Off To the Races
by Green Kneesocks
Summary: Kageyama Hana and her husband, Ichimaro, loved their daughter, they really did, but they could not take care of her. Not when they had a son to worry about. Giving her up was the best thing for everyone. Suzuki Touichirou especially. Fem!Mob Mob raised in Claw AU. Lifetime/growing up fic. Updates one to three times a day because the plague has left me with a lot of time on my hands
1. The Only Way

There was no other way.

Two years ago Hana and Ichimaro Kageyama had a daughter. They called her Shigeko. She had been planned, she had been wanted, and she had been loved. For the first year of her life she had been their beloved daughter. Shigeko had been the culmination of their love and the final piece to the puzzle called family. She would be sugar and spice and everything nice. She would go to school and grow up and marry well and all of the things that the Kageyamas wanted for their only daughter. She would be happy. A charmed life. An ordinary life.

But as the years went by it became apparent that Shigeko's life would be anything but ordinary.

The trouble started when she was born. Things moved on their own and for a while Hana thought that she had just been sleep deprived. She thought that she was just tired and forgetful, she had been getting only, four hours of sleep a night. She had been worried, even considering calling in some outside help when she came into the nursery and found everything upside down in a corner of the room and her daughter laying in the middle of the room….

But then she saw it with her own eyes.

And she thought that she was going mad.

Then her husband saw it too.

Then they both thought that they were going mad.

But they weren't. Their daughter could move things without touching them. She could move things without touching them and float herself out of her crib and through the house and it only got worse but they could cope. They had to cope. They had to cope because she was their only child and they loved her so much and they had made her. She was their responsibility.

Then they had a son.

And he was normal.

And they loved him.

Shigeko loved him too. She loved him too much. She loved to make his toys float for him….and she loved to make him float, too. She loved to make him float so high off the ground that, had he slipped from her grasp, he would have surely died…

And he almost had.

Shigeko had been just few weeks past her second birthday when she picked up Ritsu again. She had picked him up out of the bath because he didn't want to be in there. He hated getting his hair washed but it was a necessary evil. He just had so much of it and I would have been easy, so much easier, if he had just stopped crying!

But he hadn't.

Hana had been washing him. Ichimaro had been at work and she had been alone with the children just as she had every single day since the day Shigeko had been born and she could have handled it if Ritsu had just stopped crying but he couldn't and his crying had attracted Shigeko's attention and she had just been trying to help…

"Little brother doesn't like that!" she had managed to string together a complete sentence and Hana would have been proud if she hadn't been so terrified. No matter how many time Shigeko levitated her brother it never stopped being terrifying. Her son had been in his little bathtub one minute and the next he had been touching the blue tiles of the bathroom ceiling…and still crying…

Hana could not reach the bathroom ceiling.

She could not reach any ceiling. She couldn't reach her son and he was crying and Shigeko kept on telling her that, no, she was not going to put her little brother down and Ritsu was still crying and Shigeko was making him float around in circles now, which was even more terrifying, and then he was still crying but now those were fear cries and she tried to get up to…she didn't even know but she slipped and fell and shouted…

And then Shigeko had started crying.

And then Ritsu hit the ground. The rest of the house was carpeted. The bathroom was not. He fell and wailed and that was the thing to really set Shigeko off.

Hana couldn't remember what happened next.

The only thing she remembered was shaking. Everything was shaking. Then she woke up hours later in a hospital with bandages around her head and Ritsu in a cot next to her. If Hana closed her eyes she could have imagined him as he was the day he had been born. Her happy little accident. A normal birth, a normal son, just…normal. But he was not an infant, he was a little less than a year old, and he was there in a baby cot with his arm…and also his ribs…bandaged up. His little arm was in a cast…gauze and something else across his chest….

He was hurt.

She had let her son get hurt.

"Hana, it was just an accident. Kids have accidents all the time, that's why we have hospitals." Ichimaro had said to her. He said it with a laugh that did not reach his eyes…eyes which kept darting over to their daughter. He had come in as soon as she was cleared for visitors. He had come in with their daughter in tow. There wasn't a sitter in Japan who would sit for her. There wasn't a neighbor that would do them that favor. Even the children's grandparents wouldn't do it. Shigeko was Shigeko.

"Kids aren't supposed to put their parents in the hospital, Ichimaro." Said Hana lowly. This was not normal. This was…she did not have words for this. This happened when their daughter was two…what would she be doing at twelve? Twenty two? Thirty two? And what about when she had her own children….

"Once when I was three I left my roller skate on the front steps and my father broke his back in three places. Accidents happen when you have kids. Hell, you've seen the scar from where my brother ran me over with his bike. I was about five then. These things happen. Shigeko feels bad about what happened, she was the one who got help, remember? She's been asking about you and Ritsu for hours now. She's…she's sorry." Said Ichimaro

Her eyes were locked on her parents. The toy, some children's educational videogame thing, lay abandoned on the floor. Her eyes, haunting and unblinking, rested upon her mother, then her father, and then back again. Hana wondered what her daughter must have been thinking. Shigeko never went to the hospital, they had to opt out of vaccinations because the first and only time she had been given a shot she had turned the entire children's wing of the hospital upside down…

Medical reasons incompatible with vaccinations, they called it in her file.

They didn't have a name for esp. That was a name that the internet had given them when their infant daughter had levitated out of her crib. When she hadn't held her bottle but instead kept it floating in front of her. When she turned the bathroom into an aquarium. Amazing things. She had done such amazing things when she was a baby…but then they had Ritsu…and she hit her terrible two's…

"Mama hurt." Shigeko had said. Then she stood up and toddled over to Hana's hospital bed. She didn't climb, no, she levitated herself up and rested beside Hana. She recoiled from her own child's touch, from the feel of tiny fingers pocking her on the head, the bandage wrapped around it…

A massive concussion.

A cracked skull.

"Yes, Shige-chan, mama's hurt right now but in a few days she'll be able to come home and so will little brother. They just have to stay here and get some rest. Go night-night for a while. That's all. See how they have these beds? These are special night-night beds and they make the people who sleep in them get all better." Said Ichimaro

"Little brother night-night?" asked Shigeko. Ichimaro picked her up and carried her over to Ritsu's cot. He was still out of it from the drugs they gave him. Shigeko reached out to him and Hana got up from her bed and caught her arm. She had almost slipped on her blankets as they hit the floor and her IV had popped out but she didn't care.

Ritsu needed her to keep him safe.

"Don't wake Ritsu, Shige, he needs to go night-night now and so does mama. Come on, let's go to the candy machine and get a treat before we go home and go night-night." Said Ichimaro after the moment before him and his wife passed. In that moment she had looked truly terrified…and in that moment so had he. Shigeko…she was there daughter and accidents happened….

That was what he told himself, anyway.

Accidents happened with kids all the time. They were accident prone little goblins. He tried to rationalize it all away but…but he couldn't. Not after the image of his wife and son in the hospital haunted his dreams that night. Not after he had to spend the entire day with a fussy, telekinetic, toddler...

Not after Shigeko had slammed him into a wall because he hadn't brought her little brother and mother home when she woke up…

Waking up to that had been terrifying. He had always seen her telekinetic hold as something akin to her weak little baby grasps…but it had not been weak. It had been enough to throw him from the bed and into the wall…a grown man…and she had at least said sorry….

As much as a two year old could.

And maybe she was sorry. As sorry as a two year old could be. Maybe she did feel bad about what she did…or maybe she would do it again. Hana had made a point, ages ago, that she was already uncontrollable. Washing her hair was a nightmare. Getting her to put her snow pants on was an ordeal. Forget taking her to the doctor or dentist. Other parents smiled and nodded and offered up their own tales of their children's terrible two's but it was not the same. Their children could not put them in the hospital on accident…

There was no other way.

The decision had been made a week after Hana and Ritsu had come back to the hospital. There was just no other way. They didn't want to do this, it pained them greatly, but there was no other way. They had another child to think about. Ritsu was normal, totally normal, and it was unsafe for him to be around his sister due to her…condition. It was for the good of the family.

It was the hardest decision that either of them had ever had to make but it was the only way.

This was the best way.

Suzuki didn't care for children in an abstract sense. His own son was alright when he didn't need something but he had Masami to tend to him. Sho was getting older, getting into things, and may have even been gifted with teleportation for how quickly he could move…and he didn't need another Sho to tear up the house…

But he did need more espers.

Recruiting was slow. The experiments to awaken latent psychic abilities were abysmal failures. You couldn't give someone who didn't have the predisposition for it the gift of ESP and the ones who were predisposed couldn't do much more than bend spoons or light small fires. Those people, he called them his Awakened because nobody could know he had been wrong, had their uses. They could still accept a portion of his power and he had power to spare. That was useful for foot soldiers but to take over the world he would need more espers, higher level espers, and they were few and far between. He had been traveling the world for years, now, and hadn't found more than a handful of cooperative adults.

So he decided to cast a wider net.

His contacts in Seasoning City told him of a child esper who had been relinquished to the system. That was a rarity on it's own. Children who awakened couldn't usually do more than move a coin across a table or make a feather float. This was a female child. Even rarer. Suzuki had no idea why but most espers were male. He had people on figuring out why but Claw had only come into being a few years before. In a decade or so he'd have more backers, more people who saw him as the God he was, and he'd have the money and manpower to unlock every single secret that esp held.

But first this rare, and becoming rarer, child.

His contact had given him the name of the orphanage and further contacts so he could do all of this nice and legally. He couldn't be held by the law if they ever tried to stop him but he was building an organization. This would have to be done legally. Everything had to be done legally. Besides, Masami was a real stickler for the law. She had even insisted that Sho have a real birth certificate and be born in an actual hospital despite the fact that Fukuda was an accomplished healer.

He indulged her so.

And that was how he found himself filling out paper work with a lawyer present in an unassuming grey building in the unassuming city he had been born in. Had he been the sort of man who saw signs he would have seen this as a good one. The city he had been born in all those years ago had managed to create another gifted esper.

And she was a gifted child.

Her aura told him all he needed to know. The aura that could be seen here blocks down the road from this child prison they called an orphanage….or group home, now, because orphanages had gone out of style when he was a boy. A child prison to house society's unwanted. Like the animal prison, shelter, Masami occasionally wasted her afternoon at.

"….sign here….and here….and here again….and date here….." Suzuki signed where he needed to sign and sealed where he needed to seal without complaint even though this paperwork seemed endless. At least he hadn't had to do any of those tedious home visits. So much trouble to take in an unwanted child. Creating Sho had been much easier, nobody even tried to look into his life then. He wondered if maybe he should have peopled the world with espers himself. It was certainly less tedious than this process.

Why so much trouble for someone so unwanted?

He saw a flare of her aura. Pink and blue. His was red and yellow. He wondered if that meant anything, two colors. Maybe it was a sign. Heh.

"And this set of forms gives the birth parents the option of opening up the adoption with the consent of the child before she reaches the age of majority. You and your wife would have to give consent as well until the child either reaches the age of majority or is legally emancipated in some way. The term legal emancipation means…." Suzuki wasn't listening. She was out there. She was out there and she was upset. She shook the building. The windows rattled and the man, the owner of this children's prison, said something about earthquakes. Suzuki just kept on signing where they told him to sign. He wasn't even paying attention at this point.

In the future he'd need to find a person for this.

There would be more esper children in the future, maybe. Masami had been talking about a younger brother for Sho. He didn't much care for another boy. Even the man who would one day rule the world could not stop his own extinction and when that extinction happened he did not need a crisis of succession. If his sons had even a drop of his blood they would kill each other over the world he would leave them.

Girls were so much easier to deal with.

And they could create more espers when they hit that age. There were far more male espers than female so they could take their pick of the strongest and create even stronger offspring. A bit like breeding dogs. There would be no question of parentage. Masami was not the sort of woman who would stray, and Sho looked exactly like him anyway, but one could never be sure with other women. He would have liked to be sure that his grandchildren were actually his grandchildren.

Not that this girl's children would be his grandchildren.

He had a girl and a boy, now, but they would be raised as siblings. Despite the fact that they were of no genetic relation they would still be repulsed at the idea of coming together physically. A pity that he didn't have the personnel, yet, to raise Girl separate from Boy. A bit like how the Egyptians raised their royals but without the crippling birth defects. Maybe in a few years when he got more people and adopted more orphans.

"….and you're done, Suzuki-san. Now just as soon as they process this paper work they'll bring you your daughter-" said his lawyer. The man on the other side of the desk, the child prison warden…or maybe child vendor considering how much this little endeavor had just cost him, stood up suddenly.

"You can take her right now! I mean, why draw these things out? We find that the children…adapt better! Yes, they adapt better, much better, if they are put into their new living situations as soon as humanely possible! Why sit around waiting for the ink to dry! Come, come, she's waiting for you! We'll just send you your copy of the completed paper work along with her new birth certificate, insurance card, medical records, and everything else!" said the direction. The lawyer began to sputter about this being highly unorthodox but Suzuki raised his hand to silence him.

"Yes. I would love to bring her home today." Said Suzuki. He got up and began to walk towards her aura. He was followed by his layer who was arguing with the child merchant on the legality of just letting him walk out the door with a child like this was a dog pound or something. Suzuki didn't see what the problem was. He was the only person who wanted the child.

He could see why.

This was supposedly the female children aged two dormitory. There was one cot in the room. The others were dissembled and stuck into the walls, floor, and ceiling. Several windows had been covered with cardboard. There were bits of colorful plastic littering the floor that may have been toys at some point. Sitting on the only cot in the room was a small girl, her hair up in braids being her only distinguishing feature. She wore the female uniform of this child prison, a blue dress with a white shirt, and her face was blank.

He was often told that his face was blank, too.

The room shook as they entered. It was bathed in her aura, though he was the only one who could see it. It shook as the room shook. She sat still, there, on her cot. Suzuki got closed and smelled…sour milk? Yes. The wall beside here seemed to have been painted in it.

"Want little brother. Want mama. Want papa." Said the girl. The cot she sat on raised its self up off the ground. He pushed it back down without lifting a finger.

"Hello Shigeko, do you remember me? We met briefly once before." Said Suzuki trying to speak as amicably as possible. Amazing. Truly amazing. He'd have to invest in some of these child prisons, warehouses, orphanages, group homes. Who knew what he'd find next.

"Want to go home. Mama. Papa. Little brother." She said. Suzuki shook his head.

"That's where I'm taking you, Shigeko, home with me. I am your father now, and you have a new mother and younger brother. Come now, let's leave this place." Said Suzuki. He reached out a hand to her amicably. She shook her head. The room began to shake. He calmed it. He sat down beside her and pulled, from his suit coat, a small bottle of milk with a straw. She attempted to snatch it away with her powers and stare at him quizzically when she could not.

"Wait a moment, don't be so greedy." Said Suzuki. He opened it with his powers, his back was to the two men who were still locked in debate over the legality of this situation, and she watched him with that same quizzical non-expression.

"Here. I know you're partial to milk. You need to stop this behavior, Shigeko, it's uncivilized. You have the strength to do this, true, but this is such a waste of your abilities." Said Suzuki. She watched him as she drank her milk. He had no idea if she was even listening to him. He wasn't sure how much thought children her age were capable of. He couldn't remember being her age. He did remember, though, that he had wasted much of his youth trying to live like, to be like, everyone else. Such a waste. His children would not waste their talents like that.

He leaned in close.

"After all, Shigeko, an ant does not have a quarrel with a boot now does it?" she said nothing. She just watched him. She reached out her little hand and extended her aura from it. She gave his aura a tap. He tapped hers back.

"Come along now, daughter. Your mother and brother are waiting for you." Said Suzuki. He stood up, picked the child up, and went about his way with his new daughter.

Suzuki Shigeko.


	2. New Home

A/N: I'm sorry it's so short you guys. Christmas and other winter holidays have had me pretty busy. Longer chapters will be forthcoming though!

"We'll tell people she took after you." That was the first thing that Masami said when her husband brought home their daughter, and she was their daughter, despite being born to other parents. Masami had so rarely seen this side to Touichirou but she liked it. He seemed, from the outside, like a cold man but he could be so loving, the most loving, if given the chance.

She was so glad that she had given him the chance.

They had met by chance at a train station. She had been soliciting donations for the animal shelter she worked at and he had been coming back from one of his business trips. At first she had just thought that he was just another exhausted train passenger trying to make his way home so she gave him her usual, but shortened spiel, about how everyone had a responsibility to the animals and so on and so forth.

"_So you work at an animal prison because you think that the weak have a responsibility to the strong?"_ he had said when she stopped him on his way out of the station. The tall red haired stranger….with an 'interesting' world view. At first she thought that he was being funny, calling it an animal prison, but later on she would realize that he saw everything as a prison, even the human body.

"_We're just vessels, these bodies, that's all. We could accomplish so much more if we weren't trapped in these fragile, imperfect, machines." _Touichirou loved to talk philosophy. They talked of nothing else on their first two dates. It had been an impulse, leaving her number with that red haired stranger coming back from parts unknown, but it had paid off…even if he could be kind of cold sometimes. He had a big heart, it was just underneath all of that coldness. He was like those pints of ice cream they sold with the chocolate core center. You just had to dig and dig and dig until you got to him, the sweetest part of him.

The part that brought home poor little orphan girls with nowhere else to go.

"Why? I don't care if people know she's adopted and besides, she doesn't look a thing like me." Said Suzuki. Masami liked that girl, that was good. Sho was taking his nap. He wondered how his son would react to their being another child in the house. Masami had informed the boy of the change in their family structure but the boy was only a year old. Who knew how much he understood. He hoped that the two of them would get on, Boy and Girl, because otherwise it would be a long…however many years it took for the children to become independent. Suzuki hadn't needed his parents since he was in middle school but Masami was still so dependent on hers.

She cared for people.

She cared for everything and everyone. Her worldview was fascinating. That was what had drawn him to her. He had been trying to get Claw off the ground, then, well trying more than he had been trying now, and it was such a slough. He needed money and that money came partially from dummy companies but mostly from cults…and those cultists were the most tedious and annoying people that he had ever encountered. He had been at his wits end with the constant kowtowing and just needed someone who challenged him.

And she did.

She took the view that the strong needed to protect the weak. That was why she had devoted her life to caring for animals even though it was such a waste of time. She did not view it that way. They got to talking. She gave him her phone number. He called it. They talked. They dated. They had sex. She got pregnant. They got married. Sho was born.

It had all happened so fast, but fast was good, better than drawing the whole thing out for years and years.

He was not immune to the same things that all men wanted. Finding a mate hadn't been at the forefront of his mind but he was glad to have found the one he found. Her presence was usually enjoyable, she was a devoted mother to their son, and she would be a devoted mother to their daughter as well.

So in the grand scheme of things he had done well.

"Really Touichirou? She doesn't look a thing like you?" asked Masami. She pointed over to the girl. She had discovered Sho's toy animals and was lining them up on the living room floor. She wasn't smiling, she wasn't frowning, she wasn't anything. She was just staring down at the little bits if plastic shaped like animals in her hands. Just staring.

"No. I don't see it." Said Suzuki. She was certainly less boisterous than Sho, that was a good thing, Sho, when he woke up, would most likely throw his toys around, run, scream, climb, jump and whatever else he could do. Maybe that was just the difference between boys and girls. He had no idea, he was an only child.

"That's your resting face." Said Masami motioning to the girl as if they hadn't been staring at her since he brought her home from Seasoning City.

"What do you mean?" asked Suzuki. He didn't see his face in her. He saw his aura in her, two colors, but that was it. There was no point in speculating as to whether or not the child looked like him. Aside from a period in his teenage years he had been keeping almost complete control over the desire for sex. He had broken it for Masami but she had done a lot of persuading.

And it had paid off. That was how they had gotten Sho.

"That's your resting face, Touichirou. That's how you look all the time, like you're bored of everything. She looks just like you." Said Masami as she watched the girl, no, her daughter playing with some of Sho's toys. She could talk, sort of, though she hadn't done much of it. She had been asking for her biological family until Touichirou poured her a glass of milk. Which Masami then transferred into a sippy cup because one did not serve a two year old a full drinking glass of milk. The milk had been the thing to calm her down. The room had started shaking but Touichirou had managed to get her calm…

Another way that their daughter took after him.

Masami knew what her husband was. It had been a shock, an amazing shock, to realize that the world was so much…bigger….than she had ever imagined. Psychic powers were real and he had them. She wondered if he had passed them down to Sho. Sho did look almost exactly like his father after all. Touichirou had said that it was too early to tell with Sho, most espers didn't present their powers until later on in childhood, but Masami knew that powers or no powers they would both still love Sho.

And Shigeko.

Shigeko who could shake the house. Shigeko who, according to what Touichirou had told her, had been abandoned by her family because they just could not care for her anymore. Shigeko who had been about to have been sent away even from her orphanage because she was a 'danger' to the other children with her 'condition'.

This was a two year old girl. All she needed was love.

"I suppose she does. Nobody would ever believe that this was our child, though, she's so obviously fully Japanese. I suppose that we could color her hair if this really means so much to you." Said Suzuki. Masami seemed to think that he had said that in jest and laughed.

"You're ridiculous. Isn't daddy ridiculous, Shigeko?" laughed Masami. Shigeko looked up from what she was doing. She stared at these two people in front of her. Suzuki wondered what the girl could have possibly been thinking and made a mental note to look for telepaths. The girl, to the untrained eye, didn't seem to be thinking anything at all. She just stared at the two strangers in front of her.

Her aura told another story.

This was a tentative sort of calm. Needs existed in a hierarchy and at the bottom was food, shelter, and safety. A pity that this hadn't been an infant. She remembered her biological family, though being only two years old those memories would soon fade, but he needed the girl to attach to his family now. She needed to see them as her ingroup. She needed to see him as her father.

He'd much rather have her grow up to work towards his goals rather than opposed them.

"Daddy?" asked Shigeko quizzically. She looked around the room.

"Yes. There's daddy and here's mommy! And Mommy is so happy to meet you! Yes she is! Yes she is!" said Masami getting down in Shigeko's level. She took her sippy cup of milk and put it behind her back. She stared at the woman in front of her and the man sitting across the room. She looked around at the house, at these toys she had never seen before, and at this woman who called herself mommy.

And at the man.

The man who called himself daddy. The man who was red, red and yellow. She knew her colors. She was pink and blue. The woman had no color at all, like the people she had been with in the bad place. Now she wasn't at the bad place anymore. This was….this was a good place.

There was milk here.

"Do you hear that? Your little brother is waking up. Come on, let's go meet little brother." Said Masami. She reached her hand out to the girl, to Shigeko, to her new daughter, and it took the child a moment to take it. Her eyes met Masami's and she held her hand tightly.

"Want little brother…" muttered Shigeko as she was led down the hall. Mommy, daddy, little brother….she knew…these were those people….and this was her…house? She didn't know. All she knew was that the people here were nice and there was milk.

"Yes, let's go see little brother! Oh, Sho's going to be so happy to meet you." Said Masami as she led Shigeko down to Sho's bedroom, their bedroom. The books all said that rooming together would be good for them, it would help them grow as siblings. Those books had been about older children, Masami had been assured by many that being as young as they were they would never think of each other as anything else, but Masami was not going to take a chance on her family's happiness.

"House. Big house." Said Shigeko as the lady walked her down a hallway she had never seen before. This place was knew. This was place was new but….good. Better than the bad place. Lots of milk, which was good, and the people were nice. So nice. So she allowed herself to be led. The floor was nice under her feet and the lady's hand was nice in hers. Her voice was nice, too, she said nice things.

"…and I know that you're just going to be the best of friends. See? I've made a bed for you right next to your little brother's." said Masami. She led Shigeko over to Sho's crib. He was standing and rattling the bars as he tended to do. She felt the shift in the energy around her. Her husband was near, very near, and she was glad that he was there to share in this moment.

"Little brother?" asked Shigeko. That was not little brother…right? She knew little brother…but….she reached over through the bars. The other person reached back.

She saw red, a different red than the man had, and it touched her colors.

"Touichirou, take a picture!" whispered Masami. Sho was usually so upset after getting up from his nap. This was great! He had never taken to anyone, not even the other children at the playground, so quickly.

"Of course." Said Suzuki as he pulled out his phone. He'd indulge Masami even though what needed to be seen wouldn't show up in a photograph. Sho had something of an aura though it was barely anything. Nothing compared to the girl. She shone so brightly. That was what mattered and it would not show up on camera.

Still, though, he indulged Masami.

He indulged her when she insisted on painting half of Sho's room pink for the girl even though they had more than enough rooms for the girl to have picked one and made it her own. He didn't understand why they had to share a room, the children, but it did make Masami happy and he did supposed that it was in his best interests that the children got along.

They would one day inherit the world after all.


	3. Breakfast for Dinner

Normally breakfast was served at eight in the morning.

Mob was four, now, and she could tell time. Not with the hands and the numbers on the round clock but she could read the numbers on mom's phone. Right now the numbers on mom's phone said that it was six fifteen. That was six fifteen at night, Mob could tell, because it was dark out. Six fifteen in the morning was also dark out but a different kind of dark. That was the dark with the pinks and yellows and also birds singing. This was dark with a lot of dark purples and no birds outside. They were asleep now, mom said so, and she knew a lot about animals. Mom knew a lot about a lot of things, like how the sun was visiting America now but they got to visit his daughter, the moon. Mom knew because she read it in their 'Goodbye Sun, Hello Moon' book.

Well it was mostly Sho's book.

He drew his name on it. He could draw his name, now, and so could Mob. Well she could draw the characters for Mob and Shigeko, but she was called Mob. That was what her friends at school said. Even though mom and dad said that her name was not Mob and that she shouldn't answer to it but Mob didn't mind. The character was much easier to remember and also her friends at school gave her that nickname and that meant that they liked her…right?

Right?

Mom and dad said that it was mean that other people were calling her that. Mom said to tell her teacher. Mob didn't because she didn't mind. She had been called so many mean things before like 'Bowl-Cut' or 'Weirdo' or other comments like that. Mob was a nice nickname, and it made sense, too, because she knew that she was boring and plain looking. Mom braided her hair every day and cut her bangs and got her lots of pretty dresses, mostly pink because mom said that she looked nice in pink, and her socks had pretty lace and her shoes were super expensive, mom said, and mom also said that all of that made her look pretty but Mob knew that she didn't look pretty, she looked like Mob.

Also the character was much easier to write.

Dad didn't care that the character was much easier to write or that people had called her meaner things. Dad said that because she could do the same things that he could, move things without touching them and see certain people's colors, that she shouldn't have taken that from the other kids. Dad said that she was better than the other kids, and he called them 'insects' which meant bugs, which was a mean thing to call someone. People were people and bugs were bugs. Mob didn't see what being able to move things without touching them and seeing a few more colors than most people had to do with other people being bugs.

Besides, that would have meant that Sho was a bug.

He could sort of see the colors. He knew that dad's colors were red with a little yellow and her colors were pink and blue. Fukuda, he made sure that they were healthy and fixed the owies that mom couldn't fix with kisses, had only green as his color. There were some other people too, people from dad's work, and they all had their own colors. Sho could see the colors if he tried really hard. Mom couldn't see them at all.

Mom and Sho were not bugs.

They were people, her family, and family was important. They were the people who would always be there for you. It said so in their book, What is a Family? Mom knew all the best books. A family had grownups and kids and they all loved one another. A family could have a mom and dad, or one mom or one dad, or two moms and two dads, or it could have aunts or uncles or grandparents or foster parents. There could be lots of kids, too, or just two like in her family. Her family was a mom and a dad and a sister and a brother. She wanted another sister. She didn't care if it came from mom's tummy like she and Sho did or if it came from an orphanage like the book said that some kids did.

Kids that came from an orphanage were the same as kids who grew in the mom's tummy, Mom had said so.

People were all the same. Well the same level of being important, mom had said. She also said that dad was just being grumpy when he called the other kids bugs. Dad could be very grumpy sometimes….but at least he hadn't been when Mob told him what mom said.

"Your mother is entitled to her own opinions." Dad had said. That was the same as telling someone 'you can think whatever you want, I don't care' when they disagreed with you a lot. Like how Sho always wanted the stuff in their bath that turned the water green even though Mob thought that it was like taking a bath in a gross swamp or something. Sho said that it made the boring bath fun, much more fun than it was just bubbles, and that was the wrong thing to think.

But Mob hated fighting with Sho.

He was her little brother and she loved him. She was a big sister and a good big sister was nice to her little brother. So she told him that he could think whatever he wanted and she didn't care. That was before dad said that mom was entitled to her own opinion. That was a much more grown up way of saying that. It was still kind of mean, though, even if it was grown up. Dad shouldn't have been mean to mom, in Mob's opinion, but she couldn't tell dad what to do. That wasn't how it worked. Dad told her what to do because he was her dad and that was what dads did. The only trouble was that she didn't want to listen to dad and be mean to the other kids, especially since they really weren't being that mean to her.

"An ant has no quarrel with a boot." Was what she had said. Dad said that a lot. When he said that he was calling people bugs, which was not nice, but he was saying that her powers were like a big shoe and she could squish people with them. That was mean. She didn't like squishing bugs, neither did Sho even though he was a boy, so she did not want to be a great big shoe. Great big shoes didn't make friends, people made friends, even Mobs.

Background characters.

Better a background character than a big shoes. Dad must have agreed because he patted her on the head and then gave her a present from his trip. He took a lot of trips, she and Sho figured that was his job, professional trip taker. He went all over the world in big airplanes and brought them back toys and candy and clothes and whatever they asked for. Mom said that dad spoiled them but that didn't make any sense, spoiling was for things like milk, not people. Besides that was what parents did, they made money and stuff and they used the money to get the kids whatever they wanted. A family worked to make all of it's members happy, the book had said that, and mom had read the book so it must have been a true story. Mom was not a liar. Moms were good people and good people did not tell lies.

Like now.

Mob believed mom when she said that dad's plane had touched down safely and he was only his way. She had a thing on her phone that told her when the planes came and went. There were lots of planes coming and going from Japan, that was where they lived, so if dad missed one plane he would just be able to take another. Like when mom took her and Sho to the big park downtown or the museum or the candy store and she didn't want to drive so they took a bus. If one bus missed them then they could always just take another.

Dad wasn't taking the bus, though.

His driver took him home from the airport. That was good, then dad would be less likely to be grumpy, which was good because he could be very mean when he got grumpy. He punished them a lot when he was grumpy, mostly Sho, but sometimes Mob. He punished Sho more because Sho was a boy and also he couldn't put a bubble around himself to keep from getting hurt. He would though, when he got bigger, because they were brother and sister and that meant that anything that she could do he could do.

Except pee standing up, but that was because he was a boy. Not that Mob was jealous or anything. She could grow a baby in tummy when she grew up so there! That made them even!

She knew that he would be able to do all the other things that she could do, though, when he got to be her age. Move things without touching them. Put a bubble around himself. See all the colors. Make things float and even break when he got upset. Anything that she could do, most anything, he could do too. They were brother and sister. They came from mom and dad. It all made perfect sense.

"Where's dad? I want dad!" shouted Sho from his spot at the table. He kicked the underside of the table and his animals went flying. Mob caught them without touching them and put them back. Dad always got very grumpy when there was a mess. They were supposed to be better than other children, dad was always saying, and that was why they had to be neat and tidy and not like little pigs. Even though that made no sense. Pigs lived on farms, not in cities, and they lived in sties, not castles.

Their house was a castle.

"Sho, honey, shush. Your daddy's on his way home right now. See? The Google says that it's smooth traffic so he should be here very soon. Ok? Now remember, we have to be good when daddy comes home. You both know how grumpy he can be after one of his trips. Travel really take it out of him." said Mom as she checked her phone. She tucked some of her hair behind her ear and then put her eyebrows together really close. That meant that she was thinking very hard about something. Mob could tell.

"I want to travel too!" said Sho. He was still at the table but he wasn't kicking it. That was the breakfast table where they had breakfast. That part of the kitchen was called the 'breakfast nook'. They also had a dining room but that was for dining. Mob didn't much understand why they needed two separate places to eat, all of her friends said that it was weird, but mom said that this was what she and dad were used to. Mob didn't know why they couldn't do something different, well something more like what other people did, but mom was the mom and dad was the dad and they decided how the household was run. It didn't matter what she and Sho wanted. They were the kids.

Dad said that hierarchies were very important.

And he hated it when she and Sho whined about what they wanted. They were only allowed to ask once, and nicely, and then never again. If he answer was yes then she and Sho would get whatever it was that they wanted and if the answer was no then what they wanted would never happen. It was hard to tell when something was a yes and when something was a no. Sometimes it could take days or even weeks for an answer.

Patience was a virtue, dad had said.

Virtues were good things, good traits, that people had. Mom said that. So she and Sho had to be patient about what they wanted. She wanted a lot of things, like the doll with the hair that really grew or the robot cat that could learn tricks, but she also wanted more than toys. She wanted dad to be less grumpy. She wanted Sho to be able to do the things that she could do. She wanted mom to have a little sister for her growing in her tummy. She wanted the other kids to be able to come over and play, and she wanted to be able to go to their houses. Even though that had everything that they needed in the house. Their house was their castle and they had no need to leave it.

Dad had said.

"Can we, mom?" Mob asked. She loved the house, the castle, because it had her family in it. It also had all of her and Sho's toys in their playroom and their TV in the TV room and their swing set in the backyard and also the tall tree that sometimes had the neighbor's cat in it. She didn't want to leave the castle and mom and Sho but she also wanted to see the places that dad went to. See all the different countries, like Australia where people rode around in kangaroo's pouches or England where they talked funny and drank weird tea or even the other side of the world where people walked upside down! She could have, with dad, gotten on a plane whenever the sun tried to say goodbye to Japan and follow it to America and Europe and Australia but also the North Pole where Santa lived or the South Pole where penguins lived, according to a book Sho picked out at the library, or China where they had pretty things they wore in their hair or anywhere, really.

Any of the places dad had been to.

The places that he brought back pieces of for them.

"Can you two help me set the table? Why yes, you most certainly can Shigeko." Said Mom as she took some plates, the breakfast ones, and put them on the table. Sho crossed his arms and shook his head. Mob shook her head right back at him. They got into a brief head shaking match before he swept his animals off the table with his arms and into his lap. He used his shirt as a basked and carried his toys back to the playroom. Little brothers could be so weird sometimes. Sho knew that if he left his toys out dad would just get mad and break them but he had been about to anyway.

"I'll help, mom, but that's not what I wanted to ask about." Said Mob. She didn't move at all from her spot in the middle of the kitchen, or 'under foot' as mom called it sometimes. Mainly because she sometimes stepped on Mob as she went about her work in the kitchen or the garden or the house or wherever else she was trying to do things. That was because she had to move things by touching them, sometimes Mob helped her, but she couldn't do the things that Mob and dad did.

Mob had no idea why mom and Sho were so different.

"You're taking a bath tonight and that's final. Shigeko, you know that if you go for too long without washing your hair it gets knots in it. Now which would you rather have? Hair with knots or hair without knots?" asked Mom

"Without, but I wasn't going to ask about that, either? But tonight can we not turn the bathwater colors? I just want bubbles." Said Mob

"Now you know that it's Sho's turn to pick what goes in the bathwater, Shigeko. When you get big enough to take your own baths then you can decide what goes in the water. When you share with someone you have to make compromises, that's just how it goes." Said Mom

"But I hate it when the water turns colors. It's all…gross." Said Mob

"Shigeko-" said mom

"Mob. How come you never call me Mob? I want to be called Mob and it's my name so why can't I be called what I want to be called?" asked Mob. The stack of plates beside her began to shake. She didn't know why. She wasn't upset, when she got upset the whole room shook, but she knew that she should not have been making anything shake at all. Dad said that power was nothing without control.

"Because that's not your name, Shigeko. I know that you…you like that nickname but I'm going to call you by your actual name, alright? And I don't want either of us to get upset over this. Now, what is it you wanted to ask me and why is it getting in the way of you helping set the table? Come on, Shigeko, do your part too. Sho's off putting his toys away so you can arrange the plates. Come on, you're four years old, you can do this." said Mom. Mob did as she was told. She put the plates, all four of them, down where they belonged. She got the silverware from the drawer, too, without being asked. That was very important, doing things without needing to be asked. That was a good thing, doing nice things for people without needing to be asked. It was the kind of thing that made mom happy.

She did the eyebrow thing, the thing that she did whenever Mob used her powers. Mob wasn't super sure what the eyebrow thing meant, exactly. Faces were kind of hard for her sometimes. That was ok, though, because mom had gotten her a book at the library with different pictures of faces and what they meant.

"Mom, I want to go with dad next time." Said Mob as she got the drinking glasses from the cabinet and put them on the table. Mom's drinking glass was clear with cats on in, Sho's was shaped like a cat but blue, hers was shaped like a cat but pink. Dad's was clear and plain. He didn't like animals much, Mob didn't know why. It wasn't just cats, which already would have made no sense, but also all animals. He said that there was no point in taking care of them unless you were going to eat them, which was what farm people did, only not for cats and dogs and hamsters and gerbils and guinea pigs and rabbits. Those were the kinds of animals that mom had at her job. Sometimes she took Mob and Sho with her to work but that wouldn't be happening anytime soon because dad was coming back. Mob didn't know how long he would be back for but when he was back they mostly just did things that he wanted to do.

"Shigeko, you know that daddy needs to travel for his work. Daddy's work isn't like my work, there are no kids allowed. Ok? Besides, don't you have fun here with me and your little brother?" said mom. She was cooking and talking, now, which was dangerous. One time mom did that and she burnt herself so bad that dad had to call Fukuda. Mom didn't deserve that, she was so nice all the time. She never got grumpy, not like that, not that Mob didn't love dad! She did, she really did…she just didn't like it when he came home all grumpy. Even though he was mostly mad at Sho because Sho was the worst listener in the house…not that Mob would ever tell him that to his face. She did wish, a lot of the time, that he would have been a better listener so that dad wouldn't have to punish him so often. Even now Sho was walking much too loudly, dad didn't like it at all when they were loud, and if dad had been there then he could have yelled at Sho or even given him a punishment.

She shushed him as he walked really heavy through the castle and into the kitchen. He even opened the door much too hard. It hit the wall and make the cat cake pans hanging on the walls rattle. She hoped that nothing broke. Dad hated it when things broke.

"I want to go with dad too….I don't want dad to go again!" said Sho. He stomped his feet when he said that. Mob shook her head and put her foot down, under his, when he went to stomp again. She could see, off in the distance, dad's colors. He was getting closer. Mob wanted to stomp her feet, too, and yell and shout like Sho did but she couldn't. When she did those things the whole castle shook. The castle shook like there was a dragon outside trying to get the family living inside…but it wasn't a dragon at all but Mob herself….and that was not good. Dad always said that power was nothing without control so Mob needed better control.

But it was hard.

But she just had to work harder.

"Can't we all go with him just once? I want to see the places he goes to and…and I want to be with him too. Whenever he comes back he's all grumpy and sometimes he doesn't get better until it's almost time for him to go again. Why does he have to go all the time? Why can't he get a different job where he stays here?" asked Mob. Mom was quiet, then, before she turned off the fire and put the pan on the other burner.

"Shigeko, Sho, I need you both to listen-" said mom. She got down on her knees so she wasn't so much taller. Mob knew that a serious talk was coming. Mom always got down really low to their height when a serious talk was coming. The last one had been her explaining to Sho that animals had to live outside where their homes and families were and that if he brought them inside it would be like someone taking him away from his home and his family forever.

"But I want-" said Sho. He didn't get it yet, maybe because he was so little or maybe because he was a boy, but he just didn't get it. They couldn't get upset. It might have even been because he didn't have powers, he couldn't do what Mob and dad could, so he didn't have that kind of control. They had just had his birthday, he hadn't been three for very long at all.

"Dad's coming, Sho, you should be good." Said Mob. Mom let out a shaky breath and put her one of her hands on each of their shoulders. She did the shaky breathing thing again. Mob didn't know what it meant but she knew that it wasn't good. People said all kinds of things without words. She didn't know why people were always saying things without words, it made things harder than they had to be, but they did. That was just the way things had to be.

"Yes…daddy's coming home. He's coming home and we're going to be good, ok? He's had a long flight and he just wants to relax. That's why we're having breakfast for dinner, you know, because daddy loves breakfast food. Ok? Let's not make it any harder for daddy than it has to be. Ok? That means no getting upset, no shouting, no making a mess, and no asking daddy if you can go with him. Alright? Can we just be good?" asked Mom. Mob nodded. Sho didn't nod under she nudged him with her powers.

"Ok. I'll be good….so dad likes me." Said Sho. Mom had that look on her face and she did that weir breathing thing again. Maybe it was because Sho was wrong. Dad liked them all the time, even when he didn't show it like other dads did. Sometimes he did, of course. Sometimes he gave them outer space rides, that was when he picked them up without touching them and flew them around the house, sometimes he went with mom with them to the park and pushed them super high on the swings, and sometimes he told them bedtime stories about the things he could do if he were the king of the world and they were his royal family.

Then the whole world would have been their castle.

But that was just a story. The castle was castle enough for them.

"Sho, dad likes us all the time. He's our dad, it's what they do. Remember the book? Families come in all different shapes and sizes, some big and some small, but love is something had by all." Said Mob. Mom kissed the tops of their heads.

"You're such a sweet girl, Shigeko…my sweet little girl…" said Mom as she got up from the ground. Sho tugged on her dress as she tried to get up.

"What about me? What about me? What about me, mom?" asked Sho

"You're not a girl." Said Mob. Even though she kind of wished that he was. Boys were loud and they ran around a lot and jumped and climbed and stuff like that, stuff that mom and dad said that girls weren't supposed to do. If she had a sister then she'd have someone who she had more in common with. Someone who didn't make her dolls look for worms in the dirt or toss them down the stairs so they could fly or jump on her bed to get her to wake up in the morning. Those were good reasons to want a sister.

She also had another reason to want a sister, though it was not a good one. At least she thought that it was not a good one. She didn't really know what it was. She just felt…sad…when she thought about Sho. About her little brother. She remembered….at least she thought that it was a memory. It felt far away, like a memory from a dream, but…not.

She remembered being very sad. It had something to do with…with a boy who was not Sho…but that didn't make sense. She only had the one brother and he was Sho. So why did she feel like someone was…missing…sometimes when she looked at him. Why did she sometimes expect someone else to be there?

"You, Sho, are my gentle little boy. My sweet little girl and my gentle little boy…what more could I ever have asked for." Said mom. She kissed them both on the head again. Mob fixed her bangs after mom messed them up. She didn't like people being able to see her forehead, she didn't know why. It felt kind of like she could hide behind her hair, sometimes, even though she knew that she had no reason to hide at all. '

"What's dad?" asked Mob as she saw dad's colors getting closer. She saw his colors getting closer and she could feel them, too. She pushed her colors against his. He pushed back but not meanly. She could sort of tell, from colors, because those were better than faces for that, how people felt.

And dad did not feel terribly grumpy.

"Your father…..dad….daddy is a good man. Your daddy is a good man and he works very hard to make a better world for the two of you so…so the least we can do is make him his favorite dinner." Said mom. She fixed her dress and went back to the stove. Mob and Sho looked at each other for a moment. Sho would tell her if mom was upset or not. She could read colors but he could read faces.

He ran to the door when the lock turned.

So mom must have been ok, then, even if Mob got the feeling that she wasn't. Why wouldn't she have been? Dad was home and they were having breakfast for dinner and dad had probably come back with presents, too! Now the whole family would be together and be happy.

They way that they were supposed to be.


	4. Falling Down

They had always lived in the castle. It was their home and it would always be their home.

And Sho was going to defend it!

"Sho! Enough with that stick! Mommy and Daddy are trying to sleep." Said mom. She and dad were in their room. They slept in a lot when dad came back from his trips. Sho didn't know what time it was but he knew that the sun was up and the shadows were staring to get short. It was getting close to no shadow time. That was when the sun was high and they had lunch.

"But there's monsters out here!" said Sho real loud so that mom and dad could hear him. There weren't real monsters, dad would never let them get into the house, but big sis could make their toys fly and he could hit them with the big stick he found on the ground the other day and that counted as defending the castle.

Mom and dad said some stuff from behind their door. It sounded like fighting, almost, but quieter. That made Sho quieter. He hated it when mom and dad got into fights. He wished that they could just get along. Like him and big sis, they got along great!

"Sho, remember, if you ever see a monster you just bow and be polite and it'll leave you alone. Ok? Now, please, mommy and daddy need to rest." Said mom. Sho didn't know what they needed to rest, for, because they had been resting all night. Maybe they were turning into old people. Old people needed sleep all the time, not that he knew any old people personally, he hadn't seen mom's mom and dad since he was a baby and he didn't even know if dad had a mom and a dad.

"Then I'll hit 'em with my stick!" said Sho because, of course, you couldn't just be polite to a real, live, monster. That would be stupid because unless you hit it with a stick then it would eat you. Dad said that the world worked liked that, you either got eaten or you were eaten.

Mom said that dad was just being silly when he said that.

"Sho, enough with the stick, ok? Sticks belong outside now go put it back where you found it." Said mom. Everything belonged outside it seemed. Sticks and stones and plants and grass and even all of the animals they found out there, too. He knew that it was mean to take animals out from the wild, it made them sad to be separated from their families, and Sho didn't want to make anything sad but it seemed like they would have been much happier in the castle. It was big and warm and they had plenty to eat and plenty of places to sleep. The castle was so big that there was a whole part of the house that they weren't even using!

Big sis said that their new little sis would have one of those rooms.

But Sho knew how it worked. First mom had to get really fat and then the fat would turn into a baby and it would crawl out of her stomach just like he had and so had big sis. That was why mom had that scar on her stomach that people stared at when they went to the pool. She didn't like the staring even though it wasn't a scar from doing bad things, it was a scar that she had gotten making new people she said, and dad said that he didn't like them going out in the world where the other people were and that he would have a pool built in the castle for them.

Sho didn't mind the other people that much.

Sometimes they stared at him and tried to touch his hair. Sometimes they spoke real slow to him and mom or just spoke English even though this was Japan and in Japan they spoke Japanese. Sometimes they only talked to big sis and told her to tell him and mom what they were saying. Sometimes they even asked weird questions like where big sis had come from or if they were watching her for someone else.

Big sis was his big sis. Why else would she live with them in the castle?

People could be weird sometimes. He didn't mind them that much, not really, ok a little bit really. Animals were better than people in a lot of ways, so he liked animals better, but he didn't dislike people. He liked the people he knew. He knew mom and big sis and dad and he liked them. They mostly liked him back, well it was dad who mostly didn't like him, but that was just because he was so different. He couldn't do the things that dad and big sis could do. But that was ok, mom couldn't either, and neither could most other people.

But he wanted to.

"Come on, mom said to put that stick back outside." Said his big sis who kept on telling people to call her Mob even though that was just people being mean to her. She didn't believe that, though, and Sho did feel bad about pushing those other kids too but people needed to be called by their names. Besides, it was a mean thing to call someone and mom was always saying how they had to be nice to people and stuff.

"I don't want to." Said Sho. This was a really big stick. If he left it outside then something could have happened to it. Girls just didn't get it. They played with boring stuff like dolls and dress up clothes and stuff.

"Mom said so and we have to do what mom says or dad'll get mad. Don't make dad mad, Sho." whispered big sis. She had a point about that. Last time dad got mad at him he got a punishment…and he was still sore from that. Not like the time when he was really little and his arm had extra corners and then Fukuda had to fix it. That had been a bad time, from what Sho could remember of it. Big sis remembered it better than he did, not that they were supposed to talk about things like that or anything.

"I'm not gonna!" said Sho maybe a little too loudly. He heard more talking from mom and dad's room and decided to run away before dad got out of bed. Big sis followed him. She was still making their stuff float, even when they got to the outside. The yard was big and had high walls around it. Around those walls were a bunch of trees which sometimes dropped really big sticks into their yard. Sho didn't much like the wall, if it wasn't there then there'd be more sticks and also he could climb the trees, but dad said that the wall was important.

It kept out other people.

Sho could hear them, sometimes, driving down the street. They lived in a city with more people than he could even count, he and big sis tried a bunch of times to count all of the different people they saw when mom took them places, but there weren't a lot of them by where they lived. This whole street was castles like theirs. Not like the kinds the samurai and shoguns lived in but castles none the less. They had high walls and big windows and were so big that there were entire parts of it all dusty and old and never, ever, used. The other kids at preschool lived in castles but also regular houses. Sho didn't like regular houses, they looked too small, and there wasn't enough room for all of your stuff it looked like. Also there wasn't any room for new little brothers, which were much better than new little sisters, even though big sis wanted a little sis.

The last thing they needed was more girls in the house.

"Sho, it's cold, let's go inside. We can play with the stuff dad got us." Said big sis

"No way! I wanna climb!" said Sho tossing his stick aside and going to their play structure. It was cold and metal and also kind of slippery but it was more fun than being inside and being real quiet so mom and dad could sleep. Also dad was less likely to get mad when they were outside.

"Mom says that we're not supposed to go to the top unless she's here, Sho, remember?" said big sis. Sho stuck out his tongue and kept on climbing. It was high up, their play structure, but he liked it that way. When he got to the top he could see over the wall and into other people's yards. He wondered what their castles were like. Which rooms weren't they using? Did they also have rooms with beds nobody slept in? Rooms with boxes full of papers in kanji that he couldn't read yet? Books full of pictures that weren't even in color? He couldn't see into their windows, they had curtains and blinds and stuff, but he could see into their yards and that had to be good enough he supposed. He wondered what people thought about their castle. Did they ever climb up high and look at it and try to imagine what his family was like?

"I'm not gonna fall!" said Sho

"Are too!" said big sis

"Am not!" said Sho. This could go on for a while. He usually won when they played 'am not, are too'. Well he was the last one talking, usually, when mom made them stop.

"Yes you are, you fell last time! Remember? When mom had to call Fukuda?" said big sis. Of course Sho remembered. He liked Fukuda. Fukuda was the family doctor but not like the one at the hospital who gave shots and had only citrus flavored lollipops. Maybe if he let go of the metal bars and let himself fall and get hurt then Fukuda would come over and make him better and play with him and big sis and stuff. Or maybe not the last part, he was different when dad was home. He didn't tell jokes or pick them up or play with them or anything. Everything was different when dad was home. Less fun. Mom didn't take them as many places, they never even went to the animal shelter or the dog hotel, and they had to be very neat and very quiet.

But Sho still loved dad.

"I'm not gonna fall! You come up here if you're so worried!" said Sho. Big sis wouldn't. She never climbed this high. Mostly because she never wore pants but also because she was afraid. The not wearing pants thing was an excuse. He didn't get girls, why they wore skirts and dresses and stuff, it just looked uncomfortable.

"I want to but I'm too scared. Mom says that we aren't supposed to go up so high unless she's here. You're gonna get in trouble." Said big sis. She was doing the thing where her hair was trying to fly away. She did that a lot when she was mad or sad or happy or anything. Sho reached up and felt his hair. It just stood up all the time regardless of what it was that he was doing.

"Both hands Sho!" she shouted. It was her shouting that made him lose his balance, nothing else, and he would have regained his balance too if she hadn't been shouting so much. But she was still shouting and he had still lost his balance and his feet slipped and now he was hanging by one hand.

"Don't fall Sho! It's cold out and the ground is hard!" said big sis. Sho didn't need her to tell him that the ground was hard, he remembered from the last time he fell, and he didn't need his big sister to remind him.

And he was not scared.

He was not scared of falling and hitting the ground and his arm having extra corners again. That had happened before and he had been fine. Fukuda fixed it and he'd fix it again so there was no reason to be scared. Sho wasn't afraid of anything. He was a big boy now. He wasn't scared and he wasn't going to cry, either, when he hit the ground. He had cried before but that was because dad wasn't around. Dad hated crying, he said that only babies and weaklings cried, and Sho was not a baby or a weakling. He was not going to let dad down again.

He tried to pull himself up.

The bars were too cold and his fingers were kind of frozen. He was cold all over. It hadn't snowed yet, mom said that it would snow any day now, but it was pretty cold outside. He wasn't wearing his jacket or hat or mittens or scarf. Mom would be mad about that but he would rather have mom upset with him than dad. Mom never punished him, not for real anyway, and she never got mad at him for real too. Mom was nice like that. If he fell and cried she wouldn't have been mad at him at all…but mom was not dad. Moms were not dads. Dads weren't as nice as moms.

"Just let go and I'll catch you!" said big sis. Sho's arm hurt. He couldn't pull himself up but…but if he fell and he couldn't help but cry dad would be mad at him…and also did might be mad at him for falling in the first place…dad never liked it when me messed up at stuff. Even at stuff that didn't matter as much as climbing and falling, like reading and writing. Dad always hated it when he messed up hiranga, which they were learning in school so he didn't mess up as badly, and kanji which they weren't supposed to learn about until they were older and he messed up all the time…

Dad didn't like failure.

"No! I can do it myself!" said Sho. Dad hated it when he messed up. Sho was not going to upset dad. He was going to pull himself up and keep on climbing until he got to the very top and he was going to do it all on his own! He was not a baby anymore and he could do things for himself! He had this. He just had to ignore how stiff and frozen his fingers were, how much his arm hurt, and how hard it was to even hold on now…he had to ignore it and be a big boy and pull himself up and make dad proud of him!

He tried to pull himself up.

It hurt.

His other hand couldn't hold him up anymore.

And then he fell.

The ground was coming in fast. He may have screamed, just a bit as he fell, and then again as he came to a sudden stop. It felt like something was holding him up but not like when mom picked him up. It was like he was being held up not by hands but, like, he had fallen onto an invisible wall. He could even see, sort of, a shimmery sort of color around him. Pink and blue. It seemed to move and shift around him as he stayed floating in the air. He looked up. He could still see over the wall. Not over the whole castle but over the wall. He wondered if anyone could see him.

He hoped that they couldn't.

He hoped that nobody could see that he had to have his big sister save him.

"Shigeko! Sho!" that was mom. She was running out of the house in her robe and slippers. Dad was behind her but he was walking. He didn't have his whole suit on, just the blue pants and white shirt, and to Sho it made dad look…weird. Less than himself. He always wore a suit, even to bed Sho imagined, though he had never woken up earlier to see if dad ever wore pajamas. Dad looked less like himself not just because he wasn't wearing his whole suit but because he looked….kinds happy.

"Daughter. I had no idea you could lift anything as heavy as a person." Dad even sounded happy. He wasn't even looking at Sho. He was looking at Shigeko. It wasn't fair! Just because she could do stuff like that…just because of that dad never punished her! Even though mom said that she wasn't supposed to use her powers on people! Even though mom said that she needed to be sweet and never, ever, ever use her powers against people!

At least mom didn't look happy.

"Shigeko! Put your brother down! Do you have any idea how dangerous this is!?" mom asked. She looked kind of scared, actually, even though Sho wasn't crying or anything. She probably thought that he was going to cry like a baby if he hit the ground. She probably thought that he was still a baby. It wasn't his fault that he was younger and it wasn't his fault that he couldn't do the same stuff sister and dad could do!

It wasn't his fault.

"But if I let go of Sho then he'll fall down. I don't want Sho to fall. I love him." said big sis

"I…I love him too but you can't just…I told you not to use your powers on your other people! And that includes your brother!" said mom

"Masami, don't discourage the girl. Daughter, that's an impressive display of control, especially from someone your age. Your mother is distressed, though, so why don't you try and let your brother down gently. As gently as you can. I'll be here to catch him if he falls." Dad even sounded different when he talked to big sis. All nice and stuff.

He never talked to Sho like that.

He at least made good on his word and caught Sho when big sis dropped him. Sho knew that she hadn't meant to drop him but he had still been mad anyway. Sometimes he got mad at her and sometimes he was her friend. He didn't know why he felt the way he did, just that he felt that way, and he had shouted.

And kicked. But mom had picked him up. She was rocking him and telling him that he was her good, gentle, boy. That she knew how scared he must have been. That big sis hadn't meant to scare him. That he was ok now. That she loved him. All the nice things that moms said to you when you were hurt.

But he wasn't hurt.

But at least mom was saying something to him. She wasn't mad at him, she hadn't known that he had been climbing, and at least she wasn't going to put him in time out of anything like that. Not that time out was a real punishment. Dad gave real punishments. Dad would have been mad for real. But he wasn't. He wasn't mad at Sho or anything.

He was talking to big sis.

He was telling her how strong she was.

He was telling her how proud of her he was.

He was telling her about all the things that she would be able to do when she got older.

He didn't say anything to Sho at all.


	5. Bed Time

Masami had beautiful hands.

Suzuki watched her hands as she braided Daughter's hair. Daughter sat very still for this procedure, not out of any inborn ability to suppress her childish nature for more than a quarter of a second at a time but, instead, due to the little beeping electronic device in her hands. Masami hated those things, games and tablets, and insisted that they were detrimental to the children's development. Suzuki disagreed. They kept Son and Daughter quiet and that was greater than any sort of detriment that a few toys could bring to the children's development.

"Dad! Dad, look! I drew you! Dad!" that was Son. He was bouncing up and down with a piece of paper clutched between two hands. Suzuki slid him out of the way with his powers. Not hard, no, gently enough that the boy could barely even feel it.

"Dad! Come on! Look!" said Son again. Masami was looking at him now, and frowning, Her hands had stopped their work. He disliked it when she frowned. It was out of place on her face, beautiful and not yet ravaged by time. He couldn't imagine it, her being ravaged by time, just as he could not conceive of a time in which Son would not be something of a pest.

"it's lovely. Thank you." Said Suzuki glancing down at what the boy had drawn. His motor skills were not the best but he was progressing away from drawing tadpole people. That was good. Suzuki may not have had Masami's maternal instincts but he had done his research. The children were developing just fine, actually quicker than they should have been, despite what Masami feared from the detrimental effects of electronic toys and television watching.

"See, I drew you red because big sis said that you are. See dad? You see? I used the right kind of red from the box. See dad?" asked Son. It wasn't that he didn't care for son, he could be something of a pest but he was still Suzuki's son, it was just that Son could be so, very, annoying.

Truly.

Not like Daughter. Daughter was, if anything, unobtrusive. Quiet. Pensive. She thought deeply before she acted. Son just acted. Perhaps it was due to her gender. Masami had the same way about her. Thoughtful. Quiet. Deliberate. Though Suzuki could never remember being anything close to the pest that Son was. Not that he had many clear memories from this time in his life. Being three years old. Being four years old. His early childhood must have been very uneventful since he could barely remember it.

"It's very nice, Sho." said Suzuki. There. Masami was smiling again. That was good, her smiles, the ones that lit up her entire face were the best but those were her rarest smiles. The little ones, the one she did now as she braided Daughter's hair, were wonderful as well.

"What's wrong, dad?" asked Daughter. Yes. She could see his aura. It was flaring a bit. He needed to control himself. Grand displays of power were simple but keeping a grip on himself, keeping his aura level and making sure that his power did not surge was difficult. It always had been for as long as he could remember. Still, though, he had to set a good example for Son and Daughter. Daughter was in the same boat as him, it seemed, though Son was looking to be something of a late bloomer.

"Shigeko, hold still." Said Masami. Her hands worked quickly, now, putting daughter's hair into it's final braid. It was tied off at the end with a pink elastic band. Masami had color coded the children. The girl was pink and the boy was blue. The girl should have had both colors since those were both of her colors. He had no idea what the boy's colors would be. He was still such a late bloomer.

"Nothing, Daughter." Said Suzuki. Daughter had, seemingly, abandoned the toy in her hands. Her hair was finished and she had been sat down on her bed. The house had enough space for the children to have their own rooms but they had some kind of irrational fear of being separated at night. Fear of the dark was common but his children were not common. They should have had enough sense to know that the house was the same whether in the light or the dark. Nobody would ever harm his family, assassin or stranger lurking in the darkness. They had nothing to fear.

No harm would ever come to his family. They were his. Any harm that came to them was as if someone was bringing harm to him…and nobody would ever be so stupid as to try and harm him.

"Come on, now, to bed you two. It's eight thirty." Said Masami. Daughter said nothing. She used her powers to untuck her covers, themed with some animated character from one of her programs, and then laid herself down. Her pajamas had that same theme to them. He wondered what it was about that program that had captured her attention. To him it seemed the same as any other program that girl played incessantly on the television or her tablet. Other girls in impractical dresses using their powers for what the creators deemed to be 'good' along with a talking animal…usually a cat. Girl seemed to like cats. Son and Daughter had been hounding him for one, they had even turned Masami to their side, but Suzuki was holding firm.

He was not getting a cat or any other useless animal.

"Can't we stay up late?" asked Son. Always defiant. Always annoying. Masami indulged him far too much. Daughter was in her bed laying down and waiting for whatever the next part of this nighttime ritual would be next. Suzuki knew that when he had been their age there had been some sort of ritual to get him to sleep. Being carried high on his father's shoulders, his mother singing him a son though he could not for the life of him remember what it was. His mother had a lovely voice, he remembered, though he could not for the life of him remember what it was that she had sang.

He had so few memories of his parents.

"No, Sho, it's late enough as it is. Come on now, off to bed." Said Masami. Suzuki knew what would come next. Boy would beg and plead and whine and Masami would give in because that was just the way that mothers were. His own mother was much more lenient than his father, he remembered, though neither parent had any command over him for long. Masami probably already felt that she had no command over the children. That was why she was always so lenient with them.

"…ok…" said Son. He glanced Suzuki's way as he said it. Suzuki did not have as soft a heart as Masami did for the children. Masami loved he children, but in the vague and imprecise sense of the word. She loved them no matter what they did or how they acted. Suzuki loved them in the concrete way in which parents were meant to love their children. He loved them when they obeyed and when the met or exceeded expectations. Simple. Easy. Precise. Daughter understood this fact. She constantly exceeded his expectations of her. Always obedient, always powerful, though she was also a very impassive child.

She allowed herself to be called by that wretched little nickname.

Suzuki wondered if that was how she felt about herself. If that was her understanding of herself, of her place in the world, then it was a very inaccurate one. She was not the protagonist of this world but she was not one of the faceless masses. She was his daughter, he had chosen her out of all of the other esper children in the world….well if there had been any other esper children that were also orphans she would have been his first choice, and that seemed to something intangibly…more….than what Sho was. Sho was just a random act of genetics. He hadn't set out to create Sho, no, Sho had just come.

He had chosen Daughter.

He had ended up with Son.

Son was…Son. He knew that he was supposed to have some irrational feelings of favoritism to Son. Son was male and he had been conditioned by the society in which he had been born into to value male children because they continued the family line. Son was also the only one of the children who shared his genes. Daughter could not be his. He had never been free with physical intimacy, not in his adult years anyway, and he had never been unfaithful to Masami either. That was the bargain that a man and a woman made when they entered into a relationship in order to assure that the children produced from this union carried both of their genetic codes.

Daughter had neither his nor her genes.

Daughter was an anomaly. By all accounts she should not have existed. A child esper of her skill, and a female at that, should have been unheard of. Suzuki didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle that made them, them, but he had gathered enough data to know how badly male espers outnumbered female espers. Daughter was a rare find. He was lucky to have found her.

He loved her.

Her eyes met his across the room. She laid in her bed, he sat down in the rocking chair that Masami had picked out for herself when she had been pregnant with Sho. Good back support, good for nursing, good for sitting with long periods of time with an infant who could not sleep without human contact. He had been weak as a child, Sho. Daughter had no such irrational needs. Even now Masami had so sit in the bed with Sho as she read through a children's book, some story about a cat looking for it's mother. Son still had that irrational need for contact with his mother even though he could do so much for himself now…

Daughter laid down in her bed and listened.

And Masami read. She read even though she had been teaching the children to read. Suzuki would have had the children read themselves to sleep if they couldn't go to sleep on their own. He could understand that. Reading helped slow the mind down from the stressors of the day. He could understand why the children needed the restful calm of the printed word. He could understand, also, why the children needed the lights dimmed but not darkened after their mother was done reading. They were small and could not protect themselves, even Daughter, and they were not used to his presence so they still feared for their own safety.

They had no reason to. If there was even the slightest chance that any harm would come to his family Suzuki would have taken precautions to bring that chance down to zero. Nobody stole from him. Nobody harmed what was his. This family was his, he had made it himself, and nobody else's.

He could even understand their desire for affection.

He had even shared such a desire, then, when he was their age. He could remember…warm hands. Soft voices. Safety. A sense of safety in a world that he did not yet feel safe in. A world that was not yet his. That he had not yet held in the palm of his hand.

He was not small anymore.

They were small and forming attachments. Masami was their rock, the person who kept them tethered in a large and loud world that they were still too small to understand. Masami was the rock that kept them tethered to the world but he would be the one to remake it. That would have made a far better story than a cat who cried about it's lost mother. It was no use crying. It got you nowhere. Emotions were the things that clouded the mind, twisted and turned the world until it resembled something out of Wonderland or some other fantasy world the children would have been familiar with from their stories.

He'd have to get them new books.

He expressed that to Masami as they retired to their own bedroom.

"You don't have to buy books, Touichirou, the kids love going to the library and I love taking them. They have story time on Tuesdays with lemonade and cookies…though I think Sho may be allergic to citrus. Last time he had some his mouth itched for hours. I tried everything, even coating the inside of his mouth with aloe, but in the end I had to call in Fukuda. Not that the kids minded one bit. They love Fukuda so much you should have seen it, they were clinging to him like monkeys when he had to leave. Well mostly Sho. Shigeko's quicker to say goodbye. Poor little thing. Sometimes I wonder if she remembers…she just looks at me like I'm a stranger sometimes…but then I remember that it's just her resting face. She really was happy to have you there for bedtime. It's just hard to get a read on her sometimes. I swear to God that is the most serious four year old I have ever met." Said Masami. Her hands were hard at work again. It was time for her bedtime ritual, though she would not be retiring for a couple more hours, and this was far more fascinating than watching her plait their child's hair.

The room smelled of artificial berries. As close to fresh berries as the scientists in whatever lab concocted the creation that she would spread across her arms, legs, and stomach every night before she retired and every morning after she bathed. To keep her skin soft, she had said, and it worked. In the quiet moments they shared, moments that had become rare once the children had come into existence and Claw grew to it's current size, he would close his eyes and map the wide expanse of the silky softness of her skin with his hands. Not sexually, no, just to know what it was that she felt like.

He was not, truly, above the irrational need for human touch.

She spoke at length. She always spoke in bucket the closer it got to his departure date. He spent more time out of the country of his birth than within it. He spent more times in airplanes than on the ground. He had circumnavigated the globe more times than he could count one foot, and even more times than that by air and sea. He listened to the sound of her voice. The way it rose and fell. She was perfect. That was why he had chosen her. She was the most perfect person, the very best, in the entire world.

He would know considering how many times he had travelled it.

"Maybe you could read to them next time. It would really mean a lot to them, especially Sho. I know how he is and how he presses your buttons but he's only like that because he misses you. They both do, Shigeko just doesn't show it like Sho does." Said Masami. The bed dipped as she sat down next to him. Her lotion had been capped and put on her nightstand beside the framed drawings that the children had done. The desire to create art was a human one, Touichirou had even drawn as a child, though he stopped when he realized that he could only replicate and not create. The children did that too, replicate the things that they saw in their world. It seemed repetitive, honestly, to see so many crude drawings of the cloistered world of this house, its yard, and the public park/library.

"I would much rather they learn to read to themselves. They're getting older and I want them to do well." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to hand her the television remote and she only hit the play button. Some soft music, instrumental, played. She knew him. He could not stand music with lyrics. So very distracting.

"Touichirou. They're in preschool." Said Masami. He knew that tone, that incredulous tone. Her nose scrunched up when she said that and so did her eyes. She smiled, though, because she thought that it was funny. Ridiculous. She thought that he was ridiculous. She had so many times in the past…and he didn't mind. She was his person, his most perfect person, and from her he would put up with quite a bit.

"They, or at least Daughter, can read hiranga and some kanji. They're much more capable than we are of learning new things. Why not take advantage while we can?" asked Suzuki. She shook her head and smiled. She wasn't as exasperated with him as she tried to seem.

"Because they're children." Said Masami

"I am aware of that. I am also aware of the fact that they have a greater capacity for learning than we do. All they have to do is put the work in and they could be years above others their age." Said Suzuki. Not peers, never peers, because his children were peerless. His children would one day inherit the world. There weren't children alive that could even stand in their shadows.

"Let them do the work of growing up. Honestly, Touichirou, sometimes I think that you forget that they're only children." Said Masami

"I know how old they are, three and four." Said Suzuki

"That's not what I mean. It's just…Sho's just a little boy. He's not Shigeko. Shigeko is an unusually….reserved…child. Sho is just a boisterous little boy who wants some positive attention from you. I know you love him, Touichirou, but sometimes…he's very small and he might not be able to see that you love him. Not that I would ever question whether or not you loved us. I know you do. I know that you love us and you would never….I know that you love us." Said Masami using that word, that vague word again. Love. Such a vague concept when she spoke of it. He had concrete terms with his love.

He loved the children when they were obedient and lived up to his expectations.

He loved his wife because she was a good companion to him. She took care of their home and their children and him, when he allowed himself to be weak around her, and that was a need in and of itself, the need to be weak around someone. It was a need that he had no yet conquered but a need just the same. Even now he allowed himself to be weak, vulnerable, around her. He was less than fully dressed. He wore only his button down and slacks. His suit was a shield, no, a container for what he was. He was a man of power and he dressed the part.

He felt naked then, around her, which made no sense because she had seen him truly physically naked more times than he could count. Not as often as she had before the children but they had their moments despite the fact that she was adamant about not having another child until Son and Daughter had entered elementary school.

"I love all of you." Said Suzuki after a moment. He did not mean it in the same way that she did but it was in his best interest to keep her happy. She was his after all and he wanted her to be happy. She smiled when she was happy. Like now. She was smiling at him, now, and took his hand in hers. She rested her head on his chest and sighed.

"We love you too."


	6. Packing Up

"How long with you be gone for this time?" asked Masami as she packed up her husband's suitcase. He could have done this himself in a fraction of a second with his powers but she wanted to do this for him. She wanted to draw out the time, what little time they had left, for as long as possible. The children were playing in their room, the creaking of bedsprings and the banging of bedframes against the wall told her that they were jumping from bed to bed again, but she wouldn't chastise them. Not now.

Not when she had so little time left with her husband.

"I have no idea. No more than a month, I'd imagine, maybe more. It's hard to judge the time when I don't even know what it is that I'm dealing with." Said Suzuki. Goodbyes weren't difficult for him. This wasn't even a proper goodbye. He would come home, he always came home, and his family would still be here for him when he got back. Masami always got so emotional when he left. So did the children, which was why he wasn't going to tell them until they saw him off. The plane would be ready by tomorrow. He could have flown under his own power but why do something on his own when he could have someone else do it for him?

"You said that it was another esper." Said Masami

"I said that intelligence told me that he was an esper. Apparently he's been building up his own organization of espers but his powers are still unknown. That's why I can't possibly judge how long I'll be away for this time." Said Suzuki as he watched Masami work. He could have done this himself, and in a fraction of the time, but he liked watching her work. She had such beautiful hands, his Masami, and he liked watching her work. He liked watching her.

He'd see her again shortly.

This feeling, the one blooming within his chest and setting somewhere in his ribcage, was irrational. He would see her again. He would come home and she'd be there waiting for him. He knew that he had nothing to fear, there wasn't a being on their Earth who could even begin to pose a threat to him, and there wasn't a being on this Earth stupid enough to harm a single hair on his wife's head. She would be fine. The children would keep her company until he came back. The children would be here as well. They would age, they aged so rapidly at this stage of development, but they would be here.

They would be right where he left them.

"Touichirou…please. I know you have to leave but does it have to be for so long? I miss you, the children miss you, so please just…cut this trip short. As short as you possibly can." Said Masami. She was on dangerous ground and she knew it. Touichirou could have a temper but he would never do anything to hurt her. He would never do anything to truly harm anyone. He just…he could have a temper…but he never set out to hurt anyone.

Even though he could sometimes let that temper get away from him when he was disciplining Sho. Always Sho, never Shigeko, she was such a daddy's girl.

"I'll be gone for as long as I need to be gone for." Said Suzuki flatly stating the flat facts of the situation. He was going to go and come back as usual. He couldn't understand her sometimes…but that was why he had chosen her in the first place. It would have been boring to have had someone he understood completely. Masami was Masami and even now after almost half a decade of marriage he was still putting together the pieces of her puzzle.

"Not so loud! They'll hear you…" said Masami as she heard the worst sound that a mother could hear. The sound of silence. The children had stopped doing whatever it was that they were doing in there. They were too quiet. Their television wasn't on, either, and she didn't hear in beeping of their tablets. She didn't even hear Sho…and he was always so boisterous…

The children could not hear this. They always went to pieces when their father left them. They were young, so young, and they needed their father around. Masami was half Japanese, she knew how things worked here. Fathers went off to earn the money and mothers stayed home to raise the children. That was how it had been for her mother and her mother's mother and so on and so forth all the way down the line. Touichirou may not have been providing for the family in the traditional sense but he was out there providing…

Maybe her expectations were just different because her own father had been unusually involved. He had not been Japanese, that had been it, and he had been able to get away with more. Leaving the office before the boss, turning down offers to go out after work, taking days off to take her to the park and the zoo or even just to hang around the house and play with her. That was the difference between her and Suzuki. She hadn't met his parents but she had seen pictures. His father was Japanese but his mother was not.

He was just playing out the role that had been modeled for him.

Just like Sho would, one day, play out the role that his father had been modeling for him. Masami didn't know if she wanted that. Touichirou had said, many times, that the children would inherit all that he was building. He spoke so grandly in the stories he told the children. He was going to build a new world for them, a better world, one where they could be free with their abilities. Shigeko. Sho took after her. Not that Shigeko took after either of them, they had adopted her after all, but Touichirou had only opened up their home and their family to her because of her abilities.

Shigeko, regardless of her abilities, was looking to Masami for instructions on how to one day fill the roles of grown woman, wife, and mother. What was Masami modeling for her daughter, and Shigeko may have been adopted but she was her daughter, and was it…right? Would Shigeko be in this position one day? Would she be packing up her husband's suitcase while he just oh so casually told her that he would be gone for a month or maybe more?

Did Masami even have the right to question her husband? She didn't have the gift of esp. She had no idea what it was like to be him, to grow up as he did, and to face the world in the way the children, Shigeko would have to. She knew that the work he did was important, and it had provided for her and the children well, and that the work he was doing would benefit people like him everywhere. She didn't know what that work was, exactly, but she knew that it seemed rather selfish to put herself ahead of the entire world.

"That would be unfortunate. They always get so emotional when they know I'm going to be leaving. I don't understand it. They have object permanence, they know that I'll return, and they know that even if I'm not here, personally, to protect them no one could ever harm them." Said Suzuki. Masami put down the shirt that she was folding and took in a long breath.

"Touichirou, it's not about object permanence or them fearing for their safety. They're small children and they love and miss their father." Said Masami. She wondered, sometimes, if there was something wrong with her husband. He had always had an odd way about him but it had only become more pronounced since they had married…or maybe it had always been there and she just hadn't noticed because their courtship had been so fast. He had always been just a little bit off, out of step with the rest of the world, and at first she had found it charming….and sometimes she still did, like when he called her job an 'animals prison' or he called the children's preschool the 'children's prison' or when he called the orphanage Shigeko came from the 'orphan prison'….prison came up a lot and Masami didn't really feel like unpacking that little idiosyncrasy of his right then and there, because as charming as he could be sometimes there were also times that he just…wasn't.

Like now.

Like when he sounded like an alien trying to blend in and failing. She wondered if something was wrong with him, nothing serious of course, but some sort of social disorder. When they had been children nobody had even heard of social disorders and even now, despite the increased awareness, people were still very touchy about it. She had no idea how to bring it up to him, she couldn't think of a nice way to tell her husband that he sounded like a pod person, so she didn't. He didn't seem it but he could be very sensitive.

Besides, it might have been an esper thing.

Shigeko displayed some of the very same characteristics that Touichirou did, so much so that she wondered if they were indeed related somehow, though she knew that Suzuki had never been unfaithful and even if he had been he wouldn't have cooked up fake adoption papers just so that his bastard child could live with him. No, those were crazy thoughts to have. Shigeko shared his odder idiosyncrasies because they were both espers. Nothing more.

"They know that I'm coming back, and with gifts for them, too." Said Suzuki. Small children were so illogical sometimes…or all the time. He could not wait until they reached the age of reason. He always came back to them even though it was not easy coming back to people who cried when they couldn't eat off of this favorite plates and were afraid of the closet under the stairs but somehow also found the courage to scale the wall that divided their house from the rest of the neighborhood.

"The gifts are nice but…and you know that they're very grateful to you for them….but they miss you. They love you and they want to spend quality time with you. They won't be this young forever. We're going to wake up one day and they'll be all grown up and out of the house." Said Masami

"I don't see why they'd leave, there's plenty of room for them and their families here." Said Touichirou. He had built his family a fortress for a reason. The children called it a castle but really it was a fortress. All it needed was armed guards to keep them safe, but those would come later, once he had enough power that nobody would dare tell him no.

"….that's not the point. The point is that they…you've read about this, I know you have. Right now they're at a critical period of attachment. They're looking to you for safety and love and they're looking to our relationship as a blueprint for the relationships that they'll have in their adult lives. It's…it's important for them to see us and to spend time with you. You want Sho to grow up to be like you, right? Well he can only grow up to be like you if he watches you. The same goes for Shigeko. The way she sees you acting, the way you are with her, will be her script for when she finds the man she wants to marry." Said Masami. She tried to be as logical as possible, Touichirou understood logic above all else, and it seemed like she was getting through to him. He was sitting very still and he was watching her with unblinking eyes. She held his shirt in her hands and waiting with baited breath. It was like the world had stopped turning, it always felt like that when Touichirou got that look on his face. That deep, pensive, look.

"I understand." Said Suzuki after a moment. After he had chewed on what she said. The children needed him to be there for them or they wouldn't attach to him properly. It was in his best interest for the children to be attached to him. It would do him no good to have his heirs usurp him once he took the throne of the world. Yes, it was in his best interest to keep the children on his side…and it was in his best interest for the children to imitate him as well. They loved to play pretend, to act out different roles, and occasionally those roles took them to wearing their parents' clothes and pretending that they were parents themselves. Masami thought that this was adorable. Suzuki had always found it annoying, he didn't like having his things touched by anyone other than his wife, but she was right that he should have been encouraging that behavior…

But he could not stay.

And he could not hurry his trip.

He had important work to do. He had to build up his organization to he could take the world that was rightfully his. He could not weight the needs of the children against the needs of the world. The world needed him. The world needed him because the world was his. Masami had a point, the children would one day grow up, and that day would come faster than he thought. It still felt like yesterday that they had brought home Sho, small and wailing, from the hospital….Shigeko small and quiet from the orphan prison…

Which did he value more? The present or the future?

"So…so will you cut this trip short?" asked Masami hopefully

"No." said Suzuki. He saw her face fall. She just didn't understand, that was all. She tended to be remarkably shortsighted about things sometimes. That was fine. He knew what he had to do and he would do it…

Though the face she was making brought back that unpleasant feeling. He swiftly exorcised that emotion. His aura was beginning to show it and if he lost control, well, then their discussion would have been pointless.

"Touichirou, please. They miss you. They need you. When you're gone they beg me to tell you to come back. They like having you around even for the simple things, things they don't even like, like bedtime and bath time. Please." said Masami clutching his shirt to tightly that she could swear she felt the fabric begin to separate.

"I cannot sacrifice my work but I can…I suppose that I could…read to them." Said Suzuki. He did not like the feelings that she was giving him, the way his aura reacted, the fact that no matter how much he tried he could not exorcise this emotion. This strange, painful, emotion that would not go away….

"That…that would be wonderful." Said Masami. She may have lost her cool for a moment but she had at least managed to get through to him somewhat. He was making progress, thank God, and maybe there was hope for him yet. She didn't know what his childhood had been like, he was loathe to speak of it, but she assumed that his father had been the same sort of man that he was. The children deserved better than that. They deserved a father who was there, who cared for them, who loved-

She stopped herself.

Her husband loved the children.

That was why he was getting up and going to read the children a story even though he was not a fan of their favorites. She put his shirt down and sat on the bed. The bed groaned and his suitcase leaned onto her thigh. She'd get back to it later, after she sat for a moment, because this whole thing had been so draining….

He could be so draining sometimes.

But she loved him.

He was a good man. He may have seemed cold, sometimes, but he was a good man. He cared for his family. He must have. Even now she could hear his voice through the walls, through the vents, and he was speaking nicely. He may have seemed toneless, monotone, in his speech but there was a timbre to him. She had been married to him long enough to know what he meant, how he felt, through his one of voice.

She crawled over and pressed her ear against the wall. She let herself listen, eavesdrop, but she did not feel guilty. Touichirou so rarely spent time alone with the children. He always hovered around her when she was with the children. Sometimes he picked them up with his powers, sometimes he spoke with them, but never on his own. Always hovering. The children still cared for him, still missed him, and she sometimes wondered if he returned their affects…which was a crazy thought to have, of course, because he was their father and a father cared for his children even if he didn't always show it.

But now he was showing it.

She tried to remember what book it was that he was reading to the children. They had their favorites, books that she had read over and over again until she could recite them with her eyes closed and, in fact, had at the ends of days so long and tiring that she could barely keep her head up and her eyes opened but she still had to read to them because she was their mother and she was all alone with them and if she didn't read to them then who would?

Touichirou was never around.

But he was around now.

"…_.and the father remade the world for his children. It was not only his birthright but theirs-"_

"_What's a birthright?"_

"_Something that is yours by right of birth. Now don't interrupt."_

She frowned just a bit. Sho really needed to stop interrupting like that. He knew how his father felt about that. He knew that his father had a temper. He was three years old, now, not old enough to understand a lot of things but old enough to understand that his father did not appreciate being interrupted. Touichirou loved his son, he really did, he just had a bit of a temper. A bit of a temper that Masami was worried that her son had, or was about to, set off…but he hadn't. He hadn't and that was good. Maybe Shigeko's influence was rubbing off on him. She was such a good girl, that one, always so quiet. Aside from a few…incidents…with her powers, which she was still too young to understand the full danger of, she was such a good girl.

Not that she or her husband were about to play favorites.

Sho was more like her, Shigeko was more like Touichirou, and that was fine. She loved the children equally and so did Touichirou…even if he didn't always show it. That was fine. The children…they understood. They understood that he loved them and when they grew up they would understand the importance of the work he did for them…even if Masami herself didn't quite understand it.

You didn't have to understand, you just had to believe.

"_Is it a true story, dad?"_

"_It will be, given time."_


	7. Getting Along

Mob didn't mind being called Mob and she didn't know what everyone got so worked up about.

Mom said that if people were calling her something as mean as Mob then they weren't her friends to begin with. Mob didn't understand what was so bad about being called Mob. That was what she was called, Mob, and she liked it better than Shigeko. It was easier to write, for one thing, and her friends had started calling her that. They were her friends, they let her play with them, and didn't run away when she got close or call her weird like the other kids did.

Besides, Dad always said, anyway, that an ant had no quarrel with a boot.

That meant that they were never supposed to fight with normal people. Normal people were weak, dad said, and they weren't worth their time. Mob could life a person with her powers, she could life her little brother anyway, and if she could lift someone then she could drop them. If she could drop them then she could throw them. If she could throw them then she could hurt them and she didn't much like the idea of hurting people.

Mom said that hurting people was wrong.

Dad said that an ant had no quarrel with a boot.

So Mob didn't understand what was up with Sho.

"Leave my sister alone!" shouted Sho as he swung his fists out wildly. They were doing it again, calling her by that stupid name! They shouldn't have been mean to her like that! He was supposed to keep her safe! He was four, more than big enough to keep his big sister safe!

People were so mean to her. She was weird, everyone was always telling him that she was weird, and then they would say other things too. Things that made him want to hit them. Things that made him hit them. Things that got him kicked out of the library and recess at school and a bunch of other places. Things that made mom upset with him. Things that made dad proud of him.

Dad always said that an ant had no quarrel with a boot.

That meant that it was stupid to fight with someone who was so much stronger than you. For as long as he could remember big sis had been able to do the things that dad could. She could move things without touching them and make the house shake and the lights flicker and she could even pick him up. He couldn't do anything like that yet. Maybe because he was so little. Dad said that it was probably something to do with how little he was. Big sis agreed. Dad didn't like it, that he couldn't do any of those things, but that didn't make him weak.

Dad liked it when he defended big sis so that was what he would do!

"Come on! You want to go? Let's go!" said Sho

"Mom's going to be mad at you." Said Mob as the kids she had been playing with went to the other side of the park without her. She loved her little brother, she really did, but she didn't love it when he got like this.

"No she's not….not if she knew what they were calling you. You shouldn't let people call you that, it's mean. You're Shigeko, not Mob. Mob isn't a name for a person and you shouldn't let people treat you like that. You should fight them! But not with your powers! But you shouldn't let people be mean to you like that!" said Sho. Brothers were supposed to protect sisters. That was because boys were supposed to keep girls safe. Dad said so, that was why the wall around the castle was so high, so that bad people wouldn't even think about coming in and hurting mom while he was too far away to protect her. Sho was too small to keep mom safe but he could still keep his big sis safe and sound!

"Sho, stop it. Mom's going to take us home if you fight." Said Mob as she put her hand on his arm and shook her head. They were at the park now, the one with the big blue slide that she used to be kind of scared of when she was little but not now. Now she was five and she was more than big enough to get to the top of that slide…with Sho's help. He was brave, the bravest little brother that someone could ask for.

He was so brave to go down the big slide with her.

But he was not brave to go around picking fights with the other kids for her. These kids were kind of her friends. They went to the same park and played together sometimes. Well they had let Mob play with them, sometimes, when there weren't a lot of other people around or Mob brought some of her dolls. She had a lot of them from a lot of different places. Dad usually brought her back dolls of the places he'd been. He was always going places that were far away but he always came back so it was ok then.

Besides, they had mom, and she never went anywhere without them.

Even now she was sitting on a bench and talking to another lady, probably someone's mom, and she wouldn't just up and leave them one day. Dad never told them when he was going on his trips, they always just woke up and he was gone, but it was ok. They were used to it. They hardly ever cried. Dad said that crying was for the weaklings of the world and that they were not weak at all. They were his children and they were strong, they had to be he said, because they were his. Mob didn't always feel strong, not even with her powers, but dad said that she was. He said that she was stronger than Sho, to, because Sho cried all the time. Well he used to cry a lot more but dad said that even a little crying was way too much crying.

Mob didn't understand that.

Mob didn't understand a lot of things.

"I don't care! People shouldn't talk to you like that and you shouldn't let them." Said Sho crossing his arms and stomping his feet. He didn't care if mom took them home, it wasn't like she ever punished them. Not for real, anyway, not like how dad would punish them. Him. Sister was a girl so she didn't get punished. She was way too soft. Girls were soft like that, not like boys, and that was why they needed to be protected. It was like with the animals at mom's job. They were small and needed people to keep them safe. Sho liked that, being the person strong enough to keep other people safe. It felt nice being able to keep other people safe.

"I don't mind and I don't know why you mind. Lots of people have nicknames." Said Mob

"But it's not a nickname, it's them calling you names. I have to keep you safe." Said Sho

"It is a nickname. It's a nickname because they aren't hurting my feelings at all. I'm sorry if you feel upset but there nothing to be upset about and nothing to keep me safe from. Even if they were being mean to me they're normal people and dad says that I'm supposed to be nice to normal people." Said Mob

"No, dad says that normal people are supposed to be nice to us. That's why he's always saying that an ant has no quarrel with a boot. Boots are people like us, ants are normal people, and quarrel means fight. Normal people aren't supposed to fight against people like us because it's not a fair fight. It's like how you never get punished because you're a girl and you're not ever supposed to hit girls because it's not a fair fight." Said Sho

"You're not supposed to hit anyone Sho, mom said so, because it's not a nice thing to do. Dad says that people like me aren't supposed to fight with people like them because it's not nice. I could hurt them if I wanted to. It's different when you have powers. You'll understand when you get powers." Said Mob

"That's not what dad meant." Said Sho with a huff. He knew what dad meant, thank you very much. He knew his own dad. Sister didn't get it because she never got what people said. She never understood what people meant and said and stuff like that. She could be so clueless sometimes.

"Is too." Said Mob. She knew what dad meant. He had been telling her that for as long as she could remember. One of the first things she could remember was him telling her that while she was upset and then her feeling all better after that. She didn't know what was upsetting her or where she was, it wasn't the castle and they had always lived in the castle, but she did remember how nice it felt when he told her that. Like everything was going to be ok. Besides, she knew dad better than Sho did. Dad only spent time with just Sho when he needed to be punished. Dad spent time with her to help her with her powers. It must have been a lot nicer than getting punished, though dad had never done more than yell at her, and even that was a long time ago.

"Is not!" said Sho. How could she think that she knew dad like that? She didn't. All she knew was how to use her powers. She didn't know about talking to people or making friends or anything like that. She couldn't even tell when the other kids didn't want her around. Not that Sho liked hanging out with kids that didn't want his sister around but she did make it hard to be friends with her. Her eyes were always bored looking and people didn't like that but when he told her she just said that she couldn't understand. She said that a lot. If she couldn't understand the other kids then how was she supposed to be able to understand dad?

"Is too!" said Mob. She stomped her foot, then, even though she knew that she wasn't supposed to. It wasn't ladylike, mom had said, and it made her lose control, dad had said. She didn't lose control that badly…ok, a little badly. She thought that she only made the ground shake a little bit but they weren't in their castle, now, but instead were at the park and normal people weren't used to her powers. What seemed like a little shaking to her was actually enough to get people worried, it seemed, because they were taking their kids and going. Maybe she and Sho should have stopped this. Mom was looking at them…and she would get mad if they fought…she didn't like fighting one bit.

"Is not!" said Sho. She couldn't scare him just because she had powers! When he got his powers the he could be the one to make the ground shake whenever he wanted to win a fight! When he had powers then they wouldn't even fight because then there would be no more reason to fight!

"Is too!" said Mob stomping her foot again. Why couldn't he just drop it!? She didn't want to fight with him but she didn't want to tell him that he was right even when he wasn't. She knew what dad meant and she was not going to back down just because Sho could yell louder than her and probably everyone else in the whole world.

"IS NOT! NOT! NOT!" said Sho shouting as loudly as he could. Lots of people were leaving now, probably because of big sis, and he felt kind of bad about that. People were leaving this really fun park just because he and his sister were having a fight….ugh! Why couldn't she just drop it already! She was clueless when it came to people and talking so of course she would have had no idea at all what dad had meant!

"Is too! Too! Too!" said Mob. She was about to stomp her foot again when someone grabbed her arm, hard. She didn't think, she just put up a bubble like dad had shown her, and the person behind her said bad words.

Oh. That was mom.

And like that the bubble of her argument with Sho burst like the bubbles in the bubble bath they probably weren't getting that night because they had been fighting and they weren't allowed to fight. Fighting wasn't nice. Mom didn't like fighting at all.

"Both of you! Enough! We are going home!" said Masami. She knew that it was wrong to shout at her children but she couldn't help it. She had told them over and over and over again until she was practically blue in the face not to fight one another like that. The two of them, just Shigeko for now, could do some real damage. Shigeko had almost lost control. This was not their house. If Shigeko lost control and broke something out here…there would be consequences for the whole family. That was why Touichirou had a playground built in the backyard. Maybe it would have been better not to bring them around the other children…

No.

They needed to learn to socialize with people outside of the family, it was just good for them. They would grow up to be maladjusted adults if they didn't learn how to make friends and be social at this critical period in their development.

Yes, she needed to bring them around other people….but she also needed to enforce stable discipline. So she took them home. She didn't care who started it, she didn't care who was right, she just cared about removing them from the situation before someone noticed the five year old girl who could cause earthquakes by stomping her feet. They did not need that kind of attention. This was why her husband was out there making a better world for people like him and their daughter. So that way people could understand.

Masami hadn't been the one to make the world the way it was.

She knew how people were. They didn't trust what they could not explain. There was no explanation for Shigeko's powers, she just had them. That was another part of Touichirou's work, he had said, researching what made them tick. What made one person develop esp but not another. What made one person have the abilities of a God, he had said, and the other one the abilities of an ant. Masami hoped that he came to an answer soon. She hoped that she had something to tell the children, soon, about what they were, what they could become…

And why they had to be careful.

They had to be careful, Shigeko especially, because their powers would only scare people. Not everyone was as open minded as she was…and she had been a little bit freaked out the first time she has seen her husband use his powers all those years ago…and she loved him. She was loathe to make the children, mostly Shigeko, hide who they were but the world was not an open and understanding place.

So she punished them even though she hated to.

She didn't punish them the way her husband would have. She had never struck the children, she had never been punished like that in her childhood and she didn't quite agree with her husband's discipline methods, but she did enforce some discipline. Taking away toys and privileges, bed without desert, and timeouts were in her discipline arsenal and she wielded them with care.

Even this time out.

The children had been moaning and groaning about it, being sat down on their beds and told not to move, but it hadn't been for very long. Five minutes plus an extra minute for every year they had been alive. That was what the book said, anyway, because they were very small and anything longer would have been far too much.

"Mom, why does Sho get to be done first because he's younger?" asked Mob as she sat down on her bed just like mom had said. This was torture. It was bad enough having to sit on her bed while her toys were right there just waiting to be played with but it got even worse when Sho had been allowed to get up a whole minute before her and then she had to watch him sit on the ground and play with his animals. She could have played too, she had animals too, and they could have played menagerie together or circus or something like that.

But instead she was stuck on her bed like she was in jail or something.

"You can come out now too, Shigeko, and you can play with Sho but first I want to know why you were using you powers back at the park." Said Masami sitting down next to her daughter. Something began to play music. She sat up and pushed away a stuffed, light up, unicorn cat. How Shigeko managed to sleep on a bed so covered in stuffed toys was beyond her.

"…because Sho was being mean…" said Mob softly

"No I wasn't! They were being mean to you and I was going to stop them but then you wouldn't let me! And you were wrong, too, about what dad said!" said Sho. He felt like throwing the toy in his hand, it was a plastic hippo and it went with the hippo family with his safari animals, but he didn't throw it. First of all you were not supposed to throw things at girls, second of all you weren't supposed to throw things at moms who were also girls, and third of all his toys had done nothing to deserve that.

"What did your dad say?" asked Masami keeping her voice level. Touichirou often forgot just how small the children were. They took things so literally at their age. Like that story he told them about when they would inherit the world. She knew that it was just him explaining his work in a way that was easy for them to understand but they had come away from that story believing that they were a prince and a princess and that she and her husband were going to be king and queen of the world. She had, mostly, managed to set them straight but she knew that as soon as her husband came back he'd tell them that story again and then it would be back to square one.

"Dad says that an ant has no quarrel with a boot. He meant that we weren't supposed to fight with normal people because we could squish them like boots but Sho thinks that it meant that we were supposed to squish them like boots because they were fighting with us…and they weren't even fighting with us. They were just calling me Mob again." said Mob

"You…Shigeko, you shouldn't let them call you that. It's mean." Said Masami

"I don't think that it's mean at all. If they wanted to call me a mean name then they could have, Mob is not a mean name, it's a nickname. I don't mind it and even if I did it wouldn't be something worth fighting over." Said Mob

"You just think that it's not worth fighting over because you're a girl and girl's hate fighting." Said Sho

"I don't hate fighting because I'm a girl, I hate fighting because it's not nice." Said Mob

"Both of you…just…your father meant that…that fighting is wrong because you have powers and could hurt them…but that doesn't mean to never fight." Said Masami trying to find some words for what Touichirou must have meant. He could be so abstract sometimes that even she had trouble understanding him…and she was thirty years older than they were.

"I don't understand." Said Mob

"Me neither." Said Sho

"Ok…listen, don't pick fights and don't use your powers against others…unless you have to. Name calling is not a situation in which you can use your powers and neither is disagreeing with each other. Only use your powers against others if they…if they hit you first or threaten to." Said Masami

"But mom! They shouldn't think that they can hit us or threaten us or be mean to us in the first place. Dad said that because we have powers-" said Sho

"Your father meant…he meant that powers are like….knives." said Masami, her eyes dancing across the room until she came to their play kitchen set.

"We aren't supposed to put them in the dishwasher?" asked Mob because that was the first thing that came to mind when mom mentioned knives. She had no idea what mom was getting at. Why couldn't mom and dad ever just be direct about things?

"I like to put things in the dishwasher." Said Sho. Well now none of this made any sense…but he would like to load the dishwasher again now that they were talking about it…

"We'll load the dishwasher later but first…just listen. Your powers are like knives in the sense that they're tools. You can use a knife to cut food or you can use a knife to stab someone. But we don't go around stabbing people because that's not a nice thing to do at all." Said Masami

"Because then you'll go to jail and never see your family again." Said Mob. That made sense, when you hurt people you got punished and when you did something really bad you went to jail, which was like a timeout but worse. Also you never saw your family again. She could be annoyed by Sho sometimes but she still loved her little brother…and she loved mom even though she punished them sometimes…and she loved dad, too, even if she didn't see him that often.

"Yes." said Masami

"And they beat you with bags of frozen oranges and feed you dog food make you shower in a room full of strangers and beat you with soap on a rope." Said Sho. He had seen jail on TV and he didn't want to go there. If that was where you went if you hurt people with your powers then he knew that when he got his he was never going to hurt anyone ever again.

"Frozen…oranges…?" asked Masami. She looked between the children a few times before her eyes settled on the TV. Good for nothing child blocks…

"Yes. We saw it on TV. They beat you up really bad. We saw it on the movie channel." Said Mob

"Well! No more prison movies for you two!" said Masami with a forced chuckle. Right, time to reset the child locks before they saw something that would warp them for the rest of their lives. She got up quickly and closed the TV cabinet. She would have locked it but Shigeko knew how to undo locks with her powers. She knew that later on she'd have to have a series of talks with the children, mostly Shigeko, about misusing their powers but that felt like it had been enough for one day. She still had to do so much. Dinner, laundry, workbooks with the children, bath time, bed time, and then the million and one other things that she had to do to keep the household from imploding.

It was a lot.

But it would get easier once her husband came back…and stayed. He could be the one to have these talks with the children, then, but on their level. No more abstraction. They were children and could only understand so much…and she herself could only understand so much…and there was still so much to understand…

A tug at her skirt.

"Mom, can we load the dishwasher now?" asked Sho. Mom got that far off look, that meant that she was thinking, and he didn't much like it. Especially because she was giving the TV that look. Last time she had done that she had locked it up in the TV cabinet and it took him and big sis a while to get the lock opened and figure out how to undo the child blocker.

"Huh? Oh, after we eat but first, let's see what's up with the menagerie today." Said Masami sliding down from Shigeko's bed and onto the floor. The children followed her over to where the plastic animals roamed and soon they had a good game of menagerie neighborhood and also dolls going.

And everyone got along for the rest of the afternoon.


	8. Souvenir Shopping

Boy and Girl were not difficult to shop for.

Girl enjoyed dolls so he purchased a doll for her. Boy loved animals so he purchased an animal for her. Not a real one, of course, but a bit of plastic molded in China and shipped to whatever country it was that he was in. They spoke Dutch, here, which he could get by in. He learned quickly. Language learning was necessary, now, because his work took him all over the world. When he ruled it, when he could rest, then the rest of the world would speak Japanese.

A simplified version, of course.

No need to torment the world with the endless, truly endless, lessons on the kanji that he had been subjected to. He could recognize over fifty thousand of them last he checked, though only about three thousand or so of them were actually in his daily use. Maybe even less due to the sheer amount of time he spent outside of the country.

He needed to get back to Japan.

An irrational feeling. People were alike all over. Here, there, anywhere they were all the same. Small, so very small, and weak but assured of their own superiority due to their sheer numbers. The gift of esp was not a common one at all and could not be made common, either. Another batch had been lost. Those Awakening Chambers were still abysmal failures. Even if the person crammed into one of them could awaken some sort of long neglected power they held they often times did not even survive the awakening process. Such a pity. It was a shame to lose potential manpower like that.

But it had to be done.

All good things came from suffering. There was no greater teacher than suffering. In order to awaken one must have been put through the sort of pain that left one wishing for, begging for, death. It didn't bother him, their cries and plies, and it never had. He wasn't the one in pain so why should it have mattered? Besides, it wasn't as though he went around forcing people into those awakening chambers. They wanted the gift of esp, they knew what they were getting into, and they knew that death was an option.

Now that was something that he understood, wanting something so badly that you would die for it.

It was not a hyperbole when he said it, even to himself, that he would die to become the ruler of this world. He would have. If only for a second, if he could only rule for a second, then he would have gladly perished at the end of that second knowing that for a second, just a second, all had been right with the world. This world was backwards, upside down, and he needed to be the one to correct it. Not just for himself but for his children as well.

Daughter like dolls with a lot of hair. He'd get her one.

He found himself in a toy store, a proper toy store, not the overstimulating plastic menagerie that Masami purchased the children's toys from. Plastic things mass produced and owned by anyone. Common things for common people. His children were anything but common, ordinary, they were extraordinary. Or at least Daughter was. Yes, Girl had progressed far beyond he ever could have hoped. Power with the most rudimentary amount of control. More than she had when he had found her. Power was nothing at all without control, he had known this to be true for his entire life, and it was a lesson that he passed down to his child.

There. That was a lovely doll.

A European looking thing. Blonde hair down to it's feet and strikingly blue eyes. It was dressed in the sort of folk costume that was native to this area complete with small wooden shoes. Son and Daughter would have loved wooden shoes but he knew that he would not have loved the migraine that would come with giving the children wooden shoes. They had enough noise makers as it was. How Masami could have stood to listen to that racket day in and day out was beyond his understanding. She was such a patient woman, his wife.

He would not come home empty handed.

He had come to this country in search of another child and found nothing. There had been word of a child, orphaned and possessed, which could have meant that the child was in the same boat as Daughter had been. This child had not been possessed at all, merely quite mad, so Suzuki had to pass. He would have so liked to have brought home another child…not that he liked children, no, but Masami did. Masami liked children and he liked securing the next generation.

There were so few of them.

He would have thought that he would have had another child to buy toys for by now. Masami refused to have another, she did not refuse him but she did refuse to reproduce, so he looked to the various orphan prisons that the world had. There were so many orphan prisons but none of them had born fruit. He had even looked to Seasoning City again, perhaps another esper child had been born and relinquished, but nothing. That city had produced him and daughter and it seemed as though it were done, for now, creating esper children.

He had Son and Daughter and that would have to be enough for now.

Daughter would like this doll. He knew that he could have had someone do this for him, there was no shortage of people willing to serve him, but this was something that he preferred to do himself. He knew what he wanted his children to have. Not the cheap, mass produced, plastic junk that they preferred but something one of a kind, like her.

Daughter really was a priceless gem that had been pulled from a pot of dirt. He had done his research into her bloodline. Nothing. Nothing of interest going back several generations on both sides. Just like him. Nothing. Daughter even had a biological brother, he had discovered, and the boy was completely normal. He'd had the family followed for weeks but the boy didn't even have an aura let alone anything close to what Daughter had. Such a pity, the children had been asking for another sibling. Son wanted a brother, Girl wanted a sister, but Masami had been very adamant that the baby factory was closed until further notice.

He didn't understand her one bit.

She enjoyed being a mother, she had said so many times, and if the children tired her too badly he could always bring in someone to help. Female espers were rare but he was sure that he could find one and persuade her to work for the family. He could even just bring in some of the cultists. They worshipped him, they were right to do it, so of course they would worship his children. Well Daughter, anyway, he wouldn't so much as mention Son until he displayed something. Anything. It didn't even have to be at Daughter's level. At this point Suzuki would have been willing to accept literally anything, any evidence that his son was in fact his son and there hadn't been some terrible mix up at the hospital Masami insisted on giving birth at even though he could have figured out how to help her. People had been giving birth since there was a human race, he could have helped her through it, but she insisted on going to a hospital.

His son was his son.

The boy looked just like him and he knew that Masami would have never been unfaithful. Son was his son and that was all there was to it. Esp was part genetics, part fate, and part the choices that one made in life, it seemed. Stress, fear, rage, these emotions triggered it. Daughter hadn't had much of a life before becoming his…maybe he had been too easy on son.

There. Animals carved from wood. Perfect.

He had to get Son a gift too or he'd put up a fuss.

Daughter would love her gift.


	9. Company

"It doesn't hurt!" said Sho as he showed his mom the owie he got. He had been trying to climb up the walls and walk across but he had fallen into the berry bushes. It didn't hurt but big sis freaked out and yanked him out too fast and his skin got caught on the thorns. It barely even hurt. Mom was just freaking out over nothing.

"Really, it doesn't hurt at all. I'm not a baby." Said Sho as he tried to pull his arm away. Mom just picked him up and started carrying him inside the house. Big sis was following them and talking about how sorry she was.

"If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times…" said Mom real quiet, so quiet that Sho could barely hear her and he was in her arms. He didn't know who mom was talking to, him or big sis, because she had told them both a bunch of things at least a thousand times. He wasn't supposed to climb the walls under any circumstances and big sis was not supposed to use her powers on him unless there were extenuating circumstances.

A word which meant 'not unless there's an emergency' or something like that.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, Sho! I'm telling the truth, it was an accident! Really!" said big sis while she tugged on mom's skirt. Mom did that thing where she took in a really long breath, held it, and then let it out for even longer. Sho knew what that meant, she was upset with them, and he knew why. It was because big sis used her powers. Mom never got this upset when he tried to climb the wall. She shouted, sometimes, but she would always carry him inside and make him sit on his bed for some reason.

She said that it was a punishment.

He was not about to go telling her what a real punishment was.

"Really! I just got scared because that bush has thorns in it and I thought that you were being stabbed to death or something! Really, I just thought that you were getting hurt!" big sis was tugging really hard on mom's skirt, now. They were in the bathroom and there wasn't a lot of room. Sho cradled his arm in his hand. It didn't hurt that much, he didn't know what big sis was so worried about.

"Shigeko! Please!" said Mom. She didn't have to say please 'what', Sho knew that please meant 'shut up and leave me alone' but big sis was super clueless.

"Please what, mom?" asked big sis

"Please go to your room, ok? I need to see…I need to make sure your brother is ok, ok?" said Mom

"But I want to help." Said big sis. She was using her powers, now, to get the first aid stuff out of the drawers. Mom was poking his wrist bone with her fingers. It didn't hurt that bad, it was just changing colors a little bit, and the blood only looked like a lot of blood because big sis had yanked him out of the bushes too fast. That was all.

He was not a baby and he was not going to cry.

Dad said that he was much too old to cry. He said that crying accomplished nothing and that only the weaklings of the world cried. Dad said that his kids couldn't cry because they had to be strong enough to inherit the world when they grew up. Besides, Sho was not a girl. Girls cried all the time, it was how they were, but boys had to be strong. Dad said that he had to be strong, like him, because one day he'd have a family that he had to keep safe. Sho knew that he'd take good care of his family when he grew up…even if he had to kiss a girl and stuff when he grew up. Yuck. But that was what grown ups did…because they were nuts.

Mom sure was going nuts.

"Mom! Mom, I found the band aids! And the antibiotic cream! And the thermometer! See! I can help!" said big sis. There were all kinds of first aid type things floating in the air now. Sho tried to kick at the stuff flying around him but mom grabbed his foot.

"This is sprained…if not broken….it should not be changing color like that…" mom was talking to herself again. Big sis was tugging on her dress and still making stuff fly. The tap turned on and a bar of soap, new soap, flew out of the cabinet.

"Mom, they said at school that when you get a cut you're supposed to clean it. If we start a new bar of soap then it won't have any germs on it…right? Does soap have any germs? They said that germs are everywhere and on everything but they also said that soap kills germs. Do germs live on soap, mom?" big sis was asking again even though mom didn't like it when they bothered her while she was talking to herself.

"He hates it when I take you to the hospital….God he's so paranoid…" said mom as she ran her fingers over his wrist. Sho couldn't help it, he winced, even though that was weak. He wasn't supposed to wince or cry or yell, that just made it worse. You were never, ever, ever supposed to show when something hurt. That was what weak people did and Sho was not weak.

He was four. He was a big boy now.

"Should I get the hand sanitizer too? The one from your purse? And the cinnamon to make it all better? And the magic lipstick? Should I, mom?" asked big sis. Sho wished that mom would get the cinnamon and the magic lipstick. The lipstick was magic because it had glitter in it. It was silver with silver glitter. The cinnamon and the lipstick together could make any owie better, that was why mom had them.

Sho wished that she would just kiss it better already.

"Sho, baby, does this hurt?" said mom as she squeezed the purple part of his arm. He closed his eyes and tried to keep his breathing level. That was what you were supposed to do when something hurt. He wished that she would just kiss it better…if it was the kind of owie that could be kissed better. Sometimes they got owies that mom couldn't kiss better…and also sometimes he got owies that mom wasn't supposed to know about.

Because she freaked out a lot.

And also it was Sho's fault that he got those owies. Dad wouldn't have had to punish him if he hadn't been so bad.

"Mom, hey mom….mom?" said big sis. She tugged on mom's skirt really hard and she had to pull it up because her shirt ends were popping out of it. Mom did that thing where she closed her eyes for a while. She held onto the purple part of his arm even harder and he saw spots in his vision…and then he cried out…but only a little! And dad wasn't around so he wouldn't get punished for real. That was good.

"Shigeko! Go to your room, now!" said mom. Big sis let go and looked at them for a while before she left. After she left all the things that she had been holding up with her powers fell down to the ground. Mom said some bad words when that happened. That was bad. Mom almost never said bad words. Sometimes she said bad words when they did bad things, or when bad things happened like when she burnt her hand when she was cooking, or when she and dad jumped on the bed in the middle of the night and she bumped her head on the wall…or maybe the ceiling since she was super tall. She was saying a few bad words, now, and he didn't say anything.

He didn't even breathe.

Mom had never punished him for real before but she could always start…or she could tell dad.

"I'm going to have to call him…." said mom still talking to herself. Sho's eyes widened. She was talking about Fukuda. Fukuda worked for dad and he had powers, too. He couldn't move things without touching them or anything like that but he would heal any owie. Well the bad owies, the really bad ones, took a while but they got all better eventually. He was the one who fixed him up when dad had to punish him.

"Sho…stay here and don't move your arm." Said mom. She went to get her phone. He climbed down from the counter and put his ear to the vent to listen. You could hear everything through the vents. He heard mom talking, she sounded real quiet and stuff so he couldn't really hear what she was saying. She was so quiet that he couldn't even hear her above big sis' crying.

"Big sis! Hey!" whispered Sho into the vent. He didn't get what she was crying about. She wasn't the one who had gotten hurt and she wasn't the one who was going to get punished once dad heard about this. Dad never punished her, he liked her the best, but he would like Sho the best, too, once he got his powers.

"S-Sho? Is that you?" said big sis

"Who else could it be?" asked Sho rolling his eyes even though she couldn't see him through the vent. She could sense people, she said, but only people with colors. That was why she was the first person to know when dad was getting close to the house. Sho knew that if dad were to come back, mom usually didn't tell them until the day before but he got the feeling that dad would be coming through the door any minute to punish him, big sis would warn him.

"A vent spirit, maybe? I see spirits sometimes, but not usually around here." Said big sis. That was another thing that she could do. She said that she could see good, bad, and neither spirits. The neither spirits were just hanging out and doing their own thing. The good spirits were super rare, like a cat with blue eyes, and there were a lot of bad spirits. She got rid of one, well she said that she was getting rid of one, once when they were little but Sho hadn't been able to see anything.

He would get his powers when he got bigger.

"No, it's me. Stop crying or dad's going to give you something to cry about." Said Sho

"He's not here. He's in a whole other country." Said big sis

"I know but he can still find out that you cried, and he hates crying, so when he comes back you'll be in for it." Said Sho. He didn't want his big sister to be in for it….even though she had never been in for it once in her life. Dad never punished her because she was a girl and she had powers and stuff. It wasn't fair. Maybe dad would have been nicer to him if he were a girl…but that wouldn't be good either. If he were a girl then he would have to wear dresses and he didn't much like dresses. Also his hair would have had to be long and long hair took too much trouble. Also he'd only have boring old dolls to play with and he'd go crazy if he only had dolls to play with.

"Are you going to tell on me?" asked big sis

"No." said Sho. There were few things in this world worse than a tattle tale and Sho was not going to be one of them. He didn't want his big sis to be punished, not really, even though if dad punished her like he punished him then things would have been much fairer….

He didn't know if he wanted things to be fairer.

"Is mom mad at me?" asked big sis

"No. At least she doesn't sound mad. She's calling Fukuda now and he's going to fix my arm. It hurts, but not too bad, but it's changing colors and I can't really move it too good." Said Sho. He was still cradling his arm. He wondered what was wrong with it. It hurt way, way, way more than a little but he'd had worse. Besides, there was no use crying over it anyway. Crying wouldn't make it all better and it would only upset dad when he heard about it. Dad would know, he always knew, and he'd rather dad just be a little mad that he was climbing the castle walls than be very mad that he had been crying like a weak little baby.

"…I didn't mean to hurt you, Sho, it's the truth. I just got scared and that's why I picked you up." Said big sis

"Yeah, I know. You freak out so easily about stuff. I was fine. Nobody ever died from falling into a thorny bush." Said Sho

"I know but people also die from losing too much blood and falling from very high up. The wall is super high, it's taller than mom! And also you got a lot of cuts and scratches and stuff. You could have died, little brother." Said big sis. Girls were always freaking out over every little thing. Dad agreed, he said that girls had a tendency to overreact, which meant that they were always freaking out. He wished, sometimes, that he had a big brother instead of a big sister. If he'd had a big brother then he could have had someone to run and jump and climb and fight and play with. Not someone who only wanted to play house and needed his help going down the big slide.

"Could not have. It wasn't high enough to kill me. People only die if they fall off of mountains or roofs or skyscrapers or something like that. You know, like on TV." Said Sho

"I…I guess….but I really am sorry about what happened…" said big sis

"Stop saying sorry, I'm not crying so I'm fine. Besides, Fukuda's coming!" said Sho

"Do you think he'll play with us?" asked big sis. Sho had to think about that for a moment. Fukuda played with them sometimes but dad didn't like it. Sometimes it seemed like dad didn't like anything at all. He almost never played with them and even when he did he just sat on the floor and watched them play. That was not playing with someone at all. When Fukuda played with them he threw balls around with them and also played games that Sho liked, like menagerie zoo circus animals with dinosaurs, or boring games that sister liked, like house or kitchen or restaurant. Girl games were the most boring games ever!

"Yeah, probably, but we have to do that thing where we hold onto his legs to he can't leave." Said Sho. Dad really didn't like it when Fukuda hung out with them. He said that Fukuda had his own things to do for the organization, that was where dad worked, and that he shouldn't have let himself be distracted by little pests, that was what dad called him and big sis sometimes. Dad also called them Son and Daughter or even just Boy and Girl.

Maybe that was why mom said that the baby factory was closed, because Dad had enough trouble remembering two kids' names.

Fukuda always remembered their names, though, and he was always really nice. Even if he didn't bring them presents from far off countries where people looked different and spoke whole different languages. Fukuda played with them which was nicer than the presents, though Sho was not about to complain about presents. Dad might stop bringing them presents all together like he had that one time…well he had brought something for big sis…and not for Sho…

Because Sho had been acting like such a baby.

He really had been. There was no reason to have cried so much. He had no reason to have been afraid when mom stated taking him to preschool. He had been in places that weren't the castle before. They went to the pool and the park and the library and mom's work at the animal shelter before so he didn't see, now, looking back what had been so very different about going to preschool. It was just a room with kids. But the room had been too small and there had been too many kids and he didn't know any of the other kids and they all looked at him weird and they tried to touch his hair a lot and he was all alone because big sis had to go to a different classroom and mom had left him all alone and…

And he had been such a baby.

He was three then. He was four now and four year olds did not act like babies. That was why he didn't cry even though his arm hurt a lot. It hurt even after mom picked him up and took him to the living room and put frozen vegetables on his arm. She let him watch whatever he wanted on TV, within reason she said, which meant that he couldn't watch anything cool like Six Headed Shark Attack even though it was educational because it showed you what would happen if you were attacked by a six headed shark. He watched the other animal show, though, the one where they went all over the world and talked about the different animals there. Today they were in a place called Zanzibar. It was far away and the people looked different and didn't speak Japanese at all.

Dad went to those sorts of places.

Maybe he could go to those places with dad when he was a bigger boy and got his powers.

Because he was getting to be a bigger boy and he was going to get his powers soon, maybe. He was a big enough boy not to cry, at least, even though his arm hurt so bad that he thought that it might have been better just to chop it off and then attach one of those cool steel claws that people had. Dad was going to be so proud when he heard how Sho was such a brave boy. He was even brave when mom left him all alone to go and talk to big sis. He didn't like it, being all alone in the castle, because it was so big and he was so small…

But he wasn't small, he was big too, and it was stupid to be scared when he was all alone.

It was stupid to ever be scared. Dad said that being afraid made you weak. If Sho was weak then he would never inherit the world like dad said that he would. It was so cool! One day he'd be in charge of the whole world! He could see all the animals that he wanted! He could fill the castle with cats and dogs and hamster and gerbils and Guinea pigs and regular pigs and sharks and lizards and narwhals and griffins…ok, maybe not griffins. They might not have been real. But he could fill the house with all of those other animals.

It would be great.

He thought about animals and not his arm. He didn't know how long he had spent thinking but it had been long enough for big sis to come running out of her room even though mom had said to stay in there. Mom had come back to him, eventually, and held him on the couch while they watched TV. It was nice. He wished that dad and big sis could have been there but it was still nice. Dad didn't like TV that much anyway, though, but he also didn't really like much of anything at all.

"Shigeko! What did I say?!" said Mom. Sho didn't know why mom kept on asking big sis that. Big sis didn't get it, she was so clueless that she didn't even get it that when mom asked that she was really saying that big sis was being disobedient. Big sis usually answered with everything that mom had said that day. Mom always told her not to be smart.

Which even Sho didn't understand. He didn't know what was so bad about being smart.

"But Fukuda's here!" said big sis. She was waiting by the door, the inner front door, and she had to wait for a while before Fukuda got there. Dad was always saying nice things to Shigeko about her powers. He said that her range was impressive. He never said that Sho was impressive but he would, one day, when he got his powers. He'd probably be even more impressive than big sis!

Big sis would never have been able to keep quiet if her arm had hurt this much.

Fukuda fixed his arm up. It didn't hurt.

That was the first thing that he did, well after he took off his shoes, he went right over to Sho and fixed his arm. He did it by making himself glow green, like a lamp, and then he touched Sho's arm. It didn't hurt, not really, actually it kind of tickled. Sho couldn't tell, really, if it was a good feeling or a bad feeling. Like being tickled. Being tickled made you laugh but it wasn't a good sort of laughing.

It felt better, though, than having a messed up arm.

"There you go little guy, good as new." Said Fukuda as he let go of Sho's arm. Sho waved his arm around. It didn't hurt one bit. He banged it against the side of the couch a couple times before mom grabbed his arm and told him to stop.

"What about you little lady? Any concussions, contusions, or abrasions I should look at?" said Fukuda. He smiled when he said that. It was always kind of weird at first seeing him smile. Dad never smiled and he was a man so it was weird to see men smile like that. Sho didn't know a lot of men, just dad and Fukuda. His mom was a lady and all of his teachers were ladies and the librarians were ladies and only moms came to the park and moms were ladies.

It was nice having another boy around.

"No, she's fine." Said mom. Shigeko was standing on her tip toes behind the couch. She always got really quiet and sniffly when mom punished her even though mom never punished her for real.

"Play with us!" said Sho. He threw his arms around Fukuda even though he wasn't that heavy at all. Mom sighed. She sighed like that when she was really tired. Sho didn't know why she was so tired for, it wasn't even dinner time yet. She could be tired after dinner because that was wind down time. After dinner they did their workbooks and took baths and watched a little TV before it was time to go to bed.

"Please, Fukuda….will you play with us? Please? We don't have to play for very long." Said big sis. She was quieter, girls were real quiet and polite like that. Mom started to say that it was getting late, which of course was not true at all because it wasn't even dinner time yet, and that Fukuda was busy, which was not true either because dad was out of the country and Fukuda was less busy when dad was out of the country.

"If your mom says it's ok." Said Fukuda. He looked at mom when he said that. Mom looked away even though the polite thing to do when someone was talking to you was to look at them.

"You know how he is." Said Mom quietly. Fukuda reached over and almost put his hand on mom's but then didn't. That was good. Holding hands didn't mean that you were in love with someone, mom and dad were in love anyway, but it was still super gross to hold hands with a girl who wasn't your sister. Sho didn't have anything against everyone holding hands, there was nothing wrong with holding hands with your sister, and sometimes it even felt nice like when, at school, they made everyone line up and hold hands for their daily walk and sometimes he wound up holding hands with Akira, he was nice and had two dogs and a hamster, and it was always a very nice walk then they had to hold hands.

He wondered why mom didn't seem like she wanted to be friends with Fukuda.

"Then let me be the one to deal with him." said Fukuda. Sho had no idea what that was about, he was as clueless as big sis when it came to adults and their ways, but it ended with Fukuda playing menagerie but also with dolls, which was good. Fukuda even stayed for dinner, too, even though it was getting late like mom kept on saying.

She kept on saying it but…but not like she meant it.

Which was good, because if she had meant it for real than Fukuda would have had to go home. Like that time when Sho got punished but had to tell mom he fell down the stairs and he hurt a lot, before he could keep himself from crying, and then Fukuda came to fix him and then he and mom got into a fight and mom told him to get out of her house and also she said bad words, too.

But this was not like that time.

Fukuda stayed for dinner and hung out after bath time, which was shorter than normal because they had company, and he helped them with their Japanese workbooks and then played with them some more and even read to them before bed. It was nice, really nice…

Why couldn't dad be nice like that?


	10. Bad Dreams

Mob loved her little brother Sho.

"Big sis….I had a bad dream."

So of course she'd let him sleep in her bed.

She had been shaken awake in the middle of the night. It was late, her clock said 10:18, which was very late indeed. She could tell time and she could sort of do math. They had gone to bed over two hours ago. That was more than a hundred minutes, which was a very long time indeed, and she was groggy from having been asleep for so long.

But she loved Sho so she didn't mind.

She pulled her blankets to the side and let him lay down. It was dark in their room, they didn't have their nightlight when dad was home, but she could kind of see him. He was red, a little, kind of like dad's color. He had a little bit of color to him, now, but only when he was upset. Like now. He was really upset. He climbed into her bed fast and pulled the blanket up over his head. Mob put her stuffed cat on top of him for protection. It was big and fluffy and could scare away all of the bad things that could get them.

"Don't tell dad." Said Sho, his voice muffled by her blanket. Mob put another stuffed cat on him. Two were better than one. Those cats were brother and sister. Brother cat had a cape because he could fly, he used to be called Super Cat until dad got her Princess Cat. Now they were brother and sister cat.

"I won't tell dad anything." Said Mob. She used her powers to put another stuffed animal on top of them. This time it was Mrs. Unicorn. There had been a Mr. Unicorn too but Mob got upset once and she accidentally broke him. Mom tried to sew him back up but it was no use. Mob couldn't remember what had happened or what she had been so upset about…sometimes when she got really upset she couldn't remember things that happened to her….but it had something to do with Sho and dad…

Right. Dad had been mad at Sho.

Nothing good ever happened when dad was mad at Sho.

"Promise?" asked Sho

"Promise." Said Mob seriously because a promise was a serious thing, the most serious thing that a person could do was agree to promise something. When you promised something then it had to happen, like how Fukuda promised to visit again or mom promised to take them to the animals shelter again or dad promised to rule the world for them.

"Cross your heart, hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?" asked Sho. Mob nodded. Of course. A promise was an important thing and she wasn't going to break it even on pain of death and needles in her eyes. When you promised someone something you had to keep it. To break a promise was to break someone's trust and breaking trust was the worst thing that you could do. It was like stealing from them, almost. Stealing their trust. Mob didn't know what she'd do if she couldn't trust her family, her mom and dad and little brother. Dad said that family was the only people in this world that you could trust, that everyone else in the world was untrustworthy, and that family was the only thing that mattered. Mob knew that there were a lot of people in the world, more than a hundred, and she wondered how all of those people could be untrustworthy. She didn't ask, of course, because dad hated it when they questioned him. He was their father and they had to do as he said, he had told her, and she was very good about doing what s hews told. That was why dad never had to punish her like he had to punish Sho all the time.

"Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye." Said Mob. She reached down and found Sho's hand. It was all shaky. She held it in hers until the shaking stopped. She thought that it had been a very long time. The clock said that it was 10:29, which had been more than a hundred seconds probably, which was a long time. A hundred of anything was a lot.

It must have been a very bad dream.

Especially since he was still kind of shaky. Sho wasn't afraid of anything. Not heights, not bugs, not worms, not crossing the street, not the big slide at the park, nothing. He was the bravest little brother that a person could ask for so if he was still all shaky then whatever he had dreamt about must have been very bad. Mob had bad dreams too. She dreamt that she was all alone and that she didn't know anyone, not even dad, and that she wanted to go back to her family even though dad was taking her back to her family.

It made no sense.

But nothing was scarier than being alone.

"Sho, you don't have to be afraid. I'm here. You're not alone." Said Mob as she used her powers to put another stuffed animal on top of him. This one was Princess Teddy Bear. She used to be Queen Teddy Bear but then mom got her an Elsa Bear and now that bear was a princess. Not a princess of the world, like dad said that she was, and mom said that dad was just playing pretend, and dad said that he wasn't, but a princess of her toys. That seemed like it would be easier than being a princess of the world. The world was big and she was small. Bigger than the castle.

Mob would have rather been a princess of the castle than a princess of the world.

She felt alone in the castle, sometimes, because it was so big and she was so small. The world was even bigger than the castle and she was so much smaller than the world. Dad said that she and Sho would inherit the world, that meant that after he and mom died then she and Sho would be in charge of the whole world. Mob didn't want to think about that. Mob didn't want to think about when she was be all grown up and she and Sho would be all alone because mom and dad were dead. It was scary when dad said things like that, things like 'all things have their time and all thigs die' and 'one day I won't be here and when that day comes you and your brother will have to rule the world in my place' and other such things.

There was nothing scarier than being all alone.

Maybe that was what Sho was so afraid of.

"I know that I'm not alone. You're here and you're trying to bury me. Of course I'm not alone." Said Sho

"I'm not trying to bury you, I'm trying to make you feel better. You're not alone, Sho. I'm here." Said Mob. Sho turned away from her. Her stuffed animals fell to the ground. She picked them up with her powers and put them back on her bed where they belonged. Sho thought that she was trying to bury him? Why? Why would she try and bury her little brother? He was her little brother. It was like dad said, one day it would just be her and Sho…and if she buried him then it would just be her on her own. All on her own. Her very own. In this castle…in this world…without mom or dad or Sho…just her…Suzuki Shigeko…Mob…

"I know that I'm not alone! I'm here and you're here and we're here together! And mom's here and dad's here!...why does dad have to be here?" asked Sho. His voice was sad, there, and shaky. And he was still shaky. Mob tried to hug him but he just pushed her away with his shoulders and kicked her with his foot. Mob didn't kick him back. Big sisters weren't supposed to kick little brothers even if they kicked you first. That was just not the thing to do. Mom said that she and Sho had to get along, had to be friends, and that she had to take care of him because he was her little brother.

She would have taken care of Sho even if Sho wasn't her little brother.

"Because his trip is over. He always comes back when his trips are over. That's what dads do. They come back home." Said Mob

"Well why did he have to come back? He keeps on coming back and…and he just messes everything up!" said Sho. Mob reached over and covered his mouth with her hand before dad heard. She got very still and very quiet. Dad had already punished Sho that day. She and mom had been in the yard playing while Sho had been punished. Mob couldn't remember for what. Mom had been worried about Sho and she kept on saying things like how she warned him and how he knew what dad was like.

Sho licked her hand.

Mob pulled her hand away really fast. Ick. Brother germs. She didn't let her powers jump out and do something, not really, but all of her stuffed animals went flying to the other side of the room. That was better than what could have happened so it counted as a victory. Mom said that she shouldn't use her powers that often, that she had to be sweet, and dad said that power was nothing without control. Both of them would have been mad if Mob had done something like break a window or shake the house. But she hadn't so that counted as a victory.

"You're gross. Now I have your germs." Said Mob as she wiped her hand on Sho's head to give him back his germs.

"No, now I have your germs. Now I have girl germs and that means that I'm going to turn into a girl." Said Sho

"I don't think it works like that. If I worked like that then I'd turn into a boy because now I have your boy germs. I don't want to be a boy. It's too hard." Said Mob

"Is not. Being a girl is harder. At least I don't have to have mom messing with my hair all the time." Said Sho

"Is too. At least I don't have to run around and climb and jump and stuff." Said Mob

"That stuff's fun." Said Sho

"It looks tiring. Also it makes mom and dad mad." Said Mob

"….everything makes dad mad." Said Sho. Mob had to think about it. She had to try really hard to remember the times when dad was happy. He was a lot like her, she took after him because she was his daughter, and his face didn't move around like other people's did. People were always making faces about stuff, faces that Mob had trouble reading, so she just didn't bother at this point. She could see dad's colors and his colors were much easier to read. He didn't get super happy, not like mom and Sho did, but he did get happy about stuff. Everyone got happy about stuff but some people got happy about different things than others. Like how mom got really happy when cilantro was on sale, she liked it, even though it tasted like soap. Or like how Sho got excited when they found chipmunks in the yard and even tried to bring them inside even though mom said that wild animals belong in the wild. Or like how she got excited when her pink dress with the lacy parts was washed even though Sho said that getting excited over clothes was the dumbest thing ever.

"Not everything. Breakfast makes him happy, and when mom hugs him he gets happy, and when he takes off his shoes he gets happy, and when he tells us stories he's happy-" said Mob

"He doesn't act like it." Said Sho

"He does, you can tell by his colors. Colors are easier to tell than faces." Said Mob

"Well I can't see colors! Not those colors!" said Sho. Mob covered his mouth again but this time she put her hand in a blanket first. That way she wouldn't get his germs.

"You will, don't worry. Mom and dad say that one day when you're big and strong-" said Mob

"I'm already big! I'm already strong! Why can't I…what's wrong with me? It isn't fair! You can do all the stuff that dad can do and he likes you better and-and-and you don't even look like him but you can do all the stuff that he can do and he…he likes you but not me…" said Sho. He turned to face her, now. She couldn't tell what face he was making, it was so dark in their room, but she knew him well enough to tell that he was sad. Sad and mad at the same time. That was a Sho feeling.

She took his hand and held it in hers.

"Sho…I love you. I don't know what makes it so that I can do all of this stuff but you can't. I don't know how it works but I do know that dad said that you were his son and because you're his son that means that you'll be just like him, ok? So now you don't have to worry because you know that we just have to be patient. Dad says that it's important to be patient." Said Mob

"….it's not fair." Said Sho

"I know. I wish you could do all of the stuff that I can do. If I could give you my powers I would." Said Mob

"Don't say stuff like that." Said Sho

"Why not? It's the truth. If we could trade places, except for I'd still be a girl and older, I would. I don't want you to be upset, Sho. I want dad to like you as much as he likes me. I want you to be happy more than I want anything else in the whole, entire, world." Said Mob

"More than a cat?" asked Sho

"More than two cats." Said Mob

"More than a little sister?" asked Sho. Mob had to think really hard about that one. She really, really, really wanted a little sister. Someone to play house and dolls with who wouldn't complain the whole time. Someone who she could watch movies with love and kissing and stuff with who wouldn't make throwing up noises. Someone who was more like her. Someone who looked like her, too. Nobody in her whole, entire, family looked like her. Mom had brown hair and dad and Sho had red hair but she had black hair. She was also the only person who had brown eyes. She hoped that her little sister looked just like her….if she was ever getting one. Maybe the baby factory would be opened again at Christmas time or around her birthday, maybe.

"More than two little sisters." Said Mob after a while. As badly as she wanted a little sister who looked just like her and liked all of the same things she liked she wanted Sho's happiness more. She wanted Sho to be happy more than she wanted anything else in the world, and that was the truth.

"I wish…I shouldn't wish that we could switch places but sometimes I do. Sometimes I wish that dad loved me as much as he loves you. Sometimes I wish that I could just…I don't want to be a normal person. Dad's always saying that the worst thing that you can be is a normal person and I…I know that mom's a normal person and I know that people at school are normal people and I like them a lot but…but the only normal person that dad likes is mom…and I just…" said Sho. He was crying, now, at the end. Mob could hear him sniffling. She covered his mouth so that dad couldn't hear him. Mom and dad must have been asleep by then, it was so very late, but she didn't want to risk it. He didn't lick her hand that time but he didn't stop crying.

She used her powers to push their dresser in front of the door. She didn't know why she felt so scared, dad would never hurt them, but she was scared. She was scared for Sho. She wished as hard as she could that he got powers right then and there. She wished that there was a way that she could pass her powers on to him as easily as she could pass on a cold. But she couldn't, she could only hold her little brother while he cried. He was crying now and he was trying not to cry but that was just making his crying worse and Mob…she had no idea what to do.

She wished that dad wasn't home.

The thought comes suddenly. It's unwanted. She loved her dad and she loved her mom and she loves her little brother. She has a family and she loved each and every one of her family members. She loves them and if she loved someone then she never wished that they would go away. She never even wished Sho away, even when he was being annoying. Not now, of course, he was not being annoying now. He was annoying when he threw her toys around or changed the channel on the TV while she was watching it or borrowed her tablet without asking and then forgot to charge it or when they were taking a bath and he splashed her even though they weren't allowed to splash…those were times where he could be annoying. This was not one of those times.

This was one of those times when she was sad for him and scared for him and being all sad and scared made all of their toys go everywhere and the bed float and…and a whole lot of other stuff, too, that she should not have been doing. Dad didn't like her when she lost control of her powers like this just like how he didn't like Sho when he lost control of his feelings like this…

And she saw red.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw red. Dad was moving. He was awake and he was moving. She shook Sho. He was clinging to her, now, and it was hard to shake him but she did. She shook him as hard as she could even though she didn't have a lot of room to move her arms. She didn't want to use her powers for this, they were doing enough as it was, and she could have accidentally hurt him…and that would have been bad…worse than this…

"Sho! Stop it! Dad's coming!" said Mob. She could see dad's aura and it was getting closer and her powers were still being weird and Sho was still sad and if dad saw how bad they were being he was going to be so mad and whenever he got mad at Sho he punished him…and that was the worst because sometimes Sho got really hurt and he was always sad and mad afterwards…

"No he's not!" said Sho. Mob pulled him close and pulled her blanket up over their heads. She shushed him over and over again as dad got closer and closer and closer…there was so much red…there was so much red that it almost seemed like there was red right there with her…and a different kind of red…which was weird because dad was always the same kind of red…

"He's…he's not…" said Sho. He was crying, sort of, but not the loud sort of crying. This was more hiccuppy. Usually they would go to mom if they were crying this bad but they couldn't because dad was home and dad hated it when they were weak and childish like that. Dad hated a lot of things.

"He is…it feels like he's out there but also…well it feels like someone's here but not him…it's weird. I don't know. It's weird…" said Mob. She let her colors touch these new colors. That was…weird. Scary. So scary, so many scared feelings, that she had to pull her colors away from these new colors. As soon as she pulled away the new colors, a different sort of red, softer, went away and it was dark underneath the blanket again. The only thing she could hear was Sho's breathing….and footsteps coming down the hall.

"Sho, stop breathing like that!" said Mob. He heard her, she knew that he heard her, but he was still breathing like that and no amount of hugging was making him stop. No amount of hugging or head kisses or telling him that everything was going to be ok was making him stop…

Dad hated it when he got like this.

The door creaked opened. Mob closed her eyes and she tried to pretend that she was asleep but she knew that dad knew that she was awake. She knew that he could hear Sho breathing like he was about to cry and that she was awake even though it was after bed time….and she knew that he'd get mad at them. Mad at her and punish Sho. She never got punished, just ignored and sometimes yelled at, but Sho got punished for real and she…she didn't want that.

"Son. Daughter. Explain." Said Dad. He must have been tired. He used fewer words when he was tired. He usually sounded like that right when he got back from his trips. That was why mom hardly ever took her and Sho to the airport to see his plane come in. When he sounded like that they were on thin ice, like the kind that was on top of the duck pond that they were never supposed to walk on because they could fall in and drown and Sho sounds like he's drowning and she feels like she's drowning but she can't because then they would both be drowning-

She made herself stop feeling like that.

She took her feelings, her powers, and smooshed them down into a little ball like Sho did when he ate bread. It hurt, a little, but the things in their room had stopped moving and had hit the ground. She was controlling her powers. That was good. She was supposed to control her powers. Power was nothing without control. Dad always said that.

"Nothing. Bad dreams. We're fine." Said Mob. She didn't want to use a lot of words either. The more words she used the more likely it was that dad would know that she was lying…sort of. It wasn't nothing, they were being bad, they were letting him down, and that was wrong…but she had to keep Sho safe.

The thought made no sense. There was nothing to be afraid of. This was dad. Dad was just how all dads were.

"Good. Go to sleep." Said dad before he closed the doors. She watched his colors as he went down the hall and to his and mom's room. She could see them through the walls. She closed her eyes and she could still see them. She wasn't seeing with her eyes, no, but with her own colors. She could only see dad's colors, those other colors were gone now. No matter how big the castle was she could always see dad's colors when he was home. The other colors were new.

But gone.

And Sho was quieter, too. He was clinging to her but his breathing was back to normal. That was good. It was good when he was calm. It was good that dad had been too tired, or maybe he was feeling too nice, to punish Sho. Mob loved dad. She didn't want dad to go away. She didn't wish that it was only her and mom and Sho who lived in the castle.

Sho was falling asleep, he was doing the little kicks he did while he drifted off now, and that was good. She didn't want him to be awake and be sad.

She just wanted her little brother to be happy.


	11. Futility

This whole thing was an exercise in futility.

"T-Touichi-"

Not that he was complaining. As far as exercises in futility went this was one of the more enjoyable ones. Her thighs on either side of him, her hands on his back…in his hair…across his chest…everywhere that she could reach. She really had beautiful hands. Soft. She was soft. Every inch of her skin was so, very, incredibly soft. She had a very complicated skincare regimen and while Suzuki could not understand why she did it he had no reason not to reap the benefits.

He could get lost in it, the feel of her. Not just the obvious. There was more to this than the act of being within her vessel like this. That was something that set her apart from other women, this feeling she gave him, all of the feelings that she gave him. He had been with other women before and that had been…less. Yes, less was the word that he would use. He hadn't had the urge to touch them, not really, not in ways that didn't benefit him in any way. Brushing his hands across her shoulders, her neck, her stomach, grasping her thighs as she bore down onto him…oh yes.

Yes.

"Touichi!"

He was always Touichi when they were like this. He didn't know why, she was a mystery to him sometimes, but he didn't mind. Not in this situation, anyway, though she had never called him Touichi under any another circumstances. He didn't know how he would react if she did. If anyone else called him that, or even by his given name, they'd pay for their disrespect. Not her, though, never her. He made many allowances for her.

Nobody else EVER saw him like this, for one thing. Vulnerable. He was completely naked. That left him vulnerable. His aura was laid as bare as he was, too, which was another vulnerability that no one but her ever saw. Well daughter was home but she and son had been parked in front of the television with unhealthy snacks, soft drinks, milk drinks, and their tablets should the television bore them. He wasn't worried about the children disturbing them. If daughter saw his aura she'd do nothing, he had instructed the children to leave him and Masami alone until further notice, and Daughter generally did what she was told. She could control Boy to some extent, too, which was just wonderful. The last thing he wanted was his children disturbing him when he was this vulnerable.

The intimacy of it made it vulnerable.

This was an intimate act. He was literally within her body, he could not conceive of anything more intimate than that. He had been like this before, with other women, and he knew that she had been like this with other men, but that didn't matter. He knew that he could never trust another woman like he could trust her and she wanted for no other man. He made sure of that. He provided for her both materially and intimately. His powers had their uses.

"Toui-Touichi-!"

It felt good knowing that he had made her feel good. He didn't understand why. He understood mutually pleasurable experiences but not things that made her cry out like that. There was something about hearing her voice, feeling her hands digging into his arms, the way her spine would arch…all of it.

There were so many things that he didn't understand about her.

But he was not about to go and ask her now.

He did this for her. Mostly for her. This was nice, enjoyable even, but it was pointless. She had stated on numerous occasions that she did not want any more children. He didn't know why she was so opposed to having more children, the ones that they had were getting older so there was less for her to do, and she enjoyed taking care of beings smaller and weaker than herself. She was good at that, taking care of weaker beings, even taking care him…

"I love you!"

She loved him. He loved her. Sometimes he wondered if her version of love was different from his. He loved her because she took care of him, showed concern for him, and he found her company enjoyable. Even when they weren't like this he found her company enjoyable. Though this was, very, enjoyable. The way her hips bounced up and down in synchronization with his, the way one hand knotted itself in his hair and the other dug deeply into the flesh of his back, the way her mouth crashed against his…

And then she was very still.

Red and flushed. Her eyes glassy and unfocused. Her hands still around him, slackly, slowly running up and down his back. Her hair was fanned out around her like a crown, it was a crown, her crown, because she was his queen and he was her king and he would rule this world for her because she deserved it more than any other woman in the world because she was HIS and his alone and this was his and his alone and no one else would ever see her like this or be with her like this and this may have been an exercise in futility but…but it had still been enjoyable.

A mutually enjoyable experience.

But a truly futile one as well.

"Mmmm….stay and cuddle…" This part wasn't as enjoyable. He still laid down beside her and pulled her into his arms. Still not dressed. He needed to get dressed. He wasn't himself if he wasn't dressed. He didn't even feel comfortable wearing pajamas, Masami always got put out when he tried to sleep in his suit like normal, and being naked when he didn't have to be…it wasn't good.

He pulled his aura close again.

He used his powers to pull the blanket up over them. There. That was a little better. It wasn't that she was there, with him, seeing him like that…it was that he was like that. Not dressed. Not himself. It was pointless, this part of it, even more pointless than what they had been doing before. At least before it had been mutually enjoyable. This was just warm and cold at the same time. His skin was sticking to hers uncomfortably.

It wouldn't have been so bad if they had actually been working towards something.

"Touichirou…I missed you so much…" she was nuzzling him now. He had researched this, why she was like this afterwards, and it was a side effect of the chemical rollercoaster that they had just ridden. They were, or at least she was, in a sea of dopamine and oxytocin. Chemicals that the mind released in an effort to create a better pair bond for the child that they could have produced. He wondered why he never felt it, what she must have been feeling. She was still…blissed out was an expression that he had heard, before. He understood the physical pleasure of it but he didn't much understand this.

What was the point of a pair bonding experience when they were already pair bonded?

They hadn't produced a child, there was no chance of that, so what was the point of this part? He hadn't much wanted to do this in the first place, he had other things that needed doing since he would be leaving Japan again soon, but she had set the children up in front of the television and pulled him away by the hand. It had been too long, she had said, which he understood. Women were not so different from men when it came to needs like that one, and it had been a long time since they had last been together like that.

And it was enjoyable.

But also quite futile.

So very pointless since she still didn't want to have any more children.

"I've missed you as well." Said Suzuki not lying, not really. He had missed seeing her and speaking to her and laying beside her at night but not in the way she did. She cried, sometimes, when she set eyes on him after a large amount of time had passed since they had last seen each other. Her presence was enjoyable. He enjoyed her presence…and he enjoyed the presence of very few people. She was his, that was it, she was his most perfect person. That was why he did this with her.

"Do you have really have to go again?" asked Masami. Suzuki's face remained placid, it did not display the annoyance he felt, though his aura told another story. Not that Masami could see it. That was good, he hated it when her feelings got hurt. He was expected to do something about it when she was upset though even after five years of marriage he still had no idea what it was that he was doing.

"I have to." He said simply. She nuzzled him again and he wished that she would stop moving. Their skin, his skin, felt very unpleasant as it peeled away from hers.

"You've been out of the country so much this year…you missed Sho's birthday, even." She said softly, her voice reverberating into his chest. That was true, he had missed Boy's birthday, though he had send a gift. More animals for is menagerie. The gift was appreciated of course, Boy loved animals, so Suzuki did not see the problem. Boy's birthday had been, in the grand scheme of things, just another day. There had been no reason for him to be present for it. Not like for Daughter's birthday. Daughter was an esper and it was important to see how much her abilities has grown year by year, that was all.

"God…why am I still talking about the kids? Ugh…" she sounded frustrated there. He touched her hair in a gesture of comfort even though he didn't know why she was frustrated with herself in the first place. If she didn't want to discuss the children then she shouldn't have brought them up.

"It's just….it's hard for them, sometimes, with you away so often and for so long…" said Masami softly. He kept playing with her hair even though it had a layer of sweat on it. Parts of it had been matted down, mostly likely from the position she had been in, and he used his powers to slowly unknot her hair. It was easier to touch it that way. She also seemed to find this process enjoyable. That was human instinct. It came from back when humans had to pick lice off of each other when they were primates. This he understood. This he could do.

"It's hard for me, too…being away from you. I miss you." Said Masami

"If you want to have sex more frequently we can." Said Suzuki. He thought that they were having more than enough sex, once every four to six weeks was plenty when one was not trying for a baby, but maybe an increase in the number of times they had intercourse would lead to an increase in her desire to have another child. Or maybe it was just a numbers game and eventually she would get pregnant even with that little miracle of family planning she took every single day. He had no idea where she kept them. If he had then he would have simply sabotaged them in some way. He did not understand why she didn't want to have another child. Maybe she just didn't see that it wouldn't be much of a burden on either one of them. He had several cults devoted to him and they could and would gleefully send more money at his behest. They would also trip over themselves to help her care for their new God. Well the son of their current God…and he so hoped he had a son next. Boy was somewhat of a disappointment and he wanted to know if it was just something wrong with Boy himself or if having a child with a non esper had been the reason for Boy's complete and total lack of psychic ability.

Really, a new child would be no problem at all.

He did not understand her one bit. It wasn't even so very difficult caring for children. They were mostly a collection of wants. Once those wants were filled they left you alone. Like with Boy and Daughter. All they really needed were their tablets and some junk food and they were fine. He could not begin to understand why she hovered over them so. Why she was always taking them out into the world even though she complained about the hassle.

Women were strange beings.

"It's not about the sex….I just miss being with you…ok? It's hard being…being alone all the time with just the kids for company. Isolating." Said Masami

"Do you want me to send some people to keep you company?" Said Suzuki. He was already thinking of who he could spare. The only person he had in the area was Fukuda…he supposed that Fukuda could have been moved into the house…no. Absolutely not. The feeling is irrational. Masami had no reason at all to be unfaithful to him….but still, the thought of any man but himself in his home threatens to make his aura spike.

A spike of yellow.

Not good.

He exorcised that emotion. It made no sense. She was there, with him, and she had no reason to ever be unfaithful. He fulfilled all of her needs. She had no reason to be…to want to be unfaithful. That emotion had been illogical so it had to be exorcised. All emotions were so illogical. They just got in the way and made him lose control…and he could not afford to lose control. Not when she was so close. Not when she was right there.

She was vulnerable.

But he was the most vulnerable.

"No, Touichirou, I want…I want to spend more time with you." Said Masami

"We're spending time together right now." Said Suzuki. He could not begin to understand this woman. Sometimes he liked it and sometimes he felt like banging his head against the wall until he, or the wall, collapsed. They spent a lot of time together, she was the only person in this world that he enjoyed spending time with! What more did she want from him? it wasn't as if the world was going to conquer itself, now was it?

"So if I want to spend time with you I have to sleep with you? Is that what you're saying?" she asked, though in more of a statement sort of tone. She had rolled off of him, too, and taken most of the blanket with her. He could see the pale expanse of his own skin…and he didn't like it. The freckles that dotted his body, the pale skin underneath them, the flesh and bone beneath that. His body. His vessel.

He was not his vessel.

He was more than his vessel.

"No. I'm saying…my words mean what they sound like. Right now, in this moment, we are spending time together." Said Suzuki trying to be as clear as possible. She needed to understand him because he could not understand her and one of them needed to be understood.

"I just….you don't get it. Touichirou, I miss you when you're away and I want you to be home more often." Said Masami sitting up. She had pulled the blanket up over her breasts and body, now, which Suzuki thought was very unfair. He tugged the blanket over with his powers and at least managed to cover the lower half of himself.

"I can't. I have to take care of-" said Suzuki

"Can't you delegate some of…whatever it is that you do? You're the President aren't you?" asked Masami

"I didn't get to be the President by giving away bits and pieces of my power. I have to leave, I have no choice, and what I do I do for you. I do a lot for you." Said Suzuki

"What? This house?" asked Masami waving her hand around to illustrate a point that Suzuki could not begin to understand. Yes. This house, this fortress, this 'castle' as Boy and Daughter referred to it, was something that he had done for her. it was the biggest house in the city, of course he would provide his wife and children with the best accommodations money could buy.

"Yes. The house, the money, the children, and this, as well." Said Suzuki

"What do you mean by 'this'?" asked Masami with her eyes narrowed in that way they did when a fight was brewing between them. They so rarely fought, he wouldn't even have called them fights, but she did. He had never fought her in the real way, the way in which he fought others, because he had no reason to fight her. She was his wife and she did her job. Plus she was a normal person, she had no reason to try and prove herself against him.

"Sex. You wanted to have sex so we had sex." Said Suzuki simply. That, apparently, had been the wrong thing to say. She tore the blanket off of him and used it as a robe as she got up. He sat up, too, and watched her curiously. He'd wait until she got dressed before he got dressed even though he hated being stark naked when he didn't have to be. He didn't want to upset her further. The happier she was with him the more likely she would be to have more of his children.

"I didn't hear you complaining." She said lowly. He did not understand what she was so upset about. They had been intimate with each other like she had wanted. She had finished, he knew what it felt like when she finished, and she didn't fake. That would have been even more pointless than having sex with no hope of making a child.

"I'm not complaining, I'm just stating a fact. You wanted to have sex so we had sex. There were other things that I could have been doing with that time but I chose to have sex with you because sex is a need and my job is to fulfil your needs. Even if the act of it was pointless beyond the mutual pleasure of it." Said Suzuki. Great. He had, once again, said the wrong thing. He wished that she would just write him a book of instructions. There were marriage manuals but they were often contradictory and the things that they agreed upon made no sense. Child rearing manuals were easier. At least there were books on child development that he could have read. Much less had been written on the subject of marriage and understanding the female psyche.

"Pointless?" she gasped out. He nodded.

"The point of it was to reproduce. You don't want to reproduce so it was pointless." Said Suzuki simply. Once again that was the wrong thing. He knew because she made a strangled sort of sound, well it sounded like she were being strangled even though he had never strangled her, nor had he had the need to, so he had no idea what it sounded like when she was being strangled. It still sounded strangled, though.

"I…I can't even right now." Said Masami. She held the blanket up with one hand and the other one massaged her temples like she had a migraine. She was not prone to them but if she were having a migraine she really should have called Fukuda. He'd clear that right up.

"You can…you can do whatever you want, ok? If that's the way you see it then…then you can do whatever you want." Said Masami. He closed his eyes for a moment and watched his aura. Yep. There it was, a power flare. He'd have to break himself of that if he wanted to set a good example for Daughter.

"I don't understand why you're so upset. I did what you wanted." Said Suzuki as calmly as he could. People were always so strange, so confusing, to him. He had always told himself that when he ruled the world he would have no more need to try and understand them, that they would have to try and understand him for once, but Masami was his wife…he would be trying to understand her for the rest of his life. Wonderful.

"You just said that sex with me is pointless!" said Masami. She was shouting loudly, much too loudly, in Suzuki's opinion. It was his understanding that children as young as Boy and Daughter were to be kept in the dark about the existence of sex for as long as could be managed. That would prove to be a bit difficult with their mother screaming at the top of her lungs…well it felt like, anyway.

"It's pointless but pleasurable. I didn't hear you complaining, you seemed to be enjoying yourself as I recall." Said Suzuki evenly. She let the blanket fall to the ground and began to gather up her clothes. He used his powers to help her, to try and re-establish a peace that he wasn't sure when he had broken, but that just seemed to upset her more. She snatched her clothes from his telekinetic grasp and put them on with much more force than necessary.

"You-you-you-! I can't get into this with you right now! God! And you wonder why I don't want to have any more children!" said Masami as she finished dressing. She kicked the blanket towards him, threw the door opened, and then slammed it shut. He had no idea what had upset her so, what he had done, but he'd make it up to her later. He'd bring her back something nice from…whichever country it was that he was headed to next. Yes, he'd bring her something and then that would be how they made their peace once again.

That had been so pointless.

He gathered his clothes up and dressed quickly, powers were helpful when it came to that. He'd take a bath if she wasn't in there already. He'd give her some space even though he had no idea what it was that she was so upset about. Women were such complicated creatures. He hoped that Daughter continued to take after him as she got older. He could not handle two Masamis. He could barely understand her as it was. Daughter at least was much easier to understand. She liked praise and toys and milk and junk food. Easy. He had no idea, he could not begin to understand, what Masami wanted.

He didn't need to understand her to care for her.

Even if their argument had been an exercise in futility.


	12. Practice

Dad was going away soon.

Dad went on trips all the time. He had to go on trips for his work, though Mob wasn't sure what that work was, but she knew that it took him away from her and mom and Sho for weeks and weeks. She had no idea what, exactly, it was that he did but she did know that whatever it was he couldn't do it in Japan. He was going to a country called Brazil, now, and Google maps said that it was on the other side of the world. It was across the Pacific Ocean, not the 'specific ocean' like Sho had called it, and that was a long trip. Dad was taking a plane and he would be gone for a while.

Mob was going to miss him.

"Come on, Daughter, I know you're stronger than this." said Dad. Dad was trying to see if she could move him. She couldn't. The strongest that she had ever been was…well when she got upset and moved the whole castle, but the heaviest thing that thing that she could move on purpose was Sho. Besides, dad wasn't even letting him move her, he was pushing her away every time she tried to push him. Not that she wanted to push him or anything, no, she wasn't mad at him at all and even if she was she wouldn't ever push him.

Mom was mad at him, though, for some reason.

Sho thought that she was mad, anyway. Mom was in her bed and wouldn't get up. She said that she wasn't feeling well but Sho said that, based on how she was talking, she was mad about something. Dad had let them make their own breakfast, though, even though mom said that they were too little to pour their own cereal and milk and juice. Dad said that they were old enough, which was good, but Mob had still used her powers because the cereal was up high and the milk and juice were heavy.

Dad said that her control was impressive.

But now he wasn't impressed. He wasn't impressed because she wasn't as strong as he was. That made sense, he was a lot bigger than her, and also a lot older, but she still had to impress him. She was his daughter and he was always saying how no child of his would be a failure or weak or a disappointment or a lot of other not so nice words.

"You're too big." Said Mob. She wanted to stomp her foot and shout but she didn't. Even though it felt like they had been in the yard for hours. Even though it was cold outside and her legs were shaky because she didn't have tights on, just long socks, and her skirt wasn't that long. She wanted to go inside and play something else. She wanted everyone to play together, her and mom and dad and Sho because dad was going to be leaving really soon.

But mom was laying down and Sho was hiding under his bed with his animals because dad punished him again that morning.

So it was just Mob and dad together before he left.

"Maybe. Or maybe you're just not trying hard enough." Said dad. Mob didn't think that it was a fair thing for him to say. She was little and he was big, of course he would be stronger than her.

"I am, I'm just little. You're a lot bigger than me." Said Mob trying to sound calm, like he did. She kept her aura still and quiet. That was what dad called their colors, their auras. She had one, Dad had one, Fukuda had one, and she might have seen Sho's once. She might have just been imagining things, though, because she wished really hard that Sho had powers like she did. Sometimes when you wished for something hard enough you thought that it came true. Like when she wished really hard for a little sister and then she thought that mom's stomach was getting bigger, babies came from mom's stomachs, but mom was just wearing baggy clothes. The baby factory was closed, mom had said, and while Mob had no idea what the connection between the baby factory and mom's stomach was she knew that if it was closed then there would be no little sister for her.

"That has nothing to do with your abilities. If this were a contest of brute force I would win but our abilities have nothing to do with age. If age had anything at all to do with this then you would not be at the level you are." Said Dad

"I'm stronger than all the other kids?" asked Mob. That was what it sounded like. She had never met another kid with powers but there must have been others. Right? Because all adults used to be kids, even moms and dads, so there must have been kids in the world with powers. Dad had gone all over the world. Maybe he had met some. Maybe Mob wasn't' so alone.

She felt alone, sometimes, even though she had a mom and a little brother.

"You are the strongest esper of your age that I have ever known. The only exception being myself. You are my child and you should be strong enough to at least break through my barrier. Come now, I'm not even trying." Said Dad

"I don't think that I can." Said Mob

"Don't think, Daughter, try." Said Dad. He never called her by her name. Not Mob or Shigeko. She wondered if it meant that he was mad at her or happy with her. His colors, his aura, gave nothing away. She wondered why she was Daughter but Sho was usually Boy. Sometimes he was son, occasionally dad called them by their names even, but usually she was Daughter and Sho was Boy and mom was Masami. That was her actual name, Masami. Dad's was…Touichirou…and she shouldn't have had to wrack her brain for that information. Touichirou, or Touichi when mom and dad were jumping on the bed. It was unfair of mom and dad to be able to jump on their bed but she and Sho weren't allowed to.

"I can do lots of other things, though. I can read and write Hiranga better than all the other kids in class and I'm the only kid in my whole school, the preschool and the kindergarten, who can write with kanji. I mean I don't know a lot of kanji but I know more than all of the other kids. I can…I know how to tie my shoes with and without my powers and…and…and I can beat Sho at Go and Chinese checkers and go fish…and I can-" said Mob

"Those things aren't special." Said Dad. Mob saw her colors, her aura, move. She tried to make it stop but she couldn't. The tree behind her began to shake and a bunch of leaves, what few leaves were left, fell down on her. She reached up to brush the leaves out of her hair but stopped herself at the last minute to use her powers. Dad liked it when she used her powers for things.

She accidentally pulled her hair.

"But at school they said that everyone is special and mom said that powers were just another talent that some people had and that it was ok that Sho-" said Mob digging her shoe into the grass beneath her feet. She didn't like it when dad said things like this. These were the kinds of things that made Sho feel bad about himself, and he should have always felt good about himself. He was the best little brother in the whole, wide, world.

"Normal people can believe whatever they want, that doesn't matter. People like us don't have to grasp at whatever we can in order to justify our own existence. People like us, espers, stand head and shoulders above all others." Said Dad. Mob shook her head. She knew that she was on dangerous ground, Dad hated it when people didn't agree with him, but he was wrong…no, dads couldn't be wrong. He was just…mistaken. Yes. That was it.

"But Dad, mom said-" said Mob trying to get him to listen. Mom was smart, she knew everything, and dad would surely listen to what mom had said.

"Your mother in entitled to her own opinion. " said Dad with a wave of his hand. Mob frowned. That was kind of mean, she thought, but she must have been wrong. Everyone, even Sho, said that she couldn't get a clue when it came to other people after all….yes, that was it. Dad was not being mean to mom. He was just stating a fact. People were allowed to think whatever they wanted to think.

"And you, Daughter, you and I stand head and shoulders above all other espers." Said Dad

"But I don't want-" said Mob

"It's not a question of wanting, Daughter, and it never will be. Fate bestowed you with these powers and you've got to use them to their full potential." Said Dad

"But I don't want to hurt you." Said Mob

"You won't hurt me." Said Dad

"But if I push too hard and I lose control-" said Mob

"So don't lose control." Said Dad

"But what if-" said Mob

"No. No more discussion. You're going to try and you're going to succeed. You're going to inherit the world someday and when that day comes you need to be worthy. Forget your age, your stature, your gender, forget all of it and just act." Said Dad

"I'm too little!" said Mob

'No. You are not." Said Dad

"Yes I am! I'm six and you're…I don't know how old you are but I know that you're much older than I am and I can't break through your barrier or move you or knock you down or-or-or anything…." said Mob

"You're losing control. Stop it. You're better than this. You are Suzuki Shigeko, my daughter, and you are better than this. Do not disappoint me. I will not have another one of my children be a disappointment." said Dad

"Dad…that's a mean thing to say about Sho." said Mob, her fists clenched at her sides. Dad was not being very nice at all when he said that. You were supposed to be sweet and nice and gentle, like mom always said. Sho was a good little brother, a good person, and there was no reason for dad to be disappointed in him. Dad…he was always talking about how their powers made them special and all…but there were more things in the world than powers that could make a person special.

"I will not have another child of mine become a disappointment." Said Dad again even though she had JUST SAID that he was being mean to Sho. There was no reason to be mean to Sho. He was the best little brother ever. He as brave, he could climb and jump off of anything, and he was smart, too. He knew more about animals than even mom knew. Also he could jump from his bed to hers and back again without hitting the ground. Also he was the reigning champion of the game where the floor was made of lava and they had to jump around the TV room furniture. Also he could draw much better than she could. Sho was a good person and he was good at things…and he felt so bad about himself…and it was because Dad was just SO MEAN and it made her SO MAD and now her colors, aura, was SO BRIGHT and-

"I expect more from you, Daughter, and I will not have you become-" said Dad

"Please…stop saying mean things about Sho." said Mob

"Why? It's true. Your brother is nothing but a-" said Dad. He was about to say something mean, again, about Sho and Mob knew that she should have kept calm, kept her colors still, but she just….she couldn't. She had to make him stop. Sho was not a disappointment. Sho was a good person, the best person. Her little brother and best friend in the world…and Dad was talking about him like he was nothing….

"Dad, please stop it." Said Mob

"What? You're losing control on Sho's behalf? I cannot begin to understand you, Daughter. Why are you so bothered by me stating a plain fact? Boy is your brother, true, but you stand head and shoulders above him. You need to regain control. Why are you acting like this?" asked Dad

"I-I'm trying not to." Said Mob. She should not have been losing control. She was almost six, now, and much too big to be losing control…but Dad needed to get a clue! How could he say something so mean? How could…Mob could not begin to understand.

"Honestly. You're no better than-" said Dad. Mob couldn't help it. She knew that it was wrong to act like that, to lose control, but she couldn't help it. Dad was just being so mean. She hated it, when he was mean, because he…he was her dad and dads were not supposed to be mean…

She couldn't help it.

She just wanted him to stop.

She lost control. Her aura flared out and her colors flared out and his barrier shimmered…and he took a small step back. Mob gasped and covered her mouth when it was over. She had no only lost control but almost hurt her dad, too, and now she was in for it like Sho had been…and she had never been in for it in her whole, entire, life!

Dad took a step forward. Then another.

She closed her eyes and braced herself for whatever her punishment would be. She had seen the marks on Sho, the purple and blue and sometimes black ones that covered his stomach and back sometimes when he was bad, the kind that made mom call Fukuda and be very sad…and Mob didn't want that to happen to her and dad was getting closer, she could feel him, and she tensed up so much that it hurt…and then she felt his hand in her hair-

"There. Was that really so hard, Daughter? You could have broken my barrier, you know, if you hadn't lost control. Learn from your failures and grow." Said Dad. That was all he said before he went back in to the house. He was probably leaving now, for his trip, and Mob…usually she would have followed dad, begged him to stay, to play with her for just a little while longer. Now she…she didn't want him around…and that was just the worst. She knew that she should have chased after him, dragged out what little time they had together because she had no idea when he'd be back. She knew that she had to do that, that was what she had always done before…but now…now she didn't…

This time she just watched him walk away.


	13. Mrs Suzuki

It was getting harder and harder to get out of bed these days.

Touichirou was off to…somewhere in South America. Brazil. What he did there she did not know but she knew that he would be gone for at least a month if not more. She wondered if he went to just one country or multiple. She wonder what it was that he was doing down there. He said that there was an esper there that he was looking into, and that where there was one there would be others, he had said. What he was gathering other espers for she had no idea.

She didn't much care.

"Mom! Mom, are you awake yet!" That was Sho pounding on the door. She rolled over and checked the time on her phone. She should have been up ages ago. The children needed her. They were hungry. They needed their breakfasts and then they needed to head down to the library to exchange their books and then they needed to stop off at the animal shelter and help out for a couple hours and then they needed to have lunch and do their workbooks and then they needed to-

Second verse same as the first.

Her life revolved around them. She had…what had she done before them? She'd had friends, she'd had a job, she'd seen her family more than once every few years…she'd had so much but then…Touichirou had come into her life. She loved him. She still…she still loved him. She was his wife and she had made her choice. She still loved him and…and she had to. Even if he didn't…no…he loved her. He had to love her. Why else would he have married her? He could have had a woman in every country if he wanted to!

That would have been much simpler.

Then this feeling, this feeling that had been building since she had no idea when, would have made sense. If her husband had been unfaithful then her unhappiness would have made so much sense and then she would have been free to…she didn't even hazard to think. Besides, this was her life now. She knew what Touichirou was when she met him. A total pod person. It had been adorable, charming even, but now…now it was just draining. The way he just…didn't understand. Her. The children. The whole of humanity.

Such a pod person.

"Mom? Are you ok? You didn't make breakfast yet." There, pod person number two. Shigeko. Their daughter. Shigeko had been a welcome, but sudden, addition to the family. He had told her, not asked, told, that her that he had found an orphan that they needed to take in because she had been cast aside due to her powers. She was…she was so much like him that it was scary. Even now she was only thinking of herself just like Touichirou only thought about himself. What she could do for him. Nothing came from within with that man….and he didn't even understand why that was a problem.

"Mom! Mom, the door's locked!" Sho. Her baby boy. So wanted. A happy accident. She knew, approximately, when Sho had been conceived. It had been an act of love, she had thought, that very first time. She had brought him home to the apartment, that little shoebox, and they had shared a bottle of sake and then gotten to it. He was different when he drank, freer with himself, and it had been…an act of love. And then she had found herself married and pregnant and moved into this house. This castle.

This gilded cage.

"Maybe she's not in there. Maybe she climbed out the window or something." Said Sho. He had the right idea. Masami wished that she could just climb out the windows and run down the street in her nightgown and slippers until this house and Suzuki Touichirou were only distant memories. She couldn't, of course, because she could not abandon Sho.

The children.

She could not abandon both of the children.

Both of HER children.

"Why would she do that? I think that she'd be too afraid to climb down…and also she can use the doors like she's always telling us to. It doesn't make any sense." Said Shigeko. She was such a pragmatic, logical, child. Just like her father. If Masami didn't know better, Shigeko was obviously fully Japanese, she could have thought bad thoughts, insidious thoughts, thoughts that would have poisoned her against her only daughter. Touichirou thought that sex, the ultimate act of love, was pointless unless one was setting out to create a child…which raised questions about how drunk he had really been when they had made Sho….so of course he wouldn't have just slept with some random woman in Seasoning City, had a child with her, and then pretended that said child was an orphan in order to-

Crazy thoughts.

"Because it's fun to climb out the windows, duh! Girls are so weird sometimes, you guys have no idea what's fun and what isn't." said Sho. He was nothing like his father. He didn't think, he just acted, much like Masami had when she was younger. Heh. Younger. That had only been about six years ago. Why did she feel so old now? She couldn't even get herself out of bed.

She rolled over and faced the door.

She could see their shadows peeking out under the door. She wondered how long it would be until they got bored. She knew that she needed to get up and start the day. Maybe it would be easier when they went back to school…no it wouldn't be. That was even worse. Then it was just her alone in this house. She never wanted a house this big. She had never wanted to live behind such high walls, or any walls at all. She had wanted a small house with a garden and a yard for dogs and cats to run around in…but Suzuki wanted to keep the world out. He seemed downright afraid of it, sometimes, the world and the normal people in it.

Who knew with him?

"Mom wouldn't do something like that. What would she even do once she got outside? Her shoes are still by the door. She wouldn't just leave the house without them on. That's not right." Said Shigeko. Her voice was so flat. Sho was sounding distressed but she sounded disaffected as always. That was Shigeko. She had been disaffected even when she had first come home. Not immediately, no, when she got comfortable enough around them to show her true self…

Just like her father.

"Maybe she's sick, then, and she lost her voice or something? Break the lock!" said Sho. Masami closed her eyes. She did not want to deal with them. She just didn't have the strength…and she knew that she was being a terrible mother. She knew that she should have been up and out of bed ages ago. Her children were hungry. She was their mother. She had her role to fill.

That was what it all came down to, didn't it? Roles.

She tried to get up but felt a chill. Cold. She was cold, bone cold, too cold to get up. She laid back down and buried her face in the pillow below her head. No. She threw it out of the bed. It smelled like him. She rolled over, she had been on his side of the bed again. That smell, the shadow of him, used to comfort her in those long weeks when he would be away from home. Now it just reminded her of what she had. Who her husband was. The last time they had-

Pointless.

The worst part wasn't that he had called it, the last time they made love, pointless but instead that he hadn't even realized how cruel he had been. He never seemed to even hear the words that came out of his mouth. He said what he meant and he meant what he said. Without the potential to create another child, another being to pound on her bedroom door and demand their breakfast, then sex was pointless. She didn't even know why he wanted another child so badly, he hardly even spent time with the ones that they already had!

"I can't break the lock, Sho, because then she'll get mad at me. What if she's not sick, just really deep asleep and she wakes up and the lock's all broken? What then?" asked Shigeko. Masami pulled the blanket up over her head. Shigeko could have taken the entire door down if she had half a mind to. That was why Touichirou had taken her in, her powers, and that was why he spent what little time he had at home with Shigeko and not Sho, his actual child.

No.

Shigeko was their daughter.

"Then we run away and hide under our beds until she forgets that we broke the door." Said Sho. She smiled. Yup. That was a five year old boy. He sounded the way a five year old was supposed to sound. Shigeko was six, almost, and she sounded like….Masami didn't even know what. Not a six year old girl, that was for sure. A pod person. A mini pod person. Her father made into miniature and pulled into a dress and pigtails.

"But then the door will still be broken." Said Shigeko

"I don't care! I want my mom!" Sho was shouting, now, and the door was rattling. He was either pounding on it or kicking it, Masami would believe either, and she knew that she had to go out there and be the mother that they needed. They were her children and she…she was their mother and she had a role that she had agreed to fill…

She was so cold…and so tired.

Tired of life. Tired of all of this. Tired of being trapped in this house being Suzuki Touichirou's wife and the mother to his children that he had always wanted. She had no function beyond that. She was his wife and only his wife. Everything came back down to that, her role, didn't it? And she couldn't just sit there…well she could. It would have been so easy, too easy, to just lay there…

But she had a job to do.

That was what her life had turned into, this, a series of jobs. That was the role that she had agreed to fill. She used to take some enjoyment out of it, tried to anyway, and made countless excused for him…no matter what he did…and now she was just so tired…so very tired…

She was just so, very, incredibly tired. She had so much to do…and the to do list would only get longer and longer the more time she wasted there in bed…and she had to get out of bed and…and-and it was what she had to do…and she had to get out of bed now…

But she just…she just could not. She just could not get out of bed. She didn't see the point of it. Was that all she was, just someone filling a role? Could she have just been anyone? Anyone could have…Touichirou didn't see her and her…she was just his wife. His wife and the children's mother. That was who she was. She wasn't Masami. She wasn't Suzuki Masami anymore, no, she had ceased to be that person ages ago.

"Shigeko! Sho! I'm not feeling well today! Just…pour your own cereal." Said Masami, the blanket still over her head. She could feel a change in the atmosphere, the energy around her. That was Shigeko's doing. Her powers.

"But you said that we were too little!" said Shigeko. Sho was reminding her that their father had allowed them, Shigeko, to make them cereal and milk the other day. Touichirou couldn't even be bothered to make breakfast for his own children. Why would he? He was the husband. His job was to go out and put a roof over their heads and food in their bellies and clothes on their backs. Anything beyond that would have been too much to ask. A little kindness, a little understanding, a little affection…that was asking far too much of Suzuki Touichirou.

"I know what I said! Just…listen to what I'm saying now. You two are now, officially, old enough to make your own cereal. Ok?" said Masami

"But I want pancakes!" said Sho. Shigeko agreed with him. Masami should have cooked, that was her job, but she just…she did not feel like making anything. Especially not breakfast food. There was…Touichirou liked breakfast food…and he liked so little…

"And I want an omelet with cheese and ketchup." Said Shigeko. Masami screwed her eyes shut. Shigeko…she was so much like her father. Suzuki Shigeko. Suzuki Touichirou. She was kinder, sweeter, than her father…but she was only a child. Even Touichirou had to have been a child at some point…though that was hard to believe.

"It's cereal or nothing!" said Masami louder, harsher, than she had ever spoken to them before. It worked, though, and she could tell by the sound of their little sock feet hitting the floor as they ran away. She should have been nicer, better, a better mother to her children. She should have been…

She should have been a lot of things.

Wife. Mother. Mrs. Suzuki.

But it was hard.


	14. Bath Time

Mom was very sick.

"Mom! It's bath time!" said Mob through mom's bedroom door. Mom had been in there for a really long time. She came out, sometimes, to go to the bathroom or to take very long baths. That was something that you did when you were sick, took long baths, to cook the germs out of you. Mom had been sick for a while and Mob knew that they weren't supposed to bother Fukuda for every little thig but this seemed liked a big thing.

Mom had been like this for a very long time.

"Skip it tonight!" said Masami, her voice muffled by her pillow. The kids never liked taking baths. They always splashed and kicked and screamed and made little terrors out of themselves. Well that was mostly Sho. She, Shigeko, just sat there until she flooded the bathroom. She never gave any indication of when she would flood the bathroom, and anything from soap in her eyes to being splashed by Sho could trigger it, and Masami did not feel like cleaning up a flooded bathroom.

"But mom, my hair has knots and Sho's all dirty." Said Mob. They had been outside all day. They hadn't gone to school or the library or the animal shelter or the pool or anywhere else. They had gotten up, had their cereal, and played in the yard all day. Mom made them sandwiches for lunch and then went back to bed. Now it was late, they'd missed dinner, and it was dark out. They had been playing in the yard all day and Sho was covered in dirt. Mob was less dirty but her hair was still uncomfortably knotted. Mom hadn't done her braids in a while so she had just let her hair be loose. The knotted mess that it had turned into was driving her crazy.

But she didn't know how to wash her own hair.

"So go take a bath." Said Masami. Shigeko was not a child, not a child in the sense that Sho was. She could do things for herself. She had always been very advanced for her age. She spoke in full sentences by two and could write in perfect hiranga by three. She knew how to count by twos and tie her shoes. She could life her own brother with her powers and could do very fine movements, too, according to Touichirou. Shigeko was his pride and joy. Well if Shigeko was so capable then there was no reason why she couldn't run her own bath.

"But you said that me and Sho are too little to take baths by ourselves. You said that we would flood the bathroom. You said that-" said Mob

"Shigeko…just…you and your brother are now, officially, old enough to run your own bath." Said Masami

"But I don't know how-" said Mob. She and Sho were now, officially, old enough to do a lot of things. They could have as much media and tablet time as they wanted to now, let themselves out into the yard, make their own cereal, and put themselves to bed. Mob read their stories, now, as best as she could. She knew more kanji than Sho. She was getting tired of their books, though, but mom was too sick to take them to the library. Mob wondered if they were old enough to go by themselves. She knew where it was…

She wished that mom would get better soon.

"You turn the tap and water comes out, Shigeko, that's pretty much it. You've been taking baths for your entire life, you know how it works, ok? Now let me sleep. Mommy…she's not feeling too good." Said Masami. That was who she was. Mommy. Mom. Mother. Wife. Mrs. Suzuki. Suzuki Masami. She had things to do but…but she just couldn't. Not now. They were fine. They were Touichirou's children, they were capable. Sho was…she needed to…Sho had Shigeko. Her father in feminine miniature. Small but capable. Logical. Untethered to the world of love and affection and emotions. Even now her voice was flat. Any other child would have been the least bit concerned. Not Shigeko. She didn't sound like she cared whether or not Masami lived or died, just that she kept up with all the things that a mother was supposed to do. Such a selfish child. Selfish like her father.

"Ok…I'll do that…but will you give us a bath tomorrow? And make breakfast? And…and take us to school? And the library? And…and play with us?" asked Mob. She wondered how long mom was planning on being sick for. This was getting weird. She wanted mom back. Even when she told them what to do and made them do extra school work and stuff she was…she was their mom and it was weird to be without her.

"Let me rest, Shigeko." Said Masami. There. That was all that mattered, wasn't it? What she could do. How she could be of service. What about what she wanted? What about who she was? This was her life, now. She existed in service to the children. In service to her husband. She had been doing this for years and years. Years and years of thinking that it could get better, of thinking that her husband would…would appreciate her….would care for her. But he…was he even capable of that? He had been so cruel…and he would come back and continue to be so cruel…and his children were, his daughter was, jut like him…

She was a sweet girl now but she was getting older.

She hadn't expressed any concern at all towards her mother. Sho, at least, asked her if she needed medicine and if they needed to call Fukuda. Shigeko just asked what Masami was going to do for her. Children were supposed to be selfish by nature, so maybe Shigeko was normal and Sho was unusually selfless, or maybe Shigeko had the same whatever it was that made Touichirou, well, Touichirou. Maybe it was an esper thing.

She was so glad that Sho was normal.

"Ok…I'll do that. Goodnight mom…" said Mob before she walked away. She went to the bathroom and turned the taps on. They were kind of stuck so she used her powers. She turned on the hot, only, because she knew that the bath was supposed to be hot. Mom…she couldn't remember how far mom turned both taps…but she knew that it had to be hot.

"We're not supposed to play with the tub." Said Sho as he came into the bathroom to see what his sister was doing. There was a black mark on the wall from where he touched it. They'd been, well he'd been, playing in the dirt patch in the back yard. She'd just been telling him not to get too dirty. That was how girls were, they never liked to have proper fun.

"I'm not playing, mom said that she's too sick to give us our bath so I'm…she said that we're old enough to take our own bath." Said Mob as the tub filled up. This wouldn't be so hard. She just had to…to remember all the steps. There. There was the bar of soap and the shampoo, that went first, and then the conditioner and then rinse and…and then comb her hair and braid it…

She didn't know how to braid hair.

But she was big, now, and she had to figure it out. She wasn't little anymore, she was capable. Dad was always saying that she was capable. She may have been little but she had to ignore that, like dad had always said, because she was Suzuki Shigeko. That meant that she couldn't be like the other kids. She couldn't be afraid or not able to do stuff.

"I don't want to take a bath!" said Sho. He wasn't that dirty and, besides, big sis was not mom! She didn't get to tell him what to do just because she was older!

"Sho, we both have to. We haven't taken a bath in days and we could get really sick." Said Mob trying to make as much sense as she could. She knew that she could get sick but that wasn't why she wanted a bath. She just felt gross. That was a girl thing. Boys never felt gross, in fact they liked gross things, and Sho was a boy so he didn't mind being all dirty….or that they were still in their pajamas from days ago. They knew how to dress themselves but mom usually set their clothes out for the day.

"I don't care. You're not mom, you can't tell me what to do." Said Sho

"I know that I'm not mom but I'm older and I think that we need to take a bath." Said Mob

"Well I think that we don't." said Sho crossing his arms. What was with her? They'd only gone a few days without taking a bath, it wasn't like there were flies stuck to them or anything.

"Please?" asked Mob. She mostly just didn't want to take a bath alone. He didn't care if she was dirty but she was…and she didn't want to be alone. Mom was sick in her room and dad was far, far, far away and now…now it was just her and Sho.

"Just take a bath by yourself." Said Sho

"I don't want to be alone." Said Mob

"Why? Do you think you'll drown?" asked Sho

"No, I just don't want to be alone." Said Mob

"…are you scared?" asked Sho. He wasn't supposed to be afraid of anything, neither of them were. Dad said that fear was just a sign of weakness. He didn't want dad not to like him…but sometimes he still got scared of things. The castle was their home and he couldn't ever remember living anywhere else but sometimes it could be scary. Like at night. Or sometimes during the day. Even though it made no sense. Nothing could hurt them, dad had said so, and anyway nothing had any reason to try and hurt them. Big sis said that any spirits that they saw were the kind the just wanted to be left alone.

"…kind of…and also we need to take a bath. Mom's sick so she can't take care of us so that means that we need to be able to take care of ourselves. Like Dad always says, we aren't little anymore and we need to be strong." Said Mob

"…so it would make mom happy if we took a bath?" asked Sho

"I think so, yeah. She can't help that she's sick so we should at least try and take care of ourselves. Besides, she said that we're old enough to take a bath on our own now." Said Mob

"We've been old enough for a lot of stuff lately." Said Sho quietly. He was bigger, he was five now, and he still hadn't gotten his powers…but at least he was old enough to make his own breakfast. That was something that mom was supposed to do…but she was sick and he was big enough to take care of himself. Dad would be happy that he was taking care of himself.

He still wanted mom back, though.

"I know. It's not fair because you're a year younger than me so you get to be old enough before I was." Said Mob

"Maybe I'm just more awesomer than you are." Said Sho

"Awesomer is not a word." Said Mob

"You're just saying that because you know that I'm awesomer." Said Sho

"We're equally awesome." Said Mob

"You keep telling yourself that, big sis." said Sho

"Are you going to get in the bathtub or not?" asked Mob

"Fine, fine, I'll get in." said Sho. If it made mom happy then he'd do it even though he wasn't that dirty. Mom was sick so the least they could do was make her happy. He didn't know why mom didn't just call Fukuda. They weren't supposed to call him for every little thing but mom had been sick since dad left. This was not a little thing. He hopes that it's not serious. He's never been to a hospital but he's seen them on TV and he knows that he never wants him mom to ever go to such an awful place.

Ever.

"Do you want bubbles?" asked Mob as she put her clothes in the hamper. It was kind of full and she had to use her powers to get the top to stay down. Maybe mom would say that they were old enough to wash their own clothes next. She could do that. She could do whatever mom wanted her to do. It was easier, doing the things that mom wanted her to do.

"No, but I want the colored stuff." Said Sho

"Eww, no, I hate taking green baths." Said Mob shaking her head. Mom may have always said that life was full of compromises and all of that but there were some things that you just could not compromise on.

"We have other colors." Said Sho kicking his clothes over to the corner. Big sis used her powers to put them into the hamper. He wanted to kick the hamper over.

"Anything but green, I hate green, it makes the water look gross." Said Mob. She used her powers to get their bucket of bath bombs out from under the sink. She hoped that mom got better soon so that they could make more. They didn't have to make more, though, they could do whatever mom wanted.

Mob just wanted her to get well soon.

"Do we have any more with glitter in them?" asked Sho even though glitter was for girls, everyone said. He still liked it. He wanted green, though, even if it didn't have any glitter. He was going to compromise, though, which mom was always telling them to do. She said that life was all about making compromises whether you felt like it or not.

"Just pink ones." Said Mob taking out the bucket and shaking it. Sho made a face that Mob thought was quite uncalled for. Pink was a lovely color. Mom said that it was Mob's best color and bought all of her clothes in pink. Sho's were mostly blue. It made sorting the laundry easier.

"Any more red?" asked Sho

"Pink is kind of like red." Said Mob hopefully. Sho stuck out his tongue. Great, just great. He has to take a bath and it's not even the color he wants.

"We have blue, too, and purple." Said Mob helpfully. She didn't want to end up in a fight with Sho. They almost never fought for real and she hated the rare times when they did. They were brother and sister, they had to get along. That was why she had a little brother, so she could have a friend that would be with her always and forever.

"Do the purple…and I changed my mind about the bubbles!" said Sho. Well then if he couldn't have glittery then he'd have bubbly. Even though the bubbles sometimes got in your eyes and made you cry and stuff.

"I think I should have added them before." Said Mob as she turned off the hot water tap. The water level was kind of high. She knew that it got higher when there were people in it, too. She hoped that the bathroom didn't flood. Mom said that when the floor got wet it was bad for the house. Mob didn't want to ruin the house, it was their only place to live.

"Just pour a whole bunch in now to make up for lost time." Said Sho. He wanted to get this whole thing over with so he could get back to playing before it was bedtime. Mom hadn't been making them get in their beds since they got sick but maybe she might this time. He hoped that they got to stay up late again. Last night they stayed up so late that the bad words shows came on. He didn't get what was happening in them or what most of those words meant but it was still fun to stay up late…but he did kind of hope that mom busted them again, too, because then that would mean that she had gotten back to normal.

"Are you sure that's how it works?" asked Mob. She thought that it was the water pouring in that made bubbles, not just putting the bubble potion in…but she wasn't about to flood the house and make the family live outside in the playhouse in the yard or anything like that. They wouldn't all fit. She and Sho barely fit these days.

"Would I ever steer you wrong?" asked Sho

"Yes, yes you would. Like remember the time when we tried to paint the bedroom wall because you said that it would be a good idea? Or the time when you made me catch those squirrels with my powers and we tried to hide them in our room? Or the time with the raccoon and the cakesters-" said Mob

"Just pour the stuff in, big sis…" said Sho. What was this? An acquisition?!

"Ok, ok." Said Mob. She poured in a good amount of bubbles, she thought. Mom usually measured it in capfuls but Mob just poured it in with her powers. She made sure to use a lot, and then put in their bath bomb too. It looked kind of ok. She knew that it was the water moving that made the bubbles grow but there wasn't a lot of room left for more water. Well she could let some out water out but she had already filled the tub with hot water once, she wasn't sure if there was enough water left in the water heater for two baths' worth of water.

"You go first, I'm gonna get toys." Said Sho as he ran out of the bathroom in search of his plastic zoo animals. Mom usually only let them pick two toys each for the tub but mom wasn't there right now. He was going to bring the whole menagerie! It was going to be awesome!

"Bring my mermaid cats!" said Mob as Sho ran down the hall. She heard the door to their room slam opened and then shut. She decided to get in before he dumped all of their toys in the tub and there wasn't enough room left for her.

She swung one leg over and dipped it into the water.

And screamed.

Masami had been drifting in and out of consciousness when a loud scream brought her, permanently, back to the land of the living.

First there was a scream, then the house shook, then the sound of something shattering a million times, and then the rug by the doorway began to chance colors…because it was wet. That was water seeping in from under her bedroom door.

She jumped out of bed and ran down the hall. She slipped, once, and went tumbling into the hall wall. Some plaster gave way due to her foot hitting it and her leg got cut in the wall hole. She barely felt it. Something was wrong, very wrong. Sho could have been hurt!

They both could have been hurt.

That was Shigeko who was screaming. That wasn't normal. Shigeko was not, and had never been, a screamer. Neither was the hallway being flooded with water…warm water. Hot water. The bathroom was not far from her bedroom. That was where the water was coming from…water and…Masami felt something under her palm. She lifted her hand up and saw blood….and white slivers.

Porcelain.

"Mom! Mom, come quick! There's blood EVERYWHERE! The bathroom EXPLODED!" shouted Sho as he ran from the bathroom. His feet hurt a lot but big sis was doing even worse! She was all bloody!

"Sho! Get away from there!" said Masami. She climbed to her feet and shoved her son down the hall and away from the bathroom. Bits of broken porcelain poked through her soaked socks as she ran to the bathroom…or what was left of the bathroom….

Exploded.

The bathroom had exploded.

There was nothing left. Nothing. Just twisted metal and broken porcelain and water…so much water…flowing from everywhere…

And in the middle of it was Shigeko.

"Shigeko…." Said Masami. Shigeko was crying in the middle of the floor completely naked. Sho had been naked too…a bath. She had told Shigeko that she was old enough to take a bath and…one of her legs was red. Red collected at the edges of a large, white, blister…a scald. That was why there was so much hot water….Shigeko had scalded herself…because she was six years old and could not be trusted to run a bath on her own.

She had dropped the ball.

Sho could have been hurt.

"Sho! Are you ok?" asked Masami. She tuned so fast she almost slipped again. She had pushed Sho away to keep him safe…but she may have pushed him too hard.

"My feet hurt and there's stuff stuck in them but I'm fine." Said Sho. It hurt but he'd had worse pain in his life before. He just wanted to know if big sis was ok. She was hurt worse than she was and it was much worse because she was a girl and girls were super sensitive and stuff.

Moms too, apparently.

Mom had run over and picked him and was asking over and over again if he was ok even though he just said so.

"Thank God you're alright!" said Masami as she held her son close. She was never, ever, ever leaving him alone like that again.

"Mom, forget me! What about big sis!?" said Sho as he pushed his mom away. He didn't know what happened but he knew that it had to have been his fault. He was the one who left her all alone. One minute everything had been ok and the next there had been that loud sound and the house shook and then the whole hallway was flooded…and big sis was all bloody and she had the red and white thing on her leg that looked like it hurt a lot…

"Shigeko…" said Masami. Right. Her daughter….her daughter needed her. Her daughter had done…this…but she needed her. She knew that she should have been there, she should have been the one to run them a bath…and now she was paying for it. Shigeko was hurt, badly, and had been hurt badly enough to lose control…and she could have so easily lost control again…

And Masami had no way of stopping her.

Or fixing this.

The burns, the scalds, the cuts, or the bathroom. There was nothing that she could do for…for any of this. She could only hold Shigeko until she calmed down and…and then she had no choice but to call Fukuda. She didn't want to, she didn't want this to get back to her husband, but she had to. The one thing Touichirou cared about was psychic powers and the only time he had ever gotten even the least bit frustrated with Shigeko had been when she lost control of her powers.

She had no choice.

She made the call and then after that all they could do was wait. Get as dressed as she could get them and wait. She managed to calm Shigeko down enough just by holding her. Calm enough to get her into a nightshirt and to get one of the kids' shows on the TV while they waited. Fukuda was close. Touichirou hardly ever took him with on these long trips of his. He liked having someone close by in case something happened. Something like this. He didn't want them going to the hospital. He hadn't even wanted Sho to have been born in the hospital. Just another thing about her husband that she could not even begin to understand.

Fukuda was better than a hospital, anyway.

"That looks like it hurts." Said Fukuda as he ran his hand over Shigeko's leg. The girl nodded and buried her face in her mother's arm.

"The water was too hot." Said Mob simply. What else could she say? It hurt a lot and she couldn't remember what happened after she stepped in to the tub? That once dad heard about this he would be so mad at her for losing control? That she felt awful because Sho had gotten hurt? That she had ruined the good bathroom and now her mom would be mad at her for that and dad would be mad at her for losing control?

Maybe they would send her away.

Where had that thought come from?

"Well luckily for you, little lady, this is going to be a quick fix." Said Fukuda. A scald. A bad one. The cuts and scrapes had been easy. She just had a lot of them, that was all, and so did her brother. Apparently a bathroom had exploded…and she had been responsible for that. Her. A six year old girl.

"It hurts…" said Mob. She could feel her hair starting to float. Mom stopped breathing for a moment and Mob kept her powers quiet. It was easier, now, because she had done all of that. She was tired, too, very tired…and it wasn't even that late…

"Fix it! Fix it!" said Sho as he shook Fukuda back and forth. Big sis needed him!

"Sho!" said Masami

"It's alright, he's just worried about his big sister." Said Fukuda before he got to work. He was tired, they had so many cuts…but he had to do this. This was…this was bad. He didn't fault Shigeko one bit for what had happened. She had an accident with her powers, that was all, and it was to be expected from someone as young as her. She was more powerful than most adults and she was only six years old. He read the same reports Suzuki got, he knew why Suzuki had taken in the girl, and he knew exactly why Suzuki should have been at his daughter's side.

Masami couldn't handle it.

She looked awful. She always taken such good care of herself, before, and he had never seen her like this. Bags under her eyes, hair greasy from not washing, and in her pajamas…pajamas that it looked like she had been wearing for some time. The house was a mess, too, which was odd. She was usually so good about picking up after the kids but there were toys and cereal pieces everywhere…and the faint stench of sour milk…oh. That would be the pile of half eaten bowls of cereal in the corner. There were chips everywhere, too, and what looked like the middle of a loaf of bread just sitting out on the rug…and that made no sense. Masami…she never would have let this happen.

What happened?

"Stay! Stay and play! And help mom, too, while you're at it!" said Sho after big sis was all healed up. He didn't want Fukuda to go, he never wanted Fukuda to go. He played with them and he talked to them and stuff. Mom wasn't even doing that anymore because she was sick.

"Masami?" asked Fukuda. She averted her eyes and tucked her leg in close under herself.

"It's nothing." Said Masami softly. She just wanted all of this to be over. She had messed up. She had dropped the ball and now her children had been hurt but she was fine. It was just a scratch. She wanted to be alone.

She was never alone.

"No it's not! Mom's been sick for days! Right?" asked Sho. Mob nodded.

"She's been stuck in bed since before dad left…and her leg has blood on it." Said Mob softly. She pulled up Mom's nightgown so that Fukuda could see the cut. Mom pulled it down really fast.

"It's really nothing." Said Masami

"Then let me fix it, Masami, please." Said Fukuda

"It's…I'm fine. I don't need help." Said Masami. She didn't want any help. She didn't want anyone. She just wanted to be left alone. This was her life. This was her house and these were her children and she Mrs. Suzuki.

"Masami, please, let me fix it. Let me help." Said Fukuda. Something was not right. A lot of things weren't right. His job was to help the Suzuki family and that was what he was going to do.

"Mom, please…you've been sick for so long." Said Mob. She put her hand over mom's. She had been so sick…and now she wasn't letting Fukuda help her…she didn't get it.

"Come on mom, let Fukuda help. It doesn't hurt or anything!" said Sho

"There's no helping this." said Masami softly. She felt a hand over her cut. A warmth started in her cut and spread through her entire body. She closed her eyes but she could still see the slight, green, glow of Fukuda's powers.

"See mom! Fukuda can fix anything!" said Sho. Masami didn't say anything, she just smoothed down his hair. A futile gesture as, even as filthy as it felt, it still defied gravity.

"I can't fix anything…but I can try. If you'll let me." Said Fukuda. He didn't know what had gone wrong, here, and he knew that he was probably overstepping but…but he couldn't just leave this be. He had been leaving things be with this family for years…ever since Suzuki first had him patch his son up. He knew that bad things happened to people who defied the boss. He knew that, for all of his talk of a better world, Suzuki didn't much care who he hurt or how…and he knew that he couldn't be selfish. Something had gone wrong and it needed fixing…so why not…try…at least? For the sake of the children, if anything.

"I don't know." Said Masami pulling away from him. She had a house to take care of. She had to have the repairmen, no, the contractors come around tomorrow…and she had to clean up this mess…and get the kids cleaned up…she had so much to do.

And she was the one who had to do it whether she liked it or not.

Life was a series of compromises after all.


	15. Bonding and Braiding

Mob still wasn't so good at braiding hair.

But mom was showing her how! She was sitting on mom's bed with her and mom was showing her how to braid her hair and this was so good! This meant that mom was getting better! Fukuda really could heal anything. He had been by their house a lot since she accidentally broke the good bathroom. Mom said that it was fine and they'd get it fixed later. Mom also said that she was sorry.

Mob didn't know what there was to be sorry about. She was the one who broke the bathroom.

"Which color ribbons do you want?" asked Masami. She had sat like this with her mother, before, when she was Shigeko's age. The scene was the same, mother and daughter sitting together with a brush and a box of hair clips, ties, and ribbons. Shigeko loved having her hair brushed. Shigeko had such long, thick, hair. Not wavy like Masami's or gravity defying like Sho's, and Touichirou's too when he let it grow out.

She wasn't exactly like her father.

She needed to stop seeing Touichirou in her. She needed to see Shigeko for who she was. She wasn't even his biological child so, really, there was no resemblance. None. Not in appearance or attitude. Any of his mannerisms that she had picked up were purely the result of what little time she spent with him, that was all. She was her own person.

She was different from him.

And Masami needed to stop seeing Shigeko as Touichirou in feminine miniature. She may have shared some common traits with him but she was not…she was her own person. And she was wanted. She was an orphan that they had taken in and she was a part of their family. She was Suzuki Shigeko…and Masami loved her.

A pair of soft pink ribbons hovered out of the box and into Masami's hand.

"These ones match my dress." Said Mob. Mom was still in bed but she had put on clothes, which was good, and she made them waffles for breakfast. That meant that she was beating whatever kind of cold she had or whatever it was.

"They do, good eye Shigeko." Said Masami. There was a prickle, there, when she took the ribbons from Shigeko. A tickly, a prickly, sort of static electricity. Her powers. She had…she had used her powers and that was fine. They were a part of her. This was fine.

This was fine.

"Can I braid your hair next, mom?" asked Mob. Mom had such pretty hair. Her hair was lighter than Mob's, much lighter, and had waves in it. Sho's hair had spikes. Dad's hair was spikey like Sho's when it got long, mom had said, but Mob had never seen Dad with longer hair before. Sometimes she even forgot what dad's hair looked like now. What he looked like now. She wished that he would come home.

But she also didn't.

Because things were more fun when dad wasn't around. Fukuda was around more and he played with them and stuff. Mom even let them have extra electronics time, she was timing them again, and they all played Wii resort. It was fun even if mom didn't play for very long. Dad thought that games were a waste of time. He liked educational things. He said that she and Sho had to be the smartest kids ever if they were going to inherit the earth when they grew up and he died. Mob didn't much care about inhering the earth, she'd rather have been a magical girl than a princess, she just wanted dad to love her. He liked her and Sho best when they listened.

She wished dad could have been more like mom.

Or Fukuda. He was only supposed to come over when one of them was hurt. Dad had been very clear about that. Well mom was still kind of sick, she said that she was too tired to play with them for very long and she had laid down for a while, so it was ok that Fukuda was there. He had made them lunch, curry, and he had played with them in the yard, too. Not like how dad made her practice with her powers. He helped them climb on the monkey bars and played catch with them and played house with her. Sho even played for a little bit but he was the zookeeper not the baby. He had to be the baby because he was the littlest but Fukuda said that she had to be flexible sometimes.

That meant don't be bossy. Nobody likes a bossy person.

She hoped that Fukuda could be with them for a while. She also hoped that mom got better but not all the way. Better enough that she could get out of bed but not so much better that Fukuda had to go back to his own house. Well, he said that he lived in an apartment, which was smaller even than a regular house. He could have come to live with them in the castle. There was plenty of room.

Lots of room without dad around.

"You can try." Said Masami turning so her back was to her daughter. She could see Shigeko in the closet mirror. She really was so small. Fukuda said that she was as strong as an adult. That seemed like the sort of thing that Touichirou should have mentioned. Shigeko had lost control because she had too much power for someone her age. Masami…she scared herself. She had seen the adult power and not the little girl that was stuck with it.

She had gone to Sho, first.

Had she been more like her husband she could have appealed to biology. Of course she would have wanted to protect the child that shared her genes first. That was just good survival. That was also a cold, cruel, way to look at the world. They were more than their instincts. They were not cats and dogs, they were human beings and were capable of thinking beyond their immediate survival. She should have thought….she should have gone to Shigeko. Shigeko had been hurt and…and she had needed her mother.

Well her mother was right there, now, where she belonged.

"Why is your hair like this, mom?" asked Mob as she dragged her Sailor Moon brush through her mom's hair. The brush didn't make it smoother like it did hers. The brush made mom's hair stick up and out like a poodles.

"Because you're brushing it while it's dry. It's ok, I don't mind." Said Masami. If anything this would give her an excuse to take a bath later. She needed one. She had been wallowing too much lately. So what if it felt like the walls were closing in on her and she had given her entire life away to a man who was incapable of love. Of showing love. He loved her in his own way. She just wished that he could love her in the way that husbands were supposed to love their wives. She had agreed to this union, this marriage, this promise of forever with the idea in mind that it would be a true union. Not him jetting off all over the world and leaving her alone in this…this dollhouse. That was what it felt like. A dollhouse that he could come over and play with whenever he wanted. Mother, daughter, and son. A complete set if not for the chronic lack of father. Not that Masami even knew why she wanted her husband to come back. He had been so cruel, before, and he hadn't even realized it. It would have been better if he had set out to be cruel, then she would have had reason to feel like…like she wanted out.

A tug at her hair.

There was no out. Not while they had these children together. There was no way that he would let them go…or at least Shigeko. She wondered if he even knew he had a son. Shigeko was his pride and joy and he would never, ever, let her go. Sho was his son and he might have ignored and neglected him but…but Touichirou still would not have let his children go.

And she could not leave them alone with him.

"Sorry mom." Said Mob. She hadn't meant to hurt her mom but she had. That was all she could do, wasn't it? Hurt people.

"It's ok…you didn't mean it." Said Masami softly. Shigeko was just a child. She needed to remember that Shigeko was just a child. She hadn't meant to pull her hair and she hadn't meant to do what she had done the other night, too. She was only six years old.

"I didn't. It was an accident." said Mob. Dad said that was no excuse, that something was an accident, because she was supposed to be better than that. She didn't know why she was supposed to be better than that, just that dad said that she was supposed to be better than that.

"So then it's ok. You…you don't need to feel bad about things that are accidents. Sometimes things happen that are out of our control and that's ok. There's nothing that we can do about them." Said Masami

"I should be more careful. If I'm more careful then I won't do things that hurt people." Said Mob

"…we all make mistakes." Said Masami

"Yes, but my mistakes hurt people." Said Mob

"We can all make the sorts of mistakes that hurt people, Shigeko, but the important thing is that we learn from and fix our mistakes." Said Masami. She took the brush from her daughter's hand and showed her the right way to do it. In small sections, not just tearing the brush right through. Not that Masami's hair liked to be brushed when it was dry. That didn't matter, this made Shigeko happy.

"Even if we keep making them?" asked Mob

"Well…sometimes things are beyond our control….and sometimes they're not. If something is within your control then you can try and stop it from happening but sometimes things just…happen." Said Masami. Touichirou couldn't help being the way that he was. Maybe it was better, not worse, that he hadn't intentionally been cruel to her. There was something different about him, and not just his powers, something in the way that his mind worked was different than hers and most other people's minds as well. He was just…that was something out of his control…and he was trying. He must have been trying. He must have been trying because, otherwise, why would be burden himself with a family. Yes, he wasn't selfish at all but…but just someone who was very different and was just trying his best. Hell, if Shigeko was anything to go off of then it was something that had to do with having psychic powers. She and Touichirou were just two of a kind in a lot of ways.

But not Sho.

Sho was normal. He smiled and cried and made eye contact when he was a baby and hit all of his milestones and could play with the other children, to a degree, and knew how to be selfless. He…he was more like her. Whatever was wrong with Touichirou had not been passed down to Sho. He was…he was normal.

She loved both of the children.

"Control…" said Mob. Dad was always saying about how she needed to have better control. Dad said that raw power was absolutely nothing without control. Mom wanted her to have control too. She hadn't had control back when she made the bathroom explode. The water had just been so hot…and it hurt so much…but she needed to get better at her control. She needed to get better at ignoring when she was hurt. She needed to be more like Sho. He never cried, well almost never cried, when he got hurt. He'd been hurt more times than she had, too. He was always either getting punished or getting hurt. He knew that he would get hurt but he just kept on doing the stuff he did.

Boys were weird.

And Sho was a boy so he was weird. Maybe that was why they were so different. He was a boy and she was a girl. Boys and girls were totally different. That was just how it went. They had some stuff in common but they were still so different. They even looked totally different. His hair was red and hers was black. His eyes were blue and hers were brown. His hair was spiky and hers was straight. He burned in the sun and she just got darker. They both had pale skin but he had so many freckles that they could play connect the dots with them.

Sho looked a lot like dad…and also mom.

Mob didn't look like either of her parents. Her parents didn't look like most people, though. They had light hair and blue eyes and stuff. Their hair was different, too, it stood up and stuff. Mob looked like everyone else. She had pale skin and brown eyes and black hair. Her eyes were different too. Mom and dad's eyes were weird, too, and so were Sho's. They had different eyelids than she did…than most everyone did. Sometimes people asked her where her family was from and when she said Japan, because this was Japan that they were living in, they asked where they were really from.

That was if people believed that mom was her mom and Sho was her little brother.

She wondered how it all got figured out, how people looked. This was why she was Mob, she looked like everyone else, while the rest of her family looked different from everyone else. She was just like everyone else…except for her powers. But that could not be seen. She wondered when her hair would turn red. If Sho was going to get powers like her than it would only be even if her hair turned red like Sho's.

"Mom? When is my hair going to change colors?" asked Mob as she brushed mom's hair the way she had shown her.

"Why? Did you find a grey hair?" asked Masami. Not even forty yet and already going grey. Well being married to Suzuki Touichirou would age anyone.

"No, all of your hair is brown. I was just wondering when my hair would change." Said Mob

"Oh, well in about…forty years, I guess. Give or take." Said Masami

"My hair is going to turn red in forty years?" asked Mob

"Red? No, Shigeko, grey. Grey or white." Said Mom

"But when will it turn red?" asked Mob

"Shigeko…unless you color it when you get older then it's going to stay black." Said Masami. She wondered where this had come from. She should have been happy to have had black hair. Masami would have traded everything that she owned, back when she was a kid, for black hair just like everyone else. Had things really changed so much since she had been a child?

"But I want to look like you and dad and Sho. I don't look like anyone in my whole family…" said Mob. Now she was done brushing. She was too sad to brush. The brush didn't agree, it tried to float out of her hand, but she clutched it tight. The bed shifted and she found herself being hugged by mom.

"Shigeko….you're fine just the way you are." Said Masami. She had known that this day had been coming, Shigeko was starting to ask the uncomfortable questions. Of course she could never be told that she was adopted. It would just cause her distress. Besides, it didn't matter. She was Suzuki Shigeko, not whatever her old family name had been Shigeko, and she had a family who loved her. Her real, no, biological family, had given her up because of her powers and Touichirou had…had taken her in.

Because of her powers.

Or because, maybe, he saw himself in her. They did have some very similar mannerisms even if she didn't look a thing like him. Shigeko was their daughter, her daughter, and that was that. Masami….how could she have been so cold to her own child…cold enough that her child was asking these sorts of questions. She hadn't been herself, at least she told herself that she hadn't been herself, because she could never have behaved that way towards one of her children.

And Shigeko was her child.

"But why am I the way I am?" asked Mob. She was so different and she had no idea why. Why couldn't she be more like the rest of her family? The only person she was like was dad, because they both had powers, or maybe mom too because they both were girls. She wished that she could have swapped places with Sho, then he could have had her powers and she could have at least looked more like the rest of her family.

"Because….because that's just the way it all worked out." Said Masami. What else could she say? She could not ever tell Shigeko that she was adopted and as for why she had powers…that was a complete and utter mystery. She figured it was something in environment or genes or something. She didn't know, she was not a scientist or anything like that. All she knew was that her daughter was starting to ask some really big questions that Masami was not even close to being ready to answer.

"But why did it work out like this? Why do I look so different? And why do only I have powers? Why do some people have powers and some people don't? Why doesn't Sho have powers even though he's my brother? Why does he have red hair like dad but I don't have brown hair like you? Why do I-" said Mob

"Shigeko, stop. You are the way you because….because that's just how it worked out. Ok? There is no rhyme or reason to it. Some people have powers, some people don't. That's how it works." Said Masami with a sigh. She was so tired. Dealing with Shigeko could be so draining…dealing with both of them could be so draining.

"Ok….but people are supposed to look like their parents too, right?" asked Mob

"Shigeko-" said Masami

"I have black hair and nobody else does and-" said Mob

"My mother had black hair, so did your father's father. Your father and I are half Japanese and you…you just came out looking totally Japanese. That's all." Said Masami pulling lies out of the air. She regretted it almost as soon as she said it. She had never mentioned the children's grandparents before and for good reason. There was no way to explain to them why they had never….well her parents had seen Sho as a baby…but they didn't even know about Shigeko….and Touichirou's parents…she didn't even know if they were still living. They hadn't even come to the wedding.

She didn't blame them.

Touichirou…he could be a pod person a lot of the time. She was curious about where he came from, what his parents were like, all of it but it never came up. Not really. He never wanted to talk about them and he had nothing good to say about his childhood. They couldn't have been very good parents, anyway, if they never saw that something was amiss with their son…

Pot, kettle.

"Oh. So I look like grandma and grandpa?" asked Mob. She had never met her grandparents…or known that she had grandparents. That made sense…right? Her parents must have come from their parents and their parents also had parents and…and was it just a never ending chain of parents? Was it parents all the way down until…what? Where did people come from? Why did they have kids? Why was she there? Why was anyone there? Who made people? Where did dead people go after she exorcised them? What would happen to her after she died? Would she have kids, too? Didn't everybody? Wait, no, Fukuda didn't have any kids. How did people decide who had kids and who didn't? And how many kids? And-

"Am I going to have to braid my own hair?" asked Masami. Shigeko had gone very quiet. Too quiet. She might have been thinking about…about things that Masami was not ready to talk about. There was no nice way to tell someone that their father was so disliked by their grandparents that they didn't even know that you existed.

At this point telling her parents that she had a six year old daughter would have just been…odd. Too much. Too many questions asked. Too many hurt feelings. Too many people saying 'I told you so' once the initial anger passed. Her parents had never liked Touichirou…and maybe they had been right about him…but that was neither here nor there. This was her life, now, and she had might as well make of it what she could.

"No, mom, I'll do it. I was just thinking-" said Mob

"Remember how I showed you, Shigeko, two equal parts." Said Masami tuning around and shaking her hair out. She felt her daughter's hands in her hair. She was still so quiet…but she was always quiet…but like her father there were different kinds of quiet to her.

"Mom? How come grandma and grandpa never come to visit?" asked Mob

"Because we live very far away and my parents are too old to travel." Said Masami quickly.

"Oh…ok….but then how come we never go and visit them then?" asked Mob

"Because…because we have to be here when daddy comes back from his trips. You know how he likes us to be at home when he comes back." Said Masami. She wondered if her nose was growing from all of these lies. It was surprisingly easy to lie to her daughter. Too easy.

But she couldn't tell the truth.

"Ok…I guess…but then why don't we all go and visit? I mean when dad comes back from his trips." Said Mob

"Because he's tired from travelling, Shigeko, and the last thing your father wants to do when he comes back from travelling abroad is to travel again. Alright? And be careful not to make knots in my hair." Said Masami. She didn't want to get into this now or at any time. This was…there was no way to have this conversation. She wished that Shigeko could just get a clue already…but of course she couldn't. She was only six years old and Touichirou's daughter, too.

"Ok….I get it." Said Mob. Sometimes it felt like there were more things that she couldn't do than she could. Dad had a lot of rules, well not rules like how mom had rules but rules just the same. Mom had rules that she said were rules, like how they weren't supposed to wear shoes in the house or watch TV after bed time or play on their tablets and stuff outside of screen time. She and Sho had to have time outs and got stuff taken away when they broke those rules. Dad had a lot of rules but he didn't come out and say that they were rules.

Until he got mad that they had done something that he hadn't wanted.

Like how dad hated it when they cried. Or when they played with other kids. Or when they talked about school and stuff like that. Dad hated it when they were weak and did weak things and also when they talked to the other kids and stuff. He said that there was no point in them being friends with normal people because they were going to inherit the world and stuff. He got mad, mostly at Sho, when they broke one of his unsaid rules. She wished that dad could have gotten mad at her instead but that wasn't what dad was like.

He liked her, not Sho, sometimes.

But he loved them both. He was their dad and dads had to love their kids. He just had a lot of rules and could be really grumpy sometimes. That was it. Dad still loved them. Dad had always loved them.

"Good, now get the green ribbons and show me how well you can tie a bow." Said Masami. Well that had been short. Good. She would tell Shigeko, tell both of her children, the truth. One day, just not now. She knew that she could not say anything to tarnish their father in their eyes. They were just children, they had their whole life to shatter their image of him.

And she would not, could not, be the one to shatter it.


	16. An Unexpected Guest

Masami was making an effort.

She was out of bed, that was what mattered, and she was spending time with her children. Both of her children. Sho and Shigeko. They were playing videogames, she knew that they had been playing too many videogames but it kept them quiet, and she was watching them. They were so happy, well they looked so happy, anyway.

"Mom, do you want to play? You can be on my team." Said Sho as he glanced backwards at his mom. She was still in her pajamas even though it was after lunch time and she hadn't done anything all day but sit on the couch and watch them play. He knew that girls liked boring things but that was the most boring thing that he could think of. Even more boring than playing Wii ping pong for what must have been hours and hours.

Girls were so weird.

Mom should have been the one playing with big sis. They were both girls, moms must have still counted as girls, and they could have had a lot of fun together. Not that Sho didn't like playing with big sis, she was his big sis and they had to be friends, he was just getting tired of playing what she wanted to play. He didn't' dare try and make her play something that he wanted to play, no, because then they might get into a disagreement, which was like a fight but not a fight, and then mom might have gone back to her room.

And then they'd be all alone again.

"No, I'm alright. You two play. Keep it an even number." Said Masami

"Three is an even number." Said Sho

"No it's not. It's an odd number because two is an even number. Mom said so, before." Said Mob. She wished that mom would play with them but she was still sick. Fukuda said there were things in this world that even he could not fix. That made no sense. He was Fukuda, if he could fix the big white thing that had been on her leg then he could fix anything. He had called it a scald. Mob just called it painful, the most painful thing that she had ever felt.

But she, at least, was better now.

So was Sho, too. He hadn't been that hurt but he had still needed to be seen to. That was the worst, knowing that she had hurt Sho. Mom too. She loved her family so much…and she had almost hurt them. She had hurt them just because she had not been able to control her powers. Dad was right. Power was nothing without control. She should have practiced more, been better, that way she would not have lost control no matter how much pain she had been in.

She wasn't a little kid anymore.

"Mom, is three really not an even number?" asked Sho

"Well…let's see….half of three is one and a half so unless we're cutting people in half then I'd have to say 'no'." said Masami with a smile that she knew did not quite reach her eyes. She just…she couldn't. She could and she couldn't. This whole thing just felt so…pointless. Pointless and…and trapping. This house trapped her. These children trapped her. She had trapped herself. She couldn't…not that she wanted to leave. Was it right for her to even think that?

She knew what she was getting into.

He hadn't set out to be cruel. He never set out to be cruel. He just did not understand…anything. He understood books, learning, things like that. He understood love as a…as a chemical process. As something that happened in people's minds so that they could reproduce. That was what he saw marriage as. Their marriage. She saw their marriage as…it was about love. Love was…love was something in and of its self. Everything else, the marriage and the family, were a byproduct of love for her.

She had known what he was when she married him.

So she had no reason to feel the way she felt.

"You always take her side." Said Sho. Masami shook her head. She never took any sides when it came to…to them. She…she loved them both equally. They were both her children.

"No she isn't. Math doesn't have sides, it just has numbers." Said Mob simply. Sho just didn't get it because he was a whole class behind her…not that she was that great at math either to be honest. Mom said that she was getting better, though, so that was good even though it seemed like she liked Sho better sometimes.

"Well she does always take your side." Said Sho. Mom was always taking Shigeko's side. She was always making Sho play games that big sis liked to play and told him not to run and climb and jump and stuff but if big sis had done that stuff then she wouldn't have gotten punished. Sometimes it felt like both of his parents liked her better. It made sense for dad to like her better, they both had powers, but mom….that didn't make as much sense.

"No, she takes your side all the time and dad takes mines. We each get one of our parents." Said Mob

"Shigeko-" said Masami

"I guess that makes sense." Said Sho. Mom was his and dad was Shigeko's. That made perfect sense. It even made him feel a little bit better. At least he got one of his parents.

"It does. That's the way I see it, anyway. You get one and I get one and that's how we share. Like how you have a tablet and I have a tablet or like how you get a bed and I get a bed. Things like that." Said Mob

"….that's how you see it?" asked Masami. That was…that was dangerously close to something that she would have expected to come out of Touichirou's mouth. That made sense….she was his daughter too after all. That didn't mean anything though and she had no reason to feel this way. She could feel it coming back, the feeling she'd had that night…the one that made her run to her son and ignore her daughter. That was not the feeling to have. It was…it led her to do the worst sorts of things. Shigeko was her daughter. She was…she was also her father's daughter.

She was also a six year old girl in pigtails.

She was not capable of the cruelty her father was. Her father was not even a cruel man. He had not chosen to be the way he was just as Shigeko had not chosen to be the way that she was. She had not chosen to see her parents as just…people. There had been no love in the way she just parceled up her family like that. A parent for each child. That was how Shigeko saw her family. Her mother and father. No warmth, no love, nothing.

Just that same flat affect.

The flat fact of the situation as she saw it. Cruel in it's callousness but not cruel in it's intent. The words of a child who did not yet know the power of her words. Not the words of a man who was more than old enough to know what his words could mean. But he couldn't know just as Shigeko couldn't know because…because neither her husband nor her daughter could control the way that their minds were inherently wired. She knew what she had been getting into when she married Touichirou, when they had Sho, and she had known something was not right with Shigeko from almost the very beginning. She'd made her own bed and now she had to lay in it.

So she went back to bed.

Just to have a lie down. Not to lock herself away again and leave her children to their own devices for days and days as she had before. Not to let them live in filthy clothes surrounded by snacks and cereal, the only foods that they could eat. She was planning on getting out of bed at some point, she had dinner to make after all, and she was not letting the children live on cereal again.

She was just resting.

"I think mom's sick again…" said Sho as he sat on the couch where had just been sitting. It was still warm, even. He laid down. Big sis sat next to him. He made sure to lay out so that he was the only one who was where mom had been sitting. She was his mom after all. He got mom and she had dad and now they were even.

"She said that she was just resting." Said Mob as she tried to get some couch too. She wanted to sit where mom had been sitting. That was almost as good as sitting with mom. Mom loved her and she loved mom but Sho needed someone to love him, too, so she would gladly have given him mom if he got love that way. Dad loved her the most anyway, because they were so alike, so it made sense then that Sho got mom. He looked more like dad but he acted more like mom.

"Resting is just something that she says when she's sick. She's going to be sick and be in her room for days and days and days again. I can feel it." Said Sho. He reached for the remote control but it was too far away. Big sis picked it up with her powers and handed it to him.

"She promised me that she wasn't going to do that ever again." said Mob. She let Sho pick the show or whatever, she was bored of videogames anyway and she didn't want to fight with Sho about what he wanted to put on. Mom hated it when she and Sho didn't get along. It was better for everyone if they got along. That way the family ran smoother.

"Did she say that she promised?" asked Sho

"Yes. She said that she promised that she would never let anything like that happen to us again." said Mob. Mom couldn't control when she got sick…but she could be sick out in the living room with them and that was better than how she had been sick before. They needed at least a mom. Dad was still far away….so they at least needed a mom around.

"She just said that, then, because you made the bathroom explode." Said Sho

"No. She meant it." Said Mob. She pulled her braids down because they were trying to float away. Mom had meant what she said and she had said what she meant. Mom was not a liar. Moms did not tell lies. They couldn't. That wasn't how they worked.

"No, she just said that because you made the bathroom explode and she got scared." Said Sho. Mom had been really scared that night. He saw it. That was why mom went to see if he was ok when he so obviously was. She had been afraid of big sis…which made zero sense. She was a girl and girls were not scary. They never hit you. Big sisters never hit you and moms never hit you. Not like dads. Dads hit you a lot.

"….do you really think so?" asked Mob. She wanted to yell at Sho and tell him that mom was not afraid of her…but that made sense. That mom would be afraid. Mom didn't have any powers. Dad said that normal people didn't trust what they could not explain and that her powers would make people scared or mad…he said that even other espers would be scared of her powers…and that was why she had to have perfect control at all times like he did. Mom was a normal person…

Her mom was afraid of her.

"Yeah, it makes sense. That's why she's being sick in her room instead of out here with us. Maybe she's just…scared of powers or something. Maybe that's why she won't let Fukuda fix her even though she's sick. Maybe she's just going to get sicker and sicker and sicker until she has to go to the hospital." Said Sho

"….but dad said that none of us are ever supposed to go to the hospital." Said Mob

"He did but that's where sick people go, to the hospital." Said Sho

"They do." Said Mob. She was quiet, then, and Sho was quiet. The TV wasn't quiet but she wasn't watching it. Mom was sick and she was scared and now she was just going to let herself get sicker and sicker…Fukuda had said that there were some things that even he couldn't fix…but maybe mom just wasn't letting him fix her…

"Hey Sho?" asked Mob

"What?" asked Sho. He hadn't been watching TV, not really, but he didn't want to talk about mom anymore. If she was gone back to her room then there was nothing that they could do…unless there was and he just hadn't thought of it. But thinking about it was making him sad. He didn't want to be sad. He wanted mom back. Mom was his parent after all. Big sis had dad and he needed someone too or he'd be all alone.

"I'm worried about mom." Said Mob

"And you think that I'm not!?" asked Sho

"No, I never said that. We can both be worried about her the same…ok? We're both worried about…I'm worried that she's going to just get sicker and sicker and sicker because she won't let Fukuda fix whatever it is that's making her sick. I'm worried that she's going to be so sick that she's going to be in the hospital…or worse." said Mob

"But if she goes to the hospital then dad'll be mad at her…" said Sho. if dad got mad at mom…Sho had no way of protecting her from dad. Mom was a girl and she'd get really hurt and sad because that was how girls got when they got hit. He never wanted mom to end up going through that. Ever.

"That would be bad…" said Mob. Dad had never been mad enough at anyone but Sho to punish them…but she didn't want him to start now.

"Ok. I'm calling Fukuda." Said Sho

"How? Mom has her phone in her room." Said Mob

"From my tablet, duh." Said Sho getting off the couch. Big sis followed him even though he didn't need to be followed. The house wasn't scary until the sin went down.

"You have his phone number?" asked Mob. She hadn't ever called anyone from her tablet before but she'd never had anyone to call. School friends were for being at school with. The same went for park friends and library friends. She had never called Dad, either, because mom said that they weren't supposed to bother him while he was working.

"I have skype and it has every phone number that mom knows." Said Sho. Big sis was still following him. Maybe she still got scared when they were separated. He was a big kid now, he was only afraid of the castle when it was nighttime and it wasn't nighttime yet so he was not at all afraid. Not of the hallway, not of his room, and not of how mad mom would be if she knew that he was using his tablet without asking. They had rules about screens and stuff, rules that he did not understand, but he wasn't afraid of mom. She never punished him for real. Not like how dad punished him.

"Mom might be mad…" said Mob

"Who would you rather be mad? Mom for me calling Fukuda or dad for mom letting herself get super sick?" asked Sho

"Mom." Said Mob quickly. There was nothing to think about. Mom getting mad was not nearly as bad as dad getting mad. Mom never hurt Sho when she was mad but dad did. Sho was her little brother, of course she would do anything for him, even endure the world's longest time outs and getting her tablet and videogames taken away for the rest of her life.

"See? I knew you'd come around…now help me read." Said Sho. He could read. At school they said that he read just fine for a five year old. He just needed someone who read just fine for a six year old. Kanji was impossible, hiranga was hard, and English was a whole other thing entirely….and big sis was a better reader than he was because she was so much older than him. That was fine. He was braver than she was, anyway.

Brave enough to risk mom punishing him, anyway, which was no risk at all.

She might not even punish him, no, not when Fukuda came over to make her all better. He did not and could not begin to understand her. Girls were a mystery. That was just how the world worked. It was fine, though, because he didn't need to understand anything right then and there besides the fact that his mom was sick and she needed help and he was going to, he had to, be the one who got her help. He wasn't afraid of being punished like big sis was. That was because she was a girl and didn't know the meaning of the word 'punishment'….and he did and he knew that if mom ended up in the hospital then dad might be mad enough at her to punish her…

And that would have been bad.

So he didn't let that happen. They called Fukuda. He picked up after the first ring, which was very good, and then he asked them a bunch of questions. He asked them how long mom had been in her room for, if they'd had food that day, if dad was home early. Stuff like that. Too many questions, in Sho's opinion, and he made sure that Fukuda was well aware of his opinions.

Big sis was a better questions answerer than him.

And, eventually, Fukuda showed up at their house like Sho had told him to. He didn't come very fast, in Sho's opinion, because two episodes of his show had gone by. With commercials that was one hour. Mom could have died in that hour! Sho had no idea where he lived but he knew that adults could get around very fast. Not only could they drive but they had very long legs and big feet as well. Also Fukuda had showed up with shopping bags! His mother could have been laying thee dying and Fukuda had time to go to the store!?

"Well since it's around dinner time I thought that you kids would be getting hungry." Said Fukuda after Suzuki's son finished giving him the third degree. Yup, that was the President's offspring. Shigeko may have looked the part, that same weird non expression that the boss seemed to wear no matter what the circumstances were, but Sho was certainly just as demanding as his father.

"The sun's still up. We don't have dinner until after the sun goes down." Said Mob. She used her powers to open the curtains so that Fukuda could see.

"And we have food in the house! We have two different kinds of cereal!" said Sho. He grabbed Fukuda's hand and tried to drag him down to mom's room. She needed help right now! Right this minute!

"Sho, that's not polite. You have to ask people to follow you, not drag them around." Said Mob. She reached over and tried to pull Sho's hand off of Fukuda's. Sho wasn't as strong as she was. She could have dragged Fukuda around with her powers if she wanted to…but that would not have been very nice at all.

"Nah, it's ok Little Lady. You're both just worried about your mom, I get it." Said Fukuda. The house looked a lot better, the kids looked more well cared for than they had before, and nobody was bleeding. This was a good, good, good sign. Masami hadn't…she hadn't backslid. She needed help, though, a lot of it. She…he understood her. How trapped she must have felt. Fukuda did not care for the president as a person. He was a combination of bizarre and terrifying…and he could only imagine what it must have been like to be married to a man like him.

A man who would be so cruel as to tell his wife that the act of making love was pointless.

Fukuda would have never said those words to Masami…to anyone! That was beyond the pale. No wonder Masami had gone spiraling so terribly. This being the last straw and all of that. He got it and he…his job was to help the Suzuki family. So that was what he was doing. Easing her burden. Not that these two could ever be a burden. He didn't understand what the President was always griping about. These were great kids and any man would have been happy to have them. Even Sho, the little firecracker that he was.

"Are you worried about our mom, too?" asked Mob. Fukuda could heal people so if he was worried then it must have been really bad, whatever it was that was wrong with mom. Whatever it was that had her in bed almost all the time.

"I'm…concerned for her. Your mom is going through a tough time right now, ok? And I need you two to remember that none of this is your fault." Said Fukuda

"We're not the ones who made mom sick. We hardly ever get sick." Said Sho crossing his arms. Mob nodded.

"We're fine, the one that you should be worried about is mom." Said Mob

"So go on! Do the thing you do and make her feel better already!" said Sho

"I will, I will…but you two know what?" asked Fukuda

"What?" they both asked at once

"I accidentally picked up some extra food at the store and then I got to thinking….I shouldn't let all of this go to waste so how about I have dinner with my favorite family." Said Fukuda

"How do you know if it's extra yet?" asked Mob

"I just do." Said Fukuda

"Well you can go have dinner with them later, right now mom needs you." Said Sho. So Fukuda had another family he was friends with, huh? Well then that was fine. Who needed him?! Well, them, obviously….but if he couldn't stay and play then…then that was fine, too. Sho was a big kid now and he wasn't going to cry or yell or anything.

"We won't keep you very long at all." Said Mob. She wanted Fukuda to stay and play but if he had another family then…then that was fine. There were a lot of people in the world and obviously Fukuda knew others besides her and Sho and mom and dad….

"You two…." Said Fukuda. He tussled their hair as he made his way to their kitchen. These kids…these adorable, perfect kids. He knew for a fact that he must have been overstepping…but he was the only healer in all of Claw. Suzuki could be a right bastard to his subordinates but he would never seriously harm someone he needed. The man was not invincible. He took his hits, too, in those fights he was always getting into. He never lost those fights, of course, but occasionally a phone call would come in at some odd hour of the day or night telling Fukuda that a plane was waiting to take him to God only knew what corner of the world because the boss had gotten a cut or a bruise and could not be seen like that.

Nobody could know that the great Suzuki Touichirou was just as mortal as everyone else.

It would lose him followers. Cultists and Claw members alike and that could not be allowed to happen. Fukuda wondered what it would be like when the kids got older. When they didn't need him there all the time to sort out their childhood accidents. What it would be like then, when he had to be chained to the boss' side twenty four seven…well maybe not. He had said, before, that Claw was no place for Masami. That she needed to stay at home. That her place was at home with their children. That she was happy at home. Fukuda wondered, sometimes, if Suzuki even knew the meaning of the word. Happiness. Happy. Suzuki was not a happy man. How could he have been when he had left all of this behind?

This family.

These were great kids. Fukuda…he had always wanted kids but it had never happened. He was not going to bring a family into the kind of life he led. He'd known Suzuki for years, decades even, and he knew that Suzuki would never let him get away. He was too valuable to lose. Back in the day his grand dreams had just sounded like, well, dreams. The kind of thing that someone thinks about when they're out there wishing for something different than their ordinary lives. That was then and this…this was now. Now he had people calling him President. Now he had people worshipping him like a God. Now he was out there full of ambition, trying to get everything that he had ever wanted.

No matter who it hurt.

The whole thing would crash and burn eventually. It had to. No one man could rule the world. For as long as they had known each other Suzuki had been planning on ruling the world. Like a ten year old who never grew up. Now he had children of his own and a wife and he was leaving them all alone to live the kind of life he had always wanted to…

And leaving his family behind.

Why would anyone want the world when they could have had this? Two little people in the kitchen with them, helping them cook, telling them their little stories about their lives. Things that may or may not have happened. Things that they cared about. Their world was so small. This house. Father, mother, brother, sister. Why would you want the whole world when you could have their world? Why would you want anything more than this?

It just didn't get any better than this.


	17. Lines

They were so very cute.

Shigeko and Sho had, at some point that night, passed out. They were propped up against each other as they sat, curled up, and the end of the couch. Sho's head rested on her shoulder, her head rested on top of his, and they were both dead asleep. It made sense, it had gotten very late. Fukuda had made them dinner again, well the children had helped, and then they had begged him to stay. They had literally gotten down on their hands and knees and begged him to play with them. Playing turned into TV time, bath time, and more TV time. It would have turned into bedtime, it should have turned into bedtime, but Masami was loathe to pop the bubble that they existed in.

It was so nice.

"You don't have to keep doing this." said Masami as the muted TV played some commercial in the background. The room was flushed out in white and blue. It cast dancing shadows around the room despite the fact that the occupants of the room were still.

"I want to." Said Fukuda as he watched the kids sleep. They were so precious. Shigeko's sleeping face was the same as her awake face just with closed eyes. Same impassive look. Sho, on the other hand, slept like a dog. All scrunched up expressions and little kicks every now and again. Fukuda wondered what it was that he was dreaming out. That they were both dreaming about. Shigeko's aura moved even though she herself was still. Rotating. Pink and blue in equal measures. Sho still had no aura to speak of.

"I…I want you to…too…but you can't keep doing this." said Masami

"If you want me to go then I'll go…but only if you want me to go." Said Fukuda

"You know I don't want that." Said Masami

"Then I won't go." Said Fukuda

"It's not about what I want, though, now is it? It's never about what I want." Said Masami

"It is. This is about what you want. Masami…Masami this is about what you want." Said Fukuda

"No, it's not. It's always about what HE wants. Even this family…the kids…he wanted kids. I mean I wanted Sho and I love Shigeko but…I don't know. It's his world and we all just live in it I guess." Said Masami

"No. That's not true. He just…he wants it to be his world and he can't…he can't see anything beyond what he wants…and that's not fair to you, to any of you…and I'm sorry." Said Fukuda

"Why? You're not his keeper any more than I am. This is…this is the life I chose. With him. This is my life." Said Masami softly. She closed her eyes and leaned back. The couch wasn't that big. She ended up leaning into Fukuda. She could feel it, the energy that surrounded him, and it was…warm. Touichirou was like touching a balloon after dragging her feet across a wool carpet. Fukuda was like leaning back against a heater on a cold winter's day.

"You deserve better." Said Fukuda, his hand over hers. She had such soft hands. He had noticed, before, but he had never….the darkness was making him braver. The cover of the darkness and the fact that Suzuki was half a world away. Masami was…she deserved so much better than this. He had watched her grow dimmer and dimmer and dimmer as the years went by. It all came to a head recently and…and she did not deserve that. If he had been there for her…more so than he had been…he should have been there for her.

"Better than these two? What could be better?" Said Masami as she ran a hand through Shigeko's hair until she got to Sho's. They were so close…and so cute. Adorable. They loved each other so much. Even with Touichirou's influence they were so close and loving….even Shigeko. They were not the problem here. She should have been grateful for what she had, for them. So what if her husband was about as warm and loving as a snowman? She had these two wonderful children and they had her. She had always wanted children. She had always wanted to take care of something smaller than she was.

She had gotten what she wanted.

So why did it feel like this? Why did it hurt to look at them? They were her children…and she did not regret having them. She regretted….she didn't know if she regretted who she had them with. Touichirou hadn't meant to hurt her. There was something about him, something in the way his mind worked, and that was just how he was. He couldn't help it. He hadn't meant to be so very cruel…but that didn't mean that his words hadn't hurt her….

How much did intentions matter?

"Just….better. I don't know, maybe I'm just overstepping." Said Fukuda

"You are…and you know that I'm not the one who'll mind." Said Masami

"Let me deal with him." said Fukuda

"How could you possibly deal with him? You work for him." said Masami

"I just will, alright? He needs me. He doesn't like to acknowledge it but he needs me." Said Fukuda

"There's no one in this world that he couldn't replace." Said Masami bitterly. There was millions of women in this city, this country, and billions on this planet. If all he wanted was a baby factory then he could have taken his pick…and if he was so unhappy with the children, child, that they had made together then there was nothing stopping him from going back to the drawing board.

"There are people in this world that are irreplaceable." Said Fukuda. She was so…he had never seen her look so bitter before. He reached over and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. She leaned over into him. Her hand never left her children's hair.

"Not to my husband." Said Masami. She put emphasis on the word husband. That was…that was a gesture of intimacy. That was…it could be seen as platonic. It could have been seen as more than platonic. She didn't know what she wanted to see it as.

Touichirou had not done that before…on his own, anyway.

It was like sweet intoxication. How had she become so starved for affection…proper affection? How long had it been? Before, way before, back before even Sho had been born Touichirou had been affectionate…when she asked. She thought, back then, that it was cute. How she had to spell everything out for him. The way he always held her when she asked and caressed her when she asked and…and that had just been the way that things were between them. At some point she had stopped asking and he had stopped doing. Pair bonding. That was the point of it…and Touichirou couldn't see the point since they were already a pair. They had two children together, where could she possibly go?

"Even to him." said Fukuda. He didn't pretend to be Suzuki's closest confidant and best buddy for life or anything but he did, somewhat, understand the man. He spoke, occasionally, of Masami. He didn't wax poetic but there had been times, rare times, when they had come back to Japan together after what felt like eons on planes, trains, boats, and whatever other means of conveyance that they could find. Times when Suzuki would, out of blue, say something like 'I hope she's been well' or 'She's probably still awake' or something like that. Statements which sounded like idle chatter but really were amazing things because of the simple fact that it was a rare occasion when Suzuki Touichirou thought of someone other than himself.

He cared for Masami.

He cared for her in his own way. Not the way that mattered. Not the way that she deserved. She deserved so much better than what he could give. Nobody deserved to be treated the way that she had been treated. He would never have treated her like that. He would have done better by her. He would have made her happy. He would have-

He got off that train of thought.

"I could be anyone." Said Masami softly. She leaned back, into him, just for some more of the sweet intoxication that was human affection. Affection from another adult. From a man. From someone who was not her child. From someone who she did not have to explain human affection to.

"Don't." said Fukuda. He knew that he was getting close to a line, very close, and that if he were to get any closer then he ran the risk of stepping over it. If he stepped over it then…then all of this would just disappear. This was not his family, this was Suzuki's, he was just….just keeping it warm for him. That was all. Coming over, making dinner, and then playing pretend.

He could not cross that line.

"it's true. To him I could be literally any woman on the planet." Said Masami

"That's not…it's not true. The way he is…you're just about the only person in this world he gives a damn about. I've never heard him mention anyone else in the way that he mentions you." Said Fukuda mostly to keep himself from that line. This was not his wife, this was not his family. This was…this was Suzuki's family. Suzuki Masami, Suzuki Sho, and Suzuki Shigeko.

"Well who else would put up with this?" asked Masami with a laugh so bitter that it could have put a clove to shame. He hated it. That sound…and he never wanted to hear it from her again. His hand was over hers. His hand was….this could be platonic. She would read this as platonic. This was nothing more than purely platonic. This could never be anything more than purely platonic.

"Masami…" said Fukuda

"Who besides me would put up with…with him?" asked Masami. She knew that there was a line and she knew that she was crossing it. She felt drunk. She hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since that glass of champagne two New Year's Eves ago but she felt drunk. That was what this was, intoxication. Sweet intoxication. The sweetest intoxication that there ever was. Human touch. Human affection. The lot of it.

"You'd be amazed what people are willing to put up with…when it comes to him." said Fukuda. He would not tell her the lot of it, the whole of what it was that her husband did to people. There was nothing that either of them had to gain from him disseminating that information.

"I…I'm sorry. I hadn't…as difficult as it can be to be married to him I can't…I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to work for him….not that I even know what it is that you do." Said Masami. There she went, whining again. She had nothing to be upset about. She…she had a family and a nice home and Touichirou could be draining but…but at least she didn't work for him doing whatever it was that he did. She still had zero clue what he did even after all of these years.

"Fix him up. Fix you guys up. That's what I do, I fix things." Said Fukuda with a shrug. That was the simple way of saying it. His powers…the way his powers worked. He was a healer, a fixer, even though it felt like he was about to ruin everything….

"You can't fix everything." Said Masami softly. Her hand was over his. His hand was over hers and her hand was over his and it was…this was platonic. This could be nothing other than platonic.

"But I can try." Said Fukuda. The line was there….and he could not cross it. Even though she was there. Even though her hands were so…so soft. So wonderful. She really did have beautiful hands. Everything about her was just so, incredibly, beautiful.

She was close.

He was close.

It was dark.

It was silent.

Then it wasn't.

"Sho…stop kicking me…"

Masami broke away from Fukuda like he was on fire. Her children had…they had been right there. Her children had been right there and she had been about to…she didn't even know what. Maybe nothing. Maybe something. Maybe she was just being weird. Maybe she was just starved for adult affection. Maybe she was just terrible.

She didn't know.

But she did know that she had two children that needed to sleep in their own beds or they'd get up in the middle of the night, not be able to fall back asleep, and then be very cranky come the next morning. Therefore there was nothing else to do but pick Sho up, motion for Fukuda to pick Shigeko up, carry them to their beds, and tuck them in.

And then go to bed.


	18. Jumping on the Bed

Sho sometimes woke up in the middle of the night.

Sometimes he had to pee, sometimes he was thirsty, and sometimes there was no reason at all for it. This was not one of those no reason at all times, no, there was a very good reason that he had gotten up at…he checked the clock…eleven fifteen at night. Yes, there was a very good reason for him to be up at this crazy late time. Hey! It was almost tomorrow! He wondered what happened when the day changed. When the year changed there were fireworks, that had happened last New Year and the New Year before that, and he hoped that there would be fireworks again. Actually maybe there wouldn't be any fireworks at all. They would have woken him up, probably, if there were fireworks that went off every time one day turned into the next.

The sound of fireworks hadn't been what had woken him up.

Fireworks sounded like 'bang, bang, bang' this sounded like 'creak, creak, creak'. That was a whole different sound entirely. The creaking wasn't that loud, not loud enough to wake up big sis anyway, but Sho had heard it. He had good hearing, Fukuda said so, and that was why he wasn't supposed to pick his ear with his finger or he'd ruin it and go deaf. Fukuda had said so and he knew a lot of things about everything. He had come over tonight, again, to help them make dinner. Well to help mom. He and big sis just helped stir rice and make sure that nothing boiled over. They were still too little to help with real cooking, Fukuda had said, but he had picked them up so they could see what was going on.

Sho wished that he had been less careful.

Fukuda had picked him up so that he could see the miso soup cooking. Miso soup with pork because big sis liked pork. The cooking hadn't looked that cool, the fire had been much cooler, but Sho had still appreciated being picked up. It was nice. Dad never picked him up unless it was to throw him or to push him or something. Mom asked dad to pick him up, too, sometimes but he liked to pick up big sis better. He just plain liked big sis better….but that was ok because mom liked him. He got mom and big sis got dad. He didn't know which of them got Fukuda. He didn't even know if Fukuda was a person who they were expected to share. He mostly just came around them one of them was sick or hurt.

Sho wished that he hadn't been so careful when he held Sho up.

Because then if he fell into the soup and the fire, even if it would have hurt, then Fukuda would have had to stay and make him all better. Sho didn't think that he would have minded the pain, he was five now and was used to getting hurt, and it would have been worth it to get Fukuda to stay. It was harder and harder and harder to get Fukuda to stay these days. Just getting him to stay after the dinner dishes were cleaned up took hours and hours of wedeling. He always went home every single night, too, though Sho wasn't sure when. His bedtime was at eight thirty and he had a lot of trouble staying up past nine. Sometimes he and big sis even fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV and they woke up in their beds. Big sis said that she could tell by the energy around them that Fukuda had put them to bed.

Sho wished that Fukuda would just stay.

There was plenty of room in the castle. They had rooms that they weren't even using! He could have lived in the room full of chairs or the room full of dusty boxes or the room with the tree outside of it that made a scary shadow when the sun started to go down…or maybe not that room because that was a very evil room. He knew it to be true. Big sis said so, too, even though there weren't any evil spirits. Dad said that there were no evil rooms and if there had been something dangerous in the house he would have gotten rid of it before he and big sis were even born.

Maybe that was why dad was always away on his trips.

Sho didn't want dad to leave forever but…but things were a lot more fun when he was gone. Sho knew that it was his fault that he got punished. He didn't have any powers like big sis did. He wasn't good like big sis was. He was just…he was this collection of wrongness that was himself and that…he should have tried harder to make dad like him. When dad was home he had to try harder but when he was away it was a whole different story all together. When he was away then Sho could run and play and just be…happier. It was hard, sometimes, to be happy when dad was around. It was easier to be happy when mom and big sis and him were all alone in the castle…also when Fukuda was there, too.

It was easy to be happy when Fukuda was around.

So it would suck, then, when he had to leave.

Not that he didn't go home to his own home every night. He did but he was coming over almost every day. It was nice. He played with them and taught them things and never called them names or looked at them like they were gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe with all of the flavor gone already and also covered in germs. He made mom smile too, she smiled a lot when he was over, and Sho was torn. On the one hand he liked it when the people he loved were happy but on the other hand mom had been getting better, lately, and if she got all the way better then Fukuda would stop coming over…

And it sounded like she was all the way better.

But he needed a second opinion. He was five, so he was smart as five year old, but he needed a six year old's opinion. Sho was awesome, he knew that he was awesome, but he was only five. She had an extra year of being alive to her so she would know better than he did.

"Hey! Big sis! Wake up!" said Sho as he shook his sister awake. He knew that he wasn't supposed to wake her up, she didn't like it, but this was important! This was so important that there was no way that he could possibly wait until morning!

"No. I'm asleep." Said Mob as she pulled her blanket up over her head. Sho sometimes woke her up in the middle of the night for no reason. Last time it had been to ask her what would happen if they made a car small enough for a cat. Nothing, obviously, because cats didn't have thumbs so they couldn't drive. Also cats wouldn't want to drive because they could climb and stuff.

"No, you're awake. If you were asleep then you wouldn't be talking to me." Said Sho

"I'm talking in my sleep." Said Mob

"No, you're lying." Said Sho

"I am not. I'm half asleep." Said Mob

"There's no such thing." Said Sho

"Is too. Remember how mom keeps on saying that she's half asleep until she gets her coffee?" asked Mob. She hadn't been lying at all. She really was half asleep and she did not feel like being all the way awake at…wow, it was past eleven. That was pretty late. She wondered if anything cool would happen when the day changed. Probably not, if something cool happened then Fukuda would have told them about it already.

"That's mom and mom is a grown up. We have so much energy that we don't need stuff like that, Fukuda said so." Said Sho

"Ok, ok, ok, fine….but I am really sleepy. Why did you wake me up in the middle of the night? Is this about another weird dream you had? If it is can we please talk about it in the morning? After the sun comes up?" asked Mob

"The sun is up in…um….America." said Sho

"Yes, that's true, but this is Japan and in Japan it's night time and when it's night time that means that we have to sleep. Remember from the book? We have to greet the sun before his lovely daughter the moon?" asked Mob

"Yes, of course I do, I was there when mom read it to us." Said Sho

"Then you'll let me sleep?" asked Mob hopefully. She wondered if all little brothers were like this or if this was just a Sho thing. Her friends at school, the ones with little brothers and sisters, said that younger siblings were a pain. Sho wasn't a pain, not really, but sometimes he could be kind of annoying. Like now. He was still her best friend though. Nothing in the whole wide world could ever make them stop being friends with each other.

"In a minute." Said Sho as he climbed onto big sis' bed. Mob sat up and stared at him. What was so important that it couldn't wait until the daytime?

"Sho….please just tell me what it is. It's late and I want to go to sleep before the sun comes up." Said Mob

"Shush! Just listen!" said Sho. He put a finger to his lips for emphasis. Mob stopped talking and listened to…what was that? It sounded like someone was jumping on the bed. But that didn't make sense. She and Sho weren't allowed to jump on the bed…and they weren't even jumping. She looked around. There was energy in the house…not spirits, but they almost never came into the house…oh! She knew that energy! That was….that wasn't old energy, that was new. Happening right then at that moment.

"Well?" asked Sho

"Fukuda's still here." Said Mob simply. Well then that was actually something that had been worth waking her up over. That was good…though she would have liked to have been invited to the sleepover. She had never been to a sleepover, of even a friend's house before, but she would have liked to have been invited to one at least. Besides, it was one thing not be invited to a sleepover…..it was quite another not to be invited to a sleepover in your own house!

"What!?" asked Sho jumping to his feet. The bed groaned as he moved too fast and some of big sis' stuffed animals fell to the floor. Maybe Fukuda had finally decided to stay forever! This would be great! Then he could play with them for every single moment of the day and night! They could be friends all the time! They could even stop sleeping and just play and play and play and play until they passed out! This was the best thing to happen to him since the last best thing that had ever happened to him!

"I can see his colors. He's in the house." Said Mob

"Come on! Let's-" said Sho grabbing big sis' hand and trying to pull her. She didn't move.

"We're not supposed to be up right now. If mom finds out that we're awake and not planning on going back to sleep then she'll probably send Fukuda home and put us in time out or something. I want to see Fukuda too but if he's here this late at night then he's probably going to be here in the morning, too, and we should wait." Said Mob even though she didn't much want to wait. She had to be responsible. She was the older sister, not the younger sister, and it was her job to tell Sho when something was not a very good idea at all.

"….fine….but it would be wrong for her to punish us! She can't tell us that we're doing something wrong when she's doing something wrong, too!" said Sho. He was tired of rules and stuff. What did it matter that he was messing up his sleep schedule? He could always just fix it again later. This was more important than sleep, anyway, and mom should have understood that. Besides, she was the one who had woken him up, anyway, and she shouldn't have been jumping on the bed in the first place, too.

"What's she doing wrong? Did she forget to separate the recycling again?" asked Mob

"No! Well, maybe, I didn't check…but she's jumping on the bed! How can she jump on the bed even though she keeps on telling us that jumping on the bed is wrong because we could hurt ourselves or break the beds or annoy dad with the noise?" said Sho

"Maybe it's different because she's a grown up and they're the ones who can make the rules." Said Mob

"That's dumb. When I grow up and inherit the world then I'm making a rule that everyone can make their own rules." Said Sho

"Dad probably wouldn't let you do that. Even if you inherited the world after he got old and died his spirit still wouldn't let you do that." Said Mob

"Then you can just exorcise him." said Sho

"….I can't exorcise our dad." Said Mob after a moment. She loved dad and she knew that he would die someday, he talked about it a lot, she didn't want it to be any time soon. She hardly got to see him as it was and after he died…well then he'd be gone forever if he passed on…and then Sho would be the one to inherit the world. Not her, she was a girl, and her job was to get married and have babies. Dad said so. It wasn't fair, not really, that girls couldn't inherit the world…not that she wanted to boss the whole world around. She just didn't like that the option was closed to her just because she had long hair and peed sitting down. It didn't seem fair, in her opinion, but dad said that her job as to be like mom and get married and have babies so that was what her life would be.

When she grew up and got married and had babies then she would let them jump on their beds whenever they wanted to.

"Yeah…I guess you can't…"said Sho even though a lot of stuff would have been easier without dad. He was so mean all the time…but he was still dad. He loved his dad and dad would love him, too, if he was better. That was all that he had to do, be a better person, and then dad would love him and stuff. When he ruled the world, after dad died like he was always promising to, he would be a lot nicer to everyone…and he would let them jump on the bed whenever they felt like it. It seemed unfair that mom could make a rule for them but not follow it herself.

Sho wasn't going to be like that when dad gave him the world.

"We should go to bed. If mom figures out that we're still up she might tell dad when he comes back and then we'll be in for it." Said Mob even though Sho was the one who would have been in for it. Dad would have just ignored her for a long time, Sho was the one who was always getting punished.

"Yeah…he'd get mad at me…and maybe you too." Said Sho

"Maybe." Said Mob

"And he might get mad at mom, too, if we told him that she'd been jumping on the bed." Said Sho

"I don't want dad to be mad at mom. You're right, we shouldn't say anything." Said Mob. She pulled her blanket to the side and Sho laid down next to her. He was warm, so warm that she didn't need her blanket, but she wasn't comfortable without it.

"And don't tell dad that we slept next to each other, too. I don't want him to call me…or you…names or talk about how weak we are." Said Sho

"I won't say anything, don't worry Sho." Said Mob. She and Sho weren't supposed to sleep in the same bed anymore, either, because they were five and six now and had to be big kids.

But if mom could break some rules then so could they.


	19. Selfish

Masami had made a mistake.

Pure and simple she had made a mistake. That was all. She had toed the line of sweet intoxication too closely and crossed it. She hadn't set off to cross it. One touch led to another which led to a kiss and she knew that she should have stopped, the smart thing to do would have been to stop, but she hadn't. She had not been kissed like that in so long…and she wanted more. She hadn't thought of her children sleeping in their beds, of the ring on her finger, of the fact that she had been in the bed that she had shared with her husband. None of that even began to cross her mind. No. She had been selfish and she had made a mistake.

One that did not just affect her.

"Mom, is Fukuda coming today?" asked Mob as she tugged on mom's nightshirt. She was in her pajamas during the day again. That meant that she was getting sick again. Mob knew that she should not have been happy when mom got sick, that was not the way to be at all, but when mom got sick that meant that Fukuda was coming.

She hadn't seen him in days.

Which had been normal, before, but was not normal now because he used to come over every single day. Now it had been three days and he hadn't been to their house even once. The house was bigger without him, and sadder to, and Mob did not like that. Neither did Sho. It was one thing to make Mob upset but making Sho upset was crossing a line it felt like.

"Shigeko….go play with Sho, ok? I'm not feeling well today." Said Masami. She made an effort, a concentrated effort, not to be short with her daughter. She reminded herself that Shigeko was only six. She had no idea what Masami was going through and was not trying at all to push her mother's buttons. She was six.

"But I want to play with Fukuda. He used to come by all the time and now he's not. Is he mad at us? Did we do something? If we did can you tell him that we're sorry? I just…I want him to come back. Sho does, too." Said Mob. Maybe mom would listen if she told her how much Sho wanted Fukuda to come back. Sho was mom's favorite after all.

"Fukuda….he has his own life, Shigeko, ok? He has his own things to do and can't be at our family's beck and call, ok? So, please, just go play with Sho." said Masami

"Can we play Wii?" asked Mob after a moment. She liked videogames and she liked Sho…and she liked Fukuda, too. She wished that mom would have just come out and told her what happened.

"Yes, yes, that's fine., just go" Said Masami. Her daughter went about her business then, something which Masami was very grateful for. The children…how could she have done that to the children. She was a married woman. She had a family. She hadn't been thinking…but she had thrown it all away just the same. She had thrown everything away.

This house felt like a castle, a cage, a gilded cage but it was still her home and this was still her family.

She had thrown it all away. All of it. Touichirou…he could never know. He had a temper and he had never given her any indication that he would hurt her…but he could have. He so easily could have. She had never been afraid of him before…but she had never done anything to him to make him feel afraid before, either. She had always…she had always tried to make the best of it. The best of him. But now…she had no excuse for what she had done. There was no excuse and there was no telling Touichirou…he could never find out. That would not have been good or anyone, anyone at all. Especially the children. She had to think of the children.

She could hear them playing, now, and she wondered once again how she could have done this to them.

She was in the kitchen, now, and it was cold and quiet. Fukuda had been helping her make dinner these past few nights. She had thought that he was just doing it to make sure that dinner got made in the first place. That had all gone out the window the other night. He helped her make dinner because he had wanted to be with her. That had cinched it. He had said that he wanted to be with her, to spend time with her, and that had been the end of it. Nobody, no man at least, had ever expressed such an interest in spending time with her.

Touichirou couldn't get away from her fast enough, it seemed.

He was due back, soon, and she knew that he wouldn't even have time to unpack before he was off to the races once again. She had no idea what it was that he did but whatever it was it must have been a hell of a lot more important to him than her and their family. He didn't care for her, it seemed, beyond what she could do for him. He never expressed longing for her, never said that he missed her, and she had to ask him to kiss her. These were pair bonding experiences, he had said, and he didn't understand why they would need so many pair bonding experiences since they were already a pair.

Were they, still?

The last time they had been together…truly together…it had left her feeling cheap and used and just…tired. Drained. He was so draining sometimes. He had bene draining, then too. So draining that for once she was the one who could not get away fast enough. With Fukuda…it had been much different. She had…Touichirou had been better in a purely mechanical sense. He knew what she liked. He knew her body inside and out and he had his powers, too. Fukuda…it hadn't been planned. It had been new. She hadn't been with anyone new in so, very long….

She hadn't been that selfish in so, very, long.

And she could never have been that selfish again. It could never happen again. It would never happen again. She didn't want it to happen again. She…she did and she did not. She wanted….she didn't even know what she wanted. She wanted to live her life, she supposed, and to live it happily. Fukuda made her happy. The attention, the way he spoke to her like a person, like he wanted to know her as a person, all of the feelings that she had been starved from before. All of it. She wanted that…

But she didn't want to hurt anyone.

She could still hear her children. They were in the living room together. They were so very young. She could not derail their lives. She would not derail their lives. They had a mother and a father and…and their mother and father were both very selfish people. The most selfish people that one could ever imagine. Even now she was away from them and wallowing in her own self-pity. Even now she was leaving them in front of a screen instead of interacting with them. Playing with them. They wanted Fukuda back. They had gotten too used to him, too attached to him, and Masami knew why. Their father was across the water and their mother was an incredibly selfish women. She didn't blame them at all.

"Fukuda!" that had been Shigeko. They were missing him so terribly. She shouldn't have let them get so attached….or she shouldn't have let herself ruin it for them. They missed him and he had only been away for a few days. The time passed longer for them, of course, because they were only children. Small children at that. Shigeko had just now started school and Sho was still in kindergarten. They were too young for all of this.

"Shigeko, what did I say?" asked Masami. She was not prepared to leave the kitchen, not yet. She had a meal to cook and she had a cup of tea in front of her that had grown cold ages ago but she may have been ready to start drinking soon.

"You said that Fukuda was too busy to come by but he's here right now." Said her daughter from the living room. Now this got Masami up and out of the kitchen. She expected to see him at their doorway about to ring the bell. She went to the door and saw no one.

"Shigeko, you shouldn't say things that aren't true." Said Masami with more exasperation than she should have let show. She had even come running. She should not have come running. She should have stayed in the kitchen and gotten started on feeding her children before she gave up and just let them eat cereal again.

"I'm not telling lies, mom, I don't tell lies. I can see Fukuda coming. He's coming here right now. I can see his colors." Said Mob

"Big sis knows." Said Sho. Mom shouldn't have called big sis a liar. Of course she knew, she had powers. Sho wouldn't have been much of a little brother if he didn't defend his sister. Even though she cheated at Wii sports by being really good at it.

"Did you two ask him to come over?" asked Masami. She was not angry with her children and she would not be angry with them. They were only children. Even Shigeko was still a child. She was six years old. A six year old girl with her hair in pigtails and a school satchel as big as she was. She was too young to take a hint, to get a clue, and realize that her mother did not want Fukuda to come around right then.

"No mom, we've been playing Wii all day." Said Mob truthfully. She didn't know why mom had thought that she was a liar, before, because she most certainly did not tell lies at all. She was a sweet girl, a nice girl, like mom was always asking her to be.

"You can play too if you want." Said Sho. Mom was by the door looking out the little window. That seemed so boring. He had thought that mom was feeling better, she had been happy enough to jump on the bed after all, but that happiness seemed to be short lived. She seemed to be getting sick again. She was older and maybe older people just got sick all the time. She wasn't an old person yet, he knew because old people had white hair, but maybe she was just on her way to becoming an old person. That was bad. Dad was always talking about when he died and it made Sho kind of sad….but the thought of mom dying made him feel a million times sadder. This was his mom and she could not die. Who would play with him, then, who wasn't big sis?

"What? No…no, that's fine. You two…you keep playing." Said Masami. She could see him, now, walking down her path. He had a grocery bag with him like normal….and she didn't want…she didn't know what it was that she wanted. She wanted to see him again, to have him around, to have someone around who gave a damn about her…and these were dangerous thoughts to have. To have about him. She was going to, what, play house again? Why not just go out to the kids' play house and make grass and leaf salad and hose water soup while they were at it? That was what they had been doing, playing house, and she knew that she had to put a stop to it. She knew that she had to…to slam the door in his face and tell him to get out of her life. Tell him that he had gotten what he wanted from her and now he could hit the old dusty trail. She had served her purpose to him, what more did he ask for?

He was not Touichirou.

He wanted more from her. He wanted…to her he was…and to him she was…and she didn't know if she wanted to be…this was all just too much! This was too much and she wanted him to turn around and go home! He was always there in her home and her life…and he was…he was…she could not even think it. She could not think something so untrue. He was welcome in her life and he was wanted in her life. Maybe even more so now…

"Mom's being all weird again…..you think she's sick?" said Sho softy, so softly that his mom could not hear. She was just standing there looking out of the door window. He wished that he knew what was wrong so he could fix it. There must have been something he could do. There was always something that he could do.

"I guess so. I mean Fukuda is getting really close to the house and he only comes by when one of us is sick so I guess that she's still sick." Said Mob

"She seemed like she was getting a little better, before." Said Sho

"Maybe she pushed herself too hard and then ended up making whatever was making her sick worse." Said Mob

Masami wanted to tell her children that she was not sick. She wanted to tell them that she was fine and that everything was fine. She wanted to lie to them…her own children…but hadn't she been lying to them for years. Their father didn't…no. These thoughts about Touichirou were not the thoughts that she should have been having. He loved them…in his own way…and he may have been cold and selfish, sometimes, but at least he had never betrayed the family. Everything that he did had been in service to his family.

She was more selfish than Touichirou.

And she was going to continue to be selfish. There was a knock at the door. Masami knew that she could have pretended that nobody was home, she could have told him to go away, she could have pretended, even, that her husband had come back from his trip early….she could have done a lot of things. She had options besides opening the door but….but she still opened the door. Because she was just so, incredibly, selfish.

"Hey." Said Fukuda quietly

"Hey." Said Masami. They stayed like that for a length of time that could only have been called awkward. She wanted him to go. She wanted him to stay. She wanted to run away. She wanted to stay there, with him, until she died of old age. Maybe she would have. She made no move to move out of the way after all. She knew that it was rude, not inviting him in, but inviting him in had been the cause of all of this…no. Her own selfishness had been the cause of all of this. She was selfish to neglect the children as she had and she was selfish to have done that to her family. She and Touichirou were two of a kind, it seemed, two very selfish people that couldn't think past their own wants and needs for more than five seconds.

"Fukuda!" ah yes, the children had noticed. They ran from the TV, abandoning it for the first time in hours and pushed past her to hug Fukuda as best as they could. He dropped whatever it was that he had been carrying but Shigeko caught it with her powers. She didn't even have to do anything at all, she just reached out and caught it.

"I knew you'd come back. Big sis didn't think that you were ever coming back but I knew that you were." Said Sho hugging Fukuda with all that he had. This was great! Now the castle wouldn't be so empty! And maybe, this time, he'd stay the night again but not leave super early in the morning. Fukuda was good at making dinner, maybe he was good at making breakfast too!

"I never said that I thought that he was never coming back." Said Mob. She had been thinking it, yes, but she had never said it. She didn't need to think about that anymore, though, because he was back and now everything was going to be ok!

"Well I'm here now you two, so who wants some dinner? Unless your mom already started it, of course." Said Fukuda. Masami shook her head.

"I haven't started it yet. You can help me." Said Masami in a small voice, once smaller than she had ever used before. It would have been so much easier if he had never come back. She hadn't planned on anything happening, it had just sort of happened, and if she could have closed the book there….it would have been the best. She hoped that he wasn't counting on it happening again because it most certainly would not be happening again that night or ever.

No matter how good it had been.

"Us too!" her children both said at once. Masami shook her head. Their little faces fell…well Sho's did, anyway. Shigeko's was just as impassive as always. She wondered what it would take for her daughter actually emote. A lot, probably, since she took after Touichirou even though they didn't share a drop of blood between them. Hell, maybe she took after Masami, too. Maybe she'd grow up to be short sighted, selfish woman like her mother.

That was what Masami was, shortsighted and selfish.

"Not today, ok? You two just keep playing. You can have unlimited screen time, ok?" asked Masami. That, too, was shortsighted and selfish. She knew that if they spent too much time in front of screens it would only hurt them in the long run. She was good at that, hurting her children in the long run. They did not deserved to have someone so selfish for a mother. They did not deserve to have someone so selfish for a father. They deserved so much better than what she and her husband could be.

Shortsighted and selfish.

It had been shortsighted and selfish to let Fukuda in the house, the kitchen, and to start cooking with him like everything was normal. They cooked in silence. Her prepping her part and him prepping his. She couldn't remember the last time that Touichirou had helped her cook…and she needed to come off it. She needed to…to stop comparing what she had to what she could have had. She needed to take what she had and hold onto it for dear life because it was her life. No, not just her life, but her children's lives as well. She could not derailed their lives.

"Masami-" said Fukuda

"The water's boiling." Said Masami

"I know. I just…I'm sorry about-" said Fukuda

"You should really get that soup going." Said Masami

"I will but-" said Fukuda

"And thank you for the pork. You know how Shigeko loves it. I worry about how pale she is, she might be anemic." Said Masami. The kids. Always steer it back to the kids. The kids were the furthest thing from…from what had happened. She just needed to keep away from what had happened.

"She might just not take UV damage…some espers are like that…but Masami-" said Fukuda

"Sho too, maybe, then but he might just be a ginger." Said Masami

"I…Masami-" said Fukuda

"He does burn up something awful in the sun-" said Masami

"Masami. Stop it. Just….talk to me." Said Fukuda

"We are talking." Said Masami. She didn't look at Fukuda, she kept her back to him, because she knew that nothing good would have come from looking at him. Her back was turned and she had no plans of turning around but a hand on her waist changed everything. He wasn't forceful or mean, his hand just rested there on the curve of her waist and kept nudged her a bit. He didn't order her to turn around, he asked her.

So she turned around.

"About what happened, I mean. I want…I want to talk about what happened." Said Fukuda. He had stayed away for days and he knew that it had been wrong. He'd had his own shit to unpack, there. He knew that he had been attracted to Masami for some time now but this was his boss' wife. Not just his boss but Suzuki Touichirou's wife. He'd hurt people, maimed people, for less. He was not a man one wanted to trifle with…and Fukuda had not set out for anything to happen…it had just happened.

A touch.

A kiss.

And then…everything.

And now they were in this mess together. Telling Touichirou was out of the question unless he had a death wish…and he knew that Touichirou cared for Masami in his own way…but he also could not suffer a traitor to live. The man was powerful, possibly the most powerful amongst all espers, and he knew it. He would not let this slight against him stand. Fukuda had always had fantasies about being with Masami. Her family. These kids…these wonderful kids…but he knew that it could never be…but he had still made his mistakes. She was like a sweet wine and he could not help but overindulge and now…now he had made a mess. A mess that he was fully prepared to own up to.

"I don't see what we have to gain by talking about it. It happened and it can never happen again. I am married. I'm a married woman and you…you work for my husband. What, did you think that I was going to…what, exactly? Make this a regular thing?" said Masami

"No. I know that it can never happen again…and it never should have even happened in the first place. I know that I made….I feel like I made a mistake. I care….I care about you and I know that…that I shouldn't. I know that I didn't just cross a line the other night….I threw up on it…and I am so sorry." Said Fukuda. His hand was still around her waist. She was so beautiful…but she was not his. None of this was his. This woman, this kitchen, those children playing in the living room. This was Suzuki's life….he was just keeping it warm for him.

"I…we both crossed a line and it…it can never happen again." said Masami even though she wanted it to…and that was the absolute worst. The fact that she wanted nothing more in the moment than to kiss him…

"Never again." said Fukuda even though the thought of never again holding her, being with her like that, cut him to the core of his being.

"And…and obviously Touichirou can't know." Said Masami. She'd lose the children. She'd lose…she wanted out. She had thought that she had wanted out but she knew that she would never get out. Not when there were the children.

"Of course not." Said Fukuda. That went without saying. If Suzuki didn't get suspicious then nothing would happen. He…he was not a kind and forgiving man…but he also couldn't see past himself. He never would have even considered his wife or one of his most valued subordinates capable of something like this.

"And…and I'm sorry to have….to have been so selfish. I put you in this position and I…I understand if you don't want to come around here anymore." Said Masami. Now that had that had been around her waist moved up to her back. She was pulled close. The water in the pot on the stove was boiling, the water level was rapidly falling, but neither of them cared. She was…she was enjoying this…and that was wrong. She wanted…she wanted this…and she wanted it from Touichirou…but that was not going to happen. Not unless she asked him to…and even then it would have been stiff and short and awkward. This was…she wanted this so badly. It hadn't been about the sex. It had never been about sex. It was about intimacy…and the fact that it had been so scarce in her life up to this point….

"You…there is nothing about you that could ever be seen as selfish. You are…you are the most selfless woman that I have ever met. You put up with so much….nobody could blame you. I…I'm the one that crossed that line with you. Me. This is my fault…" said Fukuda

"….both of us are at fault here…" said Masami

"I…I guess. Yes, both of us…and…and I understand if you don't want me around anymore. Just…just let me say goodbye to the kids and we can go back to how it was before. One of you gets hurt, you call me, I do my job…and then I leave." Said Fukuda softly. All business. He should have kept it strictly business. He was the Suzuki family on call healer since Suzuki did not trust, or was maybe afraid of, hospitals. That was what he had been hired…taken on…to do and that was what he should have been doing. That was how things were going to have to be from now on-

A finger over his lips.

"No. I don't want that. I want…I like having you here and…and the kids love you to. They need someone stable in their lives…they love you…and I…I enjoy having you around…so stay. Please." Said Masami. There was a silence, a pause, through which only the boiling of a pot and the joyous exclamations from the children in the other room could be heard. She knew that she was being selfish, again, but she…she didn't want to be selfless.

"…alright. I can do that." Said Fukuda. He knew that he was gambling with a loaded gun there but he…he did not care. Maybe he was being selfish. This was not his wife, these were not his children, and this was not his family…

But he could still pretend.

No matter how selfish that made him.


	20. Unusual Atmosphere

The atmosphere in the house was different.

Suzuki had felt it the moment he came home. For one thing they weren't having breakfast for dinner. Masami always made breakfast for dinner when he came back from being abroad. He had given her plenty of notice but instead of an omelet and pancakes and waffles and whatever else he found pizza. Cheese pizza. Not even any toppings. The children were very particular about their toppings it seemed, something that made no sense to him. Pizza was meant to be eaten with toppings, that was why they put toppings on pizza. Also it wasn't like Masami to indulge the children so. She was always on them to broaden their culinary horizons even though it was so much simpler to just let them eat whatever they wanted.

That was odd.

Something else which could only be classified as odd was the fact that Masami was in her nightgown even though she was not anywhere close to being ready for bed. She had done nothing with her hair, too, just tied it back. No makeup, either, which felt….it felt strange. She used to make such an effort for him, he was used to her making an effort for him, but now that effort was just….where had it gone too.

Odd.

The last bit of oddness was the fact that he could feel Fukuda. The ghost of him, not his literal ghost of course but the ghost of his presence. He had been….he had been in Suzuki's home long enough, and enough times, to have left an imprint of himself. For a little while Suzuki wonders, as he shares the first meal with his family in weeks, if there had been some catastrophe while he was away which had necessitated Fukuda's presence in his house.

But there hadn't been.

The bathroom had exploded, daughter had made the bathroom explode on accident, but that was not why Fukuda had been in his house long enough that his energy lingered….no. Apparently, according to the children, Masami had taken very ill in his absence. Daughter had said that so matter of factly, as matter of factly as she said everything, but it was not something that was matter of fact at all. Well it had been a fact, Masami had been ill, but it was also something that made his aura flare. A flare of yellow. Yellow where there should have been red.

Daughter noticed.

And commented.

And for that he almost didn't give her the doll he had purchased for her. A native looking doll in native clothes. Good for her cultural education. If she was going to inherit the world someday she'd need to be able to understand it. He had almost kept that doll from her because she should have known full well not to comment on when her father had his own lapses in control. They were rare but they happened. He did not keep her doll from her, that would have just upset both of the children and after the trip he'd had the last thing he wanted to deal with was upset children, but he did tap his aura against hers somewhat harshly.

She was much easier to correct than Sho.

He exorcised that emotion, that panicked emotion, as quickly as he could. No harm would ever come to Masami. He had procured an on call healer for her and built her a fortress…though no fortress could keep out germs…maybe he should have built some sort of bubble instead…but that just lowered immunities…but it would keep her safe from illness…he put a pin in the hermetically sealed bubble idea. He had enough irons in the fire as it was. Still the thought of her becoming ill, so ill, so very ill that he could lose her…

He does not like that feeling.

But it's an irrational feeling. She was fine. She may have been acting oddly but she was perfectly fine. She was up and about and perfectly fine and he was just overthinking everything. He was overthinking the fact that she was not dressed, hadn't made him his favorite dinner, hadn't kissed him when he came home, hadn't badgered him about spending time with the children when all he wanted was a moment to himself after dealing with sycophants and cultists and the like for weeks on end…she just left him to his own devices.

She bathed the children.

She read to the children.

She put the children to bed.

And she did not once ask him to be a part of any of those rituals. The children had asked for him, they always did, but their mother corrected them. It was nice being able to be left alone in his bedroom to just…be. Nobody around him. Nobody kissing up to him or making any attempts on his life. Just him sitting in his own bed in his own home in his own country…it was nice. Just being. Just being there, on that bed.

That bed.

Something was different.

"Masami?" he asked. She had come to their room after putting the children to bed. She had changed into different pajamas, another nightgown but one which was yellow not white like the last one had been, and had been rubbing lotion into her skin when he got her attention. He never needed to get her attention before, it had always been on him, even if she had been doing something else. That was also odd, very odd, and it made his chest feel…tight…and his aura threatened to flare out again. He didn't like this feeling at all.

So he tried to exorcise it.

"Touichirou?" She didn't even look at him when she said his name. There was something different, to, in the way that she addressed him. There was something missing, he did not know what, but he did not know that his pulse rose and his chest tightened and his aura, once again, flare outwards. He was filled with the irrational urge to…to…he wasn't even sure what. Hold her? Kiss her?

Perform a pair bonding activity.

"Something about this bed is different but I don't know what." She dropped the bottle of lotion she had been holding. He caught it, capped it, and put it on her nightstand with his powers. She was still, very still, sort of like an animal froze when it sensed a predator. Like she was afraid. Afraid of him….but that was absurd. He had never once harmed a hair on her head. He had never once even had the urge to. She was his.

"I bought a new bedding set." Said Masami after a moment. Suzuki felt it under his palms. Yes, the color was the same but the material was different. Stiffer. It even smelled different. They had a few sets of bedding and they all smelled the same. Like the detergent she used and the smell the house carried within it and the smell that she carried as well. This bedding smelled like…kind of like plastic. He didn't much care for it at all.

He wished that she would just lay next to him already.

To get the bed smelling the right way, of course, and also….pair bonding. He knew that the urge he had to pair bond with her, to hold her, to be near her was an irrational one. They were already married, she had chosen him and he had chosen her, they should have been past this by now. But evidently they were not. Evidently he was still weak when it came to her. He could not indulge. He could not risk losing control.

Nothing good happened when he lost control.

"Come lay down next to me. This smells like plastic. I'd rather it smelled like you." Said Suzuki trying his best to articulate what he felt without exposing any weakness. What good would he be to her if he was weak? She depended on him totally and completely. She depended on him to provide for and protect her and she could not have him weak.

"That's all?" asked Masami in a tone that he could not ever recall hearing from her. He didn't like it. It was unpleasant to the ears. Her voice had always been so mellifluous. This time there had been a hard edge to it, one that he did not like one bit. He took a deep breath. There it was, that feeling, that desperate panicked feeling. He tried his best to exorcise it.

"Yes." said Suzuki. The feeling was there and it was not going away. She made no move to sit let alone lay down. The more time passed, no more than seconds, the more this feeling seemed to grow. It grew exponentially, it seemed like, and no matter what he did it just would not stop. She just would not join him.

"What's with you?" asked Masami. She was looking at him now like he was something that she had found on the ground. Something shiny and new, like a foreign coin, some object of simple curiosity. His aura was visible now, maybe, even to her. He needed to calm down. He needed to…he needed to get rid of this feeling. This feeling…his aura was spreading. His aura was spreading throughout the room. It chased the remnants of Fukuda away.

Fukuda had been in this room.

And that thought creates an entirely different feeling within him. This feeling was worlds easier to exorcise. He knew that this feeling was pointless. It was crazy. Masami would never have been unfaithful to him. She had no reason to be. He provided for her materially and physically. They were married and part of marriage was the understanding that other people were off limits. This was a bond that humans had invented to make sure that everyone's offspring were, indeed, their own. Masami had no reason to be unfaithful. Fukuda had been in this room because Masami had been on her sickbed for some time, as the children had said.

And now another feeling was there.

And he was shaking. He was physically shaking under the strain of keeping it together. He thought of her being ill, so ill, ill enough to pass away…and she must have been very ill indeed if Fukuda had to come over and heal her over a course of multiple days. He was weak, then, and he allowed….he left himself no choice but to allow Masami to see it.

"The thought of you perishing…it hurts me." He said after a while. He articulated it as best as he could without showing any extra weakness. Admitting that he cared for her so deeply that her death would have affected him…that was a lot. But what was a wife if not a confidant. He had laid himself bare before her, physically, so many times…so he had might as well lay himself bare emotionally as well.

Even though he hates himself as soon as the words pass his lips.

"You could replace me easily." Said Masami once again in that tone that he's coming to absolutely hate more than anything else in the world. Why is she talking like this? Why? She was acting….she had never acted like this before. Something was…something was different about her…

Had she changed?

Had he been away for so long that she had changed?

"Yes, I could, but I don't want to. If you're thinking purely in terms of my ability to attract another woman that wouldn't be difficult at all. I don't want to find another woman, though. Even if you were to perish I don't think that I would want to do that." Said Suzuki. Talking helps. Talking helps ground him. Objectively speaking he's a man of wealth and power, even now with the ring on his finger women threw themselves at him. He did not indulge, he had a wife, and he was not a fan of meaningless encounters anyway. Much too messy. Masami was his and he did not think that he could ever find another woman who was exactly like her.

So if she were to die in front of him right then and there we wouldn't have taken another wife.

He didn't much need to, anyway. He had a son, he had secured the next generation, and as badly as he wanted to have another child he knew that biologically speaking his work had been done. He had a son to pass on his genes, he was fine in that regard, so there would be no need to take another wife or even a lover. Masami knew that. Anyone with half a brain could have seen that and Masami was the most intelligent woman, person, that he had ever met in his life barring himself of course.

"Sure." Said Masami in a tone, another tone, that he did not understand. Well at least she answered in the affirmative. That was good. She understood that no matter what happened he would never, ever, be with another woman. He assumed that the same went for her. He took good care of her, better care of her than any other man had the means to, and even if one of the numerous attempts on his life went through she would be provided for long after his passing.

"I apologize for before, when I almost lost control. It won't happen again. I just…your illness worried me, that was all. I remembered how truly fragile you are. The thought of being without you pains me greatly but there is no reason for me to have those thoughts. Fukuda was here to tend to you and I assume that he did his job considering that you are up and about….if not behaving a bit oddly." Said Suzuki

"Yeah…he helped out a lot while you were gone." Said Masami

"I'll be sure to praise and reward him appropriately later." Said Suzuki

"….yeah…." said Masami

"Please, join me….I have not been beside you in quite some time." Said Suzuki. In for a penny in for a pound. He was being weak, and now even weaker, but he needed to have her beside him right that moment. She needed…she needed to get back to normal.

"So now you want to be with me?" asked Masami

"Yes. At the present moment I want you to be beside me on this bed." Said Suzuki. He didn't understand what was so unclear about what he had just said. Usually she was the one who craved these pair bonding activities. He felt, then, a bit like he had the first time he had ever travelled. Not even abroad, no, when he had gone on that school trip to the mountains. He had slept in an unfamiliar room on a futon, he had been used to a bed, and was surrounded by people even though up to that point he had always slept alone. It had been off and unpleasant and that was what this was, now. Odd and unpleasant.

"Are you sure? Are you sure it's not pointless?" asked Masami. She put an emphasis on the word 'pointless' that he could not see the purpose of.

"Pointless….yes, I suppose that…there is no point to pair bonding because we are already a pair…but I feel a sort of…of distance between us. Despite how close you are to me I can feel an unpleasant amount of distance and I…this is not something which I wish to feel. I want you to be near me right now, Masami." Said Suzuki. Words were hard. That made him sound so weak, so pathetic, and if she turned away from him and fled the room in disgust he would have understood.

But she did not.

The lines around her eyes softened. She drew the covers and laid herself down beside him. She laid far away from him, it seemed, usually she turned into an octopus when they laid in their bed together, and he would address that later. For now, for right now, she was lying there in bed next to him and that was what he had asked for. He always got what he asked for…and usually it felt good….but now she was just so far away that…that it was maddening.

"Why are you so far away from me?" asked Suzuki biting the bullet and just asking her. He wondered if he had done something that she found objectionable. He wracked his brain and found nothing, nothing that she would have been aware of, anyway.

"Because….do you honestly not know why?" asked Masami

"I have no idea why you're acting like this. None at all." Said Suzuki speaking the absolute truth. She did not seem to like the truth based on the scoffing sound she made.

"Typical This is so typical." Said Masami. She turned her back to him and it hurt as badly as if she had struck him. This was too much. There were too many emotions, here, emotions that he could not put a name to. He knew that they were bad. He knew that they made his aura flare out. He knew that they made his control, the control that he had spent the better part of a lifetime honing, slip through his grasp. He did not know what these emotions were or how he could exorcise them so that he could just function again.

"What's typical?" asked Suzuki levelling his voice. Strong. He was strong. He was the strongest being in the world. He knew no equal.

"You. This is so you." Said Masami

"I don't follow." Said Suzuki

"Of course you don't! God, you are such a pod person, you know that?! It's like…God! You're cruel and you don't even realize it! Don't you have any clue how…how much it hurt?! How much you hurt me?! How much you've been hurting me for all of these years!?" It was like a damn broke. She turned to face him, now, and she had tears streaming down her cheeks. Her breathing was much too fast and her eyes were much too glassy and he did not like this one bit.

He would have exorcised those emotions long ago.

But Masami was not him. She did not exorcise her emotions, she let them overtake her until she lost control. Like this. This was what she looked like when she lost control. When he lost control he didn't cry, things broke and people died. He did not have this luxury. He envied her for this. Even though she had no reason to lose control he did not envy her.

"When did I hurt you? Masami, I would never do anything to harm-" said Suzuki. He knew that he could be a cruel man at times. One did not get to be the head of Claw by being softhearted…but she had never seen that side of him. He never brought that side of him, that man, home. That man existed in offices across the water, on plains and trains and within automobiles. That man had never once set foot in this house. He had never had any need to.

"See?! You just can't get a clue, can you?! It hurt me last time! It hurt, Touichirou!" said Masami

"What time? Please, I can't understand what you mean and I need you to be as specific as possible because I…I am not following right now." Said Suzuki. He allowed her to shove him. It wasn't like she was capable of doing any damage. No, the way she had been acting hurt him much more than any hit she could have landed.

"Last time we had sex….do you even remember? Do you even care?" asked Masami landing another shove to his chest.

"Last time we had sex? Do you mean before I left?" asked Suzuki

"Yes! Then!" said Masami

"Then? If I was causing you pain then I would have stopped if you had asked me to. I have no interest in causing you any sort of harm, Masami. You're my wife." Said Suzuki. Well it was nice to get to the bottom of it. He had been a bit overly enthusiastic, maybe, but that was alright. Now he knew that he had done something wrong and he could easily learn from his mistake.

"Seriously?!"

Or not.

He wondered, briefly, if homosexuals had it easier. He was not the best at understanding people but he did think that he would have more in common, thought wise, with another man than he did with a women. Another man would have been socialized like he would. They would have thought similarly and acted similarly. Maybe the sex would have been better to…and he decided to put a pin in that thought. This was not the time to debate the merits of homosexuality with himself. This was the time to be a good husband and listen to his wife's troubles and try to fix whatever it was that he had done wrong.

Marriage could be so draining sometimes.

But she was worth it.

It would have been worth a hundred years of this just to make sure that she never looked at him, never spoke to him, like she had before ever again. He wanted his Masami back and if this was what he had to go through then so be it. He was no stranger to a challenge, he was going to take on the entire world soon, and this should have been a piece of cake.

"Please….please tell me what I did wrong so that I can fix it. I want you to be happy, Masami, and I can't make you happy unless you tell me how to." Said Suzuki. More weakness. Admitting that he wanted to do things for her just to see her happy. Maybe homosexuality wasn't something that would have, hypothetically, been for him after all. He couldn't imagine being this weak in front of another man even if he felt the same way for that man as he did for his wife.

"That's the problem….that I have to tell you. You just…when you told me that having sex with me was pointless it was so cruel…and the worst part is that you have no idea how cruel you had been. You have no idea how it felt….you had just been **inside of me** and then you…you said that it was pointless because we didn't make another kid…and it hurt so much…and it's…for years." Said Masami

"You….you were hurt by that? By my words? Why? I don't understand. The main point of having sex is to make a child….but it's also a pleasurable pair bonding activity. I said that, before, and I assumed that was the reason you sought out intimacy with me." Said Suzuki

"….I love you. I wanted to have sex with you because I love you. It has nothing to do with pair bonding or whatever. I wanted to be with you…out of love…and sometimes I feel like…like you don't love me. Like I could be anyone. Like you just needed a woman to have your children and take care of your house so you picked me." Said Masami

"That….that doesn't make any sense. Love is pair bonding. We love each other because we have chosen each other out of all other potential people to create a life, and life in general, together. I enjoy it when we have sex. I enjoy….I enjoy being near you…and I had no intention of being cruel to you." Said Suzuki. People were strange. If he had wanted to be cruel to her, not that he ever wanted to be cruel to her, then there were at least five things that he could think up in that moment that he could have done. But he had no reason to do them because she was his wife. It was hard, sometimes, trying to reconcile her view of things with his but that was what had attracted her to him. How different she was.

"Sometimes it doesn't feel like, it, Touichirou. Sometimes it feels like I could be literally anyone. Like I could just wake up tomorrow and switch places with another woman and you wouldn't miss a beat." Said Masami

"No, I would notice that. I would definitely notice that. Masami…if I just wanted a woman to care for me and my home and my children then I would have hired someone. I chose you because I…I love you." Said Suzuki even though that word was so very imprecise. Overused, too. That word did not encompass the way he felt about Masami….very little in this world did.

"Then act like it." Said Masami. She leaned her head onto his chest. He buried his face in her hair. She smelled….she smelled different. He couldn't place it but she felt different as well as smelled different. She….there was an energy clinging to her…Fukuda's energy.

She must have been very ill, then.

"Tell me. Tell me what to do and I'll do it." Said Suzuki. She was silent, after that, but she was clinging to him so then everything was right with them again. She was back to normal. She…she was his and he was hers and it was…it was all going to be back to normal now. Now she would tell him what she wanted from him and when and how.

And he was glad.


	21. School Uniforms

Daughter was six years old now.

It hadn't meant much to him, the children's birthdays. They lived another year. He expected them to live so he did not breathe a sigh of relief every time a page on the calendar was turned. They got taller, they spoke better, and they became a little more independent.

Case and point.

"Look dad!" said Mob as she spun around. She was six, now, and didn't go to kindergarten anymore. She went to real school now and while she was sad, very sad, to leave Sho behind she was happy to go to a real school with real uniforms and everything. That had been a big thing for her when she told mom which school she wanted to go to. She had to go to one with uniforms. Mob liked uniforms, they looked cool and older. She was six now, not five, and that meant that she got to a real elementary school!

Plus she liked the way it felt when she spun around. Kind of like she was a magical girl.

Though of course she was not a magical girl. Her powers were not magical, dad had said so, and she was not a magical girl. Dad said that she was a princes, a princess of the world, not a magical girl. Mob would have rather been a magical girl than a princess of the world, though she would rather have been Mob than anything. Mob blended in. Mob was just like everyone else.

Mob didn't have to worry about losing control and accidentally hurting someone. Mob was just like everybody else.

"You're wearing your uniform. Very nice." Said Suzuki simply from his spot at the breakfast table. He hadn't been home for a school run in quite some time. The children were older now and school was, for daughter at least, compulsory. He had been against putting the children in school from the very beginning. Masami was a very intelligent woman, she could have taught them everything they needed to know right there at home, and if she hadn't felt like it he could have hired the best tutors that Japan had to offer.

But Masami had been firm. They needed to learn how to be around other people.

He deferred to what his wife said when it came to child rearing. She knew best. Mothers always knew best about this sort of thing. Fathers, well, what did they know? He hadn't carried the children, well Son, and he hadn't raised them either. In his opinion they didn't need to learn how to be around people because they, well certainly Daughter, stood head and shoulders above all others. They, or at least she, had no reason to learn how to mix with all of the extras in the world. Not when she was a man character.

"Shigeko, be careful. No sitting on the floors or rubbing up against the walls." Said Masami as she scrubbed out the frying pan. She eyed the clock on the wall. They had time, but only just. She would have left it until she got home but Touichirou did not like a mess and she did not feel like getting into it with him. Not that early in the morning.

"I'm not mom, don't worry." Said Mob before she spun around again. She loved this uniform!

"Are you trying to transform?" asked Sho as he finished off his breakfast. He was so glad that he didn't have to wear a uniform. He was still in kindergarten and they had to wear the stupid hats and he jackets but only while they were coming and going. In school he could wear whatever he wanted. He missed big sis, it was weird not being at the same school as her, but they'd be back at the same school soon…and he'd have to wear a stupid outfit, too, but at least he wouldn't spin around like he was on some magical girl show or something.

"No, I just like to spin." Said Mob

"Why?" asked Suzuki. He did not understand Daughter one bit in that moment. She seemed so proud of that outfit and he just…he could not begin to understand. He hadn't had to wear a proper uniform until he started middle school. Black gakuran, gold buttons, black shoes. A uniform in a sea of uniforms. It itched, being forced to be just like everyone else. Daughter's uniform consisted of a navy blue blazer, white shirt, navy blue ribbon, navy blue skirt, white socks, and black shoes. She would walk out that door, just as he had when he was young, and disappear into a sea of girls dressed in identical navy blue blazers and ribbons and skirts with white socks and shiny black shoes…why would she ever want that?

"Because I like how my skirt spins." Said Mob. She spun again, this time too close to the table, but dad used his powers to keep anything from falling. It was kind of weird having dad there. He hadn't been back since before she started elementary school. He was there at the table like this was all normal. Like he had breakfast with them every morning. Like he saw her in her school uniform every morning.

She wondered if dad being there made the atmosphere weird.

She had trouble reading the atmosphere sometimes. Even at her new school the other kids said that she couldn't get a clue. They called her 'Mob' at her new school, too, and she didn't even have to ask them to. She hoped that dad never figured out that she was still letting people call her 'Mob'. Her name was Shigeko, Suzuki Shigeko, and she was supposed to be called Suzuki or Shigeko, if people were more familiar with her, but she didn't want to be called Suzuki Shigeko. She wanted to be Mob. Mob was just like everyone else. Mob blended in with the background. Mob didn't have to worry about being a princess of the world like dad kept on saying she had to be.

"Be careful! I said don't get that uniform dirty, Shigeko, we don't have time for you to change." Said Masami. Getting Shigeko dressed in the morning had been such a production, as it always was. She insisted on dressing herself that morning as she did every morning. She and Sho were old enough to dress themselves and were quite good at it…when they were getting dressed in their regular clothes. T-shirts and pants, lose fitting things, those were easy. Things with buttons…things with multiple steps…Shigeko needed but would not accept help.

Why that school had the children wear shirts with buttons Masami would never understand.

She didn't understand why a six year old needed a school uniform anyway. She hadn't worn a uniform until middle school, a navy blue sailor dress with a red ribbon, but for some strange reason her daughter wanted to wear a blazer and a button down shirt and a pleated shirt and shiny leather shoes. The shoes had to be shiny, very shiny, Shigeko had been very clear about that. She had been very clear about everything when it came to her new school.

Mainly that it had to have a uniform. A real uniform.

"I am being careful!" said Mob. She did not want to have to go through the trouble of putting on her uniform again. It had a lot of steps. There were buttons for her shirt and her shirt had buttons, too, but on the side and her jacket also had buttons and her shoes had buckles, but she didn't have those on yet, but the whole thing took so much time. All Sho had to wear for his school was the blue jacket and the yellow hat. Mom didn't put any of that on him until they got to the door. Sho hated uniforms. He liked the clothes that he had. Loose stuff with the tags cut off because they bothered him. Mob didn't get it. Uniforms were for when you grew up. Even dad wore a uniform, sort of, his suit was kind of like a uniform. Dads wore suits. Well, her dad always wore a suit anyway. Mob had never seen him without his suit on. Not even in pajamas.

She liked her uniform but she didn't want to sleep in it.

"No you aren't." said Sho as he got up and put his plate in the sink. Mom was only doing the dishes now because dad was there. Dad liked everything to be neat and clean and he didn't care who he bothered by wanting everything to be neat and clean all the time. Sho didn't much like it when dad ate with them. When dad ate with them then Sho wasn't allowed to have any of his animals at the table. He needed to eat with his animals because they were his friends. Well so was big sis but that was different.

"Sho." said Masami in that tone, the one that told him not to start, and thankfully he listened. He was only five years old, it was normal for him to get into it with his big sister, but Touichirou didn't like it when the children were quarrelsome and she did not feel like getting into it with him. It was too early for all of that.

"Sorry mom." Said Sho. Right. Mom sometimes thought that he and big sis fought, they didn't of course, but mom thought that they did and he didn't want to upset her. Plus if she got upset then dad might have become upset with him…and he didn't want that. He sat kind of away from dad, just a little, because he didn't want dad to do that thing where he found some tiny thing wrong with what he was doing and got upset with him. He never did that to big sis. He liked big sis best, but that was ok, because mom liked him best. They each got a parent. There. That was even and fair, like dividing up the bacon at breakfast.

"I really won't get it dirty. You don't have to worry." Said Mob

"I have no idea why you want to wear that thing in the first place. It can't possibly be comfortable, for one thing, and you're dressed like all the other girls at your school. Why would you want that?" asked Suzuki. He was genuinely curious as to what Daughter's reasoning was. She was so fascinating. A being so far removed from himself. Sho was like him when it came to uniforms. He understood how terribly…terrible…it was to be forced to look like everyone else. Even Masami had expressed her own sense of perplexion last night as she ironed Daughter's uniform. Why a six year old would want to wear a school uniform was beyond both of them.

But Daughter had not come from either of them.

Some of personality was genetics and some of it was fate. For example, Masami had expressed numerous times that Sho was quite a bit like she had been when she was young. Daughter, on the other hand, had his resting face it seemed but beyond that did not mirror him or Masami in her behavior. She was still his daughter, though, he had the court papers to prove it. Not that she would ever be seeing those court papers. It was best that she had no idea of what her true parentage was. He did not want anything tugging at her loyalties. She was his daughter and she had to be on his side come the day. She was strong, very strong for someone her age, and she would only get stronger. The last thing that he wanted was for her to serve as his foe at any time in the future.

"It's not about being comfortable, I just like it. I'm not little anymore. I get to wear a real uniform now…oh! And I have a school satchel too! A real one!" said Mob. She rushed off to find her school satchel. She and mom and Sho had been to buy it a while ago. It had taken a while for her to find the best one. It had to be pink, of course, because that was how she told her stuff from Sho's. This one was pink and leather, mom said that horse leather was the best kind but Mob didn't care about that, and it felt good on her back even if it was full of all of her school stuff. Dad hadn't seen it yet, or even any of her new school books even.

She wondered if he cared.

Mom cared. She said that she was so proud that Mob was in real school now. Fukuda had cared, too, when he went with her and mom and Sho to her first day of school. He had been there because mom had burned herself on accident with the iron. She had been ironing too early in the morning, she had said, but luckily Fukuda got up that early and they all had breakfast and then walked with Mob to her first day of normal school. It had been a good day.

Even if she had maybe cried, just a little, when it came time to leave Sho.

He had his own school he had to go to. He had kindergarten and she had first grade and they had to be apart…and it was hard. They had always been in different classes even as far back as preschool but they had always been in the same building. Her school was far, very far, from Sho's. He'd even had to be late because he wanted to come with her to her first day. She hadn't cried that much, and Sho hadn't cried at all, and she hadn't been that ad either. She still came back home to her family and that was what mattered.

She loved her little brother so much.

"Well she's certainly excited." Said Suzuki as his daughter practically ran out of the room. She was followed by Son who warned her not to touch his school things. Suzuki could not remember ever being this excited about school. It had always been just a place that he had been forced to spend the better part of his day.

"Shigeko loves her new school…or maybe just the uniform." Said Masami as she wiped her hands off of on her apron. She checked the clock. Time to go. Shigeko's new school was much farther than the children's preschool and kindergarten had been. They had to leave earlier if they were going to make it on foot. They didn't have a car, her husband had cars that came to pick him up but aside from that they did everything on foot.

"I do not understand that child at all." Said Suzuki. Well he had always had trouble understanding most people. Even when he had been small it had seemed like everyone else was on a different set of instructions than he was when it came to socializing. When he hit middle school he realized that it didn't matter if he understood other people. His powers had grown stronger and he had realized, then, that the world could and did fit right in the palm of his hand.

When he ran the world he wouldn't have to understand the people in it. They would understand him. They would have no choice.

"She's a mystery to me." Said Masami. Of course she did not say what she really meant. She would have, if she had been itching for a fight, that he didn't understand anyone but himself. She didn't say that, though, because that wouldn't have accomplished anything. He was the way he was and that was just how he was. He wasn't…he didn't try to be the way he was…and he tried for her, at least. She didn't much care for the fact that she had to tell him whenever she needed basic intimacy and comfort…but that was just how he was.

He was home. She should have been happy about that.

The kids were happy. Shigeko had been so excited when they had picked out her uniform and school bag. She said that she could not, absolutely could not, wait for her father to see her in her new school uniform and new school satchel. She had always been closer with Touichirou than Masami, they were a lot alike those two…for better or for worse. Touichirou had gotten excited about things, before, when they had first met. His grand, pie in the sky, plans for the future. He never discussed those anymore.

But that didn't mean that he had given them up.

How long would he stay for this time? Two weeks? Three weeks? How much longer until something or other pulled him across the world and away from his family. She had thought that she wanted him gone, that she wanted to be away from him, but what she had really wanted was that human connection with him….that connection that he seemed to have trouble maintaining. He thought that everything was fine. They were married and had children, his end goal, and now everything was fine between them. He had no idea…and he would never have any idea. Ever.

"I was never this excited for school when I was a child. Honestly I thought that it was more of a slough than anything." Said Suzuki as he finished off his coffee and used his powers to place the cup in the sink. He didn't much like having dirty dishes in the sink but it seemed as though Masami was done with that particular household task. He wondered if he should have hired some help for her. Female espers were so rare, though, and he couldn't waste one to give his wife some household help. Yet.

Or maybe Daughter would become more of a help as she got older. It would be good practice for when she had her own household to run. She would be at that childbearing age in a few short years. He didn't see why she would want to delay it. She would be in line to rule the world, well to serve her part in ruling the world, within a decade. People held off on childrearing due to educational and financial obligations. Daughter would have to worry about neither of those things. She was his daughter, she would never have to worry about securing employment or extending her education. She would be free to focus on the things that mattered in life.

"I think she's more excited to be growing up. They grow up so fast. It feels like just yesterday that you brought her home." Said Masami as she took off her apron. She was not doing any more dishes until she got home. She had to drop the kids off at school and then do some shopping and them come home and do some laundry and then the cleaning, too, and then maybe she could rest for a minute or two before she had to go and pick Sho up from school. She'd take him to the park for a little bit before Shigeko's school got out. Elementary school lasted longer than kindergarten. Yes, she and Sho would have a nice time at the park.

Touichirou was free to join them at any time.

Though he probably would not. He had things to do even when he was at home. One of the many rooms in the labyrinth he called a house was his office. She had no idea what it was that he did but it involved him locking himself away for hours and hours. She would be without his company, any company, for hours. She entertained idle thoughts of injuring herself just to have Fukuda come around….but that would have been a terrible idea. It hadn't happened again, no, just the one time but she was not going to sit there with Fukuda and her husband….just no. Even though she liked having Fukuda around in the mornings. He helped her with the cooking and the washing up, he played with the kids, and he even walked with them to school. He had been there for Shigeko's first day of elementary school, he had even helped her entertain Sho throughout the entire opening ceremony. The very long opening ceremony. Sho didn't do well when he had to sit still for long periods of time, she feared or his elementary school teachers, but Fukuda had managed to keep him mostly quiet without having to shove a phone or a tablet into his hands.

"They used to be so small." Said Suzuki. It amazed him just how quickly children grew. Especially Daughter. She had been strong before, back when she was two and they first met, but now she eclipsed every single adult esper he had ever met. Not him, of course, she was still as strong as she had been as a child. She would, could, possibly be as strong as he was now when she hit her adult years. He was so grateful that she was female. A son would have challenged him, possibly, but a daughter would never have done anything like that. He wondered what she would be like when she got older. Would she be like Masami, hardworking and intelligent? Would she be ambitious like him? Or would she stay the same, obsessed with games and toys and twirling in the kitchen in her school uniform? Would she stay the same, just transported, transmuted, into the body of an adult. He had been the same since he was about…thirteen or so. He wondered when she would stop changing. Probably when she hit that age, too.

"Yeah…they're growing up." Said Masami. She did not bring up how much of their lives he had missed. She did not bring up the fact that he missed Sho's first steps, his first words, his first day of preschool and kindergarten. She did not bring up the fact that he wasn't in a single family picture. That would have just ended in a fight and she did not want to fight with him.

It wasn't worth it.

He wouldn't change, anyway, no matter what. Even after that fight they'd had the other night he still hadn't changed. He asked her, periodically, if she wanted affection…which was not him changing at all! He still just did not get it. Asking if she needed affection didn't make her feel loved, no, it made her feel like one of the kids' virtual pets. Press 'A' to give affection. Press 'B' to feed. She was a human being and she just…she did not even know.

The floor was kind of slippery. She had just waxed it yesterday. If she were to slip then…

She was not calling Fukuda. No. Touichirou…she did not want to know what he did to his subordinates when they slept with his wife. Fukuda had been vague, very vague, about what it was like to work for her husband. He had just said that sometimes he had to fix up upper echelon members who got on her husband's bad side. So that meant that Touichirou's…whatever it was…was big enough for echelons….and also he was…he hurt people on occasion….

Masami stopped asking questions after that.

She did not want to see Fukuda hurt. She…she did not have feelings for him, she could not have feelings for him, but she couldn't stand the thought of him getting hurt because of her. And it would have been because of her. Because she had acted so selfishly. She had been selfish enough to start all of that with him and she was selfish, no, for wanting him to be there with her instead of her husband.

"Here, look at this, dad." said Mob as she ran into the kitchen and almost bumped into mom. She knew that she had taken a long time but she had good reasons, lots of them. She had to get her hair braided, which took time, and also she had to get Sho ready to go. That meant that mom had to do less work, now. Mob was six, she was old enough to help mom out. Besides, dad liked it when she did things for herself.

"Your school satchel. Very nice. Though I have to ask, why is it pink? I thought that girls had to use red satchels." Said Suzuki as a school satchel was thrust into his arms. It was a heavy thing. Real leather, it seemed, which was good. It would last. Only the best for his daughter. It was pink, too, and it had that dreadful cat that Daughter adorned her things with. Hello Kitty. He would never understand the opposite sex.

"They have to be red?" asked Mob. Some people had red satchels but most of the girls in her class had pink or blue ones. Light blue, boys got dark blue. She didn't know why it was important to divide up the colors but she didn't know a lot of things. That was why everyone said that she couldn't get a clue.

"They did when your father and I were in school, but that was a long time ago." Said Masami

"Before I was born?" asked Mob

"Yes, a long time before you were born." Said Masami

"Oh." Said Mob. She tried to think of her mom and dad as kids. She couldn't. Mom had always been mom and dad had always been dad. It was hard to think of them as being little and going to school and playing games and stuff. She wondered what they were like when they were her age. She wondered if they all would have been friends. She can't imagine dad having friends, though, but she could imagine mom having friends. Though Mob didn't know of any friends that mom had besides Fukuda. Mom and Fukuda were best friends, it seemed, since Fukuda was always at their house and sometimes even slept over to they could all have breakfast together. But she and Sho were not allowed to talk about that because it would make dad jealous because his work too him away from his family and stuff.

"Thirty two years before you were born." Said Suzuki. That was how long it had been since he had been her age. Being six had been fun in the sense that everything had been simpler. He wondered if she was enjoying being six. Maybe not since she seemed to be in somewhat of a hurry to grow up, what with the school uniform and everything. He didn't blame her. Childhood was all about being controlled and no child of his could stand to be controlled like that.

"That's…a really long time." Said Mob. She couldn't even think of a time so long ago. Wow. Her parents must have been really old, then. They didn't seem like old people but they would be one day…maybe even soon. Time was kind of scary when you thought about it for a long time. She wondered what she would be like when she was as old as her parents. What would her kids be like? What would life be like?

That was a lot to think about.

The future was such a far off place. She didn't think that she could think about it because she had no idea what was going to happen. The world could change so much. Her world could change so much. She had no idea, before, how it would feel to go to a different school than Sho. Now she did. She had no idea how it would feel, again, when she had to go to middle school while he was still in elementary school. She also had no idea, before, what it was like to wear a uniform. She had no idea, now, what it would be like to wear a middle schooler's uniform or a high schooler's uniform. She had no idea what it would be like to wear an adult's uniform, too.

She had no idea what kind of job she would even have when she became an adult.

She didn't even know what dad did but he had to wear a suit. She had no idea if she would even have a job. Mom didn't, she was just a volunteer at the animal shelter, and dad said that when she grew up she wouldn't have to have a job besides taking care of her family. That was how a lot of moms were but some moms had jobs, too. Mob didn't know if she would have wanted to have a job. The future was still very far off.

But she knew that she did not want to rule the world.

"Not really. Time passes more quickly the older you get." Said Suzuki as he handed her back her school satchel. She was so proud of this bag, of that uniform, and that was a testament to how small her world was. When she got older, when all of his plans came together, then he would be able to give her the whole world. She deserved the world and he would give it to her.

"Is that why you're gone for so long? Because the time passes so fast that you forget how long you've been gone for?" asked Mob as dad put her school satchel back in her hands. It was heavy, for a moment, before she used her powers to help her hold it up.

"No, I know how much time is passing." Said Suzuki. Masami winced. Daughter's aura tucked in close. Both were not the responses that he thought that he would receive. People, even his own family, were truly perplexing.

"Do you…do you miss us?" asked Mob. Mom put her hands on Mob's shoulders and was trying to lead her out of the kitchen, she supposed that they needed to get to school now, but she needed to know if dad ever missed them. They missed him. Well she did, anyway. Dad…dads missed their kids when they were away. They had to.

"Shigeko, we have to get on the road if you want to make first bell." Said Masami as she tried to lead her daughter away. Shigeko was doing that thing where she just rooted herself into place and would not be moved. Masami hated it when she did this. She didn't know her husband taught their child these things. Last time this had happened Masami ended up having to buy two gallons of strawberry milk just so that she could leave the grocery store. Shigeko had finished them off within the week, of course, but that much sugar could not have been good for her.

"I think of you when I'm away. I wonder how you're doing. I wonder if you're happy. I wonder how you've grown. I, occasionally, also find myself wanting all of you near me." Said Suzuki. He wondered if that was what she wanted to hear. Daughter and Masami, what they wanted to hear. Women had soft hearts like that. He wasn't lying, he did occasionally find himself missing his family. The children's antics could be amusing at times and their worship of him never grew tiresome. Masami, well t went without question that he did not enjoy being away from his wife for so long. She had said, before, that she wondered if she even mattered to him. That had been such an odd question. Of course she did, she was his wife. If all he wanted was a nanny for his children and a maid to keep his house clean then he would have found some espers willing to serve him in that way. Or cultists. They'd do anything that he asked of them.

"We miss you too, dad." Said Mob. Ok, now she would leave. Sho was getting upset by the door, he was asking when they were going to go. Mob checked the wall clock. Yes, it was time to leave. She could go now that she knew that dad missed them. That had been a dumb question to ask. Of course he missed them when he was away, he was their dad.

"Come on, Shigeko, we have to go. Your brother is starting to get anxious." Said Masami. Shigeko was allowing herself to be moved, good. She did not want to get into that with her husband. She knew that he was telling the truth…or rather she hoped that he did. He never called when he was away. He never skyped, either, or any of the other communication platforms that were available to him. Hell, she would have taken an old fashioned letter as opposed to the weeks of silence that he would only break to tell her when he was on his way back. Sometimes it felt like he didn't even know that he had a family.

Like now.

He made no move to join them on their school run. She could have used some help wrangling Sho. He was a ball of energy at the best of times and it got even worse when it was time to go to school. She could have used some help. She could have used some company. She was going to come back to a near empty house, most likely, with him locked in his office doing whatever it was that he did for work. That was how it was in this country, her mother had complained many times on the subject when Masami was younger, but she knew that even if they were to uproot the family and move to one of the many countries that Touichirou travelled to he would not change one tiny bit. Nope.

But that was ok. That was just how her husband was.

"Dad, you can come with us if you want to." Said Mob as mom led her out of the kitchen. Fukuda sometimes walked with them to school but he was not their dad. Sometimes dads walked to school with their kids. Well back when she was in little kid school like Sho. She was too old, technically, to have any parent walking with her to school but mom said that she wasn't allowed to walk on her own. She wouldn't have minded if dad came too.

But he didn't want to.

"I trust that your mother will deliver you to school safely. Have a good day. Learn a lot." Said Suzuki. He didn't know why the children still clung to him so. She was six years old now, and Son was five, but they still clung to him just as they had when they were toddlers. Children were odd like that, he decided, or maybe he was just the strange one. Well he didn't need his children to understand him, nor did he need to understand them. He just needed their obedience and they just needed him to provide for them. There. It was such a simple relationship.

So why did it feel, at times, very complex?

There were things about interacting with others that he just did not understand. When he had been younger, as young as the children were now, the others had always said that he couldn't get a clue. He didn't care about that, now, he was a grown man and he did not have to get a clue. He was going to rule the world within ten years, he didn't need to understand others, they just needed to understand him.

Though he did wish, sometimes, that he could understand his children. He didn't know which one he wanted to understand more, they were both so perplexing, but he did wish that he had some idea of what it was that made them tick.

His wife, too.

She was a mystery to him, sometimes….and maybe he should have made more of an effort to understand her…

Or maybe she should have made more of an effort to understand him.


	22. Porridge

Suzuki Touichirou did not cook.

He knew how to cook, to an extent, but he did not cook. Others cooked for him. His wife, people who worked for him, people who worshipped him like the living God he was, they all cooked for him. He had more important things to do with his time than cook. His time was very valuable and he so rarely found himself with a surplus of it.

"This tastes different. I like it better before." Said Sho as he picked at the bowl of porridge dad had made. Dad had made them breakfast for the first time that Sho could remember…and maybe that had been for good reason. He jabbed his spoon into his porridge and tried to pull it out. The porridge kept on trying to eat it.

"That's because before someone else made it. Either eat or go hungry, it's your choice." Said Suzuki as his son made faces at the breakfast that he had prepared for him. Masami had asked him to make breakfast. Well she had said that she had a lot to do to get the kids ready in the morning and that she didn't have enough time to make breakfast. He asked her if the children were old enough to make their own breakfast and then her eyes did that thing that he strongly suspected meant that he had said something wrong.

And then she asked him if he could be so kind as to make breakfast.

He didn't want to make breakfast, he hated cooking, but if it got the children out of the house faster than he would help. He really needed to hire someone to help out with this task and all of the other domestic tasks that Masami did. There were just so few female espers…and he did not want another man in the house. That was irrational of him, he knew that Masami would never cheat on him, but he did not want to court any unpleasant emotions. Enough of the unpleasant emotions had already been brought out upon this return to his home.

There was still some distance between Masami and himself.

He thought that he would have settled it, whatever that terrible mood of hers was, when he told her that he would do whatever she wanted to make her feel loved. She wanted affection and he would give it to her whenever she asked. He enjoyed giving and receiving affection from her as well, though he knew that it made him weak, weak and some other emotions that he knew would not lead to anything good. She didn't know, nobody knew, just how much emotional control he needed to have over his powers. Well, there was one person who might have understood…

But she was not there now.

Daughter was being groomed so that she would be fit to be seen by the world. There was so much work that women needed to do to look nice, girls as well it seemed. Daughter's hair needed to be brushed and braided and she needed to be dressed in her school uniform, apparently she had some trouble with buttons, and she needed Masami's help to do all of this. It had been a slow start for the children, it seemed that they had been up late playing, and that had caused the late start to the day.

And also why he of all people had made breakfast.

"Can I have something else?" asked Sho

"Do you plan on making it yourself?" asked Suzuki

"Mom says that I'm too little to use the stove." Said Sho

"Then I guess you're eating what I made." Said Suzuki. He didn't see why Sho was too young to cook for himself, if he set himself on fire they had a healer on call. Sho was five now, he should have been old enough to do something for himself. Anything. He didn't much feel like questioning Masami's judgement, though, because the domestic sphere was not his place to be making comments. Within these four walls Masami was God.

"But I don't like it." Said Sho

"Then don't eat it." Said Suzuki. He wondered if Daughter was just an usually wonderful child. She never whined like this. This whining was grating on his very soul.

"I liked it better before." Said Sho sticking out his tongue even though mom said that if he did that then a crow would swoop down and mistake his tongue for a worm.

"I know. You've said that already. You're going around in circles." Said Suzuki trying his best to keep his aura still. He wanted to reach over and smack his son across the mouth for his constant whining but Masami was upset enough with him already. What she was so upset about he still did not know. He did know, however, that he did not want to make it any worse than it had to be.

"No I'm not, I'm sitting in my spot." Said Sho with a shrug.

"I didn't mean literally. I meant that you had already said that and I already told you that, before, someone else had made your breakfast. Now I've made it and there's nothing wrong with it but if you want to go hungry then that's your business. I don't particularly care either way." said Suzuki

"…Fukuda's is better…" muttered Sho. That was mean. Dad was so mean sometimes. That didn't matter, he had other people who were nice to him. Like Fukuda. Sho wondered when he would be coming back. He came over when he accidentally bought extra food at the store…maybe he had finally learned how to buy just enough food for himself…that's not a thought that Sho likes to have at all.

"And how would you know that?" asked Suzuki not looking up. Honestly, the things that came out of his son's mouth. He would gladly have taken daughter upending her school bag in front of him and explain in painstaking detail each and every single one of the books and trinkets which lay within than his son's juvenile attempts at making him jealous.

"Know what?" asked Sho. Dad was talking to him like…like he didn't know what he was talking about! Well Fukuda was a million and one times the cook that dad was! And he was a better storyteller too! And he knew how to play Mario Party and Mario Kart! And he was good at washing hair so that none of the soap got in your eyes! And mom always smiled when he was around!

"That Fukuda cooks better than I do. He's a healer, not a cook." Said Suzuki making an effort not to look at his son. If he did not look at the boy then he would not get angry with the boy. There. Simple. If he got angry with the boy then he would punish him and that would just make Masami unhappy with him….and she was unhappy enough as it was.

"Sometimes he helps mom make us breakfast." Said Sho. He did too know what he was talking about!

"...when she was ill, you mean?" asked Suzuki after a moment. Well that was…not what Fukuda was paid for. He was paid to be a healer, not an on call chef, and if Masami had been too ill to cook then she could have ordered takeout from any restaurant in the city. They certainly had enough money for that. Hell, if she didn't want to cook any more than they could afford to order takeout three times a day for the rest of their lives. Four time, five times, every hour of every day if she so wanted to.

"Yeah, back when she was super sick…but also when she started to get better. He came over a lot. He made us breakfast and lunch and dinner. He played with us and read to us and helped mom give us a bath and-" said Sho naming all of the things that dad should have done but didn't. Well he would have done all of that for big sis. He liked big sis. He liked her that best and sometimes Sho wondered why they even bothered to have him if dad thought that he and mom had gotten it right the first time.

"Did he now?" asked Suzuki trying his best to keep his tone level. He would have to speak to Fukuda later about this. He had been hired to be a healer, not a chef or a nursemaid. Masami…she might have asked him to…or maybe he took it upon himself. Both options make his aura flare and churn dangerously.

"Yes." said Sho

"And did your mother ask him to help or did he take it upon himself?" asked Suzuki in that same measured tone. He needed to keep it together. This was…both options gave birth to emotions that he needed to exorcise for his own good. He could not lose control. He would not lose control. Nothing had…there was no reason to him to feel like this. Masami had just…taken ill…and needed help around the house…so she asked…he did not want to think about this.

"I don't know." Said Sho. He didn't know if mom asked him to come over of it he just came around. He was always saying that he accidentally bought extra food and stuff but how could he tell if it was extra if he had just come from the store?

"Try to remember, yes?" asked Suzuki

"Ok….I think mom asked him to because he was here so much…but one time I called him because mom was sick…and he started coming by a lot after that. He came by a lot of the time after he got extra food…even though me and big sis didn't know how he could tell if it was extra yet…" said Sho

"Did he now…?" said Suzuki

"Yes, he did, and when he made breakfast it didn't try and eat my spoon." Said Sho sticking out his tongue once again. Suzuki did not comment on that. If his son wanted to act like that then he could have been dealt with later. Right now he had other things to mull over.

"Then make your own breakfast if you're going to be so picky. Honestly, your sister would have never behaved like this." said Suzuki as his son huffed and puffed beside him. The boy was not helpless. He could make his own food…or better yet call Fukuda since he held the man in such high regard.

"Well I'm not big sis." Said Sho. He wanted to take his breakfast and throw it at dad but that would just get him punished.

"Obviously." Said Suzuki not even looking at his son. He so wished that his son was more like his daughter. In temperament especially. Daughter would never have turned her nose up at what had been provided for her. Daughter, also, never would have made such a juvenile attempt at getting under his skin. Daughter would have known better than to compare him to one of his subordinates.

"….I'm going to make cereal." Said Sho. His insides hurt, then, when dad said that. He knew that sticks and stones could break his bones but words would never hurt him. Well he would have rather had a broken bone, all of the bones in his body smashed to bits and used to make marrow soup, than have to listen to dad say such mean stuff to him.

"This is cereal." Said Suzuki picking at his own breakfast. Hot cereal like he remembered his own mother making for him when he was young.

"Is not. It's porridge." Said Sho. Dad was bad at cooking. Everyone knew that cereal came in boxes and had marshmallows and prizes inside and stuff. Honestly, that was why mom or Fukuda should have been the only ones allowed in the kitchen.

"Which is a type of cereal. Hot cereal. Not that sugary garbage you and your sister enjoy so much." Said Suzuki

"It's not garbage, dad, it's good and it turns the milk green, too." Said Sho

"Disgusting." Said Suzuki

"Is not!" said Sho. Suzuki could feel a flare building. He kept his aura and himself under control. He needed to. He could not lose control, not over something as inconsequential as the boy.

"Either eat this, make your own breakfast, or starve. I don't care what you do so long as it involves you shutting your mouth." Said Suzuki. Daughter was never like this. She was always so grateful. She was such a good child, his favorite child, and not just because she shared his gifts. He could not take much more of Boy's whining. He never recalled whining this much as a child and he couldn't imagine Masami ever whining like this, either.

"….fine…" said Sho. He got off his chair and dragged it over to the cupboard. It was easier when big sis helped out. She had powers. Dad liked her better because she had powers. Dad was a jerk to him because he didn't have powers. It was fine. Dad hadn't knocked him down or hit him or anything so it was fine.

His chair wobbled as he got his cereal out of the cupboard. Dad didn't even look his way.

Dad would have helped big sis if she had been about to fall. He would have caught her with his powers and told her to be more careful and he would have been all worried about her and stuff. Dad never worried about him. Dad never cared about him. Sho looked down. He was high up. A fall from this high might break a whole bunch of his bones. That would take a while to heal.

He might even get some decent breakfast out of it.

Sho let the chair he was on wobble a bit more. Dad didn't even look at him. He was looking at something on his phone. He didn't care about Sho. If it had been big sis up there wobbling like that then he would have told her to be careful. He cared so much about her…it wasn't fair!

He let himself wobble some more.

And then he fell.

"Next time be more careful." Said Suzuki not looking up. He had been waiting for…he didn't even know what. For Sho to catch himself? For Sho to reach with his powers and get the balls of sugar and empty calories that he so desired. Hell, even something as simple as an aural flare would have been fine. But no, all he got was his son laying on the ground and a floor covered in green cereal pieces and tiny marshmallows.

"All of my bones are broken!" said Sho as he laid down on the ground. He didn't know if they were broken or not but maybe if he said so loud enough dad would call Fukuda. Even if all of the bones in his body weren't broken Fukuda could still find something to fix.

"Ae they now?" asked Suzuki. He could have helped his son up. He could have made sure that his bones were, in fact, not broken. He could have done a lot of things. He didn't much see the reason why he should have. Sho was probably fine. He always made something out of nothing. Still, there was a mess and Suzuki maybe should have done something….

He picked up the floor.

The last thing that they needed was rats. Sho could get himself sorted out. He had gotten himself into that predicament and he could get himself out of it. If he truly was hurt then he could have called Fukuda. The man had already spent so much time with his family already….

"Little brother!" said Mob. She heard a loud sound and came running. Her shirt wasn't all the way buttoned but she didn't care. Sho was hurt! She picked Sho up and sat him down on his chair with her powers. He just crossed his arms and kicked at her.

"Leave me alone! I'm fine!" said Sho as he got up off of his chair and left the room. He didn't have anywhere in particular in mind, he just wanted to get as far away from dad and big sis as possible. Let them have breakfast together….and lunch and dinner too! He didn't care anymore! He stomped down the hallway and would have made it to his room if mom hadn't stopped him.

"Sho! What's the matter? What was that sound?" asked Masami. She got down to his level and checked him for injuries. He seemed fine, perfectly fine, but if he had done something to warrant being punished…

He looked fine.

"Nothing! I'm fine!" said Sho. He tried to push past mom but she held him in place. If he had powers he could have gotten free…but no, just no. He would never have hurt his mom like that. He loved her so much…she did not deserve him being mean to her and pushing her and stuff like that. He was her favorite, after all, just like big sis was dad's favorite. That was how it worked in families. Each parent had a favorite kid and in families with three or more kids…well those kids were out of luck, then, now weren't they.

No matter how bad stuff got he was grateful not to have a little brother or sister.

"Sho….did your dad punish you again? I've told you time and time again not to-" said Masami. She knew that Touichirou would never do anything to hurt either of the children but he was very old fashioned when it came to some things…like discipline. He was very old fashioned when it came to discipline and Sho…he and his father didn't always get along.

"No! He doesn't care about me! I fell down right in front of him and he didn't even do anything. If I had been big sis he would have caught me or-or-or something! It isn't fair. He likes her better just because she has powers." Said Sho

"Sho-" said Masami

"I could have broken all of my bone into a million little pieces and he still wouldn't have tried to catch me. I fell from up high, really high, and he didn't even…care." Said Sho

"You fell? From where?" asked Masami as she gave her son a onceover. He seemed…he wasn't bleeding. He was…he seemed ok. He seemed like he was doing alright…no blood, no bruises that she could see…nothing physically anyway.

"From the chair. I was trying to get cereal and I fell down." Said Sho

"Sho…I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you fell down and I'm sorry that your dad didn't…he didn't notice until it was too late." Said Masami. She needed to think up a lie and she needed to think it up quick. She could not…her son was too young to know just how selfish his father could be…not that he could have been that selfish…or maybe he could have been. Maybe he truly could have been so selfish that he didn't even lift a finger to help his son…or to make him breakfast.

She asked so little of her husband…

"He noticed. He didn't care. All he did after I fell down was clean up all the cereal with his powers. If he could clean up the cereal then he could have helped me. He just didn't want to because I'm not big sis." Said Sho

"Sho….some people just aren't good in a crisis. Some people…some people get mad, some people run away, some people act, and some people freeze. Your father…sometimes people freeze and they don't know what to do. That's all. Your father…daddy loves you. Remember that he loves you, ok? Now come on, let's go have some breakfast and then-" said Masami

"I'd rather starve to death." Said Sho crossing his arms.

"Sho! You shouldn't say things like that!" said Masami

"It's true! Dad said that I could either eat what he made, make my own breakfast, or starve….so I choose to starve. I am not eating breakfast. I am not!" said Sho. Masami took in a deep breath and shook her head.

"Sho…are you really not hungry?" asked Masami. Sho shook his head.

"I'm not hungry one tiny bit." Said Sho

"Ok…then can you…can you get dressed for school? I have to….to straighten some things out with your father." Said Masami. She patted Sho on the head and went to go have a word with her dear husband. Honestly. She asked so little of him and he still couldn't…she ended that train of thought. He did a lot for her. He didn't do the things that she wanted him to do but he did do a lot to provide for his family.

So could she ask for more?

She wasn't asking so much more of him than any other wife would have asked for her husband. She knew that his work was important to him. He was trying to change the world or something like that. Well she hadn't asked him for the world, she had only asked him to make breakfast for their children before she took them on the death march to Shigeko's new school! She just asked him to make breakfast, that was all, she didn't ask him to cook them a twelve course feast!

She marched into the kitchen fully intending to get into it with her husband at that insanely early hour of the morning, and was just about to, when she heard something that stopped her dead in her tracks.

"….and then Fukuda taught us how to make s'mores in the microwave. You have to be careful or the marshmallows with explode and make the microwave all dirty. Then we all watched Frozen together. We switched between Japanese and English. In Japanese the song is called, the one that she sings when she goes up the mountain after everyone finds out about her ice powers goes-" said Mob as she ate her cold breakfast. Dad called it porridge but she called it cold mush. She didn't care, it wouldn't kill her, and she got to talk to dad for a little bit. She knew that she should have gone after Sho but dad had said to leave him be and when dad said something she had to do it.

"Daughter, I am well aware of that movie. You have shown me that movie one five separate occasions. Please, do not sing a single bar of a single song from that movie." Said Suzuki. Children were awful storytellers, truly awful, but there was much information to be gleaned from their stories as disjointed as they were.

"Oh…ok. Well after we watched Frozen Fukuda helped mom give us a bath and then he read to us about Hello Kitty, the book where she and her friends bake a cake. He did voices, too, like he did a really funny one for her friend-" said Mob

"Shigeko, finish your breakfast. It's a long walk to school." Said Masami as soon as she got her bearing. No. Just…no. Children had tape recorder eyes and ears. They were incapable, truly incapable, of keeping anything to themselves. She didn't know what the children knew…or what they would say….or what her husband would make of it.

And she didn't want to start up with all of that. Not now and not ever.

"Yes mom." Said Mob as she shoveled cold much into her mouth. It tasted of nothing, amazingly enough, absolutely nothing. It also tried to hold on to her spoon when she tried to dig it out. Maybe this was why moms were the cooks, not dad. Wait…that wasn't fair, Fukuda had been a very good cook when he came over. Fukuda cooked much better than dad did so it must not have had anything to do with if you were a boy or a girl.

"Masami, join us. I'll have a car sent." Said Suzuki. He pushed out a chair with his powers and she sat down slowly. He used his powers to ladle her a bowl of what Daughter had so lovingly referred to as 'cold mush'. Masami took her spoon in her hand but made no move to eat.

"You don't have to do that. We can walk, it isn't that-" said Masami. She felt…she felt cornered. Like a mouse did when it got spotted by a cat. She wanted…she wanted to get out of the kitchen and take the kids to school…or just somewhere out of the house. She felt something like a sort of static electricity poking at her arms. Her husband…she knew what his aura felt like.

"I've already called the car, it'll be here shortly, and with child safety seats created for their exact heights and weights. Now, please, have breakfast with me. We'll have time to talk." Said Suzuki. He was not angry with her. He could not be angry with her. She had done nothing wrong. She had…she had needed help and she had asked for it. She had asked another man for help…but nothing more. He was being irrational.

These were crazy people thoughts.

Suzuki was many things but crazy was not one of them.

"I…I have a lot to do. I have to do the ironing and the shopping for tonight's dinner and I have to mop the kitchen and vacuum the living room and-" said Masami

"Ask Fukuda to help." Said Suzuki. Her eyes went wide, then, when he said that. Suspicious…somewhat…no. He had nothing to be suspicious of. He was thinking and acting irrationally, that was all. Masami was his and she would never, ever, ever cheat on him. Ever.

"Can he come over again? Mom, can he?" asked Mob. That would have been so great! Maybe he could play with them again, even, or anything really. She just wanted him around, that was all.

"I…nobody is sick or hurt right now so no, Shigeko, now finish your breakfast. The car to take you to school will be here any minute and we shouldn't keep the driver waiting, that would be rude, and also a waste of money." Said Masami. Suzuki kept himself calm. Now she wanted to talk about wasting his employees' time and his money? Now, not when she was using his only healer as a chef and maid and nanny and-

He exorcised that emotion.

"So he was only here so often because he was tending to you?" asked Suzuki evenly. Masami nodded.

"Yes. He was just worried, I was too sick to do…anything…and he just sort of took it upon himself to help out with the housework and to spend time with the kids. You know how they are." Said Masami trying to sound calmer than she was. She needed to think up something that would satisfy her husband. She needed…she did not need him to be suspicious of her.

Of anything.

As far as he was concerned everything was hunky dory in the Suzuki household and that was how it was going to stay.

"I see….alright then. What you're saying is you need help around the house. Very well, I'll make inquiries." Said Suzuki as he flipped through his phone. So few female espers…so very few…he could not wait until daughter came of age…or at least became old enough to help her mother out around the house in some substantial way. When she was old enough to have her own children. In about ten years or so.

Those years could not pass by fast enough.

"You really don't have to hire anyone." Said Masami. She did not want servants. She knew that Touichirou had money and that he fancied them something akin to the royal family. When they had gotten married he promised her fleets of servants…as soon as he could find some…and Masami did not need fleets of servants waiting on her hand and foot! She wanted a husband by her side! What was so hard to figure out about that!? And he wondered why she had Fukuda over so often! Why the kids liked him better! Why she had let Fukuda into her life, her home, her bed-

Don't think about it.

Not while your husband and daughter are sitting there at the table with you.

"You need someone to help you and I'll get you the help you need. I've been wanting to get you some help around the house for a while now but female espers are rare, very rare, and the ones which I have found leave much to be desired." Said Suzuki. The Awakened, as he called them, were largely useless. Barely any power to them at all. Very few even showed the slightest signs of power…and very few or those few were female.

He did not want any man in that house that was not him or his son when he grew up.

"There aren't any girl espers besides me?" asked Mob

"There are, there are few of them but there are other female espers. Whether they are suited to serve this family or not…well that will take some thought." Said Suzuki

"…they don't have to be espers…" said Masami. She did not want servants, she did not need help, but she did not want her husband to go digging around in that area. She would talk more about this later, when the children were in bed, and not while her daughter was there looking up at them with her eyes wide and her face blank as she took in things that she could not begin to understand.

"Yes they do." Said Suzuki. She was being odd, he didn't know why she was being so odd, but he would figure it out later if it was something that she needed to tell him about. He felt…better. She was amenable to him bringing in help. That was good. She had been overwhelmed, that was all, it had nothing at all to do with her wanting to be near Fukuda. That was good.

That was a relief.

"We…we'll talk about this later on. Come on, Shigeko, let's go get Sho ready before that car gets here." Said Masami. She didn't wait for her daughter to follow her, she just got up and left the kitchen as fast as she could without it being suspicious. That had been close, too close. He could have found out…he could have known…

But he didn't know.

That was what mattered the most.


	23. Big Kid Feelings

Sho's school let out before big sis' school.

A whole hour before her school let out. That meant that he and mom had a whole hour to kill before they had to be at big sis' school. Well mom said that it was more like half an hour to forty five minutes but Sho didn't care. He didn't care how long they had, just that he had some time to play with his friends…or rather kids from his class. He never went to anyone else's house and they never came to his…

Dad wouldn't like that, mom said.

He remembered when he was really little dad and mom had an argument about whether or not he and big sis should have been allowed to go to school. Dad said no because he didn't want his kids mixing with normal people. Mom said yes because she wanted him and big sis to learn how to be around people and talk to them. Mom won the fight and he and big sis were allowed to go to school.

And nothing more.

"Here, if you stand up on the swing you'll go higher." Said Sho. He was playing on the swings with a kid from his class, Akira. He was nice. They played together a lot and had snack together a lot and pushed their futons together a lot during naptime. Not that Sho actually slept, no, he just tried his best to lay very still. His best wasn't good enough a lot of the time but it was the effort that mattered.

Besides, it wasn't like he was bothering anyone.

"But what if I fall?" Akira asked. Sho shrugged as he climbed up onto the swing. Mom looked up from her phone and he smiled at her to let her know that everything was ok. He wouldn't get hurt and even if he did mom could just call Fukuda. Other kids weren't' so lucky though….

"If you start to fall just tell me and then I'll throw myself on the ground first. That way you can land on me like a crashmat." Said Sho. That seemed like as good of a plan as any. He knew that if he had been playing with big sis she would have been all 'Sho, we need to follow the rules' and 'Sho we could get really hurt' and 'Sho it's not polite to put your shoes where people sit' and so on and so forth. He wished, sometimes, that he had a big brother instead of a big sister. He wondered what that would have been like. Maybe a lot like this.

Maybe.

"But then you'll get hurt."Akira said. Sho started rocking on his swing to get some air.

"I don't care. If I get hurt then I get hurt. That's part of the fun, I think, that you could get hurt. It's less safe that way. Safe stuff is so boring." Said Sho as he tried to get some air. This was a lot easier when big sis could push him with her powers…but she was busy at big kid school so whatever. He was happy where he was, too. He didn't need her to have fun…

But he did miss her.

Playing with her was different, more boring, but there was some fun stuff to it, too. Plush he didn't get that weird, nervous, sort of feeling he got sometimes when he was around other people. There were different kinds of nervous feelings, really. There were the kinds he got when he had trouble talking, the kinds where he hid behind mom even though he wasn't supposed to, and the kind he got now. Kind of like nervous but also like he just ate a bunch of pop rocks and soda pop and then jumped on the bed for a million minutes. That was how he felt now.

He didn't know if he liked or disliked it.

"Do you really promise to break my fall?" Akira asked. Sho nodded.

"Of course. It won't be that hard. Just tell me when you're going to fall and I'll be your crashmat" said Sho. He got some air…and then he slowed down. He had to be the crashmat after all. He couldn't be the crashmat if he went super high or super fast. This was not the time to try and go over the bar. Not that he had ever been able to go over the bar on his own before. Big sis had used her powers once but that was at the much smaller swings that they had at home…and also mom said not to ever do that again because it was dangerous.

Moms worried a lot like that.

Girls in general worried a lot. Boys were more fun. They played actual games, not just dolls and house all the time, and also they liked to run and climb more. Sho was glad he was a boy. He didn't know what he would do if he was a girl. Go crazy, probably, or maybe he'd like it. Maybe if he were a girl he'd like to play with girls more and then he'd wear dresses and play house and love to be boring. Yup, he'd lose his mind.

Boys were way more fun than girls, anyway.

"It's hard to stay balanced like this!" said Akira

"That's because you're moving too much. Just rock back and forth with your body but leave your feet alone. If your feet move then you'll move too much and then you'll fall off." Said Sho

"O-Ok….but it's hard to keep my feet still. The swing keeps moving." Said Akira. Sho shook his head. It wasn't that hard if you stopped being afraid. People were too afraid sometimes. What was the worst that could happen? You fall and break your bones into a million little pieces? They could tape you back together at the hospital. Bones were easy to fix. Besides, nobody that he knew of had ever died from falling off of a swing.

"You've got to stay still or you'll fall off." Said Sho

"Do you do this a lot?" asked Akira

"Yeah, at home. I almost went over the bar like this once but then I had to stop because my mom was getting scared." Said Sho stretching the truth just a tiny bit. There was no need to mention that his big sister helped out with her psychic powers. No need to mention that at all. Besides, Sho wanted him to think that he was cool. That felt very important right now. Sho liked it when people paid attention to him and sometimes he really liked it when specific people paid attention to him.

Akira was one of those people.

Sho didn't understand why. Mom was always saying that he had to be the center of attention. She said that like it was a bad thing. Sho liked it when people paid attention to him, it wasn't like he was doing bad things. This wasn't bad, it was fun, and it got him attention. He didn't know what it meant when he only wanted a specific person's attention. He'd wonder about that later. Who cared about the why? It was the now that mattered…or something like that. Something that he had read on the back of a fortune cookie a while ago.

"Sho! Be careful over there!" said mom. Sho smiled at her again. He was being careful. He wasn't trying to go super high or jump off or anything like that. He could think of five dangerous things, more dangerous things, that he could have been doing right then and there.

"Maybe we should stop…you mom is yelling at you." Said Akira

"Her? She's fine, you know how moms are. They worry about everything." Said Sho

"Are you sure that this is safe?" asked Akira

"Is anything? I mean think about it, you could trip and fall down the stairs on your way home from school if you aren't careful…or you could choke on your lunch…or you could fall asleep and never wake up like old people do." Said Sho. Maybe that wasn't the thing to say. Maybe he had been clueless, like big sis, and now he had lost himself a very good friend…person from his class…who he liked talking to and hanging out with even though the whole thing made him feel all weird inside but also it was kind of a nice sort of weird but it was quickly turning into a not so nice sort of weird-

So he swung higher.

He swung higher in an attempt to outrun that feeling. He could hear Akira telling him that he was going to get hurt. He didn't care, he just wanted to escape that weird feeling that he was getting. It wasn't a good one and he did not want to feel it but he had no idea what to do besides outrunning it…so he did. He swung as high as he could until he couldn't swing any higher at all.

And then he jumped.

And someone caught him.

He opened his eyes. Mom. Big sis was gone and dad never came with them to the park so of course it was mom. Akira had stopped swinging and was looking at him, now. Sho tried to get out of his mom's arms. He was turning red he was so embarrassed. He looked just like a baby. He was five years old, now, much too old to have his mom pick him up and hold him like this.

"Sho! Don't ever do anything so dangerous again!" mom said as she held him close like he was going to start crying or something. He wasn't. Mom was just being weird and stuff. He was fine. He had never been in any danger and even if he had been Fukuda could have just come back to the house to put him back together. Moms. They were always overreacting. Better than dads, though, they didn't care what happened to you.

Yeah, he liked mom better…even if she did embarrass him.

"Mom, stop it. I'm fine….come on, people are looking." Said Sho as he pushed against his mom to try and get down to the ground before any more people saw this. He looked back at Akira but he had gone back to his own mother which meant that they wouldn't be able to play again until playtime tomorrow and that made that weird feeling come back but mom was holding him and he had no way to run away even though he wanted nothing more than to run away and never look back until he got way too tired to even begin to feel feelings…but that was not possible. For one thing mom wouldn't let him do that and for another thing no matter where he went his brain would follow.

Mom put him down. At least he had that going for him.

"Sho, that was dangerous. What if I hadn't been here to catch you? You aren't at home. If you get seriously hurt out here people are going to expect me to take you to a hospital…and you know that your dad doesn't like hospitals." Said mom

"I would have been fine, mom, really. You don't need to freak out like this. I'm five, not four." Said Sho. he expected mom to keep lecturing him, to go on and on until his ears got sore, but instead she just started smiling at him.

"You're right about that, Sho, you aren't four years old anymore." Said mom

"I'm not, so don't go holding me like that in front of people. It's embarrassing. Everyone saw you holding me. Akira saw you holding me. Mom, please, I'm not a baby anymore. I'm in kindergarten, now, not preschool." Said Sho. Mom kept on smiling and patted him on the head. His hair went back to standing up the minute she took her hand out of it. It just sort of did that. People thought that it was cool.

"How about this, I won't pick you up in public if you agree to never, ever, try jump from so high up ever again. Do we have a deal?" asked mom

"But I had to jump." Said Sho

"Oh? Someone twisted your arm?" asked mom

"No…I just felt weird so I had to…" said Sho quietly. Mom put her thinking face on. Sho didn't like it when mom made that face. Nothing good followed it.

"Weird how?" asked mom

"I don't know. Kind of good and bad at the same time? Kind of like…like I drank a liter of soda and then a pack of pop rocks and then I jumped on the bed a whole bunch. It was weird so I tried to do stuff until I got away from all the weird feelings…and then I jumped. So, yeah, I had a very good reason! The best reason! And I'd do it again!" said Sho stomping his foot for emphasis. Mom just smiled at him for a long time.

"Do you…do you get this feeling a lot?" asked Mom. Sho nodded yes.

"Sometimes." Said Sho

"Is it around one specific person?" asked Mom. Sho looked at the ground. He was embarrassed…and he didn't even know why.

"Right now yeah but sometimes it's around different people." Said Sho

"And was that bo-kid, was that kid one of those people?" asked mom. Sho nodded yes. He felt kind of weird, now, admitting it to mom…but that made no sense. He always told mom everything. That was what moms were for, knowing stuff about you. They were never mean to you and never made fun of you. They were kind of like big sisters except they knew how to make dinner and give baths and were allowed to boss you around all the time.

"Uh-huh…" said Sho. He looked down at his shoes now. He didn't want to look at mom or be looked at. He didn't know why he was so embarrassed, just that he was, and this was another feeling that he did not like one bit but there was no running from this feeling just like there had been no running from his other feelings. No matter where he went his feelings would follow.

So maybe he should just deal with it.

He could exorcise it like big sis could exorcise spirits. Just walk up to it and go 'hey! Knock it off!' and then they would. Yes, he'd try that. He looked up from his shoes and stared at mom. Maybe he stared her down. He wasn't sure. What he was sure of, though, was that he did not like this feeling and the he wanted it to go away.

"And I won't feel bad about that! I don't know why I feel bad about how I feel but I don't want to so I won't. My feelings aren't the boss of me, I'm the boss of me, and I say knock it off!" said Sho. Mom just stared at him for a moment before she laughed. She put her hand over her mouth and she laughed.

Sho didn't much like being laughed at.

"Sho…honey mommy's not laughing at you…you're just so adorable right now I wish I had recorded that." Said mom. Sho stuck out his tongue. No, he did not need any more embarrassing stuff recorded on mom's phone. She had so much already…like the time when he was a baby and he got spaghetti all over himself…or the time big sis put him in a dress and pretended he was a doll…or the time he got his hand stuck in that jam jar…

"….I'm not adorable. I'm big now." Said Sho s seriously as he possibly could…which just made mom laugh again. Great.

"Right, right, right. You're a big kid now and…and let's call those big kid feelings. Ok?" asked mom

"Big kid feelings?" asked Sho

"Yes, big kid feelings. You're getting older and you're going to feel…like that…about gir-people, a lot of people, and it's normal. Sometimes these feelings can be good, like you're walking on air, and sometimes these feelings make us want to jump off of the nearest tall building." Said Mom

"Yeah…they do…" said Sho

"But no matter what feeling like that is ok. It's a normal part of growing up, ok? You're ok just the way you are, Sho, remember. There is nothing wrong with…people are going to…and it's none of their god damned business…and you're right, you should never feel weird or bad about having feelings like that no matter who you're having them for…God…already. I can't believe it…oh God…it was just yesterday that I was changing your diapers and now you're-" said mom

"Mom! Stop talking about when I was a baby! You're embarrassing me!" said Sho. Mom just smiled and touched his hair again. She kept on doing that…why? He had red hair and it was spiky on it's own. She had five years to get use dot it! He knew that he had! It was one thing for strangers on the street to touch his hair but his own mother….?

"Sorry, I'm sorry. You're right, you're a big boy now. Come on, let's go pick up your sister before the school decides to keep her." said Mom. She tried to take his hand and walk with him but he pulled away. He was a big kid now, hand holding was only for crossing the street. What would people think if they saw him holding hands with his mother? What would people that he had big kid feelings about think? Nothing good. They'd be all 'Suzuki Sho is a baby who still holds his mom's hand and sleeps next to his big sister and also drunks out of a sippy cup sometimes' which would not be good at all. Dad would just say that he was weak, clinging to mom like that, because dad said that everything he did was weak and wrong. Well that was dad. He was ok the way he was, just like mom had said. Just like she was always saying.

He was Suzuki Sho and he was ok just the way he was.


	24. The World's Worst Hiding Spot

Sho knew that he was not supposed to be in mom and dad's room.

Not while dad was there, anyway.

Mom sometimes let him and big sis hang out in there with her. She also sometimes even let them sleep with her if they were scared or lonely even though they had each other. Dad didn't want them in his room, though. They had their own room, dad said, and that meant that they did not need to be in his under any circumstances. Sho knew that playing hide and seek counted as being 'under any circumstances'.

But this was a really good hiding spot.

Big sis would never find him here! They had been playing in the yard so that was where she would spend most of her time looking. It wasn't against the rules because they had never agreed that they would only be hiding in the yard. He was so going to win. The winner was the person who hid for so long that the seeker gave up. Kind of like the time he had looked for big sis for an hour before he found her on the ceiling. The only rule was no powers, no disguises, and no running around switching hiding spots.

So she could hire a hide and seek lawyer and he'd still have an airtight case!

He had the best hiding spot in the world and it wasn't against any rules! He was hiding in mom and dad's closet. He had been in here a few times but not for a while. There were so many boxes and bags that he had plenty of places to hide. There was nothing interesting in the boxes and bags. The bags were the hanging kind and inside were only mom's dresses and dad's suits. Sho used to think that he just never changed but, apparently, he just owned a million of the same suit. That seemed kind of boring to Sho. kind of really boring. This whole closet was kind of really boring. The bags were boring and so were the boxes. The big ones had papers and the little ones had mom's shoes in them. So boring….but such a good hiding spot.

Big sis would never find him in there!

Or maybe she would. Sho heard the door open and flattened himself against the wall. How had she found him so fast?! What, did she have super hide and seek powers too?!

"Touichirou, I don't want any servants or maids or nannies or whoever else you're thinking of hiring, ok?" That was mom's voice. Well that made sense, it was mom and dad's room. Sho crawled to the door and peeked through the slats. She sounded kind of upset…and she looked kind of upset too. She was folding up some clothes from the laundry basket. Dad was with her too but he wasn't helping. Sho kind of wanted to help, mom liked when he was her good little helper, but he also didn't want to lose the game…and make dad mad, too, since he was most certainly not supposed to be in mom and dad's room…while dad was there at least.

Sho decided to stay put.

He did not feel like getting punished that day.

"But you said that you needed help." Said dad. Sho had no idea how dad felt. He never showed it. Ever. Kind of like big sis. She showed it sometimes, which was good, but dad never showed his feelings. He looked the same whether he was happy that he got breakfast for dinner or upset that he had to punish you.

"I…you know, Touichirou, you can help me while you're here. Nothing's stopping you." Said mom. Sho knew that tone. That was the 'get off your butt and be a good helper' tone. Dad was to clueless to know what mom meant, though, and he didn't start helping right when mom said that even though she so obviously wanted help.

"I have no idea what you want me to do." Said Dad

"Well, what am I doing?" asked mom

"Folding clothes." Said Dad. Mom rolled her eyes. Dad couldn't see her rolling her eyes, her back was to him, but Sho could. Mom should not have done that. She said that he and big sis weren't allowed to roll their eyes because it was rude and stuff. It wasn't fair that she made a rule for them but did not follow it herself. It was like how she jumped on the bed but told them that they weren't allowed to jump on the bed. Parents sucked sometimes.

No, not mom. Never mom.

But dad sucked sometimes.

Like now. Mom needed help. She said that she needed help and when someone said that they needed help then you had to help them. That was how it worked. Even if you didn't want to help the person you still had to. Like when your sister needed someone to play dolls with her or when she needed someone to brush the other side of her hair for her or when she needed someone to taste her milk for her to see if it had gone bad. That was what people did, they helped each other out when they needed it. People needed other people.

"Yes, I am. Can you maybe, you know, help me?" asked mom

"You've never asked me to help you before." Said dad

"You've never offered to help me." Said mom

"So you have needed help, then?" asked dad

"Touichirou…I want help from you. Not servants, ok? You. My husband. I know that when we were growing up this was how the labor was divided….but that was then and this is now. I want…I want you and I to be equal partners, ok?" asked mom. Sho nodded even though mom couldn't see him. That made sense. Moms and dads were teams just like brothers and sisters were teams. Moms and dads were kind of like brothers and sisters except they didn't have the same parents and also kissed….well he assumed his mom and dad kissed. He had never seen them kiss but he knew that it was something that moms and dads did.

And it was gross.

The most gross.

"But we aren't. You know about these things, the home and the family, and here I defer to your judgement." Said dad

"Oh? You defer to my judgement?" asked mom. Sho didn't know what 'defer to my judgement' meant but he did know that tone of voice. She was being sarcastic. She sometimes talked like that with Fukuda but less….mean…if that was the word for how she sounded. Mom and Fukuda never talked to each other the way mom and dad did.

"Yes. When it comes to the house and the children I defer to your judgement. I have never once questioned the choices you have made for our children." Said dad

"What have I done that you find so very questionable?" asked mom in a low, mean, dangerous sort of tone. One that Sho found to be very out of place on his mother. That was not…she should not have sounded like that even if she was talked to dad and even if dad was being a major jerk to her.

"Having Sho at a hospital, putting the children in school, taking them out into the world, letting them share a room-" said dad

"If you had it your way we'd be isolated in this-this-this cage!" said mom

"This is not a cage. It's a house. You're free to leave at any time." Said dad. Mom made a weird choking sort of sound and her eyes got wide and watery. She looked like she was about to cry. Sho wanted to rush out of the closet and yell at dad for making mom feel bad but he also didn't want to be punished. He was kind of a scaredy cat like that…and he didn't like it at all…but he was so much smaller than dad was…and there was nothing that he could do.

"You want me to leave you, Touichirou?" asked mom. Sho watched her. She seemed sad and mad at the same time, there. He didn't want mom to go, and he almost told her to stay, but he stopped himself. He did not need to end up in trouble for being in mom and dad's closet…and being in trouble with dad was the worst thing ever. He knew that sometimes moms and dads left, that was called having divorced parents, and he also knew that some kids were orphans. He didn't want to be an orphan and he didn't want mom and dad to be divorced either. When you were from a divorced family you had to leave one parent behind forever…and he didn't want to leave either of his parents behind forever. Even if dad could be a mean jerk sometimes.

"What? No, of course not. I don't want that, I could never want that…and I don't know why you would want that. I provide for you. I give you everything that you could ever want. You and the children…I have made sure that you want for nothing in this world." Said dad. Sho frowned. There were a lot of things that he wanted that dad couldn't give him. He wanted powers but that wasn't something that dad could give. He wanted to never have to go to a school with uniforms but that was something that was unavoidable, mom had said. He also wanted a hamster but that was something that dad could, but did not want, to give him. For reasons that Sho could not understand dad did not like animals. He wondered if dad liked anything at all.

"….are you sure about that?" asked mom

"Yes. I would gladly give you the world and you are right to ask it, Masami. There is nothing that I wouldn't give you. Nothing in this world." Said dad. There he went again. He talked about that a lot, what was going to happen when he ruled the world. He was going to make it a better place for people like him and big sis, people with powers, and he was going to make the whole family the new rulers of the world. Then when he died Sho would be the boss of the world because sons inherited from their fathers. Sho didn't much want the world, it sounded like more trouble than it was worth really, and neither did big sis. Dad didn't care. He said that they were only children and that they would understand when they got older. He hated it when adults said things like that. What was so hard about explaining things so that he could understand them now?

"I want my husband by my side, ok? That's what I want more than anything else in the world." Said mom

"I'm right here." Said dad

"But for how long, Touichirou? How long this time? How long until you're gone for weeks and weeks and I'm here, all alone, with them? How long?" asked mom

"I have no idea when another matter that requires my immediate attention will come up but when it does I will attend to it. Building a new world, running my organization, it takes time. It takes up a lot of my time now but when I'm done then…then I can spend more time with you." Said dad. Sho didn't know how to feel about that. One the one hand he loved dad…but on the other hand he could be mean a lot of the time. He could be super mean and he liked big sis best…but he only liked big sis best because she had powers and he didn't. Because she was a better listener than him. Because she was more like dad than he was. Because Sho just wasn't enough of anything for dad. Because Sho was…because Sho could only be himself and the person that he was just was not good enough for dad.

"And when will that be?" asked mom. Sho kind of wanted to know that too. Dad had been talking about how he was going to fix the world and stuff for as long as Sho could remember. That had been five whole years, even longer, actually, since dad had been working on that from even before Sho and big sis had been born.

"In a decade or so, perhaps. I'm not sure. When the children come of age" said dad. Sho didn't know what 'come of age' meant. He'd ask Fukuda later or just look it up himself.

"So I'll have to spend another decade with you spending more time away from me than you do with me? Another decade of not knowing when my own husband will be home and when I will end up waking up to an empty bed?" asked mom

"Masami, I feel like you're….angry….with me…" said dad really slowly like he was talking to someone who he thought didn't speak Japanese. Sho hated it when people talked to him and mom like that. It was almost as bad as when people talked to him and mom through big sis. Dad shouldn't have talked to mom like that. Dad shouldn't have been such a jerk.

"I am. I mean….God, it's so hard talking to you sometimes." Said mom

"What do you mean? I say what I mean and I mean what I say. If anything it's difficult for me to understand you. I don't understand why you would be upset with me. I take care of you and the children. You want for nothing here. I cannot begin to understand why you're upset with me." Said dad. Big sis was like him, Sho decided, because sometimes he would be upset with her and she would act like she was ignoring him but she just wouldn't get it. That was why she was dad's favorite, they both had powers and they were both clueless.

"That's just it…you don't understand. It's like I have to spell everything out for you. Touichirou….I miss you when you're gone. I…even though you hurt me, and don't tell me you'd never hit me you know that I mean emotionally, I miss you when you're gone. It's hard for me being alone with them…and servants are not the answer! You just….even when you're here it's like…things used to be different. Back when we first met, back before Sho…and Shigeko. Back before all of this. I just…I miss that man, the man I fell in love with. I miss him." said mom. She was sitting on the end of the bed and she was holding her head in her hands. Dad was just sort of staring at her, now, and Sho could not read his face. Though he did not see very much through the slats in the closet door. Mom looked sad, though, and he was sad because she was sad. Dad didn't look sad. He didn't look like anything. He didn't even do anything. He just watched mom be sad….

Sho hated it when mom was sad.

"I'm right here." Said dad. Then he made a blanket float up and over mom's shoulders. She wrapped it around herself and leaned back. Dad at behind her and just let her lean on him.

"I…Masami….I'm right here." Said dad again. He still didn't have any kind of look on his face. He didn't have any kind of tone in his voice. Sho didn't get it. Mom didn't mean she wanted him back like he had gone on a trip or something, she meant that she wanted him to be the way he was before. Like how when he and big sis argued sometimes, rare as it was, she would say how she wanted her little babies back.

"Masami….I'm right here." Said dad again. Still in that same way. Mom just had her eyes closed. She had her arms hugged around herself. Dad reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes really fast and turned around to face him.

"Are you?" asked mom. Her voice was kind of quiet, there, like she was whispering. Sho didn't know what she was whispering for, it wasn't like she knew that he was there. If she knew that he was there then she would have told him to get out. If dad knew that he was there then he would have punished him.

"Yes. Masami-" said dad

"You keep saying my name." said mom

"I know. I like to. I like…Masami, I care for you…and I have never stopped caring for you. I don't know why you think I would. I know…I'm not as adept at conversation like you are….and I cannot afford to be weak-" said dad

"I think that you're a lot of things, Touichirou, but I don't think that you're weak." Said mom. She leaned really far back into dad's chest and she closed her eyes. Dad closed his too…and he had a look on his face then. He looked…happy. Kind of happyish. Not super happy like Christmas morning happy but a little happy, like you saw a funny hamster video on YouTube happy. It was weird. So weird.

The weirdest.

"Because I have never been weak around you." Said dad. He hated being weak. Sho thought that when dad said weak he meant 'having actual feelings' and stuff. Sho wasn't allowed to be hurt or scared or mad or sad or anything when dad was around. That was another reason why he liked big sis best, she never let those feelings show.

"I wish…you don't have to be guarded. When you're with me…you don't have to be guarded. You're always so…you're always so guarded. I know that part of that is….is the fact that you can't help the way you are. I know that you…you're such a pod person and you can't help it…and I just…Touichirou, I love you. Remember that." Said mom

"I know you do. You tell me at least twice a day." Said dad

"I know I do…and I wish you would tell me." Said mom

"I love you too." Said dad

"No I mean…you never initiate…anything. You never…this is the first time you've held me without my asking in so long…"said mom

"Is this what you want?" asked dad. Mom nodded. Her eyes were still closed and she was smiling a lot. She was hugging dad, now, and he was hugging her and Sho felt like this was something that he wasn't supposed to see but mom and dad…he had never seen mom and dad hug before. He hadn't even known that dad even knew how.

"Yes….I want this. I want…I want you to touch me without my asking. I want you to be there when I wake up in the morning and also when I go to sleep. I want-"said mom

"The order of events is reversed." Said dad

"What?" asked mom

"The order of events. You would see me before you went to sleep and then when you woke up. Not the other way around." Said dad

"Oh, you know what I meant. I want you here, with me, all the time. When you were gone…I was so hurt and lonely…." Said mom. Sho frowned. Why was mom lonely? He and big sis had tried to play with her every single day that she had been sick. They were always with her. They all lived in the house, together, and it could be big and lonely but they were never separated. Ever.

"Because I misspoke?" asked dad

"Yes and because….because you're always so distant from me. You never hold me or kiss me or…or help me out around the house. I want us to be…to be together, Touichirou. I want us to build this life together. I want…I want you to be there for me. I want to…I want to sit with you and talk with you and kiss you-" said mom. She probably would have said more stuff, a lot more stuff, and Sho wished that she had said all of that stuff that she had probably been planning on saying. He really wished that she had kept on talking. Anything that she could have said would have been better than what he was seeing right then and there at that moment in time.

Dad kissed mom.

Mom kissed dad.

Mom and dad were kissing.

Sho had never seen such a horrifying sight in his life. Kissing was gross. Disgusting. The worst part of every movie. Who would want to kiss? Kissing was sharing spit…and not in a cool way. Wrong. It was wrong pure and simple. Sho knew that mom and dad must have kissed before. He knew, well he had patched together, where babies came from. A mom and a dad kissed on a bed and then the mom's stomach got really big and then you got another brother or sister. He kind of wanted a little brother. He used to really want a little brother but now….well now not so much. It was one thing for dad to like big sis better, she was a girl and they were not super alike. It would be even harder for him if he had a little brother…also their parents would not divide up so evenly anymore.

And then there would be no room for him at all.

"Touichi….Touichi I want…I love you. I love you so much. I just…I want to be with you. I was so…I was so alone and so…I couldn't even get out of bed and…and I just…I'm sorry." Said mom. Sho didn't care what she had said, he just cared that she and mom had stopped kissing. There was no sicker sight then seeing your parents kiss. No scary movie, no matter how much blood and guts there was, did not compare to the sick sight of seeing your own two parents kissing. No. Parents were not allowed to do that. When Sho inherited the world after dad died he was making a new law that parents were not allowed to kiss unless it was to have a boy child and a girl child and then there would be no more kissing for the rest of eternity. Also no hand holding or hugging either. Actually moms and dads weren't even allowed to look at each other just to be safe.

"For what?" asked dad

"Just…I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry." Said mom. Dad was still hugging her. He was back to having no look on his face at all, which was better than how he had looked before when he and mom had been kissing and stuff…and Sho would never be able to forget that. It was printed into his eyelids. This was…this was his life, now. He would never be able to escape the nightmare vision that had been his parents kissing. It would haunt him until the day he died. It would drive him crazy. He'd end up like the guy at the bus stop who always yelled at the birds to get out of his house even though it was a bus stop and nobody lived there.

He would either go crazy or die. Whichever came first.

"Masami, I have no idea what you're apologizing to me for." Said dad. Sho hoped that mom did a lot of explaining, complicated explaining, the kind that involved her never hugging or kissing dad again.

"I just…just know that I'm sorry, ok? Just know what…know what I mean when I say that I'm sorry." Said mom. Now dad looked kind of…confused? Sho was going to go with confused…and it was so weird seeing dad make faces like that…almost as weird as it was seeing him kiss mom like they were in a movie or something…

He needed to get out of this closet.

But he couldn't. The closet didn't have any windows or a back door. He was trapped. Well and truly trapped. There was no escape. Even if he closed his eyes and stuffed his ears shut mom and dad would still have been out there and they still would have been hugging and kissing and nothing would ever make that not sick. Nothing.

"Are you…are you sorry that you were angry with me? Or that you were so…unclear in your expectations of me? Or that you're still being very, very, very unclear in what you mean? What you want? Please, I need something more to go off of than 'I'm sorry'." Said dad. Sho was fully on team lots of explaining. All the explaining. With charts and pictures and big, complicated, words that you needed a whole, entire, library to look up.

"Just…just kiss me." Said mom. At that point Sho closed his eyes and scooted to the back of the closet. One of mom's dresses had fallen off a hanger. He pulled it over his head and tried to ignore the fact that his parents were kissing. They were kissing and mom was calling dad 'Touichi' which was even weirder than when she called him 'Touichirou' even though that was the name that dad's parents had given him when he was born, so it was what he was called, but dad was called dad and mom was called mom and he was called Sho or Suzuki or Suzuki Sho or little brother and big sis was called Shigeko or Suzuki or Suzuki Shigeko or Big Sis or sometimes Mob even though that was mean and she was out there looking for him and he was in the world's best hiding spot listening to his parents kiss and-

And fight?

That sounded a lot like fighting…but that wasn't…moms and dads didn't fight like that…but that sounded an awful lot like fighting…which meant that mom and dad were fighting and there was nothing that he could do about it…nothing but listen…and he had never felt so small and powerless in his life…and he just wanted more than anything else to disappear and never be seen again and-

"Someone's here." The fighting stopped. That was dad. Sho stopped breathing. Had dad…he had been breathing really heavy…

"That? That's Shigeko out there. I think that she and Sho are playing hide and seek or something out there. They're fine. Everything's fine. Come back to bed." Said mom. Sho covered his mouth and kept his eyes screwed shut. He wanted to disappear. He wanted to be invisible. He had to disappear. He had to be invisible. He didn't know what would happen if dad caught him in the closet listening to him and mom fighting but he knew that it would be bad.

"No, I mean I felt another aura…at least I thought that I did…" said dad. Sho could hear the bed move and then some walking. He focused on trying his hardest to disappear.

"Are you sure it wasn't Shigeko? Touichirou, why would there be another esper here. You didn't send for anyone…did you?" asked mom

"No…and that's why this is something of interest to me. There should not be another esper here besides Daughter and I…let alone one I do not know." Said dad

"Touichirou…maybe it was nothing. I mean…why would another esper be here? The only person from work you ever have over is…is Fukuda. I mean…you go to people, they don't come to you. Why would one be here?" asked mom

"These attempts on my life are becoming tiresome." Said dad quietly. He was so quiet that Sho almost hadn't heard him…but he had…and he…why were people trying to kill his dad?!

"Excuse me? Did you just say 'attempts on your life!? What the hell, Touichirou?!" asked mom. He heard the bed squeak again and he hoped that mom and dad weren't back to fighting…

"Sometimes people…my work is my business." Said dad. Mom made a kind of upset noise. She might have looked upset, too, but Sho was not going to open his eyes and go see. No. He needed to be invisible. He needed to be so invisible that nobody ever saw him again and then he never had to ever remember what he'd heard.

"Touichirou…no. None of that Yakuza shit…oh God…you're not involved with them, are you?" asked mom. Sho knew who the Yakuza were, they were in movies that he and big sis watched even though they weren't supposed to. They shot people and stuff like that. Dad…dad was working with those people? That was…that was not good….

"Them? No, they do as they're told." Said dad

"As they're…what?! Are you seriously telling me that-" said mom

"Masami, please, don't ask me about my work. Nothing good will come of you asking me about my work." Said dad

"You…Touichirou…what do you DO?!" asked mom. There were a lot of footsteps, then, and Sho didn't even want to know what that was about. He heard cloth rustling and metal jingling, too. He wished that he were deaf. He hated it, hearing mom and dad fight, and hearing them being all upset.

"Masami…stop it. Just…stay here, stay in the house, and keep the children close. This is nothing that I can't handle. Just stay in the house, please…and don't ask me about what I do. The specifics of it. You don't need to know. Just know that I will always take care of you…and keep you safe. But I can't keep you safe unless you do as I say and stay in the house with the children." Said dad. He sounded kind of mean, there, like when he was telling Sho how much of a weakling and a disappointment he was.

"I…fine. Just…just do whatever it is you need to do." Said mom. There was the sound of a door opening and closing and Sho, well, he was proud of how long he waited before he left his hiding spot. His plan was to go and hide under his bed and pretend that he had been hiding there the whole time.

Of course big sis didn't believe him.

She was mad at him for cheating at hide and seek. He didn't tell her the truth. He had no plans of ever telling her the truth. He had no plans of ever revealing or reliving the fact that he had seen mom and dad kiss…or that he had heard them fighting…

No, he was taking that to his grave.


	25. Talks

Suzuki Touichirou did, in fact, care for his family.

That was why he did the things he did. All the things he did. Be it sending valuable people to keep his family safe, spending the entire night searching for some unknown esper, or playing with his children.

"Daughter, be careful. This is an exercise in control, not power." Said Touichirou. He was relaxing with his favorite child, now. The other night had been an exercise in futility and frustration. He had felt, for a brief moment, another esper in his home. Such a thing could not be allowed to pass. So he did what any sane and reasonable person did and went to find and end the man who thought that he could intrude into Suzuki's home. Really, it could not be allowed to pass.

"I'm trying dad but the cards keep on trying to fall down." Said Mob. She was…she was happy to be playing with dad, he hardly ever played with them, but she was worried. She was worried about how many auras there were near their house. Mob had only felt dad and Fukuda's auras before. She had never felt so many strangers before in her life…and she didn't know how to feel about that. One that on hand it was kind of scary but on the other hand she had no idea that there were so many people out there in the world like her.

Which was neat.

She hadn't realized how alone she'd felt all these years. It had just been and dad and also Fukuda who had powers. She had never felt so many different auras before and she kind of wanted to power through her nervousness and meet the people that they were attached to…but dad said not to bother the people hanging out outside of their house. They had a job to do.

"So you need to try harder. Remember, power is nothing without control, Daughter." Said Touichirou. Being able to build a house of cards at her age with only her powers was an impressive feat, one which took his mind off of the invasion of his home by some unknown esper. It was one thing to make attempts on his life but to come after his family…well that was something else entirely. The only member of his family with a hope of defending themselves was Daughter but she was still so raw. Power without control. There could have been collateral damage if she had ever been forced to use her powers in self-defense. The house could be repaired but the people in it….Masami was irreplaceable.

"Are you two still at it?" asked Masami looking up from her phone. These people lurking just outside of her home were making her squirrely. Touichirou was involved in something shady, she knew this now, and his little comment about the Yakuza working for him….were those Yakuza outside? She didn't want to know. Well she did and she didn't at the same time. She had been too naïve over the years. This house must have cost millions upon billions of yen. The way they lived…of course her husband was up to something shady.

And she was a silent accomplice.

"Yes. Daughter, for all of her self-doubt, if proving to be quite adept at this. We may very well run out of playing cards soon." Said Suzuki. He was not embellishing. They had already gone through two packs of playing cards doing this. One of which he had brought back from a hotel ages ago when he hadn't had the chance to get the children proper gifts and the other was, apparently, from a Go Fish game based on that terrible Rainbow Fish book the children loved so much. Such a bad influence. The Fish gave away everything that made it special just to be accepted by the masses. That book had 'disappeared' ages ago. He hoped that it hadn't made any sort of impression on the children. Daughter, or at least her aura, shone so brightly….Boy still had no aura to speak of. Boy was…he didn't even know where Boy was or how he was doing. He didn't much care. He so rarely got to spend time with Daughter like this. Boy would come out of wherever he was hiding at some point.

"Thanks dad." Said Mob. Adept must have meant something good. Dad said something good about her. That alone was almost enough to make her forget that there were a bunch of strangers outside of her house. The mom and dad had been freaking out yesterday about the aura that she felt for a millisecond. The weird one that sort of felt familiar but not really. The fact that Sho wouldn't come out of their room. He hadn't come out for breakfast or to play with dad.

She hoped that Sho wasn't getting sick.

Because he might have caught what mom had. She didn't know what it was that her mother had been sick with but she did know that it was serious enough that Fukuda had to come over to the house all the time. That must have been a very serious illness if it did that to a grown up. Sho was just a little kid. She hoped that he was ok…

"There should be some more Go Fish cards in the kids' room." Said Masami as she scrolled through her phone. Fukuda said that they hadn't found anyone and that he was nearby in case something happened. The whole thing…this whole thing was…she didn't even know. Her husband had, and she didn't have another word for it, goons. He had goons and those goons were outside of her house, parked up and down her street, looking or some unknown esper that posed some sort of threat to them. This was not how she had imagined her life going. This was not what she had expected at all.

Her husband and daughter spending actual time together.

Well that was something that she had always wanted…and it took all of this madness to get it. She was still under house arrest, it felt like, and that tempered any feelings of joy or gratitude that she could get from the scene before her. She so loved it when Touichirou acted as an actual father to his children…but she could not shake yesterday's events. Her part in them. She had apologized for…she had been on dangerous ground there. He could have put two and two together and…and she had no idea what it was that he was capable of.

Yakuza shit.

"Hopefully not with the Rainbow Fish on them." Said Touichirou as he placed another card at the top of their house. Daughter did the same. The house of cards had not toppled yet. This had been a game that Touichirou had enjoyed when he was younger. An exercise in precision and control. Something to make him better in his adult life. He hadn't been so adept at this when he had been six, he thought, but then again his father had not been able to teach him.

His Daughter was a wonderful thing.

There was something to this fatherhood thing. There was something to raising a smaller being and teaching it all the things that it needed to know. To have someone mirror you in all things. To have someone who looked at you and decided that whatever you did they would do it too. It all meant something to her, it seemed, every little thing he did. This was different than how he mattered to others. Daughter did not worship him as a God or fear the power he held. That was…the fact of that was very refreshing.

He enjoyed this, being a father.

"What's wrong with the Rainbow Fish?" asked Mob. She liked that book. The fish had a lot of pretty scales that the other fish didn't have to instead of being a braggy jerk about it the fish shared his pretty scales with everyone…even though pulling them off like that must have hurt. Still, if Mob could have taken her powers and ripped them off and shared them with other people she would have. If everyone had powers then having powers wouldn't be special and she could just be Mob, then, and not be special. Dad was always saying how special she was. How she was going to inherit the world someday. How she was a princess of the world or whatever and how she was going to have the best life ever when he gave her and Sho the world.

She didn't want the world.

And she didn't want to be the ruler of it.

She was a Suzuki and that was what Suzuki's were for, Dad had said, ruling the world. Well in that case she didn't want to be Suzuki Shigeko. She didn't want to be anything. She just wanted to be Mob. That was all. Even though she knew that she was not Mob because she was someone, Suzuki Shigeko, or just Shigeko, or just Suzuki, or Big Sis, or Daughter. That was who she was….and she had to be Suzuki Shigeko even though she didn't much want to be.

Not that she would ever tell dad that.

She would never hurt his feelings like that.

"That book is terrible and I won't have you reading it." Said Suzuki as he finished off the pack of cards. Daughter was staring at him, now. What, did she expect an explanation? She may have been his child and that entitled her to more of his time than most other people but he was not in the habit of explaining himself to anyone other than his wife. Daughter was not and would never be that person to him. There would always be that power imbalance and that imbalance meant that he did not have to explain his reasoning to her.

"You don't like any of our books." Said Mob. Dad hated reading to them. He always made up his own stories even though they were all the same. They were all about how great their lives would be once they had the world. They were about how much more special they were because they were his kids. They were about how there would be so many other espers around for her to be friends with and then to grow up and marry and have babies with when she got old.

Boring stories.

"They're children's books. I am not a child. I'm sure that you wouldn't enjoy any of the books that I read, either. They don't have any pictures, for one thing." Said Suzuki. He wasn't an avid reader but he did enjoy reading to learn about the world around him. Cultural books occupied a lot of his time. Not all of his job was brute forcing people to his side. He did not rule the world, yet, and that meant that when he was in Rome he would do as the Romans did. Or wherever else he found himself.

"But then…if your books don't have pictures then what do you read?" asked Mob. All the best books had pictures, everyone knew that. Even some of mom's books had pictures. Those were called manga books, mom had said, and some of them were ok. They were about people falling in love and stuff. Mob thought that was the best part of any book or movie. Sho said that the parts where the people fell in love and kissed were the worst parts of anything.

Boys were weird, sometimes.

"Cultural guides, mostly. I don't read for pleasure, I read to learn things." Said Suzuki. He saw the confusion in her eyes. She was still so young. He wondered when she would be old enough to join him on his trips. She still went to school and that took up a lot of her time but at some point she would have to become familiar with the day-to-day running of Claw as well as the special missions and such that he did. She would never inherit it, no, she was female and not his blood on top of that. She would still be expected to take her place within it. Maybe as a Division head….or that other idea that he'd had. If he ever found espers as powerful as, or as skilled as, he was…by half. Nobody could ever meet his skill not even his own children…but if he did meet some exceptionally powerful espers they would be by his side at all times.

He'd call them the Ultimate…whatever number he ended up at.

And Daughter, of course, would be one of them.

Son…the jury was still out about him. He knew that he had to care for Son regardless of whether or not he had powers…but that was a tall order when someone like Daughter was around. Son ay have had too much of his mother in him…and that could be a real problem. For insurance, if anything, he so wished that Masami would give him another child. She had said that she would consider it when the children, both of them, were in elementary school…so another year at least.

He did not understand her one bit, that woman.

"That sounds boring, dad." Said Mob

"That's because we're at completely different stages of life. When you get older then you'll see." Said Suzuki

"When we're the same age?" asked Mob

"We'll never be the same age, daughter, I will always be older than you. You'll get older, though, and when that happens you and I will be able to understand each other better I'd imagine." Said Suzuki. Daughter was a bit like him. She was strong, like him, and she had trouble understanding the world and it's people just like he did. There was a certain kinship that he could feel between them. One greater than the one he felt with his biological son, anyway.

"Sure you will." Said Masami under her breath. She couldn't imagine her husband getting along with anyone. He was…he was a lot like Shigeko but Shigeko at least tried to make friends and live in the world with people. Her husband didn't want to live in the world, no, he wanted to rule over it. At least Shigeko would never have wanted anything like that.

"What?" asked Suzuki. He so hated it when she whispered. Maybe his hearing was just starting to go. He was getting very close to forty after all…all the more reason for him and Masami to have another child…but that was not the thing to mention in front of Daughter. Children were supposed to be shielded from even the mere thought of human reproduction until they were older. He didn't know how old, pubescent, probably, and he didn't know why they needed to be shielded from such things but he trusted Masami's judgement on that as he did on all things related to the children.

"Nothing. I'll go and get you two another deck of cards. That really is a very impressive house of cards you've built for yourselves." Said Masami as she got off the couch quickly before she said something that she regretted. Shigeko called out a happy 'thank you' that followed Masami down the hallway and to the kids' room.

Where someone had taped up a sign which told her to 'go away' in hiranga.

She took it down, of course, because she could not condone a sign which was so rude…and also her husband was obsessed with the children learning kanji as soon as possible. Masami understood wanting the children to excel in life but there was such a thing as putting too much pressure on them. Her husband always put so much pressure on them when he was around…

She didn't blame Sho for hiding in his room.

Masami knocked as she entered. She knocked to show some politeness but this was her house and she was going to come in either way. That would change when the children hit their teen years, there were things that teenagers did alone in their rooms that Masami did not want to walk in on, but right now they were children and she was their mother and she would not be barred from portions of her own house.

"Can't you read?" asked Sho from the fort he had made out of his and big sis' covers and pillows and stuffed animals.

"Sho, you know not to be rude to people like that." Said Masami as she entered the room. The blinds were drawn and the nightlight was on. The television was on but muted. She stepped over a sea of plastic animals and building blocks, he had been playing menagerie again it seemed, and sat down on the floor beside a lump of pillows and blankets that may or may not have been her son.

"Sorry mom." Said Sho. He had been mean to his mother…he felt like he was going to cry. She had so many problems that she didn't need him adding to them like that! Not with dad and her fighting and stuff. You weren't supposed to fight girls like that. Ever. You weren't supposed to fight anyone at all, that was a rule at school and also in life, but you especially were not ever supposed to fight a girl. Even if she was your sister and she was being super annoying. Even if she was your wife and…and he didn't even know why dad had fought her. He could understand being all freaked out if a girl tried to kiss you, he hated it when girls tried to play catch and kiss with you even though they knew you hated it, but dad had been the one to kiss mom!

Buyer's remorse?

"It's ok my sweet, gentle, boy. I know you didn't mean it." Said Masami. She pulled up one of the blankets and ran her hand through his hair. There had been a lot of stress in his voice. Something was bothering him. Masami frowned and reached over to his bed with her other hand. Well he hadn't wet the bed, thank God, so that was one theory crossed off of her list. He hadn't been punished, either, he hadn't been anywhere near his father in a very long time, it seemed, so he hadn't had any opportunity to upset his father.

"Mom…I love you so much…" said Sho. What had be done to deserve a mom like this? She may have made up all sorts of rules that she herself did not follow, she may have made him take a bath even when he didn't need it, and she may have punished him sometimes…well what she called punishment…but she did not deserve to have dad treating her like that!

"Sho, baby, tell mommy what's bothering you. Are you worried about all of the strangers daddy brought to the house? Because he says that they're here to keep us safe-" said Masami

"From him?" asked Sho. Mom stopped playing with his hair, then, and he knew that he had said the wrong thing. Unlike big sis he was totally capable of getting a clue.

"Sho…why would we need to be kept safe from your father. He loves us. He would never hurt us." Said Masami. She knew that Touichirou punished the children…well he punished Sho…but he never went beyond punishment. That was how he had been brought up. She had been brought up in a similar way but…well she didn't agree with him but parenting was about compromise.

"Because…because you and him were fighting." Said Sho softly. He pulled his shirt up over his eyes. He knew that mom could still see him there, he hadn't disappeared, but he didn't want her to see him crying. He felt like he was about to cry. His eyes were wet and prickly. His nose was getting stuffy. He could not cry. Crying was weak and he…he had been weak enough already. He hadn't been able to keep her safe.

"Sho…your father and I may have exchanged some…some heated words last night but we were just…we were both just worried and stressed. Sometimes when we get stressed we…we feel cornered and lose control of our mouths. Sometimes we use words that we know we shouldn't, or speak in mean tones, but that does not mean that we don't love each other. You and Shigeko fight sometimes but you always make up-" said Masami. She had lost control of her mouth last night. She knew that she shouldn't have raised her voice where the children could hear her. She had been hurt, she had been worried, but that was no excuse to distress them so…or just Sho. Shigeko…nothing could ever get to her. She was her father's daughter after all.

"Big sis and I never fight…not like that. I would never hit her or any girl. You're not supposed to hit girls. Only the biggest losers in the world go around hitting girls." Said Sho, his face still in his shirt. Before he knew what was happening it was being pulled down.

"Sho…your father has never hit me…and I don't know where you've gotten this idea from but-" said Masami

"I heard you guys fighting." Said Sho

"Sho…I may have raised my voice last night-" said Masami

"No, not then. I mean…I mean before bedtime. Before all of these guys showed up. Back when…when big sis and I were playing hide and seek. I was…please don't be mad but I was hiding in your closet and then you and a dad came in and I didn't want to come out because I didn't want to get in trouble and stuff." Said Sho. Mom looked…she looked really scared. Not mad. He expected her to get really mad at him for hiding in her room. He expected her to make him stand in the corner or to take his desert away that night or something like that.

But instead she looked scared.

And he got it. Dad could be very scary sometimes. All of the times. He wished that he was bigger and stronger. That way he could he kept her safe. But he wasn't big and strong, no, he was just five and little and weak and he didn't even have any powers too. There was no way for him to keep his mom safe.

"You…you were in the closet….the whole time?" asked Masami. Well. Well then. Ok. Ok then. That was….oh God. Oh merciful God in heaven….

"Yeah. I was in there when you and dad came in to put the clothes away and then I was still in there when you guys kissed but then I hid under one of your dresses when you and dad started fighting." Said Sho. He reached up and patted his mom on the hand. She was so sad that she couldn't even look at him. When he grew up then he would be able to keep her safe…and he wished that he would just grow up quicker already!

"The…the whole time?" asked Masami. It felt like the floor had been pulled out from under her and now she was in freefall. She was so…so embarrassed….and just….well it wasn't like the same thing hadn't happened to her when she was around his age. She had gotten up in the middle of the night because she thought that a ghost was in the house…and then she had opened her parents' bedroom door without knocking…and then…well the rest was something that she knew that she should have described to a therapist at some point.

Poor Sho.

Poor Sho? Poor her!

She was the one who was going to have to sit down and explain….well maybe her husband should have been there with her to explain. Both of her parents had been there to explain just what it was that she had seen that night all those years ago…but then again no. Touichirou…he did not understand the concept of 'age appropriateness'. No. This, like everything when it came to raising the kids, fell squarely onto her shoulders.

"Yeah, the whole time." Said Sho. Mom winced, then, like she had gotten hurt. Sho felt as clueless as big sis in that moment. He knew that mom was hurt, feelings wise and body wise, and he just…he didn't know what to do or how to stop making it worse.

"And you…you didn't see anything?" asked Masami hopefully. Well that was…this was not as bad as it could have been. Sho might not have been traumatized for the rest of his life.

"No, I didn't see anything. I mean I saw you guys kissing….that was so gross….but I didn't see it when you guys started fighting," said Sho softly. He felt Mom's hands hook him under the armpits and she picked him up and sat him next to her on his bed.

"Mom, what're you doing? I was fine on the floor." Said Sho a bit more meanly than he should have. He was not a baby, he did not need to be picked up, but if it made mom happy then he needed to swallow all of his upset feelings…even though he was not a baby anymore and did not need his mom picking him up like he was one. Also he had been fine in his fort. That was why he had made the fort, so he could have had somewhere to be.

"Sho…I want to talk to you about what you heard." Said Masami taking a deep breath. She could not be squeamish about this. This was…this was a talk that she had wanted to wait a couple more years to have with her children. They were still so young…but she could not let Sho go around thinking that his parents had gotten into a fistfight. No, that would have been far more traumatic than what had really happened.

"About how you and dad were fighting? I'm sorry that I didn't protect you-" said Sho

"No, honey it's not your job to protect me, first of all, and second of all there wasn't anything for you to protect me from." Said Masami

"But I heard you and dad fighting." Said Sho

"Your dad and I…we weren't fighting. I know that you think that you heard us fighting but we weren't. We were...do you remember when we talked about big kid feelings?" asked Masami

"…yes…" said Sho. He knew what big kid feelings were. They were those feelings that were good and bad at the same time and made you do stuff like jump off of swings when you were near the person you felt that way about. You wanted to both be with them and run far away from them, too…but what did fighting have to do with big kid feelings. He sometimes felt like pushing people he felt like that about, mostly when they got too close and he got too many of those weird feelings, but he never did. That would have been mean and he did not want to ever become a mean person.

"Well there are also grown-up feelings. Grown-up feelings are a lot like big kid feelings. When grown-ups have feelings like that they…they want to express those feelings physically." Said Masami

"…like when I want to push Akira sometimes?" asked Sho

"You pushed him?" asked Masami

"No, I never pushed him before but sometimes I want to. Like when teacher makes us all hold hands when we go on our walks and I get paired with him and it feels kind of good and bad and I want to push him because it's a lot of feelings and stuff. That's why you and dad were fighting? Because you felt bad about kissing each other?" asked Sho. Well he could understand feeling weird about kissing someone. He'd never kissed anyone before, out of his own free will or anything…..girls loved to play catch and kiss…but the thought of kissing someone makes him want to both throw up and run away at the same time.

"No…Sho, your father and I weren't fighting. Your father and I…we love each other very much. When people love each other very much they get a lot of those sorts of feelings and they want to express them. That's why people hold hands and kiss." Said Masami

"That's disgusting." Said Sho sticking out his tongue so mom knew just how gross it was. Moms should not have been allowed to talk about gross stuff like that. It was bad enough that stuff like that was in all of the movies big sis liked. He thought that stuff like that should stay in movie world, not come out into the real world where he lived and stuff.

"You'll change your tune when you get older, trust me on this. One day you'll grow up and meet a girl-a person who you feel very strongly about too. Feelings like that are a part of growing up." Said Masami

"So all grown-ups feel like that all the time? Like they just want to go around kissing each other?" asked Sho

"Some people are like that and some people aren't. Some people want to kiss everyone, some people only want to kiss the person they're in love with, and some people never want to kiss anyone at all. Some people want to kiss boys, some people want to kiss girls, and some people don't want to ever do any kissing at all. They're all perfectly ok just the way they are. You're perfectly ok just the way you are, too." Said Masami. She didn't much care who the children ended up falling in love with. She just wanted them to end up doing better than she did. She knew how Sho was, well the signs he was showing, and it was best to make sure that he knew that however it was that he turned out Masami would always be ok with it. She would always love her son.

"So then why did you and dad fight?" asked Sho. He still didn't get it. If they loved each other so much then why fight? And he still thought that they had fought. They had to have been fighting. What else could they have been doing? Jumping on the bed?

Actually, maybe that was it after all.

"Sho…we weren't fighting. Listen, when two people love each other very much they…they want to express it. Sometimes they kiss or they hold hands or they do…something else. Something that only grown-ups are allowed to do. Not kids. Not with other kids and certainly never with grown-ups…and if a grown-up ever asks you to then you tell me and you will not get in any trouble. Ok?" asked Masami

"Do what?" asked Sho

"You know how boys and girls are different, right? Well boys and girls are different because there's something that happens when they get older. Sometimes men and women have very strong feelings that they want to express so they…" said Masami. She gave him the best, child friendly, explanation of what it was that he overheard. His eyes widened as she explained, quickly, how people expressed their love.

It was a short explanation.

And it was straight to the point.

And she didn't go into any specifics besides the fact that people fit together, sometimes, and that was how babies were made.

And even though he came out of that talk with a thousand yard stare she still felt that she had done the right thing. As difficult as that had been she knew that she could not have had him go through life thinking that his parents regularly got into fistfights with each other. No, that had been…she couldn't imagine being five years old and having all of that hanging around in her mind. Yes, she had done the right thing by explaining all of this to Sho.

Next was Shigeko.

But maybe that could wait a moment. Just a moment. She was not going to rip her away from her father to explain the awful truth of creation to her.

"Mom…." Said Sho. That was…grown-ups were….people actually….

"Sho? if you have any questions feel free to ask them. You can always ask me anything." Said Masami

"Am I getting another brother or sister?" asked Sho finally. That was the most pressing matter at hand. Well that and informing big sis of the terrible things that grown-ups did with one another when they thought that they were alone. She needed to know. Everyone needed to know.

"No. Not any time soon, anyway. You two are enough work as it is." Said Masami. She hoped that he didn't start up about wanting a little brother again. She was not having any more children for the foreseeable future. They had the two children and that was enough. Touichirou wanted more children but he hardly ever enjoyed the children that they already had.

"Ok…I have to go now…to another place…" said Sho. Masami let him get up and walk, slowly, out of the room. His thousand yard stare would go away eventually. She would have waited a few more years to talk to the kids about this but the awful truth was better than the terrible idea that he'd constructed in his mind.

Touichirou may have been a lot of things but he never would have hurt her.

He never would have hurt any of them. She had no idea what he was involved in but she knew that he would never harm her or the children. She was not afraid of him. She was annoyed by him, exasperated by him, and still in love with him but she was not nor would she ever be afraid of him. He was her husband. She had no reason to be afraid of him.

She had no reason to be afraid of him.

She had no reason to think that he would ever hurt her…or put the family in danger. Even though he was involved in some very shady shit. Even though he was, apparently, doing God knows what out there in the world and she had no idea of it and….and she needed to stop thinking about it. She would never get answers out of him. Even Fukuda was sugarcoating it, what he told her. There was no point in getting upset over this…there was nothing that she could do about it.

"Mom! Sho's telling lies!"

But there was something that she could do about that. Her daughter needed her. There was something that she could do. She could be a mother to the children. She was a mother to the children. She was their mother and a damn good one at that. She may have had no control over what her husband did but she could at least raise her children and…and make the most out of that.

So that was what she did.

"Shigeko, come here. Mommy has something important to talk to you about."


	26. Fights

Dad had never been home for this long before.

Mob and Sho didn't know what to make of it.

"Do you think he lives here now?" asked Sho as he raked a brush through his hair. It was time to get ready for school. Mom usually helped them but that morning she wasn't. She was talking to dad about something in hushed tones behind their bedroom door. He hoped that they weren't fighting.

"He's our dad. He's always lived here." Said Mob she took the brush from Sho and brushed his hair out herself. He was doing it wrong. You had to brush your hair in small sections, mom had taught her that. Mom usually brushed their hair for them but she and dad were talking. That wasn't weird, she and dad had been talking a lot lately, but Mob hoped that they had been talking about good things. Sho said that they had been upset, lately, but Mob couldn't see it. She was bad at things like that. That was ok, though, because she had Sho to tell her when people were mad and fighting and stuff.

"I mean all the time. I don't think that he's ever stayed this long at once before." Said Sho as his hair was brushed out. That made it stand up worse, which was the point. He liked that his hair stood up. Big sis had boring hair, it just hung straight down.

"Yeah…it's been a while…but this is a good thing I think. Maybe he'll stay forever." Said Mob as she finished Sho's hair. There, nice and spiky, just the way it was supposed to be.

"…I guess that would be a good thing." Said Sho as he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror.

"It is. That means that he can be here to play with us and-" said Mob as she tried to braid her hair with her powers. It was easier this way. Even if they were kind of uneven. Mom was much better at this than she was. Mom always knew how to do stuff like this…but she was busy. Closed doors meant don't come in and mom and dad's bedroom door was closed and had been all day. Mom had only come out to wake them up and tell them that they were going to school that day. They hadn't gone to school in a while and when they did it wasn't one day and then another. Dad said that they didn't need to go to school, that it wasn't safe out there, and that they needed to stay in the house forever where it was safe. Mob didn't know what he was so afraid of.

"Play with you, you mean." Said Sho as he glared at their reflections in the mirror. He looked like dad when he did that. That was the same face that dad made when he didn't like something. Dad was home, now, and for the first time in…Sho didn't even know, he wanted dad to get a move on and get back to work. Then it would just be him and mom and big sis and also Fukuda. He hadn't come over once since dad had been back. It wasn't fair.

"Yes. He plays with me but when you get your powers-" said Mob as she gave up on the braids and focused on buttoning up her school shirt with her powers. Dad said that power was nothing without control so she had to get better at having control. That way he would keep on liking her. He liked her because she was like him. That made sense. He loved all of them but he didn't like Sho. That also made some sense. They each got a parent. That was how it worked.

She got dad and Sho got mom.

Even though she wished that dad would be as nice to Sho as he was to her. It would all be different when Sho got his powers. Then they could all be together…well not mom. Mom didn't have any powers. Well she had mom powers, which were things like kissing scrapes and bruises better and being able to make rules and stuff, but she didn't have any esper powers. Not like she and dad had. Not like Sho would get. Why wouldn't Sho get his powers? He was her brother.

"I'm not going to get my powers." Said Sho quietly. Why didn't she see it? If he didn't get his powers now, and he was five already, he was never going to get them. He was just…Sho…and dad didn't like that. Dad wanted him to be like big sis. That was why dad wanted to have another kid, Sho had overheard his parents talking about it, because Sho didn't have any powers and he would never, ever, get them.

"Yes you are. We just have to wait. Good things come to those who wait. Mom said that and mom would not lie to us, ever. Moms aren't allowed to tell lies. It's against the law." Said Mob

"I've been waiting my whole life." Said Sho

"I guess that we just have to wait some more, then, that's all." Said Mob. If there had been some way to give her little brother her powers she would have done it. This just wasn't fair at all. Dad said that there were espers and there was everyone else and espers were better than everyone else, something Mob didn't fully believe, but even if it wasn't true she didn't want Sho to be like everyone else. She was the one who wanted to be like everyone else. She wished that she could just wrap her powers up in wrapping paper and give them to Sho for his birthday. Then they could both be happy. But that wasn't how it worked. Dad said so. Dad said that only one absolute being had the power to share their powers with others.

And Mob didn't want to be that absolute being.

"You didn't have to wait." Said Sho. It wasn't fair. Big sis had been born with her powers, mom and dad said so. Sho had only been born with eczema and a head that was shaped weird. He had no idea what was wrong with him, why he was the way he was. He didn't even know why mom and dad had even had another kid. They had gotten it right the first time.

"Yes, but dad says that most people have to wait. He says that most people aren't like me and him." Said Mob

"Why shouldn't I be like him? I'm his son!" said Sho. He knew that he shouldn't have been yelling. Dad didn't like yelling in the house. He didn't like much of anything. He just liked breakfast for dinner, which was very confusing for Sho, and big sis, which was much less confusing. Maybe dad would punish him for shouting in the house. Maybe dad would punish him so many times that he ended up getting sick of it and then he decided to go off to some other country and then the house could go back to the way it was. The way that it was supposed to be.

"Maybe….maybe you just take after mom. That might be it. Kids take after their parents. It's because they share DNA. Like how mom said. " Said Mob. She knew where people came from now, where they really came from, and it was terrible. Gross. Not nice at all. She wished that she didn't know, that Sho really had been lying, but he hadn't been. She wished that Sho had never found out. They were different like that. Sho was the kind of person that did things that he wasn't supposed to. Mob never did things that she wasn't supposed to. She wondered which parent she took after.

"So, what, you think that I'll never get powers, then?" asked Sho. The brush on the counter began to shake. He glared at it. He wished that he could do that. He wanted to be able to do that. It wasn't fair. He actually wanted powers! She didn't want powers. She didn't want anything. She didn't even want to be anything. She didn't even want to be herself. She wanted to be Mob. Sho at least wanted to be himself…or even her. Even if it meant turning into a girl and having to wear dresses and have long hair he still wanted more than anything to wake up and do a Freaky Friday swap with his big sis…but that was just in movies, not in life. In life things didn't work out all the time.

"No, I just meant that…um…maybe it'll just take longer because you're so much like her. You are a lot like her, you know? You both don't like citrus, and you both like animals, and you both like to play in the rain, and you both like-" said Mob grasping at all the ways Sho was like mom. He got mom and she got dad. He took after mom and she took after dad. That was how their family worked. That was how all of this worked. Even if it meant that if Sho really and truly took so much after their mom then…then he might never get his powers. It wasn't fair. Sho was her brother and he actually wanted these powers!

"So that means that I'm going to be like her, then, is what you're saying? Fine. I'd rather be like mom than dad. At least mom is nice. You can be best friends with dad for as long as you want. I don't care." Said Sho still glaring at the brush on the counter. It moved, just a little, and that was her doing it. Because she had powers and he didn't. Because she could do things that he couldn't and she just had to show off like that!

"Sho, you're going to be…you can be what you want to be. Like mom always says, we can be whatever we want to be. You'll get your powers, you just have to wait a little more-" said Mob even though she had no idea how long it would take or if it would even ever happen.

"I'm tired of waiting! You didn't have to wait!" said Sho. The bathroom was shaking, now, just a little and for a moment he wonders if it's going to explode. Good. At least if it exploded then dad would be mad at Shigeko. They already had to use the farther away bathroom, the one that was cold and in the scary part of the house, so if Shigeko broke this one then everyone would be mad at her…and he was such a bad person for wanting that.

He was a bad little brother.

"You and I are different people, Sho. You're you and I'm me. No two people are alike, even brothers and sisters, mom even said so." Said Mob

"No, we're not alike….you came out right and I came out wrong." Said Sho

"That's…that's not true. You are right. You're good and right, Sho, because you're my little brother." Said Mob. She didn't ever want to hear her little brother saying something so awful about himself ever again. He may have been annoying, sometimes, and occasionally he could be downright confusing, but he was still her little brother and she wanted him to love himself just as much as she loved him.

"No…that's not true and you know it. No matter what happens, how long I wait, it won't change the fact that you were born right and I was born wrong. You have powers and I don't. That's what dad cares about. He wants a kid with powers and he got you…and I don't know why he even bothered to have me." Said Sho. He didn't know, sometimes, why he had ever been born. So mom could have a kid like her? Well that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to…he wanted to be who HE wanted to be, not who he was supposed to be. It wasn't fair, the way families worked, the way that each parent got a kid and in families with more than two kids one kid had no one at all. That wasn't a good system at all. The more he thought about it the more he felt like crying and yelling…and the way everything was shaking…that didn't help!

"Sho, please stop it. You're fine the way you are-" said Mob. She reached over to give Sho a hug, a squeeze, something for him to know that she was there for him and she loved him no matter what. She was then and would always be his big sister. Even if he was being kind of mean right then, to himself, and even if it hurt her when he was mean to himself.

He pushed her away.

He told her to leave him alone.

The brush flew off the bathroom counter and hit her in the head.

Nothing broke. That was good. Mob had already broken one bathroom. It still hadn't been put back together. This was a different bathroom. This one was farther from the part of the house that they used. This one was bigger than the old one and also a lot colder. This wasn't the part of the house that they were heating. This wasn't the part of the house that they were using. This house was so big that there were parts that they never even went into. That was good. If Mob accidentally broken this bathroom then there would at least be another spare somewhere.

She hated it when she broke things.

She was bad when she broke things. Dad didn't like it when she broke things. Dad got mad at her and stopped talking to her when she broke things…and that's just the worst. She doesn't like that, being ignored by dad, but it wasn't as bad as what dad did to Sho….what he would do to Sho when he found out that Sho had upset her to the point of-

She's so upset she thinks she sees dad's aura. Red. Red and upset.

But no, that's not dad's aura. Dad's aura is a darker red, and it had some yellow in it too, this aura was just bright red. Like mom's lipstick. Bright red without a trace of yellow….like the aura that she had seen before. Just like before as quick as it came it was gone…

But at least Mob knew, now, where that aura had come from.


	27. Sho Gum

Dad had never paid this much attention to him before.

The kind that didn't involve punishing him…or ignoring him.

"It won't bend." Said Sho. They were in the kitchen, now, and he was trying to bend a spoon like he had seen on TV. Big sis could bend a spoon with her eyes closed…and she had bent a spoon with her eyes closed. She had bent every single spoon in the drawer trying to show him how it all worked.

"Here, just kind of…push it with your powers I guess." Said Mob as she picked up a spoon she had already bent and twisted it the other way. She thought that had been a good idea. Bending spoons was easy. She had seen it done on TV a million times….and she could do it…but Sho couldn't…

But he finally had powers. That was what mattered the very most.

It was such a good feeling, knowing that Sho had powers, because he had wanted them for so long. Now they were more like brother and sister. Well they had always been brother and sister but now it felt more like they were brother and sister. They didn't look at all alike but they both had powers and stuff. Plus now mom and dad would love them both the same. Now they wouldn't have to divide up their parents anymore. Mom could love her and Sho the same and Dad could love Sho and her the same and everyone could love everyone else and they could all do powers stuff or play games or watch movies or go to the park or all of the other things that families did together.

This was really nice.

"I'm trying but nothing's happening." Said Sho. He could make himself glow red and that was it….not that he was complaining! He was finally what he was supposed to be. Who he was supposed to be. Who he had wanted to be for his whole, entire life! He had powers…sort of…

Nothing like what dad could do

And nothing like what big sis could do. Big sis was his sister…but she was so much better at this than he was. She was older, too, which was why she was better at things like school stuff…but this was different. She had been born with her powers and he had only gotten them just the other day….and that just was not fair. He knew that he should have been grateful to even have powers in the first place, most people didn't including his very own mom, but it was just….dad was paying attention to him. That was what mattered. Not the fact that big sis was so much better at this than he was.

"Focus Son, always focus." Said Suzuki as he tried to get his son to do…anything! Anything besides let his aura show. Right now he was little better than one of the awakened. It had been a pleasant surprise when he finally realized what that mysterious aura had been. It had been his son being mentally traumatized by the sound of his parents having intercourse. It had been a relief, at the time, both because his son had powers and because nobody was coming after his family….but now it was just an annoyance.

His son was still very far behind where he should have been.

And wasn't that just the worst. Suzuki had thought that what he wanted more than anything else was for his son to finally, finally, finally be something other than a complete and utter disappointment. Well now….he had powers, that was good…but he was still so far behind what he could have been. Not like Daughter. Daughter was more like him. Effortless power. He thought that he wanted a son with powers more than anything else in the world but now he knew that what he had really wanted was a worthy successor.

One that shared his blood.

"I am focusing, dad. I've been focusing this whole time." Said Sho as he stared at the spoon in his hands. He wanted it do what he was telling it to do. He was screaming at it in his mind to bend. Sho knew that he should have been grateful to even have powers in the first place…and dad was finally hanging out with him…

But he was looking at Sho like he was gum at the bottom of his shoe.

He never looked at big sis like that.

"Show him again, Daughter." Said Suzuki. He exorcised the emotions this evoked within him. Son was his flesh and blood but he couldn't do even a millionth of what Daughter had been capable of when he acquired her. Daughter didn't share a drop of his blood, a strand of his DNA, and yet she eclipsed his natural born child in every way imaginable. That wasn't fair…to borrow a phrase from the children…but life was not fair.

To other people.

Life was more than fair to him.

"Ok…but I don't know how else to explain it, though. I just sort of…do this." said Mob. She tried to slow the process down as much as she could…and she also tried to remember that there was even a process to this in the first place. She reached out with her powers slowly and untwisted the spoon in her hand…and then she retwisted it. Slowly, maybe, like they demonstrated things at school. Mob wished that they taught powers at school. If they had then maybe she would have been better at helping him with this like she was when she helped him with his homework. She wished that this was as simple as hiranga and counting practice. Maybe if she wished hard enough it would come true. Her wish for him to have powers came true after all.

"I'm doing everything that you guys are doing but it still won't work." Said Sho. He wanted to throw the spoon across the room but he didn't. Dad was there and he may not have been looking at Sho like he was a person but he was at least looking at Sho without punishing him. That was better than he'd gotten in a while.

He had powers, dad loved him now, and he should have been grateful.

"Evidently you aren't." said Suzuki. He needed to keep calm, keep patient, and exorcise any and all negative emotions that this little exercise was bringing to life within him. Masami wouldn't have liked it if she caught him losing his temper with the children. With Son. Daughter was still doing just fine…and he had no reason to lose his temper with her….she was doing nothing wrong at all. She was just being what she was supposed to be. He had acquired her because he had never met an esper of her skill.

Though, maybe, some part of himself had been holding out hope that the child he had fathered would eclipse the child that he had adopted. He was the true protagonist of this world, it's rightful ruler, and yet his own son had been weighed and measured and found wanting. His own son. The one that he made. The one that shared his blood, half his genes. The other child, the one he acquired, the one who came from nothing, was a more worthy successor than his own son.

"It's ok Sho. You'll get it. If you just try harder then-" said Mob. She had been patting him on the back and trying to make him feel better. She could see his colors now, which was so much more than what had been able to do before, and she was so happy for him. She was so happy that he could finally be there with her and dad. She was just so happy.

But also she wasn't.

Because he wasn't happy. She could tell. She could tell with him sometimes. He looked like he was about to break something or yell or something. It made sense, dad had said some very mean stuff to him, and Mob had just been trying to make him feel better. To make this better for him. He had gotten everything he ever wanted and…and now he was still so upset…and it wasn't fair.

"I am trying!" said Sho. He pushed her hand away. She pulled her hand back and just sort of looked at him. He didn't know what it was that she was looking for. It wasn't fair. Even though he had finally gotten his powers….he wasn't anything like her. Even now she had still been born right and he had still been born wrong. Dad still liked her the most, too, because she was stronger than he was.

Dad was still looking at him like he was shoe gum.

Dad never looked at her like that. Dad always talked to her like she was a person. Dad always looked at her like she was a person. Dad…it was hard to be believe that dad really loved him. Mom said that dad loved him and moms could not lie….but maybe she was just wrong. Moms could be wrong about things, like the time mom tried to make a cake in the microwave but just made burnt stuff. Maybe that was like. He had always thought that dad would treat him like big sis…but at least he wasn't punishing him, now, which was better than Sho ever could have asked for.

"Behave." Said Suzuki. He did not want to deal with them when they were like that. Quarrelsome. Children could be so very quarrelsome sometimes. Or maybe they were like this all the time. He had never been home for so long before, such a long stretch, but he could not afford to leave. Nothing had come up that needed his personal touch, not yet, and he couldn't leave just as Son finally became able to do…something. He couldn't just up and leave now…and also Masami had asked him to stay.

She asked him for a lot of things.

Some of the things that she asked for he…he wasn't sure what that he was supposed to…to do. To feel. To want. She was….she was a lot to him, the only being on Earth who could be said to have power over him. She wanted him around and he…well he would be around more. He couldn't very well leave at the present moment, now could he? She wanted him to spend more time with their children. Well at least now it wouldn't be quite the exercise in frustration it had been before. In aggravation. Children, small children, really were annoying beings. Loud and impulsive. Completely illogical in their thought processes…or maybe just Son. Daughter had been shaping up rather well….and it should have been Son.

If he could swap their places, Son and Daughter's, he would have long ago.

Let Son be the foundling, the changeling child given up by ordinary people who had no hope of caring for him. A child with a thought process and a mind so foreign to his that had he not been there when Son had been born he would have thought that his son had been the changeling, not his daughter. He wondered why this had to happen to him….or in general. Children were supposed to be a reflection of their parents but he couldn't see anything of himself within his son besides the red hair, pale skin, and blue eyes.

"Yes dad." Said Mob. Sho was still upset and she wanted to try and comfort him again but dad was, probably, upset with them. Parents didn't like it when their kids fought, mom had said so. Mob was glad that mom was laying down in her room and not around to see this. Mob wasn't trying to fight with Sho, he was her little brother and she loved him, but somehow they had found themselves fighting…and she didn't understand why. This should have been a good thing, the two of them practicing with their powers and stuff, but he was still all upset.

And she just could not understand why.

"I am trying." Said Sho. He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. Dad was still looking at him, and still looking at him like he was shoe gum, and he felt like shoe gum. He thought that he had wanted powers…but what he had really wanted were powers like big sis had. Like dad had. All he got were…pretty much nothing.

"Try harder." Said Suzuki. Stress, fear, pain, these were the things which awakened latent psychic powers. Sho was still too young for one of the awakening machines, he was too small to fit in one and the process might have been enough to kill him as well, but maybe provoking him might get some sort of reaction or…something. Anything. Suzuki knew that he was at his most powerful when he was emotionally out of control. The same went for Daughter even though she was not, truly, his daughter. The same may have been for Sho as well. At this point he was willing to try everything short of tossing Boy off of the roof.

"I've been trying as hard as I can." Said Sho. Fine. If dad was going to look at him like he was shoe gum then he was going to give dad the exact same look right back. He crossed his arms and kicked his feet and gave dad the meanest look he could manage.

"Well then I am sorely disappointed in you." Said Suzuki as his son glared at him with all of the anger and resentment a five, almost six, year old could muster. If Masami had been there she would have scooped him up and comforted him. She was softhearted like that. Suzuki was not softhearted. Son had awakened twice now. Once from the psychological damage of hearing his parents having sex and the other time when he had been quarreling with Daughter over whatever it was that children quarreled about. Stress seemed to be the trigger….

Being thrown off of the roof would not have, necessarily, been enough to kill him….

"Let's play something else. Come on, Sho, let's go play outside. I could push you really hard on the swing-" said Mob. She needed to get Sho away from Dad. They were going to fight, it looked like, and either way Sho was not happy there. Even if he and dad weren't going to fight, even if dad wasn't saying mean things, Sho shouldn't have had to be in any place where he was not happy. She was his big sister, it was her job to protect him and to make him happy.

"It's like you're not even trying." Said Suzuki. Daughter seemed to have grown bored with this. That was fine, she could go. This was child's play to her anyway. Son was the one who needed this. Boy was the one who needed the practice. Daughter…she was fine. She was more than fine…she eclipsed Son in every measureable way…

And it wasn't fair.

"I'm trying. I've been trying, dad, this whole entire time! It's not like you're showing me how to do anything, anyway, you're just telling me to do stuff. When mom wants to teach us something new she shows us first. Like when she taught us how to brush our teeth and stuff. You're supposed to tell people how to do something if you want them to do stuff." Said Sho. Big sis was tugging on him, now, but he was not moving. He was still looking at dad all meanly and he still deserved it. Why couldn't dad be more like mom? Why couldn't Sho himself be more like big sis? Why couldn't everyone be more like everyone else?

"You shouldn't have to be shown. You should just know. It should just be instinct." Said Suzuki. He didn't let himself feel any of the frustration that grew within him. He couldn't. He could not lose control, not when he was trying to get Son to lose control. Not when Daughter was sitting right there. He had to set a good example for his daughter.

For Daughter.

"Sho I could…um…I could swing you over the bar again, little brother. Do you remember how cool that was? That you thought that it was? How you went right over two times? Remember? How you went so fast?" said Mob. She didn't much want to swing Sho over the bar again, that had been scary and mom had been upset with her, but she didn't want Sho and dad to fight. She didn't want anyone to fight with anyone else. Why couldn't her family just get along? People were supposed to get along with one another.

"…it's not." Said Sho quietly. He didn't know why he had been born wrong and big sis had been born right. He didn't know why even when dad paid attention to him it still hurt. Even if he wasn't being punished it still hurt so much. Being with mom never hurt like this. Maybe, even though he had powers now, things were still the same. Mom was his and dad was for big sis and that was just the way that their family was. He wished that dad would stop looking at him like that, like he was shoe gum, and look at him like he was a person. Like he was big sis. But he wasn't big sis, he was only Sho, and he wanted….he was a bad little brother, then, for wanting the things that he wanted. He, for half of a millisecond, wanted to be an only child. At least if he were an only child then dad wouldn't have had anyone to compare him to.

"Come on, I can put you up high in the tree, too, and you can try and catch squirrels and-" said Mob. She tugged on Sho again and he just pushed her away. She didn't know what she was supposed to do. Well she could just carry him away…but that would have been mean. She was strong enough to pick him up with her powers and just carry him away but…but that would not have been a nice thing to do at all. You weren't supposed to use your powers on other people. Mom had said that.

"Daughter, if you want to go and play then go and play. I'm not done with your brother yet but you can go.' Said Suzuki simply. She must have been bored. Why wouldn't she? This was well below what she was capable of. She was like him in that way. She knew what she was and she knew that she should not have had to waste her time like this. The world could be a very boring place, sometimes, when you were the true protagonist of it.

"Big sis, just-" said Sho. He wished that she would just go off and play on her own…and he was a terrible little brother for feeling like that. He didn't know what was wrong with him. He wanted to be with and he wanted to be alone. He wanted to be with dad and he wanted to be alone. He wanted…he wanted a lot of things right then and he couldn't understand it and it was just so hard-

And he could see it, again, the colors. The red. His color of red.

"I want to play with Sho." said Mob. She needed to get Sho away from dad before he got punished. She needed to keep her brother safe….but not…but yes. Even safe from dad. Dad loved them both, he was their dad and he had to, but he could also be very mean to them…to Sho. Like right then. He was being meaner to Sho then than she had ever seen or heard him be in her entire six, almost seven, years of life.

"He's busy. Go and play by yourself." Said Suzuki. He was having some trouble understanding her, there, why she wouldn't just be by herself. He hadn't had a friend in the world when he was her age and he had done just fine. Besides, her brother was her rival now…even though there was no real rivalry between them. She was so assured of herself, her position in the world, that she didn't see her brother getting his powers as a threat to her place. So assured. His child.

"…yes dad." Said Mob. She didn't want to make whatever this was worse. She wanted her family to get along and if that meant her leaving Sho alone with dad….even though it felt wrong….she would. She would because nothing good ever came from making dad mad. They had to make dad happy when he was home. That was how this family worked.

"And don't wake your mother. She's very tired today." Said Suzuki as Daughter left the table to go off and do…whatever it was that little girls did with their time. Now it was just him and Boy…who still looked very sullen. Angry. But nowhere near exploding. Losing control. The only difference was that his aura was clearly visible. That was almost nothing.

This was so frustrating.

"…she's always tired…." Muttered Sho. He wanted to go, too. He wanted to go and play with big sis. He even wanted to go and be with mom even though she was tired, maybe even sick again, because anything was better than being with dad. Dad who kept on looking at him like he was shoe gum. Sho gum.

That was what he was to dad, gum. Sho gum.

But being looked at like he was Sho gum was much better than being punished or ignored.


	28. Working From Home

Masami worried him sometimes.

Suzuki had never remembered his wife taking quite so many naps. She went to bed when the children did…and she just kept on sleeping. She woke up, made them all breakfast, and then went back to their room. That had been hours ago. He had tried to do some work in his office, the boring sort of work that came with running Claw, but the children…they did carry on…

One child on it's own was fine.

Two together were a perpetual motion machine.

Daughter had wandered into his office with her dolls and her tablet and set herself up on the floor in front of his desk. She had said nothing, just carried on with the business of being a little girl. It was not a school day. School hadn't been on a Saturday since he had been a child himself, and that was a pity. He enjoyed the time the children spent at school. He still did not much care for the fact that his children had to mix with the masses, if there had been an all esper school…well he would have been more opened to it, but he did like the fact that they were out of the house for hours at a time.

Sweet peace.

But sometimes too much of it.

Masami napped a lot during the day. She used to practically hang off of him when he was home, before, but now…well now he hardly saw her. He had to seek her out. He was not accustomed to seeking her out. Not that there had been much seeking needed, she mostly just stayed in their room. Sometimes he found her watching television or on her phone but most of the time she was just napping…and he didn't know how to feel about that. She had so many expectations on him in this relationship, expectations that he didn't even fully understand, and he had breathed a sigh of relief when she finally let him be…

But he missed her.

But he knew that he should not have missed her.

He thought of her often when they were apart…and even more, it seemed, when they were together under the same roof. He had never spent this much time under the same roof as his family before. Not for years, anyway, since the children had been much younger. Maybe Masami had just gotten used to him being around. Maybe she had decided that she didn't feel lonely without him anymore. Or maybe she had just taken ill like the children had said.

He hoped that she hadn't.

He really hoped that she hadn't.

He really, really, really hoped that she hadn't.

She was so fragile, his Masami, and she could have so easily been taken from him. He didn't know what he would do without her. She was the only being in this world that could have him completely unraveled…and he didn't much care for that…but he also did. He cared for her so more than any other being on the planet. More so than the children, maybe, or maybe it was different. The needs of his offspring were different than the needs of his partner…or rather what he needed from them. Even Daughter who was not his, not really, had earned some amount of his caring.

Well she was an easy child to care for after all.

On her own. When Son came into the picture it was a different story. Little girls, how he wished that he'd had two little girls. Little girls were quiet creatures. Neat and tidy and obedient and quiet. Quiet. He liked that, how quiet they were. They never ran or jumped or shouted or anything like that. Little boys were different. He couldn't much remember what he had been like as a little boy but he didn't remember being like Son.

Son was his own being entirely.

Son had entered his office even though he knew that he had been forbidden from that entire section of the house. Daughter….the rules could be bent for Daughter. She was harmless. She was quiet. Son hadn't been. He had dragged Daughter away from whatever it was that she had been doing on the floor with her dolls and her tablet. He dragged Daughter into what he had been doing. Some game which involved running, jumping, and shouting.

So much shouting.

Mostly on Son's part. At that point they had both been dismissed from his space if they could not be quiet. Son glared at him as he stomped off. Son had been doing that more and more lately. Maybe because he was getting older. Suzuki had read that children became resentful of their parents as they got older and sought out more independence. He had been quarrelsome lately as well. Even with Daughter. He didn't understand that one bit, how they could go from playing happily one moment to arguing the next. Well it was Son who did the arguing. Daughter never fought back, well he had never seen her fight back, she just tried to diffuse the entire thing before it got out of hand, it seemed.

She was not a quarrelsome child on her own.

Which was why she had been allowed back into his office, eventually. Masami had come out of their room to prepare lunch and then had gone right back in there. She hadn't been asleep the last time he had passed by her door, he could hear the television, and that had been a relief. He had been worried about how much she had been sleeping lately, worried enough even to think of calling Fukuda, and maybe he still worried…and he didn't like to worry. It wasn't a good emotion. Well, all strong emotions were not good emotions, but worry was one of the worst. Worry didn't just make his powers slip through his grasp, no, worry also made him weak. He could not afford to be weak. Not for himself and especially not in front of his children.

They could not afford so see their father being weak.

Especially not Daughter. She was the most like him. She was as strong as he had been as a child. She was the most like him, the greatest reflection of his being, and it may not have been fair but it was the truth. If she saw him being weak not only would she think that she could be weak but she might also think that any future partner of hers could be permitted to be weak as well. That was worse, even, because she could not waste herself on someone weak. She was six, almost seven, and still a child. She would not remain a child for long. Even now he was amazed at how much the children had grown in a few short years. In a few more years they would be adults. Ten years about. Give or take, of course. He didn't have a set timetable or anything, everything was still up in the air, but in about ten years everything would come to fruition. It would be far too late otherwise. He wanted this done before he was fifty so he could have some time to enjoy ruling the world before he got old. Even the man who conquered the world could not stop his own extinction. No, he knew fully well that he would someday die and leave the world to his children and their children and so on and so forth. He also knew that the simplest and easiest way to secure the next generation probably would not happen. He had raised Son and Daughter as his son and daughter after all….and he did have his regrets about that. He had shot himself in the foot when it came to securing the next generation after all.

The pace of life was so fast.

And the time one had to keep apace was so slow.

Even now he was starting to feel his age and he wasn't even forty yet. Thirty nine. Getting older. If he could have done it again he would have met Masami much earlier in life and married her much sooner and had more children than just Son. He had acquired Daughter as quickly as he could so he had no regrets on the timing of that. If he had gotten started on all of this soon he could have found some way to raise Daughter away from the family unit…but no. Even if it would have been better for the next generation…he did enjoy Daughter's company.

As much as he could enjoy the company of someone who was not Masami.

Maybe because Daughter was female. Women and girls tended to be quieter, which he liked, or maybe it was just the fact that Daughter was more like him. Deliberate in her actions. Quiet in her being. There was even some ambition to her, it seemed, though that could only be seen in her enjoyment of school. Every day after school she upended her bag and explained all of her work to him. She took such pride in her school work and her school uniform and even in her school bag. He could not understand it himself but he did admire her ambition and devotion to her goals. He wasn't sure what those goals were but she did give him a running report of how well she was doing at working towards them. He didn't completely understand her but he did enjoy her company.

Her company had actually gotten more enjoyable as she had gotten older.

Soon she would be even older. He had met her at two. Small and prone to tears and losses of control. Now she was almost seven. First Sho's birthday and then hers. Next year she would be eight. Then nine and then ten and so on and so forth until she, eventually, grew up and had children of her own and even then the years would still keep turning for her. One day this would be her office, she was not going to inherit the world but she would do her part to rule it, and her own children would be there at her feet with their toys and tablet computers or whatever it was that children in the future would be playing with.

One day she would be someone's Masami.

No, someone would be her Masami. She was like him. One day she would find her most perfect person and then she would marry him, or not, he just wanted her to find someone. Preferably someone near her on the power scale. Actually that was the only thing that mattered. Someone who came close to being her equal. As close to her equal as another esper could come. He didn't care if the man she chose was Japanese or foreign. If he was Daughter's own age or terribly older or terribly younger. If he was fat or slim, intelligent or moronic, serious or immature, Suzuki did not care. He didn't even care if she had one man or many. She could have a man in every country if she so wanted to, female espers were rare so she could have her pick of the men when she got older, he just wanted her to be with an esper of comparable power. He didn't know why she was the way she was, she was like a flower that had grown out of a pot of dirt, but he did know that if he wanted the Suzuki family dynasty to stand then he would need an entire garden. Suzuki was the true ruler and protagonist of this world solely due to the immense powers fate had bestowed upon him.

Getting power was easy. Holding onto it was the difficult part.

But his children, both of his children, would play their parts. Son and Daughter. Son was going to inherit the world by default. Masami didn't want any more children so it looked like they were just going to have Son. At least he had some power to him. At least he wasn't just like everybody else. Ordinary. Not extraordinary but at least not ordinary. That was better than nothing. Not anything to celebrate, of course, but not as bad as it could be. Son was not as bad as he could have been.

He could learn.

In terms of powers and in terms of behavior.

He had come back even though he knew that he was not wanted. Thankfully he did not continue with his terrible behavior. No, he simply sat down on the floor beside his sister and drew. Silently. That was all that Suzuki has asked for. Some peace and quiet. Son was capable of it. He was capable of sitting with his family and not running, jumping, or quarreling with his sister. There was hope for him yet. He sat and drew quietly until dinner. He enjoyed drawing. Suzuki had some of his drawings, well Masami had tacked up, some of his drawings around his office. He was a fairly good drawer for a child of his age.

Suzuki grew curious as to what his son had been scribbling at down there.

The children had made themselves a little nest on the floor of his office. They had been camped out there all day. Blankets, pillows, toys, and what looked like an entire rainforest worth of paper were sprawled out on the floor of his office. He would have them clean it up later. He reached down with his powers and picked up Son's drawings. He wondered what went on in that head of his…

Animals.

Many drawings of animals. Drawings of cats and dogs, it seemed, and also rodents as well as some more exotic animals…it seemed. Zebras, elephants, lions, tigers. Decent drawings for someone his age. Decent drawings for a five year old. He found nothing wrong with anything that son had drawn. He didn't know much about perspective, it seemed, but Suzuki at least knew what son was going for. Besides, it wasn't like he had any artistic ability. One of the few things in this world that he could not do. Well it was nice to see that Boy was good at something.

Pretty good at something.

He didn't just draw animals, it seemed. He drew the house, well he took some creative liberties, but it was still a nice drawings. The walls weren't quite so high and there weren't any cats sitting on them, that Suzuki knew of, but it was a nice drawing. He also drew his mother and his sister. None of Suzuki…and he didn't know why that made him feel the way he felt. Boy could draw whatever he wanted. Whoever he wanted. He didn't even draw people that well, it seemed, he was much better at drawing animals. Animals and…whatever that was.

It was a series of squares with numbers on them.

Suzuki held up the drawing. It caught the light and…oh. There was writing on the other side. Hiranga and katakana and some, very few, kanji. At least an effort had been made. The writing was…it made sense once he realized what he was looking at. A blueprint it seemed. A blueprint for a cake. The squares were tiers. He wanted a tier or white cake, a tier of yellow cake, a tier of chocolate cake, a tier of something called lava cake, something else called mud cake, a tier of cannoli cake, a tier of cheesecake, and a tier of ice cream cake.

Right. He had a birthday coming up soon, didn't he?

Suzuki stacked the drawings and put them on the ground where he found them. Well, most of them. He kept the drawing of the cake.

Son did have a birthday coming up after all.


	29. The Best Birthday Ever

Sho went to bed five and woke up six.

He had tried to stay up until midnight so he could see the day turn and his age turn too but he ended up falling asleep. Big sis was supposed to wake him if he fell asleep, that was why they had been sleeping in his bed, but she had fallen asleep too. So he missed the day turning and he missed turning six.

But at least he was six now!

Big sis said that she was sorry, which was nice, but then she also said that he had a whole of being six so it shouldn't have mattered if he had been awake until midnight, too, which cancelled out the part where she said that she was sorry. That was just how Sho felt and he was six now, the same age that she was, so he was entitled to feeling however it was that he wanted to feel. Not that he was going to spend his first day of being six fighting with his sister.

No, that would have been a waste of a birthday.

He wished that his birthday wasn't in the winter time. December first. The month had changed yesterday too. The day, the month, and his age had changed. The year would change too, but that wasn't until January, which was next month. Sho went to kindergarten, he knew his months now. He knew that the current month was December and that last month was November and that the next month would be January and all of that. He also knew that all of those months were during the winter where it was cold and dark outside and it even snowed, too, which could be fun but also meant that he had to wear itchy winter clothes and stuff.

Also it made his hair freeze to his head if he went outside while it was wet. That was pretty cool.

That was what they did on his birthday. He'd never had a birthday party with other kids beside his big sis, something which occasionally made him kind of sad, but at least mom took him to all the best places! That made up for it. They had ultimate cereal for breakfast, that was when all the cereals were mixed together into one big cereal, and mom even put cinnamon on it for him. Dad said that it was disgusting, which made Sho feel bad, but he also said happy birthday, which made Sho feel good. Dad had never been around for one of his birthdays before.

It wasn't that bad.

Or that good. Dad just had breakfast with them and then went back to his office to do his work. He didn't come with to the trampoline place or the animal shelter or the pool. He was busy, mom said, and Sho understood. Dad was super busy all the time and that was why he couldn't come with while they all had fun. Dad wouldn't have had much fun anyway, Sho figured, because he didn't seem like he would enjoy fun things…or anything for that matter. He wondered what dad's parents did for his birthdays. Probably nothing at all since Sho couldn't see his dad having any friends to invite over for a birthday party and he didn't really seem to like to do fun stuff. On mom's birthday they went to the animal shelter and then went out for dinner. Sometimes dad was there. Not for the animal shelter part but for the going out for dinner part.

Sho hadn't ended up getting a pet from the animal shelter.

Because dad didn't want him to have one. Dad didn't want any animals at all in the house. He didn't care for them, mom said, and he didn't approve of keeping pets. Dad didn't really approve of anything it seemed. Sho hoped that he never got boring when he grew up. Dad was thirty nine years old. Maybe old people were just super grumpy all the time like that. Grumpy and boring. So boring.

Dad wouldn't have had any fun if he had come along with them.

And maybe Sho wouldn't have been able to have any fun if dad had been there with him. It was hard to have fun when dad was around, it felt like sometimes, mostly because he didn't like having fun. Big sis said that he wasn't so bad but big sis was just like dad in some ways. She wasn't a lot of fun, not really, because she never ran around or jumped or climbed. She didn't even like diving into the pool. Sure that sign said no jumping but they weren't going to kick you out if you did a few cannonballs. Besides, it was his birthday and he could do whatever he wanted.

Well not whatever he wanted.

He couldn't take one of the rescue cats home, for one thing, even though he and big sis had voted yes and even picked out a cat. It was his birthday and he wanted a cat, a hamster really but cats were good too, but mom had said no. Well she said that dad would have said no. Dad said no to just about everything it seemed….and Sho did not care for that one bit. He wanted a pet, a friend, a companion….one that was not his sister. He wanted one more than anything. Not that he didn't love his sister, he just really wanted a pet.

And he had not been throwing a tantrum thank-you-very-much.

But mom said that if he was going to be going around throwing tantrums then that would be the end of his birthday. He shut up, then, because of course he wanted his birthday to keep going. Even if he did want a pet…he wanted a birthday more. Besides, the birthday express, which was what mom called it when they went places on his and bib sis' birthdays, had more stops to make. Saying goodbye to all of the animals had been hard, even harder now because they hardly ever came here anymore, but he was six now and had to be a big boy and just get it done with. He and big sis made sure to say goodbye to all of the rescue animals and to make sure that they knew that they were loved. Even if their original families hadn't loved them then he and big sis would. Also they made sure to tell each and every animal that they would be getting a new family.

Even that cat that hissed and swiped at everyone that got near.

Sho felt like that sometimes. Sometimes for no reason at all he started fights with big sis. He didn't know why. He loved his big sister, they were a family and a family loved each other, but sometimes she just made him so mad…and for no real reason! Sometimes she made him mad for a good reason, like when she changed the show on the TV just because he stopped watching it for a little bit and she wanted to watch one of her boring shows or some movie where the people kissed at the end…blech! When she just went and changed the TV channel on him that was a good reason to get mad at her and stuff. But sometimes he didn't have a very good reason at all. Sometimes he just sort of…got mad.

For no reason.

Sometimes she would just be doing her own boring thing and he'd just sort of look at her or feel her, he could feel people now, and then he'd just get so mad. He'd remember things like how dad always let her play near him and sit near him and sometimes even picked her up with his powers…how she could pick people up with her powers and bend things and break things and fix them and all of the other things that dad wanted them to do…and then he remembered that no matter what happened she had been born right and he had been born wrong. Even though he had these powers he had still been born wrong and no matter how hard he tried he would never catch up to her…

Those were times when he got mad.

And when he got mad he'd say mean things to her…like he'd tell her how boring she looked or how dumb her toys were…or he'd kick over her doll house or throw her dolls around the room…or he'd take her tablet and make her lose her game….and he didn't know why he did such mean things. It was like there was another Sho inside of him, maybe, and that Sho…that Sho was kind of mean. That Sho remembered how much it hurt when dad looked at him like shoe gum, Sho gum, and how he never looked at big sis like that…and then he'd get mad…

Even on his birthday dad still looked at him like Sho gum.

Which was why he splashed big sis a bunch at the pool even though she told him to stop. Even though she asked him a million times to stop. Because she had water in her eyes and nose. Because she didn't like that. He didn't stop. The other Sho, the meaner one, didn't stop. He didn't stop until the water in the pool kind of…well it kind of exploded, like when they would be in the bath sometimes and he'd splash big sis but in a splash battle…except there was more water in a pool and also other people…and then they had to go right home because they weren't supposed to use their powers in public. Big sis wasn't supposed to use her powers in public.

And now he wasn't supposed to use his powers in public.

So they walked home. In the cold. Mom had dried them off as best as she could but his hair still froze. That was another thing about him, something he didn't much care for…sometimes he could be kind of a jerk to mom. Like how he didn't want to put his hat on. There was nothing wrong with his hat, it was clean and fit and didn't look at all stupid or anything….but he just hadn't wanted to wear it. Because mom wanted him to. Because mom…he loved mom….and he loved her even when she was sleeping all day. Even when all she could say was 'That's nice, Sho.' when he tried to show her his drawings or play with her or something like that. She would just say that and go back to sleeping or watching TV or looking at her phone or whatever else it was that she was doing. He loved her…even when, in those times, it kind of felt like she was looking at him like he was Sho gum too…

He didn't want to wear his hat.

And it as his birthday and if he didn't want to wear his hat then he didn't have to wear his hat. It didn't matter if his hair was still wet or it was cold out or anything like that. Besides, if he did catch a cold like mom warned him about they could just have Fukuda come over. He wasn't coming over today even though Sho had drawn him an invitation to cake and present land, what mom called the final stop on the birthday express, which was just their kitchen after she had made him his cake. Fukuda wasn't coming over because dad was there. Dad said that Fukuda was only supposed to come over when they were either sick or hurt.

Mom was sick again.

But even when he called Fukuda himself, he was not supposed to go calling people on his tablet but he wasn't supposed to do a lot of the things that he did, all Fukuda said was that dad was home and that dad would take care of mom. That made no sense. First of all dad didn't have any healing powers, second of all dad couldn't take care of a garden rock, and third of all Sho wanted Fukuda at his birthday and on his birthday he got whatever he wanted!

But not Fukuda.

But he had dad. He had wanted dad to come home for his birthday since…since the first birthday that he could remember. The birthday when he smashed cake in big sis' face…or maybe that had been her birthday. No, wait, it couldn't have been her birthday because dad was usually there on her birthdays. He even called them, her, on the birthdays that he couldn't be there for. He never called Sho. He just sent a present from whatever country he happened to be in at the time. Toy animals, mostly, or things like books in other languages or weird candy from other countries….

Sho wondered what dad got him now that he was back in Japan.

He wondered what Fukuda would have gotten him if he had maybe, possibly, changed his mind and decided to come over. Then he could play with him and big sis…kind of like a real birthday party. Or how things had been before dad had moved back into the house. Not that Sho knew if dad had permanently moved back into the house…and he kind of hoped that dad would just move along or something….and he knew that those were bad thoughts to have. Dad was his dad and he was supposed to want his dad to live in the house with his family. He wanted dad to move in and play with them and hang out with everyone and….and all of the stuff that Fukuda did.

Sho wondered if Fukuda was as good at making cake as he was at making other things.

Curry.

Pork miso.

Friend rice.

Pancakes.

Fukuda could even make cereal taste better. He could even make mom's gross vegetable baked thing taste good. Dad didn't know how to cook. He had tried to cook once and Sho's stomach hurt just thinking about it. Dad wouldn't have helped mom make his birthday cake anyway. Dad never helped mom with anything and it bothered her a lot, he had heard mom and dad talking about that before, and while the rest of that day was something that he wished that he could have forgotten he did feel bad for mom.

Even he and big sis had chores…sometimes.

They were a lot neater, anyway, since dad had moved in. Dad liked things to be nice and neat and clean and tidy and all of those others words which meant that Sho had to pick up his toys and not make a mess out of the living room and other such boring things. Fukuda never made them be neat. He made them clean up after themselves but he never told them that they couldn't play…but then again it wasn't Fukuda's house. He didn't live there. He never even stayed for sleepovers, not since the one with mom that he and big sis weren't supposed to talk about because mom said that dad didn't like having people over for long periods of time, even though Sho wished that Fukuda wouldn't just stay for sleepovers but that he would stay forever and ever and ever. But he couldn't. Dad would have said no.

Dad said no to everything.

Sho fully expected dad to say no to cake and presents when they got to the house. Dad said no to everything. Plus he didn't fully trust big sis to keep her mouth shut about the splashing. Dad would get mad if he knew that his favorite kid had been upset…and also that he had made big sis lose control of her powers. Power was nothing without control, dad said that, and a whole bunch of other stuff too. Dad sure did like to talk sometimes…and Sho didn't much like to listen, sometimes, even though it made dad super mad when he didn't listen…but he didn't want to listen to dad or be around dad or have his birthday ruined by dad.

Sho was sure that dad would have ruined his birthday.

So it was amazing that he didn't.

"Touichirou….what…what am I looking at?" that was what mom said when they went to the kitchen. They were going to help mom make his cake, she was still kind of mad about what happened but she bought Sho's story that they were only playing, but she had not been mad enough to take his cake away. He had been looking forward to this cake. He lost his drawing with the blueprint of what he wanted, all of the layers and stuff, so he made another one and left it in mom's shoe for her to find. She found it and smiled and patted his hair and said 'we'll see' which didn't always mean no…and Sho had wanted that cake with all of the layer so badly that he could smell them while he took his boots off in the genkan…

He hadn't been imagining things.

"Cake. It's Son's birthday, isn't it? December first?" asked Dad. Sho was amazed that dad even remembered his birthday…though at that moment Sho had trouble even remembering how to be mad at dad…not after…

"That's a lot of cakes." Said big sis. Her hair was doing the floaty thing even though parts of it, the parts that her had didn't cover, were frozen together. She did the floaty thing when she was mad or sad or scared or good feelings too, like happy and glad and stuff. She was probably happy. Sho knew that he was.

"Yes….yes it is…but…Touichirou…what in God's name possessed you to do this?" asked mom. She was looking at the cakes all wide eyed like they were going to eat her. The whole kitchen table, the one they ate at every day not the one for preparing food, was covered in cakes. All of the ones that Sho had drawn. There was the white cake, the yellow cake, the chocolate cake, the lava cake, the mud cake, a the cannoli cake with a bunch of little cannoli pieces on top, the plain cheese and only cheese cheesecake, and even the ice cream cake with real cookie dough ice cream inside of the cake.

This was the best birthday ever.

Even if they weren't all stacked up like he wanted.

"Son wanted this and it's his birthday. On the children's birthdays they get cake. Son drew this diagram yesterday of what he wanted and I ordered it for him. The bakery wouldn't stack the cakes though because it wouldn't be structurally sound but Son know to be grateful for what he has." Said dad. Sho nodded. He could be grateful. He was grateful. The most grateful. He was so grateful…and happy, too. He had never seen this much cake in his entire life. So much cake…and all of it just there for him…right there in front of him…

He was so happy.

And he was even happier…or maybe it was a different sort of happy entirely…when dad pulled out a folded up piece of paper from his suit pocket….and then he unfolded it…and that was where that went! His first drawing! This one didn't have all of the layers that the second one had but dad had liked it and kept it and thought of him…

Dad had thought of him.

"That's too many cakes." Said big sis. She didn't sound jealous but she must have been. All dad ever sent her were dolls from other countries and dresses and hair things and stuff. Boring stuff like that. Stuff she never even asked her. Dad had never saved one of her drawings, never liked it so much that he carried it around with him, and never gotten her a million cakes for her birthday.

Dad actually cared about him.

"There's no such thing! Thank you so much dad! Can we eat them now? Can we?! Can we!?" asked Sho. He was so excited that he started tugging on dad's suit coat even though he knew that he wasn't supposed to. Dad didn't punish him, no, he just picked him up with his powers and sat him down at the table.

"Masami, is it time to feed them yet? I think they, or at least Son, is hungry." Said Dad. He didn't pick up big sis, she had to sit down at the table on her own. Mom didn't sit down, no, she just stood in the middle of the kitchen looking at them like she had never seen cakes before. She must have just been happy that dad helped her out with something like she had wanted him to.

She must have been so happy.

Also there was cheesecake, which she liked and he picked because she liked it, though he made sure to write down no toppings. He didn't like fruit and stuff on his cheesecake. He liked his cheesecake like he liked his cheese pizza, plain. Very plain. Mom like all kinds of cheesecake, though, so she must have been so happy…

"Mom, can I have some ice cream cake? One of the corner pieces? The one with Sho's name on it?" asked big sis. She never got cakes that said 'Happy Birthday Shigeko' in giant blue characters that took up the whole cake. She just got cake flowers which were very tasty but also boring. So boring. Letters were better. That was if someone just happened to climb over their garden wall and peak into their windows they could read the cakes and know that they were all for Sho.

"….sure….sure…let's all just-just have some…some cake…." Said mom after a minute. She was so much in shock that she had forgotten how to talk. She went to get the plates but dad told big sis to set the table with her powers. She did, none of the plates broke, so they could get right to eating.

And eat they did.

Sho had a little bit of everything. Everyone but dad had a little bit of everything. Dad just had the plain cheesecake. He liked plain best. Sho hadn't known that dad liked plain best when he had been planning out the cake, dad had just said so when big sis asked he was just having cheesecake. He liked plain best. Just like Sho did. He and dad both liked the same thing. Sho hadn't thought that it was possible. Dad never liked anything. If something was fun then dad went out of his way to dislike it…or so Sho had thought. Sho wondered, again, what dad had been like when he was Sho's age. When he had been six years old. Did his dad get him a bunch of plain cheesecakes that said 'Happy Birthday Touichirou' on them? Had he had parties after all? Or had he been all alone? For a little bit, in that space between cake time and presents, Sho could sort of see dad as being, well, a person. A person like everyone else. Not just a guy in a suit who looked at him like he was Sho gum and liked big sis the very best and also kissed and did unspeakable things with mom. He was just a guy, a guy who used to be six years old one time, who had gone to bed five and woken up six.

Sho wondered if he would have liked that kid.

He wondered if that kid would have liked him.

He wondered if dad liked him now. Dad had looked at him like he was Sho gum, again, when he asked about getting a pet. He said that animals were for eating and work only. They didn't need to keep animals because they didn't need beasts of burden, work animals he meant, and they didn't need to butcher their own livestock, he meant get cows and chickens and pigs and eat them, so they didn't need to keep animals in the house.

He looked at him like he was Sho gum when he said that.

But then he said that Sho made a good cake choice. Then he said happy birthday. Then they did presents. He expected dad to have gotten him more animals for the menagerie even though mom said that the menagerie was getting too full…but no. instead of plastic animals dad handed him a bunch of wrapped up boxes. They came from the same department store where mom got their clothes, Sho could tell by the writing on the wrapping paper, and Sho had been expecting clothes…

A truly terrible present.

But instead he got pencils.

A truly wonderful present. Real artist's pencils and real artist's crayons and paper and stuff like that. Real stuff for real drawing. Mom asked dad, again, what in God's name possessed him to do that…and Sho told her to stop it before dad changed his mind. Sho's presents had to be mostly experiences, mom said, because he was born so close to Christmas…and that wasn't fair at all since twenty four days separated him from Christmas…and Sho did not want dad to side with mom.

But he didn't.

"I noticed that Boy has an aptitude for artistic expression." Was what he said. Sho could have floated away he was so happy…and he did for a little bit…not much and not far but he had floated….and that was amazing even though mom made a scared sound because she probably thought that he was going to fall and hurt himself…and big sis said that she was happy for him…

And dad, for once, did not look at him like he was Sho gum.

It was the best birthday ever.

And not just because of all the cakes.


	30. Get Well Soon

He had never known Masami to nap so much.

It was worrying.

"Are you sick?" asked Touichirou as he sat beside his wife on their bed. Her back was to him, she was laying down, and had been since breakfast.

"I'm tired. Do you need something?" said Masami. She was just tired, that was all. Touichirou was making something out of nothing. He did that sometimes. For a man as cold as he was, and he could be a very cold man sometimes, he sure could make something out of nothing. So what if she had been laying down a little more often than usual? He was around so it wasn't like the kids were unsupervised.

And it was about time he took an interest in his own children, anyway.

"No, not at the present moment but I am….concerned. You've been sleeping a lot lately. The children are worried that you've come down with something." Said Suzuki. He was worried, too, but he could only tell her once that he was concerned. Even saying that once had been too much. Concerned. She was the only being on this planet that he would ever admit that kind of weakness to.

"I'm not sick, just tired, ok?" asked Masami. She did not want to get into it with him. She had no idea where to start, for one thing, and if she did start up with him then her words would just fall on deaf ears. He never listened to her, not in the real way, because he just did not understand her on a fundamental level…it felt like that, anyway.

"Have you been sleeping badly? We could get a new bed-" said Suzuki already thinking of at least five different solutions to this problem…if it even was a problem. When it came to other people he was out of his element and he knew it. Masami wasn't just anyone…and it stung, a little, that she was so far beyond his understanding.

"I've been sleeping just fine at night, Touichirou, ok? Stop making something out of nothing. If you or one of the kids need something I'll get up but right now I just need to rest." Said Masami. Underneath the covers her phone was clutched in her hands. She wanted, for once, for her husband to leave her be. She had someone else she wanted to get back to.

And she was a terrible person for it.

She had made vows, a lot of them, when she married Touichirou…and she had broken them. She had broken promises, broken trust….and she wanted to do it again. Not the sex part…well yes the sex part…but more for the emotional aspect of it. Of him. Of the man in her life that was not her husband. She had thought that having Touichirou around more would have been better but even when he was there it was like he was a million miles away.

This was the first time in a long time that he was actually speaking to her.

Not about the house, not about the children, and not about what she needed to do for him. He was actually talking to her….and she was pushing him away. Too little too late, maybe. Or maybe she was just terrible. She knew how she got when she had been in bed for a while, how twisted that things could look, and she worried that she was twisting things right now. She had twisted things before, twisted them so badly that she had pushed away her own daughter….and now she was pushing her husband away. Or maybe it was him that had been pushing her away. She had been telling him for years now that she wanted more love, more intimacy, more of him….and he had always said ok but then put the whole responsibility of their intimate life on her shoulders.

Having to ask for her husband to kiss and cuddle her took a lot of the joy out of it.

Plus a lot of the time it seemed like he didn't even want to be there. Spontaneity. She needed spontaneity. She needed it or else it was just…nothing. Just her asking for things that she should not have had to be the only one asking for. She wondered, sometimes, if he even loved her. But that was just her getting it all twisted up into the worst thing possible.

He loved her in his own way.

A way which she was beginning to not care for at all. Not when she had someone who loved…who cared for her…in the regular way. The way which involved listening to her and speaking to her….which involved making an effort to read her….instead of just asking for a list of all of her emotional needs and how they needed to be fulfilled….

She hadn't seen him in so long.

They used to make dinner together. That was what she missed the most. When he would drop by with 'extra' food….and the kids would be so happy….and he'd listen to how everyone's day was and then tell them about his own…that had been just wonderful. The best. That had been the best and she was the worst for thinking that it was the best. She had her husband and he…he loved her in his own way. Even now that she was getting things all twisted up and wishing for another man to come into her house and into her life and take her away from this-

No. She wasn't going anywhere.

Even if her son had…could….she was not going anywhere. Even if she'd soon have another Touichirou on her hands she was not going anywhere. She loved her son and she was…she had been happy when she had gotten her powers. She had been so happy for him. He had spent his entire life wishing that he had powers like his big sister and now that he finally had them….now he could be just like his father and sister…and that was just…it was…it was…

It was fine.

"I don't think that this is nothing. I….the only time I remember you sleeping this often was when Sho was an infant. Neither of the children are infants, they're getting to be more and more self-sufficient each day, and I can't understand why you've been spending so much time in bed." Said Suzuki. He wanted to lay down next to her….but he stayed sitting. If he were to lay himself down then the next thing he would want to do would be to wrap an arm around her and pull her close and-

And other such things.

Weak things.

He shouldn't have needed her. He shouldn't have needed anyone. He was complete on his own. He was a full and complete being on his own…and he could believe that much more easily when he was alone. It was hard to remember that fact, that simple fact, when he was with her. Masami. His Masami. When they were together, or just near each other, he felt like a piece of himself was missing. She had it. He had given it to him, divided himself up, and given part of himself to her. He had done it without even realizing what had happened….

And he did not like it.

"Why do you even care?" asked Masami

"Because….because this is not normal behavior for you." Said Suzuki. He allowed himself to lean back just a little. He could not lie down. If he did then he would throw an arm around her…and if he did that then he would break off another little piece of himself and give it to her…and he had already broken so many pieces of himself off already…

He had to be a complete person on his own.

"What's the harm in me just laying here? Who am I hurting? The kids are fine, I can hear them playing in the yard, and you just said that you don't need anything. Why do you care if I just lay here in this bed?" asked Masami. He didn't see her as a whole and complete person, it felt like. He saw her in terms of what she could do for him. He saw as his wife, not as Masami. That was why he was so 'concerned' about her.

"There's no harm…but your company is missed. The children ask about you often." Said Suzuki. They asked him about Masami and when he said that she was resting they then asked him to take her place. He could deflect them by ordering them to play outside or to watch television or by allow them to play endless amounts of videogames….but that, all of that, was beginning to lose it's effect on them. They wanted their mother. Suzuki could not recall ever needing his mother as much as his children needed Masami. He was torn. On the one hand they needed to form healthy attachments but on the other hand he wanted his children to end up being as full and complete as he was.

As he tried to be.

Because he was not a whole and complete person. He was…he was Masami's person…and right now he was worried out of his mind. Part of him was. The part of him that he tried his hardest to exorcise. The part of him that he would have been better off without. He could not afford to be weak. He could not afford to be just like everyone else.

"What about you, huh? Do you miss me too?" asked Masami

"….yes." said Suzuki

"Then why not just say it? Why do you always have to be this way? Why can't you….why can't you just love me the way I love you? For who I am, not what I can do? I just….I wish that you could love me the way that I love you." Said Masami. She didn't have to turn around to know that he was puzzling over what she just said. She knew him. As far as he was concerned as long as he was happy then the state of their union was good.

"I don't want to be weak-" said Suzuki. He was not good at this sort of thing, not good at it at all. He wished that she would just write him out a list of directions or get him a book or something. Your Guide to Being a Good Husband. He wished that she would just…just understand him. Understand that he could not be weak like everyone else. That he had to be better, stronger, than everyone else. He was alone for a reason. He was the supreme being of this world….and that was who he had to be. That being could not be weak. That being could not just break off pieces of himself and just…just be incomplete….

He did not like this feeling.

"I don't think that you're weak. I could never think that. If you think that I see you as being weak then you're projecting your own feelings onto me." Said Masami quietly. If it was weak to text her in the middle of the day to see how she was doing then she wanted him to be weak. If it was weak to pull her close and ask her what was wrong then she wanted him weak enough that a stiff breeze could blow him down the street. If it was weak to stop by just because then she wanted him to be so weak that Shigeko could have beaten him in a fist fight.

"I…I don't…." said Suzuki because, well, what did one say to that? He was not projecting his own feelings onto her. No. She just…she just….he didn't even know. She just wasn't making sense. None of this made sense. The way she had been acting, lately, had not made any sense in a while…

People slept this much when they were either sick or hadn't been sleeping during the night.

But she said that she was not sick….

But maybe she just didn't know that she was sick. She might have just not realized it. Yes….that happened sometimes. Yes….he knew exactly what to do.

If his wife was sick then, of course, he would call the healer. What else could he do? He left Masami, called Fukuda, and told him that he needed to come right over and fix whatever was wrong with Masami. She had been like this since…he wasn't entirely sure. Since Son's birthday? Since Son awakened? Since…maybe since he set foot in this house all that time ago. This was not normal for her…it couldn't have been. He knew Masami. She had a fire inside of her, she did things, she did not lay down in bed all day and watch her life pass her by.

She did not make him feel like this.

She had never made him feel like this before….well she had, once, when she had been giving birth to Sho. There had been so much blood…and she had been in so much pain…and for a little bit he thought that he was going to lose her. He had felt like this, then, but maybe even more so. He was….he felt like he was losing her…but that made no sense.

Masami was his.

Masami was not his.

Fukuda made sure, every time that he visited the Suzuki house, to remind himself. To remind himself that none of this was his.

Coming to the gate. This was not his house.

Walking up the path. This was not his family.

Knocking on the door. Those were not his children.

Entering the genkan. Masami was not his wife.

These were the things he reminded himself every time he visited…though he had not visited in quite a while. The house is messier, a little, than Masami usually kept it. There are more of the kids' toys around…and also Sho got into the drawing paper again. The kid was singlehandedly responsible for the decimation of the rainforest….that little artist. Fukuda wanted to pick up his drawings, to see what had been captivating him lately, but he did not. He could not.

He was being ushered through the house.

And not by one of the kids.

"I have no idea what it could be but I trust that you'll fix it." Said Suzuki as he led Fukuda through his house…even though the man did not need to be led. No, he had made himself very comfortable in Suzuki's home the last time he had been overseas…and he exorcises that emotion. He had been asked to come over, that was all, and really it was Suzuki's own fault for not telling Fukuda that he did not need to take orders from the children.

It would never happen again, anyway.

Because Suzuki would not be going overseas again for as long as he could manage it. Son had finally awakened, he needed to be near for when he finally learned how to do…something. If his control ended up being as bad as Daughter's had been. As bad as Suzuki's had been in his own youth. Yes, he needed to be here in case something happened….even though it seemed as though nothing was going to happen. Even now he could only see the barest hints of Son's aura. He and Daughter were playing in the snow outside. Daughter shone so brightly…she almost totally eclipsed Son…and he chose not to think about that, either.

So many things in this world to upset him.

"I'm on it, boss." Said Fukuda. It was easy, actually, to deceive Suzuki. The man could not see past his own ego. As far as he was concerned the state of his life was fine. He had a wife who loved him and most of his employees/followers were loyal to him. Fukuda had never made any attempts on his life so, obviously, he was loyal. He didn't suspect a thing.

And he wouldn't, so long as Fukuda did nothing suspicious.

Which was why he made no attempt at seeing the kids…even though he could hear them. He wondered how they were doing. Sho had been dealing with some new feelings, Masami had said, about some boy from his class. It could have been nothing, it could have been the beginning of something, but no matter what it was Fukuda knew that he and Masami would always accept him for who he was. It still must have been pretty confusing for him, especially considering how heteronormative this country was. Poor Sho. Not an easy road ahead of him.

And not just because he had a crush on another boy.

Sho's powers had shown up, too, finally. Though not finally if one compared him to other espers. Even Fukuda himself hadn't come into his powers until middle school. He had no idea that anything had been different about him aside from the fact that he had never been sick once in his life and that he never scared and always healed very quickly. Sho had an aura, that was what Masami said anyway, and he hoped that his father wasn't pushing him too hard…

Of course he was.

Sho did not need that. Fukuda knew how Suzuki could be. He knew how sensitive Sho could be. He wasn't like his father in that way….or like his sister. He could hear and see Shigeko. He wondered how she was doing. He hadn't been able to walk her to school in so long. Suzuki Shigeko, first grader. That had been a happy day. He wondered if he'd be around for Sho's first day of elementary school. He hoped….but he didn't dare hope. He tried not to think about it. Sho was six now…and about half a year Shigeko would be seven….the time, it did fly….

Stop thinking about it.

"You'd better be." Said Suzuki. Masami was sick and now she would be better and he had nothing to worry about, no reason to feel this way, because soon she'd be fine. Everything would be fine.

Everything was fine.

Fukuda told himself that everything was fine. He told himself that when Suzuki led him to the bedroom door…to Masami. He tried not to remember. When a hug had turned into a kiss…turned into one…into two…into three…turned into so much more…..he did not think about that. About what had happened. About what he wished would happen again.

About what could never happen again.

"This could take a while." Said Fukuda as he entered the bedroom. He wished for once that his boss could take social cues…but he could not. He just lingered in the doorway. Not optimal. Masami was…he knew what it meant when she got like this. He knew that what she needed was someone to hold her, to listen to her, to talk to her. She needed….

What she needed he could not give her. Not unless he wanted to end up in a hole somewhere.

"Well?" asked Suzuki after a moment. He had been on the receiving end of Fukuda's healing before. It didn't take long…though he had never been terribly injured or ill before….

"She's asleep." Said Fukuda. She was so beautiful when she slept. So peaceful. Her face was so unguarded, so soft, and her eyelashes….her eyes….her everything. Her everything was…was everything.

"So wake her up if you need to." Said Suzuki. His eyes narrowed just a bit. A flare of one's aura could mean nothing or it could mean something….but that was insane. Masami was his and he was hers and that was how marriage worked. She did not even look at other men just like he did not even look at other women. That was what marriage was.

"…right…" said Fukuda. Well not this was worrying. How would she react if she woke up to him standing above her like that? What would she say? What would she say while her husband was lingering right there in the doorway?

He shook her awake.

Because not doing anything looked suspicious as hell.

He shook her awake. Softly. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to wake her and ruin this…everything…that she was in that moment. But he has to wake her, to ruin this. He shakes her by the shoulder. Her shoulders are soft…though he cannot feel how soft now. He's feeling her shoulder through the blanket and her pajamas. One hand is clutching the blanket…her hands are so soft. So soft and beautiful. He wants to take that hand…he has taken that hand…he's taken that hand in his and brought it to his lips…and then he's pulled her close…and then….

She stirs.

"Hey...hey it's me." Said Fukuda softly. He eyes snapped open so fast he was sure she'd injure herself. She sat up quickly and drew her blanket up to her neck.

"What are you-" asked Masami. That was the only coherent thought in her head. One minute she had been staring at her phone wishing that he'd call or text or something….and for a moment she thinks that she may have wished too hard…because he's there. He's there and the thought that through the power of wishing could have brought him to her is truly absurd…but he's there and this….this is not good even though she wants this…BECAUSE she wants this….

"Your husband called me. He said that…he's worried about how long you've been in bed for." Said Fukuda. There's emphasis on the word husband and a darting of his eyes. She gets the picture. He feels his heart pounding in his chest. Maybe because she was so near….maybe because he could be caught at any time….

"Touichirou? Can you go to the kitchen and get me some pineapple juice? With ice and one of the kids' bendy straws? It would really make me happy…and make me feel better." asked Masami, a waver in her voice. No. They cannot be in the same room. She needed…she needed to be alone…alone with…

She didn't even know.

Well she did but she didn't want to think about it…about how she was…about who she was.

"Alright." Said Suzuki. Finally, a direct order…not that he took orders….but this he welcomed. She needed something that he could give and she had given him a time frame for when to do it. Not like how she told him that she wanted more affection but refused to tell him when she wanted this affection and in what quantity he was supposed to give it. He didn't much like fetching things for her but at least, now, she was making some sense.

Which meant that, maybe, she was getting better.

"He wants me to get better….heh." said Masami as she heard her husband walk away. Wow, the great and powerful Suzuki Touichirou did something to help her out. Someone mark the day.

"Masami…talk to me. We don't have a lot of time and I just…please talk to me." Said Fukuda. He sat on the bed beside her and took her hand…her impossibly soft hand. He dragged his thumb across the top of her hand, across each finger, but stopped at her wedding ring.

"We have all the time in the world. He's never in the kitchen. It'll take him a few hours to realize that we don't even have pineapple juice." Said Masami

"Sho still has the citrus thing?" asked Fukuda with a smile. She mirrored his.

"Yeah, I think he may even be allergic. He says that citrus fruits make his mouth itch. So, yeah, no pineapple juice for us. Plenty of milk though. I think Shigeko may have come from a dairy farm or something." Said Masami. She was mentioning that which could not be mentioned…and she didn't care. She was mentioning that which was must not have been mentioned to he who must not have been allowed to cross the threshold of her bedroom door…and she had to stop watching wizard movies with the kids….heh….heh-heh….

"What?" asked Fukuda nudging her a little.

"What about what?" said Masami, a smile still tugging at the corners of her lips. A foreign sensation.

"That smile. Come on, what's going on in that head of yours?" said Fukuda

"Nothing. Just…movies me and the kids watch. Have watched….I've been terrible to them lately." Said Masami

"I'm sure you haven't. You're a great mom and the kids love you." Said Fukuda

"They did….I've been no kind of mother to them. I could barely drag myself out of bed for Sho's birthday….he loved your gift, by the way. I had no idea that they made one hundred and twenty count boxes of crayons." said Masami

"Yeah…I saw his drawings as I came in. He really is talented…in a lot of ways." Said Fukuda

"Yeah…I should have known. I mean at the back of my head I knew that this was a possibility…with Touichirou as his father…but I guess that I thought that since he wasn't like Shigeko….he was like me." Said Masami. Fukuda decided to take a risk and put his arm around her.

"This isn't a bad thing. He's…Sho's a good boy. He won't…he takes after you when it comes to temperament. Not Suzuki. You. He won't grow up to be like his father. Not with you as a mother." Said Fukuda. Masami closed her eyes and leaned against him.

"I just…I hate myself sometimes. For feeling this way about my children…about my husband…about you…I just….I hate myself sometimes, I guess…." Said Masami. She closed her eyes. She didn't want to open them. If she did then…then she might cry. She was…she was so…she hated this feeling.

All of these feelings.

She was kissed.

"Don't. Don't ever say that. I never want to hear you say that again. Masami…please." Said Fukuda. He had just done the second stupidest thing he had ever done in his life….and if he had been alone with her he would have done the absolute stupidest thing he had ever done…again.

"But I…I ha-" said Masami

"No. Masami I…you know how I feel." Said Fukuda. They had never spoken about it. Feelings. Their feelings. His and hers. After that first night, that only night, he had been ushered out of the house in the morning…and they had both decided to never speak of it again….

And now he was speaking of it.

That which should not have been spoken of.

"I…I feel…." Said Masami. She didn't have the words for it. She didn't have the…she just couldn't. She just let herself be there with him.

"Better. Please, feel better, for me. If not for them, for all of them, for me." Said Fukuda softly. She was leaning against him. She didn't say a word. She just nodded. She took his hand in hers and nodded. He leaned down. She was so soft…so perfect…

An aura entered his range.

He stood up. He put a respectable amount of distance between the two of them. As much distance as would be normal but not so much that he had something to hide.

A glass levitated across the room.

"The children said that there wasn't any juice but Daughter said that strawberry milk is just as good. So here….and I'm glad to see you feeling better." Said Suzuki. Masami was sitting up. There was more color to her. She was breathing a lot heavier….

Good. She was better.

"I…I'll be on my way, then. Goodbye President Suzuki. Mrs. Suzuki." Said Fukuda as he left. He left before he could say something that he regretted.

Milk was not as good as juice.

The kids had names.

And Masami was….he honestly hoped that she had gotten just a little bit better.


	31. Up Early

Mob was almost seven years old.

She was old enough to do things for herself, now, like get herself ready in the morning.

It wasn't hard. The first step was getting up, that hadn't been hard at all. It was still really early, the sun was barely saying 'hello', but she had school so she had might as well get up now. She wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep now, anyway. No, something very scary had woken her…

But she didn't know what.

But she had to be brave. It hadn't been a bad dream, no, because then she would have remembered it. It had been more like someone shaking her awake and shouting…but Sho was the only one who did that and he was asleep in his bed. They didn't have to get up for another hour. She didn't wake him. She just used her powers to pull his blanket up higher and tuck it in around him. Her colors touched his. Pink and blue to red.

He hadn't woken her up.

He hadn't been the one to wake her up…and neither had mom. Mom never shook them awake, anyway. She touched their heads and sang to them and then they woke up and got ready for school and had breakfast and all of that stuff. Mom might have still been asleep. Mob had no idea when she got up. She had no idea when dad got up, either. Mom and dad always just got up before them.

Dad was up.

She could see his colors, sort of. He wasn't in mom and dad's room…no…she focused. She could see his colors, a different sort of red than Sho's and with some yellow in it, in the direction of his office. That was where he did his work. Mob didn't know what work that was, he was mostly just on his computer all day, but she knew that it was important. Dad had said Sho. That was why Sho had gotten kicked out. Dad didn't like to be distracted. Dad liked to have peace and quiet. Mob was good at peace and quiet, she had been voted quietest in her entire class…and the school year was only half over!

She was quiet as she got ready for school.

Her uniform was hanging up on the hook outside of her wardrobe. Well technically it belonged to her and Sho but she had more clothes in it. Sho got the drawers and she got the wardrobe because she had more things that needed to be hung up. It didn't matter if you folded up boy's clothes and stuck then in drawers, mom said, because boys didn't really care about their clothes like that. Mob cared about her clothes. Mom said that they were very expensive. That was why she had to take care not to get them dirty…and also other things like not hanging them on wire hangers…which Mob thought was an odd thing to worry about but she still listened to mom. Things went better when you listened to mom…dad too.

You had to listen to your parents.

Mob was very careful when she put her uniform on, just like mom had said that she had to be. Mom had said, before, that uniforms were expensive and just because they were wealthy, which meant they had a lot of money, that didn't mean that they were allowed to be careless and wasteful with their things. Mob was proud of her uniform, anyway, because it was a big kid uniform. She used to have to wear a uniform when she and Sho went to the same school. They had to wear a yellow hat and a blue jacket when they walked to school, and also they had to wear shirts with the school's crest on them, but those were little kid uniforms. Her uniform had a skirt and a shirt and an indoor jacket that was called a blazer and a white shirt with too many buttons and long socks that didn't stay up all the time. It was a big kid uniform because that was what she was, a big kid.

A big, brave, kid.

She still wasn't sure what had woken her up like that. Maybe it had just been a dream after all, one that she just couldn't remember. She had those types of dreams sometimes. She sometimes had dreams where she was happy but she didn't know what had gotten her so happy but she just woke up really happy…to it stood to reason that sometimes she could have sad or scary dreams like that too…

Dreams were just dreams.

Dad said so. One time Sho had a bad dream, back when he was little, so he went to mom's bed but he forgot that dad had come home and then dad had gotten all mad at him. Dad he told him that dreams were only dreams and if he couldn't tell the difference between dreams and reality then dad was very disappointed in him…

He had tossed Sho in bed and said that.

And Mob did not want to be tossed into bed really hard, or yelled at, so she decided that she would say nothing about this. Not to dad, anyway. Dad liked her and she wanted to keep it that way. Dad liked Sho too…he must have, he gave Sho the best birthday ever after all. He got a million presents and a millions cakes. Mob only got one cake and a few presents for her last birthday…she wondered what she would get for this one. It was coming up soon, just a few more flips of the calendar, and she wondered what she'd get…maybe a million cakes…

Or maybe just dolls like normal.

But Mob wouldn't have minded the dolls. No, not at all. She was glad that dad had given Sho so much stuff for his birthday. Dad was always so mean to Sho…even now that he had powers dad was still so mean to him…but dad could also be nice. Like how he did so much for Sho's birthday or how he let  
Sho play with her in his office while he was working. He even said that Sho's drawings were nice. Dad didn't…he didn't hate Sho…

Dad was hard to understand.

Dad was confusing, sometimes, like math class. Even if all the pieces to find the answer were right there in front her Mob still couldn't put them together. For math or for dad. Dad could be nice and then he could be mean and then he could be nothing at all…and it was very confusing. So confusing. The most confusing. Mob wished sometimes, that he could just come out and tell everyone how he felt about them. If he even liked them. He used to be away for months at a time and sometimes, back when she was little, Mob wondered if dad even liked them at all…and now he was there, which meant that he must have wanted to be home, but he was still kind of mean. Mostly to Sho.

Which made no sense because he had powers now.

He couldn't do anything, not really, not since he accidentally hit her in the head with her hairbrush that one time. Maybe that was why dad was so mad at him lately. He wanted Sho to be more like him. That was how parents were. They made their kids, the process by which this happened was disturbing, so they wanted their kids to be like them. Sho was like mom and she was like dad and that was an even split, everyone got a kid that way, but maybe dad just wanted Sho to be like him because he was a boy and dad was a boy. Maybe that was it.

Dad was so confusing sometimes.

Mom could be confusing too. Like how sometimes she slept all the time like she was sick and other times she'd just jump right out of bed and take them to the park or the pool or the animal shelter or just on a walk…and she'd ask them a lot if they were having fun…and those would be really fun days but the next day she'd be laying down all the time…like she was sick…and maybe it was one of those things that came and went, like a cough…but mom was not coughing. Fukuda had come by to fix her…and he hadn't so much as said 'hi' to her and Sho…but mom was still…being like that. Mob didn't get it. Dad didn't get it either. That was why he was always asking her if mom was being normal and stuff. He had been away from the castle for so long that he forgot what went on inside of it.

But he was here now.

He was here and his colors were there and he felt kind of…not good. Mad. Like he was mad at something…or someone. Though Mob had no idea what it was that he could have been mad at. Sho was right there after all. There asleep in his own bed…so dad had no reason to be mad at him…Mob didn't get it. She didn't get it at all. She knew to stay away from dad, though, and that was what she did. She was in her uniform, now, and after getting dressed it was time to brush her hair and her teeth and then have breakfast, check her school bag in case she forgot something, and then head off to school. That was how the day went. Mom would be so happy that she had gotten herself ready all on her own…

But before she woke mom up and showed her that she had gotten ready she ought to actually finish getting ready.

She walked as quietly as she could to the bathroom. She could lift herself up off the ground with her powers but that was kind of hard, sometimes she dropped herself, and mom didn't like her using her powers for stuff like that anyway. Mom didn't seem to like powers much. The rules for powers were getting more and more restrictive. Now she wasn't supposed to use them for mundane things, things which she could do by hand, because…Mob didn't even know why. Dad said that she had to use her powers as much as possible. That was what they were for, dad had said. Heaven had given them these powers to be used…though Mob wasn't sure if heaven had given them like dad had said or if it was just in her genes, not the pants but the building blocks inside of you, like mom said. Dad said that they had these powers because they were supposed to rule the world and stuff but mom said that she and Dad and Sho had powers for no reason at all. Just like how some people had red hair or blue eyes and their sisters didn't. There was no rhyme or reason to it, mom had said.

Mob didn't know what to believe.

Mom and dad were not liars, it was wrong to tell lies, so one of them must have been mistaken…but she didn't know which one. She didn't like to think about it, that one of her parents could have been wrong, because…because it made her feel like the ground was gone under her feet. Mom and dad always knew just what to do, that was why they were mom and dad. If they didn't know and she didn't know then there was nobody in the whole world who knew. Besides, it didn't matter why she had her powers. She just had them and there was nothing that she could do about it.

Besides, her powers made dad love her more.

Dad had powers, Sho had powers, and she had powers. That made her the same as them. Less different. She was tired of being different. She made her way to the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror, at how different she was. She was…she was so different from everyone else. Not in the world, no, because when she went outside of the house, past the castle walls, people looked like her. Everyone had black hair and brown eyes and their eyes were shaped like hers, too. Within the walls of the castle everyone looked…they didn't look like her. Different from her and different from everyone else in the world. Maybe they all just looked different because they were special, the most special people, like dad was always saying about.

Mob didn't want to be special.

Outside of the castle her powers made her special but she looked like everyone else. Inside of the castle most of the people had powers but she looked different from everyone else. If dad didn't have powers like she did she would have wondered if the hospital had maybe switched her with another baby. Maybe somewhere else in Japan there was a little girl named Shigeko and she had red hair and blue eyes and her whole family had black hair and brown eyes and she was looking at herself in the mirror wondering what had happened and why she was so different and-

Mob started brushing her hair.

She brushed her hair with her powers and her teeth by hand. It was so much easier to do this with her powers even if her hair did get tangled in it sometimes. Easier and faster. She had a lot of hair. Mom said so every single time she brushed and braided it. She said 'you have too much hair, Shigeko' and then she smiled and laughed which meant that she hadn't said that to be mean. She couldn't be mean. She was a mom. Moms could not be mean. Dads could be mean but not moms. When she had a bunch of kids then she would be nice to them…but she hoped that their dad wasn't mean…

Maybe that was just how dads were.

Dad certainly felt mean right then. She felt…she saw…those were his colors, his aura, and he was moving around…back and forth…and he felt mad. Auras weren't stopped by walls and stuff so she could feel him as clearly as if he were standing right next to her. Based on where his colors were coming from he was still in his office…and he was mad about something. She wanted to know what he could have been so mad at. The only thing that she had ever seen him get so mad about was Sho…but he was asleep…but maybe he had done something bad and now dad was really mad and he was just waiting for Sho to wake up so he could punish him and-

Mob had to be brave.

So she went to see what had gotten dad so mad. She walked really slowly and quietly down the hallway. The floor was cold under her socks. It was still wintertime out even if the year had changed. It would be wintertime for a while, until just before her birthday. She was born in spring. Sho had been born in winter. She wondered how birthdays worked. Who decided when the baby got to be born? Did it come out when the mom ran out of room in her stomach or did the mom just decide when to push it out like on TV? Or was it a surprise? She'd ask later, when mom woke up, if she was going to be up that day, how she decided which of them was born in the spring and which of them was born in the winter.

She didn't know if dads got a say in that.

And she was not going to ask dad, no, not now. Now she was trying to hear what had gotten him so upset. She had made it to his door…and his colors still looked upset…but she still didn't know why. She couldn't just go and open the door and ask, he wouldn't have told her anyway, so instead she pressed her ear against the door. It was cold. Everything in the castle was cold. She'd heard mom complaining to dad that because the castle was so big it was really hard to heat and cool. Mom was right about that. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, but nice in the spring and fall. That was how the castle was. Dad just didn't know because he was hardly ever home…

Well that had changed…

"I'm surrounded by incompetence." Mob heard dad say. He sounded mean, then, very mean. Meaner than he had ever sounded before…meaner even then when he talked to Sho. Mob covered her mouth so she didn't make any shocked noises at how mean dad was being.

"I appointed you division head so that I would not have to deal with these things myself…." Said Dad. Mob pressed her ear even closer to the door. Who could have gotten dad this mad? And why? Was he talking to one of the people who worked for him? Mob…now she was extra curious. Dad had other workers besides Fukuda, they had come to the castle when dad had felt Sho's aura when he was stuck in mom and dad's closet, but Mob hadn't seen or heard much from them…and dad had never been that mean to them, too….

"Stop talking. This grows tiresome." Said dad. Mob knew that tone, she knew a less mean version of that tone, and she hoped that whoever he was talking to on the phone, she could hear someone else's voice though she had no idea what they were saying, but she really hoped that they listened. Dad only said things like that when he was getting ready to punish someone…Sho, always Sho…and Mob hoped that he didn't take whatever this was out on Sho…

"Fine. If you cannot control your subordinates then I will…and you will be stripped of your rank and reassigned. I cannot stand for such incompetence." Said dad. Mob heard a phone click off and then…dad said a bunch of bad words…words that she didn't even know that dad knew…and that time she did make a shocked noise because, well, that was shocking….

"Daughter. Enter." Said Dad. Mob knew that she had no choice. Dad knew she was there…and of course there hadn't been any way to hide from him. Dad was even better at seeing colors than she was…and now she had to enter his office like he said and explain herself…and she wanted to go back to bed…

"Daughter. Now." Said Dad and Mob, well, she really had no choice.

But she did as she was told.

She opened the door by hand, it was heavy, and just stood in the doorway. Dad motioned for her to come close and when she didn't do it fast enough he dragged her with his powers. She let herself be dragged until she was in front of his desk. His face looked bored, his face always looked bored, but his colors looked…mad.

"Yes? You need something?" asked dad. Mob shook her head no. She didn't like the way dad was looking at her. That was how he looked at Sho…but that was good. If he was looking at her like that then he wouldn't look at Sho like that. If he yelled at her then he wouldn't yell at Sho. If he punished her then he wouldn't punish Sho…she had never been punished by dad but if he punished her instead of Sho then…then she would gladly let herself be punished so long as it kept her little brother safe.

"Then why are you here?" asked Dad.

"You…you felt mad and you sounded mad and I just…I wanted to see what you were so mad about." Said Mob. She kept eye contact with him, he said that she was always supposed to make eye contact when she spoke to him, and she stood up straight because he said that she always had to stand up straight. She had to be brave. She was a big kid, now, and that was why she got to wear a big kid uniform. She was a big kid, a big brave kid.

She was almost seven. Seven was a big kid.

"That's none of your business." Said Dad. Mob nodded.

"Yes Dad. I'm sorry dad." Said Mob. She wanted to leave but she knew that she had to wait for him to tell her to go. She always remembered to wait, that was one of the differences between her and Sho. Sho never waited to be allowed inside or dismissed. That was one of the differences between them besides their hair and eye colors.

"I'm surrounded by incompetence. I cannot wait until you come of age." Said Dad

"You mean…when I grow up? You want me to work for you?" asked Mob

"Of course I do. I'm raising you for that purpose and I know that you'll never fail me." Said Dad. Mob smiled. Dad seemed less mad, well his colors seemed less mad, and if he wanted her to work for him when she grew up then she would. If it made dad happy. She just wanted everyone to be happy.

"I won't dad, I promise you." Said Mob

"Good. I knew that I could trust you, Daughter." Said Dad. Then he sighed.

"Dad?" asked Mob. He didn't usually sigh like that…or do anything at all to show his feelings unless he as punishing Sho or made at Sho…this was…weird. Kind of.

"Daughter?" asked Dad

"Are you ok?" asked Mob. Dad didn't look mad, not that she was the best judge of these things, and he didn't feel mad…anymore. She didn't know. Dad was confusing sometimes.

"A six year old girl will serve me better than legions of grown men. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry." Said Dad. Mob wondered what he meant by that. That was not an answer, as dad was so fond of saying to her and Sho…mostly Sho, but Mob was not about to go and tell her dad that he hadn't given her a real answer.

"Um…you can do either. If you want to cry, though, I can get you some tissues." Said Mob. To her surprise dad smiled, actually smiled. Well it was only a little smile, like the kind you did for school pictures, but dad was smiling…

"Helpful. Like your mother. You're a good daughter, Daughter, a very good daughter. The best I could have hoped for." Said dad. Mob smiled, now, because it always felt good when dad said good things to her…though she wished that he could have saved some of those good things for Sho. He needed to hear them more than she did.

"Thank you. You're a very good dad, too." Said Mob. She said it to be nice. Truth be told she sometimes wanted a dad who was nicer, ok she wanted that a lot, mostly for Sho. She didn't care if dad was nice to her or not. She just wanted Dad to be nice to Sho.

"Don't sing my praises, I have enough people singing my praised. It's tiresome." Said dad

"You don't like it when people are nice to you, dad?" asked Mob. That would have made so much sense. Dad was mean and stuff because he just didn't like niceness…and that didn't make sense….but a lot of things didn't make sense.

"I dislike it when people sing my praises. Well I like it on occasion but not now. I know that I'm a good father to you, Daughter, and I don't need to be told as such." Said dad

"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say the wrong thing. I say the wrong thing a lot. I'm sorry." Said Mob. Oh great, now dad was mad at her too…but that was good. If he was mad at her then he wasn't mad at Sho. For every moment dad spent mad at her that was one less moment that he would be mad at Sho.

"And don't apologize, either. You're my daughter. I don't need your apologies." Said Dad. That was kind of hurtful…though Mob did not let it show. Dad didn't like it when she and Sho let things show.

"I'm confused. I'm not allowed to say sorry? Mom says that when you do something wrong you're supposed to say sorry….I'm confused." Said Mob

"Daughter, when you get to your adult years you'll realize how tiresome it is to have people groveling to you. They grovel because it's their place but it is not yours. You're a Suzuki. You're better than that…but if your mother wants you to get into the habit of apologizing then…I suppose you can, for now, but not to me. Don't grovel to me. Tell me how you're going to change your behavior in the future but do not grovel to me." Said Dad

"Um…ok. I'll…um…be more careful about the way I talk?" said Mob. There were a million and one rules that existed for talking to people and just when Mob thought that she understood when she was doing a whole new rule popped up. It was like they were all playing a game at recess and Mob didn't know the rules…so like every single day at recess…

"Good. See? This is why you're one of the more tolerable people on this planet." Said Dad

"Thank you." Said Mob. She didn't know if tolerable was a good word for a person. You tolerated things like getting your hair shampooed and Brussel sprouts with dinner. You liked people. Well you didn't have to like all the people in the world, no, but saying that you tolerated someone seemed kind of….mean. But that was just how dad was.

"That's all. You're dismissed. Have a productive day at school." Said Dad. He waved his hand and the door opened. Mob didn't wait for dad to push her out of the room with his powers, she left of her own accord. That had been…her head hurt. It hurt a lot. Talking to dad…sometimes it felt like dad's rules for stuff were totally different from the rest of the world's rules for talking and stuff. Sometimes. Or maybe she just wasn't working hard enough at understanding dad. He was the only person in her whole family that she was like…sort of. They both were weird when it came to talking and stuff and they both had powers…well Sho had powers now, too, even if he couldn't really do anything…but she still had more in common with dad. In the way that she was…

Though she thought that she was a lot nicer, sometimes, than dad.

Not that being nice was a contest. Dad just didn't seem to understand about being nice, that was all, and he couldn't help it. So that was ok. He was ok now, anyway, because he had said so much nice stuff to her. She wished that he had saved some of that nice stuff for Sho. He needed to hear it more than she did. Sho had mom and she had dad, that used to be fair, but then mom stated getting sick a lot…and then Sho had been alone with her and dad…

Mob walked past mom's room.

The light was on and Mob could hear mom moving around. Good. She wasn't sick that morning. She was out of bed…though she might have just been getting up to get her and Sho up and ready for school. Well she could make it easier on mom. Then mom could say that she was a good daughter just like dad had said. Yes, she'd help out mom by….getting Sho ready, too!

Then mom would be happy.

Mom and dad would both be happy and then she and Sho could be happy and then everyone could be happy.

She had to make everyone happy. Like dad said, she was a good daughter.


	32. Presents

Mob missed dad.

He had gone on another one of his trips. He said that he would be back soon. That should have been good. It should have made her not miss him because he would be back soon…but she had no idea what 'soon meant'. A day? A week? A month? Month months? It was hard to tell with dad. The best thing to do was just to go with it, though, because dad didn't like it when they questioned him. He didn't like a lot of things and it was their job, her and Sho's, to not do the things that made him mad. They had to be good like that.

Being good was very important.

Good and sweet. Mom always said that she was her sweet girl. Dad said that she was a good daughter. That was his nickname for her, Daughter. That was kind of weird, dad said that nicknames weren't ok, but then he went and called her Daughter all the time. She didn't see how being called Daughter was that much different from being called Mob. Neither of those were her real name, Shigeko. Daughter was just like Mob. Not a name but instead a description of what she was. When she was at school she was Mob, she was quiet and blended in to the background and there was nothing special about her. At home she was Daughter because, well, she was the daughter. She was the daughter and Sho was the son.

Dad called Sho Boy, too.

Which was a lot like being called Mob. There was no description there. Nicknames were about some kind of description of the person, like the kid in her class that everyone called Horsey because his teeth were really big, or Worm Eater, the kid who got caught eating worms…boys were weird like that. Mob was called Mob because she looked and acted like a background character. Sho was called Boy because he was a boy…Son was a better nickname because it at least described his place in their family.

Dad never used their names.

Mob had asked mom, once, if dad knew their names. It would have made sense if he had forgotten, the way he never used them, because at this point it may have been awkward to ask. What would he even say? Hey, kids, I forgot your names? He had certainly been away long enough to forget their names. It would have made sense. Mom just said that she was being ridiculous. Of course dad knew their names, he was their dad. He knew their names and their ages and everything about them. He was their dad and he loved them. Even if he didn't know how to show it.

He really didn't, sometimes.

Like sometimes he said nice things, like she was a good Daughter and Sho was a good drawer, but then in the very next sentence he would tell Sho that he was being a disappointment and then he would tell her that he expected better from her. He expected her to be able to control her powers, to be able to help Sho with his powers, to help mom out more, to just be better. A better person. A good Daughter. Mob was trying, she really was, but it was hard. Dad wanted so much…or maybe she was just capable of so little. That might have been it. She might have just been incapable…incompetent….like he called the people who worked for him.

Useless.

Dad said that he was going on this trip to deal with some useless people. He said that he had left someone in charge of something very important and they had proved themselves to be a bunch of useless incompetents and now he had to go fix what they broke. Mob hoped that it didn't take too long. Sometimes fixing thigs took a long time, like when she and Sho accidentally broke a plate and had to glue it back together. She hoped that dad came back soon. She didn't care if he came back with presents, she just wanted dad back.

She missed him.

He wasn't so bad…to her. He had even bene really nice to Sho, too. He took one of Sho's drawings, it was a drawing of the castle, and put it up on his office wall. Mom was always the one to put their pictures up. It was nice of dad to do something like that. Very nice of him. He did it, he said, because Sho wrote the title in kanji. Suzuki Family Castle. Dad was proud of him, too, even if he didn't say it. Dad was proud of them for things besides powers, Sho thought that he wasn't but Mob knew better, she had known dad for a whole extra year after all. Since she was a year older…wait…

If she was a year older, a whole year older, then her birthday would have been on December first of the previous year…

Her birthday was in May. May was…one, two, three, four, five months after December…so she wasn't a whole year older…well their ages did overlap….huh. She had never thought about it before. Mom and dad must have been in a big hurry to have another kid then. Mob had asked mom, once, why she had a little brother. A lot of families only had one kid. Some had two. Some had no kids at all. A man on the TV said that there weren't enough kids to replace the old people when they died. She wondered why some people had kids, some didn't, some had a lot, some had one, some had girls, some had boys, and some had one of each.

Mom just said that every family was different.

She said that they had Sho so that she would have a friend to grow up with. That was weird. Little brothers were not friends. Little brothers were their own thing. Maybe. Mob wouldn't have known. She didn't have any friends, not really, because she never went to people's houses and they never went to hers. She went places with mom and Sho, of course, and she played with kids at the park and at school and stuff but she didn't have the sorts of friends that the other kids had….and she didn't really know how to feel about that. She wanted friends but Sho was her little brother…and she should have been happy with who she had…

Plus dad said that he didn't like it when she and Sho played with the other kids.

He said that once he had the world he'd find a whole bunch of people like them and then they'd have people they could hang out with and stuff. Other psychics. Other espers. Dad said that psychics were the best kind of people…but Mob didn't agree. Where did that leave mom? She didn't have any psychic powers. She had mom powers, of course, like being able to look out the window and tell if it was cold outside or the ability to put her hand on their foreheads to tell if they had temperatures, but she didn't have psychic powers or anything like that…but she was still their mom and she was just as good as anyone else.

Mob didn't understand dad sometimes.

"I don't understand your father sometimes….I swear…." Said Mom. Mob looked up from what she was doing. Math homework for school. Sums. Sho was in the living watching one of his shows. That one was a live feed of a bunch of hamsters in a tank. She wondered if the hamsters were uncomfortable being stared at by the whole world all the time. She'd ask Sho later. He was lucky, his school didn't give homework.

"What's wrong, mom? Do you want me to lift that box for you?" asked Mob as mom carried a big box into the kitchen and put it on the table. It could have been presents from dad. She hoped that it was presents from dad. She didn't ask though, that would have been greedy. Plus she had to ask how mom was feeling. That was the polite thing to do when talking to mom. Mom said that it was important to take an interest in what other people were thinking and feeling. Dad was different. He got annoyed, he said, when people went prying into how he felt and stuff. He said that it was nobody's business but his own how he felt.

"No, I've got it…your father sent us…I have no idea what he sent us." Said mom. Then she muttered some stuff that mob couldn't hear. Mom went to get the kitchen scissors. Mob got up and went over to the box. It smelled like cardboard. She didn't know what she expected. Maybe she expected it to smell of wherever dad had gone to. He said that he had to go to America again. Mob wondered what America smelled like. She wondered what Japan smelled like. Did Japan have a smell and she was just used to it? Was it like going to a new classroom and it smelled funny but then you got used to it? Were houses like that? Did her house have a smell? Was it like how mom said that they had to wash their clothes and take baths when they came back from the animal shelter because they smelled funny?

"We've got presents!" said Sho. He ran in from the living room and bumped into the table. His socks slipped on the floor. Mom had just waxed it. The floor was always slippery after it was waxed. Mob wished that she had been fast enough to catch him. She caught her glass of strawberry milk, though, because it had fallen off the table and was about to hit the floor that mom had just cleaned and waxed.

"Shigeko. Not in the house." Said Mom. Mob reached over with her hand and put her glass back on the table like normal. The rules were different when dad was gone. Dad liked it when they used their powers. Mom didn't. She wanted them to do things the regular way…and Mob didn't get it at all.

Also Sho was not supposed to run in the house.

But mom didn't say anything….and that was ok. That was fine. Sho got punished enough by dad anyway. He needed someone to be nice to him. If mom being nice to Sho meant that she was mean, not even mean, to Mob then that was fine.

"What'd dad get us? What'd he get us?" asked Sho. He jumped up and down with his hands on the table so he could get up higher. That was a trick that he wasn't supposed to do. That was how the coffee table in the living room got messed up. Mom didn't tell him to stop, then, either, but that was ok. Dad was always telling Sho what he was doing wrong. Dad was always on Sho's back so it made sense that when he was gone Mom wouldn't be on his back. The reverse was true, too. When dad was around he was almost never on Mob's back. Therefore it made sense that mom was on her back like that. It was only fair.

"Give me a second to get this box opened…he always uses so much tape…or at least his people do." Said Mom. She meant dad's workers. He had a lot of them and they were all incompetent, he said. Mob didn't think that he should have been calling the people who worked for them dumb. You weren't supposed to call anyone names, actually, because it was mean. Dad didn't know that he was being mean, though, because he didn't understand the difference between mean and nice. Mob wished that she could just sit him down and explain to him that words could hurt…but he would have probably gotten mad at her if she did that.

"Can I have the tape when you're done, mom?" asked Sho

"For what, honey?" asked Mom

"Taping things." Said Sho

"Fine, but don't get it in anyone's hair or eyes." Said Mom. She smiled when she said that. She had been in a good mood since dad had left. Maybe because she wasn't sick anymore. She had started to get better in the days leading up to when dad left, she took them to the pool and to the park and even to the animal shelter where they groomed the cats…those cats had no liked being groomed….maybe because the brush was pointy…but it had still been fun. It had been a while since mom had done anything fun for them. She had even been sick on Christmas….

But now she was ok.

She was smiling and she had made her hair all pretty and she had makeup on and she was wearing her pretty dress, the one with the birds on it, and that meant that she was better. Mob wished that dad could have been there to see that mom had gotten better. He worried about her. He never said that he worried about her, he never talked about his feelings, but he asked Mob if mom had been sick a lot, what her symptoms were, things like that. He asked a lot. That meant that he was worried. Because he loved her, probably.

Mom and dad were in love and that was not gross no matter what Sho said.

Even if they did do very gross things to one another because that was how adults showed love…ick…

"But the world looks cook through tape vision…and my eyelashes grew back." Said Sho

"No hair, no eyes…ok?" said Mom

"Ok…" said Sho. Mom reached down and touched his hair. Sho was happier now that dad was gone, too. Mom had less rules, he said, and she never looked at him like he was gum. Mob didn't know what was wrong with gum. Gum came in a million flavors, was fun to chew on, and even more fun to blow bubbles with.

"Ok, let's see what dad sent us this time from…New York City, New York, U.S.A. Well they're creative over there, now aren't they?" asked Mom with a smile.

"No, because they used the same name twice. At least I don't think so." Said Mob. Dad said that foreign people were weird but they thought that Japanese people were weird too so it was all even. He said that it was important to understand the world and the people in it if they were going to rule it. Mob didn't want to rule the world but she did like the foreign candy and snacks that dad sent some times.

"Shigeko…you're so adorable…and sweet." Said Mom. She didn't pat Mob on the head. Mob didn't mind. That just meant that there would be more head pats for Sho. Sho needed them more than she did. Sometimes he cried at night when he thought that she was asleep. She tried, sometimes, to go to his bed while he cried and to make him feel better but then he just kicked her out and told her to mind her own business. She stopped doing that after they got too loud and woke dad up and then he got mad at Sho for being quarrelsome, which meant starting fights, even though they weren't fighting at all…

Mob pretended to sleep, now, when Sho cried at night.

He was happy now, though, which was good. Mom was pulling out smaller boxes from the big box. The boxes had their names on them in kanji and English. They had to learn those characters too. The English ones. Dad said that the only languages you really needed were Japanese, Mandarin, English, and maybe Hindi. That was a lot of languages. They had just started English in school and it was already really hard.

"Ok looks like…oh, chocolates. Ok, Shigeko and I got Valentine's day chocolates…I have no idea why…" said Mom

"Maybe dad is going to be gone for White Day, too, and wanted to make sure that we got our candy." Said Mob. That would have made sense. Sometimes dad's presents didn't make it in time for holidays. Shipping things from overseas was hard, he said, and also sometimes he just forgot. He didn't say that he forgot, mom did, last year when they got their Christmas gifts in February.

"Can I have some?" asked Sho

"Ok. You can have half of mine." Said Mob

"But not if they're the gross kind. I hate the gross kind. Who puts fruit in chocolate?" asked Sho. Mob shrugged. Sho thought that the weirdest things were gross. Like orange juice. He said that citrus tasted gross and made his mouth itch. Mob didn't say anything, of course, she was the same way with cilantro. Well it didn't make her mouth itch but it did taste like soap. So gross.

"Lets see…oh, he sent a note. According to your father there is no White Day in the country he's in and he knows that we like chocolates. Also he says, once again, not to get him candy because he hates sweet foods…and he wishes us all well….and he says that he'll be back when he's back." Said Mom

"That doesn't make sense. Of course he'll be back when he's back. Where else would he be?" asked Mob. She didn't get it one bit…but she didn't get a lot of things.

"That means he doesn't know when he's coming back." Said Sho. Mob nodded. Sho really was better at this than she was. A lot better.

"He'll be back eventually…now let's see what else he got us!" said Mom. Then she got a bunch more stuff from the box. Sho got citrus candy, dad forgot that citrus was the thing that Sho didn't like, but mob traded him all of her chocolate for his citrus gummies and hard candies. Mom got a pretty bottle of perfume. She didn't put any on, she must have been saving it for a special occasion. Not that they had many of those. Or maybe she was just saving it so it was nice like the others. Mom collected perfume, she had a whole shelf of it in her room. Dad was always getting her perfume and stuff so she must have liked it.

Dad sent Sho stuff too.

More artist's pencils. Sho had a bunch but he could always use more, he said. He was happy about what she he got. Mob was happy about what she got. She got a doll that looked like her. Dad said that, well he said in a note, that there was a place that could make dolls that looked like you. He said that he passed it on his way to where he was going so he sent someone with a picture of her and now she had a doll that looked just like her.

It had long black hair in braids like hers.

It had brown eyes like hers.

It's eyes were shaped like hers were.

It even had on clothes that looked like her school uniform.

Dad said that it was a friend for her. He always called her dolls that, friends for her. He either sent her a new doll shipped in a box from another country or he handed it to her himself. 'Here Shigeko, a friend for you' was what he would say. He said that they were good for 'modeling social interaction' too. Mob, if she had been a meaner person, would have said that she wanted other kids for friends, not dolls, but that would have been a mean and ungrateful thing to say to her dad. He didn't have to get them anything and it really was a nice doll.

Not creepy at all.

Sho said that it was creepy but Mob didn't agree. To agree would have been ungrateful. This doll…she was grateful for it. Even if it felt like…like it was looking at her…maybe dad should have kept it. Maybe he would be able to remember her name if he had a doll that looked like him. Maybe he should have had dolls made of her and Sho so then maybe he could remember things about them. Like their names. Or that Mob had dolls already and that Sho hated citrus and liked crayons better than pencils because you could get more color from a crayon or that mom already had a million bottles of pretty perfumes….

But saying those things would have been ungrateful. Dad didn't like it when they were ungrateful.

Mob should have been grateful. There were kids in this world who didn't have any dolls at all. Any dads at all. She stuffed all of her bad feelings down, conceal don't feel like from Frozen, except she wasn't going to run away to live on the mountain of ice…but she did feel like she was going to maybe explode….but she still stuffed all of her mean and ungrateful feelings down.

She had to be sweet.

She had to be a good daughter.

She had to miss her dad.


	33. Valentine's Day

On Valentine's Day you were supposed to give a boy you liked candy.

Mob didn't give the boy she liked any candy.

His name was Taro. He sat in front of her and he was tall and he ran fast during recess and he helped her when they were doing math in class and one time her apple fell on the ground after she took a bite out of it so he gave her his…and that was so nice of him. He was always really nice to her. Like the one time when they were in art class and they had to draw each other's portraits and he didn't make fun of her because her drawing wasn't that good and he drew her in a blue dress like Elsa's because he knew that she liked that movie…and also they held hands that one time…well the teacher paired them up for a fire drill and made them hold hands…but usually people didn't want to hold hands with her even though if they didn't hold hands and it was an actual fire then they'd end up all burning to death…but Taro had held her hand like it was nothing.

Which was nice.

People were mean to her sometimes. She didn't like that. Mean people. Well she liked everyone in the world, it would have been mean otherwise, but she didn't like the company of mean people. You had to choose your company carefully, dad had said, so that was what Mob did. She didn't hang around mean people…even though the mean people were friends with the nice people and therefore a lot of the nice people didn't want to hang out with her…

School was hard like that sometimes.

Being around people was hard like that. She didn't like to be made fun of. That was why she was Mob, nobody noticed Mob, because Mob blended into the background. Nobody ever…well they shouldn't have….made fun of Mob. Because she was unnoticeable. Even if she said the wrong thing and had trouble with math and also one time she accidentally tucked her school skirt into her underwear and nobody told her because it was so funny….even though in Mob's opinion it was not funny at all. Taro had been the one to tell her that her underwear was showing…which was bad because he was a boy and not her brother but also good because he stood behind her so she could fix her skirt. He was nice like that.

Mob liked boys who were nice.

When she got married, she decided, she would marry a boy who was nice. She would have married Sho if she could but Sho was her brother and that was outside of nature's laws. Her teacher had said so. Brothers and sisters were never supposed to get married because then their babies would come out with six arms and two heads. That would have been bad for the baby, it would have gotten made fun of if it was born with six arms and two heads. She wanted to have babies that would never get made fun of. That was why she wanted to marry someone nice. She wanted to be married to someone nice who would never make fun of her or be mean to the kids even if they were like Sho.

She didn't want to be married to dad.

Well she couldn't have been because he was her dad and also he was married to mom. She didn't want to marry a boy like dad. Dad was mean without even knowing it. Mob got enough of mean people at school. She didn't want to have to come home from school and then have her husband be all mean to her. No, she wanted to be married to someone nice.

Not that anyone wanted to marry her.

She wasn't even seven yet, she couldn't get married. It took a long time to get married. You had to get to know someone really well. That was why the marriage between Anna and Hans in Frozen wouldn't have worked out, because they hardly knew each other and she never realized that he was a villain and that he was going to let her heart freeze and stuff. That would have been the worst, if Mob met a boy and fell in love with him and it turned out that he was a villain. That would have been the super worst. That was why she wanted to marry someone nice.

Well if she had it her way she would have married Kristoff….but he was not real and you couldn't marry a fictional person. That was also outside of nature's laws. Her teacher said so.

But she wasn't ever going to get a boyfriend let alone get married. She couldn't even give the boy she liked the most in her whole class a chocolate lollipop even though it was Valentine's Day and she had asked mom, specifically, to get her a chocolate lollipop….though Mom didn't know the reason. No, Mob was not going to tell her mom that she liked a boy. If she told mom then dad would know because mom and dad were not allowed to keep secrets from each other and then dad would be made at her because she liked a boy who wasn't an esper like she was.

The only boy esper she knew who was a kid like her was Sho.

And she couldn't marry Sho. Actually being married to Sho wouldn't have been that great because then they would have to sleep in the same bed and Sho kicked in his sleep. Also they would have to agree on what was on the TV instead of having separate TV times. Yes, being married to Sho would have been hard. Even though, then, he'd go away forever because that was what you did when you were an adult. You never talked to your own family because when you became an adult you started a new family and one day Sho would meet some girl and she'd marry him and then he'd move far away and never see her again and then she'd be all alone in the castle.

She didn't want to be alone.

So maybe then it was good that she didn't give Taro the chocolate lollipop. Maybe it was better that she didn't get a boyfriend. If she got a boyfriend then maybe she would get a husband and then maybe she'd have to leave her family forever because she'd have her own family and then she'd have to be someone's mom and then she'd sleep all the time like her mom did.

So maybe she should just stay single.

Yeah, maybe that was the thing. To stay single. She was only in the first grade after all, she had years and years to find a boyfriend…even though she did like holding hands. She wondered what it would be like to hold hands with someone for no reason. Well not for no reason, for love, but not because it was a fire drill. She wondered what it felt like. Was it warm? Sweaty? Sticky? Boys had sticky hands sometimes…well Sho did…a lot of the time. Taro's hands weren't sticky that one time they held hands. He wasn't like Sho, though, because he didn't touch everything or keep candy and stuff in his pockets. It had been nice…actually…

She really wanted to hold hands with someone.

A boy. A boy who she liked and who liked her. They'd hold hands and watch the sunset and go for walks in the park and other romantic stuff like that. Then when they had been going out for long enough, ten or twenty years, they'd kiss…the thought makes her red in the face. Ten or twenty years seemed like long enough to get to know someone…to get to know someone well enough to…to kiss them…

She needs to stop staring at the boy in question while she thinks about this stuff.

Because her face is super red, now, she can feel it. She must have been as red as a tomato…and everyone must have known what she was thinking of…and they could all tell and she was so embarrassed and now he was coming towards her and she wanted to run away but her feet wouldn't work and her legs would work and her lungs wouldn't work and she was all hot and cold at the same time and-

"Mob, do you want to play with us?" he asked. Mob couldn't talk. She couldn't remember Japanese. Not a single word of it. Gone. It had all just poured out of her head like when she got water in her ears at the pool.

"We found an empty soda can and we're going to kick it around. Do you want to? We need equal teams for a game. We've already got Ito and Hiroshi and Ono and Seito. We used to have Nakamura but he's holding hands with his girlfriend. So gross." He said

"Um…" said Mob. She wanted to play, she really wanted to play. She wanted to play and…and she also didn't want to because she knew that she would say something dumb or do something dumb and she's so nervous that she feels like her stomach is trying to crawl up her throat…and she can feel her braids trying to float away….

She reaches behind herself and holds them down.

"Come on, we need equal teams. Man, I hate Valentine's Day. All the best kickers have girlfriends now…so gross. Let the second graders be gross I say, we in the first grade have better things to do with our time! Right, Mob? Suzuki?" he said. Mob tried to say something. Anything. But she couldn't. She could feel the chocolate lollipop in her pocket and it's suddenly super heavy in her pocket and she wonders if her pocket will break or maybe the chocolate will melt and then she'd be all sticky and gross and then she'd feel even worse.

"Come on, you're good at kicking things. Remember when we were playing soccer in gym and you scored that goal. I mean you scored in your own team's goal but that was still a really good kick. I thought that it was really good, anyway." He said.

"T-Thank you…" said Mob. She held her braids close because they were going to float away…she felt like she was going to float away. The only thing holding her down was her heavy school satchel. Thank goodness for homework.

"So, are you going to come and play?" he asked. Mob tried to say yes. Saying 'thank you' had taken a lot out of her. She didn't know if she had ever been this nervous in her life. She wanted…she really wanted to go and play…but what she wanted more was to give him the gosh darned chiclate lollipop in her pocket and then hold hands with him like the other kids, the bigger kids, were doing over on the play structure and by the trees….it looked nice. It looked really nice…..

"Well, is Suzuki coming or not?"

"Why are you even asking her? Mob never plays with anyone!"

"Yes, Princess Suzuki thinks she's too good for us commoners!"

Mob hated that last one, that last nickname. She liked Mob, didn't mind being called Suzuki, but hated being called Princess Suzuki. They had an assignment where they had to talk about their favorite stories and she talked about the one dad told her and Sho a lot. The one where he was going to be the king of the world and she and Sho were going to be the prince and princess of the world…which maybe she shouldn't have talked about. Maybe she should have just talked about their Hello Kitty book…even though dad said that Hello Kitty books were drivel.

"Come on, Mob, you can be on my team." He said. Mob…she wanted to say yes. She felt one of her feet start to step forward, she felt the word yes forming in her mouth….and she felt her face getting even redder somehow…

"Big sis! Time to go!"

Oh! Mom and Sho!

"I-I have to home now…Happy…Happy Christmas! I mean Valentine's Day! Just….bye!" said Mob. She turned really fast and ran to the school gates. Her shoes were slapping against the ground and she was slipping a little but she didn't care. She just wanted to go home and then never come to school again. She couldn't. She'd have to quite school forever. That was the only way.

Happy Christmas?

Happy Christmas?!

What was the matter with her?! How could she forget what day it was? It was Valentine's Day! That was the whole point of today! She was so dumb….and now he probably thought that she was dumb too and he'd never ask her to play again and they'd never be gym buddies or fire drill buddies again….and it was all because she had been so dumb….

"Shigeko." Said Mom. She said it in that low tone that she used when they were doing something wrong…oh. Her hair was floating. She had forgotten to hold her braids down…so she did that now. She held her braids down with her hands. She wasn't supposed to use her powers where people could see.

"What's wrong?" asked Sho. Mob shook her head.

"Nothing." Said Mob quickly. She did not want to talk about this with her little brother.

"Your colors are really bright. Are you mad at that kid? Was he bothering you for candy? Want me to beat him up?" asked Sho. He waved he box of candy in his hands around like he was beating up an imaginary person with it. Mob didn't want him to beat anyone up, real or imaginary, because that was not nice. Also a girl gave Sho candy, which was and was not nice at the same time. She was glad that a girl liked him….but he was way too little for all of that!

"Sho, no beating people up. Gentle, you're a gentle boy." Said mom. She reached down and gave him head pats. That was good. He deserved all the head pats. He deserved all the head pats in the world…and also all the chocolate in the world…but not too much chocolate because it had sugar in it and that was bad for you.

Besides, Sho was already the sweetest little brother in the whole, wide, world.

"But I have to defend my big sister's honor!" said Sho waving the chocolate box around again.

"You don't have to defend my honor, Sho, I'm fine. He was just asking me to play, that's all." Said Mob

"But your colors are being all weird." Said Sho

"That's just because of…of reasons." Said Mob. She did not want to go into what those reasons were with her little brother. Just…no. This felt private. There weren't a lot of things that were private between them, they still took baths together after all, and she didn't like to keep secrets….but she did not want to talk to her little brother about this. Maybe if he had been her little sister instead of her little brother it would have been different…but he was a boy and she was not going to talk to a boy about this.

"Bad reasons?" asked Sho

"No just…reasons….do you want a chocolate lollipop!?" said Mob. She said that last part really fast, too fast, but she wanted this thing out of her pocket now. Right now. Right now because it was getting heavier and heavier and heavier…

"Huh?" asked Sho

"A chocolate lollipop. I have one. Do you want it? I mean I understand if you don't. You already have that box of chocolates right there. That might be too much chocolate." Said Mob

"No, I'll take it. I'm not going to keep this anyway." Said Sho

"You're not? Honey, those are your first Valentine's Day chocolates. How do you think the girl who gave them to you would feel if she knew that-" said mom

"Why should she care? She gave them to me and now they're mine. I don't want them anyway. They have…I think they might have fruit inside. They're assorted and assorted always means that at least one of them has fruit inside…and it might be like, orange paste or something, to I don't want them." Said Sho

"If you don't want them then I'll eat them." Said Mob

"No! I mean….I think….I think that my friend would…would want them. Mom, can we go back to the park? Please? It'll only take a second." Said Sho

"Well normally I'd say no, we have homework to do and all, but since it's a holiday….yes. But not for too long, Sho, I left the oven preheating at home." Said Mom. She gave Sho another head pat. Mob was glad. She was glad that she had something for Sho, too, for Valentine 's Day. She had just been planning on giving him her desert, mom was making a cake since it was a holiday and she was feeling better. She had been feeling a lot better, lately, it seemed, because she was wearing her nice dresses and putting on her makeup and also playing with them. With Sho. Mostly with Sho…but that was ok. She deserved it. He deserved everything. He was the best, nicest, sweetest little brother ever.

And the most generous, too, it seemed.

When they got to the park the first thing he did was start running. That was normal for him, he liked to run around and stuff, especially at the park. Mob didn't run, no, she walked over to the swings. She swung on her own, she wanted to swing with Sho, but Sho was busy. He had ran right over to his friend and they were talking about….something.

Sho was very red.

His colors and his aura. She saw him, there by the sliding poles, when she went up. Again when she went down, too. She didn't know what he was turning so red for. He was just talking to his friend, Akira. The one he always played with when they went to the park. It was a 'no girls allowed thing' Sho had said. That had been kind of mean but mom said that sometimes boys were like that. Then mom let her have no boys allowed movie time when they got home and she watched a compilation of all the Disney kisses ever.

And it had been nice even if Sho spent the whole time making throwing up noises from the other room.

He looks like he's going to throw up now…and Mob is about to jump off the swing and make sure that his friend wasn't being mean to him or anything. Nobody was allowed to be mean to her little brother. They could be as mean as they wanted to her, that was fine, but nobody was going to be mean to her little brother. If they were mean to her little brother then she'd tell them to knock it off or else. Else being telling on them to their moms, of course, even though nobody liked a tattle tale.

But Mob didn't have to tattle on anyone.

Because Sho gave his friend that box of chocolate that he didn't want…and then he ran back to mom. He ran so fast that he slipped a couple times but he just got up and kept running until he got to the bench where mom was sitting and then he started tugging on her coat to get her to go. Mob stopped swinging and went back to her family. It looked like it was time to go. She didn't say anything, she just went back to mom and Sho and walked home with them.

In silence. Sho only talked when he told her that he was fine and that she needed to stop asking if he had a fight with his friend or something. She still asked again, though, and then something pushed her so hard she fell down. She pretended that she tripped even though it had been Sho who had glowed bright red and it had been Sho's energy that pushed into her.

She knew that it was an accident.

And even if it wasn't, well, he had told her to leave him alone. It was her fault for not listening. People got mad when you didn't listen to them. That was just how things worked. Sho would never have hurt her for no reason anyway. He was her little brother and he loved her and she loved him to.

And that was what Valentine's Day was about. Love.

And also candy but mostly the love.


	34. Important Questions

"Mom, why did you pick dad?"

Masami looked up from her phone. The kids were back from school. Shigeko had been doing her homework at the kitchen table last Masami checked. Sho was doing something in his room that involved more jumping on the bed than Masami thought was strictly necessary. She didn't have the energy to stop him, though, she barely had the energy to sit up. She wanted nothing more than to go to bed until it was time to make their dinner….but that was not going to happen.

If she sent back to bed she might not have been able to get back up again.

And then the kids would have noticed and said something to Touichirou and then he'd 'worry' some more and then it just…it would not be a good time at all. She didn't need Touichirou prying into how she was feeling. It wasn't like he cared. He didn't care about her, just what she did for him.

Kind of like Shigeko in some ways.

"What's up?" asked Masami. Shigeko should have been doing her homework. She usually got right to it after school without being asked. Abnormal for a six, almost seven year old, but Shigeko was not a normal child by any means.

"Why did you pick dad?" asked Mob again. She had been thinking about it since Valentine's Day. Why did people pair up? Why did you only get these sorts of weird, nervous, feeling only for certain people? Why was holding hands with Taro nothing like holding hands with Sho? Well aside from the fact that Sho was her little brother after all. Why did she only want to hold hands with one specific boy and not all of the boys? Why had she never wanted to hold hands with a girl? Why did people pair up in the first place?

"For what?" asked Masami. Why had she picked Touichirou out of the crowd that day? She had been asking herself that for years and years now. It had been a busy day. She had been about to go home, actually, because it had been terribly chilly out that day and her coat had not been thick enough for the biting February cold. She had been about to leave when she saw him in the crowd. There had been nothing special about him…aside from the red hair. It had been longer, then, more like Sho's was now. Touichirou's hair spiked up, too, when it got long….which was why he kept it so short these days. Yes, it had been the red hair that had led her to start up a conversation with the handsome stranger…

And then nine months later Sho was born.

"To be married to. Why did you pick dad?" asked Mob. She knew why people got together in movies. First they met and they either had love at first sight or they argued a lot. Arguing a lot sometimes meant love or it meant that the person was a jerk…Mob didn't know how you were supposed to tell the difference….it seemed hard. She had no idea what she was supposed to do if she did have love at first sight, too. She hadn't had that with Taro…or maybe she had. She first got these weird feelings when they had gym for the first time and he had won the class race….and also he was the tallest boy in class, too….

"I picked your father because…" said Masami. What was she supposed to tell Shigeko? That she had married Touichirou because she had gotten pregnant before she had even known the man a full year? Before she had spent enough time with him to know what he was really like? That he had been so fascinating to her that she had been drawn to him? That he, back then, had his moments of sweetness? That those moments used to be enough for her?

"Because he's tall?" asked Mob. Dad was really tall. He was taller than mom and mom was tall enough to reach the top shelves of the cabinets.

"Huh?" asked Masami with a blink.

"Dad's really tall. Did you marry him because he's tall?" asked Mob

"Shigeko…people don't get married because one person is taller than the other. That's not how it works." Said Masami. She needed to get back to monitoring the things the kids watched on TV. Such strange ideas. She would have expected something like that from Sho, he acted his age, but not Shigeko.

"Oh. I just thought that you might have married him because he's tall because…I don't know. Tallness is just…nice…I think? Like he could run really fast…I've never seen dad run before….but I bet he could if he felt like it." Said Mob. She reached behind her and held her braids down. She was getting very close to mom finding out why she was asking this. She was not going to tell mom about how she felt. If she did then mom would tell dad and then dad would know and then he'd be mad at her.

She was only supposed to feel this way about another esper.

Even though dad was married to mom and she wasn't an esper. She was a normal person and had no powers, no psychic powers, so it wasn't fair that she couldn't like whoever she wanted. It wasn't fair at all…but she would never say anything like that. She would never tell dad that he was being unfair. Then he would be mad and if he got mad he might take it out on Sho. That was not something that Mob would ever let happen.

"No, I didn't marry your father because he's taller than me…I married him because I love him." said Masami. That was the best answer for a six year old. There was only so much that a six year old girl could understand.

"Why did you fall in love with him?" asked Mob. There had to be a reason…right? People didn't just fall in love at random…right? If Mob knew why she had fallen in like then she could pick the next person she fell in like with. She could pick another esper so that dad wouldn't be mad at her.

"There wasn't one reason in particular." Said Masami. He had been charming in his awkwardness. He had been handsome, he still was handsome, but at the time she had never been with a man as handsome as he had been. He cut a good figure in that suit, the one he was always wearing, and back then when he had been wearing that charcoal grey one….but Shigeko did not need to know that her mother had thought about her father like that. She was only six.

"So it wasn't love at first sight?" asked Mob. They said in Frozen that love at first sight wasn't real. They also said that in Enchanted, too, but that was a movie that was only half animated…and Mob felt like that mattered for reasons that she would think about later. Animated movies were just better than ones with real people so it was easier to trust animated movies.

"No, not at first sight." Said Masami. She had been attracted to him at first sight. The love had come later. Not much later. The love had come at a love hotel. When he had held her, afterwards, and told her that he cared for her. He had said it so quietly. She had barely even heard him above her own breathing. He had said it, though, and at that moment she knew that she loved him…and Shigeko was way too young for that story.

"How did you and dad meet?" asked Mob. The question had jumped into her head and she hadn't had time to think about it before she asked. She wondered if she was prying. Dad said not to pry into his life, sometimes, when she asked him questions about his life. Also sometimes he just told her things about his life…he could be so confusing sometimes. So could mom, really.

"At the train station." Said Masami. That was an easy one to answer. It had an answer that a six year old could easily understand and be content with. Shigeko had never taken this much of an interest in her parent's lives before this….Masami wondered why. What did she hope to gain by asking all of these questions? Shigeko didn't just ask questions for no reason…she must have been…been trying to figure something out….or been trying to gain something….but what?

"What train were you taking?" asked Mob. Maybe circumstance was what mattered. Maybe if she got the circumstances right then when she met another esper, a boy esper who was not her brother, if she met him in the right way then she could make herself fall in like with him. Then dad would not have been mad at her.

"I wasn't on a train…why does that matter?" asked Masami. She watched her Daughter carefully. She was impassive as always, a tiny Touichirou, and just as difficult to read. It was amazing that she had ever managed to puzzle out what it was that went on in Touichirou's head sometimes….and maybe she wasn't as good at it as she thought that she was.

"What day was it?" asked Mob. Maybe if it was on the right date at the right place then she would meet someone dad would have liked and then it would have been ok that she wanted to hold hands with whatever boy it was that she would end up meeting.

"A Tuesday….but why do you-" said Masami

"What was the date?" asked Mob. Dates could be important to. Like how being born on a certain date meant that you were a certain sign and then that mattered…somehow….Mob wasn't sure how it mattered but it mattered…at least Ito, from her class, said that it mattered….and Ito did get good grades and was popular….

"Why does that matter?" asked Masami trying her best to get to the end of this. She did not want to think about Touichirou. Shigeko had picked a hell of a time to be interested in her parents' past. She wanted to know…and Masami did not want to think about it.

"Because I want to know. Did you see dad first or did he see you first?" asked Mob. In movies usually the girl saw the guy first and then she wanted to be with him so she went on an adventure and then they got together….Mob hoped that she didn't have to go on any adventures. She liked it at home. She would only go on an adventure if Sho was there with her.

"I saw him-" said Masami. She didn't want to think about this. She didn't want to think about the red haired stranger she had met on that cold day all those years ago. She didn't want to think about what happened, the mistakes she had made…some of the mistakes that she had made. Sho was not a mistake.

"What was the first thing you said to him?" asked Mob. That mattered to. The first thing she had said to Taro had been 'thank you' because he had picked up her pencil after it fell. The first thing he had said to her was 'Suzuki, you dropped your pencil' which didn't seem very love at first sight but Mob had no idea what it was that people said to each other when they fell in love…or, rather, like because she was only in the first grade. Love was for when you were old enough to kiss someone. She wondered what that was like….not that she would ever ask her mom what it was like to kiss dad. Ick. No way.

"Shigeko-" said Masami running a hand through her hair. Clean and light. She had showered that day. It had been an effort but she had showered. It had taken a lot of effort, actually, just like this was taking a lot of effort. Shigeko could be so draining sometimes.

"What was the first thing he said to you?" asked Mob. Maybe what the boy said mattered. That was what it felt like, sometimes, that boys just picked girls. She wished that a boy would just pick her. An esper boy that dad would have liked for her. Then he wouldn't have been mad at her for being with a boy who wasn't an esper….even though it was so unfair. Why did dad get to be in like with whoever he wanted? How could he just make one rule for her and then another for himself? That wasn't fair!

But it was not her place to tell her dad what was and was not fair.

"Shige-" said Masami. She needed a minute to think, to breathe, to marshal what little energy she had left. Draining. This whole thing was just so draining. Her whole life was just so draining. When had this become her life? When had…when had this become…it? She had been so young then, though it had only been about seven years ago….felt like seventy. She felt so old and tired and….and she wasn't even forty yet.

"Did you decide to get married then? How long did it take for you to decide that you wanted to marry him? Why did you start to like him? When? Mom-" said Mob trying to get as many questions out as she could. They were popping into her head so fast she had to say them before she forgot. She needed to know. She needed to know how it all worked so that way she could fall in like the right way next time and then dad would have been happy with her.

"Shigeko! Please!" said Masami reaching the very end of her rope with this. The minute she said it, shouted it, she wished that she could have taken it back. Shigeko was only six years old. She couldn't help but be draining, that was just how kids were.

"I'm sorry mom…" said Mob. Great. Now she had said the wrong thing again and now mom was mad and maybe she would even end up getting sick again. It was all Mob's fault. Mom wasn't like dad, her getting mad at Mob wouldn't spare Sho, because mom never got mad at Sho in the first place.

"It's fine, Shigeko, it's fine. I'm sorry I snapped at you. I just want to know….where is this coming from?" asked Masami trying her best to keep calm. She wanted to lay down. It would have been easy, she was on the couch after all. She could have just let herself fall back and…and she could have but she wouldn't. She had to be there for Shigeko. She was hurt, it seemed, and her hair was floating. It would do no good to upset her, she didn't have the best control to begin with…

"Where's what coming from?" asked Mob. She didn't cry, she didn't sniffle, she didn't let herself do anything. Dad hated it when she showed her feelings. She was a good daughter, she would not do the things that upset dad…even though she didn't know what was wrong with showing her feelings. She knew that losing control was bad because she could have hurt something or someone but just showing feelings…dad said that showing feelings was weak. He didn't want her and Sho to be weak…even though there was nothing wrong with having feelings and showing them. Mom had said so a long time ago when she and Sho had been little…

But she and Sho were not little anymore.

"All of these questions. What brought all of this on?" asked Masami. She needed to know what Shigeko was getting at…if she was even getting at anything. She was a six year old girl. She might have just been asking questions for the sake of asking questions. What motives could a six year old possibly have? Shigeko was…she was not like other children but…but she was still just a child…

And Masami had to remember that.

"I just….I wanted to know why you married dad. That's all, mom, I just wanted to…to know. Because I don't know about…about stuff like that. I just wanted to know about that stuff, that's all. Why you fell in love with him and…and stuff like that." Said Mob softly. Mom was mad at her…and that was the worst. At least if Dad was mad at her then he wasn't mad at Sho….but mom did not work the same way. She was never mad at Sho, ever, even when he did things that he wasn't supposed to. Even when he did things that used to get him punished mom never did more than ask him to stop a million times. That was because she liked Sho best…and that was good. That meant that mom and dad were back to being evenly dived up. That was a good thing. Now each of them had a parent.

It was a good thing.

"I married your father because I love him and I love him because….because he's a good man." Said Masami. He wasn't. He was cold and distant and selfish…but he was also a good man. He treated her…not badly. He never raised his voice to her and had certainly never raised a hand to her. He put this roof over her head and clothes on her back and…and he did keep them at a high standard of living…but it wasn't enough. Plus there was what he did to keep his family living so well. She suspect, no, she knew that he was doing some criminal things…and she wished that she didn't. She wished that she could go back to pretending that he was the head of some company or something…but now she knew. She didn't know everything but she knew enough.

She knew enough to be worried.

She knew enough to worry about her safety, her safety and that of the children…and she also knew that she would never totally know what it was that she even had to be worried about. He had always dreamt of living in a world of espers, a world where everyone was like him and nobody had to hide, and he dreamt of ruling that world. Everybody wanted to rule the world. Everybody had those sorts of thoughts. Those 'the fools in power are dragging us to ruin, I could do it so much better' thoughts.

It wasn't like Touichirou was actually going to do something about it…right?

The man detested politics. He wasn't going to go into that…but she had no idea what it was that he even did. Even back then, back on that day when they first met…she hadn't thought to ask him where he was coming in from. Where it was that he had been running off too…and he had done his running off even back in the beginning. Never for as long as he did now but…but he had gone off to pats unknown…which was why she had hurried into bed with him…into this with him…and she hadn't even asked him why he was going.

And now she was stuck.

Not she was stuck in this…this cage. This gilded cage. She was stuck and she…she had tried for so many years to make the best of it. For herself and for her children…but that was becoming more and more difficult as the years went by…but she still had to try. For Sho. For Shigeko. For her son and her daughter.

And that meant not snapping at Shigeko when she asked some simple and totally normal questions.

"Oh…ok. Thanks mom….I'm going to go and do my homework now." Said Mob. Well that didn't really answer anything. She still didn't know how it all worked, loving someone or just liking them a whole lot, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do now that she did like someone…or what she was supposed to do in the future.

The future when she met the person who she was supposed to like.

She could only like someone who dad liked and dad only liked other espers so she…she would have to meet another esper. One who was not her brother. One who was tall. One who could run fast. One who was nice to her. Yes, that was the big thing. Niceness. That was how it worked in movies. The girl always liked the guy because he was nice. Even when the two people fought all the time they still secretly liked each other and you could see it in the niceness. Mob knew that she wanted, if any boy would ever like her back, a boy who was nice to her…and nice to her all the time. Not some of the time like dad was to everyone but all of the time.

Not that Mob had seen dad being all that nice to mom….but she didn't watch them every hour of every single day…..

Maybe that was it. Maybe dad was nice to mom in secret.


	35. Late Start

Mob liked to help mom out.

Mom was happy with her when she helped out. She didn't even use her powers even though they would have made a lot of chores a lot easier. She wasn't allowed to. Not in the house when dad wasn't home. Well she wasn't supposed to use her powers in the house when dad was home, too, but dad wanted her to use her powers and when dad was home it was best to focus on making him happy. He punished Sho was he was unhappy and Mob didn't like that at all.

She had to keep her little brother safe.

"Shigeko, be careful near the stove. It's not safe." Said Masami. Shigeko was helping her make breakfast. They had gotten a late start. She had gotten a late start. She had just…she just could not get out of bed that morning. Shigeko had been a big help, though. She had gotten herself dressed and gotten Sho dressed and gotten her school bag all packed up. Masami had only gotten out of bed as Shigeko was climbing up on the counter to get the cereal.

They didn't have enough time but Masami was going to make them a proper breakfast.

She was a good mother.

"I know, mom." Said Mob as she stirred some eggs. Mom called this whisking. Mob could have gotten it done a lot faster with her powers but mom didn't like it when she used her powers. Maybe that was why Sho had stopped trying to use his powers. He was making breakfast the usual way, too, though his job was a whole lot easier.

"Is this enough bread?" asked Sho as he held up the plate of toast that he had made. He made half the loaf because mom had gotten the thin slices. They only got the thick kind when dad was home because that was the kind he liked best. Mom didn't like the thick kind, she liked the thin kind, and also the kind with all the little seeds. Sho didn't understand why she liked bread with seeds, and he didn't like it much himself, so he made half a loaf of the thin white slices.

"Sho, honey, that's more than enough. Come away from the toaster now." Said Masami. She walked over and put the toaster away before Sho made any more toast. He was smaller, that was why he got the easier job. A full breakfast. Eggs, toast, bacon, and fruit. A full western breakfast like the kind she had grown up. Touichirou, too. He preferred a western breakfast to a Japanese one, something which Masami was grateful for. She was not staying up all nice preparing miso and natto and slicing fish and making salads. Too much work and not enough payoff. He agreed. That had been one of their first dates, actually, to a breakfast place he liked…

"Mom, are the eggs mixed, I mean whisked, enough?" asked Mob. She held up the bowl so that mom could see. She had that far away look again, the one that Mob wasn't supposed to ask about.

"What? Oh, that's fine. Now we'll add the sweat cream." Said Masami. She went over to the fridge and looked for the sweet cream. Almost out. She'd have to order more groceries later. It was easier than walking to the store. She ordered most things these days.

"Sweet cream? Like sweet milk?" asked Mob, her eyes wide. She knew that mom put milk in the eggs but she never would have guessed that it was sweet. She eyed the container in mom's hand. She had never paid much attention to the stuff that mom cooked with…but now she was and she could…she could read the carton. Happy Farms Sweet Cream. She wondered if the cream was sweet because it was made by happy cows…or maybe they just fed the cows a lot of sugar. Either way sounded good to her.

"Like a milkshake?" asked Sho. How cold mom have put sweet milk in the eggs? They never tasted sweet. He would have tasted it if they were sweet. That was the kind of thing he would have noticed.

"Those have ice cream in them." Said Mob helpfully. She kind of wanted a milkshake then. One that mom made. She knew that there were places that made milkshakes but they mostly just ate what mom cooked. They never ate out and hardly ever ordered in. Only when mom was too sick to cook.

"Not all the time. Sometimes they have frozen yogurt." Said Sho

"Frozen yogurt is just like ice cream, though." said Mob. Sometimes mom got it because it was healthier than ice cream. Mob didn't get what Sho complained about. It was just as good as ice cream. It was different but not as bad as he made it seem.

"No it's not. You just don't know about food." Said Sho. Big sis could be so weird sometimes. Frozen yogurt was not ice cream no matter how many times mom said that it was almost the same thing and much healthier. Sho didn't care about healthy food. If he wanted to eat healthy then he'd go to the refrigerator and eat a carrot.

"I know about food. I just think that frozen yogurt is the same as ice cream. Well not exactly the same because one is ice cream and one is yogurt. They both taste good though. Especially with sprinkles and strawberry syrup and-" said Mob

"It's not the same and you know it. You're just deluging yourself." Said Sho as the butter and jam were placed in front of him. He heard mom laugh and when he looked up he got head touches. Mom sure liked to touch his hair.

"Deluding, Sho, your sister is deluding herself…and no she isn't. You're both entitled to your own opinions." Said Masami. She ran her fingers through her son's hair before getting back to the stove. She took a quarter stick of butter and tossed it into the pan. It melted slowly. She glanced at the clock.

They were going to be late.

But being late once in a while wouldn't kill them. It was elementary school, not university.

"Even if they're wrong." Said Sho quietly as he started to butter the bread. The bread kind of came apart in his hands….but it was the bread's fault for being so thin. He liked the thick kind better. The kind that was so thick and warm that the better just sort of melted in. Then you put the jam on and the jam was cold and the bread was hot and the butter was all melty….that was good breakfast.

"We're both allowed to think whatever we want. We're different people and we have different thoughts and feelings. That doesn't mean that your opinions are any better or worse than mine, Sho. We're allowed to disagree about things." Said Mob as mom took the bowl from her and put the sweet cream in. She wanted taste it, the milk not the eggs, well it was cream but cream was a kind of milk…whatever it was she wanted some. But that was not for her, that was for the eggs, and if you didn't put the milk in the eggs then they wouldn't be as good. Mom made the beast breakfast food, dad even said so, and Mob was not going to mess with mom's cooking. Mom was the very best cook in the world, dad had said so. He said that out of every meal he had ever eaten in his life mom's meals were the best. She was better than any cook in any other country in this miserable world, dad had said. Mob wondered why the world had to be so miserable…and also she wondered why dad had to call the world miserable. It was like he couldn't say anything nice without following it up with something mean. Even when he was talking about mom. Mob hoped that if a boy ever liked her he said nice things without following up with mean things.

"Very…mature….Shigeko." said Masami. That was…that did not sound like something a six year old would say. Her tone, there, and her delivery….that was almost word for word what Touichirou would say during those rare times in which they argued. She could think whatever she wanted to, he didn't care. That was the gist of it. He didn't care how she felt. Once he decided how he felt then nothing else mattered.

"Very mature Shigeko…" muttered Sho. Big sis had dad, what did she need mom for too? They had agreed a while ago that they would each get one parent. She got dad and he got mom. What else did she need? She got dad and she got good powers and him…well he got mom…even if he didn't have her right now…

It wasn't fair.

"Thank you." Said Mob as she watched mom fold up the eggs into the pan of butter. The butter was important. While she folded with one hand she reached over and took the salt with the other. She shook it twice, put it back, then she grabbed the pepper and shook that three times. Mob committed it all to memory. She couldn't wait until she was old enough to use the stove on her own. Then she could make the family breakfast, all of their favorites, and then mom could rest. She had gotten up late because she was tired and she was tired because she was sick. Well when Mob got older she would take care of her mom and also Sho. Dad, too, if he was still around.

He had been gone for a long time.

He had said that he would try to make it a short trip but that had been weeks ago. He wasn't back yet. He sent mom and E-Mail that said that he had some things to take care of in another country, a different one than the one he had been in before, and that he would be back when he was back. Mob missed Dad…and she also…things weren't better or worse when dad was gone. Things were just different.

When dad was there they had breakfasts like this for dinner. Not just breakfast.

When dad was around she was allowed to use her powers.

When dad was around mom was a lot more tired. Maybe because she had another person to take care of.

When dad was around Sho cried more at night. He always pushed her away when she tried to make him feel better.

When dad was around they had to be a lot quieter. Mob didn't mind, she could be quiet, but Sho minded a lot.

When dad was around….a lot of things were different. But that was ok. Mom was like ice cream and dad was like frozen yogurt. Both had their good and bad points. Both were equally good desserts…well parents. Both of her parents were good parents and that was…that was the truth. She loved mom just as much as she loved dad…though dad was for her and mom was for Sho. That was the way that it was and Mob did not mind one bit. Just so long as Sho was happy. She loved Sho and when you loved someone then you did whatever you could to make them happy.

Mob just wanted her family to be happy.

"You've always got to keep the eggs moving, Shigeko, or else they'll burn on the bottom. Always use a lot of butter, too, real butter. Salted butter is the best but you can use unsalted too…or sweet creamery butter if you don't have any sweet cream. You want to get the eggs as light and fluffy as possible…but make sure that you aren't under cooking them, too. There's a balance." Said Masami mainly because she felt that she had to say something. She had always enjoyed cooking with her mother when she had been young…and she had hoped to share in that experience with her own daughter someday.

When she had been young she had dreamed of the day she'd have a daughter to teach things to.

When she had been Shigeko's age she had been teaching her dolls how to make tiny lightbulb oven cakes and cookies. She had been so excited to teach her dolls all the things that her mother had taught her…and she had been so excited to learn from her mother. She had been like Sho, underfoot until she had been given some foolproof task…that she would have ended up messing up in her enthusiasm. Like Sho with the pile of bread crumbs that he was intent on buttering. Shigeko didn't need to be kept busy.

No, if anything she was paying too much attention.

Touichirou had been fascinated with her cooking, too. At some point she would have thought that her husband would have offered to help her but that never happened. He just sat there and watched her with unblinking fascination. The same sort of fascination that Shigeko was staring at her with, now. She wondered if Shigeko ever planned on helping her in the kitchen. Not now, no, she was too short even to see over the top of the stove. When she got older. In a year or two or three or four…

Or never.

Why would she ever help? She had a mother to cook for her. Her father certainly never helped. Why would Shigeko cook for herself? She had her powers, she didn't need to concern herself with the petty concerns of the normal people-

No. This was not Touichirou.

This was his daughter.

"You can cook the eggs in the bacon grease, too, but that makes them too heavy. Also it makes them taste of bacon." Said Masami quickly. She was fearful, for a moment, that Shigeko had suddenly gained the ability to read minds…and there would have been no way to tell if she had. She still stared up at her mother with that same, impassive, look. Maybe she should have had Sho help her. She was falling into regressive gender norms…and it was hard not to, in this house. She'd show Sho next him. Even if he would have probably been terribly underfoot.

"I like it when the eggs taste like bacon." Said Sho. He liked bacon even though it was made from pigs and pigs had feelings too. It had made him sad, back when he was little, that they ate animals for food but dad told him that he was being dumb and that there was a food chain and humans were on top. Things ate humans, though, like tigers and sharks and bears, but dad hadn't been amused when Sho pointed that out. He just told Sho to go be annoying somewhere else. Dad always thought that he was annoying. An annoying nuisance, dad had called him once, and he had probably said other things about him but Sho has ran away before he could hear anything else.

Dad was so mean sometimes.

But mom was always so nice.

"I like it when we have ham steak. I think that I like ham steak more than bacon." Said Mob. Bacon went too quickly. Ham steak was slower to eat and also you got more food. Ham steak was a weird breakfast though. At school the other kids had miso and fish and salad and stuff like that for breakfast. They said, the other kids said, that she ate like a foreigner.

Mob didn't see what was so bad about being a foreigner.

Not that she knew any foreigners. She didn't see what was so bad about being from another country, though. One time she saw a man on TV talking about Japan being only for the Japanese. That seemed kind of mean. The country had plenty of room. It was huge, she learned about how big it was at school. It was a really big island…no…archipelago. That was what you called a bunch of islands that were together. Dad had been proud of her for knowing such a big word.

Also he said that Japan for the Japanese was a stupid way to think.

People were alike all over, dad had said. He knew. He had been all over the world, he said, and in his travels he said that people were alike all over. Regular people, he said, not espers. He mostly just cared about espers. He cared about mom, though, and she was not an esper. Mob wished that she could give mom her powers though, so then she could be like everyone else in the family. Sometimes she wondered if mom ever felt left out. She was the only one in the house who couldn't do anything.

Well Sho couldn't either…

But he would learn. Once he got bigger and stronger. Once he learned how to do other things…things that nobody had ever had to teach Mob before. Things that had always just come to her. Well, sometimes she had to watch and learn from Dad but a lot of stuff came naturally to her. She wondered why Sho was so different from her and dad even though they were brother and sister. Maybe he just took after mom more than Mob did…yes…that was something that made sense.

"Well we're having bacon." Said Masami. She was only a short order cook when Touichirou was around. Her children ate what she made or they went hungry.

"Can we have pancakes, too? With powdered sugar and warm syrup?" asked Sho

"We don't have enough time, honey, maybe tomorrow." Said Masami as she reached up to grab a plate. One went to her hand before she could even reach the cabinet…and she almost dropped it. Honestly. She had told Shigeko a thousand times not to use her powers in the house like that.

"Shigeko." Said Masami, warning in her tone. Shigeko usually had a lot of trouble with tones and body language but this was, at least, something that she understood. Probably because she was so well acquainted with it. Honesty. And Touichirou had the nerve to complain about Sho never listening. Sho…you needed to know how to talk to him. Shigeko just sort of did whatever she wanted, sometimes, and there was no correcting her it seemed.

"I'm sorry, mom. I forgot." Said Mob even though she didn't even mean to do that. It just happened. That was so weird.

"Not in the house." Said Sho. Of course that had been big sis. Of course. He had glowed red and he had thought, for a minute, that he had been the one to help mom out. He wanted to help, too. It wasn't fair that big sis was the only one who got to help just because she was a girl.

"I know. I'm sorry." Said Mob. Mom didn't say anything, she just started putting food on the table. Mob climbed up on the counter and got their special breakfast plates out the normal way. Zootopia for Sho, Frozen for Mob, and Aristocats for mom. They had gotten these for Christmas from the Disney Store. Well the website for the Disney Store. Mob had never been to the actual store…Mob had never been anywhere. They didn't have to go places, Dad had said, because it was pointless. They could have anything and everything delivered right to their door, dad had said.

Even cool plates.

Dad hadn't gotten one, though. He didn't like Disney movies. He only liked documentary movies. He liked things that had actually happened. He liked to learn things, learning things mattered, and he liked to do things that mattered. Mob wondered if dad ever did things for fun. It was hard to imagine him having fun…

"Be careful, Shigeko." Said Masami as her daughter climbed up on the counter. She could have slipped and hit the floor…or maybe even fallen on the stove. The burners might still have been hot. That could have been a nasty burn. The kind of thing that she would have had to call Fukuda in for…

"Shigeko, get down from there. I'll get the cups." Said Masami quickly. Shigeko, as usual, didn't listen so Masami picked her up and put her in her seat. It was a strain on her back. Shigeko was getting bigger now, she'd be seven soon, and…and that was the normal course of things. Masami was not at all worried about what would happen when Shigeko got to be too big to be picked up…too big to be sent to her room…too big to be punished…

Masami wasn't worried about that at all.

"Ok." Said Mob after she was sat down in her seat. She could have gotten the cups down, too. She could have helped. She was helpful. She could do things. She was not incompetent. She was not useless.

"Don't eat all the bacon." Said Sho as he put some bacon on his plate. They were big enough to serve themselves now, mom had said, and big sis always took too much of one thing. It wasn't fair that just because she was older she got everything. That was not fair at all. Not one bit.

"I won't….actually I don't even think that we have enough time to eat. We're going to be late." Said Mob as she read the clock on the wall. She could tell time now. Well so could Sho but she could tell time better because she was older. She could tell time on clocks with hands and clocks that just had numbers.

"That's fine, Shigeko, you can be late once in a while." Said Masami as she sat down with the children. What kind of a six year old was itching to go to school? She should have been happy to spend time with her family. Especially since she spent most of her day away from her family already. Hours and hours at school….

"But if we're late then-" said Mob. Lateness was not good. When you were late then the teacher got mad at you. If you were late it meant that you didn't value other people's times. Dad said that early was on time and on time was barely acceptable. Lateness was the worst, he said, and if someone was late then that meant that they didn't value him or his time and then they were gotten rid of. You weren't supposed to be late for anything, ever, dad had said so.

"Shigeko, it's fine." Said Masami. She stressed the word 'fine' a little more than she had meant to. She just wanted to have a nice breakfast, that was all. Was that such a bad thing? To want to spend some time with her children? What was Shigeko so eager to leave them for? What was so good about being out there, in the world? What was wrong with her family that she was just itching to get back out there on the road?

"But dad said-" said Mob

"Shigeko! I said that it was fine! If you want to leave then leave. You're almost seven years old, you can walk yourself to school. Your father was walking himself to school when he was your age." Said Masami. She gripped her fork in her hands so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. Sho was staring at her. He looked…she was worried him.

She softened her face.

"Um…ok. Goodbye Mom, goodbye Sho….I'll see you after school." Said Mob. She didn't mean…was she kicked out of the table, now? But she was hungry…and she hadn't meant…she hadn't meant that she wanted to be kicked out of the table…she didn't want to be kicked out…she didn't want that…she didn't want that at all…

Control.

Power is nothing without control.

She reached behind herself and held her braids down.

Dad would have been proud of her.

She got up, slowly, and went over to the genkan. That was where her school satchel and school shoes were…and she had to put them on…and then she had to go to school…by herself…

"Shigeko! Come back here and eat your breakfast." Said Masami. Her daughter had been ready to just up and leave her family…like it was nothing. She had just gotten up and left. Just said goodbye and….and just went to get her shoes on…and just left…

"Yes, mom." Said Mob. She was confused, now, but happy that she hadn't been kicked out of the table. She ate fast, though, because she didn't want to be late. Sho ate slowly, though, so it balanced out. He just would not stop looking at her…and it felt weird being looked at while she ate.

It all balanced out, though, because mom wouldn't look at her at all.


	36. Up Late

Sometimes it was fun to stay up late.

Even if this was when the weird stuff came on.

"Why do her clothes talk?" asked Mob. She didn't understand this show at all. She liked the main girl, her hair was pretty, but she didn't understand what was happening. Why was the long haired girl so mean to her? Why did her clothes talk? Why was her magical girl outfit so…naked? And why did her boobs flutter around in her transformation sequence? Sailor Moon, well all of her friends too, got naked for their transformations but their boobs didn't flutter around.

That looked like it hurt, honestly.

"Because her clothes are alive and they fight together." Said Sho. Honestly. Big sis knew nothing about TV shows. She watched boring stuff with kissing and friends doing boring stuff. This was interesting. There were friends being friends but there was also fighting and stuff. Even if the girl did get naked a lot. That was stupid. Her armor didn't protect anything. Why did magical girls always have to in such weird clothes? If you were going into battle then you should have put on some real armor or something.

"But why are her clothes alive? And why is their school so weird? And why is her friend so nuts? And why doesn't her skirt cover her…anything?" asked Mob. She would not have liked to have to wear a uniform like that. Like the one that she wore after she transformed. Mob could never have walked around like that even if she had to fight evil and stuff.

"I'm watching the same show you are." Said Sho with a shrug. Suddenly a hand covered his eyes.

"Don't watch this part, she's going to be naked again. I think that you're too little to see this." said Mob as she covered her little brother's eyes. For his own good, of course. This was not TV for kids. The rating in the corner of the screen said that this was rated for adults only. Well they were not adults, not even if they combined their ages. They were twelve, together, and would soon be thirteen together but they were in no way an adult together.

"Hey!" said Sho. Maybe too loudly, actually. Mom was asleep. If she got up and found them watching grown up stuff at this hour she'd be mad and take away their TV tomorrow. She didn't punish them for real, he'd rather take her worst punishments than anything dad could have cooked up, but he also did not want to have his TV time taken away.

"You're too little to see the naked parts." Said Mob simply.

"But you can't even see her naked parts. They forgot to draw them on." Said Sho. Who cared if she was almost all the way naked? People were naked all the time. People were naked under their clothes all the time and nobody ever said anything.

"I don't think that they're allowed to draw them on." Said Mob. She didn't know why anyone would ever want to draw something like that. People were naked all of the time under their clothes. That was more than enough.

"Well if you can't see her naked parts then I should be allowed to see." Said Sho. He didn't get what the big deal was. He took baths with his sister all the time. Mom had even explained why boys and girls were so different….ick. He didn't care if the girl was almost all the way naked anyway. He wasn't one of those guys that hung out under the slide or the jungle gym trying to look up girls' dresses and stuff. He didn't get it, honestly. People could be so weird sometimes, especially when it came to girls and stuff like that.

"Nope. You're too little." Said Mob. She was the big sister and it was her job to keep him safe and stuff. Mob didn't know why you weren't supposed to see naked people, aside from the fact that it was embarrassing, but she did know that it could be bad for you…somehow.

"Come on, I want to see the fight!" said Sho. The fights were the coolest part of this show. That was his favorite part of this. That and the dog in the hoodie. Everything else he could have taken or left. They had weird angles in this. He didn't get it.

"Shush! You'll wake mom up! When she gets back into her normal uniform then I'll uncover your eyes." Said Mob. It weird watching a show like this with her brother, she decided. It was really weird. It was one thing to share a bath with your brother or change with your family in the family changing room at the pool. Those were all normal situations in which a person could expect to be naked. This was…this was something entirely different, it felt like.

"But then I'll miss the whole fight!" said Sho. He wanted to see if the almost naked girl beat the other almost naked girl. That was her arch enemy….maybe. He wasn't watching for the plot, no, it was kind of complicated. He was watching for the fighting and the drawings and also that blind guy was way cool. They should have had more of him and less of the girl with the one red piece in her hair.

"You also shouldn't be watching fighting, too, because it's bad for you." Said Mob. Sho had been kind of…fighty…lately. She didn't fight with him, of course, because she was his brother and you were not supposed to fight with your little brother. Besides, Mob was obviously doing something to bother him and she wished that he would just tell her what it was that she was doing wrong. Then they could have gone back to getting along all of the time instead of just most of the time.

"Why don't we just turn the TV off and read, then?" asked Sho sarcastically. While they were at it they could have walked to school and waited for tomorrow to happen. Girls, or at least big sisters, were so boring sometimes.

"We can do that if you want to. I got this new book at my school's library, well it's a manga, and it's about-" said Mob. Reading to Sho…that would have been wonderful! She had a great book, well dad had said that manga was not books, but Sho would have liked it a lot. It was about dogs and they were friends and they did fun stuff together. Sho liked things like that…well at least he used to. He liked things with fighting in them now…more than he had before….

"I was being sarcastic, duh! I don't want to read, I want to watch the fight. I don't get why you're being so weird about this. You and me have been taking baths together for our whole, entire, lives. You've seen me naked and I've seen you naked and we're real people, too, not drawings." Said Sho. He threw himself back into her and they both went crashing to the ground. He stood still, then, so he could hear if mom was getting up. He heard nothing.

And big sis didn't try to cover his eyes again.

"It's different because we're brother and sister…and also it's normal to take baths. It's not normal to walk around in the world almost all the way naked. Also you're a boy and boys like girls which is why boys can only see their sisters naked. I think that's how it works, anyway." Said Mob. The thought of being naked in front of a boy who was not her brother was…she didn't think about it. That would have been enough to make her drop dead from embarrassment.

"Well I don't like girls like that so I can watch the fighting, then, and don't tell me that I can't see fighting. There's fighting in all of your shows, too. Like in Sailor Moon or in Frozen, even. You can't say one thing and then do another. You're not dad." Said Sho. Dad did stuff like that all the time. He told Sho that he was annoying and stuff but he also did stuff that was annoying…like how he was always talking to himself while he worked…or like how it was his mission in life to kill all the fun that he could find until the world was just as boring as he was.

"I'm not…and it doesn't matter if you still think that girls are gross or not. I don't think that boys are supposed to see stuff like that." Said Mob

"Well you're not the boss of me just because you're older." Said Sho. If he were the older brother instead of the younger brother then he wouldn't have made up rules just to mess with her and stuff. All of his rules would have been just and fair. Like they'd have at least five capfuls of bubble bath per bath per night. Also all movies were to end in either dance parties, fights, or cool credit sequences. Never kissing. Never, ever, ever kissing. Yes, those would be his rules if he were the big brother….he didn't know why he had to be the little brother.

"I guess….but if you think that you're going to end up weird or something then…then we're watching something else." Said Mob. This seemed like the kind of thing that would turn a person weird. Like those kids who weren't allowed to play together at recess anymore because the teacher caught them doing gross stuff…ick. She didn't want Sho to end up like that.

"All the stuff that comes on this late is weird." Said Sho with a shrug. Maybe that was because only weirdos were allowed to stay up with late, it seemed. All of the stuff that came on late on this channel had girls with big boobs and tiny clothes and stuff that Sho felt like he was supposed to laugh at but wasn't funny at all to him.

Grow ups were weird.

"I know…I don't know why grown-ups like to watch stuff like this. It's kind of cool how the drew everything but…but the whole thing is weird and hard to follow." Said Mob

"Maybe that's why it's rated for adults." Said Sho

"Maybe. Maybe we just can't understand it…kind of like how dad can't understand Frozen. He thinks that it's boring." Said Mob. Grown ups were different from kids. Kids had fun stuff to watch, adults had confusing stuff. One day they would become adults and then they would watch stuff that their kids thought was weird or boring or confusing. That was just how it worked, probably. She knew that she had enough trouble understanding things now…she was not looking forward to becoming a grown up at all.

"He's right, it is boring." Said Sho with a shrug. Girl shows were so boring. Girls were just different like that, weird, but it was ok because girls thought that boys were weird too. Maybe that was why dad was gone all the time, he thought that mom was weird or something like that.

"Little brother!" said Mob. How could something so…so wrong…have come out of her little brother's mouth!? Where had she gone wrong?! What had gone wrong in his life, in her life as his big sister, that he could think such terrible thoughts?! Now they needed to watch Frozen again, in Japanese and then in English with Japanese subtitles, until he understood why Frozen was the best thing ever.

"What? It's boring. They sing a bunch, she goes up the mountain, she comes back down the mountain, and then everything melts. There's nothing happening there! No fights, no nothing! She has super cool ice powers and she doesn't even fight anyone. Like it would have been cooler if her sister had fire powers and then they had a powers fight. Instead they just talked and hugged and stuff. So boring." Said Sho

"We talk and hug and stuff…" said Mob softly. Did Sho think that the times they spent together were boring? Did he think that she was boring? Lots of people thought that she was boring…well it was the truth…she was boring but so was dad…he was her dad after all.

"We're in real life. Nothing interesting ever happens in real life. Like how you and dad have powers but you never do anything with them." Said Sho crossing his arms. He crossed his arms and kicked his feet and he wanted to kick a bunch of other things…but he did not. He didn't because…because it was not the thing that he was supposed to do. He was supposed to be gentle and sweet like mom had said. He didn't know why he was so mean, sometimes, or why he wanted to kick and hit stuff sometimes…and he wanted it all to stop.

"Mom says-" said Mob before she was cut off. Mom said that she wasn't supposed to do things with her powers. When she used her powers then mom got all quiet, sometimes, or she got mad sometimes too. Mob didn't want anyone to be mad at anyone ever. If she really did end up being a princess of the world then the first thing she would do would be to make a no fighting rule. Then everyone would have been a lot happier. Yes, people should not have been fighting. Ever.

"Like if I had powers I'd-" said Sho

"But you do have powers. You can see the colors, auras, and sometimes you move things without touching them…like the time you hit me in the head with my brush. Remember?" said Mob. She did not want to get into this again. He was not powerless. He had powers. He had powers and there was nothing wrong with him…but he didn't see it that way. No, she knew what would come next. Next up he'd say that there was something wrong with him. That he had been born wrong and she had been born right. People were not born right or wrong, they were just born. It was what you did with your life that mattered. Just like Mewtwo had said in the first Pokemon movie.

"….said I was sorry already…" said Sho. He didn't want to have to feel bad about that anymore. When he thought about it then he felt bad and he either cried or hit something…or sometimes both at the same time.

"I didn't mean for you to say sorry again, I just mean that you do have powers. You can move things without touching them just like me and dad can." Said Mob. He could…sometimes. Rarely. But he would get better. He was just littler than she was, that was all. There was nothing wrong with him. Nothing wrong with him at all.

"No. I can't. Not like you and dad can. No matter how much I try it's like…it's like things didn't even change. No matter what happens, no matter what, you were still born right and I was still born wrong." Said Sho. He felt like this all the time…and he didn't know why. He did know what would come next, though, it was the same thing that she always said. She always said that he was fine the way he was and stuff like that. Stuff that she said just to make him feel better.

"No! Sho, don't ever say that. You were not born wrong. You were born right because you were born. I'm happy that you were born, Sho, I'm so happy. I want you to be here and I want you to be born. I don't care if I'm Elsa and you're Anna. I just want you to be my little brother." Said Mob

"….it doesn't matter what you want. It matters what I want. I want…I want to…I want to have been born right." Said Sho softly. She didn't understand. She could never understand. No matter what happened she was still the Suzuki that had been born right and he was still the Suzuki that had been born wrong. Dad had even said it, once. Big sis was born lucky. He was lucky to have been born at all. He was the reason mom had that thing on her stomach.

"But you were! The day you were born was the happiest day of my life!" said Mob. She meant every word of it. Having a little brother was the best thing ever. She didn't know what she would have done without him. She sometimes dreamt about now having him. Sometimes she dreamt that she was at a place…a bad place…and he wasn't there. He wasn't there and mom wasn't there and dad wasn't there and she was all alone…but then dad was there but she didn't recognize him…and that was the end of her dream. Sometimes she woke up tasting milk. It was a bad dream…but it was just that, a dream. She had Sho and Sho had her they were together just like they were supposed to be. There couldn't be a Suzuki Shigeko without a Suzuki Sho.

"You don't remember when I was born. You were just a baby. Nobody remembers things from when they were a baby." Said Sho shaking his head. He didn't need her to tell him things just to make him feel better. Nothing that she could say could ever change what they were. Suzuki Shigeko had been born right, Suzuki Sho had been born wrong. There could have easily been a Suzuki Shigeko without a Suzuki Sho. In fact dad might have even preferred it that way…

"I do. I do too remember. I remember….I sort of remember. I remember I was in this room with a funny smell…and I wanted to go home…but then you were there all wrapped up…I remember that they blanket was sort of scratchy…and I mostly just remember how you smelled." Said Mob

"How did I smell?" asked Sho rubbing his eyes with the back of his sleeve. He was glad that they hadn't turned the lights on. He didn't want to see his tears. He wasn't supposed to cry. Crying was wrong. He was wrong. Everything about him was wrong.

"Kind of like lotion." Said Mob resting her head on his shoulder. When he didn't push her away she tried pulling him in for a hug. He allowed himself to be hugged but he did not hug her back. Sometimes he didn't hug her back…but that was ok. She was not supposed to be pushy like that. Besides, dad said that they were getting too old for hugs anyway.

"Do you really remember that or are you just saying stuff?" asked Sho softly. He was being hugged. He didn't hug back even though he wanted to. He was getting too old to be hugged. He was not a baby anymore. Dad had said so.

"I really remember. That's a real memory. It's something that really happened." Said Mob. She knew that it was a real thing that happened to her. Dreams had a hazy sort of feeling to her, kind of like walking through a fog…the thick kind that came into their yard sometimes and hung around so thick that they couldn't see the house from the top of the slide.

"Oh. I kind of remember…something from when I was a baby, too. I remember I was really little and…and I was mad about something…but then you were there and you were…you were there and I was there and mom was there and dad was there. The sun was in my eyes. That's all that I remember." Said Sho. He knew that it was a memory that really happened and not a dream because he could remember it clear as a movie. He could never remember his dreams, the details, just the way that the dreams made him feel…especially the way they made him cry, sometimes.

"Oh. How old were you?" asked Mob. Maybe if she knew how old Sho was in his memory then she could remember how old she was in hers. She didn't know why that was important, just that it was.

"I don't remember, I was a baby! Sheesh!" said Sho pushing away from her.

"Sorry. I didn't mean anything by that. I don't know what you know, I can't hear your thoughts…and I don't want to. That seems like it would be a terrible power. The world would be so loud. It would be like everyone's talking at you at once." Said Mob trying to talk about something else, anything else. She looked around the room quickly before her eyes landed on the TV. Another episode of that show. They were having a marathon, it seemed, though she had no idea who would be able to stay up all night watching TV. Well, who besides her and Sho.

"You just like it quiet because dad likes it quiet." Said Sho

"No, not because, we just have that in common. I'm like dad and you're like mom." Said Mob

"We each get one." said Sho quietly. That was the fairest thing….but he wished, sometimes…but he knew that it was stupid to wish for things that could never come true. Dad would never stop looking at him like he was Sho gum. Not until he became something more than what he was.

"Yes, that's how it works I think. I don't know. This stuff is kind of complicated…but dad didn't tell me to like it quiet, I just like it quiet is all. That's why I think that being able to hear people's thoughts wouldn't be a good power at all. It would be so loud all the time and also you would be invading people's privacy all the time." Said Mob getting away from the subject of their parents. Sho got so sad when they talked about things like that…and she never wanted Sho to be mad. No. He was her little brother. If she could have done something, anything, to give him eternal happiness then she would have.

"Yeah…I get it. Kind of like how her clothes keep on talking to her. The would be so annoying, I think." Said Sho getting back to the show at hand. He didn't want to talk about that anymore. He could feel himself getting mad, getting mean, and he did not want to be mean Sho right then. He didn't ever want to be mean Sho.

"Yeah, it would be. I love my uniform but I wouldn't want it to talk to me." Said Mob shaking her head. She had enough trouble concentrating in school to begin with. She didn't need her uniform trying to start a conversation with her. Taro did that enough already…not that she minded…but maybe she should have minded.

"What would it even say? I mean you have powers but you don't save the world or fight evil or anything with them. You're boring like that." Said Sho. Mean Sho was back. He didn't want to become mean Sho but he just couldn't help it. It had just come out. That was just…he was trying to hurt her, maybe. He didn't know why he wanted to hurt her…or maybe he did. He didn't know. He didn't want to think about this.

"I know." Said Mob simply. It didn't hurt. He was only speaking the truth. People at school said that she was boring. She always looked like she was bored, they said.

"Like, it would probably get so bored of you that it ran away." Said Sho. He didn't know why he said that. He didn't know why he wanted her to…he didn't even know. Yell at him? Tell him off? Cry? Do something? So anything?

"Probably." Said Mob just as simply. She was boring and that's why her school friends never stuck around for very long. She was boring because she couldn't go over to people's houses or have them over to hers and she didn't know a lot of the games they played and stuff like that. It didn't matter how often they talked to her and ate lunch with her and played with her, they always left her in the end. That was fine. She had Sho. He was her little brother and her best friend all in one. She was so lucky to have him as a little brother.

"Then you'd be naked and stuff." Said Sho. She didn't react. She never reacted. She never reacted or anything ever. She just sat there, always, with that same look on her face. Be more like Shigeko, dad said, and control yourself. Be boring, he meant. Never react, he meant. Let me say anything to you and treat you however I want to, he meant.

"Yeah, probably." Said Mob. That would be what would happen if her uniform ever got tired of her like everyone else did. Then she'd be there in her underwear and undershirt and then people would laugh at her…like they did already.

"Then they'd all laugh at you." Said Sho trying, again, just to make her say something or do something…because no matter how calm someone looked, how bored they looked, there was always something coming. Always.

"Most likely." Said Mob. There was some silence after that. The only thing that they could hear was the TV. It was on quiet, very quiet, but she could hear it as clear as if it were going full blast.

"I'm sorry." Said Sho suddenly. He needed to say that. He didn't totally feel it but he had to say it. He had to be nice to his sister. She was his sister and she had always been there and she always would be…and it wasn't like he had anyone else there, in the house, to play with. Even then…that wasn't the whole reason. No matter…no matter what happened they would always be brother and sister…

"About what?" asked Mob. He had nothing to apologize her. She had nothing to make him say sorry for. He had done nothing to make her make him say sorry. You weren't supposed to say sorry when you told the truth. You were just supposed to tell the truth, the whole, and nothing but the truth so help you God. Even if it hurt. Well the truth hurt, that was how it went. The truth hurt…but that was ok. It was ok if she hurt. Anything to keep him from hurting.

"The stuff I said to you." Said Sho quietly. He should have been better, like mom wanted him to be. She wanted him to be a sweet, gentle, boy and at least he could be what she wanted to be. At least mom thought that he had been born right. At least mom liked him for who he was…and not what he could do. Could or could not do.

"What about it?" asked Mob

"It was mean. I shouldn't have said mean stuff like that to you. I'm your little brother and you're my big sister and we…we should be friends and stuff. We shouldn't fight…I shouldn't fight with you. I don't know what's wrong with me. Sometimes I'm just…mean…for no reason. It's like there's another Sho inside of me and he makes me say weird stuff…but not really because there isn't really another Sho. There's just me." Said Sho. He drew his knees up to his chest and closed his eyes. He was the worst little brother in the world. Another way that he had been born wrong and she had been born right. She had never had a mean thing to say about anyone ever. She was being what mom wanted him to be, too. She was just good at everything, wasn't she? It just…it was not fair.

"Sho, I'm not mad. You didn't say anything that wasn't true. I am boring and if my uniform was alive then it would run away from me the first chance it got. I don't do cool stuff with my powers, I can barely control them, and if my clothes did run away and I was naked then everyone would laugh at me. It's ok. It's ok to tell the truth." Said Mob. She put a hand on Sho's back. He shouldn't have been so sad. He had told the truth and you were always supposed to tell the truth. She wished that there was something that she could have done. She couldn't even hug him, no, because he would have just pushed her away again.

"…if they laughed at you then I would beat them up. Even without cool powers like yours I would beat them all up." Said Sho. Mean Sho liked to hurt people and things…but mean Sho could also do good. He could defend her. Even if he wasn't a sweet, gentle, boy like mom wanted…he could still keep his big sis safe. That was what brothers were supposed to do, they were supposed to keep their sisters safe.

"Please don't." said Mob. Fighting was wrong and she did not want Sho to fight for her. She didn't want anyone to fight with anyone else ever for any reason. Especially not her little brother. Besides, she was the big sister, not the little sister, and it was her job to keep her little brother safe.

"I would. I'd take your uniform and put it on and then I'd beat everyone up." Said Sho standing up and pointing towards the TV. Even if it meant having to put on a talking dress he would hurt anyone who tried to hurt his sister. He was supposed to keep her safe.

"I really don't ever want you to beat anyone up…and also why would you wear my uniform?" asked Mob. The thought is funny, though she does not smile. Control was important. Still, the thought of Sho in her school uniform was funny….

"Because it gave me super powers, duh!" said Sho shaking his head. If he got her powers by putting on her clothes then he would gladly dress up like a girl for every single day of his life from this moment onwards.

"My uniform doesn't give me my powers…" said Mob. She wished that it did. Then she could take it off and just be normal. Like everyone else. Not only that but then she could just take her powers off and give them to Sho. Then he could have been happy.

"Well if it did I'd wear it. If it was alive and it gave you super powers and made part of your hair red then I'd wear it and I'd beat everyone who ever made fun of you up with half of a pair of scissors. I really would." Said Sho. That could have been kind of cool…him using his powers for good. Her powers. Psychic powers. If he could do cool stuff with his powers then that would be what he did. Good stuff. The stuff that mom would have wanted him to do.

"But then they'd get hurt…" said Mob. You weren't supposed to hurt people and you weren't supposed to play with scissors. You weren't supposed to point knives at others and scissors were a lot like knives.

"I don't care! I'd do it! I'd do it again and again and again and again-" said Sho

"What is going on out there?" oh no. Mom was up. That could have been so bad. That could have gone so wrong. They were not supposed to be up this late, they were not supposed to be out of bed, and they were certainly not allowed to watch weird adult shows in the middle of the night! Mob and Sho didn't say anything. They just turned off the TV and ran right back to bed where they should have been in the first place. Staying up late was fun sometimes…

…but not all the time.


	37. After School Conversations

School let out at two forty five.

At two forty five Mob packed her things up and went to the gates to wait for mom and Sho. She's school let out at two o'clock. They used to go to the same school but now they didn't. She missed it, going to school with her brother. Getting out of school at the same time. They played together after school and also during recess. Now they couldn't even play together after school because he played in the park with his own friends and they had to rush home so they could do homework and mom could make dinner.

Mob missed kindergarten sometimes.

But first grade was ok, too. She liked the uniform and the real school satchel and how they had real desks now and stuff like that. Even if they didn't nap anymore or have snack time. Even if they only got one recess. First grade was still nice. The people who were in her class were nice too, most of the time. Some of them were nice all of the time.

"Are you going straight home again?"

It took Mob a minute to find words. She tried to talk but her throat was all dry and sticky and stuff and her tongue forgot how to work and also she forgot most of the Japanese she knew…which was a real problem because she only knew how to speak Japanese. If she forgot Japanese then she would forget language all together and then she'd never be able to talk to anyone ever again. Not that she really talked to people outside of her family that much. That might have been why she was so nervous, because she mostly only talked to family members…

She knew that wasn't why she was so nervous.

"I-I am. My mom and my brother are coming. Are-are you going home, too?" asked Mob. There. That was how you made words. Polite words. Words that fit the situation that you were in. Not 'Happy Christmas'….why had she told him 'Happy Christmas' before?! She was amazed that he even still wanted to talk to her. That he hadn't told everyone about how she had said something so dumb…how she had forgotten what holiday it even was!

She was so clueless sometimes.

"Yeah, but now right now. I can wait with you if you want. You know, so you don't get lonely." Said Taro. Mob nodded. That was all that she could do. Nobody had ever waited with her so she didn't get lonely. Well Sho and her waited for things together all the time but they were brother and sister and lived in the same house. This was different. Taro was not her brother. It was different when the boy was not your brother. Well not ever boy made her feel like this. Just Taro…and she knew that she was not supposed to feel this way about a boy who was not an esper. Dad would have been mad at her, disappointed in her, even though he loved mom and mom was not an esper. At least she thought that dad loved mom. Sho said that he had seen dad kiss mom, once, but Mob couldn't imagine it…and she didn't much want to. People kissing was ok but parents kissing was just….not the sort of thing that a person was supposed to think about.

Even though she knew that they must have kissed at some point.

And now she's thinking about kissing stuff and Taro is right there and it's quiet, too quiet, and she knows that she's supposed to say something but she has no idea what. Maybe she just shouldn't say anything. Maybe if she says something she'll just make a fool of herself like she had before. Maybe she'd say Happy Christmas or something instead of…what was the next holiday coming up?

White Day.

"Did you see that dog that got into the yard today? While we were having math?" asked Taro suddenly. Mob nodded. She remembered. Everyone had run to the windows when Ito spotted the dog in the yard. The teacher said that they were being ridiculous. It wasn't like they had never seen a dog before, she had said, but then Hiroshi, who was friends with Ito, said that they had never seen that particular dog before and then everyone laughed and the teacher closed the blinds.

Mob wondered how that dog was doing.

Hopefully it made it to the shelter mom took them to sometimes. If she had been there she would have told the dog about the shelter. She couldn't talk to animals, well she could but they didn't understand, but Sho said that animals understood more than people thought and mom agreed with him so he must have been right.

"I remember." Said Mob. There was more silence.

"Do you remember the park where it scratched it's ear with it's foot? It's cool how dogs do that. People can't do stuff like that." Said Taro

"My little brother can. When he was really little he used to pretend that he was a dog and he would do that but he doesn't anymore because my dad said that he was being stupid." Said Mob. She and Sho used to play animal shelter where she was the shelter volunteer and Sho was the dog…but then dad said that the whole game was stupid and that they had to play something else. Sometimes it felt like dad thought that everything was stupid.

"Your dad said that?" asked Taro. Mob nodded.

"Yes. He said that it was stupid and that we should play something else because we were becoming tiresome." Said Mob

"Your dad said that for real?" asked Taro

"Yes. That's how dads are." Said Mob. Dads were mean and moms were nice and that was how families worked.

"My dad isn't like that." Said Taro

"…but then what is he like?" asked Mob. She had never been to anyone else's house before in her life. She didn't have any cousins, either. She just knew how other families were from TV…and they were nicer on TV but TV was not real life. In real life dads were gone all the time and moms slept all day and little brother's threw crayons at you until you left them alone and then you were kind of cold and alone and your house was so big and you were so small and-

"He's really nice! Well sometimes he can be mean, like when he just comes back from work or when me and my little brother do bad stuff but he's never mean for very long. We play stuff together, he taught me how to play Go and Chinese checkers and chess and stuff and we play together after he has a beer and watches a little TV when he gets home from work. Sometimes we go places, too. Last weekend he took me and my brother to this museum of pizza that they had, my mom didn't come because she had work, and then we went to the arcade afterwards and dad showed us this game from when he was our age and it was really fun." Said Taro. Mob nodded.

"Oh." Said Mob

"You don't do stuff like that with your dad?" asked Taro. Mob shook her head.

"No. He mostly just works. He's away a lot of the time for work and when he comes back he just goes to his office and works some more. Sometimes I play in his office while he works." Said Mob. She had never, well not never, but not usually seen any other dads. The moms were the ones who picked the kids up from school and stuff. She didn't know that dads did stuff like that…outside of TV…but maybe Taro's family was just weird. Yeah, maybe that was it. His mom had a job. Moms didn't work. Dad said that the moms didn't work because they had to take care of their families and that it was the dad's job to provide for his family. Dad said so…

How did other families do things?

Mob had never really given it much thought. She had just thought that her family was normal…but what if it wasn't? What if every other family was normal and hers was weird? Taro's family sounded nice, anyway, normal or weird it sounded nice. Dad never did stuff like that with her and Sho. Dad was always too busy. Yeah, maybe that was it. Dad was just the most busy person in the whole city. He certainly acted like it….

"Oh…um…yeah, Ito's dad is like that too…I'm sorry…Mob. Suzuki." Said Taro

"it's ok. I don't even know what there is to apologize for." Said Mob. Things were the way they were, that was why they were the way they were.

"That your dad never hangs out with you. That just seems sad to me, I guess…" said Taro. Mob didn't say anything. Was that sad? Did she even want dad to spend more time with them? Whenever he spent time with her and Sho then Sho got upset…but when it was just her and dad then he was happy. Maybe the thing was to spend more time with just dad. Then he wouldn't be so upset with Sho. Maybe that was what she was supposed to do, put herself between dad and Sho, for Sho's own good. She did only get one parent after all. They both did. Sho got mom and she got dad. That must have just been the way that it was supposed to be.

"I mean….I don't know. I'm sorry." Said Taro

"What are you sorry about? You didn't do anything." Said Mob

"For making you sad. I mean you look like you're sad so I'm sorry for making you sad. That's all, Mob…Suzuki." Said Taro

"I'm not sad, that's just the way I look all the time. That's why people call me Mob, because I always look like this. Well they call me Suzuki, too, because that's my name…but they also call me Mob." Said Mob. People always said that about her. That she looked bored or sad all the time. She wished that everyone in the world could see colors, could see auras, because then if they could then they could be able to see how she was feeling. Like with Dad. Dad always looked like he was bored too but if you could see his colors then you could see how he was feeling. He didn't have a lot of big feelings but he did have feelings. So did Mob, she was his daughter after all…and maybe she wished, sometimes, that she was more like Mom…but no…

Because then Sho wouldn't have anyone at all.

And she always had to think of Sho.

"Um-" said Taro

"Yes?" asked Mob at the same time.

"You can talk first." Said Taro

"No, that's ok. I just said that because you were talking to me. I just talked too fast, that's all." said Mob. There was some silence, then, and Mob wondered once again if she had said the wrong thing. She had a history of saying the wrong thing. She wished that she could just get a clue already. What good were psychic powers if she couldn't just get a clue?

"Oh." Said Taro. There was some silence again. He was looking at his shoes. Mob looked down at her shoes, too. They were black. Mom called them loafers. Mob missed her old shoes, her gym shoes, but this was not kindergarten and they needed a pair of shiny black shoes for outside of the school and a pair of shiny black shoes for inside of the school. That was ok. Dad said that dressing nice was very important. That was why he wore suits all the time, even to bed. Well Mob didn't know if dad wore suits to bed but she did know that she had never once in her almost seven years of life seen her dad in a pair of pajamas. Mom, though, she wore pajamas all the time unless she was going outside for some reason.

"Um…hey Mob? Uh…um…do you like…stuff?" asked Taro. Mob wondered how she was supposed to answer that question. I like strawberry milk. I like warm socks right out of the dryer. I like cats with fluffy tails. I like buttery eggs and thick slices of toast with jam and butter. I like to play with my little brother even though he plays rough. I like Frozen more than Tangled but I like Tangled more than The Princess and the Frog and I like The Princess and the Frog more than Cinderella but I like Cinderella more than Enchanted because Enchanted has too much stuff with real people and Mob liked drawn stuff more than with real people and-

And she liked him.

"I…I like stuff…" said Mob. She had no idea how she was supposed to answer that so she just went with the most direct answer. She liked things. A lot of things. People. Some people. Him. But if she said that then she'd end up dropping dead right there and then Sho would be an only child and she can't let Sho be an only child. He'd end up so lonely. He'd have nobody to play with or jump on or shout at.

"I mean…what kind of stuff do you like?" asked Taro

"A lot of stuff." Said Mob quickly. You, I like you. I like you so much. I think about you a lot instead of doing my school work, sometimes, or during recess and I really like you and now I want to run far away because now I'm thinking about how much I like you and-

"Like….um…do you like Hello Kitty or do you just have the bag? Like, I don't even know what show the robot on my bag is from but I have to use it because it was my big cousin's bag and this saves money. So I was just wondering if you…liked Hello Kitty." Said Taro quickly

"I like Hello Kitty. I like Hello Kitty a lot. I like cats a lot. I like all animals but cats are my favorite. My brother likes hamsters and rats and mice the best even though they're vermin, my dad said. I like most animals and stuff like that. Do you like animals too?" asked Mob. Well no she was having the opposite problem as before. Now she was saying way too many words. Now instead of having trouble remembering Japanese she was remembering way too much of it and it was all coming out like word throw up…which was preferable actual throw up which she felt like she was about to do, too, because she was just so nervous and-

"I like dinosaurs, I think they count as animals. I like the really big ones, and the ones that fly. Those are the coolest. I have a fossil of one, but it's a little one, I think it's a fossil anyway. I found it by the pond in the park…and maybe I'll bring it to school and show you if my mom lets me take it out of the house. I mean if you like that kind of thing." Said Taro

"I do." Said Mob even though she had no real opinion on dinosaur or rocks or fossils. Dad had brought them back a pretty rock called a geode, once, but she didn't think that it was the same as fossils. She might end up liking dinosaurs, she didn't know. She hadn't given them much thought…but now she wanted to rush home and watch all the dinosaur documentaries that she could find…

"Cool. That's cool. You're…um…I think that you're cool. I mean the stuff you do. I mean like…like how you know kanji already. Thanks for helping me when we were doing writing, by the way. You're really smart." Said Taro. Mob nodded. Now she was grateful that mom and dad had spent so long teaching her to write. She liked to help people, to be helpful, and she liked it when people said nice stuff to her…when one person said nice stuff to her…even though dad would have been so disappointed in her for feeling this way.

She couldn't help how she felt.

Even though she was supposed to. Even though dad had been telling her for her entire life that she had to have control over her emotions. All of them. Dad said that power was nothing without control…and he had meant everything. Not just powers. Strong emotions made for power flare ups, he said, and those weren't allowed. She could hurt something…or someone….

And she didn't want that.

Or to make dad disappointed in her…even though she didn't know why it was so important that she got married to another esper when she was a grown up. Dad hadn't and he never complained about mom or how she didn't have any powers….

"T-Thank you…" said Mob. She was tucking her head down low, now, because she could feel herself turning red again. She reached behind herself and held her braids down with her hands. Power was nothing without control. Conceal don't feel. Stuff like that.

Be normal.

Even though she was most certainly not normal.

"So um…I have to go home now. Goodbye! See you tomorrow…because we're in the same class…bye!" Mob watched him run down the school steps, past the gate, and then down the road. She would have watched him some more but she could see Mom and Sho coming up the way. Right. Time to go home, too, because that was what you were supposed to do after school.

It took a minute for her legs to listen to her.

It took a minute for her stomach to stop being all flip floppy.

But she had to hold her braids down the whole way home.


	38. Breakfast at Midnight

Touichirou was happy to be home.

That last trip…how had he chosen such incompetent...he didn't even….

It had been a lot.

But now he was home. He was at the gates of his home where his wife and children and bed were. He could just lay down and relax. Not sleep, no, because his body expected it to still be daytime. Goddamned jetlag. People were not meant to travel as quickly as he had across the world. As powerful as he was he was still human and his body still had trouble adjusting to a new time zone so quickly.

It didn't matter. He didn't need to sleep.

He could just lay beside Masami for a while. Yes, he had been looking forward to that for a while. He had grown accustomed to her face, her presence, and this trip had been unusually difficult. Well, in the sense that it had been unusual for him to miss her. He thought of her often but those thoughts had never come with that bitter sort of ache in his chest. It was irrational. He knew that he would come home to her again. No matter how many attempts were made on his life he would always come back to her.

And the children.

He felt Daughter's aura before he even reached the front door. It was late, well past the hour in which people could reasonably be expected to be awake, but there Daughter was. Awake. She was moving closer to the door. Son was…considerably harder to see….but still asleep. She was still asleep, too, Masami. She had no aura but he knew that, at this hour, he could reasonably expect her to be asleep. He wanted her to be awake, to wake up and make him breakfast and chatter on about the comings and goings of the household while he ate and listened. He just needed to hear her voice, that was all.

Weak.

You're weak, Suzuki Touichirou.

And you're letting her make you weak.

He would not be waking her. Even though he wanted to, even though it would have been so easy, he would not be waking her up at this ungodly hour. He was not one of the children. He did not need to cling to her to feel a sense of security. He was secure. He was secure in that fact that he was Suzuki Touichirou and that was more than enough for him.

He opened the door.

"Daughter. I know you're there." said Suzuki. Daughter needed ten hours of sleep a night at her age. Either to ten hours for optimal development. She had to get up early for school. This was a school night, he assumed, though he confessed to himself that the exact date had gotten away from him at some point. Dealing with all of this. So tiresome.

"Hi dad." Said Mob. She had been hiding around the genkan corner. Dad was there. He was taking his shoes off with his powers. His suitcase was hovering behind him. She knew that she was supposed to be in bed. She knew that dad would not be happy with her and then he'd tell mom what she did and then mom would be upset and then everyone would be mad and she might even get her tablet taken away or her TV time…but it didn't matter.

Dad was home.

"You're awake." Said Touichirou as he faced his shoes the right way. It was good to model proper behaviors. It was good to engage in proper behaviors in general. He was sick and tired of people keeping their shoes on when they should have taken them off. When he ruled the world the first thing he was doing was breaking Americans and Europeans and whoever else of the inarguably revolting habit of keeping their shoes on while inside. Simply revolting.

"Yes." said Mob. She waited for dad to tell her to go to bed. Sometimes she was allowed to leave on her own and sometimes she had to wait for him to tell her to go. It was hard to tell with him so she just decided to be careful. It was best to be careful with dad. Sho was never careful, that was why he got punished so often, and for some reason he refused to learn to be careful, too. Maybe because he was younger. She was older and it was her job to act right. That way he would learn to act right, too.

"Why?" asked Suzuki as he crossed the threshold into his home. He missed it. The smell of it. The feel of it. He had been away for so long that his own energy, the energy which saturated the house, had largely dissipated. It had been replaced by Daughter's energy. Bright, far too bright for a child, so bright that it eclipsed anything that Boy was capable of…

"Because I felt you coming and I want to see you." Said Mob. She held eye contact, stood up straight, and spoke clearly. Dad liked all of those things. She had to make dad happy. She was already doing something wrong so she had might as well try and make him happy. She was his daughter after all and that was what good daughters did, they made their dads happy.

"From what distance?" asked Suzuki. Her range may have grown since he was away. A good thing and a bad thing. She was almost seven years old. Girls could begin puberty as early as nine. He had gotten a significant power boost when he had hit puberty, around twelve if he remembered correctly, and that had been when he had his first true explosion. Daughter…she was a mirror into his past. A feminine mirror. Himself reborn into her flesh…well he could have seen her that way had she actually been his actual daughter. She was not. There was no possible way that she had been his biological child.

Fate could be cruel and kind at the same time, it seemed.

"I don't know. Far, I think. I felt you coming and it woke me up so I stayed by my window until I saw a car dropping you off." Said Mob

"How long was that?" asked Touichirou

"The clock said seven minutes." Said Mob

"I see." Said Touichirou. Well now. That had been some distance. He was bright, he knew that he shone the brightest of all espers, but for her to have seen him at that distance and at her age. She was not yet seven, at least he thought that she was not yet seven. Her birthday was after White Day and he knew that it had not yet been White Day. He still had not given Masami and Daughter their obligation chocolates. Chocolate from Germany this time, not that repulsive American chocolate that he had sent before. He regretted sending them American candy before he had tried it himself. He did not care for sweet foods, he had never cared for them even in his youth, but there was something especially disgusting about American sweets.

To think that had been the country of his mother's origin.

He understood why she chose to uproot herself to Japan.

"Do I have to go to bed now?" asked Mob. Dad hadn't said anything to her in a while. He might have been done with her. He might have been in one of his rare good moods, too, and he had no plans at all of waking mom up in the middle of the night and telling her that Mob had gotten up and left her room. She was only allowed to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, that was it, not play or watch TV or even greet dad when he had come back for the first time in months…

Well mom had never come out and said that last part but Mob could only assume.

"Do you want to go to bed now?" asked Suzuki. He needed human contact. Just a bit of it. Just a small amount to take the edge off of this feeling, this irrational and unpleasant feeling, that had settled within him weeks ago. Sycophants and cultists and mutinous traitors grew so tiresome after a while. He needed someone on his level. Masami was asleep and he was not going to wake her. To wake her would have been to admit weakness….

Though wasn't this admitting weakness too?

No. His Daughter had no power over him. She had sought him out. She was his Daughter, he had power over her, and he could even think of her as something of an…an employee. Yes. Something akin to that. Someone who existed to fulfil a particular job within the organization. She was…she was his child and she would someday be his…

Second?

Perhaps. She was second only to him after all. She was female, fate could be both cruel and kind, and she would one day find herself as consumed with her own household as Masami was…or perhaps not. Perhaps in ten or so years' time he would have enough espers at his disposal to serve as a sort of staff for her. Daughter may have even been more amenable to having staff to take some of the burden of running a household off of her shoulders. Yes, she would both serve Claw and secure the next generation.

Ten years, or so, could not come fast enough.

Or maybe even fewer. When did girls hit childbearing age? He'd look it up later. He needed to secure the next generation as soon as possible. He still had so little hard data on how the gift of ESP was passed down…especially between two espers. She was female, she could have had a lover in every country, every prefecture, if she wanted to. He did not care who she took to bed when she got older, who she chose to secure the next generation with, so long as they were espers…powerful ones.

The years could not go by fast enough.

"Do I have to?" asked Mob. She wondered if this was a trick of some kind. She had to be in bed right then. Mom had rules and in the house they had to do whatever mom said. Dad said so. Dad said that they had to listen to mom…and Mob was doing such a poor job of it…and then mom would be mad…but she also wanted to see dad. She wanted to be with him. She wanted to her about how his trip was and also…and also she wanted to be with him and know things about him. Things that other kids knew about their dads. What games he had played when he was a kid. What shows he had watched. Who he had played with. What his school had been like. Things like that. She knew so little about her dad…and according to the other kids in her class that was not normal at all…

What was dad LIKE?

When he wasn't working or in a bad mood?

What did he do for fun?

Did he even know what fun was?

And other such pressing questions.

"No. You may be here in my company for some time. Not the entire night, of course, because I know you have school in the morning." Said Suzuki. If he kept Daughter awake for too long her academic progress would suffer and then it would reflect badly upon him and Masami as parents. He didn't care, he knew that Daughter stood head and shoulders above all of the other children, but Masami would. Why she did not just educate them herself, she was a very intelligent woman, Suzuki did not know.

"Ok….what do you want to do?" asked Mob. She didn't want to just stand there by the genkan all night, that would have been so boring and also her legs would have gotten tired…and also she had no idea what it was that dad did besides work. It would have been nice to see what he did besides work, what he did after everyone went to sleep….

"Are you hungry?" asked Suzuki. He was. He hadn't eaten since departing from Berlin. Crossing the world was both tiresome and hunger inducing. Normally Masami would have had breakfast for him. Normally it would have been warm and waiting for him as soon as he crossed the threshold and entered the house. But he had not told Masami that he was coming back. It had slipped his mind. He had just been so grateful to be headed back to Japan, back to civilization, that he hadn't thought to E-Mail his own wife his flight details.

And now he had to deal with his own mistake.

"Kind of." Said Mob. She had heard the expression midnight snack before, and sometimes she and Sho got up in the middle of the night to get to the snacks, but she had never gotten a midnight snack with dad before. She hadn't even known that he was a midnight snack sort of person. That was something that she had learned about him.

"Has your mother taught you to cook yet?" asked Suzuki. What he really wanted was some of Masami's cooking. He had been served meals by some of the best chefs in the world but none of them could possibly compare to her skill. That was the sort of thing that mothers passed down to their daughters, right? He recalled Masami telling him stories of her own mother teaching her how to cook. Was Daughter old enough to cook, even?

"Mom shows me how to cook sometimes." Said Mob. So had Fukuda but he hadn't been around in a really long time. Nobody had gotten hurt in a really long time. A new record for them. Mom was still sick, though, but she called it being tired. She had some kind of sickness where she was tired all the time…though it had been getting better lately. She had been getting dressed more often and cooking all the time and sitting out in the living room with her and Sho…and Mob didn't even mind that sometimes mom fell asleep on the couch and she and Sho had to remind her to make dinner and give them their baths and stuff like that.

"Good." Said Suzuki. He made his way over to the kitchen. Daughter followed a few paces behind. Good. He didn't like to cook. He could make a few things for himself, porridge and rice and such, and he did not care to learn how to do any more. The process of cooking was tiresome to him. Masami enjoyed it, she had said years ago that she found it fulfilling, so he left the cooking to her. Perhaps it was one of those male/female things. Women did seem to enjoy domestic tasks more than men did. Though he could not say for sure, having lived his entire four decades of life as a man and all. Daughter was female, though, so she was better suited to this task than he was.

She knew what she was doing.

"Ok. And then mom said that when the eggs were whisked until they looked like this you were supposed to add in sweet cream. That's a type of milk." Said Mob. She was cooking all on her own! Well dad was there to make sure that she didn't burn the house down but she was cooking! She was standing on a chair in front of the stove and cooking on her very own!

Mom said to never touch the stove.

But she was not touching the stove.

Dad was teaching her how to multitask, he said, which meant doing a lot of different things with your powers at once. Power was nothing without control and she had very good fine control, he had said, which meant that she could break eggs and hardly get any shell in the insides. She could also toast and better bread and whisk eggs and melt butter all at once.

And she wasn't touching anything.

But she was using her powers in the house…but dad had said that this was ok. Dad said that she needed to learn how to control her powers. He said that mom said that she couldn't use her powers inside the house when dad was away because mom had no powers of her own. Dad said that mom was afraid that there would be an accident or something and then she would have no way of fixing it because she had no powers of her own. Dad also said that he would talk to her. This rule was bad for Sho's development, he said, and Mob agreed.

They both wanted Sho to be the best that he could be.

"Good. Don't deviate from your mother's recipes." Said Suzuki. He was sitting at the table on standby should Daughter begin to lose control. He was also syphoning off some of her excess energy in order to keep her from losing control. She had remarkably good at this. As good at this as he had been at her age. He hadn't cooked, no, though he did have a small lightbulb oven that he occasionally made cakes in. He used his fine control to stage grand space and mech battles. Also the Mach Five had been involved on occasion. In those days he saved the world instead of ruling it as he was meant to. He hadn't known that he had been meant to rule the world in those days. Back then the latest installment in the Gundam franchise, his laser disk of the Galaxy Express 999 film, and his Famicom had been his greatest joys in life….huh. He had almost forgotten about that. What he had done at her age. Being seven years old…

He wondered if he still had his laser disks or his famicom or his toys…

To give to the children, of course, not any irrational sentimentality.

"I won't, dad. I can do this." said Mob. She could, she really could. She wasn't used to using her powers like this but she could feel dad helping her keep control. Like when mom used to push her on the swings or keep her hands under her stomach when she had been learning to swim…it was like that. Dad was teaching her how to control her powers and he wasn't making her throw things or try and break through his bubble and he wasn't trying to break through her bubble…

This was nice.

Was this what everyone else did with their dad?

"I have complete faith in both your culinary abilities and your control, Daughter." Said Suzuki. Why couldn't this have been Sho? Fate was kind and fate was cruel. Fate had dropped this child, this prodigy, this treasure into his lap but fate had also given him the Boy….and while the boy did show artistic aptitude that was not what mattered. Psychic powers were the only thing that mattered and as far as those went he was little better than one of the Awakened. Suzuki could have just shared his power with the Boy…

But he didn't want to.

That was his Son. His offspring. He should have eclipsed the offspring of two nobodies…but he did not.

"Thanks Dad." Said Mob. She smiled, a little, before she stuffed it down. She had to control her emotions. Everything she was carrying was in a very delicate balance. Like the man on Japan's Got Talent who spun all of those fancy plates on long poles. She had to keep everything in balance or it would all come tumbling down and then dad would be disappointed in her and mom would be upset with her. Mob did not want that at all.

What she wanted was for him to say things like that to Sho.

Because Sho was the one who needed to hear them, not her. Not Mob. Mob was Mob. Mob was a background character. Mob should have faded into the background. Mob should have made room for Sho, not taken all of dad's attention away. Mob should have made Sho look better…

Mob should not have been better at this, at anything, than Sho.

"Something is wrong. Explain." Said Suzuki. He steadied her telekinetic grasp for her. Her control had been so good. Something had changed. What? What had changed? Why did women have to be so very confusing? He hoped that he didn't have another Masami on his hands. He cared for her, he really did, but she was so confusing sometimes…and Daughter may have been following in her footsteps despite having no biological relation.

"I was just think that…that Sho feels bad." Said Mob. She wanted to give dad a piece of her mind, which was a saying that meant tell him exactly what she thought about him and the way he treated Sho. But she could not talk to her father like that. That was not how a good daughter talked to her dad.

"He's asleep." Said Suzuki. Whatever Son felt bad about could be dealt with in the morning. He came bearing gifts after all. The children loved gifts. Material possessions could make anything better, it seemed. That was the backbone of the economy after all. Besides, what could a six year old boy possibly have had to feel bad about?

And why was he wasting his time with irrational emotions, anyway?

"Dad…Sho's been…he really wants to get better, with his powers I mean. I mean he wants to be able to do the kind of stuff that you and I can do. He feels really bad that he can't do the stuff we do. He's always saying things like he was born wrong and I was born right and-" said Mob as she folded the eggs like mom had shown her. You had to fold, not stir, because stirring made the eggs scrambled. These were not scrambled eggs, they were buttered eggs, which was different. Mom's mom had taught her and then she had taught Mob and when Mob had a daughter then she would teach her. She focused on what she was doing. If she did this right, if she did a good enough job, then maybe dad would listen to her and maybe even consider being nicer to Sho.

Or maybe if she did a bad job then he'd be mean to her.

And then maybe he would get all of the meanness out of his system and then they could all be a happy family like everyone else was a happy family.

"He was born wrong." Said Suzuki simply. He felt his Daughter's telekinetic grasp fail her and he picked up where she left off. Thankfully she had realized her mistake quickly and went back to what she was doing. He grabbed a piece of toast out of the air with his power. It was almost as perfect as Masami's.

"That's…dad, why would you say something like that?" asked Mob. No. That was not right. Sho had been born right! He had! He had too been born right and there was nothing at all wrong with him!

"Control, Daughter. I know you have better control than that." Said Suzuki. Now she went to pieces? Why? Because he had stated a simple fact? Boy had been born wrong. He was the reason for that scar on Masami's stomach, the one she refused to let him have Fukuda heal. She wanted the reminder of the greatest thing that they had ever done together. Their greatest accomplishment.

Somehow Boy had been their greatest accomplishment.

"I'm sorry. I just got upset when you said that about Sho. He's my little brother and I love him and it hurts me when…that hurt me." Said Mob. She spoke slowly and clearly and she kept her powers under control. She was not supposed to lose control. She was not supposed to be someone that dad wouldn't have wanted.

She needed dad to love her.

"Why? It's the truth. He was born wrong and that's why they had to cut him out of your mother." Said Suzuki as Daughter finished the eggs. From what he could tell she had done a good job. They looked just like Masami's and smelled just like Masami's. She would be so happy, Masami, now that Daughter was finally old enough to provide some domestic help. She may have just had exhaustion. Fukuda had said that Masami was exhausted and that there was only so much he could do. Masami didn't have powers, she had to do everything in this house on her own with her own two hands. It must have been exhausting. He could recall his own mother often complaining about the effort it took to care for him and his father and their home. Even if Daughter could be somewhat unstable at times…though she was not even seven years old yet. Still so small. She had time to learn…and so did her brother. There was still time for Boy…

And at least he felt ashamed about his lack of progress…which was understandable…though why the circumstances of his birth troubled him Suzuki had no idea.

True, it had been hard at first. He had almost lost control when they said that they had to cut Masami open. That was why he had wanted her to give birth at home. Son had been born in the wrong position and if Suzuki had just had enough time to calm down he could have turned Boy right around…but he hadn't and the decision had been made and Son had been born via cesarean and Masami had been cut open…and that had been just…but she was fine now and Boy was fine and Suzuki carried no irrational feelings about the subject.

Even though Son, apparently, did.

"What do you mean?" asked Mob as she tried to stay calm. Doing things helped. Setting the table helped. Just her special plate, this time, and Dad's plain plate. Just her special glass and his plain glass. She set the table and plated the food, which was what mom called serving, and the whole time she kept herself mostly under control.

Her hair was floating.

She didn't sleep in braids. If her hair had been in braids then she would have been able to hold them down with her hands. Her hair wasn't in braids and it was floating like she was underwater and she didn't know how to get it to stop even though she knew that she needed to have better control than that. Even though she knew that dad would get on her about her lack of control…but that was good. Maybe then he could say that she had been born wrong and that Sho had been the one to have been born right.

Also they CUT babies out of your stomach?!

But then what was the belly button for?

"Your brother had to be cut out of your mother. He was born in the wrong position and he had to be cut out via caesarian section, which is the name of the medical procedure, though your mother and I hold no ill will towards him. He was only an infant and had no control over the position that he had found himself in. It really is not an uncommon medical procedure and he should not hold any ill will towards himself for this. Also you've done a wonderful job on these eggs and I commend you for it." Said Suzuki as he ate. Not exactly like Masami's but better than the slop he had been eating before. Such a talented little girl, his daughter…he'd have to get her something nice for her birthday. Maybe another doll modeled after her...yes…she'd love that.

Who wouldn't want a doll that looked like them?

That was, essentially, what it was to reproduce. To reproduce was to create a smaller version of yourself, a being that was half you and half your most perfect person, a being that had been created in both of your images. Yes, Daughter's love of dolls made perfect sense. She had some very strong maternal instincts. Good. That would be good for the next generation. Grandchildren. He wondered if being a grandparent would be terribly different from being a parent. Maybe it would be easier, he'd have to spend much less time with his grandchildren than he had to spend with his children…though Daughter on her own wasn't that bad. Yes, her children would be very pleasant to be around. Son's on the other hand…well they might have taken after whatever woman he chose as his most perfect person…and he hoped that he did not end up with a female version of himself. No…that would not have been good for anyone.

He was so grateful to himself for finding Daughter.

Though he did not like the level of unbridled emotion that he was seeing from her.

"They…they actually cut you open to take the baby out of you?" asked Mob. She couldn't eat. Not now. Not after she had just learned this terrible piece of information. Wow. She and Sho had been cut out of mom's stomach like…like what? Like they were gutting a fish? The room shakes as Mob gets a terrible mental image. Ick. Mom as one of the fish Fukuda had gutted the last time he came over to help make dinner…ick.

"Daughter, control yourself. It's not an uncommon medical procedure but it is not a common one either. When it comes time for you to have children I'm sure that there won't be any complications. You'll be fine." Said Suzuki. He wondered what it was that she knew about childbirth and human reproduction. Masami said that she had given the children a barebones explanation of what went on in order to alleviate Boy's concerns that he had heard his parents having a fight instead of doing the direct opposite…and hopefully that day had been enough to teach him not to go sneaking around while his parents were trying to have a private moment with one another….

"So then I'll be ok?" asked Mob. She reached down and felt her belly button through her nightgown. Good. Everything would happen in the usual way and the doctor would not have to gut her like a fish. That was good because she was not a fish at all but a person.

"Most likely." Said Suzuki as he continued to eat. Daughter's distress seemed to have passed. Good. He did not know how to deal with a distressed child and he was loathe to wake Masami at this hour. The later she was up the later she would sleep. He did desire her presence…and her…but those were not the thoughts to have. Especially not while eating a meal with his Daughter.

"Is that why Sho's not as powerful as me? Because he came out of mom like that?" asked Mob. That might have been it. She wished that it was. Then she could tell Sho that it wasn't his fault and then he could stop blaming himself and then they could go back to being best friends…because they were best friends…they could go back to being the sort of best friends that never fought unless it was important.

"I….your brother is a mystery to me. I don't know enough about how powers are inherited to give you a proper answer…but I will once I have sufficient enough data for a meaningful answer." Said Suzuki. That seemed to satisfy her as she, then, began to eat. He ate as well. He wished that he knew what made the Boy the way he was. If he knew why he was the way he was then maybe he could fix the Boy…

Defy fate.

Fate who had been so cruel as to give him Boy but so kind as to give him Daughter.

"Hey dad?" asked Mob suddenly. She didn't know what she was going to say, exactly, after this but she knew that she wanted to talk about something other than how bad Sho felt about himself. If they kept on talking about this then she might have been in danger of telling dad just how she felt about how he treated Sho…and that would not have been good at all for either of them.

"Daughter?" asked Suzuki

"Um…do you like…why do you like breakfast food so much?" asked Mob. There. That was an ok thing to talk about. Food. She had nothing mean to say about dad's choice in favorite foods so she wasn't in any danger of saying anything that would have caused a problem.

"Hmm? I suppose that I just do. It's efficient and nutritious while still being calorically dense. Always eat calorically dense foods, Daughter, your powers take a lot out of you if you use them." Said Suzuki

"Ok." Said Mob even though she had no idea what 'calorically dense' meant…not that she would tell Dad that. He might have thought that she was dumb if she asked…and he also might have sent her off to learn even more kanji, too, which she did not feel like doing this late at night…or ever since she led the class in reading and writing already anyway.

"How have you been, Daughter? Are your studies going well?" asked Suzuki. Right. He was supposed to be modeling proper behavior. It was proper to have small talk at the table. Masami said that the children's social development was very important…even though when they ruled the world they'd have no need to fit in. The world would accommodate them, they would not need to accommodate the world.

"Yes, school is good. I have good grades in everything but math…but I'm working really hard to be better." Said Mob. Dad would like that, that she was working hard to get better, even though no matter what Mob did math made zero sense to her.

"Ask your mother for help. She's a very intelligent woman." Said Suzuki. Daughter's aura flared. He wondered why. Did she disagree? Well if she disagreed then she would have to be corrected. When it came to intelligence he was the only person who could be her equal. She stood head and shoulders above everyone but him in all ways. She was the most intelligent, most thoughtful, most industrious, most creative, and most beautiful woman in the world and he would end anyone who thought differently.

"You never say nice things about mom…I mean I never hear you say nice things about mom." Said Mob after a moment. That was…that felt weird. It was weird, knowing that her parents were in love, even though of course they had been…having proof of it…that was what was so weird.

"I don't have to say these things for them to be true. Besides, your mother knows how I feel about her. one day you'll find a man who you feel that way about and then you'll understand that you don't need to say it for it to be known and true." Said Suzuki. He was not one for grand declarations of emotion. He was not one for even allowing strong emotion to exist within himself…but there it was. He knew it was there, Masami knew that it was there, so there was no need to acknowledge it.

"Oh." Said Mob. So did that mean that when you were in love you never said it? But then how would you know, then, that the other person loved you? If a boy loved her she would hope that he would come out and say it. This seemed like the kind of thing that you were supposed to say, and often, because otherwise you could forget that the other person even loved you at all….and Mob couldn't think of anything sadder than that even if she spent the rest of her life thinking.

"These sorts of things will become more apparent once you meet someone…and when you're older, as well. You're a child now and these emotions, what they meant and how to control them, are beyond the scope of your imagination right now. Things will become much clearer in time." Said Suzuki as his fork scraped against his plate. Children were so simple in their thoughts and emotions…and there was some freedom in that. Freedom that he has lost as he aged.

There was freedom in innocence.

Though there was loss, too…because these emotions may have been trouble in their intensity…but they were not painful as so many other emotions were…well they were but it was a good pain. It was a pain that you looked forward to feeling, the pain of being near your most perfect person, the longer you were away from them…

But Daughter was too young for that.

Romantic caring. Sexual desire. Partnering and the attachment that came with it…all of it was well beyond the boundaries of her imagination.

"What is going on in…here?"

There. The pain. That pain that he loved to feel….maybe he was just some kind of masochist….but he had wanted to feel this for so long…to feel her. To be near her. To hold her and kiss her and debauch her in all the ways she loved. The ways he loved. Those mutually pleasurable ways that he should not have been thinking of while his Daughter sat beside him…unpleasant. Now it was the unpleasant sort of feeling…

Wasn't it past her bedtime?

"Masami. Hello. It's nice to see you again." said Suzuki keeping his voice and his aura as level as he could. Daughter was shrinking back in her seat…and her aura was acting like she was frightened of something…but that was good. She gave him something to focus on. He focused on keeping her powers under control before she broke something…or someone.

"Touichirou….I didn't know that you'd be coming back…or that you were planning on cooking." Said Masami. She had expected to find the kids watching TV or getting into the snacks or something of that nature but instead she not only found her husband but she found out that he knew how the stove worked, too.

"I cooked, mom! I cooked all by myself! Dad said that it was ok and I made all of this! Come here and sit down and have some with us!" said Mob. She was excited, she knew that she was excited and she knew that she should not have been so excited. She should have been calm and in control like dad had wanted…and now he would be mad at her…

But if he was mad at her then he was not mad at Sho.

"Daughter. Control." Said Suzuki. Children, even Daughter of all people, could be so tiresome sometimes. He wondered if his control had ever been this bad…and he remember that it had.

"Touichirou…you let her use the stove?" asked Masami. That…that was…what? What!? In what universe was letting a six, not even seven, year old girl use the stove ok? There was a chair in front of it…she could have so easily fallen and burnt herself…and then they would have had to call Fukuda and that was a thing in and of its self now…

What had Touichirou been thinking?

Only of himself, as usual, most likely.

"Yes. She proved to be quite adept at cooking. Thank you for teaching her, you've taught her well." Said Suzuki. Praise. Everyone loved praise and there was no one who deserved it more than Masami. She was such a good partner to him and mother to their children. He could not have picked a more perfect person to be his wife. His person.

"I…I'm going back to bed. You two have fun with…with this. I…I can't right now. It's twelve thirty in the morning….I'm going back to bed." Said Masami. Nope. Not now. She'd clean up in the morning and then…then what? She couldn't punish Shigeko for doing what her father had asked of her and there was no way that Touichirou would ever even begin to understand that maybe, just maybe, a little girl should not have been allowed to get up after midnight and make breakfast for her father who was a grown man and perfectly capable of cooking his own damn meals!

She was not going to get into that right then and there.

"You're right, it is late. Daughter, go back to sleep. Masami, I'll join you." Said Suzuki as he used his powers to put all the dirty dishes in the sink for Masami or Daughter to take care of tomorrow. He needed to be near Masami, then. He needed to be near her and to just…just be with her. Such irrational feelings…but ones that he had gone far too long without satiating.

"No, you two can keep on doing whatever it is that you're doing. Don't let me interrupt you two." Said Masami. Not that she knew why they needed to bond any more than they already were. Shigeko and her father were already two peas in a pod. Even now, when Masami looked past the differences in hair and eye color, she could have sworn that she was looking at a smaller, more feminine, version of Touichirou sitting there looking more disaffected than any child ever should have….

She needed to go to bed.

It was either too early or too late for this.

"You're right, it is late. Daughter, I trust that you can see yourself to bed. Goodnight." Said Suzuki. Daughter nodded. She was so much easier to deal with than Son. Son always put up such a production when it was time for him to go to sleep. Daughter, not so much.

"Ok. Goodnight mom. Goodnight dad." Said Mob. She didn't stick around once dad told her that she could go. She was happy to go to bed. She was happy to have had spent some time with dad. She was happy that dad had let her cook on her own. She was happy that she had done such a good job.

And most of all she was happy that nobody had gotten mad at anyone else.


	39. White Day

It was raining.

The sky had been grey and dark when Mob had left home and now it was raining. It was like the sky had opened up and all of the water in it was pouring out like a faucet. Mob was standing on the school steps. She wasn't getting wet, there was a little roof above her, but she was getting cold. The sky was dark and everything was wet and her finger felt frozen. She tucked them up into her sleeves.

Mom would be a while.

When it rained Sho liked to jump in all the puddles. Mob didn't want him to rush over on her account. She wanted him to be happy. Dad was back. When dad was back it was hard to get Sho to be happy. Dad hadn't even done anything to him and he was unhappy. When they had woken up the morning after dad had come back, Mob forgot to tell Sho that dad had come home, Sho had ran back to his room and wouldn't come out until mom carried him out.

She should have warned Sho.

It was her fault. A lot of stuff was her fault. She wished that she could have just been better. Mom seemed upset, well Sho had said that mom had seemed upset, that morning and that was probably her fault too. She couldn't help the fact that dad's rules, when he was around, took the place of mom's rules…and Mob hadn't touched the stove anyway. If mom was mad at someone then she should have been mad at dad.

Mob didn't want anyone to be mad at anyone else.

She just wanted everyone to be happy. It was a holiday. White Day. White Day was a happy day. That was when girls got chocolate…so maybe it was just a good holiday for her and mom. Dad got her and mom chocolate and he even gave it to them in person….so mom should have been happy. Mob had been happy. She had been…was it right for her to be happy? When mom and Sho were upset?

Maybe mom and Sho would feel better. They both liked the rain.

Mob did not. It was cold out. It was cold and wet and even though she was standing under a roof she could still feel the dampness of the world soaking into her clothes. She wanted to go home and change into her after school clothes and eat her chocolate and do her homework. Maybe she could do her homework with Dad again. He let her work in his office so long as she was quiet. She could be quiet. She could be very quiet….that was why dad liked her.

She had dad and Sho had mom and that was the way it was supposed to be.

Everyone got one parent. Even though other people's families were different…she had been asking around…that was the way that her family worked. Other families weren't espers, though, so that must have been it. That…it sort of made sense. Even though Sho had powers now…he was still mom's and she was still dad's. Dad liked them all…right?

Of course he did.

Dad liked them all and they all liked him and everyone liked everyone else and they were a family and that was the way that it was. Everyone liked everyone and everyone got along and if they didn't then Mob just wasn't working hard enough. She wasn't working hard enough at being a good daughter or a good big sister. That was all. She had to be a good daughter and a good big sister because…because she just had to. There was a feeling, a bad one that she got sometimes, that all of this was just…just something that could go away. That one day she'd wake up and her whole family would be gone and it would all be her fault.

A bad feeling.

She didn't much like thinking about bad feelings. She also wasn't supposed to think too hard about good feelings, either. She was supposed to have feelings that were small, not big, because big feelings would make her lose control. Power was nothing without control, dad had said so. Mob was getting better at her control. She hadn't lost control even once today even though she'd had so many big feelings, both big and little, that she had felt.

She didn't get any chocolate.

But that was ok. She had gotten chocolate from her dad and that was fine. Family chocolate was just as good as non-family chocolate. Besides, if she really wanted chocolate then she could have just had mom add it to the cart the next time she ordered food. Really, she was ok. Boys didn't like her like that…and it was ok. Besides, that kind of stuff was for older kids anyway. She was still just in the first grade. Second graders were all about holding hands and stuff so maybe she'd get chocolate from a boy in the second grade.

If she and Taro ended up in the same class.

Mob tried not to think about him. She was not supposed to like a boy who wasn't an esper…even though the only esper boy she knew was her own brother….dad would have been so disappointed in her. She didn't want dad to be disappointed in her…even if he had no reason to be disappointed in her. He had married mom, he loved mom, and mom didn't have any powers at all. What made it ok for him to make a rule for her that he himself did not follow? Why was that ok? It wasn't fair…not that Mob would ever have told her dad that it wasn't fair. No, she did not get to tell her dad what was and was not fair.

It really was not fair though.

A lot of things were fair.

She was…she was ok, though. So what if she hadn't got any chocolate? So what if she liked someone who she was not supposed to? So what if when she got home mom was probably still going to be mad at her just because she had done what dad had told her to do? She was ok. She was fine. She really was.

"Are you ok?" oh. Mob looked up…and then looked right back down at her shoes.

"Hi Taro….I'm ok." Said Mob

"Ok. That's good…I mean…because you just seemed like you were kind of sad. The way you were just looking at the ground and all…but I'm glad that you're ok." Said Taro. Mob looked up. Right, people thought that you were sad when you looked at the ground. Well people always thought that she was sad. They always thought that she was sad or bored or something like that. She wasn't though, not sad, she was ok. She was always ok. She was Mob. She had nothing to not be ok about.

"How are you?" asked Mob. That was how conversation worked. Someone asked how you were and then you asked them how they were. Also Mob did want to know. She liked talking to him, he was always nice to her. She liked it when people were nice to her.

"I'm ok. Still kind of sad that we had to have indoor recess because of the rain." Said Taro. He kicked the ground a little while he talked. Mob didn't get why. She didn't get a lot of things about how people were. Dad said that it never got any easier. He said that it didn't matter, anyway, because people were supposed to try and understand them, not the other way around. Mob didn't agree but of course she said nothing. She had to be a good daughter and good daughters did not contradict their dads.

"It wasn't that bad…we got to play inside at least instead of doing extra work." Said Mob. She knew that she shouldn't have been like that, not wanting to work. Dad said that work was important and that you couldn't be lazy and shirk it. She should have worked hard at school so then dad would be proud of her…

"Yeah, that part was fun. How come you didn't play with us? We needed someone to be red so we could have an even number." Said Taro

"I don't know how to play Chinese checkers…I mean I don't know how to play that well. My brother and I try to play sometimes but…he's not really good at games that take a long time." Said Mob. The other kids had been playing games and stuff. Mob had just played with the blocks. There was a playroom they went to, sometimes, when they had to have indoor recess. There were games and toys and blocks and stuff like that. Mob had just played with the blocks because that was the only thing left. She didn't know how to play with kids who weren't Sho…even playing with Sho could be hard sometimes. He only wanted to play the games that he liked….but that was ok.

"I would have taught you. I mean if you had wanted me to teach you I would have. I mean only if you wanted me to. You built a really cool tower out of the blocks. I mean before it fell over. I can't build towers that tall, I mean." Said Taro

"Thank you. I don't usually build things that tall…my brother usually kicks them over. He says that building straight up is dumb. We usually build houses for his animals and stuff. Toy animals, I mean, we don't have real animals. My dad doesn't like real animals. Um….do you have any pets?" asked Mob

"No, we can't have animals because my mom is allergic. I'm a little allergic, too, but just a little. Um…are you allergic to anything? I'm allergic to animals with fur and also some colors of food dye." Said Taro

"I didn't know that about you. I don't have any allergies…I'm sorry." Said Mob

"You don't have to be. Allergies suck. I shouldn't complain though. I hear that there's a third grader who can't have peanuts or he'll die. I get sniffly and itchy but at least I won't die." Said Taro

"Die? From peanuts?" asked Mob. It must have been scary, being a normal person. Dead, just from eating. Mob was glad that she had Fukuda, that way if she ever ate something that could kill her he could make her better. Not that she had anything that she was allergic to…and not that she had seen Fukuda in a while. Sho said that he was about to jump off the roof just to get Fukuda to come over again but Mob had mostly talked him out of it.

"I know, it's so scary right? That's why we can't do chocolates at school anymore…well why we're not supposed to. Lots of people still give out chocolates but in secret. Well not totally in secret because they eat their chocolate at lunch but not, like, right where the teacher can see." Said Taro. Mob nodded. She had noticed how much chocolate some of the other girls got. They pretended that it was gross, that a boy gave them chocolate, because that was what you were supposed to do even if you liked someone. Mob didn't get it. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be, though. Dad certainly never told mom that he liked her or he loved her. Not even that morning when he gave her the White Day chocolates. He just said 'Happy White Day. I have chocolates for you and Daughter' and then he gave them chocolates. At least mom's box was bigger.

"Um…did anyone give you any chocolates?" asked Taro

"My dad did." Said Mob. Though maybe that was the wrong thing to say because he just sort of stared at her then. He looked like he was about to say something but he was stopping himself.

"No I mean did anyone at school give you any chocolates?" asked Taro after a while. Mob shook her head.

"No." said Mob. There was more silence. Mob watched the rain falling. It was still coming down really heavy. She hoped that mom had remembered to bring their umbrellas. This was the kind of weather that you could get sick in and she didn't want Sho or mom to get sick…even if it did mean that Fukuda would come to visit. Maybe he would come by anyway to give mom chocolate. That was what you were supposed to do on White Day after all and mom deserved all of the chocolates in the world. Mob didn't mind that she hadn't gotten any from anyone, she didn't mind at all, and mom and Sho could have he chocolates from dad if they wanted them.

"Um…." Said Taro

"Yes?" asked Mob. He was playing with the straps of his school satchel. Mob played with hers, too, because he was playing with his.

"Do you want to see my fossil? I mean I remember you said, before, that you wanted to see it but that was all the way back at Valentine's Day and I wasn't sure if you still wanted to see it but then I thought that…I thought that you might still want to see it and I would have brought it sooner but…um….I didn't." said Taro

"You can show me if you want." Said Mob. She remembered that. That was all the way back on Valentine's Day…a very long time ago. Back when there had still been snow on the ground. Now it was later, a lot later, but he had remembered and…and now her stomach was all flip floppy. She held her braids down with her hands and watched him dig through his bag until he found a rock.

"It looks neat." Said Mob. She tucked her braids into her shirt and then held the rock since he was holding it out like he wanted her to hold it. She felt it with her fingers. She felt the ridges and bumps. There were little shapes in it. It was nice.

"See? I think that this part used to be a leaf…and see this part? I think it's part of a bone." Said Taro as he turned the rock around in her hands. She didn't think that the ridges and bumps looked like anything in particular but she didn't say anything. She couldn't say anything. Her brain was starting to forget how words worked….which made no sense because she had really good grades in reading and writing…but now she just could not remember what she was supposed to say…and she knew she had to say something….

"See? Here, I think it might be a rib bone or a back bone or a neck bone." Said Taro. Mob nodded. She could only nod. Her voice was gone and all the words she knew were melting together into one big word like when mom melted cheese and stuff on the stove and Mob felt like she was a stove, warm and hot to the touch, and she wondered if she was red because she felt red and warm and-

And his hand was over hers.

"See? There." said Taro. Mob nodded again. She nodded and his hand was still over hers and her heart was beating so fast she could feel it in her ears and her braids were trying to escape from where she had tucked them under her shirt and-

"Do you like…do you like this?" asked Taro. Mob nodded. He was talking about the rock in her hand, obviously, and not that he was…he was just showing her where to feel, that was all. Like how mom used to put her hand over hers and Sho's when she was teaching them how to write. Yes, that was what it must have been. She was just thinking way too much into this.

Of course she was.

She was Mob. Who would want to hold hands with her?

"Do you like…do you still like Hello Kitty?" asked Taro. Mob nodded again. She still had the Hello Kitty school satchel after all…and now it felt like it was rising up off of her back….she felt like she could have risen up off the ground too. She tells her powers to stop. Power was nothing without control. She wasn't supposed to use her powers where other people could see, that was a mom rule and a dad rule. She wasn't supposed to use her powers…even on accident…

"Do you…do you like chocolate?" asked Taro. Mob nodded again. She needed to find some words, to make some words, but she didn't know any words. It was like her tongue had forgotten how to move, like the lady on TV who got stung on her tongue by a bee and then she lost the ability to talk and taste and stuff. Maybe Mob would end up like that, too. Well at least, then, she would have had an excuse for why she couldn't talk…

"Hey um….Mob? Suzuki, I mean…because that's your name, Suzuki. Um…I got you…um…." Said Taro. Mob watched him. He was turning red, too, but maybe that was just from the cold. Maybe. Probably. Sho turned red in the cold…and it was pretty cold out.

Her hand was cold.

Because he took his hand off of hers.

To put the rock back in his bag. He put the rock away and then he just sort of stared at his bag for a while. Mob took this time to keep her feet planted firmly on the ground. She had been floating, well starting to float, and that was not a good thing at all…

"Here! This is for you!" said Taro. He stood up really fast and shoved something into Mob's arms. She took a step back from the sheer force of it. She got her footing quickly and looked down. There was something pink and plastic in her hands…

Oh.

It was a box of Hello Kitty assorted chocolates. But why would he get her a box of chocolates? Because it was White Day? But they didn't have to give obligation chocolates in the first grade, their teacher had said so, and even if they had to give obligation chocolates Mob wouldn't have expected any. Why would someone give her chocolates when they didn't have to?

She didn't understand.

But she still had to be polite.

"Thank you." Said Mob finding some words. Words for the situation. When a person gave you a gift you said thank you. You didn't ask why it was given, that was impolite, and she was supposed to be polite all the time.

"Y-you're welcome….uh…I was at the store with my mom and I saw that they had Hello Kitty stuff and then I thought about you and how you liked Hello Kitty so I bought you this…well my mom bought it but I picked it out…and um…Happy White Day!" said Taro. Mob should have said it back. She would have said it back. She would have said it back if she had gotten the chance.

But she hadn't gotten the chance.

Because he ran away.

But before that he kissed.

He leaned in, kissed her on the cheek, and then ran away.

"I…" said Mob. She didn't know what to say or do or-or-or-anything! That was….what? What?! How had…why had….what?! Just…she did not understand. She could not begin to understand. She had been…she had been kissed…well it wasn't like she hadn't been kissed before but that was not a kiss from mom….or from Sho…

She took a step forward.

And another.

And another.

Even though he had long since run past the gates and down the street. Even though she was standing out in the rain and the cold and the…the rain…what had happened to the rain? It had stopped hitting her over the head. Her shoes…she could feel only the toes of her school shoes touching the ground…and her hair…her braids had come free from her shirt…and she…she didn't care because…

She couldn't.

She could barely even think let alone care.

This was…she had never been so happy in her whole, entire, life…

"Suzuki Shigeko!" oh. Mom. Mob felt her feet start to touch the ground. She was grabbed by the arm, roughly, and she almost lost her grip on the box of chocolates in her hand. That hurt…mom must have hurt her on accident. Mom had never hurt her before…but mom had never grabbed her like that before, either…and it hurt. It hurt and she told mom it hurt but Mom might not have been able to hear her. She was walking with loud footsteps and talking really loud, too.

"….can't believe you! You think that you can just do whatever you want? Do you!? Well you can't! There are rules! I cannot believe that you would deliberately…." Said Mom as she dragged Mob down the road. Sho followed them. She made eye contact with him. He looked away. He was all wet. He had two umbrellas. One was his Zootopia one, his new one because his old one broke when he used it as a sword one too many times, and in his other hand was her Frozen umbrella. The one with Elsa and Anna hugging on it.

Mob was getting all wet.

But at least Sho was dry.

"….think you can do whatever you want! Well you can't! You just can't! Just because your father…." Mom was dragging her too hard and too fast, mom had very long legs, and Mob thought she was going to trip…but she hadn't. Not once. She was proud of herself for not tripping. She was happy that mom was mad at her, too, because that way there wouldn't be any anger left for Sho…not that mom was ever mad at Sho….

"Mom?" asked Sho quietly. He was being quiet, which was weird for him, and his colors were showing too. Red. A lot of it. They weren't walking fast anymore, no, they had made it home. Sho looked…Mob thought that he looked scared but she wasn't sure. She was bad with faces. She wondered how she looked. She had been so happy….but now she wasn't….

She was sad.

Because she had been so happy, before. Because she had been so happy…it was like falling down. From low to the ground it didn't hurt but from high up….but she deserved to feel bad. She had been bad. She had lost control of her powers. She had let herself feel big feelings. Power was nothing without control. Dad had said so. He would be so disappointed in her…

She had been such a bad daughter.

She had both lost control and let a boy who wasn't an esper kiss her….dad wouldn't just be disappointed….he would be mad. He'd be so mad at her…even though she hadn't done anything wrong! She hadn't mean to use her powers and she hadn't….dad could not make one rule for himself and another for her! It wasn't fair!

Her colors showed.

The rain stopped again.

Mom let go of her.

"Get inside." Said Mom in a tone that Mob had never heard from her before. They were at the front door…so what else had mom been expecting her to do? She had no choice but to go inside. This was her house. This was Castle Suzuki and she was Suzuki Shigeko so of course she'd go inside….and mom didn't have to yell at her…mom had never been this mad at her before….she was acting like…like Mob didn't even know what….

Like how dad was with Sho.

Mean.

Mob slipped out of her shoes in the genkan. She put her school bag down where it always went…and she clutched her chocolates really close. So close that she could feel the box starting to bend. She wanted…she didn't even know what she wanted. A time machine? Maybe. But she had seen enough movies about time travel to know that it was a bad idea…

She had no idea what she wanted.

"Go to your room." Said Mom in that same tone. Mob nodded. She wanted that. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to be all alone so she could…think? Think about what she had done. Think about all the rules she had broken and how she had been such a bad daughter….and she was such a bad daughter…and dad would think so too…

Mob went to her room.

She changed out of her uniform.

She hung it up on her wardrobe to dry.

And she just sat on her bed. She sat on her bed and stared at the chocolates in her hands. She didn't know how long she had sat there for. Long enough for the smell of cooking to fill the house. Long enough for the sun to go down. Long enough for Sho to finish what little homework kindergarteners got and to try and talk to her.

"Sho! Leave your sister alone! Come and help me." That was what mom had said when Sho had tried to come into their room. She had been so happy to see him. He looked ok which meant that he hadn't gotten in trouble with anyone…not that Mob even knew what he could have done wrong…but she was happy that he was alright either way.

And that he had wanted to spend time with her.

"Don't cry if dad hits you. It just makes him hit you more." That was all that Sho had time to tell her. Mob nodded even though dad had never hit her before….though she had never given him a reason to hit her….and now she's worried…but dad would never…

But she had never given him a reason to.

She sat very still on her bed. So still. So still she even forgot to breathe. She could feel…dad was in the house…and he was….he didn't feel mad. He felt…normal. Maybe mom wasn't planning on telling him. Maybe mom knew that if she told dad about what happened then dad would be mad and not love her anymore and then she'd be all alone and also Sho would be in danger because dad might end up taking it out on Sho…and that would have been the worst thing ever…

The worst.

Worse than missing dinner.

Worse than missing homework time.

Worse than skipping her bath.

Just…the worst.

She was shiver even though she was in a warm dry room and in warm dry clothes. She was shivering and her stomach hurt…maybe because she had missed dinner. Maybe because she hadn't eaten since lunchtime…she was hungry then…

But she didn't eat.

She didn't go out and see if she could have dinner with her family and she didn't eat her chocolates, either. No. She didn't even want them anymore. She held the box in her hands. She wanted to throw the box across the room as hard as she could. She wanted to forget this whole day, to remove White Day from the calendar for the rest of eternity. Valentine's Day, too, and any other holiday that had to do with liking someone and giving gifts and getting them…she just wanted it all to be over. She wanted…she wanted it all to be over and done with and she wanted…she wished that she had never been bad or gotten these chocolates or gotten her hand held or gotten…kissed….

She wished that she could have just forgotten that day and everything that had happened in it.

But she couldn't.

Because she had been trying to forget and she couldn't. That wasn't how forgetting worked, first of all. You forgot memories when you didn't use them, like in Inside Out, and in trying to forget the memory she was using it…and that was just making it worse. It didn't even feel good, remembering, because…because it hadn't been a good thing. It hadn't been a good thing even though then, in that moment, it had been the happiest moment of her life…

She touched her cheek where she had been kissed.

So that was what it was like. So that was what it was like to be kissed by someone. Not for real like big kids and adults did…she would have died right then and there if Taro had kissed her for real….but she had been kissed…and that was what it was like. To be kissed. To have her hand held…it had been just as god as she thought that it would…

And she would never feel like that again.

"Daughter." Mob felt dad before she saw him. She looked up and tucked the box of chocolate close. She didn't want it anymore…but she also didn't want dad to take it away, too….it was confusing. This was confusing. The way she felt…she had never felt so…so scared…before. Of dad. She was worried, before, about how he treated Sho but she had never been afraid of…of dad…before.

"Dad." Said Mob. She looked up. He didn't seem mad…she didn't think he was mad, anyway. His aura was calm and he looked bored, as always….but who could tell with dad?

"You missed dinner." Said Dad. He wasn't asking a question, it seemed, but making a statement. People turned their voices up at the end of sentences to show that they were asking a question…but then again dad never did that…

"I did." Said Mob. Dad didn't like a lot of talking. Well sometimes he did but he always told you what he wanted. Well he told you if you did something wrong. Mob had already done something wrong, she didn't want to do anything else wrong. She wished that dad would just tell her what she had done wrong and told her how terribly she had messed up…

"Your mother sent you to your room. Did she also exclude you from dinner?" asked dad

"I think so. She didn't tell me not to have dinner but she also didn't tell me that I could have dinner." Said Mob

"I see…why? Your mother has been acting unusually. I don't recall her ever punishing you like this. What did you do?" asked Dad. Mob thought for a moment. She could have lied…it would have saved her trouble….dad didn't know what she had done….but that would have been lying and lying was wrong. She wasn't supposed to be a bad daughter….if she was a bad daughter then dad wouldn't want her anymore…and then she'd be all alone….

"Dad….I was bad." Said Mob. She closed her eyes and waited for Dad to yell at her or tell her that she was awful or hit her like he hit Sho…but he didn't.

"Your mother said that you lost control…I wouldn't consider that to be bad behavior. I am disappointed in you for losing control…and in public too…but you are young…" said Dad. She looked up at him. He looked down at her. He was so tall and she was so small….

"I made myself float and I stopped the rain." Said Mob

"Stopped? How?" asked dad

"The rain got caught in the air." Said Mob

"Individual drops?" asked dad. Mob nodded. She bowed her head and closed her eyes. She wondered if kowtowing would have been better…but no, dad…he always complained about people kowtowing to him….she didn't know what to do…

"Yes….I'm sorry, dad, I really am. I didn't mean to." Said Mob

"I know that you didn't mean to. You're young and you lose control…and I am not happy with it…but I know that it was not out of malevolence. I ask that you take more care in the future. Power is nothing without control, remember that." Said dad. Mob nodded. She nodded but still kept her head down. She wished that dad would just get to the punishing already. Punishing her or telling her that she was a bad daughter or something….

"Are you going to yell at me?" asked Mob

"Have I ever?" asked Dad

"No." said Mob…even though she wished that he would. If he yelled at her then he wouldn't yell at Sho. She had no idea if Sho had done anything bad lately, she hadn't seen him in hours, but she knew her little brother and he usually had done at least one bad thing by now.

"Then I won't now. You don't need me to raise my voice with you. You have enough presence of mind to know when you've done something wrong and you know to correct your behavior. I've always liked that about you." Said dad. Mob…didn't know how to feel about that. She was happy that dad had said he liked something about her…but she still felt guilty. Dad should have been yelling at her…like he did to Sho….

"A-and you aren't going to…to hit me?" asked Mob. Dad raised an eyebrow. His colors moved, too, but not like he was mad. She knew what his aura looked like when he got mad.

"Have I ever?" asked Dad

"No but…but I was bad…I did bad things…" said Mob

"Things? Plural?" asked dad

"Mom…she didn't tell you?" asked Mob

"No. Your mother only told me that you had lost control in public. Well she seems to think that you used your powers on purpose but I know that you would never do anything like that….right, Daughter?" asked Dad

"It wasn't on purpose…it was because I had a lot of big feelings…and then I lost control…and you're always saying how I'm not supposed to lose control. So I was bad." Said Mob softly. She felt her hair moving…that was dad.

"This is what I like about you. Unlike the useless morons I have to deal with you admit your mistakes and you know to remedy them in the future. You're a good daughter, Daughter, and I'll ask your mother when you'll be permitted to eat again." said Dad. He touched her hair again, with his powers, like how mom was always touching Sho's head…

Dad wasn't mad at her.

She smiled. Dad left her room. She kept on smiling. She felt the box in her hands and her smile turned into a frown…she should have told Dad about….but the time had come and passed. She hid the box under one of her stuffed animals. She'd…she'd figure out what to do with that later. Tomorrow. She'd think about it tomorrow…when White Day was over…

Because right now it was dinnertime.

Even if she had to eat on her own it was still good.

Nobody was mad at her….


	40. Treasure Room

The point of a door was to open.

There were a lot of doors in the castle. Mob and Sho had tried, once, to count them all but they ended up getting too scared. That had been years ago though, when they had been three and four. Now they were six and seven, much too old to get scared by their own house. Well it was kind of scary…but not if they were together. The house was big and they were small but together they were big.

They could always stand on each other's shoulders and pretend to be a giant if they ran into something scary.

Though that one might have just worked on bears. There weren't any bears in the house, they weren't stupid, but spirits were a whole other story. Mob could see spirits, she knew that they were real, and she knew that they could be evil, sometimes. She knew that she had to exorcise the evil ones…though she had not run into an evil spirit in ages….and there might not even have been any in the castle. Dad said that there weren't a lot of spirits because of his and Mob's auras…

But still.

"It doesn't open." Said Mob as she tried to turn the knob. They were bored. Mom was watching TV in the living room, she said that she was too tired to play with them, and dad was working in his office. When they got bored they got ideas. Usually those ideas involved playing with their toys or their Wii, Mob had gotten some new games for her birthday, or playing outside. Not this time. Mob had been playing on her own in Dad's office while he worked but then Sho had come in and dad said that if they were going to be underfoot then they had to get out…

…and then Sho had the idea that if dad didn't want them around then they wouldn't be around.

Which led them to going deeper into the castle than they normally went.

"It's a door. Doors are meant to open. If they didn't want us to open this door then they would have just built a wall here." Said Sho. He pushed on the door. It wouldn't move. This was so unfair. It was his house and he'd go wherever he wanted to go in it!

"But doors also have locks on them. When a door is locked then you aren't supposed to go in." said Mob as she felt the door with her powers. She could feel the lock…it was one of those same sorts of locks that some of the doors had. The ones that mom could open from the outside with a coin. Mob could have opened this door but…but when a door was locked you weren't supposed to open it.

She didn't want to make mom madder than she already was.

Not that mom had come out and told Mob to her face that she was mad at her. She just…seemed mad. She was always quiet towards Mob…and she stopped doing a lot of the things that she used to. She never brushed Mob's hair or let Mob brush hers, she stopped helping Mob get dressed in the morning, they never played dolls together anymore…

Mom was mad and Mob had no idea why.

"That rule is just for the bathroom and stuff so you don't see someone naked or something. There's no naked people on the other side of this door." Said Sho. No locked door could keep him out. He lived her and he would go wherever he felt like and he would do whatever he felt like. He was just as much a member of the family as anyone else. He was Suzuki Sho and this was Castle Suzuki and therefore the castle and everything in it were his even if he was an underfoot nuisance.

"No but the door is locked. Come on, there's lots of other rooms in this part of the house. Rooms that we've never even gone into." Said Mob tugging on Sho's shirt. He batted her hand away.

"Come on big sis, just undo the lock. I'd do it myself but I don't have a coin." Said Sho. He didn't also say that he didn't have powers. He didn't need to be reminded of the fact that he did not have powers. He did not need to be reminded of the fact that he had been born wrong and she had been born right. Dad had done a good enough job of that already.

"But what if there's something back there that we aren't supposed to see? I don't want mom to get mad at us. I'm not even sure if we're supposed to be back here in the first place. I know that we aren't supposed to go to the crawl space or the attic or the-" said Mob. The castle was big. Dad said that the castle was really old and had actually been built up over the years. He had made it even bigger when he got it, he said, because he wanted to have all of his most trusted people living with him. He changed his mind after Sho was born, he said, because he didn't want people near his family. They were his and his alone, he said, which felt more like he was talking about a family of dolls in Mob's opinion. People did not belong to other people. That wasn't how things worked at all…not that she was in any position to tell her dad how things did and did not work. She was the child and he was the adult. He told her how things were, not the other way around.

"Mom never gets mad at you….nobody ever gets mad at you…" said Sho. She was the favorite in the whole, entire, house. She used her powers in public and she only had to have late dinner. Dad didn't hit her and mom didn't yell at her or tell her that she expected better from her, which was so much worse than the yelling in a lot of ways, and it just wasn't fair…but he couldn't stay mad at her.

He shouldn't have gotten mad at her in the first place.

Because good little brothers did not get mad at their big sisters. Good little brothers were nice to their sisters and never wished such awful things on them. Sho had been such a bad little brother lately…and giving her a chocolate bar the day after White Day had not made up for it at all…

He wished that he knew what was wrong with him.

"Ok. I'll open the door." Said Mob even though she really didn't want to. She knew what would come next when Sho started talking like that. He would get sad about how dad was mean to him and how mom was always sick and tired all the time….and Mob was getting sick and tired of her being sick and tired…though she would never say something so awful to her own mother. She wouldn't even say such an awful thing to a stranger on the street let alone her own mother…

Mob shouldn't have felt like that in the first place.

She should have been happy that mom was well enough to get up and sit on the couch with them and watch TV until TV got boring. Until Mob got bored enough to go and spend time with dad. Until Sho had decided that he wanted to be included too even though Dad didn't like having him around, it seemed. Even though-

"It's a treasure room!" said Sho. Wow! Every castle had a treasure room, usually guarded by a dragon, and their castle was no exception! There were boxes stacked so high that they almost touched the ceiling! There was a layer of dust on everything, and it was getting up his nose, but this was still so cool! There were treasures untold right there under their very noses! And he had been the one to discover them!

Well big sis had helped….

"It looks more like a junk room to me." Said Mob. There were a few junk rooms in the castle. There was one that had her and Sho's baby stuff, the crib they slept in and their old toys and baby clothes and stuff, and there was another one where they put their Christmas tree and decorations when there weren't using it, and probably a whole bunch of other ones, too.

"You're just being a spoilsport. Come on, let's see what the treasures are!" said Sho as he picked a box and opened it. It didn't have any treasures, just a lot plates all wrapped up in newspaper…he was careful not to break them. He wondered why mom ordered new plates from Amazon even though they had a whole box of them. Cups too. Tea cups, mugs, saucers. All in such nice colors, too. Yellow and blue and green…but the brown ones were kind of ugly…

Maybe it was a junk room.

"You're right, Sho, it is a treasure room. Look what I found!" said Mob as she pulled a pretty hat out of a box. It was a straw hat like the one mom wore when it was sunny out except it had a white ribbon around it and a white veil, too….and…oh! There, at the bottom of the box, were some plastic white flowers. Mob picked them up and put them in the hat's ribbon.

"That's just a hat." Said Sho. Girls cared about the dumbest stuff. Treasures were things like gold coins and swords and armor and stuff. Not frilly hats…though he might have said the wrong thing. The right thing would not have been the mean thing…and he had said something mean again without even realizing it.

"You look pretty. It's like you're getting married or something." Said Sho. He had to be a good little brother, a better little brother, the best little brother that a sister could ask for!

"Thank you." Said Mob. She left the hat on. She felt nice wearing it. Even if it was too big and covered her eyes just a bit. Also it was dusty…but that was ok. A little dust never hurt. Maybe they could clean the dust out of this room and make it into a proper treasure room. They could take all of these treasures out of their boxes and make a treasure museum or something.

"What do you think all of this stuff is?" asked Sho as he opened another box. This smelled nice. He dipped his head in and breathed deep…which was a bad move because he immediately started sneezing.

"Bless you." Said Mob as she looked in the box that Sho had stuck his head in. There were candles and incense sticks in there…and a picture of two people she had never seen before. They were smiling in the picture. There were two of them. One of the people, the man, looked Japanese. The woman didn't look Japanese at all but she might have been half Japanese. Half Japanese people were still Japanese even if they had red hair and blue eyes. Like Sho. He was half Japanese and he had red hair and blue eyes and he was still just as Japanese as Mob was…well she was half Japanese too but she just got all the Japanese genes mom had said. She picked up the picture…and then immediately put it down. That picture…it did not want to be touched.

"It's treasures, like I said before." Said Sho even though a lot of this stuff didn't feel like treasures at all. This box smelled nice, it had candles and incense and stuff, but those were not treasures. Neither were pictures of strangers. Some of them were so old they weren't even in color.

"Sho. Don't." said Mob. She took his hand before he could touch another one of the pictures. They did not want to be touched. That was the feeling that Mob was getting and she decided to listen to it.

"They're in my house so they're my pictures and I'll touch them if I want to." Said Sho. She was not dad. She did not get to tell him what to touch and what not to touch. He'd touch whatever he felt like!

"They don't want to be touched." Said Mob

"They're pictures, they don't want anything." Said Sho. He moved his hand out of her grasp. He tried to reach down and look at the pictures, there were a few in there, but the box closed itself and then slid across the room. A stack of boxes lifted itself up and the box he had been looking through went to the bottom of the stack.

"I said not to." Said Mob even though she wasn't supposed to use her powers inside the house…but dad liked it when she used her powers…but mom didn't…but that box had felt wrong and she had been protecting Sho and protecting Sho made it ok.

"Fine. You take that side of the room and I'll take this side if that's the way you're going to be." Said Sho. She was acting just like dad. She was acting like just because she had powers she could be the boss of him. Well she couldn't. He wasn't afraid of her…and he had no reason to be. She was his sister and she….she would never hurt him…

So why had he felt like she would?

"Ok. That's a good idea. That way we can look through everything faster." Said Mob. She decided to give him some space. His aura was showing again. That wasn't a good thing at all. She knew that sometimes he got upset, she could be upsetting, but she had been doing it for his own good. Those pictures hadn't wanted to be touched and Sho needed to understand that he couldn't just do whatever he wanted. Sometimes it was better to do what you were told.

All the times, actually.

Mob did what Sho told her to do and she looked through the boxes on her side of the room. She found a lot of neat stuff. Some old dolls, pretty ones made of porcelain and in pretty dresses, as well as ones that were in pretty kimonos and didn't look like they were for playing with. She also found pretty silk kimonos. She wanted to try them on but they were adult sized…and also she had never worn a kimono before. Besides, she had this hat.

It felt weird.

Not bad just…weird.

"Can I look at these pictures, your majesty? Or are you going to freak out again?" asked Sho as he held up a photo album. It was big and dusty but might have had something cool inside. Big sis walked over to him and touched it. She closed her eyes and for a moment he could see her colors. Well he could always see the pink and the blue but they were never so…loud…if that made any sense at all. At least he was getting better at seeing colors…

"These feel fine." Said Mob. These pictures didn't feel like they wanted anything, which was exactly how pictures were supposed to feel. Pictures were supposed to feel like nothing at all. Mob didn't know a lot but she did know that when things started feeling like they had thoughts and feelings it was a bad sign.

"These are so old…there aren't even any colors." Said Sho as he flipped through the pictures. These were so old the people were still wearing kimonos and stuff like in the dramas that mom liked. He was so glad he got to wear pants. Anything without legs looked like it was just way too much trouble.

"Maybe they're the people who lived in this house before." Said Mob as they flipped through the pictures. There were a lot of people in there…people who were probably dead. These didn't have any colors at all and if they didn't have color it meant that they were old. One of the pictures had a kid in it…a kid like her…who was probably either old or dead…

One day Mob would be an old person and then she would die, also, because everyone died eventually…so she would die….

And so would Sho.

And mom would die and dad would die and everyone she ever knew would be dead and all that would be left would be pictures.

Mob decided to stop thinking about that.

"We've always lived in the castle." Said Sho. He didn't want to think about who might have lived in the castle before. The people in these pictures…this was an old photo album…the kids in these pictures must have all been grown up or even dead by now. He would grow up one day. He'd grow up to be mean and boring like dad…and then his eyebrows would look like caterpillars. Then he would die.

He didn't want any of that.

"But someone must have lived in the castle before us. Dad said that he bought this house. This isn't where he's from. Someone had this house before it became Castle Suzuki." Said Mob. She wondered where dad had come from. He never said. Mom never said where she had come from, either. Was it a secret? When she became an adult would she have to keep secrets from her kids, too?

"Well it doesn't matter because it's our castle and it will always be our castle." Said Sho with a shrug. He didn't want to talk about that or think about it. It didn't matter where these pictures had come from or who the people in them were. They were just pictures.

"Sho, don't flip the pages so fast." Said Mob. One of the pictures came out. It was of an old person with a pretty kimono on. She looked like she could have been someone's grandmother…not that Mob had any experience with those. She seemed nice, though, from what Mob could tell.

"There's something written on the back of that." Said Sho

"Suzuki….I know that one, it's our family name…but this one looks like mom's name. Just the Masa part, though, not the ami…not Masami…" said Mob as she read the back of the picture. Sho took it from her and tried to read it himself even though Mob knew that he knew that she was the better reader.

"See, I told you that we've always lived in the castle. These are Suzuki's and we're Suzuki's so that means that a Suzuki has always lived in the castle." Said Sho

"But dad said that he bought the castle before we were born." Said Mob

"Doesn't matter. These are Suzuki's and we're Suzuki's." said Sho

"But not everyone named Suzuki is related. Like how when we were at the pool that one time and we thought that those big kids were calling us but really they were calling their friend who was also named Suzuki." Said Mob

"Nope. We're always lived in the castle." Said Sho. This castle was theirs and always had been and always would be. This would be their castle from back in the shogun days all the way until people were just heads in jars and ate fish food and had robot bodies.

"Ok." Said Mob. She went back to looking through boxes. She did not want to fight with him about this or anything. She knew what dad had told her and if Sho didn't believe her then he could ask dad. She knew that dad would never have lied to her. Sho was just being Sho, that was all, he just didn't like to be wrong. He and dad were alike like that.

She wanted to believe him, though.

About the people in those pictures also being part of the Suzuki family. The one they were a part of. There were a lot of people in Japan called Suzuki and mom explained, back when they were little, that not everyone in the world that had the same family name as them was related to them. That wasn't how it worked. Back in the olden days there were just only so many family names to go around. Not everyone had one, too, just the fancy people. Well one day other people decided that they wanted to be fancy so they picked last names too.

They weren't related to anyone who didn't live in the castle.

The other kids talked about their cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles and stuff…but she and Sho didn't have any of those. They just had each other. They had each other and mom and dad and that was enough…even though sometimes it felt like it wasn't. Mob wished that she had other people in her family to know…to look like. Mom and dad were both half Japanese. That made her and Sho half Japanese too…even though her teacher had laughed when she said that she was half Japanese…because she didn't look like she was half Japanese. She looked like everyone else…outside of the family.

She wondered if any of the people in the pictures looked like her.


	41. Bad Feelings

Mob didn't know what to do with this box of chocolates.

She had been keeping it in her and Sho's room even though they weren't supposed to take food out of the kitchen. They could get rats if they took food out of the kitchen and Sho was the only one who wanted rats. She knew that she should have eaten the chocolates a long time ago. That was what they were for, after all, but she didn't.

She couldn't.

She didn't want to.

These were the first White Day chocolates she had ever gotten. Sho had given away his first ever Valentine's Day chocolates but Sho hadn't liked the girl who gave them to him. She was one of those girls who played that game where you chased boys until you caught them and then you kissed them. Not a very fun or good game at all in Mob's opinion. Kisses were supposed to be special. Also you weren't supposed to kiss someone when they didn't want to be kissed, mom had said so. Mob had wanted to be kissed. She hadn't said so but she hadn't minded….

Even though she should have.

She should have eaten these chocolates before mom found them and asked where they had come from. If mom asked then Mob would have had to tell the truth and then mom would have told dad and then Dad would have been so mad at her. Dad didn't want her to like anyone who wasn't an esper…which was not very fair rule at all in Mob's opinion. She wished that she didn't have to follow that rule…or a lot of the rules she had…but she had no choice. She did not get to pick and choose which rules she followed.

She should have ate the chocolates to get rid of the evidence.

But she didn't want to. She didn't want to get rid of the evidence that…that a boy had liked her. He must have, why else would a person do that? It had felt good, so good, knowing that someone liked her…and now it didn't. Now when she thought about that day all she could think about was how mad mom had been at her. How mom had never been that mad at her before. When she thought about that she wanted to toss the box of chocolates across the room even though she was not supposed to throw things in the house.

She was not supposed to do a lot of things.

She brushed her hair out of her face. She was dusty. She and Sho had been in the treasure room again. It was dusty in there. She was in her room now. It was never dusty in her room. Mom kept it pretty clean. She was still tired all the time but not as tired. She said that dad wouldn't let her be tired. Mob didn't get how that worked. You either were tired or you weren't nobody else could tell you how to feel. That wasn't how it worked. But that was how mom said that it worked so Mob…she didn't know. All she knew was that she was dusty and kind of sad and also alone.

Sho had pushed her.

It was her fault. She had tried to keep him out of one of the boxes, one of the boxes that did not want to be opened, and so he had no choice but to push her. He had said sorry right afterwards even though it was Mob's fault that he had pushed her in the first place. She was always trying to boss him around, like he had said, so off course he was totally justified in pushing her down on the ground like he had. Really. It was her fault.

She didn't care if he pushed her. She just wanted them to be friends.

And she had also wanted to be alone. That was why she was laying down on her bed on a perfectly normal Sunday holding a box of chocolates to her chest and looking at the ceiling and just…thinking…about stuff. All kind of stuff. Feelings stuff. She wished that she could just exorcise all of her bad feelings. Life would certainly have been a lot more simple that way. Easier.

She didn't like these feelings.

Taro talked to her sometimes times but not all of the times. She didn't know what she wanted. He never tried to hold her hand or kiss her, she didn't know how to feel about that, and he went to play with the other kids when they made fun of him for talking to her. They said that she was his girlfriend, which she wasn't, though it did hurt when he ran away…he talked to her mostly after school when most of the other kids in their class had gone home. Mob liked those times…and she didn't like that she liked those times. She wished that she could just…not feel the feelings that she felt.

But she was not a robot.

She had feelings and she needed to control them but sometimes…sometimes it was really hard. She wished that she could have been more like dad. Dad never lost control. He always knew just what to say and do and stuff. She was…she was just Mob. She wished that she could have been better. A better Daughter, a better person, just…better. But she couldn't be better just like she couldn't shake this heavy feeling that had settled right on top of her heart.

"Big sis?" There was a voice on the other side of the door. Sho's voice. She heard his voice before she saw his colors, his aura. He knocked at the door, too, which made no sense because it was their room. Also Sho never let closed doors stop him anyway.

"I'm here." Said Mob. He must have known that she was there. He must have been able to see her aura. Why was he suddenly asking if she was there? And why didn't he come in right away? Instead he opened the door really slowly.

Mob didn't understand.

But she did sit up really fast and hide her chocolates under the stuffed animals on her bed. They would keep her secrets. Toys were the best secret keepers because they couldn't talk…not that Mob had many secrets. This was her first real secret besides the bad thoughts that she sometimes had about dad and mom and how bad she felt in her own family…that was a secret to keep because she should not have been feeling that way. She was supposed to good. A good daughter and a good big sister and a good person in general.

"I really am sorry about….about how I pushed you." Said Sho. Mob nodded. He was in the doorway even though dad said that it was rude to linger in doorways. Mob wasn't about to tell dad about that, though, because she knew not to ever tattle on Sho. Tattling on people was wrong but tattling on your little brother was the most wrong. You were brother and sister, you were always supposed to be on the same team, even when there weren't supposed to be teams in the first place. The whole family was supposed to be a team even if it didn't always feel like that.

"I know you're sorry and I forgive you, little brother." Said Mob. She thought that would be end of it. He said sorry, she forgave him, and that was that. She didn't think that he should have apologized anyway since she was the one who made him push her. You weren't supposed to upset people. That was why dad never punished her, not even once, because she never did anything to upset him.

"I just…I just get so mad sometimes…" said Sho. Mob nodded.

"I know how you feel. It's hard, sometimes, when you have really big feelings. You're just not supposed to feel them, I guess. Dad says that, anyway, that you always have to control yourself or your powers will get out of control and stuff." Said Mob

"…I don't have any powers…" said Sho really quietly.

"Yes you do, Sho, you know you do…and come closer. I can barely hear you from all the way over there." said Mob. It took Sho a minute but he came and sat down next to her on her bed. He was all dusty and he was getting her bedspread dusty but that was ok because she was dusty too. Everything was ok.

"I don't have powers even if I kind of do. I can't do any of the stuff that you can do…and it makes me mad. I guess…I guess that…I don't know." Said Sho. Mob put her arm over his shoulders and pulled him in for a hug. Sometimes he pushed her away and sometimes he didn't. This was one of those times when he didn't. He didn't hug her back but he also didn't push her away.

"You do have powers, Sho, and you'll be able to do all the things that I can do. You just have to wait until you're my age-" said Mob

"But we'll never be the same age! You're always going to be a year older than me and I'm always going to be a year younger than you….and I don't even think that matters. You…I can't even do the stuff that you could do when you were my age…or even the stuff that you could do when we were little. I just…you were born right and I was born-" said Sho

"No! Don't say that! You were not born wrong no matter what you think…or what dad says…" said Mob

"Dad even said I was born wrong. See? You're just saying things to make me feel good even though they aren't true. You're a liar." Said Sho

"I am not a liar! I don't think that you were born wrong and dad…dad can think whatever he wants. It doesn't matter. You were not born wrong." Said Mob

"If I wasn't born wrong then why am I like this? Why can't I do the stuff that you can do? And why am I so mad all the time? So mad and mean and…and stuff…all the time?" Said Sho

"I don't know why I can do the things that I can do and I don't know why you're so mad all the time but I do know that you're my little brother and I love you. You were not born wrong. I don't care what dad says. He said that you were born wrong because they had to cut you out of mom's stomach-" said Mob

"What?! What are you even saying!? I don't remember that!" said Sho. He shook his head and tried to push her off of him. She let him go. It wasn't right to hug someone when they did not want to be hugged. She wanted to hug him, though, because there was nothing worse than knowing that he felt bad. She loved him. She would much rather have felt bad every moment of every day if it meant that Sho never had to feel bad again.

"Of course you don't, you were just a baby. That's how mom got that thing on her stomach, that's from when you were born." Said Mob trying her best to make him feel better. She was bad at words. She needed to explain what she meant and then he would understand and then he would feel better…

"So I was born wrong, then, and you were just telling me things to make me feel better." Said Sho. Ok, do he wasn't feeling better. He was feeling bad and she…she had no idea how she was supposed to fix this. She had to fix this, though, because she was his older sister and she was supposed to take care of him.

"No, dad said that a lot of babies are born that way. He says that it's not an uncommon thing that happens. He also says that it's not an uncommon medical procedure, which means that it happens all the time, and he says that he doesn't hold the way you were born against you either." Said Mob. She held his hand and pulled it close. She wanted to make him feel better…and she felt better, too, when they were together. She had trouble with words and talking…so maybe she would be better at this. She tried to show him all the love she felt for him in that gesture. Like how dad could say so much about how he cared about you just by tapping you on the head with his aura.

"…I hurt mom, too…" said Sho. Mob let go of his hand and pulled him into another hug. She'd let go if he pushed her away. Sometimes he wanted to be hugged and sometimes he didn't, it was hard to tell sometimes. Sometimes he even got mad at her when she didn't hug him when he needed it, too, which was not entirely fair because she wasn't like other people. She couldn't just sense when someone needed a hug. She could sense spirits and other espers and stuff but she couldn't sense when her own little brother needed a hug….

She was a bad big sister like that.

"I don't think that you had any control over that. You were just a baby after all. Babies don't know what they're doing." Said Mob. She wished that she knew which combination of words would make her little brother feel better. A better big sister would have known the right combination of words from the very beginning to make her little brother, the best little brother in the whole world, feel better.

"I still hurt mom. I hurt mom and I hurt you and I just…I keep on hurting people even though I love them." Said Sho quietly. So quietly that Mob had barely even heard him.

"I forgive you for pushing me and I don't think that mom was ever mad at you for the way you were born. If dad isn't mad at you for it then mom probably isn't either. I'm not mad at you either. I'm not mad at you for pushing me and I'm certainly not mad at you for being born. I'm happy that you were born and I'm happy that you're here with me now. I love you, Sho, I love you the very most out of everyone in the world." Said Mob

"I love you too…and I hurt you….and you're still sorry. I don't…I wish that I knew why I'd pushed you…or why I think such mean thoughts sometimes. I just…I wish that I knew what was wrong with me." Said Sho

"Nothing. Sho there is nothing wrong with you at all. It doesn't matter if you have powers like mine of not. It doesn't matter if you…if you push me or not. I love you and you….I think that you're the best little brother in the whole world, Sho. I really think so." Said Mob. She could hear Sho sniffling, now, and she was starting to get all teary eyed too….and she wished that she could just make all the bad emotions in the world go away.

She wished that she could just exorcise these emotions. All of the bad emotions that she and Sho felt. She wished that she could have done more for him…for everyone. She had been so selfish, before, she felt like. Selfish to leave him alone after he pushed her. She had been too caught up in her own bad feelings, that was all. She shouldn't have been thinking about her own stuff and her own feelings.

She should have been more worried about Sho.

He had real stuff that he was sad about. She was sad because a boy liked her. Sho was sad because no matter what he did or who he was he never felt like he was going to be who he wanted to be. Her. He wanted to be her. She wanted him to be her, too. She wished that she could just make a deal with the universe and swap their places. Then she could be the one with hardly any powers and he could have been the one with all of the powers.

Then they both could have been happy.

Maybe she was the one who had been born wrong and he was the one who had been born right. Maybe she was the one who shouldn't have had powers. If she hadn't of had powers then she could have been friends with who she wanted and…and been with who she wanted…and she could have had mom and Sho could have had dad….then everyone could have happy. She could have been…she could have been happy…

But it really didn't matter if she was happy, did it?

It mattered way more if Sho was happy.

"You're squishing me. Come on, let's go back to the treasure room. I found a box that's full of toys…there aren't any girl toys but….but you might still like some of them." Said Sho. He pushed free of her hug and wiped his eyes. Mob did the same. She hadn't realized that she had been crying…or that she had been making things float.

She put her toys, her dolls and stuff animals, back down on her bed where they belonged.

She made sure that her box of chocolates was still hidden.

Then she made her way with Sho back to the treasure room. That was something to do, something better than laying around and thinking about stuff, anyway. She shouldn't have been like that anyway. She should have been there for Sho…that was her job as his big sister. To always be there for him even if he pushed her.

She exorcised all of her bad feelings. Sho had enough bad feelings for the both of them.


	42. Can't Sleep

Late and early were relative terms.

To some people eleven sixteen at night was early. To others it was late. To those who spent more time in the air than on the ground early and late meant nothing. Suzuki had seen outran the sun so many times that, eventually, day and night meant nothing. His own internal clock was so confused that he had given up on it completely. Usually he just went to bed when Masami did and woke up when she did as well. It didn't matter if he was tired or wide awake. Night was for sleeping and day was for being productive.

He should have been asleep.

But he couldn't.

Masami had gone to sleep ages ago. He had joined her. He had even put on pajamas like she liked. Sleeping fully dressed was odd to her. To him having a separate set of clothing for sleeping was odd and always had been. He had always preferred to sleep in his day clothes…do he could not recall ever putting up the fuss that Boy did when it was time to change clothes. Daughter was so much easier to deal with. Masami was adept at dealing with both of the children, though, and the bedtime ritual hadn't taken very much time at all. The children were getting older, she had said, and needed her to do less and less for them. They dressed themselves and could be trusted to brush their own teeth and all of the other things necessary to complete the bedtime ritual.

The children were asleep.

But he was not. He should have been asleep. Usually falling asleep was not so difficult after he had been back in Japan for a while…but he had his own bedtime ritual to complete. Well his ritual was watching Masami complete hers. First she removed her makeup and then she brushed out her hair and changed into her sleeping clothes and then covered herself in lotions and potions of all sorts before laying down next to him. While laying down she'd talk to him or ask him to hold her…and he did enjoy those times…and he needed those times to sleep…

She had just laid down, turned her back to him, and went to sleep.

Well he wasn't sure if she had truly been asleep. Her breathing was wrong but she had not responded to him when he tried to speak to her. She may have been ill again….no…Daughter said that she had been much better lately. Well Daughter had confirmed that Son said that she had been much better. She wasn't sleeping all day anymore…which was an improvement…but she was still acting very much out of the ordinary.

Had something changed?

He had been away for far too long. He hadn't intended to be out of Japan for as long as he had. He usually came back after four to six weeks but that had been…too long. Too many upstart espers thinking that they could take all that he had built. Too many idiots thinking that they could win, that they had even the smallest iota of a chance of taking him on, too many idiots taking up far too much of his time. Time that he should have been spending here, with Masami. Her presence was always enjoyable. Even when she was making no sense her presence was enjoyable.

He had chosen her, after all.

Everyone else in life he had wound up with. He was gathering the world's espers. There were so few of them that he could not just pick and choose who he associated with. He took everyone who was loyal…and obviously he was not the best at vetting his followers…he'd have to do something about that. Later. Much later. Right now he had no intention of leaving Japan unless it was absolutely necessary.

He was tired.

But he couldn't sleep.

Which was how he found himself in his current predicament. Sitting on his living room sofa watching a documentary about ancient China in English. His favorite genre was documentary. He liked to learn things, to be productive. He used to like other things, when he was the children's age, but now it was mostly documentary. Maybe some of Masami's historical dramas…not that he had been invited to watch television with her lately.

Masami had been leaving him alone since he got back.

Which was good in the sense that he had been getting a lot of work done but was not good in the sense that…that he…he had…missed her. He hates himself for feeling that way. He's weak when he feels that way. He shouldn't need anyone else. He should be complete on his own. He should not lay there in bed looking over at his wife's back and wishing that she would turn around and prattle on about the house or the children or something like that. He didn't care what.

He did not get lonely.

And he had no reason to miss Masami. She was right there in their bedroom. He could have gotten up off that couch, woke her up, and demanded that she go back to normal…even though she would not have responded well to that at all…but he had the right to ask whatever he wanted of her…but she was not a servant that he could command. She was his wife and there was the assumption of partnership in that. He had chosen her as his wife and he could not behave that way towards her.

Even if he wanted to.

He was not afraid that she would leave. She would not and could not leave. Not that he was keeping her prisoner or anything like that…he just did not think that she had any reason to leave. He continued to provide for her and the children. That was his job and he did it well. He was never cruel to her, either, or even mildly unpleasant. He was always good to her, he listened to her when she spoke and held her when she asked for it and if she wanted to he would gladly have gone to bed with her…

It had been a while.

Which was just plain odd for her. Usually she wanted to on the first night or so when he came back. This time she hadn't even given him any indication that she desired him in that way…which was odd…and also left a pain behind his ribs that he could not identify. Sex was and was not a need. He was not an adolescent, he could control himself now. He had a son already so there was no real need to him to act in such a way, his genes had been passed down already and she did not want to bear him another child anyway, but there was the pair bonding aspect that he missed…

Which made no sense because as a married couple they were already part of a bonded pair.

He never initiated, anyway. He was better than that. He was complete on his own. He was…he had to be. If he was not complete on his own then what was he? Nothing. He was nothing. He could not allow himself to be nothing. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he was not nothing. No one. He was someone. He was-

Tired.

And alone.

Human contact was a need. Maybe him needing someone…it was a quirk of psychology. Humans were social animals after all. There was a saying, it's lonely at the top, and it was. The only person in this world who he allowed to be his equal was being…distant…and it pained him. It pained him but he could not admit that it pained him. What would she think of him, then, if he were to be so weak? She would have wanted nothing to do with him. She hadn't married a weak man. She had married Suzuki Touichirou, the future lord and master of the world.

He missed her.

He exorcised that emotion. He should have been fine being alone. He was whining about nothing. He should have been fine. He was not one of the children. He could stand to be alone. The children could not stand to be alone. They became frightened when they were separated as if they had not been living in this house for their entire lives. The Castle, as they called it. The Fortress would have fit better, or the Mansions, or The Three Mansions Strung Together to Make a Home Worthy of His Family. The children were so strange in the way they saw things. Saw things and named things. They had found a 'Treasure Room' which from what he could gather was one of the storage rooms. He had thought that he would have had more children by now, or that this could have served as something of a base…but no, it was still just the four members of the Suzuki family…

As it had always been.

He so wished for another child.

A female child. Girl children were so much easier to deal with than boy children. Quiet, obedient, capable, and if he had a daughter, a blood daughter, then he could have been one hundred percent sure that the next generation could have been secured. Also he would have had another polite, neat, obedient, and above all else quiet child. Also Daughter could have had a friend. One not made of plastic, of course, but one that she could interact with who was not her brother…or one of the children in her class. He did not want her, or Boy, mixing with non esper children…or any common children honestly. But they did not have the luxury of being surrounded by their true peers…and neither had he in his youth…and that was such a pity.

Such a pity.

He so wished that he could have given them more siblings. Female siblings. Boy was…boy was like three children all in one sometimes. He'd rather have had a house full of Daughters than of Sons…but the whole thing was a moot point. Masami wanted to stop at two children and that was the way that it was going to be. He was not a cruel man, not to her anyway, and he would never make her do anything that she did not want to do. So they were stuck at two children…and only two. He had been looking for others, Masami did not want to make any more with him, and he had turned up with nothing. Children…they so rarely awakened….

And when they did it was never anything close to what Daughter was capable of.

She was a gift, Daughter, a blessing sent to him. A blessing that was meant for him and him alone. A gift from fate that further cemented it in his mind that he was the one true ruler of this world. Why else would something so perfect have been given to him? A child as powerful as he had been at her age…a child who eclipsed his own flesh and blood son…

He was grateful for her.

"Daughter. I know you're there." said Suzuki. He could see her aura. She was standing there, just out of sight. She tended to hover near him. He allowed this. Her presence was unobtrusive.

"Hi dad." Said Daughter. She came, slowly, out from behind the corner. She watched him as she stepped forward. She still kept a respectable distance, though, she did not jump on him like son did. Well, like he used to.

"You're awake?" he asked. He knew that she was awake, he had eyes, but he wanted her to explain why. She nodded but said nothing else. She held her hair down. A nervous gesture. Her hair was not braided so strands of it began to float. Another nervous gesture.

"I couldn't sleep. That's why I'm awake right now." Said Daughter. He watched her and waited for her to say more. She said nothing. She hated wasting time. Hers and his. He really didn't need any more information. She could not sleep. Perhaps she had something weighing on her, too…but the thought was absurd. She was a seven year old girl. What could she have possibly had to weigh on her?

"Join me." Said Suzuki. It was an order, not a request. Her presence was unobtrusive. Calming, too. If they were both awake then there was no reason not to watch television together. She loved television. She and Son watched for hours and hours and hours.

"Yes, dad." Said Daughter. She walked, slowly, to the sofa and sat beside him. The light cast by the television caught on the sparkling things on her nightgown. It was a blue one with that character she liked on the front. The princess or queen or whatever with the cryo-kinetic abilities. She had a fascination with royalty, it seemed, since all the clothing she owned bore the image of a princess or queen. It made sense.

She was a princess after all.

"What show is this?" asked Daughter as she tucked her knees up under her nightgown. She must have been cold. She was hugging her knees to her chest. He didn't feel hot and cold, not like most people, but he had when he had been her age. She must not have learned that trick yet. He reached behind them with his powers and draped the sofa blanket over her. Masami used this a lot, it must have been warm. He made a mental note to have the heating system looked at.

"A documentary about China. Do you speak English yet?" asked Suzuki. He pulled the blanket close around her with his powers. It would do him no good to have her fall ill.

"Thank you…and no, I don't know English. Well I kind of know but not well enough to understand what they're talking about." Said Daughter. Well now that was a pity. English had been his mother tongue as much as Japanese when he had been her age. Well he had only been half Japanese after all. He and Masami spoke English but they so rarely spoke it. They should have spoken it more around the children. Language learning only got more difficult as one aged.

"Here. You can read, yes?" asked Suzuki as he put on the subtitles for her. She nodded.

"Yes. I have the best reading scores in my class. Mom taught me." Said Daughter

"And your other scholastic achievements?" asked Suzuki. He had always been at the top of his class without even trying. School had been such a slough. He could have accomplished so much more had he not been kept in that child warehouse for so long.

"I'm good at everything but math." Said Daughter. Well you couldn't win them all. She was not his child, after all, so she could only be expected to take after him to a certain degree. He had expected better of her though….but that was neither here nor there. What did she need that child prison for? She would go on to do great things with her abilities. Her powers, those were what mattered most in this life.

"You'll learn eventually." Said Suzuki simply. His eyes were on the television, as were hers, but his aura's attention was fully on her. She was pulling her aura in close. She drew it in as she drew in her knees. She was exorcising some sort of strong emotion. Good. She had been taught well. He wondered, though, what it could have been that had her so troubled.

She was a seven year old girl. What could have possibly been on her mind?

"Were you good at math, dad, when you went to school?" asked Daughter. Her question came after a while. Longer than should have been when one had a conversation. Well he thought so, anyway, he was not well versed in the art of conversation.

"I excelled in all subjects. Why do you ask?" asked Suzuki. It felt nice, her taking an interest in him, but she must have had a reason why. He was her father, well he was the man that was raising her, and he supposed that he was her measuring stick for what was and was not normal. That must have been it. She was comparing herself to him in order to see if she was normal. Children were like that.

He had been like that.

He rapidly came to the conclusion, when he was a child, that there was no one else like him in the world. He was different. Then he had come to the conclusion that being different was not a bad thing at all. He was different but in a good way. It didn't matter that he was lonely when he could hold the whole world in the palm of his hand.

"I just wanted to know what you were like when you were my age." Said Daughter

"I don't have many clear memories of being your age." Said Suzuki speaking the truth. The memories became more clear around the ages of seven and eight but he did not have the running record of his youth the Masami had. It made sense considering the fact that nothing eventful had happened to him in his youth. Not until middle school, anyway.

"None at all?" asked Daughter. She was interested in who he was as a person…and it was nice. He was so sick and tired of dealing with cultists and sycophants. Daughter was not one of them. She was at a curious age, that was all. She was trying to see herself in him. He wondered what she would find. There was the argument, nature vs nurture, and he was curious to see which won out with Daughter. She knew herself as his daughter, as Suzuki Shigeko, and her birth family must have been little more than distant memories…if even that.

He wondered who she would become when she came of age.

A smaller Masami?

A smaller him?

Or someone entirely new?

"I remember…I remember being very small and sitting cross legged in front of the television. I remember that I enjoyed collecting laser disks, a physical media storage format that went extinct long before your time, and I remember that I touched one and it shattered….I also remember painstakingly coloring in my manga because I could not stand anything in black and white." Said Suzuki as he searched for some memories. He had been a different person, then. They said that if you were given a boy at seven you would also have the man he would become…and he wondered how much he had changed. He had put aside his childish obsessions; Speed Racer, The Galaxy Express, and all the rest. He had been a bit of a loner…aside from Masami he had never had a single friend in the world…and he had been filled with ambition. His ambitions at seven were to pilot an outer space train, a race car, or a giant robot…his ambitions had gotten far more realistic as time went on….

Was he the same man at forty one as he had been at seven?

And would she be the same woman at…whenever it was that little girls became women…as she had been at seven?

"Oh. I do stuff like that too. I like to collect my movies on disks because that way I can still have them if the internet goes out…and I like to watch TV real close even though it messes with my eyes…and I don't like how manga is in black and white, either. I don't color in my mangas, though, because I get them from the school library. I would if I could though…so I guess that we have stuff in common." Said Daughter

"We do." Said Suzuki. He hadn't known that about her. There was a person there, finally, instead of a collections of needs. She was getting older. He had been aware of the days passing by, he had been there for her birthday celebration after all, but it was hard to reconcile the child sitting next to him with the toddler he had met half a decade ago. What a difference a few years could make.

"Do you like….cats?" asked Daughter

"I enjoy their function as mouse catchers but if you're trying to ask for a pet in some roundabout way the answer is, was, and always shall be a resounding 'no'." said Suzuki. The children had been forever hounding him for a pet. He would never say 'yes' to such a request. He did not like animals in the house plain and simple. Besides, he would have thought that the children would have had their fill of animals at the animal prison where Masami wasted so much of her time.

"I wasn't asking for a pet, I know that we can't have one. I just wanted to know if you liked them…because I like them…and I just wanted to know if we had that in common." Said Daughter. Well that was alright then. She wasn't like son. She knew that 'no' meant 'no' not 'ask me again in ten minutes'.

"Good. You at least know the meaning of the word 'no'." said Suzuki. There was more silence. Her hair was still trying to float away. He wondered why she didn't just tie it back. He said nothing, of course, because one did not criticize a woman's appearance.

"Do you like….do you like candy?" asked Daughter

"No. I cannot stand sweet foods." Said Suzuki. How the children could put so much sugar in their bodies was beyond him. He had tried their sweets, once, and had to immediately brush his teeth afterwards. Such an unpleasant, cloying, sweetness….

"Oh. Do you like…milk?" asked Daughter

"I find it tolerable. Normal milk only, of course, not that strawberry concoction you drink. How you and Boy can stand it I do not know." Said Suzuki

"We like sweet things…but we're different people from you." Said Daughter

"Yes. Yes you are." Said Suzuki. He wondered how much Son would end up taking after him. Right now he just saw a lot of Masami…and not the good parts of her. That child was a trial…such a trial…

"But we also came from you." Said Daughter

"Yes you did." Said Suzuki. He was not going to tell her the truth of her parentage. Ever. Masami was right. She had wanted to keep it a secret and Suzuki, initially, had not understood. That was why Masami was the smartest person on this planet second only to him. Daughter did not need anything or anyone else tugging on her loyalties. She was a Suzuki now by law if not by blood. She did not need to go searching, later on, for the family who abandoned her. She was his now and that was what mattered most of all.

"Are we like you? Am I like you?" asked Daughter

"I see myself in the both of you. I see physical self in Son and my temperament in you, Daughter." Said Suzuki. She really was a lot like him…and he wondered why. He was out of step with the rest of the world, there was no point in deluding himself, and so was she. He wondered if whatever had gone pear shaped in his social development had something to do with his immense power level. Daughter certainly furthered that theory.

But without more espers it would be impossible to know.

"Oh." Said Daughter. And then there was some silence. He wondered if she was out of questions. Children that age were always asking questions in an attempt to try and puzzle out the world around them. Even now in this information age they'd found themselves in. He'd have to get her a phone so she could look up some answers on her own. How heredity worked. That seemed to be the running theme of her questions.

"Hey Dad?" asked Daughter. She was attempting to exorcise more emotions now. He wondered why. For a brief moment he thinks that she's going to confess to some crime. But that's absurd. Daughter was not a malevolent being nor was she an agent of chaos like Son was. Daughter was…unstable…but she would never have knowingly acted against him.

"Daughter?" asked Suzuki. More of her hair began to rise up into the air and the images on the television screen began to go to pixels and he readied himself to lecture her, again, about her lack of control when she managed to find whatever words it was that she had been looking for.

"Do you like me?" asked Daughter. What kind of a question was that?

"Of course I do. Do you think that I would have kept you around if I did not like you?" asked Suzuki. She was a child and acted as a child did. She could not, and he could not believe this, perform a simple act of reasoning. He did not keep things that he did not care for. Therefore he must have cared for her.

"You…you'd get rid of me?" asked Daughter

"If you ever acted against me, yes, but you do not. You are obedient, intelligent, and I find your presence to be unobtrusive. Of course I like you." Said Suzuki. A question so stupid could only have come from the mouth of a child. He could not wait until she grew up.

"Ok…and Sho, too?" asked Daughter

"What about your brother?" asked Suzuki

"Do you like him, too?" asked Daughter. He needed to think about that one. Boy was an agent of chaos molded into the form of a six year old. He was loud and boisterous and annoying….but he was also his son. His only son. A mixture of him and Masami…and he could never have disliked Masami…so he could never have disliked their son.

"Yes." said Suzuki after a moment's thought.

"And….and would you get rid of him, too?" asked Daughter. This required less thought.

"If he were to ever betray me…but I know that neither of my children would ever be capable of such treason." Said Suzuki. Not like the morons he had not vetted properly….no matter, no matter, that was neither here nor there….

"We would never betray you dad. We love you." Said Daughter. He reached over with his aura and smoothed down her hair. He drank up some of that excessive energy, too, while he was at it. She calmed down, it seemed. Good.

"I know you do. I know." Said Suzuki. Love. Such an imprecise word…but they were only children and their vocabularies were still limited. It wasn't a bad word, anyway, because it carried a sense of loyalty with it. Something that had been in short supply lately.

"Um…Dad?" asked Daughter. He exorcised his own emotions, there. He made a mental note that she became talkative at night. Active, like a bat or something. Perhaps children were nocturnal. Perhaps that was why Son kicked up such a fuss come bedtime. He wondered what her latest line of inquiry would be…and he was tempted to order her a phone or a new tablet or something so she could look her questions about heredity and family structures up on her own because it was late and he was tired.

"Yes, Daughter." Said Suzuki keeping his aura and his voice level. He was tempted to order her to go back to bed…but then he would be alone. He does not like that prospect at all. He would rather play twenty questions with her all night than be alone again…

"Do you…do you know how to play Chinese checkers?" asked Daughter

"Yes. Why?" asked Suzuki. He had enjoyed that game in his youth. He had played with his own parents…back then…before the…before he…he exorcises any and all emotions having to do with his late parents.

"Some of the other kids play Chinese checkers with their dads and…and I want to play with you…because you're my dad. I'm not very good but…but I would like us to play together because…because you're my dad." Said Daughter. A simple request and one he could honor. There are emotions there….memories…a cool marble in his hand. Sunlight hitting him in the eyes. Someone touches his head….someone congratulates him for winning….

He exorcises those emotions.

They have no place here.

"Do you have a board?" asked Suzuki. Daughter faced him, her eyes went wide, and her aura shone brightly. They'd work on control tomorrow…or rather during the daytime as the time had surely passed midnight by now…

"Yes." said Daughter

"Good. Go get it." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to clear off the coffee table. Daughter, thankfully, did as she was told and rushed off to her room. She came back just as quickly with a Chinese checker board clutched in her hands.

The time passed quickly after that.


	43. Trapped

Trapped.

Masami finally had a word for how she felt.

She felt trapped.

The word came to her while she was fixing lunch for her and Touichirou. She had been standing in the kitchen when it hit her. There was a window. She could see out of it. She could have climbed out of it. She wanted to climb out of it. She wanted to climb out of it and run across the yard and down the street and then far, far, far away.

But she couldn't.

Because someone had to make lunch.

So therefore, she was trapped.

This house was her home and her prison as well. She could not leave. Such a simple thing…she could not leave. Sure, she could have walked out the door, she'd find herself walking out the door later on to pick up the children from school, but then she would have to come back and then do it all again. Again, and again and again. She was…she was this person…she had not wanted to be this person. She had not dreamt of becoming this person…

The person she had become.

She found herself wishing that she could have swapped places with someone else, anyone else. This house…this was a beautiful house. Large. There were rooms that she wasn't even using for anything, not even storing junk, and her husband had even been talking about adding to it. The house next door, well what passed for 'next door' in this neighborhood was for sale. He wanted to buy it and connect it to their house…just as he had done when the house on the other side had been put on the market. She didn't know why they needed so much space. They were only four people….

Isolated.

Nobody on either side.

Her and the children. Forever.

Her, the children, and Touichirou. The Suzuki family. She hadn't wanted this when she married him. They had traveled when they had first gotten married. Before Sho. His work had always taken him all over the world, what that work entailed she was not sure if she wanted to know, but they had done some travelling…before she had been too big to travel. Well before he had said that she was too big to travel. It hadn't been smothering then, his concern, or what passed for concern with Touichirou back then. He hadn't been worried about her but who they had made….but in terms of his investment in Sho's creation.

Not in Sho as a person.

Not in her as a person.

The only person he cared about, truly cared about, was himself. Himself and Shigeko. His Daughter. She had been an investment too, it seemed. His greatest investment. He spent most of his time with her. Even last night…she had woken to find herself alone in her bed and for a moment, a wonderful moment, she had thought that he had left the country again and she could have had some peace…terrible thoughts to think about her husband, but instead she had found him and Shigeko in the living room. Shigeko had been asleep on the floor with a Chinese Checker board in front of her and Touichirou…well it had been adorable in a way. How he had fallen asleep slumped against the couch.

He always looked so peaceful when he slept.

Any and all good feeling that she had felt about the scene tableaux before her were chased away at the realization that they had been up all night playing Chinese checkers. Shigeko had school in the morning and instead of staying in bed like she knew she was supposed to she had been up all night. She thought, once again, that she could do whatever she wanted…and Touichirou had, once again, encouraged this…

Masami hated herself sometimes.

For how she caught herself feeling about her own Daughter. Shigeko may not have come from within her body but she was still her child just the same. It was so hard to reconcile the fact that despite their similarities Shigeko was not the second coming of her father. She was not a miniature version of her father. She was her own person and she was only seven and the thoughts that her own mother had about her…they would destroy her. Masami was a bad mother when it came to Shigeko.

And a terrible wife when it came to Touichirou.

This was what she had wanted to be, a wife and a mother. When she married Touichirou she'd had this picture in her mind…not pure domestic bliss but not…not what she had become. Who she had become. She had no reason to feel the way she did, to have become the woman she had become. Touichirou was distant but never cruel to her. He had never even so much as raised his voice to her. He provided for her. She had never…never in her life did she think that she would see as much money as was in their bank account. Never in her life did she think that she would live in a house this big. Her children…they went to the best schools the city had to offer…schools that Masami had never even been able to attend as a child. She had a good life for herself and her children…

But she still felt like this.

Trapped.

And she had no idea where it was that she even wanted to go. To her parents? Why, to get a big, fat, 'I told you so' from not only them but everyone else who had told her that marrying Touichirou was a mistake? To…to Fukuda? Who WORKED for her husband? Who she had put in a very bad and possibly dangerous position? No. She wanted…she did want to see him again. It had been months since she had seen or heard from him…and she wanted to be with him. If even to be in his arms for a moment. If only to have him listen to her…to listen and speak back. To just…to just be MASAMI with him. Not Mom. Not Wife…and she was amazed that Touichirou hadn't started calling her Wife yet…even though that was all she was to him. Just his wife. Just the woman who iron his shirts and cooked his meals and washed his dishes and bore his children and occasionally went to bed with him…not that they had done much of that since…

And she didn't even know why she wanted to.

To feel something? That must have been it. He had always been at his least guarded when they had sex. He actually emoted when they had sex. He looked at her….like he was really looking at her…and he held her afterwards, too…and it was…

She'd had better.

Not that it could ever happen again.

So maybe that was why she felt so trapped. Because she couldn't be with the man she wanted to be with. That, of course, made her just a terrible person. Touichirou had never given her a reason, a real reason, to do what she had done. It would have been another story if he had been out there womanizing…but she knew him. He may have been a cold man, a distant man, but he was also a man of his word. Marriage meant that they couldn't see other people. He had actually felt the need to inform her of that on their wedding day….and when she had asked if he had considered them to be nonexclusive up to that point he had said 'no' because they'd had the exclusivity talk already…and he had also said that he didn't even look at other women like that…he had said that he was just trying to make sure that they were on the same page when it came to the parameters of a marriage.

He had been so charmingly clueless back then.

That had gotten old fast.

She wished that he had been out there cheating on her. She wished that he'd had a woman in every country and that he was running off to be with mistresses and other families that he had started…even though the thought of him cheating on her makes her feel physically ill…but then she would have had an out. Then she would have had a reason to have cheated on him. She wished that he had vices, real vices not eating nothing but omelets and staying up late playing Chinese checkers and watching foreign documentaries, real vices that could have given her a reason to want to leave. If he had been out for weeks on end womanizing and drinking and gambling and pissing all of their money away…but he didn't. He wasn't that sort of man.

On paper he was perfect.

Aside from whatever Yakuza shit he was involved in. He had been the one to…to confirm that he was involved with them…and that they had been making attempts on his life…and that she…she had no idea…for years…but that was not enough to leave. Well it was but…but also not. That would take a lot of explaining….and she did not know how to explain…to justify…

To anyone.

Especially her children. If she ever were to leave then….then she would have to take them with her. She couldn't take them away from her husband, from their father, because…because they loved him. Even Sho who he was just so…so cold to. Sho was more of a momma's boy but Shigeko was firmly daddy's little girl…and she couldn't take care of Shigeko on her own anyway. Shigeko…she was getting older. The older she got the stronger she'd get…and the only person who had a hope of controlling her was Touichirou…and that was just how it was. If she had a choice between Shigeko and Sho…she did not like her answer to that question. She should not have even posed that question to herself. She should…she should…

Sho.

If she had a choice it would have been Sho.

Sho had powers too but nothing even close to what Shigeko could do. Sho…he still listened to her. He took after her. He looked almost exactly like his father, he hadn't inherited the eyebrows thank goodness, but he took after her. Shigeko…she looked like neither of them, she was adopted after all, but she took after Touichirou….and whether Masami wanted to admit it or not being what she was Shigeko would need her father. She would go through things that Masami had no idea how to guide her through. How was it, even, growing up as an esper? What was esper puberty like, even? Masami shudder to think about her Daughter's coming teenage years…Sho's too. They were children now but they wouldn't be for much longer….and she had no idea how to help an esper through that period of life or a little boy…not that she knew if Touichirou would be much help…

She couldn't take them with her.

And she couldn't leave, either, because….because then who would raise them? Sho needed her. He was such a sweet, sensitive, gentle boy…and Shigeko needed her mother. She was already a bad mother but she would be a piss poor excuse for one if she just up and abandoned her children….or just one of them. Sho…she had Sho to think about. Shigeko…Touichirou loved Shigeko the most in the entire family. It was so obvious that he favored her…and that he would have taken decent care of her…as decent as he was capable of…

She couldn't leave the children alone with their father.

And she couldn't take them with her.

So she was well and truly trapped. She wanted…she wanted to climb out that window and run. Run to her parents, to her lover, or just…away. Down the street in nothing but her house slippers. Down the street and into the horizon never to be seen again…like this was one of her dramas…but it wasn't. This was real life and she had to live with the choices she'd made.

She didn't climb out the window.

She didn't run away.

She finished lunch.

"Touichirou!"


	44. A Box Full of Treasures

It was called the Treasure Room because it was full of treasures.

Well not everything in the Treasure Room could have been considered a treasure. There were a lot of boxes full of boring stuff like pictures of strangers and fancy plates and table cloths and stuff. Those were not treasures unless you were some kind of adult or something. There were things that only Mob considered treasures, like the pretty hat she had found or the box of jewelry, and there were also things that only Sho considered treasures. Like the bamboo sword.

Mob was not a fan of the bamboo sword.

"Sho, be careful. You could get hurt." Said Mob as Sho swung the big bamboo sword around. She didn't get what was so neat about it. It was big and heavy and gave you splinters if you weren't careful. Boys were so weird sometimes.

"No I won't and if I do then mom can just call Fukuda." Said Sho as he swung the sword around some more. Maybe he wanted to get hurt. He didn't want to hurt his big sis, he would have been a terrible person if he'd had, but maybe he wanted to accidentally hurt himself so bad that mom had to call Fukuda and then he could come over and they could all hang out together like they used to.

It would have had to be something more than a splinter.

Because big sis could take those out on her own.

She had taken all of their splinters out and it hadn't even hurt. She had used her powers, not tweezers like mom would have, and Sho was grateful to her. Really he was. Those had hurt…and if mom saw that their hands were covered in splinters then she would have told them that they had to go some other place to play. This was the best place in the house. It was far away from dad. He didn't like to play near dad because dad hated fun. Big sis liked to be near dad and since Sho didn't like to be on his own he had to be near big sis...which was why they were in the Treasure Room to begin with.

Even though this was the only treasure that they had found so far.

He swung his new sword around and it hit the stack of boxes behind him. The shook for a minute but stopped. He hit them again. Those wouldn't have been enough to kill him…right? He didn't want to die, he had too much stuff left to do, but he just wanted to get hurt enough that Fukuda had to come over. Then they could show him all the junk they found and he could help mom make dinner and then they could all play together…it would have been nice…

He hit the boxes again.

But they didn't move.

"Sho, I said to be careful. You could get really hurt." Said Mob as she steadied the boxes that Sho kept on hitting. She didn't get it. He must have known that he was doing something dangerous…right? Dad said that Sho never thought before he acted but Mob thought that was a mean thing to say. Sho thought…he just sometimes didn't think right. Like right then he was probably just thinking about how much fun it was to swing his sword around. He wasn't thinking about how all of those heavy boxes could have fallen on him and flattened him into a pancake.

"You're not the boss of me." Said Sho. If he wanted to get hurt then he'd get hurt. She didn't get to tell him what he could and could not do. She wasn't mom or dad even though dad liked her the best. She didn't get to make up new rules whenever she wanted.

"I know that I'm not the boss of you but I'm worried. I love you and I don't ever want anything bad to happen to you." Said Mob

"I'm going to be fine, big sis, now why don't you go and look for another sword so we can have a sword fight?" asked Sho. He wouldn't get too hurt from this. It wasn't like the time he had broken his arm when he had been little…and even then that hadn't been that bad. He hadn't even cried once even when it started to turn all kinds of colors. Girls were such worrywarts. He needed to distract her so he could do what he had to do.

"But I don't want to have a sword fight." Said Mob. Nothing about a sword fight appealed to her. She didn't want to get hurt and she didn't want to accidentally hurt Sho. She wished that Sho liked Chinese checkers. She had tried to play with him but he just kept on tossing the marbles around because he thought that the game was boring. Mom thought that Chinese checkers was boring, too, and also she had gotten mad that she and dad had stayed up late playing together…even though dad had been the one to say that it was ok so, really, he was the one that she should have been mad at.

"Then go and play with dad." Said Sho. He was lying, of course, because he didn't want her to go. The house was scary when they were separated. Not that he was afraid of anything. He was just being ridiculous like dad had said. He had lived in this house for his whole life, he had nothing to be afraid of, certainly not how big it was and how it went on forever….

"I don't want to do that either." Said Mob even though she kind of did. If she was with dad then she could make sure that he didn't get mad at Sho. She could distract him from all of the things that Sho said and did that dad considered to be bad things even though they really weren't. Like talking too loud or laughing too loud or breathing too loud. She liked dad and all but…but sometimes he could be mean to Sho when he didn't really deserve it…even though Mob knew that it was not her place to decide whether or not Sho deserved it…dad had been very clear on that…

"Then go and look for another sword." Said Sho with a shrug. Well as best a shrug as he could manage while he was holding a giant sword. He wondered where it had come from. Not the people who had lived in this house before, of course, because they had always lived in the castle, but maybe one of the Suzuki's from the pictures had been a famous bamboos swordsman or something. Or maybe it was just a random sword. He didn't know. He'd ask mom, later, when Fukuda came over.

"Ok." Said Mob even though she really did not want to. When she found it she would only half sword fight. She'd go down easy and let him win. She didn't care if he accidentally hurt her, she just didn't want to hurt him. He had been hurt enough already in his life. She was his big sister and it was her job to keep him safe and make sure that he was ok.

And also to make him happy.

So she looked for another sword. She went over to the wall where they had found the box for the bamboo one. She hoped that she found another bamboo sword and not a katana or something. Sho used to have a plastic katana until he put a hole in the wall on accident when he got mad and then they had to hang a picture over the hole and then mom took it away and said that now nobody would have a katana or any other toy weapons…but they weren't breaking any rules because that was a real bamboo sword. It was a real sword used for kendo, which dad said was the only sport that was worth following, and mom had never said that they couldn't have any real swords….though Mob really hoped that she didn't end up finding a katana and then they would have to have katana fights.

Maybe those counted as knives.

Mom said that they weren't allowed to play with knives. Real knives, not butter knives, because they could get hurt. Well the rule was that they weren't allowed to touch knives. Dad let her used her powers and chop things up with a knife…and mom had gotten upset then too even though Mob hadn't broken any rules…and then she had gone to lay down when Mob pointed out the fact that she had, indeed, not touched the knife. She didn't get mom sometimes. Mom and dad. How they had different rules and Mob was, somehow, expected to follow both sets of rules at once. It was hard.

Lots of stuff was hard.

Like going back to where they had found the sword. She had to crawl under some boxes, she and Sho had also tried to build a fort, to get to the far wall. There was a box with kendo clothes in it. The box said Suzuki Shigeru. Mob wondered if that was one of her ancestors. Shigeru. That was kind of close to Shigeko…kind of. Maybe she had been named after him. Maybe he was even one of the people in the pictures…not that she had any way of finding out. Dad had been kind of upset lately, well his colors looked upset, and he had said that there had been an attempted coup, which meant that someone tried to steal his job from him, and that he was still cleaning up after what happened…even though mom was the one that did all the cleaning.

She didn't want to make dad mad.

She couldn't ask mom either because mom had been snapping all the time, lately, and Mob had no idea what it was that she was doing wrong. She had been sticking close to dad, mostly, and doing everything that he wanted her to do but it just didn't seem to help make mom any happier. She hoped that whatever was wrong would pass. She hoped that mom was just in a bad mood or that she kept on getting up on the wrong side of the bed…though Mob had no idea which side was the right one and which was the wrong one….maybe they were both wrong and mom just needed a new bed.

Or maybe she needed a new daughter.

Mob didn't know what she could do to be any better. She made sure that dad didn't get mad at Sho…as often…and she made her own bed and cleaned her side of the room and brushed her own hair and got herself dressed and she would have cooked her own meals and done her own laundry, too, if mom had let her. Mom was always talking about how much work she had to do around the house…well she was always telling dad that she needed help…but then when dad said that he'd hire staff and maids and servants and stuff mom said no.

Mob didn't get why.

If dad hired people then mom would have been less tired. If mom was less tired then she would be less snappy with them. If mom was less snappy then they could have come and played with them, there, in the Treasure Room. Then she could have played with Sho and said no to the swords and the sword fighting and whatever else Sho was planning on doing with that stupid bamboo sword. Mob really hated that thing. She wished that Sho would just put it down and go back to what they were doing before. She didn't think that the box of lacy tablecloths was dumb. All the needed to do was find a table and where they had put the box with the fancy tea service and they could have a tea party like the used to when they were little.

Mom might have liked that.

She had liked that when they were little. Well they were milk parties because Mob and Sho hadn't liked tea back then. She didn't much care for tea these days, either, and neither did Sho…but they drank it when dad had tea. Well she drank hers. Sho just swirled his tea around in his cup and complained. He could be such a complainer sometimes…not that Mob would ever think something so mean….and she had and she was just the worst big sister in the whole, wide, wor-

A crash.

Mob didn't even think, she just lifted the boxes around her up so she could go and save Sho…who had saved himself, it seemed….he had saved himself. There was a sword on the ground in front of him and a box hanging just above his head…and it was suspended in a red aura…but not dad's red….

"Sho! I'm so happy for you!" said Mob. She clapped and jumped up and down. She couldn't help it. Sho was doing it! He was lifting something with his powers! Something heavy! He had used his powers to save himself! Mob didn't care if her braids were floating or that the boxes were still floating or that she wasn't supposed to jump up and down in the house or that her dress was flying up or anything like that. She was just so happy for Sho!

"Shut up! Leave me alone!" shouted Sho. He couldn't even get hurt right! He was supposed to get crushed by a box and break his arm or his leg or one of his other bones and then Fukuda was supposed to come over and then-then-then-ugh! He couldn't do anything right! Even when he tried to do something wrong he couldn't even do it right!

He box spun around.

It stopped.

And then something hit him on the head.

"Sho!" said Mob. That box was obviously way too heavy for him. It made sense, he was still so very little, and now stuff was hitting him on the head…a book. Mob took the box from his grasp and tried to put it gentle on the floor beside him.

She tried.

But he wouldn't let go.

"I said leave me alone!" said Sho. He didn't know how he did it and he didn't know why he did it but he pulled on the box with his powers…and then more stuff fell out and hit him…and that just made him madder. He was mad…he was so mad….he was so mad that he could just-

"Hey!" said Mob as she fell down flat on her back. She wasn't hurt, at least she thought that she wasn't hurt, but she wasn't ok either. Sho had pushed her…and that had hurt her feelings…but to be fair he had told her to shut up and also to leave her alone. She should have just listened to him. She should have just done as he asked…but if she had done as he asked then he would have ended up getting crushed by…she sat up.

Manga.

Manga and…toys?

Huh?

"Sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" said Sho. He got up and ran to big sis. He pulled her up really hard…and he might have been hurt her then….and he was just so sorry! He hadn't meant to! He pushed his sister! Only the biggest losers in the world went around pushing girls!

"I'm ok, I forgive you. It was my fault for making you mad." Said Mob as she was helped to her feet. It felt more like he was trying to rip her arm off like he had done to her Elsa doll but she didn't say anything about that. He didn't mean to hurt her. He never meant to hurt her. He was her little brother, he would never have done anything to hurt her.

"I was a jerk, too." Said Sho. Well she had made him mad…but he had made himself mad. He couldn't do anything right. No matter what he did, even if he had used his powers, it didn't change the fact that she had been born right and he had been born wrong. He couldn't even come out of mom the right way. She had a big scar on her stomach from where the doctor had to chop her open and yank him out of her.

Mom and dad should have stopped at one kid.

Maybe they had just had him because they needed a boy. Boys were more important than girls when it came to families, dad had said, because girls don't add to your family like boys did. Girls joined other people's families and boys brought people into the family. That was why he was going to be the one to inherit the world and not big sis. Her kids wouldn't be Suzuki's, dad had said, they would be whatever her husband's family name was. That must have been the reason that mom and dad had chosen to have him, because they needed a boy, and they never would have had him if big sis had come out a boy.

He used to want a brother, before, but he didn't now.

Big sis was hard enough to have as a sibling. She was so perfect all the time. Dad liked her because she was just like him. They were both quiet and didn't know how to have fun and they both made mom say bad words under her breath when they did something clueless. Dad liked him a little, apparently he had told big sis so, but that was probably just because he was the only boy. He hoped that mom and dad didn't have another kid and he hoped that if they did then it would be another girl.

Even if girls were so boring to play with sometimes.

"Sho, look. There's toys." Said Mob as she looked through the stuff that had fallen out of the box. She picked up a little white car with a five on the side of it. It had a wind up key. She tried to turn it but it didn't do anything.

"These aren't ours…" said Sho as he walked over to the stuff on the floor. He picked up a mech with only one arm. It was weird looking. It had a weirdly human face and was blue and just…weird. All dinged up, too, and scratched up. Some of the scratches looked like writing….he looked closer…and he knew that named.

Suzuki.

"This one says our name on it." Said Mob. She showed Sho the toy car. On the bottom someone had written, in magic marker, Suzuki.

"It says our name on this one, too." Said Sho handing her the mech. She ran her fingers over the scratches.

"You're right…these toys aren't ours. I would have remembered it if we'd ever had these toys." Said Mob

"Yeah, and if they were ours then they would have been in the room with our old preschool stuff in it." Said Sho. Mom sometimes said that they had too many toys and she made them box up the stuff that they weren't playing with and then she put it into storage….those were always sad days….but he did not remember any of this stuff. He didn't even know what half of this stuff even was.

"What's a 'Game and Watch'?" asked Mob as she picked up a weird rectangle looking thing. There were black stick drawing guys all over it. She turned it around. Someone had written their family name on the back of it, too.

"It looks like a DS but with only one screen" said Sho as he took it from her. He tried to turn it on but nothing happened. Maybe that was why it was in there, because it was broken…some of that stuff was broken…and maybe he had broken it. Like the yoyo that was broken in half or the Godzilla with no tail…and other stuff looked like it had been broken a long time ago. Like the glider with it's wing all taped up or the slinky that was all tangled up.

"And this looks like a tablet." Said Mob as she picked up red tablet looking thing. It might have been broken. She tried turning the knobs but all that happened was a black line started moving.

"I think it's for drawing." Said Sho. That looked like fun, actually. He took it from her hands even though he knew that he was supposed to say please first. He'd say sorry later. Right now he wanted to play with this…whatever it was. It was ok even though it could only go in straight lines...wait, no, he figured out circles…

This was pretty fun.

He didn't know who this Suzuki kid was but he had pretty good taste in toys.

"There's so much stuff in here." Said Mob as she crawled inside of the tipped over box. She wondered if this all belonged to some kid who lived in the house before. A boy, probably, because these were all boy's toys. Sometimes boys could play with girl toys and girls could play with boy toys, mom had said so, but no girl would ever have been so rough on her toys. She picked up a toy firetruck with no wheels. Yup, a boy had done this.

She would never understand boys for as long as she lived.

"Maybe his mom mad him get rid of all of his old stuff like mom makes us do sometimes." Said Sho as he drew some circles. He didn't know what this drawing would be, yet, it would come to him later. Maybe a cat or something. Maybe a princess. Maybe a cat princess. Something that big sis would like…since he had been such a jerk to her. He'd draw her something nice. He could at least do what right.

"Maybe. I wish we have known about this stuff before. We could have been playing with this stuff the whole time.." said Mob as she crawled out of the box. Her hat got caught on the outside but she held it on with her powers. She loved this hat so much…and she kind of wished that there were more pretty hats instead of all of these boy's toys. Well, there were other things in the box, too. There were books, too. School books. She opened one up. It was a writing primer like hers. This one said that it belonged to Suzuki, too, and that Suzuki was in the first grade like she was. He had good strokes, this kid. Kind of mad looking though…and his doodles were kind of mad, too. A lot of people getting stabbed with swords and crushed by cars and being on fire and other mean stuff like that. Boy's drawings. She put the school book down and picked up a manga.

"See? I told you that there was treasure in here." Said Sho as he crawled over to see what big sis was reading. Manga. Something called Galaxy Express 999…and it was in color! Wait, no, someone had just colored in all the pictures…which was so dumb. It wasn't a coloring book. There was hardly any space to even do the coloring and you couldn't decide what color to even make the stuff because it had all been decided for you on the front cover.

"I never doubted you, little brother." Said Mob as she flipped through the book. This was Suzuki's book. He had colored in all the pages…and he was really good at coloring in the lines…and he had even written notes on the sides of the drawings. Mostly about the planets and…and also he was mad at someone named Yuta…and also he liked some girl called Suki…well he certainly wrote about her a lot. About things she'd said, what she'd had for lunch, what she got on tests, and one page had even had what looked like a total report on everything that she had said that day on it. He had written over the drawings to write all of that down…

Mob wanted to be liked and all but that seemed to be a bit much.

Though it would have been nice if someone called her their most perfect person.

"Where'd all of this come from, though? I mean who would just leave a box of toys here and not tell us about it?" asked Sho. He leaned in closer to big sis and felt…something. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck were standing up and he was getting all cold and shaky.

"Dad." Said Mob. She could see his colors…and he was getting nearer. She used her powers to put the stuff back in the box…and to stack the other boxes back up like they were supposed to have been. Dad hated it when they were messy. He'd said so a thousand times.

"Nah, dad didn't have any toys when he was a kid. He hates fun stuff." Said Sho with a shrug. When dad was their age he probably spent all day at school waiting for tomorrow to happen. The idea of dad having fun…it did not mesh well in his mind. Dad just…he was not a fun person.

Not one bit.

"No, I mean dad is coming." Said Mob. Sho sat up straight beside her. As soon as she said that the door to the junk room slid opened…and there he was. Mob made her aura calm. Dad didn't like it when she felt upset…or when she felt anything at all. He was kind of like the dad from Frozen accept he didn't give her gloves or die on a boat on the ocean. He still believed in the whole conceal don't feel thing even though you were supposed to feel whatever you wanted to feel. Mom had said so…but then dad had said that mom didn't know what she was talking about because she was a normal person and as smart as she was there were some things that she could never understand.

"Son. Daughter. Explain." Said Suzuki. The children had Masami worried. He had just been annoyed. That had been far too much noise…but at least he had seen Son's aura…so maybe something of note had happened.

"A box fell down but Sho caught it. There were books and toys inside. We're reading a book now." Said Mob. Maybe dad would have liked it, too, this book. He had said that he had liked Galaxy Express and that he liked coloring in his manga…a crazy thought. This could have been dad's stuff…but that wasn't possible. This was dad. She couldn't imagine him ever sitting down and just…playing with his toys like a regular kid.

"That's all?" asked Suzuki. He kept his aura calm. There were…so many emotions. That hat…that book…Boy's powers….all of it. He needed to stay calm. This was…this was far too much…

He knocked the hat off of Daughter's head and threw it across the room.

"Yes. That's all. A box fell and Sho caught it. He caught it with his powers. I tried to help him but it spilled. There were books and toys inside." Said Mob. She didn't let herself react when dad knocked he hat off of her head. She had liked that hat and all but dad was, obviously, mad at them. He was obviously mad at them for making a mess and making noise and stuff like that…

But he didn't have to go and knock her hat off like that.

What was wrong with boys? Why did they always have to go around hitting everything?

"Those are…were…mine, you know." Said Suzuki. He had to say something. There was nothing…there was nothing wrong there. Son and Daughter had just found the junk from his late parents' house, that was all, and those were just objects. Simple objects and nothing more. That hat…it was just a hat. Nothing more. Those toys were just toys. Nothing more. That kendo sword at boy's feet….was just a kendo sword. Nothing more.

He remembered the day it had been given to him. He was had finally been deemed old enough to have it. His father's old kendo sword. He had been thirteen years old and he needed it for kendo at school…which he had excelled at. He hadn't even needed to use his powers. They had been so proud of him…there was a kendo trophy in that junk room somewhere….and a picture of him receiving it…and that hat…mother's hat…

He exorcised his emotions.

"You're Suzuki?" asked Sho incredulously. He hid the red tablet thing that he had been drawing with behind his back. Dad…that had been dad's toy. All of those toys had once belonged to dad…when he was a kid…he used to be a kid…a regular kid….

Does. Not. Compute.

"Last I checked." Said Suzuki. Boy was good for pulling him out of those emotional spirals, if anything, even if he was annoying. He felt…less bad, now. There was no use feeling the way he did. The past was in the past. What was done was done. These things were objects. Nothing more. Not windows or doors or whatever into the past. It didn't matter that he could remember how many hours it had taken to color in that book…he had done it during classes…they had always been so easy…and a…he remembered now. A girl had sat in front of him…a light haired girl…and the sun had risen and set with her as far as he had been concerned…and this had been decades before he had even met Masami….and now he didn't want to remember anymore. He did not want to remember the pain of rejection…how she had called his powers 'weird' and 'creepy'…it was of no consequence. It had happened thirty years ago.

"We're sorry, dad, and we'll try to be more…better…in the future….and we won't touch your toys anymore." Said Mob. Dad hated it when they were loud, and messy, and quarrelsome, and also when they touched his things. They were lucky he only flipped the hat off of her head. She was lucky. He could have so easily flipped Sho across the room.

"It's fine, children, it's perfectly fine…and you can have those toys…I suppose. They're of no real use to me now." Said Suzuki. The children thanked him profusely even though they had no reason to. It wasn't like he was going to be getting much use out of them. Better they go to someone who could enjoy them instead of collecting dust in one of the many junk rooms….

"Thank you, dad." Said Mob. She said it once, like dad liked, but Sho said it a bunch of times. She was glad that he was happy, at least. This was a good day. They had found so many treasures. Dad's old treasures, even….though she wished that he would have stayed and played with them.

But dad never played with them…and he had seemed mad…madder than normal…anyway.

Even if they had a whole box of treasures to play with.


	45. The Most Beautiful Woman in the World

Masami really was the most beautiful woman in the entire world.

Suzuki knew this to be true. He had been all over the world after all and he had never seen a woman who could ever compare to her. Not that he spent a lot of his time looking at other women. He had a woman, what did he need another one for? He had the most beautiful, intelligent, woman in the entire world. Well the parts of it that he had seen….but he was not about to go travelling the world looking to see if there was a woman who could eclipse her.

There probably wasn't.

"What?" asked Masami as she sat at her vanity table and brushed out her hair. Shigeko had braided it again. It had been more knots than braids, honestly, but it had made her happy. That was what mattered the most, making the other members of her family happy, even at her own expense.

"Nothing, I'm just looking at you." Said Suzuki. She had been so irritable lately. She had been so distant lately…and he had no idea why. She hadn't even so much as kissed him in…in however many weeks it had been…and he knew that he should not have been craving her, a kiss from her, so badly that he was starting to even dream of it…or badly at all. The two of them…they were already a couple…so why did he want to…to continue to couple with her. He wished that he knew what was wrong with him. He felt out of control.

He hated feeling out of control.

"Well can you stop? God, I feel like I'm under a microscope." Said Masami as she brushed out her hair a little more vigorously than necessary. What, was he getting his staring in now since he had spent the entire day locked away in his office again?

"I'll stop if you want me to." Said Suzuki. He stopped looking at her but, instead, looked at her reflection in the mirror. He couldn't see as much of her, then. Just her face and her hair and her neck and her collar bones…and he had no idea why his eyes were tracing the path that her collar bones made beneath her nightshirt…well he did, she was a very attractive woman, but it made no sense. He had seen her naked a thousand and one times….

So why did he want to again?

Because she was beautiful. Because she was attractive. Because it had been a very long time since they had last been together physically. He knew that it was a normal human need…and he also knew that he was not a normal human and that he should have been above normal human needs. Besides, at the end of the day it would have been pointless. She did not want to have any more children…even though he wanted more children….but he was not the only person making that decision….and he got the feeling that it wasn't even about that…

He wanted to have more children.

But he wanted her, more.

He wanted to pick her up and sit her down on the table, her makeup table, and kiss her until she could not be kissed anymore. He wanted to pull her nightshirt up over her head and then worship at the altar of her body like he had when they had been younger, when they had first been starting out…and had it been seven years already? Seven years ago….seven years ago he would have given in to this feeling. He would have given in because he had been younger and his control over himself had not been what it is today….and even now his control was slopping. There, on her table, he could see some of her hair pins rising into the air. Light things floated first. Light then heavy and then…he did not want to think about what happened next. What the next stage of losing control was.

He could never fully lose control. Not again.

He wouldn't allow himself to.

"You're still staring at me." Said Masami. She could feel the tingle in the air, that hanging static electricity, his aura. Him. His attention was focused fully on her…and she wished that he would just go back to his office or stay up all night with Shigeko again or something like that. She was getting ready for bed. She was in her nightclothes and she was getting her hair ready and then the lotion and then bed. She had already started her bedtime's ritual. He had already completed his.

He brushed his teeth and took off his suit coat and tie.

He would have slept fully dressed if it didn't weird her out so much. How he could just…sleep…like that. He also slept on his back with his hands folded like a corpse. Like when they put a corpse out for viewing before they buried it. The only thing that kept him from looking dead, when he slept, was the rise and fall of his chest as well as the fact that, occasionally, their bed would lift off into the air. It would only hover a few centimeters off the ground but that had always been enough to ruin her sleep totally and completely.

She wondered if she'd be able to get any sleep at all tonight.

"No, I'm staring at your reflection." Said Suzuki. His phone lit up on the bedside table. Not good news, it was never good news, but he had been getting a very long and unbroken stream of bad news lately. A failed coup. Of all the things for people to waste his time with….

"Fine, you can stare at me if you want to…not that I have any idea why you want to…" said Masami as she finished her hair. She turned the vanity lights off and went over to the bed. She felt Touichirou's eyes following her. What was he staring at? Had he been away for so long that he had forgotten what his own wife looked like?

"Because you're beautiful." Said Suzuki after a few moments. He had taken his time picking out just the right way to phrase that. If had had just spoken without thinking he would have told her something like 'I want to go to bed with you right now' or 'I feel like I haven't touched you in years even though I know that it has only been a few months' or 'I wish that I could put you in some sort of hermetically sealed bubble for your own safety and never let you out but that would be a bad idea because in trying to keep you safe I would be destroying your immune system and also that may be a form of imprisonment and if I have no reason to imprison you because you are my wife and I trust you totally and completely and also you used to smell like cinnamon and now you don't and I want to pour cinnamon on you until you smell how you're supposed to and also I miss the way your skin feels against mine and also I miss the way your nose crinkles when you laugh and also I miss the way you bite your lower lip when you watch your dramas and also I love the way you tell me that I'm being ridiculous when I point out the inaccuracies in your dramas and also you are the only person who is allowed to call me ridiculous and that's because I care for you so much and I want nothing more than to pull you down next to me and go through all of your favorites until you're nothing more than a quivering puddle beneath me'…

Or something like that.

But he doesn't say any of that, of course, because then what would she think?

"Oh." Said Masami. She had her lotion uncapped and was about to empty the proper amount into her hands and then spread it where it needed to be spread and rub it where it needed to be rubbed before her skin got dry and itchy. She had been about to do that when he decided to throw her a curveball. It wasn't the first time he had called her beautiful. No, on their first date he had said in that same matter of fact tone that she was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen in his life up to that point. He said it just now in that same tone.

The one that she had found charming, back then.

And it was still…he could be charming in his honest. Charming and also brutal. He could be so brutally honest sometimes…all the times. Towards her. Towards what he thought of her. He didn't love her…not in the way that she loved him. He loved her in the sense that he loved the function that she served. She was brought back to that day…that day when she leanred just how brutally honest her husband could be…

Pointless.

He had called making love with her pointless.

But pleasurable.

He had also called it pleasurable…but it was so much more than that. If she had just been after pleasure she had something in her bedside drawer that was just as good and didn't cause her nearly so much grief. It wasn't just pleasure she had been after…at any point. With him or with…and she should not have been thinking about that. Her eyes flickered to her phone. She hadn't gotten so much as a text from him in so long.

"That's just the way I feel. I feel…that you're the most beautiful woman that I've ever seen and I enjoy watching you." Said Suzuki. He caught her lotion with his powers. She had just sort of frozen…and of course she had. She had been shocked because he had never come out and said it like that. That he needed her. That her been the layer underneath it all. He needed her and he missed her and…and he wanted her so badly…

The bed was starting to raise up off the ground.

He got himself under control.

"Really? I'm the most beautiful?" Said Masami. She reached out and took her lotion from where it was floating in the air. She smiled, just a little, just as much as she was feeling. That tone…that tone could be so cold…but he also be so…so…him. She made a point not to look at him. She knew that if she looked at him then all of those feelings would start up again. The ones that reminded her why she married him in the first place. She didn't…she didn't know why she felt the way she felt. Like she wanted to be with him but…but she also…she also had no idea if she…she just didn't know. Inside of her were a whirlwind of contradictions. She loved him and she wanted to run far away. She wanted to be held and she wanted to slap him across the face. She wanted him to get out of her life and she wanted to nail the doors and windows shut so she could never be without him ever again. She didn't know how she felt about him. Beneath the secrets and the cold exterior there was something else, something that only she could see, and sometimes she could see it and she just wanted…she didn't know what she wanted.

She wanted her husband back.

If she had ever had him in the first place.

"Yes. I say what I mean and I mean what I say." Said Suzuki. He wished that there was some way where she could just…understand him. If there was some way that she could just understand him totally and completely. Without him having to tell her what he imagined and thought and felt…because he thought and feelings and slipped into fantasies that he knew that he shouldn't have slipped in to…

He hated himself for how weak he was.

And if she knew then she would hate him right back.

And he could not handle her hating him.

"And that's what all the staring is about?" asked Masami as she worked her lotion into her skin. She could feel it again, his eyes on her, and she felt…she didn't know how she felt. She loved him. She loved him and also…it was hard to love him. Buried beneath all the anger and resentment that had been building and building and building there was still that core of…of love. For him. For how much of a pod person he could be. For how…how sweet he could be, sometimes, even though he was mostly sour. He was like the sour candy the kids ate by the boxful. Sour on the outside and then sweet on the inside…though the sweetness was often overpowers by the sourness.

"Yes. You're beautiful and I like to look at you." Said Suzuki. It had been far too long since they'd had any physical intimacy at all…and he was feeling it. He watched the path her hands took across her thighs. Had her nightshirt always been so short? This was the one with the kitten coming out of the sunflower on it…and he remembered, now, that there was a set of very itchy feeling pajama pants that went with that. He wondered why she wasn't wearing the matching pants.

He was not about to question it now.

"Like a work of art?" asked Masami. That had been one of their dates. Her husband didn't like art, not really, not in any way beyond a superficial 'that's a pretty picture' sort of way. He had taken her to the city art museum and spent exactly thirty seconds looking at each and every picture with the intensity that only he possessed. That was how he looked at her, too, it seemed. Like she was just there to be stared at and enjoyed on a purely superficial level.

"Yes. Like the one you like. The one of the woman at the piano. I forget the name of it but you remind me of her." said Suzuki. That had been one of their first dates. She cared for art more than he did. He didn't dislike art, no, he could appreciate it on a technical and ascetic level. She appreciated it on a different level, it seemed, and that was why he had taken her to art museum. Well that and he also hadn't known much about her back then. Not as much as he knew now. He knew, now, that her favorite genre of anything was historical drama. Another thing that he had learned about her was that she loved Spanish perfume more than any other kind. He knew more than her likes and dislikes, too, he also knew her various idiosyncrasies. Like how she always started everything on the left side even though she was right handed. Or like how she always feel asleep on her left, rolled over to her right, and woke up on her stomach. Or like how she always painted her finger nails red but would paint her toenails every other color but red.

She was so fascinating.

"Woman and Piano." Said Masami with a smile, a small one, but one that was slightly bigger than the one she had been wearing before.

"Yes, that one." said Suzuki. She was smiling again. There truly was no sight better in this world than her smile.

"That's the name of the painting. Woman and Piano." Said Masami. She capped her lotion and put it back. She was chilled, slightly, and debated whether or not she should wear her pajama pants too. The room was chilled but she'd warm up as she slept…but she was chilled now. It was spring, now, and the chill in the air hadn't quite gone away yet. She wasn't about to turn the heater back on, it wasn't that cold yet…and it would have been wasteful…and also the kids would wake up in the night and she'd find them watching bizarre television shows at midnight again.

"Not very creative." Said Suzuki. He made a mental note to remember the name of her favorite painting. When he ruled the world he'd have all of her favorites hung in the house for her. All of the best art in the world would be hers to look at for as long as she wanted. Everything in the world that she wanted would be hers. He'd give her the world a thousand times over and she was right to ask it.

"No. Not really." Said Masami. She decided on wearing the matching pants. She could always kick them off if she got hot later. It was very hot, sleeping next to another person, and her husband had been gone from her for long so that she had forgotten what a furnace he turned into at night.

"What are you doing?" asked Suzuki. She turned her back to him…and now that feeling was back. That tightness in his chest…he had the irrational feeling that she was turning his back on him in a more final sense than a literal one. Bu that was insane. She was his wife, she would never have turned her back on him, that was what marriage was after all.

"Getting pants. It's freezing in here." Said Masami as she looked through her drawers for the matching pants to this. She could feel the shirt riding up as she bent down. She pulled it down in the back. She could feel his eyes on her. She wished that he would just stop with all the staring already…and she also wished that he would never stop. At least he was showing her some appreciation for once in their marriage.

"You can come to bed. It's warm here." Said Suzuki. He made room for her even though there was already plenty of room…and he also didn't really want to be away from her. He wanted to be near her, as near to her s two people possibly could be.

"In a minute. Let me find my pants." Said Masami. It was getting late and she had to be up early to get the kids ready for school…and to beat Shigeko up. At some point she had turned into a vampire. Masami did not want to wake up to the smell of cooking and the sight of her husband and her daughter eating breakfast together…the breakfast that Touichirou had let their seven year old daughter cook on her own. She wished that she could have told him to knock that off, letting Shigeko cook, because one day there would be a terrible accident. One day Touichirou would not be there to stop there from being a terrible accident and then Masami would be the one to deal with the consequences.

"I can get you another blanket if you want. We have so many of them." Said Suzuki. He opened their closet with his powers. He did not want…she was a grown woman and she could wear whatever she wanted…but he just didn't want her any more dressed than she was now. Even this was too much…and at some point he had turned back into an adolescent. She didn't want to have another child therefore there would be no point in surrendering himself to her, in losing control with her….

"No, let me find my pants." Said Masami, her back still to him. Not that it helped. She could still feel his eyes on her. If she hadn't known any better she would have thought that he had been checking her out…but of course she knew better. There hadn't been a single time in their entire relationship that she had not been the one to initiate. Never once had he ever told her that he wanted to have sex. He had pretty much zero sex drive and she accepted that about him.

He wasn't the one she wanted to go to bed with, anyway.

And wasn't that just the worst? That even after all of this time she still thought of Fukuda. It wasn't about the sex. If Masami just wanted to get off she had a phone and a toy for that…and her husband who always got right to it when she asked. She had his body, it was the rest of him that she wanted. She wanted someone who wouldn't just roll off of her and tell her that unless they were making another mouth to feed and back to clothe the whole thing was pointless. Someone who actually held her afterwards and enjoyed it. Someone who…someone she….

Someone else.

"Do you have to?" asked Suzuki

"What?" asked Masami. There had been a note of…something…in his voice. Which was weird because there was never a note of anything in his voice. She stopped what she had been doing. She debated turning around…but then she would have to deal with whatever that had been. She was not in the mood to deal with anything right then.

"Find your pants? Do you have to?" asked Suzuki

"Yes, I do. What is with you tonight?" asked Masami

"I want…" said Suzuki. He choked on his words. He could not just come out and say it…but she was going to get dressed…and right then and there that was the last thing that he wanted. Her legs…she had such nice legs. He hadn't seen her legs, he hadn't seen much of her, since…since he couldn't even remember the date. He wanted her in that bed right then and there beside him. He wanted her thighs on either side of his head while he did that thing she liked….and that other thing…and then he wanted her nails to dig into his back while he brought them both to mutual satisfaction…

Be he could never ask her for that.

"Yes?" asked Masami as she dug through her dresser drawers. She had to find the pair that matched otherwise her whole rotation would be thrown off.

"I would not mind it if you joined me here, in our bed, in your current state of…being." Said Suzuki. The words tasted like ashes in his mouth. He could not believe that he had just admitted to needing her. How could he have admitted such weakness? He was complete all on his own. He had to be.

"Oh…alright." Said Masami. Well this was…odd of him. He never cared about how she looked beyond asking her, whenever she decided to have a barefaced pajama day, if she was sick again. He never expressed a preference before…for how she slept. Negligee or nightgown it was all the same to him. She could have been stark naked and he wouldn't have given a damn.

"Here." Said Touichirou as he used his powers to carry over a blanket from their closet. He covered her with is after she laid down beside him. He flicked the light switch and they laid down together in blissful darkness.

"Masami?" asked Suzuki as she settled into the bed next to him. The bed dipped with her weight. He smelled coconuts and tropical fruit. Her lotion.

"Yes?" asked Masami as she got comfortable.

"There's a distance between us." Said Suzuki. He chose his words carefully. He couldn't admit to himself let alone to her that he felt incomplete without her. That would have been well and truly awful.

"There is." Said Masami. She wondered what he was getting at. If he was cold then he should have gotten himself one of the blankets that he was piling onto her.

"Why?" asked Suzuki

"Why what?" asked Masami

"Why is there a distance between us?" asked Suzuki. She was laying so far away…but that was becoming her habit, now…and he did not care for it one bit.

"Because it's a big bed." Said Masami simply. She had plenty of bed. There was no need to crowd him. He needed his space and she would give it to him.

"That's true…but you used to come much closer to me." Said Suzuki. Had she changed? Had something changed in his long absence? The children had grown taller and his wife had grown…far more distant….

"Do you want me to come closer to you?" asked Masami. She wished that he would have said yes…or better yet just pulled her close. Puller her close and said that he loved her and that he was sorry for everything and that he would change and…and she had been watching way too much TV.

"If you want to." Said Suzuki. There, that was a good way to phrase it. That was it would have been her idea and he could have been absolved from the guilt of having let himself down so totally and completely.

"Don't give me that. Would it kill you to tell me what you want once in a while? I hate how it's always on me. I have to be the one to ask for everything. It's like you don't even give a damn." Said Masami. She crossed her arms as best as she could in a laying down position. What was he so afraid of? If he didn't want to be with her anymore then he should have said it. He should have just come out with it and then they both could have been free of each other already.

"That's not true. I care about you." Said Suzuki. That had wounded him, it had. How could she think that he was uncaring? After all that he did for her?

"You never show it." Said Masami. What she would have given for a kiss when she woke up. Being held as she slept. Even a simple 'how was your day, dear?' when he finally decided to emerge from his office and remember that he was not the only person living in the house.

"Yes I do. I support you and the children." Said Suzuki. How was that not showing it? If he hadn't cared for her then he would have just walked away and never come back. Women were so strange. Wives were so strange. She was so strange.

"…well you won't let me work." Said Masami after a moment. She missed it, the world of work. She had never wanted to crawl out the window and run down the street in her slipper back when she'd had a job. It hadn't been much of a job, taking care of the animals, but it had gotten her out of the house and she had been around other adults. She loved her children but this house…it wasn't so stifling when her husband wasn't there….but he was there and it was so stifling and he was so smothering, now, his presence and his aura and the blankets he kept on piling on top of her….

"You…want to work? Why?" asked Suzuki. He saw his aura, there, but that had not been the shocking part. Why did Masami want to work? She was well taken care of. Was there something she wanted to purchase? If there was she should have bought it. She should have done something with the truly obscene amount of money they had. The Japanese government was starting to look into his finances again…and that was always such a bother….

"I don't know, it's just a thought. I just…I feel so trapped in this house all the time…I only go outside to drop the kids off or pick the kids up or do something with the kids….I haven't even been down to the animals shelter since Shigeko's birthday…" said Masami. There were people there that she had never seen before, now, people that called her the newcomer. Her life's work had been the animals. That is before she had given her entire life to Touichirou. Before she had put everything on hold to be his wife and a mother to his children.

"You don't have to feel trapped. I would never stop you from leaving." Said Suzuki. She wasn't a prisoner…and he had no idea why she felt like one. He had prisoners, plenty of them, and she was not a prisoner in any way shape or form…not that he would be telling her about the prisoners anytime soon. No, she would not have approved at all…

"…do you want me to leave?" asked Masami

"Not at this hour, it isn't safe…but if you have somewhere to be then I can have you followed by a full security detail." Said Suzuki. He always had her followed when she left the house, it was for her own safety, but she never left the house this late at night…and the world was full of truly despicable people. He'd have her surrounded by his best men at all times. There would be marksmen in the trees and on top of buildings, too, in case anyone decided to make an attempt on her life. He wondered if there was some way to give her some sort of artificial force field…or a bubble made out of diamond…or some sort of suit of armor….power armor….or maybe some sort of giant mech…

And now he had regressed into his childhood self.

"I don't have anywhere to be and I don't want a full security detail….and I wouldn't even need one in the first place. This is a good neighborhood. The worst we have is people swiping Amazon packages and even that's rare." Said Masami. So now he chose to care about her wellbeing? She shifted a little closer to him. It was sweet, in a way, in his own personal way…but she did not want a full security detail following her around while she picked the kids up from school tomorrow or whatever else she had to do.

"I know. I had him dealt with." Said Suzuki. The audacity of some people. Thinking that they could steal from his family. It was a good thing he had the house occasionally watched. Not all the time, he couldn't spare the manpower yet, but enough times that he had noticed that someone had been stealing the things Masami bought.

Nobody stole from his family.

"Touichirou….is that more yakuza shit?" asked Masami. She wanted to squirm away from him, back to her side of the bed, but he had his arm around her. There was no way out.

"I haven't had need to them for quite some time. It's none of your concern, anyway, Masami. Just know that I would do anything to keep you safe." Said Suzuki. She was so warm…it felt good. Having her in his arms. She was….she was perfect…and not just because she was half naked and smelled like a scientist's interpretation of a tropical island. She was perfect because she was his. She was his and he…he was hers.

This was so perfect.

"Touichirou…why won't you just…just tell me what you do? We've been married for almost seven years, now, and I still have no idea what you do…or if it's going to put me and the kids in danger." Said Masami

"I would never put your or the children in danger. What I do…it's complicated. It's complicated and I know that there are parts of it that you would not approve of. Just know that I'm making a better world for myself and the children. Our children." Said Suzuki. He wanted to explain it to her, his dreams, and his plans…but she would never approve. She abhorred violence in all it's forms…and also his plan sounded insane on paper. He didn't think that it sounded insane but enough people's last words had been 'you're insane' or some version of it…and it was starting to…to stick. But he was not insane.

The world was.

What kind of a world was it where the powerful had to hide from the powerless? What kind of a world would it be where his daughter would not be acknowledged as the wonder that she was? What kind of a world would it be if he let history repeat itself for his daughter? And his son, too, if he ever planned on showing a modicum of talent. He needed to take over this world and remake it to what it was meant to be.

As something better than what it was.

"But are we….are we in danger? Please I just…I have no idea what you do. The day to day of it. I just know that…that you have to regularly put oceans between us…and that's just…it's just…..this whole thing is hard for me. You know? Well you don't…actually…" said Masami

"What's difficult for you? Masami…I can't tell you the whole of what I do. If I were to tell you the whole of what I do…you would not be happy…and you would be in danger. Just know that I'm gathering espers and that I'm trying…I'm trying to make a better world for our children. A better world than the one I grew up in." said Suzuki. He also spent last month hunting down traitors like dogs and destroying them in ways that he had never thought possible…but she did not need to know that.

"I told you already. Time and time again I have told you. The secrets are difficult for me, having you away for weeks or sometimes months on end is difficult for me….being alone in the house all day with the kids is difficult for me…and before you say anything I do not want servants in the house! I don't want a bunch of strangers in my house touching my things and bothering my children. I just want…I want my husband by my side. That's all I've ever wanted." Said Masami

"I am by your side. I'm right here and I won't go anywhere. I care for you and…and I won't have to put any oceans in between us…not for a while. I'm right here, by your side, and I always will be." Said Suzuki. He kissed the top of her head as he said it. There. Cinnamon.

He kissed her again.

"I know you are…I know." Said Masami. She didn't…she didn't know how to feel. It would have been so much easier if she had stopped loving him, if any and all of her feelings for him had died…but they hadn't. Even now, knowing that he was into some shady yakuza shit…she still loved him…and she wished that she didn't.

She really did.

But he was being uncharacteristically open with her, now. He was kissing the top of her head and burying his face in her hair. He did love her…in his own way. He could initiate sometimes….those times were just so rare that she could barely recall the last time….

Oh.

Right.

The time they had traumatized Sho.

"You smell like cinnamon." Said Suzuki. He pulled her close. In for a penny, in for a pound, he supposed. It was like a dam had broken. He had kissed her once, on impulse, and now he just could not stop. He was ever so slowly losing control. He was letting it slip through his fingers…and he sort of…it was not all bad. This was not the sort of loss of control that ended in death and destruction….

But he still should not have been losing control like this.

"I know. Sho threw a cinnamon shaker across the table at breakfast." Said Masami. She did not know what was wrong with that child. He had been so aggressive lately….nothing like either of his parents. Her husband may have had a temper but he never took it out on his family…so she at least had that to be grateful for….

"Are you alright?" asked Suzuki as he ran his fingers through her hair. That child…he does not want to think about the children now. He'd punish Boy later for hurting his mother. That was just not done. He knew better. It was one thing to be quarrelsome with his sister, children were quarrelsome little goblins, but it was another to throw something at the woman who had to be fileted like a fish to bring him into the world.

"Fine. No concussions, contusions, or abrasions." Said Masami. She almost wished that it had done some damage just so that she could see…him…again. But no, the Suzuki family had been in remarkable heath these past few months.

"Good. I'm glad that you're unharmed." Said Suzuki. He kissed her. She, eventually, kissed him back…and it was odd. Maybe she was just…tired? Upset with him? But he had done nothing to upset her. She was…women were a mystery to him.

"Touichirou…" said Masami when there was a moment between kisses. She wanted…she didn't know what she wanted. She wanted someone who…who was there for her. Who she could trust….and she wasn't sure if she trusted him. How could she trust a man who kept secrets from her? Who did things that she knew to be illegal?

"Masami….I lo….I want to…I care for you immensely." Said Suzuki. There. That had been…sort of what he meant. What he would have told her, if he had to tell her the absolute truth of his feelings, would have been something along the lines of 'The sun rises and sets with you and I have no idea what I would do without you and if I could I would build you a beautiful cage and never let you out so that I could keep you safe and happy for the rest of eternity and also can we have sex?' or something like that.

"I…I know you do…I know." Said Masami. She let him kiss her again. She kissed him back, eventually. It was better if she closed her eyes. If she closed her eyes she could remember…things that she should not have been remembering. The way that it had…just…been. So intimate. She wished…she had been without him…or anyone…for so long…

And it wasn't bad.

It was…ok.

Because she still loved her husband. Even after all that he put her through…she still loved him. Even though, afterwards, she felt so trapped. She was trapped there, with him, in that bed and that room…and she wanted so badly to climb out the window…to climb out and just….just run away….she had no idea where…but she waned to…

But she didn't.

"Masami…you're so…you're so beautiful."

But she really wanted to.


	46. Up Late All Alone

Sho woke up to an empty room.

And he didn't like it.

He knew that he was a big kid, now, and he knew that he had to be brave, but right then and there he did not feel very brave at all. He knew that it was dumb to be scared in his own house. Dad had called him ridiculous. He had said that it was ridiculous to be afraid of his own house. He had been living in this house for his entire life. There was nothing at all to be afraid of. Not even any spirits to bother him. He was being weak and ridiculous then, being so afraid that he was alone in his room that he was hiding under his blankets like a five year old.

He was six years old, now, much too old to be hiding like this.

He was six and he should not have been afraid. He was practically a big kid already. No, wait, he was totally a big kid already. Next year he'd be in the first grade and when your grades had numbers then you were a big kid…even though Sho didn't much want to go to the first grade. He'd be at a different school than Akira, and all of his other friends who he also cared about, and also he'd be stuck at big sis' school. The uniforms there were the worst!

And he didn't just hate them because big sis' uniform looked creepy in the dark.

Clothes didn't really come to life. He knew that. If clothes could really come to life then they would have done it already. Even if it was just girl's uniforms that came to life…and even if they did come to life they helped you fight other evil clothes…and stuff. He didn't know. Late night TV was so weird sometimes. He didn't get it entirely but it was fun to stay up late…even if mom did get upset with them when she found them watching TV in the middle of the night when they knew that they should have been in bed.

She never got mad at him, though.

Not in the real way. Not in the way that dad got mad at him. Dad was always mad at him…and he never even showed it. He never yelled or anything like that. He just said mean things and also hit him a bunch. All the while his face was the same, like he was bored, and maybe he was. Maybe he was getting bored of punishing Sho and he should have found something else to do with his time.

Dad would never stop punishing him.

And Dad was scarier than anything that went bump in the night. He could be scary without even trying. He could be mean and scary…but also weirdly nice, too. Like when he said that Sho's drawings were nice. Well he didn't say nice he said that Sho's drawings showed clear perspective and proportion…which mom said was the same as telling him that he drew a nice picture. He decided to trust mom on that. Even though it was so weird for dad to be nice. He did other weird stuff, too, like when he got Sho all of that cake on his last birthday…and also when he gave him and big sis all of his old toys. They were old and a lot of them were broken but some of them were stull fun.

He didn't get dad sometimes.

But he also didn't get big sis sometimes, either. He didn't get how she could always look so bored when she wasn't, how she could just sit there and dress up dolls for hours and pretend that they were talking and stuff, how she actually liked taking baths, how she got up early for school even though they didn't have to, why she kept a box of old candy from White Day hidden under that creepy doll dad got her on her bed, why she even still had that creepy doll that looked just like her only it had evil eyes that followed you across the room and-

And  
Sho got out of bed.

He had to…to…to go to the bathroom! Yes, that was it. He had to pee and he could not risk wetting the bed because he was way too old to be doing stuff like that and also Dad would have been mad if he found out that Sho still wet the bed sometimes. He couldn't help it. Even if he went to bed without having drank any water at all since bedtime he still sometimes wet the bed. Sometimes from bad dreams and sometimes for no reason at all. Big sis never wet the bed. She was perfect, as far as mom and dad were concerned…

Well as far as dad was concerned.

Dad liked big sis. They always hung out together. When he and big sis got home from school she'd always go and do her homework in dad's office and then one time Sho even caught them playing Chinese checkers. It was a boring game but he would have liked to have been invited. That was the polite thing to do. He always invited dad and big sis to come and play with him and mom. Well, when mom was feeling up to playing. She was tired all the time now. Sho wondered if she was sick or just tried. Maybe she was turning into an old person. They slept a lot, old people, because they had lived a long time and living was exhausting.

Mom had said that living was exhausting.

Sho didn't know why she had said it. They were drawing pictures in her room, he had been drawing a dragon cat and she had been drawing a real cat, and she just put her pencil down and looked at him and said that living was exhausting…and Sho didn't know what he was supposed to say to that so he just hugged her and then she hugged him back way too tight…and then they had gone back to drawing like nothing had happened.

Living was exhausting.

Sho didn't get it. He understood being super tired, he was super tired right then, but that was because he was supposed to have been asleep. He understood getting exhausted when you hadn't had enough sleep or when you had been doing a lot of playing that day but just living itself….he didn't get it. He wanted to ask dad, he did know a lot of stuff even if he was mean about it, but he didn't. Dad was…dad did not like him. Dad was always on him about something and he was always saying the meanest things and…and Sho did not want to talk to him more than he had to.

Or maybe he did.

Maybe he wanted dad to treat him more like he treated big sis.

But, obviously, that was never going to happen. Dad was for big sis and mom was for him and that was just the way that it was going to be. Even now Sho could hear…dad. He was awake and he was talking to someone. Sho changed course. He had really only been going to the bathroom to see if big sis was there. He always got scared when they were separated in this house…this house which was a different house entirely at night. Sho moved quickly and quietly, like a ninja, so he didn't step on any of the creaky parts of the floor. He made sure not to because he didn't want to make the house upset…even though that's a stupid way to think. It was a house. It didn't have any feelings. Houses were houses and people were people and monster houses were not real they were just in movies and this was not a monster house or a haunted house, those were real, this was just a regular house and he was fine and-and-and he knew that he should have just gone back to his room but-

But he was too scared.

So he went to the living room. Even though Dad didn't care at all if he was scared. Even though Dad would be more likely to punish him for being scared than to pick him up and tell him that everything was going to be alright. Even though dad would probably call him annoying and underfoot and tell him to get lost like he always did. Maybe that was what he wanted. Maybe he wanted to be afraid of something that was really scary. Something that he had a reason to be scared of.

He wanted his mom.

But she was asleep and exhausted all the time, anyway.

He wanted his big sis.

But she was probably in the bathroom or something and he shouldn't have needed her anyway.

He kind of wanted his dad.

Even though his dad was the biggest jerk in the whole world.

He knew that he should have been fine on his own. He should have been alright just on his own and he should have been a person all on his own, too. That was what dad said. He said that he was a complete person all on his own and that Sho needed to grow up to be a complete person all on his own. Sho didn't get it at all. If dad was a complete person all on his own then why did he marry mom? And why did he and mom make their kids, too, if dad was compete all on his own?

And why was dad watching TV with big sis if he was complete all on his own?

"Do you like this? I thought you would. You have a fascination with royalty." Said Dad. He was sitting on the couch next to big sis. He wasn't pushing her off or telling her that she was being annoying or telling her that she needed to learn to give him space. No. He was sitting right next to her and they were watching some really boring show together for no reason other than the fact that they were both super boring people.

"This is interesting, dad, I'm learning a lot." Said big sis. She was in for it once mom woke up…or maybe not because she was with dad. Dad said that he hated being bothered….also he said that TV was banal. That was a word which meant stupid, mom had said so. Sho had never known dad to like watching TV…but of course he would be watching something boring. He and big sis could be boring together. They could watch all of the boring TV in the world together. Sho didn't care.

"I do wish that your fascination would move away from the royalty of Europe, though, Daughter. You are Japanese after all." said dad

"I'm half Japanese." Said big sis. Even though she was all Japanese. She got the half of mom and dad that was Japanese and he got the half of mom and dad that wasn't. That was why people were always trying to touch his hair and when he and mom were out together they either talked really slowly or talked to mom though big sis.

"You're Japanese and yet you're obsessed with American and European media. All of those films you watch are made in America and are about princesses of European descent. I really don't understand you sometimes, Daughter." Said Dad. He didn't say it like she was gum that was stuck to the bottom of his shoe. No, he was the Sho gum and she was the person.

"What do you mean? You picked this out." Said big sis. Sho thought that she would have been in for it, talking to dad like that…but of course she hadn't been. This was big sis. She was never in for it even when she talked to dad in ways that would have gotten Sho thrown across the room. It wasn't fair…

"I know. I chose this because I knew that you were fascinated by the royals of Europe. All of your dolls are of European royalty. Well aside from the Arabian one." said Dad

"She's Princess Jasmine. I like her a lot. I don't think that her country is a real one, though." said big sis

"I've seen that film. It looks a bit like ancient Baghdad." Said dad

"What's Baghdad?" asked big sis

"A city that I've traveled to on a few occasions. Dreadfully hot." Said dad

"I thought that you didn't feel hot and cold." Said big sis

"I can I just choose not to. I went there before I mastered the ability to ignore temperature extremes." Said dad. Sho wished that he could do that, too. He hated it when it was summer and it got super hot outside and his shirt stuck to him and his hair got all wet and sweat got in his eyes. Dad never sweated n matter how hot it got outside. It was both cool and weird.

"Can you teach me how? Then I wouldn't have to wear snow pants in the wintertime." Said big sis. Mom still made them wear snow pants like they were still little kids. Sho thought that they were annoying but big sis really hated them. That made sense, she was a girl, and girls hated pants. He didn't get it one bit.

"I could. Wait until the temperature becomes unpleasant. Though I do not understand your aversion to wearing pants. Is it a female thing?" asked dad

"I don't like pants. They're uncomfortable. I don't even like tights that much. It might be a girl thing. Boys are so unlucky, they can't wear dresses and skirts." Said big sis

"They can. Clothing is just clothing at the end of the day. I've worn robes and kimonos but I find myself most comfortable like this." said dad

"Is that why you never wear anything else? Not even pajamas?" asked big sis

"Yes. I see no reason why I shouldn't be comfortable at all times." Said dad

"I wish that I could do that, too, be comfortable all the time." Said big sis

"Why not? I don't see why you can't be comfortable all time. You're a child. It's not as though you have many social obligations which require you to dress a certain way. Well there is your school, of course, but I was under the impression that you enjoyed wearing your uniform. Was I wrong in my assumption?" asked dad

No, dad, I like my uniform but sometimes I just have to wear things I don't like. Mostly it's pants that I don't like. I hate that, sometimes, I have to wear pants. Like when it gets too cold out, even too cold for tights, then mom makes me wear pants and I don't like it. I don't even like tights and leggings that much but I really hate pants. I just don't like the cold that much I guess." Said big sis. She was talking about things she liked and disliked…and dad was listening. Dad wasn't telling her that she was being annoying. Dad was telling her that he didn't care how she felt…because he did care, he cared about big sis and how she felt about things and what she thought about things and-and-and this just wasn't fair!

"Well then when you get older I'll have to take you someplace warm." Said dad. No…dad did not just say that….he never took them with. He said that they were too young, that they would be underfoot, that they had to stay in school and stay home and keep mom company at home….and mom had to stay because it wasn't safe for her…

Because she didn't have powers.

Like Sho didn't have powers, not really. He could make his colors show and sometimes he could move things without touching them if he got mad enough but aside from that there was nothing else at all that he could possibly do….nothing that he could do that could impress dad enough to make him even think of taking him with…like he was planning on taking big sis with….

"You'd take me with you?" asked big sis. Well now she looked happy. Sho could tell by her colors. They were showing. Pink and blue. Two colors. Dad had two colors too, red and yellow, but he was mostly yellow. Dad and big sis just had everything in common now didn't they?

"Yes, when you got older. Right now you're very small and you require a level of care that I simply cannot perform. When you become older and more independent then I'll take you with me. I could use the loyal and useful help." Said dad

"And mom and Sho, too?" asked big sis

"I suppose that at some point I'll have to take your brother with me….he is to inherit the world after all…though your mother would be happiest here. She loves this house and she would not be safe if I were to bring her with. You can defend yourself and your brother…there's time for him. Your mother would be in too much danger. Besides, I would never take her from a place she loves so much. I want her to be happy. Like a goldfish in a tank. People are a bit like fish in that they don't like to be moved from one habitat to another. You and I are different. Well you, and I, and your brother as well….possibly…it's too early to tell with him." said dad

"I want Sho to come with. He'd be so happy coming with you." Said big sis. Sho…he knew that she was just telling dad things that she knew Sho would have wanted her to say. She probably didn't want him there. She probably wanted it to just be her and dad…like now. That was why she hadn't woken him up, because she wanted it to just be her and dad….

"Yes, I suppose he would. He'll come with when he's older just as you will, I suppose. You're both going to be getting older at some point and then you'll be ready for more responsibility. You'll take to it, I know you will, and your brother…there is time for him yet. Time for him to become more like you." Said dad. Sho wished that dad had just hit him over the head…it would have felt better than hearing what he had just heard…

"Sho would be really good at working for you. He's smart and brave and he gets good…ok…grades at school and I bet that if he worked for you and if I worked for you then we'd all be really happy together." Said big sis

"Yes. I suppose so. The world…it will be in good hands when I can no longer rule it. Your hands…and your brother's. His children's and their children's and so on and so forth." Said dad

"Dad…why does Sho get to be the one to inherit the world? I mean…you always say that Sho is going to take over for you…" said big sis.

"Because he's my son and that's how these things go. He'll have his children and they will be Suzuki's. You'll have your children and they will belong to whichever man or men you chose to have them with." Said dad

"But I'm a Suzuki and then if I have kids then they'll be my kids and then they'll be Suzuki's too. Because they came from me and I came from you." Said big sis

"Yes, if you marry your brother." Said dad. Sho stuck out his tongue. Gross. He didn't want to be married to anyone first of all, marriage meant that you had to have a wife and a wife was like a big sister and a mom all in one but you also had to kiss her…which was in no way appealing at all. Second of all he was not going to marry his sister! That was gross and wrong and just-just-just not ok! At all!

"Dad….I can't marry my brother…because he's my brother…and that would not be ok. That's outside of nature's laws. I heard that at school. People are not allowed to marry their brothers and sisters." Said big sis. Sho agreed. He really agreed. He liked his big sis but not like that. He'd never liked a girl like that. The kind of like that made you want to hold their hand and stuff. He barely even liked holding hands when they went on their walks at school. He always tried to get paired with Akira or someone else. Girls always got all giggly when you held hands with them even if the teacher made you. They read into stuff way too much.

"When you rule the world, help to rule it, then you can marry whoever you want to." Said dad

"So then I could marry someone who…who wasn't an esper?" asked big sis

"No. That would be unacceptable and if you were to do that then I would no longer accept you as my daughter. You know better than to waste yourself like that." Said dad. He sounded bored, as usual, but his words were mean. They were mean and…and poor big sis. She wasn't used to hearing mean words like that….and she didn't deserve to be….even though part of him was almost…happy…that he wasn't the only person who dad was mean to.

"But what if I met someone and I liked them and then they liked me back? Even though they weren't supposed to like me back because other people made fun of them? But I still liked them a lot and I wanted to be their…girlfriend…and stuff?" asked big sis

"If that man, that hypothetical man, were an esper then I would have no problem with that. You can marry whichever esper you chose. I don't care if he's slim or obese, a genius or a moron, terribly older than you or terribly younger, or anything at all about him beyond the fact that he is an esper…well I would prefer someone close to your level but I cannot control the fact that there are so few people like us." Said dad. Big sis looked kind of sad there, from what Sho could see, and he kind of felt bad for her. He figured that she liked that guy who was always talking to her when he and mom came to pick her up from school. Sho wanted to kick his butt, of course, because that was what you were supposed to do when some guy tried to hold your sister's hand. He didn't know why you were supposed to beat the guy up, just that you were. Still he wouldn't be like dad and be all 'I get to pick the person you marry' or whatever he meant.

Dad wouldn't try to find a girlfriend for him…would he?

Because that would have been the worst. Not only did he have to have a girlfriend but he had to have one who dad picked. Someone mean and boring who probably thought watching the grass grow was fun and sweet foods were gross and that manga needed to be colored in even though it really didn't and it was a waste of time and-and-and-

Dad was such a jerk sometimes.

"Yes dad. I understand." Said big sis. She seemed sad then…so sad…and Sho…he didn't want to be there while she was sad. He didn't want her to be sad and he wanted to tell dad, to march right up to him and tell him, that he was being the biggest jerk in the entire world and that he needed to knock it off and just be a nice and normal person like everyone else had to be!

But he didn't.

He just went back to his bed and laid down and tried to sleep. Even though the room was scary and the doll with the creepy eyes was watching him…he still laid down and tried to get some sleep. Even though he felt bad for big sis. Even though he felt bad for himself. Even if dad had said some mean stuff he had still been talking to big sis…had still been listening to her…and that had been…

More than he had ever done with Sho.


	47. Kendo Sword

"Sho, be careful with that."

They were in the Treasure Room again. It was the most fun room in the house. Well the third most fun room. It went their bedroom, the TV room, and then Treasure Room. The Treasure Room went fourth if you counted the backyard as a room. Which Mob did not because it was outside but which Sho did because it had high walls all around it. They had fought, well had words, about that before. They didn't fight. Not really.

Mob hated fighting.

Almost as much as she hated that sword.

"I am being careful." Said Sho as he swung his sword around again. Big sis had followed him to the Treasure Room. They had been in dad's office but then dad kicked them out because he had to talk meanly at people in Mandarin. Sho didn't know what he was saying but he knew that tone. Someone was going to get it.

At least not Sho this time.

He had gone to the Treasure Room because mom said that she was too exhausted to play. That was normal for her. She was always super tired…and Sho had no idea why. All he knew was that this was life now and also he wasn't supposed to call Fukuda because there was nothing that he could do about mom being tired. Dad had said so and Sho did not want to be the next one in for it so he did what dad said.

"No you're not. You almost hit me." Said Mob as she tried to pop the arm back on one of the robots from dad's old toy box. At least she thought that this was another one of dad's old toy boxes. They had found another with a lot of boy's toys in it. These were made out of metal and didn't have Suzuki written on them. They must have been dad's, though, because mom would have played with girl's toys when she was a kid.

"Almost isn't the same as actually hitting you." Said Sho. He swung his sword near to her but not hitting her just so she could see the difference between him hitting her and him not hitting her. This was a very heavy sword, she would have noticed if he'd hit her.

"You should still be careful." Said Mob. She gave up on the robot and tried to scoot away so she didn't end up getting hit. That was a kendo sword, a real one, and she'd seen kendo before. Dad said that it was the only sport in the entire world worth following and they had stayed up late and watched some together. She liked staying up late with dad even though she was always super tired in the morning. It was nice being with dad….sometimes. Not all of the times but sometimes. Plus if she was spending time with dad then dad wasn't spending time with Sho and then Sho was safe for a few more hours at least. She would always do whatever she could to keep her little brother safe.

Even if he could be very annoying sometimes.

"You're not the boss of me." Said Sho

"I know that I'm not the boss of you, Sho, I just don't feel like getting hit with that sword." Said Mob. That thing looked heavy and dangerous. She had seen kendo on TV. Those guys wore all of that protective clothing for a reason…though if she got hurt then she could see Fukuda again…but then she would have had to bother mom and dad and Fukuda, too, and Mob did not want to bother that many people…or anyone, for that matter.

"If you don't want to be here then go and hang out with dad some more." Said Sho. She and dad were best friends now, it seemed, so she should have gone back to him. She was his favorite after all. He let her stay up all night all the time even on school nights….it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all.

"I can't. Dad told us to get out. We should always do what dad says. That way he won't punish us." Said Mob. It made sense, perfect sense, but Sho just would not even start to listen to her….

"Yeah, like he'd ever punish you." Said Sho. Big sis punished….the thought was crazy. Dad had never punished her in the whole seven years she had been alive. He wasn't going to start now. Why would he? He had Sho there, already, to punish as often as he wanted.

"He doesn't punish me because I don't give him any reason to." Said Mob. She wished that Sho could have just understood that dad only didn't like him because of how he acted. All he had to do was be the person who dad wanted him to be and then dad would like him just as much as he liked her and they could have all been happy again like they had way back when she had been little.

"No, he doesn't punish you because you're his favorite. He's always hanging out with you and stuff…it's so dumb." Said Sho. Dad only liked her best because she was boring, like him. It was important to like people for who they were, mom said so, and dad should have listened to mom. You had to like people for who they were, not who you wanted them to be.

"You get mom and I get dad. We decided a long time ago." Said Mob. That was how it worked in their family. In other families it was different but that didn't matter. They were this family and they had to do things the way that worked for them….even though it wasn't fair that Sho only got mom and she only got dad…it wasn't fair at all.

"I know we did…and it's not fair!" said Sho. It had been a lot more fairer when mom hadn't been tired all the time…but now she was. She was tired all the time and she didn't want to play nearly as often as she used to but dad was always wanting to hang out with big sis…and it just was not fair!

"No, it's not. I wish that dad liked you as much as he likes me, Sho, I really do…but he won't like you if you don't do what he says." Said Mob. She wished that she were better at talking, she really did. She wished that she knew that secret combination of words that could make Sho listen to her and listen to dad and just….just listen….

"I do! I do what he says!" said Sho. He lived under dad's rules and he followed them! He didn't bring any animals inside of the house and he never hung out with his friends outside of school and he was always quiet and out of the way when he was home! What more did dad want from him, anyway!?

"No, you don't. He doesn't like loud noises or running around or liking things that he doesn't like or being around him when he doesn't want you to be around him. You just have to like everything that he likes and be very quiet and then he'll like you as much as he likes me." Said Mob. There. That seemed like the right combination of words…though maybe not. She could see Sho's colors, his aura, and maybe…maybe she should have chosen a different combination of words entirely. Dad said that you should always say what you mean and mean what you say…but that only worked if the other person understood what it was that you were trying to tell them…which Sho did not…

"That's stupid. Why should I have to change who I am for him to like me? I'm not a doll. I'm not you." Said Sho. That had hurt and not he had to hurt her. She didn't just get to hurt him like that! She didn't! She didn't! SHE DIDN'T!

"I never said that you were a doll." Said Mob trying her best to be as clear as possible. How she had managed to call him a doll with what she said she did not know but she really was sorry…and she just wished…she wished that this were easier. This was hard. This was so hard….

"You want me to act like one. You're such a doll, you know that? You're like that doll you have with the string in it's back. You only talk when someone-someone makes you and you-you only do things that dad wants you to do. It's like you're a doll…and I'm not. I'm not a doll!" said Sho

"Sho, I never called you a doll…and I don't think that you're a doll…and I don't think that I'm a doll either. We're people, Sho, and people are not dolls." Said Mob

"Fine. Not a doll then. A robot. You're like a robot." Said Sho

"I'm not a robot either." Said Mob

"You are too like a robot. You walk and talk like a machine. It's creepy and weird and people say that you're creepy and weird. That's why they call you Mob, because you're creepy and weird. You're just like dad." Said Sho

"Sho…you're saying a lot of mean things to me right now and you're really hurting my feelings." Said Mob tying to use her big kid words like mom was always telling Sho to. She just…she had to make herself as clear as possible. That was all. She had just not been making herself clear enough this whole time.

"You and dad are like a couple of robots. No wonder he likes you so much better than me." Said Sho

"Little brother…you're being mean and I…I want you to stop. Come on, you can swing the sword at me as much as you want to and I won't say anything." Said Mob even though she did not want to risk getting hit on the head with a heavy kendo sword. Well better hit in the head then having her heart broken because her little brother wasn't acting like a little brother was meant to act. He was meant to be her friend…and they had been friends since the day mom and dad had brought him home from the hospital. He had been so small…and his hair had been really spiky. It had felt good under her hands. He had smiled when she touched his hair…

"Why don't you just go away? I'm busy in here. You go off and be robots with dad while I stay here and do fun stuff." Said Sho. He didn't know why he was saying all of this…why he wanted to hurt her…why he wanted her to feel as bad as he did every single day…she was his sister and he loved her but…but he just felt so bad all the time….

"Brother…please. You know that I get scared if we're separated….and so do you. This is the scary part of the house." Said Mob

"Liar." Said Sho

"I am not." Said Mob

"Yes you are. You're a liar. You're a liar a million times over. You don't get scared if we're separated and you don't care if I get scared either…which I don't because I'm a big kid now." Said Sho

"Yes I do. I care so much about you and if you get scared. I love you and I am not a liar. Don't call me that." Said Mob. He did not get to call her that. She had never once lied to him in her entire life. She did so much to keep him safe…and now she was having mean thoughts. Bad thoughts. Thoughts that she should not have been having about her little brother and how he had no right to be mean to her and how he needed to talk to her nicely because she did so much for him….

"Yes you are. You're Shigeko….you're Mob. You're Mob the amazing lying robot doll girl." Said Sho

"I am not!" said Mob. The stack of boxes next to her toppled over. A dusty pillow flew out of the box and knocked over the block tower she and Sho had made before…back when they were friends. They weren't friends anymore….why weren't they friends anymore?

"Yes you are. You're a lying robot doll girl named Mob. You don't care if I get scared if we're separated. If you did then you wouldn't leave me alone in our room all night so you and dad could go hang out and watch boring TV in the living room together like a couple of boring robots recharging their batteries so they can be boring in the morning." Said Sho

"You…you can hang out with me and dad too, if you want." Said Mob even though she didn't want Sho to be there. Well she always wanted to spend time with her little brother but she didn't like spending time with her little brother and her dad at the same time. Dad…it was hard to keep dad's attention off of Sho when he was in the room. Plus Sho was bad at staying still and Dad liked it when you stayed perfectly still and listened to him talk…and it could get very boring very fast but you couldn't show it or say so.

"Why would I want to do that?" asked Sho even though he really wanted to. He wanted to be there so bad…and he wanted to be big sis so badly…because then dad would like him. Dad was a boring jerk but he was still…dad.

"Because…because you're acting like you want to. I don't think that you would like it…dad doesn't like it when you act like…you…but if you wanted to come and watch TV with me and dad-" said Mob

"No. I don't want that. I don't need to hang out with you and dad. Leave me alone. Leave me alone all night. I don't want to hang out with you and dad and be boring." Said Sho

"Now you're the liar." Said Mob. That was mean but…but she was losing control…and she was not supposed to lose control. Especially not at her little brother. Things were floating and her powers were prickling at her skin and her colors were showing and now she was saying mean stuff….no wonder dad didn't want her to be the one to inherit the world. Not that she wanted to be the princess of the world or anything…she just didn't like it when dad talked about how because she was a girl she could never be as much as Sho could be because he was a boy.

"I am not! I am not a liar and you don't get to call me names!" said Sho

"But you get to call me names?! Sorry…sorry. You can call me all the names you want. It's ok." Said Mob. She had to be a good person. She had to be a good daughter and she had to be a good big sister and she had to be a good Suzuki. She had to be….good.

"See? You're such a doll. You won't even fight with me." Said Sho

"I don't want to fight…I never wanted to fight. I love you and when you love someone you never want to fight with them. I'm bad at talking, Sho, you know that. I just meant that it didn't seem like you were telling the truth when you said that you didn't want to spend time with dad and I." said Mob

"I was…" said Sho. What did he want to spend time with them for, anyway? They only did boring stuff together. They watched boring shows and talked about boring stuff and just were…boring! So boring…the most boring. Yeah, he didn't want to hang out with them anyway. He didn't care if he got up in the middle of the night and he was all alone…..it didn't matter one bit!

"It's ok if you want to but I just think that you wouldn't have a good time at all. I have to hang out with dad because if I don't then he'll get mad at you or he'll notice something about you that makes him mad and then-" said Mob

"I get it! He likes you better!" said Sho swinging that sword dangerously close to her head. He almost lost his grip on it. It was big and he was small. It was heavy and he was weak….like dad was always saying.

"But he can like you, too, little brother. He can like you just as much as he likes me." Said Mob

"Will you just stop talking already, doll girl? I'm not pulling your string." Said Sho. He did not need her to rub it in his face…how she was born right and he was born wrong. She had powers and he barely…and dad liked her because she knew how to act and he didn't…the list went on and on and on…and he wished that it would end…that it would all just end and that she would just leave him all alone already so he could do…something. He didn't know what but he knew that he wanted to be left alone.

"Sho, dad would like you a lot more if you just stopped doing…all of the things that you do. If you acted more like me, more like who he wanted you to be, then he would-" said Mob

"I said shut up!" said Sho. He didn't know what happened. The sword was in his hands. It was heavy. He swung it at her to shut her up.

He didn't mean to hit her in the face.

He didn't mean for her to end up on her back.

He didn't mean for her dress to fly up so her underwear showed.

He didn't mean, also, to make her face all bloody.

"I-I'm sorry! I-I-I-I didn't mean to! I-" said Sho. He pulled her up until she was standing. She had her eyes closed and she was closing her hands into fists…and her colors were showing worse than ever…and the room was shaking…and there was so much dust in the air…and it was hard to breath…and now all of the boxes were floating….

"Conceal, don't feel. Conceal, don't feel." Said Mob over and over again. She was saying it out loud and in her head. She wished that she had gloves. Elsa had gloves and they helped…but there was no way to externally control psychic powers. Dad had said so a million and one times. She wished that there was some way to stop this…she felt like she was going to explode…she could see her aura and feel her powers reaching out everywhere…

And then they weren't.

She felt like her energy was being sucked up like the time she got her hair stuck in the vacuum robot when she was three. It was quick and it hurt a little…but things were calming down. She opened her eyes. Things were setting themselves down on the ground….and the windows opened on their own…and there was a lot of red around…

Red like Sho's aura.

Red like dad's aura.

And red like the stain on the front of her shirt. That was bad. She liked this shirt. This was her pink shirt with the white bows and it only went with this skirt and mom said that she had to take good care of her clothes because she ordered them from expensive places and also she was a big girl now and she had to be responsible for her own things…

"Ouch." Said Sho. It felt like the time he had gotten his finger stuck in a finger trap and no matter how much he pulled it just kept on eating him. What was that? He had never felt that before in his life. It felt like…not good.

Not good at all.

And then things got even worse.

"Son. Daughter. Explain."

Sho stopped breathing. He let go of big sis and took a step back. Dad may have sounded like a robot but even robots could have tones. He had argued with the robot who lived in his tablet enough times to know that robots could get annoyed. Dad was not even a robot, not really, even though he acted like one. He was a person and he could get mad.

And he was mad.

"Daughter, explain." Said Suzuki when both of his children refused to tell him why he was taken from his work by a small earthquake localized on this room of the house. He knew what he had seen and felt…Daughter had been close to an explosion….and it was all son's fault if her bloody nose and black eyes were something to go off of.

"Sho accidentally hit me with the kendo sword. I'm ok." Said Mob. She took all of her bad feelings and locked them away to where they couldn't get out. She needed to stay calm and not explode. Power was nothing without control. Dad had said so.

"A kendo sword?" asked Suzuki. There, on the ground….Son had been PLAYING with it? He exorcised the emotions that brought to the surface…and there were so many. Son had no right to play with that and he had no right to strike Daughter with it. Striking an unarmed opponent…quarreling with his own sister…striking someone he had no reason to strike…sowing discord in the family unit….

He wondered why the universe tormented him with this child.

"Yes. That one. But I'm sure that it was an accident." Said Mob. Sho was scared, he always made himself small when he was scared. He liked to try and disappear even though it wouldn't work. He wasn't the inviable man. Dad knew where he was and dad….dad's aura looked so mad…and Mob had no idea how she could make this better besides telling dad that it had been an accident.

It had been.

It had to have been.

Because Sho was her little brother and he would never do anything to hurt her on purpose.

"That is a real kendo sword…and it's olden than I am. When, exactly, did that look like a toy?" asked Suzuki. He directed that question at his ingrate of a Son.

"I don't know." Said Sho quietly. He looked down at his feet while he talked to dad. He didn't want to look dad in the eyes. He had very scary eyes sometimes.

"That is not an answer, Boy. Now explain to me how you even managed to lift a kendo sword and why, after you had managed to lift it, you thought that the best course of action would be to harm your sister with it?" asked Suzuki. He was being tried. That was the only answer as to why the universe had given him this child for a son. Fate could be kind and fate could be cruel…and so could Suzuki.

"Dad, it was an accident. It was my fault. I was the one who-" said Mob. Dad was going to hit Sho. Dad was going to hit him and it was all her fault…and she felt like she was going to cry. Something was still pulling on her powers but she didn't even have it in her to worry about that. Sho was going to get hit and it was her fault and hers alone for pushing him to smacking her in the face with the bamboo kendo sword.

This was all her fault.

"Daughter. I don't believe I was speaking to you. Was I?" asked Suzuki. Daughter was trying to defend her brother. He should have punished her, too, for being weak like that…but absorbing her excess energy was punishment enough. She should have been weak, now, weak and helpless like the seven year old girl she was. That was punishment enough. Suzuki couldn't even imagine what that kind of hell was like.

"No, but dad…but you don't have to punish Sho-" said Mob

"Daughter. Be silent. You are the child and I am the adult. You do not command me, I command you. Do you understand?" asked Suzuki

"Yes, dad." Said Mob softly. Powerless. She was powerless to stop this…this thing that she had been the one to cause…this was all her fault. All of this was all her fault…and there was nothing that she could do…she felt like she was going to throw up.

Or cry. Whichever came first.

"Good. I'm glad that you understand. Now go to your mother. Your brother and I have quite a few things to discuss." Said Suzuki. There was a good child. Why had fate chosen to give him the perfect child in the form of that foundling but had given him…that…for a blood son. He could not begin to understand. He could not begin to understand anything but the fact that he had, once again, a lesson to teach his son. Hopefully this one would stick better than all of that others had.

"I…yes, dad." Said Mob. She gave Sho's hand a squeeze as she passed. There was nothing else that she could do. This was all her fault….all of it….

She was the one who should have been careful. Not Sho.


	48. Eavesdropping

"There you go, pretty as a picture."

Mob touched her nose. It wasn't crooked anymore. It didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. Nothing but her stomach and her heart. This had all been her fault. She shouldn't have made Sho hit her on accident and she should have done more to convince that dad it had been an accident. Now Sho was being punished and it was all her fault….she was such a bad big sister.

"Shigeko, what do you say?" asked Masami trying her best to keep her voice level. She had left then alone for ten seconds and now this happened. This was all her fault…mostly her fault. She had been selfish again, lately, but the children were six and seven years old…and they knew how much their father hated it when they fought. They knew how much it hurt their mother when they fought. But they still carried on like cats and dogs.

"Thank you for fixing me up, Fukuda." Said Mob. She sounded like a robot there…just like Sho had said. She hadn't been mean he had been right. There was that saying about how the truth hurts. Well Mob knew the truth and it hurt a lot. A lot, a lot.

"You're welcome, Little Lady. Always happy to help. There anything else I should take a look at? Any more concussion, contusions, or abrasions you'd like to get fixed up?" asked Fukuda. She had grown so much…both of the kids had. Probably. He still hadn't seen Sho. He had been away from all of them for so long…he reminded himself that this was not his family. Masami was not his wife and Shigeko was not his daughter and Sho was not his son and this was not his life. He was there to do a job, that was all, and now that he had done it he had to get a move on before the President started to suspect anything or just got pissed off. Whichever came first.

"No, I don't think so. I mean I don't know if Sho is ok or not. He was ok when I left but…but I don't know." Said Mob softly. Sho was probably not ok and it was all her fault. Next time she got hit in the face with a kendo sword she was going to keep quiet about it and keep her powers under control.

"We're fine." Said Masami. She didn't…she didn't want him in the house. She did and she didn't. She wanted to hold him and never let him go…but she also wanted him to head back to wherever it was he went when he wasn't patching one of them up so she could go back to being exhausted in peace. This was exhausting. Her daughter, her husband, they were both so exhausting. So draining.

"Mom's been tired a lot of the time, too, and Sho and I are worried about-" said Mob. Mom was still in her night clothes. She was so tired she didn't even match her top and her bottoms even though you always had to be matching so you looked nice. Mom had said so. Mom was in her sleeping clothes and her hair was all frizzy and she didn't have any makeup on, which mom said that adults had to wear all the time to look nice, and it was just…she was worried about mom. She was worried about mom and Sho and the worry was making it feel like she had a rock in her stomach. She knew that this wasn't the sort of thing that Fukuda could fix. He was a healer, not an exorcist, and she needed someone to exorcise all of these bad feelings from inside of her.

"I said that we were fine. Now go and play, Shigeko, you're all healed up now. No need to take up more of Fukuda's time than you need to." Said Masami. She knew the look she was getting. She knew that she had spoken too harshly. Shigeko had been through a scare and she needed her mother…but her mother needed her space. Shigeko had almost lost control of her powers again…and once again it had been her husband who had to fix it….and once again she had lost control because she was young…and also because of Sho. She knew that it was Sho she should have been upset with. He was six years old, now, and he knew not to hit his sister. He also knew her rule about toy weapons…and that the rule also extended to real weapons, obviously. She knew that she should have been angry with her husband, too, for leaving a real kendo sword…which her six year old son had somehow managed to lift….out where Sho could get to it and accidentally hit his sister in the face.

And it had been an accident.

It had to have been. Sho…he could be a little…much….sometimes but he would never have intentionally hit his sister. Even if Shigeko had provoked him…she could be a little 'much' too sometimes…that still hadn't given him the right to hit her in the face hard enough to break her nose and give her two black eyes. She still couldn't believe it…they were only six and seven years old and already they were fighting like this…

And there was nothing that she could have done, anyway, if she had been there.

"But I don't want to play anything." Said Mob. She didn't want to go back to the Treasure Room and look for new toys to play with. She didn't want to go to her room and play with the toys she already had. She didn't want to sit on the floor of dad's office and pretend to play while she watched him work. She didn't want to sit in the living room and watch TV.

She didn't know what she wanted to do.

But she knew that she didn't want to have fun. How could she? Her little brother was being punished and that…it had all been her fault. How was she ever supposed to have fun again knowing that she was responsible for this happening to Sho. He was her little brother and he did not deserve it…even if he had hurt her…but it had been an accident so she couldn't have been mad…but he had also said all of that mean stuff to her… but that mean stuff had been stuff that she needed to hear….

"Then go and do something else." Said Masami. She put her hand on Shigeko back and gave her a slight push. Just enough to tell her that she needed to get a move on so the adults…so they could talk. She wanted…she did and did not want to talk to him. He didn't owe her anything. He was nothing to her, nothing that could be said, and it wasn't like she owned him. If he wanted to vanish into thin air well then that was his business.

She hoped that he didn't vanish again.

"Yes, mom." Said Mob. It was best to just do as you were told. That was why dad liked her better than Sho, because she could do as she was told. Mom told her to go away so she went away. Mom told her to go and play so she went and played. She went to her room and laid down on her bed and tried to make her stuffed animals float. She was still so tired….and she didn't even know what from. It was like someone had stuck a straw in her and sucked her powers out….

Which was good.

Because then if she didn't have any more powers then she could have been Mob, not Shigeko. Not Suzuki Shigeko. Mob. Someone who didn't stick out, who didn't have anything that made them special, someone who could be just like everyone else. That way, if she was just like everyone else, Sho wouldn't be mad at her anymore. It would be like he was an only child. He would have been a lot happier as an only child. If it had just been Sho then mom and dad would have had to like him the best because they didn't have any other kids to compare him to. Then dad wouldn't have been upset with the way Sho acted because he wouldn't have had anyone to compare him to. Then dad would have been happy that Sho even had any powers at all instead of being upset that Sho couldn't do the things that he could do…that she could do….

Sho would have been a lot better off without her.

She managed to pick up the doll, the creepy one, the one that looked like her. She picked it up with her powers…which were coming back….and she didn't know why. She wished that she could either give them to mom or give them to Sho or just get rid of them…but they were like this doll. A gift. An unwanted gift. She couldn't give this doll away because it had been a gift from dad and she couldn't throw it away for the same reason.

Her powers had been a gift from dad.

She was his daughter after all. Suzuki Shigeko. She was his daughter and she had gotten her powers from him. A gift from him. Sho's gift from dad had been his red hair and blue eyes. Sho thought that his gift sucked…but they couldn't trade. If there was some way that she could wake up with red hair and blue eyes and Sho could wake up tomorrow with her powers she would have done it. She wished that she could make a deal with God…or the Devil…or someone or something that made deals like that…but she couldn't…

She was stuck with her powers just like she was stuck with this doll.

She put it back down. She didn't want to look at it. A doll that looked just like her…or maybe she was the one who looked like the doll. Maybe she was a doll. Maybe she was a doll just like Sho said. Maybe she was…she didn't know. All she knew was that she didn't like herself at that moment…she turned over and stared at the wall. She heard plastic rustling. Her box of chocolates.

If she didn't even like herself then how could she have possibly expected someone else to like her?

She really should have eaten those. Taro didn't like her like that. Ito had asked him to his face and he had said 'no'. Well he had said 'of course not' which was worse than 'no' and it seemed like he had liked her….well if he liked her then…then he didn't like her anymore now and she should have just ate those chocolates before they got all gross and stale…but she didn't want to…and that was so dumb. Food was meant to be eaten and she wasn't even supposed to have food in her room in the first place so if she didn't eat them then…then mom would find them and throw them away…

She hid them back under her doll.

She didn't want to eat the only memory she had of someone liking her. She didn't want to eat the memory of the only time someone had wanted to hold her hand. She didn't want to eat the memory of her first kiss…even though it wasn't a real kiss she still didn't want to eat the memory. She wanted…she knew that it was dumb but she wanted to save those forever.

Maybe when she grew up she'd end up putting them in a box and putting the box in the Treasure Room and then her son and daughter would end up finding them…and then her son would accidentally hit her daughter in the face with a kendo sword…and it would….it would not have been good…

Mob did not feel good at all.

Which made no sense because that was what mom had called Fukuda for, to make her feel better. She was better, now, her nose and face didn't hurt anymore…but she still felt terrible. She felt like she had swallowed some kind of rock or something and now it was all settled in her stomach and…and it hurt. She wished that this emotion was a spirit so that she could exorcise it.

Or that it was an injury so that Fukuda could heal it.

But it wasn't an injury or a spirit and there was nothing that anyone could do. Not her and not Fukuda. She wanted to run back to him and ask, though, even though she knew that the answer would be no. That was why he couldn't cure mom. He couldn't fix feelings like the tiredness that mom felt all the time, he could only fix ailments…

She wished that he could have fixed mom.

Maybe that was what h was trying to do, now. She could hear his voice though the vent. It was muffled and echoing but it was there. He was talking to mom about something. They were talking really quietly together about something. She got off her bed and laid down in front of the vent even though she knew that listening in on other people's private conversations was wrong.

"….go…"

"I can't…."

"Help…."

"….where…?"

Mob could only hear every other word of what they were saying…if that. She wanted to know what they were talking about…mostly because she just hadn't seen Fukuda in so long. She wondered where he had gone to, where he went when she and Sho and mom were healthy…and she wanted to ask. She didn't want to be in her room, she wanted to be out there with mom and Fukuda…but maybe it was best that she was in her room. She couldn't hurt anyone from in her room.

She couldn't hurt anyone.

She laid on the ground with her ear pressed to the vent. She could barely hear but…but at least she was too far away to hurt anyone.

"It would hurt everyone." Said Mom. Mob could hear more clearly now…mostly because mom was raising her voice….a sound that Mob did not like one bit. It was…she didn't like raised voices and mom…mom was supposed to be nice. Because she was mom. Mom was the nice parent and dad was the mean parent…that was how it worked.

"Masami…you have to think about yourself. Think about yourself and the kids." That was Fukuda. He was harder to hear because his voice was super deep. She wondered if he was upset that mom had raised her voice to him. She wondered…she wondered a lot of things. She wondered which of these vents connected to the Treasure Room…she wondered what she would have heard if she had pressed her ear to that vent…she wondered if she even wanted to know what she would have heard if she had pressed her ear to that vent…

She didn't want to.

She stayed where she was.

"I am thinking about them. They need…they need their father. They need an intact family." Said mom. Mom was talking about them….why? Well the answer was obvious, because they had been bad. She was mad at them or worried about them or something. Something that was making her talk about them in hushed tones that Mob had to strain herself to hear.

"Is this what they need?" asked Fukuda. He was loud, that time, and it was the first time that Mob had ever heard him raise his voice…and she didn't like that, either. She didn't like that at all.

"What's your plan, then? You and I? If you think that I'm going to-" said Mom. She was raising her voice again. Mob worried. Dad hated loud sounds and if he could get mad at Sho…did moms and dads get mad at each other? She didn't know…and she didn't want to find out. Maybe that was where Sho got it from, the inability to just do what dad wanted him to do and be who dad wanted him to be. It would have made sense. Sho was like mom and she was like dad after all.

"I don't have a plan...it was just a thought. Masami…I care about you and it brings me no joy to see you like this…to see the kids like this…and I just want to help. I want to help you in whatever way I can." Said Fukuda. He wasn't raising his voice then, which was good. She never wanted him to raise his voice again. That was not the sort of person he was…and she did not want to remember him as that sort of person. She wanted to remember him as the nice person who fixed her up when she got hurt and who played with her and helped mom make dinner and was just…nice. She didn't know when he would come back again…and she did not want to remember him as someone else in her life who was mean and stuff…she had enough of that already…

"There is no help…and there is no way out." Said Mom. Mob wondered where mom was trying to get out from. She had no idea what it was that mom could have been talking about…but then again Mob knew that she was the worst at talking. She knew words, she knew their spellings and their meanings, but they just changed meaning so quickly based on who was talking and why….it was hard. Very hard.

"Masami…there is always a way out." Said Fukuda. He said that in a tone so low she could barely hear him…and there was something else to his voice, too, something that Mob had never heard before. Something that sounded kind of gravelly…like when mom had a scratchy throat…but different…

"Easy for you to say. You can walk out that door whenever you want to." Said Mom. Now that made even less sense. The front door worked just fine. If mom had to go out then she could. She could have gone out to the yard to play or gone to the library or the pool or the animal shelter or anywhere else, really, because she was an adult and they could do whatever they wanted to.

Mob didn't understand.

"Masami…so can you. Just…please let me help you. I love you." Said Fukuda…and Mob really did not understand. Mom loved dad….and dad loved mom…because that was what being in love was…but maybe this was one of those times where words didn't always mean what she thought that they meant. Like how she loved milk. She loved to drink it but she wouldn't marry it…but mom was a person…not a bottle of milk…and you couldn't love a person like an object because people were not objects at all…

Oh!

Maybe it was like how she loved Sho! Sho was her brother…and he could be mean sometimes…but Mob deserved it and she loved him the most out of anyone else in the world. Not like she wanted to marry him or anything, he was her brother and that was gross, but she did love him….and that must have been what Fukuda meant…

But he and mom were not brother and sister.

Mob didn't know. She didn't understand anything…but the fact that she should not have been listening in on other people's conversations…so she stopped. She stopped and went back up to her bed and put a pillow over her head so she couldn't listen in on the fractured words that were coming up through the vent.

Besides, she had her own words to find.

She had to find the words that let Sho know that she was sorry.


	49. Choose

She was a terrible person for even considering it.

"Mom, big sis is taking up the whole tub!"

"I'm sorry. I guess that we just got too big to share. I'll be done soon and then you can have the whole bathtub to yourself."

She was a terrible wife, terrible mother, and terrible woman for even considering it.

"I don't want to be all by myself I just want you to take up less room in the tub."

"I'm trying my best, Sho, I really am. I can't help it if I got bigger."

What kind of a mother would ever even begin to consider it?

"Your toys keep floating over to my side."

"Sorry, they just go where the water goes"

She couldn't go through with it…but she had to. She had no choice.

"We should cut the tub in half. That way you can have half a bath and I have half a bath."

"But if we cut the tub in half then water will just end up going everywhere."

There was no other way. She couldn't…this was not the place for her…for the children. This was not the place.

"That's true…."

"Here, maybe this will help."

Sho. She had to think about Sho. He was becoming…she did not like the person he was becoming. Fighting with his sister….fighting her…even fighting at school now. She did not want that for her son. To be that sort of person. He used to be such a gently boy….and now he was fighting with anyone and everyone…and it was all her fault. It was her fault for…for raising him the way she had. For having him with who she had…

"But now I'm cold."

"Sorry. Here's I'll stop."

She loved her son. She loved her son more than anything else in the whole world. She would kill or die for him…and if she would be willing to kill or die for him then she also should have been willing to leave for him. There was no other way. This house…this was not the place for her son. For her children. She had two children.

"Shigeko, stop that." Said Masami finally. The water had been parted like the red sea. They really were getting to be too big to bathe together. It had been easier when they had been toddlers…everything had been easier when they had been toddlers. They were elementary schoolers now. Sho would be going into the first grade next year and Shigeko the second grade. Grade schoolers. She had grade schoolers and soon she would have middles schoolers and then high schoolers and then she would blink and they'd be graduated from university with their own homes and lives and they'd be full adults…their own people. They would be their own people…and the people who they became would be as direct result of what she did, here, and now to raise them. They would be what she made them into.

She could see the adults that they were becoming.

And she didn't like it.

"Sorry mom." Said Shigeko. She said it in the same way that her husband apologized…in that way that said that she was in no way sorry. She knew how Masami felt about her powers. She knew…and she did it anyway. She thought she could do whatever she wanted to…and of course she did. Touichirou would have let her get away with murder if she could. Sho, in tears, had told her the truth of what happened in the junk room.

The things Shigeko had said.

Sho had said some mean things, too, but he acted as a child did. He did not deliver a cold and logical speech about how it was in his best interests to surrender who he was to his father's will for basic self-preservation. No child should ever have had to do that…or to think like that. No child should have had to live like that…afraid of their own father…and Sho was afraid. Shigeko wasn't but she had always been daddy's little girl.

"Don't do it again, Shigeko" said Masami. She loved her daughter. She loved Shigeko…but she did not like the person that Shigeko had become. She used to be so sweet back when she had been small…but she had gotten older. She got more and more like Touichirou with every passing day and Masami, at this point, would not have been surprised if Shigeko had been his secret daughter by some mistress in some far off land…

But she wasn't.

Her name had been Kageyama Shigeko. She had been born on May 25th at some hospital in Seasoning City to a woman named Hana and a man named Ichimaro. She was not Touichirou's child even if she did look and act exactly like him. She was herself…she had become this person all on her own…she had become this person because Masami had allowed her to become this person. This smaller version of the man she had married…this person…this cold, pragmatic, person….

"I won't mom. I know that you don't like it when I use my powers." Said Shigeko. Masami said nothing, just poured some shampoo over her daughter's head and began to lather it up. Shigeko was her daughter. She had raised her as her daughter…but in some ways she was more Touichirou's daughter than hers. Even though Touichirou knew nothing at all of raising children. Even though he had spent less than a year, cumulatively, with his own children she was more his daughter than hers.

They would have been happy together.

She could not control Shigeko. Even now she couldn't control Shigeko. She sang 'I'm sorry', she always sang 'I'm sorry', and then she went right back to doing whatever it was that she had been doing. She was like her father in that way….they deserved each other. They would do well together...and Masami was no kind of mother for even beginning to think the thoughts that had been running through her mind. No kind of mother at all…

Shigeko was better off with her father.

Shigeko was uncontrollable. She was a prodigy. Touichirou had been singing her praises since before he had even brought her home. She was more powerful than most adults and would only get stronger the older she got. She lost control, or so she said, all the time…and the only person who could stop her was Touichirou. Shigeko…she would never have left her father. She was such a daddy's girl…she was just about the only person in this family that Touichirou actually enjoyed spending time with. They were up late almost every night even though Shigeko knew that she had school in the morning. She sang 'I'm sorry' every morning when she practically fell asleep in her cereal but she wasn't, not really, because she just went and did it all again the very next night…and Touichirou encouraged her. He saw no value in her education. All he cared about were her powers.

Shigeko was better off with her father.

It was the only way.

Masami…it was like Sophie's Choice, almost, but this was Japan and nobody would have to die. She was just…she had to choose which one of her children to save and which one to…there was no choice. She would save the one who could be saved. Sho….he had been acting so aggressively lately…and that had been her fault. There was hope for him yet, though, and that was why he would be the one she…she took with her. It would be both easy and hard.

Leaving.

Taking Sho with her.

Leaving Shigeko.

In a perfect world she would have been able to take both of the children with her. In a perfect world she would have been able to just divorce her husband in the usual way and not have to spirit her son off in the middle of the night…or day…whichever was easier. In a perfect world she would not have had to divorce her husband at all. In a perfect world he would have been a warm and loving man who treated her and the children well and…and…didn't put her in danger….and hadn't ruined their daughter and…

And this was not a perfect world.

This was the world that they lived in. This was the real world and it was not perfect, far from it, and hard choices had to be made. Fukuda said…he said a lot of things. Some things he could not take back…some things she did not want him to take back…and some things that could never be taken back….and that was…it was what it was. It was what it was and she was who she was and this was…this was her life. This was her life and it didn't have to be her life. Not forever. She had gotten herself into this…

And she could get herself out.

It would be hard. Apparently her husband frequently had her followed….and she…she was not ok with that. She wished that she could have said that it had been the last straw, the sending people to stalk her…but every single time she thought that they had reached the last straw he went ahead and got another box out of the pantry. She had no idea what he even thought that she could be doing that she needed to be followed. What? Did he think that she was cheating on him?

Fukuda said that he was just paranoid about her safety.

Fukuda said that if Touichirou suspected a thing then he would have been dead. He would have been killed…by her husband….and Masami got the feeling that Fukuda had not been exaggerating….which was even more of a reason to leave….even though it might have even been dangerous to do so. She had to leave. She could not spend another day in this…this…this prison…and she could not let her children…her child…her son….grow up in this place.

She was a terrible mother.

She was…she had no idea how she had become…this. Her life had moved by so quickly. Who would have thought that seven years of her life could have just blow by like…like they were nothing. Forty. She was almost forty now. She was forty and she had let this happen to her. Let her life become this. When she had first gotten married…when she had been pregnant with Sho…there had been a world of promise laid out in front of her. Now there was only…only this. This person she had become. The people she had let her children become. The person…the person that she had let her daughter become. The person that she was letting her son become…

She would never let Sho become…become…his father.

She already had two Touichirou's to deal with.

"Mom? Mom? Hey, mom?" asked Sho

"Yes?" asked Masami. She took her hands off of Shigeko's head. She was more lather than girl at that point. It would have been a good photo-op if she had just smiled or frowned or…or something. But no, even when she had been small she had been pretty non-emotive….just like her father.

"Can we get a bigger bathtub so me and big sis can still have baths together but still have room?" asked Sho. Masami smiled and dipped her hands in the water before patting Sho on the head. Shigeko's shampoo smelled like citrus, lemons to be specific, and Sho hated citrus. He might have even been allergic to it. When they were gone she'd take him to a doctor and see if he was allergic or just picky. When they were out of this...this place….

"Yes, if you want. We can get a bathtub as big as a swimming pool." Said Masami. They wouldn't be able to live anywhere nearly as palatial as this. They would…she had no idea where they would live. She had money…well she could syphon some off…and then they'd have to find a place to live…and she hadn't worked in so long…and going to her parents' house was out of the question…

She had to get out.

She had no idea what she would do, then, when she left…but she knew that she would figure it out. Leave the city, leave the prefecture, leave the country….she didn't know where she would go or what she would do but she knew that this was something that she had to do and should have done years ago. She had…it would be hard…but it was something that had to be done.

For the children.

Both of them.

They were debating, now, at which point an artificial indoor body of water stopped being a bathtub and started being a pool. Sho said that a bathtub could never be a pool because there could be hot water in it. Shigeko said that once an artificial indoor body of water became big enough to do dive in it become a pool. They were still so cute….Sho and Shigeko. She may not have been very animated, she looked bored as always, but she was still cute…and seven. She was only seven and she was so much like her father….but there was still time for her. There was time for her but….but Masami…she couldn't give her what she needed. Shigeko was…she wasn't like Sho. Sho had inherited very little from his father besides looks. He would…he could do some of the things that his father could do but as Touichirou had said many times Sho was nowhere near his sister's level…

She was a terrible mother for even considering it.

"Sho? Shigeko?" asked Masami softly. They were still debating. Sho was winning by virtue of shouting the loudest. Shigeko was letting him win by virtue of being incapable of raising her voice just like her father. Touichirou had never once shouted in the entire seven years she had known him. Not even at the television. She was so much like him…and so much like…like herself. Touichirou was incapable of debating anything with anyone. He either conceded that they could agree to disagree or just shut down. She had asked him about that ages ago and all he could say for himself was that he knew that he was right. If he knew that he was right then he didn't need other people to tell him that he was right. He always thought that he was right.

"Mom, can you settle this?" asked Sho

"You can win if you want, Sho, I don't like it when we fight." Said Shigeko. Masami fought herself not to hear Touichirou saying that. She was…she was and she was not Touichirou. She was her daughter and…and…and Masami just did not know.

"It stops being a bathtub when you stop bathing in it." Said Masami finding some words. She grabbed the measuring cup she kept in the tub and poured bathwater over Shigeko's head. She had so much hair…and she focused on Shigeko's hair. She focused on how black it was, how long it was, and how it did not spike up ever. Not even when it was wet. How it was black, the blackest shade of black there was. How it was long. How it could grow long without breaking off.

How Shigeko was not her father.

She was her own person.

She was…she was….she was a lot of things.

"So I won. It'll never be a pool because you're supposed to take baths in it. You can't take a bath in a pool because of the chemicals that make it smell weird." Said Sho

"You win." Said Shigeko

"I know that I won." Said Sho

"I'm agreeing with you." Said Shigeko. Masami couldn't listen to this anymore. She dumped a handful of conditioner into Shigeko's hair….and it wasn't Shigeko's conditioner. It was hers. She had accidentally dumped a handful of nineteen hundred yen conditioner on her seven year old daughter's head. Now her hair would be way too greasy. Masami's hair was dry. Shigeko made a lot of oil for a seven year old. She…would she be able to wash her own hair? When Masami was gone…if she couldn't take her with…would Shigeko be able to wash, shampoo, and condition her own hair? Would she….would she be ok? Not that Shigeko would be on her own…Masami…was there even a way to take Shigeko with? Touichirou cared about Shigeko. She was his pride and joy. She was the only person he even tolerated. She was…she was his daughter…

Masami didn't know how to feel about her own child.

About the child she had raised.

"Sho? Shigeko…? Listen. This is just a question but if you…you had to choose between your father and I…who would you chose?" asked Masami. She was interrupting another one of their debates. Now they were debating whether or not hot tubs could count as bathtubs. Shigeko said no because you couldn't wash your hair in them but Sho said yes because you could wash your hair in them if they were in your house and there were no other people around.

She would miss this.

"You." Said Sho immediately. There was no thought there, none at all…and it was so…Masami did not have words for this feeling. This good feeling. This good feeling that she had when her son chose her without question…and of course he would. His own father wouldn't even call him by name.

"Do you mean forever?" asked Shigeko. What was there for her daughter to think about? Her father never even called her by her name! He only spent time with her on his terms! He was the most selfish man to ever exist and-

"Forever. I think she means forever. Like if the house exploded or something or there was another dimension or something where we only had either mom or dad." Said Sho

"Oh. Dad then." Said Shigeko. There was no thought there, none. She had just gone straight to her father…who father who never called her by name. Maybe she didn't like her name. She was always calling herself 'Mob' after all. Maybe she liked being called 'daughter' all the time. Maybe she liked being ignored until her father felt like interacting with her. Maybe she liked being up all night with her father even though she knew she had to get up early for school. Maybe she liked…

She liked Touichirou better.

They were two of a kind after all.

"Because then you get mom and I get dad. Then it'll be even and things should always be even." Said Shigeko. Masami nodded. She nodded again and again until she felt like that bird the kids had that looked like it was drinking water. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded.

"Mom…are you ok?" asked Shigeko. Like she cared. Like she actually cared about…about anything….like she was anything other than her father's daughter….

"Fine. I'm fine. Just a little tired….Shigeko, rinse your hair. Both of…play until you get bored and then dry off and get into your pajamas. I need…Mommy needs…..Mommy needs to rest now." Said Masami. She couldn't stay in that room any longer. She needed space.

Space from her own daughter.


	50. Going Out

"I'm going out."

Suzuki looked up from his laptop. Daughter looked up from her tablet.

"Where are we going, mom?" asked Daughter. She seemed excited, he could tell by her aura. The children did enjoy their outings greatly. He hoped that she took Son, too, or maybe just Son. Daughter was unobtrusive as always. She hadn't said a word to him since she sat down with her tablet and did whatever it was that she did on that thing. Son had been cast out ages ago, it had been his own doing. He was outside now, maybe, or maybe he was back in the junk room. Suzuki didn't know. It wasn't his job to keep track of the children.

"You and your brother are staying here. I…I'm going out to do some shopping." Said Masami

"Why aren't you taking the children? You always take the children with you." Said Suzuki. He was not a babysitter. The children….Son. Son was the difficult one. Daughter mostly took care of herself. Yes, he could babysit Daughter if he needed to.

Not that he had ever needed to before.

"Because sometimes I like to go places on my own, Touichirou. I spend my entire day with them you know." Said Masami. He didn't get it.

"But they're at school for most of the day. At school or asleep or amusing themselves." Said Suzuki. He didn't know what it was that Masami complained about so often. The children were home so little…though then they were home it could be taxing. Mostly Son. Daughter was rarely taxing, only when she lost control, but those times were few and far between. Not like when he had been her age. Well when he had been her age he hadn't have anyone to guide him. Daughter was a very lucky little girl in that regard.

"When they're at school I'm here taking care of the house. Just…watch them for a few hours while I'm out shopping, ok? I'm not asking a lot of you. I never do." Said Masami. Well she was asking a lot of him. She never asked anything of him, he just did things for her, so any asking at all was a lot of asking. Besides, this was her job. He did his job, providing, and she did her job, nurturing, and together they would raise healthy and well-adjusted children. That was how the family unit functioned best. Why was she trying to change it now?

She had never asked him to watch the children before.

"I'll send a car for you." Said Suzuki. It was odd, her going out on her own. It was odd, her leaving like this…but he was being odd for thinking that it was odd. She usually just ordered the things they needed. She only went to the actual store for things like shoes, things that had to be tried on, so maybe that was it. Maybe she was getting a new pair of shoes.

She had nine pairs of shoes in their closet.

But then again what did he know about women. He owned one pair of shoes and that was enough for him. Son had one pair of shoes too. Daughter had multiple pairs of shoes. Maybe it was a female thing. They did enjoy shopping, didn't they? Part of the nesting instinct? Maybe Masami just wanted to leave the house…even though she had no reason to. Anything that she possibly could have wanted could have been delivered right to their door. The benefit of this instant gratification age they were living in. She could have ordered anything from any country and had the shipping expedited so it came as fast as possible and she didn't have to go out into the world where anything could have happened to her and anyone could have hurt her because she was out of his protection and he sort of wanted to go with her but not really because he hated shopping, usually, and he hated being out in the world with regular people but he should have been there to keep her safe and she should at least have taken Daughter because Daughter was strong for someone her age or-or-or-

He saw Daughter's aura.

She was looking at him.

And she was concerned.

And he could not lose control like this in front of his wife and child. That was not the man who he was meant to be. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He could not and did not lose control. It would have set a terrible example, too, for Daughter to see him lose control like that. She may then end up thinking that her father was a hypocrite, which he was not, and that it would be ok for her to lose control….or something even worse. That the person who she was meant to be with….that it would be alright for her to waste herself on someone who lost control.

He had his child's future to think about.

"I can walk, Touichirou." Said Masami. He didn't understand that, either, but he knew that when Masami got like this there was no changing her mind. He was not going to panic, he was not going to let his mind run away with him, and he was not going to argue with his wife…even though he really wanted to. Even though it was even more dangerous for her to be on foot. Even though there were so many people in this world who would have loved to hurt him by going after his family…

Thank God he had the manpower, now, to have her followed when she left the house…most of the time, anyway, thanks to the latest coup/attempt on his life.

"Be careful out there. It isn't very safe." Said Suzuki. He knew Masami. She was a mystery to him, that was what he knew about her after all of these years, but he liked the mystery. The way she did things that made no sense to anyone other than herself. She was interesting. The way her mind worked…she was interesting. From anyone else it would have been annoying but she could never have annoyed him.

The children on the other hand…

They were a different story. Daughter was fine when she was alone. Masami had left and Daughter, after asking why she couldn't come with, went back to her tablet. Son was another story. It seemed that Masami had neglected to tell Son that she had been leaving….

"Why didn't mom take me, too?" asked Son. Suzuki decided to let Daughter field his inquiries. Daughter was older and more mature. He wondered how many of Masami's duties she could take over. Masami hadn't said when she'd be returning and it was approaching lunchtime. Daughter could make lunch. It wasn't hard and she had probably seen her mother do it a thousand times. Daughter could care for Son, too. She had been watching Masami since she had been two years old after all.

"You hate going to the store with mom. Maybe she remembered you saying so and then decided that it would be easier if she just went by herself." Said Daughter. That made sense. It made enough sense that it should have calmed Son down. It certainly would have calmed Suzuki down if he had any reason to worry…which he didn't. Masami was fine. She was out there in the world totally defenseless and vulnerable but she was fine. He had her followed and if it came down to it his men could protect her…with what little they could do…

She was too vulnerable out there.

The Chinese had entire cities that laid empty. Maybe when he ruled the world he could give one to Masami. Then she could interact with the world but still be safe. He'd put some kind of dome over it too. Clear diamond. Unbreakable. Then she could have been safe and protected. Then he wouldn't have ever had to worry about her again.

"….maybe…or maybe she's getting stuff for us and she doesn't want us to see. You know, like Christmas shopping." Said Son. He didn't much want Son to be there. He had disrupted the tranquility that he and Daughter had cultivated….he would get bored, eventually, and move onto something new. Hopefully nothing involving any kendo swords…he didn't like to think about that. The sword, the fact that Son had struck Daughter with it, all of the irrational feelings that came with it….

He exorcised that emotion.

All of them.

"Yes, maybe something like that…but it's summer. She'll be back, though, and I know that she would have taken us with if she could. Mom loves taking us to the store with her and all of the other places, too." Said Daughter. She pulled Son close when she said that. Masami was good at that, too, being reassuring. Not that there was anything that anyone needed to be reassured of. Masa was fine and she would be back and she would be safe when she came back.

She would be.

"Son. Daughter. Go play outside." Said Suzuki. That was the thing that parents were supposed to say, right? Go and play outside. He could remember…back when he had been very small….that he had been told to play outside many times. He had enjoyed himself…from what he could remember. They, the children, liked to be outside…

And he needed some space.

He was in the house and Masami was outside the house. That was not the way that things were supposed to be. When would she be back? He didn't know. He knew, however, that she would be back. He had this feeling, this nagging feeling, that something had been bothering her. Well she was always talking about things that bothered her but she also never told him how he was supposed to fix them…or even what it was that she was getting at half the time. She could be so confusing sometimes…

She really could.

But she was his. She was his most perfect person. She was perfect even when she wasn't. Even when she was at her most confusing she was still perfect. She was perfect even when she turned everything upside down…like now. He had never been alone with the children before. Ever. Even when Sho had been a baby he had never been alone with his own child. Wait, no, there had been the car ride to take Shigeko home from the child warehouse, orphanage, group home place….though she had been asleep for most of that trip. He may have overestimated how much it took to knock a two year old esper out. That was why he had never drugged the children's food and drink again after that even though it would have made his and Masami's lives a lot easier. That and substance abuse not a good thing to encourage in children, probably, and also they might have died. That would not have been good, either.

They children were fine, now.

He could hear them if he opened his window. He didn't mind that he was letting the air conditioning out, he didn't really feel hot and cold anymore. Not like he had when he had been younger. It put him at ease, not that he hadn't been at ease already, to hear the children's voices. Masami would have been cross with him if they were to perish, get kidnapped, or run away. They were fine. They were playing, or maybe quarreling, outside. They were fine and everything else was fine and Masami was fine and-

And update.

She had been to the bank and now she was at the shopping center. She had also stopped at Starbucks and gotten something with a long name that he could not make heads or tails of. Before that she had stopped to tie her shoe. She was wearing her white gym shoes with the pink accents. She had also checked her phone approximately thirteen times and had possibly sent a message though she had been too far away to tell. Now she was trying on shoes. She had tried on four pairs of shoes. Two pairs of high heels, one pair of gym shoes, and one pair of flat shoes.

Good. She was safe.

"Sho! Be careful!" Daughter was admonishing her brother for something. He had probably been doing something reckless again. He was so reckless…..like his mother. Though he could never have imagined Masami as half the hellion that their son was. He did take after her, though, in temperament. He was just as difficult to understand, just as much of an enigma, and that made no sense because he had not only come from Masami. Daughter was like him, though, and he had no idea if it could have been attributed to nature or nurture.

She was so much like Masami, too.

She had Masami patience and her capacity for caring. He had no idea if this could have been attributed to Masami' influence or if that was just a female thing. He didn't know. He didn't know many women or girls so he had nothing to compare the two of them to. Whatever it was he liked it. He could depend on Daughter just like he could Masami. No, not depend upon…

Trust.

He could trust the two of them. He had been betrayed before…and he was still cleaning up that mess….but he could at least trust most of his immediate family. Son…he wouldn't have trusted Son with a houseplant at this point in his life…but Daughter had proven herself to be just as capable as her mother. The woman who had raised her, not the woman who had birthed her and abandoned her, though to Shigeko Kageyama Hana would just be another stranger in a world of strangers. He had no intention of telling Shigeko the truth of her parentage and neither did Masami.

He didn't need anything tugging at his Daughter's loyalties.

"Sho, wait for me. Don't run so fast! You could get heat stroke!" said Daughter. Always thinking of her brother. Always loyal to her family. Even if Son could be so annoying sometimes. Even though that child was more like three children. Even though she had been struck in the face with a kendo sword by her own brother…well the boy they had raised with her. There was no genetic material shared between the two of them. Not that it mattered. They were raised as siblings and therefore they thought of each other as siblings and that was the way that it was going to be.

Such a pity.

His phone vibrated again.

Another update. Masami was trying on hats, now. Huh. He hadn't thought that she liked hats. They hid her hair. She had such soft and beautiful hair. He hoped that she didn't take to wearing hats. Though it was sunny out. Maybe he should have told the children to put hats on. Which one of them burnt in the sun, again? Both? No, it must have been neither. Daughter would have told Son to put a hat on…and even if they did end up with sun burns or skin cancer Fukuda could have fixed it….and he had no reason to have the irrational feelings that he had towards the man. He was a loyal follower, nothing more.

Loyalty was in short supply these days.

But Fukuda had not been involved in the coup. Fukuda had been the one to inform him of the coup as it was being planned. Those traitors…Suzuki knew that other words could have been applied but he did not lower himself to speaking like that even in his own mind….those traitors had approached Fukuda and he had no thoughts beyond informing Suzuki of the plotting that was happening right beneath his nose.

He could trust Fukuda.

Even though the atmosphere had been strange between Fukuda and Masami…or maybe he was just misreading the atmosphere. He had never been good at reading the atmosphere even as a child. In fact it was during childhood that he had first become cognizant of the fact that he was different. That though he spoke Japanese as his mother tongue he still had no idea what it was that the people around him were actually saying. People never said what they meant and meant what they said. Well he did. He did and Daughter did and the rest of the world would, when he ruled it, and when his children inherited it. Masami…to an extent…well she believed that she said what she meant and meant what she said but as of late he could feel something like a distance growing between the two of them. He didn't understand it.

But he understood her.

She was…she was Masami. She was wonderfully confusing and confusingly wonderful. She was his everything. She was everything good and everything bad that he had ever felt. He cared for her. He cared for her in so many ways that he didn't even have a precise word for it…and because he cared for her he trusted her. Whatever was happening with her…it would pass. It would always pass. These things always passed in the end.

His phone vibrated again.

He's not worried. He's not thinking of all the terrible things that could have happened to Masami out there in the world. He's not thinking of how she should never be away from him even if there were things that she needed to do. They were apart enough as it was. It wasn't like he asked to be away from her. Sacrifices had to be made on his part. He had to do what he did to give his wife the life that she deserved.

He checked his phone.

Now she was looking at children's clothing. He knew that he didn't need updates on every single thing that she did but…but it made him feel better. Knowing that she was out there, in the world, and that she was safe out there. The thought of her just being out there without his protection….it was like the floor had fallen apart beneath his feet and he had forgotten how to keep himself aloft with telekinesis. She was out there…but she was fine. She was fine and she would be coming home…eventually. He wished that he could have just asked her…

He was Suzuki Touichirou. He could do whatever he liked.

There were no limits on what he could do. If he wanted to call his wife and ask her when she was planning on coming home then…then there was nothing stopping him. He had fingers and he had a phone…but then if he asked her she would know how he felt…how close he was to losing control…and then he would lose her. She had no idea what it was like, what he could be like, and he had no intention of showing that part of himself, that weak part, to her. Even if he could do whatever he wanted he…he didn't want to deal with the consequences of what he wanted to do…

He so wanted her to come back.

"Dad? Sho has a sunburn and he scraped a bunch of his skin off when the was climbing the wall and also he's hungry…and I'm hungry too but I don't have to eat yet." Said Daughter. He hadn't noticed Daughter. He had been too wrapped up in himself to notice Daughter approaching him or the way Son was carrying on and-

What had she wanted?

"Can't you take care of it?" asked Suzuki. He hadn't been fully paying attention to what she had said but he was confident that she could take care of everything. She was someone who he could trust after all.

"Do you want me to call Fukuda?" asked Daughter

"Why?" asked Suzuki

"Because of Sho's scrape and also because of his sunburn. I'm sorry that I forgot about the sunscreen. I won't forget ever again I promise." Said Daughter. That was why he trusted her. She learned from her mistakes, apologized, and knew what she had to do to fix whatever it was she had failed at.

"Do you think that this is a situation in which you need to bother Fukuda or can you take care of this yourself?" asked Suzuki. He valued Fukuda. Loyalty, proper loyalty, was so hard to come by these days…but he did not like how attached the children were to him. How he had overstepped, before, when Masami had taken ill. How the children spoke of him. How the atmosphere was always strange when he was there with Masami. He knew that there was nothing between them, Masami was his wife and she would never commit any acts of infidelity, and he knew that the way he felt was irrational…

He was Suzuki Touichirou. He didn't have to justify why he did and did not want someone in his home. Not even to himself.

"I don't know how healing works…" said Daughter. He did not hold that against her. Healing wasn't in his power set either. Fukuda was the only healer he had ever met in all his life and all his travels. He didn't think that a scrape and a sunburn counted as a medical emergency, though, not something that required the use of a healer.

"Do you think that this is something serious enough to bother Fukuda over?" asked Suzuki. Daughter had good judgement…right? He held her in high esteem. He knew she was a child but she was more powerful and more intelligent than the rest of them if her brother was anything to go off of.

"Um….I don't think that Sho is going to die so…no?" said Daughter. She phrased it like she was asking a question. He'd have to talk to her later about speaking with intent. She should never have ended something like a question unless she was actually asking a question.

"I don't think that your brother is going to die either." Said Suzuki. She nodded. Good. She understood.

"Ok….but we're hungry, too. Um…Sho is more hungry than me but I can make him wait until mom comes back." Said Daughter after a moment. Right, they had been hungry. Children needed food just like adults did. Right….they needed food…and he did not cook.

"Did she tell you when she planned on coming back?" asked Suzuki. He did not cook. He did not like to cook. He knew how to cook, sort of, but he did not want to cook. Masami was a good cook. Daughter knew how to cook, too, though she didn't have nearly the amount of culinary knowledge that her mother did.

"No." said Daughter. He had wondered…or maybe he had wished…that Masami had given the children some indication as to when she would be back. She knew that it was getting close to the time in which the children were usually fed. Yes….that was why he was feeling….all of these things that he knew that he should not have been feeling.

"She didn't say anything to you at all?" asked Suzuki

"No. She just said that she was going. I was there with you, she didn't tell me anything special." Said Daughter. She didn't know…and of course she didn't. She had been in the room with her mother when she said that she was going…and that was fine. Suzuki was fine.

"Alright. Daughter, why don't you make lunch? You know how to cook." Said Suzuki. He did not cook and he did not want to cook. The children would be fine. Daughter knew what she was doing. He trusted Daughter just as much as he trusted Masami.

"But mom said that I wasn't supposed to-" said Daughter

"You'll be fine. Your mother told you not to cook unless I allow you to and I am allowing you to. Now go and feed your brother because he becomes more restless than he already is. I trust you." Said Suzuki. There was something to be said about doling out kernels of praise to various subordinates. That was not what he had done in that case. He did legitimately trust Daughter. He wished that there were more of him. One to make lunch and one to keep him company. He knew that it was irrational, he was a complete person all on his own, but he did enjoy her company. The way he felt…he needed a distraction.

He should not have been so anxious.

He should not have been anything. When he felt too strongly then he lost control and when he lost control people died or at the very least got seriously injured. Also it was shameful to lose control at his age. How could he rule over the whole world if he could not even rule over himself? He was fine and Masami was fine and everything was fine. He had no reason to be like this just because his wife was far from home and he was alone, totally alone, with his children for the first time in his life…

He was fine.

He needed a distraction.

So he worked. He got messages, of course, about Masami's whereabouts. They were supposed to check in every so often and the large gaps between messages made him feel like maybe they had lost track of her…and they had better not have if they knew what was good for them. How hard was it to follow one woman around while keeping enough distance that she didn't realize that you were there? He wished that he could have sent Masami out into the world with a full security detail but she would never have agreed to that.

He looked into empty cities.

There was a phrase 'down the rabbit hole' which he had heard the children use. They often fell down their own rabbit holes, mostly about shows they watched or videogames they played, and the phrase referred to severely losing track of the time. There was something calming about work and when work was paired with research, always enjoyable, he could find himself calming down and losing large swaths of time.

He went down the rabbit hole that was the logistics of creating an artificial city for just his wife.

There would be a clear dome over it. Walls were so imposing and she may have felt like he was trying to keep her trapped inside. He kind of was but the idea was to keep the outside world outside of the city where it belonged. The city would have a clear dome made of diamond over it, he could make diamonds himself so a city sized dome wouldn't take up too many resources, and she would be able to see out of it, too. The inside would be completely sterile so she wouldn't ever fall ill, ever, because if she ever fell in then she ran the risk of dying. There would be a hospital there just for her just in case anything ever did happen. She was so fragile…he would have to pave the streets with rubber so she didn't get hurt. No cars, either, because those were dangerous too. She'd have a palanquin fit for the queen that she was.

She would be a queen of the world.

And her city would have been made just for her. There would be animals, he hated them but she loved them, just out and about. Dogs and cats and elephants and zebras and wolves…no, wait, no wolves. She liked wolves, she had that sleeping shirt with the wolves howling at the moon on it that she wore sometimes but he was not filling a city with wolves for her…unless he had them domesticated…but then they would just be big dogs….there would be a lot of animals for her and they would all roam freely so she could enjoy them. There would be shops, too, because she liked shopping it seemed. Also Starbucks. One on every corner…so pretty much like some cities he had been too…and also there would be a lot of cake because she loved cake. Lots of sweet foods…and also dentists because her teeth didn't grow back like his did…at least he was mostly sure that normal people's teeth didn't grow back….he'd have to look into that, too…also all the shops would have her favorite kind of toothpaste, the kind with the bubblegum flavoring but was definitely for adults…

It was always vile kissing her after she had just brushed her teeth.

But he wouldn't say anything. It was a small price to pay for the privilege of kissing her. He would kiss her more often, then, because he would have seen her more often. After he'd ruled the world for a bit he would pass it down to Sho…dear God….or perhaps one of his offspring….the thought is terrifying….and then he could retire to the closed off city with his wife and just…rest. Just rest and be with her. He'd listen to her even when she was boring or made no sense and he would hold her and watch all the historical dramas she wanted to….and he'd have to create a television station just for her….or several. At least three. She liked historical dramas a lot but she also liked other things. Documentaries and science fiction….he'd commission more Galaxy Express 999 for them…but a more realistic take…as realistic as a program about a steam engine traveling through space was…

He'd enjoy it.

He'd enjoy it with her and their grandchildren as well. Daughter's grandchildren. The ones he would get from Daughter. Son and his family would be busy ruling the world in his place. Daughter would stay with her mother, though, and help rule the world from the closed in city. Daughters were meant to stay with their mothers. Daughter would have her own children to care for. Her husband…he had no plans for her husband. She didn't even really need one, she could have as many lovers as he wanted, he just wanted to see what sort of grandchildren she'd make. If she met the right man or men her children could conquer the world.

Good thing she was on his side.

She would be loyal to him until the day he died…not that he had any intention of dying. At some point he would funnel money into researching a way to keep him going in some capacity for as long as possible. Not that he feared death. No, fearing death was stupid. But if there was a way for the man who conquered the globe to stop his own extinction then…why not take advantage of it? For Masami, as well.

She could not die.

If there was a way to give her an immortal robot body he would….but there wasn't. Not now. There wasn't some distant planet at the end of a long train ride through space where he could go and get a robot body for his wife but actually the planet was evil and used people as parts for it and then-

Daughter was seven years old. Not him.

And with the urge to watch Galaxy Express 999 for the first time since he was in elementary school he realized that the shadows had grown much longer outside his window…

And no news of Masami…

And then the panic set it. He was well and truly…and he had to keep it under control…because she was there…out there…and obviously the people he'd ordered to follow her had lost track of her and-and-and-and-and-

"Dad? Are you ok? Your aura is being all…weird." Daughter. She was in his doorway. She was covered in sugar and she smelled of butter and there were crumbs in her hair…and she could deal with that herself.

"Fine, I'm fine. Go back to whatever it was that you were doing." Said Suzuki. He had to stay composed. Composed for himself and his children. They could not see him losing it like that…and he could not lose it like that, either. He had to stay calm.

And calmly murder the people who had lost his wife.

"Ok. Should I tell mom that you're ok, too?" asked Daughter. He felt his heart stop…and then start up again much too fast.

"Your mother is here?" asked Suzuki. How had he…how had he not noticed? Because she was a normal person. He had no noticed because Masami was a normal person and had no aura. She was harder to find than Son who had little to no aura at the best of times….

"Yes. She just came back. She said not to bother you but I bothered you because I was worried about you…and I'm sorry." Said Daughter. He barely heard her. He had no idea what he said to her after she said whatever it was that she had just said. All he could think about was Masami…there…safe and sound…

There she was.

She was in the kitchen. There were shopping bags on the floor. She was scraping something out of a pan at the sink.

"Why did you tell Shigeko that she could make lunch? This was not a nonstick pan…" said Masami as she scrubbed as hard as she could. She seemed…angry. Yes, he could see it. The tightness around her eyes, the harshness of her tone, and the way she hadn't even said so much as 'hello' to him…

"The children were hungry." Said Suzuki simply as he exorcised the feelings that grew with every second he spent looking at Masami. She was so beautiful. He watched her clean the pan in the sink that their daughter had, apparently, ruined…

Masami had such beautiful hands.

Every single part of her was so beautiful.

She was perfect. His most perfect person.

"Then why didn't you feed them?" asked Masami. She muttered something under her breath that he could not hear.

"Daughter knew what to do. You taught her well." Said Suzuki. He felt…better. Well not the best because she had been away for a while and also the kitchen was messy and he did not do well in messy and chaotic spaces. But he was doing better…and he should not have been unwell at all. She was back, he knew that she was coming back…so he should not have been feeling unwell…

Maybe he was just unwell because the people who had been following her had lost her and not even bothered to tell him.

"Yeah…you'll always have Shigeko…." Said Masami. He agreed with her. He would always have Shigeko.

"I will. Even when she has her own family I doubt that she will leave me…us." Said Suzuki. Shigeko was a good Daughter, she would never leave her parents. It would be nice. Just him, her, and Masami together. He and Masami would be able to rest and Daughter would be an adult and she would be even better company and Son would be doing the hard work of ruling the world…

So they could all just rest already.

"Right. The kids are going to grow up, get married, and then spend their lives with us…" muttered Masami. She was still scrubbing. He wondered why she didn't just throw the pan away and buy a new one since she seemed to like going out to the shops all day.

"Do you think?" asked Suzuki

"Think what?" said Masami

"That they'll get married." Said Suzuki

"I hope they end up getting married…then they can be as happy as we are…" said Masami in a tone that he could not place.

"But they were raised as siblings. I always thought that it would have been too odd for them to….Masami?" asked Suzuki. She was looking at him like…he had no idea what she was looking at him like. She had dropped the pan in the sink and now she was just staring at him. He wondered if she wanted him to turn the tap off. It was getting close to filling the sink up to the point that it overflowed.

"Touichirou…what the fu-I meant to OTHER PEOPLE! Why would you….? How does your mind WORK?! Just…explain it to me right now what is happening in your mind that would even lead you to-to-to the thought ever even crossing your mind-" said Masami. He had no idea what it was that she was so upset about. He thought that she had just meant that if the children were to grow up and get married they wouldn't have anything to worry about since there wasn't a drop of blood between them.

"Masami-" said Touichirou. He was about to explain to her how his entire thought process worked, even though it would have taken some time, when they were interrupted once again.

"Dad? Can you play with me again….because you and mom are yelling…but you don't yell at me. So can we play?" asked Daughter. He was about to send her away, she knew better than to interrupt her parents when they were talking, but Masami decided to speak first.

"Go and play with your Daughter. I have work to do." Said Masami. He didn't need to be an expert at reading the atmosphere to know that he was not wanted there…

And he didn't know why.

What had he done? She had been so cross…so short…lately. So distant. He wished that she would just write him a letter or something with all of her feelings and thoughts and wants and needs. Why had she wanted him to explain his thought process to her? Why was the burden on him? She was the one who was being all…

Whatever it was that she was being like…and for whatever reason…


	51. Tailed

Once she knew what to look out for it was surprisingly easy to tell when she was being followed.

"Mom? Why are we walking this way? We never walk this way. Why are we walking this way?" asked Sho

"This isn't the way to the library." Said Shigeko

"We've been taking the same route for years. Aren't you two bored of seeing the same old scenery?" asked Masami. It was hot. It was dreadfully hot. The kind of hot that made her hair stick to her head and her face red and puffy. Sho's too. Shigeko didn't seem to be feeling the heat. She said that Touichirou was teaching her not to feel the elements…among other things. She was bored. She always looked bored. Even when they were walking through the heat bubble that was this city on the hottest day of high summer she just looked bored.

But she walked along with them.

Which was more than her father had chosen to do.

"I guess….but it's so hot! Why does it have to be so hot?!" said Sho. He tried to pull his hand free from hers. She had to hold his hand because this was a new route. Shigeko could hold onto her other hand if she chose to. She just didn't choose to.

"It's not so hot." Said Shigeko

"It is too so hot! It's so hot that my skin is melting and my shoes are melting and we're all going to melt to death." Said Sho

"People don't melt, Sho, they burn. Like the time with the bacon grease? And mom got that big blister? Or all the sunburns you get? People blister and burn in the heat." Said Shigeko

"So then we'll blister and burn to death, big sis, and there's nothing that we can do about it. I don't know why it has to be so hot out today!" said Sho

"Because it's high summer, Sho. Don't worry, once this passes it'll start turning into fall." Said Masami. She didn't want to be walking down this street on this day any more than he did but she had a reason, a good reason, to drag her children around like this.

Three steps. Stop.

Three steps. Stop.

Five quick steps. Stop.

Five quick steps. Stop.

She was being followed. She could hear the footsteps that dogged hers. Someone needed to give these idiots some stalking lessons. When you were tailing someone you weren't supposed to follow them step for step. Usually when you knew someone was following you they were trying to intimidate you. This was not one of those times. Touichirou didn't want her to know what she was being followed. These guys may have been terrible at tailing her but they were persistent. It had taken her all day, before, to shake these guys and by then it was so late that she had to head home. She had managed to get what she needed done, though.

Cash.

Jewelry.

Burner phone.

She'd have to leave quickly…when she did leave. When the day came. She didn't know when that day would be…before school started up again. It would be easier on the kids. It would be easier if they weren't just ripped out of their classroom and taken...taken to wherever it was that she was going to go. She didn't know yet. She was still financing her escape. Thank God that Touichirou never asked her where the money went. She could have been burning it for warmth and he wouldn't have noticed a thing. He never noticed anything.

"….because the sun is too close right now. That's how summer works." Said Sho. Masami was fading in and out of their conversation. She was still trying to see if she could lose them. She was followed at every turn. The streets here were so winding….even when they rushed across the street or cut through a store they had been followed.

How?

"Sho…that's not how it works. Right now Japan, the part of the Earth that Japan is on, is pointed towards the sun. That's because the Earth isn't straight up and down. Dad told me." Said Shigeko. Masami walked a little faster. The children kept up. It was so hot….but she kept on going. She needed to figure out the best way to lose these guys. She had managed to do it before…but she hadn't had two children in two.

"Mom?" asked Sho. Masami slowed down. She could see it, behind her, the car. There had been a car that…that had been following them. A black car…how clichéd could Touichirou get? That car…and the people on foot…maybe the people on foot were just a distraction. Maybe…maybe everyone was following her…and now she was getting paranoid. Now she was getting paranoid and it was all Touichirou's fault.

"Hey, mom?" asked Sho again. She felt a tug at her skirt. She watched the car park down the road. She made a note of the license plate number. She couldn't see inside, tinted windows, but she assumed that there were some men in black types inside or something. Or some Yakuza. Or something.

She could slip away on her own but…but not with the kids…

"Mom!" shouted Sho. Masami reached down and patted Sho on the head. She pretended that she was looking at something on her phone. She needed….she moved too slowly when she had the kids…but she had to take the kids.

"Sho, mom doesn't want to talk right now. I can tell because dad does the same thing when he doesn't want to talk." Said Shigeko. She had the kids. They could keep apace but they also had trouble disappearing. All it had taken was a hat and a change of clothes to lose those guys before. She couldn't disguise the children. They'd ask questions, first of all, and second of all what was she supposed to do about Sho's very distinctive and noticeable red hair? At least Shigeko, after a haircut and a change of clothes, could look just like every other seven year old girl in Japan.

"Mom always wants to talk. Dad never wants to talk. They even each other out like that." Said Sho. Masami pretended to scroll through her phone. She wished that she had a car….no, that would have made her even more conspicuous. She had no idea how…how she was supposed to run away with two children….

"Dad wants to talk. He just always wants to talk about things that he cares about. Like he was telling me about this show about a train that goes through space, the manga we found in the Treasure Room, and then he told me about another show about a car and-" said Shigeko. Masami worked through the logistics. Shigeko was easier to hide but Sho…Sho needed her more. Shigeko didn't even want to come with, probably, she had chosen her father after all. She had made her choice and that was it…but she couldn't just leave her Daughter alone with her father…could she? Could she just…she loved Shigeko but…Masami's Choice. Like Sophie's Choice but with less World War 2 and in Japanese. Coming to a theatre near you. She didn't….she couldn't chose. If she chose she knew who she would chose and if she made that choice then she knew that she would have been a terrible mother.

"That stuff's boring." Said Sho

"No, it's not. Dad likes some interesting stuff. I mean even kendo can be interesting when you watch enough of it really late at night. You should stay up late with me and dad, Sho, we do want you around. Well I want you around. I love you a lot, little brother." Said Shigeko

"Dad only likes boring stuff…and that's why he likes you…I'm sorry. I'm sorry I said that. I don't know why I said that. Sometimes I just say stuff, I guess, and I don't know why….I just know that I'm sorry." Said Sho. She had given birth to Sho. She had carried Sho inside of her for nine months and then she had been sliced open like a fish and had her organs moved around so that they could rip him out of her. She had the scar to prove it. Ok, it wasn't as bad as it seemed in her mind but she did have the scar to prove it. Shigeko….one day Touichirou had rolled over in the middle of the night and told her that they were adopting an orphan.

And then he came home with Shigeko.

He had asked, of course, if she was ok with that. He had asked in that way of his that wasn't really asking at all. He had asked in that way that told her that his mind had been made up. She hadn't had a problem with Shigeko's adoption, on the contrary, she had been so happy to open her home and life up to Shigeko. Shigeko may not have come from her body but she had raised her….she was Shigeko's mother…and she wished that she was Shigeko's wicked step mother instead. She wished that she had no attachment at all to Shigeko. That she could be one to those terrible women who could raise children for years and then just cast them aside. Who could have looked at Shigeko and thought that just because she had not carried her, had not birthed her, that she was somehow less than her blood child.

She did not want to leave her daughter.

She did not want to leave her son.

But she did want to leave her husband. She had…she had never lost, totally, her feelings for him but she knew that she had to get away. She wasn't…her husband was the sort of man who would send people to tail her….because he didn't trust her. He didn't trust her, he was right not to, so he had her followed. She had cheated on him, had no plans to do it again, but she had cheated on him…and now he had her followed…and this was in addition to all of the other shady stuff that he was involved in. The things that put her in danger.

She had a real reason, now.

She didn't know who she was justifying herself to. She didn't know who it was that she was arguing with. She had cheated, she was in love with another man, and that should have been reason enough. Her husband was incapable of real love, that was another very good reason. She had someone who was capable of real love…but she wasn't running away to be with him. She couldn't. That would be the first place that Touichirou would go looking for her. Not to mention what would happen to Fukuda…not that she knew what it was that her husband did with people who betrayed him, Fukuda refused to give her nay details, but she knew that it was bad.

She had to get away.

"Sho, Shigeko, come on." Said Masami. She couldn't shake these guys, it was hot, and the book bag was heavy. She'd try again later. She'd try…she would try again later. She was…she was going to have to take the both of them…or at least Sho. Shigeko….Shigeko needed her father and Sho…Sho needed her. The whole thing was more even that way. Shigeko herself had been the one to say it. Things were meant to be equal….

"Mom…Sho thinks that we're lost." Said Shigeko. Masami reached down and patted her on the head. She wasn't a bad kid and there might have even been hope for her. Maybe she could come back from this person she had become. She had been the sweetest little girl a mother could ask for. She had been…she had been a good daughter…she was a good daughter. She was…she was her daughter.

Shigeko is, was, and always would be her daughter.

But she had a son to think about. She had herself to think about. She…she had…she had some hard choices to make. Some very hard choices.

"Oh, we're not lost! I was just taking a more…scenic…route, that's all. Now come on, before all the good books are gone!" said Masami. She plastered a smile she did not feel onto her face. She took both of her children's hands. She set off down the road.

With footsteps tailing her the whole way.


	52. Long Walks

Mom sure loved taking long walks.

Mob had never known her mom to love walking this much. Mom usually complained, before, about how far apart things were and stuff like that. Now she was walking them through the heat all over the city. Well it felt like they were going all over the city but it must not have been that far. Dad had offered to send a car around for them but mom said that they weren't walking that far. She said that they all needed the exercise anyway.

Mob wondered why they needed the exercise.

Mom was sleeping a lot less these days, she wasn't as exhausted, and Sho was always running around and playing and stuff. Mom must have meant that Mob was the one who needed the exercise, then, because she had been spending pretty much all of her time with dad. Dad didn't like running around or anything like that, he liked to work, and he liked it when she was quiet and let him work. She had been spending her summer on the floor of dad's office with her toys or her tablet. Mostly her tablet, dad didn't like a lot of clutter in his office, so she had been mostly on her tablet. Dad didn't limit their screen time like mom did and he even let her buy as many games as she wanted. Stuff for her games, too.

Her tablet cat had the very best food, now.

Dad didn't say that her games were a waste of money like mom did. Dad said that she was learning valuable nurturing skills which would serve her well in her adult life. That meant that she needed to learn how to take care of things because when she grew up she was going to be somebody's mom like mom was her mom and Mob had to be a good mom so she had to learn to take care of things. Sho didn't have to learn to take care of things, dad said, because he was a boy and when he grew up his wife would take care of things for him just like how mom did for dad. That was how it worked in families.

Dad had said so.

Dad was always telling her what she would be when she grew up. How she would work for him and help him run the world, even though she didn't want to, and how she had to have a lot of kids because the world didn't have a lot of espers in it and they needed to make more. Mob had wanted to grow up and work at the animal shelter and take care of the cats….but she didn't tell dad that. If she told dad that then he would tell her that she was not allowed to grow up to work at the animal shelter and help take care of the cats. Dad already had a plan for her and she had to follow it.

It was best to just do whatever dad wanted.

That way he didn't end up getting mad at you. Sho was always doing the opposite of what dad wanted him to do. Dad was always telling Sho to be quiet and stop being a nuisance but Sho always just did whatever he wanted. Even when he was with mom he didn't just go with it even though it was so much easier to just go with what mom wanted. Like now. Like right now mom said that they were going for a walk and Mob, well she didn't much want to go on this walk, but mom said that they were going to walk so they were walking.

It was too hot out.

Mob had black hair. It was long and thick and it trapped heat. That was why she got hot so easily in the sun. Dad had said so. He said that she was unlucky because she had to have long hair and that her hair was black. Sho had short red hair. It reflected the sun, dad said, which was why he was better at being in the sun than she was. The hats that mom made them war didn't make her any less hot. Her head was sweaty and the rest of her was sweaty. She was so sweaty that her dress was sticking to her back and getting stuck on her legs. Her shoes were slippery in her sandals from how much she was sweating.

But she was not going to complain.

Not like Sho was.

"Mom! Walking is so boring! Can't we walk to somewhere fun, like that park?" asked Sho. Mob wanted to go to the park, too. It was less miserable if you were playing something or doing something fun. Not that Mob would ever have said something like that to mom. When someone wanted you to do something then it was best to do it. Otherwise they got mad.

"Sho, come on. It's nice to get out of the house and explore the neighborhood sometimes." Said Mom. Dad said that mom had been acting weird lately. Mob agreed. Mom had been leaving them all alone in the house with dad. Dad usually left her in charge of her and Sho. It should have been fun, being in charge, but it wasn't. Sho didn't like it that dad always put her in charge even though she was a whole year older than him. He said that she wasn't mom and it wasn't fair.

Dad just told Sho to be quiet and do whatever Mob said.

"But I don't even think that we're even in our neighborhood anymore." Said Sho. Mob agreed but said nothing. The houses were different here, a lot smaller. They lived in the biggest house in the whole city, dad had said, but the houses here looked nothing like theirs. They were smaller with only fences, not walls, and Mob didn't know how a family could live in a house so small. Where they did they put all of their extra stuff? Where did the kids in the family play? Where did the dad work? Where did the mom sleep and watch TV?

"It's nice to explore other neighborhoods, too. It's nice to see what else is out there." said Mom. Mob nodded. This was nice, exploring, kind of like what dad did. He had been all over the world and he had seen so much…and he said that when she and Sho got older he would bring them, too. Mob didn't know if she wanted to leave Japan, though, she had always wanted to travel with dad but the thought of leaving Japan…when she had seen so little of it…it was kind of worrying….

Mob wished that mom could have come too.

But dad said that mom wasn't safe because she didn't have powers. He said that when he ruled the world he would make a city for mom to be safe in. She would be safe and happy, dad said, in the domed city that he would make for mom. Mob thought that it sounded kind of lonely, a whole city just for one person, and the dome would be….trapping. It would be like the garden wall but worse. It would be like being trapped under a glass bowl, like Sho did to garden flies even though it was mean, and it would have been…

Mob wasn't allowed to have opinions on the things that dad did and did not want to do.

"Like other parks?" asked Sho. Mob wanted to tell mom to look on her phone for other parks for them to play at. Walking without purpose was miserable…but she wasn't supposed to question mom, either. Children did not question their parents, dad had said so, and she was not going to make mom or dad upset. She had to set a good example for Sho, too, dad had said. A lot of work went into being a good daughter but it was work that she knew she had to do. She had to be a good daughter so she could help keep the family together. Everyone had their part to play. Dad had said so.

"Maybe. We'll see where our feet take us." Said Mom. She stopped walking and looked on her phone. Mob wanted to ask what she was doing but she didn't. That might have counted as questioning mom. Mom had been so snappish with her lately. Mob wished more than anything that she could just get a clue already. Lately it had seemed liked everything she did was wrong. Everything she did had just made mom mad at her. Mom wouldn't even look at her much these days. Mom only tucked Sho in and she only washed Sho when they took a bath, Mob was old enough to wash her own skin and hair mom had said, and mom was telling her to fix her own snacks and put her own clothes away and…

And Mob had no idea what it was that she had done wrong.

But she wanted to make it right.

"We have brains in our heads and feet in our shoes and they can steer us wherever we choose." Said Mob. That was from a book, one of their English books, that mom read to them sometimes. Mom still read to them but she only sat on Sho's bed and she held him close and…and Mob was bigger than Sho. Mob was bigger than Sho and she was not little anymore…like dad was always telling her. She was older, a second grader once school started again, and she had to…she had to be a big kid now.

"That's right." Said mom. She didn't look at Mob when she said that. Even though dad said that she spoke really good English. Dad said that she had to be careful the way she said certain words or people who's mother tongue was English would think that she sounded funny. Mom didn't tell her that her English was very good or that it was good that she remembered her book or anything like that.

Mom didn't even look at her.

Mom hadn't even taken her hand.

Mom had taken Sho's hand and they were walking down this strange road in this strange part of the city. She wondered how dad felt when he walked down strange streets in strange countries. Did he feel like this? She'd ask him later. She wasn't allowed to question him but she was allowed to ask him questions. Dad liked it when she asked questions about him and his life. Well sometimes he didn't and it was hard to tell what was and was not ok to ask sometimes…

A lot of the times.

She kind of wished that she was back with dad. She wished that she was back in dad's air conditioned office where she could be with him and see how he was and just…just make sure that nothing made him mad…or if something did make him mad she could keep him away from Sho. She wanted Sho to be safe even if he was the one who made dad mad at him. She wanted a lot of things…things that she could not have. She wanted everyone in her family to get along all the time, like on TV, or like how other people's families were. She wanted….she wanted a lot of things…

She wanted her dad.

Because dad at least looked at her, sometimes. Not with his eyes but with his aura. She had no idea if mom was looking at her…well she wasn't…but there was another way of looking at people that had to do with auras…but of course mom wouldn't do that. She couldn't do that. Mom was a normal person and normal people did not have auras. Only espers had auras and mom was not an esper. There weren't a lot of espers in the world, dad had said, and that was why he had picked mom to be his most perfect person. He said that when she grew up she would find her most perfect person to, when she grew up, and he would be an esper.

But there weren't a lot of espers in the world.

Even though she had felt some, been feeling some, and had been feeling some for a while. She used to feel them occasionally before and after school. Little pokes at the edges of her feeling. Little jabs like when Sho poked her in the middle of the night. This was the middle of the day, though, so it was different…and also she had never felt this many before. It was getting worse…not worse but more…numerous.

Lots of little pokes.

Lots and lots and lots of little pokes.

Sho couldn't feel it. Sho would have said something if he could. He was bad at sensing people. He was bad at sensing her, sometimes, even though dad had said that she had an unusually bright aura. Dad said that she was almost as bright as her was. That had made her feel good. Dad could be mean, sometimes, but he could also be really nice to her too. She just wished that Sho could have gotten some of that niceness, too.

But he didn't.

Because he always did things that were wrong. He didn't have powers like she could and he couldn't sit still and be quiet like she could…and dad would only like Sho if he were more like her. Dad was…dad was dad and Mob…her job was to be there for dad…..to be there to keep him from getting any more upset at Sho…and she maybe liked spending time with him, too. At least he looked at her and talked to her and….and he was starting to be nicer to her than mom was….

She wanted to be with dad.

And she wanted to be with mom too.

She wanted everyone to be together.

But she mostly wanted to stop this poking feeling. She got this from Sho when he slept because he had bad dreams. She felt this from dad when he needed her attention. She did not like feeling this from strangers on the street. It was annoying and kind of…gross…too. Gross like being all covered in sweat all day while she walked under the blazing hot sun….

She stopped.

She stared.

These other auras felt weird. Her aura was pink and blue, dad's aura was red and yellow, Sho's aura was just red, and Fukuda's aura was just green. She didn't know why those people, the ones she could see, all had auras that were the same. Sho had an aura that was red like dad's but his aura was a brighter red and it also felt different. These people…it was like someone copy pasted them.

It felt wrong,

"Shigeko, keep up." Said Mom. Mob pointed at the people sitting in the black car at the end of the street. She couldn't see into the car, it had black windows, and she wondered how driving at night worked with black windows. Not that she was about to ask a bunch of complete strangers why they had a black car and black windows and how they drove at night without getting into all kinds of terrible accidents.

"Sorry mom." Said Mob. She stopped staring at the car. It drove off really fast and Mom grabbed her by the arm. Now she was sort of being dragged. Her sandals were getting dirty. These were new. Mom had gotten them for her on her last shopping trip. Mom explained that she had to take care of her shoes and all of her stuff. She said that because she was older now she'd have to do more for herself.

Because one day she wouldn't be there.

Mob knew that mom meant that one day she'd be an old person and Mob would be a grown up. When Mob became a grown up the she should have been able to take care of herself. That was why dad was letting her hang out with him, too, because one day she would be a grown up. When she became a grown up the she would have her own family to take care of.

Being a kid was practice for being a grown up. Dad had said so.

"Mom, are we going to a park? One with a playground? And a dog run? And one of those sprinkler things?" asked Sho

"But we're in clothes." Said Mob. She never thought things through. Dad said that. He said that Sho never thought things through and that was one of the things that made him annoying. Dad thought that Sho was annoying all of the time. Sometimes Mob thought that Sho was annoying and all but that didn't change the fact that Sho was the best little brother in the whole world. Even when he was tugging on mom even though you weren't supposed to tug on people like that.

"It's hot out, it's not like we'll get sick or anything like that." Said Sho

"But we'd still be all wet." Said Mob. She was sweaty already. She didn't want to end up soaking wet, too. Dad had been teaching her not to feel the heat or the cold but…but she wasn't that great at it. She wasn't that great at it yet but she didn't let on. Dad didn't like her when she was a failure.

She wanted dad to like her.

Because it felt good, having dad like her.

Even if it made her selfish.

"I don't care about that, big sis. I'd rather be all wet than all hot and sweaty." Said Sho. Mom reached down and touched his head. He always got head touches and head pats. Because he was so little. Because he was so little and…and she wasn't little anymore. That was why dad trusted her to make lunch and look after Sho and stuff. Because she wasn't little anymore.

"We'd have to walk home like that…and it's a long walk home." Said Mob. Mom was still walking them. She kept looking behind them at the people who were walking down the street, too. They had those weird copy and paste auras, too. Mob didn't get it at all. She didn't get why there were so many espers out in the world…and why dad kept on saying that there were so few of them in the world. Mob wanted to know more people like her. Sometimes she felt very alone, even in her own house, because aside from dad it felt like there was no one else in the whole world who was like her. Dad even said that. He said that there wasn't any girl in the whole world who was like her.

It was kind of lonely.

But she knew that she should not have felt like that. She should not have felt so alone. Dad said that being lonely was a bad thing. He said that she had to be a complete person on her own like he was. He said that he was a complete person but…but then he was always letting her spend time with him. And also he had married mom. And also he had made her and Sho. If he was such a complete person all on his own then he shouldn't have needed a family or anything like that. He should have been fine being all alone like he had said.

Mob didn't get him sometimes.

But she never told him that.

Because Dad liked her best. Dad liked her best and she….she liked dad best. She liked dad best because Sho liked mom best and mom liked Sho best. That was the best way for them to be. They had to divide up their parents evenly. Things had to be even and equal and…and that was the way that they were supposed to be. Even though when dad was gone she felt so alone. Mom didn't have powers and Sho didn't have powers like she had powers and mom liked Sho best and it just left Mob feeling so….

Alone.

Even now she felt alone. Mom was talking to Sho. She had let go of Mob and now she was holding hands with Sho and walking with him and…and she felt so alone even though she was with her mom and her little brother…and she was surrounded by other espers….strangers. Strangers with strange auras. Red, like the house over there that was painted bright red. Red like the red flowers that grew in the window boxes. Red like…kind of like dad's aura. Like dad's aura but…but different and also…and also kind of similar and she still felt so alone and she just wanted…

She didn't want to be alone.

She didn't want to feel alone.

And she didn't want to be surrounded by strangers. Mom and Sho were an island she was…she was also an island but they were not an archipelago like the nation of Japan was. Japan was an archipelago. That was one of the bonus questions on a test she took at school last year. That was a vocabulary test. She knew that word from dad, though, because he had gone to the Philippines and that was an archipelago. Lots of islands together was an archipelago.

She wasn't an archipelago, though.

She was an island all on her own. Like Madagascar, which dad had also gone to and told her about. She didn't want to be an island, though, she wanted to be an archipelago. She wanted to be in an archipelago with someone but she…she felt so alone. Mom and Sho were there and Dad was home and she wanted to go home but she wasn't sure where home was….she expanded her perceptions. She expanded her perceptions and looked for home…not that she was planning on running away…just that she wanted to feel-

Oh.

There were a lot of those copy and paste guys around, more than she thought, but also…she knew that aura!

"Mom, we've got to walk that way." said Mob. She tugged on mom's hand even though she wasn't supposed to do that. She had a good reason for doing this, though, a very good reason. She hadn't felt this aura in so long, so very long, and she missed it so much.

"Shigeko, wait for your brother." Said Mom. She let Mob tug on her…and Mob didn't think that she was mad. She had trouble, though, with figuring out what people felt and needed and wanted. It was so much easier when people said what they meant and meant what they said. Like dad was always doing. He always said what he meant and meant what he said and it may not have always been nice but at least he was easier to understand than most other people. Even people in her own family.

"You had better be leading us to a park." Said Sho. Mob didn't know where she was leading them because she wasn't leading them to a place. No, she was leading them to a person. A person that they would be so happy to see and who would be so happy to see them.

Right?

Wrong.

The walk had been longer than Mob had thought. She could tell where people were by their auras but judging distance was not easy. Still once she started she couldn't stop. She didn't want to stop. She didn't want to have this alone feeling inside of her anymore. She didn't want…she didn't want to feel alone anymore.

But maybe the walk had been too long.

"Fukuda!" said Sho. Well at least he was happy. They were very far from home, now, and she had the blisters to prove it. She was still happy, so happy, but not happy enough to shout like Sho did. He shouldn't have been yelling, it wasn't polite.

"What the hell-hello. Hello Masa-Mrs. Suzuki. Sho. Shigeko. What brings you to my neck of the woods?" asked Fukuda. It was weird seeing him outside of their house. He was dressed in summer clothes and he had a grocery bag. Maybe they were near his house. Or maybe this was just where he bought food. Mob didn't know. She was just happy to see him.

"Big sis led us here." Said Sho. Mob nodded. She had never expanded herself out so far before. Dad would be so happy with her when she told him about this! Not that she was going brag or anything like that….because that would have been wrong.

"Did she now?" asked Fukuda. He was smiling like he was happy but his aura was kind of…scared? That was the feeling she was getting off of him. Like how Sho's aura was when he knew that dad was going to punish him or when he was having a nightmare. But why would Fukuda have been scared? Wasn't he….wasn't he happy to see her? To see them? Why wouldn't have been happy? He was always happy when he came to their house.

"Yes. She led us here from about….eleven or twelve blocks away…" said Mom quietly, Fukuda nodded.

"Wow, you felt me from that far away, Little Lady?" asked Fukuda. Sho crossed his arms and stamped his foot. He didn't like it when dad talked about how strong her powers were…and it seemed like he got just as upset when other people praised her, too.

"Yes. You and a bunch of other espers too. They're back there, over there, and across the street as well." Said Mob. She pointed to all of the espers around them…and that might have been rude. Those espers ran away when she pointed at them. She was being rude or…or maybe they were scared of her…

"Wow. I had no idea that there were so many of us around. You could feel all of them?" asked Fukuda. Mob nodded.

"Yes. Dad says that I have very good range." Said Mob

"So it was you I felt earlier, then?" asked Fukuda. Mob nodded again.

"Yes. That was probably me, too. Dad said that my aura is very bright." Said Mob. She got the feeling that she was saying the wrong thing based on the looks that mom and Fukuda were giving each other.

Mob just didn't understand.


	53. Dad, Daughter, and Dinner

Mom was out again.

She took Sho with her this time. Just Sho. She said that she would be coming back eventually. Mob didn't know why she said eventually instead of a real time. A real time would have been much easier for her to deal with. For her and dad. Something she thought that dad took it worse than she did.

"Did you mother tell you when she would be coming back?" asked dad. This was the third time he asked her that. Not that Mob was complaining. Dad could ask her whatever he wanted.

"No, she just said eventually." Said Mob pulling off her headphones to be polite even though the volume wasn't up that high. She was watching Frozen on her tablet, in English this time, because dad liked it when she worked on other languages. Dad was working on updating his list of leads. People sent him leads for where other espers were and it was his job to figure out if they were worth looking into. That meant that he might have been going on another trip.

She didn't want him to go.

But she also did.

But she said nothing.

"Did she tell you where she was going?" asked Dad. He had asked her that question a bunch of times, too. His voice sounded normal and he was still looking at his computer but she could see his aura. His aura looked worried and he was trying to keep it from looking worried. He was trying to keep it together.

He was really worried.

Mob didn't know what he was so worried about. Mom was just…she didn't know where mom was…but she said that she was coming back. Besides, she couldn't go anywhere that was very far away. She still had to be home in time to put her and Sho to bed. Also she was totally coming back home because all of her stuff was there. Mob couldn't think of a reason why mom would want to leave anyway.

"No. She just said that she and Sho were going out and that I should stay home and keep you company." Said Mob. Dad's phone vibrated. He picked it up with his powers. She saw his eyebrows furl together. It was kind of funny, like two caterpillars cuddling together, but Mob didn't say anything about how dad's eyebrows looked just like caterpillars. That would have been mean.

"Daughter, do you have any idea why your mother would be at the playground near the train station? There's a playground near the house that she takes you to, correct? Not the mention the one in the back garden…." Said Dad

"She didn't tell me why she would go there but maybe she went there because Sho was saying the other day that he wanted to go to a different park than the one we usually go to." Said Mob. She wanted to put her headphones back on and get back to Frozen. She would have wanted to come to the park too. She didn't know why mom would take Sho and not her. Well, she did like Sho better…

But that was ok.

Sho got mom and she got dad. That was how the Suzuki family did things. Nice and even. She wished that mom would have liked her just as much as she liked Sho. She also wished that dad liked Sho just as much as he liked her. She wished that everyone could just like everyone else and be happy with everyone else.

She also wished that she had light hair and blue eyes and also a talking cat.

But wishes did not come true outside of movies. In real life you had to work with what you had. In real life your mom went to the park with your brother and not you. In real life your dad never called you or your little brother by your names. In real life it was too hot outside and too cold inside and there was nothing you could do about it because you weren't allowed to play with the thermostat and also you were supposed to be working on not being able to feel hot and cold and it wasn't fair and-

And she went back to watching Frozen.

She liked Frozen. Even though she was having trouble with what everyone was saying, and it was weird hearing different voices coming from the characters, she still liked Frozen. She was laying on the floor of dad's office on her stomach. The vent was right behind her. She could feel the cold air on her legs and up her dress. She wished that she was allowed to turn the air down but she wasn't. It was fine.

The cold never bothered her anyway.

"Daughter." Said dad. She felt her headphones being pulled off of her head. She tried not to be annoyed even though dad just kept on asking her questions that he knew she did not know the answers to. If he wanted to know why mom had left then he should have just called her. He had a phone and mom had a phone and their phones had charge so he could have easily called her. Not that she would ever go off and say things like that to dad.

She was not Sho.

She thought before she spoke.

And dad liked that about her. She was quiet. Dad liked that. Dad liked it when she was quiet and stuff. Dad liked her better…and she kind of liked it…liked being the one that dad liked. She liked having someone who liked her…but she did wish that dad liked Sho as much as he liked her. She also wished that mom would just come back home already so she could make dinner and make dad stop worrying. She didn't like it when dad worried. It didn't fit him at all.

"Yes, dad?" asked Mob. She paused her movie. They were just about to get to the part where Anna and Kristoff fell off the mountain and into the snow. She liked that part because they were ok at the end. Next came Fixer Upper, which was her third favorite song in the whole movie, well not in English because it was hard to follow but she was still learning. She wanted to keep on learning but she couldn't because dad kept on asking her questions about stuff that she had already told him that she didn't know the answers to.

"Your mother…she's never spoken to you about wanting to go anywhere, has she?" asked Dad. Mob had to think for a minute. Mom talked about having to go to the store a lot, and to go to register her and Sho for school, and to go and take the recycling out and stuff like that…

"Mom says that she has to go and do errands and stuff." Said Mob. Dad looked up from his phone and watched her. His eyebrows did the caterpillars cuddling thing again. Like they were trying to meet in the middle and cuddle but they couldn't quite make it. Mob wondered why dad didn't do his eyebrows. Mom did her eyebrows. It looked like it hurt. Mob watched mom getting ready sometimes. When she did her eyebrows and her makeup and painted her nails and stuff. Sometimes mom put makeup on her, too, even though she was only seven. Seven was too young for makeup, mom said, even play makeup. She could have makeup when she was in middle school, maybe. She didn't want makeup, no, she just wanted to do something with mom. Something where mom couldn't show Mob how much more she liked Sho than her…like now. Like how she had taken Sho to the park and not her…

"No, I meant to go to another place. To leave this place and go to another…possibly permanently." Said dad. Mob shook her head. Mom never talked about going places other than for errands. She didn't have any friends besides Fukuda but mom never went to visit him. Fukuda always came to them. The other day had been the first time that they had ever seen him outside of their house, actually, in all the years of her life that she could remember.

"You mean like run away from home?" asked Mob. That was a scary thought. Never seeing mom again…and she had Sho with her. She had Sho and if mom ran away from home with Sho then she would never see them ever again…and she'd be stuck with dad….

"Yes…in a sense. Has she ever talked about wanting to get on a train and leave?" asked dad. Mob shook her head. Mom had never talked about that…and that made her feel a world better. Which was good because she had started to make the picture on her tablet get all pixelated.

"No. Mom never talks about things like that. Why?" asked Mob. She wondered if that counted as questioning dad or just asking a question. She had trouble telling the difference, sometimes. She didn't want to get in trouble but she did want to know what had brought all of these weird questions on.

"Because she's been watching the trains for a while…never mind. Leave me. Find somewhere else to be." Said Dad. The door opened. Mob didn't need to be told twice. She was not Sho. She did what she was told. She felt bad that she had said the wrong thing, though, because now she was all alone.

It was still daytime.

But the castle could be just as big and just as lonely during the day as it was during the night. Well night was scary because the dark was scary…even though she was much too old to still be afraid of the dark. People feared the dark because they feared the unknown, dad had said, and that it made no sense to be afraid of this house at night because she had lived in it for her entire life. They had always lived in the castle and they always would. This was their home.

This was their castle.

It was castle Suzuki. Half of the Suzuki family was gone, though, so it was very lonely. Mob went to her room. She didn't feel like being alone in the living room and she did not want to go to the Treasure Room alone, either. It made her sad to be in there. She knew that Sho hadn't meant to hit her in the face with the kendo sword, Sho had drawn her an 'I'm sorry' picture and taped it to her face while she was asleep. Sho was sorry and she had forgiven him…even though she was the one who had upset him….and now everything was ok. She loved her little brother.

She missed her little brother.

She missed him so much.

She went to their room. She laid down on her bed with her tablet and went back to watching her movie. She put her headphones on and pretended that Sho was right there on the other side of the room watching his shows and playing with his toys and just being there and being Sho and she was on her bed and she was just being Mob and this was a normal day and everything was ok.

She was so lonely.

She reached over with her powers and pulled her box of chocolates out from under her doll, the one that looked like her, the one that watched her while she slept but would not come to life and kill her. Because dolls did not do that. Dolls did not come to life and kill you and then become you. That was just something that happened in movies that came on late at night and she and Sho were not supposed to watch for very good reasons.

She held her box of chocolates close.

It wouldn't melt. It was too cold in the house for it to melt. She pulled her blanket up over her legs and hovered her tablet in front of her. She clutched her box of chocolates to her chest. She knew that food was meant to be eaten but she just could not bring herself to eat those chocolates. Taro hadn't given her anything else, not even on her birthday, and he hardly ever talked to her since the other kids in their class started teasing him for liking her. She didn't hold it against him that he has stopped talking to her, she knew what it was like when people teased you, but it had still hurt. He had been the only person to ever want to hold her hand or to kiss her…not that they had kissed for real but nobody else had ever even wanted to kiss her before…

And they never would again.

But it was ok. Dad would have been upset at her for liking a boy who wasn't an esper anyway. She had to do what dad wanted her to do and to be who dad wanted her to be. Not that anyone would ever have wanted to be with her like that. Not a boy who was tall and nice to her and liked to spend time with her and talked to her and was always nice when he talked to her and…and she needed to stop thinking about this. She was fine. She was Mob. Nobody would ever want to be with her like that.

Despite what dad said.

Dad said that when she grew up she would have to get married and have a family. She didn't know who she would end up married to…or how happy she would be. She heard mom and dad talking through the vents, sometimes, well she and Sho did. Sho was better at tones and stuff and he said that mom always sounded either sad or mad when she and dad talked. They didn't spend a lot of time together either, mom and dad, and Mob didn't want to be married to someone who didn't want to spend time with her. She wanted to be married to someone who wanted to watch TV with her and play videogames with her and go to the park with her and hold hands with her and maybe even kiss her for real.

Mom and dad never did any of that stuff.

Not that she wanted to watch her parents hold hands and kiss. Sho had seen them kiss once and it had been the worst day of his life, he said, and Mob believed him. Mob wanted someone who wanted to spend time with her, though, for real. Not like how dad spent time with mom. Mob didn't know if it was how being married was or how dad was as a person. She knew that she didn't want to be married to dad, though, or a person who was like him. She needed someone to be nice to her. She needed someone who would want to spend time with her.

She needed someone who would make her feel less alone.

But she was alone. She was all alone…and she didn't know when she would be less alone. Dad told her to go away and mom was gone with Sho…and she didn't even have a friend she could play with. She had dolls. So many dolls. Dad called her dolls her friends. Dad always said 'here, a new friend for you' or something like that when he bought her a new doll. Her dolls were not her friends.

Her little brother was her friend.

Her very best friend.

But he was gone and she was alone. No matter how high she turned up the volume she was alone. She wished that Sho was there. Even if he wanted to jump on her bed and throw her dolls around and tell her that she was boring and that all of her toys were boring she wanted him there. But he wasn't there. She was alone, all alone.

She felt s shift in the energy around her.

Dad's aura. Dad was moving. She sat up, pushed the blanket off of her, and hid her chocolate box back under her doll. She kept her aura still and tried to stay calm as she felt dad's aura coming closer to her door. She knew that she hadn't done anything truly bad, like losing control, but she was still worried. Dad had been the one to kick her out after all. Dad had been the one to kick her out and now he was looking for her and she had no idea what it was that she had done and-

"Daughter." Said Dad before he opened her door. He never knocked. Mom usually knocked. Mob didn't know why she minded whether or not dad knocked. It was his house and he could choose not to knock if that was what he wanted to do. It was his room and his door and his house and his world.

She just lived in it.

"Dad?" asked Mob. She took off her headphones and pushed her tablet to the side. Dad hated it when she didn't pay attention to him when he was talking to her. Well he hated it when Sho didn't pay attention to him when he was talking to them but she did not want to act like Sho. She knew what happened to people who acted like Sho.

"Are you hungry?" asked Dad. Mob nodded. It was summer, mom had called it high summer, and the sun went down a lot later than it usually did. That didn't change the fact that it was almost dinner time according to the clock on her tablet.

"Yes." said Mob

"Do you want dinner?" asked Dad

"Yes. That would be nice. Do you want me to make it? I know how to make some stuff." Said Mob. She knew how to make dinner. Mom had been showing her how to do more and more things. Like how you had to put butter or oil in the silver pans because they didn't have the nonstick stuff on them. Or like how to add seasonings to the paste sauce that came from the jar to make it taste better. Mom was showing her things because one day she wouldn't be there. Mob had thought that mom meant that she wouldn't be there when Mob became a grown up but she had meant, it seemed, times like these when she was busy being out in the world with Sho and Mob had to stay home and keep dad company.

"No. Your mother was very upset the last time I let you make dinner…I'm not entirely sure why…but she was very upset. Here." Said dad. He used his powers to toss her his phone. She watched him do the password with his powers. She knew those numbers. That was mom's birthday.

"Find food." Said dad before he left the room. She held dad's phone in her hands. His phone. She had used mom's phone a million times before. It had a pink case and her wallpaper was a picture of her when she was little and her lock screen was a picture of Sho was he was a baby. Dad's lock screen was black and his wallpaper was plain blue. He didn't have any games, either, but this was dad. He didn't much like games.

She didn't snoop.

Even though she wanted to. Snooping was wrong. Snooping on your parents was even more wrong. She had to respect other people's privacy. Even though she wanted to know what it was that dad did on his phone all day if he didn't have any games….he had whatsapp and wechat and some stuff in languages that she couldn't read…and she also knew that reading other people's texts was wrong. Like the one time when Fukuda had sent mom a text while she and Sho had been playing with picture filters, the cats ears was still the best one, and then Mob had read it to mom and she got sent to her room for invading mom's privacy…

And dad did much worse to people than send them to their rooms.

Mob found the Demae-can app. Mom used this one to order stuff when she was too tired to cook. She usually just got pizzas from there even though they had more stuff than pizza…a lot more stuff it seemed…all kinds of food. Every kind of food that had ever been made it seemed….all the foods that anyone ever could have wanted…

Mob wanted a milkshake.

And fries.

And Sho liked pork curry. Spicy pork curry. The kind that made you cry while you ate it.

Also mom liked cheesecake with toppings on it.

And dad liked breakfast food…but for some strange reason there was no breakfast food on this. None at all. That was weird. What if someone wanted to eat breakfast for dinner? What if someone's dad really liked breakfast food? What if someone's dad loved breakfast more than any of the other kinds of food that they sold in the city? What then?

Dad had also complained, before, that what the rest of the world called sushi was pure and utter garbage. He must have liked it, then, if he complained about how bad a job all the other countries in the world did. Dad said that Japan was the center of food and culture and everything that was good in the world came from Japan. Mob thought that was a mean thing to say about the other countries but she never said anything about that.

Dad liked sushi.

He had liked it on New Year, anyway, and Mob wanted to get something that he liked. She could have cooked but mom had gotten upset that she had ruined one of the fancy silver pans…and also dad told her to find food. So she found food. Ordering was easy. She had no idea if she had spent a lot of money or not, mom was always saying that things were expensive but dad was always saying that they had plenty of money…and the kids at school said that she was rich because of where she lived and stuff…but she had no idea if she was rich…

She didn't think that they were rich.

Rich people drove around in limousines and wore fancy clothes and jewelry and stuff like that. They had a big fancy house, though, well dad said that their house was fancy. Anyone with eyes could have seen that it was big. Mom said that it cost a fortune to heat and cool the house. Dad said not to worry about money because there would always be more money. Mob hoped that she hadn't spent too much money.

She didn't want to make mom mad.

She didn't want to make anyone mad. She was going to be a good Daughter to both mom and dad. She had to be good. She was good. Dad told her all the time that she was good. She made her bed like a good Daughter and she set the kitchen table like a good Daughter and she was very quiet like a good Daughter. She had to be a good Daughter. She had to be good so that dad would keep on loving her. She needed at least one person in the family to love her.

Mom loved her.

But she loved Sho more.

But that was ok. She still had dad. She went back to be with dad after she finished with the table. Dad had come to talk to her so maybe it was ok to be around him again. Also he was in the living room, now, and not his office. Also she had to give him back his phone. That was a good reason to go and sit next to him on the couch while he watched one of his documentaries that wasn't in Japanese.

He put the subtitles on for her after she sat down.

"You found food?" asked Dad. He didn't look at her, not with his eyes anyway. She could feel his aura settling down onto her. She let him look at her. It wasn't like she could have done anything to stop him.

"Yes." said Mob. Dad clicked his phone opened. His aura was still settled down onto her. She felt it prick at hers like when she dragged her feet down the carpet.

"You were certainly hungry." Said dad

"I wanted to get dinner for everyone. I wanted to make everyone happy." Said Mob. She watched TV because dad was watching TV. She would have rather been watching one of her shows but she didn't say anything. She didn't want dad to get annoyed with her or mad at her or anything like that.

"You're just like your mother." Said dad

"I am?" asked Mob. She didn't look a thing like mom. Also mom was good at talking to people and stuff. She never said the wrong thing. If anything Sho was the one who was just like mom. He looked just like dad, minus the caterpillar eyebrows, but he acted just like mom. That was why mom liked him best. She was just like dad, mom said so all the time, and that was why dad liked her the best.

"Yes. Your mother….before you and Sho were born your mother made me dinner. She made far more food than two people could ever have been expected to eat because she wanted to make me happy. So she made all of my favorites. A bit like you did just now. You're a lot like her, Daughter." Said dad. Mob nodded.

"Thank you." Said Mob. There was nothing else that she could say. She was…she was interested, now, in what it had been like in the times before she and Sho had been born. Mom and dad were a whole seven years younger back then. Mom and dad…she wondered what they had been like back then. What had they been…doing….together back then? They must have been closer, right?

Dad must have been nicer to mom, right?

Mob didn't know. She didn't know and she didn't ask. She just watched TV with dad until the food came. Well until she felt an aura prick at the corners of her perception, one of those copy paste auras, and then there was a knock on their door. That was weird. Delivery people always rang the bell at the front gate. Also delivery people never had auras, too.

Dad hadn't been worried.

He just went to the door, got the food with his powers, and then told the copy and paste aura person to go back to his post. Mob watched the person from behind dad's legs. He had the same aura as all of those other people….but he looked like a regular person….and he was even shaking a little when dad talked to him…

Dad closed the door and told her that it was dinner time.

"Daughter." Said dad as he clicked his chopsticks together with his powers. Mob never used her powers while she ate, and rarely used her chopsticks, but she decided that the best thing to do to stay on dad's good side would be to copy him. So she used her powers to use her chopsticks too…even though eating fries with chopsticks was kind of weird.

"Yes dad?" asked Mob as she dipped a fry into her shake. Mom never let her do this on the rare times they had junk food like this. She said that it was super gross.

"Did your mother tell you when she would be home?" asked dad for what felt like the hundredth time. Mob didn't let any of her feelings show. Not on her face and not on her aura. Good daughters did not get annoyed at their dads for asking questions that they had already gotten the answer to.

"No. She just said that she would be home eventually." Said Mob

"That is a very long timeframe." Said Dad

"It is." Said Mob. There was some silence between them, then, which Mob used as an opportunity to continue to dip her fries. She loved this, the mixture of salty and sweet, and she wished that she could have eaten like that all the time. She wished that…well she wished for a lot of things. She wished for a lot of things that could never come true. Mom would never let her eat junk food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner just like dad would never like Sho as much as he liked her.

"Why do you do that?" asked dad as he ate his food. He ate very slowly and deliberately, like it mattered which of the little pieces of fish and rice got eaten first. Sho ate like that too. Well he ate animal crackers like that.

"Do what?" asked Mob

"Dip your fries in your drink. Why do you keep on doing that?" asked dad

"I like the way it tastes. Do you want to try?" asked Mob

"No. I don't care for sweet things, you know that." Said dad. Mob nodded. Dad didn't even out syrup or powdered sugar on his pancakes. Very strange, in Mob and Sho's opinions, though Sho was the only one who voiced that particular opinion.

"Ok, but the salty and the sweet taste good together." Said Mob

"Do they really?" asked Dad. Mob nodded. She wondered why dad hated sweet foods so much. She didn't know if she could ask.

"Yes. They taste good while they fight it out." Said Mob. One of her fries floated off of her plate, dipped its self in her shake, and then flew over to the end of dad's chopsticks. He put it in his mouth, made a face that Mob knew better than to so much as smile at, chewed slowly, and then took a drink of water.

"That…was vile." Said Dad

"I'm sorry." Said Mob

"How can you possibly eat like that?" asked dad. Mob was tempted to ask him the same thing. She had seen him eat plain pancakes three times a day, before, and one time he ate two whole omelets with so much ketchup on them that she could barely even see the plate. She said nothing, of course.

"I just like it I guess." Said Mob. They were all entitled to their own opinions, mom had said so, and so had dad but on a separate occasion to when mom had said it.

"Here. Try this. Broaden your pallet." Said Dad. He floated a piece of pink fish with rice over to her side of the table. She took it with her chopsticks and put it in her mouth.

"Slowly. Actually taste what it is that you're eating." Said Dad. Mob did as she was told. It just tasted like tuna and rice to her. It didn't have enough flavor. It needed mayonnaise but not the spicy mayonnaise that Sho liked.

"There. Wasn't that better?" asked Dad as Mob finished chewing and swallowing. Mob nodded and then took a sip of her milkshake. Strawberry with whipped cream and strawberries on top and a poke stick, too. Nice and sweet like she liked it.

"Yes dad." Said Mob. If dad said that it was better then it was better. She didn't agree but…but she had to because dad was her dad.

"I've had better though, but if you want good you have to be nearer to the water. I'll take you with me next time I go…and when you get older." Said Dad. Mob nodded. When she got older…but wasn't she older already? She was old enough to cook and take care of herself and Sho…she was older now…but not old enough to come with dad….

Did she even want to go with dad?

Would she and Sho be alone with dad…or would dad leave him alone with mom? Would mom and Sho be lonely together…or would they be happy? Happier than they were now? Was Mob happy with dad? Dad liked her better like mom liked Sho better….and she liked dad a lot…and she liked the rest of her family…

She missed mom and Sho.

But they came back, eventually, just like mom had said before. They must have had a big day, too, because mom went to bed as soon as she got home. She barely even said 'hi' when she came in….

But she came back. Dad could stop asking, now, about when mom was coming back. That was what mattered the most.


	54. The Only Way Once Again

This was the only way.

There was no other way. Masami he tried every other way. There was none. There was nothing else that she could do. Even now, in the early hours of the morning, she was thinking. She was trying to think up some brilliant plan, some eureka moment, in which she could leave with both of her children in two. Shigeko and Sho. There had to be some way where she could leave with both of them and start a new life. A life far away from this place.

There was no way.

Shigeko's aura was too bright. Masami would only get away if she could slip away, become a needle in a haystack, and she couldn't do that with her daughter. Sho had the same problem. Fukuda said that Sho had an aura, it was there but not as bright as his sister's. He was noticeable too. The people who followed her, the people her husband hired, were bad at following her when she was on her own. It took a while but she could shake them. She couldn't shake them with both of her children.

Or even just one.

She had tried to run away just her and Sho. She had spent the entire day ta the train station trying to leave with him. To leave with him and never look back…but she just couldn't shake the people following her. Not with Sho in tow. She would have to leave her son behind…and her daughter…and there was nothing that she could do.

This was the only way.

Today was the day. Fukuda said that Touichirou would be leaving the country again soon. There was something that he needed to look into and apparently it was important. So important that it could have turned into another long trip. The last long trip had taken months…and Masami….she couldn't have taken the children with her even if her husband was away. Apparently when he was out of the country he had teams of people watching her every move. Now there were people just sort of…around. She knew that there was a guard posted outside of their house twenty four hours a day but the rest of them he had to order to follow her. When he was away it was even worse…

She wouldn't get past the front door.

This was the only way. It was now or never. Today or never. She had tried with both of the kids, then with just Sho, and she knew that her best bet was by herself. She had to…to abandon her children. Shigeko. She was abandoning Shigeko. Sho was different. Touichirou had been disappointed in Sho….and he had always loved Shigeko. He would never let Shigeko go for as long as they both lived. Sho…Masami wondered if he even wanted Sho.

There was a plan.

Fukuda was invaluable. He was close to Touichirou. They had known each other for years, since before she had even met Touichirou, and he was trusted completely. He was also close to the family. To the children. Touichirou…he would not have taken the children with him and if by some miracle he did…she knew which child he would be ok with leaving behind. With losing. Hell, this might even be a good thing for Touichirou. Now he could go to the orphanage and pick out the son he'd always wanted, too. He could stop off on the way home and pick out the perfect wife, too, whatever it was he wanted in a wife. In a partner. It was obvious to Masami that she was nowhere near enough for him.

If she had been enough for him he would have held her without being told.

If she had been enough for him he would have kissed her without being told.

If she had been enough for him he would have stuck around and not gone traipsing all over the world without a thought to his own wife.

If she had been enough for him then he wouldn't have been involved in all of the shady shit he was involved in. He would have given some thought to the danger he was putting her and the children in.

If she had been enough for him he wouldn't have sent people to stalk her even before the thought of leaving had ever even crossed her mind.

If she had been enough for him then he would have been laying in that bed beside her. He wasn't. It was early, the sky had just started turning blue, and he was off in his office doing whatever it was that he did. According to Fukuda she was better off not knowing. She was better off not knowing even a tenth of what her husband got up to….shady shit. All of the shady shit that she could think up he was probably involved in.

She was better off without him.

But she also wanted…she wanted to have been able to look at him for one last time. She had been asleep when he came to bed and hadn't even noticed him getting up. She wasn't going to stop by his office and offer her goodbyes. Tell him that she was going and that he had pushed her to it. No…that would have been stupid. The stupidest thing that she could have done. She'd leave a note in the kitchen. She'd tell him that she was headed off to the store to get some fresh fish or vegetables or something. Or that she was headed off to Starbucks or something.

Not that she was headed off to parts unknown.

She sat up from her bed for the last time. This had been their bed for seven years now. She had moved in with him long before Sho had been born. Right about the time when the test came back positive and she was making some hard choices. She had been amazed, swept off her feet, that he had stepped up so quickly. There had been no discussion of options. She had told him that she was pregnant and then he just said that they could get married…and then he came back with a ring for her…and then the rest was history. He hadn't even asked her what she wanted…

It was Touichirou's world. She just lived in it.

This was Touichirou's house…and she didn't live in it anymore. She wasn't taking anything with her. Not even clothes. She would even ditch her purse as soon as she could. Fukuda had another for her at his place. He had clothes and a bag and even new shoes for her. Drab things. Things that she never would have worn. Her closet was opened. She should have closed it. Touichirou was slightly paranoid about one of the kids hiding in there again. Well he was slightly paranoid about everything. It wasn't like they were doing anything that would traumatize the kids anyway. They hadn't since that night after he came back. For such a selfish man he was very giving in bed….which was about the only thing that she would miss about him.

She got out of bed for the last time.

She wouldn't miss the way he stared at her. She wouldn't miss the way he was incapable, totally incapable, of holding her even though they had been apart for weeks or even months. She wouldn't miss the way he treated her more like a maid and short order cook instead of a wife. A partner. She would miss the way he never even though about her, how she felt or what she wanted, and lived his life as if he were the only one in the world. Like the rest of them were CPU characters in one of the kids' games…

She went to her closet for the last time.

No kids back there. No, they'd still be in bed. They slept later and later as the summer went on…Touichirou would have a hell of a time getting them up for school…she was not crying. She brushed the back of her hand across her eyes and flipped through her clothes. The last time she would ever stand there and wonder what dress to wear. She'd never get to dress like this again. The colors and patterns…and the expensive labels…she would never dress like this again. She couldn't. She had a drab wardrobe of cheap white, grey, brown, and black things waiting for her all packed up at Fukuda's…he was risking his life for her and here she was lamenting the fact that she would never wear the violet dress with the velvet collar again….her clothes didn't matter. Nothing mattered but getting out and figuring out what she would do next.

She took her yellow dress out of her closet.

Shigeko loved this dress. She loved the color and the texture of the fabric and the fact that it was the best dress for twirling around in that Masami owned by far. She had promised this dress to Shigeko when she grew up. She had…she had promised Shigeko a lot of things. She had promised to walk her into her new classroom this year…she had promised to teach her to paint her nails…she had promised to teach her how to wear makeup…she had promised to take her to the cat shelter again…she had made so many promises to her daughter. She was going to miss out on so much in Shigeko's life. Going through elementary school…middle school….high school…university. Her first love. Marriage. The birth of her children. Masami would miss all of it….and Touichirou would be…but he wouldn't give a damn…

She couldn't take Shigeko with her.

Shigeko would be all alone with Touichirou. She'd grow up without a mother. There were so many things in Shigeko's life that needed a mother's touch. Things that Touichirou wouldn't have been able to help her with even if he could get away from his shady work and be a father for ten seconds. Shigeko…she was only seven…but she wouldn't be seven forever. She'd be eight and then nine and ten and eleven and twelve and then she'd start puberty around those years and Touichirou had no idea how to help her through that. Through any of it. Her first real crush. Her first bra. Her first period. Pretty much anything that she would have needed help with. There was still so much to teach her…

Masami tossed her nighshirt into the hamper and put her yellow dress on.

There was still so much she had to teach both of the kids. Sho…she was leaving Sho…for the time being at least. Fukuda said that Shigeko was the jewel in Touichirou's and he would never let her go but Sho….they had never gotten on. If Sho were to go missing one day…Fukuda said that it most likely wouldn't have been a manhunt to find him again. Sho would come back to her one day…and then she could teach him all the things he needed to know. How to be sweet and kind and gentle and nothing like his father. How to be a man, a real man, not like his father. How being a man meant more than getting a woman pregnant and then providing for her and the child. How being a man meant being there for his wife…or whoever else he chose to be with. It might have been too early to tell, Sho was only six after all, but she knew that she would love him no matter who he chose to spend his life with. Touichirou…he never would have accepted Sho…and he didn't accept him now. Sho…one way or another he would come back to her.

Masami went to her drawers and put some socks on.

She would get her son back. She would be there for him. She had made her choice…not that there was any choice at all. Shigeko….he would turn the Earth upside down and inside out searching for her. For his wife and son….well he had never paid them much attention to begin with. He had said, before, that he would have noticed if she just swapped places with another woman…but Masami doubted that. He didn't want a wife. He wanted a maid and a nanny and a cook and an occasional call girl. He was rich as all get out, he could afford to have all the help he needed. He never even said that he loved her…it didn't matter. She was done with him.

She tied her hair back.

No time to shower. If she showered then she might have started to have second thoughts. No. The best thing to do was to get up and get out and just…leave all of this behind. This life she had been living. This life that she had been going through the motions of. She would miss her children but she would not live this life. The life of a kept woman. That was what she was at the end of the day, a kept woman. She wouldn't miss it. Life would be hard, especially after living like this, but she would survive. She hadn't worked in years and couldn't go to her family for support, that would be the first place he would look, and she couldn't indulge in her wild fantasies of running away with Fukuda either. She'd have to truly support herself for the first time in her life. She had lived with her parents for her entire life, barring a few years in the dorms at her university, and after she had gotten pregnant with Sho she lived here….she hadn't even had to work, not for real, since she had been….

She grabbed her purse.

She had money. A lot of it. The money was free as the air in the Suzuki household. Touichirou never checked the family finances. There was always money for whatever he needed. Whatever they needed. Even things that they didn't need. Why the children needed their own tablets…she would never heard the dueling sounds of them trying to play their games at full volume while sitting side by side again….she was not crying. She could not cry. She would not cry because…because she could not have seconds thoughts. She could go, save herself, save Sho later on, and then they could live their best lives or the entire family could stay here and just…carry on. Carry on as they had been carrying on for years. She could not carry on anymore…

She checked her phone.

And then put it back on the charger.

She had a burner phone. She had a burner phone, almost two million yen in cash and jewelry, and a hair dye kit. She would not take her phone. She would ditch her bag as soon as she could. She would lose her stalkers and then head over to Fukuda's apartment by way of back roads, cutting through two shopping centers, and walking under a bridge. He was watched too but not nearly as stringently as her family was. Plus it was still early. The shift change hadn't happened yet and according to him a lot of the people following her were useless. Not even proper espers, he had said, Awakened….whatever that meant. She didn't have an aura, anyway, so once she lost them she'd become a needle in a haystack. Once she cut and dyed her hair…

She'd be unrecognizable.

She had a very common name. Suzuki. Suzuki Masami. She would dye her hair a common shade of black and cut it short…and then wear the drabbest clothes imaginable…and then she would just…disappear. Live off her savings until Fukuda told her the heat died down and then…start her new life. It was…she felt like vomiting. A new life. She'd….the sky was the limit…she could do…not anything. She had no CV anyway. Nothing but volunteering and a university degree in nonsense. She did speak fluent English and Japanese….

Not the best job.

But she had money and that would keep her afloat. She'd have to be the soul breadwinner. Money wouldn't grow on trees anymore. Sho…he would need so much. School uniforms and school fees and doctor's fees, she wouldn't use his insurance card unless she absolutely had to, and toys and food and…and she would do it. She would provide for her son. She would give him the life that he should have had from the beginning. A life filled with love, all the love that she should have been giving him over the years…the love that his father should have been giving him. Even if it was in some tiny shoebox apartment in a terrible neighborhood in some far off city she would give him the best life she could.

She made her bed for the last time.

She would give Sho the best life that she could. Him and her. No father. She did not want…she did not want that. Not with anyone but Fukuda…and that could never happen. Fukuda was in too deep, he said, and for him the only way out was death. Touichirou was planning something bug but unfeasible. That was what Fukuda had said. Touichirou was planning on ruling the world…it would blow up in his face, of course, but to think that all these years…the stories that he had been telling the children were real…he really was planning on taking over the world….

She closed her bedroom door for the last time.

The house was freezing, as usual. Touichirou had never had an air conditioner as a child. Now he pair and arm and a leg to turn this house, three houses put together in actuality, into a walk in freezer. She hoped…she hoped that the children would be warm while she was gone. That they'd be good to each other. They had been fighting like cats and dogs lately…she wished that she could have taken…taken them both…even if Shigeko wouldn't have wanted to go. Even if she was so much like her father it was uncanny. Even though she was seven going on forty, it seemed, and even though she didn't much care for her own mother….she had said that given the choice she would choose her father….and she was so much like him already…Masami knew that she could not save her daughter. It was too late. She couldn't give Shigeko the life she needed. Sho was barely an esper. Shigeko…she was a prodigy. Fukuda had said so as had Touichirou. That was why she had been abandoned by her biological parents in the first place. She was an esper, a powerful one, and she could not always control that power…and Masami had no way of stopping her once she lost control….so she was better off.

Masami walked down the hallway for the last time.

There were plastic animals all over the floor. She turned her dress into a basket and collected them. She was…this was the last time she would ever clean up one of their messes. How many times had she done this before? Without even a thought? Now she was…this was the last time….she would see Sho again. Fukuda said that he would bring her Sho the first chance he got. Sho would join her and they would have a new life together and then he would leave his toys all over the floor and she'd pick them up for him and-and-and-

She opened her children's bedroom door for the last time.

The curtains were drawn. The room was dark. There were more toys on the floor. Masami put Sho's plastic animals in his plastic animal bin. This room was a disaster area. There were toys everywhere…the pieces to a puzzle…socks without matches….legos….clothes…so many clothes. Some of which were Shigeko's. Masami picked up a dress. Clean. Shigeko had left a clean, thirty thousand yen, dress right on the floor…though that might have been Sho's doing. He could be so destructive when he got upset. She had always tried to teach him to be a sweet, gentle, boy…and he would. When she started her new life and the heat died down Sho would be the sweet, kind, gentle little boy that she had always wanted him to be. That she had always known that he could be.

She tucked her son in for the last time.

He had kicked his covers off in his sleep. He needed to stay covered. It was freezing in their room and thee were his summer Zootopia pajamas, not his winter Zootopia pajamas. He could get chilled…he got chilled so easily…even though he was so warm now. He was so warm and soft…she had forgotten how soft his skin was. She had marveled at it, when he had been born, how soft his skin was. Even though he had been covered in eczema his skin was so soft….and his hair had been so soft….and it still was. Her boy. Her sweet little boy…she let her hand linger on his back. He turned around but did not wake up.

She spoke to her son for what felt like the last time.

"Sho…mommy loves you. Mommy will always love you even if…if even she's not right there with you. Mommy loves you and she is always thinking of you. You're my sweet, kind, gentle boy and we…we'll be together again. Someday we'll be together and…and I can give you the life you should have had. One with friends and…and a mother who can always be there for you…and you'll be so happy. We'll even get you a cat or a dog or a hamster or a canary…whatever you want….whatever you want because…you are so loved. I love you so much." Said Masami. She whispered it softly, so softly she could barely even hear her own voice. She wished that he would have woken up. Woken up and thrown his arms around her and begged her to stay…

He did not.

Masami kissed the top of his head for what felt like the last time. He was asleep. Had he been awake he would have shouted at her that he was not a baby anymore and he would have rubbed her kiss off like it was the kiss of death. But he was not awake. He was asleep and he couldn't do a thing to stop her from showing him just how much she loved him. He was six….she didn't hold the way he was against him…and she had no idea when she would see him again? Would he be seven? Eight? Nine? Ten? Older? Would the damage have already been done by then? Would he have even wanted to be near her, to go with Fukuda to be with her? Or would he….would he resent her? She didn't know and she wasn't about to go and find the kids' magic eight ball and ask it. She just knew…she knew that this was the only way…even though she so desperately wished that there was some other way…

She kissed her son on the head again.

And then she crossed the room and kissed her daughter.

For the last time. This would be the last time that she ever laid on eyes Shigeko. Her daughter. The little orphan that her husband had brought home half a decade ago. She had been so small then…and she was still so small. She was so small and helpless and…and Masami had taught her what she could. She wouldn't be there to help Shigeko become a woman. She was still a little girl…and there was still so much to teach her. She was so…she needed her mother…but Masami was no kind of mother to her. Even before this she hadn't been what Shigeko needed. Who she needed. Now…now there was no other way. This was goodbye.

She took the box of chocolates from Shigeko's hands.

Old. Very old. These were from White Day….Masami remembered that day. The day she had caught Shigeko using her powers. The day she had…the day her daughter had gotten her first ever box of White Day chocolates, apparently. Shigeko…she hadn't told her. Her first crush….or at least the first time a boy had ever shown interest in her…and Masami hadn't known. She put the box of chocolates on Shigeko's nightstand. She wanted to wake her daughter up and get all the details…how had she missed this? Her own Daughter's first romantic experience…Shigeko hadn't come to her with it…well of course she hadn't. Why would she have? Masami had been so angry with her that day…this was on her. Everything about their relationship up to this point was on her…

She spoke to her daughter for the last time.

"Shigeko….I love you. I know that you and I…things have been difficult lately…but know that I love you. It hasn't been easy all these years but I do love you. I would…I would take you if I could but I can't. You…you deserve so much better than what I can be. You need someone other than me. Shigeko…when you were two years old…you came to us. You came to us as a gift. When God sends you a blessing you…you're supposed to treat it better than I've treated you. I have...I have to go now but you'll always be with me and I will always be with you…you will always be with me. Even if I won't be with you physically. Even if I won't be around to watch you grow up and become a woman….I will always be with you and you will always be with me. You…you will always be my daughter." Said Masami. She said nothing more. A tear, a single one, hit the mattress with a plop. It was time to go. It was time to go because if she didn't go now then she would never go. Not that she wanted to go, to leave her son and daughter, but she had to.

She had no choice.

This was the only way.


	55. Where's Mom?

"Dad, I really don't know."

Dad was asking about mom again. She had gone out. She went out a lot these days. She was going to come back. She always came back. She had gone out that morning, she had left a note in the kitchen, and she would be coming back eventually. That was when she always came back.

Eventually.

She was coming back. Even though it was starting to get dark out. Even though mom had already missed both breakfast and lunch. It was coming up on dinner time and she was still gone. She and Sho had been kicked out of dad's office. He was worried even though he never said that he was. Mob could tell by his aura. He was worried about mom. Mob was worried about mom, too, but she didn't say anything. She couldn't say anything. Sho was very worried and if she told Sho that she was worried, too, then he would freak out.

"Think, Daughter, try and think. Think of where your mother would go if she…think of where your mother would be. She takes you and your brother out with her when she goes out. She must go somewhere." Said Dad. He had kicked them out of his office but then he went to bother them when they had been in their room minding their own business. She had put Zootopia on for Sho, in Japanese because this was no time to be making him practice English, and she had put the covers on him so he would be warm and toasty and calm.

He had been so worried all day.

They were all worried.

"I am thinking, dad, and I don't know. I'm sorry but I don't know." Said Mob. She was trying her best to keep it together. She wanted mom back too. She might have just been out watching the trains come in and out of the station or something. Mob didn't know. All she knew was that she woke up and mom hadn't been home and she had been the one to make breakfast and lunch and mom still wasn't home and she didn't want to have to make dinner to and she wanted her mom to just come home already.

"You honestly don't know?" asked Dad. Mob nodded. She didn't lie. She had no idea where mom would be for so long. She wished that she did know. Then they would be able to find her and bring her back. She had never been gone for this long before….

"I don't know, dad, I really don't." said Mob. She wished that dad would just get out of their room. She had just gotten Sho to calm down. The longer dad was in their room for the harder it would be for Sho to stay calm and stay quiet.

"What about your brother?" asked Dad. Mob wished that dad wouldn't talk about Sho like he wasn't even in the room with them. Sho was a person…but dad just didn't talk to him like one…and that Mob was not going to start with dad about that. She didn't want to start with dad at all.

But she wasn't going to.

She had left her phone. That wasn't like mom at all. She had left her phone on the charger and it had been hours already. Maybe she thought that she lost it wherever she was out in the world and she was looking for it. Maybe that was it. Maybe she was at the phone store buying a new phone and the line was really long or something. That was another very good reason for her mom not to be home even though she had missed two meals already and Sho had been crying….and Mob wanted to cry….

But she didn't cry. Dad hated crying.

"Maybe she ran away from home." Muttered Sho from his blanket cocoon. Mob pulled the blankets tighter around him like a burrito. He had to be quiet. He had been living with dad for his whole life and he still didn't know that dad liked it best when he was quiet.

Dad didn't say anything. Sho just hit the wall.

"Sho didn't mean it, dad, mom didn't run away. She might just be lost or…something." Said Mob before dad could hit Sho again. There was a loud sort of thumping sound when Sho hit the wall. She didn't ever want to hear that sound again. She didn't ever want Sho to get hurt again. She needed to keep Sho safe. She was his big sister and she had to keep him safe.

"I never want to hear either of you say that again." said Dad. He was watching her with his eyes and his aura. Mob nodded. She tried to keep her aura still and her face still. She couldn't let dad see how worried she was. How scared she was. Dad wouldn't have liked it at all if he could see how she felt.

"Yes dad." Said Mob. She didn't know if dad had meant that they weren't allowed to say that mom might be lost or that they weren't allowed to talk to him about mom at all. She wanted to talk about mom. She wanted him to tell them that he knew where mom was and that he was going to find her and that she was alright and not lost or hurt or dead or…or she didn't even know….

"Good. Feed yourself and your brother at some point." Said Dad. He left their room, then, and closed the door behind him. The room was silent aside from the movie that she had forgotten to pause. She could always rewind or start it again…or maybe it was time to start dinner. Mom started dinner at different times based on what they were going to have. Mob wondered what mom had been planning to make for dinner. Maybe nato even though it wasn't a dinner food. They had a lot of nato. They wouldn't run out of nato anytime soon…

But what about all the other food?

Mom was the one who bought the food. Dad never bought food. If mom never came home then they would never have food again. Then they would starve. Wait, no, dad let her order takeaway….so they got to live on takeaway. That was ok…she liked takeaway…but she liked mom's cooking more. Because mom was there and she was the one who cooked it, not a stranger, and it had love in it. Mob could taste the love that mom put into it…and mom needed to come home and make more food….

Mom needed to come home.

"She's never coming back." Said Sho. Then something hit her over the head. It was soft…a stuffed animal. Then another hit her over the head. And another. And another. And then something hard hit her over the head. A pencil. Then a drawing book. She just stood there and let him throw things at her. She knew that if she told him to stop then he would just get mad at her and then they would fight and then dad would end up getting mad at them…and he was already pretty mad. Well worried. Mob could tell. Everyone was worried.

"She is too coming back, she's just late. That's all." Said Mob. She was their mom. Of course she was coming back. She was their mom. Moms did not just run away from home and never come back. That was the kind of stuff that only happened on TV and in books. Besides, if she had been running away from home she would have had a suitcase. All of her stuff was still in her closet and all of her makeup was still on her makeup table. Dad even asked her if any of mom's stuff was missing. She had just done the laundry so the only thing that was missing was mom's pretty yellow dress. The one that was good for twirling. Mob liked to twirl sometimes, when dad wasn't around, and mom said that she could have that dress when she grew up…

So of course mom was coming back. She had to give Mob the dress for when she grew up.

"She isn't. I know that she isn't. She's gone and she's never coming back." Said Sho. He was out of things to throw at her, it seemed, unless he wanted to get off of his bed. She hoped that he didn't. When mom wanted a moment of peace she put a movie on for them and then she made dinner. Was Mob mom…now? Since mom was away was she supposed to be their mom? Was that how it worked because she was the only girl in the house besides mom? Or maybe not since Sho never replaced dad even though he was the only boy in the house besides dad.

"Sho, don't say things like that. You know that she's coming back. She can't just leave, she's our mom." Said Mob

"I'll say whatever I want to say. Mom is gone and she's never coming back. I know because I dreamt about it." Said Sho

"Sho, dreams aren't real. You're just too little to understand that there's a difference between dreams and reality." Said Mob. She needed to stay calm and understand that Sho was little and he didn't know what he was saying. She needed to remember that she had to take care of him now that mom was gone…no, not gone. She was just…out.

"I know that there's a difference between dreams and reality but I know what I dreamt this morning…at least I think that I dreamed it. Mom was in our room and she was kissing us and talking to us like she was going away forever." Said Sho

"That was a very sad dream, it sounds like." Said Mob. She hadn't had any dreams like that. She dreamt about being very cold and then very hungry and then she was all alone and she didn't know anybody even though they were her own family. That had not been a good dream at all.

"But I don't think that it was a dream….because in my dream she was wearing her yellow dress…and then I heard you telling dad that her yellow dress was the only one that was missing. So that's why I don't think that it's a dream and I think that mom is really gone…" said Sho

"But…but she wouldn't go." Said Mob. Sho's dream didn't sound like a dream at all. Sho's dream sounded like something that could have happened…because he was right about the dress…and that meant that he might have been right…but she also knew that she could not let herself believe that. She had to believe that mom was coming back. Mom had to come back. They would be all alone….alone with dad….but still all alone.

"I would go. If I could go then I would." Said Sho. He said it quietly, so quietly, that Mob wasn't even sure if she had heard him. Why would he want to go? This was their home. Sometimes it could be big and cold and scary but it was still their house. This was their castle. They had always lived in the castle. This was their home.

"Sho, you can't go. Why would you want to go?" asked Mob

"Because…because mom is gone. Mom is gone and now…now I don't have anyone. You have dad and dad has you and I have...I have no one." said Sho

"But you do have someone, Sho, you have me. You have me and I have you and no matter what we'll always have each other. It's been that way since the day you were born, Sho. You're my little brother and I will always be there for you." Said Mob

"But…I want my mom back…" said Sho

"I don't think that she's gone. She might just be lost…like maybe she got lost because she forgot her phone. She didn't have her phone and her phone tells her where to go…so she got lost. Or maybe she fell down and hurt her leg and now she can't walk…or maybe she's stuck in line somewhere. There are a lot of reasons for mom to be late, Sho, and that doesn't mean that she's gone forever." Said Mob. She didn't think that she convinced Sho of anything….

Because she couldn't even convince herself.

Mom was gone…and she didn't want it to be forever….but she didn't know. She wanted mom to come back. She wanted her mom more, then, than she had ever wanted her mom before. Sho had just…he had just put ideas in her head. She had no idea ow to get that idea out of her head now that it had been put in there. Or maybe it had always been there. Maybe it had always been there from the very moment she got up and mom was nowhere.

She wanted her mom back.

But she had no idea where she even was. If mom had been an esper then Mob could have just looked for her aura. She was good at seeing auras. She could see a lot of auras hanging out around the house. She could see the auras, the copy and paste auras, and a few new ones, too. She wanted to meet these other espers, to see them and see…see someone like her…and to tell them that they needed to stop hanging out around her house and to go out there and look for her mom.

Dad beat her to it.

She left the bedroom. Sho was upset and she had to find food for them. She was kind of hungry, maybe, or maybe that stomach ache was just from worry. She was worried about mom…and she couldn't even show that she was worried! And it wasn't fair! Dad could show that he was worried! He could bother her non stop about where mom had gone to and when she would be back even though he had ears and he could hear her and she was speaking plain and clear Japanese! She didn't know and she…she…she wished that Dad would just…just do the mom thing. The thing where no matter what went wrong mom pick them up and hold them and tell her that they were going to be ok…

She wanted that from dad.

And she maybe wanted that. She wanted…she wanted dad to…to…to pick her up and tell her that she was going to be ok. That this was all going to be ok. She wanted that…or maybe she just wanted his phone again. Maybe she just wanted him to give her his phone because she had already cooked two meals for her and Sho, cereal and milk and sandwiches counted as cooking, and she was tired…like mom was always so tired. It was tiring being mom….and she did not want to be mom. She didn't want to be mom until she was a grown up and married and someone else's mom.

She wanted to be Mob.

And she wanted Dad.

But dad was busy. Dad was busy and she was not mom, no, and she was not Mob either. She was Daughter. She was Daughter because that was what dad was always calling her. Daughter. She was Daughter, not Mob, and not even Shigeko…she was Daughter and even if she wanted nothing more than to act like the opposite of who Daughter was. She wanted to run up and throw herself into dad's arms and tell him to tell her that she was going to be ok and that everything was going to be ok.

She did not do that.

"Get out. Get out you idiot! I'll find her. I'll find her if I have to tear down this entire city." Said Dad. He was at the door. Mob had an excuse prepared. He knew she was there. She knew that he knew that she was there. When he asked she would just say that she needed his phone to order more takeaway. If that was ok. She'd, of course, ask if that was ok. Then he wouldn't get mad at her…even though he was already mad…sort of…but not at her…

"Daughter. What do you want?" asked Dad. He had slammed the door really hard. His aura was flaring out and it hurt a little bit…just a little. She wanted to be near him even if he hurt her. She wanted her dad…she wanted her dad and she wanted her mom and she wanted to…to be….she wanted to feel like she was ok….she wanted to feel like everything was going to be ok…

She wanted her dad.

And her mom.

She wanted to feel safe.

She wanted to feel ok.

"Your phone. I want to order takeaway for dinner…if that's ok." Said Mob. She was there and dad was there but it did not feel like they were there together. There were more of those weird aura guys…and they felt weird…and she felt weird, too. Like she was going to be sick. Like she was all alone. She wanted dad to just pick her up or give her a hug or even a head pat…but dad did not do things like that. He didn't even do that thing where he rested his aura on top of hers like some kind of blanket.

His aura hurt.

"That's fine. Order something for your mother as well." Said Dad. Mob couldn't help it. She smiled. She smiled and her aura was showing the pictures on the wall beside her began to shake and-

And she fell down.

"Power is nothing without control." Said Dad. Mob nodded. She wasn't hurting. That hadn't hurt. She had just gotten knocked down onto her back, that was all, she wasn't hurt or anything. She was fine. Dad had never punished her like that before but she…she was fine. She took all of her feelings down inside of herself and kept them there. She wanted…she wanted dad to pick her up and hold her….and she wanted to go far away from him and never see him again…

She wanted her mom back.

And she wanted her dad back, too.

She was…she didn't know how she felt.

"Conceal, don't feel." Said Mob. She said it more to herself than to dad. She wished that she had gloves that kept her powers from going out of control. But she had tried loves already and the gloves did nothing. She did not have ice powers, she had psychic powers, and life was not at all like in the movies. The only one who could control her powers was her…and she had been doing a very poor job of it, hadn't she? So dad was right to push her. Really she had given him no choice.

"That's right." Said Dad. He passed Mob his phone with his powers. There was a shift in the energy around their house. Another one of those weird auras was back, the copy paste ones, and Dad opened the door. He said some harsh words, a lot of them, but Mob wasn't really listening.

She was reading.

She hadn't meant to snoop. Dad had just left his messages opened. It was a bunch of people saying that they hadn't seen mom anywhere. Well they called her Mrs. Suzuki but they meant mom. The last time she had been seen was at the big Starbucks at the shopping mall. The underground one that they had walked to once…and it was so far away….and mom had walked that far…and maybe she had gotten lost…

She clicked out of dad's messages and ordered her and Sho pizza. They would leave some for mom, too. She had been excited when dad said to get food for mom, maybe they had found her, but she had been wrong. Mom was still out there and she was still missing….but maybe she'd come back. Of course she would come back. She was their mom and moms couldn't just…just…leave. She had been wrong and she had lost control and dad had no choice but to punish her for being bad.

She had been a bad Daughter.

Maybe that was why mom had left.


	56. Into Thin Air

Masami was gone.

Vanished into thin air. Gone. There was no trace of her. He had turned the city upside down looking for her and still…nothing. He checked neighboring cities. Nothing. He was starting to look for her outside of Japan's borders. He had to find her. She was not…people did not just vanish into thin air. Well they did but Masami was no teleporter. He would have noticed, by now, if she was.

She was just gone.

In those first few days he had suspected foul play. He had lost count of the people who wanted him dead or at least hurt. It would have made sense that someone would have taken his wife just to hurt him. For ransom or for murder or for all of the other reasons that people kidnapped women for. It had taken days to sort out all of his known enemies. Most were either dead or were wishing they were. Still none of them had taken Masami. Most of them hadn't even known that he was married…

That was the truth. A telepathy saw to that.

After his enemies had been crushed and defeated he allowed another, much worse, thought to enter his mind. She had left of her own volition. Once a search of every hospital, police station, and women's shelter turned up cold he decided that…since she had not been taken or hurt she must have just…left. His first thought, well before he suspected that she had been kidnapped, was that some harm had come to her. Normal people were so fragile. She could have been murdered or hit by a car or gotten heat stroke or even just gotten lost. So he looked for her…and he did not find her….

He even checked the morgue.

He checked several morgues. The city morgue, the morgues of hospitals, any morgue that he could find. Because she was fragile. Because her life could have ended at any time. He had known this to be a fact since the day he had first realized his feelings for her. She was fragile and he cared if she lived or died. She was the only person he could ever remember caring about in that way. It would have been distressing if one of the children were to perish, Daughter was valuable and Son was…his son…but their deaths did not inspire nearly the amount of bone crushing, heart stopping, pain that Masami's would have.

She was not in any morgue.

This left the last option. She had left of her own volition. This brings with it it's own brand of heart stopping, bone crushing, pain. She had last been seen at the underground shopping center getting a cup of coffee. She had just…vanished….according to the idiots he had sent to follow her. She had been there one moment and then she had been gone the next. That was not possible. Everyone was somewhere and she had to be somewhere…had to have been hiding somewhere….hiding from him….

But why?

He cared for her. He had always cared for her since the day he had met her. When he walked away from that chance encounter with a phone number and an unpleasantly pleasant feeling settling into his chest. He had cared for her and taken care of her since they'd wed. She was happy here. She had no reason to be unhappy. The house was spacious, the money was abundant, and she had two children to dote on. He had been a good husband and had provided her with everything that she had ever wanted or needed….except for a pet…but she would not have just…just left…for that reason….right? That was not a good reason for someone to leave at all. A good reason would have been if he had been a subpar provider or a womanizer or if he had treated her cruelly. But he had never done anything of the sort. He had always been good to her. He had always treated her like the queen she was…so why had she left?

He wished that it were foul play.

He wished that she had been injured.

He wished that she had simply lost her way.

He almost wished that she were dead. He didn't know which would have hurt worse. Her being dead or having had left him. Both were…both made him almost lose control. He had lost control, before, and taken part of the house with him. When he had gotten word that his wife was nowhere to be found. When that idiot had darkened his doorstep and told him that the search had turned up nothing. When he slammed the door shut…and then remembered nothing….but now the genkan and dining room are one continuous space….and the children had been quite frightened.

"Sho! Don't go in there! You remember what happened!" said Daughter. He could see and hear her clearly through the bedroom wall. He was in his room, now, the one he and Masami had shared since before Son was born. He was on the bed he and Masami had shared countless times. What he wouldn't have given to have shared this bed with her one more time. Not even sexually, just to have woken up and watched her sleep…she was so beautiful when she slept….what he wouldn't have given….

"You're not the boss of me! You're not mom!"…and what he would have given for a moment's peace! Honestly. Without their mother the children had taken to following him around like a pair of ducklings. He normally would not have minded, well he would not have minded Daughter, but now Son and Daughter….they were little aggravations.

"I know I'm not mom, Sho, but dad said that we weren't supposed to bother him unless we were hungry or the house was on fire. We just ate lunch and the house isn't on fire so we need to leave him alone." Said Daughter. He would have thought that she would have been able to take better care of her brother. It had been almost two weeks since their mother left…vanished…and Daughter had proven that while she had some skill to her she was no Masami. She had little control over Son and she was, frankly, not the best at keeping house or cooking meals. Perhaps it was her age. He didn't know.

All the little things that Masami had done for him….they weren't being done now.

"It's not on fire yet." Said Son. Suzuki wondered if it would have been worth it to roll out of bed and knock some sense into Son. The last thing he needed was a fire. A fire would have meant work would have needed to be done on the house, he still needed to find someone to fix the genkan wall, and also the children could have injured themselves. If they injured themselves then he would have had to pull Fukuda off of the search for Masami.

Currently his job was to stakeout the places she frequented. He couldn't move Fukuda far from the children. They were accident prone little monsters after all.

"Sho! If you go and start a fire you know that dad's going to punish you! And then mom'll be mad too, once she comes home." Said Daughter. Suzuki wanted to knock some sense into Daughter, too, and he disliked striking her. He hadn't had to strike her before this, before she starting making an annoyance out of herself, and he did not like it. Maybe it was her gender or maybe it was the fact that she tended to lose control when she was struck…and also Son became insufferable….or maybe he was just tired. Maybe he was just tired of having to deal with them nonstop day in and day out.

Maybe he needed a nanny.

"She isn't coming back and you know it." Said Son. Now Suzuki was ready to strike him. He had made it clear to both of them that they were not to mention their mother ever again. He would rescind the order when Masami was found, of course, but as of now he did not want to hear about her. He did not want to think about her….and he did not want to think about how irrational he was being. She was gone. When she was found, and it was a when, he would…he did not know what he would do. Become angry with her? Throw himself on the ground and cling to her ankles as if he were one of the children? Cast her aside?

He could never cast her aside.

And he would never do anything to punish her.

So maybe the best course of action would be to pretend that she had been on holiday….and just forget all of this nastiness. He could….he would just exorcise all of this from his memory. Yes, if Masami were to step through that doorway as if nothing had gone wrong then he would have….he would have pretended that nothing had happened. Maybe she had just been afflicted with some wanderlust, he knew it well, and she had just decided to leave….without telling anyone where she was going…and leaving her phone…and taking tens of thousands of yen from their bank account…and leaving her checkbook and credit cards….and all of her jewelry….

She wasn't planning on coming back.

"She is too coming back, Sho, you know she is. She's our mom and she wouldn't just leave us like this. She's our mom and…and she loves us." Said Daughter. He can feel his powers threatening to spill from his vessel. He can see his aura flaring. He had told them time and time again not to mention their mother and to leave him alone unless they needed something. He would have expected this level of disobedience from Son but not from Daughter of all people….

How was he supposed to deal with the two of them?

He had been planning, before, on leaving the country. Not for a long time, there was no coup to deal with, but he had been planning on leaving…and now he couldn't. Not without Masami. Not without knowing that she would be back here waiting for him. He didn't care if, when he returned, she was waiting for him in her best dress with her makeup on and her hair set nicely and the kitchen full of warm breakfast types foods…he didn't care. He just wanted to come back home to her.

He would gladly have spent his entire life coming home to her.

"She is not!" shouted Son. There was a flash of his aura and a crash and that, well, that had been the last of it. Really. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with them without Masami…in her absence. She would come back. She had to come back. He would just….he could wait…he had no choice but to wait for her. He could not just take the children with him. They were hard enough to deal with in their own home. He could not take them with him.

He could barely deal with them now.

He got out of bed. They were being quarrelsome again. They tended to do that. Had they always been this quarrelsome? He did not know. Masami dealt with them. He couldn't…he didn't want to deal with them. There was very little in this world that he could not do. There were plenty of things in this world that he did not want to do, however.

Like this.

"Son. Daughter. Stop this." said Suzuki as he threw opened the door. Daughter was on the ground and Son was standing over her. Of course Son would have started it. He always started it. He was such an annoyance. Such an aggravation. Such a little-

He slammed Son back against the wall.

"Dad! Me and Sho were just-" said Daughter. She was prepared to come up with some excuse for Son's poor behavior. For her inability to control her brother. He had left her in charge. She was proving to be useless. He was sick and tired of dealing with useless people.

He slammed her against the wall, too.

With his powers, of course, because he was a cruel man. He so rarely actually struck his children. That was such a base and barbaric way to discipline them. He wasn't actually hurting them. They carried on, well Son carried on, Daughter apologized for making him strike her. Such a good Girl. She at least learned from her mistakes. Not like Son.

He let the children carry on.

He went back to his office. He had matters to attend to, many matters, and he had been letting them slip since Masami vanished. Left. Vanished. He had….he had to focus and get his work done because he was the linchpin of this organization. He was the only thing keeping Claw together. He was Claw. He could not let his mind get clouded with these matters. He had a wife. Now she was gone. Now he had to…to plan for the future….in case she never returned….

She would return.

But it could be some time before she returned. In that interim he had to….to get his own household in order before he attended to anything else. He needed….he was running out of clean clothes. Daughter…she was not much of a housekeeper….but she was only seven years old….and he had no idea what to expect from a seven year old. All of his research into children had taken place when they were toddlers. At this point he would have expected them to have been capable of taking care of themselves. They could read and had infinite information machines. They should have been able to take care of themselves…at least beyond what he had seen of them. Daughter, at least, should have been able to step in for her mother. She had been Masami's protégé for all of these years…right?

Or maybe Daughter was his protégé. Not Masami's.

He saw so much of Masami in their daughter. There was so much patience, there, and caring. She put up with her younger brother after all. Masami was adept at household management. It must have been difficult, the children were the neediest people he had ever encountered in his life, and somehow Masami had managed to keep them alive without losing her mind for all of these years…

Or maybe she had lost her mind.

Maybe that was why she had left. He didn't know. All he knew was that she was gone and now he was expected to take care of these needy little monsters all on his own…and it would be on his own. He was not getting a nanny, even temporarily, because that would be…if he made even semi-permanent arrangements….then it would be like assuming that Masami was gone forever…and she was not gone forever. She was just…

She was coming back.

He felt that pain in his chest again. In his eyes too, the corners of them, and for a moment he thinks that he's going to lose control and just….just cry. Like one of the children. Like a child. A small, weak, child. He wants…he wants….he wants Masami. He can't remember the last time he felt like this. Maybe…when Masami had been giving birth….and they had to filet her like a fish…and he was not exaggerating even though she said that he had been. He remembered her, on her recovery bed, her mid-section freshly stitched and their son sleeping in her arms…he remembered…

She took his hand.

She told him that everything was going to be alright.

And then she had called it ridiculous, the way he was being, because it had only been a little surgery. A routine surgery. She had even let him push her blanket to the side and pull her hospital shirt up and see the space where she had been bandaged…and stitched up…and he had felt like this. Women died in childbirth every single day. Seeing that her surgery had gone well…it hadn't put him at ease. It had made everything worse. It had…it had made him feel like this…

He had almost lost control.

And their new baby, Son, Boy, had started crying…

And Masami had…she had kissed him on the forehead and told him to stop being ridiculous. Then she rocked Boy until he stopped crying. Then she fed him. Even after she'd gone through….through all of that…she had still managed to hold it together. She was so strong…in some ways she was stronger than him…and that was one of the things that drew her to him…

That was one of the reasons he loved her.

That was what it was. As long as he was being weak…he could admit that he loved her. He loved her even though it was an imprecise word…a word that didn't even come close to encompassing the way he truly felt about her. How the sun rose and set with her. How she…she was perfect. She was perfection poured into the form of a woman. The woman. The most perfect woman in the history of existence. She was…she was his everything…and now she was gone. Now she was gone and now he had nothing. He was nothing. He had this feeling of…nothing…inside of him. Painful nothing. Like he had a black hole inside of himself and it was sucking everything inside of him dry….like he had nothing…and he was nothing…and…

And he needed Masami.

He needed her like he needed air. He would die without her. He felt it and he knew it. Instantly. He would die without her….and it hurt…and he was weak…and he hated himself. He hated himself so much in that moment that he wished for nothing more than the ability to exorcise himself…..and he should have…and maybe…

He was a complete person all on his own.

He exorcised that emotion. All of it. He took it and destroyed it like it was a stray spirit. He was not going to….to give into these feelings. He was not…he was a complete person all on his own and that…that was the way he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be…he was supposed to be better than this…better than what he was…

He was supposed to be better than this.

He lifted his head. He hadn't even been aware that he had put his head down. His head was down and everything that wasn't bolted down was up. Up in the air…and he was losing control…and he had to stop it. He had to stop it and….and he had to…he had to…

He had to be better than this.

He put everything back where it belonged. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He was better than this. He had spent his entire life trying to be better than this. He was…he was fine. So what if Masami was gone? She would either come back or she wouldn't. Him going to pieces wouldn't solve the problem. He had his own problems, immediate ones, to deal with. He had fire after fire after fire to put out so he had might as well get to it and-

An aura.

Another fire to put out. Not one of the Awakened, no, a natural esper….he knew that aura. Fukuda. But why would Fukuda be there? He wasn't injured…and the children…perhaps he had lost control, a little, when he punished them. Oh. He hoped that he hadn't truly harmed them. He was not a cruel man, not to his family, and even if he had been a cruel man he would not have risked damaging his own offspring or the child he had acquired.

He so hated when he lost control.

He went to see what it was that was the matter with the children. What was so wrong that Fukuda had to be called away from searching for their mother for. Their mother was missing and they were…well if he had hurt them then he was truly sorry. The two of them…his children…he was not going to lose his children as well.

Never.

He made his way to through the house. It was a mess. The children had, at some point, forgotten how to pick up after themselves. He swept the toys and books and bits and pieces of whatever to the side and he walked down the hallway. It seemed longer, then, but that must have been a trick of his perceptions due to his emotional state…and he shouldn't have even had an emotional state to begin with. He should have been fine. He should have been able to control his emotions and his powers. What sort of an example was he setting for his Daughter? What sort of an example was he setting for himself? He couldn't even control his most simple and basic of emotions….

He tried.

And he managed to succeed. Fukuda was in his house…and he had no reason to feel these irrational feelings. Even though Fukuda had overstepped time and time again when it came to his family…but that was just a sign of devotions. Devotion or…or just general kissing up. Either way he should not have bore Fukuda any ill will. He was a good and loyal employee. Good and loyal. Two things he had been soundly lacking. He was an asset, really, a real asset to Claw and to Suzuki himself.

He trusted Fukuda.

"You stay and keep your dad company, ok Little Lady?" he heard the tail end of whatever it was that they were talking about. Son had blood down the front of his shirt. His shirt was yellow. The blood showed. Had he shoved Son face first into the wall? He shouldn't have done that. He so hated damaging the children. They were his, after all, his and his alone….

Because their mother was gone.

"….I have to keep dad company…you're right." Said Daughter. Suzuki hung back. He watched the interactions between them all, the familiar way Fukuda was for his children, and…and he knew that the way he felt was irrational. He could trust Fukuda. He could trust Fukuda and…and he had no reason to worry.

Even though they were in the genkan.

And Son's shoes were on.

Daughter's were not.

Suzuki exorcised the emotions that he felt, that this brought forth inside of him. Son…there was no reason for Son to be going anywhere. There was no reason for him to even think of going anywhere. There was no reason for anyone in his family to be going anywhere. There was no reason to…he forced himself to calm down.

His aura had been visible.

And he was being watched.

"Hi dad. Sho's nose was bleeding a lot and it was crooked. Fukuda fixed it. He didn't cry once." Said Daughter. Son looked frightened, a little bit, and that…that was not what he had taught him. He looked….he had no reason to be frightened. At least his aura was showing, though, which was something.

"I take it he's better now." Said Suzuki. He watched Fukuda. Fukuda seemed perfectly calm. His aura was calm and he was calm….and he didn't even know what it was that he was even looking for. This was Fukuda. The man may have frequently overstepped, which was annoying, but he did not have a disloyal bone in his body. He was a healer. They were the good and loyal sorts. The kind of people who wouldn't dare do something so stupid as….as he didn't even know what he had been thinking. Sleep. He needed sleep. He hadn't slept in…he didn't even know. The bed…it was too empty and too big and too cold…the whole goddamned house was too cold….

Not a reason to wear shoes in the house, though.

"Yeah, I patched him up. He's fine now, boss." Said Fukuda. Calmly. Always so calmly. Well this wouldn't panic him, now would it? Masami was nothing to him, maybe a friend…a friendly acquaintance. Losing Masami would not have pulled the rug out from under him. He was probably just grateful to be out of the heat. What was it outside? 32? 34? He didn't know. Hot. It was high summer as Masami was fond of calling it.

"I'm fine, dad." Said Son. He was reluctant to make eye contact. He was clinging to Fukuda, too, even though he had no reason to be. Really, what was he so frightened of?

"I can see that. Why are you wearing shoes?" asked Suzuki

"Dad, I'm still in the genkan." Said Son

"He's still in the genkan." Said Daughter.

"Just thought we'd hang out in the yard for a little bit. Just seemed like you could use some peace, boss." Said Fukuda. Suzuki watched him carefully….not that he had any idea what it was the he was looking for. This was just Fukuda overstepping as usual. Suzuki really did need the peace. Son and Daughter…this house was not big enough for the three of them….

This was three houses strung together with wood and plaster. There was plenty of room.

"Fukuda. Do not overstep." Said Suzuki. There was plenty of room in the house and he…he had some irrational worries about letting Son out of his sight…even though Son was not always in sight…but he still….he did not like this feeling at all…

So he exorcised it.

"Sorry sir, really, the thing is that I was just thinking that-" said Fukuda

"You are not paid to think, you're paid to heal. Since you've healed my son you have no more reason to be here. Go back to searching for my wife. That is an order, Fukuda, not a request." Said Suzuki. Son protested. Daughter said nothing. She said nothing beyond bidding Fukuda adieu.

Really, that man needed to learn to stop overstepping so much. It wasn't earning him any points in Suzuki's book. He had a job to do, one far more important than giving into the children's constant neediness. He had to find Masami. She had to be found because she was somewhere. Everyone was somewhere and…and he knew how big the world could be…

But people did not just vanish into thin air. Normal people did not vanish into thin air.

Masami was not gone.


	57. The Woman in the Mirror

The woman in the mirror had short black hair.

Masami hated it. She hated the bad dye job. She hated the bowl cut bangs. She hated the blunt bob that she had done herself with a pair of kitchen scissors. She hated it. She hated it and she wanted to shave it all off and wait until her hair grew back. It was her hair and she should have been able to do whatever she wanted with it. She shouldn't have had to ruin her hair just so she could live her life. She ruined it and now she looked…

She looked like a stranger.

"What's wrong?" asked Fukuda. He stood in the doorway of the bathroom. His bathroom. This was his apartment. The blinds were all down and the curtains were drawn. Nobody knew she was there. Nobody even suspected. According to Fukuda nobody even suspected him.

He was risking his life for her.

Because he loved her.

"I hate my hair. I hate the cut and the color and just….I hate it! I hate it so much and I just want to shave it off and wait for it to grow back! This is just….not flattering! I look like...like…God, I sound so vain….what the hell is the matter with me…." Said Masami. She was still facing the mirror. She hated this. She hated all of this. She wanted….she didn't hate this enough to want to go back. There was no going back, anyway, even if she wanted to. Even if she wanted to give up this whole plot and just….go back.

Back to what?

Back to her husband. Her husband who was involved in some downright insane shit. Not just shady, they had moved long past shady, and now they were into the realms of cartoonish super villainy. He was honestly planning on gathering enough espers to take over the world with psychic powers…it was insane. It was like he had sat down, watched one of the kids' shows, and thought 'hey, I could get behind that' and just…done it.

According to Fukuda Touichirou had been planning this since middle school…which made an insane amount of sense when she thought about it…..

"Masami, stop it." Said Fukuda

"Why? I sound so vain right now. My husband is hunting me down and I left my kids alone with him and…and I'm here bitching and moaning because my hair looks like something Shigeko would have designed. I'm just…how can I be so vain?" said Masami

"You don't sound vain, you sound scared….but if you really want to shave your head and grow your hair back I can help with that." Said Fukuda. He walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. His head rested on her shoulder. She could feel the warmth of him, the everything of him…and she had felt this time and time again and….and this was not about that.

"So you're a cure for baldness, too?" asked Masami. She leaned back against him. She was so starved for….for this. Intimacy. Not even sex, just intimacy. Loving intimacy. Intimacy that she hadn't had to pry out of him. She finally had it…and it would all be over soon. This was not a permanent arrangement by any means. It had been almost two weeks. That was longer than she had ever thought that it would take to…Touichirou was still looking for her.

Why?

He could have any woman he wanted. He could have literally had any woman in Japan but for some reason he was fixated on her. She had no idea why. It wasn't like he loved her. He loved what she did. She was his on call maid and cook and nanny and occasional call girl. He didn't give a damn about her as a person. He didn't give a damn about anyone other than himself. He wasn't sad that she was gone. He was upset that his wife, his possession, had left him. He didn't care about her.

She was amazed that he hadn't just started calling her 'Wife' or whatever at this point.

"If you want me to be. I want you to feel better, Masami, you know that I do…and for the record I don't hate it, the hair I mean. I think it makes you look…distinguished." Said Fukuda. He buried his face in what was left of her hair. It used to go down to her mid back. It was a bob, now, even though she had the wrong face for it…

"So by distinguished you mean 'old'? Because I look at least forty, now." said Masami. She was worried, she was scared, and she hated herself…and probably not because of what she had done to her hair. She hated herself for what she had done to her family…what she was doing to her family…

"You don't look a day over thirty nine. I just mean that you look…is there anything that I can say that will be taken as a compliment?" said Fukuda. Masami reached up and put her hand over his. Compliments…he wanted her to feel good…he wanted her to…he wanted to…Touichirou never complimented her. Not really. He stared at her but he rarely, if ever, said anything nice to her unless she fished for it….

She brought his hand up to her face and kissed it.

"Just wanting to compliment me is enough." Said Masami. He was enough. He had been enough, enough to make her forget….for a time. She still woke up in the middle of the night staring up at his unfamiliar ceiling, a popcorn ceiling, and just…thinking. About how the kids were carrying on…about when she would see Sho again….about what would become of Shigeko….

She didn't want to think about that. About the daughter that she had abandoned.

"Then let me tell you that's your beautiful no matter what color your hair is." Said Fukuda. Masami smiled and kissed his hand again. She was terrible. The worst. She was no better than those women who ran away to be with their lovers….no. She had a good reason to leave and…and she had to good reason to do this…

It wasn't like she'd ever see him again after this.

"I'll let you….just this once." Said Masami. She turned so she was facing him. She took the good with the bad. If she closed her eyes she could have just…erased the past seven years of her life. Erased the years she wasted with Touichirou and replace them with some idealized life with Fukuda. He would have been a good husband. Even if she and the kids would have had to live in his one bedroom apartment at least there would have been love. Love and genuine….genuine feelings. Touichirou…he had no feelings for her. To him she was just a pretty little wind up doll, maybe, one that he could play with whenever he chose and put back on the shelf when he got bored. He was her husband and…and she didn't…she didn't want to be his wife anymore.

So this was ok.

"Only once? Are you sure about that, Masami?" asked Fukuda in a tone that made her heart forget how to do it's job, how to play it's part, or maybe it was playing it's part far too well. She knew what he was doing. He was distracting her, trying to make her feel better, trying to take her mind off of all of it. The fact that she had to disappear. The fact that she wouldn't see her son again for God only knew how long. The fact that she would never see her daughter again…all of it.

He was trying to pacify her worries with kisses and cuddles.

And it was working.

"Yes, any more than that and it wouldn't be sincere." Said Masami. She let him pacify all of her problems with kisses and cuddles. She let his hands roam her back, she let her hands roam across his. This was….she was selfish. She was selfish for doing this and she was selfish, too, for leaving the way she did. She should have tried harder. She should have found some way to at least take Sho with her…but she just…there hadn't been enough time. Touichirou had her stalked at the best of times but he really went all out, it seemed, when he was out of the country…and he would be out of the country again soon. It could have been fall or even winter by the time he came back again. By then it would have been too late to disappear with the children. School will had started, for one thing, and the weather would have turned, too.

It was hard travelling with two children in the cold.

It was hard to travel with two children end of discussion.

"You know that I'll always be sincere towards you, Masami." Said Fukuda. He kissed her, then, lightly. It was on her to kiss him back, to tell him to continue, or to take a step back. That was how it had been the first time. After they had carried the kids off to their beds. When their eyes met in the dark. He was the one to kiss her but she had been so drunk on sweet intoxication that she had been the one to lead him to her bed…

And here they were.

A pair of idiots in love.

"I know." Said Masami. She did not take a step back. She was an idiot like that, a selfish idiot of a woman. She was making this whole thing worse. They would part soon. They would have to part soon. Touichirou was moving the search outside of the city, which was good, but she could not stay here. She could not put Fukuda's life in any more danger than it already was. Touichirou….he was not a man to cross…apparently.

She had no idea what he did to people who not only slept with his wife but helped her plan her escape, too…and she did not want to find out.

She knew that the smart thing to do would have been to stop. They were going to part ways, soon. Her on a train to parts unknown and him…him back to her husband's side. Touichirou would be going abroad again and that would be the time to get Sho to her. There was no way in hell that he was going to take Sho with him. Shigeko, probably, because apparently he had decided that as the next family member with a vagina she was the one who the onus of caring for the house and the family fell onto. She was only seven years old…but there was no way to get her away from Touichirou. There was no way to hide her. Apparently her aura shone bright as a Christmas tree at the best of times…and she was also totally and completely loyal to her father. Touichirou had been good to her all of these years…not like how he had been to Sho…

Masami still did not know the full of what it was that Touichirou did to their son.

But she knew that Fukuda got called to her house to fix a broken nose.

Sho would be…Touichirou would not take Sho with him. He'd sooner find a nanny, one of the rare female espers that he knew, and then it would be easy to get Sho away from her. He was a little escape artist at the best of times. It would only take him slipping away once, just once, and then she'd have her son back. Fukuda could even do what he had been planning on doing, before, and just say that he was talking Sho for a walk and he got away from him. He'd be punished but not killed, her said, because at the end of the day Touichirou didn't see Sho as anything special…

He was special. He was the most special boy in the entire world and she was proud to have him as her son.

"Fukuda…" said Masami as she went in for another drag of sweet intoxication. She didn't want to think about this. She would think about this tomorrow or the next day. When she was on the train to parts unknown, when she was on the train to start her new life, when she was on the train to the place she would be reuniting with her son again….eventually. Hopefully soon. Then she would tell him how sorry she was for…for everything. For the life she had given him.

"Masami…I love you." Said Fukuda. Masami kissed him again. She did not want to exchange 'I love yous' even if she did feel it with every fiber of her being. She was through with love and she was not about to make promises she could not keep. I love you…words that had weight and meaning…weight and meaning which she was not about to…to throw down precisely at his feet right about then…or ever…

Because this would come to an end…..but she could enjoy it while she had it.

The woman in the mirror could enjoy it while she had it.

The woman in the mirror could let herself be carried from the bathroom out onto the bed. The woman in the mirror could allow the black t-shirt she had been wearing to be pulled up over her head. The woman in the mirror could allow every inch of her skin, skin which hadn't been kissed by sun in so long, be kissed by a man who glowed so brightly and so warmly that she couldn't tell the difference. The woman in the mirror would not think about what was going to happen after. The woman in the mirror would not agonize over what was happening now. The woman in the mirror would just….just go with it…

And the woman in the mirror would just go on from there.


	58. Car Rides

Mob could count the number of times she had ridden in a car on one hand.

Sho could, too, so maybe they would need two hands to count the number of times they had ridden in cars. That was what they were doing, now, because dad had told them to amuse themselves.

"There was the time when a car came to take me and…you….to school." Said Mob as she raised another finger into the air.

"And there was the time, too, when a car came to take us to that big park with the slide that you were too scared to go down." Said Sho raising one of his fingers into the air. They didn't have a lot of times when they had ridden in cars. It was just not something that they did. They had usually just walked everywhere…with mom….

It hurt to think about her.

So he went back to thinking of times when they had ridden in cars. He liked this, riding in the car. It was fun to watch the world go by. Also there windows went up and down with a button. There was even a button to open up the window on the roof of the car. This was fun. Well Sho thought that it was fun. Dad had just said that they were being annoying.

"I went down the slide. I mean it took a while for me to be brave enough but I went down the slide." Said Mob. It was better to think of good things. Times they had gone for rides in the car, fun places they had gone, times when they were happy. They had to think of good things and talk about good things because that way they wouldn't think about what was happening now.

Mom had been gone for a long time.

And Dad was finally taking them on a trip!

"Yeah, because I had to go down with you. Those big kids were all like 'go, little kids, go' and we were all like 'no, big kids, no' and then we had to go down the slide together even though we could have gotten stuck and died." Said Sho. Mom was the one who said that it wasn't safe to go down the tube slides together. She said that the slides with the opened tops were ok but they could have gotten stuck in the tube slides. She had been worried when they came out the bottom. She had run so fast over to them…

And now she was far away from them.

And they were going far away from her, too. Dad was taking them on a trip. Fukuda had come by and offered to take care of them but dad had said that it would have been stupid to leave them in the house where they would probably end up burning it down or something. Then a bunch of those weird guys, the ones who called dad 'President Suzuki' came in and packed up a bunch of their clothes and some of their toys and their tablets and stuff and then dad said that they would all be going on a trip to a country that Sho had forgotten the name of.

Dad was finally taking them with him!

…..but mom wasn't coming.

"I remember. Thank you for sliding with me even though we didn't slide as fast because we were too people and also I kept on slowing us down. It was still nice of you to help me, Sho." said Mob. She wondered if there were any big parks where they were going. Dad said that they had to be on their best behavior and not to embarrass him. He looked at Sho when he said that. She was supposed to make sure that Sho was good. Dad didn't say that but Mob knew that her job as the big sister was to take care of her little brother. She had to make sure that he was good and he was safe and all of that important stuff. Mom used to do that.

But Mom wasn't around anymore.

Mob had never prayed before. Mom said that she was a Buddhist when she was a kid and that dad wasn't a religious person, which meant that neither of her parents believed in God, but Mom had also said that she could make her own choices about those things. She didn't know who she was praying to or how to pray but she prayed to whoever was listening, these past few nights, to bring her mom back. She even left an offering of cookies and milk. If it worked for Santa Clause then maybe it worked for whoever was in charge of bringing moms back, too.

She had just told Sho and dad that she was practicing for Christmas.

Which was not a lie. If Santa was the one who decided to bring mom back then she really had been practicing for Christmas. Maybe she would wake up on Christmas morning there would be a big box with shiny paper and a big bow on it and then she'd open the box, well she would wait or Sho first because that was the polite thing to do, and then they would open the box and mom would be in there! And she wouldn't have suffocated either because the box would have had air holes or something. Mom would have been back and everything would have been ok again and-

It was nowhere near Christmas.

"Hey, well, I couldn't let you hold up the line all day. We still had to jump in the ball pit and do the zip line and stuff." Said Sho

"I remember that. The ball pit was fun but I didn't try the zip line. It was too scary." Said Mob

"No, you were just afraid of people seeing your underwear. I don't know why you won't just put on pants." Said Sho

"Because pants are uncomfortable. I don't know how boys can go around wearing pants all day. I'd hate it." Said Mob. She was kind of cold, though. This car had cold seats. That was because they were made of leather and also dad made the driver, who was named Driver, turn the air conditioner up all the way. Mob sort of wished that she had been wearing long socks or even tights under his skirt. She wondered if the country they were going to would be warm. Or maybe it was like how they talked about seasons and the hemisphere's in school and they were going to the other side of the world and it would be winter and she would have forgotten to put on tights but it would be ok because it would be Christmas because Christmas came in the winter and then mom would be back…or something like that.

"I don't know how girls can go around with no pants on all day. You always have to be worried about people seeing your underwear. Who needs that?" said Sho

"You don't always have to worry about that, just when you're running and jumping and stuff. Stuff that you're not supposed to." Said Mob

"That's just stuff that you say I'm not supposed to do…and you're not the boss of me anyway." Said Sho. She thought that just because she was older and a girl she got to replace mom. Well she didn't. Sho would listen to dad, he was scary, but not to big sis. No matter how much she thought that she was mom, now. She wasn't mom. Mom was mom and even if she wasn't there she would always be mom.

"Ok, I'm not the boss of you but dad is. Dad said that we aren't supposed to run around or jump or do stuff like that." Said Mob. The list of things that they were not allowed to do seemed longer, sometimes, than the list of things that they were allowed to do…but it was just easier if she didn't go around questioning dad. He didn't like that at all.

"Dad says a lot of things…" muttered Sho. He eyed dad. He was looking at his phone. They were all in the backseat together. Well dad was sitting in front of them. This car had a lot of space in the back. Usually the cars that came for dad were little cars. He'd probably gotten this especially for him and big sis. Maybe he even…wanted…them to come. That makes no sense though, knowing dad, he was probably just mad because there was no one to watch them.

Dad said that Fukuda couldn't watch them.

Then dad said that Fukuda was overstepping again, whatever that meant. Dad should have left them with Fukuda. Maybe then mom would have come back. He and big sis suspected that mom and Fukuda were secretly best friends. That was why they used to hang out together all the time and have sleepovers and stuff. Maybe if mom wouldn't come back for them she would at least come back for her best friend.

Sho missed mom so much he could have sworn that he smelled her when he hugged Fukuda goodbye.

She smelled like cinnamon a lot of the time. Cinnamon was her favorite thing to put on everything. Cinnamon was awesome. Maybe that was why Fukuda had smelled like cinnamon, because it was awesome, and not because he missed mom so much that he poured out a bunch of cinnamon on himself so he could smell like mom.

Sho pulled his shirt up over his nose and breathed in.

"Yes, I do, and I hear a lot of things as well." Said Suzuki. A trip with the children. A work trip, not a wander aimlessly and try to make sense of the world around him, trip. He had waited for as long as he could for Masami to either come to her senses or come back to him dead…he didn't want that last one at all but he accepted the possibility that something terrible had happened to her…and he simply could not wait anymore. Some matters demanded his in person attention…

And he would have gone mad had he stayed in that house any longer.

She lingered in their home like a spirit he could not exorcise. She was in the scent she left in their bed, the clothes she left in their closet, the bottle of soap on the side of their bathtub. She was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Every moment in that house put more and more strain on his control until he just…could not be there anymore. His work had been piling up anyway. Fukuda has reminded him of that.

He may have been an overstepping brownnoser but he had a point.

He had come to their door earlier offering up his services as a nanny so that Suzuki could attend to the business of running Claw. At first there had been anger…but then came shame. He had been building Claw up since before he had even known that Masami existed and now he was falling apart due to her absence. He was no kind of leader and he was setting no kind of example for Son and Daughter. What kind of man would Son become if he saw his father falling to pieces like that? What kind of man would Daughter choose when she came of age if her only example of what to expect in a man was her father losing control like that? He had them to think about, his two greatest….his greatest investment. He had to be the man he knew himself to be, not the man who he had allowed himself to be. He had to work for who he was.

He could not lose control.

And he could not go to pieces.

So he told Fukuda to pack and meet him at the First Division. He didn't feel like travelling with the man. No, he was becoming too much of a sycophant. He had hired Fukuda to be a healer, not a kiss up, and while Suzuki did enjoy some kissing up even he had his limits. No, he didn't need that right now. Now he needed to work. Now he needed to forget.

And now he needed to figure out what to do with the children.

Very few people knew that he had children. Daughter was…Daughter would be impossible to hide. She shone too brightly. She was too much. Son hardly shone at all. He would be easier to hide…but that wouldn't work either. Son and Daughter, for irrational reasons that he was not privy to, became frightened when they were separated. Nothing good came of Daughter becoming frightened. There was enough damage in the house to prove that fact.

Nothing good came of striking Daughter.

Not that he was planning to. Daughter was a good child, she just needed to work on keeping Son in line. He was a very busy man and he could not attend to his children…so he had might as well let people figure out that the two little humans trailing off behind him were his children. Yes…that would be fine. He had already dealt with anyone who had been stupid enough to plot against him. Nobody would try to harm him by going through his children.

Or his wife.

It was clear that she did not want to be found. She had found a way to disappear completely and never be found and he…he had no idea why. He had always treated her so well. No matter what she wanted he gave it to her…aside from a pet…but the children were kind of like pets. Like squawking birds or yapping dogs. They were small and annoying creatures that required constant care…though maybe he should have just let Masami get a pet if it meant that much to her…

She hadn't left because of a pet.

He had no idea why she left but he knew that it had nothing at all to do with the fact that he had no allowed her to get a dog or a cat or a whatever it was that she wanted. People did not leave because of flimsy reasons like that….though people had not always made the most sense to him. Take the children and their constant chatter. They were off to a whole other country, they so rarely even left the boundaries of their neighborhood, but they were chattering endlessly about places that they had been in the prison that had been their existence. There was a whole world out there and since the day that had been born, Son had been born, he had been looking forward to the day when he could show it to him.

Of course in this fantasy, in the rare times when he would permit himself this fantasy, Son was a grown man.

Also there hadn't been a Daughter at the start of this fantasy. She came later. Masami occasionally featured but he knew that the things he did were far too dangerous for her. She could not climb Everest in her plain shoes. She could not dive down into the Mariana's Trench to see what existed in the depths. She could not fly to the North Pole and just watch the glaciers move. She was so fragile….

And he could have kept her safe.

But then she had decided to leave him. He did not and would never understand why she had left. He had never been cruel to her, never even treated her poorly. She had everything, almost everything, that she had ever wanted. He did not understand her. He could not begin to understand her. She was gone from the house and she was gone from his fantasy of taking his adult children with him to see the world as he had seen it when he was young. Younger. He wasn't old yet.

But oh how these children would age him.

There were charging ports on the plane. They could charge their tablets and give him a moment's peace and quiet. There was internet….not all of his planes had internet….and that was something that he would have to look into. He would have to look into clothes for them, too, because they grew like weeds. He would also have to look into tutors for them because only was he going to become permanently nomadic, no sense in going back to the house now, he was not going to put them in school so they could be ruined by the other children.

There really was no need to have any other children around Son and Daughter at all.

They had each other and they would socialize with each other and become functional people with each other. They would grow up together to become full and complete people just like he was. Why wouldn't' they? They were his children…one of them was his child…no, they both were. He had raised them both after all. Yes, they might even be better off being raised by him full time.

They would need new shoes and clothes eventually.

They would need to be fed three times a day.

They would need more playthings.

They would need to learn English, Mandarin, and Hindi just to get by.

They would need to learn a lot of things because he was not raising idiots.

These children were a collection of needs that he was now expected to fulfil. He was not overwhelmed…even though now he was expected to be both father and mother at the same time…but he was not overwhelmed. Just fulfil their needs and find ways to occupy their time. Humans had been raising children since there had been humans on this Earth. He could do this. He would do this.

He had no choice but to do this.

The children were making a racket now as they approached the airfield. He knew that plane and yes, it did have internet. Good. At least the children would be kept occupied…and they needed to be occupied. They were both getting excited, even Daughter, and he had no idea why. It was just an airplane. A metal box that flew in the sky. There was nothing worth noting about it…but then again they had been reminiscing about the times that they had been in cars…the few and far between times…this was their first time seeing a plane. This was their first time flying.

They'd soon get used to flying.


	59. Shanghai

Shanghai was a city in China.

China was a country in Asia.

Japan was also a part of Asia.

Japan was a collection of islands called an archipelago.

China had islands but it was not an archipelago.

Those were things that Mob knew about Shanghai. Well Shanghai and China and Japan. That was where the airplane had taken them. To this apartment in Shanghai. This was where dad lived when he had to stay in Shanghai, he had said, and now this was where they were going to live for the foreseeable future. Which meant that he didn't know when he would be done there. Which meant that she and Sho were probably going to miss school registration. Which meant that they would start school late and be the slowest kids in their classes and then everyone would make fun of them and stuff.

Which was not good.

A lot of things in her life were not very good at all at the moment. Mom was missing and dad was gone off to work and she and Sho were stuck in the smallest space that they had ever been stuck in. They were stuck there all alone. There was food for them in the kitchen and a TV they could watch, even though neither of them spoke any kind of Chinese, and they had internet which was still in Japanese even though they were in China. Well the parts of the internet they went to, the parts with shows and stuff, were still in Japanese. Dad said that there was plenty of Chinese stuff on the internet too, and some of it was interesting, and that she and Sho should work on learning at least mandarin.

Which looked like kanji but was not kanji…which was very confusing.

Also they were bored. Bored and confused and also they, or at least Sho, said that he had a sort of shut in feeling and he wanted to go outside. Dad said that he would take them outside when he got finished with his work. That had been hours ago. He had gone off to do something, he didn't say what, and had left her in charge of Sho. Sho did not like her being in charge of him.

"It's not fair and you know it." Said Sho as he drew in his drawing book. He drew what the sky looked like from the plane that they had taken. He hadn't been scared, not even for one second, and he had only held hands with big sis for the whole trip because she had been scared. That had been it. It had been neat, flying in an airplane, but this part was not neat.

At least when they had been in the castle there had always been something to do.

Something to play with, some new place to explore, something cool to get into. Now there was just this tiny place that they were trapped in. Sho had no idea what a place where people were meant to live could be so small. There was a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. This was where dad lived when he left the castle. It was boring, like him.

"It really is. I don't see why we had to come all the way over here just to sit inside and be bored…and I don't know why he left you in charge, too." Said Sho

"He left me in charge because I'm older than you, that's all, and he wants me to keep you safe until he comes back from working." Said Mob

"That's totally unfair!" said Sho

"I know that it's not fair but dad said that we have to stay in here and we have to be quiet and also I'm in charge. It's ok, dad said that he was coming back and when he came back we could go outside." Said Mob

"I don't believe him." said Sho. He didn't even look up from his drawing. He didn't have to. He knew that big sis was just going to give him that same look she always gave him, that look that wasn't really a look at all, and then she would tell him that dad was awesome and that he was talking crazy talk and that dad was totally going to keep his promise and take them outside and then everything would be ok.

He missed mom.

But mom was gone.

"I know you don't believe dad but you should. Besides, what choice do we even have? He's our dad, Sho, and we have to believe him. Besides, it's not like he lies to us." Said Mob. No, dad never lied. He was always completely and totally honest no matter what. Even if it was things that they didn't want to hear, like they had to leave the house right that second and he had no idea if or when they were coming back. Mob liked it better when dad answered them honestly than when he just refused to answer them at all.

Like when Sho had asked if mom was ever coming back.

That was not a good question to ask. They were never supposed to ask that. They were supposed to pretend like they had never had a mom at all, it seemed, and Mob…she didn't want to do that. She wanted to talk about mom. About where she could have been. About if she had run away from home or if she had gotten lost or kidnapped or maybe she just fell and broke her leg and was waiting for someone to find her like she saw on TV once about a man who broke his leg in the woods and got lost…

Mom was not lost in the woods.

And maybe she wasn't lost at all. Mob didn't want to think that mom was lost. Mom being lost or kidnapped, that was why they were never supposed to talk to strangers, was worse than the thought of mom running away from home. At least if she ran away from home she was still safe and sound…maybe. She did not know. Fukuda said that wherever mom was he was sure that she was thinking of them and that she loved them both with all her heart.

But if she loved them both with all her heart then why had she left?

"He still hasn't told us what happened to mom." Said Sho

"Yes, but that isn't lying. He just told us to never ask him that question again or to mention mom in any way." said Mob

"….but I want to…" said Sho. He wanted to talk about mom. Talking about her wouldn't make her come back, she was never coming back, but it would still…he had a mom and he wanted to remember her. Even the bad times, like when she would sleep all day and stuff, he wanted to remember. She was never coming back. That was why dad didn't give them a date or a time for her to come back. She was gone…and he had no idea where…and maybe it had been…sometimes he thought that it had been his fault. For fighting with big sis. For not being better. For making dad mad at him all the time. Sho knew that he had been born wrong, that was why mom had the scar on her stomach, and maybe the fact that he had been born wrong…maybe that was why his mom had left him….

He wanted his mom back.

And big sis was not mom even though she liked to pretend that she was. She had woken him up that morning and made him eat fruit because it was healthy and then made him take a bath and comb his hair even though it never stayed combed and then she even made him have fruit again for lunch…not that there was much else in the kitchen. If they wanted something special to eat they had to write it down and then give it to the weird aura guy that was outside the apartment door and he would get it for them.

Food stuff.

Not what he really wanted.

"I know you do…and I want to, too, but we can't. Dad said so." Said Mob

"So?" asked Sho

"So what?" asked Mob

"So we just pretend that we don't have a mom?" said Sho. His drawing was now abandoned. Big sis had been playing on her tablet, something boring probably, and that was abandoned too. They were looking at each other now. He was mad, getting mad anyway, and his aura was showing. She wasn't anything and her aura was always showing. She just…she just stared at him…like dad always stared at him….

"We have to do what dad says." Said Mob. Of course she didn't want to pretend that she didn't have a mom. She wanted her mom back. She didn't care if mom was in this tiny apartment with her and Sho. She just wanted her mom back….but she was not getting her mom back….because if they were getting their mom back then….then she would have been back already.

"It's not fair. He doesn't get to just-just erase our mom because….because he says so. He can't just make us pretend that she never existed. She did exist. She does exist!" said Sho

"Sho-" said Mob. Loud. He was being entirely too loud. She was not supposed to let him be loud. She was supposed to be the one in charge. Dad trusted her to be the one in charge.

"She exists and she's gone and she left us and-and-and I don't know why!" said Sho even though he knew why. He knew what he had done. Everything. He had been born wrong and mom…mom had decided to leave because of him. Because no matter what happened and what he did he would never be good. Never be right.

"You need to-" said Mob

"She's gone! She just left and-and-and I don't know why!" said Sho

"You're shouting-" said Mob. She glanced at the door. The copy paste aura guys were out there…and they felt like dad…but they weren't dad. They weren't dad but they reported to him and they would tell him about how she had let Sho yell inside even though they were supposed to be quiet because there were people all around them and-and-and she was not letting Sho get in trouble again!

"I don't care! I don't care if I;m shouting! Mom is gone! Mom is gone and-and-and-" said Sho. This room was too small. The room was small and the walls were white and the carpet was white and the cushions that he had made his drawing fort out of were white and he felt so caged in and trapped and he just needed to get out!

So he left.

He walked past big sis and out the door and he left.

Those weird aura guys tried to stop him but he just kept on walking. He felt something like an invisible wall…and he just walked right through it. Aura through aura. He had no idea where he was going or what he was doing. He just had to get out. He just had to get out and get…away. He didn't know where he was going to go….

He didn't even know, fully, where he was.

But he knew that he had to get away. Big sis was running after him. She was telling him that he had to go back inside…and also that he had to put his shoes on. Right. He was outside in his socks. She was so far behind him because she had stopped to put her shoes on. He knew that in some other countries people wore shoes all the time, even in the house, and in other countries some people never wore shoes at all. Maybe this was one of those countries where nobody wore shoes ever.

It was not one of those countries.

He had run down the stairs and out into the city…and people were looking at him weird. Of course they were. He had red hair and blue eyes and freckles and…and also he didn't have any shoes on. The people there were looking at him weird and saying things that he didn't understand….and even though he was outside he felt even more trapped than when he had been inside…

Was this why mom had left?

Had she felt this trapped feeling, too? Had she felt like she was…like she was stuck? Sho had felt like that even back at the castle. When dad and big sis had been hanging out and liking each other…but mom had mostly been asleep…and even though the house was super big it still had walls…even the yard had walls…and he had been stuck there. He had brains in his head and feet in his shoes but he could not steer himself wherever he chose. Even now he could not steer himself wherever he chose. He had no idea where he was.

It was called Shanghai.

It smelled weird. It looked weird. He could sort of read some of the writing on the signs but not really. He thought that he had been stuck before but this….this was a whole other kind of stuck. He should have thought this through. Dad was always saying that he wasn't incapable of thinking things through. Sure he was outside but then…then what? What was he going to do now? Walk back to Japan in his bare feet? He had run down the stairs and out the front door of the building…and now he had to run back up the stairs and back to…not home but…but the place where the futon he had slept on last night was. Where his drawing books were. Where his sister was.

"Sho! At least put your shoes on!" said Mob. She handed Sho his shoes. He was just kind of looking around…which was good. She was glad that she hadn't lost him. She did not speak mandarin or any other kind of Chinese. She knew nothing about Shanghai or China or anywhere that wasn't where she had grown up. If she had lost track of her little brother here…she never would have seen him again….

And also he wasn't wearing shoes.

You always had to wear shoes when you left the house. Even if you went swimming at the pool you still had to wear water shoes. Sho wasn't wearing shoes. The ground was dirty. That was why you were supposed to wear shoes when you went outside. If mom had been there she would have been so disappointed in Mob for not taking care of Sho. If mom had been there then Mob wouldn't have had to take care of Sho in the first place…

Mom was not there.

And Mob was the one in charge.

"Fine." Said Sho. He took his sandals from her and put them on. There were two red aura guys standing off to the side and talking. Sho wondered if they were going to tell dad on him. Probably. They worked for him after all. He wondered how dad would punish him this time.

"Are you ok? Did you step in anything sharp? Or gross?" asked Mob. She looked him over. He seemed to be fine. No blood or bumps or bruises. She wondered if maybe she should have put her hand on his forehead, too, even though she had no idea what that would have told her. That was just something that you were supposed to do when you were worried about someone. Mom had done that, before, when she had been worried about them.

"No. I'm fine." Said Sho. Those weird aura guys were still looking at him and big sis and talking to each other. It looked like they were arguing. Sho had no idea what they were saying. He didn't speak Chinese.

"Come on, then. Let's go back inside before dad finds out." Said Mob. She took Shi's hand, well she tried to, but Sho pulled away from her really hard. She tried again and he did the same thing again. It hurt that he didn't want to hold her hand. They always held hands, even when he had been scared on the plane ride, and…and it hurt when he pulled away from her. It hurt a lot…

But she didn't let it show.

"I don't want to." Said Sho. He didn't know where he would go or what he would do out here but he knew that it had to be better than being trapped up there.

"But you have to. Dad said-" said Mob

"I don't care what dad said!" said Sho. That was the last straw. He did not want to hear any more about dad or what he said or what he wanted from them! From him! He didn't know where he was going to go or what he was going to do but it had to be better than being there, bossed around by his big sister, or waiting around to get punished by his dad.

He started walking.

"Sho! You can't just leave! We'll get lost!" said Mob. She was seven and he was six. They needed to be outside with a grownup. Mom had always said that they were never to go outside the house, or the yard, without an adult. They weren't just outside the house and the yard, no, they were outside the country! Plus dad had been super clear, they were not supposed to leave the apartment under any circumstances. Dad had told them to do something and they had best do it unless they wanted to get punished. Mob got punished too, now, like Sho got punished…and it was the worst. Dad never hurt her, not really, but it was always so…scary…when he pushed her down. Or into something. Or just reached out and hit her…he didn't do it very hard…but he did hit her…and it was scary because he was dad and…and it also felt kind of like he had been tricking her all these years, too. That he had tricked her into thinking that he loved her…but he did love her. That was why he punished her, to make her into a better person, so it was ok….

She did not want to be punished.

Even though she was long past that point. They had left even though they were not supposed to and she had let Sho go outside without shoes on…and it was all her fault…and dad was going to punish her…and maybe if he punished her a whole lot then he wouldn't have any energy left to punish Sho with…even though that was not at all how it worked, maybe, she didn't know. It had never worked before…

Sho would not slow down.

And they were being followed by those weird aura guys. Mob wondered why they didn't just tell her and Sho to stop…and she wondered if she was supposed to listen to them…they worked for dad so they listened to dad but wasn't working for dad kind of like working for them? Because they were all part of the Suzuki family? They had even called her 'Miss Suzuki' even though mom was…well she was Mrs. Suzuki…

She was not a grownup.

She was not mom.

And it felt a little bit unfair to her that dad expected her to be mom. Well he never came out and said that she was mom now, because then she would have had to be married to her own dad and that wasn't right at all, but he treated her like mom. He made her take care of Sho and even asked her, before, to cook and clean like mom had. Was it because she was the oldest kid? Or was it because she was a girl? What if Sho was the older brother? What would have happened then? Was it even something worth thinking about?

What did it matter what she thought about? Her thoughts couldn't change what was happening right then and there.

"Sho, where are you even going?" asked Mob as they came to a stop. It was hot. The air tasted funny here. Her feet hurt because she hadn't had time to buckle her sandals the right way. They had been walking for hours, it felt like, though she didn't have a clock anywhere near her so she couldn't tell the exact time.

"I don't know…away, I guess." Said Sho. He couldn't walk anymore. His feet hurt and his skin hurt, he had a sunburn coming on, and also it hurt to breathe just a little. He had no idea how long he had been walking for, at least a million kilometers if not more, and he just wanted…he didn't know what he wanted.

To go home.

To his actual home…but that was never going to happen again. It wasn't home without mom. It wasn't castle Suzuki if all of the Suzuki's weren't living in it….and dad didn't count. He could move to wherever he wanted, Sho didn't care, he just wanted his mom back. He didn't care what happened as long as he got mom back.

"You can't just do that, Sho, you can't just run away like that. Something bad could have happened to you! We don't know where we are and we don't understand anybody and nobody understands us because we're speaking Japanese and-and-and I need to stop it." Said Mob. She could see her aura. Those copy paste aura guys took a couple steps back. Normal people weren't looking at them, yet, so she hadn't totally lost control…but she needed to calm down. Conceal, don't feel. Losing control…that would make dad madder at her than he probably already was.

"I know that! You think that I don't know that!?" said Sho. He could see his aura again…and he was getting close to losing control. He wanted to push her. He wanted to shove her. He wanted…he could not do any of the things that he wanted…because she was his sister…and he didn't want to hurt her…he just…wanted to hurt something.

He didn't understand why.

"Sho, I don't know what you do and don't know. All I know is that you can't just run away like that. You can't just…just run away even if you want to." Said Mob

"I wasn't trying to run away. I was trying to get away." said Sho

"What's the difference?" asked Mob

"I was trying to get away from you." Said Sho

"Oh. That hurts my feelings but…but I understand. I understand why you wouldn't want to be around me. Because I can't control my powers and I can't take good care of you and-" said Mob

"No, it's got nothing to do with that! I wanted to get away from you because you wouldn't shut up about all the stuff that dad said! And you kept on trying to be mom! You are not my mother." Said Sho

"I know that I'm not our mom-" said Mob

"My mom. I had mom and you had dad, that was what we agreed on." Said Sho

"I know that we agreed on that but…but we don't have mom anymore." Said Mob

"I know! I know that we don't have mom anymore…and I hate that! I hate that dad…he's making us pretend that she never existed in the first place! And he's trying to make me treat you like you're our mom but you aren't! You're my big sister, not my mom, and I don't see why I have to do what you say-" said Sho

"I don't like it either, you know. I don't like how dad puts me in charge. I don't like how mom is gone and we aren't allowed to talk about her. I don't like how dad punished me-you. I don't like how he's always punishing you just for talking about her. I don't like it and I didn't ask for…for any of this." said Mob

"Neither did I…but now we have it…and I don't want it. I want to go home. I want to go back to the castle." Said Sho. He wanted to go back to the castle and see mom there, he didn't care if she was wide awake or on one of her sleeping marathons, and then everything would have been ok and he would have been ok…but that could not be. He knew that it could not be…but he could still want things. There was no crime in wanting things….

"I do too…but we can't. We live…I don't know where we live now, dad said that this wasn't a move just a trip, but I…I miss the castle…and I miss mom, too. I miss her so much that it…it hurts." Said Mob. She was crying a little. Sho wiped the tears from her eyes. Well he kind of just shoved them back in but that worked too.

"Big sis…do you think that we'll ever be able to go back home?" asked Sho

"I don't know. I don't know any more about what's going to happen than you do….but I do know that we need to get back because if dad comes back and sees us gone then nothing good will happen to us." Said Mob. She took Sho's hand, he didn't shake her away, and they walked together. They retraced their steps and, when that didn't work, they asked the weird aura guys to lead them.

Turns out they sort of spoke Japanese.

And they did have to do what she said. Well what she and Sho said. Sho told them to get them candy, they passed by a candy store, and they did. So they did have to follow their orders. Mob wanted to tell them to, well ask them nicely to, show them how to get back to Japan…but she wondered if that might have been pushing it. She didn't want to push it. She and Sho were in enough trouble as it was.

At least it had seemed that way.

They went back to the apartment and watched Chinese TV, well tried to watch Chinese TV, until dad came home. He said some mean sounding things, Mob didn't speak Chinese and she had trouble with tones but Sho assured her that those were angry words in whatever language, and then he came through the door.

Mob and Sho waited to get punished.

But he just told them to explain…and they did…and then he just stared at them for a while before saying…

"Children need exercise."

And that was that.


	60. Shanghai Disney Land

They lived at Disney Land now.

Well not really. At the end of the day, after the fireworks show, they had to go home. They had a car waiting for them. Mob didn't know if the car even went anywhere. Dad always said that when they got bored they should just head back to the car and they'd go back to the apartment. She wondered if the weird aura guy got bored sitting in the car all day. She didn't know.

And Sho didn't care.

He was just happy to be outside. They lived at Disney Land now, maybe, which beat being stuck inside all day. Dad hadn't punished him for going outside, before, he had just told them never to do that again. Then the very next day he had someone drive them to Disney Land and gave them a bunch of money and told them to exercise and have fun. They weren't allowed to use their power, or tell anyone that they were there alone, but aside from that they could do whatever they wanted. This was a pretty fun place. Mom would have liked it…

They weren't supposed to talk about mom.

Or think about her. They had to pretend like they had never had a mom in the first place. Dad all but said so. Sho…he wanted mom back…but he also didn't want to get punished. Besides, he knew why she left. It was because of him, why else? She was gone and now he was alone with big sis and dad and…and at least they got to spend the whole day every day at Disney Land.

Until the moved again.

But he didn't know when they were going to move again and neither did big sis. All they knew was that they got to spend the whole day at Disney Land, no school or anything like that, and it was fun. Even if she liked boring things it was still fun. Besides, they mostly just did the stuff that he liked. Like the shooty thing. He liked the shooty thing a lot.

"I'm sorry I shot you in the eye." Said Sho. Big sis was blinking a lot. He really hadn't meant to shoot her in the eye. Even if it was just a laser it still hurt. He knew, he had shot himself in the eye just to see if it hurt. Turns out that it did.

"It's not that bad." Said Mob. The spot in her vision was getting smaller, that was what mattered. She hoped that it wasn't permanent. There were some things that even Fukuda couldn't fix, he had said, and Mob had no idea if eyes were one of them.

"I'm still sorry and I still didn't mean to." Said Sho. For once he hadn't been trying to be a jerk. Well he never set out to be a jerk, he just sort of acted like a jerk to her sometimes. Sometimes he just got so mad for no reason…

"It's ok. It was an accident. I'm sorry that I got more points than you." Said Mob. She shouldn't have beaten him even though she had told him a thousand times that if he wanted to have the best score he should have aimed before he shot. He usually just shot over and over and over again and only got points from luck. If you weren't going to play right then you shouldn't have played at all…at least that was what mom would say when they would play Wii and Sho would just mash buttons and then get super upset when he lost. She wondered if mom would have had fun, too, if she had come with…but of course Mob had no way of knowing if mom would have had fun or not. Maybe she would have, Mob didn't know, and she had no idea if she had ever really known her mom at all.

"You didn't." said Sho. She didn't win, she never won. She was scared of dark rides. That was why they couldn't ride the Tron thing, she got too scared. She only wanted to do boring stuff. Girls were boring like that….or maybe just she was. He didn't know. It wasn't like they were allowed to play with any of the other kids. Dad had said so.

"I did. But it's ok, we can get back in line and try again." said Mob. She wasn't bragging that she had beaten him, she was just stating a fact. She was older and she played the game right so of course she was the one who scored the highest. Not that she was braggy about that or anything.

"No, I'm bored of this part." Said Sho. They had been in Tomorrowland all day. He was starting to get bored. He had been at Disney Land all week. He was starting to get bored…but it was better than being trapped inside all day.

"Oh, ok. Do you want to go to Fantasy Land again? I think Elsa is going to sing again. The show is usually at the same time every day unless it rains. It rains a lot here." said Mob. She looked up at the sky as she said that. Cloudy. She hoped that they didn't get rained on again like they had the other day. She felt her bag, she had an Elsa bag now, and the rain ponchos that she had packed were still there. They had rain ponchos and water bottles and a lot of money. They'd be ok.

"I just said that I was bored. I don't want to be more bored than I already am." Said Sho

"What's boring about Elsa singing? That's my favorite of all the shows." Said Mob

"She sings the same song over and over again. She's not even as good as she was in the movie." Said Sho

"All the shows are the same over and over again. We've been here for a week and it's all been the same over and over again. If one thing is boring then it's all boring." Said Mob

"No, some things never stop being fun. Like the pirates thing, that will never stop being cool no matter how many times we ride it." Said Sho

"That's true." Said Mob even though it was kind of scary. Sho liked it though and if he liked it then she liked it. Besides, it was a whole lot better than being inside all day.

"And Fantasy Land will never stop being boring." Said Sho

"That's not…well if you think it's true…" said Mob. She didn't want to fight with him. He was a boy, of course he thought that all of the stuff that she liked was boring. She knew that she should have thought that all of his stuff was boring and that he was gross, because he was a boy and that was how boys and girls were supposed to feel about each other. At least that was how a lot of the girls at school were. Mob was weird like that, that she liked being friends with her little brother, even though he thought that all the stuff that she liked was dumb and boring.

"I do. Now come on, let's get more cake. I'm hungry again." said Sho. He wasn't really hungry, not really, but he could tell that he was starting to be a jerk again. He didn't want to be a jerk to her or to anyone. Dad was enough of a jerk for all of them. He wasn't dad even though he looked just like him.

"But we just ate." Said Mob. They had gone crazy at the bakery when they had come here for the first time and they had gotten sick. She had just gotten a stomach ache but he had thrown up. They needed to eat healthy food…not that there was a lot of that here. The chicken and vegetable and rice thing was good…even if they only gave you chopsticks. She and Sho had always used either forks or kid's chopsticks. They were out of practice. Dad had even said so.

"I know, but I want another one of those donuts that looks like Mickey's head." Said Sho

"Don't you want something healthy to eat? Remember the last time you ate too much junk food and then you threw up on the Honey Pot thing?" asked Mob

"That's just because you spun it too fast." Said Sho

"You asked me to spin it that fast." Said Mob

"Just come on. I'm hungry." Said Sho. He started walking. Big sis followed. He wasn't afraid of her not following, she'd be the one who got in trouble if he got lost. Dad put her in charge again. He was always putting her in charge. Dad even said it was because she was older. That was why she got to hold on to the money and stuff, too, even though it wasn't fair. Sho needed money for stuff….not that big sis didn't just give him money whenever he needed it…

He could use more T-shirts.

Especially since his shirt was still kind of wet from when they went on the rapids ride thing. She hated that one. She hated all the fun stuff. She just wanted to walk through the maze and meet princesses and watch them sing. So boring.

They could have been bored at home.

They could have been a lot of things at home but they had no idea when they would be going home again. Back to the castle. They still lived in the castle, they had always lived in the castle, and one day they would go back to the castle…right? They had to. They had to because…because it was their home. Besides, mom might have thought that they left her if she came back to the castle and then everyone was gone. If she came back. He had no idea if mom was coming back or not…

And he wasn't allowed to ask.

"Do you want to go to the parade after this? If you want to skip the Elsa show?" asked Mob as they got in line at the bakery. Well it wasn't called a bakery, it was called something else here, but if it was a place that sold cakes and cookies and other baked stuff then it was a bakery.

"We can go to the Elsa show if you want." Said Sho. Walking had helped. He had out walked, out ran, jerk Sho. Jerk Sho was always mean to his sister…and he did not like being that sort of person. He was a big kid, he was six, and he had to be better. He had to be a good little brother. It wasn't like she was even doing anything. She was just doing what dad told her to do. She even said that she didn't like it when dad put her in charge. Mom was the one who should have been in charge…

But mom was gone.

"No, it's ok. You're right, we've seen it before and we're heard the song a million times. We can do what you want." Said Mob. She had to think of him and what he wanted to do. She was his big sister and she didn't want him to leave. Mom had left. If moms could leave then little brother could leave too…and then she would be all alone.

"I don't care. Let's just go to Fantasy Land and see Elsa again." said Sho. It wasn't like it would have killed him to do what she wanted to do. He should have been nicer. What if she left too? Not now, they may have been big kids but they were still just kids, but one day she would grow up and he would grow up…and then she could leave to. She could leave him alone with dad…or maybe she and dad would leave him. Both were equally awful.

"I know that you do. We can do what you want to, Sho, I like to make you happy." Said Mob. He didn't need to do things just because she wanted to. It felt nice, being thought of, but there was guilt to it, too. She should have been the one to make him happy, not the other way around. She was the big sister, not the little sister, and it was her job to make him happy. It was her job to take care of him. Dad had said so.

What could be better than making her little brother happy?

He was her brother and she was his sister. They cared about each other. Even if he didn't always act like it. Even if he could be downright mean sometimes. Even if he sometimes said things that hurt so much that she thought, maybe, that he didn't like her….he still cared about her.

"Here. I want to make you happy, too. I don't want to be a jerk. I don't like to be a jerk." Said Sho. He gave her half of his donut thing even though he wanted the rest of it. That was what you did when you loved someone. You gave them the ears from your donut even though they didn't also they had all the money in the world so they could buy all the donuts in the world which would have been cool but also would have been kind of a jerk type thing to do which meant that even in his own head he was a total jerk-

"You're not a jerk, you could never be a jerk, you're my little brother. Little brothers can't be jerks. You're also my best friend, too, you know. If little brothers can count as friends." Said Mob as she took the top of his donut and traded him half of her really long cinnamon sugar bread thing. He didn't ask but it was fair that way. It was important to make things as fair as possible even though life wasn't fair. Dad had said that.

"I'm your only friend." Said Sho. That was one of the worst things about moving…sort of moving. Well the very worst thing was that they didn't have a mom anymore but the second worst thing was that they didn't go to school anymore. No school meant nobody new to play with. Nobody new to play with meant that he was stuck doing boring stuff all day….and also he didn't get to see his old friends…but at least he didn't have to go to the first grade.

He hadn't wanted to go to the first grade.

Because the uniform sucked and you had to walk much farther and also his friends from kindergarten were all going to different schools. Also big sis had a lot of homework and it looked like it was really hard and he had better things to do with his time after school than sit down at the table and just do more school work. At least now he didn't have to worry about school work anymore…

Maybe even never again.

"That's true." Said Mob. She didn't know how to feel about that. She hadn't ever had any real friends, not like Sho had anyway, and she couldn't have imagined a better friend in the world than Sho. Even if he could be mean sometimes. It wasn't like she was going to be making any other friends, anyway. Dad said that they were only allowed to be friends with other esper kids and there weren't any other esper kids.

"So come on, let's go see Elsa sing for the millionth, billionth, trillionth time." Said Sho. He was going to sit through it for her. He's sit through it again and again because like he had just said, she was his only friend. Well he was her only friend and it worked both ways. She loved that show and that song and he had to be less of a jerk so he would be nice to her.

Besides, she went on all the rides that he liked.

Even the dark rides. Even the scary ones. She was always there for him. She'd be there for him today just like she would be tomorrow and had been yesterday and would continue to be for the rest of their lives. Also as long as this trip lasted. He knew that dad's trips lasted a long time. Sometimes even months…months and months and months…

He hoped that they would be back in time for his birthday.

Because even he was starting to get bored. They got there at opening each day and they stayed until closing. It had been a whole week. He didn't think that he ever could have gotten bored…but he was starting to. He wondered if they would go somewhere else. Somewhere like…home. Because even here the trapped in feeling was getting to him. Even though he was in no way trapped, not inside a place anyway, he was still trapped. Stuck here in a place that was supposed to be fun…and was fun…but it still wasn't home. He still barely understood what people were saying, he knew very little English and no Chinese whatsoever, and he didn't think that it would have bothered him as much as it did. Maybe that was why dad always said how glad he was to be back in Japan when he came home after a while…

Would they ever go home again?

Dad only came home because mom and big sis were there. He had said so. Now that mom was gone and dad had taken them with…would they ever go home again? They should. Mom might…she might have come back. She might have been back home waiting for them and…and she might have been worried because they were far away and….and….

And he was just imagining things.

She was not back. She would never be back…and neither would they…and he had to at least not be a jerk about it. Big sis didn't ask for this to happen and neither did he. This was just…a thing that happened. It had happened and now…now they were here. At least 'here' was fun. Even the parts with the princesses and the singing.

"Come on, Sho, you sing too. It's more fun that way." said Mob. She knew that he didn't much like this song or this movie, he said that nothing happened even though a lot happened, but it was more fun if he at least tried to have fun. She knew that he was sad and she was sad too. There was a lot to be sad about. They were far from home and their mom was gone. That was a lot to be sad about…but they could at least make the best of it.

Even if they could never go home again….

At least they got to live at Disney Land now.


	61. Hong Kong

Thank God for theme parks.

Children needed constant stimulation. That was just their natural state of being. He had been no exception as a child. He remembered constantly exploring, trying to make sense of the world around him, and of course his children would do the same. The only difference was that when he was young he had enough sense to stay out of danger.

And also his parents never took him outside of their city let alone the country.

He did not blame Son and Daughter for wanting to leave. He was angry with them, of course, but it was in their innate nature as children to be afflicted with a wanderlust and a desire to explore the world and he could not punish them for that. Well he could but it wouldn't have done anything at all to correct their behavior in the long term. Instead of fighting them on their innate nature as children it seemed that a better course of action was to simply find a place to let them get all of their excessive energy out.

Once he took over the world he was going to have more Disney Parks built.

That is if the children were still young when he reached his goal, his lifelong goal, of taking his place as the ruler of the world. It certainly seemed as though his goal would be coming sooner rather than later. Of course he had always had feelings like that whenever he found a new esper of some skill and talent. It got even worse when he managed to get this esper onto his side. He had his ways though the best way to really test them, to see if they were worthy to stand in the shadow of what it was that he was building, was through good old fashioned tests of strength and tenacity and-

Fighting.

A lot of fighting.

There really was no other way. It had nothing to do with the sense of enjoyment that he got from fighting, nothing to do with that at all. And he certainly did not need any reassurance that there wasn't a single being on this Earth who could challenge him. No, none of that at all. This was just the best way. That was all. The only way.

He always won.

Though they weren't always divisive victories. Such as now. Such as why he had a gash down the side of his head. Hence the blood ruining one of his favorite shirts. They were all the same but some were more comfortable than others. Softer. More worn. Blood stained. This shirt would become unwearable and now he had no choice but to throw it away and get another, on his own because while he had people to shop for him Masami was the one who had always known what he wanted, and maybe even at this point he had no idea what it was that he even wanted and he wanted to keep this shirt and Masami would have known how to get the blood out but she was not there anymore and he had no idea where she was and-

"Sorry, Boss." Said Fukuda as he wiped, maybe too hard, at the blood crusted to Suzuki's head. Another esper had tried to 'prove' themselves and now there was another set of wounds for him to mend. Just another day in paradise. Part of him wanted to tell Suzuki that maybe, just maybe, getting into brawls wasn't the best way to realize his dream of ruling the world or whatever. The last thing he needed were any more of his underlings filled with stewing resentment. Fukuda hadn't had to fight him…though now he sort of wished that he'd had. He wished that he had the strength to do…something…anything. Something beyond fixing the cut on this bastard's head.

Calm down.

And stay calm.

Good.

"Huh? Oh, yes, of course." Said Suzuki. His mind had gone to her again. She had been gone for weeks, now, and the feelings he carried for her had become irrational. She was not dead or injured or wandering around with amnesia, he had looked for her extensively, she was hiding. She was hiding herself from him…and that was fine. Well, no, it wasn't because her departure had torn a hole through his very soul and he had no idea when it would ever heal….but those feelings were irrational. She was gone.

And there was no reason to harbor any more emotion towards her.

He had exorcised it.

He really had. She wanted to leave. Fine. She was nothing to him. Just another person on the street. She had never been worth his time, anyway. He could have had literally any woman in the entire world. She was just another woman in a sea of women. There had been lovers before her and there would be lovers afterwards. That was all she was to him, an old lover, someone who had been tired of anyway. He'd simply wanted to go to bed with her and he had and now…and now he had moved on. Moved on to…where was he? Shanghai…no, that had been last week. He had moved on and now he was in…the skyline looked like Hong Kong, He had put distance between them, a lot of it, and he would not have been able to do that if he still cared even an iota for her.

He was fine.

"Alright Boss, you're fine." Said Fukuda as he finished. There was no point in being full of seething resentment towards this man. There was no point in any of it, really, because nothing would change the outcome. He was still there, trapped, with Suzuki. It didn't matter if they were in Japan or China or wherever else was on their travel itinerary. There was no way out.

For him at least.

Masami was safe. She was safe and sound and that was what mattered. She had an apartment and a job and nobody had been even close to finding her last time he checked in. Of course he would not be checked in too often for obvious reasons. He was not going to compromise her. Fukuda saw first hand what Suzuki could do to people who challenged him. Fukuda wondered what he would to his own wife…after she had been the one to…to betray him….

Thank God Suzuki couldn't see what was right in front of him.

"Good. You can return to…whatever it was that you were doing. That will be all." said Suzuki. He waved his hand and his office door opened. He'd have to move offices again, it was a disaster area in there. He hated messes. Masami was always good at cleaning them up. She had always been a very neat person. She had even, on their first date, tried so smooth his hair down. That was before he had cut it this short. It got like Son's when he let it grow out. Masami had always liked it, though, and she had expressed unhappiness when he had it cut short…and maybe if he had left it long she would have stayed…

He exorcised that emotion.

"That's all? No concussions, contusions, or abrasions?" asked Fukuda. He did not feel as light as he sounded but the worst thing that he could do was be out of the ordinary. The last thing he wanted to be was suspicious. Suzuki was self-centered, not blind, even though sometimes it seemed like he really needed to have his eyes examined.

"No. You may leave." Said Suzuki. He had so much he needed to do. So much that he needed to get done with before the children made their way back. They always came back both excited and exhausted. Usually covered in powdered sugar, chocolate, sprinkles, and other assorted debris. He could not wait for them to get old enough to help him out. To be something other than children. But he still had years of this…

Theme parks were a godsend.

"And the kids?" asked Fukuda. He knew where they were. He knew where they were and he had no idea what went through Suzuki's mind sometimes. They were six and seven years old. They could not be all alone in Hong Kong! Even if it was a walled in children's paradise, if Tokyo Disney Land was anything to go by, it still wasn't safe. Forget the fact that they were children. Shigeko was a year and a half older than Sho, that did not give her the maturity or judgement to keep track of another human being.

Forget the fact that Shigeko had so little control over her powers.

And forget the promise that he had made to Masami. The last time they had checked in she had asked about her kids. All he could tell them was that they were in Shanghai and they were fine. He omitted the fact that they were left unattended all day in Disney Land…and also they kept on making themselves sick eating truly obscene amounts of sugar. They needed someone to take care of them…and that someone could not be him…

Not that Masami needed to know that things were anything other than perfectly safe and fine and under his total and complete control.

"They'll be ill again when they get home, most likely. I so wish they would eat something other than confectionary and the like. You'll tend to them when they return. I don't expect them back until the evening." Said Suzuki

"Yeah, they'll do that. Maybe I should head over there with them just to make sure they don't make themselves sick or get hurt." Said Fukuda. People looked at you strangely when you were a single man in a family theme park and they looked at you even more strangely when you hung around two kids who looked nothing like you. He had managed to spin it that he had simply been heading over there on his day off…and he had been believed….but maybe if he made it a regular thing he could bide his time and spirit Sho away. Make it seem like he had just wandered off. Children went missing in foreign countries all the time and, really, it was irresponsible to let the children run wild and free at their age anyway.

He was contemplating on what the best way to kidnap and six year old boy was.

Somehow his life had come to this.

"They're fine. Everything is fine. You are dismissed." Said Suzuki. He so wished that Fukuda would learn to take a step back. Claw was a strict meritocracy. Kissing up would get Fukuda nowhere. He didn't even amuse. He didn't do anything, he didn't gain anything, by overstepping like this. His children were fine.

He knew how to care for his own children.

They had enough to eat and drink and were amused. It was an amusement park after all. The children were fine and they did not need a nanny or a nursemaid or whatever else Fukuda thought that he was to them. If Suzuki hadn't been so in control of himself he would have told Fukuda that if he wanted to spend his time chasing after children then he should have found a woman and had his own family instead of constantly trying to make use of his.

But he did not say that.

"Sure thing." Said Fukuda. If he hadn't had so much control over himself he would have told Suzuki that he had no idea how his children were doing. He had no idea if they were happy or sad, hurt or well, anything. He had no idea that his children probably weren't fine. That Disney Land could only distract them for so long. That they must have been hurt, worried, confused, because their mother was gone and they had been uprooted from their entire lives and their father was doing nothing at all to make it any easier on them-

He said none of that.

He had more sense than to piss off Suzuki. He had more sense than to tell the man that he was terrible, a terrible person, by every measurable metric. He had more sense than to tell him that those children would have been better off raised by wolves than they were by him…if you could even call what he was doing 'raising' them. He had more sense than to tell him that he would ruin those kids, he would ruin them so badly that….that unless Fukuda did the unthinkable and kidnapped his son….those kids would be ruined…that those kids were actually better off being all alone in Hong Kong….

They really were better off far, far, away.

Thank God for amusement parks.


	62. Hong Kong Disney Land

They still lived at Disney Land.

Which was better than living in the new apartment with dad, at least that was what Sho had said. The new apartment which was different from the last new apartment. This one had two bedrooms so she and Sho didn't have to live in the living room. They were in a place called Hong Kong now, which was a part of China but also not a part of China. Dad explained it to them but Mob had forgotten most of what he said. All she knew about Hong Kong was that nobody spoke Japanese, she and Sho had to learn a whole new money system, and there was Disney Land here.

They could never get tired of Disney Land.

Well they had gotten kind of tired of the last one. Just a little. This was a different one but a lot of things were still the same. There was the castle, which was similar to the one in Shanghai, though not as big. Nothing here was as big as was in Shanghai. Not that Mob wanted to go back to Shanghai anytime soon. No, she really just wanted to get back to Japan. Back to Japan and back to the castle where they belonged. They were Suzuki's and it was called castle Suzuki and they had always lived in the castle. She agreed with Sho on the subject of going back home.

Though she, of course, said nothing to dad.

What could she say? That she wanted to go back home right that minute? That she was sick and tired of waking up and not knowing where she was? That she wanted to sleep on her own bed in her own room and be in her own house? That she didn't care if the castle was empty or that she and Sho would be all alone? Well that last one was half of a lie. She wanted to be with mom…but mom was gone. Fukuda said that no matter where mom was she was still thinking of them.

But she didn't have to think of them.

She could have just come home to them and been with them in person. Dad said that mom left of her own accord. She's wasn't laying hurt or dead somewhere and the kidnappers hadn't gotten to her. That was the only thing that dad had said to her when she asked about mom even though she wasn't supposed to. Then he pushed her down with his powers and it had hurt a lot, he had pushed her so hard that all the air had gone out of her lungs, and that had been scary…and she had lost control…and this was actually their second Hong Kong apartment….and dad had been so disappointed in her…

But better her than Sho.

Besides, she and dad were ok now. He still let her go to Disney Land and he still gave her a big handful of money to keep in her Elsa bag and he still told her to have fun. He always said that before they left. He told them that they had to have fun and get good and tired. So that was what they did. Since dad hadn't said anything about being mad at her then she could have a lot fun. So could Sho. Really, they were having a lot of fun.

"I'm bored." Said Sho. Mob frowned. They were drinking frozen cola with ice cream in it, Mob knew that it was bad for them but she didn't care it was very hot out, and this had come out of nowhere. A minute ago Sho had said how much fun they had been having. Maybe he was just in a bad mood because Mob had forgotten to put sunscreen on him again. Fukuda could fix his sunburn when they got back. Tomorrow Mob would remember to cover him in sunscreen. Herself too, that was why she had forgotten, her skin never burnt or got any darker in the sun. Dad said that was a good thing, that she was so pale, but Mob didn't think so. Back at school the other kids would say that she looked like a ghost. Still, it was better than burning every time the sun came out to say hello.

"We can get more autographs. Someone new might be walking around." Said Mob. She didn't know why Sho was so bored. They had only been coming here for the past three days. There was still so much new to do like…like a lot of things. All sorts of things. Oh the things they could do….like…um….more autographs! Wait, no, she had just said that…

And also their autograph books were getting kind of full.

"Nobody new is ever walking around." Said Sho

"Um…we could go on the spinning teacups again." said Mob even though they just ate a lot of Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes and Sho had thrown up, before, when they were in Shanghai. She actually hoped that he didn't pick that one. She needed to learn to think before she spoke, like dad was always telling them to.

"Those are just like the spinning honey pots at the last Disney Land." Said Sho

"We could go on the carosel again." said Mob

"That's just more spinning." Said Sho

"We can go back to superhero world." Said Mob

"We were just there." said Sho

"We can feed popcorn to birds." Said Mob even though they were not supposed to do that, actually, though she didn't know why. Birds could be hungry, too. Mom had always let them feed the birds when they went to the park with the bird pond in it. They would stop off at the store and get stale bread or bags of popcorn and then feed the birds…and sometimes the birds would take their food…or the mean ducks would come back…but mom would chase them off…

"Then they'll just yell at us in Chinese." Said Sho

"Maybe they won't." said Mob

"You're right. They'll yell at you in Chinese and they'll yell at me in English." Said Sho. Mob wondered why people did that. She could understand thinking that they both spoke English or that they both spoke Chinese, both kinds that they spoke here, but it was weird when they said something to her in Chinese and then turned to Sho and said something to him in English. They were clearly brother and sister so of course they would speak the same languages.

"But then that's ok because we won't be able to understand them anyway." Said Mob. She was trying to be funny. She was trying to make him smile. It didn't work, he just sat back and crossed his arms. Mob had no idea what combination of words would make her little brother happy.

So she didn't use words.

She just poured what was left of her cola with ice cream in it into his cup. He looked up at her. She looked back at him. Maybe he was just unhappy because he was hot and his skin was burnt and stuff. She couldn't fix any of that but she could at least try and make him happy in the only way that she could. That was her job. She was his big sister.

"Thanks." Said Sho after a little bit. He tilted his cup back and drank way too fast. Mob wondered what his hurry was. It wasn't like they had anything specific to do. Well there was the princess show but there was no way he would ever be in a hurry for that. She wondered for a moment before she remembered that not only did that drink have frozen cola but ice cream in it as well…and she knew what happened when you ate or drank cold stuff way too fast…..

"Sho, be careful or you'll get a-" said Mob

"Brain freeze!" shouted Sho. He almost tilted backwards but Mob caught him with her powers. She wasn't supposed to use them where normal people could see….but nobody noticed. Everyone was busy with all of their own stuff. Well most of them. Some of them said things in Chinese, Mandarin and Cantonese, but Mob had no idea what it was that they were saying. They hadn't noticed her powers, they would have freaked out if they'd had, and Sho was ok. That was what mattered, that Sho was ok.

"I said to be careful." Said Mob as Sho calmed down. Brain freeze was the worst, the very worst. She wished that she had healing powers because then she could have made it better. She wished that she could do more for him. She was supposed to take care of him after all. She was the big sister.

"I was careful." Said Sho

"Ok." Said Mob

"I really was!" said Sho

"I believe you, little brother, I always believe you." Said Mob even though it hadn't looked like he was being careful at all. He would not have lied to her, though, because he was her little brother and little brothers did not tell lies…well unless they were telling you that they had washed their hands before eating. But to be fair there was mostly this citrus smelling soap in all the bathrooms.

"Good. You should." Said Sho

"I know that I should." Said Mob. They just sort of sat there for a little bit. Sho kicked the underside of the table a few times even though he should not have been doing that.

"I'm bored." Said Sho even though he had said that before. He had said that before and she had offered up her suggestions and he had said no to them all. If anything she wanted to go back to Fantasy Land and go to the garden place…but Sho thought that it was boring in there. This wasn't a boring place at all. This wasn't…this was just a place that they had gotten too used to. That was all.

"I know." Said Mob after a while. What else could she say? She had already said a bunch of things that they could do together. What else was there to do? Besides go back to the car….or maybe it was a different car this time. She could sense another one of those weird aura guys….and it might have been the same one. Dad had called them the Awakened. They were artificial espers, which meant not real, like how artificial cheese from the can was not as good as real cheese despite what Sho though, and that was why they all had such similar auras. She wondered if they ever got bored just waiting for them. She had asked, once, but they said that they were not allowed to speak to her unless it was necessary….and they also called her Miss Suzuki even though she told them a million times to call her Mob. Nobody called her Mob. She had missed the first day of school. Nobody was ever going to call her Mob again…but that was ok….because she called herself Mob. Even though it was not a name. It was who she wanted to be, though, and that had to count for something. Right?

She liked being called Mob a lot better than being called Miss Suzuki, anyway.

"Aren't you bored?" asked Sho

"No. Not really. I can think of a lot of things more boring than this." said Mob. She was a little bit on the bored side…but that was ok. Going back to the apartment was a lot more boring than this. Dad said that they couldn't walk around Hong Kong on their own because it would attract undue attention, which was dad speak for 'kids aren't allowed out on their own' and if people noticed them out on their own then dad would get in trouble and people would find out about the place he ran. Claw was supposed to be a secret, he said, and people who talked got in big trouble.

Mob wished that being an esper wasn't such a big secret.

But dad had said that one day it wouldn't be. One day he would make it so that being an esper wasn't weird or scary. When he ruled the world then he would make it into a better place for espers everywhere, he had said, and she was looking forward to that…though not to the other stuff. She didn't much want dad to take over the world and then leave it to her and Sho. She may have been dressed like a princess, her Elsa dress had gotten dirty so now she was Anna, but she did not want to be a princess of the world like dad said that she would grow up to be. She didn't want to boss people around like that. She didn't even like bossing Sho around so she of course would not like to boss around all the people in the world.

Even if Dad had promised to build a Disney Land just for her.

She was getting kind of tired of living in Disney Land.

"Like what?" asked Sho

"Being back at the apartment. At least here we can be outside." Said Mob

"But at least there's air conditioning in there." said Sho

"That's true but I know you. We'll play videogames for an hour or two and then you'll be begging me to let you sneak outside for just a little bit. Remember what dad said, we can't go outside unless we're here. This place is for kids so two more kids wouldn't attract any attention." Said Mob

"I know what he said. I was there." said Sho

"Ok. I just thought that you might have forgotten." Said Mob

"I didn't forget what dad said, big sis, I have ears and stuff. I know that if we go back we have to spend the rest of the day inside. I'm just bored." Said Sho

"Do you want to play on your tablet for a little bit? I brought it and I'm sure that we can find a charging station somewhere. I even remembered the converter thing this time." Said Mob. She hadn't remembered, last time, that the plugs in Hong Kong were different than the ones in Japan and she and Sho had been kind of disappointed. Sho was the only one who showed it, though. It was ok, well not totally ok but more ok than it was for Mob, for Sho to show his feelings. That was because his powers were still little. She had a lot more power than he did, dad called her a prodigy and that was a word that meant very good at something without even trying, but Mob tried every day. That was why she couldn't show her feelings, because she had to try and control her powers, and that was why she could not sit there and kick the table along with her little brother and complain with him about how bored she was.

"No, I'm bored of that, too." Said Sho

"Oh. Um…do you want to-" said Mob

"I think that this one is more little than the other one." said Sho

"You mean in Shanghai?" asked Mob

"Yeah, where else could I have meant?" asked Sho

"I read on the map that there are other Disney Lands. There's the original one in the U.S. and then there's one in Tokyo and one in Paris and also-" said Mob

"Well we've only been to the one in Shanghai." Said Sho

"I know." Said Mob

"There's one in Tokyo too." Said Sho

"I know, Sho, I just told you that." Said Mob

"We've only been to the ones in China." Said Sho

"I know." Said Mob

"Even though it probably would have been easier to go to the one in Tokyo. That's at least still in Japan and we're from Japan." Said Sho

"I know it is. Back at school, at my old school, the big kids that were graduating got to take a school trip to Tokyo." Said Mob. She hadn't given that trip much thought, that was for the older kids, and she was not one of the older kids…but she could have gone with her class if she had stayed at school…and she had no idea why she felt sort of sad about that. She was traveling with her little brother and her dad, and she got to practically live at Disney Land, what could be better than that?

Having a mom.

But she should not have been thinking like that. Dad had told her not to talk about mom. Dad had told her not to so much as think about mom. Dad had told her to exorcise those emotions. Mob had tried…but she couldn't. She had a mom and she'd had the same mom for her entire life and now she didn't have a mom….and that was….it hurt kind of…

And she couldn't exorcise that emotion no matter how hard she tried.

"Do you think that dad'll take us to the one in Tokyo?" asked Sho

"Maybe. He doesn't tell me where we're going…or even if we're going. He woke you up the same as me that morning and told us both that we had to pack up because we had to go to Hong Kong next." Said Mob. That had not been a fun way to wake up at all. Mom always told them the day before what their plans for tomorrow were….but dad was not mom. Mom was mom…and mom was gone….

"Do you think that he'll ever take us home again, big sis?" asked Sho. Mob wanted to reach over and cover his mouth even though that would not have changed what he had just said. She felt around with her aura…and the only other esper around was the weird aura guy that was waiting for them…and she didn't know what she was so worried about anyway. Dad had more important things to do besides spy on them.

"I really don't know, little brother, I don't know at all" said Mob softly. She wanted to cry, now, because she had been thinking about mom for so long…and she had been up almost all night thinking about mom…and she wanted to cry or shout or something….but she couldn't. There was no way that she could…no way that she could exorcise these emotions….

So she just stomped them deep down low where they would drown underneath pancakes, frozen cola, and ice cream.

"I don't know either…" said Sho. Mob nodded. She reached over and took his hand even though it was somehow both sweaty and sticky at the same time. He was all sweaty and sticky. The umbrella they were sitting under did nothing for the heat. She wondered if it was still high summer, or if high summer was different in China than it was in Japan.

"I'm bored." Said Sho. Mob wanted to tell him that she knew that he was bored, she had working ears after all, but she did not. That would have been mean and big sister were not mean to their little brothers. Ever.

"I know." Was what Mob settled on.

"Do you…do you want to go back to princess town?" asked Sho. Mob blinked. Had she heard him right. He must have meant fantasy town….and he hated fantasy town…because he said that it was boring….but then again he was bored so…so she figured that he could have been bored anywhere.

"If that's ok with you." Said Mob. She really did want to go…but she also did not want to make him unhappy. She loved him so much…and when you loved someone then you always wanted to make them happy. He took his hand from hers and just got up. She followed him pausing only to throw their cups out because they did not come all the way to Hong Kong to make a mess. Like dad had said when they had left a mess at breakfast the other day. They did not come all the way to Hong Kong to make a mess…just like they had not gone all the way to Shanghai to make a mess…and just like they were not going to go wherever the next stop on their trip was to make a mess.

They were going to go to wherever their next stop was to go to Disney Land probably…..because that was where they lived now.

They lived at Disney Land.

And it was getting kind of boring.


	63. Ratatouille

Ratatouille was not a breakfast food.

But he was not about to argue with the children on what they could and could not eat. It had vegetables, something they hadn't eaten in a very long time, and anyway they seemed to enjoy it. Well they enjoyed saying it's name, anyway.

"Rat-ta-too-ey"

"Ra-da-too-ing."

They had been going back and forth like that for the entire meal. Honestly it was starting to become grating. He so wished that he hadn't sat down to this meal with his children. They didn't need him there with them while they ate, they weren't toddlers, but he had nor shared a meal with his children in a very long time.

And now he remembered why.

"There are over a hundred thousand words in the French language. Choose another one." said Suzuki as the children proceeded to laugh over the name of what they were eating….and he continued to not understand why. Children were such strange creatures sometimes. They operated on a form of reason and login that he had long forgotten. At least they weren't moping around about Masami anymore.

At least now they both understood that they were never to mention their mother again.

"But that's the only one we know." Said Son. Daughter nodded in agreement. Suzuki made a mental note to find someone to teach them French in that case. He really needed to get on with educating them in some capacity. It was just so much easier, and quieter, to leave them at Disney Land all day. That was why they were staying in Paris, now, even though it was slightly inconvenient. France was a big country but nowhere as big as China or the U.S….which may have been their next stop over. He had no idea. All he knew was that he was jet lagged, hungry, and his children were about to drive him to drink. Not that he had anything against drinking, if he tried to ban alcohol when he took over the world there would be no doubt that his rule would be a short one, he just did not like himself drinking. He needed to always maintain control for his own good and the good of those around him.

But he really needed a drink.

"Well then you'll just have to learn others." Said Suzuki

"We're going to school here?" asked Daughter. He saw her aura. The thought of returning to school was making her anxious. He had no idea why. He had been under the impression that she enjoyed going to school and that she took great pride in her scholastic achievements.

"I don't want to go to school." Said Son. That reaction was more in line with what Suzuki knew about that child. He would have much preferred to be underfoot all day, running and jumping and getting into everything, but it was past the beginning of the new school term back in Japan…and of course he would educate his children…..

"Dad, how can we go to school here? We don't know anybody and we don't speak the language." Said Daughter. Yes, valid concerns, but only if he had been planning on letting them attend school in this country. That would not have been a good move at all. First of all his children were not going to mingle with everyone else's, no way, and second of all they were nomads now. No sense in going through all the work of sending his two very foreign children to a local school and then having to move again in a few days to a few weeks.

"I'd have someone come here and teach you and your brother. Think of it like a school with only two people and that other person there with you at all times would be your brother." Said Suzuki. They still got frightened if they were separated. He'd have to break them of that when they got older. Son could, if he ever truly awakened, handle some business for him. Things that required attention but not necessarily his attention. Daughter could….she would stay by his side. Always.

An irrational feeling.

Daughter would not leave him. Well he had thought that Masami would never leave him too….he exorcises that emotion once again. He cannot risk losing Daughter. She was truly irreplaceable in ways that Masami never was. She was, at the end of the day, just a woman. A normal woman. There were women everywhere and if he wanted to he could have one. He could have two. He could have had a woman for every day of the week…he just didn't want to. He just didn't have the time. Yes, the time, to replace his wife….and he should have been on that. She was a hell of a lot easier to replace than his Daughter. Even his own biological daughter, and he needed to get in that too and sooner rather than later, would most likely never come close to her natural skill…if his son was anything to go off of.

He had a lot of things to do.

And not a lot of inclination to do them.

And that could be a real problem down the line. He was at war with himself. At war with the things that he knew that he had to do and the things that he just….he just got sentimental about. Masami. There was a raw, open, gaping wound where she had been. She was gone, now, and the rational thing to do would have been to have found another woman. The rational thing to do would have been to get back to the business of having more children, something that he had been wanting to do since Son was born. The rational thing to do would have been to just…move on….because she had left him, betrayed him, and therefore she was not worth even one millionth of the…the everything….that he gave her. His thoughts, his emotions, his pain….all of it. She was not worth it and no matter how many times he told himself that….

It still hurt.

And that emotion would not allow itself to be exorcised.

"…..different grades. How would that work?" asked Son. Suzuki backtracked for a bit. Right, the children had been debating the logistics of such an arrangement. They were his children, that was for sure, or they had at least been raised by him. Daughter was somehow just like him and nothing like him at the same time. Son was nothing like him and nothing like his mother, too. He wondered how much of it was nature and how much of it was nurture. He'd have to get someone on that.

"Grades are only useful for organizing large groups of children. Since it is only you two you're free to learn at your own pace. It's more efficient that way." said Suzuki. The thought of his children going to school with the others, with normal children, is not something that he wants to contemplate. They were already far too used to being near the other children, the normal children. He so wished that he could have given them a world where they wouldn't have been forced to deal with normal people….but at least he could give them that now. There may not have been any other children but they were surrounded by espers, at least here….and the awakened counted….sort of.

"Yes, dad." Said Daughter. She went back to picking at her breakfast, which really was more like her dinner. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Jet lag. How he loathed jet lag. The children seemed to be coping better than he was, even, though they were smaller than he was and their age made them much more adaptable.

"Why is it only us? Why can't we go to school with the other kids? And why can't we play with the other kids?" asked Son. Daughter was shushing him. She understood why. Maybe it had to do with her age, or maybe her gender, he had heard that girls were more mature than boys.

"Sho, stop it. You know why." said Daughter. He patted her on the head with his powers. He had seen Masami give the children affection like that before. Well with her hands…and she's always had such beautiful hands…and he needs to stop thinking of Masami.

"Because we're espers and they're not." Said Son. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. Daughter reached over with her hand and pushed his plate closer to him.

"Sho, come on. You have to eat. Come on, it's really good." Said Daughter. She was very good at taking care of her younger brother. She was very nurturing, like her namesake. Shigeko. The kanji for nurturing child. He wondered what he would have called her if he had been the one to name her. He had thought of it, renaming her, but at two years old changing her given name would only serve to confuse her more than she had been when he adopted her.

"I'm not hungry." Said Son, his arms still crossed. Suzuki wondered if he legitimately didn't want to eat or if this was some attempt at being contrary. Son could be so contrary sometimes and for no reason at all.

"Come on, it's good." Said Daughter. She picked up his fork with her powers and attempted to feed him. He tried to bat the fork away with his hand.

"No." said Son

"Please? It's good. Even I'm eating some." Said Daughter

"So?" said Son

"So what?" said Daughter

"So what if you're eating. I'm not you. Just because you're hungry doesn't mean that I am." Said Son. He made sense, of course, though he knew that Daughter would not relent. Women liked to feed you. They could not rest easy until they thought that you had eaten enough for three people. Masami had been like that. When they had first been married she had called him every single day, when he had been abroad, and she had always and without fail asked him how he had been eating. His late mother had been the same, too, from what he could matter. It must have been a female trait. They were so confusing, women, and he wondered when Son would figure out that there was no arguing with women when they decided that you needed to eat. Maybe he'd figure it out when he found his own most perfect person and married her…and then she left him….

And he needed to come off of this.

Because there was no use ruminating on Masami being gone. She was gone and she was not coming back. He was still searching for her…sort of. He knew that he needed to look for her. He knew that he needed to find her, even if she had betrayed him by leaving, he knew that he still needed to look for her…though what he would do when he found her he had no idea.

Hold her tight and never let her go.

Tell her to get out of his sight forever.

Or something like that.

"I just meant that it was good, that's all. Because I'm eating it so it must be ok to eat." Said Daughter. They were getting close to becoming quarrelsome. Well Son was quarrelsome and Daughter was just trying to eat her breakfast/dinner. He was too tired for this. He wondered if it would be better or worse to kick Son out of the table so he and Daughter could have a pleasant meal.

"You'll eat anything. Back in China you ate even pork blood soup. I don't know how you could eat something so gross." Said Son

"It was good…and I only ate it because I recognized the character for pork…and it didn't taste gross…and it's not so weird, right?" said Daughter

"Almost two billion Chinese people can't be wrong." Said Suzuki with a shrug. That hadn't been a fun night. Well these dinners were never fun, he didn't like the business side of things and he didn't much like sycophants either, and he also didn't like bringing his children places. Well Daughter had done well. She had eaten her food and sat quietly. Son on the other hand…well he hadn't been that bad. Not as bad as he could have been. He mostly just sat down at the table with Daughter and drew furiously. He wished Son would have slowed down, his drawings had been very good and could have been even better if he had taken his time….though perhaps the violent imagery should have been something worrying.

"I think that it was gross." Said Son

"I didn't make you eat any. Besides, you liked your chicken thing so it doesn't even matter." Said Daughter. He should have left them that night, he really should have, but he had wanted…at least Daughter there. She had a very calming presence. He had maybe wanted Son there, too, or rather the idea he had of Son…

He wanted a worthy successor. He got Son.

But there was still time for Son, maybe, he was only six years old. Come December he would be seven. Then eight and nine and so on and so forth. One day he would wake up and his son would be a man. He would be a man and he would be ready to inherit the world….and he would be worthy. One way or another his son would be worthy. He would grow up to be a man worthy of the world Suzuki would create.

Though right now he was not a man worthy of ruling the world, no, he was a very contrary and annoying little boy.

"I just said that I didn't want any more." Said Son

"But you barely ate." Said Daughter. She looked between him and her brother, now. Suzuki didn't care either way. If he was hungry later then he was hungry later. That was his own problem. Children could be so strange, so irrational, sometimes.

"If your brother wants to starve then let him starve." Said Suzuki. They'd eat later, anyway. They always stuffed themselves with everything dep fried and covered in powdered sugar that they could get their little hands on. It made sense that they, or at least Daughter, would eat such calorically dense foods…though he did wish that they would make an effort to eat healthier. That was important that they eat vegetables. Masami had always been on them all to eat more vegetables…and she was a master of cooking them. Even when she would work broccoli into his omelets…even then it was good….

He thought of something other than Masami.

"Sho, please eat. If you don't eat right now then you'll be hungry later. You get kind of upset when you get hungry and I want us to have fun today. There's a Disney Land in Paris and it'll be fun. We haven't been to that one yet. I bet that there's a lot of dark rides and scary rides and-" said Daughter

"And it'll be just like the one in Shanghai and the one in Hong Kong." Said Son

"No, this one will be different because we're in Europe. That's different from China and Japan." Said Daughter

"People are alike all over." Said Suzuki. Maybe he should have just let her figure it out on her own. He had been all over the world over and over again and while people had their idiosyncrasies they were, at their core, alike.

"Really?" asked Daughter

"They're all normal people, aren't they?" said Son. Well there was a first time for everything. Son had not only said something that made sense but he agreed with his father too. Maybe it was a sign of the apocalypse. Suzuki glanced out the townhouse window. Nope, no rain of fire, just a sun that he had not been expecting to see. Goddamned jet lag…..

"I guess….but that's ok. We still have each other…and it would make me happy if you ate. Please? I bet the rats who made this worked very hard." Said Daughter. Then she laughed, and Son laughed, and Suzuki felt like there was some joke that he was not aware of. He never compared regular people to vermin…and it didn't seem like the sort of thing that Daughter would say…because she was such a sweet girl. Masami had always said that she was a sweet girl. It was not like her to be….like that….and it was unlike Son to laugh at something like that, either….

They were still laughing.

And Son was eating.

And Suzuki did not get it.

"Daughter. Explain what you just said." Said Suzuki. He could see her aura. She seemed startled. She did not show it, much, but she had been startled. Her plate even jumped. Son was eyeing him wearily…and he had no idea why. Sometimes he got the feeling that the children were frightened of him. He didn't have the faintest idea of why. He was very good to them. He got them whatever they wanted and made very few demands upon their time. He disciplined them, of course, but they were children and they needed discipline.

"About rats cooking food?" asked Son. Suzuki nodded. The entire thought was absurd….but not in a funny sort of way. More of a 'what in the world' sort of way. Rats cooking food….how would that even work? They had no thumbs….and also they didn't have that kind of intelligence to them. They were intelligent creatures but as far as he knew rats could not cook. Or maybe they could. Maybe they really had tiny little cities under their very feet. Maybe they slept in matchbox beds and used spools of thread as coffee tables. Or maybe it was just the little people who lived inside the walls. Maybe the walls here were filled with borrowers and-

And he was spending far too much time with the children. Their media was seeping into his mind.

"Do you mean you want to explain why it's funny?" asked Daughter. She said that like it was obvious what they were laughing at. Not that it bothered him, being left out of the joke, it didn't bother him at all. He didn't care. Curiosity. That was all.

"If you would be so kind, Daughter." Said Suzuki

"Ok, so there's this movie called Ratatouille about this French rat named Remi and he liked to cook but he can't because he's a rat so…." Said Daughter. She proceeded to tell him, in great detail, the story of the rat with the amazing sense of smell that wanted nothing more than to be a rat. Son chimed in, too, with his interpretation of the most absurd and disturbing plot that Suzuki had ever heard. Just the thought of something as small and weak as a rat controlling a human being like a mech…and also the thought of rats being intelligent enough to run a restaurant….

Disturbing.

This did not disturb the children, no, they enjoyed this immensely. That was why they had asked, over and over again, for Ratatouille when they heard that they were going to France. Well then….that was…that was something. Something…something that was something. Children….just when he thought that he understood his children they went and threw him a curveball like that. He wondered how Masami dealt with this sort of thing for all these years…

Well she had always read to them. Her stories never came from whole cloth.

He'd have to start telling them stories again.


	64. The Grossest Thing Ever

This was the grossest thing ever!

It really, really, was!

Girls were the worst!

They really were!

"Sho, stop spitting. It's gross." said big sis. Well it was easy for her to tell him to stop spitting. She hadn't been through what she had been through. She was a girl, too, and she would never be able to know how he felt. Girls were the ones that did stuff like this.

"I'll spit wherever I want to!" said Sho as they walked up the path to the house they were staying at. He didn't know what she was complaining about. He had spat out the window while they were in the car. It wasn't like he was spitting on her or anything. No, that would have been wrong. She was his big sis and you did not spit on your big sister. That was crossing a very important line. You did not spit on girls no matter what they did to you.

"Please don't spit in the house…or spit into a cup or something. Dad won't like it at all if you spit in the house." said big sis. As if Sho cared at all what his dad thought. Well he kind of did, he didn't want to get punished again, but sometimes it felt like dad just punished him whenever he felt like it.

"You don't get it." said Sho as the door opened. They took their shoes off outside the door and then left them in the front hallway. There was no genkan here, people in this country wore shoes in the house, but they were Japanese and Japanese people knew better than to wear shoes in the house. Dad had said so and big sis had took it upon herself to remind him every single time that they came back to this house that they were Japanese and Japanese people did not wear shoes in the house…even if it wasn't their house.

"I don't understand at all, you're right, so can you explain it to me?" asked big sis. She was always saying that she didn't understand. She didn't understand why he was mad at her sometimes. She didn't understand why people always spoke English to him and Chinese to her. She didn't understand why dad liked her and hated him. She didn't understand why mom would have wanted to leave. She didn't understand a lot of stuff.

She was lucky not to understand.

Because sometimes understanding things really sucked.

"What's there to understand? A girl kissed me on the mouth and it was gross and now I have to spit all the time and for the rest of my life." said Sho. He didn't understand girls. They were always trying to hold his hand and kiss him and stuff. He didn't know why that girl had taken it upon herself to follow them around all day. He didn't know why she had spent the whole day trying to hold his hand even though there were a million other boys in the park and they might have wanted some strange girl to hold their hand. He didn't understand why she had snuck up on him while they were watching the fireworks and kissed him.

On the mouth.

For real.

That was a thing that had really happened to him.

Girls were always chasing him and trying to kiss him, and sometimes they caught him and kissed him, but never on the mouth. It was gross. The whole thing was over in ten seconds but it had been the grossest ten seconds of his life. Big sis had been all happy for him….and of course she would be…she was a girl. That was what girls did. They spent their whole lives thinking about kissing and watching movies where people kissed and it was just all kissing all the time with them!

"Sho, you can't spend the rest of your life spitting. It's a gross habit." said big sis. The faced their shoes the right way and made their way into the house. It was all lit up even though it was late. Dad must have still been up. He didn't care. Dad could stay up for the rest of his life if he felt like it. It wasn't like he cared about them or what they did. Not like mom. She had always asked them how their days had been and she always listened when they talked. She was nice like that.

He wasn't supposed to think about mom.

Dad had said so and dad was the boss and it was easy for him to say things like that. He didn't care that mom had gone. If he cared then he would have found her and made her come back. He was just annoyed that he actually had to have him and big sis come with him on his super long trips. He didn't care at all about mom. He didn't even want to talk about her. Not that Sho knew where she was, where she could have gone to, but he did know that she was never coming back…and it was because of him.

Random girls followed him around and stuff but his own mom had left….not that he wanted his own mom to follow him around and kiss him and stuff. That would have been weird.

"Well then what am I supposed to do?" asked Sho as they walked through the house. This was weird. This house looked, from the outside, like it was squished between some other houses. There were people who loved on either side of them. People with auras. People who worked for dad. It was weird having people so near…but he didn't care if they got grossed out because of all the spitting. He had to do it. This was his life now.

"Um….I don't know." said big sis

"See? You can't even think of something else for me to do so I'm going to spend the rest of my life spitting." said Sho as they made it to their room. Well not their room, they had a room at the castle, but the room that they were sharing here. At least there were bunkbeds here, that almost made up for the fact that this was not where they lived and they were so far from home that they had raced the sun here….

A glass floated into his hand.

"Here, spit into this at least." said big sis

"But then what am I supposed to do if I need water in the middle of the night?" asked Sho

"Um….get another glass?" asked big sis. Well that would have made sense. That would have been something that he could do. He could have gotten up in the middle of the night and gone through the dark in this strange house and found the kitchen and drank some of this funny tasting water, apparently the water in other countries tasted weird and gross, and then he could have walked through the dark and back to this strange room which was not his room even though Dad had called it his room and-

"You do it, then, since you care so much." said Sho

"It's not that I care….I just don't want you to get in trouble, little brother." said big sis. She hardly ever called him little brother. That was just not the way it worked. She was big sis because she was older and he was Sho because, well, he was Sho. He was just Sho and that was his name…even though dad never called him by his name. Dad didn't even know his name, it felt like, and even though he didn't even know his own son's name he thought that he could just punish and punish and punish over and over again for stuff that wasn't even bad!

Mom never punished him. Not like dad did.

"No, you just don't want dad to get mad at you because you're not taking good care of me." said Sho. She thought that she was mom. Dad treated her like she was mom. She was not mom. Mom always took good care of him, the best care, and that was who he needed. His mom, not his bug sister. He did not need…he did not want his big sister to take care of him.

"I-I'm not?" asked big sis. She was sad. She didn't look sad but he knew that she was sad. Her voice got kind of small and she held her braids down with her hands. He didn't know why he wanted her to feel sad, he just knew that it made him feel better….and that was just the worst….

"Nope. You're taking the worst care of me ever." said Sho. Maybe he just wanted her to feel bad because he felt bad so much of the time. Sometimes he felt better, well it was more like he forgot about what he felt bad about, but then it came back. He wished that he could have been like her. She never got like this. Sometimes it was like she didn't have any feelings at all.

"How can I take better care of you? Please tell me and I'll do it." said big sis. How could she? She could have been…if she could have put cinnamon on everything for him…if she could have patted his head and told him he loved her…if she could have drawn with him…and played with him….and been more like…

If there was some way to trade his sister for his mom he would have done it in a heartbeat.

"You could….maybe next time you see a girl following me around and trying to hold my hand and trying to kiss me then you could tell her to go away!" said Sho. He wasn't going to tell her that he didn't want her around anymore, that he rather would have had mom, because….because he didn't want her to be gone, too. He still loved her and he still cared about her. He just…he wanted everyone to be together…and he wanted mom to be there to take care of the both of them. Mom always let him hide behind her when girls tried to kiss him. She laughed and said that it was cute but she always kept them from kissing him.

"I tried…..but she didn't understand Japanese and I didn't understand her language, either." said big sis

"That's not an excuse. You should have just spoke girl to her." said Sho. Sometimes it seemed like girls spoke their own language. He certainly didn't understand them. Big sis

"But….we don't have a secret language or anything like that." said big sis

"So you're just weird, then?" asked Sho. He was trying to hurt her. Sometimes he just….tried to hurt her. He didn't know why. He didn't know why he was so bad sometimes. He was so bad all the time and she was so good….because he was born wrong and she was born right. It always came down to the fact that she had been born right and he had been born wrong.

"I don't think that we're weird….I think that you're weird. Boys are weird. You're always fighting and stuff and doing gross stuff and it's just so…weird. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I should have been nicer to you. I should always be nicer to you. You're my little brother and I love you…and you're right, I wasn't taking very good care of you at all." said big sis

"No, you weren't." said Sho. That had been too much. She took a step back like he had just hit her…and he was the worst, wasn't he? The very worst. The worst little brother that a big sister could ever have had.

"I was just happy for you….because someone liked you…and you're allowed to have people like you. Dad said so." said big sis

"Dad doesn't get to decide who is and isn't allowed to like me." said Sho sticking out his tongue. Dad had to be the boss of everything and everyone. He didn't need dad to tell him that he could and could not like someone…not that he had anyone he liked. Not that he had ever been good enough friends with a girl to like her. Well a person. Mom said that he could like whoever he wanted but boys liked girls, that was how it went, well actually it was more like girls liked you and they chased you around and kissed you and then they laughed and ran away. He didn't get it.

"He is. He said that you could be with whoever you wanted because there are barely any girl espers but I can only be with a boy esper because he said so." said big sis

"Well it's not like anyone likes you like that anyway." said Sho. There weren't any other esper kids at all. He was all alone. That was fine. He didn't need any other kids to play with…even though it got kind of annoying only being able to play with his big sis….and he didn't even want anyone to like him anyway. Not like that. It was so gross.

"I know. That's alright. I don't mind." said big sis. He wished that she did mind. He wished that she would just yell at him or push him or something like that. Something he saw the other brothers and sisters doing. When they went out he saw brothers and sister fighting all the time….but big sis never fought with him.

It would have been easier if she was mean to him.

It would have been so much easier if she had been just as mean to him as he was to her. Then he would have been less of a jerk. He didn't want to be a jerk, he didn't like to be a jerk, but he just sort of…was a jerk. Maybe because he was dad's son. Maybe that was why dad only called him 'Son'. Maybe when he grew up then he would be just like dad…

The last thing he wanted to be when he grew up was anything at all like dad.

And not just because of the weird eyebrows.

"Someone would probably like you. I don't know why girls care about that so much, liking people and kissing them and stuff, but I guess that there's some one out there and he'll like you a lot and want to do all of that stuff that girls like to do." said Sho. He just wanted to make her feel better. As her little brother he was supposed to beat up any guy who liked her, that was just what little brothers were supposed to do, but he did want her to be happy. She never got mad…she just got sad…and she was never going to get mad.

"Thanks….and I'm sorry that I didn't tell that girl to leave you alone. I was just so happy that someone liked you that…that I didn't stop and think about if she liked you back or not. I just wanted you to be happy…because you're unhappy a lot of the time." said big sis

"I'm not unhappy. I'm never unhappy. We live at Disney Land, I can't be unhappy. We don't have a bed time or a bath time or a wake up time and we don't have to go to school. I'm very happy. I'm the happiest kid in the world." said Sho. He was not going to talk about how sad he was. She was sad enough because of him already. Besides, not every part of his life was bad. He had to…to do like the song that mom liked said to do…and only think about the positives. There were some….but they didn't outweigh the fact that he didn't have a mom.

Well he did have a mom.

She was just gone. She was gone somewhere and she was never coming back. She was gone. She was gone and he…he was all alone with big sis and dad. Dad was….he was not mom. Big sis was not mom…and when he thought about it…it was so much….so maybe he should just have looked at the good parts of it.

"Ok. I'm glad that you're happy. I mean I thought that you were upset but I'm glad that you're happy. I'm sorry that your first kiss got wasted, though, those are supposed to be special. Mom said-I mean I know that they're supposed to be special." said big sis. Mom had talked them about that once. When he was so grossed out because big sis kept on watching the kissing part of Frozen. Mom said that first kisses were special and you always had to ask…and he hadn't had anyone he wanted to kiss and he still didn't…so he wasn't sad about that. Nope. Not at all. It wasn't like there was someone he wanted to kiss and he would never see him again-

Because you were not supposed to kiss boys.

Nobody had ever told him that to his face but he knew that girls were with boys and boys were with girls. Well dad had sort of said that. He said that when Sho grew up and got married and had kids then he would understand why dad did all the things that he did. Sho didn't know if he wanted to get married when he grew up…because he just could not imagine liking a girl like that….but having a bunch of kids to be friends with would have been nice.

He was not going to grow up to be like dad.

"I don't care about that stuff. You know that I don't care about that stuff. I'm just upset because it was so gross. The grossest thing even. Even grosser than the time we found that dead bird in the yard." said Sho

"Oh. I'm really sorry." said big sis

"About what?" asked Sho

"I'm sorry that it was gross for you. Don't worry, when you get older and you find your most perfect person, dad says that there's a most perfect person out there for everyone, and she kisses you then it'll feel so nice that you won't even be able to keep your feet on the ground." said big sis. Sho stuck out his tongue. Girls were so weird about that….but at least she seemed a little bit happier. She just wanted him to be happy, that was all, and he….he should have wanted her to be happy, too. He should have been a better little brother to her.

He put his spit glass down on the ground.

"I'm tired of spitting. I'm going to go brush my teeth."


	65. Reasons to Get Up in the Morning

The best reason to wake up in France were the omelets.

He had an irrational longing to go home. There was no other word to describe it as besides irrational. A home was just a house, four walls and a roof, at this point. Without Masami he had no reason to go home. The children were here, his wife was gone, and French omelets were delicious. Light and buttery. Simple and unpretencious. Delicious. Masami always used too many eggs and put way too many fillings in when she made her omelets. Not enough butter, too, when she made them. Really the omelets here were much better.

They were.

And he had to get up, have breakfast, and start his day. Meetings, endless meetings. At some point those shell companies he owned actually turned into real companies that made real money, not just places to store the money he already had, and he needed to be there for some of the running of those companies so…yes, he needed to get up. Any minute now.

Any minute now.

The sun wasn't up yet. His body had sort of adjusted to the time change. It didn't matter. The minute he got used to the time change he'd have to leave again and race the sun across the globe, again, and mess up his sleep schedule….again. Well at least it was easier for him to deal with than the children. They had been insufferable on those first few days. Children, apparently, did not deal with exhaustion well.

They did not deal with anything well, it seemed.

Or maybe it was just Son. Daughter was coping very well with the changes in her life. She was a very adaptable child. He hardly ever even had to correct her these days. There had been a period where he'd had t corrected her in the same manner he did Son but she actually learned and became a better person for it. She really was a very good child.

He wished he had more of her.

If he had more of her then his life would have been a lot easier. No sign of Masami….but that was to be expected. He didn't know why he cared so much. She had already proven herself to be a traitor…so he didn't care if he ever saw her again. He hardly even thought about her now. There was no point in giving her any more power over him.

His bed felt too big, too cold, and too empty.

He got up. He had to get up. He had to start his day. It was just easier to start his day when others were accustomed to starting theirs. That was just the most efficient way of doing things. Besides, he didn't need any more sleep than he had already gotten. When he ruled the world then he could sleep in as much as he wanted….when he passed the world down to Son then he could sleep as much as he wanted. Alone. All on his own…because without Masami there was no need to retire to the walled in city. The city in bottle. The city he had been planning on creating for her….

He changed clothes.

He didn't much care for how his clothes were folded. Masami had her own way of folding….but she was gone and his clothes had been folded and that was what mattered. He so wished that Masami would have taught Daughter how to properly fold clothes. She just sort of stuffed clothes in…because she was very small. She was small and she hadn't had the time to learn all the things that her mother was going to teach her. All the little things that Masami did….that she would never do again….

It was too early for this.

He changed clothes quickly. There was no thought to it. His clothes were not the same, just very similar, and it was more efficient that way. That and, well, his own vanity. At some point in his life he had found the perfect suit and, of course, that was what he was going to wear. It just made the most sense. Masami hadn't been like that. There was no rhyme or reason to the clothing she wore. She wore brightly colored dresses, sometimes, or sometimes things with patterns. Sometimes she wore pants and t-shirts, and sometimes she just wore pajamas all day. Women were strange like that, never sticking to one style of clothing even though the whole thing made shopping easier.

Son had the right idea.

Son always wore jeans and a t-shirt with one of the characters he liked on it. Simple. A bit too simple considering just how creative he was. He always thought that artists were a bit more….more…but Son was still very young…and also Son had come from him. Son hated getting dressed in the mornings, he would rather have just worn the same thing all the time, and Suzuki did not blame him one iota. Changing clothes was such a chore sometimes.

He wondered how Daughter did it.

Daughter seemed to have a new dress for ever day of the week. They looked like costumes to Suzuki but he had learned ages ago that questioning a woman's clothing choices was an incredibly ill-advised action. Daughter had taken to dressing like the princess she was. She never wore crowns but she did wear miniature ball gowns everywhere. They looked cheaply made, though he did not voice that opinion either. Masami used to complain about how hard the children were on their clothes…and she always bought them very expensive things. Well expensive by her standards. Daughter seemed to have gone the opposite route. Quite a few very cheap things to wear.

Or not, he had no idea how women's clothing was judged.

He wondered when the children would outgrow their clothing. He wondered when the children would start growing. Their growth had always been very dramatic to him. He would return home from abroad and they would have shot up several centimeters seemingly overnight. It was over the course of several weeks, though, obviously. He could see no measurable growth from the children….but they must have still been growing. That was one of those things that Masami had been on top of, making sure that the children were developing properly, and things of that nature.

He had no idea by what metric he was supposed to measure the children.

There was the metric of their powers, though that was not a reasonable way to measure them. Daughter was a prodigy second only to him and Son…Son was still little better than one of the Awakened. That would have to be fixed at some point. Even as a child Suzuki had been able to do more than make his aura glow and, occasionally, throw something across the room when he got up. No, he had been able to shake the whole house….the entire neighborhood….how he had wound up with a child like his Son he did not know.

Son was still asleep.

Daughter was still awake.

He was groomed and dressed and his breakfast was waiting for him and then he would get going and start his day. His day began long before the children's did. The children spent their days at the amusement park, he knew that he needed to find someone to educate them but as of right now it was just more efficient to let them exhaust themselves there, and he knew that they would head back over there today as well. They were small and it was a place designed to occupy the time of small people like them. They were happy there.

Though not happy enough that they should have been up at this ungodly hour.

They normally came in between ten and eleven at night. Much later than their old bedtime. That was good, it meant that he didn't have to see them very often. They were sleeping when he left and about to go to sleep when he came home. Easy. Caring for them was not an efficient use of his time….though he could have cared for them if he had to. He knew what to do, he couldn't do it at Masami's level but he knew what to do. He just had to keep them fed and watered and sheltered and educated and occupied and he had to model good behaviors for them and make sure that they were socialized at least somewhat and make sure that they were eating healthily even though they only liked-

"Good morning, Dad." Said Daughter. She was at the kitchen table. She was groomed and dressed and ready for her day. She was in another one of her ball gowns, this one was pink, and one of her princess characters was on the broach she wore….and he did not know the name of that one. He did not know the names of most of them. Daughter didn't seem to mind. Not like Son, no, that child got so upset when Suzuki couldn't remember the names of his characters and such. Children….or maybe just Son.

"Good morning, Daughter. Why are you awake at this hour?" asked Suzuki. Children did not deal well with being tired. Children needed more sleep than adults. These were things he knew about children. Daughter was a child even though then, at that moment, she looked more like an adult in miniature. She had her breakfast in front of her, sweet crepes for some ungodly reasons, and a warm mug of something that looked like coffee but had a cloying sweetness to it. She was sitting at the table with her tablet in her lap and her fork hovering in mid-air. Across from her was a covered dish. His breakfast.

He sat down to join her.

"I couldn't sleep. Sho kept on kicking me out of bed." Said Daughter. She put her tablet on the table and put her fork down onto her plate. She was giving him her full attention. Good. Son never did that.

"Was something wrong with your bed?" asked Suzuki. Daughter shook her head.

"No, I mean yes, I mean….it's not my bed. My bed from home I mean." Said Daughter

"Oh. That's understandable. You've been sleeping on the same mattress for your entire life. There is a period of adjustment." Said Suzuki. He'd had trouble travelling too, when he had been young. Even that first school trip had been too much for her. Son seemed to be more adaptable than Daughter in that respect. That was something that Suzuki had not foreseen.

"Does it take a long time? Because I had the same problem back in Shanghai and Hong Kong." Said Daughter. She knew how valuable sleep was. He made a mental note to have the sorts of beds they had back in their home in Japan sent to the various living spaces he cycled through. There were a few that he always reused…and those were only made for him. He'd have to get some larger accommodations on standby. The children needed space as well. Children needed a lot of things.

But he was, if anything, a good provider.

"It can. Eventually you won't even noticed that you're far from home. Human beings can become accustomed to anything, you know. We aren't the first nomads and we won't be the last." Said Suzuki

"You mean like gypsies?" asked Daughter

"Yes, a bit like them, though we aren't going to be living in caravans anytime soon." Said Suzuki. He began to eat, which was her signal that it was alright to keep eating. Never eat before the highest ranked person. A lesson that Daughter had taught herself and Son had missed the memo on. He always went straight to shoveling his food down his throat, Son, while Daughter waited until it was socially appropriate and even then ate at a normal pace.

"It looks fun, though." said Daughter

"What would you know about gypsies?" asked Suzuki

"Only from this movie." Said Daughter. Then she hit play. Oh, finally, he knew this one. The Hunchback. He had seen another adaptation of this…though it had not been so very colorful. How did they even managed to adapt this for children? It was his impression that they had to be shielded from the evils of the world. He didn't much see the point in shielding the children, they would have to learn about the world at some point, but Masami had always been big on keeping the children as, well, children….and he had trusted her judgement.

Even now.

Even after she had left. Even after she had created this space within him that could only be described as a wound. Open and raw and gaping and there and it just refused to close…or maybe he just refused to stop picking at it. Maybe if he just stopped thinking about her, exorcised her from his mind, then the wound would close. But he just…he couldn't. Not when she was everything. Not when she could be seen in everything from a glance at a woman with long brown hair to something as simple as the smell of cinnamon…the scrape of a fork on a plate…rolling over in the middle of the night and finding nothing and no one….just more bed…

And in his children, too.

"That was better than the other film you like, the one about that rats who cook. Truly disturbing." Said Suzuki. Masami loved movies from this studio…and so did Daughter. Son, too, though not as much as Daughter it seemed. It was odd, a little bit, to see her eating off a plain white plate. Hers always had a character on it. So did Masami's. She was so much like her mother.

But she would never betray him.

"Disturbing?" asked Daughter as she brought her tablet back down onto her lap. Her fork and mug hung in the air. She used her powers more these days….though usually when Son was not around. He so wished that she would set a good example for Son. Maybe then he would try and be something more than what he was. There was too much of Masami in him. Not just in the way that had so little power to him he had might as well be a normal person. No, he challenged him, too, just as his mother had. He had his own ideas about things and he just would not….he was too much like his mother…

But hopefully his Son would not betray him.

He would not allow it.

Though Son never listened to him. Not like Daughter. She generally did whatever it was that she was told. She was good like that. His favorite child. Masami had told him ages ago not to play favorites but that made no sense. Obviously Daughter was the superior child. Powerful but obedient. Capable. Unusually mature for her age, if Son was anything to go off of, though perhaps Son was just a particularly immature child. There was no way to have a functional conversation with Son. Not like with Daughter.

"Yes. The thought of rats having a society comparable to that of humans as well as being able to pilot humans like mechs doesn't disturb you?" asked Suzuki

"Um….I never thought about it like that. I think that it would be neat, though, if rats were like people. Then it would be ok to keep them as pets…not that I want a pet. Because I know that I can't have one. But if I did have a pet then I would want it to be smart so we could be friends and also it would be cool if it knew how to cook." Said Daughter

"You'd have an easier time running a rat through a maze than teaching it to cook." Said Suzuki

"Through a maze? Rats like to do that?" asked Daughter

"I have no idea if they derive any enjoyment from it but I know that people often run rats through mazes to test their intelligence." Said Suzuki

"They do that to people too, I think. In Hong Kong there was a garden maze and a lot of people got very lost. Me and Sho didn't. We got through it really fast. Sho thought that it was boring." Said Daughter

"Of course you two made it out. You're my children." Said Suzuki. They were very intelligent children. They had to be. They were half of him….Son was half of him. He forgot, sometimes, that he did not father Daughter. She had come from strangers. She was like a flower that grew out of a pot of dirt. She was not half of him and half of Masami…she seemed so much like she was….

Irrational feelings.

Pain. He should not have been in pain. There should not have been any pain at all when he looked at Daughter, at his Daughter. She was….she was not Masami and she was not Masami's Daughter and he should not have been reminded of Masami when he looked at her and even if he was reminded of Masami he should not have been in pain because he was better than that. Stronger than that.

"I know. That's why you call us Son and Daughter. So that we don't forget that we're your kids and that you're our dad." Said Daughter

"I suppose so." Said Suzuki. He did not like to use their names. They had names, they were called Shigeko and Sho, but Son and Daughter just fit better. That was who they were. A Son and a Daughter. A Boy and a Girl…though he didn't like to think of Daughter as Girl. Daughter was his Daughter. He was so rarely cross enough with her to think of her as being only Girl. Son could be Boy, though, because he was so, incredibly, aggravating.

"It's like how we're supposed to call you dad even though you have a given name. That's just how our family works, I think. Some families call their kids by their names though. I see them when me and Sho are out. Why are some families so different?" asked Daughter

"Sho and I." said Suzuki

"Huh?" asked Daughter

"You said 'me and Sho' when you should have said 'Sho and I'." said Suzuki

"Oh. I'm sorry. I'll be better in the future." Said Daughter. He liked that about her, how she always admitted her mistakes. She didn't sit there and argue like Son did. She was agreeable. Maybe she came from agreeable people. He didn't know. He hadn't had her birth family followed in a while. He had them checked up on occasionally just to see if her biological brother had even a modicum of ability. He did not.

And Suzuki didn't want another Son.

He wanted more girl children. They were so much easier to care for. So much more agreeable. They wouldn't cause a crisis of succession either. No, his boy children would kill each other for the world he would leave them. Girls weren't like that. They would share the world. They would be kind to each other.

He so wished he had another Daughter.

Not enough to go out and do something about it, though.

"See to it that you do." Said Suzuki

"I will, dad, don't worry." Said Daughter

"Good." Said Suzuki. There was some silence, then, broken only by the scraping of forks. They fell into these simple silences sometimes. It was nice. There was always so little silence when Son was around. He had a need to fill the atmosphere much like his mother had. He and Masami had been able to talk about anything and everything, before, before she…

Even before she left something had gone wrong.

She spoke less to him. He should have known that something was wrong when she stopped initiating conversations with him. He had been grateful for the quiet. He hadn't known, then, what a gift it was to be able to speak with her. What a gift it was to be able to hear her voice. He would never hear her voice again. He would never see her face or hear her voice ever again….

"….because I think that Sho wants to go. I don't want anything, not really, just for Sho to be happy. You too." Said Daughter. Right. She had started speaking at some point. What the subject of her speech had been he did not know. Something about her brother…but he was still asleep as he should have been at this hour….he tried to think of what it was that she had been talking about. He came up with nothing. She was looking up at him like she expected him to say something…

"I know you want your brother to be happy. You care for him a great deal as you should." Said Suzuki responding to the tail end of what he had heard.

"I do, that's why I don't care if we go soon. Sho's getting bored, I think, and also I think he might still be mad at me because of how I didn't tell that girl who was following us to go away. I'm sorry, I know that I'm not supposed to play with the other kids, but we weren't playing with her. She just kind of started following us…and I think that Sho might be mad at me, still, because I didn't stop her. I feel bad." Said Daughter. Oh. The children wanted to leave. He could understand that, wanderlust, the wanderlust that came when you realized just how but the world could be.

"We won't be staying for much longer, I think. Things are still up in the air. Don't worry, we'll keep moving. I know how boring staying in one place can be." Said Suzuki. Children craved newness. That was just how their minds worked. They sought out new experiences because they were at a critical stage of learning and development.

He really needed to get back to the business of educating them.

He'd have to find tutors, or set someone to finding tutors, and they would have to be espers….or it would be best if they were espers. There were so few of them in the world. He knew that he needed to get on fixing that, too, but he just…he did not have the inclination to people the world with espers. Not again. He just…he was irrational. He knew that he had genes that needed passing on and he needed more data on how ESP was even passed down and the only way to get that data was to people the world with espers but…

But that would be a lot.

Sho…Sho had been an accident. A happy accident as Masami called him. Daughter had been a blessing. His word for her. Children were….there was more to children than just waiting nine months for them to finish growing. There was so much more to making them than fifteen to twenty minutes of exhausting pleasure. There was so much more to having children than just…having children. And there was so much more to choosing who you had children with than just…not being careful. Than rolling the dice and hoping that the odds were in your favor. He so wished that he were female. Then he could have just had children with no though to who he was having them with.

He could not replace Masami.

Even though she was not irreplaceable. She was just a woman, a normal woman, and the world was peopled with normal women. She was not special in that regard….even though she was. Even though he knew that there were billions of people on this Earth and that, objectively, Masami could not have been the most perfect of all of them…especially after what she had done…

She had left him in a position where anyone could betray him.

"….don't know why she did that. I mean I love Sho too but I don't want to kiss him. Ick. I never understood why some girls did that. Catch and kiss never seemed like a fun game…and you're not supposed to kiss the boy on the mouth anyway. That's just not nice. I don't do stuff like that, don't worry…" Daughter was talking again. He must have looked interested. Well his aura was focused on her even though he was polishing off the last of his breakfast. Daughter would never leave him, never betray him, right? She seemed loyal now…but maybe she was just biding her time like his mother had…no. Daughter had no relation to Masami. Daughter was her own person and she would never betray him, never leave him.

He loved her for that.

He wondered if there was some way to make her grow up more quickly. She was such a good person, a useful person, and such good company now at seven he wondered what she would be like at seventeen. Or twenty seven? Or thirty seven? What would she be like? Much like this? Would she trade in her cheap facsimiles of ball gowns for the real thing? Would her idols turn from princesses to queens? Or would her interests go in an entirely different direction?

He couldn't wait to meet the person she became when she grew up.

There was a world of promise in her. One day she would grow up, though he wasn't quite sure how to measure that, and then they would be…something closer to equals then they were now. When did one measure adulthood? He knew that it was measured, for simplicity's sake, chronologically. Though he had felt like an adult long before the laws of Japan told him he was. Somewhere around thirteen or fourteen, maybe even fifteen, he had felt like an adult. Females reached maturity quicker, didn't they? They grew faster and reached sexual maturity quicker. Maybe he should have cherished the time he had with her as a child in that case.

Because women were very complex beings.

And teenagers, from what he could gather, were sent from the pits of hell to torment their parents. Though he could not imagine a greater torment than whatever Son was planning on throwing at him. He could not imagine Daughter being even a millionth of a percent the terror that he was sure that Son would become. Daughter…she was a good person. No matter what age she became, what stage of life she hit, she would always be a good person.

And seeing the person she was becoming was a pretty good reason to be getting up at this ungodly hour for.


	66. Running Rats Through a Maze

"Don't name them, Sho, they aren't pets."

"I heard you the first fifty times."

Dad said that people ran rats through mazes all the time. Maybe this was ok. It was something new, and it was fun, and they even got to play with rats….

Well of them was a hamster.

The hamster was Sho's favorite. Mob wondered if something got lost in translation, which was the name of a movie Mom liked and also something that meant when you mostly spoke Japanese and tried to speak English to someone who mostly spoke French and only knew a little English and even less Japanese something things got confused…like the words for hamster and rat.

"I still think we should name them, though, so we know which one is which." Said Sho. He wanted to keep at least the hamster but dad said no pets. Dad really hated animals…not like mom. Mom would have let them keep at least the hamster….if she didn't have to do what dad said all the time.

"One is black, one is white, and one is a hamster. We know which is which." Said Mob. She felt like mom, now, and not just because she had to put sunscreen on Sho every half hour. Well that wasn't a hard rule but every half hour would be safest. They were outside in the backyard of the house they lived in. There was a wall, so it was ok, and they weren't keeping any of these animals, so it was also ok.

Dad wasn't going to get mad. That was ok.

They had stayed home, which dad never said that they weren't allowed to do, and they were not going keep any of these animals, so it was ok. It was ok and they were not going to get in trouble. They were allowed to ask the weird aura guys for things, too, so they would not get in trouble for that either…and if they did and dad wanted to punish them she would just take Sho and hide and then tell dad that it was all her fault….and it was…

This had, kind of, been her idea.

"I guess….but they need real names. Everyone needs a real name." said Sho. That was like how dad never called them by their real names. Living things needed names, mom said, because they needed to know that they were loved. It was important for people and animals and stuff to know that they were loved. Being loved….being loved was important.

"They probably have names at the pet store or animal shelter where they came from. If we give them names now then they'll end up getting all confused and stuff." Said Mob as she picked up the hamster with her powers and put it at the end of the maze they had made. They didn't know what they were trying to prove with this other than that hamsters and rats liked to eat food and knew how to run fast.

"Do you think?" asked Sho. It was hard to imagine the lives of these animals. Did they have friends where they came from? Families? Moms and dads and big sisters and little brothers? Was one of these guys someone's mom? And did the kids miss their mom? Did the mom know that her kids missed her? Did the mom even care? Did the mom ever think about the kids? Did the mom ever….did the mom ever think about coming back?

"Yes. Animals can give each other names, especially rats. That's all the squeaking, it's rat language. They have their own language and probably friends and families and stuff…and I don't think that's disturbing at all." s

"Yeah….I guess. Let's make a slide, too, to go over the moat." Said Sho. He dug through the pile of stuff they found until he got out a very long paper towel roll. They had collected all the junk they could find, which hadn't been a lot, but enough to make a maze for all of the animals they were borrowing. This was…this was nice….even if he couldn't keep them….

Because dad didn't like animals.

Mom liked animals. Mom said that animals loved people just as much as people loved animals. Dad didn't love anyone but big sis, that was why he didn't like animals or even his own kid. All he cared about was big sis and it was the worst and-

"Don't cut yourself." Said Mob. She used her powers to take the scissors from Sho's hands and cut the cardboard tube herself. She didn't want him to get hurt. She loved him and when you loved someone you wanted them to be safe. That was why the walls of the maze had cotton balls on them, because they loved those little animals and they didn't want them to get hurt. The walls were made of cardboard so they might have gotten cuts…and that would not have been good at all.

"I know how to use scissors." Said Sho. He didn't yell at her or kick her like he wanted to. Well not wanted to, like part of him wanted to, the mean part of him. That was a part of himself that he didn't like. He knew that he should have been nicer…and he tried. Animals were watching.

"I know but I just don't want you to get hurt. I love you." Said Mob as she finished making the slide for him. It went over the moat, which was a water bottle that they had cut in half, and Mob wondered if it would have been safer to take the water out. Maybe. Rats could swim, right? And so could hamsters?

"Yeah, yeah, yeah I know." Said Sho. He turned away from her and picked the hamster up out of it's plastic cage thing. He wished that he could have kept him…or maybe it was a her. He didn't know and he wasn't about to go invading it's privacy like that. Or maybe animals didn't care, they were naked all the time. He wondered if they got hot having so much fur. It was hot out even though it wasn't high summer, no, now it was low summer.

He didn't know if that was a thing.

And he couldn't very well just go and ask now could he. Mom was the one who taught them about high summer and therefore mom would have been the one to know if low summer was a real thing. Summer was a very long season, at least he never remembered it lasting this long…or maybe it had something to do with how they were halfway around the world, dad had said. If you could get jet lagged then could you get season lagged too?

He wasn't about to go and ask dad that.

Dad was already going to be mad at them because they had borrowed all of these animals. He'd probably punish, them, or maybe just him. He hardly ever punished big sis. That was because he liked her. She got dad and he got mom…only they didn't have a mom anymore. They only had each other, now, and dad which was almost like not having anyone at all. Well having someone who didn't like you and made you feel like shoe gum, Sho gum, all the time. That was who they had. A dad. They needed a mom but they had a dad.

Maybe he wanted to be an orphan.

Maybe this hamster was an orphan. Sometimes back at the animal shelter where mom took them too they got orphaned pets. Those were pets without homes or parents. Maybe they were lucky in a way. Like if their parents didn't like them. Like if their parents didn't like them then they would be happier all on their own. Kids could be orphans too. A lot of movie characters were orphans. Maybe he wanted to be an orphan…he was already halfway there. No mom and hardly even a dad….

"I think that rats run faster than hamsters." Said Mob as she let one of the rats, the black one, go through the maze. They ran really fast and were smarter too, maybe. She could totally believe in the rat cities and rat societies that dad thought were so scary. Well he said disturbing and that was a word which meant scary. She didn't think that smart rats were scary. She didn't think that rats in general were scary at all. She didn't get why, on TV, people always shouted and jumped on top of chairs.

These little guys weren't scary at all.

Maybe they were just misunderstood. Dad said that people would be afraid of them for what they could do, that was why they had to keep their powers a secret for the time being, but maybe they just didn't trust what they didn't understand. Like rats. They weren't mean and scary and they didn't have fleas, well these rats didn't have fleas, and actually they were very small and cuddly. Not the terrible things people made them out to be.

People didn't understand their powers but it would be better when dad took over the world.

And also, maybe, when he ruled the world he would be so busy that he would look the other way if she and Sho got a pet. Well maybe they would be adults by then and then they would be able to do whatever they wanted. Well not whatever they wanted, they would have husbands and wives and stuff, so they would have to listen to them…but they would at least have more freedom than kids had. Not that they had a lot of rules, just a few very unfair ones, and maybe a few unfair rules would be better than having a million and one fair ones.

Like mom had.

"No way, they're too long. Hamsters are smaller and smaller things go faster. That's why we have to take a little plane when we go places and not a big plane. That's science." Said Sho as he let them hamster run up and down his arm. With his free hand he fed her a sunflower seed. She liked it. Hamtaro hadn't lied to him.

Not that he would name the hamster after the show, no, that would be too boring.

Not that they would be naming any of these animals. They couldn't be named because if they got named then it would be like they were their pets and then it would be harder to say goodbye. Maybe that was why dad never used their names. Maybe he thought that he and big sis were going to run away like mom did. That was a stupid thing to think. They were six and seven years old. Where would they even go? They were oceans and countries away from home and didn't speak a word of the language that the people here spoke.

They were well and truly trapped.

But at least they had a yard to make animal mazes in. Even though this house was not their house and this yard was not their yard at least they had somewhere to play. That was a lot more than a lot of people had. He hated apartments, he decided, and he felt bad for all the kids who had to live in them.

"If you say so." Said Mob. She didn't think that Sho was right at all. She thought that hamsters were too small to run fast and also they got distracted too easily but of course she would agree with her little brother. That was why you did when you loved someone, you agreed with them even if you didn't actually agree with them.

"I don't say so, I know so." Said Sho. He hated it when she was like that. She just told him what he wanted to hear. What she thought that he wanted to hear. It made him mad…and he didn't even know why. He knew that he had to stay calm but…but he was so upset…

But he had to be good. There were animals watching.

"Ok Sho. I know you do. Do you think we should make an elevator too? And then another level of this maze?" asked Mob. They still had some boxes that they could cut up. If they made another level then it would be even cooler. Maybe dad would even think that it was cool. He had talked about that, before, building a self-contained city with different levels and stuff. The cities he talked about would have domes over them to keep the people inside safe but Mob had no idea how to make a clear dome out of what they had so she just settled for another level.

It went sort of well.

Until one of the rats ran away.

And then she tried to catch it with her powers.

But Sho got up to chase it.

And then he fell on her.

And she fell on some scissors.

It hurt. There was a big cut down the side of her arm. Her blood got all over her dress, this was a copy of the dress that Ariel wore after she turned into a human, and it may not have been her favorite dress it was still nice…and now it had blood on it….but it wasn't all bad. That was why she didn't cry. It was a bad cut but it meant that they got to see Fukuda again.

Which was always good.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Fukuda could hear Sho shouting the minute he stepped through the door. The lack of genkan was disorienting but it wasn't frightening, no, that honor was reserved for the sound of Sho's apologies mixed with him shouting something about blood.

This was what happened when you left a six year old and a seven year old unsupervised.

The Awakened did not count. They took their orders from the children. They weren't supposed to…at least Fukuda hoped to God that they weren't supposed to. He didn't know. All he knew was that nobody had thought to stop the kids from doing…whatever it was that they had been doing. Whatever it was that they had taken over the yard to do.

That involved various rodents in cages.

And Shigeko sitting there on the ground just bleeding….poor kid. Poor Sho, too, Fukuda figured that he had something to do with this. Who would have thought that emotionally neglecting a child and then blatantly favoring his older sister would have resulted in a very angry little boy? And who would have thought that this very angry little boy would have had all the normal impulse control issues that child his age had? Really, this whole thing had just come out of nowhere-

These were not his children.

He reminded himself that these were not his children when they greeted him like he was Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy, and the second coming of Walt Disney himself.

He reminded himself that these were not his children while he listened to the play by play of what, exactly, had gone wrong.

He reminded himself that these were not his children while he healed the cut, the very ugly cut on Shigeko's arm.

These were not his children and this was not his family. They were Masami's children and she was…he didn't even dare think of her whereabouts. She was gone and she was safe and…and she was happy. The last time they had checked in she seemed happy….as happy as a woman starting over from nothing with her kids a world away could be. She was…she was doing better than she had been, before, and that was all that Fukuda wanted. All that he could ask for.

Her happiness.

"It really was an accident…." Said Sho as Fukuda healed big sis up. He didn't want her to get hurt, to get all bloody, and that time it had been an accident….and she probably didn't believe him. She had said, before, that she believed that it had been an accident but she was the type of person to just say things that she thought would make him feel better.

He didn't.

"I know, Sho, you told me a bunch of times already. I'm not upset with you. I'm more upset that you're upset." Said Mob. She had been upset, she had been scared, but she had been calm, too. She had kept all of her feeling deep down inside of herself to where they couldn't come out and hurt anything or anyone. She kept them right there inside of herself, next to her stomach it felt like, and that kept her from losing control even a little bit.

Dad would have been so proud.

"Hey, listen. I don't blame you. Your sister doesn't blame you. I bet your little friends down there don't blame you either. Accidents happen, especially when you're on your own with a pair of very sharp scissors." Said Fukuda as he moved the very large pair of scissors, much too large for children their age, away from them.

"We're not babies….and we're not alone. We have each other and those guys who work for dad, too." Said Sho

"I meant you didn't have your mo-you didn't have a parent or a nanny watching you, that's all." said Fukuda. It was one thing to leave them alone ay Disney Land all day, at least there was no way for them to get hurt there, but to leave them alone in a strange house in a strange country with no real supervision….

These were not his children.

But he was still an adult and he was involved and he was concerned.

"Dad left me in charge." Said Mob. She didn't know what the look on Fukuda's face meant, exactly, but if she were just to go off of his aura…she had said the wrong thing again.

"He always leaves her in charge…because he likes her the best." Muttered Sho

"Sho…he likes you too…I mean at least a little." Said Mob

"You're just telling me things that you think I want to hear." Said Sho

"No. I'm not. If he didn't like you at least a little then he would have just left you all alone at home. He doesn't have to take us with him, you know." Said Mob

"He has to because he's our dad." Said Sho

"No, he could just leave us with a nanny or something like Fukuda said." Said Mob

"Hey now, I never said that your dad was planning on-" said Fukuda

"I wish that he would have left me at home." Said Sho

"But then…little brother you would have been all alone. I don't want that. I could never want that. I love you so much…"said Mob softly. Sho took her hand but kept his head turned away from hers.

"Yeah…I love you too….even if you're bossy and stuff…" said Sho

"See? You two love each other and everything is ok. So now then….how about….." said Fukuda. He stopped himself before he could do anything stupid. He was about to spirit Sho away. Shigeko….there was no spiriting Shigeko away. She was too noticeable, too bright, and Suzuki would definitely burn the world to the ground looking for her…

And then he would burn whoever it was that had the audacity to take her.

But it would have been so easy to spirit Sho away. Suzuki was busy all day, Claw wasn't all vicious beatings and boring speeches, and Sho….he didn't give a damn about the kid. The only problem were the Awakened. They may have let him take Sho….but they knew him. They had at least seen his face. Suzuki would have him found and disposed of if he dared Spirit Sho off to his mother….

And then Masami would be compromised as well.

"How about you two show me what, exactly, it is that I'm looking at." Said Fukuda. He couldn't take Sho away from here, not yet anyway, but he could at least spend some time with the kids. Snap a few pictures for Masami…maybe even a video. It wouldn't have raised suspicion. This was an impressive rodent fortress that the two of them had built.

Oh. According to Shigeko it was a maze.

And according to Sho they had permission to build it.

And according to Shigeko rats ran faster than hamsters.

And according to Sho his sister had no idea what she was even talking about.

And according to Fukuda, not that anyone asked him, these were the most adorable kids in the world. Masami…she would be happy to see that they were doing as well as could be expected…if they ever checked in again. He knew the number of her burner phone by heart…and he knew her new e-mail address….and as far as he knew Suzuki didn't have anyone watching the internet…so there wasn't a high change that she would be compromised….

He hit send.

And as far as anyone could tell he just took some pictures of a rats running through a maze.


	67. Nothing Scary At All

They were going to move on soon….and there was nothing scary about that at all.

Dad said that they were nomads, which meant that they moved from place to place, and they were moving on soon. That meant having their things packed up again. That meant another plane ride. That meant their body's clocks getting all messed up again. That meant waking up in another strange country with strange food and a strange language and all of it would make them realize, again, how far from home they really were.

Really far.

And they would be going even farther, soon. Mob had no idea if they were ever going home. Dad only went back to the house because his family was there. Now mom was gone and she and Sho went on his trips with him….so they were probably never going back home. Back to the castle. If the castle even was home, now, without mom in it. Mob had no idea where mom was…but she knew that wherever mom was it was not where she needed to be.

She should have been better.

Dad said that mom was a traitor. She had run away because she was a traitor and then he hit her for asking about mom, which was the right thing to do because she knew the rules, but saying that mom was a traitor was not the right thing to say at all. Mom was not a traitor, she was a good person, and if she left she must have had a good reason. Mob knew the reason. The reason was because she just hadn't been good enough.

Sho was always saying that he was born wrong and she was born right but in Mob's opinion he got it backwards.

Dad said that she was born better than right. That made Mob sad. She didn't think that she was any better or worse than everyone else. She had powers but every single day it was a struggle to control her powers. That wasn't good. Mom knew how hard it was for her to control her powers. How bad it was. How she always messed up. Mom knew and she left because Mob just wasn't good enough and-

"What's with you?" asked Sho as he rolled onto his side. It was bedtime, well the time that they had been going to bed lately, but he wasn't tired. Well he was but he couldn't sleep. How could he? He still wasn't used to this bed and it was way too hot and big sis was letting her aura be all weird. Plus big sis was bad at tucking him in.

"Nothing." Said Mob. She had been thinking about mom and she could not tell Sho that she had been thinking about mom. Then Sho would think about mom and then they might start talking about mom and that was bad because then dad might hear them and then he would be mad. He was very sad about what happened to mom. That was why he called her a traitor and stuff. It was like when Sho was mad at her and called her things like 'annoying' and 'bossy' and stuff like that. Fukuda said that when people felt mad or sad or things like that the first thing they lost control of was their mouths. That made sense. Why else would the people she love say such mean things?

"Then stop making your aura all weird. It's hard enough to sleep here as it is." Said Sho. He turned around so he faced the wall. It was the wrong color. The walls in their bedroom at the castle were blue. The bed was wrong too. It was too hard and too skinny. How did people manage to sleep in these terrible beds? He hoped that he got used to it soon…or they moved again before he had to get used to it.

"I'm sorry, Sho, I didn't mean to keep you up." Said Mob. She wondered how he managed to sleep in this heat. There wasn't any air conditioning here. Dad said that whoever picked this place for them was dumb. Mob didn't want to think any mean thoughts about anyone…but it was very hot. It was hot so that she wasn't even sleeping with her blanket on and her night shirt was still stuck to her back with sweat.

"Whatever. Wake me up when it's time to go back to Disney Land." Said Sho. He tried to close his eyes and go to sleep. He couldn't. It was too hot. The bed was too wrong. Big sis hadn't tucked him in the right way. She hadn't kissed the top of his head and told him that she loved him….well she had but she had done it wrong. She had done it wrong just like she had told him his story wrong and had picked out his pajamas wrong and just like she had wished him goodnight wrong.

Mom would have done it right.

Mom knew just what to do. Mom was….mom was gone. She was gone and…and there was nothing that he could do about it. It was his fault, anyway, because he was just so….wrong. Big sis had been born right and he had been born wrong. Also dad was kind of a jerk and he would have run away, too, if he could have. He would have run away with her…and that was why this was about Sho, not about dad, because if she was just sick of dad she could have taken him and big sis with her….

Well not big sis because dad liked her best.

But if mom wanted him then she would have taken him with her. Now she was far, far, far away….or maybe he was the one that was far, far, far away from her. They were so far apart. Was she sitting in the heat trying to get comfortable on a strange bed in a strange place? Was she thinking about him, too? Or did she already have a new kid...

He turned around again.

His eyes met big sis'. She was awake, too, even though she was the one who told them that they had to go to bed. She was always bossing him around. She had the right to, dad had put her in charge after all, even though it wasn't fair. If anyone should have been in charge it should have been mom….but mom was gone….and he wished that there was some way he could stop thinking about her. Not like being able to forget her but being able to just…not think of her. If such a thing was even possible.

"Stop looking at me, it's creepy." Said Sho

"Sorry." Said Mob. She had been called creepy a few times before in her life. The kids at school, back when she had gone to school, thought that she was creepy. That the way she stared was creepy. That the way her hair hung in her face was creepy. It had hurt then and it hurt now. Maybe even more so because it came from her own little brother….

He was probably just bothered by something else.

And if not that was ok, too, because she loved him. When you loved someone then you didn't hold it against them when they were mean to you. She just wanted him to be happy, that was all, and if him being happy meant that she had to be unhappy then that was ok. It was like how mom said that one time when her slice of cake fell on the ground. She said that she wasn't going to eat a single bite of her or Sho's slices of cake because she was the mom and she had to sacrifice for her kids. When you loved someone you sacrificed for them.

And she loved Sho more than she even had the words for.

"You're still doing it." Said Sho. He felt himself picking a fight. He wanted to pick a fight. He didn't know why he wanted to pick a fight, just that he wanted to pick one.

"Sorry." Said Mob. She made sure to close her eyes good and tight so she didn't make Sho upset. He seemed like he was starting to get upset. She could see his aura better than usual. That usually meant that he was getting upset.

"You said that already." Said Sho

"I did." Said Mob

"You're still looking at me, too." Said Sho

"No, my eyes are closed. It probably just looked like they're still opened because of how dark it is in here." Said Mob

"Turn around so I can be sure." Said Sho

"Ok." Said Mob. She faced the wall, now, so make Sho feel better. This part of the bed was kind of sticky from where she had been sweating. She didn't know where dad was taking them next but she hoped that it was somewhere cold. She wished that she had ice powers like Else. Eternal winter sounded pretty good right then.

Mob closed her eyes.

A true kingdom of ice and snow where it never, ever, ever got hot out. Sho would never get another sunburn again. They could play in the snow and stuff. They could build snowmen and igloos and snow forts and snow cities and snow airports and a snow Disney Land. Also there would be a snow maze, too, because the maze was the best part of Disney Land by far. Well that and the giant lollipops and also the teacups and also the fireworks and the castle.

But not the dragon under the castle.

This castle had a dragon under it. It was so scary even though Mob was mostly sure that there were no such things as dragons. Mostly sure because there were also supposed to be no such thing as psychic powers but she had them. The dragon under the castle wasn't real, though, just real scary. Not that she was allowed to be scared. Dad hated that feeling. He hated most feelings…but that dad. She hadn't been scared, she had been brave, and Sho had been scared so she should have had to be extra brave.

She had tried to be brave, anyway.

But she hadn't lost control of her powers….but what if she had? What if she had lost control of her powers and the dragon had been real and then Sho had gotten hurt and then she was all alone and everyone left her and they went to where mom was and she was all alone and she didn't understand anything and her powers wouldn't listen and the dragon was real and also she was in her underwear in public and also-

Something hit her on the head.

"Your aura is being all weird again. I can't sleep with your aura doing that, it's like a light show." Said Sho. He maybe threw his pillow a little too hard. He might have hurt her….but that was a dumb thing to think. Of course he hadn't hurt her. It was a pillow. It was full of feathers or something else that was soft and light and she was fine and it wasn't like the time with the scissors.

That had been a bad time.

It had been an accident.

"I'm sorry, little brother, I really am. I was just having a bad dream. I couldn't help it." Said Mob

"Oh…sorry. What was it about? I mean was it about…was it about dad?" asked Sho. Whenever he had bad dreams he dreamt of dad. Dad being mean to him, dad hitting him, dad leaving him all alone someplace and taking big sis with him and then leaving him all alone. He wondered if she was afraid of him, too, even though he hardly ever even punished her. He hoped that her bad dream was about dad and not him…even though he could be a real jerk to her…

"No. It was about me. Sho…if I ever lose control….I'm sorry. If I ever do anything to hurt you….I'm sorry, too. I'm just….I'm just sorry…." Said Mob. She knew that she hadn't hurt him but…but she just felt like she had. She loved him so much…she could feel tears prickling at the corners of her eyes….

"I know you'd never hurt me, big sis, don't be dumb." Said Sho. She could have hurt him really badly if she wanted to. She could have picked him up and threw him into the sky so far that he went into outer space. She could have hurt him…but she wasn't a jerk like that. She may have been bossy and annoying but she wasn't a jerk…

But he was the jerk.

Because she was crying. She was crying and it was making him feel bad…and also she had his pillow…so he had no other choice. He got out of bed, his skin stuck to his sheets and it felt gross getting up, and he stepped out onto the floor. It was made of wood and it creaked. He whipped his head towards the door. Dad…dad hadn't heard him. Dad hated it when they were loud and woke him up….but they hadn't. Or at least he wasn't at that door, not their real door, telling them to explain.

He wasn't.

So Sho did the thing that a good little brother was supposed to do. He told his big sister to scoot over and then he laid down next to her. Even though it was hot and even though he had been having enough trouble sleeping before. He laid down next to her and held her hand. That was what you were supposed to do. Even if everyone liked her better than you. Even if she was the bossiest person in the whole world. Even if she was a poor substitute for mom, like frozen yogurt instead of ice cream, or maybe something else because he kind of liked frozen yogurt better than ice cream…

Even if she could be so…her….he still loved her.

So he stayed with her because she had been scared. Mom had done this, slept in the bed with them, when they had been little and had bad dreams. Mom was always nice like that. Mom always cared about them like that. She had…and he hoped that she still did. He reached up and hugged big sis really tight. She wasn't mom but at least she was there…and she always would be no matter what. Because she couldn't run away because she was a kid just like he was.

He felt like such a little kid.

He shouldn't have been the one feeling bad. She should have been the one feeling bad. Well neither of them should have been feeling bad, dad hated all feelings, but she was the one who was less not allowed to feel bad. She was a girl and girls could be sad like this. That was just how girls worked. He was her brother and he had to be the one who was brave for her….even if she didn't think that he was brave. Like when they went under the castle to see the dragon. She told him over and over again that if he was scared they could turn back at any time.

He wasn't afraid of anything.

He wasn't afraid of dragons or dad or…or her, too, even though if she could have hurt him really bad…he was not afraid of her. He was not afraid of her just like he was not afraid of anything else in his life. Like how he would wake up and not realize, for a little bit, where he was. Waking up in a new place, a scary place, was not scary. Nothing scared him at all.

There was nothing scary, nothing at all scary, about any of this.


	68. Sleeping on an Airplane

He preferred the children when they were asleep.

They were certainly much quieter when they slept. Much more peaceful. No quarreling, no shouting, no conversations that somehow went nowhere but also went on for hours. They were still and they were silent and they were perfect. Well they were mostly still and mostly silent and mostly perfect. Son kicked in his sleep. That was why Daughter had chosen to sleep so far away from her brother.

And why she was rested against him.

Apparently flying had lost much of it's adventure. They said that human beings could become accustomed to anything, even hurdling through the air at thousands of kilometers an hour with nothing to protect them but what was essentially a cylindrical piece of aluminum. Not that he hadn't lived through much worse than a place crash. Still, though, he did not much like to be in them. Hence the reason why he didn't dare use his powers to move Daughter.

She was very warm.

Her head was resting against his side. She had pressed herself close to him. For comfort and safety, most likely, things that she could not have gotten from her younger sibling. Also there was the fact that said younger sibling kicked in his sleep. A bit like Masami. She moved in her sleep, too. She tossed and she turned and she kicked their blankets off, sometimes, too. Those were annoying times. She also found herself wrapped around him, too, but those times were less annoying. Much less annoying. Those times…

Those times were over and he needed to come off of this.

He had missed this, it seemed, without even realizing it. The warmth of another human being beside him. Who would have thought that he would have missed it? This whole thing…he did not like the person who this whole thing had turned him into. Maybe that was for the best. He had done something to make her leave. He had done something wrong and now she was gone and he-

He exorcised that emotion.

She was a traitor plain and simple. She had left him and that was nothing more or less than an act of betrayal. She should have counted herself lucky that he had other things to do with his time than chase her to the ends of the Earth. He had work to do and a new world to make. He also had to raise their two children on his own….but that was not so very difficult. They could be left to their own devices, mostly, and they didn't need so many things. Food, water, shelter, and clothing…as well as education and entertainment and guidance and all of those things that fell under that annoyingly imprecise term called 'love'…how he hated that word. He didn't love the children.

He was happy that they existed, even Boy.

He was proud of the people that they were becoming, though to a lesser extent with Boy.

He was invested in their continued existence, even Boy's.

He never wanted any harm to come to either of them.

He would murder anyone who laid a finger on them. That should have been enough. There were billions of other people on this planet but these two were the only ones that he was attached to. Girl, Daughter, because she was amazing and actually very good company and Boy because he was half of his genes…and the only bit of Masami he had left…

He had loved Masami.

If he were to use her word for it. He had loved her. He had enjoyed being with her, even sought out her company, and when they were together he just felt so…good. He thought of her often, more so than any other human being on the planet, and when they had been apart he longed for her. Not just physically. She had been the only woman he wanted to share himself with, physically, too. The only woman who he ever wanted to be so vulnerable towards. He wanted nothing more than to have her again. To have her by his side and in his arms…what else could he possibly want from her?

She may have betrayed him but she was still his wife. He still loved her.

Even though the word was too overused and overblown. He cared for her. That was a more precise word for what he felt. He cared for her emotionally and romantically and in every other way a person could care for someone. She was always telling him that she felt the same way…so why had she left him? Where had she gone to? When would…would he ever see her again?

He saw her everywhere.

Every single light haired woman was Masami, for a moment, before he realized that no she wasn't. He wondered if the children felt the same way. He wasn't going to ask. The children….they missed their mother. They needed their mother. They spoke of their mother to each other and they tried to speak to him, too, about her…and he was not going to talk about her to them. He didn't want to talk about her to anyone.

It hurt.

Did they feel that pain too? Or were they more resilient than that. She had always said that they were resilient children. She had always spoken so highly of them, even Boy, actually after a while he was the only child that she spoke highly of. Their Son. Their children. Daughter….he wondered why she had seemed so distant from Daughter. She was a wonderful child. Calm and obedient and intelligent….though she could be aggravating too. She was so constantly clinging to him. She held his hand and wrapped her arms around him and she was forever telling him that she loved him. Every day at least a thousand times a day she said something along the lines of 'I love you, Dad' or something like that.

She was her mother's daughter.

She leaned more into him. He propped her back up onto her seat. The ocean beneath them was nothing more than an expanse of black. He wondered if she, and her brother too, would like to see it during the day. Son drew marine life sometimes, colorful fish from a film he watched, and Daughter seemed to have an interest in mermaids…though those did not exist. He had looked, when he was younger, back when he realized his own mortality. Eating mermaid flesh seemed like a gamble, worth it in every way, and had found no mermaids and no mermaid flesh. So he resigned himself to dying someday and decided to achieve immortality instead by having many children and leaving a long legacy. Well he had one child and adopted another…and he knew that he was free to have as many as he wanted to, now…

But he didn't much want to.

Because that would have been a lot. He already had the two children and they were enough of a handful. Yes, that was it. He just did not have the time. Even now he did not have the time. Even though one of the Awakened travelling with them was a woman, and she seemed nice enough, and she had light hair…but he just did not have the time for all of that. Yes, he was a very busy man and this completely illogical feeling, every completely illogical feeling, that he had towards Masami had nothing to do with it.

He still cared for her so much.

And he hated himself for it.

"Dad?" asked Daughter. He had propped her back into her seat by hand. He must have woken her up. He wondered if he should have kept her up. That was better for the jet lag…but then Son would wake up, too, and then they would both feed off of each other like some sort of perpetual motion machine. He did not want to deal with that, with them, right then and there.

"Go back to sleep. We're still in the air and will be for some time." Said Suzuki. He reached over and took her tablet off of her seat just in case she decided to wake up and watch more of whatever it was that she had been watching. Something else from that studio she liked. He so wished that she would have watched more Japanese media but he was not about to get into that with her just now. Not at this hour.

"How much time?" asked Daughter with a yawn.

"Hours. Now go back to sleep." Said Suzuki. She nodded, closed her eyes, and attempted to lay back down onto him. He reached over and sat her back up.

"Dad, why do you keep on pushing me?" asked Daughter

"I've done no such thing." Said Suzuki. He'd pushed her before. She knew that he had pushed her before. Neither of them had enjoyed it. He hated correcting her because of the constant threat of her losing control. Also he felt a sort of pain when she cried. Probably because she was small and female.

"You did. I tried to lay back down and you pushed me away." said Daughter

"If you want to lay down then do as your brother has done and find a row of seats to sleep in. We're the only passengers on this plane besides the Awakened and they know not to bother us. Find somewhere to sleep if you're so inclined to recline." Said Suzuki

"I don't want to sleep next to Sho. He kicks in his sleep and also sometimes he picks on me, too, even though he still loves me and stuff." Said Daughter with a yawn.

"Then sleep on your own." Said Suzuki. He wondered at which age it would be appropriate for the children to sleep on their own. They had shared a room since the day he had brought her home. It had been surprisingly easy. Son still woke up in the night but instead of complaining she would climb into his crib and sooth him. She had called him 'Ritsu' too, for the longest time, and he had been worried about that. Masami hadn't been. She had said that she had been separated suddenly from her family and it would take her time to forget them. She forgot them relatively quickly. He was grateful for that. He wondered, sometimes, if she still remembered her biological parents. She never gave any indication that she did. He hoped that she didn't. He was her father, no one else, and he did not need her loyalties being tested….and he did not need her to leave him, too. Not that she was in any position to…she was only seven years old. Eight years old next year. Then nine and so on and so forth until she was a grown woman. He wondered what she would be like as a grown woman.

Another Masami?

Not his Masami, of course, because instinctively he knew that no matter how old she got he would always recognize her as his child. Those were the same sort of instincts that would keep Son and Daughter from doing the logical thing and getting together when they hit adulthood. There wasn't a drop of blood between them but….since he had no plans of telling him that then the most logical option for their adult lives was off the table. Daughter would meet some man and get married and then he would be replaced in her life….

As was nature's way.

And then one day she would wake up and find that the man she had married was gone and that she was all alone in the world with whatever children that union had produced and…and then he would hunt down whoever hurt her like that and he would end his life. Slowly. Painfully. Daughter did not deserve that sort of pain. Neither did Son. If Son's wife ever left him…same thing, though perhaps not by his hand personally.

Nobody hurt his children.

They were his.

"But I don't want to. It's scar-I don't like to sleep on my own. It's not comfortable for me." Said Daughter. He heard her censoring herself. They children got scared when they were separated. They were small and the world was big. He wondered when they would grow out of it. He wondered when he would be expected to force them to grow out of it. They would have to separate one day. Son was going to inherit the world. There were things that he would have to learn that would take him away from his sister.

They would be separated eventually.

And he would be separated from them. As annoying as they could be…as aggravating as they could be…they were still his children. There was more of that irrational pain at the thought of being left alone. That made no sense. He was a full and complete person all on his own. For his entire life he had been all alone. There hadn't been anyone else in the whole world like him. Now there was. One person who he had made and one person who he had found….and that must have been it. He saw himself in the children and that was the thought of them leaving him hurt him so….

That must have been it.

"Fine. If it'll help you sleep." Said Suzuki. He raised his arm and let her rest her head on his chest. He lowered his arm around her protectively. Though he had no idea what it was that he was supposed to be protecting her from. If their plane went careening into the ocean, perhaps? They would be fine. Daughter could put up a strong barrier and Son…Son would be fine. Not that he had any plans of them careening into the ocean….though he never planned on that happening. It just sort of happened.

These attempts on his life were so tiresome.

"Thanks Dad….I love you." Said Daughter as she shifted to get comfortable. He wondered how she could have slept like this. Maybe it was a female thing. Masami had fallen asleep on his chest countless times. Usually when they had been watching television together after a long day. Sometimes just because she wanted to be near him. He enjoyed being near her, too, though he never fell asleep on her chest or anything like that.

It looked like it was hard on the spine.

But she seemed comfortable. She was small and warm. He patted her on the back. How this child could have been so warm, like a little furnace, he did not know. Maybe it was all the sugar she ate. The body burned fuel and sugar was a very good source of it. They lived on things that were sweet and deep-fried and he wondered if it was worth it to argue with them so they would eat a healthier diet…that was his responsibility, now, even though he did not like to argue with them. It was always so draining.

"I know." Said Suzuki after a moment. He wondered why she kept on telling him over and over again. She knew that he had heard her the first time. He always replied when she told him this. She was his Daughter, of course she was attached to him. He had been the only father that she could remember. Her life depended on him. Her life was in his hands and of course she would love him, that was basic evolution, and of course he cared for her as well. She may not have had his genes but his instincts still recognized her as his child.

"You know?" said Daughter

"Yes. I know. You say it often enough." Said Suzuki

"Ok." Said Daughter. She had a tone, there, and her aura was…different. He wondered if he had said something wrong. She probably wanted to hear it back, like her mother had, because she was just as much her mother's child and she was his.

"I care for you, don't ever forget that. I just don't like the word love. It encompasses too many concepts. I care for you, if you were to die I would be unhappy, and I will do everything in my power to keep you alive and to make sure that your life is the best that I can provide for you. That is how I feel about you, Daughter." Said Suzuki. He wondered if maybe he should have said that to Masami. Maybe then she would not have left him. Maybe she left because she thought that he didn't care for her…

Even though that was truly absurd.

"Oh. I feel that way about you too, Dad. I care about you a lot. You and Sho and-I care about everyone in my family. I just want everyone to be happy." Said Daughter. She was so small and warm and…there. He reached up and put his hand on top of her head. Her hair was soft. A bit like petting a cat but without the cat. He didn't usually care for human contact, it threw him off kilter, but this was…nice. Alright. She was small and harmless. Because she didn't ask much of him. Nothing that he didn't understand. Not like Masami. He had always liked that about her, how difficult it was to understand her, how there was always something new to learn…

He hadn't learned fast enough.

Maybe.

And then she had left….

That was on her. She had been the one to choose to leave. She had been the one to betray him. She had made her choice and he had no way of getting her back and that was just the way that things were, now, and he was fine anyway. He had…he had a lot in his life. He knew that he had a lot in his life. He had everything, almost everything, everything but the world…and he did not need her.

He did not need Masami.

"As do I. There is nothing I want more than your happiness." Said Suzuki. They were his children. Of course he wanted them to be happy. Unhappy children were something that he would not have wished on anyone. Besides, it wasn't like it was such a difficult thing, making them happy. Just give them whatever they wanted within reason. Not complicated at all.

"Just mine?" asked Daughter

"What do you mean?" asked Suzuki

"What about Sho?" asked Daughter. She looked up at him. His eyes met hers. His aura met hers. She was troubled…and he had no idea what could have been troubling a seven year old girl.

"What about your brother?" asked Suzuki. He was there, asleep, surrounded by his various drawings. Drawings of…the sky? The sky and the ocean. Vast expanses of blue and black. He really was talented, his Son. He reached over and picked up one of his drawings. A feat considering the fact that his Daughter was using him as a pillow. He was careful not to overbalance her. He would have used his powers but he did not entirely trust them right then.

"Do you want him to be happy, too?" asked Daughter. What kind of a question was that? The things that came out of this child's mouth. Such complete and utter ridiculousness.

"Of course I want him to be happy." Said Suzuki. He liked it better when the children were happy. They were a lot less annoying when they were happy. Children always needed to have something to occupy their minds. That was just how they worked. It was easy to make Son and Daughter happy. They wanted for so little in their lives. Of course they wanted for so little, they were his children.

"That's good. I'll tell him when he wakes up. Not now, though, because he always gets upset when I wake him before he's ready to get up." Said Daughter

"He didn't know?" asked Suzuki as he stared at the drawing in his hand. The other hand rested on top of Daughter's head. This really was a good drawing. He wondered if Son would become some sort of artist when he grew up. He could do whatever he wanted when he ruled the world. Well in addition to ruling the world. Daughter…he wondered what sorts of talents that she had. Besides caring for Son. Masami was very good at taking care of all of them….

"No. Sho thinks that you hate him. Even though I tell him that you don't he thinks that you do." Said Daughter. Suzuki looked over at his sleeping son. He didn't hate the child, no, he was frequently annoyed by him and more than once he wondered why fate had decided to torment him with such a child but there wasn't any hatred at all between them. How could there be? That was his son, his child, half of him and half of Masami.

Besides, it wasn't as though he was about to go back to the drawing board any time soon.

"I don't hate him, he's my son. I don't know why he would think that." Said Suzuki. Children could be so dramatic sometimes. Maybe that was it. Everything was so exaggerated with children. It had to do with their lack of perspective and life experience. As terrible as they thought that their lives were they had no idea how bad things could get.

"Because you punish him more than me…and he still thinks that he was born wrong and I was born right. He thinks that because you like me better." Said Daughter. Liked her better…he did…and Son knew why. Daughter was just a less aggravating child than Son. Daughter was just…better….in most ways. But Son shouldn't have felt hated. Disliked, possibly, but not hated.

"If I hated him then I would have left him in Japan and only taken you. I enjoy your company more because you're less aggravating. That doesn't mean that I hate your brother. I don't hate either of you." Said Suzuki. There, hopefully that left no room for whatever other half baked ideas the children had come up with.

"That makes sense." Said Daughter

"Of course it makes sense. Why would I take someone I hated with me? I could have easily just left him, and you, in Japan. I didn't because you're my children and I have to care for you." Said Suzuki

"But….but if you hated us then you wouldn't take care of us anymore?" asked Daughter

"Yes, of course, but there is very little you two can do to make me hate you. I don't hate anyone. Hatred takes a lot of energy and time which I do not have. I'm a very busy man, I don't have the time or mental space for hatred. Mild dislike, yes, but never hatred. You shouldn't bother to hate anyone either. It's beneath you." Said Suzuki. He ran his fingers through her hair. He wondered who a little girl could even hate. A child who was unkind to her? A little boy who rejected her romantically? Wait, was she at that age yet? He'd ask her later. Masami would have known, being her mother and female and all. He wondered if Daughter hated her mother for abandoning her. It would be understandable. Masami had done something unforgiveable after all….

He did not hate her.

He could never hate her.

She was his wife….and he cared for her…even now he cared for her.

"I don't want to hate anyone, it's not a good feeling. I want to like everyone and be friends with everyone." Said Daughter

"You shouldn't do that, either. You can't be friends with everyone. Actually you should have as few friends as possible." Said Suzuki

"Why? That sounds so lonely, dad." Said Daughter. Suzuki kept patting her hair. Lonely. There had been that feeling, before, when he had been young. When he had been too young to realize that he was complete on his own, that he was the most powerful being on Earth, and that the world was his. What did he need other people for when he had the whole world in his hands?

"Because you should try to be as complete a person as you can on your own. Other people…other people complicate things and make you weak. I would never want that for you." Said Suzuki. This was dangerous ground. He wanted her to find a romantic partner at some point. She should have been complete and on her own but she also needed to pass her gifts down to the next generation.

"I don't want to be lonely. I don't like being lonely." Said Daughter

"How could you be lonely? You and your brother are always together. You eat together and play together and even bathe together. I would have thought that you enjoyed his company…though I could understand if you didn't. He has been so quarrelsome lately." Said Suzuki. It amazed him how they could go from playing happily together in one moment and then in the next be in the middle of what looked like world war three. Children. He hadn't even understood them when he had been a child.

"I know. I meant….I miss playing with the other kids, that's all, and so does Sho. But don't worry, we won't, because you told us not to." Said Daughter

"That's a good girl. I don't want you or your brother wasting your time…but don't worry. We'll find more children like you. They'll be your companions. You and your brother are very lucky, you know, to have each other. Even if your brother does not possess your skill he does understand you. Growing up all on your own…it's not easy." Said Suzuki. He may not have had the clearest memories of being their age but he did remember, before he learned to exorcise the emotion, how lonely he had been….before he learned that he had no reason to be lonely.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" asked Daughter

"No." said Suzuki. They didn't know that? Well he hadn't exactly been forthcoming about his life…and it did make sense that they would be curious about the time before they had been born. He wondered why Masami, though, hadn't told them that…..

"Oh. I'm sorry." Said Daughter

"Why?" asked Suzuki

"Because you were all alone, dad, I'm sorry that you didn't have any brothers and sisters. I don't know what I would do without Sho. Even if we fight sometimes. Even if he pulls my hair and pushes me sometimes. Even if he runs away when I try and put sunscreen on him. I still don't know what I would do without him." said Daughter

"Don't apologize. It is of no importance or significance. I don't care." Said Suzuki. He twisted a strand of her hair between his fingers. She was so small and her hair was so soft. She liked this gesture, it seemed. He could see her aura. She was very happy….or at least very content.

"Oh….hey dad?" asked Daughter

"Yes?" asked Suzuki. He wondered what other questions she could have had. Wasn't she tired? Hadn't she just been asleep? At this rate she would never sleep and then they would arrive and she would be in a terrible mood. A terrible mood for her, of course, her terrible moods were nothing like Son's terrible moods. Those…those were the stuff of legend.

"Do you think that we would have been friends? If we were the same age?" asked Daughter. Suzuki didn't even have to think about his answer.

"Of course." Said Suzuki. Daughter was so much like him as a child. Not just because her powers were comparable to his, either. She was quiet, as he was, and she enjoyed a lot of the same sorts of games that he did as a child. She was even a pretty decent Chinese checkers opponent, on the rare times in which they'd play, though Go was not her forte. She enjoyed a lot of the same sorts of things that he did. She enjoyed watching very long documentaries when she couldn't sleep at night and she loved breakfast foods as much as he did, too.

If they were both children then they would have been friends.

If they had both been adults, both been the age he was now, then they would have been friends too. She was comparable to him when it came to power and they got along very well. She would be as close to a friend as he could allow himself to have. He wondered what she would have been like, what she was going to be like, when she became an adult. What would grown woman Shigeko be like?

Would she be anything like little girl Shigeko?

He'd know in a few short years. Whenever it was that little girls became women? Menarche, right? That was the demarcation? He had no idea, he was not a woman, and Masami had neglected to tell him when their daughter would be considered a woman. It was easier to tell with boys. Sho would be so much easier. It was easier to guess the ages of boys than girls, anyway. So many times he would catch himself trying to figure out if he was looking at a grown woman or a teenage girl. Not that he saw much of a demarcation between teenagers and adults.

He hadn't ever been a teenager.

He felt like he had just woken up one day a man. He had lost, at some point in middle school, the ability to relate to others his age. He had just…felt like a grown man. Maybe it was the same with girls. Maybe one day Daughter would wake up, consider herself to be a grown woman, and then they could go from father and daughter to father and daughter who were also something closer to friends than they were now.

He would not wait for her to become an adult.

"I think so, too. You and me and Sho could have been such…good…friends…" said Daughter. Her breathing became slower and her aura calmed down. It moved, her aura, always. Pink and blue fractals. They slowed down as she drifted off to sleep. Good. No sense in keeping her up until all hours. No sense in moving her again, either, otherwise she would just end up waking up again and they'd be back to square one. No, he'd let her sleep. He sat back. He put Son's drawing down beside him, carefully, so he did not wake Daughter.

He kept his hand in her hair even though there was no real reason for it.

He enjoyed it when she was asleep but he found himself preferring her when she was awake.


	69. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Supposedly this was the most wonderful time of the year.

The children certainly seemed to think so.

"Dad, look at the tree." Said Mob as she tugged on her dad's hand. She didn't tug as hard on dad as Sho tugged on hers. They were in a whole other country, again, and this one really liked Christmas.

"I see it, children, I see it." Said Suzuki as Daughter pulled his hand. She held his hand and Son held hers. They were out and about now, mainly because work had been stifling, and also because the children had been getting restless. Wintertime was not good to them. Too much cold and too much darkness. They'd spend the new year somewhere warm and tropical. He hated the heat but they loved it and when they were happy they bothered him less.

And what was better than that?

"Do you think they sent people to climb up it to get all of those ornaments on?" asked Sho. He had asked big sis, of course, and not dad. Dad didn't hate him, he was always saying that he didn't hate him, which was…nice? Not being hated. Dad said, before, that he was annoyed by Sho a lot of the time but did not hate him.

Even though it sort of felt like he did, sometimes, but not all of the times.

Like now it didn't feel like he hated him. Dad was kind of nice today. Maybe because it was Christmas. They weren't getting as many presents as usual, dad said that they had to try and travel light, but they were at least walking around and looking at trees, which was nice. Mom used to take them to the department stores to look at all the cool trees they had there. There were some very nice trees in this country and they seemed to like Christmas a lot, too, which was good.

So Sho didn't really mind how cold it was or how dark it was or how he could only sort of understand what the people around them were saying.

"Or maybe they had people like us who could move things without touching them." Said Mob as they got closer to the big tree. She wondered how long it took that tree to grow. She wondered if it was sad about being cut down. She wondered if Christmas tress ever felt bad about having to die so that people could have nice Christmases. That was why, back at the castle, they had always had a plastic tree. Mom said that it was less wasteful, less cruel, and left less of a mess.

They didn't have any kind of tree where they were staying.

But there was one at Claw HQ. Well the HQ that was here, there were a bunch of them, but this one had a Christmas tree with only red ornaments. Dad liked red. His aura was red so maybe that was why he liked it. Her aura was pink and blue and she liked pink and blue. Sho's was red, though, but red was not his favorite color. He wanted to get a tree and make all the ornaments themselves in all different colors but dad said that they would be moving along soon to somewhere warm for the New Year.

They still hadn't gone back to the castle.

"I've seen them putting this together a few times. They have machines to help people reach." Said Suzuki. A walk through the city was doing him some good. His mind had been all over the place since Masami left. A walk with the children, as annoying as they could be, well mostly Son, was doing him some good. Masami loved this time of year, Christmas time, even though they had zero connection to the religion this holiday was based off of. Or maybe it was based off of consumerism. That would make sense, too. That was a religion most of the world could get behind.

The children had such long Christmas lists.

Masami had always been the one to vet their choices. They wanted so much, things that he had never even though that they would have wanted, and things that he hadn't even known that people made. Like slime. The children had discovered slime and now they were obsessed with it. Making it, playing with it, leaving it everywhere. They wanted several different kinds in different colors…and that was his fault for forbidding them from making it after the incident….

Masami liked to make crafts like that.

And she never minded cleaning up after the children. She had always been so good at keeping the house nice and keeping the children occupied and cared for….and he could do it, too, just not as well. He had gotten back on educating the children and there was maybe some progress there…though getting Son to sit still was always a trial…and the children had adjusted to their new nomadic life for the most part…

They still asked him when they were going back to the house.

There was no reason to go back. Aside from the fact that it was the only place in the world that was truly theirs…for now. When he ruled the world it would all be theirs and everything and everywhere would feel like home. He told the children the truth, that he didn't know when they would return, because he harbored irrational feelings towards the place that…that he had built for Masami….

"Next year can we get a tree that big?" asked Mob. Maybe next year they would be done being nomads. She wanted to go home. Christmas was always fun at home. She and mom and Sho would put the tree together and then they would make the gingerbread houses and then they would make cocoa and watch Christmas movies and do all kinds of Christmas stuff….

But mom was gone.

But Dad liked Christmas at least a little…right? Didn't everyone like Christmas? Wasn't this supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year? She wondered if mom was having a wonderful time. She wondered if mom had gotten a tree and decorated it and then made all the gingerbread on her own and was sipping cocoa and watching Christmas movies and…and stuff like that. Maybe she was even back at the castle waiting for them. Maybe she missed them. Maybe she had missed them so much that she had decided to come back…

No she hadn't.

And Mob was dumb for thinking like that.

"Where would we even put it?" asked Suzuki. He made a mental note to get a tree that large for the children when the world was theirs. Well if they still wanted one. They most likely would not still be children when that time came…though them not as they were now…that was a difficult concept for him to imagine. He felt Daughter's hand in his. Her hand would always be smaller than his…..right? She would always be small and she would always seek out his company and she would always react with an odd amount of joy and wonder at the simplest things in life…right? She would stay the same…right?

Most likely.

Or maybe not. He didn't know. He had been thinking more about the children, lately, and the passage of time. Son's birthday had come and gone. Daughter had organized a birthday party for him. She had hand written invitations and everything. He had attended the event, of course, because it had been the anniversary of his only son's birth. There had been plane cake. It hadn't lasted too long. Son seemed happy.

A decent affair.

Son was seven years old now. The age of reason, as some people believed, though Suzuki still wondered. Seven years old. Seven. Seven years ago he had held his son in his arms. He had been small and red and loud. Terrifying. The fact that he had made a human being, that there was a new person in the world who existed, was terrifying. He had come to terms with it rather quickly, having made Son and also having almost lost Masami….and now that was not what troubled him. If troubled was even the word to use. Son was older and he would continue to get older….and Suzuki had no idea if Son would stay the same.

He wanted Daughter to stay the same, a fixed point in time, but he wanted Son to grow up.

And come into his own. He was still so weak. Still so close to nothing. Daughter eclipsed him, and every other esper besides Suzuki himself, but Son was still little better than one of the Awakened. This could not be. The only thing to do would be to give him time…but time was not an infinite resource. What would Son be like at eight? Nine? Eighteen? Nineteen? What if he never became anything more than what he currently was?

The thought is terrifying.

But he does not let it show.

"We could cut a hole in the roof and then just turn the heat up really high." Said Sho. They weren't allowed to get any closer to the tree, there was a fence, and he would have climbed over it if dad hadn't been there. Dad's aura was being kind of weird. Something was bothering him. Big sis said that if you wanted to know how dad felt you had to watch his aura really closely. He had no idea what it was that he was looking at but he knew that unless dad was all calm and stuff then something was wrong.

Dad didn't hate him.

He said so. He said so and then when Sho said that he was lying dad said that he never told lies. He said that what he said was the truth and telling something other than the truth was a waste of his valuable time. He told Sho not to lie, too, because when he grew up and inherited the world then his time would be super valuable too. Too valuable to spend lying to kids.

Dad didn't hate him.

He liked big sis best but he did not hate him. That was why he held hands with big sis. They had to hold hands, he said, because this was not the city to get lost in. Then he reminded them what happened in Shanghai and he said that this city was not like Shanghai and Sho couldn't just try and run away…which of course he had not been planning on doing. Especially in his bare feet. It was too cold out for all of that…and he didn't have that trapped feeling anymore, anyway. No, he wasn't trapped…not really. If anything he wished that they could just stay put for a minute…

But at least they were going to the beach, soon.

Dad had said so. He said that they would be going somewhere warm soon. He said that warm was better because that way he and big sis could spend longer being outside and playing and stuff. They liked playing in the snow but it got too cold and it got into their boots and also sometimes he just got stupid ideas like putting snow down the back of big sis's snow suit…that hadn't been a good thing to do and he was sorry he did it. He didn't even know why he did it, just that he got the idea and then the next thing he knew he was doing something very mean…

And then he ended up buried in the snow.

Big sis said that she was sorry. She said that she hadn't meant to do it, that it had just happened, and that she was sorry. He was sorry too. They were both sorry. She had the same problem he did, it seemed, that sometimes she just did things without thinking too. The only difference was that she had powers and he didn't. Well he sort of did. The other day he got so mad that their teacher wouldn't let him go and play, there was no recess anymore even though recess was the best part of the day, that he made a tea cup shatter with his powers…

He hadn't meant to.

But it was nice to know that he had powers. Even if his powers made him do jerk stuff. Maybe he was just a jerk. Maybe deep down on the inside he was a jerk. Like the movie he and big sis saw about the bat who got the potion from the witch with the house with chicken legs that was supposed to turn him into what he was on the inside but then the bad guy drank it and turned into a dragon…so maybe Sho was a dragon or something on the inside. Something mean and stuff. He didn't want to be like that one the inside but he had no control over it, it felt like…

Maybe he hadn't been trying hard enough.

"But what if birds and stuff got in?" asked Mob. That would be cool accept for the birds. This city had a lot of birds. Sho liked to chase them even though he kept on slipping in the ice. Also one time a bird took her big pretzel. They were mean like that. Geese were mean, too, like the time Sho had tried to chase him but then the goose came back with friends and then they chased her and Sho…that hadn't been very fun at all.

Mom usually kept birds from bothering them.

There had been a lot of ducks at the park she took them to. When they were really little, so little that Mob barely remembered what had happened and Sho had still ridden in a stroller, they had been feeding the ducks but then the ducks got all mean and took the whole bag of bread from Sho and then Mob tried to take it back but then the ducks had tried to bite her but mom made them go away.

There was no one to keep them safe from mean birds now.

"We'd chase them out with sticks or something." Said Sho. He wasn't afraid of the birds. Even if he had gotten all bitten up by geese that one time. Nothing scared him. Nothing in this whole wide world could ever scare him…besides dad….but dad was only scary when he was mad…and he didn't hate him. That was an important thing to remember, dad did not hate him. Dad had even said that it was an important thing to remember. Dad only punished him because he cared for him, he said, and he wanted to make him better than what he was.

But how could a person become better than what they already were?

Mom always said that he was great the way he was. Mom said that there were some things about him that were good and some things about him that were not so good but there was nothing that he could do that would ever make her stop loving him. Dad said that he would stop caring for him if he ever betrayed Dad…which he had no plans of doing. Maybe mom thought that he had betrayed her. Maybe mom left because….

He wasn't supposed to think about mom.

"It would make more sense to just find a place with a hundred and eighty meter ceiling." Said Suzuki. That would have been nice, actually. A hundred and eighty meter tree all covered in fairy lights…that would be nice. He made a mental note to have that made for them next year. Or something close to it. He didn't much mind this holiday, the trees were nice. He didn't know much about art or decorating or aesthetics but he did know what he liked and he liked that.

It really was a nice tree.

Daughter's hand was nice in his. She wore gloves, blue ones, with that queen she liked on them. The ice one. Daughter had been singing that song while she played in the show. She had even made herself a castle. A European style castle but a castle. Son had kicked it down and it had been a shame. It had been nice. It was a pity…but Daughter hadn't minded.

Daughter's presence continued to be enjoyable.

Even Son's was, in that moment, somewhat enjoyable. He had a hand on the guard rail but made no attempt to climb over. Good. Suzuki did not want to have to deal with whatever the repercussions would be if Son were to go with his worst impulses as he usually did. Maybe it was a consequence of his age or his gender, Suzuki did not know, all he did know was that when Son actually behaved himself he could be tolerable or even somewhat enjoyable to be around.

His ideas were fascinating.

He usually saw so little of himself reflected back to him from his Son. More than once he had wondered if this truly was his child and not some sort of changeling. That was his Son, the red hair gave it away, and he was so little like him…most of the time. Not now. Not when he had just talked about his own big, grand, dreams of creating something to his liking. He wondered if Son thought of other things beyond giant trees and homes with skylights big enough to accommodate them. He wondered if Son ever imagined domed cities, towers to space, and trains across the galaxy…though that last one he tried not to think about because of the sheer absurdity of it. He was far too old for such absurdities.

But Son was not.

And Suzuki was genuinely curious. He was curious about what went on in that head of his. What he could create if he had the power to create anything. His drawings gave some of it away. Buildings above the clouds, menageries as big as cities, and castles that went on for pages and pages….Son really was fascinating. He wished that Son showed him more of the fascinating version of himself and less of the hyperactive and annoying version of himself.

Daughter always showed him the best version of herself. Daughter never let him see her stormy…and he knew fully well that she could be. He knew that the children quarreled. He knew that she lost control. He knew these things about her but he still cared for her. There was nothing in this world short of outright betrayal that could ever let him ever stop caring for her.

"And one of those ceiling windows, too, to let the sunshine in. Not that we get a lot of it in the winter." Said Mob. It was snowing a little. The snow made the lights of the big tree in front of her look like they were twinkling. She held Sho's hand a little tighter. Sho had that look in his eyes, the one that he got when he was about to do something that he was not supposed to, but at least he wasn't doing it. That was good.

She was his big sister, she had to take care of him.

She liked taking care of him. She liked being his sister. She liked being his friend. Even if he could, sometimes, be mean to her she still liked being with him. Playing with him. Even just standing there with him, like now, was very nice. He was very nice and she would not have traded him for the whole world. His hand felt good in hers, like he was safe and she was safe and they were safe together. Safe and happy.

"There'll be more sunlight when we leave for the New Year. It's summer where we're going." said Suzuki

"We're skipping winter all the way?" asked Mob. She had just thought that they would be going to one of those places that had year round warm weather. How could you skip a whole season? She knew that you could skip hours, that happened when you went through a time zone, and maybe there were season zones and they were like time zones.

"But what about big sis' birthday? It's in the spring." Said Sho. If they skipped her birthday then would that make him the big brother, then, instead of the little brother? He didn't know if he wanted to be the bigger sibling or not. It seemed like a lot of work with no guarantee that dad would like him better. Maybe he just should have kept his mouth shut.

"No, we wouldn't skip it, the southern hemisphere just has summer when we have winter. Because the Earth is tilted." Said Suzuki

"Oh yeah, they said about that at school." Said Mob

"So it's going to be summer where we're going?" asked Sho

"Yes. For the time being, yes." said Suzuki

"It'll be fun, Sho, we can go to the beach and swim and play in the sand and make sand castles again just like we did before." Said Mob. They had stayed a place near a beach, before, and it had been so fun…even if she had stepped on a sharp shell and even if Sho did get mad and make their sunscreen explode. It had been an accident, though, so she was not upset with him. Even if it had been a mess and it had gotten in her hair and also her eyes. She was just happy that Sho had powers, that was all, and dad had been happy to hear that Sho had been able to do something, too. She hoped that when the New Year came Sho learned how to do even more things. He was seven, now, and maybe that would be old enough for him to catch up to her.

"….I don't want to wear any more sunscreen." Said Sho. He kicked the snow under his shoes. He hated sunscreen and he hated sunburns but he didn't know which he hated more. Maybe the sunscreen because it was all sticky and gross. At least Fukuda could fix a sunburn.

"Don't worry, you won't have to, not until we get to the southern hemisphere." Said Mob

"Then I'll just stay here then with the tree for the rest of my life." Said Sho

"You'd get cold and freeze, Sho." said Mob

"No, my coat is super warm. I'll just stay here with the tree and if I get hungry you can bring me food and if I get thirsty you can bring me water. Yeah, that's the life for me." Said Sho. He was mostly kidding, mostly, though living outside did seemed more and more preferable each minute to having to put on sunscreen again. He hated that stuff so much that one time he had made the bottle explode just by wishing it would.

"It's a very nice tree but I know that they're going to get rid of it once the Christmas season is over." Said Suzuki. He could sort of understand Son, there, because it really was a sight to behold. He looked forward to seeing what Son's inevitable drawings of this day ended up being. He had been experimenting with blending colors lately….

"When you take over the world can't you just make every single day Christmas?" asked Sho

"I could…though when every single day is a holiday then there are no more holidays because they've become so common place." Said Suzuki. The children so rarely talked about it, what it would be like when he took his inevitable place as ruler of this world. He may make a second Christmas for them though, since the Season did make them very happy. It was just better for everyone involved when they were happy.

"Can you at least get rid of sunscreen?" asked Sho

"But then if dad got rid of sunscreen you'd get all burnt." Said Mob

"The sunscreen is worse than the sunburns. Fukuda can at least fix the sunburns. The sunburns hurt but at least they aren't gross." Said Sho

"Wear sunscreen or you'll make yourself very sick when you get older." Said Suzuki. He knew Son's pain, he really did. There was something in the genes for red hair that also gave one a weakness to sunlight. He had always hated sunscreen as a child though for his own good he had allowed his mother to slather it onto him. It was sticky and unpleasant against his skin but it saved him from getting skin cancer later on. His mother said so.

She knew best.

Masami knew best, too, he was not ashamed to say that mothers always knew best. Well without her that meant that he knew best by default. It hadn't been easy caring for the children, well it had and it hadn't, but he thought that he had been doing a decent job of it. They were more enjoyable to be around in some ways and in other ways they were more annoying than he ever could have conceived.

Still, it wasn't that bad.

Sometimes it was even somewhat enjoyable. Like now. They were engaged in one of their very long debates, this time centering around if it was better to be happy now and miserable later or miserable now and happy later. He sided with Daughter. It was best to make some sacrifices in the short term to help fulfill long term goals. Though Son also did have a point about there being no point to life if one was not at least comfortable.

His children.

These were his children. The both of them. They may have driven him mad sometimes, and would most likely continue to drive him mad tomorrow, but these were most certainly his children. His and Masami's. He stopped thinking about her. She was gone and she had left him all alone…though he was not alone. It didn't matter if he was alone or not, he was complete all on his own, but he was literally never alone.

Not when he had the two of them at his side.

He was literally never alone anymore….but right now it was ok. Alright. Nice, even. The children were pleasant and the weather was pleasantly cold and the decorations were aesthetically pleasing. Yes, this was pleasant. Even the children were there at his side and being pleasant. They were not shouting or running or jumping or being quarrelsome. No, they were just talking, just debating their fascinating little worldviews.

Suzuki didn't know if this was truly the most wonderful time of the year but it was at least pretty pleasant, in his opinion.


	70. Seashells

This beach had a lot of seashells.

Not that they were going to take them with. No, they never travelled well and there wasn't much to do with them outside of the beach. The shells stayed at the beach where they would serve to decorate their castle. This one was called castle Suzuki, because their family name was Suzuki, and it was the best of the castles that they had made so far. That was why they had written castle Suzuki in the sand beside it with a bunch of seashells.

Not the best writing tool, they found out, but something permanent. Or at least Mob felt like that. Shells were like rocks, they lasted forever, but not in suitcases and backpacks because unlike rocks shells shattered and got sharp little pieces everywhere and then Fukuda looked at you funny when you told him why you had a bunch of tiny cuts on your feet. That had not been a fun day at all. Nothing like today. Today was a very fun day.

"It doesn't look like it says what it's supposed to say." Said Sho. He turned his head to the side to get a better look. Nope, that was not what that was supposed to say at all. He was seven, he knew how to read, and he especially knew how to read his own family name.

"You think, little brother?" asked Mob

"You can see just as well as I can." Said Sho

"We need more shells, I think." Said Mob. Sho was right, that looked just awful. It was because the shells were all different shapes. Maybe if she only got shells that were the same…but those were hard to find. She wished that she could have just moved the ocean out of the way and then used her powers to collect and sort all of the shells…but there were other people around. Not a lot of them but enough that she knew someone would notice.

"We already got most of the shells on the beach." Said Sho

"That's true but I think that it looked bad because we don't have enough shells. We should go in the water and feel around for more." Said Mob

"Here, I'll just write it in the sand." Said Sho. He picked up their sand shovel, the good one, and wrote what they had been trying to write.

"The wind could blow it away, though, or someone could step on it. That's why I was using shells, so it would last forever." Said Mob as Sho wrote in the sand. His hand writing was better, he remembered the stroke order this time, but sand was too impermanent. It would be nice if it was there forever. Things changed much too fast in Mob's opinion.

Like moving.

Moving happened much too fast. They went from winter to summer. One day she had been wearing a snow suit and now she was in her bathing suit. It was so weird…but nice, too, because she had to look at the positives. They were at the beach. Before they went places with dad they had never gone to the beach before, just the pool. The beach was hotter and saltier and there was sand everywhere…but it was still fun. They made sand castles. That was always fun. Having fun was important. What was the point of life if you weren't going to have fun with it? Experience it? Live it? Life was to live after all, at least Sho had heard that somewhere. Maybe in a movie or a popsicle stick or a fortune cookie. They ate a whole box of fortune cookies the other day. Dad said that they were being ridiculous but he also said that their English reading skills were getting better. Dad could say nice things, sometimes, even if he had to wrap them up in mean things. It wasn't fun when dad said mean things….so Sho chose not to think about that. He chased those sorts of thoughts from his head.

It was important to have as much fun as possible.

"It's a sand castle. Unless we sit on this beach guarding it for the rest of our lives then it'll just end up turning back into beach. That's how sand worked." Said Sho. He wrote more stuff in the sand. 'Sho was here and so was his big sis' and stuff like that. He didn't know what she was on about, wanting it to last forever. Nothing ever lasted forever.

Nothing.

They could wake up tomorrow in the lands of ice and snow or something. They could wake up tomorrow and dad could be a jerk again. They could wake up tomorrow and dad could be nice. They could wake up tomorrow and eat with chopsticks. They could wake up tomorrow and eat with sporks. They could wake up tomorrow and it could be dark out. They could wake up tomorrow and it could be light. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Things just changed all the time.

And you got no say in it so you had might as well go with it.

Otherwise you started to feel trapped. Sho liked how they moved so much. The trapped feeling had trouble catching up to him. The feeling he got when he realized how truly far from home he was. How he would never go home again….how this was his life. How even then he went around the world it still felt small because the only people in this world were dad and big sis…

'Suzuki Sho will rule the world!'

That was a good thing to write in the sand. He was going to rule the world. When he did then he would never feel trapped again. That was because he would be able to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He would be able to go wherever he wanted, even back to the real castle, and then…well he didn't know what he would do then. All of this was for when he was a grown up, anyway, so it didn't matter. Now, anyway.

"I don't think that we'll be here for that long so you're right, Sho, you're always right." Said Mob. She picked up their other sand shovel, the one that Sho had cracked trying to dig up rocks with, and started to write. 'Suzuki Shigeko was here'…just like Sho had written. She looked at it for a while. That was what you were supposed to write. Well at least that was what Sho had written. It didn't look right though, even though she had used the right stroke order. No, that wasn't right at all. She reached down and fixed it.

'Mob was here.'

That was better. There was no one around to call her Mob anymore. She didn't go to school and nobody ever even used her real given name. She was either 'big sis' or 'Daughter' or 'Miss Suzuki'. Mom had always called her Shigeko or Shige…never Mob. Even though Mob fit better. Mob was what she wanted to be. Mob was a regular kid, like those kids, the ones who were looking at them. Regular kids got to go to school and have friends who weren't their little brothers and….and she was being ungrateful like dad called her sometimes. She didn't want to be ungrateful. She should have been happy. Being a regular kids wasn't all that good.

Regular kids didn't get to go to Disney Land whenever they wanted.

Regular kids had bedtimes.

Regular kids didn't get to eat whatever they wanted whenever they wanted.

Regular kids had parents following them around all the time telling them what to do.

So maybe being a regular kid wasn't so great. Even though regular kids got to go to school and make friends and have moms…well not everyone had a mom. Some families only had one parent, like theirs, and some kids had no parents at all. Those were orphans. They lived in orphanages which were big scary buildings full of strange people and strange food and strange smells….not that she was sure that was what orphanages were like. She just got that feeling. Some kids had no parents at all. Some kids only had one. Some parents had two dads and two moms, too, they had seen some families like that once. They were married people, dad had said so, sometimes boys married boys and girls married girls he said. One to ten percent of the population was like that, dad had said. That was regular, he said, on the low end of regular.

Regular kids had families that all looked different.

But they all had a lot more rules than Mob and Sho had. She had so many rules back when they had a mom. They had to take baths every night and have at least one vegetable with every meal and they had a timer on their screen time and they had a bedtime and a wake up time…at least now they could do whatever they wanted. Well not whatever they wanted. They had to only play with each other, never use their powers in public, and not run away from the guys who followed them around. Mob could see them, or at least their auras, and they were there to keep them safe, dad had said…

Also to keep them from running away.

Though where there was to run away from she did not know. Dad was their dad and he could be mean but she would never have run away from him. Then she would have had no parents at all. Also Sho would have been all alone. She didn't want Sho to end up being all alone. She wanted Sho to be there, with her, all the time. Even now that they were older and it was a whole new year they still got scared when they got separated.

They only had each other after all.

They were best friends. They had to be. They were brother and sister after all. They had been friends since the day the doctor cut Sho out of mom's stomach. They would be friends until the very end, that was forever, and nothing could ever make them not be friends. Even when Sho was mean and poured sand down the back of her swim suit or put seaweed in her hair or stomped on her sandcastles. He was her little brother and she loved him even if he did do things that he knew were wrong.

Like now.

Like how he was breaking the rules now. Another kid was talking to Sho. Well sort of. Mob had no idea what the kid was saying. He was one of the regular kids who were watching them. This was a boy who was older than them…or maybe just super tall. He was taller than her and Sho. His hair was yellow, too, and his eyes were blue so he was foreign….actually she and Sho were Japanese so they were the foreigners. This was not Japan. They may not have been in Japan but they still had rules to follow. No matter how far from home they were they still had to follow dad's rules. Mob walked up and took Sho's hand.

He shook her off.

She tried to drag him away.

He pulled free and kicked sand at her. Mob knew that there was no changing his mind when he got like this. She hoped that those weird aura guys weren't watching them carefully. She knew that with her powers she could have picked him up…but she was not going to stop Sho from breaking the rules by breaking and even bigger rule herself. No. She just sat down in the sand and started to think up explanations that would not be lies but would also keep dad from getting super mad at them…

"Sister." Said Sho using the few words of English he knew. He knew that he was not supposed to talk to the other kids but…but he wanted to. He couldn't just be expected to talk to only his big sister for the rest of his life. They were brother and sister, not best friends, being brother and sister was different. They were forced to play together because they had the same parents. He loved her like a sister, and he didn't want to be a jerk to her, but he hadn't talked to a kid who wasn't her in a long time.

He hadn't talked to another boy in a long time.

And that was why he was being so weird. He spoke better English than that. Dad even called his English passable, which being from dad might as well have been fluent….well Sho knew that he was not fluent but he spoke better English than this. Words were kind of hard right now. Standing in one spot was hard. Had it always been this hot out? He needed more sunscreen, he could feel himself turning red.

"Hi!" said the other kid. Sho hadn't caught his name. He wondered if it was ok to ask his name. He didn't know how the manners worked in this country. He was Japanese, not a native, and this kid might not have been a native, either. He wondered if that was ok to ask, where he had come from, and he also wondered how to ask….English was hard for him right now. Thinking was hard for him right now. Maybe he was getting sunstroke. That must have been it. Way too much sun out here.

"Shy." Said Sho pointing at big sis. He knew what it meant when she got like this. Later on she was going to pretend to be dad and lecture him about how he was acting wrong and stuff like that. Like she was the boss of him…which dad said that she was…but she wasn't because they were both kids. He could do whatever he wanted to, even break the rules, and it didn't even matter because it wasn't like dad punished her all that often anyway.

"Ni hao." Said the kid. Sho blinked. Oh, right. For some reason people always assumed that they, usually big sis, were Chinese. He didn't get why…and it usually made him kind of mad now…but he didn't feel mad now. Now he felt like the time he had eaten six of those big donuts and then ridden the teacups at Disney Land….which made no sense because all he had eaten today was bread and cheese and also four ice pops. Also he hadn't been spinning around…even though it sort of felt like he had been spinning around….

He wanted to start spinning around.

He wanted to run and jump and spin around and just MOVE and he didn't even know why. He had felt like this before….he remembered. Back when he used to play with Akira from his old class. Right. Big kid feelings that made you do dumb stuff and made people look at you weird…and he was being looked at weird.

"Konichiwa. Japanese." Said Sho remembering how English worked. His brain worked best when he was moving…and he wanted to start moving….but he also still wanted to talk to this kid. He hadn't talked to another kid, another boy, in what felt like a million years. He knew he would pay for this later but he didn't care. He was seven, now, and he was old enough to make his own decisions. He didn't need a big sister following him around and telling him what to do.

Sho wasn't doing anything wrong, anyway.

Mom had always been happy when Sho and big sis had made friends even though all of their friends had been normal kids. If mom said that it was ok then it was ok….even if she had run away from home…but he did not want to think about mom now. He thought about this other kid. He was talking now, talking way too fast, and Sho tried to keep up. Maybe he should have listened to his English tutor better. Maybe then he would have been able to keep up better. He really wanted to be friends with this kid. That was what this weird feeling was, him just really wanting to be friends with him, like how he had really wanted to be friends with Akira.

He hadn't had a friend in a long time.

Which was why he was being so weird. He wished that he could just remember how to be normal. He wished that he could tell his stomach to stop feeling so weird…and he tried to…except it didn't listen. It actually got worse then the kid asked, well asked with motions, to borrow his shovel…and then they touched when he handed it over…and then he was sure that he was going to throw up or have heat stroke or something like that….

And then he felt really dumb.

Because he was bad at reading English. He wasn't great at speaking it but he was even worse at reading and writing it…and he felt so dumb. He did his best but he was bad at it and the other kid, the letters that spelled out his name were S-K-Y-L-E-R, went back to playing with the other kids…and then once he was back to that Sho rolled around in the sand for a little bit just to get all of the weird feelings out.

"Are you alright?" asked Mob. Sho had been so weird there. Not because he was rolling around in the sand like a dog, he did that sometimes that was normal for him, but because he had been so quiet before. Quiet and kind of shaky. He had been smiling a lot and looking at his feet a lot, too, and shuffling a lot. He seemed….Mob saw his aura and it was nervous….but Sho was never nervous. That was just not the sort of person that he was. He didn't even know the meaning of the word, at least it felt like that sometimes, so to see her little brother being so unlike his normal self….it had been odd.

Very odd.

"I'm fine, don't be nosy." Said Sho. He didn't want to talk to her about this. This just…it felt like something he didn't want to talk to her about. That wasn't so weird. They didn't talk about everything. Like he never talked to her about why she would get up in the middle of the night to hang out with dad and stuff like that. If he didn't get nosy into her life then she shouldn't have gotten nosy into his. And what was with all the questions, anyway? Didn't she have anything else to do besides ask him questions?

"I'm not being nosy, I'm just worried is all. You just seemed kind of nervous back there. Your aura, I mean. I just worry about you…and also you need more sunscreen because you're getting super red." Said Mob. She helped him to his feet.

"Don't put that stuff on me. If I'm red then I'm already sunburnt. Fukuda can just fix it when we get back." Said Sho. He brushed the sand off of himself. Well now he felt better…just so long as he didn't think about that other kid. Then he felt fine.

"You're turning back to your normal color, now, so I think you're getting better. Also I think that it wasn't a sunburn." Said Mob. That was good, she didn't want Sho to end up with sunburns or heat stroke. Then dad would get even madder than he already would be if he found out that Sho had been talking to another kid. A kid that wasn't her…not that she minded. No, she was just worried about him getting punished, that was all. She never felt bad about the fact that the other kids had always liked him more because he was more like them and she was too much like herself….she didn't mind that at all. She hadn't felt bad about that since she had been little. She was not little anymore. She was a big kid now and these sorts of things did not bother her.

"I don't know what that was." Said Sho. Normal. Be back to normal already.

"Were you scared?" asked Mob. She knew how he felt. Sometimes she had trouble with her feelings, too. Dad said that it was normal. Dad said that because they were so different the world felt like Wonderland and they were Alice. Everyone had their own crazy logic and they were the ones who were expected to figure it out. It would be different when they ruled the world, he said, but they did not rule the world now so she had to at least try to understand her feelings and the feelings of others.

"It was like…it was like a bunch of feelings all together…like scared but also happy and…and stuff…but I don't want to talk about this with you! Come on, let's dig a deep hole in the sand and see if there's treasure or something." Said Sho picking up his shovel…the shovel that he had let that other kid use…and now he was getting warmer again.

"Oh. Like being happy and scared and nervous and kind of like you're going to throw up but somehow in a good way?" asked Mob. She knew that feeling. She got that feeling sometimes. Back when she had been at school…and sometimes for no reason at all. Sometimes for boys she didn't even know the names of. Sometimes for boys that weren't even real. Liking someone was always a weird feeling….

Wait.

Sho liked that other kid?

But Sho was a boy.

But sometimes boys liked other boys.

So that was ok. That was a thing that happened sometimes. One to ten percent of the population, dad had said, and that was a whole lot of people even though it didn't sound like it. Sho just fell into that part of the population. That made sense. He had always been super different. He had red hair and blue eyes and hated citrus after all. Yeah, this was just more of Sho being 'Sho'. She loved him just the same now as she had ten seconds ago before she realized this about him. She wondered if this was something that was supposed to bother her. A lot of people were bothered by this…but a lot of people also wore shoes inside and thought that if someone didn't speak English they would magically learn if you talked super loud to them.

"I just said that I didn't want to talk about it! Now either grab a shovel or go away!" said Sho. He did not want to talk about this. He wanted to…to dig a deep hole. Maybe there was treasure underneath the sand. Or maybe there was just lava and stuff…or maybe if they dug past the lava they would get to China or Japan or maybe just the ocean.

"Ok, ok, I'm sorry…but you know that I would never make fun of your for liking someone, right Sho? I'm your big sister, I would never make fun of your for anything. Even that time you wet the bed when we were sleeping next to each other….and I know that we agreed never to speak of that again…and I'm sorry I remembered it just now. I just meant that I won't tease you because you like that boy." Said Mob as she dug next to Sho. She wondered if they would actually find something this time. Last time they had only found bottle caps, seashells, and rocks. Maybe they would find something cool this time. Or maybe not. Maybe they were giving up before they had even started. Sho had stopped digging after all.

"Don't be dumb. I'm a boy." Said Sho. Him? Liking someone? Nope. Gross. Plus he was a boy and boys couldn't like other boys. Boys married girls, that was how it went. He was different enough. He was bad at having powers and bad at all the other stuff dad said was important. Dad was always saying what it would be like when he grew up and got married and had a kid. If dad found out that not only did he not have powers, and not only was he bad at just about everything that dad cared about, but also that he liked a boy…

Dad already didn't like him much.

Also liking people was gross! Liking led to holding hands and kissing and all of that gross sort of stuff! He hated kissing! Five girls had kissed him already, and one right on the lips, and it had always been the worst thing ever! Kissing was the grossest thing that anyone had ever invented! The only thing worse was that gross thing that adults did to make babies! Love was gross and sick and wrong! So was liking someone!

"I know that you're a boy, Sho, but boys can like other boys. I don't mind that you do. I'm your sister and I will love you no matter what." Said Mob. She decided to keep on digging even if Sho had stopped. This was close enough to their castle that it could have been a moat. They'd need to get some water in it first. Then they could redo the writing that Sho had ruined somewhere else.

"Big sis. Shigeko. Suzuki Shigeko. Listen to me when I tell you that I, Suzuki Sho, do not like anyone like that. Liking someone leads to holding their hand which leads to kissing and kissing is gross. I do not and will not ever like anyone. Ever." Said Sho in his most serious tone of voice. The kind of voice that dad used when one of the people who worked for him messed up. She had messed up. He didn't like anybody and he would never like anybody…like that. So gross.

"Ok…but if you ever do like someone and want to hold their hand and kiss them I just want you to know that I'll love whoever you love…but not in the way that you love them because if we liked the same boy then that would be bad." Said Mob. She knew not to argue with Sho when he got like this. With Sho she had to pick her battles and sunscreen was a big enough battle to make this not worth it. Besides, Sho was too little to think that liking someone was ok, anyway. She wondered why so many boys were like that. Liking someone was a good thing…if they liked you back…and she hoped that Sho found someone who liked him back. She had someone who had liked her back for a little bit and it had been so nice…and she wanted Sho to feel like that, too, because if anyone deserved to feel that good it was her little brother.

"Shut up and dig." Said Sho. He wished that she would just come off it already. He didn't like anyone like that…why was that so hard to understand? Liking someone was gross and it led to doing gross stuff. Girls were always thinking about that stuff, that was why so many movies had love and kissing in them even though that was a great way to ruin a perfectly good movie. He did not like anyone, especially not another boy, because then dad would like him even less than he did now…

And he already disliked him for all of the other things that made him, him.

Sho didn't want to give him anything else to dislike him for. He wasn't big sis. He wasn't just like a smaller version of dad. He was fully himself and all of the things that made him Sho were also things that dad thought were wrong with him. It didn't matter if big sis didn't see it that way because she was not dad. Dad saw things his way and his way was the only way, according to him. He had already planned out Sho's life and there was nothing at all that he could do about it because dad was dad and he was not only the boss of him but he was also going to be the boss of the whole, entire, world someday.

So he might as well dig a deep hole and see what he could find.

He found seashells.


	71. Lonely Feelings at Night

Sho kicked in his sleep.

Mob hadn't minded, before, when they had been little. That was just how Sho had always been. There had been more bed to go around when they had been little. Not like now. Now they were bigger and there was less bed to go around the way he kicked, not just that but turned too, kept her up. She knew that she was big enough that she had to sleep in her own bed. She knew that she was going to be eight, soon, and eight year olds did not need to sleep next to their little brother when they had bad dreams.

No, not bad.

Lonely. She had a lonely dream. Not a scary one, not one that left her awake with her heart pounding and the room trying to turn itself upside down. No, this was a dream that left her waking up with a feeling inn her heart that was somehow both heavy and empty at the same time. The kind of feeling that, when she had been little, she used to just climb into bed next to her little brother and sleep next to him until she felt better.

There wasn't enough room now.

Because they were bigger. Maybe because she was bigger she was lonelier. Being bigger…no, not about being bigger. Being more alone. She was more alone now. She was always with someone but she always felt alone. Even when she was surrounded by people, even when she was with her own little brother, she felt alone. She didn't know why. It wasn't like she had ever had that many friends. There had been people she had gone to school with. There had been people who she had talked to and played with at school but they hadn't been real friends, not like regular kids had friends, and not like she and Sho were friends.

They were best friends.

Because there wasn't anyone else for them to be friends with. So of course they were best friends. Even if he could be kind of mean sometimes. Even if he had spent the whole plane ride poking her in the back because…she didn't even know why. He said that he was sorry when they landed and he even let her have his tablet when hers died. That meant that he really was sorry. She just wished that he had been sorry enough not to be mean to her in the first place.

Maybe that was why she felt so lonely.

Maybe she just felt lonely because he, her own brother and only friend, could be mean to her sometimes. Dad could be mean sometimes, too, without even trying. That must have been where Sho got it from. Mob wondered why she wasn't mean. Maybe she just got more of mom than Sho did. Mom had always been so nice…and now the feeling is getting worse. The feeling always gets worse when she thinks about mom.

The bad feelings always got worse when she thought about her mom. When she was mad at something, which happened sometimes despite what Sho thought, the mean feelings that came with being mad at something or someone got worse. When she was sad, like she kind of was now, then tears came when she thought about mom for too long. Mom…mom had just gone. She had just gone and…and then everything had changed…and now there was no way to go back and mom was gone and Mob…she didn't know why mom would just leave like that…she really didn't.

She did.

Mom left because of Mob. Because she had powers. Because she had powers and she couldn't control them all the time…and dad was always saying that power was nothing without control. He said that her greatest fault as a human being was her instability. He said that her control was constantly slipping, which was why her hair floated when she got too happy and the room shook when she got too mad and other such things, and that she needed to be able to control her powers or she would be nothing. Unstable. Dangerous to be around. She needed to exorcise her emotions, he said, all of the strong ones until she could control herself.

And that was why mom had left.

She had always said that normal people would be scared of her powers. That was why she could not use them in public. Dad even agreed. He said that there was no need to show the normal people what they could do just yet. He said that showing off their powers would only make the normal people mad at them and scared of them and that would not be advantageous to their goals. His goals.

Mom had been a normal person.

And she must have been afraid. That was it. Because Mob had such bad control. Nobody in the whole world knew what it was like to be her. To have so much power and so little control…and to have everybody being afraid of her. She knew that the copy paste aura guys were afraid of her. Sho had said so and he was very good at reading people like dad. Dad said that they were right to be afraid of her because she was so powerful, more powerful than most adults. Even the other espers, the ones that worked at the Divisions, were afraid of her. There had been a big snow storm, before, so instead of going outside dad made some Division guys come to him…and when they saw her their auras got all close like they were protecting themselves.

They had been afraid of her.

And if even other espers were afraid of her then mom must have been super afraid. Ashamed, too, maybe. Dad always said that it was shameful when she lost control of her powers. She was his Daughter, Suzuki Shigeko, and she had to control her powers or she was nothing. She was his daughter and he expected more from her, he had said, and maybe Mob wished that he expected a little less from her. Maybe then she wouldn't feel so bad, sometimes, about not being able to stop herself from losing control sometimes. For having so many big feelings inside of herself that she could not control…

The room was full of her energy.

She could see her aura now, she could see things starting to float, and she knew that she needed to get out of the room before she woke Sho up. They hadn't been here for very long, their body clocks weren't used to this place yet, and getting back to bed after getting up while your body clock still thought it was in a whole other country was hard. She didn't want Sho to be up all night and then sleepy and grumpy in the morning. Dad would not have been happy with her if she let that happen.

Dad.

She wanted mom. She wanted to be with her mom but she didn't have a mom anymore. She was gone and they weren't even supposed to speak her name. She was gone and now all she had was a dad…and dad was there…and he liked her. He cared for her. He said that he cared for her. He said that he cared for her more than anyone else in the whole world. That had felt nice, when he said that, even though it shouldn't have because Sho was his kid too and he should have liked them both the same…even though there was only one of dad and two of them.

One parent could not be divided up by two kids.

You couldn't divide up one into two. Well you could and you got one half…but how were they supposed to cut dad in half, exactly? Back when they had a mom and a dad Sho had gotten mom and she had gotten dad and it had been perfectly fair. Now they just had dad…she just had dad. Dad didn't hate Sho, he had said so, but he just liked her better…and sometimes she liked that. Sometimes she liked being liked.

She wanted to be with dad.

Because Sho kicked in his sleep, she didn't have a mom, and she was much too upset to sleep on her own. She just wanted to be near him, even if he got mad at her because her aura was like this, she just wanted to be near him for a little bit. Maybe he was still up. He had trouble sleeping sometimes, too, and sometimes they hung out at night. Those were fun times. They would watch documentaries about things, the last one they had watched was a documentary about rats and how they lived in cities but did not know how to cook or have little cities, and dad had let her lay her head in his lap and he touched her head a lot like mom had always been touching Sho's head. Other nights they played Chinese checkers or ate late night dinner or they just talked. Well he talked and she listened. She listened to the things that bothered him. How dumb the people working for him were, how he couldn't find powerful enough espers, how much better Japan was than the rest of the world at everything…though mob didn't much agree with that last one. The fries in America were better. England had very good candy. Australia had kangaroos which were very nice even though you couldn't ride around in their pouches and they also hated it when you tried to do that…well when Sho had tried to do that. Trinidad had all of these little lizard running around and they were so cute. Korea, the South, had pretty dresses and kimchi which was not at all gross. The Labrador place was nice even though it wasn't filled with Labradors like she and Sho thought that it would be. China, the parts they had been two, had two Disney Lands and also there was a panda sanctuary they went too and pandas were so cute…but they also didn't like it when you tried to pet them. When Sho tried to pet them.

The world was a big place and Japan may have been where she had been born but there was a lot of other stuff to experience and enjoy, too.

But she was not about to argue that with dad. No, he hated arguing. If he wanted her opinion then he would ask for it. He always asked her when he wanted her opinion. Sometimes he said that she was fascinating and other times he said that she was just a child and had no idea what she was talking about. Mob never argued with him when he said things like that to her even though those were mean things to say to anyone.

She never argued with him.

She was his Daughter. Her place was not to argue with him. He had said that, before, that they had no reason to argue because she was his daughter and it was not her place to argue with him. Also he was not going to argue with children. So they just never argued. She and Sho argued sometimes even though she hated it when they did. Sho picked fights with her more than they just…disagreed…but that was ok. Even though said that he hated it when they fought. It was annoying and aggravating, he said, and he did not need any aggravation from his children when he got enough of it from the people who worked for him.

Mob had no intention of aggravating dad.

Even now. He was asleep. Sometimes when she came into his room in the middle of the night he was awake. He either told her that he wanted her to go away or they went to the living room and watched TV or something like that. Usually when she came in and he was asleep she just went back to her room or she went to watch TV on her own or something like that. She knew that she should have just left him alone but…but she just did not want to be alone.

She laid down on the floor.

This floor was carpeted. It was clean. It was soft. It was warm in here, warm enough, though she did have to tuck her feet into her nightgown. This one was another Elsa one…though she was starting to get kind of bored of Elsa. It was still nice, though, even if it wasn't very warm. Of course it wasn't warm, the cold never bothered her anyway. The cold never bothered Elsa anyway because she had ice powers. Maybe Mob's feelings shouldn't have bothered her anyway because her powers were centered around her feelings…or something.

She still felt lonely.

And her aura was still being all weird. She could see her colors, see her powers, and she could see that she was so close to losing control and making things float or even worse. She couldn't help it. She just wanted to be near someone. She wanted to be near her brother but he just kicked and pushed her away in his sleep. She wanted to be near her mom but her mom had run away, far away, and she would never see her again for as long as she lived. The only person that left was her dad but he was asleep and if she climbed into bed with him he would be upset with her for not only waking him up but also being incomplete and weak and whatever other words he felt like calling her.

There was a shift in the energy around her.

"Daughter. Explain." Said Dad. His voice was low and scratchy, but not mad, she could tell by his aura. She knew exactly what his aura looked like when he got mad. She knew at this point in her life that he was not mad…but also how quickly he could go from being normal to being mad and then going right back again.

"I wanted to be near you but you were asleep. So I tried to sleep on the floor. I'll go away now." Said Mob. She got up. Dad sat up too.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" asked Dad. Mob shook her head. She hadn't checked the time when she got up. She only knew that it was dark outside.

"No dad, I didn't check. I'm sorry that I woke you up." Said Mob

"You can't sleep?" asked dad even though, obviously, she was having trouble sleeping. Why else would she be up at whatever hour this was? Plus she had just said…well she had only said that she wanted to be near him. Mom would have let her sleep in the bed with her. Mom had always let them do that…but mom wasn't there anymore now was she?

"I was barely asleep…but don't ever disturb me unless it's important." Said Dad

"I'm sorry." Said Mob. She waited to be dismissed. Kicked out. Told to go away back to her own bed and to lay there and wait for tomorrow to happen if she was going to be like that. Or told to go to the living room and wait for him and then they would spend time together and it would be so nice and-

"Do you like that? Sleeping on floors?" asked Dad

"No. Not really." Said Mob

"Then why sleep on the floor without a futon?" said Dad

"Because I didn't want to be in my bed and Sho kicks in his sleep so I didn't want to sleep next to him." Said Mob. She wanted to tell him that she was lonely. That inside of her there was a giant gaping loneliness and it was getting bigger and bigger, like the time she got a whole in her tights and it got bigger and bigger the more that she picked at it. She knew that she needed to control her powers, control her feelings, and that she should have been a complete person on her own like dad was a complete person on his own….

But that was hard.

And she was bad at this and any minute now Dad would tell her how badly she had messed up. She had let herself get lonely and she had woken him up and he wasn't happy with her and then he would tell her so and then all of these bad feelings would get even worse. That was how it always went. She just wished that she could have been better.

"What's wrong with your bed?" asked Dad

"It feels too empty." Said Mob. It took her a moment to find the right words. She needed to tell him that she had felt lonely and sad without using those words. Dad hated it when they had bad feelings like that. He hated it when they had any strong feelings at all. They were both supposed to be better than that, dad had said, and any minute now he was going to tell her that she was being bad and being a bad Daughter and a bad Suzuki and-

And he didn't say anything for a while.

He just stared at her….which was worse than him telling her that he was ashamed of her and to get out of his sight. She almost wished that he would do that, talk to her like she was Sho or even one of the people who worked for him, but he didn't. He just kept on looking at her. With his eyes and with his aura. He just looked at her and looked at her and looked at her and Mob, for a moment, wanted to tell him to just get on with whatever mean thing that he was planning on saying so she could go off and be lonely on her own.

The blanket next to him moved.

"This bed is too large for one person. Rolling over from a warm bed to a cool one is something unpleasant. Come here and warm this side of the bed." Said Dad. Mob wondered who this person was and what he had done with her dad. Dad hated it when she and Sho had asked to sleep with him and mom when they had been little…but mom had been there too. There hadn't been enough room. Also Sho kicked in his sleep and he would have kept everyone up.

That was a two person bed.

And she and dad were two people. So that made sense. She could maybe even pretend that mom was there and she was the one who offered to let Mob sleep in the bed with her and she cared that Mob felt sad and lonely and she was going to make her all better because that was what mom did. She loved them and she made them feel better.

She climbed into bed next to dad.

He pulled the covers up over them. He used his powers to push her more onto her side of the bed. She let him. Even if he was far away he was still letting her sleep next to him. He had never let her do this before. She wondered if maybe he was feeling lonely too…but that was crazy. Dad did not get lonely. He was a complete person all on his own. Still, this was nice. She felt a lot less lonely.

"There. That should be better than the floor." Said Dad as he turned his back to her.

"Yes. It is. Thank you dad. Goodnight." Said Mob. She still felt kind of alone…but it wasn't so bad. Not now. Not that she was near someone…and not if she pretended that he wanted her to be near him. That he was feeling lonely too. That he wanted her to be there with him because he felt like he needed someone, too.

"Goodnight, Masa-Daughter. Daughter. Goodnight Daughter. I'll see you in the morning. Sleep well." Said Dad. Mob rolled over so she was facing his back. Those had been crazy people thoughts. She knew her dad. He was never lonely. He was her dad. That was why he slept with his back to her. Because he wasn't lonely at all. He just didn't like how this side of the bed was cold.

Which kind of made her feel lonely.

"You too dad…sleep well." Said Mob. She still sort of felt lonely…but this wasn't so bad. She was at least near someone…even if his back was to her. Even if he pushed her back to her side when she tried to get closer. That was kind of…lonely feeling….but at least she was with someone. At least wasn't alone. At least she could pretend. Pretend that she was with mom…but she had to stop pretending. But at least…but at least…

But at least he didn't kick in his sleep…at least she hoped that he didn't.


	72. Grapefruit

There was no reason to call it a grapefruit.

It may have been a fruit but it neither looked nor tasted like grapes. At least Sho figured that it didn't taste like grapes. He didn't really like fruit all the much, he'd eat it when he had to, but citrus fruits were the worst. The worst things on this entire world to eat. That was why he didn't have a grapefruit. It smelled like citrus so it must have, therefore, also tasted like citrus.

"You wouldn't like this, Sho, it's a citrus fruit." Said Mob. Sho had been staring at her breakfast all morning. She didn't know why. He had waffles. Waffles with chocolate chips and powdered sugar. She wanted some…but dad was having a grapefruit so she would too.

"I know it's a citrus fruit and I don't want any. I'm not dumb." Said Sho. He stabbed his food with his fork. He wouldn't have eaten that even if someone paid him all the money in the world. Why people ate citrus he didn't understand. It just tasted bad and made your mouth itch. Who would want to eat something like that?

"I wasn't calling you dumb, I would never call you dumb, I just saw how you were looking at my grapefruit and I thought that you might want to try it." Said Mob as she dug her spoon into her grapefruit half. She didn't much like this but dad did. Sho would hate this. This was not sweet. Fruit was meant to be sweet and this was not sweet but it was a fruit…a grapefruit…even though it neither looked nor tasted like a grape. Maybe it was just named to confuse people, like apple jacks cereal which did not taste like apples or was shaped like jacks.

Things had weird names, sometimes.

"You should. It's good for you." Said Suzuki. He didn't know why he subjected himself to meals with the children. They were so quarrelsome even at this hour of the morning. Or maybe Son was just being ridiculous again.

"I don't care if it's good for me. It's still gross." Said Sho. He never ate things that were good for him and he was fine. Besides, if he ever got sick then Fukuda could just fix him up. He didn't see why he needed to eat gross stuff like that just to be healthy, anyway. If things were meant to be good for you then they would taste good. Things that tasted good wanted to be eaten and things that did not taste good did not want to be eaten. That was why he wasn't supposed to eat the green berries that grew at the park with the ducks. Mom had told him that a while ago. If it tasted bad then it wasn't meant to be eaten…but then she went and tried to make him eat an orange.

"It's not that bad." Said Mob as she picked at hers with her fork. She'd eaten worse things before. This wasn't bad it was just….unpleasant. The color was too red, like blood, and it smelled too….citrusy? Maybe she had that in common with Sho. If this were sweeter then maybe it would have been better…but dad liked it so it was ok.

"Nobody's making you eat it now are they? They are not." Said Suzuki. He didn't really care what the children ate just so long as they didn't bother him about being hungry. They could eat sugar ten times a day and he wouldn't have cared. He got the feeling, though, that this was something that he should have cared about. Masami had always tried to make them eat food that could be classified as something other than sugar. His own mother had always been on him to eat what she wanted him to eat, too. As a child he had been content to live off of white rice, pickles, and nato. That was all that he would eat for every meal for a time. It had been before his parents had been afraid of him…he had been younger than the children were now. He wouldn't have minded if they decided to live off of white rice, pickles, and nato. He wondered if he should have. Maybe he gave the children too much freedom…though he did not want to deal with them when they were upset.

They could barely follow the rules that they were given as it was.

They didn't need new ones. They had enough of them. Besides, it was best to pick his battles with Son. Daughter…there were so few battles when it came to Daughter. Son was a whole other story. He wondered if he had been as contrary and willful as Son was as a child. He could only reflect on his own behavior through his own eyes, of course, and it wasn't like his parents were around to answer any questions.

"I know that I don't have to eat it I just don't know why you guys want to eat it. It doesn't look or smell like grapes. It's like an orange but worse. I don't understand it at all." said Sho

"I don't understand it either, really. It's just…it's like you said, an orange but not. It's not bad, though, just different." Said Mob

"It's better than an orange, it's less sweet." Said Suzuki. The children had the palettes of, well, children. He didn't understand them and never would. He hadn't even been able to understand the other children when he, himself, had been a child. They had always been so strange to him. The way they spent all their money on candy and arcade games….it had never made sense to him. Candy was too sweet and arcades were much too crowded and noisy. Maybe he had just never been a child. That made sense. He had never once felt like one…that he could remember, anyway. His memories of his early life were not terribly clear.

"Yes, it is. Much less sweet." Said Mob. This was definitely less sweet than an orange…but she asked for it and she was going to eat it. She wished that she had some milk to wash it down with…or maybe not. Milk and orange juice were a terribly combination so maybe milk and grapefruit were a terrible combination too. She wondered what the point of fruit that was not sweet was. Mom said that things that tasted good were good for you and things that you weren't supposed to eat tasted bad. That was why they weren't supposed to eat those green berries that grew in the park with the ducks. Sho ate them once when she was little, still little enough to ride in a stroller, and he ended up getting sick. She wondered if people were meant to eat grapefruits. They didn't taste like they were meant to be eaten.

"You guys are so weird." Said Sho. He ate his own breakfast. Dad and big sis were so weird. Mom understood him. Well she sort of understood him. He wondered if she still understood him…he hadn't seen her in so long. He wondered what she was eating for breakfast. He wondered if it was even breakfast time in Japan. He wondered if she was even still in Japan. He wondered…he wondered a lot of things about mom.

He wondered about mom.

He missed mom.

Dad was not a good substitute for her. He was….sometimes he would be nice to them. Sometimes he could be ok. Like on his birthday…or big sis' birthday….he gave them a lot of stuff and he took them a lot of places….but he never did the stuff that mom did. Not to Sho, anyway. He never played with him, just big sis, and they never watched TV anywhere or went anywhere and he never did that thing that mom did when she reached down and patted him on the head and told him that everything was ok without even using words….

Dad was never like that with him, only big sis, but he was getting better with that.

Accepting that. Dealing with that. The fact that big sis had dad and he had mom…but he didn't have mom…but he at least had still had mom for a little bit. That was enough…not really. He just told himself that it was enough. He just told himself what he wanted to hear, like how big sis was always telling him what he wanted to hear, but in telling himself what he wanted to hear he was actually making it all worse…

He thought about something else.

"Really. It's like the worst parts of all citrus fruits came together to make that." Said Sho

"You haven't even tried it." Said Mob. She wondered how many more bites it would be until it was enough. Mom had a rule where she had to at least taste what was served to her. The rule at school, back when they'd had school, was to clean her plate because there were people starving in other countries and somehow instead of sending them the food they made it better by eating all of the food. Their tutors let them eat if they were hungry, only not ice cream ever again because Sho had left a whole box of popsicles on the table and their English primers had gotten ruined. Also not peaches because their math tutor had a deathly peach allergy. Also not chips because their Japanese history tutor hated the sound of crunching. Dad had the least amount of rules about food. They could ask for whatever they wanted but he wanted them to eat everything they got so they didn't bother him about being hungry.

"I don't have to try it to know that it'll suck." Said Sho

"Don't complain about food that you're not being forced to eat…and don't use that word." Said Suzuki. At some point his Son had discovered the word 'sucks' as a substitute for worse profanity…and he was getting to that age, now wasn't he? The age when he would curse at everything….and other such adolescent annoyances. He wished that there was some way to skip the children ahead through adolescence. They'd had more birthday, he had an eight year old and a seven year old now, and he did not want to deal with the in between years. The last gasps of their childhood. Soon they'd be teenagers and then adults and then he could finally have a minute of peace.

"But it does suck." Said Sho. Sometimes things sucked. Sometimes it sucked when you woke up and your dad told you that you were moving again. Sometimes it sucked when your sister chased you around with a bar of soap and made you take a bath. Sometimes it sucked when you went to your drawings because you didn't get a chance to finish them all but a lot of them had gone missing. Sometimes it sucked when you wanted to spend the day digging holes and seeing what was in the ground but instead your dad called someone to teach you something dumb like math or history or English or Japanese or whatever. Sometimes stuff sucked and Sho was not afraid to say when it sucked. It wasn't like he was saying any bad words…and he knew a lot of them.

"You haven't even tried it…and don't say sucks." Said Mob. Even though 'sucks' was not a bad word in the least bit. Sho had said worse words, a lot worse words, when dad wasn't around. Not that Mob was ok with Sho talking like that. She wished that he wouldn't. She wished that he would…be a lot better than how he was…a lot of the time. But she still loved him. She would always love him. Even if he was kind of a complainer sometimes.

"I don't have to." Said Sho crossing his arms. He hit the table on accident when he did that but big sis caught his fork with her powers before it could hit the ground. He wished that she hadn't. He wished that she hadn't shown off like that. She showed off sometimes even though she totally said that she wasn't.

"Do too." Said Mob. She knew this fight. They could get stuck in this for what felt like hours. She knew that she and Sho were not supposed to fight…but he was being kind of ridiculous. Kind of very ridiculous. Dad did not like it when he got like this…and neither did she.

"Do not." Said Sho. She could hold this up for hours or even days. Well so could he. She did not get to win at this, too. She won at everything. She won at having powers and she won at staring contests and she won at finishing her breakfast first and she won at having a dad and she just…he was tired of her winning all the time!

"Do too." Said Mob. She wished that he would just come off of it already. He could be so…so…she didn't want to say it. Mean, sometimes, but not now. Now he was being kind of….annoying. But she didn't even think to call him that. He was her little brother. She was his big sister. He could call her bossy and annoying and all of that stuff. She could not call him that back. Dad said those mean things to him all the time. He did not need that from her too.

"Do not." Said Sho. She did not get to win. He did not have to try something to know that it was gross and he would complain about whatever he wanted to! Even food that he had never tried before. She did not get to tell him what to feel or how to feel it and neither could dad. Dad could not tell him that his feelings were wrong and that he needed to get rid of them. Neither did big sis. She never said it to his face like dad did but she was always telling him how to act and how to be. That was the same as telling him that his feelings were wrong and everything about him was wrong and…and stuff….

"Do-" said Mob. She did not like this one bit. She did not like the way he was being and she did not like the way she was feeling because of the way that he was being. She was annoyed and she felt like he was being annoying and she was mad at herself for even feeling like that. She did not like this and she wanted their fight to end and also she wanted to be done with breakfast and just…back to normal. Back to the way she and Sho were meant to be. Back to being best friends because they were brother and sister and brothers and sisters were supposed to be best friends.

"Son, stop complaining about foods that nobody is making you eat. Daughter, stop encouraging him. Both of you find something else to talk about because this is becoming tedious and draining." Said Suzuki. That was quite enough. He hated it when they were quarrelsome and he hated their debates even more. Not the fascinating ones, no, the ones like this. The ones they went around and around and around. He hated it when they went around and around on that ever spinning wheel. He did not need the annoyance, not today, not when he had all sorts of idiots to sort out. He did not want idiots at home to deal with too…not that this was his home, no, just a place to stay…and not that his children were idiots…no….they just acted like that sometimes. Even Daughter…and he had expected something better than that from Daughter.

"Yes dad. Sorry dad. We won't fight anymore." Said Mob. She did not want dad to be mad at them. Dad had enough to be upset about. He had been telling her, before, that the people at the third division were really bad at their jobs. He didn't say that it made him super upset but Mob could tell that he was. In his aura and the way he talked to her. Sometimes he told her about his troubles. When they were watching TV late at night or sometimes even when he let her sleep next to him. Those weren't super often, he was a lot more likely to kick her out of bed than let her stay, but sometimes she laid next to him in bed and he just started saying stuff.

Like that she needed to pick her people wisely or they would be useless and just drag her down.

She knew that he wasn't just giving her advice but also that he was telling her what was bothering him. She had trouble reading people, most people, but not dad. Maybe because dad was the person she spent the most time with besides Sho. Sho…she didn't even know if Sho understood himself. She figured that she had to be able to understand someone in this world so she had might as well be able to understand her own dad. Even if he didn't understand her much, too, it seemed. She was an enigma, he called her, because she was a girl he said. He said that her thoughts were operating from a completely different place than his was. Because she was little and she was a girl.

He said that when Sho got older they would understand each other better but because she was a girl she would also be very confusing to him and he would always be confusing to her.

Even though not only did she understand him that wasn't a fair way to think, either. She was a girl but being a girl didn't make her an alien or something…did it? Boys were so confusing sometimes. They were loud and they fought and did dangerous things like that time when they were at a theme park but not a Disney park and Sho got yelled at in English because he and another boy were walking, well trying to walk, on the railing for the lines and they could have gotten hurt. Sho did stupid stuff, dangerous stuff, when other boys were around sometimes. Boys were just like that when they got together…so maybe girls and boys really were so very different.

She didn't know.

She also didn't know why Sho reached across the table, took her grapefruit off of her plate, and then took a bite out of it. His eyes went wide when he took a bite out of it, and he looked like he was going to throw up maybe, and he also looked like he was going to spit on her…but he didn't. He threw her grapefruit rind at her, he had taken a bite out of it for some reason, but he did not throw up.

His mouth was super red.

"There. Now I can complain about it for as long as I want." Said Sho. His mouth was itchy. His throat was itchy. The inside of his mouth tasted like what he would imagine death would taste like. He stuck out his tongue but the air just made his mouth itchier. He wondered what would happen if the itching never went away. He was about ready to pick up his fork and start scratching the inside of his mouth until there wasn't any skin left to itch.

"You're ridiculous." Said Suzuki. He got up from the table and left the children to the work of being children. He could not wait until they were no longer children. Adults. If things were bad now he did not want to think about what their teenage years would be. Maybe he should just wait it out in some sort of bunker…on the North Pole….beneath the Arctic Ocean….totally cut off from the world. He would weather the worth of their years and then they would become adults and they would become something better than what they were now.

On his way out he picked up one of Son's drawings off the floor.

There was dark blue and then light blue. This was an underwater picture. In the picture were two domes. One of which was pink and had what looked like a representation of Son himself, the red hair gave it away, and the other one had a representation of Daughter. The triangle body was the universal symbol for female. There was pink, too, a lot of it. Domed in under water cities.

That was his Son.

He wondered what the world would look like when Son inherited it. They would build something together, maybe, something worthy of them. Of what they were. Something…perhaps. One day. When he grew up and grew out of whatever amazingly annoying phase he was stuck in right now. The phase that made him quarrel with his sister, act ridiculous, and spit so loudly that he could be heard down the hall.

"Sho, stop spiting. Come on, today after classes we were going to-" said Mob

"I can't stop spitting!" said Sho. The itchiness and the bad taste in his mouth were not going away. If anything the itchiness was spreading across his face and down his neck. He was crying a little, too, because of how itchy he was. He scraped his tongue across his teeth hard. He chewed the inside of his mouth. That didn't help either.

He heard the sink turn on.

"Here. Maybe some water will help." Said Mob. He hated citrus fruits. He would not even taste citrus gum. That didn't mean that he had to spit all over the table and make dad leave. She wished that dad had stayed…sort of. She liked being with dad when he was in a good mood…and there was a higher chance of him being in a good mood if he was with her. Dad was in a bad mood sometimes when he came back from work. He would be in an even worse mood than normal when he got home thanks to Sho and the ridiculous way he was when it came to citrus….no. She could not be mean to him even in her head. She was his big sister, she would not let herself think mean thoughts about her.

"It won't go away." said Sho as best as he could. Talking was getting kind of hard, too. His throat was scratchy and his eyes were itchy and watery, too, and it was getting hard to breathe, too.

"You shouldn't get yourself so worked up, it's only a fruit. I know that it was weird and gross and tasted nothing like a grape at all but you don't have to get yourself all worked up and stuff." Said Mob. She was kind of…tired. She was tired and it was only seven in the morning. Well seven forty five…or maybe more like eight, then. Too early to get into this with her brother. They had school stuff to do anyway and she wanted to get done with it so they could go off and do something fun.

"It's….terrible." said Sho. He tried to drink the water but he just ended up coughing it up…and then he just kept on coughing. Big sis hit him on the back. She wasn't helping…and he was not getting himself all worked up. No, this was different. It had always been bad, his mouth had always gotten itchy, when he ate citrus fruit but….but it had never been as bad as this before.

"Sho…you're getting all spotty…" said Mob. She took back all the means things that she had said and thought about him. This was all her fault. She had been much too mean this morning and now he was getting sick. He had…she didn't know what he had but he was coughing a lot and his skin was all splotchy. This was bad and scary and she still wished that dad would have stayed because this was scary and she didn't know what was happening or what she was supposed to do and-

The kitchen table flipped over.

The fridge fell forward.

She didn't know if it was her or Sho and she…she was getting scared….and she didn't care if she got scared and dad saw and got mad because then if dad saw and got mad then….then he would at least have been there. He would have been there and he would have known what to do because even if he was mean sometimes he always knew what to do.

"Call….F-Fu-Fuku-Fukuda…" said Sho. He was scared. He was scared and the kitchen was broken and he didn't know how much of that was him and how much of that was big sis and he didn't care. He just didn't want to die. He wondered if this was what it felt like to die. He wondered if he was going to stop breathing and then die of not breathing…or even he would maybe die of itching if that was something that people could die of.

He didn't know.

All he knew was that he needed Fukuda. He needed Fukuda right then and there…and big sis went off to call him…and left him all alone. The room shook less without her in it…but it was still shaking a little…and then at least that was him shaking it and if he died then he could at least die knowing that he'd had powers….

He didn't die.

But he was not allowed to ever have citrus ever again.

"I knew it. Since you were a little more than two years old I knew it. You're allergic to citrus. We knew it." Said Fukuda as he finished up as best as he could. Sho had been….he had been in a bad way. Thank God that Shigeko called him when she had. How could Suzuki just let his Son suffer like that? Just leave his kids all alone when one of them was like that?

"Was I going to die?" asked Sho. He felt better. He could talk and breath but his eyes were still watery. That may have had to do with how…how it had been so scary…even though he was not supposed to be scared of anything. He was supposed to be brave. He was…he was supposed to be a lot of things. He had failed to be all of those things…

"Nope. You're going to be just fine little guy. No concussions, contusions, of abrasions." Said Fukuda. He said it with much more levity than he felt. He said it like this was all normal. Sho had never gotten along with citrus…and it had never been that bad before. That kid…that poor little kid…he had been all alone…well almost all alone. A seven year old all alone with only his eight year old sister in charge. Shigeko may have been older, now, and she may have been unusually responsible but she was still only eight years old.

He should have been there.

Masami….she would never have forgiven him if she knew….not that he would tell her. She checked in about once every few months to make sure that the kids were alive and to ask how progress on getting Sho to her was going. It had been almost a year since she had made her escape. She was teaching English and living in some nondescript one room. Not the best place for Sho….but any place was better than this. Better than almost dying….maybe and exaggeration and maybe not…he didn't know. He was a healer, he could just heal when something was wrong, he didn't have to know specifically what was wrong and how bad. He just healed.

Poor kid.

"Is he better yet?" asked Mob. They were in the living room now. The kitchen was a mess…and she was not about to leave Sho's side even though she knew that she needed to fix the mess that she had made. She didn't want to be away from Sho. She didn't want to be all alone without Sho…and she would have been if Fukuda hadn't come in time…and it was all her fault for being mean to him…

She would never be mean to her little brother, even in her head, ever again.

She didn't know what she would have done without Sho. She would have been all alone with dad…which a lot of the time was just being all alone end of discussion. She had no mom and…and she almost had no little brother, too. She would have only dad…and she loved dad…but she also wanted to have Sho, too.

"Yup. He's all better now. What about you? Any concussions-" said Fukuda

"No. No concussions, contusions, or abrasions. I'm fine. Sho was the one who needed you." Said Mob. She was fine. Fukuda could see that she was fine. Sho was the one who hadn't been fine. Sho was the one who had needed him. Sho. Always Sho. Always think about Sho and…and how wonderful he was…and not how annoying he could be.

She should not have been thinking those sorts of thoughts about her own little brother.

"Hey, that's my line." Said Fukuda. He reached over and patted her on the head. She seemed…closed off. Even for her. It made sense. She'd had a scare. She'd been all alone with her brother when that had happened. He wanted…he wanted to always be there for her. For both of them. He had promised Masami that he would look after her children…and he had been doing a piss poor job of it lately.

He had promised Masami many things.

There was the door. The Awakened were out there….but they had moved. They had moved…he could only tell that they were not at their posts. He did not have Shigeko's range. He wasn't anywhere near her level. She was…she was something else…and she was so bright and…and her aura was so bright…

Shigeko was too hard to hide.

The door was right there. Sho was right there. He was there. He had made so many promises to Masami. He had promised her that he would….and the door was right there…and from what he could tell the door was unguarded…because they had been afraid of an eight year old girl…and it would have been so easy to….

"How about you and I get some air? Shigeko, you hold down the fort." Said Fukuda. He just needed to get Sho out that door. He'd work on the logistics of how to get him to his mother later. He just needed to get his son out the door.

Her son.

He just had to get her son out the door. Out the door and then…and then back to his mother where he belonged. Shigeko….she was such a good kid but there was no way to take her, to hide, her, and there was no way that Suzuki would have let her slip through his fingers. She was his pride and joy. Sho was just the person he had made and then been disappointed by…

Suzuki would be pissed but he'd get over it.

"We're not supposed to leave yet." Said Mob as she followed them to the genkan. Well it was more like a rug they had put on the floor near the door to serve as a proper genkan. She did not want to be alone….and she did not want to give dad yet another reason to be angry with them. If he found out that they missed school…he would not have been happy with them at all.

And also she did not want to be alone.

"Oh, we'll just be out there for a minute. Your brother just needs some air." Said Fukuda. Just out the door. Out the door and then he could figure out the rest later. Out the door and into the city and then-

"We're not supposed to leave yet. It's a rule." Said Mob. She saw her aura, there, and she knew that she should not have been letting it show like that. Power was nothing without control. Conceal, don't feel. All of that sort of stuff. She knew that she had to control her powers….

Sometimes it was so hard.

"Rules are made to be broken, right?" said Fukuda as he slipped back into his shoes. Out the door. Out the door and…and then he could figure out the rest later. Back to Japan. Back to Masami. He had a head start. Suzuki was busy with the debacle that had happened at the division headquarters. Time was on his side. All he had to do was get on a plane…passports…or a boat….passports…or maybe-

"I-I don't know…" said Mob. Rules were not made to be broken. Rules were made to be followed otherwise your dad got mad at you and then he liked you less and didn't spend time with you…and that was sad. That was the sort of thing that made you wake up feeling all sad and stuff….and then he wouldn't even let you be near him when you felt like that because he was mad at you because you broke so many rules….

"Don't worry, we'll be right back. You just hang out here and wait for your teacher, ok?" asked Fukuda. He just had to go out the door and then-

Something held him in place.

"Don't leave me all alone. Don't go outside and leave me all alone. We can't go anywhere anyway. Thank you for helping us, Fukuda, but we can't go with you. You can go now." Said Mob. She did not want to be alone. She wanted her little brother…and she wanted her dad to love her…and she wanted everything to be ok…and it wasn't ok. She had still broken the kitchen and Sho had still gotten hurt and dad would still be mad at her…and she didn't want him to be any more mad at her then he was most certainly going to be because of all of this…

"Right. I wouldn't want to keep you. Goodbye Sho, goodbye Shigeko. Don't hesitate to call if you need me." Said Fukuda. Shigeko was adopted. He knew that Shigeko was adopted. She had zero blood relation to Suzuki…but in that moment she had looked just like her father. Like she had been dismissing him. Before…she had clung to his leg and begged him to stay…when she had been younger. Now she was…she was ordering him around like she was her father ordering one of his subordinates around…

She looked just like her father.

Her aura was touching his and for a moment he forgot that she was just an eight year old girl. She was as strong as an adult, as powerful as an adult, actually she was more powerful than most adults. Himself included. She could have thrown him across the room. She could have picked him up and thrown him and there would have been nothing that he could have done. He wasn't psychokinetic. He had no way to stop her if she decided to…to be even more like her father than she was now…

She was an eight year old girl.

"Goodbye, Fukuda." Said Mob. He was looking at her like he looked at dad and he was talking to her like she was dad…and she didn't like it at all. She didn't like hearing that from Fukuda. He wasn't one of the weird aura guys, he was someone she had known for her entire life, and she wanted…she wanted to go with him…or she wanted him to stay and play…

But both options would have gotten her in trouble.

And they were in enough trouble.

So after Fukuda left she took Sho to the kitchen, flipped the table back to the way it was supposed to be, and then waited. She sat and she waited and she tried her best to be calm and to keep her aura and her emotions calm. Sho was doing a better job of it than her, though…

"Big sis?" asked Sho. He didn't know what he wanted to say. Maybe he wanted to tell her that he was sorry that he had freaked her out. That he was sorry that he had eaten the grapefruit even though he knew that he would end up getting sick. He also wanted to tell her that it was her fault that he had gotten sick because he had been right, he knew that he would have been right, and that she shouldn't have taken dad's side like that…

"Yes, little brother?" asked Mob. She wanted to tell him that she was sorry that she had let him get sick. She was sorry that she had been so mean to her. She wanted to tell him that she cared about him and that he was her best friend and that she never wanted to be without him. She exorcised the mean thoughts from her mind. Thoughts like the fact that nobody had made him eat the grapefruit and that she had, in fact, told him not to. Thoughts that she knew she was not supposed to have about her own little brother.

She loved him so much.

"Grapefruit sucks." Said Sho. He, for once, did not want to fight with her. Not when she was like that. Not when she was sitting like dad and talking like dad and all of that stuff…and he did not want to fight. He just wanted the day to go on as normal…and not just because he had almost died from eating a grapefruit.

"It does…it really does…but you know what I don't understand?" said Mob. She wanted things to go back to the way that they were supposed to be. She wanted them to go back to being best friends. They were supposed to be best friends. They were brother and sister so of course they were supposed to be best friends.

"What?" asked Sho. He wanted them to go back to being normal. To being big sis and Sho. He wanted her to go back to being big sis, even it meant that she was bossy and annoying, because she was sounding and acting way too much like dad. He didn't want her to be like dad. Dad was like dad and that was enough of a dad to last him for the rest of his life.

"Why do they call it a grapefruit in the first place?" said Mob. She smiled, well she tried to, because his wanted them to be happy again…to be normal again…for things to go back to normal again…or as normal as things could possibly be in their messed up family.

"Yeah….there's no reason to call it a grapefruit." Said Sho. He smiled, too, because…because she was being normal again. She was agreeing with him. She agreed that it was a weird and gross food. Dad liked it but she didn't. That was good. That was perfect.

She didn't know, either, why it was called a grapefruit….and for some reason that was awesome. She was still his big sis.


	73. Shoes

Mob only had one pair of shoes that still fit.

Sho had none.

"I am not wearing those." Said Sho with his arms crossed. It was too hot for winter boots. Those were the only shoes he had that fit. Those and house slippers but he was not going to wear house slippers outside. Well he would have if that wouldn't have ruined them. Anything was better than what his big sis had decided to propose.

He was not wearing his sister's shoes!

"Come on, little brother, please? I want to go to Coney Island. We've never been there and the internet said that it was fun but we can't go unless you're wearing shoes." Said Mob. School was done with, well what they called school, and now they could go and have fun. They needed to do something fun. They had been inside all day and the day before that and the one before that. Dad said that it wasn't safe for them to go outside.

And now it was.

But they couldn't go anywhere if Sho didn't put her shoes on. They fit him just fine, she didn't see what the problem was. They weren't her pink shoes, those had broken apart a while ago, these were blue. Well they were her blue Elsa shoes but blue was still a boy's color…not that she understood why boys were so weird about colors. Pink was just fine and boys could like it just as much as girls. Girls were actually luckier than boys when it came to colors, they could like all of them, while boys had to follow a bunch of stupid rules.

"No. I am not wearing your shoes! I'm a boy!" said Sho. Nope. No way. He was not wearing her shoes. He did not want to be made fun of. Also her feet had been in them. You were not supposed to share shoes like that. It was gross even by his standards. He would rather have tied bread bags around his feet than wore his big sister's old shoes that she had been sweating in and also had a princess on the side…though it was cool that they lit up when you walked….

"I know that you're a boy Sho, we just took a bath last night, but you have to wear shoes. Yours don't fit you anymore and it's too hot to wear snow boots. Please? Come on, there's rollercoasters. You love rollercoasters." Said Mob. She did not want to be in this house for a moment longer and she knew that he didn't either. He could have worn his old shoes…but they hurt him really bad and they were going to be walking around all day….but then again her feet would be hurting too.

She was giving him her last pair of good shoes.

Hers didn't fit so well either, the front was coming off and she had glued the bottom back on, but she didn't want a new pair of real shoes. Mom had gotten her those shoes. Mom had gotten her those and she had picked them out with love and…and she was not going to just get rid of something that mom gave her. Dad always made them throw away things that were broken or they had stopped using. She was not throwing away the last pair of shoes that her mom had gotten her.

She'd rather Sho wore them until they fell apart.

Besides, she had her dress up shoes. She had a bunch of pairs of dress up shoes and they weren't so bad. Ok, they were pinchy and slippery and the plastic made her feet all warm and gross and also the heel was hard to walk in but they were fine. She didn't want a new pair of walking shoes…and even if she asked for one those aura guys were bad at picking out shoes. It had taken them almost a day to come back with boots for her and Sho last time she had sent them out for stuff. She couldn't buy her own shoes or clothes or other stuff….could she? She didn't know how. That was one of those things that mom knew how to do.

Mom was gone.

And Mob was not her mom.

"I'll wear snow boots then. It's not that hot out. I feel fine." Said Sho

"You only feel fine because there's air conditioning here. I know it's only spring here but it's super hot and your feet are going to be too hot and then you'll get all mad at me." Said Mob

"I'd rather be way too hot than wear your shoes! Why can't I just wear my shoes? I don't care that they don't fit anymore and that they're way too hot and that they have a hole in them." Said Sho

"Because they're too small, they hurt you, and they have a hole in them. I can't let you walk around like that. Come on, I want you to be comfortable. Your feet will feel better in my old shoes. They don't fit me anymore but I know that they'll fit you. Please? I want to go outside. Don't you want to go outside? And Coney Island sounds fun. A whole island that's an amusement park? Doesn't that sound fun? Or maybe we could go somewhere else. Just please, Sho, put on my old shoes." Said Mob. She held her shoes in her hands and tried to hand them to Sho.

He wouldn't take them.

"I'd rather wear bread bags on my feet than your shoes." Said Sho. He was not wearing her shoes. He was not a girl. He was not wearing girl's shoes. He was not wearing girl's shoes that she had sweated in and stuff. He did not need to wear her shoes. He had his own shoes. He had his own shoes that his mom had gotten him before she left last year. She had gotten him those shoes and he could still cram his feet into them. He was not sending those worker guys out to get him more shoes. They picked out bad shoes and also they were not his mom.

Mom was gone.

And big sis was not mom!

"Bread bags? But then where will we keep the bread?" asked Mob

"We're out of bread!" said Sho

"Oh. Then tell those weird aura guys to get us some…and maybe get you some shoes, too, because you don't want to wear mine." Said Mob

"I wouldn't wear your shoes if the world was flooded with pee and they had stilts on the bottoms." Said Sho

"That's mean. There's nothing wrong with my shoes. You can't wear your shoes. You're going to end up getting hurt. I don't want that." Said Mob. She was not going to get mad or anything like that. She was just going to keep on being nice. She was going to keep on being nice and being a good big sister. Mom would have wanted that. Dad wanted that. She was a good Daughter. She had to be a good Daughter and that meant being a good big sister and taking care of her little brother.

"And you won't get hurt in those?" asked Sho pointing at the dress up shoes that she was wearing. Dad said that her shoes were ridiculous but also that you weren't supposed to ever talk about what a girl was wearing. Ever. Even though her shoes were so dumb. She always slid around when she tried to run in them. Dad said never to tell big is that her shoes were dumb. Girls hated that.

He didn't care what she hated.

Because she didn't care what he hated.

"I probably will but that doesn't matter. I just want you to be comfortable." Said Mob. She would probably hurt herself in these, she slid around just trying to walk around this apartment, and even now she probably would have been sliding around if not for the carpet they had put here to make a pretend genkan because people in this country kept their shoes on inside for some reason. She didn't care if she ended up falling down and breaking all of her bones. She just wanted Sho to be happy.

"Stop being like that…" said Sho. He hated it when she got like that. Like he was the only person that mattered in the whole world or whatever. Sometimes he wished that he had a regular big sister. The kind that argued with you and said that you were annoying and stuff like that. He had seen families like that where the big sister was just as much of a jerk as the little brother.

It would have been better if she had been a jerk right back.

At least then he wouldn't have felt so bad about the way he could be sometimes. At least then they would have been even. She kissed up to dad and showed off with her powers and bossed him around like she was their mom but she wasn't really a jerk. Not like how he was a jerk. How he could be a jerk. Like now he was being such a big jerk towards her and all she wanted was for him to be happy…

She said that.

She was always saying that she wanted him to be happy, that all she wanted was for him to be happy, but then she went and bossed him around which she knew made him all happy. She was always hanging out with dad, too, when he was around and they were always so boring together. He was tired of that. He was tired of it always being big sis and dad. It wasn't fair. It used to be fair back when they'd had a mom but not they didn't have a mom and the whole thing was just so unfair…the most unfair thing ever…

"Like what?" asked Mob

"Talking about how much you love me and how you want me to be happy and stuff." Said Sho

"Oh…that bothers you? Why? That's how I feel and it's a good way to feel. I love you and you love me. I don't want anything other than your happiness and you don't want anything other than mine. We're brother and sister and best friends, too." Said Mob. She felt that way, she really did, even when Sho was being mean to her. Even when he was being so mean and so difficult that she just wanted to-to-to-well she wasn't going to. She was not going to just lose control like that. She was not going to lose control even a little bit. She pulled her aura back in close and tried to keep her feelings calm and level. She loved Sho, she really did, and when you loved someone it didn't matter if they acted terribly towards you. You still loved them and you cared about them and you never, ever, left them.

She was not mom.

She was not going to leave. Even though she totally could have. Even though she could have taken back her shoes and left Sho all alone…she wasn't going to….and she was a bad person for ever even feeling that way. That was not the sort of person that she was. She did not think mean thoughts about her own little brother. She loved him. She knew what it was to be alone. She knew what it was to have no one. She knew what it was to look around and to have everything be different to be all alone-

She had never been alone in her life.

But she got the feeling that she knew the feeling. She dreamt about it sometimes. She's small and everything is big and scary and she doesn't know anyone, even her own dad, and it's just…the worst. She doesn't ever want to be alone and she doesn't ever want Sho to know what it is to be alone. She cares about him and she will not ever be the sort of person who would be mean to him.

It didn't matter how he treated her.

"It bothers me because you're always talking like that. Like you would set yourself on fire or something if I told you that I was cold." Said Sho. He was so mad at her sometimes…and he didn't know why. Well he did. She was dad's favorite person in the whole world and because she was there he was all alone. She had their whole family, now, and then she still told him that she loved him the most in the whole world. That hurt. He wished that she was more of a jerk. She was always trying to make him happy and stuff…and he was sick of it! He wished that she would do the same stuff to him that he did to her. Sho wished that she would just yell at him or call him names or pull his hair or drink all of his milk when his back was turned or something.

But she didn't.

And she never would because she was born right and he was born wrong. People weren't supposed to be like he was. Mad all the time. Well sometimes he was happy or something for a little bit but he was mostly just mad. Being mad made him do mean stuff, dumb stuff, stuff that he regretted the minute that it was done with. He didn't understand…and he sort of did…but he also didn't…

It was complicated.

"I wouldn't set myself on fire because then I would be dead. I'd give you my clothes, though, if we were lost in the woods in winter or something. Or maybe on a mountain and the air was thin and cold and we were going to freeze. I can use my powers to keep myself warm, sort of, so I wouldn't need my clothes. I would give them to you and then try and save us both." Said Mob

"…..I wouldn't wear your stupid clothes anyway…"muttered Sho

"But you would freeze!" gasped Mob. She could just see it. It was like that movie she and Sho saw on TV about the people who got lost in the woods in the winter and then they started to eat each other…or something…something bad like that. Something that she did not want to remember. Why did they make movies like that? And why did they put them on TV? Not being able to understand what the people was saying was actually worse, it made the whole thing worse, and she wants to stop thinking about this. she wanted to reach out and take Sho's hand like she had when they had been up late watching scary movies….but now was not the time. She knew what happened when he got like this. She really didn't like it at all when he got like this. He could be so nice sometimes, like they were real best friends and not just brother and sister best friends, kind of like how dad could be really nice sometimes. Maybe Sho got it from dad. They were father and son after all.

Dad could be mean one minute and then nice the next.

Mom was nice all the time but then she ran away.

Mob hoped that she was more like dad than mom. She thought about it, sometimes, getting away. When she felt trapped. When she was trapped. When it was just her and Sho and they were trapped and he wouldn't stop being a jerk and stuff and there was no way out. She thought about crawling out the window and running down the street in her bare feet even though that would have been a dumb thing to do. You were not supposed to go outside without shoes on, you were not supposed to run away from your little brother, you were not supposed to go off on your own without your little brother, and you were not supposed to go off on your own without your little brother in a country where you barely spoke the language and didn't know anyone or anything oh-

"I don't care. I don't care if I freeze to death and you have to keep me in the fridge or else I'll melt. I would never wear your stupid dumb girl's clothes even if they were the last clothes in the whole world! Even if when I walked down the street people laughed at me because I was naked!" said Sho. He knocked the shoes out of her hands and they it the rug. She looked at him for a while. Her hair did the thing where it stood up. He watched her hair float and then her shoes started to float and then the lights started to flicker.

He wasn't afraid of her.

He wasn't afraid of anything. Not even his own dad. He was not afraid of his own big sister when she got like this. She was such a bossy annoying annoyingly bossy person! There was nothing scary at all about her. He wasn't scared. There was nothing scary about her. He was fine. He was fine and she was fine and everyone was fine. He wasn't afraid at all.

He could see his aura.

"Yes you do. You do care. You care about yourself and I care about you." Said Mob. She could see his aura. She could see her aura. She could see both of their auras and how both of their auras were pushing against each other's…which was almost as bad as pushing each other….and she never wanted to push her little brother. She loved her little brother. She loved him the most out of everyone in the whole world…even if he could be kind of a jerk sometimes….

"I would rather walk around naked than wear your clothes and I would rather walk around barefoot than wear your shoes." Said Sho. He was not afraid of her or anyone else. He was not afraid at all. He was not the person who was scared. He was not scared.

"You don't mean that. I know that you don't mean that. You don't mean a word of what you just said." Said Mob. She kept her feelings inside. His aura was pushing against her and he was close enough to her that he could have pushed her…and he had in the past…and he could have pushed her again and…and then she would have just let herself get pushed….because she did not want to fight with Sho. She did not want to fight with anyone. She did not like fighting at all. She just…she just wanted to go to Coney Island!

Conceal, don't feel.

Calm down.

Exorcism of your emotions.

"I mean it. I am not wearing your shoes. I am not wearing your clothes even if we were going to freeze to death. I am going to wear my shoes and only my shoes." Said Sho

"They don't fit." Said Mob. She sounded like dad, then, when he got mad. She wasn't mad. She was not mad at all. She was just…she was just…her aura was just being weird. Her aura was being weird and she…she was fine. She was fine and this was fine and all she needed to do was to get Sho into her shoes and then they could go and have fun because they had been inside for too long…

Much too long.

"I don't care." Said Sho. He didn't. He would wear his shoes until they fell apart and then he would put them back together with glue. These were from mom. These were the last shoes that mom had ever gotten him. Mom…big sis was not their mom. She was not their mom no matter how much she wanted to be. How she was always pretending that she was.

"Yes you do." Said Mob. She was not going to lose control. She was not going to be mean. She was going to calm down and help Sho calm down and then they were going to have a nice day together. Together they'd had so many nice days before…and she wanted them to have all of the nice days. She wanted him to have all of the nice days that existed in the world.

"I don't. I don't care." Said Sho. He knew that he was being a jerk again…and she didn't want to be…but he just could not stop it. He was so mad…and he didn't even know why. Well he did. Because she was bossy. Because she had no right to boss him around. He didn't care if dad left her in charge. She was not their mom!

"Yes. Sho. You do. I want…I want us to get along…and I want you to just put my shoes on so we can go. We've been inside for days and days because of what happened…I don't know exactly what happened but dad made us stay inside so it must have been bad…and I just…I know that you want to go outside and you can't unless you're wearing shoes that fit and I want you to wear mine-" said Mob

"Why do you even care?! They're my feet and if want to wear my own shoes until they fall apart then I don't see any reason why I can't!" said Sho

"Because they're too small and you'll get blisters! And they're uncomfortable! And you have to wear my shoes!" said Mob. She was losing it. The lightbulb above them burnt out. Something hit her over the head. She should not have been losing it like that. She should have been better. She should have been a better big sister to her little brother.

She was the worst.

"You are not the boss of me! Just because dad made you the boss of me does not mean that you're the boss of me!" said Sho. He could see his aura and he could see it pushing against her aura…and her.

She took a step back.

"I am the boss of you! Dad making me the boss of you does, actually, mean that I am the boss of you! Why won't you just wear my shoes! You're being such a jerk about this! They don't even fit anymore! The only person you're hurting by being like this is you, little brother, and me because I just want you to be happy! Why are you being like this!? Why do you want to wear shoes that don't fit?!" said Mob

"Because mom got me these! Mom got me these and if I don't wear them anymore then I'll have to get rid of them! Also your shoes are girl's shoes!" shouted Sho. He wiped his eyes. He didn't know when he had started crying….or even that he had been…but he was. Big sis was crying a little too. He reached over to wipe her tears away.

She took another step back.

"Oh….I get it…." Said Mob. She did not want Sho to push her again. She took a step back. She felt…calmer. Her heart was pounding and her head was pounding and her aura was still being all weird but…but she was feeling better. She understood how he felt. He missed mom too.

They both did.

But they weren't allowed to talk to each other, or anyone else, about how much they missed her.

And it was hard.

"I….that's why I wanted you to wear mine. Because mine don't fit anymore and whenever we outgrow our stuff dad makes us get rid of it…and I don't want to do that. I don't want to get rid of something that mom gave me…I don't want to get rid of…mom…" said Mob. Even though she knew that she was breaking one of their biggest rules. They were not supposed to ever talk about mom. Dad had said so.

Dad wasn't there.

But he still made all the rules.

"Well I won't. Why should you get to keep your shoes when I'm going to have to get rid of mine? You get everything already, you know, you get everything and I get nothing." Said Sho. This wasn't fair. She got dad and she got…she got someone and he didn't have anyone. Not mom. Mom had just gone and…and he got left behind….because he was born wrong. Dad thought that he was born wrong and so did mom and big sis…she always….always rubbing it in his face that she was born right and he was born wrong. Not with words but with her powers…and the stuff she could do with them…and it wasn't fair. Nothing was fair.

"That's not true. We get the same things-" said Mob

"No we don't! You have dad and I don't have anyone! You're not mom! You don't get to pretend that you're mom just because dad puts you in charge! It's not fair how you have dad and I don't have anyone!" shouted Sho

"That…that isn't true! You have me and I have you! We have each other and we will always have each other! I am not trying to be mom….I'm really not….I just want to be there for you. I want to be there for you because…because if I'm not there for you then who will be?" said Mob. Dad didn't hate Sho like Sho kept on saying that he did…but he was not happy with Sho either. He was not happy that Sho was the way that he was…and he was never there for Sho….but that was ok. Mob was there for Sho.

She knew that she wasn't their mom and she hadn't been trying to be.

She just wanted to be the best big sister that she could be. It wasn't fair. Sho was right that it wasn't fair. Mom…she should have taken Sho with her. Then Sho could have had someone. He didn't have anyone. Just her. And she had dad and that meant that he didn't…and that wasn't very fair either. Nothing about any of this was fair.

But she was not the one who decided what was and was not fair.

"Yeah…you're right." Said Sho. If she wasn't there for him then who would be? Not dad. Dad barely even liked him….if he liked him at all. Not mom either because she had run away. It wasn't fair…a lot of stuff wasn't fair. He had no idea how to go and make it more fair. He wasn't the one who decided who got a fair deal and who didn't.

He didn't decide what was and was not fair.

"Come on, let's go outside already." Said Mob. She grabbed her good shoes with her powers and knelt down on the floor. Sho could put his own shoes on but she liked doing this for him. Maybe he was right. Maybe she was trying to be mom. Mom used to do this for them when they were little. She was gone but they at least still remembered her…and maybe that was it. Maybe the memory of her wasn't in the shoes she had bought them but in…in the way that they had her in their brains…and in how she remembered the things that mom did and then she did them too…

Maybe that was it.

She was glad that Sho understood, too, and she was glad that he finally agreed to wearing her shoes. Now they could go outside and have fun and make good memories. They could make god memories together like they had with mom…not that either of them was planning on leaving the other…but they had memories and those were for forever…or at least until you forgot them...but while they were in your head then it was like they were forever. She got Sho into his shoes and then they left just like how mom would have gotten them out the door.

Now she had no more shoes that fit. She really didn't care.


	74. Blisters

Criticizing a woman's clothing was dangerous.

Not that Daughter could have been considered a woman in any sense of the word. She was female but still just a child. He still knew, though, not to criticize what she wore. Adults or children he knew how sensitive women could be about their clothing. He didn't understand it. In nature it was the males of the species that had to put on a show to attract mates. Women really had the advantage when it came to mate selection.

Not that Daughter was anywhere near that age.

But he still knew not to question her clothing choices. She might not take it well. Masami hadn't and he hadn't even meant anything by it when he had asked her why she wore such uncomfortable shoes on their dates. She had been the one to bring it up, too, how much her feet hurt. He just asked a simple question and that turned into….something. He didn't even know what. She had just gotten very short with him and then ended their date early.

Which made no sense because she had been the one to bring up how much her feet hurt.

"Do you think that it's too late to call Fukuda? My feet really hurt." Said Daughter

"It's never too late to call him, that's what I keep him around for." Said Suzuki. They were on the couch, now, watching television. This was a documentary about the evolution of the common housecat. Something that he had chosen specifically for Daughter. She and son had an affinity for those creatures. They really were useful and fascinating…but they were not getting a pet. Thank God that Son wasn't there to start about how badly he wanted a pet. Son was asleep. This was Suzuki's time with Daughter.

She really was good company.

Even if she did complain, sometimes, though he did not blame her for complaining. Her feet were red, swollen, and covered with blisters. He wondered why women chose to wear such uncomfortable shoes. He knew that shoes that Daughter was walking around in. He had heard them slapping against the ground when she and Son played outside. They were plastic and loud and weren't good for walking if the state of her feet was anything to go off of.

He did not understand the opposite sex and he never would.

"I just don't want to wake him up. It's really late." Said Daughter. She laid her head down against his side. She was tired. That was the first sign. She leaned against him and eventually her head ended up in his lap and she closed her eyes and drifted off. Usually he carried her to her bed when that happened. Sometimes he let her sleep there if she seemed comfortable. The last thing he wanted to do was wake her up and then have her being unable to fall back asleep. It was those nights when he would put a pillow under her head and cover her with a blanket and brush the hair from her face and just watch her sleep for a short amount of time. There were times, rare ones, where he would carry her to his bed. Those were the times when she would try to move but she would wake up, grab him, and ask him not to leave her.

She was good company.

He wondered what sort of night this would be. She had been in some sort of emotional distress, before, due to a quarrel with Son. They were quarreling more and more frequently these days. He had no idea why. Maybe they were getting older. Maybe this was one of those things which preceded their oncoming adolescence. He remembered that period of his life. A lot of anger back then….

And he hadn't had a sibling to direct that anger at.

"That looks painful." Said Suzuki. She reached down and pulled up the hem of her nightgown. Well it looked more like a ball gown to him but all of her clothes looked like ball gowns. He wondered what that was about, too. She had always dressed in those sorts of things but he remembered her wardrobe having more variety. He sort of understood that. He had several copies of the same suit he cycled through. He found what he looked good in so why not have nine of the same suit? Masami had always called him ridiculous.

Daughter understood him.

As much as she was capable of understanding him, anyway. Decades separated them. Gender separated them…though for some odd reason he got on better with her than he did with Son. She was just more like him…somehow. Maybe because she had spent so much time with him…though she had always sought him out. Son used to seek him out but now those times were becoming few and far between. That was both good and bad. He was being pestered less but he also got to see fewer of Son's drawings. He had a real talent for artistic expression.

He got that from his mother.

"It is. Especially the white things." Said Daughter. She poked at one of her blisters. He shuddered. He wondered why she didn't just wake Fukuda up and demand that he heal her. That was what he was for and it wasn't as though he was far away. He had to be near, now, because through some genetic quirk Son had developed a deadly citrus allergy. Maybe Fukuda would have been too drained, maybe, since it had been quite a day.

Lots of new Scars.

"Those are blisters. They come from wearing improperly fitted shoes." Said Suzuki. He patted her on the head. Poor child.

"Oh. So then I guess that I shouldn't have Fukuda fix my feet, then, because they'll just get hurt again." said Daughter. That made sense…in a strange sort of way. There was no sense in doing the same thing over and over again, that was true, but he knew that he would never have been able to live with pain like that. He hated pain.

Pain was hard to exorcise.

"You wouldn't be in pain anymore. There's always that." Said Suzuki. He allowed his hand to meet her hair. Her hair was so soft, so very soft, that he couldn't help it. She was his child. This was not a show of weakness. If you could pet a cat then you could pet a child and since he did not have or want a cat then he had might as well pet his child. Children were kind of like pets. They were small and made messes and were underfoot all the time. Kind of like pets.

Their presence was much more enjoyable than that of a pet.

"There is but I don't want to make more work for him. I don't want him to get too tired to use his powers. Sho might accidentally eat more citrus. If he eats more citrus then he could almost die again…that had been scary…and I know that I'm not supposed to get scared of things but Sho almost died and that…that was scary. I don't want Sho to die." Said Daughter. He could see her aura. That had been disturbing to her.

For him as well.

He expected attempts on his life. He even expected his enemies to go after his children. Even an accident would not have been out of the realm of possibility….but that had not been an accident. It had been a grapefruit. One of the best of all fruits, not sweet at all, and he had enjoyed them….before Son almost died. Before he had almost lost his only child. The only thing of Masami he had left. Her child. Their child. The one that they had made together.

He had taken one of Son's drawings to work with him.

And that could have been the last of Son's drawings that he had ever seen. That he had ever taken to work with him. That he had ever looked down at when his day grew long and tedious. He had left with two children and could have come home to only one. He had come so close to losing his child, his son, and it had been disturbing.

He would allow Daughter her emotions.

He understood her.

"Your brother is not going to die. I won't allow it." Said Suzuki

"You can tell people not to die?" asked Daughter

"I can do everything in my power to keep your brother alive." Said Suzuki. Death was one of the few things that he had no control over. He could have died in the last attempt on his life, a suitcase bomb, but he hadn't. His Son could have died from something as simple as eating a grapefruit. His Daughter could have died that evening when she slipped on the garden path because of those ridiculous shoes she had been wearing. He could have lost Masami-

He had lost Masami.

"Because you love him?" asked Daughter

"Because he's my Son." Said Suzuki. He really did not like that word. 'Love'. It encompassed so much that it didn't even encompass anything. People loved people and cats and dogs and eating and drinking and all sorts of things. He cared for Son. Son was annoying, underfoot, loud, hyperactive, but also his Son. There was caring there, beneath it all, not as much as for Daughter and not anything like he had felt for Masami but there was caring. The children knew that.

They knew that he cared for them.

"Oh…but you love Sho, right? Like you love me?" asked Daughter. He cared for Daughter a bit more than he cared for Son. She was just more compatible to him. That was all. She was easier to be around. She was even…she was even a bit more like Masami than he was…even though that made no sense. Son was all that he had left of Masami. There was so much of her in him. She had always been creative and intelligent, and there was an intelligence to him beneath all of the impulsivity, and there was even some of the look of her in their Son….

He cared for both of the children.

"I care for you and your brother. You know that." Said Suzuki. The children could be so strange sometimes. Of course he cared for them. He would have left them at a child prison, orphanage, if he hadn't. They knew that was what happened to children who were unwanted. Many of their shows and movies starred orphans. He had never understood that. That was not something to strive for. Maybe some part of Daughter remembered her old life. If she did then she had never told him….

And he was not about to ask.

"I know it but Sho doesn't. I told him that you don't hate him but he doesn't think that you like him. I know that you must like us at least a little." Said Daughter

"You're correct in your assumption, Daughter." Said Suzuki. She was laying down more on him. Their show played in the background. He wondered if she understood enough English to follow it. She was watching, at least, and he could see her aura. She was settling down for the night. It was late for her. Children needed a lot of sleep. He wondered if she would allow herself to be carried to her bed.

Or maybe his.

Which he knew was a sign of weakness. He should have been complete on his own. He had spent weeks, or even months, on end away from Masami. He had slept on his own for all of those weeks and months and it had been fine. Maybe because he knew that he had her to come home to. He wished that he could just exorcise those emotions, all of them, connected to her. The he could just pick Daughter up and lay her down on her bed and then be done with her.

Her presence was pleasant.

"I love you, dad." Said Daughter. She said that sometimes. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. Masami had told him that she loved him, too, in the same random way that Daughter said it. It was off hearing those words from Daughter. That was why he didn't like that word, it encompassed too much. The love that Masami meant was worlds different from the love that Daughter meant.

"I care for you as well." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to bring a blanket over to her. The children had built some sort of fort. He hoped that they didn't take this too badly, the destruction of their fort, because he did not need this sort of annoyance. Not with what he had to deal with.

She shifted again. She seemed as though she were still in pain. It pained him that she was in pain. Her being in pain made him think of the times that he had been in pain. He hated pain. Be it the little things like cutting himself shaving or misjudging the temperature of a cup of tea…or the bigger pains like being torn between two super dense gravity masses…

Or the pain he woke up with every morning.

"Have Fukuda fix you up in the morning. I can't stand to see you in pain like that." Said Suzuki

"Ok….I will." Said Daughter. She shifted. He covered her again. It was cold in there. The children had turned up the air conditioning as high as it would go. He did not disapprove. It was summer…high summer as Masami would have called it. She liked spring and fall best. She had always enjoyed mild weather. He wondered if she was beating the heat wherever she was….

He didn't care.

She was a traitor. She had left him. She had left him and the children and that made her a traitor. He did not have room for those who were not loyal. For those who would seek to harm him. She had harmed him. She had worried him and pained him and she didn't even care. She had just walked out that door without a care for him or the children or their life together-

"I really will, dad, you don't have to get upset. You know that I would never lie to you. I love you and when you love someone you never lie to them." Said Daughter. She had put her hand over his in an attempt at comfort. He didn't need comfort. He was a complete person on his own. He took his hand from hers.

And then he sat her back up.

"See to it that you do. Also wear some practical shoes so you don't end up like this again. I can't stand to see you in this state, Daughter." said Suzuki. He was cold. That was just because they had been sharing body heat, that was all. The room they were in was much too cold. That was all.

"Those are the only shoes I have left." Said Daughter

"Then have the Awakened get you some new ones and some for your brother as well. His shoes are in terrible condition." Said Suzuki. Masami had been the one to get the children new clothes when they needed them. He had no idea how to buy children's clothing and the children, it seemed, had no idea how to purchase their own clothing. He hadn't wanted to criticize what she wore, it was dangerous ground, but she was being ridiculous.

"I don't….we don't want new shoes." Said Daughter

"Your feet are covered in blisters and Son's shoes are held together with tape. You need new shoes." Said Suzuki

"But we don't want to wear new shoes. We don't want different ones. We like the ones we have." Said Daughter

"Then have the Awakened get you new versions of your old ones." Said Suzuki. He understood not wanting new shoes. He had found a pair of shoes that he liked so those were the only shoes that he was going to wear for the rest of eternity. He fully planned on being buried in his usual suit and shoes. He didn't see a reason why he shouldn't have been. It was different, though, for him because he was fully grown. The children probably did not have the option of finding their perfect outfits and wearing them until the day they died and then for some time afterwards.

They really didn't.

He had been their age, once, and he had completely upended the children's section of the department store his mother always shopped at. He had a…shirt…it was blue and had a giant robot on it. He couldn't remember which one, some show that he liked, but he did remember how painful it had been when he grew out of it. When he couldn't even pull it down over his stomach. His mother had gotten him two, the original and one in the next size up, but that had been ages before….before he grew out of them both…and then by the time they made it to the store they didn't carry it anymore…

That had not been a good day.

But then his mother had gotten him another blue shirt, three sizes up, and then that had never happened again. Maybe that was the way that the children felt about their shoes. He hadn't know much about what they wore, he hadn't had to notice these things before, but he had to notice now. He was the one who clothed them, now, after all.

"But we don't want-" said Daughter

"I know how attached a person can get to their clothing. Your clothing is an outward expression of who you are, a bit like your aura, but something that is under your control. I understand but I need you to understand, too, that you need to wear properly fitted shoes. There is no point at all in getting upset over clothing. You need to wear shoes, that is not up for debate, so get some new ones that are as close to what you had before and then when you find ones you like get enough pairs that they'll last you for the rest of your life…or at least until you go up a shoe size." Said Suzuki

"I…yes, dad, I'll do that." Said Daughter. That had been a lot less painful than he had imagined. Maybe because he wasn't criticizing her, not really, just pointing out a fact. She needed shoes that fit. Simple. There was no reason for her to wear shoes that pained her. He didn't even know why she would wear shoes like that…..

He'd ask her later.

Because it was dangerous ground criticizing a woman's choice in clothing. Not that he was criticizing her….and not that she was a woman yet. Still a child. She'd be a child until she wasn't. He didn't know when that day would come but he knew that it was coming. She would maybe make more sense…or less sense….when she got older. He didn't know. He had no idea what she would grow up to be, what she would be like.

He hoped that she never changed.

Because she was so pleasant to be around now. So agreeable. Even after he had criticized her choice in clothing she remained pleasant and agreeable. He hoped that she carried this with her long into her adolescence and her adulthood. He knew that adolescents could be difficult, at least that was what people said, but he could never imagine Daughter being anything other than her agreeable self.

She really was an agreeable person. A pleasant one. He loved that about her.


	75. Halloween

On Give Me Candy Day people were supposed to wear costumes and get candy.

Mob was not wearing a costume.

But people kept giving her candy so she was not going to correct them. Correct them any more than she had been before, anyway.

"But I'm not a-" said Mob as one of dad's workers, not the copy paste aura guys but a different guy, tossed some candy into her bucket. Fukuda had given her and Sho buckets and told them to go around saying 'Trick or Treat'.

Mob didn't get it.

"Don't say anything, they might stop giving us candy." Whispered Sho in Japanese. The people here mostly spoke English, a weird kind of English he had trouble understanding, but he did understand candy. Mom never let them have candy that often back when they still had a mom. Now they could have all the candy they wanted, whatever they needed the weird aura guys got for them if they asked, but this was fun.

He liked Give Me Candy Day.

"But I'm not a princess, this is just my normal clothes." Said Mob. She was in her normal clothes, a new Elsa dress since her old one was too small, and Sho was in his pajamas. The ones that made him look like a dog if he put the hood up. Mob did not understand this country….were they in the same country? It had been a train ride this time, not a plane ride, but it had been a long one….the people here still spoke English, though, even if they talked funny.

This was a weird place.

"You got that at the Disney store, I think it's a costume if it comes from the Disney store….and stop complaining! They might stop giving us candy." Said Sho. He liked this place. Sho had no idea where he was, dad called it a compound, but he liked it. Fukuda said that on this day kids went around in costumes asking for candy. Dad said not to be underfoot but this was fine because it was the point of the holiday. At least that was what big sis had said and she was in charge so therefore she would be the one in trouble if dad had a problem with this.

He didn't know who he was kidding. He was always the one in trouble.

"But we shouldn't lie to people…and also I feel weird getting candy from strangers. Mo-we aren't supposed to take candy from strangers." Said Mob. Mom always said that they were never supposed to take candy from strangers. She was not supposed to mention mom, though, even though she sometimes wanted to. She knew that mom would not have like this holiday. She said that candy was for special occasions…which this was…but not in Japan. Mom was in Japan so she must not have…well maybe she wasn't in Japan. Mob didn't know.

She shook her bucket.

That was a lot of candy. Fukuda had gotten them buckets that looked like scary pumpkins. Well Sho's looked more like a pumpkin because his was orange. Her pumpkin was pink because she was a girl. Fukuda even said that he got her a pink one because she was a girl and she liked pink. Sometimes she wondered if she liked pink or people just told her that she liked pink. She wasn't going to complain, though, because that would have been rude and they were not supposed to be rude. Dad had said so. They were supposed to be on their best behavior because a lot of important people were here and while they had nothing to prove, dad had said, he still didn't want them to embarrass him or anything like that. Mob figured that this was ok because it was a holiday and Fukuda had said that this was ok. He had been walking with them until he was summoned.

Summoned was when Dad sent copy paste aura guys to find you because you weren't answering your phone.

"We aren't taking it from them, they're giving it to us, and they aren't strangers anyway. They work for dad which means that they work for us and since they work for us then it's ok for us to take all of their candy." Said Sho. Big sis could be so weird sometimes. Candy was awesome. She was trying to be mom again. She was always trying to be mom. He wished that he could have gone off with Fukuda. Before dad sent people to drag him away Fukuda said that if they split up they could cover more ground if they split up, but then big sis was all worried about being on her own.

Then Fukuda had to go, anyway, so it was just him and her.

But, hey, more candy for them that way. Big sis needed to stop trying to be a grown up and just have fun once in a while. Things were better if you kept on having fun, kept on moving, because that way you couldn't think bad thoughts. Like how it had been a year since you last saw your mom. How you hadn't been home in a year. How you hadn't been able to understand what the people around you were saying for a year. Stuff like that.

This was fun. The key to it all was to have fun.

"Um…ok. If you say so, Sho." said Mob. She reached over to take Sho's hand but he pulled it away. She let her hand hang there, that had hurt her feelings, but she didn't say anything. She didn't have to. Sho sighed and rolled his eyes and held her hand. She knew that she was too big to need to have her hand held but she had been feeling sort of…sad. Sometimes she just got sort of sad.

It was because she had been thinking about mom.

Well that and everything else. It was hard being so far from home. They never had holidays like this in Japan. Going up to people and asking for candy…the whole thing felt kind of weird. Kind of very weird. Sho didn't mind it but Sho didn't mind anything. Maybe he was better at getting used to things like this because he was younger than her, or maybe because he was les Japanese than she was. That was why he didn't miss home as much as she did, because he was less Japanese, even though they were both half Japanese.

Well mom had been half Japanese and dad had been half Japanese and two halves made a whole so therefore Mob got all of the Japanese parts of mom and dad and Sho got all of the parts of mom and dad that weren't Japanese.

At least that was how Mob saw it. She didn't see herself in either of her parents. Well she had having trouble remembering mom's face but she had pictures of mom on her tablet…even though she really should have deleted those like dad told her to….she didn't look like mom at all. Or dad. Sho looked like both of them. She didn't look like either of them. Maybe she looked like some of those people, the dead ones, who's pictures were in the Treasure Room back at the old house…their house…not that she was going to go back there and check any time soon.

They were never going home again.

Not back to the old house and not back to Japan either, probably. Mob didn't know. She didn't decide where they went and where they lived. That was up to dad and dad said that it was up to what needed to be done. Mob sometimes wished that it was up to her. She would have gone somewhere with an amusement park or something fun like that if it was up to her. Even the last place that they had lived had been more fun than this. There had been lots of trees with pretty colored leaves and also she and Sho had picked a bunch of apples. Fukuda had taken them. It had been fun.

Until they got separated.

That had been scary. So scary that Mob had dropped her apples…and then they had started to float…and then she had run away because she was losing control of her powers and she was not supposed to. She ran and hid behind an apple tree, the trees were kind of small so that people could pick apples from them without having to climb up, and then the tree had started getting bigger which had made her even more scared so she ran some more….

And then she had found Sho.

And she had took his hand and she hadn't let go of it for the entire day. She got more apples but that didn't matter, only being with her little brother mattered. Being separated from Sho was scary. Especially when they were at a new place….which was all the time. This was a new place too but it wasn't as fun as the apple picking place. It wasn't much fun at all. It was a bunch of buildings in the middle of nowhere.

Dad said it was a compound.

He said that this was where people went to become awakened. That was why some of the people had weird copy paste auras. He said that those were artificial espers. Artificial meant not real. Not real in the sense that they hadn't been born with their powers, not in the sense that they themselves were robots or something. People came to this place to get powers…people who hadn't been born with powers…

Dad told her not to tell Sho.

Because Sho had powers already. Sho sort of had powers, anyway. He could move things without touching them but only when he got super mad. He could make his aura show, too, but only when he got super mad. He was kind of like her. She lost control when she got super mad or super scared or super anything. Sho just showed his powers when he got super mad or super scared or super anything. He was like her but also not like her.

Sometimes it felt like there was no one in the whole wide world like her except for dad.

"I love this country. Even if people talk weird and stuff I love it here." Said Sho as they got more candy. Some people had bags of little candies with them, others just had the big ones from the machines, but candy was candy. Except for the guys who gave them citrus candy. Those people could go jump off the roof. If he had citrus he would die…not that he was about to tell anyone that. Dad said that if people found out that citrus could kill him then dad's enemies would use that to kill Sho and hurt dad.

And Sho did not want to almost die again.

That was why Fukuda had been with them. He was with them a lot more now than he had been before. That was because citrus was evil, like Sho had been saying for his entire life, and if he died then it would be bad. Fukuda was there in case he accidentally ate any citrus. It hadn't happened since the last time, big sis had even stopped drinking orange juice and dad had even stopped eating grapefruit, but it could happen again.

Pretty soon, too, if people didn't stop giving him tropical flavored candies.

He didn't know if it was all citrus that would kill him or just real fruits. Fukuda said that unless they were going to try stuff until he found out what killed him, not something that anyone wanted to do, then they would have to either avoid all citrus or go to a hospital and figure it out. They weren't allowed to go to hospitals so Fukuda was just supposed to be near them all the time. That was why dad had brought them with to this place.

Originally, he said, he was going to leave them in a place called Florida, which was a part of America, and he and big sis were supposed to live at Disney Land or the Ocean until dad settled the stuff that he had to settle here. That sounded a lot more fun than what they had been doing for the past few days. Nothing. A whole lot of nothing. There wasn't even a yard that they could play in. It was too hot here, too, even though it was supposed to be fall in this country. They had spent the past few days playing with toys, dad just bought them new ones for every place they stayed so they didn't have to pack, and playing videogames and also fighting even though they weren't supposed to…and Sho hated it when he turned into a jerk….

This was more fun than staying in their apartment.

But it would end and then they would have to go back in there and play videogames and stuff until they were bored. They weren't supposed to be underfoot but aside from school dad didn't give them anything to do. Sho hoped that he finished up with whatever it was that he was doing here so they could go somewhere fun. Like that Florida place. Even if it was sunny, which meant icky gross sunscreen, at least there would be something for him and big sis to do.

There might even be other kids.

Not that he and big sis were supposed to play with the other kids. No, they weren't, but sometimes they played near the other kids. Big games of tag at parks. Multiplayer games at arcades. Making sandcastles on the beach. Stuff like that. Fun stuff with other kids where he could pretend that he was allowed to have friends that weren't his big sis.

He loved his big sis.

But he wanted more friends. Friends who were boys, like him, because only playing with a girl got boring. Even an un-birthday tea party on the ceiling could be boring with big sis. It had been fun the first time but then she was all on him to stop spilling the tea and to use his manners and then she tried to get him to put on one of her princess costume dresses and that had been the very last straw. It was more fun to play his sorts of games. Jumping on their beds doing acrobatics, making forts, having wars, pretending to be dogs or cats or wolves or even fish when they took a bath. Fun stuff. Boy games. Games that girls hated.

Sisters could be so boring sometimes.

"I like it too…but not this place, not really. I mean I like candy but this place is kind of…creepy." Said Mob. Everything was grey and it was kind of dark and most of the people around them had these weird uniforms on. The copy paste aura people had those uniforms on. The other people, the ones with scars, looked like they were in costumes and Mob would have thought that they were participating in Give Me Candy Day if they hadn't been dressing like that every single day that she and Sho had been there.

"I'm not afraid of anything." Said Sho. This place was creepy. This place was so creepy that he kind of wanted to hide, sometimes, because without Fukuda it was kind of…big feeling. It felt big and it made him feel small. Not that he was going to say anything. There was candy. Candy was good and getting the candy was fun and, ok, the whole place felt kind of creepy and it felt weird being in his pajamas when not in bed and it felt way too big, too, but that was fine.

There was candy and candy made everything better.

"I know, Sho, I know. I didn't say that you were afraid I just said that I thought that it was creepy." Said Mob. They had been walking for a while. There weren't a lot of people around here. She could feel auras, a lot of them, but not too many that were close by. That was an important skill, dad had said, being able to find people based on their auras. It was easy to practice here. There were a lot of different auras here.

"It's not that bad." Said Sho. He stood by what he said even when something that sounded a lot like a ghost moaning, or at least what he thought a ghost would have sounded like, reverberated down the hallway. He felt something…weird. Like something reached inside of him and stirred his insides around like soup. That was…he hadn't liked that at all….

Big sis covered her eyes.

"It just went from creepy to scary." Said Mob. She had seen…she didn't know what she had just seen. There had been a loud sound, like someone being hurt or something, and then a flash of red. She covered her eyes but she could still see part of it sticking around. That was because she wasn't seeing it with her eyes, she was seeing it with her aura.

Someone ran past them.

A lab coat person. Mob didn't know if they were doctors or scientists. Sho didn't care, he said, he only cared about that fact that they didn't give them any candy. They didn't even seem to notice her and Sho. No, they just walked past them really fast. Mob turned to walk away.

Well she tried to.

But Sho was holding her hand tight and he was not moving.

"Sho, come on." Said Mob as she tried to tug on him. She could have moved him with her powers but that would have been mean and she did not want to be mean to her little brother. Even though she wanted nothing more than to get out of there. This place…it did not feel right at all.

"Where are you going? Come on, something's happening over there. Don't you want to see what it was?" asked Sho. He wanted to see where all of those people were going. He had seen…something. He didn't know what he had seen but it had been something and he wanted to know what it was and what was happening and also this place was boring, mostly, and this had been the first interesting thing that had happened in a while.

He wanted to take a look.

But she was still holding on to him.

"No. Not really. I want to go back and eat our candy. Well trade our candy first. I'll give you all of my chocolate for your citrus stuff. I'll even give you my chocolate taffies, too, and my black licorice." Said Mob

"Yuck. The only one who likes black licorice is dad. Give it to him." said Sho

"Ok, I will. Let's go back and we'll organize our candy and then make our trades and then we can watch Zootopia again. Or maybe something else? Like Totoro? Or maybe Castle in the Sky again? Or something new? Like I saw this movie that looked interesting about these magical girls and-" said Mob

"You go back and do all of that if you want to but I'm going to check it out." Said Sho. He shook his hand free of hers and started walking.

"But Sho! Um….I can't eat any of my candy until we trade. That way I won't end up eating something that you wanted." Said Mob. She did not want to go towards the…whatever that was. There were spirits there…or at least one. She was no stranger to seeing spirits. Out in the world they all just sort of hung out. In places like this, though, they were rare. They didn't like to hang out around powerful espers, dad had said, and that was why there had never been any in the Castle when they had lived there.

She saw a spirit.

And then it was exorcised.

"I like peanut butter cups, things with nuts, and thing with caramel….oh! And red m&m's. Save me all of those and I'll save you my citrus taffy, citrus hard candies, and those tiny lollipops you like that don't even have any gum inside." Said Sho as he started walking. The moaning had turned into screaming…and he had a bad feeling about all of this….but he had to see. He had to see and he had to know.

This place was creepy.

He was kind of scared.

He heard big sis' shoes slapping against the ground. She had a new pair of princess shoes and these were even louder than the ones she had been wearing before. He and dad agreed on something, for once, her shoes were super annoying and girls were weird for wearing shoes like that. He hoped that when he grew up and some girl caught him she didn't wear weird shoes or anything like that. Not that he liked thinking about gross stuff like that but it was nice thinking about how he was totally not going to die, either of eating citrus fruits or of whatever that noises and stuff was about, and he was totally going to not die and grow up and marry some girl who would probably want to kiss and also fix gross food for dinner and make him take baths and all the stuff that big sis did.

"Sho!...Please, wait for me." Said Mob as she caught up to him. She didn't want to go there, towards the noise and the spirit, but she didn't want to be on her own either.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm here." Said Sho. He tried his best not to look scared. He tried his best to be brave. Big sis was a girl and it was ok for her to be afraid. Well dad said that it wasn't ok for either of them to be afraid but it was less not ok for big sis to be afraid because she was a girl and girls had a lot more trouble conquering their feelings and stuff, according to dad. He was the boy and he was going to be brave.

But if she wanted to hold hands then they would hold hands.

They held hands as they went the same way those lab coat guys went. There was something happening there. With every single step they took Sho felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up. He had to run away, that was what this feeling was telling him, but he was not going to listen to his feelings. Like dad had said…even though he was the biggest jerk in the whole wide world most of the time…

"Say something." Said Mob as they walked towards wherever the commotion was. She could see it. Hear it. Feel it. A cacophony of auras. Shouting. A lot of it. Shouting and moaning and also there were some spirits, here, and they asked her to exorcise them…so she did. As they walked she exorcised the spirits…even though based on what dad had said there should not have been any spirits there at all….

"What?" asked Sho as they got to a place where the lights started to flicked and the hallway got narrower. There weren't any more of those lab coat guys. They were all in the other room. He could sort of see them through the windows. They were standing at some machines….and something in Sho said that this was a very bad place.

He could see a lot of red.

"I don't know, anything." Said Mob. She wanted to hear the voices of the living, not the dead, and not screaming. Ghosts and spirits didn't usually scare her…and dad would have been so ashamed if he knew how scared she was feeling now. He would have been mad and ashamed, too, if he knew how she was acting. Holding Sho's hand and shaking so much that her candy was rattling around in her plastic pumpkin bucket…

"My name is Suzuki Sho and I'm waking. I'm walking and my name is Suzuki Sho." said Sho as he held her hand way too tight. He was seeing…something. People? Around them? No, something else. Something that was both the same but different. It was like trying to watch steam. Like when they would be in the tub and the steam would go into the air and then vanish….

But scary.

Just a little scary.

"That's good. My name is Mob and I'm walking. I'm walking and my name is Mob." Said Mob. That helped, it did, hearing his voice and hers. She didn't know why it helped, just that it did, and she did not want to question it now.

"That's not your name. Dad says that you're not allowed to call yourself that anymore." Said Sho. Fighting made him feel better. Fighting made him less afraid. He didn't know why acting like a jerk made him feel better, only that it did, and he wished that there was some other way. She must have felt worse, now, and now he felt worse because he had made her feel worse.

"Fine, my name is Suzuki Shigeko and I'm walking. I'm walking and my name is Suzuki Shigeko." Said Mob. She did not want to fight. A fight would have just made everything worse. She wanted to turn back. She wanted to turn back and to turn away from this place. She was short but not so short that she couldn't see out of the wall windows.

She didn't like the look of those machines.

She didn't like the shouting that she could hear. It was ringing in her head. She could hear the shouting and she didn't know why Sho would want to go towards the people shouting. She didn't know why anyone would go towards the shouting. This was the part of the scary movie where she wondered why anyone would ever do something that would obviously end badly.

Curiosity killed the cat.

She didn't know which cat that curiosity killed. She didn't like thinking about a cat dying. She wondered if curiosity killed the kids, too, as well as the cat. She got that feeling. She had a feeling that she was not supposed to be there, that it was a bad place to be, and that if she had been on her own she would have run away a long time ago.

But she was not on her own.

And if it was something that scared her then…then it was something that could hurt Sho. She did not want anything bad to happen to Sho. He was her little brother, the only little brother that she had, and she loved him more than anything or anyone else in the world. She loved him so much that she would have given him all of her candy from now until eternity if he would just turn back…

But he didn't.

"Hey, a door. Come on." Said Sho. There was a door that was big and metal and if this were a game there would have been a boss fight on the other side. But this was real life. This was real life and…and in real life there weren't boss fights…right? Even though he kind of expected a boss fight to be back there. He would have won it. In game or in life he would have won it.

Even against dad.

He could sort of feel dad's aura. There were a lot of those weird auras around but dad was there, too, he knew what his own da felt like. He maybe should have turned back…but that would have meant running away. He had to be brave. Dad couldn't punish him for being brave. He was always going on and on and on about him conquering his feelings like fear. Dad wasn't going to punish him for acting the way, the exact way, that dad was always telling him to act like.

"Sho…maybe we shouldn't. We might get in trouble. I can feel dad near…we might get in trouble." Said Mob. That was the last thing that she could tell him. She tried asking him nicely and she tried saying things that made sense and would appeal to him, dad always said that the first thing you should do is offer someone something that they want and then move towards violence…not that Mob was going to be mean like that to her little brother…but dad would be mean to him. Dad was scarier, sometimes, than anything that could have been behind that door.

"Then turn back, big sis, but I'm not stopping here." Said Sho. Contrary was something that dad called him sometimes. Contrary, annoying, underfoot, lots of mean words. He knew that he was being contrary now. He was not going to turn back just because she asked him to. She was not the boss of him. She was not their mom.

She was not the boss of him.

He opened the door.

She followed him.

They weren't noticed. They were not noticed as they opened the door and crept down the stairs, the door had opened to some very steep stairs, and walked down to where the lab coat guys were….and dad…and Fukuda! Sho was about to call out to him but big sis put her hand over his mouth. He licked her hand on instinct. That was what you were supposed to do when your big sis tried to make you shut up when you didn't want to.

"Dad." Whispered Mob. She tried to pull her aura in close. She saw dad's aura twitch, a little, at the same time as his shoulders. He might have noticed them or he might have just been reacting to the way the room was full of that weird aura….thing….that she had seen before.

She wanted to run away.

Sho had licked her hand. That was gross. She didn't say anything. She didn't say anything when Sho licked her hand, or tugged on her hair, or even when his candy bucket had shifted….and made a noise…but that noise was louder in her head than in life, maybe. She didn't say anything or do anything because then her aura might have moved and then dad might have noticed her.

And that would have been bad.

Because she was not supposed to be there and neither was Sho. She was supposed to be taking care of Sho. She was supposed to be keeping him from being underfoot. She was supposed to be in charge of him. Dad had asked her to, told her to, take care of her little brother. She was failing. She was being such a bad big sister. She was such a bad big sister and a bad Daughter and she…she…she deserved whatever was coming to her.

Dad turned around.

But he didn't look at them. One of those machines opened and someone fell out. He flopped out, the man, like Sho flopped around when he didn't want to go somewhere and he had to be dragged around. That was….that was different because at least Sho was still…breathing…when she dragged him to the tub and stuff. That guy just sort of laid there.

Then Fukuda knelt down and did his healing thing.

But he didn't move.

"Another failure." Said Dad. Mob shook a little, just a little, and she wished that she had just dragged Sho away. She had the power to do so. She hated using her powers on him, that was why she never used her powers on him, but maybe she should have. Maybe then she wouldn't have been there where this…whatever this was….was happening. This was so bad…so scary…and she just wanted to go home….

"Yes. Sorry boss. I did my-" said Fukuda

"Continue the tests. There is something I must attend to." Said Dad. He walked away from Fukuda. The lab coat guys carried the other man away…and Mob closed her eyes. The man wasn't dead. He wasn't dead. He wasn't dead.

"He's not dead." Said Sho. Big sis was whispering it so he was whispering it too. She knew when people were and were not dead. She knew because she could see ghosts. She knew and he believed her. He believed her and he knew that the other guy was not dead and he was not scared and he did not wish that he had just done what big sis said and gone back to their apartment and traded candy and watched movies and stuff.

Dad was looking at them.

He couldn't breathe.

Dad was walking towards them.

He was shaking.

Dad stopped walking.

Big sis spoke first

"Hi dad." Said Mob. She knew that it would only look worse if she just started explaining right then and there. He always asked them to explain first. That way she at least had time to figure out how to explain without lying but also with minimizing damage.

That was her job.

"Son. Daughter. Explain." Said Dad. Mob put her hand over Sho's mouth and didn't react at all when he licked her hand again.

"It's Give Me Candy Day. Fukuda said that in this country on this day people give kids candy when they wear costumes. We were getting candy." Said Mob. She wanted dad to pick her up. She wanted dad to hug her and tell her that she was going to be ok. She wanted dad to tell her that the other guy was not dead and she had not been seeing his spirit or any other people's spirits and that this was all ok and she was ok and that everything was going to be ok…

Like mom would have done.

But dad was not mom. Dad was not mom and he did not do the things that mom did. She was supposed to do those things now. She was going to have to tell Sho, when he was back and she was back and they were eating their candy, that everything was ok. That the guy hadn't died. That they were going to be ok. She would hold him and make him feel batter just like mom would have if she had been there with them instead of wherever it was that she had been for all of this time….

"Halloween. You mean Halloween." Said Dad. Mob nodded. She didn't uncover Sho's mouth even though he wanted to talk. Because he wanted to talk. It was always worse for him, for them, when he tried to fight with dad. She was not going to let him make any of this worse. She was handling this. She was supposed to keep him safe. She was supposed to make things better and easier for Sho. She was his big sister. She was supposed to be taking care of him.

"Yes. Halloween. That's what Fukuda called it. Halloween. The day where we're supposed to get candy. We were just looking for candy and now we have candy and we're going to go now if that's ok." Said Mob. She knew that it was best to ask. Sho never asked. That was why he wasn't supposed to talk, now, even if he licked her hand until he totally ran out of spit and dried up like a raisin. They were in trouble, that was a given, but she was not going to let them get into any worse trouble than they already were.

"Go. Go and don't come back here. You're both underfoot." Said Dad. Mob nodded and dragged Sho away. She did not want to be there. She knew that if something bad had happened dad would have said something….right? Or at least he would have been upset….or mad…or something. Anything other than calm.

His aura was so calm.

But hers wasn't. Not even when they got back to their apartment. Not even when she told Sho that, of course, that guy had not been dead. Not even when they traded their candy. Not even when she put a movie on for them, not a scary one, but one about a witch that went around delivering things. A nice movie. One that made them feel good.

She made sure that Sho was happy.

Even when she though that she couldn't. Even when she thought about what she had seen…she still made sure that her little brother was happy. Her little brother mattered most in the whole world. She was his big sister and she was supposed to take care of him even when she felt very scared and…and not good…

She was a good sister.

And she never once showed Sho that she was afraid. Conceal, don't feel. That was what she was supposed to do. Dad would have been proud of her if he had could have seen her. But he didn't. Not for a while. He had been so busy since they had come to the compound…and for once she couldn't wait until they moved again. She wanted her mom but she was gone. She wanted her dad but he was busy. He didn't come back until late at night, after she had put Sho to bed, and tried to go to bed herself. She had tried but instead ended up sitting up in bed just…waiting….for tomorrow to happen. She had waited like that until she felt dad's aura…and their front door had opened…and then footsteps…and then their bedroom door had opened.

She wanted to hide Sho for some reason.

But dad didn't punish Sho. No, he just left two apples on their nightstand. He pulled their covers up with his powers and swept their toys out of his path. She was still sitting up. She watched him. Her aura met his. He didn't seem mad…he didn't seem like anything. He just seemed like…himself. He felt like himself. Not mad but not happy or not…anything. Just…just dad.

He reached over and patted her on the head. She looked up at him. He wasn't mad at all…or scared…or anything. He had just come in to leave them apples…even though you were supposed to leave candy…but he didn't like candy. He liked apples…so he left them apples. For a moment she thinks that they're poisoned apples…but that's crazy. Dad wouldn't poison them. Dad loved them. She was not scared and she had no reason to be. It was just her dad. Normally she would have stayed up with him, watched TV and listened to his day, and she sort of wanted to…but she also didn't want to leave Sho. He needed her. He would have been scared if he woke up in the night, he got up at least once a night to pee, and he found out that she was gone. He had been scared, maybe, since she had been scared and she was older. If dad asked her to hang out she didn't know what she would do…

But he didn't ask her to hang out.

"Happy Halloween, Daughter." said Dad. He brushed her hair out of her face, laid her down, tucked her in, and left the room. She sort of wanted to be near him, even if they were just going to go to sleep or watch TV or anything really, but she needed to be with Sho. He was just a kid and he needed his big sister. She would always be there for him.

She would even give him all of her candy if he asked.


	76. Haircuts

Mob's hair was in her eyes.

Mom used to cut their hair, hers and Sho's, but mom wasn't there. Dad got his hair cut every so often and he took Sho with him. He didn't take Mob with because she was a girl and girls were supposed to have long hair. At least that was what Mob figured. Mom had always said that she couldn't cut her hair because she was a girl and she also had very nice hair.

Well mom had said that she didn't have to get her hair cut but that was pretty much the same thing as telling her that she couldn't get her hair cut.

She liked her hair. Sometimes. Not the part where she had to brush and braid it every day, she had to do it by hand or else she would end up accidentally pulling her hair so it took a while, but she did like how long it was. It was fun to spin around with her hair down and stuff. Plus dad said that her hair was nice. He was always giving her head pats, like mom did with Sho, and that was nice even though she should have been telling him to give Sho head pats because he needed it.

She gave Sho head pats so maybe it all evened out.

Sho had nice hair, too. It was fun to touch. It stood up on it's own and was so fun to push down and watch spring back up. He didn't really like that too much so she didn't do it that often. She didn't know why he didn't like his hair. She wished that she had hair like his. Even if she had to keep it short she would have wanted hair like his. That way she could have matched him and dad. It wasn't fair. They were both half Japanese but she got all the Japanese and he got all the half. Back in Japan she had looked like everybody else but here she was different.

Well she was always different.

Dad said that she was a rarity, which meant that there were not a lot of people in the world who were like her. People with powers like hers. She was a prodigy, dad said, and she was second only to him. That meant that out of everyone in the whole world the only person stronger than her was dad. She didn't care about being stronger than everyone else. Sho did. She wished, and had wished for a while, that she and Sho could have swapped places. She could have been the one with hardly any powers and he could have been the one with all the powers in the world or whatever other nice thing dad was planning on saying to her.

Maybe Sho would get more powers for his birthday.

She hoped that he did. Even though she was not sure how that would go about happening she really, really, really wanted him to get more powers. So far all he could do was move stuff, light stuff, when he got super mad. That was not useful at all, dad's words, and Mob wished that he would have said something nice. He could be really nice sometimes…to her. Sometimes to Sho but those times were super rare. Like when Sho drew something cool and dad said that he liked it. He also always stole Sho's drawings, to, which was not nice…maybe dad was just bad at being nice. Mob didn't know.

She knew that he would be nicer to Sho once he got his powers.

She knew because dad had been nice to her for her entire life. She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't had her powers and she couldn't remember a time when dad had not been nice to her. Well there was time after when mom left when he hit her a lot…but that was her fault for making her mad. Just because he hit her sometimes, not in a very long time, didn't mean that he didn't love her. He did. He cared for her. That was the same as telling someone you loved them. She didn't know why dad didn't just come out and say it if he loved her. Maybe he just didn't know how. That might have been it.

Dad loved her.

And he loved Sho, too. He must have. Even if he had been kind of mean to Sho, before, because Sho had been too freaked out to sleep so he was bothering her and dad when they had been trying to watch TV, even though Mob would not have called it bothering, and then Dad told him to get lost. He was just freaked out about what happened back at the Awakening compound. She was freaked out about it too but she didn't say anything. She knew better than to say anything. Dad hated it when things bothered her, when she let things get to her, and stuff like that. Even though that had been such a scary place….

She tried not to think about that.

She thought about what she was doing. She turned the bathroom lights on, all of them even the mirror lights, and she looked at herself in the mirror. She used her powers to make herself tall enough to make eye contact with herself. Her hair was in her eyes. She had to cut it. Mom had always cut it for her but now she had to cut it herself. That was also kind of scary…because she could mess up and ruin her hair…but it was hair so it didn't matter. It would grow back….but of course in the time it took for it to grow back people would make fun of her for being bald….not that she was going to cut her hair bald….

Just her bangs.

They were in her eyes and it was getting annoying so of course she was going to cut them. She put the bowl on her head. This was the bowl that they used for popcorn. Mom had put a popcorn bowl on her head too…but maybe that bowl had been a different size. Mob didn't know. She really didn't know anything about cutting hair besides the fact that she had to brush it first and to use a bowl to cut her bangs.

Mom should have done this.

But mom wasn't there. Mom wasn't there to do this. Mom knew what to do. Mom always knew what to do. Mom should have taught her how to cut her hair if she was planning on leaving. She should have taught her how to cut Sho's too and also how to do…a lot of mom stuff. Sho was always telling her that she was not mom, that she shouldn't have been trying to be mom, and she had not been trying to be mom. She was just trying to be…to be there for him. If she had been trying to be mom then she would have done a much better job of it.

She picked up the scissors.

These were their scissors. The ones they used to cut paper with. She had made Sho's birthday card with these. It was almost his birthday. The sun was going down earlier and there was snow on the ground. It snowed a lot here in the winter. She didn't know how much longer they would be here for but she was going to make the most of it. This was another house, not a compound, and she hoped that they never went to another compound for as long as they were nomads for. She liked it here. There was a yard and the yard had snow in it and that was where Sho was. They had been playing in the snow but then her hair had been getting in her eyes even though she had tried tucking it into her else hat, the one with the braid in the back which Sho said was dumb because she already had braids, so she had come inside because she just could not take it anymore.

She had scissors in her hands, she had a bowl on her head, so there was nothing to do then besides start cutting.

It would have been easy. Just a straight line across her forehead, Mom had done it a thousand times, and it hadn't been hard at all. Not like those times when mom had taken her and Sho with her to the place where she got her hair cut. It was a salon. It was bright and the music was loud and it smelled like shampoo and hairspray. Sho had hated it. She liked it. Mom said that when she got to be too old for the bowl cut then mom would take her to the real salon. Then she could get her hair cut and her nails painted and her skin cleared up, which was when they put that mud looking stuff on Mom's face, and then she and mom could have had a mother daughter day like mom had said about before…

That was not going to happen.

Because she didn't have a mom anymore, just a dad, and dad didn't do the stuff that mom did. Dad was home, he said not to disturb him because it had been a very tiring week and he needed some peace and quiet, but she kind of wanted him to be there. Maybe he knew how to cut hair. Maybe he knew how and then he would do it for her ad then if something went wrong it would be his fault. Not that she would tell him that it was his fault. She wouldn't be so mean to her own dad. She didn't like to be mean. She wouldn't ask him, though, because he needed peace and quiet. She would just…just do it herself. She was big. She was big and she could do these things for herself. Dad was always telling her that she was big, now, and she had to start taking care of herself.

She brought her scissors up to her forehead.

She wobbled, just a little, because she had been nervous. She was holding herself up with her powers. She should have had better control than that. Dad was always telling her that she should have had better control. She was a prodigy, second only to him, and she should have been better. She could not embarrass him. She was supposed to be more than that, better than that, he had said. He was always telling her stuff like that. Things that weren't very nice.

She wished that he knew how to be nice.

If he didn't know how to be nice then he probably wouldn't have known how to cut hair…even though Mob wasn't sure how those two things were connected. Dad was smart and he knew a lot of stuff. Dad knew how to count by nines and how to tie shoes with his powers and how to read in seven different languages and also he was good at playing Chinese checkers and Go. Dad was smart at so many things but also bad at so many other things. Like being nice. She wished that he could have been better at that…but he wasn't. He was kind of like her. She was bad at talking to people and figuring out what they meant and stuff like that. She was just like dad…

Sometimes she didn't want to be.

But she didn't get to decide that stuff just like she didn't get to decide whether or not she was going to cut her hair. She had to cut her hair because it was bothering her. She would rather risk messing up her hair than going around with her hair in her eyes. It put her at a real disadvantage when she and Sho had snowball fights. Not that she was going to try very hard. She wanted Sho to win because winning made him happy and she wanted him to be happy more than she wanted anything else in the whole world. No that she was going to let him win again. The last time she had let him win he had taken a handful of snow and put it down her back.

It had been awful.

It had done down her back. It had been under her undershirt and dress and sweater and at least she hadn't been wearing snow pants, the only god thing about not having a mom was that nobody tried to make her wear snow pants, because if she had been wearing snow pants instead of tights then the melted snow would have gone down her legs too. She didn't want that at all. Sho had been sorry, he had said so, and he had ever offered to let her put snow down his back. She hadn't taken him up on that offer. That would not have made what he had done right. She would never have wanted to hurt him, either, even if it was just snow. She hated it when people got hurt. She didn't even like playing fighting games or even having snowball fights.

She would have rather built a snowman.

But they were not going to build any more snowmen. Sho hated that song and she had tried, she had really tried, but she could not stop herself from singing. It just fit, they were building snowmen, even though it also didn't fit because she and Sho were best friends. She may have been afraid of her powers, sometimes, but she was not going to shut herself away from Sho. They only had each other, it felt like sometimes, and she was not going to leave him all alone. She was his best friend and he was her best friend. They were best friends…even though he sometimes put snow down her back…but best friends could be like that sometimes…

She needed to cut her hair so she could go outside and play with Sho and also maybe end up with snow down her back.

She took a deep breath and snipped some hair at the very end of her bangs. Maybe she had taken off too much. Her bowl had shifted a little. Now her hair was uneven. Maybe. She didn't know. Maybe her hair would even out if she just cut it all off at once. Maybe it didn't even matter if she cut her hair or not. Maybe she should have just left her hair alone and let it grow into her eyes and then she could have just figured out how to get around without being able to see like a bling master or something. Like in that fighting movie Sho liked….and also liked to imitate…and also he hit really hard sometimes even if he was playing. Not that she didn't like playing with Sho, he was her little brother, and they were also best friends.

She cut off a little more of her hair.

And it was uneven. It was uneven because she wobbled. She wobbled because the energy around her had shifted. More red. Red with yellow. That was dad. He was coming out of his room. Maybe to be mad at her and Sho. They had been kind of loud that morning…and also Sho was being loud right now even though she was inside so he had nobody at all to shout at like that. He was probably just playing pretend. She needed to play with him. She wanted to play with him. She had to get this done and then go outside and play with him and make him play quietly because otherwise dad was going to be upset with them and that was the absolute last thing she wanted.

She cut off a little more of her hair.

The energy around her kept moving. Dad was moving. He was out of his room and moving towards her. He probably needed the bathroom. She had to finish this before she got kicked out. This house only had one bathroom. That was normal for this country, dad had said, but also very annoying. She and Sho took long baths, they liked to play, and also they soaked the bathroom sometimes…and dad hadn't liked that…he hadn't liked that at all…..

"Daughter, are you sure that's wise?" asked Dad. She hadn't cut fats enough and now dad had caught her. The hair that she had cut off was picked up with his powers and tossed in the trash can with their empty tube of bubblegum toothpaste, which they knew not to eat, and Sho's toothbrush because she had accidentally used his and that meant that he had no choice but to throw it away because it had sister germs on it. She should have been more careful. Like now she should have been more careful. Her hair was so uneven….

"I was just trying to cut my hair because it was in my eyes and it bothered me. I can finish some other time. You can have the bathroom." Said Mob. She hoped that dad didn't get mad at her because she had made a mess of the bathroom and of her hair. She hoped that dad didn't get mad at her for letting Sho get loud outside. The last thing that she wanted was for anyone to get punished.

"Is it supposed to be so uneven?" asked Dad. Mob shook her head. She knew that it looked bad. Now dad was telling her that it looked bad. At least she didn't have to go to school anymore. At least there weren't any other kids to make fun of her…except for Sho….but Sho didn't mean it when he was mean to her. That was just the way he was. He was bad at being nice sometimes, like dad was.

"No. I'm just bad at this." said Mob. Dad walked over and took the scissors from her hands.

"Well you are trying to cut your own hair. People are not meant to cut their own hair, you know, that's what barbers are for…or I suppose stylists since you're female. Why not just have someone else cut your hair?" asked Dad as he brushed her bangs down with her hands. Mob shrugged.

"I didn't know that I could. You didn't take me with you and Sho when you guys got your hair cut." Said Mob. Dad took the bowl off of her head and put it on the sink.

"You didn't ask…though cutting your hair would require a completely different skill set. Yours is quite a bit longer. I have no idea why you would want to cut your hair anyway. You have very lovely hair." Said Dad as he started to cut her bangs. She was facing him. She could kind of see herself in the mirror. Dad was doing a better job than she had been.

"You think my hair is pretty?" asked Mob. Dad didn't usually say nice stuff like that…and it was nice. She hadn't really thought of her hair as being pretty. It looked liked everyone else's hair. Long and black. Mom said that she had always wanted hair like hers when she had been little. She was different, she said, and when she was a kid that made her sad. Mob wished that she looked more like mom or dad or Sho. Then they could have all matched.

"It's very long and very soft. It's nice." Said Dad. He put the scissors down and used his powers to get all of her hair up and into the trash. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her bangs were even. They were even but shorter than they had ever been before…but that was because before someone else had cut her hair.

"Thanks dad….your hair is nice too. I wish that my hair was more like yours and Sho's." said Mob.

"Why?" asked Dad

"Why what?" asked Mob. She thought that what she had said made sense. She wanted to have hair like everyone else in her family. She wanted to match. She wanted to look like she belonged. Who wouldn't want to look like the rest of their family? Families were supposed to look like each other. That was how people could tell that they were a family.

"Why? Why would you ever want hair like ours?" asked Dad

"Because then we would match." Said Mob. Dad looked at her for a while. He looked at her like she was a puzzle or something from his work that he was trying to figure out. She didn't know what he was trying to figure out in what she had just said. It was pretty straightforward, as far as she knew, but she was bad at talking and stuff. Kind of like how dad was bad at stuff like being nice. Maybe they did match.

"Why does that matter? You're my daughter. Why would it matter if we're a matching set?" said Dad. It was something that made sense. Dad…he made a lot of sense. It didn't matter if she looked like Sho and dad, if they looked like a family, because she knew that they were a family. She didn't know why it mattered to her so much….the way she looked in relation to her family…

She knew that they were a family. That was what mattered.

"You're right, dad, it doesn't matter if I look like you and Sho…because we're a family. I know that we're a family and it doesn't matter if I look like you. You're still my dad." Said Mob. It was a simple fact, he was her dad, and Sho was her brother…but it was still nice to say. She just felt so…different…sometimes. It had been worse since mom was gone. Not only was she the only one with black hair and brown eyes she was the only girl, too.

But it didn't matter.

Because they were a family and they loved each other.

"Good. Now get out so I can take a bath. Go play with your brother, he's out there talking to himself. It sounds like he's starved for company." Said Dad. Sho was being loud, loud enough that he could be heard in the house, but he was just playing pretend. She wondered if dad had ever played pretend. He said that he liked things that were real, which was why the only kind of show he ever watched were documentaries, but when he was a kid he was always reading that Galaxy Express manga, he had colored in a lot of volumes of that, and he also liked shows with giant robots and stuff…but that was probably because he had been a kid, then. Dad was forty one now, he had a birthday a while ago, and maybe he was too old to remember being a kid.

Mob would have believed that.

Maybe that was why he had so much trouble understanding them. Maybe it was because he had trouble remembering how to be a kid. Maybe that was why he was always telling her that she had to grow up, too. He was always putting her in charge and stuff even though she was only eight. She wasn't nine yet, not until spring, but she didn't know if she would feel any older at nine than she did at eight. Nine was fourth grader aged. Fourth graders had always seemed so old to her, before, back when she had been a first grader. Fourth graders had shorter recess and had pierced ear and held hands with boys and stuff like that. It was so weird, really, thinking that if mom hadn't ran away she would have been a fourth grader…next year. She should have been a third grader now. Third graders had seemed super old, too. Maybe she was starting to get old. Maybe one day she would be as old as dad and she would forget how to be a kid and stuff like that.

She didn't want to end up like that.

She never wanted to forget how to play. She didn't want to forget how to be nice. When she grew up and got married and had a boy, he would be called Shigeo, and a girl, she would be called Shoko, she would play with them all the time. She would be nice to them all the time, too, even if they were mean sometimes or underfoot or something like that. She would never forget how to play, or how to be nice, no matter how old she got.

But she wasn't a grown up yet.

She wasn't forty one yet, she was eight and a half, and she didn't have any kids so that wasn't something she had to worry about now. She had a little brother, though, and dad was right. She needed to be there for him. He needed someone to play with and that someone was going to be her.

"Yes, Dad." Said Mob as she left the bathroom. She went back downstairs, but on her boots and coat and hat and scarf, and went back to playing with Sho. Even if he did play too rough, sometimes, and even if he did stick snow down her back. She was his big sister, his best friend, and she would never stop playing with him no matter what.

It was easier, now, because at least hr hair wasn't in her eyes anymore.


	77. The Worst Birthday Ever

This was the worst birthday ever!

And it was only one in the afternoon!

And he had barely gotten any fun stuff done!

And also there was snow in his shoes and it was really annoying!

"I hate today! I hate it!" shouted Sho. He really did. If mom had been around then none of this would have happened. If mom had been around he would have spent his birthday at the animal shelter or the pool or the library or anywhere but at the damn sled hill where there were stupid crazy girls there who followed you around just because you went sledding with them once and then they tried to hold your hand and then when you tried to run away from them they caught you and then they kissed you and then it was just the grossest thing in the whole world!

This was a terrible start to being eight.

"But it's your birthday, little brother, you can't hate your birthday. This is the anniversary of you being born and the day you were born was the happiest day of my life." Said Mob. She didn't really remember it but she did remember being so very happy that he was there. She was still so very happy that he was born. She loved having a little brother. He was the best little brother that she could have asked for…even if he did push her down the sled hill and then throw snow in her face.

"Stop talking like you're mom." Said Sho. That was the last thing he wanted to hear, her pretending that she was their mom. She had been doing that since mom left. Why didn't she just stop it already? She was not their mom. They didn't have a mom anymore. Just a dad.

"I am not talking like I'm mom…and don't mention mom. Dad's home." Said Mob. Her eyes darted over to where she could see his aura. He hated it when they were upset or when they fought…and Sho was upset and they had fought….

"No he's not. He said that he had to deal with idiots today." Said Sho

"He is too home, I can see his aura. Come on, we can go somewhere else like to a different sledding hill or something. Remember, you said that you wanted to go sledding? We can still do that-" said Mob

"I don't want to go sledding anymore." Said Sho. He never wanted to go sledding again. It had been fun…and then it hadn't. It hadn't and he didn't want to go back. He just wanted…he didn't know what he wanted to do but he did know that it did not involve sledding.

"Ok, we can do something else." Said Mob. She took her boots off quickly. There were lots of things that they could do inside. Like play Wii. Or draw. Or jump on their beds even though she knew that they weren't supposed to.

"I don't want to do anything else." Said Sho. He mostly just wanted to be alone…even though they got scared when they were separated….but maybe he was too old to be scared of being away from his big sis. He was eight now after all. She was eight too. Sometimes their birthdays overlapped. She was still older than him. Maybe dad was right and they were too old to act as childishly as they always did. Maybe then he was right not to like his birthday anymore. Dad didn't like his birthday, he had said so, so maybe Sho just took after dad.

"Do you want to-" said Mob

"If you start singing that song, big sis, I swear to God-" said Sho. No. He was not going to hear that song again. She thought that it was funny, and it had been the fist million times, but now it was just annoying. Yeah, he got it, there was snow on the ground. There was snow on the ground and she was the big sister with powers and he was the little sister, brother, without powers and their live were just like Frozen complete with a jerk for a dad. He got it.

"I wasn't going to sing, I know how you feel about that song, I was just going to say if you wanted to open your presents then you can." Said Mob. He hadn't wanted to open his presents that morning. That had been so weird. Usually that was the first thing he wanted to do. Mom had always told him to wait until the end of the day. Mob hadn't had to keep mom's rule. Sho hadn't asked. He just slept in and then asked to go sledding. They didn't have to do any school stuff that morning because it was Sho's birthday, dad had said. He had also said 'happy birthday' to Sho.

"What's the point? Dad got me art supplies and you got me animals." Said Sho tossing his hat down on the ground. He kicked it, too, just to keep from kicking his big sis. His birthday sucked. Sure he got a lot of presents but that didn't mean that it was immune from sucking.

"You don't know what kind of art supplies or what kinds of animals." Said Mob. She was almost pleading with him, now. He was tossing his hat and scarf around, now. He was mad. She could see his aura, that was how mad he was, and she had no idea how to fix this. To make matters worse she could see dad's aura getting closer. Great.

"I don't have to know. You guys get me the exact same things every single year." Said Sho crossing his arms. He kicked his boots off in the makeshift genkan. He didn't care if he got snow everywhere. It wasn't his house. This was just a house they lived in. He wanted to be in his own house with his own stuff and his mom and…and he wanted it to be the way it was before. When he was six. He had eight for not even a full day and he was already sick of it.

"Well then what do you want? I have a whole bag full of this country's money and I'm sure that the driver will take us to a toy store if we asked." Said Mob. They left their toys at the places they stayed but it was ok because they repeated places. This was a repeat place, her dolls were still here. She would get him whatever he asked for. She needed to make up for not being there for him. She had been too focused on having fun that she hadn't noticed that her little brother needed her. This was all on her.

"I want…." Said Sho. He wanted a lot of things. He wanted girls to leave him alone. He wanted dad to be at work. He wanted to be back at his own house. He wanted his birthday to have passed already. He wanted to have celebrated his birthday with his mom. He wanted his mom to have been there to chase stupid crazy girls away. He wanted his sister to chase stupid crazy girls away if she was so bent on pretending that she was mom. He wanted his big sister to leave him alone if she wasn't going to actually be helpful. He wanted his dad to be far away at work. He wanted his dad to take his sister to work with him since he liked her best. He wanted his dad to stop liking his sister best just because she had powers and Sho didn't. He wished that she had been born wrong and he had been born right.

What was there to celebrate? She had been born right and he had been born wrong.

"Yes?" asked Mob. Whatever he wanted she would do for him. She would have the driver take him wherever he wanted and she would do whatever it was that he wanted to do. Even if it was to go and find animals to play with even though dad hated it when they played with animals. She didn't care. She just wanted her little brother to be happy.

"I-I want…." Said Sho. He didn't know what he was supposed to say to her. There was no point in telling her what he wanted. She couldn't give him what he wanted. Nobody could give him what he wanted. He wanted…he wanted to BE her…to have her powers…and there was no way that it was going to happen. She was eight and he was eight and then she would be nine and she would still be her and no matter how much older he got he could never be anyone other than himself.

"Whatever you want, little brother." Said Mob. She faced their boots the right way with her powers. Dad was coming. He cared a lot about manners and stuff like that. He cared about them being quiet, too, and they hadn't been quiet at all. Dad would not like it…how they had been…and he was going to be so mad at them…and he couldn't be mad at Sho because it was his birthday…but of course he would be….he was always mad at Sho….

His aura got closer.

His footsteps got closer.

She took off their coats and put their hats and gloves and jackets away where they belonged. Dad cared about messes and about them being quiet and about them getting along and she needed to make sure that dad didn't get mad at Sho on his birthday…and this was all her fault, anyway, because she had been too busy having fun on her own instead of watching out for her little brother…she was such a bad big sister and Daughter and she couldn't blame dad for getting mad at her…in fact she welcomed it…

She didn't care if Dad got mad at her just so long as he didn't get mad at Sho.

He seemed a little mad…or at least his aura was….but he wasn't doing anything to Sho and that was what mattered.

"I want some peace and quiet from the both of you." Said Suzuki as he came upon his children. They should have been gone all day. It was Son's birthday after all. They should have been out there finding fun. They should not have been in the house. He needed peace and he needed quiet and he needed space. They were just so…draining…sometimes.

"Yes dad." Said Mob quickly. She covered Sho's mouth with her hand to keep him quiet but he licked her…which she didn't mind too much…but then he reached up and scratched at her hand…which hurt.

"You have something to say?" asked Suzuki. He wanted nothing more than to either lose himself in work or just sit and stare at the void until it stared back. He hated this time of year. Masami loved it so he hated it. He didn't care if she was gone, she was a traitor after all, he just….couldn't like anything that she liked…no, that was childish….he would figure it out later.

If the children would only give him some peace and quiet.

"Sho probably does but it might be something that would make you mad so I'm covering his mouth. He's just upset because of what happened when we went sledding. I'm working on calming him down so he can have a nice birthday." Said Mob. She kept her hand over Sho's mouth while he scratched at her. She didn't care if it hurt, she just wanted Sho not to get punished on his birthday of all days. He could still have a happy birthday…maybe….

She felt dad's powers tugging at her hand.

And she let him tug her hand away. She was weak, a little bit, and he was strong. Well maybe she could be stronger but she did not want to fight with dad. She just wanted them to have a nice day. Why was that so much to ask? Why couldn't they just have a nice day with no fighting and no getting mad at each other and nobody getting punished?

Because she wasn't trying hard enough.

"Get on with it, Son, just say your piece and then be quiet." Said Suzuki. Maybe if he just let Boy get it over with he could get it out of his system for the day and then they could have just a day, an hour, a moment of peace. Why couldn't they just have one peaceful day? Why did Son have to quarrel with everyone? What went through his mind that made starting fights with his father and sister seem advantageous?

"It's my birthday and I'll be mad if I want to." Said Sho. This was his birthday and for once dad was not going to tell him how to feel. He was going to feel how he felt. If he was mad then he was mad and if he was sad then he was sad and if he wanted to kick the walls and throw his toys around then he was going to kick the walls and throw his toys around. It was his birthday after all.

"What are you so angry about? You're eight years old. What could you possibly have going on that could make you THIS upset?" asked Suzuki. He tried to keep his voice level but he could feel some exasperation mixing into it. This child…how had Masami dealt with this child day in and day out for the first six years of his life? A year and a half, almost two years now, had passed since Masami left…and he was not going to think about that.

About her.

About how she had always been able to calm Boy down when he got like this. About how she had always been so good with the children. About how this was the beginning of the Christmas season and had she been there she would have had some Christmas activity to keep the children occupied with or some birthday thing or something to keep them from getting bored or whatever and fighting with each other like this and driving him up the wall with their never ending quarrels.

"Sho's just upset because when we were at the sled hill some girl kissed him. That's all, nothing serious." Said Mob. She didn't get what was so upsetting about a girl liking him. He said that he didn't like anyone like that but he was eight now and she had been liking people since she was five or six. Maybe he was one of those boys who liked other boys…but he had never liked a boy either. He would have told her if he did. They were best friends, they told each other everything, and if he did only like boys like that then he really should have said so to all the girls who tried to kiss him.

That would have saved them a lot of grief.

"Nothing serious!? Some girl kissed me, the grossest thing ever by the way, and you don't think that it's anything serious? You don't care at all about me! If you did then you would have made her stop the minute she kept on trying to hold my hand! You don't care about me at all! You just care about bossing me around! That's all! You don't care what happens to me!" said Sho. He could see his aura then, he was just that mad, and he wanted nothing more than to push her…so he did….

He only had powers when he felt like acting like a jerk.

"Sho, I said that I was sorry! I already said sorry so many times! What else can I say? I can't go back in time and change what happened so why can't we just forget about it and have a nice day? Please, little brother?" asked Mob. She let herself be pushed against the wall of their makeshift genkan. She didn't want to fight back even though she was a lot stronger than him. She hated fighting and she would never, ever, ever have done anything to hurt her little brother. She wasn't dad.

"You can-" said Sho

"Daughter. Leave us." Said Suzuki. This child would be the death of him. He could not begin to understand this human being that he had made. Why would he be upset with his sister about that? Or upset at all? Well he was only eight. How old had Suzuki himself been when he started to notice the opposite sex? Sexually around twelve or thirteen but romantically he must have been about six.

He did not understand his own Son one bit.

"Dad, please don't punish Sho. Punish me. I'm the one who didn't take good enough care of him." said Mob. She wondered if she should have kowtowed. She wanted to kowtow, she was just that sorry, but dad hated that. Sometimes. Sometimes he liked it when people groveled to him and sometimes he hated it. It depended on his mood…and she had no idea if he was in the mood to be groveled to or not.

"Daughter, leave us. Don't make me tell you again." said Suzuki. His aura tapped against hers. She left without further protest. He could feel her aura as she left his presence. She was very worried. He wondered what she was so worried about. It wasn't like he had any reason to punish her. She had done nothing wrong despite what she believed.

The children were very strange creatures sometimes.

"If you're going to punish me can you at least be fast? It's my birthday." Said Sho. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. He wondered what it would be this time. Slammed to the ground? Into a wall? Or maybe just smacked a bunch of times. Whatever. He didn't care. Dad could do whatever he wanted.

"I should punish you but I won't." said Suzuki. He couldn't punish the Boy without having any idea what it was that he was punishing him for. Well, being a nuisance and quarreling with his sister were his most obvious crimes but…but that had come from a place that Suzuki did not understand.

And he wanted to.

Because he did not understand this child one bit. Angry, willful, defiant. That was what this boy could be. Suzuki may have been the same when he had been young. He didn't know. He didn't have very many clear memories of his childhood. He remembered getting so angry sometimes…angry enough to explode…but that was not Son's problem. He never exploded, only showed his aura, but that may have been the equivalent of an explosion for him.

"Then what do you want?" asked Sho. He wondered if it was something worse…though he couldn't imagine anything worse than dad punishing him. Well maybe punishing big sis on his behalf…that would have been terrible…the thought of her being punished hurts him. He's a jerk but he's not so big of a jerk that he wants his sister to get hit or anything like that.

"Explain to me why you're being so quarrelsome with your sister. It doesn't, and has never, made any sense." Said Suzuki. Why was this the child he couldn't understand? Well understanding Daughter could be difficult…but Son was an enigma. The machinations of his mind were incomprehensible.

"Why do you care? You never care. You don't care about me at all." Said Sho. He could feel dad staring at him. He wished that dad would just hit him or something already. In some ways this was worse. At least if dad hit him…he understood it when dad hit him. That was normal, regular, not at all like this. Dad never asked him what was bothering him. Dad didn't care about him. Dad didn't care about anyone other than big sis.

"That isn't true. I care about you. If I didn't care about you then I would have left you in Japan." Said Suzuki

"….I wish you had…" said Sho

"Well that is not an option. You're my only Son and I care about you. I am not abandoning my only Son in Japan. I have no reason to. You are a trial. You have been a trial since the day you were born but that doesn't mean I don't care about you." Said Suzuki. Maybe if he'd had another Son it would have been different. Maybe if Daughter had been another Son it would have been different….no. Son was all that he had left of Masami….even if Daughter had been born male that fact would not negate his feelings towards his Son. The boy may have been a trial, draining, annoying, all of it….but he was still half of Masami. He was all he had left of Masami…

"Well you should have! Then you could have had big sis and only her! You could have had each other without me and-and you both could have been happy and then I could have been happy! You like her the best! You've always liked her the best since the day I was born! You even said so yourself!" shouted Sho. He knew that shouting at dad was dangerous. He hated loud noises, he hated being disrespected, and he just plain hated Sho sometimes…it felt like. Dad could have smacked him…and maybe he should have. Then they at least could have been done with whatever this was.

"I favor her, that's true. However, that does not negate the fact that I also care for you. To a lesser extent, of course, but I do care for you. I don't know why you would think that I didn't. You're here, aren't you?" said Suzuki

"Well I wish I wasn't. I wish that you had never even had me." said Sho

"That's…strange. Why would you wish for the cessation of your own existence?" asked Suzuki. He felt like this should have been something he should have noticed. Son wished he were dead? Why? His life was good, charmed even. He spent his days playing and drawing and running around like a little nuisance. He got almost everything he asked for and…and what else could he have wanted? The thought of Son ceasing…it isn't good. Sure he could have had some peace but he would also never see another one of Son's drawings…and he was such a good artist. He would never again see the little glimpses of Masami within the Boy either….

"I don't want to stop being here, I wish that I wasn't here in the first place. I wish that…sometimes I wish that I had never been born! Ok?! I was born wrong and SHE was born RIGHT! I'm…this…and she's THAT! And she's all that you care about! Now it's just you and her…and I don't have anyone! Because of the way that I was born! I'm all alone all the time!" shouted Sho

"Your sister is your constant companion. You're never alone. You aren't making any sense right now." Said Suzuki

"It's not the same! She had you and I had mom-" said Sho before his head smacked against the wall beside him. He didn't fall down. Even though his head hurt and his ears were ringing he didn't fall down or cry or anything. He was eight now. He was not a little kid anymore. He hadn't cried in years.

"Don't ever mention your mother again." Said Suzuki. Lowly. Dangerously. The children never to mention their mother. She was gone. She was gone and she had betrayed them all by leaving. It was best if they acted like she had never existed. Then, maybe, they would be able to move on. To exorcise Masami from their minds. To stop thinking of her day in and day out. To have just a moment of peace.

"Yeah, because that's going to make it all better. If we act like she never existed, that we always just had you, then everything's going to be ok." Said Sho. He glared at dad while he said that. He glared and his aura showed and he wanted nothing more than to push dad. To shove him into the wall and make his head hurt and his ears ring. To give him a bump on the head like the one Sho could feel forming.

He did.

Well he tried to, with his powers, but it didn't even phase dad. Because he wasn't big sis. Because he would never be his big sis. Because no matter what he did she was still born right and he was still born wrong and that…that was just his life. That was his life now. That was how his life had been since the day he had been born.

"If you're going to try and challenge me then I would suggest you wait until you're bigger and stronger." Said Suzuki. That he understood. Son trying to pick a fight with him. Dominance, proving himself, or just blowing off steam so he didn't explode. For once in the Boy's eight years of life Suzuki could confidently say that he understood the Boy.

"I'll never be big enough or strong enough to fight you and you know it." Said Sho. He wished that he was. He wished that he was older than eight. He wished that he was as old as dad. If he were dad's age then dad could have been an old man and then Sho could have hurt him like dad had been hurting him his whole life. Those were jerk thoughts, he knew that those were jerk thoughts, but he couldn't help it.

"I suspect as much but I don't have confirmation of that fact." Said Suzuki. He wished that his Son were strong enough right now. Daughter could have challenged him if she wanted to…but he had no intention of making her a Scar. Maybe a division leader…no. That wasn't high enough. Something above division leader….something that would keep her closer to him. An elite amongst elites. He had some espers which were above even the level of his top elites…and he'd had this idea for a while to gather them together…but where would that leave Son? If he had his elites amongst the elites at his side at all times it would draw attention to the failure that his own Son, the child he had fathered, was…and he could not have that. He could not shatter the image of himself that he had built up.

As it stood now Son was still little better than one of the Awakened…

The Awakened. A thought, a mad thought, a dangerous thought takes root in Suzuki's mind. One that he had managed, in the past, to exorcise. His Son would not have survived, before, because he had been a child…and people died during these experiments. Even recently at the Eighth Division Compound….but that had been a normal person. Son may have been almost nothing but he was far from normal.

Sho was his son.

"I was born wrong and she was born right….and I'll never be anything…" said Sho. He wanted to go to bed and wait for tomorrow to happen. This was the worst birthday ever. He hated his birthday. He hated being reminded of the fact that no matter how much time passed he would never catch up to her. There was nothing that he could do but be…him. The person that he was.

Suzuki Sho.

"That isn't true. You could be something." Said Suzuki. Risking Son's life…the thought of losing Son hurt…but did it hurt more than the fact that eight years had passed and still nearly nothing? Even Son was starting to feel it…and that was…he did not like the fact that Son felt like that.

"How?" asked Sho. Mom had always said to give it time…and Sho had been giving it time. He had bene giving it so much time…and still nothing had happened. He was still himself and big sis was still herself. That was…nothing had changed. Nothing at all had changed.

"If there were a way, maybe, to help you become more than you are…even if it were dangerous…would you do it?" asked Suzuki. Son would most likely survive. That was his Son. He was not going to lose his Son….and his Son was not going to go through life being little better than one of the Awakened. He was not going to be eclipsed by his sister…who was not even his sister, technically. His child was not going to be eclipsed by the child of two nobodies from nowhere.

He was not going to let that happen.

"Of course I would." Said Sho. There was a way to fix him, to make him better, and he was going to take it. He wondered….was dad lying to him? If there was a way to fix him then why hadn't dad done it before? Why had he waited this long? He could have been…for all of these years he could have actually been…he could have been someone. Someone better than what he was. He could have been someone….someone who was born right.

He could have been big sis.

Not in the sense that he could have been a girl but in the sense that he could have been…he could have been….he could have been someone dad could have liked. Loved. He could have been someone who could do the same things that big sis and dad could do. There was a way and dad hadn't said anything before….but he had also said that it was dangerous. Sho didn't care. He did dangerous things all the time. Just that morning he had gone down a steep sledding hill standing up on a sled with his eyes closed. He didn't care about danger. He laughed in the face of danger.

There was a way to fix him.

This was the best birthday ever.


	78. Being Here

Mob did not want to be here.

The bed across from hers was empty. Sho was supposed to sleep in that bed but Sho…he was somewhere else. Somewhere else in this terrible place. The compound of the Eight Division. They were back. They had just left and now they were back. That wasn't too weird for them, they repeated places sometimes, but it was weird to have been back so soon.

Mob did not want to be here.

She did not want to be in this bed, in this room, in this compound. She wanted to be literally anywhere else in the world. She wouldn't have minded, even, the tiny place they had stayed in when they were in Sidney and also it was so hot…she wouldn't have minded that at all. At least they were together there. That was when she and Sho had gone far away to see kangaroos…and they did not let people ride in their pouches. Also their pouches were kind of gross. Also they did not like it when you came up and tried to play with their babies. She and Sho had learned that the hard way. Thank God she could put up a barrier.

She had been able to protect Sho.

But she could not protect him now. Now they were…here. At this bad place. This place that had spirits to exorcise. They never talked to her, neutral spirits liked to talk to her, they just begged her to exorcise them. She did. She wondered why dad or one of the other espers didn't. The Awakened. There were a lot of those guys here. They had the red uniform on with the symbol for Claw.

That was what this was.

Claw. That was what dad did, what he was a part of. The group that dad ran. Claw. She….she didn't like it here. It was dark, there were no windows, and everyone was afraid. Of her. Of dad. Of each other. This place….the auras here were afraid. There were a lot of doctors here, not healers like Fukuda but real ones, and scientists. If this had been a movie then this would have been the place where they made monsters or killer robots or whatever.

This was where they made espers.

Latent ESP could be unlocked, dad had said, and that was why they were there. Why he had brought her and Sho there. Sho had wanted her powers for his entire life…and now there was a way for him to get them. He was big enough, dad had said, to go through whatever they did to make the Awakened. Mob remembered Halloween. She remembered what she had seen…but that had not been a dead body….right? Dad would have said something or done something if that had been a dead body….

There were spirits here.

She had never seen so many spirits in one place in her entire life….except when they passed by graveyards…

She could see them, their auras, when she closed her eyes. She could see a lot of auras when she closed her eyes. Dad, the copy paste auras, Fukuda, a few she didn't recognize, and also Sho's. Sometimes it was so faint that she almost didn't see it and sometimes it was so bright that she could see nothing else. She had tried to go to him, before, but dad had told her to leave him be.

This was for his own good.

Dad had said so and dad did not tell lies…ever. He told the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help him God. He told the truth when it hurt and…and therefore if Sho was getting hurt then he would have told the truth about that.

Sho was going to be ok.

She knew that she should have been happy for him. For as long as she could remember he had wanted her powers. There was a way, now, for him to get them and a good big sister would have been happy for her little brother. She should have been thrilled that he was finally getting what he had spent his whole life wishing for. Now they could be espers together, for real, like she and dad were. Now dad could like him. Now they could all get along. Now everything could be better.

A flash of Sho's aura.

She covered her eyes even though that did nothing. She used her powers to pull her blanket up over her head and closed her eyes and covered her ears. There was no blocking out the world. Not when she was seeing and hearing him with her aura, not her body. Not when she knew deep down that he needed her, that his aura never did that unless something was wrong, and that she should have been there to protect him. This was a bad place. This felt like a bad place. She didn't know why dad had brought them to such a bad place. Didn't he love them? Didn't he care that Sho was probably hurt or mad or even scared? They got scared when they were separated. There was nothing worse than being away from her own little brother. Didn't dad care at all that-

Dad cared about them.

This was for Sho's own good. Dad had said so. Dad did not tell lies. This was….this was good…and after whatever happened…when it was over….then Sho would have powers like hers and them everything would be better. They would stop fighting. They would get along all the time like brothers and sisters were supposed to. They would be best friends…and then everything would be good…and also Dad would be nice to him…when he got better. When he got powers like she and dad had…

Another flash of Sho's aura.

The room shook. That was her. She was…she was…she was scared and worried and she didn't want to be scared or worried. She wanted to be safe. To feel safe and good and to…to have Sho with her. They were hardly ever separated. Only for short bits of time like when they played alone or if one of them went to sleep before the other or when she went to sleep next to dad. She needed Sho to be in that other bed. Was this how he felt when he woke up and she was hanging out with dad or sleeping next to dad or one of the million other things she did when she had trouble sleeping?

She was a terrible big sister.

And she did not want to be alone. She knew that dad didn't like it when she did this, leave her bed to go to his, but she did not want to be alone. Sometimes she woke up in dad's bed after she fell asleep while watching TV. Sometimes she slept on the floor of Dad's room and he woke up and either told her to go away or that she could sleep next to him. She hardly ever climbed into bed with him and when she did he got upset with her.

But she didn't want to be alone.

So she left her room and crept down the hall to where dad was. He had been busy all day. Busy with Sho. She hadn't been allowed to be around, dad said that she would have been underfoot, which felt weird to be called because that was his word for Sho…weird and kind of hurtful…even though it was a good thing that he had called her that. That meant that he hadn't called Sho that. Every time he was mean to her it was one less time that he was mean to Sho. She may have been all alone but dad had been with Sho and he had probably been nice to Sho…so it was worth it.

She had been lonely.

And she still was lonely. She had spent the whole day watching TV and playing by herself. Even Fukuda had been busy. He had to be there while they were doing whatever it was that they were doing to Sho. In case he got hurt, Fukuda had said, and it made sense because Sho was always finding new ways to hurt himself. She hoped that whatever was happening ended soon and Sho didn't get hurt. She was lonely enough as it was. She didn't want to know what life would be like without her little brother.

She walked faster.

She opened dad's door with her powers and walked inside as quietly as she could. Dad was asleep on his back. He slept on his back with his hands folded when he was alone. When she slept next to him he slept on his side. She wondered if he was trying to make room for her when he did that. She didn't know. She didn't even know how someone could have slept like that to begin with…but she was not going to wake him up in the middle of the night to start asking him questions. If she was about to do something like that she would have asked, instead, about Sho…if he was ok….if he missed her….why his aura was being like that….

She climbed into the other side of the bed.

The side that dad was not sleeping on. She climbed in and pulled the covers over her head. Dad was still asleep. She could see his aura. She let herself get as covered in his aura as she was in this blanket. Maybe then if she let herself be covered under his aura then she would stop seeing spirits and stop feeling Sho. Sho…she wanted Sho….she wanted him to be the one sleeping next to her, not dad. She would have chopped off both of her braids and poured her strawberry milk down the sink just to feel him do his sleep kicks and keep her up all night. She almost felt one of his sleep kicks…but that was just her imagination. Dad hardly ever moved in his sleep. Sometimes he rolled over. Sometimes he made the bed float. He talked, too, sometimes. He talked to mom in his sleep. She wondered if he dreamt that she was talking back.

"Daughter. Explain." Oh no….Dad woke up. He was not talking in his sleep, he was awake, and he had pulled his aura and his blanket off of her. She was cold. Even though this was her thickest nightgown and she had fuzzy slipper socks on she was still cold. The cold still bothered her even though this was her Elsa nightgown. She wanted to tug the blanket back, and she would have if this was Sho. But this was not Sho. This was dad and the last thing that dad wanted at this hour was to get into a tug of war. Especially after he had been gone all day.

"I got lonely. I'm not used to being separated from Sho. That's why I'm here." Said Mob. She explained herself as clearly as she could. She needed to be near him because she was lonely and scared and all she wanted was her little brother back…but he would not have taken it well at all if she had gone and spilled her guts to him like that. He hated it when she had bad feelings, big feelings, like that.

"So you thought that disturbing me would be a good idea?" asked dad. He was still on his back and was looking up at the ceiling. She watched him with her eyes and with her aura. He didn't seem mad…but also not happy….she didn't know. She was bad at reading people like that, even her own dad sometimes.

"You let me sleep next to you sometimes. I thought that this would be one of those times." Said Mob

"…that's true. I do indulge you on occasion." Said dad. Mob wondered if it counted as indulging if dad just picked her up and carried her to his bed when she fell asleep in front of the TV. She didn't say anything, though, because the last thing she wanted was for dad to get mad at her.

"Can I stay or do you want me to go away?" asked Mob

"I suppose you can stay. You did wake me up after all. There would be no point in sending you away now." Said Dad. That was dad speak for 'I want you to be here' Mob figured. Or maybe not. She was clueless with other people, Sho even told her so. That was why when they were out and about other kids were always trying to play with him but never with her. She could read dad better than Sho could, though, so there was that.

"Ok." Said Mob. Dad put the covers back up over her but did not cover her head. She folded her hands like dad folded his. This was not a comfortable way to sleep at all. She slept on her side or her stomach but almost never her back….but if dad was doing it then she would do it too.

This was not a comfortable way to try and sleep.

Dad must have thought so, too, because he was still awake. Maybe she had woken him up too much. Sho did that, sometimes, when he woke up in the middle of the night and turned the lights on. Mob always had trouble falling back asleep. She didn't know why he had to turn all the lights on just to walk to the bathroom but she never told him to stop or turned the lights off. She wanted her little brother to be happy even if it meant getting woken up in the middle of the night and then being all grumpy in the morning.

"Daughter?" asked Dad. She wondered if he was going to kick her out. She didn't want to be kicked out. If she got kicked out she wouldn't go back to sleep. She would go to the TV and watch Frozen…no, Zootopia. That was better. That was Sho's favorite movie. She would watch Zootopia and then the Aristocats. That was mom's favorite movie. She wasn't sure what dad's favorite movie was.

"Yes dad?" asked Mob. She wondered what dad had wanted to ask her. He was very quiet, then, even though he had just addressed her. His aura was weird. Kind of swirly. Lots of yellow. Yellow wasn't good. Her aura was mostly blue with some pink. Pink was the bad color for her. Sho didn't have a bad color.

She saw his aura again.

"Nothing. Go to sleep." Said dad. Mob didn't say anything. She just rolled onto her side and pressed herself against dad. She fully expected him to push her off the bed. She expected at any second to find herself on her back on the floor with dad telling her that if she was going to crowd him like that then she should have just stayed in her own bed.

But he didn't push her away.

He didn't move but he didn't push her away. He just sort of laid there. Mob wanted….she wanted him to hold her like mom used to. Like when she had been little and she had crawled into bed with mom, her and Sho, and then mom had pulled them both close and told them that everything was going to be alright. Mom had always been there for them…until she wasn't. She had already lost one member of her family, a quarter, she could not lose another. Then it would just be her and dad. Only half of the Suzuki family.

She was not going to lose Sho.

She saw his aura again.

"Dad…." Said Mob. She pressed her face into his side. He was wearing his button down shirt. He never wore pajamas, he hadn't since they had left Japan and mom had stopped telling him to wear them. Mob had heard mom, before, telling dad not to sleep in his day clothes. That it was weird. She called him Touichirou when she said those things. Nobody called dad that these days. He was either 'dad' to her and Sho or something like 'Suzuki-san' or 'President' or 'Boss' or 'Sir' to the guys who worked for them. She wondered if he would forget his name if nobody used it. She wondered if that was how names worked. She wondered if she would forget that she was 'Big Sis' if there wasn't anyone around to call her that.

"Daughter?" asked Dad

"I….I just…." Said Mob. She didn't know how to say what she was feeling in a way that would not make dad upset. She wasn't supposed to have feelings like that in the first place. She was supposed to be good. She was supposed to…to not have big feelings…to be the person dad wanted her to be. Daughter. She was supposed to be a good daughter….

She was being a bad daughter and a bad big sister too.

"Out with it. I would like to get some sleep tonight you know." Said Dad. Mean. That was mean. She didn't know why dad had to be so mean all the time! He was her dad! Why couldn't he just be nice to her and nice to Sho, too?! If he had been nicer to Sho then Sho wouldn't have had to be put through whatever it was that those white coat guys had taken him away to do to him!

Conceal, don't feel.

Something hit her on the head. Dad's powers.

"Power is nothing without control, Daughter, now control yourself and tell me what it is that's bothering you. I don't need this…not from you. I have enough to deal with. The least you could do would be to not be…like this." said Dad. Mob felt bad. She hadn't meant to trouble him. She just wanted…she wanted him to…she didn't even know. To hold her. To bring Sho back. To at least tell her that Sho was going to be ok. To give her some assurance that she would not soon have to exorcise her little brother's spirit from this terrible place.

"When will Sho be back?" asked Mob. Maybe that was ok to ask. She didn't know. It was hard to know the rules with dad sometimes. He changed them often and didn't bother to tell anyone. What was ok one day could make him md he next….and sometimes it was very hard….

"That's up to him." said Dad in a tone that was more…she didn't know. Something besides mean. Something that she couldn't place but knew was not meant to be mean.

"What does that mean?" asked Mob. She could feel…sort of…what he felt. If she focused on his aura. He was…bad feelings. His aura….it felt scared….and-and-and she didn't know what to do….

"It means that whenever your brother is done then he will be done and we can go on to…I don't even know. Whatever is next on our travel itinerary, maybe? Somewhere far from here. The Seventh Division perhaps….or perhaps Tokyo…we've been away from Japan for far too long." Said Dad. She tried to focus on the parts that dad said about going back to Japan, about maybe going home, Sho would be so happy…if he came back….

When he came back.

"Sho's coming back though, right? I mean he's not….they aren't hurting him, are they?" asked Mob. She didn't like how quiet dad got after she said that. She didn't like it at all. She wanted him to say something, anything, even if it was something mean. Even if he wanted to call her every single mean name he knew until his voice got sore. She didn't care. She just wanted to know that her little brother, her best friend, was going to be ok….

"Your brother will not die. He is going through a…a process….but not one which will kill him. He will come back…and I don't want to speak another word on the subject. Now either go to sleep or go away. The choice is yours." Said Dad. She didn't like how often dad said the word 'die'. She hadn't said 'die', she had just maybe thought it, so really that was no reason for him to go and use that word.

She had so many more questions for him.

But she knew that she would not be getting any answers. Dad had spoken. This was something that they were not supposed to talk about. Like mom. If Sho…if he didn't come back…then it would be just like with mom. She would not be allowed to even talk about her own little brother. The Suzuki family would be cut in half….and it was all her fault. If she had been born ordinary, if she had never had these powers, then Sho never would have wanted them and then he never would have put himself through this. He would have been in the other bed in their room….and she would have been there too…and they would have been together….

Mob felt alone.

So she pressed herself even harder against dad. He went very rigid for a moment before reaching an arm behind her and patting her on the back. He was still rigid when he did that, like he didn't want to, but he was her dad and when she was scared he was supposed to take care of her…or maybe that was just moms. She didn't know. All she knew was that she wanted her little brother.

She wanted her mom.

She wanted the other half of the Suzuki family.

"I'll stay. Goodnight." Said Mob. She wanted her whole entire family to be together. She didn't want them like this, fractured and broken, and she would have given anything to have Sho back…and mom back…and to have Sho safe from whatever it was that he was putting himself through…because of her. Because he wanted her powers. Because she had been born with powers and he had not…and it wasn't fair. It should have been her there, wherever Sho was, and he should have been there in her place. She wished that there was some way to swap their places….

But there was not.

Even though Mob really did not want to be here.


	79. Going There

Mob had been alone for too long.

Dad left in either the middle of the night or the early morning, she didn't know which, all she knew was that she had woken up to an empty bed. Dad's side of the bed had been cold. He'd been gone for a while by the time she woke up. She wished that he hadn't gone. Waking up alone…it have been scary. Being alone was scary.

Still no Sho.

Sho was still…wherever he was. He was gone and she was all alone. She ate her breakfast alone, half a jug of milk and half a box of cereal, and even though it had probably been delicious she hadn't been able to taste it. She didn't like it, eating alone, without dad or Sho…or mom. Now instead of their being half of the Suzuki family there was a quarter of it. Dad had left her all alone all day.

Still no Sho.

It felt wrong. Being without her little brother…it felt so wrong. She knew that this would not be forever. Dad said that it wouldn't be for forever. She knew that Sho was not going to die. Dad had specifically said that Sho was not going to die…even though he had also been the only one to use the word 'die'…and also that meant that what he was going through killed people….like that time they had seen….yeah. This was…she didn't like to think about it.

But there was no way at all for her to take her mind off of it.

She tried watching TV and playing with her toys and playing videogames and even taking a nap even though she hadn't done that since she was very little. She just wanted to take her mind off of the fact that Sho's aura had been so bright…and now it was gone….and that could have meant that he was done with…whatever it was that they were doing to him…or not. It could have meant that he was done being….a being. Done with being a person and he could have turned into a spirit and-

And Mob had ended up losing control and messing up her room.

And she didn't even feel bad about it, not really. This may have been the room that she was sleeping in but it was not her room. Not even in the sense that her room was back at the castle. No, this was not her room because there was no Sho in it. She shared a room with Sho. That was how it had been since the day Sho had been born. She shared a room with her little brother. She loved her little brother. She loved her little brother so much…..and now he was gone. And this was not her room. If it wasn't THEIR room then it was not HER room.

She had lost control.

Dad would be angry with her but that was a good thing. Then maybe he wouldn't be angry with Sho. He was always so angry with Sho. Even now he might have been. Even though Sho had been put through….whatever it was that they were putting him through. She didn't even know. All she knew was that he was supposed to come out the other side just as strong as she and Dad were. She didn't know why he cared about that. She knew that, if it came down to it, she would rather lose her powers for the rest of forever than lose her little brother. Her powers were just another part of her, like how she liked cats and couldn't run very fast but played a good game of Chinese checkers, according to dad anyway, so really if she had to lose her powers then she would have given them up in a heartbeat. For her little brother, of course, because she could not just get rid of her powers for no reason. Dad would never have allowed that. He said that their powers were the only things in this world that mattered about them. That their powers made them special, made them the best sort of people in the world, and that

What good were her powers, anyway?

She didn't even know. She'd had these powers since the day she had been born, dad had said. For as long as she could remember she had been able to do things that most people couldn't. Dad said that she was rare because girls couldn't usually do the stuff she did and also kids weren't supposed to be as strong as she was. She was a prodigy, dad had said, and she didn't want to be one. Not when it meant that Sho got hurt. What was the point of being extraordinary when your little brother was ordinary?

There was no point.

There was no point to being Suzuki Shigeko and she did not know why Sho was putting himself through…whatever it was…to become more like her. Dad said that fate gave them their powers. Dad said that fate gave them these powers and made everyone else extras in the world. That meant that Sho was an extra because he wasn't like her and dad. Mob wished that she were an extra in the world. Mob. Not Shigeko. She didn't much want to be Shigeko anymore. She would rather have been Mob.

She would rather have been a Mob character….then Sho could have been a main character….and then none of this would have been happening.

It started happening again, seeing Sho's aura, around when she had gotten so bored and lonely that she had picked up one of Sho's drawing books and tried to start drawing a picture of…something. She didn't know what it would be yet beyond a series of red circles. Sho did this sometimes, he just started drawing and said that it would become whatever it became, so maybe this was ok…even though Sho had told her a million and one times never to touch his drawing stuff without his permission. Permission he almost never gave. But this was ok. He would be mad at her. It was ok if he was mad at her. If he was mad at her at least that would have meant that he would have been back.

For a moment she thought that he had been back.

But no, that was just his aura doing that thing again, which meant that they were back at it. Whatever 'it' was. Well 'It' was a scary clown that lived in the sewers and ate people….but that was just a movie. Sho had wanted to see that movie. That had been a fun day. They had been in the middle of nowhere and all that there was to do was a mall with a movie theatre and a play place and Fukuda had been able to take them to there, well dad hadn't known, and they had watched all the movies that the theatre had in one day. Mob didn't even care that they had been in English. Her and Sho's English had gotten good enough that they could sort of understand, well more than sort of, what was going on. It had been a good day even though one time Fukuda took Sho to the bathroom but she had to stay behind to guard the popcorn and also she was a girl and not allowed in the boy's bathroom because the only boy she was allowed to see naked was her little brother and she hadn't been too scared at first but then they had been gone for a while and she thought that they had forgotten about her and left even though if she focused she could still see their auras. They hadn't left her, Fukuda had just gotten lost and he wouldn't take directions from Sho. He had gotten lost, so lost, that they had ended up in the parking lot.

It was hard being away from Sho then and it was hard being away from him now.

Actually it was harder, now, because they were back to doing stuff to him….and Mob did not want that. She wanted her little brother. She didn't care if he got powers or not and neither should he have. He already sort of had powers and he could do a lot more than most of the people in the whole entire world could do. Fate had made a terrible mistake, giving her most of the power and giving almost none of it to Sho, and she wished that fate had been more careful….and also she knew, from Brave, that you could change your fate but it was more trouble than it was worth and also your mom turned into a bear.

Which was probably not what was happening.

But what did she know? She had no idea what was happening to her little brother and…and it was making her lose control…and she hated being alone…she wanted nothing more than to be with him…so why not be with him? Well besides the fact that dad had told her stay put, of course. Dad said that Sho had to go through this alone and that her being there would only complicate matters. But she didn't see how being there for her little brother could complicate things. She didn't see any reason why she shouldn't have been there for her little brother.

Dad said no.

Dad would be mad at her…but she didn't really care. She didn't care if he got so mad that he hit her again. He hadn't hit her in a long time…but that didn't matter. She didn't care if he hit her just as hard and just as many times as when he hit Sho. She just wanted to…to see if Sho was ok. To be there for him. If she got punished for that then she would take whatever dad threw at her.

She put on her shoes and left.

"Miss Suzuki? Do you need something?" asked the copy paste aura guy outside of the door. They were everywhere. She was mostly used to them. Mostly. There was will something weird about people who had the same aura. Kind of like the first time she ever saw identical twins in real life. She didn't stare, though, because that would have been rude. Besides, those guys stared enough as it was.

"I'm going to go check on my brother." Said Mob. She wondered if they would try and stop her. They never tried to stop her and Sho from doing anything. Even that time when they were staying at their apartment in Munich and Sho tried to climb out the window and on to the roof…though dad never said that they WEREN'T allowed to climb out the windows. Not like now.

She was not allowed to leave.

"The President said that you were supposed to stay put." Said the guy. Mob didn't know his name. Mob didn't know any of their names and they never gave their names when she asked. Dad told them not to. Mob didn't get why. It would have been easier to get to know them if she knew their names. Though it would have been harder to do what she was doing now, deliberately disobeying dad, if she knew the name of the guy who was going to tell on her.

"I know what he said but I want to check on my little brother." Said Mob. She took a step forward and waited to see if she was stopped. No, she wasn't stopped, just watched. They watched her a lot, stared at her, and dad said that it was because of how her aura was. How bright it was. How strong she was. She didn't much want to be stared at.

"I'm going to start walking now." Said Mob. She kept on walking and was met with no protest. She wondered if she had to listen to them if they told her to do something. She was a kid and kids were supposed to listen to adults…but adults listened to her. Not to Sho that often, when Sho told them to do something they always looked at her like they needed her permission, and that was kind of weird. Maybe it was because she was a year older than Sho. Maybe that one year made all the difference. She wondered what it would have been like if Sho had been the older brother and she had been the little sister. Would he have gone looking for her?

Would he have even been in the position to go looking for her?

Would she have still been more powerful than Sho even if she had been younger? Would Sho have been mean to her even if he had been older? Would he have taken care of her the way she took care of him? Did she take care of him because she was older or because she was a girl? Dad said that girls were better at things like that, taking care of people, but sometimes Mob didn't feel like she was very good at taking care of Sho. Like now. She had let this happen to him…

She had no idea what was happening to him.

She could feel his aura and she walked towards it. People stopped and stared at her but nobody tried to stop her. People said hi to her as she passed, well some of them did, and they just said her name. Miss Suzuki. Suzuki-san. She was not a grownup. People did not have to call her that. She was Shigeko-chan….even though nobody called her that. Sho called her big sis and dad called her Daughter. Even when they weren't speaking Japanese he still called her Daughter. Sho still called her big sis, too, even when they weren't speaking Japanese.

Her name was Suzuki Shigeko.

But she preferred Mob. But what she preferred did not matter. She'd only be Daughter soon…at least that was what it felt like. There was dread in her stomach sitting heavy as the time she and Sho ate that brick of chocolate. It was heavy and it made her kind of sick. If something happened to Sho then there would be nobody around to call her big sis…unless dad had another kid. Unless mom came back and then she and dad had another kid like she had wanted when she was younger. Would they do that? If something happened to Sho would they…would they have another kid? Another little brother? Would they call the new little brother Sho and pretend like there had never been a first Sho? Like the time back in first grade when the class fish died and the teacher just got a new one with the same name and they all pretended like it was the same fish even though it so clearly was not?

People were not fish.

And nothing was going to happen to Sho anyway. She wouldn't let anything happen to Sho. She'd die first. The thought comes to her suddenly. She could die. Sho could die. She knew that they could die, dad said that even they were not immortal, but it had always been just a thing that she knew happened but never thought about. Now she was thinking about it. Never having Sho by her side again. Him turning into a spirit or just…passing on. Her passing on. Passing on to whatever was on the other side. She had no idea what was on the other side and neither did dad…and she did not want to find out and she certainly did not want Sho to find out either.

So she kept walking.

She followed his aura through the cold, grey, hallways. These were the same ones that she and Sho had trick or treated down on Give Me Candy Day, which was a much better fit for that day than Halloween, but they were not exactly the same. No. The people didn't have candy this time and they didn't look happy. In fact there were very few people there at all and the ones that were there seemed sad. They spoke in hushed tones and shut up completely when she walked by. They went back to talking as she passed.

"…a kid…."

"…his kid…."

"….no, that's his kid…"

"….cruel…"

"….can't take much more of this…."

Mob didn't stay in one spot long enough to eavesdrop…and she should not have been eavesdropping in the first place. She wondered what they were talking about….and she hoped that they weren't talking about Sho. She hoped that whatever was happened to Sho was so simple and ordinary that it wasn't even worth talking about. She hoped that when she came upon him he would be annoyed and shove her or pull her hair and tell her that she was being annoying and to go away.

She wouldn't have minded it If he was mean.

She just wanted him back. She could feel dad's aura, too, and she tried to pull her aura in close so he wouldn't sense her. There was a lot of Sho here. A lot of Sho and a lot of the awakened and a lot of Fukuda as well. That was bad. If she was feeling this much of Fukuda then that meant that he had been doing a lot of healing…and that meant that Sho had needed a lot of healing…and that was bad. That meant that he had been getting hurt….

She opened a set of heavy metal doors.

She knew this place. This was the place that she and Sho had gone to all those months ago. She made herself small, she pulled her aura in close, and she tried her best at sneaking around. Everyone, including dad, was crowded around something that she could not see. She didn't know what it was but it had their full attention…and also it felt a lot like Sho…

"This is your son!" Fukuda was practically shouting at dad. Mob pressed her back against the wall even though dad was more likely to notice her aura before anything else. Fukuda was yelling at dad…almost yelling…and nobody talked to dad like that. He was the President. Nobody could talk to him like that…then they would get punished….if they talking to him like that….

"I'm aware of that fact." Said Dad. She could tell that he was mad. His aura was mad, there was a lot of yellow in there, and his hands were clenched into fists. Mob covered her mouth, she was breathing really hard, even though she knew that it wouldn't help. Dad would notice her aura before anything else…even though the whole place was covered in Sho's aura…

So much red.

And it felt weird. It felt like he was there but he also was not there. Well he was there but not there beside her…where he was meant to be. She was supposed to be there for him…and she could feel tears tickling at the corners of her eyes…and she could feel her control slipping…but she could not lose control. Not now.

Not ever.

"He's only seven years old-" said Fukuda. Mob almost told him that Sho was eight now. That this was the weird time of the year when she and Sho's ages lined up. She was born in May and he was born in December and…and she almost wanted to explain that to Fukuda…but she didn't. She didn't. She couldn't because then dad would know that she was there. He still hadn't noticed her, by some miracle, and she was not trying to…to be noticed.

"Eight. He just had a birthday." Said Dad

"Fine. He's eight fucking years old and you've got him in one of those-" said Fukuda. Mob gasped, just a little, because she had never heard Fukuda say bad words before. He was in for it. Dad hated it when people said bad words. He hated a lot of things but he especially hated that.

"Do not question me." Said Dad. Mob nodded. Fukuda needed to listen to dad. Nothing good ever came from not listening to dad…not that she was about to start telling Fukuda that he needed to listen to dad. She was deliberately disobeying dad right then and there at that second….

"I've known you for over thirty years, Suzuki Touichirou, and I never once thought that you were capable of-" said Fukuda. He was shaking, now, and his aura was super visible…but not as visible as Dad's…or Sho's…or hers….

She pulled her aura in close.

"You are on dangerous ground right now. Stop talking." Said Dad in that slow, low, sort of tone he used whenever Sho was being bad and arguing with him. She had never heard that talk to another grown up like that. He was mean to the copy paste aura guys but he never talked to them like that…and she wished that she hadn't heard that. She wished that she was back in the safety of her room…but that was selfish. She had come to check on Sho and…and now she had…and-and-and-

And she got the feeling that he was not ok.

And it was making her control slip. It was making her bangs float up high behind her head. It was making her aura be visible. It was making her shake….and making…making the room…was she making the room shake or was dad making the room shake? Or was Fukuda making the room shake? Or was Sho making the room shake? She didn't know.

"No! I can't just stand idly by and let you-" said Fukuda. He reached over to touch dad…which was something that nobody was supposed to do…and then his hand stopped…because dad put up a barrier…and Mob put up a barrier, too, because….because she didn't even know. It just happened. When she lost control things just happened.

"You can and you will. You're a healer so heal. That's all I need you to do. When I want your opinion I'll ask for it." Said Dad

"Well you're getting it! You are getting my goddamned opinion whether you like it or not, Suzuki Touichirou." Said Fukuda. He was shaking, still, and his aura was shaking too. There were too many…to many colors…way too many colors….and hers were there too….and she felt….she felt so….

She felt like she was going to explode.

"No, I won't be. Now shut up and heal my son when he needs it. Beyond that I do not need you." Said dad

"Bullshit. This whole thing is pure and utter bullshit. You know that these things don't work. You know what these things do to grown men! This is an eight year old boy and you've been torturing him-" Said Fukuda

"Shut up." Said dad. Then Fukuda hit the ground. The copy paste aura guys and the lab coat guys pretend that they couldn't see anything. She could tell because they looked and then looked away. That was what she did whenever Sho ended up on the ground. She closed her eyes. She didn't want to see this. This was…a lot.

A lot.

She was shaking. She was shaking and she just…she could not keep it together….even though she had to. Even thoughb dad was right there and if she lost control…even though he could probably see her now…she tried to move, to move her feet, to move away from there and back to her bed where she could just hide…

But her feet would not work.

"Daughter. Explain." Said Dad. Mob could feel herself being pulled forward. Her feet dragged against the ground. Her aura pushed out. Her powers pushed out. Dad let her go.

"I-I-I was looking for Sho." said Mob. Fukuda was very pale, there, and he was opening his mouth like he was about to say something even though no sound was coming out. Mob reached behind her and pulled her braids down. She could feel dad looking at her. She could feel his aura resting on her…and it hurt…

But not as much as Sho's aura.

It was hitting her now…and she had no idea why it hurt….but it did….and she just wanted to…to go…to go away…and that was selfish. She was selfish. She was selfish for not wanting to be there when Sho so clearly needed her to be there for him. She needed to be there for Sho…but she wanted to run away.

"Shigeko! You need to go-" said Fukuda. She nodded. She didn't know if she had to listen to him but she was choosing to listen to him. She was being looked at. Everyone was looking at her and…and she just….did not want that. She wanted to go. She wanted to run away…

Even though Sho needed her.

"You do not command my children, Fukuda, do not over step. Daughter, you have deliberately disobeyed me-" said dad. Mob nodded. She could feel Sho's aura. She could feel a tear escaping from her eyes and hitting the top of her shoe. She stared at it. She felt dad trying to push her down. She didn't move. She didn't want to move. She didn't want dad to push her down. She hadn't done anything to deserve dad pushing her down. Sho was her little brother and dad had told her that she had to be there for him, to take care of him, and that was what she was doing. She was being there for her little brother.

"I was just worried about Sho!" said Mob even though she knew not to raise her voice to dad. She knew not to disobey dad. She knew that she had to be good, to be a good daughter, but she…she just….it felt wrong. It felt wrong to leave Sho there…and it felt wrong to disobey dad, too….

Power was nothing without control.

"Do not raise your voice to me. Go back to your room. I'll deal with you later." Said Dad. Mob could feel more tears streaking their way down her cheeks. She wanted…she wanted her little brother back…and he was right there….but there were so many people around that she could not even see what, exactly, it was that he was in…

She was crying.

But she was not leaving.

Because she wanted…she wanted Sho…she wanted her little brother…and she knew that she had to go. She had to do what she was told. She had to do what she was told, she was being told by both dad and Fukuda that she had to go…and Fukuda even said that she didn't want to see this…even though she didn't know what 'this' was…just that it was bad…

Someone told dad that they were ready to start.

Fukuda begged dad not to.

Mob had no idea what was about to start…but she had a bad feeling about whatever it was…which turned out to be right…because she heard Sho scream after some loud noise started….and-and-and-and-

And she couldn't remember what happened after that.


	80. No More Eighth Division

The Eighth Division was gone.

"Hold still, I think you cracked your skull."

This facility, the awakening portion, was built two stories underground.

"I looks worse than it is. Head wounds always bleed like crazy."

Wind. Sunlight. There was no roof. Dirt. Dirt in his mouth. Dirt in his hair. Blood in his eyes.

"The kids are ok, by the way. I managed to put Sho back together. Shigeko passed out."

Pain. He was in pain. His vision blurred. The world echoed. He could barely understand a word that Fukuda said. He tasted blood. He smelled blood. There was blood. Everywhere.

"Well I did my best to put them to sleep. The last thing they need, in my opinion, is to see this."

He turned his head to the side. His children. Not moving. Son was…alive. Daughter was alive as well. He could see Son's aura. It shone almost as brightly as Daughter's…though perhaps Daughter's aura was simply unusually dull. His own aura was…normal. That had not been him. Even though he had been close to that point…that had not been him.

"Yeah, I know, when you want my opinion you'll ask for it. Listen if you're going to put me in the ground then do it. I don't care anymore. Maybe I will later but I just…can't. I can't right now."

His children could have been mistaken for sleeping. He had the urge to tell Fukuda to shut up before he wakes them. He doesn't want them to be awake. When they were awake they were underfoot. He didn't want that. He needed….he needed time. This was big. This was something that he was going to have to run himself ragged fixing this. Thoughts, his thoughts, came clearly now. More clearly. It was easy to exorcise his emotions, the ones that had been plaguing him, now. Now that they had been knocked out of him.

"I know you can hear me and I know that I'm overstepping. Right now I just….I can't. I'm a healer and that's what I'm doing, healing you. You and those kids."

He sat up. He had been slumped over….something that had been digging into his back. That hurt. He pushed it away with his powers. Fukuda took a step back. The entire area was bathed in pink and blue. It drowned out Fukuda's green and his own red and yellow. He pushed Fukuda's aura away. He pushed Fukuda's hand away.

"You know better than to speak to me like that." Said Suzuki. He stood up and looked Fukuda in the eye. They had a history. Fukuda had been the first other esper he had met. They had been together in some capacity for about three decades. More like two and a half…but nobody was counting. Fukuda had been, apparently, like it meant something. Three decades or three hundred would not give him the right to speak to Suzuki that way.

"I do. Sorry Boss." Said Fukuda. There hadn't even been a delay. Good. Maybe he could excuse Fukuda's blatant disrespect. Maybe he could just…forget it…for now. It had been a very stressful time. Son had not been doing well. Fukuda was unusually attached to his children. He had none of his own after all. Yes, he could let it go for now. He had known the man for almost thirty years now...and he also only had the one healer. Yes, that was it. Healing was rare, very rare, so rare that Fukuda was the only healer that he knew of. That was why Suzuki would be letting this slide just this once. Because it would be too much trouble to go back to the drawing board. Anyone else would have been put in the ground if they had dared speak to Suzuki in that way.

Everyone else was already in the ground.

There should have been more auras. There weren't. There were….he could see people…and spirits…and he could see the massive hole in the ceiling…and the wreckage that had been the awakening chambers. He could see the broken concrete and twisted metal…he could smell blood and…ozone? It hung in the air. It hung in the air like the residue of Daughter's aura.

A true awakening.

A true explosion.

"What's the damage?" asked Suzuki as he surveyed the scene around him. His children were curled up together on the ground. A jacket, Fukuda's jacket, had been draped over them like a blanket. It was not big enough to hide the fact that they were both mostly naked…or the Lichtenberg figure that crossed Son's back. Son was breathing. He was bloody but he was breathing. So was Daughter. That was good, breathing was good, not that he could ever envision a situation in which the children being able to breathe would not have been good.

They were fine.

So why did he still feel like this? He needed to get back to business. He needed to get back to work. He needed to figure out exactly how much of this situation was salvageable. There was a hole in the ceiling. That was something to worry about. A lot of people were dead. That was something to worry about. Manpower shortages and massive renovations. Things that needed to happen. They would have to make all of the Awakened at the Seventh Division…which was not feasible. That was why he had created an Eighth Division in the first place. This was…not good.

Daughter had exploded.

"Besides the obvious? I highly doubt that this place is safe anymore. I don't just mean from the government. I mean that the structural integrity of the compound has been compromised. I did what I could but so far I've counted twelve dead Awakened and five dead scientists. That's just what I've managed to count. I healed you and the kids up, and whoever else I could, but there's nothing more that I can do." Said Fukuda. Suzuki nodded. He appreciated the return to normalcy from Fukuda. He overstepped occasionally, he had a weak spot for the children that caused him to act…irrationally….but at the end of the day there was no one more loyal than Fukuda.

"The children?" asked Suzuki. Son was kicking. He kicked in his sleep. Wrapped across his leg…that was one hell of a scar. It wrapped around his calve and then up behind his knee. Fukuda usually healed…well there were some things that left scars. When he went too quickly. When the wound was severe. That was why the Scars had, well, scars…

Son was a Scar.

Which was, actually, a good thing. Not the various marks that marred his Son's skin, no, those were grotesque but that fact that for once the damned awakening chamber actually worked. He wondered if it made espers who already had their powers stronger…or maybe Son always had the potential within himself and he had just been too young to bring it out. Fukuda's words ran through his mind. Son was only eight years old. Daughter was almost nine, now, in about half a year…and she was a prodigy. He had always compared Daughter to Son. Son to Daughter. The child of two nobodies from nothing to his own flesh and blood…and found his own flesh and blood wanting. Not anymore. He had no idea what Son could do now but…but if his aura, his passive aura, was anything to go by then the experiment had been a success.

Daughter had exploded.

"It's like I said. I managed to get Sho as healed up as I could. The scars…there's nothing that I can do about those but they're-they're normal for people who survive that fucking-that experiment. All of the experiments. He's alive, he's breathing, and I had to put him to sleep so he didn't see…any of this." said Fukuda. There's a look in his eyes that Suzuki doesn't like. There something in his tone that Suzuki doesn't like. Fukuda was, once again, getting close to overstepping. These were his children. He knew what was right for his children. Son knew that it would have been dangerous, the experiments, but he volunteered. He volunteered because he wanted to be something more than what he was…and now he was. It had been a success.

Daughter had exploded.

"And Daughter? Is she injured?" asked Suzuki. Aside from being completely naked, well almost completely her clothes were so damaged that she might as well have been, there was not a scratch on her. Nothing. Her passive aura, she was truly asleep, was duller than normal but he knew from his own explosions that something like that was to be expected. She would be groggy for a few days and would have trouble with some fine motor functions. That was to be expected. She had never truly exploded before…not like this…and he was disappointed in her.

She could have killed him.

She had killed at least seventeen people. He had been warning her about this for her entire life. Power was nothing without control. She had set his work back…and put him in danger. Him and Son. She could have killed Son. That was how…that was how she had come to him in the first place. She had almost killed her biological brother. Was she trying to make an orphan out of herself again? Why had she even been there? He had told her, he had told her to her face, that she was not to come anywhere near where her brother was. He had told her! And then she had the nerve to not only deliberately disobey him but also put his life in danger, put Sho's life in danger, and set his work back…he didn't even know how far! The nerve of that little-!

He exorcised that emotion.

"No. She's just passed out. She just…she just freaked out, ok? She freaked out and lost control. Please, don't be too hard on her." said Fukuda

"You're overstepping. I will deal with my Daughter as I see fit. She deliberately disobeyed me. Not only that but she put my life, Son's life, your life in danger. She also killed seventeen people. I cannot let her get away with killing seventeen people. Good manpower is so hard to come by. You know this just as well as I do." Said Suzuki. He didn't know what he would do to her…he had never been this angry with her before. He wanted to….he saw his aura. He was going to lose control if he thought about this too much. He needed to focus on the here and now. He needed to focus on getting everyone out, having this place repaired, and then replacing the dead. The Awakened were largely disposable but the people who actually ran the awakening experiments….they were a whole other story.

"You're not going to tell her that…are you?" asked Fukuda

"Tell her what?" asked Suzuki

"That she killed seventeen people. You can't seriously think that telling her, a little girl, that she killed someone…let alone SEVENTEEN PEOPLE is a good idea. I know you. I've known you since our school days. You're smarter than that. I know for a fact that you are smarter than that and I know for a fact that once you calm down you'll see that it's a bad idea. You'll see why you can never tell her the truth about what happened here. " Said Fukuda

"Why not? She's responsible for this. She deliberately disobeyed me. She needs to know why I'm upset with her and why she's being punished." Said Suzuki. He did not appreciate being questioned by one of his subordinates. Even one he had known as long as Fukuda. He knew how to raise his own child. He knew what could happen, what had almost happened, because she had lost control.

"Don't you dare." Said Fukuda. There was something low and dangerous in his voice…and in his aura. Suzuki didn't like it one bit. Now was not the time to challenge him…or maybe it was. He was angry enough that he might actually injure Daughter later, when she got up. She was the one responsible for all of this….

"Watch your tone and watch what you say." Said Suzuki

"Do you really think hitting her is going to solve anything? She's not even nine yet! She's not even nine and she saw something horrific and it freaked her out and she lost control of powers that a kid her age isn't even supposed to have yet! She's just a kid, Suzuki, and she saw her brother getting tortured. Smacking her around because she lost control…you know that saying 'the beatings will continue until moral improves'? Yeah, moral never improves. If you lay even a finger on her you know it'll just make her more unstable and then something like this will happen again…or maybe even something worse…next time." Said Fukuda

"Yes, the next time could be even worse. Which is why she needs to learn from this time. I know better than you, better than anyone, how bad the next time could be. I know and I need to stop her from-" said Suzuki. Fuck it. Fukuda had been doing nothing but overstepping and overstepping and overstepping and he needed to be taught his place and this was the worst day and he had almost died and he had lost a very good compound and a lot of staff and he had almost lost his Son and-

"I know how your parents died, Touichirou, I know what happened that day." Said Fukuda. Suzuki's aura shrank down. He found that he could no longer draw breath. Fukuda…how dare he…..HOW DARE HE!

"Get out of my sight before I murder you." Said Suzuki. He was serious. He was dead serious. He had never been more serious about anything in his entire life. Fukuda had no right to speak of that, of the past, of his parents and that awful day…HE HAD NO RIGHT.

No right.

"Fine, I will, but take my advice. If not as a colleague, if not as someone who's known you for most of your life, then as a healer. There are some things that we never can heal from. What she did, that's one of them, and if you tell her what happened I guarantee that she'll break. She'll break and then there'll be no fixing her. I know you. I know how much time you've invested in her. Time, money, and effort. I know how rare she is. If you tell her she'll break and if you hurt her because of what happened….it's going to happen again. It's going to happen again except the next time she'll wake up an orphan. I don't want that for her and neither do you. I know that I've overstepped, that I've run my mouth, and that I'm truly going to pay for it later. All I can say now is thank you for letting me say my piece. I'll go now and get everyone packed and shipped out before this place collapses down over our heads." Said Fukuda. He stood there…oh. He was waiting to be dismissed.

"Get out of my sight." Said Suzuki. He wanted to kill Fukuda….but he needed him. He needed Fukuda because…because he was the only healer in all of Claw. That was the only reason he was still alive after saying…all that he had said. Suzuki closed his eyes for a while after Fukuda. He sat down beside the children, closed his eyes, put up a barrier, and tried his best to exorcise all of the emotions that threatened to come bubbling to the surface.

He hadn't thought about his parents in years.

He hadn't thought about what happened to his parents in years.

And now he was trying his best not to. He was trying his best…but at least this took his mind off of what happened. Off of what his Daughter had done. For all of his insolence Fukuda had a point. He had always been good at that, reigning in Suzuki's worst impulses, and he was….oddly grateful to him for it. Even if he had been so far out of line that it wasn't even funny. He knew that, in his previous state of mind, he could have severely injured Daughter.

He brushed the hair from her face.

She had not set out to make herself an orphan. She loved him. That was why she was always telling him as much, and why she was always seeking out his company, because she loved him. She loved him in the sense that she had imprinted on him. He was her parent and she looked to him for safety. She cared for him in the way that children cared for their parents. In the way that he had cared for his own parents long ago. She had not set out to hurt him….even if she had disobeyed him…but if he punished her she may have ended up losing control again…or losing the pair bond that she had formed with him…and then it was over half a decade wasted on her.

He would not punish her.

And she would never know what happened here.

And neither would Son. Son could not keep anything to himself. He would tell his older sister…and also he would find it psychologically distressing as well. What had happened here. He could not risk losing his Son, either, not now that he had become someone worth keeping around. His resting aura was so much brighter, now, than it had ever been before. Good. More than good. Maybe he should have just…accentuated the positives. Son had finally awakened and Daughter….he had seen the upper limits of her power.

She could not take him.

If she ever got it in her head to challenge him then she would lose. That was…a comfort. He had never been afraid of her challenging him before but now…and that was due to Fukuda's insolence. Fukuda's insolence and her loss of control. She would never challenge him, she loved him, and even if she did she would never have been able to win.

Even if, now, there was no more Eighth Division thanks to her.


	81. A Couple of Weeks Later

It had been a couple weeks since the thing with the Eighth Division.

It had been a couple weeks since Shigeko lost control and destroyed an entire division compound…or at least a section of it making the entire place structurally unsound.

It had been a couple weeks since Sho awakened…..even though he was only eight and he would have gotten the rest of his powers on his own in time.

It had been a couple of weeks since he ran his mouth at the most powerful, most dangerous, and most idiotic man in the world…not that he didn't deserve it. Suzuki had always been something of an idiot when it came to looking past himself. He deserved what he got and more. Even though he'd come very close to getting himself killed running his mouth like that….

It had been a couple months since he'd last checked in with Masami. That was good. He had no idea what he was supposed to say to her. He had let her son get tortured until he unlocked the rest of his powers…powers that would have come in on their own by the time he became an adult. He had let her daughter lose control and kill seventeen people on accident. He had let her husband torture their son, both of their children, and there was nothing that he could have done about it. There was nothing….nothing that he could have done.

Poor Sho.

The kid was fine, it seemed, though Fukuda had only seen him from a distance. The kids hadn't called him in to heal them so he hadn't had any reason to go near them. He was on thin ice with Suzuki. He had used the word 'murder' and Fukuda knew that he did not speak in hyperbole. Mentioning his parents had been crossing a line. He knew that he had been crossing a line. He just needed something, anything, to shock Suzuki off the train of thought that he had been on. Punishing Shigeko for what had happened would have been the worst thing that he could have done. She was only eight…

Even if it didn't feel like it.

Fukuda remembered what had happened. He doubted that he was capable of forgetting what he had seen that day….what he had felt. What it felt like to be in the middle of….that. It was his own powers that had saved him. He was a difficult man to hurt. Well it had been painful but he healed very quickly. Suzuki had even been kind enough to pull him into his barrier….even though it had eventually broken under the sheer psychic force that had been Shigeko. She hadn't meant to do anything….and that was the worst part. The most terrifying part. An eight year old girl, not even nine yet, had managed to do…that.

She seemed fine.

He had only seen her from a distance, too. There was a lot of work reassigning people, salvaging data, moving awakenings to the Seventh Division…it had taken superhuman effort to get it all running smoothly in such a short amount of time but that was what they were after all. Superhuman. Even if it didn't always feel like it. In the face of overwhelming power, the kind that was contained in that little girl, he had felt like little more than a normal person. He was little more than a normal person compared to her. They all were. She had power that he had only seen once before…in her father. The father who had been ready to knock her into next week for losing control of that power. She was fine now, from what he had gathered, she and Sho had been set up in another house and she hadn't been knocked into next week. Judging by how normal she had looked the last time he had seen her, getting onto the plane that took them across the world once again, she had been normal. Happy even. Suzuki had done something intelligent for once in his life and kept his mouth shut about what had happened. Good.

Nobody, especially not a child, needed that hanging over their head.

And she was just that, a child, even though with each passing year it was harder and harder not to see her as her father in miniature. They had similar mannerisms, ways of speaking, even ways of carrying themselves. It was easy to think of her as him but he…he forced himself to see her for the child she was. The child who had managed to destroy an entire section of the compound just because she had been scared. A child who, apparently, had no memory of what had happened.

Good. That was good.

He knew that she didn't remember what had happened, he could tell, because she was still up and about like normal. He knew her and he knew the wreck she would have been if Suzuki had gone along with his idiotic plan of telling her what had happened and punished her for it. That poor kid….Suzuki had been through the same thing and he would have punished her for it. Talking about his parents, the day he had lost them, had been a low blow…but things were ok between them. He was still alive so that was as good of an indication as anything that he was forgiven for his outburst.

If it was one thing that Suzuki was good at it was pretending that bad things had never happened.

They had the same relationship they'd always had, the same dynamic that they'd had since their school days, and it suited the both of them just fine. He kowtowed and Suzuki bossed him around. Fukuda hated he man as much as ever, who wouldn't, but Suzuki had the emotional range of a teaspoon. He couldn't see past his own self. He had no idea just how much Fukuda loathed him, now, for what he had done to Sho. To Shigeko and Sho.

To what Suzuki had made him an accomplice in.

But there was nothing that he could do about what had happened now. There was no sense in challenging a man who could hurt him faster than he could heal. There was no sense in ending up dead and leaving those kids truly alone in the world. He still hadn't found a way to get Sho to Masami…and now there was no way. Not with Sho's aura being what it was. Anonymity had been his first defense and now it was gone. He had failed Masami….and those kids…

But he could at least make their lives a little more cheery.

Which was what brought him to their front door, Claw's front door, on that cold December day with a gift tucked under each arm. A new doll for Shigeko and a new sketchbook for Sho. Well technically he had been called in because, according to Sho, a tree had fallen on Shigeko…though he had seen her in the background of the call and aside from a few scrapes and bruises she had been fine. What did he know, maybe a tree really had fallen on her and that was just what the result was.

Judging by the amount of pine needles in the snow, the crater in the ground where a young spruce tree had grown, and the trail of dirt and pine needles made in the snow and leading towards the front door he had a few reasons to believe Sho's story. Even if it wasn't true he had to come when summoned. Even if he wasn't sure if he even wanted to be there. Even if he had no idea what he was supposed to say to these kids. Sorry wouldn't be enough. If he said sorry then they would want to know what he was sorry about. There was the obvious, not protecting them, but also….also things that they were too young to know about. His hand in getting their mother away from their household. His hand in destroying their parents' facade of a marriage. All of it. Things that they, at eight and almost nine, were not at all ready to hear. Things that they were never going to be ready to hear. Things that he was never going to be ready to tell them.

He wanted to turn back.

But he couldn't. The minute his feet reached the last step of the landing, the minute he was bathed in the glow of the porchlight, the door opened. He saw the aura before he saw the kid it was attached to. Red. Bright red. Fruit punch red. Ironic because fruit punch would probably kill the kid the aura was attached to. Anything with citric acid would kill Sho. He had lived through something that killed a good percentage of the grown man who were thrown into it but something as simple as a grapefruit could send him into a deadly allergic reaction.

Life was weird that way.

"Fukuda, come quick! There's blood everywhere!" said Sho. Fukuda felt himself being pulled forward by his mid-section. Sho's doing. He had a hand out and he was pulling Fukuda so hard that he had no choice to follow. The hallway was filled with dirt. Fukuda almost felt bad about kicking his shoes off in the makeshift genkan. The feeling only intensified when he felt the pain of pine needles poking through his socks.

It smelled like Christmas in that borrowed house.

Piney. Very piney. Sort of like how his house had smelled when he was a child. His parents had always been into getting real trees. It was odd, sort of, that the kids would have wanted a real tree since Masami had always put up an artificial one. It was the same tree every year, Fukuda remembered, but Masami had always made it look amazing. He wondered what she was up to. Enjoying her Christmas? Enjoying it with someone? Or simply wallowing in the fact that her children were an ocean away and she had no way of knowing that they were safe…

They weren't.

And not just because of the pine tree standing precariously in the middle of this borrowed living room. It was too tall for the room it was in. The top was bent at a ninety degree angle as it touched the ceiling. It was resting in a corner, gravity seemed to be trying it's best to pull it down to the ground, and it was covered in paper chains and ornaments. The kids' doing. Shigeko sat down on the ground in front of it covered in light scratches and bruises.

"Hi Fukuda. You didn't have to come all the way out here, I'm fine, but it's nice seeing you." Said Shigeko. She was eight now, too old to run up to him and jump into his arms or wrap herself around his leg and beg him to play with her. She was too old…that was it. If she knew what had happened then…then she would have been a wreck. But no, she was just sitting in front of the Christmas tree cutting out round pieces of construction paper. A box of crayons laid opened beside her, it's contents spilled out over the rug like so much debris….body parts….guts….blood….

"…I did it all by myself! Big sis didn't even have to help me once, you know. Not once! She actually tried to stop me you know. Like she could have." Said Sho as he grabbed his arm and shook him. Fukuda was thrown from his memories, from his mind, by the feeling of a gift slipping from his grasp. He watched, he waited, for it to hit the hardwood floor.

It didn't.

He could see Sho's aura. Well he had been seeing nothing but Sho's aura, his passive aura, but now it was active. It was active and he was holding the present in front of his face and shaking it. His hands were at his sides, mostly, though he was making hand motions. Shigeko made no such hand motions when she took the other present from his grasp and placed it under the tree.

"Thank you, Fukuda, we'll be sure to open them on Christmas Day like we're supposed to." Said Shigeko. She had stopped what she was doing and now she was looking at him. She was making full eye contact now just like…well he had made eye contact with her that day…and he had seen nothing behind her eyes. Like now. Her eyes gave nothing away. They guarded her secrets, her thoughts, her emotions. The eyes were the windows to the soul but it seemed that she had invested in a set of curtains.

Just like her father had.

"I'm going to open mine now and there's nothing that you can do to stop me, big sis!" said Sho. Fukuda could see it, the brief tug of war that followed. Shigeko won. There was no contest. She didn't have to move a muscle to win. She simply took his present and put it under the tree. She lined it up with similarly sized boxes. Boxes labeled 'Son' and 'Daughter'.

"You know the rules." Said Shigeko

"Yeah, and I don't care. It's my present and I will do whatever I want with it. If I want to open it right now I will and if I want to save it forever like you did with those White day chocolates then I'll do that too…but I won't. I chose to open it right now right this very second." Said Sho

"Not until Christmas Sho, you remember what dad said. Our cultural rituals are important." Said Shigeko. Yeah, that sounded like something that Suzuki would have said. He had gone on about it, before, back when they had been younger and Claw had been nothing more than the two of them and Suzuki's bedroom. It was important to persevere people's cultures so that they had less of an incentive to rise up and kill you…not that anyone even stood a chance against him…

"You're not the boss of me." Said Sho. There was a flash of red, active aura, and then Shigeko wound up sprawled out on the ground. For a moment Fukuda could not breathe. He could not move. He could not think. He pulled his aura in close, very close, before some part of him remembered to extend it over to Sho. Not that it would do either of them any good. He was not psycho kinetic. He could not put up a barrier. He was at the mercy of whatever happened next.

Shigeko sat up.

"I am, Sho, dad said so. Also you shouldn't use your powers like that. I'm glad that you finally have your powers, your for real powers, but you shouldn't use them to push people. I don't use my powers to push you. I've never used my powers to push anyone. If you want to push me then you can come up and push me the normal way. I don't mind that." Said Shigeko. Fukuda let out the breath that he had been holding. He felt all the muscles in his body, at one point tense and ready to carry him away should he have needed it, relax. His aura came back in close where it belonged.

That had been a close one.

When they had been younger Suzuki had lost control. He had a temper and it seemed like every little thing set him off. If someone had pushed Suzuki, young Suzuki, Fukuda shuddered to think what the result would have been. Hell, if someone had the nerve to push him today unless it was in one of those 'prove yourself' situations Fukuda doubted that there would have been enough of the poor bastard left to heal. No, they'd probably have to bury the poor sod in a shoe box.

Shigeko had taken that rather well.

"…whatever. I don't care anyway." Muttered Sho. He crossed his arms and looked down at his socks. Fukuda was struck with a sense of…sadness…for the kid. He had gone through all of that and still his older sister eclipsed him. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair…and now he sounded like the one who was eight, not Sho….though even if it was a childish statement it was also a fact.

Nothing about Suzuki Sho's life had been fair up to this point.

But Fukuda could not dwell on it, he had come there for a reason after all, and he had to fulfil that reason to justify why he had been there. Suzuki….he had overstepped one too many times. He couldn't just be in the house when he came back, whenever that was, he had to…to get a move on and heal the very superfluous looking injuries that covered Shigeko. Even though she seemed fine. Even though she was watching him with those haunting eyes….her father's eyes….

He healed her.

He had her stand up and his healed the injuries she pointed out. The tree had fallen on her…but only the branches, it seemed, when Sho had pulled it out of the ground with his powers. They had made sure to leave the roots as attached as possible so that they could replant it before they left again…and Fukuda focused on that. On the fact that Shigeko had taken care to make sure that the tree's main roots were as in tact as possible…even though that was why the house was full of dirt. Suzuki would never have done that. He would never had gotten a real tree, anyway, and he had never allowed Masami one either.

Pointless and messy, he had said.

Shigeko was not her father…even if it felt like it. Even if she was capable of the same sort of destruction that he was. Even if, at any moment, she could have exploded and killed them all. She was just a kid…and she wouldn't stay that way for long. She had never been too prone to tantrums…but she was just a kid, not a teenager, and in a few short years she'd be a teenager…and so would Sho….

And he was in no way looking forward to that time.

But they were still children, now, and that was….better. They were still young. They weren't as young as they used to be, he used to be able to pick them each up with one arm, but they were still young. Shigeko was still young enough that she could be enough of her own person that….that they wouldn't have another Suzuki on their hands to deal with…and Sho was still young enough that he might…he might have been able to get Sho away from this place. Claw. Away from his father. Back to his mother where he belonged…somehow. Even with his aura being as bright as an adult's. Even with powers that he may not have had full control over….

Fukuda did not know.

"Fukuda, stay and make ornaments with us. Come on, we're making Christmas!" shouted Sho. He tugged on Fukuda's arm and jumped up and down. The house shook with each jump he made…and not just because it was a cheaply made prefab. No, his aura…his powers…filled the space…like they would fill every space…like they would make it impossible to hide him….and now he was worth coming after in his father's mind….

"You don't have to stay, Fukuda, I know that you're busy. I'm ok now. No concussions, contusions, or abrasions. You can go if you want to." Said Shigeko. She said it so calmly and levelly….it was almost like talking to what he imagined a young Suzuki would have been….but she was not him. She was not even his daughter, biologically, but still…

He had a choice to make.

He chose to leave.

It had been a couple of weeks after what happened at the Eight Division….and not enough time had passed.


	82. Marks and Scars and Baths and Trees

Sho actually kind of liked all the marks on his body.

"Sho, come on. It's bath time." Said big sis. He didn't want to take a bath, not really, but dad said that he was filthy. Sho didn't think that he was filthy and he had said so but dad said that they had to take a bath and big sis said so and sometimes it was just best to do what dad and big sis said…also dad wasn't happy that they had ripped a tree out of the ground and brought it inside.

But also he was impressed. He said so.

So, really, it had been the best Christmas ever just for that. He had used that word, impressive, because Sho was impressive. Dad had said so…and it had felt so good. Even better than opening all of his presents. More art supplies, so many art supplies, and other stuff on his list. Like a new tablet. Like a new 3DS XL…which was better than his old DS because it was in 3D….and also all the games he wanted…and also he and big sis had phones now, real ones, because dad said that he was sick of their asking for them….

But dad saying that it was impressive that he ripped a tree out of the ground and dragged it inside…that had been the best thing ever….

So, really, everything was worth it. Including all of the marks all over his skin. The pinpricks up and down either side of his arm, the thick leathery skin that wrapped up the side of both of his legs, the thick skin on the soles of his feet, and especially the tree on his back. Well it wasn't a tree, it was where he had been shot full of lightening, but it was cool looking. Big sis had took a picture of it.

He didn't really remember all of how he got these marks….and he didn't want to…but he was happy that they were there because they meant that he finally had powers, his real powers, like dad and big sis.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm coming." Said Sho. He turned away from the mirror, it was one of this whole wall mirrors like mom and dad had in their room at the castle. He could see his whole body all at once in that mirror. All of the marks on his body. All of his scars. They were cool.

Big sis looked away when he turned around.

It wasn't because he was naked. They had seen each other naked every single bath time since they were kids. You weren't supposed to see girls naked and they weren't supposed to see you naked but it was ok if you were brother and sister. Big sis wasn't looking away because he was naked, no, she was looking away because of all the marks on his body. He didn't remember everything about how he got them, and Fukuda said that he was better off that way, but he remembered waking up in a bed with big sis holding his hand and telling her that she was so sorry that all of that stuff had happened to him and now he had all of these marks.

He didn't get what she was so upset about.

"You can go in first so you can be comfortable." Said big sis. She was still looking away from him. He didn't get her. What was she so upset about? She wasn't the one who had to go through all of that stuff….not that he had been afraid. No, not once. Not even when the doctor guy closed the door and…

"Or I can go first if you want me to." Said big sis. She was holding onto her hair now. She did that when she was bothered by something. What did she have to be bothered by? She had been born with her powers. She had no idea what you had to go through….but it was worth it. It was worth it and he was fine. Even if the water was so hot there was steam…and the room was kind of hot…and maybe breathing was getting kind of hard…

He stepped into the tub.

And he was fine. This was a bathtub, he had been taking baths in bathtubs for his entire life, and this bath tub did not have a door that was going to close and he was not going to be underwater until he couldn't breathe anymore and he was not strapped and he was fine and-

He couldn't move his arms.

He didn't think. He just threw himself back and used his powers to get free. He shouldn't have done that. That was big sis. That was big sis and she had just been hugging him from behind, a back hug because he was not a baby and did not need his big sister to hug him like he was little, and he didn't know why he was a jerk to her there. Maybe because he was annoyed at being hugged. Yeah, that was it.

"I'm sorry. I just thought that you needed a hug. Your aura looked like….it looked like you needed a hug. That was all. I'm sorry, Sho." said big sis. Sho shrugged. He was just being weird. He was fine now. His breathing was normal and he was normal and he hadn't hurt her, her back was to the wall not the faucet, so really everything was fine. Really.

"I don't need a hug. I'm fine. I'm better than fine….check this out!" said Sho. He raised a hand in the air and a globe of water floated out of the tub and hung around in the air. Big sis used to do this a lot when they were really little. She used to wait until mom left them alone and then she would make water planets. Mom didn't like it when they used their powers. She always got upset or at least kind of worried looking…but mom wasn't there anymore.

"That's cool, Sho, I'm glad you can do that now." Said big sis. That was what she said whenever he did something with his powers. She just said that she was happy for him…and he knew that she was telling the truth. She didn't lie. She couldn't lie. She really was happy for him…even though she had no reason to be. Didn't she get it? He had powers now, too, just like she did. That was what made her so special, what made dad like her the best. Powers were her thing and now he had them and now dad might even start to like him the best.

But she wasn't afraid of that.

It was like she didn't care, sometimes, even though she said that she did. She had said, when they woke up in beds that they didn't recognize in a place that they had never been before, that she was so happy that he had finally gotten his powers. That she had been wishing for him to have powers just like hers for their entire lives. That made zero sense. Didn't she realize that she was in danger? That now dad could totally like him just as much as he liked her? That dad would want to hang out with him, now, and would want to stay up late watching boring TV and playing boring games like Go and Chinese Checkers and read boring books about history and other countries and stuff…with him? Not her?

Did it have to be an either/or thing?

It had always been an either/or thing. She had always had dad and he had always had mom…until they didn't have a mom anymore. After that she had gotten dad and he had been alone. Well she had never left him alone, not when they were both awake anyway, but it was not the same. She may have always been pretending to be their mom but she was not their mom. She was big sis. Big sis was not mom. He had mom, before, and he had needed her…but now he had dad. Maybe. And also he totally wanted dad.

He did.

He really did.

Even if dad had been a jerk to him before. Even if dad had hit him a bunch of times before. Even if dad had called him a bunch of names before. Even if dad had…dad loved him, now, because he had powers. Things would be different now. They had to be. Dad had only been mean to him because he had been born wrong and big sis had been born right. Well now he had powers like hers and dad's and now…now things would be better.

It had been worth it.

"That's all you have to say?" asked Sho

"Um…I think that if you focus more the water will keep it's shape better. You move your hands a lot when you use telekinesis. Dad says that the mark of true control is keeping your aura steady and your movements to a minimum. Like this." said big sis. She barely moved her fingers and a perfect ball of water rose out of the tub. His water blobs wiggled and wobbled and lost water but she had just made one…now two….now three perfect water balls.

He let his water globe fall on her head.

"Whatever. Maybe I wanted mine to be like that. Not everything needs to be perfect, you know." Said Sho. He stuck out his tongue even though he knew that it was rude. He had powers like hers now. It had all been worth it…even if she was better at having powers….but that was just because she'd been born with her powers. He'd only had these powers for a couple of weeks. Plus she'd had dad to teach her about her powers for as long as she'd been alive. Dad had hardly been back since they moved to this house.

It had to do with the…the thing….he remembered.

He remembered being afraid, being in pain, and then a bright light. At first he thought that he had finally died, he remembered asking to die a couple of times when the pain had been too much even though he didn't really mean it…at least not now….and he remembered seeing a light and then being really scared and then cold….and then he didn't remember anything. Fukuda said that it was better that he didn't remember.

He remembered seeing the sky.

Which made no sense since the compound was mostly underground. He remembered everything hurting and looking up and seeing the sky…and then nothing. And then he went to sleep. That might have been a dream…or it might not have been. Big sis was always talking about how she was so worried about exploding….so maybe he had exploded and took the roof off the place. It would have made sense. He had heard dad talking on the phone, too, about their not being any more Eighth Division because of the 'Awakening Incident'….so maybe Sho was just so awesome and so powerful that he totally wrecked the whole compound. Big sis couldn't even do that…right? He didn't know. He had never seen just what she could do….and she had never seen just what he could do either! She said that she didn't remember what happened either. She said that the last thing she remembered was dad yelling at her and then when she woke up she was in bed and he was in bed and they were in beds that they had never seen before in a house that they had never seen before wearing pajamas that they had never seen before and when they left their room they found dad and he had a look on his face that they had never seen before….

It had been a little scary.

But they were past that point now. It was over and he had powers and it had been Christmas and a New Year was coming and with that New Year came a whole bunch of new stuff. The first year of his life where he had actual powers. He couldn't wait. The first year where dad would like him as much as big sis. He really couldn't wait. He might even end up being more powerful than his own big sis.

He really, really, couldn't wait.

"I'm sorry. I was just trying to help." Said big sis. She did that thing where she played with her hair. She did that when she got upset because sometimes her hair floated away. He wondered if his hair would do the same thing too….but maybe not since it was always spiky.

"I didn't ask for your help. I can do things on my own. I can figure out my powers on my own." Said Sho. Big sis nodded.

"I know that you can…but I just wanted to help you. I guess that I just feel bad about…about how I couldn't help you before." Said big sis

"Help me when?" asked Sho

"Before. At the Eighth Division. You needed me and I wasn't there. I could see your aura and I knew that you needed help but I waited for too long and now you're…like this." said big sis

"Like what? Totally awesome?" asked Sho. He made another water glob and let it fall on her head. She didn't react. She just sat there. She was staring at him now. She was staring and staring and staring and he did not like the way that she was staring at him.

He poked her.

"That hurt." Said big sis. Maybe he shouldn't have poked her in the chest like that. Mom said that you weren't supposed to poke girls in the chest even if they didn't have boobs. He didn't know why he poked her there…or even poked her at all. Well she had been staring but….but he had been kind of a jerk. He was such a jerk sometimes….

"Sorry. You were just staring at me too much." Said Sho

"Oh. I'm sorry. I just….I'm sorry about what happened to you. All of…all of your scars I mean." Said big sis. She reached out and touched he pin pricks that ran up and down the tops of his arms. He had some on the bottoms too. She let her hand rest of them…and he shook it away. That was where they had put the needles in him. They didn't hurt…but he also didn't want to think about it. It had all been worth it. Dad had even said that nothing worth achieving didn't come with sacrifice. He said that before they closed the doors…

Water went everywhere.

Now he was cold. Big sis used her powers to turn the taps on. She also used her powers to pick up the water and put it in the sink. She just picked it up and then…and then it went in the sink. She could pick up water like it was nothing. Water was hard to pick up. It didn't have a shape, it was just water, and it just…it didn't like to be picked up. It really didn't.

He poked her again.

"Don't be sorry, dummy, you didn't make me do anything. I wanted this. I wanted to go into the machine and I wanted to get powers and now I have powers and it was all worth it." Said Sho. Dad had asked him a bunch of times if he wanted to go into the machine, if he wanted to let those scientist doctor guys hurt him, and if he wanted to get out. He said no. No matter how much it hurt he still said no. Even when he thought that he was going to die he still said no.

It was worth it.

Now he had powers. What could be better? He had powers and now he could be as good, or even better, than his big sis. What else could he have asked for? This was everything that he had ever wanted…and she had said that it had been everything that she had ever wanted for him, too. But if that was the truth then why did she try and save him when he hadn't needed saving?

Because she had been worried.

Or maybe because she wanted dad all to herself. It's a thought that makes no sense because, well, he knows her. He knows that she never lies and she's all about sharing and all of that stuff. She was bossy, the bossiest big sister in the world, but she did not lie to him….even though it would have made more sense if she hadn't wanted him to get powers. If she hadn't wanted him to be like her. If she was jealous of him…

If she was that sort of person then it would have been easier for him when he was a jerk….he would have felt like a lot less of a jerk….anyway….

"But you were in pain…" said big sis.

"No pain no gain." Said Sho

"That's something that people say but….but I'm still sorry and I wish that there was a way to give you your powers, your new powers, without you being in pain or…or you getting all of these scars." Said big sis. She touched the pin marks in his arm again and he was just about ready to poke her in the chest again, even if you weren't supposed to do that, but then she stopped. She raised her hand up and she called their shampoo over. She picked it this time, it smelled like bubblegum, and it was ok….even though he liked the Zootopia kind better.

She dropped a glob of shampoo on his head.

He dipped his head forwards and let her wash his hair for him. He could wash it himself but he didn't want to. It was bad enough that he had to take a bath, she had made him, so she had might as well wash his hair. Even though he was a big kid now. Even though, before she left, mom had showed him how to wash his hair. He felt her fingers in her hair…tugging a little…just a little…but then a little felt like a lot even though he knew her and he knew that she was not the sort of person who tugged on hair…that was what he did to her….and she was not tugging on his hair…and nothing was tugging on his hair…and he was fine. He was there, in the tub, and he was fine…

"I can do it myself!" said Sho. He knocked her hands out of his hair. He reached up and lathered his hair really fast. Fast enough that it was done in almost a second. She was washing her hair, now, and it took longer because she had miles and miles and miles of it. He turned his back to her and dipped his head under the water.

There was a hand on his back.

He pushed her away with his powers.

"I'm sorry! I just….I just wanted to touch your tree." Said big sis. He kept his back to her. He could feel it, now, the burning…he could feel it…and then he didn't. He didn't feel it because it was over. It was over and it had all been worth it.

"Well don't. We're in the bath. It's weird to go poking around someone like that when you're taking a bath with them." Said Sho

"It is?" asked big sis

"Of course it is!" said Sho

"Oh…but you've been poking me in the chest all night even though it really hurts." Said big sis. She crossed her arms over her chest like she was afraid that he would poke her again…which to be fair was what he had just been doing.

"Fine. I'm sorry that I poked you in the chest a bunch of times." Said Sho. His back was still to her. He didn't want to look at her. He knew that she was still looking at him. He didn't want her or anyone else looking at him…and not just because he was naked.

"I'm sorry that I touched your tree. I didn't know that it still hurt. I just…I thought that it was kind of pretty. That's all." said big sis

"It doesn't hurt anymore and it's not pretty. It's cool. I'm a boy. Nothing about me is pretty." Said Sho. He was still turned around. He felt the water behind him shift. She was rinsing her hair now. She didn't ever duck her head under, no, she showed off and used her powers to pick water up and dump it over her head. He should have done that. He could do that now.

"I think that your eyes are pretty." Said big sis once she was done washing her hair.

"What did I just say?" asked Sho. Nope. He was a boy and nothing about him was pretty. His eyes were cool…even if they weren't. He used to hate his eyes, before, back when they had lived in the castle. His eyes and his hair and his freckles. Nobody looked like him. Now that they had been away from home for a while…people looked more like him. Not a lot of red hair, people still stared at him because of his hair, but a lot more people with blue eyes.

"I'm sorry. I mean cool. I always thought that your eyes were cool. I always wanted eyes like yours, little brother." Said big sis. She reached over his shoulder and handed him a bar of soap. She picked this soap out too. It was shaped like a strawberry. That was ok. It was better than citrus, anyway, but everything was better than citrus. Citrus was evil. It made him itchy and it could have even killed him. When he ruled the world, after dad gave it to him, he was making all citrus illegal. It was so stupid. He had all of these powers but something as puny as a grapefruit could kill him. It wasn't fair. Big sis wasn't allergic to citrus. She should have said that she was happy about not being allergic to citrus…and having brown eyes. Brown eyes and black hair and no freckles at all. She looked like everyone else…back home. Nobody looked like her out here, out of Japan, and he should not have been so…so happy…when people stared at her.

"Yeah, well, that's dumb. You should be happy that you look like everyone else." Said Sho with a shrug. He had powers now…but she was still born right and he was still born wrong. He may have looked like dad but she looked like everyone else in Japan. Not that they were ever going back to Japan….maybe. He didn't know. They had been out of Japan since mom left and…and sometimes it was nice looking like everyone else. At least out here, out in the world, out in some parts of the world at least, people looked at him like he belonged.

"I don't…not really. I want to look like you and dad and…and you and dad." Said big sis. Sho shrugged and handed her the bar of soap. His back was still to her. She was staring at him, at his tree, and at least her staring at him was better than her touching him. Touching his scars. They didn't hurt but…but he still did not want her touching them.

"Whatever, you're weird. Anyway I'm ready to come out now. See you later." Said Sho. He climbed out of the tub. He didn't feel like playing in the tub with her. He hadn't felt like doing that for a while. Maybe he was just getting older. He was eight now. He was maybe too old to be playing in the tub with his big sis.

Or maybe she should have just stopped staring at him and touching him.

He caught sight out himself in the whole wall mirror. He liked the marks, the scars, even if it had hurt getting them. He had powers now so they were worth it. They were a reminder of how…how hard it had been to get these powers. Big sis had been born right, he had been born wrong, but he had evened it out. He had earned his powers, she had been given them. So maybe it was better this way.

He actually kind of liked all of the marks on his body.


	83. Cereal and Powers

Powers made everything easier.

"Sho, not at the table."

Sho stuck out his tongue at big sis. She was just jealous. Dad was always telling her that power was nothing without control. That was why she couldn't do this without making a mess. When she poured her cereal she picked up the box by hand and shook the cereal out. She also put the milk first, but that was wrong for a while other reason, but Sho was still so much better than her at this. He could take a bunch of cereal pieces out with his powers and then put them in the bowl. And then the milk. The milk went second. Everyone knew that they milk went second.

He picked the milk up with his powers.

But then he put it down. She could pick up liquids. She could pick them up and keep them in shapes, not just globes, and then she could move them…and he should have been able to do that too. He would have thought, before, that using his powers would have been hard. That it would have taken a while to learn. It hadn't. Once he got his powers, once the pain stopped, using his powers had been kind of easy. Like he was supposed to have them. But he wasn't.

He reached inside the milk jug with his powers and pulled out enough for a bowl of cereal.

"Son."

Sho ignored dad. He knew what he was doing. Dad was going to be so impressed. Like when Sho ripped that tree up out of the ground. Dad had been so impressed with him. Dad had even said so. But that had been last year. This was a whole new year. This year would be different. They were still at that same house in the middle of nowhere. Sho wondered if they would be moving soon. Maybe back to Japan. Maybe back to the house. Maybe mom had come back to the house. Maybe she was back and she was waiting for him and then she would see that he had powers….and he didn't know what she was going to do then….but he still had powers and they were cool and mom would go back to loving him and-

The milk jug wobbled.

It was just because the milk got caught in the top. Sho wished that they got milk out of buckets or something. He was trying to keep the milk in a shape, like big sis could keep liquids in shapes, but that was hard because he still had to get it out of the jug. He couldn't change the shape of the milk because then he would end up dropping it and then he would fail and then dad would not like him anymore…and that would have been the worst. The very worst. He needed dad to like him….

The milk wobbled again.

"Daughter, stop your brother before he makes a mess." Said Dad. He didn't even look at Sho when he said that. Even though dad was right there he still had big sis boss him around. He could have at least bossed Sho around himself.

"I am not going to make a mess." Said Sho. Even if he did it wasn't like this was the last milk in the whole entire world. They had plenty of milk left in the world. If they didn't have any milk left besides this then big sis would have been freaking out. She loved milk. It was like water to her. Dad never said anything to her about drinking milk all the time but every time Sho drank more than a liter of pop a day suddenly he was just the worst person ever. Dad never said mean stuff to big sis. Dad liked big sis better. He would always like big sis better.

"Yes, dad." Said big sis. She was so mealy mouthed sometimes. It was like she only opened her mouth to say 'yes dad' and 'no dad' and stuff like that. She should have told dad that, obviously, Sho had this. She should have believed in him or helped him or something. Dad should have believed in him, too. He had powers. He had powers and now things were supposed to be different. Things were supposed to be better.

But they weren't.

Because dad still wasn't even looking at him. He was looking at his phone. He was looking at his phone and eating his cereal, hot cereal, all on his own without even looking at his own family. Dad didn't care. Dad didn't care about them….he didn't. But he would. Once Sho showed him what he could do then he would care and then everything would be better. It had been worth it. It had all been worth it because once dad saw what he could do then-

The milk jug tipped over.

But it didn't spill. Big sis caught it. She caught it with her powers and tipped back to the way it was supposed to be. She was at least looking at him…and he wished that she hadn't been. He wished that she had been looking down at her phone. They had phones now so she should have been looking at hers. He had a phone, too, so he should have been looking at his. Then everyone could have been doing their own thing and it wouldn't even have mattered that dad wasn't looking at him.

He wanted to kick her.

But he didn't because that would have been a jerk thing to do. He was a jerk. He didn't know why he was a jerk but he was a jerk. He was always doing mean things to her. He was always hitting her and kicking her and pushing her and saying the worst kind of stuff…and he hated that about himself. It was like there was another Sho inside of him and that Sho was mad at her and everything else in the world all the time. That Sho did jerk things…but that Sho was a part of him. Maybe he was just a jerk. He didn't know.

There was a splash.

She was pouring his milk for him now…like he was some kind of a baby. But he was not some kind of a baby. He was eight years old! He was eight and he was not a baby and he could have poured his own milk. He tugged on the milk jug with his powers. It didn't move. Well it moved a little but she just pulled harder. She was stronger than him…and it wasn't fair. Well it kind of was because she was older and she'd had her powers for longer…but dad was right there. Dad was right there and he was watching the whole thing and he could see how she was still so much better than he was even though he had gone through all of that and finally gotten his powers-

"I can do it myself." Said Sho

"I know but I wanted to do it for you." Said big sis

"Show off." Said Sho. He wanted to say more things, more mean things, but he didn't. He held himself back. He needed to stay calm and be calm and just…and just not be a jerk. He was just…he was just such a jerk sometimes…and he didn't know why. Kind of like how dad was a jerk all the time. Big sis said that dad could be really nice sometimes. Maybe dad was like him. Sho could be nice sometimes but most of the time he was a jerk….and he had no idea how to make it better.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to show off. I just saw that you were having trouble so I did it for you. It's easier if you just tip the whole milk jug forwards. If you try to pick up the milk before youre good at picking up liquids then you'll make a mess. I used to do that when I was really little. Before dad taught me how to." Said big sis. Sho sort of remembered that. He remembered being small, so small he still had to sit in a high chair even though he was big enough to escape, when big sis spilled milk all over the table. Mom just laughed and said that there was no use in crying over spilled milk….

Was mom at home?

What was she doing? Had she stayed up late to see the year change? Had she had a party like he and big sis had? With noise makers and sparkling juice and counting down for the new year in every country. They watched the year change in Japan and America and China and Australia and England and a whole bunch of other places. There were fireworks and excitement and the excitement never stopped no matter how many times they watched the year change.

He mom stayed up that late?

Dad hadn't. Dad hadn't stayed up with them. He had been tired, he said, because of all the stuff that was happening in Claw. People were being moved around and stuff because of what he did when he got his powers. He had wrecked a whole division. Dad said that it was impressive, Sho had heard him talking on the phone, that it was impressive that a child had managed to do all of that. Sho was impressive. Dad was impressed.

But he wasn't impressed now.

"Does every single meal we share have to end in some sort of quarrel?" asked dad. He still didn't look up. He picked up his teacup with his powers and took a sip. He still didn't look up from his phone. He still didn't look up Sho.

"We're not fighting, dad, we're not fighting at all." said big sis. She was speaking for him, now, and he wished that she would have just gone back to being all mealy mouthed. 'Yes dad' and 'No dad'. At least she hadn't been speaking for him then.

"Yes we are. You keep on bossing me around and treating me like a baby. I can pour my own milk with my own powers and I can do it better than you, too." Said Sho

"How does one 'pour milk better'? Explain, Son." Said dad. It felt…nice…because dad was talking to him and looking at him now. Also he said 'Explain' which was what he was always telling big sis to do.

"She pours the milk first and then puts the cereal in. That's what she does and it's wrong. You have to put the milk first. That's how you make cereal." Said Sho. He said it calmly and clearly, like how dad was always telling them to be, and he was killing it. He was doing his best big sis expression. He was killing it.

"Scandalous." Said dad. He was smiling a little, just a little, and that was more than he usually did. Sho smiled too. He was doing something right. He was doing something right…and all he had to do was to imitate big sis. Copy her. That was what dad wanted, wasn't it, a copy of big sis…..

"If you put the milk in first then there's less room for cereal…and also you put in too much milk. Then you have to drink the milk from the bowl and that takes up valuable room in your stomach and then you can't eat as much cereal." Said Sho. He was still doing his best impression of big sis. Why was this was dad wanted? Why was this something that dad…that dad….why did dad just want to be with big sis? He was even sitting close to her. He was sitting on one end of the table, big sis was in the middle, and dad was at the other end.

"If you two can call the vile concoction cereal." Said dad. He was still smiling a little, just a little, which was so much more than dad….more than he usually did. He loved her so much more…but not for long. He had powers. That was why….that was why things would be better, because he finally had his powers.

"It's fruit flavored. Berry flavored. Citrus would kill me." Said Sho. Big sis was playing with her phone, now, and that was good. Let her be like dad. She was being like dad and he was being like her and maybe, then, dad would be more like mom…not the leaving them part, no, but the being nice to them part. This was being nice to them…by dad's standards. Which were different than the standards of normal people.

"I know. I'm well aware of your allergy. How that happened I will never know." Said dad. Now he wasn't smiling anymore. Now he was back to looking at his phone. Sho went back to looking at his cereal.

"It's not my fault I have allergies." Said Sho quietly. That was not something that he had any control over and it was wrong of dad to be upset with him about it. Did he think that Sho asked to have allergies? Did he think that Sho liked the fact that if he had any citrus, any at all, that he would die?

"I know. If anything it's mine. Mine and your….it's my fault. Somehow I passed an allergy down to you…even though I don't have any allergies at all." said dad. Sho had no idea how it worked. He knew that you got things from your parents because they were the people who made you. They did something gross and sick and wrong and then they made you and you were there. He got his hair and eyes from dad. He got his freckles from mom. He got his powers from dad. He got how much he liked animals from mom.

At least he got stuff from their parents.

Big sis didn't look like anyone in their whole family. She had black hair and brown eyes and her skin was always pale as a ghost even when they went to the beach and stuff. At least he looked like people in his family…and at least he had powers too. Now people would be able to tell just by looking at him and dad together that they were a family. His aura even looked like dad's, red, while her aura was pink and blue and didn't look a thing like his or dad's. The only thing that she had gotten from dad was her powers. The only thing that she had gotten from mom was the fact that she was a girl.

He wished that she had gotten a citrus allergy from one of their parents.

"Well I can't help it." Said Sho crossing his arms.

"I know you can't." said dad. He said it kind of like he was upset. He might have been. Who knew with dad? Everything was always making him upset. There was no telling what would set him off next.

"It's ok, Sho, you're wonderful just the way you are." Said big sis. That was the worst thing. He hated it when she said that. She was always telling him that, had been telling him that for his entire life, and always when he talked about how much he wanted powers. Well she didn't have to say that anymore because he was better, now, because he finally had powers.

"I know that." Said Sho through gritted teeth. He crossed his arms and gritted his teeth and that was all that he was going to do. Even though he felt like he was going to be a jerk again. He tried not to. Dad hated it when he and big sis fought.

"Ok. It just seemed like you were upset. I don't like it when you're upset." Said big sis. She was being like dad, now, telling him how to feel. He was allowed to feel however he wanted. Mom had said so. Mom had said that he was fine just the way he was. Mom loved him for who he was. Mom had always loved him for who he was. That was why big sis could never be mom, aside from the fact that mom was a whole different person entirely, because she was always trying to tell him how to feel and how to be. He was always getting bossed around by her. Dad was always making her boss him around.

It just was not fair.

"I can be however I want to be. You don't get to tell me how to be." Said Sho

"But I was just-" said big sis

"You are not the boss of me. You don't get to tell me which of my feelings are ok and which of my feelings aren't." said Sho

"I wasn't trying to-" said big sis. That was the worst part. He knew her. She hadn't been trying to be mean to him. She never tried to be mean to him. She just bossed him around. Dad was always telling her to boss him around. Maybe she was just…maybe she was just in the same boat that he was. Maybe she was sick of being bossed around too. Maybe she woke up sometimes and just…just wanted to go to bed again. Maybe she was just tired, too, tired of always having to try….

But she almost never had to try.

Everything had always come easy to her. He felt the pin pricks running up and down his arms. She had been born with her powers. She had been born right and he had been born wrong. He had powers now but…but she was still better than him. She had her powers from birth and she…she would always be better than him. Dad would always like her better.

The realization makes his chest hurt.

The realization makes him want to be a jerk again. He wanted to kick her, to push her, to shake her and tug on her braids and…..and he doesn't. He just gets up from the table. He kicks his chair away from the table and runs back to his room. Not his room. The room. The room that he had woken up in after…after all of that….after they had put him in that machine and closed the doors…and then everything had hurt. They had….there had been so much hurt…it had hurt so bad….

And he had the scars to prove it.

He ran to his room and threw himself down on the bed. He tossed his shirt off and ran his hands up and down the pin pricks on his arms. They were there and they didn't hurt anymore. His tree, the big tree thing on his back, was pressed against the bed. He could feel it, sort of, again. The way that the electricity had set him on fire from the inside, it felt like, and it had been so much and it had hurt so much and-and-and-

His phone rang.

It was in his pocket. They had phones now. Nice ones. Dad had said that they were nice phones. He said that they had a lot of memory and the screens were big and the cases were supposed to keep them from breaking. Because, according to dad, Sho destroyed everything he owned. Sho didn't destroy everything he owned. He knew how to take care of this things. He knew how to keep his things nice. He had bene carrying his things, some of them, from country to country since mom had left and…and nothing was ruined or broken…

He got mad and broke his things sometimes.

He wanted to smash his phone. He wanted to throw it across the room and watch it break…but he did not. Not just because this was the first phone he'd ever had ever, real phone not full of candy, but also because he had to prove dad wrong. He didn't ruin everything he touched.

He got a text.

It was from big sis. His texts were always from big sis. Who else would message him? It wasn't like he had any friends and it wasn't like dad was going to text him. Dad could barely stand to talk to him. He loved talking to big sis. He and big sis hung out in dad's room all night and talked and watched TV and Sho was never invited…though it seemed boring so he didn't even care one bit. Not one bit.

'_I'm sorry little brother.'_

She was always telling him how sorry she was. That was her favorite thing to say….because she meant it. He wished that she wasn't. He wished that she was a jerk. He wished that she was as much of a jerk as he was. He wished that she….that she was more like him. He had always wished for a little brother but…but maybe he should have wanted a big brother. If they were both boys, and she was older, then maybe she would have been as much of a jerk as he was. Older brothers were supposed to be jerks, right? But then again so were older sisters.

She was not a jerk.

He could see her aura. She was there outside of the door. There was a knock even though there was no reason for her to knock. This was both of their room. What, was she worried about waking him up? It was morning time. They had to be awake now. They had to be awake when the sun was awake and asleep when the moon was out no matter what their body clocks said. Sho wondered what country his body clock thought that it was in. Not Japan, that was for sure.

"Sho? Can I come in?" asked big sis. Sho didn't say anything. He just waved his hand and opened the door with his powers. She was there. She was there and she had a bowl of cereal in her hands even though dad was always saying that they could only eat in the kitchen…even though Sho knew for a fact that she and dad ate popcorn when they watched TV in his room. Not that he cared. Dad liked his popcorn with way too much salt and way too little butter. Sho liked kettle corn, it was sweet, but caramel corn was the best. Big sis liked caramel corn the best too. She just didn't tell dad because then he would love her less. It wasn't fair. They had to do so much to get dad to love them. Mom had always just loved them for who they were. She had always been so nice to them all the time…but then she had left. She had left and now….and now this was their lives.

"It's your room too, you know, you can come in whenever you want." Said Sho

"I know. I just didn't want to bother you. I can tell that you're upset…I don't know why but I know that you're upset. I brought you your breakfast. After you eat we can do something fun. I bet that there's a sledding hill somewhere around here we can have those weird aura guys take us to. There might be a dog park, too, and it's been a while since we played with any dogs. Or maybe we could play some of our new games? Or maybe-" said big sis. She crossed the room while she talked and left his bowl of cereal on the nightstand.

He didn't want it.

"Do you know what I want to do, big sis? Sit here. I want to sit here." Said Sho. He wanted to be alone. Sometimes he just wanted to be alone…or to be with someone else. He missed having other kids to play with. All he had was his big sis. He wished that he had friends, even a best friend, because she was his sister. She couldn't be his best friend, too. What kind of a guy had a sister for a best friend?

"But you have no shirt on." Said big sis. She poked him in the stomach. Her finger was long and her nail was kind of sharp….but he knew that she hadn't meant to hurt him. That wasn't the sort of person she was…and it wasn't fair. She was being all nice like mom was. She was being more like mom….and that meant that he was being more like dad….and the last thing he wanted was to be like his dad. Aside from having powers. He had always wanted powers and now he had powers and now…and now things were supposed to be better…even if they weren't.

"I know. I'm the one who took it off." Said Sho. He turned on his side and faced the wall just to get her to stop poking him. Only now, much too late, did he realize that she could see his tree. She touched it. She was always touching his tree. Whenever she saw it she ran her fingers up and down it. It was cool but she didn't have to touch it all the time.

"You aren't cold?" said big sis, her fingers still tracing up and down his tree. He wanted her to get hit with electricity so she could have one…and then he took the thought back just as soon as it came into his mind. He didn't wish what he went through to get his powers on anyone in the whole world. Especially his big sis.

"No. I'm fine." Said Sho. Even though he was a little bit cold now. He was a little cold and he wanted to put his shirt back on but he couldn't because he had just said that he was fine.

"Oh…ok. Um….I guess that I'll leave you alone then….but pleas eat, ok? I have to make sure that you eat three meals a day. Also please put a shirt on if you get cold. I'm also supposed to keep you warm. Also please come out and play with me if you get bored….because I'm also supposed to keep you entertained….and also I like playing with you." Said big sis

"….fine." said Sho. His back was still to her. He kept it to her until she left. Only when she left did he sit up and finally eat his cereal. He had bene hungry….even if he had tried not to be. He was a lot of things that he tried not to be. He tried to lift his spoon with his hand but it shook. It shook because he was mad. It shook because he was sad. It shook because he was cold. It shook for no reason at all. It just shook.

So he used his powers.

Powers made everything easier.


	84. Look What I Can Do

Look what I can do.

Suzuki had been hearing those five words nonstop since Son had woken up. Fukuda had put him under after the…events….of his awakening. Suzuki had known, of course, that his Son was going to wake up. Why wouldn't he? He was going to wake up because he had not been terribly hurt. Fukuda had healed him. Therefore there was no reason for Suzuki to have spent the entire trip to their new temporary accommodations staring at his Son and just…watching him. He had been on the receiving end of one of Fukuda's healing comas once, truly it had been horrific, but he had been under for some time. He knew that Son was not going to die.

Look what I can do.

Son had said that when he woke up. Suzuki had been asleep in his own temporary bed in his own temporary room in this temporary house. A place in the middle of nowhere. A place where there weren't people around for miles. A cheap prefab that would not have been missed if Daughter woke up in the same state she had passed out in. But she hadn't woken up in that state. She hadn't woken up in any state. She had simply trailed into his bedroom after Son and asked where they were. She had been normal. Her mood had been ordinary. Son had been extraordinary.

Look what I can do.

That was what he said. Then he raised the bed Suzuki had been sleeping on high off the ground. He hadn't been steady, he hadn't been even, but he had managed more in that instant than he had in eight years of life. Daughter had been able to do more than that as a two year old…but Son was not Daughter. Son was his own person…and he was finally the person that he should have been all along. He had been so happy. His aura had been so bright. Daughter's had been bright too…but because she had been happy. Why she had been happy Suzuki did not know. Didn't she know that she had a rival now?

Look what I can do.

Son had dropped him, eventually, and it had been Daughter who caught it. She had been so happy for her brother even though it made no sense whatsoever. She had a rival now. She had a brother, well she had always had a brother, but now she had a brother who could have overshadowed her. Who could have eclipsed her. She didn't even seem to care. She was just…happy for her brother. She said so many times. It made no sense. Suzuki had never been cursed with a sibling but he knew that if he had a sibling he would not have been happy if said sibling developed psychic powers.

Look what I can do.

Daughter had said that to him. That had been one of the first things she had ever said to him. He had brought her home and she had been…weary…of the strangers surrounding her and calling themselves her family. She had been slow-ish to adjust. She took to her brother first, then her mother, and then finally to him. She had been two years old and said those five words and then made the entire dinner table float up to the ceiling. He had been so proud of her. So impressed by her.

Impressive.

That was the only word which had come to mind. Impressive. Son had genuinely impressed him. There had been worry, some of it, that then entire thing had been for nothing. That he had risked Son's life for nothing. That Son had risked his life for nothing. Fukuda was getting to him. Son had made his own choice. Son could have asked to stop at any time and Suzuki would have indulged him. His Son had stuck it out, gone the distance, and reached his full potential.

Impressive.

The whole thing had been impressive. That an eight year old boy had managed to live through something that killed grown men regularly. That was impressive. The scars on Son's body were also impressive. A record of his victory over himself. He had won. He had his powers and he had lived through the awakening process and now he was finally the person who he had always been meant to be. The person who Suzuki knew that his Son had always been meant to be. There was an element of pride there, maybe, in the fact that his Son had been eclipsed by his Daughter. Not even his Daughter. The child of two nobodies from nowhere. He may have come from the same nowhere, Seasoning City was pretty much nowhere in the grand scheme of things, but he was not nobody. He was somebody. He had always been somebody. Therefore his Son should have been somebody….and he was.

Impressive.

The amount of progress that he had made in these few weeks had been impressive. Son had managed to go from, pre awakening, having to be literally spitting mad in order to move even something as light as a cup across the room…and towards his sister's head….to being able to rip trees out of the ground….and onto his sister. Son at least realized that their rivalry was still alive and well. Well it was one-sided….still. No matter what Son learned how to do it was something that Daughter had been able to do since she was a toddler. Son was finally awakened but Daughter…she was a prodigy.

Impressive.

Daughter had been impressive since the moment he learned of her existence. She had apparently spent her early years terrorizing her biological parents until they sent her to a child prison, orphanage, which she had then terrorized…other people's words. He really could not imagine Daughter terrorizing anyone...of her free will. Of her own free will, when she was acting under her own free will, she was actually not a very willful child at all. Usually. She had her moments…like the Eighth Division. That had been…

Impressive.

The Awakening lab was two stories underground and she had managed to take the roof off of the place. She had managed to make an entire division of Claw uninhabitable. She had managed to kill seventeen people on accident. Fifteen more than he had…damn Fukuda….bringing up the past. Fukuda had been quite impressive as well. There was a time and place to impress him, to try to, and that had not been it. That had not been the time or the place. He had people who ran their mouths, a certain sardonic chlorokinetic of indeterminate gender game to mind, and Fukuda was not one of them. Suzuki hadn't been lying when he said that he was ready to murder the man. He hadn't just crossed a line, he had dropped a bomb on it, and that was something worthy of death….but it would also have been something stupid, an idiotic action, killing Fukuda. Killing the only healer. That would have been….stupid. Even though Fukuda had no right to talk about what happened to his parents…or to tell him how to raise his children. He was a good father. He was doing what was best for them. Son had been the one to agree to everything in the first place and Daughter…she should have obeyed him. She should not have gone anywhere near the lab…

But she had.

But what was done was done. Like that song she was always singing said, the past was in the past, and all of that. He maybe should have punished her…but psychological trauma was something that Fukuda could not heal. She was just a child and the shame of losing control and making things VERY difficult for her father would have had some sort of adverse affect on her. He did not need her to change. He liked her just the way she was. She was his favorite child after all. No matter what Son could do, how impressive he got, he was still a very annoying little boy. Actually he was even more annoying, now, because he had powers.

But he was still impressive.

And this whole thing….it may have made Son more annoying than he had ever been before…and it may have caused more work than he could ever remember having in his life….but it had been worth it. Ultimately it had been worth it to unlock Son's full potential…and seeing just what Daughter could do. The upper limits of her power. What she could do if she truly lost control…and he wished that he could have just told her what she had done. That way she could have learned from her mistakes just as he had.

But Fukuda was better when it came to interpersonal skills.

Suzuki didn't much see the value of them, not when he was the most powerful being on Earth, so it was ok to admit that Fukuda was better at that sort of thing than he was. Even when they had been young he had been the one to handle…everything. Everything when it came to other people. When it came to establishing Claw. Back when it had just been the two of them in his bedroom sitting down on the floor and planning out how he would rule the world. Fukuda had seen his vision and had submitted immediately. That had been their relationship for all of these years. Thirty of them, almost, together. Fukuda…he had been out of line but…but he was better with people. Not that Suzuki would ever let him get away with it again. Telling him how to raise his children or bringing up the ancient past. Fukuda would pay…next time.

He had enough to deal with right now.

He had more than enough to deal with right now.

He had been gone for sixteen hours. Too long. The children had been alone all day. He wondered what they would have done to the house in his absence. He didn't much care about this house. This was just another Claw house. When he vacated it some other esper would move in. Probably the international division. That Joseph was trying to climb the ranks…he'd have to keep a look out. The last thing he needed was another upstart trying something stupid. What he needed was someone to enforce his authority when he was away. Daughter would be good for that…when she got older. Son had other things to do, well he would have when he got older. Son could be the one running around the entire world doing…not everything Suzuki did…but a good amount of what he was doing. Yes, that would be Son's role…

But not now.

Now he was an eight year old boy. He was eight and Daughter was almost nine, their birthdays were very close together, and they didn't have anything to do besides the work of growing up. He wondered what complaints their tutors would have for him this time. He wondered what new, creative way, they had discovered to destroy his house. He wondered what would be waiting for him when he entered the house.

"Look what I can do!" said Son. Suzuki hadn't even slipped his shoes off when Son's voice rang through the house. There was some movie playing in the background…and he knew this one. The children were watching the one about the princess with the very long hair. Daughter's choice. She still hadn't shaken her obsession with European royalty. They needed to get back to Japan. They needed to get back to civilization. They needed to…but he couldn't.

He had too much to do.

And it had nothing at all to do with the fact that Masami was still in Japan…maybe. He had no idea where she was, she could have been living in a tree in the Amazon for all he knew, but he just…he figured that she was still in Japan but that had nothing to do with the fact that he hadn't set foot in Japan since she had betrayed him. No, he was just much too busy. He was much too busy to head back to Japan and rest. He had too much to do.

He was exhausted.

"Dad, come and see!" shouted Son. Suzuki rubbed his eyes and cracked his neck. The Eighth Division hadn't been the most important of all of the divisions but it still served a very important purpose. It also housed and trained all the newly Awakened. It also awakened a lot of the Awakened. Fixing this, reassigning everyone, looking over years upon years upon years worth of data….it was a lot. Plus they were playing catchup from the holidays. Their cultural traditions were important….even though they also made more work, the holidays did, because everyone had to play catchup.

"Dad, can you please come here? Sho wants to show you something." Said Daughter. He smiled. She did not shout, no, she simply projected her voice. She asked him nicely, too. Yes. He did not want her to change. It was better that he said nothing to her. He could not stand to lose her. If there was some way to preserve her as she was for the rest of eternity he would have. To keep her at eight and a half. To keep her from turning into someone else, from changing, then he would have. But there was no way to stop time.

He had already looked into a time machine. The science did not add up.

"I'm coming." Said Suzuki. He did not shout, no, he projected his voice enough that the children heard him. He had no reason to shout at them…at least he hoped that he hadn't. He didn't care what they did to the house, it was just four walls and a roof, but if Son injured Daughter again so help him God-

No children.

Auras but no children. He looked around the room. The television was playing…he liked this part, the animation on the lanterns was beautiful, but there were no children. He could have understood Son's absence. This was the part of the movie where the main characters realized that they had feelings for each other. Not something that Suzuki himself would have enjoyed as an eight year old boy…and not something that he much enjoyed now. This was more of Daughter's thing. He wondered if she was interested in anyone yet. He wondered if she was at that age yet. He wondered where she would even have met anyone. The children only had each other, they were in the middle of nowhere, and as far as they knew they were blood siblings. They weren't of course, but Suzuki would rather have not started a pattern of inbreeding for the future generations of Suzukis. No, that was what had killed off the royals of Europe. The children were probably too young for that, anyway, considering the fact that they were still young enough to play hide and seek.

A game which he was the undisputed king of.

As a child he had been the king of hide and seek. Back when the other children had still played with him, of course, but that had ended around the time when they began getting too old for that…or they realized that there was no beating him. He had always used his powers and did not consider it a form of cheating. No, there was nothing wrong with using the powers that fate had blessed him with. Even if it was to sit on the ceiling.

He looked up.

There they were.

"If you two really wanted to hide from me then you would have made more of an effort to hide your auras. I knew you two were in this room the whole time." Said Suzuki. The children were having a picnic on the ceiling, it seemed. There was a blanket, an everything pizza, a bottle of some kind of cola, and a jug of milk.

There was also a fair bit of milk and cola on the floor.

"We weren't trying to hide. You just couldn't find us." Said Daughter. She was smiling. He could see her eye teeth. She was truly happy. When she smiled so her eye teeth were visible then she was truly happy. Masami had been the same way. Her truly happy smile, her everything was right with the world smile, showed her eye teeth. She had other smiles. The tight one she used for pictures. The open mouthed smile combined with a laugh that she did when she was also truly happy…but a much different sort of happy that he should not have been thinking about while he was in the same room as his children.

That he should not have been thinking about end of discussion.

"Which is the same thing, you know." Said Son. He held a glass of cola in his hand. It did not pour out. That was Daughter's doing. It seemed that she was suspending the liquid and the pizza in the air while Son did the rest of the work. Impressive.

"If you think so, Sho." said Daughter. It really was an impressive feet for both of them. Daughter's hair may have been trying to reach the floor, and she was sitting on her dress to keep it in place…and Son was also wearing a dress for some reason….not that Suzuki felt like creating some sort of a gender complex by enforcing clothing rules, but the fact that Son had managed to suspend himself and his sister to the ceiling was quiet impressive for someone who had only had his full powers for a few weeks.

"I don't think so, I know so." Said Son. His control wavered just a bit but Daughter picked up the slack. Of course she would not have seen their relationship as something of a rivalry. She was Masami's Daughter in practice if not by blood. She was a born nurturer. She had been taking such good care of Son, filled Masami's shoes so well, that Suzuki was truly impressed. Of course she would have seen Son not as her rival but as her companion, friend, and the person who she had been tasked to care for. She really was a prodigy at everything she set her mind to.

"I'm impressed by the both of you." Said Suzuki. He really was. If he thought that ripping a tree out of the ground, and it was still there and turning quite brown as well, was impressive Son had outdone himself. Power was nothing without control after all and Son was displaying more of it than Suzuki had thought possible. He had been expecting something closer to a younger version of Daughter, raw power and little control, and he had been pleasantly surprised by this turn of events.

"But mostly me, right dad? Because I'm the one doing all the work?" asked Son. Suzuki had to think about it for a moment. Which child was he more proud of? Son was showing exceptional power and control but Daughter was also showing exceptional control…and he knew just what was lurking beneath her surface….so it was a tough call to make.

"I'm a bit more proud of you Son for your display of power and control but I'm also proud of you as well, Daughter, for assisting your brother." Said Suzuki. He could see both of their auras…and Daughter was really smiling now. He could see her bottom row of teeth as well. He'd have to talk to her about displays of unbridled emotion….later. it felt nice, being smiled at by her, or just seeing her smile…even though it made no sense. His happiness should not have been dependent on the happiness of another. That was not how it worked. The only thing that mattered was whether or not he was happy. Damn everyone else and their feelings…

It was hard to think that way about Daughter.

Maybe because she was so much like Masami in so many ways. The way she cared for others. The way she clung to him even though she had no reason to. She was almost nine years old, mostly independent, and she did not need to hold his hand whenever their plane took off or stay up until all hours awaiting his return or to crawl into bed with him at night because she said that she felt lonely…she was so like her mother.

She was going to make someone very happy someday.

And if the esper she chose as her most perfect person ever tried to leave her Suzuki would hunt him to the ends of the Earth and murder him personally with his own two hands…in front of an audience…in a stadium….and also there would be fire….and then afterwards he would have his body strung up as an example to any other man who dared to try and betray his Daughter.

Yes. That was a good plan.

"See? Dad's happy with us both." Said Daughter. Son's control wavered completely but Daughter took up the slack. She didn't miss a beat. The liquid didn't even spill from their cups. Son sat there with his arms crossed and a glare plastered to his face.

"Whatever." Said Son

"Sho-" said Daughter

"Can I take this stupid dress off now?" asked Son. Suzuki wondered why he was wearing it in the first place. Son had never worn Daughter's clothes before, in fact he seemed to believe that he was the authority on what was and was not gender appropriate, and the sight of Son in a dress…it worried him.

He needed grandchildren.

Ones from his bloodline. Son needed to meet a woman, preferably an esper but Suzuki was realistic, and he needed to have at least one child. Preferably more than one. No more than ten, more than that would most certainly create a crisis of succession, and also drive everyone in the world insane. Son was the one to inherit the earth and then his son would inherit it and so on and so forth. Maybe one of Son's children could marry one of Daughter's, that would be ideal, but that was thinking too far ahead. Neither child had even entered puberty yet. No, right now he would deal with the most immediate concern he had for the next generation.

Son was wearing a dress.

Which could have meant nothing and it could have meant something. Hopefully nothing. A dress was just cloth after all. Just cloth that had been fashioned without leg partitions. Like a robe or a yukata. This wasn't a robe or a yukata however, this was a facsimile of a ball gown, purple and sparkling with sequins and glitter…and Suzuki knew how obstinate Son was. How contrary. If Suzuki told him to go and get into his own clothes then he would have probably worn that thing until it fell apart.

Suzuki's mind was turning too fast.

He had asked to take it off. That meant that it had not been his idea, it had been Daughter's and she did have a tendency to dress him up in her clothes…well she had when she had been younger…probably because she was starved for female company. The world did not have enough female espers in it. He really should have made more…Masami hadn't wanted any more children…but she was gone now…but he couldn't because…because…because of reasons that had nothing to do with Masami.

He didn't have the time.

Yes, that was it, he just didn't have the time to meet a woman and see if he was compatible with her and then sleep with her…even though it had been longer than at any other point in his adult life…and then have a child and then raise that child and then spend every second of his life watching her because, apparently, he was in a positon where anyone could betray him….

He just did not have the time to give Daughter a little sister.

"Ok…thank you for playing with me today, Sho. I had a lot of fun. Tomorrow can be your day." Said Daughter

"Whatever. It was the least I could do after I….but I told you in plain Japanese not to touch my tree!" said Son. Suzuki puzzled over that statement while Son tore off the dress he was wearing, he was wearing his own clothes under it which relieved Suzuki more than wanted to admit to himself, and he found nothing that he could think of, besides the dying pine tree in the corner, that could match up with what Son and Daughter had apparently had a conflict about.

A dress hit him on the head.

He tossed it off. Well then, that was that, and now he could do take his dinner in his office…and do more work….the same work that he had been doing all day…except now he had children to distract him….to distract him with the inevitable quarrel that would brew between them….so really he had no chance of getting anything done…and he had been working for the past sixteen hours…and he was hungry….

He walked up the wall and joined his children on the ceiling.

They stared at him as he sat down beside them. He took a piece of pizza, with plenty of toppings as God had intended, and took a bite while they stared at him gob smacked.

"Dad, you're eating with us? Thank you, we appreciate this a lot. We missed you." Said Daughter. She was drowned out, however, by Son's exclamations. Apparently he thought his father was 'so cool' and that walking up a wall was 'the most awesome thing ever' and that Suzuki 'totally had to teach him that'.

He would, of course, because this was a good skill to have. Wall walking. He supposed that the children had just picked themselves up and flown to the ceiling. That was well and good but it took much more control to walk up a wall than to throw one's self onto the ceiling. Power was nothing without control. Yes, he would teach the children this technique as soon as he had the time.

And he knew just what his Son would say when he mastered it.

Look what I can do.


	85. Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree was dead.

They should have put it in the ground when Christmas ended…but they hadn't wanted to. They liked it there, their tree, the first real tree that they had put up in their lives. Mom always said that there was no need to get a real tree because they had a perfectly good fake one in one of the treasure rooms. They hadn't waited for dad to say no when they got this tree, they had just ripped it up out of the ground and brought it inside and decorated it. It had been a very nice tree….but now they had to put it back.

But it was dead.

"I'm pretty sure that trees aren't supposed to be brown." Said Sho as he poked at the tree. Some of the needles came off and hit the ground. They should have put it back in the ground before. They should have maybe put a bigger water bucket underneath it. They also should have maybe brought in a smaller tree because the top was just about ready to break off from being bent.

"Maybe it's just….getting caught up with the other trees? Because trees turn brown in the fall-" said Mob. They were all packed up and had to get going. There was a plane waiting to take them to some other country and they had to leave this house behind, even though they had been there long enough to sort of get used to it, and they had to put the tree back.

It had died.

Well it was close to death. Mob could feel it. She touched it with her hand. It felt like it was about to die…and she didn't know how she knew that, just that she knew it, and that it was so sad. It had been such a nice Christmas tree but Christmas was over and New Year's was over and actually it was getting close to Valentine's Day…and they really should have put the tree back in the ground right when Christmas was over…

But they hadn't.

And now they had a dead tree in the living room.

"Not pine trees. We had pine trees in Japan and they didn't turn brown in the winter. That's just for trees with leaves, dummy." Said Sho. He felt bad about letting their tree die and he felt bad about being mean to his sister…he just felt bad in general…

"Right…..but we can still put it back in the ground." Said Mob. Poor tree….she should have taken better care of it. Now it was dead. It could have lived for thousands and thousands of years, like those giant trees she and Sho saw in California, or something like that. Now it was dead and they had killed it. They were tree killers.

"Why? It's already dead." Said Sho. Dad said that they should just leave it and the Awakened would get rid of it when they cleaned up the house. The house needed a lot of cleaning…mom had done the cleaning before so now there was no one to clean but the Awakened….and they would get rid of the tree…their Christmas tree…the one that they had made all by themselves. The one that he had pulled out of the ground all on his own.

"I know that it's dead, I can tell, and that's why it needs to go back in the ground." Said Mob. She held the branch in her hands. The needles prickled her. The needles were right to prickle her. The tree was right to hurt her like that. She had let it die. She had let it die and it was all her fault and now the tree was dead and it was all because she and Sho had decided to have a Christmas tree. Maybe mom had been right and there was no point in having a real tree. Maybe mom should have been there to stop them from ripping a tree up out of the ground. If she had been there

"It won't start growing again." said Sho. There was no point in it. The tree was dead and when something was dead then it was dead and there was no way to make it stop being dead. That was how death worked. Like if he had died, before, then he would have been dead and then that would have been it.

"We could give it a proper burial." Said Mob. Sho shrugged. That meant that he was going to help her put the tree back in the ground….even though she was such a dummy. They weren't supposed bury trees, just people and pets, because they left spirits behind. Mob saw them all the time. She saw them and she exorcised them. Sometimes they wanted her to and sometimes they didn't but she had to. Well she had to exorcise the evil ones. She had to exorcise the evil ones but she left the neutral ones alone…and also she had never felt a tree spirit evil, neutral, or good. But they still had to put the tree back in the ground.

It was the right thing to do.

You always had to do the right thing, that was why it was called the right thing, because it was right. Mom said that it was always important to do the right thing. Like when they found those baby birds in the yard and they wanted to bring them inside and raise them, even chew their food for them, but mom had said that they were better off with their mother. She put them back in their nest, it was a myth that their mother would hate them if they smelled like humans, and even though she and Sho had wanted to keep the birds the right thing to do would have been to leave them with their mother.

If mom had done the right thing then she would have….she would not have….

Mob didn't want to think about Mom. She hated thinking about mom. Thinking about mom made her sad. She had been without mom for two Christmases, two year changes, and now it was getting close to two Valentine's Days. Not that mom had ever done anything for Valentine's Day. When dad was around she made him dinner and then they went to their room for a while to hang out. She and Sho had to watch TV and play videogames and stay very, very, very far from mom and dad's room. She didn't have to watch Sho back then. If Sho needed something then he asked mom, not her, and then mom did stuff for him.

But mom was gone now.

And now Mob had to be mom. Mob had to be mom even though, like Sho was always telling her, she was not mom. She was not mom and she…she was doing her best. She made sure that Sho ate three meals a day and took a bath every few days and she brushed his hair and cut his nails and made sure his clothes fit and his shoes fit and that he did his homeschool homework and that he brushed and flossed and rinsed with fluoride rinse because they had some grown up teeth now and those did not grow back and-and-and she had to make sure that Sho took care of his teeth and his self and also that he was good and that he didn't break anything and that he didn't hurt himself or her and that he didn't bother dad and she also had to worry about herself and controlling her powers and doing her own school work and being good and doing what dad wanted and-and-and-

"Will you relax already? I'm putting the tree in the ground. Stop freaking out." Said Sho. He could see big sis' aura all the time, now, and it was bright. He used to just think that it was all the same sort of brightness but it flickered like a loose lightbulb. Like when he kicked his lamp off of the nightstand of their old room back at the castle and it flickered nonstop and then mom said that the lightbulb was loose…and then she fixed it. Mom always knew just what to do…

But she was gone.

She was gone. She was gone and she was never coming back but that was…that was fine. If she wanted to be gone…then she was gone. She was gone but he…he had his powers now so at least dad liked him. At least dad cared about him now. It had been worth it. Even though he got kind of scared, sometimes, when he took a bath…or the time he pricked himself with his fork and almost peed himself…or the time in the tub when big sis rinsed his hair without warning him and he flooded the bathroom…or the time he woke up and he didn't know what he had dreamt about but everything in the room was shaking and also he had wet the bed…but dad had been at work so big sis had took care of everything before dad noticed. They figured out how to do laundry…eventually…and all of the bubbles that came out of the washer were fun to slide around in. Mom would never have let them do anything like that.

Big sis was not mom.

"I-I wasn't…freaking out. I was just…thinking." Said Mob as she followed Sho through the house. He was carrying the tree with his powers. He was really good at holding things steady, better than Mob had been at his age. Sho had such good control…and she was not jealous. She had good control, too, maybe. She had to always work hard at keeping her powers under control…but that was ok because Sho didn't have to work hard at all.

And she was not jealous.

Because she loved him. She loved him and she wanted things to be easy for him…even if she had been spending her whole life trying to control her powers and he had just gotten his powers and he could already do so much without messing up…but she was not jealous. She had no reason to be. Sho had finally gotten everything that he had ever wanted. Powers and dad's love. She was happy for him. She was even more happy for him because control had come easy for him.

And he had lived through that terrible place.

"Well think about how we're supposed to have a funeral for a tree." Said Sho. He used his powers to open the front door. The tree was floating this time, he had dragged it before, and that was good. It meant that he was getting better. Big sis had told him, before, how hard it was to control her powers. He had trouble controlling his powers too but opposite of her. He had trouble getting his powers to start working and she had trouble getting her powers to stop working.

So it made sense that he had better control over his powers than she had.

And it made sense that he was impressing dad more than she ever had. Dad was always saying that he was impressive. No matter what Sho did dad was impressed. He was never impressed with big sis. He was always telling her that she had to have better control and stuff. He was always telling her what to do. Maybe that was why she was so bossy. Maybe it was just a never ending chain of bossiness. Well it did end, it ended with him, because he had no one to boss around. He got bossed around, like now, like how now he was going to have a funeral for a tree.

The things he did for his big sister.

He owed her one. He had been such a jerk lately. He owed her a lot, actually, because no matter what he did he always ended up acting like a jerk to her. Well to be fair she was always being bossy and annoying…but he still felt bad about all the stuff he did. Bad enough to even wear a dress the other day and play ceiling dinner….the ceiling dinner had been fun but he had hated wearing her dress….

The things he did for his big sister.

"Well think about why we're burying a tree." Said Sho

"Because…because I feel bad that we killed it. I feel bad and I just want to put it back in the ground. Even if we can't bring it back to life we can still put it back in the ground." Said Mob

"….help me carry." Said Sho. It made sense what she said…but he didn't want to say that. He didn't know why. He didn't know what made him not want to agree with her. That was him being a jerk again. He was such a jerk…and he didn't know why. Because he was a jerk. He didn't know why he was a jerk just that he was. It didn't make sense. Maybe he had just been a jerk, before, because she had powers and he hadn't…

But he did have powers now.

He had powers now…and she was more powerful…but he had better control. Dad was more impressed with him, he had said so, and dad hated it when they fought. Dad hated it when they fought and liked him now that he had powers and dad liked him and…and he had no more reason to be a jerk…aside from the bossiness…but she was always nice to him even if she was bossy…and he was kind of a jerk. Kind of the biggest jerk on the planet, it felt like, and he…he should have been nicer to his big sis…

The things he did for his big sister.

"Sure." Said Mob. She helped Sho carry with her powers. She didn't pick it up by hand, it was very big and she was very small, an also it was pointy. It was pointy because of the needles…which were everywhere…and also on her…and she was glad that she was glad that they were leaving that day. They were going to Korea, which was near Japan but not Japan, but was also maybe near enough to Japan that they could have gone back…at least for a little bit…and they wouldn't even bring trees inside because dad said that it was dumb to make a mess like that….even if they weren't the ones to clean it up he said that he hated stepping on needles….and then he told her to tell Sho to stop making such a mess.

She was in charge of Sho.

Even if he hated it. Even if she didn't much like it. She was the big sister and that meant that…that she had to take over after mom after she left. Because she was the next oldest girl. Back when they had been at home with mom she hadn't been allowed to boss Sho around. Things were different now. It was…ok. It was ok because Sho needed someone to take care of him. She had to take care of Sho…even if sometimes it didn't feel fair. It was unfair that she had to be the one to make sure that they both ate and took baths and did school stuff and made dad happy by not losing control or acting wrong or…or anything like that….and sometimes it was hard. Sometimes she forgot to do the right thing. Sometimes she forgot to make Sho take a bath or do his homeschool work and sometimes they fought and sometimes she let Christmas trees die.

She was such a bad big sister sometimes.

But she could still try her best. Like now. She was holding the tree up with her powers, now, mostly. This was her idea and she was going to put it back in the ground where it belonged and then she was going to get Sho all cleaned up because he was covered in needles and then she was going to double check their packing and then make sure that they had gum, too, for when their ears popped when the plane took off and then she had to help Sho with his homeschool stuff on the plane but also keep him from getting bored and then-

"Well, it's in the ground." Said Sho. He felt bad, now, for the tree. It wasn't fair to it. They should have just put it back….he shouldn't have pulled it up in the first place. He was always doing something wrong. He was a jerk to his sister and now he was a jerk to trees, too. He was just a jerk all together. Maybe it would have been better if they just left him at this house and then went on to the next one and then-

He hated feeling like this.

There had been so many bad feelings inside of him lately. Bad feelings that made him kick the walls and kick his sister….bad feelings that made him yell until his voice hurt…..bad feelings that made him want to push his sister down in the snow. He wanted to but he didn't. He just slammed that tree down way too hard. Better the tree than his big sister. Dad was not impressed when he hurt her. He should not have been hurting his big sister at all, not just because dad said that it annoyed him but because it was wrong, but he just…he didn't know what was wrong with him.

He was such a jerk.

"Not so hard. You're hurting it." Said Mob. She could tell, sort of, even though most people said that plants did not have feelings. Dad had said so when Mob told him that the plant on his desk was scared of him. Mob knew that she was just being dumb and weird and stuff….but she could sort of feel that plants had feelings….

"It's a tree." Said Sho sticking his tongue out. He wanted to push her down in the snow but he didn't…even though she had been kind of annoying there….and that was not a reason to push his sister!

"I know. It's just…hurt." Said Mob. She knelt down in the snow even though she wasn't wearing pants or tights, just a skirt and socks and boots, and she put her hands down on the ground. She moved the dirt over the tree's roots until they were covered like they had been before…but it was still almost dead…and she had let it die. She had messed up and it had died. She messed up all the time.

She cried a little.

She really wanted the tree to not have been dying. Dad always said, he was always saying, that she was good at taking care of Sho. She didn't think that she was. She was always messing up. Dad always told her that she was always messing up. He said that she was messing up and then he said that she was good at taking care of Sho…and it was confusing…and hard….hard for her to…to even…to even know what she was, sometimes. She hated that, how dad could be nice and then mean and then nice again and then mean…and maybe it didn't even matter. She knew that she was messing up. That was what mattered.

She cried.

Not loud crying, not like the kind Sho did in his sleep, just little tears. She didn't breath loud or sob or anything like that. Her tears just hit the frozen dirt and the snow burned the skin that it touched and soaked into the clothes that it touched and her tears were freezing on the ground and she was so sorry and she just wanted to be better, to do better, and for the tree to just start growing and-

And it turned green.

And then she was pushed face first into the dirt and snow.

"It's not fair!" shouted Sho. He finally had his powers and then she just-just-just-just-went and brought a tree back to life! How did that even happen!? Why did she have to go and do that! Just when dad finally started to like him she had to go and-and-and-

He ran back inside before he pushed her again.

"I'm sorry." Said Mob even though…even though she wasn't. She was sorry to have upset Sho but…but this was so cool. She had cried a tree back to life. It was like at the end of Tangled…or the Pokemon movie…she could heal things! Like Fukuda did! Maybe she could even heal all the scars all over Sho…the ones that she hadn't stopped him from getting….

She picked up a pine needle.

She poked her skin with it until it started to bleed a little. She couldn't make herself cry again but maybe if she focused….and she did…but she did not heal. She just…she just turned the pine needle green. She could heal plants? That was…she didn't know. She'd ask dad later. She had never seen him heal himself or plants but…but he might have known something.

She would ask him later.

After she made Sho feel better. She had hurt his feelings…even though she hadn't meant to…and now she had to make him feel better. She had to do her job. If he was in a bad mood now then he would be in a bad mood on the plane and then dad would be upset with her and then she'd…she'd have let him down…and then he would be so upset with her and then Sho would be upset with her and then her whole family, the members of her family that were there would be upset with her…and she didn't know if she could even handle that while they were in an airplane thousands of kilometers in the air going very fast…and now she was worried about losing control….

Power is nothing without control.

Conceal, don't feel.

This was neat. She had a new power and she would show dad and he would help her learn to use it like he had been helped her for her entire life. Then she could teach Sho and then he would stop being mad at her and then he would maybe even stop pushing her…even though she should not have been bothered by that because he was her little brother and she loved him…and also…and also she didn't like to be pushed but…but she still loved him…

Maybe it was like with dad. Sometimes when someone loved you they hurt you too.

But it was ok because things could get better. Like with the tree. It was dead but now it was alive again. Sometimes dad was mean and sometimes he was nice. He wasn't mean when she didn't deserve it. He was nice when she deserved it and mean when she deserved it. Sho was the same way. He was nice to her when she was a good big sister to him and he was mean to her when she was a bad big sister…even though being a good big sister meant taking care of him and…and that was what dad wanted….but if she did what dad wanted and took care of Sho then he got mad at her…

And it was hard.

It was so hard sometimes. You could do what you wanted but then…but then people would get hurt. Like with the tree. She had wanted it to be inside and then it had almost died. Or like with Sho. Sometimes she just wanted to play by herself and have fun and not have to worry about him but…but then…but then she would be being a bad sister. A bad big sister and a bad daughter. She just…all she wanted to do was to be good….and it was hard to be good…and to do the right thing…but she had to…to do the right thing even if it…

If….

The tree was alive. That was what mattered.


	86. A New Friend

Mob had never met anyone with purple hair before.

Well lavender. He…? She? This person said that their hair was lavender, which was a shade of purple, but it was best to be specific with these things. They said that their hair was lavender and no, it did not grow like that, which was a dumb question for Mob to have asked. She knew that it was dumb the moment she asked it. Nobody outside of anime had purple hair that was natural, not from a salon, but then again she saw a lot of things in her daily life that were only supposed to exist in manga and anime and movies and stuff.

Like being able to control plants.

That was what this person was here to teach her how to do. She had just found out that she had the power to control plants not too long ago. Dad usually helped her with her powers but he couldn't control plants. That was weird. How could she have a power that her own dad didn't have? Dad was her dad and she had come from him so therefore she should have had all of his powers. That was how it worked.

Dad said that the scientists were still trying to figure out how it all worked.

Mob wished that they would hurry up with all of that. She didn't know why she had this power, and so far it was hard to use without messing up, and she wished that maybe dad had this power and then he just sort of ended up forgetting that he had it. Then he would be able to remember and then he would be able to help her like he always helped her. Well her and Sho…but sometimes it felt like she helped Sho more than dad did. That was ok. Dad was a very busy man. That was why he had to have someone come over to their house, not their house but one that they were staying in, and teach her how to control plants.

And also maybe watch Frozen and play dolls, if this person was a girl, or play with Sho if this person was a boy.

"Is your name actually Daughter?" they asked. Mob shook her head. They were sitting at the kitchen table. The person, dad just said 'this is your new teacher' and left. Then the person said 'so you can do it too' and then made the hanging spider plants grow super big. Then Mob had said ok. Then Sho had thrown a pencil at her because it wasn't fair that she had a power that he didn't have. In all of that there hadn't been any introductions made.

"No, my name is Suzuki Shigeko. You can call me Suzuki or Shigeko or Suzuki Shigeko….or Mob. I like Mob a lot." Said Mob. They looked up from their book, Mob didn't know any of those characters, and raised an eyebrow….well they would have if they had an eyebrow. Mob wondered what happened to their eyebrows. Sometimes mom just drew hers on when she made a mistake. Mob didn't understand why people did all of those things to their eyebrows. Most people had regular eyebrows that looked fine.

Dad's looked like caterpillars….but she would never tell him that to his face.

"Why the hell would I call you Mob? That's not a name, that's an insult, and not a very creative one either." They said. They went back to their book and turned the page. They turned the page backwards like in English. That book was in Korean. Mob knew what it looked like, she was supposed to be learning it, but she didn't know any of the characters yet. She really wanted to learn Korean mainly so she could watch that show she saw about the girl who dressed up like a ladybug and the boy who dressed up like a cat and it was kind of like shonen but also kind of like shoujo so she and Sho could watch it but it didn't have subtitles in Japanese so they really needed to learn Korean. She wondered if it was hard. She wondered if she could ask them.

She usually wasn't supposed to have conversations with the people who worked for dad.

Usually they were either supposed to do what she told them to, the Awakened, or they just came and taught her stuff and left, their tutors. Sometimes there were others, people with big scars or other people who worked for dad but didn't do anything for her and Sho. She wondered if those people were supposed to listen to her, too. She wondered if this person was supposed to listen to her. She wondered if she was even supposed to have conversations with this person.

She didn't even know if she remembered how to talk to people who weren't dad and Sho.

"Because it's something that I like to be called." Said Mob. That was what she settled on. She didn't have a big reason for it, she would just rather be Mob, and it was something that she wanted to be called. That was the one thing that the Awakened wouldn't do. They only called her Miss Suzuki. Sho was Little Suzuki. He didn't like being called 'little' and she didn't like being called 'Miss' but dad had told them that they had to be respectful of them…even if the more respectful thing to do would have been to call them what they wanted to be called in the first place. Not that she was going to argue with dad. That would not have gotten her anywhere but punished.

"Fine, whatever. You're Mob and I guess that I'm your babysitter for today….that sexist asshole…." They muttered. Mob held her braids down with her powers. She didn't know what she had said but she did know that it must have been bad if she had gotten them cursing like that. Dad said that cursing was the lowest form of speech and that she and Sho were better than dad. Dad had whole lists of things that they were better than, it seemed sometimes.

"Um….I think that you're supposed to be my tutor for today…and I'm sorry." Said Mob

"That I got pulled off the Fifth Division for this? Well thank you so much for your kind apology, Miss Mob." They said. Mob smiled. Good. They accepted her apology and now they could both be friends…or as close to friends as an almost nine year old could be with an adult. Mob wasn't picky at this point. She knew that it was wrong to feel like this, she loved Sho with all of her heart, but she really wanted to play with someone who wasn't her little brother. Or just watch TV…or read books. Whatever they felt like doing.

Mob had never had a friend over before.

But she had no idea if she and them were friends yet…or if they were even allowed to be. They were an esper, which was good because dad said that she was only allowed to be friends with espers, but they also worked for dad….so she didn't know. But they were getting off on the right foot it felt like. That was good. Maybe they could show Mob how to get purple hair. Dad had never said that she wasn't allowed to color her hair…he never gave her or Sho rules about hair and clothes and stuff. Their clothes only had to fit and also they always had to be wearing them. No going around naked when it got hot…though Sho was the only one out of the two of them to do that. He didn't understand why it was a rule and Mob didn't either. She and Sho had been taking baths together for their whole lives and dad was a boy like Sho was a boy. Dad just said that they were not animals and they had to wear clothes all the time. Then he said that Sho was tiring…which he could be.

A crash came from the living room.

"I'm ok!" shouted Sho from the other room. Then there was another crash. Mob got up to see what was happening. He didn't need her. He was just playing something that involved jumping on the furniture. It didn't matter if they broke anything, this wasn't their house anyway.

"I'm sorry for being a bad host and leaving you alone. I just had to check on my little brother." Said Mob. It was important to be polite when you were trying to make new friends. She really, really, really wanted a friend. Even if they were kind of quiet…but that was ok, she was kind of quiet too. They could read books together….or something…..

She didn't know if she remembered how to hang out with someone who was not Sho.

"Does he have an off switch?" They asked. Mob shook her head. She knew that it was a saying, she sometimes had trouble with those, but she knew that they were just being funny. That was good. She was getting better at getting a clue. Maybe she'd be all the way better by the time she was nine.

"No. That's just how Sho always is. He'll get tired eventually, though, and then he'll draw and he's always pretty quiet when he draws. That's when I do my homeschool homework." Said Mob. She sat back down on the table. Her tablet was charging in front of her. She wondered if it would be rude of she started reading something too…or maybe it was more rude not to be reading something when someone else was reading. She didn't know, there were a lot of rules, and back when she had gone to school and played with other kids she hadn't known that there even were rules until she broke them.

Then everyone laughed at her.

"Good. Well then I guess that we'll just sit here until he exhausts himself or we die of old age, whichever comes first." They said

"Um….I think that he'll get tired before we get old….and also we don't have to sit here. If you don't want to teach me about my plant powers we could-" said Mob

"It's not that I don't want to, well yeah I don't want to, but it's also the fact that I have no idea how the hell I'm supposed to teach you. I'm not a teacher. I was a florist before all of this and now, well, you're way too young to know what it is that I do in Claw." They said

"I'm almost nine." Said Mob. She was not young. She hated it when people said that she was too young, well they didn't say that or much of anything beyond 'yes, Miss Suzuki' these days but back when she had a mom she was always being told 'you're too young'….which made no sense. Mob may have been a kid but she was not young. She couldn't remember ever feeling young.

"Yeah, you're way too young to know. Call me back when you're ten at least." They said. Mob nodded, she could do that. Ten was way older than almost nine. Ten was in the double digits…not that she knew what made that so important, just that it was. She wondered what things would be like when she was ten….probably more of the same. When she was little she used to look forward to going on to the next grade and being taller and also going on trips with dad. Now she wasn't in any kind of school at all, was so tall that she needed new clothes, and her life was one never ending trip with dad….so what was there even to look forward to anymore?

Making a new friend.

"Ok, I will. Um….do you like…stuff? I mean do you like the stuff that I like. I mean what kind of stuff do you like?" asked Mob. That was important when getting to know someone and making a friend. They said that they didn't want to be her teacher so maybe instead they could be friends. She hoped that they could be friends.

"I like not being bothered while I'm trying to work but I guess that ship has sailed. I like to read, I like to drink, I like to do travel, and I like a lot of things that you're way too young to know about." They said. Mob frowned a little. She didn't like being told that she was young…but they said that Mob could ask again when she was ten. That meant that they would still be talking to her when she was ten. That meant that they might have wanted to be friends with her….and that was so wonderful!

"…do you like cats?" asked Mob quickly. She needed to know what they had in common. Friends were supposed to have all sorts of things in common. Like her and Sho. They both like to go sledding and they both liked Disney movies and they both liked cats, though he liked hamster better, and they were both espers and they both like bubble baths and warm milk and hot chocolate in the summer and ice cream in the winter and a whole lot of other stuff. She didn't know if she would ever meet someone who was a better friend than Sho but she really, really, really wanted more friends.

"They're alright, I guess. Not a fan of the constant shedding and pissing in the house but, hey, there's no pets allowed in Claw so whatever." They said. Mob would have to change that rule when she took over after dad…or she would have to ask Sho too because he was a boy and boys were the ones who did the inheriting. Mob would have so many cats, at least ten or fifteen, and she did have to agree about the shedding and peeing everywhere. Whenever she and Sho and mom went to the shelter mom always gave her and Sho a bath and washed their clothes when they got home. Ok, she and them had something in common. She wondered what else the two of them had in common. Only one way to know.

"Do you like milk?" asked Mob. That was important. Milk was delicious and good for you, too. It built strong bones and made you grow up big and tall and also it could be made from soy or oats or coconuts or almonds….and all of that wasn't as real milk but she wasn't too picky. Also milk could be strawberry flavored.

"I like it alright I guess. Could be worse. At least strawberry milk is healthy. That's why it has fruit in it." They said. Mob wasn't sure if they were right about it being healthy, dad said that it was all sugary and gross, but it was too early to be correcting a new friend. Sho was always saying that she was bossy and she thought that she knew everything. She didn't want to scare them off now when they had just met. Mob knew that she had to ask something…and soon. They weren't looking at her anymore. They went back to their book. Mob fidgeted with her powers even though she knew that she wasn't supposed to. The table started to sway and hover for a bit. They looked up from their book and raised the space where an eyebrow should have been.

"Why don't you have eyebrows?" asked Mob. She wished that she hadn't asked that question. The minute she asked it she knew that she had said the wrong thing. What if they felt bad about being different? What if the other espers made fin of them for not having eyebrows? What if they started to cry? Oh no! Mob didn't know what she would do if they started to cry!

"Why do you have eyebrows?" They asked. Mob hadn't been expecting that. She had no idea. She just knew that she had them. She hadn't ever figured that there would have been a reason for it. People just….had eyebrows.

"I was born with them." Said Mob after some thinking. That was the only reason that she could think of…though it was not a reason at all. She had eyebrows because she did. She'd have to ask dad why she had eyebrows later. He looked like he knew a lot about eyebrows.

"Well I was born without them. Next question?" They asked. Mob took a moment to maybe stare just a little. That was not an answer. There must have been some reason that they had been born without eyebrows….but maybe that was best left to dad to answer. Right. They wanted to be asked another question….were they playing the question game? Sho usually won at that. He asked 'why' until Mob and Google ran out of answers.

"What are you reading?" asked Mob. That seemed like a good question…unless she was prying too much. You could ask too many questions and the ones that you asked could be too prying. Dad was always telling her that…even though she didn't think that asking about his parents hadn't been so prying…but then again she was bad at that sort thing, talking and stuff, so what did she even know?

"It's a trashy romance novel that you would not be interested in since, you know, you're eight." They said.

"I'm almost nine and I like love stories. I don't think that they're gross but my brother does. He makes throwing up sounds every single time people in movies and on TV kiss. I don't mind. I like love, it's a good feeling." Said Mob

"The love makes the world go round." They said. Mob nodded. She liked them even more now. Sho said that love made the world gross and dad said that gravity from the sun made the world go round. Boys were so weird like that. Maybe she was talking to a girl then. She didn't know. Mob couldn't even tell from looking. They had short hair and their shirt was so baggy that Mob couldn't tell if they were a boy or girl…but that wasn't fair, really, because Mob was a girl and she didn't have any kind of chest at all. Well she sort of did, now, except her chest was just kind of pointy and sore all the time. Not that she was going to tell Fukuda about that. Nope, no matter how much it hurt to sleep on her stomach she was not going to say a word…even if her chest stayed like that forever and it was always sore and stuff, too, and then people made fun of her like they had back when she went to school…even though they were all in the first grade and nobody had anything to brag about yet, in Mob's opinion.

"It's in Korean and you look Japanese to me." They said. Mob sat back in her chair. She had been leaning forward too far. That had probably been rude. It was rude when boys stared at girl's chests so maybe it was rude when girls stared at girl's chests…that is if she was even talking to a girl. Why was this even so important to begin with?

"Do you like Galaxy Express 999?" asked Mob. She had to ask something because if she didn't the next question she asked would have been if they were a boy or a girl…and she could not ask that. That was a good question, Mob thought, because it had nothing to do with anything personal. Right? She didn't know. She asked dad when he first read Galaxy Express 999 and he told her not to dig around in things that didn't concern her…and then he read her the manga when they hung out in is bed and he told her about how he would read Galaxy Express back when he had been little during class because there was nothing that his teachers could tell him that he didn't already know. She didn't understand sometimes, what was and was not ok to ask, so at least if she messed up she had gotten good practice.

"The Galaxy Express? You read the Galaxy Express?" They asked. Mob nodded and called her tablet over with her powers. She scooted her chair next to them with her powers and showed him her manga collection. It was so big that she had to store some of it in the cloud. That meant that she had a lot. She didn't read all of it, she just bought ones that looked nice, but she had read the whole Galaxy Express every single volume. Dad liked it and if she liked it too then she and Dad could be better friends.

"See? I have all of it. Me and my dad read it together." Said Mob

"You and….Suzuki? He reads this stuff? He reads for pleasure? He enjoys life?" They asked. Mob nodded. She could understand how they could think that dad didn't know what fun was. Sho thought so too. Dad knew how to have fun, he liked to watch documentaries and read manga with her about giant robots and outer space and war and other boy stuff….dad knew how to have fun. He just didn't show that part of himself with other people. Mob wondered why. He would have had more friends that way…if he even wanted friends…but then why wouldn't he have wanted friends?

"Yes. Dad can be a lot of fun sometimes. He can be mean sometimes, too, but he can also be fun. We read this together before bed sometimes. Sometimes we read other things." Said Mob

"….and he's seriously your dad?" They asked.

"Yes. I know that we don't look alike but it's because both of my parents are half Japanese and that makes me half Japanese but I got all of the Japanese." Said Mob

"You sure that you're not just adopted?" They asked. Mob shook her head. She wasn't adopted. Mom and dad would have told her if she was. Also she was just like dad. She was just like dad even if she didn't look like him. Dad said that inherited traits were weird like that sometimes.

"No. My dad is my dad." Said Mob

"Sure. You keep on believing that." They said. Mob wasn't sure if she was supposed to say anything to that…or what it was that she was supposed to say to that. They just sat in silence…and she didn't like it. She had to say something and….and maybe she should have asked another question…or talk about how she was not adopted….and she felt sort of bad, now, because she was thinking about how…how she didn't look like the rest of her family….but she couldn't let herself be mad at anyone let alone her new friend.

"Do you like Frozen?" asked Mob. That was the first question that came to mind. She needed to know. It was very important to know if someone liked Frozen…but it was ok if you liked Tangled better…or something else entirely. Also this was a good way to see if this person was a boy or a girl. Mob couldn't just come out and ask. First of all you did not ask about people's privates, she felt like, because they were private. Also if she asked if this person was a boy or a girl and they were a boy they would have thought that Mob had called them girly and if they were a boy then they would have thought that Mob was saying that they looked like a boy. Both were not nice things to say to someone at all. Nope. Not at all.

"Not as much as you, obviously." They said with a motion towards Mob's dress. This was a new Elsa dress, the old one was too small and also Sho stepped on the cape and it ripped off. She had another one but it wasn't as nice as this one because it didn't have a cape or the sparkly parts that were supposed to look like ice crystals. They were too old to dress like she did. Back when she and Sho lived at Disney Land, well they still did sometimes, Mob could tell which girls she would have gotten along with based on what dress they were wearing. Not that she ever broke dad's rules, of course, because if she did then dad wouldn't be nice to her anymore. She didn't want that. She could never want that.

"I like it a lot but you might like it as much as I do. I don't know if you do or not. I just met you today. We haven't even played Elsa dolls yet. I bet that you'd be better at it than my little brother. I like to play with him but he's very rough on my toys sometimes….that is if you play with dolls." Said Mob. She needed to figure it out. Was she talking to a boy or a girl? She hadn't realized before now how important it was to know.

"I don't like it enough to spend my time and money playing with dolls." They said. Mob wondered if that meant that they were a girl or that they were just too old to play with dolls. Like back when she had been in the first grade the fifth graders would always make fun of them for playing with dolls because dolls were for kids…even though they were all in the same elementary school and therefore were all kids.

"But do you like it?" asked Mob. She didn't know if she could be friends with someone who didn't like her favorite movie…but then again she was not in any position where she could just turn down friendship like that.

"It's ok. I've seen worse. The ice girl should really have come out at the end…and you have no idea what that means, do you?" They asked. Mob shook her head.

"I don't but it's ok, you can tell me when I'm ten like you said before…if we're still friends by then." Said Mob

"Friends? You think that we're friends?" They asked. Mob nodded but then stopped. She had probably misread the whole thing. She was so bad at getting a clue sometimes. She couldn't wait until she was older….if that would even help.

"Well….I want us to be. I don't have many friends and I like you and I think, too, that your hair is very pretty…or cool. Cool is better." Said Mob. Boys were not pretty. Sho had made it perfectly clear that there was nothing that boys hated more in this world besides being called pretty. She didn't understand boys one bit. She hoped that they were a girl. Mob hadn't had a girl to be friends with in so long….that is if they were even going to be friends. She didn't know. Maybe she had misjudged the whole thing. Maybe this was like how she wasn't supposed to try and make friends with the Awakened. She didn't know. All she knew was that she really, really, really wanted a friend.

"Right…..I'm cool." They said. Mob nodded. She wondered if that was the right word. She had trouble finding the right word sometimes. She wished that there was a list of words, like a phrasebook or something, so that she would always know what to say. It was hard, like walking across a minefield was she imagined, talking to someone and trying to make friends…or maybe she was just out of practice…or maybe she had just never been good at it in the first place.

"You are. I think that you're really cool. You like a lot of the same things that I do and your hair is lavender and also you're very nice. Nobody talks like you do. Nobody's allowed to talk to me like you do. Dad says that the Awakened aren't allowed to talk to me…and it's kind of lonely…but I want us to be friends…if you want to." Said Mob she crossed her fingers. She kept her hands under the table and crossed her fingers. She loved Sho but…but she wanted another friend…but having another friend did not mean that she didn't want to be friends with Sho…and hopefully he saw it that way, too.

"Ok…you win. We're friends." They said. Mob was happy, so happy that her hair started to float…and then she started to float up out of her chair…so she got up…and then she did the only thing that came to mind.

She went in for a hug.

And something tugged on her hair. The spider plants that were hanging from the kitchen ceiling were tugging her back. She stopped. Right. Sometimes friends pulled on your hair…or at least Sho did. She wasn't really sure if she wanted another friend who was like Sho. She was already a big sister to Sho, that was why he tugged her hair, but she was not sister to this person…and she didn't much like getting her hair pulled….but she also didn't much like being lonely, either. She didn't know, she hadn't known, how lonely she had been with just Sho until she had finally gotten another friend. The first non-Sho friend that she'd had in a while….

"We're not the kinds of friends who hug." They said. Mob nodded. They stopped tugging at her hair, the plants went back to being still, and Mob sat back down in her chair. They were reading so she went back to reading too. She knew that she was supposed to be practicing with her new plant powers…but she would do that later. She was hanging out with her friend.

Her new friend.

The friend who she did not know the name of…and that felt kind of wrong in some ways. Friends needed to know each other's names. She was Mob and her friend was calling her Mob….and that felt good and she didn't know why it felt so good but it did…and she needed to know her friend's name. She wondered if it was ok to ask now…well even if it wasn't she still had to…because it was only going to get more and more awkward since they were friends now…

"Um…what's your name?" asked Mob. She looked down at her tablet as she asked. That was she didn't have to think about…about how awkward she was….so awkward that they didn't even want to be friends with her anymore…and they had just become friends…

"Minegishi Toshiki. Call me Minegishi, not Toshiki, and not Toshi. Call me Toshi and I will end you, Suzuki's kid or not." They, Minegishi, said. That was a name, their given name, that was for both boys and girls…and Mob still couldn't tell if Minegishi was a boy or a girl…but that didn't matter, Mob figured.

She finally had a friend. That was what mattered the most.


	87. Bitter Chocolate

Bitter. That was how this day felt. Bitter.

Suzuki had come to really hate Valentine's Day.

He had been mostly neutral about this holiday. He hated chocolate, anything sweet really, but every year Masami got him a block of bitter black chocolate…which was enjoyable. Mostly because it was from her. Chocolate, even bitter black chocolate he could take or leave. She did more for him on Valentine's Day, too, and even though it was his day he still did his part for her. He had done his part for her….about two Valentine's Days ago. The last one…well actually even when they had still been together he had usually missed it…but they made it up to each other. Now she was the one who had missed Valentine's Day…and he didn't care.

He didn't.

He really didn't. She was a traitor. She had left him. He didn't care about…he didn't. This was just another day. This had been just another day. He woke up in a bed that was not his in a room that was not his in a country that was not his and then he got to work building up the world that was his. Well it would be his world, he just had to keep on working, and also not let himself get distracted by the date on the calendar.

Valentine's Day.

One this date about nine years ago or so he and Masami had gone on their first date. A walk through a museum, a meal, some, unusually good sex, and then a promise to repeat the process again and again. They had. It had not been a long courtship but there had been no reason for it to be. He knew long before they married, long before she even brought up the idea of marriage, long before they knew of Son's conception, that she was the most perfect person in the world and that he was going to spend the rest of his life with her. She was so perfect that she had to be his. He could not recall ever feeling for another woman what he felt for her…and that was long before they had sex. Before she had leaned in and kissed, even. Before her hand even met his for the first time. He just…knew…that she would be his.

That he loved her.

And he hates that word. It's so imprecise. Love was too vague to encompass everything that he felt…that he had felt….for her. The way that he needed to be beside her. The way that he needed to hear her voice. The way that he needed to remake the world for her, remake it into a place where she could be safe and happy, the way that he wanted to give her the world if she were to ask it…and she would have been right to ask it. The world may have fit in the palm of his hand but that did not mean that he was incapable of sharing it. He would have shared it with her. He would have shared everything that he had with her…and he had. He had given her his life, his body, his time, his money, his emotions, and his children.

It hadn't been enough.

He had no idea what else she had wanted from him. What area he had been deficient in. He had always spoken to her even when his head was pounding and he was just so drained from the million and one little annoyances that came from running Claw. He held her even when he was too warm or too uncomfortable and just wanted some space to process the cocktail of feelings that came with her touch. He gave her the biggest house he could and all the money in the world, almost, and she wanted for nothing. He had sex with her whenever she asked and he made sure that she never left their bed unsatisfied. He gave her two children, a boy and a girl, and he would have given her more…if she wanted them. But she hadn't wanted them. He had no idea what she had wanted.

She hadn't told him what she wanted.

She just left. She left him even after she promised that she would be there with him until the day she died. Well she hadn't died, she had left with the clear intent to disappear completely and never be found, and now he was all alone…with the children. She had left them alone with him. She had left him alone with them. She had betrayed him. She had betrayed the children. She had betrayed Son. She had betrayed Daughter.

He didn't want to think about it.

And last year he hadn't. He had drowned himself so completely in his work that the date had passed him by. Now….this year was different. For one thing Daughter had greeted him with a 'Happy Valentine's Day' which had then reminded him of the fact that it was Valentine's Day and then he had been reminded, again, when someone else decided to wish him a happy Valentine's Day…which wouldn't have been too bad if the woman who had wished him a happy Valentine's Day hadn't look so much like Masami….out of all the female espers in the world, admittedly very few, there had to be a light haired woman with blue eyes, very blue eyes, and the same habit Masami had of playing with her hair…

It hadn't been a good day.

And he just wanted to forget. He tried to work, he tried to complete his day as usual, but he just….couldn't. It was as if his mind were working independently of him. Every little thing reminded him of Masami. The feel of the tea cup in his hand…she really made a good cup of tea. The feel of his bed, cold on one side, when he got up that morning. She was in everything, her memory, and her absence. It…it had been easier and easier each day to deal with it, all of the emotions that came with her absence, and exorcising them had been getting easier…

But not easy.

And especially not today. He was having so much trouble forgetting that he decided to do something that went against everything the he believed in. True control came from within, he couldn't allow himself to be weak and dependent, and all of that. He was upset with himself for doing this, very upset with himself, but…but he needed to get out of the emotional hell that Masami had left him in. He would be angry with himself tomorrow, hell he welcomed something other than the pain of her absence in his life, but right now he had to exorcise these emotions by any means necessary.

He needed a drink.

So he had one. Korea was not Japan, so no good sake, but they had rice wine…which was not sake. He and Fukuda had debated this, ages ago when they had been young, that there was no difference between sake and Korean rice wine. Fukuda had questioned him more back then. Things had changed about when they finished school. He, eventually, acquiesced that there was a world of difference between rice wine from Korea and proper Japanese sake. Which was good. Suzuki would fight anyone who disagreed with him…and he was itching for a fight. Son got that from him, the propensity for violence and all of that, so really Suzuki shouldn't have faulted the boy…even though he should not have been quarreling with his sister. Daughter didn't have a violent bone in her body, she took after Masami in that regard, so there was no point in fighting with her. Son…he had inherited that, amongst other things, from his father….

Suzuki hoped that Son did not inherit this from him.

This emotional weakness that he carried with him. He hoped that his Son didn't inherit this. He hoped that his Son never found himself so fixated on a woman who had betrayed him that he decided to indulge in his worst impulses and put his very control on the line…though Son, amazingly enough, didn't have anywhere near that problems with control that Suzuki had been fighting with his entire life. Thank the universe for the small miracles he supposed.

He needed a big miracle.

He was just gone enough, had just drank enough, the he was hoping and wishing and praying for a miracle. He prayed for Masami to come back to him. He prayed, as the car rushed down the unfamiliarly familiar roads of this country towards the familiarly unfamiliar house he lived in, that Masami would be there to greet him. An absurd thought, the last desperate prayer of a man who had lost everything, even himself, and one that he knew that he universe would not grant….though he could hope.

He did hope.

He hoped as hard as he could. He hoped that by some miracle she would be there. Untouched by time, though it had only been a little less than two years, she would be there for him. She would be there and she would be waiting and he would not have been upset with her. No. Even though he had every reason to be, even though he had every reason to throw her to the streets and cast her out of his life for eternity he wouldn't. No. He wouldn't even raise his voice. He would lower himself down to the ground and kowtow for her forgiveness….and he was so weak….so pathetic…but if that was what it took, if that was what she wanted, then he would gladly kowtow to the ground for her.

He didn't have to kowtow.

It takes him a moment to realize that the car has stopped because he's back. He's back at the latest in his never ending string of temporary accommodations. It takes him a minute to realize that it's time to get out of the car. It takes him a minute to realize that it's time for him to go into the house. It takes him a minute to remember how to even get out of the car. In the end he ends up using his power…and cracking all the windows….but it doesn't matter. It's his car.

It's Claw's car.

And he's Claw. He is Claw, Claw is him, and therefore everything and everyone within it was his. A bit like that game he saw Son and Daughter playing, sometimes, on their tablets. That game of urban planning in which the object was to make the most prosperous city possible….a far cry from the old Game and Watch games he had wasted his time with when he was their age. He wondered what they were up to, his children. His little humans that he had made….one of which he had made. The little humans who he was responsible for. The little humans who would literally die without him. The little humans who called him 'dad'. The little humans who looked up to him. The little humans who spent every moment of their lives learning from him.

They were his….the thought hits him. It hits him as hard as the door does when he throws it opened with his powers. Right there, in that house, were two human beings who belonged him totally and completely…well everyone in Claw did…but he did not make everyone in Claw…and he did not make all of his children. He forgets that fact, sometimes, because Daughter is so much like him.

And so much like Masami.

"Dad…are you ok?" asked Daughter. She was still awake at this hour. He didn't know what hour it was, exactly, but he knew that it was long past the hour at which children were expected to be asleep. They had things to do in the morning same as he did. They had their lessons and then whatever else they filled their time with. He should have told her to go back to bed.

But he didn't want to.

"I….am fine. How are you?" asked Suzuki as he kicked his shoes off in the genkan…or whatever it was called here. He didn't know. He couldn't be bothered to know. He couldn't even be bothered to face his shoes the right way.

She faced his shoes the right way for him.

"I'm ok. I'm just worried about you. I felt your aura while you were coming home…and it felt weird. Also you forgot to make your shoes face the right way." said Daughter. She had thought of him. She was always thinking of others just as her mother did. Masami had always taken such good care of him, not in the way that the Awakened did, and not in the way that he could take care of himself. She had been….she had been everything….and now she was gone….

The lights above him flickered.

"I'm fine." Said Suzuki. He put his arm out and braced himself against the genkan wall. There had been some power to it, he figured, because the ceiling started to rain plaster down on both him and Daughter. She put up a barrier. She put up a barrier and watching him. He could feel her aura against his. She was watching him so carefully….

"Dad, are you sure? I know that I'm not supposed to question you but….but you've never been like this before…." Said Daughter. Right. She had never seen him drinking before. Not even socially. Well she never came with him, neither her nor Son, for those times when he had to pretend to be social. To pretend to be a social being….to understand what it was to want to be a social being…because not every part of his job was lording over people….sometimes he had to make an effort to fit in….

And he hated it.

And he hated feeling like this. He hated feeling so out of control. He hated being so out of control. He was a complete person on his own…at least he tried to be. He had lost her, his other half, the being that he had let be his other half…and now he was all alone…and it shouldn't have mattered if he all alone. He was a complete person on his own. He didn't need anyone but himself.

He reached for the wall again.

And Daughter was at his side. She held his hand and watched him, watched his aura, and her face seemed….worried. He'd deal with that later. Her display of emotion. She was not setting a good example for Son there….but then again he was not exactly setting a good example for her. Her own father came through the door at whatever hour this was stinking drunk…or maybe not to that point. He had a notoriously low tolerance….because he never drank…and in those times when he had to drink socially he usually had Fukuda fix him up when he started to feel it…but he was not going to bother Fukuda over this.

He had Daughter to take care of him.

"I can call Fukuda if you're sick. I really can, I have a phone now, and his number is in there. Him and you and Sho….and also Minegishi now. Wow…I have four phone numbers saved in my phone….but that's not important. I'm sorry. I should be worried about you right now." Said Daughter. She was supporting him, now, with her body and her powers. He rested a hand on her shoulder. He wondered how she could sleep in this thing. It was itchy, one of her wool night dress things, and he had no idea how she could stand wool so near to her skin….that seemed important…she was so different from him…but she was always there for him….

Just the way her mother was.

And he hates himself for it. He should not need anyone else. He hasn't needed anyone else ever in his life…and he never should have even opened himself up to the idea that he would ever need anyone other than himself. Daughter was there. She was there and she was asking about him, his health, and she was concerned. There's a bottle of rice wine in his inner suit pocket. It weighs him down. He wants to get rid of it.

But he doesn't.

He just leans down more onto Daughter.

"….if you want. I hear that chicken soup is good for when you're sick. We don't have cans of chicken soup but we have chicken flavored instant noodles and that might be the same thing. I don't know…but I do know how to make instant noodles. Minegishi taught me. Well they didn't teach me, I just watched them make instant noodles, and I don't know why they don't just ask the awakened to bring regular soup. They just said that they liked the instant kind. I don't know. We still have some if you want them." Said Daughter

"No. Instant ramen is vile." Said Suzuki. That was the first coherent thought in his mind. Vile. He'd always preferred real ramen. He was not so time poor that he couldn't have a bowl of actual ramen. He wondered why Daughter would even bother with something like that, cheap instant noodles, when there was a whole world of real soup out there worthy of her.

Worthy-ish.

Because nothing would ever be worthy of her. He was struck with that feeling. Nothing in this world would ever be worthy of his Daughter, of Masami's Daughter, of Daughter. She didn't just dress like royalty, she was royalty, and nothing would ever have been worthy of her. It's a mad thought, it's a drunk thought, but it's one that sticks to his mind. He cared for her so much. He reached down and twisted his fingers in her hair. She had such sort hair, such beautiful hair, like her mother did. Well her hair was nothing like Masami's but it was still nice. That was the word. Nice.

"Um….ok. We have tea…I can make you some of that. Or maybe I can make you coffee…I mean I can figure it out. Coffee is like tea…I think. I don't know. I just know that when someone is sick that they need a lot to drink…I think…." Said Daughter. He leaned a little more of his weight on her. She supported him with her powers. He hated himself for being so weak. He hated himself for showing her his weakness. That must have been why Masami had left…because she had seen him at his weakest….

Daughter wasn't even nine years old, yet, and she had nowhere else to go even if she were to get the idea in her head to leave.

"Daughter…the last thing that I need is another drink…." Said Suzuki. He tried to take a step forward. He stumbled a little as he left the genkan. She was still supporting him. She was seeing him at his weakest, at his most pathetic, and he knew that he would be kicking himself over this later…but this was now. This was now and it was Valentine's Day and, it pained him to admit it, it was not an easy day.

He wondered where Masami was.

He wondered where Masami had gone to. He wondered what she was doing. It was late, it was even later in Japan, and she was probably asleep…alone. She must have been alone. He didn't think that he could have handled it if she were with someone else. No…of course she wasn't. He had nothing to base this off of but gut feelings…she must have been alone…yes. She had maybe fallen asleep in front of the television while one of her historical dramas played….

He took another step forward.

"Do you want to go to bed? If you don't want to drink something then maybe you should lay in bed…and then I'll call Fukuda and-" said Daughter

"Take me to bed…but don't call Fukuda." Said Suzuki

"Why? He makes us all better. That's his job. I mean I would feel bad waking him up in the middle of the night but I don't want you to be sick, dad, I don't want anything to happen to you." Said Daughter. She was supporting him as he walked towards his room…the room he was sleeping in. He passed by the children's room. Son was asleep. He could feel his passive aura. Son shone so brightly….so very brightly….

"Daughter….I don't need Fukuda. I don't need anyone." Said Suzuki as he was led to the room he slept in. He opened the door with his powers. There was too much behind it and the door would have broken off of it's hinges had Daughter not been there. She caught it with her powers while she was supporting him….she was so talented. Splitting her focus like that. His Daughter was so talented….

"Everyone needs someone dad. I mean that's how I feel. Like how Sho and I need each other…and you. We both need you." Said Daughter as she walked Suzuki over to the bed. He let his suitcoat hit the ground. Daughter pulled the covers back for him with her powers. She was so good at fine movements…he remembered how they had played when she was a child. When she was two and they played that came with the balls…and she had been amused…or when they had first started playing Chinese Checkers….a game of skill, strategy, and picking up marbles with her powers while engaging in games of skill and strategy.

"You and your bother are children." Said Suzuki as he was tucked in. Daughter stood at the side of the bed. She had his suit coat in one hand. Something bulged from her nightdress pocket.

"We are….and we need you. You're our dad and…and we need you….and we don't know what we would do without you." Said Daughter. Suzuki frowned. He let himself frown. That was…she thought that he would betray her like that? Her and Son? No. They were his children, his people, and he would never betray them like that. He would never leave them….or cast them aside. Not unless they betrayed him first…and that was something that he could confidently say would never happen.

They were his.

"I will never leave you. You know that, Daughter, and I don't ever want you to say things like that ever again." said Suzuki. She held his suit coat in her hands. She played with it, she fidgeted with it, and she cast her eyes away from his. He didn't like that. She was pulling her aura away from his. He didn't like that.

He picked her up with his powers and put her on the other side of the bed.

The bottle clattered against the ground as she dropped his suit coat. She almost hit the ground, too, as her powers lashed out in surprise. He maybe have dropped her a little too hard on the other side of the bed. It didn't matter, this mattress was soft, and she would be fine. She was always fine. Children were resilient.

"Please don't be mad at me….I just meant that I didn't want you to get sick like…like….I just don't want you to get sick. I want you to always be here. I'm just…worried about you. I'm sorry. I can go way if you want me to." Said Daughter

"I'm not angry with you. I don't know why you would get that idea." Said Suzuki. He rolled onto his side so he was facing Daughter. She was on her side, too, and she was facing him. Her hand was over her pocket. Her eyes still could not meet his. She looked so pale under the harsh lights of his bedroom. He reached over with his powers and turned them off.

Thank God he didn't blow the power to the house.

The lights flickered and, eventually, went off. He maybe shouldn't have been using his powers when he was in this state. He maybe shouldn't have even gotten himself in this state to begin with. He had set such a bad example for her. This was not what she needed. This was not something that she needed to see. Her father in this state. What did she even think of him? Did she think that it was alright to get herself into this state? Would she, when she got older, get herself into this state? Would she allow whatever man she chose as her most perfect person to get himself into this state? He didn't even know. He prayed that she didn't.

She was much too good for this.

Her control was….it was not Son's but she was quite a bit more powerful than Son…and she had some decent control for a child her age. She had more than decent control. He could see her aura, he could see how distressed she was, but this only manifested in the swaying of her hair. He could see it in the light cast by the streetlights outside. The way her hair moved. As if she were underwater. He could feel her aura against his, pressing against his, and she was distressed. She was so distressed…..and he didn't like it. She shouldn't have felt like that. She should have exorcised those emotions. She would end up being ruled by them…as he was….she would end up in the same predicament that he found himself in now…and he could not have that.

"You threw me onto the bed. You only throw me and Sho when you're mad at us." Said Daughter

"I hardly ever throw you. You hardly ever upset me." Said Suzuki. Daughter could be annoying, sometimes, like when she sought him out when he hadn't wanted it. When he had wanted to be alone. When she had lost control of her powers…and of Son. When he came home to find the house in shambles, he didn't do well in messy and chaotic spaces, and Son acting like a little brat. He didn't much like those times….

"But you do throw Sho….kind of a lot." Said Daughter

"He's an annoying little brat sometimes." Said Suzuki. Daughter so rarely angered him but Son…Son was sent to try him. Son was loud…annoyingly loud…and he never listened. He had his moments. Moments when he was pleasant. Moments when he was downright impressive. Moments where Suzuki was proud of him…but those moments were outnumbered by the times his son drove him crazy. Those were the times when he could do nothing but throw his Son across the room or slam him into a wall or just smack him…and Son was such a trial…and he angered him so much….and so did Daughter, on occasion….

Though she so rarely truly angered him.

"Oh…ok. That's….ok. I guess." Said Daughter.

"You, however, are not and I did not set out to throw you. I just wanted to place you here beside me." Said Suzuki

"Why?" asked Daughter

"Why not?" asked Suzuki. It wasn't as though this wasn't a part of their nighttime ritual, sometimes. They watched television together. Sometimes in the living room and sometimes in his bedroom. His bedroom was easier. When she fell asleep in his bed he didn't have to pick her up and put her in her bed. He didn't have to risk waking her up…and Son up…and then risk the children both being fully awake and keeping him awake. No, this was just easier.

And it was nice waking up to the other side of the bed being warm, for once.

"Oh….I guess that…there's no reason for me not to be here. It's just that when we hang out like this we usually watch TV." Said Daughter

"That's true." Said Suzuki. They usually watched something that he enjoyed. Documentaries, usually, or kendo when it was on and they managed to catch it. He wondered what was on now. Something that she enjoyed? Something animated with music and royalty and romantic subplots that were so paint by numbers that he could tell the outcome before the first song even ended….but that she also liked. He didn't understand her choice in shows but then again he hadn't been able to understand Masami's either…

"So…do you want to watch TV? Some of their stuff is pretty cool. Like, today, me and Sho were watching TV after Minegishi left and we saw this thing that looked like kendo but isn't kendo. I think that it was called-" said Daughter

"Kumdo. That's what they did to kendo when we brought it here." Said Suzuki. They had seen at least one documentary about the Japanese conquest of Korea…and he wondered how much she remembered. How much she had been paying attention. It hurts, a bit, that she might not have been…it hurts and it tastes…bitter…knowing that it hurts. Acknowledged that he felt it…acknowledging it…it tasted bitter.

"Yes, that's what it was called. It was mostly like kendo but the swords were different and the uniform was different and also the flags were blue." Said Daughter

"I have no idea why they had to change it. It's practically still the same. I can't stand superfluous changes." Said Suzuki

"Maybe they just wanted it to be more Korean. You know, like how when we were in American and you said that the sushi was vile and that deep frying sushi rolls and putting mayonnaise on them should have been considered a crime or at least an aberration?" said Daughter

"Yes, I did say that, I remember." Said Suzuki

"Well I think that it's the same way." said Daughter. He laughed when she said 'aberration'. Was she trying to imitate him with that tone? She was so…so….so…

"Say 'aberration' again." said Suzuki after a moment. He could see her puzzled expression reflected in her aura. He didn't blame her. It wasn't often that he treated her like a little parrot. Only when he had her practice whatever language he had put her to working on. What was it now? Korean? He was not going to drill her on Korean. His own Korean wasn't even that good….

"Aberration." Said Daughter. Suzuki shook his head and smiled. The bed shook with him. She was so…adorable. That was the word for her. Adorable.

"And you're right to quote me. Sushi was not meant to be eaten deep friend and covered in mayonnaise just as kendo was not meant to be played with blue flags." Said Suzuki

"The way that they use blue instead of red…it's important?" asked Daughter

"Yes, the most important. There is a greater contrast when you see red. It draws the eye. Also red is more negative a color, it has more negative psychological connections, and losing a Nippon is a very negative experience. One of the worst of my life." Said Suzuki

"You? You lost a Nippon?" asked Daughter incredulously. He didn't blame her for the display of emotion. It was something that was hard to believe. He had been a kendo prodigy. Well he had been a prodigy at anything and everything he had put his mind to. Good grades, awards, athletics, everything. Everything in this world had come as easy to him as breathing.

He wondered if that was her experience as well.

He wondered if she would be a world class kendo…no, not kendo. She was female. Naginata. She would be world class. He would make sure of it…though he so wished that he could have sparred with her…and he hadn't known that he wanted this until now. Sparring with her. He hadn't been in the ring since high school. It had bored him, mostly, because it had always been so easy for him. He hadn't even had to use his powers. Everything had been so boring back then…and that was why he lost it, maybe, when he lost that point…

His form had been perfect.

"Apparently my form was wrong." Said Suzuki

"You didn't have both feet on the ground?" asked Daughter. He would have been angry at her, at anyone, for questioning him like that. For thinking that he would have overlocked such a basic rule…but he's mostly just impressed with her. She had managed to remember some of the rules…which was more than Son ever did. Son considered kendo to be boring….

Daughter had better taste than Son.

"I did…but three referees thought that I didn't. No matter, no matter. That was decades ago. Decades before you were born. You won't have those sorts of problems." Said Suzuki. The thought, the memory, is bitter. He doesn't want to think about it, the person he had been, and the person that he was now. Right now, not in general. In general he had better control than this. Better control over himself and better control over his powers. Not now. Now he had gotten himself into this state…like a kid or something. Like he had when he was younger…and he was not that person anymore. He was not supposed to be that person anymore.

"You want me to learn Kendo?" asked Daughter. Suzuki was grateful to her for the topic change. Kendo…he liked kendo. He liked kendo and he liked thinking about the future so, of course, he would have liked to talk about the future and kendo. She always knew just what to say.

"No, of course not. You're female. You'll do naginata." Said Suzuki. She would be good, more than good, she would be world class. Because she was his Daughter…and because he would one day rule the whole world. Even if she wasn't any good, a bitter thought, he would be the one to decide what it was that counted as world class. It would be his world after all.

"Why? Why can't girls do kendo?" asked Daughter

"Because they don't. A naginata is a woman's weapon and a shinai is a man's weapon." Said Suzuki

"Oh…it's one of those things." Said Daughter. He thought that he detected a note of bitterness to her voice. That didn't fit her at all…so maybe he was mistaken. He wasn't good with tones at the bets of times and especially not now when he was in this state.

"What sorts of things?" asked Suzuki. He so hated it when she was vague like this. That was just how woman were, maybe, or maybe she just got it from her mother. Masami had been a fan of being vague. Expecting him to know what she meant when she never said what she meant. He wished that Daughter hadn't taken that, inherited that, from her mother.

"One of those things that boys can do but girls can't. I just…it feels like there's so much that I can't do because I'm a girl." Said Daughter. Suzuki wondered what she was complaining about. There were plenty of things that she could do as a girl that a boy couldn't do. Having long hair, her like hers, seemed nice. She did enjoy brushing it. She also had more pageantry to what she sore. She was always in those ball gowns of hers. She also had the advantage when it came to human reproduction. She would have no trouble finding a partner. There were more than ten male espers to every female one. Plus she had the factory for making more people within herself. She would always know for sure that her children were hers. Though, maybe, that was not on her mind right at that moment. She wasn't even nine years old yet. He wondered if she had started to notice the opposite sex romantically. Minegishi had been a common conversation subject for her…though he had no idea what Minegishi even was…though he was just about drunk enough to ask…but his phone was in his coat pocket and he was feeling unusually lazy. He didn't much want to get up. The bed was so nice….

"Like what? What do you think that you're missing out on?" asked Suzuki. He wondered what she wanted that she didn't have. He didn't think that her life was so different from her brother's. There were some things that boys could do that girls could not…but they had their own versions of things. Like kendo and naginata and other things, too. Women, no matter what age, were a mystery to him.

"I can't go in the boy's bathroom. Sho says that it's cool in there." said Daughter

"It isn't, your brother is lying to you. All public bathrooms are disgusting." Said Suzuki wrinkling his nose. He didn't blame her, though, because he had felt the same way about the girl's bathroom. They spent so much time in there and always went in groups…so he had figured that there must have been something interesting in there. Something that the boy's bathroom didn't have. Aside from the sanitary napkin dispenser there was nothing in there that the boy's room hadn't had. He had been so juvenile back then…well he had been a child….

"Oh….ok. Um…girls can't have as much fun as boys…that's another thing that bothers me. I have to watch Sho because I'm the big sister….and I have to learn how to take care of Sho because I'm going to be someone's mom some day….but sometimes I just….it feels like I'm not allowed to have fun because I have to take care of Sho." said Daughter. Suzuki didn't get it. She had fun all the time. Her days were filled with toys and game and television and trips to places like amusement parks….she had plenty of fun. if she wanted to know about the daily grind then she could have spent a day in his shoes dealing with all of the stupidity around him….

"We all have our jobs to do. You take care of your brother, and eventually your own household, but you'll never have to do what he's going to have to do…or what I do. It may seem hard now but it's a lot easier than inheriting the world…believe me." Said Suzuki. It wasn't so hard, caring for the children, at least it wasn't hard when you knew what you were doing. Masami had known what she was doing….and Daughter knew what she was doing….those were female skills. The things that they were good at. He envied her, somewhat, because it was….as long as he was in this state then he could admit that caring for the children was difficult.

They could be so maddening sometimes.

The children fought. The children made messes. The children did things that were downright bizarre. Masami had been the master of caring for them….because she was their mother….but she was gone. She was gone, now, and he was the only one there…and he was doing his best. Even if he had no idea how to get the children to calm down. How to get them to listen to him. Even when he hit them….Son….it never worked. Son was still Son…

Daughter was good at caring for him. He listened to Daughter.

"Ok…." Said Daughter

"Good. You understand." Said Suzuki. He loved that about her, how understanding she was, and how she always listened to him. He reached over and pulled her close. He didn't need her, no, he just…this was…pleasant. This was pleasant. This was pleasant because she was warm.

"I understand….that because I'm not a boy I won't…I won't be able to do stuff like do kendo with you…or inherit the world…and I have to take care of Sho forever." Said Daughter

"No, of course you won't have to take care of your brother forever. He'll become a man and he'll meet his most perfect person and-" said Suzuki

"Most perfect person?" said Daughter. He patted her on the head, letting his hand linger in her hair at the end. She really had such beautiful hair. So perfect. She was just so perfect sometimes. She was going to make someone very happy someday.

"Yes. One day he'll meet a woman and she'll be perfect just like you'll meet a man and he'll be perfect. Perfect for you. The person who you see as being the most perfect in the world…and then you'll care for him and you're family…when you're an adult. In ten or so years." Said Suzuki

"When I'm eighteen? That's when I have to get married?" asked Daughter. That seemed like a good age…but he did not care when she married. Eighteen, nineteen, seventeen, sixteen, he didn't care. He just wanted to secure the next generation. He wondered what sort of children she would have. Smaller versions of herself. He would enjoy her children. Son's….son's children would be…hopefully they would take after their mother. Whoever she would be.

"Whenever, I don't care. I just want you to be happy." Said Suzuki. She would be happy…she would be. Masami had been happy…maybe. Well obviously not. Obviously she had been unhappy about something and then, instead of telling him what she needed, ran away from home….but Daughter was not going to do that. She would never leave him. She would never….he pulled her closer as if she were going to get up and bolt…

"Dad, you're going to break your gift." Said Daughter. She pushed his hand away and reached into her pocket. He watched her as best as he could. A gift? Right. It was a holiday. Valentine's Day.

"You keep it." Said Suzuki. He didn't care what she had gotten him. He didn't want it. He didn't need anything for Valentine 's Day. He didn't even want to know what she had gotten him. He knew what she had gotten him. She got him the same thing every year. She got him the same thing her mother had gotten him. Bitter chocolate.

"But I got this for you." Said Daughter. Suzuki wanted, then, to push her out of the bed because he had just told her…but then he would wake up in the morning to an empty and cold bed…and he didn't much want that. He didn't much want that again…not when he was in this state, anyway.

"Daughter. Just….leave it on the nightstand." Said Suzuki. He'd just leave it in her room later. He didn't much want her gift, even the knowledge that she had gotten him something….he didn't want that. He didn't but…but he wanted her.

The thought is bitter.

The thought is as bitter as the chocolate he knows that she got him. He needs her. He's not supposed to need other people. He's a whole and complete person on his own. He was a whole and complete person on his own…and then he met Masami and everything went pear shaped…but he wanted it to go pear shaped. He wanted…he wanted her more than anything else in the world…and he still did….but she was gone…

And all he had now were the children. Daughter. All he had now was Daughter…and he needed her….

It was bitter….bitter as Valentine's Day chocolate.


	88. Reading at the Kitchen Table

"Are you sure he's your brother?"

"Yes, he is, I'm sure."

Minegishi had asked that question three times now. Mob didn't get why it didn't seem to count the first time. Of curse Sho was her little brother. They had the same mom and dad. Even if they didn't look alike or act alike they were still brother and sister. That was why they were both called Suzuki. Suzuki Sho and Suzuki Shigeko. Their dad was Suzuki Touichirou and their mom…they had to pretend like they never even had a mom to begin with….

But that didn't mean that she and Sho were not brother and sister.

"And you're sure that he doesn't have an off switch?"

"He doesn't, he really doesn't, I'm sure that he doesn't."

Minegishi had asked her that about four times now. She understood why Minegishi would ask that. Sho had been really weird all day….weird even for him. He wouldn't leave her alone. He was always telling her to leave him alone, that she was bossy and annoying and stuff, but now when she did want to leave him alone he just went and bothered her non-stop. Right now he was shooting her with NERF darts. They weren't supposed to have toy guns, mom had said so, but dad said that they were ok. Well he said that they were ok if she and Sho absolutely had to play with them….which it seemed that Sho absolutely did.

"Can't you put up a barrier or something?" asked Minegishi as they started the read the same goddamned page for the third time. That kid…that terrible kid….Suzuki's terrible kid. They hadn't imagined that Suzuki would ever have let his kid get to be so terrible. The man freaked out if people so much as breathed too loudly in his direction but he let his son act like this!?

Well, to be fair, he was being raised by an eight year old.

Almost nine year old, as the kid was so fond of saying. She was more like what Minegishi had always imagined Suzuki's kid to be. Way too powerful for it's own good and scared into quiet submission. Yup. That was Mob to the letter. They still stood by their theory that Mob was adopted. She didn't look a thing like Suzuki and didn't act a thing like him either. Not like the other kid, the little brother, that was definitely Suzuki's kid even if he acted like a little asshole…no, because he acted like a little asshole.

"I tried that before but then he just broke through it. Sho just wants to play right now…but I don't want to play. I want to hang out with you. You're the guest and you're my friend, too." Said Mob. She was going to be a polite host. She had even made that instant coffee that Minegishi liked. He…or maybe she…or maybe they….yes, they hated it when the Awakened got them coffee. They said that it always came back too cold and too weak. They said that Mob made a good cup of coffee.

They hadn't even told Mob to make them one, she just did, because Dad said that it was good that she just did things without having to be told.

Mob made herself a cup of coffee too…even though she hadn't been able to get more than one sip down. That was a dad drink. Dad loved bitter things like that. Dad might have had fun with them, too, because he liked to do quiet things like this….not that she was going to ask him to join them. He was working, for one thing, and also he might not have been ok with Mob having a friend. She was supposed to be taking care of Sho after all…

He was fine.

She could see him in the living room. He had made a fort and sometimes he stuck his head out to shoot her. Those darts hurt a lot, and she was sure that she was going to end up with a bruise, but it was ok so long as Sho was having fun. That was the only thing that mattered, that Sho was having fun. She felt guilty ignoring him but just that morning he had told her to leave him alone so…so maybe this was what he wanted?

She didn't know.

"You sure you're eight?" asked Minegishi. This kid…this was defiantly Suzuki's kid. He'd trained her well. Minegishi was tempted just to go up and ask the man if he had adopted Mob…but that would not have gone well. The boss did not like people asking him questions. He didn't seem to like people at all…and not in the way that Minegishi didn't much care for people. Some people were ok, like Mob, and some people made them want to set themselves on fire just to get rid of them, like Mob's little brother. God, that was Suzuki's kid. Entitled, weirdly violent, and obsessed with being the center of attention.

This may not have been Minegishi's first choice of gig but at least they didn't have to deal with Suzuki face to face anymore.

Being an enforcer had it's perks, true, and being a babysitter also had it's downsides but at least they got to put their feet up for a little bit. The kid was ok company most of the time…but there was no way in hell Minegishi was playing with dolls. This was ok. Show the kid a few cool plant tricks and then brush up on their written Korean until it was time to be reassigned. They had been with the Fifth Division for a while and they were ready to move on. Maybe the international squad needed more manpower…or maybe the Seventh Division….

Too bad about the Eighth Division.

"I'm almost nine." Said Mob. Just a few more months until her birthday. Then she'd be nine…not that she knew what was so special about that. She just wanted to grow up. Maybe then she could have more friends…or enjoy the friend she had. She kind of wanted to go and play but Minegishi was an adult and did not play…and this was ok. Mob was getting a lot of reading done. She had found a manga about Japanese history and she could read it and then talk about it with dad.

He seemed kind of mad at her lately.

Ever since Valentine's Day he'd been kicking her out of bed. Also he was starting to send her to bed more. Sometimes they'd be watching TV and he'd just…send her to bed. Randomly. Usually after she got very comfortable and felt her eyes getting heavy. That made sense, though, because if her eyes were getting heavy then it was time to sleep…so it all made perfect sense….

Even if it did hurt her feelings a little when dad was like that.

"Almost nine is still eight." Said Minegishi. How had their life come to this? They were hanging out with a kid…but it wasn't too bad. Better than hunting down traitors, maybe, and listening to Suzuki give orders and harp on about his dreams for world conquest. Poor kids. Minegishi only had to deal with Suzuki on occasion. These two were trapped with him….though it didn't seem like he had been doing much parenting. No, Minegishi had been coming around for a few days now and it seemed like the only person taking care of these kids was Mob. Maybe that was why she was so…weirdly adult-ish. Nothing like her so called little brother…though to be fair Minegishi would have left ages ago if both of the kids had been carrying on like that.

A dart hit the table.

Minegishi picked it up with a spider plant leaf and threw it back at the kid. Maybe that counted as teaching Mob how to use her powers. Minegishi did not get Suzuki sometimes. He had powers, he was the most powerful esper in the world, he knew that you grew into your powers naturally. You didn't need a teacher, you just knew, like eating or drinking or breathing or having really shitty sex. Your instincts just sort of knew what to do.

"Sho, please stop shooting at me and my friend." Said Mob. She liked that word, friend, and she liked to use it. She hadn't been able to use it to describe anyone other than her little brother in so long. It was nice. This whole thing was nice…even if sitting in one place and reading all day did feel kind of boring. It didn't matter, sometimes you had to do boring things if you wanted to be around someone, like with her and dad.

"You guys should stop getting in the way of MY darts." Said Sho. They had two guns. He had a big sister. He wanted to have a gun battle. He didn't get what the holdup was. Big sis was his friend…sort of. She was supposed to play with him and only him. She was supposed to like to play with him, not sit and read boring stuff. Their homeschool was over. It was time to play. Her friend, Sho had asked if they were a boy or a girl but then they had asked if it mattered and Sho had been about to say 'yes' when big sis told him not to be rude….she was so bossy sometimes….and he hadn't been being rude then anyway….

Big sis was so bossy.

But she was his big sis. She should not have been spending time with someone else. She should not have been siting there reading boring stuff when he wanted to play. Sometimes he wanted to be left alone and sometimes he wanted to play and this was one of those times when he wanted to play. She had never not played with him before. Even when he had been a jerk she had still played with him….and now she wasn't….well he had been kind of a jerk this morning….and maybe she was finally tired of him….

Like mom had been…

He shot another dart. He shot another dart like he was shooting that thought out of the air. Mom had left because…he felt like, sometimes, it was his fault even though Fukuda said that it wasn't. Fukuda said that while he had no idea why mom had left or where she had gone to he knew that it was not Sho's fault. Sho had felt like, before, that he had been born wrong and big sis had been born right…but that was just the way dad saw them, had seen them, before all of it happened….and anyway mom hadn't seen it that way. Mom had liked him best. In mom's eyes big sis had been born wrong he had been born right.

Big sis was not mom.

She was not going anywhere. She couldn't go anywhere, she was his big sis, and also dad wouldn't let her go. Sho was worried about nothing. He was worried about nothing. That person, the one who was supposed to be teaching big sis how to use the plant powers that it was unfair that she had, was probably a girl. That was why they had purple hair and liked to be quiet and read books with people kissing and stuff on the cover. They were a girl and big sis was just hanging out with another girl reading girl books and talking about girl things.

So boring.

Sho wished that he had another boy to play with. Someone who liked animals but also was not a jerk to them. Someone who liked to draw but also didn't make fun of his drawings…like the kids at school had back when he went to school…or stole them like dad was always stealing his drawings. Someone who was his age…but maybe a little older. A little taller, too, not that Sho knew what it was about being taller that mattered so much. Someone who could put up a fight. Someone who could maybe even win. Someone with powers, too, because dad would never let him have a friend without powers.

Sho wanted a friend too.

He went to fire off another dart when the houseplant beside him took the gun out of his hands and threw it.

"Hey!" said Sho. Nobody treated him like that in his own house! Not that this was his house but….but it was the place he lived.

"Yes?" asked Minegishi from the kitchen table. That had been easy. Too easy. The kid's aura was too bright but he was way too slow to react. Mob had said that he had just gotten his powers. That he had been put through one of those crazy awakening chambers and had managed to come out alive. The Awakened Child that all the refugees from the Eighth Division were going on and on and on about.

Minegishi had heard that it had been a little girl, though, but hey everything turned into Chinese whispers eventually.

"You can't do that!" shouted Sho climbing to his feet. His fort fell down…and now big sis was putting it back together with her powers. She wasn't even moving her hands. Showing off. She was such a showoff sometimes.

"Yeah, I think that I just did." Said Minegishi looking up. Brat. That was the best word for this kid, brat. Somehow Suzuki had a brat for a son. Minegishi had always imagined, well not always but when they first heard that Suzuki had kids, that his kids would have been terrorized into a mealy mouthed sort of near silence. Like Mob was. Suzuki had a temper, anyone who had spent more than five minutes with the man would have seen it, and yet his Son acted like this….or maybe Mob got the worst of it…

Parents were the worst sort. That was why Minegishi had stopped talking to theirs.

"Sho, please be nice. After Minegishi goes home then you can shoot me for as many times as you want to." Said Mob. She would gladly let Sho shot her…even though it hurt…and even though she didn't much like toy guns…she would still let him. That was what big sisters were supposed to do.

"That sounds like a perfectly healthy thing to spend your day doing." Said Minegishi. If they were Mob they would have used their powers to teach their little brother a lesson. Minegishi had not been above such things when they had been an older sibling. That was just how it went, siblings lived to torment each other. Mob, apparently, did not get the memo. Minegishi barely knew these kids but he did know that neither of them were normal. The boy obviously had some sort of hyperactivity disorder and Mob, clearly, had a few thing going on based on the fact that she didn't make eye contact or hear sarcasm. Actually, based on that Minegishi could have totally believed that Mob was Suzuki's kid. That man really could have used some professional help. That was the extent of Minegishi's two and a half semesters of psychology classes could tell them about the truly messed up Suzuki family.

"I don't want to shoot at you for target practice! I want us to have a gun battle!" said Sho. He was not just going to shoot at her for target practice, that was a jerk thing to do, and also it wasn't fun. If he wanted to just shoot at people he would have had the Awakened stand around and let him shoot at them again. He wanted to play with her….how long was she planning on sitting and reading for anyway!?

"Ok, we can do that later. I'm busy right now. Do you want your tablet? Or maybe you're hungry. You get kind of upset when you're hungry." Said Mob. She checked the time. It was getting close to when they usually asked for lunch. She hoped that Sho asked for a vegetable today. Fukuda came by last time around lunch to talk to them about how they needed to eat real food. Well at least that was what he said. He just came around to hang out with Sho. He was always trying to hang out with Sho without her….

But that was fine. She had her own friend now.

"No. I want….I want you to leave me alone!" said Sho. He went back into his fort and turned his back to her. If that was the way that she was going to be then, fine, he didn't care. She could be however she wanted. He had plenty of things to do. Like drawing. He could do that on his own. She was a terrible drawer. She may have been better at having powers and stuff but she couldn't draw her way out of a paper bag.

Not that he understood that expression.

You didn't draw your way out of things when you were trapped. You fought really hard…even though you were stuck…and there were sharp needles digging into you…and then there was water…and you couldn't breathe…and it hurt so much….and you couldn't move…and you couldn't get out…and then you couldn't see….and then nobody was coming to save you but you didn't have to be saved because you decided all on your own to do this….and then…

He had scribbled all over the page he was drawing on.

He crumpled it up and used his powers to throw it at big sis. He threw it as hard as he could. She caught it. She just looked at it and she caught it…and then she uncrumpled it. She uncrumpled it and smoothed it out…and then he reached over with his powers and tore it up.

"Sho, you didn't have to do that. It was nice. Like those scribble paints we saw at the art museum." Said Mob. She didn't get it. Sometimes he just got so upset for no reason…and there was nothing that she could do but be nice to him. That was all she could do…and it wasn't enough. Nothing was ever enough it felt like. It just never stopped. Sho was her little brother, she was stuck with him even though she had never once considered herself stuck, and he didn't have an off switch…which made things sort of hard for her sometimes….

But she would always love him.

"I told you to leave me alone!" said Sho. He collapsed his fort around himself and just…sat there. He sat there and he looked at the little bits of light that came through. There was light. There were no needles. He could move. There was no water. Nothing was cutting him or burning him or poking him or shocking him.

He was ok.

"Huh. I guess your little brother does have an off switch." Said Minegishi. Yup, that was Suzuki's kid complete with the destructive tantrums when things didn't go his way. Like the time when he had fought Suzuki. He had been so pissed off when he couldn't' land a single hit…almost took the whole Division down with him….yup. Father and Son right there. Thank God Suzuki only had the one Son.

And thank God that Mob turned out so….ok. Weird but ok.

"Yeah…I guess." Said Mob. She wanted to go over there and see what was wrong but…but Sho had told her to leave him alone. When he got like that, when he started hiding, he really meant it. If she went up to him while he was like that…if she did that then he would have kicked her or hit her or pulled her hair or all three…and she didn't want that at all.

She just wanted to read with her friend at the kitchen table. That was all.

So that was what she did.


	89. Up and Alone

Not again.

Not this again.

Sho was way too old for this.

Maybe he was just dreaming. Maybe if he went back to bed in his dream then he would wake up in reality. Maybe when he woke up in reality then everything would have been fine. Just, that was it. Just a very vivid dream. He had those sometimes. He had just been having one…which might have been how he had gotten himself into this predicament. That was just it….and also probably the whole liter of cola he had drank that night. That might have been it, too. Big sis told him not to drink so much before bed.

Because this would happen…like it happened sometimes….too many times.

And it was not a dream. Sho tried to lay back down and go to sleep but he couldn't. He was wet and cold and gross…even by his standards. This was the worst. He was supposed to be too old for this. This hadn't happened since he was little. Mom had been the one to tell him that it was something that a lot of kids went through and that he would grow out of it in time. Well a lot of time had passed. He was eight years old now.

And eight was way too old to be wetting the bed.

He threw his blankets off with his powers. Now he was even colder. This sucked. This really sucked and he would use the word sucked because it sucked. It sucked in Korean and English and Japanese and Mandarin and every other language that had been invented. It was wet and gross and it sucked and then at any minute big sis would notice his aura and then wake up and tell him that it was going to be alright and get him new pajamas and new bedding and a new mattress cover and then-

Her bed was totally empty.

He checked the clock. It was late. They had gone to bed hours ago…but she didn't always stay in bed. He knew where she was. There were only so many places in this borrowed house that she could have been hiding. She was either in the bathroom, maybe, or with dad, probably. She and dad liked to hang out late at night. He didn't like to join them. They were always so boring together…and also dad didn't seem too happy to hang out with him. Even though he had his powers and he was impressive….

Sho got out of bed.

His pajamas clung to him. They felt gross. They felt gross and smelled worse and usually this was the part where big sis helped him get out of his pajamas and stripped his bed…but she was busy. That didn't matter. He didn't care. He could take care of himself. He would take care of himself. He was a big kid now. She was off with dad and that was fine. He knew where the spare pajamas were, he knew how to strip a bed, he knew how to take a shower….which he had to even though he didn't want to. He was covered in pee after all.

He was covered in pee and nobody cared.

Mom had usually been the one to take care of him when this happened. Now it was big sis. He never even had to wake her up. She could tell by his aura. She was always there, had always been there, in the next bed. Before. She was hanging out with dad more and more these days. He even let her sleep in the bed with him. He always kicked Sho out when he tried. Dad said that he took up the whole bed and also kicked in his sleep. Sho didn't think that was fair. He couldn't control what he did in his sleep. Big sis did stuff in her sleep too. She snored and hugged you and also made the bed float sometimes. It wasn't fair…

A lot of things weren't fair.

He took off his pajamas and threw them in the hamper. He stripped the bed with his powers and then did the same thing. As long as he got new bedding on the bed and put new pajamas on himself then dad would be none the wiser. Dad hated it when Sho wet the bed. At least he had when Sho had been little. Dad didn't know that Sho still wet the bed sometimes. Big sis was good at hiding the evidence…but now she was gone….

He could see her aura. She was still in the house.

He didn't need her. He was a big kid now. He could do this himself and he did do it himself. He had hid the evidence. Now all he had to do was take a shower, no time for a bath, and then put new bedding on the bed and head back to sleep. Simple. He didn't need her or anyone else to take care of him, he could take care of himself, like dad was always talking about. He was a complete person on his own. He didn't need big sis and she didn't need him. She had someone else to hang out with now. Someone who was boring and read books all the time and probably didn't even like her. They seemed like they didn't like anyone…but for some reason his big sis would rather have hung out with someone who was mean and boring than her own little brother.

Some best friends they were.

He had always disliked it when she called them best friends. You weren't supposed to be best friends with your sister. That was not what sisters were for. He hadn't ever liked it….but that didn't mean that he wanted her to replace him. First she had replaced him with dad and then she had replaced him with her new friend….and that was fine. He could replace her with…with….with….

He didn't even know.

But he did know that he was cold and covered in pee. That was not the way to be. So he decided to head down to the bathroom and take a shower all by himself…even though he could count the number of times he had bathed on his own with one hand…but he was not a little kid anymore. He could shower on his own. Even though he preferred baths he could shower on his own. He couldn't just go off and run himself a bath. Dad would notice and then he would ask why and then Sho would have to either make something up or tell dad the truth. Getting caught in a lie was worse than getting punished for what he had done. Dad said that he considered lying to be a form of betrayal and he punished it accordingly.

Dad would punish him if he knew.

Dad probably noticed his aura but…but he never said anything. Not unless Sho was being a jerk…which he was not being right now. He was just doing a naked run down the hall to the bathroom. Well Dad could punish him for that, too, and he would if he caught Sho running around naked. Dad was always on him to wear clothes. He wasn't allowed to even hang out in pajamas or his underwear. Dad said that they were people and people had to wear clothes. Dad wore clothes all the time. He even wore clothes to bed, daytime clothes, and Sho would not have been surprised if dad took baths fully dressed in his clothes too. Dad was weird like that.

Dad was weird.

Sho could have filled books with all of the weird things that dad did. Like how he slept in his clothes and ate breakfast for almost every meal and hated Ratatouille and every other movie with either mice or little people in them. They tried to watch The Secret World of Arrietty with dad once, or at least he and big sis had been watching it and then dad just came and sat down with them which was another weird thing he did sometimes, and then he watched for a little bit but then he was all 'this is disturbing' and then he went to his room. Even though it was a Japanese movie and dad was always going on and one about how awesome Japan was even though there were a lot of other countries in the world and they had their own cool stuff. Dad was weird about Japan sometimes, too, like how he was so into it but he wouldn't take them home…

Dad was weird.

And he was being weird now, too. Sho could hear him. He was in his room and he was….happy? Sho could see his aura. He wasn't that great at auras but dad felt…happy. He sounded happy too. The dad version of happy, not the normal person version of happy. If dad were a normal version of happy then it was a sign of the end of the world and Sho maybe should have took up praying. Dad was never normal people happy. Sometimes he could be the dad version of happy. Like when something good happened at work or there was a new documentary about Japan or something good happened with kendo, the most boring way for two people to beat each other up in Sho's opinion, or when he was hanging out with big sis.

Dad was happy because he was hanging out with big sis.

Sho knew that the smart thing to do would have been to just go and take a shower and then go back to bed and then wait for tomorrow to happen. Maybe he would be less of a jerk tomorrow. Yeah, he would play with big sis and they would do stuff that she liked. She could totally put him in one of her stupid dresses and put clips and stuff in his hair and then they could play dolls or watch one of her movies or something like that. He wouldn't complain and he wouldn't fight with her. He wouldn't shoot her with his dart gun either. Dad said that a gun was a coward's weapon anyway.

But a bamboo sword was fine.

"That's a Nippon. Right, dad?" asked big sis. Sho frowned. They were watching kendo…and he didn't care. Kendo was boring and dad was boring…and he knew that he had to get a move on…and he knew that he shouldn't have cared either way what dad and big sis were doing.

"Nippon. You're correct Daughter. Good eye." Said dad. Sho could hear him. He got as close to dad's door as possible. Dad's room was always closets to the bathroom because he had to get ready for work and stuff in the mornings. Sho didn't know what he had to do to get ready since he slept in his clothes and his hair was so short that he didn't even have to brush it. Sho didn't get it. Big sis probably did. She was always hanging out with dad after all. They were like best friends….if you could even be best friends with your dad. Sometime, in the times before mom had left, he had felt like they were friends. Mom understood him. She understood the things he liked, the things he cared about, and the things that he wanted. She understood him…and now she was gone. She was gone and he was alone and now there was no one to understand him or anything like that. It was just him…him and big sis…

But she had other people now.

She had always had dad but now she had a friend…sort of. Technically they were supposed to come over and teach big sis about her plant controlling powers, powers that it was not fair that she had and Sho didn't, but they mostly just hung out with big sis and read and drank coffee….which was gross and made Sho's heart all fluttery and his head hurt. Sho didn't know why she wanted to hang out with someone who was so boring. Maybe she just liked boring people. Maybe that was why she was sleeping with dad. Maybe she just wanted to spend time with the most boring dad in the world watching the most boring sport in the world. Maybe because she was so boring. Maybe she just knew that she was the boring sibling and Sho was the fun sibling and that was why she had stopped inviting him to hang out with her and dad at night.

Sho didn't even care. He had other things to do with his time…like shower…and he would. In a minute.

"The blue flags are kind of confusing but at least the Nippons are the same." Said big sis. Sho knew what Nippon meant. That was when you scored a point in kendo. Kumdo too, which was what they called it here, even though it was almost totally the same. Scoring points in kendo was dumb. You had to call your attack and then do it perfectly. Plus everyone was wearing protective gear, too, so they couldn't even hurt each other for real. So boring.

"Mostly the same. You're right though, Daughter, it is much better in Japan." Said dad. Sho wished that dad hadn't told big sis that she was right. He was always telling her that she was right. He was always nice to her like that…and it just was not in any way fair….but things had never been fair for him. Whatever. He had powers now. Dad liked him for that. What did he care if dad never wanted to hang out with him?

"I don't really mind kumdo, dad, it's ok. I've been watching naginata, too, and it's nice. I think I like it as much as kendo." Said big sis. Sho had no idea what naginata was. Probably something boring. Probably something boring that dad and big sis were going to do together….something that he wouldn't have had any interest in anyway because it was so boring.

"You're about old enough, you know." Said dad. She was always old enough. Old enough to hold onto their money. Old enough to be in charge. Old enough to decide where they went. Old enough to be friends with a grown up. She was always old enough because she was a year older than he was….and she wasn't! This was the part of the year when their ages overlapped! He should have been old enough. He-

He tried to calm down.

Because he did not want to get caught. Dad did not like to be bothered. He did not like to be bothered and he did not like it when Sho ran around less than fully dressed…and he was all the way naked now…and then if dad caught him he would be all the way mad too. He hated it when dad got mad at him. He never got mad at big sis. Big sis was about the only person that he was almost never mad at. He even got mad at Fukuda sometimes and Fukuda said that he and dad had known each other for thirty years. That was longer than Sho had even been alive. Dad had gotten mad last time Fukuda came over, when Sho tried to hang from the shower curtain and fell and messed his arm up, because Fukuda had stayed and hung out and then Fukuda and Minegishi got into kind of a fight because Minegishi said that it was weird how Fukuda wanted to take a walk through the neighborhood with him. Minegishi was weird too, in Sho's opinion, for wanting to hang out with big sis. It was wrong to call Fukuda weird for doing the same thing that they themselves had been doing. In Sho's opinion.

Dad just told Fukuda not to over step. Sho hadn't thought that Fukuda had overstepped…but Sho was not big sis. Dad only cared about what big sis had to say.

"To like naginata?" asked big sis

"To start naginata. I think that you're old enough." Said dad.

"But what if…sometimes back at school I would get scared when we played games in gym because…because I might have lost control…and I still worry about losing control. Sorry. I'm sorry that I lose control sometimes still." Said big sis. That was true. Sho's control was much better than hers. Dad had even said that his control was impressive. Dad had said that Sho had very good control, even better than dad himself had at Sho's age. That had been one of the few nice things that dad ever said to him….

"You still do." Said Dad. Sho tried to keep his aura close. He was such a jerk. He was the biggest jerk that there had ever been. He was happy that his own dad had said something mean to his big sis. He should not have been happy about that. He should have felt bad that dad had said something mean…to his best friend…

What was wrong with him?

He was dad's son. Dad was the biggest jerk in the world and that was why it made sense that Sho had been such a jerk for his entire life. Dad wasn't always a jerk, sometimes he could even be nice, and Sho was he same way. He didn't set out to be a jerk he just…just did jerk stuff. That was just the way he was…and he couldn't help it. He and dad were two of a kind…maybe. No, they weren't…because Sho knew that he was being a jerk…and he could do things to stop it. Like…like by being nicer to big is. Yeah. Tomorrow he would be nice to her…

Even though dad was already plenty nice to her.

"Yes. I'm sorry. I know that you want me to be better…and that I have to set a good example for Sho…" said big sis. Sho stuck out his tongue. He didn't need anyone to set a good example for him.

"You're fine. You haven't lost control in any serious way. I would have been able to feel it." Said dad

"You can feel me from all the way at the Fifth Division?" asked big sis. Sho had no idea where the Fifth Division was but he knew, from dad's complaining, that it must have been far. Dad had really good range. Sho's range wasn't that good. Dad's range was better….and he probably could have felt Sho….but unless Sho bothered him then he would say nothing. Dad didn't care about Sho unless he was doing something cool with his powers or doing something to mess with big sis or bother dad.

"Yes. If I focus I can feel you and your brother. I check in on you two like that from time to time." Said dad. Sho felt…nice…because dad had checked up on them…but then he reminded himself that dad was probably only checking on big sis. He only cared about big sis. Unless Sho was doing something cool with his powers…and he hadn't done anything cool with them lately. He could move things without touching them and he could make himself float but that was about it. Big sis could control plants. That was much cooler.

"Why not just call? We have phones now and-" said big sis

"Why call when I can just expand my perceptions for a moment and feel the both of you? It's just easier." Said dad

"Oh. Ok." Said big sis

"And your control has been very good lately. Better than I would have thought that it would be. You have the occasional hiccup but I think that you would do well in naginata. It's mostly skill, not power. It's a sport which rewards control and planning. That's why I think that it would be good for you, daughter." Said dad

"Ok…but I wish that I was a boy so then I could learn kendo….so you could teach me. I like it when you teach me things." Said big sis. Dad was always teaching her things…but dad didn't ever accuse her of bothering him. Dad was always happy to teach her stuff…and he had been teaching her stuff for as long as Sho could remember. Sho didn't need to be taught how to use his powers. Sho just sort of knew how they worked.

Big sis might have had dad to show her how her powers worked but dad had never called her 'impressive'.

"I suppose some things do transfer over. It would be easier for me to spar against you. When you gained some skill of course….and I brush up on mine. It's been several decades since I last touched a shinai." Said dad

"That's ok I guess….but I think that Sho would have more fun sparring against you. He likes to fight." Said big sis. Sho would have loved to spar against dad….he would have loved to wail on dad with a bamboo sword…and he knew that he was a jerk for wanting to beat dad up with a shinai. He had those sorts of dreams, sometimes, except for how in his dreams he didn't use a bamboo sword. In his dreams he mostly used his hands…

He had weird dreams sometimes.

"Son would not do well in kendo." Said dad. Sho wanted to…he wanted to go up to dad and…but that would have been so stupid. Dad was bigger and stronger than he was. Dad was just being a jerk, anyway, and he…maybe he couldn't help it. Maybe he couldn't help it like Sho couldn't help it. Maybe he didn't realize how hurtful he was being….but he must have had to have known. He knew that Sho was right there after all….

"But he loves fighting." Said big sis

"Yes, he does, but his emotional control is terrible. Son can hit things and hit them hard, and his strength is impressive, but kendo is a sport of control. I never once used my powers and I almost made it to world class." Said dad. Sho waited for big sis to defend him. His emotional control was great! He never lost control of his powers like big sis did! He always had perfect control! Near perfect control! Dad had even said that he was impressive! If he was so impressive then why….then why did that say that? And what…what was big sis going to say? She was…she was going to defend him. She always defended him. That was what big sisters did. They defended you when your dad decided to go off and be a jerk and say…and say jerk stuff….

"But he never loses control of his powers like I do." Said big sis. She shouldn't have said that so quietly. She should have said it nice and loud. She should have said it as loudly as she could so that dad heard her and he got the message. Sho had good control. He was powerful. He was impressive. Dad had said so.

Dad didn't ever tell lies.

"He never loses control in the same way you do but he does lose control. We both know it. I know you, Daughter, and I know that you are not the quarrelsome one. That is what I like about you. You're never quarrelsome. Son on the other hand…Son is very quarrelsome not only with you but with me as well. He does not have the control or the patience for kendo. He can't even sit still to watch it. Not like you." Said dad

"Yeah…he says that it's boring. He says that it's a boring sport for boring people who love to be boring. He probably wouldn't have much fun…even though he likes fighting a lot more than I do…" said big sis

"Exactly. He should stick to drawing. He's a very good artist." Said dad. There. That was dad being nice again. Sho didn't get it. Sometimes dad could say such nice things…it didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. Nothing was fair and nothing made sense and also he was very cold and knew that he needed to take a shower…but he just could not stop listening…even if this didn't concern him at all…as dad would probably tell him if he ever decided to get out of bed and tell him to put some clothes on and go back to bed.

"He is a really good artist…and I think that it would make him happy if you told him that. I mean then he would believe that you liked his drawings…and that would make him happy, I think. I don't think that he believes me when I tell him that you like his drawings." Said big sis. Well she was right about that…but not because he was hearing it from her. He just didn't think that dad liked anything. If dad liked his stuff so much then he should have just told him to his face…like mom had…back when she had been around.

"He knows how I feel." Said dad. Sho wanted to tell dad that, no, he did not know how dad felt! Nobody knew how dad felt! Nobody knew how dad felt because dad never acted the way he felt! Unless he was mad he never acted like…like….like anything! He was like big sis…but big sis never showed when she was mad….

Dad and big sis were still talking.

But Sho did not want to hear anymore. They could stay up all night watching boring TV and talking about boring stuff. He just did not care. He had better things to do with his time. He didn't need big sis or dad or anyone. He didn't care what they had to say about him or about anything. He had stuff to do. He had to shower and put new sheets and bedding on his bed and then go to sleep.

That was what he did.

He showered, got dressed, fixed his bed, and went to sleep.

And it didn't happen again…on that night, anyway.


	90. Natural Impulses

It was a natural impulse.

The urge to be near an adult female human. He was an adult male human and she was an adult female human. Therefore the impulse he had, to be near her, had been natural. He had controlled it, of course, because he was not an adolescent but it had been there. For the first time since Masami left it had been there. Intruding upon his thoughts. Intruding upon the placid calmness of his aura.

"I'm sure that, now, the government will stop looking into your business, Suzuki-san."

He didn't know her name. Well he did know her name, it was Pang Sujin, but he was not going to make it known that he knew her name. He had no reason to know her name. He had no reason to go looking up her name. He had no reason to even care that she had a name. The Awakened had names but he never expressed any interest in that…because their names didn't matter….just like her name did not matter. It didn't. She wasn't an Awakened, or a Scar, she was just….some people did other things besides wait on him hand and foot or help him take over the world. She was one of the people who helped him launder money. Some business of his in Korea, legitimate business of his, was actually making money…and that caused a domino effect that he didn't totally understand, but would not ever reveal that he didn't understand, and that required certain things to be smoothed over. Which she did.

He liked an intelligent woman.

"If given a freer hand I could talk to…."

He was fading in and out of everything she said. She was saying words, Japanese words, and her Japanese was perfect….another plus in his book…and her hair was light, dyed but he didn't care, and her hair was long too….and he was staring. He was staring. He looked away. What she was saying was not so captivating. He didn't even need to be informed of what, exactly, was happening. He trusted his people and he trusted that his people could then trust their people. He didn't personally oversee every single aspect of his empire both financial and world domination…and really he had other things that he should have been doing….and he needed to attend to those things….

"…which would make people much less suspicious…"

He was a very busy man. His days were long and tiresome. He had children to go home to…and they were very tiresome too. At some point they had acquired toy guns, which he had never wanted them to have since a gun was a coward's weapon, and Son had taken to shooting at his sister…and Daughter refused to defend herself….the opposite sex was so strange…and tiresome. Daughter was tiresome in her own ways. Everything was tiresome. His days were already ten to sixteen hours long….and he had business to attend to….

"…..of course there is always risk in…."

Maybe he needed to start recording what happened in his office. Every word this woman was saying went in one ear and out the other. He was tired, he decided, much too tired. He had been up half the night with Daughter watching kendo and naginata highlights, she really was taken with the sport, and that had been a miscalculation since no amount of tea seemed to be able to perk him back up. He was just tired. That was why he was fading in and out. That was why, when his eyes found themselves looking up from the blank screen of his laptop and onto her face….and they occasionally tried to dip lower…which was just not done. He was a grown man, forty one, and he did not just stare at members of the opposite sex like that. He hadn't done that in ages, not since middle school, and even then he hadn't set out to do it. He was older now, a lot less….he didn't even have a non-crass word for what he had been as an adolescent, and he had no need to stare at a woman. Not a woman on the street and certainly not one that he was expected to work with.

It was just crass.

"….good idea? Suzuki-san?"

He blinked. His aura flared a little, just a little, but enough to make him angry with himself. He wondered if she had sensed that. She didn't have much power of her own, her primary skill was hyper cognition according to her file…that he had been skimming through for legitimate work reasons, and she had some technopathic abilities. Nothing close to what a certain technopath in the second division could do but a very rare skill. She was a rarity in and of herself, a female esper, and that…that was why he was staring. He so rarely saw female espers…aside from his Daughter….but Daughter was Daughter and a child and he did not look at his Daughter in this way…

He should not have been looking at any woman in any way.

"Yes, yes, that's fine. Do all of that." Said Suzuki with a dismissive wave of his hand. She bowed and left. He was glad for it. He had been staring. He had been staring and he…he could not begin to understand what was wrong with him. He didn't usually look at women….but then again he didn't usually talk to women. They were around him when he was out in the world but he was not one of his children, he did not linger out in the world, and he did not have the time or the inclination to stare at them…and it was not socially appropriate.

Creepy.

That was the word that had been applied to him so many times in his youth….and now his mind had decided to betray him and go over all of his romantic and sexual failings. Not that he had a lot of them. Not that he still cared about the time he got rejected in the sixth grade…because he had been creepy….which was about every single pre late middle school rejection he had ever gotten. He had a habit, back when he was young, of staring. That and, well, his voice had always been odd. Even before he learned to keep complete control over his emotions he had always had trouble with tones. His own and other people's. The way he spoke had been creepy. The things he spoke about had been creepy too. He had always been interested in different things than his peers, from what he could remember, like the period in his early childhood when he had been obsessed with the validity of giant fighting robots….they were neat and all but how did they WORK? Then when he had gotten older and spent a significantly longer period of his life obsessed with the Galaxy Express and it's related works…and it was a fascinating story with a well-built universe and Daughter agreed with him…and that meant something because his other child did not agree with him…so it felt like it meant something…

He needed to get home to his children.

They were tiresome but at least they left him with no headspace left to mull over his lifetime's romantic and sexual failings. Not that he cared for either anymore. The last woman he would ever allow himself to care for romantically is, was, and forever would be Masami. He had left himself open and vulnerable and she had betrayed him. That was after putting on an unnecessarily lavish party to promise, in front of everyone, that she would never leave or betray him. She even left after making a human being with him. She had just…left. Gone. Into thin air without even so much as an explanation. She hadn't even told the children…and she loved the children…or at least she said that she had loved them…and him…and he had trusted her…and she had gone and betrayed him like his trust was worth nothing.

If she, the most perfect woman in the world, could betray him then anyone could.

And he could not have that. That was why he could allow himself to even think of a woman, any woman, in any capacity other than as someone who he could use…for work purpose…and not for…and now he was little better than an adolescent. He was not the sort of man who bent a woman over his desk and…because it was just not done. It was clichéd, for one thing, and also far too crass for his tastes. Besides, sex was not a need. It was an impulse but it was not a need. Food was a need. Water was a need. Shelter was a need.

Sex was not a need.

And neither was companionship. People were social creatures but he was not like anyone else in the world…well maybe Daughter….but that was different. Besides if he felt like being social that was what Daughter was for. She was a pleasant person to be around. She liked all of the same things he liked, she also had her own things she liked and some of it was enjoyable, and also when he was tired he could just send her away. Yes, Daughter was pleasant. She was a very pleasant child. He really should have gotten home to her.

Companionship was not a need.

He didn't need companionship. That was why he didn't seek out anyone but his own child. That wasn't even about companionship. That was just parenting. Parenting involved spending time with his children and that was what he was going home to do. He was certainly not going home because he had the urge to seek out Pang-san and ask her, again, some question about her plan or her position or…or anything like that. There was nothing else to talk to her about. He was not going to ask her about her kumdo achievements, it was an inferior version of kendo anyway, and he was not going to ask her about the pendant she had been wearing. He didn't want to know what sort of mech that it was…and he didn't want to know which franchise it was from…or why she felt comfortable displaying her love for a piece of media on herself even though she was an adult…or if she had always been so confident that she would cast aside all care for the judgement of others…or-or-or anything else that he had been able to gather from either reading her file or staring at her for so long his eyes had dried out….

He needed to go home.

Too much time around other adults. That was it. When it had been him and the children, when he had been able to leave work for a bit and see his family, he had never been like this. Masami had been around but he had never stared at her…at least not if they'd had sex recently…and that was it. It had been a while. That was all. It had been a while and that part of his brain, the primitive part that only cared about passing his genes down, was trying to take control of his thought process. That was all. She was female and he was male. That was all that it was.

It had nothing to do with the fact that she had dyed her hair brown.

Really, it didn't. Nope. Not at all. Nothing to do with any aspect of her physical appearance whatsoever.

It had nothing to do with the fact that her fingernails were bright red…the same as Masami's had been. Nothing had anything to do with Masami. She was gone. She could have been dead for all he cared…the thought of her dead still pains him…and he hates himself for being weak like that. She had betrayed him. He should not have cared. In fact he should have been so uncaring that he had replaced her…but he doesn't want to…because of the risk of betrayal. That and the fact that he was so busy. Much too busy for another wife. Much, much, much too busy. Plus if he had another wife he would have to have another child and then that child might not get along with his children…Son…and if he took another wife then she might not have gotten along with his children….Son. Mostly Son.

Daughter got along with everyone.

Even Minegishi. Apparently, much to Son's chagrin, Minegishi and Daughter got on like a house fire…which lent credence to his theory as to Minegishi being female….but he was not going to ask. Either Minegishi was female and he had nothing to gain from that fact, besides the fact that he knew another female esper, or Minegishi was male and then he probably ended up in another fight…which he would win of course…be he did not need to sow dissent in the ranks. He had checked the files but under sex someone had written 'none of your business' and he knew that he had to get that sorted but he had other things to deal with.

Like the fact that his mind was still going over his numerous romantic and sexual failures.

Of course now he was simply circling the mystery of what had gone wrong with Masami. This just furthered his feelings that, yes, he did not need another wife. He couldn't even understand the one he had…and was technically still married to….and he had messed up with her…which meant that he would mess up with another woman. Even one who enjoyed science fiction, had a degree of hyper cognition comparable to his own, had been a kumdo champion from middle school to university, and openly enjoyed science fiction. He did not understand women and if he found another one he would just end up miserable.

It was all sexual, anyway.

Being weak enough to revert back to adolescence was preferable to being weak enough to needing someone's companionship. Yes, that was something he could deal with more easily. It made more sense. Usually it had been four to six weeks, his old dry spells back when he had been away from Masami, but now it was going on two years. Yes, instead of spending his ride home mentally torturing himself over his lifelong inability to understand women and their ways his time was better spent figuring out how to solve this problem.

Not like that.

He hated how he lost control during the times, the rare times, when he had seen no other way out than to debauch himself. Adolescence had been…embarrassing….to say that least. It was easier to keep control when he had a partner. Someone to focus on. Someone to make him think about himself…he was always self-conscious during…and someone to keep him grounded. So the house didn't shake. So everything that wasn't bolted down didn't end up on the ceiling. So the power to the house didn't blow. There was a reason he had sworn off all of that….and he was not looking forward to the children's teenage years. Nope. Not at all. He made a vow then and there to never even comment on what he heard, and probably would feel too considering how good his range was, when Son hit that age. Nope. There was nothing to be gained for either of them by pointing out that which was better off not noticed. Of course he knew that the children wouldn't extend him the same courtesy, being children and all, which was why he had always either sent them outside or distracted them in some way when he and Masami had needed to be intimate.

Of course Daughter had always asked what it was that she had felt.

Her range was comparable to his back then and it had only gotten larger. Son's too, though he came nowhere close to being as sensitive as his sister was. There was no privacy when one had children…Masami had complained about that, before, and now he saw what she meant. As much as he loved Daughter's company, and tolerated Son's, sometimes he did want and need to be alone. Of course they never left him alone. They were children and could not understand that they had to give him space. That was a case for finding them a new mother. They could bother someone else for once. Someone else would be there to take care of them.

They may have been children but they were not babies.

His mind, the part of him that was telling him to find a mate and reproduce, was trying to convince his rational mind that he needed a partner. Well he did not. His children could take care of themselves….well Daughter could take care of them. She was smart like that. She was smart and capable for a child and he was so looking forward to her growing up. She would be brilliant when she grew up. She would be good company when she grew up. She was already good company now so when she grew up then she would be even better company. The best company that he could have asked for.

Who needed a wife when he had a Daughter?

For companionship. Companionship. Something he did not need but still enjoyed from time to time but knew that he was not supposed to indulge in, like warm sake, or his more violent impulses. Companionship and only companionship. That was all. She had no genetic relation to him but she was a child. He was many things, many things that society had deemed wrong, but he was not attracted to someone as young as her. Also that was his Daughter…not by blood but he was not going to start an incest precedent. Also she would find the prospect psychologically distressing because as far as she knew he was her blood parent. No, she was for companionship and nothing more and when she grew up she would just be a woman who was genetically unrelated to him that spent all of her time with him and-

And he needed either a drink, a woman, or both because he was starting to worry himself with where his mind was going…and that seldom happened.

Since the only way to stop indulging in these trains of thought was to give in to them, the thought made his skin crawl with revulsion, he had might as well go home and rip that Band-Aid off as quickly and cleanly as possible. It was late, but not as late as he usually came home, so he might have been able to tell the children to find fun somewhere….curse this cold…nothing was opened when it was this cold out…first chance he got he was dumping them at a Disney Land….or putting them on a plane….

But there was no need to send them on a plane.

Because the house was devoid of children. It was upside-down and inside out, he would deal with that later, but the children were not inside. They were around, of course, but not in the house. No…he followed their auras….they were in the garden….and he could see the garden as he made his way through the house…

Had that wall always been there?

Upon further inspection it isn't a wall but a series of vines. Plants. Good, Minegishi was paying off. The only thing more terrifying than his Daughter's powers going out of control was the thought of powers that his Daughter had that he did not going out of control…but that was ok. Her control seemed good. Good enough to build a fort, anyway. A rather impressive fort…and he thanked God that this house was in the middle of nowhere where there was no one to question the two leveled plant fort that the children had built…

There were windows, too, and murder holes judging by the amount of darts that littered the lawn. The snow was gone, mostly, and the children didn't seem bothered by the cold in the least bit. No, they seemed fine from what he could hear. They were even laughing…not quarreling….which was good. It meant that they were much less tiresome now. That was always good. Maybe he could get some peace and privacy for once in his life.

"Dad! You can't come in! It's a secret club!" shouted Son as he stuck his head out of one of the windows. There was some light coming from the house…and some extension cords coming from the house…and he knew that he was supposed to tell them that they were going to burn the house down but he was not going to rain on their parade.

Even if Son had said that he was not invited.

Son and Daughter were the children, not him, and he was not going to get upset about not being allowed into a fort that he couldn't even physically fit into…probably. He was not ten years old anymore. Besides, he had started his own…and he was going to get off of that juvenile train of thought right then and there. Honestly. He was a grown man.

"Sho, dad can come in if he wants to. It's not a secret club. Everyone can join." Said Daughter. Well now he felt better….and he had no idea why he felt better. He did not care one iota if his children included him or not. In fact he preferred to be left alone. He was just happy that Daughter showed him such loyalty. He hoped that her loyalty carried over into her adult life. She was a brilliant little girl and an asset.

"If everyone can join then what's the point of having a club?" asked Son

"Um….good times?" said Daughter. He would have to talk to her, again, about ending her statements as if they were questions. It was unbecoming of his child. Masami would have taught her that…if he had been around…and now his mind had once again decoded to go over all of his sexual and romantic failures. Great.

What'd he end up doing with that bottle of rice wine?

"We can have those in here on our own. Besides, I already let you let Minegishi join. That's too many people in the club house. If They didn't fit then dad's not going to fit." Said Son

"Then I'll just make the room bigger." Said Daughter. He could see her aura travelling down the roots and vines that made up her fortress. He wondered how she had come up with this design, it seemed to be part European castle and part single family home. There were plenty of murder holes too…but that was Sons idea most likely. A gun was a coward's weapon but maybe the next compound he built needed murder holes in the walls…and secret passageways too….for important reasons that he would think up later. He had wanted to build secret passageways in the house in Japan but Masami had told him that he was being ridiculous. She wanted an actual house to live in, not one with secret passageways and tunnels and escape hatches…she had always been practical like that. He wondered if she would have been proud of what Daughter had built.

He wondered what she was doing now.

And he tried to force himself to stop wondering, to stop caring, because he had no reason to care about her like this. She was gone. She was gone and she was not coming back and he didn't need her. He didn't need her or any woman. He was fine on his own. His own mind was just a mess. Probably from the ten to sixteen hour days. Yes, that was it. He just needed to do what he needed to do to get back into the right state of mind.

"Daughter, there's no need to harm the integrity of that structure. I was just checking up on you two, that's all." said Suzuki

"Oh…ok. We're fine. We had pizza for dinner and we took a bath and now we're out here." Said Daughter. He nodded. Good effort. Worthy of Masami.

"I hate baths…"muttered Son. How that child could hate basic hygiene Suzuki would never know. Masami had always been good about getting him into the tub, though…..she had always been good at all of those parenting sorts of things…

"I know you do but I had to make you take one because your hair was all greasy and you were dirty from the dirt. Now come on, it's late and we should go to bed-" said Daughter

"Can we sleep out here?!" shouted Son. Suzuki didn't even have to think. He knew that Masami would not have approved but….but Masami was not there anymore. She had forfeited the right to disapprove when she left them.

"Yes, that's fine. Stay out here all night and don't come in until morning." Said Suzuki. Good. Some space. Finally.

"But what if we have to go to the bathroom?" asked Daughter

"We'll go in the yard like dogs." Said Son. Suzuki wondered, briefly, if the hospital had made a mistake…but of course they hadn't. That was, somehow, his and Masami's child. He was responsible for helping to create that little boy right there.

"Sho! That's disgusting! We're people and people don't do that." Said Daughter. Well at least one of his children had sense. So was that a point to nature…or nurture? He didn't know. He would puzzle it out later.

"I agree. You may come inside if you need to but whatever you do you are not to bother me. Not even if this house is on fire. Do you both understand?" asked Suzuki in his most serious voice…well what he assumed was his most serious voice. He wondered if he was being serious enough…or maybe too serious….he didn't know. He had trouble with tones. He didn't want to frighten them, they were insufferable when they were frightened, but he did want some time alone.

Which why were amenable to giving.

Which freed him up to spend his time giving into his most natural, and most hated, impulses.


	91. Cat Ears Headband

It was Mob's birthday.

She was nine years old today. She was older even if she didn't really feel any different than usual. She was still the same size she had been yesterday. She didn't know why she always expected to suddenly get taller on her birthdays, it had never happened before, but for as long as she could remember she had always just…expected to be different. To wake up different. Older. Maybe because older usually meant taller. That was probably it. It didn't matter anyway, she was still taller than Sho, so what did she need to get any taller for anyway? No reason at all…though it would have been nice…

To be different.

To be different than how she had been last year and the year before that. How she had been since mom left. She was so…tired was the word for it. Some parts weren't too bad, she liked it when she and Sho lived at Disney Land and stuff, but most parts were so….dad liked the word 'tiring' and Mob liked it too. She missed school and not having to worry about stuff…worrying about stuff was tiring. Worry about Sho, mostly, taking care of him and making sure that he didn't do anything that would make dad upset and also making him eat food and take baths and do his homeschool work and go to bed. It was just…tiring...having to worry about all of that. Maybe that was why mom had gone…because it was tiring.

Mob had no idea why her mom had gone.

It had been two years. Mom left when she was seven and now she was nine. Seven plus two made nine. She knew math. She was bad at it, even dad said that she was unusually bad at it, but she at least knew sums. Seven and two made nine and she was nine and mom had been gone for two years and she had been seven when mom left and now she was nine and….and she didn't know. She didn't know why mom had left and she didn't know if mom was ever coming back…not that she would be able to find them even if she did…and she didn't know why it still bothered her. Dad said, after he finished hitting her because she asked about mom, that mom was a traitor and that they wouldn't concern themselves with her. Then he told her to get out of his sight….but then the next day they went back to hanging out like everything was normal.

At least she still had dad.

"I cannot begin to understand you, Daughter. I have no idea why you would want to spend your birthday here of all places." Said Dad as he walked them through the Fifth Division. Mob had wanted to go to work with him and it was her birthday and on her birthday she got to go wherever she wanted. She picked here. This was a good place, all bright and sunny with windows and people who didn't look scared all the time…

Much nicer than the Eighth Division Compound.

There were no spirits hanging out here. Just a lot of espers. She could see so many different auras, truly different, not like how the Awakened had auras that differed so slightly that you had to focus to be able to tell them apart. There were plenty of Awakened there, too, but also a lot of other espers. This was where Minegishi worked. They said that they did stuff that she wouldn't be able to know about until she was ten. She wondered if maybe she could negotiate it down to nine. She didn't see any bad stuff happening here. No spirits hanging around and no people screaming, either. This was a very nice place…

She didn't know what Sho was so upset about.

"Me neither. You're weird and this place sucks….sorry." said Sho as he held her hand. She knew that Sho was scared, she could tell by his aura, and she didn't get why. This place wasn't scary at all, not like the place where they had done all of that bad stuff to Sho…he still dreamt about it. She knew he did. He cried in his sleep and sometimes he wet the bed. She wished that she knew why he was still upset. All of that had been months ago and…and he had his powers like he wanted. She didn't know why she still got upset about it, thinking about it, too.

She decided not to think about it. She exorcised the bad thoughts from her mind. It was her birthday after all and on her birthday it was ok for her to do that.

"I don't think that it sucks, Sho, I think that it's nice. There are so many other people here and it's…it nice to hang out with dad." Said Mob

"Don't say that. It's crass." Said Dad. Mob nodded. She shouldn't have said that…and she shouldn't have let Sho say that either. Even on her birthday she still had to take care of them.

"We're sorry dad, we won't do it again." said Mob. She covered Sho's mouth with her hand while she said that. She didn't want him to pick a fight with dad on her birthday. She just wanted to spend the day with dad, that was all. Part of her wished that she could have left Sho at home…but that was the bad part of her. The part of her that was a very bad big sister. She was a good big sister so of course she wanted to spend time with her little brother an stuff like that.

"When have a I heard that before?" said Dad

"Um….we mean it this time. Right, Sho, we mean it this time?" said Mob as she took her hand off of Sho's mouth so he could talk and also stop licking her hand. It sucked when he did that….it was gross when he did that, she meant, even though she only meant it to herself.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we mean it this time. Fine, I don't know why you would want to be here because it's boring and stuff. You could go anywhere on your birthday but you picked here? Why?" asked sho

"Yes, it does seem an odd choice to make." Said Dad

"Wanting to be with you?" asked Mob

"Yes, you see me when I come home. Why would you want to spend your birthday at work with me? I have no idea what you think goes on here but I can tell you that whatever it is that you've been imagining cannot possibly live up to the boring minutia of my work day." Said Dad

"You don't do any fun stuff at all?" moaned Sho

"No, this isn't a playground. Its serious work I do, Son." said Dad

"You don't beat people up and make examples out of them?" asked Sho. Mob frowned. She hoped that Minegishi had been lying when they told that story….but friends never lied. She hoped that dad wasn't going around hitting people. That wasn't nice. When she ruled the world…well when Sho ruled the world and she helped because she was a girl and girls could not inherit the world, she wouldn't fight with anyone. She'd had enough fighting, enough of being fought with by Sho and watching her dad hit her little brother, in the nine years that she had been alive…she had seen enough and she was done with it.

"Yes, but not that often….and how did you know about that in the first place?" asked dad

"Minegishi said so. They said that Fukuda followed you around because you were always fighting with people and getting hurt. They said that when people didn't let you boss them around you beat them up so bad that they had bad scars on their faces to remind other people of how they aren't supposed to cross you." Said Sho

"They did say that." Said Mob. Dad was looking at Sho for a while, which could have been good or bad, and Mob thought that it might have been bad so of course she had to make sure that dad knew that Sho was not a liar.

"I, on occasion, have to put people in their place. When you're powerful people want to challenge you." Said Dad

"But can't you just ask them nicely not to challenge you?" asked Mob. She didn't like the idea of dad fighting. She didn't like the idea of anyone fighting. Why couldn't they all just get along? Claw was all espers, dad said that it was important that all espers had a place to be together and stuff, and since they were all espers didn't that mean that they all should have been friends? She didn't know. She wished that she were the one in charge of Claw. Then she would tell everyone that they had to be friends. Not that she could force people to be friends….but she could at least be nice to everyone and make everyone else be nice to each other. If she were the boss of Claw…which she wasn't and never would be. She wasn't the son, Sho was, and Sho was the one who was going to be the boss of Claw…so the fighting would probably just go on and on and on.

"Who would listen? You've got to teach people not to mess with you. Right dad?" asked Sho. Mob wished that Sho was less fighty. Quarrelsome was the word that dad used. She never fought back, she didn't want to fight with her little brother, but her not fighting back didn't seem to stop him in the least bit.

"For once you're right, Son. That's the difference between the male and female perspective I supposed." Said Dad with a shrug. Mob wondered why it always came down to it. Boys were supposed to be one way and girls were supposed to be a whole other way entirely. She wondered who decided this stuff.

"That means that girls are weird." Said Sho. Mob shook her head. She didn't think that she was weird because she was a girl, she just thought that she was weird because she was dad's daughter. He was weird. He hated sweet foods and never called her by her name and a whole bunch of other stuff that she would need all day and several books to fill.

"No, not weird…just different. Their thought process is as alien to us as ours is to them." Said Dad

"Yeah, like why you want to spend the whole day in Dad's office." Said Sho. Mob didn't mind dad's office. It felt like when they were little and they played on the floor while dad worked…even though this office was different. It still had the desk and the chair and the laptop and Sho's drawings tacked up on the walls but there were…people….here. People coming in and out. They always said happy birthday after they asked why she was there. Well after they stopped staring. Dad said that they were just staring because not a lot of people knew that he had kids…which was kind of hurtful a little since it felt sort of like dad was ashamed of her…because she couldn't control her powers…and stuff like that…but that was ok. It was her birthday and she was not going to feel bad about anything. She was fine. She was happy. She was in dad's office and she was with him and he was being nice to her, he hadn't said a single mean thing to her and Sho all day, and it was just like when they had been little…at the old house….which she was not going to think about.

She decided to think about how everyone was telling her happy birthday. That was nice.

Sho had told her happy birthday when she woke up and then Dad had told her happy birthday over breakfast. Also Minegishi had texted her happy birthday. Fukuda had even told her happy birthday, too, in person. So that was a lot more happy birthdays than she had gotten last year. Last year it had been her and Sho and not a lot of dad….but now it was her and Sho and dad and she was happy…even though mom wasn't there she was still happy.

"Yes, it's not that I don't enjoy your company, Daughter, but I have to ask…why?" asked Dad. Mob didn't know why he even needed to ask. Maybe he just didn't understand her because she was a girl and he was a boy, like he had said. The answer was so obvious though….

"Because you're gone all day…and I miss you a lot when you're gone." Said Mob. That was the truth of it. The whole truth and nothing but the truth so help her God. She missed dad when he was gone. She didn't just want to be near him because she could keep him from being mean to Sho, well not keep him from it but at least distract him, but also because she wanted to be near him. She didn't have a mom anymore but she at least still had a dad. She had dad and dad was nice to her a lot of the time and being with dad was better than being cooped up in the house all day. Not their house but the house they had been staying in these past few months. She wondered if they lived in Korea now. She wondered if they were ever going back to Japan. She didn't say anything, though, because there was no point. Even dad didn't know when they would move again.

"Oh. I find myself thinking of you, and you're brother to a lesser extent, when we're separated as well." Said Dad. Mob frowned. She knew that she was not supposed to let her feelings show on her face or her aura but…but dad should not have said that. Or at least he should not have said that while Sho was right there. He had feelings to and those feelings got hurt. That was why he was scribbling in his sketchbook like that. He did that when he was upset. Sho wasn't supposed to let his feelings show either.

Suzuki's had better control than that. They had to because the Suzuki family was made up of the most powerful espers alive and power was nothing without control. Dad had said that.

But Mob did wish that, on her birthday at least, Dad could have been nice to Sho. Sho was a good person. He did bad things sometimes but that did not make him a bad person. It also did not make him aggravating or tiresome or annoying or any of the other mean words dad used sometimes. Mob wished that she could have asked dad to be nice…at least for her birthday….but there were some things that she could not ask for. Like her mom back. She could ask to go anywhere on her birthday, do anything, and get whatever new toys or dresses she wanted but she could not ask for…for the things that she wanted more than anything else in this world.

A dad that was nice, to go back to the castle, and her mom back.

But at least she could spend time with her dad. That was, at least, something. And at least she wasn't bored. Dad explained to them, well mostly Sho it seemed but Mob didn't feel left out at all because it was nice when dad and Sho were friends like that, what it was that he did. Who the people who came in and out were, all of them saying happy birthday to her once they realized that it was her birthday, and what they did for him. Mob didn't feel left out at all even though it was her birthday. No, she just sat on dad's comfy office chair with her new tablet and her new tablet games and her new shoes that lit up when she walked and her new dress that dad had gotten her which was actually a real kimono, he said, because he didn't like her other dresses that much…even though it didn't matter if he liked them because she was the one who wore them and he was gone from the house all the time anyway and-

Conceal, don't feel.

Power was nothing without control.

She did not feel left out. She was happy. She was happy to be out of the house, she was happy to be with her dad and little brother, and she was happy that they were getting along. She was happy for all of her new stuff. She was happy for all of the gifts that she was getting now, too, from the people who had wished her happy birthday…even though some of it was just…stuff that she did not want. Like all of the plastic jewelry. She didn't wear jewelry plastic or otherwise. Sometimes candy necklaces but that was it. She also got a lot of dolls that she didn't know…and also some candy that she didn't much like…but she was a gracious gift accepter. Dad said, when she was little, that it was important to be gracious to the sycophants so that they stayed loyal to you. That seemed like a mean thing to call someone…

But it fit.

While Dad was showing Sho how he ran Claw she had a bunch of people coming up to her and going 'Happy Birthday Miss Suzuki' and 'You're looking well, Miss Suzuki' and 'You look just like your father, Miss Suzuki' and other stuff. They said it in a tone that dad had told her was deferential….but to Mob it just seemed fake. She didn't want people to fake liking her, there was no point in it, she wanted people to really like her and to like her for who she was. Not who her dad was. Not for what her family name was.

She didn't have a lot of people like that in her life.

But she did have one. She didn't know much about them, they hadn't been friends for very long at all…and they could be kind of prickly like a cactus sometimes….but they were still Mob's friend. They didn't call her 'Miss Suzuki' or 'Miss Shigeko' or anything like that. They called her Mob because that was her name, what she had decided to name herself, and that was worth more than any present that she had gotten that day.

But they had also gotten her a present.

"Happy Birthday and many more and all that crap. Here." Said Minegishi. They didn't talk to her like the others did…and it was nice. They talked to her the same way they talked to everyone else, Sho said that it was mean, but Mob knew that Minegishi was not mean. They seemed mean but they weren't. If they were then they wouldn't have gotten Mob a present or gone through the trouble of wrapping it.

"What's in the bag, big sis?" asked Sho. He was next to dad, then, but he stood up on his tiptoes like it would help him see better or something. Mob wanted to take a picture but the moment had passed.

"What is it?" asked Mob as she held the pink party bag in her hands. Sho came over to her and tried to see inside but she pulled it away. This was her present to open. She sometimes let Sho open he presents…but she did not want to do that this time.

"Thank you very much." Said Mob. She meant it that time. Well she meant it every time but she especially meant it that time. She didn't know what it was, it was in a paper bag, but it was for her and it was from a friend…and she couldn't remember the last time she had gotten present from a friend. Well she had gotten a birthday present from Sho, he had gotten her a stuffed cat, and Sho was her friend…but getting presents was different when it was your friend versus yours brother who was also your friend…if brothers even counted as friends. Minegishi said that being friends with your little brother because you and your brother had no choice but to be together.

Mob didn't know if she agreed with that.

"Ok, whatever, just don't hug me." Said Minegishi. They were not the sort of friends who hugged. Minegishi had so when they first met. Mob wanted to be the sort of friends who hugged but that was part of friendship. When you were friends with someone you also had to think about what they wanted. Kind of like getting a gift. Getting a gift because she was dad's Daughter and people worked for him or were afraid of him didn't mean as much as a gift from a friend. What was in the gift didn't even matter. It was the thought that mattered.

But she did like what was in the gift.

"You look-" said Sho. Mob braced herself for something mean. Sho had explained to her, before, that sometimes he just said mean things without thinking about it. That the mean things just came out and he had no way of stopping them. That was just the first stuff that came to his mind…so it was ok.

"Never criticize a woman's clothing or hair, it's dangerous ground, Son." Said Dad. Mob didn't much like being called a woman, she was only nine, but she did appreciate dad being nice to her like that. She didn't see how it was dangerous ground, either, because she was not dangerous. She loved Sho and she would never have done anything to hurt him…even though she lost control sometimes…like the time when she lost control and didn't even remember what happened…but she knew that it must have been bad if she couldn't remember it…

She hated it when people were scared of her. It was the worst, the very worst, and it was even more the worst when she was getting that was her own family.

"I was going to say that she looked cool. I want a cat ears head thing." Said Sho. Mob smiled. She took off her headband and put it on Sho's head even though it was hers and it was for girls, too. She wished that she could have taken a picture but she hadn't had the time. Dad used his powers to take it off of Sho's head and put it back on hers. Minegishi laughed and dad dismissed them. That was what it was called when dad told someone to get out but didn't say a word.

"That belongs to your sister, leave her alone. Now come here, I have to show you something." Said Dad. Mob wanted to tell dad that she didn't mind, and could never mind, sharing with Sho. She loved her little brother and of course she would share everything she had with him. Even this really cool headband. It was pink and fuzzy and looked like cats ears…and now she looked like a cat…and she looked so cool…and Minegishi was such a good friend for remembering that she liked cats…

If her birthday had ended right then and there then she would have been very happy.

But it didn't end right then and there, no, because she was not that lucky. There was more day to fill and if the day had just been filled with dad and Sho ignoring her, not that she minded or felt left out in any way, she would have been fine. But the day was not over, not by a long shot. There were still people coming in and out of dad's office, he was a very important man he had said, and she didn't even mind that. Even if she got more people wishing her a happy birthday but not meaning it, and even more gifts without thought of meaning. Even if she did end up getting kind of bored because dad and Sho were ignoring her, she didn't mind because they so rarely got along, and even if she did spend a lot of time wishing that mom were there….

If not for what happened her birthday would have been fine.

And nothing had even happened. A lady walked into dad's office. That was all. That was sort of weird, there weren't a lot of girl espers in the world. Dad had told her that she was rare, the rarest, and that there hardly ever were girl espers…but there was a girl esper right there in dad's office. She had an aura, it was light blue, so she was an esper…and maybe that was why dad stared at her so much. Mob knew what dad looked like when he was listening and he was not listening to that girl esper…

So maybe she should have taken the hint and come back later…or never….which was a very mean thought to be having about another person.

Mob knew that even on her birthday she was not supposed to have such mean thoughts about people. She was supposed to be sweet, like mom had always told her to be, and sweet girls did not wonder if they had the power to dismiss people from their dad's office. None of the other people who worked for dad talked to him this much…and dad's aura never got like that when he was around the other people who worked for him. Dad's aura was like that, all clingy like Sho's did when he met some boy he wanted to be friends with or hers did when she met someone who made her feel all weird…and she knew what it was when she felt all weird…and she had seen enough auras including her own to know…

She didn't know anything.

Besides the fact that this lady made dad's aura all weird. She was too…her hair was too brown, Mob decided, not at all like mom's. She was too nice, too. She was all 'aren't you a pretty kitty?' and stuff like that even though Mob was not dressed up like a cat at all. If anything she was dressed like she was going somewhere fancy because she had been wearing the kimono that dad had gotten her. Mob didn't know exactly why but she got the feeling that she did not much like that lady.

"Is it really your birthday, Pretty Kitty? And how old are you today?" asked the lady. Mom looked up from her tablet because it was the polite thing to do. Even if she had to pause her movie. Even if she didn't much feel like being talked to right then and there. Even if she didn't much want anyone talking to her or dad right then and there in that moment in time. That was mean but it was her birthday….but she was still being way too mean…

"I'm nine years old today and my name is Suzuki Shigeko." Said Mob. Usually she told people to call her Mob. Usually she liked to be called Mob. Usually she liked it when people were nice to her, for real, and called her Mob…but she got the feeling that she would not have liked it for this lady to call her Mob. She was too familiar. She was too close and too familiar.

"Happy Birthday, Shigeko-chan. I love your kimono too. So pretty. But ooh, what's that you're watching? Mice? So scary, but I bet they don't scare you. No, I bet a kitty like you would eat those mice right up." Said the lady. Mob felt bad for feeling like that but…but….but she was talking to Mob like she was three, not nine, and also she was way too familiar. She was Miss Suzuki to people who didn't know her well…even if she hated being called Miss Suzuki…but she didn't want to be called Shigeko-chan either….

"I'm not a cat, I'm just wearing the headband, and I wouldn't eat those mice even if I was. In this movie the cats are the bad guys. The cats try to eat the mice while the mice just trying and live their lives." Said Mob. She didn't think that she sounded mean, she had trouble with tones, and she hadn't been trying to sound mean anyway. Even if she sort of disliked this woman….

Which wasn't right because she was not supposed to dislike anyone.

Mom had said so. Mom. Suzuki Masami. The lady who dad should have been staring at. The lady who should have made dad's aura all weird like that. The only lady who should have been talking dad. The only lady who should have been in dad's office. Dad didn't need to talk to any other girls because he had mom and mom was….she was somewhere. Everyone was someone. Dad was not allowed to like any girls but mom….not that Mob knew that dad liked this lady…and the thought of dad liking any lady was kind of….gross. She knew that mom and dad had been in love with mom, they had kissed and made her and Sho, and that was enough for her mind to handle. It was so weird to think of dad having those same weird feelings that she got, sometimes, about someone anyone let alone that lady…

Who Mob wished that she could have dismissed.

"Another one of your movies about a shadow society of super intelligent mice? Disturbing." Said Dad. Now he was looking down at his laptop. Sho had pulled her tablet out of her hands. She let him have it. She watched dad. He wasn't working. She knew how he looked when he was super into his work. He not super into his work then, or into his work at all.

"Mice in general….icky, but mice as smart as people…very icky. You're such a brave girl, Shigeko-chan." Said the lady. Mob smiled and nodded. That was all the she could do, just smile and nod, and nothing else. She was not going to be mean to that lady…and she had no reason to be mean to that lady…and it wasn't like the lady was even DOING anything. She didn't even stay for long, she just had to tell dad some stuff, and then she left and everything went back to normal.

So aside from that it was a great…good…ok…birthday.

Especially because of her new cat ears headband.


	92. Paperclip Necklace

There were periods of activity and periods of inactivity.

That was the cycle that his work took. In these periods of inactivity, the sort that he found himself in, he had usually gone home to his family. His wife and children. Well now he didn't have a wife, well he did he just had no idea where she was, and his children were with him at all times. He was not going home, home to the house that he and Masami had shared, so really there was nothing to do during these periods of inactivity besides, well, acting.

Micromanaging.

He had literally nothing else to do. He had enjoyed, before, spending these times with Masami. She was gone. She had been gone for about two years now. Two years…the wound was raw. The wound was raw but…but less raw. Maybe. All things healed in time. Time healed all wounds…even this one. Well he didn't need time to heal all wounds, no, he had healer for that…but this was not the sort of thing that he could heal. He had said so. So there was nothing to do but wait.

He had been waiting for two years.

Work had helped. In the beginning there had been fire after fire after fire to put out. There had been the mess he made looking for Masami, that had taken some time to clean up, the mess from another failed coup, and then the…he didn't even know what to even begin to classify the Eighth Division as….and it had kept him very busy. But those fires had been put out and now he had….well not nothing….but not a lot to do.

So he took the children to work with him.

They had been getting restless. This had been the longest period of time that they had spent in one place. He hadn't set out to settle here, not that they were settling, it had just sort of happened. He had put out the fires that needed putting out and now he and the children were here….and had been here for quite some time. So they had grown restless to he had brought them to work with him. Simple. It was a bit like when they had been small and he had worked from home. They were still small, not as small but still small, and they still sat on his floor and still carried on…and it was pleasant for the most part.

"Can we have more paperclips?" asked Daughter from her spot on the floor. She and Son were making…something. Jewelry? A paperclip net? He didn't know. He did know, however, that this activity kept them quiet while they were in his presence. He maybe should have left them at home but…but he did enjoy spending time with them. Daughter, at least, though Son had his moments. Besides, it was about time that he started teaching Son how to run Claw. It would be his someday after all.

"The big ones." Said Son. He didn't even look up as he used his powers to link together oversized paperclips into something that only the children knew the function of. He wondered what it was that they were building. Maybe jewelry or a bridge, even, though to where Suzuki did not know. Son shared his desire to build things, to create things, though Son's creations usually never made it past the design stage. That was better than what Suzuki had ben capable of at his age. Somewhere in the boxes of junk from the past that filled the old house there were notebooks with his half-baked ideas for the world he knew that he would create.

"Here." Said Suzuki as he sent them over a box of paperclips. They were delighted and went back to using their powers to link them together. He watched them with intermitted attention. There was a pleasure to watching them when they got along.

"Big sis, stop using all the red ones." Said Son

"Ok, Sho, you can have them. Can I have the silver ones?" asked Daughter

"The big ones or the little ones?" asked Son

"Whichever ones you like the least." Said Daughter

"Here, you can use these." Said Son as he handed her a box of small paperclips. They were so pleasant when they got along. He wondered why they fought the way that they did. He had never had a sibling before but he knew that it would have done him no good to fight with the sibling he had. Even if they had been rivals….not that Son and Daughter were rivals. They had no reason to be.

Aside from the fact that Son was so much less powerful than Daughter.

But he was powerful in his own right. He was powerful in his own right, he had earned that power, and it was his. Who would have thought that it would have taken so much to unlock his potential? That he had almost paid the ultimate price….but that was neither here nor there. That, all of it, had happened and now it was over. Son had….Daughter had….they all had….it had been….

He passed them some more paperclips.

It was over. That…mess…at the Eighth Division was over and this was the Fifth Division and that was all over and his children were there and they were fine. Both of them. Son and Daughter. He didn't know why he still thought about it sometimes, why it sometimes came to him out of nowhere, and why it hurt so much to think about it. It had happened and it was over. A lot of things had happened and they were over.

This was now.

There was not any point at all to dwelling on the past. Especially when it had turned out so well. In terms of raw power Son was nowhere close to Daughter but in terms of control he was leaps and bounds ahead of her. Probably because he had less power to control. He was still a powerful esper in his own right. More powerful, even, then most adults. So it had all worked out. He had put Son through all of that…and he had let Daughter lose control….but it was all over now.

They were there, together, and it was all over now.

And as quick as those thoughts came they passed. Irrational. The whole thing had been irrational. Worrying about things that had already happened. He should have been worried about things that were going to happen…not that he was worried about anything at the moment. It was a pleasant afternoon. The children were happy, they were playing, and they were there with him. Daughter may have been wearing that ridiculous headband, he really hated that thing, but she was there. Son may have been talking far too loudly than the situation warranted, and he also may have been making a mess, but he was there.

Things were good.

"Here dad, I made you this." said Daughter. Suzuki looked up from his work as he felt something being draped across his neck. He reached down. Oh.

"So you two were making jewelry." Said Suzuki

"I was but Sho's making something else." Said Daughter

"What is he making?" asked Suzuki. Son looked up from what he was doing, a mass of paperclips hung in the air in front of him, and didn't even waver as Son's eyes widened. Suzuki didn't know what his Son was so scared of.

"I'm making the skyscraper." Said Son. He pointed out the window.

"The Samsung Building? Why, out of all the buildings, did you create that one?" asked Suzuki. The likeness was actually very good. Son could do more than draw. Still, though, there were so many other buildings he could have recreated…or just created his own. But the time for that would come later when Son was older. He was better at conceptualizing these things. The two of them would build amazing things together when Son got older.

"Because it's there." said Son

"He says that he built it because it's there, dad." Said Daughter even though Suzuki was perfectly capable of hearing. He was getting older, his early forties were starting to become his mid-forties, but he could still hear just fine. He didn't know why she did that sometimes. She was a mystery but she was his favorite mystery.

"As good a reason as any I suppose." Said Suzuki. The children got back to their work and he got back to his. Son was still hard at work…and he was more tolerable when he was working. When he had a singular task to focus on. That was best, giving him something to do, and he was getting older…maybe the time was coming….

But he was only eight.

But Suzuki had thought, before, that putting him in an Awakening Chamber would have been a bad idea too because of his age. That had been a rousing….a success. It had been a success. Sure it had cost him an entire Division of Claw, a research Division at that, but in the end it had been worth it. Maybe Son was old enough, now, to help him….he would learn how to run Claw someday…and he had already shown Son how to do some of the most basic things that he did…

And that had been enjoyable.

Having Son near him but not making a racket or a mess. Having both children near him but having them not fight. They had both been busy with their respective roles. Son had been learning how to take care of his father's legacy and Daughter had been greeting people socially. She was so much better, socially, than he had been as a child. Yes, it was about time that both of his children learned how to fill the roles they would grow into.

Teaching Son had been so enjoyable.

He had thought, before, of how much he would enjoy the day when his Son stopped being a child. When they could be something closer to equals. Not ever exact equals, no, but they would be able to be in the same room without Son driving him insane. They would work together, him and Son, until he finally got old enough that he could let him take over. Then Son would rule the world and Suzuki…he could rest. Enjoy the remainder of his life. Enjoy spending the time that he had left with Masami and….with Daughter. Daughter and her children and whatever man it was that she chose as her most perfect person. Or not. Any man that she chose would have been a member of Claw, he did have the largest collection of espers on the planet after all, and then even after retirement all members of Claw would be his to command. He could just send whatever man she chose on a never ending series of pointless missions. The sorts of missions that he sometimes sent people on just to test their loyalty.

Things that even a child would be capable of.

Was Son old enough? The children still got scared when they were separated….and he would have thought that they would have grown out of that by now. They were almost ten years old. Suzuki had no memory of ever being so attached to his parents or to anyone. Not even Masami. He had never been frightened when they were separated because he knew that he would always come back home to her…and now obviously he knew that he had been taking the assurance that she would always be there for him for granted….

He was not going to allow himself to feel that way.

Wistful. He was not going to allow himself to feel wistful…or anything. She was gone and that was fine. She was gone and that…that was how things were so of course it was fine. How else would things have been? He so wished that some fire would start. He wished that some terrible thing would pop up, some coup or explosion or even the children fighting, something to take his mind off of all of that. As it was he was reading and rereading and re-rereading this same document so many times that he could recite it by heart…

He needed a fire.

He was tempted, actually, to start a real fire. Maybe just start a fire and call it a drill….but there was no reason to ruin everyone else's productivity just because he was being irrational. Also he should not have been setting fires where the children could see. Not only would he have been setting a terrible example but, well, Son did not need to learn how to make fire. The last thing Son needed to learn how to do was to make and then play with fire. That would have been….pretty bad. Really bad.

So no starting fires.

"Minegishi's back." Said Daughter suddenly. Suzuki felt…huh. Daughter was better at picking out individual auras than he was…or maybe she had just been waiting and watching. He wondered what it was about Minegishi that fascinated Daughter. Well aside from the implacable gender and lack of eyebrows. If Fukuda hadn't assured that it was socially inappropriate he would have asked all the questions that came to mind when he was in the presence of said fascinating esper.

"So they are." Said Suzuki. Thank God that Minegishi was Japanese. There were so few languages with a genderless conjugate option.

"Can I go hang out with them?" asked Daughter. She seemed hopeful, then, he got that feeling from her aura. There was some irrational hurt there…and he did not understand it. Daughter should have been taking more of an interest in the other espers at Claw. She wouldn't inherit it but she would play her part in running it. Plus it was about time she started to notice the opposite sex…? He didn't know what Minegishi was…and he wished that it were socially acceptable to ask…and he also wished that Fukuda hadn't told him that it was socially unacceptable to ask…and also that he didn't still care about what was and was not socially acceptable.

"With Minegishi?" asked Suzuki. He had no idea why anyone would want to spend time with Minegishi socially. There was a reason that They existed largely as an enforcer. They didn't get along with anyone. That was why they had been moved to Korea in the first place. Nobody in Japan would work with them.

"Yes. They're back and sometimes we hang out. I read a book that they suggested and now I need them to explain it to me because I have no idea what it is that I read." Said Daughter

"What book?" asked Suzuki

"Infinite Jest…in English…I read most of it and I don't know what I read." Said Daughter

"Why didn't you ask me? I would have helped you." Said Suzuki. He had seen her hunched over he tablet these past few weeks but he had assumed that she had been playing some game. There it was, again, the irrational feeling of hurt….and he exorcised it. She was getting older and more independent. That was good. That was what he had been wanting for years…right?

"I'm too old to have my dad reading to me. I'm nine now." Said Daughter

"That you are." Said Suzuki. She was nine years old and at some point she had stopped asking him to read to her. She had stopped…but that was ok. That was good. She was getting older. She was older and…and he should not have felt this kind of a sort of a…loss. It didn't even matter. She was still a child. She was in a headband with cat ears and one of her mock ball gowns….even though he had bought her something worthy of the JAPANESE princess that she was…but he would say nothing about her clothing. Best lesson he had ever learned. Never criticize a woman's clothing.

"So can I go see Minegishi?" asked Daughter

"You're leaving?" asked Son. There. They still got scared when they were separated. Or maybe it was Son who got scared when they were separated. Daughter had made friends with Minegishi, for reasons that Suzuki did not understand, and girls did mature faster than boys…maybe it was Son who had trouble separating from his sister. He didn't blame Son. Daughter was a very pleasant person to be around.

"If dad says yes then you can come to." Said Daughter. Suzuki didn't know if he would give her his permission. He didn't want her to go…but he also knew that he needed to encourage her to be more independent. Like she had said, before, she was already nine years old. Soon she would be ten and then eleven and then he would blink and she would be a grown woman. Even today he had almost expected her to still be the two year old he had met all those years ago.

"I don't want to. You guys are so boring together. All you ever do is read books and talk to each other. I can do that on my own." Said Son

"Don't talk to yourself, Son, it's a sign of madness." Said Suzuki with a sigh. That was the last thing that he needed, one of the children going mad, well madder….Daughter was fine. It was not a bad sign that she had no memory of what she had done to the Eighth Division. She was fine. He was fine, too. He also had trouble remembering what had happened when he lost control and blacked out…and he was not crazy. Even if people did say, when they thought that he wasn't listening, that he was crazy and Claw was just a pipe dream.

"Maybe I've gone crazy then." Said Son

"Please don't go crazy, Sho, I don't know what I would do if you ever went crazy." Said Daughter

"Hang out with Minegishi?" asked Son

"No. Well yes but I would still invite you to come along too. No matter how crazy you get you'll always be my little brother." Said Daughter

"What if I start running around naked and stuff?" asked Son

"I would still be your big sister." Said Daughter

"What if I killed and ate people?" asked Son

"Please don't." said Daughter

"But what if I did? What if tomorrow you opened the fridge and a whole bunch of people came out and they were dead and then blood spilled everywhere like in that movie we saw? What then?" asked Son. Suzuki shook his head. The things that the children watched on television.

"I would….I don't know. Be upset with you I guess…but I would still love you." Said Daughter. There was so much of Masami in her. That acceptance. She could give complete and total acceptance. Suzuki knew that he was not capable of that. He would have knocked Son into next week if he had been going around killing people for now reason. You never killed someone for no reason. That was just not what was done. Also you never ate people, that was dangerous, and also there was plenty of food out in the world.

"Even if it ate people?" asked Sho

"Um….yes? But please don't do that. I…I don't think that dad would let you do that." Said Daughter

"Your sister is right, I would not allow that." Said Suzuki. The things that these children came up with…when he took over the world he would have to do something about what they put on television. He would have to do something about a lot of things but television would be a priority since this was what the children spent their time watching. That was almost as bad as the films they watched staring mice with human intelligence. Disturbing.

And he was not the only one who felt like that.

Not that he was about to go and discuss that, or anything, with….with her. She had a name, he knew her name, but it was easier not to think of her name. He wished that he could have forgotten her name and her aura and that she even existed. Suddenly, as her aura passed near his, he felt very conscious of himself…and he didn't know why. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He did not feel like this.

"So can I go?" asked Daughter. Her aura was tucked in. Guarded. He didn't know why. She was a mystery but she was his favorite mystery. He wanted her to stay…but he would let her go. He hated when they disagreed, as rare as that was, and her growing independence from him and her little brother was something that he should not have been worried about.

He should not have been worried about anything.

"Are you coming with me, Sho?" asked Daughter as she stood up carefully. Son shook his head. His aura was fine. He wondered what Daughter was guarding herself from. He wondered what had her so on edge…not the same thing that had him on edge…and he was not on edge. He was normal. He was fine. Everything was fine.

"You guys go have fun being boring. I've got important stuff to build." Said Son. Daughter accepted that answer and started to leave. She opened the door with her powers…and normally he would have been happy about that display of powers…but she opened the door at the worst possible time…

"Oh my Goodness! I'm sorry Shigeko-chan." Suzuki looked down and pretended to be busy. He didn't know why he did it, just that it was something that he had to do. He had to look busy and not look up and move, above all else move, so he typed even though he was not making words but he couldn't stop because he just had to keep on moving…and he didn't know why….

"Miss Suzuki. I'm Miss Suzuki…and I'm sorry that I bumped into you. Is there something that I can help you with? My father is very busy right now." Said Daughter. She's carrying herself differently. He can sense her aura. She's imitating him, the way he spoke to the various people under him, the way he held himself…and there's an emphasis on the word 'father'…and also she's never referred to him by that title. He's 'dad'. He used to be 'daddy' but now he was 'dad'….and he wasn't sure if he was ready to be 'father' yet….or why he felt so irrational about the manner in which his Daughter referred to him as.

He did not understand himself sometimes.

"Oh it's nothing to worry yourself about Miss Suzuki…oh aren't you grown up? I just have to go over some figures with your father. What about you? Are you off on important business for your dad?" Suzuki kept on looking down. He looked down and he pretended to be busy and he kept on moving because he had to keep moving…and his mind was moving…so his body had to move…and he wasn't even making the beginnings of words…or maybe he was and he had just forgotten all of his Korean. That was plausible. For some reason he could barely remember his own name.

Because her aura was moving closer to his.

"No, I have to have tea and discuss literature with my friend. I'm going to go do that now. It was nice to see you again." said Daughter. He could barely hear their exchange over the rush of his own blood. He was fidgeting with the pens on his desk. He wished that Son had gone with, too, because he knew that he was setting the worst kind of example.

Power was nothing without control, as he had always told himself.

And he needed to get his powers and his emotions and his heartbeat under control. His thoughts, too, because they were racing. He hadn't felt like this since…he doesn't want to think about the last time he felt like this. All he could do was ride it out. What else was there to do? If he couldn't suppress an emotion, crush it into nothing, and then he could at least suppress what it was that he was feeling.

"Suzuki-San? Suzuki-san?" she was addressing him now. He forced himself to look up. Looking at her was sort of like the time he had challenged himself to stare into a lightbulb when he had been a child. It hurt. It was beautiful but it hurt. He needed to get himself back under control. She was there and she was talking to him so the best thing that he could have done was to answer…and he had to speak…

Speak.

Make words.

You know how to speak, Touichirou.

So do it.

"Yes?" asked Suzuki. Son was looking up at him now. He was so much harder to read than Daughter. She wore her emotions on her aura, Son wore his on his face, and Suzuki had never been good at reading faces. He hoped that Son couldn't read him. That would have been…he did not want to do that much explaining in one day…or ever.

"I asked if you made that." She gestured to him and for a moment he has no idea what she means…but then he remembers. He has the urge to shove the paperclip necklace Daughter made him under his shirt…but that would have just been him losing control…and he was not going to lose control. E kept his face impassive.

"No, my Daughter did." Said Suzuki. Normal. Be normal. You know how to be normal so be normal already Touichirou.

"Well she's a very talented artist." She said. Suzuki nodded. She went over some figures, he probably should have listened to that, but he couldn't. Not when it was taking every ounce of his being to keep acting normal. Not like he was about to lose control and turn his entire office upside down. Not like he needed to get up and walk around because all of this was…a lot.

He knew how he felt.

And he did not want to feel this way about anyone ever again.

He fidgeted with the necklace his Daughter made for him. It kept him grounded…where he should have been. Grounded and settled. In control. It kept him in control long enough to get back to that period of inactivity he had been agonizing over. He had even more trouble sitting still, and once again contemplated starting at least one fire and calling it a drill, but as much as he was loathe to admit it fidgeting with that ridiculous paperclip necklace helped.

There were periods of activity and inactivity. He had to get back to the inactivity part.


	93. Hanging Out and Talking Like an Adult

Mob was not a little kid anymore.

Which was why she was sitting in a Starbucks drinking something that was truly disgusting talking about books that she could barely understand and had to force herself to finish reading. She was not a little kid. Not all of her books needed pictures and not all of her drinks needed to be more sugar than liquid. Like the time she and Sho had made lemonade from scratch and put in so much sugar that it stopped dissolving. Even if it had been kind of good…but Mob was not a little kid anymore. She was nine years old now and nine was not a child…well it was….but not a small child.

"You know you don't have to drink that if you don't want to." Said Minegishi. This was either the high or low point of their life. Sitting in a Starbucks with a nine year old and watching said nine year old attempt to choke down a cup of black coffee and discuss a book that Minegishi only read because they were bored on a long plane ride. They had nothing to do with their time but hang out with a nine year old…

"I know." Said Mob as she took another sip. She was not little. She was not a little kid and she was friends with Minegishi and Minegishi was an adult and drank coffee and talked about books and therefore that was what Mob would do, too.

"Or torture yourself. Whatever. It's your coffee and you can do what you want with it." Said Minegishi. What was with this kid? She was in no way Suzuki's kid. One time Minegishi had seen him throw an entire pot of tea at one of the awakened because it had gone cold or was too weak or whatever Suzuki thought justified one throwing such a fit over a pot of tea.

But that nine year old was also going to inherit the Earth or whatever.

So really what they were doing was kissing up to their future boss. Well one of their future bosses. Suzuki may have been a sexist asshole but he was not stupid. There was no way that he was going to leave Claw to his son. He had might as well just out a dog in a suit and let it run Claw. No, this girl was their best bet.

All hopes for the future rested on a nine year old girl.

"I know that I can stop at any time but I don't want to be wasteful…and also I don't mind. This is good. This is very good…" said Mob. She wasn't lying. Good coffee tasted very bitter. Dad had said so. She had taken a drink of his coffee once when she was little and he said that it was good because it tasted so bad. That was the rule. If something tasted bad then it was good for you. Like grapefruit. Or medicine. Well she never took medicine, she never got sick, but she heard that it was just awful.

"Wasteful? You got a real kimono for your birthday. I don't think that you've got any money troubles." Said Minegishi. There had been a time in their life when they would have loved to have worn something so expensive…but that time had passed when they hit adulthood and realized that there were better things that a person could piss their money away on. Like books and liquor and lavender hair dye.

"I don't think that we do, I don't really ask, but I don't want to be wasteful. Mom, my mom, she always said not to be wasteful…but don't tell my dad that I was talking about my mom. We're not supposed to talk about her because she betrayed us by leaving." Said Mob

"You have a mother?" asked Minegishi. Who in the hell wanted a piece of THAT? Even at their most desperate they wouldn't have touched Suzuki with a ten foot pole. That guy. He wasn't unattractive but he wasn't attractive either. Well aside from the money and the power but it was not worth it to have to wake up next to him every single day.

"Yes. Her name was…is….Suzuki Masami. She was very nice. I miss her every day…but don't tell my dad I said that either." Said Mob. She expanded her aura out as if dad were right there ready to smack her over the head for talking about, even thinking about, mom. They weren't supposed to waste their time on traitors and mom was a traitor…even though the thought of her mom as a traitor left a taste in her mouth more bitter than the coffee she was trying to drink.

"I don't tell him anything. I, like most people, am not worthy of even breathing the same air as the great Suzuki Touichirou." Said Minegishi

"That's not true. You're a good person and a good friend and you can breathe whatever air you want to…but please just don't tell my dad that I was talking about my mom. He really hates it when we talk about her." said Mob

"Your secret is safe with me." Said Minegishi. They weren't about to go betraying the kid's trust. Also they weren't about to go and start a conversation with Suzuki. They had no idea why anyone would ever want to have a conversation with him. They had no idea how his children could even stand him.

"Ok. I knew I could trust you. You're my friend." Said Mob. She knew that she was smiling too much and that her aura was showing too much….but she was happy. She was so happy. She had never had anyone who would keep her secrets…aside from Sho…but she never had many secrets before.

"Yeah….I'm friends with a nine year old…hooray." Said Minegishi

"And I'm friends with an adult. We can be friends, right?" asked Mob. She didn't know if kids and adults could be friends. She didn't know the rules about friendship. For her whole life she had only been friends with Sho.

"You're Suzuki Shigeko. Who in the hell thinks that they can tell you what to do?" asked Minegishi. She had the potential to have been a real brat, but she wasn't. Minegishi wondered how Suzuki, overgrown child that he was, had managed to raise a kid like this. Minegishi still thought that she might have been adopted. It all fit. The fact that she looked pure Japanese, the way that her aura was a different color from her father and brother…if aural colors were inherited like that, the way that she was nothing like her father or brother…but Minegishi was not about to go off and voice those half-baked theories to his boss. No, that would not have gone over well at all.

"My dad." Said Mob. Dad was the only person who told her what to do. No other adult had ever been that way towards her since she had stopped going to school and mom had left. She was the one who told adults what to do, now, sometimes…and that was weird. Well it had been really weird but now it was less weird. She had gotten used to telling the Awakened what to do and dad sometimes even sent her to pass his orders along to other departments too. Mob always tried to be nice when she told people what to do. Not like how dad told people what to do. He was always kind of mean about it.

"Yeah. That'd be about right." Said Minegishi

"But he tells everyone what to do. He has to because he's the most powerful esper ever. He said so. He said that it's a terrible burden being the most powerful esper alive. That's why I'm glad that I don't have to inherit the world, I couldn't if I wanted to because I'm a girl, I don't think that I could tell everyone what to do. I don't even like telling people what to do now. Sho is always calling me bossy but I don't want to be." Said Mob

"Yup, that's Suzuki in a nutshell." Said Minegishi as they took a sip of their coffee. This kid was way too sweet for this world. Also this kid was probably adopted. Also Suzuki was a sexist asshole. So pretty much second verse same as the first.

"Yeah, that's how dad is." Said Mob

"I don't know how you can stand him. If he were my father I would have emancipated myself at the age of four." Said Minegishi

"What does emancipated mean?" asked Mob

"When you go to the courts and have yourself declared a legal adult. Best decision I ever made." Said Minegishi with a shrug.

"You did that when you were four?" asked Mob incredulously. Did that mean that Minegishi was an orphan? Did that mean that They didn't have any parents? The best characters in shows and books and movies and games were always orphans because they didn't have parents to tell them what to do and also the lack of parents really pushed the plot along and stuff. Mob was glad, though, that she was not an orphan. She was half an orphan because she didn't have a mom but she didn't want to be an all the way orphan. She loved her dad and brother and her mom, too, even if she was supposed to pretend that she had never had a mom in the first place.

"No, fifteen." Said Minegishi. They prayed that there were no follow up questions…but this was the kid. Of course there would be follow up questions.

"Why?" asked Mob after a moment. She had cycled through several questions before settling on that one. She hoped that she wasn't being nosy. She just wanted to know….even if it was none of her business. She knew that asking adults about the past was not ok, dad hit her sometimes when she asked about things like his parents and stuff, but she knew that Minegishi would never hit her so that was ok. Even if they were mad at her at least they wouldn't hit her.

"Because my dad was an asshole and my mom was an even bigger asshole. Maybe that why I'm such an asshole. Maybe it's genetic." Said Minegishi. That was the extremely abridged version of a very crappy life. A crappier life than Miss Suzuki had over there…or not. Minegishi didn't know. Suzuki was an asshole but he wouldn't just go and knock the kid around….would he? There was no point in it. The kid would only get stronger while he got weaker. That was how the natural ordered of things went. You got stronger while your parents got older and weaker and then, eventually, you could come back in your early twenties and make them pay for every single injustice they had wrought against you. Then you planted two trees and every year you went back to your childhood home and harvested the fruit and then just let it rot in front of you while you drank a nice warm sake and flipped through a good book.

"You're not an….you're not that. You're a very good person. I like you a lot." Said Mob. She didn't say bad words, dad said that there was no point to being crass like that and also it was unbecoming not just for a member of the Suzuki family but also for a girl, but she wasn't about to go around being bossy to her friend. She wasn't dad. He was the one who had to boss everyone around, not her.

"Yeah, I like you too. You're a good person Mob. Sweetest girl in the world." Said Minegishi. They picked up their book and hid behind it. They didn't do these cute bonding moments. So the kid had a similarly crappy life only without the economic uncertainty. Big freaking deal.

"Oh…my mom used to call me that. Sweet. She used to say that I was really sweet….that she wanted me to be really sweet." Said Mob

"But then you weren't so mom flew the coop and left you alone with Daddy Dearest?" asked Minegishi. As soon as they spoke they realized that they had said the wrong thing. The kid's eyes welled up with tears and the table began to shake. Right, don't piss off the second most powerful esper in the world and the spawn of the man who snapped a man's neck once for…Minegishi didn't even know.

"I-I guess…" said Mob. That was probably why mom had left…and this was why it was best that she didn't talk about mom. Because when she did she got sad. She didn't like to be sad and also…and also she didn't like to think about…about this…but she had been thinking about this. In trying not to think about her mom being gone she was, in fact, thinking about her mom being gone. Maybe if Mob had been better mom would have stayed. Maybe if she had done more to help take care of Sho or more to make dad happy then mom would have stayed….Mob didn't know. All she knew was that she was crying a little, now, and dad would be mad if he found out.

"See? Didn't I tell you that I was an asshole?" said Minegishi. They pulled their sleeve down over their hand and dried their tears. They had seem parents do this with their kids…not that their maternal instinct were finally going to kick in or anything like that. The kid just needed comfort, that was all, and it would do nobody no good to have that kid all upset like that.

"You're no an….you're not that word. You're a good person and my friend. I mean we're friends and…and you didn't mean to hurt my feelings. Because we're friends and friends don't hurt each other's feelings, right?" asked Mob

"I was out of line with that whole thing about your mom." Said Minegishi. Everyone had a line. Some people had several. Her father had more than most people. Mob was most certainly adopted. Suzuki would have put anyone who dared to upset him like that deep in the ground.

"No, you weren't. You're my friend and friends do not hurt each other's feelings. Brothers can hurt their sister's feelings but friends don't hurt each other's feelings." Said Mob. That may have just been wishful thinking on her part. She had seen friends on TV and they never set out to hurt each other…and she was friends with Sho and she had never once set out to hurt him. Sho had never set out to hurt her, either, he said. He just said words and they came out and he just had thoughts about hurting stuff and then it just happened. That was ok. It was ok so long as nobody set out to hurt anyone else.

"Right…." Said Minegishi. Was this a kid? Was this Suzuki's kid? They didn't know. They knew what they had been like as a kid, they had been a morose and vindictive little devil, but this kid….Mob was something else entirely.

"And we're still friends, right? Even though I lost control of my feelings and my powers a little bit?" asked Mob

"Yeah, we're besties." Said Minegishi. They said this sarcastically because, well, Mob could not have been serious. In what universe could a few tears and a slight loss of control be a friendship ending even? They could not begin to understand the kid, sometimes, or most of the times. It went both ways, too. She, as usual, seemed to have trouble with tones. Her eyes and her aura lit up like Christmas morning. Part of them really felt for the kid. They knew how it felt to be alone. They had spent a lot of time alone when they were a kid…of course they had chosen to be alone. Maybe they just rejected people before they could get close enough to reject them…or maybe they just didn't like people bothering them while they were trying to get through this life thing as fast as possible.

The kid was ok. Kids were ok. Minegishi wasn't about to run out and have two point five kids and a house with a white picket fence but this kid, right there, was ok.

"Um….can you have two best friends….besties? Because Sho is also my best friend." Said Mob. Wow. A best friend. She'd never had one of those who wasn't Sho before. What did best friends even do? She didn't know. She knew what she and Sho did but she and Sho were also brother and sister. That was why they spent almost all of their time together and played together and ate together and took baths together and dug to the Earth's core together and made forts together and stuff like that. What were she and Minegishi going to do together as best friends? If a person was even allowed to have more than one best friend.

"You can have unlimited best friends." Said Minegishi with a shrug. They told themselves that this was only good for them. That they did not need to watch what they said more carefully and that there was nothing wrong, this was not the low point of their life, being best friend with a nine year old.

Also that nine year old just happened to be the second most powerful esper alive. So there.

"Oh. I didn't know that. Ok." Said Mob. She was so happy. She was so happy, happy enough that she could feel…oh. She reached behind her and pulled her braids down. Her hair had started to float. She tucked her braids into her cat ears headband. Minegishi really was a good friend.

"Well you can so why not go out and make all the best friends you can?" asked Minegishi. The kid needed more friends. The kid needed to hang out with other people. Minegishi could feel an attachment forming…and that was not good. They had never been attached to anyone since they had been a child. Attachment left you vulnerable…and also Mob would be moving on soon. It wasn't like Suzuki to stay in one place for too long. General gossip was that he was sleeping with that annoying woman from finance….but that couldn't have been true. Well at first Minegishi had doubts about it but, apparently, some woman had voluntarily married Suzuki at some point…

"Um…I don't know a lot of people…and I'm not that good at talking to people…even if they're nice to me." Said Mob

"Really? Because when we hang out you can't seem to shut up." Said Minegishi

"Oh….I'm sorry if I talk too much. That's the problem that I have, I either talk too much or too little. Also I don't know how to make friends. I don't even know how I made friends with you. I have a lot of trouble talking to people…even when they're nice to me. Like that lady who was nice to me…I don't know why I'm always so mean to her…" said Mob. Sho thought that Pang-san was a nice lady. She came to dad's office at least once a day to talk to him…and at least once a day Mob had to take a walk. She didn't like how that lady was always so close to dad…and why dad's aura always got so weird when she was near. She was a nice lady though, even if she did talk to her and Sho like they were in pre-school…and she had never said or done anything mean…so Mob had no idea what was wrong with her. Maybe she was just bad socially. Dad said that some people were just bad socially but it was ok because when he ruled the world the he would be able to change the social rules completely.

"You? Mean to someone? Call a priest, it's the end of days." Said Minegishi

"I don't think that it's the end of the world…I think that there has to be demons and fire raining from the sky like in this movie me and Sho, I mean Sho and I, saw once. Also yes I can be mean without even realizing it. I just….I don't like the way she talks to dad and stuff. Like she doesn't say mean things but she stands really close and she says his name in a weird tone…and also she calls me Shigeko-chan instead of Miss Suzuki." Said Mob

"I thought you wanted to be called Mob?" asked Minegishi. Maybe they needed to get in on that betting pool. Apparently Pang from finance was into their not so benevolent leader. What was she after? The money? The power? Neither of them were worth dealing with Suzuki. Even if it was just sex Minegishi couldn't imagine it being anything other than short and to the point. The man only had two kids after all so, yeah, even his first wife hadn't been eager to get on that.

"I-I do but…but I don't want her to call me Mob. I want her to call me Miss Suzuki…and I don't know why." Said Mob

"You seriously don't know how you feel right now?" asked Minegishi

"….my mouth feels kind of bitter from all of this coffee." Said Mob as she smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth a couple of times. She was sticking to tea from now on. Adults drank tea. She wouldn't look like a little kid for drinking tea…right?

"No, I mean emotionally." Said Minegishi

"Dad says that I shouldn't let myself feel too many emotions or I might lose control of my powers." Said Mob. She wondered if it was the same for everyone….or it probably wasn't since Minegishi didn't seem to get it.

"…and another piece of the puzzle falls into place." Said Minegishi. So that was why Suzuki always looked like he was either on his way to a funeral or sucking on a lemon flavored dick.

"Huh?" asked Mob

"Jealous. You feel jealous that this woman is trying to take your mom's place." Said Minegishi. That may have been the wrong thing to say since the table jumped. Every table jumped. People began to look around in wonder. Someone said something about an earthquake.

"Wh-what do you mean?" asked Mob. Maybe she needed to get her hearing checked. There was no way that anyone would ever think that they could try and….she had heard wrong. That was it. /she had heard wrong and now Minegishi was going to repeat themselves and it was all going to be just fine.

"Obviously this woman is into your dad and she's trying to…um….be his girlfriend." Said Minegishi. There was no child friendly way of saying 'she's trying to get ahead by getting in his pants' so for once Minegishi held their tongue. They were not prepared to explain the horrible truth of the facts of life to Mob in the middle of a Starbucks on a cold spring afternoon.

"She wouldn't." said Mob. She sounded…mean…when she said that. Well she felt mean. She had a mom, her name was Suzuki Masami, and she did not need another one. Girls were not allowed to like dad. If she was allowed to boss adults around then she was making a rule. No girls were ever allowed to like her dad. Ever. End of discussion. They weren't even allowed to give him candy on Valentine's Day…or maybe they could since dad hated candy. She didn't know. She was just making this all up ad she went.

"Hey, hey, it's none of my business or yours, you know. I could be wrong, I don't exactly hang out with the ladies in finance and gossip." Said Minegishi. Yeah, there was the Suzuki in her. Minegishi knew that look and that aura well. That was the 'someone's got it coming' look. Poor Pang from finance. Well that was what she got for trying to climb he company ladder by climbing into the boss' lap.

"She wouldn't….because nobody is allowed to like my dad like that. Girls are not allowed to like my dad." Said Mob as she tried to keep her powers and her feelings under control. She was not getting a new mom and dad was not getting a new girlfriend…or wife…and that was the end of it.

"Under penalty of torture?" asked Minegishi. She was kind of cute when she got all fired up like this. She was like a hissing kitten. A coffeed up hissing kitten.

"No…um….I don't know what the penalty would be…because I've never given anyone a penalty before but nobody is allowed to like my dad like that….because it's kind of sort of gross….really gross…and um…um…I don't know!" said Mob. It really was gross, the thought of some girl liking dad like that. Girls were not allowed to like dad like that and dad was not allowed to like any girl but mom like that. He and mom were still married. He still wore his wedding ring. He and mom were still married. The ring never came off because marriage was forever…unless you got divorced….but mom and dad were not divorced.

Her head hurt.

Her stomach hurt.

And her heart was beating really fast.

"Yeah…no more coffee for you." Said Minegishi as they slid Mob's cup away from her. As cute as this was that was still the most powerful esper on Earth losing it. Minegishi could not let that happen. Especially after what may or may not have happened to the Eighth Division thanks to either her, her brother, or both of them.

"Right….no more coffee because….because I think that it's making my heart beat funny. Like when I drank a whole pot of tea. Um…let's…do you have any good books to recommend? Like the last one?" asked Mob. She was not going to lose control over her powers. She was in control and she was not going to lose control over her emotions. She was going to sit and have fun with her friend before dad expected her back. That was what she was going to do and…and that was just the way that it was going to be.

She was in control.

Because she was not a little kid anymore.


	94. Midnight and Independence

It was midnight.

It felt like it, too. Mob had been in this country for long enough that her body clock had adjusted to the change in time. Sometimes when she got go to a new place she would wake up in the middle of the night because her body still thought that she was in a different time zone. That was why she woke up in the middle of the night sometimes but now was not one of those times.

"Sho? What are you doing up so late?" asked Mob. Sho was using his powers to strip his bed. He might have wet the bed again or he might have been eating in bed again, too, and ended up making a mess. Or maybe he had been drawing in bed and got ink or whatever everywhere. Either way she, of course, would have helped him.

"Nothing. Go back to bed." Said Sho. He didn't know what was with him. He hardly even drank any water before bed but it had still happened. Maybe it had less to do with the fact that he hardly drank water and more about the fact that he'd had another bad dream. This always happened when he had bad dreams….and he had no idea why he'd had another bad dream. Dad had been so nice to him lately…or at least not mean. Also the time with the bad place was over, he had gotten his powers, so there was no need to wake up after dreams where he couldn't see or breathe and everything hurt….

"Let me help you." Said Mob as she sat up. She tried to grab his bedding with her powers but he held it tight. She knew that if they had been playing normal tug of war he would have won, he was a lot stronger than her, but this was powers tug of war and when it came to powers she could have easily won…

And maybe she should have.

Because he needed her help and that was her job, to help him, and to take care of him. That was what dad had told her to do. Dad had told her to take care of her little brother so that was what she was going to do. Sho needed her. Even if he was always telling her that she was bossy and stuff he did need her. She could have easily stripped his bed and ran him a bath and then made his bed again and dad wouldn't have even known. Sho was making so much noise that, of course, dad was going to hear him and wake up and then they'd both be in trouble. She didn't want that.

Neither of them wanted that.

"No. I told you to go back to bed." Said Sho. She was always bossing him around and treating him like a baby. Dad said that she was supposed to take care of him but he was not a baby. He could take care of himself. That was why dad was showing him how to do so much stuff. Dad trusted him to learn how to run Claw but big sis didn't even trust him enough to strip his own bed.

"You're making a lot of noise. Dad might wake up." Said Mob

"No I'm not and no he won't." said Sho

"How do you know?" asked Mob

"Because I just know, ok? There's no way that someone could wake up. I'm barely making any noise. I'm like a mouse or a rat or a shrew or a vole or some other tiny animal that doesn't make a lot of noise when it moves around." Said Sho. She never trusted him. She always thought that she knew best. Well he knew best about some things, too. Dad said so. Like when it came to drawing and stuff dad said that he knew best…and that had been the nicest thing that dad had ever said to him….and even dad knew that Sho was not a baby anymore. Why couldn't big sis see that?

"Well I woke up." Said Mob

"Well, duh, you're sitting right there. Dad's all the way down the hall. He won't hear me and even if he did he won't wake up. He's super tired because of the fight today." Said Sho as he yanked his blankets and sheets out of her telekinesis and stuffed them down into the hamper for the Awakened to deal with later.

"You and dad had a fight? When? Are you hurt?" asked Mob as she got out of bed as fast as she could. She turned the lights on with her powers and looked him over. He tried to squirm away as she pulled his shirt up over his head. He didn't have any new injuries…and of course he wouldn't have had any new injuries. Fukuda had probably fixed him up already.

"Get off of me! I'm fine!" said Sho as big sis pulled his shirt up over his head. He was just about to take his own clothes off, he was covered in pee after all, but now he wasn't going to because she had tried to take his clothes off for him. She had pulled his shirt up over his head and was poking at his chest now. He was not a baby. He could undress himself.

"Do you feel ok? Dad….why was he mad at you? Mad enough to fight?" asked Mob. She shouldn't have left Sho and dad alone. She shouldn't have thought that it would be ok to leave them alone just because they had been getting along well lately. She always needed to be there to keep Sho and dad from fighting. She shouldn't have wanted to spend time with her friend or-

"He didn't fight with me. He fought with some guy." Said Sho. Big sis had been away when that happened. That had been Sho's idea. She hated fighting. Dad said that it wasn't her fault that she was weird like that, no, all girls were like that. They all hated fighting and that was why, when dad told him how the Scars got their scars, Sho suggested that dad send big sis away. So that was what dad did. Big sis hung out with her friend doing boring stuff like talking and reading while Sho got to watch the coolest fight ever.

And it had been cool.

Not scary. There hadn't been anything scary at all about it. He didn't know why Fukuda had told him not to look. He had looked. He had watched the whole time. Dad didn't even have to hit that guy, not like he hit Sho, and ok that part had been scary….because for some reason Sho had been expected dad to hit him…but dad hadn't. He hadn't hit anyone. It had been a powers only fight.

Sho had never had a powers only fight before.

And he was not about to start now. Even though big sis was being so bossy and annoying. He pushed her with his powers sometimes but he…he was never going to fight her the way that dad fought people. The she would have ended up with a big ugly scar on her face. Or even a bunch like the tiny old man had. He just hadn't quite no matter how many times dad told him to submit. That gravity control thing had been cool, though.

"When? Which guy?" asked Mob. She didn't remember…but she hadn't been around much that day. She had been hanging out with Minegishi and running errands for dad. She had seen his aura and someone else's but she hadn't asked….and maybe she had. Or maybe not. She didn't want dad to be fighting with Sho or anyone but she couldn't just outright tell him what to do. She could distract him or tell him her opinion if he asked for it.

"Some Scar. Did you know what was how they got their scars? They fight dad for power and he kicks their butts so bad that they get those big, ugly, scars." Said Sho

"Oh…" said Mob. She didn't like how happy Sho was about that. She didn't like how happy Sho got when there was fighting. Dad said that boys just liked fighting, that was how they were, but Mob wasn't sure about that. Mom, back when she was around, was always telling Sho not to fight. She wanted him to be gentle and she wanted Mob to be sweet…and she was doing her best. She was doing the best she could but her best wasn't good enough when dad was going around beating people up for no good-

Control.

Power is nothing without control.

Conceal, don't feel.

"Stop freaking out. Dad didn't kill him or anything. Besides, he was the one who asked to fight dad. He came all the way from Japan just to take a shot at dad and he lost. Even with his cool gravity control powers he lost." Said Sho

"Oh….ok. I guess….I guess that's ok." Said Mob

"Yeah, it is. It was more than ok. I wish you didn't get so weird when there's fighting. It was so cool! Like, the guy could make these black holes and dad was all 'oh, you can manipulate gravity, neat' but then he undid the whole thing! He said that you have to have very good control to mess around with gravity and stuff but I bet that I could. He said that he would take me someplace deserted so I could practice without killing everyone around me." Said Sho. He wouldn't lose control and kill everyone. He was the Awakened Child, he had better control than that. That was what everyone called him 'The Awakened Child' which was way better than what they called big sis. They only called her 'Miss Suzuki' because that was all that she was. Being born with her powers, being born right, wasn't nearly as cool as living through being awakened. Dad had even said so.

He said that it was impressive that Sho hadn't died.

Which was kind of scary, because Sho had figured that dad would have kept him from dying, but if dad had been there to keep him from dying then there never would have been any danger and he would have never awakened his powers and then stuff wouldn't be as good as it was now. Life was pretty awesome now. He and dad were mostly ok now. Dad still said that he was annoying and stuff but he also let Sho hang around and taught him stuff, too, stuff that big sis didn't get to learn because she was a girl. So, really, it had all worked out and big sis had nothing to freak out about.

"You probably could…mess with gravity I mean…but I wish that you didn't think that fighting people was cool. There's nothing cool about hurting people." Said Mob

"I never said that hurting people was cool. I said that the fight was cool." Said Sho. That was just something that she couldn't understand because she was a girl. Hurting people was not fun. The act of fighting was fun. Girls were just weird like that. He wished that she had been his big brother. Then, maybe, they would have been able to understand each other…but then again if she had been his big brother instead of his big sister dad would have…dad would have had no reason to have had Sho in the first place. You needed at least one boy and one girl in a family, dad had said, so have an even set. You had a girl to take care of you and a boy to succeed you. If dad already had a boy then he would have had no reason to have another one.

He was happy with a big sister instead of a big brother…even if she was hard to understand and also the bossiest person in whatever country they happened to find themselves in.

"But fighting IS hurting people, Sho, it is." Said Mob. She didn't like it when people got hurt. Powers were not for hurting people with. Mom had said so. Dad had also said, when they were little, that an ant did not have a quarrel with a boot. That meant that they weren't supposed to go stepping on ants for no good reason. They were not supposed to use their powers to fight people who were weaker than them. It was…it just felt wrong to Mob. Very wrong.

"No it's not. Fighting is cool moves and powers and stuff like that. Hurting people is just….making people feel bad. There's a difference. A big difference." Said Sho. He spoke slowly and clearly like he was talking to someone who didn't speak good Japanese.

"Then why did you wet the bed?" asked Mob

"What?! I never told you that I-" asked Sho

"You're all wet and you smell like pee and you're stripping your bed at midnight, I can tell that you wet the bed, little brother. You only wet the bed when you have bad dreams and a lot of the time when you have bad dreams it's because something happened during the day." Said Mob

"….I wet the bed for no reason at all…" said Sho quietly. He did not have a bad dream because of the super awesome fight that he had just seen. He had a bad dream because….because that was the thing that his brain had decided to do to him. That was all. Also he drank way too much water before bed. Yeah, the water was probably the real reason that he had wet the bed.

"Oh….that doesn't make a lot of sense but I'll believe you. Now come on, I'll draw you a bath and then-" said Mob as she used her powers to get new pajamas out of the drawer for Sho. Sho crossed his arms and turned his back to her. She could see his tree, the tree shaped scar on his back, and she wanted nothing more than to reach out and trace it's roots. She didn't, of course, because she knew that it would just make him mad. It didn't hurt him, she never would have done anything to hurt him even on accident, but he just did not having it touched. It was so pretty…even if he did have to be in a lot of pain to get it.

She should have been the one who ended up with that tree.

And not just because it was pretty. It was because you had to go through a lot of pain to get it. She didn't remember much from that day but she remembered how much it hurt….to know that Sho was hurt….and how powerless she had felt. Well she was not powerless now. She was going to take care of him whether he liked it or not. That was her job, to take care of him.

"You don't need to draw me a bath. I'm not a baby, I can make my own bath, and I'm not going to take a bath anyway." Said Sho. He kicked his pajama pants off and tossed them in the laundry hamper. He took his new pajamas from her. He could have picked them out on his own. He knew how to take care of himself. He did this on his own all the time. She was usually with dad, anyway, so she didn't even know what he did….but she still should have been able to just…to just know that he wasn't a baby anymore. A little kid anymore. Even dad knew that he wasn't a little kid anymore.

"Sho, you have to take a bath. You're covered in pee. You could get sick and either way you don't smell good. Come on, I'll run you a shower and-" said Mob. She couldn't let him out of her sight. He might have ended up waking dad up. Dad minded when Mob woke him up, but not too much, but he got super upset when Sho woke him up. Sho and dad may have gotten along better than usual but they still weren't as good together as dad and Mob were.

"Big sis! I can run my own shower, ok? We don't have to take every single bath of our lives together! I mean shower….or bath…thing with soap and water! I'm not a little baby, I can run my own shower. This happens to me a lot and I can take care of this all by myself. Ok? Can't you just get off of my back for five seconds?" asked Sho. He wanted to push her…but he didn't. He wouldn't. That wouldn't have been fighting, that would have been hurting her, and he hated hurting her. He loved her. Even if she was annoying and bossy he still loved her.

"Oh….ok. I just…if you woke dad up he would be mad at you. If I woke him up he would just be mad at me….and I don't mind it if dad is mad at me. He never gets as mad at me as he does at you." Said Mob

"Dad's hardly mad at me anymore. Calm down already. I'm not a kid anymore, big sis, and me and dad hardly ever fight." Said Sho with a wave of his hand. She was all worried over nothing. Sho knew that things would get better if he got his powers. Things did get better, it just took time, but now he and dad were doing better than they ever had before.

Big sis couldn't see it.

That was because she had her own stuff going on. Maybe it was like dad was always saying. He and big sis weren't little kids anymore. They were old enough to not only do things for themselves but also for him. They were going to be grownups soon. They were going to be grownups and dad said that they had to practice for that now. That was why dad taught him one thing and big sis had to run errands for him and stuff. They weren't kids anymore and not only did that mean that Sho could help dad out but, also, he could run his own baths and stuff!

Why couldn't he have had a little sister instead of a big sister?

"Ok….I guess…but please be careful. I don't want anything bad to happen to you, little brother, because I love you." Said Mob

"Yeah, yeah, yeah I love you too. Just go back to bed, ok? I'll see you in the morning." Said Sho. He didn't want her to be upset. He didn't want anyone to be upset. He wished that she hadn't woken up. She slept too lightly. She had always slept too lightly. Maybe it was time that they had their own rooms…

Nope.

Showering on his own was one thing but sleeping on his own was another thing entirely. They weren't little kids anymore but….but even grownups shared rooms so this was ok and not babyish at all. He wasn't afraid of the dark or anything like that but….but he couldn't sleep alone. He just couldn't.

"Ok…..goodnight, Sho." said Mob softly. She waited until Sho was out of their room before she climbed back into bed. She reached over with her powers and made his bed with new bedding. She could at least do that for him. Even if he wanted to do more on his own…without her…and they had been together for their entire lives…well his entire life. There had been a whole year of her life that had taken place without her little brother…

They had never taken a bath separately before.

But a shower was different. A shower was different because…because it was not a bath. A bath was something that could be shared but a shower could not. Technically you were supposed to scrub down and then take a bath, that was the way other people did, but mom had never bathed them like that. She said that her house growing up had been more western so it was a western bathroom and that was how she and Sho were used to taking baths…even if dad said that it was gross to just jump into the tub like that. Maybe she should have scrubbed Sho down before…because he had been kind of gross…

She needed to take care of Sho.

But it was hard taking care of someone who didn't want to be taken care of. Dad said that they were older now, eight and nine, and that was why they were old enough to come to work with him now. Back when they had been six and seven they had been old enough to go on trips with him. What would happen when they were nine and ten? Ten and eleven? Eleven and twelve? Mob didn't know. She didn't know but she did know that no matter how old they got she would never stop taking care of her little brother.

And also midnight was late.

And she was tired.

So she closed her eyes and went to sleep…even if she hadn't wanted to….to stay up and wait for Sho to come back….

It was midnight. Midnight was late. She fell asleep.


	95. Just a Normal Day

It was a normal day.

"Who are we fighting today, dad?"

Son was practically jumping up and down. Suzuki didn't know what he was so excited about. That had barely been a fight. Once he figured out how to undo the gravity control ability it had ended quickly. He had barely even taken any damage. It was mostly annoying, honestly, because that Scar hadn't known when to quit. He would have shown Son a real fight if he could, that Shimazaki or even Minegishi had been pretty eventful, but he was not about to go calling people into his office just to fight them.

Well I was something in his power to do but he wasn't going to.

Because as much as he wanted to fight someone, as much as he wanted to show his Son what a real fight was, he wasn't about to do something as stupid as disrupting everyone's work. No, that would have been just terrible for productivity. Besides, he didn't exist to entertain Son…even if it was nice that Son was finally taking an interest in something other than drawing pictures and quarrelling with his older sister. He probably would have quarreled with her again if given half the chance. If she hadn't been sent off. She should have returned by now. She was probably sidetracked. She would come back. She always came back. She always would come back. She was Daughter.

"First of all there is no 'we'. You are eight years old and nobody is going to be proving themselves against you. The very thought is absurd. You're only eight years old." Said Suzuki looking up from his work. Son had both hands on his desk and was jumping up and down, practically, and caused several loose things from his desk. He caught a rolling pen with his powers and put it back in the pen holder. Son was undeterred. There was something to admire in his tenacity. There was also something annoying in it as well.

"I know that I'm eight." Said Sho

"There. Now you understand." Said Suzuki

"No, I don't." said Sho

"What's not to understand? I thought that I made myself perfectly clear. You are not going to be fighting anyone. You're too young." Said Suzuki. The Scars proved themselves against him, not his Son, because to be asked to prove themselves against an eight year old boy…it would have been an insult. He'd might as well have them fight Daughter while he was it. Not that he ever would. She was both too unstable and too delicate for something like that.

"But you even said that I was as strong as most adults." Said Sho. If he was as strong as an adult then why couldn't he fight like one too? It wasn't fair. Dad still thought that he was weak. For all of his talk of Sho getting older and being able to handle more and stuff like that dad still thought that he was a little kid. What was even the point of going through that whole awakening thing if dad was just going to treat him like a baby?

"Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that you are not an adult." Said Suzuki. He wondered if he had been like this as a child. Probably. There had been few people in the world to tell him no. Though he remembered that he had at least obeyed his parents for the most part. Of course that had changed once he reached adolescence…but Son was nowhere near that age. He was only eight years old. If anything Daughter was closer to adolescence…which may have been why she had been distancing herself from him lately…but that meant nothing. That was the normal course of things. Daughter would distance herself from him and Son would fight him tooth and nail for things that were just not going to happen.

"But why does that matter? If I'm just as strong as an adult-" said Sho. Dad wouldn't have been like this if he had been big sis. Dad would have been all about her fighting. He still liked her best. Even though being awakened meant more than being born with your powers, because of how much it hurt and stuff, he still thought that she was…she was better than him…

And she wasn't even there.

Dad had sent her away. She had to tell something to someone at some place for some reason. Dad was always sending her off to do things. Sho helped dad with the things that he could do from right there. For when he got older, dad said, even though he never said how much older Sho had to get. He was already older. He was eight and had been eight for a while. Dad was still treating him like he was seven in some ways….but that was just how dad was….because Sho was not and would never be as good as big sis….

"Because you are not an adult yet, Son, and you never will be with that attitude. I would never ask you to do something as absurd as fight a grown adult. First of all they have to prove themselves against me, not you, because Claw is not yours yet. When you're a grown man and Claw is yours then you can allow as many people to prove themselves against you as you like. That time is not now and you are going to do as you're told and let this matter drop. Do I make myself clear?" asked Suzuki. He did not want to quarrel with Son. He didn't enjoy it, for one thing, and Son was starting to fight back, too. Son was no match for him, no man could be his equal let alone a little boy, but he still did not like fighting with the Boy. He could have gotten hurt and it was just stupid to hurt his own Son. Fukuda had, well he had overstepped, but he had said that since he only planned on having the one Son it would have been in his best interests not to damage the Son he had.

"You wouldn't say the same thing if it was big sis who was asking you." Said Sho. He crossed his arms and sat back down on his spot on the floor. His drawing stuff was all on the ground around him. He had been drawing with charcoal. He had been drawing a city with a dome on it, he and dad had been talking about that a few days ago, but he didn't want to keep drawing it now. He just wanted to sit there and cross his arms and kick, too, while he was at it.

"Stop that." Said Suzuki. Son was older, an older child, but still a child. He acted as a child did. Daughter was a child too but she almost never acted as a child did. Maybe it was because girls matured faster than boys. He'd heard that somewhere before. Girls matured faster than boys. Or maybe it was Masami's influence. He didn't know. He did know, however, that Son was annoying sometimes.

"You never answered my question." Said Sho

"You never asked one." said Suzuki. He didn't even look up at Son. Let him sulk. He could sulk all he wanted to. He could sulk for the rest of his life. Suzuki didn't care. Suzuki was not going to go and beg his Son not to act like a child. He couldn't help it. It was instinctual. Children were such children sometimes.

"Yes it did. I asked you if you would say the same thing to big sis." Said Sho

"No, you never asked a question. You made a statement, an incorrect one not worth justifying, and I said nothing." Said Suzuki

"That's the same as asking a question." Said Sho

"No, it isn't." said Suzuki. He didn't know how he had gotten into this fight with his Son. He didn't much want to be fighting with Son. Son was…he was annoying…he was annoying and underfoot and a lot of things…but he had been worse in the past. This was hardly a fight, anyway, and even if he could have ended it he wouldn't.

Because he felt Daughter's aura.

She had left his immediate range. He could have looked for her but he didn't want to. That would involve spreading his aura out and if he did that then he would feel literally everyone within his radius. He had been told, before, that it felt off putting. Not that he cared about being off putting. He knew that he could be off putting, he had been called creepy for his entire life, and he also knew that nobody in their right mind would call him creepy again….so he could be as off putting as he wanted to be…

But social rules were meant to be followed.

"Fine. Would you say the same thing to big sis if she asked to fight the next future Scar?" asked Sho through gritted teeth. Dad knew what he meant, he was just being a jerk as usual.

"Your sister would never ask that of me and you know it. She has an aversion to violence." Said Suzuki. The day Daughter asked to fight some upstart esper…well he would have been proud, actually, and then he would have had Fukuda or someone check her for signs of insanity. That would have been so out of character for her…but he would have been proud….but he would never ask that of her. At least not yet. They never even sparred together. Maybe it was her gender or her age or Masami's influence. It didn't matter. Daughter was a little girl, he could excuse her aversion to violence, it would have been much worse if she had been a boy.

He thanked whoever was listening that he hadn't had two boys.

Because then they would have killed each other long ago. Even now Son was unusually violent with his sister. Suzuki wondered where that had come from. He never went around just starting fights and neither had Masami. Maybe that was just some inborn trait of Son's that had appeared at random. Son was…Son was his Son…and sometimes he could be a bigger mystery than Daughter.

"But if she did I know you would say 'yes'….because you always say 'yes' to her….and it isn't fair." Said Son

"Don't exaggerate. I don't always say 'yes' to your sister." Said Suzuki. Honestly. If anything Son had much more freedom than Daughter did. Daughter was always stuck to his side, or she had been until lately, and she had always been so….fearful? Yes, he would apply that word to her. That was why she clung to him. That was why she climbed into his bed and cling to him. She was afraid of the world, maybe, because of how overstimulating it was. How it made it so easy to lose control…or maybe he was just projecting. She was a mystery to him and always would be and maybe there was no point in trying to puzzle her out.

"Then why did you let her go?" asked Sho. When he asked to go dad always made him say where he was going and to warn him not to be underfoot. He could just send big sis out with something to do and she could come back whenever and go wherever and…and that just wasn't fair. Dad never cared what she did. He let her do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. Probably because he liked her best and he always would.

"I didn't 'let' her go, I told her to go. I had something for her to do and I sent her to do it. Her tasks are different from your tasks. You have your own things to learn how to do. I don't understand where this is coming from at all." said Suzuki. Son was still sitting and still sulking. His drawings laid abandoned. That was a pity. He had started working with charcoal and his drawings were, as always, very good.

"So if I was just gone for hours and hours then you wouldn't mind at all?" said Sho even though he knew full well that dad wouldn't care if he was gone for hours and hours. He could have walked right out the door and off into the city never to be seen again and dad wouldn't even care. He only cared about big sis. He had always only cared about big sis. At least that was what it had always felt like.

"Your sister has not been gone for hours and hours." Said Suzuki. So much hyperbole. Children. Did they always have to be so very childish?

"It feels like it." Said Sho

"Well it hasn't been. Now stop this. It's tiresome." Said Suzuki. Son was less tiresome than he had been when he was small but he was still very tiresome. What he wouldn't have given to have had Daughter back at his side…and she had been gone for some time…but it's wrong for him to anxious. She's Daughter. She's fine. She was stronger than every other esper alive barring him. Besides, he always had eyes on her. The Awakened were everywhere and they would not lose track of her….not like Masami…because Daughter was an esper. Her aura was so bright that even at this distance he was able to feel her. He didn't know exactly where she was but he could still feel a vague sort of awareness of her.

"…whatever…" said Sho. He went back to drawing. Whatever. He didn't care. He was going to draw. Dad could feel however he wanted to and he could think whatever he wanted. Sho didn't care. He had stuff to do. Drawings to do. That was what he was good at. Dad had even said that his drawings were good. He didn't think that this drawing was very good. Charcoal smeared. The lines weren't very clean. Clean lines were better. It was easier to see what it was that you were supposed to be drawing. He didn't even fully know what it was that he was even drawing. It had started up as a room. He didn't know which room.

Maybe it was his room.

He hadn't been in his room for so long. Maybe it wasn't his room. This room only had one bed. His room had two beds in it. One for him and one for big sis. That was how it always was. This wasn't his room that he was drawing. It was a room. The walls of the room weren't straight. The lines couldn't be shaky like this. When the lines were shaky then the effect of depth was ruined. But the lines were shaky because charcoal was terrible for drawing with and he never should have tried this. He never should have tried this and he should have just stuck to pencils and now he had to start all over and there was no point because it was always going to suck and then-

"It's very nice." Said Suzuki. He craned his neck over to see what Son was scribbling at. Some attempt at abstraction. He didn't understand abreaction, or most art, but he did know that it looked nice. Son was drawing with bits of charcoal. Messy but it created a nice light and dark effect.

"You're just saying that….you always say that." Said Sho. The picture in his hands floated up in the air and over to dad's desk. Sho didn't look. He didn't need to. He knew what dad was doing. Dad sometimes took his drawings and stuck them up on the wall with tacks. Sho didn't understand why. That wasn't even his best work. That was mostly just stuff that he either discarded or wasn't even finished with.

"I know I do. That's because I enjoy your work." Said Suzuki as he tacked up his Son's drawing. These really were very good. He had these up in a few of his offices. The ones that he had visited with the children. He didn't know much about art but he would rather have had art from his own flesh and blood than from some long dead stranger. He didn't care about technique or composition or any of that. He just knew that he liked things that looked nice and Son's drawings looked very nice.

"You just say that to make me feel better….or whatever." Said Sho. Dad just said things like that to make him feel better because when he got upset he was 'annoying' and 'tiresome' and all of that. Dad didn't like it when he acted up. Dad didn't like…he didn't like anything. Most of anything, anyway, it seemed like.

"No. I don't lie. I don't waste my time with lies." Said Suzuki. He didn't understand his child one bit. Why would he lie? What would he have to gain? Son was, well, Son. He had talent, he knew he had talent, so why would he think that his father would lie to him about the talent that he had been honing for his entire life? He could work hard and he did work hard so why would he think so poorly of himself. Was this really his child? Suzuki had never felt poorly and lowly about himself even once in his life.

"Ok, you don't lie. Sure." Said Sho. Dad lied. Dad said that mom was a traitor and stuff because she left. Mom was not a traitor…because she was mom. Dad even made some dumb rule about how they weren't supposed to talk about mom or even remember that they had ever had a mom….and it was hard…and sometimes Sho just wanted to take dad and yell at him to just…to just stop it!

"Good. I'm glad you understand." Said Suzuki. Well that had been rather painless. Good. Son was coming around. Son was coming around and that was good. Maybe this would end up being a low stress day. This was one of those periods of long inactivity. The sorts of times in which he would have been long back at the family home. But he was never going back to the family home so he had no other choice but to work, to find something to do.

He was a bit like Son in that regard.

Son had an inability to be still. He always had to be running or jumping or climbing or drawing or quarreling. Suzuki was the same way. He always needed to be occupied by something. Ever since he was a child he had always been consumed by work. Not school work, no, but instead the world he would build when he grew up. The world made by an esper for espers. A world where he didn't have to be alone. Not that he was alone. He was never alone. He was always surrounded by his children after all.

His children.

Daughter was getting closer. He could feel her aura and it felt….jittery? Jittery was the best word for it. He was, for a moment, anxious. Had something startled her? Frightened her? But what in the world could have frightened her? She was so strong…but she was still just a little girl. She wasn't like Son. Son was a fighter. Daughter was anything but. That was the difference between boy children and girl children. Men and women, too, when he thought about it. The opposite sex was just that, opposite, and it was a wonder that the human race had managed to progress as far as it did. He wondered if he would ever be able to understand his Daughter…or his Son…or anyone for that matter. Not that anyone….not that he had to understand anyone. He understood himself. That was what mattered.

"Hi. I have coffee." Said Mob as she walked through the door. She sat down next to Sho and passed a coffee to her brother and dad. Minegishi said that if she drank enough coffee she would learn to like it. It would, eventually, taste good. Well it didn't taste good and her heart was beating funny but at least she'd had fun with her friend…and she even had another super thick book to read in a language that she barely understood so….good?

"Yes….you do." Said Suzuki as he was passed a warm cup of coffee. He preferred tea but anything worked when he was tired…and he was somewhat tired. He didn't know what had gotten him this tired. Or maybe he did. Maybe it had been Son. He was tiring, so tiring, dealing with Son.

"Why do you have coffee?" asked Sho as big sis at down next to him. She was kind of squirmy. She kept on playing with her skirt and she was even making his papers rock back and forth.

"Because I do." Said Mob. There was no reason for it, not really, no big reason anyway. That was what she did. She went and had coffee with her friend because that was what she wanted to do. She didn't even mind that it taster terrible or made her heart beat funny. This was fine and she was fine. Really.

"Should you be drinking coffee?" asked Suzuki. She seemed….jittery and agitated. Children weren't mean to have coffee, right? Well she did drink tea, black tea, and that was caffeinated…and she did drink a lot of soft drinks too…but wouldn't coffee stunt her growth?

"You never said that I wasn't allowed to." Said Mob

"We can't have coffee, we're kids." Said Sho

"We do a lot of things that kids aren't allowed to do. We don't go to school and we stay up late and eat junk food all the time and play unlimited videogames and stuff like that." Said Mob

"That's true….but coffee is for grownups. Also you're acting weird." Said Sho

"Well dad never said that I couldn't. Right dad?" asked Mob. She needed to move. She needed to get up and move but also sit still and also make her heart stop beating so fact but not with her powers because she might have ended up accidentally killing herself if she did something like that. She just wanted this feeling to stop but she knew that it would stop in time. All of her feelings eventually stopped in time.

"You can have all the coffee you want." Said Suzuki. He didn't much know why she wanted to drink coffee but the only reason he could think to be opposed to it was the fact that she would stunt her growth…but part of him wanted her to stay small forever so her stunting her growth was fine by him.

"I had four cups." Said Mob quickly. She didn't want to have four cups of coffee but Minegishi kept on getting refills so she kept on getting refills and then one refill was another and another and then Minegishi had to cut her off because she was making things float and stuff.

"That….is a truly excessive amount of caffeine, Daughter." Said Suzuki. He wondered if that much caffeine was dangerous for a child. He truly had no idea. The only thing he knew was that they couldn't have any alcohol or else they would end up with brain damage. Caffeine was…was that dangerous? He didn't know. He'd see how this turned out.

"I think so too. Also it tasked bad." Said Mob

"Then why did you drink four cups of it?" asked Sho. Big sis was weird sometimes. Everyone knew that when something was poisonous it warned you with its bad taste. That was why mom said to never eat the berries that grew at the park. Also why you weren't supposed to eat vegetables unless they had been deep-fried in tempura batter…and dad was crazy for saying otherwise.

"Because-" said Mob. She would have told Sho that she had drank four cups because that was what Minegishi had drank and they were a grownup and Mob was a kid but that didn't mean that Mob had to act like a kid when something shifted. Someone's aura entered her range…her close range….and she knew that aura.

She did not like the person attached to that aura one bit.

Minegishi said that the person attached to that aura, Mob knew her name but didn't want to use it even though that was mean, wanted to be dad's girlfriend. Dad was married and because he was married he couldn't have a girlfriend. That was called cheating, also known as adultery, and that was not right. Mom would never come back if she knew that dad had cheated on her….and mom could still come back. Nothing was stopping her. Well something would be stopping her if dad let this lady trick him into falling in love with her. That would not have been good at all.

Mob already had a mom. She just wasn't there, that was all, but she was still mom.

"Hey, that lady's coming back. Can you feel her?" asked Sho. He already knew why big sis drank that much coffee, because she was weird like that, and that was too normal to be interesting. Not like this. This lady was interesting. She was someone who actually liked hanging out with dad. Nobody made her. That was weird considering how normal she seemed.

Also when she was around dad acted weird. That was kind of funny or at least amusing.

"Both of you quiet down." Said Suzuki. He checked the clock. Yes, it was the time again. She usually came by around this time. Sometimes she had news, other times she had things that he needed to sign off on, and occasionally she had a proposal. He wondered what she would come by with today. Not that he cared, work was work, and not that he looked forward to seeing her or anything like that. He was just curious as to what she brought.

Tea this time.

"Hello Suzuki-san and children." said Pang.

"Hello. Good afternoon." Said Mob. She stood up and bowed like was polite. She may not have liked this lady but she was not going to be mean or rude to her. That would have been wrong. She still had to be polite. That was fine. Even though this lady was trying to make dad fall in love with her even though he had a wife, that ring that married people wore showed other people that they were married, and that wife was still alive and out there and she could come back at any time.

"Hi." Said Sho as big sis tugged him to his feet. Right, you were supposed to bow when you said hello. The rules were different in every country. Sometimes people looked at you funny when you bowed and sometimes they even laughed. He wished that the rules were the same everywhere. That would have saved him a lot of thinking.

"Hello children. How have you been?" asked Pang

"We've been fine. How have you been?" asked Mob. She was having trouble keeping her aura steady. Her powers kept on trying to lift things. She was bouncing from foot to foot. She knew that she should have stayed still, that dad would be mad at her, but she just couldn't help it.

"I've been fine, just seeing if your dad wants a cup of tea. It's good tea today." Said Pang

"If it's so good then why didn't you bring us some?" asked Mob. That may have been the wrong thing to say, it might have even been mean, but it had just popped into her head…and also she could kind of understand Sho better now, maybe.

"Tea sucks." Said Sho. If he could he would have drank nothing but cola but that was bad for him, Fukuda said, and he had a lot to do as it was, Fukuda had also said.

"Son. Daughter." Said Suzuki. He had expected that from Son but not Daughter…if she had even been rude. It had seemed like a question but she had a tone there…so he didn't know. He always had trouble thinking when she, he knew her name he just didn't want to acknowledge that he knew it, was around.

"I had no idea that you too drank tea. Though from the way you're dancing around I wouldn't want to give you any liquids." Said Pang.

"You're right, I don't want anything else to drink. I have to go to the bathroom. So does Sho. Excuse us." Said Mob. She took Sho's hand and dragged him out of dad's office. She didn't want to be there. If she spent any more time there she might have ended up saying something even meaner. Dad had already given her aura a warning tap. She had been rude. She was Suzuki Shigeko, she was not supposed to be anything other than sweet, mom had said so back when she had still been around.

"But I don't have to pee!" said Sho as big sis dragged him away. She was strong, sometimes, when she put her powers into it. He could have broken free but that might have counted as fighting with her and dad hated it when he and big sis fought. Dad already seemed like he was starting to get mad at them. Nothing good came of making it worse.

"I apologize for the children." Said Suzuki after they left. He sat at his desk and pretended to work. That was what worked best. Pretending to work. That way his eyes, at least, couldn't betray him. Not like his aura was trying to do.

A cup of tea was sat down on his desk.

"You don't have to. Those two are just too cute sometimes." Said Pang. Suzuki expected her to stay standing and tell him what the real reason she had sought him out was. She didn't stay standing, she sat in one of the seldom used chairs across his desk, and she just sort of…looked at him. He wondered if he was supposed to respond now. He probably did. The art of conversation eluded him at the best of times. He knew that he had to say something. He had to look at her and say something but he just didn't know what. Maybe he should have looked at her first. That way after he looked at her he might have gotten some idea as to what to say to her.

He risked looking at her.

She had done something with her hair but he didn't know what. All he knew was that it looked nice. She looked nice. More than nice. He kept his eyes resting on the bridge of her nose. That seemed like a safe place to look. He had never been one for eye contact unless he was trying to intimidate someone. The bridge of her nose seemed safe. That way his eyes wouldn't rest too intensely on her…or drift downwards…as they tended to do because apparently he turned into an adolescent every time a woman gave him so much as the time of day. Well he was not an adolescent, he was in his early mid forties, and he was beyond this. There was no reason for him to feel like this anyway. He had a wife. She may have been gone….missing….but he still had one.

He had a wife and therefore the way he was feeling right then was irrational. Therefore there was nothing stopping him from having a conversation with her. With those emotions exorcised he was free to have a conversation with Pang-san from finance…even though the subject was his children and not finance…and he had no idea why she would want to talk about his children….maybe because, according to her file, she had none….and that must have been it. She wasn't seeking him out socially. The thought was preposterous. Nobody but his own children sought him out socially and he had made them…one of them….

"You don't have to live with them." Said Suzuki. That was the only thing that came to mind. Yes, they could be adorable sometimes, but they were little terrors too. Mostly Son but Daughter, when provoked by Son, had her moments too. Maybe that had been the wrong thing to say. He didn't know. All he knew was that there was a woman in the chair across from him and a cup of tea on his desk and he had no idea how he was supposed to navigate this situation.

"That I don't. Still, they are sweet, especially your daughter. Such a polite little girl. Like her dad." Said Pang

"She does take after me." Said Suzuki. Daughter really did despite the fact that he didn't share a drop of blood with her. Talking about Daughter….he could do that. He wasn't sure what it was that made this woman want to talk about his children…or talk to him at all about something other than work…and he knew that he should have put a stop to this…and he was going to…any minute now…

"She looks like you too, it's the eyes." Said Pang

"Her eyes are brown." Said Suzuki reflectively.

"True, but she has that same look in her eyes that you do." Said Pang

"She takes after me." Said Suzuki. He tried to keep his eyes on the bridge of her nose. His eyes wanted to drift upwards, to her hair, or lower to her mouth. He liked to watch her talk, he had discovered that about himself not too long ago, and right after discovering this fact he decided to put a stop to that before it could get any worse. He should not have felt the way he felt or…or wanted the things he wanted…because there was no reason for it. He already had the most perfect person in the world. He already…he had already had her…and now she was gone….but that was fine. He still had her…even though he didn't….but he didn't need anyone else.

His eyes met hers.

Was he supposed to look away? Or would that have been awkward? Or was it more awkward for him to keep eye contact with her? He had been told so many times that he was creepy, that his eyes were creepy, that his stare was creepy…he had been called creepy so many times…but those times were over and nobody would ever call him that again.

She was looking at him.

She was playing with her hair. She was playing with her hair and drumming her nails against her tea cup…and it wasn't annoying even if he knew that it should have been. Maybe I it had been a proper teacup instead of a paper carryout cup. Maybe if her long red nails had been drumming against a porcelain cup it would have been annoying. Maybe he wished that she had been annoying. Maybe if she had been annoying obnoxious then he wouldn't have been feeling like that and everything would have been a thousand times easier.

Her aura was knocking into his and then shrinking away.

And he had no idea what any of this was. He had no idea what he was supposed to do or say in this situation…and he wished that the children had been there just to distract him…but they were off on their own and he was all alone with…and that was fine. That was fine and everything was fine and he just needed to exorcise these emotions….even though they were so stubborn.

"So…Suzuki-san…" said Pang

"Yes?" asked Suzuki maybe a little bit too loudly or too quickly or…or something like that. Wrong. He always did something wrong when it came to being social. The only person that had ever looked past it had been…was still…or not anymore. He didn't know. He didn't want to think about the last woman who had sought him out socially and looked past his many social shortcomings…not that he wanted to even acknowledge the fact that he had any shortcomings….

"I've noticed…." Said Pang. Her eyes were darting downwards but he didn't have the time to look away from her because as soon as he tried to move his eyes away from hers she looked back up at him.

"Yes?" asked Suzuki a lot calmer that time. Mostly because this time was his second time saying it. Maybe he should have used more than one word. One word answers weren't polite…and why did he care whether or not he was polite?

"Suzuki-san...um…your son? Does he take after you as well or…" said Pang. She motioned towards his hand….oh. He still wore his wedding ring. Of course he still wore his wedding ring. He was still married. He still had Masami…even if she didn't…even if she didn't want to be with him…even if she was gone…

"He takes after his mother." Said Suzuki. He reached down and played with wedding ring. He was still married. He was still married and he had to get back to work and…and that was what he was supposed to do.

But he didn't have anything to do.

Well that wasn't true. There was always something for him to do. Only thing was that he couldn't even think of what it was that he had to do. Not when there was a woman sitting across from him and another one of his mind…and he so wished that the children would have just come back already. Things were always so much simpler when the children were around. They always gave him something to think about. To worry about. To do. If they had been there then they would have been quarreling or something else, some other fire for him to put out, and at this point he would have welcomed even a real fire….

"That one's new." Said Pang pointing behind him. He was confused, for a moment, before he remembered that Son had drawn him something new.

"My Son drew that earlier." Said Suzuki

"It looks like a ship. A spaceship, not an ocean liner." Said Pang. Suzuki turned to look at it. He didn't see it. It was…it was some sort of space….but he couldn't see any objects in it. It was a bit like that magic eye book the children had been driving themselves crazy over. He was grateful, though, to have had an excuse to look at something other than her.

"I just see space." Said Suzuki

"Me too. It's the sort of ship that bends space around it. A much better way to travel the cosmos if you ask me." Said Pang

"Too dangerous." Said Suzuki. He had looked into different ways to explore deep space. The only thing that he had come to a definitive conclusion was the fact that one did not mess with wormholes. You never knew where you were going to be spat out…not that he had allocated a lot of time or money to the validity of deep space exploration…and certainly not with trains…

"You think so?" asked Pang

"You disagree?" asked Suzuki

"A quick jump is a lot safer than putting people into stasis. I wouldn't trust my body to a machine for the needed centuries to travel in deep space. I've seen pretty much every movie ever, I know how it goes, and I figure that since we need to trust machines anyway if we're going to be traveling through deep space I would rather trust a machine for a short jump." Said Pang

"That's true. You can never fully trust a sentient machine. I still wouldn't bother with jumps. You have no way of knowing where it is that you're going to be…you're going to exit." Said Suzuki. He hadn't had a conversation like that since…well Masami had told him that he was ridiculous, after a while, and he had been. He was being ridiculous now. Those were his childhood dreams. He was not a child. The children were children. He was an adult. He had to have realistic goals, like world domination, and not deep space travel.

"That's part of the fun, though, don't you think?" asked Pang. There was something in her voice, something that made him turn around and dace…and he wished that he hadn't. He made eye contact with her again. Her eyes were brown…brownish green…and he wanted to ask her why they were that color. He wanted to ask if she had put in contacts or if she had been born like that. She isn't pure Korean, she looks maybe part Japanese…in her face…but her eyes seemed more…and not he was staring at her again. He was staring and he needed to stop staring because he had no reason to stare because not only was it socially inappropriate but, also, he had already had the most perfect person in the whole world….so there was no reason to look at her like that…or at all.

"Thank you very much for the tea." Said Suzuki. He opened the door to his office without moving a muscle. It takes her a moment to get a clue. She seems….well her aura seems…he doesn't know. He doesn't look into it. He goes back to work. There was no shortage of work. Even if sometimes it felt like there was…there was no shortage of work…and he had to work…

He heard his children quarreling….and he had never been so grateful to hear the sound of his children quarreling.

"Dad, can you tell big sis that they totally could play kendo with katanas is they wanted to?" asked Sho. He wasn't sure how they had gotten to katanas, well he knew that it was because they had seen some Scar carrying a katana, but he needed big sis to acknwoldge the fact that kendo would have been less boring if the guys were stabbing each other with super sharp katanas.

"That's not kendo anymore, Sho, it's only kendo if you use a real shinai. That's why it's not kendo when you hit me with a stick. Dad'll tell you if you don't believe me." Said Mob. She didn't understand Sho sometimes. It always came back to fighting with him. Boys were so weird like that…though she may have been too into that conversation, before, probably because of all the coffee she had been drinking that day. Well even this was better than watching that woman make dad be all weird.

Thank God she had gone back to her own department to do her own work far away from Dad.

"It's not kendo if there's no shinai. What you're thinking of is something incredibly dangerous and not worth the effort one would go through to have a real katana forged." Said Suzuki. He was so grateful to have them back and ridiculous. He had never been so grateful to deal with the ridiculousness of children.

Better than his own ridiculousness.

"You always take her side." Said Sho. He crossed his arms and sat down on the floor. That was normal. No matter what happened dad would always take big sis' side. He shouldn't have expected anything else.

"Are you going to drink that?" asked Mob. She let Sho sit on the ground and be upset. That was ok. She wished that he hadn't been upset but this was one of those times when he needed to be left alone. Besides, that cup of tea was still on dad's desk. He hated takeout cups. He only drank tea from real cups. He probably wanted her to drink it or pour it out or something. If he wanted a cup of tea she would have made him an actual cup of tea…even though she wasn't that good at making tea yet….but she would gladly spend the next million years making tea for dad if it meant that he didn't drink that tea right there on his desk that he hadn't even asked for…

"Eventually." Said Suzuki. He pulled it closer with his powers. No sense in wasting tea. This was…it was a cup of tea. He drank tea all the time. This was normal. He normally drank tea around this time. That was normal.

This had been a normal day.


	96. Moving Out and Moving On

There was no way to undo the regrets of the past.

Not that Suzuki Touichirou had many regrets. He tried not to. He tried not to do anything that he wasn't totally certain of. He tried to always act in a place of rationality and logic. He never lost control, at least he tried not to lose control, and in those rare times when he did lose control…when he did things that he regretted…and he did regret this…he dealt with what it was that he had done. He had to deal with this. He had to…he had to do something because he had…he had…

He had lost control.

He had lost control. His control had slipped through his fingers and now he had to deal with the consequences. He almost wished that he had lost control in the usual way. He wished that his powers had slipped through his grasp as they tended to do. He wished that he had simply lost control and…and just lost control. He hated when that happened and he hated himself for losing control like that….in that way…but it was preferable to the way in which he had just lost control….

"President Suzuki? We're here."

Home. Home but not home. The place he was staying with his children. His children…who he should not have sent home. He could feel their auras. They had gotten bored so he sent them away. They were annoying when they were bored…but maybe he should have just sat it through. Their restless boredom. It would have been better to have had them near. He wouldn't have lost control in the way that he had if his children had been near. Well he might have lost control, they had been trying him all day, but at least it wouldn't have been in the way that he had lost control…

He needed a bath.

That was what he would do. He would go inside and take a bath and then just….just stop feeling everything that he was feeling. The shame. The disappointment in himself. The anger he felt towards himself. The vulnerability. That was the worst of it, the vulnerability, because he did not do vulnerability. He was not vulnerable….he could not be. He was untouchable. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he was untouchable.

Well obviously he wasn't.

"Dad! You came back!" said Daughter. She jumped down from the ceiling as soon as he came through the door. The ceiling was covered in what looked like footprints. They had been playing up there again. He didn't care, this wasn't his permanent home, and they could have burnt it down for all he cared. In fact he would have preferred it if they had burnt it to the ground. He would have preferred coming back to smoldering ashes where the house had been. It would have been preferable to coming home to his Daughter jumping down from the ceiling and attempting to embrace him even though he had not been gone for very long at all.

He put up a barrier.

"Sorry dad, I didn't know that you didn't want to be hugged. I won't try to do it again. I just missed you, that's all." said Daughter. He had no idea why she would have missed him. He had last seen her six hours ago. Six hours was not long enough to miss someone. She had no reason to miss him anyway. She knew that he was coming back. There was no need for her to react the way she was now. No reason at all. Maybe she took after him. Maybe she was just as irrationally emotional as her father. Not that he even was her father. Maybe he had just imprinted on her and now she had picked up his worst traits and in a few shorts years she would be making the same mistakes that he had made.

She was still standing there.

He pushed her to the side with his powers. Not hard enough to hurt her. Not hard enough to send her flying into the wall…even though he sort of did. Even though he wanted to lash out at someone…and she was there. She was there and she was…she had done nothing wrong. She never did anything wrong, not really. He hoped that he didn't cross paths with Son.

"Leave me alone for the rest of the night." Said Suzuki. He did not want to deal with either of his children. He did not want to deal with anyone ever again. He needed to be alone. He needed to be alone…even though he was never alone. He was himself. He was always with himself. There was nowhere that he could go that his mind wouldn't follow. That his mistakes wouldn't follow.

Maybe he could drown them in the bath.

He scrubbed himself down as the bath filled up. He had fallen out of the habit of doing this, or taking actual baths, but maybe he should have gotten in the habit of it. Maybe he could wash away his mistake, his weakness, his loss of control…but those were irrational feelings. The irrational feelings of an irrational man. A man who had allowed himself to be a slave to his emotions. The emotions that he should have had enough control to exorcise before they even got to that point. There was no scrubbing his mistakes from himself. There was nothing that he could do about the past.

The only thing he was scrubbing off was a layer of skin.

Skin and sweat and saliva…she had been fond of kissing him. Masami had never kissed him that much. She had been so fond of kissing every inch of skin that she could find…not that she had been able to fund a lot of it. They had mostly been fully dressed. He'd never wear that suit again. He had others, a closet full of the same suit, so really this one would not have been missed. It was just clothing. He shouldn't have had such irrational feelings towards clothing. He shouldn't have had such irrational feelings end of discussion. But he did have such irrational feelings. His feelings were the most irrational and he was being irrational and-

The mirror broke.

The tile around the mirror broke.

The tile beneath his feet cracked.

He was losing control. This was a better loss of control than…than what had just happened. He didn't even know how it happened. They had just been talking and then the next thing he knew he was taking her and she was asking him to take her…so he took her…and it had felt so **good**…at the time. It had felt amazing. He hadn't been with anyone like that in years. He had missed it. Mouth to mouth, lust to lust, skin to skin, sweat and salvia and…and other things mixing…..a hand in his hair…the other one digging into his back….

He could still see himself in the mirror.

A row of red marks leading from his neck down to and across his collarbone. He turns so he can see is back. Red with raised lines…her nails had been digging into him during….and Masami had never dug her nails into him like that. She had never….well she had…but in the beginning. The very beginning. But then she had stopped scratching him and started exploring his skin more slowly while he…well they'd had more time after that. The first time that they had been together like that it had been fast and heavy and…and it had felt like they had to get to it before the opportunity passed them by…but then they got married and it had gotten slower, languid even, because they'd had all the time world it seemed like.

They hadn't.

"Dad? Are you ok? The house shook and your aura was-" said Daughter. Concerned, she as concerned for him. Usually he would have liked that about her. Her capacity for concern was one of the better female traits. It was different now. He wanted to be alone now and he had told her that. Masami had been like that too. She had always followed him around asking what was wrong when he had told her to give him some room to breathe.

"What's wrong? Dad? Are you-" said Daughter

"What part of leave me alone didn't you understand?" asked Suzuki. He did not raise his voice. He was not going to raise his voice. His Daughter had done nothing wrong….aside from disobey him…but if he raised his voice then she might become emotionally unstable and then he would have to deal with that…and he did not have the capacity to deal with anything at that moment.

"I-I understand. I was just worried because the house was shaking and-" said Daughter

"Do you need something?" asked Suzuki

"No. I just wanted to know if you were ok. I'll go away now." Said Daughter. He heard her footsteps and watched her aura move farther and farther away. Good. He did not want to deal with her right then and there. He needed a bath. He needed a bath and he needed to think. He needed to act, not think, but he had no idea what it was that he was even supposed to do.

He got in the bath.

The water was too hot. He didn't care. Let it be too hot. Let him boil himself alive. He didn't care. He just wanted…he didn't know what he wanted. The ability to go back in time and tell his past self not to be an irrational idiot. That would have been just wonderful. He couldn't believe himself. He couldn't believe that he had lost control like that.

He couldn't believe that he had betrayed Masami like that.

He had betrayed her. They were still married and he had betrayed her. It hurts knowing that he'd hurt her…even though it shouldn't hurt at all. She was a traitor. She had left him. For all he knew she was out there with some other man-

The house shakes again.

This time Daughter stays away. He can see her aura. She's still far away and she shows no signs of investigating what happened. Good. He is not going to explain to her what happened. She was a child, first of all, and second of all even if she had been a grown woman and not a little nine year old girl this still would have been none of her business. It was nobody's business but his own who he slept with…not that he was ever going to do that again. Lose control again. Allow someone to make him lose control again. Allow someone to reach out and touch him…to lean in and kiss him…and if anyone ever did try and kiss him well the he would push them away and ask them what the hell they thought that they were doing.

That was what he should have done.

But he hadn't. He'd allowed himself to be kissed. He'd allowed himself to be touched. He'd allowed her to kiss him and touch him and…and he had not been a passive actor through it either. His hands had found their way under her clothes. He had been the one to pick her up and…and there was no greater cliché. Taking a woman on his desk like it was the setup to some tired old bit of pornography. A man and a woman alone in an office with a desk.

Clichéd.

Crass.

Filthy.

And above all else wrong. It had been wrong of him to give in, wrong of him to enjoy it, and wrong of him to want to do it again. That was what most disgusted him about all of this. He wanted to do it again. To speak to her. To see her. To touch her. To continue their conversation about the merits of kendo vs kumdo….and how they had gone from kendo and kumdo to having sex on his desk he didn't quite understand….and maybe he should have made more of an effort to understand. If he understood how it happened then he could make sure that it never happened again.

Because it couldn't happen again.

He leaned back in the tub. Too shallow. Long but shallow. The tub he'd had in his home when he had been young had been deep enough to drown in. Not that he was about to go off and try and drown himself. He wasn't that upset with himself. He was not going to drown himself or anything like that. He was just going to feel sorry about himself, it seemed, sit there in that tub and feel sorry for himself because he had given into his worst impulses.

He could not let that happen again.

He could not allow himself to lose control like that again. He wouldn't. He had no reason to. He had only lost control like that because he hadn't been touched by a woman in years. That was all. Nothing compared to being touched by someone else. To having someone else not just touching him but kissing him and caressing him and digging her nails into him. Nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the feeling of a living breathing woman-

At some point he had become a womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own pleasure.

He pressed his palms hard into his eyes. How could he have been so-so-so he didn't even know a word bad enough to properly describe what he had done. He didn't even have a word to describe the shame he felt. The shame and self-loathing that ran through his body. He had betrayed himself and he had betrayed Masami….and he knew that feeling like he had betrayed her was the most irrational part of all of this. His wife had left him. She had been the one to betray him. She had no say whatsoever in whether or not he slept with other women. He could have had a woman for every day of the week and she wouldn't have had any say in it at all…because she had betrayed him. She had been the one to betray him. She had been the one to leave…and all she had done was leave. She hadn't taken a lover…not that Suzuki had taken Pang as a lover…once did not count…and anyway it didn't matter. He should not have had any thought at all for Masami.

For all he knew she had found someone else.

The bathroom floods.

He lost control again. The thought of Masami with another man…at least it makes him feel less ashamed of himself. At least he felt sickened, now, and hurt instead of ashamed of himself. At least he felt like make he should have drowned himself because the thought of her with someone else…the thought of her touching another man like she had touched him….the thought of her under someone else…calling someone else…

Not Touichi.

Unless she met another Touichirou and decided to be with him…and that was so absurd…the thought was so absurd that he was brought from the bad place he had found himself in mentally. He was cold now, the water from the tub was everywhere but in the tub now, but at least the thought of her leaving him for another man named Touichirou…the thought makes him feel almost like he's going to laugh…and he has no idea why. He just…

He doesn't understand himself.

But he does understand that he made a second mistake. He had barely been in the bath and now it was ruined. The whole bathroom was ruined. His doing. He always ruined everything when he lost control. Story of his life. That was why he had spent so much of his life struggling not to lose control….and right now it didn't matter how much he tried to keep his powers under control. He had still lost control and broken the mirror and flooded the bathroom. It didn't matter if he was angry with himself. The past was in the past. The past was in the past and the present was the present and the future was full of unknowns.

How was he supposed to go back to work now?

What did he even want? He wanted to put a stop to all of these emotions. He wanted to put a stop to everything that he felt. He wanted to feel nothing, nothing at all, but he couldn't stop feeling everything that he felt because…because it had been a lot. It went without saying that he had ruined everything and now he could never return to the Fifth Division no matter what happened….because then she would seek him out…and before he had even looked forward to when she sought him out. That had been before they had….

He couldn't go back.

Awkward. The whole thing would have been awkward. The whole thing would have been too awkward, much too awkward, and he did not do awkward. He was in control of every situation…and he was not in control of this one…but he could be. He would be. He would simply never speak to her again. That was another cliché. Bedding a woman and then never speaking to her again. Getting what he wanted and then disappearing into the night. At some point he had become that sort of man. At some point he had become the sort of man who…who just picked women up and rested them on his desk and took them and…

And enjoyed it.

A womanizing slave to his own joy. That was what he was. That was what he had become in Masami's absence. A slave to his own pleasure, his own joy, and that was what it had been. Joyous pleasure. The summit of all pleasure. Not just for him, no, no matter how badly he lost control he always made sure he did the best he could. He had no idea how good it had been for her, he hadn't had enough opportunity to learn her body, nor she his…and there would be no further opportunity.

He got a robe from the bathroom cabinet and put it on.

He made his way to his bedroom. The children were still awake, or at least the television was still on, and he made sure not to alert them to his presence. To alert Daughter to his presence. Son didn't care about him, not in the way that Daughter did, and he was not in the mood for her to follow him around like Masami had…all those years ago.

He did not need her concern.

And he did not need to talk about this with anyone. Masami had always asked him to talk to her about what was bothering him. He had no idea why she wanted to know. If it was something that concerned her then, of course, he would have told her. Talking about things was supposed to make him feel better. That was the way it was for women, anyway, based on how often he had overheard Daughter telling Son to tell her what was wrong.

Even though he had no idea what sorts of problems children their ages would even have had.

Nothing like his problems, anyway, problems of his own making. He hoped that the children didn't have these sorts of problems when they got older. He hoped that they were better than this. That they were better than giving into their worst impulses. Their worst, most base, and most crass impulses. He hoped that they were capable of being so much more, so much better, than what he could be.

He got dressed.

He didn't much want to leave. Not that he had any attachment to this place, he didn't, it was always such a hassle to do a sudden move. This was his fault. This was all on him. He hadn't been forced into anything. He had gone along with what she wanted. He should have been better than that. He should have been better than wanting to stumble his way to satisfaction in his desk with someone who worked for him. Such a cliché. The worst sort of a cliché.

He laid down on his bed.

He hadn't bothered to get fully dressed. He never slept in a full suit, usually just a button down and pants, but now he had left the button down and was just in an undershirt and pants. He was cold. He was aware of his body. He was cold and aware of his body and the fact that he was cold. He could feel his skin, if that made any sense, which it didn't. He was just so hyperaware of himself…and he always was after he had sex. He had spent his life keeping people at arm's length. It was always a lot when he touched someone, kissed someone, allowed himself to be touched and kissed, put a part of himself within another person….

He was fleeing the country. It was the only rational thing to do.

"Dad? Do you still want to be alone?" asked Daughter. She was just outside his door. She hadn't bothered knocking. There was no point. She knew that he could sense her the same that was she could sense him. Son was around too but Son knew to stay away from him when he didn't want company. Daughter's concern overrode her basic sense of self preservation. That was something both admirable and annoying about her.

"Do you have any plans of actually leaving me alone?" asked Suzuki. If she had been Son then he would have slammed her into a wall and ended it…but she was not Son. She was Daughter. He was loathe to hurt her. Because of her gender, maybe, or maybe because he liked her best…or maybe because she had lost control and killed seventeen people without any memory of it. He didn't know. All he knew was that she was not going to leave him alone no matter how many times he asked her to, it seemed.

"Um….maybe? I just….I'm worried about you. Also it's Sho's turn to pick what we watch on TV and he picked this movie about a man who's kidnapped and put in a prison for fifteen years and then he came out for revenge and there's a lot of fighting and I don't like it so I kind of wanted to spend time with you but you seem mad…not mad like how you're usually mad but just kind of sort of mad and I'm worried and stuff." Said Daughter. Suzuki sighed and waved his door opened with a twitch of his fingers.

"If you aren't going to leave me alone then you had might as well join me." Said Suzuki. He didn't much want to be alone and he hated himself for it. He hated the way he felt, vulnerable and alone, but at least Daughter wouldn't judge him…even though he was setting a terrible example for her. Losing control like he did….she did not need to grow up thinking that it was acceptable to lose control like this.

In any way.

But he was not talking with her about anything even tangibly related to THAT. She was nine years old. She wouldn't have to struggle with that particular facet of life for a few more years at least. A few more years until he has to warn her no to overindulge. Not to let herself be vulnerable. Not to…not to do as he had done. Not to let some irrational moron bend her over his desk, either, though if anyone even tried to lay a finger on his Daughter they would soon find themselves quite dead. He doesn't want to get into this or anything even a little bit related to this with her.

He just wants to be near her.

"Thanks dad. I really missed you today after me and Sho left. It was lonely without you. I guess that I just got more used to you being around and stuff. I'm sorry the Sho and I were fighting. We fight a lot, even Minegishi says so. They said 'hi' by the way. Well I was talking about you, about how we watched that documentary about the pacific war together, and they said to tell you that they said 'hi'. I don't know why they didn't just say that to you themselves. They aren't shy at all. I thought that they were but then…" said Daughter. She was sitting beside him on the bed. He was still laying down. He just let her talk. He wasn't really listening to the long tale of her day. He just wanted to be near her.

She took his mind off of everything.

It was hard to dwell on his mistakes when she was near. His sexual ones, anyway, because that was his child and he was not going to think about that sort of thing while his child was near. She was easy to get lost in, her stories, the way even though her voice never wavered her aura told its own story.

She'd had quite the day it seemed.

"…..Sho said that he wanted a turn so I gave him one and then he picked this really scary movie with a lot of fighting and stuff and I didn't like it so I was waiting for you to come home and then you did come home…" she prattled on. She certainly had an eventful day. They both had…and he's not going to think about any of that. He's going to think about…about where the next stop on the never ending Suzuki family express would be.

Where would she like to go?

He focuses on her so he doesn't have to focus on anything else. She may like Norway. Her favorite princess was from Norway. No, wait, the platinum blonde was a queen and the brown haired one was a princess. They were related to the long blonde haired princess….and he knew way too much about this. Well he'd might as well think about that than all of the other things that could have run through his mind. Like what he had done.

Maybe Daughter would have liked Norway.

There was a whole world that they could have traversed. The only thing was that they had to steer clear of Korea for the rest of their natural lives. Really it was the only rational thing to do. Otherwise he would have to talk about what happened…and move forward somehow…but moving away was the same thing as moving forward. Moving far away and reminding himself that he was never, ever, to lose control like that again.

That he was never going to put himself in a position where he could lose control again.

"….in this weir prison with a TV and stuff and he was in there for fifteen whole years and I don't know why but he got out and then he met this woman who made sushi…." Said Daughter. He would keep her near. If she, or Son, had been near than the thought wouldn't have eve crossed his mind. The thought that what he had been doing had been ok. It hadn't been ok.

And he was not running away.

He'd take the children somewhere. Maybe far from work…or maybe the opposite. Maybe he just hadn't been working hard enough. Maybe he had been leaving himself too much headspace to be filled with things like this. Maybe if he worked himself to the very bone he wouldn't lose control like he had. Maybe…there were a lot of maybes. Not a lot of certainty.

He needed certainty.

"….made sushi in Korea. I mean I've never had any but I never really go anywhere. They had a lot of coffee here, though, and coffee places have little cakes. Even though I shouldn't eat refined sugar. Minegishi says that refined sugar is poison but they also drink beer and stuff and that's also a form of poisoning. I don't know. I just didn't know that they had sushi in Korea. Maybe it's like how they have kendo but call it something different. Why are there so many Japanese things in Korea, dad?" asked Daughter. It takes him a moment to realize that her monologue is over and she's addressing him.

"Because we tried colonize them. It didn't work out but they took on a lot of our culture." Said Suzuki. She was good at distracting him. Now his mind wen to a very interesting documentary he had seen and that he knew that she would enjoy. It was in Korean but her Korean was actually better than his. Probably because she had to learn how to read it fluently. He hadn't even realized that she liked books. Who knew what else she liked? How else she had changed? Really he needed to focus on his Daughter more. That was just good parenting and he considered himself to be a very good father.

He needed to spend more time with her.

Because then he wouldn't have the opportunity to get himself into these sorts of predicaments.

"Oh. I didn't know that we did that. But if they borrowed so much from us then why do they still read backwards?" asked Daughter. Suzuki sat up and patted her on the head. Adorable. Truly adorable.

"Or maybe they think that we read backwards." Said Suzuki

"Oh. I guess that would make sense. Not everywhere is Japan. Some people think that stuff about Japan is weird just like we think that their stuff is weird. Maybe that's just how the whole world is. Maybe everyone just thinks that everyone else is weird and that's why we have countries and stuff so we can all be weird in our own ways without other people thinking that we're weird." Said Daughter. Suzuki thought about what she said. People wanted to be with their own people, that was what he got from it, and it made sense. There was no place like home after all.

And they hadn't been home in years.

He has the urge, then, to go back to Japan. He can't, though, because Masami lives there…and that's irrational. He's been nothing but irrational lately. Millions of people lived in Japan. He was not going to let one of them keep him out. Especially not someone who betrayed him and his Daughter. His children. He had betrayed Masami….and that's an irrational feeling. She betrayed him first. He's done nothing wrong.

"Daughter?" asked Suzuki

"Yes dad?" asked Daughter. She was tucking her legs into her nightgown now. She reminded him of a turtle then even though turtles crouched into their shells, they didn't bring their shells down over themselves…but she still reminds him of a turtle. He wants to touch her head again, tussle her hair, but he doesn't. He has no need to show her affection. She knows that he cares for her. If he didn't care for her then he would have sent her away.

"Do you want to go back to Japan?" asked Suzuki. For a moment he thinks that he's asked the wrong question. Her aura begins to glow and expand and her hair begins to float. For a moment he thinks that she's going to lose control and make herself an orphan again.

"Yes. I would love that. Thank you dad!" said Daughter. Then she leaned forward. He put up a barrier on instinct, his heart wasn't in it, and that was why she smashed through it like she did. She threw her arms around him and he just sat there until she got her fill of him. He didn't much want to be touched by anyone right then let alone his own Daughter….so he pushes her away when her embrace becomes excessive.

"Good. We'll leave tomorrow. Inform your brother." Said Suzuki. He laid down as Daughter ran off to do just that. This was perfectly fine. Suzuki was not going to be kept out of the nation of his birth just because his wife was probably still there. He didn't even care anymore. It had been two years. That was well past the point at which he should have been over her….

He needed to move on.

So he would move out. Moving out was the same as moving on.

He couldn't undo the mistakes of his past but he could at least move past them.


	97. Seoul to Tokyo

So this was where their life had gone. Eh. Could have gone worse.

"So from now on we just follow Suzuki around wherever he goes?"

"Pretty much."

"Whatever."

Minegishi crossed their legs and leaned back. They were sitting next to Fukuda, the first member of Suzuki's entourage, and their plane buddy for the duration of their trip. They didn't get to ride up with the Suzuki family, horror of horrors, they were relegated to the back. Minegishi wasn't complaining. It was hard enough being stuck in a flying metal tube with Suzuki, they didn't need to get up close and personal with him.

Flying was hard enough.

Minegishi wasn't afraid to fly, no, very little in this world could scare them. Nor did the fact that the President himself was right there frighten them in the least bit. Suzuki was an asshole and he could kick some ass when he wanted to but he never kicked any ass unless he was provoked. Minegishi had no intention of provoking the boss. So that was not what bothered them. Minegishi simply did not like being up so high off the ground. Aside from the seeds in their pocket, they always carried seeds with them, they were never this far from plant life. Even a boat would have been better. At least the ocean had seaweed.

No matter, they'd brought something to help with this and many other of life's annoyances.

"What's that?" asked Fukuda as he leaned up from his phone. He knew Minegishi. He didn't know Minegishi as a person but he was familiar with their work. Very familiar. There were only so many reasons Suzuki could have had for brining Minegishi with them and none of them were good. Normally he wouldn't have cared but normally they would not have been heading back to Japan.

She was fine.

Masami was fine. If Suzuki had found her then she would have been there with them. He would have had her dragged across the ocean to him and he would have made her beg for his forgiveness. Also he would have killed Fukuda, too, for his part in all of it. No, Suzuki did not know about Masami's whereabouts. Even Fukuda himself had no idea where she had gone to. She had moved again and not told him where she was going…for security reasons she had said. Not knowing where she was would have made it difficult to bring Sho to her.

A foam dart hit him on the head.

"Son, stop it. I've told you before, a gun is a coward's weapon."

The kids were happy. More than happy. They hadn't been back to Japan, back home, for two years now. Well Sho was happy anyway. Shigeko was as unreadable as always. She was looking over towards them for some reason. If he hadn't known any better he would have said that she had her father's eyes. Her aura wasn't as closed off as usual…and that was not good. He hoped that she was happy. He hoped that she wasn't about to send them crashing into the ocean. There was some difficulty there, still, separating the little girl he saw from the destruction she had wrought to the Eighth Division. That hadn't been so long ago, just after Sho's birthday last year, and he was nowhere near over it. What he had seen. What he had been through. All of it. He could hide it though, the fear he felt for Shigeko, just like he'd hid the contempt he'd felt for her father for the past almost thirty years.

And the utter dislike he had for one of Claw's best enforcers.

"A couple Xanax. I don't plan to be conscious for this little field trip. You want one?" asked Minegishi as they held out an old hard candy tin.

"You know I can just put you under, right?" asked Fukuda as he held up his hand and shook his head. Medications didn't work on him, first of all, and second of all the kids were right there. That was a terrible example to set for them…but then again look at who their father was. Now there was a terrible example and then some.

"Pass." Said Minegishi as he popped two pills into his mouth and washed them down with a swig from their water bottle. Just water, unfortunately, since this was not going to be a long trip. Seoul to Tokyo. Not very long at all. They were no stranger to air travel, being ping ponged between Divisions as they were, and it never stopped being unpleasant.

"Well do you have to do that where the kids can see?" asked Fukuda

"Yes." said Minegishi. There was some silence then. Minegishi pulled out a book and started skimming it. They weren't always reading, they just liked to make it look like they were, that way people might get a clue and leave them alone.

"Alright then." Said Fukuda. He was not going to start something on that plane or on a train or in the rain or anywhere else from that old book of rhymes the kids read. He had been following Suzuki around for decades. He knew not to start things. He was not going to start anything. He was going to tally up his bad thoughts for the day and then just wait for the sun to set and then rise again. That was all that he could do. That was what he had done for the past he didn't even fully know how long.

"Sho, that's my arm rest."

"No, this is mine and that one's mine."

"But that's both of them."

"Fine, you can have this one."

They were fighting again, Sho and Shigeko, but that was the usual for them. As usual Suzuki did absolutely nothing. Well he did a whole lot of nothing until he smacked Sho upside the head or slammed him into a wall or sometimes just hit him….those times were the hardest. They were rarer, now, than they had been in the past. Maybe because Sho had powers now. He was considerably less of a source of shame to his father now. Thank God they were in a plane and Suzuki knew not to make this any worse while they were thousands of miles up in the air.

"So this is my life now." Said Minegishi. Their eyes were closed. Their eyes had gotten way too heavy. This was the real stuff, not analogs, and they hadn't had the real stuff in a while. They hadn't been on a plane ride in a while. Since becoming Mob's only friend they hadn't been sent to any other divisions. At first they thought that, hey, they could finally settle down and put down some roots but, no, as it turned out they were promoted to Mob's best buddy for all eternity and the second member of the Suzuki family's entourage. At least the pay was good and the company was less annoying than what they were used to.

"The first decade is the hardest. You'll get used to it. Just go where he goes and do whatever he wants you to do." Said Fukuda. There was a note of bitterness there. He knew that Suzuki couldn't hear him and even if he could he couldn't hear tones for shit. Fukuda had tried sarcasm out on Suzuki extensively back when they had been younger. He couldn't hear it. In fact he took pretty much everything literally. The thrill of insulting the man to his face wore off quickly, they hadn't even been men back then, just a couple of kids in school together. Him just trying to get by and Suzuki just trying to take over the world.

And here they were now.

"The FIRST decade? God, how long have you been doing this?" asked Minegishi. They cracked an eye opened. Well then. They didn't mind it, not really, being friends or whatever with Mob. It was an easy gig. It might even get better when she was older. Not a kid anymore. Kids were ok in small doses.

A foam dart hit them between the eyes.

Very small doses.

"We went to school together." Said Fukuda as he looked out the window. They weren't even over the ocean yet. Sho had used up half his darts. Fukuda had helped pack the kids up this time and he had made sure to pack Sho's darts under his clothes where it would take him a while to find them. The kid hated changing clothes and bathing,…and Fukuda didn't blame him. He knew what Sho looked like underneath that long sleeved shirt and jeans. Poor kid. It was getting hot out too, starting to get hot out, and Fukuda had no idea what the poor kid was going to do once summer hit.

People would see his scars and they'd have questions.

In all the years that Fukuda had known Suzuki he never would have guessed that he would have been cruel enough to do something like that to his own Son. He knew what the Awakening Chambers did to people, he designed them, and he designed the uniforms that the Awakened wore too. He was the one who called their scars unsightly. Almost three decades they had known each other now…and that just went to show how well a person could truly know Suzuki Touichirou.

"Damn." Said Minegishi. Their head was starting to swim just a bit. School together? How could anyone have stood to be in Suzuki's presence for that long? For any length of time? Even being this close to the man was making him squirrely. Caged in. Suzuki wasn't even looking at him, not with his eyes or his aura, but being so close to the man…it had Minegishi feeling cagey.

They needed a nap.

But that nap was not forthcoming. As soon as they closed their eyes again, rested their head against the window and closed their book, another aura got even closer. That was an ok aura. An ok aura from an ok kid. Minegishi's friend. Minegishi's only friend…it felt like. That was fine. It said more about the rest of the world than them. They'd never had any use for others, never had any use for friends, so if a nine year old made for better company than the rest of the world than that said a lot about the world now didn't it? She was an ok kid, Mob, and normally Minegishi would have been ok with Mob trailing after them trying to make friends and puzzle out those strange creatures known as adults. This was not a normal time. Minegishi was miles above the ground and the only plants that could be felt were the seeds in their pocket.

Not a good time at all.

"Your brother still being an asshole?" asked Minegishi without opening their eyes.

"Sho isn't being a…that word…he just doesn't like long plane rides." Said Mob

"Korea to Japan is not long, Mob." Said Minegishi. They didn't even really need a plane. They could have taken a boat or something, anything other than the hell that was riding a plane, but it was what it was. He felt her sitting across from him. She was watching him. Eyes and aura. She stared a lot but not like how Suzuki stared. Suzuki stared at you like you were a frog and he was going to dissect you. Mob stared at you like you were a colorful insect. Something there and fascinating and worthy of her fully attention and appreciation.

How Suzuki expected anyone to believe that those two were father and daughter Minegishi did not know.

"Miss Suzuki. Are you alright? Motion sick? Anything?" asked Fukuda. Sometimes when he looked at her he saw that kid, the little kid he used to make dinner with. The kid he used to play with. The kid he used to pick up and give airplane rides to. Well she didn't need airplane rides anymore. She was nine. She could ride on a real airplane. She could ride on a real airplane and she didn't need or want him to pick her up and spin her around.

"She's sick of her brother." Said Minegishi with a groan. What was with that 'Miss Suzuki' crap? She hated that shit. She liked to be called Mob. She could decide who she was…and Minegishi was not projecting their own craptacular childhood onto Mob. Nope. None of that. Though if in ten years Mob ended up planting a tree Minegishi would not have been surprised. Not that Mob was going to make herself an orphan. If she was planning on it she would have made herself an only child before making herself an orphan.

"No, I'm not sick Fukuda. I just wanted to hang out with Minegishi. Also Sho wants to hang out with you but he's also planning on shooting you in the eye even though dad said that a gun is a coward's weapon. I'm just warning you now but you didn't hear it from me." Said Mob

"You can sit here but be quiet. I'm sleeping until we get to Japan. You get it?" asked Minegishi

"Got it!" said Mob

"Good. Now let me rest." Said Minegishi. They heard the click of a tablet turning on. Then they heard some scurrying followed by the sound of a toy gun shooting off a dart. So this was their life now, huh?

Whatever. It could have been worse.


	98. You Can Never Go Home Again

They could never go home again.

When Mob heard that they were going to Japan she had assumed that they were going home.

Back to the castle.

Because they had always lived in the castle. For her entire life, until mom left, the castle had been her home. Castle Suzuki. That was the home of the Suzuki family. When they were in Japan they should have lived in the castle. It made sense. They had a perfectly good house to live in. There was no reason to live anywhere but the castle. It just made sense and dad was always all about making sense.

"When are we going home?" asked Mob. She stepped to the side as some of the Awakened walked by carrying her and Sho's stuff. Some of it. They had to travel a lot so they left a lot of their stuff at the different places they'd stayed. Seoul was the only exception. She told the Awakened to pack all of their stuff because she had assumed that they would have been back at the castle by now.

They weren't.

"For the time being this is your home." Said Dad as he checked something on his phone. He didn't seem upset…and she didn't know why she expected him to be. Maybe because of how badly he had been shaking the house before. Well he was better now. At least he was acting like he was better now. He was pulled his aura away from her.

Which was weird.

He was never a very opened person but every time she got near he pulled away from her. He held his aura close and pulled it away…and he pulled himself away from her, too, when she got too near. She took a step forward and he took a step back. She took another step forwards and he took another step back. So on and so forth.

Mob didn't understand why.

"But…but what about the castle?" asked Mob even though she knew that they were staying here now. Sho was as upset as she was but he was showing it. He was in their room, the room that was going to be where they would be sleeping, and he was jumping on the bed and hitting the walls and stuff. He was upset. She was upset too.

She just took care not to show it.

She kept her aura close. She kept her aura close and she kept her face still. Dad could not know how upset she was. Sho was allowed to be upset, well he wasn't but Dad expected that from him, he was always madder when she got upset. He hardly ever hit her, not like how he was always hitting Sho, but he said the meanest things when he was upset with her. He treated her like he didn't love her anymore, like she wasn't even his Daughter anymore, and it hurt. When she showed that she was hurt by him he just got even madder. He was mean like that, her dad.

But she couldn't let it show that it bothered her.

"Do you mean the old house?" asked Dad. He was looking at her now. She was looking back at him. She felt a warning tap against her aura. She was not supposed to talk about the old house because they had lived there with mom and they were supposed to pretend like they'd never even had a mom in the first place…even though that made no sense. Of course they'd had a mom. What, did dad think that they were just going to forget about her? That if he pretended hard enough she and Sho would just forget that their mom had ever even existed?

That was not how it worked at all.

You needed a mom and a dad to make a baby. The way they went about making that baby was disturbing and if she hadn't heard it from her own mother she would have thought that it was a lie like the people who stole your organs or stuff like that. But mom and dad had done that super gross thing and that was how she and Sho had gotten there. Therefore since people existed in the world because of mom they could not pretend that mom did not exist.

Perfectly rational like dad liked.

"Yes. I mean the old house. The one that we used to live in, before. I want to stay there." said Mob. She didn't let on about how mad she was. About how sad she was. She had wanted to go home for the past two years. To play with her old toys. To sleep in her old bed. To use up the last of her Hello Kitty Shampoo. To eat off of her Frozen plate. To get the crackers out of her school satchel before the house got ants. To play in the backyard. To go to the park again. To go to the library again.

To be with mom again.

But she knows that mom won't be there. For as much imagining as she had done on the plane ride back to Japan, there hadn't been much else to do since Minegishi slept like a rock and Fukuda never wanted to play anymore, she knew that her mom would not have been back. Mom was never coming back. She had betrayed them all like dad had said. She shouldn't have wanted her mom back…

But she did.

She really did. She wanted mom to wake her up with singing again even though she and Sho woke up on their own now. She wanted mom to make them breakfast even though the Awakened brought them whatever food they asked for. She wanted mom to braid her hair again even though she could braid it all by herself now. She wanted mom to give her and Sho a bath again even though she and Sho knew how to bathe themselves. She even wanted mom to boss her and Sho around. She wanted mom to tell them when to take a bath and when to go to bed and when to wake up and what to eat and when to eat it.

That way Mob wouldn't have to be the one to decide those things anymore.

But mom was gone. Mom was gone and castle Suzuki had been empty for two years. That was all the more reason for her and Sho to go back. Dad could work from there, he had an office there, and there were even enough rooms that some of the Awakened could stay with them. Even Minegishi and Fukuda could stay with them. Well they could have stayed with them now but Minegishi lived next door and she had no idea where Fukuda was.

It could have been good….or at least better than another strange house in another strange city.

"No." said Dad. One word. That was all that he was going to give her, one word. She felt her aura flare. She reached up and held on to her braids before they could start to float away. Power was nothing without control. Conceal, don't feel. Dad hated it when she lost control. Dad hated a lot of things. He hated more things than he liked, it seemed, and Mob wished that he would just have…have made her one of the things he liked. She wanted him to like her all the time, not just sometimes, because when he liked her sometimes it made her worry about the times when he would stop liking her. Like now. Her control was starting to slip and he didn't like her at all when her control slipped.

"Maybe for a little bit?" asked Mob. She had never been to England but she knew the expression 'in for a penny, in for a pound' which meant that since dad was already probably about to start disliking her again she had might as well just…just make it worse. Even though she got the feeling that she shouldn't have been making it worse. Normal kids didn't have to beg to go back to their houses….

But she was not a normal kid.

She was the Prodigy. Sho was the Awakened Child and she was the Prodigy. That was what people called them, sometimes, when they thought that she and Sho couldn't hear. She was born with her powers, they said, and Sho was the only kid to live through the awakening machine…and at that point Mob stopped listening. She didn't like thinking about what had happened to Sho on that horrible day…even though she couldn't really remember it. She just remembered pain and fear. Her control slipping through her fingers. Then nothing. That was why she and Sho were not normal kids.

So she shouldn't have wanted to be treated like a normal kid.

She shouldn't have wanted to go to school. She shouldn't have wanted to have woken up to a mom making her breakfast and laying out her clothes and walking her to school….wait, she was nine now. A fourth grader. She would have been walking herself to school. Sho, too, because they would have gone to the same school. They would have if they had been normal kids. They weren't. That was why they never went to school and got to go to work with dad and sometimes even got to play all day.

She was not a normal kid and neither was Sho. This was not a normal family. It was irrational to pretend that they ever could be a normal family.

"The answer is 'no', Daughter, now do not make me tell you again." said Dad. Mob wanted to shout at him. She wanted to tell him that he was being a real…words that Minegishi used to describe people they didn't like….and also that she was tired of being away from home and she wanted to be a regular family for ten seconds. She wanted to yell and scream like Sho did. She wanted to kick the walls so hard they cracked, like Sho did. She wanted to slam doors all day and then slam windows all night. She wanted to be Sho if just for a minute. If just for long enough to be allowed to show dad just how she felt.

But she was not Sho. She was Shigeko. Mob.

She was not Son. She was Daughter.

And Daughter could not act like Son. That was not how it worked. Even though it wasn't fair. Sho got to act like such a little kid…and he was only a year younger than her. It wasn't fair. Nothing was fair. Sometimes she liked her life, being able to wear her Elsa dress all day and play with her little brother and watch all the TV she wanted and play all the videogames she wanted….and other times she wished that she could have been in school with the other kids and been able to have friends who were kids and was able to have a mom or…

None of that was ever going to happen.

"Yes dad. I won't make you tell me again. I understand that we can never go home again. I understand that no matter what I say or do we'll never be able to go back home again. I understand." Said Mob. She wished that she wasn't so very little. She wished that she were older. She wished that she were old enough to live by herself…with Sho, of course. She wished that she could have gone back to the Castle herself and done all the things that mom did so she could at least pretend that she still had a mom…and stuff.

But she couldn't.

"Good. I'm glad that you understand. Now go and make your brother stop that this instant. I am sick and tired of his carrying on like that." Said Dad. Mob nodded. She was dismissed to go and take care of Sho. Even though there was so much she wanted to say. Even though it was so hard to be back in Japan, so close but so far from home, and also from mom…and she had no idea where mom was. She wanted to walk out that door and either walk back to the Castle or walk to find mom or both.

She had no idea where mom was.

She had no idea where the castle was.

She only knew where she was. Tokyo. Capitol city of Japan. Most populated city in Japan. Had a lot of arcades. Those could be fun. It had a Disney Land too. She and Sho would probably spend a few days there. There wasn't a big Division of Claw here but there some business that dad owned. They laundered his money. Laundered meant cleaned but not literally. That meant taking the dirty money and mixing it in with the clean money so the taxman didn't get suspicious. Since there was no real Division of Claw here that probably meant that they wouldn't be staying for long.

Not that it mattered since they were never going back to the castle.

She wanted to go outside and look for mom or look for the castle but she did neither. She went to Sho. She was not going to argue with her dad. She was going to take care of her little brother and then she was going to unpack their things and then she was going to have the awakened get them food to eat and then she was going to maybe hang out with Minegishi or play with Sho or just sit and wait for tomorrow to happen. She didn't know. It all felt pointless since they were staying here, now, instead of going back home.

"I want to go home! I want to go home! I want to go home!" shouted Sho as he jumped up and down on the bed. At least he had taken his shoes off in the genkan. At least this place had a proper genkan. At least they were back in Japan. At least they wouldn't have to learn a whole new language again. At least people would be able to understand what they were saying again. At least they didn't have a whole new money system to learn again. At least the people looked like them…like her…again.

A pillow hit her over the head and knocked her cat ears headband off.

"Sho, come on." Said Mob. She sounded tired, then, and she felt tired too. She just wanted…she wanted to go home. Homesickness was not a feeling that passed. Homesickness was not something that could go away in even two whole years. Sure it could get quieter, not hurt as much, some days you could even forget about it but it never went away. Not really. Now it was hitting her so hard…and she just wanted to sit down and…and just be alone…but she couldn't just be alone. She had Sho to take care of. If she didn't take care of Sho then who would? He couldn't take care of himself. He was just a kid.

"No! Not until we go home! We're in Japan!" said Sho as he kept on jumping up and down. It didn't matter one bit if he broke the bed, the Awakened would just bring him another one, but Mob still didn't want to go through the trouble of asking them for another bed and then waiting for them to get one and they would probably come back with the wrong thing and then she would have to send them out again and then dad would be upset because of how long it would take….

She did not want to have to deal with that.

She did not want to have to deal with anything. She picked up her headband with her hands. She didn't know what would happen if she used her powers. She could feel her powers bubbling up from inside of her. She could feel herself losing control. Her braids were starting to float away….so she tucked them into her headband.

"Sho, I just talked to dad. We're not going home. We're staying here." Said Mob. She wanted him to stop jumping. He was going to ruin the bed. He was going to make himself dizzy. He was going to make himself throw up. Those were all things that she would have to deal with. She was the one who took care of him. She was the one who had to take care of both of them.

"No!" shouted Sho. He took off his shirt and threw it at her. It hit her on the head. She took it off her head, folded it, and then put it down on the nightstand beside her. Not their nightstand. Nothing in this room, none of the furniture, was theirs. Their furniture was in their room at their house. This was not their house. She agreed with Sho….not that she could show it.

"Yes. Dad said that this is where we're staying." Said Mob. She wanted to lay down. She couldn't. She had to stop Sho. Dad told her that she had to stop Sho that instant…and that instant had passed and now it was a new instant and now she really had to make him stop….

"No!" shouted Sho. A sock hit her on the head that time. It was gross. Now another sock hit her over the head. It was just as gross as the first one. She was tired. She was tired from flying and she was tired from fighting and she was tired of…she was just tired. She was just so tired. She was just so very tired…..

"Sho….please stop it." Said Mob. She was tired of holding back her powers. Not in the sense that she wanted to lose control but that she was tired from holding her powers back. She was tired. She was tired and hungry and upset and she just wanted to rest….but she couldn't.

"No!" shouted Sho again. Mob took a deep breath. She wished that she had gloves. She wished that she was like Elsa with the gloves that could stop her powers….but gloves didn't even work. She had tried gloves. She had tried gloves and they didn't work and nothing worked but keeping her feelings under control…and she was having so much trouble….

"Sho…you need to understand that sometimes things don't work out the way we want them to. Sometimes we can really want something so badly that it hurts but…but no matter how much it hurts we have to remember that we can't always get what we want." Said Mob. She was trying to be like mom. That was something that mom had said to them years ago. She was mom now, practically, and she had to try and fix this…if she even could…..

"No!" shouted Sho. He was still jumping. She could feel dad's aura. He was getting upset. He was getting upset and now she was upset because now he would be upset at her…even though she was the one who should have been upset with him. This was all his fault. He was the one who wouldn't take them home even though he easily could have. They were in Japan. Home was in Japan. Therefore if dad had stopped being a….one of the bad words Minegishi used a lot….then none of this would have happened.

"No you don't understand?" asked Mob. He was still jumping. He was using his powers now so he hit the ceiling. If the ceiling broke then they would have to find another place to live. Dad would not have been happy about that even though they had a perfectly good castle they could have stayed in.

"No!" shouted Sho. Mob could feel her head pounding. She just wanted some quiet. She just wanted him to stop. What did he even think that she could do about this? She was a kid the same as he was. Dad was the one who made the rules, not her, and she had no right to tell him what to do. She was the kid and he was the adult. She was Daughter and he was Dad. She couldn't just walk up to him and tell him something like 'Suzuki Touichirou you are being a jerk and I am walking home in my socks if I have to. If you want to stay in Tokyo then you can stay in Tokyo all by yourself because my little brother and I are leaving just like mom did' or something like that because then she would most certainly get hit. More than once too.

Even if it was something that she wanted to say.

But she was not that sort of person. She didn't just say whatever mean thing came to mind. Even if she hadn't been scared of being hit a bunch of times she still…she still wanted….she wanted to just…she wished that she knew the magic combination of words that could make dad take them home. Even if they were bad words. Even if they were mean words. Even if they were words that she should not have used on her own dad.

She and Sho just wanted to go home….but they could never go home again.

"No, what!?" asked Mob. She could feel her braids floating. She could feel her aura growing around her and becoming visible. She knew that she was not supposed to lose control like this, that she was setting a bad example for Sho, and that she needed to stop…but she couldn't. She had no way of stopping her powers once they got like this. She had no way of making any of this stop….

Power was nothing without control.

And she guessed that she was nothing because she was quickly losing control.

"No!" shouted Sho. Another pillow went flying towards her face. She blocked it with her powers. It exploded. There were feathers everywhere. She had lost control. At least she hadn't hurt Sho. At least she hadn't hurt her little brother. He had stopped jumping, now, and was holding himself in the air. She could see the pinpricks running up and down both arms. She could see the tree on his back, the way part of it wrapped around to his front, and she could see his aura too…

She slammed into a wall.

She didn't even think. She just lashed out. She just pushed back…and then the house shook…and then Sho shouted. Sho shouted because she had hurt him. She wanted to stop. She wanted him to be ok. She wanted them both to be ok. She wanted the whole world to stop. She wanted her mom. She wanted her dad. She wanted someone, anyone, because she had lost control and not only that she had done the worst thing that a person could do to another. The worst thing that a big sister could do to her little brother. She had hurt him. She was the worst. She had hurt the one person in the world who was guaranteed to be her friend. Who was always going to love her. She had hurt him and now…now she was paying for it…

She was dragged out into the hallway by her braids.

It hurt.

"Daughter. Explain." Said Dad. He was the one who had dragged her out. Not a moment too soon if the loud crash coming from the bedroom was anything to go by. He was mad at her. She could tell by his aura and the fact that he had grabbed her by the hair with his powers. He was still holding her by the hair. He hauled her up to her feet by her braids. She was calmer now…sort of. Hurting Sho had been a big shock, a big enough shock that she at least realized what it was that she had been doing.

"Sho's upset and then I got upset." Said Mob. There was so much more that she could have said. She could have told dad that this was all his fault. She could have told dad that if he had just taken them back home to the castle then none of this would have happened. She could have told him that he hadn't worked harder to find mom. She could have told him that instead of sending people out all over the world to look for espers he could have sent those people all over the world to look for mom. It was like he didn't love mom anymore. It was like he didn't love them. It was like he didn't love anyone but himself and-

He yanked on her hair again. This time he pulled her up so high that she had to stand on her tiptoes just to make it hurt a little less.

"Did you intentionally provoke your brother or did you lose control?" asked Dad. Mob yanked her hair out of his telekinetic grasp.

"I lost control because Sho was upset." Said Mob. She was so mad…the walls next to her shook a little. Dad…she saw his aura before she felt him use his powers to hit her…and she put up a barrier. She didn't mean to put up a barrier but she did. It didn't matter. He shattered it after a moment.

"I am so disappointed in you, Daughter, that I do not even have the words to describe it." Said Dad. That was worse than dad hitting her. He was disappointed in her…but she had done her best! If Sho wasn't going to listen to her then there was nothing that she could do. She may been pretending to be mom but pretending only went so far. She was not mom. She wanted mom! She wanted mom and she wanted to go home! She wanted…she wanted a lot of things….

Things that she knew that she was never going to get.

"Then why don't you just let me go home!? Just let me go home and then let me take Sho with me and then you can be all alone and you can be happy and then we won't be around to bother you ever again!" shouted Mob. She didn't meant to shout at her dad, she didn't like shouting in general but she especially did not want to shout at her dad…but she had and now there was no taking it back…

He slammed her into the wall.

She let herself be slammed into the wall. She was tired. She was tired of fighting both with dad and with Sho, too. She just wanted to stop, to rest, and to get her powers back under control. She had failed dad. She had disappointed dad. She had probably failed and disappointed mom, too, and that was why she had just left them one day without even leaving a note or saying goodbye. This was all her fault. Everything was all her fault. At least it felt like that. It felt like that because…that was what dad felt. He felt that she was a failure…that she had disappointed him…

She wanted her mom.

She wanted her dad.

She wanted to be alone.

"Stop this. You've never acted like this before and I have no idea why you're acting like this now. You need to stop being irrational. You know that you're only nine years old. You can't go back to the old house on your own and there's no reason for you to go back. I'm here. Your brother is here. That means that you'll be here too. You will always be by my side and I won't hear another word to the contrary. Understood?" asked Dad. He had picked her up now but not by the hair. He was trying to look her in the eyes. She turned her head to the side.

"I don't…." said Mob. She didn't understand. She didn't understand why they couldn't just go home even for a day. That was all she really needed, just one day, and then they could say goodbye to their house forever once again. She didn't think that she was asking so very much. Just a single day. That was all. She just….for one day she wanted to be able to pretend that she was…that she was a kid again…and that things were the way that they had always been.

"Daughter. Are we understood?" asked Dad. Mob looked him in the eyes and nodded.

"Yes dad. We're understood." Said Mob. She didn't want to say anymore. She didn't want to do anymore. She just wanted…she wanted to be with someone and she wanted to be alone. She wanted someone to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be ok but she also…she just wanted to be alone. She had lost control and now she wanted nothing more than to be left all alone….

"Good. Now get out of my sight. I can't bear to look at you right now." Said Dad. Mob nodded. She nodded and walked off. She didn't go back into the bedroom. Sho had stopped carrying on in there but she didn't want to start with him again. She went past the TV room. She didn't want to watch anything on TV even if it was in Japanese for once. She walked past the Awakened who stared at her like she was something scary…which she sort of was…she had lost control…

She wanted to be alone.

She knew that she could not walk home. She had no idea how to get home and besides, dad had told her clear as day that she was not allowed to leave him. She had to be with him all the time…so even if she had walked to a train station or a bus station or took an airplane she still wouldn't have been able to go home.

So she didn't go home.

She went in the direction of the only other friendly aura she felt. Minegishi couldn't live in the house with them. Dad had said no to that idea and Minegishi said that they didn't want to live with dad anyway. So Minegishi lived right next door. It wasn't a long walk at all. All she had to do was walked a few meters and there their house…the place that they were staying in. Minegishi was from Japan too. She wondered if they ever missed the house that they grew up in. She wondered if they were sad that they had to stay in Tokyo too. She wondered if they ever felt like they were trapped and there was no way out even though there was no reason at all to be looking for a way out. She wondered a lot of things about them.

Not that she had any plans of asking.

She just wanted to be near them. She just wanted to be near them while they read or whatever. She didn't care. She just needed a friend. She knew that she was being rude by just letting herself in. She knew that she was being rude by not asking first. She didn't care right then and there. The only thing that she cared about was not being alone.

She felt so alone.

She found Minegishi quick enough. They were laying down on the bed seemingly asleep. There was a half full bottle of something clear that did not smell at all like water. She put the cap on in case it spilled. She used her hands. She didn't trust her powers at all. She didn't want to make even more of a mess than she had already.

"Wh-what are you doing here?" asked Minegishi as they opened their eyes. Mob felt her eyes start to water and prickle. She had messed up again. She had woken up her friend and now they were going to tell her to get out of their sight and-

"You look like crap. No offense." Said Minegishi as they say up. They were already in their pajamas it seemed like, a baggy T-shirt and purple pajama pants. Was it bedtime in Korea? Was their body still on Korea time? She didn't know. She knew that she was tired and…and a whole lot of other feelings that she knew that she should have been focused on getting rid of.

"I feel like…like that. Sho and I had a fight and…and I pushed him-" said Mob. She didn't know what she was expecting but it wasn't Minegishi to start laughing. She didn't even know if they could laugh. She felt better, though, even though she had no clue what was so funny about that. She had hurt her brother. She should have filled her pockets with rocks and walked out into the ocean like in that movie she and Sho saw.

"Serves him right." Said Minegishi

"Huh? No, I hurt him-" said Mob

"Yeah, and I'm surprised you didn't do that sooner. I've known you for…six months? I have no idea, I can't do math right now, but I do know that your little brother has had it coming since the day I met you two." Said Minegishi

"But…but I wasn't nice. I hurt my brother." Said Mob. Sho hadn't had it coming. Sho was her little brother and she loved him. She didn't care what he did or how badly he acted. She loved him and she would always love him. She didn't care how many times he made dad mad or hurt her or…or he did any of the things that he was not supposed to do. She should not have hurt him.

"And? How many times has he hurt you?" asked Minegishi

"That doesn't matter. I love him and I shouldn't have hurt him. I shouldn't have lost control. Dad's so disappointed in me. He told me to get out of his sight…and now I'm here…but then he also told me that no matter what I would always be by his side…so I'm here. Can I be here? Is it ok for me to be here?" asked Mob. She was sniffling now. Minegishi made space for her on their bed.

"Yeah, that's fine, but we're not the sort of friends who cry to each other." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded. She knew that rule about not crying. She had been so bad that day. They hadn't even been back in Japan for half a day and already she was acting like this. No wonder dad wanted her to get out of his sight. No wonder he had hit her and pulled her hair. No wonder he was disappointed in her beyond words…

She was disappointed in herself, too.

"Ok. I won't cry. I understand." Said Mob. She was not going to cry. She was not going to lose control of her emptions again. She was Suzuki Shigeko. She did not cry. She was not going to make dad any more disappointed in her than he already was…which was already more disappointed in her than he had ever been in her life that she could remember. He had talked to her like she was Sho…that was how upset he was with her…

This was good. If he was upset with her then he would not be upset with Sho.

And she could make it up to Sho, too. She could let him do whatever he wanted from now on. No more healthy foods or baths or homeschool work or anything. She would scrub him down in his sleep and crush up vitamins into his food and do all of his homeschool work for him. Yes, then he would be happy with her again…or not. Maybe she had ruined everything. Maybe she had ruined their relationship as siblings and also her relationship with dad and he was going to send her to an orphanage or something and she would be all alone and-

"You still nine?" asked Minegishi

"Yes. My birthday was in May." Said Mob. Minegishi muttered something to themselves before reaching out for the bottle that was beside the bed. They looked at her, and then at the bottle, and then at her again before they twisted the cap off of the bottle and pouring some of the liquid into it. It looked like water but it certainly did not smell like water.

"Here. I know that I'm probably ruining your life right now but it sounds like your dad already got that started so drink this." said Minegishi as they handed her a capful of something that burnt her nose when she smelled it.

"What is it?" asked Mob as she stared at the clear liquid in front of her. The bottle was in Japanese…which told her nothing. She could read the words but she had no idea what they meant. Had she forgotten how to read? No, she just didn't know these words…but it didn't matter.

"Something that I shouldn't give you right now but, hey, I was about your age when I started and also…seeing you like this makes me feel like crap…because I guess you've grown on me or whatever….but if you tell anyone I said that I am never hanging out with you again. You got it?" asked Minegishi. Mob nodded. She wasn't going to tell anyone that Minegishi said that they cared about her…even though she didn't get why…and also she was going to drink this even though it smelled like something that she was not supposed to drink.

It burned.

But she swallowed.

"Next time just drink it down, don't hold it on your mouth." Said Minegishi. They patted Mob on the back. For a moment she thinks that she's going to be hit again but she's not. This is Minegishi and Minegishi is her friend and friends did not hit each other unless they were siblings.

"Oh…ok. I will. What was that stuff, anyway? It tasted like burning." Said Mob. She wished that she'd had some water. Her mouth and throat were raw and her eyes were watering and her nose was running…and also she was feeling sort of warm inside…

"Vodka. Good Japanese vodka. The one thing, well on my very short list of things, I missed about this country. The only country that does better is Russia it's self but my Russian is shit." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded. She felt…she felt like she needed to lay down. She felt warm and kind of tired…

But not bad anymore.

"My dad says that Japanese things are the best in the whole world and that Japanese people are the best and the most cultured people in the whole world too. He says that. He says a lot of things. Some of the things he says are very mean. I hate it when he says things that are very mean…but I can't even say anything…." Said Mob. Another capful was pressed to her hand.

"You get one more but that's it. I'm trying to make you feel better, not turn you into a drunk." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded and drank the next capful the way Minegishi told her to. She expected Minegishi to put the cap back on the bottle but they just took a big drink right from the bottle. Maybe Minegishi was a boy. Boys did that a lot.

"Hey, are you a boy or a girl? I've been wondering that since the day I met you but I was too scared to ask." Said Mob. She felt a little dizzy. Minegishi let her rest her head on their shoulder.

"Yup. You're drunk. I know you wouldn't have had the balls to ask me that otherwise." Said Minegishi

"Drunk?" asked Mob. She knew what drunk was. Sometimes adults drank sake and acted dumb. That was what dad said drunk was, anyway, and that was why he said that he hardly ever drank sake even though it was delicious. She had seen dunk people in anime too. They had rosy cheeks and noses and acted silly.

She touched her nose. It felt the same. But rosy was a color, not a feeling.

And she didn't think that she was acting silly. Well she was leaning against Minegishi. They weren't the sort of friends that hugged. They were, though, apparently the sort of friends who leaned against each other. This was nice. Minegishi was warm. Their aura was nice. Their room was full of boxes…maybe they should have made a fort. There were plants too. A plants vs boxes fort like she and Sho made…that would have been fun.

"Yeah, I may have given you a little too much you little drunk. Also to answer your question unless you're asking me out, which I would say no to because you're nine and I'm not a creep, then you don't need to know that." Said Minegishi

"Oh. B-But what do you do if people want to ask you on dates? If they don't know if you're a boy or a girl then how will they know if it's ok to ask you?" asked Mob. Poor Minegishi. It was so sad that they didn't have love or kids. Mob sort of wished that they had kids just so that Mob could have had another kid to play with…but they didn't and Mob should have been happy with Sho. She could see his aura. He was still upset…and she should have gone to him…but she was very comfortable sitting right in that spot.

"I don't date people who care about that. Well I don't date in general and what I do is not something that you're ready to hear about at your age. Maybe when you're ten but not nine." Said Minegishi

"Oh…ok. I don't understand but ok." Said Mob. She did not understand the world of adults. She had thought that dad was hard to understand but maybe they all were…actually everything was becoming hard to understand. She couldn't keep balance. She kept on swaying and swaying until she fell backwards onto the bed. It smelled new. It was new.

It was comfortable.

"Yeah, you're gone. You can wait out world war Suzuki here, even the plants can feel how pissed off your dad is, on the condition that you don't tell him I let you drink. I don't want to be next after he's done with whatever it is that he's doing over there." said Minegishi

"Ok…I won't tell dad…won't let him get mad at you." Said Mob. She knew that she should have been worried, been afraid, but she wasn't. She was…content. Yes, that was the world. Content and snug as a bug in a rug. She could get used to this…and also she could keep a secret. This was so nice. Her feelings wouldn't listen and her powers wouldn't listen and she had been so upset before…

She may not have ever been able to go home again but…but at least it wasn't so bad anymore.


	99. Making Up

There was no problem that could not be solved in some way.

His Daughter was no exception.

Something was wrong with her. Since coming to Japan she had been so odd. Not that they had been back for very long, only a few days, and over the course of those days she had been distant from him. She hadn't sought him out in the night, she hadn't clung to his legs when he tried to leave in the mornings, and she hadn't tried to go to work with him either….not that there was much for him to do in Tokyo.

The Seventh Division was in Seasoning City after all.

And they would not be going to Seasoning City. He was not going to risk it. There was nothing for them there. Well an entire Division of Claw…which was still in it's infancy. He had established the Seventh Division, well planted the seeds of it, shortly after adopting Daughter. Seasoning City had produced the both of them after all. It seemed as though they were the only two espers to come out of there…but then again lightning could strike the same place twice. Or thrice, in this case. Still he was not going back to the place of his and his Daughter's birth.

He didn't need that kind of stress.

An irrational kind of stress. The sort of stress that could drive a person to lose control. He didn't need to walk down the same streets of his youth, to maybe even see the house he had grown up in, to climb the same tress, to eat at that same omelet place…if it was there. To light some incense for his parents. He didn't need…he didn't need that in his life right now. He had enough going on as it was. He had business to run and a world to take over and…and he did not need to go to Seasoning City.

Or home.

The children had carried on something fierce on their first day back. Son put up a racket and Daughter…she defied him to his face. She defied him to his face and forced his hand…not that he had hurt her in any way. He barely touched her. She had been asking for it anyway with the way that she was carrying on. The way that she had let Son carry on even though he had told her to stop him. The way that she had lost control and attacked her brother….all of it. It hadn't been like her at all and he hadn't been able to reconcile the way she was acting with the person he knew her to be so she forced his hand in that way.

She had forced his hand.

It had been her fault. She should have been able to keep it together. He had been able to keep it together. It wasn't easy for him, either, being back in Japan. He hadn't thought it through, coming back here, because even if he was kilometers from the home he had shared with Masami it still hurt. The wound, which had been scarred over, had opened again. It was opened and he had to do his best to close it. There was no reason for this wound to be opened. He wasn't anywhere near home…but he was. He was closer to the house that he and Masami had shared….closer than he had been in years.

Irrational.

A house was a collection of walls and pipes and a roof. The house was just a building no different from the one they were staying in now. No different from all of the ones that he and the children had stayed in. He knew this, he could recognize this, and he had been recognizing this from the moment that he had stepped foot into their new accommodations. There was no need to go back to that house even for one day. There was nothing there but dust. Dust and boxes of junk from the past. Memories that he had been trying to exorcise for years and years. He was not going back.

And neither were the children.

Daughter had asked to leave him. She dared to ask to leave him after all that he had done for her. She would have been languishing in that child prison if not for him. Not that she knew about the child prison. Not that she could ever know about the child prison. Not that she could ever know her true origins….but still. She should not have asked to leave, to go back to the old house, and she….she should not have even thought to….she should have….

She was going to be by his side for the rest of his life.

He did not want to draw parallels between his wife and his Daughter. He had to keep those two categorizations far away from each other. Daughter was nothing like Masami. Daughter was easier to understand than Masami had ever been. Daughter never asked him for things that he couldn't understand, she never asked for affection and didn't tell him when she wanted it or how, and she never pushed him away in one breath and then drew him closer in the next. She never…she was not her mother. Masami may have left him, may have betrayed him, but Daughter never would…

So he tried to understand Daughter.

In the moment, when she had asked to leave him, he had been disappointed in her beyond all measure. Disappointed in and also…other feelings. Cold ones. Cold ones that stabbed him in the wound that Masami left and then twisted back and forth until blood was drawn. So he had told her to get out of his sight…and she had complied. She had gotten so far out of his sight that he had feared that she had left….but she hadn't. She had just gone to spend time with Minegishi.

And then she had come home the next day and she had stayed….so that was good.

"Daughter. Eat something." Said Suzuki. Daughter was staring at her plate. There was a full Japanese breakfast spread out in front of her and she hadn't touched a bite. He had even held up on breakfast for her and she wasn't touching a single scrap of it….

"Don't touch the furikake. I barely even had any." Said Son. He took more than his fair share…but that was fine they could always get more. They could always get more of everything. There was no need for Daughter to just sit there and stare at her food. She was slumped down in her chair, too, which was not like her at all. He reached over with his powers and propped her up properly.

Her aura pulled away from his.

And she was looking at him now. He was bad at reading faces but auras…she seemed frightened. He didn't know what she was frightened of. She had nothing to fear. She was his Daughter. He would protect her from everything around her. He would keep her safe and protect her like he had been for her entire life. Her and Son and-and Masami…

"You need to eat something." Said Suzuki. Daughter shook her head. She was still looking at him now. He didn't know why she was so focused on him. Her eyes met his and her aura was focused on him…and he had no idea why. It wasn't like she had spent the past seven years that they had known each other ignoring him but….but she had never been this focused on him, either. It was….he didn't like it. The fact that she was so frightened. He felt, almost, like she was frightened of him…but that made no sense. He had never given her reason to be frightened of him.

"You've been eating nothing but the furikake." Said Suzuki. It wasn't that there wasn't enough to go around it was just the fact that it was rude to eat all of one thing. Son's table manners weren't the best. Daughter had excellent table manners. He'd have to ask her to help Son with that…even she ever stopped carrying on the way she was.

"No, I've been eating other things too. See my rice bowl? It's empty and it's my second bowl of it, too. I'm super hungry because we had to wait to eat breakfast for some reason." said Son

"Your sister was away. We should all eat at least one meal together a day." Said Suzuki. Truth be told he would have rather eaten on his own or just with Daughter….but it was good for them to eat together at least once. It reinforced family bonds. Also Daughter enjoyed it.

"She's always away hanging out with her friend and stuff. You never tried to starve me before." Said Son

"You are far from starving, believe me, you've never known true hunger and you never will. Now stop this." Said Suzuki

"Sho can have all of everything. You and Sho can. I'm not hungry." Said Daughter. She seemed paler. She was resting her head on one hand now. Her eyes were squinted shut. Was she sick? He had never once known her to get sick…the thought is frightening. The thought of there being something that he could not protect her from….that she could not protect herself from….the thought of her succumbing to some illness.

Masami had been frequently sick towards the end.

"You need to eat something." Said Suzuki. Daughter was not sick. If she were sick then she would have told Fukuda. If she were sick then she would have gone and gotten herself all healed up. She was not sick. She was just….not sick. She wasn't any paler than usual. She had always been pale. She got it from him.

No, she didn't.

"I'm not hungry." Said Daughter. She wasn't looking at him anymore. She was looking down at her rice bowl. It was full. His was half full. Son's was empty. He didn't know why his Daughter was carrying on like this. She was not sick, no, because if she was then…then it would have been unthinkable…but she was not sick.

"Did you eat today?" asked Suzuki

"No." said Daughter

"Then eat now. You need to eat to live." Said Suzuki. She picked at her rice with her chopsticks. She held her chopsticks strangely. Both of the children did. They hadn't really used them that often, had they? Masami had always preferred a fork and she had been the one to make the meals and set the tables…that had been years ago. Well the children mostly lived on things that they ate with their hands. Pizza, french-fries, candy….he'd have to teach Daughter how to hold chopsticks later. Then she could teach Son. They had to learn how to use chopsticks especially if they were going to be spending time in Japan again.

"I'm trying." Said Daughter as she picked up some rice with her chopsticks and ate it. She made a face as she ate it. That was strange. She only made faces when she ate things that she didn't care for. Like the time with the locusts. Son had enjoyed them but Daughter had made that same face…

Did she just not like it?

Yes, that must have been it. She just didn't like it. She usually ate everything that was put in front of her. She was usually so good about that. He didn't much care what the children ate just so long as they ate. He thought that she would have appreciated it, a real Japanese breakfast after so long away from home, but he must have miscalculated. She was just…hungry for something else. Also she must have been tired, too. Maybe he wouldn't take the children with him today. There wasn't much for them to do and he couldn't just take Son with him, that was too much of a hassle.

Daughter was fine.

"If you don't like it then you can ask for something else. I just thought that you would enjoy a real Japanese breakfast since you were so happy, before, to be back in Japan. We all are." Said Suzuki. Son nodded as he dug into his third bowl of rice. He seemed fine now, better than he had been before, though he sort of carried on still…but not the same way that Daughter had been….

Daughter should not have been carrying on at all.

But that was over now. She hadn't uttered a single word about going back to the old house since that day. That meant that it was all over and…and now they could carry on as they always had been. No matter what country they were in they could always carry on. Their geographic location didn't matter anyway. They were still the same people no matter where they were. So there was no need to assign any irrational feelings to their location. So Son and Daughter, really, had no right to carry on the way that they had been.

"It's fine, dad, I'm just not hungry. Are we going to work with you today or are we doing homeschool?" asked Daughter

"I want to go to the arcade! Well an arcade…and also the park, well a park, and then we can find some other place fun a-and-" said Son

"Are you feeling alright?" asked Suzuki. She could not have been sick but if she had been then it would have been nothing at all to call Fukuda…unless this was one of those things that he could not fix. Like Masami's condition. Whatever her condition had been. Whatever had made her carry on in bed all day. Daughter…she did not have the same affliction or condition…she couldn't have…

Something was different about her.

And he had no idea what it was. There was sort of a distance between them. He could sense it. A metaphysical distance. She was sitting right across from him but she felt so far away…and he was not at all accustomed to feeling like he was far away from her. She had been his shadow whenever she was near to him since the day he had brought her home. Well almost since the day he had brought her home. She had been weary of him before…back when she was only two years old….but that was seven years ago. No point in dwelling on the past now.

"I feel fine. I can totally go and-" said Son

"No, not you. Your sister." Said Suzuki. Son stabbed a piece of pickled vegetable with his chopstick until it was reduced down to almost nothing.

"I feel fine. I just don't want any breakfast." Said Daughter. That was not like her at all. She did not skip meals. She was…she was still growing and needed to eat. She was an esper and needed to eat. She needed to eat often because not only was she growing but her powers were taxing on her energy reserves as well. Daughter…she should not have been worrying him like this. She should not have…she should not have been acting like this.

He exorcised the emotion that he was feeling. The anxiety.

"What do you want, then? Whatever you want you can have." Said Suzuki. There was no reason that she couldn't have whatever she wanted…within reason. If she asked to go back to the old house again…he hoped that she didn't start up with all of that again.

"I want….I want whatever Sho wants." Said Daughter. She pushed her rice bowl away. Son reached over and took it from her. His hand stopped and his eyes met hers as he grabbed her bowl. She did nothing. He took it. That was normal for the two of them. Daughter took care of Son. That was how it was supposed to be.

But Daughter was not the way that she was supposed to be.

Suzuki ruminated on this throughout his entire day. Better to ruminate on his Daughter's strange behavior than on the million and one other things that came to mind. Masami. The house. The life he used to live. The life that he had made with her…that she wanted no part of. She had taken everything that he had given her and just…just left it all there. She had just left him. She had left him and…and she was gone…and even before that there had been this distance between the two of them…

A distance which she had let grow.

A distance which he had her grow.

A distance that would not grow between him and his Daughter. She was never going to leave him. He wouldn't let her leave. She would be by his side for the rest of his life. She had no reason to leave. She…why did she have to say that? That she would leave for the old house and…and take her brother with him. She would never leave him. She was not…she was not Masami's daughter. She didn't have even the smallest bit of Masami in her and that was….was good. She was…she was her own person…

And she was not going to leave him.

She wanted…she wanted to be near him. She was just…he had no idea. Maybe she had just been having a bad day. Maybe she had just…maybe they needed to leave Japan. She wanted…he had no idea what she wanted. She had said, before, that she wanted to be in Japan and so had he…and also he wanted to leave. He wanted to stay and go at the same time…so maybe she felt the same way, too. Maybe she had a wound that wouldn't heal like he did. Maybe she felt the way he felt.

Of course she didn't, she was just a child.

It may not have always felt like it but she was a child. Even if she hadn't been a child she had no reason to feel like…to feel the way he felt…and he should not have been feeling anything at all anyway. He was feeling this and it…it would pass. It had passed before for the most part, before he made all of those stupid choices, and it would pass again. If the feel of betrayal ever could truly pass. He didn't know. She would never know. She would never know the pain of choosing someone out of everyone else in the world and then having them leave you….

If anyone ever did that to his Daughter then he would murder them.

And Daughter would never leave him. She was just…he didn't know. Melancholic. Morose. Sick looking. She had been like that since they quarreled….and maybe that was it. But they had quarreled before…but not so badly….and she had always come back to him. He had never quarreled with Masami and yet she still…and Daughter was not Masami. Daughter was also younger…and he had struck her hard enough to break through her barrier….

Was that it?

If it was then he would have to make peace with her. He had no idea how to make peace with someone he had upset. Usually when he upset people he didn't care. They were only upset because they had given him a reason to make them feel like that. Sometimes people forced his hand…his own Daughter included….but Daughter was not like most people. Did he really want to go groveling to her like that? Did he really want to make peace with her even though she was the one who forced his hand?

She needed to eat.

If she was on some sort of hunger strike then, of course, he would make peace with her. He couldn't have her starving to death or anything like that. She had been hard to find. A prodigy. He knew that she would be had to replace…so therefore she was irreplaceable…and therefore making peace with her was fine. If anything she was forcing his hand.

So he had to make peace with her.

Because he could not stand the way she was carrying on. Carrying on but also…not. Not in the way that Son carried on, he could not have handled it in if she carried on like that, but she was….she was carrying on in her own way. A distant sort of way. Not seeking him out. Not spending time with him. Not…not being herself. He missed her. It was a bit like how it had been with Masami...that sense of distance.

So he would have to make peace….somehow.

Not with words, no, because we did not grovel and especially not to his own nine year old Daughter. No, he would get her a gift. She had always liked it when he came back from abroad with gifts for her. Yes, she would appreciate the gesture and then she would stop with whatever it was that she was feeling and then things could go back to normal.

All it would take was one doll.

The search for said doll ended up taking longer than Suzuki had anticipated. It had to be perfect. He had always put care into what he got her. There was no point at all in picking out a gift if it wasn't going to be the most perfect one he could have picked out. He also had to do this personally. The Awakened couldn't be trusted. They could have come back with all sorts of nonsense. There was a reason that there was a difference between an Awakened soldier and just a general Awakened esper. No, he would gladly spend the better part of the day at every doll shop on Tokyo, turned out that there were a lot of them, to find something that his Daughter would like.

And then they would be alright again.

"Here. This is for you." Said Suzuki. That was the first thing he said to his Daughter after coming home. He had left Son and Daughter to their own decides that day, not even school work for them, and judging by the fact that Son was passed out in front of the television it had been a day well spent. There were stuffed toys and little trinkets everywhere. Good. They'd tired themselves out. That was why Daughter was all…slouched over…like that.

"Thanks Dad." Said Daughter as she took the gift bag from his hands. She rested it on her lap and just sort of looked at it.

"You can open it." Said Suzuki. That wasn't like her at all. The children had never waited….well Daughter waited, Son just sort of tore apart whatever paper or bag contained his gifts….but Daughter always asked and then opened. She was just sort of staring at it…and that wasn't like her. Even her aura seemed…duller.

"A new friend for you." Said Suzuki

"Oh. Another doll. Thanks dad. I'll put it with the others." Said Daughter. She seemed tired. There was a far off quality to her voice. She also had some trouble getting to her feet. He reached out to help her and she flinched away.

"What was that?" asked Suzuki

"What?" asked Daughter. She swayed a little on her feet. She must have been very tired. It wasn't so late…maybe she was still on Seoul time. Yes, that must have been it. That and her age. Children needed a lot of sleep, didn't they? That might have be why she was still acting so…differently.

"That. That thing you did. You've never done that before." Said Suzuki. Daughter swayed a bit as she stood. She put her new friend down next to a half full bottle of milk. She had some trouble setting her doll down, it seemed, and he helped her as best as he could. By hand that time. She still stepped away from him. He didn't know why.

"I don't know." Said Daughter after a moment. He picked up her doll and handed it to her. She must have liked it. She loved dolls. She had so many after all. She was a little girl and little girls loved dolls.

"That's not an answer." Said Suzuki

"It is. You asked me something and I answered you." Said Daughter. Suzuki thought for a moment. Well she was technically right, she had answered him, but that had not been the answer that he had been looking for. He didn't know what it was that he had been looking for, what it was that he wanted her to say, but it was something more than 'I don't know'.

"But it's not a real answer." Said Suzuki. Daughter shook her head. Son kicked in his sleep. She pulled a blanket off the couch with her powers and draped it over Son. At least that part of her was still normal. The caring part. He didn't know what he would have done if she had stopped…if she had just laid in bed all day…and stopped being…herself.

"Sho might wake up." Said Daughter by way of explanation. Yes, that would not have been god at all. Son had been carrying on…both of the children had….but now at least Daughter would be better now. Right?

"Are you tired? You're acting like you're tired." Said Suzuki. She reached up and played with her hair. It was down now. She kept it in braids a lot, even when she slept sometimes. He forgot how long it was, sometimes, long and straight and black as night. She really had very beautiful hair.

He reached out and brushed it behind her ear.

And her aura pulled away from his. He frowned. That was odd. She was being so odd. She was being so odd…he didn't know. He had given her a new doll, a new friend to play with, but she was still so…so…he didn't even know. All he knew was that he didn't like it, the way she was being, and he wanted…he wanted her to be…not like this.

"Are you still mad at me?" asked Daughter

"Have you done anything today to make me angry with you?" asked Suzuki

"No, I mean about before…when I asked you to go home. Are you still mad at me? Are you still so disappointed in me that you don't even have the words for it?" asked Daughter. So he was right. She was upset about what happened. He had thought that the doll would have made it better. Maybe it had and it just needed time. She was…she was still being like…and he didn't like it.

"No. That was days ago. I'm no longer angry with you or disappointed in you." Said Suzuki. He tucked the rest of her hair behind her other ear. She didn't flinch away that time. She was still unsteady a little bit but she was at least not pulling away from him.

There was less distance between them now.

Which was such a relief. He had never been this relieved in his life…well no, that was hyperbole. There was no greater relief in life than the relief he had felt when he had been allowed to go and see Masami after they had cut Son out of her. This was a big relief though, knowing that she was still there….which made no sense. Of course she was there. She was nine years old, where was she even going to go?

She wouldn't be nine forever.

And that was what he was….what even was this feeling? Fear. He was afraid of the growing distance between the two of them. Maybe because emotional distance was a precursor for physical distance? Masami had been the same way…but Daughter was not Masami. Daughter would be by his side for the rest of his life.

"Um….dad?" asked Daughter quietly

"Yes?" said Suzuki. She played with the hem of her dress. She wasn't in pajamas yet. He wondered if maybe she should have been headed off to bed. He wondered if she wanted to watch television with him. He always enjoyed watching television with her. He wondered if maybe she was bored of television by now…or something. He didn't know. He did know, however, that he wanted to be near to her. It felt as though he hadn't been near her in years….and that was an irrational way to feel. He had just seen her that morning. He hated it when he got all irrational like this.

"Do you…do you still love me?" asked Daughter. She said it so quietly that he could barely even hear her. she was probably only speaking so quietly because Son was asleep. She should have spoke up, though, because he had hardly heard her. Well it didn't matter, he had heard her, and now he had to answer her.

"Yes. I do." Said Suzuki. He hated that word, that imprecise word, but if that was the word that she wanted to use…if that was the word that would keep her by his side, then he would use it. He did care for her. The thought of losing her made him ache. The thought of being away from her made him….unhappy. So, yes, he did love her.

"I love you too, Dad." Said Daughter. She embraced him, then, and he didn't push her away. Even though he didn't like being trapped like this. Having another person wrapped around him like this. He still let her, though, because having her near was better than being far away from her.

She still held on to her.

He reached down and touched her hair. She had such soft hair. Such soft hair. She still held onto him. She cared for him. She cared for him and she would always be by his side….he would make sure of it. She was only nine years old. She was only nine and she could not go anywhere but be beside him…and when had this become such a big fear for him? It was being in Japan, probably, that did this. Everything here reminded him of Masami….

But Masami was gone.

But he had Daughter and that was enough for him.


	100. Target Practice

Big sis had been weird since their fight.

The fight itself had been weird. Big sis never fought back. She never yelled at him or pushed him or anything. She wasn't supposed to. She was the big sister, not the big brother, and if she had been a boy then he would have fully expected her to push him back and yell at him. She was a girl, though, and girls didn't like to fight. Dad had said so. Even if he was a jerk he could be right about some things.

And also big sis had never fought back before.

Which was scary. He remembered, or maybe he dreamt it, that something bad happened once. Something loud and…and he was there and he was scared….and also there was a light. It might have been, probably had been, a dream or something. Something like that. Because that had been the first time in his entire life that big sis had fought back.

And she had been scary.

All she did was push him. That was it. She probably could have done much worse. She didn't have to push him, then, because he was only yelling at her and not pushing her or hitting her or anything like that. If he had been pushing her or tugging on her braids then it would have made sense for her to push him. But he hadn't been and therefore it made no sense that she had pushed him and that was the really scary part of all of it.

Not that she was so much stronger than him.

No, he wasn't afraid of her because she was so much stronger than him….or even afraid of her at all. He was just…not happy….that was all. Because she had pushed him. She had lied to him, too, before she pushed him. She had said that they were going home. This was not home. Home was the Castle because they had always lived in the castle and this was not the castle. So she had lied. She was lucky that he only jumped on the bed instead of on her like every part of him was screaming to. She had lie to him.

This was not their home.

No matter how many toys they brought with them this was not home. Even if they were back in Japan this was not home. Though it was nice to know what everyone was saying. He was tired of having to learn knew languages. English and Mandarin and Korean and all of that. It was nice to be back in Japan where he could understand all the people and read all the signs, also they were in a city this time and not outside of a city where there was a whole lot of nothing. It just felt better to have people near him.

Nobody had lived near them when they lived in the castle.

And that was not a reason to like it here. There was stuff to do, at least, and he was trying to make the best of it. Dad was not going to take them back to the castle. They had fought about it. Dad kicked his butt. Dad kicked him and hit him and threw him and, eventually, the message sank in. They were never going home again. Everywhere was their home. They could live anywhere in the world but the castle.

When everywhere was your home then nowhere was your home.

Big sis said, before, that they were never going home to the castle so they had to make the best of it now. So that was what they had been doing. At least there was stuff to do in Tokyo. The other day they went to an arcade. The day after that they went to a park. It had been fun even though big sis had been there…and also kind of boring. She had been kind of boring lately, actually, which was nice in some ways. It was nice, at least, that she was not planning on making fighting with him a regular thing. It wasn't nice, however, that she was making doing nothing at all a regular thing.

"Come on, play with me." Said Sho. They were done with their homeschool work and now they could do whatever they wanted. Dad said that he didn't really need them because there wasn't a lot to do in Tokyo to begin with. That left more time for fun.

"Did you do your homeschool work?" asked big sis. She picked his notebook up off the table and held it open so she could see.

"All of it." Said Sho. It had been boring as all else but he had done it. Dad was happy when they did their work and now was not the time to make dad mad. His aura had been so weird since the first day. Also he had been way madder than normal on that first day. He had punished Sho before but never like that. Also he had never pulled big sis' hair like that before, either. He hardly ever punished her because she was his favorite and all of that. That whole day had been so weird.

But this day could be normal.

It was normal. The TV was on like normal, she was watching Frozen in Japanese again even though they had seen that movie a million times, and she was even wearing that dumb Frozen dress too. That was normal. She had a bottle of milk in front of her too. That was normal. She liked milk even though cola was the best drink there ever was. She didn't agree, that was why she had been drinking so much milk lately. Enough to make her tired all the time. Sho had heard that about milk, that it had chemicals in it to make you tired. Maybe that was why she had been laying down so much lately.

She was not getting sick.

She was not sick like mom had been sick. First of all mom spent all day in her pajamas. Big sis was not in her pajamas but instead in one of her costume dresses. Second of all big sis was out of bed. Mom had spent the whole day in bed when she had been sick. Third of all big sis was still bossing him around. Mom had left him and big sis alone all day when she had been sick. Therefore big sis was not sick like mom had been.

She was just weird.

"O-Ok. What do you want to play?" asked big sis. She was laying down on the couch, she did that a lot these days. She had this creepy looking doll sitting on her stomach. Sho picked up one of his guns, not a real one because dad said that a gun was a coward's weapon and also real guns were not toys, and aimed it at her doll.

"Target practice." Said Sho. She wasn't going to push him again. No matter how hard he pushed her she was never going to push him back again. Before was just because she had been upset, that was all, she had even said so. She had been so upset that she had even spent the night with Minegishi….and Sho was not jealous just because he had never been to a sleepover before and also it had not been hard sleeping away from big sis. He had only been up all night because his bones were cracked. It didn't matter, Fukuda had fixed him up and dad wasn't upset anymore and neither was big sis.

She was weird but not mean an weird at the same time. Nope, just weird. Different.

"Please try not to shoot me in the eye this time." Said big sis. She was still laying down on the couch. She didn't even try to move. What was the point of target practice if your target wasn't moving? She used to run away sometimes when he shot at her. He knew that maybe he should have shot at something else but he didn't have anyone else to shoot, the Awakened weren't fun to shoot and Minegishi was way mean, and also he needed to get as much shooting in before dad got rid of his guns just like he got rid of everything else that he didn't like.

Sho really missed his crazy string.

And making glitter bombs. That had been fun.

And also the time with the water balloons. That may have been the one step too far, playing that inside the house, because big sis slipped and then her ankle got super swollen. Though really they had no choice but to play water balloons inside because outside it had been snowing and people died of getting too cold. Like in that movie about the people who were trapped on the ski lift. So really unless they wanted to die by freezing they'd had to play water balloons inside the house. They were not being ridiculous like dad had said.

Sho was not ridiculous.

"I'll try but these guns aren't very accurate." Said Sho. He hadn't been aiming for her eye that one time or the other time or even that OTHER other time. He had been aiming for her face and then the bullets had just gone into her eye. She was ok though, she hadn't gone blind, and even if she had then Fukuda would have been able to fix her up. He could fix anything.

Well, not broken dolls.

But whatever. If her doll broke then she would just get another one. She had a million of them anyway. She always filled up the bedrooms of wherever they were staying with dolls. They were so creepy. He didn't get it at all. Girls were just plain weird and big sis was the weirdest out of all the girls in the whole world.

He knew, he'd looked.

"Ok. Even if you hit me in the eye I won't be mad at you, little brother." Said big sis. She said that but he had to test it. He didn't trust her. She had said, before, that she would never do anything to hurt him. Then she went off and pushed him even though she had been the one to lie to him in the first place. So really everything that happened had been her fault.

If she had just told him that they were going to Tokyo, not home, then everything would have been ok.

But she had lied. She said that they were finally going home. He wanted to go home. He had left a drawing on the kitchen table and he still had to finish it. Plus also he had left his Zootopia plate at home and everything tasted better off of that plate. Even steamed vegetables tasted better off of that plate. Mom always served them off of their special plates…and even if they went back to the castle Sho knew that mom would never serve them off of those plates or any plates ever again. She wouldn't because she was gone. She had run away from home and left their family and she was never coming back. Dad had said that because she had left she was a traitor….and Sho would never have called his own mother a traitor. She was mom and no matter what he would always love her….and she had said that she would always love him….

But then she had left without him.

"Ready, aim, fire." Said Sho quickly before he shot his gun. This one was a revolver. It shot a lot of bullets out one after the other after the other. It was good for making a lot of shots at once. Most of his were accurate, they hit her doll, and the doll went tumbling from big sis' stomach down to the ground.

She didn't catch it with her powers.

It stopped in midair before changing direction and flying across the room. For a moment Sho had thought that she had been throwing it at him. She hadn't been because it went in the totally opposite direction of him. She just sort of looked at it for a while like she couldn't believe that she had done that…like she had lost control….and for a moment he feels very cold…

Big sis losing control was….not good.

"Oh. I did that." Said big sis. She sat up and took another drink from her milk bottle. Her fingers fumbled over the cap a couple of times but she got it opened. That was kind of weird….but she wasn't sick. She was fine, just weird.

"That was a good shot, Sho, you didn't hit me at all." said big sis. Sho shrugged and tossed his gun to the side. He was bored of that already.

"Wasn't aiming at you." Said Sho

"Oh. Ok. I still think that it was a good shot. Do you want to watch Frozen with me? It's getting to the part with the trolls and the Fixer Upper song. You like that one." said big sis

"It's ok." Said Sho. He kind of wanted to do something else but…but he did like this song just a little bit. Not that he would ever admit to it. This was a girls' movie. Somethings in their world for only for girls, some things in this world were only for boys, and some things in this world were for both. This movie was not for both…but he did like parts of it.

He used his powers to jump from his spot and onto the couch. He only squished big sis' legs just a little.

"Careful, Sho, you might hurt yourself." Said big sis as she pulled her legs up and sat up. It took her a little but to sit up. Sho ended up having to reach over to help her. Sho wondered if maybe he should have called Fukuda just to be safe…but then dad might have thought the he and big sis were fighting again and that would not have been good at all. Dad was already so upset from their first night in Tokyo…yeah, it would do no good to make dad even more upset.

"Be careful Sho, you might hurt yourself" said Sho doing a dead on impression of big sis when she said that. She said that like she was a grown up, all worried about him, but if she had been worried then she wouldn't have pushed him before in the first place.

"That's what I just said. I want you to be careful so that you don't end up hurting yourself." Said big sis

"I didn't hurt myself. I'm not a baby. You worry about your own self." Said Sho. Big sis leaned against him. Well she sort of tipped over against him. He let her. Girls were like that, always touching and hugging and stuff, and he wasn't going to make her sad or anything like that. She was just being weird, that was all, and he would let her be weird even if she was leaning against him and the stupid cape from her stupid dress itched his stupid arm so stupidly that the entire thing just felt so stupid.

He was mad for no reason again.

He hated when this happened. He kicked the couch a few times. He was big enough, now, that his feet hung over the couch. Mom used to mark their height on the doorframe…but mom was not there anymore to do that. Also they never stayed in one place long enough to make down how much they grew. Dad didn't care anyway. He could have cared less whether they grew or shrunk.

Big sis cared, though…and it was so annoying.

"I-I don't need to. I worry about you. I love you so much Sho…so very much. You're my most favorite brother in the whole world, you know that? I'm so happy that I get to be your big sister. I'm so happy that you're here…" said big sis. She was hugging him, now, and rubbing her head against his. He tried to push her away.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah I love you too, big sis, now knock it off." Said Sho. He didn't need to be hugged. He was fine. If she needed a hug then she should have hugged dad. He was always letting her hug him. He never let Sho hug him…which was fine. Sho was eight, now, and way too old for hugs. Especially from his big sister. Yeah, he was old enough that hugs were something that he only gave to people when he had to.

And he had to hug her now.

Because she wanted a hug and she was his sister and also all of the love and stuff like that. He did love her. He just didn't go around screaming it at the top of his lungs. She knew that he loved her. Even though he was a jerk to her he still loved her. So he had to hug her, and he had for a little bit, and now the hug was done. He hoped that whenever he ended up getting a girlfriend or a wife or whatever she didn't want to hug or stuff like that.

But she probably would and it would probably suck.

"You are the best little brother in the whole world and I never want you to go." Said big sis

"I'm not trying to go, I'm trying to get you to let go." Said Sho as he managed to squirm one of his arms free. He could have used his powers…but then she might have used her powers….and he didn't want that right now.

"Let it go! Let it go!" sang big sis. Well it was more like she was shouting than screaming. Sho wished that dad could have heard that. Then maybe he would have shut up about all the noise that Sho made. He took that back as soon as he was done thinking it. No, he did not want dad to be back there. Everything seemed to be making him mad these days…which really wasn't that different from every other day. Well he had been meaner lately….at least to Sho. He stopped being mean to big sis as soon as she came back from Minegishi's house the day after they had that big fight.

"What's with you?" asked Sho. She was done singing, now, and she was playing with his hair. She was pushing down on it and then letting it spring back up. He hated it when people touched his hair. Sometimes adults did it but mostly it was other kids. Girls. They were so weird about hair. They were always brushing their hair and braiding it and washing it and all of that stuff. Girls were always touching his hair and saying how nice it was….they were weird like that.

And big sis was the weirdest.

"I've always been so jealous of your hair, little brother, I wish that my hair was red. You're so lucky to have red hair." Said big sis

"Don't be a dummy. Red hair sucks. Everyone stares at you when you have red hair. Be happy that you have black hair like everyone else." Said Sho

"Not everyone in the world has black hair." Said big sis

"But everyone in Japan does. You're lucky to look Japanese." Said Sho. Everyone in Japan looked like her. That was one of the things he missed about being in the rest of the world. They went to a lot of places that weren't Japan and the people there looked a lot like him. Now they were here and people looked like big sis. It wasn't fair. They were both half Japanese but she had gotten all of the Japanese and he had gotten all of the half.

It sucked sometimes.

"You-you're Japanese too. We're Japanese and we live in Japan….and everyone speaks Japanese….and stuff. I don't know. You're someone I love. I know that." Said big sis. She was hugging him now and she wasn't stopping no matter how much he squirmed. She was being so weird…but she wasn't being mean and that was good. She had never been mean before that day and he hoped that she was never mean to him again.

This family wasn't big enough for three mean people.

"Yeah, I love you too. I love you and I love Japan and I love getting hugs and I love everything." Said Sho in his best Minegishi impression. She didn't get it. She couldn't hear tones. Neither could dad. She got it from him. She got everything from him. Her powers and the way she talked and being able to sit through kendo. All he got from dad was red hair.

"Sho, you don't love everything. Like citrus. If you have any citrus you'll die. I remember that day. It was so scary. I almost lost you…and then if I lose you then…then I won't have a little brother anymore…" said big sis. She wasn't holding him as tight, now, but he didn't try to squirm away. He knew that if he tried to she would just hold onto him super tight again. He didn't need her to hold on to him tight again just like he didn't need her to talk about the time he almost died because of a stupid grapefruit.

"I remember. I was dead. I was the one who did the almost dying." Said Sho

"I'm so glad that you're alive." Said big sis. She yawned, then, and she was leaning more of her weight onto him. Maybe she was going to take a nap again. She had been taking a lot of naps lately. He didn't get it. She must have been hanging out with Minegishi for too long. She had probably caught his boring. Or maybe that was just something else that she had gotten from dad.

"So am I." said Sho. She was still leaned up against him. He could have pushed her off easily but he didn't. That would have been a jerky thing to do and he didn't like to be a jerk to her. He was a jerk all the time. Maybe he deserved to be pushed by her. Maybe if he wasn't such a jerk to her…but he couldn't help it. Sometimes he just did things without even knowing it. It was like he was on autopilot sometimes. Like the other day, the day when they had first come to Tokyo, and his body kept on telling him to move around and stuff and so he had jumped on the bed because otherwise he would have hurt her for lying…and he had ended up hurting her…but she had ended up hurting him first….

But he had done more of the hurting over the years.

So maybe she had just been getting even. He didn't know. That wasn't really like her but she had been acting so weird lately he wasn't sure if he could ever accurately predict her behavior again. He didn't like that. Enough stuff had changed in his life…he didn't need her changing too. He didn't need her being all huggy and touchy-feely and stuff. Well she had always been like that but never this bad before. He also didn't want her to sleep all day like mom had.

She was always trying to be like mom.

Even though there was no way that she could ever be like mom. Mom was their mom. There wasn't a single person in the whole world that could ever have taken her place. He had been thinking about her a lot since coming to Japan. Sometimes he even imagined running into her on the streets…but that would never happen because they got driven everywhere and also mom didn't live here. He didn't know where she lived but it wasn't here. She had always said that they were luck to live in such a big house and away from the hustle and bustle of the big city.

She probably wasn't here.

She probably wasn't anywhere.

"Hey, don't go anywhere….I mean fall asleep. I might want to do more target practice later." Said Sho. He had shared a room with her for his entire life. He knew what it sounded like when she was starting to go to sleep, how her breathing got, and he didn't want her to go to sleep. To leave him alone. Even if she was being all weird it was better than him being all alone.

"Ok…whatever you want little brother…I love you so much…" said big sis. She let him go and took another drink of her milk. Her eyes were kind of droopy like she had been up all night…and she sort of had been. She and dad were cool again and they had been hanging out. Sho didn't care. Let her hang out with dad or whatever. That was how things always were.

She had been weird since their big fight but somethings never changed. She was still dad's favorite…and also she was always up for a game of target practice.


	101. Doll Hospital

Mob hadn't meant to break her doll.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!"

And neither had Sho.

"Maybe we can fix it with glue or tape or something!" said Sho as he held up Mob's now headless doll. Not only had her head come off but it had broken in half, too. She wasn't upset about it. She hadn't really liked that doll anyway. Dad just got her dolls all the time without ever even asking her what she wanted. She didn't care at all if this one broke.

She took another sip of her strawberry milk.

It was hard to be sad about things when she had milk. Milk was good and sweet and creamy and built strong bones. Also you could put things in milk to make it taste better. Like chocolate or strawberry or the stuff that Minegishi kept in their drawers. Well that stuff didn't make it taste better but it made her feel better at least. Like now. Normally she was at least a little bit upset when Sho broke her things but now she wasn't upset at all. She didn't even like that doll that much. She had a million others so the loss of one doll didn't matter at all.

"It's fine. I don't care. I mostly just want to lay down." Said Mob. She liked to lay down. That happened when she drank too much milk. She got tired and also kind of nauseated but it was worth it. It was hard to get even a little bit upset when she drank milk. Also her powers didn't listen to her when she had milk, enough of it anyway, but in a good way. Usually her powers didn't listen to her in the way that they just did stuff without asking. When she drank enough milk her powers just stopped doing things all together.

It was nice.

"Don't lay down! We have to fix this!" said Sho. No. No way was he going to let her lay down. He had let Mom lay down back when she had been sick and…and he was not going to let big sis lay down. She wasn't even sick. She couldn't be sick. She was fine. She was just….her aura was weird and she slept all the time but she was not sick.

"Sho-" said Mob

"We can…we can get some tape and some glue and then…um….some nails and a hammer…and also maybe we can…maybe Fukuda knows how to fix dolls! I mean he can fix people and dolls can't be more complicated than people." Said Sho. He hadn't meant to break her doll. He had just wanted to play so he jumped on her and then they fell off of the couch and her doll fell too and the head came out. Dad was going to be so mad at him for so many reasons.

He didn't want dad to be mad at him.

Dad had been so weirdly grouchy lately even for him. Big sis said that it was because he had a lot to do at work, probably, because that was what he was always complaining to her about. Sho didn't care why he was so upset, just that he always acted like a jerk. Maybe that was where he got it from. Maybe since his dad was a jerk and he was a jerk then his kids would be jerks. Maybe he'd even end up married to a jerk and then she'd be a jerk to him and they'd be a bunch of jerks to their kids…and that would suck so much….so he just needed to work harder at not being a jerk. That was all. He couldn't be a jerk forever. If he kept on acting like a jerk then big sis might start fighting back again…and he had no desire at all for that to happen.

Dad had made himself perfectly clear. Sho was not to provoke his sister ever again.

"People are made of flesh and blood and skin and organs and stuff. Dolls are just toys. Fukuda can only heal people." Said Mob. It took her a moment to get to the point. Milk made her brain all foggy sometimes. She really wanted to lay down. Maybe the fog would go away once she got some more sleep.

"He can fix toys, too. Remember the time he fixed your dollhouse?" asked Sho

"When we were little?" asked Mob. She could sort of remember that. She had been….four? Much smaller than she was now. Maybe five. It was hard to remember. That happened when she drank too much milk at once, her brain started slowing down, so maybe she should have taken a break….maybe.

"Yeah, back when we lived in the cast-in the old house." Said Sho. He knew that dad wasn't home but he couldn't help but stop himself from calling it the castle. Dad said that they weren't ever supposed to talk about the castle again. He said that the past was in the past and that the castle was just walls and a roof and stuff like that. He said that if Sho or big sis ever mentioned the castle again they would be punished…and Sho didn't want that. He was still sore from the last time.

"Oh yeah….I remember…when you climbed on it…" said Mob. She remembered that day. She had been littler and Sho had only been a little mean. Mom had been tired but not as tired as she eventually got. That was one of those days when Fukuda would come over to play with them. She wondered why Fukuda never played with them anymore. Maybe because they were big kids now. Yes, that must have been it.

"Yeah, I remember that too. Anyway let's figure out how we're going to fix this." said Sho. He didn't need her going back and remembering all the times he had ever been a jerk to her. Couldn't she see that he was trying to be a better little brother? Couldn't she see that she had won? That, since that night, he had been making an effort not to be such a jerk because she could have pushed him back again? Maybe she didn't. She could be kind of clueless sometimes.

"But I don't even care." Said Mob. She had so many dolls. Dolls she hadn't even asked for. Dad was always just getting her dolls to play with. He called them her friends. Dolls were not friends, they were toys, living and breathing people were friends. Also she was perfectly capable of making her own friends. But she didn't say anything like that to dad, no, that would have been mean. She just accepted her new doll and put it with the others. That was the nice thing to do.

It was a lot easier to be nice these days.

Minegishi was so smart. That was why they were always reading books, because they were super smart, and also books gave them good ideas. Well Mob didn't know if the idea came from a book or not. She would have to ask them the next time they hung out. They had stuff to do, they said, and the stuff that they had to do was stuff that Mob was not allowed to know about until she was ten. There was a lot of stuff that she wasn't allowed to know about.

But that was ok because she had her secrets too.

"Well I do!" said Sho. He took her doll from her and went to go and fix it. She just went back to the couch to watch TV. Frozen again. She had been watching it over and over and over again…but that was normal for her. She was so weird like that. Girls were so weird like that.

Like why they liked dolls so much.

Sho had to turn the doll away from him which he tried to tape the doll's head back on. Why did girls have to play with such creepy stuff? They looked too much like people. Like what Sho imagined dead people looked like. He had never been to a funeral so he had never seen a dead person but he imagined they had frozen faces and glass eyes and just stared at you if they had died with their eyes opened, which if movies were to be believed people sometimes did. Girls were so weird to play with stuff like this.

He didn't get big sis at all sometimes.

He wondered if he had been adopted. He thought about that sometimes. He may have looked like dad but he didn't act like dad. Big sis acted more like dad. He didn't look that much like mom, and he had seen her picture that week so he still remembered what she looked like, and he didn't act that much like mom either. Mom had never been a jerk like he had been a jerk. Maybe he was the reason mom had ended up getting so sick. Dad was always saying that he was tiring.

Big sis was tired all the time.

So maybe she was sick. Maybe whatever it was that was wrong with her had nothing at all to do with him. Maybe…maybe this was the sort of thing that he should have called Fukuda about after all. Maybe he knew how to fix big sisters and dolls….Sho really hoped that he knew how to fix dolls. If dad found out that this happened he would just think that Sho had done this on purpose and that he had been picking another fight…and then that would have been so bad…so really Sho had to call Fukuda.

Yup, it was the smart thing to do.

Mob wondered if taking so many naps was the smart thing to do.

She was taking a sort of nap on the couch, she had been anyway, when another aura came into her range. She knew that aura, who it belonged to, but it was hard to open her eyes. She took a lot of naps during the day now, milk made her kind of tired, but no matter how much she napped during the day she was always tired. Maybe all the sleep she had been getting lately had trained her body to think that it needed to sleep most of the day. Like cats.

She needed to get up.

Because Fukuda was there. He was coming closer and closer to the house which meant that something was wrong…or maybe not. If Sho had hurt himself then she definitely would have heard him screaming. He screamed all the time. He screamed when he was happy, he screamed when he was mad, he screamed when something he liked came on TV, he screamed then commercials came on, he screamed when it rained, he screamed when it snowed…there was a lot of screaming in Mob's life.

Which was why she always had a little headache just hanging around in her head.

"Get up, Fukuda's here." Said Sho. He grabbed big sis' hand and pulled her until she was sitting up. She opened her eyes slowly and made a lot of tired noises. Maybe if she didn't stay up late every night watching TV with dad then she wouldn't have always been so tired during the day…and those were jerk thoughts to have and he was not going to be a jerk to her today. He couldn't speak for future Sho but present Sho was not going to act like a jerk.

He was going to be good today…for as much as today and they had left.

Fukuda had thought that today was going to be a good day.

Tokyo was always an easy gig. Not too many ways for Suzuki to injure himself here. This was mostly a place where he made and laundered a lot of money. Also Yakuza stuff….but they had learned not to start with Claw. Mostly. Still he would have picked the aftermath of some of the world Yakuza vs psychic brawls that Suzuki could have put himself through….anything really….instead of this.

These were not his children.

He had been reminding himself of that fact for years now. This was not his family and these were not his children. Sho was not his son, Shigeko was not his daughter, and Masami was not his…anything. He worked for this family, that was all, and he needed to…to become less attached to these kids. There was nothing he could do for them beyond healing up their scrapes and bruises. Not at this point. Not after everything that had happened these past couple of years.

Sho had gotten his full powers.

And Shigeko became more and more like her father with each passing day.

He didn't know which was worse. He didn't know which would have disappointed Masami more. The fact that he had promised to watch over her son and, eventually, deliver him to her but instead let him almost die in one of those godforsaken awakening chambers…or the fact that he had let her daughter grow up to essentially become Suzuki in braids and a dress. She had always acted like him but now…now she was starting to think like him.

She was gathering espers.

Not on her own, of course, because she was only nine. She was gathering her own espers from the ones her father had picked. For what reason Fukuda could not profess to know. All he knew was that Minegishi, one of the biggest assholes in Claw and also one of the most powerful, was orbiting Shigeko now. He had no idea why. The official story, as much as there was one in Claw, was that Minegishi was teaching Shigeko how to use her plant control powers…

But Fukuda knew better.

He had known Suzuki since they were kids. Older than Sho and Shigeko were now but still kids. He had been weird then, too, but also…also it had been nice to have someone who wanted to hang out with him. They weren't friends, though, Suzuki made that clear by day three. Fukuda was just in his orbit. The only other esper he had ever met up to that point. It was mutual. They had each been the only other esper that the other had met…and at the time Fukuda had been grateful for what they were to each other. Even if they weren't friends. Those were the closest thing he and Suzuki had to halcyon days…even after the accident that took Suzuki's parents….and Fukuda had tried his best goddamn it! He couldn't raise the dead! He couldn't raise the dead and he did not deserve to have been beaten up by some overgrown-

Calm thoughts, calm aura, calm emotions.

He should have maybe warned Minegishi about what was in store for them. What it meant to be in Suzuki's orbit. What it probably meant to be in Suzuki Shigeko's orbit. A lifetime of servitude with no way out but death…that is if he didn't reach over to the other side and drag you back kicking and screaming….which, thank God, he couldn't do. He had only tried to reach over fully to the other side once. Fukuda didn't know what happened but he knew that Suzuki had vowed to never try again.

He wondered what Shigeko would be like when she got to be her father's age.

Hopefully Fukuda would be dead by then….or at least old enough that he didn't have to follow this family around anymore. He maybe should have warned Minegishi about what was coming to them…but they were so unpleasant. So incredibly, unbelievably, unpleasant to be around or speak to or spend any length of time at all with. No, let them figure out what this lifetime gig was like.

Fukuda wondered how his life would have turned out if he had just gone to the normal school by his house instead of the one you had to score high to get into….but there was no point in speculating about it now…

Now he had a job to do.

"Fukuda! Come quick! It's really bad!" shouted Sho as he threw the door opened and tried to drag Fukuda into the house. What was he stopping for? Lives were in danger? Or maybe just Sho's…..but only if dad knew what he did! Which he wouldn't! Because Fukuda could fix anything! He just needed to stop hanging around and-

Right, the genkan.

They were in Japan again and in Japan people took off their shoes inside the house. That was the polite thing to do. Fukuda was polite like that. Even in this life or death situation. Not that dad would have ever killed him…right? No. Dad would hit him a bunch, tell him that he sucked as a Son and a human being, but he would never kill him. If he did then he would have to have a new Son and that wouldn't happen because mom was gone…unless dad and mom were divorced….but they weren't! Mom was just…somewhere else. She was still mom and dad was still dad and…and dad was not getting another wife!

And also he was not going to kill Sho because everything was under control and the doll was getting fixed and it would all work out! It really would!

"Sho, let me take my shoes off." Said Fukuda as he untied his shoes. It must have been bad if Sho was being like this. He needed to stay calm. The house was still standing and Shigeko's aura felt normal. So she at least hadn't lost control. That was good. He could hear the TV going. She was fine. Sho looked fine too…but obviously something was wrong if Sho was being like this….

"Just kick off your shoes and come on! Before dad gets home!" said Sho. He didn't get what was taking so long. Sho never untied his shoes, he just slid them on and off. It went faster that way. There wasn't enough time in the day to be taking shoes off and putting them on like that. There were dolls that needed fixing!

"Sho…you should be nice." Said Mob. She had managed to get up. She needed a nap. She needed a nap more now than she had before she had even fallen asleep. She yawned and rubbed her eyes.

"Little Lady…I mean Miss Suzuki. I take it you're the one who needs help." Said Fukuda. Her aura was weird. He was getting a weird feeling from her too. Like she was…sick? Poisoned? He didn't know. He could tell, sort of, with his aura what was wrong with a person. The trouble with her was that her aura was so bright and just…everywhere. It was hard to get a good read off of her, Suzuki too, sort of like trying to understand what someone was saying to your while they were screaming in your ears.

"N-No….my doll is the one who needed help." Said Mob as she telekinetically brought her doll over. Her grip was shaky and slow but she made it to the front hallway. She passed over to Fukuda as he stepped into the hallway in his socks. Mob smiled. They had cats on them. He used to have a pair that had cats in people clothes. This pair was just cats doing cat stuff.

Mob liked cats.

She reached up and felt for her cat ears headband. It was….somewhere. This happened to her sometimes. She put stuff down but she didn't remember where. She hated it when that happened…as much as she could hate something. Dad said that hating things and people took too much effort. The worst thing that you could be was indifferent, dad said, because then you weren't expending any energy at all.

"What about you? Any-" said Fukuda. He plastered a smile to his face and tried to dust off an old classic. She was smiling a bit. Smiling and…and swaying a little but too which was odd. Was she sick? She never got sick. Neither of the kids did. The kids didn't get sick unless…she didn't have any allergies. Not that he knew conclusively….but this didn't feel like an allergic reaction….

What was with her?

"No. No concussions, contusions, or abrasions." Said Mob. She smile a little bit. Fukuda said that a lot…well he said it more when they were little. That was because they got hurt a lot more often when they were little. They were big now and didn't get as hurt. Even if she did fall down sometimes. She reached out and held onto the wall. She felt kind of like she was going to fall down again.

"Just that….can you fix it? I already tried tape but it wasn't strong enough. Maybe glue? I don't know….I didn't do it on purpose…but you can fix it, right?" asked Sho. That was one of the nice ones that dad got her….and at least Fukuda could keep a secret.

"Hmm….this is a very serious injury but don't worry, I know just the man for the job." Said Fukuda. If Masami had been there then….but Masami was not there. She was off living her life and…and he needed to stop thinking about her. Sometimes he managed to go days without thinking of her…but this was not one of those times. Not when her children were so near….her children. Not his. These were…they were not his…and the thought still hurt but…but at least he could do this for them. For Sho. To keep him from getting in trouble. The break might have been beyond his expertise, he only healed people, but there was that one esper with the power of restoration and creation. Suzuki wouldn't be too pissed that Fukuda pulled him off of construction if it was for Shigeko. She was his little girl after all. Besides, the Seventh Division looked ridiculous enough as it was.

"Don't tell dad!" shouted Sho. Dad didn't need to know about this. Dad didn't need any more reason to be mad at him. He had no idea if dad was even going to be mad at him that day but he didn't want to push it. Sometimes he came home mad and sometimes he came home and he only hung out with big sis….and there were also rare times when he came home early enough that Sho was still awake and he hung out with both of them….but those times were so rare. So very rare. But not so rare that he didn't sometimes hope for those days…

"Don't worry, I won't bother your dad with this. He's not running a doll hospital after all." said Fukuda with a shrug. He tried to sound more lackadaisical than he felt. No child should ever have had to be as afraid of his father as Sho was of his. It had gotten so much worse since Masami had left, the way Suzuki was to his kids, and the way the kids had…had become. Sho was so scared looking and Shigeko…if he didn't know better he would have thought, from the look he was being given, that she was Suzuki's flesh and blood daughter.

"There are doll…hospitals?" asked Mob. Were there really doll hospitals? Did that mean that there were doll ambulances and insurance cards and emergency rooms and pharmacies? How had she not noticed this before? She watched Fukuda closely. She need to know more about this. Also she needed to sit down.

"Well they're more like repair shops. Don't worry, I know someone who'll get this fixed right up for you, Miss Suzuki." Said Fukuda. He bowed, too, which may have been overkill but when it came to Suzuki, her father, respect was best. She was so much like him…and also she still felt odd….but if something was truly wrong then she would have said something. It didn't serve her well at all to keep an injury or illness from him. That was the only weakness that Suzuki would admit to him even after all these years….

"Ok. Do you want to stay? You can play with us? I have other dolls" said Mob. She missed it when they played together. She could wake up enough to play. She would….she would make an effort to wake up. She would maybe drink less milk. Maybe.

"No, I should really get going." said Fukuda. He had to get this fixed up before Suzuki came home. This doll looked expensive. He had gotten this for Shigeko. That was where he had disappeared to the other day. He shouldn't have played favorites like that. That wasn't good for either of the kids. Sho was becoming such a brat and Shigeko…he didn't even know what she was becoming….

They weren't little anymore.

They were older and things were different. He wanted to play with them. He wanted to come down to their level and into their world and…and he couldn't. First of all Suzuki hated it when he overstepped and he had been so…difficult…since they came back from Korean. Since they came back to Japan. Since that thing that he knew for a fact happened but he also knew that it would be suicide to mention.

He was not getting on Suzuki's bad side.

"It doesn't have to be dolls!" said Sho. He missed when Fukuda played with them. It wasn't fair. Big sis got to hang out with Minegishi all the time but Sho didn't have anyone…and it wasn't fair….not fair at all. Life wasn't fair. Nothing was fair. It wasn't fair that he was going to get in trouble if dad…if dad knew what he did…because it was an accident!

"No, no, I have to get this fixed but it was nice seeing you two. Sho. Miss Suzuki." Said Fukuda. He wanted so badly to play with them…but he had to get this done. He had to do this for Sho, so he wouldn't get in trouble, and if being the ambulance to the doll hospital kept him from being the guy who had to put Sho back together then so be it.

"Bye…" said Mob as Fukuda left. She hugged the wall and went back to laying down. She sort of missed Fukuda…but that was ok. He had other things to do. It was nice to see him even for a little bit. She felt…good. Very good…but also very tired.

"Yeah, bye." Said Sho as Fukuda left. It wasn't fair. Nothing was fair. He was…he was thinking like a jerk again…and that was wrong. He needed to be better, to be less of a jerk, and…and it was hard. A lot of stuff was hard. It was hard when no matter what he did he still felt…like this. He still felt bad and…and now he felt worse because Fukuda had just left…but he had to go because he was trying to keep Sho from getting in trouble….which wasn't fair at all….

But a lot of stuff wasn't fair.


	102. The Game of Divorced Princesses

It was fun to play dolls.

Sho hated playing dolls with her. He said that every time they played dolls together a little piece of his soul died. That was a lie, either your whole soul died or it didn't, and also Mob would have noticed if her little brother had died. She didn't know what was so bad about playing with dolls. It was fun. It was like you had a whole little world there for you to mess around with. Maybe this was why dad wanted to rule the world, because making your own little world was fun, though maybe instead of trying to take over the world dad could have maybe played dolls with her.

That was never going to happen.

Because dolls were for girls. She didn't understand why boys refused to play with dolls. They played with toy animals and toy soldiers and toy robots and toy superheroes but for some strange reason if the toy was shaped like a girl then they couldn't play with it. The rules for boys and girls made no sense at all sometimes. Like why girls were allowed to wear dresses but not boys, or why boys were allowed to have short hair but not girls, and stuff like that. The world had a lot of weird rules. Maybe dad would simplify them when he ruled the world.

Mob would never rule the world.

That was fine by her. There was so much that went into ruling the world, so much to learn, and so much bossing people around to do that it just didn't really seem worth it. She was happy just the way she was. Well she had been a little bit unhappy today, dad took only Sho to work with him, but she was happy too. She got to play with Minegishi!

"So now this one is going to go to the store I guess." Said Minegishi as they held a doll in their hands. They had no idea which character this doll was supposed to be, what her backstory was, or why they had even agreed to this in the first place…well, ok, they knew why they had agreed to this. Suzuki had turned them into his personal, on call, babysitter….and also the kid had grown on them….and also they had been neglecting the kid lately…

Not that this was their kid.

And not that playing with this kid was awakening long dead parental instincts or anything like that. No, they just felt bad for the kid. Suzuki was an asshole and, frankly, he had no business raising houseplants let alone human children. Mob's life sucked balls so maybe Minegishi could make it suck a little less. Then when Mob grew up she and Minegishi could do the same to Suzuki as Minegishi had done to their parents…and Suzuki was just as bad, if not worse, than Minegishi's parents had been.

This was for Mob. Poor kid.

"Wait, that's not the store, that's the mall." Said Mob. She used her powers to slide that box out of the way and bring over the appropriate box. She had brought all of her doll stuff to Minegishi's house. It hadn't been hard, they lived right next door, and also Mob's powers were listening better today. Maybe because she hadn't had any milk.

Well any of the milk that she had been drinking.

It wasn't stealing, now, because Minegishi had let her have some before. She would have gotten some herself but Minegishi said that if she told dad on them then they would get in trouble and Mob didn't want to get her friend in trouble. Also kids weren't supposed to drink that stuff anyway. That was for adults only and Mob was only nine. Not even nine and a half yet. If dad knew what she had been doing then she would have gotten into all kinds of trouble.

And she didn't want that at all.

"What's the difference?" asked Minegishi. They hadn't played dolls since they had been a kid. They really had nothing against dolls, there was some artistry to them, and they weren't against feminine things in general. What bothered them about this had nothing to do with them. Poor Mob. She said that her father had been showering her in dolls since World War Suzuki. That was what Minegishi was calling it. If they hadn't been so messed up, drinking after taking two Xanax a few hours before would do that to a person, they would have done…something.

Well they did do something.

They had set the kid floating down a river of vice and sin. Minegishi knew that kids were not supposed to drink, it was illegal, but they didn't much care. They hadn't been much older than Mob when they had started to dull the pain of living and all of that. At least the poor kid hadn't asked for more…though her eyes did go up to up to their bedside drawer. Mob had decided to surprise them when they had been sleeping.

Thank God her aura was so bright.

And thank God they had gone to sleep fully dressed. The talk about privacy had been short and to the point. Knock first unless you wanted to either see someone naked or get your ass kicked because you did not sneak up on someone in their sleep. Apparently nobody in her family knocked…and also she and her brother still bathed, slept, and changed clothes together. Not a lot of boundaries there.

And also Suzuki slept fully dressed and possibly also bathed in his suit….and Minegishi was inclined to believe Mob about that.

"This has the Starbucks were Mulan works." Said Mob as she turned the box around, put the old Starbucks cup in it, and then put her Mulan doll in the box. She liked the dolls that already had names and backstories because it was fun to make up new adventures about existing characters. When dad took over the world she hoped that he made, or rather nicely asked, the people at Disney make more movies about her favorite characters for her…or maybe just a great big crossover. That would have been so great.

"….why does she work at a Starbucks?" asked Minegishi as they picked up another doll. Mob shook her head and handed them another different doll.

"Because Merida got her a job here." Said Mob

"Who's Merida?" asked Minegishi. They knew Mulan, that had been a kick ass movie, but they had no idea who most of these princesses were…mostly because they did not share the nation of Japan's obsession with the Disney company. Even as a child they had liked grisly war movies and reenacting murders and executions…and also Sailor Moon but they had managed to put plenty of violence into that, too. Huh. Maybe they had some issues that were best worked out with a professional…nah, hanging out with and corrupting a nine year old. That was a much better use of their time. Maybe the love of this sweet little girl would heal their dark and damaged soul or whatever.

"The one in your left hand. She's a Scottish princess. She has a bow and arrow and accidentally turned her mom into a bear, well the witch did it but she only meant change her fate like not having to marry some guy she didn't even know, not turn her mom into a bear. Anyway she turned her mom into a bear because her mom was always telling her what to do and didn't care that she liked to fight and shoot her bow and arrow but then she and her mom got along and they defeated the evil bear and then they got along and the mom changed back into a person, but she was naked and that part was kind of funny, and then they got to be friends. Oh! And also the movie is called Brave." Said Mob. She was breathing kind of heavy towards the end. She had to explain it as fast as possible. Mob didn't much like that movie because nobody sang, they just played songs while stuff happened, and also she didn't kiss or even fall in love with any of the boys. If Mob had a bunch of boys that wanted to marry her she might have at least liked one of them. Sho liked that movie more than she did anyway, mostly because there was no kissing.

Boys were so weird sometimes.

Which made Mob think that Minegishi might have been a girl. They weren't good at playing with dolls but that was because they were a whole eleven years older than she was. They might have been out of practice. They weren't throwing the dolls around or making them fight or anything like that. Mob wasn't going to ask again, though, because Minegishi said that it was none of her business unless she was asking them on a date. She didn't like them like that. They were just friends…and also they were a lot older than she was. Mob wasn't going to ask again. She hadn't been thinking when she asked. Two capfuls was too much.

It was better when it was spread out in a bottle of milk.

"Ok….but why did she get Mulan a job at Starbucks?" asked Minegishi

"Because they're friends." Said Mob

"But one of them lives in Scotland and the other one lives in ancient China. How did they even meet? They live on opposite sides of the world…and also in different time periods." Said Minegishi

"Yes, but not now in this game. Now in this game they live in Japan and Mulan ran out of money after the war was over so her friend Merida got her a job at the Starbucks at the mall." Said Mob

"Uh-huh. Why doesn't Mulan just work on her family's farm? They seemed to be doing pretty well for themselves." asked Minegishi

"Because she married Shang but then they ran out of money because there was no more war and then Shang lost all of the money they had saved up in the economic downturn so they separated and Mulan went to be roommates in Tokyo with her friends Ariel and Merida and now she worlds at Starbucks." Said Mob

"Makes as much sense as anything else I suppose." Said Minegishi with a shrug.

"It does." Said Mob. She was glad that Minegishi agreed with her. Sho just said that her backstories were dumb. Minegishi was probably a girl, then, if they agreed with Mob that her game made lots of sense.

"Though how they can afford an apartment in Tokyo on three Starbucks worker salaries is beyond me." Said Minegishi

"Ariel doesn't work at Starbucks. She sells human stuff at the human stuff store. She used to live in the castle but then she ran away from Prince Eric and their Daughter, Melody, and now she lives in the city with her friends." Said Mob

"The mermaid from the Little Mermaid has a Daughter? Is that cannon?" asked Minegishi. They had the laserdisc of that movie….God they were getting old…and wasn't she, like, sixteen in that? And also there was the horror of the whole 'reproducing like a human' thing when mermaids so clearly came from eggs…but of course Mob hadn't thought too much about the horror of the ending of the Little Mermaid.

"Yes. In the second movie she had a Daughter named Melody. It was an ok movie." Said Mob

"How many of these movies did they make?" asked Minegishi. Well they were now, officially, old. Twenty five. They had might as well been dead. They needed to give up now and move into an old folk's home for the remainder of their life. Yup, no other choice.

"Three movies and a TV show." Said Mob. Mermaids were ok. Just ok. She still liked Frozen best, not as much as she had when she was little but she still liked it best. She and mom used to watch together before she left.

"So this is what Suzuki Shigeko does with her time." Said Minegishi

"Yes. Also sometimes I help dad with work stuff but also I watch a lot of TV and play and stuff. Dad lets me watch as much TV as I want. It's nice. I'm sorry that you have to do so much work and stuff…but at least we get to play now." Said Mob

"That we do…if you'll let me play." Said Minegishi

"I am letting you play. You're Merida and Mulan. I'll be Ariel…oh and also Belle. She lives in an apartment with Aurora and Cinderella. Belle works at a book store and Cinderella works at a clothes store but Aurora doesn't work because she has settlement money from what happened with the witch and the spinning wheel." Said Mob

"Settlement money?" asked Minegishi with a laugh. Maybe they needed to start playing dolls with Mob more often. This was starting to get interesting.

"Yes. Remember, when I was wearing my Aurora dress you said that her family could have gotten settlement money from what happened with the spinning wheel and the witch so I asked my dad what that was and he said that when something bad happened to you or a member of your family then your lawyer went to argue with someone else's lawyer and whoever's lawyer argued the best got to keep most of the money. So I put that in Aurora's backstory." Said Mob

"Ok….but if she has all of this money then why does she have two roommates?" asked Minegishi

"Because friends should live together. Cinderella had to live somewhere when she left the prince so she stayed in Aurora's castle but then Bella had to leave too and they decided to live in the city. They all live in this building because Elsa and Anna own it and they wanted to build a place where they could hang out with all of their friends and also Anna had to leave Arendelle because she and Kristoff aren't together anymore and Elsa went with her even though she didn't want to and she misses her kingdom and being the queen but she had to because that's what big sister's do. They do everything for their little brothers and sisters even if it makes them sad or they don't want to." Said Mob

"Uh-huh…." Said Minegishi. Well they were certainly sensing a theme here. They wondered if there was a therapist on staff to help Mob with the inevitable commitment issues she would end up struggling with in her adult life as a direct result of nobody helping her deal with her parents' divorce.

"Yes. That's why they all live together. Oh! And also Princess Jasmine lives with Tiana, she's the one from the frog movie, and also Jane from the Tarzan movie too because they're all friends and needed places to live." Said Mob

"Because they all broke up with their princes?" asked Minegishi

"Tarzan and Aladdin weren't princes but yes." said Mob. She really needed to show Minegishi more movies. They had no idea about any of the stuff that mattered. Maybe they were a boy, then, because even as an adult they should have known this stuff. Some of those movies were so old that they had come out before she and Sho were even born.

"So everyone breaks up in this game? And then they live with their best friends in some kind of 'no boys allowed' apartment paradise?" asked Minegishi

"Yes. There aren't any boys at all in this. Boys are messy and loud and stuff. Well there are boys allowed when Sho plays but he hates playing so this is a no boys allowed game...I mean no boys in the game. If a boy wanted to come and play with us then he could." Said Mob. She didn't want to exclude Minegishi in case they were a boy after all. That would have been mean. Also she didn't want to paint herself into a corner if Sho suddenly decided to show up….but the odds of that were lower even than the odds of Minegishi leaving the room so Mob could borrow some more of that Vodka stuff from the bottle in their drawer. She didn't really need it, though, since she was one hundred percent happy right now. It was nice to have someone who wanted to play with her.

"That's still not enough for an apartment in Tokyo, you know, living with three roommates and everyone works for minimum wage at the mall." Said Minegishi. They never professed to being a good person. Not that they were a bad person, either, they were just…poking holes in the world that a nine year old girl with obvious issues had created for her dolls.

"Is Tokyo really expensive?" asked Mob

"It's one of the most expensive cities in the world." Said Minegishi

"Oh. I didn't know that. Dad never talks about money. He just gives me money when I need it." Said Mob

"You're nine. What do you even need money for?" asked Minegishi

"If I want to go to do fun stuff with Sho. Like how we went to the arcade the other day…oh! And also there's a Disney Land near here and we're going to go. Do you want to-" said Mob

"Pass." Said Minegishi. They didn't even need to think. A hot day, it was getting to be summer, the massive crowds, and having to spend the day with Suzuki Jr.? Hell no. They'd rather go on one of Suzuki's pointless 'prove your loyalty' missions than deal with that headache. They liked the kid but up to a point and that point was Tokyo Disney Land.

"But it's fun-" said Mob. It would have been so fun to have Minegishi go with them. That was what friends did, they invited you to go places, and then you went places and had a lot of fun…though her idea of fun might have been different than Minegishi's.

"I said pass. I don't like crowds, I don't like the heat, and I'm usually pretty busy." Said Minegishi. They cared about the kid and all but there were limits.

"With work stuff that I can't know about until I'm ten?" asked Mob. There was stuff about Claw that she didn't know. There was stuff that she was too young to know, stuff that was on a need to know basis, and stuff that dad said that she would never have to know about because she was a girl. She was tired of people telling her what she did and did not need to know. It was so…annoying…and as soon as the thought hits her, the thought and the annoyed feeling, she reaches for her milk bottle even though it's just plain milk today. She wasn't getting at that drawer today…another annoyed thought. Too many annoyed thoughts in one day. She tries to be happy. Someone's playing with her. Nobody ever plays with her except for Sho and unless she begs him for a whole day. She should be happy. She is happy.

"With personal stuff that you can't know about until you're ten." Said Minegishi. Not that they had any intention of telling Mob about any of this when she was ten. Maybe when she was a teenager or something. Ten year olds did not need to know about the things that they got up to.

"Oh…ok." Said Mob. She couldn't wait until she was ten. Then she could know all the stuff that she was too young to know now. She didn't know why one year would make such a difference but adults were weird like that.

"But you have fun at Disney Land. Say hi to Mickey Mouse for me. Get lots of autographs. Be sure to lose your brother somewhere in the crowd and make yourself an only child." Said Minegishi

"Um…I'll have fun and say hi to Mickey, even though he's not real but playing pretend is still fun, and I'll get a new autograph book just to fill up for you, but I won't lose Sho because I love him so much. Even if he won't play dolls with me unless I beg him all day." Said Mob

"You sure you don't want to lose your brother and live that sweet, sweet, only child lifestyle?" asked Minegishi

"No. I love Sho. Even if he can be mean sometimes I love him." said Mob. The only thing worse than the way she lived now was if she had to be all alone. She was so happy that mom and dad had given her a little brother, a best friend, because otherwise she would have been so lonely all these years…and she missed Sho so much even though she knew that he was coming back…and she wished that she had been born a boy so she could have gone with….and she reaches for her milk again even though she knows that it would give her the tired but happy-ish feeling because it's just milk.

"Even if he is an annoying little boy?" asked Minegishi

"All boys are annoying." Said Mob. She wished that she hadn't said that. If Minegishi was a boy then she would have hurt their feelings….but if they were a girl they would have agreed with her…and Mob wondered why it mattered so much to her. Maybe because her whole life had been divided up into boy stuff and girl stuff. She had never met anyone who just…was…before. Also she had never met anyone who kept whether or not they were a boy or a girl a secret before. That was smart, though, because if you kept it a secret then you could do whatever you wanted and nobody could tell you that you were doing the wrong thing because they wouldn't know which you were for sure, a boy or a girl.

Mob sensed something in the energy around her.

For a moment she thinks that the aura she's feeling is Minegishi's. She wondered, worried, that she had said something mean and wrong and they wouldn't want to play with her anymore and then she would be all alone at home and she would be so lonely and-

She didn't have much time to wonder.

"Are we really?" Mob threw up a barrier as fast as she could. That was…her heart was pounding. How could someone DO that? Just APPEAR like that! It was….it was rude, actually, very rude. Because you were supposed to knock before coming into someone's bedroom unless you wanted to see them naked or get beat up.

And this man's eyes were closed so….

Mob did not want to beat him up even if he was being super rude.

"Calm down, Mob, I know this asshole. His name's Shimazaki. He's a teleporter." Said Minegishi. They didn't even bother to stand up. There was no point. They didn't want him there, they didn't want him anywhere, hence why they were spending their afternoon playing the game of divorced princesses.

"So I've been upgraded from annoying to asshole?" said Shimazaki. Two auras, one very loud, the other Minegishi's. Something plastic under his feet. A bed in the corner, or at least it was shaped like one. It smelled like milk, vodka, and potting soil in there. Also the midget with the loud aura was staring at him.

"No, you're an annoying asshole. It's a lateral move." Said Minegishi. Mob was looking at Shimazaki like she was afraid of him….which made no sense because she was second only to her father. She could have taken Shimazaki down with her eyes closed and not even broken a sweat.

"Well then I am so sorry to break up whatever this was. Truly I am, Toshi, truly I am." Said Shimazaki. He walked over to the bed and sat down. He had come partially to be with Minegishi and also partially to figure out whose aura this was. No matter where in the city he was he could hear that aura…and apparently it belonged to a midget. Huh.

"You know never to call me-" said Minegishi

"Minegishi doesn't like to be called Toshi…and also you stepped on our game…so you should say sorry…because that was rude." Said Mob. She tried to sound like dad then. She didn't know if she did but…but that was so rude! Even Sho wasn't usually that rude but he got a pass anyway because he was her little brother. This man probably worked for dad which meant that, maybe, it was ok to talk to him like this even if he was an adult.

"You're seriously going to talk to me like that? I mean you seem pretty powerful, for a midget, but I'm-" said Shimazaki. In Claw you had to prove your strength so, yes, starting fights with random espers was fine.

"That's not a midget, that's a nine year old girl. She's supposed to be that short. I have to ask, though, are you meant to be so stupid or is this something that you're been working hard to cultivate within yourself, Ryou?" asked Minegishi dangerously. Nope. He did not get to mess with the kid. Not while Minegishi was there. The kid had enough shit going on in her life without having this asshole pick fights with her.

"Sorry, I just assumed someone with an aura so loud must have been an adult. My mistake. I assume that this is the Awakened Child then?" asked Shimazaki. He was not afraid. So the kid managed to take down the entire Eighth Division. Whatever, those idiots were a bigger joke than the Seventh Division. There was no way that some kid could take him.

"That's my brother. People call him the Awakened Child and they call me the Prodigy. I prefer Mob, though, and that's what I would like to be called. Also Minegishi would like to be called by their family name. Not Toshiki or Toshi. You should always call people what they want to be called." Said Mob. She sounded more like dad, there, and that was good. No matter what dad said people listened to him. That must have been a good feeling, having people listen to you all the time no matter what you said.

"What the hell kind of name is Mob?" asked Shimazaki

"That's what she wants to be called. If you have a problem then take it up with Suzuki himself." Said Minegishi. Wow. The kid went to bat for them. That was a lot considering how much she hated conflict. Wow.

"I've been guarding him for days. There's no way I'm asking him anything." Said Shimazaki

"You've been guarding my dad? Why? Is something wrong?" asked Mob. Oh no. Sho was with dad. If what was happening was so bad that dad needed someone to guard him…she didn't know what she was supposed to do. She could…she didn't know.

She took a drink of milk…and was once again disappointed.

"Some of the usual shit…wait….dad? As in your father? As in he made you? As in you're his actual kid? As in someone actually wanted to-" said Shimazaki

"Yes. He's my dad. Thank you for keeping him safe. I guess that because you kept him safe I can forgive you for being rude…and still being rude….because it's rude to talk to you with your eyes closed." Said Mob

"You're really his kid?" asked Shimazaki

"Yes." said Mob. She had nodded, first, but then she remembered that his eyes were still closed even though there was no reason for them to be closed. Sho did that sometimes too. He did it just to be annoying. Boys were so annoying even when they were all grown up. It was a wonder that dad came out so normal…aside from how mean he could be sometimes.

"And you have no idea why people might be after your old man?" asked Shimazaki. Oh this was rich. So Suzuki had a little heiress all tucked away. He knew that the boy was his son but he had no idea what Suzuki had a Daughter too. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with this information, she was only nine and he was a lot of things but not any of that, so the only things left to do was figure her out. She had a two colored aura like Suzuki…and she sounded like him too…and he was an idiot. Well nothing to do now but try and figure the mysterious Miss Suzuki out.

"No idea." Said Mob. Maybe because he was so powerful. He did say, before, that people tried to fight him because of how powerful he was…so that was maybe it. She didn't know. She didn't want to have to think about this and worry….but Sho was ok. Dad may not have liked him all that much but he still wouldn't let anything bad happen to him.

"And you also have no idea why my eyes are closed?" asked Shimazaki

"Don't." said Minegishi. They knew where this was going. If he thought that picking on a kid was making him any more attractive then he was sadly mistaken. He was only shooting himself in the head. Minegishi would have been all for it, after they finished the game of divorced princesses of course, but now…not so much. No matter the age boys were annoying idiots.

"I don't know why your eyes are closed, no." said Mob. She got the feeling that this was something that she should know…but she didn't know a lot of things. She didn't even know the names of most of the people who worked for dad. She felt so dumb right then….

Minegishi reached over and patted them on the head even though they weren't the sort of friends who did stuff like that.

"He was born without eyes. He uses his powers to get around so it seems like he can see but he can't. He's planning on opening his eyes and freaking you out, it's ok to be freaked out it freaked me out the first time too, and then he's going to laugh at you. Well he thought that he was going to, anyway, but now he's going to get the hell out of my house because, like you said, he was being incredibly rude." Said Minegishi. This was quite enough. It was one thing to mess with another adult but a kid. Nope. No way. Not happening.

"Oh come on. I thought that we could-" said Shimazaki

"Are you drunk, high, or just stupid? What about you is supposed to be attractive right now? You're sitting there, on my bed by the way, picking on a kid. Not just any kid but the boss' kid. Get out of my house if you're going to act like that. I don't have the mental space for your stupidity right now." Said Minegishi. There was a moment of silence. Minegishi let their aura show just how serious they were. They hadn't been lying about not having enough headspace for this. God, he was so annoying. He had his good points but he was so arrogant and annoying he could even put Suzuki to shame.

They needed a good, stiff, drink.

"Fine." Said Shimazaki. He knew when to bow out. He'd be back later partially for Minegishi, they could be so moody sometimes but they always came around, and partially to figure out as much as he could about this kid who's aura looked just like an adult's.

"Sorry about him. He's not usually such an asshole…well he is but never like that. So where were we?" asked Minegishi as they straightened up the boxes that made up the doll mall.

"I'm sorry that I was so rude to your friend-" said Mob. She had been rude, hadn't she? She should have been nicer even if the other person was being rude. She was always supposed to be nice and sweet just like mom had said. If mom could have seen her now she would have been so upset….but that man had started it…and he should have been nicer…but two wrongs did not make a right…but that was still Minegishi's friend.

"He's not my friend. Now, where were we?" Said Minegishi as they handed Mob some of the dolls. Mob was still looking at them, lots of questions in her eyes, questions that Minegishi knew for a fact that Mob was way too young to have answered for her.

"But he was acting very familiar with you, kind of like you were friends." Said Mob

"Mob…what Shimazaki Ryou is to me, besides a headache and then some, is something that you are not old enough to know about. Ok? This is one of those tell you later things. Now where were we?" asked Minegishi

"When I'm ten?" asked Mob

"Yes, yes, when you're ten. Now where were we?" asked Minegishi. The plants on their windowsill began to wilt…their doing. They did not deal well with stress at all. They could feel another miserable stress headache coming on. This was not how they had wanted to spend what little free time they had. They wanted to play dolls, not twenty questions.

"Um….we were at the part where Mulan was at work and then Pocahontas was going to come in because she left John Smith….and are you ok? Your aura is being weird." Said Mob

"I'm fine, just a headache, I just need a drink." Said Minegishi. Well they had already started the kid down the river of sin so why not? They turned around and got a bottle of something, it didn't matter what it was all good, out from their drawer. They could feel Mob's eyes and aura on them.

"Can I have some?" asked Mob. She hoped that it hadn't been a one time thing. She also sort of had a headache….sort of. Also it was polite to share.

"For the love of….fine. One capful. Just one and only one. I'm not trying to ruin your life here." Said Minegishi as they poured Mob a capful before taking a swig directly from the bottle. Mob, apparently, didn't care about germs as she drank down her own capful. She handed Minegishi back the cap and then picked up one of her dolls. She started to play with it's hair.

"Thank you." Said Mob. She felt sort of bad, now, because of all of those times she had snuck into Minegishi's house to borrow a little for her milk. People said that they were going to borrow food all the time, like borrowing a cup of sugar or something, but now it occurred to Mob that unless you were planning on giving it back then it wasn't really borrowing…and also maybe being shared with once didn't mean being shared with forever…and maybe she had been doing something bad.

But it was good.

It tasted like burning and made her feel almost like she was going to throw up but it made her less mad, less sad, and made her powers less big and scary. So it was good…but she was bad for taking all of that without asking. Especially from her friend. She and Sho never asked about sharing food and drink but she and Sho were brother and sister so the rules might have been different…

She passed all the dolls to Minegishi

"Here. You can plan out the game." Said Mob. It was the least that she could do after coming into their house when they weren't home and borrowing out of the bottles without asking. She wished that she could have done more but she couldn't think of anything more that she could have done…and also her brain was getting kind of foggy again….

"That's really nice of you but I'm liking this game of divorced princesses. Now come on, let's get on with it." Said Minegishi. She was a nice kid, nicer than they had been as a kid anyway, and they hoped that she never lost her niceness…but she would. When she grew up. The world had a way of taking the niceness out of everything it touched…

But hey, at least they were having a nice time sitting there playing the game of divorced princesses.


	103. Long and Boring Meetings

Sho was doing his very best not to move or talk or do anything….like dad had told him to.

That was normal for them.

It was like the game of statues. That was a game where while the lights were off, you could run around and have fun but then when the lights came back on you had to be a frozen statue. If you moved them you were out. He used to play that back when he went to school. He and big sis had tried to play that later on but it was no fun with just two people.

This was no fun.

He was sitting next to dad while a bunch of people talked about boring stuff. Sho didn't care what they were talking about, he just wanted something to HAPPEN already. Like the other day. One minute everyone had been talking and then there had been this explosion but he was ok. Dad put up a barrier around them. The other people weren't so ok but dad said that it didn't matter.

He also said that the attempts on his life were becoming very tedious.

Which meant that he was tired of people trying to kill him. The explosion was a bomb that someone had put in their briefcase. Sho didn't know why they thought something as puny as an explosion could kill dad. Nothing could ever kill dad, he was the strongest esper ever, so really all they had done were hurt a bunch of their own guys. Like that guy who tried to shoot dad.

That had been kind of scary.

One minute dad was just telling him all about how he had to be quiet and not embarrass him or Claw or anything and then there had been this loud sound, kind of like a firework going off, and then Sho closed his eyes because it was loud and scary…but then he opened his eyes and he heard something hit the ground but then Fukuda, he had been there too, covered his eyes and told him that it was something that he was never supposed to see.

Dad said that these attempts on his life were becoming tiresome…and also that a gun was nothing more than a coward's weapon.

Sho had been afraid, a little bit, because people were trying to kill his dad. He didn't want his dad to get hurt or die or anything like that, he sometimes wished that dad would go off on a plane and never come back but not like a plane to the afterlife or anything. He didn't want his dad to be dead or even seriously hurt. People were trying to kill dad…but it wouldn't work! So Sho knew that he has nothing to worry about. With powers like theirs then nothing could hurt them.

But dad was still tired of all of that so he hired a body guard.

His name was Shimazaki. His job was to follow dad around and stop people from trying to kill him. These people tried to kill him a lot. They were the yakuza, the real yakuza, and sometimes they tried to kill him. Other people tried to kill dad too like rival esper groups or even betrayers from within Claw itself. They were tiring and annoying and that was why he had hired Shimazaki. He was ok….

Really tall.

And also his powers were so cool! He was like this super cool blind master or whatever. He had no eyes, it had been more cool than scary when he opened his eyes and showed Sho that there was nothing thee at all, and he used his powers to see. He had no idea what colors were, he said that auras were either loud or quiet, and he had no idea what people really looked like besides their size and shape, but he could catch a gun dart in midair even if you shot at him while his back was turned. Also he could teleport, which he said that he would show Sho how to do if he was capable of it, which he probably was.

Because he was the Awakened Child after all.

Which was so much cooler than being the Prodigy. Big sis may have been born right but Sho had to work for what he was. He had much better control over his powers than she did and she'd had them for her whole life. He was awesome like that. Not that he was bragging or anything, big sis had been weird lately so he wasn't going to hurt her feelings or anything, but he really was the more awesome Suzuki kid.

"For the love of God…how much longer?" Sho heard Shimazaki mutter. He was closer to Sho than dad. Sho agreed with him, this meeting had gone on forever. This probably wasn't even going to end in another fight. That was why Sho had agreed to come to this thing. He wanted to see the fight. That was also why big sis wasn't allowed to come with, because there could have been a fight. Girls didn't like stuff like that. Dad also said that this was a side of business that big sis was not allowed to know about. It would just freak her out, he had said, and also she wouldn't have to run this part of Claw.

Sho would, that was why he had to be there.

He wanted to tell Shimazaki that, yes, this was so long and boring and that this was taking way too long. He wanted to say something else too, like maybe warning him about saying anything because dad liked it when people were quiet, or just telling him that he should shut up….in his best interest, of course. He didn't say anything of course. Dad had told him to be quiet after all.

That was the only reason why he didn't talk to Shimazaki.

Not because he was really tall. Not because he was kind of cool like how he just sort of said stuff without worrying about getting in trouble. Not because he was super power and cool and…and a whole lot of other stuff. No, because dad told him to be quiet and being quiet was the best thing to do around dad. Yes, that was it.

So he said nothing.

He just shrugged. He felt dad's aura focus on him. What did that want? It wasn't like Sho had said anything. Nope, he was just sitting there like dad had told him. Dad had no right to get mad at him for just sitting there like he was supposed to do. Just like dad had told him to do. Really, there was nothing wrong with shrugging and dad was not going to be able to punish him for that…dad could do whatever he wanted. He could punish Sho for whatever he wanted to.

It sucked.

Sho maybe wished that he was back at home with big sis. She was safe at home…not that Sho wasn't safe. Dad would never hurt him. Dad only punished him and only when he deserved it…when dad decided that he deserved it. At least he thought that big sis deserved it too…and that was not a good thing to think. That was a jerk thought to have and Sho needed to stop being a jerk.

"If that's all I think that I'll be leaving. My son seems to be getting restless." Said Dad. He didn't have any tone, there, but his aura at least didn't seem mad. Everyone was getting up now and bowing. Sho bowed too even though it looked dumb because he was so much shorter than everyone else. He was the only kid there.

Which was normal for him.

They left first. Dad said always get there first and leave first. That was so that people knew that you had all the power. He talked about that a lot, how to look like you had all the power, though in Sho's opinion if you had all the power then there was no reason to act like it. People would just know that you had power. Sho had power, well he would beyond his powers when he grew up, and when he had all the power then the first thing that he would do was outlaw any and all long and boring meetings.

"You good, boss?" asked Shimazaki. Sho walked a little bit behind him and dad. He couldn't help it, his legs were shorter. It had nothing to do with not wanting Shimazaki to look at him. That would have been a totally dumb way to be. Shimazaki was blind. He said that unless he focused on people's faces then he had no idea what their expression were and he never focused on anyone's face because he could just see their aura. Sho wondered what his aura looked like to Shimazaki.

Which was so dumb. Who cared what their aura looked like?

"Bored, mostly, and somewhat restless. That was beyond tedious." Said Dad as they walked. Sho looked up at the big building that they left. There were so many big buildings everywhere. He wondered if he could fly that high…he wanted to try. Just because the building was high. Not because of the building feeling inside of himself that he needed to move. He felt sort of like those times when he and big sis played soda can roulette except he was all of the shook up cans of soda at once.

He walked a little slower.

"Yeah, kind of makes you wish for another bomb, huh?" asked Shimazaki. Sho nodded. Dad couldn't see him moving but Shimazaki could. Sho did wish that there had been another bomb or more shooting or maybe a fire or something. Sometimes besides the endless talking. That was a big part of Claw, it seemed, the truly endless amounts of talking. Sho was not looking forward to that when he grew up. Not at all.

"It would break up the tedium." Said Dad after a second. Sho walked a little faster. He felt like he should say something too. He wanted to say something. He had been too quiet for too long. He wasn't used to it. He wasn't used to being quiet and still and he needed to say something or do something

"Yeah, it was boring." Said Sho. He wanted to talk. There was this feeling inside of him that he should talk. He hadn't talked in so long…and also all he had done was nod and that felt dumb. He didn't want Shimazaki to think that he was dumb. He wanted Shimazaki to think that he was cool….and he was cool!

"Anything that I should worry about?" asked Dad. There was a car waiting for them. This car was black. All of the cars at Claw were black. When Sho was in charge he was totally making all the cars red. Red or blue or green or yellow or maybe even pink because girls loved pink and stuff like that and big sis would need to get around somehow when she was older and stuff. Yeah, anything but black. Such a boring color. He wanted to talk about how boring black was, how they really needed to get new cars in different colors, but he said nothing. First of all because dad had ignored him and second of all because that might have been a jerk thing to say because Shimazaki was blind and had no idea what colors even were.

"Aside from a lot of gun stroking, no. I think they learned their lesson finally. So, can I go?" asked Shimazaki as they got to the car. One of the Awakened ran over and opened the door for dad. He looked at Sho for a moment.

"Yes. I won't need you again for the rest of the day. Take my son home." Said Dad. It was kind of like someone had poked Sho in the chest really had even though he knew that nothing like that had happened at all. Dad was just telling him to get lost again.

"We can still-" said Sho. He didn't know what he wanted to do besides hang out with dad. It wasn't fair that big sis always got to hang out with him. it just wasn't fair…or something that he should have cared about at all. He shouldn't have cared either way. Dad was a jerk, why did Sho want to hang out with a jerk? He was boring to hang out with too. This was good, actually, because he hadn't drawn anything all day. Yeah, this was good…maybe.

"You're restless, I can tell. Go home." Said Dad. Sho wanted to tell dad that it didn't matter if he was restless or not. Dad had just said that he was restless too and-and-and-

"Fine." Said Sho. There was no arguing with dad. Arguing with dad just made him mad and nothing good ever came of making dad mad. It didn't matter. He'd see dad again later anyway. Now at least he had time to draw….because big sis would just be all tired again, probably, when he went home.

"Come on kid, let's get you home." Said Shimazaki. He put his hand on Sho's shoulder and for a moment Sho forgot how breathing worked. Which was weird because breathing was just one of those things that your body knew how to do. He felt weird, all warm all over, and also like he wanted to run around. He could have run around if he wanted to. Dad was in the car now and they were driving away….so dad couldn't see if he just started running around and stuff…but Shimazaki would know and then he would think that Sho was dumb or weird or something and Sho really, REALLY, wanted Shimazaki to think that he was cool.

Because he was.

"Come on kid, let's go. You don't want to hang around here after dark, trust me." Said Shimazaki. His hand was still on Sho's shoulder and he felt like he needed to say something but he didn't know what and also he sort of felt like doing cartwheels because he had to move but he couldn't because then that would be weird and also there was broken glass on the ground and he could have gotten hurt but he needed to move and also talk but he forgot how words worked and he needed to remember how words worked and he had been talking since he was really little and people did not just forget how to talk so he had to say SOMETHIING. He had to or else he would look so dumb and-

"Um…you said that you would show me how to teleport." Said Sho. There. Those were some words. Good. Now at least he remembered how to talk and he even used words that fit the situation.

"Huh. Yeah, I guess I did, didn't I?" said Shimazaki. He was so close that Sho could even smell him…and he smelled kind of nice…and that was a weird thought to think about someone so Sho decided to stop thinking it. He needed to keep being normal and to keep his aura normal and to just be normal already….though in trying to be normal he was actually being pretty abnormal because normal people didn't have to focus this hard on being normal. They just either were or were not normal. That was how being normal worked.

"You did. So what do I do? Just throw myself really hard with my powers until I move so fast that nobody can see me? I saw that in a movie once. Um…sorry. A movie is like a bunch of pictures that move and-" said Sho. That was not the thing to say to someone who was blind. He was such a jerk sometimes. He was a jerk to everyone it seemed. He wished that there was just some book he could read that would teach him to be a nicer person. Or maybe it was just something inescapable, something in his genes that he had gotten from dad, and now he had been cursed to spend the rest of his life as the biggest jerk in the whole world….or second biggest. There was no bigger jerk in this world than his dad.

"I know what a movie is. I'm blind, not stupid, and I actually know the movie you're talking about. Also, no, it doesn't work like that. It's more like…ok, just sort of see where you need to go in your mind's eye and just…go there." said Shimazaki. Sho looked down at his shoes and nodded. He had said something dumb. Dumb and also kind of…kind of mean, too, maybe. At this rate he was going to end up being just like dad, wasn't he?

Nope.

There was no way he was going to grow up to be a mean jerk who wore the same thing every day and was also boring and…and his eyebrows were not going to look like caterpillars. He was not going to become like dad no matter what. When he took over the world from dad he was going to be a lot nicer…even if he didn't really know how to be nice. Big sis could teach him how to be nice. She had always been nothing but nice to him for as long as he could remember…aside from that fight they had a little while ago…but that was over now.

They hadn't fought at all since that day.

She had been sort of tired since that day, though, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do. If he called Fukuda then that would have meant that there was something wrong with her and that she was sick…of course if she was sick and he didn't call Fukuda then she would have gotten even sicker…like mom had…but big sis was not like mom! This was different! A hundred million percent different!

It had to be.

Maybe if he learned to teleport then he could teach her. That would at least get her up off of the couch. Also that would have been nice, him having a power that she didn't. That would have been good. Even. Fair. Because she had a power that he didn't. Yeah, it would have been great if he learned how to teleport and she couldn't figure it out….

Those were jerk thoughts to have and he should not have bene thinking like that.

"I can do that." Said Sho. He had no idea what Shimazaki meant by 'mind's eye' but he did know that he needed to learn how to do this so he could show up big sis…so he could show big sis how to do this. If she didn't have the power to teleport then she didn't and that would have been really sad and then dad would have been disappointed in her but then he also would have been impressed by Sho…which might now have been great for her but, hey, life was not fair.

"Uh-huh. Go ahead and try, then." Said Shimazaki. Sho got the feeling, then, that he was being tested. He got that feeling a lot. A lot from dad, mostly, but also other espers. When he walked around Claw on his own or with big sis people looked at him like he wasn't supposed to be there. Like he was a dog at a cat shelter. When he was with dad people looked at him differently. Like he was a part of dad. Like they were thinking 'who is this kid and why is he with the big boss' or something like that. Like they were testing him. Like they were trying to figure out if he even was dad's son…

Nobody ever looked like big sis like that.

With dad or alone people were scared of her. Because her aura was so bright, mostly, but also because dad always introduced her as his Daughter. Dad almost never introduced him. Maybe it was because he was so obviously dad's kid, they looked alike after all, or maybe because dad was still ashamed of him even though he had finally gotten all of his powers…..

Or something.

"I am trying." Said Sho. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the house that they were staying in. It was easy to picture it because it just looked like all of the other houses near them. He pictured it in his mind and he felt his aura glowing and he kept his eyes closed but he didn't end up getting there…or anywhere.

"You tried. At least you can say you tried." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. Sho wanted to say that he could keep on trying, that he wasn't going to stop trying until he got it, and that he was totally capable of learning how to teleport. He wanted to say that stuff and a whole lot of other stuff but he didn't.

Because the world fell away under his feet.

For a moment, a second, there was nothing at all. There was nothing at all and he couldn't see or feel anything, not even the ground beneath his feet because there was no ground beneath his feet. There was no ground beneath his feet or air around him. The only air that existed was the air in his lungs…and that was it…

But then the ground was back.

And the air was back.

And he was fine. He was totally fine. Even if he was about to pee his pants. Not that he did. He was not a baby. Also he was not a fraidy cat. Also he was never going to wet himself in front of another person. Especially not someone that cool…or anyone! Also he was not about to wet himself because he was not scared even though the whole world had just…fallen away…but he was not afraid at all. Nope. Not at all….

"See you later, kid." Said Shimazaki. He reached down and patted Sho on the head like he was a puppy or something….and he didn't mind. Even though he hated it when people messed around with his hair. They were always trying to touch it because it was red and spiky and…and stuff. But Shimazaki didn't know what red was…so he just touched Sho's hair like he was a puppy because…Sho didn't even know. It wasn't like he was a nice guy or anything, he was kind of rude actually, and he and Sho weren't friends…not like big sis and Minegishi were friends…so it didn't make very much sense.

He liked it though.

He stood in his spot even after Shimazaki teleported away. He could still see his aura, though, at the house next to theirs. The one with all the plants in the windows. The one with the wax paper taped up over the windows. The one with the garden in front. Mineigishi's house.

Big sis came out the front door.

And Sho had no idea why he had been staring. He knew that he didn't want to get caught staring, though, because he didn't want to explain why he had been staring, because he didn't fully know why he had been staring…so he did the only thing that he could do. He ran away.

"Hi Sho!" said big sis. Sho barely heard her. He started running and he would have run all the way home and thrown himself under his bed and never come out if he hadn't seen her fall a little bit. So he had to change course, that was just what a good little brother did, even though there were barely any stairs for her to even trip on.

"Th-thanks Sho….I fell down." Said big sis as she leaned onto him. She seemed kind of tired. That was just because she had been up all night hanging out with dad, that was all, and not because she was getting sick…because she was not sick at all. She was fine. She was normal and fine. This was normal and she was normal and he was normal and now they were going to go home and be normal.

Perfectly normal.

"Yeah. I know. Come on, let's go inside and be normal." Said Sho as he helped big sis down the stairs. There were not that many stairs at all but she was acting like the time they tried to walk all the way up that Skyscraper back when they were in….somewhere in America where they had a specific day for walking up and down skyscraper stairs. He didn't get it.

But she wasn't sick. That was what mattered.


	104. Dolls and Affection

A/N: I'm sick. I don't know with what but no matter what happens I'm going to do my best to stick to the daily update schedule. Just don't think that I've abandoned this fic if you don't see any updates in a day or two.

Daughter was still so easy to shop for.

She liked dolls. Representations of living people. He understood that, the joy that came from having complete control over another living being. She crafted little worlds for them too. He also understood that. Having the whole world fit in the palm of your hand, the feeling of it. So he could even think that he understood her. That part of her anyway. People had so many parts to them and those parts were constantly changing. Most people were very difficult to understand.

He understood her better than he had ever understood another living being in his entire existence.

"Here. A new friend for you." Said Suzuki as he handed her another new doll. He had been stopping off and getting her new ones almost every day after work. They kept her from feeling left out, he imagined, because he had been leaving her alone all day and only taking her brother with him. He couldn't have taken her with even if he had wanted to.

This was not the place for a little girl.

His dealings with certain yakuza groups had upset Masami. Ergo since Daughter was also female then they would upset her, too, and he could not have that. She had already threatened to leave him once. It hadn't been a real threat because she was only nine…or maybe it had been since she was only nine and, of course, was incapable of fully planning ahead. Either way he was not involving her in any of this. He'd bring her to work with them on their next stop…wherever that would be. He didn't know. All he knew was that if he kept on providing materially for her like this then she would be happy and she would have no reason to even think about leaving him.

"Th-Thanks Dad. I love it." Said Daughter. He might have woken her up. She had been laying down on the couch. One of her shows was playing. Something Japanese, thankfully, that show she liked about the teenage girls who saved the world in very short skirts. He wondered if she had been waiting up for him again. She must have been there for a while based on the number of empty milk bottles that littered the table. He used his powers to compress the empty ones until they were small and then to send them to the kitchen garbage can.

"H-Hey….I was drinking those." Said Daughter as she sat up. She held her new doll in her hands. Another one that looked like her. It was so much easier to find dolls that looked like her in Japan. She looked Japanese after all. He wondered if that ever bothered her, having to look like everyone else…but then again she had been so happy, before, to wear her school uniform. That was something that he did not understand about her.

"No you were not, Daughter, those were empty. How you can drink so much dairy in one day is beyond me." Said Suzuki as he down beside his Daughter. She smiled at him. She leaned down and rested her head against his arm.

"You smell weird." Said Daughter

"Like what?" asked Suzuki. He pulled his shirt up over his nose. He was, if anything, fastidious about his appearance and hygiene.

"Fireworks." Said Daughter as she closed her eyes. He rested a hand in her hair. She really had very soft and beautiful hair. It was heavy and silky. Masami's had been light and silky…and he was not going to think about her. He didn't understand himself. It was a big country. There was no point to thinking more about her now, or about her at all, because she was gone and she had betrayed him and he should have just forgotten about her…

And other such things that he had been telling himself for years.

"Oh….gunpowder." said Suzuki. Right. He needed to change. Shimazaki was elected to teleport him and Son away instead of dropping the moron who had the nerve to make an attempt on his life in the ocean or something.

"Did you and Sho go see fireworks without me?" asked Daughter

"I wouldn't dream of it." Said Suzuki. He made a mental note to take her to see some fireworks. The children enjoyed them and so had he as a child…and as an adult though he would not tell a soul. He had no desire to leave Daughter out of something which she would have enjoyed. He so liked making her happy.

"You smell like fireworks though." said Daughter

"Never mind why I smell like gunpowder." Said Suzuki. Daughter nodded. She pulled the remote over with her powers and handed it to him. He was thankful for that. He could feel a headache growing. How she could watch this he would never know. Much too loud, much too colorful, which made sense because she was a child after all. Also she was female. That was something that he did not understand about her, her media choices.

Masami had been difficult to understand in that regard as well.

They used to watch her historical dramas together. They could agree on that. He liked learning about history and she liked watching the drama unfold. Those had been good nights. When Son was a baby and he would sit there with them, asleep, and it felt like it was just him and her….like they were the only two people in the whole world…..and she would rest her head on his chest or in his lap. He would touched her hair or her face or her hands….and she had such beautiful hands….

Daughter's hands were soft, too, and her nails were lavender.

"This is new." Said Suzuki as he tapped her nail with his finger. Daughter opened her eyes and nodded.

"Minegishi painted my nails for me. Well they were painting their nails and then I asked if they would paint my nails and then they did. I like it. I tried to paint their nails, too, but I had trouble staying in the lines. Then we played Totalitarian Doll State, Minegishi invented that game, and then Sho came home and I had to go home to play with him. Then me and Sho played target practice. Then we had dinner and watched TV and took a bath and then I put Sho to bed. Then I came here to wait for you to give me my new doll. Those are all of the things that happened to me today." Said Daughter. He liked that, how she listed things off. He had never been sure when Masami wanted him to ask the details of her day. Sometimes he would ask and she would get cross with him and tell him that her days were unchanging and that he should have known that. Other times, when he didn't ask, she would get upset with him for not asking.

Women were so confusing.

Daughter was so much easier to understand. He wondered if it was all Daughters or just her. Not that he was ever going to have any more Daughters….he hoped. He hadn't exactly been careful before….back in Korea…but he is not going to think about that now. Also he was never going to do anything like that again. Even if there was the brown haired woman who worked at the doll shop where he bought Daughter's friends…and maybe it was time he found another doll shop….

Maybe.

"Your nails look very nice." Said Suzuki. He wasn't a fan, honestly, because she was just a little girl and that was something that grown women did….and also Minegishi apparently…..and she was just a little girl…but this was something that he did not have any expertise in. For all he knew this was normal for little girls her age. He didn't know. Masami would have known.

Sometimes he wished that he had a female perspective.

Because he was not ashamed to say that he was out of his depth when it came to these things. He thought that she was too young to paint her nails but he also had no idea what was and was not normal female behavior for her age. He had never been female and he had never had any sisters. There weren't any women in his life that he could ask…and there never would be. No, not after what happened before. He was never risking losing control like that again.

"Thank you, dad. Do you want to pick what we watch or do you want me to pick what we watch." Said Daughter. Right. He had stopped scrolling. He handed her the remote. She knew what he liked. She knew him to a degree. The degree at which he allowed her to know him. There were so many things about his life that she could not know about. Like why he smelled like gunpowder….or why they could never enter the nation of Korea ever again.

"Here, you choose." Said Suzuki. He didn't have to wait for very long. She found another documentary about the domestication of the housecat. Though from what he had learned from her numerous cat documentaries cats were not domesticated at all. They simply decided that it would be advantageous to share space with humans. He wondered why she watched so many of these documentaries, they were the same thing over and over again, but he was not going to get into it right then and there with her.

He was tired.

He was tired and he just wanted to rest with her. Her presence was so enjoyable. Even if she seemed tired, her aura was being strange and her movements were sloppy, he still enjoyed sitting there with her. He had her hand in his still. She had very soft hands. She smelled like….aloe? Where had he smelled that before?

Right, Minegishi.

They smelled heavily of dirt a lot of the time. Sometimes aloe, too, and sometimes rosewater. Suzuki didn't ask them about there. He knew that he shouldn't have cared about offending them, when he ruled the world then social rules would mean nothing, but he was not going to go up to such a valuable esper and ask if they were male or female.

He was starting to lean towards female anyway.

But then again things were a lot more fluid now than when he was a young. The rules were a lot more lax now and he had no intention of tightening them again. The sexuality of others was not of his concern unless they were trying to have sex with him….or if they were espers. He did need more espers in the world…but in general people did not react well to being told that they had to reproduce. Even though the world was woefully bereft of espers….

And he had done his part.

"You certainly spend a lot of time with Minegishi, don't you?" asked Suzuki. He had been skeptical about taking Minegishi with them but Daughter had made friends with them and, really, there was no reason to say no to her. He couldn't blame her for wanting to surround herself with other espers. He had been the same way when he had been her age.

"Yes. They're my best friend who isn't Sho. We're besties, they said so first so that way I know that I'm not just being clueless again." said Daughter

"Do you know if they're male or female?" asked Suzuki. He was leaning towards female. Why else would they have painted Daughter's nails? He didn't know what he would do with this information, though, if they were female. It wasn't as if he was ever going to pursue Minegishi sexually or romantically. They weren't attractive to him. The oddly colored hair, the constant quips and comments, and the fact that he was never sleeping with a subordinate again. With anyone again. He was not going to turn into some womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own joy.

"I don't know. Minegishi says that unless I want to date them then I shouldn't ask. I don't like them like that, we're just friends and also they're a grownup, so I don't ask. Well I did ask once but they didn't answer. Sometimes I think that they're a girl because they like to play dolls with me and also they painted my nails again. Sometimes I think that they're a boy because they always wear pants and also they like fighting. There's a lot of fighting in Totalitarian Doll State." Said Daughter

"What on Earth is 'Totalitarian Doll State'?" asked Suzuki. Well the game of dolls was, fundamentally, a game of creating a world and controlling it…but why totalitarianism? It never worked out. He was going to rule the world and all but he wasn't going to control every aspect of people's daily lives. There would just be no self-governance and a severe curtailing of personal freedoms. That was totally different.

"It's a game that we and Minegishi played when they got bored of playing Divorced Princesses. It's where Elsa takes the crown of the magic kingdom from Mickey and then Elsa with some other princesses take over the whole Disney world but then there's a resistance. We didn't get to play for very long because Shimazaki came to visit Minegishi and then Minegishi kicked me out. I don't know why they hang out so much. Playing with me is probably more fun than hanging out with him." said Daughter

"I would imagine so." Said Suzuki. Just when he thought that he understood his Daughter she went and said something like that. Maybe he should have paid more attention to the games she played. He might have understood her better. He wondered what the world would have looked like if she were the one to inherit it from him. He was going to make a better world for all espers, one in which they wouldn't have to hide, and one in which eventually there would be a way to make everyone an esper. Though that was far off in the future.

He wondered what her future would look like.

What would the world look like in her hands? What did she want? She was getting older now. She had said, before, that she wanted a world where everyone got along. In theory a totalitarian state would bring peace, she so hated conflict, but with a truly totalitarian state there would be never ending resistance fighting…but then again if he took over the world he would have those fires to put out anyway. No, not if, when. When he took over the world.

The world would fit right there in his hands.

And had she been his biological Daughter then the world could have fit in her hands as well. Her soft, small, hands. But she was not his biological child so the world would never fit in her hands. He wondered if it would have been better off in her hands. She had such small hands, such soft hands, just like her mother's.

"Dad….how come you keep on holding my hand?" asked Daughter. Right. He had been holding her hand for far too long. Not like him at all. He was not an affectionate person. Well he was if he was told when he was expected to be affectionate. He could be affectionate towards his Daughter, she was female, and that was ok.

"I'll stop." Said Suzuki. She shook her head and looked up at him.

"I don't mind. I like it when you're nice to me like that. I wish that you were like that more often." Said Daughter. Well not there was some serious dejavu. For a moment her hair is not black and her eyes are not brown and she is not his Daughter at all but his wife and she's talking, again, about how she wants more affection but then refuses to tell him how much more affection or at what times she wants this affection.

Women were so confusing.

And he hoped that Daughter was not going to be confusing. She was…she was a lot like him. He wanted to think that she was one of the few people in this world that he could understand. He wanted to understand her. He wanted there to be someone in this world that he could understand. Not that he felt alone or anything like that. To feel alone he would have needed someone and he need no one. He was a full and complete person all on his own.

He was.

"How often is more often?" asked Suzuki

"What do you mean, dad?" asked Daughter

"If you want me to show you affection then I need to know what sort of affection, in what quantity, and at what times. Otherwise I will have no idea what you want. I am many things, Daughter, but a telepath is not one of them." Said Suzuki. He found himself feeling something akin to fear. He was…afraid…that she would get up and leave just as her mother had. He was afraid that he had said the wrong thing and that she was upset with him, even though he had no idea what it was about what he said that could have been taken as wrong, and that she would just get up and walk away….

Which made no sense.

He didn't need her. He didn't need anyone. That had been his mistake with Masami. He had been too weak around her. He had been too dependent on her. That was why she had left him, maybe, he didn't know and he couldn't very well go and ask her why she had left now could he? He just…he was just being irrational. This was his Daughter. She was never going to leave him. She was going to be by his side for the rest of his life and also for some time afterwards if he didn't pass on right away. She was still so small that he could keep her from leaving. He was not going to make the same mistakes with her that he had with Masami….even though he wasn't entirely sure what those mistakes had even been….

People were complicated, especially women.

"Um….ok. When we sit on the couch together I want you to hold me close and touch my hair and stuff. The same for when we hang out in your room and watch TV. Also I would like it if you hugged me at least once a day. I like hugs. Sho won't let me hug him that often anymore because he says that he's too big and Minegishi says that we're not the kind of friends who hug. That's what I want." Said Daughter. There. That was not so very difficult. He had no idea why that had been so difficult for Masami. Perhaps because she had been a bit more like everyone else than Daughter was. Yes, Daughter was more like him. He didn't know why she was so much like him when her brother was so much different….

A quirk of genetics?

For his entire life he had felt it. The difference between him and the rest of the world. The rest of the people in the world. For his entire life he had been able to move things without touching them amongst a great many other talents but for some reason he had never been able to figure out the art of conversation. Pulling meaning from words. Words didn't mean what their definitions were, it seemed, because there was a whole other level of meaning that he had never been able to understand.

He said what he meant and meant what he said.

And so did Daughter, thankfully, because this made their whole relationship so much easier. True it was not a walk in the park, they did quarrel, and he did have reason to become angry with her and also to punish her, but those times were rare. They generally got on so well…maybe that was because they were made the same, it seemed. She had expressed it too. She had expressed a similar frustration with the world, the way it communicated, as he had felt for his entire life. Maybe it had to do with genetics. She may not have been his Daughter by blood but there was a similar quirk of genetics that gave her the same sorts of powers that he had.

Not all of the same powers, of course, because he had been the only one bestowed with the ultimate power.

"Yes. I can do that." Said Suzuki. He reached his arm around her and pulled her into a more sitting position. Then his hand found her hair like she had asked of him. He didn't like direct orders, he hated them actually, but he would do as she asked. She was just a little girl. She wasn't trying to have power over him, she was just trying to reinforce a parental bond, and it was in his best influence to make that bond as strong as possible. She wouldn't be a little girl forever. She would grow up and then one day she might get the same sort of idea her mother had….

But she was not her mother, she was Daughter, and that would never happen.


	105. Fights and Scars

Sho didn't mind the scars on his body.

There were the pinpricks that climbed up and down both sides of his arms, the scar that took up almost his entire leg, the thing on his stomach, the tree on his back, all of it. These weren't bad scars, no, they were more like battle scars. It had felt like a battle, getting those scars, and getting his powers. He had never been in a real battle though, dad said that he was too young, but now he could. Like those guys he had seen, before, with all of those scars on their faces. They fought dad and lost, they were called Scars.

But he was not a Scar.

No, he was the Awakened Child. The Awakened had scars, the same ones that he did, that was why their uniforms had long pants and long sleeves. But he was not one of the Awakened. He was the Awakened Child. There was a difference, dad had said so, and the difference was that he was the only kid to ever go through the whole Awakening thing. Also he was way more powerful than all of the Awakened put together.

So he had no reason to mind his scars.

"No. You are not wearing that. Go change your clothes." Said Dad. He barely even looked at him when he said that. Dad still hardly even looked at him even though he was bringing him to work all the time. How could dad have said that his clothes weren't right if he wasn't even going to look?

"But you barely even looked." Said Sho. Dad looked up again. His face was still but his aura got a little more mad. Whatever. He was always mad about something. Sometimes it seemed like he went around looking for things to be mad about.

"Change your clothes. I won't ask you again." said Dad. He would ask again, though, because that was how it went almost every single morning.

"What's wrong with my clothes? I'm dressed normal." Said Sho as he pulled on his shirt to show dad just how normal he was. Maybe dad wanted him to dress like him…and he was not dressing like dad. Nope. He never dressed up and for good reason. Too many layers, too much itchy fabric, and those clothes looked way too boring.

"You know that you cannot dress like that. Long pants and a long shirt." Said Dad

"But it's summer." Said Sho. He and dad argued like this almost every day. It was too hot out to dress like dad did. Even if they spent most of their time inside it was way too hot out to dress like that.

"I don't care. You know that you can't go outside like that. I am not going to have this argument with you every single day, Son, now either change your clothes or spend the day with your sister. It's your choice." Said Dad. He was starting to get mad. Sho could tell by his aura. He was the one getting himself all upset over nothing. So he had a few scars, big deal. They were cool looking. Also they told people not to mess with you. It was like how the most powerful characters in fighting gams always had a whole bunch of scars like that.

"But it's hot out." Said Sho. Maybe if he tried to make sense then dad would see that there was no point in making Sho dress like it was still wintertime outside. If anything more people would notice him because he was the only kid who was still wearing long sleeves and long pants even though it was summer outside.

"What did I just say?" asked Dad. He was mad but trying to be nice. He was only trying to be nice because big sis was still home. He may have been taking Sho with him and teaching him about how running Claw worked and all, so far it involved a lot of people trying to kill you and also boring meetings, he still liked big sis best. That was why he was always getting her presents and watching TV with her and letting her get all cuddly with him. Also dad hugged big sis now. That was the most unfair part of it all…not that Sho cared. No, he was much too old for hugs and stuff like that. He was eight and eight was much too old to be hugging your dad and stuff.

Of course nine was older than eight.

But the rules were different for girls. They were allowed to get hugs from their dads and stuff because they were girls and they hugged everyone all the time. That was just the way they were. Sometimes Sho wished that the rules were different, that boys could want hugs too, but then he remembered that at least the rules for boys weren't as restrictive as the rules for girls. At least he never had to wear dresses and got to cut his hair short. Also he got to go to work with dad and watch dad or Shimazaki, it was mostly Shimazaki he was so cool, beat people up and stuff. All big sis got to do all day was play dolls with Minegishi and stuff like that.

And he was not hanging around with big sis and Minegishi all day. He'd end up dead of boredom.

"You said that I couldn't go outside dressed like this even though I look like everyone else." Said Sho

"Son-" said Dad

"All of the other kids are wearing shorts and short sleeved shirts so why can't I? People are going to think that I'm weird if I go around dressed like it's wintertime. Dressed like this I look like everyone else." Said Sho

"You do not look like everyone else and you know it. You know that you can't dress like that out in public because then people will see your scars and ask questions." Said Dad

"Or maybe they'll look at my scars and think that I'm someone that shouldn't be messed with." Said Sho. Dad shook his head. Sho could still see his aura and he was still mad. Normally dad would have either pushed him or hit him or just left. He had been nicer lately and it was only to do with big sis…and that was not fair at all. A lot of things weren't fair at all.

"That's ridiculous." Said Dad. Sho could see his own aura now. That was not ridiculous! Dad was the one being all ridiculous! He was the only one who cared about this! So what if all of his scars did look kind of gross? Gross didn't mean uncool! He looked really cool and he liked his scars and if he liked his scars then that was all that mattered! Like his hair. Mom said that as long as he liked his hair then it didn't matter what the other kids said. His hair was a part of himself like his eyes were a part of himself and his freckles and his scars, too. He was all of those things and all of those things came together to make him, Suzuki Sho, and so long as he liked himself then there was nothing wrong with the way he looked.

"Is not. I don't mind my scars so-" said Sho. He knew that it was stupid, getting mad at dad like this, and he knew that he was probably going to get slammed down to the ground or something, but he didn't care at this point. Sometimes he didn't care, sometimes he just got so mad that he just didn't care, and he knew that he would pay for it later but right now he just did not care.

"Stop this." said Dad

"Why? I don't mind my scars and I don't know why you mind my scars even though you keep on saying-" said Sho. He would have told Dad that he didn't care if people noticed his scars and asked questions. Let them notice and let them ask questions. What was the worst that they could do? For someone who was always talking about when they ran the world and stuff dad sure did care a lot what other people thought.

"Daughter, come here." Said Dad. Sho crossed his arms. No. No way. He was not letting big sis dress him. That was what dad was calling her over for. That was how this usually went. Dad got mad and then called big sis over and then she picked out different clothes for him and chased him around their room until he got bored and let her catch him and then he changed clothes and then that was the end of it.

He didn't need his big sister to dress him.

Mom didn't even dress him anymore. Well she had stopped dressing him before she left. She had been letting him dress himself for a while before she left….and she never told him what to wear, either, unless it was school time. He didn't need someone to tell him what to wear. Not when he was little and not know, either, even though he was covered in scars now.

"Yes dad?" asked big sis. She had been in their room. She was dressed, now, but she had been laying down. She had a headache, she said, she woke up most mornings with a headache. Dad said that it was because she was drinking too much milk and not enough plain water. She didn't listen to dad and kept on drinking milk instead of water. Dad never yelled at her or punished her for that even though she didn't listen to him one bit about drinking more actual water and less milk.

"Dress your brother in something else." Said Dad. He wasn't even looking. If he had been looking he would have been able to tell that big sis was wearing something even dumber than what he was wearing. She wasn't even wearing normal clothes. She was wearing a costume. She was almost always wearing one of her costume dresses. Dad never said anything to her about the way that she dressed. It was dangerous ground telling a girl she was dressed dumb. Dad had said so.

That was a dumb rule.

Why did it matter if it was a boy or a girl who you were saying was dressed dumb? It was still mean no matter who you were talking to. Sho wasn't a girl, he didn't spend hours and hours picking out what clothes to wear, but it still hurt being told that he was dressed dumb. That was just how dad was. He was a mean jerk. That was why Sho was a mean jerk sometimes. He came from his dad after all.

"Yes dad." Said big sis. Her eyes were all squinty and she was holding her head. Sho wished that he could have felt bad for her but he was mostly just mad. He was mad at dad for being mean to him and he was mad at her for trying to boss him around again. She was only a year older than him. It wasn't fair that she got to be in charge. She was always trying to be like mom. She wasn't mom. Mom was mom and mom never would have made him change his clothes and she would have made dad change his mind too, maybe….or maybe not. He couldn't remember, actually, if mom ever mad dad change his mind about stuff….

"I don't want to change clothes." Said Sho. Big sis was pulling on him now. She was holding his hand and tugging on him but not very strongly…even though with her powers she could have grabbed him and dragged him away. Even now even though her head was killing her and maybe her eyes, too, because her eyes were all squinty like there was something stuck in them.

"Then stay with your sister. I don't care either way." said Dad. Sho felt like someone had stuck him in the bellybutton with the end of a wire hanger and stirred his insides around before pulling them out like in that movie he saw. He didn't know how dad could even say that. Dad must have liked having him around at least a little…right? Because otherwise he would have taken big sis around even though the stuff he did in Tokyo was not the kind of stuff that was for girls….

So when they left Tokyo dad would go back to only spending time with big sis.

The thought hurts. The thought hurts so much that he wants nothing more than to hit big sis, to fight her, to push her down and….and other mean stuff. Stuff that he isn't going to do. It's easier because dad is there. He's a lot more afraid of dad than he is mad at big sis.

"…I don't want to stay here with her, it's boring." Said Sho. He looks at her when he says that. She's been so boring lately. She either just wants to play with Minegishi or to play dolls or just to sit on the couch and either nap or watch TV or both. That was even more boring than sitting through dad's long and boring meetings, the ones that didn't end in people being shot at or blown up.

"The come on, Sho, you can wear something else. Your shirt with the lizard scales is clean. Also the one with the wings on the back. You like those. Come on." Said big sis. Dad was looking at him. Big sis was looking at him. Too many people were looking at him. He wanted to yell and scream and kick and break something…or something….but he couldn't. Dad was watching him and dad would punish him and also big sis was watching him and she'd get upset and then when she got upset she got even more tired than she usually was.

He didn't want that.

So he let himself get led back to his room. No, not his room, the room that he was sleeping in. He had the bed on the left, big sis had the bed on the right, their wardrobe was in the corner, there was a dresser between their beds, he had his toys on his side of the room, she had her toys on her side of the room. That was how he and big sis had set up each and every room that they had ever stayed in. That was because their real bedroom had been set up like that.

This was not their real bedroom.

And she was not their mom.

"OK, lift your arms." Said big sis and she tried tugging on the bottom of his shirt. He pushed her hands away and tossed his shirt up over his head. She was holding another one of his shirts in her hands. The green ones that made him look like he was a lizard. She had been about to dress him in the shirt like mom had dressed him when he was a little kid.

She was not their mom.

"I'm not a baby, I can dress myself!" said Sho. He pushed her away with his powers. She was knocked against her bed. Her feed hit an empty milk bottle. She just sort of left them everywhere when she was done with them. Dad never told her that she was being gross even though she totally was. Dad let her do whatever she wanted. Dad was always nice to her. Even when he got mad at her and pushed her or hit her or dragged her by her braids he always got her a doll or something afterwards to say sorry.

He never said sorry to Sho.

He never said sorry to big sis either, never with words anyway, but he still at least got her something that she liked to show her that he felt bad. He never felt bad for punishing Sho. That was because he liked her best. Either that or because you weren't ever supposed to hit girls. Either way Sho would have liked for dad to have at some point said sorry or bought him something to say sorry or something like that.

Dad had hurt him way more than he had ever hurt big sis.

"I never called you a baby, Sho, so you didn't have to push me. You know that I would never call you names or anything like that." Said big sis. She reached out and handed him his shirt. He took it from her with his powers and threw it on as fast as he could.

"You were too calling me a baby. You know that I can dress myself. You don't need to dress me." Said Sho. Big sis walked past him towards their dresser. He took a step back so that he didn't end up pushing her again. He wanted to. He wanted to because dad was mad at him and he'd be mad for the rest of the day but then he'd come home and give big sis a new doll and then they'd hang out and he'd be laying in his bed listening to them hanging out and…and that was the way that it was going to go. That was the way that it had been for so long….

It wasn't fair.

"Dad told me to dress you, Sho, and you know that we both have to do what dad says. He's the boss of us because he's our dad." Said big sis. She handed him a pair of his pants. He liked these, he had drawn on them with magic marker and it still hadn't washed out. He wasn't about to tell her that he liked them, though, because he was a big kid now and he could pick out his own clothes and dress himself and all of that.

"Well you are not our mom, big sis, and you don't get to dress me. Ok? You're not the boss of me." Said Sho

"But dad said-" said big sis

"I don't care what dad said! You're not the boss of me! You're not the boss of me just because you're older and you're not the boss of me just because dad likes you better!" shouted Sho

"Don't yell, little brother, you know that dad hates yelling." Said big sis. That just made him madder. He had just told her not to boss him around but there she went bossing him around again like he hadn't even just gotten done telling her not to be so bossy all of the time.

"Shut up already!" said Sho. He pushed her again. This time she ended up being pushed against their dresser. The stack of his drawings that he had up there went fluttering to the ground. She caught them with her powers and stacked them back up even though she was sitting on the ground.

"I'm sorry." Said big sis. Sho was still mad but…less mad…because she had at least said sorry. That was way more than dad did. He reached out to her. She closed her eyes and scooted backwards. He grabbed her hand and helped her stand up. Maybe he shouldn't have pushed her. He shouldn't have pushed her, there was no maybe about it, because you were not supposed to push girls…and he shouldn't have pushed her…because that was mean and wrong…

And he was a lot like dad.

But at least he said sorry. Dad never said sorry to him but at least he could say sorry to her. He was mad at her, he was always a little mad at her, but she had just been doing what dad had told her to do…and he shouldn't have pushed her. He should have pushed dad. He wanted to push dad. He wanted to push dad as hard as he could. He wanted to push dad and hit him and slam him into the wall and push him down on the ground…but he couldn't. He wasn't strong enough. He wasn't even strong enough to be pushing big sis around.

But she let him push her around.

She was always nice to him like that. She was always letting him push her and yell at her and use her for target practice and stuff like that. She was always making sure that he got breakfast and dinner and lunch when they were together. She always made sure that his clothes, the ones he liked, were always clean and she always put his toys away so dad wouldn't get mad and she made sure that none of his drawings got lost…well she tried to but they still went missing sometimes….and she did a whole lot of other stuff….and she liked his scars, too. Especially his tree. She was always trying to touch his tree because it looked cool, she said, and she never made him change clothes when they were just hanging out together…she was always so nice…even about stuff that made dad mad at him about….

And that was why he said sorry.

Because she didn't mind his scars.


	106. Tokyo Disneyland

They hadn't been to Disneyland in a while.

Dad used to leave them at Disneyland all the time. They got bored pretty fast but that didn't mean that she and Sho were totally sick of it. Of course they weren't. They loved Disneyland and they were happy to be there now. It had been so very long since she and Sho had been to Disneyland together…way too long…

Which did not suit Mob at all.

When they had been little dad used to let them practically live at Disneyland. That was before, back when they were seven and eight, but now they were eight and nine and much older. Now dad took Sho with him a lot of the time. Mob could have gone on her own but she didn't want to. That wasn't any fun. Minegishi didn't want to go with either and Mob wouldn't have wanted to leave Sho behind anyway.

Things were always more fun when Sho was around.

"Give me the rest of your popcorn." Said Sho as he reached for her popcorn bucket. She let him have it. He liked the popcorn better than she did, anyway. They had a lot of different kinds here and she thought that she would like milk tea flavor but it was just sort of weird. She wished that she had her actual milk, it was sort of hard to make her powers listen now after she had been getting them to listen by drinking milk and also she could feel more of her feelings now too, but she didn't need it. Well she sort of felt like she did but it wasn't nice to borrow from Minegishi all the time like that. Not nice at all.

And she had to be nice.

"Are you sure you only want popcorn for lunch? They have lots of other stuff here." Said Mob as Sho finished off her popcorn. Dad had told her to make sure that her brother ate some actual food at some point. Popcorn didn't count because it wasn't very good or you. Not enough food groups. That was why she liked he chicken sandwich that looked like Mickey's hand. It had all the food groups and tasted good, too. Also the place that had that was right next to the place with the churros and those may not have been good for her but they were for dessert so that was ok.

Plus Sho liked churros too.

"I'm not a baby anymore, I know what I want to eat and when I want to eat it." Said Sho

"I know. I'm sorry. I was just worried about you. I don't want you to be hungry later." Said Mob. She didn't say that, also, dad had told her to make sure that he ate real food. He hated it when she brought up the fact that dad had put her in charge. She didn't know what was so upsetting about that. Dad put her in charge not only because he liked her best, which may not have been all the way true considering how he was spending time with Sho now, but also because she was older. She couldn't help being older.

Also she had never asked to be put in charge anyway.

"I'll say when I'm hungry and I'm saying so now. I don't know why you don't like this popcorn, it's really good." Said Sho

"I know it is but it tastes weird, milk tea, as a popcorn. I think that I like the salt kind best…or maybe the caramel kind." Said Mob

"Boring." Said Sho as he threw his head back and tossed a piece of popcorn into his mouth. Mob caught it with her powers and held it there until he sat right and ate like normal. He could have choked to death and she did not want that.

"No it's not. Plain popcorn is boring. That's the only kind dad likes…well sometimes he puts ketchup on it." Said Mob. Dad only ate plain popcorn. Sometimes with butter but it had to be real butter. He didn't like the artificial butter that came with the stuff you made in the microwave. He said that it was vile…but then again he hated most good foods.

"He puts ketchup on everything. One time he put it on pizza." Said Sho. Mob nodded. She remembered that time. Dad was kind of weird sometimes…kind of really weird. Mom used to tell him stuff like 'Touichirou, you know that doesn't take ketchup' when dad would try and do something weird…but now she was gone and dad was free to ruin all of the food that he wanted to. Not that she was ever going to tell her dad that not everything needed ketchup…also that the things that did need ketchup, like omelets, did not need so much ketchup that you couldn't even see the food that you were eating anymore.

"That's so boring though. You can get salt and caramel popcorn anywhere. You could wake up in the middle of the night and tell the Awakened to go off and get you those kinds of popcorn and then they totally would. Why not get something interesting like the soy sauce kind or the shrimp kind-" said Sho

"Because the shrimp kind is sort of…not good." Said Mob. She wanted to say that it had been the most unpleasant thing that she had ever eaten but dad said that saying things like that was called hyperbole and she was not supposed to waste her time speaking in hyperbole. Like how she and Sho weren't supposed to say that they were starving even if they were super hungry. There were a lot of rules to what they could and could not say.

"Ok, yeah, bad example. The shrimp kind sucks. Shrimp is for shrimp and maybe chips but not popcorn." Said Sho

"Maybe shrimp salads, too." Said Mob

"Yeah, the salads too…but only the kinds without lemon." Said Sho

"Also maybe crackers. I like shrimp crackers." Said Mob

"That's because you want to be a cat." Said Sho. He reached over and flicked her headband. She held it on with her powers. She felt more awake today and her powers listened better…but they also didn't listen sometimes, too. Usually when she had been drinking milk all day she sort of got tired and her powers got tired, well not normal milk but the kind she drank, so it was a little weird being all the way awake…

But it bothered Sho when she was tired all day.

"I don't want to be a cat, I just like them a lot. They're cute and soft and fluffy and they're fun to play with. Like do you remember-never mind." Said Mob. She was not going to ruin today by talking about the past, about when they were little, about times that they were supposed to pretend had never happened. Even though she didn't want to pretend that they had never happened. She just had to because those had been times that they had spent with mom.

And they were not supposed to talk about mom.

Dad had said so, he had told them so many times before, that they were never supposed to talk about their mom ever again. She had left them, their family, and they were not supposed to talk about her. She had betrayed them. She had abandoned them. They had no reason to even think about her. Dad had said so and he was their dad and he got to decide everything…and it just wasn't fair. He didn't get to decide what went on in their heads or what they talked about when they weren't with him…

But he sort of did.

Because even when they were away from him it sort of felt like he was there. To Mob, anyway, she couldn't speak for Sho. She had no idea how he felt. She wasn't going to ask. She wasn't going to talk about this with him. They were there to have a nice day. This was the first time that they had been able to come here since coming to Tokyo. Even if it was hot out and stuff. Sho was taking the heat worse than she was. Dad didn't really feel hot and cold, he said, but that was not an easy trick to learn. Even in the shade Sho was super sweaty.

She hated making him dress like that.

He had to wear long sleeves and long pants and gym shoes even though it was hot out. It wasn't high summer yet, mom always called it high summer when it got to be later in the year, but it was pretty hot out. She had to make Sho dress like that because dad said so and dad said so because Sho was covered in scars and if normal people saw them then they would ask questions and they couldn't have that. Sho didn't care but dad did and if dad cared then Mob did.

She still felt so bad for him.

Which felt sort of unfair even though that made no sense. She thought, sometimes, that it wasn't fair how she had to always think of him but nobody ever thought of her. Well dad was always getting her stuff and he listened to her about the hugs and stuff but that was not the same as thinking about her. He was always asking her what she needed and what she wanted but he was also telling her that she had to be the one think about the things that Sho needed and stuff. She had to watch out for him because she was his big sister and stuff but…but then who was going to watch out for her?

Or maybe she didn't need anyone to watch out for her because she was so old, now, since she was nine after all.

"Remember what?" asked Sho

"Nothing." Said Mob. She didn't want to talk about the times when mom would bring them to the cat shelter. They weren't supposed to talk about mom and they weren't supposed to remember those times, either. She shouldn't have even brought it up. She needed to learn to think before she spoke. Like dad had said.

"You were going to say something. Don't lie to me." Said Sho. He was right. She shouldn't have lied to him like that. She was a terrible big sister for lying. Telling lies was wrong, anyone could have known that, but talking about their mom was also wrong. Which one was less wrong?

She didn't know.

But she did know that…that lying made her feel a lot worse than talking about mom ever had. Talking about mom…that was something that made her feel bad but more of because her mom was gone and she was never coming back. Lying to her little brother made her feel bad because she was being a bad person when she told lies. Even if Minegishi said that the only bad thing about telling lies was when you got caught. She wasn't supposed to tell lies though, dad had said so. He had said that because he never wasted his time telling lies then neither should she and Sho have…even though pretending that they had never had a mom in the first place was kind of like telling a lie.

Because they had a mom. Her name was Suzuki Masami and Mob remembered her. She was real, not imaginary, Mon knew the difference.

"You're right. I shouldn't have lied to you. I just spoke without thinking. I was just going to ask if you remembered the cats at the shelter that mom took us to when we were little. That's all. I'm sorry." Said Mob. Sho was quiet after that. She had said the wrong thing and now he was going to be sad, now, and it was all her fault.

"….I remember. There was the orange one, do you remember? The one we called Toulouse?" asked Sho

"Because of the Artistocats. I remember. Remember how Marie and Berlioz weren't his brother and sister?" asked Mob. She was smiling a little. She shouldn't have been smiling. She shouldn't even have been talking about this. She knew better than this. Dad would have been so disappointed in her. He would have been so disappointed in her that he couldn't even stand to look at her. That was the worst, the time when he said that he was so very disappointed in her that he couldn't even stand to look at her….it hurt so much…

And he would have said that to her again if he knew what they were talking about.

But Sho was smiling now. Sho was smiling and if it meant that Sho smiled then she wouldn't mind it if dad found out that they had been talking about mom and if he decided to tell her that he didn't like her or pick her up by his braids again then…then that would be fine because she had seen Sho smile. Besides, she could always borrow a capful or two from Minegishi and then not be as sad anymore.

"I do. I think that the one we called Marie might have been a boy, too." Said Sho

"I thought that all white cats were girls." Said Mob

"No, just most. They called the white cat, the one we called Marie, the workers called him Prince so he might have been a boy. I don't think he minded being called Marie." Said Sho

"I hope he didn't mind. Poor kitty. He should have said something." Said Mob

"Maybe that was why he was always trying to scratch us." Said Sho

"Us? He was mostly just trying to scratch you. Remember how you use to always chase them around trying to pick them up? And then mom would-sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said-" said Mob

"Mom showed me how to pick up cats without scaring them away. I remember." Said Sho. They were quiet, then, and Mob opened her popcorn bucket again and pushed it towards Sho just so that something would happen. She wished that she had just been able to keep her mouth shut. She wished that she could just get a clue already. Nine years old and she couldn't even get a clue…

"I remember when mom showed you that. I was there. We were really little…" said Mob. She knew that this was wrong. She knew that it was wrong because dad said so. She knew that dad would be so mad at them…but she wanted to…to talk about her. About mom. She had been their mom, she had existed, and even if she left them it didn't mean that she was just…not their mom anymore…

At least that was how Mob saw it.

Dad saw it differently. She was supposed to see everything that dad saw. She was supposed to see what dad saw and think what he thought…even though that was not how it worked. She and dad were totally different people. She and dad could agree about stuff and disagree about stuff…..but that was just the way that she saw it. Dad wanted her to be a good Daughter and to be a good daughter she had to see what he saw and think the way he thought…even though he could be so very-!

She needed milk.

As soon as she got home she was going to see if Minegishi was home and if they wanted to share. She sometimes had to ask two or three times but they eventually shared with her. It went both ways, though, because she was bringing them back some of the curry popcorn. They would probably like it. Well they said to bring back weird popcorn and curry was a weird flavor for popcorn without being all weird like shrimp…so it would be a fair trade…

She couldn't wait.

"Yeah, we were, but we're not anymore." Said Sho as he finished off her popcorn. He didn't seem worried or sad…and maybe she shouldn't have been either. It wasn't like he was going to tell on her, he wasn't that sort of person, so maybe she shouldn't have been worried about anything. It wasn't like dad knew what they were going to say, what they had said, when he wasn't around…so maybe she should have just relaxed. Yeah, it was like a secret…

Secrets were ok.

Well they weren't but it wasn't like she was going to go up to dad and tell them that she had a secret that she was keeping from him. She already had one that she was keeping pretty well. She wasn't about to get her best friend who wasn't Sho in trouble and she also wasn't about to get herself in trouble either since kids weren't allowed to drink.

Also it felt like talking about mom wasn't nearly as bad as drinking.

"No…we're not. You're almost as tall as me now." Said Mob. Sho had always been smaller than her but now he was starting to catch up…or maybe she was just shrinking. She didn't care if she grew or if she shrunk just so long as her little brother was happy.

"That's just because of your shoes. We're the same size and I'm going to be taller than you anyway. Boys always end up being taller than girls." Said Sho.

"Not all the time. Remember those ladies we saw from the Olympics? They were over two meters tall." Said Mob

"Yeah, ok, but how many olympics people are there just walking around and stuff. Most of the time boys end up being bigger and stronger than girls." Said Sho. Mob was both sad and happy that they were done talking about mom. She wanted to talk about mom, she wanted to remember her, but she also felt bad when she talked about mom since…since it had been so very long….

"Yeah, that's true. You'll probably be bigger and taller than me when you grow up." Said Mob

"But not stronger…" muttered Sho

"You don't know that. You're still growing. You could end up being even stronger and more powerful than me when you grow up, little brother." Said Mob

"You think?" asked Sho. He seemed happy, then, and hopeful. Mob nodded. Even though dad said, before, that she would always be stronger than Sho.

"Yes. I think so." Said Mob. Thinking and hoping were the same thing so it was not a lie, not really, because she really hoped that he grew up to be a much more powerful esper than she would ever be. Then he could be happy. What could be better than her little brother being happy? Besides having mom back…no, Sho's happiness mattered the very most.

Sho seemed very happy then.

He was shaking her popcorn bucket a bunch even though he could tell that there was no more popcorn in it. Even though he was all red and sweaty, maybe they should come back in the fall or winter next time, he still seemed so happy. That was good. Sometimes he was so sad when they talked about mom, in those rare times when they would talk about mom, but now he seemed at least a little happy…and that was good.

This could still be a fun day.

"Do you want to go and get more popcorn? Or a giant churro? Or something with food groups in it?" asked Mob. It was important that she made sure that Sho had enough to eat. Also to make sure that he didn't get another sunburn…but she would put more sunscreen on him later. She didn't want to make him upset just yet…and also he had on long pants and a long shirt so the only thing she had to worry about was his face and neck. That was easier than trying to put sunscreen on his arms and legs while he squirmed and kicked and stuff.

"I don't want to eat anything yet. I want to ride something. How many fast passes do we have left?" asked Sho. Mob nodded and went into her bag. Next to the balls of money, phones, and chargers were all of their fast passes. Technically you were only supposed to have one of those at a time but Sho hated waiting in lines and the Awakened like to be helpful…and also it wasn't cheating because they could have kept these if they had wanted to. They just…liked waiting in line…or something.

"We have pirates and space mountain and Winny the Poof and the teacups…but they aren't teacups here and also we just ate a bunch of popcorn-" said Mob

"I don't care. I don't care if we're full of popcorn or the teacups are all mermaid here. I want to do that." Said Sho

"But you might throw up again." said Mob. Also she might throw up again. She woke up nauseated sometimes, this morning had been one of those times, and she was mostly fine now…but she had been avoiding the teacups for a reason even though at this Disneyland they were in a cool little Mermaid place and she really wanted to go…

"That's a risk I'm willing to take. Now come on!" said Sho. He threw her popcorn bucket around her neck and grabbed her hand. Mob let herself be dragged. Even if she knew that she could, and would, get super dizzy it was worth it to make Sho happy. He hadn't been happy in a while so she was happy to make him happy now.

Just like when they had been little and spent the whole day, days and days even, at Disneyland.

They may have been older, and she may have not been one hundred percent on the whole spinning around until she was sick thing, but making her little brother happy was always worth it.

Besides, they hadn't been to Disneyland in a while.


	107. Sneaking Around

It only counted as sneaking around if you had started off sneaking around.

Which was why Mob was not sneaking around. She hadn't left her house, well the house she was staying in, with the intention of going to Minegishi's house to sneak around. No, not at all. She had left her house with the intention of finding someone who wanted to play with her without complaining and telling her that she was boring. Normally it wouldn't have bothered her, when Sho told her that her games were boring, but she had been feeling sort of…not happy…lately. Mainly because she had been borrowing less and less from Minegishi lately.

Sure her milk didn't burn going down anymore but her feelings got hurt a lot more easily.

Well maybe not. She had just been making her feelings be a lot quieter than they usually preferred to be. It was easier to control her powers that way and to keep her feelings from becoming too much but also it made her tired all the time and also sometimes nauseated. It was bothering Sho, too, seeing her like that so she had to cut back.

Plus it was wrong to borrow things from your friends without asking and without having any ability at all of returning.

Which sounded like stealing but wasn't. First of all it was not stealing because Minegishi shared with Mob whenever she asked. They only gave her a capful, usually, and never when they weren't having some first but that still counted as sharing. Third of all if there had been some way to return the favor then Mob would have. If she had no intention of ever returning the favor then it would have been stealing. Like on TV when neighbor's asked each other to borrow a cup of sugar. Obviously you couldn't return a cup of sugar after you used it but you made it up to the person you borrow from by lending them something in return. So because Mob would have been willing to make it up to Minegishi then she was not stealing at all.

But it still felt bad to borrow things without asking.

But Mob wasn't sneaking around for that reason….nor was she sneaking around at all. Minegishi let them come over all the time when they were home. Mob always let herself in. She always knocked on Minegishi's bedroom door, you were supposed to do that because otherwise you'll see things that scarred you for life like Minegishi had said, so that was ok. She came over with a bunch of dolls and stuff all the time so this was ok. She would have knocked on the bedroom door, too, if she could…so that meant that it was ok to stand outside of the bedroom door…for a while…because she totally had every intention of knocking.

She really did.

She also had all the time in the world to start knocking on the door in front of her. She'd start knocking at any minute now. She just needed time. That was all. She was not sneaking around or spying on anyone. She just needed a minute to raise her hand up and knock on the door to make sure if it was ok for her to come in. That was all.

She was not eavesdropping.

"Toshi, you are ridiculously tense. Even for you." Said Shimazaki. Mob had known that he was over, too, she could sense his aura. He followed dad around throughout most of his day. Dad still wasn't home but that just meant that the dangerous part of his day was over now. Sho said that people tried to shoot dad and stuff, why anyone would want to hurt her dad she did not know, but she was grateful to Shimazaki for protecting her dad and little brother, too, when Sho was with dad. She really was grateful towards him…

Even if he was kind of a jerk sometimes.

"Toshi? Toshiki? Minegishi Toshiiki? Toshi?" said Shimazaki. He kept on calling Minegishi by their given name even though they didn't like to be called that. That was kind of a jerk thing to do. You had to call people what they wanted to be called. People were allowed to decide their own names and Minegishi decided that they only wanted to be called Minegishi and you were not supposed to use someone's given name without permission anyway because it was rude to be that familiar with someone without their permission. It really was.

But Shimazaki could be kind of a jerk sometimes…a lot of the times….

"I was curious to see when you'd get tired of this but it's been half an hour now….half an hour….what do you want, Ryou? Can't you see I'm busy." Said Minegishi. Mob wondered if Minegishi was given permission to call Shimazaki by his first name or if they had just decided to do that because he kept on calling them Toshi. She didn't know. She'd ask later. Right now she just…wanted to know if it was ok to knock on the door. That was all.

"Actually I can't-" said Shimazaki

"Yes, because you're blind. Oh my you are just so very clever, aren't you?" said Minegishi. Mob heard the bed creak. Minegishi liked to hang out in their room reading on their bed. They said that there was nothing else to do since they had been demoted. Mob didn't know what they meant by that but she did know how relaxing it could be just hanging out in your room. Well it was a lot more relaxing when people didn't come in and bother you.

Shimazaki was kind of like Sho when it came to bothering people who were just kind of trying to relax.

Sometimes Mob would be playing in the room or watching something on her ipad or something and Sho would just sort of come in and jump on her or start trying to get her to play with him or something. Shimazaki was the same sort of way with Minegishi. He would just sort of appear and then he and Minegishi would say a bunch of stuff to each other that sounded mean but might not have been mean at all judging by the fact that Minegishi still let him hang out with them no matter what he said. Mob didn't know how well they got on though because, eventually, she was always kicked out of the room and sent right back home.

So maybe if she knocked on the door now then she would be sent home.

But maybe if she waited for long enough by the door then Shimazaki would get bored and teleport back to wherever it was that he lived and then she and Minegishi would be able to play dolls or just hang out or anything really. So that meant that the best thing to do was to stand there by the door and just wait for whatever was happening on the other side to be over with. She didn't think it would take too long. They both seemed like they were being mean to each other and Mob didn't know why you would spend time with someone who was mean to you unless they were members of your family.

"Well I try to be. Why? Do you think it's working?" asked Shimazaki. There was another creak of the bed. Mob wondered why he didn't just leave Minegishi alone. It sounded like they were trying to scoot away from him. Mob had no way of knowing what was going on, of course, because while she could see their auras she couldn't see them.

"I think that you think that you're clever but, in reality, you aren't." Said Minegishi. Mob frowned. That seemed extra mean…but then again Shimazaki had probably just popped around without asking again.

"Oh? Well now you're just trying to hurt me. Go on, insult the poor blind man who only came to you seeking some basic human companionship-" said Shimazaki

"You know something? You can't hide behind the fact that you're blind forever. I don't give a damn that you don't have any eyes, Shimazaki, I can and will kick your ass if you annoy me enough." Said Minegishi

"I know you will. You've done it before and you'll do it again." Said Shimazaki. Mob wondered why Shimazaki kept on pushing them then. If he knew that, eventually, Minegishi would get upset and fight with him then why did he keep on carrying on like this? What was with boys and fighting with people and annoying them? Mob had no clue. She wondered how people had come this far if boys were like this even when they grew up.

"Then shut up before I get up and kick your ass." Said Minegishi. That wasn't a nice thing to say…but maybe Minegishi was a boy too, then, because that was what boys were always saying to each other. Maybe when Mob grew up she would figure out why boys were obsessed with fighting. If that was one of those things that could be figured out. It may have been one of life's mysteries, like why diet soda made your head hurt or how come no matter how many baths you took there would still be sand in your hair for days after you came home from the beach.

"Please, don't get up on my account." Said Shimazaki. There was more creaking, then, from the bed. Mob wondered if they were actually fighting. She maybe should have at least knocked because then, if they knew that she was there, they might have stopped. She raised her hand up to knock on the door but only managed to tap it once when the talking started back up again.

Maybe she should have knocked even though they had started talking.

Because now the door was opened a sliver, just enough to barely see through, and this wasn't good because now if they did notice her then they would have thought that she was peeking through the sliver of space between the door and the doorframe. That would have been even worse than if they had found her and thought that she had been eavesdropping. Not that she had been eavesdropping and not that she was looking. She just couldn't help it.

She had never seen them like this before.

She had never seen anyone like that. Ever. All cuddled up….but not like how she cuddled up with Sho sometimes. Minegishi was laying down and Shimazaki looked like he would have been crushing them but it looked like most of his weight was on his arms. Minegishi didn't even seem to care. They just had their arms crossed behind their head. Mob didn't get this at all…but she did get the feeling that maybe she was not meant to be watching this…

She reached over with one finger and pulled the door shut slowly so she wasn't noticed.

"You just like me best on my back." Said Minegishi

"No, I like you best on your side facing me." Said Shimazaki

"Well I like you best on your back looking up at me." Said Minegishi

"Eyes opened or closed?" asked Shimazaki

"Opened." Said Minegishi

"I thought that freaked you out." Said Shimazaki

"It did, before, but I got used to it." Said Minegishi

"It doesn't bother you?" asked Shimazaki

"The empty space where your eyes used to be?" asked Minegishi

"There is no 'used to' but yes." said Shimazaki

"No. That doesn't bother me at all. Since the eyes are the windows to the soul looking down at your empty eye sockets is actually reassuring." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't get it. She didn't get a word of what she had just heard. Not getting it, not understanding, just made her want to listen more…even though she knew that she was not supposed to be sneaking around and spying on people…and she wasn't. She was just…waiting for her chance to…to ask Minegishi to play with her. That was it.

But this was interesting.

It still sounded like they were being mean to each other but…but also like they weren't. She didn't get it. She just…she just didn't get them. She got the feeling that this was different than her and Sho. Sho could be mean to her but she was always nice to him because he was her little brother. She really got the feeling that whatever she was listening to was different than anything she had ever seen or listened to in her life…and she wished that she could have asked but she didn't know who she could ask. The person she usually asked about this stuff would probably get mad at her if she ever mentioned that she had been there overhearing…whatever that was.

"Why? Because I have no soul?" asked Shimazaki

"No, you do, that's what's so reassuring about it. If you do then maybe there's hope for me yet…or whatever." Said Minegishi

"You do have a soul Toshi, I can feel it. I can hear it and I can feel it and I'm touching it right now." Said Shimazaki

"Stop touching my aura." Said Minegishi

"Oh? And what would you rather I touch?" asked Shimazaki

"If you don't know already-" said Minegishi

"I do you, I just like it when you ask." Said Shimazaki. He laughed there. Mob didn't know what he was laughing at…and also the way he laughed sounded weird. Kind of deep. Deeper than any other laugh that she had ever heard….and that was something else that she had no idea what to make of. The way he laughed…and why she couldn't stop thinking about the way that he had laughed….this whole things was so confusing…or maybe she just couldn't get a clue. That must have been it.

"If you're going to sit there waiting for me to beg then I suggest that you make yourself comfortable since that's never going to happen." Said Minegishi

"I've had you begging before, Toshi." Said Shimazaki

"Calling me 'Toshi' over and over again is only pissing me off more, you know." Said Minegishi

"Alright, I won't call you Toshi anymore…even though you look like a-" said Shimazaki

"How can I look like a 'Toshi' or an anything to you? Aren't you the one always going on about how blind you are?" asked Minegishi

"I was going to say that you look like a kind and caring human being and I would love to get to know you better. Right now, if possible. But, yeah, if you're not in the mood to-" said Shimazaki

"Well I would be in the mood if you were not so truly annoying." Said Minegishi

"Am I still an annoying asshole?" asked Shimazaki

"Yes. You're an annoying asshole and I do not need anyone pissing me off right now. I have enough crap to deal with as it is." Said Minegishi

"Like what? Your new assignment is pretty freaking sweet if you ask me. You just hang out with a kid all day playing dolls and braiding each other's hair or whatever it is that you guys do." Said Shimazaki. Mob got the feeling that she and Minegishi were being made fun of then. She frowned. She didn't care if she got made fun of, well she kind of did, but she cared more if her friend got made fun of. Maybe she was right and they were just being mean to each other…even if it seemed like they were and were not being mean to each other….

"Yeah, it's a cushy job, that's the problem. If I wanted a cushy job then I would have stayed at the Florist's. I joined this stupid thing to have something to do. I mean Mob's ok but I know for a fact that Suzuki only brought me along to be her babysitter-" said Minegishi

"Join the club. I have to protect his son sometimes and that kid…I don't even have words for that kid." Said Shimazaki. Sho was the kid that he was talking about and there were a lot of words that could apply to him. He was a good little brother. He was nice, sometimes, and he was brave. He was good at climbing and knew that names of every single animal in the world and also was a very good artist, too, so good that dad even kept his drawings and he didn't like anything at all.

"Yeah, he's a brat. You have a point there. At least Mob's good company….I don't know. I'm pretty sure that I've been demoted. I used to be an enforcer. I used to-" said Minegishi

"Enforce?" asked Shimazaki

"Yes! And now he's just using me as a babysitter…because he's a sexist asshole." Said Minegishi

"So why not just tell him that you're a guy? I mean I'm pretty sure that he can't tell what you are either way. So why not just tell him that you're a guy and then see if he reassigns you. I mean if I had a daughter I wouldn't be leaving her alone with some guy. I'm a guy, I know how we think, and if I had all the money and power Suzuki did I would not leave a guy alone with my naïve, impressionable, daughter." Said Shimazaki

"You know she's nine, right? The fact that your mind would even go there says a lot about you." Said Minegishi

"I didn't mean I'd try anything with her while she was a kid, or ever really because she scares me a little, but she'll grow up and be all 'hey, now that I know what guys are for I'm into you' and then boom! You've secured your place in the brave new world Suzuki's building for us all." said Shimazaki

"So what you're saying is that I should keep you far away from her and any other underage girls I can find." Said Minegishi

"No, I'm just saying that you should tell him that you're a guy and that he should stick you back on sucking the life out of people with plants and then using their bodies as fertilizer." Said Shimazaki. Mob knew that he was joking. He had to be joking. Minegishi wouldn't so things like that. They were ni-not mean enough to do something like that.

"I don't define myself that way and you know it. Man, woman, it's all so pointless to me and it should be to everyone else, too. Besides, I've never felt male or female in my life and I am not about to go and lie to Suzuki's face. You know how he feels about lying? Remember that guy who took all those sick days? Remember what happened to him?" asked Minegishi

"Oh yeah. I bet Hatori still hates himself for opening his big mouth about that." Said Shimazaki

"Hatori? Oh, yeah, the tech guy." Said Minegishi

"You know him. Remember we met him back when we were all in Japan together a couple years ago looking for that woman?" asked Shimazaki

"I can't imagine you were very helpful back then considering all we had to go off of was a vague physical description and threats of torture for anyone who couldn't find her." said Minegishi

"No, I was helpful. I shook people down for information." Said Shimazaki

"Did you get any?" asked Minegishi

"No but I got to shake a bunch of guys down so it was worth it even if we did all piss off the boss by being 'a bunch of worthless incompetents not even worth the air we breathed' as our great and fearless leader was fond of shouting." Said Shimazaki

"Your team got off easy. He told us to go fill our pockets with rocks and walk off into the ocean. At least that way we could have been of some use to something." Said Minegishi

"Did you do it?" asked Shimazaki

"Oh yeah, I totally filled my pockets with rocks, walked into the ocean, and turned myself into fish food. You're actually talking to the ghost of Minegishi Toshiki right now." Said Minegishi

"Well can you tell my grandma that I miss her, my childhood brail teacher that he smelled like garlic and shame, and my dad that I hope he's burning in hell right now getting it up the ass by virgin demons?" asked Shimazaki

"Alright, he message has been passed along. Also your childhood dog says that it died because you didn't love it enough." Said Minegishi. She knew that Minegishi was kidding. Nobody could see to the other side. Dad had said so. Also they must have been kidding, not lying, because lying wasn't nice and Minegishi may not have been super nice but they weren't going to lie or anything like that.

"Well then you've got the wrong dog. My dog died because I fed it too much junk food and it got diabetes." Said Shimazaki. Mob wanted to tell him that she was sorry that happened to him. She didn't like him that much at all but she didn't think that she deserved to have his dog die. She didn't know what diabetes was but she knew that nobody deserved to have their dog die. Poor Shimazaki….

"How the hell did you actually manage to give a dog diabetes? Were you feeding it chocolate or something?" asked Minegishi

"What the fuck is the matter with you? You think I'm some kind of sadist? No I didn't give Ultradog chocolate, I gave him cake and ice cream because he liked it and it made him happy. It also made him fat and diabetic….but to be fair I was like seven, I didn't know that with every bite I was slowly killing my best friend." Said Shimazaki

"And that's what made you the man you are today?" asked Minegishi

"That and the vicious beatings. Never forget the vicious beatings." Said Shimazaki

"Where would we be without our messed up childhoods?" asked Minegishi

"Not in this weird half yakuza half cult thing, that's for sure." Said Shimazaki

"Whatever, it's not so bad aside from Suzuki. We get a lot of money, we got to see he world, full dental, retirement account, a seat of power once he takes over the world, Christmas and New Year's off, pet insurance—"said Minegishi

"Those weird office parties the awakened throw every year on Suzuki's birthday. Those guys are really enjoying the cult portion of our jobs." Said Shimazaki. Mob didn't know what a cult was but she didn't know what was wrong with throwing dad a birthday party. Maybe it was wrong because he would never go to a birthday party thrown for him. He didn't like parties, he said, or anything that made him be social with other people.

"I can't stand those guys. The difference between a natural esper and an artificial one is night and day." Said Minegishi

"Just like the difference between a Suzuki and the rest of us. Those kids…I look at them and I think that I'm looking at tiny adults. It's uncanny." Said Shimazaki

"Will you stop being so freaked out? They're just kids. Mob's actually pretty cool when you get to know her…not that I'll be letting you get to know her based on certain previously made comments." Said Minegishi. She didn't know why Minegishi didn't want her to get to known Shimazaki but she, also, wasn't complaining. She would rather be all alone than hang out with Shimazaki.

"What? Are you jealous?" asked Shimazaki

"I don't get jealous, you know that. If she wants you when she's an adult or a teenager or, you know, not so very clearly a little girl then she can have you." Said Minegishi. Mob shook her head. She didn't want him. She didn't know who would want him, she really didn't, but she knew that she didn't want him. If she were a meaner person then she would have thought something like how the only girl who would love him, with the way he talked to people and acted, was his big sister. If he had one, that is. She wasn't about to go in there and ask him or anything like that.

"Oh? And if she fell in love with me?" asked Shimazaki. Mob stuck out her tongue. Ick. Her? In love with Shimazaki? She'd rather be all alone for the rest of her life. He was mean, he smelled weird, and she didn't like the way that he talked to or about people. If he thought that she would ever fall in love with him then he needed to have his head examined.

"Then you hit the jackpot." Said Minegishi

"You wouldn't care?" asked Shimazaki

"No. What do I care if someone falls in love with you? Especially if Mob falls in love with you in some hypothetical future scenario that we both know is never going to happen." Said Minegishi. Good. She didn't know what hypothetical meant but she did know that she was glad that Minegishi knew that she would never fall in love with Shimazaki for as long as she lived.

"What? Are you saying there's something wrong with me?" asked Shimazaki

"Where do I even begin?" asked Minegishi

"Cute, Toshi, very cute." Said Shimazaki

"Fine, you're perfect. You're practically perfect in every single conceivable way but you're still not so perfect that Suzuki is going to let you anywhere near his little heiress. We both know that when she gets older then he's going to build his sacred virgin of a daughter her own little tower where she can be safe from guys like you." Said Minegishi. Mob blinked. She didn't know what a sacred virgin was but she knew that she did not want to be kept in a tower. First of all she did not want to be away from Dad or Sho or Minegishi, either, and second of all she was not a princess. Only princesses got kept in towers and she did not want to be or call herself a princess. Third of all she could easily just fly out of her tower and escape so, really, the whole thing would have been a waste of time.

"You act like I'm some kind of lecherous old man." Said Shimazaki

"Well you are getting up there in years." Said Minegishi

"I'm twenty seven." Said Shimazaki

"I know. You're almost thirty. Practically ancient. Tell me, what was it like growing up during the war?" asked Minegishi

"I sold bad information to both sides in an effort to prolong the war for my amusement." Said Shimazaki

"And how'd that work out for you?" asked Minegishi

"Pretty good, though maybe I went a little too far towards the end." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah, maybe just the one step too far…but hey, we rebuilt and as a result of the constant nuclear bombardment we have these wonderful powers we're now going to take over the world with." Said Minegishi

"You really think so?" asked Shimazaki

"Think what?" asked Minegishi

"That our powers come from radiation like we're in a Godzilla movie or an anime or something." Said Shimazaki

"I don't have a fucking clue. Head to a research division and ask them, they'd probably know. All I know is that a quarter of a century ago a baby was born that could see spirits and control plants and that baby grew up to be the most overpaid babysitter in all of Japan." Said Minegishi

"Just tell him you want to strike fear in the hearts of men again. I'm sure he'd understand….as much as he's capable of understanding another human being." Said Shimazaki

"I can't. I just…I can't leave he kid. That's the thing of it. I cannot leave that kid back to the hell she's growing up in. I mean…I know what that kind of life does to a person. That's what made you and me and probably most of the upper echelon…and come to think of it the awakened must not have had the best lives either." Said Minegishi

"So stop griping and be the kid's babysitter for the rest of your life." Said Shimazaki

"Honestly we're more like friends, if you must know, and it's not so bad." Said Minegishi

"So what were you pissing and moaning about before?" asked Shimazaki

"You intruding on my solitude." Said Minegishi

"You know, if you really want me to go then I'll go." Said Shimazaki

"No, stay, I guess. I don't know." Said Minegishi

"Should I stay or should I go?" sang Shimazaki in English.

"Well if you keep on singing like that I'll be forced to kick you out." Said Minegishi

"Well then I'll have to be silent as a church mouse. You don't have to be, though, in fact I'd prefer it if you weren't." said Shimazaki

"You've got a one track mind." Said Minegishi

"Guilty. But how can I think of anything else when you're here and I'm here….and this is the only thing between us…." Said Shimazaki

"Why'd you stop?" asked Minegishi

"Because I'm fifty five percent sure that there's a kid, the kid, right outside your door." Said Shimazaki

"What do you mean 'fifty five percent sure'? I've seen you pick out espers from-" said Minegishi

"It's the same reason why I have trouble getting a lock on Suzuki sometimes. She's got a very loud aura. It's like she's right here in my face screaming every time I come here to see you." Said Shimazaki

"You're not going to continue unless I check for her, are you?" asked Minegishi

"Nope." Said Shimazaki

"Fine. But when I get back I'd better be able to see each and every one of your tattoos, Ryou." Said Minegishi

"Good. One of us should be able to." Said Shimazaki. Mob was too scared to be curious. She tried to get her feet to move. She managed to make a few quiet steps back from the door. She would have ran but even if her feet hadn't felt like she was wearing bricks for shoes she wouldn't have ran. That would have made noise and if she made that much noise then Minegishi would have certainly known that she was there and then they certainly would have been upset with her. Certainly.

They certainly seemed upset.

"What the hell do you think that you're doing?" asked Minegishi as the opened the door. Mob stood frozen, her dolls still in her hands, as Minegishi looked at her. Their aura seemed mad…but only a little. Not mad like when dad was mad at her…but then again nobody in the whole world could ever be mad like dad could be mad.

But she still felt bad about having had made Minegishi this mad.

"I-I wanted to play with you and I remember what you said about always knocking on your bedroom door and I was going to knock but then I heard you and Shimazaki talking…and also I saw your auras…and then I thought that I would wait until you guys were done because Shimazaki can be kind of mean to me sometimes and stuff…so I waited but then I decided that you guys would be talking for a while so I decided to go back home and that's where I'm going now. Ok? Bye." Said Mob. She went to turned and walk away but a plant reached over and grabbed her by the braid. Not hard, though, so this was ok.

Aside from the fact that Minegishi was mad at her.

She hated it when people were mad at her. She never wanted to make anyone mad, let alone her friend, but this was just the way that it was going to be. She was the one who had stayed and listened after all even though she knew, no matter how she tried to change her own mind she knew, that she should have just gone right back to her own house from the very beginning….

And now her friend was mad at her.

"Next time knock from the very beginning, ok? Don't just lurk behind doors. It's rude." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded.

"Ok. I won't ever lurk around behind doors again. I'm sorry." Said Mob

"Good….and don't ask me about anything you heard, either. Don't you even think about asking me about any of that until you're older because I am not answering any questions." Said Minegishi

"Sure. Not until I'm ten." Said Mob. That wasn't so bad. That just gave her so much more to look forward to on her birthday. She still felt bad about making Minegishi mad but this wasn't anywhere near as bad as when dad got mad at her. This was ok.

"Good. Now don't come back here until tomorrow. Ok? No matter what you are not stepping through that door until tomorrow. I don't care if you caught a tsuchinoko or saw a unicorn or it's raining burning ice outside. You do not bother me until tomorrow. Got it?" asked Minegishi. Mob nodded. Sure. She could do that. That was better than when dad said to go away and leave him alone. He said that a lot when he was mad but then he never said when it was ok to talk to him again. So confusing. At least Minegishi was easy to understand even if they were mad at her.

"Good. Now go home." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't need to be told twice. She was done eavesdropping and sneaking around.

And yes, it did count as sneaking around even if you didn't set out to go sneaking around.


	108. Playtime, Talking, and Trying

There was a very long list of things that Mob was not supposed to ask about until she was ten.

But she was still nine. She was still nine and she wouldn't be ten until May and it was only August. Summer wasn't even over yet but still, with each day, she had more and more things that she wanted to ask Minegishi about. Words that she didn't know. No, not just words, but phrases. She knew what words meant and the ones that she didn't know she could look up on her dictionary app. Phrases were different. They were like little bits of code, words put together, and the order of these words made them greater than the sum of their parts.

At least that was what it seemed like.

She had no idea how people went around figuring out these codes, these hidden bits of meaning, from words. She sometimes wondered if they just memorized them all kind of like how dad said that she and Sho had to memorize fifty thousand kanji. She also sometimes wondered if it was just something that people were just expected to know. Like how babies just started talking one day.

She didn't know.

She was just clueless like that. Back when she had gone to school the kids in her class had always said that she was clueless. She was clueless and she was bad at talking and almost nobody wanted to play with her…those were not good times. It had been hard enough to understand the other kids, and she still couldn't even do that, but being friends with an adult was way different. Minegishi was twenty five, that was a whole sixteen years older than her, and sometimes it felt like those sixteen years might as well have been sixteen centuries. There was a gap between adults and kids and as good of friends as they were there was so much that she just could not begin to understand.

But Minegishi said that they would tell her when she was ten.

But that was a long time to wait. Even now Mob didn't know if she could wait. She was hanging out with Minegishi. They were at her house, well the house she was staying in, but not the house that she had been staying in before. They had moved again, this time to a different and much warmer part of Japan, but their living situation was still the same. Mob and Sho and dad lived in one house and then right next door Minegishi had another house…but Shimazaki also lived with them, now, because dad said that it made sense to bring Shimazaki around with them too. To keep him safe.

That was why she and Minegishi were playing in her house.

She didn't like Shimazaki all that much. Sho thought that he was the coolest guy ever. He thought that Shimazaki was like the blind master from those kungfu movies that he watched sometimes. Or like from his battle animes. Sho talked about him a lot. Dad took just him to work sometimes, a lot of the times, because they were doing stuff that she wouldn't like. Dad had said so. Dad had said, before, that she was supposed to be with him forever but then he went and only took Sho with him. Mob minded…a little…but it was nice hanging out with Minegishi.

And only Minegishi.

She hated how she didn't like Shimazaki. She was supposed to like everyone but she just…could not like him. She was supposed to be sweet and nice and like everyone, like mom had said, but she just couldn't like someone who was so mean all the time. He was mean in the mornings, he was mean in the evenings, he was mean on the weekdays, he was mean on the weekends, he was mean to her, he was mean to Minegishi, he said mean things about her and Minegishi…and also probably everyone else he had ever come into contact with. He certainly said mean things about a lot of people who Mob had never even met before.

Mob couldn't stand mean people.

Outside of her family, that is. She knew how mean dad and Sho could be but she didn't dislike them. She could never dislike her dad or her little brother. She could, however, dislike someone who had no relation to her. She wanted to tell Shimazaki that he needed to stop saying such mean things to people all the time and to learn himself some manners. He was so mean to Minegishi and they seemed to be friends….and she expected Minegishi to have at some point told him that if he didn't have anything nice to say then he should not have said anything at all.

Because Minegishi always spoke their mind.

They seemed mean, sometimes, but not mean like Shimazaki was mean. They were mean but more in a say what they felt all the time sort of way. Kind of like dad. He said that he didn't have time to tell lies. He said what he meant and meant what he said and if people didn't like it then they had better keep it to themselves. That was different from going around and breaking social rules, though, but Mob wasn't sure how that was different from breaking social rules so she just always made an effort to be nice. She had to be nice. Sweet and nice.

Like mom had wanted her to be.

So she was sweet and nice and she was not going to tell Shimazaki what she thought of him. That he was way too mean and that he would never make friends with anyone talking to and about people like that. She also didn't tell Minegishi that they could have made a much nicer friend. Someone who they both could have played with. Someone who didn't' teleport into their bedroom and step all over their doll city. He did that sometimes…and Mob didn't get why.

She didn't understand a lot of things.

Like why Minegishi and Shimazaki were even friends to begin with. That was why they agreed to stay in the same house. If they weren't friends then they could have lived in separate houses like Fukuda, he had always lived apart from everyone, so they must have been friends…and that made no sense. Minegishi said that they would explain to Mob all the details of their relationship with Shimazaki when she was ten years old.

She didn't want to wait that long.

"...the counsel of princesses sentences you, blonde roller blading doll, to hard labor in the salt mines. Prime Minster Else, if you will." Said Minegishi. They were prosecutor Snow White and bailiff Merida. Mob was Prime Minister Elsa and her cabinet of princesses. They were playing totalitarian state. Mob may have zoned out just a bit.

"Huh?" asked Mob. She had been thinking too much. Minegishi sighed and put down the dolls in their hands. They put them down in the salt mines, which was just a plate with table salt on it, and looked at her for a really long time. Mob wished that they would just say what was on their mind. They knew that she was bad at reading faces. Their aura, at least, didn't seem to be too mad. That was good. Aside from the one time when she had been listening outside the door while they got all cuddly with Shimazaki they hardly ever got actually mad at her.

"You know you're the one who wants to play dolls day in and day out." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded. She did like to play dolls. It was just so much fun to have someone who wanted to play dolls all the time, not just when she begged all day, and who didn't complain either.

"I know. I'm sorry. I was just thinking." Said Mob. She was still thinking. She could see the time on Minegishi's watch. It was getting later. Sho would be back soon. He probably wouldn't come back with dad. She wanted to spend time with dad and Sho…but she also wanted to play dolls with her friend. That wasn't possible if Sho was back. He wanted to spend time with her but he also hated playing dolls. Dad never played dolls with her, they only did things that he liked when they were together, so really this was her only chance to play dolls.

But it would be ending soon.

Because every time Sho came back it was Shimazaki who brought him. Whenever Shimazaki came back then Minegishi went to hang out with him and told Mob not to go anywhere near their house until the daytime. No matter what she saw or thought that she saw she was not supposed to go anywhere near the house next door.

Even if it did look like they were fighting sometimes.

"Well think about who you're going to sentence to the salt mines next. Or don't. They're your dolls." Said Minegishi

"I really am sorry. I was just thinking…but I'll stop now. Come on, let's play before you have to go." Said Mob as she used her powers to hand Minegishi back the dolls that they had been playing with.

"I don't have to do anything…unless your brother is coming back. Then, yeah, I'm gone." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't blame them. She loved Sho so much, she loved him more than anyone else in the world, but she knew that he was not for everyone. Minegishi thought that Sho was an annoying little boy…and he could be annoying and he was a little boy, so that was ok…well not totally ok but not as un-ok as it was when Shimazaki called him a brat. That wasn't nice at all. Sho was not a brat.

"It's getting late…so we should play as much as we can." Said Mob

"Right. Because it's not like we have time to continue the never ending saga of this princess dystopia." Said Minegishi

"We might not have time tomorrow. Dad might have something for you to do and then…and then I'll be here all alone unless Sho stays." Said Mob. Those weren't fun days. Minegishi had stuff that they had to do besides play with her. They were not her babysitter like they called themselves, they were her friend, and that meant that they still had their other job. They were an enforcer…and Mob had no idea what that meant….but she knew that they didn't actually use plants to suck the life out of people and then use their bodies as plant fertilizer.

"I can guarantee you that your dad has nothing for me to do here. This is mostly more of Shimazaki's area of expertise." Said Minegishi not looking up at her. Mob knew that they missed their old job, whatever it was, and Mob even felt a little guilty…but it wasn't like she was forcing Minegishi to be her friend. That would have been mean. She and Minegishi were friends because Minegishi wanted to be friends with her. There, that was the thing of it.

"Oh…ok. But um…you don't have to be my friend if you don't want to be. I mean if you want to get back to your old job you could. I wouldn't stop you." Said Mob

"Yeah, I know I can quit whenever I want. I just don't want to. I'm the one who said that we were friends, remember? Now come on, where were we?" asked Minegishi

"You did say that we were friends but I just…I remember how, in that time when I was in your house when I shouldn't have been…and I'm sorry about that, I just remember how you told Shimazaki that you missed-" said Mob

"Didn't I tell you never to talk about what you heard?" asked Minegishi. Now their aura looked a little bit mad…but not the same sort of mad that dad got at her…so it was ok. Less mad. Less mad was good. She didn't mean to make her friend mad, she was just worried, and she could not help being worried. Dad said that it was one of her good traits, being concerned about others, even though she should have been a full person on her own…though she still wasn't sure how that one was supposed to work since people needed other people to survive and stuff.

"You said to never ask about what I heard. I'm sorry I just…I just don't want you to be unhappy…because I care about you and stuff." Said Mob. She wished that she had something to put in her milk. That was the downside of being in her own house. Minegishi kept all of their bottles in their top drawer and they only shard when they were at their house…but Mob didn't really like going over to their house to play because they shared with Shimazaki now.

"Yeah, Mob, you're just a bottomless well of love and caring." Said Minegishi

"Thank you." Said Mob. They said the nicest things sometimes. That was one of the reasons why Mob had no idea why they were friends with Shimazaki. He never said nice things like that. He never said nice things to anyone.

"I'm fine, you know. I miss my old job but this…hanging out with you is nice. Ok? Now, where were we?" asked Minegishi

"The salt mines…." Said Mob. She wondered what it was about Minegishi's job that they missed…or what their job even was. She had no idea. That was one of those things that she wasn't supposed to know about until she was ten. Well that was very far away. She didn't want to wait until May…but she had to…even though she didn't want to.

"Mob…come on. I know that look. I know that you want to ask me something and I think I know that it's something that I already told you that you were way too young to know about yet." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded. She was too young to know. She was always 'too' something. She was 'too' something to go with dad, too. Too left out. That was what she was, too left out. Dad left her out of whatever it was that he did all day these days because she was a girl. Too young. Too much of a girl. Too something. Too something that always left her getting too left out. Because she was different. She was always so different all the time…and it…was not good. Not good at all. She didn't….it was not nice to think like that. It was not nice at all and she had to be nice. She had to be nice all the time and it was so…so hard…to be nice all the time.

She maybe wished that she could have been more like Minegishi.

They seemed mean but they just said what was on their mind. They said what they meant and meant what they said and sometimes it seemed sort of mean but it wasn't, not really, because the truth wasn't mean…not mean in the sense that being mean was mean. There were so many levels of meanness…and she didn't want to think about that. Meanness. She wanted to think about niceness. That was what she was supposed to be, to do, be nice all the time…

"I know. I just feel…I just feel sort of…left out…I guess. But I know what you said and I won't ask you." Said Mob

"Good. I'm not trying to be an asshole-" said Minegishi

"You aren't being an…that word…and you never could be, Minegishi." Said Mob

"Thanks. You're a sweet kid….not the best judge of character but a sweet kid…and, yeah, being left out sucks but I'm not telling you because I know for a fact that you are too young to hear it, ok? I'm not trying to leave you out of anything." Said Minegishi

"I know but it just feels like it. Like how my dad won't bring me with because I'm a girl…" said Mob. She wished, sometimes, that her family was more even. It had been even, before, when she had a mom…but now she didn't. Now she was the only girl in the family…and she didn't like to think about it. She hadn't thought about it that much, actually, when she had been taking care of Sho all the time. She hadn't had the time to think about it.

But now she did.

She had been different for her whole, entire, life. She had always looked different than everyone in her family and acted different…and it was not easy being different. Even now she was different. She was left out because he was different…and that wasn't fair…but a lot of stuff wasn't fair at all. That wasn't fair, that life wasn't fair, but there was nothing that she could do to make it any less unfair than it already was. Like the very long list of things that she was not supposed to ask about until she was ten. That wasn't fair. Or how she had to stay home because she was a girl. That wasn't fair either.

"Your dad is a sexist asshole." Said Minegishi

"Dad isn't a…that word. Either of those words. Dad can be kind of mean but he's not a…that word." Said Mob

"Fine, ok, he's your dad and you love him no matter what but you have to admit that he can be pretty damn sexist." Said Minegishi

"I don't know what that word means." Said Mob. She would have googled it if it weren't impolite to pull out her phone while she was in the middle of talking to her friend.

"It means he has one set of rules and expectations for you because you're a girl and another set of rules and expectations for your brother because he's a boy. It isn't fair that he thinks less of you because you're a girl. The world can be kind of sexist, actually, and I hate it." Said Minegishi

"But…isn't that how it goes? Boys can do some things and girls can do others? Like how kids can do one thing and adults can do another?" asked Mob

"That's different. Adults are different from kids. Men and women? There aren't that many differences between them you know." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't have the first clue as to what Minegishi meant. She knew that boys were one way and girls were another. There was some overlap but, really, they were different. Right?

"I…I don't get it….but I'm bad at getting a clue." Said Mob. She really was bad at getting a clue and she was not afraid to admit it.

"It's not your fault. Just remember that you can be whoever you want to be, live your life however you choose, and don't let anyone tell you that you can't do something just because you're a girl." Said Minegishi

"But my dad says that I can't come with him because I'm a girl and the work that he's doing right now isn't for girls to see…and also he's my dad and he gets to tell me what to do." Said Mob. Minegishi sighed and rubbed their eyes. Then they said a bad word and stopped. Maybe because they still had salt on their hands. Mob used her powers to push the salt away. Getting salt in your eyes was the worst, like getting ocean water in your eyes, or like when your little brother got mad at you and splashed salt in your face at dinner.

"You…I know you. You hate violence and your dad's right about that. It's not because you're a girl, plenty of people men and women hate violence, but it is because you'll freak out if you knew the full extent of what happens while your dad is here…and also that's why I can't tell you certain things about my job or my past. Ok? Me, myself, I am not trying to leave you out. I don't want to freak you out, ok? And I bet that your dad doesn't want to freak you out either. He's just being a sexist asshole about it…" said Minegishi

"Oh. Ok…um…is that why you keep it a secret? If you're a boy or a girl? Because you're afraid of people being…sexist?" asked Mob. It seemed like it would be a bad word, because it had the word 'sex' in it which was not a word that she was supposed to be using, but she wasn't sure. She'd have to figure it out later. Minegishi said a lot of bad words but most of them she knew to be bad so she knew not to use them.

"It's not a secret, Mob, I just don't feel like either. Never have. Even when I was your age I never felt like a boy or a girl." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded. She didn't get it but she nodded. She never thought too much about it, she just knew that she was a girl and it wasn't really a feeling…but when she thought of herself as a boy it felt wrong…so was that how Minegishi felt all the time? She didn't know. This was sort of complicated.

"I…kind of get it. Like when I think of being a boy it feels wrong. So does being a boy or a girl feel wrong to you? Both options?" asked Mob

"Honestly it doesn't feel like anything. Anything but ridiculous. You know I was only a few years older than you when I went to middle school and I was forced to wear this ridiculous uniform and put in this box….and expansion to the same box I had been put in for my entire life…just because of something that I was born with. Something that I had no control over. I decided pretty early on that I was going to live my life on my terms and here I am." Said Minegishi. Mob tried to imagine it, younger Minegishi, well younger than they were now but older than Mob was now, and it was kind of hard. Imagining all of this was kind of hard. Maybe she was just too little to understand.

Maybe there was a reason that there were some things that she wasn't supposed to know about when she was ten.

The idea of boxes…now that she had heard it she could imagine it…she could imagine that at least. She was in a box. This box was called 'Daughter'. This box was called 'Suzuki Shigeko'. This box had the things that made her the person known as Suzuki Shigeko, the person known as Mob, in it. She wasn't the one to put all of the things that made her up in that box…but she could only take things from the box to make up herself…and it felt unfair. It felt like something else added to the long list of things in her life that were unfair…and she was so tired of things which were unfair. Sort of like how Minegishi had been tired, too, of things which were unfair.

Live her life on her own terms.

Dad would never have let her go and do something like that. She was just a kid, first of all, and second of all she was supposed to be a good Daughter. She couldn't live her life on her own, being only who she wanted to be, because she didn't exist on her own. She still had to be with dad and be his Daughter and be Sho's big sister and be Shigeko Suzuki….she had to also be sweet, the sort of sweet that her mom had wanted her to be…

So she was in a box but she couldn't get out of the box…but that was…ok…maybe.

"OK? Now enough philosophy and vocabulary and whatever else we were talking about. Can we please just get back to our game before your brother comes home and Godzillas his way through Doll Town like he does every night?" asked Minegishi. Mob decided to get back to playing. She was getting tired of thinking about things that she had no control over, things that were unfair, things that gave her a headache.

Maybe there was a reason that she had to wait until she was ten to know about that very long list of things…because then it might be easier to understand.


	109. Pleasant Evening Conversations

Parenting got easier as the children got older.

When they had been infants, well at least when Son had been an infant, he had needed round the clock care. He had needed to be fed and held and rocked and changed and interacted with constantly. Most of that had been left up to Masami. It had honestly been a bit terrifying when she would just hand him Son. He had been so small, then, and so fragile. If Suzuki had lost control even a little bit then he would have lost his Son, the person he had created, and the person who depended on him most in the entire world. If he made a mistake, not even one relating to losing control of his powers, he could have ruined his son's entire life. If he even did so much as drop the small, red, screaming human that he and Masami had made….then it would all have been over.

Also Son vomited constantly. That had not been fun.

Infants couldn't hold anything in or down and…and that was not pleasant. Masami had been the one to handle all of that. She had changed and dressed and bathed Son and kept him alive through the first years of his life. He had been nearer to his family then, he had to be, because there was just so much that could go wrong….and Masami also refused to allow him to build Son some kind of force field or cage or something to keep him from hurting himself. Babies were, for some reason, suicidal. That was not a fun time. Having to make sure that Son, even before the age of two, didn't come up with some novel new way of endangering himself….

Suzuki did not care for caring for infants in the least bit.

Or small children. The yelling and the screaming and the crying and fighting and the complete lack of any sense of self-preservation at all. He wondered how the human race had managed to survive all these years if it's children seemed hell bent on sticking forks in electric sockets and climbing out of windows…or maybe that had just been Son. Daughter had been her own source of stress during those years. She had been born with her powers and, in the two years she had been alive, she had gotten so little control over them.

Not that he should have been complaining about that fact.

If her control wasn't so very poor then she never would have come to him. Then her parents never would have abandoned her. Those people had no idea what they were doing. Well it didn't matter since their abandoning her was the best thing that ever could have happened to him. Esper children were very rare. Most powers presented around the onset of puberty and even then the most they could produce was something insignificant. Daughter was a prodigy and he had always been grateful for her…even if he'd had to put some of his work, most of his work, on hold when she came to them. It had been somewhat difficult to get her acclimated to their family. Also Masami had no way of stopping Daughter when she did such ill-advised things as making her brother fly or when she would throw tantrums and lose control completely….and he had never seen someone get so very angry over having to wear a pair of pants….

Some things never changed.

It got easier, caring for the children, as they got older. Son was still reckless as always but Daughter had gotten much better at controlling her powers. That was just wonderful. Her control wasn't the best, a certain quarrel the two of them had came to mind, but she was getting better every day. Her aura had even been so very calm lately. He was proud of her for that. Well he was proud of her for many reason. She was pleasant to be around, she took very good care of Son, she was a lot like him, and she was even taking his life's work so seriously. She was gathering espers of her own. So far just Minegishi but still that was a good step for a child her age. That was more than he had done at her age. When he had been nine years old he had still been coloring in his manga and staying up until all hours to watch television and giving himself arthritis playing Space Invaders. She had vision, his Daughter, and it was his vision.

He didn't know what he would do if she had her own vision.

She had the potential to be his greatest rival. Her power presented at birth like his had and she was a prodigy just as he had been. Well not quite the prodigy he had been but she was not his Daughter. He forgot that sometimes, that she was not actually his child, just a child that he was raising. She was so much like him. She had always been an easier child than her brother. Even if her brother was becoming an easier child as he got older. He could actually bring his son with him, now, for at least part of his day. He wasn't as pleasant to be around as Daughter, of course, but he was finally old enough to be brought with.

He wished that he could have brought Daughter with.

But he knew her. She had an aversion to violence just like Masami had. Most women had that it seemed. He wasn't going to bring her around with him when he did this portion of his work. She would have been so unhappy. It would have been distressing for her and then she would have ended up losing control and then, well, he knew what happened when she lost control. Truly lost control. There were attempts on his life, near constant and very tiresome attempts on his life, and she would not have taken it well. Nobody took it well, seeing someone try to kill their father, even Son had been distressed the first time.

As much as he loved her she would not be coming with.

But that was fine. She had found a companion so at least she wasn't lonely during the day. What she saw in Minegishi he would never know. That was the most sardonic person he had ever met. If Daughter had been of a similar temperament it would have made sense but, no, Daughter was far too kind. He didn't understand her, he had never been able to fully understand her, but somehow it felt as though it got more difficult as she got older. Or maybe there was just more of her to puzzle out. That was what he liked about her, actually, how there was so much of her to puzzle out.

He enjoyed her presence more the older she got.

"What is the point of this, again?" asked Suzuki. This was his time with Daughter. He had never been one for copious amounts of television, not since he had been young, but this was pleasant. A calming way to end his very trying days. His empire needed money which meant that he had to earn it which meant a lot of dealings with people who, well, he would have preferred not to have had to deal with. Which meant so many headaches….even with Shimazaki there to stop things from happening before they even happened…it was such a headache.

She made it better, though, she was just so….pleasant.

"In this show the girls are all friends and they just sort of…hang out." Said Daughter. He knew that he should have been grateful that she was moving away from the constant, never ending, stream of Disney movies she had been watching for the past nine years of her life. This was, at least, Japanese. He had kept her out of Japan for far too long, that was on him, but there was so much to watch…animation was capable of so much…so why would she want to watch drawings of girls going about their daily lives? He had never been able to understand that part of her, her media choices, since she had been two years old and had been watching that same film over and over and over again….

"Is anything else on?" asked Suzuki

"This is streaming. See? No commercials." Said Daughter

"Oh. Alright. I hate commercials. So obnoxious." Said Suzuki

"What does obnoxious mean, dad?" asked Daughter

"Annoying. I find advertisements to be very annoying." Said Suzuki

"Me too. They keep interrupting the show for them every few minutes." Said Daughter

"At least you have platforms by which you can avoid them. It wasn't like that when I was your age." Said Suzuki

"You were born before they invented TV?" asked Daughter

"No, I was born in 1973. We had television, four or five channels if I remember correctly, and plenty of advertisements. Television has been around for a while, Daughter, since my father was young." Said Suzuki

"Your dad? I didn't know that you had a dad." Said Daughter

"Everyone has a father. You know where children come from…right?" asked Suzuki. He did not want to have to explain it. He had assumed already that Masami had. It wasn't that he was squeamish, no, he just didn't see the point in telling her about something that she was too young to even understand. She was just a child and he wanted her to stay that way for as long as possible.

It felt like just yesterday he had brought her home.

"I know. They come from the mom's stomach. I'm not dumb." Said Daughter

"I never meant to imply that you were unintelligent. I simply wanted to know if you knew how the human race reproduced itself. You said something that implied that you didn't." said Suzuki

"I know that you must have had a dad of your own….you just never talk about him…and also I've never met him. Him or your mom." Said Daughter

"They're dead." Said Suzuki simply. There was no emotion behind his statement. There didn't need to be. His parents had been dead for quite some time. He was an orphan. He was a self-made orphan.

"I'm sorry…I didn't know." Said Daughter. She turned to face him and soon he found himself being embraced. She was expressing sympathy. For what he did not know. His parents were dead. He was forty one. That was the age at which many people lost their parents. Well he had lost them much earlier in life but she didn't know that. She didn't know that because he never told her. There had never been any reason to tell her or her brother. No reason to think about it, about that day, about the day that he had been more upset than he had ever been in his life…the day he truly lost control. He remembered it, what it had felt like, and that was why he was not going to tell her about the day she had lost control. Even though he had killed his own two parents which was much worse, he imagined, than killing seventeen strangers.

"You don't need to offer sympathy. They've been dead for quite some time. Decades before you were even born." Said Suzuki

"Oh….ok. But I'm still sorry. I know that if I ever lost you…if you ever died…then I would be so sad all the time. I don't know what I would do without you, dad. I love you." Said Daughter. Her eyes were getting watery. He pulled his sleeve down over his hand wand dried her tears before they could even fall.

"The feeling is mutual. If I were ever to lose you then I would be upset as well." Said Suzuki. The thought of losing her, the thought of her leaving or dying, brings about the same sort of pain that he used to feel at the thought of Masami's death. She was gone now so that pain was pretty much just a constant, a dull ache in his chest, that never fully went away no matter how much time passed. He was not going to lose her, Daughter, not to anything. Disease, desertion, not to anything.

"And Sho, too?" asked Daughter

"Yes, and your brother as well. He is my only Son after all…though I would feel the loss of both of you. I would probably feel it more acutely, actually, than you would feel for me." said Suzuki. The thought of losing Son is also painful but less so. Maybe because they never got along as well as he and Daughter did. Maybe because he didn't enjoy spending time with Son like he did with Daughter. Maybe because, as troublesome as it would be, he could always have more biological children while Daughter had been a stroke of luck. He didn't know. He didn't want either of his children to die or leave him.

"You think that you would be sadder to lose us then we would be to lose you? But we're a family, dad, we love each other all the same. We like each other in different ways but we all love each other the same." Said Daughter

"That isn't true. I would feel the loss of my children more acutely than my children would feel my loss. In the end you will have to bury me. That's nature's way. We all have to bury our parents eventually." Said Suzuki. He wondered if Daughter would be the one to put him in the ground. If she would rise up against him one day…or just lose control. He didn't want to think about that. She would never rise up against him. The thought was absurd. The thought of her losing control…that was less absurd…and he did not want to think about this anymore.

"You…..you're going to die some day?" asked Daughter. He could see her aura then. She was becoming distressed. Why? Hadn't she realized this already? One day she would have to bury him. Well cremate him first. She was thirty two years younger than he was? Did she think that he was going to be the one to outlive him?

"Yes." said Suzuki

"When?" asked Daughter

"I have no idea. Nobody knows when they're going to die, just that they will. Everyone dies. One day you'll die, too, and your children will bury you. That's just the way that it works." Said Suzuki. It should have been reassuring to her. She should have realized that there was nothing to do about it. People died all the time, parents included, and all we could do was wait for this inevitability.

"But…but I don't want you to die." Said Daughter

"I don't want to die either. In fact I don't plan on dying until I am very old." Said Suzuki

"When…when will you be very old?" asked Daughter

"I don't know. In fifty years maybe?" asked Suzuki. He had no clue when he was going to die and he did not plan on dying any time soon. What was so distressing to her about death? She knew that it was an inevitability. She could see spirits and had been able to see them since the day she had been born. He didn't understand her one bit.

"Is that a long time?" asked Daughter

"It is, half a century is a long time. I don't know why you fund this so distressing, Daughter, you know that death in an inevitability. You can see spirits and exorcise them too. You know that one day I will die and you will die and everyone will die. There's no need to be so distressed over it. I never was." Said Suzuki

"I guess that I never thought about it this much…you dying. I love you and I don't want you to die, that's all…but you will die. Just like your parents died and that's just how it works. Like you said, that's just the way that it works." Said Daughter

"No, not in the way that my parents died. I have no intention of dying the same way that they did." Said Suzuki

"How did they die?" asked Daughter

"In an accident and that's all that I am going to tell you. Don't not ask me any follow up questions. They won't be answered and you'll just put me in a bad mood." Said Suzuki. He didn't feel bad about it. His parents were dead and that was just the way that it was. He didn't want to rehash the story, though, not even for her. She was looking at him. She was looking at him and he knew that she was going to try and ask him something that he was not about to answer…and then he would be in a terrible mood…and then their while evening would have been ruined.

But she didn't say anything.

"Ok dad, whatever you want." Said Daughter. She embraced him again and then went back to watching television. He liked that about her. She could follow orders. Sometimes she disobeyed him, thank God she stopped asking about going back to the old house, but generally she followed his orders.

He liked that about her.

He liked a lot of things about her. He reached up and played with her hair a bit. She had such beautiful hair. She had such soft hair. She herself was very…soft was the word for it. Soft and warm. That was just…the best way to describe her. He watched her more than he watched the television. She still looked like there was something on her mind but she said nothing. That was good. He didn't want to go on and about what happened. He didn't much feel like talking about death anymore, actually, and he had no idea how they had even gotten to the subject of death. There was no point in her thinking of death or troubling herself over this, either, since she was so very young. This was not what a little girl should have been worrying herself over.

"Daughter?" asked Suzuki

"Yes, dad?" asked Daughter

"Why do you like this show?" asked Suzuki. That was a question that he had and it was very far from the subject of death. Plus, well, he didn't understand her one bit.

"I like how they're all friends. Also I like how they all go to school. I miss school sometimes….but I'm happy now. I mean I don't mind homeschool." Said Daughter. Oh. Well that made sense. He had watched the shows he watched as a child because they were so far divorced from his own existence. The vastness of outer space, climactic mech battles, all of it was so far from his own life…even if he could make things move without touching them and about a thousand other things. She was the same way. He wondered if she colored in her manga, too, when she was bored. He wondered if she ever got lost in her own thoughts, thoughts of things that she could have created, the world she could create. Or maybe she wasn't bored enough to do that. She didn't have to waste her time in school after all.

"You do very well in it and you're not held back by the rest of your class." Said Suzuki

"I don't think that the other kids would hold me back." Said Daughter

"They would. If you're anything like me they would. I always hated being in school when I was young. Everything always moved so slowly, much too slowly for me. I wouldn't want you and Son to languish like I had to." Said Suzuki

"Ok…you're right. If you didn't like school then I wouldn't like it, too, because I'm your daughter…and I don't need to go to school anyway. I mean I can always watch shows about school. So that's ok." Said Daughter

"Even if they are dull." Said Suzuki

"We can watch something that you like, dad." Said Daughter. He liked that about her. When he and Masami would watch television, well on nights like this when he would sit beside her and she would have already been in the middle of something, she would always tell him that if he didn't like what she was watching then he could go and watch something else in the other room. Of course he always stayed with her.

He wished that he had known, then, what a gift it was just to be near her.

He pulled Daughter closer. She liked this. Physical contact. It reinforced the parent and child bond that they had. Considering that she was not his child, not biologically, it needed enforcing. That was why he never held Son like this and why Son never asked. Also Son and Daughter were different genders. He could also blame this little quirk of her personality, the fact that she constantly sought out physical contact with him, on her gender. Masami had been the same way…of course Masami hadn't been so courteous as to tell him when she wanted physical affection and in what quantities.

Daughter had told him, though, and he was thankful for that.

"Thank you. I would like that." Said Suzuki. She understood him. Well she understood him to an extent. Mostly that he preferred documentaries to all other forms of entertainment. She worked quickly and soon she found something where they could both be entertained. She had found this show a couple nights ago. Here they explained how simple everyday things were made.

Fascinating.

For the both of them. Now they were watching chopstick artisans work. He had never in his life owned a pair of homemade chopsticks. There just wasn't any point to it. As a boy he had always snapped his chopsticks on half on accident and then as a man he never stayed in one place long enough to necessitate handmade eating utensils. Maybe he should have had some made for Daughter, though, because it would encourage her to actually use chopsticks.

She mostly just ate with a fork.

Which he should not have been complaining about because at least she was an improvement over son. He ate with his hands. He ate everything, well he tried to eat everything, with his hands. Even miso soup. He just reached into his bowl with his hands to pull out the pieces of tofu. Not even with his powers. It had been vile. That was why Son could never come to the more social parts of the job, the ones that involved breaking bread with others. Suzuki hated breaking bread with others, he preferred to eat most of his meals in solitude, but at least he had better table manners than to go and eat soup with hands.

He wasn't above pulling out the solids with his powers, first, and then drinking the broth but that was as far as he would go.

"Wow." Said Daughter

"What?" asked Suzuki

"Those chopsticks look so pretty. I can't believe that someone is going to actually eat with those." Said Daughter

"I wouldn't eat with something so ornate. There's no point. A meal is a meal." Said Suzuki

"Yeah, you could accidentally break them or something. Then it would all be a waste." Said Daughter

"Exactly. There's really no difference between chopsticks, as far as I can see." Said Suzuki

"Those are more complicated than the ones that come with takeout, though, so I think that's the difference." Said Daughter

"Yes, I suppose that the difference is in the complexity of their creation." Said Suzuki. He wondered if she would like some like that…but maybe not. They would either get lost or broken in the course of the children's lives.

"I didn't know that chopsticks were so complicated." Said Daughter

"I had no idea that there were chopstick artisans either. Though I suppose that there are artisans for everything. They do good work, I've had some things made by hand. Never chopsticks, though, but other things." Said Suzuki

"Like what?" asked Daughter

"The kimono I got you for your last birthday, Daughter. That was made by hand for you." Said Suzuki. She almost never wore it. He didn't know why. He knew that it wasn't practical for daily life but she never did much. She looked nice in it. She did care about her personal appearance, that was why she dressed the way she did. In those costumes. Even her pajamas looked like the costumes she wore.

"Oh. It's nice. I didn't know that someone made it by hand." Said Daughter

"It was. I'll have another made for you for your next birthday…or whenever. You look very nice dressed like that." Said Suzuki. It was dangerous ground, critic sizing a woman's clothing, but he didn't think that what he said counted as criticism. Masami took it very well when he told her that she looked nice in yellow.

"You think so?" asked Daughter. What kind of a question was that? He was not going to lie to her or to anyone. Lying was a waste of time and his time was very valuable. He was not going to lie to his own Daughter, either, because there was no point to it. Especially about something as simple as her physical appearance.

"Yes, I don't lie to you or to anyone." Said Suzuki. Daughter was playing with the hem of her pajamas now. He didn't know why. He watched her hands. She had lavender nails, now, she had colored them again. She had beautiful hands, like her mother's had been. May still have been. He had no idea how Masami looked these days. She had been gone for so long…and he was not going to think about her anymore.

"I know. It's not a lie when you say something nice about someone. Sometimes you just have to say nice things about people to make them feel nice." Said Daughter

"Oh. A social nicety. I suppose those have their merits. That was the truth, though, what I said. I only speak the truth to you." Said Suzuki

"I only tell you the truth too, dad. I would never lie to you." Said Daughter. She didn't need to say it. She was his Daughter. She was his Daughter and she would never lie to him. He trusted her totally and completely.

More than the last person he had trusted totally and completely.

But he doesn't want to think about Masami. He doesn't want to think about those nights that they would spend together just watching television and being near each other. Just enjoying each other's company. She's gone and that's the whole of it. She'd gone and she betrayed him and he was wrong to trust her. He was not wrong to trust his Daughter. She was his child and in that intangible fact of it, the fact that she was his child and he was her parent, he knew that he could trust her never to leave him.

Even if he had said, before, that she wanted to go…

Well he had told him to send her away. Same difference. She hadn't said a word about it since that night so he trusted that whatever had made her say something to terrible had passed. They were together and that was…he should not have cared. He didn't like it, the attachment he felt towards her, because he should have been complete all on his own. Not that she completed him, no, nothing like that. Nothing like the sense of fullness and completeness he had felt for Masami….

He just enjoyed her company. Daughter's company. That was all.

"Do you want to watch the next one?" asked Daughter. Their show was over. He wondered if she was tired. He wasn't.

"I suppose so. It's not so very late. Not for me at least. Are you tired?" asked Suzuki

"No, not really. I don't have to get up at any specific time anyway. I like spending time with you, dad, I miss you a lot when you're gone all day." Said Daughter

"Why? You know that I'll come back. I would never just abandon you. You're my child." Said Suzuki

"I'm not afraid that you'll never come back, dad, I just like to be with you. I wish that I could come with you and Sho." said Daughter

"You can't. When we move again then you can come with. You wouldn't want to come with anyway. You would be very unhappy and I don't like to make you unhappy. Emotional instability does not suit you well." Said Suzuki

"You mean I can't come because I'm a girl." Said Daughter. There was something in her voice, there, something that he could not place. He was never any good with tones. He watched her aura. She seemed upset about…something….but he had no idea what. She was so much happier at the house than she would have been with him. She knew that this wouldn't last forever. If anything they were going to move again soon. There were periods of inactivity and periods of activity. They were entering a period of activity.

"Yes. You would not be happy. When we move again, which we may soon have to, then you can come with me and your brother." Said Suzuki

"Do you promise?" asked Daughter. He didn't know why she wanted to come with so badly…but it was nice that she wanted to help him. She would be an invaluable help when she got older.

"I don't make promises but I will bring you along if it's something that you can help with." Said Suzuki. That should have made her happy….but it didn't. Her aura was still the same. Her aura and her tone of voice and her face.

"But you'll bring Sho along either way?" asked Daughter

"What is this? You're acting like you're upset." Said Suzuki

"I'm not upset, dad, I just….why are there different rules for me and Sho just because he's a boy and I'm a girl?" asked Daughter. Well she had answered her own question right then and there, hadn't she? She had answered her own question and therefore he didn't need to answer her…but he had to. Even if it was to say what she had just said. He didn't know what was so hard to understand about that. She and Son were different people and the rules were different. That was why he could trust her to be left in charge. She was more mature than him, she was better at listening than him, and he could trust her more than he could trust Son. It had something to do both with her gender, girls matured faster than boys, and her temperament.

"You just answered your own question, Daughter. You're different and that's why the rules are different. That's why I leave you in charge and not your brother when I leave you two alone while I am otherwise occupied." Said Suzuki

"That's not what I meant." Said Daughter

"Then what did you mean? Be specific because right now I cannot understand you at all. Can you do that, Daughter?" asked Suzuki. He could feel a headache coming on. Women could be so very complicated sometimes. Even nine year old girls. She would only get more and more complicated, wouldn't she? As the years went by and she got older and older and older.

"I just meant…you leave me out when you take Sho with you and that hurts my feelings. That's all." said Daughter. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with hurt feelings. He'd get her another doll. That was something. He'd get her another doll…that would make her feel better. Also he would bring her with him next time. When he did a different, less violent, portion of his work. Something which would not upset her.

"When we move again." said Suzuki. That seemed to calm her down. At least she stopped bringing it up. That was good. Her aura, eventually, went back to normal too. There. She was better. He'd bring her with when they moved and in the meantime he would get her another doll, too. Yes, that would be good. Before all of that, though, he would enjoy the rest of his evening with her. Yes, a nice and pleasant evening between him and his Daughter.

Perfect.

This parenting thing got easier and easier as she got older and older.


	110. Loose Tooth

Mob had a loose tooth.

That wasn't weird. She'd already lost most of her kid teeth. At least she thought that she had lost most of her kid teeth. She didn't know, she had never been to the dentist before, she but did know that she had lost a lot of teeth already. She wondered how many teeth she had left. She'd google it later, or ask dad, dad probably knew. He knew a lot of things about a lot of things. He'd probably be able to tell her how many teeth people had and also how many teeth she still had left to lose.

Also why her teeth were turning yellow.

"Move over." Said Sho as he came into the bathroom. This was another day that Sho would end up spending with dad and she would end up spending with Minegishi. She wondered if they would paint her nails again, that was always fun, or maybe they would read books and drink coffee like a couple of grownups. Well they were a grownup, she was still a kid, that was why she still lost teeth.

Even though she didn't always feel like a kid.

Sometimes she felt like a grownup…or at least like there wasn't much of a difference between herself and the grownups around her. The only grownup who told her what to do was dad. No other grownup told her what to do and that was why she didn't feel like a kid around them. They told kids what to do, that was how things went, but she was actually the one who told grownups what to do sometimes. Like the Awakened. She told them to do things and then they did them. Like how she said yesterday that she wanted pancakes for breakfast and now she could smell pancakes coming from the kitchen. Or like how a few days ago she and Sho had wanted the honey popcorn from Disneyland and then a few hours later they had the honey popcorn from Disneyland. She didn't tell every single adult in her life what to do, though.

She never told Minegishi what to do.

They told her what to do but they didn't have power over her, like dad did, Mob just listened to them. Even if they didn't get punished if they didn't listen. Well they wouldn't get hit but losing Minegishi's friendship would have been pretty awful. Also Minegishi had good reasons for telling them not to do the things that they did. Like not sneaking around their house and stuff like that because Mob would end up seeing and hearing stuff that she wasn't supposed to and also didn't understand.

Not that she did a lot of sneaking around…not really.

"What, Sho?" asked Mob as she stared at herself in the mirror. Were her teeth more yellow than Sho's? Or less yellow? Had her teeth always been this yellow?

"You're taking up the whole sink. Move over." Said Sho as he tried to scoot in next to her.

"Sorry, Sho." said Mob as she let Sho push her out of the way. She smiled and pushed at her tooth in the mirror. It was one of her side teeth, she thought that it might have been called an eye tooth, and that was the last one she needed to lose…of those teeth. She had already lost the one on the other side. She had it in a box somewhere, she saved their teeth like mom did, and she wondered if the other one that she had lost was as yellow as this one.

"Give me the toothpaste. Come on, dad hates it when I take too long." Said Sho. Mob nodded and handed him the toothpaste. It was bubblegum flavored. She wondered how that worked, bubblegum toothpaste, since bubblegum was supposed to be bad for your teeth. Maybe that was why her teeth were turning a weird color.

She didn't like it.

The color her teeth were turning, not the toothpaste. She liked the toothpaste. Bubblegum was the best kind. Well the very best kind was the red and green berry flavored Christmas kind that she and Sho had gotten when they went to the Christmas store last year but they only had that kind at that store back in America. They were still in Japan, now, and it wasn't Christmastime yet. She wondered if a different kind of toothpaste would have helped her teeth. They were not supposed to be that color at all.

"Do you want me to knock it out for you?" asked Sho

"Huh?" asked Mob. She stopped poking at her loose tooth. It wasn't loose enough to come out yet. Still only wiggly, not twisty. When it started to be able to twist around then it was about ready to fall out on it's own.

"Your loose tooth, the one you keep on picking at. Do you want me to knock it out? I know how." Said Sho. Whenever his teeth were lose he either yanked or knocked them out even though you were supposed to let them come out on their own. Mom had said that back when Mob had gotten her first loose tooth. Mob had tried to get it out by tying a string around the doorknob and the other end around her tooth and then slamming the door. The only thing that she had managed to get out of that was a headache from the noise of slamming the door over and over again.

"It has to come out on it's own, Sho, but thank you." Said Mob. She wanted to tell him not to yank out any more of his own teeth. She didn't know why it wasn't ok, the tooth was going to come out on it's own anyway, but she did know that you were supposed to let it come out on it's own. Mom had said so and mom was very smart. She knew a lot of things about a lot of things. Mom and dad were both smart people so maybe that was why they had gotten together.

She actually had no idea why her parents had gotten together.

They weren't together anymore and that was why it was important that she knew why they had gotten together in the first place. If she knew the reason then she could know what not to do. What a bad reason for getting together with someone was. She knew that they had met at the train station, that was what mom had said, and she knew that dad thought that mom was perfect, he had told her that once. If dad thought that mom was perfect then why did mom leave?

She didn't know.

Maybe it was like losing a tooth. She lost her teeth because they were too small for her. She outgrew them. Maybe that was the same way with people. Maybe you could outgrow a person…like how she and Sho used to be together all the time but now they were apart sometimes. Sho wouldn't leave her though, he couldn't, because they were brother and sister. He would always come back to her. That was how family worked…well how brothers and sisters worked. Moms could leave you. Moms could just be there one day and gone the next…but not little brothers. They were forever. Brothers and sister were forever, not like parents. Parents weren't forever…unless they were dads. Dads were forever.

Even if they needed you less and less.

Sho was eight and a half now. He didn't need her for as much stuff. He could brush his own teeth, before she had to do the toothpaste for him and make sure he rinsed, and he could do other stuff too like brush his own hair and get dressed all by himself. They still shared a bath, though, because it was fun to play in the tub. Even if Sho did splash a lot. Sho wouldn't want to take a bath with her forever. One day he'd be big enough to take a bath on his own and then he would need her less and then he might even go and then-

Sho was her little brother. He would never go.

"That's dumb." Said Sho as he put way too much toothpaste on. You weren't supposed to eat the toothpaste. There were warnings on the tube. It said not to eat it because it could make you sick. She used her powers to scrape some of the excess toothpaste off before Sho could make himself sick.

"No it's not. When your teeth are ready then they come out on their own." Said Mob

"Who's the boss? You or your teeth?" asked Sho

"But Sho, my teeth are a part of me. I'm the boss of me so therefore I'm the boss of my teeth but they're also the boss of me. I am the boss of me but my body also does stuff on it's own….so I guess that I am and am not in control…kind of like my powers." Said Mob. She held her hand out in front of herself. She saw her aura move with her hand. She opened and closed her fingers and watched her aura move in and out. Pink and blue. Always moving. She couldn't control her aura like she couldn't control when her teeth decided to fall out.

"I'm always the boss of myself…well sometimes I can be a jerk without realizing it…but I'm still the boss of myself. Well I try to be. My teeth come out when I say they come out. Besides, if you yank them out as soon as they start to wiggle you get more money from the tooth fairy. Sometimes she even leaves you candy instead of money. I mean I know we get unlimited money and candy but it's better when you don't have to ask for it." Said Sho

"I don't think it works like that. I think that you're thinking of harvesting apples, not teeth, and also I don't think that the tooth fairy thinks like that. I think that the tooth fairy just gives you lots of money and candy because you're such a wonderful person and she loves you more than anyone else in the whole world." Said Mob. There was no tooth fairy. She knew that there was no tooth fairy. She had goggled it back when Sho had lost his first tooth and he put it under his pillow but then in the morning there hadn't been any money for him. Mob goggled and found out that there was no tooth fairy, which actually hurt a little bit, but she didn't tell Sho that. He was littler than her and he would have taken it worse. Also if she told him that there was no tooth fairy then he would have known the mom tricked them and then he would have been sad. So she had just decided that the best thing to do was to keep on pretending.

She didn't like tricking Sho like that.

But telling him that there was no tooth fairy would have been worse than tricking him. She could have just not given him anything, too, but then he might have thought that he was a bad kid and that was why he didn't get anything. Sho wasn't a bad person at all. He could be mean and he hit her and shouted at her but he was not a bad person. He was the best little brother in the whole world.

"No, she doesn't play favorites based on how you act. She gives you money based on your teeth because she needs the best ones to build her castle with." Said Sho

"Well your teeth are the best then." Said Mob

"Of course they are. Especially the ones without the dark spots on them. Those are the best ones I think." Said Sho

"You really should brush all of your teeth, Sho, not just the ones that show." Said Mob. Sho sometimes just brushed the front ones because those were the ones that people saw. Mob didn't get it. It wasn't any extra effort to brush each and every one of your teeth, not just the ones in the front.

"I am brushing them all now! I heard what Fukuda said." said Sho. Fukuda came to see them once because Sho's tooth hurt him a lot. It was a grown up tooth. It had a really bad cavity, Fukuda had said, because of all the candy Sho ate and the soda he drank. That was why it was important to brush your teeth every single day. Well that and the fact that if you didn't brush your teeth then your breath would smell and you'd be excluded from society.

"Ok. Just making sure. I just want your teeth to be ok, Sho, so you don't end up with cavities." Said Mob

"My teeth are fine. Besides, you're one to talk. Your teeth are turning yellow." Said Sho

"They are….and I don't know why. I brush every day. Twice a day even. No matter what I do they just won't stop being…all yellow." Said Mob. She poked her front tooth with her toothbrush. She was right, her teeth were yellow, and she hated it.

"Maybe Fukuda could fix it." Said Sho

"I don't want to bother him over something as dumb as teeth. Fukuda is for things like broken bones and bleeding and stuff." Said Mob

"And fixing your dolls." Said Sho. There was a tone there that she couldn't read. She was bad at tones but that was ok because dad was too. She could see his aura. He wasn't mad. That was what mattered.

"That too. I didn't even know that there were doll hospitals. It was nice of him to take my doll to the hospital. I should say thanks the next time I see him." said Mob. She hadn't seen him in a while. Sho hadn't been getting hurt like he used to and Mob hadn't been hurt in a while. Fukuda never just hung out with them. Minegishi hung out with her but Fukuda never had. Maybe because they were older now. Maybe they outgrew them like they outgrew their kid teeth.

"He didn't take it to the doll hospital, he had this guy fix it. Higashio. He has the power to fix anything. Dad says that he's super useful." Said Sho. Mob nodded. She had let a lot of espers back when they had helped dad at the Fifth Division. There were so many espers in Claw it was hard to remember who could do what. She had to, though, because dad said that when she grew up that would be one of her jobs.

She had to help run Claw when she grew up.

Even though if she had a choice she would have worked in a cat shelter or as one of the people in costumes at Disneyland. That was what she wanted to be when she grew up but she didn't get to decide what she wanted to be when she grew up. Regular kids got to be whatever they wanted to be. She had to be what dad wanted her to be. Dad said that he never got a choice, either, when he was a kid. He was born with the ultimate power and that meant that he had to be the one who ruled the world.

Sho didn't get to pick either. Suzuki's didn't get to pick.

"I don't think that we'll see him today though." said Sho

"What are you going to do today?" asked Mob

"I don't know. Drive around in cars, sit through meetings, throw stuff at Shimazaki. The usual." Said Sho

"You shouldn't throw things at people but especially not at Shimazaki." Said Mob. Even though if anyone deserved to have stuff thrown at them it was Shimazaki. He was just so mean all the time. Plus he called Minegishi by their first name even though he knew for a fact that they did not like that one bit.

"Why not? He likes it." Said Sho

"Because it's mean to make fun of blind people…also I don't think that he likes it. He doesn't like anything." Said Mob. Well everyone must have liked something but Mob had no idea what it was the Shimazaki liked. She never hung out with him. She never wanted to hang out with him. She would rather have hung out with Sho when he was super mad and also super full of those energy drinks with the warning label on the front.

"I'm not making fun of him. I would never make fun of him. He's so cool! He's like this blind master or something. You know he can teleport anywhere in the whole world, right? And he can see with his powers and stuff? And he can hear really well, too. Like he can hear pudding. Like if you shake a cup of pudding he can hear it…and steal it. He likes pudding. Dogs too. One time he was supposed to be watching me while dad did something, I don't know what it doesn't matter, and then he just grabbed me and teleported me-" said Sho

"That doesn't sound very nice." Said Mob. You weren't supposed to just grab people and stuff. That wasn't very nice. The polite thing to do would have been to ask…and nobody was ever allowed to be impolite to her little brother.

"Shut up! It was! It's cool teleporting, not scary at all, and I wasn't even scared the first time! I really wasn't'!" said Sho

"Ok. I believe you." Said Mob

"Good. You should. Anyway he teleported me to this park and then he said that I had to pretend to be his kid and there were these dogs everywhere and people let us pet them and play with them. He likes dogs a lot. He said that when he was a kid he had a dog and that it died through no fault of his. He said that dog is man's best friend more than man is man's best friend. Also did you know that you can pet dogs for unlimited time if you tell them that you're a blind single father?" asked Sho

"Shimazaki is someone's dad?" asked Mob. She felt very bad for that kid, or kids, and also for the lady who married him. Those poor people.

"No! That was the lie! He told those ladies that he was my dad and also that he was blind, that part is true, and then they let us pet the dogs and play with them and roll around with them and let them lick us. Dad was upset when he finished his stuff and we weren't there…and also that we smelled like dog…but Shimazaki was all 'whatever' like he wasn't even scared of dad." Said Sho

It's wrong to tell lies, little brother, very wrong." Said Mob. Shimazaki was being a bad influence on Sho. Telling lies was wrong, both mom and dad had agreed on that, and lying just to play with dogs was very mean indeed…also Mob would have liked to have been invited to play with the dogs. It couldn't have been that much trouble for him to pop round and get her too….not that she wanted to hang out with Shimazaki in the first place.

"I don't care. It was worth it to pet dogs. He likes birds, too. One time he teleported into a tree because there were baby birds. He heard them all the way from the ground. They were hatching and then he pulled me up and I watched and he watched too but he could only sort of see with his powers, he says that the easiest things to see are other espers, but we watched and until the momma bird started pecking our heads. We had to come down from the tree then and then dad was all 'you are both ridiculous' but then Shimazaki was all 'whatever' again and then we went for a ride in the car and then while we were in the car Shimazaki showed me-" said Sho

"He shouldn't say 'whatever' to dad. That's not nice." Said Mob. Dad said that it was always very important to be respectful to people and to have your underlings respect you. She didn't know what happened to people who disrespected dad but Minegishi said that bad things happened to people who took bathroom breaks in the middle of meetings so Mob assumed at least that whatever he did to people who were disrespectful was worse than what he did to people who had to go to the bathroom.

"He didn't SAY 'whatever' he was all LIKE 'whatever'. There's a difference. Anyway when we were in the car he showed me how his phone worked, well I just kind of climbed up on him to see, and it reads everything to him. That's because he's blind. I was wondering why he had a phone if he couldn't see. Did you know that his phone case was from Sailor Moon? Because he didn't. He said that Minegishi picked it out for him for his birthday." Said Sho

"That's not a nice trick to play on someone." Said Mob. Even if it was kind of funny it still wasn't nice at all…but Minegishi probably had a good reason for doing that.

"No way, it's super funny. Anyway he was all 'what's wrong with it?' and I was all 'it's a girl's case' and he was all 'why is it a girl's case?' and I was all 'because it's pink' and he was all 'I have no idea what pink is' because he doesn't know what colors are. Even auras. He can't tell what color own aura is. He says that aura's sound like things. He says that I sound like a mosquito because I'm pesky but you and dad shout all the time." Said Sho

"Oh. I didn't know that." Said Mob. She also didn't know if Sho had been giving her a play by play of an actual conversation, earlier, but she wasn't going to ask. She was always so clueless about this kind of stuff.

"Well now you do. I don't think that I'm pesky but he says that I am. He says that I'm like a mosquito that won't leave him alone but I don't think that I'm like that. He thinks a lot of stuff that I don't think, either, like he thinks that lemon soda is good even though it isn't. Also it'll kill me and when I told him that it would kill me he said that I shouldn't have told him that because now he knows my weakness but he works for dad so I know that he'll never mess with me like that. Besides, if he tried that then I'd have to beat him up." Said Sho

"No. Let dad beat him up…or me." Said Mob. She didn't want to beat anyone up but if Shimazaki gave Sho citrus then she would have no choice. That wasn't funny. Citrus could for real kill him. If someone killed her little brother then she didn't know what she would do. Hurt them. Kill them, maybe, even. Nobody hurt Sho. Nobody.

"You couldn't ever beat anyone up. You're a girl and girls don't do that. At least dad says that they don't. Shimazaki says that in the Seventh Division there's this girl Scar and she has super hitting powers. Like she can punch through walls and stuff. Also Minegishi fights with him all the time and Shimazaki says that they're a girl and not a girl, whatever that means. I asked him what it meant but he just said to ask Minegishi but I'm not going to do that because they're your friend…and also it's not a polite question and I know that dad'll get pissed off it I start asking people who work for him questions like that. So you ask." Said Sho

"No. I'm not asking that. Well I did, before, and Minegishi said that it was none of my business because unless I want to date them then there's no reason for me to know." Said Mob

"Well ask again because I want to know." Said Sho

"No. I can't do that, little brother, I'm sorry but I can't." said Mob. She was not going to risk her friendship with Minegishi to ask questions that were none of her business. Also it didn't matter. Boy or girl they were still a good friend.

"If you ask for me then I'll yank your tooth out for you." Said Sho. He reached forward and tried to tap her tooth with his finger. She stepped back. That was how people got sick. Not that she had ever been sick in her life…but she wasn't about to start now.

"No. I told you that I would wait for it to come out on it's own. Now come on, you have to rinse or you might accidentally swallow some toothpaste and then you'll get sick." Said Mob. She used her powers to fill Sho's rinse cup. He took it and rinsed way too fast to have effectively got rid of all the leftover toothpaste.

"There. You happy?" asked Sho

"Yes. I'm very happy." Said Mob. She was just happy that he listened without fighting with her. Good. Now that tooth brushing was done with they could have breakfast and then…well they'd separate but she'd see him again.

"Good. Now let me yank out your tooth for you! Come on, you're driving me crazy playing with it like that." Said Sho. Mob covered her mouth and shook her head.

"No, leave it alone. It'll fall out on it's own." Said Mob

"But you're making me crazy with all of that playing with it!" said Sho

"It's my tooth and it's going to come out when it's ready, ok? Do I ever tell you what to do with your teeth?" asked Mob

"You tell me to brush them." Said Sho

"That's different. I tell you to brush your teeth for your own good." Said Mob

"I'm telling you to yank that tooth out for your own good. If you leave it in for too long then the tooth on the bottom will come in crooked and then people are going to make fun of your for having messed up teeth." Said Sho. Mob uncovered her mouth. She didn't want to be made fun of. Nobody had made fun of her to her face in years…and she didn't want that to start back up again. Plus Sho knew what he was talking about. He knew more about how people worked that she did. He may have been younger but he wasn't anywhere near as clueless as she was.

"…will it hurt?" asked Mob.

"Most likely. Don't worry, I'll use my powers so it goes quick." Said Sho. Mob nodded. She didn't much want to be in pain…but she also didn't want to get made fun of.

"Ok…but make sure that you only pull out the loose tooth." Said Mob. Dad had said, before, that his permanent teeth grew back on their own. She had no idea if hers would too and also it didn't really seem like the sort of thing she should have been trying out for herself.

"Of course I'm only going to yank out the loose tooth! What do I look like? Someone who doesn't know about loose teeth?" asked Sho

"No, you just look like yourself….ok. You can do it now." Said Mob. She closed her eyes and braced herself.

"Ok, I'll be quick…and don't get me in trouble! If dad asks then you tell him that you asked me to do this." said Sho. That wasn't exactly the truth, Sho had talked her into this, but she wasn't going to get him in trouble with way.

"You know that I would never try and get you in trouble. You know I love you." Said Mob

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love you too big sis. Now hold still and say 'ah'." Said Sho. Mob did what he said.

She held still.

She said 'ah'.

And then she tasted blood. It hurt and she tasted blood but she didn't yell even though it had hurt a lot…and also her tooth looked super gross just floating there in front of her. It was all covered in her spit and blood…and it was dripping spit and blood, too. She took it in her hand and put it down on the sink. She didn't want to look at it. Sho filled up her rinse cup and handed it to her.

"See? That wasn't so bad. Girls are such babies about pain. That was only a little tooth, too. One time I had a tooth that was hurting me so I yanked it out and it was really big and even had a bunch of stuff at the bottom. Not like how most teeth are hollow at the bottom. This one had a whole other part. It was really hard to yank out but I did. It had a big black thing on it, too." Said Sho

"Please don't yank out any more of your teeth even if they hurt. You might end up yanking out a permanent tooth. Those don't grow back." Said Mob after she finished spitting and rinsing her mouth out. She rinsed off her tooth, too. She didn't put it under her pillow, there was no point, but she did put it in her pocket. She didn't know why she was saving her teeth, the ones she outgrew, but she knew that she had to. Maybe the why of it didn't matter. She didn't know.

"Those grow back you know, dad said so." Said Sho

"His grow back. I don't know if ours do." Said Mob. She wondered how that worked, dad's permanent teeth growing back. He was the one who called them permanent but they couldn't really be permanent now could they if he lost them sometimes. He lost them in fights, he said, and he also said that if someone could manage to hurt him like that then they were good material. Mob didn't know if she believed that it was a good thing to knock out someone's teeth. It showed that he person was powerful but that didn't mean anything. Powers were powers and they had nothing to do with you being good or bad.

"We should test it then. One of us should knock out the other's tooth and then we'll see if it grows back or not. I think that it will because we're dad's kids and we got our powers from him so that meants that if he can do it then we can do it." Said Sho. Mob shook her head. That was a terrible idea. What if they didn't grow back? Fukuda said that he wasn't good at fixing teeth. Also they couldn't go to the dentist, either, so really that was not the thing to be trying.

"No, Sho, let's just have breakfast. Come on, dad doesn't like it when you take too long and you guys probably have a lot of stuff to do today." Said Mob. She felt the space in her mouth where her tooth used to be. Maybe she had yanked it out too soon. Maybe her other teeth missed that one. Maybe that tooth, the one in her pocket, missed the ones in her mouth. Maybe she should have just let it be until it was ready to come out.

There was nothing that she could do about it now.

The tooth had to come out one way or another. Maybe it was better to just yank it out and get it over with like Sho had said. She had outgrown the tooth. There was no reason to let it hang around if she had outgrown it. Teeth were not like people. They didn't have feelings and also it was ok to discard them when you outgrew them. It was not ok to do that with people. Not ok at all…because people had feelings, but teeth did not.

Teeth didn't leave like people did. They just got loose and fell out.


	111. Planes and Pictures

He didn't take a lot of pictures.

That had been Masami's thing. She had always felt the need to document everything that happened to them. Everything from the birth of their son to the time she had made him that cake…and she knew that he hated cake. But she had made him a spice cake anyway for his birthday. She had insisted that it wouldn't be sweet, and it wasn't that sweet, but he still had not been a fan. She had taken a picture of the face he made when he took the first bite. She had called it adorable. Had called him adorable.

And also she had laughed.

He didn't need to take a picture to remember her laugh. The way her whole face lit up. The way she smiled so wide that he could see all of her teeth. He remembered the sound of it, too, of her laughter. The way it made him feel. The fact that with just the simple act of laughing she could shoot his control to hell...

It had been such a gift to hear her laugh.

Being with her had been such a gift. Even if he knew that the smart thing, the rational thing, would have been doing anything and everything in his power to forget that he had ever even had a wife to begin with. She was perfect, his most perfect person, but now she was gone. She was gone somewhere and he was somewhere else. He was hurling through the sky at thousands of miles an hour with their children in tow. The time had come to say goodbye to the nation of Japan and to say hello to…he couldn't even remember where it was that he was headed.

The way he felt made no sense.

He had been upset to enter and now he was upset to leave. Some part of him, some stupid part of him, had been worried about…or anticipating…running into her. Even though he knew that the odds of running into her were a million to one…or a billion. He didn't know, he hadn't done any statistics since university. He just knew that some stupid, irrational, part of him wanted to run into her while they were still in Japan. He wanted to see her and…and he didn't know what. Throw himself down onto the ground in the kowtow to end all kowtows. Cling to her ankles like one of the children and beg her never to leave again? Scream at her? Tell her that she had no right to leave, to betray him? He had no idea what it was that he would have done.

He just wanted to see her again.

Which was what brought him to his pictures. He had some of her, a few, mostly of the two of them together. She had been fond of taking pictures. Sometimes with his phone. Why hadn't he taken more pictures? He'd had half a decade to take more pictures. Of her smiling and her laughing or even her just…being. Just being there and…and…and he was being irrational. He had work to do. He always had work to do, even flying through the air in this flimsy piece of metal, and he needed to tend to that work and not sit there flipping through pictures of his ex-wife.

What?

WHAT?

The plane shakes. It isn't turbulence. No, it's him. It is him and the absurd thought that he had just had. She was still his wife. She was his wife and she would always be his wife. Even if they were far apart. Even if he had no idea where in the world she even was. Even if it had been years and years since he had even set eyes on her…she was still his wife. His wife and no one else's.

"Cool! We're going to die!" shouted Son. He was at the other end of the plane. He still had that toy gun, or maybe it was a new one, and he had made a game of attempting to shoot anyone and everyone. Why so many people put up with this insanity he would never know. Masami had been good, better than him anyway, at putting up with Son's antics. Daughter took after her in the respect. She had been letting Son use her as target practice even though Suzuki could not imagine that being a fun game for her…or anyone involved.

"Sho, don't be like that. We're not going to die. Sometimes planes just get shaky, that's all. Like remember the one we took from Zurich? That one got all shaky and you said that we were going to die then, too, but we didn't. Dad would never let us die." Said Daughter. She had such faith in him. He liked that about her. Of course he would not have let them all die. These were his children, first of all, and also three of his most irreplaceable espers. Minegishi, because Daughter liked them as well as Fukuda because they needed a healer and Shimazaki because these attempts on his life were tiresome. Also Son seemed to like him…his children had the strangest taste in companions.

"If I have to hear the word 'die' one more time someone is getting kicked off this plane." Said Minegishi

"Die. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die…." Said Shimazaki. Suzuki wondered how many times he planned on saying 'die'. What there was to gain by upsetting Minegishi he did not know. Maybe that was why he and Son got along so well. Now Son was joining in even though Daughter was telling him in plain Japanese to knock it off.

So, this was his life.

He had been the one to start all of this. If he hadn't lost control, then, then the chain of events which had kick started this would never have happened. This was his retribution. He deserved it. He shouldn't have even been looking through his pictures. He knew that he had pictures of her, of Masami, of his wife there. He knew that he should have exorcised the pictures of her from his phone and the memory of her from his mind. That was the healthiest thing for him to do, the most rational thing for him to do, but he just….couldn't.

"Shimazaki! Who's the eight year old?! You or him?!" shouted Minegishi. Suzuki knew that he should have done something about that. One word from him and the rest of their plane ride would have been silent. He would have been able to hear himself think again….and that was why he allowed that. He didn't want to hear himself think. If he started to think then his thoughts would have inevitably gone to Masami. He didn't want to think about her. He didn't want…he wished, sometimes, that he had never met her.

Because then he wouldn't have had to exorcise her.

If she had just been another woman, another face in the crowd, then he never would have been in this mess. He never would have begun to feel what it was that she made him feel. The emotions that she inspired within him. Ones that he had vowed never to feel again. Ones that he wished that he had never felt in the first place. Love, it was not a good feeling. Love was such an imprecise word…and such an imprecise feeling. The love he felt for Masami was actually a mixture of several different emotions. There was obsession, sexual desire, fear, anxiety, joy, and a whole lot of other feelings. The same sorts of feelings that fed into his powers. The same sorts of feelings that made him lose control…and there was no way that he was ever losing control again.

He had to set a good example for his children.

"Dad?" asked Daughter. He opened his eyes. He'd had them closed, before, in an effort to shut out the world. To shut himself away from his own thoughts. That had been stupid. If he wanted to escape his own internal monologue then, maybe, he should not have shut out the outside world. Even if it was annoying. Even if his head was killing him, now, because there was some sort of argument going on…but better the argument out there than the racing thoughts in his own mind.

"Yes?" asked Suzuki. Daughter took a seat next to him. She didn't have to climb into her seat anymore. When they'd first started traveling she'd had to climb up using her whole body. Now she just had to give herself a slight boost. She was taller now, and growing. She came up past his waist now. He wondered if he should have been measuring the children. Masami measured their heights against a door frame. They weren't ever in one place long enough to keep a record of the children's heights…so he supposed that they had to measure themselves against him.

Son was still slightly smaller than Daughter.

He wondered if that was normal. Weren't boys supposed to be taller than girls? Or was that only when they got older. He had no idea. He had no idea if Son was normal or not. He acted like he was ten children instead of one most of the time. Was that normal? He couldn't pay attention to one thing for very long, either. Was that normal? Suzuki had no idea. Masami would have known. She knew so much more about childrearing than he did. No amount of study had prepared him for the reality of having small humans who were completely dependent on him for everything.

"We aren't going to die, right? You could catch us if the plane fell out of the sky?" asked Daughter

"Of course I could. Lifting an airplane is child's play." Said Suzuki. While he had never really gotten to the limits of his strength he knew for a fact that he could lift five commercial airplanes without breaking a sweat. He would have lifted more but people started to notice.

"Oh…ok. But if you can lift planes and stuff then why are we flying in one? Couldn't you just lift me and Sho and-" said Daughter

"This is just easier and it's less likely to get me noticed. We don't run the world yet, Daughter, we still need to have a degree of anonymity." Said Suzuki. He hated that about the world they lived in. He had wanted to give his children a world where they never would have had to hide…but that was not possible now. Now he was still building that world for them and building their empire. One day they wouldn't have to hide. One day the world would be his…theirs. That day was just not coming any time soon.

"Ok." Said Daughter. She sat beside him. The arguing at the other side of the plane was over. He did not envy Fukuda having to sit back there between Minegishi and Shimazaki as well as across from Son. At least Son had stopped with the gun. Now he was sitting there drawing something. Suzuki would have to see what it was later. Son's drawings were always very good. Everyone needed a talent in life and art was Son's. Suzuki had never been one for art. Sure he could reproduce images he saw but he couldn't create something from nothing like Son could. He inherited that from Masami. She had always been very creative.

He needed to stop thinking about Masami.

There was no reason to be thinking about her. It wasn't her birthday or their wedding anniversary or even the anniversary of when they'd first met. He had no reason to think about her, not that some arbitrary turn of the calendar was a good reason to think of her, but now he especially had no reason to think about her. He was leaving Japan, had left Japan some time ago. So what? He had no idea if she was even still in Japan.

"Dad, are you ok? Your aura is being all…pointy." Said Daughter. Suzuki mad an effort, a conscious effort, to smooth down his aura. He had no reason whatsoever to be upset. She was right. That was why she was pointing out the fact that his aura had been acting up. She was telling him that he needed to calm down for her sake. If he went and lost control then she would also think that it was acceptable to lose control and the world would not have survived long enough for him to take it over if she went around losing control.

"Fine. I'm fine." Said Suzuki. That should have been the end of it. It wasn't. She was still looking at him. Her hair was starting to float. Her braids. The rest of it was tied into two braids and also imprisoned under the ridiculous cat ears headband she was always wearing. He wondered why she wore that thing. She should have gotten rid of it ages ago. She knew who gave it to her….actually she had no idea what the problem even was…and he was not explaining that to her. She was nine, first of all, and second of all even if she had been a grown woman the last thing that she would have wanted from her father was to know the dirty details of his sordid affairs.

"Because I did try and tell Sho to stop." Said Daughter. He wondered why she was rehashing this. He knew what had happened. He was right there. She had tried to get her brother to stop. That was normal. He hadn't listened to her. That was also normal. He wondered how Masami had gotten the children to listen. For all of the things that she had taught Daughter before she had left maybe how to get children to listen and obey should have been one of those lessons.

"I know." Said Suzuki. He wondered if this would be the end of it. He had told her that he acknowledged her efforts. What more did she ask for? Maybe she wanted his attention and affection. She did seek him out often. Not as often as when she had been young but she did seek him out often. He reached an arm over his shoulders and pulled her close. Maybe this was what she wanted. Maybe this would be the thing to make her stop with this already.

"He just wouldn't listen to me." Said Daughter as she leaned into him. She was so small and warm. This was pleasant. She was always so pleasant…even if she insist on rehashing the events of just a few moments ago. Sometimes he didn't understand her, like now, but three decades, a generation, and gender separated them. There was no way that he would ever be able to understand her totally and completely. Still, though, he understood her better than most. She was still his child even if he hadn't fathered her. They were in the same boat in a lot of ways. Their powers. The loneliness that came with them…he imagined. He wondered if she had been lonely for other children. He wondered if she ever wanted another companion….not that he was planning on giving her any siblings.

"I'm aware." Said Suzuki. He hoped that this would be the last time that he had to tell her that he was aware of the events that had just transpired. This was becoming tiresome. It would have been more tiresome, though, if she hadn't been so pleasant to be around. There was a comfort to it, holding someone smaller and warmer than he was, something instinctive. Because this was his child. Because she was his child and he was the one who was supposed to protect her. Yes, this was…he thought of Masami less. He had stopped thinking about her until he remembered her. Daughter was good for that, taking his mind off of things that it should not have been on in the first place.

"But he did end up stopping so that's ok, right?" asked Daughter. He wanted to sigh. What was with her? He didn't know. He wanted her to stop talking. He wanted her to just sit there so that he could hold her close and just enjoy her presence. If she was there, near him, then she exorcised the thoughts of Masami from his mind better than he ever could through sheer force of will.

"Yes, that's fine Daughter. You brother is quiet now. There's no need to go over and over and over what happened? Yes? Now, please, enough of this." Said Suzuki. Daughter nodded. She attempted to get up. He didn't let her go. He didn't let her go and…and he didn't want her to go. He wanted her there by his side.

Not that he was dependent on her or anything like that.

He didn't need her. The only person who he needed was himself. He was a full and complete person on his own. He just…enjoyed her presence. He enjoyed her presence but if she wanted to leave then she could have left at any time…but she didn't want to leave. She just thought that he had dismissed her. She asked him that sometimes, if he wanted her to go, even when she should have known that he wanted her to stay…not that he cared either way.

He didn't care either way.

She just…if she went back there, with Son, then he would have….gotten all riled up again. If he got all riled up again then the plane ride would have become truly unbearable and he could not have had that. Then the other two back there would start up again, he couldn't tell if they loved or hated each other, and then Fukuda would probably end up stressed out and he couldn't work if he was stressed out. So, really, the thing to do was to keep Daughter right there beside him. For the sake of the rest of this plane ride.

"You want me to stay?" asked Daughter

"If you go back there then your brother will start up again and, frankly, he's very tiresome when he starts up like that." Said Suzuki

"But I wanted to see if Minegishi wanted to-" said Daughter

"They're asleep. You know that they always sleep through plane rides." Said Suzuki

"I know. I just wanted to-" said Daughter

"Stay sitting." Said Suzuki. He wondered why she wanted to leave him. Well she couldn't. She was not going to leave him….even though he knew that he was being irrational. Well it was her fault for saying, all those weeks ago back when they first came back to Japan, that she wanted to leave him to go back to the old house. She was not supposed to want to leave him. She was his Daughter. She was his and she was never going anywhere.

"Yes dad." Said Daughter. She pulled out her phone. He watched her screen. He was just curious as to what she could have been doing. She was brushing some kind of pink kitten…horse…thing with wings and a horn and also there were rainbows and sparkles. One of her games. He didn't even begin to try to understand her.

"Do you want a turn?" asked Daughter

"A turn?" asked Suzuki

"At this. You're looking over my shoulder like Sho does when he wants a turn." Said Daughter

"No, I don't want a turn, I just wanted to know what you were doing. What even is that creature supposed to be?" asked Suzuki

"Rainbow unicorn kitty friend." Said Daughter. As if that string of words was supposed to mean anything to him at all. He much preferred Son's games. His at least revolved around taking care of animals that existed in life. Also the colors didn't make his eyes feel like they were starting to bleed.

"Which is a…pet of some sort?" asked Suzuki

"Yes. He's my pet. I take care of him." said Daughter

"What is the purpose of this game?" asked Suzuki. When he was her age he had been the reason for the hundred yen shortage in Japan at the time. So many hours spent playing Space Invaders. There had been other games but Space Invaders was the best. Just him defending the world from aliens…so simple but complex…those had been good times. From what he could remember. He wondered why she never played games that were actually fun…he'd have to show her some games worth playing. Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaga, Galaxian, all of his old time wasters. The things that used to be so important to him when he was younger….

His parents hadn't been able to understand him, either.

He hadn't thought about this in decades. Coming home long after dinner had been served and cleaned up. A week's worth of money lost in an afternoon. That was shortly before he learned how to trick the machines with his powers. How to stand there for hours and hours on his own playing the same games until….why did he stop playing? Oh yes, he got bored. He played for so long that the game had stopped being able to generate levels. Something else that he was far too good at…and he had come home so angry….and his parents hadn't known what to make of him…

"To have fun. There's mini games and stuff and also it's just fun to take care of something that's not….real." said Daughter

"Right….you just…enjoy that." Said Suzuki. Daughter was still brushing it's digital fur. The children wanted a real pet. It was still out of the question. He did not like animals, he did not want to love in close proximity to one, and the children didn't need one anyway. They had digital pets. What more did they need? All the fun of taking care of a pet but no torment for the parent.

"I will. Are you ok, dad? You made the plane shake before and I'm sort of worried about you." Said Daughter

"Don't worry about me. I'm perfectly fine. You just play your game." Said Suzuki. She nodded and went back to staring at her phone. Masami hadn't let him get the children their own phones even though she complained all the time about them borrowing hers. Well she wasn't around and he wanted them quiet…and they were being quiet. Maybe too quiet. Maybe he needed them to make noise so that they could drown out his thoughts…

Maybe he should have let her go.

But then she would have been gone from him. She was there, now, and he liked it. She had wanted to be near her friend but said friend was passed out as they were on every plane ride. He wondered how they managed it. Sleeping on an airplane. He couldn't sleep with so many people around. He could barely sleep when it was just him and Daughter.

It had taken him some time, too, to get used to sleeping next to Masami.

He had spent so much time on those first few nights, when they had been married and the house had been bought and she hadn't been big with Sho yet, just watching her sleep. The faces she made. The way her eyelashes caught the morning light. The way her hair seemed to float out in all directions like a halo. Even the way she would open her eyes first thing in the morning. He wished that he had taken a picture. He'd had half a decade to take a picture. He wished that he could have seen, just one more time, her face while she drifted off to whatever her dreams were….

He always slept with his back to Daughter.

He didn't want to watch her sleep. He didn't want to watch her face while she closed her eyes and went to the place where her dreams were born. He didn't want to see her while she was there all small and drifted off….so he didn't. So he slept on his side with his back to her even though he hated sleeping like that. He could have slept on his back, she hardly took up any of the bed, and he could have kicked her out at any time…but he didn't. He liked having her near.

Even now he liked having her near.

She looked….adorable….if that was the word to use. Yes, it was. She was so adorable there with that expression of serious concentration on her face and her aura…she was just so adorable. That would have been Masami's word for her. Masami would have asked him to take a picture, to preserve that scene for the rest of existence. Like the one of her he had, the one he didn't like to look at, of the day he'd brought her home. Masami had been so happy that day…and he had her happiness there, preserved for eternity, in his phone. He could have seen her, seen how happy she had been that day, back when she had been his….but he didn't. He didn't. He focused on Daughter. The serious sort of happiness on her face. The way her headband was askew. The way she bit the ends of her fingers….all of it. She was so….she was so like her mother…and he didn't want to think about it. So he didn't. He just watched her.

He didn't take a lot of pictures and he wasn't going to start now.


	112. Mints

Minegishi didn't know how their life had come to this.

"OK, so then they can all get on the giant cat and then….."

Hanging out with a nine year old. Apparently at some point in life THIS had become normal. Well it had been normal for some time now so, really, there was no point at all in bitching about it. They hung out with a kid. Sometimes they had fun together. Even though the only reason Minegishi had joined this stupid organization was to have something to do with their life, something to get rid of the constant malaise that had been their existence. Maybe there was nothing that they could do about the sense of listlessness and boredom that followed them wherever they went. They tried working, drinking, soft drugs, not so soft drugs, sex, regular violence, ultra-violence, joining a cult, and now…whatever this was.

Playtime.

"They can ride the giant cat…if they dare too." Said Minegishi

"What do you mean?" asked Mob. They were playing in Minegishi's room. Sho was home and he was slamming doors and Mob didn't want to be around while he did that. There was nothing that she could do. She knew because she tried to help him calm down the last time he had been slamming doors all day and she ended up getting hit in the face with a door for her trouble. Not something that she wanted to repeat at all.

"Well you did bring a giant dog, Mob, so what if the giant dog were to chase the giant cat? That is in their nature after all." said Minegishi as they picked up Mob's stuffed dog. Playtime wasn't that bad. They had struck a balance between their games. Mob still had her banal slice of divorced princess life and Minegishi still had plenty of executions and torture scenes. He wondered how, exactly, Mob was supposed to be related to Suzuki again. Based on what they did at some of those divisions the game of dystopian princesses should have been right up his alley.

"No, in this world cats and dogs are friends. They came to an agreement after the secret wars of cats and dogs." Said Mob

"Well somebody's been watching movies." Said Minegishi

"You saw that movie too? Do you remember the part where the dog-" said Mob

"Yes. I remember that movie well. It's one of the few my parents had on tape…nothing much else to do…" said Minegishi. Great. Now they were remembering their crappy childhood. They did not want to become one of those adults that spent their entire lives harping on about how bitterly unfair their lives had been. That was not Minegishi. Their life had been a crappy one for a number of years but godlike control over plants and a seat of power once Suzuki managed to take over the world more than made up for the fact that mommy and daddy never loved them.

"You didn't have any brothers or sisters?" asked Mob. She didn't know what she would have done without Sho…when he was nice. Not like how he was now. She could still hear him slamming doors from all the way over at Minegishi's house. She knew that he was her responsibility. She knew that she was supposed to be over there calming him down before dad got home…she just didn't want to be. She didn't want to get hit in the face with a door for her trouble. Besides, he would be fine. Sho was always fine after he got all upset like this. Sho was always fine in general. Minegishi said that the only one she had to worry about was herself…which made zero sense since people needed other people that was why they has friends and families and stuff, but she wasn't going to argue. She liked being here…and not just because of what Minegishi had in the drawer behind them.

Though she was kind of thirsty.

"I don't like to talk about my childhood." Said Minegishi. The only thing worse than thinking about it was talking about it. The only person who knew that full story, as much of the full story as Minegishi was willing to tell, was Shimazaki and that was only because he wouldn't shut up about their scars. Mob wasn't even ten years old yet, she was nine and a HALF at most, and that was way too young to get even the abridged version of the terribly childhood of Minegishi Toshiki.

"Why?" asked Mob. She wanted to know what they were like when they were a kid. Did they play with dolls? Or toy animals? Or action figures? Or did they like to draw? Or did they spend a lot of time outside since they had plant control powers? There were inside plants all around them. Was this what their room was like when they were a kid? Mob wanted to know, she needed to know, and she didn't know why she needed to know just that she needed to know. Dad almost never talked about when he was a kid and Mob…she wished that she had been able to ask mom back when she still had…had a mom to ask…

"Because it sucked. It sucked about as bad, if not worse, than yours. Really it depends on how often your dad hits you." Said Minegishi. That was maybe not the thing to say. This was a nine year old sitting in front of them. A nine year old in her stupid princess dress with that stupid cat ears headband on. This was a kid who still played with dolls and watched cartoons and still believed in dreams and the power of friendship and true love's kiss and all of that. She didn't know better than to pry. She just wasn't there yet and it wasn't like she had anyone in her life to teach her basic social skills. This was just a kid and they were being an asshole, as usual, and that was wrong.

Be nice, Toshiki.

"My dad hardly ever hits me. Well he mostly just hits Sho. Dad just sort of pushes me or drags me by my braids. It's not so bad. He hardly ever punishes me at all. Not since I asked to go back to the old house. That was wrong of me though. We aren't supposed to talk about our old life with mom because she betrayed us by leaving…and that wasn't right." Said Mob. She didn't think of her mom as a traitor even though she knew that she was supposed to. Dad did, though, and if he decided that she was a traitor then she was…because she had just left them like it was nothing….but Mob couldn't just think of her own mom like that….because she loved her mom even if she was gone somewhere far away….

"I'm sorry." Said Minegishi. The words tasted bitter in their mouth. An apology. They owed Mob an apology. They didn't like to apologize but they had to. Maybe they wouldn't have if Mob had been older but she as only nine so, therefore, she was owed an apology.

"About what?" asked Mob. She couldn't think of anything that Minegishi had done that would have earned her an 'I'm sorry'. She thought harder and then even harder still and came up with nothing at all that Minegishi had to be sorry about.

"I was an asshole back there. So I'm sorry." Said Minegishi

"You were? I don't think that you were being a….that word." Said Mob

"Well I was, ok? I was and you are way too young to deal with me being an asshole to you like that." Said Minegishi. They wished that she would just take the apology. This was such a rare thing. Mob had a better chance of catching a tsuchinoko, seeing a unicorn, and getting genuine praise from her father all in one day than she had to Minegishi prying an apology out of themselves again.

"Um….ok. I don't know what you're apologizing for but ok." Said Mob. The plants beside Minegishi, those were called spider plants, began to turn a sort of yellowish color. Mob reached out with her powers and made them green again. The poor plants didn't deserve that and Minegishi didn't deserve to see their plants die. They cared so much about their plants. Every time they moved Minegishi made the plants really small for easy travel so they wouldn't get hurt even though there were new plants everywhere on Earth that they could have made friends with. Well aside from the poles but there weren't any Claw bases on the poles. Dad said that it just wasn't cost effective.

"…I need a drink." Said Minegishi. They were not going to have it out over an apology that Mob should have known that she was owed. The world was going to chew that kid up and spit her back out. That was what the world did to people who were sweet like that. Sweetness and goodness wouldn't get Mob very far at all, especially not in a place like Claw, and Minegishi did not want to think about that. Hence the ill-advised day drinking.

"Can I have some too?" asked Mob as Minegishi got up and went to their dresser drawers. They dug around for a little bit. Mob could hear the clank of glass on glass as well as what sounded like someone shaking up a tin of mints. That was because there had been a tin of mints in the drawer. Now they were on top of the dresser along with a bottle of something clear with a label in a language that Mob couldn't read.

"Fine, one capful, and nothing more." Said Minegishi. At some point they had started Mob down a river of sin. They weren't ruining her life, though, that was something that they made sure to remember. They were not ruining this kid's life. They had been going much harder when they had been only a year or so older than her. So, really, Mob's life was not at all in danger of being ruined.

"Thank you." Said Mob. She wanted more than one capful. One capful made her feel happy, sort of silly, but two would make her feel all calm and relaxed. Three would make her sort of sleepy. She didn't much want to be sleepy, just relaxed, because eventually she would have go home and Sho would still be upset and he would probably still be slamming doors and then dad would be upset at her for letting Sho be upset all day and also for letting Sho slam doors and he hated loud sounds like that and she was supposed to be watching him because she was the big sister and he was the little brother and it was he big sister's job to take care of the little brother and-

Something was pressed into her hand.

Minegishi drank straight out of the bottle. Mob knew that there wouldn't be any germs. They had explained it to her before. That burning that she tasted was germs dying because of how high the alcohol content was. The higher the alcohol content the more germs that died. So really this was good for her. Even if it did burn her mouth and throat going down. Not as bad as before, though, but she did prefer to mix it with something. She wondered how Minegishi could stand to drink so much. They were drinking straight from the bottle and that looked like it was way more than one capful…not that Mob was going to say anything. Of course it wasn't fair. Minegishi was an adult and they could drink as much as they wanted because this stuff was for adults. Mob was the only kid in that house. Sho was next door at their house, well the house that they were staying in, and Mob was at the house that Minegishi and Shimazaki stayed in. She was the only kid there and she was not in charge and she wasn't going to ask for more even though she really wanted more….

"I told you already, Mob, that's all I'm giving you." Said Minegishi. Mob was staring at them. She was worse than Shimazaki and he was nothing but staring. He stared with his aura since he had no eyes. Even when he was rooms and rooms away, like now, he was still staring. They could feel him watching them…and he was probably just waiting for Mob to go home. Yes, that was it. He just wanted her to ditch the kid so they could have some good old fashioned adult fun. Well if that was what he wanted then they hoped that he had made himself comfortable because it was going to be a long day.

"I know. I didn't say anything." Said Mob. How did they know what she was thinking? For a moment Mob wonders if they can read minds….but that was a very rare power. Dad had said so. That was why he didn't have any telepaths even though they would have been very useful.

"Not with your words, no, but your eyes told the whole story. You get one capful and that's it, ok? I am not trying to ruin your life here." Said Minegishi

"How would you be ruining my life if you let me have more? I don't understand." Said Mob. Adults were always talking about doing things for your own good. Didn't they get it? Mob may have been young but she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She knew what was good for her. She didn't need someone else telling her what was good for her.

"Mob, don't make me get into-" said Minegishi. They did not want to get into childhood alcoholism and their first hand experiences with it. They were in no mood whatsoever to get into the tale of woe that is their childhood. They were not in any mood at all to-

"Where's the tea?! Minegishi, where'd you put it?"

Speaking of being in no mood at all.

"Shimazaki wants to know where the tea is." Said Mob in case Minegishi didn't notice. At least he was yelling through the wall and not teleporting right in the middle of their game like he usually did. That was good. Mob wasn't much of a fan of yelling, it made her heart beat funny and her lungs work extra hard, but she was even less of a fan of Shimazaki. She had no idea why Minegishi wanted to be friends with him…but then again she didn't understand a lot of things about other people.

"I know. I can hear him. I'm thinking." Said Minegishi. Crap. They had moved it. They were only living with Shimazaki because…because it was just easier. They both had to be near the Suzuki family so it made sense to live together…and it had nothing to do with Minegishi wanting him around or anything like that. Because they didn't. He was annoying as all else. Like now. Couldn't he find it himself? Well, no, actually, because of the whole not being able to see thing…..

"Minegishi is thinking!" called Mob through the wall. She wondered how Shimazaki made tea without being able to see. She wondered how he did a lot of things without being able to see. Like getting dressed in the morning. His clothes always matched even though he had no idea what colors were. She wondered if Minegishi helped him with that. That made sense. Maybe that was why Minegishi lived with him. Mob couldn't imagine any other reason why they would ever even want to.

"Tell them to think harder!" said Shimazaki

"I'll just look for it myself." Said Minegishi. This was kind of their fault…not that they would ever admit it. No, that would be letting him win and if they let him win he would never let it go. Minegishi couldn't have that. They were working together for the foreseeable future and they were not going to sit there and hear every day a thousand times a day about the time that they moved the tea. No, they'd go completely insane. So, really, the only thing to do would be to go and look for it themselves…and also they did have an advantage when it came to looking for the tea on their own….because they actually could look….

They would see themselves out.

"Bye." Said Mob as Minegishi left their room. Now Mob was all alone…and she knew that she had to stay put. She needed to stay put right there on the floor with her toys…and that was what she was going to do. Even if her eyes kept on going up to the bottle that Minegishi had on their dresser. Even though she was sure that they wouldn't miss another capful or two. Even though she was sure that she wouldn't drink that much…and Minegishi always shared so maybe this was….it would be like sharing before the sharing happened.

What was wrong?

Mob felt like maybe that was wrong. Minegishi did say, over and over again, that they did not plan on ruining Mob's life…not that she had any idea how this would be ruining her life. Minegishi hadn't told her how this would be ruining her life…so maybe it wouldn't. Mob didn't think that it would. She could take care of herself. That was what she had been doing since she had been little. Taking care of herself and Sho. If she could be trusted to take care of another human being then she could be trusted to take care of herself…..

She drank another capful.

She drank from the bottle…which was more than a capful. She knew because she ended up choking just a little and spitting some of it out…all on her dress. Not that much but….but now she smelled like she had been…and then Minegishi would be so…and she didn't want…

She saw a tin of mints.

So of course she ate one. Even though Minegishi had never offered to share those….well she was already in this deep. Besides, they wouldn't miss one single insignificant little mint now would they? And besides, better she smelled like mint than drinking. She took it in her mouth and bit down…and then tried her best not to spit it out.

Bitter!

That was not a mint. Mints tasted minty. That tasted bitter….the most bitter thing that she had ever had…but she chewed and swallowed. She washed it down with the milk she carried around with her everywhere. She maybe should have mixed…but that was neither here nor there. She sat back down and pretended to be normal. Even though there was a super bitter taste in her mouth. Even though she suddenly felt…weird. Very weird. She could see her aura…and it was being all…she picked up a doll with her powers. Too hard. It hit the ceiling. Her powers weren't listening right then. That wasn't weird…not too weird. Her powers had never been the best at listening.

She heard the door open.

She could feel Minegishi's aura. She felt…nice. It was nice that her friend was near. She smiled and leaned back…a little too much. She caught herself with her powers before she could hit the ground. Well she tried to. She managed to just a bit before she ended up flat on her back.

"Come on, enough of that." Said Minegishi. They picked Mob up. How could one capful do that? Well this was a kid, a nine year old, and maybe nine year olds were not meant to drink. Maybe they were just a terrible influence and in ten years Mob would track them down and blame them for the horrible path her life was taking.

"Thanks." Said Mob. She felt…she felt like the time she and Sho had tried to sleep like bats. When they had laid down and with their feet up on their beds and their heads on the floor….and then they tried to sleep like that…and they had both gotten so light headed….

"Come on, let's get back to it. Where were we?" asked Minegishi. They didn't want to deal with anything besides playing dolls. Not the fact that they had been such an inconsiderate asshole moving things around in the kitchen…and not that they were ruining an innocent kid's life….not about the sad, sad, tale of their life…none of that. No, they were going to focus on playing dolls.

So they tried to.

But they couldn't. They couldn't focus because Mob couldn't focus. She was…she was not being normal. That had not been one capful. Maybe Minegishi needed to start marking the levels on their liquor bottles….no. No way. Mob would not have…..well someone had been getting into their liquor…and that somebody was probably Shimazaki. The man had no concept of boundaries or personal space or anything like that. Yeah, it was him who had been stealing from her…not Mob.

Even if Mob was being kind of…weird.

"Mob. Hey! Mob!" said Minegishi. They snapped their fingers in front of Mob's face. She didn't even open her eyes. She had…it looked like she had fallen asleep sitting up. Minegishi's eyes went back up to the top of their dresser. That little…she had better not have….

"Oh….hi. Hi Minegishi. Hello." Said Mob as she forced her eyes opened. She just wanted to sleep. She just wanted to close her eyes and sleep…and also eat. Sleep and eat. Sleep…that sounded wonderful….

"Yeah, hi, welcome to the land of the living." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded. She closed her eyes again. Minegishi snapped their fingers and shook her. This was…not normal. This was not normal at all.

"Hi…" said Mob. She had trouble keeping her eyes opened. She was…she wanted to sleep. She let herself fall forward until she was resting against Minegishi. They were so soft. They smelled good. Like dirt. Dirt and plants and also fabric softener.

"Yeah, hey! Open your eyes! This isn't a hotel!" said Minegishi. Mob had collapsed against them…and now they could smell it. Mob smelled like a liquor store had exploded. Wonderful. Ok, so they had ruined Mob's life…ok then. Mob was drunk…very drunk. They had no idea how drunk was very drunk. At least she wasn't vomiting…oh God. Nope. None of that. They were not the sort of friends who vomited on one another.

"I…I'm tired." Said Mob as she buried her face in Minegishi's shirt. They were so warm and soft. Mob reached her arms around Minegishi and tried to pull them into a hug. They were just so warm and soft…the warmest and the softest. Warm hugs were the best. She used to get a lot of hugs…when she was little. The hugs were warm then too. They were warm and soft and smelled like cinnamon. This was a good hug, too.

"No, you're drunk. You are drunk off your ass right now, Mob." Said Minegishi as they tried to get their personal space back. Slowly, very slowly, because whether they liked to think about it or not Mob was the second most powerful esper alive and she didn't always have good control at the very best of times, either.

"I like warm hugs." Said Mob. The hug was over now. Now she was feeling cold. Now she was feeling cold and she wanted the hug to go on forever…and she wanted to close her eyes…and sleep. Sleep sounded just so wonderful….

"I know you do, I know." Said Minegishi as the managed to slowly pull Mob off of them. Her eyes were closed again. Sleeping. This was….this was ok. If she had alcohol poisoning then she would have been throwing up. She was just tired…and that was fine. She just needed a nap, that was all.

"You're my best friend." Said Mob as she reached out towards Minegishi again. There was a hand on her chest pushing her away. She leaned into it until it was the only thing keeping her up.

"Mob, how much did you drink?" asked Minegishi

"Milk….I like to drink milk…" said Mob

"Yes, I know you love milk. Everyone knows you love milk. That's not what I'm asking. You had way more than what I gave you. How much?" asked Minegishi doing their best not to sound mad…even though they kind of were. Mob should not have been stealing from them in the first place and she should not have been drinking to the point of passing out. She was gone, now, and that was….Minegishi had tried so hard to teach her moderation!

"I'm sorry….drank from the bottle….stole a mint…so sorry….still be my friend…" said Mob. She was putting all of her weight on their hand. She just wanted to close her eyes for a little bit. She just…she was very tired, the most tired, so incredibly tired…like the time she and Sho had stayed up all night to watch the sun come up.

"Mint….what are you…oh no." said Minegishi. They laid Mob down on the floor and went up to their dresser. They never counted these…and they maybe should have….but they never expected that a kid would have gone through their things and…and didn't everyone ever teach her not to go through other people things? Seriously? Well obviously not because her father had better things to do than parent his offspring, obviously, but still!

"Not very…minty." Said Mob as she rolled over onto her side. This was the most comfortable she had ever been in her entire life. This was the best floor with the best carpeting and the warmest room and she had the best friend ever and everything was so nice…this was all so nice…and she just needed…just for a minute…

"Hey, hey, stay with me. How many did you eat?" asked Minegishi. This could have been bad. As in accidentally killing a kid bad. They had killed people before but never kids. This was…well there was that healer…who was also apparently Suzuki's bestest buddy for all time…and there was no way Fukuda would keep quiet about this. He'd tell Suzuki and then Suzuki would, literally, kill them. He'd done it before. There was no way to have clean hands and run Claw at the same time…and Minegishi may not have had the greatest life but they did not want to die.

"One…" said Mob. She turned and faced the other direction. She just wanted to sleep. How hard was that to understand? She was tired…and kind of hungry….and she just wanted to close her eyes and get some sleep….

"Ok….that's not so bad. It's not…not so bad. You're young…you have a good metabolism. You're going to be fine. Just….whatever you do don't stop breathing." Said Minegishi. They put their hand on Mob's back to make sure that she was still breathing. She was…she was breathing. That was good. If she was breathing then she was alive. Just…

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

This kid was not going to die. Minegishi had mixed Xanax and liquor loads of times and hadn't ever once…but Minegishi was a grown adult. This was just a little nine year old kid. This may have been the most powerful esper in the world but this was still a nine year old girl…but she was going to be fine. Minegishi didn't know how they were going to assure her being fine but she was going to be fine. She had to be…

There was a shift in the energy around them.

"Whoa. Did you kill the kid?" asked Shimazaki as he decided to see what had Minegishi's aura all anxious. Even though they knew full well not to bother Minegishi when they and the kid were hanging out in Toyland.

"No! I did not kill her…she just got into something that she shouldn't have. That's all. Now either help or go away." said Minegishi. They were not at all in the mood to deal with this. They had one thing to deal with and that was more than enough.

"She smells like a liquor store." Said Shimazaki. It was…strange….seeing someone so powerful being so vulnerable. Not that he was going to do anything. Another person might have been more unscrupulous. After all that was the second most powerful esper in the world and the daughter of the most powerful. That kid was also the dumbest esper in the world in so many ways. But hey, he didn't care, not his kid not his problem.

"And you think that you smell any better?" asked Minegishi with a shake of their head.

"At least I don't smell like I just got through with a week long bender." Said Shimazaki

"I've smelled you after a bender. It's very similar." Said Minegishi

"Like you can even remember the last one." said Shimazaki. It'd been a while since they had fun, actual fun, and he missed it…though they were not taking that kid along. Even if it seemed like she was starting to get a little ahead of herself. This was why he didn't have any kids. He knew that he'd end up royally fucking them up. Also the lifelong responsibility of caring for another human being. He wasn't much up for that either.

"If you think that you can remember our last one then you're deluding yourself." Said Minegishi.

"Hey, I have very clear memories of Prague." Said Shimazaki

"So you remember the singing?" asked Minegishi

"I remember it was well received." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah, you don't remember Prague." Said Minegishi

"Do too." Said Shimazaki. He knew that he sounded like a kid there. He could see, sort of, Minegishi smiling. It was easier to see the amusement in their aura than to watch for the minute movement of their face. The kid was still passed out. Still alive. Heart was still beating, lungs were still inhaling and exhaling, eyes moving behind her eye lids. The kid wasn't dead that was what mattered. Suzuki…he wouldn't have taken it well if it turned out that one of his kids was dead.

"Uh-huh, what about Cabo?" asked Minegishi

"When were we in Cabo? Recently I mean…or ever actually…." asked Shimazaki

"After Prague but before Sidney." Said Minegishi

"Fine, you win. It's an empty space after Prague." Said Shimazaki. He poked the kid a couple times with his aura. She was alive…which was good. He wondered what Suzuki did to people who accidentally.

"Shimazaki, can you go back to whatever is it that you were doing? I've got to deal with…this." said Minegishi as they kept their hand on Mob's back. Inhale. Exhale. Still alive…and she was going to stay alive. She was not going to die and…and she was not going to end up describing this to a therapist in ten years either.

"What even is 'this'? I mean she smells like she's drunk-" said Shimazaki

"She is drunk. She's drunk and she got into my pills." Said Minegishi. That was not their fault, not really, because it was not their job to teach Mob not to go through people's stuff or to take medicine that was not prescribed for her…or purchased by her through several less than totally legal means.

"Why'd you get her drunk?" asked Shimazaki. He had always wondered what would happen if you got a kid drunk…but to actually go off and do it. Part of him expected better from Minegishi…but part of him also wanted to know just what would happen to the kid.

"I didn't get her drunk I gave her one capful. She took it upon herself to get drunk." Said Minegishi. What did he take them for? Of course they did not set out to do this. They had better things to do with their time than get nine year olds drunk. Literally anything else was a better use of their time.

"Ok…but then why'd you give her pills, too? I mean yeah I've thought about it, getting a kid messed up just to see what would happen, but it's not like I've ever gone and done it." Said Shimazaki. If they were getting kids messed up he had some acid somewhere. That would have been a hell of a lot safer than this.

"I didn't 'give' her anything. She got into my stuff. I don't even know what goes in that head of hers." Said Minegishi. What, did he think that they were some kind of idiot? No, of course they didn't give Mob anything. What was even the matter with him?! That was something that he was more likely to think was a good idea. He was Mr. 'We have this vial of acid let's dose babies to see what would happen'. Nothing good would happen! Obviously giving acid to babies was a bad idea and getting kids drunk was a bad idea! Everything was a bad idea!

"You want me to take her to a hospital or something? I mean I know what you carry around-" said Shimazaki. Yup. That was one soon to be dead kid. Well they were fucked. Suzuki was not going to take that well. Maybe if his son had gotten himself into this mess but not his daughter. Nope, there was no way that Suzuki was just going to let the death of his favorite kid go.

"Hell no. Suzuki would literally kill us both. No hospitals." Said Minegishi. How were they even going to explain it? Just walk up and go 'hey, can you fix this kid up? She mixed liquor and Xanax on my watch and now I'm afraid that she's never going to wake up again. Oh, and keep it to yourself. I'm part of this weird cult that trying to take over the world and stuff and my boss is kind of touchy about who knows about us. Please and thank you!' or something like that?

"I can go grab that healer guy. I mean….this is kind of…not good." Said Shimazaki. The kid was downright terrifying, her existence, but he didn't want her dead. He watched her breathing. Was it slowing down? Or speeding up? God damn it now he was getting himself all anxious. He never had these problems before. Nope, he never had to deal with shit like this.

"You know that as soon as he heals her up he'll go running to Suzuki…speaking of, why aren't you trailing after our fearless leader?" asked Minegishi. Their eyes darted to their bedroom door as if Suzuki would let himself in at any minute…which to be fair was something that he would have been fully within his rights to do since his kid stood a good chance of being in real danger.

"He told me to bring his kid home and then leave him. I strongly suspect that he doesn't like me." Said Shimazaki

"I have no idea why he would feel that way. I really, truly, don't." said Minegishi

"Yeah, well, he's going to dislike you even more than he dislikes me when he realizes that his kid died on your watch." Said Shimazaki

"Shut up already. She's not going to die. She just needs to sleep it off. That's all, she's just got to sleep it off." Said Minegishi. They were no healer. They had no clue if that was what she needed. She was breathing, her heart rate felt normal…but they had no idea what normal felt like for a kid…but this was fine. She was fine. If she stopped breathing they'd…toss her into a cold bath? They didn't know.

"I'll make her a bed on the couch then." Said Shimazaki. They needed to do something. There was no reason to do anything, this wasn't his problem it was Minegishi's, but him not doing anything…he was getting a caged in feeling and he needed to do something. Besides, Toshi needed him. Toshi had all but acknowledged that they needed him and this was a rare thing. The more he helped now the more he could rub it in their face later.

"Sure, whatever. Tell yourself that you're helping." Said Minegishi. They had no clue what they were supposed to do. This was not a good feeling, the powerlessness, and they did not like it. They hadn't felt this powerless since they were small, as small as Mob was right then, and they didn't like it…but there was nothing that they could do. Nothing that they could do without getting themselves killed.

So they put her on the couch.

They put her on the couch and they put the TV on and they waited for her to wake up. She never stopped breathing, at least, and her heart never stopped. Jabbing her in the side could wake her temporarily. That was a good sign. That meant that she was…ok. She was ok and that was what mattered. Minegishi couldn't get mad at her…yet. It would be different when she woke up.

Because this was her fault.

Not Minegishi's. Mob was the one who had done so many stupid things….things that even at her age she should have known were stupid! You were not supposed to steal. You were not supposed to go off and drink and take medicine that was not prescribed to her…or purchased by her. She was just a kid and she should not have…this was her fault!

"This is your fault, you know. You got yourself into this state, not me." Said Minegishi as they sat down beside her. The TV was on but neither of them was watching it. They watched Mob. They kept a hand on her back to make sure that she was still breathing. That was all that they could do.

They hated feeling powerless.

"I mean, you should know better. You're almost ten you know. You should know better than do just go and-ugh! I can't even right now." Said Minegishi. Mob stirred. She didn't wake but she stirred. That was a good sign. She wasn't dead…and of course she wasn't dead. She was made of tougher stuff than that…right?

"When I say that you only get one capful then I mean it. I get it, your life sucks, but that is no reason to go off and steal from me. You get it? Stealing is wrong. You should know that by now." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't stir again. She was still deep asleep. Of course she was. It hadn't been long enough for her to wake up…if she was ever going to wake up….

"Or maybe you don't. Did anyone ever teach you that stealing is wrong? Did anyone ever teach you anything? I know your dad….well I don't KNOW him but I guess that I know him about as well as any of us truly can know him….so I guess that he never sat you down and told you not to drink or steal or take random pills…" said Minegishi. There was more silence between them. The silence stretched on. Something was on the TV, some kid's show, but neither of them was watching it. This stupid kid…this stupid kid trusted them….this was not Minegishi's fault! They didn't go off and tell Mob to be stupid enough to-to-to-

Monkey see, money do.

"I mean it can be fun, taking random pills, but not for you. Not at your age. You get it? When you grow up then you can take all the random pills you want. Hell, I'll even babysit you while you figure yourself out…but not now! Can you just….can you just be a kid for once in your life? Can you? Just because you see me doing something that does not make it ok for you to do it too! I am an adult! My mistakes are my own, ok? If I want to go around messing with my brain chemistry then it's my freedom as an adult to do so. You're just a kid…and you're not even my kid…you know. You aren't my kid but here I am worried out of my mind…" said Minegishi. They sighed. Mob turned. Now her back was to the TV. At least she was still moving. She'd be fine…probably. She'd have a big chunk of missing time, and she would probably wake up ravenously hungry in a few hours, but she would be fine. Minegishi knew from experience….adult experience…well more like teenage experience. Not nine year old experience….that was the important thing…but how much different was it really? Weren't kids supposed to be resilient or something? Plus she was just as powerful as an adult….so she would be fine…it stood to reason that she would be fine…

"I'm pretty sure that he can't hear you." Said Shimazaki popping in from nothing to sit beside them. Minegishi glared at him. The effect, of course, was lost.

"Make yourself useful and tell me how her heart beats doing." Said Minegishi

"Normal. Well normal for a sleeping person. Stop making yourself crazy, Toshi, she's fine. If she hasn't stopped breathing yet then she won't stop breathing anything soon." Said Shimazaki

"You don't know that." Said Minegishi

"Yeah, you're right, I don't. I'm just sitting here telling you what you want to hear. What I really think is that the second you let your guard down she's going to stop breathing and then you'll be in for it. Me too because I'm involved now." Said Shimazaki

"Well at least you're being honest with me…and call me Toshi again. I dare you." Said Minegishi

"I won't just because I feel like being contrary right now." Said Shimazaki

"Well can you go be contrary somewhere else. I have to keel vigil over this kid until she either wakes up or I have to go into hiding for the rest of my life." Said Minegishi

"Alright, alright, I know when I'm not wanted. I just came by to tell you that I told her brother that she was having a sleepover with you tonight. You know, so you don't end up having to explain to Suzuki what happened to his kid. I figure that she'll be out until tomorrow at least anyway. So you may thank me later." Said Shimazaki

"…later never comes, you know. It's like tomorrow. Always a day away." said Minegishi. They were grateful, really, but if they showed it then they would never be able to live it down.

"Well what is today but yesterday's tomorrow?" asked Shimazaki before he popped out of existence so Minegishi could have some space.

"I didn't know that they made brail fortune cookies…and he's gone. Great. He got the last word. Thanks a lot, Mob." Said Minegishi. They weren't mad at her, not really, even though they had every right to be. She had been the one to get herself into this state. Sure she had watched Minegishi get themselves into a similar state time after time but…well the phrase went 'monkey see, monkey do' and all of that but Mob was not a monkey. She was a human being. A kid. A human kid.

And also the human kid that Minegishi was somewhat responsible for.

They hadn't wanted this, being responsible for another human being, that was why they planned on never having kids. Too much to worry about. They wanted more out of life, more excitement, but having a kid was not the thing to do. Despite their feelings they were now somewhat responsible for another human being…and they had done a piss poor job of it. Now they had to stay up all night making sure that this kid ended up waking up…

Something which was kind of their fault.

This was why they didn't want a kid. They had known Mob not even a year and they had already managed to mess her life up. Not that she was the brightest bulb in the bunch if she thought that any of what she had done was a good idea….but then again she was a kid and kids were not known for their reasoning skills. Some adult never even developed reasoning skills. The apple didn't fall far from the tree. She could see little Suzuki being stupid enough to do this. Being so assured of his own invincibility that he would be dumb enough to do…this. Yeah, they could see that. Like father like daughter…

Even though she really was nothing like her father.

She wasn't that much like Suzuki when it came down to it. She was a hell of a lot nicer than he was and a hell of a lot more pleasant to be around. Plus she had tried to make friends. She hadn't just started ordering them around…and she had the potential to be such a brat. Nobody was raising her to be anything other than a brat. Hell! Nobody was RAISING her at all. Poor kid. No wonder she went and did something so transparently stupid.

Something that Minegishi should have stopped her from doing in the first place.

At some point their life had come to this…being a terrible role model to the offspring of the most powerful man on Earth.

Whatever. It could have been worse.


	113. One Thousand Paper Cranes

Mob got the feeling that Minegishi was mad at her.

She could tell by their aura. She didn't know what she had done to make them mad, well she sort of did, but they had never been truly mad at her before. This was…not good. This made her want to both run and hide but also kowtow right then and there and beg their forgiveness. She didn't get the chance to, though, because Minegishi was not hearing it.

"Good, you're awake. Now go back to your own house." Said Minegishi. Their back hurt, their head hurt, their everything hurt. They just wanted to get some rest after having kept vigil over Mob all night. At some point they had passed out…and woken up to a message on their phone telling them that they were needed for their real, actual, non-babysitting related job.

"But I'm sorry that I-" said Mob. She had a terrible taste in her mouth, she was hungry, and it was earlier than she usually got up. She could tell by the sun. She wasn't even in her house. Well the house that they were staying in, anyway. She had fallen asleep on Minegishi's couch…and she had zero memory whatsoever of how she had gotten there. The last thing she remembered was being very warm, very hungry, and very tired.

"Apologize to me later. Right now you need to go home and I need to shower and get dressed for work. My actual job. The one that doesn't involve you. Ok?" asked Minegishi. They sounded sort of mean…but not their usual sort of mean. Also their aura looked different than usual too. Mob didn't know what to make of this. She knew that she had done something wrong, it was wrong to take things without asking, and also it was wrong to fall asleep when you and your friend were hanging out…but Minegishi had never been truly mad at her before…

She didn't like this feeling one bit.

"Um….ok. But I really am sorry-" said Mob

"I know, I heard you the first time." Said Minegishi

"I just really want you to know how sorry I am." Said Mob

"Do you even know what you're sorry for?" asked Minegishi

"For falling asleep?" asked Mob. That was the first thing that came to mind. She should not have fallen asleep at her friend's house. She should not have drank so much that she had fallen asleep, especially when she knew for a fact that she was only allowed to have one capful, and she also should not have eaten that terrible tasting mint without asking. She would have said sorry if she hadn't fallen asleep so that was why she apologized, first, for falling asleep.

"Do you seriously think that I'm pissed off at you for falling asleep? Seriously? You're seriously that clueless, Mob?" asked Minegishi

"Yes, I am. I don't understand why you're mad at me even if I said sorry. I wish that I could, though, I wish that I could understand…and also I wish that I hadn't done that because you're mad….and I wish that I knew how to make you less mad, and also I wish-" said Mob

"Oh just fold me a thousand paper cranes, why don't you?" asked Minegishi with more anger than they knew that they should have been directing at her. She was apologizing…and of course she didn't know what it was that she had done wrong. She was just a kid after all. She didn't fully understand how close she had come to never waking up again…but she did know, she had to know, that stealing was wrong! Also that had been a bitter pill to swallow, literally, and she must have had that instinctive self-preservation instinct to spit out anything bitter! She could control plants! She must have known that the bitter ones were the ones most likely to try and kill her!

"Do you really want me to?" asked Mob. She didn't know how to fold a paper crane, she had never folded a paper crane before in her life, but if it would help her friend then of course she would gladly fold a thousand paper cranes….or however many Minegishi wanted. A thousand seemed like a very big number.

"Well if you're going to sit there and make wishes all day then why not just start folding paper cranes now? It'd be a more productive use of your time." Said Minegishi. They were too sore, too tired, and too frazzled from last night to hold their tongue. It was taking everything that they had not to curse Mob out right then and there. Space. They needed space from her. Space to process and space to get in the right headspace for work…real work.

"Um….ok. I've never done that before but if that's how you want me to tell you that I'm sorry then that's what I'll do. I really am sorry though. I shouldn't have fallen asleep, that was rude of me, and I shouldn't have drank so much to make me fall asleep and I shouldn't have drank without asking because that was wrong and also I'm sorry about-" said Mob

"Save it for later. Ok? I don't want to hear it right now. I am so upset….and I need space. Ok? I need some space to calm down. Talk to me in a day or two." Said Minegishi. They were not going to yell at a kid. Yelling at kids was wrong, well most of the time sometimes they could really be little shits, and yelling at this kid was especially wrong. First of all it was wrong because it could have set her off and second of all it was wrong because she had enough shit going on in her life as it was.

But that did not give her the excuse to steal.

That did not give her the excuse to gamble with her own life like that. Not only hers but Minegishi's too. If she had died then Suzuki would have killed Minegishi without a thought. If something had happened to her it would have been on them even though they were the ones who told her that she was only allowed to have one capful. They tried to teach her moderation! She should have known that-

And this was why they were putting space between themselves and Mob.

"Ok…I'll see you later then….I guess." Said Mob. She didn't want to leave, not really, because she was still sort of tired first of all. She had only gotten up because Minegishi's phone had woken her up. Second of all she didn't like to leave people alone when they were mad. She always followed dad around when he was mad because she sometimes managed to distract him from what was making him mad in the first place. She also didn't like to leave Sho alone when he was mad because sometimes he broke things…but sometimes she had to leave him alone because she just couldn't take it anymore and she even felt herself starting to get mad sometimes…and maybe that was the way that Minegishi felt. Maybe they were mad at her, so mad, that they couldn't be around her because….because they had mean thoughts that you were not supposed to have about someone towards her…or maybe it was like when dad told her or Sho to get out of his sight because he couldn't even stand to look at them….

Mob hoped that it wasn't one of those times.

She wanted to stay but she knew that she had to go. She made her way next door and let herself in as quietly as possible. She made sure to face her shoes the right way in the genkan, though, because dad hated it when they faced their shoes wrong. He said that it was bad manners and that they were not being raised with bad manners…even though Mob knew that she had pretty bad manners. That was why Minegishi was mad at her. They must have gotten mad because they found out that she had taken without asking...

Even though it had only been a few tiny sips and one little mint.

Well one mint which had not tasted like mint at all. It had tasted bitter…so maybe it had been a bitter. Yes, that seemed like a good name for it. A bitter. She hadn't liked it. It had tasted terrible…but it had also made her feel…nice. Kind of floaty. Floaty but also sleepy. Maybe it was the bitter that had made her so tired. Maybe it was like a sleeping pill…but if it was medicine then why was it in a candy tin? That didn't make any sense.

It didn't matter if it made sense or not. She still should not have taken without asking.

It was all her fault that her friend was mad at her. She was the one who had decided to do that, no one else, and even if they were over reacting they were allowed to react however they wanted. Like how Sho overreacted sometimes and hit her or threw things at her or pushed her or broke things or kicked and screamed and slammed doors and jumped on beds for hours on end. Mob knew that they weren't going to do something like that…well she did but also she didn't…even though she totally did. It was like her mind said one thing but then her brain said another…even though her mind and her brain were the same thing…

It was confusing.

And Mob wanted nothing more than to sleep. She was still so tired. Maybe after she slept it would make more sense to her. Her brain was still moving kind of slow. It probably just needed to recharge some more…like her phone. She checked it. She definitely needed to put this on the charger…and also she had a bunch of missed texts from Sho. They started off with a lot of mad face emojis and ended with a lot of sad faced ones. He said that he was sorry a bunch of times. Oh no….she should have gone home…even though she didn't even remember deciding that she was going to have a sleepover with Minegishi…

Her first sleepover and she couldn't even remember it.

Sleeping in the same room as her brother didn't count. Neither did sleeping next to her dad. Family was different. She'd had an actual sleepover with an actual friend and she had wasted it sleeping. She could have just slept at home. She should have just slept at home. Not only did she waste her first ever sleepover she had also imposed terribly on her friend. That was after she had done all of the eating and drinking without asking…so really there was no wonder at all why Minegishi was so mad at her. She needed sleep. She needed to sleep in her own bed and then she needed to think of how she was supposed to make this better because she did not want to lose her only friend-

The thought make the room shake.

Which was not good. Her powers were being weird still. Instead of ignoring her, though, they were doing things on their own. That was not good. Dad was awake. She could see his aura and she could smell breakfast. Dad was awake and that meant that he must have noticed and now he was going to be mad at her too and she had enough people mad at her as it was…and having dad mad at her was the worst anyway because sometimes he pushed her or pulled on her braids and she did not want to deal with the feelings that came from that because she was having enough feelings as it was and-

The house shook again.

"Daughter. Explain." Said Suzuki from his spot in the kitchen. His tea sloshed out of its cup and onto the table. Daughter's doing. She was home, now, and something had caused her to lose control. It was too early in the day for all of this. He had so much he needed to get done that day. So many idiots thought that they could challenge him, disobey him, deliberately-

His Daughter was one of those idiots.

He was loathe to call her an idiot but she had disobeyed him…or not. He had never explicitly told her that she was forbidden from spending the night with a friend. He had never run into this problem before. He had never thought that he would come home to Son purposely putting holes in the walls out of anger because his older sister had decided that she preferred the company of a friend to that of her own family…

But then again considering how her brother had been carrying on he didn't blame her all that much.

So, really, he was not mad at her. He had been upset with her before but that faded which each and every little footstep that carried her into his sight. She seemed bedraggled. Her hair was coming lose from her braids, her headband was askew, and her dress was heavily wrinkled. He so hoped that she changed. No child of his was going to walk around like that. He was glad to have her back, though, as unkempt as she was.

And as often as she had just been losing control.

"Hi dad." Said Mob as she entered the kitchen. Dad was already dressed and eating breakfast. That could have been a good thing or a bad thing. She hoped that nothing was happening at work to make him upset. She hoped that no traitors were trying to dismantle his life's work again. It was always so annoying when that happened. Dad got upset and then she had to both spend time with him and make sure that nothing happened to Sho, too, and it was a lot of work. She wondered why people were so opposed to what dad was doing. He was just trying to make the world a better place. What was so bad about that?

"Good morning Daughter. Why were you losing control just now?" asked Suzuki. He got right to the point. He didn't waste time prattling on about how her presence had been missed. He didn't need to. She was back and he was not going to admit weakness like that right to his own Daughter's face. What would she think of him then? And what kind of power would she think that he was giving her over him. He didn't need her, he didn't need anyone, he simply enjoyed having her near. That was all.

"I was just worried about Sho, that's all." said Mob. That wasn't the whole truth but she was not going to tell dad what she had done. She knew that he would have been mad at her. Kids were not supposed to drink, first of all, and also she was not supposed to steal. She hadn't stolen very much but doing wrong was doing wrong no matter what she had done.

"Yes, he was carrying on last night, wasn't he?" asked Suzuki. He wondered if she had been able to hear how her brother had been carrying on without her. He wondered if she felt guilty for abandoning him. He wondered if she had even wanted to come back. He wondered why she had even left in the first place. He wondered if she planned on leaving again. He wondered if he should have forbade her from leaving…even though he had no reason to…but he didn't need a reason. He was her father and he could forbid her from doing whatever he felt like forbidding her from doing-

But he was not going to alienate her.

And he was not going to admit how much her absence had affected him. To punish her for leaving, to forbid her from doing it again, would be the same as admitting that he had felt her absence keenly…and there was no way that he was going to do that. So he exorcised his emotion. He stuffed it down and exorcised it completely and totally so there was nothing left at all.

"Um….I don't know. I was asleep. I'm sorry that Sho was bad. I'll be home today to take care of him and then he won't be bad again." said Mob. She was tired, so tried, and also worried. She loved Sho the most out of anyone else in the whole wide world but she didn't want to have to chase after him or anything like that. She just wanted to rest and also to fold a thousand paper cranes like she had promised she would.

"See to it that you do. You can go now." Said Suzuki. That was all that he could say to her. Anything else would have been too much, would have given away too much, and he had to hold his cards close to his chest. He didn't need her, he didn't need anyone, and he certainly did not need to admit to her that he had felt something close to needing her….

So he dismissed her.

Rather than share this meal with her, he really wanted to, he dismissed her. He had to dismiss her, there was no doubt about it, because he missed her company just that badly. She should have gotten a clue and left, especially after she had been dismissed, but instead she just stood there staring at him. He looked down at his phone as he ate, maybe if he ignored her then she would get bored and leave, but she did not leave. Even though she had been explicitly told to leave him alone and go off and do whatever it was that she did during the day.

"Hey, dad?" asked Mob. Dad was smart. He probably knew how to fold paper into all kinds of shapes. She only needed cranes though. She knew that she could have just googled it but it was easier to learn new things when another person taught you how.

"Yes, Daughter? What is it?" asked Suzuki. He was tempted to tell her just to go away and leave him…but then that might have distressed her and then she might have lost control again but possibly in a real way…and he could not have had that. Even though she should have worked harder at controlling her powers. Even now her aura seemed strange. It was a combination of both active and lethargic…and he had no idea how that had even come about. She was always full of surprises. Both of the children were. Son's sheer strength, determination, and energy were surprisingly. How someone his size could have kicked so many holes in the walls, even with psychic powers, was beyond him.

"Do you…do you know how to fold paper cranes?" asked Mob

"Paper cranes?" asked Suzuki. He looked up from his phone. That was sudden. She had never asked him about that before…and it was nice. It was so nice to see her taking an interest in her own culture for once.

"Yes. Like origami. I just thought that you might have known how to because you know a lot of things about a lot of things." Said Mob. Her voice got quiet at the end. Maybe it was too early to start asking dad about things. Maybe he was tired or maybe he was mad about all the holes that were in the walls…or maybe he got mad and made them himself…and maybe she should have just gone to bed and worried about this when she was fully rested instead of asking dad-

He motioned for her to come stand next to him.

And she did. It seemed ok, he didn't seem mad, so maybe she was just worried about nothing. Even though she was close enough that he could have shoved her into a wall or pulled her up by her braids or anything, really. Distance even had nothing to do with that. He never did those things by hand, he never punished her by hand, he always used his powers…and he hardly ever punished her, too. So she had no idea why she was so worried. Sho never got all scared of dad like this and he got punished at least fifty times more often than Mob did if not even more times than that.

"Here. It's really quite simple. Watch me." Said Suzuki. He showed her. She watched him. He showed her with his powers and then by hand. It had been years since he had done this. Not since he had been small, as small as she was now, and his mother had told him that if he folded a thousand paper cranes he would have gotten a wish. He had folded them all by hand like he had been shown and yet he still hadn't gotten his wish.

But that was ages ago.

"That looks so complicated, dad." Said Mob. She watched dad work. He was good at that. Was origami something that all adults knew? Sometimes mom would fold paper animals for her and Sho to play with but she hadn't done that since they were little. Since Mob had been much too little to have watched and learned like she was now. Even though dad was going kind of too fast for her to follow.

He passed her a paper napkin with his powers.

"It really isn't. This is just a test of your ability to memorize multiple steps as well as a test of your dexterity. You can do this." said Suzuki. Those were not empty words of encouragement. He was simply stating a fact. There was no reason why his Daughter could not fold a paper cane. Cranes were easy, anyway, frogs were a whole other thing entirely. He wouldn't have minded it if she had asked him how to make a frog, too. He enjoyed teaching her things and he enjoyed having her near…which was not an admission of weakness because he was teaching her an important life skill.

Which she was on her way to understanding.

At least she had been on her way to understanding once the time came when he absolutely had to leave. He knew that he could never be late, he arrived precisely when he meant to, but he did have a schedule to keep. Deals to make. People to see. Idiots to make examples of. He had a full schedule and he was not going to ruin it just to teach his Daughter origami….even though he sort of wanted to. No matter, no matter, once a period of inactivity came up then he would sit at the table with her and teach her everything he knew. He would get her some proper origami paper too. Napkins could hardly cut it. She would have liked that, some decorative paper. Anything was better than the plain paper napkins and paper towels that they kept in the kitchen.

Yes, he and Daughter would have a nice time later on when he had the time and proper paper to teach her how to do this right.

Mob didn't think that she was doing it right.

So many of her cranes were lopsided. Some of them, most of them, couldn't even sit up on their own. She was so bad at this…but she didn't know if she had to be good at it. She just knew that she had to get to a thousand. When she got to a thousand then she could ask Minegishi to forgive her. Yes, then everything would be ok between them again. That was all that she wanted, for everything to be ok between her and her friend.

"You came home."

And also for things to be ok between her and her little brother. Sho was awake now. She must have been working for a while. She didn't know, she hadn't been staring at the clock, but the sun had moved across the room. Dad had left a while ago too. It was just her and Sho. She stopped folding and looked up at him.

He had brushed his own hair and teeth and gotten himself dressed, too. That was a good sign.

"I did. I'm sorry that I had a sleepover with Minegishi without telling you or inviting you. I should have invited you instead of leaving you and I am so sorry Sho." said Mob. Sho didn't say anything. He just sat down across from her. She used her powers to clear the cranes away and got him his box of cereal out from the cabinet along with milk, a bowl, and a spoon.

He just stuck his whole entire hand in the cereal box even though he knew that it was unsanitary.

"You should have invited me. I would have come. Even if you and Minegishi are super boring together then I would have come." Said Sho as he ate. He was mad at his sister, who wouldn't have been in his situation, but he was not going to be mean to her. He was trying, again, to be nice…even though she had been the one to leave him…but he had been acting like a jerk. Even dad said that he didn't blame big sis for wanting to leave because of how much of a jerk Sho had been acting like….

"But you would have been miserable…" said Mob

"I don't care. It's not…you should have asked me to come. I would have come. It would have been better than sticking around here with dad all night." Said Sho

"I'm sorry. I'll invite you next time." Said Mob. That was the polite thing to do even though she knew that Sho would have been miserable…but that was ok because she loved him and when you loved someone then you included them in everything even things that you knew would end up making them truly miserable.

"I wish that you would have invited me that time!" said Sho. He had tried, he really did, and he also really had not meant to send his bowl flying. Big sis caught it with her powers before it could shatter, though, so that had been good. One less thing for him to worry about. He hated getting stuff stuck in his feet and getting it out was even worse.

"I know that I should have invited you, Sho, I really am sorry. I just fell asleep and then the next thing that I knew it was tomorrow. Please don't be mad at me, I don't want you to be mad at me too." Said Mob

"Too? Who else is mad at you….besides dad? I mean I think that he might have been mad at you last night….or maybe just mostly mad at me." Said Sho. He reached over and hugged his side. It was still sore from before…but that had been his fault for acting like a jerk.

"Dad's mad at me? Why? He seemed so nice this morning. He even showed me how to fold these…but I guess that it's hard to tell with dad sometimes…or maybe I'm just clueless." Said Mob

"You're clueless…but that's ok. I guess that if he didn't do anything to you when you came home then he isn't planning on doing anything to you at all." said Sho

"That makes sense." Said Mob. Sho was hugging his side. That could have meant that dad had punished him or it could have meant that he had fallen off of something again. She didn't know. She didn't want to ask. If dad had punished him then it would have been her fault for not making sure that dad was happy or at least not mad where Sho could set him off and make him even madder. If Sho had fallen and hurt himself then that was her fault too for not watching him. No matter what happened it would always be her fault so she just didn't much feel like having stuff be her fault….so she didn't say anything even though she should have because she was supposed to be a good big sister and good big sisters did not act selfishly like this.

"Why are you even making these, anyway?" asked Sho. He kicked some away from his feet. Mom used to make these before she got sick. Hers were better. She made them so that they actually looked like what they were supposed to be. She knew all the animals. Cranes and frogs and monkeys and dogs and a whole lot of other things. That was before she got sick and had to sleep all day, though, that was way back when he had been little. He wasn't little anymore. He didn't need to play with paper cranes anymore.

"Because I have to make a thousand of them." Said Mob

"Why? Are you trying to make a wish?" asked Sho

"What do you mean?" asked Mob

"Remember from the story mom told us? When you fold a thousand paper cranes you get to make a wish and it has to come true. Not like a birthday wish or a wishing well wish or wishing on a star. When you fold a thousand paper cranes then your wish has to come true." Said Sho

"Oh. I don't remember that story very well." Said Mob

'Mom probably just told it to me in that case. You were probably busy hanging out with dad." Said Sho

"Yes. That's probably it. I'm not trying to make a wish though." said Mob

"Well then can I have your wish? I mean if you get a wish for every thousand you make then I should have it if you're just making these for fun." Said Sho

"I'm not making these for fun, Sho, I'm making them for Minegishi." Said Mob. If you got a wish then maybe that was why Minegishi had sent her off to do this. Well if that was what it took to get them to forgive her then Mob would gladly give them her wish.

"Why? Because they're your best friend?" asked Sho. He wanted to take his box of cereal and throw it at her…but he didn't. Because then she would leave and also it would be a waste of perfectly good cereal.

"Because I think that they're mad at me and I want them to forgive me." Said Mob

"So you only care if they're mad at you?" asked Sho. That wasn't fair! He was mad at big sis almost all the time and she never folded a thousand paper cranes to make HIM forgive her!

"No. I care if you're mad at me too, Sho." said Mob

"But you're giving your wish to them and not me. I'm mad at you way more often than they are, I should be the one who gets the wish." Said Sho

"I'll make another thousand so you can have that wish too, alright little brother?" asked Mob

"Fine…but let me help too. There's no way we're getting any wishes with these." Said Sho

"What's wrong with them?" asked Mob. She made a few float with her powers and held them up to the ones that dad had made. There wasn't that much of a difference…was there?

"They're supposed to be cranes, right? Well they look like lumps. There's no way that we're getting any wishes for a thousand paper lumps." Said Sho

"Well then you do it if you know so much better than me." Said Mob. That came out a little meaner, or a lot meaner actually, than she had meant. She had been working hard and then Sho just calling her hard work a bunch of lumps…that had made her just a little upset…or more than a little….

"Show me how to and then I'll show you how it's done." Said Sho. Honestly. There would be no point in making two thousand of these things if they just ended up messing them all up. Then they would have wasted a whole day and that was a day that they would never be able to get back. Besides, it couldn't have been that hard.

It was.

Dad had showed big sis and then big sis had shown him. Maybe he would have learned better if dad had been the one to show him. Maybe that way he would have been able to do better than big sis on the first try. He did do better than her eventually. When they ran out of napkin and paper towels and had to use his old drawings. When they had run out of those, even and then they had to send the Awakened out for paper. When they had covered the whole kitchen table and the kitchen floor and they had to move out to the living room.

They made a lot of cranes.

Eventually they made it to one thousand and Sho decided, then, that he would use up his wish. It was something that he had been wishing for, wanting, for years. He wanted mom back. That was all. He didn't care if she came back and she was so sick that she was stuck in bed all day. He didn't care if she never read to him again. He didn't care how she came back to him just that she came back. That was all that he wanted…

And paper crane wishes had to come true.

They just had to otherwise his mom had been a liar and he knew that his mom was no liar. She wasn't a traitor either even if that was what dad thought. If he still thought that after mom came home well then….well then Sho would have no choice. He would have to take mom with him and run away. Because if dad thought that mom was traitor then he would maybe even punish her like he punished him and big sis…and then that would have been bad…so he and mom would have had to run away. Big sis could stay with dad since he liked her best.

That was his paper crane wish. Big sis could do whatever she wanted with the second one.

"Ok, you can have your wish now. I think that we're finally done." Said Mob. The sun was making long shadows in their house. It was almost done. She hoped that it said hello to Japan for her. Not that she wished for that or anything. No because first of all the sun always rose on Japan so that would be a waste of a wish and second of all these wishes were already promised to people.

If she wanted a wish then she could just fold another thousand paper cranes.

Even though her hands were so, so sore, so super sore that she had ended up using her powers towards the end. She hoped that the thing that gave wishes didn't count that as cheating. Her brother helped with half of them…and she hoped that Sho helping didn't count as cheating either. She just hoped that the wishes worked and she didn't have to sit there and fold anymore cranes.

Even though she really wanted a wish of her own she didn't want to sit down and fold anymore cranes.

What she really wanted was mom back but she was not going to wish for that. Dad didn't like her anymore. He had decided that she was a traitor and they were supposed to pretend like she had never existed. If Mob ended up wishing her mom back into the family then she would have been miserable because dad didn't even like her let alone love her anymore…and also dad would have been mad at her too because wishing for mom to come back was the direct opposite of pretending that she had never existed.

But she still wanted her mom back.

"I already used it up." Said Sho

"Sho! You should have said something." Said Mob

"Why? Would you have stopped?" asked Sho

"No…but I still wish that you would have said something." Said Mob

"That would have been dumb. If you wouldn't have stopped then I wouldn't have had to tell you anything." Said Sho

"That makes sense…I guess…" said Mob. She still would have liked to know if he was using one of the wishes. What if he wished for something dumb, like a pet? Dad would have been mad. The only thing worse than him wishing for a pet would have been him wishing for a little brother or sister for them. Mob did not need that kind of extra work. Yes, that would have been the worst thing that he could have wished for…aside from their mom coming back. But he was smart. He knew how mad dad would have been if mom not only suddenly came back but he also found out that she and Sho were the ones who wished for her to come back. As much as she loved mom and wanted her back, more than anything else in the whole wide world, she knew how badly that would have turned out. Sho knew too…right? He was smart like that….right?

"And don't you dare and ask me what I wished for. If this is anything like birthday wish rules then it won't come true if I tell you." Said Sho. There was no way that he was going to ruin this. How often did you get a guaranteed wish? He wasn't sure if he had done it right, actually, since big sis had been the one to start this and he had only been helping. He also didn't know if this was like genie rules and the wishes were nontransferable. He also didn't know how long the wish would take. Would mom be back tomorrow morning or would this take a hundred years and she'd be back when he was old or something like that.

"I won't ask, then, but I hope that it comes true little brother. Thank you for helping me all day even though I know that you must be bored and tired and also all you had to eat today was a box of cereal and so you must be hungry and-" said Mob

"I'm fine, leave me alone and go give these stupid things to Minegishi." Said Sho. He hoped that calling the cranes stupid didn't take the wish away. Were they the wish granters or was it a God or something like that? He didn't know, the story hadn't been too clear on that, but he did know that he did not need big sis to pretend to be their mom. They had a mom and she was coming back now! Hopefully. It depended on if he had made the wish the right way.

"Ok, I will. I love you, little brother." Said Mob

"Yeah, yeah, yeah I love you too big sis…now leave me alone. I'm going to go eat another box of cereal." Said Sho. He was careful not to step on any of the paper cranes. If he stepped on them then that could ruin the wish, too. He didn't care at all if Minegishi's wish came true. He just cared about his own wish. He just cared about getting his mom back.

His wish would come true.

"Ok. You can have mine if you want." Said Mob. She'd only had a box of cereal and some milk that day…and also she was more tired than she ever had been in her life…but she was going to make up with Minegishi. They were home now. Mob could see their aura. That was good. Now all she had to do was figure out how to get these paper cranes all the way next door without running them.

How hard could that be?

Just when Minegishi thought that their day couldn't get any harder their window decided to open on it's own.

"Seriously?" groaned Minegishi from their bed. She knew that aura, it was Mob's, which meant that now after a long day of stringing up traitors it was playtime once again. Minegishi did not feel like playing. They were exhausted and still sort of upset over what had happened earlier. They just wanted to rest…

But then a little white bird flew in through their window.

And then another and another and another. They flew in so fast that Minegishi couldn't even begin to understand what was happening. By the time they made it to their window to shut it they realized that these weren't little white birds at all but folded up bits of paper. Paper cranes.

What must have been a thousand paper cranes floated their way into Minegishi's bedroom.

This was Mob's doing. They could see her aura. She had been the one to do all of this…and Minegishi knew why. Their conversation that morning. Mob making all of those wishes and then Minegishi sarcastically telling her to make a thousand paper cranes since she was sitting there making wish after wish after wish…and apparently she had….because she, like her father, was deaf to sarcasm. Well then….

Wow.

This must have taken all day. Even with telekinesis this must have taken all day. Mob really was that sorry…and of course she had been. That was the sweetest kid in the world. She had made a mistake, a dangerous and stupid one, and she was sorry. That was….Minegishi was getting a soft spot for that kid. Or maybe they'd always had one for her. Or maybe their whole head was just one big soft spot. They'd believe either.

The apology was still accepted though.

Minegishi was always going to accept Mob's apology, there was no point in holding a grudge against a nine year old anyway, but the paper cranes just cinched it. The knock on the door, on their bedroom door, was the icing on the cake. Mob was knocking. She was actually respecting boundaries. Minegishi half expected the sun to come back and some clouds to part while a heavenly choir sang hallelujah.

But they settled for opening the door and them saying a simple hi.

"Hi." Said Minegishi. There was more to say, apologies to accept, but all that they had managed to get out was a simple 'hi' before Mob was on the ground kowtowing. A little bit down the hall they could see Shimazaki laughing. They flipped him off knowing full well that he could see the gesture. Thankfully Mob couldn't from their position on the floor.

"I'm sorry, Minegishi! Please accept the one thousand paper crane wish that I got from making these cranes and please keep on being my friend. I'm sorry about what happened. Please don't be mad at me anymore!" said Mob. She held her kowtow on the floor. She could feel herself being looked at by both Minegishi and Shimazaki. She didn't care. She would gladly have done this for days and days if it meant that Minegishi forgave her.

"Ok, ok, I forgive you. Just get up off the floor and never do it again." said Minegishi. Yup, they were getting soft in their old age. Or maybe not. This was some gesture. A thousand paper cranes. Minegishi didn't believe in magic, Mob was the kid not them, and they didn't think that wishes were transferable anyway, but it was a nice gesture.

Minegishi forgave Mob but they were still a little pissed.

But, hey, Mob said that she was never going to do it again. Also Minegishi could have used a little sweetness after a full day of doing things to traitors that were really not so sweet. They weren't totally out of the woods yet, Mob had messed up royally, but at least they weren't angry…as much….anymore. Mob was…she was a good kid. Even if she had stolen from Minegishi and broken their trust….but then again maybe they should have just left that stuff where Mob could find it…

They were going to make more of an effort to keep their less than legal things out of Mob's sight…and also they were going to have to start marking their liquor bottles…so much extra work…but then again Mob had done her fair share of extra work that day too.

"Really? I'm so happy. This was so worth it! Now we're still friends and you get a wish! But don't tell me what it is or it won't come true. I think that it might be the same as birthday rules." Said Mob. She was so happy! Now they could keep on being friends and they could play together some more and hang out and have another sleepover only Mob would be awake for this one and also she would invite Sho just to keep it fair and this would be so great and-

"The only thing I wish for is a good night's sleep. Ok? Go home, I'll see you in the morning." Said Minegishi. As touching as this scene was they needed sleep to live. They could be besties again some other time. Minegishi was pretty much dead on their feet and judging by Mob's aura and how early she had gotten up that morning she wasn't doing much better.

"Ok….good night." Said Mob. She wanted to hang out and play but she was hungry and tired and stuff. That was ok, though, because they were still friends. They would be able to play again tomorrow and the next day and the next day too! Because Minegishi wasn't mad at her anymore even though she'd messed up really badly.

And it only took a thousand paper cranes to make things all better.


	114. Rippy Bits

Sho knew that he was being a baby.

Of course wishes did not come true. Even if you folded a thousand paper cranes your wish would not come true. That was because there was no such thing as magic and wishes were just words. There was no combination of words that would magically bring his mom back. She was gone and he just…he just had to accept that. He didn't know why he couldn't. He was eight now, almost nine, and he was big enough to know that he was never getting his mom back.

It hurt.

"Sho, come on. If dad doesn't want you to come with then we can play." Said big sis. She was shaking him awake. The joke was on her, though, because he had always been awake. He had gotten up early that morning after not having been able to sleep all night…because he was such a baby sometimes.

"Go away." said Sho. He pulled the blanket up over his head. He didn't want to play. He didn't want to do anything. Well he did kind of want to do something. He wanted to yell and scream and hit things…and he probably would. If she kept on bothering him then he would have probably ended up yelling at her and maybe even hitting her…and he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to be a jerk to her like that.

"But we haven't played together in a while. We could play Wii or we could go somewhere or we could-" said big sis

"Do you know what I want to do?" asked Sho. He sounded mean there. He shouldn't have been mean to her like that. She was his big sister and…and part of him knew that he was supposed to be nice to her and another part of him, the jerk part of him, didn't care one bit. That part also wanted to kick her. He pulled his blanket tight over his legs. There, now that his legs were trapped he didn't have to worry about kicking her…even though she did sort of deserve it for the way that she was being.

"I don't." said big sis

"Do you want to know?" asked Sho

"What is it? Whatever it is we can-" said big sis

"I want to sit here, ok? I just want to sit here and wait for tomorrow to happen." Said Sho. Maybe he would be less upset by the time tomorrow came. Maybe by the time tomorrow came around he could stop being a baby and he would stop caring that he had folded a thousand paper cranes for no reason at all.

"Why? What's happening tomorrow?" asked big sis

"Something. Nothing. I don't know. All I know is that tomorrow won't be today. Ok? I just…I want it to stop being today." Said Sho. Tomorrow. He would stop caring about this tomorrow. Tomorrow was another day after all…so by the time tomorrow came then this would all be a distant memory or whatever.

"Because dad left you here with me all day?" asked big sis. He did not need to be reminded of that. Dad said that morning that he'd had enough of him and needed a break. He was such a jerk…and that was why Sho was such a jerk. Father and son, jerks together.

"No! Because-because…." Said Sho

"Because why?" asked big sis

"Because you're annoying me right now! Can't you just go and do something else?! Can't you just go off and bother someone else?" asked Sho

"But….I'm just worried about you. You seem kind of…upset." Said big sis

"I'm upset because you won't go away." said Sho. She made a sound like she was sad, there, and he felt bad for being a jerk…even if he wasn't really sure if that was a jerk thing that he did. Maybe she was the one who was a jerk. She wasn't going away even though he asked her to after all.

"….do you really want me to go away?" asked big sis. She sounded sad there…and she had nothing to be sad about! It wasn't like she had made a wish and stayed up all night hoping that it would come true! She had given her wish away! Maybe if she had held onto her wish and then wished for mom to come back right at the same time that Sho had wished for mom to come back…maybe then mom would have come back…even if they were on the other side of the world…and he was just being such a baby. There was no such thing as magic and there was no such thing as getting wishes from folding a thousand paper cranes. All you ended up with were cuts on your hands when you spent a whole day folding a thousand paper cranes.

"I'm speaking plain Japanese aren't I?" said Sho. He spoke three and a half languages. She spoke four. Did she want him to tell her in all the languages that they spoke to leave him alone? Why was that such a hard concept for her to grasp? He didn't want to play. He wanted to be alone because otherwise he knew that he was going to lose his temper and then he would be a mean jerk to her and then…and then he would feel even worse because he had been mean to her. Mom always hated it when he was mean. She always wanted him to be nice…and he didn't know why he still cared what mom thought. She was gone and no amount of wishing and hoping was ever going to bring her back.

"You are." Said big sis. She was still standing over him. His back was to her but he could see her aura. He wished that she would have gone to play with her friend or something…but they weren't around. He couldn't see their aura. She only played with him when they were at work.

"So then you're either deaf or stupid." Said Sho

"That's not nice." Said big sis

"I know that it's not nice. It's true though. I told you in plain Japanese that I want you to leave me alone. If you can't understand that then you must either be deaf or just plain stupid. Which is it?" asked Sho

"Neither. I'm worried about you. You're acting like-" said big sis

"Like a jerk? Well newsflash, I am a jerk. Dad's a jerk and I'm a jerk too because I'm his son." Said Sho. Maybe that was why mom had left. Maybe she knew that he would have grown up to be a jerk and then she left to spare herself his jerkiness…or something like that. He didn't know. He just wanted to be left alone.

"I wasn't going to say that, Sho, you know that I would never call you names. I was going to say that you were acting like something was really wrong. What's wrong? Why won't you tell me? If you would just tell me then I could make it better." Said big sis. She thought that she could make it better?! She was always thinking like that. Thinking that she could do anything just because she was more powerful and dad liked her best and left her in charge all the time. Well she couldn't!

That time he did try to kick her.

"Leave me alone. Unless you can grant wishes, and I know you can't, then you should just leave me alone." Said Sho

"I wish you wouldn't kick me and hit me and yell at me and call me names and stuff like that, little brother." Said big sis

"See? You can make wishes but you can't grant them." Said Sho. His back was still to her. He had to keep his back to her. If he looked at her then he might have ended up yelling at her or hitting her or something like that. He didn't want that. He didn't want to fight. Not with her.

"You're right, I can't grant wishes…but I can still make them and I wish that you would just stop it. Just stop yelling at me and kicking me and just…please just tell me what's the matter. I'm here for you, Sho, I love you the most." said big sis

"Maybe you should have saved your wish then. Maybe if you had saved your wish then you could have wished for me to stop kicking you." Said Sho. That would have been a good use for a wish. If she had wished that he was less of a jerk to her and her wish was granted…that would have been really nice. But that was not how things worked in the slightest.

"Sho….please just tell me what this is about." Said big sis

"It's about….you know what this is about!" said Sho. This time he did turn around to face her. She was looking at him. He wished that she would stop. He didn't think, he just threw his pillow at her. For a minute he worries that she's going to make it explode like before, like she did when they had their great big fight, but she doesn't do anything. She just lets it hit her in the face.

This makes him even madder.

She wouldn't fight back! She wasn't fighting back because she knew that it would make him feel like more of a jerk than he already was! She should have just fought back and then they could have been in a fight and then…then he wouldn't have been such a jerk! If she was a jerk too then-then it all would have been ok. They would have been jerks together and then it wouldn't have mattered how mean he was. Mom wouldn't have thought that he was a jerk if she had two jerk kids! And if big sis was a jerk too then dad wouldn't have liked her any better than he liked him.

But she wasn't a jerk. She was bossy and annoying but she wasn't a jerk.

"If I knew, little brother, then I wouldn't have asked you in the first place. I don't ask questions just to hear myself speak. Can you please just tell me what this is about?" asked big sis. She sounded just like dad there. That was word for word what dad would have said. She even got the tone right….

Sho had no choice.

He rolled over, sat up, and pushed her. He pushed her by hand and with his powers. She went flying to the ground….and she looked up at him…and he knew that he had been a jerk….but so had she! She was the one who had been talking like dad! What, did she think that she was dad too, now!? She already thought that she was mom! Why did she need to pretend to be both of their parents!?

"That hurt." Said big sis. That was all that she was going to say?! She should have been the one…the one to say sorry! She should have been the one to tell him that she was sorry about pretending to be mom and pretending to be dad and making him fold all of those paper cranes in the first place! She was the one who got them started on that and she was the one who got his hopes up!

"Yeah well a lot of stuff hurts!" said Sho

"Like what? Sho, if something hurts then you have to tell me so I can call Fukuda and he can fix it." Said big sis

"This isn't something that he can fix! Ok?!" said Sho

"Just talk to me…please…" said big sis. She looked like she was going to cry…and he was just the biggest jerk in the whole world. It felt like that, anyway….but she was being a jerk right back. She was the one who wouldn't shut up about him telling her how he felt. He couldn't talk about it. Not with her or with anyone.

They weren't allowed to talk about mom.

"What? You want me to talk? Well then here, I'll talk. Leave. Me. Alone. There. Was that enough talking for you?! Was it!?" asked Sho. Big sis got up and wiped her eyes. His eyes met hers. He was not going to sit there and spill his guts to her. Besides, she wouldn't get it. She still had dad. That was why she didn't use her wish on getting mom back. She still had dad and no matter how much time he spent with dad he would never…he and dad would never be as close as dad and big sis were….

It wasn't fair.

She didn't say anything. She just left the room. She left the room and she left him alone like he had been asking her to all morning….but he didn't feel any better. Actually he felt worse. Once she was gone then he had nobody to be mad at but himself. He had lost control again and he had been such a jerk to her…but she had been a jerk too! That was what he told himself, that she deserved it, because she just would not leave him alone.

And also she had gotten his hopes up.

If she hadn't been folding all the paper cranes then he wouldn't have thought about mom and the story she had told him back when he was little. If he hadn't remembered her and the story then he wouldn't have gotten the idea to fold a thousand paper cranes in order to wish her back into his life. He had been such a baby….there was no such thing as magic…and wishes didn't come true even if your mom told you that they would.

Mom had lied to him.

She was a traitor like dad had said. She had lied to him about getting a wish if he folded a thousand paper cranes and she had lied to him about living him until the end of time and she had lied to him about always being there, too. It had been lies on top of lies on top of lies. So why did he want her back? He didn't! At least dad and big sis had never lied to him! At least dad and big sis were always going to be there! What had mom done for him besides lie and disappear and-and-and-and betray him! That was what she had done! She had betrayed him! He didn't care if she ever came back because she was a traitor and a betrayer and a liar and-and-and-

And she was his mom.

She was his mom and that made everything just so much worse. He wanted her back. Even if she was a liar and a traitor and a betrayer he still wanted her to come back. There were oceans between them now, probably, if she had stayed in Japan. That was far. Oceans were far and plane rides were long and…and he didn't care. He wanted his mom back.

He couldn't even remember what she looked like.

That sent him jumping from his bed like a kangaroo with bedbugs. He jumped out of bed and fell to the floor. He rolled over onto his stomach and took his box of pencils out from under his bed. He used his powers to bring over a bunch of paper cranes. He unfolded them until he found one made with blank paper. He had to…he had to remember what she looked like.

Think brain! Think already!

Trying to make himself picture mom just made it harder to picture her. He picked up a brown pencil…that was not the same brown as her hair…but it would have to do. Maybe if he didn't' press to hard. He started with her hair. It had been brown and soft and puffy, too, sometimes. Her skin had been pale…but not like his and certainly not like big sis'. No, she was more peach colored. Her skin would come next. She was tall, too, much taller than him…he thought. He didn't know. He had grown since he had seen her last. Maybe she hadn't been that tall at all. Maybe he had just been short. He had been six after all when she left…

He drew her tall.

He remembered that she wore a yellow dress sometimes so he drew that too. She also had red fingernails. He drew those too…even though now her hands looked way too big. He wished that he had stared this as a sketch first. That way he could have worked out any mistakes before the color. He was being such a baby starting straight from coloring. He was always such a baby. This drawing sucked and he sucked and everything sucked.

He half expected big sis to come in and tell him not to even think the word 'sucked' even though that wasn't a bad word at all.

But she wouldn't be coming in. She was watching TV, he could hear it. Fine. Whatever. He didn't want her around anyway. She would have just come in pretending to be their parents again. There was no replacing mom and he had no idea why she would ever want to be like dad. He was like dad and he hated it. Why couldn't he be more like himself and less like dad? He couldn't be like mom. Mom was nice all the time. Sho had no idea how to be nice all the time.

Maybe big sis could give him lessons.

She was always trying to be nice all the time. That was why she never yelled at him or hit him back. She wasn't that sort of person. She was a nice sort of person and that was who he was supposed to be, too, even though he had no idea how to be a nice person. Mom would have been so mad at him if she could have seen just how much of a jerk he was. Even picture mom was probably mad at him. Picture mom, real mom, his mom, other people's moms, no mom would ever like him. Not the way that he was. Even picture mom looked like she was mad at him…or at least she would have looked mad if he had drawn her a face.

He put his pencil down on the page.

And he couldn't remember her face. No matter how hard he thought he couldn't remember his own mom's face. He sucked! He sucked so bad! He was the suckiest son in the history of sons! No wonder dad didn't like him! No wonder mom had left! He sucked! He sucked! He sucked! He took his drawing and ripped it up. He threw the rippy bits around the room and then he just started kicking the bed next to him. He kicked and he screamed and he didn't know why he was kicking and screaming, only that it made him feel better, so he kept on doing it.

The room was shaking.

Pieces of plaster came down from the ceiling. The lights flickered on and off. Those were his powers. Sometimes he lost control of his powers, too, just like big sis did. Dad called it having a temper tantrum, not losing control, even though Sho did not have temper tantrums! He was not a little kid! He didn't get upset and throw tantrums! He just lost control sometimes, that was all!

Like now.

There was stuff flying through the air and hitting the walls and he didn't even care. This wasn't their house. They were never going back to their house. This was just a place that they were living at. This place didn't matter. He could gave brought the whole entire thing crashing to the ground and it wouldn't have mattered. In fact maybe he should have brought the whole thing to the ground. Maybe he should have used his powers to bring the whole house crashing to the ground and then they would have to move again and then-then-then he didn't know!

He didn't end up bringing the house crashing to the ground.

There was another aura in the room. It was brighter than his and stronger than his. Big sis. She was taking all the things that he was holding up and throwing through the air. It was like she was ripping them out of his hands even though she was all the way in the doorway. She was using her powers. She was stronger than he was. It wasn't fair. She was so much stronger and…and dad liked her best…and she probably didn't even want mom back! Why would she have wanted their mom back!? She had always liked dad the best! And now she even got to pretend to BE mom, too!

It wasn't fair!

"I told you to leave me alone!" shouted Sho. He shouted that at her a few times. She didn't listen. She just used her powers to keep him from breaking any more stuff. She walked towards him and as she walked more and more of their stuff got put away. He dolls went back to their spots and the paper cranes all lined themselves up on the floor and their beds even got made. He didn't ask her to do that. If he wanted their room to be clean then he wouldn't have messed it up in the first place.

"I know what you said-" said big sis. Good. If she knew what he said then she should have known enough to do what he said. She wasn't mom. She didn't just get to come in here when he told her not to and start bothering him when she knew what he wanted to be alone. What? Did she think that she could come in here and make him feel better? Like mom would have if she hadn't left them? Well she was not mom and she never would be!

"Then get out of here, Shigeko! Just get out! Now!" shouted Sho

"No. I won't do that. You need-" said big sis. She was standing over him now. She looked tall like that. But she wasn't tall. They were the same size. She wasn't mom and she wasn't tall. She was his big sister. She was only a year older than he was. She was not the boss of him.

"You don't know what I need!" shouted Sho

"Yes I do. You need-" said big sis. She said it like she was trying to be mom. Mom talked like that sometimes….and that made no sense. He could remember the way his mom talked but not the way she looked? He could remember her voice but not her face? What even was that!? What was the MATTER with him!?

"You need to do what I told you! Don't you remember what I said!? Don't you ever LISTEN?! I told you to go away! I said that! I SAID THAT!" shouted Sho. He was standing up, now, because he had to be. She was not taller than him. She was not the boss of him. She was not their mom no matter how much time she spent pretending that she was! She was not mom…he had no mom….

"I know what you said but…but you're upset! You are so clearly upset and…and I hate it! I hate that you just won't let me help you! Sho, you are my little brother and I love you! Even when you act like this! No matter how mean you are or how many times you yell at me or hit me or kick me or call me names I will always love you! Now please just tell me what's wrong!" said big sis. Her aura was pushing up against his. Her hair was floating around her head. Her hands were clenched into fists. The shook at her sides.

She was mad at him.

"Sh-shut up." Said Sho. He was mad right back. Now they were mad together. He didn't want to hear about how much she loved him. He didn't want to hear about how she wanted to take care of him. He didn't need her to love him or to take care of him. He didn't need anyone to take care of him. He could take care of himself. He was a complete person all on his own. He didn't need her or mom or dad or anyone.

"No. I will not shut up. Something is wrong with you right now. I don't know what it is and I don't know if it's something that I can fix but I am going to try. I love you and it hurts me to see you like this. Now tell me what's wrong." Said big sis. She was talking like dad now. That way of talking where you were trying super hard not to have any feelings. That was how dad talked when he was mad at them, mostly Sho, and Sho did not want to hear it from his own big sister.

"Nothing's wrong." Said Sho. There was no point in telling her, she couldn't make it any better, and anyway even if he did want to tell her he wouldn't. Not after she had ordered him to. She was not the boss of him!

"Now you're lying to me. You were yelling and breaking things and you lost control of your powers too. I know what it's like to lose control like that and don't worry, I won't tell dad, I just want to know what's wrong and I am not moving from this spot until you tell me." Said Big sis

"You're not mom, you know. Just because you boss me around and say some of the same stuff that she did…that does not make you mom." Said Sho

"I know that I'm not mom but…but that doesn't mean that I can't care about you. I care about you more than anyone else in the whole world…and I wish that you would just believe me when I tell you that." Said big sis

"Stop it." Said Sho through clenched teeth. She didn't listen. She never listened. He didn't want to talk about it. What did he have to do? Hire a skywriter! Move some clouds around until they spelled out a message in the sky that even she wouldn't be too clueless to understand?

"No. I will not stop it. Just tell me-" said big sis

"I can't remember mom's face! Ok?! Is that what you wanted to hear!?" shouted Sho. He pushed her as hard as he could. She took a step back but didn't fall. She caught herself with her powers. She didn't even start crying or anything. She was still just staring at him…like she was dad and he was doing that thing where he stared at you like he was a Martian trying to understand humans.

"Sho-" said big sis

"I can't remember her and I tried to draw her and-and-and I can't! Ok?! Do you get it now!?" shouted Sho. She took a step back but aside from that she just kept on staring at him. He grabbed her by the arms and shook her. She didn't stop staring.

"Sho, if you wanted to-" said big sis. Sho didn't listen. He was past the point of listening. Now he was talking. All the words came up like word throw up. He couldn't help it.

"I thought that she would come back, ok?! I thought that if I made a thousand paper cranes and wished hard enough that she would come back but-but-but I was stupid! I was being a baby! There are no such things as wishes. Mom is gone and she is never coming back and-and-and I can't even remember her face! Ok!? And that's why I want you to leave me alone! The stupid paper cranes were your idea and you're the one who got my hopes up and-and-and-" said Sho

"Sho. Stop yelling at me." Said big sis. She reached a hand over and for a moment he's got the crazy idea in his head that she's going to hit him. But she doesn't hit him. Of course she wouldn't, she's big sis. She just called her tablet over with telekinesis.

"I don't want to play anything right now. I just want to….wait for tomorrow to happen. I don't know." Said Sho as she stared scrolling through her tablet. A game of air hockey or a temple run tournament would have been fun…but Sho just didn't feel like it right then.

"Here. So you remember what she looks like." Said big sis. She turned her tablet around and…and she had a picture of mom. It was mom and him and her at the table…and he remembered that day. They had been really little…and it had been Christmas time…and they had been decorating the cookies…and he had been so little…and it had been so long ago, four years ago almost, and-and-and-

A tear slid down his face.

She reached over and pulled her sleeve down over her hand. She wiped up his tears like mom did. Her tablet floated in the air. Sho didn't look at it. He didn't want to look at it. He didn't want to remember mom or think about her…and he also did. He wanted…he wanted his mom back…but he also didn't because she had left and even if she did come back those times…those times were over. There was no way that they could ever go back to how things were, not after she left, and not just because dad hated her now. Sho…he was mad at her…and she wouldn't have wanted to come back anyway. He wasn't supposed to be mad at her because she was his mom…but he was. He was mad at her and dad and big sis…and himself.

He was mad at everybody.

"Don't do that. I'm not a baby." Said Sho. He was not supposed to cry. He was not allowed to cry. But there he was just standing there and crying like he was a little baby and she was standing there, too, and she was drying his tears like he was a little baby and she was mom…and she wasn't mom! He pushed her hand away. She just went right back to drying his tears even though he never asked her to and he didn't need her to and-

And he didn't even know anymore.

"I wasn't calling you a baby. You're sad and I'm going to at least dry your tears. I'm going to do what I can to make you feel better." Said big sis

"Showing me a picture of mom isn't going to make me feel better. You're not even supposed to have that, you know. If dad finds out then you're in for it." Said Sho

"I know that I'm going to get in trouble if dad finds out but I also know that you're not going to tell dad on me. You're not like that." Said big sis

"Yeah, I won't tell dad." Said Sho. He had no reason to tell dad. He was a jerk, not a tattle tale, and he had no reason go around telling on his sister anyway. He had nothing to gain by getting her in trouble just like she had no reason to tell dad on him when he did bad stuff.

"Thank you. I won't tell him that you were drawing mom, either, and I'd hide your drawing for you when you're done with it. Dad likes to take your drawings, he goes through your drawing pile every day before he goes to work, but if I fold up the drawing of mom and hide it in your shoes or with your plastic animals then maybe dad won't be able to find it." Said big sis

"I hate it when he steals my drawings." Said Sho. He didn't know why dad did that. He stole them and then he put them up on his office walls, sometimes, or sometimes they just vanished. He didn't get dad one bit sometimes.

"I know but he isn't going to stop. We can't tell dad what to do, he tells us what to do, that's why he's the dad and we're the kids." Said big sis

"Yeah, I know. I know that he's the boss of us and he can do whatever he wants and we get no say in it at all…and it doesn't even matter if he takes my drawings, I can always draw more. He won't get my drawing of mom, anyway, because I ripped it up." Said Sho. He picked up one of the rippy bits and held it between two fingers. She reached out and took it. Her aura filled the room and before Sho knew it the bits and pieces of his drawing had come back together.

Almost like new.

"Here. See, now you can finish." Said big sis. She held out the drawing. He took it. He couldn't do things like that….no matter how much he tried he couldn't do things like that. She could. He…he didn't know how he felt. He was happy that…that he could finish his drawing but also sad that…well about mom…and now he was mad at her too and all she had done was help him.

He didn't know.

He just didn't know.

"Thanks." Said Sho. That was all that he could manage to say. That was what he was supposed to say when someone did something nice for him. Thanks. He said that even though there was so much more he wanted to say to her…much of it mean…some of it not mean…but he didn't say anything.

He just said thanks.

And then he went back to drawing. He was sad and mad and happy and…and a whole lot of other feelings. Feelings that made him want to scream and cry and break things…but he didn't. He didn't scream or break things because he had already done enough of that and he was tired of being a jerk. He didn't cry, either, even though he wanted to cry more than anything else in the world.

He didn't, though, because he was through acting like a baby.


	115. Nighttime Rememberings and Thinkings

How could a person forget their own mother?

Easily, it seemed, for Mob at least. Sho had been upset, before, because he had forgotten mom's face. He had been trying to draw a picture of her, she had no idea why he would do something that would so obviously get him in trouble, and he had gotten upset because he couldn't remember her face. Mob had to show him a picture. She wanted to describe it to him but she had to show him a picture.

Because she had forgotten their mom's face too.

She was the worst. How could a person just forget their own mother like that? Mom…she had known mom since the day she had been born. Even before that because she had grown in mom's stomach. She didn't think that two, or maybe three, years could have erased something as important as her mom's face from her mind? She remembered other things about mom. How she smelled like cinnamon, how she wore a lot of yellow, how she liked cats the most out of any animals in the whole world, and things like that. But she just hadn't been able to remember mom's face.

But she had pictures.

She couldn't fault Sho for not remembering their mom's face. She had forgotten it too. Sho at least had an excuse, he was a lot younger than her, and when you were little you forgot things easier. That was why she could remember when Sho had been two but Sho couldn't remember ever being two. She was the older sister and she was the one who was supposed to remember things better. Like what their mom looked like.

Or what their mom had been like.

Mob had been thinking, lately, about mom. About she had been. She remembered mom as having been tired a lot of the time. She spent most of her time in bed because she had been sick and tired. Sho didn't remember her like that. Sho said that she had only been sick for a little bit but she had mostly been fun. She was always taking them places and playing with them and all of that sort of stuff. Stuff that dad never did. Mom was like the opposite of dad, Sho remembered, and Mob sort of agreed. Maybe. She didn't know. She had always spent more time with dad when he had been around. That was how they had divided up their parents. She had dad and Sho had mom.

That was the way that it was.

But now things were different. She and Sho had to share dad. Sho actually spent more time with dad now than she did. He was still doing the part of his work that she could not be involved in. She wouldn't have liked to come around because she hated fighting and stuff like that. Even though she liked being with her family more than she disliked fighting. She missed her dad so much sometimes…and Sho when he was gone…even if she did have a friend now. She already didn't have a mom, she was not going to lose her brother and dad, too.

Even though she knew that those were crazy people thoughts.

It was crazy to think that she would wake up one morning and her dad and little brother would be gone and she would be all alone in a strange house in a strange country without anyone…dad wouldn't do that to her. Sho wouldn't let dad do that to her. She wasn't going to lose her dad or her little brother. She was sure of that. Dad had told her that she would be by his side for the rest of her life and Sho was her little brother so she had to take care of him. Therefore they would always be together. Even when she grew up she would always be with dad. Sho would grow up and go, though, and she wondered if she would still be able to remember him. She couldn't remember everything about mom. Stuff like her favorite color and her favorite drinking glass and her favorite time of the day…things like that. She wondered if she would forget these things about Sho when he grew up and left. She wondered if mom remembered those sorts of things about them. She wondered if mom ever thought about them. She wondered if mom ever stared up at the ceiling at night and thought about her and Sho.

Mob did that sometimes.

It was nighttime now. She was supposed to be asleep. Sho was asleep in the bed across from her. He was laying on his stomach and he was kicking a little bit. Maybe he was dreaming about running. She hoped that he was having good dreams. Sometimes he had bad dreams. Sometimes he cried in his sleep and Mob had to wake him up. When he cried in his sleep it hurt her. She never wanted him to ever be upset. Also sometimes he wet the bed while he cried in his sleep. That wasn't good either.

She hoped that this wasn't going to turn into one of those sleep crying, bed wetting, nights.

Mom would have known how to make it better. She would have come in and sprinkled the magic cinnamon around and kissed Sho on the head with the magic lipstick and then he wouldn't have had any more bad dreams. That was what she had done and Mob couldn't do that because she wasn't mom. Mom would have known what to do to get Sho to stop wetting the bed, too. The only ideas that Mob had were to keep Sho from drinking any liquids before bed and also sometimes waking him up to get him to pee before he ended up wetting the bed. Mob wished that mom would have taught her more about taking care of Sho.

How was she supposed to take care of Sho when nobody had ever taught her how?

Mob turned on her side and watched Sho sleep. He was nicer when he slept. He had been so upset lately. His wish hadn't come true. Mob wished that there was some way to make his wish come true, to make mom come back, even though it would have been a disaster if mom came back. Dad hated her now because she was a traitor. Also bad things happened to traitors. Minegishi said that their job was to deal with traitors and that they had to do things to traitors that weren't very nice. Things that Mob wasn't allowed to know about until she was ten. She wasn't ten yet, it hadn't even been Sho's birthday yet let alone hers, but she thought that even at nine she was old enough to know what happened to traitors. What dad would have done to mom if she had ever come back to them. Even though he should have been nice to her. She might have had a good reason for leaving….

Mob couldn't think of one.

Mom was happy. She had been sick for a long time but…but she had no reason to be unhappy. Dad never yelled at her or hit her or pulled her hair or pushed her down or anything like that. Dad had always been so nice to her. Dad had let her stay in Japan, he never made her come with, and even when he was back he still let her do whatever she wanted. She could make whatever she wanted for meals and watch whatever she wanted to on TV and leave the house whenever she wanted. If dad had been mean and bossy she could have understood why her mom would have wanted to leave, but he hadn't been, so she had no idea why mom had wanted to leave them…

Maybe mom just didn't like them anymore.

Maybe she had just stopped loving them. Maybe she didn't like how clueless Mob was. Maybe she wanted a better Daughter who was good at making friends and talking to people. Maybe she wanted a Daughter who could help her out with things more, like taking care of Sho and stuff, and that was why she left. Maybe she had a new Daughter. Maybe she had a new family. Maybe she had fallen in love with someone who wasn't dad and now she had a whole new family and she didn't need them anymore at all.

That was crazy.

Moms wouldn't have done that. She loved…she loved them. Mob…Mob had always thought that mom loved them…but maybe she had been wrong. Maybe mom had stopped loving her all together. Maybe…she didn't know. She just…she wanted her mom now even though her mom had gone and…and that was so sad…and…and she felt so alone. She rolled over and faced the wall. As she rolled over she heard something crunch. Oh. She had rolled over onto a paper crane. There were still a lot of them in the house. Minegishi said that as much as they appreciated the gesture they had no use for a thousand paper cranes and that Mob had to get the cranes out of their bedroom right that second.

They were everywhere.

Mob should have known that folding cranes couldn't make wishes come true. These were just cranes, just bits of paper, and were not magic. There was no such thing as magic. Well Mob was mostly sure that there was no such thing as magic. She had psychic powers which normal people would think were magic if they ever saw her using them but dad said that their powers came from science, not magic, and that magic wasn't real. Mob still should have known that paper cranes didn't grant wishes. Minegishi had forgiven her because she had done something nice for them and not because she had wished for them to forgive her. That wasn't magic, well the magic of friendship, not real magic. Not that magic was real. Not that wishes were real. Things didn't happen just because you wished for them. Your friends didn't forgive you because you wished for it, no, they forgave you because you folded a thousand paper cranes to show them how upset you were.

Maybe if they showed mom that they had folded a thousand paper cranes, actually more, then she would see how much they wanted her back.

Mob did want her mom back. She wanted to be with mom and to…not even do to anything specific. Just to be with her. Even though that would have been a bad idea. Even though dad didn't like mom anymore and he would have been mean to her if she came back…or just done to her what he did to all the traitors….Mob still wanted her mom back. Maybe she was selfish to want mom to come back. Mom didn't want to be there with them and maybe it was selfish to…to want to make her come back. Was it selfish to want to make someone come back to you when they wanted to get away?

She didn't know.

All she knew was that she wanted mom and she felt alone. That was a normal feeling for her. Wanting her mom and feeling alone, both, were always there just hanging out waiting to make themselves noticed. Sometimes she forgot about them like when she was happy or playing but the feelings would always come back. Like now. The feelings were back and she…she had no way of making them go away. Everyone was asleep. She wanted….she wanted to be near someone. She wanted to be near someone but it was the middle of the night. Sho was asleep and she would have been mean if she just woke him up to play. Dad was asleep and he didn't like it when she woke him up by crawling into bed with him. She certainly couldn't wake Minegishi either. They were always very grumpy in the mornings and Mob did not want to know what they were like when they got woken up in the middle of the night.

Mob was all alone.

She heard the crunch of paper. She hadn't moved. That was Sho. He was still kicking in his sleep. Mob knew that she had to get rid of all the paper cranes, dad said that he was tired of walking on them, but Mob didn't want to just recycle them. She and Sho had worked all day on those paper cranes. They had folded with their hands and their powers for hours and hours. She didn't want to just get rid of all the work they did. Also there was a part of her, an irrational part, that felt sort of like if she got rid of the cranes then Sho's wish wouldn't come true.

Even though she knew full well that wishes did not come true.

She wondered if Sho was kicking because he was feeling lonely too. Whenever she had too many feelings her powers acted without her telling them what to do. Whenever Sho had big feelings he kicked and screamed and said the meanest things…and did the meanest things…but she still loved him and he still loved her. She wondered if he felt lonely sleeping there all alone in his bed. Maybe people weren't meant to sleep alone. At the zoo the monkeys would all sleep huddled together in the fake tress. People were kind of like monkeys, she saw that in a documentary, so maybe people weren't meant to sleep alone. Moms and dads shared beds, that was why their beds were big enough for two people. She saw on shows sometimes that whole families slept in the same room on futons on the floor. So maybe it was weird to sleep in her own bed all the time.

Maybe that was why she was so lonely.

She got up out of her bed. She didn't want to be alone. She felt cold as she pulled her blanket off. It was getting to be colder out. It was fall where they were. They sometimes stayed in places where it was hot year round but not that often. Dad didn't like warm places and they went where dad took them. Mob wished that warm weather would come but it would only come sooner. Mom liked warm weather. She would have been happy in the summer. Had mom had a good summer? Had she had fun? Had she gone to the pool and the park and all of the other places she liked to go to in the summer time? Mob didn't know. Was mom awake now in her own room, wherever she had ended up, wondering if her and Sho were ok? If they'd had a good summer?

Mob didn't know.

She did know, however, that she had to get the cranes up off the floor. She used her powers to pick them all up and put them in a corner of the room. She didn't want to recycle them but she also didn't want to wake Sho up by walking across the floor and making noise. He was smaller than she was and he needed all the sleep he could get. Also he could be very mean when he didn't get enough sleep. Well he could be very mean at the best of times but he could be even meaner when he didn't get enough sleep.

Mob would be careful not to wake him up.

She crossed the bedroom floor quickly. This room was bigger than the last one they'd shared. Mob didn't like that. She didn't want to be far away from her little brother…even though sometimes she slept next to dad. She still didn't like distance between her and Sho. When they had been little they had done everything together. They went to the same school and they slept in the same room and they always played together and they ate together and took baths together and all of that stuff. If someone had told Mob back when she had been little that she would have separated from Sho…or that Sho would have separated from her…she would not have believed it. If someone had told her that her mom would run away from home she would not have believed it. If someone had told her that she would get to go with dad on his trips, and that the trips would be never ending, then she would not have believed them.

It was amazing how much life could change.

It was amazing how much she could change. She was bigger now than she had ever been in her life. She could barely fit next to Sho. When they had been little even if Sho had been sleeping in the middle of the bed like he was doing now she could have still had some room to lay down. Now it was hard. Now she had to scoot next to him slowly so she wasn't hanging off the side of the bed. Her feet touched his. She pulled the blanket down over the both of them. His feet felt like blocks of ice. Mom would have done a much better job of keeping them warm. She was good at things like that, their mom, and Mob wished that she could have taught Mob how to be good at things like that too.

But she wasn't there.

Now it was just her and Sho. They had each other, they only had each other, and that was…that was alright. Him and her together forever and stuff. The alone feeling was still there but it was a little better. Sho was there with her. It helped. She liked being next to him while he was asleep. Even if he did kick she knew that those kicks were not on purpose. Sho was so much nicer to her when he was asleep…but it was ok that he was mean to her. She was not mom. She would love him no matter what and she would stay with him no matter what. When you loved someone you did not leave them for any reason. That was how she could tell that dad loved them. He could have left them at any time. He could have just left them all alone in Japan or he could just go to work and never come back but he didn't. He always came back and that was how she knew that he loved them.

She wondered if he still loved mom.

She wondered if he still remembered mom's face.

He probably didn't.


	116. Reasons and Understanding

There weren't a lot of reasons for a person to actually fold a thousand paper cranes.

"Nippon." Said Daughter. She looked to him as she said that. They were back at a nighttime ritual of theirs, watching television together, that he was happy to get back to. It felt like forever since he had spent any parent and child bond affirming time together. He had been spending far too much time with Son and far too little time with Daughter.

She was much more pleasant to be around.

"Correct as usual, Daughter. You're very good at this." Said Suzuki. That was a game of theirs, calling it before the referees, and they were usually right. Daughter had the patience for this. Son…Son did not. He was of the belief that unless blood was shed a sport was not worth watching. That seemed a bit odd to Suzuki. He would have figured that Son would have been able to appreciate the artistry of kendo. Well at least he had one good child.

"Thanks Dad, you're good at this too. You're always right." Said Daughter. He enjoyed the praise she gave him even though it made no sense. He knew that he was always right and he did not need validation from his own children. He became so irrational when it came to his Daughter.

"I've been doing this for longer than you've been alive." Said Suzuki

"Since before I was born?" asked Daughter. That was what he had just said, wasn't it? She asked obvious questions like that sometimes. Well they were obvious to him anyway. He knew that he was not the best at social interaction. She claimed to not be good at them either but she was more socially adept that he had ever been at any point in his life. He could admit that fact since he had no use at all for social skills. Not at this point in his life, anyway.

"Yes." said Suzuki

"Since you were my age?" asked Daughter

"Younger, actually." Said Suzuki. He didn't much want to get into the specifics of his childhood. Going to kendo matches with his father. Mother hadn't cared for the sport. Masami had been the same way and Son took after her. Daughter took after him though he had no idea why. She wasn't his child, not biologically anyway, but she was so much like him it was amazing. Probably due to all the bonding they had done over the years.

Would she remember this?

She was old enough to remember things now. Not like when he had brought her home. She had forgotten her biological family quickly. It hadn't taken her more than two weeks to stop calling her brother 'Ritsu' and to stop looking for her biological family…though it took her over a month to call him 'dad'. Well he had been 'daddy' for a while. At some point he had become 'dad' to both of his children. He wondered if he would ever just be 'father' to them. Maybe when they became adults. His parents hadn't been around long enough to be called 'mother' and 'father'.

He would be around for quite a while.

Daughter would remember him. Son too. He wasn't even forty five years old. He wasn't going to be dying of old age soon and the constant attempts on his life may have been tiresome but they had no chance of being successful. Yes. He would be around for quite a while. Long enough to watch his children grow up and maybe even their children too. He wondered if he would spend time with his grandchildren like this. The ones he would get from Daughter, of course, he was genuinely worried for the world once Son had his children. His children….more of Son….the world was not prepared. Daughter's children, on the other hand, would be pleasant little things. Yes, he'd enjoy spending time with them.

Just as he enjoyed spending time with Daughter.

She would remember this. She already had so many memories of him. More than he had of his own father. They hadn't had much time together, he and his parents, and he doesn't want to think about that…so he doesn't. He pulls her closer. She likes this, being held, it makes her happy. Her happiness was good for him. The happier she was the less likely she would be to explode.

Or rebel.

She was older now. Taller. She would, at some point, enter a rebellious phase…and he was not looking forward to that. Son's entire life seemed to have been one long rebellious phase but Daughter had always been so obedient. He had no idea what she would rebel against, though, because he really didn't restrict her that much. The rules he set down for the children were for their own good. Daughter and Son, aside from a few very easy to follow rules, could do whatever they wanted. Really the children had no reason to rebel.

He was not looking forward to their adolescence.

"When you were really little?" asked Daughter

"Yes. When I was very small." Said Suzuki. This back and forth was getting a little tiresome. He didn't know what it was that she was getting at. He wished that she would get right to the point. He also hoped that the point wasn't her getting ready to ask him about his childhood.

"What were you like when you were my age, dad?" asked Daughter. Ah yes, the question he had been dreading. He didn't like to think about it, his youth, because there was no reason to dwell on it. He had been young and now he wasn't. There. End of discussion. Once he had been a child and now he was a middle aged adult. What was there to ask about?

"Younger. I was young and then I wasn't. There's nothing to know beyond that." Said Suzuki. There. hopefully that would satisfy her. She was a child. Why did she want to hear about his childhood? What was the point of talking about a time of life that she was going through right at this moment?

"Ok….I guess. I don't know. I just wanted to know-" said Daughter

"There is nothing to know. Now come off it or go to bed. Those are your options." Said Suzuki. She was not Son. She wouldn't push him. She never pushed…well she almost never pushed him. That was why this was his favorite child. Not that he would ever admit it to the children if they asked. He'd never see the end of it.

"I'll stay. I'm sorry dad. Let's watch kendo." Said Daughter. Sensible. He liked that about her. If she had been Son then she never would have come off it. No, Son….once he got an idea in his head then he never let it go. Much like Suzuki himself though he had never carried on the way Son did. Why couldn't Son have put his mind to something other than yelling and screaming when he didn't get his way?

"Good girl." Said Suzuki. They sat in silence for a while. Daughter's aura pulled away from his, a little, which meant that something was bothering her. He didn't like that at all. Masami had pulled away from him, too, in the later days of their marriage…not that they weren't still married…and not that he was comparing his Daughter to his wife either. Daughter was nothing like her mother. She would never betray him. She had no reason to…well neither had Masami…and now he's thinking about her. He's thinking about her and there's nothing he hates more than when his mind gets stuck on her. There was no reason to waste his time thinking about her. She betrayed him. There was no reason to fret over a traitor.

"Nippon….that was a nippon! You saw, right dad?" asked Daughter. No, actually, he hadn't. He had been too busy going over every mistake that he had ever made in his marriage. She didn't need to know about that. What kind of an example would he have been setting for her if he told her that he still thought about her mother?

The children probably didn't even remember her.

That was wishful thinking. She had left three years ago about. They still remembered her. They at least also knew not to speak of her. Not to him and not to each other. They didn't even need a mother…well they maybe did…but maybe not since they were so much older. Daughter did a good job of taking care of Son. She did a good job at whatever she put her mind to, much like him, she had even made a thousand paper cranes in one afternoon just like he had at her age.

He wondered what it was that she had wished for.

"I'm sure you're correct. You usually are." Said Suzuki. He wasn't going to lie to her but he also wasn't going to tell her the truth. She was none the wiser. He never lied, it was a waste of his time, and he was not going to lie to the children. If he lied to them then they might have gotten the idea in their heads that it was alright to lie to him and he would not be lied to. Especially not by his own children.

"Because you heard how he said what he was going to do and you saw that he was holding his shinai right and he had both feet on the ground, too, right?" said Daughter

"I don't disagree with you." Said Suzuki

"I said everything that you have to do to get a point, right dad? I said it right?" asked Daughter

"I'm not going to contradict you." Said Suzuki. He wondered what it was that had her so worked up? If he didn't know any better he would have thought that she was vying for his approval. She knew that she had it so she had no reason to go on and on trying to get it. He approved of just about everything that she did. He wasn't a fan of that film she watched over and over again. He also wasn't much of a fan of the fact that everything she ate was either deep fried or smothered in sugar and served with a gallon of milk. He also wasn't a fan of…well he wasn't a fan of a lot of the things that she enjoyed but he wasn't going to contradict her on this.

"You think that I was right?" asked Daughter. He reached up and patted her on the head. She liked that. She liked physical affection. He wasn't a fan. It seemed so pointless. She knew that he was her father and he knew that she was his Daughter and they got along just fine. Why she wanted to much affection he would never know but he would give it to her. This affection, the kind he gave her, wasn't like the sort he gave Masami so it was ok. Daughter didn't see him as weak and she never would…at least he hoped so. He couldn't speak for what she would be like as an adult. He didn't know if he would show her this sort of affection when she was an adult. Would she still need this sort of bonding time? He hoped…he didn't know what he hoped. He enjoyed spending time with her but…but he shouldn't have enjoyed spending time with her. He was getting dangerously close to needing her and he was not supposed to need anybody. He was complete on his own.

"Did I say that you were wrong?" asked Suzuki

"No but sometimes I feel like…sometimes I say the wrong thing. I just wanted to know if I had it right because I know that this is something that you care about and like a lot." Said Daughter

"Well you enjoy this too, don't you?" asked Suzuki

"Yes." said Daughter quickly. He has a thought, one that he knows that he shouldn't have, that she doesn't enjoy spending time with him like this. He half expects to look down and see Masami rolling her eyes and swiping through her phone. She had never liked kendo…but Daughter was not her mother. She wasn't even Masami's child. Not in practice or biology. He shouldn't have looked down and seen Masami. He should have seen himself. This was his child after all, him in miniature, him in miniature more so than Son was….and that made no sense whatsoever but that was just the way his children had turned out.

"Good. Thank you for taking an interest." Said Suzuki. Masami had never taken an interest in his interests…and now he was thinking of her again. This was…he played with Daughter's hair. That made it easier to remember who she was. Her hair was much thicker and straighter than Masami's had ever been. He shouldn't have thanked Daughter, he was not in a position where he had to thank anyone let alone his own child, but she enjoyed it. It made her happy and it was in his best interests to keep her happy.

"You're welcome." Said Daughter. They sat in silence some more. One match turned into another and another. It was late, late for children anyway, and he could see in Daughter's aura that she was getting tired. He should have sent her to bed. That was what fathers did, send their children to bed when they were up at ungodly hours like this, but he didn't want to. He was her father and he could do whatever he wanted when it came to her.

If he wanted to stay up until all hours with his Daughter then he would stay up at all hours with his Daughter.

She wasn't asleep but she was getting there. After she fell asleep he would carry her to his bed. Because it was cold. Waking up to half of his bed being cold was not a pleasant experience. He could have just turned the heat up but that would disrupt his sleep. He would just end up kicking off his blankets in his sleep and he would end up waking up because he could not sleep without a blanket and if he didn't get at least five hours he would need coffee and tea to function and then he would be all jumpy from the excessive caffeine and then he wouldn't be able to work effectively and then everything that he had put decades of his life into would come crashing down and he would lost his life's worth. So therefore it made perfect sense to deposit Daughter in his bed after she drifted off.

It was the only rational thing to do.

She drifted off quickly. It was late for someone her age. It wasn't that late for someone his age but his days started early. Watching television was much less enjoyable without Daughter there to provide commentary or even her presence. It didn't count if she was asleep. She was so peaceful when she slept but he didn't need her peaceful when they spent time together. He needed her awake but he was not going to wake her up in the middle of the night just because he needed someone to watch television with. No, she did not need to be deprived of sleep. She wouldn't be able to do her school work or look after her brother effectively if she was tired throughout the day. That was why he had to be so careful when he lifted her, too, because it would have been so easy to wake her on accident.

He picked her up by hand.

If he used his powers then she would have woken up. His aura would have bothered her aura and then she would have woken up. She had fallen asleep on him so it would have been too disruptive to let her go anyway. She stirred a bit when he picked her up. She grabbed onto him, held his shirt within her little fists, and said something that he could not hear. He held her close like he had when she was small. This was more common when she was small. She and Son used to just fall asleep in the middle of the living room floor when they had been small. They were still small…

But less small.

Much less small than they had been. Daughter was getting heavy. She was getting tall and she was getting heavy. He wondered how many more years of being able to carry her without using his powers. He wondered how many more years of her tolerating being carried he would have in front of her. He enjoyed this, being with her, and this enjoyment toed the line of needing her. That was why this was easier than it had been with Masami. He had so clearly needed Masami…but Daughter needed him. She was totally dependent on him.

She wasn't so big.

He carried her to his bed and set her down gently. He had tried his best, his very best, not to wake her up. He had tried his best but her eyes still opened as he set her down. Her eyes opened and her little hands let go of him. She looked around curiously.

"You want me to sleep here?" asked Daughter

"It's unpleasant rolling over to a cold bed." Said Suzuki as he took off his suit coat and tie. Daughter nodded.

"Ok dad." Said Daughter. She was so understanding. He liked that about her. She just did what he said. Why couldn't he have had two of her? That would have been so much simpler. Someone who always listened to him and shared in the things that he cared about and enjoyed. He was so grateful to have had one good child.

Something crumpled under his feet.

Even if that good child seemed to have developed some sort of a fixation with folding paper. He knew why she was folding so many of these. She wanted a wish. Everyone tried that at some point, folding a thousand paper cranes, and everyone realized at some point that it did not work. Even him when he had been her age. It had made sense in his mind, the existence of magic, because he had been defying any and every natural law the world could throw at him since he had been a baby. Folding a thousand paper cranes hadn't gotten him what he had truly wanted.

But that didn't matter. The world fit in the palm of his hand.

"You can fold as many as you want but you need to do something about them after you've folded them. I am getting tired of stepping on these." Said Suzuki as he laid down beside his Daughter. He laid on his back, that was the most comfortable way for him to sleep. She turned on her side to face him.

"I don't want to recycle them." Said Daughter

"I never said that you had to recycle them, Daughter, I just said that I was tired of them being underfoot." Said Suzuki. He could feel her eyes and her aura on him. He wanted to turn his back to her even though he always had trouble sleeping on his side. He would have more trouble sleeping with her staring at him all night.

"Ok…I'll find a place for them. I just don't…I don't want to get rid of them yet. It took such a long time to make them even with powers." Said Daughter. She was quiet there, almost whispering, and she was scooting closer to him. She always crowded him when they slept next to each other. He should have just sent her to her own bed.

He didn't.

Because then the other side of the bed would have been cold and he did not want to have to wake up to that. Plus he was already settled into bed the way he was now. If she got up and left then that would have disturbed him too much. So she had to stay. She wanted to be there anyway. If she hadn't wanted to be there then she would have said something. He would not have taken it badly. He usually gave her whatever she wanted. It was in his bets interest to make her happy. She must have known that, right?

Or maybe not considering that there was something that she wanted badly enough to fold a thousand paper cranes over.

"What were you planning on wishing for?" asked Suzuki

"What do you mean?" asked Daughter. Her aura seemed startled then. Suzuki did not know why. It was a simple question and it wasn't as though he had snuck up on her or anything like that.

"The cranes. You made at least a thousand of them. What were you planning on wishing for?" asked Suzuki. Daughter went quiet after that. He knew that she was not asleep, he could tell by her aura.

"Um…if I tell you then it won't come true. I think. I don't know, it might go by birthday wish rules." Said Daughter. That would have been very sound logic if magic had existed. Magic, however, did not exist and therefore her argument did nothing more than annoy him.

"It won't come true anyway. Wishes don't come true. You either ask for what you want out of life or you take it. One of the two. Now tell me what it is that you wanted so badly that you would rather fold a thousand paper cranes to get it rather than ask me to get it for you." Said Suzuki. Daughter was quiet again. Honestly, she could be so childish sometimes…though she was a child so it was in her nature to be childish. Yes, he could excuse the fact that she still believed in wishes and magic and the universe's generosity.

"I wished…I wished to be friends with Minegishi forever. I thought that they wanted to stop being my friend and I was worried so I folded a thousand paper cranes so that we would be friends." Said Daughter. Suzuki blinked. That made sense…sort of. It made sense if one ignored the fact that she was Suzuki Shigeko. She could command anyone she wanted to. She could easily tell Minegishi that they had to be her companion until one of them died. Children could be so childish sometimes.

"You know that you can just order them to be your friend, right? You didn't have to fold a thousand paper cranes to continue your friendship with them…though why you want to be friends with them I shall never know." Said Suzuki

"I like them a lot. They're really nice when you get to know them…and also I wouldn't ever force someone to be friends with me, dad, because that's not how it works. I want a real and true friend, not someone who hangs out with me because I told them to, that's no fun at all." said Daughter

"Oh. I see. Very well then. I understand you." Said Suzuki. Like father like Daughter, the apple didn't fall far from the tree, and other such tired old clichés about parents and children. She had asked him, before, what he had been like when he had been her age. She had her answer now. Like her. He had wanted a friend so badly…that was when he had been small and weak. Smaller even than she was now.

He grew out of that.

And hopefully she would as well one day.

"You do?" asked Daughter, her tone hopeful. At least it sounded hopeful to him. He wasn't the best with tones. Her aura had certainly perked up…and that was not good. Not because he didn't want to talk about that time in his life, no, because it was late and they both needed sleep.

"I do, now go to sleep Daughter. It's late and we both need our sleep." Said Suzuki. He turned his back to her even though he always had trouble sleeping this way. Better to sleep on his side than have her staring at him all night. What was she even staring at? She knew him better than anyone else. They knew each other…an odd feeling but one which was true.

They knew each other.

And they both knew why someone would fold a thousand paper cranes.


	117. Yet Another Plane Ride

Suzuki had no plans of ever returning to Seasoning City.

He hadn't been back since acquiring Daughter. There hadn't been any reason to go back. There was nothing there of strategic importance. Well aside from the Seventh Division but they weren't that important. He had established the Seventh Division of Claw shortly after acquiring Daughter. Seasoning City had made the two most powerful espers ever to live after all. He had thought that there would be more. Nowhere near his and Daughter's level, obviously, but he had assumed that there would have been…someone. Anyone.

There hadn't been.

Which was why Suzuki was not going to get his hopes up. His contacts in Seasoning City spoke of another child esper. Suzuki was not going to get his hopes up. It was probably nothing, or at best something completely insignificant. Some people were born with visible auras, it didn't necessarily mean that they were capable of anything. If he didn't get his hopes up then he couldn't be disappointed as he had time and time again in the past. Adult espers were disappointing enough but to get his hopes up that he had another prodigy….

He didn't want to have to deal with that.

"Dad, why are we going back to Japan so soon? We just left Japan." Said Mob. Another plane ride. She felt like she had spent half of her life in planes. That wasn't true, though, because she had only started taking planes places when she was seven. She was nine now so for it to have been half of her life it would have had to be four and a half years for it to have been half of her life. Really it was…some smaller percentage of her life that she didn't feel like calculating. She shouldn't have been complaining, anyway, since it was worse for Sho. He was nine now too but since he was younger than her he had spent and even bigger portion of his life in planes.

"You have a problem with going back to Japan?" asked Suzuki. He did not understand his children. One minute they're complaining about having to leave Japan, they felt best in their homeland and he could understand that, and now they were complaining about going back. What? Had the Second Division really been so much fun that they just had to stay? He could not begin to understand his children.

"….I wanted to see kangaroos…" said Sho. It was his birthday, well it had just passed, but still. On his birthday he got whatever he wanted and he wanted to pet kangaroos like they did last time they went to Australia. They were cool and the babies were cute and he liked animals and it was his birthday and he could do whatever he wanted! And he did not want to spend his birthday stuck in an airplane heading back to Japan when they had just come from Japan!

"You can't ride in their pouches you know." Said Suzuki

"I know that!" said Sho. He kicked his feet a few times. He would have kicked more but he felt big sis' powers stopping him. He hated flying. It had been cool the first few times but now it was just boring. He needed to MOVE. He needed to move and he needed to move away from Dad and big sis. He wished that he could teleport. Then he could have gone away somewhere, anywhere, else. Somewhere not right there across from his dad and next to his sister.

"You tried to do that before. Remember? The kangaroo didn't like that." Said Mob. That had been a nice day. The first time they had gone to Australia there had been kangaroos and they had been so cute and cool…but you couldn't ride around in their pouches like cartoons said. There was just gross stuff in there and also kangaroos could be mean.

"I recall that as well. I could have told you both that their pouches are full of mucus." Said Suzuki. The things his children got up to when he wasn't around. They had been younger back then, too young to keep around while he worked, but things were different now. They were older and he left them to their own devices less and less these days. They were both nine now, after all, though Daughter was older. He wondered if the children would ever question why their birthdays were so close together. He hoped that they didn't, not any time soon, because he did not want to answer those questions.

Maybe taking them with had been a bad idea.

Seasoning City. Daughter had been born here. Her family still lived there last he checked. He still kept tabs on them, he had to, but not as much as he had when she had been young. Her brother still showed no signs of being anything more than a normal person and her parents hadn't had another child. He wished that they had just so he could get some more data on how powers came to be. If the child had been an esper, or if Daughter's biological brother had shown signs of anything, well then he would have had no choice but to give the children another sibling.

He wasn't above kidnapping.

"I know that now….so just quit making fun of me." Said Sho. He crossed his arms and sat back. He knew when he was being made fun of. He wished that big sis would just go to the back of the plane and spend time with her friend. She was always doing that. She got to have a friend and all he had was dad…and it wasn't fair…and he didn't even have dad! Dad was making fun of him too…it just wasn't fair!

"Stop that." Said Suzuki. He could see Son's aura. He so rarely lost control in the same way that Daughter did but it did happen. He was not in the mood to go falling from the sky.

"I'm not even doing anything." Said Sho

"You're aura. Be careful, if you lose control on a plane we could all die…or dad would catch us but it still wouldn't be good." Said Mob. She wished that Sho would have been happier. It was his birthday and they could still have fun. There were lots of fun things to do in Japan. They were going to a place called Seasoning City and, apparently, there was a big arcade there. That could be fun. There was also a big tower called the Cultural Tower. It was the highest point in the whole city and they let you go to the very top. That could be fun, Sho loved heights, and he could also draw the view too. He liked to draw. This could be very fun.

Mob would make sure that it was very fun.

Not just fun, no, very fun. The most fun. The best birthday that he had ever had. Better even than the birthday when dad surprised Sho by getting him all of those cakes. That was good and she could do even better and they could be happy, still, or maybe just Sho. She wanted to make Sho happy, that was all, and also nobody should ever have had to be upset on their birthday.

"I wouldn't lose control! Sheesh! Why do you have to be like that?" asked Sho

"Like what?" asked Mob. She didn't think that she was being like anything. She just wanted them not to end up in a plane crash. What was so bad about that? She wished that Sho wouldn't have been like that. He was like something, he was always like something, but now he was particularly like something. Mean. Upset. She didn't get why. It didn't matter where he celebrated his birthday. The only thing that mattered was that they were together.

"Like that! Acting like that!" said Sho

"What am I acting like? I don't understand." Said Mob

"Acting like you're worried about me." Said Sho

"I am worried about you." Said Mob

"No you aren't." said Sho

"Yes I am." Said Mob

"No you-" said Sho

"Quiet, the both of you." Said Suzuki. He knew that this argument would devolve into the old 'am not, are too' debates that could literally stretch on for hours if the children did it right. He was not in the mood for that. He had enough on his plate as it was. Going home after all this time…not that he held any irrational feelings towards Seasoning City. He had grown up there. That didn't change the fact that it was just a city like any other. He was there for a specific purpose and once that purpose was fulfilled then he could just move on and not look back.

That is unless…

It would be nothing. There was no unless. This whole trip was a waste of his time. This child…this child was nothing. Lightning could stroke twice but most likely not thrice. No, this was…this was nothing. A waste of time. Shigeko had been…Shigeko had been…he wanted and did not want another one. Another child to trail after him, another child to fight with the two he already had, and an older child at that. Daughter had come into his life when she was two. She had forgotten her family quickly enough. An older child would definitely remember their birth family.

Also this child was not an orphan.

"Yes, dad." Said Mob. She covered Sho's mouth with her hand. She knew that he would have been prepared to fight with her and she also knew that dad hated it when they fought. Dad was in a bad mood, she could tell. He kept on looking down at his phone and when he did that his aura got all mad. Something might have gone wrong with work. Minegishi said that sometimes people got stupid and thought that they could challenge dad. Those were the traitors and nothing good happened to traitors.

Mob didn't know what happened to traitors exactly but she knew that people should not have been trying to undermine dad or his work.

Dad was trying to make the world a better place for all espers. What was the matter with that? He was collecting all the espers in the world and then he was going to use them to do…something…and when that something was over then he would rule the world and everyone would be happy because he knew best. Dad had said so. He said that was exactly how it was going to happen and he never lied. Mob didn't think that the people in the world would have wanted that but dad said that what people wanted was of no consequence. He said that people never knew what was good for them. Like with Sho. He never knew what was good for him.

Being quiet was what was good for him.

He was never quiet. No matter how many times their dad got mad at him Sho just would not stop. He should have known by now that the best thing to do was just to go along with what dad wanted. Even if it wasn't what you wanted. Even if you had other things that you wanted out of life. Even if you were your own person with your own thoughts and feelings…you still had to do what dad wanted. Because he knew what was best. If he knew what was best for the whole world then he knew what was best for his family, too.

"Good." Said Suzuki. He did not want another child. Not one that he did not father, anyway. It was one thing if he had fathered another child and that child joined his household. He had no problem with that. Even though there was no chance…little chance…of that happening. He hadn't been careful that one time…but he was not going to think about that. He had two children and he would only have two children. One biological and one adopted. He was not going to adopt another one.

One boy was enough.

The other child, the one he had been told about, would not have taken well to his family at all. The child was just too old. The child also was not an orphan. An orphan would have adopted easier by virtue of being cast away from their own family. This child had two parents who showed no signs of wanting to rid themselves of their esper child. Not like Daughter's biological parents. He was not above doing what had to be done to get the child.

Though joining his own household was not what had to be done.

"I'm going to take my hand off of your mouth. Please don't try to lick me or bite me or anything like that." Said Mob. She wished that Sho would have just been quiet. She wished that he would have just listened to dad already. If he had just been able to listen to dad then she could have been back there with her friend…not that Minegishi was ever one for conversation when they flew. They hated flying because they were so far from the plants and the ground. Also they slept through most of their plane rides. Still, sitting next to Minegishi while they slept was still better than sitting next to Sho while he did everything he could to make dad upset.

That was not a nice thought to have about her little brother at all.

Especially not on his birthday. This was not how he should have remembered turning nine. Not that there was anything particularly special about turning nine. Ten was more special because you got to be in the double digits but all birthdays were special days. She thought so, anyway, dad said that his birthday was just another day and that he never wanted to celebrate it. Mob knew better….well dad knew best but she knew better….however that worked. She didn't know. All she knew was that the day her little brother had been born had been the most special, most wonderful, most amazing day of her life.

"You were trying to suffocate me!" said Sho as he pushed her hand away. She wanted to be an only child, probably, because then she and dad would be alone together and they wouldn't have him to mess everything up. Even though he spent more time with dad he knew, deep down he knew, that dad would rather have spent time with big sis. That was the truth. That was why he always brought big sis with when they weren't doing stuff that involved fighting. He knew that if big sis had been a boy, if they had both been boys, then dad would have sent him to live at an orphanage or something. Dad only had him because he needed a boy to inherit the world. Girls couldn't inherit the world, dad had said so, and that was why he'd had Sho in the first place. If big sis had been born a boy then she would have been an only child.

He pushed her.

She didn't go very far at all because they were sitting down. He knew that he was being a jerk but she was being a jerk first. Still, even if he was being a jerk dad didn't need to push him, too, and so hard…it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. Big sis was the one who had been a jerk first. She knew he hated it when she did the hand thing. She knew that he got mad at her every time she did it. She shouldn't have been trying to get him to shut up. He would shut up when he was good and ready to shut up. It didn't matter that he was making dad mad. Dad was always mad! Sometimes Sho wondered if dad went around looking for things to be mad at!

"I was not!" said Mob. She wished that Sho hadn't of done that. Now dad was going to be so mad at him! Why did he have to be like that! She used to wish that she had a little brother or sister back when she had been little. She had wanted, more than anything else, to have had a little sister but she would have settled for another little brother….but now she wanted neither. One Sho was hard enough to look after. She didn't know how she would have dealt with two of them. She had enough younger siblings, one, to last her for the rest of her life.

"Son. Daughter. Separate. I've had enough of this." said Suzuki. Two children were more than enough. He did not need a third. The child was the same age as his children were now…and he did not need a third child. Especially one who would be too old to learn to recognize them as family. He had no idea what he would be doing with the child but he knew that it would not join his household.

"Go hang out with your friend. Go on, dad said to go away, so go." Said Sho. He threw himself back in his seat and picked up his sketch book. He started scribbling as hard as he could just so he didn't end up doing something else that he would get in trouble for. It didn't really make him feel better. He just ended up ripping a hole in the page.

"Here, let me try and fix it." Said Mob. She knew that they were supposed to separate but she wanted to be near Sho. He should not have been upset. This was his birthday. He was nine now. He should not have been upset on today of all days. She should have done more for him. She should have done more to make him happy.

"I told you to leave me alone." Said Sho. She was always trying to fix it. She always thought that she knew best. What if he wanted a giant hole in the page? What if he liked it better that way? She didn't know. She couldn't read his mind. She could everything but read minds. It wouldn't have been any easier, anyway, if she had been able to read his mind. She would have been too clueless, anyway, to know that he wanted to be left alone.

"But I-" said Mob. She wished that he could have just believed her when she said that she just wanted him to be happy. She just wanted to make him happy. It didn't matter where they were. As long as they were together she would do whatever she could to make her little brother happy. That was just what sisters did.

"Daughter. Go. I cannot deal with you two being quarrelsome right now." Said Suzuki. He pointed to the back of the plane. He would have sent Son away but that would have just started up another fight and he did not want to deal with that. He had enough to worry about. The logistics of it all. Kidnapping was a lot messier than his usual methods of recruitment. It would be worth it, though, considering the rarity of child espers.

Also the children could use some same age companions.

The child would not join his household but the children, or at least Daughter, seemed to be adept at making friends. That was normal. People gathered companions. He didn't need anything like that in his life but the children were younger. It would be good for them to socialize with someone their own age and now that there was someone their own age for them to socialize with, well, that would be good.

He was getting ahead of himself.

"Yes, dad." Said Mob. She wanted to stay but she also knew that it was best to do whatever dad said to do. He was mad and she did not need to make him madder. If he got any madder then he would take it out on Sho and Sho did not need that. He needed someone who was nice to him all the time even when he was mean. He needed someone who would do anything to make him happy. He needed love and kindness and all of the things that Mob tried her best to give.

But her best just wasn't good enough.

Because no matter how much she tried Sho was still mad almost all the time. When they played he could be happy but then she said something or did something and he got mad at her…and he was a lot like dad, sometimes. Dad got mad a lot of the time too. She just wished…she wished that Sho could have been more like her and less like dad.

But wishes did not come true.

"Yes, dad." Said Sho in a singsong sort of voice. He felt dad slap him upside the head with his powers. He didn't let it show how much that hurt.

"Stop it. I don't know why you're being like this but stop it. Why do you insist on antagonizing her? She's done nothing to you. The only thing that you're doing is making me upset. Stop it." Said Suzuki. Maybe Son acted like this, acted up, because he didn't have any companions beyond his sister. Suzuki hadn't needed anyone but Son was only half of him. There was a lot of Masami in him…though Masami had never acted like that. He didn't know.

Parenting should not have been this hard.

Everything had always come easy to him in life. This, however, was not. His children. Why couldn't he have had two Daughters? It would have been so much easier if he'd had two Daughters…but that was neither here nor there. His life was what it was. He had two children who seemed to both love and hate each other…and he did not need a third.

He didn't know what he would do with the child, if the child was even something worth acquiring, but he knew that it would not join his household. The two children he already had were more than enough for him. He was getting ahead of himself anyway. This was probably nothing. This child was probably just someone insignificant. This whole trip was probably just a waste of time, his valuable time, and he would just end up kicking himself for returning to Seasoning City over nothing.

After this was over, no matter what the outcome was, he had no intention returning to Seasoning City ever again.


	118. The Gold Colored Aura

The Seventh Division was a lot like the Eighth.

They were a lot alike, actually. They were both places where they Awakened people. This place was full of Awakened, a sea of them in the red uniform, and they all had that same red aura…just like at the Eighth Division. They wore the uniform there, too. There was one for the regular Awakened and one for the Awakened soldiers. These were regular Awakened. They were new. They thought that their powers were cool even though they could barely do anything and they were always showing each other what they could do and talking about how grateful they were and stuff like that. At least that was what Mob had been able to overhear and oversee. They always stopped and hugged the walls when she walked by. Well when she had been allowed to walk by. She was stuck in the apartment just like she had been at the Eighth Division.

It was just like being at the Eighth Division.

Well there were some differences. This one was mostly above ground, for one thing, which meant more sunlight. Mob liked the sunlight. There were windows in the apartment they were staying out. They overlooked some woods and a city could be seen in the distance. Seasoning City. Dad said that they had to stay put and that they were not to go near the city for any reason. Mob didn't know why. It was boring here just like at the Eighth Division. Nothing to do and nobody to talk to. Even Minegishi was busy. They said that Mob did not want to know what they were busy with. Dad was quiet too about what it was that they were doing here.

Hopefully nothing to Sho.

Sho was with her where he was supposed to be. This was a place where they Awakened people and Sho had already been awakened so he was safe. Mob didn't know what, specifically, he was safe from but she did know that whatever had happened to him had been bad enough to cover him in scars. Scars worse than even the Scars had. This was…this was not a good place. This place felt…wrong to her. At least there were spirits hanging out around here, though, which was nice. That meant that she didn't have to exorcise anyone. She didn't like doing that. She didn't know where they went after she exorcised them. Evil spirits were a different story but she saw very few of them. There was a Scar there who could capture evil spirits like Pokemon. That was pretty neat. Actually a lot of the Scars there were pretty neat. Neat in what they could do. She had no idea what they were like as people. They wouldn't talk to her either. They just said things like 'do you need something, Miss Suzuki' and 'everything alright, Miss Suzuki' and stuff…and she hated being called Miss Suzuki so much…

She hoped they left soon.

"Boring, boring, boring, boring. This place is boring and you are boring and I am bored and everything is so boring and I am slowly going insane with boredom because this place is so boring. Boring, boring, boring, boring-" sang Sho. This place was the worst! There was nothing to do! They weren't even allowed outside. There was a whole forest out there but dad said that they had to stay put. He said that if they even thought of leaving their living space they would be punished worse than they had ever been punished in their entire lives. He said that if they were good, very good, then there would be a reward. He said that he could not be interrupted because he was doing some very important work. He said that there was something very important happening and when it was over then he and big sis would have the best surprise ever.

Sho didn't care.

He didn't care about whatever the surprise was. Knowing dad it was going to be something dumb. Sho wanted to be literally anywhere else in the whole world than at the headquarters for the Seventh Division. It had nothing to do with the fact that this was a place where they made new Awakened. Where they held you underwater until you passed out. Where they jabbed needles into you all up and down your arms. Where they shot you full of electricity until it felt like you were on fire from the inside. Where they-

Sho wanted to leave because he was bored. That was all.

"Did you do today's schoolwork?" asked Mob. She had finished hers already. She wasn't as bored as Sho was. She was pretty bored though. There was TV and they had toys but it was hard to distract from the trapped in feeling. The feeling of not being able to leave. There was a door and they were not allowed to go out it or dad would punish them worse than they had ever been punished in their entire lives. His words, not hers, so she knew that he was being serious. She didn't care what happened to her, well she didn't want to be punished but that didn't matter, but she did care about what happened to Sho.

So much had happened to Sho already.

"Yes." said Sho lying through his teeth. Schoolwork was pointless. If he were back in actual school he would have been on winter break already. What was the point of doing schoolwork anyway? Dad said that he was going to grow up to inherit the world. When he was king of the world it wouldn't matter how many multiplication tables he knew or how many kanji he had memorized. He could always just make other people do things for him and know things for him and he could focus on what mattered the most. Having fun and also having a real menagerie because when he grew up then dad couldn't tell him that he wasn't allowed to have a pet.

"All of it?" asked Mob. She knew Sho. She knew how he hated doing schoolwork. She didn't get it. By the time he was done whining about it he would have had enough time to have finished it twice over. Besides, they needed to know a lot of things about a lot of things…even if math was really hard….because when they grew up they would run the world. Well Sho would and she would be his right hand, dad had said, until she had her own family to focus on. Suzuki's had to be smart people, dad had said, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to run the world and then dad's life would have been for nothing and they could not have let that happen.

Dad's work was very important.

"I'll do it later! I can't do it right now because I'm bored!" said Sho. He couldn't focus on anything. He didn't know what was wrong with him. He could sort of feel it, sometimes, the way it hurt. He felt the poke of the needles into his skin, the way his lungs burned from being underwater, the way his-

He was fine, just way too bored, and because he was so bored his mind was playing tricks on him. That was all there was to it.

"But if you started to do your school work then maybe you would be less bored." Said Mob

"No, if I tried to do my school work now then I would die of boredom. I'd just drop dead right here and then you'd have to explain to dad how I died and then he'd be mad at you because he would have to take time away from whatever he's got going on here to have my funeral." Said Sho. He knew deep down in his guts that dad wouldn't have cared if he'd died of boredom or for any other reason. Dad hadn't cared, before, what had been happening to him. He knew that dad had been there. He felt his aura, sometimes, and one time he had opened his eyes and seen dad there with Fukuda. Dad hadn't cared…or maybe he just knew that Sho would have been fine. Yes, that was it, dad hadn't been worried because he knew that Sho would have been fine. No matter how much it hurt dad wouldn't have just let him die….he wouldn't have!

Because then he would have had to have another kid and that would have taken him away from his work.

"He would also be sad because you had died…and also don't talk about dying. When you talk about dying then I start to think about you dying…and I don't want you to die. Sho…please don't die." Said Mob. She had dreams about it, sometimes, Sho dying. Sho hurting so badly that he died. She knew that these were just bad dreams. Dad wouldn't have just stood there and let Sho get hurt so badly that he died. Dad loved them, even Sho, and he would not have just let Sho die.

"Will you just calm down already? You know that I'm not going to die. Nothing can kill me, I'm Suzuki Sho." said Sho

"What does being Suzuki Sho have to do with not being able to die? All things have their time and all things die. Remember, dad said so?" asked Mob

"I know what dad said, big sis, I have a better memory than that. I'm not a goldfish." Said Sho

"I never called you a goldfish. If you had to be a fish then you would be one of those fighting fish that we saw at the Chinese market. A beta fish I think." Said Mob

"Forget that. I would be something cool like a walking fish." said Sho

"Sho, don't remind me of that fish. It's so scary looking." Said Mob

"I can't believe that you're afraid of a fish." said Sho

"I'm not afraid of fish I just think that a fish with legs is disturbing. Dad agrees. He says that it goes against the natural order of things." Said Mob

"That makes no sense. The fish was born with legs. It's not like some mad scientist did experiments on it to give it legs. How can a fish with legs be unnatural if it was born like that?" asked Sho

"I don't know, I didn't ask dad, but you can ask him when he comes back." Said Mob

"I'm not asking dad anything." Said Sho. He pulled his aura in close without even thinking about it. Dad was…dad wasn't in a bad mood, at least he hadn't been the last time Sho had seen him, but there was still that feeling that he could not shake. The feeling that dad was there watching them waiting to punish them for…something. Anything.

"You don't have to be scared of him. He only punishes you when you're bad so just don't-" said Mob. She knew what it meant when his aura got like that. He was scared. She didn't blame him, she was scared of dad sometimes too, but he wasn't that scary so long as you didn't do anything to upset him.

"I'm not afraid of dad." Said Sho

"Ok…but I would understand if you were. Sometimes he can be a little bit scary and sometimes it might seem like he doesn't care but he does. He cares about both of us." Said Mob

"Yeah but he cares about you a lot more than he cares about me. Like if I died of boredom he'd just be mad because I'm his only son and only boys can inherit the world so then he would have to stop working and find some lady to have another baby with and then hope that it came out a boy. If you died then he would be super sad and probably try to bring you back to life with science or something." Said Sho

"That's not true. None of that was true. If you died then dad would be sad to have lost you and also if I died then I would stay dead. You can't bring people back from the dead." Said Mob

"Uh-huh, then how do you explain zombies?" asked Sho

"There's no such things as zombies." Said Mob

"People say that there's no such thing as spirits either but we see them all the time." Said Sho

"That's different. We've never seen a zombie so that means that there are no zombies and also being a zombie would be terrible anyway. You smell bad and you're rotting and you're scary and you eat people-" said Mob

"When I die I want you come back as a zombie." Said Sho

"No, I won't let that happen." Said Mob. She did not want to have a zombie for a brother. When Sho died then he would pass on like normal…and she did not want to think about Sho dying. Not now when they were kids and not in a hundred years when they were grownups either.

"You don't get to tell me how to die. I'll die when I want to and I'll die however I choose to…and also I'm not going to die! First of all kids don't die and second of all I'm Suzuki Sho, the Awakened Child, and I can't die." Said Sho

"You can still die. People die all the time, even kids." Said Mob

"Normal kids die all the time. I'm not a normal kid though, big sis, I'm the Awakened Child. If going through that didn't kill me then nothing will. I'm not afraid of anything." Said Sho. He really wasn't. Sometimes things gave him bad feelings or made him nervous but he was not afraid of anything. Not even water. No, the water didn't scare him at all. He just hated getting his face wet and also couldn't take a bath by himself because…because he got lonely. That was it. He got bored and lonely. Also big sis needed someone to take a bath with her or she would fall asleep in that tub and drown. That was a thing that happened, he saw about it on TV, and he had to be there to keep his big sis safe. Also she needed someone to wash her back for her and he needed someone to wash his back for him…even if she did touch his tree….and also he needed someone to wash his hair for him because he couldn't be bothered. Yes, those were all very good reasons to take a bath with his big sis and all of those reasons had nothing to do with the totally crazy idea that he was afraid of the water.

Nothing scared him.

"You're afraid citrus fruits." Said Mob. She knew that she was. Even drinking lemonade made her nervous. It was scary how one little plant could have the power to kill her little brother.

"Nope. They don't scare me." Said Sho. He refused to be afraid of citrus fruit. They had no power over him. Just because they could kill him so easily…but that didn't matter because he refused to die. As long as he avoided them then they couldn't hurt him. Simple.

"But if you eat them you'll die. Doesn't that scare you?" asked Mob

"Nope. I'm not scared because I know that I can avoid them. It's not like they can chase me down and stuff themselves into my mouth and force me to eat them." Said Sho

"But what if you accidentally eat one? Like the time when you ate my grapefruit." Said Mob

"That was before I knew that citrus could kill me. I'm not a moron, I know never to eat citrus, and besides it's not like we keep it in the houses we stay at." Said Sho

"Sometimes dad eats grapefruit and stuff, though, and that scares me a little because there could be a terrible accident and then you would be dead and…and I wouldn't have a little brother anymore. I don't know what I would do without you, Sho, I really don't. I love you so much-" said Mob. All this talk about death was making her all sad and teary eyed. She didn't want her little brother to die. If he died then…then she would find his spirit and drag it back into his body. She didn't know if that would work but she would try her hardest to keep her little brother alive and safe and there with her.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah I love you too." Said Sho. He reached over and pulled her into a hug. Girls. What was with them? They cried for everything. They cried when they were happy and when they were sad and also for no reason sometimes. He didn't know what she was so sad about. He wasn't going to die. If the Awakening thing hadn't killed him then nothing could. There. Nothing hard to understand about that.

"Promise you won't talk about dying anymore?" asked Mob

"Fine. I promise from the bottom of my heart, cross my heart and all of that stuff, that I won't talk about dying…but I will talk about how bored I am!" said Sho

"Um…if you're bored then maybe you could…draw a picture? Or maybe we could play Wii? Or you should use me as target practice? Or we could-" said Mob. Her eyes darted across the living/dining/fort room looking for things to keep her little brother occupied with. There were lots of things that he loved to do, from his pencils to his toy guns to their Wii, and she named them off as her eyes skimmed them. There were other things too, things like the fort they had built or his plastic zoo animals or their board games, that she didn't get a change to name.

Because the lights went out.

And then, for a moment, all she could see was a gold colored aura. When it touched hers she felt…scared. She felt so scared that she could have wet herself right there. That was…what was that? A person. That had been the aura of a person, not a spirit. An esper. A natural esper. She felt the explosion of power that came with someone awakening but those always felt the same. Also they were red.

She had never seen a gold colored aura before.

"Whoa! That was so cool!" said Sho. The room was dark, hardly any light came through those tiny windows, but he wasn't afraid of the dark. He wasn't afraid of anything. Not even whatever that had been. An aura. Another person. Someone had awakened…that poor guy….that was the only explanation of it. He had seen people awakening since they had gotten there. The explosion was always red though, not gold…so that must have been a natural…some other natural had gone through the awakening process…

He was the Awakened Child. No one else.

"That was….they felt scared." Said Mob. She pulled her knees up to her chest. The power was still out. They had lost control, whoever that natural esper was, and they had blown the power to the whole Seventh Division. They must have been strong, then, if they could do that. She did that on accident sometimes when she got upset too…

Another prodigy?

Good. She was tired of being The Prodigy. Let someone else have that title. Then she could just be plain old Mob. Not that she even knew if that had been a kid or not…but something told her that it was. She had never once in her life known an adult to be that afraid. That must have been another kid…and she hoped that it was an older kid. No little kid should ever have had to be that afraid. Well no kid at all should have had to have been that afraid but a little kid would have been even worse….

She hoped that they were ok.

"We should help them!" said Sho. He jumped to his feet and pulled big sis up. It was a no brainer. If the kid was scared then they should have helped him. He knew in his gut that it was a kid. Something about when their auras touched. He also got the feeling that it was a boy. It would have made sense, dad said that girl espers were super rare and all, and if it was a boy then they could have been friends…well Sho had to make friends before the other kid became competition….since he had awakened too….

There could only be one Awakened Child.

"We should…it's the right thing to do…but dad said that we should stay here…and we're always supposed to do as we're told…" said Mob. Helping that kid was the right thing to do. You were always supposed to help those in need. Mom had said so. Also that was what Claw was for, helping espers and stuff, and that meant that if that poor kid was alone and afraid then of course she was going to help….but dad had told them to stay put. Dad…he did not like it when they disobeyed direct orders. He did not like it at all.

She wanted to help so badly…but she didn't want Sho to get hurt…or her even though it was selfish to worry about herself like that.

"Do you always do as you're told?" asked Sho with a scoff.

"I try to." Said Mob. Sometimes she did bad things, like the time she stole from Minegishi or like how she thought that kendo was boring, but in general she tried to be as good as possible.

"Yeah, that was a dumb question…anyway! You can do whatever you want, I don't care, but I'm going to help whoever that is. Stay here and play with your dolls or whatever if you want." Said Sho. He turned to leave when he felt her hand grab his.

"If dad catches you then you're in for it. You heard him. We would be punished worse than he had ever punished us before." Said Mob

"I don't care. Anything is better than being in here. Besides, if he just awakened then he probably needs a friend." Said Sho. He didn't have any clear memories after the part where they shot him full of electricity. He did remember being scared, though, more scared than he had ever been in his entire life.

"Then…then you stay here and I'll go." Said Mob. Sho made a good argument but that was all the more reason to make him stay. In for it meant something different for Sho than it did for her. Dad almost never just came out and hit her. He pulled on her braids and pushed her around but he never just reached out and hit her…not like he hit Sho…and when he did hit her it was never hard enough to leave any marks. Never anything so bad that they'd had to call Fukuda. She would much rather have been punished beyond belief than Sho.

"No way! Why do you get to-" said Sho. No way was she going off on this adventure without him. No way was she going to go and meet the first esper kid that they had ever seen without him. No way was she going to be the one to make another friend and no way was he going to be left all alone!

"Yes way. I'm older than you. Dad left me in charge. Dad likes me better. He likes us both but he's much less likely to hurt me than he is to hurt you. If he finds out that you left this place then he's going to hurt you so badly that he's going to have Fukuda come in and put you back together. I don't want that. I could never want that. If he catches me then he'll hurt me as badly as he hurts you on a regular basis. I don't care if I get hurt. I care if you get hurt. I am not letting you out that door so either I go or neither of us goes. Nothing you say or do will change my mind." Said Mob. She held Sho's hand tight in hers.

"No." said Sho. He pulled his hand away from hers and took a step back. He ended up with his back pressed up against an invisible wall. A barrier. Her barrier. He instinctively tried to break it. He hit it with everything he had…and it didn't even crack.

"Yes. Stay here little brother." Said Mob. She used her best 'dad' tone. The kind of tone he used when he gave the sorts of orders that had to be followed. The same tone that made that one Awakened Guy wet his pants…and Mob did not want to make Sho wet himself but desperate times called for desperate measures.

"Bite me." Said Sho. What else could he do? He wasn't strong enough…he would never be strong enough…and now she was going to go off and meet that kid and make friends with him and then he would probably end up being stronger than Sho and then dad would adopt him and send Sho to an orphanage and then-

"Don't say things like that. You know that dad hates it when you say things like that. Come on, I won't be gone long and then we can play together. I might even be able to bring the other kid if I can sneak him away from wherever he is. Then we can all be friends." Said Mob

"Shut up." Said Sho

"Why are you so upset, Sho? Please tell me. Maybe I can make it all better." asked Mob

"Because you're going off without me to make friends with this kid and then you'll have another friend and I'll have no one and he's probably another Awakened Child and I'm the Awakened Child and-and-and-" shouted Sho. Things in the room were starting to float. His doing. Big sis went inside of her shell. He couldn't break through her barrier, he wasn't strong enough, and there was no point in trying.

He tried anyway.

Their auras lit up the darkness. His red and her pink and blue. He threw whatever he could at her but it had no effect whatsoever. She just stood there and asked him over and over again to stop. He didn't…well he tried not to. He was fine until she stuck her hand through her barrier and took his…and didn't let go. No matter how much he fought and pulled and pried and kicked and screamed she wouldn't let go of him.

Then he got tired.

It felt sort of like someone was pulling his insides out through his belly button. He got so tired and his aura got so dim…and then he found that he couldn't fight against her anymore. He was just…he needed to sit down….and he did. Right there on the ground. The lights were still off. He could feel a lot of frantic auras moving against the edge of his perceptions including the mysterious gold one. He felt a blanket being pulled over his shoulders….the roof of their fort…but he was too tired to be mad at her about that.

He was too tired to be mad at her about anything.

"Ok, now you just stay here and I'll go check it out. Ok?" asked Mob. She was bouncing up and down a little bit. She felt sort of like the time she and Sho had drank all of those energy drinks, the ones with the warning labels that said that they had too much sugar and caffeine to be considered safe in them, which made zero sense because all she'd had to drink that day was plain milk.

She'd worry about that later.

Sho had tired himself out. That was good. That meant that he wouldn't have been able to follow her. She made sure that he was comfortable and then she set off to find where the gold aura was coming from. She wasn't noticed. Well she was but not by anyone important. She knew that the Awakened noticed but they were too busy running around to care. They were afraid of something….but she didn't know what.

She hoped that it wasn't the other kid.

But that was ok if it was. She knew what it was like to have people be afraid of her because she was a prodigy. Kids were not supposed to be as strong as she was, dad had said so, but it was ok because she was a Suzuki and Suzuki's were the strongest espers around. As she walked down the sterile white halls she thought about everything that she would say to the other prodigy. She would tell him that it was ok that he was the way he was. She would tell him that he had nothing to be afraid of. She would tell him that he could be friends with her and Sho. She would tell him that he had nothing to be afraid of, that Claw was a good place, and that he was amongst other espers.

She would make him feel welcome.

Or her. It could have been a her. Mob had no idea what the other esper was. The other esper could have been neither, even, like Minegishi was. Mob didn't care, she just wanted another friend. She wondered if they were ok, the other esper, because she had seen firsthand what happened when someone was put in one of those Awakening things. Sho had the scars to show….and the other kid probably had scars too…but that was ok. Sho was proof that even if a lot of the scars were unsightly it was ok because they just meant that you got your full powers. When you got your full powers then you could do all kinds of things and your dad was proud of you-

Did this kid have parents?

The thought makes Mob almost stop in her tracks. She knew that this was a kid and if this was a kid then the parents should have been near. The mom and the dad. Or just the mom or just the dad or two moms or two dads or some kind of grown up…but she didn't feel any new grownup auras. She felt…she didn't even feel dad, which was good, but also she didn't feel any new grownup auras. Just the Awakened and the Scars and also Minegishi as outside…and Shimazaki was moving around too much for her to pinpoint him….

Where was dad?

It was good that dad was gone. She let her perceptions expand as far as they could go and could not find him anywhere near….not in the compound anyway…and that was good. Then he wouldn't be able to find her and catch her and punish her…even though she had no idea why she was being punished. She was helping out another esper and there was nothing wrong with that. She was allowed to talk to espers and be friends with them and that was what she was going to do. Besides, if this kid really didn't have any parents then they needed all the niceness and help that they could get.

Poor esper kid.

They were probably an orphan. That was why she didn't feel any new grownup auras…or maybe their parents were normal people…but that didn't make any sense. The kid was too strong to have come from two normal people. She and Sho were only as strong as they were because they had one esper parent. Dad had said so. The kid was probably orphaned and alone in the world…she walked a little faster….the poor kid was probably all alone and needed a friend…or even a sister. If the kid was an orphan then dad could have adopted them and then she and Sho could have had a new sibling and maybe this kid was older, too, so that way she could have had less responsibility….

She walked even faster.

She didn't know what everyone was running around for. She could clearly feel the path to take…and the kid was running away from her for some reason….but the path was still clear. Oh. Right. She forgot, sometimes, that the Awakened and even other naturals weren't as powerful as she was. She could sense the other esper clearly but that didn't mean that everyone else could. No matter, no matter, it was better that she found the kid instead of someone else like Shimazaki or that Division Leader who always wore the creepy mask or the evil spirit pokemon trainer with the annoying voice…

A blind spot.

She kid went into a blind spot of her perceptions….which was so weird. She had never felt a blind spot before…but maybe that was their power. Maybe they had the power to disappear completely. That was so cool! Maybe they could teach her. Maybe they could compare powers and learn from each other and hang out every day and be best friends and have sleepovers and birthday parties and Christmas parties and forget the year parties and Halloween parties and Samhain parties and lunar new year parties and equinox parties and political parties and-

And a white room?

She came to the blind spot on her perceptions. A white room. The door was white and…and there was a gross sort of energy coming off of it. She touched it with her hand and then pulled away. A curse. She knew what a curse was. Sometimes evil spirits put curses on people….and sometimes other people put curses on people. Like Sakurai the Samurai. He had cursed his toy sword until it was a real one…and this room felt kind of like him…

She dispelled the curse on the door.

Good. Now she could open it…..but there was no knob. There was only this keypad thing…and she did not know the password. Just to be safe she typed out the word 'password' with her powers. That was her and Sho's password to their tablets and phones. It was easy to remember. Password was not the password…so she tried password1 and the password11….and she was getting nowhere.

So she just overloaded it.

That was a way to get past keypads, at least it was in videogames, and art imitated life after all. She was glad that it worked because the only other alternative would have been to rip the door out of the wall with her powers…and someone definitely would have noticed that. She didn't want anyone to know that she had been sneaking around where she should not have been. The Awakened wouldn't have said anything, they treated her like she was an adult, but the Scars might have told dad…and also Shimazaki was there somewhere and he seemed like he would have been a tattletale. She did not need him or anyone else tattling to dad…

And nobody would.

Even if she had maybe overloaded the keypad too much. The whole hallway smelled like burning….and that had been her doing. She maybe should have been just a bit more careful with what she had done…but that didn't matter. That could have been explained by an electrical error or something. Yes, she would be fine. She was fine, totally fine, and so was the other esper….

It was a boy.

A crying boy. The room he was in was white…and it felt weird….and Mob dared not step foot in it. Not when all of her instincts were screaming at her that she had to run away while she still could. She tried to reach into the room with her powers and pull the boy out…and she could not reach into the room. There, carved into the white walls, was a curse…a nasty one. She couldn't even reach into the room to disburse it…and that was…it was scary. It was scary and wrong and she wanted the room to never have existed and she was getting scared and it felt like she had too much energy and-

And now the boy was looking at her.

"Don't hurt me!" shouted the boy. Mob took her powers and stuffed them down inside of herself as deep as they could go. Conceal don't feel. Power is nothing without control. She was not going to hurt him and she was not going to let him think that she was the sort of person who went around hurting others. That was no way to make friends.

"I'm not going to hurt you, boy, I'm trying to get you out. See? I opened the door. Come out of there. That room is cursed…I think it takes away powers…so you really should get out of there. It feels like an evil room." Said Mob. She didn't mean to scare the boy but evil was the only way that she could describe it. If she knew how to make fire then she would have burnt it to the ground because a room that could take away powers should not have been allowed to exist.

"You…you're letting me out?" asked the boy. He was standing up now. He was a little taller than she was. His hair was blond and his eyes were blue and she wondered what country he was from. She wondered what his name was. She wondered how he spoke Japanese so well. She wondered how he had even gotten into that room to begin with. She wondered so many things…

She had never seen another esper kid before…one that wasn't her little brother…

"Yes. Come on before you end up getting hurt." Said Mob. She didn't have to say anything more. The boy came running right out. His shoes made a loud noise when he ran, and also they lit up which was so cool, and Mob worried that someone might have heard…but the Awakened weren't near. The Scars weren't near.

She was all alone with him.

She felt warm. She had never been all alone with a boy before, not one who wasn't her brother anyway, and this boy looked like he was about her age….and he was taller than she was…and his shirt was all dayglow and cool looking…and she really wanted to be his friend. Yes, that was what this was. She really wanted to be friends.

Even if he did smell kind of like Sho did after he wet the bed.

"Come on, keep moving! We've got to go before they come back!" said the boy. He grabbed her hand and started to run with her….towards the awakened. Mob stopped and pulled him off to the side.

"Why did you stop!? Come on, we have to move!" said the boy

"Why are you running in the first place?" asked Mob. She looked him over. He had on a short sleeved shirt and short pants. She didn't see any of sorts of scars that Sho had…or even any at all. Was he afraid of the Awakening room? That was a totally valid and normal fear.

"Because they're going to find us! Get a clue already! I don't know who these people are or what they want-" said the boy breathlessly. Mob let her aura cover him. That helped Sho calm down, sometimes, when he had bad dreams. She needed him to know that he was safe…not that she had any idea what he was afraid of. Since he had his powers, his aura was so bright, then he didn't need to go through the Awakening process. He had nothing at all to be scared of.

"This is the Seventh Division of Claw." Said Mob helpfully. How could someone not know where they were? Was it like when she woke up in a whole other country and it took her a moment to remember that they had moved again? Probably not…she didn't know what it was but she knew what it wasn't. That was…something.

"What? How do you know that? How long….how long have you been here?" asked the boy

"Not for very long, just a few days. How didn't you know where you were?" asked Mob. She knew that it was bad form to answer a question with another question, dad had told her so, but she really and truly had no idea how this boy could have had no idea whatsoever where he was. This was so clearly a Claw division, you could tell just by looking at the outside of the building, and if he was an esper didn't he know about Claw? Dad said that every esper either worked with Claw or opposed it…but it made no sense why anyone would have wanted to oppose Claw. Claw helped bring espers together from all over the world. What was bad about that?

"I don't know! One minute I was at the park with my parents and the next I was in this cage…thing…and then I got out and I ran but…but they caught me and-and-and-and I want to go home!" shouted the boy. Mob put her hand over his mouth without thinking. As soon as she realized what she was doing she stopped. That was only for quieting down little brothers, not new friends, and she had been so rude there….

"I'm sorry that I did that, I'm used to keeping my little brother quiet like that, and it was rude of me. Just don't shout, please, because then they'll find us and I'll get in big trouble-" said Mob

"We're both going to be in big trouble if they find us! Come on, we've got to keep moving. We can find where they put your little brother and then we can escape-" said the boy. Mob frowned. Escape? But he wasn't trapped…right? People wanted to join Claw. That was why there were so many Divisions. Espers from all over the world wanted to be a part of dad's vision for the future. They followed dad because he was the most powerful esper ever. Also he was going to make the world a better place. Who wouldn't have wanted to be a part of that?

"I know where my little brother is, he's back in the room, and also…what did you mean by escape?" asked Mob

"What did I mean? What did you mean? Do you…do you live here?" asked the boy

"Yes. Well yes and no. My family moves around a lot for my dad's work. Right now we're living in this Division but we can move at any time." Said Mob

"Your dad…my parents are like that too….did they….did they take you from your dad? Did they take you and your brother from your parents, too? Is this…do they just take kids and make them live here and-" said the boy

"No! No, it's not like that at all. We don't take people, they come to us. Claw is an organization that gathers espers from all over the world and brings them together to help make the world a better place for espers everywhere. One day we won't have to hide our powers and-" said Mob

"You….you're like me. You have….you have colors too…." Said the boy

"Yes. That's my aura. Every esper has one. Sometimes it's the same as your parent's aura and sometimes it's different. Didn't you know that?" asked Mob. How did he not know that? All powerful espers had at least one esper parent….right? And the boy had said that he had parents...but then what was he doing there? He said kidnapped….but that must have been a mistake. Yes, a terrible mistake. He had no esper parent…so they thought that he was an orphan. Yes. That was it.

"My parents don't have powers….but your do?" asked the boy

"No, just my dad. That's where I get it from. That's probably why they took you, you know, and it was probably an accident too. Since neither of your parents has powers then they probably just thought that you were an orphan. I'm sure that when I explain it to them then they'll take you home." Said Mob

"No! Don't talk to those people! Are you ok? Did you hit your head or something? Or is this like Stockholm syndrome? Have you been here so long that you've gone crazy or something!?" asked the boy. He was shaking her now…and only Sho could do that. She took a step back. He had called her names, too, and that was something else that only Sho could do. Only little brothers could be mean like that.

"I am not crazy and you shouldn't shake me like that. If you're going to be mean to me then I'm leaving. The only person allowed to be mean to me like that is my little brother." Said Mob. She was prepared to leave. She wanted a friend but not one who was going to be mean to her. You had to choose your company wisely, dad had told her that, and keeping mean company was not wise at all.

"Wait! Stop….I'm sorry. It's just…the things that you're saying aren't making any sense…or maybe that's just me. I'm so scared and…and I just want to go home…and you're here telling me that I can just leave and…and that this was a mistake…but I know what it wasn't! I was just minding my own business when these guys came and took me and then I woke up here and-and-and it was not a mistake! I never asked to come here! I have no idea why I'm even here! These people steal kids-" said the boy

"No, they don't. We don't steal kids. We're a good place. We bring espers together. You're actually the first esper kid that I've ever met that wasn't my little brother so you can take my word that we don't steal kids. Trust me, I know my dad, and he would never steal a kid. He already has two anyway." Said Mob

"You…you're one of them….one of Claw…" said the boy. He backed up and backed up until his back was pressed against the wall. His eyes were darting around in both directions. His aura was big again. He was messing with the lighting, the emergency lighting, and once that was gone they'd be in darkness…and also if he kept on carrying on like this then they would easily be discovered.

"I'm only nine and a half, I don't work for anyone. Well I help out my dad sometimes but not lately. Also please stop being afraid. If your aura gets big again or you mess with the power then they'll find you again. come on, conceal don't feel. Power is nothing without control." Said Mob

"Co-conceal don't….is that from Frozen?" asked the boy

"Yes. I love Frozen, can't you tell by my dress? Do you like Frozen? I have Frozen, well I have all the Disney movies, and if you want you can come and meet my brother and we can hang out. I mean if you want to be friends…but I understand if you want to go straight home. You must be scared. This really was a misunderstanding, I think, because I know my dad and he would never let this happen. The Awakened must have made a mistake, those are the guys in the red uniforms, they really aren't that smart and they make a lot of mistakes. Do you want to come home with me or do you want to leave?" asked Mob. She crossed her fingers that he would stay and be her friend…but she also knew that he wanted to go back to his mom and dad and she did not blame him one bit. She would have been freaked out too if she'd been taken away from dad….and she had freaked out when she had realized that mom was gone and she was never coming back…

Also the boy had been scared enough to wet his pants so he probably wanted to go home and change.

"I want…I want to go home. I don't want to become a part of the esper army or whatever it is that people do…I just want….I want my mom and dad…." Said the boy. Mob knew what she had to do. She was not going to do the selfish thing and bring this boy home with her and let him borrow some of Sho's clothes and also run him a bath and give him a hot meal, too, because he seemed hungry. She was not going to try and keep this boy here and make friends with him…even if dad said that the only friends she could have were epsers….

She was going to help him get out.

"I'll help you. Don't worry I won't tell the Awakened or the Scars anything….even though they have to listen to me because my dad is their boss…I'll just help you sneak out." Said Mob

"You…your dad is their LEADER….?" Asked the boy

"Yes. My dad is the president of Claw and one day he'll rule the whole world." Said Mob. The boy was looking at her again…and his aura was scared…and she had no idea what he was so scared of. He knew that she was not going to hurt him and she just said that she would help him get out. What more did he want?

"Pl-please….I don't want to join Claw…I just want to go home. I want….I want my mom." Said the boy. Mob knew that feeling well. Wanting to go home, wanting mom, being in a strange place with strange people…she had to help him. There was nothing else that she could do but help him.

"Come on, we can take the access hallways. I kind of know my way around, this is a lot like the other Divisions, and I can sense anyone long before we run into them. Try to be quiet though because if someone finds us then my dad'll punish me for leaving my room…and I don't want to get hit today." Said Mob

"You-you're helping me? Even though…even though your dad runs this place? And he'll hurt you if he catches you?" asked the boy.

"Of course I'm going to help you. You're alone and afraid and you want your mom. I know that feeling, it's not a good one, so I'll help you. Also you smell like you wet yourself and I bet that you want to go home and take a long bath and change your clothes. So come on, I can feel them getting closer." Said Mob. He stared at her some more before nodding and following her. Mob knew the path outside…well she sort of knew it. This place may have done the same thing that the Eighth Division did but it was built more like the Second Division…which she had spent some time in…

She eventually found the way out.

She kept her aura around the boy's. That way none of the Awakened could see him. She didn't know if this trick worked on Scars but she was not going to stick around long enough to find out. She needed to keep going no matter what. She had to get this boy back to his mom. Nobody should ever have had to be separated from their mom. Nobody should ever have had to be far from home. Nobody should ever have had to be scared that they wet their pants. Mob wanted this boy to be her friend but she also wanted him to be happy, to be safe, and to be back with his mom and dad who loved him very much.

So she showed him the way out.

"Head that way, towards the city, but be careful. My friend Minegishi is on the other side of the building but they can control plants and you're in the woods. I'm sure that you were only kidnapped on accident but if the orders are to keep you here then even my friends have to follow them. But don't worry, the Awakened have terrible ranges and the Scars hardly ever leave the Division so as long as you get back to the city you'll be fine….oh! Hang on, I think I have some yen in my pockets!" said Mob as she dug through her pockets. They were outside now, they had gone through a bunch of maintenance and access hallways until they found an exit that was far from everywhere, and now it was time to say goodbye. She wasn't dragging it out or anything, meeting the first esper kid she had ever met who wasn't her little brother, she just…people needed money for things like food and new pants and maybe even a taxi and she had yen to spare so she had might as well give it to him.

"This is…a lot of money." Said the boy as Mob handed him a bunch of bills. Was it? That was just her pocket money. She only had one ten thousand yen bill in there. He could have that too. She had only asked for one to prove to Sho that they existed.

"You can take a taxi home if you see one. I don't know if there are taxis all the way out here but you can stop one and take it home. That's all the money I had in my pockets, I'm sorry if it's not enough." Said Mob. The boy took half the money and tried to press it into her hand.

"Here. You need money too if you're going to escape-" said the boy

"I'm not trying to leave. I can't. My little brother is here and also my dad would be worried about me. Also my friend is here and they said that they'd paint my nails at some point and I like painting nails…so you take the money. It's not that much and I can always ask for more if I need it." Said Mob. She took the money and pressed it back into his hand. Instead of taking the money he just wrapped his hand around hers. She felt her face start to turn red. This was…this was a lot. She had never felt…not since she was little…and now her heart was racing and her aura was too visible and….

"Come with me. We can come back later for your brother. You can't stay in a place like this." said the boy

"I-I don't want to leave….my family is here. My whole life is here….but you can go. Go and go now because people are going to notice and….and I don't want you to get captured again. I don't know where my dad is or when he's going to be back and he's the only one who can fix this mistake…and he's going to be so mad at me if he finds out that I left…so please, if you want to go then go now." Said Mob. The boy still held her hand. She didn't want him to stop….but also she did. She wanted him to get back to his parents because nobody should ever have had to be separated from even one of their parents let alone both of them.

"Thank you…thank you so much. I will never forget you…." Said the boy

"Suzuki. Suzuki Shigeko…but my friends call me Mob…well my friend calls me Mob but more people would call me Mob if I had more friends." Said Mob. Her face must have been red as Sho's hair. She was sweaty and her heart was racing and she wondered if she was going to die. Her hand was being held by a boy!

"Mob…I will never forget you or what you've done for me…you saved my life." Said the boy. Mob nodded. She would have told him that he was not in any danger of dying, that Claw did not kill people, but she didn't get the chance. She would have told him that he needed to get going because she could feel Minegishi's aura noticing her aura. She would have told him that he needed to make his aura as small as possible or he would get caught. She would have told him a thousand and one things if she'd had the chance…but she hadn't the change to say even one more word to him.

Because the next thing she knew she was being kissed.

One minute she had been talking and the next his lips had been over hers. It had been quick, not like in the movies, and his lips had been super chapped…but it had been a kiss. A real kiss. A real kiss from a boy…her feet stopped touching the ground. Her lungs stopped working. Her heart was working overtime. She felt like she was going to die but in a good way. A kiss. A real kiss. A real kiss on the mouth like….like she had always imagined….well not like she had always imagined because it hadn't been as long and there hadn't been fireworks…well there had been inside of her…and they were still going off inside of her even after he pulled away…and she felt grass under her feet but she was still floating…the grass was growing around her….all the plants were growing….

Her first kiss.

"I-I-I'm never going to forget you either…." Said Mob once she remembered how to speak Japanese. That was….that stripped all of her sense right there on the spot. She wanted to do it again. She felt…she could not make sense of this feeling beyond the fact that she wanted to do it again. Again and again and again….but it would never happen again because she would never see that boy again. Ever. For as long as she lived she would never see him again….and she didn't even know his name…

"Hanazawa Teruki. I-I'm Hanazawa Teruki…and I can't believe that I just did that…" said the boy, Hanazawa, as he turned just as red as she must have been. She wondered if that had been his first kiss too. She wondered if it was ok to ask. She wondered if it was ok to ask, too, if she had been any good. She hadn't moved at all and in movies they always moved their lips. Also she hadn't hugged him or but her arms around his shoulders like they did in movies. Are imitated life after all. Maybe she had done it wrong. Maybe she was bad at it. Maybe…well it wasn't like they could do it again. He had to go back to his family. It would have been selfish of her to make him stay just because she wanted to kiss him a bunch.

"Me neither….thank you. That was….that was really nice…um…but you have to go before someone catches you again." said Mob. That had been hard to say…and what was wrong with her? She should not have even thought about keeping him there with her. She should have been ordering him to run away…not that he was someone she could boss around….but he needed to go and she needed to stop thinking about what life would be like if he stayed with her and became her boyfriend and married her and they had babies together and one would have been called Shigeo and the other would have been called Shoko and…and stuff that was never going to happen because she was never going to see him again.

"You're right. I-I should go…thank you so much, Mob, for saving me. Thank you so much and…and I will always remember you." Said Hanazawa. He gave her hand another squeeze and she just about turned into jelly right then and there. Was this how it always felt after kissing? Would she ever feel like this again? She didn't know. She didn't know anything beyond the fact that she had just had her first kiss and also she had defied dad…and she would be in for it…but that didn't matter because she'd just had her first kiss!

"Me-me too. I-I will always remember you too….Hanazawa Teruki." Said Mob. She didn't want to let go of his hand but she knew that she had to. She didn't want to let him go but she knew that she had to. To do otherwise would have been selfish and she was not going to be so selfish as to keep someone from their family. No, that would have been wrong, even more wrong than deliberately disobeying her dad. She was in for it….if dad found out what she had done…because even though he had made a mistake she had still defied him and also he might not have been a big fan of the whole kissing thing either…so that was something else that she was going to keep to herself…

She needed to get back before someone noticed her….some more.

She ran back as fast as she could. When she got there Sho was taking a nap. She put the TV on and sat next to him and tried to act as normal as possible. The power was back and that meant that they could do normal things…even though she had no idea how she was ever supposed to feel normal again…because this had been such the day…..and it wasn't over yet. She hoped that Hanazawa made it home safe. She hoped that he made it back to his mom and dad.

And she hoped that he never forgot her…because she knew that she would never be able to forget him for as long as she lived.


	119. Graveyard Meetings

It wasn't often the Suzuki Touichirou found himself with no idea as to what he was going to do.

He was drawing a blank. It was like no matter what option he took the outcome still would not totally favor him. The child, a natural esper, was simply too old to incorporate into his household. A nine year old, the same age as his children, was old enough that he would not be able to forget his biological parents. If the boy had been an orphan it would have been a different story but, of course, he hadn't had the idea to orphan the boy until after he had been captured. Of course killing the boy's parents and making it look like an accident would have had it's own logistics…

And there was no point in dwelling on what he should have done.

The boy had bene captured and was being held in the Seventh Division headquarters. To what end he did not know. He had never had to deal with this, an esper child, before. Adult espers usually flocked to him willingly. Threats of violence and copious amounts of money could sway even the most stubborn adult. Children were different. He should have planned this better.

Of course he had never imagined that he would find another prodigy.

Well that was a strong word. His Daughter was a prodigy just as he had been. The child that they had found was gifted, if anything. Closer to Son's level than Daughter's. A good addition to Claw. Not a good addition to his family. Even though the children could have used a companion. That was why they were constantly asking him for a pet, they wanted a companion, and he was finally in a position to give them one. A companion, not a pet, because he had no desire to cart a cat or a dog or a canary or a komodo dragon or whatever else it was that the children wanted.

There was a cat looking at him. He glared at it.

He should have been back at the Seventh Division. He knew that he should have had some sort of plan, he should have been there to dispense some sort of orders, but he had nothing. Why did this have to be a nine year old? A nine month old would have been so much easier to deal with. Someone small enough that they could have been seamlessly added to his family like Daughter had been all those years ago. He should have been happier, ecstatic, over the moon…but he wasn't. Because of logistics. That was it. There were just too many logistics that came with kidnapping a child. Another powerful esper that spawned from two nobodies from nothing….

Two very rich nobodies from nothing who actually wanted their esper child.

He should have orphaned the boy before kidnapping him. Not personally, of course, because this was not one of the things that he was going to see to personally…even though maybe he should have. There were so many ways that it could have gone wrong…but it hadn't gone wrong. It had gone right and now they had the child and they needed to know what to do with him and Suzuki had no idea what he was supposed to do with a child who did not want to be a part of Claw but needed to be a part of Claw because child espers were so rare….

That cat was still looking at him.

He glared back at that cat. He glared like he had never glared before. He could make his eyes glow red and it was good for putting the fear of God into people. Apparently cats were immune. It stared right back at him from where it was sunning itself. He stared right back at it. He didn't remember Seasoning City having quite such a stray cat problem but then again he hadn't been back in years. So much had changed. The fact that this city seemed to churn out powerful espers, however, had not changed since he had been born. First him and Fukuda and then Daughter and now this new child. This city did not disappoint. He needed to get back and make sure that he didn't end up disappointing himself. He never should have left in the first place. He was attending to business. That was all. He had noticed a distinct lack of Fukuda and of course he had to track the man down personally. In case he had gotten the idea in his head to run away.

Not that Fukuda would ever do that.

Suzuki knew Fukuda. He had been fiercely loyal since the very beginning. Back when Claw had been nothing but the two of them sitting on his bedroom floor dreaming of a better world. Fukuda would not have left…at least the old Fukuda would not have left. He was a different man sometimes. He had first seen it during Sho's awakening. He would have dismissed it as a one off thing, a fluke, but then it had happened again when he learned of the exact reason they had all been uprooted back to Seasoning City. Suzuki did not consider himself to be a very forgiving man, or even a little bit forgiving, but he could excuse Fukuda's outburst when he realized that they were going to be kidnapping the child esper.

He had a soft spot for children.

And also, Suzuki knew this for a fact, he did not want to be back in Seasoning City any more than Suzuki did. Seasoning City had been the place where it all had started for the both of them. Fukuda had been eager to leave this place, eager to get on with life, and eager to get away from everything that this city was. Every memory it held. There was nothing good in this city, nothing from the past anyway, and Suzuki…he did not want to have to even think about the past. Not that he felt guilt. Not that he was still ashamed of how things had gone. Not that he had been actively avoiding not only this city but this place, the place he was in currently, for decades….

And not just because some cat was staring at him.

He walked past it. He wondered if there was any significance to the fact that a graveyard cat was staring at him. Maybe he had the mark of death on him. Maybe that was it. Maybe this was going to be the day that he died. Maybe he tripped and fell and broke his neck. Maybe there was some elaborate plan to kill him in the works and this would be the day that it finally worked. Or maybe being in a graveyard just got him thinking about death. He didn't know. All he knew was that he did not want to be there. He would have never come if he hadn't had to. But he did. He knew that he could have sent someone to collect Fukuda but…but knowing their history together…and the way that they had parted…the last words that he had spoken to him…

Suzuki was not a forgiving man but he did understand the value of building at least a decent relationship with the only healer that he knew.

"Come to pay your respects?" asked Fukuda as he poured some water over a gravestone. There was some incense burning, too, and a plastic convenience store bag near his feet.

"No." said Suzuki. It was pointless. Fukuda's parents had already passed on. That was why they were not amongst the lingering spirits. His mother had passed of a stroke and his father had passed in a car accident. Perfectly normal and mundane ways to die, deaths that gave neither of them cause to linger, Fukuda knew that. He was an esper, he could see spirits, and he knew that the only things housed in that grave marker were his parents' ashes. Their spirits had long since gone on so, really, there was no point at all to this ritual.

"I didn't mean to my parents." Said Fukuda. He turned his head to the side. Suzuki followed his gaze. He knew that Fukuda was not watching that cat saunter away, no, he was looking about six meters to the right. To the gravemarker that said Suzuki. There were probably thousands of people called Suzuki in Seasoning City alone but that marker belonged to a specific Suzuki family. His family.

"I'm not here to pay my respects to anyone." Said Suzuki. He had no urge to light any incense. He had no urge to pour water over any grave markers. He had no urge to leave a slice of cheesecake with whipped cream and strawberries for his mother or a mochi bun filled with red bean paste for his father. He had no prayers to say, no farewell missives to give, and no flowers to leave so that they could wither and die like everything else in this godforsaken place.

"Come to kill me then?" asked Fukuda

"No." said Suzuki

"You sure? I mean we're already in a graveyard. It would save you the trouble of burying me." Said Fukuda

"You don't want to be cremated?" asked Suzuki. Well that was something that he hadn't known. He would have assumed that Fukuda would have realized that spirits had a better chance of moving on if their bodies were cremated. Also it made more sense from a space saving point of view.

"No. I want to be buried under a tree. A sapling. That way I can at least be of some use to someone after I go." Said Fukuda. He had a tone there that Suzuki could not understand the meaning of. It wasn't heated like it had been before, when he had sent the extraction team after the child, it was…tired? Yes, it sounded tired. But it was in the middle of the day. Jetlag?

"That makes sense I suppose. Not a fruit tree though, I hope, since some may consider it disturbing to eat the fruit of a tree which was nourished by a decaying human body." Said Suzuki

"That's what you find disturbing?" asked Fukuda

"Yes. That doesn't disturb you?" asked Suzuki

"Not as much as kidnapping a nine year old boy for no reason whatsoever." Said Fukuda. There was another note of something in his voice. Not tiredness. A strain to it. Anger? Fukuda's aura certainly seemed angry…and now they were right back to where they had started.

"I don't need to explain myself to you." Suzuki. Fukuda had taken issue with taking the child for some reason. There were plenty of reasons not to want the child, logistical ones, but that was not the place Fukuda was coming from. Fukuda had a problem with taking the child from his parents. He had a problem with the fact that the child's parents would miss him. It made no sense to put the parents into the equation. The fact that the boy would remember them, that was the thing to worry about, not the fact that his parents would miss him. They could easily have another child. The child may not have been an esper but since the parents were both normal people then that shouldn't have mattered. It wasn't like the thought of losing his children, the thought that made his aura flare and his powers threaten to go out of control, because his children were irreplaceable.

"I know." Said Fukuda. If he knew then why was he being like this? Fukuda was usually the one who explained other people to him but now there was no way that he could ask Fukuda to explain himself. People did not react well to that. They became defensive and shut down so Suzuki knew that he was not going be asking Fukuda to explain what was wrong with him.

"If you know then why are you still upset?" asked Suzuki

"Because….I spoke out of turn and I'm sorry. If you're going to kill me or something just…do it. If not then I'll be back in a minute." Said Fukuda. He turned and took a small cake from the convenience store bag by his feet. He left it at the grave marker by his feet and bowed his head in prayer.

Suzuki got the feeling that he was not supposed to be there.

He got the feeling that this was not the thing for him to witness. This ritual. Their cultural rituals were important but this was just…pointless. The dead didn't care. They either passed on or lingered until their unfinished business was finished with. They didn't care for prayers or flowers or incense or offerings. He hoped that his children didn't waste their time doing these things for him after he died. He planned on passing on quickly. His parents had gone quickly.

Immediately.

He didn't know what possessed him to look over at their grave marker. They weren't there, just their ashes, they had passed on immediately. He had no reason to look over for them. He didn't need them. He was a grown man with children of his own now. Even if they had been alive he wouldn't have needed them. He didn't need anybody. He was complete all on his own. He didn't need to tell his parents that…that he had children now. That he had children now and that his children were espers and that he was proud of them, even his son, and that…he had no reason to want to tell his parents anything. Even if they had been alive he as a grown man now. He was complete all on his own.

Fukuda stopped praying.

"I'm not going to kill you." Said Suzuki. Why would Fukuda be worried about something like that? He only killed traitors and while Fukuda had spoken out of turn he had never done anything that could ever be considered treasonous.

"Then why did you follow me here? I know that it's not to visit your parents." Said Fukuda

"I wanted to know where you were." Said Suzuki simply. The truth was that he was putting off making decisions about what was to be done with the esper boy but Fukuda did not need to know that. He would not shatter Fukuda's image of him by admitting that he was inductive.

"You could have just had me followed. I know that you don't usually do these things personally." Said Fukuda

"That's true but…but you are not just anyone. You're the only healer, you know, and if some misfortune were to befall you then your loss would be felt." Said Suzuki

"Well I was planning on coming back. I was always planning on coming back." Said Fukuda

"I don't doubt you." Said Suzuki. Fukuda was his most loyal follower and the closest thing that he'd ever had to a friend. Fukuda had asked him that, to be friends, back when they had been young. Suzuki told him that he didn't have or want friends, just allies, and here they were now. Still Fukuda had known him the longest and knew the most about him. More than anyone else in the world barring Masami.

"Are we heading back now?" asked Fukuda. He didn't look at Suzuki when he said that. He looked past him. Suzuki wondered what was so fascinating. Probably that cat again. He had never understood the fascination that people had with cats or any other animals really. Then again the things that he couldn't understand about people could fill a warehouse.

"Have you finished?" asked Suzuki

"Yeah. I'm done unless you have soe praying to do." Said Fukuda

"No, I don't. It's a pointless ritual. My parents have passed on. Yours have too." Said Suzuki

"This isn't about the dead, Suzuki, it's for the living. I know that my parents have passed on but I still like to visit them and pay my respects." Said Fukuda

"I don't understand. They've been dead for some time now." Said Suzuki

"I know that you wouldn't….I know. I know you…I know you don't believe in this. In ritual. In human connection." Said Fukuda

"I don't, you're correct. I've never had any use for it." Said Suzuki

"I know. That's why it's so easy for you to…never mind." Said Fukuda

"Easy for me to do what?" asked Suzuki. There was something to his voice there, an edge, because he had gotten the distinct feeling that he had been criticized. Nobody criticized him. Nobody had the right to. Especially not his subordinate. His aura flared. He exorcised that emotion. He was not going to lose control again. He was hearing things that weren't there. Fukuda would never have…well he had before….but he didn't mean anything by it. Maybe he was becoming more sardonic in his old…middle age. They were middle aged now, weren't they? Forties already….

"Easy for you to take a nine year old boy from his mother and father. It's easy for you to do that since, you know, you never had any attachment to your parents to begin with. You've never needed anyone, never been attached to anyone, not once in your entire life." Said Fukuda

"Yes." said Suzuki. All of the things that Fukuda had just said were true…so why did he feel like this? He felt like he was being criticized while Fukuda was only speaking the truth. He had never been attached to his parents…not since he had been very small, anyway, so it was…easy. Easy for him to take the child away from his parents…hard to figure out what to do with the child, though, since there was no option that didn't have something of a bad outcome….

The child could not join his household.

The child would try to escape no matter what division he was assigned to.

The child would never want to join Claw, not really, not unless…he had no idea. Usually he was very good at thinking things through. Usually he was very good at planning but…but there was just something about this city that stripped him of any and all ability to think and plan and…and he needed to get the hell out of this city.

"That kid…Suzuki that kid has a family. It's not like with Shigeko. Shigeko was practically an orphan, no one wanted her, this kid is different. He has a family. He's nine and he's never going to forget this family, not like Shigeko did, and he will always resent Claw and…and you…for taking him away from them. His parents actually want him. They're going to…they're going to want their son back. This kid…people are going to look for him. A lot of people." Said Fukuda

"I know." Said Suzuki. He had thought of that little eventuality. There was nothing that could be done about that but people would give up the search eventually…or he could just have the parents removed…but then the disappearance of an entire family would arouse even more suspicion. He wished that this boy had lived literally anywhere else on the planet. Then Suzuki could have had plans A-Z ready without all of this…noise…in his head.

He hated Seasoning City so fucking much.

"Then why even put yourself through all of this? Why not wait until he's an adult and then approach him. I know how you value your time. I know how much you have going on. Wouldn't it have been better to wait the nine short years until this kid was a legal adult and then approach him with the same spiel you give every espe that crosses your path?" asked Fukuda. Yes, this was why he was kept around. Well that and his healing powers. He had a way of looking through the fog, through the noise, and seeing the best possible plan. That was a good plan, it would have been a great plan, if not for a few simple things that Fukuda had overlooked.

"Nine years is too long. I want Daughter to get used to him." said Suzuki. Fukuda had overlooked the children. Specifically he had overlooked the fact that the children desired a companion who was not their sibling. Also Daughter was getting older and it was best to find someone for her now. At least someone worthy of her. She asked, sometimes, about making friends with children who were not espers. He knew that soon she would want to become involved with the opposite sex and soon she would be begging him to allow her to be with a non esper. There weren't a lot of espers in the world to begin with, it was too early to see how many were in her generation, but if he could find someone for her…and make sure that it was someone who could never leave her…well then why wouldn't he have done so? Every single father wanted what was best for their Daughter.

"What….? She's….she's not even ten years old. I don't think that this is something that you need to…to worry about. Also I can't see her being ok with you just picking out….picking someone out for her…and the kid also….I'm sorry. I'm just trying to wrap my head around what you just said. This…arranged marriage or whatever it is you have planned…." Said Fukuda

"No, not an arranged marriage. I would never make Daughter go through with something like that. I simply thought that finding someone for her at this age would have been better. Also it would be good to study another child esper. This is the third one that I know of. I have my reasons for not waiting for the child to grow up. Do not question me." Said Suzuki

"I wasn't questioning you." Said Fukuda. Suzuki would take his word for it even though it had seemed like he was being questioned. Fukuda would never do that. Well he would but…but only when acting out of emotion. Only when he lost control. That was….understandable-ish. Tolerable-ish. Fukuda-ish. He would believe Fukuda for now, anyway. That was what he would do. Even though a feeling was taking root within him. Even though he could feel…he could feel something that was hard to exorcise but still there….

"I know." Said Suzuki

"I'm with you all the way, you know that right? I just think that there are less…stressful…ways to do things." Said Fukuda

"When I want your opinion I'll ask for it." Said Suzuki

"I know, I spoke out of turn. I apologize." Said Fukuda

"Good. Now come back with me and-" said Suzuki. He would have told Fukuda that when they got back he needed to look over the esper child. Make sure he had no concussions, contusions, or abrasions. Make sure that nobody had been careless or overzealous in their efforts at extracting the boy. He would have said something but he hadn't had the chance. No. His phone had vibrated and that had broken him out of whatever moment that he and Fukuda had found themselves in. This…moment. This moment was…this moment was theirs and was not…enjoyable. Pleasant. Yes, pleasant was a much better word to use.

"Suzuki?" asked Fukuda. His aura was shrinking back. Suzuki knew why. It was because his own aura was expanding outwards. He couldn't help it. Thank God that they were in a graveyard. Pretty much everyone there was already dead and those that weren't were keeping their distance. Even that damn cat had gone away.

"We are leaving right now. Come." Said Suzuki. He was so angry. He could barely hold it together. This was…he was surrounded by incompetence! This was…this was the worst thing that could possibly happen. How could everyone be so…incompetent! How hard was it to keep track of one little boy?!

"Sir?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki knew that tone, it was fear, and he didn't care. He welcomed it. A welcomed distraction from the rage the simmered beneath his surface. How could this…he needed to keep calm. The child was gone but he could be found…and he could expand his aura out and…and he found nothing because…because he was so muddled…all he could feel were the awakened and…Daughter? Why was she so bright? What had…what had transpired?

He didn't know but he would find out.

"Come. Something…unforeseen…has happened." Said Suzuki. He would find out who was responsible for this and they would pay. He didn't know he would do or who he would do it to but they would pay for this.

God, how he hated Seasoning City.


	120. The Blame Game

Dad could be very scary sometimes.

Like now. Now he was the scariest the Mob and Sho had ever seen him. His eyes were glowing red and his aura…his aura was expanding to fill the whole room. It hurt when his aura touched theirs. It burned, a little, and they tried to pull away but there was nowhere to pull away to. There was nothing that they could do but watch and listen as he stood there with his eyes glowing and his aura big and painful….dad was scary.

Sho thought that he looked like a monster.

Mob tried not to think of anything at all.

"Tell me, how hard is it to keep track of one nine year old boy? How difficult is it to keep one child in a cell until my return? How difficult is it to keep one little boy captive until-" said Suzuki. He was going to lose it. He was dangerously close to losing control. He could feel his aura, it hurt, and he knew that he was mostly energy at that point. He could feel it in his eyes and his body. He wanted to murder just about everyone in that room from the Awakened to the Scars. Even the two in his upper echelon had failed him.

Failure would not be tolerated.

"We're sorry! We're so sorry President Suzuki!" shouted an Awakened. Soon several others joined in pleading for their lives. They had failed the President so, of course, they deserved to die. They just didn't feel like it.

"Do all of you honestly think that kowtowing to me will make up for your many, MANY, failures?" asked Suzuki. He got a smattering of 'yes sirs' and 'we're sorry, sirs' from the Awakened before him. They were all down in a kowtow. It didn't help. If anything it made the whole thing worse. At least his Scars knew better.

"Sir? I take full responsibility for what happened and I assure you that there will be punishment for the sheer incompetence-" said Ishiguro. He glared at anyone and everyone through his mask. This could not stand. They had failed their President and now he was going to demote all of them. He had not fought the President for four hours nonstop just to be kicked back down to the level of a regular Scar. He would have his seat at the top of the world by the President's side and nobody was going to take that away from him.

"As you should. This Division is your responsibility and you could not even keep track of one child. I should take you down where you stand for this. You are not worthy of the title of Division Leader. In fact none of you are worthy of your titles or ranks." Said Suzuki. He wanted to kill them all. He wanted to kill them all and get back to the drawing board…but that would not have been an intelligent thing to do. If he killed everyone then he would need to replace everyone and that would have meant spending even more time in Seasoning City. He wanted to leave. He wanted to get in a plane or a boat or on a train or just to pick a direction and to start walking. He hated it here. If it weren't for the fact that he needed to get that child back, personally most likely, he would have packed himself and the children up and left ages ago.

"With all due respect, sir, we did have him. He was in one of the curse rooms and he should not have been able to escape on his own." Said Ishiguro. The child had help. There was no other way. Those curse rooms could hold even him. The child, as powerful as he was, should not have been able to break out on his own. They couldn't see it through his mask but his eyes landed on Suzuki's two children. Both of them were around the boy's age. The girl's aura was very distinctive, not like the Awakened, and she had been felt at various points in the facility even though he had been assured that Suzuki's children would not be underfoot.

"Obviously your curse rooms are not as secure as they seem, then." Said Suzuki. Ishiguro may have been useful but he had also overstepped. He was a very old man, he had lived long enough….but then he would have had to find a new Division leader. He followed Ishiguro's aura. It was focused on…the children? Why? They were doing nothing to draw attention to themselves, well Daughter couldn't help it, but she and Son were just standing there holding hands and staring at him. They seemed frightened, their auras did anyway, and he wondered why. His anger was not directed at them. He knew his Son and Daughter were not capable of betraying their own father like that.

"The control panel to the curse room was shorted out from the outside, sir." Said Ishiguro. He still focused on those children. He didn't know them, they kept to themselves, but he could remember feeling the girl child's aura moving around. The girl child was looking back at him now in some facsimile of her father's constant non-expression. She would most likely have been filled with the same sort of ambitions that her father was. She was not too young to be after power for herself. What was it that she wanted? Her own Division? Was that her plan, to make the leadership here seem incompetent and then to take over. She may have just been a child but so had everyone in that room at some point in their lives. Ambition knew no age.

"Explain." Said Suzuki. He did not like what was being implied. Someone had betrayed him. Someone had seen fit to free the only other esper child that they had been able to find since Daughter. Now the child was out there running free and he was there getting to the bottom of it. He'd sent someone competent out to find him this time. Shimazaki knew the child's aura so it was only a matter of time before he was found and returned.

And dealt with.

"We're still working out how it happened but after the boy's initial escape from the holding cells he was caught and put in a curse room. The room can only be opened from the outside with a control panel and that control panel was shorted out from the outside." Said Ishiguro

"Review the security footage, then, and tell me who here saw fit to betray me." Said Suzuki

"Nobody betrayed you!" said Mob. She couldn't help it, it just slipped out, and now everyone was staring at her. Sho was holding her hand really tight. She hadn't meant to say anything, she just needed to get dad off of this train of thought. She had…she had not betrayed him because….because she had been helping another esper and that was what Claw did, it helped espers, so really she had not done anything wrong at all. She was not lying to dad. She was not a liar or a traitor.

"Shut up!" whispered Sho. She should not have been talking. Even he knew that this was the time to shut up and let dad yell. At least he wasn't yelling at them. If he started yelling at them then he might have figured out that they had been thinking about leaving. They hadn't left, though, because he had gotten really tired all of a sudden. Big sis put him down for a nap and then she had watched TV. That was what happened. That was the only thing that had happened. Big sis hadn't left because if she'd left then she might have been the traitor and if she was the traitor then dad would have done to her what he did to traitors. Sho had seen it so many times. It was not good and he was not going to let that happen to his big sis. Even if she could be kind of bossy and annoying nobody deserved to have something like that happen to them. Not even his bossy and annoying older sister who was always on him to do his schoolwork and take baths and go to bed at a reasonable time.

"Daughter. Stay out of this. This does not concern you or your brother." Said Suzuki. She was speaking out of turn….and now he had that to deal with on top of everything else.

"But nobody betrayed you! We wouldn't! Nobody would betray Claw! Claw helps bring espers together and that's a good thing so that means that nobody would betray you!" said Mob. She needed to get dad off of this whole 'betrayal' thing. She didn't know what happened to traitors, exactly, but she knew that it as the sort of thing that Minegishi wasn't going to tell her about until she was ten. Also if anyone could have been considered to be a traitor there it was her, not that she had done anything wrong because obviously the boy had been mistaken for an orphan and kidnapped by mistake, but dad might not have seen it her way. So she had to make sure that dad knew that nobody would ever want to betray him.

"Don't!" said Sho. He reached over and covered her mouth just like she had been doing to him for as long as he could remember. She didn't lick his hand or try to bite him or anything. That was good, he did not want her germs even if they were brother and sister, and she was being quiet now, too. Her aura and her face seemed scared though. He didn't blame her. Dad was scary then, kind of like a monster made up of energy, and that was worse than how he was scary at the best of times.

"Daughter…you see the best in people. You're young and you can still see only the best in people. I know that it pains you to think of someone trying to undermine our work but it does happen. Don't worry. The traitor will be dealt with and then your new friend will be found again and you and your brother will be introduced to him and I know that you'll be happy." Said Suzuki. Son was trying to shut Daughter up. Good boy. He would have to speak with Daughter about speaking out of turn but he did not blame her. He had, so far in life, shielded her from the vast majority of the realities of his work. She wanted to believe that nobody would be stupid enough to undermine him or his work. Maybe it was her age or her gender that made her so naïve to the ways of the world, the fact that sometimes people were either stupid enough or suicidal enough that they would work against him, and he did not want to shatter that within her but he would have to. At some point she would have to know that as much as she idolized him, which she was right to do, others did not and actively tried to hurt him and the work he did.

"Yeah, we think so too dad. Can we go now? We didn't have anything to do with this and we…we have a lot of…schoolwork to do! Yeah, a lot of that. Also it's cold out here and…and big sis isn't wearing a sweater. So, yeah, can we go?" asked Sho. He wanted to tell dad to let them go, that he was being a jerk and that he wanted to get as far away from him as possible, but he wasn't going to say that. He was too scared to be mad.

"Go." Said Suzuki. Son had a point. The children hadn't done anything wrong. They weren't capable of it. They were loyal to him, they had to be, and he trusted them completely and totally. They were the only people he could trust that much.

"Come on. You can help me with my English or history or math or whatever. Let's get out of here and-" Said Sho. He took his hand off of big sis's mouth and grabbed her by the hand. They had to go back before she said anything else. If she said anything else then dad would have started to suspect them. Even though he had no reason to be suspicious. That was what Sho told himself. Big sis hadn't helped. Big sis hadn't been the one to betray dad. Big sis had stayed in the room with him. That was what had happened. That was all that had happened.

"Sir? If I may?" asked Ishiguro. His eyes and his aura had not left that girl. She had been responsible for this. It was the only thing that made sense. Nobody in his Division would have done something so heinous as freeing a prisoner. It had to have been an outsider. Not those upper echelon espers that Suzuki had brought with him either. They already outranked him. They had no reason to want his job, they were already members of Suzuki's personal entourage, so they were above suspicion. The girl, on the other hand, was just a child. She had no place in Claw's hierarchy, not really, but she was her father's Daughter. She wanted to prove herself, probably, to her father. She had come from the man who planned on taking on the whole world, of course she would be filled with ambition. Well he was not going to lose to a little girl. She had miscalculated. She had thought that she was above suspicion because she was just a little girl. She had thought that nobody would dare say anything to someone who was as powerful as she was. Well she had severely miscalculated.

"If you may do what?" asked Suzuki dangerously. He did not need excuses or kowtowing. He did not need anything other than the name of who had betrayed him.

"Your children were supposed to stay put, were they not?" asked Ishiguro. The boy wore his emotions on his sleeve. He was frightened. The girl was as placid as always. He wondered if the boy had been adopted. The girl looked just like her father. Suzuki, when they had fought, had been so placid. Even after four hours and nearly killing him, he wondered if Suzuki had been prepared to kill him, Suzuki had been so placid.

"They were." Said Suzuki. He did not like where this was going. He did not suspect his children. He did not like the way suspicion was being cast towards his children. He did not like this at all.

"They were, I'm sure that they were." Said Fukuda quickly. He did not want to be present for this but he needed to be. He needed to be there for Sho. This seemed like something that Sho would have done. He would not have gone along with something so transparently wrong. He was Masami's son.

"Then why did I, not only me but many others, feel her aura moving through the facility earlier?" asked Ishiguro. There. One of the girl's allies. She may have been small and adorable there in her princess dress but looks could be deceiving. Nobody knew that better than Ishiguro himself. Seeming harmless had it's advantages. That was why he had the voice modulator in his mask.

"Um…." Said Mob. She knew that people could feel her but…but she assumed that it had been only the Awakened…and she also thought that they Awakened wouldn't have told on her…but that was not the thing to think. The Division Leader was telling on her. Mob didn't know her, the lady in the mask and the black dress thing, so really it shouldn't have been surprised that she was telling on her.

"The kids had nothing to do with this." said Fukuda. He knew that if he started yelling or pleading that it would make him looked desperate and guilty. He knew that Sho had something to do with this. Maybe Shigeko too but definitely Sho and he knew that if Suzuki knew that his own son had betrayed him…..Fukuda knew what Suzuki did to traitors and he knew, also, what Suzuki was capable of doing to his own son.

"We didn't!" said Sho. No. He knew what dad did to traitors and he was not going to do that to big sis!

"I know that you two had nothing to do with this." said Suzuki. He felt his aura flare, then, and he let it show. This was not a productive use of his time. He would not be lied to. It was one thing, one terrible thing, to place blame on another. It was another thing entirely to blame his children!

"How can you be sure? You were gone all day. I was not. I know for a fact that I felt her aura. There are only so many bi-colored auras in the world." Said Ishiguro

"Of course you felt her aura. She's everywhere." Said Fukuda dismissively. That was good. At least he hadn't felt Sho. Suzuki would never have done anything to harm, truly harm, Shigeko. She was his pride and joy after all. Sho was just his son, Shigeko was his prodigy.

"Daughter? Did you have something to do with this?" asked Suzuki. He knew that she hadn't. He knew that he could trust her. He knew that she was his Daughter, his most loyal follower, and that she would never have betrayed him. He trusted her. He trusted her more than he trusted anyone else in the world. Even Masami.

"No. We didn't do anything." Said Sho. She didn't know how to lie. She never told lies even if it was in her best interest. He was letting her do the talking, that was good, he was much better at lying…even though he knew that he wasn't. He really wasn't. She didn't go anywhere or do anything. That was the truth. That was all there was to it. That was the whole of it. Yes, it was.

"I was asking your sister. She can speak for herself." Said Suzuki. He could feel something…something growing within him. A bad feeling. Daughter…she would never have betrayed him like that. But then why hadn't she stayed put? He had told her to stay put. She should have done as she was told. There was no way that…that they should have betrayed him…she had no reason to leave her room, though. There was nothing her for her to…but she would not have done…she would not have done anything.

"I….I didn't help him escape. I didn't let him out." Said Mob. She was telling the truth. Not the whole truth but half of the truth. She had saved the boy from the curse room but…but he had been the one to get himself out of the holding cell. That meant that she was not the one who helped him escape. That meant that she was not the one who let him out. That meant that she was not the one who betrayed dad. She had never betrayed dad and she would never have betrayed dad. She loved her dad.

"Then what were you doing?" asked Ishiguro. She was lying. She wasn't even good at it. She was putting on her cute and innocent act but he could see right through it. She reminded him of a younger version of himself in a lot of ways. There was something to be said about being seen as helpless. She wasn't helpless, though, and she wasn't innocent. She was a Suzuki and that was enough for him.

"I-I-I-" said Mob. She was not a good liar. She did not like lying. Mom said that lying was wrong. She was not supped to tell lies and if mom could have heard her then…then she would have been so mad…and so disappointed. She was telling lie…even though she had done a good thing…but she was not supposed to go around telling lies…

"She was looking for me. She got freaked out because it went dark." Said Minegishi. They were not involved in the mass kowtow. They were off in the corner scrolling through their phone. They had no idea what had really happened. They just knew that they had felt Mob outside. They also were not itching to go running to Suzuki with this information. He was the type to smack his kids around and Mob didn't deserve that. Also they were a bit more selfish, too, in the sense that they didn't want the Seventh Division to go the way of the Eighth Division. They liked being alive thank you very much.

"I'm sure she did." Said Ishiguro. She was gathering her own allies. What was her end goal? A Division of Claw? Or to usurp her father, even? She was his firstborn but she was a girl. She would be overlooked in favor of her brother…unless she was trying to frame her brother even…something which may have been it…

"She's just a kid, you know. What's your excuse?" asked Minegishi. There was no reason to be such a bitch. Suzuki was pissed and the only way to make him slightly less pissed was to throw someone under the bus. Well it wouldn't be Minegishi, the woods were very big and they were just one person. It wasn't going to be Mob either. If this moron was going to be throwing someone under the bus then it should have been literally anyone other than Suzuki's favorite kid.

"I know what I-" said Ishiguro

"You're blaming children for your own incompetence? Really?" asked Fukuda. Wow. He and Minegishi were agreeing on something. It was a sign of the end. He wondered what they had to gain from this….oh, right. Shigeko. For some reason they had decided to ally with Shigeko for some reason. Fukuda knew that these were not sentimental reasons. Minegishi did not see Shigeko as the child they never had or anything like that. Minegishi probably just wanted to cover their own ass. Suzuki wouldn't live forever, he would be succeeded by his children one day, and it made sense to get in good with his favorite child. Fukuda didn't care why Minegishi was protecting the kids. He just cared about keeping Sho safe.

"Yeah, you're blaming us for your own incompetence!" said Sho. This was good. As long as everyone else was talking then dad wouldn't expect big sis to talk. Not that there was anything to talk about. That was what he kept on telling himself. There was nothing at all to talk about. Nothing had happened. Big sis hadn't done anything. If he kept on telling himself this then it would be the truth.

"Don't help." Said Minegishi. Another surefire way to piss Suzuki off, get his son going. That was an annoying little boy at the best of times and these were not at all the best of times. Even throwing someone under the bus would not fix this. They hoped that Shimazaki managed to find the kid. It would be easier for him in the outside world where they didn't have curse rooms every so often. Those really threw him off, or so he said, Minegishi didn't think that he needed to hold onto them while they walked through the division.

"Don't tell me what to do." Said Sho. He would help. He would help and he would keep big sis safe. Even if he knew that by this time tomorrow she would be back to bossing him around like normal.

"Listen you little-" said Minegishi. They did not have patience for annoying little boys. They did not have much patience to begin with. They needed to lay down. This whole thing was just too much. The fact that they had moved back to Japan so suddenly, the fact that they hated these big division compounds, and the fact that Suzuki's aura was practically SCREAMING at them. This whole thing was one big headache. That kid, the one that they had kidnapped, had better have been worth it. Mob level prodigy worth it.

"Enough. If you value your life then you will stop this immediately. All of you." Said Suzuki. A headache. This was such a headache. Everyone was such a headache. He wanted to leave. He hated Seasoning City so much. He could not take one more minute in this city or this division. Hopefully Shimazaki would have been able to track down the child. Then they could….he didn't know what would come next. He couldn't think. He needed a drink…for the first time in he didn't even know how long.

"Yes dad. We'll go now, dad." Said Mob. She took Sho by the hand. Dad waved his hand and that meant that they were dismissed. That was good. She needed to go before she had to tell any more lies…or before she had to try and tell more lies. She was not a liar, not a good one, and mom would not have wanted her to tell lies anyway…and dad would not have wanted her to have betrayed him by helping that boy escape…so she couldn't come clean because then she would be in so much trouble…and also there was the part with the kissing and she was not going to tell her dad about that so, really, the only thing that she could have done was to take Sho and run back to their room.

So that was what she did…only with walking quickly instead of running.

"We are going to stand here all day, all month, all YEAR until I find out who's responsible for this." said Suzuki. He watched his children disappear from sight. Well their bodies did but their auras…Daughter could be seen through the walls….until she walked past a curse room. There was silence after that declaration and he used that time to trace the path the children took. Son's aura was eclipsed by Daughter's. He could see her clearly and he didn't even have to focus….so Daughter could have, in theory, been the one to…but that was crazy. Daughter had gotten frightened by the sudden plunge into darkness, she was only nine years old after all, so she had sought out the company of a trusted adult. There that made perfect sense…though it was not like her at all to abandon her brother…but Son did not fear the dark. Yes, he had no sense of self-preservation but Daughter did. There. It all made perfect sense.

"Can I go too, boss? I didn't let the kid go. Security isn't even my department. I was on outside security but with everyone running around like a bunch of headless chickens I couldn't get a lock on any one aura. Also the curse rooms here are really throwing me off." Said Minegishi. Not a total lie. They saw best through the eyes of the plants which was why they had been outside but the sheer number of curse rooms, the blind spots, really did throw them off. Also they just plain did not want to stand there all day, all month, all year until someone came forward. Knowing what Suzuki did to traitors, what he asked them to do to traitors, that was not going to happen any time soon.

"You are dismissed." Said Suzuki. He knew that Minegishi wouldn't have betrayed him either. They had a soft spot for Daughter, possibly due to not having any children of their own, so they would not jeopardize their relationship with Daughter. Also they had nothing to gain by letting that child go.

"Can I leave too, boss? I was with you the whole time and security isn't my department either." Said Fukuda. He had to get back to those kids. He knew that he could not leave them alone now. He didn't know how he would protect them, Sho, but he knew that he needed to be there with him. He had done a good thing in letting that poor little boy go. He needed to know that he had done a good thing even if his father was acting like he had committed some kind of terrible crime. There was so much of Masami in him, even now after being separated from his mother for all of these years, and it made Fukuda so happy. The world did not need another Suzuki. The world could barely handle the one it had. That amoral, self-serving, selfish, moronic….he got off that train of thought. Nothing good would come from that train of thought. He would just tally up his evil thoughts for the day like normal.

"Fine, you're dismissed as well." Said Suzuki with a wave of his hand. There was no need for Fukuda. He would not be healing the person who had seen fit to betray-

"Can I leave too, President Suzuki? I was on my lunch break when it happened-" said one of the Awakened

"No. Nobody else will be dismissed. Not until the person responsible for this comes forward and-" said Suzuki. He would have kept on talking if he hadn't been interrupted by a shift in the energy around him. He knew that feeling. The one that came right before Shimazaki appeared before him.

Empty handed.

"Shimazaki. Explain." Said Suzuki. It had only been….he had no idea how long it had been since the child escaped, honestly. He knew what time he had been informed of the child's escape but he had no idea when it had actually happened….but had it been long enough for the child to disappear completely? He knew how fast he could travel but he was a grown man…but the boy's family was wealthy….

"Yeah, I looked in every corner of this city but all I found were some evil spirits, some neutral spirits, and a very friendly dog. No kid." Said Shimazaki. This was not on him. The last person that Suzuki should have put on security was the blind guy. Not here. There were too many curse spots, they messed with his perceptions, and he wasn't sighted. He relied on sound and touch, mostly, to navigate when his perceptions failed him. Not the things to rely on in a place like this. He had done his best and Suzuki got what he got and he didn't get upset.

"So you failed me too?' asked Suzuki. He tried his best to control his powers. He hated today. He hated this day and he hated this place and he just wanted to LEAVE but he couldn't because he still had so much to do and-

"Yeah, kind of. Hey, I did what I could. If the kid fled the city or the country or whatever then, hey, he's gone. What can you do?" said Shimazaki. Eh, they didn't need any more kids around anyway. They had Suzuki's two kids and that was enough of a headache for everyone. The last thing that they needed were more of the little monsters running around. Kids that powerful weren't worth it anyway, too unstable, it was best to wait until they were adults. That was Shimazaki's opinion, anyway, which he knew that Suzuki didn't give a shit about.

"Find him." said Suzuki

"I'd get right on that if I could, boss, but I have no idea where to start looking." Said Shimazaki. He surveyed the people around him. A lot of people kowtowing. He would not join them. The division leader looked like he was about to blow. That could have been interesting. He still didn't much want to hang around. He could see, sort of see, where Toshi had gotten to. Toshi was way more fun than these idiots.

"Fine. You're dismissed….everyone is dismissed. Leave me." Said Suzuki. He didn't have to tell them twice. Everyone practically ran out of the room. Everyone but Shimazaki, he teleported, and soon Suzuki found himself alone. Good. He needed to be alone…as alone as he could be. He could see auras even past the blind spots…but not everyone could. He had to remember that not everyone was as strong as he was. That was why if he had been there he could have…but he hadn't wanted to be there…and that was fine. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He could do whatever he wanted. He could go wherever he wanted.

He could just leave.

So that was what he would do. He would leave this place and go….somewhere else. If the child was gone then…then he was gone. It was unfortunate but they would meet again. There was a division of Claw on at least every continent so it stood to reason that he would eventually find this child somewhere else. Somewhere other than Seasoning City.

He hated Seasoning City so much it was frightening.


	121. Telling Secrets Asking Questions

Mob was in love.

At least she felt like she was in love. She knew that you couldn't fall in love with a boy you'd just met, Frozen taught her that, but she really did feel like she was in love. Not that she knew what being in love felt like, she had never been in love before, but she had never been kissed before either. She wanted to kiss him again, that boy, but she knew that it was never going to happen. She was never going to see him again. He had gone back to his mom and dad and then they had run away from Seasoning City, maybe from Japan itself, and that was…it was for the best. He wasn't an orphan and he had parents and nobody should ever have had to be separated from their parents.

When you loved someone you let them go.

She was selfish. She wanted him to be there with her. She wanted to hold his hand and to kiss him. She wanted to…she wished that she had gotten to know him better. He was in her thoughts and dreams now and she didn't even know his favorite color. She didn't know how many brothers and sisters he had or if he was an only child and she didn't know what his powers were or if he had been born with them like she had and she didn't know what his favorite movie was or his favorite food or…or anything about him at all. He was just…she liked him a whole lot. It felt like love. She liked him a whole lot but she didn't know anything about him…

And it didn't matter because she would never see him again.

Claw was looking for him but it didn't seem like dad was putting a lot of effort into it. She remembered when mom had gone missing, how he had people looking up every tree and under every rock for her. He said that he had some people on it when she'd asked. That was weeks ago. Right after everything happened dad came back to their room and told them that they were leaving right then and there. Then a bunch of awakened came and put their stuff in boxes. Now they weren't in Seasoning City anymore. They weren't even in Japan. They were in Australia now, like Sho had wanted for his birthday, and they had petted a lot of kangaroos too.

So she was happy.

Even if it was hot out. Even if having Christmas when it was hot out had been weird. But this place had a pool so it was ok. Pools were good because then Sho could swim and nobody would look at his scars and ask about them. They were at another Claw compound, this one was in the middle of nowhere, so they didn't have to worry about other people seeing them use their powers or anything like this. Also this wasn't where they made new Awakened, too, which was good. They just trained the Awakened soldiers here. They were awakened somewhere else. Also there wasn't any kidnapping on the agenda, Mob had asked, so really this had been a great time…

Aside from the fact that she was hopelessly in love with a boy she would never see again.

And also she couldn't stop thinking about kissing. It wasn't like she hadn't thought about kissing before, because she had, but now that she knew what it was like she was thinking about it more than ever. She used to think about what it would be like to have a boy like her and hold her hand and kiss her and now that she knew what it was like she wanted it to happen again and again and again….and also once more for good measure. She had always thought, at the back of her mind at least, that no boy would ever have wanted to kiss her. She didn't know any boys besides her brother and she did not want to kiss her own little brother…well she did kiss his cuts and scrapes and bruises better but that was different. The way she loved Sho was different than the way she loved…well she should not have been using the word love because you could not love a boy that you'd just met…but you also didn't just go around kissing boys…unless you were playing catch and kiss but that game was for little kids and also Mob had always thought that it wasn't a very fun game at all…because kisses had to mean something…and that kiss had meant something….it had meant 'I'll never forget you' and it worked….and she missed him so much but how could she miss a boy that she didn't even know….

It was complicated.

"Mob, either knock that off or get out." Said Minegishi from their spot on the couch.

"Knock what off?" asked Mob. As far as she knew she hadn't been doing anything. She was sitting on the couch by where Minegishi was laying down and watching a compilation of the best anime kisses of 2014. They could compile them now because the year was pretty much over.

"Your aura. It's practically screaming at me." Said Minegishi. People were not meant to jump around between time zones as often as they did. People were not meant to live in the middle of the desert like they were now, air conditioning could only do so much. People were not meant to have to sit there and feel someone else's aura screaming against theirs when all they wanted was some peace and quiet.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know that it was doing that." Said Mob. She pulled her aura in really close. Her aura had gotten big again. That happened, sometimes, when she thought about things that she shouldn't have. Things that gave her big feelings. Like kissing. She needed to stop thinking about this right now…so maybe watching a kissing compilation video wasn't the best thing to do…but she was already half way done and she needed to know what the best kiss of 2014 had been.

"Well now you do." Said Minegishi. They closed their eyes and tried to relax. Easier said than done. In addition to their normal list of complaints they also had to add their body's betrayal to it. Stupid inescapable facts of biology.

"I do. Thank you for telling me. I didn't know that my aura could scream. Well I knew that it could seem like it was screaming because Shimazaki said that mine did. Dad said that it wasn't literal, though, because the way we perceive auras depends on how we perceive the world. Dad said so. He said that because we're sighted people we see auras as colors while Shimazaki-" said Mob

"You know if you say his name enough times he's appear, right?" said Minegishi with a groan.

"Really?" asked Mob. How did he know if people were saying his name? Could he hear that well? For real? He could hear pudding. Sho hadn't been lying. They lived on the same compound but not the same house. He lived next door with Minegishi but one time Sho had opened a pudding cup and he just teleported right in and took it. That had been kind of mean, actually, but Sho didn't mind.

"How about we don't test it, yeah?" asked Minegishi. They reached over to the coffee table for their water. Mob passed it to them with her powers.

"Ok." Said Mob even though she did want to test it. She didn't want to see him, she didn't much care for him at all, but she did want to see if he could hear that far. Was it a part of his powers? Or was he just a blind master like Sho was always saying?

"And can we please watch something else? We've been watching people kiss for half an hour." Said Minegishi. They were maybe just a bit too testy. They couldn't help it. Mob was a nice kid but even she could be annoying at times. Not that Minegishi would send her away or anything. She'd just end up getting drowned by her little brother in that damn swimming pool which had no right to exist in the middle of the goddamned desert.

"You're right, it's been my turn for a while. Here, now you can pick." Said Mob. She'd finish the compilation later. Right now she had to stop being selfish. Maybe by selflessly letting her friend pick the show then she could cancel out how selfish she was in wanting to see him again…even wanting him to have stayed with her. Wishing that he had been an orphan so that he could have come with. Thoughts like that.

She could be so selfish sometimes.

She didn't know where all of this selfishness was coming from. She tried not to be selfish. Mom had always told her and Sho that they shouldn't be selfish. She wanted them to be sweet and gentle and good and even if she wasn't there she was still their mom and…and moms were important. You had to try and make your mom proud. She wanted her mom to be proud of her…and maybe when she came back…but that wasn't going to happen. Mob knew that mom was never coming back. She had about as much of a chance of seeing her mom again as of seeing that boy, Hanazawa Teruki, again.

If she'd asked a magic 8 ball it would have told her to ask again later.

"Give me that-holy fuck!" said Minegishi. They should not have sat up so fast. What was wrong with them? It wasn't usually this bad. Maybe the universe was punishing them for all of the terrible things that they had done. Well then the universe could go ahead and bring it on. This wasn't so bad….

Yes it was.

"Are you ok?! I'll call Fukuda, stay there!" said Mob. She got her phone out of her pocket and was about to call Fukuda when a plant reached over and knocked her phone out of her hand.

"Don't." said Minegishi through gritted teeth. This would…it would pass. It was worse than it had been in a long while but it would pass….and of course Mob wouldn't know that. Being nine and completely unware of how nature would soon decide to torment her. That was a talk that Minegishi was not in the mood to have right then and there…or at any time really. Not their kid, not their problem.

"But you've been sick all day. It's ok, Fukuda can fix just about anything. Like this one time Sho hit me in the face with a kendo sword, a shinai, and then-" said Mob

"Mob, trust me, this isn't something that he can help with." Said Minegishi

"Oh…ok. Are you tired? Because my mom got sick where she was tired all the time and she would spend all day I bed laying down…and Fukuda couldn't fix it…and I don't want that to happen to you too because you're my friend and-" said Mob

"I'm not sick. I can get up from this couch at any time, I just choose not to. Ok?" said Minegishi. Too much concern. Way too much. It was sweet, she was a sweet kid, and Minegishi knew that they should enjoy that sweetness before the world decided to smother it with a pillow like an unwanted stepchild. They would enjoy that concern and sweetness later once their insides were done becoming their outsides.

"I guess…I guess that's ok but…but you sounded like you were hurt. Also you said a bad word…and I just want to help." Said Mob. She was so selfish. Here she was sitting there thinking about boys and kissing while her friend was sitting there in terrible pain. Some friend she was.

"Do you really want to help?" asked Minegishi

"Yes. I really want to help. I'll do anything." Said Mob

"Go to my room and get me the tin of mints on top of my dresser, the clear bottle in my sock drawer, and the pill bottle that says Motrin. Don't touch anything else. Ok? No drinking anything you find in there and certainly no eating anything you find in there. Especially that plastic bag with the sugar cubes in it. Stay the hell away from the sugar cubes." Said Minegishi

"Why do you have sugar cubes? And why can't I touch them? You like your coffee black." Said Mob

"Mob, are you going to eat those sugar cubes? Because I guarantee that if you eat one of those sugar cubes you will not be ok. Also I'll be mad at you. You do not eat anything or drink anything you find in my room. You got it?" asked Minegishi. That was just what they needed, Mob almost killing herself again. Though she wouldn't die if she ate those sugar cubes, she would just end up wishing that she was dead. Yeah, no. She did not need Mob tripping out on them while they were dealing with the bottomless cruelty of nature's machinations.

"Don't eat or drink anything in your room. Got it." Said Mob. She got up and did what Minegishi asked. They didn't have to keep bringing up what had happened back last fall. She knew not to do that ever again. Minegishi said that there was a chance that she would have never woken up again. That was scary. It had been the best sleep that Mob had ever had so she believed completely and totally that there was a chance that she never would have woken up.

She was not going to eat or drink anything that she found in Minegishi's room.

Even if those sugar cubes did look inviting. She wondered what was so bad about sugar cubes. Maybe because it was refined sugar. Minegishi said that refined sugar was a poison. Also it gave you diabetes and that was what had ended up killing Shimazaki's childhood dog. So she would stay away from the sugar cubes and also the bottle that she found in Minegishi's sock drawer…even if drinking from it would make her stop thinking about things.

"Bring me that black marker on top of my dresser, too!" called Minegishi. Mob stopped staring at Minegishi's private stuff that she was not allowed to eat, drink, or go through. She grabbed what she was told to grab and then ran back to the living room. She handed everything to Minegishi and they sat up slowly. Mob helped with her powers. She wished that they would have let her call Fukuda. Maybe it was something that he could fix. She hated seeing other people in pain and also she would have to call Fukuda later anyway because Sho's sunscreen had probably ended up coming off in the pool.

"What? You want some?" asked Minegishi before they took a swig of something that Mob was way too young to drink. They knew that look. Mob wanted them to share. Whatever. Better to share now than to have Mob end up giving herself psoriasis or alcohol poisoning because she had decided to be a little sticky fingered sneak thief.

"Yes please." Said Mob. Minegishi passed her the bottle. She managed to take one sip before it was taken away from her. Minegishi immediately put the cap back on and the marked the level with a black magic marker. They did that now so that Mob couldn't borrow any more for her milk.

"Don't look at me like that. You get what you get and you don't get upset." Said Minegishi as they popped open the pill bottle and shook a few out into their hand.

"Ok. That's all there is, there isn't anymore." Said Mob. She knew not to ask for more or Minegishi would get mad at her. Even after folding a thousand paper cranes they were still mad at her for that one time last fall even though they knew that she was sorry. She had been selfish, then, and she needed to stop being so selfish all the time.

"Exactly. Now quit standing over me. Sit back down already, I'm not going to die." Said Minegishi. Mob sat down immediately and scooted back to her spot in front of the couch. They sat in blissful silence for a few moments.

"Why did you say 'die'?" asked Mob

"What?" asked Minegishi

"You said that you weren't going to die." Said Mob

"And?" asked Minegishi

"Well you saying that you aren't going to die makes me think about you dying…and now I'm worried about you dying." Said Mob

"Will you calm down, Mob? Trust me on this, nobody ever died because of this. Nobody in the history of ever has died because of this." said Minegishi. That kid was too high strung. Though they couldn't blame her being Suzuki's spawn and all. Plus she had that brother of hers to deal with. Poor kid.

"Are you telling the truth or are you just saying things to make me feel better?" asked Mob. Sometimes people did that, they told you things to make you feel better, which was sort of like lying but not really. Even if Minegishi had been lying to her she had no right to say anything. She was a liar too. She had lied to dad, half lied to him, about having nothing to do with what happened at the Seventh Division. There was no way that she could have told dad the truth. Even if he had made a mistake in thinking that the boy had been an orphan she still could not reveal her part in what happened. Technically she had betrayed her dad. Also, technically, she had double betrayed him by lying. Also she would have had to talk about the kissing parts, too, and she did not ever want to talk to her dad about that. Her mom, maybe, but not her dad. She was so grateful that the security cameras had stopped working when the base went to emergency power. The last thing she wanted was her first kiss to have been recorded for the whole world to see.

Even if it would have won that year's best kiss award.

"Whichever helps you sleep easier at night." Said Minegishi. They settled themselves back down on the couch. They felt better already. They were never complaining about this assignment again. At least being Mob's best friend they got to rest when they needed it. They did not envy Shimazaki having to follow Suzuki around all day. Even taking a plane ride with the man was too much. How Mob and her brother hadn't made themselves orphans yet was a mystery.

"…you're going to be ok." Said Mob. That was the answer that would help her sleep easier at night. She did not want to lose her friend. Was that selfish too? Not wanting Minegishi to die just because she didn't want to lose her only friend who was not her little brother? She should have wanted Minegishi to live only because then they would have been dead. It should have had nothing to do with whether or not they were friends.

"There. Now watch TV and let me rest. I'll be back to normal in a few days so don't worry about it." Said Minegishi. Time for some of that trash TV that they never would have watched under normal circumstances. They just needed to turn their brain off for a little bit, that was all.

"…but if I call Fukuda then he can come over and make you feel better now." Said Mob

"I already told you it wasn't that kind of thing. Learn to listen." Said Minegishi

"Sorry. I'm just worried about you. I don't know what I would do if I couldn't hang out with you." Said Mob

"Go swimming with your little brother?" asked Minegishi. Splashing could be heard outside. How had that kid not grown gills yet?

"I guess…but Sho splashes a lot and also there's this game where he holds me underwater…and it's not that fun." Said Mob

"Game? Since when is attempted murder a game?" asked Minegishi

"It's not attempted murder! I get a turn to hold him under too….I just don't hold him under for real because I don't want him to get hurt…" said Mob. Even though that was kind of selfish of her. She should have played the way that Sho wanted her to play because that was what big sisters were supposed to do. They were supposed to play with their little brothers even if those little brothers acted like jerks sometimes.

"OK, but how does this count as a game in the first place? Last time I checked games were supposed to, you know, be fun." Said Minegishi

"It is fun…for Sho. That's what matters, if Sho has fun." Said Mob

"So it's a selfish sort of game, then. Thank God I'm an only child." Said Minegishi. They wondered if Suzuki ever planned on doing something about his son's violent streak. Probably not. Knowing Suzuki he probably saw his son's violent impulses as a good thing. This was why Minegishi had no plans of ever reproducing.

"Sho isn't selfish…I'm the selfish one." said Mob

"You?" laughed Minegishi

"Yes, me…and please don't laugh at me. Friends shouldn't laugh at each other." Said Mob. At least she got the feeling that friends were not supposed to laugh at one another. Most of her knowledge of friendship came from TV since until she was eight, eight and a half really, she had been without any friends besides her little brother and the friendship that you had with your little brother was different from any other kinds of friendship. Your little brother was the only person allowed to be mean to you. Mob didn't know if the meanness went both ways but she was not planning on being mean to Sho any time soon.

"I wasn't laughing at you, Mob, just the idea that you could ever be selfish. I've known you for about a year now and I have never seen you do a single selfish thing. You put up with a lot, you know, a lot more than I ever would have. A lot than anyone as powerful as you ever would have." Said Minegishi

"I can be very selfish sometimes. Like when I don't let Sho use me for target practice or hold me under water or drink my strawberry milk. I can be selfish sometimes like that." Said Mob. She could also be selfish by undermining her dad's work but she was not going to talk about that.

"That's not being selfish, that's not being a doormat. Don't be a doormat Mob, nobody likes a doormat. Not even the doormat themselves." Said Minegishi. They omitted the fact that Mob could be something of a doormat herself. It made no sense. If anything she should have been a bigger brat than her little brother considering how powerful she was.

"I…I don't think that I'm that. I just want to be nice. To be sweet. My mom…she always said that I had to be sweet…but don't tell my dad that I was talking about my mom! Please! He'll get so mad at me! We aren't supposed to talk about her because she's a traitor and-" said Mob

"Calm down, calm down. I won't say a word to your dad. I'm not that kind of person, I can keep a secret." Said Minegishi. They wondered about the mysterious Missus Suzuki. Apparently she had run away from home. They couldn't imagine why.

"You can?" asked Mob. She had a secret now and she wanted…she wanted to tell it. She didn't know why she wanted to tell it, the minute she told it she knew that it would stop being a secret, but she wanted to say it. To say it out loud so that it would be true…even though she knew that it was already true. It was a thing that had happened and she wanted to talk about it…not the betraying part but the kissing part….

But she knew that she should have kept it to herself.

"Of course I can. Secrets only stay secrets if people don't going around blabbing to anyone who'll listen." Said Minegishi with as best a shrug as they could do while laying down.

"You're right. I shouldn't tell secrets. Let's watch TV, what's on?" asked Mob. She was not going to say anything. She knew that she could trust Minegishi but she also knew that a secret wasn't a secret if she went around talking about it.

"Something that I think you'll like. Plenty of love and drama and the like." Said Minegishi. Well that was a hell of a way to change the subject. They wondered what Mob could have been keeping a secret. She was nine. What, had she gone back to surreptitiously day drinking again? Probably not since she seemed to be at her normal level of alertness. Now Minegishi was curious. Mob was keeping something a secret…even from them…but what? Minegishi had a theory but it was insane. There was the shit show that had been the Seventh Division…and Mob had been outside…but that didn't mean that she had anything to do with what happened. No, she wouldn't have worked against her father like that. At least that was what Minegishi chose to believe. Mob wouldn't have done anything like that because she was loyal to her father and she knew what he did to traitors…well she must have had some idea…right? She must have known, at least, that it wasn't anything good.

Mob had nothing to do with what happened and thinking that she did was crazy talk.

"You're right, I do like this." said Mob. Even if it wasn't animated it was still interesting. It was about a bunch of people and they could be kind of mean to each other but also a bunch of them liked each other too. She liked shows and stuff where people liked each other. She liked it when people were happy and also she liked it when people held hands and kissed because then she could think about someone wanting to hold her hand and kiss her and-

And now she was back to where she had started from in the first place.

She tried to keep her aura small. She needed to stop thinking about this. It would never happen again, there was no chance that she would ever see him again, and even if she did she knew that it would not be a good thing. Dad wanted to kidnap him and make him a part of Claw. That was not a good thing because he would have been separated from his parents then. It would have been selfish to imagine running into him and then him joining Claw and then being her boyfriend and then they held hands and kissed a bunch. No, that was not the thing to imagine at all because it would never happen again. Nobody would ever want to kiss her again but that was ok because at least now she knew what it was like.

"I knew you would. It's way more entertaining than watching people kiss for hours and hours. I have no idea what you get out of that anyway. Watching people kiss is like watching people eat. What's in it for you?" asked Minegishi. It was also G rated pornography but Minegishi wasn't going to get into that. They had better things to do than hang around watching fictional characters kiss. It was right up there with porn in terms of boredom. What people got out of watching other people get it on they would never know. Now books were a whole different story. Nothing could ever compete with the medium of print…not that they were going to tell Mob about the existence of paint by numbers shoujo manga and trashy romance novels. Let her find out about those in a couple years on her own.

"It's not boring. It's nice to see people in love and being happy." Said Mob

"And also you can imagine that you're the one doing the kissing." Said Minegishi. They figured that was it. They were young once too though it had been books for them. Between the ages of eight and fourteen they had been deep in the seven circles of shoujo hell. Then they made it to high school and discovered boys love and the manga that they kept at the very back of the shop. Also the joy that could be found with living, breathing, people that existed in life and not as a series of clichés on a page.

"What? I-I don't know what you're talking about!" said Mob. Her hair flew up. She reached up with her hands and held her braids down. Her cat ears headband slid down over her eyes. She let go of her braids to push it back up but then her hair went right back to floating in the air. Why did her powers have to betray her like this!?

"Sure you don't." said Minegishi. Nailed it. They should have taken a picture. They could have embarrassed her with this when she was older. Adorable. Truly adorable. Minegishi wondered if they should tell her that all of those feelings that she had were about to get a hell of a lot worse. Nah, let her actual parent warn her about the oncoming storm.

"I-I don't. I mean I don't think about…I mean not that often. No boy would ever want to kiss me anyway so there's no point in thinking about it." Said Mob. Someone had wanted to kiss her but she would never see him again so that was the same as nobody wanting to kiss her ever again. She didn't know any other esper boys anyway and dad even said that espers her age were rare. Besides, there were lots of other girls out there to kiss. Not esper girls, dad said that girl espers were super rare, but other prettier girls. She wasn't pretty, she knew that she wasn't pretty, and she knew that there was no point at all in being upset about that. It wasn't like she could change how plain she was. Well there was makeup but she was only nine and also mom hadn't taught her about putting on makeup.

"What are you on about? Of course someone's going to want to kiss you. You're Suzuki Shigeko." Said Minegishi. She didn't get it? Her father was the most powerful man on Earth. He was going to take over the world and when that happened the guys would line up like dominos. Even without her father taking over the world it wasn't like guys her age were all that picky. Was she female and willing? If the answer was yes and yes then she could have had her pick of the guys.

"What's my full name got to do with boys wanting to kiss me?" asked Mob

"Really? You don't get it? Your father is a ridiculously powerful man. Guys are going to line up for a shot with you. Some girls too, probably, if you're into that." Said Minegishi

"Um…I don't think that I am. I've never liked a girl before and even if I did dad says that I'm only allowed to like other espers and dad says that esper girls are super rare." Said Mob

"And you're just going to let him run your life like that?" asked Minegishi

"Yes?" said Mob. What else would she do? She had to do what her dad said, he was her dad, and she was a good Daughter and she did what she was told. That meant that she did what she was told when she was told to do it.

"You'll change your tune when you get older." Said Minegishi

"I will? But I want to be a good Daughter and I want dad to like me so I do what he says…even if he tells me who I am and am not allowed to be in love with…but it doesn't matter, anyway, because I don't even know anyone I can fall in love with." Said Mob. She was still holding her hair down, now, even though her powers had calmed down. Minegishi reached over and bopped her on the head.

"How can someone your age be this doom and gloom? I mean I'm not some hopeless, love conquers all, romantic but you are way too young to just give up like this. That's for when you're in your forties at least." Said Minegishi. What was with this kid? And how had she spawned from Suzuki? Adopted. She had to have been adopted. There was no other explanation for it.

"I don't think that I'm all doom and gloom. I don't know anyone who I could fall in love with. I mean…" said Mob. She didn't know anyone else she could fall in love with. She was in love. Even if nobody had ever told her what it was like to be in love she knew that she, Suzuki Shigeko, was in love with Hanazawa Teruki. Even if she only knew his name, that he lived in Seasoning City with his mom and dad, and that he was afraid of being kidnapped she still loved him. She didn't much like this feeling, she decided, because of how much it hurt knowing that she would never see him again. She also loved this feeling because remembered what it had been like to kiss him and hold his hand made her feel like she was full of coffee and pop rocks.

"You mean?" asked Minegishi. Well this was certainly more interesting than trash TV. There were developments in the kid's life that they were not aware of. The Suzuki family, the inner workings of it, were fascinating. Mainly just Suzuki's idiosyncrasies. If it weren't for Mob they wouldn't have known that Suzuki slept fully dressed, put half a bottle of ketchup on almost everything, and was disturbed by the idea of hyper intelligent rats. There was no bedrock of Suzuki family weirdness, just more fertile soil.

"Um….if I tell you a secret do you promise not to tell anyone? Not even my dad?" asked Mob. She really, really, REALLY wanted to tell someone and Minegishi would be a good secret keeper. That was what best friends were for, keeping secrets. Besides, Mob didn't have to tell the WHOLE truth about what happened. She didn't have to name any names or talk about any traitorous actions that she may or may not have engaged in. No, just the part that had been on her mind since the moment it happened.

"I actively avoid speaking to your father." Said Minegishi

"Why? He can be very nice sometimes." Said Mob

"Because he can also be pretty damn terrifying too, sometimes." Said Minegishi. They were not above admitting, even to a kid, that they were afraid of Suzuki Touichirou. He was a weirdo, he could be funny sometimes in his idiosyncrasies, but he was also the most powerful man alive and he knew it. He was not above hurting people to punish them or just because he'd had a bad day. Mob was his Daughter, she should have known that, though Minegishi knew firsthand how when you were that age everything seemed normal because you simply did not know anything else.

"That's true….but can you keep a secret from him even when he's being scary?" asked Mob

"Of course I can." Said Minegishi. Hopefully Mob was not about to go and tell them something that Suzuki would want to torture them over. That would be…not good. They had spent the past few years staying on Suzuki's good side. They did not want to join any of the traitors that they had personally put in the ground.

"Ok….um….one time I kissed a boy and I think that I might be in love with him now but it doesn't matter because I barely even know him and also I'll never see him again and please done tell my dad!" said Mob. She said it really fast, all in one breathe, because if she paused then she would have had to stop halfway through. She felt…better…after having had told someone. Not that it had been a bad secret, she just felt better having had told someone about it. Someone who she trusted and who she knew would keep this whole thing a secret.

"That's what you're swearing me to secrecy over?" asked Minegishi. Well then. That sure was…something. Good for Mob. Getting out there and all. Yeah, good for her. Also thankfully this was not the sort of thing that they imagined Suzuki would try and torture out of them…maybe. They couldn't be sure with that guy. Yeah, they could see him going on a manhunt for the boy who dared to touch his precious daughter.

"Yes. Please don't tell anyone about this for as long as you live and also if you don't pass on and linger on as a spirit please don't tell anyone what I just told you." Said Mob in her most serious voice. This could not leave this room. She could hear Sho outside and for a moment she thinks that he heard…but he hadn't. He was still enjoying swimming and also not having to worry about who saw his scars. That was good. She didn't want her little brother to know about this. He was not a good secret keeper and also she didn't want him to know that she had kissed someone. This was not the thing to be telling little brothers at all.

"Hey, my lips are sealed. The truth about your little boyfriend stays right here in this room." Said Minegishi. It was kind of cute, really, the thought of Mob and some other kid. Good for her.

"I…I don't think that he's my boyfriend. I mean I'm never going to see him again…and that makes me kind of sad." Said Mob

"Why? If it's one of those just for fun things then the worst thing that you could possibly do is catch feelings." Said Minegishi before they could censor themselves. Mob was nine. Right. She had no idea that those just for fun things even existed. She was still young enough to believe in true love and fairytale romance.

"Just for fun?" asked Mob. Kissing had been fun but you couldn't just call it something like 'just for fun' like it was a game or something. Kissing meant something. It was a way for people to show that they loved and cared for one another. Mom had said that. She said that when people grew up they found the person that they loved most in the whole world and then they kissed and got married and also did that super gross thing that adults did so that they could get a baby. All of that stuff was big and important and, of course, was not 'just for fun'.

"That's for when you're older. Just…how to explain this…ok. You know his kissing is fun? Well sometimes people kiss and…and we'll just stick with that for now. Sometimes people kiss other people just because they feel like it." Said Minegishi. There. That was nice and age appropriate and G rated. That was pretty good for someone fighting to stay away and also in a ridiculous amount of pain.

"Because they're boyfriend and girlfriend." Said Mob. That was the good thing about having a boyfriend, she imagined anyway it wasn't like she'd ever had a boyfriend, you could kiss him whenever you wanted to. Well when he let you kiss him. Otherwise you were just playing catch and kiss and that was not a very good game to play at all.

"No, they're just two people who felt like kissing. So they kiss. That's all there is, there isn't anymore." said Minegishi. Please, Mob, accept this answer because there is no way that you're getting the talk today. Let your father deal with that in his own weird, and probably off putting, way.

"But…that doesn't make sense. I mean kissing feels good but then how do people just…do it? Without being boyfriend and girlfriend or even in love? It such a big thing…I mean unless they're playing catch and kiss but boys don't like that game." Said Mob

"Catch and kiss? The kids still play that?" asked Minegishi. They had never been a fan even as a child. The boys hadn't liked it and the girls were always way too aggressive. Seemed like a lot of trouble to go through for a mediocre kiss. Also sexual assault was wrong.

"Yes. Well I've never played that before because it seemed kind of mean and I wasn't playing it when Ha-when the boy I kissed…when he kissed me. He just sort of…did it…and it felt nice but then he had to go and now I'll never see him again. I don't think that it was just for fun…and I didn't know how people could just kiss for fun…because isn't it a big thing? I mean I think that it's a big thing, my mom said so. She said that when people grow up they find someone who they love more than anyone else and they kiss that person and marry them, too." Said Mob

"Well that's something, too. Some people just aren't made for the whole 'just for fun thing'….and I get the feeling that you're one of them. Sometimes people kiss because they love each other and sometimes they just feel like kissing. Ok? Can this be the end of it?" asked Minegishi. Kids today. Back in their day they sat on their hands on opposite corners of the room until they were married…or the made out behind the gym but that was for late elementary school/middle school.

"Ok…" said Mob. This was…this just raised even more questions. So adults just went around kissing each other because they felt like it? But then why did they get married and have kids and stuff? Why would you do that if you could just go around kissing people whenever you both felt like it? Was this what it was to be an adult? To have the freedom to just kiss random people? Was that…what that what had happened to her? She wasn't' his girlfriend but…but it had meant something. He had said that he would never forget her…and then he had kissed her…and then her heart started going 'doki doki' like the sticker and it hadn't stopped once…so it did mean something…so did that mean that…she had no idea what anything meant anymore. She wished that there was someone who could have just told her how everything worked…

Minegishi knew how things worked.

Had they done that before? Just kissed someone for the sake of kissing them? Did they still do that? How did they even decide who to kiss? What was the criteria? Was it like finding espers for Claw, anyone would do? Or was it like picking people for the upper echelons? What was the vetting process? How did two people even decide to kiss without it being awkward? Had Minegishi kissed a whole bunch of people before? Or just a few? And had it been awkward?

How did anything work!?

"I hear you trailing off over there. What's on your mind?" asked Minegishi. Maybe they were just some kind of masochist. Or maybe they had just shot their judgement to hell mixing things that were not meant to be mixed. Or maybe they just had a soft spot for Mob. Or maybe their whole head was just one big soft spot.

"Um…did you ever kiss anyone before?" asked Mob quietly. That was way too personal of a question to ask. She regretted asking it as soon as she said anything. She wished that she could have taken it back but she could not turn back time. She knew, she and Sho had tried to run backwards and do that. They had just ended up falling down.

"I'm twenty five, of course I have." Said Minegishi with a dismissive wave of their hand. Sleep was coming, a deep and sound sleep. They'd have to pick this conversation up at a later date.

"Really? Who? Was it a boy or a girl? Were you in love? Was it-" asked Mob. Now she had a million and one questions and she knew that she shouldn't have asked but maybe it was ok because the first question was and she just had to know!

"I've lost count, boys and girls, some of those people I had feelings for and some of them were just for fun. I'm not seeing anyone romantically right now and I have no plans of seeing anyone romantically. Does that answer your questions?" asked Minegishi

"Um…some of them. Are you sleepy? Because you're acting like you're sleepy." Said Mob. She knew what was in that mint tin, those were sleeping pills that put you into the best sleep of your life but they also made you super hungry. She'd get some snacks for Minegishi when they woke up. They were such a good friend keeping her secrets and talking to her about all of this private stuff.

"I am dead tired, Mob, and I'm starving. I'm also in pain but there's nothing that you can do about that. You know what I need right now? Food and rest…but the food first." Said Minegishi. It had been difficult to keep their eyes opened for some time now. They just needed to rest their head, that was all. Just for a little bit…

"What kind of snacks do you want? I can send the Awakened out for anything but it might take some time because we're in the middle of nowhere." Said Mob. She felt something poking at the edges of her perception. Oh. Shimazaki. Well that was good, he could teleport anywhere, but then again she did not want to ask him for any favors…but that was a selfish way to think considering the fact that her friend was starving. That was some good medicine. It was for people who couldn't sleep and also didn't have good appetites, which would explain why Minegishi was so skinny and also kind of mean-ish sometimes.

"Whatever is in the house…preferably chocolate." Said Minegishi. They could feel something poking at the corners of their perception. Oh, him. If he bothered them they swore to God-

"I have chocolate left over from Christmas, you can have it all. Do you want the kind with nuts or the kind with caramel in it or-" said Mob. They would have listed off all the chocolate that she had, the list was long, but she was interrupted by someone appearing right behind her. She turned so fast that she bumped into the coffee table.

"Toshi likes plain dark chocolate, don't you Toshi?" asked Shimazaki as he tossed a chocolate bar down onto Minegishi's chest. He could have come sooner but the timing wasn't right. What was the use of teleporting if you couldn't use it to time your entrances perfectly?

"Minegishi doesn't like to be called Toshi. They told you that." Said Mob. It was so mean to call someone by their given name after they had asked you not to. So very mean. Mob didn't understand why they always chose to live together. Maybe because Shimazaki was blind and needed help sometimes. Minegishi was such a nice person to help him out even though he could be sort of mean sometimes.

"Minegishi is too hungry to care what Minegishi is called." Said Minegishi. The sat up and attempted to rip the paper off what was most likely the best chocolate bar in the entire world. They needed food to live. This wasn't a natural hunger, and chocolate wasn't a real food, but that didn't matter. They needed food to live goddamn it!

"Toshi, you're gone. You are so gone right now." Laughed Shimazaki

"Like you should be." Said Minegishi. They knew that they shouldn't have spoken with their mouth full, bad example to be setting for the kid and all of that, but they were so hungry. So incredibly hungry….

"So you're kicking me out of my own house?" asked Shimazaki. He leaned over and let his fingers brush some of their hair away from their forehead. He was rewarded with a small smile and a slight shove.

"This is my house…well my dad's house…because he runs Claw….but if Minegishi wants you gone then you should go." Said Mob. It was very rude, too, to hang around somewhere when someone told you that they wanted you to go away. She didn't understand him one bit. Was he clueless or was he just trying to be a jerk?

"Do you really want me gone, Toshi?" asked Shimazaki. He reached over to play with their hair again when his wrist was grabbed. He was pulled downwards and his last coherent thought was 'in front of the kid?'

"Now I want you gone." Said Minegishi. They hadn't been thinking, not really, and honestly it was that conversation that they had been having with Mob that had put the idea in their head. Thanks to the magic of modern chemistry the thought had managed to bypass the little person inside of their head that kept them from making stupid choices.

They'd feel bad about this tomorrow.

"What?" asked Mob. Her eyes were wide and her aura was big. She was…not sure what she'd seen. Minegishi had just pulled Shimazaki down and kissed him…like it was nothing. Like they did it all the time. But…but why? Why would they have wanted to kiss him? Why would anyone had ever wanted to kiss him? He was so…mean. Mean, nice sometimes, but mostly mean. She felt…disappointed…in Minegishi. They could have kissed anyone else in the whole wide world. She wondered why they had even wanted to kiss Shimazaki…and she wanted to ask…but if she asked then she would have been rude and she did not want to be rude to her friend…so she said nothing at all…

"I feel so used." Said Shimazaki even though he felt nothing of the sort. Xanned out Minegishi was the best Minegishi. Well stoned Minegishi was the best Minegishi but they hadn't done that together in a while.

"Well then go feel used somewhere else. I'm tired and I'm sure that our fearless leader is looking for you. Someone needs to save him from, you know, the constant never ending assassination attempts." Said Minegishi. They laid back down and closed their eyes. Sleep….wonderful sleep.

"Yeah, it'd be a shame if someone killed him on my watch. See you Toshi." Said Shimazaki

"They don't like to be called-" said Mob. She would have said more but she didn't have any words left. They kissed. Again. This time Minegishi was the one being kissed. That was….what? What? Were they boyfriend and…friend? Or were they just kissing for fun? She wanted to ask, she really wanted to ask, but Minegishi was asleep and she knew not to wake them. That would have been rude.

So she gathered some chocolate for when Minegishi woke up.

She'd ask them, later, if they were in love too.


	122. Swimming Pool

There was a big difference between a pool and a bathtub.

Bathtubs made Sho feel like he was trapped. They were too small, way too small, and he couldn't get in and out that fast…well he could but he couldn't. He couldn't because it was so small and the room was small and he was squished next to big sis and…and he just didn't like baths! He didn't like getting into a tub and having his body scrubbed with soap and shampoo put in his hair and then water poured over his head. He didn't like any of that and it had nothing to do with being afraid or not being afraid!

He didn't much like water.

But pools were ok. Jumping in and out was ok. He didn't like to stay in but he liked to jump in and out. His stupid brain was not going to ruin pools for him. It was like his brain was acting without him, making him scared of water but not really because he wasn't afraid of anything, and he was the boss of his brain anyway so he was not going to be scared! He was not going to have baths and pools and beaches ruined for him…well beaches were actually ruined for him but for a whole different reason. He couldn't go to the beach anymore because of the scars all over him. He had a whole bunch of scars and if people saw then then they would ask questions and that wouldn't have been good.

He didn't mind the scars.

They looked cool and they were a reminder of everything that he'd had to go through to get his real powers. To become the Awakened Child. He was the only kid who ever went through the Awakening Process. Ever. Even that kid, the one that got captured, hadn't stuck around long enough to be awakened. Sho didn't really blame him for running away. It sucked, what they had to do to you, but it was worth it too. Some people were just weak like that. They ran scared just because it hurt a little…or a lot…when they did all of that stuff to you. It wasn't so bad and it wasn't like it lasted forever. No, it only lasted for…as long as it lasted for.

Sho couldn't fully remember how long it took.

He just remembered how much it hurt…but that didn't matter. So it hurt, big deal. So he couldn't get in the tub without feeling trapped. Whatever. Pools were better than tubs anyway. They were bigger and he could get in and out whenever he wanted and also they were outside, too, which made him feel a lot better. Also big sis wasn't there to pour water over his head or to try and get him to wash his face or anything like that. He liked the bathrooms in Japan best. You scrubbed down and then you got in the tub. That was different from the rest of the world. For the rest of the world you scrubbed down in the tub or the shower. That meant that you were trapped until you were clean.

There was no way to be trapped in a pool.

"Sho? Do you want to come back inside yet? There's lunch." Said big sis. He felt her aura long before he saw her. She had been swimming with him too, well she had been swimming and he had been jumping in and out, but then she said that he was playing too rough and she left. Girls were like that, they hated being splashed and dunked and stuff. He didn't get it.

"I'm not hungry." Said Sho. She was trying to be mom again, telling him when to eat and stuff, and he didn't like it. He would eat when he was hungry and he would drink when he was thirsty and he would get out of this pool when the bad feelings came back and then he would jump in when they went away. He could take care of himself. He was not a baby.

"But you haven't eaten anything all day." Said big sis. She wasn't a liar, not usually, but she had to know that what she just said had no basis in truth. Of course he had eaten food that day. He wasn't stupid. He knew that he had to eat to live. She was just being bossy again. She said that she wanted to watch out for him but, really, she was just bossing him around. Not like he had watched out for her, before, back in Japan when that kid escaped. He had lied to dad's face or her…or maybe he hadn't. He didn't know for sure that she had or didn't have anything to do with that kid escaping and it was better that he didn't know either way. Lying to dad, that was looking out for her even if he wasn't sure if he was for sure lying. She as just being her normal bossy self.

"That's not true. I hate half a box of cereal and a can of soda for breakfast. Oh! And a bunch of cookies too. That's food." Said Sho. That was the good thing about being with dad. He let them eat whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Mom divided foods up into breakfast foods and lunch foods and dinner foods and healthy foods and unhealthy foods. At least now he could eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He didn't need anyone telling him what to eat or when to eat it. Especially not his big sis.

"That's not food, Sho, that's just sugar." Said big sis. Sho flicked some water at her for being bossy. She still had her barrier up. The water droplets just stuck to it.

"If I can eat it then it's a food." Said Sho. He was nine now and he did not need her bossing him around like this. He wasn't a little kid anymore and even if he was still a little kid she was not the boss of him…even though dad was always leaving her in charge. He didn't know why dad kept on leaving her in charge. This was the part of the year when he and big sis were the same age. If anything neither of them should have been in charge…or dad should have stayed and been in charge…or he should have taken Sho with him. Yes, that would have been even better…but he hadn't taken Sho with him. He had just left and now Sho was there all alone with big sis…and she was in charge…and it wasn't fair!

"That's not true. You can eat grass but that doesn't mean that grass is a food." Said big sis. She let her barrier drop. The drops of water that were stuck to her barrier hit the ground and disappeared almost immediately. It was hot out, hot enough to dry the water that had been sticking to his face super fast too. He hated it when there was water on his face.

"Things can eat grass." Said Sho. He knew about animals. He knew way more than her about animals and he knew that animals ate grass all the time. She was not going to stand there and tell him that grass was not a food when animals ate it all the time.

"Not people." Said big sis

"Yes they can. If animals can eat grass then people must be able to eat grass too." Said Sho. If there had been grass then he would have eaten some to prove his point. There wasn't any grass here though, just concrete and dirt. It was too hot for grass to grow here. It was too hot to be January down here. The southern hemisphere was so weird.

"I don't think that's how it works. Like remember how we saw those pandas in China and they were eating raw bamboo but when we tried to eat raw bamboos we just ended up getting cuts in our mouths? I don't think that's how it works. Sorry." Said big sis. Sho stuck out his tongue. She thought that she knew everything just because dad left her in charge and also for part of the year she was older than him and also she did all of her school work…he knew things! She was not smarter than him and he did not need her to take care of him!

"Yes it is. That's totally how it works. Like how we saw on TV. If we're ever lost in the woods then we have to eat the food that we see animals eat." Said Sho

"When are we ever going to be lost in the woods?" asked big sis

"I don't know but it could happen." Said Sho

"I would never let you get lost in the woods. I'll always be there for you, little brother." Said big sis. If they got lost in the woods she would still be trying to boss him around. She was not mom and she needed to stop pretending to be mom but that would never happened and…and he did not need another mom! He didn't even need the mom he had! Not that he still had a mom…because she was gone…all he had was a dad who was mean most of the time and a big sis who was bossy most of the time…

He jumped back in the pool.

He made sure to put a barrier around himself when he jumped in so he didn't get too wet. So he didn't feel like he was drowning. That was the thing, to put up the barrier, so that way it would be easier to remember where he was. His brain was always trying to play tricks on him. His brain wanted him to think that he was back in the awakening place even though he knew for a fact that he wasn't. He was in Australia which was nowhere near the awakening place. He was in a pool which was not a place where they drowned people. He was fine.

He let his barrier down after he surfaced.

This was fine. There was water all around him but he was fine. He would try to stay in longer this time. He stayed in a little longer each time in an effort to tell his brain that he wasn't back at the awakening place. He would never have to go back there again or go through all of that again. He was fine. It was over and he had come out the other side better than when he went in. He was the Awakened Child now. He was the Awakened Child and he was not afraid of anything.

Not even water.

He let himself just sort of float. This was ok because it was a pool. There was space for him to move around in. It was bright outside, too, and not dark. He could move his arms and legs in whatever direction he chose. He could swim in whatever direction he chose. He was a good swimmer, mom had said so, but that was back when he was little. He was even better now. He wondered what mom would have said if she could have seen him swimming now. Would she still have been proud of him? He didn't know why he even cared. She was gone and she had left him all alone.

Or not.

"Are you sure that you don't want to come inside? I would like it if you did. I really would, Sho" asked big sis. She came into the pool in the usual way, with the ladder, and she didn't have a barrier up. She didn't need one, her brain wasn't trying to play any tricks on her. She could be in the water whenever she wanted to. Whichever water she wanted to be in. Even the beach. She could still go to the beach because she didn't have any of his weird scars. That was because she was born with her powers, she was the Prodigy, and he was just the Awakened Child. Wait, no, there was no 'just' about it. He had to go through stuff to get his powers, she had just been born with them. That was the easy way. Everything always came so easy to her.

He splashed her.

"No, I am never coming back inside ever again for as long as we both shall live." Said Sho. He didn't want to go back inside so for the time being he was never going back inside ever again. Maybe he would change his mind later, he didn't know, but what he did know at this moment in time was that he wanted to be left alone and not bossed around by the bossiest big sister in the history of big sisters.

"Why'd you splash me?" asked big sis. She was still coughing. He hadn't splashed her that hard. She didn't know what it was like to choke on water, to have water in her eyes and nose and mouth and then it was above your head and you couldn't even move and-

And he splashed her again.

"You didn't have to splash me…but you can if you want to, I guess." Said big sis. She was still coughing. She was still coughing like she was drowning…but she wasn't drowning. This pool wasn't deep enough to drown in. They could easily just throw themselves over the sides. They could easily escape so she had no reason to carry on like that.

He splashed her again.

"Sho, I really don't like this game…but if we have to play then you can keep on splashing me." Said big sis. He had no idea why she had said that. Why did she have to be like that? She went and told him one thing and then another thing that was the opposite of the first thing that she had said. If she didn't want to be splashed then she should have just said something…or maybe she should have just left him alone to begin with.

"Don't you have your own friend to hang out with?" asked Sho. She only hung out with him when there was no one else around. He was her last choice of friend but that was fine because they weren't friends, they were brother and sister, and that was not the same as being friends. You picked out who you were friends with. You were stuck with whoever you were brother and sister with. He wouldn't have picked her for a big sis. He wouldn't have picked anyone for a big sis. If it had been up to him them he would have been an only child. Then he wouldn't have had anyone to bother him while he was trying to be alone!

"Minegishi is sick…but not the kind of sick that Fukuda can help with, they said. Anyway I like spending time with you even if you do keep on splashing me." Said big sis. There. She even admitted that he was her last choice of person to hang out with. Whatever. And he would not stop splashing her, too. Not until she told him to stop splashing him. If she didn't like something then she should have said something. Or splashed him back like a normal person would have. Why did she always have to be like that?!

"Why don't you ever splash back? Or just leave? If you don't want me to splash you then either splash me back or leave." Said Sho. That would have been better, if she had been a jerk back, but of course she wouldn't be. How was she not a jerk? He was a jerk and dad was a jerk so then it stood to reason that she would be a jerk too…but she wasn't. She wasn't a jerk at all. She was…she was more like mom…and it wasn't fair. Why did she get to be nice like mom while he got to be a jerk like dad?

"I could never splash you back, I know how you're a little afraid of water now, and I could never make you feel bad on purpose. Also I don't want to leave you because I love-" said big sis. She was about to tell him that she loved him. She was always saying that. What, did she think that he didn't believe her? Well he did, he just didn't need to say it over and over again. Once in a while was enough. When you said something too many times it became insincere…not that she would ever be insincere. He sort of wished that she would be, just once, so then it would be ok for him to be a jerk to her. But that would never happen, she didn't know how to be a jerk, and even if she did she would never have been a jerk to him. She didn't know how to. She didn't know how to do a lot of things, like get a clue.

"I know that you love me. I need you to know that I am not afraid of the water." Said Sho. His brain just didn't like water anymore, that was all, he was not afraid of it. He was floating in a big pool of it and he wasn't the least bit scared. He just…he just felt like getting out again, that was all, because there was a lot of it and it was all around him…but he couldn't leave because if he did then she would just have gone on and on and on about him being scared of the water like he was some kind of baby or something!

"But sometimes when we take a bath and I rinse your hair you-" said big sis

"That doesn't mean that I'm scared of the water. I just don't like having water on my face and…and I just don't like being in the bathtub. That doesn't mean that I'm scared of the water or anything like that." Said Sho. He splashed her again. He wished that she would just come off it already.

"Ok…but if you were there wouldn't be anything wrong with. I mean dad says that he doesn't like it when we're scared but I don't mind. You can be afraid of whatever you want to be afraid of. I don't mind." Said big sis

"Well that's great and all but I'm not afraid of anything. Especially not something as dumb as water." Said Sho. Why would he be afraid of the water? He was made out of water, all people were, and therefore he could not be afraid of it. He was splashed around. He wasn't afraid of this. He just…his brain was dumb and tried to play tricks on him, that was all, making him think that he was back in that place. It wasn't the water that bothered him, it was that place, but she wouldn't be able to understand that now would she? She wasn't the Awakened Child, she was the Prodigy, and she would never have been able to understand what it had been like or what he had been through…not that…not that it mattered…because it was over now…and that meant that…that he was wrong to feel the way he did.

He splashed her again.

"But if you were I wouldn't mind." Said Big sis. She wiped her face off. She didn't care if she got splashed. She didn't care about anything. That was the worst part of it, having a big sister, she was just always so nice for no reason at all. She cared about you and stuff just so that she could make you feel bad. He felt bad…he felt like a jerk…even though she was being the jerk by not shutting up about this!

"But I'm not so it doesn't matter." Said Sho. He splashed again so that she could see how little it mattered…and he got water on his face…and he wanted to get out and he had been wanting to get out for some time…but he couldn't. If he got out now then it would prove her point about him being afraid of the water…and he was not going to prove her right.

"But if you were then there wouldn't be anything wrong with that. There really wouldn't be. I get scared sometimes too…mostly of…well not of myself but what I can do…I guess." Said big sis

"Well I'm not afraid of myself or of anything else. I don't get scared." Said Sho. That was a lie. He did get scared. He woke up scared sometimes…but she didn't need to know that…and he shouldn't have been afraid of anything in the first place. Dad had been telling him his whole life that he was not allowed to be afraid. Mom had said that it was ok but mom didn't get a say in anything anymore because she left. People who were gone didn't get a say.

"It's normal to be afraid of things. It's normal to-" said big sis

"But I'm not so it doesn't matter. Can't you just knock it off already? I'm not normal and I am definitely, certainly, one million percent, not afraid of the water. So can you please just drop it already, Shigeko?" asked Sho. He didn't care what was normal for normal people. They were not normal people. If they had been normal people then they would have been at home with their mom and they wouldn't have had to go moving every few weeks for no good reason and they wouldn't have been swimming outside in the middle of January and they wouldn't have had powers in the first place! They were not normal and there was no point in even thinking about what was normal for the normal people! They were not and would never be normal! They had never been normal once in their lives.

He splashed her hard enough that he made sure that water got in her eyes and up her nose.

"I'm sorry. I just…it seems like you are. I know that dad says that we aren't allowed to be afraid of things but I…I don't mind it if you're afraid. Like what mo-you can be afraid of things. I don't mind." Said big sis. Why wouldn't she just come off of this? It didn't matter what she said or what dad said or what mom had said. He was not afraid at all of the water! He was not afraid of anything. She didn't have to keep on saying the same thing over and over again.

He splashed her again.

"Sho…why do you keep on doing that? You know that it bothers me and…and you know that when I get upset sometimes I lose control…and I don't want to lose control and hurt you on accident. So why do you keep on splashing me like that?" asked big sis

"Because you won't shut up." Said Sho. She was acting like this was a big deal when, of course, it wasn't. splashing wasn't a big deal, not like drowning. Not like almost drowning. Not like when you were full of water and you tried to breath but there was no way to breath and you couldn't even move and-

And she didn't know anything about drowning and she never would.

"Ok, I'll shut up. I just-" said big sis

"That's not shutting up. Shutting up means not talking anymore. Because you were still talking that means that you had no plans of shutting up." Said Sho. He tried to sound like dad then, all scary, like he sounded when he was yelling at the entire Seventh Division without really yelling. He had this way of talking where it was as scary as when he was yelling but without him ever once raising his voice.

He didn't do a good dad. Hers was much better.

"I planned on being quiet and I was going to be quiet. Fine, if you say that you aren't afraid even though I can tell by your aura-" said big sis. She really did a much better impression of dad than he did. She did it without even trying. She just talked like he did…and she shouldn't have. She tried to be mom, she tried to be dad, who was she going to try and be next? Couldn't she just be herself? And couldn't she shut up about him being afraid of the water already!? He wasn't! He was fine! He was great! He was…he wanted to get out…but how could he when she wouldn't shut up!? It was like she was trying to get him to prove her right?!

Well he wasn't going to.

She was saying something else. He wasn't listening. Instead he dunked himself under the water. There. Now she would see that he wasn't; afraid. He wasn't afraid of the water that was all around him. He wasn't afraid of not being able to breathe…or open his mouth…or the way his lungs burned…

How long had he been under for?

He needs to get back to the top…but he can't find the top. His eyes are closed. He can't open them. He can't open them and he can't remember which was is up and he's kicking and there's no bottom but there must have been a bottom unless he's in the deep end and the whole thing is a dep end and he just needs to get OUT but he CAN'T and he can't breathe and no matter what he tries he can't get to the top and-

He feels something.

He clings to it. He clings to it and he kicks and he can't open his eyes and he feels himself going down and he can't feel the bottom no matter how much he kicks and he thinks that it might be the deep end or he might be sideways or he might be upside down or maybe the world is upside down and maybe there's no way to get to the top and maybe he's sinking and he knows that he's sinking and-

And then there's air.

He's on the ground. The concrete. There's concrete under his back and he's got air all around him and…and he's still so cold…but he's on the ground now so he's ok. He breathes. In and out over and over again. His eyes…his eyes still won't open…but he has to open his eyes. He needs to…he forces himself to…

He opens his eyes.

He hears big sis before he sees her. She's on the ground, too, doubled over. Coughing. She's coughing and spitting up water. She's spitting up water and so…so is he. He's rolled over onto his side and he's spitting up water. He doesn't remember doing this. He doesn't remember…how he got there. He doesn't know. He's just coughing up water…and so is she.

Then he stops.

She's stopped too. She stopped and she's sitting there with her knees pulled up to her chest. She's under her barrier again. He can see that there are beads of water stuck to her barrier. She's looking at him from under her barrier. There ae scratches up and down her arms. There are scratches up and down her arms and they're red. They're red and deep and she's staring at him.

He stares right back.

He did that, didn't he? He was such a jerk. It was one thing to splash your sister but another to…to scratch her that badly. So badly. He shouldn't have….but she was the one who wouldn't leave him alone! She was…she was…she was staring at him and…and she just wouldn't stop! So she had been the one to make him…to make him go underwater…and now she had scratches and…he had scratched her and….

And he was sorry.

"Big sis…Shigeko. I'm sorry. I just…" said Sho. He didn't know how to finish that sentence. Well he knew what he would have said. He would have told her that it wouldn't have happened if she had just left him alone…but he had been enough of a jerk to her already. He had been such a jerk and…and that was…that was the whole of it.

"I'm sorry Sho, I should have left you alone. I'm going to go inside and have lunch now. I'll see you when you're done." Said big sis. She didn't say anything else. She just got up and left…and he should have been happy. She was leaving him alone, like he had wanted, and now he had the whole pool to himself…

There wasn't such a big difference after all between a pool and a bathtub.


	123. Healing Scratches

The kids hardly hurt themselves these days.

As far as Fukuda knew, anyway. They hardly ever called him. He got called in for broken toys more often than broken bones these days. Maybe because they had gotten less accident prone as they had gotten older. Or maybe they just needed him less. He knew that, when they were younger, they had been lonely. Almost no father to speak of and a mother going through her own things. He had been a source of stability to them, then, but now…now he was just the guy who came in and healed them.

Nothing lasted forever.

They were still children but they weren't small children anymore. They had changed so much over the years that Fukuda had hardly noticed. He just woke up one day and Sho came up to past his waist. He was almost taller than his older sister now, actually, and Fukuda would have expected him to have been prouder of that fact. Younger Sho would have been proud of that. Nine year old Sho was proud of…of things that he should not have been proud of in Fukuda's opinion.

He had failed Masami.

He had promised her that he would get her son to her. That just plain wasn't possible. He had also promised her that he would watch over the children and keep them from turning out like their father. That ship had sailed a long time ago. For Shigeko at least. She was more and more like her father every day. She was cold to him, cold to just about everyone, and had no problems ordering people around. She used to be so apologetic before, when she had to ask something of him…or anyone, but now she gave orders with confidence to rival her father's.

Fukuda, I have scratches. Can you fix them?

Her tone was so flat. Not even a hello. Just calling him over and telling him to come and fix her scratches. That was something else that she had in common with her father. Suzuki could not deal with minor injuries. They weren't conductive to his worldview. He saw himself as a God and God did not bleed or bruise or spill hot tea on himself and end up with bad scalds. She, apparently, couldn't deal with just a few scratches. Whatever. It wasn't like he lived that far away.

He hated these compounds.

Cities were better. There was never any shortage of things to do but at least in cities there was less to do and also he didn't have to live quite so close to the Suzuki family and their entourage. If two people, well three if he were to count himself, could be considered an entourage. Whenever they were in these compounds either Suzuki did something to hurt himself, usually getting involved in another crazy 'awakening' experiment, or someone had enough of him and decided to try and end his life. None of those injuries ever took. Fukuda never let them take.

He didn't have it in him to kill anyone. Not even Suzuki Touichirou.

And he didn't have it in him to let a little girl suffer. Even though he doubted that she was truly suffering. This may have even been good for her. Let her see that she was just as human as everyone else. Let her see that her father had filled her head with…he got off that train of thought. There was no point in denouncing Suzuki in his head. He would never denounce him in reality so there was no point in denouncing him in his own mind. No, he would follow Suzuki around for the rest of his life and then probably into the next, too. He wondered what his life would have been like if he had ended up getting into a different school. If he hadn't taken an interest in Suzuki. If he had left Suzuki when he had the chance, when they were kids, when things hadn't gotten this far.

But they had gotten this far.

He had gone this far. Even though he hadn't gone very far at all. He only lived right there at the other side of this compound. He had his own prefab. All the houses here were cheap prefabs. He was getting so tired of living in cheap prefabs. If he'd had it his way he would have had a house deep on the country. Just him and….just him. There was not point to it, thinking of her, thinking of what could have been. If he'd met her first. If he'd managed to get her away from him sooner. If…there were a lot of ifs. The loneliest words a person could ever know were if only, if only, it were so. Masami was gone and she was living her own life. They hadn't checked in since…he couldn't even remember. Too long…

It was better this way.

He made it to Shigeko's door. Someone, most likely Sho, had drawn a sign. Suzuki family only. There was a caste drawn underneath it with a sleeping dragon. Sho could draw very well for someone his age. That was…Sho hadn't drawn anything for him in so long. He hardly even saw any of Sho's drawings. Just the ones that Suzuki carried around with him for God only knew what reason. It wasn't like he was one of the great art lovers in the world and he certainly didn't give a damn about his own son beyond the fact that he had powers. He didn't give a damn about either of his kids.

Or not.

He did have a soft spot for Shigeko. When he spoke of the children unprompted he always spoke of Shigeko. She had discovered some new power or she had said something so intelligent or she could call kendo better than even the most seasoned referees. Always such good things about Shigeko. Fukuda wondered, bitterly, where the praise for the rest of his family was. Where his son's. His blood son's, praise was. Where his wife's praise had been. He had turned her into a ghost, practically, and….and he needed to stop thinking about Masami. She was gone now. No, not gone, she had escaped. She was much better off wherever she had ended up in this world of theirs. She was…she was not his wife.

This was not his family.

And other such things that he'd been telling himself for years and years. This was not his daughter, something he was grateful for more and more these days, this was his boss. Essentially his boss. This was someone who he had to answer to. He was there for perform his function within Claw. Noting more and nothing less. She knew it as well as he did. He knew that the minute he walked through that door she wouldn't throw herself at him and wrap her arms around his legs. She wouldn't beg him to stay and play with her. She wouldn't hand him a mountain of dolls and tell him who he had to be and what their world was. No, she would just…

"Hi Fukuda."

Say that. Two simple words. She stood there in a wet bathing suit, part of him wondered if it was wise to leave two kids unattended with a swimming pool, and held out her arms. Those were….deep scratches. Human nails had done that. Sho had done that. She was in a wet bathing suit. Sho had been diving in and out of the pool all day. He could be heard all throughout the compound. That was good. He hadn't ended up with the hydrophobia that most of the Awakened ended up with. Even if he had the same scars, some of them even worse, than the Awakened ended up with. That was good. What he had done to his sister was not but Fukuda didn't blame him. Not with the way that he had been brought up for the past nine years.

"Litt-Miss Suzuki. Those look pretty bad. Want me to fix those up for you?" asked Fukuda. He had been about to dust off an old nickname. He knew better than that. She was her father's daughter. Suzuki hated being called anything other than Suzuki. Even when they had been kids, closer to being friends than they ever had been in their entire lives, he had never been Touichirou. Not once. She was her father's Daughter. She wasn't little lady anymore. She wasn't even Shigeko. Miss Suzuki. That was what she was, who she was, now. Who she was to him. Polite. He had to be polite to his boss's daughter.

His future boss.

"Yes. Just these." She said. She came to him and held out her arms. He hadn't even had time to take his shoes off. He was still in the space in front of the door reserved for the genkan. There were two pairs of shoes there. A tiny pair of plastic blue sandals as well as a pair of adult sized lavender gym shoes.

And the adult who those shoes belonged to could be seen laying down on the couch dead to the world.

"What about them? Are they ok?" asked Fukuda as he healed up the scratches on Shigeko's arms. They looked worse than they were. He resisted the idea that she had done something to deserve this. Sho needed to be held accountable for his actions…even though the poor kid had been to hell and back. Shigeko antagonized him without meaning to. He was just angry at the world, his father's doing, and something that Fukuda himself should have tried harder to counteract. Poor little guy…

"No. Minegishi is asleep and even if they were awake they wouldn't want me to tell you to heal them. They said that what was wrong with them was not the sort of thing that you could help with." She said. Fukuda knew, based on the opened pill bottle and empty liquor bottle, what was wrong with Minegishi. They were a terrible influence on Shigeko, in his opinion, but he didn't dare voice that opinion. If Shigeko wanted to be friends with an adult, not just any adult but that adult, then there was nothing that Fukuda could do about it.

Even though he should have.

He could see the road that Shigeko was going down and he did not like it. She smelled like liquor, a bit like it, and someone her age…well he was in no position to stop her from doing anything. He wasn't anything to her. He had no power over her but if he had he would have told her that she should not have been friends with adults. Especially not that adult. Fukuda had seen Minegishi's handiwork, the aftermath of it, and Shigeko….he did not want her to go down that path.

Any of the paths that she could have been led down.

"Are you sure?" asked Fukuda. He could fix intoxication easily. Lord knew he'd done that enough times for Suzuki back when they'd been young. He wanted to warn her not to drink. Suzuki may not have been her father by blood but he had been just as powerful, then, and she was now. She did not need to get drunk or whatever else Minegishi was. That wasn't going to be good for anyone. She was nine years old…he should not have even had to have been worrying about this. She was nine and she should not have even known that drinking, and whatever else Minegishi was into, was even a thing. He should have been there for her. He should have been there for both of the kids. He had…he had failed Masami so very badly…

"No, they said the same thing yesterday and the day before that. If they say that they're fine then I guess that I believe them. You can go now, though, I'm fine now. Thank you." She said. That was it. No throwing her arms around his legs, well waist now because she was taller these days,

"Well if that's it then I guess that I'll be off." Said Fukuda. There was so much more that he wanted to say to her. He wanted to ask her if she wanted to play. He wanted to ask her how she had been. He wanted...he wanted to see if she still had at least some traces of the kid that she used to be….but he didn't. He knew how Suzuki felt about him overstepping. He had overstepped before, years ago, and it hadn't ended well for him. There was no point in overstepping, anyway.

He had already failed Masami.

He had let her daughter grow up to be…a smaller version of her father. Yes, that was the best way to describe it. She was just a smaller version of Suzuki. A smaller, female, version of Suzuki. More so than his own son. His own son who Fukuda could see, as he left the cheap prefab, rolling around in the dirt. That could have been nothing, Sho could be very strange sometimes, or it could have been something. He was concerned. He couldn't just let Sho…well he was overstepping but…well not really. Rolling around in the dirt could not have been good for him.

Also he had been meaning to speak to Sho.

He knew that Sho was the one who had let the kid go. The kidnapped kid. The worst thing, almost the worst thing, that Suzuki had ever done. They were kidnapping children now…apparently this was what they were. Claw was an organization that kidnapped kids and forcibly awakened them for whatever crazy idea that came into Suzuki's mind. However he planned on justifying the latest of his crimes. Sho…he had let the boy go. There was still so much of Masami in him. That was why Sho had been down there with the others for questioning. That was why he had defended his sister, too. He knew Shigeko. She would never have defied her father like that. No, she must have gone looking for Sho…and found him too. He had seemed dazed a bit, almost like they had been fighting, and he knew that the only reason that Shigeko would have left her room would have been to go after her little brother. She would never have defied her father otherwise.

But Sho would have.

He was so proud of Sho. He wished that he had some way of safely telling Masami that he had not totally failed her, that her son was a good person, and that there was still some hope for him. There was still hope…and hope was usually in such short supply in this place. He wished that there was some way that he could have shown Masami what a good person her son had grown up to be against all odds. Not that he was grown up yet. No, he was only nine years old….he was only nine but he had been braver at nine than Fukuda had ever been at any point in his life.

"Sho, what are you doing?" asked Fukuda. Sho stopped rolling around in the mud and looked up at him. The mud his a few of his scars. The thing on his back was covered as were the ones on his chest and stomach. The thing on his leg, though, was right there plain as day. He wished that there was more he could have done for him. It was difficult, it must have been, having to spend the rest of his life covered in those truly grotesque scars…but there was nothing that Fukuda could do for scar tissue. It was what it was.

"Making mud. What are you doing?" asked Sho. He was mad, Fukuda could tell, and that was good. He hadn't taken after his father in that way. The way in which no matter what he was feeling Suzuki was cold as ice and about twice as unpleasant.

"I was just healing your sister and-" said Fukuda. Sho instantly jumped to his feet. He jumped to his feet and he grabbed Fukuda. His aura was visible. The droplets of water that clung to him began to raise up from his skin and float away.

Fukuda held him close. He didn't care about the mud.

"I'm sorry!" said Sho. He said that over and over again. He was begging forgiveness for something that Fukuda could not have faulted him for. Kids fought, that was normal, and little brothers were obligated to be pains to their big sisters. Of course his rivalry with Shigeko would be worse than was normal between siblings. Shigeko was his father's favorite child. Suzuki was very opened about which child was his favorite and which child he would rather have been without.

He hated Suzuki, sometimes.

And he loved Sho. He reminded himself, again, that Sho was not his son. This was not his son but…but that didn't matter right now. Sho needed him. Sho needed someone. Sho really had no one. Suzuki may have been spending more time with Sho and all but he still favored his sister above all else. That wasn't fair. Nothing about Sho's life had ever been fair.

That poor kid.

"Hey, hey, it's ok. You didn't do any real damage. I swear. No concussions, contusions, or abrasions." Said Fukuda. He dusted off an oldy but a goody. It worked. Sho stopped apologizing. His aura calmed down, too, which was good. Sho wasn't anywhere near his father or sister's level but he was still a powerful esper in his own right.

"I…I don't know why I scratched her. We were swimming and then I went under, but I went under on my own, but then I grabbed her and…and then I scratched her…and I don't know why I did that…and I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm such a bad person. I don't know why I'm such a jerk. I wish I was a good person-" said Sho. Fukuda shook his head. No. This was not the way that Sho should have seen himself. He was only nine years old. He should not have been talking that way about himself…and he shouldn't have been fighting with his sister either but Fukuda didn't much care about that right now. No, Sho was hurting. That was the only thing that he cared about.

"Sho, no. You're a good person. You just got a little upset, that's all, and I'm sure that she forgives you. She's not mad at you at all, she's never mad at you, and I bet that your dad won't even hear about this." said Fukuda

"You…you think?" asked Sho. He sniffled and wiped a tear from his eye. He left a streak of mud there. Masami, had she been there, would have laughed. She would have thought that he was just the cutest thing. This would have been such a good photo op…Masami would have whipped her camera right out and taken the picture…and she would have been there too. She always loved taking the kids to the pool. She always loved going places with them. If he hadn't…if he hadn't helped her escape…would she have been there with them? Or back in Japan? Would she have been there with him? Would he have…he stops thinking about this. About her. She's gone, now, and it is what it is.

She's gone.

"Yeah, I know that I won't say a word to him about this. I would never rat you out…no matter what you do." Said Fukuda. He wanted, he wished, that Sho would have told him right then and there that he had been the one to let the boy go. That he had been the one to do the right thing. He knew, though, that Sho would never have confessed to saving the boy.

He knew what his father did to traitors.

"No matter what I do? Even if I get mad and hurt big sis? Even if I do bad things?" asked Sho. Fukuda paused for a moment. He didn't want to give Sho the ok to behave badly…but he also didn't need to worry about another person being there to punish him. Another person there just waiting for him to act out. No, Fukuda could never be that person.

"Yes…I won't tell him about the times you do bad things. The things that your father would consider to be bad." Said Fukuda. He would never tell Suzuki what his son had been responsible for. They both knew what Suzuki did to traitors. He would not put Sho through that. He had already let Sho go through the Awakening process. He had already been partially responsible for Sho losing his mother. He had already been unable to protect Sho…but he could, in this way, at least.

The kids hardly ever called him in anymore, they hardly ever got hurt, and Fukuda could not be responsible for getting them hurt.


	124. Movies, Love, and Movies About Love

Big sis had the absolute worst taste in movies.

It was almost Valentine's Day and that meant that they had watch gross movies with love and kissing in them. Why she would torment him with this Sho would never know. It was gross and wrong, watching people kiss and stuff. They didn't kiss until the end but Sho would have preferred it if they got it over with in the very beginning. That way the worst of it could have been over. Like how it was best to wash your hair before anything else. Big sis never got the worst of it over with first. She always watched the kissing parts of the movies at the end and washed her hair last and even ate her vegetables last too instead of choking them down at the beginning so dad didn't get mad.

He did not understand her one bit.

"Can we PLEASE watch something else? Anything else? This is torture!" said Sho. He threw himself back onto the couch and kicked. He was stuck inside next to her. They had moved to a place where it was cold out, it was winter in the northern hemisphere, and he couldn't go outside because it was cold and snowy. Even dad was home but he was working in his room. Sho wished that he could have gone outside. The snow wasn't that bad. He could still kind of see the outside world for at least half a meter.

"But it's not even half over yet." Said Mob. She hadn't seen this movie before but she liked it. It was about these two older kids and they were in high school and they were in love but they were too shy to admit it and also one of them could see ghosts. It was beautiful.

"You know how it's going to end! It's always the same. The boy and the girl realize that they like each other and then they kiss and a song plays and then it's over. All of your movies end the same way. They're so boring!" said Sho. He didn't understand her one bit. He had put up with enough of this, he figured, because he had been kind of a jerk to her lately. He hadn't almost drowned her again or scratched her but he had been kind of mean. He didn't know why he was so mean. She was bossy and annoying and was always trying to be their mom but he had been such a jerk to her lately….and that wasn't good. Even if Fukuda said that he would never tell on him….

Being mean to big sis was still wrong.

"The ending is the best part." Said Mob

"You're crazy." Said Sho

"No I'm not. I just….I just think that the ending is the best part. Also it's almost Valentine's Day and that means that we should watch movies about love." Said Mob

"Well then you can watch gross stuff all on your own." Said Sho. He got up off the couch. He could feel her looking at him, her aura was resting on him and her eyes probably were too, so of course he turned around and faced her.

"You can change it if you want. I just want to hang out with you." Said Mob. She didn't much feel like being all alone. She wanted to watch the things she liked but she also wanted to be near her little brother. They used to be better friends, she felt like, and she wanted to go back to being the way that they had been when they were little. They were older now, he was nine and she would be ten in May, and maybe this was what happened when you got older…you stopped being good friends with your little brother….and it really was not…good. They used to play together all the time. She hated how things had changed. Maybe she just wasn't making enough of an effort. She sometimes avoided him because he could be kind of mean to her…and that wasn't right. She should not have been avoiding her little brother even if he could be mean….

"Fine, I'll stay…and we can watch what you want." Said Sho. The words tasted like ashes in his mouth. Why did she had to look at him like that? He was being kind of a jerk again…and he needed to stop being a jerk. He was nine now and…and he had been too much of a jerk lately…well all of the time.

"No, we can change it." Said Mob. She didn't want to be too bossy. He was always telling her that she was too bossy. It was hard not to be bossy when dad told her that she had to be the boss of him. Even when dad was home she still had to be the boss of Sho. She had never asked for this, to be in charge, but without mom being there and with dad busy all the time she had to be in charge because she was the oldest.

"Don't make me change my mind." Said Sho. He threw himself back down on the couch and decided to grit his teeth and bare the grossness. What was with her? What was even the point of watching people fall in love and kiss and stuff? Girls were so weird. They were crazy about love. He had never once been able to understand them in his whole nine years of life.

"Why don't you like this?" asked Mob. She would never understand her little brother. Most boys, actually, were hard to understand. What was wrong with love? What did boys have against kissing? Well not all boys, obviously, but most of them had something again falling in love and kissing. She would never understand boys. It was a miracle that people still got married and had babies with the attitude that boys had.

"I just said, because they all end the same way and it's super boring." Said Sho with a shrug.

"But a lot of the things that you watch all end the same way, too. In your shows the good guys always win and the bad guys always lose." Said Mob

"Whatever. It's not the journey, it's the destination." Said Sho recalling a very good piece of cookie based wisdom. He wondered why more deserts didn't have fortunes in them. You could probably fit more wisdom in something like a mochi or a whole cake or a bowl of ice cream.

"You got that from a fortune cookie." Said Mob motioning to the fortunes covering the coffee table. They had eaten a box of fortune cookies for lunch. They weren't the best cookies but it was fun to see what your fortune was. Dad said that they were ridiculous but not in the way that meant that he was mad at them so that meant that it was ok to eat and entire box of fortune cookies for one meal.

"There's a lot of wisdom in those cookies. Don't knock the cookies!" said Sho. He used his powers to send the little scraps of paper flying into her hair. That wasn't a jerk thing to do because they were just pieces of paper and they couldn't hurt her…unless she ended up with cuts on her face or something…but Fukuda would fix her up and not even tell dad on him. He was a nice guy like that

"I wasn't knocking the cookies." Said Mob shaking the pieces of paper out of her hair. They fell down into her lap like how it was snowing outside. She picked one up and read it. This had been one of hers. Eat more fortune cookies. She got a bunch of those, and a bunch of empty cookies too. Sho got the ones with advice in them and stuff, better advice than saying to eat more fortune cookies anyway, and he even got one with two fortunes in it once. He always got lucky like that. He got to get two fortunes and he got to go to work with dad sometimes and he got to be born a boy, too. Boys had it better in a lot of ways. They got hit more often, which was bad, but they got to spend more time with dad because they got to inherit the world. Mob didn't much want to inherit the world but it did feel unfair, sometimes, that she couldn't just because she was born a girl. It wasn't fair…but maybe she only felt that way because Minegishi had told her that it was unfair that dad treated her and Sho differently just because Sho was a boy and she was a girl.

"Well it sounded like you were. Never knock the cookies, they have a lot of wisdom and advice in them." Said Sho

"Even if they tell you to eat more cookies sometimes." Said Mob

"That's good advice, if you eat more cookies then you might get a better fortune, so you should eat cookies until there's aren't any left…and then when there aren't any left you've got to go and buy another box." Said Sho

"Do you want to eat another box of fortune cookies?" asked Mob. She didn't want to eat another box of cookies, they'd had one for lunch already having one for dinner would have been just too much, but if Sho wanted them to eat another box of fortune cookies then she would…because she loved him and she wanted to make him happy more than anything else in the whole world.

"Maybe. I'm kind of tired of them. After a while they just taste boring. Like how watching the same thing over and over again is boring." Said Sho. How could she just keep on watching this? Now was the part where the guy did something that looked bad and he was all 'I can explain' but the girl didn't let him and then they were broken up for a little bit. They'd end up realizing by the end that they were in love the whole time and kiss in the cherry blossoms or something. Gross enough to make him feel like he was going to throw up his half of the fortune cookies.

"But it doesn't matter if all these movies go the same way. It's not the journey, it's the destination like you said." Said Mob

"The destination is super gross." Said Sho sticking his tongue out.

"It's not…it's nice." Said Mob. She smiled and ducked her head low. She knew firsthand how nice it was…but nobody needed to know that. Well Minegishi knew that but they could keep a secret…and also they were not her little brother. She did not want to talk about this with her little brother, and not just because if she told him what happened he would figure out that she was the one who betrayed dad, she was not going to tell him because this was just not the thing that you talked about with your little brother. A little sister maybe but she didn't have one of those, just the little brother, and she was happy to have Sho…even if she sometimes wanted a Shoko instead of a Sho. At least that way dad would have treated them the same. They might have gotten along better, too. Girls didn't hit, usually, but they could be mean in other ways…it was pointless to think about what life would have been like if she'd had a little sister instead of a little brother. She got what she got.

"Yeah, if you're a lovesick girl." Said Sho. He knew firsthand how not nice it was when you were a boy. Girls were always trying to kiss him. Big sis said that girls liked him because they could tell that he was awesome. He knew that he was awesome but that didn't mean that he wanted random girls kissing him. He didn't go around kissing random people. He thought that Shimazaki was awesome but he didn't just go and try and kiss him…and also he wouldn't because he could not kiss another guy. That was not the way that it worked. Dad would have killed him, anyway, because dad hated it when he was different. When he did things that deviated from dad's plan of raising the perfect kids. Dad had said, before, that he had to grow up and get married and have kids of his own. He said that once Sho had kids of his own to be tormented by then he would know why dad was the way he was. Sho didn't much want to have kids, you had to do unspeakable things with a girl to have kids, but he did know that once his kids were born he wasn't going to be the way that dad was with him. He wasn't going to hit his kids or make them feel like the gum you got on the bottom of your shoe. He was going to be nice to them and make them happy and also treat them the same even if one had powers and one didn't or if one was a boy and the other was a girl.

Girls had it so easy.

Girls hardly ever got hit. Dad hardly ever hit big sis and had never once hit mom. You weren't supposed to hit girls, anyway, everyone knew that…which was why Sho was the biggest jerk ever. He wished that he had a brother instead of a sister. A Shigeo instead of a Shigeko. Then maybe it would have been ok to fight him…but also that would suck. As much work as it was to run the world Sho was happy to do it. That was why dad needed him. If dad had a Shigeo instead of a Shigeko then he would never have had to have a Sho at all.

"I-I'm not lovesick!" said Mob. Nope. No way could her little brother know about this. How could he tell? Was it written all over her face?! Well she wasn't in love…not really….because she would never see him again…but she did think about him a lot….

"Are too. All girls are. That's why they spend all day watching movies about love and also chase you around so they can kiss you." Said Sho

"I don't do that to boys…it's not nice…and I'm not lovesick." Said Mob. It was not a lie. To be lovesick she would have had to have been in love. She couldn't be in love with a boy she would never see again, that was just not how it worked, so she must have just…wanted to kiss him. Like how Minegishi said that sometimes people kissed for the sake of kissing…not that Mob would ever have done that. She didn't know. She'd only kissed one person in her entire life and she just could not get it out of her head…but that didn't make her lovesick. Maybe kiss-sick was a better word for it? Either way she was not telling Sho what happened.

"You don't do that but a lot of girls do and it sucks." Said Sho

"Is it really that bad? Also don't say that word. Dad might hear you." Said Mob. She felt around for dad with her aura. Still working and still not mad. That was good. He had been in a much better mood since they'd left Japan all those weeks ago. She was glad for that but she also knew how fast his feelings could change.

"It's the worst! It sucks, and I'll say whatever I want because this is a free country…I think, and anyway it does suck and there's not any other word in Japanese that can describe it! It sucks when you're just minding your own business and some girl comes up to you and kisses you! Like she either chases you and you think that you're just playing tag until she catches you and kisses you or you just think that she wants to be friends or something but then she just kisses you and laughs and runs away! The worst, the suckiest, is when she kisses you on the mouth. Like you're just minding your own business and then some girl who you barely even know, or don't know at all, is kissing you on the mouth! It sucks!" said Sho. He was mad by the end of it. He was breathing kind of hard and his aura was showing. Well he was mad and he had every right to be mad. Even mom said that the game of catching and kissing wasn't right because kisses had to be special. Sho didn't want to kiss any girls at all so that meant that none of them were special.

"Oh…but don't worry. One day you'll meet someone who you want to kiss and who wants to kiss you and it'll be the greatest moment of your entire life." Said Mob. Well of course he thought that the game of catching boys and kissing them wasn't fun. Those weren't real kisses, the girls in her class back when she had gone to school said so, and that was why it was ok to catch a boy and kiss him. That way nobody could accuse you of liking him. Mob had never understood that, any of it, so she hadn't gone along with it. She was glad that she hadn't. She wouldn't have wanted a boy to talk about her the way Sho talked about the girls who had kissed him. She wondered if…there was no point at all in wondered what that boy, the one she saved, thought of her. They would never see each other again. There was no point in wondering if he ever laid down in bed at night and looked up at the ceiling and thought about what it had been like to kiss him. There was no point in wondering if he ever just randomly thought of her and blushed or sighed or anything like that. No point at all.

"That's not going to happen." Said Sho. If he ever got all love sick and started spending all his time watching other people kiss on TV and in movies and stuff he wanted to be hit in the head. He wanted someone to hit him in the head with a brick to knock some sense into him…or to give him amnesia. Either one would do.

"It will when you're older, it happens to everyone, but I think that it might happen to girls first. Falling in love. I heard that girls mature faster than boys so-" said Mob

"If that happens, if I ever fall in love with someone, I want you to hit me in the head with a brick as hard as you can." Said Sho

"What? No way!? I am not hitting you in the head with a brick, little brother! That would be terrible!" said Mob

"Ok, a rock then." Said Sho

"No. I'm not hitting you in the head with a rock. Not even if someone threatened to hit me in the head with a rock." Said Mob

"Ok, then go get a baseball bat or a cricket bat or a kendo sword or a hockey stick or a tennis racket or a badminton racket or a croquet mallet or a-" said Sho

"Stop it, Sho, you know that I would never hit you in the head with anything. Not even my own hand. I would never do that to you. You could die!" said Mob

"No, I wouldn't die. I would just get some sense knocked into me or I would get some amnesia. Just enough to forget that I had ever fallen in love in the first place." Said Sho

"Why would you want to forget falling in love? You're probably just too little. When you get to be my age then you'll like someone and they'll like you back and then she'll want to kiss you and then you'll want to kiss her and-" said Mob. Dad had said, before, that she and Sho had to get married and have kids so that there would be more Suzuki's to run the world. They had to get married to other people, he later said, which made sense because she could not marry her own brother. That was against nature's laws. Also they would have fought all the time. Also Sho kicked in his sleep and she was not going to spend the rest of her life sleepy because she couldn't get a good night's rest sleeping next to Sho. She hoped that the girl Sho married, and dad said that it had to be a girl, was nice. She hoped that she and the girl Sho married got along and became friends and played together all the time. It would be like having a little sister, almost, maybe.

"Stop it before I throw up!" said Sho. He'd kiss a whole bag of lemons before he kissed a girl. He'd kissed girls before, well they'd kissed him, and it had been the worst. He never wanted to go through that again for as long as he lived.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to make you throw up. I just meant that one day you would find a girl you liked, dad says that if you don't find a girl he'll find one for you, and then you'll want to be her boyfriend and then you'll marry her-" said Mob

"That's gross, shut up already with that…and tell dad that he's going to have to find me a girlfriend because I have never once liked a girl in my whole life." Said Sho. He didn't get what the big deal was about them. They were ok, some of them, but they were weird too. The games they liked were boring, dolls and stuff, and when they did play with you it was never that fun. When he played with girls it was kind of boring. When he played with boys he felt like running around and climbing things and doing flips and handstands, even if he wasn't good at them, and also a lot of other stuff. It was like being full of soda and pop rocks when he played with boys…not that he had played with anyone other than his big sis in a while. Dad had so any stupid rules….

"Oh. Well that's ok, you might find someone you like. If you like a boy then that's ok too. I mean I think that it's ok but I don't think that dad will but that doesn't seem like the kind of thing that dad can be mad at you about. The heart wants what it wants, I read that on a fortune cookie once, so you can't tell someone who to fall in love with-" said Mob

"I said so shut up about it! Do you want me to watch this with you or not? Because if you keep on talking about me falling in love with someone I'm going to our room." Said Sho. He didn't want to think about love, it was gross, and it made you want to do gross things like kiss. He didn't want to kiss any girls and certainly not any boys. He was already different enough. Besides, who would want to kiss him anyway? He was a jerk…and also kissing was gross and not the good kind of gross like sucking on a jaw breaker and then spitting in colors. Kissing was the bad kind of gross and the thought of him kissing was gross and he just wasn't going to kiss anyone! And it wad nobody's business but his own who he did and did not kiss!

"Sorry Sho, I want you to stay, so I'll shut up now." Said Mob. Boys were so weird when it came to love and stuff. She wondered if Sho would end up being one of those boys who liked other boys. It seemed that way, sometimes, because he always got so weird when other boys would try to play with him and stuff. Even when they were kids. She knew that she got weird around boys because she liked them, or at least really wanted them to like her, and since Sho was her brother and they were family then maybe he was the same way. She couldn't imagine her parents being all weird and nervous around each other…though she couldn't even begin to imagine them together. They had fallen out of love and that was sad. She hoped that she never fell out of love…if she ever feel in love in the first place. She hoped that Sho never fell out of love, either, with whoever it was that he fell in love with when he got old enough to fall in love with in the first place.

It would be just like in the movies….though she did hope that he didn't end up falling in love with a boy just like him. She didn't know what she would do if she had two little brothers.


	125. Valentine's Day Breakfast

Valentine's Day was a holiday about love.

Not just the kind of love that made you want to kiss someone and hold their hand and marry them. No, there were different kinds of love. Like the love you had for your friends and the love you had for your family and also the love you had for a cold bottle of milk. Not that Mob was going to be giving milk out for Valentine's Day. No, that would not have been a good gift at all. She was the only one who really liked milk, the only one who would gladly replace all the water in the world milk, so it would not make a good present. Not that she had a lot of Valentine's Day presents to give.

No, not very many at all.

But that was normal for her. She only had so many boys in her life that she had to give gifts too. She had dad and Sho and Fukuda and maybe Minegishi. She got Minegishi a bar of dark chocolate just to be safe. If they were a boy then Mob was doing the right thing by giving them chocolate. If they weren't a boy then they would at least be happy to have gotten the chocolate. Everyone liked chocolate….or at least most people liked chocolate.

Dad hated sweet foods.

Well not all sweet foods. She'd seen him eat plain cheesecake before. Since he'd eaten it then he must have liked it at least a little. She hadn't gotten him a plain cheesecake though. He might not have actually liked it. He told her before about social niceties, how sometimes you had to try and act like everyone else, and if you acted enough like everyone else then you would get followers and stuff. Mob didn't really want followers, she wanted friends, but she figured that the same thing went for making friends. That was why she drank so much coffee even though she really did not care for it at all. She wasn't going to make dad eat something that he did not care for at all. It was Valentine's Day and on Valentine's Day you were supposed to give the boys I your life that you loved presents.

So she had made dad an omelet.

She'd made it just the way mom showed her how to all those years ago. Dad liked moms cooking, he'd said so back when mom lived with them, and mom hadn't made this but…but it was still the same recipe at least. Hopefully dad would like it. She'd even drawn a heart and written 'Happy Valentine's Day, Dad' in ketchup. Dad liked ketchup. She spelled it right, she knew that she had, and she knew that he would like this because that was what mom had done on the rare Valentine's Days when dad had been at home. She wondered what mom was doing. Was she making Valentine's Day omelets for someone else? Was she still making them for dad and then eating them all by herself? Did she even think about-

That didn't matter.

Mom was gone now. What she was going to do or doing right now or thinking right now didn't matter. She was gone and she was never coming back. Mom was gone and Mob had no idea why. She could have left because she didn't love Mob anymore, because of her powers or how weird she was, and that was fine. There was nothing that Mob could have done to get her mom back. She might have left because Mob and Sho fought all the time. She might have left because dad could be kind of mean sometimes. Mob didn't know. All she knew what that it was Valentine's Day and on Valentine's Day you had to do something special for the boys in your life that you loved.

So she made an omelet and drew a heart on it using ketchup.

It hadn't taken too long. She had been a little out of practice, not that she had spent much time practicing to begin with, but she had at least done a good job. It wasn't burnt. That was good. She had spelled everything right. That was good too. Now all she had to do was wait for dad to wake up and come to the kitchen and see what she had made for him. It wouldn't be very long, no, because she could see his aura moving. It was morning time. She hadn't woken Sho up yet. She wanted to spend time with him. She wanted to give him his present, assorted chocolates but none with fruit inside, and then she wanted to spend time with him. She loved him so much and this was a day about love so this was, therefore, a day to spend time with her little brother who she loved very much.

But not her dad because he had a lot of work to do.

He always had a lot of work to do. Running Claw was very hard. There were all of the Divisions and outposts and compounds and safe houses and all of their sources of money, too, that he had to manage. She would have liked to have spent the day with him, and she could have, but she knew that Sho would not have wanted to come with. He wasn't as good at sitting still and being quiet as she was. Dad liked it when they sat still and were quiet. That was also why she hadn't woken Sho up, either, because she knew that he would not have been able to be quiet for breakfast. Not like she could have.

She really wanted this to be a good Valentine's Day.

"Daughter. Explain." Said Dad. That was the first thing he said when he came to the kitchen. She didn't mind that he didn't say 'good morning' or something like that to her. She knew that he would only say that if someone said it to him first. It was always best to let him talk first. That way she wouldn't accidentally end up making him upset or anything like that.

"Happy Valentine's Day, dad, I made you breakfast." Said Mob. She had made herself breakfast too but he could see that. There were two uncovered plates and one with tin foil on it. That would be for Sho when he woke up. She dew a ketchup heart for him, too, but he wouldn't care. She didn't mind it if he didn't care, it was the thought that counted, and that wasn't just for Christmastime either.

"I can see that. You made this yourself? You didn't ask the Awakened to do anything?" asked Dad as he sat down. He looked at her with his aura and at his breakfast with his eyes. She hoped that she had done that right, the same way mom did it, because she knew that if she messed up he would not have been nice about it.

"No. I made it all on my own. Well they brought the ingredients but I cooked it all on my own." Said Mob. She sat down at her spot across from him. She used her powers to pour herself a glass of milk and to pour him a cup of tea. She had made the tea herself too, though the kettle had done most of the work.

"You used to do this more often. I remember." Said Dad. He was talking about back when they lived in the old house. Back when mom had either been sick or not home. Back when…she needed to stop thinking about this. It was wrong to think about this…even though Dad was the one who brought it up. She wondered if he still missed the old house. If he had ever missed the old house. Probably not. It wasn't like he still loved their mom or anything like that. He thought that she was a traitor and they were not supposed to love traitors. Bad things happened to traitors. Mob didn't have the first clue what those things were, exactly, but she knew that she did not want any of them to happen to her mother. That was why she had mostly stopped wishing for mom to come back. She didn't want anything bad to happen to her…even if she had left them all alone with dad. Even if she had decided that she didn't want to be their mom anymore. Even if she hadn't even said goodbye. The least that she could have done was to say goodbye…but Mob did not want to think about this now. It was irrational. It made no sense. Mom was gone and she was never coming back so there was no point at all in being mad at her for being gone.

"I did. I used to cook but now I don't have to because the Awakened bring us everything." Said Mob. There. That was a good answer. She had said the right thing because she hadn't mentioned the old house at all. She wanted to mention the old house, this old lives, what it had been like to have mom around. How she used to draw ketchup pictures on their omelets. How she used to let Mob help her make breakfast. How she used to smell like cinnamon sometimes because she would make things like French toast and pancakes with it. How she…how she had done a lot things.

She didn't say a word about mom.

"May I ask why you chose to cook today? You didn't have to." Said Dad

"I wanted to because it's Valentine's Day. I made you breakfast because I know you hate chocolate and like breakfast foods." Said Mob. She watched dad with her eyes and her aura. He still hadn't eaten anything. She had…she had done something wrong, then, to make him not want to eat. He must have been hungry, he always woke up hungry, but he wasn't eating….

"You aren't obliged to get me anything, you know." Said Dad

"Obligated?" asked Mob. She knew that on Valentine's Day she had to do something nice for her dad because he was a boy and you had to do nice things and give gifts to the boys in your life that you loved and stuff.

"A word which means 'have to'." Said Dad

"I know what obligated means, dad, I just meant that I don't know why you said that. It's Valentine's Day and I know that you don't like chocolate so I made you an omelet." Said Mob

"You didn't have to. Even if tradition dictates that you do something nice for me because I am your father you still didn't have to. You know that I don't care much for holidays." Said Dad. Mob frowned just a little bit. She knew that she didn't HAVE to do something nice for her dad, nobody had twisted her arm or anything like that, but she wanted to. She loved him and when you loved someone you wanted to make them happy. At least that was how she saw it.

"I know that I didn't have to make you breakfast but I wanted to. I just wanted to do something special…but if you don't like it then I can make you something else." Said Mob. She just wanted to have a nice Valentine's Day, that was all. Somehow she had managed to mess it up just like she managed to mess everything up. What was with her? Why was she so clueless? Why did she mess up everything?

"No. This is fine, Daughter, thank you." Said Dad. Mob smiled. She smiled so much that the only way she could have possibly smiled more would have been if dad had used her real name. He didn't, though, because he never did. She sometimes wondered if he remembered her name. She knew that was crazy talk, though, because of course he knew her name. He was her dad, he had been, the one to name her…unless mom had been the one to name her. That would have made sense too. Mob knew, however, that when she had kids she would remember all of their names…not that she knew when she would have kids or who she would even have kids with. The boy she liked was long gone and she would never see him again…

She tried not to think about that.

She, instead, thought about the great day that she was going to have. It started off great because she had managed to make breakfast without burning the house down. It would stay great, too, because dad took a bite of the omelet she'd made for him. He chewed it slowly and looked down at his food the whole time. She didn't know if that was a good sign or a bad sign. She just knew that she had tried her best and she could not do better than her best…well she could have practiced…and maybe she should have practiced. Maybe that would have been better…maybe she would have done better that way…she didn't know.

All she knew was that she really, really, REALLY wanted dad to like the omelet she'd made for him.

"This tastes…good." Said Dad. Mob was happy. Mob was so happy that she had to hold on to her braids or else they would float away. That would have been bad. It was bad enough that dad could see her aura. He did not need to see her losing control either. That would have ruined the whole day. He was always so upset with her when she lost control. She was too old to lose control and had been for some time. If he got mad enough at her then he punished her….or he might have even left her one day…like mom had…

She stops thinking about this and focuses, instead, on that fact that she had done something right.

"Thank you." Said Mob. What else could she say? She wanted to know what he liked about it specifically, if it was a good as mom's, but she knew not to ask about mom. That was not a good thing to do. That would most certainly ruin the entire day.

"Your mother…she taught you how to do this." said Dad. Mob's heart stopped. It had taken dad a while to say that, almost like he hadn't been sure what to say, and Mob wished that he had picked something else to say. He was talking about mom. He never talked about mom. He hadn't talked about mom since he had told them that she was a traitor and that they were never to mention her again for as long as they lived. But he was talking about her….right now he had just said…and was that ok? Was it ok that dad had mentioned her? Did that mean that it was ok for her to mention mom….

Mob didn't know.

"Yes. She did." Said Mob. She decided not to use a lot of words. The fewer words she used the better. If she started up about mom then she would have started asking questions. She would have asked if they were any closer to finding her. She would have asked if they had figured out why she'd left yet. She would have asked if dad ever laid awake in bed at night and missed her. She would have…she would have started and not been able to stop…even if mom was a traitor she still missed her so much…and she just wanted to talk ABOUT her since there was no way to talk TO her…

But she didn't even get a chance to say anything else even if she had wanted to.

"Wake your brother. His breakfast is getting cold." Said Dad. That was what Mob did. She got up from the table, went to their room, and woke Sho. He hadn't wanted to wake up, of course, because it was early but dad had told her to do something so of course she was going to do what it was that dad had told her to do. She was a good Daughter that way. She also didn't want to stick around long enough for dad to start to get mad. Even if he was the one who brought mom up first…but there was no point in whining about how unfair it was. She had been told to do something and now she was going to do it like a good Daughter would.

"Here you go, Sho, happy Valentine's Day." Said Mob as she took the tinfoil off of Sho's breakfast. He tubbed the sleep out of his eyes and picked up his fork. He was still tired. He had gotten up in the middle of the night again to change clothes and change his sheets. She wasn't going to tell dad that Sho had wet the bed, though, because then dad would have been mad and she did not want to ruin the day for anyone.

"Thank your sister." Said dad. He was scrolling through his phone now. He was using his powers, too, to eat. He had his fork hovering in the air with a bit of food on it. He looked up briefly, fed himself, and then went back down to scrolling through his phone. Mob wondered why he didn't just put his phone down. Mom had always said no powers or phones/tablets at the table…but mom wasn't there anymore. Mom wasn't there anymore and this was not her house or her table or a meal that she had cooked.

Since Mob cooked this meal did that make it her table now?

She was just a kid but she had been the one to make breakfast. She had been the one to remember it was Valentine's Day and she had been the one to cook breakfast and she had been the one to wake Sho up, too. After this she would brush his teeth and his hair and help him pick out day clothes and make sure that their school work got done…all the things that mom used to do. She was even cooking the same foods that mom had cooked…

Maybe Sho was right. Maybe she was trying to replace mom.

"Thank you for the meal, big sis." Said Sho. He yawned when he said that. He was still sleepy. It made sense, he had wet the bed in the middle of the night, and he hadn't been able to get to sleep even after his clothes and sheets had been changed. Mob had helped with that, too. That was another thing which mom had done. She wasn't trying to be mom, she didn't wake up in the morning and decide that she was going to be new Suzuki Masami, she just…she did what she had to do. Dad had been the one to put her in charge. She had never asked to be in charge. She had never wanted to be in charge. That was just what had happened. She was in charge now and she…and she had to do what she had to do…

She was not trying to replace mom and Sho had bene wrong to accuse her of that.

Not that she would ever tell her little brother that he had been wrong. She would never have told him that every time he accused her of pretending to be mom it made her both sad and mad at the same time. She was not going to make them fight like that. She wanted them to have a good day. She had always never wanted anything more than for the people around her to have been happy.

Was that so much to ask?

"You're welcome, little brother." Said Mob. She sat down and got back to eating. They ate in silence. She could feel dad's aura resting on hers. He wasn't looking at her with his eyes but he was looking at her with his aura. She didn't know why. She had made breakfast like she had done, before, back at the old house. It wasn't like she had done something amazing. There was nothing at all amazing about making breakfast. Mom had done it every day. A crazy part of her thinks that dad might have been missing mom, that he had been resting his aura on her because she reminded him of mom, but that was crazy. If he had been thinking of mom, if she had been making him think of mom, then of course he would have punished her. He didn't like mom, he didn't care about mom, and in fact he might have even hated her.

Because she was a traitor.

Mom didn't love dad, either. If mom had loved dad, had loved any of them, then she would have been the one to have made breakfast. She would have been the one to have said happy Valentine's Day. She would have been there with them…or at the old house, actually, now that Mob had thought it through. She would have been at the old house and so would she and Sho, probably not dad, and they would not have been sitting at the table in whatever country this was at whatever Claw base this was…but there was no point in thinking about that now.

Mob would never leave her family.

She knew that she had to grow up to have a family, dad had said so, and she knew that one day she would be someone's mom and she could not see herself ever running away from home. She didn't know who her kids would be or how many she would have or what they would be like but she knew that she would never just up and leave them. She would never leave her husband, either, even if he was like dad…and she really hoped that he was nothing like dad….not that she had any idea at all who her husband would be.

She knew who she wanted to be her husband.

She held her braids down again. Her aura was bright, dad could see that, and her face was red…which she knew that Sho noticed. She could not think about him, the boy, because then she would be all nervous and sad and a whole lot of other feelings. She needed to think about something other than the boy, she knew his name and she knew that she could not even so much as think his name, but in trying not to think about him then it just made her think about him more. She wanted to be with him, to be his girlfriend, and to hold his hand…or even kiss him again…

She missed him more than anything.

She missed him and she wanted to kiss him and….and she didn't even know him. She didn't know a single thing about him besides the fact that he was an esper like her. He also had blond hair and the bluest eyes she had ever seen. He was taller than her, too, which had been nice. He was brave, too, because he had escaped from being kidnapped, on accident of course because dad was not a kidnapper, and also he had run all the way home on his own through the winter cold…at least she hoped that he had gotten home. She hoped that he had made it home, and since Claw hadn't found him then he must have gotten home ok, and she knew that since he was probably safe and sound then…then she would never see him again.

But that was ok.

He was safe and sound and she should have been happy for him. She should have been happy that he was with his parents, both of his parents, and that…that he was probably happy again. Mob knew that she should not have been imagining what it would have been like to have set a fourth place at the table. What it would have been like to make a 'Happy Valentine's Day' omelet for him. She had never gotten a boy anything for Valentine's Day. Well she had gotten a boy a chocolate lollipop once when back when she had been in the first grade but she had gotten too scared and ended up giving it to her little brother. She would have gotten something for the boy. She had kissed him, well he had kissed her, or maybe they had kissed each other. Once the kissing happened, once two people decided to do something so big, then giving gifts on Valentine's Day was pretty easy compared to that.

Not that she would ever see him again.

She tried not to think about him. She tried to eat. She tried to eat without thinking of him and how he had met her and how she had met him and how it had felt to kiss him and hold his hands…and how she had promised to never forget him…and how he had promised never to forget her. She knew that she couldn't love someone she he just met but she also knew that she could not have…she could not have just kissed him for fun. Sometimes these were just for fun things, like Minegishi had said, but that had been more than…than to feel good. He hadn't just kissed her because it felt good…right? He had kissed her because…she just did not know. She just…she wanted to see him again. She wanted to hold his hand and kiss him…but she couldn't.

She couldn't forget him.

She wondered if dad would ever forget mom. She wondered if he ever still thought about her. He had mentioned her just now…but then he had gotten very quiet. Even his aura was being quiet. Still, too, which was not like him. His aura had been focused on her, before, but now he had pulled it in close. He wasn't looking at her with his eyes or his aura. She wondered if dad was upset…but he wasn't. If dad had been…anything…but he wasn't. Not that she could tell. She couldn't tell when his aura got like that. He probably wasn't upset, though, because dad was…dad. He was dad and he didn't want mom to come back…and he probably didn't even love her anymore. She wondered why dad had loved mom in the first place. She wondered why dad had ever loved mom in the first place.

She wondered how he had ever fallen in love with mom in the first place.

How could you tell if you were in love? What was the criteria? She didn't know. She thought…she didn't know what she thought. She didn't know how she felt about that boy, the one who she didn't even want to think the name of, but she knew…she knew that it felt close to…close to love…even if it couldn't be love. She wished that someone would have told her what love felt like, when you could tell that you were in love, and how you knew who it was ok to fall in love with…

She was not going to ask. She knew not to ask.

Because if she asked then dad might have known…and dad could never know. She was a traitor, she had gone against dad's orders, and she knew that dad would not have loved her anymore if she had been a traitor. Even now he seemed like he didn't love her. He wasn't looking at her. He wasn't looking at Sho, which was always a good thing, he wasn't looking at anything at all. He was just…there. His aura was so close…and she had no idea what she had done wrong. Was this what it would be like to be married to someone? Would he had been like dad, keeping his aura close so she couldn't figure out what he was feeling? Would the boy have been that way? No, he hadn't once hidden what he was feeling…even though that was what you were supposed to do. Boys, especially, but her too. She didn't to be married to someone who hid their feelings. She didn't even want to be the girlfriend of someone who hid their feelings. She wanted…she wanted to be that boy's girlfriend so badly…but she didn't even know him.

She ate her breakfast.

A silent breakfast wasn't weird in the Suzuki family. A silent breakfast was something that was almost normal. It was better if they were silent. The less noise they made the less chance there was of dad getting upset with them. Everyone was in their own head. That was good. If they kept their thoughts in their own heads then they could not make their thoughts known to everyone else…which meant that dad could not get mad. She wished that mom was still there. She could have asked mom about how she felt and what she was supposed to do now. She couldn't get the boy out of her head and she would have done anything to see him again…she wondered if mom had ever felt that way…

No, she had wanted to be away from dad.

She wondered if dad had ever felt that way about anyone. Not mom, of course, because he said that she was a traitor. She wondered if dad had ever been in love with anyone else besides mom. She wondered if dad would ever fall in love again. She wondered if he parents were even still married. She didn't know. She wasn't going to ask. She hoped that dad never fell in love with anyone else, though, because she did not need a new mom. Even if love was a good feeling. Even if maybe being in love would make dad a nicer person.

She didn't know. She stayed silent. It was a silent breakfast…or at least it would have been.

"Tastes just like mom used to make." Said Sho. He yawned as he said that. He was sleepy. The sun was barely up. That was why he had forgotten himself. That was why he had done something so wrong, so very wrong, as to have mentioned their mom. Something that he knew he would probably pay for later. Dad had punished him for much less, much less serious crimes, than mentioning their mom. Now dad was going to be so mad at them. Now dad was going to hit Sho and maybe her, too, because she had been the one to make their breakfast. Mob closed her eyes. She stopped herself from putting up a barrier. Dad didn't like that. He took it as a sign of defiance. She just sat there and waited.

She also stopped breathing.

Sho did the same thing. She could see his aura, scared, and she could feel it too. Also scared. She could see his how chest had stopped rising and falling. He was scared. He was scared and there was nothing that she could do about it. Even though she loved him more than anything she could not help him. He had done the worst thing that she had ever seen him do and now all they could do was wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And keep on waiting. Dad finished, he ate all of his food, and then he stood up. He was tall. How had Mob never realized that her dad was so tall? He didn't seem mad, his aura seemed pulled in and his eyes didn't rest on either of them, but she still shook as he walked past her.

"I'm leaving. Entertain yourselves today." Said Dad as he left the kitchen. He didn't even look at them as he left. He acted like they were invisible, like they were ghosts, like he wasn't mad at them enough to have wanted to turn them into ghosts. Mob didn't breathe until she heard him step into the part of the hallway that served as a genkan. Sho didn't breathe until he heard the front door open. They both didn't relax until they saw his aura leave their, mostly Sho's, range.

"It really does taste like mom's so….thanks." said Sho. He said that long after dad was gone from both of their ranges. That was the only time when it was safe to say something like that. Mob reached over and took his hand. She held his hand tight, even if his hand was both greasy and sticky at the same time, and smiled. That had been…not as bad as it could have been. Nobody got hit. Nobody got punished. Nothing bad happened at all. Maybe because it was a holiday…even though dad didn't care about holidays beyond knowing that they had to observe them. Still, Mob was not complaining. That had been even better than anything that she ever could have imagined.

They talked about mom and nobody got hurt.

"You're welcome…and happy Valentine's Day, little brother. I love you." Said Mob. Sho let her hold his hand. That was good. This was good. They had talked about mom, nobody had gotten hit, and now Sho was letting her hold his hand. He hated that, he had said, because he wasn't a little kid anymore. He really wasn't, this was the part of the year when they were the same age, but she still liked holding her little brother's hand because she loved him so very much…

She loved her whole family so very much…even if dad could be mean…but he hadn't been mean back there…

This was the best Valentine's Day ever.


	126. Too Big For Bath Time?

Sho did not like to take baths.

Mob didn't really mind.

"Sho, lift your arms." Said Mob. She didn't really mind bath time but she did miss bathing outside of Japan. Mom had never scrubbed them down before they got in the tub. When they had been little she and Sho hadn't thought that it was weird. Not until Mob got to grade school, anyway, and the other kids said that they scrubbed down before they got in the tub. Mom said that because one of her parents wasn't Japanese she had never gotten used to scrubbing down before a bath so she never scrubbed Mob and Sho down before a bath.

She tried, sometimes, but Sho would not stand for it.

Like now.

"No. This is so stupid. We just took a bath yesterday. We haven't even gone outside so we're not that dirty." Said Sho. He had never been a big fan of bath time. Even before all the stuff that had happened to him, the stuff with the water, he had never been a fan of bath time. It was just so boring. Even with bubbles and bath bombs it was so boring. Just sitting in a warm tub of water with his sister. He could think of fifty different things to do, fun things, that didn't involve getting in the tub.

Or standing in an empty tub while his sister scrubbed him down.

"We have to take baths every single day, you know that Sho, and I can't let you do this yourself because you don't do a good enough job." Said Mob as she dunked their scrubber in their beach bucket. This wasn't a Japanese bathroom, there was no separate place to scrub down, so she made due with a scrubber and a beach bucket full of soapy water. She had already scrubbed herself down, she was kind of cold actually, and now it was Sho's turn. She wished that he could have done it himself but he hated taking baths and always did a halfway job.

"I do too!" said Sho

"Do not." Said Mob

"Do too!" said Sho. He knew this game and he knew that would always be the winner. He could always outlast her. He was the most patient out of the two of them, the most patient when it came to this anyway, and he knew that she would give up very soon.

"Do not." Said Mob. She knew this game well and she knew that she should have just let Sho win. She always let Sho win…but they didn't need to fight about this. This was not something stupid like what to watch on TV or if he could wear shorts in with long socks in the winter. This was taking a bath and bathing was very important. Mom had said so and dad agreed. Dad said that bathing everyday was what civilized people did and also that there were no people in the world more civilized than the Suzuki family. Mob didn't think that they were better than anyone, and certainly not because of something that was as much up to chance as what their family name was, but she did want to make her dad proud of her. Proud of her and happy with her. Her and Sho…though he was so rarely happy with Sho…

"Do too. I do too do a good job. I use soap and water and everything. You just think that I don't do a good job because you go so slowly that it takes you days and days to take a bath. I have important things to do with my time and I can't just sit here all day taking baths. I'm not a girl." Said Sho

"No Sho, you don't. You don't get in between your fingers and toes or behind your eyes. You need to get everywhere or you could end up smelling bad or even getting sick. It's not about being a boy or a girl, Sho, it's about taking a bath the right way and I'm you big sister and it's my job to make sure that you take a bath the right way. Now come on and let me scrub you down before you end up smelling bad." Said Mob

"No Shigeko, it's just adults who smell bad when they don't take baths, not kids. That's why adults have to wear deodorant and perfume and cologne and after shave but not kids." Said Sho. He'd hung out with dad, before, when he got ready for the day. Sho was not allowed to touch any of his getting ready stuff because he was just a kid.

"People smell bad when they don't wash, adults just smell worse." Said Mob. People had to take baths every single day or they would end up smelling bad. Mom had been the one to tell them that. Not that she was planning on mentioning mom any time soon. Dad and Sho had mentioned her before but that was…that had been weird. She was not going to push it. She was not going to risk dad getting mad at either of them, but especially Sho. He still had bruises on his side from the last time dad had punished him.

She wanted to call Fukuda.

But Sho wouldn't let her. He said that he was fine. She didn't even know what it was that Sho had even done. He had just been hanging out with dad, they both had, and then Mob had gotten up to get more milk. She had been gone for no more than two minutes when she heard a loud crash and then dad telling Sho that it was all his fault.

A lot could happen in two minutes it seemed.

"Well I know how to scrub down and I can do it myself. I'm nine! We're the same age again and if you can scrub yourself down then I can scrub myself down, too." Said Sho. They weren't exactly the same age. They were almost twins, their birthdays were really close, and since sometimes they were the same age it made no sense for her to be in charge. She could be in charge when she was ten and he was nine…even though that wasn't very fair either.

"Don't be so loud. Dad could hear." Said Mob

"Then give me the scrubber and I'll be quiet." Said Sho

"Here, but please do a good job." Said Mob as she handed him the scrubber. She liked the scrubber better than the loofa that they had used when they were kids. This one felt cleaner because it was made from plastic, not sponge, and also it traveled a lot easier. Mob liked bringing as much of their stuff with them as she could when they moved. They couldn't bring everything so some things had to be left behind until they lived in the same place again.

Which did not always happen.

This was the first time they had ever been in this house. They moved every few weeks, sometimes even every few days, but also as long as every few months. She hoped that once dad's dream came true, once he ruled the world, they could stay in one place. She also hoped that it had a Japanese style bathroom, their final place to live, because it was hard getting scrubbed down in just the empty tub. It was cold and it felt weird, too, standing so close to her brother while she was naked. Even though that made no sense. It was ok to be naked together because they were brother and sister. Dad said, back when he had been little, he and his parents used to all take a bath together at a bath house. She had never bathed with dad or mom so that would have felt weird, and it would have made sense to feel weird if dad took a bath with them, but it was not weird to take a bath with her little brother.

Even if they didn't really fit in the tub together that well these days.

"See? I know how to do a good job." Said Sho. He made sure to get in all of the nooks and crannies like she did. He didn't need his big sister to scrub him down. She was always trying to be mom. He wondered if he would ever be old enough to bathe on his own…though the thought of bathing on his own feels weird. He likes and dislikes having her there. He has trouble with that, figuring out his feelings sometimes, and he wasn't even supposed to have them in the first place. Dad had said so. He said that big feelings were dangerous because that was how he lost control of his powers.

Sho lost control sometimes but now always of his powers.

He just got upset and then did things. That was just what happened. He got ideas in his brain and then they happened and sometimes he was a jerk, too, and he didn't like it. He was a little brother and he was supposed to be good to his big sister. Sweet and gentle like mom had always wanted for him. Why did he wanted to make mom happy? She was gone. She was…she was gone but she was still their mom…his mom…

It was complicated.

"Ok. I'm sorry that I doubted you. Do you want me to do your hair for you, too?" asked Mob. She picked up his shampoo, the same Zootopia kind he always got when they were in a country which had it, and she offered it to him. She didn't think that he could do a good job on his hair, he always rushed it, but he had a point. This was the part of the year when they were the same age. Maybe he had gotten better at it and she hadn't even realized.

"I can do it. I'm not a baby." Said Sho. He dumped out their soapy water and then refilled the bucket. She bumped into him when she got her shampoo. Some girly thing that smelled like flowers. He didn't care. She had conditioner, too, which made no sense to him. Why put extra steps into something like this? He wished that he could have just ran a bar of soap in his hair like dad did.

But dad had shorter hair than he did.

Short hair had something to do with whether or not you needed shampoo. Mom had said so. Mom used to put conditioner in his hair, too, when she had been around. He skipped that step now. He didn't want to have anything at all wet in his hair. This was always the hardest part. Getting his head all wet. The water on his face…all of it…

He took a deep breath.

He did this as fast as possible. Picking up a glob of water with his powers made it easier. So did tipping his head all the way back so that none of it touched his face helped too. The part with the shampoo was hard, he hated the way it felt in his hair, and he hated how much he had to touch his hair to get it all sudsy like it was supposed to be. The fingers in his hair…rubbing against his head…the droplets of water hitting his face…it was the worst. He had to keep going, though, because he had to prove her wrong. He had to prove that he was not a baby and he did not need her to give him a bath. He did not need to be scrubbed down and he did not need her to wash his hair. He was a big kid now, he was nine, and he could do it himself.

"Do you want me to help?" asked Mob. Sho had stopped. She was still lathering up her hair. If she had been the one doing that she would have been done by now. His hair was shorter than hers, much shorter, and it would have been a lot faster if she had done it…but she had to let him do it himself because she did not want to fight with him.

Dad hated it when they were quarrelsome.

And Sho did not need any new bruises. She wished that he'd never had any bruises at all but she wished for a lot of things. Even if she spent all day, every single day, folding paper cranes her wish would never come true. Dad would never stop hitting Sho and that was just the way that it was. She hoped that when Sho grew up he never hit his kids. She knew that she would never hit hers. If the boy she married tried to hit their kids then she would just take her kids and leave.

Moms could leave sometimes.

She wondered if she would have to give her kids their baths when they were nine. She didn't need help anymore but Sho did even if he acted like he didn't. If mom had still been there would she have been scrubbing them down and washing their hair and then playing with them? Or would she have left Mob to give Sho his bath? Or would they have been taking baths on their own, even? She couldn't imagine taking a bath without Sho but it would have been nice. The leg room would have been the nice part…but also maybe being naked on her own…not that it was weird or anything being naked around her little brother…

Well it hadn't ever been weird before but they had been little kids, before, and now they were bigger kids and she knew that bigger kids eventually took baths on their own…

"No, can't you see that I'm almost done?" asked Sho. He had stopped. He had stopped because he could feel his face getting wet. Now he had to keep going. He had to finish this. He was a big kid now and he could wash himself off. So that was what he did. She had always done this for him but he could do it for himself. She was done with her shampoo, now, and had used all of the water in their bucket to rinse her hair. That meant that he had to refill the bucket.

So that was what he did.

He glared at the water. He wished that it would have come out faster. He was cold and having all of this stuff in his hair felt weird. He hated taking a full bath. Showers were better. He could just get in and out and be very careful about getting water on his face. Simple. It was all so simple. This whole thing was long and complicated and the water came out so slowly…but maybe that was what he wanted. Maybe he wanted to draw out the time before he had to have water on his face, and it always got on his face when he rinsed with a bucket, for as long as possible. Even though it made no sense to delay it. He was going to have to rinse either way so he had might as well rinse like this.

The bucket was full enough.

He tilted his head back and tried his best not to get water on his face. Using his powers helped. By the time he was done his head was shampoo free and he was shaking. The cold was the thing that made him shake, he told himself, just the cold. He wasn't afraid. If he could jump over and over again into a swimming pool he could wash his hair. The swimming pool was bigger, though, and didn't give him a trapped in feeling. He could always put a barrier around himself as he jumped in. Here he needed to get his head wet. The water was dripping down his face and the back of his neck…and he wanted to get out…but they hadn't even done the bath part yet.

"Do you want some of my conditioner?" asked Mob as she combed her conditioner through her hair like mom had done for her a thousand times before. When she had been little. Conditioner was good for your hair, mom had said so, though she hardly ever made Sho use it. That was because his hair was short, mom had said, so he only needed conditioner sometimes. Of course mom had forgotten to tell her just how often sometimes was. Mom had forgotten to tell her a lot of things.

Like what to do when Sho started shaking.

She knew that he was afraid of the water even if he didn't say so. Even though it made no sense to be afraid of the bathroom. She would never let him drown and she would never do the things to him that they had done to make him awaken. She would never have done anything like that to her little brother. She loved him more than anything else in the whole world.

"No, of course I don't. I want to fill up the tub now." Said Sho as he shook. He was cold, that was all, he was cold and naked. He wasn't trapped, though, because he could have stepped out of the tub at any time and run away. Even if he was naked. What did it even matter? His sister had seen him naked a million and one times before and Dad was a boy too. Yes, it would have been easy to get out and run away.

He felt better now that he knew that he could run away.

"Wait, I have to rinse my hair first." Said Mob. She didn't mind sitting down in a tub of her own bath water. That was because she was used to it. Dad said that it was weird, the fact that she and Sho didn't mind doing all of their washing in the same tub that they played in, so she was going to try and be as normal as possible. She was weird enough as it was. She was mad, maybe, a little because mom hadn't taught them to take baths the normal Japanese way…

But there was no point in being mad at mom.

If she decided to be mad at mom then that would be the only thing that she would have time to do. She had enough to be mad at mom about that she could have easily just sat there and been mad all day. She could have been mad at mom for leaving, for not saying goodbye, for not teaching her all the things that she was supposed to know, all of it. She easily could have sat there day in and day out being mad at mom…but she wasn't going to do that.

It would have done her no good, anyway.

"Hurry up." Said Sho. He did not want to sit there shivering. That was what he was doing, shivering, and he was not afraid. He was not afraid of anything. He was Suzuki Sho and he was brave and he was not afraid of something as stupid as the bathroom. He could have left at any time and that meant that he was safe…not that he had any reason to be unsafe. He was with big sis and, like she told him every single day a million and one times a day, she loved him. So she would not hurt him. So she would be there for him no matter what. So he was ok.

She even rushed the conditioner part of her hair so he could fill the tub.

"Ok, bubbles or no bubbles?" asked Mob. She knew that she hadn't rinsed her hair properly but Sho's happiness was more important than washing her hair the right way. She could tell that he was unhappy by his aura. Mom would have been able to tell just by looking at them. Mom had been good at that, figuring out what Sho felt, and Mob…she was not mom…but she was doing her best. She couldn't do any better than her best…

But she had to try.

"Bubbles. Lots and lots of bubbles." Said Sho. The bubbles made it better, more like something fun, and that distracted him from his stupid feelings. He wished that he could have been more like dad. He almost never felt anything. He didn't want to be a jerk like dad, well he already was a jerk, but he did wish that he didn't have so many big and scary and uncontrollable feelings…but he did. He did and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing but sitting there and trying to make them go away.

Nothing to do but exorcise them.

"Can you move over a little bit? I don't have enough room." Said Mob as she tried to sit down. Some places had bigger tubs than others. This tub was a little on the small side. She had seen in a movie that before, when dad had been a kid, the tubs were so deep that you could drown in them. She didn't want to drown in the tub or anything like that but she would have liked to have been able to sit down without her feet drawn up to her chest.

"I would if I could. This tub is tiny." Said Sho. He wanted a tub as big as a swimming pool. Then they could have had their own room to sit and swim and play. It would have been like back when they had been really little, back when mom had given them baths, way back to the beginning of his memories….but those times were over and done now. Now he was a big kid and so was big sis and maybe…maybe….

Maybe they were too big, these days, to take baths together.

"I know….I hope that the next tub is bigger." Said Mob

"Maybe we're just too big." Said Sho. He tried to sound like he didn't care. He took showers without her all the time. Whenever he wet the bed he had to take a quick shower or he would smell like pee all night and he did not like smelling like pee. He didn't drag her into the shower with him every time he wet the bed…but that was a much quicker process than this…the thought of being all alone in a bath….the room being so tiny and water being on all side of him….

He didn't know how he felt about that.

"We have to take baths, little brother, there's no way around it." Said Mob. She knew how he hated baths. She knew that if he had it his way he would have never even set foot in a bath tub for the rest of his life. She also knew that as a good big sister it was her job to make sure that he was clean and didn't smell bad. If she didn't take care of him then dad would have been so upset with her. She wasn't mom, she never said that she was, but she had inherited a lot of mom's jobs. Sho got to inherit the world. She just got to inherit responsibility.

"I meant that we could take baths on our own." Said Sho

"Um…if you want to, Sho. I don't know how I feel about that. I mean I like taking baths with you but there isn't a lot of room for the two of us since we're both nine…well you just turned nine and I'm almost ten…I don't know." Said Mob

"Me neither…." Said Sho

"But we could…we could try it I guess. I mean we are both nine year old now." Said Mob even though she really did not want to bathe on her own. Even if it was starting to feel weird, taking baths with her little brother, she didn't want to be totally on her own…but he had shown her that even if he wasn't the best it at he could bathe on his own…and they were getting older….so they could maybe try it.

"Sure. Whatever. Now give me the bucket of boats so we can play tsunami." Said Sho. Sure, he could try taking baths on his own. There was nothing wrong with that. He was not scared. He was Suzuki Sho and he was not afraid of anything. Especially not bath time.

He just minded it, that was all. Even if she didn't.


	127. Chocolate Pudding

The best kind of pudding was chocolate pudding.

The chocolate pudding that came totally plain, not even any sprinkles.

Simple worked best when it came to pudding.

That wasn't Sho's opinion. None of it. In his opinion the best kind was the rainbow kind with the sprinkles. He and big sis both liked that kind. Her favorite, though, was the blue kind with the sparkles that you could get in some countries. That kind was supposed to be Frozen themed so of course she liked it the very best. He liked the rainbow kind best because it had all the flavors. If someone were to ask Sho he would have said that plain chocolate pudding was super boring.

But nobody had asked him.

And this wasn't even for him. No, this was for someone else. Whenever he got a pudding cup it got stolen. He knew that he should have minded, and he pretended that he did, but really he didn't. He liked having his pudding cup stolen. He knew that it made no sense. He knew that he should have been spitting mad because every single time he opened a pudding cup it got stolen. He didn't mind though, not at all, and he actually kind of liked it.

He could be really weird sometimes.

Like now. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen, not his kitchen just the kitchen in the house that he and big sis and dad were staying in, and he had a pudding cup in his hand. He had a bunch of pudding cups around him. These were his dinner. He could have had whatever he wanted for dinner and he had chosen a whole bunch of pudding cups. Big sis was eating real food, fries and a milkshake, and she said that he should have eaten some real food with her. Pudding was real food. You could eat it without getting sick and that was what made it real food.

It had enough food groups to be food.

Dairy was a food group and sugar was a food group and therefore pudding was a food. Therefore it was ok to eat a whole bunch of pudding cups for dinner. Mom would not have wanted him to have eaten a whole bunch of pudding for dinner. Mom would have made them a meal with a whole bunch of food groups and she would have made sure that he ate it all…but mom was gone. He didn't have her there to tell him what to eat and that was…that was fine. It was the way that things were. Mom was gone and she wasn't around to tell him what to have for dinner or if pudding was an acceptable dinner or if the way he felt while he stood in the middle of his kitchen holding an unopened pudding cup was ok…

He had no idea what he was even feeling.

Kind of nervous, mostly, like going on a dark ride that you had never been on before. Like you knew that something was going to happen, you knew vaguely what was going to happen, and you also didn't know what was going to happen. That was what this felt like. Sho also felt just a little bit like he was going to throw up. That was weird. He hadn't eaten anything but he still felt like he was going to throw up. He also didn't understand that or why he felt like running around…well he always felt like running around…but now he especially felt like running around. He wanted to run and jump and climb and scream and….and a lot of other things. He'd felt like this before, a lot of times before, but now it just felt…different. Weird.

He felt really weird.

"Sho? Are you sure you don't want to eat real food?" asked big sis as she came into the kitchen to throw her trash out. She was done eating already. He wasn't done yet. He hadn't even started. Well it didn't matter if he had started or not. They didn't have a specific time that they were supposed to eat. Dad didn't care if they ate or starved. He didn't care if they grew or shrink. He just…didn't care about a lot of stuff.

Mom would have cared.

But mom was gone. Mom would have made sure that they had dinner…and he should have stopped thinking about mom. He was nine now and he was old enough to know that his mom was gone and never coming back. He didn't need her. He could figure out on his own what to eat and when to eat it and also he could figure out his own really weird and confusing feelings. He was nine now, not eight or seven or six or five. Nine. One year from being ten. He could take care of himself.

He did not need his big sis to open his pudding cup for him.

"Here, let me help." Said big sis as she took his hand and tried to get at his pudding cup. He pulled it away really fast. He could do this himself.

"I'm not a baby, I can do it myself." Said Sho taking his pudding cup back. He didn't want this pudding cup, or any pudding cup, stolen from his big sis. He was just…looking out for her…because she would have been sad if someone took a pudding cup right out of her hands. Yes, she was really sensitive about things like that. Girls were sensitive about things like that.

"Ok, I was just….you weren't eating and I got worried about you." Said big sis

"Well don't be. I'll eat when I'm good and ready to." Said Sho

"When will you be good and ready to, little brother?" asked big sis

"I don't know. In a minute, maybe? Why do you care? Nobody's stopping you from eating." Said Sho

"I just ate." Said big sis

"Good. Now why don't you go and do something else? Anything else?" asked Sho

"Um….I was watching the kittens live stream…if you want to watch with me…" said big sis. That sounded awesome. That sounded more than awesome. He knew that live stream. There was a box of baby kittens and they did all of those cute things that baby kittens did. Their eyes were opened and they mewed a lot and the momma cat took good care of them….he really wanted to watch with her….but later.

"In a minute, now leave me alone." Said Sho. She looked at him some more. He wished that she would stop. He had no idea why she was always trying to take care of him and stuff. Well dad had left her in charge but he was home now. He was holed up in his room. He had said that he and big sis had been ridiculous. That was a word that dad called them a lot, ridiculous, and Sho…he wished that dad had some different words for them. Nicer ones. But that was not something that was ever going to happen. Dad could be such a jerk sometimes and he had been especially jerky lately. He said that people made more attempts on his life, which meant that someone else had tried to kill him. People were always trying to kill dad. Sho didn't know why, it never worked, and it just made dad mad. If it hadn't worked yet then, of course, it wasn't going to work at any point in the future.

Dad had someone to protect him.

Not that dad needed it. It was hard to actually hurt him, Dad had said so and Sho had seen it firsthand when he fought that Scar, but he also got annoyed when people tried to kill him. Also the people around him got killed when people tried to blow him up and stuff and that was annoying because good help was so hard to find, dad had said. So he had gotten Shimazaki to stop things before they happened. He was so cool! He could see what people were doing even if he didn't have eyes and he catch bullets, too, and also one time there had been a suitcase bomb and-

And Sho felt weird.

He wanted to run around the kitchen until he didn't have any energy left inside of his body at all. He wanted to roll around on the floor and shout until he ran out of things to shout about. He wanted to…he had a lot of things that he wanted to do. He didn't understand why. He didn't understand why he felt like this sometimes. A lot of the times, actually, when he was around him…and a few other people but he had never been around those people for long enough to feel like this for long enough for him to be…for him to feel this way for this long.

Long enough for…for him to….he didn't even know.

He was being weird. He knew that he was a weird person, random kids were always telling him that he was weird in the rare times when he was around the other kids, and he didn't know why he was so weird. Well because he had freckles and red hair and stuff. But that wasn't why he was weird now. No, he was weird because…because he just felt weird…and he didn't know why. He never knew why. Even when he had been little he hadn't fully known why. Mom had explained it but she hadn't really explained it that well…and now he had nobody he could ask about this. Certainly not his big sister and most certainly not his dad. No, dad barely had feelings and the ones he did have he pretended that he didn't.

He needed to stop being weird.

He wanted something to happen and now he was going to make it happen. Simple. He wanted to open this pudding cup and he wanted it to be stolen out of his hands…and he didn't know why…but maybe the whys of this weren't important. The whys of this were just….he didn't know and he didn't want to agonize over this for the rest of his life. He was only nine, he had a lot of life left, and he did not want to spend it standing in the kitchen holding on to a pudding cup and wondering why he felt like he was going to either start running around or throwing up…

He really wanted to watch the live stream of the baby kittens.

He took a deep breath and opened his pudding cup. Nothing happened. That was weird. Whenever he was out with dad Shimazaki always stole his pudding cups. He knew that Shimazaki was around, he could see his aura, and he knew that he knew that Sho was there. His aura was loud, Shimazaki had said, and therefor he must have known that Sho was there. He was right next door. Was he ignoring Sho? Was he pretending that Sho wasn't there? That he was invisible? That he was….Sho didn't even know. What he did know was that he did not like this feeling at all. Now he really felt like he was going to throw up. Now he was sure that if he didn't get this pudding cup stolen out of his hand he was going to throw up right then and there.

"I sure hope that nobody eats all of my pudding cups….I sure do have a lot of chocolate pudding cups here." Said Sho. He knew that Shimazaki could hear him. He could hear pudding. Sho knew that if he could hear pudding then he could hear Sho shouting about all of the pudding that he had.

"I won't eat your pudding, Sho. I don't even like chocolate pudding." Said big sis from in the living room.

"I wasn't talking to you!" shouted Sho in frustration. Why did she think that he was talking to her? He obviously wasn't. He, obviously, wasn't going to ask her if she was going to steal his pudding cup. Oh course he didn't want his big sister to steal his pudding cup. Of course he…he didn't even know why he wanted his puddling cup to be stolen in the first place but he knew that he didn't want his big sister to be the one to steal it from him!

He didn't understand.

He didn't understand anything. He didn't understand why it hurt his feeling that Shimazaki was ignoring him. He could see Shimazaki's aura when he focused. It was all tangled up in Minegishi's like they were fighting or something. They fought a lot. Sho didn't know what they were always fighting about. Sho had no idea why they even hung out all the time if they were going to be constantly fighting. It wasn't like they were siblings or anything like that. Siblings fought all the time but they didn't have the option of not wanting to be together.

Not that he wanted to be away from his big sister.

She was his big sister and she could be so annoying sometimes, like now, but he didn't want her gone. No, he wanted these weird feelings gone…and he had no idea how to get rid of them! He just wanted his stupid pudding cup to be stolen and he didn't know why! This was just a stupid pudding cup and he should have eaten it and then gone and watched TV like this was just a normal night and-and-and he should have done more to be normal but-but-but he could not even begin to understand himself and…and…and….

He threw his pudding cup.

It hit the wall. There was a splat sound. Heh, so he could hear pudding too. Heh. That was…that wasn't as funny as he thought that it would have been. There was pudding on the walls and it smelled like chocolate…and he didn't feel any better. He didn't feel any relief from the feelings that he had inside of him…of anything it was worse. If anything now he felt even more ignored. Shimazaki must have heard that…he heard very well….so he must have been ignoring Sho. For Minegishi. For big sis' friend. Big sis was friends with Minegishi and that was why he felt like this. He wanted to be friends with Shimazaki. That was it. That was why he felt like this…

That was why he was jealous.

That was what this feeling was. This was the same feeling he got, well almost the same feeling he got, when big sis hung out with dad or when he saw other kids with their families…yes, almost the same feeling. This feeling was like that but…but even worse. Like the feeling had eaten a whole bunch of pop rocks and then drank a whole liter of cola. He didn't like it at all. He didn't like…he didn't like this feeling at all and he wanted to know how to get rid of it but he had nobody that he could ask! Dad barely had feelings and big sis would probably just fuss over him like he was a little baby or something. Like he was a baby and she was playing at being mom…and he did not want that right now…

But that was what he got.

She came in to the kitchen and immediately started cleaning up after him. Even though they had Awakened that they could call for that. Even though he wanted it like that, maybe, because he was the one who had done that. He wanted his pudding on the walls, maybe, she didn't know. She could have asked. She could have asked him if he wanted his pudding to be thrown all over the walls instead of coming in to the kitchen and then getting out the paper towels and the all purpose cleaner that smelled like lemon but had no citrus in it, so it wasn't deathly to him, but he still hated. She could have asked.

But she didn't.

He had no idea what he would have told her anyway. He didn't know what he was supposed to tell her now. If she had been dad then she would have been all 'Sho. Explain.' Well, no, because if she had been dad then she would not have been using his given name to begin with…but she wasn't even using his given name now!

"….should be more careful, little brother. We could end up getting ants." Said big sis as she cleaned up the mess that he had made. He stood there not even sure what he was supposed to do. He wanted to push her. He could have pushed her…but then he would have been acting like a jerk. He knew that he was a jerk, the son of the biggest jerk in the world, but he…he was working on that. Not becoming as big of a jerk as dad.

"Leave it. Maybe I wanted it like that. Maybe I like it the way it is. Maybe it is the way it is because I want it that way." said Sho. Big sis stopped cleaning and looked at him like he was crazy. He could see her aura, too. It was so bright it blocked out pretty much every aura but dad's. Dad was still doing his own thing. That was good. If dad had been there then he would have told Sho to explain…and he could not even begin to understand why he had even done that…and if he told dad that he didn't know why then dad would just tell him that 'I don't know' was not an answer and then they would go back and forth like that until dad either told him to get lost or punished him.

"But…that makes no sense. Food is for eating. If you want something else I could have the Awakened bring you something or I could even make you something or-" said big sis

"Big sis…can you please just leave me alone?" asked Sho. He didn't want to answer any questions. He had his own questions and he did not need to add new questions to his pile of questions. If he were to write his questions down then the list would have been meters long. He had no idea…he had no idea why he felt like this or why he had done what he had done and he…he did not even know how he was supposed to answer her!

"Um…but you're upset. I mean if you're throwing things then-" said big sis

"Just leave me alone!" shouted Sho. He threw himself down on the ground and rolled under the table. She wasn't leaving him alone. He could see her aura and her feet. Her socks were white. His were blue. He wanted to see her socks walking away. He wanted to be alone. Maybe if he was alone, all alone, he could just forget all of his feelings. He would have liked that a lot…just to be able to forget all of his feelings and…and just exorcise them…or something. Just to be able to take his feelings and to make them go away. But he couldn't do that. If he had been able to do that then it would have been done already. No, he was just...he was just there and he had his feelings and they wouldn't go away.

If he couldn't get rid of his feelings then how was he supposed to get rid of his big sister?

She moved. He thought that she was going to leave him alone like he had asked. Why he had thought that he had no idea. She never left him alone when he told her to. Not in the past and not now. No, now she was still cleaning. He hated it, the lemon smell, and he hated it even though he knew that it would not kill him. He felt like he was going to die, though, because he just had so many feelings….and he just could not begin to understand….but he had to maybe try harder….but he didn't…he just did not know….

She moved again.

Her feet were right in front of the table. He could have kicked her, he wanted to kick her, and that was why he had to draw his knees up to his chest and wrap his arms around his legs. He could not risk kicking her. He was trying to be better, he was always trying to be better, and maybe this was the going to be the time when he finally figured out how to be a better little brother and person…

He didn't know.

He heard the silverware drawer open. There was the sound of some clanking. Then he felt the table above him move. She stopped moving and then came down to his level…and he scooted away. He had to scoot away before he was mean to her again. He felt like being mean…but then if he was mean to her then she might have felt bad…like he felt bad…and he didn't want her to feel like this…like he didn't want to feel like this…

"Here. Please don't throw this one. I don't know why you're upset, little brother, but…but you can talk to me about it…and I can go away too. I love you." Said big sis. He didn't say anything for a while. She was there in front of him under the table and she had a pudding cup for him and…and he didn't know what to say. He didn't know what he could say. He could have…he knew that if he said something then he might have said something mean…

So he stole the pudding cup from her.

"Thanks." Said Sho because he had to say something nice. She was being nice and he had to say something nice…and maybe if he said something nice then he would feel nice…but he still felt bad…bad and ignored…even if she was here and not ignoring him…

He didn't know.

He opened his pudding cup and he ate it. Nobody tried to steal it.

Chocolate pudding tasted boring anyway.


	128. Painting Nails

Mob was not the best at painting nails.

"Will you stay in the lines?" said Minegishi

"Sorry." Said Mob

She had trouble staying in the lines. Maybe the angel was weird. She was sitting on the couch with Minegishi, they were laying down with their feet on Mob's lap, and Mob was painting their nails. Well she was trying to. This wasn't as easy as it looked. The brush was tiny and the nail polish was super runny. Kind of like the paints that she used to have when she was little. Her painting surface was small, too, Minegishi had very narrow nails, and also they moved around sometimes too.

So this was not easy.

But Mob was not going to give up. She could do this. She would do this. She would do this because this was what friends did with one another. They hung out and painted each other's nails. Well this was what Minegishi said that friends did and Mob was going to take their word for it. Friends did this but not brothers and sisters. No, she she'd asked Sho if she could paint his nails he just ran away.

She wished she had a sister sometimes.

Not that this was for boys or girls. This was just fun, Minegishi said so, and they also said that dividing the world up between boy things and girl things was stupid. It took too much effort, they said, and it put people into boxes. They didn't much like being bossed around, they had said, and Mob wondered why they had come to work for dad, then, since they did not like being bossed around. Mob didn't ask that though, she didn't ask anything, she just painted.

As best as she could.

"You know that you're just supposed to paint my nails, right?" asked Minegishi as they felt Mob go outside the lines once again. They hadn't been expecting professional quality work but they had at least expected the kid to be able to paint a straight line. Not that they were terribly upset. It was Claw's couch that she was ruining, not theirs. That was their good nail polish that she was wasting, though, and that color was hard to find. A true lavender, not the light purple that everyone tried to pass off as lavender.

"I'm trying but you have really small nails." Said Mob. She was getting a lot of nail polish on the couch. She hoped that they wouldn't be mad. They were living here for the foreseeable future after all. Mob had no idea how long that would be, though, since Dad always said for the foreseeable future. It could have been a day, a week, or a month. Not a year, though, they never stayed in one place for that long. There was a lot of important work that they had to do and it took them all over the world.

And also there was downtime but that also took them all over the world.

"No smaller than yours I'd imagine." Said Minegishi with a shrug. They went back to their book. They'd fix what Mob messed up later. Besides, it wasn't like anyone but themselves would be seeing it anyway. This was the part of the year when they had very little to do. Normally, in the days before they joined Suzuki's personal entourage, they would have been passed between bases and divisions as needed. Even in the slower parts of the year they'd always had SOMETHING to do. Now they just had a whole lot of nothing. At least they had time to catch up on their reading…though they could have done that back when they worked at the florist's shop. Boredom did not suit them at all. Of course they knew that they had probably just jinxed what little peace that they had and now something catastrophic was going to happen.

Any second now.

Aside from Mob's inability to paint inside the lines nothing terrible was happening. That was…fine. This was a good book after all and they were happy to be reading it. Even if it was kind of predictable. Predictable schlocky romance…they didn't know if they were bored or not. One the one hand this was just like every other romance novel that they had read but on the other hand there were the little differences that made them interesting…

Maybe they could reread Infinite Jest again just to feel smart.

"Is that a funny book?" asked Mob. She could see Minegishi smiling…which was a rare sight in and of its self. Them reading a fun book would have been even rarer. Mob had tried to read some of the thick books that they had, the thicker the better when it came to books, and she hadn't understood a single word of anything inside of them. Even the ones in Japanese. She wondered if it was a good book that they were reading. She wondered if they would let her borrow it.

She eyed the glass on the table.

She always asked before she borrowed now. Since the time when she had gone to sleep and almost never woke up, Minegishi's words, she had been more careful. She knew not to take things that didn't belong to her. Being offered something once was not an open invitation to borrow whenever she felt like it. That was not how things worked, you had to ask, and she had asked. She had asked and had been shared with and she had gotten all that she had been allowed to have.

Which did not feel like enough but she was not going to say anything.

"This? I guess in some ways. More clichéd than anything." Said Minegishi

"Oh. What kind of book is it?" asked Mob. She knew what clichéd meant, it meant that it recycled plots from other things, and Mob did not mind clichéd stuff. Minegishi said that all the things that she read were clichéd. That was just because she was a kid, Minegishi said, which was something that made Mob want to learn how to read and understand the thick and complicated books that adults read.

"A very clichéd love story in which the main protagonist, a woman in her mid-twenties without a clue about what to do in her life, doesn't realize that she's had the love of her life standing right in front of her for years. Bickering equals love and all of that." Said Minegishi. They looked up and expected a certain annoyance to pop right there into their field of vision. Nope, nothing. It was still the middle of the day. Unless he was particularly annoying Suzuki would keep him around for a few more hours yet.

"Does it really?" asked Mob as she started on Minegishi's other foot. She made a mistake while they shrugged. She wished that they would sit still but she wasn't going to say anything. She was the one who had started the conversation anyway.

"Maybe, it depends on the person I guess." Said Minegishi as they felt Mob make yet another mistake. It wasn't like they expected a lot from a nine year old anyway. Maybe they had been too hard on her. She had stopped working. That could have meant that her feelings had been hurt…or that something was on her mind. Neither of those options were good. They stifled a groan. They did not want to have another one of their conversations about love and life and all of those things that her parents should have been teaching her. Not that either of her parents would have done that great of a job of it. Her mother had run for the hills the first chance she got and her father was, at the very least, unbalanced. Unless he'd been kidding about wanting to take over the world this whole time.

Please, for the love of God, let her feelings just be hurt.

"But you can show love by being mean to someone?" asked Mob. They had probably meant the kissing sort of love, not the family sort of love, though that did sound like the family sort of love. Like how even though Sho and dad could be mean to her they still loved her. She wondered if that was what it would be like when she got a boyfriend, too, when she got older. If she got a boyfriend. The only boy who had ever liked her was gone from her life forever…and now she felt kind of sad…but she always felt like that when she thought about…stuff that she should not have been thinking about.

"That….is a conversation to be had when you are older." Said Minegishi. They were not getting into THAT with a nine year old. Hell no. They were not paid enough for that.

"When I'm ten?" asked Mob. That was something else to add to her list of questions to ask when her birthday finally came. It was still a while away, not until May, but she could wait. Dad said that her patience was one of her best qualities.

"Yeah, sure, let's go with that." Said Minegishi. She wasn't keeping some sort of list…was she? And she wasn't planning on waking Minegishi up at 12:01 a.m. on May 25th with a multi-page list of questions? And a pen and paper so she could take notes? No, that was not how it was going to be…and if it was, if Mob did plan on waking them up at midnight with a list of questions, then Minegishi was turning over and putting it off for another year at least.

"Ok…" said Mob. She wanted an answer now, though, not when she was ten. She wanted to know why people felt the way they felt about other people. She wanted to know why she felt the way she felt about…him. She knew his name, it was Hanazawa Teruki, but she didn't even want to think of it. Why had she promised that she would never forget him? If she hadn't made that promise then…she didn't want to forget him but she had to…because she knew that she would never see him again….and it was hard.

She wondered if she would still have these problems when she was ten.

"Hey. Back to it. If you're going to stay then you're going to work." Said Minegishi nudging her with their foot. They knew Mob, at least they thought that they knew her, and they knew when the wheels in her head were turning. They knew what she was thinking about. Minegishi wondered if they were the same when they were nine years old…

Probably not considering the fact that back then they had been executing their dolls by hanging them from garden vines and also pouring salt on garden snails just for the hell of it.

"Right, sorry. I was just thinking…" said Mob as she got back to it.

"As people tend to do." Said Minegishi

"They do think a lot, I think, or maybe I just think a lot. Or maybe I even think too much. I don't know. I just don't know how to stop thinking." Said Mob. That was the whole of it. She just did not know how to stop thinking about him, that boy, the one she would never see again. That had been all the way back around Sho's birthday. Now it was March. Would she be thinking of him for the rest of her life? Did she want to be thinking of him for the rest of her life? She didn't even know…

She was in love…maybe….and she didn't like it one bit.

Because it hurt. The memory of it felt good, the best thing that she had ever felt in her life, but the fact that it had been the best thing that she had ever felt in her entire life left her feeling bad…and she didn't understand it one bit. She wished that there had been a book or something that she could have read that would have explained the way she felt and then how to stop feeling it. She wished that she could have understood the way that she felt. If she understood the way that she felt then she could have made herself stop feeling it, or she could have maybe even felt that way about someone else…though she had no idea who she would ever feel that way about…

And who would ever want to feel that way about her.

"Focus on what you're doing, maybe?" asked Minegishi

"Oh. You mean distract myself. I've been trying to do that and sometimes it works but sometimes…sometimes it doesn't. I don't know. I just wish that I could turn off my brain or something…because I just can't stop thinking about…stuff." Said Mob

"If this is about that guy again I swear to God-" said Minegishi. Nope. Not this kid again. Minegishi was going to find that kid, the one who Mob had kissed, and drag him back to her kicking and screaming if they had to. What was she so worked up about? First kisses weren't anything special….of course she was thinking like an adult. Kid, Mob was a kid, and kids were different. It was hard to think of her as a kid, sometimes, like now.

Poor kid.

"It-it's not just about…I mean I can't stop thinking about him but it's more about…about how I want to figure out why I…I mean I know why I feel the way I feel but…it's really complicated and…I just want to stop…I don't know." Said Mob. She was not good at talking. This was one of those times when she was more than not good at it, when she was bad at it. Terrible. She wanted to stop feeling like this but she also didn't. She wanted…she wanted a lot of things. She wanted to be happy…but she couldn't be because she could never see that boy again.

He didn't want to join Claw.

Even though she had no idea why he wouldn't have wanted to join Claw. They brought espers together and worked hard at making the world a better place. Since he was an esper already he might not have even needed to go through the awakening process. He could have even been so powerful, when he got older, that he could have made it to the upper echelon. Then he could have been in a division or one of those people who moved from division to division…or one of the people who followed dad around…and then they could have been together and been boyfriend and girlfriend and then gotten married and had a boy named Shigeo and a girl named Shoko and then if they had even more kids, her family had two but she didn't know what the limit on kids was, they could have a Masami too after her mom and then a Touichirou after her dad…or maybe a Souichirou because having the exact same name as dad would be confusing because dad was still around…and also Sho might have wanted dad's name…but then again he said that he was never going to fall in love with anyone…which would have been sad…

Or maybe it was more sad to fall in love with someone and then never be able to see them again.

"You're nine going on nineteen, you know that?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. This was not a good harbinger of things to come. For the foreseeable future they would be friends with Mob…which meant that they would be stuck hanging out with a moody teenager. Dealing with a moody, confused, love struck nine year old was hard enough. Kids…or were they called tweens at her age? Minegishi didn't know. When they had been young kids had just been kids.

"No I'm not. I'm nine going on ten." Said Mob. Well that was…she got the feeling that there was something that she wasn't getting. She wasn't about to turn nineteen, no, she was about to turn ten. Ten was a big enough change, double digits, nineteen would be way too much. She'd be all grown up then…and she had no idea what she would do when she was all grown up. Who she would be.

Who she wanted to be.

She still wanted to grow up to work at the animal shelter like mom used to when she and Sho were really little but she knew that dad would never let her do that. No, he had told her that she was never going to leave him. So that meant that when she grew up she would have to be an upper echelon member of Claw. She would also have a family and stuff, like dad had said, and then they would keep her busy.

It didn't matter who she wanted to be. Dad had already told her who she had to be.

"I mean that you're acting just like a teenager. You are way too young to get hung up on some guy, especially one that you're never going to see again. Never get feelings…well in these just for fun sorts of things, not that I'm telling you how to live your life or anything….it's none of my goddamned business who you catch feelings for….but if you do then don't end up getting yourself all twisted up like this. It's exhausting." Said Minegishi

"Oh…I didn't mean to be exhausting…really." Said Mob. She wondered if that meant the same as being tiresome. Dad called her that sometimes, tiresome, mostly when Sho was fighting with her. She didn't want to be tiresome or exhausting.

"You're fine." Said Minegishi

"I don't try to be exhausting or tiresome…I just sort of am I guess." Said Mob. Minegishi sat up and patted her on the head.

"There, there Mob. There, there." said Minegishi. They had smudged their nails. They could fix it later, Mob had done a pretty crappy job anyway. How in the hell was this Suzuki's kid? Driving herself up the wall over some boy….getting all down and gloomy because Minegishi had pointed out how exhausting she was…if Minegishi had been in Suzuki's place they would have asked for a blood test. God knew that if Minegishi had been Missus Suzuki, the thought is as disturbing as it is absurd, they wouldn't have been anything close to faithful and not just because they were not a monogamous person. Being with only Suzuki for the rest of their life….that would have been hell on Earth. Not just because they would have had to listen to Suzuki wax poetic day in day out about his grand plan to take over the world. He looked like he was pretty damn selfish in all areas of life. Including bed areas.

Hopefully Mob wouldn't end up being a thing like her father, otherwise she really would end up dying alone like it seemed she was terrified of.

"I can go away if you want me to. Dad always tell me to go away when I'm being tiresome…so I can leave you alone if you want me to. I'm used to being alone since dad started taking Sho with him all the time. I mean I don't want to go but if you want me to-" said Mob. She would have said more but she got flicked on the back of the head. Not hard. Just hard enough that she noticed.

"Shut up. We have fun together. Now give me your hand." Said Minegishi. They didn't wait, they just took Mob's hand and got to painting. At some point they had developed a soft spot for the kid…or maybe their whole head was a soft spot. They would have believed that. After all they were painting a nine year old's nails in an effort to console her.

So, this was their life. Eh, it could have been worse.

"I really am sorry that I'm so exhausting." Said Mob. Minegishi was much better at this than she had been. She felt bad. She was so tiresome. That was why, one of the reasons why, dad hadn't taken her with. She wished that she could have been better, been less tiresome and less…herself…but she didn't know how to be anything other than herself. Anyone other than herself. Not even the person who dad had told her to be.

"Shut up about that, you're fine. Could be worse. Now hold still or you'll make me mess up." Said Minegishi

"Ok. Sorry." Said Mob

"And stop apologizing all the time. You're Suzuki Shigeko. You're the last person in the world who needs to be apologizing for anything." Said Minegishi. This kid was a walking contradiction. How could the daughter of the most powerful man on Earth have been…this? This way too sweet for this world kid?

The universe could be really weird sometimes.

"But sometimes I do things that are wrong and when you do something wrong you're supposed to say that you're sorry." Said Mob. That was what you were supposed to do, mom had said so, and mom would not have lied to her…or maybe she would have. Mob didn't know. Mom had been gone for so long…but there was no point in thinking about it. Thinking about her wouldn't bring her back. Mob just wished that she could stop thinking.

About everything.

But in trying not to think she was just thinking even more. She had no clue what she was supposed to do. She was clueless, totally clueless, but that was normal for her. People had been calling her clueless for as long as she could remember. Even her own little brother called her clueless…but that was normal for him. He said mean stuff to her a lot of the time but that didn't mean that he didn't love her…just like it didn't mean that dad didn't love her when he said mean stuff to her. She wished that people could have been nicer. Not just to her but to each other, too. She wished that people could just get along and be happy and all of that stuff…but wishing never helped. Wishing never helped and neither did thinking.

"You're not just polite, though, you just apologize for everything. Don't. Also…you're not that exhausting. Not like some people who we will not discuss." Said Minegishi

"Who?" asked Mob. She couldn't think of anyone who was exhausting…well Sho could be kind of exhausting….and also dad when he was being all mean…yes, dad could be exhausting sometimes…maybe that was just what Suzuki's were. Exhausting. Maybe the whole family was just exhausting and tiresome and that was why mom had left them. Maybe when she grew up and found someone who wanted to be with her then he would leave just like mom had.

She didn't want to fall in love with someone if it just meant that they would leave.

She wished that she wasn't in love, or at least like, because he had left…well he'd had no choice but to leave…but he'd had a choice. He could have joined Claw. There was nothing wrong with joining Claw. It was a good place to be and you got to make money too. Also you didn't have any parents to tell you what to do. Well he wouldn't have had any parents to tell him what to do.

But he'd left her.

What was the point of kissing her, then, if he was going to leave? What was the point of saying that he would never forget her if he was going to leave? It felt…bad. She wondered if this was how dad felt. Mom had left him, too, and they had been together for much longer. She knew that they must have kissed at some point, she had never seen it but Sho said that he had, and also they had kids together so they had done something awful to get those kids…and then mom had just left dad like it was nothing…just like what happened when…

She didn't want to think about it anymore.

"I'm not going to say his name because if I do he might just show up and ruin what's left of my day….and it's only one in the afternoon. So, really, I'd rather not. I'd much rather sit here and show you how to paint nails the right way. You know, so the nail polish actually gets on the nails?" asked Minegishi as they worked on Mob's other hand. Something else was bothering her. They could tell by her aura.

Poor kid.

"Oh…ok. Um…you've very good at that and…and I like watching you work. I'm learning a lot. I'm sorry I went outside the lines…I mean that I'm bad at it." Said Mob. She just needed to distract herself. When she thought too much she got all sad and she didn't want to be sad…so she had to just…stop thinking. She looked over to the glass on the table. That was good for forgetting.

But she was not going to borrow without asking again. She liked being friends with Minegishi.

And not just because they were very good at painting nails.


	129. Good Help is so Hard to Find

Suzuki needed a new bodyguard.

If he had to be in close proximity to Shimazaki Ryou for another second he was going to kill everyone within a hundred meters. Not of his own accord, though, no that would have been a stupid thing to do on purpose. Claw had staffing shortages as it was. Also there would be a lot of cleanup that would need to be done. No, he was not about to go on any killing sprees of his own accord.

But he had little to no control over himself when he exploded.

And he was close to an explosion. For once it had nothing at all to do with his Son. Well it always sort of did, the child was a trial in and of himself, but for once he was not the sole source of his father's stress and suffering. No, the Boy was being remarkably good. He was sitting on the floor drawing. Suzuki could make out a lot of red in whatever it was. Probably the last Scar that he had fought. Son was always very invested in those fights. Daughter on the other hand would have found them psychologically disturbing, probably, and if she ended up psychologically disturbed she would be of no use to him. Also he liked her the way she was.

He so wished that he had brought his Daughter with. At least she was pleasant to be around.

"How you doing, boss?" asked Shimazaki as he poured himself something in a heavy decanter. He smelled it as he poured. Cognac. Old cognac. Suzuki never drank, not when he could avoid it, so he wouldn't mind if Shimazaki borrowed some. This was thirsty work after all.

He just could not begin to understand why so many people kept on trying to kill his boss. It was one of life's mysteries.

"I'm fine. Yourself?" asked Suzuki. That liquor was strictly for decoration. Well that and the occasional social drink he had to take. Claw wasn't all bloody fights, long speeches, and endless piles of paper work. He would let Shimazaki drink some, though, mainly because it might shut him up for a minute.

"Been worse." Said Shimazaki. He leaned back and put his feet up on the short table in front of him. The table shook. He heard some papers hit the ground. The kid, Suzuki's son, stopped his constant pencil scratching for a moment. He almost wished that he could tell what it was that the kid had been drawing all day. He could smell graphite and also wax. Not candle wax, that had it's own smell and it carried a sort of a taste to it, too. No, that was something like crayon wax but stronger. Sucked that he couldn't see, the kid was apparently a pretty good artist.

"Have you now?" asked Suzuki. He kept his eyes on his work and his aura on Shimazaki. To send him away or not to send him away, that was the question. On the one hand an attempt on his life could be made at any time. On the other hand thinking that death lurked around every corner was a sign of paranoia and he did not consider himself to be a paranoid man. On the other hand, the other other hand, Son was a lot quieter when Shimazaki was around. There, that one won out. A quiet Son was a good Son.

He had no idea why Son was so quiet when Shimazaki was around but he was not going to question it.

Son probably wanted a companion who was not his older sister. That made sense, maybe, since the children had been together since Son had been one and Daughter had been two. Maybe they were sick of each other….they had been so quarrelsome as of late. Daughter had decided, too, to find a companion on her own who was not her brother. Maybe Son was doing the same thing. Not that Suzuki pretended to understand his Son. No, the Boy was a complete and utter mystery to him.

Even now.

Even when he was being quiet he was a mystery. He was collecting his drawings from the floor, and from what Suzuki could see they were indeed scenes of violence, but said nothing. Well it seemed as though he was on the cusp of saying something but he just could not find the words. Odd. Son usually just sort of said whatever popped into his mind. The Boy had never had anything approaching a filter before…but he was nine years old now. Maybe he was just getting older.

Suzuki could not wait until his Son was a grown man…or at least not a child anymore. Maybe then he could have had some hope of understanding the boy.

"Your shoes are on the table." Said Sho as he collected his drawings. He felt…a lot of things….so he was going to go with vaguely upset. You weren't supposed to put your feet up on the table when you had shoes on…and Sho decided to conveniently forget that he put his feet on the table when he had shoes on all the time.

"I know. What are you going to do about it?" asked Shimazaki. He watched Suzuki as best as he could. That guy had the loudest aura he had ever heard. It wasn't directed at him, which was great, though he knew he could totally last another fight with him. In the entire organization he was third when it came to raw power. It went Suzuki, Suzuki's Daughter, and then him. He wondered where the kid, Suzuki's son, ranked in all of this. His aura was loud too but not as bad as the rest of his family. Not that he was trying to pick a fight with the kid to prove himself or anything. No, he was not about to go off and fight a nine year old.

Though he was pretty bored.

Aside from beating up some potential traitors, he wondered why so many people bothered making suitcase bombs since even if they went off he could easily get Suzuki and his kid to safety before any real damage happened, he really had nothing else to do. It would have been suicidal for them, the traitors, to try again. He didn't think that the traitors were that smart, you would have to have been an idiot to challenge Suzuki like that, but they weren't stupid enough to try twice in one day.

Even though that would have broken up the monotony of listening to Suzuki type and Suzuki's son scratch pencils and crayons against the never ending stack of papers he carried with him.

"Throw something at you." Said Sho. That was the first thing that came to mind. He kind of liked it when he threw things and then Shimazaki caught them. It was so cool. He couldn't see a thing but he could still catch and stuff. Even stuff that he wasn't facing. It was cool when he dodged, too, and teleported…he was just so cool.

"Try it and see what happens." Said Shimazaki. He wasn't going to do anything worse than throw whatever the kid threw at him right back. He wasn't in the business of fighting kids. It wasn't fair. He knew he would win…now. He'd rethink this in a few years when the kid stopped being, well, a kid…even if he was more powerful than most adults.

"You'll dodge, probably, but then I'll throw something at the place you dodged from and then that'll hit you and you'll be all 'Sho, you beat me' and I'll be all 'yeah, I did' and then you'll be all-" said Sho. He couldn't stop talking. It seemed like his brain either had trouble remembering words or used too many of them. He could not begin to understand his own brain not one bit. Maybe dad had just hit him on the head too many times.

"Son. Be quiet." Said Suzuki. He looked up from his work and made eye contact with his Son. Well now the Boy was being loud again. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it, the amount of noise the Boy made, and he wished that there was. He needed quiet. Daughter was always very quiet, she always had been since she was small, and she would have been quiet if he had brought her with…but he couldn't bring her with. There had been a lot of lower echelon people challenging him lately, and the traitors were becoming emboldened too, which were two things that Daughter could not have stood to have seen.

It could have damaged her psychologically.

Women just were not violent beings. Usually. There was the one female Scar in the Seventh Division…and he was leaning more towards Minegishi being female these days though he knew that there was no socially acceptable reason to ask them what they were, but aside from that any women, the few women, that were a part of Claw had nothing to do with it's violent side. So Daughter would have had nothing to do with its violent side…even though she was so powerful…comparable to him even…

And he did so want her to be there, by his side, where she belonged.

"I'm not being loud." Said Sho. He could talk wherever and whenever he wanted to talk. This was a free country….maybe…he wasn't entirely sure honestly. Well either way he should have been able to talk whenever he wanted to. He never talked to big sis like that. He always talked to her even when they were talking about boring stuff that only dad liked. Dad never talked to her like he talked to him, like he was a little kid or something, and then Shimazaki had heard dad talking to him like a little kid and now he probably thought that Sho was a little kid even though he totally wasn't!

"You're being tiresome. Stop it." Said Suzuki. He tried to get back to work. He had been reading the same damn line for ten minutes now…and he had been typing the same thing over and over again too…and he still had so much to do…and so little of it could be delegated. Maybe he needed to take Daughter with him just so that he could teach her how to do the more tedious parts of the job…

Yes, that would be wonderful.

But what was not wonderful was the sudden aural spike he felt. It shoved itself into his metaphysical self. That was a lot of power that had been expelled at that moment…and now it was happening again. He closed his eyes and saw with his aura. Lower…below him…where was that? The mess hall…not an attempt on his life then…a fight. Again with this?

Claw tended to attract the violent types.

Normally he was not one to intervene in their little squabbles. However, he was annoyed now. He had already been annoyed and this was just making it worse. He did not deal well with annoyance at the best of times. This was annoyance on top of annoyance on top of annoyance. A triple layer omelet of annoyance without ketchup. No wait, with ketchup, but watery ketchup. The cheap kind that was water and sweet and he had seen the children literally drinking on more than one occasion. Not the good thick kind that was just a little bit spicy but not too much…he checked the time on the corner of his computer screen.

Too early for lunch…but he was Suzuki Touichirou. He could eat whenever he wanted…

But then again he couldn't because there was a fight in the middle of the mess hall…and he did not feel like dealing with that. He did not feel like going down there and putting his lower…yes, those were definitely lower echelon esper…in their places. Wait, no, that was the aura of one upper echelon member…he knew that aura. Relatively new but still very powerful…and he hadn't been placed yet…though it did look, metaphysically anyway, that he knew what he was doing….

He did love a good fight….but he also hated discord within the organization.

"Shimazaki. Bring me whoever is responsible for this." Said Suzuki. There, that was at least something that he could delegate.

"On it, boss." Said Shimazaki. There. He had wanted something exciting to happen and now something exciting was happening. He put his glass down on the table, no coaster because he didn't feel like it, and immediately smelled wet paper. Oh, right, the kid's drawings. Oh well that would teach him to leave his stuff unattended.

"Hey!" said Sho. That was so not cool! Which wasn't good at all because Shimazaki was usually so cool! Which wasn't good because people were either cool or not cool and now he was mad and he did stuff without thinking when he was mad, just to upset the person who had made him mad, which was why he reached out without thinking and drank the cola colored stuff that was in the glass that had been put down on his drawing-

-and it was not cola.

He spat it out immediately…and ruined the rest of the drawings he had on the table…and that was the least of his problems. That had been the most disgusting thing that he had ever tasted! And he'd had raw durian fruit before! That had tasted just like burning and it still burned even though he had spat it out! What was WRONG with Shimazaki?! Why would anyone in the whole world think that it was ok to drink something so, incredibly, awful!?

"Serves you right." Said Shimazaki as he prepared to teleport away and break up/pour gasoline on the fight that was going on in the…oh, the cafeteria. It was about lunch time it felt like. He was kind of hungry. Maye there would be putting today…unless that greedy bastard in finance ate it all again…but no matter, no matter, lots of collateral damage in these sorts of fights. A consequence of putting so many espers in one place.

"Take my Son with you." Said Suzuki. Every time he thought that he had reached the end of his rope with that child he just ended up with more slack. That had been…the picture on his laptop had gone all fuzzy. He was that upset. Well now he would have to have the cleaners around. He didn't much care for drinking, it DID NOT agree with his powers, and now he had to deal with not only an attempt on his life, an annoying bodyguard, a son that was driving him up the wall, a fight that was turning into a riot, and now this. He needed a break…and it was only noon.

"Yeah! Let's go beat some guys up!" said Sho. Well that was certainly enough to make him feel better. Smashing some guys' heads in or whatever. He could feel it with his aura, it felt like a big fight, and he got to get in on it! And he got to fight alongside Shimazaki…he took back all the mean thoughts that he had been thinking, before, about him. Shimazaki was way cool again. The coolest. He was cool too, by association, because they were going to beat up so many guys together!

"Don't be so enthusiastic." Said Shimazaki. He grabbed the kid by the head and teleported them right in the middle of what felt like a cross between a grade school food fight and a prison riot. There were so many things flying around that he had to put up a barrier, he couldn't dodge them all, and he didn't much feel like trying. He scanned the room quickly…though not quickly enough for some people.

"Come on! You take the left and I'll take the right and then we'll meet in the middle!" said Sho. This was just like in the movies. They'd fight their way to the middle and then they would stand triumphantly on top of a pile of bodies, just knocked out not dead, and then they would eat pudding cups and also he would draw them afterwards…and it would be good.

"Sure, go on kid. Do your best." Said Shimazaki. He heard the kid start yelling and then 'saw' him running into the middle of it. His aura got all mixed up in the shouting of the upper and lower echelon member's fray. So many different pitches, so many different volume levels….it was overwhelming. He shut out everything that wasn't an esper's aura. He shut out all other stimulus…

And then opened his eyes.

The biggest guy in the room. There. In these situations it was best to find the biggest, strongest, guy in the room and take him out…and that guy was certainly big and strong. It was like he had turned himself inside out, sent his powers inwards, until every inch of his body was screaming with his aura….and what a body it was. Tall, taller than him by so much…and strong too. Well then. This was going to be…interesting.

And it was.

It was a shame that it had to end. He was right, taking down the biggest guy in the room ended the fight, though the kid did help by taking out a section of the wall…and thankfully it had not been a load bearing wall. Or maybe not, actually, since if it had been a load bearing wall it would have been far more interesting. Still, between knocking down a wall, taking out the strongest guy, and one idiot getting naked for some reason and covering himself in ketchup and mustard…the smell would linger for days most likely….it had ended relatively quickly.

Such a pity, it had been fun…though not as fun as seeing what the boss would do to the guy who started the fight…and for such a truly insane reason….

"Explain again." said Suzuki. He didn't know whether to laugh or to cry or to do some unholy combination of both. He settled on doing nothing, keeping his face and his aura as impassive as usual, because that was what was best. Even when his subordinate dragged his newest upper echelon member into his office…covered in God only knew what….with such a truly absurd story.

"Yeah, tell the story again!" said Sho. That had been the coolest thing ever! And to think that the whole thing had started over a cookie. It was nice to know that adults sometimes lost control too. Well he knew that they did, dad was always worried about that, but it was nice to know that adults sometimes lost control in the way that he did and it wasn't the end of the world. Though he had never lost control that badly before…

"He took the other guy's cookie and so that guy kicked him in the nuts. I didn't think that it was a fair move, kicking someone in the nuts, so I intervened…and then it got out of hand." Said Shibata. He wasn't afraid of Suzuki, he had the size advantage and better reflexes, and he had done nothing wrong. He fought people, that was why he had been recruited in the first place, and it wasn't like this was an organization devoted to peace and love. Well he still wasn't entirely sure what they did, Suzuki would not have been serious about taking over the world, he knew that this was not the place for pacifists.

"Some guy was naked and screaming and covered in food." Said Sho helpfully. That was the best part. As soon as dad finished punishing this big guy then he would totally get to drawing that. When he became the President of Claw, and the world, they were having weekly if not daily food fights. That had been the most fun thing ever!

It totally was!

Even if he had gotten scared a little bit, lost control, and knocked down that wall…but he could just blame it on the fighting later. Dad would totally have believed that it was all of those other guys. If he didn't…well it wasn't like that had been an important wall or anything like that. It hadn't been the wall with the drink machines or the vending machines. It had been the wall with the posters about what to do if someone choked on food and it was ok to mess that one up because if you didn't know to slap someone on the back then you were some kind of moron.

"Yup, that was a thing that happened." Said Shimazaki as he poured himself another glass of the boss' expensive cognac…no, wait, brandy this time. Whatever, anything to get the ringing out of his brain from all of those auras screaming at once.

"He was licking the floor, too." Said Sho helpfully

"He really was." Said Shimazaki before he downed his brandy much more quickly than was strictly necessary. Damn, that was good shit. Why it was wasted on Suzuki he would never know. The universe could be a bitch like that. That poor guy in front of the boss was about to know firsthand just how much of a bitch the universe could be once the boss put him in the ground for starting shit. He hated it, when people started shit, even though it was so incredibly easy to start shit. Everyone, or at least the upper echelons, were about two steps away from killing each other.

God, he loved it here.

"That….I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with the information." Said Suzuki slowly. Well then that was…out of the ordinary. Not that these massive brawls were ordinary. He had no idea what was wrong with everyone sometimes. There were times, even, when it seemed like everyone in his upper echelons was about two steps away from premediated murder and he was the only thing keeping the bloodbath at bay.

God, it was so tiresome here sometimes.

"Punish the guy for flashing everyone? I mean, honestly boss, in the grand scheme of things flashing everyone and kicking guys in the junk is a hell of a lot worse than picking up a table and throwing it at someone. I mean yeah, some people got hurt, but that healer guy is on it." Said Shibata. The adorable little boy was shaking his head a bunch. The President's kid, it looked like, based on the hair. Shibata just wanted to pick him up and hug him and squeeze him and never let him go because he was just the cutest little thing in the whole wide world…but he had to maintain the image the boss had of him…

And also that was the sort of thing that had lost him his job at the pet store.

"That is neither here nor there…but I am…impressed….as to how you were to handle so many people at once." Said Suzuki. He did not like being told what to do, or what he should have done, even if it was a good idea. When he needed someone's counsel he would ask for it…though in the grand scheme of things it was the sort of annoyance that he was used to. Fukuda had been offering up his counsel since the day they had met. Yes, in the grand scheme of it, of annoyance, that ranked pretty low.

A lot lower than raiding his liquor cabinet and dripping ketchup, mustard, and God only knew what else around his office.

"It was nothing, boss, I didn't even have to go all out." Said Shibata with a shrug. He was worried, he hadn't even been here a month and the boss was pissed at him, but it was a worry softened by the truly adorable little human looking up at him. The kid was looking up at him with wide eyes now…and he just wanted to pick him up and toss him in the air! How could one little human be so very adorable!? And how could such an adorable little human have come from such a joyless man as President Suzuki?

"That wasn't you going all out!? You were HUGE! You had, like, ten guys up in one hand! You were like ten meters tall! You were-" said Sho. Ok, this guy was cool. This guy was so cool. Not as cool as Shimazaki…but still so cool! And then he could be cool too if they were all on a team or something….because they did fight really well together….

He kind of wanted to go back downstairs and start another fight just so that they could have all fought on the same side.

"Son, quiet." Said Suzuki. He looked between the two of them, Shimazaki and…what was his name again? He'd look it up later. He seemed more…pleasant…and personable than Shimazaki. He had even taken care not to touch too many things considering the state that he was in…and Suzuki liked that…and he had needed a new body guard for a while.

"If you want to get rid of me over this I understand. It was a pleasure working for you and-" said Shibata. Well that was fine. It wasn't like he hadn't been fired before. At least this time it wasn't for hugging and petting the animals too much…they were so fragile…and it wasn't like the time that he had run the kiddie train at wee world…kids were so fragile too…yeah, he could handle this. Even though it had felt, for a little bit, like he had found a place where he could have made something of himself. A place where there were other people like him…but this was ok. He could always go back to beating people up for the Yakuza….even though that job sucked…

"Get rid of you? No, in fact I have just the assignment for you." Said Suzuki. The advantage of having Shimazaki around was that he could see threats before they became problems. His resting range was amazing as were his reflexes and ability to predict his opponent's movements. The detriment to having Shimazaki around was that he was so, truly, annoying….a whole other level of annoying….

Did the bad outweigh the good?

It didn't matter. It wasn't like he couldn't have had two bodyguards. He had been needing another bodyguard for quite some time anyway.


	130. Crowded

It was starting to get kind of crowded.

Mainly because Shibata was over two and a half meters tall and about as wide as an adult kangaroo…they had spent too much time in Australia that year…but it was a good way to measure him. About as wide as an adult kangaroo. That was not an exaggeration, the man was big and wide and made everything about fifty times more crowded than it had to be…like this house. These living quarters were not designed with this many people in mind. Forget how many bedrooms it had, that was irrelevant, it was simply not big enough for three people.

It had barely been big enough for them and Shimazaki.

"….don't talk to the boss, don't look at the boss, don't even breathe in his general direction when he's pissed off…which is most of the time." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi closed their eyes and sighed. At some point Suzuki's entourage had grown by another person…for some reason. It wasn't because he needed the protection. Maybe he just wanted friends and this was the only way he knew how to make them…or maybe he just planned on collection people like trading cards. Minegishi didn't know and they didn't care.

They just wanted their peace and quiet back.

"What's he always so pissed off about? He's got it made. He's the head of Claw and he's got those two kids. God, they are so cute aren't they? I was watching Suzuki's son for him and he was showing me these drawings he did and he's a really good artist and he even drew me and then Suzuki's Daughter came over and she's so cute too, she was dressed like a princess and she said…." Said Shibata. Minegishi was tempted to tell him that if he loved Suzuki's kids so much then he could take up residence in the Suzuki family home and leave them in peace. He didn't seem to realize how loud he was, how the house shook with every step he took, his the windows rattled. Even the plants were afraid of him.

Shimazaki slammed doors and cupboards, he sang at random, and he slept with the same podcast blaring every night but he was the sort of annoying that Minegishi had learned to tolerate.

They'd had a few years to learn how to tolerate Shimazaki's presence. They worked well together, apparently, even if they had both been floating between different divisions. They'd even cohabited in the past, though never for this long, though it had been long enough to learn how to tolerate each other. Minegishi learned to keep the plant life to a few areas of the house, it messed with his perceptions, and he learned not to bother them when they were truly trying to sleep. The noise had taken some time to get used to but, hey, there were worse things.

He didn't stomp around the house so hard that Minegishi could feel it in their room, for one thing.

He teleported a lot, actually, with no thought to anyone else. Yeah, Shibata wouldn't last long once Shimazaki decided that the best time to pop into the bathroom and shave would be when he was in the middle of a bath. Even when they had separate bathrooms Shimazaki always bothered them…well let him bother someone else. It wasn't like they cared or anything. He was an annoyance…and the only reason that they were annoyed was because there was a second annoyance around, now, in their space and frightening their plants. That was all. Minegishi hadn't grown accustomed to it just being the two of them. Minegishi didn't care. If anything they wanted to live alone, all alone, so they could get caught up on their reading. They had been on the same goddamned page for twenty minutes now. Yes, if they had been all alone it would have been better…

What was with them tonight?

Well annoyance, obviously, since Shimazaki had decided to offer up their living space to Shibata without even asking. Apparently there had been a brawl in the cafeteria, all the exciting things happened when they were out on assignment, and Shibata had so impressed the boss that he just had to have him in the entourage. Then Shimazaki had decided that no, they couldn't let him continue to stay in the dorms of the headquarters, so he just had to move in with them…and that was how Minegishi had come home soaked in blood and fertilizer to find Shimazaki giving an all too enthusiastic rundown of their job.

What had Minegishi done to deserve this? Besides the numerous sins up to and including murder, of course.

"...just always at least a little pissed off but you'll get used to it. Just make sure nobody tries to kill him and watch his kid occasionally. Actually all the time. You can be the new babysitter. I do outrank you after all." said Shimazaki. Minegishi rolled their eyes. They all ranked the same since they all performed the same function. Follow Suzuki around, do his bidding, and occasionally take care of his children. God, he was always trying to be more than he was. Always so self-important.

Second only to the boss, that was how he had described himself when they'd met.

Annoying. He had been annoying when they'd met. He was still annoying now. Yeah, Shibata wouldn't last. Shimazaki would run him out by tomorrow…if he didn't kick him out in the morning…not that Minegishi even cared. He could do whatever he wanted, they didn't care, just like they could do whatever they wanted and he wouldn't care. They owed each other nothing…though it was a courtesy not to bring someone back home…at least it was a courtesy that they had both followed up to this point. Minegishi had known him for years. He had a type and it was pretty much anyone who would fall into bed with him.

That was fine.

Minegishi had better standards than that. They were choosy…well they had been before they'd met him. They had a type, too, but that was fine. Who cared if it was annoying and wore too much cologne and sang off key in languages he barely spoke and didn't know the meaning of boundaries and…and other things that they did not care about at all. They didn't give a damn about Shimazaki or what he did or how he had interrupted their pathetic play at domesticity.

Auras pass near their door.

They don't know whether they want to tell Shimazaki to leave them the hell alone or to go out there and claim the living room. To begin to claim parts of the house because now they feel like it has to be portioned out. It's a stupid way to feel, an irrational way to feel, but it's the way that they feel. This isn't their house, this isn't anybody's house. They don't know where the houses come from, who's in charge of buying and furnishing them, but they know that when Suzuki decides that it's time for everyone to move on then someone else will live here and the endless cycle will continue. This house belongs to everyone and it belongs to no one. This is just walls and a roof, that's all, just another cheap prefab or whatever and it's only superficially different from the next place that they will be forced to call home when they're moved again and again and again….

They need a drink.

"That's Minegishi, you've probably seen them around. Don't bother them though, they can be kind of testy after work." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi resented that comment. They were kind of testy even if they hadn't been grinding future traitors into fertilizer for the better part of the day. They turned onto their side and faced the wall. They did not want to be bothered, they decided, not by anyone. In facing the wall they could feel another aura, one that was way too bright and also kind of upset. They did not want to be bothered by anyone, even the kid, even if it felt like world war Suzuki was still going strong.

They wanted to be alone.

"With the purple hair? The one that the boss has…." Said Shibata. Minegishi imagines Shibata making the cut across the throat motion. He was still too new, that one, and he wouldn't last. A comforting thought if there ever was one.

"I have no idea what purple is." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi rolled their eyes. It was so easy to forget that Shimazaki couldn't see. A person would think that he would have gotten sick, eventually, of delivering that line. The way he said it. The seriousness that, if you didn't know him, you would think was real. The way that, if you didn't know his aura, you could imagine that the little hiccups in it were a sign of anger. Minegishi knew better. He liked making people uncomfortable like that. He relished it, actually, because he liked being an asshole.

Minegishi just was on asshole. They didn't go out of their way to cultivate those sorts of traits within themselves.

"Oh….I'm sorry. It's just so easy to forget that you're…that you can't…" said Shibata. This was the time to get any and all nervousness and discomfort out of his system. Shimazaki was blind. He knew it, the world knew it, and he liked to use it to mess with people. He liked to go out of his way and be an asshole. He liked to wake you up at three a.m. and pretend that he couldn't find his room even though he had found your room just fine and…yeah.

He could be a real asshole sometimes.

"Well now I feel like crap. Thanks for that." Said Shimazaki. He was such an asshole. Such an annoying asshole. Minegishi said what they meant and meant what they said. They never tried to make anyone feel any way in particular. They never did this, said things to make people squirm, and Shimazaki had said that just to make Shibata squirm. Minegishi may have been an asshole but they, at least, weren't that big of an asshole.

Better an asshole than an agent of chaos.

Honestly, that man could not stand to be bored even for a moment. He would, back then they had first met, start fights just to amuse himself. Not just with Minegishi, either. Anyone around would do. Shibata wouldn't last ten seconds around him. As imposing as the man was physically it was hard to take him seriously with all the gushing he had done about Suzuki's kids. He was way too soft for this, for Shimazaki, and he'd be out the door in no time.

Or Shimazaki would drive him out the door.

"I-I didn't mean to make you-" said Shibata. Minegishi could not believe that Shimazaki could tolerate this. That was genuine remorse. Annoying. Too easy, much too easy, which meant that Shimazaki would never get bored of him. He would never let this end. This joke, if it could even be called that, would be run into the ground. He would never stop pretending that he had been offended and he would never stop making Shibata kowtow and this was going to be Minegishi's life from now on.

For the foreseeable future, anyway, because Shibata was obviously not going to be able to take Shimazaki for too long. Asshole and agent of chaos that he was.

"Nope, too late. I'm going to cry. Congratulations, you've made a blind man cry. Going to go next door and scare the kids next?" asked Shimazaki. He wasn't funny, he was annoying, an annoying asshole. That was all. There was nothing funny about playing with someone's emotions so that their aura hiccupped all over the place and it seemed like they both wanted to kowtow to you and to kill you, at the same time if such a thing were possible. Minegishi could have told him that Shimazaki wasn't serious. They could have told him that Shimazaki was just being an asshole, they could have gotten up from their bed and dog eared their book and left the sanctuary of their room….

But they didn't.

They had no reason to. It was best not to get into the habit of saving people. It bred dependence and Minegishi did not need anyone dependent on them. Hell, the kid that hung out with them day in and day out wasn't even dependent on them. There was nothing attractive about dependence, not from anyone, because it was just too much responsibility. They had always been responsible for themselves and only themselves ever since they could remember. That was the way that they liked it. That was how they could find the agent of chaos so tolerable.

He only needed himself and he would be back to being by himself very soon.

Once he got on his bullshit. Once he got bored and started acting up like a toddler. Once he decided to dig through his suitcase and find that vial of acid he had been carting around since God only knew when, nobody needed that much acid for personal use in Minegishi's opinion, and then he would go on about how they should all take a swig and or go and leave some sugar cubes around for random kids to find or dose babies or any of his other crazy ideas that, unless you knew him personally, you could be able to give him the benefit of the doubt on and assume that he was kidding.

Never assume anything.

He wasn't kidding. He wasn't ever kidding…and if he ever drank from the vial Minegishi was not babysitting him. Let him think that he had died and replaced the real Ryou again. Let him end up sitting naked in front of the opened refrigerator again. Let him spend the night with his head pressed against the carpet, rubbing his head up and down, so he could hear the sound and then get whatever meaning he could from it. Let him suffer, he would bring it on himself if he drank straight from the vial, just like the time he had decided that he should be the one to measure doses despite being blind….

They had fun together, occasionally.

"What?! No! I would never!" said Shibata. Shimazaki was laughing now. Minegishi didn't care. Let him laugh. Let him laugh so hard that he turned blue, keeled over, and died. Good. More fertilizer. They had been planning on planting their own orange grove for a while now. Or maybe just throw a handful of seeds onto the ground and see what popped up on it's own. Heh. Maybe it would be a Little Shop situation…Shimazaki sure sang enough that Minegishi could have seen him coming back as a sentient, singing, plant.

They smiled again. They shouldn't make it a habit. It was bad for the skin.

"You sure? Rattling them, or at least the boy, is fun. Don't mess with the girl though, she's Suzuki's favorite. She's Toshi's favorite too and they will not hesitate to mess you up." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi digs their nails into their arms. He KNOWS not to call them Toshi. He knows full well that they don't like it when people take it upon themselves to call them Toshi. Especially if said person knew full well neve to call them Toshi.

It didn't usually make them this upset.

They reached over and made themselves a little fort around their bed. The turned over, sat up, and went through their drawers. They needed to sleep. They needed to sleep because it had been a very long day and tomorrow would probably be a very long day and every day would be a very long day until, eventually, they died. They would die as they lived.

Slightly pissed off, slightly drunk, and on medicine that had not been prescribed by a legitimate medical professional.

"Toshi? Oh you mean him…her….them…."said Shibata. Why were the walls so thin? Suzuki could have had actual houses built instead of these stupid prefabs. Why was what they were, what they were medically, such a point of importance, too, while they were asking why? Honestly. The only people it should have mattered to were the people that Minegishi planned on sleeping with…of which Shibata was not going to be one of them.

They had higher standards than that.

"I'm not telling you, figure it out on your own. Actually what you should do is ask. Just go up to them and ask. They really love that, I swear." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi decided that, yes, they would be going to sleep. Let them carry on and on about them like they couldn't hear. They picked up a marker and wrote out on their forearm that they were not to be bothered. That was in case Mob decided to let herself in…which she would have judging by the aural light show they were seeing. A fair bit of Suzuki's aura…poor kids.

They decided to end their message with a smiley face just to raise the kid's spirits. No sense in the kid getting too upset and sending them all the way of the Eighth Division. No sense in Minegishi being in such poor spirits, not that they were in poor spirits at all, and upsetting the poor kid. They would be better tomorrow, not that they weren't fine now, they would just be more…better…tomorrow. That was all. The finished their message, took their non-prescribed prescription medicine, and laid back down with their book. Another trashy, pulpy, romance novel that, really, they should not have been wasting their time with. They still had to read the novelization of Frozen that Mob had lent to them…heh…their book exchange went both ways now. It was nice to have someone to exchange books with…even if that person was nine and only read movie novelizations and manga…but it was better than trying to learn brail…

They could recognize a few words.

Well not right then, of course, because they could not focus on what it was that they were reading. It was all Japanese to them…because it was Japanese…heh. Well they thought that they were funny and that was what mattered. Fuck what other people thought….of their thoughts….heh. Thought about their thoughts…well Mob would have laughed if she had been around….but she was not around and she should not have been around for this…her life was messed up enough already….didn't need Minegishi's bad example….never asked for responsibility like that anyway…

The energy around them shifted.

"Toshi? You dead?" asked Shimazaki. He was sitting on the end of their bed. They pushed him but their strength wasn't in it. They were much too tired. That was it. They were just much too tired.

"Don't ever call me that." Said Minegishi. They kept their eyes closed. That made things just a little more even between them. Or maybe he was the one with the advantage. He could still see them. They could feel his aura on them. They could feel him watching them.

"Oh come on, you like it." Said Shimazaki. He leaned back against them. They could feel the cool leather of his pants against their leg. They could feel the softness, the impossible softness, of his shirt against their hand…which they pull away. They had been seeing him, that was all, in one of the ways that he had seen them…

He hadn't needed to touch them to see them but he had…and they had let him….because they were a moron when it came to him.

"You know that I don't. I've said so many times before-" said Minegishi. What was he bothering them for? He had a shiny new toy to play. He had someone who wasn't used to him, yet, and there was just so much that he could do with that. The potential for endless chaos. He knew that he couldn't get to Minegishi…so why bother with bothering them?

"You say a lot of things." Said Shimazaki. He took their hand in his and began to pick at their nails. He dragged the pad of his finger against the top of their nails. One after the other after the other. He ignored the callouses on their hand, he'd felt them before, but the nail polish is something new. They didn't pain their nails that often, it was annoying waiting for them to dry and they chipped like crazy, so this was new for him.

They pulled their hand away again.

"I do. Like leave me alone. How about that?" said Minegishi. They wanted to roll over, to turn their back to him, but the gesture would have been meaningless. He was still looking at them and they would always be stared at. His aura was over theirs now. They couldn't pull away. There were plants around. Their aura always stuck to plants. Great.

"What's with you? Come on, this guy is hilarious, and I was thinking, too, that if you still had some-" said Shimazaki. Minegishi shoved him a little bit, just a little, because they did not have the strength to hurt him. Too tired. It had been too much, that day, that was all. They were just…tired. That was why their hand had lingered on his shirt. They wondered if he knew how he looked. They wondered, they had wondered since they had met him, why he dressed like that. Did he know how he looked? Or did he just pick out his clothes based on how they felt? Everything was soft, that he wore anyway, and they wondered how that felt to him. He felt things differently than they did. Other senses compensating and all of that. They wondered her their clothes felt to him. Heavy and baggy things…cotton, they liked cotton a lot. He liked silk. Silk and leather and cotton, too, sometimes.

They stopped touching him.

"Go through your own stash if you want to be stupid." Said Minegishi

"Come on, you always have better stuff than I do." Said Shimazaki

"That doesn't mean that it's yours. Go through your own stash if you want to act like an idiot and get messed up." Said Minegishi

"Hypocrite." Said Shimazaki

"I am not." said Minegishi. They opened their eyes and sat up. They were a lot of things but a hypocrite was not one of them. If they had been a hypocrite they would have…they didn't even know because they were more certainly not a hypocrite. They could not think like a hypocrite because they were not a hypocrite. They were themselves. Honest to a fault, spoke their mind, and wanted nothing from the world that they could not get by themselves.

"Really? Because I can see your aura and I can hear your voice. You're messed up right now." Said Shimazaki

"I'm trying to get to sleep right now. When I wake up I'll be fine. You, on the other hand, are going to do something stupid and end up staying up all night. You're going to be tired in the morning and when you get tired you get sloppy and you ruin your reflexes, the one thing that Suzuki keeps you around for, and then you'll end up with all the other people who piss Suzuki off and, honestly, I do not need the extra work." Said Minegishi. Not as eloquent as it had been in their head but they couldn't help it. It could be excused…not that they knew who it was that they wanted to excuse them. That was…this was weird. Why did he make them so self-conscious? The staring. It was the staring.

Even without eyes he still stared at them nonstop.

"Wow, I had no idea you cared so much, Toshi." Said Shimazaki. This time Minegishi did put some strength into it. They could have put their powers into it, there were plants all around them, but they didn't feel like it.

He caught their arm.

He traced the characters that they had written there. He could feel it, the marker, but the characters meant nothing to him. They meant nothing but he still traced them, the pads of his fingers tracing across the thick, black, characters drawn there. Across their skin. They could feel a little bit of his nails there, too, and it sent a shiver down their spine. Even in their current state he could still make them feel…everything.

"I don't." said Minegishi finally. They didn't. There was no point at all in caring about what happened to him. That asshole was responsible for himself just like Minegishi was responsible for themselves. That was the way the world worked. It was every asshole for themselves.

"You do. If you really didn't care then you'd let me mess up and end up on one of Suzuki's lists." Said Shimazaki

"He has lists?" asked Minegishi. They would have raised an eyebrow if they'd had one to raise. They didn't put it past their fearless leader to stay up long into the night composing lists of undesirables. They wouldn't have put it past Suzuki to have put those closest to him on those lists. Shimazaki would have known, being so close to the man, though his new partner might have known too. Minegishi didn't care what Suzuki did in his spare time. They didn't care if they were on meters and meters worth of lists. They weren't assigned to following the man around so what did they care?

"No clue but, hey, wouldn't you? Honestly I always assumed that you did. Being you, you know." Said Shimazaki

"Well I don't. I have better things to do with my time than sit around pouring over lists of enemies." Said Minegishi. They wanted to pull their arm away but they didn't have the strength. Well they did but they did not feel like finding it. They were exhausted, annoyed, and also quickly becoming ravenously hungry. The reached over with their other hand and called a vine to themselves. They could make a spider plant bear fruit, apples to be precise, and honestly that was a much cooler power than teleportation and whatever it was that the new guy could do.

Nothing as cool as making apples grow from spider plants.

"Thanks." Said Shimazaki before he bent down and bit into the apple. He then, apparently, did not know what to do with it so he just held it in his mouth like one of those fancy pigs that people in the movies ate. Minegishi rolled their eyes so hard that they knew he could sense it. He just smiled and leaned down close to them. Minegishi didn't take the bait, they knew he wanted them to lean in to take the apple and then he would drop it and they'd kiss or something, so they decided that they would just stop that before it happened. They did not want to deal with that tonight.

"Not for you." Said Minegishi before they took a bite. Tart, way too tart, but hey it had been enough of a feat to make an apple grow from a spider plant in the first place.

"I already had a bite." Said Shimazaki

"You didn't have a bite, you just bit into it, there's a difference. Now leave me alone. I have a lot to do. Apples to eat, books to read, sleep to get." Said Minegishi as they leaned back into their bed. Not really their bed, they preferred a futon, but a bed that they were told to sleep in. This wasn't their home. It wasn't anyone's home.

So why did they care that they could feel it shaking because a certain uninvited housemate couldn't walk across the floor without stomping as hard as they could?

"Or you could watch TV and get messed up with me and the new guy." Said Shimazaki in a tone that was supposed to be tempting but just came off as annoying. Minegishi was not going to smile and they certainly had not taken another bite of their too tart apple to keep from smiling.

"You can't 'watch' anything." Said Minegishi after they finished chewing. Adult company did sound nice…and so did passing out on the couch in front of the TV…but not nice enough to pry them from their bed.

"No but I can listen and sit next to you and poke your aura when you start to get too comfortable." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi shook their head.

"Pass, now leave me alone." Said Minegishi

"And don't bother you until tomorrow for any reason and then a smiley face?" asked Shimazaki. Minegishi was confused before they looked down and remembered what they had written down on their arm. Huh. Even after years of knowing a person they could still surprise you….but then again that had been written out as simply as possible because Mob was only nine and Minegishi had no clue how well she read beyond, well, tormenting her with books that grown adults had trouble comprehending.

"I didn't know you could read. How long have you been keeping this from me? Any other secrets that I should know about?" asked Minegishi

"I used to steal all the time when I was a kid, things I didn't even need. One time when I was three I swallowed a hundred yen coin just to see what would happen. Also I ate candles until I was-" said Shimazaki. Minegishi had no clue if any of that was true, well they knew that the candle things was true but the rest could have been a total fabrication, but it didn't matter. This could have been one of those times when he just said things to say them.

"But when did you learn to read, that is the question." Said Minegishi. It was amazing how he could have kept that from them for all of these years….you thought you knew a person…not that they cared. They could have been hiding literally anything else from them. They didn't care. None of their business. They barely had enough time to mind their own business let alone someone else's.

"You've seen me read. Hell, I've read to you. Remember Sapporo?" asked Shimazaki. Yes, they clearly remembered their mission to that little town just outside of Sapporo during the winter when they had to take out some traitor's little pet project. Recruiting from within Claw and thinking that nobody would notice…what a moron. They remembered how cold it had been and how there had been literally nothing to do pre and post mission. They also remembered that Shimazaki's books were boring as hell. Nothing but sex and pointless fights…much like the man himself. They remembered laying down on some shitty double bed in the middle of nowhere and sitting close together to share body heat, literally to share body heat, and then everything that came afterwards. They remembered sitting down to read and come down from the heady feeling that they always got afterwards. They remembered him sitting down and just…reading aloud like it was…like they didn't even know what. They remembered drifting off at some point in the night and waking up to the shittiest tea that they had ever had.

"Vaguely." Said Minegishi before devouring the core of the apple. Maybe the cyanide would get to them. They could only hope. It took about two pounds of seeds, not apples but seeds, to do a grown adult in. They would need to make more apples.

"Well there, I can read." Said Shimazaki. He honestly sounded offended there. They could tell when it came to him. Well then let him be offended. It was not so far out of the realm of possibility that, by chance, he would not have been able to read written Japanese. On account of the whole 'not being able to see' thing.

"Brail." Said Minegishi simply

"I can recognize some kanji too. Some hiranga and some kanji…by touch. My mom…she had some stupid idea that I could learn to read like that. Some idea that I could have been normal or whatever." Said Shimzaki. Nope. Too close to emotional depth for them. They were upset with him, they reminded themselves, and they were not going to be swayed into…whatever….by the sad, sad, very sad tale of the life of Shimazaki Ryou.

They made another apple. They shoved it in his mouth.

"You're a man of many surprises, Shimazaki Ryou, now surprise me by getting out of my room and letting me get some sleep already." Said Minegishi. Shimazaki, sparingly enough, did leave them the hell alone.

Which was what they had wanted in the first place.

Now they could be alone in their room and just…sleep. Even though voices still carried through the walls and the house still shook. They were alone, they shouldn't have felt this way…

Like this house was getting way too crowded.


	131. Flying Higher and Higher

"Higher!"

Sho was flying!

He knew how to make himself fly. That was easy. Well mostly. He couldn't make himself fly this high, well maybe he could, he had never tried. Why would he ever have had to try when he had someone who could throw him so high in the air that he could see over the houses? Over the tree? He was up so high that he could see the way that the Earth was round. Like being in a plane. Maybe he was up that high. Maybe he would end up bumping his head on an airplane?

That would have been so cool!

"Sure thing Little Suzuki!" said Shibata. This was the greatest job ever! Suzuki had been mad at his son for some reason, the kid hadn't been that loud but Suzuki had a famously short temper, but Shibata could help the little guy. Poor kid had been sad all day, Shibata could always tell when it came to the little people, but he knew how to cheer them up.

Plus Little Suzuki was an esper so it wouldn't be another Wee World situation.

Shibata was not terribly afraid of what would happen if Little Suzuki were to go too high. Espers were made of tougher stuff than normal people so it stood to reason that esper kids would have been made of tougher stuff than normal kids. It stood to logical reason. Also Suzuki's kids were probably tougher than other esper kids on account of who their father was.

"Don't kill Suzuki's kid. He might not take it too well." Said Minegishi. There were periods of activity and periods of inactivity. This was one of those periods of inactivity for them. They had no idea that there would have been so much hanging out involved in this job. If they knew, when they had agreed to teach Mob how to use her plant powers that they would have ended up spending an inordinate amount of time just hanging around doing nothing…they may have reconsidered.

Or not since the kid was good company.

They didn't even have to throw her into the air over and over again. Nothing about that looked fun. Now sitting in a fort made out of plant life and reading, that was fun. Mob was good company. Even now. She was sitting there gripping her book so hard that her knuckles had turned white. Minegishi was tempted to tell her that worrying wouldn't save her brother if Shibata were to drop him. She had the power to catch him. Minegishi had never personally seen the upper limits of her power but she had destroyed the entire Eighth Division. Catching her little brother should have been easy.

Though if Mob were to 'accidentally' allow herself to become an only child Minegishi would have totally understood.

"You don't think that he's going to drop Sho…do you?" asked Mob. She was worried. She had put herself under a barrier, it had just happened she hadn't set out to do that, and she could feel the grass underneath her trying to grow. It was a nice evening, good for building forts, and that was what she and Sho had been planning on doing. She felt bad about getting him in trouble earlier. She should have just agreed with him. If she had just agreed with him then dad would not have gotten mad. Dad hadn't hit Sho, which was good, he just said mean things…which was not good. Not as bad as if he had hit Sho but still not very good at all. Maybe Mob shouldn't have come to work with dad. Sho always seemed to be at least a little upset with her when they were together. It had felt like that for a while now but these days it seemed to be getting worse. Maybe it would be better when they weren't the same age anymore. They weren't twins like Shibata had thought, that was wrong, they were just the same age for part of the year. Sho would maybe be less mad at her when she was older again. That way he would be less upset that dad had left her in charge.

"God willing." Muttered Minegishi. They didn't want the kid dead. They had done a lot of messed up shit in their lifetime but wishing death on kids was not something that they did. They never wished death or harm on kids and they never hurt them either. So they didn't want Sho dead just…quieter. Less…himself. More like his sister. Not like his father, no, the world did not need two of Suzuki. It could barely handle the one it had.

"Huh?" asked Mob. That had sounded like Minegishi had wanted Sho to get dropped…but that would not have been a very nice thing to want at all. Mob must have misheard or misinterpreted or something. There was no way that Minegishi would have wanted Sho to fall because then he would have been hurt and that would have just been the very worst thing ever.

Even if Sho had taken the milk from her lunch and drank it right in front of her even though he hated whole milk.

But that had been her fault for arguing with him…and it didn't matter anyway because she was Suzuki Shigeko and since her dad ran Claw she got to have unlimited things from the cafeteria and vending machines. The Awakened got her whatever she wanted and they even opened her milk for her too. They would have fed her, too, and they had offered but that seemed like it would have been weird. She was almost ten, too old to be fed, and much too old to be upset about having her milk stolen.

"God willing that he doesn't get dropped." Said Minegishi. They were not going to upset Mob like that. It wouldn't have done anyone any good whatsoever. Also Mob was pretty much the only person in the world that they could tolerate. Shibata was annoying, which was why he got on so well with Suzuki's son, and Shimazaki had been insufferable lately. They would have liked to have been alone but the kid wanted to hang out and they had developed a soft spot for her.

"Oh, ok. I figured that was what you meant. You wouldn't want Sho to get hurt. Nobody would. He's the best little brother ever." Said Mob. Sometimes she felt like she was telling herself that…but he was the best little brother ever so of course she would tell herself that. It was important to only speak the truth to yourself, dad had said so, like how he told himself all the time that he was going to take over the world. Because he said it, that he was going to take over the world, then it would happen.

So if she said that Sho was the best little brother ever then he was the best little brother ever.

"Well since I'm an only child then I'll have to take your word for it." Said Minegishi not looking up. They wondered when Mob would snap and make herself an only child. It would either be that or the Suzuki kids would wind up estranged in their adult lives. Maybe they'd come back together on the occasion of the death of their father and then reconnect through the clever use of flashbacks from each other their points of view cleverly showing how they had become estranged but also how they could come together again.

Heh.

This was a decent book. Could have been better, could have been worse, could have been more middle of the road than it already was. At least it wasn't another one of the endless volumes of Galaxy Express 999 that Mob, for some reason, kept on reading over and over again even though Minegishi got the feeling that it was a total slough for her.

At least it had been for Minegishi when they had been a kid. That was an important lesson, just because something was old didn't mean that it was good.

"Now hold me upside down and then throw me!" shouted Sho. Mob pulled her barrier in closer and winced. She was happy that dad was inside. That way he couldn't see how upset she was getting. He hated it when she showed her feelings. Especially when her feelings made her powers act up. Like now with her barrier.

She tried to dissipate it.

"….I think that I might end up an only child soon." Said Mob. Now Sho was being throw and he was upside down…and he was very close to the tree. She used her powers to make the branches grow in a different direction, one less likely to injure Sho. She did not want him to get hurt even though she knew that Fukuda was only a phone call away. She got the feeling that Fukuda didn't much want to be bothered, sometimes, because he never offered to stay or spend time with her and Sho anymore…and also he always called her Miss Suzuki. Maybe he was just calling her that because she was getting older, though, and not because he didn't like her anymore…even though he acted like he didn't like her anymore….

"I'll get you a really nice sympathy card." Said Minegishi. They looked up from their reading. Well then…that was not safe at all. See, they knew Shibata wouldn't last. Even if that was Suzuki's least favorite kid the loss of his only son would be felt. There was just something about men and their sons. Like it was some big accomplishment to have made a kid with a penis. Like the family name being carried on was the most important thing in the world.

Minegishi doubted that these would be the last Suzuki's.

"….you think that Sho's going to die? Because if you think so then maybe I should…maybe I should make him stop….because I don't want Sho to die. I already lost my…it's already just me, Sho, and dad. If Sho dies then it'll just be me and dad…I mean I love dad but I love Sho too…" said Mob. Sho dying would have been worse than mom leaving. At least Mob was mostly sure that her mom was still alive. It had been three years since she had last seen her mom but…but mom would not have died. Only old people died in their sleep and stuff…but there could have been an accident or mom could have gotten sick…because she was just a normal person. She didn't have to worry about dad dying from being sick.

She just had to worry about people trying to kill him.

He needed two whole bodyguards because people were always trying to kill him. People had tried to kill him so many times that he had even said that the attempts on his life were becoming tiresome. That was way too many times…well once was too many…but people should not have been trying to kill her dad in the first place. She loved him so much and she just…she didn't want him to die. Then she and Sho would have been orphans. Even if mom was still alive she would have still been gone, not there to take care of her and Sho, and then they would have had to live in an orphanage….because dad would have been dead…and then Sho could have died too…and then maybe everyone would pass on super fast too so she wouldn't even have time to say goodbye….

Mob didn't want to think about mom dying or Sho dying or anyone she loved dying…also if Sho were to die right there in front of her then…then she would regret their stupid fight for the rest of her life and into her afterlife too.

"You're Suzuki Shigeko, aren't you? If you want him to put your brother down then tell him to put your brother down." Said Minegishi. They were not going to tell Mob the story of how Shibata had been discovered by Claw…or what had happened at Wee World. Yeah, Mob was already on the cusp of freaking out. That would not have been good for anyone.

Though it would have been exciting.

But maybe too exciting. There was good excitement and bad excitement. That was the difference between them and Shimazaki. They were not an agent of chaos. They may have been chronically bored, kind of an asshole, and a lover of many of life's less than legal vices but they were not an agent of chaos. Chaos for the sake of chaos, acting without thinking things through, did not appeal to them at all. The best thing to do was just to sit and wait and think things through.

Which was why Mob would never know what happened at Wee World or the Pet Palace or any other stories that Shibata had drunkenly stuttered out the other night at the top of his lungs.

"Yes….I'm Suzuki Shigeko." Said Mob. She didn't like her name. Suzuki Shigeko. She didn't like the way it felt…even though you couldn't feel words. She knew that she was being ridiculous in thinking that her name was a dreadfully heavy thing…but it was. It meant that she was the Daughter of the king of the whole world. It meant that her entire life had been planned out from the day she had been born. It meant that one day she would help to rule the world even if she couldn't inherit it. It meant that…it meant that…

It also meant that she had the power to boss adults around.

She could tell the Awakened what to do but that was normal. The lowest level of Awakened could be bossed around by everyone in Claw. There were levels to them from the not awakened yet to the barely awakened to the awakened soldiers and…and there was a whole color system that Mob hadn't even fully learned yet. Rank had to do with what department and division they served, too, which made the whole thing even more complicated. She had asked dad, before, why he had made such a complicated system. He had just said that it didn't matter if the system was complicated because he was already the boss of everyone.

And so was she.

But she didn't want to be the boss of everyone. She hated being bossy. Dad made her be bossy to everyone. Sho was always mad at her because she was bossy but she couldn't help it if dad left her in charge. She never asked to be in charge but Sho didn't care. He knew that she hated being bossy but he didn't care. He still got mad at her for being bossy. He accused her of being bossy all the time, not just when she was telling him to take a bath or do his homeschool work or to brush his teeth or put his stuff away. He was always telling her that she was bossy. Even today when she had told him that hamster were too little to even be able to strike the keys on a piano let alone play complicated music…and they couldn't read music either because they were animals…and maybe she should not have said anything because it had made Sho mad. It had made him get mad and call her bossy and then dad got mad at Sho and then Sho had…

Sho had been upset earlier…but he was better now…even if he was doing something super dangerous.

Mob didn't want to make him unhappy but she also didn't want to end up becoming an only child. She didn't want to be all alone with dad and she didn't want any sympathy cards either even though Minegishi said that they would get her a nice one. Probably from a bookstore. She and Minegishi went to a lot of bookstores and they had very fancy cards there…but Mob didn't want any sympathy cards at all anyway.

She just wanted her little brother to be safe.

That was why she left her plant fort, crossed the yard, and went to talk to Shibata. To tell him nicely not to toss her little brother quite so hard and quite so high. She shook a little bit, partially because it was cold out and her Elsa dress was not the warmest and partially because Shibata was the biggest person that she had ever seen in her entire life…and she had seen a lot of people over the years in her travels.

She was Suzuki Shigeko. She was Mob. She could do this.

"Higher! Higher! I want to hit my head on an airplane!" said Sho. This was the coolest! The wind in his face, the bugs in his teeth, and not a care in the world! Not even about how mad dad had gotten at him. He didn't know what he had done wrong. Big sis started it. She was the one who had said that you couldn't teach a hamster to play the piano.

When you could and someone on YouTube had.

But she said that hamsters weren't as smart as that. She said that they were too small, too, to play piano. She said that in the video that they'd seen the notes that the hamsters played didn't have anything to do with the keys. She didn't know. She didn't play piano. Neither of them played any instruments so she could not tell him how hamsters could play the piano.

She was not the boss of what was and was not possible in the world.

Even though she thought she was. That was why she had come over. He had seen her when gravity pulled him back down to the Earth. He could have defied gravity, it would have been easy, a lot easier than defying his big sis. She had dad on her side and while she had no real power dad had all the power. It was like how the Divisions worked. The division leaders thought that they had power but dad was the absolute power of Claw. He was also the absolute power of the family…

And he could be very scary sometimes.

"Um….excuse me." Said Mob. She wanted to try and sound like dad. She didn't like talking like him, it was mean, but it made people listen to her. She knew that she had to make herself heard, dad had told her that, but it was hard sometimes. All of the times.

"Hey there Little Princess. You want a turn?" asked Shibata. He caught Little Suzuki at the last second. That would have been bad….but he couldn't help it. She was just so adorable! And not in the weird way like some people liked to imply about him. He just liked cute things, that was all, and these were the cutest kids in the whole world in his opinion. He had never seen a half Japanese ginger kid before…or a half Japanese kid who looked totally Japanese. These kids were so cute and he just wanted to hug them and squeeze them and never let them go!

But he wouldn't because he did not want to get fired.

He put Little Suzuki down and got down to the kids' level. The girl's aura looked all freaked out. He knew that he had that effect on people. He'd had that problem for his entire life. He had been a freakishly huge almost twenty pound baby and he had been a freakishly huge kid and now he was a freakishly huge adult. He was a huge adult and these were such tiny kids and he was not going to freak them out.

Then he would have been off babysitting duty and he did not want to get knocked off of babysitting duty.

"No thank you. I was just wondering if you could throw my brother a little more gently and a little less…high up in the air?" asked Mob. She tried to speak with confidence like dad had said. She was Suzuki Shigeko and the name was heavy…but she had to be strong enough to carry it. She had to be strong like dad had always told her to be. She had to be Suzuki Shigeko, not Mob, even though she would have rather been Mob.

"Why do you always have to be so bossy all the time!?" said Sho. Shibata was holding him back by his shirt. He wasn't going to try and push her again…and he could have gotten out of his shirt easily…and also he could have used his powers anyway so there was no point in holding him back. Big sis had been right, before, when she'd had her barrier up…even though she hadn't needed to put up a barrier because he wasn't going to do anything to hurt her.

"Whoa, calm down little guy. Your big sister is just looking out for you. Don't worry Little Princess, I won't let anything happen to your little brother." Said Shibata. He wished that it had been socially acceptable to take pictures of other people's kids because these kids were just so cute! Especially Suzuki's daughter. She always wore those costumes. He had never once seen her in real clothes. Either princess costumes or the most adorable little kimonos…

So adorable!

"Ok…thank you. I'm just going to go back to reading now. Have fun Sho." said Mob. She bowed and then went, quickly, back to Minegishi. She didn't much like Shibata throwing Sho up and down in the air and, also, she didn't much like being called Princess. She was not a princess. She was not a Little Princess or even little. She was almost ten, which was not little, and she was not a Princess either. She was dressed up like Elsa and Elsa was a queen so calling her little queen would have been better.

But she didn't want to be called that either.

She just wanted to be called Mob. Mob was just….Mob. She knew that people had been teasing her when they had given her that nickname. She knew that, even back in preschool, people had been mean to her. She also knew that because of her real name she should not have let them call her that. She knew that the name, her real name, was heavy because there was something to it. The weight of expectations and power and…and stuff that she did not want. She wished that she could have just been Mob but she knew that she couldn't have been. She was still just Suzuki Shigeko…but at least she wasn't a princess…even if her dad was going to be the king of the entire world.

"You're bossy, Shigeko!" shouted Sho as he was thrown a lot lower, and softer, than before. He didn't understand her one bit. She knew that he could make himself fly and also put up a barrier. She knew that Fukuda was super close and would not have let anything happen to him. She knew all of those things but she still bossed him around. Sometimes he got the feeling that she liked being bossy, telling him what to do, and stuff. Dad certainly liked being bossy and she was dad's kid after all…

And so was he.

He had been a jerk when he said that. He should have been nicer. Maybe the worst parts of dad had been divided between them. She got the bossy parts and he got the jerk parts. Maybe that was just the way it worked. Maybe they had gotten the bad parts of mom, too, even though he couldn't even remember anything bad about his mom.

Well she had left.

He wondered if one day big sis would leave him too…or maybe he would be the one to leave. Maybe he would leave one day and…and he didn't even know what. He was Sho and he had to run the world when he grew up. Since the entire world was his then there was no place for him to run away too. Even if hopped in a plane and flew away he would still be on the Earth and it would have been his Earth to run so, really, it would have been like running away to his backyard or something. Not that he planned on running away…and not because he had nowhere to go, either. He knew that he couldn't leave big sis because…because then she would have been sad and…and so would he.

He had no idea if dad would have been sad.

Dad ran away all the time. Well he left all the time, which was different, but he never did stay in once place for too often. Because of work. It was his world anyway. The world didn't realize it yet but it was dad's so maybe it didn't matter where he went. He wasn't like mom. If they woke up tomorrow and he was gone it wouldn't have been because he had ran away. Dad would never do that to them, anyway. That just wasn't who dad was. He had his kids and because they were his he was never going to let them go. Like how the world was his and he was never going to let it go.

He said that the world was his because he had decided a long time ago that he would rule it.

Because he had the audacity to say it, he said, it must have been true. Sho didn't know if he wanted the world, if he could be bossy enough to run it, and the thought of running the world was both exciting and scary in a lot of ways…ways that he knew that dad would not have liked him thinking of. Ways that made him wish that he could fly this high and this fast. Ways that made him wish that the world wasn't his, wouldn't be his when he grew up, because then there would be nowhere to go. He would be stuck. Was that why mom had run away? Had she felt stuck and trapped by dad bossing her around all the time? Was that how she felt now?

He had no idea.

But he knew that he did like flying, its freedom…so maybe mom would have liked it too.


	132. Lunch and Distractions

One of the best times of the day is, was, and always would be lunch.

The best person to share lunch, every meal really, was Daughter. She and Son had come to work with him that day. Son to learn what it was that he would have to do and Daughter because she was old enough, he thought, that she could have some tasks delegated to her. He trusted her with simple things right now but things would become more complex as she proved her competence. That was how it went for everyone in Claw…though maybe, since this was his child, he should have just sent her straight to the upper echelons…

Not yet. She wasn't even ten years old.

Still though she had proved herself to be more competent than Son. Son…he was not Daughter. Suzuki was about ready, actually, to have a blood test done. Sometimes it felt like Daughter was his child and Son was the foundling. Or maybe he was a changeling. That would have explained everything from his behavior to the fact that everything he ate was covered in sugar. He had even see Son, on occasion, eating from a sack of sugar….

He would never understand that child for as long as they both would live.

Daughter, on the other hand, he felt like he had a good understanding of. That day, anyway, she could be confusing on occasion as well. Such as what her obsession with cats was. She still had on that headband with the cat ears, the one that she had gotten for her last birthday. He hated that thing. It was ridiculous. She was not a cat, she was a human being, and she should not have been pretending to be a cat. That was what bothered him about her cat ears headband. That was all that bothered him. It had nothing to do with who had given her that headband or who was e-mailing him nonstop or who had had almost managed to forget or who he was spending the lunch hour agonizing over as his food rapidly cooled and-

"Dad? Do you want to trade?" asked Mob. Dad wasn't eating. That was weird for him. He loved breakfast food, especially omelets, and especially omelets with ketchup on them. Especially that kind of ketchup. Mob didn't understand about the different kinds of ketchup but she pretended that she did for her dad's benefit. He liked it when they had things in common.

"What, Daughter?" asked Suzuki. He was hovering above an E-Mail. He knew that he should either have opened it or deleted it. Very few people had his personal E-Mail…and he didn't even remember giving it to this particular person…but then again he had been trying to forget her for a year now. Almost a year. Both not long enough and far too long.

"Do you want to trade food with me, Dad?" Said Mob. She wondered if dad hadn't heard her or if he just didn't get it. He had been an only child so he had trouble understanding the things that she and Sho did. From trading food to playing fort he just didn't get it. If Sho had been there he would have explained it to dad. Sho was eating in the cafeteria. He wanted the people down there to fight again. Why anyone would want people to fight she did not know.

Maybe dad could explain it to her.

But he seemed busy, too, or just zoned out. He had been staring at his computer screen for a while. His aura was being weird too. It stung hers when she got too near. He was keeping it tucked in, too, and maybe that meant that something was bothering him. The only thing that could have been bothering him, that Mob figured, was his lunch. Sho hadn't been around much so that couldn't have been it and she couldn't think of anything that she had done wrong that day. She brought dad the papers that he needed and stapled what needed to be stapled and delivered what needed to be delivered. She also had to boss around some Awakened, they had been hanging out outside of dad's office trying to watch him because they liked him a lot. They had been being so loud so dad sent her to tell them to get lost. She didn't say the words 'get lost' but she did tell them that they were distracting dad. They left, eventually, but they had been all happy that she was talking to them and….and it had been sort of weird, the way that they were looking at her, and the way that they talked about her as they left. They had been all 'she spoke to me' which was…weird.

Sometimes the Awakened could be kind of weird.

"You want to trade with me? Why?" asked Suzuki. He thought that she liked that mess of sugar and fat and salt and oil. Pancakes with syrup, the fastest way to ruin them, french fries with enough salt that he could see all the way from his desk, and a milkshake that he knew she would be dipping her fries in very soon. Maybe this was a good sign. Maybe she was growing up. Maybe soon she would eat real food and stop dressing so ridiculously.

Maybe she would retire that goddamned headband already.

He was tired of looking at it. He was tired of thinking about it. He was tired of…he was tired of thinking about a great many things. He was tired of going over his own mistakes in his mind…and he hated the fact that he had made those mistakes in the first place. He hated how weak he had been…and how weak he was being now…

He missed Masami. He only missed Masami.

He missed Masami more than anything…and that was hard enough to admit. He didn't need her, he didn't need anyone. He just…he missed her because they had been together for so long…even though she was just a normal woman. Just like any other woman…even though she was so much…more….than any other woman that he had ever met.

Masami. Always Masami. Even if there had been someone else, and he was not proud of that, there would always be Masami. His Masami.

"You aren't eating. We can trade if you want. I have pancakes but I didn't put any syrup on yet. Also I have fries with salt and I know that you like fries with salt. Oh! And I also have a cookie and a milkshake but I know that you hate sweet things…but you can have them if you want to." Said Mob. She and Sho sometimes traded foods if he got something that he didn't like. Like the time with the durian or the breadfruit or the meat on a stick that may or may not have been people….Mob thought that it wasn't but Sho said that it was…and she never liked trading gross things for good things but it was worth it for Sho.

Dad didn't have anything gross though.

That was his favorite food. Four egg omelet with mushrooms, ham, green peppers, cheese, another kind of cheese, and sometimes bacon inside. Also sometimes avocado but not all the time because sometimes that was just too much, dad had said. Mob thought that it wasn't too much because it was a fruit and dad needed to eat more fruit. You were supposed to eat all the food groups but dad didn't eat a lot of fruit because it was sweet and he hated sweet foods. She wondered if dad was allergic to sweet foods. Sho always hated citrus and then when he got older he became allergic and now if he tried to eat citrus he would die…and that made her a little nervous because she was with dad and Sho was downstairs where there was lemonade and orange juice and citrus fruit and other kinds of citrus fruit too…and if he accidentally ate some he would have been in so much trouble…

She let herself see the auras around her. Fukuda was there, too, near Sho. That was good. He would be safe, then, with Fukuda near him.

"No thank you, Daughter. I'm fine. Eat your lunch." Said Suzuki. He was fine. There was nothing wrong. He would just ignore this email like he had been ignoring them since she had started sending them. She was a mistake, pure and simple, and he did not miss her. He already missed Masami and that was more than enough. He had nothing to miss about her, he knew her name but he knew not to use it, he barely even knew her.

Her thoughts on faster than light travel weren't feasible anyway.

He had no desire to know her, anyway, none at all. So she had interesting things to say. Big deal. Everything could be interesting if he thought long enough and hard enough about it. The way the clouds moved through the side, the drawings that Son had left scattered around the office, the way the sun got caught on the sparkles of Daughter's dress. The way she dipped her fries into her milkshake before she ate them. The way her hair was starting to grow down into her eyes. The fact that even though the headband did nothing to keep her hair out of her eyes she still wore it.

He could not stand that headband.

He knocked it off of her head. Daughter reached up in confusion as that ridiculous headband of hers went stumbling to the ground. She was confused and slightly….frightened? What reason could she have possibly had for being frightened? It wasn't as though he had harmed her in any way.

"Dad? Are you…mad at me?" asked Mob. Dad tried to hit her over the head but he missed. She had no idea what she could have done to him that would have made him that mad. She was just eating lunch…but maybe she was eating lunch wrong….even though she had no clue whatsoever how she possibly could have been eating her lunch wrong. She was just sitting there and eating and sometimes dad could be so-

Conceal, don't feel.

There was no point in getting upset with dad. If he was upset with her then it was for a good reason. She had, obviously, done something wrong. Dad would tell her what she had done wrong and then she just wouldn't do it again. One more thing that she was not allowed to do…there was no point at all in thinking like that. She had to follow rules, all kids did, even her. She didn't have as many rules as normal kids and she should have been grateful for that. She could eat whatever she wanted and she didn't have to go to school, well she had homeschool but that was different, and she got to play with her little brother all day which she had not been allowed to do back when they had to spend most of the day at their separate schools…so one more rule wouldn't be so bad.

"No." said Suzuki simply. He was not angry with her. She had done nothing. Well she had worn that headband…but he was not going to explain it to her why he had done what he had done. First of all he was not the sort of man who admitted his mistakes and second of all nobody wanted to know that their father, who they looked up to more so than any other being living or dead, was nothing more than a womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own joy. What kind of an example would he had set for her if he were to tell her that he'd been unfaithful to her mother with the woman who had given her that ridiculous headband that she was always wearing?

A terrible one.

She may grow up thinking that it would be alright for her to stray from whoever she chose...or even worse…that it would be acceptable for the person she chose to stray from her. No. That would not be allowed to pass. If the man who she chose was ever unfaithful to her then he would have no choice but to murder that man with his own two hands…no. Death was cheap. He would devote a portion of his life to making that man suffer in any way that a person could suffer.

All the ways.

In all the ways that he deserved….no. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he could do whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted to whenever he wanted…but he had promised Masami and she had never once been unfaithful to him….well it had been three years since he had last seen her and he had no idea what she was up to. She could have replaced him. She could have replaced him twice over. Thrice over. Right at that very moment she could have been-

"But your aura seems mad." Said Mob. She knew that she was on dangerous ground, asking dad all of these questions, but she really just wanted to know what it was that she had done. She wished that she knew all the things that made dad mad, that he didn't like about her, like a list or something. Then she could have been better and dad could have been happier and he wouldn't have gotten into moods like this.

"Not at you." Said Suzuki. He did not want to get into this with her. He reached for his fork and decided that the best thing to do would be to eat his food before it got even colder and then he would get back to work and forget about the pile of emails that he should have deleted or moved to his spam folder. He should have done more to forget her, to rewrite history in his mind to that he never made that terrible mistake in the first place, but there was just something wrong with him….something that made him torment himself like this.

"But you tried to hit me." Said Mob

"No. I don't 'try' to do anything. If I set out to do something then it gets done. If I had set out to strike you then I would have struck you. Now let me eat. If you don't want to eat then find something to do that does not involve bothering me." Said Suzuki

"Oh…ok. I won't bother you." Said Mob. She didn't know what she had done to make dad mad but she knew that if she kept going on and on about it then dad would have gotten even more upset with her. She didn't want dad to be upset with her. Sho would be coming back, maybe, unless he went outside and had Shibata throw him in the air again. That always made Mob so nervous…but not as nervous as she got when dad was upset….

"Good." Said Suzuki. He went back to eating. She did the same. There was a delay, though, as she had to spend some time watching him. He had no idea why she had to watch him, what her curiosity was. She knew that he had told her to leave him be. For a moment he wants to tell her to get out…but he needs her there. She keeps his mind on her…a little bit, at least. He knew that if he were to be alone then he would end up driving himself crazy. Maybe he was already crazy. He was constantly putting himself through all of this torment. He shouldn't have gotten himself so worked up…

But he had.

She would have been so ashamed of him if she knew what he had done and now he had felt. She looked up to him. She looked to him for guidance for her own life, how she was supposed to be, and if he couldn't even control himself then how was she supposed to? She would take it as permission to lose control and act like…this. Honestly he would not have been surprised if she ended up leaving him one day-

-she would never leave him.

Not that he needed her. Not that he needed anyone. Not that he wasn't a full and complete person all on his own. She was just…she was his Daughter. Of course she would not be able to leave him. She would always be his Daughter and therefore she would always be by his side. She was dependent on him…well she would grow up but…but she would always be with him and he should not have been thinking about this, about any of this, about anything other than finishing lunch and getting back to work.

There was no shortage of things that needed doing.

He had money and people to move around and there was a stack of things that needed his approval and the latest purge had left some big holes in the organization. He had things to do and getting all twisted up over someone who he barely knew, and who should not have been bothering him anyway, and who he should have told him to leave him be….it was irrational, the way that he was being. Completely irrational and not at all conductive to his future goals.

"Did your computer freeze? I mean because you've been staring for a while and I know how to unfreeze it. At least I think that I do." Said Mob. It did not feel good being near dad when something was upsetting him. His aura hurt, for one thing, when it touched hers. Also knowing that he was upset made her feel upset and then if she got upset she could have lost control….and that would not have been good…so she had to just stop…but she couldn't because dad was being…well he wasn't being anything.

That was the worst.

It was a relief, almost, when he did end up mad at her and Sho. There was a sense of relief to it because once he punished her she knew that it was the longest possible time before more punishment. She hated it when he punished Sho, though, but it was better when he punished her. That way, at least, Sho was ok and…and she didn't have to worry about being punished for a very long time.

She wished that he would have just hit her over the head and gotten it done with instead of just knocking her headband off.

"No. I told you to leave me alone." Said Suzuki

"I know you did but I'm worried…about you. I love you dad and I can tell that you're upset and I don't know what I did that's making you so upset but I'm sad about…about how you feel." Said Mob. She thought that she had said that right. She had a lot of trouble saying the right thing at the best of times. Dad wasn't like everyone else, he had his own rules about what was ok to say to him, and sometimes he got mad at her even if she didn't think that she had said anything that was that wrong.

Like now. He was even more upset now and she had no idea what it was that she had said that was so bad.

"I don't feel any particular way, first of all. Second of all you don't need to worry about me, I am the adult and you're the child, so therefore I am the one who should be concerned with your wellbeing instead of you being concerned with mine. Third of all and finally you've done nothing wrong. Well you had, before, but now…well now you're becoming tiresome. If you don't stop it I'm going to send you out." Said Suzuki. He thought that he had made himself perfectly clear. Verbal expression had never been one of his strengths. There had been no reason to develop those skills since he had actual strength to him. She was…upset…though. That was the feeling he got from her aura, anyway, even though she had no reason to feel that way.

He had thought that he had been calm, honest, and to the point. If he had wanted her frightened then he would have set out to frighten her.

"….sorry, dad." Said Mob. She knew as soon as he started looking at her, with his eyes and with his aura, that she had said the wrong thing. She wished that he could have just punished her now and gotten it all over with. Sooner rather than later. Better that she got punished than Sho. He was the best little brother in the whole world…even if he could be kind of man sometimes…but he did not deserve whatever punishment dad was planning on coming up with for them.

She sat as still as possible.

"Apology accepted. Now be quiet." Said Suzuki. He liked that about her. She realized when she'd made a mistake and then she owned up to it. He had no idea where she got it from. He had been agonizing over every mistake that he had ever made since…he didn't even know. Last spring's mistake had been weighing on him lately. He had mostly purged all thoughts of that incident, and the woman involved, from his mind…but now, thanks to her constant attempts to regain contact with him, he found himself wishing that she would have walked through his office door with a warm cup of tea and a few minutes of intelligent conversation….

Why was she even trying to reestablish contact with him in the first place?

She did not have feelings for him. She had no reason to have feelings for him. Logic dictated that she should have hated him. He had been the one to leave and leaving…that was the worst thing that one could do to another person in his opinion. Be it through death or simply getting up and walking away leaving was the worst thing that a person could do because it robbed another person of your presence in their life. He had no idea why she would have wanted him in her life. It couldn't have been that the sex had been just THAT good.

Well if it had been then that would have made sense. He hadn't disappointed anyone yet.

That's the stupid part of his brain, the one concerned with the reproductive instinct, that tells him that he should be proud of himself for never having had left a partner unsatisfied. That isn't an accomplishment, the more intelligent part of his mind reminds him, because it really isn't that difficult. Even on a very uncomfortable desk with someone he had never been with before and who he would never be with again…and that was fine. There was a feeling attached to that and he doesn't even bother to examine it.

He just exorcises it.

He should have no feelings about this, what had happened, beyond simple curiosity as to why she would want to speak to him at this point. The time to speak to him would have been after he had left. If she had his personal email then she could have contacted him at any point. Not that he wanted her to contact him. Not that he wanted to talk to her about that book she had been reading or if she was still into….he did not care. Pang was just a woman who had been in his life briefly and then he had done something with her that he shouldn't have….and that was the whole of it.

He went back to her message. His cursor hovered over it. His finger hovered over his mouse. He did not click.

His lunch was half eaten. Daughter was done and was back to doing something on her tablet. He was tempter to ask her what she was up to. Even if it was another one of her games or one of her movies or even one of her short videos full of humor that he was far too old to understand he wanted to…to use her to distract himself…but he didn't. She would just start up with her questions again and he did not want to deal with that.

He should have just deleted this message.

He should have deleted all of her messages. He should have ignored her. He should have done something about the fact that she was bothering him…but he didn't. He hated himself sometimes. How he could be. How he was. The sun got caught on his wedding ring. He was married. Even if Masami was gone he was married to her and she had never been unfaithful to him and he should not have been unfaithful to her but he had been unfaithful and out of everything that he had ever done in his life that was his only regret…his only recent regret…and he should have just forgotten about Pang and what had happened but he couldn't and-

He felt Daughter's aura.

"If you're done I can take your plates and stuff…because I'm done so I'm going to get rid of my plate and stuff…" said Mob. She didn't want to be around dad when he was all upset like that. She couldn't just get up and leave, though, because he would have asked her where she was going and then she would not have just been able to come out and tell him that she did not want to be near him. That would have been mean and she was not going to be mean to her own dad.

But she did want to put some space between them.

And she couldn't just say that she had to go to the bathroom because she had just gone to the bathroom so if she said now that she had to go to the bathroom then he would have been able to tell that she was lying…and also she would have been lying, too, and she hated lying. She was bad at it, first of all, and second of all she was not supposed to tell lies in the first place. Both mom and dad had told her that lying was wrong. She had to be good. Dad liked her better when she was good and so did mom…even if she was gone. Even if mom had betrayed them all by leaving which was worse than telling lies. At least, even if she had told lies, she would still have been there. Mom was…why did she even care what mom thought? If mom had been there then she would not have had to even think about lying to her own dad. She would have been a home and…well she would have been at school…or maybe not. She had no idea what time it was in Japan. She knew, however, that she would have been with mom but not dad and if she had been with mom then she would not have had to worry like she was now. She was worried about getting punished, worried about Sho getting punished, worried about how dad felt, worried about letting dad down, worried about letting mom down…and it shouldn't have mattered if she had let her mom down.

Mom was gone.

There was anger there when she thought about it. Mom having had left. She tried not to be angry but…but she was still trying to be what mom wanted her to be even though mom was gone. She should have just worried about dad, being who he wanted her to be, because he was there. Of course he wouldn't have wanted her to lie to him because that would have been bad of her even though there were worse, so many worse, things that she could have done.

She wondered if avoiding your own dad because he was mad and refused to tell you why was wrong, too.

"Take it." Said Suzuki. He had lost his appetite in the first place. He uses his powers to pass her his half eaten lunch. Such a pity, it had been good, but he had lost his appetite. A physical reaction to all of the emotions that he was trying to exorcise. Good. She was leaving. She didn't have to see her father like this. What could he even say to her? Well nothing, obviously, because she was ten…or was she still nine? He had no idea.

Young. Too young. Also she was his child.

Also he had nothing to say to anyone about this let alone his own child. He had no idea why it was that Pang was messaging him out of nowhere, why she of all people wanted to get into contact with him, and he didn't care. He had work to do. He had an organization to run. He could not afford to become…this. To practically drown in his own emotions…ones that should have been exorcised ages ago….

Why did SHE have to be one to contact him?

Why couldn't it have been…no. The windows behind him crack. He's glad that Daughter isn't around to see him like this. He doesn't care if Masami ever speaks to him again. She had left him and she was a traitor and he would not have given his first born child to have been able to see her just once more….he doesn't care about Masami or how long it had been or how she had left him or how he had been unfaithful to her or how she could have been with someone else at that moment in time or at how his Daughter had questioned him or about how-

He exorcised his emotions.

The only thing he cared about was getting back to work. The best time of the day, lunch, was over and now it was time to get back to work.

He couldn't afford to be distracted like this.


	133. Lunch in the Cafeteria

Sho had never eaten in the cafeteria before.

He liked it! There were so many other espers around, none of them kids but he was used to that, and nobody cared how he ate or what he said or even if he was loud and annoying! This was so much better than being upstairs and eating with dad and big sis! This was freedom, true freedom, like the time when he was at the museum and they had a bird in a cage so he let it go and it was so happy…and he had no idea what big sis had been so mad about. Her favorite song was called Let it Go after all.

He drank his pudding straight from the cup and threw it across the table. He knew that she would not have been able to let that go.

"You know, Little Suzuki, there's a garbage can right there." said Shibata. He pointed across the room at the big line up of garbage cans. They had a bunch of signs telling people to throw their trash away. Sho maybe should have but he wasn't going to. He was free and he could do whatever he wanted to. Besides, it wasn't like everyone else in the room was cleaning up after themselves.

"I know, I don't care." Said Sho. He opened up another pudding cup and went to drink it, managed to get it so close he could smell the chocolate and vanilla swirl, when it disappeared right out of his hand. He didn't have to look far to see where it had gone to. It was right across the table from him.

"That's mine!" said Sho. He stood up on his chair and reached over for it. Shimazaki just hit him in the face with a plastic spoon. The spoon was sticky, he had already used it, and it was so gross! It was only ok when he did that to big sis, not when someone did that to him, because it was the grossest thing ever! Now he had Shimazaki's spit on him and…and he felt weird because of his gross it had been. Yes, that was it.

"I know, I don't care." Said Shimazaki. He took his spoon and dug into the kid's pudding. He could have said something like the kid had eaten enough pudding cups, he'd heard three hit the table so far, and then childhood obesity and type two diabetes and all of that shit. He could have said that, justified himself, but he didn't. He just liked messing with people.

"Be nice, he's just a kid." Said Shibata

"Yeah, I'm just a kid. So be nice to me." Said Sho. He reached across the table for his pudding cup back. He knew that it was gross now. Only brothers and sisters or brothers and brothers or sisters and sisters but never people who weren't related to each other. He should have been grossed out…and he was! He was super grossed out! He was the most grossed out! But he had to get his pudding cup back because…because of the principle! Yes, principles were important. Dad had said so. You had to stand by your principles and stuff and his principles said that he wanted his pudding cup back even if it was full of Shimazaki's spit.

"I'm a kid at heart so, no, I won't." said Shimazaki. If the kid didn't want to be messed with then he should have been less fun to mess with. There. Simple. Maybe Shimazaki should have had some kids. They could be fun…but then he'd have some kids. That was a lot of commitment. Also he'd never get a break from them. Even now he was starting to need a break from the kid. Or maybe the world. It was loud as hell in there, and not just because everyone felt the need to shout, there were a lot of auras in there. Well it was better to be down there than hanging out waiting for Suzuki to finish eating. That guy's aura screamed at the best of times but now he was on a whole other level. Shimazaki wondered what was up with him…but he didn't care so much as to go up to the man and ask. Or to spend any time unnecessary time with him.

"It's ok little guy. Here, you can have my cookie." Said Shibata. He passed Sho his cookie even though he wanted that cookie. He really wanted that cookie. These were the best cookies that he had ever had. These cookies were totally worth the big fight that had happened, before, and which had ended in him getting a new job and the cafeteria getting a new wall. He wanted that cookie but so did the kid and as the adult it was his job to go hungry so the next generation would not starve. He was old, twenty six already, he'd lived his life. Now it was time to give the next generation a chance at life.

"I wanted pudding…." Said Sho softly. He still snatched the cookie away, though, because these cookies were the best he'd ever had. Dad said that they were at this division because he had work to do but Sho knew the real reason. This was the best food that he'd ever had. Well at a division, anyway, because everyone knew that the best food in the world was at Hong Kong Disneyland.

"You did? Ok then." Said Shimazaki. The kid didn't waste any time, he just put up a barrier. Well he learned fast, didn't he? He could 'see' Shibata's aura. He could see him turning his aura inwards, always bizarre, but at least he wasn't bulking up to his final form now. Or maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. It would make everything more interesting.

"Don't steal my cookie or I'll…I'll steal something from you." Said Sho. He had never stolen anything in his life. Well he stole milk and candy and stuff from big sis but that was ok because they were brother and sister. She stole from him all the time too. Sometimes when they slept next to each other she stole all the blankets and one time she stole his soda out of the fridge even though she knew that he had been saving that specific soda for hours until it got just cold enough that it was good but not so cold that his teeth hurt.

"You're arguing with a little kid." Said Shibata

"And?" said Shimazaki

"He's nine years old. Why would you argue with a nine year old?" Said Shibata. You didn't argue with the little people. Even if they were adorable when they argued.

"Because it's fun. It's like playing chess with a chicken." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. The kid lunged for the cookie in his hand. He saw that coming, as he always did, and he acted quickly. He tossed his cookie from one hand to the other. The kid paused to ooh over the fact that he could throw something from one had to another. Sighted people were so easy to impress and children doubly so.

"I'm not a chicken." Grumbled Sho. He crossed his arms and sat back. He was going to get it…eventually. Shimazaki wasn't eating his cookie, he was dangling it right there in front of him, like he wanted him to take it. Well this was not playing chess with a chicken because Sho was not a chicken. Even if Shimazaki was cool and could teleport and also could see what you did before you did it, even though he couldn't see at all, but Sho was not afraid to steal his cookie back from him. If they fought then he would win. He knew that he would win because he said that he would win and if he said that he would win then he would not let himself lose.

"No, but this is like playing chess with a chicken. You can't win, because the chicken doesn't understand that it can't lose, but you still have fun." Said Shimazaki. There, a smarter way of saying that he liked to mess with people for the sake of messing with people. The kid was fun. He was a little ball of easily upset nerves much like his father. Though Shimazaki was not suicidal, he would never push Suzuki this far, even though he kind of wanted to see what would happen. Nothing good, probably, but it would still be worth it to…well maybe not. Maybe when he got old. When the world was conquered and he got his reward and Suzuki was close to death and old…but maybe that would be boring…hmm…he would have to think about it some more. He had time, though, about forty to fifty years.

"You'd be better off playing chess with a monkey. You can teach a monkey to play chess." Said Shibata

"Does it play a good game?" asked Shimazaki

"It plays decent, for a monkey. Well the one we had at Pet Palace did." Said Shimazaki

"You had a monkey?!" asked Sho. That was so COOL! He wanted a monkey! He would take good care of it, the best care of it, it would be his best friend! He wanted a monkey and…and there was no point in asking dad because he would just say no. Sho frowned some more.

"Yeah, how in the hell did you have a monkey? That can't be legal. Also monkeys are little bastards. Well temple monkeys are." Said Shimazaki. That had not been a fun trip. Though it had been harder on Toshi. They relied too much on their sight. Monkeys were masters of misdirection and they would do anything to steal from you…or for you. Though they didn't stay long enough for him to train any monkeys. They were a lot like kids, monkeys. Both were small and entertaining…..and good at misdirection.

He took an empty pudding cup and slammed it down on the kid's hand.

"Hey! What was that for?!" asked Sho. He had thought that Shimazaki had been distracted. What could be more distracting than monkeys? Well maybe cats…or hamster. Yes, most definitely hamsters, they were the best animals after all. They were small and cute and you could teach them tricks. Maybe he would have had a better time distracting Shimazaki if he'd had a hamster with him. Maybe then he wouldn't have gotten stopped again.

He felt warm.

His face was red, he could feel it, and his aura was showing and just as red. That was because he had lost. He was embarrassed and mad because he had lost. That was why his aura was that way and that was why people were staring at him…and didn't they have anything else to look at!? He wished that someone else would have started something. He wished for another brawl. He wished for a lot of things but his wishes didn't come true. He pulled his hand back. Shibata patted him way too hard on the head like he was a puppy or something.

"Don't move so slowly, kid, it's easier for me to see you." Said Shimazaki. He wondered if he would ever end up fighting this kid. He wouldn't be a kid forever after all. He would still be able to take him, maybe, especially if he was anything like his father. Suzuki telegraphed his movements too and Shimazaki would have won if Suzuki didn't have an inexhaustible well of power within himself.

"Can you see this?" asked Sho. He stuck out his tongue. He knew that he was not supposed to stick out his tongue, dad said that it was immature and stupid to be so immature, but that was what he felt like doing. If anyone deserved to have someone stick their tongue out at it was Shimazaki.

"Close your mouth before the birds nest in it." Said Shimazaki. He could hear Shibata laughing. He didn't see what was so funny about that. Kids stuck out their tongues all the time, it was just something that they did. It wasn't like when a dog walked on it's hind legs or something like that.

"Little Suzuki, come on. You've got to finish eating so you can grow up big and strong. Don't you want to grow up to be big and strong like me?" asked Shibata. That was so cute…but he shouldn't have been laughing like that. He was on babysitting duty, his superior had put him on babysitting duty, and he was not going to mess this up. The boss would have been upset with his son if he could have seen him then…and that was not a good thing, when the boss got mad at his son. The boss was a little too…much…when it came to his son, in Shibata's opinion, but what did he know? He wasn't anyone's father. At least he was mostly sure that he wasn't.

"Yeah, eat something, little guy." Said Shimazaki. That hiccup of his aura. It was way too easy to push that kid's buttons. Oh they were all so fucked when Suzuki either died or stepped down from his positon as unquestioned lord and master of the world.

"Eat this." said Sho. He did something that he had never done before but he knew that it was a bad thing. He had seen people doing that and he knew that it wasn't good. Mom had said so. She didn't tell him what it meant but she just told him that she never wanted to see him do that. Ever. Well it was ok, then, because mom was totally gone and never coming back.

"Are you flipping me off?" laughed Shimazaki. Ok, now it was time to laugh. He could see it, the kid was sitting there flipping him off like it was nothing, and it was hilarious. Really, it was. Oh, if Suzuki could have seen that he would have lost it. He would have done worse than knock out a wall. Well Suzuki wasn't there, just his son, and Shimazaki was going to enjoy the hilarity of being flipped off by a nine year old.

"Sho…that's not funny." Said Shibata. He laughed behind his hand. That really was funny. It was as funny as it was cute, with was very, but he should not have been laughing….but he was. He wished that it were more socially acceptable to take pictures of other people's kids. This would have been his background for sure if he could have taken a picture of this.

"I'm not trying to be. I'm trying to-" Said Sho. He could have said more, he would have said more, but he didn't have time. He felt a familiar aura coming near to his. Not dad's, thank God, and not big sis' either. No, this one was green. Green and warm and nice and fun.

A hand reached over and tucked his finger back into his fist.

"Sho, you know not to do things like that." Said Fukuda. Sho never ate down there with everyone else. Suzuki never ate with anyone outside of his family so therefore he did all that he could to cut his children off socially from everyone else. Or at least his daughter. He had never been as protective of Sho as he had been of Shigeko.

"I didn't do anything!" said Sho. He had said it on instinct. He felt bad as he said it. First of all he should not have been lying to Fukuda because Fukuda was nice and cared about him a lot. Second of all that was a stupid lie to be telling because Fukuda had just seen what he was doing. Third of all mom had always told him not to tell lies…but maybe that shouldn't have counted. Maybe he shouldn't have cared what mom thought, she wasn't even there and she had betrayed them all by leaving, but part of him still did. Or maybe he just cared what mom thought because mom and Fukuda had been best friends back when she had still been around and not a traitor.

"He's fine. He didn't mean anything by it." Said Shibata. He had no clue if Fukuda outranked him or not. He both was and was not a member of Suzuki's entourage. He was the personal healer to the Suzuki family and followed them around but he didn't live with the rest of them in their house and they hardly ever saw him, too. Little Suzuki seemed to be listening to him though.

"Yes I did!" said Sho. He regretted saying those words, too. Well now Fukuda would be upset because he had lied and admitted to lying. Great. Fukuda was pretty much the very last person who he wanted to be upset with him. He was kind of like a friend, almost, but a bossy one who healed him up and made him eat green vegetables and brush his teeth with real toothpaste, not the bubblegum kind.

"Sho, come on now. Why don't you come and eat with me? How's that sound? Come on." Said Fukuda. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Sho wouldn't have done that if he wasn't spending time with the worst influence in the entire organization. He knew Suzuki, he had known Suzuki since before Claw was even a thing, but he never would have figured that THIS would be the company he kept….and left his only son with. Though she wasn't Shigeko. He had to keep her close. She was his pride and joy after all.

"Ok." Said Sho because, well, what else could he say. He used to eat with Fukuda all the time. Back when mom had been sick and he had come over with extra food he had bought from the grocery store. Those had been fun times. He and Fukuda didn't spend as much time together as they used to. Probably because there was a lot of stuff to do in Claw and also Sho was a big kid now and didn't need to call Fukuda for every little thing.

He could have but he didn't.

He could have called Fukuda when he woke up all alone in the night. He could have made Fukuda come over during the day to play with him. He might have even been able to tell Fukuda to do his homeschool work for him like he had told the Awakened a few times before his teachers caught on. He could boss people in Claw around. If big sis could then he could too.

He just didn't want to.

Because he knew how it felt to be bossed around. He didn't want to make anyone feel like that but especially Fukuda. He had always been so nice to him. Even back when he had been little, so little that he could barely remember, Fukuda had been there and he had been nice to him. He sat down next to Fukuda with what was left of his lunch, only the apple and green stuff, and forced himself to eat it because he knew that the next thing that he would have been told to do was eat. Adults had this obsession with kids eating enough to grow up big and strong. It didn't make a lot of sense but then again a lot of things didn't make a lot of sense.

"Sho…you shouldn't do things like that. Ok? It's not nice." Said Fukuda after a moment. This was not his son, he reminded himself that this was not his son, but he could not have let Sho go around flipping people off. If his father had seen that then….Fukuda couldn't even stand to think of what the consequences would have been. Sho was just a kid, he didn't know what he was doing, but Suzuki would not have seen it like that. He thought that all kids came into the world miniature adults and that parenting involved hitting them when they upset you and ordering them around. Well that was not parenting and not all children were Shigeko.

"….I would have said sorry." Said Sho telling yet another lie. He knew that look, the one that Fukuda was giving him. Fukuda saw through him worse than a wet white t-shirt at the beach.

"Really?" asked Fukuda. Sho needed to spend some time with kids his own age. Actual kids, not his sister, because then he would not have picked up things like these. Of all the people that Suzuki had left his son with it just had to be Shimazaki. Fukuda couldn't speak for the new guy but he knew the look of him. Sho did not need to be around any other people with poor impulse control, Shimazaki, or issues with anger and violence, Shibata. He also didn't need to be around anyone else like his father, Shigeko, or his actual father, Suzuki.

He had failed Masami so badly that it wasn't even funny.

"…no…but he was asking for it." Said Sho. He saw Fukuda's aura hiccup and he shrunk down in on himself. It was a reflex, like when you hit your knee and it jumped, because usually dad's aura hiccupped like that before he hit him…but that was dumb, it had been a dumb thing to do, because Fukuda had never once hit him once in his entire life.

"Yeah, I'd bet he did. Still, you shouldn't get into the habit of doing that. It isn't nice. What would your mother say if she'd seen you doing that? Even if it was to someone like Shimazaki?" asked Fukuda. Masami would have hated him if she could see what he had let happen to her children. She couldn't see them, of course, because they had stopped checking in. He wasn't even sending her picture anymore. It just was not safe to send her any information. Not with that techopath Suzuki had collected. The search for Masami was still on, just cooled, and Fukuda would not be responsible for whatever it was that Suzuki planned on doing to his wife when he found her.

He knew exactly what Suzuki did to those he considered to be traitors.

"My mom wouldn't say anything because she isn't here." Said Sho. Now he wanted to leave. He was not allowed to ever talk about mom. If this got back to dad then he would be in for it. Fukuda knew that Sho would have been in for it. Fukuda was the one who fixed him up after dad punished him, he knew what would happen, but he was still talking about mom like it was something that they did all the time. What was the matter with him?

Maybe he missed mom, too.

But he shouldn't have! Mom was gone! She had left them. She had left them all alone with dad. If she had been planning on running away she could have taken him and big sis. Maybe even just him. They could have run away together and been together and been happy and…and it was…it would have been…he didn't even want to think about it. It was pointless to imagine a life where mom had taken him with her. She had left him and that was the whole of it.

The whole of it.

"That's true. She isn't here but if she were here she would have wanted you to have been a good boy. I'm sure that wherever she is she's thinking about you all the time and-" said Fukuda. They never talked about her, Masami, because Suzuki preferred to pretend that she had never existed. It was usually dangerous ground, talking about Masami, but there was a certain privacy to this place. It was crowded with people and auras. People were shouting and auras were bright and someone was committing the serious crime of watching YouTube without headphones. Across the way the other members of Suzuki's entourage were kicking each other under the table like a couple of nine year olds. Nobody was paying attention to them.

Nobody cared.

He could see Suzuki's aura above them, always above them, and he had something going on right now. Something upsetting enough to make his aura that visible. Something that Fukuda would have to smooth over later. There was always something. Maybe he was just upset about his birthday or the kids' birthdays or Masami's birthday. He was more sentimental than he let on.

"But she isn't. She's somewhere else and I'm here." Said Sho. His aura was showing again. He wanted to kick Fukuda, to throw his lunch at him, to climb over the table and hit him a bunch of times. But he wouldn't because he was not supposed to be a jerk like that. He was…he was going to eat his lunch…and he was going to be good. Mom might not have been there but Fukuda was…and also Dad was there, too, or at least his aura was.

"Sho-"said Fukuda. That anger. He had seen that anger before. He had always been prone to outbursts of anger but now it was getting worse. Fukuda did not want to know what Sho was going to be like during his teen years. He wasn't afraid, though, because he knew that he would never been on the other side of that anger. Sho was just a kid, anyway, he couldn't fully control himself.

"But if it makes you sad then I won't do that again…because it makes you sad. You're here. My mom isn't…and don't talk about her. Dad might hear you." Said Sho. He picked at what was left of his lunch. He wasn't hungry anymore.

"He's all the way up there in his office, he can't hear us." Said Fukuda

"You don't know that for sure, Fukuda. Dad just knows when you did something bad and…and I didn't even do anything bad. Well I did but you're doing something worse. Mom is gone, dad says that she's a traitor for leaving and…and we aren't supposed to talk about her. That's the way that it is now and…and…" said Sho

"Alright. If that's what you want." Said Fukuda. He hadn't meant to upset Sho. It hurt, knowing that Sho was hurt, and he wished that there was something that he could have done. There wasn't. He was powerless. He had been powerless for the vast majority of his life. Since the day he had met Suzuki Touichirou

"It is. I want-" said Sho. He wanted to go. He wanted to be alone. He didn't want to be there in case Fukuda started talking about mom again. He knew for a fact that they were not ever supposed to talk about mom. He wanted to go but he couldn't just get up and leave. That would have been mean. He was enough of a jerk that the last thing he wanted to do was to be an every bigger jerk than he already was.

He wanted to go.

He wished that he could go and his wish was granted. He felt big sis's aura. He turned to face her. She was walking away from the garbage cans and over to the drink fridge. He watched her get out a bottle of that strawberry milk she was always drinking. Something was bothering her. He could feel her aura.

It was not a jerk thing to do, getting up and leaving, if you were helping to make your big sis feel better.

"I want to go see what's wrong with big sis. Bye." Said Sho. He got up and walked over to her. She stood in line even though they didn't have to because they were dad's kids. So he really did need to go over there and help her out. The line was long and that guy who never wore headphones was there. Yes, she certainly needed him to save her. He could be a jerk to her sometimes but not all of the times.

"See you, Sho." said Fukuda. He was, once again, alone. Sho was so afraid of his father that even the mention of his mother sent him running. He wished that he could have just told Sho the truth. Not the whole truth, of course, because nobody wanted to know that about their mother. No, he had no desire to give Sho something else to describe to the therapist he would undoubtedly have to see in his adult years. That poor kid…there was so much that Fukuda should have been doing for him. So many promises that he had made to Masami, to his mother, to the woman he loved….he stopped thinking about this. About her. About Masami, his Masami…not his Masami. She was not his wife and these were not his children. If they had been his children he would have told Sho that he didn't have to go running to his sister, that he had to stay put and eat something, that he didn't have to spend every waking moment of his life with Shigeko.

But he didn't.

Because he was not going to overstep. He knew that Suzuki was pissed enough. He knew that he was irreplaceable but he also knew that his life could have been worse. There was always something worse and Suzuki would think of it. Just when you thought that it didn't get any worse….well there were prisons. There were places that Fukuda wasn't even sure existed anywhere outside of rumors. There was always something worse that could be done to him…and maybe he was just being selfish. Maybe he was just a horribly selfish man.

Maybe he should have done more.

Maybe he should have done more for those kids. Maybe he should have done more to keep Shigeko a sweet little girl and not just a smaller version of her father. Maybe he should have done more to keep Sho safe over these years. More to keep him from becoming the angry little boy he had grown into and the angry man it looked like he would be. Hell, maybe he should have done more back when he and Suzuki were in school. More to stop him. More to stop all of this…

But he hadn't and now Sho was over there with his sister and he was sitting at a table all alone poking at a cold, limp, salad and a mealy apple.

They had never eaten together since…what had happened, in the cafeteria or otherwise, and he doubted that they ever would again.


	134. Dad's Chair

Dad's chair was too big.

It was hard and cold, made of leather and not soft, but she should have been happy that she got to sit in it. She should have been happy that dad had trusted her enough to sit in his chair and help him with his work. He trusted her to be all alone in his office, too, which was more than he trusted anyone else. He had to attend to something, he had said, and Sho got bored and left. She was all alone in dad's chair in his office at his computer answering correspondence of great important.

Which was meant that she was in his email telling people that dad would get back to them if it wasn't something important and clicking the star if it was.

This was dad's work email, he had said, which meant that she had to be professional. He trusted her to sort through his work emails and to tell him what was important and what wasn't. Also she had to tell some people that dad would get back to them which was a lot, actually, more than anyone else was allowed to do. Dad trusted her judgement above everyone else's, he said, and he knew that she would not mess anything up.

It was a lot.

A new email. Some of the Awakened wanted to throw dad a belated birthday party. That wasn't important even though birthday parties were fun. Well she figured that they would be fun, she'd never had a real birthday party before, but that was ok. It made sense, though, that dad wouldn't have wanted a birthday party, belated or otherwise. He hated things like that, things with a lot of people and noise and stuff, and also he said that she was to tell the Awakened that he would not be there unless it was an important work thing. There. That was easy. That was easy and she was fine and she was doing a good job and she needed to do a good job or dad would be mad and when he got mad he would have punished her or maybe even Sho, probably even Sho, and then Sho would have been hurt and that would have been bad and it would have been all her fault and-

Things were floating around her.

She reached behind herself and held her braids down. Her headband had floated off of her head. She held on to her braids, if she let them go then they would float away, and she did not want that to happen. She cared more about her braids than her headband…though she liked that headband. Even though it seemed like dad didn't…and he was already upset that she wore it and if she messed up then he would be even more upset now…and….AND she had lost control of her powers….and it was so hard and-

-another email.

Mob closed the laptop a little too hard. She knew that if she messed up dad would be mad at her…and she was losing control…so she needed a break. Just a short one. She took some deep breaths and tried her best to conceal her feelings. Conceal, don't feel. Power is nothing without control. All of those other things that dad had been telling her for her entire life. She needed….she needed….her eyes landed on her strawberry milk.

She needed milk.

Not plain milk, no, and not strawberry milk either. She needed….she needed Minegishi to share…but they were busy and they didn't share with her that often. They kept on saying that they were trying not to ruin her life and stuff but she didn't see how something that made her feel good could ruin her life. She liked to drink that stuff even if it tasted like burning. It made her powers calm down. They didn't listen, it was like they were asleep, and that was what she needed. She needed her powers to just calm down and….and she needed to get back to work because dad had trusted her to do this for him and she needed to make her dad proud. To make him happy.

That was the most important thing, how dad felt.

Which meant that she had to stop feeling. She had to stop feeling and just…just get rid of everything that she was feeling. There was just so…much. The weight of it. The weight of what dad wanted her to do. He had never asked her to help like this before…but now he did. Her birthday was so close and he said that she was old enough to help him out more…and that meant that she would have more and more to do…and then there would be so many chances for her to mess up…

And dad had been kind of upset lately…more so than normal.

She leaned back in his chair and almost tipped over. In trying to correct herself she ended up sprawled out on the ground next to his desk. She could feel the carpet against her legs. At least she had been all alone and nobody could see how her dress had come up high enough to show her underwear. She sat up and fixed her dress.

Her headband was on the ground next to her.

There. She had stopped using her powers. All it had taken was her falling down on the ground. That was…not good. She was still worried, and now her hair was trying to float again, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do…what she could do. Well she knew what she could do. In sitting up she could see the cabinets on the other side of the room. Sho said that the stuff in those bottles was not juice or cola and it tasted like burning. He also said that he spat it out the second he drank it, which was good because she did not want him to do what she had done, and Mob knew what that meant when something tasted like burning.

She wondered if it would count as stealing.

Or borrowing without asking and never returning. She wondered if it would have been ok if she were to…but dad never said that she could. Also she was a kid and kids were not supposed to drink that stuff. Well normal kids were not supposed to drink that stuff. She was not a normal kid. She didn't go to school and ate whatever she wanted to and didn't have a bedtime and helped her dad with his very important work…so she was not a normal kid. Also family could not steal from family. Food and drinks were communal property. Dad had said so. That wasn't what dad had meant by drinks, maybe, but it was a liquid and it could be drunk. Dad said that if the food was there in their living space then it was for everyone…which was why Sho should not have hit her because she accidentally drank his soda and also she was not supposed to hide food and milk in their room when she didn't want Sho to find and drink it.

So this was ok.

So it would have been ok for her to do what she was thinking of doing. So it was ok for her to get up off the ground, walk across the room, and open dad's glass cabinet. The one with all the pretty bottles in it. He had never told her that she wasn't allowed to touch those pretty bottles. She had always liked them. In most of his office he had pretty bottles full of dark liquids. He said that those were important for social stuff. Sometimes you had to follow social rules in order to benefit yourself, dad had said, which contradicted it when he told her that because they were powerful espers they didn't have to do anything that normal people wanted them to. She was not going to get into that with him, why he sometimes said things that contradicted other things, because then he would have been upset with her. He had been so upset lately…and if she asked him why he had this for social rules after he told them they were above social rules…

He would ask her why she was being like that and then she would have to explain that it had come to her when she was about to drink from the pretty bottles.

This did taste like burning. She took a drink from the one that was mostly full. It was heavy and she, actually, almost dropped it. That would have been bad. Dad had been so upset, before, about how messy things had been in there after Sho and the others had come back from the big food fight. If she made his office smell like this then he would have been upset with her…and he was already pretty upset. She didn't need him to be upset with her or Sho…and now she was worried about him being upset with them….she was worried again.

She took another drink.

It tasted less like burning when she mixed it with something. She wasn't about to go and try to pour this heavy bottle into her milk bottle. Even with her powers she could have made a mess. Also Minegishi said that the clear ones were the best for mixing. Dark colored ones were good for mixing with dark things like cola but clear ones could be mixed with everything. Then they told her to mix the clear stuff into a cup of coffee for them. Then they told her that they were trying really hard not to ruin her life. Then they shared with her….

Adults could be so confusing sometimes.

Life could be so confusing sometimes. Things like why it was ok for adults to do something but not kids. Normal kids. The rules were different for her because she wasn't a normal kid. But still, why did adults have so many different rules for themselves and kids and why did they have to contradict themselves, too. She wanted to ask dad that, he knew everything, but she knew better. She knew not to upset him any more than he already was. It didn't seem fair, though, that everyone always had to worry about upsetting him.

Thinking like that would do her no good.

So what if it was unfair? A lot of things weren't fair. Cats would never know how soft their fur was, boys never got to wear dresses, girls had to have long hair that got knots in it all the times, and moms sometimes ran away and never came back. There were a lot of things in life that were not fair and the best to do, it seemed, was to fix the things that you could and just try your best to work with the things that you couldn't fix. She couldn't fix dad, couldn't make him less upset all the time, but she could at least do her best to make him happy and to help him out as best as she could.

And also not lose control of her powers or get upset. Dad hated that more than anything else in the whole, wide, world.

She put the heavy, pretty, bottle back where it belonged. She reached over to straightened it out so it matched the rest of them. There, that way dad wouldn't notice. She would maybe get in trouble if he noticed. Maybe. Probably. She couldn't be sure. She couldn't be sure of a lot of things…and also the floor felt a little bit uneven.

Too much.

Right. Too much. That had been too much and now she had to…she had to get back to what she had been doing. If dad came in and saw that she wasn't working anymore he would ask her what happened, well he would tell her to explain like he always did, and then she would have to explain and then he would be mad at her…madder than he had been when he left, though he had said that it wasn't at her, but she wasn't about to go and make him all mad at her.

She got back to work.

She walked across the floor, it felt uneven even though she knew that it wasn't, and climbed back into dad's chair. The wheels made it sort of hard, also it was set up for someone as tall as him not someone as short as her, but she climbed up. She could have used her powers to get up there but they weren't listening. Good. That was good. If they weren't listening she could pretend like they weren't even there. Sometimes she even wished…but that was not the thing to wish for. She had powers and they were hers and she couldn't just wish them away.

Dad would not have loved her anymore if she didn't have her powers.

The realization comes to her as she sits in his chair. She can see the whole office from there. The view was better than the view from the floor. She only got a view from up there because she had her powers. Because she was dad's Daughter. Because she was the Prodigy. Dad hadn't loved Sho very much before he got all of his powers. Even before he went through the awakening thing, the awful awakening thing, he'd had powers but they weren't good enough and dad had barely loved him. If she woke up tomorrow just a normal kid with no powers then dad…dad would not have loved her anymore. She wouldn't have gotten to see the view from up or down or anywhere. She would have been all alone.

That would be the worst thing ever, in her opinion, being all alone.

Dads could leave too. If moms could leave then dads could leave. Little brothers could leave, too, and they would once they grew up and inherited the world. Then she would be all on her own…or maybe not. Dad had told her, before, that she was never allowed to leave him. He was allowed to leave her, though, but if he didn't leave her then they could be together forever. That would be…something. She doesn't know. Would it be worse to be alone or with dad? That would be a problem for adult Mob to deal with. Nine, ten soon, Mob didn't have to worry about things like that.

She got back to work.

She opened dad's laptop…and then it did the booting up thing. Oh. She must have closed it too hard. Well it didn't matter, she knew his password, it was mom's birthday. It was always mom's birthday even though he said that mom was a traitor and that they weren't even supposed to so much as talk about her. That wasn't fair. Mob didn't think that it was fair…and she had drank enough that she could think that but not enough that she would say it out loud. Minegishi had said that there was a danger to drinking too much, you lost control of your mouth, and that you had to be careful when you drank. Mob knew that she had drank too much, the floor being uneven was a sign, but she couldn't even imagine telling dad what she really thought. No, that would not have been good at all. There was no point to it, anyway, because dad was the boss of her and everyone else and the entire world, soon, if everything went well.

There was no point in telling dad what she thought. It would just make him mad at her.

She sat back and watched his laptop do it's login thing. She and Sho had a laptop for videogames but she liked tablets better. Touch screens were just so much easier than pointing and clicking and stuff like that. She wondered why dad didn't just get a touch screen laptop. Or maybe it was just one of those things that he didn't care about. She didn't know. She would ask him later. Or not. It all depended on how he felt. She wished that he would just tell her what was wrong but, of course, he wouldn't. He never talked about how he was feeling. Sometimes it was like he didn't have any feelings at all, it seemed like, but she knew that he did. She watched his aura a lot and it did move. Even if he tried to stop it from moving, to stop himself from even feeling anything at all, because if he let himself feel things then he would lose control.

She wondered why he didn't just mix something into his tea or something like that.

She wondered a lot of things about dad. She had spent her whole life wondering things about dad. It didn't matter though, what she wondered, because even if she learned everything about him, read the book that was her dad, it wouldn't make a difference. He would still be unfair and mean, a lot of the time, and understanding why he was the way he was wouldn't make him stop being the way he was. He was who he was and that was just how it was so she just had to get back to work like how she had been before.

She went back to his emails.

She wouldn't snoop around. There was nothing for her to even snoop through. This was all work stuff. She didn't even know if he had anything worth looking through. Not that she did that, look through other people's things, that often. Minegishi said that it wasn't polite at all and one day she was going to end up finding things that she wished that she hadn't found. Kind of like the time she found what was left of their giant sandwich under Sho's bed. It had turned blue and then black and he was trying to see what other colors it would turn. Mob didn't care about what colors it was going to turn, it was gross, and she had to throw it away….that had not been a good fight. She doubted that dad had anything like that to hide from her, though, or that he had anything to hide at all.

She couldn't think of anything that dad had to hide from her.

She knew that there were things that she couldn't know about until she was older. Well Minegishi had a bunch of things that they wouldn't tell her until she was ten so she figured that dad, because he was an adult too, had some stuff that he wasn't planning on telling her until she got older. Adults were always saying that they would tell you things when you were older. Even mom had been like that. She wondered what mom had been waiting to tell her when she got older. It didn't matter, mom was never coming back, and she would never know. It didn't matter. She knew her parents. They wouldn't hide anything big from her…or at least dad wouldn't…because he trusted her. Also in a lot of ways only dad mattered. She only had him as a parent after all. She only had a dad and she had to do what he wanted her to do and she had to make him proud and she had to get back to work and-

-and she wasn't sure what she was looking at.

She had gone back to his email…but this one was different. A lot of these emails were…new? At first she thought that a bunch of people had suddenly decided that they had to talk to dad right then, right that second, but then she checked the dates. How had she missed these? She didn't even remember seeing these and….and then she checked the name at the top. This was and was not dad's email.

This wasn't work stuff.

No internal memos, which were notes that went to everyone, and the emails called dad Suzuki-san, not Suzuki-sama. Not Mr. President. Not President Suzuki. Just Suzuki-san. That was what Fukuda called dad, and a few other upper echelon people, and it just seemed more…familiar. San instead of sama. She was Suzuki-san too. Sometimes Suzuki-sama, some Awakened called her that, but mostly it was Suzuki-san. She would have preferred Mob, just Mob, but the only person who was that close to her was Minegishi. Dad…as far as she had known dad didn't have anyone close to him, closer than her, close enough to talk to him like this…

Some of these just called him Suzuki, plain Suzuki, nothing but Suzuki.

Which was weird. So weird. The most weird…and now Mob was curious. She knew that she was not supposed to be in there looking at dad's private emails, and she knew that this must have been private, but she was also…curious. Like she needed to know even though she really should have just been minding her own business and stuff. She just…she had no idea who would be talking to him like that…or why….and she had no idea what she would do if she found out but…but she was still curious…

She opened the one on top.

It said that there was trouble in the Second Division. Some of the Awakened were upset because a bunch of them didn't make it through the awakening process and the division leader was worried about the lack of loyalty…and also how many recruits that they had lost in the process….but if people had gotten lost then they could have been found again. That was what lost meant. This was in English and Mob spoke very good English, dad had said so, and lost meant the same as missing. Not dead. No, because then…then she would have seen a dead person back at the Eighth Division on that Halloween when she had been eight…and she had not seen someone die and if that person had been dead then dad would have cared…so she had not seen someone die and here lost meant missing and not dead and-

And she would let dad answer that one.

She marked that one as unread, hopefully dad didn't realize that he could check and see what had been opened and what hadn't been even if she had marked them as unread, but he probably didn't know he could do that. He was bad at this kind of stuff, he even had trouble with her tablet even though it was so easy, it was probably because he was so old. He was forty two years old, which was a lot, and when he had been born there hadn't been any computers or tablets or anything. That was good. He wouldn't know that she had snooped through his things…

And she should stop now.

Any minute now she would stop. She could have stopped at any time. Exited out and figured out how to get into dad's work only one. She could have and she would have but then she saw, in the subject line, the kanji that made up mom's name. She hadn't seen those in so long….and she had to click on it. Part of her wanted to think that it was from mom. Part of her wanted it to be mom messaging dad telling him that she's sorry she ran away and that she was coming home and then that she would make sure that everything got back to normal…

Not normal.

The way that it had been before. It had been three years. What was normal, what counted as normal for the Suzuki family, had changed in three years. A lot had changed in three years. She and Sho were taller, Sho kept his hair cut shorter, she kept her bangs cut longer, dad drank more tea instead of coffee, they rarely went back to Japan, they had stopped going to school, nobody gave them baths, nobody read them to sleep, nobody held them and rubbed their backs when they got lonely or sad or scared or-

Did she even want mom to come back?

Of course she wanted her mom to come back! Her powers aren't working right. If they had been right then that would have been an explosion. At worst it was like someone had opened a window. A bunch of stuff moved, papers fluttered to the ground, but aside from that the office was intact. Good. That was good. She didn't know why she had even thought something like that. Of course she wanted her mom to come back. Mom was her mom. Mom loved her and Sho and dad and when she came back then things would go back to the way that they had always been and then they would go back to the Castle and everything would be better and…and she would explain why she had left them in the first place. She would explain where she had been all these years. She would…she would do a lot of explaining…because she had a lot of explaining to do.

Mother. Explain.

There were no explanations to be found in that email. None. It wasn't from mom. It was about mom. The email address that it had been sent from was just a string of numbers. It said that the search for Suzuki Masami was still not turning up anything. Dad was…still looking for mom. Even though he had said so many times that she was a traitor and that they weren't even supposed to talk about her or think about her…he was still looking for her. Not personally, obviously, but he had sent people out there to find mom even though he was always talking about how short staffed Claw was. That meant…she had no idea what that meant. That he wanted her back? That he was planning on punishing her when she did come back? That he cared? That he just cared that someone had betrayed him? Mob had no idea.

She couldn't ask, either.

She could just click the back button and then mark that email as unread. She knew that she should have stopped. She had just found something that she wished that she hadn't. Minegishi had been right, nothing good came from snooping through other people's things, and Mob knew that she needed to stop right that second…but she had already found something that she hadn't wanted to see…so maybe that had been it. Maybe there was nothing else in there that she wasn't supposed to see. Maybe the rest of it was just things that…that wouldn't make her upset.

The next one was from the Seventh Division.

This one was less upsetting. They thought that they'd found Hanazawa, the boy with the gold colored aura, but it had been a false alarm. The division leader, Ishiguro, said sorry a bunch of times. He said that he would swiftly punish his subordinates. He asked for some new Scars. He said that very few of them were working out…and that they kept on fighting with one another…but that was normal for Claw. In Claw it felt like, sometimes, that everyone was just two seconds away from beating each other up for no reason at all. Claw attracted the violent types, dad had said, and they had their uses. Mob didn't think that people had uses, uses were for things like apps and appliances, not people. In her opinion at least…which didn't even add up to a grain of rice for how much dad cared.

Dad loved her.

She decided that she would stop it. She would stop being a snoop and she would get back to what she had been doing. She had go to back to starring things that needed dad's attention and giving polite but firm responses to the Awakened who requested his presence for things that had nothing to do with work. That was what she was supposed to be doing, not this, and she was about to stop when she saw something that she could not ignore.

She knew those kanji.

Touichirou. That was dad's given name. Nobody called him Touichirou. Nobody but mom had ever called him that….that Mob had heard. His parents, of course, must have called him but his given name because they were the ones who had given it to him. This was not from his parents, though, because she doubted that his parents would have emailed him in Korean…and also they might not have even still been alive….and mom didn't speak Korean either. That was why she always put the Japanese subtitles on when she watched her Korean dramas…unless mom had learned Korean in the three years she had been gone for. Three years was enough time to learn a language.

Mob had learned some English, some Mandarin, and some Korean in three years.

She didn't know enough Korean to read this message. It takes her too long to realize that she's reading it the Japanese way, not the Korean way. She picks out some words. Dad's name is in kanji, which is very helpful, and also something about….running away? Disappearing? Something about it being important to come back to Korea. Bussan…it takes her a while to read that word. That's not Seoul. Seoul is where the Claw base is. She knows where they all are, the important ones anyway, and she knows that they had stayed at the one in Seoul last year. Why would someone be telling dad to come to Bussan when the base was in Seoul?

There were a lot more words that she could not read.

Responsibility came up a lot. That word…and also urgent. Something about not being able to do something, too. Needing help. Being ignored. Her Korean was not as good as she had thought that it was. Maybe it had been better when she had actually been living in Korea. She didn't know. All she knew was that this was a complicated language and that maybe, just maybe, she needed help….but who could she even ask? Not dad, obviously, because then she would have to explain. She was a little dizzy and sleepy but even in her state she knew that telling dad that she had been going through his private things was a mad idea.

Who else did she know that spoke Korean?

Minegishi spoke Korean! They spoke Japanese and Mandarin and Cantonese and Korean and Vietnamese and some Russian but the language that Mob needed them to translate was Korean. Mob gets her phone out of her pocket and is halfway through texting them when she realizes that this is a bad idea. So that was the whole 'drinking too much makes you stupid' thing that Minegishi had warned her about. Well they had been right. She had been about to do something so dumb. It was bad enough that Mob had gone through dad's private messages and stuff. It would have been even worse if she had brought another person into this. No, she was not going to involved them or anyone else.

She wished that Google was a better translator.

But it wasn't. She and Sho had played with the translator before and the things that it came up with here just…weird….sometimes. You couldn't trust a robot to do a human's job. Dad had said so. There were human translators in Claw but Mob was not going to involve someone else. She was not going to risk getting anyone else in trouble. She was already in enough trouble…or at least she would be if she got caught…

She decided not to get caught.

She marked the message that she had read as being unread and then she closed out of dad's email. His work but private work stuff and also people called him by his given name and stuff email. She closed his laptop too and sat back in his chair. She didn't care if he found her not working. Better he be a little bit mad at her for not working than very mad at her for reading things that she was not supposed to. Minegishi had been right, nothing good ever came of snooping, absolutely nothing. She wished that she hadn't read that, any of that, because now she had questions…and her head felt foggy enough that she almost wanted to answer them…

But she was not going to find dad and start demanding answers.

Because he would not have wanted to know, would have been mad at her if she told him, how she had even come into those questions in the first place. She should not have been going through his things and she should not have questioned him either. She just….she wanted to go to sleep. Or to rest. Or to just…be still for a while. To be still and not have to worry or think or…or anything.

Dad's chair was big and cold and hard but it would have been worse.


	135. Letters, Emotions, and Delegating Work

Suzuki Touichirou did not do things that he did not want to do.

He didn't have to justify himself to anyone. Nobody. If he didn't want to go to Korea then he was not going to Korea. Simple. He said things and then they happened. He said that he was not going to do things so then things didn't happen. Simple. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he was in control of himself and every situation that he was in and he was not going to Korea.

Even if he had frantic Awakened knocking on his office door and handing him cryptic letters from people he did not want to hear from.

She wanted him to meet her in Bussan. She lived there now. People were not supposed to just up and leave…but he was not going to get into that with her or her base leader. He wanted nothing more to do with Pang Sujin…or whatever her name was. He didn't know. He didn't care. She meant nothing to him and whatever the big, urgent thing was…well he had people for that. How she had even managed to personally get ahold of him was another thing. He would have to look into that too….but he would not because he wanted nothing more to do with her.

He really did.

He didn't want to know if she had ever finished that book she had been telling him about. He did not want to know what she thought of that kumdo season. He did not want to know…there was no point in thinking of the things that he did not want to know about her. There was no point in thinking about her. He had more important things to think about like…work. His own work that he should have been doing but instead he spent the latter half of the day staring at a letter written to him in Korean on one hand and the most perfect kanji that he had seen since….on the other side.

What a waste of a day.

He should not have sent the children away. They were, if anything, a distraction. Son had taken to jumping out of places in an attempt to startle Shimazaki, which was obviously not going to happen, and Daughter…well she had been odd. She had been sleepy, honestly, and clumsy. He wondered if she had taken ill. That had been his justification for sending the children away, that Daughter had been ill….

He should have kept her near, at least.

Things were always so much easier when she was near. Even when she was being annoying things were still easier with her around. He could talk to her. He could share something worth sharing with her. He could letter her chatter on about something that she cared about. He could even just sit there in companionable silence with her. Being near her….that was always pleasant. A hell of a lot more pleasant than spending the day staring at a letter.

"Hey boss? You ready to head home? It's getting kind of late." Said Fukuda. He knew, well as well as a person could know, Suzuki. He knew that Suzuki did not get melancholic but there he was sitting at his desk with his head down. He also knew that Suzuki did not get startled, he could see an aura from literal kilometers away, so the fact that he practically jumped when Fukuda came up to him…

Something was wrong with Suzuki.

It smelled vaguely of liquor and for a moment he has the crazy idea that Suzuki was drunk. That would…that would not have been good. He had babysat a drunk Suzuki before. It had not been good for everyone. Seasoning City had recovered…eventually. He looks Suzuki over with his aura. Not drunk. Perfectly healthy…thank God.

Yay. Perfectly healthy. No concussions, contusions, or abrasions.

Hoo-fucking-ray.

"Oh…yes. I suppose it is. Very well then." Said Suzuki. Nobody had been able to sneak up on him since…well since he had been surrounded by mostly normal people. He could not believe that someone had managed to startle him. If it had been anyone else he could have been killed. Thankfully it was only Fukuda. Still, though, he should not make it a habit to let his guard down like that. Especially since he had sent his bodyguards home...and maybe he just needed to get better at tolerating truly annoying people.

At least it was just him and Fukuda.

He could be annoying sometimes. He could speak out of turn or overstep when it came to the children…though he had been better about that as of late. Fukuda's presence had always been pleasant. Even when they had been young. He had thought that it would be another year with the same bunch of…his younger self had not had non crass words for those around him…but then he had felt Fukuda's aura. He had felt his aura and then it was Fukuda who had sought him out initially. They had each been the first esper that the other had met.

They had been fast companions.

"Everything alright, boss?" asked Fukuda as Suzuki got up from his chair. He bumped his knee on his desk. Right, Shigeko had been sitting in his chair that day. That had certainly been something, walking in to Suzuki's office and seeing Shigeko there. She had been sitting there in his chair at his laptop like she owned the place. If not for her headband and the costume dress that she had been wearing he would have thought that he had been looking into his future.

Serving another Suzuki.

That was how it had been since he had been a kid. He had been curious about Suzuki. He was the only other esper he had ever met in his life. He had been aware of a feeling, before, of someone near him. He had always attributed that feeling to spirits or something like that. He had no idea, up to that point in his life, that there were others like him. But then there, at his very school, was Suzuki Touichirou. His first ever esper 'friend'.

How he wished that he hadn't gotten into such a good school.

"Damn it." Muttered Suzuki. That was not like him, either, and he knew that he should have been guarding himself better. The whole desk had jumped. That had been his powers. There were pens and papers hovering in the air now. Damn it. He hadn't lost control like this since…well this was not losing control. Not truly. He knew what it was to truly lose control.

Thank God that Fukuda was the only one seeing this.

Fukuda had seen him truly lose control on more than one occasion. That was one of the main reasons that he had kept Fukuda around for in the beginning. He had been so annoying. Always insisting that they were friends. Insisting that they spend time together even when there was no need for it. He spent at least half his nights, in those days, in Fukuda's home and visa-versa. Fukuda had seen him at his greatest lows. That terrible White Day. The time at kendo. His parents. University. The time after Sho's birth while Masami was recovering. Masami leaving. All of it. Fukuda had seen it all and yet he still stayed no matter what had happened.

He had always been so loyal since the very beginning.

"Anything I should look at?" asked Fukuda. That had been his job in the beginning. Suzuki had been pretty accident prone. He had used his powers more back then, lost control of them more often back then, and cursed more back then too. Like now. He hadn't…well he had heard…but only when something was REALLY wrong. Those times were always few and far between….

Those times had never been good for anyone.

"No. I'm fine. Uninjured." Said Suzuki. He took his powers and practically slammed everything down where it belonged. Fukuda, to his credit, did not so much as flinch. He had seen that before. Back at school when he had been too distracted by…why did it always come back to women? He was not an adolescent anymore and he should not have been so hung up on the opposite sex. Of course back then rejection had been his problem…

And the solution had been simple.

Fukuda had given him some very good advice. He was good at two things, healing and understanding other people. Two skills that Suzuki was not ashamed to admit he was lacking. Fukuda had enough social skill to tell him that it didn't matter if she had rejected his offer of White Day chocolates and told him everything from his powers to the look on his face was creepy. There was someone out there for everyone.

He was having the opposite problem now.

"You sure? Because I could take a look at you-" said Fukuda

"I said that I was fine." Said Suzuki. There's an edge to his voice and his aura when he says fine. He does not mean to do that. Next to him his desk begins to float up off the ground. He slams it back into place. He isn't an adolescent anymore. He does not need Fukuda's social help with this. He doesn't need anyone's help with this. He doesn't need anyone's help because he knows exactly what he is going to do about this. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He is not going to meet her in Bussan and deal with whatever it is that she wants him to deal with.

She was either angry at him for leaving or she wanted to beg him to stay with her.

He doesn't want to deal with either option. If she was angry at him for leaving…well he should not have cared what anyone thought. Also he was her superior. Also she was the one who couldn't get a clue, that he wanted nothing to do with her, so really there was nothing wrong with him having left her and she had no right to…but he had never been good at this. Having women be angry with him. He just could not stand an upset woman. Men, well he didn't care about men. They were simple in their anger. He understood the direct physical fighting that came with being a man and angry with another man. Women were always so strange in their anger. They never told you what it was that they were even angry about. Even Masami had always just said that she was fine when he asked her what was wrong. He knew that she was not fine because something was so clearly wrong…but she had said that she was fine…

And then she had left.

But Pang Sujin was not going to leave him. She was seeking him out. She even said that if he wouldn't come to her then she would come to him…not a good prospect. She wanted to be with him. He did not want to be with her. He couldn't. He was already with Masami. Not physically and not in spirit, he hated astral projection and had no idea where he would even project his astral form TO, but he was still her husband.

They were still married even if they were apart.

Of course he had taken that, their marriage, and practically vomited all over it. He had been weak, that was all, because it had been a very long time since he had been with a woman. Now he was fine. He never even thought about…well not often…and he exorcised those thoughts when he could. He didn't need Pang Sujin or Masami or anyone. He was fine all on his own…which was why he was not going to Korea no matter how many handwritten letters he got.

"Hey, just doing my job." Said Fukuda. He knew Suzuki, he knew that something was bothering him, and he knew that it was his job to fix it. He was the person who had known Suzuki the longest. Some might even have mistaken them for friends. Their relationship was more like the one that Shigeko had cultivated with Minegishi. Someone to hover around Suzuki and follow his orders and fulfill social needs that the man would not even admit to having. That was his job. He had been at it for thirty years. At least he wouldn't have to do this for Shigeko. Thank God that Minegishi had taken that job.

He wondered if he should warn Minegishi about the complete and utter shit show that Shigeko's teenage years would be.

She was her father's daughter after all. Daddy's little girl. His pride and joy. His spitting image. Suzuki in feminine miniature. She didn't share a drop of blood with him but she didn't have to. Whatever was wrong with Suzuki, whatever made him the way that he was, could be seen right there in that little girl. Her face, her aura, the way she walked, the way she talked, the way she wanted the world and thought that she was right to ask for it, all of it. Suzuki had been the definition of awkward when he had been just a few years older than her.

Not that he had ever really stopped being awkward.

A change of hair and a suit to wear. Those were the only things separating forty two year old Suzuki from his younger self. He had cut his hair a lot shorter so it didn't stick out like Sho's did and he started wearing suits exclusively. Even to bed. If Fukuda could have met his younger self he would have been unrecognizable. Any ambition in life that he'd had, though it had not been much, was gone. He had gotten over his obsession with sci-fi too at some point. He had grown a few dozen centimeters and his skin had cleared up in the years between then and now. An improvement if he did say so himself. Not everything was an improvement though. He had considered Suzuki to be his best friend back then, a weird and bossy kid who liked sci-fi and had powers too. A total weirdo but still an ok guy. The only other esper that he had ever met, his lunchtime buddy, and sleepover partner. They had gone exploring a lot in those days too. To the back alleys and in the sewers, abandoned buildings and homes for sale, across the train tracks and down the road into the woods….yes, he remembered that day. He had said that the clearing in the woods where they'd built their fort would have been the first division of Claw.

Suzuki killed his parents. It ended up being the Seventh Division.

He had helped his best friend through that too. Orphaning himself. Losing his mom and dad…by his own hand. Even then he had no truly seen what Suzuki was. Even back then he had still considered him to be the closest thing to a best friend that he had ever had. Younger him would have slapped him over the head and told him to ask Suzuki again what was wrong. Stay on him until he either hit him or told him the truth. Take him out for nighttime omelets so the idiot would spill his guts already. Go to the manga store with him and hang out until he said what was wrong. Younger him would have wanted him to be there for his best friend.

He had slept with his best friend's wife. He had fallen in love with his best friend's wife. He had never fallen out of love with his best friend's wife.

Younger Fukuda would have probably stepped in front of a bus if he could see what they had become. What he had become. What he had let himself become. All the crimes that he was an accessory too. All the suffering that he let happen around him. The fact that he had actually gone along with Suzuki's crazy plan to rule the world. The fact that with every year that ticked by, every turn of the calendar, Suzuki's goal looked more and more plausible….

And he was going along with it….but at least he was still there for his friend.

"I know. I can't fault you for that. I am not physically hurt. I just…control. I just need to get myself under control." Said Suzuki. Admitting that weakness…it was like the time when he had been a child and he ate those bitter berries that grew in the park. The time everyone around him was sure that he would die. The time, the first time, that he had ever truly been ill. He felt ill. He made himself ill. How could he have come to this? He was not…this was not supposed to be him. He was not supposed to be this man. He was not supposed to be weak like this.

If the time machine had been a feasible endeavor his younger self would have reached forward from the past and beaten his older self to death but then replaced him in that time line so that he could have been something other than…this.

He had never allowed himself these emotions even when he had been a child. Nothing good had ever come from them. His control had never been good but especially not when he was…well it had been ok when he had been a child…it was the onset of puberty that made everything ten times worse. But then again that was normal. You lost control of your body and then your mind went to places it shouldn't have without your control and then, he supposed, any control issues that you had with your powers were magnified a hundred fold. That was just the way it went. You had powers and then you lost control of them.

His control was supposed to be better.

He was supposed to be better. Here he was agonizing over a woman. Again. Not even his own wife. If this had been Masami telling him that he needed to get to Bussan then he, of course, would have left immediately. He would not even have taken the time to have his bags packed. He would have flown there under his own power even though he hated flying under his own power for long stretches of time. He would have been at her side no matter what she wanted. Even if it was to slap him in the face and tell him that she never wanted to set eyes on him again…

But this was not Masami.

He would have hated himself, his past self would have, if he had known that he would have been nothing more than a womanizing and self-defiling slave to his own joy. He had never planned on being unfaithful. Never in his entire life. And he had hoped to have gotten past the self-defiling at this point in his life. Yes, he would have hated himself…and Fukuda probably would have left his side, too. He didn't have the power to force Fukuda to stay, not back then, well he had been strong enough but Fukuda had never cared about that. No. He cared about building a better world. He cared about Suzuki's dream, his plans, and that was why he stayed.

Of course younger Fukuda would have had enough and left. They hadn't built anything but a fort at the future sigh of the Seventh, then planned to be the First, Division of Claw back in those days.

"I would offer you a drink but, judging by how low those bottle are, I'm guessing that you've been hitting it pretty hard." Said Fukuda even though he knew that Suzuki hadn't had a drop of the stuff. He would have been able to feel it. This was just a way to get him to talk. No matter how upset he was he would always take the time to correct someone when they were wrong.

"No. That's Shimazaki's doing." Said Suzuki. His eyes followed the path Fukuda's took. Well now that was just far too much….and the balance of the shelf, the arrangement, was off too. Of all the things…

"Want me to tell him off for you?" asked Fukuda. He had the power to do that, tell people off, since not only was he the original entourage member but he was also the only healer. There may have been a lot of idiots in Claw, a whole lot of idiots, they at least knew that messing with the only guy with healing powers was a bad idea.

"No. I can do that later." Said Suzuki. Yes, blowing off some steam would have been nice. It wouldn't even have done anything for moral. There was an expression that he had heard before, playing chess with a chicken. No matter what you did, no matter how badly you beat the chicken, it still had a good time. Yes, that would be a good way to take his mind off of…things. Fukuda always had such good ideas.

"You sure? I mean if you're close to losing control you might accidentally kill him. Especially if he's pissed you off this badly. I can take care of him since, and it's killing me to say this, we need him. He's a powerful esper and he keeps you and the kids safe." Said Fukuda. He knew just what notes to hit, what buttons to push, to get Suzuki to talk. He hated being weak and being seen as weak. He was also a control freak, a violent one at that, and he would never let a chance to discipline a subordinate go. Mix in a little loyalty and reverence and you had the perfect recipe for a few cups of instant emotional truth.

"It isn't about him. I would never allow him to get me into this state. It's about…something else. Something which you can't help me with." Said Suzuki. He liked and disliked that about Fukuda. His loyalty. The fact that he was always trying to lend a hand. He wondered if Fukuda still thought of them as friends even though they were nothing of the sort and never had been. They had just had a very good working relationship, that was all.

"You sure about that? I just spent the half hour helping one of the Awakened get his arm out of a vending machine." Said Fukuda with a shrug. Ah yes, there. Some kind of work thing. Another traitor, maybe? But no…a traitor would not have gotten him that worked up. Maybe another vast conspiracy…he so hated those. He hoped that it was nothing more than some government sending their spies in. That was always….hard…but at least it ended quickly.

"How did that even happen?" asked Suzuki. That was…odd. His only thought was that someone had tried to steal from the vending machine…or maybe it was just broken again. According to Masami that had happened to Son once when he had been small. He had gotten his hand stuck in a gumball machine when he was two. Daughter had been old enough to try and help but not old enough to know that her idea of 'helping' was only making things worse. Then it turned out that Son had only been holding onto the gumball….the Awakened, the ones who had not come through the process mentally sound, were such children sometimes….

Once he got that Awakened's name he would make sure that they never made it past the first uniform level. He was not going to share his power with overgrown children come the day.

"He was just holding onto the snack. Why he was doing that I do not know. Shredded his arm up real good though." said Fukuda. He watched Suzuki's aura. Absurdity was always a gamble. Sometimes it put him in a better mood, sometimes he took some minute detail and ran with it, and other times he just got pissed off at the stupidity of others. He was amused now. Good.

"You shouldn't have helped with that. Some people need to learn the hard way." said Suzuki. Fukuda had this thing where he just had to help everyone. Suzuki did not understand it…but then again he had never been able to understand Fukuda. There was nothing that Fukuda would not do for him, well in the past, Suzuki had seen where his limits were…

And this was nowhere near those limits.

"That's true but I like to help out when I can. So what's this new mission? More traitors? Is the government sending in their spies? More embezzlement maybe?" asked Fukuda. He tried to make his aura look enthused. Suzuki couldn't read tones or facial expressions that well, Shigeko couldn't either, and it probably had something to do with having such a large and sensitive aura. Some might see it as an advantage, and Fukuda's own small and unobtrusive aura as a disadvantage, but at least he could make his aura look any way he wanted to.

He doubted that anyone else in the entire world could have worked Suzuki like this.

"I…" said Suzuki. His eyes glanced down at the letter on his desk. He could have sent anyone in the organization anywhere. In fact he often did that just to test their loyalty. He would send them on pointless missions just to prove that they would still listen to him…and he'd never had to do that with Fukuda. He had been loyal since the very beginning. He could have…but then Fukuda would KNOW.

Nobody could ever know just how badly he had lost control that day…and just how badly he had betrayed Masami.

"Mission details?" asked Fukuda. He tried to seem interested but purely in a work way. That letter…it was partially opened and from what he could tell it was handwritten on both sides. One side Japanese and the other side in Korean…and that looked like a woman's handwriting. It was too neat, too perfect, and the kanji were…he took his eyes away. He could not show too much interest…even though the kanji for Touichirou could be seen plain as day on both sides of that paper.

"No…I mean…" said Suzuki. He could trust Fukuda. He had always been able to trust Fukuda. He was the most loyal man in all of Claw. He would…he would be able to handle discrete business…and this required the utmost discretion. Anyone else, even one of the Awakened, would have taken this information and tried to either use it against him or discredit him to the entire organization…and he could not have that….

But he could trust Fukuda.

The man saw them as friends after all. Suzuki was not above exploiting that. There was a reason that he had never had any friends, that he had never let anyone that close, and it was not only because he was a complete being on his own. He also had enough sense not to let anyone in that close. Not to let anyone truly know him on that level. The level at which he could be manipulated. Yes, he doubted that anyone else in the whole world could have been able to manipulate Fukuda like this.

Poor man.

"I can head out soon if you want. I mean unless you plan on making any more Scars any time soon." Said Fukuda. Eager but not too eager. That was the key. He watched Suzuki. Watched his eyes as they bore holes in that letter. Watched his aura as it flared and hiccupped. Watched the wheels in his head turn. Hopefully they were turning in his favor.

"Yes. There is something you can help me with…but it will require a level of discretion not normally asked of you." Said Suzuki. He felt himself instantly calm down. There. A plan. That was all that he had needed, a plan, and now he had one. He had people and his people could do things for him…even reject women as if he were an adolescent again…but no matter. No matter. Fukuda could handle this.

It was probably nothing, anyway, nothing at all.


	136. Happy Tenth Birthday, Mob

Mob knew that time would not move faster just because she was watching the clock.

But she couldn't help it. It was almost her birthday. She was almost ten. Soon, very soon, the clock would strike midnight and she would be ten whole years old. Two whole digits. She would be older. A whole year older! She wouldn't have to share her age with Sho anymore…not that she didn't like sharing with her little brother…but she was older and she didn't much like it when she and Sho were mistaken for twins. They were not twins, they just had close birthdays, and either way she was the older one.

Two minutes to go.

She couldn't wait. Not only would she not have to share her age with Sho anymore, she felt guilty not wanting to share with him, she could finally get all of her questions answered. She sat up and picked up the piece of paper on her bedside table. She did it with her powers so she didn't make any noise. Sho was asleep in the bed across from her. He wasn't pretending, he was doing the little kicks that he did when he slept, and she did not want to wake him up. He'd had a full day of hiding in places with Shimazaki and scaring people…which had not been very nice at all in her opinion. Boys were weird. The weirdest. How was she supposed to understand them? She was older now, well she would be in two minutes, but she didn't think that she would just suddenly understand why boys did the things they did.

She would add that one to the list, why boys were so weird, and then maybe Minegishi would tell her.

Even thought that wasn't one of the questions that Minegishi had promised to answer when Mob was ten. They had been promising since two winters ago to answer these questions, and there were a lot of them, so maybe they were not planning on answering any extra ones. This was a lot of questions and it was very late but Minegishi's aura didn't feel like they were sleeping. It seemed awake and so did Shimazaki's so when the clock turned to midnight she would go and ask her questions.

One more minute.

She was allowed to do over there even though it was nighttime. The rules were no waking Minegishi up, no going through their things, no sneaking around and eavesdropping like a noisy little snoop, and to stay far away when Minegishi and Shimazaki fought. They fought sometimes, Mob could tell by their auras, and one time she had asked about it and Minegishi told her that unless she wanted to have something to describe to a psychologist, that was another word for brain doctor, in ten years then she needed to stay far away from Minegishi when their aura looked like that.

Their aura seemed awake and not in the middle of a fight so it would be ok to go over there.

Dad probably wouldn't have minded, either. He was awake. He had been so busy lately. That was probably why he had been so grumpy and snappish at everyone lately. She hoped that no more traitors were doing bad things to Claw. She didn't understand traitors one bit. Why did they keep on trying to ruin dad's life's work? Why did they want to undermine all of the good things that dad did? Claw was a good place that helped bring espers from all over the world together and also dad was going to use Claw to rule the world and then the world would be a better place because dad would make it a better place.

Minegishi would probably know why traitors did the things that they did.

Their job was to deal with the traitors, they said, though they had refused to tell Mob what specifically happened to traitors. Mob wondered if it was worse than what dad did to people who hid under his desk and jumped out so they could scare him….poor Sho…but he was ok now. Mostly. He wasn't bleeding this time and none of his bones had extra corners. Dad had said that Sho deserved worse and that he was lucky that Fukuda was away on a special mission. That was really weird. Fukuda had to follow them around, that was his job, and Mob couldn't even think of a mission that would take him away from them….but maybe that was why it was a secret mission and not a regular mission. Mob wondered what happened on missions, both secret and regular, but she knew that she would never go on one. Dad had said so. Because her place was by his side. Still, she wondered what missions were all about.

Minegishi would probably know.

They went on missions all the time. They had to put traitors, dissenters, and other people like that in their place, they had said. Mob didn't know what that meant. She was still nine and nine was too young to know what happened, specifically, to traitors. Nine was also too young to know why Minegishi never visited their parents or why they got sick so often or why they drank so much or why they were friends with Shimazaki even if he was a jerk or why…a lot of why's. Nine was too young to know all of those why's.

But ten was old enough!

Midnight! Mob couldn't help it. Her powers picked up everything on her bed from her bedding to her dolls to the socks that she kept on taking off in her sleep and sent it all flying to the ceiling. It didn't make a loud noise because the blanket cushioned most of the banging but she was still afraid that she had woken Sho up….but she hadn't. He kicked and rolled over and said something about hamsters. She wanted to wake him up, part of her did, but that was the stupid part of her and she knew better than to listen to that part. It would be her birthday for the whole rest of the day and Sho could share it with her then. It would be so much fun. Since it was her birthday then Sho would have to play with her for the rest of the day and they would only play things that she wanted.

Like Shoko. She liked that game.

He said that he hated it but he said that he hated a lot of things. If he really hated it then he wouldn't agree to play with her. Birthdays were not legally binding contracts, not like promises, and he could have pushed her down and told her that if she wanted a sister so badly then she should have told dad to pick one up from the orphanage for her. It wasn't that she wanted a sister, if dad had another girl then he might love her less and also to make a sister for her he would have had to do that gross thing with mom and mom was gone and also it was gross, she just wanted another girl to hang out with.

She and Minegishi did girl things together like paint nails and watch TV that wasn't about fighting or explosions or giant robots but that did not mean that Minegishi was a girl.

Mob still had no idea and knew not to ask. She accepted that she wouldn't have another girl to hang out with probably ever because girl espers were super rare, dad had said, and also she didn't even know the rare ones that worked for Claw so unless she put Sho in a dress and pretended that she had a little sister instead of a little brother then she was out of luck. Besides it was only for one day and only for a small part of the day. Sho could at least do one nice thing for her. She did nice things for him all the time…not that it was a contest. You weren't supposed to keep score you were just supposed to do nice things because you were a nice person. Mom had said so.

Did mom remember?

Had mom remembered her birthday? Did she even still care? Where was she? Had she been looking at the clock waiting for Mob to turn ten? She must have cared that it was her own Daughter's birthday. This was the anniversary of the day that Mob had come out of mom's stomach. She came out the usual way, through the belly button, not like Sho who had to be cut out like mom was a fish or something. Maybe she only remembered Sho's birthday, then, because they had to cut her open and move her organs around and then sew her up afterwards so Sho could have been born. But mom must have cared a little bit….right?

These were not the questions to ask.

She had a list of questions that she was planning on asking and it was a long list so she had better not add to it. She should not have been thinking about mom, anyway, because it was her birthday and she could think about whatever she wanted to think about and do whatever she wanted to do and…and it was her day and she did not want to spend it thinking about mom and how she was gone and how she hadn't even said where she was going or goodbye and that made her a traitor and horrible things happened to traitors but she didn't know what those things were so, maybe, they just weren't terrible but she had no way of knowing until she asked.

So she decided to go ask.

She put her things back where they belonged. She should not have lost control like that. Dad would have been so ashamed of her if he had seen. He must have sensed it…but she did not feel him coming to tell her how terrible she had just been. Good. She let out a breath that she hadn't known that she had been holding. Dad would probably have lifted her up by her braids and dragged her around if he had known that she had lost control like that. He was too busy for her, though, he had even said so. He had locked himself in his room because he was busy and he said that if she or Sho bothered him then he would take her birthday away and anything else that they cared about.

Dad was busy and she respected that.

It hurt. It hurt more than getting up and stepping on a lego, dad being too busy for her, but she understood. He was very busy. He was busy with things that she could not begin to understand. She had seen his secret but maybe not she had been snooping after all email. She knew that he did things in Claw that she did not begin to understand and talked to people who called him by his given name and all kinds of other things that were just…weird. Things that she wanted him to tell her about, that she wanted to ask him about, but that she knew she could not ask him about. Not even because he had told her to leave him alone. No, because she had only found out about those things because she had been looking where she was not supposed to look.

Minegishi was right about snooping around. Eventually she would end up finding something that she would wish that she hadn't…and that had been exactly what had happened.

Mob needed to learn to listen when smart people told her that something was a bad idea. Well Minegishi was smart and she would listen to every word that they said. She wondered if she should bring a pencil and paper to take notes. She did have a lot of questions…but then again that might have been weird. She didn't know. She decided to bring her phone with so she could record if she had to. That was less weird. She took her phone from the charger and took care not to disturb Sho's. The screen was already cracked and she didn't want to make it worse. Her screen wasn't cracked but she did sort of want a new phone case for her birthday…a Hello Kitty one this time. The Frozen one was alright but the glitter got everywhere. Dad said that glitter was like cancer because even when you thought that you had gotten rid of it you just ended up finding more later.

She would take care not to get any glitter on Minegishi or any of their stuff.

The walk to the house next to the one she was staying at was short and cold. She maybe should have worn a jacket. May was cold at night back in Japan and also where they were now. They were in the northern hemisphere. She wondered if it was hotter down in the Southern hemisphere….or maybe not because that was their fall. She didn't know. She would ask Minegishi if there was time. She didn't know how many questions they would answer. It was late and maybe they would be going to bed soon.

It didn't sound like they planned on going to be any time soon.

The only light that was on, when she let herself into Minegishi's house, was the light of the TV. It was softly playing….ooh! She knew that movie! About the witch and the cat and she could fly but then she couldn't but then she could and also she should have married the guy with the glasses but she didn't but it was still an ok movie. She sort of wanted to watch…but she didn't. She didn't have anywhere to sit, first of all. Shibata was sleeping on the couch and there was an upside bowl of what smelled like chicken flavored ramen on the ground in front of him. Second of all she would have had to put the subtitles on because he snored like a chainsaw and she did not want to watch Japanese subtitles on something that was already Japanese. Third of all she had a mission to accomplish.

She was finally ten and she was going to get her questions answered.

She walked down the short hallway and saw that Minegishi's light was on. There was music playing, loud music, and also loud talking. It smelled weird too. Like the time that Sho had tried to pick up that skunk even though she had warned him so many times not to because the skunk didn't like that but then he didn't listen and she had to give him a bunch of tomato sauce baths…only without the tomato sauce. Poor Minegishi…but Shimazaki was there too, she could hear his voice and see his aura, and picking up skunks seemed like something that he would do. He was always bothering people for the sake of bothering them.

Dad said that he most likely had an impulse control disorder…or he was just a jerk.

But that was not the way to be thinking about people. Even people she didn't much like. Especially blind people. You weren't supposed to be mean to blind people even if they were jerks that stole the pudding cup out of your hand and told your brother that it was ok to jump out and scare people and also called your best friend by their given name even though they hated that…for reasons Mob could not understand. She would asked Minegishi that, too, why they hated being called Toshiki and Toshi. They had so many things that they wanted to ask-

-and now she had no choice but to ask them.

"See, Toshi? I told-told you that I felt her getting closer." Said Shimazaki. His hand was on her shoulder. She put up a barrier quick out of instinct. She had let her guard down, dad said never to do that, and now she knew why. That had been…not good. The floor had been gone and the world had been gone but then it had been back….and he should have asked her before he did that! You were also supposed to say hi or hello or something when you saw someone you knew! And Minegishi did not like to be called Toshi!

And it smelled really weird in there….not good but…not bad enough to make her want to leave.

The room was hazy…smoky. The room was smoky and for a moment she thinks that there's a fire but then she sees the cigarette in Minegishi's hand. Oh. They were just smoking in there. Dad said that smoking was a filthy habit. He said that smoking made you smell bad and your clothes smell bad and also it gave you cancer and a bunch of other stuff…

Minegishi was so smart, they read very big books, so why were they smoking?

"Mob, go home." Said Minegishi. It took them a moment to say that. They had been mid smoke when Mob had been teleported in. While they said that a whole bunch of smoke, more than Mob could have even thought could fit inside of a person, came out of their mouth. They coughed, too, and Mob immediately handed them a two liter of orange soda that had been on the ground.

They drank about half of it.

Mob was impressed. The only person that could drink soda that fast was Sho but he only drank cola. Orange soda would have killed him. Lemon-lime too. Also the plain soda that dad drank sometimes, the sparkling water, but that was out of how boring it tasted and not out of Sho's citrus allergy. Mob hadn't even known that Minegishi liked soda that much. They must have, the floor was littered with empty bottles, and also there was a pizza box and some empty fried chicken buckets and a pile of apple cores and also cookies and chips and…

And she would have liked to have been invited to the junk food party. It was her birthday after all.

"Mob, go home." Said Shimazaki. Then he laughed even though Mob had no idea what was so funny. Then Minegishi laughed too so Mob realized that she was just being clueless again. She had trouble with humor sometimes. Sho just said that she was weird…though she had no idea why he wanted to watch compilations of people falling down. All she could think about when she saw things likes that was how hurt those people must have been. She didn't get it. Like now she didn't get it. What was so funny about telling her to go home.

"Shimazaki go home." Said Minegishi. Then they laughed some more. They hit Shimazaki over the head with the half full bottle of soda. Shimazaki didn't teleport out of the way even though Mob expected him to. That was what he always did. He just let himself get hit over and over again and he just laughed.

Adults were weird sometimes.

"Toshi, go home." Said Shimazaki. This time he hit Minegishi over the head, but not hard, just enough to mess their hair up…more than it was already. It was always weird seeing Minegishi dressed for bed. They usually dressed nice, lots of pretty colors and shirts with buttons which Mob understood to be very fancy, but now they were just in a very big T-shirt that said something in Korean that she couldn't read and sweatpants with vines on them. The colors didn't match. It was weird. Almost as weird as Minegishi letting Shimazaki call them Toshi.

"Ryou, go home." Said Minegishi. The tried to hit Shimazaki over the head with the soda again but Shimazaki batted it away. It ended up at Mob's feet. They didn't seem to notice. Shimazaki had their wrist in his hand and he was looking at them and they were looking at him and…and Mob knew that she was clueless but she felt like this was one of those things that she was not supposed to see. Like when they kissed, but just for fun, or when they cuddled and listened to things on the couch, just for comfort.

She didn't want to go so she picked up the half full bottle of soda and set it down in front of Minegishi.

"Thanks for the soda. Now go home." Said Minegishi. The passed the cigarette over to Shimazaki. Mob wondered why they didn't just start two cigarettes. She had seen them, they were sold in boxes, but maybe that was their last one. Mob also wondered if she should have brought something to use as an ashtray too, like they had in the Claw smoking room, because Shimazaki had just ashed right there on the bed.

How rude.

"It's my birthday." Said Mob. She pointed to the clock. Minegishi looked at it, looked at her, then repeated that action several times. While this was happened Shimazaki started singing even though it was not time to sing her happy birthday…and also that was not at all how happy birthday went.

"Today is your birthday, nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh, it's my birthday too! Nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh! Today is your-" said Shimazaki. He was sitting on Minegishi bed now with his legs crossed and she could see that he had tattoos up and down his arms and legs and they went into his undershirt and she had never seen anyone with tattoos before…and also he had a lot more muscle that she had ever thought that he did…not that she ever thought about him like that, not fully dressed, and not that she was thinking about it now either! Mob looked away from him…because he was kind of a jerk a lot of the time. That was it. Not because she was getting a weird sort of feeling looking at him sitting there in gym shorts and an undershirt. That was weird. Those were the sorts of feelings that she got when she liked someone and she did not, could not, and would not ever like Shimazaki.

She'd have to go to the jungle and live with the chimps like the chimp lady in the documentary that Sho liked if that ever happened.

"That's not how you sing happy birthday." Said Mob. She omitted the fact that she knew why he didn't know the words to happy birthday, it was because the only people who would celebrate his birthday were his parents. That would have been a mean thing to say…but calling Minegishi Toshi was already mean….but that was also a mean thing to think and she was not supposed to be mean.

"She's right, you know." Choked out Minegishi. The cigarette had been passed to them, now, and Mob wondered why they were smoking something that didn't smell good and made you hack up your lungs. She didn't ask, though, because that was not on her list of questions.

"Well I wasn't singing happy birthday. You're both bad at music." Said Shimazaki. Mob frowned. She was not bad at music. If anything he was. She may not have known ever song ever made but she at least didn't go around singing just to annoy people. In fact she actively tried not to be annoying.

"You're bad at smoking. Pass it back already." Said Minegishi. They kicked Shimazaki and Mob wanted to tell them that they shouldn't fight, even though she could totally understand why someone would have wanted to kick Shimazaki, because she didn't want them to tell her to go away again.

"I, for your information, am savoring it. If anything you're bad at this. I can feel it canoeing." Said Shimazaki. Mob was confused until she saw that the cigarette was split down the middle like a canoe. Oh. That made sense. Maybe now they could give it a rest. She wondered if they had been drinking. Minegishi had said, once, that Mob would never see them truly drunk because when they were drunk they acted like an idiot. Shimazaki even more so. That would have made sense…and also she would have liked to have been invited, too, since it was her birthday….but that was ok. People had lives outside of her. Even her best friend in the whole world who was not her little brother.

"For your information I am going to kick your ass out of here if you don't share. Come on, I grew it so I should at least get to enjoy it." Said Minegishi. Shimazaki sighed and passed the cigarette back. Well he made it hallway across the bed before he passed it to Mob.

Oh.

Dad had said that smoking was a dirty habit…but he also said that about drinking. Also about nose picking, chewing gum, nail biting, toenail biting which actually was pretty gross and Sho was gross for doing it, eating ice cream straight from the carton, drinking milk straight from the jug, drinking ketchup when you ran out of fries, eating in bed, making mazes for ants and then bringing them inside the house, eating slice of ham out of the fridge, picking eye goo out, sharing hairbrushes with Sho, eating cold soup from the can, petting dogs, blowing your nose and then leaving the tissue in your pocket because there's still dry parts, wearing shoes in the house, not wearing socks in the house, wearing the same clothes two days in a row, licking pudding clean, sharing lollipops with your little brother, and playing in the dirt.

Probably some other stuff, too, that she had missed.

"Ryou, don't ruin her life…more than I have." Said Minegishi. Mob hated it when Minegishi said that they were ruining her life. Mob was ten now and she could decide if she was ruining her life or not…so she took the cigarette from Shimazaki.

"I am not ruining her life any more than you have. At least this way she won't end up with psoriasis of the liver by the time she's your age." Said Shimazaki. Mob didn't know what psoriasis of the liver was but she did know that this was sharing germs. She didn't mind sharing germs with Minegishi but she did mind sharing them with Shimazaki. Maybe she should have given it back.

"Mob, give me that and then go home. You are way too young to be here." Said Minegishi. Well that was the thing, she was not too young now, because she was ten. She had been hearing since she was eight about how she was too young to know things and do things…and she was tired of hearing that from Minegishi. They were friends and one friend did not tell another friend that they were too young for something that they themselves enjoyed.

That was siblings. Not friends.

Mob inhaled…and then coughed. She coughed so hard that she saw bright things dancing in her vision. She coughed so hard that her throat felt all raw like she had drank a bunch of the stuff that Minegishi kept in their drawers. She felt the cigarette being taken from her hand and then someone was hitting her on the back. She smelled…well she smelled smoking but also dirt and flowery shampoo. She opened her eyes. Minegishi was stretched over her and hitting her on the back.

"See? This is why I told you not to. Maybe next time you'll listen to me." Said Minegishi. They finished patting Mob on the back when she finished coughing. She did not understand the appeal of that but…but she also did not like Minegishi telling her what was and was not good for her. She was not a little kid anymore, she was ten, and nobody but Minegishi treated her like a little kid. She had met Minegishi when she had been eight and it seemed like, in their mind, Mob was frozen at the age of eight or something.

She wasn't eight. She was ten.

"I didn't mind that much. I don't mind cigarettes that much at all." said Mob. She didn't know what was so funny about that. She didn't think that she had said anything funny or in a funny way but for some reason she was being laughed at now…and she didn't much want to be.

"Kid, you just smoked-" said Shimazaki

"A cigarette. A harmless, homemade, cigarette. So that's what you're going to say if you ever regale someone with tales of this night. We let you smoke a harmless cigarette." Said Minegishi. They were being serious, they were making a lot of eye contact, and Mob tried to make it back and also not smile at their lack of eyebrows…which was mean and she should not have had the urge to do in the first place.

"Cigarettes cause cancer, heart disease, emphysema, stroke, high blood pressure, low birth weight, birth defects, erectile dysfunction, cataracts, glaucoma-" said Shimazaki. He was leaning back now and listing things as he held up his fingers. Mob wondered if she should have been taking notes, that sounded like a lot of bad stuff to remember, but she couldn't move her arms because Minegishi was still holding on to her. They had stopped making so much eye contact, though, because they were shaking their head. Mob had never noticed how shiny and purple their hair was. She wanted to touch it.

She bet that it would feel shiny and purple.

"Thank you so much, Health Minister Ryou. Always a joy to hear from you." Said Minegishi

"Am I going to die?" asked Mob. What if she died? How would she explain it to dad if she died? He would be so mad at her…and probably Sho too because he was always mad at Sho…and she did not want him to be mad at Sho and-

"No, no are not going to die just…stop freaking out." Said Minegishi

"Cancer, heart disease, emphysema, stroke, high blood pressure, low birth weight, birth defects, erectile dysfunction, cataracts, glaucoma-" said Shimazaki. Minegishi let go of Mob and slapped him upside the head loud enough for there to be a sound…and that just made her feel worse because-

"Shut your mouth for once in your life. Can't you see she's freaking out?" asked Minegishi

"Well then calm her down." Said Shimzaki with a shrug. Mob was being pulled forward until she climbed up on the bed. She knew that she and Minegishi were not the sort of friends who hugged but this…this was nice. Just being pressed up against their side…they were so warm and their shirt was so soft….

"I'm thinking." Said Minegishi. Their eyes went between their drawers and the cigarette in their hand a few times before settling on their cigarette. They passed it to Mob with a sign.

"Be sure to write me from rehab, Mob." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded. She didn't know what rehab was but she would gladly write Minegishi all the letters that they wanted. Even though she had never written or received a letter before because she was ten and had a phone and letters were more for people who were dad's age. She didn't say that, though, because she was happy now. Being included felt so good that she forgot all the bad feelings that she had. She actually hadn't liked this very much at all but she hadn't totally hated it…and also she was ten and not a kid and she was going to do what adults did because she was ten now.

She inhaled again.

"Tell her to hold it in. She's not going to listen to me. I think she hates me." Said Shimazaki. That wasn't true. She wanted to tell him that it wasn't' true. She didn't hate him, she just really disliked him and wished that he was a better person, which was not at all the same thing at all. She didn't say anything, though, because she was going to listen to his advice since he knew what he was doing…even if he was a jerk.

A great big jerk.

"Mob, don't hold it in for too long. I don't know how I would explain this to the healer if you passed out from lack of oxygen." Said Minegishi. Mob exhaled as soon as they said that. Fukuda wasn't around. For the first time in her life she would be in real trouble if she got hurt. Thankfully Minegishi looked out for her and stuff. How someone as nice as them could have been friends with, and even for fun kissed, someone like Shimazaki was something that she would never understand.

Unless she asked.

"How did you become friends with Shimazaki?" asked Mob. She maybe should not have interrupted. The cigarette was back to Minegishi. Shimazaki was saying about coke next. Mob hoped it was the orange kind. Citrus was the forbidden fruit in her family.

"Why-why do you need to know?" asked Minegishi between coughs. Mob handed them the orange soda and they drank the last of it really fast. Mob tried to pick up another one from on the floor with her powers but she just made it roll around a lot. Smoking cigarettes made her powers not work too. Good to know for the future.

"It's on my list of questions that you said you'd answer when I turned ten. See? Here." Said Mob. She handed them the piece of paper from her nightgown pocket. She liked this one. It was so long and soft and also it had Princess Aurora on the front who may have had a boring movie, even she'd had trouble keeping her eyes opened through that one, but she sure had a nice nightgown.

"Right…well you really fucked up this time didn't you, Toshi?" muttered Minegishi as they read through the paper. Mob had written it all in Japanese so as not to make any mistakes. She hoped that she had done it right. She hoped that she hadn't done anything to make Minegishi think that they had fu-messed up.

"Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. Fascinating. It sounds, feels, and smells like a piece of paper. Therefore I deduce that it's a treasure map. Come on, I'll get the shovels and-" said Shimazaki. Mob reached over and patted him on the hand. Even if he was a jerk it must have been hard being blind. He didn't get to read manga or watch movies. Also getting dressed in the morning must have been hard. Maybe that was why he wore so much black. She wished that she could have written him a list of questions, too, but she couldn't because she didn't know brail and also that would have been rude. She wanted to know, though, how he did things like cook and clean and get dressed and brush his hair and know when he was done washing his hands and stuff if he was blind and why he had all of those tattoos if he couldn't even see them…but it was also none of her business and also it was rude to point out people's differences. Mom had taught her that…and then she had left…like a mean jer-not the way to be thinking about her mother at all. She had to think nice thoughts. Always nice thoughts.

"No. We are not staying up all night digging holes again. That was the last time I ever-" said Minegishi. Their eyes went from the paper and then to Mob.

"Stay up all night digging holes for reasons that to do with…what we were doing that night." Said Minegishi. They looked at Shimazaki when they said that. Shimazaki just put their hands up like you did when you surrendered. Minegishi took his surrender…though she had no idea what he was surrendering from.

"That isn't a treasure map….sorry. It's a list of questions for Minegishi. I don't know where there's any buried treasure but if you want I could bury some money and then tell you where to find it." Said Mob

"Sounds fun. Ok, you get the money and I'll get the shovels and-" said Shimazaki. He looked funny there and Mob laughed…and laughed…and laughed…even though she had no idea what she was even laughing at. He hadn't been THAT funny but she just could not stop laughing.

"Yeah, that's enough for you tonight." Said Minegishi. They took the cigarette and put it out on their side table. Mob was so getting them an ashtray for their birthday.

"It looks like a baby cigarette." Said Mob. Then she laughed some more. Shimazaki said something about her being gone but that made no sense. She was right there. She hadn't gone anyplace at all.

"It's called a roach. Always save those so you can-" said Shimazaki. He stopped talking after Minegishi hit him over the head again. Mob covered her mouth so she didn't laugh…even though people getting hurt was not funny at all and she should not have been laughing…and also her sleeve felt really good on her face…how had she not noticed this before?

"Ryou! Are you trying to ruin her life?" asked Minegishi

"No, I'm trying to improve it beyond measure…and also I'm trying to put a middle of the night treasure hunt together."

"Shimazaki if you want to go outside in the cold and dig holes all night that's all you." Said Minegishi. They reached down and pulled up another bottle of soda and handed it to Mob. She would have preferred strawberry milk but this was good. She had never been this thirsty in her life and….what BRAND was THIS!? This was the best soda that she'd ever HAD! Where had this been all her life?!

Being ten was the best.

"It's not any fun if I'm alone. With you two it's a fun social activity. On my own I'm just digging holes." Said Shimazaki. Mob didn't understand him but that was because he was a boy and, apparently, boys never grew out of weird stuff. Maybe that what 'boys will be boys' meant…but then shouldn't it have been 'grown men with tattoos and muscles and hair on their arms and legs and chests would be boys'? Actually that didn't sound right at all…and it would come to her…it always came to her…..well usually…

Her toes felt weird in her socks.

"Then, and here comes a thought, don't dig any holes." Said Minegishi. They were smiling even though they sounded like they would not have been. Their aura was happy too…at least Mob thought that it was. Right now her aura was trying to cover her like a blanket. It was an effort, a real effort, to get it to move at all.

"I didn't even hide anything yet." Said Mob. Well she knew what she would do for his birthday…even if he was a jerk…but a funny jerk. Just in the way that he said things and he moved and…and stuff. Also she knew that she was not supposed to stare but he had a lot of tattoos and they were so pretty. There was a dragon wrapped around…oh. That was a naked lady…ok. That was…ok. There was also on his back what looked like part of a samurai with a sword…and she was going to hope that the samurai was wearing clothes…and there was the symbol for Claw on his leg…and also for some reason he had gotten the words chicken fried rice tattooed on his leg right above the hem of his shorts…

Which was probably just someone playing a prank on him. That wasn't as nice as the other ones. The stroke order was bad.

"Well then I'm bored. Minegishi, grow more we-" said Shimazaki. Minegishi interrupted them, which had been rude, but was also good because Mob had been about to interrupt and ask why he had the kanji for chicken fried rice tattooed on his leg. It was either a mean prank and he didn't know it was there or he just…really liked chicken fried rice.

Mob could have gone for some chicken fried rice.

Also some pork miso and fried dumplings and fried tofu and fried fish and fried chicken and a fried ice cream cone and a fried churro and a fried corndog and a fried snickers and a regular snickers and a kitkat and a green tea mochi and a custard mochi and a strawberry mochi and a cookies and cream mochi and cookies and warm cream and warm milk and cold milk and cold chocolate milk and cold strawberry milk and chocolate covered strawberries and strawberries dipped in caramel and caramel apples and apple pie and turtle pie and turtle soup and soup buns and meat buns and custard buns-

-but not chocolate custard buns like Sho liked because that would have been just too rich.

"I am not growing anymore…tobacco for cigarettes. I've had enough, she's had enough, and you won't admit it but you've had enough too." Said Minegishi. They pulled Mob close and ran a hand through her hair…and that felt so GOOD! No wonder cats and dogs like this so much!

"No such thing as enough…for me. The kid's aura is all over the place. Aww…she's like a little angel. A stoned little-" said Shimazaki

"What's stoned?" asked Mob. She wiggled her feet in her socks. So nice…the most nice. This was the best part of socks that had ever existed. Her green ones that looked like a mermaid tail. So pretty too…sparkly….glittery. Why did she have so much glitter on everything she owned? Her socks and shoes and dresses and nightgowns and night shirts and undershirts and underwear and jackets and coats and phone jackets….cases and her tablet case and the rubber thing on her Wiimote to make gripping easier so it didn't end up breaking through the TV like Sho had done that one time which had been scary but also kind of neat because the sparks had looked like glitter and she liked glitter and why did she like glitter so much and-

Because glitter made everything better.

Also what did stoned mean?

"Nothing. He's speaking nonsense…and he was just on his way to bed. His own bed. His own bed in his own room where he will sleep and only sleep." Said Minegishi. They did the thing where they made a lot of eye contact only they did it to Shimazaki this time…even though his eyes were closed like they always were. She wondered why Minegishi bothered if he couldn't even seen them.

"Or, and hear me out. Since we're already getting kids fucked up I have some left over coke-" said Shimazaki. He didn't get far before Minegishi threw a pillow at him.

"What the fuck is even…what happens in your mind where you think giving a nine year old KID coke is even an idea let alone a GOOD one?" said Minegishi. They said that low and slow like dad did when someone failed them. Mob didn't get why. Maybe they just only liked orange soda. That would have made sense considering how much orange soda was everywhere.

"I'm not nine, I'm ten, and I like coke. I like vanilla coke and orange coke but not lime coke or peach coke…but I also like cherry coke but the kind where you put the cherry sauce in yourself and also the cherries from the jar. That's what I like." Said Mob. She didn't know what she had said that time but now she was being laughed at again…which was making her laugh…because laugher was infections. She had heard that before. Laugher was infectious like that disease from the movie she and Sho had seen. The one that makes you into a zombie….

Zombies aren't real. Even though she's ten she reminds herself that zombies are not real.

"You heard the birthday girl, Ryou. Go out and get her some vanilla, orange, and classic coke. Pick up some grenadine too and make her a Roy Rogers while you're at it." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't like putting people to work but…it was her birthday and she was thirsty and she wanted soda and on her birthday she could ask for whatever she wanted.

"Fine, I'll wake an Awakened and-" said Shimazaki

"Nope. Do it yourself. You started this and you're going to end it." Said Minegishi

"Where am I even supposed to get coke at this hour? It's four in the morning!" said Shimazaki

"It's one twenty nine in the morning." Said Mob as she read Minegishi's clock. They didn't like using their phone as an alarm. Adults were weird like that. Well they were weird in a lot of ways. She could have filled a book with all of the weirdness that she had seen from the adults around her. Like an explorer's log or something like that…not that she wanted to get started on her explorer's log right then and there. She was too busy feeling her feet in her socks and her arms in her sleeves and her tongue against her teeth and her side pressed up against Minegishi's.

"You heard the birthday girl, get to it." Said Minegishi

"Where am I supposed to even get coke?" asked Shimazaki

"The store? I mean there are stores….things come from stores. Before they go to the stores they come from the factory. Things are made in factories. Factories are run by people. People are made by other people. It's gross." Said Mob. She had said words and she thought that they were the right ones…well there was laughter so at least she had made people happy.

"You heard her. Either buy it, steal, find it, or make it yourself. Just get the hell out of here." Said Minegishi

"Stealing is wrong…" said Mob. She didn't want to get anyone in trouble, even him, and also stealing was wrong even if you didn't get caught…but bad things happened to you when you got caught…

"So is letting you down on your birthday, Mob. Ryou, now." Said Minegishi. Mob had never noticed how expressive he was before, Shimazaki, and she wondered how he knew how to have expressions if he had never seen anyone have expressions. She didn't have a lot of expressions and there were some that other people had that she didn't understand. She wondered why that was. She wondered why she was. Was she just here because dad had needed a daughter? Or was there another reason? Why was anyone there? Why was she Suzuki Shigeko? She could have been born into another family…and that would have been awful because then she never would have had a dad who was dad or a little brother who was Sho.

Also she never would have made as good a friend as Minegishi.

"Fine…but you know that I'm blind, right? The labels aren't in brail and all the soda smells the same, like plastic, because it's in plastic bottles." Said Shimazaki

"Well then you'll have to make a few trips. You'd better get started now." Said Minegishi. They waved 'bye'bye' and Shimazaki. He stuck out his tongue, dad said that sticking your tongue out was a filthy habit' and then he left.

Mob kept moving her toes in her socks.

She would never get tired of this. How had she now known how good this felt? She needed to do this more often. This was the best. Being on this bed was the best. She bounced on it a little. Good for jumping…not that she was planning on jumping any time soon. She was just going to sit there and be happy and enjoy being ten. Being ten was the best.

"So you came here in the middle of the night just to ask me questions?" asked Minegishi. They were touching her hair again. She closed her eyes and nodded.

"You promised that you would answer then when I turned ten. I just turned ten tonight at midnight." Said Mob

"Uh-huh. So you were born at midnight exactly?" asked Minegishi

"Um….I don't know. I can't remember. I was a baby, back then, and I was too little to remember things like what time the clock said when I was born…and also I don't think that I knew how to tell time back then. They taught me that when I was really little but not a baby." Said Mob

"Fair enough." Said Minegishi. Mob knew what that meant. It meant that there was no more argument left. Dad said that when she said something that made sense but he did not all the way agree with. She didn't know how she felt about winning against an adult…not that she had even been sure that they were arguing…or discussing as dad called it…

"So will you tell me the answers to my questions? How did you meet Shimazaki? I mean I know you met at work but what was it like? What did he say? What did you say? When did you decide to kiss him? How can you kiss someone without being in love? Have you ever been in love? What's being in love feel like? What does kissing feel like when you're all grown up? Why do you want to kiss him of all people? Why do you-" said Mob

"Mob…what is the obsession with me and Shimazaki? He's barely even a friend, you know, and I met him at work. There's nothing more to the story than that. He was annoying but we had to work together and then we ended up working together a lot and then at some point we felt like kissing. That's the whole of it." Said Minegishi. Mob wished that she had recorded that. She was still very distracted by the feel of her toes in her socks…and it was so weird being able to move them without seeing them…and they were so weird in general. Like fingers for her feet. Feet fingers.

Did that mean that fingers were hand toes?

And what about Mr. McGregg, the man with a leg for an arm and a-an arm for a leg?

"….thirstiest ten year old I have ever met. And I can say that now, you know, because I can tell that you're not paying an ounce of attention to me." Said Minegishi

"I-I am. Thirsty, I mean. Very thirsty. My tongue is sticking to my teeth….it feels kind of nice…everything feels kind of nice…I can see why adult smoke all the time. This is so nice…not a bad thing at all. Dad thinks everything is a bad thing. He won't even wear pajamas. He sleeps in his suit. I don't know why." Said Mob softly. She was so comfortable. She never wanted to move from that spot. Not for as long as she would live…well she would have to go to the bathroom eventually…or maybe now. Or maybe she just thought that she had to go to the bathroom now because she had thought about it. Still was thinking about it….

"Your dad is a weirdo, Mob, I hate to say it but he is a grade 'A' weirdo." Said Minegishi. Mob knew that it was a mean thing to say but it was also a true thing to say. Dad could be a real weirdo sometimes…a lot of the times….all of the times.

"He can be kind of weird sometimes I admit…" said Mob

"Yes, he can be, and also kind of violent. Towards everyone." Said Minegishi

"I know. He was mad at Sho today about-" said Mob

"Which is why you can't tell him or anyone about this, ok? You are a kid and you are not supposed to do this…even though I would be a hypocrite if a tried to stop you and your life sucks almost as much as mine did….your dad would kill me, alright, if this got back to him. Ten is still a kid and regardless about how I feel you're too young to smoke." Said Minegishi

"Oh…ok. It's a secret. I can keep those. Like how dad is afraid of Borrowers, the little people who live in the walls, or like how Sho wets the bed a lot even though he's nine…and also um….oh! Fukuda is away on a secret mission." Said Mob

"You're not really inspiring confidence here, Mob…wait. What? What do you mean Fukuda, our only healer, is away? What kind of 'secret mission' could he possibly even be on?" asked Minegishi. Mob shrugged.

"I don't know but I know that whatever is happening dad is upset…but not at us! Don't worry. I won't tell me dad….I promise…and also I think that I have to go to the bathroom but I'm not sure because I only thought about going to the bathroom because I realized that I might have had to go to the bathroom but then I really had to go to the bathroom and-" said Mob. Minegishi let go of her and gave her a light shove on the back.

"Mob, go take a piss already. If you wet my bed then we're trading. I'm serious. I will go into you room and steal your mattress and replace it with this one." said Minegishi. Mob did what she was told. She didn't think that this mattress had a protector on it, it didn't feel like it, and also she didn't want to make her friend mad.

It had been such a good birthday.

And it had gotten better, too, when she came back from the bathroom. She had gotten distracted washing her hands, the sound of the water and the feel of it on her skin was nice, but she did eventually find Minegishi's room again…which was full of soda pop….which she knew that she was not supposed to drink at night but she didn't care.

This was the best birthday ever and it was only two in the morning.


	137. The Shoko Game

Sho only did this once a year.

Which was way too much as it was!

"I can't get your hair to stay flat…oh! I know." Said Big sis. She took off her headband and put it on his head. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He looked upset. He was upset. He hated this. He had on one of her dresses over his clothes, the purple one, and now he had her headband on too. He looked like her little sister instead of her little brother.

He really hated this.

"You look really pretty." Said big sis. Sho wanted to push her. He wanted to hit her. He wanted to bite her. He wanted to pull her hair and poke her in the stomach and kick her in the knees and…and a whole lot of other stuff that you did not do to your big sister on her birthday. Today was her birthday and that meant that he had to be nice to her no matter what. He had to play with her all day and watch movies that she liked and also do…this.

He wished that she had wanted to play anything other than the Shoko game.

That was what this was called. He used to play it more with her back when they were little and they just called it dressing up. He used to do this for her, pretend to be her little sister instead of her little brother, to make up for when he had been particularly jerky to her. He had minded it back then when they were little too but not as bad as now. That was why he had stopped doing this. She had called him Shoko and then it had been so weird because he was not Shoko, he was not a girl, and then he had pushed her and then she had hit her head and so now this was just a birthday thing.

It all balanced out because on his birthday she had to do whatever he wanted.

"Don't ever say that." Said Sho

"Sorry. I meant you looked boy pretty. Handsome." Said big sis as if that would make it better. He was not pretty because girls were pretty and he was not handsome either because that was something that moms called you. They told you that you looked handsome when kids in your class made fun of how weird you looked. Sho did not need to be reminded of that and he did not need his big sister to stand there next to him pretending to be their mom. They had a mom. She was just off…somewhere.

He wondered what mom was doing right now.

What was it that she did, now, on their birthdays? Did she make a cake and eat it all alone and be sad that she had left her kids? Or was it just a normal day for her now? And what did a normal day even look like for her now? Did she still lay in bed all day sick and tired? Did she still go to the pool and the library and the animal shelter? Did she still do the things that she used to do? Well maybe not because she was gone and they were in a different place from her and….stuff.

A lot of stuff.

"You're my sister don't call me that." Said Sho

"Oh…ok. But you do look nice. We can do something else though if you're unhappy. We can do something you like to do. We can draw pictures of watch the livestream of hamsters or….I guess we could jump out and try to scare people again even though I don't know what's so fun about doing that…" said big sis

"No…it's your birthday and we have to do what you want to do…and also I'm not scaring anyone again for a while. Dad got really mad at me." Said Sho. He was glad that this dress had long sleeves. He had never been glad before, or thought that he would be glad, about wearing a dress but this one had long sleeves. Fukuda was away on a secret mission so he couldn't heal Sho up from what happened…and he didn't like that. He was never hurt too badly, afterwards, because Fukuda had always been there.

Ever since he was a baby.

But now he was gone. He had left and Sho had no clue if he was even coming back. Sho knew what happened on missions. Dad sent people into danger and they came back with injuries and stuff. Not fun at all. He didn't want anything to happen to Fukuda. He was one of the people that Sho had known the longest and he cared about him and he was fun to play with and…and Sho didn't know what he would do if something happened to him and he didn't come back…or worse.

He ran away.

Adults could run away. Sho knew what happened to people who tried to run away from Claw. It wasn't good. He didn't know why people would try to leave Claw. Dad was the strongest esper in the world so of course it made sense to follow him. He was going to rule the world so the best thing to do was to follow him now instead of later. That way he liked you a little better…as much as dad was capable of liking someone who was not himself or big sis.

"I'm sure that he was just mad about something else and he just took it out on you. It's ok, though, because he loves you." Said big sis. Sho turned around from the mirror. He pressed his hands to his sides to keep from pushing her as hard as he could.

"That's not better, you know. I don't feel better knowing that he was mad at something else and he just…got mad at me because he was already mad at something else." Said Sho

"But it's a good thing that he wasn't that mad at you. He loves you even if he doesn't show it. Sometimes the people who love you hit you and push you and stuff. That doesn't mean that they don't love you or something. If they didn't love you then they would just leave or make you go away or something." Said big sis

"Yeah….I guess you can love someone and still be a jerk to them." Said Sho. He clasped his hands behind his back. He knew what she meant. He loved her, he really did, but he could also be such a jerk to her. Now, even on her birthday, he was thinking about shoving her backwards until she fell into the bathtub and hit her head really hard because she had said…and he was the worst little brother in the whole world. Wasn't he just? Well it made sense. He was dad's kid after all. He wondered if this was why dad didn't have any brothers or sisters. Maybe his parents knew that he would be a jerk to them and they spared them the misery of having to be related to him.

Maybe this was why he didn't have any little brothers or sisters.

Moms were the ones who decided to have the babies, Sho figured, because they grew in the mom's stomach and not the dad's. The dad just kissed the mom and did the really terrible thing to her. The terrible thing that adults did to one another because they were weird. Sho hoped that he never became that sort of adult. He had never even liked a girl in his life so he was in the clear. If he did end up liking a girl and having kids with her he hoped that his girlfriend or wife or whatever was smart like his mom and stopped having kids if one of their kids inherited his jerkiness. That was why mom had stopped having kids, maybe, because she could tell how much of a jerk Sho was and she didn't want any of her other kids to have to deal with that.

He had no idea if he would have been nice to a little brother or sister.

"Love is about how you feel, not what you do. Well it's about what I do because I show my love by being nice. Some people keep their love for you inside and show it by taking care of you and not leaving. Even if they hit you sometimes or pull your hair they still love you." Said big sis

"Yeah! Of course I still love you!" said Sho. She didn't have to tell him that. Of course he still loved her. Little brothers were supposed to love their big sister. Sure he wished that she were less bossy, the she liked more of the things that he liked, and that she wouldn't put him in a dress and pretend that he was a girl every single year on her birthday but he still loved her.

"I wasn't talking about you, Sho, I was talking about dad." Said big sis

"Well it sounded like you were talking about me." Said Sho

"I was talking about dad, about how he can hit us and say mean things to us but he still loves us." Said big sis

"Me. He hits me and he says mean things to me. He loves you." Said Sho. That was the way that it had always been. Big sis was dad's favorite and Sho was just this other kid that he'd had. He had been mom's favorite, back when they were little they had decided that each of them got one parent, but now she was the only one with a parent.

"He loves us both. He hits you more than me but he does hit me…well he did." Said big sis. Sho wants to hit dad now, not her, because she was his sister and…and she had gotten hurt. There was another feeling there too. A sort of…he didn't even know what to call it…because dad had hit her too.

Shameful joy, maybe.

He stuffed that feeling down. Being hit was the worst thing in the world. You felt all small and helpless and also scared plus there was all of the pain, too. He wished that dad didn't hit either of them but that was just what dads did. Well Sho wouldn't. When he had kids he was never going to hit them no matter how angry they made him. Even if they were terrible. Even if they went around drawing on the walls and picking their noses and starting fires and doing crimes and pulling on cats' tails he would never hit them.

"Why'd he do that?" asked Sho

"I bothered him while he was trying to work. He's just…upset. Because of stress from work. I mean something bad must be happening if he sent Fukuda away." said big sis. Sho didn't know if something bad was happening, something bad was always happening but this could have been really bad for all he knew, but he did know that sending Fukuda away was weird. So was dad punishing big sis. He only punished her when she lost control of her powers and he would have noticed if she had lost control of her powers. Dad had been so weirdly upset lately. Even his aura was showing it. That was weird…for him. That was weird for dad, his aura showing his feelings, but normal for everyone else. Even big sis who liked to pretend that she had no feelings at all like dad did. He knew better, she had feelings, and she was happy. She had been weird when she came home last night, she had crawled into bed next to him and woke him up by telling her how much she loved him, but now she was just happy…and he didn't want to be a jerk and make her unhappy.

It was her birthday after all.

She always did what he wanted on his birthdays. She always did what he wanted in general. He could at least be nice to her about this…even though it was hard. He could have just said that he was sorry, though, if he accidentally did something mean. If he ruined her birthday. Fukuda said that as long as he said sorry then it was ok for him to be mean sometimes. He was just a kid and stuff like that.

But he was going to try his hardest to be nice to big sis.

"I don't know what's happening so don't ask me." Said Sho

"I wasn't going to…but if you did know something that I didn't know then…well I guess that you would have told me." Said big sis

"Maybe I know something that you don't know and maybe I don't. I can't read your thoughts, dad says that telepathy is a rare power and none of us are probably going to ever have it, so I have no idea what you do and do not know." Said Sho. He knew things that she didn't know. He knew about what dad did to people who betrayed him and people who tried to kill him. He knew exactly what happened at the awakening labs. He knew where he hid his half of their giant sandwich. He didn't want to talk to her about those things because that was stuff that she didn't need to know about at all.

"I know…well I think that I know some things that you don't know. About dad. About people. Just…when you're with dad does anyone ever call him by his given name?" asked big sis

"What? No. Nobody's that stupid. They call him Suzuki-sama like they're supposed to." Said Sho. He was Suzuki-chan and dad was Suzuki-sama and big sis was Suzuki-san. He should have been Suzuki-san, he wasn't that much younger than her, but everyone still called him chan like he was a little kid…and even when they had been little kids people still called her Suzuki-san. It wasn't fair at all. At least nobody called them by their given names, well Minegishi called big sis 'Mob' because she wanted to be called that for some reason…he wasn't going to complain about being Suzuki-chan when she had people calling her Mob and even Mob-chan sometimes. Nobody called dad anything either than Suzuki-sama though. At least one day Sho would be Suzuki-sama too and dad would be either really old or really dead.

"Oh…ok." Said big sis

"Why? Did you hear someone call dad by his given name? Because that person is going to be in for it once dad finds out." Said Sho. Maybe dad would let him watch him deal with the traitor. That was always cool. It was always cool when someone else was on the receiving end of dad being all mad and stuff.

"I didn't hear anyone call dad by his given name. I just…nothing. It's nothing. I just wanted to see if I could figure out what dad was so mad about. It's ok, though, because he's not mad at us. He loves us and he's mad about something else. He loves us. He really does." Said big sis. She said it a bunch of times, almost like she was trying to convince herself that she was speaking the truth. If anyone loved her, if dad had to love one of his kids, it would be her. He could be mind of a jerk to her too, though, and Sho…he wasn't sure. Mom had loved them. She had always been so nice to them and she always took care of them…but dad hadn't. Maybe dad just didn't feel love. He was always talking about how he had to get rid of his feelings or he could end up exploding or something, a power that big came with a bigger expense he had said, and maybe he had gotten rid of love when he had gotten rid of all of his other feelings except for being mad at stuff. Or maybe not. Dad did take care of them. If he hadn't loved them then wouldn't he have just given them to an orphanage or left them by the side of the road or whatever else people did with their unwanted kids.

Ran away and never came back?

"You really think dad loves us?" asked Sho. He knew in his mind that his dad must have loved him because that was what dads did. Dads loved their kids and took care of them. If a parent didn't love you anymore then they left. Dad hadn't left so he still must have loved them. It only felt like, sometimes, that he only loved big sis. He was always calling Sho names and hitting him and telling him to go away and stuff. It wasn't fair…but life wasn't fair.

If life had been fair then he would have gotten a big brother instead of a big sister and he would have been doing something fun like fighting or drawing or shooting guns instead of standing there in a dress so that his big sister could pretend that she had gotten a little sister instead of a little brother. Nobody got what they wanted in this family. Dad wanted a better son, even though Sho had his powers dad still didn't like him and big sis wanted a little sis to be friends with. Sho…he didn't want a big brother or a little brother. Another brother would have just given dad someone new to compare him to. What he wanted was a mom. He didn't know if he would have traded big sis for mom back, he would have to think about that some more, but he knew that he would have traded dad for mom in a heartbeat.

"Of course he does. Sometimes he can be mean and hurt us but that doesn't mean that he doesn't love us. If he didn't love us anymore then he would just leave…but he won't. He loves us and I love you…so I won't leave you ever." Said big sis. Sho sighed. He didn't know with her sometimes. Yeah, ok, dad could have left them but…but he was just such a jerk all the time! It was like he woke up every morning and looked for things to be upset with them about. Like he thought to himself 'Suzuki, you've been too nice lately you've got to kick it up a notch' but in doing that he was being even meaner and more of a jerk than normal.

Maybe it was just how he was.

Maybe he had passed it down to Sho. That was why he wanted to be a jerk to big sis on her birthday…and also because she had dressed him up as a girl so she could pretend to have a sister…but it didn't matter. He reminded himself that he had hid behind the shower curtain the other day so he could jump out and scare her. He had and it had been funny, especially when she made the toothpaste explode everywhere, but that had been a jerk thing to do. So he owed her one. So he kept the dress on.

Even though he hated it.

He hated it so much. The sleeves were itchy and the bottom part kept on getting tangled around his legs. How did she walk around like this all the time? At least he was still wearing his clothes underneath this. It may have been too hot and uncomfortable but at least he wasn't actually wearing a dress. Well he was but not for real because he was still wearing pants.

On his birthday he was making her wear pants.

He was going to make her pretend that she was his big brother. He was going to make her wear pants, which she hated, and he was going to make her play fighting and guns and throwing things and hitting each other with swords and all of that other fun stuff that she hated. Her games were so boring. Playing dolls was so boring. Painting nails was so boring. Brushing hair was so boring. Making glitter art…ok that was fun. That was fun and he liked glitter, dad hated it but dad hated everything that Sho liked, and he did sort of want to do more glitter art with big sis…

Far away from dad, though, because his aura felt mad.

It had felt mad when big sis and him left the bathroom and went to the living room. She had to paint his nails there because the light was better. He sat through it even though with every single stroke of the brush he wanted to kick her. She was painting his nails blue but it was a way too bright blue. He wanted nothing more than to figure out where they made this stuff and then burn it down! Or maybe just tell them to stop since it was her birthday and she would not have been happy if he just went around starting fires and stuff.

He had to make sure that she was happy on her birthday.

"What color do you want for your toenails? I have this blue but I also have red and pink and purple and green-" said big sis. She went outside of the lines again. She went outside of the lines a lot. He didn't know what was so hard about painting a straight line. He didn't paint that often but straight lines were the easier thing in the whole world!

"Here, if I have to look like a girl at least let me do the painting. You're going outside of the lines." Said Sho. He took the brush from her and went to finish. Huh. This was kind of fun. Sort of like drawing but on yourself….it was ok. It was still for girls but he could see why she did this so often.

"You're better at it than I am. I guess that I'm just not an artist like you are." Said big sis

"You're ok. Some of your drawings are alright." Said Sho. They used to draw together more often when they were little. He had always been better at it than her. She mostly drew cats and characters from stuff she liked. He used to draw stuff like that too but now he mostly just drew pictures of things from life. Like the view from plane windows, the people around him, what happened to traitors, stuff like that. She hardly drew but when she did it was cats and stuff like that. The same stuff that she had drawn when they were little.

Which was so dumb. Why not draw something new?

But she liked cats and stuff. That was why he had drawn her a picture of her as a cat for her birthday. She liked it when he drew her pictures. He could have just gotten her stuff but that seemed sort of dumb. They got almost everything that they asked for and what they didn't get it was for good reason. If dad said 'no' then that was it. There was no point in going behind dad's back because he would just find out and get mad at you and that was never a good thing, dad being mad at you.

"But I'm not as good as you are, little bother. You're the best artist that I have ever met in my whole life." Said big sis

"You're just saying that." Said Sho. He wasn't an artist, he was just a guy who liked to draw, that was all. He had seen real art before and he was no artist. He was just a guy who could draw pictures. Lots of people could draw pictures. It didn't make him special. He wasn't a prodigy or anything, not like her, he couldn't do even half of the things that she could and she knew it.

She still tried to make him feel better anyway.

She told him things just to make him feel better because she knew that he felt bad about it. How she was born right and he was born wrong. She was the Prodigy, she had been born with her powers and she had been more powerful than most adults back when they had been little. He was the Awakened Child. He had to go through a bunch of terrible stuff to get his full powers. He thought that it was better, getting his powers through hard work, than getting them through luck. Everyone else thought different.

That was why he was Suzuki-chan and she was Suzuki-san.

"I am not…well I mean I am saying words but they're true. You're a great artist, better than I am, and I wish that I could draw as well as you." Said big sis. Sho almost yelled at her for telling him things that he just wanted to hear but he reminded himself that this was her birthday and on her birthday she could say whatever she wanted. So he let it go even though he knew that she was just fishing for things to say so that he wouldn't be upset or anything like that.

"There's nothing special about being able to color in a straight line." Said Sho. He finished his nails and held them up so he could see them. The hand that she had done was all goopy and she had gotten as much paint on his skin as she had gotten on his nails. The other hand, the one that he did, was much neater and not goopy at all.

It was blue so it was ok.

"The one you did is much nicer. Can you do mine too?" asked big sis. He wanted to tell her that no, he did not want to, but it was her birthday and he was not going to be a jerk. She wanted to play pretend then he would play pretend…but they were going to play target practice tomorrow to make up for this. He hated this game so much…but that was ok because this was her birthday…and on her birthday he had to do whatever she wanted.

Which included playing the Shoko game.

At least she didn't call him Shoko this time. Good. She had learned from last time that calling him Shoko was way too much. He was Sho, not Shoko, and he was a boy and not a girl like she had wanted. He was a boy like dad had wanted. He wondered what mom had wanted. He wondered if he would have had any little brothers or sisters if mom had still been around. He wondered if he would have liked that.

Then his little sister could have been the one in his place.

He would not have had a place at all, though, if mom had stuck around and she and dad went and had more kids. Dad would have had another boy to inherit the world or maybe if he had another girl he would have been all 'this works' and then had one of them inherit the world…and then he would have given Sho to an orphanage or something. Or maybe dad would have stopped by an orphanage and gotten another son. Then he could have been happy…though Sho couldn't imagine dad ever loving someone else's kid. He barely even loved the kids that he had.

Big sis loved him.

And he loved big sis. Maybe that was enough. Maybe them being together, loving each other, was enough. Maybe as long as she was there for him and he was there for her then it didn't matter how mean dad was to them and how much dad probably wished that he'd had other kids. Better kids. Or maybe just a better son…

Maybe dad would have been happy, then, that they were playing the Shoko game.

Maybe dad would have liked him better as a girl. Maybe dad just liked girls better. Girls were neat and quiet and boring and stuff just like dad was and probably had been for his entire life. Maybe he wished that he had two girls instead of a boy and a girl. He knew that dad didn't wish for two boys. If Sho had a brother then he would have fought with him all the time worse than he had ever fought with big sis. Even when he was at his meanest he always had that knowledge at the back of his mind that she was a girl and that you were not supposed to fight girls. Even if Fukuda said that it was ok so long as you told her that you were sorry. He wondered if he and big sis would have fought if they had both been girls…or maybe big sis would have just bossed him around worse than ever.

He didn't want to be a girl.

Big sis would have been way bossier if he had been a girl. That was enough of a reason not to wish that he was a girl. Also there was the fact that you had to wear dresses, which were uncomfortable, and also that you had to have long hair, which got in the way and also you had to brush all the time. Also the games were much more boring.

But this was kind of fun.

Mom had said, before, that it was alright for boys to do girl things and for girls to do boy things. But also there were a lot of rules for boys and girls so why, then, did the rule of things not matter but the rules about who got to wear dresses or inherit the world matter? He didn't know. He wondered if it mattered that he liked doing this with big sis. Or maybe he was just weird. He had always been weird, though, since the day he had been born. He had red hair and blue eyes and freckles after all. That was weird. Also he had been born without powers which was weird for his family. Also sometimes he acted like a jerk for no reason, just because his brain told him to, and that was weird…so maybe he was just weird.

Maybe he should have been used to being weird.

Or maybe he was weird enough. He didn't know. He knew that he should have just not cared. Dad said that he was a complete person all on his own and that he had never cared once what people felt or thought…but that seemed kind of jerky. Also dad did too care about what people thought and felt. That was why he dressed the way he did and read manga in secret and stuff like that. Sho didn't know if he should care about what other people thought or if he shouldn't have cared what other people thought or…or if he only cared about this because he cared what other people thought.

"Thanks Sho. You're really good at that." Said big sis. She was happy and that was what mattered. So what if he hated doing this? Playing the Shoko game? His big sister was happy and that was what mattered. He liked seeing her happy and he wished that…that he hadn't made her so upset before. He was always making her upset…but not on her birthday.

He would make her happy.

He would be there for her on her birthday. Birthdays were important. She had said before, so many times before, that the day that he had been born had been the happiest day of her life. She had been a baby when he had been born so she couldn't have possibly remembered that but it was still nice…just a nice thing that she said to him…but also one that she had meant. Because she loved him. She loved him and she was always there for him…and he would be there for her. He would be there for her on her would be nice and he would not fight with her or kick her or pull her hair and he would give her the picture he drew for her and he would play the Shoko game too.

He hated the Shoko game but he loved his big sister.


	138. Responsibility

It was a girl.

"So, yeah. This is…she gave me the…the baby and told me to tell you that…well she said…" said Fukuda. He didn't know how much longer he had to live. He had done what he had been told to do. Showed up, spoke to Pang Sujin, and accepted what she had to give him. He had done what he was told and he knew that, logically, he had done nothing worth being punished for.

But this was a situation which defied any and all known forms of logic.

He had hardly set one foot in Bussan when a baby was handed to him. Pang Sujin. He knew her…of her. She worked in finance. She had used up all of her maternity, vacation, and sick time in having her baby. She had to go back or she would be considered a traitor. It wasn't a personal thing she had just been gone for too long. She had been trying to figure out what to do with her Daughter. Her parents wanted nothing to do with her due to the fact that she was an unwed mother. She couldn't run or hide because she knew people would come after her. She couldn't raise the child either. She couldn't openly have a red haired, blue eyed, baby girl while she worked for Claw.

Even Shimazaki would have been able to see the resemblance.

So she had decided to give her Daughter the best possible life. She had decided to give her Daughter to…to…to the father. To Suzuki. The fact that Suzuki had managed to even find a woman willing to have his child, no offense to Masami he knew the story there, but also that she would have thought that being raised by Suzuki Touichirou was the best possible life for said child….it defied all logic.

Suzuki Touichirou was anything but father of the year.

He had already ruined two kids. Shigeko was a smaller version of him and Sho…Sho may have needed professional help. Those kids…Suzuki already barely took care of those kids. Now he had another kid. How could he have betrayed Masami like that? Then, paradoxically, good for Masami because he'd finally moved on. He'd found another woman to emotionally and physically neglect which meant that he would call of his search for Masami, which was good, but he had also betrayed Masami, which was bad. Of course that was a whole pot and kettle thing. But still! He had no business going around…well it was good for Masami that he was going around….but also Masami would have been devastated if her husband had gotten another woman pregnant while they had been together…but one again pot and kettle…

Logic had no place in Fukuda's mind at the moment.

"Yes?" asked Suzuki. Something was said…what was it? He didn't know and he didn't care. There was a human being in his arms. There was a small sleeping human being in his arms. There was a small sleeping red haired human being in his arms. There was a small, sleeping, red haired human being with a red aura in his arms….

What.

"Pang said that…that the baby was better off with you. That you could give her a better life. She said…oh God…that you already had your own kids and also…also she had thought that…well she said that she's sent you numerous messages outlining how she feels." Said Fukuda. Apparently that woman had been AATRACTED to SUZUKI of all people. Claw was mostly men. Most espers were men. She could have had her pick of anyone but instead she went with Suzuki of all people. Not even for reasons that would have made sense. She said that she knew how it looked but she had never been after money or power. She had just liked talking to him. He could be cute and funny. Those were the two words that she had applied to the man standing right in front of him with the thousand yard stare and the unreadable aura.

Cute. Funny.

Fukuda had asked, before, why Masami had even bothered with Suzuki. Why she had ever married the man in the first place. It was because he had been good looking, his weirdness had been endearing, and Sho had come along. So history repeated itself. Or not. Suzuki had left this woman, the mother of his…oh god…child. He had been the one to leave this time.

The world had another Suzuki in it now.

"How…" said Suzuki. He was fading in and out. There was a baby in his arms. There was a baby right there in his arms. There was a small baby in his arms. There was a small round faced baby in his arm. The baby had a round face and red hair and long fingers and was…was so small….so small and…

And Fukuda was speaking to him.

He couldn't hear a word Fukuda said. He was…the baby was breathing. This was a live human baby. It was breathing. The baby was drawing air into it's lungs. This was a live human baby. This was a live human baby sleeping in his arms. Not a doll. This was a baby of flesh and blood, not hard and cold plastic, and it was there in his arms.

A baby.

"….said she missed you. Said that she didn't want anything from you that you wouldn't give." Said Fukuda. If this woman had any sense she would have left her child in one of those baby boxes and then pretended that she'd never had it. That was the only way that this child had even a chance at a good life. If she had nothing to do with Claw. If she had nothing to do with Suzuki.

Suzuki.

He was taking this well. He had decided to come straight back from Korea. Usually post mission briefings happened in the base. Well this needed discretion. This baby…she had a target painted on her and she was too young to know it. Nobody could know about this. Nobody did know about this. Pang Sujin had told everyone she had lost the child. This little girl…she could so easily disappear. She wasn't stuck in this. She could have been left on any doorstep, in any garden, on the steps of any church…hell, they could have just sent her down the river in a fucking basket!

Suzuki was not going to keep this baby.

He hated kids. He hated kids and he hated babies, too, because they had needs and Suzuki didn't know how to fulfill any needs at all besides physical ones. Suzuki…he could not keep this baby. What was he even going to do with it? Let someone else raise it? Emotionally abandon it before it could walk? Make it feel like a third class citizen compared to his REAL Daughter? Put it through the Awakening process so that he could have a child worthy of him?

He didn't know.

"This…this is a baby." Said Suzuki finally. He knew that he had to say something. He was being spoken to and he had to say something back. That was basic manners. But he was Suzuki Touichirou. He didn't need to follow and rules. He made rules. He was the most powerful and most complete being in the world. He could have stayed silent. Maybe he should have stayed silent. But he had to speak. If he didn't speak then he knew that he would never come out of…whatever it was that he was caught in. He felt there, stuck, staring at this little person in his arm.

"Yes, that's a baby." Said Fukuda. They had known each other for thirty years just about. He had never seen Suzuki like this. Not even when Sho was born. This was…he did not know what to make of the expression on his face or the look of his aura. Tense. There was a tension running throughout his body…

Thank God that the baby was too young to feel auras.

There was a slight aura to her but Sho had been the same way when he was born. He hoped to God that this was not another Sho. He could not allow…could not sit back and watch…he could not let another child go through the Awakening process. But that was the kind of man Suzuki Touichirou was. He was no kind of father. Fukuda doubted he even knew where his children were right now. Their auras were gone. Far away, then, since he could not sense Shigeko's aura. Good.

He had time, then, to figure out what to do with this baby.

"This is a female baby." Said Suzuki. She was wrapped in a pink blanket. There was a pink cap on her head. Her face had these dry red patches…eczema. Son had suffered from it too after he was born. This was…a girl. A…this was a baby girl. There, in his arms, was a baby girl.

"It is." Said Fukuda. He, for once in his life, didn't know what to do. He had thought about just…disappearing with the child at some point in transit. Just putting the baby in a basket and leaving her on someone's doorstep…but that could have meant certain death for him. Suzuki would, at some point, get a message asking after his daughter…and not Shigeko. Then Fukuda would die and if he was dead he would be no use to anyone. Especially not Sho. Sho…he needed him. So disappearing WITH the baby was out of the question too.

Suzuki should not have had that baby.

"This is an esper baby." Said Suzuki. There. An aura. Barely there but…yes. Son's had been the same way when he had been born. Son…he had held Son in his arms like this nine years and some months ago. He had felt…good. Good. He had felt good when son had been placed in his arms for the first time. When Masami had allowed him to hold Son. He had been so small then, and he had smelled different, and he had been screaming…a fighter even back then…and Suzuki had felt a sort of…kinship…with Son that he had never felt with another human being in his entire life.

The baby was not making him feel that.

This baby with it's red hair and red aura. This baby who had come from…he didn't even want to think her name. She was…she had…they had…and now this. Now there was a baby in the world. He had made a human being. Of course he had made a human being. That tended to happen when one ejaculated inside of a woman. In fact that was the basic way all human came into the world. He had made a human because he had fallen to his own need for…and not even a real need! Sex was not a need! It was just something that he…he had enjoyed…and now there was a human in the world because he couldn't keep his pants on or his hands to himself or his aura to himself or his genes to himself then…then he wouldn't have had…

This was a human being.

"She sure is…" said Fukuda. He could see the wheels in Suzuki's head turning and nothing good ever came from that. Suzuki Touichirou thinking. The last time that he had been that deep in thought he had put thousands upon thousands upon thousands of yen into figuring out how to make the perfect omelet. The logistics of space trains. What the exact shade of blue his suit was…Fukuda hadn't seen obsessive Suzuki in a while…

Obsessive Suzuki was the worst kind of Suzuki.

Obsessive Suzuki was worse than tyrant Suzuki and disaffected Suzuki and half assed under parenting Suzuki and half assed over parenting Suzuki and the rare, very rare, drunken Suzuki. The only Suzuki that was worse was explosion Suzuki. This was…on the bright side he didn't look like he was about to explode. That was…Fukuda thanked whichever God was the right one that Suzuki was not about to explode. Maybe…maybe he would just…Fukuda had no clue. He had no reference for this. He had been so happy when Sho had been born, Suzuki happy, and he had been just as happy is not happier when he found Shigeko.

Now he was just staring at the baby like it was a frog that he was supposed to dissect for biology class.

Maybe this baby would just be another step in his quest to understand why some people had esp and others didn't. He had been compiling data for years. Maybe he would just raise the baby so he could figure out how esper kids developed. Maybe he would keep her around so he had a female heir, heiress, with his blood. Maybe he would dust of his plan of marrying Sho and Shigeko then…Fukuda hoped to God that Suzuki had totally forgotten about that plan...or maybe he would just tell Shigeko the truth about her parentage and she would just become another upper echelon employee of Claw…which she sort of already was.

Shigeko. Sho. The kids.

He had no idea when the kids would be back but he knew that they would realize something was up when they saw the baby. This was their, Sho's, little sister. Sho had a little sister…well what he had wanted was a brother, but now he had a sister…and he was not a gentle boy. Masami had tried her best, Fukuda had tried his best, but Sho's anger issues were…worrying. Shigeko could put up a barrier or defend herself at any time. This was a baby. Sho would never have intentionally hurt her but Fukuda knew that Sho was not always in control of himself.

He inherited that from his father only instead of exploding with his powers he exploded in a flurry of violence.

Sho would…not take this well. The new addition to his family. Doubly so if this baby turned out to be as gifted as Shigeko. This baby had an esper, a weak one but an esper, for a mother. That had to account for something…though he knew for a fact that Shigeko's parents had been two ordinary people without even the barest hint of esp between them. She even had a biological brother who was, by all accounts, totally normal. A genius though, if the Seasoning City chronicle told the truth about the boy's test scores, but Claw was not in the business of recruiting geniuses.

It was being run by an idiot after all.

How hard was it to take the ten seconds to put on a goddamned CONDOM?! Seriously! It was the one thing, the only thing, that he had to remember. That everyone had to remember. Safe sex. It wasn't complicated. You roll the latex tube over your dick BEFORE you have sex! It wasn't complicated and they sold them in every country. Suzuki was an idiot. Well technically he was at least hyper-cognitive…but he had been such an idiot. Fukuda had never gotten anyone pregnant. Not once in his life had he ever fathered any children with any woman. He knew that he was in no positon to raise them. He wanted them, oh God how he wanted them, but while he was trapped at Suzuki's side he was in positon to have a wife or children. More people to use against him.

At least he was not in any positon where his wife and children could be used against him.

But Suzuki was. The kids…they could defend themselves. Sho had a bodyguard now but Shibata was mostly there to guard the world from Sho. Shigeko…she didn't need a body guard. Everyone else needed a body guard if she ever got it into her head that she couldn't get things by exploiting the fact that she was a cute little girl and her father was a very powerful man. That baby was helpless. There were so many people, even within Claw, that would give their left arm to get at Suzuki but knew that messing with one of the kids was suicide.

A baby could not defend itself.

Pang Sujin was an idiot and not just for having unprotected sex with Suzuki Touichirou. She was an idiot for thinking that this baby could have any chance at all at life with Suzuki as a father. There would be people coming after her just for being Suzuki's daughter. Suzuki's adopted daughter would resent her for taking her place in the family and probably the whole organization. Sho…Sho would just plain not take this well. He was just a kid. To suddenly have a baby sister and to know that his father had done…something like that…with a woman who was not his mother…the poor little guy. He would not be able to understand this situation and…and that would set him off…

There was no way to fix this.

"I….I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this information." Said Suzuki. This was an esper baby and it was his esper baby…or maybe not. He didn't know for sure. This could…this could have just been another man's baby. This could have been anyone's baby. Lots of people had red hair and lots of people had red auras. Yes, this could have just been…this was just a baby. A baby without parents. A baby whose parents were unable to care for her. A technical orphan. Like Daughter.

This was another daughter.

A female esper baby. That was what this was. Like Daughter had once been. Daughter had been two, a toddler, when she had come to him. Really getting his hands on this orphan…this was like catching lightning in a bottles twice. Another female esper, and a possible prodigy too if she was his-if she had even a small bit of a visible aura at her age. He should have been overjoyed that another child esper had been literally dropped into his lap. This was…this was going to be so good for data and also she would be raised by-raised in Claw so she would be fiercely loyal to him come the day. This was everything that he could have ever asked for….

Then why did his collar feel much too tight.

Air had become a scarce resource. This was…he did not want to be holding this baby anymore. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. He had wanted more children in an abstract sense. He had wanted to see what he would make. He had wanted to see if they would all come out like son or if they would end up taking after him at all. He had wanted to secure his bloodline for the future. Son was worrying him just a bit. Suzuki had walked in on him wearing a dress and playing dolls with his sister…which could have meant nothing at all, just children playing as they tended to do, or it could have meant that Suzuki would never be getting any grandchildren. He had wanted another child but now…

He did not want this child.

He could not care for this child. He had no wife. He had no idea where his wife was so, therefore, he had no wife by his side to care for this child. He had no desire to divorce Masami and remarry. He had no desire to take a mistress. He had no desire to have a live in nanny. There were so few female espers and he trusted nobody with the baby. The children were another story, they could run away and defend themselves, but this baby could not even hold it's own head up yet…this baby had a target painted on her…and there was no way to get it off considering who her father…considering who Suzuki was and the fact that this child had been left in his care.

He already had two children.

He was so close to the finish line with them. They had become less tiresome as they got older. They were almost teenagers. Soon they would be adults and they would be tolerable and he would have reached his goal by then, too, and the world would be his…but a baby would push back all of his plans. The baby would have to bond with him so he would have had to spend time with it…he had spent countless hours holding son on his lap while he made some pathetic attempts at working….he did not have the time to be catering after a baby. Maybe Daughter…

She was the nurturing type.

But the target would still be on the baby. There were enough attempts on his life as it stood. Maybe the baby could have been raised by someone else…but he knew no women. Minegishi might have been female…and they looked after Daughter as if she was their own…but Minegishi was also very unpleasant to be around for long periods of time. Also the drug problem. Well Suzuki didn't know if they took enough drugs for it to be a problem, unless he felt like killing everyone around him he knew better than to partake of anything stronger than tea, but Fukuda had brought it his attention that they might not have been the best person to leave around the children. The children were not so impressionable…

But babies were entirely different creatures.

A baby would take after whoever was raising it…to a degree. He still had no idea who it was that Son took after…but daughter had taken after him and he'd had no hand whatsoever in her creation. This baby…this baby would have to be left with someone who could care for her. There were so few women in Claw and the ones that were there…well the child's mother was a solid 'no' and Daughter was just a child herself…though she was nurturing and responsible….he'd put a pin that. There was also that female Scar from the Seventh Division. She hit hard and was good at tactics…

So it was a contest between Daughter, a near stranger who ranked as lowly as she good while still being something to Claw, and Minegishi running as an alternate.

He had no idea what to do. He couldn't do this himself and if he gave the child to Daughter, even if she could rise above her chronological age as she had done time and time again, there would still be an even greater target on him and his family. He didn't watch them twenty four hours a day, he would have gone mad if he had tried, and the baby…it would be in danger if it was only the least bit associated with him…and that was why he didn't want it. Not because the room was closing in more and more and the air was getting thinner and thinner the more he held this baby…

He had to give this baby to someone else, delegate the responsibly, for her own good and nothing more. One had to think of the welfare of the child above all else.

"Are you planning on keeping her?" asked Fukuda. He would work from there. He knew that the baby would have to be raised in Claw but he had no idea by who, specifically, in Claw. Half of these idiots couldn't take a piss without wetting the front of this pants and the other half couldn't go ten minutes without starting some stupid fight. That was just the Awakened. The upper echelons…he was amazed that any of them had made it this far without being killed…the Division leaders were all pretty…eccentric…to say the least. The Scars…not a lot of healthy and fully formed individuals there…

It was almost like you had to be at least a little bit unhinged to want to join a world domination cult. Who'd of thought?

"I…do you want this baby?" asked Suzuki. The answer was right in front of him. Fukuda loved children, at least he loved Suzuki's children, and for some reason he had never had children of his own. It wasn't that he was a homosexual, no they had figured out that they were both fully heterosexual together back when they had been in school together, he had just never married for some reason. Well now he could have a child without the hassle of marrying and the trouble of having sex, waiting for his partner to get pregnant, and then the terrifying nine months where at any moment your partner and your child could have died…and then they cut her open to get the child out…like a fish.

Who wouldn't have wanted to skip all of that and get right to the part where you raised the child?

"What? No! I can't…no. I do not accept that baby." Said Fukuda. He was not going to be chained to the organization any more than he was. At least on his own he could, in theory, run away. Masami…that was what her chained her to Suzuki for all of those years. The kids. It had damn near destroyed her to leave them…but at least she could be assured that Fukuda would do his best to raise them right and, eventually, bring her Sho...and he had messed all of that up…but if he did leave then there would be no one to care for this child…and he knew that he would get attached to her just like he had gotten attached to Sho…

Which was why he had made it a point not to even so much as learn her name.

"Why not? You make good money, you have parental leave that you're never going to use, and you love children. You certainly love taking care of mine, anyway. You can care for this baby as if she were your own. This would save you the trouble of meeting a woman and having one of your own. You'd be saving years and getting right to the point." Said Suzuki

"I…I can't take care of a baby. I have no clue how to take care of a baby and I have no desire to take care of a baby. If you give me that baby then it will not get even close to the best possible care." Said Fukuda

"I am not looking for the best possible care I am just looking for someone who I can trust with this and I trust you. This baby needs to be cared for and I do not have the time. You can raise this baby and simply tell people that she's your daughter-" said Suzuki

"No. I won't do it. I don't care what you do to me I will not take that baby. That's your daughter, not mine." Said Fukuda. He was…angry. He was just so angry that Suzuki…he was not being rational. He knew that he was not being rational. Suzuki had made a person and then just...just planned on…that was what he did. He got rid of people who didn't serve their purpose or impeded him in some way.

Bringing up his lackluster romantic life had been a low blow too. No wife, no kids…and who's fault was that? Who had been the one to scare off any girls that might have liked him back when they were in school together…and university…and then he had been chained to Claw pretty much at that point…

"No! This is…this is not my child. I am not her father. I…there is no way to know if I am her father." Said Suzuki. Well there were ways, many ways, but he was not going to submit to them. If he submitted to them then he was…then he was announcing to the world that this was his child and then she would be in great danger. Yes, that was all. It had nothing to do with the feeling of slowly being crushed or the fact that if he acknowledged that he had made another child with another woman than he would have might as well stood up and told the world that he was nothing more than a womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own joy…and he was not going to say that. Who would follow him if they knew that? What would his children think? And Masami…she would not return if she knew what he had done…

The child was better off without him raising her. This wasn't even his child anyway.

"They have these new things called paternity tests. You can even get them at the drugstores in the States. Also she looks just like you." Said Fukuda. Really. He was going to pretend that he couldn't see the obvious? How clueless did he think that Fukuda was?

"I…there is no need for me to take one because I am not and cannot be this baby's father." Said Suzuki. Once. It had only been once. To make Sho it had taken at least two tries. Therefore the chances that this baby was his were so low that they were not even worth mentioning.

"She looks just like you, Suzuki. She has red hair. How many people in the world have red hair?" asked Fukuda. He needed to keep himself under control. He needed to tally up his evil thoughts and then he could make room for planning out what was going to be done about that baby…if something could even be done….

"Watch what you say…and many other people have red hair. There are rarer hair colors, probably. I am not her father. I did not father this child. This is not my child." Said Suzuki. The child in his arms was still dead asleep. That deathlike sleep that infants went into. It had always been so terrifying when Son had gone into one of those…so terrifying….but this was alright. If this had been his child then he would have felt the sense of kinship he had felt for Son. He would have felt the obsessive need to protect her from the world around her.

Now he just felt, mostly, like he was either going to asphyxiate, die, or vomit. They were all equally probable.

"Suzuki…I can't do this right now." Said Fukuda. He was close to losing control of himself and his mouth always went first. Suzuki was denying his own child like it was nothing…Fukuda knew he could be a cold man but this was…up there. This was up there with what he done to Sho and how he had planned on punishing Shigeko for accidentally killing seventeen people. He was close to running his mouth and then the baby would wake up because Suzuki would be pissed and then they would get into it with a screaming baby, it had taken so long to get her to sleep in the first place, and also he could feel Shigeko's aura getting closer and she would probably just order him to take care of the baby if she didn't just claim it for herself like a doll or something and-

-and he really needed a personal day.

"You already said that you wouldn't take the child but-" said Suzuki. The carrot would work. Most men got the stick but the men he needed got the carrot. He could offer Fukuda a substantial raise in pay, a substantial decrease in all of his non healing duties, and a seat of power come the day for this. He was prepared to offer the man a mansion on the moon if he agreed…and he did not like this about himself. The way he was feeling.

He was having a lot of trouble exorcising these emotions…but he had to unless he wanted a screaming baby on his hands…and also Daughter was getting closer and closer…even though he had told her to be gone all day…

"Suzuki. President. I am taking a personal day. Like you said I have a lot of them saved up and I am taking them. I won't be available for anything other than healing. Good day." Said Fukuda. He bowed and turned to leave.

"Fukuda. Stop." Said Suzuki. He held the baby out in front of himself. He was careful to support her head. She was so small…and he was so close to the edge…and someone needed to take this baby from him before he…

The door opened.

Daughter came in carrying two cups of what smelled like coffee. He could see her from his vantage point in the living room. She was using her powers to hold up her drinks while she took her shoes off in the makeshift genkan and faced her shoes the right way. She was always so responsible like that.

"Dad, I'm home, and I brought you a coffee too to help you work!" said Mob loudly, but not shouted, as she got her shoes just right. Fukuda was there too…he was back from his mission! She wished that someone would have told her. She only had her own coffee which she had drank from, and also put too much milk in according to Minegishi, and the one she got for dad. Still, she could at least say 'hi' to him and-

"Excuse me, Miss Suzuki." Said Fukuda. He saw his out and he took it. He knew that he would pay for it later, not waiting to be excused, but right now he needed space to…to process all of this…and to figure out what in the hell he was supposed to do in this situation. Well besides the obvious, he was not going to take that baby, he could not take that baby under any circumstances.

He did not want to be in Masami's boat…he did not want to get attached to another Shigeko.

"Bye Fukuda…" said Mob as Fukuda practically run out the door. She hoped that he was ok. She did want to hear about his mission though. Maybe he was part of that group who went to Tokyo. She had liked Tokyo alright and she would have liked to hear about how his trip was. He hadn't given her the chance though, but that was ok because he was busy, and on the bright side it looked like dad had finally decided to take a break…

And play dolls?

"Daughter." Said Suzuki. There she was. His Daughter. For a moment he thought that he had just seen an apparition of Masami. It was the coffee she was putting down on the coffee table. That was it. Masami had loved Starbucks for reasons he could not understand…and Daughter did as well even though she was just a child.

Chronologically speaking.

She was mature, intelligent, more reliable than many of his Awakened…and she was Masami's Daughter too…

"….hope you like it. No cream, no sugar, and no artificial sweetener either. Minegishi says that artificial sweetener is poison like sugar is poison but I know for a fact that they can drink half of a two liter of orange soda all at once…but don't ask how I know that. I brought some creamers with me, though, in case you wanted some. They made coffee better and also you can drink them on your own." Said Mob. She began to put the creamers on the table when dad stepped forward with the doll that he was holding. That was normal, him getting her dolls, but he didn't usually get her baby dolls. She didn't like baby dolls, the stories you could use them for were limited, and also they didn't fit in her dollhouse. She would be grateful though because she was always grateful.

"Here. A friend for you." Said Suzuki. He place the baby into her arms and made sure that she was supporting the baby's head. The last thing he wanted was a dead baby. The baby could die when it was an adult if it chose to but right now no dying before she had even gotten to truly live. Before she had gotten to see the sun rise from the stratosphere….swim in the Mariana Trench…eat solid foods….

He sat Daughter down with the baby. There. Now she was more stable.

"Dad…is this a robot? Because it's breathing and looking at me…and I know that they have baby dolls that do that…but it's also warm and I think it has an aura…dad…are you listening? I think that this is a real baby….or a really cool toy…" said Mob. Dad had shoved this…doll…into her hands and then made her sit on the couch with it…and then it's eyes opened and now it was looking at her…and it was sucking on the front of her shirt…and it had spit…

"Yes, you are correct. That is a real baby." Said Suzuki. There. This was perfect. Daughter…she was a natural at this. Yes, he had just been overthinking it. Now Daughter had a Daughter of her own and this would be good practice for when she had her own children and the baby would join his household but not as his child and this was perfect so why was he still so close to an explosion!?

"What?" asked Mob. She did her best to keep her powers out of control. This was…this was the her birthday present? She said that she wanted another set of princess dolls, they added a new one, or a fur-real friend…or just a hug…not a human baby! What was she even supposed to do with this baby?! She was ten! She was too young to be this baby's mom! Where had she even come from!? Had dad just stopped by an orphanage and picked up a baby without even asking her?! What the F-word!? Who the H-word did that!? So she wasn't allowed to have a cat but she could have a human being to take care of?!

"Control yourself or you'll upset the baby." Said Suzuki. She was…he had seen her aura flare. He needed to go. He needed to move. He needed to get out before he…he didn't even know what he would do but he needed….he needed to put some space between himself and that baby.

"Wh-what? Dad, this baby is alive! I-I don't know what to do-" said Mob. Babies were not like dolls. They were complicated and they cried and you had to feed them and change them and also they were gross and mess, like now how the baby had gotten spit all over her shirt…and she didn't know what to do…and this was a baby! A human baby!

"You'll learn." Said Suzuki. She would. She was so smart and capable and he trusted her more than anyone else in the entire world.

"I've never taken care of a baby before!" said Mob. She almost shouted that at dad. A baby was not all fun and games, she was ten and she knew that, and she just…she was ten! She didn't even know this baby's name and now she had to take care of her like she was a mom or something!

"You're taken care of your brother and he can be a baby sometimes." Said Suzuki

"That's different. Sho can feed himself and walk and talk and I don't have to give him baths or change his diapers or…I don't even know how to change a diaper." Said Mob

"Google it. Daughter, I trust you to watch over this baby until...if something else cannot be…found." Said Suzuki. He would have to share a household with that baby until Daughter came of age…and then he would have to leave Daughter because he did not want to be around that baby….

He didn't know what to do.

"Dad…I don't even know her name." said Mob finally. Maybe that would be the thing to tell dad that she was not up to this. This was…she had only been ten for two days now…and she had this baby to take care of. Being an adult wasn't all drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes…but she was only ten…but dad trusted her…

And she could not let dad down.

"Her name is…it's here in this paper with her things." Said Suzuki. There, in Korean on top and Japanese on the bottom, was a note. Please take care of Mi-Cha. He did not like that name. He would have called her…not that. Something Japanese. She was Japanese, it could be sort of seen in her facial structure. The eyes, mostly, and the shape of her mouth.

"Mi-Cha…" said Mob craning her neck so she could read the note dad had in his hand. He was pale and his aura was shaky and he kept on looking at the door…and also things were starting to float…and the baby was starting to get upset….

"No. I don't like that name. Her name will be…" said Suzuki. Girl's name. Shoko. He had wanted to call Son Shoko if he had been female but…no. Too close to Sho. Not good. Ai? Too generic .Aia….it meant ruler…but no. Not that. He didn't like the sound of it…and also he had a son called leader already…

Daughter was staring.

"But she already has a name." said Mob. They couldn't just change the baby's name like that. She might get confused and upset. She was also upset enough as it was. Mob bounced her like she had seen moms do on TV and in the world and stuff. She wished that she'd thought to ask her mom more about life, mostly about how to take care of a baby, because right now she was a lost as a goose flying north for the winter in the middle of December.

"Mukai. Her name will be Mukai from now on." Said Suzuki. He liked the sound of it. Mukai. There. Now the baby had an acceptable name…and he had just named the baby…and now he was both too hot and too cold at the same time…he had to go.

So he did.

"Wait! What do I do if-" said Mob as dad made a rush for the door and the baby started to cry.

"Figure it out!" said Suzuki. He made it through the door but, contrary to popular belief, fresh air was not a cure all. He still felt so…frightened. Yes, that was the word…frightened. When he had no reason to be. This was not his baby. He had not fathered that baby. That was just….a baby…which he had given to Daughter…which was crying….

He could not stand the sound of a crying baby.

So he kicked off from the groud and flew away before he could explode and hurt someone.

"Mukai…if you don't stop crying then I could explode and hurt you on accident…and I don't want that…" said Mob. Dad's aura was gone which meant that he was gone…which meant that she and this baby were all alone…and it wasn't even listening to her….maybe it only spoke Korean since the note had been in Korean and she'd had a Korean name before dad renamed her…

Mob didn't know what to do.

But she could not give up. Conceal, don't feel. Power was nothing without control. This baby needed her and she was not going to explode or run away. She was going to do a good job, the best job, and then dad would have been so proud of her. She would and could figure this out just like dad had said to. Dad trusted her, dad believed in her, and he was not going to let him down.

Plus, well, she had always sort of wanted a baby sister.

"Please don't cry, Mukai, I'm going to take good care of you. My name is Suzuki Shigeko but I like to be called Mob. I'm your big sister…your pretend big sister. Because we aren't related…but that doesn't change the fact that I'm going to take good care of you."

She would.


	139. We Can Figure it Out

Minegishi Toshiki did not want children.

There was no ticking biological clock. There was no concern for passing on the family name. There was no urge to make a smaller and cuter version of themselves. No. They did not want a baby, had no urge to reproduce, and actually could not stand the sound of a crying baby. It cut through them like a knife. It made them feel vaguely anxious. It made them want to bang their head against a wall until they passed out from the concussion.

They did not want a baby.

So why in the hell could they hear a baby crying?

"Look Mukai! Fresh air! And the sun! Does this make you happy? What makes you happy?" Mob was outside shouting in Korean at a…doll? She was pacing up and down her backyard with a baby doll. One of those realistic ones. It looked like it could cry, at least, and move and…turn red…and also Minegishi didn't know much but they knew that Mob should not have been holding it like a sack of potatoes….that is if that was a…

That was a real baby.

"What the hell?" muttered Minegishi. They had been laying down on their bed trying to get caught up on their reading. They had been hanging out with a ten year old all day. They liked Mob but they'd needed a break for a while…and now they had a break…well they'd HAD one but this was not something that they could ignore.

Because that was a very loud baby….that Mob should not have had.

"Please…please….please stop crying. I'll be your friend if you stop crying, Mukai, we'll be best friends." Said Mob. She was still pacing around with a screaming baby…and Minegishi could not take this. They were going to intervene because, judging by the lack of Suzuki's aura, he was off doing more important things than taking care of his Daughter while she took care of a baby. Thank God that they were in the middle of nowhere or someone would have started asking questions.

Like why there was a ten year old pacing with a screaming baby.

"Minegishi! Help me please…." Said Mob. She felt their aura before she saw them…and she was so happy to see them! They were smart and they would know what to do. Dad told her to Google it but Google had said that there were a bunch of reasons that a baby could be crying. She could have been too hot or too cold or hungry or lonely or she might have needed a change or she might have missed her parents or she might have just been crying for the sake of crying.

Babies were a lot.

But Minegishi was smart! The smartest person ever next to dad. They would know just what to do and they would do it and the baby would be happy and it would be taken care of and then Dad wouldn't tell her that she had failed him even though she sort of had…because she was not taking good care of this baby at all….but now it would all be ok! Even her aura was calming down…which was good because she had been feeling way too many feelings.

"Mob, where'd you get that baby?" asked Minegishi. Yup. That was a genuine human baby. An esper baby from the look of her aura. It was small and it was dim but it was there…and Minegishi had no idea if that was normal or not. That was a baby with an aura…so it made sense why it would be there….there as in with Claw, not there as in being held by a panicking ten year old.

What the hell was this?

"This is my baby." Said Mob. Dad had given her this baby and now that meant that it was hers and she was it's mom…but she did not want to be it's mom. Her mom. She did not want to be Mukai's mom at all. She didn't know all of the things that a mom was supposed to know and she didn't even have her own mom to ask. She couldn't even ask her own dad because he had left. So now it was just her and this baby….and she was going to be it's sister. Not a mom but a sister. She knew how to be a sister.

She knew how to be Sho's sister. Sho was not a baby. This was a baby. But she would be fine.

"What….what?" asked Minegishi. That was….what? No. That was not possible. Mob was ten. That was…what?

"This is my baby and her name is Mukai and she won't stop crying and I think that something is really making her all upset and I don't know what it is and I'm kind of scared and also she won't stop crying no matter how much I walk around with her." said Mob

"But…how is that your baby? I mean…you and that guy…right? I mean the one you were telling me about….you didn't do more than kiss, did you?" asked Minegishi. Ten year olds could have babies. The youngest mother ever had been five…it was a sick world they were living in….but Mob hadn't….Minegishi had been reading too much Wikipedia. It was poisoning their mind. Mob was just a kid. There had to be a rational explanation for the little human screaming in her arms.

"No we only…I don't want to talk about that now! I'll tell you the story of me and Hanazawa later but right now this baby needs something and I don't know what it is because she can't talk yet and even if she could talk she would speak Korean and my Korean isn't that good but that's what her mom and dad spoke so she probably can't understand us and-and-and I don't know why my dad gave her to me in the first place! A baby is not a birthday present." Said Mob

"Give me the baby and tell me everything." Said Minegishi. They did not like or want a baby but they also did not want to have to hear this baby carrying on like that. They held out their arms and Mob passed them the baby. Minegishi wasn't much wiser about this than Mob, they decided, and being an adult did not give them magical, Mary Poppins-esque powers, but they at least knew to support the baby's head.

"Um…ok. But don't hold her like that or she'll spit on the front of your shirt." Said Mob

"She's trying to breastfeed. Lovely." Said Minegishi as the baby turned it's head to the side and slobbered all over their shirt. Sometimes it really sucked having to be the adult. Like now when you got baby slobber all over one of your best shirts because, apparently, you didn't have enough to do in your life. Now you had to take care of a baby and change.

"Breastfeed?" asked Mob. She felt so much better not having to hold Mukai while she cried. She wasn't crying so loud anymore, either. She just wanted to suck on shirt…or try to eat from them. But how did that work? Babies drank milk from bottles. Mob may not have known much but she did know that babies only drank milk from bottles.

"You know, breastfeed. How babies eat. They get their food from their mothers like that. How do you not know?" asked Minegishi. Well this was certainly shaping up to be quite the shit show. Mob was ten. She was probably about to give the baby some of her strawberry milk or something. Minegishi may not have liked babies but they did not fancy having to deal with a dead one and an inconsolable ten year old.

"So that's why moms have breasts? Because they're full of milk? Like cows?" asked Mob. Huh. Well that would make sense. Moms were the ones who grew the babies inside of their stomachs so they much have been the ones who grew the food for them too. Did that mean that everyone could feed a baby like that even if they didn't have a baby?

"What? No, only if you've had a baby already….what the hell is your father even teaching….not now. I am not telling you the facts of life now. Nope. That's a crisis for another day." Said Minegishi

"Crisis?" asked Mob. She didn't think that this was a crisis. Sure this was sort of difficult, baby Mukai was still very upset, but she could figure this out. Dad was counting on her and she was not going to let him down.

"Does she have a bag? A suitcase? Anything?" asked Minegishi. Suzuki had dumped this on his Daughter, she had said, the sexist asshole that he was….but he wouldn't have just left this baby here with no supplies. That would have been insane….well anyone with eyes could see that Suzuki was not playing with a fill deck…but he wouldn't have been so stupid as to leave his Daughter alone with a baby and no supplies?

Right?

"Her things are inside." Said Mob. Right. She should have looked through the baby's bag. Her bottles must have been in there. So the milk in the bottles came from moms. That was interesting. They milked moms like cows for their milk and then gave it to babies. She hadn't known that. She knew that she was right to ask Minegishi for help. They were so smart. They knew everything.

"Well, come on then. I seriously can't take much more of this crying…." Said Minegishi. They carried the baby and followed Mob inside. They did not want to hold this baby. They did not want to care for this baby. They had no clue how to care for a baby. They hadn't joined this cult thinking that they would ever have to take care of a baby. They had spent their whole life taking precautions so as not to be in a situation where they would ever have to take care of a baby.

But now not only did they have to take care of a baby but a ten year old as well.

"Please take care of Mi-Cha. She is three months old as of the writing of this letter. Her birthday is February Second. She likes warm baths, warm bottles, and warm hugs. She has no allergies. She is formula fed. Please love her as much as I do." Said Minegishi as they read from the note in the diaper bag. Well that was no help. At least there were bottles and a can of formula in there as well as some clean clothes and diapers. Good. They had supplies. They would send for some more things for her and then…and then Minegishi did not know.

They did not and had never wanted to care for a baby.

But they were the most responsible person. Mob was ten and didn't even know where babies came from, Suzuki was gone, and the Awakened were morons. Heavy was the burden of the wise ones. This was just…this was insane. Suzuki could be an asshole but he at least had the ability to think and plan ahead. How was leaving a baby with his ten year old Daughter a good idea?

One thing at a time.

This baby was hungry. Minegishi had no idea when the baby was last fed. They had no idea how often babies needed to eat. Hell, they had no idea how much babies needed to eat. These bottles were all at different levels. They had just taken out the most full one and told Mob to microwave it until it was warm enough to drink but not so hot that it burnt.

"Mob! Hurry it up!" said Minegishi as the baby fussed in their lap. It was trying to latch on. Well good luck with that. If this baby did manage to latch on, doubtful since Minegishi was a lifelong member of the itty bitty titty committee, there'd be nothing there to reward her for her valiant efforts.

"I don't know if it's hot enough or too hot or too cold. The outside feels like-" said Mob

"Just splash some formula on your arm to see how hot it is. Having you seen mothers doing that?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. For all of the TV that kid watched, truly appalling amounts of it, she sure could be clueless sometimes.

"No. When Sho was born I was a baby." Said Mob. Minegishi did some mental math…and realized that this was not the time to do mental math. She and her brother were only about half a year apart. They could not think with this crying baby on their lap.

"Just tell me if it's ready, Mob, Mi-Cha is really hungry and I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to stand the crying for." Said Minegishi. Support the head, keep her close, don't drop her. That was what they knew about holding a baby. Sex ed should have prepared them for this. That would have been more practical for daily life than what they had been taught. Not that they had ever pictured a baby being added to their daily life.

They were not a nanny.

They were something of a babysitter, a terrible one, to Mob. That was the extent of their childcare role. Suzuki was so fucking sexist. Sure, just give the baby to the only member of his family with a vagina. She was only ten but the minute the baby was placed into her arms all of her instincts would just kick in and then she'd know just what to do. That, of course, ignored the fact that she had no idea where babies even came from.

"Her name is Mukai now. Dad renamed her." said Mob as she walked over and handed Minegishi Mukai's bottle. Minegishi knew what to do. They were holding the baby the right way, Mob had been carrying Mukai over her shoulder so she wouldn't try and eat her shirt, and that was good. Mob felt a lot lighter, now, because there was someone who knew what to do. They even knew that babies had to have special human milk…and Mob should have known that because she had known that human beings were mammals. Well she knew now and now she could take care of her pretend little sister better.

"Why? That's just going to confuse her." said Minegishi. They knew that when you adopted a pet from the shelter you weren't supposed to rename it because then it would get confused. The same thing must have gone for people. Mi-Cha was a nice name. Better than Toshiki anyway. Mukai was…what even was that name? Maybe there was some story behind it. It didn't matter. Suzuki would never say why he had seen fit to change this baby's name.

Suzuki wasn't around, anyway, even if by some miracle he felt like explaining himself to his underlings.

"I don't know. He just said that he didn't like her name and then that her name would be Mukai now. That doesn't seem like a good reason to change someone's name, I think, because you don't like it. She could have changed her name all on her own when she grew up if she had wanted to." Said Mob. She sat down on the couch next to Minegishi and watched them feed the baby. Their arm was keeping the baby propped up a little and their other arm was holding the bottle. Oh. Mukai's arms were too short for her to eat on her own. She was so cute when she wasn't screaming.

Mob was going to like having her for a pretend little sister.

Not a real sister, though, because for this to be her real sister she would have had to come from mom and dad. Mom was gone and dad didn't love her anymore. So she and Mukai were just pretend sisters. That was good. She would rather be Mukai's sister than her mom. Dad had made it seem like she was supposed to be Mukai's mom now…but that would have been way too much. She was only ten.

She felt like a kid.

"I see….and do you know why she's even here in the first place?" asked Minegishi as they fed this baby. Good. The crying had stopped and now they could think clearly. Right. A human baby. There was a human baby to take care of. Food, water…did babies drink water? Put a maybe on the water. Clothes, there were some in the bag, and there were diapers in the bag too. Which Minegishi was not going to be changing. That was a Mob job.

"I don't know. I came home and dad just handed her to me. He just said 'here Daughter, a friend for you' and then he gave me the baby. He said that I was the one who was going to take care of her. He said that I should just Google what I don't know and that he believes in me." Said Mob

"…so he seriously told you to Google it?" asked Minegishi

"Yes. He said to Google it. Those were his exact words. I have to Google the things that I don't understand." Said Mob. There was a lot of stuff that she had to Google. She didn't know how often Mukai was supposed to eat. That bottle didn't look like it held enough for even one meal. Also when did she have to sleep? She knew that babies needed a lot of sleep. She didn't know how to change diapers, either, because she had never had to change anyone's diaper before. Sho had been a baby at the same time that she had been a baby. She wished that mom would have had another baby while she still lived with them. Then Mob could have known what to do.

"So you're just expected to Google 'how to take care of a baby' and then become an expert?" asked Minegishi

"Yes. I think so. He thinks that I'll be good at taking care of Mukai. That's why he let me take care of her." said Mob

"Why would he just give you a baby? I mean trying to understand Suzuki has never been easy but…what the hell is wrong with him?" asked Minegishi. They had no idea how many bottles that this baby was supposed to eat in one sitting and they knew that if they, as a grown adult, didn't know then it was asinine to expect a ten year old girl to know what to do.

What was wrong with Suzuki?

"Dad said that I had to take care of her now. I guess that I have to take care of her because she doesn't have anyone else. Moms leave and I guess that dads can leave too and I guess that they could leave at the same time so I guess that's why we have orphanages." Said Mob

"Group homes." Said Minegishi without thinking.

"What's a group home?" asked Mob

"A group home is what they have now. It's a place where they send you when your parents either can't or won't take care of you…or if you run away from home enough times. Terrible places. Hell on Earth if they really put their minds to it." Said Minegishi. They looked down at the baby while they spoke. The baby made eye contact with them. Blue eyes. Red hair and blue eyes. Sone babies were born with blue eyes. They had been. There were pictures, the few surviving baby pictures of them, and they'd had blue eyes for a little bit after being born. The red hair could change too…though they had never heard of red hair tuning black with age…

This baby looked a hell of a lot like Suzuki.

"And they have a big room with a lot of beds and it's cold and smells like sour milk?" asked Mob. She had dreams like that, sometimes, where she was in a big room with a lot of other kids and it was cold and smelled like sour milk and everything was scary. She thought that she had been dreaming about what life would have been like if she had been in an orphanage because mom and dad hadn't wanted her anymore. So she had been dreaming of a group home without even knowing it.

Not that it mattered. Those were just weird dreams that she had sometimes.

"Weirdly specific but yes…mine smelled more like unwashed bodies and cat piss though." said Minegishi. They didn't care. That had been years ago. That was just a part of their life that Mob had asked about. What their childhood had been like. One of those things that they had promised Mob an answer to when she turned ten.

"I'm sorry…I didn't know that you were an orphan." Said Mob. She would not let Mukai go to a place like that. That must have been why dad had given her Mukai, so that way she wouldn't have to go to a terrible place, and then he left suddenly because he had something important to do that couldn't wait at all. Not even for him to explain how she was even supposed to take care of a baby in the first place. If dad even knew how to take care of a baby. That seemed like more of a mom job than a dad job.

Well now it was a Mob job.

"I wasn't then but I am now…and you don't want to hear that story right now." Said Minegishi

"Because the story makes you too sad?" asked Mob

"Because I know that this story will make YOU too sad. The last thing that we need right now is you freaking out. We've got to figure out what we're supposed to do with this baby. You can't take care of a baby, you're only ten, and I don't want to take care of a baby. Where the hell is your dad? And when did any of this look like a good idea?" asked Minegishi. The baby was done eating now, well the bottle was empty, and they had no idea what to do now. Wait, right, you were supposed to burp a baby…but that was a great way to get baby vomit on you and Minegishi did not want baby vomit all over them. The tears and drool were enough to deal with.

"I'm not going to freak out. I mean that I don't feel like I'm going to freak out. I just….I feel better that you're here. You're so smart. You know what to do." Said Mob. She wondered if Minegishi was a girl. These were the kinds of things that girls were supposed to do. Maybe that was why dad didn't stay and tell her what to do. Maybe he just didn't know how because he was a boy. That was why he had given her the baby, too, and not Sho. Sho was a boy and he didn't know what to do….

She didn't know how she was supposed to take care of Sho and baby Mukai at the same time.

"Mob, I have no clue what to do." Said Minegishi. They were not going to lie to Mob. They could sugarcoat some uncomfortable truths on occasion but they would not outright lie. Not about this. Outright lying about this would just put Minegishi in a position where they would have to care for a baby for the rest of their life…not something that they wanted. This was not what they had joined Claw for…

Though the lie would have put Mob at ease.

She was looking up at them with her big brown eyes just brimming with hope….but Minegishi was not a nanny and had never wanted to be. They needed to figure out what to do with this baby…this baby who looked like Suzuki and that he had randomly dropped on his ten year old Daughter…this baby that had a red aura…and red hair…and blue eyes….

This baby.

This baby…where had this baby even COME from? The way Mob had said it had been dumped on her by her father…Minegishi was having crazy thoughts. Thoughts that this was Suzuki's secret love child. That was insane. If this baby was Suzuki's love child that would have meant that a woman would have wanted to actually be with him. Sexually. Sure Suzuki was good looking but his personality…nobody would ever get so horny that they could ignore Suzuki's dumpster fire of a personality. Nobody's taste in men could have been that bad, and Minegishi knew a thing or two about having terrible taste in men.

Well Suzuki did already have those two kids….

"But…but you knew that she was hungry and you knew how to feed her and how to tell if her milk was too hot or too cold or just right and-" said Mob

"Hey, Goldilocks, that was all just common sense. I have no clue how to take care of a baby. I am not a nanny or a babysitter or a parent. I'm going strictly on common sense here….speaking of. Here, burp this baby." Said Minegishi. They rested the baby on Mob's chest with her head over Mob's shoulder. She could hold her head up, it seemed, she just hadn't felt like it. Well she could sort of hold her head up. She turned her head and started to gum on Mob's hair.

Cute when it happened to someone else.

"But you still know more than me. I don't know how to do…any of this." said Mob. Minegishi shook their head. She took Mob's hand and banged it against the baby's back. Not hard, like Mob had thought, and she…she had seen this before. After the baby ate you were supposed to do this for…reasons that Mob did not know.

"You're doing better than any ten year old I've ever met." Said Minegishi speaking the truth. They omitted, however, the fact that they didn't know any other ten year olds besides Mob.

"Really?" asked Mob

"Yeah. You've been freaking out a lot less than I would have figured you would have. I mean this is the most fucked up situation your dad has ever put you in." said Minegishi

"This situation isn't all F-worded up." Said Mob. She liked this, sort of, holding the baby like this. Tapping her on the back. She was trying to eat Mob's hair. She had no idea if that meant that she was hungry or just felt like chewing on something. Google would know. Mob…she could do this. Minegishi believed in her too. Mob knew that she could do this. She was a girl, after all, and she would have to do this when she grew up and grew a baby in her stomach too so she had might as well learn how to do it now.

"Your dad gave you a baby for your birthday. That's pretty fucked up." Said Minegishi

"I wanted a cat…but this is ok too. And don't say the F-word because then Mukai might start saying it and I don't want her to say bad words." Said Mob

"Is she even old enough to talk?" asked Minegishi

"I don't know when babies start talking but I don't want her first word to be the F-word. I want it to be something nice like 'thank you' or 'hello' or something like that. I think that I should only speak Japanese to her, too, since I don't know a lot of Korean and I might end up teaching her the wrong thing if I try to speak Korean to her." said Mob

"Your Korean isn't that bad…and how do you know that she's Korean? She could be anything. You don't know her parents." Said Minegishi. The note had been in Korean but they suspected that the mother had written that…and that the father…but that was crazy. Suzuki and a woman. What kind of trauma did a woman have to go through to end up with a man like Suzuki Touichirou?

The baby did have red hair….

"The note was in Korean so I figured that she was Korean. I don't know who her mom and dad are, though, you're right…but that's ok. We're pretend sisters." Said Mob

"Yeah…pretend sisters. Why do you keep saying that? I mean if your dad adopted her-" said Minegishi. They needed to get to the bottom of this. If this was Suzuki's kid then…well they didn't know what they would do, exactly. They were not exactly itching to tell the boss that they knew about his torrid love affairs. Still this was…something. Suzuki was having more kids…so they would have another Mob. Well that wouldn't be so bad. They could always use another Mob…but another Sho was another story entirely….

Please, God, no.

"I don't think that dad adopted her. He gave her to me after all." said Mob

"So you're this baby's mother now?" asked Minegishi

"What? No way! I'm only ten, I can't be anyone's mom, and I don't have a boy to be the dad either. Sho is my brother so he can be the uncle. Like when we would play house he was either the uncle or the dog. Not that having a baby is like playing house. Having a baby is a serious responsibility but I can do a good job. I have you to teach me things and you say that you don't know anything but you know more than me and I have Google, too, for the things that we don't understand, and also I have plenty of money to buy things for her and I'm good at schoolwork, well not math, but I can teach her everything but math. Also she's an esper so when she gets all of her powers I can show her how to use them. Oh! And also when she gets older I can brush her hair and paint her nails and stuff. I can do this. I can do all of this…but not as her mom. I'm too little to be a mom but I can be her big sister." Said Mob

"Uh-huh, sure, but why tack the pretend part on there?" asked Minegishi. Mob was taking this whole thing rather well. If Minegishi was in her place they would have just wrapped the baby up in a blanket, put it in a basket, and left it on some rich people's doorstep. Of course Minegishi did not have a lot of those nurturing instincts that other people seemed to be consumed by. Not even for plants.

They wished that Suzuki had given Mob a plant instead of a baby for her birthday. The plant would have been a hell of a lot easier to deal with.

"Because she didn't come from my mom and dad. She would only be my real sister if she came from my mom's stomach and then only if my mom did the…gross thing…with my dad. My mom ran away from home and my dad doesn't even love her anymore." Said Mob. She wondered how long it would take for this baby to burp. Mukai was having fun, though, now she had taken some of Mob's hair in her hand…and she was very strong….and she pulled a lot harder than Mob would have thought a baby would have been capable of pulling…but this was ok. Mob was ok.

Sometimes when you loved someone they hurt you but that was ok because you loved them and they loved you too.

"Half siblings are a thing, you know." Said Minegishi. If this was Suzuki's kid Minegishi didn't know if that would make the situation any better or any worse. If Suzuki had just popped around an orphanage and brought home a baby for his Daughter well then that was just him being stupid and thinking that a vagina granted it's user unlimited points to nurturing and childcare. If this was his love child with an unnamed woman then this whole thing was just ten times worse…and bizarre.

Also Minegishi would have thought that a wealthy and powerful man like Suzuki would have been able to afford a box of condoms or a vasectomy or anything, really, to now have a million kids that he couldn't even begin to be able to take care of.

"Half siblings?" asked Mob. How could someone only be half of your sibling? She had a mental imagine of half people walking around and stuff…and smiled. Her aura must have been happy because Mukai laughed. Mob wanted to take her off of her shoulder but she wouldn't until Minegishi told her to. They knew more than she did even if they said that they didn't. Common sense that they had called it. For an adult, maybe, because this was the kind of thing that adults were supposed to know. Because they were old enough to have babies and stuff. Mob was too little for all of this…

No, not too little. She was ten now and dad believed in her and so did Minegishi so she had to believe in herself.

"When a sibling is only from one of your parents. You know, like how people divorce and remarry." Said Minegishi. Not that this was what had happened but if it was…the note had been in Korean. Korea….now they remembered. That woman who worked in finance, the one who Mob hated, the one who was always flirting with Suzuki….

Shimazaki was going to get a kick out of this.

"Oh. Well this isn't my half sibling either because mom and dad are still married. I mean dad doesn't love her anymore and mom ran away from home but…but they were still married. That's why dad still wears his wedding ring even though mom isn't around." Said Mob. She didn't know if she wanted a little sister. She knew…well she had wanted one but…but she didn't a half-sister, if she had a half-sister then dad would have had to have found a new wife…and then she and Sho would have a stepmom…

Maybe a wicked stepmom.

Stepmothers were usually wicked in movies and stuff. She didn't know why people in the movies were always getting married to wicked people. Dad wouldn't have done that. If anything someone who wasn't used to him would have thought that he was a wicked stepdad. But he and mom were married and they were not getting remarried and she did not need a wicked stepmom or a real stepmom because she did not want her mom to be replaced. She had a mom and even a mom who was not there was still a mom.

Girls were not allowed to like dad like that.

And boys were not allowed to like mom like that.

Mom and dad were only allowed to like each other like that.

"Alright then." Said Minegishi. They were not going to press the issues. Mob was only ten and she still had a fairytale idea of love springing eternal and all that. Minegishi wouldn't have been surprised if Mob still had idea about her mom and dad getting back together at some point. Minegishi did not want to have to explain that to Mob, that her parents weren't together and her father was probably long over her mother, because they had enough shit to deal with as it was.

"Hey Minegishi? How long is this supposed to take?" asked Mob. She had been tapping this baby on the back for a while and so far all that she was doing was playing with Mob's hair. The baby had to burp because…well she didn't know why but she knew that this as a thing that you had to do for babies.

"I don't know. Time? Maybe try bouncing her a little." Said Minegishi. They had no idea why you even had to do this. They just knew that this was a thing that you were supposed to do for babies. This was a baby and babies needed to be burped. There. Simple. This was…this was a simple thing that was happening…

Suzuki dumping a baby on them…that was a thing that had happened….

"Ok. Come on Mukai. You have to burp now and then…um…I'll make a bed out of a drawer for you because we don't have a crib…and also I can give you some dolls to play with…um…and then Sho might come back and…and then you'll meet him. He's my brother and he's going to be your pretend brother. He can be sort of mean sometimes but he's going to love you just as much as I do. I just know it." Said Mob as she bounced her baby sister, her pretend baby sister, up and down. She knew what she was doing now. She had a plan, sort of, and Mukai had stopped crying so…so all of this was going to work out. Yes, this was good. This was great. She had this she-

Mukai burped!

She had this! She could take care of Mukai and everything would be ok…even if she did suddenly smell sour milk and felt something warm on her back and in her hair….

"We're screwed." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't say anything back, even if screwed wasn't a bad word, because she didn't agree….because this was fine. Everything was fine. Sometimes people threw up on you. Like how Sho had thrown up after they had ridden the spinning teacups over and over again for an hour.

Mob had always wanted a younger sister…and sometimes your younger siblings threw up on you. Even your pretend younger siblings.


	140. Still Figuring it Out

If someone were to ask Sho ten years later how he took the sudden appearance of Mukai he would have said 'well' and if pressed 'very well' or even 'extremely well'.

"You get a baby for your birthday but I can't even have one little hamster?! How is this fair?!" said Sho. He did not shout even though he wanted to. Dad told him to be gone for the house for the whole day and he had been happy to go, he had been petting dogs and climbing trees all day which beat hanging around dad any day, and at the time he had thought nothing of it. Dad was just being mean and stuff.

Turns out that he was conspiring to give big sis the best birthday present ever.

"I didn't ask for her, Sho, she just came…and please don't shout! I finally found a movie she likes." Said Mob. She had practically gone through every Disney movie ever made until she found the Black Cauldron in Korean. It was a scary movie with fighting and monsters and also the princess didn't even sing but Mukai liked it and that was what mattered. She did not need Mukai to start crying again. Mob had mostly gotten a handle on the crying. There had been some pacifiers in her bag and whenever she cried Mob just put it back in her mouth.

Unless she needed to be changed. That was something that could not wait…and also was very gross.

"If you didn't ask for her then where did she come from!?" asked Sho. This was not fair. He had been wanting a pet for his entire life but dad always said 'no'. She asks for a little sister and then there, on her birthday, a little sister. She could lie all she wanted to but Sho knew the truth about all of this. She had asked for a little sister and now she had one but there was no way that he was getting a little brother…not that he wanted one that badly….and he certainly was not getting a hamster!

Life was unfair.

"Well you see when a man and a woman love each other very much, or the man has a lot of money and power and the woman wants a piece of that, as can be seen here they-" said Shimazaki. Toshi was right, he was getting a kick out of this. Suzuki had another kid. Suzuki, their boss, this cult leader, the guy who always smelled vaguely of ketchup had knocked some poor woman up. This defied logic. It was absurd. It was hilarious in it's absurdity.

He loved it.

"Don't tell him about that! He's only nine, Shimazaki, he's got his whole life to be worried about…that." Said Shibata from the circle of the room he was confined to. There was a circle of vines around him and if he put even a toe over the line they would suck the life out of him. Minegishi's exact words. He wasn't mad at them, he couldn't be, considering that he'd almost had a repeat of why he got fired from Wee World…hopefully it wouldn't have progressed into why he got fired from Pet Palace if nobody had intervened….

"Tell me about what?! What can't I know about!?" asked Sho. He was not shouting even though big sis was doing the 'shut up' motion a lot. The baby was fine. She was watching TV and sucking on her sucking thing. She was fine even though her face was starting to scrunch up a little and it was turning red and-

-and Minegishi picked her up and handed her to big sis.

"Hey morons, the baby and I are trying to watch the movie. Take it somewhere else." Said Minegishi. It had gotten dark, the idiot brigade had assembled, a pizza had been procured, and Suzuki was still missing in action. The healer was gone too which meant that it was probably a work thing. Those idiotic traitors had picked a terrible time to start whatever ill-advised uprising they had in the works or whatever.

Unless of course Suzuki decided that fatherhood wasn't for him so he abandoned his kids to be raised by the bunch of miscreants he called his entourage. That was always possible.

"Sorry." Said Mob

"No, not you. I was talking to those morons…and before you say anything that includes your little brother. It is utterly moronic to start shouting in here when we JUST got this baby quiet." Said Minegishi

"I'm not a moron. I think that it's moronic to um…to ask dad to give you a baby sister for your birthday. You should have asked for a cat or a dog or a hamster. Yeah, a hamster would have been perfect. It would have stayed in it's cage and not cried and-" said Sho

"No, hamsters can get pretty loud at night. They're mostly nocturnal. I remember that this one time I was doing the overnight cleaning back at Pet Palace and I heard this squeaking, well first I heard the rabbits and they could be loud too-" said Shibata

"Hey. What part of 'the baby and I are trying to watch the movie' don't you understand?" asked Minegishi. They felt the energy around them shift. They didn't move. They knew what that was. Shimazaki was sitting on the couch next to them without a care in the world, it seemed, even though his incessant teleporting combined with everyone else's incessant talking had finally pushed that baby over the edge.

"Mukai, please don't cry. Look, the movie is still on. You like this, right?" asked Mob as she bounced Mukai up and down like she liked. She tried but Mukai was still crying. Maybe she was hungry again. The internet said that she should eat every three to four hours. Well Mukai seemed to want to eat every three to four minutes. They were running low on bottles last she had checked…

But it was ok. They could always get more.

Everything was ok. This was a baby and a baby was a living thing and all a living thing needed was food, water, and love. Well for a baby food and water were all together in her formula so they had that covered and everyone loved Mukai so much and therefore she would be fine. They also needed formula, which was like milk substitute but for babies, and clothes and toys and diapers…

And the Awakened were not good at buying things like that…but that was ok because Mob could do this and she would do this and she was doing this right now.

"Maybe she's hungry again." said Sho. The baby had been eating when he came home and it had eaten again a little while later. He didn't know how something so small could eat so much. He didn't know how much babies were supposed to eat. They weren't like pets. For pets all you had to do was fill the pet bowls and then you were done. Babies were more complicated.

So it made no sense at all for dad to have gotten them a baby sister instead of a pet.

"I just fed her…and also we're running low on bottles. The Awakened…I sent them out for baby formula and they came back with powdered milk…and the internet said that we should never under any circumstances give Mukai anything other than baby formula or human milk until she's at least four months old. Six months would be best, it said, but the earliest was four months and she's only three months old anyway." Said Mob

"For the puppies we would give them one ounce of puppy formula for every eight ounces they weighed." Said Shibata. This was kind of…not good…of Suzuki. To leave the baby with his daughter like that without telling her what to do. Shibata knew what to do for baby animals but baby humans were very different. Also she was way too young to be babysitting her little sister…if that even was her sister. Suzuki was married, that was what the ring was for, but he never mentioned a wife….also Shimazaki had said something about that being Suzuki's love child but that was crazy.

He couldn't imagine one woman being interested in Suzuki let alone two.

"Well how many ounces does Mukai weigh? Let me do the math, I'm better at it than you are." Said Sho

"The note didn't say…and also you don't know if you're better at math than me because you never do your schoolwork." Said Mob

"I do it some of the times…and I am too better at it than you are." Said Sho

"You're both making it worse." Said Minegishi. They covered their ears but it didn't work. If anything it just felt like it was getting louder and louder. The sound of a baby crying….this was worse than a dentist's drill. Worse than a police siren. Worse than nails on a chalkboard….

They were going to go crazy. Yes. They had been teetering near the edge for a while now but this…this would be the thing that did them in.

"Or, depending on your perspective, better." Said Shimazaki. Truth be told he was in hell. That baby…that baby cried with it's voice and it's aura and he wanted to take it and teleport it into somebody's crib so some other baby's parents could wake up and think that they had magic twins or reverse changelings or something. He could not listen to this for much longer…but he could not get rid of the baby because that was Suzuki's kid and Suzuki would literally end him if something happened to one of his kids. He could go anywhere either because it was pointless seeing as how he would have to come back since all of his stuff was there…and also Toshi was there too and it always got boring being away from them for too long.

"You aren't helping." Said Minegishi. They could hear their pulse in their ears but it could not drown out the sound of the crying baby. Not screaming this time, not so badly, but still making noise. Mob was trying her best. Minegishi did not feel like trying their best anymore. Besides, they had the twenty seven year old baby beside them to deal with.

"Am too. I'm here for moral support." Said Shimazaki. The crying was making him crazy but Minegishi always made him feel better. They got him and right now he needed someone to get him…because right now he was about to teleport that baby onto someone's doorstep and damn Suzuki and the punishment/execution that he would bring down on Shimazaki's head once he realized that Shimazaki had been the one to get rid of his screaming love child.

"And how will moral support make this baby stop crying?" asked Minegishi

"No clue. How about the power of friendship? Any effect?" asked Shimazaki

"Shimazaki has used 'the power of friendship'. It is not effective." Said Minegishi

"Toshi has used sarcasm. It is very effective." Said Shimazaki

"Shimazaki has used my given name. It is-" said Minegishi

"The baby is trying to watch TV. You should leave Shimazaki alone." Said Sho. He did not like how they were talking to each other there. It made him feel like stomping a hole through the floor. He was made and also…some other weird stuff…and maybe he was just upset because his ears were getting sore. How could something so small have so much air inside of her lungs? Had he cried like that when he had been a baby? Had big sis?

He didn't know. All he knew was that he wanted this to stop before he went crazy.

"It's ok, little Suzuki. Why don't you let them deal with the baby and you play or draw or something?" asked Shibata. He took a step out of his circle, just a step, and vines curled around his leg. He could feel himself getting weaker…and Minegishi had been serious.

"No. I don't want to play or draw or something. I want my little sister to stop crying." Said Sho

"Pretend. She's our pretend sister. Mom and dad didn't make her." said Mob

"You don't know that." Said Sho. He knew that he sounded crazy, there, but there were crazier things that he could have said. Maybe mom and dad had gotten back together and that was where Mukai came from. She looked kind of like dad. She had his hair and eye and aura color. Sho had been all over the world and he knew that most people did not have hair or eyes like his. Mukai even had freckles on her cheeks sort of and Sho knew for a fact that dad had freckles just like he had freckles. Maybe mom had come back. Maybe she and dad were-

-that was crazy. Big sis was right. She was just their pretend sister. Dad must have bought her at an orphanage or something.

"Sho, you know that's not true. I want it to be true but I won't lie to you." Said Mob. She had found the right combination of bouncing, shushing, and giving Mukai her pacifier. Now she was quiet again. She wished that what Sho had said was true. Then mom could have helped her out…even though she didn't need much help at all. Dad had trusted her and no one else with this job…but she did kind of want her mom…

People needed other people.

But she had her brother and her friends. People needed other people but they didn't need specific people. She did not need her mom, her brother and her friends would do, because this was only taking care of a baby. She could take care of a baby. Dad had been right to tell her to Google it…and also people had been taking care of babies since the beginning of time. If cave people thousands of years ago could figure it out then so could she.

"Well you don't know for sure." Said Sho. He sat down next to big sis and crossed his arms. Mukai reached over and touched his hair. He felt better, instantly, and maybe that was his power. He didn't know if she was his for real sister or his pretend sister, or if he even wanted a little sister, but she did make him feel better. Maybe that was a part of her powers. She had an aura and he had never seen a baby with an aura before.

Maybe she was a prodigy like big sis.

He didn't want that. He didn't want dad to put her in an Awakening machine but he always didn't want to have to live in the shadow of another prodigy. That was what it felt like, sometimes, like dad was the sun and big sis was blocking out the sun and he had to live in her shadow and stuff. Because dad liked her so much better than him just because even after he went through the awakening process her powers were still better than his.

Dad didn't even call him impressive anymore.

"Since none of us know for sure then we should all start up with our crazy speculations. I, for one, think that this baby is S-" said Shimazaki. He felt it before it happened, Minegishi jabbing him in the side, but he let it happen just to make them feel like they had gotten one over on him. They were stressed, he could tell. Their breathing, their heartrate, how tense they were…he hated it when Toshi got like that.

"I, for one, think that you should teleport to a baby store or something and bring back some essentials. You're a moron but you can't be a bigger moron than the Awakened. Powdered milk my ass…" muttered Minegishi. They did not want to start up the speculations about where this baby had come from. It would just get the two kids that they were sure were Suzuki's upset and then that baby would start up again and nobody wanted to deal with that.

Especially not them.

The sound of a crying baby did not drive them into the arms of the opposite sex because, gasp, they were wasting their best reproductive years having amazing but also utterly fruitless sex. They did not suddenly feel their biological clock ticking or whatever. They could hear their pulse in their head, feel it in their teeth of all place, and they did not like it. The only reason that they didn't go to their room and mess with their brain chemistry so they could get some sleep already was because they knew that the minute they got comfortable Mob would be there asking them for help.

It was hard being the only competent adult in the room sometimes.

"I would love to, Minegishi, I would but they don't make the labels in brail. You can't even trust me to pick up soda let alone baby formula. Also I know absolutely nothing about babies or baby formula or any other essentials." Said Shimazaki. He was not shirking work, ok he was, but he was also telling the truth. He had no idea what the little crotch goblins needed. He had lived his life up to this point care not to get anyone pregnant. It wasn't hard. Just don't let your genetic stuff come into contact with her genetic stuff and if your genetic stuff did, on accident, come into contact then you stole her some of those 'no baby for you' pills and you lost her number. Simple.

Suzuki, at some point, had not learned the facts of life. Either that or he hadn't been paying attention when someone had explained contraception to him.

"Take Shibata. I'm assuming that he knows how to read." Said Minegishi. They weren't in Japan but English was pretty much universal and not that hard…and even then he could always try Google translate. There were too many people around and they were all so loud and they just…they needed quiet. They needed to think.

"I can sort of read English…"said Shibata. He didn't want to leave the kids and the baby alone. Even if he was confined to his circle, and for good reason, he didn't want to leave them. They were just so small and cute and helpless….

"There. It's settled." Said Minegishi. They nudged Shimazaki with their shoulder. He knew how stressed they were. He could tell. He could always tell. This would be the part of the night where he incessantly bothered them…which it was…but it would not end in any kind of a fun way. Minegishi was just too damned tired.

Suzuki's kids, all of Suzuki's kids, were so draining….

"Come back with chips and pudding!" said Sho as Shimazaki and Shibata teleported away. Mukai smiled at him again. Big sis was smiling too but little sis', pretend little sis', smiles were better. It wasn't that he had disliked her, no he knew that he hadn't, he just…it wasn't fair that dad had gotten big sis a baby but he wouldn't let Sho have a pet. Maybe it was because dad pretty much only cared about Claw and since the baby was an esper she would be able to join Claw when she got older.

When he inherited the world he would make sure that pretend little sis got a good job with lots of fighting and action. Her own division, maybe, the Ninth Division…or whatever number they were up to by then.

"She's happy now…nobody do anything to make her unhappy…and also someone rewind the movie to the part she missed." Said Mob. The baby was happy and her little brother was happy and now she could be happy…even though she had no idea how long this happiness would even be able to last for. She didn't know. All she knew was they it was quiet now and later…she would fix what went wrong when it went wrong.

Little fires everywhere.

That was what mom had said, before, once when she had been talking to Fukuda. She hadn't known that Mob was listening when she said it. Fukuda asked her how she was doing and she had said that there had been little fires everywhere. At first she had been confused because nothing had caught on fire that day but now…now she understood. The baby cried and it needed things and then Sho would need things…and all of those needs came up fast like fires and were urgent like fires…but she was a good big sister and she would take good care of everyone around her.

Even if she had no idea when she would have time to take care of herself.

She wanted dad to come back but she got the feeling that he would be gone for a while. She had sent the Awakened to the Claw base to look for him and they hadn't been able to find him. They even dug holes in the ground looking for him…a lot of them weren't that smart...but the point was that dad was gone. Totally gone. He was gone and…and that made Mob the one in charge. She was the oldest Suzuki now. Their family had been split again…no. Dad had not run away. Dad had to come back, all of his suits were here, and he did not go places without his suits. Also there were so many things that had happened that he could have punished her and Sho for. So he would come back. He had to come back.

Things would be easier, maybe, when he came back.

"I'm Sho. That's my hair. It's red, like yours. See? Red." Said Sho. He picked one of his pencils up off of the table to show little sis the color red. She didn't know her colors yet, probably, she was too little to know things. She didn't even know how to talk. Big sis said that the only thing she could do was eat, sleep, cry, hold her head up for a little bit, and also pee a lot. That was all baby stuff. He would teach her how to be a kid.

If she even stayed that long.

Big sis had said that dad had said that she would be there with them forever if something else could not be found. Sho had no idea how long that meant. Part of him wanted her to go. Part of him wanted to tell her that there just wasn't enough room in the family for another kid and that she would need to find another place to live. The other part of her kind of liked her…when she wasn't crying. She was alright. She was little. She looked like him, too, and it would have been nice to have another person in the world who looked like him. Red hair and blue eyes just like him…and dad….but he knew that she could not be his real sister.

Because their mom was gone.

And you could only have babies with the person that you were married to. That was why people got married, to have kids. That was the only reason Sho could think of not only to be married but to do that sick thing that moms and dad did to get a kid. Mom was probably a million miles away and dad would have said something if he had found her. He would have punished her like he punished all of the traitors, not had a secret baby with her. No, this baby was just is pretend little sister. But even if it was just for pretend he could still do his best to be her big brother. That is until they found her a family of her own…because competition in his family was steep enough as it was.

She was ok, though, for a pretend little sister.


	141. 2 am Diaper Changes

Night and day meant nothing to a baby.

Muaki was crying. She was always crying, it seemed, but she was also crying right now. Right now in the middle of the night. She had gotten up twice before this. The first time had been when Mob had tried to put her to sleep. She had fallen asleep in front of the TV and Mob had been happy to hold her…for a time. She had been happy to hold her until everyone went home to sleep and Sho got tired. Mob didn't want to sit up all night in the living room by herself.

So she tried to put Mukai to bed.

Walking while holding Mukai was hard. She didn't want to use her powers. If she were to lose control Mukai could have gotten hurt or even died. Especially since dad and Fukuda were still gone. They must have been doing something really important if they had been gone all day…and probably all night too. They had to be extra careful because Fukuda was gone. She and Sho were at least kids, they could take care of themselves, but Mukai was a baby. If Mob were to drop or hurt her then she would have been so scared and sad because she wouldn't have known why she was in pain and also…well she could have been dead too.

She had a soft spot on her head.

She was so delicate. Sometimes dad got her porcelain dolls. Mob hated those because you couldn't play with them because of how delicate they were. Mukai was even more delicate than a porcelain doll. Her head had a soft spot and her neck was so weak that she could only hold her head up for a little bit and her spine was too weak to keep her sitting up…she was so weak and small and…and Mob would never have forgiven herself if she hurt Mukai on accident. She had to take good care of her little sister, her pretend little sister, because dad was counting on her.

Dad trusted her.

Dad had left her in charge of Sho before. This wasn't that much different. Sho needed to be fed and washed and sometimes he wet himself too…so it wasn't that different. Except for the fact that Sho could put his own clothes on and could feed himself solid foods and could climb into his own bed and go to sleep on his own. Mob had to carry Mukai in her arms, slowly because she was asleep, and putting her in a drawer. They didn't have a crib and the internet said that babies weren't supposed to share beds with people because you could roll over onto the baby in your sleep and then it would be smothered to death.

Mob didn't want that to happen.

So she had used her powers to pull the bottom drawer out of the dresser, her and Sho's pajama drawer, and then she put Mukai to sleep. Well she had tried to. No matter how softly she had tried to put Mukai down she still woke up. First her eyes got all scrunchy and then her nose wrinkled and her face got red and then she started crying.

So she sat down on the floor and rocked Mukai back and forth so that she would just sleep.

Sho helped, too, he sang to her and told her stories. He spoke to her in Japanese and Mob had no idea how much Mukai understood in Korean let alone Japanese but she eventually went to sleep and was put in the drawer so Mob could sleep, too. If she stayed for longer they would have to get her a crib…or maybe even a bed. It depended on how long dad was planning on letting her stay for.

Mob hoped that Mukai would stay with them for forever.

Even with all of the crying. The first round of tears had been because Mob woke up her in trying to put her to bed. The second round of tears came because she had been hungry. At least Mob assumed that she had been crying because she had been hungry. She sure ate a lot for someone so little. Mob figured it was because she was growing so much. Babies grew so much…it was a wonder that she and Sho had ever been that small. She wondered what it had been like when they had been that small. She wondered if they had ever gotten up in the middle of the night for food.

Dad wouldn't have let them.

Mob could not see her dad doing the same things for her and Sho when they had been babies as she had done for baby Mukai. When she had been hungry Mob hadn't hesitated in making her a middle of the night bottle. She didn't get mad at Mukai even though her crying could be sort of annoying. She just did what she had to do. Maybe that was the difference between moms and dads. Dads went out and earned the money while moms did everything else. That was how mom had explained it, anyway, back when Mob had been little.

It hadn't sounded fair then and it didn't sound fair now.

"Big sis…little sis is crying again." said Sho from his bed. Mob opened her eyes and rolled over. The baby was closer to his bed than hers and she had gotten up the last time and she had been the one to put the baby to bed. Also she had been doing all of the diaper changings and most of the feedings.

"Can you help her? I'm tired." Said Mob. She wanted sleep. She didn't want to be selfish, she wanted Mukai to be happy, but she also wanted to get some sleep. She needed sleep because she had schoolwork to do tomorrow as well as helping Sho with his school work and taking care of Mukai all day. Just thinking about it made her tired.

"I don't know what to do." Said Sho

"See if she's hungry or she needs a change or if she's just lonely." Said Mob. She yawned as she spoke. She was so tired…but she needed to be the one to do this. Dad had left her in charge and she was the girl. This was what she was supposed to do…even though Minegishi had helped out a lot and they might have been a boy…and also Shibata had wanted to help but Minegishi said that if she let him help then she wouldn't have had a little sister, pretend or otherwise, anymore.

"Ok…I'll try." Said Sho. Mob heard his bed groan as he rolled off of it and hit the ground with a thud. She wished that he would have just gotten out of bed normally. Doing that had just made Mukai cry louder. She tried to open her eyes but her eyelids felt like they weight a million pounds. She heard Sho talking to her and then some silence…wonderful silence…

Mob almost managed to drift off…but then the crying started up again.

"Mukai…please. Go back to sleep…" said Mob. Mukai was crying again…or maybe this was still a part of the first cry. Mob didn't know. That sounded sort of like a hungry cry, though, or maybe her aura just felt like she was hungry. Mob wasn't that good with tones but she knew auras. Also baby Mukai was always hungry it seemed. The internet said that babies needed to eat every four hours but Mukai seemed to want to eat every four minutes. Mob had, assumed, that babies would know that eating was for the day and sleeping was for the night out of some kind of instinct. Like how when you saw the sun going down you knew that you needed to sleep Even if you were jetlagged you still got that feeling inside of yourself that because the sun was down it was bedtime. This was not dinnertime, it had come and gone, but babies didn't know how to tell time…or tell when they were supposed to be asleep, too, apparently.

She was starting to get it, why dad was always talking about how tiresome she and Sho were.

Not that she would ever say something so mean to Mukai. Even if she didn't fully speak Japanese yet and might not have even been able to understand words at all yet. Dad always said mean things to him but maybe that was just dads. Mom had always been so nice to them. Mob was going to be a good mom…or rather big sister. She wasn't ready to be Mukai's mom or anyone's mom despite Sho's constant accusations that she was trying to replace mom…

She had never asked to be in charge.

"She's not listening and I think…I think that I made it worse. I gave her back her pacifier but she just spat it out." Said Sho. Mob sat up and scooted to the end of her bed. She turned the lights on with her powers. Sho hissed and covered his eyes. Mukai just cried harder.

"Does she need a new diaper?" asked Mob. That could have been it. Either that or she was hungry again…but Mob did not feel like making another bottle. That took a long time because the directions weren't as simple as they looked and also Mukai was picky about brands. Shimazaki and Fukuda had come back with a bunch of different brands of formula and Mukai…she was kind of picky. Also she kept on trying to suck on the fronts of shirts even though the note had said that she was used to eating from a bottle.

If she was waiting for human milk then Mob had no idea what to tell her.

"I don't know. Maybe." Said Sho. He pushed the drawer closer to her. Mob wanted to tell him that, yes, she needed a new diaper. That was why her old diaper was so big, because it was full of pee and other stuff, but she said nothing. Why was she thinking such mean thoughts? She loved Sho and…and maybe it was because she was tired. Yes, that was it, she was just sleepy because she had gotten up in the middle of the night…this was the second time…and also she'd had to take care of a baby all day…and she had no idea where dad was….and worrying was making her tired…

She was fine. She had this. Dad trusted her.

Mob got down to Mukai's level and picked her up. Yup. Squishy diaper. This was the grossest part of having a baby. Well the second grossest. Mukai had thrown up down her back and ruined her second favorite Elsa dress and also made her hair all gross. That was ok though and Mob had no right to get mad because she was just a baby and had no idea what she was even doing. Also it wasn't like she had a strong enough neck where she could have aimed in another direction. Also if she had turned her head she would have hit Minegishi and then they would have gone home because they had been really upset yesterday.

Mob didn't know why. Dad hadn't just left them with a baby and left without so much as a list of instructions or a date and time when he would be back.

Mob had this.

"Come on, Mukai. Let's get you changed and then I'll make you a bottle and then we can go back to sleep." Said Mob. She stood up while holding Mukai and hardly lost her balance at all. She had just been standing on the bottom of her nightgown but it was ok because Sho had been there to catch her. She could have caught herself with her powers, though, but it had been nice of him to help.

He was such a good little brother.

He followed her over to the bathroom. She didn't know why. He could have just closed the door so that he wouldn't have been able to hear her crying. He was little, only nine years old, and he needed a lot of sleep. He needed to grow up big and strong…and also he got really grumpy when he was tired and he knew that, too, but he still followed her to the bathroom. He sat down on the toilet lid while she laid Mukai down on the bathmat and got out the diapers and aby wipes and cream and stuff.

This was both simple and complicated.

"You know, Mukai, you wouldn't be so small if you didn't go to the bathroom so much." Said Sho. He was swinging his legs back and forth. He was kicking her in the back, too, but she knew that he was doing it on accident. If he had been doing it on purpose then it wouldn't have been his toes that dug into her back, she would have to cut his nails tomorrow, it would have been his whole foot. He would have done it hard enough to send her flying into the wall, maybe, if she had done something to really upset him.

She couldn't think of a single thing that she had done to upset him lately.

If anything Mukai was the one who was upsetting…but Sho would not have hit her. She was just a baby and didn't know what she was doing…but Sho didn't always know what he was doing, either. Like the one time when her tablet died so she used his…and also it was her fault for not giving it back when he asked…he slammed it up into her face and her nose had gotten all bloody. He had said, when dad had told him to explain, that he hadn't even been able to remember doing it…

Suddenly the little kicks to her back made her worry.

She made their bath toys float in front of Mukai. They wavered a little, just a little, because the little kicks to her back were now…now they felt like big kicks even though she knew for a fact that they were little kicks. Sho was not kicking her for real. He hadn't lost control. She was like him, she lost control sometimes too, and it made sense because they were brother and sister. The only difference was that when he lost control it wasn't of his powers but of his feelings and then he did mean things like hurt her…

But he was in control now.

"She used up all of the diapers that she came here with already. I'm just saying that she's really tiny, she eats a lot, and she does go to the bathroom a lot." Said Sho. Mob nodded. She didn't think that someone that small could go to the bathroom so much, that it was possible, but it was. She should have watched more shows and stuff with babies in them so she could know what to expect. She wished that mom had told her something about babies, too. Well at least now Mob had stuff to tell her Daughters when she had them….when she was a grown up. Not now. She didn't even have a boyfriend, first of all, and second of all she already had a baby and a Sho to take care of. Also she was ten and she didn't even think that she could grow a person in her stomach yet. She had never seen anyone her age with a baby in their stomach, only adults, so it made sense that she would have to wait until she was an adult…

She would be even better at it as an adult because she had figured it all out as a kid already.

Maybe that was why dad had left baby Mukai with her. Maybe he wanted her to figure out how to take care of babies now so that when she grew up and got married and had one of her own she would know automatically what to do. She already knew how to take care of a kid, she took care of Sho, and now she knew how to take care of a baby. Yes, that was why dad had done this to her.

Dad trusted her.

"She can't help it. She's just a baby and all of her food is liquids. It's just pee this time, though, so I'm grateful. Do you want to help me, little brother? This is a good chance for you to learn. You know, for when you grow up and have your own kids. Also this way there'll be two of us that know how to change diapers and two is better than one." said Mob

"I already tried. She peed on me when I tried to put the cream stuff on her. I think that she did it on purpose." Said Sho. He said that he didn't want to help but then he came down to the ground beside her. Mukai was done crying now. She looked over at Sho and smiled at him. He smiled right back. She smiled, too, so that she was included in the Suzuki family smile time.

"No she didn't. She's just a baby." Said Mob. Mukai was looking at her now and still smiling. Mob smiled back at her. Sho handed her the diaper cream without being told. It was a little thing, a very little thing, but it made her smile even more. That he was helping her. He didn't have to be there, he didn't have to help her, but he did…

She should not have been letting him help.

What would dad have said if he had seen that? She was the one who was in charge. He had trusted her with this. Sho was little, he was just a kid, and he should not have had to handle this kind of responsibility. She was the older one. She was the one in charge. She was the one who had to do everything. That was why dad never helped her. She was supposed to have this. That was also why dad never did anything to help mom back when they'd had a mom. Mom had been the one to handle everything and now she was gone so it was up to Mob to handle everything.

She wasn't trying to replace mom. Dad was making her replace mom.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's just a baby. You know that's just what she wants you to think, right?" asked Sho as he reached over and held onto her feet. She always kicked when it was time for the diaper cream. Well she kicked through every portion of this but she especially kicked for the parts with the diaper cream. Mob wondered if she had kicked like this when she had been a baby. She knew that Sho must have kicked like that when he had been a baby. She didn't have clear memories of him as a baby. She remembered one time when he was in a bed with clear walls around it, a crib actually, and he had been asleep…and she had been really sad for some reason. She remembered that she had wanted to take him out of there and bring him with her…but where had she been going? She couldn't remember. She had been little then. That was not one of her clear memories. It might have even been a dream. She didn't know.

"Yes, of course she wants us to think that, because that's what she is. A baby. Like how you're a boy and you want everyone to think that you're a boy so you get mad at me when I try to make you wear dresses and stuff." Said Mob

"Well, yeah, she is a baby but she wants us to think that she didn't pee on me on purpose. I mean if it had been an accident then why did she laugh?" asked Sho. He poked her in the belly to make her laugh again. Mob didn't tell him to stop even though Mukai's moving around like that made it very hard to finish with the diaper cream. You had to get all over, the internet had said, and into all the folds of skin too. Babies had a lot of skin folds, they were so chubby, and Mob wondered if that was ok. She knew that eating too much could be bad for you…but she also knew that babies needed a lot of food to grow and live…

She would have to ask Google tomorrow.

"Because she thinks that it's funny when you shout and make faces. She likes it when people shout and make faces. Remember how Shibata made faces at her for almost half an hour?" asked Mob as she finally finished up with the diaper cream. She would have to send someone out for more tomorrow. She doubted that this country would have the kind that Mukai was used to. She was Korean and they were not in Korea. They were in America again where everything was in English and directions would have been very hard without pictures.

Maybe the baby was just jetlagged?

"Yeah. You know I've never seen the baby get tired of it before the adult…but then again we don't know a lot of babies." Said Sho

"That's true. Maybe we should meet some so that Mukai can have some friends." Said Mob. She got the diaper on her, finally, and was trying to do up the snaps of her baby outfit. The snaps at the bottom were good for diaper changes but they were also small and made of metal and very slippery in Mob's fingers. She wasn't going to use her powers, though, because she didn't want to risk losing control and hurting Mukai.

"They'd have to be esper babies and Mukai is that only esper baby that we've ever seen….and we've been all over the world." Said Sho

"We haven't seen all of it though, just the parts where dad has business in. We haven't even seen all of Japan and we're Japanese." Said Mob. She wondered if Mukai missed Korea. She wondered if Mukai was even old enough to miss anything. Maybe she missed her mom. Maybe she was just eating so much and crying so much because she missed her mom and dad and stuff. Sometimes people stress ate. Minegishi stress ate chocolate sometimes when things were bothering them or when they were sick. Mob stress drank milk when she was feeling sad or mad or lonely. Sho stress ate his fingernails when things were bothering him. Also dad liked to drown his worries in ketchup. You could tell the state of Claw by the state of dad's omelets, Shimazaki had said, and for once he spoke the true. The more ketchup he put on the more problems that Claw had…

She wished that she had checked how much ketchup he had used for his breakfast that morning. Maybe that could have been a clue or something…but then again she was really bad at getting a clue.

"I know that it's a big world and all but I don't think that we're going to meet any esper babies. Esper kids are super rare as it is." Said Sho

"That's true. I hope…I hope that she has some friends, though, so that she doesn't grow up lonely for people her own age. You and I are lucky because we're only a year apart, sometimes even less, but she doesn't have anyone her own age to play with." Said Mob. Even if Sho could be mean she was still grateful to have him.

"She doesn't have any real brothers and sisters?" asked Sho

"I really don't know, the note didn't say, but probably not. If her real mom and dad were going to give up one of their kids then they would have given up all of their kids. I mean why only keep one kid but not the other. It doesn't make any sense." Said Mob

"Maybe her parents wanted a boy but then she was a girl. I saw on TV that they do that in some places, get rid of the girl babies." Said Sho. Mob nodded. That was so sad that people did that to girl babies. Dad said that it was because boy babies carried on the family name and inherited things. Mob didn't see why she couldn't rule the world just because she was a girl. Also the world had a lot of people in it called Suzuki as it was.

"Maybe….I mean I know that in some places they don't want girl babies…even though you need both boys and girls to make more babies…but Mukai is a girl esper. Dad said that girl espers are the rarest kinds of espers." Said Mob

"Maybe…maybe they didn't want her because she had powers. I mean normal people have esper babies all the time. Maybe they gave her up to Claw because they knew that because of her powers they would never be able to take care of her. Maybe people without powers aren't meant to take care of people with powers." Said Sho. He didn't mean to do it but he got her thinking about mom again. Maybe mom had left because she didn't have any powers. Maybe she thought that because she was so different from her own kids that they would be better with their own kind. Like he movie about the kid who adopts the chimpanzee but then it gets too big and they have to let it go in the jungle with it's own kind so that it could be happy. Maybe mom had realized that if she was around then dad would always leave them with her. Maybe she thought that she and Sho would have been better off with their own kind, espers, and would have been happier being raised in Claw with dad….

That was better than thinking that mom had ran away because she didn't love them anymore.

"Yeah…but that doesn't matter to us. We both have powers and we're both going to take care of Mukai and we're going to make her forget about her rotten old family." Said Sho. Mob smiled. Even though she knew that she shouldn't have, Mukai's real parents could have been perfectly nice and normal people for all she knew, she did smile just a little bit.

"You don't have to help me…but if you wanted to heat up one of her bottles then that would be nice." Said Mob. There were two ideas in her head and they were fighting it out. The first one was the fact that dad had trusted her with Mukai and dad had wanted her to be the one in charge. The second one was the fact that people needed other people. Dad didn't agree with that even though Claw had hundreds of people working directly for it not to mention the worshippers, donators, and random business people. Dad needed other people even if he wouldn't admit it…but dad also left her in charge…

Sho wanted to help.

This was like teaching, she decided, and that was ok. These were the things that he would need to know for when he got married and had babies with his wife. He shouldn't be like dad and make her do all the work even if she was a girl. His future wife would probably divorce him if he tried to make her do all of the baby work and Mob did not want that. Yes….this was ok because she was teaching him. That was all.

It had nothing to do with the fact that she was exhausted and it was after two in the morning.

"Ok, I'll do that since there's no chance that she'll be able to pee on me…but you burp her. I don't want baby throw up on me." Said Sho

Mob agreed to that. After all, it was nice of him to help anyone, and Mukai didn't care either way who burped her. She was just a baby after all.


	142. Feeding Little Sis

The sun came back up. Dad still wasn't home.

Which suited Sho just fine. Let dad be gone on his super-secret mission or whatever. Things were better without him around getting mad all the time and bossing them around. Really, they were. So what if he was gone and nobody had any idea of where he had gone to or when he was coming back? That just meant that they got to have a break from him for once. It wasn't like he was just never coming back. All of his stuff was still right where he left it.

Mom only took her yellow dress with her when she left.

Dad was coming back. Sho knew that dad was coming back. He had to come back. He was their dad and they needed at least one parent. Otherwise they would be orphans and he did not want to be an orphan. He had parents. Well he had a dad and his dad was going to come back and probably yell at him and hit him a bunch of times too but that was ok. That was normal for dad. He'd been that way for as long as Sho could remember.

Sho didn't know what was worse. Being all alone in the world or having dad come back.

"Sho? Can you feed her for me please? I really, REALLY, have to go to the bathroom." Said big sis. She was sitting on the couch and holding Mukai. Frozen in Korean was on even though the baby really needed to learn Japanese. Mostly because Sho didn't want to study Korean ever again. Too complicated, much too complicated. Also he didn't want to do any schoolwork today. There wasn't any point if dad wasn't around.

That was the good part of dad being gone.

"Fine." Said Sho. He used his powers to try and bring her over to his spot on the floor. He had been drawing, well he was always drawing, but this time he had been drawing her. Big sis had been taking pictures but drawings were better. There was more love in them. Also he needed to be able to draw her from life while she was still there. Dad would probably give her to someone else when he came back. He hated loud noises and messes and stuff like that. Baby Mukai was all loud noises and messes.

Like now.

Really this was big sis' fault. She was the one who had put up a barrier. He didn't know why. It wasn't like he was going to do anything stupid like drop the baby. What did she take him for? One of the Awakened? His powers were a lot stronger than theirs. His powers were also a lot more stable than hers. He saw the way her barrier shook, how it was wonky shaped, and how the colors of her aura were moving. She was unstable, dad had said, because a power that big came with a bigger expense. He also said that Sho was lucky not to be that powerful.

Which felt like an insult, really, even though dad said that it wasn't.

"Don't use your powers. She could accidentally get hurt." Said big sis. She was thinking more of herself than of him. He never, well almost never, lost control of his powers. Not like her.

"I'm not going to hurt her, big sis, so go pee or whatever. I know how to feed a baby." Said Sho. He got up and picked little sis up by hand, though, because big sis would not leave him alone to go and pee until he did. She watched him the whole time even though if you held it for too long your kidneys would explode. Little sis got that. Big sis didn't. She thought that Sho was too little to hold the baby and feed her without accidentally hurting her.

If she didn't want his held then she should not have asked for his help.

She was like dad. Dad asked for people's help but then he complained and called them incompetent and stuff like that. Big sis didn't call him any names but she did watch him until he picked Mukai up the normal way, sat down on the floor the normal way, and fed her the normal way. He could have used his powers like that. He had much better control over his powers since the day he had gotten them. Dad never had to tell him to control his powers, that power was nothing without control, and dad would have been proud of him for using his powers and stuff.

Dad would have been proud of him.

Maybe. This was a girl's job, though, taking care of a baby. Dad had said, once, that it would have made more sense for big sis to ask nonstop for a pet because girls were nurturing like that. That didn't mean that she got a pet, no, she got a baby…even though a baby was a lot more work than a pet. A hamster, specifically. Sho knew how to take care of a hamster. Sho had seen so many YouTube shows about hamsters and how to take care of them and how cute they were and stuff like that. A hamster would have been a lot easier to take care of than a baby.

Not that he didn't love little sis.

Mukai wasn't his for real little sis. She couldn't be. Mom was gone and dad hated her now so, of course, they wouldn't have made him a little sister. Also girls didn't like dad like that. He had never seen a girl chase dad around and try to kiss him or hold his hand or anything like that. That was how girls showed you that they liked you. No girl had ever been like that with dad that he remembered and dad would not have let some girl be like that with him. He didn't even let his own kids hug him.

She wasn't his little sis for real but he still loved her.

"Come on, keep eating. If you don't finish this then you're just going to start crying later because you're hungry." Said Sho. Mukai was turning her head from side to side when he tried to feed her. He didn't get it. She liked formula. The note had said so. They had made her a full bottle, too, one of the big ones. It would have made much more sense for her to eat a whole lot at once than to get up fifty or sixty times a night because she was hungry.

"Stop turning your head like that. You're just going to be hungry later. I don't want you to start crying because you're hungry so just eat. Come on, it's good. The baby on the can liked it." Said Sho. He tried to feed her again but her mouth was closed and she was shaking her head. This made no sense. She ate when big sis tried to feed her.

Maybe she just liked big sis better.

The thought of someone else liking big sis, especially his new pretend little sis, liking big sis even better…it makes him slam her bottle down on the ground. But that's all. Because she's so little. She's there sitting in his lap. She's there and she's small and he's not going to hurt her. He loves her. He loves her even though he just met her. He loves her and he is not ever going to do anything to hurt her…because she's just a baby. Even if she does like big sis better…but maybe it was just because big sis was a girl and reminded baby Mukai of her mom. That made sense. Mukai probably really missed her mom and stuff. He knew he did…even though he was not supposed to. Even though mom had left him all alone with big sis and dad. Even though Mom had just left one day and…and maybe that was just how moms were.

He didn't know.

What he did know now was that Mukai was done eating. She could and would cry later for food, she ate every ten minutes it felt like, but now she'd had her fill. Now she was just kicking her little baby legs and looking up at him. He smiled at her. She smiled back at him. He loved her little smiles so much. Her whole face scrunched up when she smiled. She was slapping him on the stomach now. She wasn't trying to be mean. Maybe she just wanted to play or something. She could never be mean to him and he would never be mean to her.

For as long as he knew her, anyway.

Dad would come back from whatever secret mission he was on and he would take Mukai from them and bring her to her new family. If he didn't want pets then he would absolutely say no to keeping a baby. Even if he had been the one who had given big sis a baby for a birthday present in the first place. He didn't know for sure what dad would do…

He didn't know what he wanted dad to do.

"Stop hitting me and I'll show you how to draw. How's that sound?" asked Sho. As usual Mukai didn't say anything. He even said that in Korean so that she would understand but she still didn't say anything. She was too little to talk. He didn't know if she would stay with them until she was big enough to talk. He knew dad and he knew how dad hated loud noises and messes and things like that. Babies were nothing but loud noises and messes. Sho was amazed that dad hadn't dropped him down a well when he was born. He had seen the movies of himself when he was little. He was a loud baby. He was so loud that big sis wasn't even in the movies that he saw. She didn't like loud noises either.

Dad wouldn't let Mukai stay.

He had known her for only a day, now, because he had come home yesterday and now it was today…but he loved her. Even if she did cry all the time. Even if she did pee on him when he tried to change her diapers. Even if she did throw up in big sis' hair…actually that part was pretty funny. He loved Mukai and he didn't want her to go…

But he didn't know what would happen if she ended up staying.

Sho was grateful that she was a girl. Dad already had a girl so big sis would be the one in trouble if Mukai was more of a prodigy than she was. She already had an aura. She didn't have any powers but her aura as a baby was brighter than his had ever been. Well since before he went into the Awakening machine thing. She was already a prodigy and he knew that because she was a girl she would be competing with big sis but…but he also got the feeling that she would be competing with him, too.

And he already had enough competition as it was.

"Sho, I said to feed her. She needs to eat the whole thing or she's going to be hungry later." Said big sis. She came up to him and held her hands out like she just expected him to hand Mukai over. Well he wasn't going to. She wasn't the boss of him even though dad had left her in charge. She wasn't the boss of the baby, either, even though dad had given the baby to her.

"She doesn't want to eat any more. She wants to draw." Said Sho. He knew that she needed to eat, she had kept him up all night with her crying, but he also knew that he did not need to be bossed around. If Mukai wanted to learn how to draw then he would teach her how to draw.

Even if she was just chewing on his pencil and kicking.

"She needs to eat or she'll be hungry. She only ate half of her bottle. If she eats only half of her bottle then she's going to be hungry later." Said big sis. She reached down for Mukai again but he put up a barrier. She pulled her hands back really fast. He didn't get why. It wasn't like he had done anything to hurt her. Putting up a barrier couldn't hurt you.

"She'll eat when she's ready to eat, you're not the boss of her stomach." Said Sho

"Don't put a barrier like that. You might accidentally-" said big sis

"My control is a lot better than yours and you know it. Go and watch Frozen or whatever, me and Mukai are hanging out." Said Sho. He waved his hand at her which meant 'leave me alone'. Thankfully she got a clue. She was so worried over nothing. So what if Mukai cried later? When wasn't she crying? She cried when she was tired and she cried when she woke up and she cried when she needed a change and she cried when you, well when big sis, changed her and she cried when she was lonely and she cried when you tried to play with her.

Babies just cried a lot.

But she wasn't crying now. Sho sat her up in his lap. She couldn't sit up on her own yet. She was just little, not stupid, so she would learn how to sit up on her own. He'd teach her. Sho was very good at sitting up even though dad said that he had terrible posture and couldn't be taken anywhere. Dad always had things like that to say…but Sho would never say mean things like that to Mukai.

"You're good at this even if you're not. You'll learn." Said Sho quietly as he helped Mukai sit up. She kept on trying to flop to the side. She was still so little…but she would learn. She would learn a lot of important things. Like sitting up and holding her own head up and walking and talking and climbing and running and drawing and using her powers and all of that.

He would be a good big brother…a good pretend big brother.

"She's too little to do that, Sho, the internet said so. She can't even hold her own head up yet." Said big sis. She didn't know everything. She had the same amount of baby knowledge that he did. They had both only had this baby for one day. She didn't need to boss him around about Mukai, too. He could figure things out. It was mean, too, to tell Mukai that she was too little to do things. Dad had told him since he was little that he wasn't as good as big sis. Well he wouldn't compare Mukai to anyone. She was fine the way she was.

"She is not too little." Said Sho

"Yes she is. She's only three months old. She's not old enough to learn how to hold her head up yet." said big sis. She was being mean even if she didn't realize it. She was saying that Mukai couldn't learn but she could and she would and Sho would help her. Like how he was helping her now. He could help her. He could be helpful. He could be a good pretend big brother.

"She can learn and I can help her. Don't make her feel bad about herself like that. She's only a baby." Said Sho

"I didn't mean that…that I wanted to make her feel bad about herself. I just meant that she's little and she's not ready to sit up on her own yet." Said big sis

"Well she wants to learn. Keep watching Frozen and leave us alone." Said Sho. He wanted to take Mukai's half full bottle and throw it at big sis. Not in a mean way. Not like the time she drank the soda that he had been saving for breakfast so he threw the can in her face as hard as he could…and then she got a cut…and he had been meaning to do that until she started bleeding. Then he took it back. That was him trying to be mean.

He mostly just wanted her to leave him alone.

There was a way of throwing things at people to get them to leave you alone. Like when he threw his shoes at her when she tried to make him take them off and come inside for some boring reason, usually for school work and stuff. When he did that he didn't mean to hurt her. That was why he had aimed for her body and not her face. He wanted throw Mukai's bottle at big sis…and he had it in his hand…

But then Mukai flopped to the side again.

He put her bottle down and steadied her. She could have hurt herself if she tipped over. Fukuda was gone and that meant that they had no healer. He didn't care if he got hurt, he was a boy and he could take it, but she was just a baby. Not only that but a girl baby. Girls couldn't deal with getting hurt. Not like how boys could. That was why big sis always cried and stuff when dad barely even touched her. Like how she would lay in her bed and cry whenever dad dragged her around by her hair and stuff.

She didn't know what real hurt was.

And there was no reason for Mukai to know what real hurt was. Not yet, anyway. She was only three months old. Sho had no idea what he was doing three months ago. He had probably been drawing and playing stuff. Normal stuff. He had been normal and she had been being born. She was born on just another normal day for him…it was weird. It was a weird thing to think about, how people could just come into the world like that.

He wondered what it was like before he was born.

"She's going to choke." Said big sis. Mukai was eating his pencil. He wanted to tell big sis to watch Frozen for the millionth time but he didn't. She was right. Mukai was chewing on the side with the chip now and if that went down her throat she would choke and die…and that would not have been good at all…

"Don't eat my pencil, it's not a food. If you want to eat something then eat some more of your bottle and if not just give me back my pencil. I don't care if you eat or not, it's your stomach, but don't wake me up in the middle of the night again. That wasn't cool. When the sun goes down then you need to sleep." Said Sho. He wondered if mom had told him that when he was a baby. He used to draw things when he was a baby, scribble on pieces of paper, mom had showed him his old drawings. She told him that he had always been an artist. Mom used to draw too, before she'd had him and big sis, and now he was…he wondered what else she had done. He wondered what it had been like for her and dad in the time before he and big sis had been born.

It was weird thinking about how things were normal but also different before he was born.

"She's too young to draw, Sho. Can you please give her back to me? I just needed you to watch her while I went to the bathroom." Said big sis

"Well I want to hold her now and she is not too little to draw. She just needs someone to show her how. She's not dumb just because she's little." Said Sho

"I wasn't calling her dumb. I think that she's really smart, actually, like how she takes off her own socks because she doesn't like that and also while you were brushing your hair she picked up her own pacifier this morning. I have a picture if you want to see." Said big sis. She had been taking nonstop pictures of Mukai. Taking pictures was all well and good but drawing them was better. That was what he had been doing, drawing pictures of Mukai. That way he would be able to remember her even if dad took her away.

There had been a lot of pictures when Sho had been a baby but no drawings.

At some point mom had stopped drawing pictures. He wondered why. He wondered if, when you had a baby, you had to stop doing things that you liked. They hadn't done any schoolwork at all that day and big sis hadn't played with her dolls even once. Babies were a lot of work. He wondered if he would have to stop drawing when he had to have a baby…or maybe it was just a girl thing. He couldn't imagine dad ever giving up the things that he loved just for Sho.

Big sis, maybe, but not him.

"Show me later. I'm teaching her to draw right now. Even if she can only scribble that's still better than nothing. I started off scribbling. Don't you remember?" asked Sho

"No but I was a baby when you were born. I don't really remember anything from back then." Said big sis

"Well I remember you from when I was a baby. I remember how we used to share a room and you would make me float out of my crib and stuff." Said Sho

"You weren't a baby then, you were two and I was three. That wasn't a crib, too, that was a bed with sides on it that mom got for you so you wouldn't escape. She took the sides off because you kept on climbing out. Remember how the sides of your bed had those things in the sides?" asked big sis. Sho didn't know what to say for a moment. She had mentioned mom…they were not allowed to mention mom…but dad was gone. He had been tense. He relaxed. Mukai smiled at him again. She did that a lot. He smiled back.

He loved her smiles.

"Bed with sides, crib, it's all the same. Right, Mukai?" asked Sho. She didn't say anything. She just slapped him on the chest and smiled. That was normal for her. She didn't mean to hurt him. He had no idea what that meant. He figured it meant 'pay attention to me' or 'I want to play with you, big brother' or something like that. Well he would. Because that was what big brothers did. Even pretend big brothers.

"I don't think that she knows the difference…and also she sleeps in a drawer." Said big sis

"She knows the difference. Just because she can't talk doesn't mean that she doesn't know things." Said Sho. She was poking him in the stomach with a pencil now. He used his powers to hold his sketchbook in front of her. He flipped to a blank paged and used his powers to press her hand, the one with the pencil in it, but he didn't make her draw anything. He wasn't going to be the bossy sort of big brother. He knew firsthand how hard it was when your older sibling was bossy as all else.

Like now.

She was looking at him and her aura was on him. She should have been watching TV since Frozen was on and she loved that movie out of all the other movies in the whole world. He was glad that Mukai wasn't watching with her. She had much better taste than big sis. She liked that Black Cauldron thing. It was much cooler. She was more like him than big sis.

And not just because of her red hair, red aura, and blue eyes.

"Be careful. I know that you have really good control but it can be so easy to lose control. It's like it happens before you even know it. Like your powers just stop listening and-" said big sis. Why didn't she get it? They were different people. Just because her powers were too big to control it did not mean that he was the same way. They may have been brother and sister but that did not mean that they were alike. They looked different and acted different and just were different people entirely.

He was not going to lose control and hurt little sis.

"Will you please stop it? I have complete control." Said Sho

"I know but…but I don't want-" said big sis

"I'm fine." Said Sho. If he didn't need both hands to hold up little sis then he would have thrown that bottle at big sis. He wanted to. Not to hurt her, no, he would aim for her stomach just to get her to shut up. He was still in control. He never lost control of his powers, only his feelings, and that was only because of her. Little sis could never make him lose control of her feelings.

"Ok….but if you want to hand her back to me….I mean she still needs to burp. Even if she didn't finish her whole bottle she still needs to burp." Said big sis

"Why? If she doesn't want to burp then she doesn't have to burp. You can't force someone to burp. That's bossy." Said Sho. People burped when they needed to burp. He was not going to boss her around like that. She was happy now. She was kicking a little but she was happy. She was even drawing something…a lot of lines. He wondered what she could have been trying to draw. She was only three months old. She hadn't seen much of life or the world…

Maybe she was trying to draw her old life.

Maybe she was getting upset, those were her fussy noises, because she was thinking about her old life. Maybe she had a big brother and big sister back in Korea. Maybe she missed her mom, too, and her dad. Not that Sho could even imagine missing your dad. His dad was gone and it felt like he could breathe. Sure this was a Claw living space, there were upper echelon people and Awakened in the houses around them, but there was no dad there to yell at him. Also he trusted those guys not tell on him if he did things that dad wouldn't like…which was just about everything.

"She has to burp or else she gets fussy…and I think that she's stating to get fussy. Please give her back, Sho, she has to burp if she's done eating. She has to burp and then the internet said that she has to sleep after eating so I'm going to try and put her down for a nap…and then I might take a nap…but I have so much schoolwork to do…and I haven't made lunch yet either…" said big sis

"Just tell the Awakened to get us something." Said Sho

"I tried that already with breakfast, remember? They came back late with the wrong thig and they wouldn't stop asking about dad. I don't know why they want dad to come back so badly. It's not like he's nice to them or anything like that." Said big sis. It was nice to hear her making sense for once. It was so weird how the Awakened wanted dad to come back. He was mean to them, meaner to them than he was to any other members of Claw, but then again they were kind of dumb sometimes…or a lot of the times.

How they could come back with waffles when he said that he wanted pancakes he would never know.

You did not mess with breakfast. Even dad agreed with that. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day and you could not mess that up. They had messed up so bad…and they had even brought dad's breakfast even though they had auras and they could see that dad wasn't anywhere near them. They asked about him and seemed sad, one of them even cried, when Sho said that he had no idea where dad had gone to or when he would be back.

The Awakened were so weird sometimes…most of the times.

"We have food, it's just junk food. We'll be fine and Mukai will be fine. She shouldn't sleep so much during the day, anyway, since if she sleeps all day she'll be up all night like she was last night." Said Sho. Really, it was obvious. If they wanted Mukai to sleep during the night then they would have to cut down on her naps. Besides, she was having fun. She was kicking and making all of those noises because she was having fun.

He bounced her up and down, though, because she was getting kind of loud.

She was so loud that she could be heard from next door. Shimazaki had teleported into their house while the sun was coming up and told them that he couldn't take it anymore. He gave big sis something that looked like water in a clear bottle but Sho didn't think was water and told her to give it to the baby so that she would go to sleep already. Big sis said no and also sorry, and then she had stuck whatever that was in her sock drawer.

If it was something that could help the baby sleep at night then he had no idea why she had said no.

Maybe it was because she didn't much like Shimazaki. Dad didn't either. Sho could not begin to understand his family members. Shimazaki was the coolest guy ever! Ok, Shibata was cool but he also cried at the end of Frozen so that lost him some cool points in Sho's book. Shimazaki never cried. Not even when he got shot in the face. Well his barrier was really close but it was so cool that he didn't even flinch. Also he could fly, too, if he wanted to. Also he was really strong. He could lift Sho up with one hand and throw him. Not as strong as Shibata thought but Shimazaki was cooler because he wasn't as tall and muscular. Not that Shimazaki wasn't tall. He was tall enough to reach over the fridge to where big sis kept on hiding them because he was eating them instead of the other food groups…even though it was his body and he could eat whatever he wanted…and dad didn't care what he ate…but still it was so cool of Shimazaki to get them out of their hiding spot and share the whole box with him. He was so cool and stuff…

Maybe he wanted to hang out later.

"Um…I'm pretty sure that babies need their naps, little brother, and she needs to eat a lot either way so she's doing to wake us up either way." said big sis. Mukai was fussing now, the way that she fussed when she was about to cry, and he had no idea why. They were having fun. They were having so much fun and she was drawing and it was so hard to have bad feelings when you were drawing pictures. Baby sis was fine and big sis was just being all bossy like she always was.

"Well she's fine. Aren't you Mukai?" asked Sho as he bounced her a little harder. Maybe she was getting upset. Maybe he should have just given up and passed her back to big sis. Maybe she was better at this than he was…but he was good at this too. He treated baby sis like she was a person and not just a series of needs that needed to be fulfilled. He cared about who she was as a person and he loved her and-and she was fine and-

She was not fine.

She threw up on his sketchbook. She threw up on his sketchbook and then she started to cry. He was very still. She just threw up on so much of his work…and now she was crying…and big sis had yanked her off of his lap…his sketchbook hit the ground. How could she!? How could she just throw up on his stuff when he was being so nice to her!? Why would she-

"Sho…please be mad at me and not her….because she's a baby and…and you can hit me or kick me or bite me or something…but not her…" said big sis. Well Sho hadn't wanted to hit her before but he wanted to hit her now more than anything. She seriously thought that he could hit a baby? What was the matter with her? He was not going to hit Mukai because she was a baby and he loved her and he would never do anything to hurt her.

It wasn't ok.

And he was not going to lose control, either, even though you could lose control and hurt someone and it was ok just so long as you said sorry to them like Fukuda said. Well even if he said sorry to Mukai it wouldn't make him less of a terrible excuse for a human being. Hitting your big sis was alright but…but he wasn't going to do that either because baby sis was watching….

"Don't be dumb." Said Sho

"I-I just meant that you get mad sometimes…and a lot of the time even if I'm not the one who made you mad you still-" said big sis

"I'm not going to hit anyone now go put little sis to be. I have to see what I can save in this." said Sho. He tried to sound happier than he was. He had worked hard on this sketchbook but…but little sis hadn't meant anything by this and big sis had been trying to keep this from happening. He had almost lost control at big sis in front of little sis…and if he had done that then little sis would have been scared of him. He never wanted to see her looking scared of anything or anyone…especially not him.

He was not dad, he would never be dad, and he did not need anyone to be scared of him.

He tore out the ruined pages and went back to drawing. He wasn't mad at all anymore.

Dad wasn't home. Mom was gone and now so was dad. Big sis may have been trying her best to pretend to be mom but he had no urge at all to fill the space that dad had left.


	143. Tummy Time

Mukai was too little to crawl.

The internet had said so. Not that Mob needed the internet to tell her so. Mukai was clearly not up to crawling at her age. She was only three months old and her main concern should have been figuring out how to hold up her own head. She was working on that now, actually. The internet said that putting babies down on their stomachs and letting them hang out like that was good for them. It was called tummy time. Mob read it on this blog that a mom wrote. She didn't know what she would have done without the internet.

It wasn't exactly like her mom was around to teach her these things.

Or her dad. He was still gone. He had left yesterday, been gone all day today, and it looked like he would have been gone all night again too. He was gone just like he used to be gone when she had been little…for weeks and weeks at a time. She didn't want him to be gone for weeks and weeks at a time again. She didn't want him to be gone at all. Even though she knew that when he got back he was not going to be happy with them. He hated messes and loud noises so, of course, he would not like Mukai at all.

Even though it was totally normal for a baby to make plenty of messes and to be very loud. She was only three months old and she didn't have any idea what she was doing. The only way she had of communicating with them was crying and screaming and she couldn't help it if she threw out a lot or moved around so much that her diapers leaked everywhere…so gross…but not her fault at all. No, dad would not have liked that at all. Mob didn't know what she was supposed to do about it, though, because that was just the way that babies were.

Maybe she was too young to have a baby.

All the moms on the internet were adults. She was only ten years old. She was trying her best, she really was, but sometimes she felt like her best was not good enough. Like how earlier she had let Sho hold Mukai and then he wouldn't give her back until she threw up on one of his sketchbooks. Or like how, before, it had taken almost an hour to get Mukai to sleep. Or like how now Mukai was struggling to crawl away and Mob knew, from the internet, that it was normal for someone her age to have trouble crawling and stuff…but she still wanted to help. Even though she had done everything the internet said from putting the baby on her stomach to putting her blanket outside where there was fresh air and nature she still felt like she was doing something wrong.

But at least Sho and Mukai were having fun.

"I think she's got it this time. Come on little sis! You can do it!" said Sho. Mukai was trying to crawl away, he could tell by the way she was moving her arms and legs, but she didn't quite have it yet. That didn't matter. She was trying and he believed in her.

"Don't shout, Sho, you're making her nervous and she'll never learn to crawl if she's nervous." Said Mob. Being nervous made everything harder. She knew. She was nervous and she didn't even know why. Her braids were trying to fly away and she had no idea why. Things were going well. She had this. She was doing everything right. She was being a good big sister. She was taking good care of the baby. She knew that she was…even though Mukai kept on throwing up…and even though she was running out of clean clothes…and even though Mob hadn't given her a bath yet because she had read that babies could drown in one inch of water, which was a lot of centimeters, and that had gotten her nervous. She cleaned the throw up and snot and drool and stuff off of Mukai with a wet rag like the internet said but that was no substitute for a bath. If she didn't give the baby a bath then she would get sick and then if she got sick there was no one around to heal her so she would die and then if she died Mob would be responsible for a baby being dead and then Mukai would never grow up and also-

"Hey, what're you freaking out about? You know that she can do it. She's not a moron or anything like that." Said Sho. She had given him this big freaked out lecture earlier about worrying about him losing control of his powers but there she was freaking out over nothing. Mukai was a smart baby, even if she did have some kind of stomach problem where she threw up on your stuff, and she would learn how to crawl. She was trying and that was what mattered.

"I'm just…worried I guess. That's all. Nothing you need to worry about." Said Mob. She was the big sister and she was the one in charge and she was the one who had to worry about Sho and the baby and if she was doing the right thing. She was the one who had to make sure that everyone was clean and fed and alive. Sho hadn't done any schoolwork and also he needed a bath. She would deal with that later. Mukai was going to get hungry again and Mob still hadn't made her any more bottles. She had to make enough to last them through the night so that she wouldn't have to get up in the middle of the night and make them.

Being in charge was hard.

Being an adult was hard. She felt like an adult, sort of, or at least what she figured an adult felt like. Tired. No wonder mom had slept all the time back when she lived with them. It was hard being in charge of a little brother and a pretend baby sister. It was hard making sure that everything got done. It was hard thinking of everyone all the time. Also it was hard getting up in the middle of the night with a baby. She was so tired. She was more tired than she had been when she was little and she would stay up extra late on school nights hanging out with dad.

But it was ok, though, because she had everything under control and she was being a very good big sister. Dad trusted her and she was not going to betray his trust.

"What's there to worry about? She's happy and I'm happy and you're happy. Well you should be happy. Be happy right now!" said Sho. She had better not have still had some crazy ideas in her head about him losing control or something like that. He was not going to lose control over his powers or himself. Even if she was being very annoying. Even if she was always so annoying. He loved Mukai and he had to be better for her.

Even though it was hard.

He wanted to kick her for thinking that he was going to lose control. He just rolled over on his stomach and kicked the ground a few times. He would have to work hard, extra hard, the hardest he had ever worked at anything to be a good big brother for Mukai. For however long she planned on staying. Maybe even forever…though he doesn't know how to feel about that. Dad would be coming back and if dad adopted her then he would have more competition…but she was just a baby…but she wouldn't be a baby for her whole entire life. That would have been awful. He didn't know what he would have done if he had a nine year old's brain in a baby's body. He sort of wished that she did, though, because then she would have understood things like how she needed to be clean and quiet when dad was around or he would punish her…or how she was not supposed to upstage him around dad because dad only had so much niceness inside of himself and most of the niceness went to big sis already.

Also dad might decide that two girls equaled one boy and then he would decide that they would inherit the world and he wouldn't need Sho at all anymore…and that would have just been the very worst….

"I can't just be happy because you tell me to be happy…but I am happy. Mostly." Said Mob. She knew that this could have been a lot worse. Mukai could have been crying. She could have been crying and screaming so loud that Mob's ears rang and other people noticed…like Minegishi. They had been a big help and all but dad trusted Mob with this job and he would not have been happy to know that she'd needed help with the job that he gave her.

She had to make dad proud even if he wasn't around.

"Mostly? Come on, big sis. You're worried over nothing. You're even more worried now than you are when dad's around." Said Sho. It made no sense. He felt on edge a lot of the time when dad was around. Now he was totally gone. He could have been gone forever and this…this wasn't as bad as it should have been. Not as bad as it felt when he woke up and mom had been gone.

Well mom had loved him.

She had loved him in the real way. Dad didn't love anyone, he just cared about people listening to him and stuff, and that was why he liked big sis best. She was the most like him and she always did what she was told. He tried. He tried to make dad love him but…but it was hard. It was really hard. It was like there was this other Sho inside of him who wanted to do bad things. Bad being things that dad didn't like…which was just about everything. Dad was just…he was dad. He was gone too…

And maybe he was never coming back…

If he was gone forever, though, then who would take care of them? Would they still be able to boss the Awakened around and make them bring food and toys and pencils and stuff? Without dad around would they be ok? Sho didn't know. He didn't know if he would come back and if he didn't come back then…then he and big sis would be orphans…

He didn't want to be an orphan.

"Well it's just…I don't know if I'm doing a good job." Said Mob. She wished that she had paid more attention to mom and all of the things that she did. The internet told her what to do but there was no substitute for her own mother. It was like how she could watch origami tutorials all day on YouTube but dad only had to show her a couple times and she got it. She wished that mom had told her what to do…she had no idea if she was doing this right….

Mukai was smiling, though, so Mob must have been doing something right.

"What? Why?" asked Sho. Of course she was doing a good job. Well by mom standards. He didn't want another mom, especially not his big sister pretending to be his mom, but she was good at acting like a mom was supposed to act. She was always telling him to eat right and dress warm and take baths and do his school work and she bossed around Mukai too. She was always telling Mukai when she had to eat and sleep and stuff even though Mukai could figure out for herself what she needed to do and when she needed to do it. Being a baby didn't mean that she was dumb. She would tell them when she needed something.

She had never been shy about telling them when she needed something.

But she was being good now. She was on her stomach practicing holding her head up and whenever they looked at her she smiled. She was happy and that…that was the way to tell if big sis had been doing a good job. His best memories of mom weren't of the times she bossed him around or acted like she knew him better than he knew himself. His best memories of mom were the ones when they were happy together.

Being happy together was what mattered most.

"Because there's so much that you're supposed to do and I don't know if I'm doing all the things that I should be doing or even if I'm doing them right." Said Mob

"Well you've been extra bossy lately so, you know, you must be doing something right. Mom was bossy a lot but she took good care of us…and we were happy. I'm happy and Mukai is happy so that means that you're doing this right." Said Sho. He knew that he was not supposed to mention mom, dad would have been mad if he knew, but dad was gone and Fukuda was gone and the only other espers around would not have told on him so it was ok to talk about mom.

Well not ABOUT mom.

Not about how much he missed her. Not about how he sometimes stared up at the ceiling at night and thought about where she could have gone to or why she had left him. Not how sometimes he wanted to scream at her and kick her and tell her off for leaving them and how sometimes he wanted to throw himself down on the ground and beg her to come back and never leave again. That was not the sort of thing that they talked about.

And especially not in front of Mukai because she was an orphan and that would have hurt her little baby feelings and hurting a baby's feelings was worse than hurting a kid's feelings because babies were little and small and couldn't even fight back.

"You mentioned mom." Said Mob. She felt around with her aura. The only espers that were near were Minegishi and the others. She relaxed a little bit. Minegishi was not a tattletale and she knew that they wouldn't let the others tell on her. Maybe that was a good thing about dad being back. They could talk about mom.

At least a little bit.

Not in the way that she wanted to talk about mom, of course. Not about how much it hurt that she was gone. Not about how much it hurt that Mob was mad that she was gone. Not about how Mob wondered, sometimes, what had happened to her. Not about how first she was gone and now dad was gone…but at least dad had a good reason to be gone. He was on a mission. He had taken Fukuda so that meant that not only was he on a mission but a dangerous one. That meant that if he never came back then…then it would not be her and Sho's fault. Then it would not have meant that dad never wanted to see her and Sho again.

"I know. Are you going to tell on me?" asked Sho. Dad was gone but he could always come back. Then she could tell on him and then dad would be mad at him and he would love her more…but she was not like that. She wasn't like that and he didn't know where he had gotten the idea that she was…because she had never told on him before…so she wouldn't tell on him now. Dad just sort of knew when he was bad.

"No. Of course not. Even if dad were here I wouldn't tell him. You know that the last thing I want is for dad to punish you." Said Mob

"Well I was just making sure. I mean…that's one of his big rules and you are his favorite kid after all." said Sho

"Don't." said Mob. She was not dad's favorite…not really. If she was dad's favorite then he wouldn't have just left her all alone with Sho and a baby. Well she had her friends to help her but…but he had been the one to hand her baby Mukai and he had said that he was hers…which didn't seem like something that you did to your favorite kid…even though dad spent the most time with her. Maybe neither of them was the favorite.

"Don't what?" asked Sho

"Say that I'm the favorite. I don't want to be the favorite. I wish that dad loved you as much as he loved me. Even more, actually. Dad's love….it can be a lot." Said Mob

"What? Watching TV and talking about kendo or whatever is too much for you?" asked Sho. She didn't know the things he knew and she had not seen the things that he had seen. She only knew the 'fun' parts of dad. She only knew that boring things he wanted to watch on TV and the boring games that he wanted to play. She only knew the boring work that dad did, too. The stuff where you told people what to do and typed stuff up and ran messages from one department to another. She didn't know what really happened, the bad things, the things that happened to people who did bad things. She didn't know just how much went into learning how to run Claw and how to eventually run the world.

"No, it's not that. It's more like…it's more like how he can be so…bossy. I guess that would be the word for it. Bossy." Said Mob

"You're seriously complaining about dad being bossy?" said Sho

"Yes. You complain about him being bossy all the time so I know that you won't tell on me." Said Mob

"You're right, I won't tell on you, but that's just a weird thing for you to complain about considering how bossy you are." Said Sho

"I'm not bossy…when I don't have to be. I'm not as bossy as dad. He's bossy all the time." Said Mob

"You seriously think that you're less bossy than dad?" asked Sho

"Yes. I'm bossy when I need you to do something for your own good. Dad is bossy when he needs someone to do something for his own good…if that makes any sense. He just…he has this idea of who I'm supposed to be and who you're supposed to be and it's just…kind of a lot. You know?" asked Mob

"Well, yeah, of course I do. It's hard knowing that when you grow up you have to rule the whole world. You're lucky. You just help dad out with some stuff here and there and then when you grow up you won't have to do anything at all. I have to run the whole world when I grow up." Said Sho. She always had it easy. Not only was she dad's favorite but also didn't have to grow up to be the ruler of the world. Parts of it sounded fun, like being able to tell everyone what to do all the time and stuff, but there was a lot of work to it too. Even just running Claw day to day was somehow both exhausting and boring at the same time. He would have to do it, though, because unless dad had another boy…he hoped that dad wouldn't….he would be the one to inherit the world.

"I still have to do things. Dad said that I'll never leave his side, that I'm not allowed to, and helping dad with what I help him with is hard. It's a lot of things to remember and people to remember and…and you don't have to do the things that I will. Even when you grow up you'll be able to be dad and have people do things for you but I'm just going to grow up to be me. When I grow up I'll just end up doing all of the same stuff that I'm doing now but I'll also have kids…my own kids. Taking care of kids and babies is…it's hard. It's hard and I don't know how I could do that and also help run the world." Said Mob. Mukai had rolled over onto her back now. She was still smiling. Mob loved her little smiles. She loved her laughs. She loved it best when she was asleep, though, because Mob was just so…tired. They'd had this baby for two days now and she was already so tired….no wonder mom had slept so much back when she had been around.

"I don't want to be dad…though. I want to be me." Said Sho. It wasn't fair. Other kids got to grow up to be whoever they wanted to be. When he was little people would ask him all the time what he wanted to be when he grew up. He used to always say that he wanted to be like dad. Sometimes like mom but mostly like dad. Now he knew better. If he had it his way then he would grow up to be like himself.

But of course he did not have it his way.

"Me too…but I don't think that it works like that. I mean…I mean I don't know how I works but I don't think that it works like that." Said Mob. Mukai had rolled back onto her stomach now. She was flailing around trying to get back onto her back. Mob reached over to help her. She moved Mukai back onto her back like she wanted to be.

But now she was acting like she wanted to be on her stomach.

She was supposed to be on her stomach. The internet said that letting her play while she laid on her stomach was very good for her. Sometimes people didn't always want the things that were good for them, though, and it was hard finding a balance between giving people what they needed and what they wanted. Baby Mukai needs to learn how to hold her own head up, she sort of could but she wasn't there yet, and Mob had to be the one to help her learn even if she wanted to be on her back….and she couldn't even seem to decide if she wanted to be on her back or her stomach.

Was that being bossy?

Dad was bossy. Sho was always saying how bossy she was but dad was the king of being bossy. Probably because he was going to be king of the whole world soon. To be king of the world you had to be bossy. Well her dad may have been a king but she was not a princess…even if she was wearing her Cinderella dress that day. She wasn't a princess because she did not ever want to boss people around. She could help people, make sure that they were doing things that were good for them, but she was not going to be bossy like dad was. Dad wanted things the way he wanted them and he only let people be the way that he wanted them to be. Mob didn't care how people were just so long as they were safe and happy.

She wasn't as bossy as Sho said.

But she knew that there was no changing his mind. He thought that she was bossy, and sometimes she had to be because he had to change his clothes and take baths and eat from all of the food groups, but she wasn't bossy like dad was. She didn't care if he liked animals or wanted to draw pictures all day and stuff like that. She just wanted him to be happy and she saw nothing wrong with that. Why wouldn't she want her little brother to be happy? She loved him more than anything.

Well actually it was a tie now.

She loved Mukai a lot. Baby Mukai wasn't her for real little sister because she hadn't come from mom and dad. That didn't mean that Mob loved her less than Sho. She had just met baby Mukai yesterday but she already couldn't imagine what life would be like without her. The good parts and the bad. The parts where she rolled around and played and smiled and also the parts where she was up all night crying and threw up everywhere and also she went through diapers so fast….but that was ok because she was a baby and Mob had to take care of her. To think that just the other day she had been normal, totally normal, and now she had a baby to look after…

She loved Mukai as much as she loved Sho…and she hoped that Mukai didn't grow up to think that she was bossy…like Sho did….

"I don't know either." Said Sho. Big sis was being bossy again. She kept on trying to put Mukai on her stomach even though she wanted to be on her back. Sho hoped that when Mukai went to her new family, if she ever went to her new family, that she didn't have anyone to boss her around. He hoped that she ended up being the big sister even though he had no idea how she could ever be bigger than anyone. He hoped that she grew up to be whoever she wanted to be and not who other people told her to be.

He hoped that she grew up to be happy.

And he hoped that she didn't end up being mad at everything like he was. He wasn't mad at her but he still felt this…kind of low level anger…towards big sis. Kind of like how if you ate four churros in a row your stomach was upset a little bit but not enough to throw up unless you spend more than six turns in the spinning teacups. He felt close to being mad…but he wasn't. Even though big sis was bossing around little sis like she always bossed him around…and even though she didn't realize how easy she had it.

She really did have it easy.

Sure she was the one who did all the diaper changes and a lot of the other baby stuff but she at least liked it. He liked parts of what dad did, mostly bossing people around and watching the fights that dad got into, but he didn't like everything that dad did. What happened to the Awakened…that bothered him…and also how weird people could be with dad…and also the traveling all over the world all the time was a lot, too. It was all just…a lot.

Things got harder the older you got.

He wished, for a moment, that he could go back to being Mukai's age. She didn't have to worry about anything at all. She only had to do things like learn how to sit up and walk and talk and crawl and things like that. She didn't have to worry about letting anyone down or making anyone mad. She didn't have to worry about someone liking her better and replacing her. She didn't have to worry about anything at all. He and big sis did all of the worrying for her.

Things must have been a lot easier being her age.

When you were a baby then nobody expected anything of you. Nobody ever looked at you and thought that there was something wrong. Sure you could be annoying when you were a baby, all the crying and throwing up and stuff like that, but you were just a baby. That was good….just being allowed to be what you were. Not being forced to be what you were supposed to be. Babies…they were so lucky. They got to be who they were and nobody ever told you that you were wrong for what you were…and also you didn't have to worry about anyone other than yourself…and he did worry about baby Mukai…because she was so little but she wouldn't be little forever. One day she would be a kid and then someone might treat her the way that dad treated him…and even though he knew that there was nothing at all that he could do about what happened to baby Mukai or who ended up taking care of her or…or what life would be liked for her…

He was the older brother now…at least for now…and at least for pretend.

Being older was hard. He had never been the older brother before…and now he was…and it was a lot. Even when he felt like he was ok, when he could breathe for a moment, his mind still went back to dad. Where he was, when he would be back, what he would do when he came back…and he didn't know why. He didn't know why he felt the way he did and he wanted to stop feeling that way. He wanted to just be able to…just stop worrying about things. About himself and dad and the past and the future and all of it.

He wished he could be more like Mukai…even though she couldn't even crawl yet.


	144. Bath Time For Baby Mukai

It took twenty four hours for Minegishi to recover.

They did not like babies. They didn't hate them, they didn't have the mental space to hate anyone, but they just did not like babies. The noise, the mess, the constant drooling and vomiting…they did not like it. They could barely stand Shimazaki when he overdid it and somehow a baby was worse than Shimazaki one week into his 'I can handle it' benders. At least they could dump Shimazaki in bed and let him sleep it off when he got to be too much. They couldn't do that with the baby. They had to be the responsible adult after all.

Being a responsible adult also meant knowing when to step away from the situation.

They could only take so much. Eventually enough was enough and they couldn't take anymore. Mob could not see them when they got to that point. She had trouble controlling her powers under stress at the best of times. Seeing Minegishi freaking out from stress…that would have been the thing that pushed her over the edge. The situation was stressful enough for her as it was.

Fucking Suzuki.

He was either a sexist moron or a womanizing, child abandoning, moron. Minegishi would believe either. He didn't exactly have the best track record when it came to judgement. He had assigned them to pretty much babysitting Mob after all. Still this was beyond the pale. Leaving a ten year old to watch a baby...how did that even begin to look like a good idea? To abandon a baby with a ten year old. The little brother didn't exactly help matters, either, considering the fact that he could be something of a baby himself. Suzuki was most likely a moron. He thought that because his daughter was a girl she had magical childcare powers or whatever.

Either he was just a sexist asshole or he was just an asshole.

The baby looked like Suzuki. Minegishi didn't have to do a side by side comparison to know that Mukai looked just like Suzuki. Red hair was rare. Blue eyes weren't actually common. A red aura, for a natural esper, wasn't common either. Their own aura was green. Blue seemed to be the most common color in natural espers. Awakened were a whole other story entirely but Suzuki wasn't stupid enough to put a baby through the awakening process…unless he was and Minegishi just didn't know what their boss got up to when they weren't around. Still though, he wouldn't do that to his own baby…

Kid, yes, but not to a baby. That would most likely just end up in a dead baby and nobody wanted a dead baby.

That was a line that Minegishi knew that they could not cross. They didn't hurt kids, toddlers, or babies. Not since they had been a kid, toddler, or baby anyway. They didn't enjoy hurting people in general. It was just their job seven days a week. They had nothing against violence, it was the quickest way to get things done, but they didn't get any joy from causing other people harm. Not like a lot of the people they were forced to work with. Not like Suzuki himself. He pretended that he was above it all but Minegishi could tell that he was enjoying himself when he let people 'prove' themselves against him.

Yeah, Suzuki was an asshole.

Possibly a womanizing one. They had never seen him try anything with anyone and if he had then they would have known. There was no secret that Shimazaki could keep. The man just could not keep things to himself, it was impossible for him, so if Suzuki had been pursuing a woman then he would have said something. He wasn't the type to force anyone to do anything that they didn't want to. That was his big thing. People chose to join Claw so that meant that everyone had to be ok with everything that he did. So for that to have been his baby that would have meant that some woman spent more than ten seconds with Suzuki and thought 'break me off a piece of that' and then nine months later the drool machine next door was born.

Crazy.

They didn't like to delude themselves but in this case they had to. Suzuki could not be having more kids. That meant that there would be more of him and the last thing that the world needed was more of Suzuki. His two kids were enough. His son was enough. Mob was a good kid. Sho was like two bad kids mashed together to form the most exhausting kid that Minegishi had ever seen. It was amazing that Mob and Sho were even related. Side by side they didn't look a thing like each other. Side by side with the baby between them Mob looked like the kid next door that had wandered into the scene…which brought up further questions as to where Mob had come from. She didn't look a thing like Suzuki or his son…

But thinking that Suzuki had adopted her….now that was crazy.

He didn't like kids. He liked them even less than Minegishi did. Some, very few, pretty much just Mob, were ok. Suzuki seemed to barely tolerate the kids he had at the best of time…so that could not have been his not so secret love child…even though it looked exactly like him. Minegishi didn't know and they didn't know why they were speculating about this. This was none of their business. Them knowing where the baby had come from would not change the outcome.

Whatever it would be.

"Well, I have bad news, Suzuki's not back yet." They felt the shift in the energy around them a second before he was sitting there on their bed like he owned the place. Minegishi sat up. They would have kicked them out, just because they were done recovering from dealing with the literal baby next door didn't mean that they were recovered from dealing with him. They should have kicked them out. They could feel a headache coming back on. They felt like being dead to the world again. A headache could so easily turn into a migraine and a migraine was pure hell on Earth…

But they needed to know what the state of the union was.

"And the good news?" asked Minegishi. They frowned as they sat up. They reached over and brushed some hair out of his face. Blood. Not his though, he rarely got hurt, but still blood. Presumably human blood. Presumably picked up from his little stop over at HQ. Presumably something was going down at HQ that caused him to end up with someone else's blood on him.

Lovely. Just lovely.

"There is no good news…well nothing that you would consider to be good news anyway. That's all that there is to it. Suzuki is still missing and so is the healer. People are fighting so that's good news for me but bad for everyone else in the organization. Also there had been a fire at some point but, hey, who cares. It's Suzuki's building." Said Shimazaki. He was a lover of life and excitement and the lack of Suzuki sure made things exciting. Interesting. Sort of like a 'who are you in the dark' scenario except for the fact that since he could feel the sun he knew it was light out. More of like a 'who are you without Suzuki holding your dick for you while you take a piss' scenario or something.

Lovely. This was all just so lovely.

"Whose blood was that?" asked Minegishi simply. Who would have thought that everything would have gone to hell so quickly in Suzuki's absence? What was the point of having a structure to the organization if everyone turned into a bunch of toddlers the minute their minder left? They were so glad that they hadn't gone with to HQ. They did not need the headache. They had just gotten over a headache.

"Not a clue, Toshi, not a clue. I know that he tried to bite me though so he had it coming." Said Shimazaki. They could see Toshi's aura, feel them next to him, and he knew that they were better. That was how they knew it was ok to mess with them now. Well he always messed with them but now he didn't have to feel guilty about it…or however closely he could approximate the feeling that other people called guilt.

"Why'd he try to bite you? And don't give me any 'wrong place, wrong time' crap. I know you." Said Minegishi

"Well they may or may not have been fighting over a box of those cookies, the chocolate chip ones from the cafeteria, and I may or may not have claimed them for myself…and then someone may or may not have seen fit to bite me…and then I may or may not have seen fit to bite them back…." Said Shimazaki. He could 'see' it. Minegishi was rolling their eyes. Amused but not angry. They could see them lifting their arm, too, and he knew that he was about to get slapped over the head.

He decided to let it happen. Just to let Toshi feel better.

"Sugar is poison and you're a moron." Said Minegishi

"And you're a hypocrite. I've seen how fast you can go through a two liter and also if I'm such a moron then why do you love me so much?" asked Shimazaki. That earned him another head slap. He knew that their heart wasn't in it. They'd fought before, they knew how to fight him, how to corner and confuse him. They weren't doing that now even though they had a jungle of houseplants at their disposal. They could have ended him where he stood if they wanted to. They wouldn't.

"Did you at least save me one?" asked Minegishi

"No, I gave them to the kids. I figured they needed something to eat since they told the Awakened to fuck off." Said Shimazaki

"Mob did what now?" asked Minegishi. Shiamzaki had trouble with expressions but they knew that even he could see how shocked they were. First of all they were proud of Mob for finally telling someone to fuck off, good for her, but they were also ashamed of how stupid Mob had been to tell the people who waited on her hand and foot to fuck off. Not that Minegishi blamed them.

This new batch of Awakened were especially slow and especially devoted to Suzuki…a combination of traits that made them especially annoying.

"She told them to fuck off. Well she probably didn't say 'fuck off' but that was what she meant, probably. Remember how loud her aura was earlier? That was her having enough of the Awakened. Pretty short sighted if you ask me considering the fact that it's just two kids and a baby over there but, hey, Suzukis aren't as smart as they think they are." Said Shimazaki. He was curious as to the fire next door. Maybe there would even be a literal one. he'd intervene if he was asked or if something truly dangerous was going on next door, dead kids were boring kids after all, but he was curious about what lord of the flies-esque scenario would end up developing over in the Suzuki family.

Lord of the flies next door, mad max at work, all he needed now was some other work of anarchy to take place at home and his life would be perfect.

"Damnit Mob…" said Minegishi as they got up. They may have bumped Shimazaki when they got up and they may not have felt an ounce of remorse for it. He deserved it for starting fights, stealing, and also bringing bad news to them this early in the morning…or afternoon. It depended on how one looked at it.

It was all about perspective.

Everything was about perspective. Such as how it was, in their perspective, idiotic of Mob to tell off the Awakened like she had. Thought that story could have been slightly exaggerated knowing who relayed it to them. Possibly even fabricated thanks to Shimazaki's lose understanding of the truth. Somehow the man both did and did not believe in objective truths. Not personal ones but objective ones such as the facts of an event which happened. Minegishi could take their perspective on what had happened, Mob finally having enough of someone, but that didn't change the fact of what had happened.

So maybe it was all about perspectives and also was not all about perspectives….or maybe Minegishi had just done too much reading and now their mind was addled. Yes, that worked out too.

"Hey, you're finally up. Shimazaki and I were starting to get worried. You know you shouldn't do all of that stuff at once with the healer gone. You might have never woken up again." said Shibata as Minegishi sped past him. They looked fine so there was no more reason to worry. Not that Shibata had been super worried. Espers were a tough bunch and he had figured that Minegishi had been fine. It was their boyfriend who had been pacing a hole in the floor, walls, and ceiling.

"Yes, well, unlike you I know my limitations." Said Minegishi. They paused in their journey long enough to motion to the mess of yarn in Shibata's lap. They didn't know what that was supposed to be but they counted six arm or leg holes so far.

"It'll look better when it's done. It's pajamas for baby Suzuki." Said Shibata. He held up his handiwork. That was pretty good for someone who had never done any knitting before. The baby was going to be so warm in this!

"Are you sure it's not for a baby octopus?" asked Minegishi. If you didn't know how to knit then you shouldn't bother, in their opinion, since you just ended up making a mess. Besides, there was no point in getting attached to that baby. There was no way in hell that the baby was going to be Mob's on a permanent basis. They would hunt Suzuki down and drag him back by his ear if they had to. Mob was ten. She could not raise a baby. She already had her hands full raising her little brother. The bulk of raising that baby would fall onto the adults around her and Minegishi had no signed up to be a nanny.

"Hey, it's a work in progress. It'll look better when it's finished and baby Suzuki is going to love it-" said Shibata. This earned him another one of Minegishi's glares. Shimazaki was lucky that he couldn't see them…and as soon as Shibata has that thought he kicks himself for having that thought. Shimazaki wasn't lucky. He wasn't a poor, unfortunate, soul but he wasn't lucky. Their little trip to the store the other day had proved that.

"Don't call her 'baby Suzuki' unless you feel like pissing the real Suzuki off. If this was someone that he had wanted to acknowledge as his kid then he would have acknowledged her as his kid instead of making his ten year old Daughter raise her. Also that might not even be his kid, we don't know, and if he ever comes back and we've been pretending that we had any idea where this baby actually came from….well you know as well as I do how truly sadistic Suzuki had be when he puts his mind to it and I know that neither of us wants to be on the receiving end of that." Said Minegishi

"But it's so clearly his kid. Why even lie about it?" asked Shibata

"The machinations of Suzuki's mind are an enigma." Said Minegishi. With that they continued their journey out of their house and out the door. They hated it when they had to stay at these prefabs in the middle of nowhere. What, was Suzuki trying to create some simulation of domesticity so that his kids didn't grow up any weirder than they already were?

Who knew?

All they knew was that they were getting tired of living in prefabs in the middle of nowhere and tired of all of this extra work. Their job used to be easy. Hang around, kill someone, hang around some more, torture someone, and then hang around some more. Second verse same as the first. Now they had to babysit a ten year old who was trying to both babysit a nine year old and raise a baby. This was their life. It would have gone worse but it could have gone a hell of a lot better, too.

This was their life for better or for worse.

Their life could have been a hell of a lot worse. At least they weren't one of the Awakened. Those guys had so many problems. It was Minegishi theory that whatever Suzuki did to give them their powers made them at least a little unhinged if not completely mad. Some of them were pretty slow, too. Maybe that was the reason for the different uniform colors. These were the lowest ranked Awakened here with them, and also the slowest, plus they were the most culty too. Minegishi knew that they had joined the cult of Suzuki Touichirou but they had no intention of doing any of the cult shit that the others were so into.

Like throwing themselves on the ground and sobbing because Suzuki was gone and his Daughter had forsaken them…apparently.

"Suzki! Where have you gone to!" shouted an Awakened with his hands thrown to the sky. Minegishi rolled their eyes and stepped over him. As bad as this life was right now it could have been a hell of a lot worse. At least by the time all of this was over, not just Suzuki being back but Claw's whole end goal being fulfilled, they would be left alone. They would have done their part for the new world order and then they could just rest.

Mob would have been an adult by then…right? She wouldn't need Minegishi anymore….right?

They didn't know. What they did know was that they could hear that damned baby crying from the street. They felt something as close to guilt as they could feel for leaving Mob alone with the baby and her little brother…even though Mob was not their kid. Mob was not their kid and babysitting should not have been their responsibility. If Suzuki was capable of rational thought he would have seen that Minegishi should not have been left with any child. They were a bad influence. They had tried not to be but they also were not going to change who they were just because there was a kid hanging off of them all the time. They were what they were and that did not mean that Mob had to do as they have done…but she was…but that was not Minegishi's fault. Suzuki should have taken a break from planning on how he was going to take over the world to do some actual parenting.

Because Minegishi was, at best, a concerned adult. Not a parent.

"Mob, let me in." said Minegishi as they knocked on Mob's door. They doubted that they could be heard over the sound of crying and the blaring TV. They knocked louder and louder until the door just swung opened. Well that was a good way to get stuffed into a sack and sold on the child market…but then again these kids were Suzuki's. Anyone who tried anything would most likely not live for very long at all…

Which was a pity considering how that baby was carrying on.

Minegishi stepped through the makeshift genkan and surveyed the damage. There were drawings everywhere, footprints on the ceiling, and cookie crumbs scattered all over the floor. The whole place smelled of sour milk and it got worse the deeper that Minegishi went into the house. The sink as overflowing with dirty dishes, which may have contributed to the smell, but the most likely culprit were the baby vomit stains on the rug.

Well wasn't this just a wonderful little shit show?

"Sho, we can't give her a bath or she'll drown!"

"How is she going to drown if we're in the bath with her? You think I would let her drown?!"

"No, not on purpose, but the internet said that babies could drown in only an inch of water!"

"I'll drown you in an inch of water if you don't give me that baby!"

Yup, just the most wonderful little shit show possible.

Minegishi could have just walked back to their own house. They could have just left the kids to…whatever that was. Their argument. If they were screaming then that meant that they were breathing and if they were breathing then they were alive and that was the extent of the responsibility that Minegishi had for them. They were alive and their house had not burned down. It was full of vomit but it had not burnt down. There. Everything was fine, all was right with the world, and they could return to their post of waiting for Suzuki to come back from wherever he fucked off to. That would have been the smart thing to do, anyway….

But even Minegishi could be an idiot sometimes.

They decided to intervene before the kids got into a powers fight or something. Plus all of that shouting was just making the crying….that godawful crying…worse. Minegishi hated that sound. They would have drowned it out with a dentists' drill on a chalkboard if they could. Babies…they were better off raising plants than babies….though their complaints were pointless since there was a baby right there and she wasn't going anywhere.

That very messy baby was not going anywhere.

"What the hell is going on in here?" asked Minegishi as they came upon two kids having a tug of war with a naked, screaming, baby. Well not a tug of war per say but one using powers and barrier. They were worried, actually, for that baby. They weren't sure if it was healthy for a baby to be that stressed.

They hated being the only adult in the room.

"Hi Minegishi." Said Mob as she made her barrier thicker. She didn't know why she felt better that they were there, Mob had this under control, but seeing an adult there made her feel…lighter…somehow. Also they were smart and they could have talked some sense into Sho. Sho wanted them to give Mukai a bath because she kept on throwing up on herself and also it wasn't fair that he had to take baths and she didn't. Even though she was a baby and could have drowned and then if she drowned she would be dead.

"Mob. Sho." said Minegishi as they took in the scene before them. A full bathtub. Two soaked to the bone kids. One screaming baby. This was either bath time or a group drowning. Judging by the screaming and the crying they would believe either.

"What are you doing in our house?" asked Sho. They did not need help. He was enough help to big sis as it was…but maybe Minegishi could talk some sense into her. The baby needed a bath. All she did was throw up all day. She smelled gross and the wet wipes weren't helping anymore. She needed a bath and there was no way for her to drown if she was in the bath with him and big sis. It would be a tight fit, he and big sis had stopped taking baths together because they didn't both fit at the same time, and also he didn't like water all that much, but if it was for little sis then he would do it. Also it wasn't weird to take a bath with little sis because even a pretend sister was fine to take a bath with. Sisters were the only girls allowed to see you naked. Sisters and moms.

"I followed the sound of crying and the smell of vomit. What are you two doing to that baby?" asked Minegishi. The baby wasn't screaming now, just crying a little, probably because the people around her had stopped screaming at each other like a couple of children….which, to be fair, they were.

"Sho thinks that she needs a bath." Said Mob

"I don't think, I know." Said Sho

"But she could drown in only an inch of water. The internet said so. I don't want to risk her drowning. I love her." said Mob

"See? I hate it when you do that. I love her too. That's why I want her to take a bath. She's been throwing up on herself all day and she smells like baby throw up which is somehow even worse than normal throw up." Said Sho

"But she could drown!" said Mob. What was so hard to understand about that. She was too little to hold her own head up. That meant that she could drown and die. If she got hurt then there was no saving her since Fukuda was still gone on the secret mission with dad.

"She's not going to drown if we're in the tub with her." said Sho. He had no idea how someone could drown in only an inch of water. That was a lot of centimeters of water but still not enough to drown a person. The water needed to be over your head to drown you. Sho knew what he was talking about.

"How, exactly, are all three of you going to fit in that bathtub?" asked Minegishi. They were too big for that…and also too old to be sharing a bath. It might end up warping them for the rest of their lives…or not. What did Minegishi know? They were an only child.

"We could sit with our knees up to our chests. It's not weird to share a bath with baby sis even if she's our pretend sister. Sisters are the only girls who are allowed to see you naked." Said Sho

"There's not enough room for the three of you and you know it, kid." Said Minegishi. Well there was the whole 'warping' thing right there. Sisters were the only people who were not supposed to see you naked, in Minegishi's opinion. Though they had never been a fan of causal bathhouse style nudity for obvious reasons.

"She needs a bath! She smells so gross!" said Sho. Mukai started crying again. Maybe he had been a bit too loud there…but still. She needed a bath and it was unfair of big sis to tell him that he needed a bath without making little sis take a bath too.

"Don't say mean things like that to her. If you want to say mean things then say them to me but never to her." said Mob

"I'm not saying mean things, big sis, I'm just telling the truth. She smells gross from throwing up and she needs a bath." Said Sho

"She does not-" said Mob

"Everything in this house smells gross and you need to either clean up or have the Awakened do it because there is no way that baby is going to be happy here. Also, Mob, I'd hate to say it but the baby does need a bath." Said Minegishi. They were the adult and it was time to be an adult. These were kids. They had no idea what they needed or how to take care of themselves. They may not have wanted the extra work but they had to do it. Somebody had to so it had might as well be them.

"I don't want them around…" said Mob. She knew that she was being dumb. Their job was to help her out with things and do what she told them to do. Even though she didn't like to be bossy. Even though this group of Awakened was bad at following directions. Even though they were more concerned with asking about dad than doing anything to help her.

"They're weird." Said Sho. He was the Awakened Child but he was not one of the Awakened. These Awakened were weird. They stared a lot and they never shut up about how great dad was and how much they missed him and stuff like that. Stupid stuff. Still, it was dumb of big sis to tell them to go away. They were the only ones who knew how to do laundry and also they brought most of the food.

"Yeah, I can't argue with you there. Ok, Mob drain most of the water from the tub. She will definitely drown if you try to put her in there but I doubt that she'll drown in an inch of water unless you leave her unattended in the bath and I know that you're not stupid enough to do something like that." Said Minegishi. These kids needed a responsible adult and they supposed that this was the part that they were meant to play. The responsible adult. Fine. They could do this. As much as they were loath to do this they would. They had decided, years ago, that they would only be responsible for themselves….but there were two kids and a baby involved now…

So much extra work.

"But then there won't be enough water for all three of us if we let some of the water out now." Said Sho. Not that he wanted to take a bath or anything. Not that he missed taking a bath with big sis or anything. He had been the one to say that they needed to stop taking baths together in the first place. He had been the one to say that they were too big to fit in the tub together. He had been the one to complain about how she was always telling him what to do and she was always pouring water on him and stuff. He didn't care one way or another. He really didn't.

"You are way too old to be taking a bath with your sister, anyway, and there wouldn't have been enough room for the three of you in that tub no matter how much or how little water was in there." said Minegishi. Really. This kid. He was just as stubborn as his father. Minegishi could totally see how this was Suzuki's kid. The baby was stubborn too, as much as a baby could be. Mob was….Mob.

Seeing the three of them together just added fuel to the whole Mob had been adopted theory…but they were not going to mull of that now. Right now they had to get this situation under control before that baby started crying again.

"That's not weird…is it?" asked Sho. He didn't have any other kids to be friends with besides big sis. He had no idea what was weird and what wasn't. He didn't even know why he cared if he was weird or normal or whatever. He was Suzuki Sho and it didn't matter how weird he was because…well actually it did…and he didn't know why but it did….

"Yeah, kid, it's pretty damn weird." Said Minegishi

"Yeah, well, what do you know? You've got purple hair and no eyebrows and your best friend is my sister." Said Sho

"That's mean, little brother. If you have to be mean to someone be mean to me. Ok?" said Mob

"Obviously me being so weird makes me an authority on what is and is not weird, now doesn't it?" asked Minegishi

"You're not weird, Minegishi, you're normal." Said Mob

"Normal for Claw is weird for the rest of the world, you know." Said Minegishi

"That…that makes sense I guess…but that was still a mean thing for you to say, Sho, and I think that you should say sorry. You know…so Mukai doesn't grow up to be mean to people." Said Mob. She didn't want Sho to be mean to people either but she had no idea where she had went wrong with him. She could do better with Mukai though. She didn't know what she had done wrong but she knew, now, how to do things right. She loved Sho, she really did, but she did not love how mean he could be to people without a single thought to their feelings.

"Fine….I'm sorry that I told the truth…I guess." Said Sho. Big sis was right. It would have been terrible if baby sis grew up to be like him. Baby sis still had a chance of growing up to be anything other than a jerk.

"Sho, that's still not-" said Mob

"Mob, leave him be. That's the best that you're going to get out of him. Sho, as a show of apology, how about you clean up some of that baby vomit in the living room. You're not stupid…I hope. You know that it is not good for the baby at all for it to be that messy out there." said Minegishi. Kids. They did not want to deal with kids. But they had to. They could at least get one of the kids out of there so they could so…something…about the fact that the baby needed a bath. Mob was only ten years old…and she had a point. A baby could drown so easily. Hell, an adult could drown so easily.

Great. More work.

"….fine….I guess." Said Sho. He hated cleaning but he would do anything for baby sis. Even get down on his hands and knees and clean up the living room. They would have cleaned it up later, maybe, it had just happened so fast. Maybe baby sis was allergic to formula or something. She did throw up a lot and he felt like throwing up, sometimes, when he smelled citrus. He hoped that she didn't have any allergies, though, because Fukuda was not around to help her if she got sick…

Or if she broke out into itchy spots and began to suffocate like he did when he ate citrus.

"Good. Ok, Mob…that baby needs a bath. She's only going to drown if you don't watch her…but you're ten so I'll be here to watch you watching her." said Minegishi. More extra work…but work that needed to be done. They apparently had a soft spot for babies, too, and not just kids. Well babies were babies. They didn't set out to be little assholes they just didn't have a choice in the matter. They were small and helpless and need the adults around them.

And Minegishi was an adult.

They were in their late twenties now so they had no excuse to be irresponsible like this. Even though they really did not want to do this. This was what had to be done and everyone else was either a child or an idiot so they were the one who had to help. Goddamned Suzuki. They were taking a person day when this was over…if this ever ended. They were not going to make it through the year otherwise. Babies and kids were just so…tiring.

Or maybe just Suzuki's kids.

"She's all slippery." Said Mob. She was kneeling by the tub next to Minegishi. She didn't much want to take a bath, not with her friend there, so she was holding the baby with one hand and soaping her up with the other. She had tried the sink before but Mukai kept on banging her legs on the faucet. The tub was too big, though, and the baby was so slippery…

Maybe they should have just gone with Sho's plan C and sprayed her with the hose.

"So use your powers to hold her up. You're still telekinetic, aren't you?" asked Minegishi

"I am…but I'm scared to use my powers on her in case I lose control. That happens to me sometimes and I don't know what I would do if I ever hurt her on accident." Said Mob. Mukai was so small…so small and so fragile…like a porcelain doll but even worse. She was not going to hurt her. Ever. Even on accident.

"Fine. Hang on." Said Minegishi. They always had seeds in their pockets. It just made them feel better. They could make them grow easily and even change the type of plant that they would turn into. These were apple seeds and they were not about to go and grow a whole tree nor were they going to make another man eating Venus flytrap. No, instead these seeds would grow into vines. The kind that could make a sort of vine cradle for the baby. Not the sort that sucked the life out of people. It was odd, nurturing and not hurting, but not so odd that it was foreign to them.

It had just been a while. That was all.

"Here, now you maintain it while you wash her off." Said Minegishi

"Ok….but if I lose control you'll stop me. Right?" asked Mob. She saw her aura when she said that. She knew that she should have had better control, done more to set a good example for Mukai and Sho, but even the idea of losing control of her powers and hurting baby Mukai was terrifying.

"To the best of my ability, yes." said Minegishi

"Ok…thank you." Said Mob. She didn't know what the best of their ability was but she did feel better knowing that there was someone there to stop her if she lost control. Dad was gone. Dad could stop her when she lost control. She didn't know how he did it but he didn't. But now he was gone and she had no idea when he was coming back…but that was ok. He had been gone for three days now which meant that maybe he was on his way back…even though he had been gone from mom and the house for weeks and weeks and weeks when she had been little…

She didn't know what she would do all alone with Sho and baby Mukai for weeks and weeks and weeks.

"You know you're holding this together a lot better than I thought you would. I mean all things considered." Said Minegishi

"What things are there to consider?" asked Mob. She didn't know what there was to take into consideration. Dad had told her to do something and here she was doing it. Dad believed in her and she was not going to let him down. What was so complicated about that?

"Your age, for one thing, and the fact that you also have that little brother of yours to take care of." Said Minegishi. Mob meant nothing by that. Had she been Suzuki Minegishi knew that they would have been treading dangerous ground. But this was not Suzuki but his Daughter. She was actually an ok human being.

"Sho helps me out more than I thought he would. He's not always good at helping me out but he does…but I do want my dad to come back, though, because it can be kind of hard taking care of baby Mukai." Said Mob as she washed the bottoms of Mukai's feet. She didn't walk yet but she did get sweaty in her baby socks…when she kept them on. She liked this, though, so Mob would keep doing it even though she wasn't sure how someone who couldn't walk yet could possibly get.

"Why send the Awakened away, though. You know that they have to basically do whatever you tell them to. Right?" said Minegishi. This was not the time to be headstrong. Maybe this was Suzuki's blood kid. She was just as headstrong and stubborn as he was. Just as much a firm believer in micromanaging too, it seemed. Well maybe after Claw burnt to the ground because everyone was lost without him Suzuki would rethink what he had been teaching his Daughter for all of these years.

"I know but they were just so…annoying. They were too worried about where dad was and what had happened to him to even start to listen to me. They never bring back the right thing and also they never stop talking about dad. How much they miss him and how great he is and stuff like that. I couldn't take it anymore. I have a baby to look after and also a little brother. I don't want to have to look after them, too." Said Mob as she washed in between Mukai's fingers. She liked that, she smiled, and Mob smiled back even though she wasn't all that happy on the inside. She was mostly just sleepy on the inside. She had been up all night crying again and Mob had no idea why. She had tried feeding her more during the day and stuff but all that did was make her throw up more….which had not been good for anyone.

"I get it but…but don't try to do it on your own. Ok? You have other people and you need to delegate work when you can. Otherwise you just get burnt out and the people under you are helpless and stupid…and the world does not need any more helpless and stupid people. They're annoying and they just make extra work for the rest of us and I, for one, am getting tired of all of this extra work." Said Minegishi

"Oh…but you didn't have to come over. Me and Sho would have gotten done with fighting eventually and we would have cleaned up eventually, too. I know that people need other people but dad trusted me with baby Mukai and nobody else. I can't let him down." Said Mob as she washed Mukai's stomach. That made her giggle too. People needed other people, Mukai sure needed her, but one day she wouldn't. One day she would be a big enough kid to take her own baths and eat solid food and change her own diapers…or not need them at all even. That was what Mob wanted to happen. She wanted Mukai to be able to do things on her own just like she could do things on her own.

"Yeah, well, I kind of did. That's what friends are for." Said Minegishi. If Mob had been anyone else Minegishi would have just popped round to see if everyone was still alive and then gone about their merry way. But Mob was not anyone else. Mob was their friend, sort of, or at least a kid that had managed to wring some parental instincts out of them so, really, they had no choice but to involve themselves in all of this. Even if they'd never had any intention of having kids or babies or whatever. Even if the sound of a baby crying was enough to drive them into the mother of all migraines. Even if they would rather have been lying in bed with a good book than kneeling on the floor helping wash a baby that wasn't even theirs…

Whatever. It could have been worse. Besides, it wasn't like they couldn't recover from this.


	145. The Littlest Secret Keeper

Baby Mukai was crying again.

Mob knew what to do. She had been doing this for a while now, or at least it felt like a while. In reality it hadn't even been a week yet. That wasn't a while. Well it could be. Waiting a week for a new episode of a show you liked to come out was a lot but when you weren't waiting for anything the time just sort of flew by. Well it had not been flying by now so maybe, yes, it had been a long time then.

Long enough to get used to a crying baby.

"It's ok Mukai. I'm here." Said Mob as she knelt down by the drawer baby Mukai slept in. She needed a crib, maybe, but a crib would not fit in her and Sho's room. They needed to share because there wasn't another bedroom besides dad's and also they had been sharing for their entire lives. Mob didn't know what she would do when Mukai outgrew the drawer though…

She didn't want to worry about that.

Now she had to worry about the baby crying in front of her. Mob didn't dare to turn the light on. She would only cry harder because her eyes would hurt. Also Sho would get upset. She was hungry, most likely, because she was always hungry. The internet said that babies needed a schedule but then the internet had also said that babies could self-regulate and set their own schedules…and Mob had no idea which part of the internet she was supposed to believe.

Mukai could tell her when she needed something.

"Let me see…I just changed you and your diaper doesn't feel full…and I opened the window for the fresh air because I know you like that…do you want your pacifier back?" asked Mob. If she tried to feed Mukai when she wasn't hungry she would just end up throwing up. She also didn't want to starve her pretend baby sister either. The pacifier test was a good one. The pacifier was Mukai's favorite thing in the whole world. If she sucked on it then that meant that she just wanted to suck on something. If she spat it out then that meant that she was well and truly hungry.

She spat it out.

Mob caught it with her powers before it could hit the floor. She wasn't as afraid of accidentally hurting Mukai. She just wasn't going to use her powers on the baby, that was all, but she was going to save Mukai's pacifier from the floor. If it touched the floor then it would have to be sterilized and Mob did not feel like boiling a pacifier in the middle of the night to kill off all of the germs. She was tired. She wanted to sleep. That didn't matter, though, because baby Mukai needed her.

She was needed.

"Ok, so you're hungry. I'll make you a bottle then. I don't think you like the formula in the blue can so I'll make the one in the yellow can. Maybe you'll like that one better." Said Mob. She really didn't want to make a new bottle in the middle of the night but she also really didn't want to have to clean up baby throw up either. Mukai was running out of clean clothes. They were all running out of clean clothes, actually, and Mob knew that she needed to let the Awakened come back into the house but she didn't want to. She didn't want to talk about dad but that was all that they wanted to talk about. They wanted to know where dad was and when he was coming back. She didn't have an answer for them. Dad didn't tell her anything at all. Nobody told her anything at all. Dad had just given her a baby and then left and now she had to take care of the baby…but that was fine. She was fine. She was in charge and she was handling this.

Everything was fine.

She could hear Sho turning over. It was too late for him to be awake. He was little and he needed his sleep. She wanted his help, she liked it when he helped, and she knew that he would try and help her again like he had been all day…but he could not help. He needed to sleep so he would have energy for tomorrow. Also dad had left her in charge of him and that meant that she had to only think about what was best for him, not what she wanted.

It was hard, sometimes, to be the oldest. But that didn't matter. She had this.

"Do you want me to feed her?" asked Sho as he turned over onto his side. Mob shook her head.

"No, go back to sleep. You can feed her in the morning. Right now you need to sleep." Said Mob. She wanted him to take Mukai from her drawer and to make her a bottle. Mob wanted to go to bed. She wanted to climb back into her bed and close her eyes and go to sleep…but that was not something that she could do. Not when the baby needed her.

"Come on, you look like you're going to pass out. Let me help." Said Sho. He didn't seem any better, Mob thought, since she knew for a fact that he had yawed for real when he said that. He had not been fake yawning and that meant that he was tired and she was not going to let him stay up all night with a hungry baby. Also she did not want to be up day with a grouchy, sleepy, little brother who she knew for a fact would refuse to take a nap no matter how tired he got.

"In the morning. Now go back to sleep. Please." Said Mob. The please was there to make sure that he didn't call her bossy. That was his favorite thing to do, call her bossy, even though she had not asked to be the boss of him or of anyone. She wanted dad to come back. She wanted him to come and be the boss of their house again because she just could not do it.

She wanted dad back.

Dad would have helped…well he would have made someone else help, which would have been helpful, and he would have known what to do, too. Even though taking care of a baby was the mom's job dad must have known something. Minegishi wasn't a mom or a dad but they had been right about burping Mukai and not filling the tub up all the way when they gave her a bath and a bunch of other stuff. Dad was very smart, he knew a lot of things about a lot of things, and he might have known even more about taking care of Mukai.

Like how to get her to stop throwing up.

The internet said that a baby her age should not have been throwing up all the time. The internet said all kinds of things, some of them scary, and Mob had no idea what to do. They had a bunch of different kinds of formula so she was trying to find one that Mukai could eat and not get sick from. She was probably used to the kind that came with her from Korea…but they were not in or anywhere near Korea so they could not get that kind.

Mob hoped that she could keep this kind down.

She pushed the drawer in front of her as she walked to the kitchen. Mukai was still crying but she cried less this way. She liked drawer rides. She also liked being carried but Mob was too sleepy to carry her. She was walking funny, that was how tired she was, and she knew that she could have dropped Mukai if she'd picked her up. She didn't want to drop Mukai. She didn't want to do anything to hurt her, only to help her.

She just wanted her baby sister to be happy.

She knew that Mukai wasn't her real sister…at least she thought that Mukai wasn't her real sister. Minegishi had taught her what half siblings were and also she had heard Shimazaki tell Shibata that Mukai was dad's 'love child' which, the internet said, was a child that came from two parents who were not married. Mob hadn't even known that you could make a baby without being married. Well she knew that people could do that thing with each other but she didn't know that people who were not married could have babies.

But they could.

But that was not who Mukai was. For Mukai to have come from dad then he would have had to cheat on mom. Mob knew what cheating was, it was when your husband or wife held hands or kissed or even did…the gross thing…with someone who they were not married to. That was not something that dad would do. Even if he didn't love mom anymore he wouldn't have just done that gross thing with some other woman. He still had his wedding ring, first of all, which meant that if he had done that with another then he would have been a cheater. Dad was not a cheater. Dad was a good person. Dad wanted to help people. That was why he had made Claw, to help people, and also everything he did he did for their kind. Espers. His whole life's work was for other people so of course he would not have done something to terrible to mom even if he thought that she was a traitor.

Also dad did not need another Daughter.

She was the Daughter. She was the Daughter and Sho was the Son and that meant that dad had one of each and he had no reason to want to have another kid…unless he was planning on replacing them. But he wasn't. She was a good Daughter. She did what she was told…most of the time. She had never betrayed him…well there was the time with Hanazawa but he had been kidnapped on accident so it was ok. Sho…Sho was a good Son even if he didn't listen to dad and caused trouble and wet the bed and said mean things and…and dad still wouldn't replace him. Dad wasn't going to replace either of them…

Maybe he had meant to get a boy and he had ended up with a girl.

Mob makes herself stop thinking about this. She turns on the itty bitty light above the stove with her powers and she mixes up a bottle that way, too. By hand she picks Mukai up and sits her on her lap. She's warm…sick? Or just warm. She stops crying when she's picked up. That was good. Mob kissed her head and rocked her back and forth.

"Let it go….let it go…don't hold it back anymore….let it go….let it go…turn away and slam the door…." Sang Mob as she rocked Mukai. She was making a bottle with her powers too but it wasn't hard. She was good at multitasking, dad had said, but Sho was better at control. Mob didn't mind. She liked it when dad said nice things to Sho. She hoped that he said nice things to Mukai…if she was allowed to stay with them. Mob loved her baby sister, her pretend baby sister, but she also wanted her to have a mom and dad who loved her very much. Dad…dad was very bad at showing love in the normal way and she knew that Mukai wouldn't like the way dad showed his love. Mostly through not being very mean, only a little mean, and Mukai…she needed someone who was nice to her. She deserved someone who was nice to her all the time.

And she deserved someone who could take good care of her.

"Let it go…let it go…do you even like this song? You're fussing again…I wished that you liked Frozen. It's a very good movie. Elsa is kind of like an esper who can't control her powers and then she's scared of herself because nobody can teach her how to use her powers but then it's a happy ending because she learns to control her powers and everyone loves her." said Mob. She hoped that Mukai liked Frozen when she got older. Elsa wasn't an esper, or maybe she was some people thought that powers came from magic, but she had trouble with control. If Mukai was going to be a prodigy like her then she would have trouble with her powers too.

But that was ok because Mob would be there to teach her like dad had taught her…but without being mean.

"Here, your bottle is done. I made it with a different kind so I hope you like it. Don't worry. The internet said that next month, well when you turn four months old, I can start feeding you baby food. You might like that better." Said Mob. Mukai was trying to suck on the front of her shirt again. Mob didn't know why, she didn't have any breasts to breastfeed with, and also the note said that Mukai liked formula. Mob put the bottle to her lips and it took her a moment to start sucking.

So far so good. She hadn't turned her head away.

"Maybe you don't like the water here. I don't know what distilled water is but tap water is healthy for you. Dad said so. The water here is good to drink, dad wouldn't have brought up somewhere with unsafe water, but you should only drink from the tap and never from a hose or a lake or a pond of a puddle. You could get sick." Said Mob. She whispered so that Sho didn't wake up. Mukai was looking up into her eyes. She was listening, maybe, or maybe not. It was hard to tell with babies sometimes.

"One time Sho tried to drink ocean water, also don't ever drink ocean water because of the salt, and then Fukuda had to help him because he got sick. We were at the beach then. We don't go anymore because Sho has Awakening scars…but you'll never need to worry about those. I think. You have an aura and you don't have any powers but…but you still have an aura and that might mean that you're a prodigy and if you're a prodigy like me then you won't need to go through that." Said Mob. She didn't know what she would do if dad did the same thing to Mukai as he did to Sho…she would lose control….like before. Before? Yes…she could remember being…scared…and then…

She doesn't want to remember what had happened to Sho.

"You might like the beach when you get older. It's like a bath with strangers and also there's sand and waves. You might like sand, me and Sho do, but dad doesn't. He says that it gets everywhere and it's annoying. He doesn't like anything though, it seems like sometimes, so you should take mine and Sho's word for what is and is not fun…and also never eat the sand. It's not a food. Never eat the sand or drink the water." Said Mob. Mukai was still looking up at her. She reached down and pressed her finger against Mukai's palm. She grabbed her finger tight. She wanted to know that Mob was there, it seemed, and Mob was of course there. She would never just leave her little sister. She would never just walk out the door. She would never made a baby or buy a baby or find a baby and then just leave Mukai all alone with it while she went off on some mission or-

She didn't want to think about that either.

"The water that comes from the taps is not water from the ocean. There's a big difference between fesh water and ocean water. Ocean water has salt and it's dangerous to drink because it dries out your insides. You're supposed to watch how much salt you eat. Sugar too. Minegishi says that sugar is poison but I've seen them drink soda. That was when we were smoking cigarettes though...but don't tell anyone that Minegishi let me smoke cigarettes with them and Shimazaki. It's a secret." Said Mob. Mukai was still looking at her. She was still holding on to her finger. Mukai trusted her and she trusted Mukai.

Siblings were supposed to trust each other.

"I have a lot of secrets. I know that I shouldn't keep secrets but I have a lot of them. Like…ok. You're too little to know what love is but when you get older you'll know what I'm talking about. You'll meet a boy and he'll make your heart beat funny and you'll be nervous and you'll forget words but then you'll suddenly remember all the words…and also you'll think about him a lot, too, more than you ever thought that you could think about another person." Said Mob. Mukai was still looking at her. She had no idea if Mukai even knew this much Japanese…but she decided to keep on talking. Mukai was a good listener and she trusted her…

And then maybe when Mukai got older she would share her secrets with Mob, too.

"The first time I ever fell in love I was seven and in the first grade. He got me chocolates for White Day and then he kissed me…just on the cheek but it was the most amazing feeling that I had ever felt in my life…enough that I almost floated away…but then my mom saw and she punished me. For losing control, not kissing, but I never told her about the kissing part. You can tell me, though, when you get older if you kiss a boy. I won't be mad at you." Said Mob. She couldn't imagine Mukai ever being old enough to kiss someone…but then again she had never imagined that she would ever kiss anyone either. Mukai would probably be prettier than her and less clueless than her. She would find lots of boys who she liked and who liked her back.

Mob wanted that for her.

"I won't be mad, too, if you kiss a boy who isn't an esper. I don't mind if you fall in love with a boy who isn't an esper. The first boy I ever fell in love with, Taro from my old class, wasn't an esper…but don't tell anyone because dad says that I'm only allowed to be in love with another esper. It's hard, though, because there aren't a lot of espers my age. The other boy I feel in love with is an esper, though, but I'll never see him again…but I think that I might be in love with him…and I think that he might love me…at least I hope that he does. He promised that he would never forget me too….and then he…um…" said Mob. Mukai's eyes were getting heavy. That was a good sign. She liked this formula, then, and she also liked being talked to.

And Mob liked talking to her. She was a good secret keeper. She couldn't talk yet.

"Ok….you've seen kissing on TV. Real kissing. That's what we did. He just…he leaned in and kissed me on the mouth…and it's the best thing in the world. When you get to be my age you'll probably kiss a boy and it'll be the best thing in the world…I still think about it sometimes…and him. I'll never see him again but…but that's ok. I saw in a book that Minegishi lent me that it's better to have loved and then lost than never to have loved at all…but the boy you kiss will probably stay with you. Remember, first kisses are important…and you don't have to keep yours a secret from me…but if you want me to keep yours a secret from other people then I will. You're the second person that I've told about this. You can tell whoever you want about your first kiss, though, but when you do have it make sure that the boy wants to kiss you. Never play catch and kiss. Boys hate that game, Sho said so." Said Mob. She was whispering extra quietly so that Sho didn't hear. He could not know about this. This was her secret and she would decide who she would share it with.

Even if the person that she was sharing it with was half asleep.

"You're very little, though, so you don't have to worry about this stuff yet. That's stuff to worry about when you get older. Like when you're closer to my age, not my age exactly but closer. There are a lot of things that you can worry about when you get older, you know. Not to scare you or anything, I would never do anything to scare you baby Mukai, but I will warn you so that things don't take you by surprise as you get older. Like your powers, whatever they will be. It's still very early and I don't know what you'll be able to do. You might have some trouble controlling your powers, whatever they end up being, when you get older and it can be very hard and very scary but you just have to remember that power is nothing without control. That's what dad says. It means the same thing as conceal, don't feel, which means that your powers are controlled by your feelings so you have to control your feelings to control you powers. My dad says so…and also he says that an ant has no quarrel with a boot…and that means don't use your powers against other people." Said Mob. Mukai was sucking more slowly now. Mob pulled on the bottle a little bit to get her sucking more. The bottle was almost empty, too. Mukai needed to be kept awake enough to burp or her stomach would hurt tomorrow. She couldn't control that so Mob had to help her.

Mob would always be there to help Mukai.

"You might have a lot of trouble controlling your powers if you're a prodigy like me. That's normal. Dad was a prodigy too and he said that when he was little he had trouble controlling his powers. The thing to remember is that you are in control of yourself and you have to try really hard…but sometimes you need a little help…and I have no problem with that. Just…ok. This is one of my biggest secrets. You cannot tell another human being for as long as you shall live. Cross your heart, hope to die, stick a needle in your eye. I know that sounds scary and I wouldn't say something so scary unless I meant it. This is a big secret and you cannot tell. That goes for now, until you learn to talk, and for the rest of your life. Ok?" asked Mob. Mukai opened her eyes and then closed them again. Ok. That was good enough for her.

Mob leaned in closer but not so close as to disrupt Mukai finishing up the last of her bottle.

"Ok. So sometimes I drink things that I'm not supposed to. Only adults are allowed to drink, not kids, but Minegishi shares with me sometimes so it's ok. Also sometimes I borrow, well I did borrow, from them. That was until I accidentally mixed it with a sleeping pill and I almost never woke up again. That's dangerous, Minegishi said, so never do that. I have a bottle, well it was to get you to stop crying but I know that you're too young to drink, and I drink sometimes but not that often. Also sometimes I borrow from dad's office…but you can't tell anyone. Remember, you swore, you really did. You can't have any, though, not until you're eight. That's when I started and I'm ok. Nothing bad happened to me…aside from when I did something stupid…so I won't stop you if you need to. It's…it's very hard to control your powers sometimes." Said Mob. The bottle was empty now. Mukai was sucking on air and Mob took it away fast. She would upset her stomach if she sucked down air like that.

She had to burp now.

Mob put her over her shoulder and started to bounced her up and down and pat her back. She hoped that Mukai didn't throw up again. She needed to keep food down or she would never grow up. Mob wanted Mukai to keep her secrets but she didn't want her secrets to die with her…and she would die if she couldn't keep food down…

She burped but didn't throw up.

Mob rocked her, slowly, to sleep. She made sure to watch her breathing and her eyes. When they started to move back and forth under her eyelids after her breathing got slow and deep then it would be time to put her back to bed in her drawer. Mob knew that putting her back was the most delicate part of it, putting her back to sleep, because it was so hard to get her to stay asleep and she could get back to crying at any minute.

Mob put her back in her drawer. She didn't cry.

"Goodnight Mukai. I'm going to bring you back to the bedroom, ok? I love you so much. Thank you for keeping my secrets. Don't worry, when you get some then I'll keep yours too. That's what sisters are for, right? Even pretend ones." Said Mob before she slowly pushed Mukai's drawer bed back to the bedroom.

She didn't cry. Not even once.


	146. The Littlest Crayon Eater

Baby Mukai couldn't draw at all.

But that was ok. She had Sho to teach her and he was very good at drawing. Even dad said so and dad never said nice things to anyone ever. Well anyone who wasn't big sis. Sho wondered if he would be nice to little sis…if he ever came back. And if she was allowed to stay. Dad hated pets and a baby was like a million pets in one. All of the fun but also all of the mess and the noise. He didn't want little sis to go…but he did want her to find a happier family than his. She deserved a dad who was nice all the time and a mom who was there and didn't run away from home. He loved her but he wanted her to be happy…

So that was why he had to teach her to draw. While she was still there.

"Here, you've got to hold the pencil the right way." said Sho. She couldn't hold a pencil, not really, but she could learn. She was very smart, he could tell. She knew her own name already and she knew who he and big sis were and she also knew that she should not have let Shibata hold her. Every time he picked her up she cried more than normal. She was smart like that.

She was a very smart baby.

"No, more like this." said Sho. He took her hand and tried to make her hold the pencil the right way. She just threw the pencil across the room. He took a deep breath. She was not going to make him mad. She was a baby and she could not make him mad. Even though just that morning she threw up all over his face when he had been carrying her. He hadn't yelled at her or anything when she did that. He just put her down on the floor right then and there and went to the bathroom.

He kicked a hole in the laundry hamper but that was ok.

He was proud of himself, then, for not yelling at her or anything and he was proud of himself, now, for not getting mad at her. She was a baby and he was not supposed to get upset with her. She was just a baby and he was not a baby so he was not going to act like a baby. He hadn't been that upset lately, too, he had hardly yelled at big sis since they had gotten baby Mukai. He hadn't hit or pushed her once, too, which was good. Well he thought that it was good of him. He knew full well that he was not supposed to be hitting his sister.

"Ok, fine, you don't like pencils. You want a crayon instead?" asked Sho. He used his powers to bring over his box of sixty four colors. He was careful to keep his aura away from big sis'. She was asleep on the couch and he didn't want to wake her. She had been really sleepy lately. Well they had all been sleepy lately, Mukai may or may not have been part vampire, but big sis had been especially sleepy. She was the one who got up with Mukai after all.

He would have gotten up with her if big sis would have just let him.

She treated him like he was the baby and not Mukai. He didn't always want to get up with her, he needed to sleep and stuff, but he did want to get up with him sometimes. To him it would have made sense for big sis to switch off with him sometimes. But she didn't. She always told him that he had to go back to bed because he was little. He wasn't that much younger than her. He was nine and she was ten. Mukai was the baby, not him, and he could help. He could totally help! He could be a good helper and a good big brother…well sort of big brother. He didn't know if Mukai would be staying long enough to be his sister, he couldn't see dad keeping another kid since he didn't really seem to like the ones that he had to begin with and also he hated loud noises and messes, but while she was there he would be the best big brother that a baby sister ever had.

"Do you want pink? Because you're a girl? Or do you want red because it matches your hair? Or maybe blue because it's awesome." Said Sho. Mukai reached over and took a handful of crayons out of the box. It wasn't a lot of them, because she had baby sized hands, but it was enough to mess up his color order. She also knocked some out of the box, too, but he was not going to get mad at her even though he'd arranged that box so that it was just right…

His aura flared a little bit.

He held his aura in close. Big sis turned over onto her side. The couch groaned when she did that but she didn't wake up even a little bit. That was good. If she woke up then she would probably tell him that it was dangerous to give her crayons because she could poke her eyes out or swallow them or something…and actually her swallowing them was a real worry. The only crayon the had managed to stay in her little baby hand was the white one and now she was trying to put it in her mouth. She wasn't trying to eat it, that was just what babies did. Sometimes big kids did that too, like how Sho bit his nails, and sometimes adults did it too. Like how Shimazaki said that he sometimes chewed on candles because he liked the way that they felt.

Not that he was going to be letting little sis chew on any candles.

"Don't do that, crayons aren't for putting in your mouth. You're going to either choke or ruin my crayon or both. Even though it's a white crayon I still care about it. How else am I supposed to draw clouds and ghosts and skeletons?" asked Sho. He tried to take the crayon from her hand but she was crazy strong for someone so small. She could even hold onto his back like a monkey while he walked around…but he had to do that in secret because big sis saw once and freaked out because Fukuda was gone.

Fukuda was still gone with dad.

He missed Fukuda. He missed Fukuda a whole lot more than he missed dad. He was a whole lot nicer than dad, for one thing, and he was used to Fukuda being around too. He had always been around more than dad had been back when they lived in the Castle. It even felt like, sometimes, he was around the house more than dad too. Fukuda would always come when they called him and sometimes he would hang out with them in the house, too. He didn't do that anymore. Dad gave him a lot of work. Dad said, once, that Fukuda was the first member of Claw ever and dad trusted him with a lot of sensitive Claw stuff. Sho would be able to trust him too, dad said, if he was still around when Sho inherited the world.

Which he would be, of course, because even though he was dad's age he would still live a lot longer.

People weren't trying to kill him, for one thing, and also he healed really fast. Like the time when Sho had been trying to throw knives, it was ok because Shimazaki said that even if Sho made contact he wouldn't be able to get through his barrier, and then he teleported away too fast for Sho to stop himself from throwing the knife and then Fukuda had been there…but he was fine. His cut closed up super fast and there wasn't even a scar. He didn't even get mad. He just took the knives away and said that throwing knives was a very bad idea.

And he didn't even tell dad about what happened.

Sho trusted Fukuda and he knew that when he grew up and ruled the world Fukuda would be right there with him and then they could hang out all the time just like when he had been little. Fukuda would even be friends with his kids, too, because he had to have them anyway so why not let them have good memories like he'd had. Fukuda wouldn't have any kids, though, he said that it was very hard to meet women and work kept him very busy.

Which Sho did not understand. There were girls everywhere and they were always trying to hold your hand or kiss you or just staring at you and sighing like that was supposed to make you like them or something.

"Mukai…come on. You're going to end up eating my crayon. I don't eat your things. I don't go into the kitchen and drink your formula or take your pacifier and put it in my mouth so please, please, please, spit my crayon out." Said Sho. He was being nice. That was the best thing to be with someone so small. Nice. If this were big sis and not little sis he could have just taken it back. You weren't supposed to be mean to your little sister…or to anyone…but at least when he was mean to big sis he could say sorry. That was ok, it was always ok, if you said sorry. Well he could say sorry over and over again to Mukai but it wouldn't matter. She was too little to understand.

She was so little.

And he did not want to be mean to little sis. He was going to be a good big brother. He was going to be a better older sister, or rather brother, sibling. A better sibling to Mukai than big sis had ever been to him. He would only boss her around when he had to, not just whenever he felt like it, and he would only make her do things that were strictly necessary.

Big sis was always making him do things that didn't have to be done.

Like putting on day clothes. They hadn't gone anywhere in almost a week. So what if he wanted to wear his pajamas all day? Who was going to tell on him? Dad was gone. Dad was off on some mission and when dad was gone it was time to have fun. Like how when the cat was away the mice could play. Not that they had mice and they weren't going to get them, either. Big sis wouldn't let him eat outside of the kitchen because they could get mice that way. It would have been a good thing, anyway, because if they got mice then they could get a cat.

They would get a cat to catch the mice and they'd get a dog to catch the cat and they'd get a wolf to catch the dog.

Or maybe they could just catch the mice themselves and make them into pets. Dad was gone and he might have been gone, even, for a very long time. When they had been little kids dad had gone away for weeks on end. Maybe things were going back to the way they were before. Maybe dad would be gone for weeks and weeks and then he and big sis and little sis could be free to do whatever they wanted to do. They didn't have a mom, anymore, either since she had run away a long time ago.

And big sis was not mom even if she was always pretending to be.

"Let go already." Said Sho. She was so strong and he was stronger, of course he was he was nine years old and an esper, but he was not going to risk hurting her. Even if Fukuda had been around he would have still been very careful not to hurt baby sis. She was just a baby after all. Even if she was ruining his crayon. He wondered what he was supposed to do. He could pull harder but then he would hurt her and also she would start crying and then big sis would wake up and she would be mad at him and then he would be mad at her and then he would yell at her and maybe even hit her and then he would feel bad…and he just did not want that.

But he didn't know what to do.

He and big sis had never had these problems. They had pretty much been babies at the same time and even though she was a whole year older she probably didn't remember much. They hadn't fought over things that often, either, because they'd always had two of everything that needed sharing. There had even been two TVs, one in the living room and one in their room, but they had gotten into plenty of fights over the remote if they wanted to be in the same room at the same time…

Sho couldn't remember how those fights ended.

Mom always came in and played something with them or made them help her with something. Eventually they just forgot about watching TV all together. Huh. Mom had been playing a trick on them, then, to keep them from fighting. Well sometimes she made them watch in separate rooms but that didn't help since back then they had gotten very scared if they were separated. The Castle had been so big….but that didn't matter. Home, their old home, did not matter. What did matter is that he had an idea now.

It had been mom's idea originally so he knew that it was a good one.

"Hey, you want me to draw something for you?" asked Sho. He let go of the crayon and she put it right back in her mouth. Well that hadn't been distracting enough…but that was ok. He was a very distracting person. Dad said that whenever he was around everything took twice as long as it should have.

"Here, see this? I'll use yellow paper. This paper actually shows colors a lot better than plain white paper. Light colors. White too but also yellows and stuff like that. Even sketch paper isn't totally white. Not like computer paper. Here, feel this. See? That's how you can tell that it's good paper." Said Sho. He took her other hand and rubbed it up and down the paper. She smiled but still held onto his white crayon.

He loved her little smiles so much.

"Here, how about I draw us? You and me and big sis. But not dad. He's not a part of us. Well he is but he's not here. I don't think he even remembers you. Nope, this is just going to be you and me and big sis." Said Sho. He picked up a pencil, first, for the line work. You always started with pencil. Well you didn't have to if you were using crayons but he liked to always start with pencil.

"See? Since we're using crayons we have to account for how thick the lines will be. It's not as bad as it would be if we were using markers or something but we still have to take into account how thick crayons are. See the difference?" asked Sho as he held up a pencil and a crayon so she could make a comparison. He hoped that she was getting something out of this. They could draw together when she got older and learned that crayons were for drawing with and not eating.

Little crayon eater.

"I'm going to start with big sis since she's the tallest. It's important for balance for things to look nice and stuff. See? That's me on the right, because we read right to left…well I do because I'm Japanese you're Korean so you read backward…if you could read, that is. Start with the tallest, at least I always like to start with the tallest. You're in the middle, there, for balance, because you're so tiny." Said Sho. This wasn't his best work, he had gone too fast, but she seemed to like it. She had taken the crayon out of her mouth and now she was staring at him.

"First I'll start with her hair. See? Black. This color is called black. Big sis has black hair because she got all of the Japanese. We're both half Japanese because mom and dad are both half Japanese but she just ended up with all of the Japanese and I got all of the half. But that's ok, I guess, because there's nothing I can do about it now. You're half Korean, I think, because of your hair and eyes. You look a lot like me, actually, you know that?" said Sho as he colored in big sis. Black for her hair, brown for her eyes, and blue for her favorite dress. He didn't do all the little details on it, the sparkly bits and stuff, because he just didn't feel like it. He didn't much like drawing big sis actually…well not drawing him and big sis together…

She got all the luck.

He had felt like that for his whole life. She was the lucky one. She got all the powers and she looked like everyone else, too, while he originally barely had any powers and also people were always staring at him and trying to touch his hair and stuff. He was glad that Mukai looked like him. He was glad that there was another person in the world who looked like him but was not dad.

"People are going to try and make fun of you for how you look. Either that or they'll treat you like you're in a petting zoo or something. They'll try and speak English to you, too, and it'll never stop being annoying. At least that's how people were when we lived in Japan. I don't know if you're going to end up staying with us or if people from your own country will adopt you so I can't say. I feel like they'll be weird about how you look in Korea, too, since they were weird about how I looked." Said Sho. If people made fun of baby Mukai then he would have to beat them up. There was no other way. That was just what brothers, both little and big, had to do for their sisters.

He really hoped that people were nice to her, though.

"I won't let people be mean to you if you end up staying with us. You're not weird looking because you look like me and if you're weird looking then that means that I'm weird looking too and I am not weird looking. Neither are you. See? I'm coloring you in now and you are not weird looking. See how your hair is the same as mine? See how this crayon matches? If they make a crayon color for your hair and my hair then our hair is not weird." Said Sho. Mukai was still watching him. She had dropped his white crayon. He picked it up and took it away with his powers before she realized that she had dropped it. She was watching him now and he liked it. He was teaching her something important. It felt good, teaching her something important, and he hoped that she remembered it for when she grew up.

He hoped that she remembered him when she grew up…if she wasn't allowed to stay.

"Our eyes aren't weird, either. See this blue? This matches our eyes. If our eyes were weird then they wouldn't have made a crayon to match." Said Sho. He drew in their eyes perfectly round. He hoped that he had gotten her eyes right. They changed. Sometimes they were bright like when she was happy and sometimes they got all droopy when she got sleepy and sometimes they got sharp, too, when she was mad. Baby mad. Like when she spat her pacifier out and it landed on her chest just out of reach. She was so cute when she was baby mad and her baby eyes got all sharp and her baby aura flared and stuff like that.

She was the cutest baby in the world…and he could appreciate cute things even though he was a boy.

Shibata liked cute things and he was the strongest, tallest, man that Sho had ever met. He was always saying how cute Mukai was and how he wanted to hug her and squeeze her and never let her go. Sho and big sis didn't let him, though, because he could have held her too hard and then they wouldn't have a baby sis anymore. He could play peekaboo with her, though, even though she always got bored after about half an hour. He had never seen a baby get bored of it before an adult but then again he had never spent that much time with babies.

Mukai wasn't getting bored.

"Oh, now you want to help me." Said Sho as she reached over to the page. He was coloring himself in, now, and that was always the fastest part. He just filled in his hair and eyes and clothes and he was done….wait. He had forgotten to fill in the skin color. Peach for him and Mukai but white for big sis. She had very pale skin, like dad's, while he was peach colored like mom. She didn't take damage from sunlight, dad had said, and that was why she was so much paler than him and mom. Mom had looked like him, well except for the stuff that he got from dad like his hair and eyes, but now she was gone. She was gone and nobody looked like him.

Mukai slapped the paper.

Well she looked like him. She looked so much like him, much more than anyone else in the world, and he was so happy for that. For his whole life he had been hoping that he found someone who looked like him who wasn't dad and now there she was. He was so happy that she was there…and not just because she looked like him. She always liked drawing and liked movies with fighting and also she smiled at him all the time…and he smiled back.

Like now.

"See little sis? And now we're done. That's what I was trying to teach you how to do but I guess that you're too little. That's ok, though, we can try again later. I mostly just didn't want you to eat my crayon like some kind of crayon eater. Maybe I should get you some of those super thick crayons like we had in my school…when I went to school…but those kind of suck because the lines are too thick." Said Sho. Mukai was still listening to him but her eyes were getting all droopy. She was tried. She wouldn't have been so tired if she hadn't spent half the night crying, he had told her a thousand times, but she never listened to him about that.

And he had stopped listening to him now.

She yawned, stretched her arms and legs, and then her eyes closed. She was napping again. He wondered when she would be big enough that she slept at night like everyone else. He wondered when she would get old enough that she would be able to draw with him. He wondered what they would be able to draw together, what she would like to draw, when she got old enough…if she stayed. He hoped that she stayed with them for as long as she could…

Long enough to learn how to draw.


	147. Playing Dolls with a Baby and a Friend

Baby Mukai was not a doll.

She was small like a doll, and it was fun to dress her up like a doll, but she was not a doll. Dolls didn't cry, first of all, when Mob tried to dress them up. Dolls also didn't kick and scream, too, when they didn't want to play anymore. Dolls didn't mind it when she dressed them up and played with them and made them into who she wanted them to be.

Mukai was a person, not a doll.

Mob did not get to decide who Mukai was. She didn't get to cast her into different roles depending on the game. She was a person. She was a person who was fun to dress up but she was still a person. So Mob played with her, but not in the way that she played with her dolls, more in the way that she played with Sho…in those rare times when Sho played dolls with her.

More in the way that she played with Minegishi, actually.

"Your sentence is death by baby. Anything to say for yourself Anna or Arendelle?" Said Minegishi. So this was their life. How many times had they had that thought in the last two years? Too many times. Whatever. Their life could have been worse. They could have been one of the Awakened if they hadn't been as strong of an esper as they were. Yeah, that was not a life that they would have wished on anyone.

They wondered if those morons were still praying for Suzuki's return.

"I didn't do it. I was framed. Please don't feed me to the giant baby!" said Mob doing a good impression of Anna's voice. Well she thought that Ana would have sounded like that if her sister was about to feed her to a giant baby. Mob didn't know why so many of the games that they played involved the dolls killing each other, or executing each other, or any of that other mean sort of stuff but she was just glad to have someone to play with. Someone who could talk and didn't try to eat her dolls.

Like Mukai did.

"You continue to lie? Really, sister? Even now you show no remorse?" asked Minegishi not really trying to do the doll's voice. That was where they drew the line when it came to the game of totalitarian princesses.

"Please Elsa! I know that as the queen you have to protect the country in this time of war but we're sisters!" said Mob

"Sisters? Ha! You betrayed me, you betrayed your country, and you've betrayed Disney studios to which we owe our very existence! Your defection to Pixar could have destroyed our entire world!" said Minegishi

"Please! I did it for you! You don't know what you've become! What happened to the big sister I used to know?" said Mob

"That person is dead, Anna, like you soon will be." Said Minegishi

"Elsa, please. We're sisters! Doesn't that mean anything? I forgave you for freezing my heart with your ice magic. Can't you just forgive me for selling our war secrets to Pixar? I was just trying to end the war before anyone else could get hurt. We've already lost Mulan, Jasmine, and Cinderella! I didn't want to lose anyone else." Said Mob

"Well now they've lost you. You will spend the last moments of your life being digested by that giant baby over there. If you're lucky she'll keep you down. You're more likely, though, to end up being vomited out and dying in a pool of stomach acid and half-digested baby formula." Said Minegishi

"Elsa, please. Come on, you don't have to do this! Why don't we build a snowman? Come on, do you want to build a snowman?" asked Mob

"No. Time for you to die." Said Minegishi. They reached over to take the well-loved doll from Mob, the limbs had be reattached several times and it looked like Mob had tried her hand at hairdressing at some point, but Mob pulled it back.

"Wait, let me take her shoes off. That way the baby won't choke and die." Said Mob. She took Anna's shoes off. She was being executed because she sold war secrets to Pixar. That was called treason and treason was a very serious crime. Also she had betrayed her sister. You were not supposed to betray your siblings even if they did go all dark side with their powers. Well she knew that she would never have betrayed Sho, anyway, she never even told on him to dad let alone betrayed him.

"Who has no sense of self-preservation? You do, you do." Said Minegishi. They poked the baby in the stomach not hard, no, just enough to get her to smile. She was ok when she smiled. Better than when she cried, anyway, though she still did plenty of that. Minegishi was learning to get used to it. Not that they wanted to get used to it but it looked like this baby was here to stay.

What in the hell had Suzuki been thinking?

His love child or not he should have had a better plan for this baby than giving it to his ten year old Daughter to raise. Not that Mob wasn't doing a good job. The baby was alive. That was already much better than Minegishi would have been capable of at the age of ten. Probably more than what they would have been capable of at twenty seven, too. They knew their limitations and taking care of a helpless little vomit machine was one of them.

It was still a cute kid, though, all things considered.

"It'll be easier once Fukuda comes back, I think, because then I won't have to watch her as closely. She can't walk or even crawl yet, not that she doesn't try, but she still gets into things. Like this morning when me and Sho were letting her lay on her stomach so she could practice holding her own head up and trying to crawl and stuff, she almost ate one of Sho's crayons. I just got up to get some milk and when I came back Sho was pulling a crayon out of her mouth. It was kind of scary…but it's ok but she didn't choke. It'll be better when Fukuda comes back." Said Mob as she took Anna's tiny shoes and put them in her pocket. She always saved the shoes. She hated it when her dolls were barefoot. Their little feet looked so cold.

If only keeping Mukai's feet warm was that easy.

She had pulled off her little socks again. Mob only saw one of them. She had no idea where the other one went. That wasn't good. Now her little pink sock wouldn't have a match…and also her feet would be cold. Mob was out of those pajamas with the feet on them, the ones that always kept Mukai's little feet warm, because she didn't know how to do laundry. She was running low on clothes herself. That would be the next thing that she figured out how to do.

After playtime.

It felt like forever since she had last played. She used to play all the time but she had been younger then. She was ten now, practically an adult, and she had all sorts of responsibilities now. She had to keep Mukai alive and keep Sho alive and also happy, even though he wasn't very happy at all since she had made him do a page from his workbook, and she also had to keep food on the table and make sure that everyone was clean and well rested and-

And it was a lot.

But she had this. She knew what she had to do and she would do it. She was the boss of the house now. She was the oldest. Dad trusted her to be the boss of the house. She had to…to do well. To make dad proud of her. When he came back he would see how good of a job that she had done and he would be so happy with her. He had to be.

He was the one who had trusted her to take care of everyone in the first place.

"Any idea when that will be?" asked Minegishi. They kind of really, really, REALLY needed their healer back. People back at HQ were not taking Suzuki's absence well. They were like a bunch of little kids fighting when dad was away…and even Suzuki's kids weren't fighting. Not like they used to, anyway, which was good for everyone. Who would have thought that without their dad pitting them against each other for the little kernels of love he tossed out would have resulted in happier and less violent kids?

Particularly Sho.

He was much less of a terror than usual. At least he wasn't when Shimazaki wasn't trying to get him to do something stupid just for shits and giggles. He was getting bored and that was bad for everyone within a ten kilometer radius. Particularly anyone stupid enough to go along with the truly stupid, illogical, or just plain insane ideas that his idle mind came up with. Like giving the baby acid.

Yeah, the baby cried enough as it was, they weren't going to be doing that.

"No. Sho tried calling him but I guess that he's somewhere without service or something. Dad too. I mean I know that I'm not supposed to call him unless it's an emergency-" said Mob

"Well what do you call this?" asked Minegishi

"Playing dolls?" asked Mob. She didn't know what they were getting at. An emergency was something like the house burning down or flooding or something like that. This was just them playing like normal. Even Mukai was being very good. She'd just had a very good nap and she liked her formula today, the one in the yellow can was her favorite, and also people were talking to her and stuff which she also liked a lot.

This was a very good day so far. No emergencies at all.

"No, I mean the fact that you're all alone with your little brother and a baby." Said Minegishi

"I'm not alone. You're here." Said Mob

"Yeah but I am not taking care of a baby. I am in no way shape or form a nanny or a babysitter or whatever else your dad would call it. Also you're only ten. I'm pretty sure that this is illegal in most countries…actually that's no kind of argument to make considering what Claw is an all of that." Said Minegishi

"What do you mean? What's wrong with Claw? It's a good place that helps bring espers all over the world together. Dad's work is very good work. I mean sometimes people get hurt and stuff but…but sometimes bad things happen." Said Mob. That was what dad said. Sometimes bad things happened. That was just how life was. Sometimes bad things happened when you were trying to make the world a better place. Like how the only way to give people powers was to…well she didn't know what happened exactly but…but she knew that it hurt.

Dad was a good person and he was doing very good work.

"Yeah, you and I are not getting into the moral grey area which Claw operates in with you today. You've got enough on your plate as it is. Let your dad explain it to you." Said Minegishi. This was maybe not the time to shatter Mob's worldview into a million little choking hazards.

"Grey area?" asked Mob. She had heard that before but she didn't know what it meant. She got the feeling that Minegishi was not talking about a room which was painted grey though. She looked over at Mukai. She didn't know either. Well of course she didn't know, she barely knew words yet, and the words that she did know were mostly not even in Japanese.

"Areas that can be seen as good or bad depending on your perspective. You know you have to mix black and white to get grey, right? Well that's what grey areas are." Said Minegishi

"Oh. Like dad's suit." Said Mob

"The fact that your dad really needs to change his suit is in no way a grey area." Said Minegishi

"He changes his suit, he has a whole closet full of them, well he used to anyway…he left them all here when he left…but that's not even what I meant. I meant that dad's suit can be blue or black depending on how you look at it. Navy blue is a weird color like that." Said Mob

"Overly literal as always." Said Minegishi. They wondered if something was up with Mob. She had always been slightly out of step socially…though with Suzuki as a father they didn't blame her. Being raised by that guy would be enough to mess anyone up socially. Well she'd fit right in at Claw during her adult years. It was easier to count the people who DIDN'T have some sort of crippling emotional or social problem.

"I'm sorry." Said Mob

"Don't be. That's what makes you interesting." Said Minegishi

"Thank you. I think that you're really interesting too." Said Mob. She knew that Minegishi didn't mean it in a mean way. They were friends and friends were not mean to each other…well Minegishi could just be sort of mean in general but not in any real way and never to Mob…unless she had done something wrong…but Mob couldn't think of anything that she had done wrong lately. So Minegishi was being honest and Mob had no reason to feel bad…even though she didn't want to be interesting. She was boring, she knew that she was boring, and the only interesting thing about her was her powers. She didn't want to be known just for her powers and she wished that there was something else interesting about her…but there wasn't.

"I try. Life's too short to be boring." Said Minegishi. They ran a hand through their hair. Getting too long, long enough for their roots to show, they'd have to do something about that. Life was too short for black hair. Though they had been putting it off since they did got literally no warning before Suzuki moved them and they did not want to end up on a tiny airplane with hair dye seeping into their brain and ultimately driving them crazy.

Crazier than they were already.

"Life doesn't feel short. It's a long time between birthdays." Said Mob. She was ten but she was already looking forward to being eleven. Maybe because then she would be older and she would know more how to take care of Mukai. Also Mukai would be a one year old and then she would be able to walk and maybe even talk a little bit. Also Sho would be ten, too, and he loved having birthdays. Dad would be forty….forty three? How had she forgotten her own father's age? She was such a terrible Daughter…well she would ask him on his birthday. He didn't much like his birthday, he never did much for his birthday, so maybe he wouldn't even care when he got older.

Adults could be sort of weird like that.

Minegishi was an adult and they didn't care about their birthday. Every birthday that Mob had spent with them, two of them, had been Minegishi just doing normal stuff like it was a normal day and not the anniversary of the day that they had been born. They hadn't even gotten any presents. Well Mob had gotten them seeds both years, they kept them in their pockets to feel better on flights and stuff, and that had been it. Well Shimazaki had supposedly gotten them something that he gave them later when Mob wasn't around but Minegishi had told her to shut up about that when she asked so she leaned more towards them having been very disappointed on their birthday.

Birthdays were important.

She wondered what Mukai wanted for her birthday. That is if she stayed with them for that long. Dad was…dad. He would not have liked her at all. No matter what Mob did she couldn't get Mukai to stop crying all the time. Also she was a baby and was very messy. Even now she was drooling all over Anna…but that was ok. That was the Anna doll that she had given a haircut to. She had three others. The best one was the singing one.

She would not be giving Mukai that one since she was still so little.

She may have been little now but she would not spend the rest of her life being little. She would get older and she would play games and make friends and all of that. Mob hoped that she spent as much of her life with there, with them, as she could…but she did not tell dad what to do. She hoped that if he found new parents for Mukai they would let her get letters from Mob and Sho and also read them to her because babies couldn't read. Maybe they would even be allowed to visit.

That would have been very nice.

"That's because you're only ten. One year, so far, has been a tenth of your life. Life starts to feel shorter the more years you've spent alive." Said Minegishi

"It does?" asked Mob. Well that sort of made sense…maybe. She was someone who was ten years old, that was true, but she wasn't someone who felt like life was short…or long. It just sort of was it's own thing. She knew that it felt like a long time between birthdays but time still passed the same way that it had always passed. It wasn't like how time got distorted, dad said, the faster you went which was why long term space travel was…well Mob got the feeling, actually, that they were not talking about the logistics of long term human survival in space.

"Yes it does. It starts to go both too fast but also too slow, too, well it seems slow when you're bored. Then once you stop being bored it goes right back to being fast again and you realize how much time that you wasted being bored." Said Minegishi

"Do you feel like that? Because I don't…but I'm not usually bored. There's always something to do or play or learn. Well sometimes I get bored, like when me and dad watch kendo and also some of the documentaries that he likes and stuff, but I'm also happy because I get to spend time with dad. I wouldn't think that you'd be bored, though, because you always have a book to read and also you're best friends with Shimazaki." Said Mob

"Yeah I feel like that sometimes…and who says that Shimazaki is my best friend?" said Minegishi. Baby drool was flung on them. Lovely. They debated taking that doll away from the baby and settled on 'no' since they did not want to hear any more of the baby's cries.

Well it was a moot point now.

The shift in the energy around them signaled Shimazaki's arrival. Minegishi could have sworn, and they had sworn, that he could sense when he was being mentioned. Either that or he had the best luck in the whole world. Whatever. He could go wherever he wanted. It was in his powerset after all, teleportation, and he could teleport wherever he wanted to.

Including on top of the high court of Arendelle…which was just a series of empty boxes but still.

"Aww, I'm not your best friend? Toshi, you hurt me." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi smiled just a little bit, enough that he could notice but no one else, and he would have considered it a success if making them smile was what they had set out to do. But it wasn't.

"You would probably be their best friend if you stopped calling them by their given name. They don't like that. Also you scared the baby." Said Mob. She picked Mukai up and started rocking her back and forth. That didn't work so she switched to bouncing her up and down. There. That got much better results.

"Here, pass her over. I'll take care of her." said Shimazaki. He had no intention to taking care of the baby himself, of course not he had better things to do, but Shibata had been making noise about how he wanted to take care of that baby for…some reason. Babies were not the good sort of interesting, they were too tedious and loud and just…too much, but for some reason Shibata wanted to take care of her even though there were much more interesting things going on.

Like how Claw was going to hell and they couldn't even find the handbasket.

"Mob, if you value that baby's life you'll do the opposite of everything that he tells you to." Said Minegishi

"I know." Said Mob. She did not trust him with Mukai. She barely trusted him with Sho. At least Sho could talk and walk and use his powers and stuff.

"Ok, then don't give me the baby." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. It could have been interesting to see what Shibata planned on doing with Suzuki's love child but he wasn't going to fight the kid over this. Not when he needed her.

"I know not to give him the baby. You told me already." Said Mob. She could feel Sho's aura coming closer. She trusted him with Mukai. She didn't like leaving Mukai with him, he was little and should have focused on playing and drawing and learning and stuff, but he was good at taking care of her.

Anyone but Shimazaki.

"Relax, I'm not here for the baby, I'm here for you. Come with me, I need you." Said Shimazaki

"Should I be worried?" asked Minegishi with a raised eyebrow…if they had even had eyebrows in the first place. They knew him. They knew that he got terrible ideas when he was bored. Doing something stupid like freaking Mob out so she exploded…yeah, he would do something that stupid.

"That depends on how much you like your job and, you know, getting paid. I feel like if Claw ends up falling apart we don't get paid anymore and, yeah, I burnt a shit ton of bridges when I left the Yakuza and I know that you don't want to be a florist…and we all know why Shibata can't ever go back to Wee World so, yeah, you should maybe be worried." Said Shimazaki

"Again with this? For the love of God can't you leave those people alone? If you're so bored then go to the store. We're out of beer." asked Minegishi. Shimazaki went there every day at least once a day to stir shit up. There was no reason to stir shit up besides his own boredom. Him stirring shit up was probably what was going to make Claw fall apart…well more than it was already. Who would have thought that micromanaging everything and everyone would have had he downside of breeding an unhealthy amount of dependence?

Also telling people that he was God or whatever hadn't been the most sound move from a business perspective.

"What happened?" asked Mob. She knew that the Awakened really missed dad. They knocked on her door every day at least twice a day asking about dad. She didn't know why they liked dad so much, he was never nice to them, but she told them all that dad would be back soon. She had no idea when dad would be back but it had been a week and she figured that he wouldn't be gone for much longer since all of his clothes were there and it felt gross to wear the same things for a week straight…

But then again he could always buy new clothes.

"Claw's going to hell without your dad and, normally, I would be all over this but it's been going on for too long and, well, I like my job. I kind of can't go back to my old job for reasons I feel like Minegishi does not want me telling you so, yeah, I don't feel like losing my job." Said Shimazaki. Life was too short to be boring and this was the most interesting job that he had ever worked…well it had been until Suzuki ran away. He was coming back though, he had to, since his kids were here and since it was so much effort raising kids Shimazaki figured that he wouldn't have wanted to quit halfway through.

"What's that got to do with her?" asked Minegishi. He had a point. Waiting for Suzuki to come back wasn't working. They hadn't been to HQ in a while but they did talk to people. Apparently news of Suzuki's disappearance had spread far and wide. People were either freaking out, deserting, or trying to carve up their own piece of Suzuki's pie…and none of those actions were compatible with the lifestyle that they had become accustomed to.

"I don't know where dad is and I don't know when he's coming back. I know that you want me to tell you or to tell them but I just don't know. Soon, probably, since he's been gone for so long but I can't give anyone any dates. I don't like to tell lies." Said Mob

"Well then you're in luck because I'm not asking you to lie. I'm just asking you to come in and just…play pretend. Pretend to be your dad for a little bit. Just go into his office, sit down, and just…well he's been teaching you to run Claw? Right? Just do that." Said Shimazaki

"Have Sho do it. Dad's been teaching him to-" said Mob. Nope. She was not going to do it. She had no idea how to be dad. She had no idea how to run Claw. She just knew how to give people orders, dad's orders, and how to answer work emails and also how to make tea. That was it. Dad did so much…and he had been teaching Sho the important stuff. She wasn't Sho. She wasn't the boy, she was the girl, and she was not supposed to be the one who inherited the world.

"Nobody's going to listen to him. He's a nine year old boy. Who the hell is going to listen to a nine year old boy? You're older and wiser and more mature and just try and hold this thing together for me. Ok? Do this for me and I'll get you whatever you want. Like…how about another baby. Yeah, then you can have a matching set or whatever." Said Shimazaki. OK, so maybe he was getting a little desperate. Well anyone would have been desperate if their entire life was on the line. Well their livelihood. This kid would help him, though, she didn't like him all that much but she was still a good kid.

Right?

"Don't steal a baby. Do I seriously have to tell you not to steal a baby? Really?" asked Minegishi. He had a point. People liked Mob. She was a cute little girl. Everyone loved a cute little girl. Her brother was a little shrieking demon child. Nobody liked a shrieking little demon child. She must have learned something from her dad…and being the first born she could be seen as being first in line even though she was a girl…so it was a good idea to have her hold all of this together…

Shimazaki had a good idea. These were truly the end times.

"I don't want another baby…and I don't think that I can be dad. I don't know how to be dad. I only know how to be myself….and also I don't want to be in charge of Claw. It's hard enough being in charge of my house." Said Mob. She didn't want to have to be in charge. She didn't know how to tell all of those people what to do. She didn't even know what it was the she was supposed to tell people what to do.

Mukai pulled on her hair.

She didn't want to have to take care of all of Claw. Taking care of Mukai and Sho was hard enough. Maybe that was why dad told her to take care of Mukai and Sho, because he was too busy taking care of all of Claw, but he…he wasn't taking care of Claw. Not if Shimazaki of all people was asking for her help.

"There really isn't much to it, probably. Just go in and act like your dad or whatever." Said Shimazaki

"I don't know if I can-" said Mob. Mukai was pulling on her hair. She was pulling and Mob didn't know how to get her to stop without making her cry. She had just finished up crying and Mob did not want to deal with any more crying and she did not want to deal with all of Claw…but she had to. If Claw did fall apart then dad's life work would be gone…

And he would be upset.

But if she messed up then he would be upset with her, too. He would be so mad at her if she made a mess out of his life's work. She would be in for it worse than she had ever been in for it in her entire life. Even worse than the time dad dragged her around by her braids because of how she had lost control…and that had been so bad…and if she messed up then it would have been even worse….

She didn't know.

"Do whatever you want. If you want to stay here and play dolls with me while the world burns then stay here and play dolls with me while the world burns. If you want to go off and fill in for your dad then fill in for your dad. Personally I think that you should at least try and do something but I'm not going to tell you what to do." Said Minegishi. It didn't matter what they wanted her to do. This was not their kid. This was not their kid and they, unlike a lot of other people, could find work outside of Claw. They also didn't believe in any of that cult stuff, either, so if Claw did fall apart then they would be fine. They didn't care about how everyone else got by. They would be fine.

They did care about Mob, though, and hopefully Claw didn't fall apart or she'd be…yeah. It would not be a good time for anyone.

"Um….I want…I guess that I…I can help…um…tomorrow. Yes, I can help tomorrow." Said Mob. She would be punished if she messed up but she would be punished even worse if she let Claw fall apart. She had to make dad happy and he would have been very unhappy if his life's work was to fall apart…and then she would really be in for it. She would be in for it and so would Sho, too, just because when dad got upset it was like he looked for things to be mad at so he could take it out on them…and it was usually Sho or someone who worked for him…and if Claw fell apart then dad would have nobody who worked for him…and then he would be extra mad…

She had to help out.

But tomorrow. She hadn't played in a while and she just…she wanted to play dolls. She wanted to play dolls with Mukai…while she still could.


	148. Filling in for Dad

Mob owned a lot of costumes.

Most of her clothes were costumes. Elsa, Anna, Aurora, Cinderella, Tiana, Ariel, Belle, they were all her costumes and her day to day clothes. Pretty dresses that she wore because…well because she liked them. She liked the sparkly parts and the way the fabric felt and also that she could look like the people, well characters, from her favorite movies too. She had other costumes. Every year on her birthday, and also just because, dad had these really pretty kimonos made for her…and they were ok. They were pretty but also really hard to move around in and she wasn't the best at tying them properly even with her powers and YouTube tutorials. They were warm and heavy and hard to play in….they felt more like costumes than her actual costumes.

This felt more like a costume than her actual costume.

She was in real clothes for once. She had tried to dress like dad. Her shirt was white and had buttons and her skirt was dark blue and her sweater was dark blue and she was even wearing a dark blue ribbon around her neck. She had left her cat ears headband at home, too, and she had let her hair down. It was loose, now, and she almost never had it loose. She even slept in her braids sometimes. But she could not have her hair in braids, now, because she had to look grown up.

She had to look like dad.

Even her shoes were like his. Real shoes. Dark brown and shiny. Not made of plastic. They didn't light up when she walked and there wasn't a single one of her characters on them. She felt…she felt like she was wearing a 'dad' costume even though he dressed much more grown up than she did. Also he always wore suits, not skirts and sweaters, but she did not want to wear pants. That would have been too much. Even her tights were annoying. She hated the way her legs felt trap and the waistband dug into her hips and the seam pressed between her legs. So annoying. But she had to dress nice, like dad, because today she had to be dad.

Dad wasn't back yet.

She had said tomorrow because she had wanted, maybe, to give dad some time to come back. She had gone to be that night praying that he came back and she would find him in the house in the morning ready to yell at her and pull her hair or worse for the bad job that she had done. Even if he had been mad at her for doing a bad job, even though in her opinion she had been doing a very good job, it would have been better than waking up to an empty house and a missing dad.

Mukai had woken up three times that night and all three of those times dad hadn't been there when she checked for him.

He was gone…but he was coming back. He hadn't run away like mom had. Dad would not have run away from Claw. Claw was his life's work. He would not have just left…like he had. He must have been on a very important mission. That was also why he had taken Fukuda with him. Because the mission was important and dangerous and…and he had left Shimazaki and Shibata behind…but maybe he didn't need bodyguards where he was going…but then why take the healer? Maybe he just…wanted his kids to be safe. Yes, that was it. He wanted his kids to be safe so he left them with his bodyguards….

Though she really did wish that dad had taken Shimazaki with him.

"Come on, President Suzuki. Address your people." Said Shimazaki. They were in the place where dad made his speeches. He made them to all the newly Awakened, when something big happened, or to raise moral. That was what Mob was going to have to do. Raise moral. Raise moral and tell people what to do. She was…she was going to do this.

She didn't want to be there.

"I'm not President Suzuki. I'm Miss Suzuki. Suzuki-san, not Suzuki-sama." Said Mob. She could see a mass of auras all mixed up. She had been able to see it since she teleported into this HQ. She could hear them all talking…and shouting….and crying…and also some people were singing. Dad really meant a lot to them. They were freaking out because he was gone.

She was not dad.

"Well right now you're Suzuki-sama to all of those people out there. The entire division is losing their collective shit because your dad is gone and, honestly, it's getting kind of boring. So go out there and do your best and all of that other pep talk crap. Remember, if you fuck this up Claw's going to fall apart and your father's life's work will be in ruins and you'll have set his cause back by decades." Said Shimazaki. Mob had no idea how she was supposed to feel better after he had said all of that. She could feel her hair floating away behind her. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest.

He was right, if she messed up she was in for it.

Not in for it like how dad would probably drag her by her hair and push her and stuff. No, in for it like…like what dad did to Sho…or even worse. Then when he was done with her he would move on to Sho…and she didn't want that for him. She wanted him to be safe and ok. She wanted him to be happy. She hoped that he was happy. She had left Mukai with him, and Minegishi and Shibata promised to help out, but she still should have been there.

She was the girl. She should have been home with the baby. He was the boy. He should have been running Claw.

"You-you really aren't making me feel better." Said Mob. She took a step back. She was supposed to walk through those curtains and out onto the balcony and tell the whole division that everything was going to be ok…and she didn't know if she could. She was bad at talking and she had no idea how she was supposed to talk to the whole division and she had no idea how to make them feel like everything was going to be ok when she had no idea if it was all going to be ok…and they were all so freaked out…and some of them were even crying…and they were crying out for dad….

And she just…wasn't her dad.

"Just think about how everyone out there is going to be hanging on your every word. The whole division…actually you hear that? That would be the drones. Every division is going to turn out to hear your address, madam President, and doesn't that just fill you with confidence? Don't you feel like you could just take on the whole world?" asked Shimazaki

"No. Of course it doesn't. You know that it doesn't. You can tell that I'm scared…and I don't know why you're scaring me. You're the one who was so scared of losing his job that-" said Mob

"I like watching your mini freak outs, Suzuki, your aura is….interesting…when you're panicking internally. Don't get me wrong you freaking out externally is terrifying but you freaking out internally is entertaining." Said Shimazaki

"That's mean." Said Mob. She did not understand how Minegishi could have been friends with, let alone best friends with, let alone KISSED a guy like this. They could do so much better. Even Shibata would have been a better best friend/person to kiss for fun sometimes and he gave the worst hugs in the world. Not that Mob was going to tell her best friend, best non sibling friend, that their taste in boys was terrible. That would not have been nice at all.

Minegishi would probably have had something nicer to say to her.

They would have said something like 'you can't mess this up any more than it already is' and 'you're a Suzuki so go out there and act like it' or 'just go out there and do your job so you don't end up making extra work for me' or something like that. They were always very good at making her feel better. They said what they meant and meant what they said but they were never mean about it. They were like a cactus. They couldn't help being prickly but they were good on the inside…though Mob wasn't about to cook and eat them because that would have been cannibalism and cannibalism was wrong in their society and most others.

"Is not. There are much meaner things that I could have said to you." Said Shimazaki

"Well I don't want to hear them. I'm nervous enough as it is. You can hear people's heartbeats and stuff. You know how nervous I am. Please don't make me any more nervous than I already am." Said Mob

"Hey, you're making yourself nervous, Suzuki. That's all you. I'm just fanning the flames and shit." Said Shimazaki

"But why? You know what happens when I explode." Said Mob. Was that just how boys were for eternity? Sho made her mad for no reason sometime too…but Sho was little. Did boys just stay little forever? Well not dad but he wasn't like most boys, he had even said so, so did that mean that most boys stayed the same since being kids? Or was Shimazaki just an annoying person like Minegishi was always saying?

"I'm not trying to get you to explode. Your aura is just interesting when you're like this. It sounds interesting and it feels interesting." Said Shimazaki

"Stop listening to and feeling my aura." Said Mob. She felt…not good…at the thought of him feeling her aura. She wasn't sure if he could stop listening to her aura too…but he might not have been able to stop that….even though auras didn't make sounds at all.

"I kind of can't. Believe me, if I could shut out the world I would, but I can't." said Shimazaki

"Well can you leave me alone then? I'm trying to calm down so I can go out there and talk to everyone but I can't calm down with you bothering me." Said Mob

"No can do. I promised Toshi that I would guard you with my life…and also I feel like your dad would consider me a traitor if I let anything happen to you and I know what he does to traitors. I'll give you a hint, it's worse than what he does to people who talk during meetings. A hell of a lot worse." Said Shimazaki

"Um….I'm sorry that you're worried about my dad punishing you but…but you really are bothering me and I would like you to stop so I can…can figure out what I'm going to…do. What I'm going to say to all of those people out there." said Mob. Well now she felt bad. She shouldn't have told him to go away. Now he was both worried about what dad would do to him and also…well he was probably at least a little scared of her. Most people were, according to Minegishi, because little girls were not supposed to be more powerful than grown men. She was more powerful than he was, if she had felt like fighting him then she would have won, but she did not want to fight him. She didn't like fighting…and also she didn't like making people feel bad.

"How about you just say 'hey, until my dad's gone I'm in charge so listen up you worthless bastards because I'm not going repeat myself' and then you start telling people how it's going to be around here? You know, that they should stop fighting and crying…but don't tell them to knock it off with the fires. I like the fires." Said Shimazaki

"You like…fire? That's….weird. Fire is dangerous…and also I can't say things like that to people. It isn't nice." Said Mob

"That's your problem, Suzuki, you're too nice. You've got no ambition, no motivation, because you're too focused on being nice. I'd have been pissing my pants if I were in your shoes. From excitement. Think about it. As of now you're the President. You can make those bastards out there do literally anything." Said Shimazaki

"But I don't want to boss them around. I just want them to know that everything is going to be ok. That's all. I just have to tell them that it's all going to be ok and that dad is going to be coming home soon…even though I have no idea when he's coming home…and I miss him so much…" said Mob. She wished that someone had been there for her to tell her that dad would be coming back. She wished that someone would have just…been there to tell her that dad was coming back. She was fine. She could handle it. She could handle all of it.

"Why? Your dad's a bigger asshole than I am." Said Shimazaki

"My dad is not…that word. He isn't and don't call him that." Said Mob. She was kind of mad now. Dad wasn't a bad person. He could be mean sometimes but he was still a good person and he was still dad and-and-and people could not just go and say bad things about him like that.

"That's it, get fired up. Now go and address your people. You can do it President Suzuki." Said Shimazaki. His hand was on her back and he was pushing her towards the balcony now. She could have put up a barrier, she could have pushed him away, she could have run away, she could have hidden someone, she could have even told him to take her home right then and there….

But she didn't.

She couldn't. All of those people out there needed her. They needed her to tell them that they were all going to be ok. They needed her to tell them that dad was going to come back….even though she had no idea when dad was coming back. Dad was gone and she was all…alone. She was all alone and…and she couldn't feel his hand on her back anymore…and she sort of wished that she did. Not his hand specifically, she didn't much care for him, but someone's….

She was all alone.

There was a drone in front of her. She could hear the whirring of it's helicopter blades. She could see an aura, too, in it…which was weird…but there was no time to figure that out now. Everyone had stopped what they were doing. The crier had stopped crying and the shouters had stopped shouting and the hitters had stopped hitting and…and now they were all staring at her. Their eyes and their auras. It smelled…not good in there. Like fire and also…people not taking baths.

Also it was a mess.

She had to clean up this mess…but she didn't know how…but it didn't even matter if she knew how or not. She had to be there for these people. She had to be dad. She took a deep breath. How did dad look when he did this? She couldn't…she could remember. She did remember. She stood up as tall as she could…which was taller than before because she was older now and also her skirts had been getting shorter which meant that she was growing. She used her powers to keep her hair down so they wouldn't see her losing control. Power was nothing without control. She had power. She had all the power.

She had dad's power.

She had dad's powers, she's always had his powers since the day she had been born, but she had his power now, too. Power over Claw. Power over all the people in front of her…and she didn't much want it. Having power wasn't about being bossy and getting whatever you wanted. Also she didn't much feel like being bossy to all of these people. Having power was…was having to take care of all of these people. She was dad. She was in charge. She was….she was President Suzuki.

She was just wearing the costume.

"Hi…everyone. Good…good afternoon." Said Mob. Dad never said that, he just started talking, but she…she was not going to be rude like that. She was going to be polite to everyone. She was going to be nice to them. They needed someone to be nice to them. Especially with how upset they had been earlier…

They were staring at her.

"Fo-for those of you who don't know my name is Suzuki Shigeko. My dad is Suzuki Toucihirou…your boss. Um…the President. That's him. That's my dad." Said Mob. She focused on keeping her hair from flying away. She focused on keeping her breathing level. She focused on keeping calm. Conceal, don't feel, power is nothing without control.

She had power and she had control.

She didn't know how many people were in all of Claw. The whole of it. She didn't know if it was a few hundred people or even a few thousand. She did know, however, that they would do whatever she asked them to. They were all staring at her, now. She could see some of them talking to each other but they stopped when she felt her aura on them. She could see herself reflected in the tiny camera lens of the drone.

She looked like dad…and also did not look like him.

"My dad is away on a very important very secret mission. I don't know what that mission is but I do know that he wouldn't have left all of you if it wasn't important…because you're all very important to him." Said Mob. She wasn't lying. She was telling the truth and the truth came very easily to her. She knew that she could not lie to all of these people…that would have been wrong…but she did know that Claw was the most important thing in the world to dad. More important than even his own kids…maybe.

And Claw was important to her, too.

Claw was everything to her and dad. If dad cared about Claw then she cared about Claw too. She cared about how they were going to bring all the espers in the whole world together. She cared about how good things were going to be when dad took over the world…and she cared about making sure that Claw didn't fall apart before dad came back.

She didn't know what dad would do…what any of them would do…without Claw.

"You're all very important to me and my dad and we want you to know that everything is going to be ok. You're all important and…and I wish that you would have been nicer to each other since dad left. You've all been very bad since dad's been gone with all of the fighting and stuff…and also the fires. The fires weren't ok and the fights weren't ok and also…and also please stop crying because dad is gone. You know he's coming back. He wouldn't just leave all of you." Said Mob. She thought that she was saying the right thing. The people in front of her seemed happy, at least. More of them were smiling now.

That was good.

She didn't like it, being up there, having them all looking up at her. They were, a few of them were, saying her name. Suzuki. That was her name, Suzuki Shigeko, it had been her name for as long as she could remember, but she just…did not want to be called Suzuki Shigeko. She wanted to be called Mob. She wanted to be Mob. She was Mob. Mob wasn't noticeable. She blended in…

There was no way for her to blend in now. Not with everyone staring at her.

"I'm going to be filling for dad while he's gone so…um…if you have any questions or just want to talk to someone you can come up to dad's office. Ok? And also all of you have jobs so please do them. Everyone has to do their part to make Claw work. Ok? Um….thank you for listening to me. You're all very good people and…and I know that dad misses all of you a lot." Said Mob. She didn't know if dad actually missed them but she figured that he might have just a little since he cared so much about his work. He probably missed them in his own kind of mean and also a little bit weird way. As much as dad was capable of missing someone.

He loved his work more than anything so he must have, therefore, missed his work…so she wasn't lying.

She was just…just telling them things that she wished that someone would have told her. But there was no one there to tell her that dad missed her. That he was totally going to be coming back. That he loved her and cared about her. Dad was gone and he wasn't even that good at telling her nice things that she wanted to hear…but that was ok. Everything was ok.

She was the only one on the platform.

She was the one who had to reassure everyone. Even though she was the youngest person in the room. Even though she had no business at all filling in for dad. This should have been Sho's job. Sho was the boy. Sho was the one who was supposed to inherit the world once dad was done with it…but he was little. He was too little to be up here with her…or on her own. He was too little to be up there reassuring everyone in the whole of Claw. He was too little to…to be dad. He was only nine. She was ten. She was the oldest and…and this was her responsibility. Taking care of Claw was her responsibility. Making sure that…that it didn't fall apart was her responsibility.

Everything was her responsibility.

People were shouting now. They said that they loved her. They said that they loved dad. Some of them were just cheering. She didn't see how what she had said, what there was in that combination of words, that could have made everyone so happy. She just told them nice things, things that she knew that they wanted to hear, enough to make them happy without lying to their faces.

They were so happy.

It felt good, having made people happy. Being responsible for them feeling better. Maybe now they would get back to work. Maybe now they would stop acting like jerks to one another and just get back to their jobs already….and maybe she wouldn't even have to tell anyone what to do because they already knew what to do. Maybe she could just get back to Sho and Mukai and she could take off this costume and just get back to normal.

She didn't know.

"Suzuki, I could kiss you. You know that? I could-" said Shimazaki as she walked back behind the curtain. She wished that she didn't need someone to guard her. She wished that people didn't try to hurt her or dad or her family. She wished…she wished for a lot of things.

And Shimazaki to never, ever, ever say that he could kiss her ever again was right there at the top of the list.

"Please don't." said Mob. First of all she didn't even like him like that. Sure he was tall and stuff but there was more to liking someone than just noticing that they were taller than you. He wasn't nice enough for her to kiss, not for real and not for fun either, and also Minegishi kissed him and you did not just go and kiss someone who your friend had already kissed. Second of all she didn't even know why anyone would have ever wanted to kiss him in the first place. If it was a choice between kissing him and never kissing anyone else for her entire life she would gladly never kiss anyone else in her entire life.

"Come on, that was brilliant and you know it. All that shit about your dad giving a damn about any of us? It wouldn't have occurred to me to lie like that." Said Shimazaki

"I wasn't lying. Dad cares about Claw and this place and everyone in it is Claw and so dad cares about it. Now please take me to my dad's office. I have work to do." Said Mob. She tried to sound like dad did. When dad said that something was going to happen then I was going to happen. He never asked, he always told, and he had always been bossy…and she did not like to be bossy…but she also knew that sometimes she had to be bossy.

"Whatever you say, President Suzuki." Said Shimazaki. He put his hand on her shoulder and then, for a second, the world around her went black and it was scary…but then it was over and now she was in dad's office…where she had asked to go. Where she was supposed to be…because she was dad now…

She was President Suzuki now….and she didn't much want to be.

"Don't call me that. Dad's the President. I'm just his Daughter." Said Mob. She walked over to dad's desk and sat behind his chair…just as big and cold and uncomfortable as she remembered it. Dusty, though, dustier than she had remembered it…

The energy around her shifted.

There was a glass in front of her. There was some cola colored liquid in it. She knew that it wasn't cola. She knew that she was not supposed to drink that because she was a kid and also she had work to do…but she was also stressed…and her powers weren't….weren't being good…and she couldn't lose control over her powers. She had to have control because she was dad now and she had his power and…and power was nothing without control.

She reached for the glass.

There was a hand over hers. Why did he have to be so annoying? He was like Sho but bigger. Sho was…Sho was a kid and he was supposed to act like a kid. Shimazaki was not a kid but he acted like a kid. What was it with boys and acting like kids for their whole lives? Saying mean stuff and teasing her and…and running away from home…..and stuff….

"Fine. Your ladyship then." Said Shimazaki. Mob pulled her glass out of his hands and took a drink. If he wanted one then he could pour it for himself. He knew where the cups were. He was blind, not helpless, and he could do things for himself. So could she. She took another sip of her drink and then put it down under a barrier so he couldn't get to it.

"Just call me Mob. I like to be called Mob." Said Mob as she opened dad's laptop. Good. The logic hadn't changed. She didn't know what she would have done if the login had changed. The tech support guys had switched to playing Star Craft or War craft or something that had craft in the name and was long and important and made them lock themselves in their office for a week straight so they could play it nonstop.

"Well then, Mob, what's on our agenda now?" asked Shimazaki

"I'm going to be doing the stuff that dad does and I guess that you're supposed to keep people from trying to kill me." Said Mob

"I doubt that anyone here would lay a finger on you. Seriously, how did you think up all of that bullshit? All of that about your dad caring about us?" asked Shimazaki

"Dad does care about us. I wasn't lying. Dad cares about all of us in the…the best way that he can." Said Mob. He was sitting on the edge of the desk now. She wanted to tell him to get off but she didn't want to get into it with him. She had a lot of work to do. People needed….people needed a whole lot of things….things that dad had to personally approve of…but she was dad so…so she would have to be the one approving of things now….

"And what about you?" asked Shimazaki

"What about me?" asked Mob

"What's your angle? What do you hope to get out of this? You're being nice to them. Why? You don't have to. Your dad certainly isn't. What are you trying to get them on your side for?" asked Shimazaki

"There is not my side or dad's side. We both want Claw to do well. And also I was nice to them because…because I'm not a mean person. I don't see what would make me be mean to a bunch of people that depend on me and my dad to tell them what to do and how to live and…and just a lot of dependence. The people down there were feeling lost and sad and scared and…and abandoned…and I made them feel better. There's nothing that could ever make me be mean to someone." Said Mob. She was working, still, and not looking at him. It wasn't rude because he wasn't looking at her either. Well he was looking at her with his aura but he wasn't facing her.

So it was ok for her to keep on working.

"You know something, Suzuki?" asked Shimazaki

"What?" asked Mob. She had told him, had just told him, that she wanted to be called Mob and not Suzuki. When someone said that they wanted to be called something then you called them that. But he had never been good at calling people what they wanted to be called. That was why he always called Minegishi by their given name even though they really hated it.

"You're a genius." Said Shimazaki. Mob looked over at him. Well that was new, he never said nice things to her…or to anyone. She hadn't known that he even knew how. Maybe there was a first time for everything, like the saying went.

"Than you-" said Mob. She would have said more but he pressed a kiss to his hand and then pressed it to her cheek. She immediately wiped it off. Ick. She should have known that he would have been right back to being annoying.

"See? I told you I could kiss you and I did." Said Shimazaki

"Please just let me work, Shimazaki." Said Mob. She put a barrier up around herself. She did not feel like being teased right now. She had a lot to do, so much to do, and she could not be distracted by some boy acting like a…well like a boy. She had to be dad and dad had…really let his work pile up. That didn't matter. He was gone, for a little bit, and she had to take care of everything…and that was ok.

She was dad now, she had to be, or at least…at least she was wearing the costume.


	149. Her Ladyship and Shimazaki

Mob was not a Ladyship.

First of all ladies were grown women and she was not a grown woman, she was a ten year old girl, so she should not have been called a lady. Second of all she knew, well she figured, that the ship part didn't have to do with actual boats but whenever she heard the word Ladyship she thought of a pink boat with glitter and stuff…which was weird. Third of all she had told him time and time again that she did not want to be called her Ladyship!

How hard was that to understand?

She was not a Ladyship or a President or a sama. She was Mob. She was Shigeko. She was Suzuki. She was Suzuki Shigeko if someone wanted to call her by her full name. She was not the boss…well she was the boss…but not the permanent boss. She didn't want to be the permanent boss. She barely wanted to be the temporary boss.

She wanted to go home and take care of baby Mukai.

She wished that she could have brought them to work with her but Minegishi said that bringing a helpless baby to Claw was dangerous. Dad had a lot of enemies and a little baby was just a sitting duck. Also she wouldn't have been able to get any work done when Mukai was crying or needed to be fed or changed or played with or needed her movie rewound to the part where the Horned King used the Black Cauldron to create the army of the dead…and why Mukai liked that movie Mob would never be able to understand…but she did understand that dad's office was no place for a baby.

She could go home whenever she wanted to, though.

If Sho needed her he would text her and then she would have Shimazaki bring her home and she could deal with whatever went wrong. Last time it had been because Mukai threw up and some of it got into Sho's mouth and he was freaking out. Before that it had been because Mukai needed to be changed. Sho didn't want to change her and neither did Minegishi. That was a Mob job and she was happy to do it because otherwise Mukai would get a diaper rash.

She, like most people, was totally helpless.

"Someone's at the door." Said Mob. She wasn't telling Shimazaki to get it, she was just stating a fact. She felt someone at the door. People almost never visited that unless it was something important. People visited her all the time. Maybe it was because she had said that she would be there if anyone wanted to talk.

She had mostly said that to be nice.

She wanted people to feel better and also, at the time, she had been ok with talking to them…a little bit. She liked meeting new people and all of that but the stuff that they came to her with…she didn't want to use the word 'tiresome' but that was the only word that fit. She didn't understand why they couldn't just settle stuff by themselves like adults. They were all adults. She and Sho were the only kids in Claw. They should have known not to fight with each other or bite each other or pee in buckets…the tech support people took War Craft VERY seriously…they all still should have known better!

Conceal, don't feel. Power is nothing without control.

There was a shift in the energy around her. Another glass of cola colored liquid appeared before her. She would have thanked Shimazaki, he was annoying but he could also sort of be helpful, but then she blinked and he was at the door talking to some people.

Red auras. Awakened. Hopefully not something crazy again.

Those guys could be kind of…not smart. Not smart at all. Like how she had to show them how to use the alternate character colors and outfits in Smash Brothers. They kept on getting confused over who was who, even though the player names were by the characters, and then they would get into fights. Over Smash Brothers of all things. She showed them how to fix it and then she told them that if they couldn't get along then there would be no more Wii allowed in the breakroom and they would have to only play at their own houses….and she also regretted saying that they could get a Wii for the breakroom…but she didn't say anything about that.

Or about the bad words that they used or player names.

"Your Ladyship? Some Awakened are here to see you. Want me to tell them to get lost?" Said Shimazaki. He could feel her glaring at him. Good. She wasn't as passive as she seemed. He liked that. Having to spend all his time trailing after a passive person was boring. She wasn't going to do anything about his constant button pushing, he knew she wouldn't, but it was still fun to listen to her aura shriek.

"Send them in please…and stop calling me that. Call me Suzuki or Shigeko or Suzuki Shigeko or Mob. Just not Ladyship…I'm not a lady and I'm not a ship." Said Mob

"Whatever you say, Suzuki-sama." Said Shimazaki. He knew that he was for sure going to catch hell for this later. Toshi was going to be so pissed at him for messing with their best friend/surrogate kid even though they claimed to hate kids. This was just too much fun. He was going to have as much fun with this as he could for as long as he possibly could. Afterwards, when Suzuki came back from wherever he fucked off to, he could go back to being bored.

Pushing Suzuki's buttons was not nearly as fun as pushing his daughter's buttons.

He was so…boring. For a man as powerful as he was, and as weird as he was, he was also so boring. His aura had this monotonous scream to it and his various habits would have put out him right at home in a retirement community. He was forty three for God's sake! Not eighty three! Shimazaki had been following powerful men around since he had been a kid. They all had their vices and their vices were fun. Sex, drugs, drinking, women, men, pachinko….none of that for Suzuki. His biggest vice was reading manga when he thought that nobody was paying attention. Well he had this terrible habit of muttering to himself while he read.

Actually Shimazaki kind of missed that. He had no idea if the Galaxy Express ever did end up making it to it's last stop.

But most of Suzuki was just…boring. No vices aside from manga, copious amounts of ketchup on foods which did not require it, jerking off really loudly at two in the morning to some woman named Masami, and possibly making that screaming little vomit machine named Mukai Suzuki was possibly the most dull boss that Shimazaki had ever worked for. Sometimes he was so bored following Suzuki around that he was ready to go back to the yakuza….and he had quit in a pretty spectacular way…as much as one could quit the yakuza…

Thank heaven for little girls.

"I told you not to call me that either…" muttered Mob. She took a drink from her glass and tried to look happy. She was tired. She was somehow more tired than she would have been if she had just been taking care of Mukai all day. At least Mukai took naps. The work of running Claw never, ever, EVER stopped. Like now. There were two Awakened in front of her, bright red uniforms so they were the newest sort of Awakened, and they looked like they had been fighting.

Wasn't that just wonderful?

"Miss Suzuki-" said one of the Awakened. The other one elbowed him in the ribs. Mob hoped that they didn't start fighting right there in her office. Why were there so many people at Claw who liked to fight? Claw was not about fighting…well there was a lot of fighting in Claw…but they were about brining people together not beating them up!

She took another sip of her drink.

"I think she's a Ladyship." Said the first Awakened. Mob was going to start having them wear nametags. She didn't know if it was polite to ask them their names since she was their boss and also she knew that she had been them before. It might have been awkward to ask them their names at this point.

"Wait! Maybe she's a highness." Said the Awakened. Mob took another sip of her drink and found it empty….great. She hated how tired and grumpy she was. She had been up all night with Mukai, Shibata had squeezed her too hard and it upset her stomach so there was a lot of throwing up and crying, and then she had to break up two fights and judge a chair jousting match before lunch…and then during lunch she had to help grease up someone's arm with butter from the lunchroom because he had gotten his arm stuck in the vending machine…and then she had to have a big teleconference, which was a fancy name for video call, with the heads of all the Divisions and THEN she had to talk to the newly formed squad of elite multinational people….that Joseph guy asked a lot of questions but it was ok because he just wanted to please dad, and THEN she had to get back to answering a week's worth of back emails…and all of this was in addition to having to teleport back home to change Mukai's diapers…and she had been going to the bathroom a lot more than usual lately….and also she still had to figure out how washing clothes worked.

She needed a nap…and another drink.

"I'm not a highness. Please just call me Suzuki-san." Said Mob. She wanted to put her head down but that would have been rude. She knew why dad was so grumpy all of the time now. People were so…they needed a lot of things. She was ok with Sho and Mukai needing a lot of things because they were little but everyone at Claw was old enough to not need…quite so many things….

"Ok. Suzuki-sama, we need your help." Said the Awakened. One of them had black hair and the other had brown hair. She wondered if it would have been rude to think of them as only their hair colors. She wondered why it mattered if she was rude in her own head. She wondered if there was anyone who could hear her thoughts. Well if they could hear her thoughts then she was very sorry for all of those bad words she had almost said in her head a few times earlier that day.

"She said that she's a-" said the brown haired Awakened. Mob shook her head. She was not going to start that up again. How did dad deal with this? Well by being mean to people…but she just did not have it in her to be mean. She hadn't gotten those genes from dad. She had gotten her nice genes from mom…but not the ones that also made you want to run away from home. No matter how bad things got, not that this wasn't all something that she could handle just fine on her own, she was not going to run away from home…or go on any extra long and extra secret missions either.

She was just fine at her…at DAD'S desk.

"What happened? You guys don't need help with the Wii again, do you? Because I'm very busy and also you guys should be working and not playing Wii." Said Mob

"We-we aren't here about that…but Satoshi won't stop spamming-" said the black haired Awakened

"She doesn't care about that!" said the brown haired Awakened.

"I do care. Spamming is not cool and you should tell Satoshi that I said that. If that's all then you guys can get back to work." Said Mob. Well at least that hadn't taken long and they had come to her with a legitimate problem too. You were not supposed to just spam moves like that because it made the game not fun for the other players. She and Sho had agreed on that rule back when they had lived in the Castle.

"It-it isn't about the spamming. Um…you see the thing is that the cafeteria, which we love by the way thank you letting us plan our own menu we're very grateful-" said the brown haired Awakened

"Extremely grateful! We used to only have one entrée and two sides but now we have a whole sides bar and-" said the black haired Awakened

"The point is that the cafeteria ran out of cookies again and the guys downstairs are upset…please don't hurt us!" said the brown haired Awakened before he went down into a kotow. The other one went right down with him. Mob was….confused. Why did they think that she was going to hurt them over cookies? Granted she would have wanted one, they were the most perfect cookies in all of Claw, but she was not going to start punished people over cookies.

Or at all.

She thought, at first, that they just thought that because she was called Suzuki and dad was called Suzuki that she would be as quick to punish them as dad had been. Well she was not going to punish them at all. She hadn't punished anyone herself or ordered anyone's punishments since she started filling in for dad. She was dad's Daughter, not his clone, and she didn't have to do things the way he did…even though he would be so mad when she came back and saw how nice she had been to everyone….

Good. At least he would have been back.

She wanted dad to come back so she could go home and get back to something close to her normal life. It was hard being the mom and the dad. She understood, sort of, why Sho was always accusing her of trying to be mom. She had been doing mom's job for so long…and now she had to do dad's…and it was a lot to do…but she would do it….even though it made her tired…and also she would be punished for not punishing people…and they were so used to being punished that they threw themselves on the ground in apology just because the cafeteria had run out of cookies…

She had thought, anyway, that it had been because they were so used to dad.

Then she saw how Shimazaki was doing that thing that he did with his aura when he was trying to look scary. She hated it when he scared people for fun like that. There was nothing fun at all about making another person feel bad. If anything he should have felt bad about wanting other people to feel bad.

Not that she was going to say anything to him now. Right now she had to deal with this.

"Please tell the people downstairs that fighting isn't ok and that the cafeteria people have my permission to order more cookies. About…um….I don't know. Enough so that people can have ten cookies a day! Yes, we have money in the budget for that. Go and tell them what I said." Said Mob. There. She could make choices on her own. Dad would have told them that they were tiresome and to get out of his sight before he got upset and beat them up.

She was not dad.

She was thanked with smiles, dad was never thanked with smiles, and the Awakened looked happy as they left her office…as they left her DAD'S office. This was not her office, Claw was not hers, and she was just keeping things together until dad came back. That was why she had only raised his chair up and not gotten herself a more comfortable one.

This was dad's office. She was not dad. She was just wearing the costume.

She leaned back and closed her eyes after they were well and truly gone. Sometimes the Awakened came running back just so that they could be in her aura for a little longer or to hear her voice or to just be in her presence…and that sort of weird…but you had to be sort of weird to work in Claw, she figured.

The energy around her shifted.

Speaking of weird.

"You know that you can just tell them to fuck off, right?" asked Shimazaki as he refilled her drink for her. She was already more fun than Suzuki. She was only ten and she already had some vices to her. In a few short years they could have some real fun together. Not now, though, because she was only like ten or something. Still, she had so much potential, she just needed someone to help her bring that potential out.

"Thank you for the drink and you know that I don't say mean things like that." Said Mob. If there was anyone she wanted to tell to F-word off, she didn't like to even think of the shortened form of the word, it would have been him. He was sitting on the edge of her desk again. He liked to sit there. She didn't know why. It couldn't have been comfortable…and also he must have known that she didn't like him in her space.

She had no idea why Minegishi like him so much.

"Well maybe you should. You know your dad never dealt with this kind of bullshit, right?" asked Shimazaki. She was way too passive. She was too passive and if she grew up to be passive then she wouldn't be any fun. Sure Suzuki swore up down, left right, sideways, and slightly to the left that his son was going to inherit the throne of the world or whatever but even he could 'see' that this girl was the brains of the Suzuki family. He knew that he would end up guarding her once her dad got too old and her brother went off the deep end somewhere in his late teens/early twenties and he was not going to guard someone passive and boring.

"Dad is a totally different person from me. He has his way of doing things and I have my way of doing things. Now please get off my…dad's…desk." Said Mob. She went back to work. A bunch of people were asking her approval for things…and even more were asking about dad….and a lot more wanted to be in her aura for some reason….she didn't understand what was so special about her aura…and she had enough to deal with without him being in her space and being annoying.

"Aww, but I like it here. It makes me feel tall." Said Shimazaki. Everyone had a line and he would find hers. Then he could push it and push it and push it until it couldn't be pushed anymore. That was the best was to get her to be less passive. Not less passive in the way that made her destroy the Eighth Division but less passive as in able to be something other than boring.

It was the boring sort of chaos now.

Chair jousting wasn't funny anymore. Fist fights weren't funny anymore. Nothing they were doing, the Awakened, was even the least bit entertaining anymore. It was such a pity…and he had no one to blame but himself. He had been the one to push those morons too far too fast and now he had nobody to blame for his own boredom.

"You're already tall." Said Mob. She could feel his aura on hers. He was watching her in the way that only he could watch her. She didn't know what there was about her to stare at…or why he had to sit on her desk…or why he had to sit so close to her.

"You think I'm tall?" asked Shimazaki. Hmm…not even a hiccup to her aura. Well she was Suzuki's kid after all…and still just a kid, too. Damn. Even Toshi's aura hiccupped when he dropped his voice like that. Not that he thought of her in the same way he thought of Toshi, nobody could ever be Toshi, and also she was just a kid. Too young. Not too young to plant the seeds of why he should have been kept around, besides how awesome he was, but too young to do something about it. In like five or four or three years maybe but not now.

"You're taller than me, now please get off of my desk." Said Mob. She saw him reach for her drink. He did that sometimes, drink right after she did, like he was a kid or something. Sho did that when he wanted to claim all the soda in the house even though opening all of those sodas just meant that they all went flat faster.

She would never understand boys.

Most of the Awakened were boys and they did the same sort of stuff. The fighting, mostly, and the annoying each other for no reason. She wondered why people paired up and got married and had babies if this was just the way that boys were. Or maybe they just married boys like dad. She could never picture dad acting like a kid even when he had been a kid. She just sort of imagined him as being born in his suit and sitting down at his desk, only it was baby sized, and getting right to work. She had always thought, before, that she never wanted to marry a boy like dad because he wasn't nice.

Now she knew that she might not have even wanted to be married if this was how most boys were like.

She was in love with a boy. She didn't know him at all, she only knew his name and that he was an esper, but when she thought about him her heart went doki-doki like the sticker…and she also knew that her heart should not have been going doki-doki for someone she was never going to see again. Imagining him like one of the Awakened, all loud and messy and fighty and stuff like a little brother, put a stop to that…and she didn't know how to feel about that. She liked it when her heart went doki-doki but she also…also felt sort of…not good about it. She wanted to be kissed again, not a just for fun kiss like adults had but a true love's kiss, and she knew that it probably wasn't going to happen. She didn't know any boys…well she knew boys but they were all annoying….

Like now.

He was doing the tug of war thing for her drink now. She was going to ask Minegishi later on what they saw in him. If he made their heart go doki-doki and if so why. He wasn't nice, he always dressed the same each and every day, he could be very rude and obnoxious, and also he was a drink and also sometimes food stealer. Minegishi could have done so much better. If they had wanted to be with someone then they could have had someone nice who didn't steal drinks and food and sit on desks and just be…tiresome.

He was so tiresome.

"You painted your nails." Said Shimazaki as he ran the pad of his finger over the smooth expanse of her nails. Huh. Nothing. Not a flare or a hiccup in her aura. Her breathing, heart rate, and body temperature were still the same. Huh. Well now this was just a personal challenge for him. She may have been ten but she was also going to someday grow up to be the most powerful woman in the whole world.

That is if Suzuki's crazy plans ever bore fruit.

"Yes, they're pink but you don't know what pink is so you should just stop being annoying and also let go of my drink. If you want a drink then you can go over there and pour your own." said Mob

"You're sharing with me?" asked Shimazaki

"Well if you want a drink badly enough to steal mine from me then yes." said Mob. Thankfully he got a clue and poured himself a drink. Also thankfully he sat down on dad's office couch. He put his feet up, his shoes were on the couch but she was too tired to get into it with him about that, and pulled out his phone.

He didn't ask, he just put music on.

She didn't mind. She actually like watching him use his phone. It was interesting. He had to say everything that he wanted it to do. That was kind of neat. She had always wondered about that. She wondered why so much of the music he liked was in English. This was a nice song. It was cheery and the people sounded British, which was a different English than she spoke and was actually sort of hard to understand, but she didn't complain.

He was quiet. That was what mattered.

She went back to work. Things went a lot faster when she just said yes. She could have the finance people fix the budget later. If people wanted raises and more staff and better break rooms and a swimming pool in every division then they could have it. Dad could sort it out when he came back. In fact this was even more reason for him to come back. There was a lot of stuff that he had to get sorted out and he had better hurry before she messed something else up.

Dad needed to hurry back.

She wanted to go back to her brother and pretend sister. She didn't want to sit in dad's office and deal with everything. She wanted to play with her dolls and play with baby Mukai and play with Sho and just…play. This was hard. Being an adult was hard. Wearing this costume was hard. She didn't understand why dad wore a tie. She had been wearing this ribbon all day and it was pulling at her neck. She wanted to get back into her Elsa dress.

It felt like less of a costume.

And playing with her dolls felt like less of a game. That was what this felt like. It was like when she and Shi would play house only back then, when they had been very small, she had done the mom things and he had done the dad things. There hadn't been a lot to do so he also played the dog and the baby. Well now they had a baby, no dog though, and she was being both mom and dad…and she was doing fine and she was handling this and…and everything was fine and…and at least Shimazaki was being quiet.

Until he wasn't.

"Mind if I smoke?" asked Shimazaki. He was bored, mostly, and also Toshi wouldn't let him smoke in or around the house even though they smoked too. Well not lately, not tobacco lately, but they had been more of a smoker when they'd met all those years ago. Toshi had been a nervous chain smoker even if they wouldn't admit it. He wondered if they had passed that on to the kid, too.

She was already a budding alcoholic and stoner thanks to Toshi after all.

"Can I have some too?" asked Mob. She had liked it before when they smoked. It made her feel all silly and happy…and also hungry and tired…but also silly and happy. She hadn't felt silly and happy in so long…and the drinking did help but…but it also made her tired and also she thought about sad things, too, when she drank.

Not that she had any plans of stopping anytime soon.

"Yeah, but you aren't going to like it. This isn't one of Toshi's." said Shimazaki. He knew that he could have crossed the room normally but he liked the way her aura yelped when he teleported right there onto her desk. He knew that she hated it when he sat on her desk like this. That was why he did it.

"You don't know what I will and will not like…and also why is this different from the one Minegishi shared with me?" asked Mob. She put emphasis on Minegishi. That was their name. That was what they wanted to be called. Shimazaki didn't just get to call people whatever he wanted to. That was not how it worked.

"This one won't get you high." Said Shimazaki as he shook a cigarette out of his carton. He stuck it between his teeth, he really needed to stop biting the filters it was a bad habit, and lit it.

"High?" asked Mob

"Yeah, that's what we were back on your birthday. Well stoned, actually, which is well past the point of being high. High is the fun part where you think that everything is hilarious and you want to bouncy off the walls, which is always fun by the way, but stoned is more of when you're ready to pass out and also the auditory hallucinations start…well they do for me, anyway. I don't know about sighted people." Said Shimazaki. Honestly. Toshi needed to stop doing things in half measures. He had no idea why they were so obsessed with not ruining the kid's life. They only saw her as the kid that she was now and not the future adult that she would be. Hopefully the kind that would be fun to party around the world with. Besides, it wasn't like they were giving her anything serious. Just enough to keep her from growing up to be as joyless and uptight as her father.

"Oh….I liked that a lot. The way I felt. What's the point of this, then, if it doesn't make you feel good like that?" asked Mob. She didn't know why dad kept on saying that smoking and drinking were bad habits. Maybe because they made you feel good and dad hated things that felt good. He hated feeling good so much that he slept in his suit instead of pajamas. Well Mob was not dad. She liked to feel good and she liked things that made her feel good.

She was her own person…and if dad didn't want her to be her own person then he should have hurried back and stopped her.

"This is mostly just because I'm bored. It's something to do with my hands. Also it keeps you from getting hungry and gives you energy. Causes cancer, though, so don't go overboard. See? This will ruin your life if you go overboard with it. I don't know what Toshi's always freaking out about. So you drink, who cares? And so got stoned with us, who the fuck cares? Toshi can be such a hypocrite sometimes." Said Shimazaki as he passed her a cigarette. He debated lighting hers with the end of his but decided against that. Too much too soon.

He wanted to find where her lines were, not send them all the way of the Eighth Division.

"Minegishi is not a hypocrite. I don't know what that word means but I know that they aren't that…and also they like to be called Minegishi. Why do you keep on calling them Toshi, anyway?" asked Mob. She held that cigarette in her hand and watched it burn for a moment. This one was a lot more cylindrical than the one she shared with Minegishi on her birthday…and it smelled different, too. Not bad but just…different.

"Toshi is Toshi to me because I know them well enough for them to be Toshi to me. Same reason it's weird for me to call you Mob. I don't know you that well. I would love to get to know you better, in three or four years, but not now. And to answer your original question Toshi is a total hypocrite, that word means someone who won't practice what they preach, because they bitch and moan about not wanting to ruin your life when I know for a fact that they've been drinking since they were seven, smoking cigarettes since they were eight, and doing a whole shit ton more stuff that you can't even comprehend before they hit middle school. I, on the other hand, am not a hypocrite. If I do it then I don't see why you shouldn't either. Life is to live and all of that shit." Said Shimazaki. He had no idea how much Toshi had told her, how much of the sad, sad, tale of Minegishi Toshiki she knew, but he figured that she could get the watered down version of it. He cut out the double parenticide, the weird sex, and the harder drugs which he had no plans of introducing her to. Yeah, that was responsible of him.

She was going to be so much fun when she got older.

"Oh. I didn't know those things about them…I guess that you really are a closer friend than me…" said Mob. Friends did not keep secrets. Minegishi knew everything about her so why didn't she know everything about them? Wasn't friendship supposed to be a two way street? What made HIM of all people a closer friend than her? She was nice and never called them Toshi and always got lost when they told her to get lost and took an interest in their interests and all of those other things that a good friend was supposed to do. How had Shimazaki of all people beaten her?

"Stop being all depressed, it's boring and I can't stand boring people. I'm a better friend to Toshi because I've known them longer and we are closer, way closer, than you can even comprehend at your age." Said Shimazaki. Nope. He was not dealing a mopey, broody, Suzuki. Too close to her father and he was done dealing with her father.

He passed her drink into her other hand. She took a sip. Good.

"Oh. You mean how they kiss you for fun sometimes. I'm not dumb, you know, I can comprehend kissing." Said Mob. She could, sometimes, get a clue. Well that was fine then. She didn't want to be the sort of friends who kissed with Minegishi anyway…and not just because they were older than she was and also she couldn't tell if they were a boy or a girl. She just didn't think that she could kiss someone just for fun. Kisses were for love. Hugs and stuff were for fun.

"Well you just know everything, don't you?" asked Shimazaki. He ashed into an empty Starbucks cup. She did the same. She was mimicking him, the way she clutched the filter between her teeth and not her lips, and the way she held her cigarettes between two fingers too. Good. He was being a good influence on her.

Toshi would have kicked his ass if they had been there now.

"No, I don't know everything. Like why you would want to smoke this kind when you could be all silly and happy and stuff…high, I mean. These don't make you feel like that. They smell nice and they are making me less tired but they don't make me feel like that." Said Mob

"If you want to smoke with Toshi just beg them. They have a soft spot for you, they'll smoke you up. That's really good shit, too, you know. Toshi's been refining that since before they even knew me. It's not then yet, though, they're trying to make something that you can just pluck from the ground and smoke but that's been a dud so far." Said Shimazaki

"I thought that smoking came from plants." Said Mob

"It does. All smokeables, well the ones that you're allowed to have anyway, come from plants. You've just got to dry them and let them cure for a while or you end up with a pile of crap." Said Shimazaki. Yup. This was going to be one fun future lord and master of the world. He was such a good influence on her. Unlike Toshi he knew where to draw the lines. Smoking and drinking and acid and molly and maybe coke were ok. Anything harder was going to send her to either rehab or the morgue. You had to be careful what vices you got a ten year old into. Toshi was just overcautious. He knew better how not to ruin her life.

"Oh….I didn't know that." Said Mob. He may have been obnoxious, and he may have cursed too much, and he may have been annoying too but he was a wealth of information. There were more things that you could smoke to feel better? And drink too, maybe? More things that could tell her powers to calm down? More things to make her powers be under control and her bad feelings, too?

She loved being an adult…well almost an adult. A kidult.

"Well, Suzuki, what you don't know could fill a warehouse." Said Shimazaki. He ashed on her head just to mess with her. She put up a barrier. He could feel her glaring at him. She didn't do anything besides glare, though. If she had been her father he would have been dead.

"I guess…and don't ash on my head. Also…um…there's more stuff like this?" asked Mob. She didn't know why dad was always telling her to stuff her powers and feelings down if there were things that could help with that. Maybe he just didn't want her taking the easy way out. Like how mom had taught her and Sho how to tie shoes even though they made slip ons and shoes with Velcro.

"Suzuki, your Ladyship….I think that you and I are going to get along just fine." Said Shimazaki

"We will if you stop calling me a Ladyship. Call me either Shigeko or Suzuki, or Suzuki Shigeko or Mob. Not President Suzuki or Ladyship or anything like that." Said Mob. She wanted to get along with him, she wanted them to be friends, but she also wanted him to be less annoying…and she wasn't sure if that was possible.

"Alright then, Mob, you and I are going to get along just fine." Said Shimazaki. He ashed on her head, again, just because he could. She told him to, in no uncertain terms, knock that off and to get off of her desk. Good. There were some of that passivity. She was going to be so much fun when she got older. Hell, she was fun now, but things would be much better when she was old enough to keep up with him.

God, he hoped that Suzuki never came back. He would much rather work for her Ladyship, Miss Suzuki, than President Suzuki.

At least she was fun.


	150. Morning Cigarettes

Mob woke up tired.

That was normal for her these days. She always woke up tired and she went to sleep tired and she was just…tired. No wonder dad was never happy. It was so tiring running Claw. Everyone needed something from her and she just…she was not dad. She couldn't be mean to people. Especially not people who depended on her. When people depended on you then you were supposed to be nice to them. You were supposed to be good to them and take care of them and all of that stuff. That was what Claw was, just a bunch of people that she had to take care of.

Except they were adults.

Mob wasn't an adult even though she felt like it. She sometimes felt like her whole life had gone by already and she was dad's age even though she knew that she was only ten. She had only been alive for ten years but it felt like one hundred sometimes. Like now. She felt like an old person trying to get out of bed. Her bones were tired and her muscles were tired and she was just…tired.

But she had to get up. The baby was crying again.

"Go back to sleep, big sis, I can take care of her. I do it all day already" said Sho. Mob didn't know why he always said that. She was the one who was supposed to take care of baby Mukai while she was home. Besides, she probably needed to be changed again and Sho wouldn't change her. Mob pulled her phone off the charger with her powers and checked the time. She had been fed less than an hour ago. She either needed to be changed or she was feeling lonely.

"Sho, no, you go back to sleep. It's too early and you're going to be sleepy all day if you get up now. I don't want that. I have to get up around now anyway for work so I'll take care of Mukai. You're little, you need your sleep. I'll make some breakfast and leave it in the microwave for you and I'll change her and put her back down for more sleep. Ok?" said Mob. That was how her day usually went. She made breakfast for Sho, the Awakened were still being annoying so she didn't want them in the house, and then she put Mukai down for more sleep or she left her in front of the TV with one of her movies on, and then she went to work. Sho would get up and take over babysitting during the day. Well Shibata and Minegishi would help him but he insisted on being the head babysitter. Mob would work all day and then come home and make dinner and spend time with her family and go over Sho's homework before giving him and Mukai a bath and then putting them to bed.

Sho didn't much want to take baths with Mukai but it was the best way to make sure that she didn't drown as babies tended to do.

That was how her days went. At night she got up with the baby. She wasn't about to let Sho do that. He was just a kid and he needed his sleep. He was only nine after all. She was ten now, practically an adult, and this was what adults did. They took care of their families without complaining. She had no reason to complain anyway. She had this. This was something that she could handle. She had been left in charge by dad and she could handle this.

Otherwise they were royally…um….they were…um….a word which she knew she was not supposed to say.

She was the one in charge. Sho could not be in charge and Sho should not have to be the one in charge. He could be the one in charge when he was a grown up. Now she had to be the grown up. She had always been the grown up between them because she had been the one who was older. She had always been the one to take care of him. Even back when mom had been around she had been the one to keep dad away from him and to keep him happy so that dad didn't get mad at him…and also there had been those times when mom had been too sick and tired to get out of bed. She had been the grown up then and she had to be the grown up now.

She had no idea why he seemed to be in such a hurry to be the grown up.

"I am not little. I'm only a year younger than you, you know." Said Sho. She had no idea why he wanted to be grown up. Didn't he realize how good he had it? Didn't he realize how lucky he was that he only had to do his homeschool work and play with Mukai. Mob was the one who changed her and stayed up with her at night and, also, she would even come home and feed her and stuff if Sho didn't feel like doing it.

He was so lucky. He had always been the lucky one.

"Sho, you're tired. Go back to sleep. I have this." said Mob. Sho glared at her. She could see him through the early morning light. She could see his aura, too. She didn't want to get into it with him that early in the day…or even at all. She had enough to deal with in her day.

Which was starting very soon.

"Fine. Whatever." Said Sho. So he was going to be grumpy that day. Fine. She would…she didn't know. She would play with him when she got home. Some game only he liked. Target practice or something like that…or maybe she would come home early…if she could.

She never could come home early.

There was always so much to do. Taking care of Mukai was so much easier than taking care of Claw. Like now. The minute that she picked Mukai up she stopped crying. Lonely then. She never slept all the way through the night. That would happen when she got older. Mob couldn't wait for her to get older. Old enough to not wake the whole house up in the middle of the night, anyway. Old enough to play with for real. Old enough to not throw up everywhere. Old enough to not need changing.

She needed to be changed.

That was, obviously, the least fun part of taking care of a baby. It was gross, very gross, and Mob was amazed that her mom had managed to do this for two babies. She couldn't wait until Mukai got to be too big for diapers. She would be a kid then and then things would be easier. Mob might have even been able to take her to work with her. She would sit on the floor and play with Sho while Mob worked just like how it had been with her and dad when she had been little.

Dad was coming back.

But if he didn't she had this. She could run Claw. She was running Claw. It wasn't that hard. She just mostly gave people whatever they wanted. She gave them casual Fridays and weekly parties and two Wiis for the breakroom so they could stop fighting with each other. She gave them extra cookies at lunch and extra syrup at breakfast. She was making them happy and that…it felt good. She could run Claw maybe even better than dad since people were not afraid of her…they weren't. They were always trying to be near her and talk to her and be in her aura…and they had never been like that with dad…and if dad never came back then she could run Claw…and she could take care of Mukai and Sho…and she would make sure that they grew up loved and happy…and then when Sho grew up she would give Claw to him…and they would all be a happy family…

Dad was coming back.

She shouldn't have been thinking like that. She had been thinking like dad was never going to come back. He would. He would come back…even though he hadn't said when he was coming back. Or where he was going. Or even leaving her a list of instructions for how she was supposed to run Claw and take care of a baby and a little brother. She wished that dad would have at least given her some directions…but she didn't get to tell dad what to do. She just went along for the ride.

Kind of like taking care of a baby.

She didn't tell Mukai what to do. Well she could but Mukai wouldn't listen. She couldn't even understand…well she could sort of understand. She recognized her own name now, mostly, at least it seemed like it. Her name had been Mi-Cha, which was what she had been called back in Korea, but now she was Mukai. She sort of recognized the name Mukai….

"Ok Mukai, I'm going to change you now. So if you have to pee anymore do it now and not all over my hands. That's always gross and I know that you're little and you don't mean it but…please just don't pee on me. I don't want that right now. I took a bath when I came home last night and I don't have time to take one now, ok?" asked Mob as she laid Mukai down on a towel on the bathroom floor. This was the best place to change her because tile was very easy to clean. She liked to pee on whoever was changing her…

Like now.

"I asked you not to do that….but that's ok. I'm not mad at you, I can't be mad at you, you didn't mean anything at all by that. You're a baby and you can't help it." Said Mob. She called the hand sanitizer down from the sink with her powers and was about to put some on before she remembered what happened last time she did that mid diaper change. Right. She had to finish this. She cleaned up Mukai and put a new diaper on her. She made sure to use the sticky tabs on the sides and not tape.

Sho always used tape.

She didn't know why. Mukai didn't go anywhere. Her diapers stayed on even when they were a little too big. They sort of had to guess at her size when buying diapers. She didn't come with a list of her measurements. Maybe she should have had Mukai's measurements taken. Dad had her and Sho measured regularly so that clothes could be ordered for them. Maybe Mukai needed new clothes. She was mostly out of clothes. She had been wearing some of Mob's doll clothes. She wished she had more baby dolls, she didn't like baby dolls that much because they only had closed ended storylines, but if she had more baby dolls then she would have had more baby clothes.

She maybe should have just gone out and gotten baby clothes herself.

That was what moms did, they bought clothes for their kids. Not that Mob was anyone's mom. She was too little and she didn't even have a boyfriend. To have a baby you needed a husband and to have a husband you needed a boyfriend and to have a boyfriend you needed to have a boy who you liked and who liked you back and to like a boy she had to spend time with someone until she got to know them and the only boy she spent time with, lately anyway, was Shimazaki and she did not like Shimazaki that much. He could be nice sometimes but he was also always in her space and touching her and stuff. Also he kept on stealing her drinks even though he could pour himself a drink. He knew where they were and he was the one who poured the drink for her so it shouldn't have been any more effort to pour his own drink.

She didn't understand him at all.

"Sorry about almost snapping at you. I guess that I'm just tired. Not that it's your fault or anything like that! I just…these are my problems and I shouldn't tell you about them. You're just a baby and you have to worry about growing up and stuff. You have to learn how to walk and talk and stuff. You're the baby and I'm the grown up." Said Mob as she did up the snaps on Mukai's baby pajamas. She smiled. Mob smiled back.

She loved Mukai's little smiles.

She wished that she could have been around to see more of them. She had work to do and Claw was not the place for a baby. It was barely the place for her. Dad's chair was too big and everyone was too weird and Shimazaki was too annoying and everything was just too….too much. She wished that she had never turned ten. Things were a lot easier when she had been nine. She'd only had to help dad out a little and she spent more of her day playing with Sho or Minegishi and not having to worry all the time…but those times were gone, now.

She was ten and that was just the way it was.

"Come on baby Mukai, let's get you winding down now. I'll put that movie you like on. Maybe you'll fall back asleep…actually I kind of want you to fall back asleep. I need to make Sho his breakfast and I have to make your next bottle and I have to see if I can find some clean clothes for Sho and…and I have a lot of things to do. So please, please, please fall asleep in front of the TV so I don't have to rock you…not that I don't like it! I do, I really do, I just…I'm very tired." Said Mob. She thought that Baby Mukai understood at least some of that. She held eye contact and her aura was even a little bit visible. She was so little…but she was getting bigger.

One day she would be big enough to do some things for herself.

Mob carried Mukai over to her TV watching space in the living room. It was just a blanket that they laid her on and some dolls for her to play with. The shoes were gone so she couldn't choke on them, Mob had remembered that, and she had also remembered that Mukai liked pink things. The blanket was pink and all of the dolls had pink dresses and stuff. It was Mukai's happy place.

Someone in the house ought to have been happy.

She put Mukai down in her happy place and then went to the kitchen to make breakfast for Sho with all the food groups even though he mostly just wanted to eat bacon. Well she was not going to just make him a plate of bacon. Humans were omnivores, not carnivores, and that meant that he needed bacon, eggs, toast, and fruit on the bottom yogurt. They still had some of those and she had made sure to get only the berry kind because those would not kill him. She had to be extra worried about citrus, now, because Fukuda was still gone…

She had to be extra worried about everything now that Fukuda was gone.

One time when she had been very little mom had gotten a bacon grease burn. Some grease had splashed up onto her hand and even though she ran it under water a big blister grew. It was so big that Sho thought that mom was growing another finger. It had hurt a lot but then Fukuda came right over and he healed her right up super fast. It must have been dangerous, though, because he had to stay by mom's side the whole day even after he healed her.

There was nobody to stay by her side or to heal her.

Which was why she used her powers for this. For all of this. Dad might have even been impressed by how she could make bacon and eggs and toast and wash a plate and pour a glass of milk all at once with her powers. She stood in the middle of the room and focused on her control. She had to focus when she did this many fine movements. Bread out of the toaster, then the butter and jam, and then keeping the eggs moving like mom had taught her, and then flipping the bacon over before it got too crispy since Sho hated crispy bacon…and then frying a piece of bread in the bacon fat because Sho liked it even though it was bad for him….and then putting it all on a plate…and then putting the plate in the microwave…and then putting the eggs away….

And then the baby started to cry.

Mob dropped the eggs, almost, but managed to catch them at the last second. One fell out, though, and now they had an uneven number of eggs and also there was egg on the floor. The egg would have salmonella in it, which Mob knew to be true because dad had warned her about that when she had been about to crack an egg into her rice when they had been in America, and then since baby Mukai spent most of her life on the floor she would get salmonella and die…

Since they had no healer.

Mob cleaned up the gross broken egg with her powers while she rushed over to Mukai. The minute she got there Mukai stopped crying….which meant that she had just been lonely. Mob didn't blame her. She got lonely sometimes too…even when she was surrounded by people at Claw she sometimes felt lonely….and she was a grown up. An adult…and a kid. A kidult. She was a kidult and she felt lonely so it must have been even worse for a little baby who didn't even have the ability to get up and be around people when she was all alone.

Mob felt bad.

But Mukai was too little to be in the kitchen when Mob was cooking. Mob was could have lost control and hurt her and she would never have been able to live with herself if she ever hurt Mukai…or anyone for that matter. They didn't even have a healer….but that was not the point. She was not the sort of person who hurt people with her powers or otherwise. Actually it hurt knowing that other people were hurt. Like now. Mukai had been sad and now she was happy and she needed to get back to sleep because Sho was not supposed to get up that early and he was just a kid and needed his sleep and she had to be a good big sister and let him sleep but she had a meeting that morning with people on the other side of the world so she had to get there early and….

And she needed a cigarette.

Drinking made her sleepy. Cigarettes made her more awake. Well the ones in the store did, anyway, the ones that Minegishi grew made her tired after a while. She needed a cigarette because she was way too tired and way too stressed and she could even see her aura. She knew that her aura should not have been showing like that. Mukai was making her aura show now, too, and that was a terrible thing to teach a baby. Dad said that having a very bright aura with a lot of flares and stuff was a sign of bad control and she was not allowed to have bad control because she was his Daughter and she was supposed to be better than that and if dad saw baby Mukai doing that then he might not like her and then he would make her go away…not that Mob was certain that she was even going to stay…and she wasn't even sure if dad was going to come back and-and-and-

And she carried baby Mukai outside with her.

She sat down on the grass with baby Mukai at her side. Dad said that this was a filthy habit, a terrible habit, a habit that was beneath him and therefore her by extension, but he said that about everything. Besides, he was always on her about controlling her emotions and her powers and stuff and this helped. She lost control when she was stressed and tired and this would help her be less stressed and tired.

Also she made sure that baby Mukai was sitting in a way where she wouldn't get any second hand smoke because that stuff was bad for you and they didn't have a healer anymore.

"You really shouldn't smoke. This is for adults and you're just a baby. I'm ten, I know that if you could talk you would have said something like that, but I'm also the one in charge. When you're ten then you can decide if you want to smoke but right now don't do what I do. Ok? And don't tell Sho about this, either, because I don't want him to smoke…also I know that you can't talk now but I know that you're going to start talking when you're about one and I don't want you to talk about this, ok?" asked Mob. Mukai was pulling up some grass. Mob had no idea if she was paying attention of if she even understood that much Japanese yet but she still had to try and make Mukai know that Sho could not know about this.

Sho could not do the things that she did.

She felt bad about needing other things to control her powers. She knew that she should have just been able to control her powers on her own like dad could. She was not dad. She needed help and she knew that dad would have been upset with her if he caught her smoking or drinking or doing all of the other things that Shimazaki had told her about but hadn't given her any to try yet he would have been mad at her…but he would not have been as mad as he would have been if he had caught her losing control of her powers.

That is if he ever came back.

She wanted dad back. She wanted him right back there in front of her even if he would have been shouting at her or hitting her or pulling her hair. She just wanted dad back. Even though she could do it all on her own, take care of Claw and also her family, she wanted her dad to come back….because she needed at least on parent. She needed one parent at least because…because….because she was not an orphan. Orphans were kids without parents but she had parents, two of them. She had two parents but they had both….both left her…

Mukai touched her leg.

Mob exhaled. She coughed a little. She had been thinking about herself too much. Mukai was a real orphan. She had no mom or dad and that was why she was her pretend little sister. Maybe that was what dad's secret mission was. Maybe he was going around the world looking for the most perfect parents ever for Mukai. People who were nice and smart and would take good care of her. People who knew that she liked having her back rubbed which she was rocked and that she hated socks but loved footy pajamas and also that her favorite movie was the Black Cauldron in Korean and Frozen in Japanese and also the Great British Baking thing in English…or maybe that was just because Shibata helped Sho watch her during the day and that was all that he watched….and also Mukai liked to lay on her stomach to play but not for too long or she'd throw up and also she liked to chew on crayons and…

Mob hoped that dad found some great parents, the most perfect parents in the world, for baby Mukai. Yes, that would have been a good reason for him to have left her and Sho all alone…

Not exactly alone.

"So we're smoking and talking to ourselves this morning. God Suzuki, you're never dull, are you?" asked Shimazaki. He was sitting cross legged in front of her now. He smelled like toothpaste and hair gel and also that weird smell that clung to him, Minegishi said that he took cologne baths, and Mob wanted him to get out of her space already because he was always crowding her and-

And she was not going to be mean.

"I'm smoking and talking to Mukai. We can go to work soon, I just have to finish this and then put her back to sleep." Said Mob. She inhaled again. She had come out here to avoid stress but there, in front of her, was the most stressful person that she knew.

She had asked herself this before and she would ask herself this again. What did Minegishi SEE in him?

"I'm in no hurry. Mind if I smoke with you?" asked Shimazaki. He didn't wait for her answer. He just got the cigarette pack out of his jacket pocket and held one between his teeth. The polite thing would have been to wait for her to say something.

"Well you have a cigarette between your teeth so I guess yes." said Mob. She inhaled again. Mukai was ripping grass up off the ground. Mob made the grass taller for her to reach better. She exhaled slowly. Shimazaki was watching her. He was staring at her with his aura. His eyes, thankfully, were closed now. He mostly just kept them closed but he did open them sometimes. He said that even without eyes he still had the same expressions as everyone else. He said that his brain hadn't totally gotten the memo that he was born without eyes.

Mob didn't know how that worked and she wanted to ask him about it but that would have involved talking to him more than she absolutely had to.

"You sure know how to make a guy feel wanted." Said Shimazaki with his cigarette still between his teeth. Mob frowned.

"I wasn't trying to." Said Mob. She wondered if that had come out mean. She wondered if maybe she should have told him that she liked having him around and wanted him to stay…but that would have been a lie and it was worse to lie than it was to say something that may have come off as being mean.

"Well someone got up on the wrong side of the bed." Said Shimazaki. Mob inhaled and exhaled…and maybe didn't take as much care as she could have to blow smoke away from him…and now she felt bad for being rude even though he was rude al the time.

"I'm fine, just a little tired. How are you?" Said Mob. She didn't know if he was being annoying or if she just thought that he was annoying. He was just asking after her…and that was what friends did, they asked after you…and she didn't know if they were friend or if she even wanted them to be friends…

That was mean. If someone wanted to be her friend then she should have been friends with them.

"Perfectly fine aside from the fact that I can't find my lighter. Help me out?" asked Shimazaki. Mob reached into her pocket and pulled out her lighter. Shimazaki had gotten this one for her. It was even pink and she figured that he had either gotten lucky and ended up with a girl's color or he had someone help him. It had been nice, the way he had been nice enough to get her this lighter, and she didn't know what to make of it. How he could be nice sometimes and obnoxious the next. He was so weird sometimes.

Like now.

She knew that he could see her reaching into her pocket to get her lighter out but instead he leaned in close and pressed his unlit cigarette against the end of hers. He was close, way too close, and she suddenly thought of how he was always saying that he could kiss her. Whenever she said or did something that he thought was smart he said 'Suzuki, I could kiss you' and also sometimes he kissed his hand and pressed it to her cheek…but he wouldn't kiss her for real. He was just being a gross boy. Like when Sho would lick his hand and chase her around with it.

She would never understand boys for as long as she lived.

She didn't know why he had to do things like that, things to annoy her, when he didn't have to. Why did boys have to be like that? They were just…she didn't know. She had no idea how new people came into the world when boys acted like that even into adulthood. Maybe that was why all the movies and books and magazines said that it was hard to find a good guy. She would gladly spend her whole life looking for a boyfriend, even if it meant dying single with cats….actually she liked cats a lot, if it meant that she didn't have to be married to a grown up version of her little brother.

She had no idea what Minegishi saw in him.

She could ask them, though, because they felt Minegishi's aura getting closer. It radiated from them and then down to the roots of the grass she was sitting on. She wondered why their aura as so weird. She wondered a lot of things about them. They had promised to answer her questions when she turned ten but now they were saying that there were some answers that she couldn't know until she was eleven, which was not fair at all. At least Shimazaki answered all of her questions.

Like now. He would have known what it was that was making Minegishi so mad if she'd had the chance to ask him.

"Good morning, Minegishi. Why do you seem so-" said Mob

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" asked Minegishi. Mob held her cigarette between her teeth and covered baby Mukai's ears. She did not want the F word to be her very first word. That would have been awful.

"Good morning to you too, Toshi. Sleep well? Any dreams you want to discuss? Still having the nightmare where you're stuck in the airplane?" asked Shimazaki

"Really, Ryou? Really? She's ten. She is ten goddamned years old. You know that she's ten years old." Said Minegishi. Mob knew what they were so mad about now…and she didn't get it. So what if she was ten? She could smoke if she wanted to. They had even smoked together once. Adults were so confusing sometimes.

"I can smoke if I want to. You smoked when you were my age. Shimazaki said so. Why are you so mad at me for? We even smoked together once. Not these kinds, though, the ones that you make. I like the ones that you make." Said Mob. She was not a child. She was ten but she was not a child. She was in charge of a baby, a little brother, and all of Claw. She was in charge of a bunch of adults and therefore if she wanted to smoke then she could smoke.

"I'm not mad at you, Mob, I'm mad at him. She is ten years old. Don't ruin her life." Said Minegishi. They were glaring at Shimazaki. He raised his hands up in the air like he was surrendering. To what Mob did not know.

"Hey, she's old enough to make her own choices in life." Said Shimazaki

"She's not old enough for the choices that you're trying to get her to make…and you know what I mean. You know EXACTLY…exactly what I mean." Said Minegishi. Mob hoped that he understood what they meant because she didn't. She got the idea that there was something there that she should have been understanding, another layer to what she was hearing, but she wasn't sure. She could be very clueless when it came to talking, sometimes.

"Like you said, she's only ten. Even I'm not that fucked up, Toshi, you know me." Said Shimazaki. He scooted away from her. Mob wondered why, now of all times, he decided to give her space. She didn't understand anything of what was happening in front of her. She wished that she had some kind of kid to adult translator…or maybe just a big book of expressions so she could puzzle out what was passing between them.

Shimazaki was better at this and he was blind.

"As much as anyone can know you, Shimazaki, as much as anyone can know you." Said Minegishi

"You know him very well, he said so. That's why he calls you Toshi but he won't call me Mob that often. He said that he'd know me that well, too, in three or four years though." said Mob. She knew that she had said something wrong but she didn't know what. She could tell by their auras. Mukai noticed too, that was why she stared crying. Too many negative feelings were passing between Shimazaki and Minegishi…

And Mob hated being the cause of them.

"Mob, come on. That baby should not be awake this early, she needs to be put back to sleep right now before what little schedule she's on goes to shit. Let's go inside. Shimazaki….sit there and think about what kind of human being you are." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't say anything. She just picked up Mukai and followed Minegishi inside.

She didn't know what they were fighting about, well she knew that she had done something wrong but she didn't know what, but she did know one this.

Minegishi had been right, Mukai must still have been pretty tired.


	151. The Little Girl in the Vipers' Nest

He had delivered a little girl into the viper's nest.

This was awesome.

"What kind of game is Suzuki playing sending us his daughter?" Some high ranking member of some Chinese yakuza, or whatever they were called over there, family had said that. He had said it in Mandarin thinking that neither he nor Suzuki, Miss Suzuki, could understand him. He didn't let on, of course, that he spoke near perfect Mandarin and neither did she.

Perfect.

This whole thing was just perfect. He knew that the smart thing, the responsible thing, would have been to tell Suzuki to put this off until her dad came back from parts unknown. He knew that as the only member of the Ultimate Four, his little pet name for him and Toshi and Shibata and Suzuki's daughter, with any experience in this sort of underworld stuff he should have had the foresight to know that sending these idiots a little girl instead of Suzuki himself was a bad idea.

He knew that they would take it as an insult. That was why told her that this was a good idea.

"This is an insult. How anyone could be so arrogant….we should just leave. Leave and take our business elsewhere." More Mandarin. So rude. Suzuki, Miss Suzuki, was always accusing him of being rude but at least he always spoke Japanese to her. Honestly. These morons. She was a real stickler for politeness just like her father. These morons were making a big mistake.

And he was not.

He knew what these types of people did to little girls. Hell, he knew what their business was. She didn't know, he was smart enough not to tell her just how filthy her father's hands were, and he was smart enough not to leave her alone. If worse came to worse then he could just teleport away from her. He doubted that they would turn this esper over to Claw.

Nasty business these people were in. Just nasty.

"We'll do business with someone else. It's a big province. We'll move through some other area."

"Leave and get back to work. Why are we even wasting time on this child? It's an insult."

"A child with a blind bodyguard. What is Suzuki even trying to tell us here?"

"Let's just leave already….leave and burn his business to the ground. He forgets that he needs us more than we need him." He saw her aura. A spike of curiosity. Not good. She did not need to be poking around in that area. He wasn't as heartless or as messed up as Toshi thought he was. Nobody needed to know that their dad was involved with people stealers. That was what he had called them his whole life. Even his own father had warned him about people in that nasty business and he had been known as the Shogun's Decapitator back when he had been known as anything other than dead.

Nobody needed to know the terrible truth about their dad at her age.

He 'saw' that her cigarette was burnt to low. He could smell it getting down to the filter. She needed another one. To her credit she was doing what he had told her to do. Just sit there and wait until someone addressed her in Japanese. At that point she could say whatever she wanted to. Right now she had to sit there and watch and listen and sip her drink, poured by him of course, and smoke her cigarette and just look like an innocent little girl.

And not the monster that she was.

Well maybe that was too strong a word for her. She was a nice kid when he got down to it. A little high strung but she was a Suzuki….and the fact that she was a Suzuki was what made 'monster' an applicable word to her in the first place. She was and was not a monster. She was a sweet kid who cared about the people around her and did cute things and all of that but her aura also screamed just as loud as her father's, she was just as powerful as her father, and she had destroyed the Eighth Division on her own.

She had a body count more impressive than his had been at the tender age of ten.

He replaced her cigarette and lit it for her. He could see, sort of, the body language of the people around them. Not shock at the smoking and drinking ten year old, no there were worse things in the world and these guys were responsible for them, but instead annoyance. This was an insult. There was no other way to take this as anything other than an insult.

And yet nobody tried to do anything about it.

He hadn't had anything fun to do in days. The Awakened and their nonsense could only do so much for him. Toshi was being cold and distant too, even for them, because they had this crazy idea in their head that he was planning on sleeping with Suzuki's daughter. Of course he wasn't, she was way too young right now, and yeah he was planning on it at some point in the future but he didn't get why Toshi even cared. Obviously he wouldn't make her to anything that she didn't want to do and obviously he would wait until she was old enough that it wouldn't be whatever it was that Toshi was imagining now.

He just did not understand them sometimes.

He heard the clink of glass against the coffee table. He heard the shuffling of feet. These idiots were just going to walk out? That was it? He could smell gunpowder on them. He knew that they were armed even without smelling the gunpowder, recently fired guns, on them. It was just common sense that one did not just walk into these meetings unarmed. He would have thought that the worst that society had to offer would have done SOMETHING interesting.

The world had, at some point, become boring.

And he did not have a pathological fear of boredom. He just couldn't stand to be bored, that was all, and it was also understandable. The world had a lot to offer and life was too short to sit around not taking it in. Things like attempted kidnappings or gun fights or listening to a bunch of hardened underworld types try and do business negotiations with a ten year old girl. Hell, he was about to trip someone just to get some excitement in his life. If he had wanted to be bored he could have just advised her to stay at HQ and deal with the nonsense the Awakened kept on coming up with. Even stealing people's cookies right off of their trays would have been more fun than sitting here and listening to people carrying on in Mandarin.

He was legitimately going to die of boredom if something didn't happen soon.

"We're not here to play, little girl, and tell the pathetic excuse of a man you call 'father' that if he's going to insult us like this this then our partnership is hereby dissolved." Japanese now. The mother tongue. Such a weird phrase. Honestly it brought to mind a million and one filthy scenarios that he was trying his best not to get lost in. He needed a drink. His mind was going a mile a minute again. He needed to stay present in the moment, now, because it looked like there was shit that needed stirring. That was it? He put her in mortal danger for that?

The universe hated him today.

"Don't call me little girl. That's not my name. It's Suzuki. Suzuki-san. That's what you'll call me." Oh. My, my, my what have we here? That was a rarely heard tone from her. Her aura was a tangle of barely contained screams. He could, if he focused on her, see the muscles near her eyes contracting. Well someone was pissed off.

Finally. Things were getting interesting.

He could hear the electric hum above him. He could feel her power in the air. Control was not her forte, hence the childhood alcoholism, but he'd purposely not given her that much to drink that day. Her tolerance was better than what it had been when he met her but he did not need her stumbling around and passing out. Thank God he had been teaching her about moderation and spacing out her drinks. Toshi had been giving her tiny capfuls and expecting her to learn moderation that way. Honesty. They could be so dumb for a smart person.

Thank God that Suzuki's daughter had someone in her life who had her best interests at heart.

"Also don't ever talk about my father like that. He's a great man and he would have been here if he could have been. I told you that when you came in." Well now someone was well and truly angry. Huh. A side so rarely seen of her…and for good reason. The normal people around her were getting scared. Elevated breathing and heart rates. The smell of fresh sweat in the air. Adrenaline in there, too, enough of it for him to smell at his distance.

Which wasn't surprising considering that the room was trying to upend it's self.

"You said that you wanted to meet with Suzuki the head of Claw. Well with my father away that's me. Whatever you wanted to discuss with my father you can discuss with me. I'm right here." Uncontrolled telekinesis. Well, barely controlled telekinesis, anyway, was terrifying. He didn't show it, of course, how much she scared him sometimes. Not her as a person but what she was.

She was to him what an esper was to a normal person.

There was no shame in being beaten by the best. That was why he never took it to heart just how thoroughly the boss had kicked his ass all of those years ago. That was also why he was not ashamed to say that he was bested, too, by this little girl. Out classed. She was the second most powerful being in the world after all, he was right to be a little bit afraid of her.

Just a little.

"And say whatever you have to say in Japanese. I speak Mandarin too but you didn't know that. It's rude to purposely exclude someone by speaking a language that you think that they don't understand and I don't like rude people." There was one of her lines. He had been trying to find them since he took up the post as her bodyguard, cigarette lighter, drink pourer, and future drug dealer God willing. She was a bigger stickler for politeness than Suzuki was…which was weird because she was much more fun in every other area of life. Genetics were weird like that, he supposed, but what did he know? He wasn't anybody's father….he hoped.

If he did have a kid out there he hoped to whatever God existed that it wasn't half the monster that Suzuki's kids were.

Those guys were about to piss themselves. Suzuki really needed to take a page out of his Daughter's book. The guy kept his power under lock and key, well he tried to, but really these little freak outs would have served him well. It would have reminded the people around him who they served. Suzuki was the most powerful man on Earth but he so rarely showed it. So buttoned up all the time. His kid on the other hand…

This.

This was how you got things done! Not lengthy boring meetings! Show people how terrifying you could be without ever trying. God, he wished that these morons had been espers. If they had been espers then they would have actually been pissing themselves. They would have been able to hear, well see because they were sighted and all of that, her aura and they would have known that nobody was supposed to have an aura like that let alone a kid. So far they were just afraid because stuff was floating and her powers filled the room so that activated the good old fight or flight instincts that they should have been listening to instead of trying to be brave. They were used to stuff floating and other insignificant phenomena.

They brought a lot of future Awakened into Claw after all and the best Awakened came from people who already had something close to gifts to begin with.

"Fine. If you want to talk to my dad, if really have to, then you can wait for him to come back but whatever deal you had with him keeps going until he talks to you. Ok?" She stood up, now, and put her drink on the table. He decided to finish it. No use letting good cognac go to waste. Well any more of a waste than giving it to a ten year old girl.

Though he did feel bad about taking it from her since she needed it more than he did.

"I'm getting back to work. Good bye." Well that was his cue. He put his hand on her shoulder and in an instant they were back to her office. Suzuki's office….her office. Yeah, without Suzuki in it his office went to his oldest kid. Well it should have gone to his firstborn son but that kid…Claw wouldn't last a day under that kid. He wasn't exactly leadership material after all.

Not like his sister.

That was good. That was way good. Interesting. Finally, something happened! Well he would have preferred a gunfight or an attempted kidnapping or something like that but, hey, watching people almost piss themselves because a ten year old girl put them in their places…that was pretty damn interesting. Funny.

Entertaining.

"You can let go of me now." She said. He waited five seconds before he let go of her. He couldn't help it. Messing with her was just…fun. Especially when she was pissed off like this. He had no idea that she could have been this fun. He needed to piss her off more often. Not now, though, because her aura was still trying to fill the room. She was fun to rile up, to piss off, but he did not want this place to go the way of the Eighth Division.

He liked being alive, thank you very much.

He popped over to the rapidly dwindling supply of very fancy alcohol that Suzuki just let sit on those shelves for years and years. Such a waste. He poured her a cup of something that she was still way too young to appreciate. Or maybe not because she had been going through this stuff like water. Yeah, she was a little girl of wealth and taste or whatever.

"Here, you need this more than I do." He said as he put her drink in front of her. He decided to stay there sitting on the edge of her desk. She hated this, she knew that she hated it, and he knew that riling her up right now wasn't the best thing to be doing…

He couldn't resist.

He didn't try and take her drink from her again, though, because this was not the time to touch her. He knew that if he were to touch her that his barrier would fall. She was trying to contain her aura, her power, and it was…not the best thing to listen to. The drink was helping, though, and the lit cigarette in her other hand. Suzuki was going to be so pissed if he ever came back. His own daughter smoking in his office, drinking his expensive for show liquor, and telling off his underworld associates….

Hilarious.

It would be hilarious when Suzuki came back and saw what became of his precious organization. When he came in and saw the chaos that came from his absence. That would teach him to fuck off to parts unknown and leave a kid in charge…though he still wasn't sure what would have been better. Him never coming back and his kid being in charge or him coming back and seeing what his kid had done.

Both would be entertaining…though he wouldn't mind working for her for a little while longer.

"Thank you." She said. He watched her take a sip. He let his aura settle on hers as her settled down. The little muscle groups that she wasn't even aware of. The way her breathing changed. She really was fascinating even in these little ways. Of course those little ways weren't anything, not really, not when there were so many big ways she could have been fascinating.

Entertaining.

"That was pretty great, Suzuki, what you did back there." he said. He knew that she liked to be called Mob. He didn't get it. He knew what a Mob character was, a background character, but he didn't know why she would apply that to herself. He was used to tuning people out, their auras, and she was one of the few people who was impossible to tune out. She was something special but for some reason she just…didn't want to be who she was.

So weird.

He had known, since the beginning, that he was different. Well it was kind of hard not to know that he was different. His parents had not been happy to have a blind son and they were not shy about voicing their opinions. Hell, dad had done more than voice his opinions….he had learned to put up a barrier real quick. Other people couldn't do that. Other people couldn't 'see' in the way that he could. For his entire life he had never had problems getting around. He could get around by 'seeing' with his powers and he hadn't even realized what he had been doing. The teleportation and stuff had come later.

He hadn't always liked being different but he had never hated it to the point of wanting to be a Mob character. Much too dull.

"No it wasn't. I was mean." She said.

"No, you were great." He said. This kid…what was with this kid? He had never been like that when he had been a kid. So…nice….all the time. Not that real sort of niceness that Toshi had inside of them deep down. No, she did more of the display of niceness that people. Like it wasn't just something inside of her. Why did she want people to think that she was nice? Well it was advantageous to her, for people to think that she was nothing but a sweet little girl, but then why keep it up in private when it was just the two of them?

There were so many layers to unwrap when it came to her. He loved it.

"I was not! Sorry just….I'm sorry. About yelling at you and also…because of how I was before. I just…I almost lost control. Please don't tell my dad." She said. He knew how she felt. Claw was the place to go when your parents were pieces of shit and there were very few bigger pieces of shit than Suzuki. Well Shimazaki's own father….but then again his father had never abandoned him with his illegitimate kid. Dad at least had the good sense to keep those kids away from his main family.

Eh, not a contest that he wanted to get into with her. Who the hell wanted to win the world's worst childhood contest? There wasn't anything worth winning there, not even one of those crappy cereal box prizes.

"Don't apologize for that. So you almost lost control? Big deal. You had a room full of grown men about to piss themselves in fear. Do you have any idea how entertaining that was? God, I was so fucking bored-" he said

"Is that all you care about? Not being bored?" she asked. He flicked her on the head. Not hard enough to hurt her, just enough to annoy her. She was annoyed now, not angry, she was fun to annoy but terrifying to truly anger. She was calmer now, thank God, calm enough not to send him flying for flicking her over the head.

"What else matters? The way I see it is that we're just all here living our lives trying not to be bored. That's the point of it all. We work so we have money to do things to keep ourselves occupied, to keep ourselves moving, because the alternative is just sitting around and waiting to die. So, yes, boredom has no appeal to me." He said. She was thinking, now, he could tell. Good.

"Being a good person matters more than not being bored. We're supposed to be here to help each other out and stuff. People need other people and we all need to be good to one another. That's why I feel bad about what I did…and you don't believe that which is why you are the way you are." She said.

"Oh? And what way would that be?" he asked. He knew that she didn't like him, not that much, and he was curious as to what she would possibly say to him on the subject of not liking him. Not liking 'the way he was'. He had no idea that she could ever be like that, so honest about how she felt, and he liked it. She was like an onion with all of her layer but also much more pleasant to peel apart. To unwrap. So maybe she was more like a present then. Not that he had ever gotten the appeal of wrapping presents. Sure the paper felt nice to the touch but the basic point had always been lost on him.

She felt nice.

Her aura did, anyway. She wasn't angry now. No pain to her at all. Now it was more like standing under a warming lamp, or under the sunlight at high noon. He could understand why so many people wanted to be in her aura. In her presence. There was something to her, to the barely controlled power, to the aura that could so easily hurt if she let it. Being near her was pleasant, like a warm afternoon, and also exciting like walking across a ledge. A tall ledge like the one at the dam. He had done that when he was her age, teased death, and he had won.

He wondered if he would win with her.

"Just…the way you are. The way you're always trying to annoy people. The way that you can't sit still. The way that you only care about yourself and how you feel. Just…that's what I meant. I care about people and you only care about yourself and not being bored. That's all." she said

"I care about people. I don't go around shouting it for the world to hear but I do care about people. I care about Toshi, you know, or maybe you don't. I do care about them as much as I can care about someone." He said. He wasn't incapable of caring for another human being. He just…cared about himself, too. You only had yourself at the end of everything. People could be fun, they could come into your life and upend everything but in a good way, or they could hurt you in ways that you never could imagine. He had learned this basic truth about the world early on. That didn't mean that he had given up on caring for other people.

He had just shortened his list, that was all.

She cared for everyone. That was what her problem was. She poured too much of herself around and ended up spreading herself too thin. That was why she was always so tired. She tried to do everything to please everyone and it just left her exhausted. He could tell. Her breathing, her heartrate, her aura, her posture, all of the aches and pains that she wasn't even aware of…all of it. He wondered when she would just tell everyone to fuck off already.

Not likely to be happening any time soon.

"If you care about Minegishi then why do you fight with them sometimes? And annoy them?" she asked.

"Because, Mob, it may have escaped your notice but I am something of an asshole. That's just who I am. Just like how you are something of a people pleaser. That's the word for it, you know, the way you just try and make everyone around you happy all the time even when you know you're killing yourself. You think that people need other people, and yeah that's how our society runs and shit, but people also need themselves. At the end of the day the only person that you'll be left with is yourself." He said

"I don't think I can think like that." She said after a while. He flicked her over the head again, well he would have if she had not put up a barrier, and he could have…no. He could not have gotten through that barrier. He was reminded, then, that he was sitting there having a philosophical conversation with the most powerful being on the planet. She could have crushed him like a bug but she wouldn't. She had power, all the power, and she wouldn't do anything with it. She wouldn't do a damn thing to hurt him just like she hadn't done a damn thing to hurt those assholes back there. Just like she would never do a damn thing about…anything! Not without someone to show her that there was a better life than being a nice little people pleasing doormat for eternity. Even now she wasn't going to tell him to get the fuck away from her. He was in her space, he knew that he was in her space, and he knew that she did not like him in her space.

But she wasn't going to do anything about it.

Her brother was a little demon child. The most stubborn and headstrong kid that Shimazaki had ever met. Her father was planning on declaring war on the entire world. Her mother…well he knew nothing at all about her mother but he assumed that she must have been a formidable woman to put up with Suzuki for however many years they were together. This girl…how had she come from the Suzuki family? How had Suzuki made someone like her? How was that even genetically possible? He could not see Suzuki putting up with this. No, Suzuki would have kicked his ass if he had ever thought about getting this close.

He could have kissed her if he wanted to.

Not that he was going to. She was ten. Gross. Stupid, too, because he would get nothing out of it. In three or four years maybe but not now. He could have done it, though, just to mess with him…but then Toshi would have been mad at him. That would have sucked. It always sucked when Toshi was mad at him. The ideas they got in their head sometimes. The craziest of ideas. She was a kid, obviously he wasn't going to mess around with her, he was just planting the idea in her head that it was an option when she stopped being a kid. She would grow up, as people tended to do, and he was not going to be cast aside when she did. He was not going to be left behind in the inevitable regime change.

Also she was going to be the most powerful woman on the planet. That could have been fun.

"You're staring at me." She said

"You know that I physically can't." he said. He knew exactly what she meant but it was fun to mess with her like this. There. She was annoyed. He hear her dig her feet into the rug. He saw her shoulders tense. She was making a point to look away from him, now. He could see her fingers moving and he could hear the click and clack of her keyboard. He reached over and flipped a piece of her hair. She pulled it away from him with her powers.

"You know what I meant. Your aura was focused on mine." She said. How she could even feel something so small as his aura against hers he could not understand. Not when she was as loud as she was, her aura, and not when she was making such an active effort at avoiding him.

"Well I was thinking about you." He said

"About me? Why?" she asked. She had stopped working now. He had her attention. He had the attention of the most powerful esper on the planet…well the second most powerful…but Suzuki had fucked off to parts unknown. So she was, as of now, the most powerful being on Earth….and he had her full attention. What should he say…what outcome did he even want?

Not her anger, no, that would not have been good for anyone…especially not him.

More conversation? Maybe….but he had already seen her annoyed. She was annoyed now and as entertaining as it was he knew that the novelty would wear off soon and then he would just end up bored again. Well that is if he even could be bored of her. She was so much fun to annoy…and fluster. Yeah. He hadn't flustered her in a while. That could be fun.

"I was just thinking of how easy it would be for me to lean over and kiss you right now." He said. Yup. She was flustered. She had put up a barrier and now she was turned away from him. She was warm now, he could feel it from his distance, and she was shaking a little too.

This was a good outcome…for him, anyway.

"You want to kiss me? Why? I'm ten." She said. Now that was a very good reason not to kiss her and also why he would not be kissing her right now. But she didn't know that. God, he was going to pay for this later. Toshi would not like this one bit but they would forgive him. He'd throw himself to their mercy later. Right now there was fun to be hard.

"Because you can be really fascinating when you want to be. Like back there with those morons. You can be fascinating and brilliant and I would love to get to know you better." He said. She was holding her hair down. Her aura was freaking out again. Flustered was a good look on her.

"You don't have to kiss me to get to know me. If you want me to be your friend then I'll be your friend but I don't want to kiss you." She said

"I didn't mean right now. You're ten, like you said, and there wouldn't be any point to it. Besides, Toshi would kill me." He said. That was the truth and one that would put her mind at ease. Not that he would actually do anything…but she didn't know that.

"Even if I was older I wouldn't want to kiss you. Minegishi kisses you. Why would I want to hurt my friend like that? That isn't nice and I'm not like that…and also even if I was older I still wouldn't like you like that. I mean you can be a nice person sometimes but also you can be…like this." she said

"Yeah, well, that's what you love about me." He said

"I don't. I really don't. Now please get off of my desk and let me work." She said. He obliged her. She had gone from flustered to annoyed and he had already seen her annoyed. That wasn't new or fun. He'd leave her be for now. He'd had his fun with her and she'd had enough of him. Not totally, of course, he knew not to push her to the point where she wanted nothing to do with him at all.

Because that would not have been good for him.

She was a little girl but she wouldn't be forever. She would grow up and he had no intention of being cast aside when she did. He had to think about the future and what kind of future he wanted for himself. Something a hell of a lot less dull than following Suzuki around would have been great. She'd be fun, his daughter, in a few years. When she stopped being quite so little. She when got more fun to fluster. She would never be dull, Suzuki Shigeko, and he loved that about her. He'd spent too many years of his life bored, he wouldn't spend another second of his life like that, and she was many things but none of them were boring.

She was a little girl in the vipers' nest after all. What could be boring about that?


	152. Pictures of the Past, Living in the Now

Mob and Sho had taken a lot of pictures over the years.

They kept their pictures in their phones and tablet. Back in the olden days, back when dad had been their age, people kept their pictures in albums and stuff. Mom had some of those back in the Castle. As far as Mob knew those were still at the Castle where they had left them. She didn't know. She wasn't sure of what became of that house and their stuff and…and mom…and also dad….

But she and Sho had plenty of pictures.

"That's one mine and dad's Chinese checkers games from back when I was little. I took a picture of the board so we had a record of what it was supposed to look like." Said Mob as she flipped through her pictures. She was going back pretty deep now. She was already at pictures of the old house…and she wasn't sure if it was ok to look at these. Not because dad wouldn't have wanted this, he was still on his mission, but because looking at the way things used to be made her feel sort of…sad.

She wanted to go home.

But she could never go home again. Now everywhere and nowhere was her home. They were like nomads, dad had said, and she and Sho should have been happy to travel around and stuff like that. The normal kids of the world didn't get to travel around the world. Mob was happy that she had been able to travel, she had been to every single Disney Park in the world which was a lot more than most people, but she also wanted to go home. Not home to where she had been staying but home to, well, her home. The Castle. The home that she had shared with her family.

The home in these pictures.

But she could never go home. She and Mukai were in the same boat. Mukai's home was Korea, Mob didn't know where in Korea but she knew that Mukai was Korean, and dad said that they were never going back to Korea again. Dad had said, back when she wanted to go back to Seoul, that they were never going to go back to Korea because of reasons that she was not supposed to ask about because she was the kid and he was the adult and he was the one who got to decide where they went and stuff like that.

Mob could have gone back to Korea if she wanted to since she was the boss of Claw, now.

She could have brought Mukai back home. She could have had the Awakened walk around with pictures of her, Mob and Sho had taken a lot of them so there would be no shortage of them, and they could have asked every single woman in Korea if they were Mukai's mom. That way they could have at least given her one last look at the place that Mukai had called home for the first three months of her life. She could have…she could have seen her mom again…but that would have been a bad idea because Mukai's mom might have been like their mom.

Their mom didn't want anything to do with them.

"That's boring. Next!" said Sho. Mukai was so bored that she was falling asleep…and yes, Sho knew that putting Mukai to sleep was the point of all of this, but still. Life was way too short to be bored. He didn't want to sit there, bored, looking at pictures of games that big sis had played with dad. Boring games. He wouldn't have wanted to have been a part of that game, anyway. Big sis and dad had always been so boring when they had been together. Not that he cared. He had fun on his own and with baby sis and that was what mattered. Besides, it didn't matter anyway. Dad was gone, now, to some place that Sho had no idea where.

He was coming back, though.

He was going to come back and…and Sho had no idea if he wanted his dad to come back. Big sis wouldn't have to run Claw if dad was back. Dad would go back to teaching him how to run Claw if big sis was back at home doing home stuff. He should have been the one out there running Claw, not him, but when dad said that she was in charge he meant that she was in charge of everything. It just was not fair and…

And at least he got to stay home with baby sis.

"Ok, but don't shout. She's getting sleepy. I need her to get to sleep so I can get back to work. I have a lot of things to…figure out." Said Mob. She was not in any hurry to get back to work. She would be back there with all the people who needed her to settle all kinds of stuff and decide stuff and help people get their arms out of things. Now people were putting their arms in a hole in the wall that someone had made while fighting…and what was it with boys and sticking their arms places!?

She needed a cigarette.

Not one of the fun ones, no, the ones who made her calm down and wake up and also not be hungry. She hardly ever got to eat these days. She had spent lunch with Sho and baby Mukai. She had changed baby Mukai but then she had gotten upset and now she needed to get back to sleep but…but she needed to eat too and she wanted to sleep and…

And she needed another cigarette.

"You're always at work." Said Sho

"I have to work, Sho, because dad's gone." Said Mob

"I never said that you couldn't go to work, I just said that you always went to work." Said Sho

"I know you and I know that you were saying that to complain." Said Mob

"No, you're just bad at talking. Get a clue, big sis." Said Sho. That was mean and he knew that it was mean but he had to say something because, yes, he had been saying that to complain. She was always at work and they never played anymore. She was always tired and she always got up super early and came home super later just like dad always had. He didn't mind it when dad did that, dad was always mad at him for some reason, but big sis…they used to be friends.

Well as much friends as a brother and a sister could be.

They were siblings and being siblings was sort of like being friends but also being…something different. When you were brother and sister then you had no choice in being friends. It wasn't like how he was back in school, how he would just have a bunch of different kids to be friends with, because he had no choice in who his big sister was. She was just this other kid who he had shared his whole life with. If he hadn't known her already he wouldn't have wanted to hang out with her. She was a girl and he never was good friends with girls. They had always been so boring and their games had been different and if he was friends with a girl, every single time he had ever played with one, she would try to hold his hand or even kiss him…and if big sis ever tried to hold his hand or kiss him he would die of being grossed out. Yes, he knew that she kissed him and held his hand already but she did that like a sister, not like she was trying to be his girlfriend, and he didn't even want a girlfriend anyway let alone one who was already his sister.

They weren't friends, they were siblings, and he missed her.

But dad would be back and then…well he'd be mad because Sho and Mukai had been drawing on the walls together because they were white and plain and boring and there was nothing to do. Well there was a lot to do to take care of her. She cried and ate and needed changing and all of that stuff but it was so…tedious. The whole thing was just so tedious, sometimes, taking care of her. He loved her, though, he loved his baby sis.

His pretend baby sis.

"Oh. Sorry. I guess I should. Um…here. Look at this." Said Mob. Sho was looking away from her now. She decided to flip to another picture. She didn't want him to be upset…and not just for the selfish reason that she was really tired. She also wanted him to be happy all of the time. She wanted her little brother to have a happy life, the best life that he could have had, because right now her life was having a family and running Claw. That would be his life when he grew up and he needed to have as good of a life as he good before he had to take over for dad.

"Oh yeah…I remember that. My birthday. The one where dad got me all of those cakes." Said Sho. That was one of his happiest memories…and it made no sense. Dad was….dad. Sho wished that he could have done something mean that day. It would have been more…more normal…for dad to have been mean. It would have made more sense. Mom was the nice one and dad was the mean one.

That was how his life had been.

But now everything was upside down. Mom was gone and dad was in charge all the time but he was gone and now big sis was working and he was a big brother now and…and everything was just so different! He wished that he could have gone back. He wished that he could have gone back into the world of those pictures and just…just been little again. Just been six and five and four and three and two and one and then baby Mukai's age again. He wanted…he wanted a lot of things that he couldn't have.

So maybe he should have just enjoyed what he had now.

"Do you see, Mukai? That was Sho's birthday. You've never had a birthday but you will…and maybe even with us. You're going to have a good birthday with us. We'll have cake and singing and presents and you're going to be so happy that you remember it for the rest of your life." Said Mob

"She's going to be one. She won't remember." Said Sho. He didn't know why he was being mean. He didn't know why he was so sad when he looked at that picture. He didn't know why he wanted her to go to another picture and also to go somewhere else.

"She might, I sort of remember things from being little. Like I have this memory of you in this…white room…and you were in this crib sort of thing with clear plastic sides…and I remember a weird smell…and also being sort of scared. I think that I must have been a baby then because you were a baby. We were babies together. So I think that people can remember from so far back." Said Mob

"We never had any white rooms in the Castle. Mom had most of the walls blue or green or yellow or brown. The bathrooms were pink, too." Said Sho. He knew that he should not have been talking about mom. He knew that mom had left them and dad said that they were never supposed to mention her ever again…

But dad wasn't there anymore.

It was just him, big sis, and baby sis. Also the other guys but they weren't Suzuki's. Well little sis wasn't a Suzuki, not a for real one, but she wouldn't have been out of place in their family. She was an esper with red hair and blue eyes. She looked like she could have been his little sis. She looked more like him than big sis did. He wondered if she knew that. He wondered if little sis thought that she was his for real little sis. He wondered if she would have some weird, hazy, half formed memories of him and big sis.

He didn't know if she would even be there with them for that long.

"Maybe it was before mom had the walls painted. Remember the pictures we saw of mom painting the house with you in her stomach? It must have taken a while to finish if she was painting the house while you were in her stomach." Said Mob

"That might have been you." Said Sho

"No, all the pictures of mom with a baby in her stomach are of you. She said that she lost all of the pictures of me from before I was two. I hope that doesn't happen to me." Said Mob

"That you end up with a baby in your stomach?" asked Sho. That was a thing that happened to girls. They grew up and fell in love and then did the gross thing with the guys they loved and then had babies. He didn't know what he would do, though, if some guy was hanging around his big sister trying to do that sort of stuff with her. That was what little brothers did, kept guys away from their big sisters. Big brothers too but Mukai was still way too little for guys to be trying to kiss her and all of that other stuff.

"No, I want to have a baby when I grow up. I want to have a boy called Shigeo and a girl called Shoko. After you and me. Then they can grow up to be good friends like we're good friends. I just meant that I don't want to lose all of the pictures of me when I have them in my stomach." Said Mob. She knew that she was tired all the time, that babies were a lot of work and it never stopped, but she still wanted to grow up and have a family and stuff. It would have been easier when she was an adult. Then she would know what to do. Babies were hard now because she was still learning. Thanks to Baby Mukai and Sho she knew that when she grew up she would be a very good mom.

She wouldn't run away and leave her kids all alone with their dad…and also she wouldn't leave them all alone together, either.

She would be like her mom but also better. She wouldn't get sick, that was why she made sure to eat all of her food groups every single day, and if she did get sick then she wouldn't be in bed all day and making her kids worry. She would always be there for her kids and she would love them even if they were very different from her. She would be there for her kids and she would never run away and…and she was going to do a good job.

"They might not be lost. They might just be in one of the Treasure Rooms." Said Sho. He flipped the picture on her tablet. It was of the Treasure Room. They hadn't ever fully explored it. He wished that he would have gone through all of the boxes while he still had the chance. He would go through all of the boxes later, though, when he had a kid. He would explore with his kids and be friends with them and never hit them and…and they would be happier than he had been when he had been little.

Of course he would have to be responsible for putting a baby in it's mom's stomach…and he didn't want to think about that. Gross.

"Yeah, there was more than one." said Mob as she flipped through the pictures. She remembered that hat. She was looking at a picture, a selfie, that she had taken of herself with that pretty hat on that she had found. She wondered if that hat was still there. She wondered if the Treasure Room was still there. She wondered if the house was even still there.

She didn't know.

"There were whole parts of the house that we never got a chance to look through." Said Sho

"I know." Said Mob. She could have gone back, maybe, possibly. She knew how to order a plane. She knew how to tell the plane where she needed to go. She knew that there were things that needed doing in person at other HQs and Divisions and bases and cells and teams and stuff. She knew that since she was dad, now, she could have seen to everything that needed to be done….and some of those things needed to be seen to in Japan….

If they went back to the Castle then she knew that she would never have been able to leave.

She and Sho could have played house there. That was what they were doing, now, playing house. They were playing house in this house that wasn't theirs. Well it was hers. Claw belonged to dad and since she was dad now and everything that was his was hers, now. This house was hers and everything else in Claw was hers but…but this was not her home. No, the Castle was her home…and she knew that if she went home then she would never go back.

She and Sho would be playing house for the rest of their lives.

But she couldn't play house. No, she had to play work. She had to play work and be the dad and go to work…but she also had to be the mom, too. She had to be the dad and the mom and it was just making her be tired and she knew that if she ever stopped and just…went home…then she would never be able to leave again…

She couldn't go home ever again. She accepted that.

"Baby Mukai might have liked to look through the boxes. She likes it when we play fort and she likes to look inside of things, too. Like she likes to stick her hand inside of paper towel rolls." Said Sho. He wondered if they could have gone home now. He hadn't been home in so long. This wasn't home. This was just walls and floors and a roof. He wanted to go home and stay there. Without dad to tell them 'no' they could have gone back…and then they could have stayed there. Just him and big sis and baby sis. Even if big sis kept on bossing him around he would have been happy.

He knew that these were just wishes. He knew that he could never go home again.

"She's just a baby. She wouldn't be able to have fun in a place like that. She can't even sit up yet." Said Mob

"She's been trying to sit up." Said Sho

"She has?" asked Mob. Her voice may have been too loud, then, and her aura may have been too bright. Mukai kicked and stirred and that was the last thing that either of them wanted for her. They needed her to sleep but…but Mob sort of wanted her to wake up. Wake up and sit up and just…just be sitting up. Mob had been away for so long that she was missing so much of her life….

But she had to work. She had no choice but to work. Someone had to work and that someone had to be the one who did it.

"She tried to. Sometimes when I sit up with her in my lap she tries to sit up on her own." said Sho

"Oh…when she does sit up then can you send me a picture? So I can see the first time that she sits up?" asked Mob

"Or you could just come back home earlier or leave later." Said Sho

"I would if I could but I can't. I always have so much to do. Without dad around to be mean to them the Awakened keep on acting like kids….but it's weird because they're adults…and also everyone wants to have a meeting with me because dad's gone and…and also people are mad that dad's gone…and I have to spend all day with Shimazaki and he's so annoying-" said Mob

"No he's not. He's cool." Said Sho

"You just think that he's cool because you don't have to spend all day with him. He's annoying. He always stands and sits way too close and he's always saying stuff to bother me or just…saying stuff. Stuff that he knows that I don't like." Said Mob. She wished that Shibata could have guarded her. The worst that he ever did was tell her that she was cute and try to pick her up and throw her in the air. She was not looking forward to going back in to work. He would be all annoying to her and saying annoying stuff and being too close and just so…annoying.

So very annoying.

"No, I think that he's cool because he's cool." Said Sho. He flipped over to the next picture and then the next and the next. He missed that, when he had hung out with dad and Shimazaki. Dad was dad but Shimazaki was fun. He was cool. He was the coolest guy in the whole world…and that was why he was upset. Because big sis got to hang out with him. Because he had been Sho's friend first. Yeah….that was it.

"But he's…not. He's annoying….and stop flipping through the pictures so fast. Baby Mukai doesn't have enough time to see them." Said Mob. She didn't understand boys. Why did they think that being annoying was cool? What was with them? And why did they decide to act like kids for the rest of their lives?

She felt bad for them, a little bit, liking being so annoying to people.

"Fine, here. You explain the pictures to her." said Sho. He stopped flipping and practically shoved the tablet into big sis' stomach. He didn't want to talk about this. He didn't want to talk about anything or think about anything or anything like that.

"Sho, that hurt." Said Mob. That had been sort of jarring. He hadn't been mean to her, physically, in a while…but that was ok. Sometimes he just got upset. That was ok. He still loved her and she still loved her and they loved each other like a brother and sister were supposed to.

"Just explain the pictures." Said Sho. He hadn't been mean to her like that in a while…and it was bad of him…and he had been so good lately…and he didn't know why he had done that. She was his sister and he should have been nice…or even said sorry. Yeah, it would have been ok if he had just said sorry. Fukuda had said that it was ok, everything was ok, if he just said sorry.

"Ok…I will. Look here, Mukai. See? That's a happy face pancake that mom made. She was good at stuff like that….our mom, I mean, not yours. We don't even know who your mom is…but I'm sure that if she could take care of you and also if you would eat solid foods then she would have made you all of the happy face pancakes that you would have wanted." Said Mob. Mukai was sitting on her lap, Sho was sitting on the floor beside her, and she knew from the way his aura looked that she should not have mentioned mom…but she was in so many of their pictures…

And also dad was gone now, too, and he was the one who told them that they weren't allowed to talk about mom in the first place.

If dad wanted his rules enforced then he should have come back home. If he wanted them to pretend like they had never had a mom in the first place then he never should have left. They wanted a mom, they wanted their mom, even though she had left…and if she were to come back right now it would have been very hard to be nice to her again….well Mob would have had trouble being nice, anyway, she had no clue what Sho would do….

Not that mom was ever coming back.

But Dad was. Even though he had been gone for so long….long enough for her to be the boss of Claw and for Mukai to become a part of their family. Long enough that she hadn't worn anything comfortable in days. It was tights restricting her legs and ribbons around her neck all day. She had never worn a costume for this many days in a row, even the Elsa one, but it didn't matter because dad was going to come back and then when he did everything would be back to normal.

Actually…she wasn't sure about things being normal…if dad would come back…if Mukai would stay…

But right now they just had pictures.


	153. Smoking Break

"Should a little girl like you really be smoking?"

Mob looked up. She was taking a break. That was what this walled garden was for, smoking breaks. She knew what the sign said even though it wasn't in Japanese. She also knew what her cigarette box said even though it wasn't in Japanese. Selling cigarettes to minors was illegal. She was a minor in every country. She was going to get in trouble if she got caught.

And she had been caught.

But she was not afraid of getting in trouble. That rules was for the outside, not Claw, because Claw was a world in and of its self. Her world. A world which she controlled. A world in which she had all the power. She had all the power in the world, it felt like, because dad had all the power in the world. Dad had all the power in the world because he was going to take over the whole world. That was his plan. He was the one who was going to rule the world after all.

Dad was going to rule the world. She just wanted to smoke a cigarette in peace.

"If I want to smoke then I can smoke." Said Mob. She didn't know if she had said the right thing or not. She had just been saying what she had to say. She had just been telling the truth. She was going to smoke and nobody could tell her not to and she really needed this.

It had been a long meeting.

She just decided that everyone could have raises, it was just easier, and it shouldn't have taken that long to come up with that solution. She had been too worried about messing with the budget. The money people said that there was too much money and it needed to be moved around and laundered, which meant mix it with clean money and not actually put it through the washing machine, and the solution was so clear. Just give everyone a raise. There. Dad…he wouldn't have done that. He would not have wanted her messing with the budget like that but…

But he wasn't there.

She was there, alone, and she just…wanted to take her smoking break before she had to get back up to her office.

Well not alone, not exactly. There was a man there with her. A man dressed in all white, which seemed sort of dangerous since food fights broke out every few days and also someone had been drawing on people as they walked by, and also his hair was super short which Mob didn't much understand. Didn't he feel the sun beating down on him? Or maybe he just wasn't hot because he had light hair, not black hair like hers. He looked like a foreigner and she wanted to ask about that but it would have been rude. She was Japanese but not in Japan. She was the foreigner here.

Still, she felt like she should have said something because he was leaning against the wall next to her.

"Stuff'll kill ya, kid." The man said.

"Lots of things can kill me." Said Mob. He seemed so familiar…where had she seen him before? Not an Awakened, no, the aura was wrong. Also he wasn't wearing an Awakened's uniform…but then again she had told everyone that every day would be casual Friday from now on…but only in the sense that they could wear everyday clothes. The week hadn't been rethought or anything like that. She didn't have that kind of power….and if she did then she certainly didn't want it. She had enough to deal with in her life without having to redraw calendars on top of everything else.

"That's true but this stuff will kill you faster and you're too young to die." The man said. Mob tried to place a name to his face. She knew that she had seen him before. The white coat, the black shirt, the necklace, the hair…she had seen him before…and this was driving her crazy. She had been trying to learn people's names. People liked it when she called them by their names…

But there were just so many people….

"I'm ten, ten year olds die all the time." Said Mob. She knew that she had to say something so she said that. What she really wanted to do was to ask this man his name but that might have been rude. She didn't know the rules for this. The only person she ever smoked with, like this, was Shimazaki but she'd…she'd had enough of him for a while. He had been touching her hair a lot lately. She knew that it was soft and she knew that he liked to touch things, she had seen him spend half an hour just playing with the wallpaper in the office, but she didn't know why he always had to touch her hair. That was against social rules…right?

She didn't know. There were too many social rules to remember.

"Yeah, but, it's always a tragedy when someone as young as you dies. Death is always a tragedy." Said the man. Mob wondered if it would be ok to just…ask him his name…but she had done that once before and then the Awakened had started crying because she didn't know his name…even though there were HUNDREDS of Awakened and only one of her….

She took another drag.

That was another word that Shimazaki had taught her. When you inhaled it was called taking a drag. It had been hard, at first, because the smoke had hurt her lungs but she got used to it. She knew that this was bad for her, it was written right there on the box that it was bad for her, but it made her feel better and also she had Fukuda to heal her if she got sick…if he ever came back…which he would because he was just on a mission with dad and not gone forever….

A very long mission with dad.

"Oh course you wouldn't know about that." Said the man. Mob nodded. She didn't know much about death. She knew that dad's mom and dad had died before she was born and she got the feeling that mom's mom and dad were dead too but she hadn't gotten any confirmation of that. She had never lost a friend, either, or a pet. She didn't know much about death at all.

She saw it again. The man falling out of the Awakening chamber….and she took another drag of her cigarette.

That man had not been dead. Dad would not have just stood by and let someone just…die. No, he had just been really hurt. Like how when you fought in Pokemon, she hated making her Pokemon fight even though they weren't even real, and they got so hurt that they fainted. She knew that she had seen a lot of spirits, a lot more than usual, at the Eighth Division but those…some places just had a lot of spirits. That was all. She had never seen anyone die and she never would.

She ran out of cigarette.

"Seriously, though, things have been very peaceful around here since you took over." Said the man

"I didn't take over." Said Mob

"You aren't Her Ladyship, Suzuki Shigeko?" asked the man

"I'm not a Ladyship. I'm just…me. You can call me Miss Suzuki or just Suzuki or Suzuki Shigeko or just Shigeko or Mob, too. Just not a Ladyship." Said Mob

"Mob? That's a weird thing to call anyone let alone the girl signing my checks." Said the man

"Well it's what I like to be called but you don't have to call me that if you don't want to." Said Mob. She didn't know why people were so against calling her 'Mob'. She knew that it had started off as a mean nickname and she knew that she should have been more upset about it but…but that was just what she wanted to be called. She could give everyone raises, she could judge the official Claw chair jousting championships, she was the only one who was allowed to play Picchu in Smash Brothers, and she could do a whole bunch of other boss of Claw stuff…but for some reason she just couldn't be called by what she wanted to be called Mob.

She didn't get it. She just didn't get it.

"How about just Miss Suzuki then?" asked the man. Mob nodded. That was ok. Suzuki-san, not Suzuki-sama. She didn't like being sama to people. She didn't like to be anything other than Mob but she really just did not like being called sama.

The only thing worse was chan.

But nobody but Shibata called her chan. That was ok. He called all kids chan, he said, and he didn't mean anything by it. She wasn't a sama but she wasn't a chan, either, even though she was only ten. She was a san, now, because she was an adult. A kidult. Somewhere between a kid and an adult. Somewhere in this confusing in between space that she just…did not always know the rules of.

Like now.

She felt like she didn't want to be there. She wanted to be on her own and she knew that because she was the boss she could have told him to get lost…but she was not dad. She was not someone who could just tell someone to get lost. She could not just tell him to go away and let her smoke in peace. She couldn't kick him out, though, because this was a space just for smoking. She was in the everyone allowed smoking space. There was a place for everyone and a place for only upper echelon people and a place for tech support and stuff like that…and she had her office which was her place…but she needed to be outside. She was tired of being all cooped up with Shimazaki and him being in her space all the time and touching her and stuff.

She wanted to be on her own for a little bit.

But she was not rude enough to tell him to get lost. He was fishing his own cigarette box out of his pocket. She watched him. She had just a box but he had a pretty metal case for his cigarettes. She wanted one, too, because it looked nice and also it looked like it kept them safe. Sometimes hers got squished, like when Mukai kicked her in the side and stuff. She made a not to get a cigarette box. She would be able to hide them better, too, for when dad came back. He would not have liked her smoking.

"That's fine. Miss Suzuki is fine. It's nice to meet you." Said Mob. She knew this social rule. She was taking a gamble, assuming that they hadn't met before, but he was not an Awakened and he would probably take her not knowing who he was better. This new batch of Awakened was extra weird, Minegishi said so, and Mob could tell without being told.

They were so tiresome.

"Nice to meet you, too. I'm Joseph. Foreigner Division." Said Joseph. He bowed to her. He did the full bow. The one you were supposed to do when someone was important. Dad almost never bowed back. He nodded, sometimes, but he almost never bowed. She knew that she shouldn't have bowed back, dad would have been mad at her because she was not supposed to treat people like her equals, but dad wasn't there and she was going to be polite.

It wasn't any trouble to bow.

"I have a meeting with you guys later today." Said Mob after straightening out. She fixed her ribbon. It had come loose. She didn't know why you had to wear something around your neck to be dressed like a grown up. She didn't much like it. She wanted to be back in her else dress. Her tights were trapping her legs and the seam was digging into her, too. The waistband made her feel like she was being squeezed like a tube of toothpaste.

She wanted to get back into her Elsa dress.

"Yup. We'll try not to take up too much of your time. It's just the usual stuff we'd meet with Suzuki about. Mission reports, mostly." Said Joseph

"Can you guys write them down? I don't know if I can remember everything that you guys say and I know that dad wants to know what happened and I know that if I mess something up he'll be upset." Said Mob

"Yeah, we can. I'll pass that along." Said Joseph. He was watching her, now, and she didn't much like it. He was watching her with his eyes and with his aura. She let herself be watched. She didn't know what was so fascinating about her. She was just Mob. She was the boss but that wasn't such an amazing thing. Everyone in Claw had seen her address and people knew that they could talk to her whenever they wanted.

She was trying to be more friendly than dad had ever been.

It was working. People felt comfortable enough to come to her with everything. They came to her when they had problems or bad news or good news or when they needed her to judge a chair jousting match or a cookie eating contest or a Smash contest or a staring contest….they had a lot of contests. Mob didn't know why they had so many contests. Minegishi said that boys had to compete with each other all the time for everything because of their biology.

Mob wished that there were more girl espers in Claw.

She wished that she had a girl to hang out with. She was so tired of boys. She had never had a lot of friends who were girls, though, not even when she had been in school. Her only friend had been Sho. Now she had other friends. She had a best friend who wasn't Sho, now, but she wasn't sure if Minegishi was a boy or a girl. Not that it mattered. They didn't act like all the other boys that she knew. Still, she wished that she had a girl to hang out with. She couldn't wait until Mukai got old enough to hang out with her….

Not that they would smoke together.

Joseph pulled out a cigarette, his were longer and thinner than hers and she sort of wanted to know why, and she would have asked if not for the next thing that he did. He picked up the pendant on his necklace chain and, to Mob's surprise, it was a lighter. Not like hers. She had a plastic one that made fire. His was metal and used electricity.

It was so cool.

Mob's cigarette was burnt down to the filter, now. She dropped it on the ground and crushed it under her shoe. She checked the time on her phone. She had time for another one. That was called chain smoking. She had learned that word from Minegishi. When you smoked one cigarette after another after another that was called chain smoking. Also Minegishi said that it was a gross thing to do and that Mob would end up making herself sick.

She hadn't gotten sick once.

She was tired of it, people telling her that this was bad for her, that she was going to make herself sick doing this. She was the boss of all of Claw. If she could be trusted to run all of Claw, to make choices that effected hundreds of people and millions of yen or whatever they called yen in this country, then she could be trusted to smoke. Besides, the more she smoke the less she drank. This gave her more energy than drinking than and made her less…stumbly…if that was the word for it. The feeling like there was a layer of fog in her brain and heavy rocks stuck to her limbs.

She could smoke if she wanted to. The only person who could make her stop was dad and he was gone.

She reached into her pocket and got a new cigarette from her box. She was running low again. Shimazaki would get her more. He could tell when she was running low and he always got her more. He was nice like that. It was so weird how he could be so annoying but also so nice. Maybe that was why Minegishi liked him so much. Enough to kiss and stuff. Not that she was going to be kissing him anytime soon even though it seemed like he wanted to. She had thought that she would have been too young for someone his age to want to kiss.

But then again she was very clueless about things.

She didn't much know how to feel about that. She had wanted that for so long, for someone to want to kiss her, even since before she'd ever even had her first kiss. She liked kissing and she liked boys who were tall and stuff but…but she did not like him like that. He was too….himself. Too much in her space all the time. Too rude. Too obnoxious. Also he was friends with Minegishi and she would not kiss someone who her friend kissed. She knew that she would have been upset with Minegishi if they had ever kissed someone who she kissed and she knew that you were supposed to treat other people the way that you wanted to be treated.

Which was why she never told Shimazaki to get lost already.

"Need a light?" asked Joseph. Mob didn't, not really, because she had her own lighter but his lighter was also really cool. She nodded yes. She just wanted to see it again. She wondered where he had gotten that from. She wanted one. She liked Joseph, she decided, even though he had intruded on her solitude. That was something that Minegishi said a lot, don't intrude on my solitude, when they wanted to be alone to read and stuff. Mob still wanted to be alone but she was grateful to be talking to someone who was nice to her and also didn't act like they were younger than her despite being older than her.

She wasn't sure how much older he was than her.

Not as old as dad was. Dad was very old, forty three, and she thought that Joseph was younger than that. He just seemed younger but…but not like how the Awakened seemed younger. Young but also an adult. Tall, too, very tall. And nice. He smelled good, too, when she leaned in to light her cigarette. The polite way to do it was to lean into someone's lighter. Minegishi said not to ever light her cigarette by pressing it to the end of someone else's. They had said that doing that was only for when you liked someone. Really liked them.

She did not, would not, and could not ever like Shimazaki like that.

Joseph on the other hand…and she had no idea why she was thinking thoughts like that. She had just met him. Why was she thinking that he could be a boy that she could like? She didn't understand herself sometimes. She had been thinking more about boys than usual. Not that she hadn't always thought about boys, she had liked boys for as long as she could remember, but now she was thinking…differently…about them. About how they looked and smelled and stuff. Thinking about getting close enough so that she could know how they smelled…

She was probably just overly tired. That would have made sense.

"Thank you. Um….your lighter is cool." Said Mob. She knew that she had to say something. She knew that she had to say something because she had been too close to him for too long. Even now she knew that she was too close to him. What was with her? She didn't even know him. She didn't know if he was nice or…or anything at all about him. Also he was older than her. She didn't know how old he was but she knew that he was a lot older than ten.

But she didn't even know any other ten year olds, anyway.

All of her friends, besides Sho and baby Mukai, were adults. She spent all day with adults. She felt more like an adult than a kid, these days, and she sort of wanted to feel like a kid again…but also there were some good parts to being an adult. When you were an adult you could do whatever you wanted…but you also had a lot of things to worry about….and she actually didn't know which was better actually.

But she did know that she had to take a step back and right now because she was breaking social rules.

"It gets the job done." Said Joseph. Mob nodded. She wasn't sure what to say to that. She was someone who was bad at saying things, she knew that she was bad at talking because dad was bad at talking and social stuff and she was his kid, but right now she wished that she knew what to say. She wanted to be alone again because, now, she knew that she had said something wrong in saying nothing at all. There were so many social things to remember and she just…couldn't remember them all.

She couldn't even remember the names of all the people who worked for her let alone all the social rules she was expected to memorize.

She felt the energy around her shift. She had never been more grateful for Shimazak to just show up. She knew that she shouldn't have left his side, he was the one who was keeping her safe after all, and maybe that was why she suddenly wanted to be cooped up in the office with him again. Even if he sat too close to her or played with her hair or said a bunch of weird and annoying stuff.

Better to be annoyed than to feel whatever it was that she was feeling.

"Really, Suzuki? And here I thought that I was special." Said Shimazaki. Mob didn't know what to make of that and she wasn't going to think too hard about it. He just sort of said things sometimes. He had said that he just said the things that popped into his head and that she should try it sometimes because it made life easier and stuff. Mob didn't know how blurting out all of her thoughts would have made her life easier.

Or more interesting.

That was another thing that he liked, interesting things, because he was bored all the time. Well sometimes work was boring and that was just how it was. That was what she wanted, anyway, being bored. Working. Being annoyed. All of that. Anything other than this weird feeling that was settling inside of her…that she had been feeling more and more often lately…because she was over tired….from working…

You were supposed to fight fire with fire even though that made no sense.

"Everyone's special, Shimazaki, now let's get back to work." Said Mob. She walked up to him a little too fast. Joseph have him a look even though everyone knew that Shimazaki was blind. She didn't think too much about that. People were always giving him looks. People didn't like him very much. He was ok with that even though she had no idea why he would ever be ok with that. If he was a little nicer then people would have liked him better.

That would have been boring, he said, that people were more interesting when they disliked you.

"Whatever you say, you Ladyship." Said Shimazaki. Mob didn't have time to tell him that she didn't want to be called that, that she hated being called that, because before she knew it she was back in her office. She didn't say anything. She just went back to her, to dad's, to THE desk. Shimazaki poured her another drink. She would sip it throughout her day so it didn't hit her too hard. Well she told herself that. Drinking was good for feelings that she didn't want to have. Cigarettes were good for that, too, and smoking outside was best…but she couldn't do that. She had a lot to do.

Her smoking break was over and she had to get back to work now.


	154. Strategic Retreat

It had been nothing more than a strategic retreat.

That was all. He had been very close to an explosion and he'd needed to make a retreat. It had all been too much and it had all threatened to overwhelm him. Nothing good came of him being overwhelmed like that. He could have lost control and taken his children…his CHILD….with him. He hated himself for it, for almost losing control, and also for what he had done to make him almost lose control.

That was not his child.

He had a Daughter. She was called Shigeko. He had adopted her when she was two. She had come from two nobodies from nothing. She was a flower who had grown out of a pot of dirt. She was his child and he had chosen her for his child and he cared for her and she cared for him and he had wanted her from the moment he saw her and…

And he had one Daughter.

He had one biological child. He had a Son. Sho. Sho was his son and he left much to be desired but that alright because the next generation had been secured and that was what mattered. This was a person who he had chosen to make. That Boy was half of him and half of…of Masami. That was all of Masami that he had left. That was their Son. That was the person that he and Masami had made together. From the moment he had set eyes on Sho he had known that this was his Son…

He had two children. One adopted and one biological.

He hadn't made a third child. He hadn't fallen to his own weakness and brought another human being into the world. That had not been his baby. Baby was not his Baby. Baby was just…baby. Baby was a baby who had been given to him because….because Baby's mother had wanted him to raise her. Baby's mother had wanted him to raise her and he…he just could not. He had his children. He had his own children and…

And he had two children.

He and Masami had two children together. They had one biological child together and one child who they had adopted. They had raised both of their children together…for a time. Masami had raised both of the children…for a time. She was gone but there were still bits of her in them. Sho had her blood. Not only that but her creativity and energy and sense of just…nurturing. Shigeko had that too. She was such a nurturing person. She cared for her brother as if he were her own child. She cared for him, too, even though she was the child and he was the adult. She constantly expressed worry and care towards him in the same way that Masami had…

Masami was the woman who he had made children with.

Baby was just…baby. That was all. Baby was just baby and he had to…he had to do something about Baby. About Mukai. He had renamed her. It had been an impulse. He hadn't liked her name so he had remand her…and that was not something that he should have done. Only a parent could name their child and he was not her parent so he'd had no right to name her. He had overstepped. He had overstepped and he owed her an apology…if he ever saw her again.

He could not go back.

He had given her to Daughter on an impulse. That meant that Baby had joined his household…which meant that he would not be rejoining his household for…for he didn't even know how long. He had no idea how long it had been. He had been living without a sense of the passage of time. He had been moving, always moving, and always under his own powers. Through the skies, the oceans, across countries and boarders and…and he would have gone across the universe if he could.

He hadn't made it through the stratosphere.

He wished that he could have gone across the universe. He wished that his powers could have carried him past the moon, the sun, and the stars above. He wished that he could have just been…gone. Away from the world. The view from on top of the world…the world had fit in the palm of his hand…and for once he didn't want it. The world had Baby in it and he didn't want to…to have to get that whole thing settled…and he would have left the planet if he could…

But he couldn't.

He had been to the stratosphere, the ocean floor, and everywhere in between. Now he found himself in the last place that he ever thought that he would be. He was back…home. At the house. A house. He owned more houses than he could count. He owned houses that he hadn't even been aware that he owned. He owned houses on top of houses on top of houses. Hell, he owned the entire world…though the world did not know it yet. Not that he wanted anything to do with the world. Not now.

He had dropped off from the world.

He didn't have his phone or his laptop. Claw could have devolved into anarchy for as much as he knew. Claw…his life's work. He needed to get back to work. He needed to get back to the world. He needed to stop acting so illogically and just…just get back to work. Back to what he was supposed to be doing. Baby. He couldn't go back because of Baby…

He had no idea what he was supposed to do with Baby.

Baby was…was not his. His children had come from Masami. With Masami gone that meant that he couldn't have any more children. There. Simple. Masami was gone and therefore he could not have any more children and therefore Baby was not his. Baby was just…a baby. Daughter's baby. He had given Baby to Daughter as if she had been a doll…but she was in no way, shape, or form a doll. She was a human being. There was a human being in the world…

That he had nothing to do with.

There was a photograph of Son on the wall. Suzuki could see it from his angle. He was laying down on his bed, on a bed, on a bed that he owned and had slept in. On a bed that he had shared with…with her. With Masami. With his Masami…with his wife….with the love of his life…his reason and his life…with the most perfect woman…the most perfect human being that had ever walked this earth. That still walked this earth. She was still alive…

She just wasn't alive anywhere near him.

He closed his eyes and inhaled. This was their bedroom. He could still smell her on her side of the bed. He was laying on his side as close as he could get to her side of the bed. This room…this room was a shrine. Exactly as she left it. He didn't have to open his eyes to know which of her dresses were hanging up in the closet and which were in the hamper. He didn't have to open his eyes to know which bottles of perfume were on her vanity table and which were on the shelf. He didn't have to open his eyes to know that there was a picture of Son as a baby right across from him. On her bedside table was a picture of Son and Daughter as toddlers on some Christmas that he had missed. Above their bed was a picture of their wedding day. He had no idea what she had been wearing that day, in that photograph, but he did remember how she looked. How she had been the most beautiful woman in the world…

How she still was.

She was the most beautiful woman in the entire world. She was the most perfect woman in the entire world. She was everything to him. She was everything, his reason and his life, and he had betrayed her in the worst way a person could be betrayed. He had been with another woman. That was the basic point of being married, the creation of offspring, but not only that offspring ONLY with your partner. You were supposed to forgo sex with literally every other person on the planet because you had found your most perfect person…

He had betrayed her.

He wondered, briefly, if she had been clairvoyant. If she had been clairvoyant and had just hid it from him all this time. That may have been why she had left. She had known, foresaw, that he would fall to temptation and then betray her in the worst way he could have….heh. No, that was a very rare power and even if it hadn't been he still would have noticed if she had been anything other than a normal human being…even though she wasn't. Masami was someone who transcended everyone else, human and esper alike, everyone that had ever lived or would ever lived. She was perfect. She was beauty and truth and…and pain. Pain and fear. Crushing loneliness. Panic. Anger. Wrath. She was every emotion that he had ever known.

She was love.

He loved her. He loved her so much. Even now, even after all of these years, he loved her. He loved her and if she were to walk through that door…he could see it. She would walk through that door as she had so many times before.

"Touichirou? Really? You're going to spend all day in bed?" was what she would have said. He could hear her voice. He could see her, there, in the doorway. She would have been…she would have been carrying in laundry or drying her hair or…or maybe even carrying one of the children…though they may have been too big for her to lift….

She would have been there.

If she had been there, transported right there in front of him, he would have thrown himself to her mercy. He would have kowtowed to her and begged and begged and begged until she forgave him. It didn't even matter anymore that she had gone, that she had left, that she was never coming back….he loved her.

"I love you." The words feel odd in his mouth. Clunky. Like a new language he's trying out but doesn't quite have the bets grasp of yet. How many times had he said those words out loud? He didn't know. Not that often. He said them again. He said them again and again like a prayer. He was not a praying man, he had never been one for religion, but he prayed now. Over and over again he said those three words like a prayer as if they had the power to bring her back. To bring his Masami back to him, back to this world, just one more time so he could apologize.

Saying 'I love you' did not bring Masami back to him.

But it did bring someone to him. To his doorstep…and he couldn't believe that it had taken him so long to notice the other aura in his range. It takes every ounce of his will power not to upend the room. He can't disturb a single thing, not a single molecule, of this room. Of this shrine. This house was a temple and this room was a shrine. A shrine to Masami.

And the shrine was not taking visitors today.

But there was a visitor at the door. An intruder. One that he had not been expecting to see…not that he had been expecting any intruders. Not that he would have expected anyone, let alone this particular intruder, but maybe he should have. Maybe he should have expected this, expected him, because for every crisis in his life he had been there. He had been there for him, to fix him, to heal him…

Because that was what he was. A healer.

Fukuda was a healer. That meant that he was a fixer. That meant that his job was to fix Suzuki's messes.

Which was what brought him here after all of these years. He had never thought that he would ever have cause to darken this doorstep again. He had never thought that he would have cause to come back, to visit this temple, this shrine. The house was a temple to her, to Masami. Every step brought back another memory of her.

Opened the gate brought back memories of bringing so called extra food just to spend time with her and the kids.

Walking up the path up to the door reminded him of walking hand in hand with the kids on their first day of school.

The feel of the doormat under his feet reminded him of all of those times when he would compose himself here before he came to see the Suzuki family. To see Masami and the kids. When he would have to remind himself that this was not his house, she was not his wife, and they were not his children. That was not his family that lived on the other side of that door. Those were just…the people he cared about most in the world. The people he cared most about lived on the other side of that door.

Nobody lived on the other side of that door.

This house was nothing more than a shrine. A shrine to a life once lived. A shrine to a family that could have been. A shrine to the most beautiful, sweetest, kindest, most amazing woman in the entire world. The woman that he had loved most in the world. She was…she was….

She was gone and this was just a house.

He went in. He had to go in. He had a job to do. He had taken a personal day to get himself sorted and then spent the last three weeks figuring out how to get Suzuki sorted. How to get that sorted. How to get…her name was Mukai, Sho had sent him pictures….sorted out. He cared so much for that baby…and so did Fukuda. He cared for the baby as much as he could care for a child that…that was not Masami's. That should not have been. Suzuki….he had no business having more children. He was ruining the ones that he already had. That baby would not have Masami's influence to taper whatever Suzuki was going to end up doing to mess her up. No, he had to do what was best for the child, for the world, and for himself.

He couldn't do it again.

He could not get attached to one of Suzuki's children again. He could not let himself get attached only to get hurt. He could not…he could not watch Suzuki ruin another person's life. Not that poor, innocent, baby's life…she was better off somewhere else, anywhere else. The search for her mother, for Pang Sujin, came up fruitless. She was gone and out of this world. She wasn't dead….he hadn't seen a body or a grave….but she was a ghost, now. She was gone without a trace. She had found a way to disappear completely and never be found again…a pattern when it came to the women in Suzuki's life…

And she had left behind a child, the second part of the pattern.

When he realized that he would not be able to find Pang Sujin, she really did not want to be found, he instead looked for someone who could take care of the baby. Someone without crippling social and emotional problems…a rarity in Claw. For them having an abusive childhood, substance abuse issues, personality disorders, and just plain being unpleasant and rejected by society seemed to be the norm. That was…not good. That coupled with how badly skewed the male to female ratio of espers was…

And Suzuki would not have accepted the baby being raised outside of Claw or by anyone other than a woman. Minegishi put it best when he…she…they called Suzuki a 'sexist asshole'.

The pool of qualified people was small, very small, and it was a miracle he had found anyone at all. Tsuchiya from the Seventh Division. She was a normal woman. She'd had two parents who never abused her in any way, finished school through university, and before joining Claw had been a somewhat famous figure in the world of women's mixed martial arts. No substance abuse issues, no personality disorders, and she wasn't one of Claw's devout cultists either. She was just a woman who wanted to make it in the world and thought that it was better to join the most powerful man on Earth than to stand against him.

Also she liked kids.

So there, it had taken three goddamned mother fucking weeks but he'd gotten the baby problem sorted out. Now all he needed to do was sort out the Suzuki problem. That would not be as easy. It hadn't taken too long to track him down. He went to familiar places when he was feeling overwhelmed and having an oops baby was overwhelming. Not that he had anyone to blame but himself. They'd been in the same health class back in school. They'd both put the condoms on the wooden penises. Suzuki knew about contraception. He knew that he was a powerful man and that women would try to take him to bed. He knew that he was married and not allowed to-

He was not going to think about his mixed feelings about all of this.

He was not going to think about how angry he was at Suzuki for hurting Masami or how relieved he was at Suzuki for taking steps to get over Masami. He was just…not going to think about it. He was also not going to think about how much HE loved Masami and how he would have given anything for her to open the door and let him and-

And he had to go in and get Suzuki before those morons in Claw decided to wage war on the world all by themselves.

Suzuki came to him.

"Fukuda. Explain." Said Suzuki. He knew what he was there for. Fukuda was, as usual, overstepping. He was there to drag him back to Claw, well try to, and…and Suzuki would not and could not go. Not while Baby was there…unless Fukuda had changed his mind and was going to take in Baby…but then he would still be in close proximity to her….

"I'm here to bring you back, boss. I've been out of the loop these past few weeks and all but I assume that without you Claw's going to hell in a handbasket." Said Fukuda. That would work, appeal to his work, appeal to the fact that the people he had been micromanaging for thirty years would fall apart without him.

"I'm…taking a leave of absence." Said Suzuki. He knew how pathetic that sounded. He knew how pathetic he looked. His hair was long enough to start to spike up and he had gone far too long without shaving…even his clothing was disheveled. God…what a sight he must have made. What Fukuda must have thought…

Not that he gave a damn what Fukuda or anyone else thought. He had no reason to. He was Suzuki Touichirou. The thoughts and feelings of others were of no consequence to him.

"It's been three weeks." Said Fukuda. No. Nope. He healed fast. Even if Suzuki decided to try and put him in the ground right then and there he would still drag him back to Claw kicking and screaming. The inmates could not be trusted to run the asylum. Even with the limited communication Fukuda allowed himself to receive he could tell that everything was going to shit.

He had been invited to witness the 'World Championship of Chair Jousting' where they would be fighting for the title of Champion of the Known Universe….and apparently next week they would be fighting for the title of Champion of the Multiverse…..

Children. Claw was staffed by overgrown children…and in front of him was the worst of the lot.

"I can read a calendar." Said Suzuki even though he hadn't known, exactly, how long it had been. Time had no meaning for him. He ate when he was hungry and drank when he was thirsty and slept when he was tired. A simple existence but one that had been working for him….and now it was all over. He knew that it was. He was…he was a very important man…and he had to get back to work….

And to stop hiding from a baby.

"I never said that you couldn't. I was just saying, boss, that everyone's getting sort of restless. They need you back. The inmates are running the asylum and….well….they aren't good at it. People have been keeping me somewhat in the loop and…yeah. It's bad." Said Fukuda

"Define 'bad'." Said Suzuki. Bad could have meant anything from mass mutinies to some idiot getting his arm caught in the vending machine. He didn't know….well he did. The Awakened made up most of Claw and while they were his most devout followers they were also, for lack of a better word, stupid. Many of them were just plain stupid…and there were so many of them….

The inmates really were running the asylum. Wonderful.

"They're started several chair jousting leagues." Said Fukuda. He pulled up the picture of the hand drawn flier he had saved to his phone. Sho's work, it seemed like, though Fukuda prayed to whatever kind and loving God that was up there that he was not involved in this nonsense….

He should have been there for Sho.

The kids must have been…well Sho must have been scared out of his mind. Shigeko was probably just as disaffected as normal. The baby…they had awakened to tend to the baby. Plus other upper echelon members…and also Sho would have told him if the baby had gotten truly sick or died…he felt like crap for ghosting Sho but…but he was not about to answer any questions. One question would lead to two which would lead to three which would, eventually, lead to Sho asking where the new baby had come from….

And Fukuda was not about to explain to a nine year old boy that his dad had made a baby with a woman who was not his mother and now that baby had been abandoned and…and a whole lot of other shit that a nine year old did not need banging around in his head.

"No. I put a stop to that after all of those Awakened kept on losing teeth and eyes." Said Suzuki. Children the lot of them. They needed him to save them from their own stupidity…and his own children needed him too…and he needed….he needed to stay away. When he was near that baby, and he knew it would happen again, he got so close to an explosion that…the loss of control would result in….

He had already made himself an orphan. He did not need to destroy his children as well.

"Well they're doing it so…you know. I think that you should come back. For the kids' sake, too. I bet that they miss you. They're only nine and ten years old after all." Said Fukuda. If he was Sho he would have been jumping for joy…but Suzuki had no idea how his Son felt about him. That was the trick to dealing with Suzuki. Let him feel more important than he was. Let him think that he was more wanted than he was.

"They're fine. Everything is fine. I trust Daughter. I trust that she is caring for her brother and…and Baby." Said Suzuki

"She's all alone with the baby." Said Fukuda

"I am aware of the state that I left her in." said Suzuki

"She's only ten years old." Said Fukuda. They were on dangerous ground, now. Baby. Not 'The Baby' but Baby. Just Baby. Suzuki…he had a thing about names. He had called Fukuda friend for a while, and then later on companion, before the long and arduous battle of the name was won. Masami, likewise, had been wife….but she had put a stop to that. Shigeko was still 'Daughter' and Sho was still 'Son' though…but that was a right sight better than 'Girl' and 'Boy'….or Baby. Sho had been Baby and then he had been Boy and now he was Son. Suzuki…he was claiming the baby as his…at least a little…

Fukuda had to think in the best interests of the child.

"She's very capable. She's her mother's Daughter." Said Suzuki. She was like a small Masami. She was…she was and was not her mother….and she could handle this. She would handle this. She was capable and loving and….and she could and would handle this. She was….she was doing just fine…

He trusted her. He loved her.

"Yes…and she's only ten." Said Fukuda. He focused on keeping his aura calm and still. How dare he mention Masami after what he had done to her! After everything that he had done to her! After he had spent years neglecting and mistreating her! After he had ruined her children's lives! After he had cheated on her! After he had made an illegitimate child with another woman!

Calm down.

"I am aware of her age." Said Suzuki

"Just…she doesn't have to take care of the baby, ok? I found someone who'll take her in. Tsuchiya from the Seventh Division." Said Fukuda. Suzuki was staring at him. Tiny pupils. Churning aura. That was…that may not have been good…or it could have been. Suzuki was….full of surprises.

"The Scar?" asked Suzuki. A Scar? Raising his….raising the baby. A Baby. Baby. A Scar was…Scars were powerful espers in their own right…so why did he feel like…like this? Whatever this feeling was…the one settling there in his chest….

"She's the best I can do. I knew that you would have wanted the baby to be raised in Claw and I know that you think that women are the best at raising kids-" said Fukuda

"I know they are." Said Suzuki. They had a loving patience to him that he knew he, nor any other man, could ever possess.

"….right. Anyway she said yes, she would take care of the baby, and I know that she'll do better than I ever could. I'm sorry but I just cannot raise a baby. I have never taken care of a baby before and I know that I am just not capable of raising a child." Said Fukuda

"You like children." Said Suzuki. He…had no idea how he felt. If Fukuda had been the one raising Baby then he would have had to be in close proximity to her…and why…why did he sort of want that now? What…what was even wrong with him?

"That doesn't mean that I can raise one. I like chocolate, too, that doesn't make me a chocolatier." Said Fukuda. There was some silence, there, as the wheels in Suzuki's head turned. He hoped and prayed that Suzuki's wheels were turning in a favorable direction…because he could not do it again. Get attached to one of Suzuki's kids and then watch him ruin its life.

"That…makes sense. Thank you. I-I'll be along….I'll be cutting my leave of absence short. You're dismissed." Said Suzuki. This was…this was a good thing. His problem was solved…so why did he feel…why did he feel like this? Like…Daughter was going to be hurt. That must have been it. Concern for Daughter's wellbeing. That was all. He was…he was concerned for her. Baby was….Baby was a problem that was being solved.

Baby was not his child.

Baby was going to be fine and he was fine and this whole situation was fine. This house…him…all of it. He needed to get back to work. He needed to get back to life. He needed to shave and change and….and leave. He needed to leave this place behind him where it belonged. He needed…he needed a great many things.

But making a strategic retreat was not going to be one of them.


	155. Her Ladyship and Fukuda

During her father's absence Shigeko sad seen fit to go off to the races as it were.

"Fukuda! You came back!" that was the first thing out of her mouth. She hadn't been expecting him to come back, it seemed. She had actually emoted there, or her best approximation of it anyway, when he walked through the doors of Suzuki's office on one unassuming morning almost three weeks after he had left. He hadn't expected to have been gone that long and he certainly hadn't expected to come back to….this.

Shigeko at her father's desk.

It was amazing how much she could look like him, like her father, despite the fact that he was not her father at all. Not by blood. She looked just like him sitting there dressed in navy blue, she even had a little ribbon around her neck and everything, picking up where her father had left off….mostly. The building looked like someone had turned a bunch of grade schoolers loose, a hallway was taped off for the 'bi weekly chair jousting tournament', and it looked like more people were goofing off than working. In other words it looked like a child had been left in charge of the largest cult, and that was the most accurate word for it, on Earth.

Even though Fukuda saw no child there.

She was ten, true, and she was small, also true. She was even, objectively, cute sitting there behind a grown man sized desk in a grown man sized chair doing the work of grown men…but that was just the surface. That was the thing to remember when working with both Suzuki and his daughter, always look below the surface. She was young but she was not a child. She was ten going on forty. She was a smaller, more feminine, but just as dangerous version of her father.

She had wasted no time in taking over.

"Miss Suzuki. You're looking well. I didn't expect to see you here." Said Fukuda. Distantly polite. At some point they had gone from her jumping into his arms and demanding that he play dolls with her to him standing across from her treating her like she was his boss…which she sort of was. If he went by who was the more powerful esper…and who was best suited to rule Claw in Suzuki's absence.

Fukuda thanked God that it wasn't Sho sitting behind that desk.

"Yeah, well, nobody expected to see you here either. Didn't you defect? I'm pretty sure you defected." Said Shimazaki. He was sitting there perched at the edge of Suzuki's desk. Very close to Shigeko. Two cigarettes were burning in the crystal astray that Fukuda had never seen used, before, and there were two cups of he didn't know what sitting there on the desk too. His eyes made their way to the strictly decorative liquor cabinet.

A lot of empty decanters.

"I never thought that he defected. He's been on a mission with dad. I've been saying that the whole time." Said Shigeko. She reached for a drink, HER drink, but stopped herself. The movement was subtle but he saw it. She was…part of him was horrified. Part of him wanted to drag her from the whole situation. She was only ten years old! She should not have been drinking or smoking or…he did not like how close Shimazaki was. He did not like how close she was letting him get to her. He did not like how she let Shimazaki take a piece of her hair between his fingers like…like Fukuda didn't even want to think. She noticed Fukuda looking and pulled her hair back.

What.

Fukuda had no clue what he was supposed to say or do to that. To any of this. She was a child. He had known her since she was two. She was, chronologically, a child. She also wasn't. She wasn't a child in the sense that Sho was a child. She was small and cute but behind that veneer laid that same ambition and arrogance that drove her father.

After all she had wasted no time at all taking over in his absence.

"Yeah but you didn't believe it." Said Shimazaki. Fukuda wanted to tell him to get the hell of off Suzuki's desk and to get the hell away from Suzuki's daughter. He wanted to get over there, pick Shigeko up, and carry her home over his shoulder. To carry her back to her dolls and her Disney movies and her costumes and her manga. Back to childhood. He wanted to…but he didn't. That was not his daughter. He had no right to tell her how to live her life.

Nothing good ever came from telling a Suzuki what to do.

"Yes I did. I really did, Fukuda, I know that you and dad were on a mission. Shimazaki just likes to say things to upset me even though he knows that I don't like it." Said Shigeko. There was some mirth there, possibly, maybe. If she had wanted him to leave her alone, if she had truly wanted that, then she would have made him leave her alone. It wasn't as though she didn't have the power to do so. It wasn't as though she wasn't the one sitting in the boss' chair. It wasn't as though she wasn't the second most powerful esper in the world.

She was Suzuki's daughter after all.

"You like me. You know it." Said Shimazaki

"I like everyone." Said Shigeko

"Yeah, but you especially like me." Said Shimazaki

"I like everyone mostly the same." Said Shigeko

"Mostly?" asked Shimazaki

"Yes. Mostly." Said Shigeko

"And here I thought that I was special." Said Shimazaki

"Everyone is special." Said Shigeko

"That's just a roundabout way of saying the nobody is." Said Shimazaki

"What do you mean?" asked Shigeko

"Well how can we all be special? If everyone is special then being special is normal and, therefore, nobody at all is special." Said Shimazaki. Fukuda had no idea what he was listening to or looking at. Nobody talked to Suzuki like that…well he did, on occasion, but he knew to space those occasions out to when they would have had the most impact…and also if they came too closely together Suzuki would get pissed off. He would have been pissed off at this. He should have been pissed off at this. If he were in Shigeko's shoes in that moment he would have probably killed Shimazaki right there…but he was not in Shigeko's shoes…

She was in his shoes.

He was having some trouble reconciling everything that he was seeing now with what he knew of her. What he had always known of her. What he had…the way that he had been seeing her for all of these years. He had tried to see her as a child but now she just…wasn't. She was and she wasn't. She was more Suzuki's child than his actual child…CHILDREN. He had no idea how badly the baby would have taken after her father, if she even would, but he knew that…that THIS was not what he wanted for Sho or for the baby.

Sho could not grow up to be….this.

It smelled like someone had been smoking a pack a day, every day, in that office. There were empty cups everywhere. Some of them were liquor glasses, which he did not want to think about, and others were more innocent. Starbucks cups, milk cartons, juice boxes, soda bottles. It was a mess in there. Suzuki would never have let things get that bad. The man loved order in all of its forms but this…this was chaos. Well she was not her father.

In some ways she could have even been worse.

Obviously there was the obvious fact that Suzuki never, nearly never, indulged in his vices. Aside from the giant fuck up known at the new baby Suzuki hadn't ever done anything that…well…anything that could have been considered indulging in a vice. Women had been a vice of his in their younger days. He had taken the shotgun approach and just asked every single woman he met until one said yes. That tapered off around university and, aside from Masami and Pang Sujin, women had never been on his radar.

He certainly wouldn't have had one sitting on his desk playing with his hair.

A ten year old girl's vices should not have been men, drinking, and smoking. Hell, a ten year old girl shouldn't have had any vices in the first place! She was…she was and was not a child. She was not HIS child. She was Suzuki's child in a way that her siblings, Sho and the baby, never could be. Suzuki had chosen her and groomed her for this position…and she would leave him wanting. That was the silver lining to all of this.

No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women, no sin at all.

That was how Suzuki lived his life. He avoided anything fun. Anything that could have gotten him too much in any one direction. He also abhorred both drinking and smoking. He would not be happy with Shigeko…which was a good thing. Fukuda knew that he was thinking terrible thoughts, there. That it was a good thing that Shigeko would be punished for her vices and punished for letting Claw go to shit just to win everyone over. There was the stick and the carrot. Both she and her father seemed to believe that but where Suzuki had only used the stick she seemed to only use the carrot. She promised them raises and time off and more breaks and a thousand and one things that Suzuki would never have allowed. She probably would have promised everyone a unicorn and a castle in the sky if they agreed to follow her…and she would have done it all under that veneer of cuteness.

She knew how to use what she had.

She was a cute little girl. She knew that she was. She knew that being a cute little girl would make people underestimate her, he knew what she had threatened those less than savory business contacts with, and she knew how to use her cuteness to get people on her side. She was learning how easy men could be to manipulate, too, if what he had been witness to was anything to go off of….

What had happened to Shigeko? Where had she gone to? And when had she become…THIS?

"Oh…I never thought about it like that…but I don't agree. I think that because everyone is different, even identical twins are different people, then everyone is special in that way. There isn't anyone like me and there isn't anyone like you and there isn't any like Fukuda, too. So therefore we're all special." Said Shigeko

"Eh, you're ten. What do you know?" Said Shimazaki

"I know a lot of things about a lot of things just like dad does." Said Shigeko

"If you know a lot of things about a lot of things then, tell, where the hell is your dad? I see Fukuda but I don't see your dad." Said Shimazaki

"You don't see anything at all because you don't have eyes…but that is a good question. I can't sense dad either. Fukuda, where's dad?" asked Shigeko. It took Fukuda a moment to realize that he was being addressed. Right. Suzuki. She was asking after him. But why? She knew that when he came back he was going to be very upset with her. She had taken power from him and she was currently running Claw into the ground. She was obviously trying to take Claw from her father and if she had to destroy everything he worked for then so be it.

Almost thirty years down the drain. Suzuki would not be happy about this.

Betrayed by his own daughter….and Fukuda had to stop thinking of her in those terms. Suzuki had a daughter now…well he'd HAD a daughter. Mi-Cha or Mukai whatever the baby responded to these days, was Suzuki's actual daughter. Which was why he could not be trusted to raise her. Suzuki had ruined Shigeko and he would have ruined Sho, too, if there hadn't been so much of Masami in her. He could not let Suzuki ruin that baby girl too before she'd even had a chance at-

Where was the baby?

He had assumed that the baby would have been wherever Shigeko was. She had always been so eager to play the part of the little mother even before her father had cast her in that role. He saw no baby. He didn't see or sense Sho, either, which made no sense. She lived to boss Sho around, to pretend to be her own mother and his too, but Sho wasn't there. It was just her there, her and Shimazaki who was her…he didn't want to go down that train of thought again.

What in the hell was going on here?

"Your father had to stay behind. He had some…business…to tie up. That's all. He sent me ahead to get the matter of the baby sorted." Said Fukuda. He was not going to tell her what had transpired between him and Suzuki, where her father had been, because that was not his place. She was not his child. She didn't want to be his child. Let Suzuki explain this debacle to his kids. He was always telling Fukuda not to overstep so, therefore, he would not be overstepping.

"Is he ok?" asked Shigeko. He didn't know what to make of that. The most obvious thing to make of it, her words, was that she was concerned about her father's wellbeing. But she was a Suzuki and nothing was ever what it seemed with them. He wondered if she was asking about her father's wellbeing or hers. If she would have to give up power just as she had gotten a taste of it.

"He's fine. He'll be coming back after the matter of the baby has been sorted out." Said Fukuda

"Oh, you don't have to get anything sorted out. We've been taking good care of baby Mukai." Said Shigeko. Fukuda wanted to ask her, tell her, that if she had been taking such good care of the baby then where was she? The Shigeko that he had known, the one that he had spent countless hours playing with, would not have left that baby's side. She would not have just…just abandoned her siblings to…to sit there in her father's chair.

"You've been taking care of her?" asked Fukuda. He kept his voice level. He kept his body language neutral. She couldn't read it. She took after her father in that way. Neither of them could see past their own selves. The man sitting on her desk playing with her hair on the other hand...that was his gift. He could read his enemies movements and stop attacks before they even started. That was why Suzuki had kept him around despite his truly charming personality. He was watching Fukuda. He was trying to play with Shigeko's hair, she was batting his away with her powers, but he was watching Fukuda.

It was unnerving.

"Well she was alive this morning so…." Said Shimazaki. He had given up on playing with Shigeko's hair, now, and was instead smoking what was left of his cigarette. There were two balancing there on the edge of the ashtray. Shigeko's eyes darted down to it. That was not lost on him. Neither were the yellow stains between her fingers or the yellow stains on her teeth.

He knew that he had done the right thing…that he was going to do the right thing.

"She's still alive. You know that she's still alive. Minegishi would have told you if she had died. Sho would have told ME if she had died…and also Sho would not let her die." Said Shigeko

"You left her alone with Sho?" asked Fukuda. He kept his breathing and heart rate as level as he could. He had to. He could not show her just how…how upset he was with her. She had…she had hundreds of people at her beck and call but she left the baby alone with SHO? He was nine years old. He was a CHILD. She had left him all alone with a baby?

Who was she?

"Well with Shibata and Minegishi and also the Awakened that kept on bothering us. He's a good babysitter except for he won't change diapers but that's ok. I can do that. We're doing good, I think, we've sort of got Mukai on a schedule and she doesn't throw up nearly as much as she used to. We figured out what kind of formula she likes and what kind of movies she likes and how she likes to be rocked and how she likes to be played with and-" said Shigeko. She said more things but he wasn't listening. He could not get over the fact that she had left the baby with Sho. He was only nine years old and he was all alone with a baby. He should not have had that kind of responsibility on his shoulders. He was just a kid, not only chronologically but emotionally, and his sister should not have placed that burden on his shoulders.

If she wanted to impress her father by doing it all then she should have done it all herself.

It's a terrible thought to have. Out of context he knew that he sounded like the worst sort of monster. To the outside observer she was as much of a child as her little brother. Well she wasn't. He knew her better than that. She was nothing like Sho. She was nothing like Masami. She hadn't taken after Masami in any way despite having been raised by her since the age of two.

He had failed Masami so terribly…

He had promised to protect Sho. He had promised Masami that he would protect Sho from his father, from becoming his father, and he…he had. In some ways. Sho was nothing like his father…and that painted a target on his back. He knew how Suzuki could be towards his son and it tore Fukuda up inside that he couldn't do a damn thing but put the kid back together when it was all over. A lot of things tore him up inside. Shigeko tore him up inside. She had…she had been failed by him, too. He had promised Masami that he would take care of her…

He had failed.

He was glad that Masami never checked in with him anymore. That she hadn't contacted him in years. He had no idea what he would have told her…how he would even begin to explain himself. He couldn't. She would hate him if she knew. He loved her. He had never stopped loving her…and that was not enough. He deserved her hatred, her scorn, her ire, whatever she could throw at him he deserved. He had been the one to fail her after all. To fail her children. To fail her son…her only child….

"….do laundry too. We figured it out. Did you know that babies need their own detergent? We didn't but, thankfully, it has a picture of a baby on it. That's how we know it's ok for her. She still has eczema patches though but I've been putting aloe, Minegishi taught me how to make aloe grow, onto them and maybe it's helping. I don't know. Mukai keeps on touching it and rubbing it off so I just put more on and-" said Shigeko

"He zoned out a while ago. Just thought you ought to know." Said Shimzaki. He took the other cigarette out of the ashtray and was smoking that one now. Shigeko made no move to stop him. She made no move to do anything. She had been behind that damned desk the whole time. That was a power move. Suzuki did it all the time. He never stood up when he was speaking to people. Hardly ever bowed back, too. Hardly ever did anything that could have risked making him feel like someone's equal.

"He…did?" asked Shigeko. Shit. Fuck. Damnit. Right. This was Suzuki. This was just a smaller version of Suzuki. He should have at least been half listening. Suzuki…he did not like to be ignored. Fukuda braced himself for what was coming. She could have done literally anything to him in that moment.

"I guess that I was talking too much. Sorry. I just meant that…that there's nothing to get sorted because me and Sho ae taking good care of her. Everyone else has been very helpful too. So there's just…nothing to get sorted." Said Shigeko

"If you know how to get the baby to stop throwing up that would be great. Everything smells like baby vomit which is worse than regular vomit because of the sour milk smell. It's driving me crazy." Said Shimazaki

"It's not that bad." Said Shigeko

"I apologize for contradicting you, Your Ladyship, but I simply must. You aren't blind, Your Ladyship, you don't rely on your other senses as much as I do. Alas I've been cursed to walk this Earth without sight and, therefore, I rely more heavily on my sense of smell to get around than you do….and baby vomit is hell on Earth to me." Said Shimazaki. Fukuda wanted to kick his ass. He wanted to walk up to him and just start kicking his ass until someone pulled him off of him. Blind or not. More powerful than him or not. Shigeko was a ten year old girl and he should not have been flirting with her like that!

She either didn't notice or didn't mind.

So Fukuda didn't kick anyone's ass…even though he wanted to. He kept himself composed. So she was trying to keep the baby. That made literally no sense. She was being so illogical. She had eyes. She could tell where that baby had come from. Her father had fathered another child. A daughter. Competition for her. Suzuki may have abandoned all of them, he tended to fuck off when he knew a true explosion was coming, but he'd still fathered another daughter. A daughter. Shigeko was not his daughter.

Did she know, yet, that she was adopted?

Had she figured it out? Suzuki had two blood children that looked exactly like him. She must have noticed by now that she didn't look a thing like her brother and sister or father and mother. She may have acted like Suzuki but…but even that had its limits. She was also nothing like Masami, not in behavior or appearance, and she must have noticed this by now….

Or not. She was Suzuki's daughter...even if she wasn't.

"Don't call me a Ladyship. I'm not a Ladyship." Said Shigeko

"Suzuki-sama then." Said Shimazaki

"I'm not a sama either." Said Shigeko

"Shigeko-chan, then." Said Shimazaki. He reached over to play with a piece of her hair again. It was loose, now, she was trying to look older. Trying to act older too by the look of…that. Fukuda bit his tongue. Not his child and not his business.

"Shimazaki, why don't you just call me what I want to be called?" asked Shigeko

"Because this is much more fun." Said Shimazaki. Fukuda knew that he should have gone over there and slapped that tone out of his mouth. That tone that he should not have been speaking to a TEN year old girl in…but she was closer to him and if she didn't want him speaking to her like that then she would have said something or done something to shut him up.

"No it's not." Said Shigeko. That was all that she said. Suzuki would have had more words…or just actions. Even when they were kids, if they had ever truly been kids,

"What do you know? You think sitting up all night with a screaming baby is fun." Said Shimazaki. Shigeko shook her head. Had she…had she been up with the baby? But why? That was what the legions of Awakened were for…though this newest batch did leave much to be desired….

"It is…well not when she wakes up in the middle of the night screaming but…but sitting with her and playing with her or just hanging out with her is fun. I love how she laughs and smiles and stuff." Said Shigeko

"And I love how she's finally going to be gone and things can get back to what passes for normal around here." Said Shimazaki

"No. Baby Mukai isn't going anywhere. Dad…if dad was going to take her away from me then…then he could have at least called me…he would have warned me…or he would have-" said Shigeko

"Sent someone? Like him? Sent someone to come here and tell you that your baby sister was going to be so cruelly ripped away from you?" said Shimazaki. Fukuda let himself glare. He knew that Shimazaki could read facial expressions. He knew that he could read auras, too. Fukuda had no idea what he was the most pissed off about. Having to deal with Suzuki, having to deal with Shigeko, having to get this baby sorted out, or having Shigeko trying to keep him from getting this whole baby debacle sorted out.

Or maybe because Shimazaki had just reminded him of what he was doing.

Poor Sho. This would not be easy for him. He was such a caring person, even under the anger he was a caring person, just like his mother was. Sho would not take having his sister ripped away from him. Fukuda…he was going to do what was best for everyone involved. The world did not need another Suzuki. The world did not need another esper child twisted by Suzuki's warped ideology. The world also did not need another very angry little esper child. That baby deserved so much better than what Suzuki could be. Fukuda…he did not know Tsuchiya. He didn't know her but he knew that she had to be a right sight better than Suzuki simply because there was no worse parent in the world. There couldn't have been.

He had to think of the welfare of the child.

"Fukuda…are you going to take Mukai away from me?" asked Shigeko. She made no sense. She didn't need the competition. She didn't need someone new to look after. She didn't need her father being all unstable because he had made an easily avoidable mistake and brought a new human being into the world…

He didn't understand her.

But that made sense. He had been trying to understand her father for almost thirty years now.

"I've found someone who can take her in. That's why I'm here. I'm supposed to bring her to her new mother before your father gets back." Said Fukuda. Shimazaki teleported across the room. Fukuda almost asked him why but then he felt it. Shigeko was…she was…he knew what that felt like. Her aura hurt. She was trying her best to keep it contained, to keep herself contained. She was…she was…

She was not taking this well.

For once in her life the entire range of human emotion passed across her face. Ten years of emoting all at once. She was…she was terrifying in that moment. She was terrifying in a way that Suzuki had never been. Suzuki was either violent or he wasn't. He either hurt you or he went somewhere private to explode. She was different. She was never purposely violent…but she did explode.

But she didn't.

She downed the drink in front of her…both of them. She downed them both and then leaned back and closed her eyes. He could see her mouth moving but he couldn't tell what she was saying. Shimazaki probably knew but Fukuda wasn't about to ask him. He couldn't. He couldn't move or think or…or anything. Not when there was just the uncertainty of…HER.

"If that's what dad says then…then let's go home and…and I'll get her things packed and…and then me and Sho'll say goodbye." Said Shigeko. She pushed away from her desk and stood up. She stumbled, a bit, and in an instant Shimazaki was beside her. He put a steadying arm around her and she thanked him.

Fukuda didn't know what to make of that and he didn't even have time to make anything of this. Before he knew it he was off, teleported in the blink of an eye, and as soon as he realized that he was being teleported he was back on his feet, back safely on earth.

And off to do one of the most difficult things that he would ever have to do in his life.


	156. Goodbye Baby Mukai

Mob could not cry.

Even though she wanted to. Even though she wanted nothing to do but break down and cry. Even though she had no idea why…why she couldn't. This was a sad thing that was happening to her bur she just…she just couldn't cry. She wasn't allowed to. She wasn't allowed to and if she did cry then Sho would cry and then she would have been setting a bad example for him…and dad would have been so disappointed in her…

And also Mukai would start crying.

"See? I found all of your little socks. I'm putting them here, see? I want you to tell your new mom that your socks are here…and also I want you to keep your socks on. Ok? If-if you don't then-then your feet will be cold." Said Mob. She stumbled a bit, just a bit, as she crouched down to put baby Mukai's socks away.

She was sort of dizzy.

"I-I'm going to pacify your clip…sorry….I mean clip your pacifier to you-your shirt. Ok? That way it won't touch the floor when you spit it out. That way your new mom won't have to sterilize it. Te-tell your new mom that if your pacifier touches the floor it-it needs to be sterilized. That means-means boiled." Said Mob. Mukai was looking at her. She was looking up at her and she smiled…she smiled and…and…

Mob walked over to her dresser and took a drink.

This was not good. She was not supposed to be like this. She felt like she was going to throw up. She felt dizzy. On her way back to Mukai she fell and braced herself against her bed. She knew that she should not have overdone it like this but…but she wanted…she wanted…

She wanted to make these feelings go away.

She got down onto the floor and sat next to baby Mukai. She was still smiling now. She was smiling and…and she reached out for Mob. Mob put her finger in the palm of baby Mukai's hand. She wrapped her hand around Mob's finger and brought it over to her mouth. Mob let her even though this was gross. She didn't care if it was gross, if she was getting baby spit all over her finger, because this was the…the last time. All of these things were the last…the last times they would ever happen.

Mukai would never smile at her again.

"M-Mukai, I need you to listen to me. I love you. I love you so much and…and I know that we haven't know each other for very long…well for me. I-I'm sorry about missing your four month birthday and…and I'm sorry that I'll miss every single birthday after that. You…I love you so much. I love you as much as I would if-if you were my for real from my mom and dad sister. Do you understand? I love you." Said Mob. She was speaking Japanese. Mukai was still looking at her. Did she speak Japanese yet? Well she didn't even speak yet to begin with but…but she would speak someday and Mob…Mob would never be able to…to hear what she had to say.

Mob switched to Korean.

"I love you. Remember that I love you. That you had a big sister named Shigeko, or Mob, or Suzuki, or Suzuki Shigeko and she loves you. Ok? You…you're such a good person and…and please grow up and…and remember me. Remember me and Sho and how much we loved you…how much we will always love you." Said Mob. She was just saying words at this point. Her Korean was bad. Her Korean was so bad that Mukai was laughing at her. She would have asked Minegishi to help but they were busy yelling at Shimazaki for some reason. They didn't want to say goodbye. Only Shibata did and he had cried a lot…which was unfair because Mob couldn't cry.

Well she could physically cry but that was not what she was supposed to do.

Fukuda was back and he said that dad would be back soon and dad would have been so mad at her if he came back and found out that she had been crying. That was not allowed. She was supposed to control her emotions and her powers. Also she drank way too much and she knew that this would get her in trouble too and…and everything would get her in trouble. She wasn't supposed to feel anything or lose control or…or anything.

Even when her little sister was being taken away from her.

It was for the best. Fukuda had found a mom for her. A real mom. A mom who was a real adult. A mom who knew how to do baby things and didn't have to Google, probably. A mom who would braid her hair for her when she grew up. A mom who would make sure to give her a full glass of milk every day so she would grow up big and strong. A mom would….who would be able to do a better job than Mob could. Because she was just a kid. She was just a kid and kids…even kidults….they were not supposed to take care of babies.

Mukai would be much happier with her new mom.

"Mukai…you're going to get a new mom. Are you listening-listening to me? This is important. Your new mom is…well I'm not your mom but…but she's going to be like me. I don't know how much you notice but I do a lot of things for you and…and your new mom is going to do the same things for you. She's going to change your diapers and clean up your throw up and change your clothes and make your bottles and put on your movies and play with you and read to you and get up with you in the middle of the night and…and she's going to love you. Moms…that's what they do…they love you…well they're supposed to. My mom…my mom left. She just ran away from me…me and Sho…and dad. She's gone and…and I miss her every single day." Said Mob. She pulled her shirt over her eyes so that Mukai couldn't see her crying. This made her happy. She thought that they were playing peek-a-boo.

Mob pulled her shirt away from her eyes.

She wanted to see Mukai's little smile. She loved seeing Mukai smile. She would never see Mukai smile again. She would never hear Mukai laugh again. Mukai was…she was leaving. She was going away and never coming back. She was…she was going to be nothing but…but pictures and memories. That was all. Just pictures and memories.

That was what happened when you loved someone.

When you loved someone they left. When you loved someone they loved you but also they left. Sometimes they ran away, sometimes their work took them away, and sometimes someone else took them away. Mukai was leaving but…but it was for the best. She never would have been happy here. Not with Dad around. Dad was mean a lot of the time and even when he was nice it wasn't that great because he would just end up being mean again and you never knew when more meanness would come and…and Mukai didn't need that. Mob and Sho had worked hard to make sure that she never knew real unhappiness. Not the little bits of unhappiness that Mukai felt like when she threw up or needed to be changed or lost her pacifier. There were the big unhappiness that she would never feel. The sinking feeling in your stomach when your dad was upset. The lonely feeling you got when you woke up and your mom was gone. The burning, angry, feeling you got in your heart when your little brother was mean to you even though you had never done anything to him but love him.

Mukai would be happy.

Mob didn't know what kind of new mom Mukai would get or if she would have a dad or a little brother or maybe a little sister or a big brother or a big sister or…or anything. She had no idea where in the world Mukai would end up or what kind of people she would end up with but she knew that Mukai would be happy. She wasn't a Suzuki. That meant that she got to be happy.

She was lucky like that.

"Make sure that your new mom knows that you speak Korean mostly, ok? Make sure that she speaks Korean to you…and if she can't speak Korean that she can hire someone to teach her so that way you can understand her. I hope you don't end up with someone who speaks English. It harder to learn even than Korean….but you'll have to learn it once you go to school…and I'm sorry that I'm going to miss your first day of school…and your whole life just…just remember that I love you and that…that you're going to have a very happy life. A good life. A happier life than mine…than what I can give." Said Mob. She could feel the tears coming from the corners of her eyes. Her aura was reaching out everywhere. She was pulling things in close. Her bed and Sho's scraped across the floor. The dresser tipped over. A ball hit her on the head. Her pile of dolls crawled towards her.

Mukai thought that they were playing.

She was laughing and smiling and…and this was good. This was what Mob wanted. She wanted Mukai to be happy and now she was happy. She was so happy to be…to be playing. Would her new mom know how to play with her? The games she liked? Would she be able to…would she be able to make things float? What sort of esper was she? Was she even an esper? Mob was….Mob was letting some stranger take care of her baby sister for the rest of her life…

Mukai was just her pretend sister.

Dad had brought her home because she was an orphan with no place else to go. That was all. Now she had some place else to go and she would be going to that place and now…now everything could get back to normal. Now her life would get back to normal. Now she would go back to playing with Sho and…and she wouldn't have to be dad anymore and…and she would be able to sleep through the night again and….

And this was….this was a thing that was happening and there was nothing that she could do to stop it.

"Mukai…Mi-cha? That was your name, before, Mi-cha. But now you're Mukai and…and I think that it's important that you remember your name. Just…I want you to remember everything. I want you to remember me but I want….I want you to be happy. I'm not making you leave, I have no choice…because my dad found you a new home and…and you're going to be much happier with your new mom than I can ever make you be. Your life with her is going to be….to be so much better than what I can….Mukai, you deserve so much better than what I can give, than what I can be…and there's nothing that I can do…" said Mob. She wiped her tears away before they fell. Mukai's last memories of her would not be of her crying. Mukai would…she would remember…

She would remember them playing.

Mob picked up a doll and put it in Mukai's lap. This wasn't one of her princess dolls. She wasn't going to give one of those away. Mob wasn't trying to be stingy she just knew that those dolls were not special. This one was. This was one of those dolls that dad had made, sometimes, that looked like her. This one even had a custom made Elsa dress on just like hers…and this would make it easier for Mukai to remember her. Mob's other dolls, her princesses and stuff, weren't made special and she had also given a lot of them haircuts. This was better. It was hardly played with.

Almost new.

Mukai deserved an almost new doll. She deserved the best dolls and the best of other toys too. The best cardboard paper towel holders and the best balls of tin foil and the best empty chip bags and all of that other stuff that she liked to play with even though it was junk. She just wanted baby Mukai to be happy…and she would be happy…

"Baby Mukai…please. I just want you to have a good life, ok? I want you to like your life. If you like your life then…then that's all I need." Said Mob. Mob had no idea if she liked her life. She liked…she liked some parts of it but…but there was just this part of her that…that was always hurting a little bit. It was like a splinter. It never really went away but there were times when she could barely feel it. There were also other times when all she could feel inside of her was this…pain. When she would be empty and aching and she didn't even know why. It would happen at the most random times. It would have made sense if that feeling came when she was being hit or punished by dad or if Sho was being mean to her but it just…showed up while she was watching TV or drinking milk or taking a bath….she would just randomly…feel like that….

Mukai would never feel like that. She was going to be happy, to have a good life, because that was what she deserved. She was going to like her life.

"I hate my life! I hate my life so much!" shouted Sho. He was mad. He was more than mad. He had never been this mad in his entire life. He couldn't see or think or breathe he was so mad.

Fukuda was taking little sis away!

"Sho….please. This is for the best." Said Fukuda. There was nothing else that he could say. He was taking away Sho's younger sister, his only real sibling, and that….that was what was happening. He was taking Sho's baby sister away and…and there was nothing that he could do to stop this. He had to think of the welfare of the child.

Of all of the children.

Sho did not need to be taking care of a baby at his age. He was nine years old and the only thing that a nine year old should have had to worry about was growing up. Shigeko…he didn't even know what to make of Shigeko. She had been….muted…..throughout the whole thing. She had immediately gone to pack up the baby's things while her little brother had a mental breakdown. Like it didn't even matter. Like she didn't even care. Like this was just another day for her. She just walked away while her little brother kicked holes in the walls and shattered the windows. She didn't care that he was on his back screaming until his face turned purple. She just…went to pack up the baby's things and that was it.

This was what Suzuki did to kids.

He ruined them. Sho may have had a problem with anger but at least he was feeling SOMETHING. Shigeko was taking the whole thing in stride. She was just…acting like her father. Even her aura…well there was some activity now but…but the colors were muted. Duller. Her aura was moving more slowly too…and he didn't know what to make of it, what to make of her, but it didn't matter because he had Sho to focus on. Sho was the one who needed him most of all.

Poor kid.

"I hate my life! I hate it!" screamed Sho. He kicked and thrashed and thrashed and kicked and he didn't know what he was thrashing or kicking at but he knew that it was there and he knew that he wanted to make it hurt because he hurt and he had never hurt this much in his entire life and he knew that maybe if he made this hurt then the hurt he was feeling would go away already!

"I deserve this. Keep going. Tire yourself out. We both know I can take it and we both know that I deserve this." said Fukuda. He was the one who saw the sad solution and did what had to be done. He was the one who ferried people away from Suzuki. First Sho's mother and now his baby sister…but Sho was too young to know about the former and too upset about the latter to form coherent thoughts.

Fukuda had no idea what to do.

This was what had to be done. He couldn't save Shigeko and he couldn't save Sho but he could save that poor, innocent, little baby. Suzuki would ruin her. The baby did not need to grow up like Suzuki's other children. She needed to be loved and safe and…and as loved and as safe as she could feel being raised in the Seventh Division…being raised in Claw. He wished that he could have gotten her out of Claw…he wished that he could have found a better life for her…

He wished for a lot of things.

"I hate you! I hate me! I hate everybody!" Sho could only make those words. The rest were just screams. The kinds that tore at his throat. He couldn't breathe. As soon as he pulled air into his body it escaped. He was getting dizzy. He was getting nauseous. All he could feel was hurt and all he could see was his aura and even that hurt and…and he was tired of being hurt!

Something was keeping him from moving.

He was being pulled over to someone. A Green aura covered him. His throat stopped hurting. His lungs took in more air. His body stopped hurting. His body felt fine, now, but his feelings still hurt. He had never felt like this before. Never in his whole nine years of life. He hated it. He hated this feeling and he just wanted it to stop. He wanted everything to stop. He wanted to just put a stop to all of his feelings.

He was being healed. Fukuda could only fix bodies, not feelings.

"Shh….Sho. You're going to be ok. Everything is going to be ok. You're going to make it through." Said Fukuda. What else could he say? He knew that Sho was in pain but there were limits to what he could fix. The only thing that he could do for Sho, now, was be there for him. Hold him and rock him and tell him that even though he was in the worst pain of his life he would be ok. Fukuda almost wanted to leave the baby with Sho, to give him his sibling and to make his life a little better, but he was not going to do something so irresponsible. Sho was a child and should not have been in charge of a baby. Sho did not need the competition, too, and Fukuda knew Suzuki. He knew that he would value the baby above Sho if she was a proper prodigy…and if she wasn't he would have unspeakable things done to her until she was. Fukuda could see the scars on Sho's body, he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and he knew that…that he could not live with himself, live on this earth, if he let that happen to another child.

This was the best thing for all of them…even if it hurt.

"How?! My…my little sis…she's going away! You're taking her away from me!" shouted Sho. He hit Fukuda. He reached over and slapped in across the face. He did it over and over again. As he slapped him he spat out words like failure and disappointment and useless and pathetic even though he knew how much these words could hurt. He knew how much being slapped could hurt. He knew but he did it anyway.

He hated Fukuda so much in that moment that if he had been bigger he would have killed him.

Why did people have to leave?! Why did the people he loved the most in the whole world have to leave!? Why did bad things have to happen to him!? Sometimes that was what it felt like. It felt like all the bad things in the world happened to him. Like God made a list of every bad thing that could happen to a person and every morning when Sho woke up God picked a new bad thing out of a hat…or one of those lottery machine…or something and then that bad thing happened.

Baby sis was being taken away.

She was leaving. Sho took back every complaint that he ever made. He didn't mind it when she threw up on herself or on him or on his drawings or on his toys. He didn't mind how she was up half the night crying. He didn't mind that she had to be fed constantly and he didn't care at all that taking care of her didn't leave him much time to draw these days. He didn't care that he had to share baths with her so she wouldn't drown. He didn't even care about all of the times that she had peed on him and then laughed even though it was really gross to pee on someone.

He just wanted his little sister to stay.

"Sho….it's going to be ok. The baby is going to a better place now-" said Fukuda

"You're making it sound like she's going to die!" shouted Sho. No! She was…she was not going to…she wasn't dying!

"No. Sho, she's not going to die. She's going to live. She going to live a long life-" said Fukuda

"Of course she is, she's not even one yet! Of course she's going to live for a long time!" said Sho

"And her life is going to be a happy one." said Fukuda

"How do you know?! What makes you the-the-the king of babies!? Why do you get to decide where aby sis goes or if her life is going to be happy or any of that!?" asked Sho

"Sho…I didn't decide this. This just…part of being an adult. When you're an adult you have to think about what's best for everyone. I want to leave the baby with you but I can't." said Fukuda

"What do you mean 'you can't'?! Huh? Explain it to me!" shouted Sho

"Sho, I have my….I mean that I'm going to do what's best for you and her and everyone. I know you love her and she loves you but…but you're just a kid." Said Fukuda

"Me and big sis took good care of her! The best care of her! What does us being kids have to do with anything? We know what's best for her! We looked up everything that there was to know about taking care of a baby and then we did it! All of it! WE DID ALL THE THINGS!" shouted Sho. He shouted until his voice hurt and he was dizzy. After he was done, after his voice was gone and the air in his lungs ran out and he tasted blood, he leaned back against Fukuda's chest. A familiar green aura covered him like a blanket.

"I know. I know that you and Shigeko did your best but you and Shigeko aren't her parents." Said Fukuda. He healed Sho and rocked him back and forth like he had done countless times when Sho had injured himself as a small child. He needed to give more comfort now than Sho had ever been given in years…not since Masami. He, selfishly, wished that she were there. That she were the one easing Sho through this. That she did all the little things she did, the magic lipstick and the cinnamon and all of it, so that Sho could just…stop all of this.

But Masami was gone off to a better place…but not dead…and he had to stop thinking of her as if she were dead.

"You're giving her back to her real mom and dad?" asked Sho with a sniffle. He felt better, now. Fukuda made him feel better with his powers and his words. He wanted that for baby Mukai. He wanted little sis to go back with her real mom and dad. There was nothing worse than when your mom left you. Sho knew that he would have traded everything he had, made some kind of deal with God, to get his mom back.

'No….I found her a new mom. She's going to have a new mom and her new mom is going to…to love her very much." Said Fukuda. He had no way of knowing that beyond blind faith. Tsuchiya from the Seventh Division looked good on paper and hadn't taken much convincing. This was the best that he could do…though even putting her in a basket and sending her down the river would have been preferable to letting Suzuki raise her.

"What's her new mom like?" asked Sho. Did she know how to put cinnamon on things to make them feel better? Did she have a special Aristocats plate that she ate off of but sometimes shared with you? Did she know how to reach even the most boring of stories, like Hello Kitty books, to make them sound interesting? Did she knew how to rinse the soap out of your hair without getting it in your eyes? Did she know…did she know all of the things that a mom was supposed to know?

Did she know that she was never, ever, EVER allowed to leave?

"She's…she's nice. She seems like she would be the violent type but she isn't. She just…she likes fighting. She used to be a mixed martial arts fighter before she joined Claw." Said Fukuda. He wondered how much it would have been alright to tell him…and then decided to tell him everything. He owed Sho at least that much.

"Little sis is going to be a part of Claw?" asked Sho. This changed things. He thought that little sis was going to end up far, far, away but if she was going to be in Claw then…then this wouldn't be forever. They may not have been able to be together for a while but she would grow up in Claw and he was going to run Claw and the world and…and that meant that this wasn't a forever goodbye. This was just…see you later. That was all. This was just…it hurt but…but big sis wouldn't be gone forever.

He felt better.

"I…maybe. She's just a baby, Sho, let her worry about learning how to walk and talk and eat solid foods first." Said Fukuda with a laugh that he did not feel. This baby would grow up to be a part of Claw. The woman raising her would be in Claw and…and she was Suzuki's daughter….and Suzuki would not let her go. He would never acknowledge her as his child but he would never let her go, either.

"Right…when she grows up she can be a part of Claw. Whatever pat her mom is, I guess. What part of Claw is her mom in?" asked Sho. They lived in different bases and Divisions all the time. The odds were good that he would run into little sis again…this wasn't so bad.

The hurt was still there but it wasn't so bad.

"The…the Seventh Division. Her mother is Tsuchiya of the Seventh Division. The qigong user. She's going to be Mukai's mother now and…and maybe one day you'll be able to visit. You know, once she gets settled. A move to another country is a big step for anyone let alone a baby. It could…it could be years until Mukai gets settled." Said Fukuda. Sho would probably never set foot in the Seventh Division again. At least not as his father's side. Suzuki hated Seasoning City and…and that was why this was the best place for the baby. Everything Suzuki touched he ruined and…and at least now, even though she would be raised in Claw, that baby would have a chance.

"Yeah…and also she barely understands Japanese. I should wait for her to learn Japanese…or I should do my Korean homework…" said Sho. He got quiet, then, because he remembered that place. It was a bad place. That was one of the places where they made new Awakened. He rubbed his hands against the spots on his arms where they stuck needles in him. He rubbed his toes against the place on his leg where all the skin had come off. He could even swore he felt his tree rubbing against his shirt…but that wasn't really a raised scar….

If someone tried to do this to baby sis he would kill them. He didn't care if he went to prison or if dad beat him up. He would kill anyone who tried to hurt baby sis…to awaken her….

To make her like him.

"Sho, what are you thinking about? Come on, I know how you get when you're this quiet." Said Fukuda

"I…I'm going to kill anyone who tries to put baby sis in an Awakening room. I'm not just saying that. I don't care where I am in the world or what I'm doing. I'm going to kill them and then I'm going to go to prison." Said Sho

"Sho…no. That is never going to happen to her. I…I promise you that I will never let that happen to her." said Fukuda. He knew that he should not have been going around writing checks that he couldn't cash. Sho needed that reassurance and…and he needed to give it even though he had no way, at all, of making sure that the baby didn't end up in an awakening experiment….but she wouldn't…because Suzuki didn't' give a fuck about her. He had been ready to pawn her off on literally anyone when he heard that she existed. He hadn't even wanted to hold her. The whole time he had been holding her he looked like he wanted to throw up. Suzuki…he had only hurt Sho because he wanted a son that was worthy of him. Sho was his only son but…but he had another daughter. The perfect daughter. The perfect cherry picked orphan that he had molded into everything that he could have ever wanted from a child. Aside from the fact that he couldn't do anything about her lack of Y chromosome…

He wondered how different things would have been if Shigeko had been born a boy.

Maybe a hell of a lot better and maybe a hell of a lot worse. He didn't know. The only thing that he did know was that he was causing Sho pain that he didn't have to feel…and if a little lie could ease that pain then it was ok. Just like Masami was living her life thinking that Fukuda was keeping her children safe and protecting them from their father Sho could spend the rest of his life thinking that Fukuda was out there making sure that his baby sister was safe and sound.

He had become quite the liar over the years.

"Good. I never want anything like that to happen to her. Even if she never gets real powers, even if she can't do much more than move a piece of paper across the table, even if she can't even do that…I hope that she never has to go through that. I don't want her to be the Awakened Child. I want her to be…I want her to be the Prodigy." Said Sho

"Sho…you're a good big brother." Said Fukuda

"Thanks…and you would be a good dad, too, if you were someone's dad. You say nice things and you make me feel better and you never hurt me or anyone else…..I wish you were my dad." Said Sho. He knew that he was not supposed to feel like that let alone say it but he didn't care. He didn't care if dad popped out of the air vents or from between the couch cushions and hit him so bad that he thought he was going to die. That was just how he felt in that moment…and how he had been feeling since he was a little kid…

He wished Fukuda had been his dad.

"Sho…don't-" said Fukuda. Sho should not have said that. That might have been the thing that finally made his father put him in the ground….but his father wasn't there. His father was sulking in Japan over Fukuda didn't even know what. It wasn't like the man gave a damn about anyone or anything other than himself. It wasn't like he cared that he had put a new life in the world. It wasn't like he even cared about the child he had wanted to create.

But he didn't tell Sho any of that.

He didn't get the chance to tell Sho anything. He felt a very familiar aura getting closer and he immediately climbed to his feet. He pulled Sho up, too, because he did not need to explain everything that just happened to Shigeko. She wouldn't have been able to understand it anyway. She, like Suzuki, had the emotional range of a teaspoon.

Even now she looked bored.

She pushed the baby into the room. The baby was sitting in a laundry basket. There, next to it, was the creepiest looking doll that Fukuda had ever seen. Why any child would want to play with a doll that looked like them, so much like them that it landed firmly in the uncanny valley, was beyond him. Shigeko pushed the basket in front of him and laid a suitcase at his feet. He knew that one, it was one of her old ones, from when she had been small. She set a diaper bag on top of it.

"I got Mukai all packed up." Said Mob. She had gotten all of her feelings out already. There. Now she was done. Baby Mukai was not going to see her upset. Sho was not going to see her upset. Fukuda was not going to tell dad that she had been upset. That she had committed the crime of showing her feelings. That was the biggest crime that a Suzuki could make, according to dad, and he was the one who made the rules now.

She was back to being a kid…and the only girl in the family.

"Thank you. Well I'll just be going now. It's a long flight ahead of us." Said Fukuda. He went to take the doll from the basket but he was stopped. Her telekinetic grasp was weak but it was there. Shaky. He could have thrown it off…but he wouldn't. She was showing him her strength in allowing herself to be weak. She was telling him that he wasn't even worth the effort of using her telekinesis properly.

She so took after her father.

"She can have the doll. It's a friend for her in case she gets lonely…and so she can remember me." Said Mob. She knew that she was not supposed to give her toys away but she didn't care. These were her toys and she could do what she wanted with them. She could give baby Mukai all of her dolls and other toys, too, if she wanted to…but there wasn't enough space in the suitcase for all of that…and also maybe instead of getting her new clothes whenever hers got dirty they should have figured out the washing machine sooner.

"Wait! I have something for little sis too!" Shouted Sho. He ran as fast as he could to his drawing pile…well what was left of it…he had made a huge mess….but that was ok because he found the drawing that she had helped him with.

The drawing of their family.

"Here. So she can remember me too." Said Sho. He tucked the drawing into the outer pocket of her baby bag. He wanted to leave it in her hand but he knew that she would have just messed it up. He didn't want her to mess it up. He wanted her to have it so that she could remember them, her family, her pretend family.

Even if she was just his pretend sister…it had felt real to him.

"I'll guard it with my life." Said Fukuda. He meant that. That was a promise that he was capable of keeping. That was the one thing that he could assure Sho of. He couldn't assure this baby's safety or her happiness but…but he could keep this drawing safe for her…and the creepy doll, too, because he did not need Shigeko getting pissed at him. He didn't need….this wasn't about what he did and did not need.

This was about what was best for the child…for the children.

He picked her up, said his goodbyes, and left while he still had the strength to. Out of everything he had done, everything he had been complicit in, this was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. Breaking up Sho's family. Making him cry. But Fukuda, at least, did not cry. He could not cry in front of the kids. He had to be strong for their sake. For Sho's sake. Everything he did, everything that he was going to do, he was doing for Sho's sake.

For Masami.

"It'll be ok, Sho, she's going to…to a better family than ours." Said Mob as Fukuda picked baby Mukai up out of her laundry basket and carried her out of their lives forever.

Mob couldn't cry. For Sho's sake.


	157. Miscalculation

Suzuki did not like it when the children were angry with him.

He knew that he shouldn't have cared, and part of him didn't, but part of him did. The sentimental part of him did. The part that had the time and energy to indulge in little walks down memory lane. The part that stopped off when they were small and they would greet him with open arms when he came through the door after being away from them for weeks on end.

He had not gotten a warm welcome when he came through the door.

He had no idea why. He had been gone long enough for the children to miss him. They hadn't seen him almost a month but…but they hadn't even come to the door. They had sensed his aura, he knew that they had both sensed him, but when he came through the door he didn't find happy children or even content children. He hadn't found any children at all.

Strange.

Their shoes had still been there in the makeshift genkan but they were not. They hadn't even been together, which was something else that was strange, because they had always gotten frightened when they were separated. But they had been separated. Daughter had been laying down in front of the television watching the movie she liked about the ice queen…but in Korean for some reason…and holding a doll's sock in her hand.

He didn't understand.

He knew that she knew that he was there. Her eyes and her aura stayed fixed away from him. It was like she was making a point not to look at him. He didn't understand. She…she cared for him. She had always cared for him but now…now she was just laying there…and the whole thing was too much like a certain other scene that he had seen played out time and time again before…

He needed to stop thinking of Masami.

He never should have gone back to the old house. He never should have gone back to the place where…where a lot of unpleasantness had taken place. The whole thing had left him feeling very off kilter. His aura was active, moving and flaring and all of that, and he felt…not good. This whole thing had been too much. Too big. Just…this whole thing….

He wished that he could have just forgotten it.

"Daughter." Said Suzuki. He had to be the one to greet her first because he got the feeling that she would have ignored him until he left her. She was…he didn't want to believe that she was ignoring him…..so he didn't. He chose not to believe it. The simplest explanation was usually the correct one. Daughter wanting to ignore him was not a simple explanation. She had never ignored him before and he had no idea why she was ignoring him now. She had no reason to.

She had been very happy in his absence.

She had taken over for him pretty much as soon as it became clear he would not be coming back anytime soon. Maybe she was ignoring him because she had tasted true power and developed a craving for it. Maybe that was it. Maybe she knew that with his return she would have to step down as the temporary President of Claw…a position and title which she had given herself. That could have been it….but that explanation wasn't simple enough. To go with that explanation he would have had to delve into why she wanted power in the first place. He would have had to come up with some sort of plan in case she ever tried to take power from him or, more realistically, her brother. He would have had to deal with the fact that she was not his blood and she could never rule.

He didn't have the energy to deal with that.

So that was not the explanation he went with. It was not the most simple explanation. Perhaps she resented him for leaving her. That could have been it. She had been his constant travelling companion since she had been seven years old. A short amount of time for him, three years, but almost a third of her life. She had just turned ten after all. That could have been it…but she had complained, before, about how often they moved around. How tired she was all the time due to jetlag. How she disliked waking up and not knowing what country she was in. He offered to have a sign made for her which she could hang up beside her bed, one of those 'you are here' signs, but she declined. So therefore she did not resent him for leaving. That explanation would require it's own explanation and he did not feel like going down that rabbit hole.

There was a more simple explanation somewhere in there. He just had to figure it out.

"Hi, dad." Said Daughter. She looked at him, briefly, before retuning her eyes to the television screen. He waited to see if she had more to say to him. It seemed that she didn't.

"How have you been?" asked Suzuki. That was a question that people asked each other. It was ok for him to ask her how she had been. Right? She…she usually told him. She usually told him how she had been…in great detail…but now she was being so…distant. Distant and different.

He didn't like this at all.

"Good. You?" asked Daughter. She was still watching television. He had no idea what was so engrossing about this movie. She had seen this movie at least a hundred times, maybe more, and she knew how it went. She had seen it so many times that she was watching it in Korean for the novelty of it. He didn't understand her one bit.

But he would try to. That way he, at least, didn't have to try and understand himself.

"I've been fine. Nothing of note…to you. How has your brother been?" asked Suzuki. He knew how Son was. Angry. He could sense his aura. Angry and violent…and apparently that anger had been taken out on the house at some point. There were holes in the walls and the windows had been taped together and everything but the couch and television were upended.

Perhaps he should have told Fukuda to stay with the children…or someone….someone competent.

"Upset." Said Daughter after a moment. He waited for her to offer some follow up information. She did not. She simply laid there in front of the television and paid him no mind. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. It was not a good sign when women acted like this. He knew firsthand that when a woman acted like this it meant that something was terribly wrong. He just had no idea what that something could have been. She was…she was being so…

She was acting just like her mother.

He could not deal with this right now. He could not deal with her acting like Masami. Not after what he had been through…not that he had been through anything. He had been working hard for years and he took a break. He lost track of time and went back to his old house. Then Fukuda, ever the sensible one, tracked him down and told him that Claw was not doing well under the leadership of a child. So he came back home.

That was what happened.

Nothing in what had happened should have had any parallels to any part of Masami's life…but Daughter was still acting like this. She was being tired and distant…and her aura did seem tired. Sluggish, even. Too much milk, perhaps? There was an empty glass of it next to her and several empty cartons tossed off into a corner…and perhaps at some point he should have had someone teach the children to clean up after themselves…well Masami had taught them but it seems as though they had forgotten…

He wished that he could have forgotten.

"Thank you for attempting to replace me. I never asked you to but you did. That was a good show of…initiative." Said Suzuki. He wasn't happy about all of the changes that she made…and he was even less happy about the fact that everyone had been very happy to follow a ten year old girl just because he had been gone for a few weeks…but it had been a good show of initiative.

So he praised her for it. She liked praise.

"You said that I was in charge." Said Daughter. There was an odd quality to her voice, there, a sleepy sort of quality. He saw it in her aura, too. Maybe she was just tired. Maybe that was it, the simplest explanation, that she was simply tired. It was late. In this time zone it was late. She must have been tired. She was tired and…and watching her favorite movie. That was why she was being so distant…that made sense. That made perfect sense.

"Of the household, not the family." Said Suzuki

"I didn't know that. You just left so fast and then left me in charge and people were scared that you weren't going to come back." Said Daughter

"Of course I was coming back." Said Suzuki

"Sometimes people don't come back." Said Daughter

"Yes, there are some people like that but I am not one of them. I'm your father." Said Suzuki

"Sometimes parents don't come back." Said Daughter. He knew to whom she was referring to. She knew not to refer to her mother. She knew not to mention her mother. She knew that her mother was gone and a traitor and she had left them and therefore they owed her nothing…and they did not miss her. He did not miss her. He…he could not miss her. He was fine. Everything was fine.

"I will always come back." Said Suzuki. He settled on reassuring her that he would always be there. Even though he wanted to punish her. Even though he wanted to drag her by her braids….her hair was down for some reason….and remind her that she could not mention her mother…but then he would have been a hypocrite. He would let it slide this time. That might have been what had gotten her so…like this. She may have been missing her mother…even though she knew not to even think of her mother…

Maybe he should have just left her alone.

But then he would have been alone. He had been alone for the past three weeks. Human contact was a need and he…he had to fulfill it even a bit. Just a bit. He…he needed to be near her. He had so many reasons to hate himself now and needing to be near Daughter was just another reason in a list, a long list, of reasons.

He sat beside her.

"You're sitting next to me." Said Daughter

"I am." Said Suzuki

"Why?" asked Daughter

"Because…because I haven't been near you in a while." Said Suzuki. This was not admitting weakness. He didn't say that me missed her, he didn't say that he needed her, he just said that he hadn't been near her in a while. She could make of that what she would. She would probably take this as a return to their nighttime television watching routine.

"I haven't been near you in a while too." Said Daughter. There was some silence, there, between the two of them. She was engrossed in her movie, that was all, she liked this song. Well she liked all the songs but she especially like this song. The one where the ice queen built her castle. He liked this song, too, the way that she built her castle. The way it was animated. He wondered if Daughter would have wanted him to build her a castle.

Not one made out of ice and snow, obviously, because the whole thing would have been terribly impractical.

He would have built her a castle if she had asked. Even a European style one even though she could have had all the Japanese castles that she wanted. A fortress. A palace. A little of both. She deserved both. She was practically royalty. A princess. She was the Daughter of the future ruler of the world after all. Yes, she was his Daughter.

She was his only Daughter.

He doesn't think, he just acts. He rests his hand upon her leg. She takes this as her crowding him and she sits up. He pauses for a moment. He could have just passed that off as him needing more space. That way she would not have suspected that he needed her. That he was so close to shattering her image of him. She needed him to be strong for her. She could not know how easily her father had gone to pieces over…over a mistake that he had made which would haunt him for the rest of his life but also one which she would never know about because no little girl needed to know that her father had been unfaithful to her mother and possibly even made a…he hadn't. That had not been his daughter. Daughter was his Daughter. Baby was not his daughter. Baby was…Baby was a baby and now she had a mother and she was not his child because his children came from his wife and since his wife had not given birth to Baby therefore Baby was not his.

There. Simple.

"Are you trying to improve your Korean?" asked Suzuki. He felt like he had to say something. This didn't feel right at all. She had always been so talkative…but now she was being so quiet. Even when they watched this movie together she talked through it. She explained the plot and the characters over and over again even though they had seen this movie a thousand times…but now she was strangely silent…and it did not suit her at all.

"Yes." said Daughter. That was all she said. He decided to speak before the silence dragged on for too long. If there was too much silence then he might have been tempted to just leave and leaving would have meant either being on his own, not something that he felt like doing, or interacting with Son…and he was impossible to deal with when he got like this. Very tiresome.

"Why? Your Korean is very good." Said Suzuki

"Minegishi says that I have an accent." Said Daughter

"Everyone has an accent." Said Suzuki dismissively. Yes, she did have an accent when she spoke Korean, but everyone in the whole world had some kind of accent. Who cared how you spoke the language just so long as you were understood?

"Well I don't want one." said Daughter

"Why not? You sound Japanese because you are Japanese. Why are you so averse to being Japanese?" asked Suzuki

"I'm not." Said Daughter

"Sometimes it seems like you are. You hardly consume Japanese media and you always dress like…that." Said Suzuki

"We watch Japanese things when we're together." Said Daughter

"Yes but we haven't been together in a while." Said Suzuki

"I know. You left." Said Daughter. He wondered if that was some sort of accusation. He wondered if she held some resentment towards him for leaving. He wondered a lot of things. He wondered why she had to be the way she was. If she had been a boy she would have just told him what was on her mind. Son certainly never held his tongue even when it was in his best interests. Girl were different. Women were different. They never said what they meant and meant what they said and Daughter was becoming a woman and that aspect of socialization would not escape her….

And he wished, maybe, that she would have just told him what it was that had her behaving this way.

Masami had been very quiet on what, exactly, it had been that she wanted. She said that she wanted him in the house more and then when he spent more time in the house she told him that he wasn't affectionate enough with her even though he reciprocated every bit of affection that she gave him. She refused to tell him when she wanted him to initiate any kind of affection or what types in what quantity…which made no sense…and then she had just left.

He held Daughter a little, just a little, tighter.

Perhaps she had been missing affection. Not the same type as had existed between him and Masami, no, that was not ok for a variety of reasons. Her age and her relation to him being the main ones. Also the fact that it would have been psychologically damaging to her. No, she was his Daughter and not his wife but maybe…maybe it was the same problem?

He pulled her close. She let herself be pulled close.

She felt like deadweight. She was that tired? Or something else? She smelled…godawful. Like she had been smoking…but that made no sense. Children did not smoke. She knew better than to take up such a nasty habit. He had told her what a nasty habit it was…but she smelled like smoke…because she kept company with people who smoked. Yes. That was it.

She also smelled like liquor.

Because she kept company with people who drank. He couldn't exactly tell her who could and could not be in her social circle…well he could because he was her father and he was fully within his power to tell her who she could and could not associate with…but he wouldn't because she was associating with some of the most powerful espers in the organization. That was a good thing.

Even if it left her smelling just godawful.

"I came back. I will always come back to you." Said Suzuki. She needed to know that. She needed to believe that. She needed to know that he would always come back to her.

"Ok." Said Daughter

"And if you want to improve your Korean I could help you with that, too." Said Suzuki

"You have the same accent I do." Said Daughter

"The accent doesn't matter. Grammar, syntax, and vocabulary are what matters. As long as you can make yourself understood then it doesn't matter what you say." Said Suzuki

"It doesn't matter if the person that you're speaking to doesn't understand in the first place." Said Daughter

"I'm…confused." Said Suzuki. She needed to focus more on Japanese and less on Korean. She could not expect to be able to verbally express herself in Korean if she could not even express herself in their mother tongue clearly.

"She only spoke Korean, I think, but then I looked on Google and it said that babies her age didn't even fully understand language. So I don't know if she even understood a word I said. That's why I'm learning Korea, well learning to speak it better. I want her to be able to understand me when we meet again…if we ever meet again." said Daughter. Suzuki pushed her away. Not hard, not enough to hurt her, just enough to put some distance between the two of them so that he didn't hurt her.

"You pushed me." Said Daughter. There was something in her voice…something that made something inside of him hurt…

"I needed space." Said Suzuki. That was it, the truth of it, the whole of it. He needed space from her….but at the same time he wanted to be near to her…and he made no sense to himself…and if he could not understand himself then….then how could he expect her to be able to understand him?

"Why? What did I do wrong? Am I not allowed to talk about her, too? Are you going to tell me that she's a traitor, too, and that I'm not supposed to talk about her? Because she isn't a traitor. Her name is Mukai and she's three months old. She likes to watch The Black Cauldron and she likes to put her arms in empty paper towel holders and…and she always takes off her socks even though her little feet end up getting cold as blocks of ice…" said Daughter. Her voice rose in pitch until it was practically a squeak. Her breathing quickened. To his horror tears began to collect in her eyes.

What?

Thankfully she had not lost control of her powers yet. No, just her emotions…and he had taught her better than that…but he had also set a terrible example for her. The last time she had seen him, the very last time, he had been out the door in a panic over a Baby that was not even his. Now she was acting like this…and of course she was. With a father like him what else could he expect?

"She…you're correct. She isn't a traitor-" said Suzuki. He had no idea what he was supposed to tell her. That he didn't want to mention the Baby because….because of his own irrational feelings? That her father was a very weak man? That she deserved a much better father than what he was capable of being at the moment? That he wanted her to lower her voice and wipe those tears out of her eyes because he couldn't stand the sight of her when she looked like this? That he was currently the biggest hypocrite in the world because he had cried, too, back at their old house as if he was the child and she was the adult.

He had no clue. He was well and truly clueless.

"Then what did I do wrong? Tell me, dad, what I did wrong? Why can't I talk about her? She's…she my…she was mine…and now she's gone. I just woke up one day and went to work like normal and then Fukuda came and…and told me that he was taking her away from me. That morning I had gotten up and ate breakfast and then did work things like normal…and then he came and told me that she was…that she was going to be taken away…and then I packed her things and I watched Fukuda take her away…I just stood there and watch him take her away…" said Daughter. Baby. She was talking about…she was feeling sadness because of…but why? Why had even begun to feel like this? What had made her so distant and sluggish and-and-and-

Baby.

This was about Baby. Why? She should have been happy that she didn't have to care for an infant anymore. She had her freedom back. No worries, no responsibilities, just spending time with her social circle and her younger brother playing games and watching television all day. What more did she even want? And…and why did she even care? Daughter…she was so much like Masami. He could not fault her for taking after her mother. Masami had taken so quickly to Daughter that Suzuki had hardly been able to believe it. He would have thought that it would have taken more time for her to develop an attachment to Daughter but on that very first day Masami had treated Daughter like her own flesh and blood.

He had miscalculated.

He had severely miscalculated.

He had given Daughter…he had told Daughter that Baby was her child…and he had spoken in a way…using the word 'if'…that Baby would be hers permanently…and therefore Daughter had formed a parent to child bond with Baby…but she was so young…right? She wasn't even going through puberty yet…but she had formed that sort of bond with Baby….and then he had let Fukuda rehome Baby…and that was why Daughter was acting so distant….

He had miscalculated.

"Daughter. Stop this. The only thing which you are doing wrong is carrying on like this." said Suzuki. First thing was first, getting Daughter to act normally. He did not like this, he had never liked this, women crying. Daughter acting up. She knew that she could not act up like this. She knew that she could lose control of her powers and-

Not even her hair was floating.

She had made great leaps in her control, it seemed, and that would be praised later. Right now he needed to get all of this under control because it was making him very uncomfortable. Nothing good came from that. He didn't need that. He had been through enough…he had put himself through enough. He had put himself through enough and he did not need her putting him through this, either.

"Are you going to punish me?" asked Daughter

"No. Not this time. This time I…I am the one who miscalculated. I…I gave you Baby to take care of…and you became attached to her…and you….you can have other children. Remember that. Baby is…she is in the care of an adult. You are not an adult and…and that is why you could not keep her…but you will have other children. Children of your own." said Suzuki. She stopped crying, that was good, but she gave him the same perplexed expression that he had been seeing for all of his life. What had he said wrong this time?

So tiresome.

"Dad…are you saying that I should have a baby because I'm sad that Mukai is gone? Because….I'm ten. I don't even have a boyfriend and…and I don't want to have a baby in my stomach…because I'm ten…" said Daughter. He thought of her and some unnamed man…at this point in her life…or at any point…and that was the most unpleasant thing that he anyone had ever conceived.

She was right. She was ten.

"No. Not now. I meant that you can have your own child when you're an adult. You've become attached to Baby and…and that was my miscalculation for giving her to you. I apologize for that." Said Suzuki. He hated apologizing. It tasted bitter on his tongue. He wanted to slam his head into the wall until he made a hole to rival the ones that Son made. Apologies were hard…unpleasant….the worst…and apologizing to his own child…his only child….

This was his fault for miscalculating.

Great. Something else that he had messed up. He could not wait until he got his emotions under control. Right now he hated himself so much…and he hated hating himself…because that was just not conductive to productivity. Which he should have been more focused on. Which he should have cared more about. He had so much to do and he shouldn't have been sitting there trying to puzzle out Daughter's emotions but…but he wanted to be near her…and that was the worst…and he was the worst…and…

"Baby Mukai is with her new mom and she's happy now…and I love her but she's better off with her new mom…and when I grow up I can have a baby and then…then I'll take care of that baby and…and I get it. I understand. Let's watch TV." Said Daughter. There was a slow quality to her speech and she was deadweight against him again. He felt like he understood her a little better now…and now he hated himself just a little more…because he had caused her pain. He had caused her pain and now…now she was like this…like Masami had been…and even now when he knew what was wrong he still looked over to her and saw her mother…because she was so much like her mother….

But not totally like her mother. Daughter, at least, told him what was wrong.

He couldn't stand it when the children were angry with him….but having Daughter acting like this…somehow it was even worse.


	158. Promotion

Dinnertime had never been such a silent affair.

They were in a new house, now, another prefab. This whole area was nothing but prefabs. It was easier to just buy a bunch of prefabs and build them up on some land in the middle of nowhere than to hide everyone in the middle of a city. He had preferred to stay in cities, before the children had come with that is, but now staying in the middle of nowhere was preferable to being in a sea of people. With the children and the difficulty they had hiding their abilities and all.

And also the fact that they destroyed everywhere they lived.

The last house had been destroyed. He didn't care about it. All the houses here were identical. They would be moving on soon, as soon as he sorted out everything that Daughter had changed in his absence. As soon as he got this HQ sorted out then they could put some space between themselves and this place.

That might have been what the children needed. Some space and distance between themselves and this place. They took after him in that way. He preferred to put the past behind him. When things went wrong he knew that the best course of action was to put the past behind him and just never go back to the scene of whatever calamity occurred. The children…they had not taken his leave of absence well…nor had they taken the loss of….

The leaving of…

They were not taking certain things well. Daughter he could understand. He had let her bond with Baby and now Baby was gone and she was feeling the loss. He would have preferred that she had exorcised that emotion but she wasn't causing problems for him so…so he would not confront her about it. Even though he wanted to…but confronting her about it would have meant a conflict with her and…and he did not want that with her. Besides, as long as she wasn't causing problems for him. As long as she wasn't losing control of her powers. As long as she wasn't being…distant from him…

Well she was but not as much as she had been before.

That had been the other night. He had been back for some days now. He had been making an effort to spend more time with the children. He had been gone from them for so long and they both carried some anger towards him. That was why he was sharing this meal with them even though he would have preferred to take his meals alone…well he would and he wouldn't have. If there had been some way that he could have eaten with just Daughter he would have.

But there was no way for him to eat with just his Daughter.

"Sho, I can cut your meat for you. You don't have to stab it so many times." Said Daughter. She was less sluggish than before…but more than he remembered her being. She had changed some in the time he was away. She had grown two centimeters it looked like, and her hair had gotten longer too. She had also taken to wearing it down. He missed her braids. He didn't know why, it was just a hairstyle, but it was…her hairstyle. He didn't know why he felt this way. She was a child and it was in her nature to grow and change.

Of course she would have changed in three weeks.

"I'm not a baby I can cut my own chicken!" said Son. He hadn't changed. He was as tiresome as always…well he had changed a little. He was louder, now, if it was possible. He also avoided him whenever he could. He hadn't brought the children to work with him since his return. He had asked Son to come with but he had run and hid and refused to come out. Daughter hadn't wanted to come either. That made sense, though, because she had been in his office for the past three weeks filling in for him…

Something which was never happening again.

"Use a knife." Said Suzuki. Son said that he could cut his own meat but, at some point, he had forgotten how to use a knife. That was Suzuki's fault. He had been away for so long that his children had forgotten how to have a civilized meal at the table like a pair of civilized human beings.

"I'm using a fork." Said Son. He then proceeded to stab his meat loudly and obnoxiously. Suzuki exorcised any emotion that he felt towards his very tiresome son in that moment. The child was a trial. The trial that was his child was tiresome. The tiresome feeling he got from his trial of a child was difficult to exorcise.

But he tried his best.

Because these were his children. His and Masami's children. Well Son was…they were both his and Masami's children. He could see Masami in both of them…and he needed to stop thinking about her. He needed to stop thinking about how long it had been since he had last seen her…and three years was not a long time at all. Three years was hardly anything. He was forty three. Three years was a miniscule percentage of his lifetime. She was gone and she had been gone for some time and the wound within him, the gaping feeling she had left in her absence, should have been closed by now. In fact it had almost been closed. He had hardly thought of her, dreamt of her, craved her, prayed for her, imagined what it would be like to see her again….she had almost totally left his thoughts.

The wound was opened again.

He had nobody to blame but himself and his own stupidity. He had opened that wound on his own and now he had to wait for it to scab over and heal. That was all. He had let his emotions get the best of him. In many ways he wished that he had exploded, lost control of his powers, and simply destroyed a few buildings and killed a few people. That way, at least, the way he felt…it would have been something less than this.

Something easier to exorcise.

"I can see that you're using a fork. A knife, however, is a better cutting tool." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to send a knife sliding across the table to Son. He batted it away with his powers and went back to stabbing his food like a little savage.

So tiresome.

"Sho, just cut your meat with a knife like dad said." Said Daughter. Always the voice of reason that one. Just like her mother had been. Masami had always been such an intelligent woman. The most intelligent woman. She had always been so…he didn't want to think about her so he didn't. He thought, instead, of Daughter. Of how intelligent she was. How she was able to both manage a household and run Claw in his absence. True she was more of a believer in the carrot than the stick, she had in fact let everyone run wild, but she had held Claw together. Of course under her leadership everyone had devolved into children but that made sense since they were being ruled over by a literal child. People reflected what you expected of them. He expected professionalism and deference and that was what he got. She expected playmates and chaos and that was what she got.

Still, though, even if she had been running it into the ground she had still been running it.

She had been managing a household, too. Fukuda said that she did not take after Masami in any way. He said that if he didn't know better he would never have imagined that she had been adopted. His views of her could not have been more false. First of all her adoption was something which everyone could see but nobody was stupid enough to open their mouth about. She…he had no idea if she suspected that he did not father her but there were very few ways in which it mattered.

She was his Daughter.

She was Masami's Daughter, too, which was the second thing. There was so much of Masami in her, so much that he had been too close to see. Being away from her made all of her little Masami-isms much clearer. The way she had cared for her brother and…and Baby. The way she was caring for her brother now. The way she had this way of being where she just seemed so…perfect. There was a perfection to her…well a flawed sort of perfection.

She had her flaws.

She could be too accommodating. She could be very cagey about her wants. She could also be very clingy towards him at times. He didn't much care for the company she kept, how she had managed to work with Shimazaki without murdering him Suzuki would never know, and he didn't much care for the time she spent away from him with said company…but she was still practically perfect. Perfect in a flawed way.

But still his Daughter.

"No, I'm stabbing it with a fork." Said Son

"But why?" said Daughter

"Because I feel like stabbing something." Said Son

"That's mean, Sho." said Daughter

"What do you care? It's already dead." Said Son. That was a good argument. He wasn't causing that creature pain because it had died and was butchered ages ago. But that was not the point. The point as that he was being tiresome as usual. He didn't understand Son one bit. Daughter seemed to understand him better. That was sense, she was a much more understanding person than him after all. She really took after Masami in so many ways.

"Exactly. It's already dead so you don't have to double kill it." Said Daughter

"I'm not trying to double kill it, I just want to stab it. Ok? Stop being so bossy. You're not the boss of dinner!" said Son. He raised his voice, there, and slammed his hand against the table. Suzuki used his powers to steady everything. He so wished that there was some way that this meal, that every meal, could be just him and Daughter. She was much more pleasant company than Son in so many ways. Like these ways.

"No, but dad is and he told you to stop. We have to do what dad says because we're his kids." Said Daughter

"Or what? He'll send us away?" asked Son

"Sho, stop it." Said Daughter

"He'll send us away just like he sent-" said Son. Suzuki knew what Son was going to say. He knew that Son was going to imply that he would send them away, him and his sister, like he had sent Baby away…which made no sense whatsoever. They were his children. Baby was not his child. Baby had a new mother and a new life and while they had spent some time caring for Baby that did not mean that Baby had joined their household.

He could understand Daughter's feelings towards Baby but not Son's.

After all he hadn't given, explicitly given, her to Son. Also Son, by all accounts, should have been happier without Baby around. Suzuki knew what it was to have an infant in the house and it was tiresome. The constant crying, the mess, the fact that day and night meant nothing to them. Son should have been glad that he didn't have to deal with that until he had his own children. He should have been happy that he got his playtime and drawing time and television time back.

Suzuki could live to be a hundred years old and still would never be able to understand that child.

"No. I would never send you away. You're my children. Even if you are tiresome you're still my children." Said Suzuki. Son made no sense. That was not something that he should have been worried about at all…but he was nine and nine year olds were not known for their sound use of logic. Well Suzuki had been very intelligent when heh had been nine but it seemed as though Son hadn't inherited that trait from him. Well that didn't really matter. Son was what he was.

It wasn't as though Suzuki was going to be having any other children so he had to work with what he had,

"See? Dad's going to keep us forever because we're his. Ok? Now can you please stop being all mad and stabbing your food, little brother?" asked Daughter

"No." said Son

"Please?" asked Daughter

"No. I already said 'no'. It's my food and I'll do what I want with it." Said Son

"But you're bothering-" said Daughter. Suzuki hated it when the children were quarrelsome with one another…though it was just Son who was being quarrelsome with Daughter. That made it worse in some ways. She was so patient with him. More patient than he deserved. She was so like her mother in that way. Masami was a very difficult woman to upset…when it came to the children, anyway. For some reason she had always just…gotten upset at him…and he'd never had any clue why.

Daughter was being very clear in her feelings towards Son in that moment.

But Son continued to fight with her. Why? Son had never had good emotional control. Daughter…compared to Son she was a prodigy when it came to…well that wasn't saying much. Could he really fault Son for being the way he was when he so clearly took after his father? Suzuki knew that what he had done, getting emotional and leaving, was unacceptable. He knew that he had set a bad example for both of his children…

But they had never seen him behaving like that.

So where did Son even learn this from? To treat his sister like that? Suzuki had never once been unkind to Masami. He had never been unkind to Daughter, either. He had punished her when she deserved it but he had never been unkind to her. Son…he could be unkind to Son but he was a tiresome little boy. Well it was different when it came to Son. Son was a boy and, of course, things were different between a boy child and a girl child. She was more delicate, Daughter, both physically and emotionally. Also she operated on a completely different system than he did, her being female and him being male and all, so allowances could be made for her behavior.

But there were no allowances that could be made for the way that Son was acting right now.

"Either eat normally or leave the table. The choice is yours." Said Suzuki. He made eye contact with Son. Son held it. He held it right back. Daughter was saying something about how sorry Son must have been. How he was just tired from the day. Of course she would make allowances for him. Masami has always made allowances for him too.

She was so much like her mother.

"No." said Son eventually. Suzuki said nothing to do. With barely a twitch of his finger he slid Son's chair away from the table. There was no point in fighting with the boy. He would simply end up carrying on until he was punished and then he would carry on for some time afterwards as well. So tiresome. It had been a long day and Suzuki simply wanted to spend what was left of it with his children…with his Daughter. With his only Daughter.

If Son wanted to act like this then he could act like this all on his own.

"Then leave. I don't care where you go or what you do but I do not need you to sit here and be both disruptive and unkind towards your sister." Said Suzuki

"I-I don't mind." Said Daughter

"Yes, you do." Said Suzuki. Of course she minded. Who wouldn't mind? Son…he had been unkind to her for quite some time and he showed no signs of growing out of it. Well that was fine. Son was what he was. It wasn't as though he was going to have another Son so he had better just learn to accept the one he had. Son was…Son. That didn't mean that he got to be unkind to Daughter. She did not deserve that.

"Dad, I-" said Daughter

"You do. You mind it when your brother is unkind to you. Even if you don't realize it you mind." Said Suzuki. He knew that she minded. She was so like Masami and Masami had always minded when the children had been quarrelsome with one another…when Son was the antagonist. It had always been Son. Daughter had always just been…there. The whole thing had not been very fair to her at all.

"You can't tell people how they feel." Said Son. Suzuki pushed his chair back a bit more. Just a warning, not a punishment. If he kept on talking like that and acting like that he would end up tipped over. Son would only have himself to blame.

"Yes I can. Now either act right or leave." Said Suzuki. He tipped Son back just a little. Son glared at him.

"Stop telling people how they feel." Said Son. Well not that was quite enough. Children did not command their parents and nobody commanded Suzuki Touichirou. Son had forced his hand. He tipped Son all the way back…or he would have if Daughter had not intervened. There, her powers, she was saving her brother.

Suzuki did not know how to feel.

She was contradicting him. She knew that her brother deserved what he got, she had been on the receiving end of his terrible behavior so many times, but she was still…still stopping him from getting what he deserved. Not only that but she was contradicting her own father. She could not…she was overstepping. She was his child and she did not get to decide how her brother was punished. She didn't know what had to be done.

Or maybe she did.

She was good at caring for him. She had run their household for almost a month on her own. She was just a child but…but he could not discount her. He had been discounted so many times when he had been a child even though he had known so much better than the adults around him. She didn't know better than him…about everything. But she did know better than him about some things…like this. Even before his absence she had been the one to care for her little brother. She knew how to care for him and she knew how to run a household too. Better than he did.

She had been taught by her mother, Masami, after all.

Masami had been the one to raise the children. She knew what she was doing. She had always known what she was doing from the very beginning. On the first night when Son had been screaming and screaming…and it had been so much…but she had just picked him up and rocked him and…and she had just known what to do. She had always just known what to do. Mothers were good at that. His own mother had always been his primary caregiver…well back when he had needed caregiving. Mothers were just better at that.

Women were just better at that.

She wasn't a woman yet. He wasn't sure when she would become one, he had never been female so he did not know how these things were measured for them, but she did know more about these things than he did. That had been what Masami had taught her, the things that women knew, and taking care of others was one of them. He stopped trying to tip Son back. She had her own ways of doing things and she was Son's primary caregiver after all.

"Sho. Um…I think that you should eat in our room or the living room or just…a place that isn't here." Said Daughter. That was what he had said, been saying, and what Son had refused to do. She was just repeating him. That was insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. He knew how Son would react. He would shout and throw something and refused and then Daughter would be so overwhelmed with frustration that she would have no choice but to strike him and then it would be a tossup whether or not he kept up his defiance, struck back, or started crying.

He watched the children.

Silence passed between them. He didn't understand what all of it was about. Son stared at Daughter and she stared right back. She pushed his plate towards him with her powers. She should have tipped him back in his chair if not just outright struck him. He knew how to act, he knew that he had been acting poorly, and he needed to be punished…but that was not her way. That was not her way because that was not Masami's way. He had always wondered how she did it, got Son to stop his nonsense with a single word or even a single look sometimes, and he had thought that it was a power unique to her and her alone.

He was wrong.

"I'm going to go have dinner with Fukuda. Bye." Said Son. He picked up his plate and stormed away from the table. Huh. Well that was…something. She had been able to dismiss him without a word. He had been right to trust her judgement. She was such a good caretaker…and of course she was. She was the Daughter of the best mother to ever have graced their earth. Masami….she had done such a good job with their Daughter….

He was so proud of his child…of their child. Of Daughter. He was proud of the Daughter that he and Masami had raised together. His Daughter.

She was staring at him now. He didn't know why. Did she want him to talk? Masami did that sometimes, stared at him when she wanted him to say something, but that had just been when she expected a reply and he didn't have one. Conversation was hard, even with her, but he had made an effort. Maybe Daughter wanted to have a conversation now. He could do that.

"You handled that very well. I'm proud of you." Said Suzuki after a while. He chose words that he knew would make her feel good. She had done well and he was not going to mince words about that. She deserved the praise he gave her. Some people thought that they deserved a pat on the head for doing what was expected of them. He hated those sorts of people. Daughter was not one of those people, though, and nothing bad would come of praising her.

The stick and the carrot usually worked.

She was a firm believer in the carrot. That was how she had kept Claw together. That seemed to be how she kept the household together, too. She had always made so many allowances for her brother…and it seemed to have paid off. He had obeyed without being struck. He decided, in that moment, that he would leave Son to her. She knew what she was doing.

She deserved the carrot, too.

"You-you're not mad that I saved Sho?" asked Daughter

"No. Not at all. The household is your domain and I'll defer to your judgement when it comes to matters of the family and the household." Said Suzuki

"So…I'm in charge of Sho and running the house and stuff? All the time?" said Daughter

"Yes." said Suzuki

"Even when you're home?" asked Daughter

"Yes. At all times. I will always defer to your judgement when it comes to these matters. I trust you fully and totally." Said Suzuki

"But then…what will you do? I mean if I'm in charge of Sho and the house all the time even when you're here then…then what are you going to do?" asked Daughter

"I don't understand your question." Said Suzuki slowly. She stared at him. He could see her aura, She was choosing her words carefully. The metaphorical wheels in her head were turning.

"I mean….you always took over when you came back. Taking care of Sho I mean. If that's my job from now on then what'll you do?" asked Daughter

"Provide for you. Keep a roof over your head, clothes on your back, and food in your stomach. That's the way the family unit is generally set up. Men provide and women take care of their homes. You have a skillset that I do not have so I'm going to delegate the work of caring for your brother to you on a permanent basis. The work you did in my absence impressed me, Daughter, it did. Think of this as a promotion." Said Suzuki. There. She would understand that. She had been promoted from one rank to another. She understood that. She must have. There was nothing to misunderstand.

"So…you promoted me? Families have promotions? I thought that was just how Claw was….set up. With ranks I mean." Said Daughter

"Yes. Claw has ranks and families have ranks You've moved up a rank. What is it that you're having trouble understanding?" asked Suzuki

"Just…what you mean, I guess. I mean in families it's just the parents and the kids and…and I'm a kid. I mean I'm ten so I have to be a kid…unless you're promoting me to….I don't know. I mean I'm…confused." Said Daughter. Suzuki paused for a moment. Right. Things weren't so clearly numbered and colored coded as he had done with Claw. She was Daughter…and she would always be Daughter…and the female rank above Daughter was mother….mother was a parent.

Oh.

There. Very simple. She went from having the power of a Daughter, occasional control over the household, to the ranking of a parent. Permanent control over the household. She would not literally be Son's parent of course, he was not going to marry his own Daughter. He knew that some people were like that….for reasons he had never understood since there were just too many risks when reproducing with one's own offspring….and also it was just not right on a visceral level. She wasn't his by blood but….that was just not right….and he was going to get off of this train of thought before he lost his appetite completely….

She had been promoted to the power of co parent but without the title and all of the…no rightness….that came with that….

"You have all the power that your mother held in the household but you are not your brother's step mother because you're my Daughter and that would be very wrong." Said Suzuki finally. He hoped that she found his answer satisfactory. He had no idea if she did. Now she was just staring at him.

"That would be outside of nature's laws." Said Daughter. Good she understood. He wished that the family unit was not so set in stone. That way he could have just thought up a new rank and title for her. Even now she was still just 'Daughter'….though he had herd that she had taken up the title of 'Her Ladyship' when she had replaced him…but there was no way in hell he was calling his own Daughter 'Her Ladyship'.

So just Daughter would suffice for now.

"Yes. It would. You are still Daughter in title but I have given you a promotion to the next rank within our family. Do you find this sufficient?" asked Suzuki. It was easier to speak to her like she was his employee. This he understood. She seemed as though she would be the type to understand that better, too, since she had basically promoted everyone she had set eyes on.

"So…I'm still your Daughter but you promoted me to…mom rank?" asked Daughter. He cringed at the word 'mom' but…but she was not referring to Masami. She was referring to herself…so that was ok.

"Yes. You've been promoted. Now pass the salt." Said Suzuki. There. Now she understood. Finally. He didn't know what was so complicate about that. She wanted power, she wanted to move up, and was filled with the same ambition he was. That much had been obvious with her filling in for him in Claw. She also had a skillset that he didn't, the one her mother had taught her, so therefore the best place to put her was as the person in charge of their home.

Simple.

She was ten now, older, and it was time that she got a promotion. It had been a long time coming.


	159. Little Baby Sock

"Give me that sock."

Mob woke up suddenly. She had just gotten used to sleeping through the night again. It felt weird, not having to get up with someone to feed and change them, and she didn't know when it would start to feel normal again. Sleeping through the night. She had been trying to sleep through the night for a while now but she still got up sometimes.

She woke up suddenly, sometimes, because she couldn't hear the baby.

There were those terrifying moments, the most terrifying, where she would wake up to silence. Just Sho's breathing in the night. The drawer the Mukai had slept in wasn't on the floor and the room didn't smell like baby throw up anymore. Baby Mukai was gone, off to her new family, and…and Mob was happy for her. She was happy, now, she had to be.

Baby Mukai had a mom now.

She someone who loved her and would take care of her. It was a good thing that baby Mukai had been adopted. Being adopted was better than being born into a family, Mob figured, because when you were adopted the people around you had chosen you. That meant that they wanted you. That meant that they accepted you. After all adopting kids was like going shopping. You could pick out the one you wanted so therefore the lady who adopted Mukai would love her for who she was because she could have had any orphan in the world. The lady who adopted Mukai also would never leave her. She had chosen to have Mukai and that meant that she had no reason to leave. She wouldn't just leave someone who she had picked out from all the orphans in the world.

Sometimes moms left.

Baby Mukai would have a better life than Mob's had for the past ten years. There were some parts that she liked, mom had been very nice when she had been around and also she and Sho'd had a lot of fun when they had been little, and also some parts that she didn't like. Mom leaving and Sho being mean to her and dad being his weird combination of nice and mean at the same time…Mob didn't know what to make of her life sometimes. There were plenty of people with much worse lives. People who lived in those starving countries they talked about on TV. People who'd had their arms and legs bitten off by sharks. That guy from the movie she and Sho saw, once, that got locked in a prison for fifteen years and then I turned out that his girlfriend was his daughter….but that had been fiction. It didn't matter. There were people out there that had lived much more difficult lives than Mob had so she should have been happy for what she had.

She had a lot of things to be happy about.

She had friends….sort of. She and Minegishi were definitely friends and she and Sho were siblings which was like friends but he was allowed to be mean to her and she and Shibata were kind of friends even though he was always trying to throw her in the air and telling her how cute she was and also Shimazaki maybe thought that they were friends….and he could be ok sometimes…when he wasn't saying anything or doing anything or thinking about saying or doing anything….so she had friends and that was something that she was happy about. She also had a family that loved her and that was something to be happy about, too.

She'd also been promoted which was something that she was supposed to be happy about.

Even though she really did not want to be promoted. Now that she was promoted Sho was extra mad at her. He was always telling her that she was too bossy which made no sense because she had been promoted which meant that she was just the right amount of bossy. He was extra mean sometimes…or maybe it just felt like it because he had been so nice to her when Baby Mukai had been their pretend sister. Maybe he would be nice to her when she grew and they had kids. Then he'd be a dad and an uncle and also the ruler of the world so maybe then he would be nice to her.

Because he was not being nice to her now.

"Sho…what are you doing?" asked Mob. She hadn't been fully asleep, she'd still half expected to have to wake up with Baby Mukai, when Sho had pulled her covers off and taken the tiny baby sock out of her hand. She had found it while they were moving from one house to another. This one had been stuck to the side of their dryer. That meant that Baby Mukai had an odd number of socks which meant that her feet were maybe very cold, or at least one of her feet was very cold, and she knew that she had to give that sock back to her but…but she couldn't.

She needed this sock more than Baby Mukai did.

That was selfish, the most selfish thought that she could have had, because without this sock Baby Mukai would be cold and then when she got cold she cried and she was probably crying and crying and crying…but she also had other socks. She had a mom now, too, and they knew where to buy socks from. Mob hadn't known. She had thought that baby socks would have been in the same aisle as all the big people socks…but they weren't….and also maybe she shouldn't have sent a blind person to find socks…but it worked out eventually. Shibata went to the baby store with Shimazaki and he came back with all the baby clothes and socks…

And then they had to figure out the sizes…

But Baby Mukai would be ok. She had a mom now and moms knew how that kind of stuff worked. She had a mom who was taking good care of her…Mob hoped…and Baby Mukai would have a much better life than she did. She felt good knowing that Baby Mukai was happy with her new family but also kind of sad that she would never see her little sister…her pretend little sister…ever again.

The tiny sock helped.

"You've been hogging the sock. I want a turn." Said Sho. He was trying to take Baby Mukai's sock out of her hand…and she held it tighter even though she knew that she was being selfish. Her little brother wanted something and as the person who was now in charge of him fulltime, like a mom and a sister at the same time, she had to give it to him…but she needed this. She just…

Mob was a very selfish person sometimes.

"It's too little for your foot. You have a whole drawer full of your own socks to pick from." Said Mob on the off chance that his feet were cold. They probably weren't, though, but she could still hold out hope that they were. She could still hold out hope that he didn't miss Baby Mukai as much as she did…because that was her little brother and she loved him and she never wanted him to feel as bad as she felt in that moment and had been feeling since her baby sister had been taken from her.

"I don't want it to wear, dummy, I want it because….because you were stupid and packed up all of her stuff so we don't have anything to remember her by." Said Sho. He tugged really hard on the sock and Mob decided to let it go. The elastic could only stretch so far. She would rather have seen it given to Sho than to have seen it torn in half. Like that king who went around cutting babies in half until he found a lady who loved her baby so much that she would rather have seen the baby with another mom than chopped in half.

Mob was happy that Mukai hadn't been chopped in half but she was still sad to see her go.

"Can you give it back when you're done?" asked Mob. Sho was right. She should have saved some of Mukai's stuff. She shouldn't have been dumb and packed everything. That had been selfish of her, too, because now they didn't have anything to remember her by. Well they had pictures of her and stuff but you couldn't cuddle with a picture and pretend that she was still near you.

She should have taken more pictures, too.

She wished that she had taken pictures for every moment that Mukai had been living with them. Maybe that would have made up for missing her entire life. Mob would never see her grow up. She would never help her take her first steps or hear her first words. She would never feed her the first solid food that she would ever eat. She would never read Mukai the Galaxy Express manga…she'd tried but Mukai was too little to understand….and she would never read Mukai a lot of other good manga too. Like the Frozen manga or-or-or a lot of other good stuff! And she would never tale her to her first day of preschool…..did her mom know how scary the first day was? How scary it was to suddenly be in a room full of stranger away from your family? Not even your little brother? And what about grade school? Did her mom know how to help her pick out a school satchel? And how to teach her to put on her uniform?

Mob should have been there for her.

But she wasn't. She wasn't there and all she had to remember her pretend little sister by was a single sock…which Sho had now claimed. It was late, Mob was tired, and also her head hurt a little bit too because she had been overdoing it lately which was not good at all for her but helped her control her powers so…she didn't know. What she did know was that she was having some very mean thoughts about her own little brother right now.

He thought he could do whatever he wanted.

He got punished over and over again but he just never stopped. He made dad mad all the time and she tried to protect him but he never let her. He was always saying things and doing things that he knew he shouldn't have been and he….he never thought about her. How much it hurt her to see him punished. How hard it was to keep dad's attention off of him. Now she'd been promoted to a job she never asked for and he was still being mean.

Mean thoughts to have towards her own little brother who she loved very much and would never be angry or annoyed at because that was wrong and having feelings like that was wrong and she had to be good and sweet like mom had said which meant that all bad feelings had to be exorcised because they were wrong and she had to be a good person all the time because that was who she was supposed to be even if it made her feel tired and sad all of the time and-

And she was just so tired….

"Shut up. You've been hogging it since she left. You think that everything is yours but it's not." Said Sho

"No. I don't think that everything is mine. My things are mine and your things are yours and some of our things are communal property, like that sock, and that's why we have to share." Said Mob. She needed to be calm. Like dad wanted her to be. Like mom would have been. Mom had never once gotten upset with Sho. Mob remembered. No matter what Sho did mom never once got upset with him.

That was just how moms were supposed to be.

She wasn't mom but now she ranked the same as mom…which meant that she was a sister with the power of a mom…or something. Dad was bad at explaining things sometimes. She knew that she was filling in for mom though and that meant that she had to do things the way mom would have done them…but not with the running away part. She couldn't run away. She wasn't even in Japan. Where would she even go?

"No, you think that everything is yours. You thought that little sis was your baby and that's why would were always telling me and everyone else how to take care of her and that's why you just gave her away without even…and now you're trying to take her sock from me, too." Said Sho. Mob sat up quickly.

What the h-word?

"Sho, no. I didn't give her away. I had no say in that and you know it." Said Mob. She was being mean, there, in her words and also her aura. Sho's stuffed animal hammock flipped over. Her doll house fell backwards. She needed to control her powers, she reached for her bottle of milk and other stuff but remembered that she had finished it ages ago, so she tried to calm down…even though Sho had said something that wasn't even in the same TIME ZONE as being true!

"All I know is that you came back from work, another thing you took from me by the way, and then Fukuda was here and he took the baby away." said Sho

"What? Sho. No. That's not how that happened and you…you know that. Dad said that Fukuda had to find a new home for Mukai, that was what his whole mission was about. Finding a home for her. Dad and Fukuda went everywhere looking for the most perfect home for her and-" said Mob

"You let Fukuda take her away. You could have stopped him but you didn't." said Sho

"How was I supposed to stop him? His orders came from dad and dad ranks higher than me. I can't just tell Fukuda 'no, disobey dad and leave Mukai with us' because he would not have listened….and also what do you mean I took work from you? That makes no sense. You're not making any sense." Said Mob. She wanted to go back to bed. She wanted to take that sock out of his hands and go back to bed…but that was a mean and selfish thought to have. She thought that them sharing it, working out a schedule or something, would be the fair thing to do…but maybe that was selfish.

Maybe her having any wants at all for herself was selfish.

If she didn't want anything at all for herself then maybe she could have been happier. If she just went along with everything and did what she was told then she wouldn't have had these occasions to be mad at herself, then. She had to make Sho happy and to do what was best for him…even if he was being kind of a jerk…but it was wrong to think of your little brother as a jerk because he was your little brother and he loved you very much…even if he didn't always act like it.

"For my whole, entire, life dad told me that when he was gone then I could be the one running the world. Not you. Me. Dad promised it would be me.." Said Sho

"I wasn't running the world, Sho, just Claw." Said Mob. She didn't know how she could have handled running the whole world. Just keeping everything together at the one HQ had been hard enough. She didn't know how dad was going to run the whole world…well he was a lot scarier than her…mostly because he didn't mind being scary….but Sho was not as scary as dad or even scary at all. He couldn't have run the whole of Claw or even the HQ or even…anything, really. He was too little. He was just a kid.

"Claw was supposed to be for me! Dad said so!" said Sho

"Sho…no. You couldn't have run Claw and you shouldn't have run Claw. It's hard work and people are really weird and also you have to spend the whole day with Shimazaki and it's…it's not fun." Said Mob. She didn't know how Sho was going to rule the whole world when he grew up. She didn't know how anyone could rule the whole world. Running Claw was hard enough. It felt sort of like being Wendy and everyone else was Lost Boys and…and it wasn't fun. She had always wondered why Wendy wanted to go home at the end of that movie, not that she had watched that movie that often because the songs were boring and stuff, but she had always thought that Wendy was lucky. She already had two little brothers and then she ended up with a whole lot more.

Mob knew better now.

It was hard being the one in charge. Especially to a bunch of boys. They fought all the time and the ones that didn't want to fight still went along with it and also nobody ever wanted to do their job and people kept doing stupid things like chair jousting and waxing hallways so they could go sock skating and also take your pet to work day hadn't gone well…and they still hadn't found that snake…and it was just so hard! Sho wouldn't have been able to manage all the nonsense and craziness…

He would have been a part of all of the nonsense and craziness.

Then dad would have been mad at her because she had let Sho become a part of the nonsense and craziness. Even before her promotion dad had always put her in charge of Sho…and really the only thing that had changed was that she was in charge of Sho now that dad was around, too, which was not something the she wanted even a little bit…and it was all just so much…and it would have been a lot worse if she had let Sho be in charge.

She was the only one who could have filled in for dad.

"I don't care about it being fun or not. Dad still said that I would be the one who inherited all of it….not you." Said Sho

"Well dad's still alive so it doesn't even matter. Ok? We're fighting about something that happened already and that we can't change and that…that I wouldn't even have changed if I could. You wouldn't have been happy running Claw and it's my job to make you happy." Said Mob

"You're just like dad. You think you can tell me how I would and would not feel." Said Sho

"No, that's not true. I'm not ordering you to do anything. I'm just saying that you would not have been happy running Claw. I know that because I know you. You like to draw and play and take care of things. That's why your virtual pets never die and why you don't have to spend any money on any special items. You got to take care of Mukai and you got to stay at home all day. You were happy." Said Mob

"You're telling me how I feel again. You're just like dad. All you care about is work and being the boss of everyone. I don't know why he promoted you to mom's rank. You're not mom, you're nothing like mom, and you'll never be anything like mom. You're just like dad and you need to just…just stop it. Just stop…stop it." Said Sho. The lights above them flickered on before going back to being off. The drawings taped to the walls all fell down. Mob grabbed handfuls of her hair and held them down. She was not going to get upset with her little brother. She loved him.

He had hurt her.

That wasn't anything new. He had always hurt her. He was always hitting her or pushing her or pulling on her hair. She knew that little brothers just were like that. Boys were just like that. Even Shimazaki was always messing with her hair even though he knew that she hated that. She knew that Sho couldn't help the way that he was and she knew that she should have just…stopped it. Like he had said. She should have just let him keep the last thing that they had to remember Mukai by that wasn't a picture on a screen and just gone to bed.

That was what she should have done.

But she was being stupid and selfish. She should have just agreed with all the things that he was saying just so that they could have some peace together. She should have been a better big sister to him. She was a terrible big sister to him just like she had been a terrible big sister to Mukai. She had let Fukuda just come in and take Mukai away from them and….and his orders had come from dad. She did not outrank dad. She could not just tell Fukuda to tell dad 'no, sorry, don't feel like it' because she wasn't dad.

Sho was just being mean.

She was…she felt like being mean back. She felt like…like getting up and taking that sock back and telling him that he needed to start being nicer to her or she would start being meaner to him. That she would start showing him what it was like to have the person you loved most in the entire world treating you like that. She could…she was a lot stronger than he was. Her powers were. She was second in the whole world only to dad. If she wanted to she could have-

No.

She gets up. She gets out of bed because she needs to move. She needs to move even though she knows that these thoughts are coming from her own brain and she knows that she can't escape her own brain. She tries, though, she gets up and leaves the room. Sho asks her where she's going. She doesn't say anything. She can't say anything. She knows that if she says something, if she tries to say something, then something mean will come out and she will end up hurting her little brother's feelings and even though he can be such a jerk sometimes she still loves him so much and…

And when you loved someone you knew that the best thing to do, sometimes, was to let them go.

Well she was the one who was going but the sentiment still stood. She felt better the minute she stepped out into the hallway. The house was the same as all of the others. She didn't need to turn on the lights to find the space near the door that they had turned into a genkan. She didn't need to turn on the light to slip her feet into her shoes and put on her hoodie. She felt the pocket. Good. Still there.

She knew that dad said that it was a nasty habit but she really needed a cigarette.

Nobody lived anywhere near them. Not every house was occupied all the time. They were more like hotel rooms than houses. People stayed and left all the time. All the houses were exactly the same. The one bedrooms were all the same and the two bedrooms and the three bedrooms and so on. Just a sea of houses in the middle of nowhere….and Mob was grateful for this. Nobody was around to see what she was doing.

Dad was asleep and Sho…well he was smart enough not to wake dad up for anything. Even this.

She held her cigarette between her teeth and lit it. Minegishi said that she wasn't supposed to be smoking and if she was going to smoke then she had at least better stop chewing on the filter. Mob didn't see what was so wrong with what she was doing. Any part of it. They were her lungs and if she wanted to smoke she could and they were her cigarettes and if she wanted to bite down on the filter she could. She was sick of not getting a say in her life. Everyone was always telling her what to do…because she was a kid.

Even though dad had promoted her.

Even if she did rank the same as mom had she was still ten. She would be ten until next May. Then she would be elven. Then twelve and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and then on and on and on until she really was an adult for real…even though she had no idea how it would be any different. She would be taller, probably, and she would dress like mom did and wear makeup like she did and then she would have her own kids to take care of and stuff.

Maybe then she could decide some stuff for herself.

But in the fact that her whole life had been planned out for her…didn't that mean that she didn't have any choices at all. She didn't even get a choice in what she wanted to be when she grew up. People used to ask her when she was little…and nobody asked her that anymore. There was no point to it. Dad had already decided for her. There were no choices left. She was what she was and she did what she was told to do…even if it hurt. Sho had no idea how much it hurt to just watch Fukuda walk out that door with Mukai. He didn't know how hard it had been when dad had been gone…

Mean thoughts to have.

So she stopped having them. That was a choice that she could make. She could choose to be nice…even though that wasn't a real choice because she hated to be mean. Mom would not have wanted her to be mean…and she had no idea why it even mattered what mom thought because she had run away and…and those were more mean thoughts. She chose to stop having mean thoughts. That was something she had some control over, her own thoughts, and also…also this. She knew that this was bad for her but it was her choice to make.

And she got to make so few choices in her life.

So she made this one. She chose to smoke and she chose to leave the room rather than say something mean and then after this she would choose to…she didn't know yet. Smoke some more? Go back to bed? Take the baby sock from Sho's hands while he was asleep like he had done to her? She wanted…she chose to be nice and she chose to let Sho keep it. He loved Mukai too and he deserved to have something to remember her by.

He deserved to keep her little baby sock.


	160. Idiots at 20,000 Feet

The only thing worse than flying was flying with these idiots.

Shimazaki to the left of them, Shibata across, the Suzuki family up front, and Fukuda over in the corner with his nose turned so high up in the air that he risked downing if it started to rain. This was the part of the job that they hated. Not the long periods of boredom, not the fact that they ha at some point become a fulltime nanny to the biggest egomaniac in the world, and not even the sudden middle of the day moving announcements.

No, the flying with the idiot brigade was the worst part.

"Oh my God, there's someone on the wing of the plane!" said Shimazaki

"I'm not looking. I know that you're messing with me. You said that the last time we flew together and I looked. Then you made fun of me for trusting you. I'm not doing that again." said Shibata

"I'm serious this time." Said Shimazaki

"You're never serious." Said Shibata

"Well I am this time. Look out the window. I'm telling you that there is someone out there right now on the wing of the plane." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi opened their eyes. He was smiling that stupid smile he always had on when he thought that he was just oh so clever. Well he wasn't. He did this EVERY single plane ride they took. He was the reason that they had to sit in the back…not that Minegishi was complaining about that.

The less time spent in close proximity to Suzuki the better.

They lifted their head just to check on Mob. She was trying to calm her brother down or something. He did about as well on long plane rides as Shimazaki did. At least the little monster didn't have a dart gun this time. No, now he had a pencil that he was jabbing her with. If Minegishi had been in charge they would have taken that thing from him, it looked sharp, but they were not in charge. Not of the kids and not of the idiots around them. They closed their eyes.

This was going to be a long flight.

"I'm not looking out that window. If I look out that window you're going to laugh. Not just a little, either, you're going to spend the whole plane ride laughing at me and then I'll get mad at you and then it'll turn into a thing." Said Shibata

"You sure? Because I'm telling the truth. I can sense someone on the wing of the plane right now. You know I have the best range out of all of us." Said Shimazaki

"There's no monster on the wing of the plane." Said Shibata

"I never said that it was a monster. I just said that there was someone on the wing of the plane. Probably an esper. You know an esper could totally survive out there on the wing of the plane at whatever thousand meters this is. Come on. Don't you want to look? Satiate your curiosity?" asked Shimazaki

"I…I guess there could be someone out there." said Shibata. Poor, poor, Shibata. Minegishi wanted to tell Shimazaki to drop it already but they knew that there was no telling Shimazaki to drop anything. Once he got an idea into his head it just had to happen and right now the idea in his head was that he was going to annoy and entire plane full of people.

It was a private plane, very small, but the point still stood.

Minegishi didn't know why they put up with this. Why they had been putting up with him for years…well the sexual reasons. Obviously the sexual reasons. He was good at what he did. Supernaturally good. The whole predicting his opponent's movements thing translated well but they were very close to just buying a toy and kicking his ass. They couldn't quite or move to a different part of Claw, Suzuki wouldn't let them and they didn't want to leave Mob anyway but they could make him leave them the hell alone.

But they wouldn't.

Maybe they were stupid. Maybe they were a masochist. Maybe they were just chronically bored and needed the constant stimulation he provided. Mental and physical. Shimazaki maybe have been annoying but at least there was never a dull moment when he was around. That could be good and bad, though, depending on his mood and how much excitement he'd had in his life.

Things had been pretty boring around here, lately, so he had to make his own fun.

"There is. Think about it. It's such a classic bit. If you could survive out there then wouldn't you? Just to mess with people?" said Shimazaki. Minegishi did not let themselves smile. Someone was projecting. They knew how this was going to go down. He'd actually, and Minegishi was ashamed of this, gotten them like that before.

They had finally looked after twenty minutes of being pestered.

Nothing at all had been out there. Not that they had actually believed him. They hadn't come to the conclusion that if he was so insistent that he must have been telling the truth. They had known him better than that but that point in their…whatever this was. They had looked, seen nothing, been prepared to ignore him for the rest of the trip, but then found his seat empty. They had looked outside again and saw him on the wing of the plane being an idiot.

History repeated itself.

Minegishi had to open their eyes, sit up, and watch this. They had to see this. Not that they cared or anything. This was just something interesting. Something to take the edge off. Well something more to take the edge off than they had already taken. Something to distract them. Those two idiots were good for that. Shibata hadn't seen this trick yet. Last time Shimazaki had just teased him for looking. So Minegishi hadn't seen his reaction to this.

That was all they cared about.

They opened their eyes and sat up…and met Mob's eyes. It took every fiber of their being not to jump back. In an enclosed space with all of these auras, plus the lack of plant life, it was easy for Mob to sneak up on them. Minegishi gave Shimazaki a light shove. He was still convincing Shibata to look out the window, still swearing up and down that someone was out there, and he was getting to be kind of grating. Mob was much better company anyway.

Even if she did smell like an ashtray.

"Well? Come on, sit." Said Minegishi. That was a little more short than they had intended it to be but they were feeling kind of short. They were thousands of meters in the air sealed up in a tin can with these idiots and also the ten year old whose life they had probably irreparably messed up.

Still, though, judging by the scratches on Mob's arm and the bits of colored graphite stuck in them she had enough shit to deal with in her life.

"Hi. Sorry, I just wasn't sure if you were asleep or not. I just know that you take medicine to sleep on long plane rides and they make your aura weird, well not weird but hard to read, and also it's hard to read your aura when you're in a plane. I didn't mean to bother you. I just thought that I should get away from Sho. Me being near him was making him upset." Said Mob

"You're fine. You're better company then these two idiots anyway." Said Minegishi. They wished that they had their bag, They had tweezers and bandages in it, hazards of the job and all of that, and Mob needed some help with that arm. Suzuki really needed to do something about that little demon he called a son before he ended up doing some real damage.

Like making his sister lose control of her powers while they were thousands of meters in the air. That wouldn't have been good for anybody.

"I don't think that they're idiots….Shimazaki can be sort of annoying but I don't think that he's an idiot…even if he is doing something kind of…not very smart…right now." Said Mob. She pointed out the window. That moron ruined the joke. It wasn't as funny if he was on the wing of the plane the whole time.

"Oh, look, there's an idiot on the wing of the plane. Whatever shall we do?" asked Minegishi rolling their eyes. They'd seen it before. Seen it once and you got the gist of it. No reason to crane their neck over and keep on staring. Yeah, they didn't need to see that idiot accidentally get pulled into a jet turbine. It would ruin their appetite for the tiny plane peanuts that must have been somewhere.

"He is being kind of…sorry! That was a mean thing to say. Please don't tell him that I almost said something mean about him. I'm not supposed to be mean." Said Mob

"You're right. He's acting like a moron." Said Minegishi

"I…I shouldn't even think like that because it's mean and…stuff." Said Mob. Minegishi rolled their eyes.

"Well some people need to hear mean things like that. Maybe if you tell an idiot that he's an idiot enough times he'll finally get it through his thick head that he's an idiot." Said Minegishi

"But…wouldn't it be better to say something like 'please don't do that?' because that way it's polite and nobody's feelings get hurt." Said Mob

"You've been telling him to step off for I don't even know how long, now. Either you don't mean it or he's not listening." Said Minegishi. Shimazaki had better lay off of Mob. She was ten. She didn't know that he was kidding. Right now she just thought that he was trying to annoy her, which he was, but she didn't see HOW it was that he was annoying her…or that in a few years it might have been something that he wanted her to take seriously. Minegishi was torn about that little eventuality. On the one hand they were unnecessarily protective on Mob but on the other hand she could hook up with whoever she wanted when she got older. Minegishi was not her parent, they did not decide these things for her, and they were not a hypocrite either. They were not going to stand there and tell her not to do what they had done and had no regrets about. The whole 'do as I say, not as I do' thing was for people who couldn't own up to their own behavior. She would do whatever she wanted, Minegishi couldn't do more than make sure she didn't end up ruining her life.

Besides, they had nothing to worry about anyway. She was too smart for him.

"Don't be so polite, Mob, he's a moron and he knows it. That's why he acts like this. He has just enough self-awareness to know he's a moron but not enough to stop being a moron." Said Minegishi. God, he really was such a moron. He was still out there, doing handstands of all things, even though he knew that he had the boss' attention. Suzuki hated anything that gave people joy. Minegishi could feel his aura.

Pissed off.

Minegishi didn't care. It served Shimazaki right. He could never just sit still…well unless he was trying to do something juvenile like pop out and scare someone. Really if Suzuki decided to just flick him off the wing of the plane then it would be his own fault. He was asking for it. Especially since he got Suzuki's kid all riled up. Now he wanted to do that. If Minegishi had been in charge they would have said 'by all means' and let nature take it's course.

But they were not the one in charge. Sho was a lucky boy.

"Why is he doing that? Doesn't he know that it's dangerous? Doesn't he know that he could get really hurt or even die?" asked Mob

"Because he's an idiot, Mob, he's an idiot nothing more." Said Minegishi simply. What else was there to it? He did the things he did because he was a moron. He was stupid enough to think that if something came into his mind, no matter how dangerous or stupid, it had to happen. He needed chaos or he would become the chaos. He only allowed himself to become the chaos because he was stupid. It was simple.

"Toshi, you're mean." Minegishi was really out of it. They didn't feel the shift in the energy around them that usually came before he teleported. They had missed it twice. Whatever. They weren't freaked out or anything like that. They were not getting sloppy or too accustomed to him. They were just out of it because they were such a firm believer in poisoning themselves slightly in order to make their life just a little bit easier.

"They don't like to be called Toshi." Said Mob. Minegishi wondered why she even still bothered. The only way to get him to stop was to ignore him. Like an oddly colored mole that was constantly changing in both shape and color the only thing to do was ignore him until he went away…and that would work out as soon as Minegishi figured out how to start ignoring him.

"Whatever you say, your Ladyship." Said Shimazaki. He bowed to her, deep enough that anyone but her would have known that he was kidding, and then blinked out of existence for a moment. Their reprieve from his presence was short. He came back just as quickly as he left. This time with tiny liquor bottles in his hands.

"I'm not a Ladyship." Said Mob in a way that could only be described as 'adorable' though she didn't know it. They wondered if she would ever grow out of it. They hoped that she didn't. They hoped that she was smart enough to use that, her adorableness, to her advantage someday. Hopefully when she took power from her father after he went the one step too far and she snapped.

It was only a matter of time.

"Aww, her Little Ladyship." Said Shibata in that same tone he would use when talking about a puppy or a kitten. Why that man had never just had his own kids to fawn over Minegishi did not know. Not that they were volunteering or anything. No, let someone else lay down on that wire.

"Really. I'm not a Ladyship." Said Mob

"You're a little girl with a title, therefore you're her Little Ladyship. Since you have a title and the power that comes with it you can decide what you do and do not want to be called. Now give me one of those before I get a migraine." Said Minegishi. They were passed a tiny bottle. Mob reached over and took it from her. Her own tiny bottle was tucked into her sleeve.

Right, her father was there.

Suzuki's aura hurt a little. He was pissed off. Well of course he was, his kid was acting up again, and it was way too much effort to get up off of his ass and do some parenting. No, that was something best left to the ten year old. No wonder Mob was on her way to a drinking problem. Minegishi knew that they had their part to play with that but, well, they also didn't like beating themselves over things that would have happened on their own anyway.

Suzuki could have driven anyone to drink.

"I don't have a title." Said Mob

"Your father thinks he's the king of the world so I guess you're a highness. Yeah, I like the sound of that. From now on you're 'Your Highness, Princess Suzuki'." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi glared at him and they knew that he noticed. They'd just had a somewhat violent talk about this. Flirting with a ten year old was creepy and there were only so many ways a person could take that. None of them were good. Also her father, their boss and the guy who frequently had people 'removed', was sitting right there. They had no idea if he was even paying attention to anything other than his smug sense of self-satisfaction but they weren't about to test him.

"You are dressed in a princess costume." Said Shibata

"These are just my normal clothes." Said Mob. She tugged at her dress, the blue one again, like she was self-conscious or something. What she had to be so self-conscious about Minegishi did not know. She was amongst friends. Let her feel constantly self-conscious in her teen years like everyone else.

"Therefore you're a-" said Shimazaki. Minegishi tapped their aura against his with more effort than it should have taken. They could not wait until this little trip was over. Land. They needed land with plant life….or at least to be away from these morons.

"Annoying. Shimazaki, you're annoying." Said Minegishi. There were several other words for what he was but Minegishi did not feel like using them. They weren't as articulate as they would have liked to have been. Maybe piling a tiny bottle of…they read the label of the tiny bottle in their hand…plum wine? Of all the things…whatever. It was a bad idea but they needed rest.

"That's what you guys love about me." Said Shimazaki

"No, not really. You've been extra annoying lately, actually, and it makes me not like you. Not that I don't like you! We're friends, if you want to be, it's just that when you say annoying things or do annoying things it makes it…it makes it kind of hard to be your friend. That's all. But it's ok! Minegishi says that when people get back to trying to kill my dad on a regular basis you'll be a lot easier to be around because without excitement you get bored and annoy people because you have to have other people validate your existence or you forget that you're real. How does that work? I mean if it's ok to ask." Said Mob. Minegishi said nothing to that. They didn't say things that they weren't prepared to stand behind.

"Toshi, why do you have to go around telling people about my personal existential crisis? I don't go around telling people that you're really a-" said Shimazaki

"You shouldn't tell people's secrets. It's not very nice…and also I'm sorry that I told yours. Minegishi didn't tell me that it was a secret…and also they shouldn't have told your secrets since you guys are best friends….but I really am sorry that I told your secret and also about how you don't know that you're real unless someone tells you that you are." Said Mob

"Wait, so this is real?" asked Shibata

"Yes. It's a serious medical condition." Said Shimazaki

"He's lyin-" said Minegishi

"It's a serious medical condition that I seriously have and it has seriously messed up my life in a very serious way. Seriously." Said Shimazaki

"Wow. So do you take meds for that? Like, how do you even…function?" asked Shibata. Minegishi wanted to get up and strangle him…but that would have involved getting up. They wished that there were plants on this plane. Even if they would have been suffering it still would have been nice to have the option of strangling people that, obviously, needed to be removed from the genepool for the good of mankind's collective IQ.

"Whatever I find, I take. Speaking of, cheers." Said Shimazaki. Everyone but Mob clinked their tiny bottles of what was sure to be crappy wine together. Mob was smart enough to know that if her dad caught her drinking then it wouldn't end well for anyone…..though it amazed Minegishi that Suzuki hadn't noticed by now that his ten year old spent her days at least a little tipsy…but then again the man seemed to have no interest at all in being a father.

So that had been his love child after all.

It had been a terrible thing that Suzuki did. Not the getting some unnamed woman pregnant. Minegishi didn't care who was pregnant just so long as it wasn't them. What was terrible was how he thought that leaving the baby with, no, that abandoning all three of his kids together was a good idea. How letting them bond with their baby sister was a good idea. How ripping their little sister away from them was a good idea.

What a thing to do to your kids.

No wonder Mob drank her tiny wine like she had been lost in a desert and this was the first drinkable liquid that she had seen in days. Not that drinking wine when you were dying of thirst was a good idea. Alcohol just dehydrated you more. Just like drinking, ultimately, made your problems worse. Sure you felt better but it wore off and then not only did your life suck but now you were hung over to.

Minegishi really needed to learn their own lessons.

That was why they made no move to stop her. They were not a hypocrite. They were not going to forbid Mob from doing the same exact thing that they were doing at her age. They would, however, be pissed at themselves for starting this in the first place. Well it was what it was. You put the toothpaste back in the tube and all that. Nothing else to do but have a drink with a ten year old and enjoy the look of horror on Shibata's face as Mob drained her tiny wine bottle without stopping for air.

Must have been a bad day.

"I didn't know that you had a serious medical condition. I mean I knew that you were born without eyes and also sometimes have conversations with yourself in your sleep but-oh no! That was something else that Minegishi told me. Was that a secret too? I'm sorry that I told everyone." Said Mob breaking the silence that formed around them before it could become awkward.

"I do not talk in my sleep." Said Shimazaki

"You do." Said Minegishi and Shibata at once. Minegishi didn't even bother to look in his direction. So what. They didn't care. Shimazaki could fuck, or more likely be fucked by, whoever he wanted. They didn't care. He was annoying. He talked in his sleep and sang when he was awake no matter how many times you told him to shut his mouth. He ate cup after cup of pudding and then left the empty cups stacked on the table in a pyramid even though that was infinitely more difficult than putting them in the goddamned trash can like a functional human being. He hit on ten year olds for shits and giggles. Minegishi didn't give a damn about him or what he did or who he did it with.

Where was the wet bar on this stupid plane?

"It's ok. M-My little brother-brother kicks in his sleep." Said Mob. Little brother. Why did she have to say little brother? With those two words said little brother decided that he had been granted invitation into whatever this was. Mob was coherent enough, she was starting to stutter a little bit, to hide her tiny wine bottle in the space between the seats. Hopefully nobody sat on it…and nobody got the idea that it would be a fun prank to have someone sit on it. There was a healer right there but, yeah, Minegishi did not like dealing with that asshole.

Anyone who followed Suzuki around, who had managed to do it for decades, could not have been a pleasant man.

That is by Claw standards, anyway.

"I do not." Said Sho. Minegishi took another drink. Great. This kid. This kid was one of the reasons why Minegishi did not want kids. Aside from the responsibility, lack of money, lack of autonomy, and lack of personal time that came from having kids they could also end up like this little asshole. He was damn lucky that his sister was such a non-confrontational people pleaser or he would have had another thing coming. If Minegishi had been his older sister they would have made themselves an orphan ages ago. Mob put up with too much, way too much, though they were reluctant to think that since the kids was full of surprises.

Like jabbing his older sister enough times with a pencil to draw blood.

They wondered why Mob hadn't gotten those scratches looked at. Her brother had managed to draw blood. That warranted a trip to the man in the corner shooting everyone dirty looks. Honestly. What did he have to be so high and mighty about? If he had been with Suzuki from the beginning like he said then he must have done something a lot worse than killing a few people and feeding their bodies to plants.

You couldn't be a member of Claw for long without getting your hands a little dirty.

"Yes you do but you just don't remember because you're asleep. Maybe you should sleep now, little brother, so that way your body will be in the same time zone as our new one." said Mob. Smooth she was not. Minegishi could easily see the 'go away' in what Mob had said. Her little brother could see it to, he hadn't totally inherited the Suzuki family social impairment condition, and he looked like he was about to say something…or start something…

Well if he did then Minegishi was ending it.

Forget Suzuki being right there. If he didn't want his Son getting what was coming to him then he should have done some real parenting years ago. They weren't going to hurt the kid just show him that, yeah, he did not get to just draw blood and be on his merry way. No. That was not how it worked and one day he was going to push his older sister too far and then they would end up like the Eighth Division.

"I'm not tired. Anyway, Shimazaki, can you take me out on the wing of the plane next? Please! It'll be fun!" said Sho. Minegishi decided to let the herd thin itself out there. No need to mess with evolution. Sometimes it was best to let nature do what it had to do.

"Sho! No way! That's dangerous and you could-" said Mob. She tried to stand up too fast and stumbled. Minegishi helped them as best as they could but their own movements were a bit sluggish now. They took back everything that they said about plum wine…and also they felt like something of a hypocrite. They were doing something that they had told Mob never to do…

But she was a kid and they were an adult.

They knew their limits. Yeah, fine, taking these two things together was the death combination but they knew their limits. That was why certain things were alright for them but not the ten year old who had attached herself to them.

"Sure thing, kid, just let me finish this…and get me a pudding from the snack cart first! Double chocolate if they have it and plain chocolate if they don't." said Shimazaki. Minegishi rolled their eyes. Sugar was poison…and they were not being a hypocrite because stoned Minegishi was a different person entirely from not stoned Minegishi. Not stoned Minegishi remembered how much they hate the dentist and loved having a functioning pancreas. Stoned Minegishi only remembered how much they liked orange soda and chocolate.

"Wait, this isn't such a good idea!" said Mob. Nobody was listening to her. Shimazaki never turned down a chance at some excitement, Minegishi couldn't be bothered, and Shibata was pulling up his camera app. Suzuki, the one who should have been stopping this unless he felt like having another love child, just sat there scrolling through his laptop without a care in the world.

"What if they just have vanilla?" asked Sho. This kid had no sense of self preservation…or maybe it was just a case of monkey see, monkey do. Shimazaki had a soft spot for this kid. Said that Sho reminded him of a younger version of himself…God have mercy on us all….and that was why he let the kid hang off of him whenever he got the chance. Also, apparently, women liked blind single fathers and not only did you get unlimited dog pets but unlimited phone numbers too.

Well good for him.

"Then I'm teleporting you out there but you have to find your way back in." said Shimazaki. Mob gasped. She was right to gasp. That may or may not have been the truth. Not that Shimazaki would have let the little monster die, no, he would have just let him fall a few hundred kilometers before saving him.

Just for the fun of it.

"Sho! Don't ask him to-" said Mob. Minegishi looked over towards Suzuki. Nope. Still no plan, it seemed, to stop his son from killing himself out of his own stupidity. Minegishi wondered what his endgame was. What did he think was going to come from leaving the parenting to a ten year old? At this point just leave them in the woods for the wolves to raise.

"Sho, come here. I want to see your drawings." Said Fukuda. He glared at everyone. He actually took the time to glare at each other them individually. Even Shimazaki, who he knew full well was blind, and at Mob who was trying to stop this insanity. Minegishi glared right back. If he really was bestest buddies 'til the end of time with Suzuki then, maybe, he should have told him to get off his ass and be a father to their children.

But no, he didn't, he was too busy feeling superior to people.

"Sho, go to Fukuda. He misses you." Said Mob. Sho looked between his two options before sinking his shoulders and going back to his seat. His father said something to him, based on their auras it was something unpleasant, and then Sho carried his sketchbook over to Fukuda before sitting beside him.

If Minegishi had been more immature they could have said something about a grown man wanting to spend time alone with a nine year old boy…but they were neither immature nor were they sexist.

"Mob, go to him too. You're covered in scratches." Said Minegishi. Shimazaki was talking about doing an encore performance, now, but Minegishi didn't care. Let him get sucked into a jet turbine if he wanted to. They had bigger things to worry about.

Like the ten year old beside them.

"I don't think that he likes me anymore. He always calls me 'Miss Suzuki' but he calls Sho by his given name and he never asks me to hang out with him…and also he saw me drinking and smoking and I don't want him to tell my dad and I think that he might tell me dad if I bother him. I won't bother him. These are just scratches. I've had worse." Said Mob

"I'll fix those up when I get at my bag again. For now here. You need it more than I do." Said Minegishi. They knew that they were being irresponsible as they handed Mob what was left of their wine but…but she needed it. Minegishi had known Mob since she was eight. There was no worse feeling to that kid than the feeling of being disliked. She didn't that. This had been a shitty month for her. This had been a shitty life for her. Minegishi…they were involved now. They were involved and maybe they saw just a bit of themselves in that little girl…in good and bad ways…and maybe that was why they were doing something so irresponsible…

This was not their kid.

Fuck responsibility. This was not their kid. They had a responsibility to the kid but up to a point. Sure they knew that they had started her down the river of sin but they could at least make sure that she stayed safe. They weren't going to find a soapbox and preach to her about how she could easily ruin her life, how she could end up making all of Minegishi's mistakes, but they didn't feel like it. They didn't see the point. Mob would do whatever she wanted to, she was Suzuki's daughter and he didn't look like he was about to do any parenting anytime soon, so she had might as well be smart about whatever it was that she wanted to do…and she needed someone to tell her, to show her, what was and was not smart.

Maybe they were just as much of an idiot as the ones they were surrounded by.

They didn't care.


	161. Picky Eating

Sho was not a picky eater.

There were just a lot of things that he would not eat. He couldn't have citrus because it would kill him but he also wouldn't eat broccoli, cauliflower, cashews, steamed carrots, strained pears, buckwheat pancakes, wheatgrass juice, tomato juice, anything food with a lot of liquid in it, rhubarb pie, flan, grasshoppers, locusts, sweet breads which were not bread at all but meat, soft cheese, hard bread, and spam.

But the worst of all was cucumbers.

"Sho, please eat your salad. You need all of your food groups." Said big sis. She was always on him about his food groups. She was still trying to be mom. Well she was always trying to be mom but now dad had promoted her, he said, which made no sense because they were a family and not a job, and now big sis had all the power that mom did.

It just was not fair.

He didn't need a sister for a mom, he needed a mom for a mom, but his mom was not there. She had run away. Everyone he loved left. Even baby sis had gone away…and she had let Fukuda take baby sis away. Even though he knew that he should have been happy for his pretend baby sis. She was in a better place now, not like she was dead at all, she had another family and that family loved her. Her new mom was a super cool fighting lady and a Scar so she could keep little sis safe and help her with her powers. Also she wouldn't ever leave because she loved baby sis. She had picked her after all.

Baby sis was in a better place because she wasn't a part of this family anymore.

"I'm not eating the salad. There's cucumbers on it and I am not going to eat cucumbers. They're gross." Said Sho. Baby sis had a new mom and her new mom didn't make her eat anything that she didn't want to. Her new mom took the best care of her ever. That was what Sho believed, anyway, because that was what Fukuda has told him. He talked to baby sis' new mom, Tsuchiya, sometimes. So Sho knew that she was happy.

Happier than he was, anyway.

He had forgotten how it was like when dad was around. How everything he said and did was wrong. How nothing he ever did would ever be ok. How even with his full powers, even with being the Awakened Child, dad would never love him as much as he loved big sis. That was why he had promoted big sis and not him. That was why she was mom ranked but he was still Sho ranked.

He didn't even understand how that was even supposed to work.

"I've seen you eat pickles and all pickles start out as cucumbers." Said big sis. She thought that she was so smart just because dad told her so. Dad only told her that she was smart because she always did their homeschool work. She only did their homeschool work because she wanted dad to tell her that she was smart. Well Sho didn't need anyone to tell him that he was smart. He knew that he was smart already.

He had been able to take care of baby sis.

Big sis had taken his job, running Claw, and left him to take care of baby sis. He had done it and he had done it better than she had. He had keep baby sis quiet for most of the day and got her to throw up less and even taught her how to hold her own head up. If big sis hadn't let Fukuda take little sis away from him then he could have taught her to crawl and walk and run and jump and climb and all of that important stuff. But she had let Fukuda take-

No.

He can feel himself getting mad now. He needs to calm down. Dad isn't at the table anymore. He said that big sis was supposed to handle this and that he would be working in his room. That had been the first thing to get him mad. The second thing had been her getting on him about eating his salad. Her getting on him like he was a baby made him think about baby sis…and now he was sad…

He reminded himself that he had nothing to be sad about.

She wasn't gone forever. She was at the Seventh Division. That was in Japan and he was in Japan. He could have gone to visit, the Seventh Division was in Seasoning City and there was a train that went from Tokyo to Seasoning City, but Fukuda said that it was a bad idea to visit while baby sis was getting used to her new mom. He said that he would pass along pictures and messages, though, he just had to keep it a secret from dad.

He could keep a secret just fine.

He still had big sis in his life, just far away, and it was perfectly ok to love someone from far away. Fukuda had said so. Fukuda said that his mom loved him from far away, too, even though he had no way of knowing that…and now Sho was starting to get mad again. He could see his aura flaring and he could feel his heart beating and he just felt…not good. Not good at all. He was mad and…and he always turned into a jerk when he was mad.

"Shut up." Said Sho. She needed to shut up before he got mad at her. That had been happening more and more lately. Dad had said, even, that he was getting worse. Well he had said 'Daughter, your brother is getting worse. Fix this.' That had been…not even mean. Dad hadn't said it to be mean…he had said it like he just didn't care anymore. Big sis was the only one he cared about.

So it was easy to get mad at her.

"Don't say that, it's not nice…and also it hurts my feelings. I don't care, not really, if you hurt my feelings but one day you're going to say that to someone who isn't me and then they're going to get very upset with you and I don't want that. Ok? So please don't ever say shut up." Said big sis. She was always so bossy…and he wished that she could have been mean, too. That she could have been mean and bossy at the same time. That way it would have been alright for him to get mad at her. That way it could have been alright for him to push her out of her chair with his powers. To tip her back and-

He was not his dad.

He shouldn't have wanted to hurt his big sis. He shouldn't have wanted to hurt anyone. He should have been…been gentle. Mom had wanted that for him…and she wasn't there. She was gone and now big sis was and was not mom and the whole thing was just confusing and unfair and-and-and he just didn't like it. He wanted things to go back to the way that they were before. Before baby sis left. Before they had left Japan for the first time. Before mom left. Back when he had been a kid and he and big sis had been friends and he hadn't been such a jerk to her all the time…

Things had been so much better back then.

"I can say whatever I want to say. You're not dad or mom. You can't just boss me around." Said Sho. He wanted to go back to the days when dad was the one who bossed him around. When things made sense. Dad may have been mean and he may have hit him but at least that made sense. Big sis being promoted…it didn't make sense at all and he didn't like it one bit.

It made him mad.

Fukuda said that it was ok to get mad sometimes. That anyone who had spent a day in Sho's shoes would have been as mad as he was. That it was understandable and that meant ok. Sho could get as mad as he wanted and it was ok so long as he didn't hurt anyone and if he did hurt someone it was ok so long as he said sorry. That was why Fukuda hadn't been mad at him even a little bit back when he had been taking baby sis away and Sho had lost control over his power…baby sis was gone…and it had been a lot for him and that was why it had been ok.

Fukuda had said so.

That was why, too, it had been ok when he jabbed big sis with his pencil while they were on the plane. She was being a bother, Fukuda had said, by trying to act like his mom. She was only a year older than him and she had no right to boss him around…but that made no sense, her not having the right, because dad had given her the right. Dad was the one who decided who was allowed to do what and when. That was why he was the dad and they were the kids.

Fukuda hadn't had anything to say to that.

But he had said that Sho's drawings were very nice. He had let Sho sit with him for the whole plane ride back to Japan. He had wanted to sit with Shimazaki and the others. He was so cool! He had been on the wing of the plane like it was nothing at all! Dad had said that Shimazaki was a moron of the highest order and Sho…well he had disagreed. Dad hadn't hit him, though, he had just told him to go be with big sis…but then Fukuda had wanted to hang out and he was not going to pass up a chance to hang out with Fukuda. Even though he'd had a chance to hang out with Shimazaki and he was so cool…and he would have probably held onto Sho if they had gone to the wing of the plane…and he was really strong and stuff…

But hanging out with Fukuda had been fun, too, more fun than hanging out with big sis and her friends anyway.

"Sho…dad put me in charge of you permanently. You know that. He told you. That means that…that I'm supposed to teach you right from wrong and it's wrong to be rude to people like that just like it's not right for you not to eat all of your dinner. You need all of your food groups to grow up big and strong." Said big sis

"Dad never makes me eat everything." Said Sho

"Dad isn't at the table right now and even if he was he would have told you to do what I say." Said big sis

"Well if you want me to eat this then go and get dad and have him make me." Said Sho. He didn't know why it was so important that he eat a slimy, gross, cucumber. She didn't eat cilantro and nobody got in her business about that. So what if he had a bunch of foods that he didn't like? It wasn't like he was ever going to get sick. Not with Fukuda around. Sure he could maybe go on another mission but Fukuda promise that he would do everything in his power to stay by Sho's side and to keep him safe. He said that he had been doing a poor job of it lately but aside from being gone for a long time he did a pretty good job of healing Sho up. No concussions, contusions, or abrasions.

"You and I both know that bothering dad while he's in his room working is a very bad idea. You know how mad he can get. You know what happens to us when he's mad. Please just…just eat your food so you can have all of your food groups and grow up big and strong. That's all I want for you. I love you." Said big sis. Why did she have to go and say a thing like that? She loved him. He knew that she loved him. She was his big sister, of course she loved him, and that wasn't the thing that you went around saying to a person.

It could make them feel bad.

It made him feel bad and he didn't even know why. He loved her and she loved him and…and he had been so mean to her. He knew that he was a jerk but it was ok because he had said sorry and was sad about it. As long as you said that you were sorry it was ok…and she knew that he was sorry…and he would have been such a jerk to her if she wasn't always being so bossy. He had been the older sibling, before, to baby sis and he had never bossed her around. He fed her when she was hungry and put her to sleep when she was sleepy and played with her when she was bored and put all of her favorite shows on TV in Korean even though he was supposed to be teaching her Japanese.

He knew how to be the older sibling.

She wasn't being the older sibling. She was being the mom. It was like they were playing house and he had to be the kid even though he liked being the dog much better. This whole thing was just…not fair. Fukuda had said so, too, and that had been nice even though there was nothing at all that Fukuda could have done about it.

He wanted to have dinner with Fukuda.

He wished that this was one of those times when she was with her friends. They were more her friends than his friends. People just liked her better for some reason. Because she was a girl, Fukuda had said, people were a lot nicer to girls. Sometimes people could be too nice to girls. Like Shimazaki. He said that the feeling he got when Shimazaki talked to big sis and touched her hands and her face and her hair and stuff were Sho wanting to keep her safe. Sho had said that sometimes when someone liked a girl a whole lot they acted like that and that it was normal for him to want to keep big sis safe.

But it was not his job.

Fukuda said that he was nine and his job was to grow up. He said that if big sis had a problem with Shimazaki acting like he liked her, even the thought made Sho's insides feel like he had swallowed a two hamsters and they were fighting, then she could have easily made him stop. Fukuda also said that if dad had a problem with it then he could have easily made Shimazaki stop, too, because he was the president of Claw and the most powerful man on Earth. Fukuda said that Sho was a good little brother for wanting to protect his sister from someone that much older than her who liked her but it was not his job to keep her safe. Fukuda also said to tell him if anyone older than him ever acted like they liked him so Fukuda could keep him safe.

Sho didn't need anyone to keep him safe.

Nobody acted like that with him and even if they did he would have been able to keep himself safe. Also he should have been the one to keep big sis safe….even though the person that she had to be kept safe from was her own little brother. Sho hated that about himself. He hated how mad he got and how he lost control when he was mad. Dad…dad felt the very same way about himself and his powers. He said that feelings were dangerous because you could end up being controlled by them and that when your feelings controlled you then you were liable to lose control.

Which was what happened when he got mad.

It felt like it was going to happen now. It felt like he was going to lose control of his feeling and get mad and then…he didn't even know what. Flip the table over? Shove big sis out of her chair? Throw his soda in her face? Tug on her hair? Smash his plate? Smash all the plates? Put holes in the walls? Rip the heads off of her dolls? Break some windows? Any of the other stuff that he had done in the past when he lost control?

He hated losing control.

And he hated being dad's son. If he hadn't been dad's son then he wouldn't have had problems keeping his feelings under control. He hardly ever lost control of his powers but his feelings…it was like they took over and put his body on demo mode. That was what big sis said that it felt like when she lost control, too. Like she was a game on demo mode and no matter what buttons she pushed on the controller her character just kept on acting on it's own. Sho hated that feeling. He wondered if it was the same way for dad.

He wasn't going to ask.

And he wasn't going to explode, either, even though she was being bossy again. He was…he was going to be better. For himself and for little sis too. He had kept his feelings under control when she had been there and…and he needed to keep it up for her. He needed to be a good big brother for her even if it was all just pretend and he was keeping her warm for her new family. He could still be better for her. He knew that if she took after him, if she saw that he was the way he was, then she would be…she would have all the same feelings that he had about himself….and he could not let her feel that was about herself.

He had to protect her from that because, even if it was for pretend, she was still his little sister and he was still her big brother.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love you too." Said Sho. He used his powers to pick the cucumbers off of his salad. She didn't say anything. He also picked out the lettuce and tomato that they were touching, too, because they had all been contaminated by the disgusting cucumbers. They were so gross and bad, just vegetables that were too lazy to become pickles, and he would not eat them or anything that they touched…

But he also didn't want to act like a jerk…he didn't want to lose control.

So he drowned what was left of his salad in ranch dressing even though he knew that it was bad for him. He wasn't a picky eater, there were just some foods that he didn't like, and everything tasted a million times better covered in ranch dressing.


	162. Daughter by my Side

Suzuki could not wait until he could leave Japan.

He didn't want to be here. He had spent enough time back in Japan when he had taken his leave of absence. He wanted to leave and never…well not never…but not return for a while. This was where he and Masami had lived their married life together…well not here specifically because this was Tokyo and they had never lived in Tokyo together before…but this was the country in which they had…and he knew that having an aversion to an entire country just because his wife could have been living in it was illogical…but that was just how he felt…

And he couldn't help the way he felt.

He hated the way he felt. He hated this feeling of needing to move and then needing to sit still at the same time. He hated this feeling that he needed to be surrounded on all sides by people and that he needed to be alone. He hated the alone feeling he had at night and the overwhelmed feeling he had during the day. He hated the wistfulness that overtook him when he saw a woman with brown hair or a woman pushing a stroller. He hated…he hated himself and he had been hating himself for some time now…but there was nothing at all that he could do about that. He had been trying and trying and trying to exorcise these feelings but they were still there hiding in the corners ready to jump out at him at the worst times. They kept him on high alert. They kept his mind running around and around in circles. They kept him….

Off kilter.

He had been emotionally off kilter since what had happened with Baby. That had been a shock. The fact that he had, for a moment, thought that Baby had been his child…but the was crazy. He was Masami's husband and any children that he had would have to come from her and since he hadn't set eyes on her in three years let alone had sex with her then, obviously, Baby was not his child and he'd just been upset over nothing. So there was no reason for him to feel the way that he'd felt, before, and no reason at all for him to feel the way that he felt now.

Off kilter.

Knowing that Masami was in Japan and that Baby was also in Japan…it made him feel off kilter. He didn't even know why he cared. Masami was gone. She was gone and…and he should not have reopened that wound…but he still should not have cared anymore anyway. He didn't need her. He didn't need anyone. He was a full and complete person all on his own. He didn't need to see her again and to speak to her and to feel her hand in his and…and he didn't need her. He didn't care. She was a woman like any other and-

-and he could not lie to himself.

She was a woman unlike any other woman that could ever or had ever walked this Earth. She was perfect. She was the most perfect woman who had ever lived and…and she was gone. She was gone and he didn't even know why. Well it didn't matter. It was in the past and the past was in the past and now this was the present and he had enough to deal with without adding his own pathetic weakness into the mix. Japan was a big country and Masami lived somewhere in it. So did millions of other people. Who cared?

Baby lived in Japan.

Baby lived in Seasoning City. Baby had a new life and a new home and he didn't care. That was not his baby. Just because he'd ejaculated inside of her mother that did not make Baby his child. Baby was just a baby and there were millions of others in this country and he didn't even know why he found his thoughts wandering to her. To how she felt in his arms. To how small she had been. To how helpless she had been. To how…to how she just…was. The being that was known as Baby. That new human being that was in the world through no fault of his own because…because that was not Masami's child and since that was not Masami's child then that was not his child.

It made perfect sense.

But if it made that much sense then why was he still dwelling on her? Baby had been adopted and had a new mother and a new life. She was somewhere at the Seventh Division compound and she was going to grow up there and probably become an upper echelon member of Claw when she got older. She would probably be a prodigy like Daughter. She had an aura even at her age…and he couldn't even remember her age…baby aged. She was baby aged…and he suddenly wished that he knew what her age was. He didn't even know why he cared. There were hundreds of people in the Seventh Division alone. What did he care about their ages?

Baby was still just a baby…

"What is the matter with me?" muttered Suzuki. He was holed up in his room now doing some work. Getting things back to normal. Daughter had decided that people would be allowed to switch branches and divisions and headquarters without any oversight. Tokyo was a popular posting even though he mainly just had a branch of Claw here because it was the capitol. People needed to be moved back to their original divisions…and also Daughter had promoted a lot of people….and those people had not earned promotions…and now he had to figure that mess out too…

At least he had something to do.

Having something to do should have made these terribly off kilter feelings go away, and it did, for a time. For some time. For now, though, even trying to puzzle out where came from where, who was going where, and who was just lost…this wasn't enough for him. This wasn't enough of a task for his mind to just…come off it. To come off the feelings that he just could not get rid of no matter how much he tried.

"Stop it, Touichirou, you're being ridiculous." Muttered Suzuki. That was what Masami would have said to him. She'd had cause to say it so many times in the course of their marriage…even though the times in which she had told him to come off it and stop being ridiculous had made no sense to him. He had been at his most sensible and logical when she had told him that. He'd never been able to understand her. Not then and not now.

He wished that he'd been able to, though, because maybe that would have made things easier.

Maybe if he had been able to understand her then he wouldn't have been sitting in bed with a laptop full of work that needed doing but a mind that instead wanted to pick apart every single interaction that the two of them had ever had. He had no idea what his goal was, there, since he could not change the past. Besides, she would always be a puzzle to him. He'd loved that about her, how so much went into trying to figure her out. How there was always something new to learn even after they'd been married for years and years…how she had never once been boring. How she had never once lost his attention. Even now she had his attention…

And she didn't deserve it.

There it was. The guilt and self-loathing were back. He had strayed from her. He had cheated on her. He had essentially spat in the face of their marriage. It didn't matter if he hadn't seen her in years and probably never would again. He still had the ring on his finger and she was still his wife and…and he had been nothing than some womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own wants and pleasure and…and he hated himself for what he had done and he had been hating himself for over a year and he knew that he would hate himself for the rest of his life.

Masami was right to have left him.

Suzuki closed his laptop and put it on his nightstand. He wasn't going to be able to get anything at all done that night. His mind was elsewhere. He strongly suspected that he was losing his mind. Talking to himself was a sign of madness after all. That would have made sense, him going mad, because he was not behaving in a way that had any basis at all in reason and logic. His wife was gone but he didn't need her so he had no reason to think about her. But he was. He was thinking about a baby, too, once which was not his. That was not his baby and he had no responsibility to that baby so why was he thinking about her? About her wellbeing? About how small she had felt in his arms? About how he had barely even held her…he had been so…he didn't even know what he had been feeling at the time but…but he still felt…he didn't even know.

He just did not know.

He felt very alone, then, and that should have been fine. He didn't need anyone but himself. He was a person all on his own. He was not like other people. People needed each other to make up for their deficiencies but since he had no deficiencies he did not need anyone else. He was the most powerful esper alive. He didn't even know the upper limits of what he could do. Not only did he have immeasurable power he could also share that power with others. He didn't need anyone and he shouldn't have needed anyone but still his mind wandered towards Masami and…and he just didn't know…

He felt an aura moving.

Daughter's. She was still awake at this hour? Well they had just crossed the world a few days ago. His mental clock was still all over the place. Daughter's might have been as well. Son never got jetlagged. Suzuki wondered why his Son had been gifted with that ability but not him. It wasn't fair but then again life was not fair either. If life had been fair then he would have had better control over his powers and his emotions and just…himself. If life had been fair he would have been able to focus long enough to get his work done, for fix what Daughter had broken, to not have had anything to fix in the first place. She should never have been in charge. He should never have left and she should not have taken power. If anything it should have been Son…

But right now he wouldn't even trust his Son to run a bath let alone the whole of Claw.

Daughter…he trusted her…to a point. She could run the house. He trusted her with the house. She ran it well. She got Son up in the morning, made sure he ate, made sure his schoolwork got done, made sure he bathed, kept him entertained, and put him to bed all with minimal help. He had been right to promote her. However, there was a difference between running a household and running all of Claw. She was too permissive. She was permissive when it came to caring for Son and she was permissive when it came to running Claw. She had let everyone do whatever they wanted and now he had all sorts of fires to put out and things to get sorted…

She had done her best.

She hadn't been taught how to run Claw and all of this chaos was on him. Everything was on him. He should not have left and he would never leave again. He knew his place, she knew hers, and as long as he lived there would never be any role confusion again. She would never rule the world, she would never rule Claw, and that was just the way that it would be.

She would, however, join him in his room for a night of mindless television.

That was her place, by his side, and he needed someone by his side in that moment. He hated himself for needing her but he did. This bed was too big, the other side too empty, and his mind was still filled with thoughts of Masami. There was this alone feeling that had settled inside of him and was making itself at home. He needed her…to warm the other side of his bed…and to provide commentary to accompany whatever they ended up watching on television…and if they ended up watching kendo together he needed someone younger with sharper eyes to tell him if the referees were making good calls or not.

So, really, it wasn't an emotional thing at all.

She served a practical purpose. That was her place. Everyone served their purpose and having someone serve their purpose was not the same as needing them. There. Simple. So there was nothing wrong with him getting up from his bed and seeking her out. It wasn't any trouble at all to find her. The houses were much smaller here than they had been in the last place they stayed. This was also not a Claw compound. This was just a suburb of Tokyo that he had bought a block of houses on for a revolving door of staff. He didn't much like being in such close proximity to not only his staff but also the normal people of the world but it was what it was.

He wanted to be in close proximity to his Daughter.

She wasn't in the house. That was…he felt a stab of fear run through his chest. He had no idea what he was so worried about. He could sense her aura and he knew that she was close. He wasn't about to indulge the irrational thoughts that ran through his mind. Thoughts about her running away. Japanese was her mother tongue, she knew how the money worked here, and she knew her way around. She wasn't a stranger in a strange land here and she easily could have slipped away into the crowd of millions that made up this city...but she had no cause to do so.

She was happy.

She was happy and he knew that she was happy because she was his Daughter and he knew how she felt. She was happy because she had no reason to be unhappy. She had a promotion, she was being provided for, he gave her a lot more freedom than a ten year old should have had, and she lived and worked closely with the group of morons she called her friends. She was happy and she had no reason to be unhappy…and neither had Masami…but Daughter was not her mother. He understood Daughter. He understood her and she understood him. They understood each other like a parent and child were supposed to.

Though he did not understand what she was doing in the backyard at midnight in her nightgown.

"Dad!" said Daughter. She stood very rigidly with her hands behind her back. Her aura was cloaked around her protectively. She was scared. He covered her with his aura and quickly looked for what she could have been feeling threatened by.

Her eyes were on him.

Oh. He had startled her.

"I apologize for startling you." Said Suzuki. He hated apologizing but…but it was easier to apologize to Daughter than to see her standing there and looking startled.

"I'm fine. How are-are you? What are you doing out here?" asked Daughter. She was still startled. He didn't know why. She knew that he would never do anything to harm her…and she should have been able to sense him coming, anyway. Also he didn't much like being asked what he was doing. It carried with it the implication that he should not have been there and that he needed to explain himself…

But he exorcised those emotions.

She was his Daughter and she meant no such thing. She simply wanted to know why he was behaving in a way that she was not used to. After all she had always been the one to have come to him…though she seemed to prefer the company of the idiots next door to his as of late…but maybe she was just getting to that age. Was ten that age? He had no idea. He had never been female before in his life but he had heard that they matured faster than boys.

But she was no so old, so mature, as to not have wanted to spend time with her own father.

"I was looking for you. Come and watch television with me. I'll let you choose the program." Said Suzuki. He hoped that he did end up having to watch the ice queen movie again. He didn't hate that movie, he enjoyed animation as a medium and it did impress, he was just tired of it. This had been her favorite film for as long as he could remember…and there was a whole world of cinema out there but she, for some reason, was obsessed with that film. So many of her dolls were miniature versions of the characters and so many of her clothes bore the images of them as well.

Like her nightgown.

On the front of her little blue nightgown was a picture of the sisters from the movie. There was the caption 'sisters' in case the reader mistook them for something else. He didn't much like that word, he decided, and he didn't know why. Sisters…Baby…but baby was not her sister…even though she and her brother referred to Baby as their pretend sister…and he wished that he could have just forbade them from mentioning Baby all together but then they would ask questions and he couldn't just label Baby a traitor…because she hadn't done anything to anyone yet. She hadn't even had the chance.

He was being ridiculous.

"You want us to watch TV right now?" asked Daughter. He wondered if it was alright to ask her. Well he knew that it was alright because he was Suzuki Touichirou and he could do whatever he wanted, but he wondered, too, if it was socially acceptable. She was the one who came to him…and he never came to her…did she think less of him?

For a moment he thinks that she can see right through him.

For a moment he thinks that she can see him for what he is. What he had let himself become. He had been no kind of father to her. What sort of father went to pieces just because he was handed a baby? What sort of father miscalculated so badly that he allowed his Daughter to get attached to a child as if it were her own and then took the child away from her? What sort of father…what sort of father would betray her mother in the way that he had?

He had been no kind of father to her.

"Yes. If you want to." Said Suzuki. He had her full attention now. Something had her off kilter, he could see it in her aura. He would have gotten closer, she liked that, but she smelled like an ashtray and he hated it more than words could ever express.

"Ok." Said Daughter after a while. Her hands were still behind her back. He had no idea why. For a moment he thought that she had been hiding something…but of course she wasn't. This was Daughter. She was incapable of keeping things from him.

"Good. Please choose something that we both enjoy." Said Suzuki. He was happy, he felt like, that she agreed to join him…and he didn't know why. Of course she would have joined him. She enjoyed spending time with him. She was his Daughter after all. She had always sought him out and…and he had enjoyed being sought out by her even when she had been small and annoying…and he didn't know if it was alright to admit that to himself…or to admit that he…that he needed her by his side in that moment. What would she have thought if she knew just how weak a man her father was?

Would she have even thought anything at all?

"Um…you can pick, dad. You can go and pick what you want and put it on and then I'll be there in a second. I have to…um…put my toys away." said Daughter. Suzuki looked around the small yard. There were toys everywhere. The children had been playing something that involved a basketball, a hockey stick, a cricket bat, a plastic katana, a tennis racket, a softball, a badminton net, and a kickball. It was a mess and he could not stand messes.

And neither could she, apparently.

"Very well." Said Suzuki. He was grateful that he wasn't going to end up stuck watching the ice queen or the princess with the long hair or, even worse, one of her films with the anthropomorphic rodents….truly disturbing. No, he could not sit through another one of those. He would find something that she liked, though, something about cats or something. Something to keep her entertained and at his side. That was her place, at his side.

Even if she did smell like an ashtray.

She kept company with people who smoked. He had no idea why she would have wanted to keep company with people who smoked but she did. At least she, herself, wasn't smoking. Such a nasty habit. He hoped that she didn't take it up when she got older. They had a healer, so her health was not an issue, but he just could not stand the smell of it…but he would endure it if it meant that she would be by his side where she belonged.

She was his Daughter. His only Daughter.

He heard her coughing as he left. He hoped that she wasn't taking ill…and he had never known her to be ill but there was a first time for everything. The thought of her being ill…he wants to wake Fukuda and drag him out of bed….the thought of her being ill terrifies him…but she isn't ill. More likely she's coughing because she spent time with people who smoked. She was fine. His Daughter was fine. The coughing even stopped so he knew that she was fine…and she hadn't keeled over and died, either, because he could still see her aura.

She was fine and she would soon be at his side where she belonged.


	163. Tokyo Manga Store

In Japan they had entire stores just for manga.

Which, in Mob's opinion, was great. She liked manga even though Minegishi said that it was a low form of literature. That was a difference in opinion between her and them and it was ok for friends to have differences in opinion. Minegishi had said so and they were very smart so Mob believed them. She had no reason to doubt her best friend who wasn't her little brother.

Though she did wish that Minegishi could like manga as much as she did.

"How has he not found the one piece yet?" muttered Minegishi as they flipped through a weekly shonen magazine.

"How long have they been looking for it?" asked Mob. She didn't read shonen, she wasn't a boy, but Sho did. She wondered if Minegishi was a boy since they had walked past all of the shoujo to get to the shonen even though the shoujo was much more interesting…but then again boys could like girl things and girls could like boy things…and also it didn't matter what Minegishi was, anyway, just so long as they stayed friends.

"Since I was your age…or even younger. I don't know, really, I never liked One Piece that much." Said Minegishi. They closed their manga and put it back with the others. Mob tried to picture them as a kid…but it was hard and not just because she had no idea if they were a boy or a girl. Minegishi gave off the feeling that they had been born an adult even though she knew that never happened. That had just been a movie, a very confusing movie, and not real life.

"What did you like? When you were my age I mean?" asked Mob. She played with the plastic handle on her basket as she spoke. She wondered if this was ok to ask them. She wondered if this was one of those things that she was not allowed to know about until she was eleven. She hoped that it wasn't one of those things.

Waiting for her next birthday was hard.

She had just turned ten back in May and now it was July, almost August, and she didn't think that it was super fair that she had to wait until her next birthday to get her questions answered. Like how about how Minegishi's parents died…which may have been none of her business but she was curious…or why sometimes Minegishi kicked her out and told her not to come back until the next day when they were hanging out with Shimazaki…not that Mob was itching to hang out with him or anything like that. Sometimes it just felt like Shimazaki and Minegishi were a two for one special even though he was so annoying and Minegishi was always calling him mean names like 'idiot' and 'stupid' and also some other words that Mob was not allowed to think let alone say out loud where people could hear and then tell dad.

She knew that she was far from dad and Claw but she was still not going to say bad words.

"In terms of manga? Or life?" asked Minegishi. Mob wanted to ask in terms of what their life was like, what they were like, but they probably wouldn't tell her. They said that their life was hard, in some ways harder than hers and in some ways easier, and there were a lot of things in their life that Mob would not have wanted to know about. Things that were scary, things that were disturbing, and things that Mob was way too young to understand…even though Mob was pretty sure that she was the judge of what she could and could not understand. She was ten, now, and next year she would be eleven. She had run Claw, taken care of a baby, and dad had even promoted her to the next rank in the family. She was young but she was not a child.

But she didn't feel like getting into all of that so she figured she would just ask about manga.

"What kind of manga did you read?" asked Mob. Minegishi shrugged. Mob wondered if they'd even read manga at all. They said, once, that they had spent a lot of time in the library when they were a kid because they wanted to get away from their home. Mob could understand that. Things could be very hard at home sometimes. Dad was being nice now…but he could be mean at any time….and Sho was back to being mean but also he was nice sometimes…and it was hard and confusing and-

She was grateful that dad was trying to teach Sho how to run Claw today.

She knew that she should have been there for him to make sure he had lunch and didn't make a mess or annoy dad but…but she also wanted to not be with her family for a little bit…and the whole thing made her so terribly selfish…but it would be ok because she was bringing back some manga for Sho. The boy kind with robots and fighting and stuff. Not her manga with people falling in love and hanging out and being friends and stuff.

She wondered what kind Minegishi had liked when they were a kid…not that she was looking for clues or anything….because it didn't matter what Minegishi was so long as they were friends…but it would have been nice to know just so that she wouldn't be so curious anymore…

"I didn't read a lot of manga. I mostly just read horror, true crime, grisly war stories, stuff about brutal dictatorships. Stuff like that." Said Minegishi. Well that was no help. Those sounded like boy things but girls could also like boy things…well to a degree. Shoujo and shonen were clearly labeled as for boys and for girls. She knew that there weren't book police out there telling you what you were and were not allowed to read….but they were clearly labeled…

Not that this was all that important. Minegishi was their friend no matter what.

"You didn't read any manga at all when you were a kid?" asked Mob. Minegishi closed their eyes and shook their head. Mob thought, for a moment, that they were made at her…but she knew that they weren't. Not when she thought about it. The only time that they had ever been truly mad at her was when she had stolen some of their medicine and also accidentally made the death combination. That was when you mixed drinking and Xanax. You could accidentally never wake up, Shimazaki had said so, and Mob was very glad that she hadn't.

She wondered why Minegishi hadn't warned her not to mix them together.

Well they had probably never expected her to steal from them…and it had been stealing. Mob had called it borrowing and she had told herself that it was ok because Minegishi had already shared some with her but being shared with once wasn't an open sharing invitation to help herself for the rest of time and also you couldn't borrow food and drink because there was no way to return it. So that must have been why Minegishi hadn't warned them…but it sure was nice of Shimazaki to warn her…even if he had been in her personal space when he had been doing the warning….

She wondered if they made manga for the blind. Books and TV and stuff was great for learning social skills…and he was missing a few of them…not to be mean or anything like that.

"Ok, fine, you pried it out of me. Sailor Moon. Ok? I used to read a lot of Sailor Moon when I could get my hands on it….and you'd better take that to your grave." Said Minegishi. Mob wondered what they were so upset about…unless they were a boy and they were afraid of Shimazaki and all of the other boys at Claw making fun of them…

Well if someone tried to make fun of Minegishi then Mob would make sure that they stopped. People were not allowed to make fun of her friend.

"Ok, I'll keep it a secret….but why? I like Sailor Moon too. I like how they're all friends and they fight together and also she has a boyfriend and they love each other." Said Mob

"Because I would prefer not to give the morons we hang out with anything more to laugh about. You know how they are." Said Minegishi

"I don't think that they're morons…but I do know how they can be. Well mostly Shimazaki. I know how he can be…and I don't know why you like him." Said Mob

"Mob…I've been trying to figure that out since the day he and I met and I've come up with nothing. Anyway, are we done here? Can we go to a real bookstore now?" Said Minegishi. Mob couldn't help it. Her mind went right to…well places that she knew that it shouldn't have. Maybe it was her fault for saying 'like' when her mind was on people liking people….or maybe it was just the basket full of love stories and also Galaxy Express and other outer space stuff because dad liked that stuff and she had to like what dad liked…even though she also liked what she liked. People could like whatever they wanted and whoever they wanted.

Even people as weird and annoying as Shimazaki.

"This is a real bookstore." Said Mob. She knew what they meant. They meant a store with a bunch of books for adults that were long and complicated and didn't have any pictures…not that all books needed pictures but the pictures really helped. That way she could picture the characters better and also it made the story a lot easier to understand. They disagreed on that, her and them, but that was ok because they were still friends.

"I meant one with books for adults." Said Minegishi

"There's an adults only section back there." said Mob. She pointed to the part of the store with the signs that said 'adults only, no minors beyond this point' and also there was a beaded curtain. Mob wondered what was back there. Probably just more long and boring stuff that had a lot of complicated kanji and was hard to understand.

"Not the kind of stuff that I'm looking for….but then again…." said Minegishi. Mob smiled. Yes! They were going to stay for a little bit longer! That was good. There were still whole aisles that she hadn't walked down. She hadn't even looked at the tiny little statues. Not that she would be buying any, they didn't look like they would make good dolls since you couldn't pose them or brush their hair or change clothes, but she did like to look at them….though she wondered why so many of them were in such tiny clothes. Not tiny like size but tiny like how Mob's underwear covered more than what some of those girls were wearing.

Those must have been for boys.

Boys liked naked girls and stuff like that. Well they did when they got older. That was why so much nighttime anime had girls with big breasts and tiny skirts and they jumped around a lot. Boys were so weird sometimes. At least the stuff for girls had love and stuff. Not just almost naked people. Why people would ever want to look at almost naked people she would never understand.

She would never understand adults for as long as she lived.

"Don't follow me and don't look through my bag later. Got it?" asked Minegishi. Mob nodded. She didn't know what the big secret was, what could have been so amazing about the adults only section that she wasn't supposed to know about, but she wasn't going to go looking around if Minegishi explicitly told her not to.

"I won't." said Mob. She was so happy. Now she could look around some more. She didn't want to go back to the base. She didn't want to have to be in a room with Sho being mean or dad being nice or dad being mean and Sho being nice or both of them being mean at the same time…and she had no idea why they couldn't both be nice at the same time…and she knew that she was being selfish but she just didn't want to go back.

So she stayed a little longer.

She walked through the aisles and aisles and aisles of manga. She stayed in the shoujo side, mostly, because she liked these. There wasn't any fighting in these, not physical fighting, and she liked that a lot. She had enough fighting in her real life. She didn't need any fighting in her books, too. She wanted the things that she didn't have, that was why she read manga. Even though there weren't really a lot of things that she couldn't have.

She had a lot of things.

She had a bunch of money in her bag and she had food where she was living and she had a dad and a brother who loved her very much and she had some friends, and a best friend who was not her brother, and she also could ask for almost anything and she would get it….and she was grateful. There were just some things that she…she couldn't have…

She walked past an aisle of little kid mangas.

Baby Mukai would have liked those. Those would have been good for teaching her how to read. She knew that Mukai was only three…four months old…but she would need to learn to read for when she got older. She would need to learn how to read before she even got to school because that way she would be ahead of all of the other kids. That was why mom had made her and Sho learn how to read and write before they even started school. That was what moms were supposed to do and Mob had to be like mom and…

And she walked past the kids' mangas.

Mukai was better off with her new family. She didn't have to worry about people being mean to her and stuff in her new family. Her new family accepted her, too, for what she was and not who they wanted her to be. They must have been good people. They had chosen to adopt her. When you grew a baby on your own in your stomach you never knew what you were going to get. When you adopted a baby you knew exactly what you were getting. That way you would accept the kid that you got because you had picked the kid out yourself. Mukai didn't have to worry about having a dad that was nice one day and then mean the next. She didn't have to worry about being in charge of her little brother. Well Mob had no idea if Mukai even had a dad or a little brother but she did know that Baby Mukai didn't have the same life that Mob had.

Even though she had a lot to be grateful for she still didn't want Baby Mukai to have a better one than she did.

Mob shouldn't have been thinking about that. There was no point in it. She wasn't going to make her come back by thinking about it. She just…she looked at other manga. There. One with a boy and a girl on the cover…she read the back. This looked nice. They were in a club together and they were childhood friends. Mob picked up the next volume in the series. Oh. There were a bunch of other boys in the club who wanted to be the girl's boyfriend…and it went on and on and on? Perfect! Mob liked the ones that went on forever. She liked how the story just kept on going and going and going. That meant that when they did kiss it would be even better than if she had picked the boy she wanted to kiss from the very beginning.

There. She had something else to think about.

She picked up one of each volume and put them in her basket. She had to use her powers to keep them all balanced. She needed another basket. She wished that they had shopping carts here. Big ones like the ones the Awakened borrowed from the store for playing bumper carts with. This basket was way too tiny but as long as she focused she could keep everything balanced and-

Oh! There was a boy and a girl kissing on the cover of that one!

And it was a whole light novel! Not just a few volumes of manga put together but a whole light novel! Those were better because they were longer…but not as long as big compilation books…but still pretty long! Oh! Ok, she needed to do this delicately. She needed to be delicate because this tower was precarious and she was excited which meant that her powers were excited and she had to be careful-

"Ae you actually going to read any of those?" asked Minegishi. Mob should not have been startled, she had been able to sense them, but she had also been too into played jenga with manga and light novels…and she was not good at jenga…and also they weren't supposed to play jenga anymore because Shimazaki had glued the pieces together and then he and Shibata had a great big fight…but maybe some glue would have been useful…

Because her books went everywhere.

"You know something, Mob, this might be a sign that you have maybe just a bit too much manga." Said Minegishi as they got down on the floor and helped her pick up her stuff. They had already paid…wow she had lost track of time…and now she felt bad about making them wait even though she hadn't even seen the second floor or the basement yet…but they had already paid and that meant that it was time to go…

Mob wondered what they had bought.

It wouldn't be sneaky to look into their bag if their bag was already opened a little…and she maybe tried to look…and she didn't see anything. There was brown paper over the front of what they had bought. Like the book covers that she'd had to use back when she was in school to keep her textbooks nice…and she would not have been surprised if they had textbooks over in the adults only section.

Minegishi closed their bag.

"What did I tell you?" asked Minegishi. Mob ducked her head low even though she knew that Minegishi could still clearly see her. It was just a reflex like how her aura pulled itself in tight around her. She could see Minegishi's aura. They weren't mad…which was good…but Mob had still done the opposite of what she had been told to do…

"I'm sorry. I was just curious and…stuff. I'm sorry if I made you mad." Said Mob. Minegishi sighed.

"I'm not mad at you, just annoyed that you didn't listen…but it's whatever. Just listen to me next time when I tell you to stay out of my stuff, ok? Adults only means adult only. You're ten. You stick with all of this. This is really more your speed." Said Minegishi. They picked up one of Mob's books, one of the ones with people kissing on the front, and Mob quickly put it back in her basket.

"Minegishi! Don't! People might see!" said Mob. She had stacked them face down in her basket for a reason! These were the kinds of books you read under the covers at midnight with your phone in flashlight mode. People could not know that she read that stuff. Too embarrassing. Much too embarrassing.

Nobody in the whole wide world could know that she read that stuff or she thought about it…besides Minegishi because they were very good at keeping secrets…Mob's secrets, anyway.

"That you really want a boyfriend? Yes, whatever will you do if people find out your terrible secret?" said Minegishi. Mob knew where she would be! Well actually she didn't know if she would be in a different place or what place she'd even go to…but she didn't want people to know how much she wanted a boyfriend!

Not even strangers in a manga store.

Nobody was looking at her….well nobody that she could see…and she didn't want to risk anyone seeing. She put all of her stuff in facedown. She had to. She didn't know why it was so embarrassing, people paired up all the time, but the thought of anyone in the world besides Minegishi knowing that she wanted someone to love her and hold her hand and kiss her…she had been thinking a lot about kissing lately…more so than normal….

She didn't understand herself sometimes.

"Minegishi….don't tell my secrets to the world." Said Mob. She wished that she could be invisible. There were so many people around and…and even though she knew that nobody was looking at her…but it still felt like it….

"You're so lucky Shibata isn't here or he'd have taken at least ten pictures of you being adorable like this." said Minegishi

"….not trying to be." Said Mob once she got the last of her books into her basket. She slipped a little as she got up. Part of her dress, the cape part, got caught under her shoes. Minegishi caught her. She didn't know why everyone always said that she was adorable. Well a lot of her clothes were costumes…and also people thought that she was tiny even though she was normal sized for a ten year old…and stuff…but she didn't think that she was adorable. She was too old to be adorable, for one thing, and also she had never been adorable even when she had been a little kid.

"Well, you are, so accept it. And stop being so embarrassed, too." Said Minegishi

"I can't help it. It feels like people are looking at me and…stuff." Said Mob

"Mob, let me impart some wisdom on you that I wish someone had imparted onto me if I was your age." Said Minegishi

"If it's about sugar being poison you've told me already." Said Mob. She knew that sugar was poison and she knew that it was bad for her but she knew a healer and also she needed the energy that sugar gave her to grow and…stuff. She needed all the food groups and sugar was a food group…and therefore she needed sugar to live…even if it was poison.

"No, it's not that…but, yeah, don't eat sugar. It's poison." Said Minegishi

"But I like it." Said Mob

"Do you also like having teeth and a working pancreas?" asked Minegishi

"Um…yes? I mean I've never really thought about it before." Said Mob

"Well just remember that sugar is poison…and also remember that nobody cares about what you're doing. Nobody's looking at you, nobody cares what you're doing, everyone is too busy worried about their own shit to give a shit about yours. Ok?" asked Minegishi. That made sense…sort of…but she still couldn't shake that feeling. It had been getting worse lately. Maybe because everyone had been looking at her when she had been the boss….and maybe she was still used to that.

But she nodded anyway.

"You get it? Good. Now come on, I'm bored as all else." Said Minegishi. Mob got up off the ground. There. Well she was sort of done…and they had been there for a while…even though there were whole floors that she hadn't seen yet…

But part of being a good friend was knowing when it was time to leave for the sake of your friend.

Like how Minegishi always left the coffee place when Mob got jittery and her heart started beating funny even though that was their favorite place to read because nobody bothered them. They were a good friend like that and Mob could be a good friend like that.

"Ok, I'm done. We can always come back next time we're in Tokyo…if dad doesn't need me to watch Sho…I'm ready to go. I'm ready." Said Mob. Her basket was heavy…and also she had to keep the stack steady with her powers…and maybe it was time to go. She could always head back next time she was in Tokyo. They came here sort of often.

She liked Tokyo a lot. Not just because of the manga stores but also because they put brown paper over your manga if you asked.


	164. Quitting a Bad Habit

Mob could quit whenever she wanted.

She really could. She just didn't want to. If she quit then she would start to feel bad about stuff. Like how dad pushed her away when she tried to hug him because she smelled like an ashtray. That was what he had said. He just pushed her away with his powers and told her that she smelled like an ashtray…and she had really needed a hug, too, because she had found where Sho hid baby Mukai's sock and she had been selfish enough to think about taking it back.

She felt bad.

And she knew what Minegishi had told her about smoking. How it was bad for her and how once you started it was very hard to stop. Well Mob knew that she could stop at any time. She knew that she could quit at any time and she just chose not to. Besides, she had Fukuda and even though they weren't friends anymore for reasons she didn't fully understand she still knew that he would not let her get sick with any of the diseases that were listed on the box the cigarettes came in.

So she was fine.

She just needed to calm down. Then she would be fine. She would calm down and go back inside the house and it would be fine. She made sure to make a mess when she came out so that way she would have an excuse for being outside and it wouldn't have even been a lie. Dad was in his room and Sho had locked himself in the bathroom with his drawing book and his ipad, they only had the one bathroom but Mob's record for holding it was two days and five hours, so she was fine.

She finally got a moment to herself.

Or at least she'd had a moment to herself. She could feel Minegishi. Their aura traveled through the ground, through the grass, and it was sort of interesting…but also she sort of wanted to be alone. She felt like that sometimes. Empty and aching and stuff. She didn't know why. Dad was mean to her sometimes and Sho was mean to her sometimes and sometimes they were mean to her at the same time and that was life.

Sometimes life was hard but that was ok.

Because there were good parts to it, too. Like how she knew where Mukai's baby sock was now and how she could look at it and hold it and stuff when Sho wasn't with her. Also she had gotten a whole bunch of new manga and she wasn't even part of the way through it yet. Or like how there was a new Frozen movie, well a short movie, and now they had green dresses and that was good because Mob was getting bored of wearing blue all the time, or also like how she had such good friends, now, even though everyone but Minegishi could be kind of annoying….

She had a lot to be happy about so she needed to stop feeling like this already. It made no logical sense at all.

She could at least make herself feel better. That made sense. Since she felt bad, and her powers and aura showed it, she had to make herself feel better. Even if she was not supposed to be smoking since she was only ten. That seemed like a dumb rule. She wasn't a baby like how Mukai was a baby. She could take care of herself and decide things for herself. If she wanted to smoke and could be trusted not to accidentally set the house on fire then why should she stop? Who was she hurting besides herself by smoking every once in a while? Nobody, that was who.

She didn't even care if she did end up getting hurt.

Mob finished her cigarette and crushed the end under her shoe like Shimazaki had showed her. Even though it sort of felt like littering. It wasn't, though, because he had said so and as annoying as he was he wasn't an idiot. He knew about things like this and he told her what she needed to know. Like how it was important to save the ends of the cigarettes that Minegishi made themselves because you could put the ends together to make a whole new cigarette.

You couldn't do that with these or you'd just end up with a bunch of filters.

Mob knew that once she got down to the filter she was done…supposed to be done. Not in the sense that you could smoke the filter, she had tried once and it had been unpleasant, but more in the sense that she was supposed to be done for the night. Otherwise you were chain smoking and chain smoking was extra bad for you. Minegishi had said so and they were smart and Mob should have listened….

She really should have.

But she didn't. She didn't want to stop and…and it wasn't like she couldn't stop. She could stop whenever she felt like it. She just did not feel like stopping. She was sad and stressed and also smoking was better for her than drinking because it didn't make her feel bad in the morning and she never have trouble walking after she smoked.

So she was just going to have one more.

"Mob? Are you chain smoking again?" asked Minegishi. They knew full well that Mob was out there chain smoking. They also knew that Mob was not their kid so this was none of their business. They also knew as the only somewhat functional adult around they had to make it their business. So that was what they were doing.

Because they did not want to be throwing Mob any funerals any time soon.

If the smoking didn't kill her then her father would. Suzuki hated smoking. He hated it like he hated gum chewing and people talking during meetings. He also had never been shy about smacking his kids around. One day he was going to smack one of those kids way too hard and then he was going to end up with either a dead kid or he himself having been killed by his own stupidity.

Also ten year olds were not meant to smoke.

"Does two count as chain smoking?" said Mob even though she was mostly sure that it did.

"What do you think, Mob?" asked Minegishi. They knew that they could let as much of the sheer, grating, annoyance that they felt seep into their voice as they wanted. Mob never noticed. Minegishi wondered if she and Suzuki had some sort of disorder…or maybe he was such a piss poor parent that he never bothered to teach his kids social skills.

Yeah, maybe it was just piss poor parenting. He did have a chain smoking lush for a ten year old after all.

"Yes?" asked Mob. They knew that they were in trouble…well not real trouble because dad was still working in his room and Sho had still locked himself up in the bathroom but kind of in trouble because Minegishi was unhappy with her…and she didn't like that.

She really didn't like that.

"Then why are you chain smoking? Come on, you know that it's bad for you…I am going to end Ryou…." Said Minegishi. Sure they had sent Mob down the river of sin but at least they had given her a map and a paddle. Shimazaki had just pushed her off into the rapids with nothing but an inner tube and a prayer.

"I just…feel…sad. Well not sad. Sort of…it's like being sad but not as…pointy." Said Mob. She was bad at talking. She was bad at talking and she wished that she had a better word for the way she felt. She felt empty and aching but also like there was a warm sadness sloshing around inside of her but also sticking to her insides like warm maple syrup. She didn't like this sadness because it also made her feel tired…but not sleepy tired….more like…stressed tired? It wasn't a good feeling.

And she had to control her feelings.

If she felt something that she didn't want to feel then she could always just exorcise her emotions. Like now. She didn't know what the trouble was. She had been promoted in her family so the same rank as a mom without being a mom, which meant that she counted as an adult, and also she had filled in for dad at work and at home. If she had done all that then why was she suddenly a kid when she wanted a cigarette? Why was this where adults chose to draw the line?

Mob did not understand adults one bit.

"Pointy? Asked Minegishi

"Yes but not…not like when you swallow a fish bone and it pokes your throat. More like…not that…and it doesn't even feel pointy. It feels like there's a whole bunch of maple syrup inside of me and the syrup is made up of sadness and it's warm and sticky and also sloshing around inside of me and I don't like it at all…so I decided to have a cigarette because I feel like this…and I don't know who I'm hurting….so I don't see what's wrong with this." said Mob

"Mob…you're ten. You're going to end up really sick if you keep that up. Ok?" asked Minegishi. They felt for Mob, they really did, but they did not want to be going to any Frozen themed funerals any time soon.

"But we have Fukuda…I mean he doesn't like me but we still have him." said Mob

"Fuck him." said Minegishi

"What? Why would you say something like that? He's really nice. He plays…played…with me and Sho when we were kids and he would help my mom make dinner and let me and Sho help and he was my mom's best friend…but please don't tell anyone I was talking about my mom…and he's nice to Sho and…and it's ok that he doesn't like me. Not everyone in the whole world is going to like me…and that's ok." Said Mob. She didn't know what she had done and she wished that he would just tell her so that she could take it back already. At some point he had just…started being different. At first she had thought that it was because she was getting older and things changed when you got older but Sho kept on getting older, too, and he had never started treating Sho any different. He even called her Miss Suzuki…which was her name, technically, but he still called Sho by his given name. Mob had a given name too, it was Shigeko. She was also called Mob but almost nobody called her that…even though she preferred it.

Mob didn't understand adult sometimes.

"That jackass walks around with his nose turned up so high I'm amazed that the birds haven't started nesting in it." Said Minegishi

"But…he walks around normal…at least I think that he does." Said Mob

"It's…I just mean that he walks around like he's better than the rest of us for reasons that I cannot begin to understand. Maybe because he's known Suzuki for longer than I've been alive. I don't know and I don't feel like knocking on his door and asking him. I have better things to do." Said Minegishi. They wondered what that moron hoped to accomplish by making an enemy out of the second most powerful esper in the world and heiress to the whole world, if Suzuki's crazy plans ever worked out, and if not the heiress to the world's most successful cult. Really, it was just stupid…and Minegishi was also not advocating for going in the other direction and incessantly hitting on a ten year old in the hopes that when she grew up a little more she'd keep you around…fucking Ryou….

Just be a decent human being to the kid. It wasn't hard. If Minegishi could find it in their shriveled raisin of a heart to do so then why couldn't that dumbass?

"I don't think that he thinks that he's better than everyone else…well except for the people he ranks above…I'm not sure what his rank is. Upper echelon at least…lower than me…maybe your rank? I'm not sure and I can't go and check because dad told me to leave him alone until I start smelling less like an ashtray." Said Mob. She pulled her shirt up over her nose. She couldn't smell anything and she had been taking care to only ash on the ground, too, and not on her clothes or shoes.

"Your dad really said that to you? I mean, yeah, you stink like you've been smoking a pack a day-" said Minegishi

"Two packs today." Said Mob

"What the hell? Why?" asked Minegishi. They took a deep breath and put their excess feelings of 'what the fuck is wrong with you?' into growing the grass beneath their feet. There. Now they were calm and ready to listen to whatever insanity Mob came up with next.

"Because…because I wanted to. Ok? I never get to do what I want…and I feel bad…and then when I find something that makes me feel better I just get yelled at…" said Mob

"Another hard day?" asked Minegishi. They had spent their day feeding people to plants, strictly for work reasons, but Mob's had been harder. She had to deal with her father and brother…so maybe she had earned the right to smoke…but also she was ten fucking years old!

Minegishi was never having kids.

They had messed Mob up badly enough and she wasn't even theirs…but then again Suzuki had probably done the majority of the damage. Minegishi wept their eyes across Mob quickly. No fresh bruises. That was good…well it was good in the sense that Minegishi could be reasonably assured that Suzuki hadn't been too pissed off at Mob…

This was what their life had come to.

Minegishi would have killed Suzuki a long time ago if they didn't enjoy not being dead. Nobody could beat Suzuki. Nobody would beat him. He was crazy, everyone could tell that he was not playing with a full deck, but he wasn't' crazy when he said that he was the most powerful man on Earth. Well he was still just as mortal as the rest of the, God willing, and one day he was going to push Mob too far and then she'd make herself into an orphan and then, and only then, would she be ready for the story of how Minegishi had lost their parents.

And then they could show Mob how to turn her father's body into fertilizer and the circle of life would turn once more.

"Yes…no….not really. It wasn't anything big. Sho and I just had a fight and I tried to hug my dad because I was sad, even though I know he doesn't like that, and then he pushed me away with his powers and said that I smell like an ashtray. I don't even know why I'm so upset. I didn't even get pushed that hard. I'm just being dumb." Said Mob. She knew that she was just being too emotional like dad said. He said that he could not deal with her when she got like this. She wished that she could have been more like him…

The not getting sad part. Not the parts where he was mean and hit people. Those were not good parts.

"You're not being dumb, you just come from a family of assholes…and I know what you're going to say and I will use that word." Said Minegishi

"Ok…but I still don't think that my dad and my brother are…that word." Said Mob. She sometimes thought bad words in her head when she was upset with them…and she knew that it was wrong of her…but she would never say them out loud. She loved her family and they loved her…they could just be sort of mean to her sometimes. That was all. Sometimes people were mean and that was just the way it went.

"Let's agree to disagree. Anyway, I got you something." Said Minegishi as they fished the plastic bag out of their messenger bag. They were careful not to disrupt their seed collection. Tools of the trade and all of that.

Well one of their trades.

At some point they had become something of a babysitter to Mob. They had never asked for this but now they were….this. It was fine. This was not how they had seen their life going but it was whatever. They honestly had never expected to live this long in the first place so, really, everything was a gain from there. Even being responsible for the chain smoking ten year old.

Who really did smell like an ashtray.

Suzuki had been an asshole to just say it to her face like that. Hell, he had been more of an asshole but not even making the barest hint of an effort at figuring out why his kid smelled like an ashtray in the first place. Mob, of course, only saw the best in her asshole of a father…and that was what it was. They were not going to get into this with Mob right now. They didn't have the strength. It had been a very long day and all they had wanted to do was rest but they had an errand to run. An important one. Suzuki was right, Mob smelled like an ashtray, which tended to happen when one smoked two packs a day…which Minegishi was amazed was even possible for a ten year old….her poor little lungs….well Minegishi'd had enough of this. They had to do something about this.

Even if, for once, they were not the ones responsible for ruining Mob's life.

"But I didn't get you anything…I didn't even know that we were exchanging gifts today. Is it our friend-anniversary?" asked Mob

"No, that's in winter, and anyway I don't celebrate made up holidays. I just got you this because I am sick and tired of you smoking. You stink, you're jittery, you're going to give yourself cancer, and you're going to get caught one of these days and I do not need to explain to your father that I'm the one who's been ruining your life." Said Minegishi

"You haven't been ruining my life. You're my best friend who isn't Sho. You're one of the nicest people that I've ever met in my whole life." Said Mob. If they had been the kind of friends who hugged then Mob would have reached over and hugged Minegishi….but they weren't. They were the kind of friends who were friends without hugging.

At least that was what Mob had thought.

Minegishi pulled her into a quick side hug. Mob wanted to hold onto them and never let go…but she didn't that because it would have been weird and also she was too old to be doing that. She just let herself be hugged quickly and then let go. After she was let go a plastic bag was put into her hands.

"Here. Take this. It's a nicotine free vape. You're not smoking anymore." Said Minegishi. Was this responsible? They didn't know. On the one hand a ten year old should not have been smoking. She could cut her life short when she was closer to the finish line than the starting gate. On the other hand they were only keeping Mob going down the better living through chemistry road…but Minegishi was not going to be a hypocrite. They were going to keep Mob from making their life ruining mistakes but they were not going to be a hypocrite.

So teaching a ten year to vape won out.

"What's the difference between this and smoking?" asked Mob. Would it make her less stressed? And tired? That was what she needed to know. She went through the bag…oh! They had bubblegum and ice cream and chocolate and pineapple flavors…and she did like things that tasted good. Smoking just mostly tasted like burning.

"This won't kill you by the time you're my age and you won't smell so bad…well you will…but in a different way. You'll smell like bubblegum or whatever. Just give me those cigarettes and don't let Shimazaki get you anymore. Ok?" asked Minegishi. They held their hand out. Mob held her cigarette box closer.

"But…thank you for the gift but I like to smoke." Said Mob. Minegishi shook their head and said a lot of bad words…and words that Mob had never heard before…and words that sounded like they shouldn't have gone together…and words in a language that Mob had never heard before…

"Give me those." Said Minegishi after they had gone through every bit of profanity they knew. That was not good. That was what addiction sounded like…and they didn't have a lot of lines but that was one of them. They were not speaking to Shimazaki for a good long time, long enough for him to forget that he existed, long enough for him to maybe do some introspection and realize that just because he had an idea it didn't mean that he had to go through with it like some kind of impulsive, not thinking, stupid…

Minegishi was too pissed off to be articulate.

"But I don't want to. I can decide for myself-"said Mob before her cigarette box was snatched out of her hand.

"Nope. Not letting you ruin your life. Yeah, ok, you're ten now and you can make some of your own choices…but you're still just a ten year old. I know that you can't see it now but you're ruining your life. Just…your dad is going to get pissed at you if he finds out and…um…he might even demote you." Said Minegishi. Time to be smart. Time to think. Mob knew that it was bad for her but she didn't care. Time to appeal to something she did care about.

Her asshole of a father.

"….you're right. Dad almost caught me the other night…so I shouldn't smoke where he's around but I don't want to quit. I can quit whenever I want to-" said Mob

"That's not how it works. Everyone who's ever started has said that they can quite whenever they wanted to. It never works like that….with this, anyway. It's a lot more insidious than a lot of other things that I do…which I should not have introduced you to, because there's a physical dependence that you get. Same with drinking which is why I stopped sharing with you so often. Just vape if you want to smoke and…if I'm ever smoking I guess you can smoke with me…and I just don't want anything to happen to you, ok? You get it?" asked Minegishi. If she had been anyone else Minegishi could have just pointed out that she was being a dumbass, taken her cigarettes from her, and that would have been the end of it. But this was not anyone.

This was Mob.

"Ok…if you think that it'll be a good idea…" said Mob. She didn't want to get in trouble…but she didn't want to make her friend mad, too, and that was what won out. She liked having someone who cared about her all the time, who liked her all the time, because it was just the nicest feeling…and she wanted to keep on feeling it. Feeling this feeling was enough to get rid of the empty and aching feeling inside of her…at least for a little bit. She didn't know how long it would be gone for this time, it never truly went away, but Mob…she wanted to keep on feeling this feeling.

So if Minegishi wanted her to quit then she would quit…for the sake of their friendship.

After all, Mob said that she could quit anytime she felt like it, and now she felt like it.


	165. Order and Messes

Suzuki Touichirou did not like messes.

He liked order. He liked it when everything made sense. He liked waking up in the morning and having an accurate idea of what his day would be like. He liked being able to sit down at his desk and know where everything was. He liked being able to look at the day's pile of work and know what he had to do. He liked order, he prized it above all else, and he would have thought that his children would have understood that.

They did not.

"The roof caved in again!" said Son from underneath the fort that he had built out of Suzuki's office furniture and some bedding he had liberated from the laundry room. Clean bedding, thank God, though there would be an Awakened somewhere wondering why they had a bare bed…and then they would all get riled up…and then productivity would be shot for the day.

He hated so hated messes.

"So? Just use your powers to hold it up." Said Shimazaki. Suzuki wondered if he was looking at a future version of his Son sitting there in the fort acting like he was the one who was nine years old. It would have made sense. They both seemed to have some sort of impulse control disorder…and maybe he should have had Son looked at…no. He wouldn't be doing that. There was nothing wrong with Son.

He was just a tiresome little boy.

Suzuki must have been a tiresome little boy at some point in his life. He had vague memories of turning his living room into his own personal fort room too when he had been small…but it had been just that, his living room, and not his father's office. Suzuki would never have done anything like this and he didn't know where Son got these ideas from…

Though it was preferable to what he had been up to before.

Chair jousting….why had Daughter approved officially sanctioned chair jousting tournaments? What were people even thinking when they did….that? He didn't know. He had told those idiots to knock it off and they had…though he had broke it up too late and more work had been made for Fukuda…and then Son had come in all riled up…and now he was doing this…

At least he was in one place.

"That's a good idea. We have to make it big enough for Shibata anyway when he comes back from lunch. I don't know why he won't eat with you. It's funny when you take people's food. They're all like 'what happened to my food' and you're all laughing and stuff…it's funny." Said Son. Suzuki didn't think that causing unnecessary chaos was funny…but he said nothing. Son was over there in the corner of the room and that was what mattered. He wasn't causing any trouble. That was what mattered.

Where on Earth was Daughter? That was also what mattered.

She had gone on a coffee break about an hour ago. How long did it take to drink a cup of coffee? He could still sense her in the building, at least, which meant that she wasn't off doing God only knew what in the city. At least she took Minegishi with her when she went…even though this was Tokyo and he knew what could happen to little girls in Tokyo…which made no sense, his apprehension, because he knew that she was perfectly capable of defending herself. She was second only to him after all…and she didn't need protection…or a keeper…even though it would have been so easy to slip away into a city of millions…but not really. Not with her aura being what it was.

He felt around for her.

Still in the building. More specifically in the open air mezzanine. Probably still drinking coffee. She had taken Minegishi with her…that was why she had been gone for so long. Those two could spend hours and hours together…and he didn't quite understand it. What his Daughter saw in them…but he wasn't going to question her or anything like that. No, he was…glad…that her social development was normal. That meant that she would do better in that area than he had.

He still wanted her back, though.

"How the hell is he supposed to fit in here? He's ten and a half meters tall." Said Shimazaki

"He's not that tall." Said Son

"He's pretty damn tall, kid, he's taller than me and I'm pretty damn tall." Said Shimazaki

"We can get some more blankets and then I can hold them up with my powers." Said Son

"He's still not going to be able to fit." Said Shimazaki. He did not teleport out of the way when Son struck him. Odd. He wondered if he should have corrected Son…and decided against it.

"It's my fort and I'll decide who gets to come in and who doesn't. I'm President of the fort." Said Son

"Ok, Mr. President. Just remember that once you let everyone into the fort it sort of loses it's appeal." Said Shimazaki

"What do you mean?" asked Son

"It's not exactly a secret fort club if you let just anyone in." said Shimazaki

"Oh…um…no girls allowed in that case. WE don't need them. They're boring and bossy and stuff." Said Son. Suzuki wonders if that's something that should have worried him. Son should have been interesting in the opposite sex by now…right? Suzuki remembered being younger than him and constantly cycling through different infatuations…but then again he had gone to school and spent a lot of time around the opposite sex. Son only spent time with Daughter and he saw her as a sister even though there was no biological relation…though from a purely bloodline perspective if Son and Daughter were to reproduce…but that was a terrible idea. It would set an incest precedent, unless he told the children that Daughter was adopted which was something that he would not be doing, and nothing good came of setting an incest precedent….he probably had nothing to worry about when it came to Son. He just didn't know any members of the opposite sex, that was all.

The fact that he had found his Son dressed in his sister's clothes on more than one occasion did seem to be a bit worrying, though, just a bit.

"Eh, can't mess with the classics I guess. Ok, this will be the no girls allowed fort. Yeah, who needs the opposite sex?" said Shimazaki. Suzuki bit his tongue. Telling Shimazaki not to encourage Son would have meant, well, exchanging words with the man…and also Son might have decided to devout his life to celibacy from that moment on just to be stubborn and spiteful.

"Yeah, girls suck, we don't need 'em. We've got our whole lives when we're married to them to deal with them." Said Son

"God, to be nine years old again." said Shimazaki

"What's so great about being nine? I can't go to bed whenever I want and I can't eat whatever I want and I have to take baths and do school work. I wish that I was your age. Then I could do whatever I wanted." Said Son. Suzuki bit his tongue. Son already did whatever he wanted. Suzuki had been VERY lenient with his Son since he had promoted his Daughter to head of household affairs, the official title was still pending. Daughter had been dealing with Son and, honestly, it had been a load off of his mind.

Where were she?

"You can spend all day building forts and you don't have to bother with women…or Toshi. Stay away from Toshi until the seventeen at least." Said Shimazaki

"Ok. I don't like talking to them anyway. They're boring." Said Son

"Boring?" asked Shimazaki

"Yeah. They hang out with my sister all day and only read books and call people names but not in a fun way and they have no idea what fun even is. That's why they're friends with my sister. She's bad at having fun, the absolute worst." Said Son. Suzuki bit his tongue once again. Daughter wasn't boring, Son was just….he didn't even have words for what Son was. Well it didn't matter. Daughter was the one who tended to him now.

"Are we talking about the same Toshi, kid? The same Minegishi Toshiki?" asked Shimazaki

"The person with no eyebrows and purple hair who hangs out with my sister and always smells like dirt?" asked Son. Suzuki knew that making negative comments about others was rude but, well, he didn't really care all that much what Son said just so long as it wasn't about him or Daughter.

"Yeah, that's them….though you really need to learn to stop talking about colors and expecting me to understand what you're talking about. I have no idea what color is." Said Shimazaki. Suzuki braced himself for the rant that Son would go on. He never could admit that he was wrong, that child, even when he knew that he was. Where was Daughter? She could have put a stop to this. Any minute now Son would start up and-

"Oh….I'm sorry. I keep on forgetting that you're blind and stuff. Sorry." said Son. Suzuki looked up from his work and blinked. Well that was….odd. Very odd. Son…he never apologized. Not without being forced to. That had been…he had no idea what that had been. Nor did he have any idea what to make of son's aura or expression. The fact that he seemed to have turned red with shame at his mistake or that hiccup of his aura…and now he was pulling it inwards…and fidgeting with his hands…and he was staring down at the ground, too….out of shame?

Suzuki did not understand.

He did not understand and he did not want to listen to another word of this banal chatter either. He needed silence and order…or at least intelligent conversation. Like the kind that he could have had with Daughter…who had been gone for far too long. He would have given anything to have swapped out Son for Daughter both in that instance and also…in general. If Son could have been more like Daughter…though then Daughter would have been more like Son.

If he'd had two Daughters. Yes. That would have been just lovely.

But he did not have two Daughters. He had a Son and a Daughter and his Son was there and his Daughter was off on her own socializing even though she knew that she was the only one who could get her brother under control without having to resort to threats and violence. But she was gone and he was all alone with Son…

He began to think up errands that he could have sent Son on. Something pointless. Send him to count all the windows in the building. Sent him to sort out the silverware in the cafeteria. Sent him to make sure that all the chopsticks in the cafeteria came in pairs. They somehow ended up with, occasionally, just a single disposable chopstick…which was just odd…

Yes, he could have sent Son to that task.

He was about to, too, when he felt Fukuda at his door. He sensed the man before he saw him…but not at a great enough distance. His aura was dull, almost depleted, that was why. Suzuki wondered what had happened but then he remembered the chair jousting accident…and those morons only had to blame themselves. Of course someone had been bound to lose an eye….they were jousting with office chairs and broomsticks in a freshly waxed hallway!

He was surrounded by idiots…or at least overgrown children.

Thank God for Fukuda. He may have overstepped, and known way too many of Suzuki's secrets, but he was still loyal and valuable. Sensible, too, if the fact that he did not get into the fort when Son asked him to was anything to go off of. He had no idea what he would have done over the years without his most loyal….companion was a good word for him…at his side.

"Hey, boss, two things. First of all can I put in an order for office chairs without wheels? They're just going to keep on hurting themselves. Also can I borrow Sho for a minute? I'm…I'm exhausted from growing all of those eyes for people and I could use an extra set of hands…and you know how incompetent this batch of Awakened are." Said Fukuda. Suzuki didn't even have to think about it.

"Yes, please, take him. Take him for as long as you need….and also please destroy any and all chairs with wheels aside from mine and ordered ones without wheels. I don't care how long they take to come. Let people stand for a while. It might teach them a lesson." Said Suzuki. That was what he liked about Fukuda. They were both on the same wavelength about a lot of things…though he did not see how Gundam was superior to Galaxy Express…though they had not had that debate since middle school.

Had it really been that long?

Time passed by so quickly. He would have thought that he would have been ruling the world by now. Almost thirty years had passed since he first conceived of Claw. Since he had come to the realization that he could and would rule the world…but then life had gotten in the way. School. Women. University. Deaths. Marriage. Children. Daughter completely unending Claw and making far more work for him than he had ever thought possible…

A lot had happened in those thirty years.

And now he was here. Sitting at his desk trying to put his organization back together while the most annoying man in the world sat in a child's fort and sang a medley of Beatles songs…just the choruses….off key….and he was no music lover but he was pretty sure that those were not all the right words….

"Rocket Raccoon, sits in his tomb, waiting for his revival…" Suzuki wondered how a person got to be that annoying. Daughter had told him that Minegishi had told her that Shimazaki had a serious medical condition where if people weren't paying attention to him, validating his existence, then he would think that he had stopped existing…which Suzuki did not want to ask about. Mental health and madness always worried him. He did not like things that he could not see and measure….and he did not like things that he did not understand…

Also he did not want to think that his own mind could betray him so badly that he would forget that he existed if people were to stop paying attention to him…

Frightening.

Not that he was frightened for long, though, because he could come off of it quickly. He was not mad and he would never go mad. He was sane. He was the most sane. He was sane enough to know that, from a young age, that he was destined to rule the world. He was also sane enough to know that this man would drive him insane if he didn't think up some reason to send him away. If he just said to go away then…well….Suzuki knew that attempts on his life could come at any time and from anyone…and Shibata was still taking his lunch break…and Shimazaki really was the better bodyguard….but he just needed a minute of peace. A second. A moment.

He so wished that Daughter had been there. She had always been such a quiet and peaceful child.

He was a genius.

"Shimazaki. Bring me my Daughter. I have a task for her." said Suzuki. He needed a break anyway. She could….answer some of his internal emails. Politely rebuff people. She was good at that, being polite, and other such social skills. Also she was much better at using that machine than he was. She had been the one to teach him the undo function after all…

His brilliant Daughter.

"Sure thing, Suzuki-san." Said Shimazaki before he blinked right out of existence. Suzuki didn't even have time to correct him…but correcting him would have meant exchanging words with him and he did not want to do that anymore than was strictly necessary. No, he wanted to enjoy the precious few seconds he had until Shimazaki came back with Daughter…

All fourteen of them.

The energy in the room shifted as it was filled with Daughter's aura. The smell of bubblegum filled the air. Sugary and cloyingly sweet…but he would not complain. She didn't smell like an ashtray anymore and that was all that he could ask for. She smelled…artificial…though? Was she wearing perfume? Was she even old enough to wear perfume? She was ten…what was normal for a ten year old girl? Should she have been wearing something other than her costumes? Should she have stopped wearing her hair in braids? Should she have been wearing makeup? Should she have been wearing jewelry? Should she have been wearing high heels? Should she have had all of the other trappings of femininity that he had observed but had never understood? What about her social development? Should she have had more female friends…any? Should she have been seeing someone by now? Who would she even have been interested in? There was no man that he had ever met in his life that could have even begun to be worthy of Suzuki Shigeko.

He was getting ahead of himself. She was still prepubescent. Thank God.

"Hi, dad. Shimazaki said that you needed me to do something?" asked Daughter. Had he? Right, right, right. He got up and motioned towards his chair.

"Here. I need you to answer my emails. You know what to do…and what not to do. No more making your own decisions. Understand?" asked Suzuki. She had made so much extra work for him. She had just said yes to anything, signed anything that had been put in front of her, and it had set his work back by he didn't even know how long…but he had nobody to blame but himself. That was why he told her, explicitly now, that she was not allowed to make her own decisions.

He was such a good father.

"Yes, dad. I understand." Said Daughter. He stuck around long enough to wait for her to get to work. He needed to walk around for a bit. Stretch his legs and also check on a few things. Normal things for his normal day. He liked things like this, normal, and orderly. Things weren't exactly the way he wanted them but they were getting back to normal and that was all that he could ask for.

That and, well, the next crop of Awakened to have been more mentally mature than a bunch of nine year olds.

He had walked in on a group of them sock skating down the halls like his children tended to do. At least they'd had enough sense, enough brain cells between them, to scatter as he approached. He was going to have to send someone to the Seventh Division to see what was going wrong with the Awakening process. Fukuda. Yes, he could trust Fukuda with this. There. Having a plan put him in a better mood and he knew, as he headed back to his office, that spending time with his Daughter would only improve his mood further….

Or not.

"You know, Suzuki, I like that better on you. Bubblegum. It suits you a hell of a lot better than tobacco seeing as how you're so sweet." Said Shimazaki being his usual annoying self…at least Suzuki would have been annoyed if he had been in Daughter's place….but he was not in Daughter's place. She was in his place…at his desk…sitting at his desk…

And so was Shimazaki.

He was sitting there perched on the edge of his DESK and just…Suzuki had no clue what he was looking at. He knew that he was seeing Shimazaki sitting on the edge of his desk with one hand brushing one of Daughter's braids behind her back…and lingering….and Daughter wasn't even looking at him…and this was…this was…

Suzuki had no idea what this was.

He knew that it made him feel….he didn't even know. There was a dose of anger there along with a smattering of other emotions that he couldn't name…and he knew that it had not just been about the desk. Sure Shimazaki sitting on his desk was beyond the pale but…but so was touching Daughter like that….

Suzuki was a man. He KNEW what the gesture meant.

Well he thought that he did, anyway, he was never that good at those social things…and also he must have been misreading the situation because Daughter was prepubescent and one did not…not with someone her age…well they did…and Daughter was only….but she was stronger than him and if she had felt that the contact was unwelcome she could have killed him right there and she knew that Suzuki would never have faulted her for getting rid of an unwanted suitor-

What the fuck….

She was…she wasn't there yet? Was she? He had no idea what was and was not normal when it came to girls. He knew that they matured faster than boys, and also that he should have been happy that she was heterosexual since that secured the next generation but…she was only TEN. He had thought that there would be more time before she would be after….all of that…

Suzuki needed a drink for the first time in the better part of a decade.

Thankfully whatever it was that he was looking at ended the moment he crossed the threshold into the room. Shimazaki teleported back over to the mess that Son had made and Daughter…she greeted him like normal….like that had been normal for her….and he had been away for so long…

Suzuki needed time to think.

"Daughter, thank you for your help. I can take it from here. Go and…and spend time with your friend…with Minegishi. Go spend time with her…him…them. Go and spend time with them or your brother or watch your shows or go shopping or something. I'll see you at home. You are dismissed. Shimazaki, bring me Shibata at once and then go and…and keep my Son safe. Fukuda is in no state to be alone with him…and then tell Son to stay by Fukuda's side for the rest of the day." Said Suzuki. He fired off orders as he walked to his desk. Daughter had barely been out of his chair before he practically threw himself down into it. He hardly heard the affirmations that he had been heard. He could barely hear anything over his own racing thoughts.

He didn't know what he was supposed to do with this information.

He so hated messes after all.


	166. Advice for the Hopeless

"Do you think that Shimazaki is attractive?"

Suzuki Touichirou was the master of the non sequitur.

They had been talking about how to best keep this new batch of Awakened from accidentally killing themselves. Fukuda had ordered the new chairs but now they had sock skating to worry about. Someone had ended up falling and snapping their leg in half…and then Fukuda had to use the rest of his stored up energy to fix that…and then he'd had to take care of Sho for the rest of the day…and Shimazaki had been there too.

It was like trying to pour gasoline on a fire and then turning on a fan.

It had been a long day and it was now getting longer. He had just wanted to get Suzuki's signature on a few things, talk about how they would keep the new morons alive, and then go home and just…rest. He was tired, he was drained, and he'd had to be in close proximity with Shimazaki all day and he had been hell bent on riling Sho up and Sho already had enough energy as it was and he did not need someone to be the devil on his shoulder telling him to jump out and scare people or start random fights or whatever else Shimazaki did to keep from getting bored.

At least Shimazaki had not been hitting on Sho. Thank God for the small mercies.

But God could be stingy with his small mercies. Hence Suzuki asking him a question to which he had no idea what the answer was. Well, obviously, being straight and not finding anything inside of the man that was even tolerable the answer was a hard 'no' but this was a Suzuki question. He was looking for an answer. He was looking for a specific answer for a specific question that Fukuda was, specifically, going to have to pry out of him.

He was so damn tired.

"What do you mean, boss?" asked Fukuda. When Suzuki just blurted things out like that it meant that he had been chewing on them for a while. Something that big, something to keep the wheels in his mind turning, could have brought out a person that Fukuda liked to refer to as 'obsessive Suzuki'. That version of Suzuki wasn't dangerous just…exhausting. Especially when it came to people. Like back when they were in their first year of high school and Suzuki had been obsessed with that third year kendo club captain…those were not good times for Fukuda. He hadn't been as good at information gathering then…

And also girls did not like being followed around and reported on…even if, for some reason, it was important to know what her preferred brand of dish detergent was.

"Shimazaki Ryou. Do you think that he's attractive?" asked Suzuki. Well that was no help. Suzuki only asked about other people like this, and they hadn't talked like this since he'd met Masami, when he was attracted to them. Not that he would ever admit to being attracted to someone. He would rather look like a creepy stalker than admit that he had the same feelings, wants, and desires as everyone else…well mostly.

He'd never asked about a man before.

"I'm not a homosexual. I don't really look at other men like that." Said Fukuda. As far as he knew Suzuki was not in any way shape or form into other men. Not that he went about asking Suzuki about these things. Also they had figured this out, together, ages ago…and that was not something that Fukuda wanted to relive…and also they were not doing that again. Nope. He was taking another personal day if Suzuki had gotten that idea in his head again.

Please, God, not this again.

"Not attractive to you specifically. Just….imagine that you're a woman and tell me if you think that there's anything at all attractive about him." said Suzuki. Fukuda took a deep breath and sighed. He was too tired to go through the mental gymnastics needed to get into Suzuki's headspace. He was just going to answer questions and hope that Suzuki either found what he was looking for or got annoyed with Fukuda and dismissed him for the day.

"He's tall. He's…built well…I guess." Said Fukuda. That was all he could come up with. If he had been a woman he would have stayed the hell away from Shimazaki. He wouldn't have even given him so much as the time of day. He was annoying. He was more than annoying. He started things just to amuse himself. He had zero impulse control. He wore way too much cologne. He had no concept of personal space. He regularly flirted with a child-

Was that it?

Had Suzuki finally figured out that his Daughter had a crush on Shimazaki? That must have been what this was about. Huh. Suzuki was taking this well. If Shigeko had been his daughter, she wasn't and he shouldn't have been thinking about her like that, he would have put Shimazaki in the ground the minute he started up with that bullshit. Shigeko was only ten. She did not need some grown man taking her away from Disney and dolls to do-

That was not his child.

She was Suzuki's child and it was his job to deal with the grown men who hit on his daughter. Fukuda had assumed that Suzuki had noticed and just didn't care, that would have been consistent with the way he had been parenting his children up to this point, but apparently the whole thing had gone over his head…also consistent with who he was as a person. He couldn't see past himself. A grown man had been hitting on his daughter, blatantly hitting on her, and now he chose to notice. He chose to notice and then…do nothing. Shimazaki was still alive. Fukuda would have killed the bastard the moment he had even THOUGHT about laying a finger on Shigeko…but the Shigeko that existed in his mind was still only about five years old. The Shigeko that existed in reality was ten going on twenty. She drank and smoked and sat behind her father's desk so she could carry out his work while he was away…she wasn't that child anymore…

But she was still a child….

But she wasn't Fukuda's child.

"I suppose that he is…" said Suzuki. The wheels in his head were turning, Fukuda could see it, and he wished that he were a telepath. He wished that he could have known what was going on in that head of his. Was he planning on killing Shimazaki? He'd killed people for less. Was he planning on letting him continue to his on his ten year old daughter? Shigeko…she could make her own choices in life. She had that same sort of arrogance that her father had. She thought that she knew what was best not only for herself but for everyone else, too. She had wasted no time in picking up where he father had left off. She had been, for all intents and purposes, an adult in her father's absence…but Shimazaki was still at least thrice her age. Not even twice, thrice, and there was no reason why she even would have been attracted to him…and he sure as HELL should not have been attracted to her. She was TEN. She was A CHILD. She still wore princess costumes and ate cereal straight from the box and…and she also drank, now, and smoked too…and Fukuda didn't even know what else she was getting up to these days….

That was not his child to raise.

"That's a bit shallow, though, isn't it?" asked Suzuki

"What do you mean?" asked Fukuda

"Women must care about more than that, right? More than appearance. I thought that ability to provide would have ranked more highly than physical appearance." Said Suzuki

"It depends on the woman, I guess." Said Fukuda

"Of course there is the biological drive to have the very best offspring possible." Said Suzuki

"We're nothing but animals when you get down to it, I guess." Said Fukuda with a shrug. He kept watching the wheels in Suzuki's head turn. He wondered when the next stop for the train of thought would be.

"He is a powerful esper. That matters…right? It should…at least it would to me if I were a woman…but I've never been a woman…" said Suzuki

"Neither have I, boss, neither have I." said Fukuda. The sun was low in the sky. He needed rest. His aura was dim, down to nothing, and he just needed rest…but he couldn't rest while Suzuki's train of thought was just chugging along on it's merry way.

"But she isn't a woman at all…well she is female but she isn't a woman…but she is human the same as everyone else…and I cannot fault her for…well I can but…that may not end well…" said Suzuki. Fukuda wanted to take him and shake him and tell him to get to the point already. He was not in the mood to played 'guess what Suzuki's thinking of' and he never would be. Not now…or even later. He had never been one for that game even when they had been younger and now…thirty years could just be so…so much…

Felt like ninety.

Fukuda kept his thoughts to himself. Thoughts about how Suzuki maybe should have figured out what it was that he was going to say before he started up with this. Thoughts that Suzuki needed to figure these things out himself since he never listened to anyone anyway. Thoughts that maybe he would do well with someone climbing over the desk and shaking him until he just got to the goddamned point already!

Fukuda remained calm.

"Is this about him and Shigeko?" asked Fukuda. He decided to bite the bullet and get straight to the point. He was tired. It had been a long day. He wanted to go home and rest before he did it all again. He needed his energy, anyway, because he was planning on borrowing Sho again tomorrow. At least to get him away from his father for a while. That was the best that he could do these days.

He'd broken his promise to Masami.

She would have killed him if she knew what he had allowed to happen to her children. Sho got angrier and angrier every day and Shigeko…she was pretty much a smaller version of her father…actually in some ways she could have been seen as worse. Suzuki had so few real vices. No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women. Well aside from the baby….and he was not going to think about that…at least Suzuki didn't make it a habit to go around womanizing and making more little versions of himself to neglect. Shigeko was right at the cusp of her teenage years…

And she had already discovered the opposite sex…

Wonderful.

"Yes. I think that he may be attracted to her." said Suzuki. Fukuda blinked. Well better late than never he supposed.

"And…you're letting him live?" asked Fukuda

"Do you think that I should execute him?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda wondered why he was even asking what Fukuda thought. Suzuki didn't give a damn what anyone thought. That was why he was the future ruler of the world and everyone else was just a stepping stone to get to his goal.

"Does it matter what I think?" asked Fukuda a bit more harshly than he should have. Suzuki couldn't read tones anyway. He didn't care about the people around him enough to listen to their tones of voice. Fukuda was too tired to care how he sounded. Suzuki didn't even care.

"Yes. You know more about these social things than I do. You always have." Said Suzuki

"That's what you keep me around for, huh?" asked Fukuda. In the past he would have been touched at the compliment. Younger Fukuda would have taken that as proof that Suzuki cared about him…but that was younger Fukuda's stupidity. Older Fukuda, current Fukuda, knew better.

"Yes. You're also good company and the only healer. I just need your social skills for now, though, because I am…at a loss. I have never dealt with a situation like this before and I don't have the skillset to know what to do." Said Suzuki. That was…rare. Very rare. Suzuki admitted that he was out of his depth…not that Fukuda had any idea what there was to be out of his depth over. A grown man was hitting on his Daughter. There really was nothing more to do than to end that man's life…or at least make him wish that he were dead…

But Fukuda was thinking about Shigeko as if she had been a child.

Well she was a child but she was not a normal child. If it had been Sho then Fukuda would have killed Shimazaki himself. Sho was a normal child. He was in no way ready for any of that and especially not with someone thrice his age. Shigeko…she was growing up too fast and there wasn't a damn thing that anyone could do to stop her. Even her own father. She kept company with adults, some of the worst possible adults that she could have kept company with, and she had picked up their habits. There was no stopping her from doing what she wanted to do.

She was second only to her father after all.

"What's there to be at a loss about? He's been hitting on her. She's your daughter. If you don't want her to see him then get rid of him or at least tell him off. She's your daughter and she's only ten. If you want to stop her from seeing a grown man then stop her. She's second only to you after all." said Fukuda. He spoke his mind…somewhat. He was just tired enough to start speaking his mind. If he had been more tired, if he had been out of his mid, he would have told Suzuki to leave him alone and to get home and do some parenting. She was not a normal child but she was a child and he was the only one who could control his child so maybe he had better get on with that already instead of letting her carry on the way she had been for weeks.

"I…that would be the…be my…my first impulse….but I don't want to…alienate her, I suppose. If she did not enjoy the attention he gave her, if she did not return his…affection I suppose, then she would have gotten rid of him herself. She hasn't. That leads me to believe that she returns…whatever this is…and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, if anything, now." Said Suzuki. Fukuda literally bit his tongue. He tasted blood. He felt pain. He didn't care. He wanted to get up and take Suzuki and shake him and tell him that he was her father and it was his job to protect his daughter not only from creeps but from herself, too, because she was too young to be doing….any of this!

Suzuki knew about the drinking and smoking, right?

He had to know. She never exactly hid it. She smelled like she had been smoking a pack a day and she was always hanging around the smoking areas and break rooms. She had even been down there today smoking something that smelled like a burning candy store and came from a plastic…thing. What were they called? Electronic cigarettes? God he was getting old…and she was too young!

She was not his child.

She was not his child and he knew that he shouldn't have cared, it was best to let her go emotionally at this point, but part of him did. Part of him still saw her as the five year old who loved to play dolls and help her mom make dinner. She wasn't five though, she was ten, and she had already done so many things that he never would have imagined her to have been capable of. She had taken over after her father, for one thing, and also she had…he didn't even want to think about the eighth division…her losing control…what she was capable of when she was pushed too far…

Not his child. She was not his child.

"Does she even want you to do anything?" asked Fukuda. He knew what he would do but he was not her father. Suzuki was her father. Suzuki would have to be the one to figure this out because Fukuda just…he was not going to get involved in this. She resented him enough already. He got that feeling. Because he favored her brother, mostly, but he also got the feeling that she blamed him for what had happened with that baby…how he had to be the one to do what had to be done…but that was fine. She could resent him all she wanted. There was nobody in the world who could even presume that they could tell her how to feel.

"That's…what I've been trying to figure out. She could deal with him easily if he were an unwanted suitor…so therefore he is not unwanted…but she's only ten years old. I had no idea that she was even close to…this…and now she's…well she is growing up. She's growing up and she's becoming a woman and women are supposed to be interested in men and if I forbid…I could if I wanted to…but then that might harm her sexual development and she may never marry and have children-" said Suzuki

"Why don't you enjoy the kids you have before you start thinking about having grandkids?" asked Fukuda. He's tired. It just slips out. There had been no way to stop it. None. Suzuki…he could be so absurd sometimes. He wanted grandkids? What about the kids he had? Why did he need a whole new set of kids to neglect? He had a ten year old, a nine year old, and a four month old…and he was thinking about GRANDKIDS?!

Goddamned Suzuki….

"Yes, it's important to secure the next generation. Of course I want Son and Daughter to have children. Preferably while I'm still living so I can see to it that they're raised properly." Said Suzuki. Fukuda practically bit through his tongue. Raised properly? He wasn't even raising the kids he had! His son was one step away from killing someone and his daughter was carrying on like she was in her twenties!

Calm. Down.

"Suzuki…don't you think that you're getting a little bit ahead of yourself? You're kids aren't even old enough to drink yet…" said Fukuda. He wondered if Suzuki knew or cared about what Shigeko got up to. He had never known Suzuki to care about anything that wasn't in service to his end goal. Even his own wife…

Thank God Masami wasn't around to see this.

Her own husband was letting a grow man just…he was letting his own daughter let a grown man hit on her. She was ten, she got crushes that she wasn't supposed to have, and Masami would have done the responsible thing and sat down with Shigeko and told her that sometimes you got feelings for people who were older than you but you weren't supposed to do anything about it or let them do anything about it…not just sit there and actually wonder if this situation was alright….

Where was Masami when they needed her?

"That's what's so confusing about this. Daughter is so young…and I would have thought that she would have had feelings for someone her own age…but the only member of the opposite sex she knows that's close to her age is Son and she would consider that to be incest, I think." Said Suzuki

"Yes…it would be…because they're brother and sister…" said Fukuda slowly. That was…that was not a thought that Suzuki should ever have had. The kids marrying each other or whatever. They were siblings…that was not right. That was more not right than Suzuki giving Shimazaki his blessing.

"Not by blood but they have been raised together…and I have no plans of telling Daughter where she really came from…so I suppose that setting an incest precedent would be a bad idea." Said Suzuki

"I agree. Incest is a bad idea." Said Fukuda. He wondered how his life had turned out this way. How there had come a point where he had to say, out loud, that incest was wrong.

"I supposed then that, yes, since she doesn't know anyone her own age then…I suppose that this is normal…but it also fills me with rage. Yes, a lot of rage." Said Suzuki

"Well, yes, he's a grown man after your ten year old daughter. It's normal to be enraged." Said Fukuda. He wondered if, for Christmas, he should get Suzuki some of those social skills books. Just something so he could have some sort of benchmark for what was and was not normal. Some parenting manuals, too, while he was at it…who was he kidding? He didn't have the guts to be so passive aggressive…he'd just get Suzuki the exact same card he gave him every year….even though the man needed help. Anyone with eyes could see that.

Heh.

"But it's also normal for her to develop feelings for someone and if I tell her no then…then that may damage her future heterosexual relationships…and I do want her to reproduce at some point. I mean she could if she were homosexual but that's a lot more steps. She's supposed to develop these sorts of feelings for men but….why THAT man? He's…he's terrible. He is in no way worthy of her. She could do so much better. He cannot be her most perfect person. He just…can't." said Suzuki. Fukuda wished that he had been recording this rare moment of emotional rawness from his boss, jailer, and sort of friend. This was….something.

Suzuki was honestly bothered by this.

Good. It was about time he was bothered by something. It was about time something knocked him on his ass. He had strode through the world like he knew everything, so smug in his superiority, and now something had blindsided him. The great Suzuki Touichirou didn't know what to do. If Fukuda had been a gloating man…but he was not. He did not gloat. There would be no point to it. These moments were rare, yes, and if he started gloating they would become rarer….

And also Suzuki would not take it well.

"Have you talked to her about this? Asked her what's up with the two of them?" asked Fukuda. He had to be an adult, here, and try to get this sorted out at best as he could from the distance he was at. He didn't have the power to tell Shigeko what to do but he could at least point her father in the right direction. That was the best that he could do. Masami would have understood.

Masami would never have let it get this far in the first place.

Fukuda thought, allowed himself to indulge for a moment, in a thought. What would things have been like if Masami were still around? The kids…they would have had much more normal lives. She had always done her best to shield them from the worst of what their father could be. Sho and Shigeko would have been in school…fourth and fifth grade…and they would have had friends their own age and they would have gotten along…and they would have been just…normal. Sho would have been a lot calmer and Shigeko…she would not have become…this. Things would have been so much better if Masami had stayed…

No. Don't think like that about the woman you love. She did what she had to do.

Just like Fukuda did what he had to do. He had to, right now, nudge Suzuki in the right direction. Even if this was less than what those kids deserved, even if Fukuda would have done so much more if he'd been their father, and even if there was so much more that he wished that he could do…this was all he could do. Manipulate Suzuki into something close to the outcome that he wanted and then pray for the best. Just like he had been doing for the past thirty or so years.

"Talk to her….I suppose I could. If you think that it's a good idea. I had assumed that she would not want to speak to her opposite gendered parent about these matters…but I suppose without a mother these things do fall to me…" said Suzuki. Fukuda wanted to ask him whose fault that was. Who had driven Masami away? Who had left her children motherless? Who had left her children to become what they were now?

Stop it.

There was no point in getting angry. It would get him nowhere. He needed…he needed to think and to plan. Suzuki…he would talk to Shigeko and then the outcome would be what it would be. He never saw him this indecisive….but his Daughter did have that effect on him. She always had. Daddy's little girl. He would have hung the moon on a string for her. Sho, not so much…

But that was ok.

Sho had him and he had Sho. If Sho had been in his sister's place then Fukuda would have done something ages ago…and he would have to talk to Sho about this. He had talked to Sho about how no adult should ever have been acting like they were interested in him and now he had to talk to Sho about what to do if he ever had feelings for someone who he should not have had feelings for. He was getting to that age. Girls weren't always going to be gross…well maybe they would be when it came to Sho since he was…the kid was something. Fukuda was ninety nine point nine percent sure that he'd had a crush on that boy in his kindergarten class…where had the time gone…and he had seen Sho et so adorably tongue tied around boys his own age on those rare occasions when he and Sho had been out in the world together….and that would be a talk in and of it's self….but Fukuda didn't mind.

He had promised Masami after all and he would do his best to keep his promises.

"That sounds like a good plan, boss. She always did listen to you the most. Yeah, I would just talk to her and see how she feels about all of this and then plan your next course of action based on that." Said Fukuda. The next course of action should have been murder but Fukuda was not responsible for Shigeko. Sho, yes, but not Shigeko. He had promised Masami that he would look after the children but…

Sho needed him a hell of a lot more than Shigeko did.


	167. Weird Conversations

Dad was being weird.

Not that dad wasn't always weird but now he was being extra weird. Not that Mob should have calling dad weird, even in her head, because that was mean. Even if dad was mean a lot of the time Mob could not just go off and call him names like that. Even if her head. She knew that he couldn't hear her thoughts, he had said before that telepathy was the one power he never wanted, but she still felt bad about calling her dad weird even in her head…even if he was being kind of weird.

"Daughter?" asked dad

"Yes?" said Mob

"Nothing. Watch television." Said dad. He had been doing that all night. All. Night. Mob wished that he would just say what he wanted to say. He was just…not saying anything. That wasn't like him at all. That was just…not like dad at all. He always spoke his mind no matter how mean it sounded or how much it hurt people's feelings.

She hoped that he wasn't planning on hurting her feelings.

She had no idea what it was that he was planning on saying to her. What it was that he wanted to say. She didn't ask him, though, because that might have made him mad. He had been sort of mad at her earlier that day. Maybe because she had been away from Sho for so long. He had kicked her out of his office…sort of. He had thanked her but he had also told her to go away…and she didn't understand at all.

Mob drew her knees up to her chest and bounced her fingers off of her leg.

She really wanted a cigarette. She wished that she could just have one more. Then she could quit forever, really, if she just had one more. Vaping was not the same as smoking even if it tasted a lot better and didn't burn the insides of her nose and mouth. She wasn't going to take up smoking, though, because she had promised Minegishi that she would stop and also dad liked her better when she didn't smell like an ashtray.

Now she smelled like bubblegum.

That was her favorite kind. Her top favorites were bubblegum and then pineapple, and then strawberry, and then very berry, and then tropical berry but she didn't like the chocolate kind because it tasted gross. She didn't like them as much as smoking though…and she really needed to smoke something…well not NEEDED because she had lived ten years of her life without smoking and therefore it was not a need…but she really wanted too….

Minegishi was right. Quitting was hard.

"Daughter?" asked Dad again. Mob didn't let herself get upset. She kept her aura in close and her eyes on the TV. This was a documentary show. Every episode was a different documentary on a different thing about Japan and she and dad had been binge watching it all night in dad's room even though it was late and she was tired and she had to get up in the morning and so did he and why were they even watching this?! They were Japanese. Well they were only half Japanese but still. Why would they watch a documentary show in English made for people who were not Japanese when not only were they both Japanese they were currently IN JAPAN? She could understand if dad was feeling homesick but they were HOME….in their home country. She knew full well that they could never go home again. That they could never go back to the Castle again…

She didn't know what she was so upset about but she knew that a cigarette would really have helped.

"Yes, dad?" asked Mob. She kept her aura from looking mad and she kept her voice normal and she was normal and this was normal, she watched TV with dad all the time, but him being all…like this was weird and it would have been mean of her to even think that he was weird…or annoying…even though he was being weird and annoying and…and stuff….

"Nothing. Continue to watch television." Said Dad. Mob closed her eyes. The picture on the TV went to bars…that was her doing. So was the flickering of the lights above them. Mob knew that she had messed up. Dad hated it when she lost control. Now he would be so mad at her. Now he would pull on her hair or push her out of bed or just tell her how disappointed he was in her or something like that.

Even though he was the one who was bothering her.

It was hard to maintain control when someone was bothering you. She was so tired of people bothering her. Like today. She had to hang out with Minegishi all day, always a good time though, because the Awakened kept on asking her to make dad reconsider about the chair jousting tournament even though someone had lost an eye. Then, after she had managed to make them go away by saying that after the wax man was done they could go sock skating, dad made them stop sock skating so they had tried to bother her again while she was looking for Minegishi…and she had no idea why she had been in such a bad mood all day.

She really wanted a cigarette.

But she had quit. Dad hated how she had smelled and Minegishi had asked her to quit nicely so she had quit. She was done with that…even though she hadn't wanted to be…and even though she still wanted to be. Because that way Minegishi would be happy with her and then they would still want to be her friend. Mob never wanted to stop being friends with them. She wanted to be their friend more than she wanted to smoke. That was why she had said no when Shimazaki offered her one of his cigarettes.

He was so annoying.

She had said 'no thank you' and then he, for some reason, took that as her permission to sit on dad's desk and bother her when she was trying to work. He had touched her hair a lot and told her that she smelled a lot better now that she had stopped smoking…even though he had asked her to smoke with him right before he said that. She didn't understand him. She didn't understand why he kept on touching her hair, either. It was just hair. Lots of people had hair. He should have gone and bothered someone else…but that was mean. He just liked to touch things. He couldn't see so he had to touch a lot of things. His powers could only tell him so much about the world. So she shouldn't have been so mean to him.

Even if he was annoying.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to do that. I'll go if you want me to." Said Mob. She untucked her legs from inside of her nightgown and began to climb off of dad's bed. She hoped that she left before he could think of any mean things to say to her. He must have been tired, his day started before hers, and it went for longer than hers too. Maybe he would be too tired to think of any mean things to say or to come up with any ways to punish her.

She was not so lucky.

"Daughter. No. Stay. I want…to talk to you about something." Said Dad. He used his powers to keep her from leaving. She settled herself back down on his bed. Talk. Nothing good ever came from dad saying that he wanted to talk to her. Well bad things happened when he said 'discuss' so maybe talking was different. She didn't know.

She did know, however, that if dad said that he wanted to talk to her then he should have got to talking instead of just sitting there and watching TV.

"Yes, dad?" asked Mob. She hoped that he wasn't about to say something mean…and it seemed like he wasn't. His aura wasn't mad at all. It was all tucked in, actually, which was very strange for him. Maybe he was worried about something at work. Well it was nothing that she had done. She had heard him loud and clear, she was not allowed to make any choices.

She was never allowed to make any choices.

Like now. She wanted to go to bed. She wanted to go to her own bed in her own room, the one she shared with Sho, and she wanted to lay down in bed and sleep. That was what she wanted. She also wanted to smoke, too, but she didn't get to make a choice about that even though she could have quit whenever she wanted. That was why she wanted one so badly now. If she had chosen to stop smoking on her own then she wouldn't have wanted to smoke so badly that even taking Shimazaki up on his offer from earlier didn't seem like such a bad idea…

But it would have been. Which was why she said no.

"I was wondering if I could…ask you something." Said Dad

"You can ask me anything, dad, you always do." Said Mob. This as very strange. Dad never asked her if it was ok to ask her something. He just asked her questions. She wondered what this could have been able. For a moment she thinks that he may have been getting ready to tell her that he knew about the smoking and the drinking and also the mangas that she kept in the bag under her bed with the people kissing…but if he knew then he would have said something to her instead of just…being all weird like this.

"I was just wondering if you were interested in anyone." Said Dad. Mob blinks. That was…what was the question? She was interested in everyone. Everyone was interesting to her since she knew so few people. Even talking to the Awakened, the ones who were sort of normal, was interesting….but she got the feeling that dad meant something else…she hated how bad she was at talking.

"What do you mean?" asked Mob. It was best just to ask instead of pretending that she knew what he was talking about. That way they could get this done with as soon as possible.

"Romantically. Are you interested in anyone romantically?" asked dad. Mob's brain stopped working for a moment….before it suddenly went faster than it ever had before. Why was dad asking that?! What did he even want to know about that for?! What was he planning on doing with that information?! There was no reason for him to want to know about how she thought about boys and holding hands and kissing and-

Wait.

Did he KNOW?

Did he know that she had kissed a boy? Did he know that she had betrayed him!? Who talked? Someone in her small circle of people she trusted had talked. Minegishi? No, they were her best friend…but they were really bad at keeping secrets…like how they had told her about how Shimazaki had conversations with himself in his sleep and also about his serious medical condition where unless someone was paying attention to him he didn't know if he was real or not…but Minegishi was the only one who knew…well them and Mukai…

But Mukai couldn't talk yet.

What the H-word!? They had told?! Mob trusted them and-conceal, don't feel. Conceal, don't feel. She had to calm down before she lost control again…she had to calm down so that she could think. She had to calm down because she was thinking thoughts that made no sense. Minegishi was her best friend. They would never tell her secrets. That was what best friends were for. They would never have told dad about how she had kissed….and if dad knew about that day, about how she had betrayed him, then he would not have waited this long to tell her that he knew. He would have punished her a long time ago.

Dad never waited. He always got right to the punishments.

So then why was dad being so nosy!? Mob didn't go around asking him if he liked any girls…because there was no reason to since he was married to mom and he was not allowed to like any girls but mom like that…but even if he and mom had been divorced Mob still would not have asked him if he liked any girls! Because that was not the sort of thing you asked your family members! She didn't go around asking Sho if he liked any girls! And Sho never asked her if she liked any boys!

This was not the sort of thing that you wanted to know about your family members!

"Wh-why do you want to know?" asked Mob. She needed to stay calm and then figure out what dad even needed this information for. Ok, if he knew that she had betrayed him and kissed a boy then he would have punished her. Also she didn't currently like anyone like that, Hanazawa was more of a faraway memory by now since she hadn't seen him since they'd kissed, so that wasn't even a secret that she had….

She didn't like anyone specific but she had been thinking A LOT about kissing lately….

Was that it? Had he figured out about all of the weird thoughts that she had been having throughout her day? Did he know about how she sometimes just looked at boys and had the weirdest thoughts? Like how she could have just gone and kissed them? Like how it was something that she physically could do at any time…but she wouldn't because that would have been weird. That was all Shimazaki's fault. He was always saying how he could kiss her…

And then sometimes he kissed his hand and pressed it right up against her cheek just to be annoying.

"I was just wondering about…about that. If you were at that point yet. You're getting older, Daughter, and I was just…wondering about that." Said dad

"Why would you wonder about that? Why do you care? That's…a weird sort of thing to care about." Said Mob. She shouldn't have called her dad weird but…but this was a weird conversation to have with someone. She would never in a million years have had this sort of conversation with him or Sho. Even Minegishi said that asking people if they liked someone was being nosy…and she had been very nosy when she asked them if they liked Shimazaki…because they did kiss a lot when they didn't know that she was around…which was also her being nosy because she should not have been in their house without making her presence known…

Maybe this was where she got her nosiness from.

"It is?" asked dad

"Yes, I mean…why do you want to know? It's kind of personal, dad, kind of very personal." Said Mob

"I am aware that it's a very personal question, Daughter, I'm aware." Said dad

"If you know then why are you asking me this stuff? Like…why do you even care if I like someone like that or not? It's not like I have a boyfriend or anything…and also you're my dad and dads are not supposed to ask these kinds of questions." Said Mob. Dad made his thinking face. That could have been good or bad. She hoped that he was thinking about something unrelated to her and love and her she had been thinking and thinking and thinking about kissing boys...literally anything other than how badly she wanted to have a boy like her and kiss her and hold her hand and stuff…

Literally anything else.

"I have recently come into some information which I find…troubling…and I don't know how I should proceed. I have no idea what I am supposed to do because, as you have said, I am your father. This is something that your mother would have handled but obviously she's not here." Said dad. Mob blinked. Dad had…talked about mom. Like just…just mentioned that Mob and Sho had a mom. That mom was a person in the world who existed…and he didn't even look mad.

He was making his ring spin back and forth with his powers….and his aura was all tucked in…which was weird.

"What's troubling you, dad? Anything that I can help with?" asked Mob. She wanted to talk more about mom. She wanted dad to tell her about mom and just…just anything other than how mom had been a traitor when she left and how they were never supposed to mention her again. She wanted to talk about mom but she knew how much dad hated talking about mom…so she didn't ask.

Even though she really wanted to.

"Just…why Shimazaki?" asked dad after a little while. Mob…was lost. She was so lost she didn't even know where they were or how they had gotten there. Well she knew, obviously, that she was in Tokyo but she also had no idea how her and dad's conversation had gone to Shimazaki of all people. Dad disliked him, dad really disliked him, and now he was talking about him…and that was never a safe thing to do because he came when you said his name, sometimes, kind of like Bloody Mary except he was real and you didn't have to look in the mirror and say his name three times to summon him.

Once was usually enough….but Mob could still feel his aura. It was all tangled up with Minegishi's next door.

"What about him…and also he comes when you say his name…so maybe don't say his name." said Mob

"I'll say whatever I want to…but thank you for warning me." Said dad

"You're welcome, dad." Said Mob. There was another stretch of silence. Their show went to the next episode. This one was about chopsticks. Why someone wanted to make a whole episode of a show about chopsticks of all things she did not know. Still, though, she would have rather stayed up all night talking about chopsticks than about her liking boys…or Shimazaki…and how those two went together she would never know.

Dad could be so weird sometimes.

"I saw you with him today." Said dad. That had been a long period of silence. Long enough for Mob to have thought that their weird conversation was over and done with. She didn't want to get back to it. She wanted to learn about chopsticks and why foreign people were so interested in them…and also she wanted to get some of those fancy chopsticks with cats on them…those looked pretty….

But she did not want to talk about Shimazaki.

"Yes, he was in your office with me." Said Mob. She stared at the TV and waited for dad to say something else. She wished that he would have just figured out what he wanted to say before he said it…and also that he didn't go back to asking her personal questions. She didn't want that at all.

"He was…Daughter? Why him?" asked dad

"He was in your office because he hangs out there all day. He hangs out there all day because you hang out there all day. You hang out there all day because that's your office where you work. I was there, too, because you asked me to help you out. That's what happened." Said Mob. She was as specific as possible. That way he couldn't tell her to explain. She hated it when he said that. 'Daughter. Explain.' And stuff like that.

She drummed her fingers against the bed. Hopefully that was the end of it.

All she wanted was to come to the end of this. What did dad want? Besides to keep her up all night asking personal questions. All she wanted to do was go to sleep….and that didn't look like it was going to happen anytime soon. Between dad keeping her up and the stress she was feeling she didn't know how she was going to go to sleep.

Smoking had always helped with that…but she had quit so there was no point in even thinking about that.

"Daughter….I'm not being clear enough. Forgive me. This is…not a conversation that I had ever imagined myself having with you…or at least not at your current age. Just...I was just wondering why you…why you feel the way you do about him. Out of all the men you could have had….literally anyone in the world…why him? And why at your age?" asked dad. Mob turned to look at him. She…had no idea what he was talking about. She was clueless, she hated being clueless, but dad could be kind of weird…and weird and clueless were not a good combination. Maybe they needed some interpreters to come in so they would figure out what the other was trying to say so they could just go to bed already.

"Dad…I don't know what you're asking me. I'm sorry that I'm so clueless but…but I really don't understand what you're asking me." Said Mob

"This isn't easy for me, either, Daughter. None of this is easy for me. I mean, you're ten years old and he's at least three times your age." Said dad. Now Mob was even more confused. She had no idea what ages had to do with it. Also he was not three times her age, yet. He was still only twenty nine. His birthday wasn't for a few more months. Mob had already planned out what she would get him. He liked to chew on candles sometimes but not eat them but she would get the nontoxic kind just in case.

"Dad….what does that have to do with anything?" asked Mob

"Because…because you're ten years old…and he's thirty." Said dad

"He's twenty nine. He won't be thirty until October. I'm getting him candles to chew on." Said Mob

"What in the world…one thing at a time. One subject at a time." Said dad

"What?" asked Mob. She had no clue, now, and she just…wanted to go to bed already…but dad was too busy being all weird and stuff…

"Daughter…just…there is not that much difference between twenty nine and thirty. Alright? I am trying to understand you right now and…and I just want to know what you…see…in him…" said dad

"See?" asked Mob

"Yes. I have no idea what I am going to do with this information when I get it but I just…want to know what it is you see in him. What about him…he's three times your age…." Said dad

"Dad…I don't get it…what you mean…and why you keep saying our ages. I don't get it. Why you keep on saying ages and also why you keep on asking me all of this. Why do you want to know about….whatever you want to know about?" asked Mob. Dad was looking at her and she was looking at dad and neither of them was looking at the TV anymore. She had no idea what anything even was anymore…

"Age may not matter to you but…but it would matter to other people. You and him…being together. Society would not approve." Said dad. Mob thought for a moment….and then it came to her. Oh! How could she have been so clueless?

Dad was asking why she was friends with him.

Even though they were barely even friends. He was annoying and he bothered her all the time and also he called Minegishi 'Toshi' even though he knew that they hated that. He was also always in personal space. She didn't much like that. She didn't want to not be his friend…but she did wish that he was a better friend.

"He's alright I guess. He's…Shimazaki. I guess. I don't like him all that much, really, but he's ok….sometimes. He can be nice sometimes but also he can be so annoying…but that's ok. Sometimes we have fun together…sometimes. I wish he would give me some more space, though, and not touch me so often. It's kind of annoying." Said Mob. Dad was looking at her now and his aura was resting on hers and…and she had no idea what it was that he was looking at her like that for or thinking about…or anything.

"So…you didn't want him to touch you." Said Dad slowly.

"No…I mean I don't mind that much. I mean I wish that he would at least ask first, I guess I would like him better if he asked first, I guess." Said Mob. Dad was still looking at her. She wished that he would just start over from the beginning and just…get right to the point…because she still didn't know what the point even was.

"I…have no idea what to do with this information…so just…leave me. It's late. Go to sleep." Said dad. Mob didn't have to be told twice. It was late, she was tired, and she wanted to just go to sleep already. So she did.

"Goodnight, dad." Said Mob. She loved her dad, she liked spending time with him and watching TV with him and…and hanging out with him. He was her dad and she loved him. She loved it when he was nice to her…but she was also tired and stressed and she really wanted a cigarette even though she wasn't supposed to have them but she couldn't help it. That had been…she didn't even know what that had been about. Dad just asking her a bunch of questions that she was too clueless to even figure out what any of that had to do with anything.

She really wished that she still smoked.

Because dad could be very tiresome when he got all weird and stuff like that.


	168. Warnings and Feelings

Sometimes in the hours between nine at night and five in the morning dad had done something truly unspeakable.

He had written on Sho's drawings.

Sho got up as dad left for the day…which was weird because he never left that early. That was why Sho had woken up. The door closed and dad's aura passed over him…which was weird. Usually he got up later on and then big sis got up and woke him up and then they all got dressed and had breakfast and stuff…but dad had left without him. He doesn't know why he cares. He should have liked it, dad being gone, but dad had just left him…

And Sho felt weirdly sad about that.

But then the sadness was replaced by getting very…very….VERY mad. There, all over the kitchen table, were papers…Sho's papers. His drawings. Dad had collected all of his drawings and then written all over the backs of them. He had treated them like scratch paper….and now they were ruined…and it was all dad's fault…like…he had paper! He could have sent the Awakened out for paper or just gone and got some himself!

Sho did not shout.

Sho was very proud of himself for not shouting. He kicked the fridge a bunch of times and bashed his fists against the wall and then, also, started to tear his drawings up because it had just been a lot and Sho knew, he KNEW, that it didn't make any sense. Dad had been hitting him for as long as he could remember and told him that he sucked as a son and stuff like that…so writing on the back of his drawings…and not even the fronts…it wasn't that bad.

But it felt like that.

He also knew that in tearing his drawings up he was ruining them more than dad ever had…and he knew that he had to stop….but it was…it was hard. He probably would have kept on crying and tearing his stuff up and trying not to scream if he hadn't stopped long enough to read what was on those papers. He hadn't meant to, there had just been some kanji that…that he knew. That was all. He just…recognized the kanji for someone's name…and then also the kanji for kill.

Reasons to kill Shimazaki Ryou. Reasons not to kill Shimazaki Ryou.

Sho stopped freaking out. He had been sad and then mad and now he was something between confused and freaked out. Dad was going to kill Shimazaki?! But WHY?! He was the coolest guy in the world! He could teleport and-and-and he was really strong and he could pull his barrier in so close it was like his skin and he smelled really nice and he liked to hang out and he always had an idea for something fun to do and-and-and-

And dad was not going to kill him!

Sho had no idea why dad would have wanted to kill Shimazaki. The thought of him not being around…about not having someone to hang out with all the time…about not having anyone to just…just have fun with….it was hard. It hurt. Dad…dad was such a jerk and Sho….he didn't even know what he was supposed to do….because dad was so much bigger and stronger than him and Sho had no way of beating him…and there was nothing that he could do-

He could warn Shimazaki!

There! That was a plan! Sho didn't waste any time. He didn't even put his shoes on. He just ran through the house and out the door…and the ground had a lot of tiny little rocks everywhere….but he made it next door! He had to warn Shimazaki because when dad wanted to kill someone he meant it. He meant that he wanted it to happen and then it would happen but Shimazaki would be ok! Sho would warn him and then he could teleport away…and be gone forever…but he could be safe!

This was a good plan!

Sho kicked the door opened with his powers and then just kept on running…which may have been a bad idea. He tripped over some shoes that some stupid person had left in the genkan like an idiot and ended up bumping his head on the stupid wall that someone had built there like an idiot! Who designed this house! They were an idiot!

But no time to complain about it now!

"Little Suzuki? What are you doing in here?" asked Shibata. This was not at all how he saw his morning going…now it was even better! He had been making pancakes, new recipe, and that had been something he had been looking forward to for so long…and now the kids were eating with him too! Or at least one of them. Her Little Ladyship was probably still at home since it was way too early for little people to be up but at least her brother was here!

Shibata didn't care if Sho could be a brat. He was an adorable brat.

"My-my-my dad is going to kill-kill Shimazaki! Get out of my way!" said Sho he ran past Shibata and down the hallway…this house looked just like the one he was staying in….but no time to be weirded out about it now! He had a mission! He had to warn the absolute coolest guy that Sho had ever met about how dad was planning on killing him! He ran down the hall as fast as he could. There, Sho could feel his aura behind a door. Nothing to do now but-

He was picked up before he could kick the door in.

"You don't want to go in there, Little Suzuki, trust me on this." said Shibata. He could move fast when he wanted to. He picked Little Suzuki up under his arm pits and held him away from his body. There. No need to repeat what happened at Pet Palace…and Wee World…but that kid survived…but no need to repeat history. He held Little Suzuki up as he thrashed and lashed out with his powers.

It was incredibly painful.

But he was not going to put Little Suzuki down no matter what. Shibata knew that the poor little guy was way too little to see what was on the other side of that door. He was only nine and there was no sense in filling his little head with stuff that he was too little to comprehend. Also he might have ended up traumatized, which was not a good thing at all, so Shibata kept on holding him up in the air even though he kicked REALLY hard.

"Put me down! I have to warn Shimazaki!" shouted Sho as he kicked as hard as he could. Shibata just stood there and took it and didn't even look like he was in pain! That wasn't fair! Sho hadn't ever felt this little since he had been this little. Little enough for people to regularly pick him up…and he didn't like it at all!

"You should warn him when he wakes up, ok? I can't let you do near that door because you won't like what you see on the other side. Believe me." Said Shibata. He decided that the best thing to do was to carry him over to the couch and find some cartoons for him to watch. Then Shibata could make him some pancakes...or not. What was Little Suzuki allergic to again? He'd ask later. Once the little guy was calmer. Yes, all he had to do was carry him away and-

And he was holding on to the doorframe.

"Put me down! You won't win! I can keep this up long enough for my sister to get tired and when she uses her powers she's even stronger than you!" shouted Sho as he held on to the doorframe like he did when big sis tried to make him take a bath when he didn't want to. Shibata would end up getting tired just like big sis did and then he'd go somewhere else and then Sho would be free to warn Shimazaki and then everything would work out in the end.

"Little Suzuki, you have to let go. I don't want to accidentally hurt you!" said Shibata. This was not safe. He knew how strong he could be…and he knew how fragile the little people could be. It was like they had glass bones and paper skin…and he needed to get the little guy to let go but…but he could not tug too hard or he would break the house…

Or the kid. Most likely the kid.

"I can't let go! I have a mission!" shouted Sho

"But we have pancakes!" said Shibata

"This is more important than pancakes!" shouted Sho

"You need to let go! You don't know what you're doing!" said Shibata

"I know exactly what I'm doing! Not let go!" shouted Sho

"Whatever you have to do you can do after breakfast! When everyone is awake!" said Shibata

"I don't have that long!" shouted Sho

"You have enough time for pancakes!" said Shibata

"No I don't!" shouted Sho

"Yes you-"said Shibata. He could have continued that argument up for hours if he had to, he was not letting Sho get through that door no matter what, when he was cut off by the shifting in the energy around him.

"Hey, I love what you're doing out here, it looks like fun, but I'm going to need the both of you to shut the fuck up. Toshi's trying to sleep and now is not a good time to piss them off. Wait until after the seventeen at least, ok, to piss Toshi off." Said Shimazaki. He yawned and stretched and tried to come to life. This was why he loved working in Claw. Something was always happening. Like now. He had no idea what those two were doing but he wanted a turn next.

Suzuki's kid was riled up about something, which was always fun, but now he had just…stopped.

That was good for Toshi, of course, because they had trouble getting to sleep at the best of times and these were not the best of times…not that Shimazaki really minded. They could deal with Toshi being all irritable and stuff. That was normal for them.

No need to get Toshi any more upset than they had to be, though.

"Shimazaki….hi…" said Sho. He let go of the doorframe and Shibata put him down. He suddenly forgot what he was there for. He knew that Shimazaki would be there, he knew that he had something he had come to tell Shimazaki, but now he had trouble remembering…a lot of things.

He had never seen all of Shimazaki's tattoos before.

Sure he had been shown a few. They went up and down both of his arms and across his chest. He'd seen the dragon, part of it, and also the list of dates on the back of his arm…and the dog on his side…but he had never seen all of them. Like the naked lady that he had on his arm…bit weird that the tattoo guy had scribbled out her privates but not her boobs, or how someone had written chicken fried rice on his leg….and Sho wondered what that was about. He wondered what all of it was about. Shimazaki said that some of them were from his old job, some of them were things he liked, and some of them were just done by his tattoo artist friend.

When Sho grew up he was going to cover himself from head to toe in tattoos.

"Hey, what's up? What are you guys screaming out here about and how can I exacerbate the situation?" asked Shimazaki. He could see Toshi turning around in the other room. He mental a mental note to pick up some of that chocolate that they liked. They had just now gotten back on good terms with each other…not that Shimazaki had ever been on bad terms with them. They had just been mad, pretended that he didn't exist, because they thought that he was being too weird with Suzuki's kid and also they were pissed that he taught her how to smoke.

He didn't get it.

It wasn't like he had taught her how to smoke meth, which he would not be doing because he wanted to show her a good time not ruin her life, he just showed her how to smoke a cigarette. No need to play the Ryou is invisible game. It had taken a whole night's wheedling to get them to even acknowledge that he was alive and then after that hours and hours of very tedious and one sided stuff just to get things back to normal.

Not a bad night, though.

And now a great morning. This kid was never dull. Almost made Shimazaki want to have one of his own. Almost. If there was some way to skip the baby stage…and also convince Toshi to give up the whole 'no babies for me ever' thing…and also find someone who would watch the kid when it got boring or loud or gross…and also someone to support it emotionally and financially…then he would have been all over that.

Maybe just stick to borrowing the boss' kid for now. All the fun of a kid but none of the mess.

"Um…uh…here!" said Sho. He picked the piece of paper he had brought with him off the ground and held it up in front of Shimazaki….like an idiot…

"That sounded like a piece of paper. I'm going to assume that something is written on it?" said Shimazaki

"Um…it says-" said Sho. Right. He was so dumb. Shimazaki couldn't read! Well, he could, but only little bumps on a page. That was called brail. Shimazaki couldn't read kanji because he was blind and Sho knew that he was blind and he had been so dumb to forget something as important as the fact that Shimazaki was blind and-

The piece of paper was taken from his hands.

"Oh shit….you gotta see this." said Shibata as he read the piece of paper that little Suzuki had run in there all upset about. Wow. The little guy had been telling the truth. Suzuki was planning on killing Shimazaki…though if this piece of paper was to be believed then he had a very good reason…if this paper was true…which it couldn't have been. Shimazaki had sworn that he had just been messing with her not…MESSING with her….

Because that would have been very wrong.

"I would if I could." Said Shimazaki. He yawned again. It was early in the morning, he could feel it, and he either needed something exciting to happen or he needed to go back to bed. One of the two. He hoped that he hadn't gotten out of bed for nothing, he and Toshi had found a very good sleep position, and he wanted to either do something or get back to the warmth and softness that was Minegishi Toshiki.

"It says-" said Sho. He was interrupted again, this time by a door hitting him across the back. He stumbled forward and Shimazaki caught him without even looking…because he couldn't look…and also he was strong enough to pick Sho up and move him out of the way…and for some reason he didn't even mind…

"What the hell are you idiots doing out here? It's not even six in the morning and we all have jobs to get to. The same job. So take whatever this is somewhere else." Said Minegishi. No. None of this. Not now. They were not dealing with Suzuki's kid this early in the day, or at all, and they were certainly not dealing with whatever the idiot brigade had cooked up between them.

They spotted a piece of paper.

Those idiots had better not have been planning to dig up Minegishi's garden to play treasure hunt again. Especially if Shibata was the one in charge of the treasure. The real treasure is inside the hearts and minds of all…what a load of….Minegishi took the paper out of Shibata's hands and skimmed it…and then read it closely….

If they'd had eyebrows they would have been raised.

"Well it looks like Suzuki's debating whether or not he should kill you. Huh. Care to explain this?" asked Minegishi

"That's what I've been trying to-" said Sho

"Really, Ryou, care to explain this? What the hell did I just read? Are you seriously…I don't believe you. I just don't believe you. How could you just-I can't even stand the sight of you right now." Said Minegishi. That was Suzuki's handwriting. Microscopic, blocky, and like he kept a thesaurus next to him while he wrote just to look smart. Minegishi flipped the paper around. Huh. That was a really nice picture of a cat…but it was not enough to relieve them of the rage that they were feeling.

"Listen, there's something I have to tell all of you. I'm blind. I know that this has come at a shock to all of you-" said Shimazaki. He could see Minegishi getting ready to hit him over the head. He decided to let it happen. Either it happened now or it happened later. Better to get it out of the way now.

Huh. Suzuki's kid stepped in front of him. His compassion would one day be his undoing.

"Stop it! Shimazaki is going to die if we don't help him! You can beat people up later but first we have to think up a plan and-" said Sho. No wonder dad was always mad at people. They could be so dumb sometimes! Obviously they had to protect Shimazaki. They were all his friends and when your friend was in trouble you helped them. It was obvious. They just had to think up a plan…or something…and Sho needed to stop staring at all of his tattoos…get your head in the game! This is life or death!

"Is it true? Shimazaki? What Suzuki thinks?" asked Shibata. Whether or not he would help would be what decided if Shibata would help. There were somethings that he just could not condone and that was one of them. It was one thing to just joke around with Her Little Ladyship but quite another thing entirely to actually want to…to have…

He wondered if Suzuki would fire him if he killed Shimazaki. That is if any of this was even true.

"That ketchup is a food group? Probably not but, hey, I don't know anything about nutrition." Said Shimazaki. He wondered when the people around him, his closest workmates and friends, as close to friends as he could have, would remember that he was totally blind. Not half blind, not legally blind, but born without eyes in his skull blind. He was tempted to open his eyes just to freak everyone out. Well everyone but Toshi, they were used to him, but it would still be worth a laugh or two. Might even cheer Toshi up.

God knew they needed it.

"Shimazaki, we're being serious. Is it true that you…um….are fond of? Yeah, that's a good way to put it. That you're fond of Suzuki's daughter? The ten year old?" asked Shibata. He cast a worried glance down at the kid beside him. Poor little guy was way too young to know about this sort of thing.

"She's an ok kid-" said Shimazaki. What in the hell were they on about? He wasn't actually interested in the kid. What did he have to do? Get it tattooed across his back….actually, that would have been a good one. Must be thirteen years or older…but his back was already full…but he could always just get it done over the other dragon…but everyone said that the dragon was so cool…but that was a really good idea.

Dick tattoo maybe?

No. Too much pain for something that he would never even be able to see…but then again he would know that it was there…and also it sent a very clear message to the world. He was not into ten year olds. God, he wasn't a creep.

"For the love of….are you attracted to Mob? You know, our boss' ten year old Daughter? The one you're constantly hitting on?" asked Minegishi. Shibata was an idiot, Shimazaki was an idiot, and they were the biggest idiot of all. They hadn't even been to ignore that stupid piece of shit for one entire day…and now Suzuki was taking the time to debate with himself about whether or not he was going to kill Shimazaki…based on something that was just…just a line that Minegishi never thought that he would have crossed.

Not at this point, anyway.

They held no illusions as to what he was. The sort of person he was. The fact that his flirting would be a hell of a lot innocent in three or four years. Of course by then Mob would have been old enough to know what he was after and smart enough to tell him to fuck off…or she wouldn't and Minegishi would have been pissed at him for starting that up with her…but that was supposed to be years down the line. This was not…this, if it was true, was not ok. She was ten. She still played with dolls. Sure she was a powerful ten year old, and a budding alcoholic, and a former smoker, but she was still just a kid and she did not need to be dealing with…with any of this!

It wasn't even six in the morning….could this day get any worse?

"Of course not-" said Shimazaki. God. You hit on one kid a few dozen times just to mess with her and you can never live it down!

"Suzuki thinks that you do….and he's gunning for you. That's what this piece of paper says. He said that…um…well he wrote that…um…we need food. I'm going to go and make food. We need food to…live. Come on, Sho. Let's get you fed." said Shibata. He was bad at this. He was really bad at this. Shimazaki was about to say that he wasn't…and Shibata really wanted to believe him…but he also…he didn't know. He wanted to make breakfast….so that was what he was going to do.

Let Minegishi handle this. They were his…girlfriend? Boyfriend? Partner. They were his partner. Shibata was just his coworker/friend/roommate/drinking buddy.

"I'm not hungry…." Said Sho. He didn't feel hungry. He didn't feel anything…well like he had been kicked in the stomach. He didn't know what it was that he was even feeling. Well he wanted to beat Shimazaki up, because that was what you did when someone was trying to go out with your sister…and also he felt…hurt. Because Shimazaki was trying to go out with his sister…with Shigeko…and that was just…

He had thought that Shimazaki was so cool…

He had thought that they were friends…but he went and liked Shigeko better….and at all. Because adults were not supposed to feel that way about kids and kids were not supposed to feel that way about adults. It had been bad enough when Sho had thought, figured, that Shimazaki felt that way about Minegishi. At least they were an adult…but big sis only thought that she was an adult…and Sho was just a kid and…

And he needed to beat Shimazaki up even though he was fun and cool and stuff. He was a little brother. It was his job.

"Yeah, whatever, leave this to me as always….moron." muttered Minegishi. They stared Shimazaki down with their eyes and their aura. They felt…not good. They were disappointed in him and in themselves and also worried for him, Suzuki would make good on whatever conclusion he came to, and also they were worried for Mob and…

And this was way too much to be dealing with at this hour.

"Toshi, you know me. Too young. Way too young. Besides, if I had she would have told you. She tells you everything. She tells you everything and you tell me everything so, really, I know everything all the time. I was just messing with her, and you know what I mean, and then Suzuki saw and I guess he's taking it the wrong way. He's not going to kill me. Beat me to within an inch of my life, maybe, but he's not going to kill me. Ok?" said Shimazaki. He reached over for Toshi's hand…and they pulled it away. Great. Back to the 'ignore Ryou' game.

"Get this shit sorted out, get yourself sorted out, and leave Mob alone. Once all of that's done with then I'll talk to you. Now leave me the hell alone. I'm going back to sleep for the next…until whenever I feel like getting up." Said Minegishi. They'd talk to Mob later. Shimazaki was right, Mob wouldn't keep something like that from them…but still. There was the matter of her not entirely rational father thinking that one of his underlings had dared to lay a hand on his scared virgin of a Daughter. His ten year old sacred virgin of a Daughter.

They were too tired to worry. They'd worry later. Sleep now. This wasn't their problem anyway. That moron had dug his own grave.

"Night Toshi…or morning. I'll save you some breakfast." Said Shimazaki. Great. He had to fight the boss again…which would have been exciting under normal circumstance but he got the feeling that Suzuki was going to try his best to injure him in some serious way if not just beat him half to death. Great.

And he hadn't even done anything wrong!

Obviously ten was too young. Obviously he would wait until it wasn't creepy anymore. Obviously he just liked messing with her. But then again it may have only been obvious to him since so many people had taken the time out of their busy lives to tell him what a creepy he was. Also Suzuki hated him now…which was not something that he was looking forward to addressing.

Whatever. That was life.

He would have teleported away but he felt himself being stared at. Suzuki's son was staring at him…and also there was a lot of barely suppressed rage there. Well now that made sense. The kid was nine and nine year olds weren't that bright. Of course he would believe something that dumb. He was a kid and kids could be so dumb.

So who in the hell would want to fuck one?

"I can tell when I'm being stared at, you know." Said Shimazaki

"I know." Said Sho. He wanted to…he didn't know what it was that he even wanted. To beat him up. To beat everyone up. To eat pancakes. To go back to bed. To ask Shimazaki why the naked lady on his arm had her privates scribbled out but not her boobs…and why he even had so many tattoos in the first place…and why he would ever like Shigeko in the first place.

Everyone liked her better.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. She was just so…he didn't even know. He didn't know why everyone liked her. He didn't know what was so great about her. She was so boring. She wasn't fun enough for him. She didn't like to build forts and pull pranks and play hide and seek and go to the park and pet dogs or climb trees or…or anything. She wasn't as fun or as cool as him and…and it just was not at all fair! What was so great about her?! What did he have to go and-and-and ruin everything they had together for? Just because of her?! Why did everyone like Shigeko so much better than him!?

He took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. It was hard.

"If you want to ask me about my tattoos then ask away. I don't entirely know what they all are, though, I just kind of let my one friend go a little crazy." Said Shimazaki

"It's not about that…but I do want to know about the dragon and why you have chicken fried rice written on your leg and also why you have a naked lady on your arm…and also I want to know…um…" said Sho. He was nervous and he didn't know why. He should have been all fired up. A guy might have liked his sister! He was supposed to beat up everyone, every single guy, who wanted to go out with his sister. That was just what you were supposed to do when you were a little brother.

"Come on, I'm starting to get bored here." Said Shimazaki. He didn't like the kid like this. All quiet. He would have taken the kid trying to kill him above…this. What was he being so nervous about? Come on. This was his favorite kid. He didn't need to have to find a new favorite kid.

"Do you like my sister? Because if you do then I have to beat you up…and I won't go easy on you." Said Sho. He didn't want to beat Shimazaki up. He was such a cool guy…and he was fun…and he had so many cool tattoos…and Sho didn't know what to do. He did and didn't want to beat up his friend…his friend who might have liked his sister…and that made him feel all mad and…and also hurt a little bit…

"I would never have expected you too. Also, no, your sister is way too young for me. I'll still fight you if you want me to but I swear on my life, wait I need something of value, on your life. Yes, I swear on your life that I am not at all into your big sister. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a rusty needle in my empty eye socket. Hell, stab me in both of them." Said Shimazaki. The kid was all mad and he wished that the kid would just take a swing at him. Being bored was, well, boring.

"Ok…ok I guess. I believe you…but yeah, my dad might not….so maybe you should run away. I'm going to…to go. Not run away but…but eat some pancakes. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do now." Said Sho. He didn't know how he felt. Mad, still, even though he believed Shimazaki. She was way too boring for him. He wouldn't have liked her. No guys liked her. The only guy who would ever like her would be, probably, the most boring guy in the whole world. Then Sho would beat him up like a good little brother had to. He was a good little brother like that.

And he was a good friend.

He had warned Shimazaki about dad and now…now he was going to have breakfast and…and that was what he was going to do. Because it was morning and that was what he was going to do. Eat breakfast and…and not feel weird. Feel mad about…about the thought of Shimazaki liking Shigeko…because that was how a little brother was supposed to feel when a guy liked his big sister…

That was why he felt like this…weirder than he had ever felt in his entire life.


	169. At a Loss, Finding a Solution

Suzuki Touichirou was at a loss.

The sleep deprivation was not helping. He had been up all night weighing the pros, cons, and outcomes of his only two options. He could either kill Shimazaki or he could allow Shimazaki to…with Daughter…and that was…the thought of Shimazaki and Daughter being in any sort of relationship disturbs him in ways that he had not been aware were possible. She was just a little girl. She was ten and…and the internet had said that ten years old was when a lot of children began to develop romantic and even sexual feelings…and he had never hated the internet before but he hated it now…so the way that Daughter felt was normal. Ten was the beginning of a sort of pre puberty time…or just full on puberty….and girls developed faster than boys and…

And Suzuki was not prepared for this.

The idea of Daughter having feelings for a man had always been very abstract. He had this vague idea of Daughter in his mind as a grown woman. She had some sort of man in her life and some children and was happy. Daughter was always some sort of vague concept in his mind, then, but an older vague concept. The Daughter that existed in this reality was a ten year old girl…and he was not at all comfortable with…with any of this. He wanted her to have normal feelings towards the opposite sex…in an abstract sense…but with someone closer to her own age!

She was ten.

Why did she have to have feelings for a man thrice her age? Suzuki had never had feelings for a woman so much older than himself…well there had been the woman who worked at the manga store…and that one waitress at the place he and Fukuda used to get breakfast from all the time…and then also there had been his statistics professor….but he had been a grown man at that point even if she was middle aged…and there had also been that woman right before Masami….

Some people preferred older partners but this did seem to be a bit extreme.

Also Daughter was a different person from him…and it had been a different time then…and none of those women had ever returned his feelings. Yes, the disturbing part of all of this was the fact that he seemed to return her feelings…and he did not want that. She was too good for him. There was nothing about that man that should have attracted Daughter. He was physically attractive, true, but there were thousands of physically attractive men in the world. If she wanted to she could have had models or body builders or those androgynous men from the music groups that women liked, for some reason, even though Suzuki would have figured that they would have been more popular with homosexuals…how much overlap was there between what women and homosexuals enjoyed, actually? He had never given this much thought…but now he was…

How did that work?

How did they decide who was going to be the man and who was going to be the women? In domestic roles and sexually? And how did sex between two men even work? Well he knew what they did but it did not look mutually pleasurable. Sex should have been mutually pleasurable for both parties. Either do it right or do it by yourself. That had always been his thinking when it came to sex. He knew that other men did not feel the same way, which made no sense, and he worried for Daughter. There were so many selfish men out there in the world, not just sexually but in general, and maybe he should have just picked one out for her. Just held audition and then presented her with the perfect man. But not a homosexual even though women were into that. And not someone who was selfish sexually…though he had no idea how he was going to audition for that. Customer satisfaction surveys? Or maybe just an informal survey to every woman in Japan? Yes, if he collected the sexual histories of every woman in Japan and then cross referenced them…well there was more to a relationship than sex…

So then he would need more than one survey.

He could just have every woman in Japan rate every single romantic and sexual partner that they had ever had and he could then assigned every single man in Japan a rating based on the data findings and then he could find and bring Daughter the best one…or something. There were also her own personal preferences, too. Like how he would never be happy with just any woman. She had to be perfect. Like Masami….but perfect was hard to measure. The woman who he loved most in the world was not the woman who another man loved most in the world…

And if any men were after his wife, if they thought that they loved her, then he would have to open their abdominal cavities and leave them out on some kind of platform and then fill them with birdseed…or worms…whichever the birds liked better…and also sugar for the ants…

But nobody was after his wife. Just like nobody was after his…how he had gotten here? Right. Daughter. He needed to find a better man for Daughter than Shimazaki. What did women even like? He was not a woman, he had never been a woman, and he did not want to get a sex change so he was going to have to think abstractly. Women wanted…apparently Shimazaki was what women wanted. Apparently women wanted men who wore too much cologne and were obnoxious and annoying and butchered the Beatles, he was no music lover but he did know the Beatles and what Shimazaki sang was not the Beatles, and sat on desks and drank and smoked and were just so…annoying!

And also thirty. He was also thirty.

And apparently he ate candles, too, which was….not normal. Candles were not a food but apparently he ate them and Daughter was already planning on getting him a birthday party and he may not have been wise to the ways of women, they were very confusing beings, he knew that it meant a lot to a woman to get you a gift…and Daughter was going to get him gifts…and she cared for him even though she could have had someone better. Someone who fulfilled the criteria by which women chose men. They liked men who were physically attractive, provided for their families, were capable of keeping them safe, and were sexually skilled. There. That was what women wanted.

Daughter was not a woman.

Daughter was a little girl and some of those things should not have even mattered to her yet! She already had someone to provide for her and keep her safe! That was him! He was her father and he would give her whatever she wanted and he would keep her safe from all of those who wished to harm her! She didn't need anyone for that! And as far as sex went she was too young for that…right? He got the feeling that she was too young for all of that but the internet had said ten was the age at which some people started having sexual feelings….but it hadn't been the case for him. The incessant masturbation hadn't started until he was about twelve…but he wasn't female….and also he did not want to think about his Daughter having feelings like those. Because she was just a little girl….and even if she did have those feelings she could have done better than a thirty year old man.

He could have killed him.

It would have been easy…but he was very useful. He had saved Suzuki's life more times than he could count, saved Son's life, and saved a lot of logistical and travel time too with how he could teleport…though Suzuki did find care rides relaxing…but not enough to kill a man over…but he was not killing a man over that. No, he was killing a man for having romantic and possibly also sexual feelings towards his Daughter…feelings that Daughter may have returned…

He so hated to see Daughter unhappy.

She had just now gotten back to normal after he took power back from her. It would not have been worth it to upset her again. She was just a child and…and she still didn't have complete control over her powers and emotions…and she could have exploded when she realized that her father had taken the man she loved away from her…even though she could have had a much better man…but then again what did he know about choosing men? Nothing. Nothing at all…or maybe…no, he knew nothing. He knew nothing about any of this.

Why couldn't this have been Son?

Why couldn't Son have had feelings of some sort for an older woman, he meant, he did not wish for Son and Daughter to swap places. No, if Son had feelings for Shimazaki then his age would have been the LEAST of his problems. If Son had developed these sorts of feeling for a grown woman then the solution would have been simple. Reassign the woman to some far away branch of Claw and then keep Son away from her until he was at a more appropriate age. Even if the woman had been gifted with the same exact power set and amount of usefulness as Shimazaki Suzuki would still have reassigned her. No matter how much Son begged and pleaded for her to stay. Children did not date adults. It was simple.

Well it was simple for Son, Suzuki didn't care how he felt.

Daughter…he hated it when she was angry with him. He hated it when she cried. He just hated her negative emotions…well he hated all negative emotions but he especially hated hers. How she would not only cry but explode….and how he would have to deal with it…and also the pain that settled within him when he knew that he had hurt her for no reason. Punishing her was different but she so rarely gave him reason to…

He was not going to miscalculate again.

He couldn't afford to. He had almost acted too rashly and miscalculated last night. Last night when Daughter had been cagey about her feelings towards Shimazaki, she just wouldn't give him a straight answer, and when she did she said that she cared for him…well she said that she cared for him but he annoyed her…but that made no sense. If she did not want to be near him then she could have made him leave her alone…but she hadn't. For reasons that Suzuki did not know she let him stay near her…

He could not afford to miscalculate again.

He had messed up when it came to Baby. He could not do it again. He could end up permanently damaging her ability to bond with others or something like that. Also this was a very crucial part of her development and if he did get rid of Shimazaki then she may have decided to never enter into another heterosexual relationship again…and that would have been bad, too, for the next generation…or maybe not. She could have children but with more steps…but also she could better choose the children that she had. She could just choose a man and have him mail her his genetic material…so then she didn't even have to bother with sex…and then she could have been happy and she wouldn't have had to deal with some man hanging around her that was in no way worthy of her…and then she could have a female companion to play dolls with…or whatever grown women did when they were together…and then she would have ten Sons and ten Daughters….and then he could retire and rest and spend time with her family and make sure that her children were being raised properly…

Yes, this was a much better plan.

But the whole thing hinged on Daughter being homosexual…which she was not. At least not that he knew of. She could have been a bisexual….but he was not going to ask her that. Asking her about her personal romantic feelings had been difficult enough. Though if she were a homosexual his life would have been better….even if she did end up with someone like Minegishi…who may or may not have been female….of course the best partner for Daughter would have been Son…but then that would upset the family balance….

Daughter was only ten years old…why did he have to worry about this now?

Masami should have warned him about this. She should have…she should have been there so that she could have handled this. This needed a mother's touch. He could not be both mother and father. Hell, Daughter had been promoted to mother now…to her brother…he hadn't thought that one through, actually, because nobody was mother to her and now she had to navigate this on her own…but she seemed to be doing well. Sure she had picked the worst possible man to be her most perfect person but it could have been worse.

She could have chosen a non-esper.

Yes, that was…that was not something that he wanted. She could have chosen a non-esper or…or someone who worked against him….or one of the Awakened…or…or…someone even older than him! Yes, she could have found a man in his fifties….or something…since she did seem to prefer older men. He was loyal to Claw, too, and to Suzuki…as loyal as anyone in Claw was. Also he…knew how to groom himself well…which must have been a challenge being blind. Also…um…he was a very sociable person and…and he was good with Son, too, which meant that he would be good with children…oh God…but he wasn't um…he wasn't that annoying…in very small doses…and maybe Daughter just wanted to keep him around for…whatever physical uses she had for him…

Oh dear God why?

Suzuki rested his head on his desk. He had been awake all night. He needed sleep. He heard some papers flutter off of his desk. He would have let them hit the ground, let someone else clean them up he already had one mess to deal with, when he felt another aura enter his range.

He looked up.

"Hey boss, been here long?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki had been too exhausted and too wrapped up in his own thoughts to even notice Fukuda….which was not good. He could have been dead if it had been anyone else…but it was just Fukuda. He was harmless and loyal and…and also much more well versed in human social interactions. Yes, Fukuda would have the answer. He had always proven himself useful in the past.

He was the one who had found a home for Baby, helped him establish Claw, and also a million other things in the past.

"Since about five this morning." Said Suzuki. He had to answer the question given to him first. That was good manner. He may not have particularly care about what people thought but he was not going to act like he had been raised by wolves.

"Anything big going down? Because that is a lot of notes." asked Fukuda. Right to work, right to the point, just like Suzuki liked. This was what his mind needed to get off of that track it had been on. He had been like one of his old slot cars from when he had been young. Just going around and around and around…and around. But Fukuda had knocked him off the track and now he was ready to become a functional human being again.

And, judging by the papers everywhere, it couldn't have come too soon.

"These aren't about work. These are about the situation between my Daughter and Shimazaki. As far as work goes the biggest thing happening is the upcoming inspection of the Awakening Lab in the Seventh Division. I was going to send you and an entourage of your choosing." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to stack the notes on his desk. Yes…he could feel himself slowly returning to the present…and he was very tired…but he had work to do…so he would do it…because according to the clock the day was starting…

Oh. He had missed breakfast with Daughter too. A pity.

"When do you need me to leave by?" asked Fukuda

"Soon. After we get these Awakened sorted out. They're still so scattered." Said Suzuki. Yes, this was good. Work. He could think clearly about work. He could see solutions for problems at work. At work he had absolute power. He would easily get this sorted out…because he knew work. He understood work. Work was a thousand times easier than child rearing.

God, he loved work so much.

"Understood….and I can take anyone with me?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki mentally skimmed over everyone that he would have wanted to take. Yes, he had no pressing need for any specific person.

"Anyone." Said Suzuki. Fukuda would probably take a few Awakened to carry things and take notes, a few from the Tokyo science team, and someone to act as his body guard. Yes, Suzuki could spare the manpower. Especially if Fukuda could fix whatever was making these new Awakened so very childlike.

"In that case I would like to take Sho with me. If that's alright with you. He's a capable esper. In my opinion he's more than ready for his first mission. Also he's been asking me about when he'll be able to go on missions, too." Said Fukuda. Suzuki….needed a moment. He pushed all thoughts of Daughter and her wellbeing aside to focus on Son…this was an odd feeling…but he needed to focus on his other child. Son was nine…but he was more powerful than most adults…and he as becoming restless at HQ…and he could have used the field experience…and he could be grating…and Suzuki would have liked to have been able to spend time alone with Daughter…

But he was also having irrational feelings, too, that he should not leave his Son alone with Fukuda…

He exorcised those. He was just tired. Tired and, thanks to Daughter, his mind was looking for problems that weren't there. Son was capable. Son would be fine. The worst that could happen was that Son injured himself. There was nothing wrong with sending Son to Seasoning City, it meant nothing to him, and Baby…well it wasn't as though Baby would BE at the Division HQ. No, Baby would be at home with her mother. That was what the maternity leave was for.

Yes, this would be fine.

"Yes. I see no problem with that. You're right, he'll be ten soon. He could use the field experience." Said Suzuki. He saw a curious ripple across Fukuda's aura but did not know what to make of it. No, matter, no matter. He could, would, and had trusted Fukuda with his life. He would be rewarded handsomely when the day came and Suzuki ascended to his rightful place as ruler of the world. Yes, when the day came all who had stood by him would be rewarded for this hard work and dedication.

It only made sense.

When the day came then he could rest. Just rest and run the world for a bit and then leave it to Son and his children…and then he would spend time with Daughter and her children…who would probably end up coming from Shimazaki…and could take after him…including his condition…and would that be enough to put her off of him? The fact that her children could have been born blind? No, she cared too much about him…if she had chosen him as her most perfect person…and if she had chosen him as her most perfect person then there was nothing that he could do…

Fukuda was still talking.

"….at least a week. Maybe with a stopover in…." Fukuda was talking but Suzuki couldn't bring himself to listen. Not with his mind going a mile a minute again. Daughter…if this was her most perfect person…then he had nobody to blame for this but himself. He had been a terrible father to her. He had been weak enough to fall to his emotions, he had been selfish enough to abandon Claw, and also he had done something wrong, very wrong, to make her mother leave the family. Yes, no wonder she had terrible taste in men. That was why she had picked the worst man in all of Claw. Anyone would have been better for her. Her friend Minegishi, that gifted technopath in tech support, that scar with the katana, her own brother, that man from the foreigner squad who wouldn't stop the incessant smoking, a stranger off the streets, even Fukuda would have been better for her.

"…think, boss? Boss? Suzuki?" Fukuda was asking him something. Something was being said. What was it.

"Yes, that's fine. Do all of that." Said Suzuki. He had no idea what he was agreeing to but he trusted Fukuda with his life. He was a good man. He tended to overstep and he could be a bit too familiar at times but he was a good man. He was a loyal member of Claw, a powerful esper when it came to healing, he played a good game of Go, he may have had terrible taste in literature but at least he had taste, he looked pretty good for his age as a side effect of his powers, he had known Daughter since she had been two, he was good with children, women seemed to enjoy his company or at least Masami had, he knew how to make a good cup of tea, he smelled alright, he never built forts out of office furniture, he was very sociable-

"Are you attracted at all to my Daughter?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda blinked and his aura went very still. Oh, right, he had interrupted him. Well whatever, he was the President, he could do whatever he wanted.

"No…I'm sorry? No. She's…she's a ten year old girl. No." Said Fukuda. Suzuki nodded. Yes, he hadn't thought that question through. Most men were not attracted to prepubescents and being attracted to them was generally frowned about in their, and most, societies.

"I didn't mean now. When she's older. I think, personally, that she's far too young for a romantic or sexual partner now." Said Suzuki. There. That was much clearer. He needed someone for Daughter in the future, not the present, and in the future she would be grown woman. That would be more socially acceptable.

"I…have known her since you brought her home from the orphanage…so I'm going to have to say no…and also that's…that's an age gap. One that I would not be comfortable with even if she hadn't been your daughter." Said Fukuda. Suzuki nodded. Well that made sense. He may have been the president but there were limits, even, to his power. He could not force Fukuda to marry Daughter…well he could…but then Daughter would have been miserable.

"Understood. I do wish you would reconsider. I think that you would be a much better partner to her than Shimazaki." Said Suzuki. Fukuda was staring at him now. His aura perfectly calm but his expression unreadable.

"Shimazaki? So you…you approve of….this?" asked Fukuda. No, of course not. Of course he didn't approve but what choice did he have? Daughter had chosen her most perfect person and this was something that he, for once in his life, did not have the power to change. She had chosen Shimazaki Ryou as her most perfect person and…and even if he did kill him he would still have had a very distraught Daughter to deal with…because he knew what it was to lose your most perfect person…and he never wanted to put his own Daughter through that sort of pain.

"No. Of course not. I've been thinking the matter over for some time now and I have come to the conclusion that Daughter….I want Daughter to be happy and I don't want to damage this area of her development so…I'll see how it goes. I want to murder Shimazaki but he's more useful to me alive than dead." Said Suzuki. There was more silence. He had said the wrong thing? His logic was sound. Daughter was his second priority. His first was Claw. Therefore he needed to ensure Claw's survival, not killing his best bodyguard, and also Daughter's happiness, not getting rid of her most perfect person. There. It all made sense.

"If I may speak my mind?" asked Fukuda

"You may." Said Suzuki. If he had been a religious man then he would have prayed that Fukuda had come up with a better solution than letting Daughter continue to see the grown man she had fallen in love with.

"Shigeko is a child. She'll get a new crush next week, probably, and then another new one the week after that. He's a grown man and he should know to keep himself away from her. You're her father and you have final say over your Daughter and you're the President of Claw so you have final say over your employees." Said Fukuda

"Yes? And?" asked Suzuki. He was hearing a lot of statements that he had already known and not a lot of solutions to his current problem of what to do.

"If I were in your shoes I would kick Shimazaki's ass for daring to touch your Daughter and then kill him later on if he didn't start keeping a respectful distance from her at all times. Then I would talk to Shigeko and tell her that she's acting much older than she is and that she needs to stop and think about what she's doing. That's what I would do. You don't always have to go straight to the killing, you know." Said Fukuda. Suzuki nodded.

When Fukuda said it, when he just came out and said it, the whole thing seemed simple.

Suzuki was the one with all the power there. He commanded legions of followers. He could command one little girl to…to wait. To hold off for another few years. At least…well Suzuki had been thirteen when he had gotten his first taste of the worlds of love and sex…yes. That seemed better than ten, at least, though part of him felt as though he would never be comfortable with the idea of Daughter being with any man at all…

But at least if she waited, just until she was as old as he had been when he started, she would have time to find a better most perfect person than Shimazaki. Someone worthy of her.

"Thank you for your counsel. I will…I will do that. Thank you." Said Suzuki. He hated saying 'thank you' to his subordinates but he had to. Fukuda had provided very wise counsel once again and as always.

Now that he was no longer at a loss the work of Claw could commence.


	170. Through the Gaps Between Fingers

Sho watched the fight through the gaps between his fingers.

Sho liked fighting. He liked being in fights and he liked watching dad fight, too. Watching dad fight was the only good part of working with him, it felt like, because it wasn't all long and boring like with memos and signing things and making decisions about money and staffing and all of that other boring stuff. The fights were few and far between but Sho always liked them. When dad fought traitors and people who tried to steal from him or kill him or do all three of those things at the same time. Those fights usually happened when he had to make more Scars or something. Sho liked those fights. He liked it when people challenged dad and then dad kicked beat them up. That was fun because it wasn't real…well it was real, it was something that happened, but it wasn't REAL. Dad was never trying to actually hurt those guys.

Sho knew what it was like when dad tried to hurt someone.

At least he had thought that he knew what it was like. He had thought that dad had been trying to hurt him, before, when he got mad and punished him and big sis. He had thought that dad was mad when he picked him up and threw him across the room or when he slapped him across the face or kicked him down the hall or stuff like that…but dad hadn't been mad then, no, and Sho could tell….

He had never seen dad so mad before in his life.

Sho closed his eyes as another blow connected. That wasn't a good sound for people to make but Shimazaki had made it. Dad had shattered his barrier like it was nothing. Sho didn't even understand why. Shimazaki had said that he wasn't in love with big sis but dad….he said that it didn't matter and that he was going to beat Shimazaki up because he deserved it. He also said that he wasn't going to kill Shimazaki, which had been a relief to Sho at the time, but that relief was gone now.

Shimazaki was bleeding.

Sho watched the whole thing from in between his fingers. Dad was kicking Shimazaki now…like he had kicked Sho so many times before…right there in the side where it hurt…but he was kicking harder than Sho had ever seen before in his life…and Shimazaki coughed up blood…and that was blood…and he was bleeding….and he wasn't even trying to fight dad…and there was no point in even trying to fight dad because he was dad…and….and there was nothing at all that anyone could do when dad got like this.

Sho watched from between his fingers.

He did not like the view. He was in the corner of dad's office where he and Shimazaki always built their forts. They had to rebuild it every single day because dad always had people clean it up. They had been talking about rebuilding their fort after Shimazaki talked to dad. Sho was supposed to draw signs saying that there were no girls allowed so that people would be clear that there were no girls allowed. Including big sis because she was boring and also…and also a lot of other things. She was the reason that the fort wouldn't get built. She was the cause of all of this.

If she hadn't liked Shimazaki then none of this would have happened.

She must have liked him. She must have liked him and then he had been nice back to her, not like he liked her but that he had been trying to be nice to her, and then therefore she was the reason why this was happening. Why Sho had to see this. Dad said that Sho needed to see how to deal with people who overstepped. That was what dad had said, overstepped, even though being nice to big sis like Shimazaki had didn't seem like he had done anything wrong. It wasn't like he tried to kiss her or hold her hand or touch her boobs or anything else that you were supposed to do to a girl when she liked you. He had just talked to her a lot and spent time with her and stuff, platonically he said which meant the way you hung out with a girl when you weren't in love with her or anything like that, and Shimazaki had explained to dad but then dad had been all 'you overstepped with my daughter' and also he had kept on saying over and over again 'my daughter is ten years old' and then Shimazaki had been all 'yeah, no shit, that's why I'm not trying to do anything' which was the worst thing that he could have said because now dad was mad at him and…and…and….

He had just been nice to her.

Dad didn't have to do this. At first it had been a fight. Dad had been all 'I'm going to fight you now' and then they had been fighting and Shimazaki had managed to avoid and evade dad for a while but then dad had said that 'stand still. You can't change the outcome' and then he had trapped Shimazaki with his powers to he couldn't teleport and then…and then….and then….

And then Sho had covered his eyes.

He didn't know what he had covered his eyes for. He had seen people getting hurt before. He knew what it looked like when people fought and bled. He had even seen people so hurt that they were dying….on TV. He had only seen it on TV and…and this was life but…but dad wasn't going to kill Shimazaki. He had said so. He had told Shimazaki that he as just going to beat him up. He also told Sho that he had to watch so he could learn how to deal with people….and Sho had watched…and he was still watching….through the spaces between his fingers…

He had covered his eyes but he was still watching.

He heard a low sort of thud and then some heavy breathing. Heavy and wheezy, too, and Sho…he wanted to forget that he had ever heard that sound. That sound meant…it meant that Shimazaki was really hurt…and it meant that…that he could have been hurt enough to die…and it meant that dad was actually capable of…of killing….well he was. Sho had seen it. Well he had been there but he had left them room when it actually happened…but those people had been traitors and people who had tried to kill dad first. Shimazaki hadn't done anything to dad besides be in like with big sis….

Well big sis had liked him.

There was the sound again. Once, twice, and then three times. Then nothing. Just two sets of breathing. Dad's heavy breathing and Shimazaki's wheezing breathing. Sho had closed his eyes at some point. He had closed his eyes even though he had seen the whole thing from in between his fingers. He had closed his eyes even though he had known what was happening. He had closed his eyes even though dad told him to watch. He had closed his eyes even though he knew that he could have been next. He had closed his eyes even though he knew that it would make dad angry. He had closed his eyes even though he knew that at any time dad could get that angry with him.

"I'm finished." Said dad. That was all he had to say. That he was done.

Sho opened his eyes.

He could see the whole office in the spaces between his fingers. There were broken things. The bookshelf was broken and the books on the shelf had broken and the furniture was broken and also his drawings that dad had stolen and then tacked up where everywhere…and dad was picking them up for some reason…he was using his powers to pick them up and tack them back up…and he was using his hands to straighten his tie…and there was blood on the cuffs on his sleeves…and also there was blood on his hands a little…and now Sho could smell blood….and now dad was looking at him.

"I told you to watch. Have you been doing that the whole time." Asked dad. Sho took his hands away from his eyes quickly. Dad's aura was weirdly calm. Like he had just got up or something. That was the worst part. If dad's aura had been lashing out and flaring and stuff then it would have been better…somehow. Not better like everything would have been all better but better like…something that would have made more sense than what was happening now.

Shimazaki was trying to sit up.

Sho didn't like seeing him like that. He had always been such a cool guy. The coolest guy ever. He had always been untouchable and invincible. He had been able to take getting shot and blown up and stabbed and stuff. He could dodge bullets. He could see his opponent's movements before they even happened. He was the blind master. He was the coolest guy in all of Claw. He was so strong and big and…and now he was sitting up and gasping and…and Sho could see him in the space between his fingers…

And then something pulled his hands down.

And now he wasn't seeing the world in the spaces in between his fingers. Now he was seeing the world with his bare eyes. He could see dad and he could see Shimazaki and he knew that he was being seen, too, and he wished that he had been the one born blind, not Shimazaki, because dad was looking at him and he did not want dad to be looking at him and he didn't want to be looking at any of this and-and-and-

"Honestly. Can't you ever do as you're told? I don't know how your sister puts up with you." Said dad. He went back to his desk and then…and then he just…sat there like it was normal. He wasn't even looking at Sho anymore….and Sho….he didn't know. Shimazaki was still breathing weird and it was…scary. It was scary and Sho was scared and he…he didn't like this. He hated this, this feeling, this scared and…and….and also he was…

He wanted to hurt dad.

He always wanted to hurt dad at least a little but now…now he wanted to hurt him for real. Not like in the daydreams he had about hitting dad back. The daydreams where he was big and dad was little and he was hitting dad back as hard as he could and dad was the one on the floor crying and Sho was the one telling him that the crying just made it worse and that he knew that he was not allowed to cry and how his crying just made him a disappointment…this was different. He didn't just want to be big enough to give dad a taste of his own medicine….

He wanted dad to hurt.

He wanted dad to know what it was like to be hurt. He wanted dad to know what it was like to be the one on the floor. He wanted dad to know what it was like to be so small and scared…and he wanted dad to know what it was like to bleed. Sho had never wanted to make anyone bleed before…and he knew that it was wrong…and he knew that mom would have been so upset with him that she would have run away, again, if she were to suddenly appear and find him like this…and he knew that he was supposed to be a good boy like she had always wanted him to be…but he also knew in that moment that he wanted nothing more than to make dad bleed.

He scared himself a little bit.

"No matter. That's settled now. That's what matters." Said dad. He had gotten his laptop back on and now he was working…and Shimazaki was standing up now…well as best as he could. Sho…he wanted to help. He wanted to run over there and help and just…just find some way of making this whole thing better…but he couldn't. There was nothing at all that he could do. He was small, so small, and…and dad was so big…and he couldn't even move from that spot because…he was afraid that he would be next…

He was a coward.

"You're both dismissed. Take him to Fukuda, Son, and then you stay by Fukuda's side for the rest of the day. Oh, and keep Shimazaki by your side as well. That's all." said dad. Sho knew that he was dismissed. He knew that he needed to walk away. hHe knew that he needed to leave the room. But he couldn't. Sho couldn't move. He knew that if he moved he could have easily been next…and he did not want to be next…he wanted dad to be next…

Dad should have been the one afraid of him.

Sho knew that if he started moving he would have started moving towards dad and if he stared moving towards dad then…then he would not be able to stop himself. He would not be able to stop himself and then…and then he would be the one on the floor and dad…dad would be the one who was bleeding. He would be the one who was scared. He would be the one who was watching from the spaces between his fingers. Dad would be…not him….dad…

Sho took a step forward.

And found himself standing outside Fukuda's office. The hallway was white and bright. He had to close his eyes. That was all. The room was just too bright and it was making his eyes hurt. That was why he closed them. That was also why…why his eyes were getting wet. Because the light was bothering them. That was also why…why he was shaking. Because of the light. It was just too bright in there, that was all, and he just…needed to get used to it. To the light.

There was a heavy hand on his back.

"Don't cry for me. I'm already dead." Said Shimazaki. He coughed when he said that. Sho knew from his tone that he was kidding, he did that sometimes, but that didn't make the shaking stop. It didn't make his eyes any less wet. It didn't do anything about…about how he felt. About how much light there was in the room.

"I'm not crying. The room…the hallway…it's too bright. It's just so bright that it hurts my eyes." Said Sho. He was not crying and he would prove it. He opened his eyes…and then wished that he had closed them. Shimazaki's face had blood in it…and also it was turning colors…and there was blood on the front of his shirt, too. Sho could see it, sort of, even though his shirt was black. Sho wanted to cover his eyes again. He didn't want to look. He wanted…he wanted to…he didn't even know what he wanted to do at this point besides just…not look.

"I suppose that I'll have to take your word for it, then, though if you were crying I would suggest that you stop. There's no point to it. Your tears won't change the outcome. You crying won't make my ass any less kicked. The healer showing up will but I have no idea when that'll be. So, yeah, stop crying already. It's not that bad." Said Shimazaki

"I told you that I wasn't crying and if I was then I could cry about whatever I felt like!" said Sho. He stomped his foot, then, and he accidentally put his powers into it. The hallway shook. Some people stuck their heads out of their offices but then ducked back inside quickly like they were afraid that if they stared for too long that they would be next.

"Calm down, Little Suzuki, there's nothing to be upset about." Said Shimazaki

"I'll feel however I want to feel…and there is too something to be upset about! My dad almost killed you!" said Sho. Shimazaki shook his head. He didn't look like he was in any condition to be shaking his head but he shook his head just the same.

"He was holding back, I could tell. If your dad wanted me dead then I would have been dead a long time ago. He just had a point to make and, yeah, message received. I brought this on myself and I have only myself to blame. Ok? So just stop…whatever this is. I can sense you and I know that, before, you were about to kick your dad's ass. I'd have to advise against that. Unless you know that you can end him I wouldn't even think about taking a shot at him. That's just me, though, you do you. If you want to end up in my shoes then by all means, go for it. It's your life, kid." Said Shimazaki. He smiled when he said that, he tried to act like everything was fine, but he also coughed and wheezed and…and he was holding on to the wall for support…

Sho took a step forward.

He pressed himself against Shimazaki's side. Shimazaki didn't need to be told anything, he knew to lean on Sho, even though he was tall and heavy. Sho felt…he didn't know how he felt. He felt glad that the coolest guy ever was still alive, all flip floppy in his stomach that he was so close to the coolest guy ever, worried that he was hurt, impatient because Fukuda was probably down in the cafeteria getting breakfast or maybe another Awakened had lost an eye or something, and also mad at dad for doing this to the coolest guy in the whole history of ever, and even madder at big sis because this was all her fault.

Sho should have beat her up for this.

But that was wrong. Hitting your sister was wrong enough but full on beating her up…that was the worst thing that he could ever do to someone…and now he was thinking about it…because this was her fault. She had been the one to like Shimazaki and then she had let dad think that Shimazaki liked her back, which was not true at all because Shimazaki was a grown up and also he probably liked Minegishi since they were always together and he talked about them a lot even when nobody had brought them up or anything, and now Shimazaki was bleeding and breathing funny and having trouble standing up and it was all big sis' fault!

But he was not going to beat her up. Mom would not have liked that.

Even though mom was gone to some other place so it wasn't like she would ever even know…but he would know and then…and then he would have been a traitor to mom….even though she was a traitor to the family…and he didn't think that she was a traitor at all! He just…he knew that he couldn't go home and beat up big sis because that was wrong. Even though this was all her fault. Why did she have to go and like Shimazaki? He was a cool guy, ok, and he was powerful too, and strong, and tall, and he had a lot of cool tattoos too and also he liked dogs and could eat sixteen pudding cups in a row before he got sick and also he was good at tag and hide and seek and he made good forts and…and he was just the coolest guy ever!

But big sis should not have liked him.

And he should not have liked big sis back…and he didn't…so he should not have been acting like he did! When girls liked you the thing to do was run and hide until they got bored! Everyone knew that about girls! Even Sho knew that about girls and he was only nine! He would have thought that a guy with a naked lady tattooed on his arm would have known more about girls and stuff but, obviously, he didn't…but it was still big sis' fault for acting like she liked him. This was all her fault.

But he was not going to beat her up.

"Hey, kid, after I get all healed up I need you to tell me if any of my tattoos get messed up. Ok? Sometimes they fade when Fukuda does his thing and I know I can trust you to tell me if they end up looking fucked up." Said Shimazaki. Sho couldn't breathe, for a moment, because Shimazaki…he trusted him…he trusted him and…and he had let this happen….even though there was nothing that he could have done…he still felt like…like this was his fault…

His stomach felt weird.

"Um…yeah. I can…I can tell you if they get messed up." Said Sho. He wanted to tell Shimazaki that he was sorry about what had happened, what he had let happen, and also that he was sorry that big sis had made this happen…but he was having trouble even figuring out how to say that…or how to say anything…

"Thanks kid. Most of these aren't important, I have no idea what some of these are even supposed to be, but some of them matter. Like the list of dates on the back of my arm. Tell me if that even gets a little bit fucked up…though I think that it's mostly my ribs that are broken…God, I hope the dragon is ok. That thing was such a bitch to get done. Oh, and my whole left sleeve, too. That one was a bitch. Make sure to tell me if something happens to anything on that arm." Said Shimazaki. Sho nodded.

"Ok. I'll tell you." Said Sho. Shimazaki was leaning on him more. Sho had to use his powers to keep him steady. Sho…he could not be afraid. Not now. Shimazaki had already seen him crying…because of the light….and he could not let him know how worried and scared he was. Then Shimazaki wouldn't think that he was cool anymore. Shimazaki was fine…right? He was fine. He was more worried about his tattoos than how he was breathing weird and that there was blood on the front of his shirt.

Sho had to be brave.

Shimazaki was being brave and he was the one who was hurt. He didn't even have to worry about being brave or not. He just was. Not being brave was not an option for him. Like when dad said that he was going to beat him up Shimazaki was all 'whatever think you is best, boss' and then everything had started up and Sho had seen…he had covered his eyes and opened his fingers…and then he saw…and he…he…

"Some of them mean something, some of them don't. Like you were asking me about how my leg, supposedly, says chicken fried rice. There's nothing significant to that. My friend is a tattoo artist and he just likes to practice on me sometimes." Said Shimazaki. Sho nodded and wiped his nose. His nose was all runny and his eyes were all watery…but he was fine. The room was just bright and also…also Shimazaki was close and Sho could smell all of the stuff he put on and it was getting up his nose…and stuff….

"What about the dragon? That's…that a cool one. Both of them." Said Sho. He needed to keep on talking. Even though his voice was getting all shaky….and he had to stop it. He had to be brave. Shimazaki was being brave so he had to be brave, too.

"Those? Those are from my last job. Dragons are supposed to mean wealth and prosperity and stuff. I just like dragons. I think they're cool." Said Shimazaki. Sho nodded and wiped his eyes.

"But you-you can't see them. Doesn't it hurt when you get them? I mean…why do you do things that hurt if you can't even see them?" Said Sho. Talking helped. Talking made him feel better. Talking kept him from thinking and he didn't want to think about…about anything. About anything that had happened. He didn't want to…to cover his eyes. He didn't want to cover his eyes again. He wanted….he wanted to be…to be…to be….

"Because other people can see them. Some people don't like them, some people don't care, but some people are really into them. Mostly women. Take that to your adult life, kid, women love tattoos. Men too, but women like them better. So be sure to cover yourself in tattoos as soon as you can. Best piece of advice you'll ever get for your adult life." Said Shimazaki. Sho nodded. He didn't really care about what girls liked. He had never had trouble getting them to like him, in fact he never did anything to get them to like him, and he usually had the opposite problem. They wouldn't leave him alone.

But he was still going to listen.

Because they were cool and Shimazaki was cool and Sho wanted to be cool and he wanted to talk to Shimazaki because he was cool and Sho wanted to be cool too…and also he liked talking to Shimazaki…and also he didn't want to think about…what happened….or why Shimazaki was sort of having trouble talking…and how he knew that they shouldn't have been talking because he was hurt…and…and….and…

Sho just wanted to keep on talking to him about this.

"Why do you have a naked lady on your arm, then? If you got those so girls would want to kiss you and stuff, gross by the way, or did you get that so that guys would think you were cool?" asked Sho

"Her? Oh, she's just somebody that I used to know. That's all." said Shimazaki. Sho…didn't know how to feel. Well he felt better, now, because he was less scared and stuff….and also he felt…weird. Because that was a picture from real life…that some lady had posed for…that he knew…..some lady had just…he felt weird. He didn't like it.

"Was she your girlfriend?" asked Sho. This was good conversation. This was good conversation and it helped him forget about…what had happened…and he had been feeling better…but now he felt worse…and he didn't get it at all. Feelings. His feelings. Sho wondered when Fukuda would be back. Sho hoped that he wasn't standing in line for the omelet station because that line could get long….and he wanted Shimazaki to get better already…and he didn't want to hear the story behind that tattoo…and also he sort of did…and also he smelled blood and that was the worst thing…and…

This was a lot.

"Girlfriend? No, I don't do the girlfriend thing or the boyfriend thing. She's just this woman I used to work with at my old job. Sort of like Toshi, I guess, but at some point she had enough of me. Story of my life. Heh. You know actually, yeah, if that one gets messed up I'll just get one of Toshi. Yeah, then they can't ignore me." Said Shimazaki

"Minegishi's a girl?" asked Sho. Well now he felt like he liked them less….or more….or…he didn't even know. He was just unhappy…but he was always unhappy. It was normal.

"Toshi is Toshi." Said Shimazaki….which didn't answer anything. Sho knew who Minegishi was. They were big sis' equally as boring and bossy friend. They were just as uncool as big sis, just as boring as big sis, and just as annoying as big sis. Shimazaki liked them for some reason…and he should have been happy. That meant that he didn't actually like big sis like that…which meant that he didn't have to beat him up like a little brother was supposed to…by why did he like such uncool people? He was weird. He was so weird.

"But you're getting a picture of them naked on your arm. Like the girl you have already. Doesn't that mean that they're a girl?" asked Sho

"Girl, boy, it doesn't matter. I just care about Toshi…and if I get a picture of them on my arm then they can't ignore me anymore. God, I hate it when they do that. I mean it's not the seventeenth yet but…yeah. I hate it when they get like this." said Shimazaki. He coughed a little bit and Sho knew that they shouldn't have been talking like this, he was super hurt, but…but it was better than just being in silence…because then he would think and remember…and then cover his eyes again….

"What's on the seventeenth?" asked Sho

"When normal Toshi comes back. God, I cannot wait until they get back to normal…or at least closer to normal. Or at least pissed at me in the normal way. I cannot believe that everyone actually thinks…well I did bring this upon myself. Yeah, this was all my fault…but whatever. When God slams a window down on your hand then he also sticks your other hand in the door frame and slams it." Said Shimazaki

"Huh?" asked Sho. He didn't know why he wanted God to do any of that stuff to him…but then again Sho didn't understand a lot of things about him. Like why he only liked boring girls who were also very bossy.

"So I got my ass kicked, so my ribs are broken, so my arm feels cracked at least, and so my tattoos are going to get fucked up. At least now I'll be able to maybe get some new ones. Give the people something new to look at…but Akihiro had better not censor any of my new ones. I can't believe that he seriously censored that one…and that nobody told me! Seriously. You think you can trust someone but then they go and censor one of your tats even though you clearly said that you wanted it just like the photo…unless the photo was censored too…kid, never go blind. Promise me that you'll never go blind." Said Shimazaki

"I can try not too…and I'll warn you if your next tattoos get messed up. You can trust me. We're friends." Said Sho. Shimazaki reached up and patted his head like he was a dog or something. But Sho didn't mind.

"Yeah, we're friends. Toshi doesn't have the monopoly on having kid friends." Said Shimazaki. Sho felt a lot better, now, even though Shimazaki was still hurt and dad had still beat him up and he could still remember how it looked, the fight, through the gaps in is fingers…he remembered…and he just…

It was over. Things were going to be ok.

Sho could feel Fukuda. He felt Fukuda before he saw him rounding the corner. He had a coffee in one hand, a stack of folders in the other, and he looked….kind of mad. He gave Shimazaki a look but then smiled at Sho.

"Hey Sho, pass him over. I'll take it from here. If you could organize these for me, though, that would be great." Said Fukuda as he handed Sho the stack of folders. He didn't much like organizing things but, also, he didn't want Shimazaki to be hurt for any longer than he had to be. He decided not to argue and just…do what he had to do. Anything to get his friend fixed up faster.

It didn't take too long.

Fukuda went really fast…but that was just because it was serious. He usually went slow, or at least he had with Sho, because working too fast made scars and stuff…and also it messed up tattoos…but Shimazaki had figured that it would happen. Sho would still warn him later, though, because he had promised. But not while Fukuda was working.

Shimazaki had enough to worry about.

Sho didn't watch, though, not even through the gaps in his fingers. He heard bones sliding around and coughing and cursing and he saw auras and it looked like fighting but…but it wasn't. They weren't fighting but Sho still was not going to watch. He didn't have to watch. Nobody had told him to and he didn't want to so he didn't. He just sat on the floor and organized folders while Fukuda worked and Shimazaki cursed at him. He could have watched, though, if he had wanted to…but he didn't.

Not even through the gaps between his fingers.


	171. Waking Up All Alone

Mob woke up alone.

Which was weird. So weird. The most weird. She never woke up to an empty house. Sometime when she woke up dad was already gone but Sho was always there. Sho almost never woke up before her and when he did he never just…left. Sho and dad left without her sometimes but never when she was asleep.

For a moment she thought that, maybe, everyone was mad at her.

But that didn't make sense. Dad and Sho were both the sort of people who always did something when they got mad. When they were mad at you they made sure that you knew it. Mob never let anyone know when she was upset with them. She tried not to ever be upset with people, it seemed mean, but when she was she just stayed away from them. Like when she and Sho had been very little. Mom would separate them when they fought. Mom said that when you were mad at someone the best thing to do was to leave them alone and cool off. Dad didn't believe in that. He was a firm believer that when you were mad at someone it was their fault and you had to make them pay.

So he was, most likely, not mad at her.

Mob was actually sort of glad that he hadn't been home when she got up. She didn't much like waking up to an empty house, she missed her family a lot, but she was glad that she didn't have to talk to dad anymore…which as a very mean thing to be glad about. He was her dad and she loved him and stuff…but also he had been asking her a lot of very personal questions last night and she didn't know why but didn't want to repeat the experience. So, even if it did make her a mean person and a terrible Daughter, she was sort of glad that dad wasn't home.

She missed Sho a lot, though.

She missed him even though he had been very mean since Baby Mukai went to her new family. That was not Mob's fault. She had nothing to do with Baby Mukai getting adopted and she hadn't had any way of stopping it from happening. If anything they should have been happy for her. She had a mom that loved her. Mob was happy…she missed Baby Mukai so much but she was happy for her. Baby Mukai was going to have a happier life than she'd had…even though she had plenty of reasons to love her life. She had a little brother who she loved and a dad who she loved and friends who she loved and sometimes people treated her nice, well her friends were always nice, and also she got unlimited milk and screen time and stuff so she was happy with her life. She really was.

She was even a little bit happy that Sho wasn't home because it meant that she got a turn with Mukai's little baby sock.

He kept it inside of one of his socks, the black ones with the flames on them, and Mob knew that going through his things was wrong but she wanted that sock. Just to hold it and look at it. That was the only thing that they had left of Baby Mukai that wasn't pictures. Pictures were all well and good but they weren't real…well they were but they weren't real in the way that they were something that Mob could reach out and feel. Not like the little baby sock in her hand. It was so soft, Mob had used fabric softener when she washed Baby Mukai's clothes because that was what the directions on the washing machine said and Mob thought that it was best to follow all the directions, and Mob never wanted to put it down. Holding it was sort of like holding Mukai…but if she were sock sized…which she had not been. She had been three month old sized. Now she would be four month old sized…or maybe even bigger because she was closer to five month old sized. She wondered if her new mom had started feeding her baby food yet. She wondered what Baby Mukai's first solid meal had been. Sho and her had planned to give Baby Mukai congee because it was easy for babies to eat and also ice cream because she deserved something tasty…even though Minegishi said that sugar was poison. Everything good was poison, it felt like, but things were ok in moderation. That was something that Minegishi had taught her about. That was why when you drank you had to use tiny little glasses so you didn't end up overdoing it. She wondered if Baby Mukai's mom would teach her about moderation. Hopefully she would. That was something that Mob was glad that there was someone else to teach her about.

She was kind of bad at moderation.

She was learning, though, not to drink enough to get sick and not to smoke so often…or at all…even though she really wanted to. She really wanted to do a lot of things. She really wanted to smoke and to not want to smoke and also she wanted to be with her dad and brother but also to be away from them but most of all she did and did not want to be with her little sister…pretend little sister. She knew that Mukai wasn't her sister, she didn't come out of mom's stomach, but it was nice to pretend even if only for a little while.

Not long enough.

"I miss you more than anything." Said Mob. She knew that she looked crazy, sitting on the floor of her room in her pajamas talking to a sock, but she just…had to do it. She just wanted to…to feel like she was talking to Mukai again. She knew that this was all in her head but it made her feel better so what was so bad about that. It wasn't like anyone could see her. They were out of her passive range. Everyone but Minegishi was out of her passive range…but she wasn't going to go over there now since it felt like they were asleep….and also it had been a while since she had gotten a turn with the sock.

"Happy another month of being alive. I hope you're having a good time wherever you are. I hope that your new mom is nice and that your new dad, if you have one, is nice and I hope that your new brothers and sisters are nice, too, if you have any. Things haven't been so nice around here since you left. Dad's been kind of weird, which is normal for him but don't ever call people weird because it's mean, and also he's been kind of nosy which is new. Sho's been really mean but I think that it's just because he misses you and also I got a promotion. Oh, right, I didn't tell you. Ok, so families have ranks too just like jobs and now I rank the same as my mom but I'm not my mom but I have all of her power…which I never asked for…but I have it…and I wish that I'd had it when you were here…but that's just me being selfish. I'm happy that you have a family now who's nice to you and…and you're lucky. That people are nice to you." Said Mob. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Even though nobody was around she had to make sure that she stayed calm and her powers stayed calm. She needed a cigarette but she had quit. She wished that she had something to drink but she had nothing in the house and she wasn't going to wake Minegishi up to ask them to share.

So she stayed in her room and tried to do it on her own.

The little sock in her hand helped. The sock reminded her of Mukai and if she focused hard enough she could even imagine that Baby Mukai was right next to her. She had never once lost control in front of her. She had never let herself lose control because Mukai didn't need to see that. She deserved so much better than what Mob could be. Mob may never have lost control but she also…also had to work at it. Keeping control didn't come naturally to her. A power that was as big as hers came with a very big expense, dad had said, and she knew that she would be paying it for her whole life. It wasn't fair. She never asked for these powers…not that she was mad at dad for giving them to her. She had gotten them from him and…and that was just how it was. Dad had done the gross thing with mom and then she and Sho had come from him and they both got powers and that was just how it went.

She hoped that Baby Mukai never had these problems.

"I'm glad that your new mom is an esper. That way she can help you with your powers. You might have big powers like mine when you get older. Most people aren't born with auras like you were so there's a big chance that you'll be like me…but that's ok. I wish that I could have been there to help you but…but that's not the way it worked out. You're somewhere else and I'm somewhere else and…and that's good. You deserve so much better than what I can be…everyone does. I'm just…I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel like…like I was born wrong and everyone else was born right…and I don't like these feelings so I do things to make myself feel better that I know that I shouldn't be doing…but I just…I don't know. I'm sorry that I put all of my problems on you like that. It was mean of me. I'm the adult…the almost adult….and you're the kid…the almost kid….and you're supposed to tell me about your problems and I'm supposed to fix them for you. That's how this works…and also never start smoking. Ever. It's very hard to stop…not that you can…hear me. Sorry. I'm sorry." Said Mob. She drew her knees up to her chest. The room was silent. The only thing that she could hear was the sound of birds outside the window. She didn't know what she had expected to hear. She knew that nobody could hear her, she knew that she wasn't talking to anyone at all, and she knew that having just a sock was not the same as having Baby Mukai with her…

She was just sitting on the floor in her pajamas talking to a sock like a crazy person.

She knew that she had to get up and get dressed and brush her hair and her teeth and then…she didn't know. If dad needed her for something he would have taken her…and she didn't have anyone to play with because Sho was gone and Minegishi was asleep…and she was not allowed to wake them. She was not allowed in their room without their permission. That was bad manners, just letting herself in places, and she wished that she had known that before Minegishi got upset at her…but it was ok because she knew better now. She would wait until they got up and until then she would…um….

She did have schoolwork to do.

So that was what Mob did. She put Mukai's little baby sock back in it's hiding place and got on with her day. She got dressed and brushed her hair and teeth and ate some cereal, not from the box because dad hated that, and then did some of her pile of schoolwork. She and Sho used to have people who came and taught them things but now that they were older they mostly just worked from workbooks. Mob sometimes missed that she was in real school. She had liked it even if people weren't so very nice. She sometimes wished that she could have school adventures like in anime and manga. A bunch of friends and a club and also there would be boys there…not that she was supposed to think about boys like that. If she thought about boys like that then she would…get distracted from her schoolwork! Yes, that was it, she couldn't stop working. It had nothing to do with the very weird and nosy conversation that she and dad had last night….why he wanted to know about that stuff she did not know.

She didn't go asking him those questions.

Well he and mom were married so, of course, he didn't like any girls…and girls could not like him. Mob couldn't imagine a girl acting like she liked him. Chasing him around and trying to kiss him and hold his hand and asking him to push her on the swings and stuff…probably because adults didn't do that. Yeah, it was different from adults. She had been reading a lot about love. When adults, or at least people older than her, liked each other then they went on dates to do things like watch the cherry blossoms or go to fancy dinners where every was all fancy or other stuff like that. The girl didn't chase the boy around and try to kiss him, that was for kids, when you were older you went out for a very long time and then both decided to kiss…or sometimes people kissed on accident..

But girls were not allowed to even think about kissing dad.

Boys were not allowed to even think about kissing mom.

And Mob did not want to think about kissing anyone…but she did. She had always thought about it, for as long as she could remember, but now it was…worse. Maybe because she finally knew what it was like. She wanted to…to know what it would be like again…and again…but that was a dumb way to feel. She didn't even have anyone she liked. Well liked in that way, the doki doki way, she liked everyone. That was what nice people did, they liked everyone, and she wanted to be a nice person. She liked everyone…most everyone…even if they were annoying.

That was one good thing about being home alone.

She didn't have anyone sitting on the edge of her desk, well she was at the table but a desk was kind of like a table, and annoy her. Touch her hair and hands and say things just to make her feel weird. At least she got to be alone for a little bit. Not that she didn't like him! She liked him a lot. He was…nice. She liked him a lot just…she also didn't like him all that much…but that didn't mean that she didn't like him a lot! Besides, he was friends with her friend and that made them friends. So everyone was friends and everything was ok…

But she was glad to have some time to herself.

There was something peaceful in having time to herself. She could do her schoolwork without having Sho complain and kick and scream and run away. She could put her music on in the background and nobody complained about how many times Let it Go was in her playlist…six times was not that much…and she could work so much faster when she was alone….and she could drink as much milk as she wanted without anyone accusing her of being a milk hog…

It was a nice time.

But that didn't mean that she was upset when dad came back. She felt his aura long before she saw him. He took a car. He liked to ride in cars. He liked watching the world go by, he had said, and she agreed. She preferred cars to being teleported because riding in cars didn't make you feel as scared and motion sick. She had enough time, since dad was coming by car, to clean her stuff up off the table and turn her music off and rinse out her milk glass. She had enough time to give the house a look over to make sure that the mess wasn't too bad. He hated messes.

And also he hated coming home in the middle of the day.

Well it was more like late morning or early afternoon…but it was still weird that dad was coming back so early. Sho wasn't with him, either, which was also weird…but Sho might have just been playing with Shibata and Shimazaki or something. Maybe they were in the chair jousting tournament…she hoped that he wasn't. Fukuda could regrow people's eyes for them but it took a lot of energy. Also Sho would have had to go through the pain of losing an eye…she stopped thinking about this. She knew that he would be fine, he could put up a barrier, and also he was with Shimazaki and Shibata. They would keep him safe.

So she had nothing to worry about.

She wasn't worried at all when dad came in through the door. His aura was…tired. She wondered if he had gotten up early. Maybe something had made him mad. Maybe he was the reason for the ripped up bits of paper that had been everywhere and also the dents in the fridge and walls….he did get upset sometimes…

But she didn't ask. It was none of her business.

"Hi, dad." Said Mob. She smiled when dad came in the door. He liked it when she greeted him, he had said so, and she liked to make him happy. He needed it, too, since his aura seemed so…not mad. Just…tired.

"Hello Daughter. Have you been well this morning?" asked dad. He must have been very tired. He was talking to her like he talked to everyone else. Dad didn't have a lot of tones when he talked but he had this way of talking to her…and now he wasn't doing it. She wondered what had happened. She wondered if she could ask…or if it would have been none of her business.

"I've been fine. I did some school work and I cleaned up the kitchen...um…is it alright if I ask you how work was? I mean I know that I shouldn't bother you but it's just weird that you're home in the middle of the day." Said Mob. She stood still and kept her aura still…she did have to hold her braids down, though, because her hair was always the first thing that she lost control of.

"Work was fine, just tiring. Why have you been here all day? I assumed that you would have come with your brother." Said dad

"Sho…went without me?" asked Mob. That was…why? It would have been one thing if dad had woken him up early and told him that he had no choice but to come with…but it was another for him to just leave her…

"Yes. Your friends…he came with your friends this morning. Shibata and Shimazaki. He came with them." Said dad. He wasn't looking at her. Not with his eyes or his aura. She could see his aura getting kind of…fidgety. She didn't know why his aura was like that….well it had been like that last night when he had been asking her all of those questions….and she really hoped that he didn't start asking her a bunch of weird and personal questions again.

"Oh. Ok. I would have come if someone had woken me up. I'm sorry dad." Said Mob. She hoped that he either told her what to do or dismissed her. She really hoped that he wasn't thinking up some new, weird, and nosy questions to ask her…even though she knew that she should not have been calling her dad weird and nosy even in her head. It wasn't very nice at all.

"I accept your apology Daughter. Actually it was for the best that you didn't come in today. Nothing of interest happened….nothing of work related interest. I spoke to Shimazaki, though, about…about you. About how I want him to keep his distance from you from now on." Said dad. Mob nodded. She was glad that he had talked to Shimazaki for her. Maybe then he would listen to her, now, and stop annoying her all the time.

"Ok." Said Mob. Dad was still looking at her, though, and she had no idea why. She wished that he would have just dismissed her already. She wanted to watch Frozen again and also drink another glass of strawberry milk.

"Daughter…are you angry with me?" asked dad. Mob shook her head. She had no idea why she would have been mad at him. He hadn't done anything lately…that she knew of. She was upset a little bit about what happened with Baby Mukai…and also she was always unhappy about how mean he was to Sho…but she couldn't think of anything that could have made her mad that had happened lately.

"No. Why would I be mad at you?" asked Mob

"Because…because I know how much you care for him…and I know that you're probably upset with me about making him stay away from you…but I am your father and as your father I've decided that you're too young. I am your father and I have the power to decide these things for you and I am deciding them right now." Said dad. Mob was confused. She had no idea what dad even meant…and that was just because she was being clueless as usual.

"He's my friend….and I guess you can tell me who to be friends with but…but it makes me sad….because I don't have a lot of friends." Said Mob slowly. He was taking her friends away? She may not have liked Shimazaki all that much but it wasn't like people were lining up to be friends with her. How could dad do that? Why did he have to be like that? He was so….bossy!

She forced herself to stay calm. She did not want to be punished.

"You can be friends with him. Just friends. Nothing more." Said dad

"So we can still be friends?" asked Mob

"Yes. But nothing more. Not at your age." Said dad. Mob hadn't ever been this confused in her entire life. She wished that Google had a dad to daughter translator because she was so lost right now…even worse than that one time when Sho had run away when they were in Shanghai that first time.

"I don't understand. Dad, I'm very sorry but I don't understand." Said Mob. Dad still didn't look at her. He closed his eyes and then opened them. He was thinking really hard about something. She could tell. She could always tell when he was thinking really hard…and that could have been a good or a bad thing depending on what he was thinking about.

She wished that he would have just dismissed her already.

"You're too young for him. You're too young for all of that…I've decided…because you're ten. When you're older…wait until you're older." Said dad. She had no idea what he even meant. She could have friends. She had friends. She didn't want dad to tell her who she could be friends with…or maybe he meant something else. She didn't know. She really hated being this clueless. She wished that he would just….well he was being all weird again and…and it was all so confusing.

"Too young?" asked Mob. She didn't think that she was too young for anything. She had run all of Claw, before, and she had been promoted in to mom's rank in her family. What, at this point, was she still too young to do?

"Yes. Ten is too young. Wait until you're older." Said dad

"Older?" asked Mob

"Thirteen. That's how old I was and that's how old you will be." Said dad. Now Mob was even more confused. She knew that she would be thirteen in three years and she knew that he had been thirteen at some point. She wished that he would just get to the point already. She was so confused…and she really wanted to watch Frozen…..and drink milk….and also smoke…but she couldn't do that last thing anymore.

"Old enough to do what?" asked Mob. Dad looked at her. She looked at him. He looked away. That was so weird. He stared. She got her staring thing from him. He never looked away…what was…she didn't even know.

"To see him, to see any man, romantically. Ten is just too young for all of that. Alright? When you're thirteen or older or twelve or…we will revisit this at a later date." Said dad

"….what?" asked Mob. Had she forgotten Japanese? That was the only explanation for it. She had forgotten Japanese and that was why it sounded like dad thought that she LIKED Shimazaki. Like she wanted to be his girlfriend or something…which made no sense. He may have been tall and stuff but there was more to liking a boy than him being tall. He wasn't nice enough. He was too annoying. Also he kissed Minegishi sometimes and she could not just go off and kiss the boy who her friend kissed! That was not being a good friend at all even if they weren't boyfriend and girlfriend…or boyfriend and boyfriend….or whatever! She was not going to kiss the person who her friend had kissed! Was that what her own father thought of her? That she would kiss someone like that?!

Conceal, don't feel.

"At a later date we will revisit this discussion. Right now I am very tired. It has been a long day and I need rest. I apologize to you for…for the judgement I have passed…but you are very young. God willing you find another man who you care for even more than him. Understood?" asked dad

"No. No I don't understand. I don't understand anything? Do you think…do you think that I wanted to be his GIRLFRIEND? Because that's what it sounds like." Said Mob. She stared at dad. Had he hit his head on something? Had he been drinking from the pretty bottles in his office? Had he lost his mind? Did she need to call Fukuda? Maybe she did. Dad was talking crazy talk.

Why would anyone in the whole wide world have ever wanted to be Shimazaki's GIRLFRIEND? That was worse than being single for the rest of your life.

…that was mean but that was just how she felt.

"I had assumed that you were, I apologize for making him leave you, and I understand the pain you must be in. I'll leave you to get yourself sorted out, Daughter." Said dad. He walked past her quickly. She wanted to grab him with her hands and her powers and just…just take him and shake him and say 'Explain. Dad. Explain.' Because she just could not begin to understand.

But she didn't tell him to explain. She couldn't. Not after she saw the…the blood looking stuff…on the cuffs of his sleeves…and his collar….

"Dad? Are you…why do you have blood on you?" asked Mob. Dad stopped walking and pulled at his sleeves.

"Shimazaki and I had a talk." Said dad. She knew what it meant when he said that…and she hated it when he lied to her like that…because talking did not involve blood….

"Did you hurt him?" asked Mob softly. She wanted him to lie to her. She hated how he lied to her when he said 'talk' but she also…she also….she wanted him to lie to her. She wanted him to lie and say that…that he hadn't hurt anyone….but she knew that he did not tell lies…

"Yes. I hurt him but you don't have to worry. Fukuda fixed him up. Now I need rest. Get back to your day. You are dismissed." Said dad. Mob…she had no idea what she was supposed to do. She had no idea what she could do…someone was hurt because of her …she was responsible for someone bleeding…even Shimazaki did not deserve that….

Even with dad home, now, Mob still felt so alone.


	172. Bathroom Fights

Sho could be very mean sometimes.

But that was ok because he was still the best little brother in the whole world. Even when he came home and locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out because of something you did…even though you had no idea what you had done to him. Whatever it was, though, Mob was very sorry. She was always very sorry. Even when she didn't know what she was sorry about she was always very sorry.

"Sho, please come out. I'm sorry." said Mob. She was glad that dad had gone back to work to make up for lost productivity. She was glad that he wasn't around to see this. He would have gotten md at Sho for acting like this and he would have gotten mad at her, too, for letting Sho act like this. She was the one in charge of him. She was the one who was supposed to make him happy. Her and nobody else.

It didn't matter that there was no one around to make her happy.

"You always say that." Said Sho from behind the bathroom door. He was not coming out. He knew that if he came out then he would hit her and he just…he could not hit her. He didn't want to hit her but he knew that he would. So the safest place to be was in the bathroom. It was the only room in the house with a lock on the door.

"I always say it because I mean it. I don't know what I'm sorry about but I know that if I did something….if I knew what it was that I did…then I would never do it again. So can you please just tell me what I did wrong?" asked Mob. She was tired. She was sad. She had gotten someone beat up. She had caused someone to get hurt and…and it was all her fault…and she had no idea how she was going to make it up to him…and she was just so tired….and also she wanted to smoke so badly because she was just so stressed and…

And she was fine. Everything was fine.

"….no. I can't. If I talk about it then I'll get mad at you." Said Sho. He wished that she would just get back to her dolls or her books or something. He didn't want to talk to her. He didn't want to talk to anybody. He was glad that dad was gone. If dad had been home then Sho…he would have…he didn't know. He couldn't fight dad. He was still too little. When he got older…but he was not older. He was nine. He was nine and he was little and also he was a jerk and a bad little brother….

So he was going to spend the rest of his life in the bathroom.

"But you're already mad at me." Said Mob. It felt like he was always mad at her. Like he went to bed mad at her and he woke up mad at her and he was just…mad. All the time. Sort of like how dad was always a little bit mad, or at least annoyed, at everything all around him even though he really didn't have to be.

"Yeah, well, I don't want to be any more mad at you, ok? I'm just…I'm tired." Said Sho

"If you're tired then I can get you some pajamas and run your bath and then you can go to bed. I mean it's still pretty early but you got up super early so I guess it all evens out." Said Mob. He was tired. She knew what to do when he was tired. She'd make his dinner, or just ask an Awakened to bring back food, for him while he was in the tub and then he would eat and then she'd put him to bed and then…and then he would feel better. Because she had done her job. She had to do her job. She had to do right by someone…because she had done something so wrong…but she couldn't think about this now. She had to be a good big sister to Sho. That meant that she couldn't get all caught up in her own problems. That was not how it worked.

"No. I'm not sleepy tired I'm just…tired." Said Sho

"Of what? Whatever it is I can help." Said Mob

"You can't help with this so don't try. Just shut up and go away." said Sho

"But little brother-" said Mob

"No. Shigeko, leave me alone." Said Sho

"But…but I can't. I have to take care of you. I love you." Said Mob

"I know that you love me." Said Sho. Why did she always have to say it? Did she think that he forgot? Well he hadn't. He knew that she loved him…and he liked her. He just didn't like her very much right then. She had gotten someone he cared about beaten up just because she liked him. She hadn't even said sorry. She had just been laying down in her bed with her dolls and stuff when he came home…and it had just made him so mad how she could have just been so…so normal…

So he went to the bathroom.

And he locked himself in. He had to. If he hadn't locked himself in the bathroom then he would have hit her or something. He had hit her before, and he knew that it was ok so long as he said sorry, but he just…he didn't want to. He didn't want to be that person. He didn't want to hit her again and again and again until she started breathing funny….until she started bleeding. He didn't want to do that to her…so he just…he had to get away from her.

And then she followed him. Because she loved him.

"Then will you come out? Little brother? I can…we can play something you like. Would you like that? Like one of your fighting games or you can use me for target practice or we can build a fort or have dinner on the ceiling or-" said Mob. She went through every single fun time that they had ever had together. Sho should not have been upset. Sho should have been happy. He was the little brother and he should have been happy.

"What I would like, Shigeko, is to be able to have some privacy in the bathroom!" said Sho. He kicked the door a few times. He shouldn't have done that because if he broke the door down then they wouldn't be able to go to the bathroom anymore. Well he would be fine because he could just pee in the yard but she'd be in trouble because she was a girl. Also he shouldn't have been kicking anything. Mom would have been mad at him if she had been there.

But she wasn't.

Kicking the door made him feel better. Better he kick the door than her. He wanted, part of him wanted, to kick her. To show her what had happened because of her and her…her-ness. What had happened because dad figured out that she liked Shimazaki…and why did she have to like him? He was Sho's friend! She already had a friend! Also now he had to beat Shimazaki up at some point for liking his sister…and he didn't want to do that either!

He wished that he had been born an only child.

"But you aren't going to the bathroom or taking a bath or a shower or even doing steam art….and also please don't kick down the bathroom door. We need a bathroom door for privacy." Said Mob

"I'll do whatever I want. You always do whatever you want so why can't I do whatever I want?" asked Sho

"Sho…I can't do whatever I want. There are things that I want that…that I can't have. I know you think that because dad promoted me I can do anything that I feel like-" said Mob. She had to stay calm…even though she was very tired of Sho thinking that. She had so many things in this world that she wanted to do but she couldn't. She couldn't…she couldn't ever take a break. She was in charge all the time and she never…not for long…got a break. Even when he wasn't taking care of Sho…she was. She was always thinking of him. She was always thinking of what she needed to do for him. She couldn't go to school, either, or any of the other things that the other kids could. She couldn't see Baby Mukai ever again, either, even though she missed her more than anything…

There were a lot of things that she wanted to do…but she couldn't.

"Then why do you? Why do you just do…anything! It's like you just do things and you just…you don't think about…about anything!" said Sho. He was trying not to yell. He was trying not to be a bad little brother…but he just…he couldn't help it.

"Little brother-" said Mob

"It's like you don't even care about what you did!" said Sho

"I don't even-" said Mob

"Like you don't even care about what you did and you-you-you-" said Sho. He was sitting on the ground. He was all curled up in himself, now, and he just…he wanted to be alone…and she wouldn't leave him alone…and he just…he didn't know what to do…and he just…he wanted something to happen…but he didn't know what….

"I don't even know what I did! Little brother, I have no idea what you're mad at me about and-and-and I am so sorry that I yelled at you. That was wrong of me. That was the worst thing that I…that I could do to you….and I'm so sorry." said Mob. She was a bad person. She was the worst. She had…she didn't know where that had come from. She was such a bad big sister…

"You got Shimazaki beat up because you like him. Dad found out and then he beat him up…like he does to traitors…but he didn't die…but he was so hurt….and it's all your fault." Said Sho. He pressed his head against the tile of the bathroom floor. It was cold. It helped him cool down. His face got red when he got mad. He wasn't looking at himself, he couldn't look at himself, but he knew that he must have been so red….

He was very mad.

And he didn't want to talk about this. He knew that it was over. He had seen Fukuda put Shimazaki back together. It hadn't taken very long at all and…and right afterwards they had been right back to having fun but…but it was so hard to just…just forget even though it was over. He had been all weird and mad and sad the whole day. Fukuda couldn't even help. They had played together, too, and stuff but…but Sho had still been so sad…and mad…

Like now. Now he was still all mad and sad….and Shigeko was not helping.

"I…I didn't…I never meant for him to get hurt. I just….I'm sorry that dad did that and…and I never meant for him to get hurt and…and…and I don't even like him like that! And I don't even know why everyone thinks that I do! He's so annoying! He can be nice but he's annoying-" said Mob. She held her braids down and controlled her breathing and had to stay calm because….because she had to be….she had to be the big sister…the good big sister…and the mom. She had to be the mom, too, and mom never got mad at them like this….

"Don't lie. He's cool and you know it. That's why you like him and that's why dad had to beat him up-" said Sho

"We're just friends. Ok? I don't like him like that. I swear." Said Mob

"Yes you do. If you don't like him like that then he got beat up for nothing." Said Sho. Fukuda told him that it was good that he was so worried about Shimazaki. It was a good thing to worry about other people but also he had to be able to tell when someone brought it on themselves. Sometimes kids liked adults, it happened, but the adult was never supposed to return the kid's feelings. That wasn't right. Big sis could like whoever she liked, Fukuda that liking people was a part of getting older and there was nothing wrong with it in and of itself, but when you liked someone you also had to think about if it was a good idea to have those feelings. They happened and sometimes they went away and sometimes they didn't but you needed know if those feelings were ok or not.

So it had been wrong of Shimazaki to like Shigeko but it had been even worse of Shigeko to like him.

"Sho…I'm sorry that he got beat up and…and I'm sorry that everyone thinks that I like him…but I don't control our dad. I don't control what he does or who he does it do. I never once asked him to ever beat someone up for me and I never will. Dad…I think that he just…doesn't know what to do when he doesn't like something…so he just takes everything out on people. Ok? Dad…he is the way he is…and I am sorry that people think that I like Shimazaki but-" said Mob. She was trying to sound like mom. Mom would have been nice and just stuck to what happened and told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Mob knew that she had her part to play in what happened but she did not control dad. Dad was dad and he did whatever he wanted.

"See? You're lying. You have no reason not to like him. He's really cool and smart and funny and he's a powerful esper and he's really strong and he can eat sixteen cups of pudding in one sitting and he likes dogs and he's really good a building forts and he's always thinking of something fun to do and he's always got the best ideas and he smells really nice and his jacket is cool and-" said Sho

"Sho…none of that stuff matters to me. I don't like him like that because….because I just…those things aren't what I look for…and I just need you to believe me when I say that I don't like him like that and I don't know why everyone thinks that I do." Said Mob

"Because he was always talking to you and touching you and being around you. Not everyone in the whole world is as clueless as you, Shigeko." Said Sho. He knew that he has just said something very mean but…but it was true. She liked him and everyone could tell. Why else would he have been acting like that if she hadn't liked him? She could have told him to stop and to go away at any time but she didn't. So she must have liked him. Fukuda said that guys acted like that when they liked girls and it was called flirting and also that grownups were not supposed to do that sort of thing with kids. If the girl liked you she either flirted back or told you to go away. That was what adults did instead of what kids did, which was mostly just girls chasing you around and kissing you, which seemed a lot more straightforward but Sho wasn't about to spend his time trying to figure out all of this stupid love stuff.

"But…that's stuff that he did to me. He was just doing it because he likes to be annoying." Said Mob. Sho's logic made no sense at all. She had never asked him to do any of that. In fact she had asked him to stop so many times...she didn't get how this was her fault…but it was. When you did something wrong you were supposed to say sorry…

Even when you had no idea at all what it was that you have even done.

"No, he was doing that with you because you like him. You like him and then dad had to beat him up and it's all your fault and that's why I'm so mad at you and that's why I can't come out of the bathroom. I'm scared of myself…I'm scared that if I come out of the bathroom then I'll end up beating you up really bad…bad enough for there to be blood…and I don't want to do that…so I need you to stay away from me." Said Sho. He felt like he was going to cry. Even after everything she had done…she was still his big sister…and he still loved her…but he really did not like her right then. She was lying to him and it was like…like she didn't even care. That was the worst part…or maybe the worst part was that he was such a bad person that he…he wanted…to beat her up…even though it was wrong…

He was glad that mom was gone. If she had been there then she would have hated him and run away all over again.

No wonder she had run away. With a kid like him who would have stayed? Even dad was tired of him, that was why he kept on telling him to go and help Fukuda, and now big sis would be sick of him too. He wanted her to go but he wanted her to stay, too. He wanted…he sat up and pulled his arms around himself. He wanted a hug…but not from her. From mom…but he didn't deserve it. He was a bad son and a bad person and even…even dad thought so. That was why he had been sent to help Fukuda so much lately and that was why he was going on the Seasoning City mission, too.

Even his own dad didn't want him anymore…he was that bad of a person.

"Sho….do you really want me to leave you alone? Do you…do you really want me to go away? B-because….I can stay here. Even if you're being mean and saying things that I don't agree with and making me feel bad…I still want to be with you. I…I love you the most out of anyone else in the whole world and I just…it hurt me so much when you're sad like this…and I love you." Said Mob. She was glad that dad wasn't there to see her cry. She was crying and…she thought that she could hear him crying, too, and she wished that she could have just been there with him so they could have cried together….because no matter how hurt her feelings were she would always love him…

And no matter what crazy stuff he was saying, too, she would always love him.

When you had a little brother you loved him no matter what…and there had been a lot of 'what' for their whole lives…but there was nothing, not even crazy accusations, that would keep her from her loving her little brother. When you were a family you loved each other no matter what. Mom had said that.

"Yeah. Just….go away. Go away before I do something that…that I don't want to do." Said Sho. Maybe it was just better to be away from her. She had done something wrong but…but he didn't want to hurt her. Mom would not have wanted that. Mom was his and Dad was hers. That was how they had divided up the family…..even though he didn't even have a mom anymore….and now dad was sending him on an away mission…and he had no idea if dad would be there when he came back…and he couldn't stop his friend from getting hurt and….

And Sho just wanted to be alone.

"Ok…I can leave you alone, little brother, if that's what you want….I love you." Said Mob. She loved him so much and that was why she was going to leave him alone. She had been selfish in trying to get him to come out. She was selfish in wanting someone to be with her. People were busy and had things to do and ways to feel and she…she had to just…just be on her own….and she had to say sorry to Shimazaki for making dad beat him up…and then she had to figure out how to make Sho happy…and she had to….she still had to make sure that they got some kind of dinner and also she had to lay out pajamas for Sho and also daytime clothes for him to wear tomorrow…and also she had to figure out how she was going to go to the bathroom because that was their only bathroom…and she also had her own bath to take…and she just….she had to talk to dad about never beating someone up for her again…even though she did not tell dad what to do…

She had a lot to do.

But she was going to do it. She had no choice. She was the only one who could do all of this. She was the only one who could take care of Sho and she was the only one who could own up to her own mistakes and she was the only one who could talk to dad….even though she was not in charge of him…and she just…she was the only one….she was the only one and she was so tired….but that was ok. She was ok

Everything was ok…it really was.


	173. Dinner With Fukuda

The best thing to do was to stay far away from big sis.

This was not an easy thing to do when they lived in the same house and slept in the same room and had to sit at the same table. Sho made it work, though, because he had to. He had no choice. He had been made at her, madder than he had ever been in his entire life, and he had been ready to do the worst thing that he ever could have done. It was one thing to fight with someone but he hadn't wanted to fight her. Sometimes he felt so mad at her that he had to pull her hair or kick her or pinch her or something like that but those things…they were not nearly as bad as what he had thought of doing to her the other day….

He had wanted to hurt her.

To hurt her for real. To hurt her like dad hurt people. That was what dad did to people, he hurt them, and he made them bleed. That was what he had wanted to do to his own big sister. That was what he would have done to his own big sister if he had opened the door. But he hadn't. He had stayed in the bathroom for the whole night to make sure that he didn't hurt her. He had stayed in there even when she'd knocked on the door because she had to pee and brush her teeth and stuff. He knew that he should have come out, they only had the one bathroom after all, but he couldn't. Not until the mad feelings, the scary ones, went away. Also her record for holding it was longer than his so she had ended up being just fine.

Everything had ended up being just fine.

Dad woke up and dragged him out of the bathroom, because it was not his personal bathroom and there were other people in the family besides him, and then he had just spent the whole day avoiding big sis. She had spent the day with dad in his office and he had spent the day with Fukuda in his office. He had wanted to spend the day with Shimazaki but he had to take a personal day because Fukuda had messed up his tattoos while he was healing him and he had to get them all retouched and redone. The whole thing took a very long time because of the colors and details and stuff. Sho had wanted to come with but he had to spend the day with Fukuda.

Because Fukuda had asked after him, specifically.

Fukuda said that he was a good helper. Fukuda said that things got done a lot faster when he was around. Fukuda said that it was nice to have someone he could have lunch with. Fukuda had been so nice to him…even though he shouldn't have been. Sho had wanted to make his own big sis bleed, wanted to hit her that hard, and he didn't deserve Fukuda being nice to him. That was why dad sent him away, too, because dad was ashamed of him. He had always been ashamed of him, Sho wasn't dumb he knew that big sis was dad's favorite, but now…now he knew that it was ok. The way dad felt about him.

Sho was ashamed of himself, too.

He was so ashamed of himself that he could barely eat his dinner. It was Japanese food, because they were in Japan, even though what really wanted was no food at all…and if he had to have food he would have made himself a jellybean sandwich…but instead he had to have a real dinner. They were with dad so they had to eat real food. Rice and fish and pickles and salad and also omelets because they were dad's favorite food.

With lots of ketchup.

That was something that people made fun of dad about. Well mostly Shimazaki. He said that dad smelled of ketchup all the time. He said that dad thought that ketchup was a food group. He said that dad was like a vegetarian vampire. He said a lot of funny things. Even after he had been healed up, when he should have been all sad and scared and stuff, he had been right back to saying funny things like…like he was fine. Even though things weren't fine and dad had beaten him up so bad…but everyone acted like things were fine. Fukuda acted like things were fine and Shimazaki acted like things were fine and even dad, the guy who had beaten Shimazaki up in the first place, acted like things were fine. He even said that things were fine. He said that Shimazaki had learned his lesson and now things could go back to normal.

Sho was having trouble getting back to normal.

Even now things were not normal. He was sitting at the table eating dinner with his family but things were not normal. He kept on looking at dad. He was…scared…even though he knew that dad would never punish him that badly. That was the punishment for liking big sis and Sho, of course, was not going to like his own sister like that. That was wrong, very wrong, even more wrong than Shimazaki liking someone as boring as her. Sho would never be on the other side of that punishment…even if he knew that dad was capable of doing that to people who were on his side….

"Daughter. Don't reach across the table. It's rude." Said Dad. Sho jumped, a little, when he started talking. Dinner had been silent. There was nothing to say. Sho didn't know what he was supposed to say. He was…he was still mad at big sis…and he was still mad at dad…but the person that he was most mad at was himself.

"Pass the soy sauce, please." Said big sis. She was sitting across from him at the table. They were having dinner now. He had moved his chair far from hers so that he couldn't hurt her. She was even too far away for him to kick her under the table. Not that he wanted to. She hadn't done anything to make him upset lately…well she had gotten Shimazaki beat up because she liked him….but he was trying not to think about that.

"Here." Said Sho. He passed the soy sauce with his powers. He didn't want to get close enough to her that he might hit her…because that was wrong. He didn't know where this had come from, how he was always two steps away from hitting her or someone else but mostly her, but he did know that he didn't like it.

"Do it by hand next time." Said dad. He was scrolling through his phone. He didn't even look up. Sho tried not to look at him. He wasn't usually like this around dad, not unless he had just been punished, but being like this was better than being mad…even though he was kind of mad. Mad enough to take his plate and smash it into dad's head and-

"I don't mind." Said big sis. He put his hands behind his back and pressed his back against his chair. He could have used his powers to…but he wouldn't. He was not going to be that sort of person…more so than he already was. He was…he had been such a bad person…and now…and now he just…he just wanted to be alone where he couldn't hurt anyone.

"Yes you do." Said dad. He still wasn't looking. He never looked at them…until he did. Until he looked at you and his eyes got all narrow and small and his aura got all mad and he just….Sho wanted to close his eyes, he wanted to cover his eyes, even though he was seeing what happened in his brain and not with his eyes.

"But I…yes dad." Said big sis. He loved her and he hated her. He wanted to hug her and he wanted to push her away. He wanted….he wanted a lot of things. It was like there were two different Sho's inside of him. One was good and the other was bad. The bad Sho always tried to take over…even now. Who was dad to tell them how they felt? How could he just-

Stop it.

Sho stabbed his fish with his chopsticks. He kept one hand behind his back and stabbed his fish with the other. This helped. He hated that this helped but it did help. He hated how he felt, how he was, and who he was. He wanted to be better, he wished that he could have been better, but he was not better. He was terrible. He was the worst. He was the worst little brother and the worst son….he was so bad that dad was even sending him away on the Seasoning City mission….and dad had never sent him away before…

"Sho, it's already dead." Said big sis. He knew that it was already dead. He had eyes. He could see that this piece of fish was dead and now he was supposed to eat it even though it wasn't cooked and he knew that people ate raw fish but mom had never fed them raw fish, she always fried it and stuff, but he was supposed to like raw fish but he liked mom's fish and he wanted mom and big sis was not mom and mom was gone and now dad wanted him gone and he should have been gone and-

"Chopsticks are not a stabbing implement. Eat properly or don't eat at all. The decision is your own." Said dad. Sho felt his chopsticks get yanked out of his hand. They laid themselves down across his plate. Dad was looking at him now. Big sis was looking at him now…and it was too many people looking at him.

He didn't want people to be looking at him like that.

"I'm going to go eat dinner with Fukuda." Said Sho. He didn't wait. He just picked up his plate and took it with him. That was all that he could do. At least Fukuda still wanted him around and at least he couldn't hurt Fukuda, not really, because he healed fast. He didn't want to sit there with dad on one side of him and big sis on the other and all of them looking at him and-

-and he left.

He slipped his shoes on and walked down to Fukuda's house. He didn't like far away. Dad had made this neighborhood for Claw members. This was different than the houses in the middle of nowhere they stayed at. This was Tokyo and there were normal people around…and they made Sho feel weird…so he walked faster. Fukuda didn't live far, dad didn't let him, so the walk wasn't very long at all. He hadn't even dropped his plate or anything.

So it was a good walk.

He used his powers to let himself in. Fukuda said that Sho could let himself in at any time of the day or night. He said that his door was always opened for Sho. It was locked for everyone else, Fukuda said that most of Claw was made up of dumb and annoying people, but it was opened for Sho. So that was why he let himself in, slipped off his shoes, and then sat down on at Fukuda's table like he owned the place…which he sort of did since dad owned all of these houses. He sat down and just…sat. He wasn't hungry but he knew that he had to eat or he'd die of starvation. He knew that he had to eat since he had come all the way here and if he didn't eat then he was just barging in for no reason at all. That would have been weird and then Fukuda would have thought that he was weird and then he would have wanted Sho gone too and-

"Hey. I thought I felt you coming." Said Fukuda as he came into the kitchen. His hair was wet and he was wearing pajamas. Sho saw a dirty plate and cup in the sink. Fukuda must have just finished dinner…and now he felt so out of place…and he wanted to go…but he wanted to stay, too.

"Can I eat dinner here?" asked Sho since, well, what else was he going to say?

"Sure. In fact I think I'll join you. That is if you don't mind me having dessert." Said Fukuda

"I don't mind." Said Sho. Fukuda got a bowl from the cabinet and then some ice cream from the fridge. Vanilla. The most boring of all flavors. Not even any toppings. Ick.

"What's that look?" asked Fukuda as he sat down.

"You're eating plain vanilla ice cream with no topping. It's so gross." Said Sho sticking his tongue out.

"How can plain vanilla be gross? It's the simplest of all flavors." Said Fukuda

"Because it's so plain. You aren't putting any chocolate or caramel or anything on it. Not even sprinkles." Said Sho

"You're right, this could use some sprinkles." Said Fukuda. He went over to the cabinet and got out a thing of sprinkles. Sho didn't know why he cared but he did. Fukuda had listened to him and talked to him and didn't make him feel dumb or try to boss him around or tell him that he was wrong and ridiculous and all of that other stuff.

It was nice.

"So…your dad picked dinner again?" asked Fukuda motioning to Sho's plate of food. Sho nodded. This was a dad meal. Fish and rice and pickles and salad and an omelet with ketchup. Dad food. Sho would have rather had jellybeans and fried chicken, or cheese sticks and fried tofu, or cereal and caramel sauce.

"Yeah. Well he and big sis did. He asks her what she wants for dinner and then she just says that she'll eat whatever he wants and then that's how they decide." Said Sho. Nobody ever asked him. Well big sis did when dad wasn't around but when dad was around it was like he didn't even matter.

"I'm sorry that they didn't include you." Said Fukuda

"It's fine. I know how things are." Said Sho

"How are they?" asked Fukuda. Sho sighed. How could he not know? He had known dad since they were kids, Fukuda had said, and he knew how dad was. How dad only liked people who were like him. Sho didn't know why he'd even been born. Dad had already gotten big sis. He didn't need another kid…well he needed a boy. That was all. If big sis had been born a boy then dad wouldn't have had him at all. That was the only reason why he had even been born, because she was a girl, and if he had been born a girl then dad would have gotten rid of him a long time ago…or like how he was trying to do now…because he had picked Sho to go on the Seasoning City trip…

All alone. Without the family.

"Fine. Normal. Everything is normal." Said Sho. Things were normal. He was normally a jerk so that was normal and big sis was normally bossy so that was normal and dad was normally mean so that was normal too. Everything in his life was normal, the most normal, plain vanilla ice cream normal.

"I mean…how have things been with you. You've been pretty shook up since what happened." Said Fukuda

"I'm fine. I'm the most fine. I'm normal. I'm a jerk and I've always been a jerk and I always will be a jerk so I'm normal." Said Sho. He took his chopsticks and stabbed his fish. He stabbed and stabbed and stabbed as he spoke. He stabbed until his fish totally fell apart and then all that was happening was him scratching up his plate.

His chopsticks were taken from his hand.

He took his hands and put them behind his back. What had he been doing? He had been…been stabbing his fish…but it was dead so it didn't matter…but he had been a jerk. He had even been a jerk to his own dinner! And now Fukuda was getting up and now he was going to leave Sho all alone and maybe he should have been all alone and maybe everyone in the world would have been better off without him and-

A fork was put in his hand.

"Chopsticks aren't for stabbing. Try this, it'll work better." Said Fukuda. Sho took his other hand from behind his back and wiped his eyes. Then he put it behind his back and went back to stabbing. He stabbed his salad and his rice and his pickles and his salad and his plate and then food got everywhere but Fukuda didn't try to stop him so he just kept on stabbing and stabbing and stabbing until his plate broke in half.

Fukuda didn't say anything.

He just took the two halve of his plate and put them in the trash. Then he got some cleaner, a roll of paper towels, and he cleaned up the table. Sho watched him. He felt….better. Sort of tired, sort of….foggy….but not mad anymore. Still sad. Still upset with himself for being a jerk but not….but not as mad…

But he had still been acting like a jerk.

"Well somebody doesn't like fish." said Fukuda with a laugh. He just…laughed…like it was nothing. Even though Sho had wasted food and broken a plate and lost control of his feelings. Fukuda just laughed like…like the whole thing was nothing….

"It…it's not that I don't like fish it's that….Fukuda? Do you…do you like yourself?" asked Sho. Fukuda was someone how could talk to about anything. He had said so. Fukuda said that he would be there for Sho no matter what just like he had been there for mom no matter what. He and mom had been best friends, Sho remembered, and that…that was sort of like…like having a piece of mom there with him. Kind of like how he had Mukai's little baby sock tucked away with his stuff for when wanted to feel like he was near her. He missed mom so much….and Fukuda had said that it was ok to miss his mom. To still love his mom. Fukuda missed mom too, he had said, and he still thought about her all the time, too. He didn't think that she was a traitor. Sho…didn't know what to think.

About mom and about how long it took for Fukuda to answer the question.

Sho watched him as he cleaned the rice and stuff up off the floor. That might have been what had been making him take so long to answer. His aura was calm and his face was….not so calm…but he wasn't mad at Sho or anything. Fukuda could never be mad at him. He swore on his life that there was nothing in this world that Sho could do to ever make him upset.

He eventually finished cleaning up the floor.

"Sho….that's a very complicated question. I like…some aspects of myself but not others." Said Fukuda slowly. He sat back down and picked at his ice cream. It was starting to melt. Sho wondered why he didn't just eat it already. It felt weird sitting at a table with nobody eating anything. Sho wanted to tell him to eat. He wanted to tell him to eat or just…just say something….because there was a lot of quiet then…and Sho didn't like it and he didn't know what to do with it.

"Do you ever….do you ever think about doing things that are….bad?" asked Sho. He wasn't big sis. He knew that it was his turn to talk. He knew that he need to talk so he talked. He got right to it. What he wanted to know. Fukuda wasn't dad. He could talk to Fukuda and not have to worry about getting hit. Fukuda was a lot nicer than dad.

He wished that Fukuda had been his dad.

"I've done a lot of things that I'm not so proud of in my life but…but that's normal. We all have regrets." Said Fukuda slowly. He looked down at his ice cream as he said that. Sho wondered if he was going to put it back in the freezer. It was soft serve, now, but it would turn to soup very soon.

"It's not something that I did that's….that's making me want to stab things. It's…I was thinking about…about doing something very bad and…and I had to hide in the bathroom to stop myself. I had to hide in the bathroom because if I didn't then I was going to do it and I don't want….I don't want to be that kind of person." Said Sho

"Sho….whatever you were going to do couldn't be that bad-" said Fukuda

"I wanted to beat big sis up so bad that she bled….like dad did to Shimazaki…or like he does to traitors. I wanted to do that so bad because….because she made him get beat up and-" said Sho

"Sho. No. First of all he had his part to play in all of that. She may have had feelings for him but he was wrong to return them and he was wrong to let your father know that he had those feelings for her and, yes, your father….he was and was not wrong in what he did….but Shimazaki largely brought it on himself. Your sister….she should not have had feelings for him but-" said Fukuda

"But she said that she didn't! She lied to me! She told me that she never liked him in the first place even though I knew that she did! She told me that she thinks that he's annoying and stuff and that she never wanted him to talk to her and touch her and stuff but she never made him stop! Like she expects me to believe that? He's the coolest guy ever! He's good at making forts and thinking up games and pranks and he's good at fighting and he's super strong, too, even without his powers and he has a bunch of cool tattoos and his powers are cool too! Like he can-" said Sho. He stood up in his chair and Fukuda put a hand on his shoulder. Sho felt himself getting red and he sat down. Right. He had gotten way too excited.

"Sho…she shouldn't have lied to you like that. When people make mistakes then the best thing to do is to own up to them and deal with the consequences. She's old enough to take responsibility for her actions. I agree with you. She should not have been telling lies like that." Said Fukuda. He was looking at Sho now. The ice cream in front of him was becoming the softest serve that Sho had ever seen. Some of the sprinkles were starting to float. Fukuda didn't mind.

He thought that what Sho had to say was more important than ice cream.

"Yeah, she shouldn't have lied. She likes him and she should just admit it….and he likes her too…and it sucks but at least he admitted it….even if I don't know why he likes her…but at least I didn't have to beat him up…because I didn't really want to. I wanted to beat her up but…but I didn't want to beat him up. Even though he likes my sister and that's what you're supposed to do when a guy likes your sister. You're supposed to beat him up and stuff. Even though I have no idea why he would like someone as boring as her. She can't even build a decent couch fort." Said Sho. Fukuda was looking at him, still, but now there was something else to it…something that Sho had never seen before.

"Sho….how do you feel about him?" asked Fukuda. That was a weird question. Shimazaki was awesome and Sho wanted to be his best friend. He had said so before.

"I already told you. He'd the coolest guy ever and I want us to best friends. I want us to hang out all the time and have fun all the time and be best friends and stuff. You know that." Said Sho. Was Fukuda getting forgetful? His birthday had just passed after all. Sho had told him and told him and told him how awesome Shimazaki was. Also Fukuda could see it for himself.

"You told me that you wanted to be his best friend but…how does he make you feel?" said Fukuda. Sho blinked.

"I don't get it." Said Sho. He felt like he wanted to be Shimazaki's best friend. What else was there to it? He wanted to be his friend so he tried to be his friend but then he got all nervous because if he said or did anything dumb then Shimazaki wouldn't want to be his friend anymore. It was simple.

"Just how do you feel when you're near him? That's all." said Fukuda

"That's a weird question. I feel the way I always have when I want to be best friends with someone. I feel all nervous and I don't know what to say because if I mess up then he won't want to be best friends with me anymore. I get all hot and full of energy and I try to do stuff so he thinks that I'm cool and stuff and he wants to hang out with me and be best friends. How else are you supposed to feel when you want to be best friends with someone? You know what it's like. You and mom used to be best friends." Said Sho

"Your mother and I…it was different between your mother and I." said Fukuda. He looked away from Sho and started to eat his ice cream now. It had turned into sprinkles soup but maybe that was the way he liked it. Dad ate weird stuff, too. He put ketchup on everything. He put it on his tempura and his omelets and his fries and his salad and also he dipped his bread in it, sometimes, as a midnight snack…and Sho had thought for the longest time that he had dreamt that until he caught him doing it again last week.

"Yeah, that makes sense. She's a girl and all…and also you knew dad first….and also don't tell dad I was talking about mom. I guess that you wanted to be best friends with dad, then, because you knew him since you guys were kids and stuff…not that I even know what you wanted to be best friends with him. He's so bossy. Your best friend shouldn't be bossy. He should know how to have fun and have good ideas but he should never boss you around. Shimazaki never bosses me around. He even says that some of my ideas are good, like when we switched the salt and the sugar in the cafeteria, or when we moved all of those wet floor signs-" said Sho

"Sho….your father and I have a very complicated relationship…and also you should not have done that with the wet floor signs. You…you're just a kid and you didn't think it through but a lot of people got hurt that day." Said Fukuda

"Oh….I'm sorry. I didn't think of all the extra work that would have made for you. I just thought that it would be funny to watch people fall down and Shimazaki agreed. He said that I had great ideas." Said Sho. Shimazaki had said that and then he'd patted him on the head…and now Sho was remembering that…and his face was all red now…and he didn't even know why. What did he have to be nervous about? It was just a memory.

"It's not about the work just…it's dangerous and don't ever do that again. He was wrong to encourage you to do that, alright?" said Fukuda

"Alright….we won't do stuff like that anymore….but I know what you're going to say next. You're going to try and tell me not to be friends with him just like dad told me not to be friends with him. He's not a bad influence like dad said. We have a lot of fun together. He's….he's really cool." Said Sho. He was playing with his shirt, now, because he needed to do something with his hands. His powers were making the table rise up a little bit off the ground…and he didn't get it. He almost never lost control of his powers when he was mad…but now he wasn't mad. He was…nervous. Nervous and happy at the same time…which was a lot better than being sad and mad. He knew talking to Fukuda would make him feel better.

"Ok, ok, I get it. You think that he's cool and you want to be…best friends…with him. Do you want to be…best friends…with anyone else?" asked Fukuda

"No. Just him. Shibata's nice too but he's always picking me up and telling me that I'm adorable and stuff like I'm a baby or something. I mean he's good at throwing me in the air and he can push me so hard on the swings that I go over the bar but I don't want to be best friends with him. Just Shimazaki." Said Sho

"It must have been hard for you, then, knowing that the person you want to be best friends with liked your sister in that way." said Fukuda. Sho felt his heart sink down into his feet. Right. That. He had almost been able to forget about that…but now he remembered…and it had been hard. What did he see in her? He was fun and she wasn't.

"I don't want to talk about it…but it was hard. It…it hurt kind of…that he would like her back. She's so boring. She doesn't know how to do fun stuff…and she lied to me, too, which she shouldn't do because we're brother and sister and we shouldn't lie to each other. She just….lied and said that she didn't like him. I know that she did. She has every reason to. He's the coolest guy ever…and I guess that because she was lying to me…and also because she had gotten him beaten up…it just made me so mad and I…I didn't even do anything. I didn't hit her but…but I still feel worse than I have ever felt in my life…because I wanted to beat her up so bad…." Said Sho. Fukuda put a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly he was covered in a green aura. He wasn't hurt, his body wasn't, but Fukuda still helped him feel so much better….

"That sounds pretty hard. The whole things sounds like it was pretty hard for you. Seeing someone who you care so strongly about getting hurt. Knowing that…knowing how strongly that person felt for your sister…and knowing how strongly you felt about them. That's a lot of feelings to have at once. Sho, you shouldn't hit people, and you should always apologize if you do, but you also should never hit someone as hard as your father does…or as many times…or in the same way. Your mother would not have wanted that." Said Fukuda

"Yeah, I know that mom wouldn't have wanted me to….that's why I hid in the bathroom! I know that she would hate me if she saw me now and-" said Sho. He wanted to hit Fukuda, and he did, but only once. Fukuda caught his arm and looked….mad?

Oh no….

"No. I never want you to say that again. Your mother loved you. She loved you then and she loves you now. She loves you and…and even if you had beaten Shigeko as badly as your father beats people, to within an inch of her life, your mother would not have hated you. She loves you more than anything else in the world. Even though she's far away she loves you…and even if she left you she loves you…." Said Fukuda. Sho pulled his arm away. He held his hands behind his back. He had to.

"If she loves me so much then where is she!? Why did she leave me!?" shouted Sho. He wished that he had been sitting on his legs, too, because he started to kick and…and he banging his leg against Fukuda's a few times…but then that was all of it, all that had happened…..because he stopped.

Mom would not have wanted him to hurt Fukuda like that.

"Sho…stop it. Just…your mother left because….because she had no choice. She did what she thought was best. She knew that she could not have been any mother to you if she had stayed-" said Fukuda

"Well she's no mom to me being gone, too." Said Sho…though he regretted it the instant he said it. Fukuda looked like he had been hit in the face.

"Your mother…she wanted to take you with her but…but she didn't know how to take care of you and…and she thought that you would have been better off being raised by your father. Because he's an esper and because…because she isn't. She had no idea how she was going to take care of you and…and that's why she left you." Said Fukuda

"Fukuda…did mom tell you that she was going to leave?" asked Sho. No. Fukuda…he could not have known. If he had known then he would have stopped her. Then he would have told her what a bad idea that was. That was what best friends did, they told you when you had a bad idea, like how Shimazaki told him that it would have been a bad idea to soap the staircase even though people falling down the stairs would have been funny. They had wanted to laugh at people, not kill them, he said. He told Sho that he had a bad idea just like Fukuda should have told mom that leaving would have been a bad idea.

"Your mother…she…she never told me that she was planning on leaving but…but I know her and…and I can speak for the…the way that she would think. I know her and….and I know that she loves you." Said Fukuda. Sho let out a long breath. That…that made him feel better and also not better. Mom…mom hadn't told him that she was planning on leaving. That was good…but she also hadn't said with her own mouth in her own words that she loved him…

But Fukuda knew mom. He knew how she felt.

"Ok." Said Sho after a while because, well, he had nothing else to say to that. Ok.

"I know you, too. I know how hard it's been on you. I know that out of everyone else in your family your mother leaving…it hurt you the hardest. She really loved you and you loved her and…and I know how hard these past few years have been on you. I know how hard they've been and…and I am truly sorry." said Fukuda

"…yeah. It is…hard. It's been hard." Said Sho. He didn't know why he suddenly felt the corners of his eyes prickling. It was pretty hard. The whole thing was pretty hard. He knew it and…and he didn't need someone else to tell him things that he already knew.

"You've been very brave, all of these years, and I…I'm proud of you. Of the person you've become. There are some things about yourself that I know that you're not happy with, I know that you're upset about how you…you feel about your sister…how you felt about her the other day….but I also know that you're a good person. You didn't hit her. Wanting to do something and doing it…those are different things. You didn't cross that line, you saw the line and you didn't cross it, and I am so proud of you-" said Fukuda. He would have said more, probably, but Sho had something to say. It just came out. He couldn't help it. He felt it and he just had to say it.

"I wish you were my dad." Said Sho. Fukuda closed his eyes and shook his head. Sho knew that he shouldn't have said that, how dad would have broken him into a million pieces if he heard Sho talking like that, but that was how he felt. In his whole nine and a half years of life dad had never once said anything so nice to him.

"Sho, no. You shouldn't say things like that. You have a dad and he loves you…in his own way…" Fukuda

"I don't want him to love me in his own way. I want him to love me in the way you love me. I don't even think that he loves me. He's never nice to me, not like you are, and…and he doesn't even want me around. That's why…that's why he's sending me on the Seasoning City mission. He's going to send me away and then he's going to leave and then when I come back I'll be living here all alone and working with the mission squad and-" said Sho

"Sho. No. You have got it so wrong…not to be mean but you are so wrong." Said Fukuda

"Then why is he sending me away?" asked Sho. He knew dad. He wasn't clueless like big sis. He knew dad and he knew that dad was going to send him away so he could get rid of him permanently. Then it would just be him and big sis like he had always wanted.

"Sho…I asked for you to be included. I told your dad that it would be best if you came with." Said Fukuda. Sho…was confused. Why? He had never gone on any missions with Fukuda before…or anyone. Dad sent other people on missions…and also he had no idea what he was supposed to even do….because he had never been on a mission before!

But Fukuda had been the one to tell dad to bring him….

"I don't get it. Why? I've never been on a mission before. I'm not even a part of Claw, not really, because I don't have a rank or-" said Sho

"Sho, I asked him to bring you with because…because I thought that you would have a good time. You don't have to do anything. Me and the others are just going to see what's making the new Awakened so…well…not smart. You just…have fun. I mean you and I will have fun. I want to show you Seasoning City, Sho." said Fukuda

"Why? What's in Seasoning City that's fun? Tokyo is fun. There's Disney Land…but that's getting kind of boring since we spent a whole week in there before…but there's the parks and the zoos and the arcades and the-" said Sho

"Your dad and I grew up in Seasoning City and I just…wanted to show it to you. There are parks there, not Disney parks but some cool ones, and there are other places too. There's this breakfast place we used to go to and the manga shop and also….also a few other places." Said Fukuda. Sho tried to imagine it, him and dad as kids, but he couldn't. It was like the time he and big sis had found dad's old toys in the Treasure Room. It was sort hard to imagine him as just being a normal kid…and Fukuda too…

But he wanted to.

"I…I'd like that. It sounds fun." Said Sho. It did, it really did, and….and he would be away from dad and big sis…and if he was away from them then he wouldn't be mad…and if he didn't get mad then he wouldn't hurt anyone…

"Sho….I'm glad. We'll have so much fun. I'll show you the spot in the woods where we'd hang out and bury things for the future….if it's still there. I'll show you the park we used to hang out in and….and the house I grew up in and…and also…your sister will be there. Mukai, I mean. She lives in Seasoning City. Remember? I told you that already?" asked Fukuda

"Yeah…but you also said that it would be years and years before she got…situated." Said Sho. His heart hurt. He missed her so much. Even if she was a crayon eater he missed her….and now he could see her….and he felt…good and bad at the same time….

"She's a smart kid, she adjusted pretty fast. I bet she misses you. I bet she misses her big brother." Said Fukuda. Sho shook his head.

"Pretend. We were just pretending that we were brother and sister." Said Sho. He knew that she wasn't his sister. She was just a person who looked a lot like him. She was just a baby who he loved and looked after like a little sister. That was all. She was just the best baby in the whole world and he missed her so much and….and he wanted to see her more than anything else in the world.

"….right. Pretend. You know…that's actually the biggest reason why I wanted to…to bring you with. So you could see her again. I know how much she misses you…and how much you miss her. You can see her but listen, ok? You cannot tell your dad or your sister about this. Your dad…he doesn't want you to visit her because…um…." Said Fukuda

"He's a jerk and he wants everyone to be miserable." Said Sho. There. Fukuda should have known that. He had known dad for years. He should have agreed, too, instead of just shaking his head like that.

"No…he just…ok. So you know how you and your sister need bodyguards when you go out? Because people are always trying to kill you? Well he doesn't want that for the baby. He wants her to have a normal life and that's why he doesn't want people to know that he knows her. He just wants to keep her safe. You understand, right? That she could be in danger if people know that I'm taking you to visit her? That I could be in danger, too, for disobeying your dad? Do you understand?" asked Fukuda. He had his hand on Sho's shoulder and he was looking him right in the eyes. Sho…he knew how much big sis missed baby sis but…but he didn't want baby sis to be in danger…

"Yeah, I get it. Don't tell anyone. I can keep a secret." Said Sho. He could and he would. He felt so much better now. He knew that coming to see Fukuda would make him feel better. He had something to look forward to and…and it was so nice just to have someone listen to him and…and stuff. To have someone who listened to him and didn't tell him that he was being dumb or whatever. That was the best thing ever.

Well the best thing ever would be seeing Mukai again being near her…being her big brother again.

Even if he had to keep it a secret from big sis.


	174. Apology Gifts

You were supposed to kowtow when you were very sorry about something.

Not every apology required you to kowtow. Accidentally using your brother's toothbrush, forgetting to turn the TV off, drinking the last of the milk, and other little things like that did not require you to kowtow. But Mob had much a very big mistakes and a big mistake warranted a big apology. With kotowing.

And also a gift.

She had to give a gift, too, because she had made the sort of big mistake that had gotten someone hurt. When you hurt someone you were supposed to get them a present afterwards to say sorry. That was why every time dad got mad at her he got her a new doll the next day. That was just how it worked. She didn't put any dolls into the gift box, no, because this was an apology gift for a boy and boys didn't play with dolls. Also when you were giving a gift you needed to get the other person something that they would like, not something that you would like.

So she got him things that he liked.

He liked a lot of things. He liked pudding and foods like it, good mouth feel he said, so she got him some double chocolate pudding cups. He liked that stuff. He also liked custard but custard had to be refrigerated and Mob knew that if she didn't refrigerate it then it would go bad but if she did then Sho would eat it and also wonder why were custard cups in the fridge. She couldn't tell him why. If he knew that she was apologizing to Shimazaki then he would have started up about how he thought that she liked it. She didn't…well she liked him as a friend…sort of…but she didn't want to be his girlfriend. She didn't know why people thought that she was trying to be his girlfriend but she wasn't….and nobody believed her…

Even though it was true.

No matter how many times she said it Sho just would not believe her. Neither did dad. Minegishi did, though, and Mob was relieved. She didn't know what she would have done if Minegishi thought that she was the sort of person who wanted to be the girlfriend of the person they kissed. Just for fun kisses were still kisses and Mob was not going to ruin that for Minegishi just like she knew that Minegishi would never do that to her. They were good friends like that. It was nice to have at least one person in the world who believed her.

If only Sho and dad would believe her, too.

At least they had stopped talking about that. Sho was going on his very first mission, soon, and that was what they were talking about now. Well she and Sho talked about it. Dad just said that it was going to happen, and he answered questions, but he didn't really talk to them about it. That was ok. Sho did enough talking for everyone. He was excited. Mob was excited for him. It was his very first mission and dad said that he was sending Sho on this mission because he was capable, not because he wanted him gone away from the family, and now Sho was upset. She didn't know why Sho would have thought that dad would have wanted him gone. Dad loved them both, he could just be really mean sometimes.

Really mean.

He could beat people up for no reason sometimes. Well not no reason at all, he thought that Mob had liked him, even though that still wasn't a good reason to beat someone up. Mob sometimes liked boys and…and if dad was going to beat up every boy she liked then she would never be able to like any boys…and she didn't want that. She wanted…she wanted a lot of things. She had already been in love, once, and she had been kissed once too. She had thought, before, that being in love once would have been enough and being kissed once would have been enough…but it was not enough. It wasn't and she did want a boyfriend….

Not Shimazaki.

Not him and not a boy like him. He could be very annoying. She didn't want to be with someone who did annoying things just to bother people. She never wanted to be with someone who did things that were annoying for the sake of not being bored. He could never stand to be bored. That would have been exhausting about him, being his girlfriend, because he needed attention all the time. She didn't think that she could do that. Also she was ten and he was almost thirty and he was an adult and she was a kid and she didn't think that she could be in a relationship with that big of an age gap. Like dad said, she wasn't old enough.

So why dad thought that she could have liked him like that she would never know…and she had asked a bunch of times….but that was not something that dad liked to talk about.

But they didn't talk about that anymore. They talked about how Sho was going on his first mission, he was going to be helping inspect the Seventh Division, and he wasn't even a little scared. Even though he had never been apart from her before…and also because they made Awakened there and he still had bed wetting nightmares about that….but Sho said that he was fine and that she needed to never ask him again because it made him mad.

So she stopped bringing it up.

Instead he just talked about how he was so excited about going to the Seventh Division. She had no idea what he was so excited about, they had been there once before and it hadn't been fun at all, but he just told her that it was mission stuff that she couldn't know about…even though she was second to dad…but that was ok. She was excited for him. She was also happy that he was talking to her again. He had gone some time without speaking to her since their bathroom fight. She didn't want to have to go through that again. She hated it when they fought.

Which was why he didn't know about the big apology she had been planning.

Even though if she'd had his help it the whole thing would have gone much faster. He knew Shimazaki better than she did. Well Minegishi knew him the very best but if Mob told them then they would tell Shimazaki, because they told each other everything, and then the apology wouldn't be as good because it wouldn't be a surprise anymore. She didn't want the surprise to be ruined. If the surprise was ruined then the apology would be ruined.

And she had a lot to apologize for.

Which was why she was in her bedroom practicing her kowtowing before she went next door to apologize. He was home. She could see his aura. It wasn't all tangled up in Minegishi's, too, which meant that it was ok to come over. Minegishi said that when their aura was tangled in his it meant that they were hanging out in a 'just the two of them' sort of way. Mob suspected that they were kissing, well she had seen them kiss, but real kissing. There were different kinds of kissing. There was the kind in the movies she'd liked since she was little and also the kind that was in the dramas mom used to watch. Where people held each other and kissed for a long time and also opened their mouths, which somehow both seemed kind of gross but also kind of not, and she did not want to walk in on the two of them doing the TV drama kind of kissing.

She had already seen them do Disney sort of kissing and she sort of wished that she hadn't.

She was happy that Minegishi was happy and had someone to kiss but also she didn't want to see that. Sometimes they forgot that she was there and sometimes they had no idea that she was there. Which was why she didn't just let herself in anymore. She didn't need to or want to see that. That was private and she did not want to see something that private. Also she knew that if someone had walked in on her when she had her first kiss it would have ruined it.

She did not want to ever ruin something as wonderful as a kiss.

Thankfully it looked like she was ok to come over. Even if it was kind of late. Dad was in bed already, sometimes he went right to his room when he came home and said that they weren't allowed to bother him, but Sho was still up. He was playing Wii. It was a one player game. That was ok. Sometimes he played one player games…even though she was there and they had so many two player games and they should have been playing together as much as they could because they were going to be apart for the first time in their lives…but that was ok. She just wanted him to be happy.

And it wasn't like he was going to be gone forever.

And neither would she. She was just going to be going next door to apologize and then she would come back and then he might have been bored of that game and then they could have played together like they had when they had both been little. Yes…that would have been nice. That would have been nice and fun and…and just like when they had been little. Things had been so much easier when they had been little…

But they were not little anymore.

They were big kids now and they had their own things to do…and they were doing their own things. She practiced her kowtow once more and then decided to head out. She took the box, it used to have shoes in it, out from under her bed and carried it behind her back. That was Sho wouldn't notice and ask about it. Not that he been talking to her that often, lately, but that was ok too. She loved him so much and she didn't deserve a little brother as wonderful as him.

Even if he was playing Wii all alone and hadn't thought to even ask her if she wanted to watch him play…or have a turn…or anything.

"Where are you going?" asked Sho as Mob made her way past the living to the genkan. She didn't care if it was warm out, she was going to wear shoes, even if Sho said that wearing shoes when it was warm out was pointless. She wondered if he was going to say that to her again. She wondered if he was going to say something mean to her again. She didn't care. She just wanted her little brother to talk to her again.

"Next door." Said Mob. She kept the box behind her back. Sho looked at her for a while and his aura flared and…and she worried just a little bit…but even if got mad at her and yelled at her or hit her it would be ok because she loved him and he loved her.

"Whatever. Don't wake dad up if you come back." Said Sho. He didn't say anything else, he just went back to his game. Mob didn't say anything else either. She just slipped on her shoes and walked out the door. Quietly, of course, because she didn't want dad to know that she was leaving.

Even if it was just to go next door.

Dad still had his weird ideas about her and Shimazaki. She didn't like him and no matter how many times she said so nobody would believe her. Well that didn't matter. People could think whatever they wanted to and there was no way for her to change their minds so she just had to…to deal with it. Even if they were so wrong…the most wrong. She didn't like him like that. They were just friends. Barely even, really, because he could just be so annoying….but they were still friends and she was still going to say sorry and kowtow and give him the apology gift.

That was what she was going to do.

The walk next door was a short one. Dad always got houses close together even though apartments would been easier. Buying a building would have been easier than buying a neighborhood, and Claw had buildings, but not that many. Dad didn't like to live with a bunch of other people around him. He said that he didn't used to mind as much back when they had a permanent home but things were different now. So, even though it was a lot of money and stuff, they all lived in separate houses.

Even though Mob had seen the budgets and thought that if they had buildings instead of houses they could have put that money into more raises for people and other stuff that they had been asking for.

But she was not supposed to worry about running Claw anymore. Dad had said so. She was supposed to worry about running the house and taking care of Sho and stuff like that. She wasn't the one to inherit the world, Sho was, so running Claw was not her problem…even though people were not very happy working for dad…but that was ok. She had to stick to the things she knew, like this. She knew how to apologize.

Minegishi said that she did it too often.

Which made no sense to her. How could someone say sorry too many times? Sorry was for when you messed up. Mob messed up a lot. It was a wonder that she had made it this far without messing up in a big way…well bigger than she had. She didn't agree with Minegishi about not saying sorry all the time…but she did agree that it wasn't polite to just let herself in…but Minegishi had said that it was impolite to just let herself into their room. The house was not their room…and also the door was unlocked…and also it wasn't like she was going to do anything bad…

She opened the door.

She stepped through the doorway and slid her shoes off in the genkan. She did this as quietly as she could. Shibata had fallen asleep in front of the TV again. Mob wondered how he could sleep with all the noise and light. Mob needed darkness and quiet to sleep. Minegishi was the same way. Mob wondered if they were asleep. Their aura was…fuzzy. Not asleep but not awake either. It got like that sometimes. Mob wasn't worried. She would visit them in a minute, anyway, just as soon as she said sorry. Then she and Minegishi could hang out all night.

Since Sho didn't want to.

She tried not to think about Sho. She tried not to think about how she wanted to play videogames or, really, anything with him. How she wanted them to be best friends again. How much she wished that she knew what it would take to make him forgive her totally and stuff. It would take more than what would fit in a shoebox, anyway. She figured. She didn't know.

One apology at a time.

She made her way down the hallway. It was dark but she knew where she was going. This house was a lot like her house but it had three bedrooms. Also there were more auras, too. Minegishi's from behind their door, Shibata's from in the living room, and Shimazaki's from in his room. She stopped at his doorway. She had never been to his room before. She had never wanted to be there before. She had never seen the inside…and she was sort of curious. Mostly about how he could find his stuff since he was blind and all. How he picked out clothes every day. How he knew where any of his stuff was once he put it down. Even how to make his bed since he couldn't see how it looked. She wondered a lot of things about him.

Like if he was still mad at her.

He must have been mad at her. She had gotten him beaten up by dad. She was the reason that had happened. Also she had done something to make him like her, too. Maybe. She didn't know. She hoped that he didn't like her like that. She hoped that everyone in the whole world was just being clueless. She hoped that he had just been annoying her for the sake of annoying her. She would ask him. She would knock on his door and she would ask him if he was mad….and if he liked her….and if he accepted her apology….and why he played his music so loud….and why this whole hallway smelled weird…..or why-

"As much as I enjoy your company I have to ask, Mob, why are you here?" asked Shimazaki. He was suddenly right behind her. She turned around and clutched her box to her chest. She put a barrier up, too, but that part was on accident. She got rid of it as soon as it was up. She hoped that he didn't think that she was scared of him, she wasn't, she was just startled.

Stared at her. She could feel his aura. She could tell.

"Um…." Said Mob. She knew that dad had hurt him but…but she didn't know that it was that bad. He had bandages tapes to his arms and stomach and also his back, maybe, if that tape went anywhere. She was so sorry. She was so very sorry. She needed him to know that she was so very sorry.

"Taking your box out for a midnight stroll?" asked Shimazaki. He reached over and tapped the box with the…it looked like a vape pen…in his hand. Mob saw some blood, there, seeping through the bandage on his arm…and it was just horrible….and she was the cause of that…and she was so sorry…

"This is for you." Said Mob. She practically shoved the box into his arms. He held it in one hand and tested the weight of it.

"You got me…a box with….a can of something in it…and also…something cylindrical…." Said Shimazaki. He bounced the box up and down with one hand and inhaled from his vape pen with the other. Mob stared at him. Dad had beaten him up and…and he was just being so calm? He had bandages all over him but he was just going to be all calm like that? It made no sense….he made no sense. Dad had beaten him up, because of her, and he was just going to…vape?

Mob scrunched her nose. That wasn't vape…or at least not the kinds she had.

"That's an I'm sorry present…because I'm sorry….wait! Hang on. I have to kowtow-" said Mob. She started to kowtow when he poked her in the chest his with vape pen.

"Don't kowtow, that's boring. What isn't boring, however, is why you're here and giving me mystery boxes. What, your dad ready to go another round? Well I'm not going easy on him this time so, yeah, hope you like being an orphan." Said Shimazaki. He poked her on the forehead with his vape pen and then he inhaled from it again. He coughed a lot as he exhaled. Mob didn't blame him.

That smelled just terrible.

"I…I don't think that my dad wants to hurt you again….and I am so sorry! I didn't mean to-!" said Mob. Before she could get any more words out a hand was over her mouth. He was behind her, now, and she was pressed up against his chest. His hand was over her mouth. She couldn't do anything, not even that thing that Sho did where he licked her hand when she did this to him not that she would because it was gross but maybe she would have she didn't know, when the world went black for a second.

And then she was on a bed.

He was sitting on a chair across from her. It took her a moment to realize that she was in his room. She didn't know what to make of this. She was in his room and…and she had never been in his room before. It was….a lot cleaner than she would have imagined. He had plastic bins with labels….bump writing labels…brail. Brail labels that she could not read. He also didn't have anything hanging on his walls, not even drawings…which made sense because he couldn't see them…but he had a lap top on his desk…which also didn't make sense because he couldn't see….and he had a bunch of little boxes on his desk lined up with brail labels…and she sort of wished that she could read them…and she had never seen a bedroom so clean before…well aside from dad's…and also that music was very loud….

And he just sat there, on his chair, vaping and staring at her.

"Sorry. I just didn't need you waking Shibata and Toshi. Shibata, well, I don't give a damn what he thinks. Toshi's been icing me out lately. They're pretending like I don't exist and I don't need them any more upset at me than they already are. Hell hath no fury and all of that. You know." Said Shimazaki. Mob didn't, not really, but she was sad that his best friend was mad at him…probably because of her, too. She was always messing up and making things worse for people.

"I-I'm sorry about…about everything. I didn't mean to make my dad beat you up and I didn't mean to make Minegishi mad at you and I'm sorry that my dad beat you up so bad that you're covered in bandages. I really should kowtow, I'm very sorry, but I won't because you asked me not to. But I should." Said Mob. He didn't say anything. He just inhaled for a very long time.

A VERY long time.

And then he exhaled. He exhaled slowly, very slowly, and Mob didn't get it.

"Was that a smoke ring? I can't sense smoke. You're going to have to be my eyes here, Suzuki." Said Shimazaki

"Um…no. It wasn't…but…um….did you hear what I said?" asked Mob. He passed her his vape pen. She didn't really want to, it smelled just terrible, but she inhaled anyway…and it tasted terrible too. Burned her throat a little bit, too, just a little…

She preferred the bubblegum kind.

"Yeah, you're sorry that your dad kicked my ass. It's fine, we're cool. Hit that again, too, you barely got any." Said Shimazaki. Mob was confused…but she did what she was told…because she didn't want to be rude. She was confused about why he was being so…normal…but she was sure that she didn't want to be rude…even if this was terrible. Well the second time wasn't that bad. Still tasted terrible, though.

"What kind of vape is this? It's…not…un-good…" said Mob. She passed it back to him. He held out his hand and pushed it back to her.

"I have no clue. My friend traded me that oil for free reign to do whatever he wanted to my back." Said Shimazaki. He spun around on his chair and showed her the big bandage across his back. Now Mob was extra confused. First of all she thought that vape fluid was water, not oil, and second of all he traded terrible tasting vape fluid so that his friend could hurt him badly enough that he needed bandages.

"Shimazaki. Explain." Said Mob. She sounded like dad then. It was so funny. She thought that it was so funny, anyway, which was why she started laughing. Even though she knew that it wasn't that funny.

"That's it, get on my level." Said Shimazaki. He pushed her hand, the one with the vape pen in it, towards her.

"Level?" asked Mob

"Hit it again." said Shimazaki. His hand was still on hers. She felt….weird. Not doki doki, like it should have felt like but instead like the time that Sho had wanted to see if his stomach would explode if he ate pop rocks and drank soda so she volunteered for the experiment because she didn't want her little brother's stomach to explode. It felt like that again. Weird and kind of fizzy.

"You shouldn't do that. Touch me like that. That's why people think that I like you and that's why my dad beat you up." Said Mob. He took his hand off of hers, for once, and then started spinning back and forth on his chair. Mob inhaled again to be polite. It wasn't that bad once you got used to it. It sort of tasted, on the third time around, kind of citrusy for some reason….so she inhaled again. Citrus was the forbidden fruit in her family.

"Your dad beats everyone up. I don't take it personally." Said Shimazaki

"But he hurt you so bad that you're covered in bandages and you've been gone for so long…." Said Mob as she exhaled. Now she could taste the citrus…and feel her socks on her feet, too. The seam of them against her toes. The tag of her dress on the back of her neck. How soft his blanket was under her legs. That wasn't real silk, she knew what real silk felt like, but it was still so soft and nice…she squirmed a little bit. The whole world just felt really nice….

"I've had worse. Believe me, I've had worse. You dad didn't even do all of this. Well, ok, that Fukuda guy sucks as a healer. I told him not to go too fast because every time he goes too fast it messes with the ink but he went too fast, and it hurt like a bitch too, and now I've been getting pretty much every single piece touched up." Said Shimazaki. Mob nodded. She nodded and vaped again. That made sense…and also didn't.

"Why do you have those if you can't see them? And why aren't you made at me? And why do you have so many labels around? What do they say? And why is your bed so soft?" asked Mob as she exhaled again. She coughed a little less that time. She felt…good. She felt like she was floating…and she was a little. So she sat back down. His bed made a loud creaking sound when she sat down. It was funny. She laughed.

"Other people can see them, that's what matters, and to answer all of your other questions….you can keep hitting that by the way….of course I'm not pissed at you. Your dad was just doing what dad's do. I mean, yeah, I'm pissed that everyone thinks that I'm a creep for some reason but I'm not pissed at you….and to continue the labels tell me what's in the boxes and the boxes are full of clean and dirty clothes, mostly, but some stuff that I have to have Toshi separate out into things that match. As far as my bed goes….why not?" asked Shimazaki. Mob nodded. She nodded a bunch of times.

Nodding was fun.

And he could see her nodding. Every time she nodded he poked her on the top of the head…which was annoying…but also funny. Everything was funny. She didn't know why. She liked it, though, the way she felt. Even if she did keep on trying to float away.

"Welcome, Your Ladyship, to my level." Said Shimazaki. Mob stopped nodding.

"Why won't you call me Mob? That's what I want to be called." Said Mob

"Because I like to make you squirm." Said Shimazaki

"I don't squirm when you call me things other than Mob." Said Mob

"You do, emotionally, and I like that. Getting a reaction out of you…and to be clear the only reason I hit on you is to get a reaction out of you. I am not in any way attracted to you. You're not my type. My type is not kids. Ok?" said Shimazaki. He spoke really loud and clear like she couldn't' speak Japanese or something…or like how people spoke Japanese to Sho when they went places together…or like how people spoke English to her when she was in places where they spoke English…and it shouldn't have been funny but it was.

"I know that you're just trying to be annoying when you do stuff like that…I know….but nobody else does…they think that I like you…but I don't. I mean I don't want to be your girlfriend. You're a very nice person but…but you annoy me sometimes…and also you've kissed Minegishi a lot of times and that means that they at least like you enough to kiss you and I would never do that to my friend…and I don't want to kiss you….ok?" asked Mob. She thought that she had made herself perfectly clear, as clear as a person could be, and she hoped that he out of all the people she explained this to ACTUALLY LISTENED!

He listened…and he laughed.

"Rejected by a ten year old….I just got rejected by a ten year old…" said Shimazaki. Then he laughed…and she laughed too…and she didn't know what was so funny….but she was laughing…

"I-I'm sorry but I don't like you like that and I don't think that I ever will. I mean….I don't think that….not to be mean." Said Mob. She didn't want him to think that she was rejecting him. She wanted them to be friends. She wanted them to get along. She just didn't want to kiss him.

He took her hand, the one with the vape pen in it, and pressed it to her lips.

"Never say never." Said Shimazaki. He said it so low and slow and…and she stopped breathing…and then he went back to his own personal space.

"Not attracted to you! One hundred percent not attracted to you!" said Shimazaki as he threw himself back into his chair and spun around. Mob nodded and inhaled.

"I know. I don't like you like that either…I mean I want us to be friends…because you can be a very nice person when you want to be…and also we have fun together…and also Minegishi likes you and I want to be friends with the friends of my friends….and also I think that we could be friends…and also I've never had that many friends in my life…and also I could always use more friends…and also…and also…" said Mob. She was having trouble picking out words. She knew so many words and she was having trouble picked them out….because there were so many…and the music was loud…and he was spinning….

Then he suddenly stopped.

He picked up the box and started to shake it. She covered her mouth so he couldn't see her smiling. She didn't want to laugh, now, even though she had been laughing before. She felt weird laughing, now, maybe because she had just been laughing for so long…

"Can I open my present or do I have to wait for Christmas?" asked Shimazaki as he shook the box. Mob wanted to tell him not to do that because there was a can of soda in there and it might explode. She didn't, though, because a present was useless if she spoiled it.

"You can open it now…or wait until Christmas…or your birthday since that's sooner." Said Mob. She wanted him to open it now but it was his gift and he could open it whenever he wanted to. That was how owning things worked.

"You know my birthday?" asked Shimazaki. Mob nodded. Of course she knew his birthday. They were friends, weren't they? Friends knew each other's birthdays. That was how friendship worked.

"Yes. October twenty fifth. You can open it then or now. It's your box." Said Mob quickly as she exhaled. This was good…very good vape….and also her hair felt good for some reason. She wondered what his hair felt like. It wasn't standing up anymore. That was because it was the end of the day. She wondered how he knew what it looked like, why he put so much gel in it in the first place, but she didn't ask.

"You know, I think I'll open it now." Said Shimazaki. He didn't look at the box in his lap while he opened it…because he didn't have to. He was looking at it while touching it…because he was blind…and she had forgotten that. She didn't know how she could have forgotten that…but she had…because he got around so well…even with his eyes closed….even if that didn't matter…

He opened his eyes.

She jumped back. She had forgotten about that! Well she hadn't but she also had. That was…he had no eyes and she knew that he had no eyes but she also wasn't used to seeing his eyes…where they should have been…and also it was sort of scary…but she couldn't be scared…because he looked happy….because he found the candles…

"Mob…don't take this in a creepy way but if you were three or four years older I would fucking kiss you right now…but don't take that in a creepy way. I cannot emphasize that enough." Said Shimazaki. Mob nodded even though she thought that maybe he shouldn't say stuff like that if he didn't want people to think bad things about him.

"There's other stuff in there…and that's a can of Coke, too. I mean I know that you have to open cans to know what's in them and I remember that you said that you liked Coke so I got you a Coke. It's an original Coke. They had diet Coke and orange Coke and cherry Coke and vanilla Coke and lime Coke and lemon Coke and Coke zero and also strawberry Coke but I didn't know if you liked any of those so I got you a regular coke. Because you like Coke." Said Mob. She didn't know what was so funny but he started laughing at her again…and she laughed too….even though she didn't know what was funny…and also she hoped that he shared that soda with her…because she was thirty…but for soda…or milk…or carbonated milk…but she wasn't picky.

"I do like coke…and also coke….God, you're hilarious…I wish Toshi was here….or maybe not since I feel like this is something that they would take the wrong way." said Shimazaki. He was laughing still and Mob didn't know why…but she did wish that Minegishi was there….but they felt like they were asleep now…but she did miss them…and also she was so thirsty.

"I don't know what we're laughing at but can we share? I'm really thirsty." Said Mob. He opened the can and passed it to her. He also took his vape pen back…and she would have to ask him what kind that was…because it may have smelled bad and tasted bad but it was great…she was great….everything was great….

"Ok, I'll share this coke with you now and the good kind with you when you're older. God, I fucking love hanging out with you. I can't wait until you take over. We are going to have so much fun together….and I mean that in the least creepy way possible." Said Shimazaki. Mob nodded even though him saying that he was trying not to be creepy made him sound sort of like he was creepy…since he was trying not to be creepy…because on his own he should have not been creepy….she didn't know. She was thirsty. She knew that she was thirsty…so she drank some soda…

And it was the best soda that she had ever tasted.

This was the best apology ever….and she hadn't even had to do any kowtowing.


	175. The Train to Seasoning City

Sho had ridden on a train before.

Sometimes they took trains but not that often. Dad didn't like being around normal people. Sho didn't like it either. Being surrounded by normal people. He spent most of his time around espers. Sure he went places but he was usually with big sis. He wasn't sure what to do. There were people all around him and they had no auras and…and it was kind of weird. He was between Fukuda and another guy, Higashio, so at least there were auras on either side of him. Across from him was a guy called Ootski. They worked with Fukuda a lot. They were sort of like his friends.

He hadn't known the Fukuda had friends.

But he did. They all worked together and they were all going to go with him on this mission and…and that was ok. Sho was near people he didn't know all the time. He'd spent half his life at Disney Land after all….big sis had better not go without him…and he knew how to be around strangers. Even though he had never been out in the world with nothing but a bunch of strangers before…but also Fukuda. He had never been out in the world with just Fukuda before…but now he was…and he was fine. He wasn't scared or worried or nervous or anything.

He was kind of hot, though.

He had to wear long pants and a long sleeved shirt. Because of his scars. Sometimes he could get away with wearing a short sleeved shirt when he was out in the world, the scars on his arms weren't nearly as bad as the scars on his legs and back, but Fukuda said that they shouldn't take any chances. So he had to wear long pants and a long shirt even though it was summer. He also had to wear sunscreen on his face and neck even though Fukuda could easily have healed his sunburns.

Big sis worried about nothing.

She had been all worried about him. She had put sunscreen on him before he left and she had packed him money and snacks and also even tried to pack him a sweater even though it was summertime. She could be so weird sometimes. Everything could be so weird sometimes. Like how he felt. He had been away from her before, they didn't spend every moment of their lives together, but he had never been this far away from her before. He would be gone for days and days…and he didn't know what he was going to do. He had never slept away from her before. Sometimes she slept with dad but they were always in the same house. Now he was going to have to be away from her…and they had been together for the whole nine and a half years that he had been alive…

He felt weird.

He was excited. He was going to see Baby Mukai! He had his sketchbook in his lap and a pencil in his hand. He really needed to draw her something. She deserved it. She was the best baby sis in the world and she deserved a new drawing just for her…but he had no idea what he should draw. He was just making lines now. He was just putting his pencil to the paper and making lines in the hopes that they would come together to become something that she would like. It was like if he just made enough lines they would turn into a drawing but making lines wasn't helping and now he was just making a mess and he needed to start over but he had already started over twice so maybe he just sucked and she wouldn't even like his drawing and then he was just a bad artist and she wouldn't ever want a drawing from him again and then he would feel bad about himself and he didn't want to feel bad about himself and-

A hand on his arm. A green aura over his.

"Looks nice." Said Fukuda as he tried his best to calm Sho down. The little guy was getting himself upset…and Fukuda couldn't blame him. This was his first time being away from his family. They may have treated him poorly but he was still a nine year old boy away from his dad and sister for the first time. No wonder he was getting so mad at his sketchbook.

But Fukuda could not allow him to get mad.

They were on a train. They were on a public train. There were people, normal people, on all side of them. He hadn't taken a car because he knew how Sho did on long car rides. They were worse for him than plane rides. At least on a train he could look out the window and stretch his legs. Plus he so rarely traveled by train. This would have been an interesting experience for him. Getting up and walking around. Looking out the window. All the stops that trains made.

Trains made a lot of stops.

And Sho had always had problems sitting still. It would have been a…tragic accident. Sho slipping away into the crowd. Fukuda going after him. Them getting off at some stop and then just…never being heard from again. Japan was a big county. People went missing every single day. It was something tragic that happened. There was nothing that anyone could do about it. Little boys went missing all the time. It happened. Suzuki would be upset but…well…he had his heiress. He had his heiress and he could always have another son. Yes. Sho would not be terribly missed.

They could figure out where to go later.

"No it doesn't." said Sho. He pulled his sketchbook up to his chest and faced out the window. The world was going by fast. They had just left that station. He didn't know how many stops it would be until they got there. Too many. Not enough. He had to get this drawing done for Mukai but he had no idea what to draw for her. She liked….she liked baby stuff. She liked shiny things and putting her arms in paper towel holders and sucking on her pacifier and people smiling at her and also movies with fighting…she really like that cauldron thing…maybe he should have drawn her something from that. She liked the part where the dead people came to life…

But she was just a baby.

He didn't want to scare her. She was just a little baby after all…but that was what she liked…but she had a mom now and her mom might not have wanted her to have drawings like that. He didn't know her mom at all, though, so he had no idea what she would have liked for Mukai to have. He didn't know much about moms in general since his had left…and stuff…

Where was mom?

He pressed his forehead against the cold window. She could have been anywhere. She could have been at any of these stops. She liked trains. He remembered that she had met dad at the train station, she had said, and that they had fallen in love right there and decided to get married and have kids. She also liked to take him to the playground by the train station. They had spent all day there once…when he had been little….but she probably wasn't anywhere near here. She was gone and he should have just accepted that she was gone instead of looking out the window and expecting every single brown haired lady to be his mom.

Maybe he should just draw her…but not for Mukai…just to draw her.

But he didn't get the chance to draw anything. His sketchbook was taken off of his lap. He knew that it was Fukuda. Those other two were talking to each other about boring adult stuff that he didn't care about. Fukuda cared about him, though, and his drawings. He didn't steal them like dad did. He just flipped through his sketchbook but also always gave it back.

"Well I think that it's a very good drawing. What is it? The wind passing us by?" asked Fukuda. He could not let Sho get upset. When he got upset the only thing to do was let him burn out. He was like a little grease fire and they could not afford to have a grease fire right now. Ootski and Higashio would understand, of course, they knew what Suzuki could be like and Fukuda had given them the rundown of how Sho could be, but the rest of the world…not so much.

Sho was not a demon child.

That was what Shigeko's entourage called him, and they were Shigeko's and not Suzuki's since she had chosen them to follow her around and God only know what else, a shrieking demon child. Other names, too, and Fukuda had no idea how adults could be so callous towards a little boy. They knew that he'd had a very difficult life and they knew that he could not be held responsible for how he was. Suzuki was not a good father and Fukuda…well he had failed Masami…and he would continue to fail her.

Since he had no clue where she even was.

"No….I don't even know. I was trying to draw something for baby sis but…but I couldn't think of what she would like. She likes that cauldron movie so maybe I should draw her something from that…or something." Said Sho. His face was still pressed up against the glass. He could have licked the window if he wanted to. He didn't know where he had gotten the idea from but he totally could…but that wouldn't solve any of his problems.

"Baby sister? You have a younger sister?" asked Higashio catching the tail end of that conversation. He had been leaving the little boy alone. That was Suzuki's child and he had no idea how he was supposed to act. He had repaired some of the Suzuki children's toys in the past but he had never met them. He hadn't even seen either until Suzuki's Daughter's address to all of Claw…and how a little girl like her managed to run all of Claw was beyond him…

He had no idea how he was supposed to treat that little boy.

Fukuda had said that Suzuki's son had a lot of emotional problems. Nothing serious, just some anger issues, and he did not want to be on the other end of those anger issues. He had been on the other end of Suzuki's anger issues more than once. He knew, though, that the child was not the father. He may have looked like his father but there was a sort of…wistfulness….and melancholy to the child…

Poor little boy.

"She's an orphan that was left with Claw. An esper baby. Suzuki let her stay with his family while I looked for a home for the baby. That was what his leave of absence was about." Said Fukuda. Nope. Dangerous ground. He had told Sho not to call the baby his sister in public…but he was only nine after all. Fukuda couldn't fault him for that. He also knew that he was in no danger from these guys. They worked closely with him…on matters like these. Fukuda was the healer. Higashio could disassemble and reassemble objects. Ootski could repurpose energy. Together they could repair and rebuild an Awakening Lab.

Joy.

Masami would have hated him for the rest of his life if she knew that he was taking her son back to the sort of place that had….that had almost killed him. She would have hated him until the end of time if she knew that he had allowed her husband to…to torture her son until he got his full adult powers. She would have been fully within her rights to hate him…and he was ok with that. He loved her so much…and he missed her more than anything…but if she hated him then she hated him. Her hating him would at least mean that…that she knew why she should have hated him…which meant that she would have been in communication with him…

He had been trying to contact her in any way that he could. Nothing.

"So that's what that was about. I thought that the whole thing was a prank, honestly, do I do like the raise." Said Ootski. He bushed his bangs out of his eyes when he spoke. So that hadn't just been the Awakened playing a prank. They really had been at the mercy of a little girl. Good thing he had been halfway around the world at the time. He'd heard that it had been a real madhouse for about a month. He wondered why Suzuki had left his daughter in charge if he was still around.

But he didn't ask.

He knew Fukuda. He knew Fukuda about as well as anyone could know Fukuda. He was the man who knew all of Suzuki's secrets. Something was up with that baby…and this was the first he was hearing of a baby…but he was not about to go digging around in Suzuki's private business. He really did not like nosy people.

"It was real and it's over. A blessing in disguise, really, since now Suzuki sees how competent his kids are and we get to bring Sho with us for this mission." Said Fukuda trying to sound more cheery than he was. Another stop had passed. He didn't know what he was supposed to do. The trip would not be so long and…and he knew that he needed to make some decisions soon. As to what to do with Sho. Sho was…Sho was not doing well with Suzuki as a father…and he had promised Masami that he would bring Sho to her…

But he had no idea where she was. She could have been literally anywhere. She could have left the country for all he knew. She wasn't answering her phone, but he only had the number for the burner, and all of emails went unreplied to. She had moved since she had run away, too, since his letters had come back 'return to sender' and…and he had no idea what he was supposed to do.

He had made a promise.

"Yeah…I get to be here." Said Sho. He held his pencil in his hand. He didn't want to be there. He wanted…he didn't want to be back with dad but he didn't want to be there. He wanted…he didn't even know what he wanted. He had never been this far away from his family before…well mom had run away and dad had always been away for work…but it was still weird. He had never been this far away from big sis before, either, and he sort of missed her even though she was super annoying….but there was no point in being all upset and stuff…..because he wanted to be here.

He wanted to see baby sis.

He wanted to go to Seasoning City and see baby sis. He wanted to spend time with Fukuda…even if all of these other guys were also coming too….and he wanted to just…be happy. But he couldn't be. Even though he was far from dad and even though he…he should have been happy that dad wasn't there to be a jerk to him and big sis wasn't there to try and boss him around…he still felt so…he didn't even know.

His sketchbook was back in his lap.

"Why don't you draw her something that you would like to draw, not something that she would like you to draw?" asked Fukuda. They passed another stop. It had been a stupid idea. He could not just take Sho and drag him off the train. He would make a scene…and also he couldn't just hide Sho somewhere until he found Masami. She had found a way to disappear completely and never be found. If all of Suzuki's men hadn't been able to find her in three years then he wouldn't be able to just find her in an afternoon.

And Sho would want to know why they hadn't made it to Seasoning City.

Fukuda had no clue how he was supposed to explain to Sho what had happened between him and Masami. How he had been the one to help her escape and leave her family behind. How he had been the one to…to tell her to get out. Also everything else. Sho…he could never know the whole of it. He wouldn't be able to understand. He was nine and these things were so black and white to him. He was still at that age where he couldn't see that Masami and him…what they had done looked wrong from an outside perspective. Cheating was wrong but…but he'd loved her and Suzuki had been terrible to her…and it wasn't as though he had planned it out.

It had just happened.

They had picked the kids up and tucked them in and then….and then she had been about to see him out…and she had just looked so beautiful. So beautiful and so sad….and someone as beautiful as her should not have looked so sad…and then he had gotten closer and she had gotten closer and then…and then it just happened.

They crossed a line.

And Sho could never know that story or…or even a more sanitized version of it. He was too young to understand and he was too young to have all of that put on him, too. He was just a kid and…and he was too young for all of this. For any part of his life. He should have been at home with his mother. He should have been getting ready for his first day of fifth grade, not his first mission, and Fukuda…he wished that there had been some way that he could have gotten Sho to Masami. That he could have given Sho the life that he should have been living.

But there wasn't.

"Yeah, I guess." Said Sho. He put his pencil to the page and…and came up with nothing. For once in his life he had nothing to draw. Usually it was the opposite. Usually he had trouble getting all of his ideas to sit still. Usually his mind was just full of ideas and they were always pushing at each other to get to the front of the line like rude people at Disneyland. Usually he ended up starting two or three drawings at once and not being able to stop until all of his ideas had come out.

But not now.

Now the page was as blank as his mind…and he couldn't stand it. He had the pencil in his hand and he knew that he needed to draw something but he had no idea what. He knew that he needed to just…draw! To make pictures on the page…but he couldn't. His brain was too busy thinking about dad and big sis and baby sis and mom and how he was far from home and how he hadn't been home in so long and he just….he couldn't!

He scribbled.

He scribbled because he had to draw something. He scribbled and he scribbled and, distantly, he was aware that Fukuda was saying something to him but he had no idea what. He just kept on scribbling. It was like his hand had a mind of it's own. It was like his hand was trying to say something that his brain hadn't been clued in on. His brain couldn't get a clue….or maybe his hand couldn't get a clue…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that he scribbled and scribbled as he went faster and faster and faster and he had to go faster still and it just happened and it made him feel both better and worse and-

And his page ripped.

He didn't think. He just threw his sketchbook. Even though he knew that he had to behave in public. Even though he knew that he was on a train surrounded by normal people. Even though he knew that he was acting like a baby he still threw his sketchbook…right at the guy across from him.

"Sho!" said Fukuda. Sho knew better than to….well he didn't. Fukuda reminded himself that Sho did not know any better. That he was just acting out because he had never been taught any better. Sho acted up and threw things all the time. He had been doing this since he had been little. Fukuda could not fault him for this.

"Thanks for the paper. I've been needing a new fan for a while." Said Ootski. He wasn't mad at the kid. He didn't much fancy having things thrown at him but he was the adult there and he was going to handle this with tact and grace. There was a piece of paper with a rip down the middle. He finished tearing it off and began to fold it into a fan. Fukuda was trying to talk Suzuki's son down now. Ooski had no clue if this was normal behavior from a child his age, he wasn't anyone's father uncle or brother, but he did know how to treat his coworkers and the kid was sort of like a coworker.

Tact and grace.

He sent a bit of energy at the kid. Enough to make a breeze. Now he was calmer. Good. He had no idea what had set him off but he had no idea how to deal with kids. The environment was probably overstimulating for him. Also Fukuda had said that he had emotional problems. Probably inherited from his father. Anyone with eyes could see that Suzuki was a little off.

"How'd you do that?" asked Sho. He wiped his eyes. Fukuda had been sort of mad at him. He had been telling him that it was ok to have big feelings like that but he was not back at the HQ. He couldn't just go around throwing things at people. Also they were on a train and if they made a scene they could get kicked off.

"I can harness energy and repurpose it. I mostly use paper fans to do so. Easier to carry around." Said Ootski

"You really should have asked him. Here, let me fix your drawing." Said Higashio. Ootski could be so clueless sometimes. He took the paper fan and put it back in the little boy's drawing book. He glanced around to make sure that nobody was looking and then he quickly restored the drawing book back to what it should have been. He closed it and handed it to the little boy.

Oh. So that was his name.

"Leader. I know you. I've fixed a few of your toys." Said Higashio as he handed 'Sho' back his drawing book. That was his given name. He had been calling him Suzuki-san this whole time. A tad bit confusing since his father was also Suzuki-san.

"It's the character for leader but I'm called Sho…and thanks for fixing my sketchbook. And I'm sorry that I threw it." Said Sho. He felt…bad….about what he did. He shouldn't have been getting upset and he shouldn't have been throwing things like a little kid, either, because he was not a little kid. He was nine and he was on his first mission and he just…should not have been acting like that.

"It's ok, Sho, as long as you're sorry it's ok." Said Fukuda. That had been…he felt like it had been close but he knew that there hadn't been any stakes at all. Sho was a little kid. Sometimes kids threw things. He couldn't help it. This was….this was fine and everything was fine and…and he let them pass the next stop. He wasn't going to take Sho away from…from this life he had been living. He wasn't going to deliver Sho to his mother.

He had no idea where she was.

Even if he did manage to get Sho away from everyone else there was nothing that he could do if Sho got upset. He couldn't even put up a barrier. He couldn't do anything to calm Sho down. Sho would get upset and then…and then it would all be over…and it couldn't even start since he had no clue where Masami even was!

Gone. She was gone.

"I won't." said Sho. He opened his sketchbook and felt…better…as he ran his fingers over the clean page. He felt a lot better and he didn't know why. Maybe because he hadn't hurt anyone. Maybe because nobody was mad at him. Maybe because…because he was far from the people who were usually mad at him…or afraid of him…or should have been afraid of him…

He was all alone now.

Alone but also surrounded by people. He was…he didn't know what to call this feeling. This feeling like he could finally just…breathe. It felt nice. He felt nice. He picked up his pencil and held it in his hand. He wanted…he wanted to draw…he wanted to draw what he wanted to draw. The person he wanted to draw most in the entire…the second person he wanted to draw most in the entire world. Not mom. He could barely even remember her face and Mukai didn't need a drawing of his mom, anyway because she had her own mom now.

He drew a picture of baby Mukai as he remembered her.

She had probable grown in the time they had been apart, babies grew fast he knew that much, but…but he knew that she would like this drawing just the same. Because he had drawn it for her. He would give it to her and then he would tell her that story of his first train ride without dad or big sis…and she would listen and smile her little bay smiles and maybe she would be able to crawl over to him and hold up her own head and…and then maybe they could play the game where she threw her socks…or maybe the one where they played with the cardboard paper towel roll holders…and she would smile and be happy…and he would be happy, too, because he had made his little sis….pretend little sis…happy.

That was all that he wanted, her happiness.

He spent the rest of the train ride drawing Mukai's picture.


	176. The Best Little Sister in the World

Baby Mukai had gotten bigger.

She was sitting up on her own now. Well she had this little pink and purple baby chair with a dangling thing in front of it but that still counted. He was so proud of her. She remembered him, too. She smiled at him. She was smiling up at him from her little baby chair in her new home. This was an apartment in the Seventh Division compound. It was just like the one that he and dad and big sis had stayed in when they had stayed in the Seventh Division last year. The walls were the same white and the carpet was the same beige color and the couch was the same black on they had and the TV was the same one day had and the shelves were the same white ones and the kitchen was in the same place and the hallway was just as long and dark and everything was just…the same.

But also different.

The walls were covered in pictures. Photos, not art, but actual photos. Like mom had put up in the Castle…which made sense because Mukai had a mom, now, and that was what moms did. They put up your picture. There was a big picture of Mukai on the wall in a pink dress that Sho had never seen, and a bow so people could tell she was a girl, and also she was smiling and….and it was nice. There were other pictures, too. Pictures of Mukai and her new mom at the zoo and the park and at a summer festival it looked like…lots of pictures of Mukai. Some of just her and some of her and her mom and some of just her mom.

Her mom was nice.

She used to be a fighting champion. There were pictures of her with trophies and medals, the same ones on the shelves, and also pictures of her beating people up…but like on TV not like what dad did to people. There were other pictures, too. Pictures of her when she was little. Pictures of her with two old people who might have been her parents and grandparents or something. There was a picture of her with all the other Scars from the Seventh Division. Even the division leader, the short lady who never took off her mask even though it was weird. The Scars dressed weird here. Kind of funny, like that guy with the big shoulder pads, or even the guy with the Mohawk and all of the piercings.

Mukai was going to be happy here.

"Here, I drew this for you. It's what you look like and also I drew a cat next to you because cats are cool." Said Sho as he opened his sketchbook and showed her the picture that he had drawn her. She was smiling and looking at him. He had no idea how much she understood. He tried to say it again in Korean.

His Korean wasn't really that good.

But she still smiled at him. She smiled and reached out for his sketchbook. He held it closer. He had read that babies didn't really see that well. It was because there wasn't a lot to look at while they were inside of the mom's stomach. Sho would have kept his eyes closed, too, if he had to be inside of a mom's stomach. The stomach acid and stuff could have gotten in his eyes. He wondered if baby sis remembered being in her mom's stomach…or if she even remembered her mom. Her stomach mom. She had a new mom and even though she hadn't come out of her new mom's stomach that was still her mom.

She was nice.

"Hey kid, you want something to drink? Like a soda or something?" asked Tsuchiya. She was baby Mukai's new mom. She was so cool! She always wore her fighting uniform, Sho knew that it had a special name but he forgot, and she had big muscled arms and she could totally keep Mukai safe and stuff. Also she was taking really good care of Mukai. She had found out how to get her socks to stay on and also the house didn't smell like throw up so that meant that baby sis hadn't been throwing up all day.

Also she was there.

It was very important for a mom to be there. His mom had left but baby sis' new mom wouldn't. She couldn't. She was a part of Claw and the only way out of Claw was dying. Also she was a Scar, which was a good rank, so she wouldn't have wanted to leave either. She also had picked Mukai so, of course, she wanted to be her mom. Not like his mom. She had run away…

But he doesn't want to think about that.

"Yes, please." Said Sho. He remembered the please part. That was good manners. He had bad manners, dad was always telling him that he had bad manners, and he didn't want to have bad manners around baby Mukai's new mom. Then she might have thought that he was a bad influence on her and she would make him go back to the rooms he and Fukuda were staying in. He didn't want that to happen. He wanted to spend as much time with baby sis as he could.

He had missed her so much.

Baby sis' new mom got up and went to the kitchen. He could still sense her even though his back was to her. It was weird being around a girl who wasn't his sister. He didn't know a lot of girls. Just his sister and his pretend sister. He wondered if Mukai would have a lot of friends growing up. She was a girl esper and there weren't a lot of them. Well that was ok because he would be her friend. He and baby sis would be friends and then he and big sis would be her friends…

Or maybe not big sis.

She couldn't know about this. She would not be able to keep this a secret. She would tell dad and then dad would be all mad at him and then he would move baby sis and her mom to a new division or something. They were talking about either reopening the Eighth Division or even building a Ninth Division but that was all talk. They spent a lot of time in Japan these days. That made it easier to visit her. If she were in Brazil or New Zealand or Canada or something then it would be harder to see her since they didn't spend a lot of time in those places.

Also there was a Disneyland here and he would take her when she got old enough to be able to eat the food and ride the rides.

He heard the ding of a microwave. He turned around and saw baby sis' new mom testing a bottle to see if it was too cold or too warm. She did it on her fingers. Big sis had showed him how to do that on his arm. Sho wondered if she knew which kind of formula to feed her. Some kinds of formula made her throw up after she ate or while she ate and some made her go to the bathroom too often and some not often enough…babies had very sensitive stomachs. He wondered why her new mom didn't just give her human milk. That was why girls had boobs, right? They were like water balloons full of milk?

That was his understanding of it, anyway.

He didn't know and he figured that asking a girl about her boobs was a pretty quick way of getting kicked out. Fukuda had told him that he had to be good, he had been very clear, because otherwise Mukai's mom would make him leave. Moms were very protective of their babies, Fukuda had said, even though didn't need to be told that. He knew already not to mess with a mom's babies. Like when he and Shimazaki and Shibata had found the next with the baby birds in it and they had tried to play with them…and then the momma bird pecked their heads and they had to run away…

He didn't want baby sis' new mom to peck his head…or whatever human moms did when they thought that you were after their babies.

"Here you go, Suzuki, sorry but I only have diet." Said Tsuchiya as she handed him a can of diet grape soda…the worst kind of soda…but he still smiled and took it. He decided to pretend to be big sis in that moment. He had to be nice and polite and good…and next time he would bring his own soda. Who drank diet? And who drank grape? And who drank diet and grape often enough that they kept cans of it in their house?

She was still a good mom even though she had no idea how to choose a can of soda.

"Thank you very much. I love diet grape soda." Said Sho lying through his teeth. Baby Mukai was looking at him. Well she was switching between looking at him and looking at the TV. It was some kind of baby show. He wanted to watch something else but he wasn't going to change the channel…even though this would turn her brain into mush. It couldn't have been any worse, though, than her listening to him tell lies. He didn't want to turn her into a liar but he also didn't want to make her new mom mad…

And also sometimes it was ok to tell lies.

Fukuda said so. If anyone asked why Sho wasn't with the inspection group he was to say that he got bored and wanted to play in his room. That was what he was supposed to say if anyone, but especially dad, asked him. He could do that. Mom had said that lies were bad but…but this lie was ok. Sometimes it was ok to tell lies. Like when someone gave you a really bad tasting soda. You still had to accept it and drink it even though it tasted like…like he didn't even know what.

This was the kind of soda they gave to traitors to torture them.

"You sure, kid? Because you look like you're sucking on a lemon. I have tap water and milk, too, if you'd rather-" said Tsuchiya

"No. This is good. Thank you." Said Sho. He smiled, too, which was also something that you were supposed to do to be polite. He was acting just like big sis. She said that she had to remind herself to smile, sometimes, and to make other faces too. She said that it was hard to figure out what face to make. That was weird. You just sort of knew….unless you were lying like he was now. He tried to make himself mean that smile. Baby sis reach over and tried to grab his shirt. Ok, now he meant that smile.

"You're welcome. Hey, move over. I've got to feed her now." Said Tsuchiya. Sho felt scared as her new mom unbuckled her from her little baby chair. He was…was scared because…because she was taking her away…even though the feelings he had made no sense at all. That was baby Mukai's new mom. Of course she could pick up her own baby.

Of course she could take her own baby away.

That was her baby and she could do what she wanted….like take her away again. Sho…he couldn't let himself feel like this. She was happy, now, and he knew that she was happy now. She deserved a mom who was nice to her and took care of her and she deserved to be in a place like this where her shows were on the TV and her pictures were up on the walls and her socks stayed on and also she didn't smell like throw up or pee. She was happy and…and Sho should have been glad for her.

Glad that she had been taken away.

Even though he had done all the things that you were supposed to do for a baby. Even though he had fed her and played with her and changed her clothes when she threw up on them and made sure that she watched good TV and showed her how to draw pictures and stuff….and he had done a good job!...calm down. He had done a good job and…and a mom could do a much better job than a big brother could. That was why big sis could never be a substitute for their mom. Because she was just a sister and not a mom even though she did all the things, too, that a mom was supposed to do.

He should have been happy for Mukai.

"Why are you feeding her now? She isn't crying." Said Sho. Baby sis would tell you when she needed something. She had never been shy about telling everyone when she needed something. She wasn't crying now, no, she was pulling on her new mom's hair and kicking her feet. She was happy.

"It's her lunch time. I like to feed her before she gets herself all upset. It's just easier." Said Tsuchiya as she walked over to the couch and sat down. Sho watched her. He wasn't sure if he should go and sit next to her. He wasn't sure how the guest was supposed to act. He hadn't been a guest in someone's home in…ever….and he had no idea what the rules were.

"How do you get her to eat when she's not hungry? When we would try and feed her when she wasn't hungry she would push the bottle away and throw up and stuff." Said Sho

"Practice. Lots of practice. I'm you and your dad had your own schedule-" said Tsuchiya as baby Mukai sucked on her bottle. That was a different kind of bottle than the ones that they'd fed her with. It was plain. Her bottles at home had been pink and had characters on them. This one was plain. Mukai didn't seem to care. She ate and ate and ate…and she didn't cry or throw up.

"No, not me and my dad. Me and my big sis. Dad was away on a mission when we took care of her." said Sho. He wasn't' a kid. He could do things like take care of his little sister. Like he could have been taking care of her right now. He could have fed her. Tsuchiya wasn't holding her right. She liked to sit up while she ate. Tsuchiya had her laying down. She needed to sit up so that way the throw up wouldn't go everywhere.

"And…the healer too, right? I mean your dad didn't just leave two kids alone with a baby…right?" said Tsuchiya. She was holding the bottle at too low of an angle, now, and Mukai was trying to pull on it. Sho wondered if she knew how baby sis needed to be burped afterwards. How you had to be careful or she would throw up in your hair. How you had to also try and get her to nap after she ate…

And Sho didn't want her to take a nap.

He didn't know how long he had with her. Fukuda said that he could visit Tsuchiya and Mukai for as long as the inspection would take. It could have been anywhere from two days to two weeks depending on how cooperative Ishiguro, the Division Leader lady, felt like being. He didn't want to waste any time at all that he could have been spending with his little sis.

He had no idea when he would be able to see her again.

"No, it was just me and big sis…well her friends helped. Minegishi and Shimazaki and Shibata-" said Sho

"The upper echelon enforcers?" asked Tsuchiya. She was holding the bottle way too low. Mukai was starting to get all baby mad. She was kicking and making her little upset baby noises. How hard was it to hold a bottle? Sho stopped himself from getting up and doing it himself. Even though he knew that he could have done better than that.

"Yeah, them. They're the guys who follow my dad around and keep him safe and deal with traitors and stuff like that." Said Sho. He didn't know what that face she was making was about. Maybe Mukai had peed on her or something. She did that sometimes if you didn't tape her diapers on good enough. She would have peed less if she ate solid foods but she was too little to eat solid foods…right? He didn't know. She didn't have any teeth so she must have still been too young for solid food.

Sho wondered if, when he saw her again, she would be old enough to eat solid foods.

He'd get her a big churro, maybe, or some ice cream. Something good. Some soda, too, but not enough to make her sick or anything like that. Something good. Something that she would remember. He had no idea how much she would remember but he hoped that she ended up remembering him. He was her big brother…her pretend big brother…after all.

He loved her more than anything else in the whole world.

"You…you were all watching her? Alone? How?" asked Tsuchiya

"We took good care of her. Well I took the most good care of her since big sis was busy filling in for dad and stuff. I kept her clean and I fed her and also when I fed her I didn't let her bottle dip down like that. She's getting mad and she's eating air and when she eats air her stomach gets upset." Said Sho. He knew that he was being a little bit rude but he didn't care. He didn't want her to have an upset baby stomach and then throw up baby throw up everywhere.

He knew how to take care of her.

"Wha-oh. Right. Still getting the hang of this. Sorry Mukai, momma's sorry." said Tsuchiya. Sho felt…like he didn't even know what he felt. He knew that he should have been happy that Mukai had a mom and all but…but he could have done better than that! Why did she have to be taken away from him? He had been a great big brother. He had taken better care of her in three weeks than dad had taken of him and big sis in the whole time that he had been a dad! Sho could have taken care of her for the rest of her life.

But she needed a mom.

Kids were not moms and dads no matter what dad thought. She needed a mom and she had a mom. She had a mom who would last forever. She had a mom who could never leave. Nobody left Claw alive. She was a Scar and she would never be able to leave. Mukai would never wake up one day and her mom would have just been gone and she would have been all alone…that would never happen to her. She would never, ever, ever have to go through anything like that.

Not while he was around.

"She likes it when you rub her back while she eats, too, and then again after she burps." Said Sho. He wanted so badly to hold his baby sister…but he couldn't just run up and take her out of her new mom's arms. That would have gotten him kicked out and he did not want to be kicked out. He wanted to spend as much time with her and humanly possible. He had no idea if or when he would ever see her again…and it wasn't fair to him but…but he needed to stop being selfish.

She had a mom. She needed a mom and she had a mom and he should have been happy for her instead of constantly thinking about how much he wanted her back.

"Here, how about you come up and feed her then, Big Brother-san." Said Tsuchiya. She was smiling at him and she seemed happy…so she wasn't going to kick him out. That was good…and also she was giving him permission to feed baby sis! He didn't need to be told twice. He got up as fast as he could and practically threw himself onto the couch. He was so excited! He got to feed her again! He could remember the last time he fed her. It had been a few minutes before Fukuda came in to take her.

She was put in his arms.

She held her own head up. She was trying to sit up. He sat her up the way she liked it. She was so warm…how had he forgotten how warm she was? How had he forgotten what it felt like to hold her? He loved her so much. He held her bottle in place. She was trying to help him, it felt like, and she….she was so smart. She was so smart and she had learned so much and there was still so much less to teach her and…and he wanted to stay. He wanted dad to make him into a Scar so he could stay forever with his baby sis and just….just be with her.

But that was never going to happen.

He wished that he were older. If he were older, old enough to run Claw, then he could have just said that he was going to keep baby sis. If he had been an adult then big sis would have been adults and then Fukuda would have had no reason at all to take baby sis away. If he had been an adult then he could have just married her new mom or something….ick…actually no that was a last resort thing. He didn't want to be married. He already had a girl to boss him around. She was called his big sister.

Maybe Fukuda could have married her mom.

Fukuda could have married her mom, he wasn't married and she wasn't married so it made sense, and then he could have seen baby sis whenever he wanted to because Fukuda's job was to follow dad around and stuff. It would have been perfect. Fukuda would have been able to give baby sis back to Sho and big sis and then he wouldn't have had to do any of the taking care of the baby stuff or any of that husband stuff either. They'd already had a baby, baby sis, so he wouldn't have had to kiss her or hold her hand or any of the other gross stuff that married people did.

But he got the feeling that Fukuda would not have gone along with that plan if Sho proposed it to him.

"You like that? Do you like your formula? It's special for you. It'll help you grow up big and strong. You want that, right? To grow up big and strong? You got so big I almost didn't recognize you. Not that I'm calling you fat or anything. You're supposed to be getting bigger. One day you'll be so big that we can play together. Then I'll teach you all kind of stuff. It'll be great. Like how to hold up your own bottle. See? You don't have it yet but I can teach you." Said Sho softly as he held her in his arms like she liked and he rubbed her back like she liked. Even her little baby aura seemed happy.

"You're pretty good at that, Big Brother-san." Said Tsuchiya. Sho let her call him that even though it was just for pretend. Fukuda said that people would think that she was really his little sister if he went around calling himself her big brother…and he didn't think that it would be such a bad thing. Who would come after her and hurt her? She lived in the Seventh Division compound, her mom was a professional fighter, and she was an esper too. He felt sorry for the moron who came here looking to cause trouble, looking to hurt her, he felt sorry for them…

Because he would kill them.

He would kill anyone who even thought about hurting his baby sister. It didn't matter where he was in the world, even if it was countries and oceans away, or even what time it was. It could have been early in the morning or late at night. It wouldn't matter. If someone tried to hurt his baby sis then he would kill them so bad that even their ghosts would be dead…or something. They'd be dead and their ghosts would be super dead and then they wouldn't be able to hurt baby sis.

Because he was her big brother and that was what big brothers did…they protected their sisters.

He had been such a jerk to big sis but he could be better for little sis. He had to be better for little sis. Even though they didn't have the same mom and dad he would still be there for her. He would still take care of her. That was what little sisters needed, their big brothers, and for her he would be the best big brother in the whole world.

Because she was the best little sister in the whole world.

"Well she deserves it. She's a pretty good little sister." Said Sho meaning every single word of it. No matter how much time passed, no matter how much bigger she got, no matter how much bigger he got, she would always be the best little sister in the whole, wide, world to him.

She would.


	177. President Suzuki's Son and Daughter

Sagami Tsuchiya was raising President Suzuki's Daughter.

She wasn't stupid. She may have led a somewhat sheltered life, she had grown up in her family's dojo, but she was no moron. She knew that this was not some random orphan that had been left on Claw's doorstep. What kind of a fool did Fukuda take her for? She knew what this was even before she set eyes on Mukai.

How many espers in the world had red hair, blue eyes, and were close personal friends of the only healer in all of Claw.

She played along, of course, because obviously this was not the sort of thing that she was going to be screaming from the rooftops. She was raising President Suzuki's illegitimate Daughter. Whatever. She had no problem with that. She was happy to do what she could to help. That was why she had joined this organization, to help people.

And herself.

She had been recruited into Claw with promises of a better world. A world where people like her wouldn't have to hide. She was promised power, wealth, prosperity for her dojo and her family, and the chance to meet others in the world like her. She had bought the whole better world spiel hook, line, and sinker. It wasn't a bad job, not really, and they really did help people. This was where they Awakened people, made them into artificial espers, amongst other things. The process was long and dangerous but, yeah, these were adults that were volunteering for the procedure. They read the fine print, signed the papers, and knew what it was that they were agreeing to…and those rumors about an Awakened Child were bullshit. No kid could have survived that.

And no parent would put their kid through that.

Tsuchiya had only been a mother for a little over a month, felt like a year, and she knew that anyone who even though about putting Mukai through something like that would be dead the minute they even so much as harmed a hair on her little red head. This was her daughter, her responsibility, and she was not letting anything happen to her. Even if Suzuki himself came knocking on her door making all kinds of crazy demands…

But he wouldn't be.

This was one of those hush-hush things. Nobody knew about this baby and she wasn't about to go spouting off about Suzuki's private womanizing. At least she assumed that Mukai was the result of womanizing. She knew what powerful men were like. Whatever. She didn't care where Mukai came from and she didn't care to speculate about her boss and some unnamed woman. Not his wife…wherever she was. He was married. He always wore that wedding ring and he had two kids already. One of which was downright freaky and made her glad that she worked in the lowest ranked of all the divisions. She had seen the kid's message to all of Claw…and it had not been reassuring.

No wonder this was such a successful cult.

She had no problem with other people worshipping the Suzuki's as living Gods or whatever, people's private beliefs were theirs alone, but she was not one of the devout. He wasn't a God. If a God decided to come down to Earth it wouldn't have been in the body of Suzuki Touichirou. Sure he fought well but there was more to life than fighting….or maybe not. Maybe she just didn't like the man. He was an annoying micromanager who really needed to learn how to speak to people. Also she got the feeling that even though he had beaten her he had been holding back. It didn't matter if he won, his victory was hollow if he pulled his punches, and she knew a lot about hollow victories.

It was nice to be in a place where she didn't have to pull her punches.

Not that she had that many occasions to fight. Pretty much all of her time these days went to Mukai. Feeding her, getting up in the night with her, changing her, making sure that she didn't accidentally kill herself…she couldn't even walk yet but she still found new and exciting ways to almost kill herself…like the time she managed to almost swallow her own sock. Whatever. There was nothing that Tsuchiya couldn't handle.

Even Suzuki's son.

"Here. I thought you might like regular better." Said Tsuchiya. He had spent yesterday with her and now he was back again. At least he had given her enough time to pick up some regular soda for him…though in her defense she had not been expecting company. That healer had just showed up at her door with the kid and said that he would be visiting for the next few days. At least she didn't have to put him up, just let him hang out with Mukai, but she would have liked some warning.

But she wasn't going to keep the kid away from his little sister.

"Thanks." Said Suzuki's son. He was playing with Mukai now, making her toys float, and she wasn't going to say anything unless he tried making her float. That would have been dangerous. This was…not entirely safe…but she wasn't a helicopter parent. Besides, he was keeping her entertained. That gave her some free time for once.

Time to train.

She wasn't too wearing of leaving him alone with the baby. She would just be in the next room after all. She left him his soda, far away from Mukai, and went to her room to hit her punching bag a few times. Normally, without the super qigong, because she did not feel like smashing it to smithereens. The noise would scare Mukai and then she would have a frightened baby on her hands and she did not want to have a frightened baby on her hands.

Especially not a frightened esper baby.

Mukai had an aura. That meant that she had, or would have, powers. The kid had powers, and the aura of a grown adult, so that was probably what was in Mukai's future. She wanted to put that future off for as long as possible. She loved Mukai, she did, but she didn't know how she would deal with a baby who had full adult powers. She had no idea what the mother's power set had been but she did know that Suzuki was the most powerful of all espers.

And she was raising his Daughter.

She would do her best to teach Mukai what she could, and the thousands of years of qigong technique that had been passed down through her family for generations, but when it came to the things that she had seen President Suzuki do…she was at a loss. She would do what she could with what she knew but…well…the future worried her just a bit. It wasn't like President Suzuki would be around to teach his daughter anything. It wasn't like he was even any kind of a father to his own kids. His daughter couldn't have been older than twelve, and that was Tsuchiya being generous, but he had left the whole of Claw to her…and his son was even younger but he had just let him come to Seasoning City with the inspection team…

Yeah, no, that man did not need to be a part of Mukai's life.

She hit a little harder than necessary. She knew not to think ill of her boss, there was a real 1984 vibe around here, but she did not think that his kid should have been in the Seventh Division of all places. This was not the place for children. They made Awakened here and no kid should ever have had to see that. A lot of people didn't make it through the process and the ones that did came out…wrong.

This was not the place for children.

And neither was her room while she was practicing. She knew that she shouldn't have let Mukai out of her sight but she was safe with her big brother. The kid had amazing control and he was as powerful as a grown man. Mukai would be fine. Besides, she should have had a relationship with one of her siblings. Tsuchiya wondered where the girl was. Probably running Claw. She'd heard that the girl was second only to the President himself and when he finally bit the dust she'd inherit everything.

Good. They could use some more women in power.

Still, though, it would have been good for Mukai to know her older sister. She seemed to be having fun with her brother. She heard a lot of laughing, baby laughs, and she was glad. Even if she didn't much like having kid dropped down onto her when she already had a baby. She let herself listen to Mukai laughing. So that was what it was like to have a sibling. It sounded like fun.

Lots of laughter.

"Hey! What'd you do that for?" and then crying. Tsuchiya….she hadn't liked the sound of that. Yelling at Mukai…this was just a kid and she reminded herself that this was just a kid. Fukuda had told her that sometimes he could get upset, prone to tantrums, and she had told the kid that if he felt like throwing a tantrum then he could go and throw it somewhere else. She was not dealing with that and she was not having her baby thinking that behavior like that was ok.

Because it just wasn't.

"What are you yelling about in here?" asked Tsuchiya. The kid had scooted away from Mukai, like he was afraid of her, and he was holding a ruined sketchbook….and immediately Tsuchiya knew what had gone wrong. Right. He had left his soda way too close to Mukai and she kicked it over, as she tended to do, and now the kid's sketchbook was ruined…and also there was a purple stain on her rug…and Mukai was crying….

Lovely.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" shouted the kid. Tsuchiya paid him no mind. She had a crying baby to deal with. The crying kid would come later. She had no idea what he was carrying on about, anyway, it was just a stain on the rug. He had spilled soda, not toxic waste, so he had no reason to be carrying on like spilling soda on the rug was a capital offense.

"Kid, pipe down. If you feel so bad then get some paper towels from the kitchen and-" said Tsuchiya as she bounced Mukai up and down. She was fine, just startled, but she was calming down…or at least she would have been calmed down already if her older brother hadn't been carrying on like Tsuchiya didn't even know what.

"I didn't mean to yell at her! I didn't! it just happened!" said the kid. Tsuchiya sighed. He was being annoying but she supposed that this was good practice for the future. This was just how kids were. She had overreacted plenty of times when she had been a kid….and she had done much worse than spill a little bit of soda on the rug. At least the kid hadn't punched down a wall or anything like that. That would have been difficult to explain to Ishiguro.

"Kid, calm down. She's fine. She's more freaked out, now, that you won't knock it off." Said Tsuchiya. She was not going to lose her temper. Her mother had never once lost her temper with her. She had been upset plenty of times, Tsuchiya hadn't exactly been an angel growing up, but she had never just started shouting or carrying on. So she would be the same towards her own child and the one that was sitting in the corner freaking himself out over nothing.

"I'm a terrible big brother…and now she's going to be scared of me for the rest of her life and she won't want to know me and she'll be right not to know me-" said the kid. Tsuchiya stared at him as she bounced Mukai up and down. She had been right. As soon as his screaming had stopped then his baby sister's crying had stopped. But now he looked like he was going to cry.

What?

When she pictured President Suzuki's son she didn't picture…this. A scared little boy. Honestly this was the first time she had ever seen the kid up close. He may have looked like the spitting image of his father, apparently the man had some very dominant genes, he acted like…like a scared little kid. She could not see the President as some scared little kid. Actually she had always imagined some sort of Benjamin Button scenario there…but that was neither here nor there.

That kid should not have been that scared.

Fukuda had said something about him having a lot of emotional problems. She was a Scar in the Seventh Division, she knew a thing or two about dealing with emotional problems, but she had insofar been dealing with the emotional problems of adults. This was not an adult. This was a very sad little boy. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do for a very sad little boy. She was used to delusions of grandeur, persecution complexes, inferiority complexes, and whatever the hell was wrong with the Awakened. This was….new…

But she was a mom now and dealing with things like this was what moms did.

"I suck and she thinks that I suck and she's never going to want to be near me and then if she does stay near me then I'm going to end up being a complete and total jerk to her and the whole thing is going to suck and…and I don't know why I suck so much…" said the kid. Tsuchiya knocked some of Mukai's stuffed toys, the only kind she couldn't accidentally kill herself with, off the couch. They had ended up making a much louder sound than she thought that they would have….oh….that creepy doll had been in the pile…but at least that knocked the kid out of…whatever that had been.

"Come here. She wants you to come and hang out. She misses her big brother." Said Tsuchiya. She patted the couch and tried to look as friendly as she could. She knew how intimidating she could be, and it had served her well in the past, but now intimidating was the last thing that she wanted to be. The kid looked at her like…like he was afraid of something…but then he very slowly made his way over to the couch.

She put Mukai in his arms.

"No, take her back. She's scared of me. I yelled at her and now she's scared and she thinks that I don't like her and she thinks that I don't care about her and she thinks that I don't want to be her brother and she thinks that I'm going to be mean to her and she wants me to get away from her and she knows that I'm the worst big brother in the history of people having big brothers." Said the kid. That….did not sound like something a healthy person would say. That also didn't look like how a healthy person would sit. He had his knees drawn up to his chest and he was sitting so far off to the side that it was like he was afraid. He had his hands under his knees and he was rocking back and forth a little bit…

That did not seem at all like a healthy little boy.

So this was what her coworkers had been like as kids. Yeah, yeah, she could definitely see a young Sakurai there. He was always happy to share his tale of woe with whoever would sit through it. She wondered what this kid's tale of woe was like. She wondered what could have happened in this kid's life to make him act like this. He was the son of the most powerful man in the world. He probably got whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. He obviously didn't have to deal with school or other kid problems…but obviously something was going on with him.

You never knew what went on behind closed doors.

She decided to give him some space. She decided not to reach over and pat him on the shoulder or something like that. Some little bit of human contact to show him that he was not alone and he didn't have to go through these feelings all on his own. Something like that. He wasn't a baby so she couldn't just pick him up and rock him…and the actual baby was doing fine. She was sitting on the couch between them now. He had put her down the minute she had been placed in his arms.

Like he had been afraid of her…or afraid for her…

"She's not afraid of you. See? She's tugging on your shirt trying to get your attention. You just scared her, that's all, but she's fine now. She's a little over five months old, she's got the memory of a goldfish. She's probably more worried about why you're so freaked out than about being yelled at." Said Tsuchiya. Maybe too blunt for a kid but she was still figuring it out. She was used to talking to someone who had just now started responding to her own name. Older kids…she had never dealt with a kid his age before…but she was figuring it out.

And this kid needed someone even if it was someone who was just figuring it out.

"I…I still got mad at her. She kicked my soda down and ruined my sketchbook…and I got mad at her. I'm a bad person. I'm a bad little brother. I'm a bad little brother and a bad big brother and…and I suck. I suck and she knows that I suck and-" said the kid

"Nope. Not that word. You're not going to use that word around my baby." Said Tsuchiya. She had, at some point, turned into her mom. She knew that there were worse words, she had used them, but she also knew that she did not need Mukai's first word to be 'sucks'.

"….it's not a bad word." Said the kid. He was wiping his eyes now and his feet were off of her couch. Good. Whatever that was had passed…or was starting to pass…thank God. She didn't know how she would have dealt with it if he had just kept on carrying on. She hoped that Mukai didn't have these problems when she got older.

"Well it's not something that I want her saying…and it's not something that you should be saying about yourself, either. You lost your temper, it happens, but you were smart enough to remove yourself from the situation when you lost control and you're sorry about it. So stop beating yourself up and start playing with your sister." Said Tsuchiya. Direct seemed to be best with kids. She had read that they didn't have the capacity for nuance. She hoped that she wasn't being too direct. She had no idea what she would had ended up doing if he had started carrying on again.

Poor kid.

"But I got mad at her…." said the kid

"So? Everyone gets mad. It's part of being human. It's not like you did anything. Well, ok, you yelled but you're, what, ten?" asked Tsuchiya

"Nine and a half." Said the kid. He seemed a little annoyed, even, that she would think of him as nine.

"Yeah, you're nine and a half. You acted like a nine and a half year old, ok? Now stop freaking out and play with her. She wants to play, that's what the tugging mean." Said Tsuchiya

"I know what the tugging means…and thanks. For being so nice to me." Said the kid. Tsuchiya had no idea what she was being thanked for. She hadn't even been that nice to him. Still, though, she was glad that she could help in whatever way that she could with…whatever that was. What was happening in that kid's life to make him react like that? To make him talk about himself like that? She didn't know.

She wasn't the one raising Suzuki's son, just his Daughter, and there was nothing she could do for the kid.


	178. Loneliness, Nosiness, and Not Knocking

Mob had never spent a night away from her little brother before.

Well that was not entirely true. She had been born before him so there must have been plenty of nights which she couldn't' remember because she had been a baby at the time. This was different though because she wasn't a baby, she was ten, and he hadn't even existed when she had first been born. He existed now and he as miles and miles and miles away from her. The bed across from hers was empty. The person who was supposed to sleep in it was gone.

Sho was gone.

Was this how he felt when she spent the night next to dad? When she went to sleep in dad's bed and he went to sleep on his own? Did he ever roll over and look at her bed and wonder where she was or if she as ok or how she was feeling? Well probably not because he knew that she was in the house and he knew that she loved him. She would always love her little brother. She would do anything for her little brother. She wished that she could have gone on the mission. She wished that she could have gone in his place and he could have stayed home and-

She hadn't thought that one through.

If she had been picked to go on the mission then he would have been the one at home with dad, which was dangerous, and also he would have still been sleeping alone and she would still have been sleeping alone. She didn't want to change history so they had switched places, changing history in general was a very dangerous thing to do because you could end up making it so you were never born, she just wanted her little brother back. Even if he had been very distant lately she still wanted him back. She wanted to hold him tight and never let him go.

Everyone she loved left.

"It won't be forever." Said Mob to herself. She needed to say it to herself because there was no one to say it to. She had been the one to tell him, back when dad had left, that it would not be forever and she had said the same thing when mom left…but that had ended up being forever. But a mission was not forever. A mission was not forever and he would be back to her…when it was done.

She wanted her little brother back now.

But that was not an option…and she needed to go to sleep. Yes, she had two options. The first option being going to sleep so she would not be tired in the morning. The second option was staying up all night staring at Sho's bed and wondering when he would come back…and missing him…and also crying a little because he was so far away. Was he asleep right now? Had he remembered to brush his teeth and take his multivitamin? He had remembered to put his dirty clothes in the hamper and not leave them on the floor? Had he remembered not to drink liquids after seven p.m. and also to make sure that he went to the bathroom before bed? What would he do if he wet the bed? Well he was staying with Fukuda and Fukuda would take good care of him.

She felt a little better.

He was fine…but she was not. She decided that since she would not be able to sleep that she would, instead, take option two and stay awake. But she would not be staring at Sho's bed all night because that would have just made her sad. She wanted…she wanted him back but she also wanted to be with other people. She could feel dad's aura. He was asleep…and she did not want to wake him up…and also she didn't really want to be near him. He was…he was her dad and she loved him but he had also beat her friend up. Shimazaki was fine now but…but dad had still hurt him. That hadn't been good and part of her…part of her was upset with him…and she did not like that part of herself. The part that was afraid of what he did to people…and upset with him for what he did to people….

She was supposed to be a good Daughter.

But being upset with her own dad was not being a good Daughter. She was a bad Daughter but….but she could be a good friend. Minegishi was up and so was Shimazaki…and it would be ok to go over there because their auras weren't tangled together. That meant that they weren't kissing. Well she had never had confirmation that their auras tangled when they kissed but what else could they be doing? Not that gross thing that adults did to make a baby. Minegishi said that they never wanted to have babies and besides, only married people could do that…or people who were in long term committed relationships which was sort of like being married but with no rings.

Minegishi and Shimazaki were neither of those things.

Even though they should have been. Everyone needed someone. Mob wanted everyone in her life to find love and to be loved, too. There was no better feeling in the world than being loved. Both the family kind and the doki doki kind…oh! And the friend kind too. That was how she felt about Minegishi. She loved them so much but she didn't want to kiss them or anything. No way. There were so many different kinds of love…

She loved her little brother and her dad.

But she was going next door to spend time with her friends. She decided that she was going to do that so that was what she was going to do. She put on her hoodie because it was a little bit chilly outside and she grabbed her vape pen, too, so she could share like Shimazaki had shared with her last time. She walked very quietly through the house so as not to wake dad up, nothing good would come of that, and then she went out the door and right next door.

It was a very short trip.

She didn't know if it would have been more rude or less rude to let herself in. Shibata liked to sleep on the couch, he couldn't fall asleep without the TV on, and if she knocked she would have ended up waking him up….but if she didn't knock she would have just been strolling in like she owned the place…but strolling in was a lot nicer than waking people up when they were trying to sleep. So that was what she did. She opened the door slowly and closed it just as slowly. She slipped off her shoes, carefully so they didn't light up and was Shibata, and then she tiptoed through the house.

It smelled weird in there.

Sort of like Shimazaki's vape but…stronger. Sort of like…wait, she knew this smell. Minegishi was smoking inside the house again. They had a rule about smoking and vaping in the house. Vapes that didn't smell like candy were ok and so were the cigarettes that they grew themselves but everything else had to be smoked outside because they didn't want the house to stink…even though it sort of did already…but Mob was going to be polite and not say anything about that. Besides, she brought her vape and it was the coconut kind that Minegishi liked and she would share with them, and Shimazaki too because they were better friends now, and it would be a good night and she would forget all about how much she missed Sho and how alone she had felt in that big, empty, room and also how upset she felt about what dad had done and how upset she was at herself for making dad do that and also how upset she was at herself for being upset with dad because that was being a bad Daughter and she wanted to be a good Daughter but it was all ok because she would hang out with her friends and-

-and maybe she should have knocked first.

She had been excited to see her friend and have fun and not feel bad. Also she had just let herself in the front door. Letting herself in the front door had made her forget the rule about knocking. She also didn't have that rule in her house. She never knocked on her and Sho's bedroom door and dad never knocked and there was never any need to knock on the bathroom door because it was only closed when someone was in there and they could all sense each other anyway and that was how nobody ever ended up seeing anything that they were not supposed to see.

Like that. Mob figured that she was not supposed to see that.

"Mob?! What the hell!?" said Minegishi…and their aura seemed mad…and they had every right to be mad. Mob really should have knocked. She should have knocked because if she had knocked then she wouldn't have seen Minegishi kissing Shimazaki, well she had seen that before, but they were kissing…different. Sort of like how they kissed in the dramas that mom watched late at night after Mob and Sho went to bed…and the ones which mom had told her that she was not allowed to watch…and for good reason.

She was not supposed to see people kissing like that.

"I'm sorry!" said Mob. She closed her eyes. That wasn't enough. She turned around. That wasn't enough either. She wanted to run away but she couldn't. She just could not get her legs to listen. She could feel her legs, they felt cold since she had turned around fast enough that her nightgown had spun out around her. The spinning had been too much. Now they weren't listening. She frozen in place. That last thing that she had been able to do was spin around and cover her eyes and she had spun around too fast because not only was she stuck but he had felt her vape pen fall out of her pocket and now it had probably broken and-

And she felt the energy around her shift. She kept her eyes closed and her hands over her eyes. She felt her vape pen slip back into her pocket. She smelled…she smelled that same weird smell but also cologne, too much of it, and also dirt…which was what Minegishi smelled like…and that was not been Minegishi who had put her vape pen back into her pocket…and she should have said thank you…

But she couldn't.

She couldn't get the mental image of….of what she had just seen…out of her head. She had seen them kissing before. She had seen Shimazaki teleport in and give Minegishi a quick kiss before going off to wherever it was that he went. She had seen Minegishi pull him in for a quick kiss, too, and then pushing him away even though it had been their idea to kiss. She had seen this stuff before but…but it had never been like that before. She had never seen them kissing together like they were trying to eat each other. She had seen…well they had been under the blanket so she had not seen much. Mostly Minegishi's back…their bare back….which meant that….

"Hey Toshi? Who's clothes are who's?" Mob pulled her nightgown up over her eyes and then went back to covering her eyes with her hands even though that was not enough layers at all. She wished that she could have run away…and she managed to get her leg to move…

"Just give me whatever and then go somewhere else. Mob and I have to work on her listening skills because I know for a FACT that we've talked about knocking MANY times before." Said Minegishi. Mob stopped trying to walk away. She knew that she was in for it now…and she knew that she should have knocked…because that would have been the polite thing to do….

She wished that she could have gone back in time and rewrote history so she had knocked on the door even if it ran the risk of making her never exist…which would have been preferable to existing right there…and hearing Shimazaki walk around behind her…and knowing that she had seen…

She wasn't sure what she had seen, actually.

Well Minegishi and Shimazaki kissing and also Minegishi's bare back…which meant that they were not fully dressed…unless they were a boy. In that case it would have been ok because the rules said that boys could walk around without shirts on because they didn't have breasts…which made no sense because Mob didn't have breasts either but she had to wear a shirt and an undershirt all the time but Sho could walk around without a shirt on and that would be ok.

She wondered if Minegishi would rather talk about the different set of rules that boys and girls had to follow instead of…whatever it was that Mob had just walked in on.

"You sure you have to talk about this now? Right now? Because-" said Shimazaki

"Ryou, the mood is dead. It's dead and it's not coming back, ok? So go to your room or something." Said Minegishi

"Fine…but can I finish that joint?" asked Shimazaki

"Hell no. I need it more than you do." Said Minegishi

"…fine. But let the record show that I still had my boxers on which means that she did not see my dick which means that I am not a creep." Said Shimazaki. Mob wished that she had enough hands to cover both her eyes and ears. She now had verbal confirmation that they had been doing….stuff. Naked stuff. The kind of stuff that people did in the movies. The stuff that she had to cover her eyes when it came on and Sho's eyes too. The stuff that dad changed the channel when it came on because it was 'vulgar, obscene, and crass' and sometimes other words, too. The stuff that Mob wasn't even too sure about.

The stuff that Mob had never wanted to see her very best friend doing.

"Ok, fine, you're not a creep. Just give me my clothes and get the hell out of here. Mob, keep your eyes closed." Said Minegishi. Mob did as she was told for once and kept her eyes closed while she heard Minegishi getting dressed. She heard cloth stop rustling, which meant that they were done, but she still kept her eyes closed just to be safe. She heard a deep inhale and then an exhale followed by coughing.

This repeated three times.

"Ok, open your eyes and get over here. We need to talk." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't want to open her eyes and go over there or talk but she did what her friend said. Maybe if she just sat there and listened and did as she was told then…then Minegishi wouldn't be so mad at her. Their aura still felt kind of mad…

They were patting the side of the bed. That meant sit here. So Mob sat next to them…but as far away as possible.

"Mob, is this an emergency? Did you come here because there's some kind of emergency happening and you didn't have time to call or text or email or send a messenger pigeon?" asked Minegishi. Their eyes were red and they seemed sort of…sleepy….but also mad, too, which they had every right to be since she had walked in on them doing….stuff.

"Um…no….and I don't even know where I would find a messenger pigeon…but I can go outside and look for one right now. I can find-" said Mob. She wanted to go away, far away, and catch whatever birds they wanted her to catch. Anything would have been better than talking about….about what she had just seen.

"Mob, sit yourself right there and don't move until I say you can." Said Minegishi before they smoked some more. Mob sort of wished that they would share…but it did not feel like the time to ask.

"Are-are you mad at me?" asked Mob

"Of course I'm mad. How many times have I told you not to just let yourself into my bedroom?" asked Minegishi

"Four." Said Mob…but then started to feel like she wasn't supposed to answer that question.

"If I've told you four times then why did you let yourself in again?" asked Minegishi

"I'm sorry. I just…forgot. We never knock at my house, ever, even when my mom was around. We don't even knock on the bathroom door, we just close it when we're not supposed to come in, but we always just go into bedroom and I missed you a lot and I was lonely and I wanted to hang out with you and I was missing Sho a lot and please…please don't be mad at me and hate me and not want to be my friend anymore!" said Mob. She felt like she was going to cry. She didn't know what she would do if Minegishi didn't like her anymore.

She wouldn't have a best friend anymore.

Nobody to spend all day reading and drinking coffee or playing dolls or smoking or just…just hanging out. Nobody to tell her that sugar is poison and smoking was bad for her. Nobody that she could go to when she was up late and feeling lonely….and she just…didn't know what she would do without her very best friend in the whole wide world…especially since her brother was gone now…and she felt tears in the corners of her eyes…and her hair was starting to float….

"Mob…come off it. I don't hate you. You know that I don't hate you." Said Minegishi

"I don-don't want us to stop being friends, too. You're my best friend and I love you so much and I don't want us to ever stop being friends and I'm sorry that I let myself in and I saw you guys kissing and stuff and…and I just don't want us to stop being friends and-" said Mob. She would have said more but she was pulled into a hug. Minegishi almost never hugger her…and she hugged back because this was very rare. They smelled weird…oh, this wasn't their shirt. They never wore black. This shirt was black and also too big, but not the normal too big of Minegishi clothes.

Mob enjoyed the hug but she did not need to be reminded of what she had just seen.

"Mob, I love you too, now stop crying. I'm mad at you but not enough to stop being your friend, ok? I will never be that mad at you. Even if came in here and smoked everything I had, drank everything I hate, cut up all my clothes, and salted all my plants I would still never stop being your friend. Ok? We're cool." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded and wiped her eyes.

"Ok. I really am sorry. I'll go now and then you can…not be mad at me anymore." Said Mob. Minegishi shook their head. Mob stayed put. She didn't want to talk anymore. They were still friends and that was what mattered. Now Mob could go back to her own room and then they could go to sleep and wake up and then she and Minegishi could pretend that nothing had happened. Like how when dad punished her and Sho they were supposed to go to bed and pretend like it never happened.

"Mob, we have to talk about this. About why you can't let yourself in here." Said Minegishi

"I know why. Because I can accidentally see stuff like that." Said Mob

"Exactly. These doors don't have locks…but fuck it I'm getting a deadbolt….and you need to knock. You saw something that you were never supposed to see. Ok? And as bad as you feel right now I feel worse because I'm the one you saw. Ok? It's embarrassing for both of us but violating for me. Ok? Very violating." Said Minegishi

"I-I didn't mean to make you feel like that. I-I didn't know." Said Mob. She felt bad now, even worse, even though she didn't really know what 'violating' meant.

"Well now you do, ok? And tell your dad and brother to start knocking, too, and you need to start doing the same. Ok? Normal people knock before they enter someone's bedroom otherwise they see things that they were never meant to-" said Minegishi

"She did not see my dick! Let the record show that-" shouted Shimazaki from the other side of the wall. Mob pulled her knees up to her chest and then buried her face in them. She did not need to be reminded that she had seen them doing….stuff. Things. The sorts of things that adults did…to make a baby…

Had they been trying to make a baby?

Did that mean that Minegishi was a girl? Also why were they trying to make a baby? Minegishi didn't like babies at all. They said so. Also they weren't married or in a long term, committed, relationship. Also if Minegishi had a baby of their own would they still want to be friends with Mob? Also what would they name the baby and what would it look like and-

And Mob had a lot of questions.

"Shut up! I heard you the first time! You're going to wake up Shibata!" shouted Minegishi. They made one of their plants grow giant and bang on the wall. Mob wanted to tell them to stop before they woke Shibata but she also wanted to ask them why they were trying to make a baby with Shimazaki of all people…or at all, even….

"Minegishi?" asked Mob. She wondered if this was ok to ask. She wondered if she was overstepping, like dad called it sometimes, by asking this…but she was already as embarrassed as a human being could possibly be so she decided to just jump in.

"That idiotic….yes? What is it?" asked Minegishi

"If you don't want kids then why were you and Shimazaki making a baby? I mean…I mean that's what you guys were doing, right? My mom says that when a man and woman love each other very much they do a thing together and then they have a baby…and if you do have a baby can we still be friends? I'm…I'm worried that if you have a baby then you won't want to be my friend anymore." Said Mob. Minegishi stared at her for a moment before they sighed and started smoking again.

Mob didn't say anything. She just watched them finish their cigarette.

"Ok, I am now in the right state of mind to have this conversation with you." Said Minegishi

"Ok." Said Mob. Minegishi took a deep breath, started coughing a lot, and then sighed.

"Alright. First of all, Mob, what do you think that you saw?" asked Minegishi. Mob felt her hair floating up behind her and her face turning red. She went back to hiding her face in her knees. She wished that she had worn her pink nightgown instead of her white one. Then her face could have blended in better.

"I saw you guys kissing…under the covers…and also you weren't wearing clothes…but I only saw your back…well Shimazaki wasn't wearing a shirt but he doesn't always wear a shirt…but that's all that I saw of both of you guys." Said Mob. She wondered if she could sink down into the bed if she tried hard enough. Even if it didn't go anywhere cool she still wanted to sink down to the bottom of it.

"That's all?" asked Minegishi

"That's all." said Mob. She didn't know what more there was to see but she did know that she did not want to talk about whatever more that there was to see.

"Ok. Well at least you won't be scarred for life…hopefully. Ok. I can do this." said Minegishi. They sighed and started bouncing their fingers against their legs. Mob wondered what 'this' was….and if it was something that they had to get themselves all pumped up for then maybe it would have been better to skip the whole thing.

"Do what?" asked Mob

"Talk to you about…you're only ten. I'll tell you what a ten year old should know. Yes, good plan. That's a very good plan." Said Minegishi

"What do I need to know?" asked Mob

''Ok. Listen. You saw…something very private and intimate. The most private and intimate thing that two people can share…keep it simple, she's ten….and it can make babies but it won't in this case because of precautions…that I am not up to talking to you about right now….just….ok, listen." Said Minegishi

"I've been listening this whole time." Said Mob…even though she didn't want to talk about this. She knew what two people did when they loved each other. Mom had told her when she was little. When a man and a woman loved each other very much they kissed each other and then they did more than kiss which was take off all their clothes and then they fit together like puzzle pieces and then the boy did something while they were stuck together, Mob didn't know what but since they were fitting together like that it must have been gross, and then a baby started to grow in the mom's stomach….but that only happened if you did it a bunch of times.

Mob didn't need to be told where babies came from, again, it had been hard enough to hear the first time.

"Well then keep on listening before I forget what I'm going to say. Ok. Two people…when they care about each other or love each other or are attracted to each other or just bored or whatever they…they can chose to come together and that's called sex and it's something that you are way too young for and-don't preach, Minegishi, get off your soapbox and stick to the facts….ok. Two people do this and it's intimate and private and not meant for anyone else, especially kids, to see. Ok? And it doesn't always end in a baby and that's not even always the end goal. Sometimes people just want to have fun and feel close to one another." Said Minegishi

"….what….?" asked Mob. That…what? People took off all their clothes and mashed their privates together….for fun? What the….what the H-Word was WRONG with adults? She could understand doing something gross to make a baby, babies were cute and fun and you could love them and also the world needed new people, which was also a good reason….

But for FUN?!

"I don't want kids, ok? You're enough of a kid for me and I will never stop being your friend and I still care about you but right now I think that we both need some sleep. Ok?" asked Minegishi

"….you do gross things like that…for fun?" asked Mob. Something had been said but she didn't know what. She was still focused on the fact that….that Minegishi….their very best friend in the whole world….was doing things like that….gross things…..for FUN?

"You're ten. You'll change your mind in a couple of years. I mean, objectively, it's disgusting but then again so is kissing when you think about it…and this is the last that we're going to talk about this for tonight, ok? If you have any questions about love or sex or guys or whatever you can ask me and I promise I'll answer them to the best of my ability….got to be responsible….but right now I am in no state to be answering any more questions and I think that we both could use some sleep, ok? How's that sound? Please say it sounds good." Said Minegishi.

Mob did not need to be told twice.

"That sounds good. Thank you for still being my friend…and…um….goodnight. Also please tell Shimazaki that I didn't see his…that I didn't see him naked so he can stop worrying about that and…and goodnight. Sleep tight. Don't let bedbugs lay eggs in your ears." Said Mob. She walked out of the room normally…and then ran all the way back to her house. She ran as quietly as she could to her bed and threw herself into bed as quietly as she could and then tried to calm down as best as she could.

That had been the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to her in the whole history of her life. She made a vow, then, that for the rest of her life she would knock on every single door she saw just in case there were naked people doing gross things on the other side of it. She had no idea that her best friend in the whole world could be so…could do something like….could think that it was a good idea to…to do things like that…

Adults were weird.

Mob…she didn't know if she wanted to be an adult. Not if it meant doing gross things like that. Kissing was not like that. Mouths were gross and spit was gross…but Mob had never kissed anyone with her mouth opened like that and….and now that she knew it was an option…well it was gross and she was never going to do that! Ever! So much grossness…adults were so weird. She didn't understand them and she never would. How was she supposed to look Minegishi in the eye after this? Shimazaki always had his eyes closed to she didn't have to worry about him…but Minegishi was their best friend…and now Mob knew that they did gross things like that…she would be up all night embarrassed now…

But at least she wouldn't be up all night missing Sho…so that was a good thing….right?

She hoped that wherever Sho was he was having a better night than she was.


	179. Three Bites Rules

Sho was not Fukuda's son.

He had to remember that. Sho was not his son. Sho could not and would not ever be his son. Sho was Suzuki's son. Sho was a child who Fukuda had no relation too. Sho was just a child who had been left in his care for the time being. Sho was just a child who Fukuda was sharing a meal with. Sho was just a child who Fukuda cared for. Sho was not his son. Sho was Suzuki's son. Sho was Masami's son.

Sho was not his son.

So why did it feel like he was? Why did it feel the two of them sitting at a table together, like they could have been father and son? Like they could have been a family in some far off time? In some other world? In another existence? He had shared meals with Sho before, more and as of late, but it had never felt like this before. Maybe because he had always been able to feel Suzuki there. At the corners of his perceptions. His aura always so bright, so there, so very much. Being away from Suzuki gave him some room to finally breathe…

And Sho, too, it seemed.

"Sho, eat your salad. You can't live on junk food." Said Fukuda. He sounded like a father, there, like he could have been Sho's father…and he needs to stop thinking about him like that. This was not his son. This could not be his son. He and Masami hadn't started up with…all of that…until well after Sho had been born. This was not his son. This was just…just him taking care of Suzuki's son for him. That was all. This child was not his child.

Even though it felt like it sometimes.

"I don't live on junk food. I had a cinnamon apple poptart for breakfast this morning." Said Sho as he picked at his salad. It was gross. There were cucumbers on it and no ranch dressing. If there had been ranch then he could have picked off the cucumbers and then drowned the taste away. That would have been perfect. But there was no dressing at all. Just a plate of leaves and vegetables.

Which was gross.

He didn't want to eat it, he didn't think that he could even get it down his throat without throwing up everywhere, but he knew that he had to try. Dad wasn't there to tip him backwards in his chair and big sis wasn't there to go on and on and on about how he needed to eat his salad….but he still didn't want to make Fukuda upset with him. He still didn't want to make Fukuda not let him see baby Mukai. Fukuda had that kind of power and Sho…he knew how adults could be.

Even nice ones like Fukuda.

"That's all you had?" asked Fukuda. He'd had to leave Sho on his own for breakfast…and it had been hard for him…but he was there to work and not play house. Ishiguro rose before the sun and that meant that the whole of the Seventh Division had to rise before the sun. When the Seventh Division rose then he rose too. He had a lot of work to do. Apparently since stress and pain made new Awakened then the best thing to do would be to up the stress and pain no matter what it did to the human mind.

There were a lot people to heal and a lot of machines to recalibrate.

Ishiguro was trying to get back into Suzuki's favor. It wasn't going to work. The failures of the Division fell on the Division leader and Suzuki did not tolerate failures. He wanted that kid back. He needed that kid back. Esper kids were a rarity and he needed as many as he could get his hands on…that is if they weren't his actual, biological, children.

He was risking his life bringing Sho here.

Sho had a right to see his own little sister. Suzuki hadn't been listening when he proposed that Sho come with. That was the only way that he'd said yes. When Suzuki was stressed he got obsessive. When he got obsessive there was only enough room in his mind for one thing at a time. So his youngest daughter slipped his mind. Good for Sho and Fukuda…and arguably Mukai as well. She was being raised in the Seventh Division compound, Fukuda didn't think it counted as maternity leave if Tsuchiya couldn't actually leave but what did he knew he wasn't Division Leader, and that was a hell of a lot better than being raised in the Suzuki household.

Just look at what happened to Sho.

He was less angry, which was good, but more anxious. He had been upset earlier because he had shouted at Mukai…which was not good at all…but he'd said sorry. He was still going to see Mukai tomorrow. Her mother trusted Sho around her and Sho…he was going to try to trust himself around her. He wondered if Tsuchiya knew that Sho was Mukai's older brother…she probably did…but she was also probably smart enough to keep quiet about it. After all, it would do no good to tell Suzuki that she knew all about his private fuck ups.

Of which there were many.

Suzuki may have been the most powerful man in the world but that didn't make him smart. He'd always gotten good grades, and when he put his mind to it he could accomplish a lot, but he was also a real idiot about a lot of things. Like his kids. Like raising his kids. Like the very basics of raising kids. When Masami had been pregnant with Sho he had poured over baby books because, according to him, he only needed to learn about the stages of life which he had zero memories of. He really should have kept on reading about parenting. Especially if he had been planning on driving his wife away.

Don't think about Masami.

She was out there somewhere and after three years he'd finally had a chance to get Sho to her…and he had no idea where she even was. He had no idea where to even start looking. Part of him wondered if she even wanted to be found. She was hiding from Claw, yes, but also….also it felt like she was hiding from him. It hurt. He'd always had those fantasies, and he wasn't stupid he knew that they could never be more than fantasies, of finding her and then…and then picking up where they'd left off. Running away together. Taking the kids…well taking Sho…and then just starting a new life. Maybe even having a kid of his own…all wild fantasies. Not just because he was forty three and way too old to be having kids. She was gone and…and he had to accept that. He had to accept that and do his best by her son.

Which included getting him to eat a vegetable that wasn't smothered in cheese or deep fried in tempura.

"I had some chocolate milk, too, and some bacon. That's food groups. The poptart had fruit and grains and the chocolate milk had dairy and the bacon was protein. That's enough for breakfast." Said Sho. He sort of missed being back home. At least dad hardly ever tipped his chair back anymore and big sis would back off if he complained enough. Also he could eat boxes of cereal in front of the TV. That was always a good time.

"Uh-huh. And what did you have for lunch?" asked Fukuda. He knew that food was not the hill to die on. He had told himself, when he was Sho's age, that when he had kids he would never try and force them to eat things that they did not want to…but he had been nine or ten when he'd had that thought. That had been over thirty years ago and since then he'd realized that even though he healed quickly that didn't mean he got to live on sugar.

Sugar wasn't good for anyone.

That was the one thing they agreed with Minegishi about. Sugar was poison. Of course they were a hypocrite, though, since Fukuda had seen them eat an entire platter of chocolate covered strawberries at a Claw function once. Still, sugar was not something that Sho needed more of. He had enough energy and enough trouble keeping still and focused as it was. Also there was the state of his teeth. Sho's last baby tooth was pretty much one big cavity…and that was his fault for not thinking to periodically heal the kid…

Sho was a big responsibility but he was Fukuda's responsibility.

"Tsuchiya made me a sandwich but it was gross. The meat had these weird red things in it. She said that they were pimentos. They were gross. They gave me hernias." Said Sho. He had been exaggerating a bit but when he said that things made him react like that it sounded like he was allergic. You weren't supposed to eat things that you're allergic to. That was why he didn't have to eat citrus fruits…and also some fruits that he did not like even though they didn't have citrus in them.

"What?" asked Fukuda trying not to laugh.

"The red things that grow on my skin and itch when I eat something that I'm not supposed to." Said Sho. Fukuda was laughing…but he was not trying to be mean….and Sho had to remember that he was not trying to be mean.

"Hives, Sho. You mean hives." Said Fukuda. He laughed, well he tried not to, but he laughed. Sho glared at him…which made him laugh a little more.

"Fine. Hives. The red things on my skin. Pimentos give me hives but I still ate it anyway because I didn't want her to kick me out. Besides, Mukai drinks formula and I tasted it back when she lived with us. It doesn't taste like milk at all. It's so gross." Said Sho. He stuck out his tongue as he remembered what little sis' main source of food tasted like. Even though he knew that he was not supposed to stick out his tongue at the table…or ever.

Dad's rule.

But dad wasn't there. Dad wasn't there and big sis wasn't there. He had never been so far away from the both of them. It was…weird. She had been his big sister for his entire life and they had always been together…but now they weren't. It was easier to be away from dad because dad had always gone off to work and stuff…but being away from big sis was weird…but it was for the best. He had been about to hurt her, before, but it was ok so long as he never ended up doing stuff like that. Hurting her for real. It was important to never cross lines like that. Fukuda has said so. It was better that they were apart…even though he missed her…but also didn't…

He got to see baby sis and that was enough for him…or at least it should have been.

"It was good of you to eat it even if you didn't like it. That was very grown up of you. Very polite." Said Fukuda. Sho had controlled his temper. He had been good about it since coming here. He was a much calmer boy when he was away from his family…and Fukuda didn't much want to bring him back…but the time was coming.

This was not going to be forever.

Sho was going to have to say goodbye to his little sister again. It wouldn't be forever….hopefully. One mission would turn into two and then three and so on and so forth. Suzuki had different standards for each of his kids. He didn't care much for his son. Sho could be allowed out of his sight. Shigeko on the other hand…well she was daddy's little girl. Even if her dad didn't always know what to do to be a good father. There was that debacle with Shimazaki..and Fukuda had never imagined that he of all people would ever have had to tell Suzuki to beat someone up let alone a grown man who had taken interest in his ten year old daughter. Suzuki had such a soft spot for Shigeko it was ridiculous.

He didn't much care for Sho, though.

So these missions would come again. There was about a once yearly inspection of the Divisions. Fukuda rarely went to these unless there was something that warranted his presence. Like now. There was only so much he could do for the Awakened….and he was so glad that Sho wasn't around to see…and he didn't want Sho to ever have to see…but sometimes you had to weigh the pros and cons….and the pros outweighed the cons.

Sho needed to get away from his father and he needed to see his little sister.

"I didn't want Mukai to see me being a jerk. If she sees me being a jerk then she might end up being a jerk too and baby sis is too little to act like that." Said Sho. She was not going to grow up to be a jerk like he was. She was going to grow up to be happy. She was going to grow up and be nice. She was going to grow up to be gentle. She was going to grow up to be much better than what Sho could be.

"You aren't a jerk, Sho, but it is good for you to want to set a good example for your little…for the baby. She really looks up to you." Said Fukuda. He could not confirm that she was his little sister. She was his sister and he wouldn't just accept that fact without explanation…and Fukuda was not going to explain to Sho how adultery worked. How sometimes people did things with people who they were not married to and that sometimes it was wrong and sometimes it wasn't and…and Sho was nine and he did not need all of that banging around in his skull.

"She has to look up to me. I'm bigger than she is. She can't even stand up yet. She can sit up and she tries to crawl but that's it." Said Sho. Fukuda laughed, again, and shook his head. Sho stabbed another cucumber. Maybe if he stabbed them enough times they would disintegrate.

"That's true. She is tiny. But she does look up to you so it's good for you to set a good example…and that means eating things that you don't like. You need to eat some real food, Sho." said Fukuda

"I had a cinnamon apple poptart and that has fruit in it and fruit is good for me." Said Sho

"That's not as healthy as it sounds. Poptarts are mostly sugar. There's very little real apple in there. Come on, you can't just eat the meat and the rice. You need a vegetable, too." Said Fukuda. He didn't know if he was overstepping or not. He didn't know if he could even tell someone else's kid what to eat. Dinner had always been a battlefield when he had been young…but that had also instilled good eating habits in him. Sho…the kid lived on junk food and Suzuki let him because it was just easier than teaching him how to take care of himself.

Calm. Down.

"But I don't want to eat it. I don't like it, I especially don't like cucumbers, and it's my dinner and my stomach and I don't get why I have to put my dinner in my stomach if I don't want to. Dad never makes me eat anything. He just makes me leave the table or makes me fall out of my chair or something." Said Sho. He didn't see why he had to eat something he hated just because someone told him to. He did it for big sis because she never shut up about him eating all of the food groups. It was his stomach and he was the one who decided what went in it. He didn't get why people made other people eat specific foods. It wasn't like they were taking food away from you by not eating…or whatever.

"You don't eat a lot of vegetables, Sho, and you should. You're growing and you need nutrients." Said Fukuda. He didn't want to fight with him but…but he also had a responsibility to Sho. A nine year old should not have been allowed to have as much autonomy over himself at his age. A nine year old should have been working hard at growing up. He should have been learning how to take care of himself, not being thrown to the deep end.

"….are you going to get mad at me if I don't eat the salad? Because I don't like it. There's cucumbers on it and I don't like cucumbers and even if I pick them off the whole salad will taste like cucumbers and there's no ranch dressing to drown the salad in…and I don't like salad without ranch." Said Sho. He was calm and he was going to stay calm. He was going to stay calm and he was going to…to eat his salad…even though he couldn't even being himself to bring a single piece of cucumber to his mouth.

They were gross vegetables that were too lazy to become pickles.

"I won't be mad at you but I do want you to try. How about…three bites? Three bites and then if you still don't like it you can be all done." Said Fukuda. That had been Masami's rule for trying new things. He remembered that it had come up at some meal he'd made…he couldn't remember what…but the kids hadn't liked it. They had never had it before and they had turned their noses up…so Masami gad made them eat three bites…

They had still left the table but at least they had tried.

"Fine…and don't say 'all done' like that. I'm not a little kid anymore. I'm nine and a half. Only little kids need people to say 'all done' like that…and only little kids need the three bite rule…and I'm almost ten you know…" Said Sho. Three bites like when he had been little and Fukuda had made them that vegetable…thing. It looked like something that had already been eaten and it tasted that way too. Mom had said three bites and then they had eaten three bites, him and big sis, and then they had been done and it had been gross but…but at least they had made mom and Fukuda happy.

You were supposed to try and make people happy.

Maybe that was why people liked big sis better than him. She was always trying to make people happy even when it made her upset. Everyone had always liked her better. Especially dad. Dad and big sis were probably having the time of their lives without him. They were so alike…and he had been alike with mom…but mom was gone now and he didn't have anyone else…except for little sis. He didn't want little sis to be like him, though, he wanted her to be better…

The only way for her to be better was if he was better.

So he took three bites. He took them all quickly and forced himself to chew and swallow even though he would rather have drank a whole bottle of Mukai's baby formula instead of that….and her formula was disgusting. He hated cucumbers. He hated the taste and the smell and the way they felt in his mouth and also the little seeds that got stuck in his teeth…but he ate them anyway to make Fukuda happy.

Because that was what you were supposed to do when someone cared about you. You were supposed to do whatever you could to make them happy.

"See? That wasn't so bad now was it?" said Fukuda. He felt…good. He felt good about what he had done even though he knew that it had just been a drop in the bucket. Getting Sho to eat his vegetables. That was…that was something. That was something for now. That was the best that he could do. Sho was not his son and there was only some much that he could do for him. He didn't know if any of this would help. He didn't know that Sho would be better or worse off for his efforts.

He just didn't know.

He didn't know if Sho would be better off for having ate his vegetables and he didn't know if Sho would be better off for having seen his sister…or for having been allowed to go on missions…if getting him away from his father and sister would end up being good for him…Fukuda just did not know.

Sho was not his son. That was all that he knew.


	180. Knocking on Doors and Seeking Company

It was important to always knock on doors.

So that was why Mob had spent the whole day knocking on door. She had spent the whole day at work with dad and she had knocked on every single door she could. She knocked on dad's office door and she had knocked on the cafeteria door and she had knocked on every single door of every single office that she had to bring notes and memos and files and dad's orders to. Even if the doors were opened she still knocked.

She was not going to make the same mistake twice.

That was why she was knocking on dad's door, now, instead of just going in. Even though his door was opened she was still going to get into the habit of knocking. Even though dad and mom were never going to be together again to even say so much as 'hi' she was still going to knock. It was a good habit to get into. It was a habit that she should have had already.

Even though she knew for a fact that dad was just sitting up in bed and watching TV she still was always going to knock.

"Daughter. Do you need something?" asked Suzuki. He had been trying to wind down so he could get some sleep. It had been odd, being away from Son for so long, but not unpleasant. There had been this worry in the back of his mind towards Son's wellbeing, though, which he could not understand. Son was a capable esper and he was in Fukuda's capable hands. He had no clue why he should have been concerned.

Emotions could be so annoying sometimes.

Like now. Daughter was back. She had been near to him all day. It had been enjoyable. He had assumed that she would have spent the day with her friend, he didn't have any assignments for Minegishi so he would have assumed that Daughter would have jumped at the chance to spend time with them, and it had been a pleasant surprise when she had elected to spend the day with him. Daughter's presence was preferable to Son's after all.

And now she was back.

He was happy that she was back. He had assumed that she would be watching her own programs or films or playing with her toys or one of her videogames or even visiting her friends as she tended to do in the middle of the night but, not, she had decided to spend her time with him…and he is happy…but he is also unhappy with himself for being happy. He is a full and complete person on his own. He shouldn't have this need to be beside her.

But he did.

"Can I sleep next to you tonight? I can't sleep all by myself. I tried to before but I can't." said Mob. She wondered if this was ok to ask. Sometimes she fell asleep when she and dad were watching TV and sometimes she fell asleep on the couch and she woke up in dad's bed. So dad must have liked sleeping next to her…but also sometimes he pushed her away and got mad at her for no reason…so it was hard to tell with him sometimes.

"Fine." Said Suzuki. He was happy that she had come to him. He had been wanting to be near her, which was why he had stayed away. There were layers to that. The first of which being the fact that he should not have needed her. He had always felt at his lowest when he found himself seeking out another human being. That had always been when he put the most distance between himself and others. Especially people who he cared for. He had put distance between himself and his parents when he had been young and himself and Masami when they had been married…when they had been together.

Now he needed to put some distance between himself and Daughter.

He needed her to become so much better than what he could be. Her control her been wonderful these past few weeks. Her aura had this sort of…hazy or tired….quality to it but she hadn't lost control of her powers once. Not even the other night…well he had woken up to the feel of her aura…but she had been in her bed under the covers when he had gone to check on her. She must have just been having a bad dream. He could not fault her for that.

She used to come to him when she had bad dreams.

But now she didn't. She was older now. Ten. At the edge of childhood. The last gasp of it. She was getting older now and that was the second layer to why he hadn't sought her out. Last time he had sought her out they'd ended up having a very unpleasant conversation. He had no idea why he'd been so squeamish. Sex and love were things that he knew existed and that were parts of being human. They were parts of being human that he was attempting to transcend but they were still there. She was human the same as him and she, of course, would have the same sorts of feelings towards the opposite sex that he had.

He just wished that she had waited a few years before having those sorts of feelings.

He had never imagined that he would ever even have been capable of being so squeamish. These were the facts of life, sex and love, and his children were not immune to them. Daughter was not immune to them. He didn't care what Son did…imagining Son having those feelings for someone didn't inspire nearly the same levels of unpleasant feelings as imagining Daughter in the same position did….so it must have just been something about her gender. That societal conditioning that told him, the stupid parts of his brain, that these feelings were not for women to have. The smart part of his brain, the part that could use logic, knew that the species could not reproduce itself if women did not have the same sorts of feelings and desires that men did.

Even his own Daughter.

His own Daughter who could have done so much better in choosing a potential partner. That was the third layer of it all. Daughter had chosen poorly because he had been a very poor father to her. Her choice of partner was a reflection of who he was as a man. They said that people chose partners who best reflected their opposite gender parent after all. He had been a poor father to her, letting his emotions rule him, and she had in turn chosen a very poor choice of male partner as well. She had chosen a man who was ruled by his own whims and emotions, who had never thought an action through to the end in his entire life, and who if rumors were to be believed was a bigger womanizer…and whatever the term for someone who slept with many men as well was….than Suzuki had ever been in his life.

He had to be something better than what he was now. For her sake.

But he was not. He was only himself and as of now he was ashamed of himself. For letting that happen to her. Also for distressing her…which he should not have felt bad about at all. She had been cross with him for what he had done to the man she…had feelings for…and she had even told him to his face that she would have preferred if he kept his more violent impulses in check. She said it in the same way in which Masami had aired her grievances with him, before, only in more of a…Daughter-esque….way. If that made sense.

It had hurt him knowing that she had been cross.

And now he felt relieved that she had sought him out. He was a mess. His emotions were a mess. He did not need her, he did not need anyone, and the intelligent thing to do would have been to kick her out of his bed instead of making room for her. He had been sitting in the middle and he made his way to the side so she could lay down beside him.

Masami's side.

"Thanks, dad." Said Mob as she made herself comfortable. She was still mad at him about what he did but she also didn't want to be alone. She was mad at him for hurting someone because of her but she also was not able to sleep alone. She just wasn't. So she sat in the dark with dad and watched TV. Even though she was still mad at him over what she did.

She was more embarrassed, though, over what she had done.

And her embarrassment won out against her being upset with dad. She knew that she and Minegishi were still friends and all but she just felt…embarrassed. She had seen something that she was not supposed to see. She had been there for something that she was not supposed to be there for. She knew that it was over now and they never had to talk about it again…but she also knew that she could not just pretend that it never happened…and that she just needed more time so that the memory could fade a little bit.

Or a lot.

"Any preference towards what we watch?" asked Suzuki. He wasn't watching, not really. He was trying to get some sleep. He was trying to get some reprieve from the thoughts running through his mind. Thoughts of his Son's wellbeing, his Daughter's first foray into the world of love and attraction, and his wife's whereabouts. Thoughts that he would have preferred not to have. Her being near to him helped, somewhat, but not totally.

But he did enjoy having her near.

"No. Your show is fine. What are they talking about in this episode?" asked Mob as she got the pillows behind her to the right height. She was a lot shorter than dad, after all, and he made his bed with his own comforts in mind. He would have had to fix her bed the way he liked it if he ever decided to hang out in her room…which of course he wouldn't. He was dad. She came to him, not the other way around.

"School lunches." Said Suzuki. He had only half been watching. It was always interesting to see a foreigner's perspective on Japan. He had no idea why people found the country of his birth so fascinating…besides the fact that it was the greatest culture on Earth. Though why people were so fascinated with school lunches of all things was beyond him. Noodle soup, a bottle of milk, and an apple or a pear. What was so amazing about that? Though things may have changed in Daughter's era. He didn't know, the show hadn't gotten to her era yet and she didn't go to school so she couldn't tell him if things had changed.

He wondered if she ever missed it.

School. Being around others her own age. She may have needed to be around people her own age. He had always found his peers to be quite tiresome but he was different from her. Men and women were different. Woman tended to be more social beings than men. She may have been lonely for people her own age. She certainly seemed to be missing her brother and he could not for the life of him imagine why. He was terrible to her and to everyone else around him. Yet she still missed him….

She missed the companionship of someone her own age.

There weren't any other espers her own age. He had managed to find one and he had slipped right through his fingers. A pity. He could have been for Daughter. Suzuki didn't know a thing about the boy but he did know what literally anyone else would have been better for Daughter than Shimazaki. She had only been attracted to him, probably, because of Suzuki's poor parenting and the fact that she didn't know anyone her own age. Well she could wait for all of that until she got older and when she did…either he found someone her own age or she chose from the pool of espers who were NOT Shimazaki Ryou.

He somehow couldn't wait for her to grow up but also wanted to freeze her in time as a ten year old.

"Really? Why? That's such a boring thing to make a whole episode about." Said Mob

"I thought so as well but it appears that the NHK had money to spend educating the English speaking world about what our schoolchildren typically have for their midday meal. I have no idea why anyone would find school meals fascinating." Said Suzuki

"Me neither. Back when I went to school the food wasn't that good. It always tasted boring and it was always the same things every single week. Curry and rice with miso, grilled meat and rice with salad and miso, meat sandwiches with salad and miso…they were really into miso…they made us a lot of miso." Said Mob. They had other things, too, but she mostly just remembered the never ending bowls of miso soup. Not even the good kind mom made from scratch. She had seen the cooks making it. It came from packets. Mom said that soup from the packet wasn't very good and Mob agreed. It had hardly any taste at all. She wondered if she ever would have gotten used to it.

Of course to get used to it she would have had to have stayed in school.

She would have been going into the fifth grade…or maybe the sixth. She wasn't sure. She had moved around so much and been in so many different countries that she had lost count of even what grade she would have been in. Still grade school though, not middle school, and she was sad that she wouldn't be able to go to middle school and high school. She wanted to have middle school and high school adventures. She wanted to make friends and join a club and have a boyfriend…

One who dad wouldn't end up beating up.

She got the feeling that dad was going to beat up every single boy who he ever thought liked her. Even if she didn't like him back dad was going to end up beating him up. Mob didn't want to be responsible for anyone else getting hurt…but she did want a boyfriend. Someone who loved her no matter what. Someone who loved her no matter how clueless she was or how often she messed up. Someone who would hold her hand and kiss her but in the normal way. Not the way where it seemed like two people were eating each other. She didn't really want to do that.

But she did want someone to love and who could love her in return…and who dad wouldn't end up beating up.

"We ate a lot of noodle soup, I remember, endless bowls of noodle soup. Occasionally we had something better like curry or stew but it was mostly noodle soup when I was your age. By the time I started to just eat a very large breakfast and skip lunch all together." Said Suzuki

"What did you eat for breakfast?" asked Mob

"Why do you want to know?" asked Suzuki

"Because I like it when you talk about what things were like when you were a kid. I like it when you share things with me." Said Mob. She liked it when dad talked to her like they were…well not equals…but when he talked to her like she was a person the same as him. When he told her about the way things used to be. She tried to picture him as a kid, as someone her age, as someone she could have known if her life had been different. If mom had stayed. If she had been born to a different family forty years ago. If her life had been normal.

But her life was not normal.

There was no point at all in wishing for a normal life. She didn't even fully want one. She got a lot of good things. Lots and lots of good things happened in her life. She had a little brother who she loved more than anything else in the world, good friends even though things were sort of awkward now, and also she didn't have to do the boring parts of being a kid like sitting through school all day or having a bed time or stuff like that. She also got whatever she wanted, mostly, and got to travel all over the world with her friends and little brother.

Who could ever ask for more?

An ungrateful person, that was who. Someone who took everything good that dad gave them and threw it right back in his face. Someone who didn't know how good she had it. Someone who watched too much TV and read too much manga. She was happy with that she had and she had to stay happy. Her life could have been much different if things had been different. If she had different parents or had been born in a different country or a different time…but she had not been born in a different country or a different time. She had been born in this country in this time to Suzuki Masami and Suzuki Touichirou and she was Suzuki Shigeko and that…that was all that she could be.

So there was no point at all in thinking about a different life. Different wouldn't always mean better.

"Really? I would have imagined that my era would have seemed boring to you. Yours is so much more...just more, I supposed. Your world is both larger and smaller than mine. Gratification is more instant and pleasures are more fleeting. For example, when I was your age we had a very limited number of television stations and they had a limited number of broadcast hours. If you didn't like what was being broadcast then you needed to find some other way to entertain yourself. Information was more difficult to come by as well. Computers weren't all linked together and the whole of human knowledge could not be carried around in your pocket. Yes, your era is a much better era than mine, I think." Said Suzuki. He could have done so much more with his life if he had been born in her era. He had conceived of Claw when he was a little older than her, in middle school, but he hadn't gotten it off the ground until his twenties. Yes, if he had been born in this era he could have been ruling the world by now.

Patience.

He had to have patience. The time would come. He gathered more money and more manpower by the day. Within in a few short years he would be able to finally wage war upon the world. He would come out victorious and at his rightful place as ruler of the world. He just needed to wait, that was all. Wait to make a better world for himself and his Daughter.

"I don't think that it would be boring, I think that it would be interesting because it's so different from what I'm used to." Said Mob

"The mind does crave novelty." Said Suzuki

"I think that it does, too. Like how I'm always getting new manga even though I have a lot of manga. Or like how Sho starts a lot of drawings and doesn't always finish them….I hope that he gets some done while he's away, though. He's really good at drawing." Said Mob

"I hope that he gets some work done. I sent him to the Seventh Division to gain some field experience, not draw pictures." Said Suzuki. Son was a good artist but now was not the time to be drawing pictures. He was weary to send Son to Seasoning City but this…this would be good for him. He had been so restless lately…and Fukuda would keep him on task. He maybe had a tendency to overstep and overindulge the children but when it came to work the man was all business.

"He can do both." Said Mob. She hoped that he was enjoying himself in some way. She knew how much he hated Awakening Labs. She just wanted him to be happy. She wished that she could have gone in his place. She wondered why he had gone at all. She was older and she had already proven that she could follow dad's orders and even replace him if he ever needed to go on another long mission or something.

"Maybe." Said Suzuki. He hoped that Son was doing something productive with his time. All of his hopes for the future rested on that child…since without Masami he could not have another child….nor did he particularly want another one.

"Hey dad? Will….will I have to go on missions too?" asked Mob after a moment. On the TV they were talking about the sorts of school lunches that she had eaten when she had gone to school. She wasn't really paying attention.

"You? Of course not. You're my Daughter and your place is here by my side." Said Suzuki. Of all the ridiculous things to come out of her mouth. Honestly. She knew that she would never, ever, ever be apart from him. She was his Daughter. He would never let her go.

"Oh….I get it. It's one of those boy and girl things….I get it." Said Mob. Sometimes it felt unfair that just because she was a girl she couldn't do some things. She didn't get it and she had never gotten it. So she was a girl? That didn't mean anything. She had long hair and wore dresses and had to sit down to pee. She didn't see how something like that, something that didn't even matter, could dictate how she lived her life and stuff. Maybe Minegishi had the right idea. They weren't a boy or a girl, they were just themselves, and they did whatever they felt like…though Mob knew that she could never be like that. She could never do whatever she felt like.

She was Suzuki Shigeko after all.

"Yes, you are my Daughter and you'll always be by my side." Said Suzuki. It may have been her gender that made him want to protect her even though she was a capable esper in her own right. It may also have been the fact that she could leave. She could leave him and then…and then he would be without a Daughter. He was already without a wife. He did not want to be without a Daughter as well. Being without a Son….he didn't much care…but being without a Daughter would have been like…like being without Masami…

And he hated himself for feeling this way.

"Even when I'm an adult?" asked Mob

"Yes." said Suzuki

"Even when I'm your age?" asked Mob

"If I'm still alive, Daughter, yes." said Suzuki

"….even if I get married?" asked Mob

"Yes." said Suzuki

"Even if I have a baby?" asked Mob

"Yes." said Suzuki

"But you said that I'm not allowed to like people. You said that I was too young and then you went and beat up Shimazaki….and I don't even like him like that." Said Mob

"Yes. You're too young to form those sorts of relationships with the opposite sex yet. When you're a teenager then you can form those sorts of relationships. At that point, the point at which you become old enough to choose a partner, I will not harm him. I do not wish to alienate you. It would serve no purpose. You belong at my side and I will not have someone at my side who resents me. It would make no sense what so ever." Said Suzuki. He was not looking forward to that day, the day she told him that there was a man in her life, but he knew that it was coming. He knew that one day she would meet a man and he would be her most perfect person and there would be nothing that he could do about it without running the risk of alienating her….and he did not want to do that. So he would deal, then, with whatever idiot it was that she chose to bring into her life. To keep her by his side he would endure it.

"….so we're always going to be together?" asked Mob

"Yes. We will always be together until the day I die. Or you die, I suppose, but you're thirty three years younger than I am." Said Suzuki. He didn't like to think about it, his inevitable demise. He accepted it, though, that one day he would cease and she would be on her own. Well she would have her own family but he would no longer be there to guide her or to protect her…and then one day she would cease as well. That was existence. The point of existence was coming to terms with your inevitable nonexistence…and making your mark upon the world while you existed.

"…ok." Said Mob. She didn't know how to feel. On the one hand she loved her dad so much but on the other…she didn't know what she would do when she was a grown up. Her whole life had been planned out for her already. She would work for Claw and work with dad and then she would come home and hang out with dad and then the same thing over and over again….and again and again and again…

Forever.

She knew who she was and she knew what she had to do. She was dad's Daughter and that meant that she had to do what dad said and live the life that he'd planned for her. There was no point at all in wanting something else or thinking about what her life would have been like if she had been someone else or…or something. There was no changing who she was and even thinking about wanting something different made her ungrateful. She had a good life coming to her. She would be with her dad forever and he loved her so much…and she also had Sho and he loved her so much…so really she just had to look at all of the good things she had. Lots of people didn't have dads and brothers who loved them. Lots of people didn't even know what they were going to do with their lives. Not her. She knew exactly who she was and who she was going to be.

Suzuki Shigeko. Daughter of Suzuki Touichirou.

"Good, I'm glad that you understand." Said Suzuki. Was it wrong to look forward to a life with his Daughter? He was her father and he was supposed to care for her. She was his child and he was supposed to want her by his side….even though it made him weak. He wanted her by his side to satiate his own desire for companionship. Not to teach her or to mold her but instead to be near her…to have her by his side.

Was that ok?

Was it ok that he was…happy…that she had come to him? That she wanted to be near him? That she had come knocking at his door?


	181. The Fort in the Woods

Sho liked to draw.

He drew all the time. Things he had seen, things that he had seen in dreams, things that he wanted to see in dreams later, and stuff that was totally random. Sometimes he drew random stuff like just shapes or just scribbles or just dots and stuff like that. This was not one of those times.

This was one of those times where he had drawn something that he wanted to see.

Well something that he wanted to happen in the future…and something that he had wanted to happen in the future. Something that he wanted to happen and that had happened to him. He knew that he had known for this while mission that he would have to go. Knowing made it easier…but that did not mean that it was easy. Leaving. Going home. Saying goodbye to baby sis.

No, not goodbye.

See you later. That was better. He had thought, when Fukuda took her away on that terrible day that he still sometimes had bad dreams about, that he would never see her again. He had thought that Fukuda was carrying baby sis out of his life forever. Well he hadn't been. He knew where she was and he knew that he would be able to see her again. Not anytime soon, though, because he had just gone on a mission to the Seventh Division. If he came here too often then dad would be suspicious. Dad didn't want him to see little sis but Sho…he didn't care what dad wanted. Not now. Seeing baby sis was something that he would fight dad about if it came down to it.

Not that it would.

Because he was going to trick dad. That was the plan. Dad thought that he was so smart but he wasn't. He thought that Sho had come here to learn how to do missions and field work and stuff. Well the joke was on him because the only things Sho had done were draw, play with baby sis, and learn to choke down disgusting stuff that some people considered to be food. He would do it all again, too, even the disgusting food part because when you were a guest in someone's home you had to be polite…and stuff. It was worth it to see baby sis. Dad would never have let him go and see baby sis…but if he was out on missions then dad would never have had any idea what Sho had been doing.

It was the perfect plan.

Fukuda helped him think it up. Sho was going to go places with mission groups and stuff and then while he was away from dad he would come to visit big sis…if he was near or around Japan, of course. Sho had promised even though he knew that he could travel places by himself. Mukai was the baby, not him, and he could take care of himself. He had this. He was going to be able to see baby sis again! Not very often but he would still be able to see her!

But not today.

"Sho, you coming?" asked Fukuda. He knocked on Sho's door before he stuck his head in and asked. Big sis never did that. She always just came in. Dad did that too. Fukuda didn't do that. It was weird, having someone knock, this whole thing had been weird. Not weird enough to bother him but still pretty weird. Like sleeping in a room with only one bed. He had been sad at first, being away from big sis, but he felt better now. Sleeping in a room by himself was normal for him since she went to bed after him and sometimes she even spent the whole night sleeping next to dad. He had barely missed her after that first day. What was the point of missing big sis when he got to see baby sis?

Baby sis was a much better sister.

She smiled and stuff at him and she wanted to play fun stuff like put your arm in the paper towel roll or laugh at yourself in the mirror. They weren't super fun games on their own but baby sis was good at making them fun. She could make anything fun. Even giving her a bottle or watching her baby shows with her even though he already knew his colors and how to count and stuff. Baby sis was way better than big sis. All big sis ever did was pretend to be mom.

He didn't want that.

What he wanted to do was stay with his baby sis but that wasn't going to happen. He couldn't even say goodbye since he would be leaving during her sleeping time. Her new mom didn't just her go to sleep whenever she felt like it and wake up whenever she felt like it and stuff. Her new mom had her on a really tight schedule. That was why Sho had said goodbye again last night. Fukuda had been there in case he got upset again, and he had, but nowhere near as bad as last time. This time he mostly just cried….

And cried.

But then he stopped crying and had the best idea ever.

"Wait, I have to give something to baby sis." Said Sho. He held up the drawing he had done for her last night. The drawing he had made for her on the way in had been hard. He hadn't had any idea what to draw for her. Last night's drawing came easy and he knew that she would love it. Well as much as a baby could love something that wasn't her pacifier or putting her arm in an empty paper towel role or singing the colors song over and over again…she had better have learned her colors by now because he did not want to sing that song again he'd be hearing it in his nightmares….and stuff…

He had used plenty of colors in this picture. She liked colors.

"Sho, you know you can't wake her up. She's little and she needs to sleep." Said Fukuda. Sho didn't know what he looked so worried about. Sho wasn't about to go and wake the baby and even if he had been about to go and wake the baby it wouldn't be that bad. She didn't cry that loudly. Fukuda just wasn't used to babies.

Sho wondered why he'd never had any kids.

Sho bet that if Fukuda had a kid then he and him could be best friends…unless he had a girl. In that case she could be best friends with big sis. He wished that Fukuda had kids and it seemed sort of weird that he hadn't even though he and dad were the same age. People dad's age got married and had kids. That was just what you were supposed to do whether you liked it or not. At least that was Sho's understanding of it. That was what dad was always saying. Sho couldn't imagine what else could have made dad have him unless it was just one of those things that had to happen. Like how you had to learn to walk and talk and read and write and crush yours hair and take your shoes off in people's houses.

"I know not to wake her up, I'm not a moron, I just want to leave this under her front door." Said Sho. Fukuda looked at him and then at the drawing. He was thinking. There wasn't anything to think about, as far as Sho was concerned, because he could be trusted not to wake Mukai up. He was a good big brother.

He knew that he was.

"Fine, but be quick about it. There's something I want to show you out in the woods." Said Fukuda. Sho decided to hurry since Fukuda told him to…and also for himself. He didn't want to cry again. He had been crying a lot lately and he didn't know why. Back home he got mad all the time, so the crying was sort of an improvement. He didn't want to be mad or sad…but it was hard when he had to leave his little sister…his pretend little sister…baby sis.

He loved her so much.

And that was why he had drawn this picture of the two of them together. She was a baby and had trouble remembering things. He could have just taken a picture but drawings were better. Drawings had love in them. His love. Anyone could take a picture but not everyone could draw like he could. Even dad said that he was good at drawing, that he was a good artist, and…and that was something that he could do. Something that he wasn't terrible at.

So he drew something for little sis.

"See you later, baby sis, I'll come back and see you again as soon as I can." Whispered Sho as he slipped the drawing under the door. He could see her aura through the walls. It had gotten a lot brighter since they first met. Maybe she would be super powerful when she grew up. He hoped so. Then she could end up a Scar or in the upper echelon and then they could be friends and hang out when he grew up and stuff. He couldn't wait for her to be old enough to remember him and for them to hang out all the time and stuff. But right now she was just a baby.

And he had to go.

Finding Fukuda was a little bit hard. There were a lot of blank spots in her perceptions. Curse rooms. He hated curse rooms. He had never been in one but he really hated the idea of them. Rooms meant to take away powers. He had been without his powers for most of his life, since he had been small, and he had been through a lot to awaken them. He never wanted to be without his powers again…and he never wanted to go anywhere near an awakening lab again either.

He hated this place.

If this place hadn't been baby sis' home then he would have gotten rid of it. When he got to be in charge of Claw he would have had this Division torn down and anywhere else where they made new Awakened. He hoped that dad left him in charge soon because then he could move little sis' mom to another branch of Claw where they didn't do terrible things to you so that you would get your powers. He didn't know any other way to awaken people so maybe they would just stop having Awakened all together. Yes, that would be good.

He never wanted anyone else to go through that.

Even if Fukuda said that it was ok because the Awakened all volunteered for the procedure. Even Sho had…and he still would have even knowing what happened to you while you were in there…but he still didn't wish that on anyone else. Good thing it looked like baby sis was a baby Prodigy. That meant that she would never have to go through that….and he was happy…and if anyone tried to put her through that he would have no choice but to kill them. Nobody hurt his baby sis.

He could feel the Awakened coming closer.

And he could feel the lab, too. He could expand his passive perceptions to feel the lab and all of the Awakened that came out of it. He didn't want to feel those things but, also, he didn't want to lose the feeling of baby sis. She was still asleep in her crib. She had a real crib now, not a drawer, and it had pink sheets and a mobile of pink birds…actually her whole room was pink. Because she was a girl and girls like pink. He wondered if she would still be in her crib the next time he saw her or if she would have a bed by then.

He had no idea.

But he did know that it was time to get back to Fukuda so they could leave. It had turned out to be a quick fix, he said, but he also said that he was sorry. Even though he didn't have to be sorry. Sho was sad to leave his little sis so soon, a lot sooner than he had planned, but he was also happy that no more of the Awakened would come out stupid. He was glad that he hadn't come out stupid. He just came out with a lot of cool scars and some awesome powers.

And also a lot of nightmares.

But he hadn't had any while he had been there. No, he had borrowed another one of baby sis' little baby socks and he was sleeping with that. It made him feel better, like she was there with him, and sometimes he even felt her aura in his sleep. He even woke up, once, expecting her to be there sleeping in a drawer on the bedroom floor. But she wasn't there. She didn't sleep in drawers anymore anyway.

She had her own crib to sleep in now.

She would get older and she would sleep in a bed and be able to sit up and chew her food and not cry whenever she needed something….and he couldn't wait. He couldn't wait for her to be older, for them to be able to draw together. But for right now…right now he was happy. Happy and sad at the same time. He wanted to stay with her, he never wanted to leave her, and…and he had to remember that…that he was would see her again.

This wasn't goodbye. This was just see you later.

"Was it hard saying goodbye again?" asked Fukuda when Sho caught up to him. He was handed his backpack full of stuff. Fukuda had his bag over his shoulder. The Awakened were already going in and cleaning up. Sho wondered what the next people who stayed in that room would be like. He wondered what the last people who stayed in that room would be like.

He wondered if he would ever stay here again.

"It wasn't goodbye, it was just see you later." Said Sho

"Yeah…about that. You know that it could be a while until you see her again, right?" asked Fukuda

"Yeah, I know, but I can wait for things. You said that if you told dad I did good on this mission then he would send me on others. Then I could sneak away and see Mukai and we'll draw together and stuff." Said Sho

"You could…but you have to be patient." Said Fukuda

"I can be patient. I'm the most patient." Said Sho. Fukuda laughed and shook his head.

"Sho. You eat poptarts raw because you don't want to wait for them to warm up in the toaster." Said Fukuda

"That's how you're supposed to eat them. Who puts them in the toaster?" said Sho

"They're supposed to go in the toaster, Sho, that's why they call them 'poptarts' because they pop right up when they're done." Said Fukuda. Sho shook his head. Fukuda just didn't know about good food. Obviously if you put a poptart in the toaster then it would get all…warm and gooey and just…not be good.

"When we get back I'm going to show you how to eat a poptart." Said Sho. He hoped that there were some left and big sis hadn't eaten them all. It was so hard to send the Awakened out for things sometimes. They had trouble coming back with the right stuff. Well maybe the next batch would be smarter because Fukuda and those other guys had fixed it so they wouldn't end up so messed up in the head.

"I'm looking forward to it…but first there's something out in the woods that I want to show you. Remember?" asked Fukuda. He was looking everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Sho didn't know what was with him. Playing in the woods was awesome! He and Shibata and Shimazaki played in the woods whenever there were woods to play in. Even when there were prickle bushes or birds that pecked your head or even when you got throw too high and you went into a tree.

None of that happened when Fukuda took him out into the woods.

"I'm mostly sure that it was this way…we marked a trail…but that was thirty years ago." Said Fukuda as he led Sho through the thick bushes and trees. There wasn't any path that Sho could see. There was the occasional painted rock, though. They were painted in red…a very faded red…and some of them had something written on them.

"It should still be here. They had to build the HQ where the ground was better…" said Fukuda. Sho stopped following him for a minute. He wasn't going to get lost. He knew how to find auras. He just had to see this rock…what was written on it…

Oh. It said Claw.

That made sense. This was Claw, the Seventh Division was right there, so of course there would be a rock that said Claw on it. It just said Claw, though, there was a symbol but it was different than the normal Claw symbol. Sho knew that Claw symbol, it felt like he had been staring at it his whole life. He felt the rock. Some of the paint came off as he flipped it over in his hands. Something was painted on the bottom.

'President: Suzuki and Vice President. Tadashi: 1986'

"Sho? Sho? You shouldn't wander off. There are A LOT of snakes in these woods." Said Fukuda. Sho stared at the rock as he felt him get closer. Suzuki. He was Suzuki. He knew what Suzuki knew liked, the character, and he knew how dad wrote the character for their family name. Small and pointy. His strokes were too pointy and his writing was too small….and it always had been. 1986…that was a long time before he had even been born…and dad had written on that rock…

Why?

"Sho? You alright?" asked Fukuda. Sho nodded. He couldn't stop trying to imagine…little dad. Dad as a kid. Sho had no idea what year dad had been born in, that was the sort of thing that big sis kept track up, but he knew that since it had been such a long time ago dad would have been a kid….and he had trouble picturing his dad as a kid. He liked to think of Dad having just been born as he was now. Like making a Sim or something.

"I found this rock." Said Sho. He held it out for Fukuda. Fukuda frowned, then smiled, and then repeated that until he got this sort of half smile thing.

"I remember that…good eye, Sho. You found the way." said Fukuda. Sho put the rock down where he found it. Fukuda led him through some trees. There were more of those rocks on the ground and they all said 'Claw' on them with different symbols. Now that he knew what to look for he could see that dad had written on some of them…but why? The more they walked the more rocks they saw…and he could not see dad going around painting rocks all day.

That wasn't like him at all.

"Fukuda? Where are we going?" asked Sho. The grass was high, the sun was out, and he was in long sleeves and long pants. He wanted to know where he was going…because he had no clue. This was…it felt like dad might have PLAYED in the woods…but that was crazy. Dad, playing in the woods? What next? Having friends and not being a total and complete jerk?

"You'll see. If I remember right then it should be here…and also if people haven't found it yet. It wouldn't have been much of a secret base if people found it now would it…God he was thorough." Said Fukuda. He muttered the last part to himself. Sho followed him.

This was kind of a fun adventure.

But also it was hot and there was sun and bugs. Still, he followed Fukuda. He followed him into the woods until they came to a clearing. This was a good place to build a secret woods fort. He and Shimazaki and Shibata had tried to build one once but Shibata was too big and Shimazaki had trouble paying attention to things…but it had still been fun…even if there had been a lot of prickle bushes…and also the momma bird had not liked them playing with her babies…but it had still been a fun time.

Whoever built this secret woods had obviously had a fun time.

It was nailed together with real wood, not sticks and stuff like his had been, and inside there were dirty plastic chairs and part of a rug and there were bookshelves and an old timey radio and TV and…and Sho had to get closer. He tried to step closed but Fukuda stopped him.

"I wouldn't…wouldn't go inside if I were you. See how the roof is sagging there? And all that black stuff on the rug? It's not safe in there." said Fukuda. His voice sounded kind of scratchy there. Sho didn't get it and he didn't care too much. That fort was awesome! Maybe it hadn't been dad's handwriting that he had seen before. He couldn't imagine dad building a fort in the woods. Especially not one with windows and furniture…and the door had fallen off…and also what used to be a swing it looked like.

"But I want to play in the fort! Come on, it looks like fun and anyway you're a healer." Said Sho. He wanted to see if that old timey TV worked and what those books on the shelf were….if they ever were anything anymore because he saw some black squares that used to be books next to them…and also he wanted to see I there were toys in there or treasure or something else cool!

Fukuda's hand was on Sho's shoulder.

He tenses up…and he doesn't know why. This was Fukuda, not dad, and he wasn't going to hit him or throw him or anything like that. Fukuda wasn't like that. He was sort of…he wasn't normal but he wasn't mad. His aura was still calm, too, but his face had this far away and wide awake look to it…and Sho didn't get it…but he stopped trying to play in the fort.

"You can…you can get close but you can't go in. How about that? Deal?" asked Fukuda. He still had that look on his face. Sho nodded. He didn't want to upset Fukuda. He was tired of people being upset with him. Sometimes people were just…upset with him.

"Ok…but are you…mad at me?" asked Sho. Fukuda shook his head.

"No, it's not you. This is just…a lot of old memories. I helped build this thing, you know. Me and your dad built this when we were thirteen…God. I can't believe that it was so long ago." Said Fukuda

"You and….MY DAD? Seriously? You and my dad built this awesome fort? But dad hates forts." Said Sho

"Yup. Your dad and I built this thing from scratch. He did most of the work but I sourced the materials…like usual." Said Fukuda

"But…are you sure it was dad? My dad? The redheaded guy with the blue eyes that are always bored even when he's mad? The guy that sleeps in his suit and stuff? The guy who eats bread dipped in ketchup for a snack? That dad?" asked Sho. He must have been losing his hearing. He must have spent too much time with baby Mukai, her crying must have damaged his hearing, because dad was not the sort of person who has fun and stuff…..even when he was a kid. I don't think that my dad EVEN was a kid." Said Sho. It would explain the rocks…but then there would be further questions. Like why dad had built this fort in the first place. And why he had made a path with rocks to find it when he could have just built a million more like how he built bases everywhere he went. And who that other rock painted was. Tadashi.

"Yup, the one and only. We were….back then we were friends and we had been hanging out for a while talking about….about Claw. It started off as a game for me but then he…get this. Ok. Your dad let himself in through my window and woke me up at five in the morning on a Saturday to drag me out to the woods where he'd found the perfect spot for the First Division of Claw." Said Fukuda. He laughed but it didn't make it to his eyes or his aura. Sho didn't know why he was trying to make himself laugh. That was not a funny story. There was nothing funny about someone waking you up early in the morning…nothing funny at all.

"But…this is the Seventh Division…and also dad doesn't build forts or have any fun at all. He hates fun. If fun was a person he'd have him beat up so bad he never showed his face around dad again." said Sho

"This…the story behind this Division is complicated…and to tell you we have to make another stop before we leave….a stop that we need to make. I'm sorry for all the stops, and for dragging you out here, I just thought that you should know….just know some history. God knows your dad wasn't ever going to take you out here." Said Fukuda. Sho….he didn't know what to feel. His head was still spinning. Dad had built a fort….with Fukuda….who had been dad's friend when they were kids, a real friend, because you did not just go and build a fort with anyone…and dad had fun back then…just like Sho did…

Dad had built this.

There's anger…and tears. Angry tears. He blinks them away as soon as they appear. He walks away from Fukuda and over to where there's part of a swing hanging. He pushed the rope back and forth while he digs his foot into the ground. Dad….dad had been a kid and he liked to have fun and he built…this….and he had never been planning no showing Sho…his own kid…

But Fukuda had.

Fukuda had taken him to this place….and dad never would have. Dad had never thought that his own so would have liked to have seen the coolest fort in the world…or even that his own son would have wanted to build a fort with him…but this was…this was ok because at least Fukuda cared about him enough to bring him here.

"I-I'm happy that you brought me here…I guess. I just…dad built this fort? With you? And he painted the rocks, too?" asked Sho

"Well I painted the rocks but your dad wrote on them. Yeah, he was trying out different insignia's for Claw. It was this game that we played back then…well it was for me. Your dad…he always took it really seriously. I mean, look at this place. I can't believe it's still standing after thirty years…feels like ninety…feels like ninety." Said Fukuda. Sho didn't know how it could have felt like ninety years had passed when he was only dad's age. Dad may have been old but he was nowhere near ninety.

Sho didn't get it.

He started to explore. He didn't go into the clubhouse, he wanted to but Fukuda had said no, so he just walked around it. He found more painted rocks, some of what used to be books it looked like, and a metal box half buried in the ground. Fukuda was off on the other side saying stuff to himself like he couldn't believe it and stuff. Sho didn't know what there was and was not to believe. It was there, the fort, and Fukuda must have figured it had still have had to be there…right?

Right?

Well Sho didn't know what to believe anymore. Dad used to be a kid and he did stuff like play games and build forts with his friends…and also he had friends…and also….also Claw had started out here. He had never given much thought to a world before Claw. There had always been Claw even if he hadn't been entirely sure what it was. But it had started…here….in the woods. Fukuda had thought that it was just a game that dad had been playing.

And dad did not play games.

Even if this old videogame looking thing had 'Suzuki' written across the back. It was partially covered by blue stuff coming from the batteries on the game but it clearly said 'Suzuki'. Most of the things in this box did. There was another Gameboy looking thing and a yo-yo and another book…this one was Gundam…and it said Tadashi on the front….and also there was a notebook.

'Property of Suzuki Touichirou. Do not read. Unauthorized readers will be killed on sight. That means you too Fukuda Tadashi'.

Sho didn't think. He just put the notebook in his backpack.

He didn't know what he was going to do with it but he did know that he could not put it back in the ground. Not when it had dad's secrets. He needed to know dad's secrets. What else had he been hiding for all of these years? What else had he been keeping from Sho? He needed to know. He needed to know and he needed to show…he couldn't show big sis. She would tell dad that he and Fukuda had been to his secret fort…and he knew she would tell because she told dad everything. That was why he didn't want to tell anyone…and no other reason but that….and it was ok because she didn't have to know anything about this anyway.

She knew enough about dad as it was.

There was a space in the box, now, where the notebook had been…and Sho didn't feel good resealing and reburying the metal box in the cold ground with that space in it. It didn't look right and it didn't feel right…and he didn't want to put the notebook back…but he also…he wanted to…he could put something of his own back in…just to fill up the space. Something that mattered to him…because this place mattered to Fukuda. It may not have mattered to Dad but it mattered to Fukuda.

Sho put his sketchbook in the box.

That sketchbook had soda on it anyways. Maybe it was better off buried for the next thirty years. Yeah, then he wouldn't be reminded of how it had been ruined…and also it would be there for when he brought his Son out there…if he had a Son…and if he wanted to bring his Son there…because it was not his fort. This was Dad and Fukuda's…who had been called Tadashi for all these years and Sho had never known…and…and this was not his fort…

It said Suzuki and he was a Suzuki.

The box said Suzuki, too, and dad had buried his stuff in there. Why he did that Sho would never know. Why he did any of the stuff that he did Sho would never know. He would never know why dad had kept this from him or why he had changed so much…or maybe not at all because Sho hadn't read the notebook yet….and he would never know why…what had made dad become the way he was. The fun hating, mean, jerk of a guy he was. What had made dad turn into…that? And how could Sho avoid it? Or was it destiny? Would he keep this place from his Son, too? If he even had a Son? And why did dad even have a Son in the first place if he wasn't going to share fun stuff like this with him? What was the point of even having a Son? Why not just have a Daughter, in that case, and only a Daughter? Girls hated this stuff….Sho didn't know why. Sho didn't know anything anymore…and he would never know anything…but that was…he didn't know.

But he did know why he buried that sketchbook. This was a place where you hid things you liked, right?

Well he liked to draw.


	182. Clingy

At some point during the night Daughter had turned into an octopus.

The time on the alarm clock said five fifteen in the morning. He didn't have to be awake until six. He had two options. He could either close his eyes and go back to sleep for the next forty five minutes or he could get up early and leave the warmth and comfort of his bed. Normally he would have chosen the first option…but this was not normal. This was not normal by a long shot.

Daughter was holding onto him.

She was asleep. He watched her face and he watched her aura. She was still asleep and he never would have expected her to be anything other than asleep. She was tired. She had a right to be tired, it was five in the morning, and they had been up late marathon watching that NHK series about Japanese life and culture. It was always useful to see which of Japan's cultural exports were most profitable. It was also always interesting to see what fascinated the foreigners. He may have carried on a bit too late into the night. He was still feeling tired.

But he could not go back to sleep.

She was clinging to his side. That was what had woken him up, the warmth. The warmth and the fact that his side was pinned down under her weight. Not that he couldn't have moved her easily, she was only ten years old, and it would have been so easy to move her…but he wasn't going to. Not when she was this deeply asleep. She was smaller and she needed her sleep. If he moved her she would have woken up and he did not want that.

Which left him at an impasse.

He tried to move his arm away. Slowly, very slowly, so as not to jostle her…but that just made her cling to him harder. Her head was resting near to him and her his left arm was wrapped in her arms. This was his fault. He had been so tired when he went to sleep that he had forgotten to turn his back to her. He had slept on his stomach and now she was clinging to him. This was…this was new and also not new. She used to do this when she had been a small child. Cling to him like this. But she was in no way a small child anymore. She was clinging to him for comfort…and she should not have needed comfort.

She should not have needed him or anyone.

But she did need him and….and there were such conflicting feelings there. She needed him and he was her father. His job was to protect and provide for her. He could do that. His job was also to teach her how to become an adult. She could not be clinging to anyone like this when she was an adult. She shouldn't have needed anyone…not even him…when she became an adult.

He doesn't know how to feel about that.

Her place is by his side. She will stay in her place. Every day he wrestles with this. He needs her by his side and he should not need anyone. Every single day he has this exact same thought. Then the versions of himself in his mind fight it out. There is one version of him who says that she is making them weak. The other version says that they have every right to keep her by their side because she is their Daughter. She is not their Daughter by blood but she is their Daughter. Masami is gone, he will never have another child, and Baby does not count because Baby is not his and Baby can't be his because he is married to Masami and-

"Sho…stop it. I'm sleepy." Said Daughter. She stirred a bit and he hopes and worries that she is waking up. But she is not. She simply wraps her arms more tightly around and sighs. Her eyes move a bit but stay closed. Her breathing ever so slowly gets back to normal. His breathing stops entirely. He does not allow himself to move or breathe or even to think. Not until he is sure, positive, that she is back asleep. He knows that he should wake her. He knows that he is a very busy man and his time is precious. He knows that the logical thing to do in this situation is to wake her up and tell her to sleep in her own bed.

But that would also be logical.

She is ten years old. He is over four times her age. He needs less sleep than her. She needs all the sleep that she can get. She has been sleep deprived lately. Her brother's doing. She had mistook him for Son after all. She had been up too late and now she needed her sleep and if he woke her than it would affect her health. That would be bad. Especially since they were without Fukuda. He was loathe to spare Fukuda, especially when terrible things could happen to Daughter at any time of the day or night, but it was necessary in order to do something about the useless crop of Awakened he had gotten.

Since Fukuda was gone now it would have been downright irresponsible to wake Daughter up.

So he let her sleep. He let her sleep all wrapped around him like an octopus. Why did women do this? Masami had been fond of clinging to him in her sleep. He had never turned his back to her. It wasn't the most comfortable way to sleep and also she took it badly. Night after night since that first night, no, afternoon. Since the first time they shared a bed. She had clung to him, then, and fallen asleep. He had not been very annoyed then, no, because in that moment he had realized that he was holding the most perfect woman in the entire world and he was never, ever, going to let her go.

His feelings for his Daughter were nothing like his feelings for his wife.

She was ten and his Daughter. That would have been wrong on too many levels. When he looked at her he did not feel the same cocktail of love and pain, desire and satiation, wistfulness and terror, that he had felt when he held Masami for the first time. No, holding her brought out….protectiveness. Yes, that was the dominant emotion. Nothing was going to harm her, not while he was around. Nothing would even have the chance to. If he could he would have built her a walled in city, no, one with a dome. The same one he would have built her mother…that he should have built her mother…because then, maybe, she would not have been able to so easily leave…

Daughter is not Masami.

He feels protective over her and that is totally normal. He is supposed to want to keep her near him at all times. He is supposed to want her to spend the rest of her life by his side. He is supposed to want to retire to a nice, clean, orderly domed city with her and live out his golden years helping Daughter to raise her children and just being able to relax. He's her father and this is the way that a father is supposed to want to feel, he's supposed to want to keep his Daughter by his side at all times, because that is how he will ensure her safety.

Son is fine on his own.

Son is off in Seasoning City…a truly loathsome place….learning on the job as it were. Fukuda would be an excellent teacher. His oldest and most loyal follower, keeper of many a secret, and also occasional over stepper. Suzuki trusted Fukuda as much as he could possibly trust another human being. He trusted that Fukuda would keep Son safe, away from Baby, and out of trouble. There were so many things in Seasoning City that he had left behind…and so many things that Fukuda had left behind, too. That place was in both of their pasts and Son…maybe he should not have let Son go…but then that would have been admitting that he held some irrational feelings towards that city. It was a collection of walls and roads and people and cars and business and commerce and also the sight of the Seventh Division HQ.

Son would be fine.

Suzuki knew that his Son would always be fine. He was not as sensitive as his sister….or as unstable. She was still very unstable. He could see it as she slept. Her aura, the color of it, the feel of it, all of it. It was moving and churning and swirling and…and that display was worrying. His own powers were under lock and key. His aura was still. Even in sleep he tried to keep is aura still. Her control was really much better when she was awake. Her aura had this sort of sleepy quality to it when she was awake. Hazy, too, sometimes. He wondered about it, sometimes, how she forced it to be that way. For her whole life he had been teaching her to keep her aura still.

It was odd.

But it had been that way for years. He chocked it up to differences between them as two individuals. He was himself and she was herself. No two people in this world were alike. She wasn't even his blood, not really, though not a day went by that he didn't wish that she were. Not that he didn't care for her, he did, but it would have just been…different…if she had been his blood child. Different in some minute but glaring way. His Daughter…she was his Daughter. She was Suzuki Shigeko. She was his and he…he cared for her so much…

She stirred again.

He stopped breathing, stopped moving, and stopped thinking once again. He had no idea what he would do if she were to wake up. Feign sleep? No, she was perfectly capable of sensing when he was awake. Tell her to go to her own bed? No, if he was up then it would make sense for her to be up. He could take her to work with him. She was a good message runner even though he had other people for that. She had made quite the impression on the people during her time ruling in his absence and her presence was good for moral. It had dipped very low since he had gotten rid of the rolling chairs but those morons had forced his hand so he felt nothing even approximating guilt. He felt, however, that he didn't need anyone getting any ideas about anything. Daughter was a good distraction. Everyone loved her so much.

Good.

She deserved to be beloved by all. She was his Daughter. She deserved to have the whole world kiss the very ground she walked on…no. She would never need to walk. Ever. After he came into power he would have a palanquin made for her and her feet would never have to touch the ground again. She would be treated like the royalty that she was. She was a Princess. She was his Daughter and he would rule the world someday and that made her a Princess. Not that she would ever succeed him, he had a blood Son for that, but…but if something were to happen to Son then she would have no choice but to be his successor. Then she would be a Queen. The Queen of the world. She would have her rightful place as Queen of the world. He would give her the world and she was right to ask it. He knew that she wanted it. That was why she had jumped at the chance to take over in his absence. She wanted power and she'd had a taste of it and he knew that she wanted more. She already had so many of the Awakened on her side…if she ever got the idea in her head that it was time for a regime change it would be very difficult to stop her. She had the Awakened, weak on their own but useful in their great numbers, and she had her little entourage as well. Technically his entourage. Her idea, though, to collect the most powerful espers that Claw had to offer.

His most powerful espers.

They were at the ultimate heights of power, the three she had collected. He had the three…four. The four most powerful espers in his personal entourage. Daughter, Shibata, Minegishi, and Shimazaki. He was curious who she would choose next. He was curious as to why she was collecting such powerful espers in the first place…if there was even a reason. She may have just desired companionship with people who may have been able to come close to being her equals. She was at that age when social relationships became more important.

And other sorts of relationships as well.

He wondered if she had started going through puberty yet. He wondered if it was an appropriate question to ask her. He wondered if he would even be able to physically get the words out to ask her that question. His attempts at prying into her romantic life had been an abysmal failure….but he stood y his actions. They were socially appropriate. Fukuda had said so and Fukuda had always had very good social skills. Shimazaki'd had it coming and he had not enjoyed hurting Daughter in that way he stood by his actions. A man that old should not have returned her feelings…and she should not have had feelings for a man like that. The age gap was bothersome enough but he may have been able to overlook it, had Daughter been a teenager or something, if Shimazaki had at least been tolerable to be around…and he hoped to God that men like Shimazaki were her type…

Not that he wanted her to even have a type.

The thought of her with a man is disturbing. Someone to come and take her away from him. Someone to distract her from her ambitions. Someone to take her away from Claw. Claw needed her. She was an integral part of it and it needed her. She was the master of the carrot. His tool had always been the stick. The people loved her. They followed him out of fear but they followed her out of love so between the two of them they could easily keep Claw from falling apart. He did not need some man ruining that for him. He did not need some man, some man who was in no way worthy of her, coming into their household and sweeping her off her feet and then…and then taking her away…from Claw….which needed her…

He wished that he could have just chosen someone for her.

The perfect person for her, her most perfect person, would have had to be someone powerful. A powerful esper but…but one without an ounce of ambition. One who wouldn't even dream of having anything to do with the running of Claw or the world. One who Daughter would find attractive. She had said, before, that she preferred tall men….pretty much everyone was taller than her…but she would grow up. So the man he chose for her would have to be tall, taller than average. He would also have to share in her interests. She liked films and manga and videogames…and dolls but he wasn't sure about a grown man who played with dolls…so no dolls. But he would have to share interests with her. He would also have to be able to give her children. Also he would have to be kind to her at all times. If this hypothetical man so much as looked at her wrong Suzuki would use his powers to flay him alive and the he would leave his body nailed to a tree as a warning to all of the other men who thought that they could be unkind to Daughter.

And if he ever left well then…there wouldn't be enough of him left to put on display.

If a man ever tried to leave his Daughter, if the thought ever entered his mind, then Suzuki would kill him. Not instantly, no, first he would be locked in a dark underground room. The room would dispense food, water, powerful electric shocks, blaring music, bright lights, and showers of ice water at random and arbitrary times. Also there would be rats. Small, sentient, verbal rats with a society comparable to that of humans. Also they would have little clothes on too just to be even more disturbing. The rats would come to see him as their God. At that point the food would be cut off and he would be forced to turn upon his disciples for sustenance. Either he would eat all of his disciples and go mad from the isolation or his disciples would eat him and there would be nothing left.

Or Suzuki could just do something simple like force feed him white sugar until his pancreas gave out and then left him to die a slow death without medical treatement….in a cage so he could be made an example out of.

He was getting himself all worked up over a man who didn't even exist yet. He didn't like having to worry about this but she forced his hand as it were. She was the one who had decided to dip her toes into the world of romantic love…and she had picked the worst person to do it with. If she had chosen someone sensible and loyal, like Fukuda…the thought is still disturbing but anyone is better than Shimazaki….then he would not have had to worry like this. Worry about her choosing the wrong man and ruining her life. Worry about her choosing the right man, to her, and then having her heart broken when he decided to leave her for no reason at all. Leaving a gaping wound within her that refused to heal. Haunting her day in and day out with the ghost of his presence. Making her feel useless, worthless, inadequate, and so many other useless things. Making her doubt herself…making her doubt her ability to provide and nurture and…and care for another human being…

Any man who dared to leave, to even think about leaving, his Daughter was going to pay with his life.

Nobody would ever leave his Daughter. Nobody would ever even think of causing her that kind of pain. Not while he was her father. Not while he was around. She would never be hurt in that way…that soul crushing way…which he still drew breathe. She was so small, there, tucked against him…and he would do anything to protect her and anything to keep her by his side where she belonged. Not that he needed her, no, but because she needed him. She needed him to keep her safe and he would.

Even if it meant her clinging to him like an octopus.


	183. Bread Dipped in Ketchup

Dad really liked ketchup.

Mob didn't know if he really thought that it was a food group like Shimazaki and Minegishi and everyone kept on saying but she knew that he really liked ketchup. He liked it on his omelets and his fries, which was normal, but she had also seen him eat it on pizza and chicken breast and also sometimes just on it's own with a piece of bread.

Like now.

"Daughter, pass the ketchup." Said Suzuki. They didn't usually have such nice breakfasts together. Usually Son did something to ruin these quiet family males. He could be so unpleasant in the mornings. He refused to get dressed somedays or to brush his teeth or hair. He also fought with Daughter on what an appropriate breakfast even was.

Cereal was not breakfast.

Son would often quarrel with Daughter and then take his box of cereal and either eat it with his hands at the table or in front of the television. It was unpleasant. Sometimes he would also pour milk directly into the box and then drink the milk and cereal and….unpleasant. Just so unpleasant. Daughter, on the other hand, was a very pleasant person to share a meal with. She ate normal things, today they were both having omelets, and sometimes she even cooked…

Like now.

"Yes, dad." Said Mob. She used her hands, not her powers, because passing things with powers was rude at the table. It was bad manners. Mob thought that the other thing that dad was doing, filling a cup with ketchup and dipping his bread in there, was also a little…not rude but…sort of weird.

And kind of gross, too.

She had made them mom omelets. Those were omelets the way that mom had taught her to make, not ones made from a mom, because that would be cannibalism and that was wrong. She knew that you were supposed to eat ketchup with omelets but Mob thought that dipping slices of plain white bread into a cup of ketchup and then eating them was just sort of…weird.

The fact that dad was using a fork for this made it all the weirder.

"Thank you. This is a very good meal. I haven't had your cooking in ages." Said Suzuki. When a woman made you breakfast, well any meal, you complimented her on it. Daughter wasn't a woman yet, he wasn't sure when she would become a woman or even by which criteria to measure that but he could be reasonably sure that a ten year old girl was not a woman, but he would complement her on her skills. Thank God that Masami had taught her how to cook.

He knew that he could have just had food brought to him but he liked this.

Just the two of them. No Son there to throw tantrums. Just him and Daughter having a peaceful meal. Nothing to worry about. Well, actually, there were things to worry about. Son was still away on the Seasoning City job…he was more worried about Son making the mission take longer than anything….but also Fukuda was away and there were so many ways in which Daughter could be harmed…and also there was just the general work stuff. Moral was low since the rolling chairs had been taken away but he was not going to budge on this. Every time those morons got wheeled chairs they ended up racing them or chair jousting or bumper chairs or a myriad of other bits of stupidity.

He wasn't too worried though. He was near his Daughter after all.

"You usually eat breakfast at work." Said Mob. They ate together sometimes but Sho was usually very grumpy in the mornings. She didn't like having to wake him up and make him brush his teeth and try to brush his hair and then try to get him into day clothes and then try to get him to eat some food groups at breakfast. Well she liked taking care of him and making sure that he was ok but she didn't like how they fought.

This was nice and all but she did miss him…even if he was very grumpy in the mornings.

She wondered what Sho was up to. It was past breakfast time in Seasoning City, maybe, she wasn't sure about the time zones and it would have been rude to take her pone out of her pocket while she and dad were at the table. She hoped that he'd had more than cereal or poptarts or chips or candy for breakfast. She hoped that he'd gotten dressed in clean clothes that morning. She hoped that he'd remembered to brush all of his teeth, not just the front ones, even though he hated brushing his teeth because the toothpaste felt weird in his mouth and stuff. She also hoped that he had tried to brush his hair because it did get knots and the knots would only get worse the longer he went between brushes…

She wished that he could have been there so she wouldn't have had to worry so much.

Even though she knew that she should have been enjoying spending time with dad. She was still upset at him about how he beat up Shimazaki but he had been really nice to her lately. Even if he did keep her up really late watching TV. He had let her cuddle with him all night and even into the morning, too. She had woken up to dad looking at her. He had been staring at her for a while, he said, because he didn't want to wake her. Usually he slept with his back to her. It was nice to be able to cuddle with him like that. She loved him so much and he loved her too. It was so nice when he showed it.

Like mom used to.

When she and Sho had been really little they would crawl into bed with mom when dad wasn't there. Mom would hold them close and tell them stories until they went to sleep. Dad held her close but he didn't tell her any stories but that was ok. She was ten now, not a little kid anymore, and she was happy just to be near her dad. She was happy whenever she got to be near him…mostly. Even now she was happy to be near him.

Even if, in her opinion, nobody needed that much ketchup.

"I do. I felt like eating something you cooked, though, today. You so rarely get the chance to cook. We so rarely have this sort of time to spend together." Said Suzuki. He glanced at the clock on the wall. He would be late if he called a car around, he did so enjoy riding in cars sometimes, but he had a teleporter on staff so it seemed that he had two options. Either cut his meal short and call a car around or spend more time with his Daughter and then teleport to work…as unpleasant as both teleporting and Shimazaki were he did enjoy spending time with his Daughter.

She put him at ease.

At ease enough that he could indulge in an old favorite of his. He knew that this was not something that a man his age should have been doing, dipping bread in ketchup like this, but he was Suzuki Touichirou and he could do whatever he wanted to. He could eat whatever he wanted to eat whenever he wanted to eat and with whatever utensil he chose to eat it with. Still, though, he knew that socially this was odd and he was still not totally immune to the social mores around him…

But this was just Daughter.

Out of all the bad examples he had been setting for her this was nothing. She was there with him and she was seeing this but she had also seen him at his worst. He wondered what sort of far reaching consequences that day, the one in which he miscalculated, would have on her. He had left her with a baby and then took it away after she bonded with it…she's forgiven him. She's no longer upset with him about that so he needs to come off it, stop thinking about how her aura looked when he realized his mistake, and just…be present in the moment with her.

She was his Daughter and he cared for her in this moment and in all moments.

"I like spending time with you too, dad." Said Mob. She also wished that Sho was there but she said nothing. She knew that dad was happier without him there. She knew that dad was happier without Sho to bother him…and it didn't matter if she missed Sho because dad didn't care. He wouldn't just call off Sho's mission because she missed him.

"Good. Will you be joining me at work today?" asked Suzuki. He would think of something for her to do when they got there. Answering his work emails…she was good at that. Running messages. Checking on the Awakened in the break room to make sure that nobody was shirking their duties. Making copies of things which didn't really need to be copied but she liked to use the copy machine so he indulged her. Sitting there on the floor of his office playing her games and watching her shows…

Well maybe not sitting in his office.

With Fukuda gone an attempt on his life could be devastating. So he needed to keep his two best men at his side at all times…and one of those men had managed to capture his Daughter's heart. Well he had, anyway, before Suzuki put a stop to that. He wondered if Daughter still had those sorts of feelings for Shimazaki or if she had come to her senses and realized that he was in no way worthy of her. He didn't ask, though, because he had this irrational mental aversion to talking about her romantic life.

Well it was very personal.

And he was her parent of the opposite sex. This was the world of the mother, not the father, though he never would have told his father when he'd had these sorts of feelings towards the opposite sex…but then again he and his father had never been close. He and Daughter were close. She had seen him at his worst and he had seen her at her worst. She understood him as well as she could and he understood her as well as he could.

But there were still some things that he did not like to talk about.

"Um….ok." said Mob. She really wanted to hang out with Minegishi…but also she had to apologize to Minegishi for not knocking…and also she didn't want to apologize. Not because she didn't feel bad about what she did, of course she did she felt bad about most of the things she did even if they weren't bad, but if she said sorry then they would have to talk about what happened….and Mob did not want to talk about it. She had walked in on Minegishi and Shimazaki doing the things that adults did together on beds with their clothes off. She didn't want to talk about it. She wanted to kowtow and get Minegishi and apology gift but she did not want to have to talk about what she saw.

So she would go to work with dad.

"Good. We'll go after breakfast. Is that what you're wearing?" asked Suzuki as he dipped the last of his bread in the ketchup cup. He knew that he should have used a truncheon but they didn't have any and also he was Suzuki Touichirou and he could store his ketchup for dipping in whatever container he felt like.

"Yes. What's wrong with my dress?" asked Mob. When someone asked you 'is that what you're wearing' it was a polite way of telling you that they didn't like your clothes. Like when Shimazaki's clothes got mixed up and he wore something that didn't match and then Minegishi asked him if that was what he was wearing and then helped him find something that looked better. He chose his clothes by how they felt against his skin, mostly, but he also wanted to look nice because he knew that he was a good looking guy. Mob agreed with him even though, ok he was tall, but there was more to it than being tall…which he had because he was also strong and his hair looked nice and some of his tattoos were cool. Especially the new one of Minegishi…though Minegishi didn't think that it was cool.

Which was very strange since if a boy got a tattoo of her on his skin, not a temporary one but a real one, she would have been flattered.

Dad had no reason to say that to her, though, because her clothes matched. She was wearing her pink Aurora dress since her Elsa one was dirty and also it was getting hard to move her arms in that one, too. This one had no sleeves which made it much easier to move around in. Her socks were pink, too, which matched her dress and her hair ties, the ones keeping her braids together, were also pink. She matched and there was no reason to say that she didn't.

Dad didn't know a lot about clothes since he wore the same thing every day.

Mob cared about clothes. Not like the people she watched on YouTube sometimes who did big shopping hauls but she cared how she looked. She wasn't Sho. He would have walked around in his pajamas all day every day if she had let him. She knew that she always wore costumes, that other people wore regular clothes, but she liked the costumes.

They looked nice.

"Nothing. I wasn't criticizing your clothing. You just wore that one the other day, that's all, usually you change your clothes more often than that. Unless this is a duplicate." said Suzuki. Criticizing a woman's clothing was dangerous ground. Also he knew nothing about fashion and he didn't care to know about it. He had found the most perfect suit in existence and that was all he would wear. Everything from his suit to his underclothes to even his shoes were the most comfortable and best looking at him so that was what he wore.

Daughter changed her clothes often, though.

At least he thought that she did. She was fond of blue. She either had one blue dress she wore all the time or several blue dresses in her rotation. That pink dress, though, he was sure she had worn yesterday. He had no idea how many duplicates she owned but he did not want her wearing the same thing two days in a row. He was a better provider than that. She could have had entire wardrobes of those dresses for all he cared. He just needed her to be changing her clothes daily.

"No, yesterday I wore my Ariel dress. The pink one with the sleeves. This is my Aurora dress, the one without sleeves. It's too hot outside to wear something with sleeves and also I think my clothes are starting to get too small since I'm having trouble bending my arms in some of my dresses." Said Mob. Maybe she should have changed. She had been dressing like this for her entire life. Most of her clothes came from the Disney Store. This was just how she had been dressing for most of her life.

But she was ten, now.

She was ten and maybe she should have been dressing more like an adult…or the other ten year olds. The only problem was that she didn't know any other ten year olds. She never saw any other kids, not up close anyway, and she had no way to know what was and was not normal. She looked nice like this, she thought, but now also she thought…and she had never given this much thought to what she wore before. She wondered what was with her lately.

She had been thinking a lot about herself lately.

About how she looked. About if people were looking at her. She sometimes felt like everyone was looking at her all the time and waiting for her to mess up. Minegishi had told her that everyone in the world felt like they were under a microscope and people were just observing them waiting for them to mess up. They said that people were so wrapped up in themselves that they didn't have the space in their minds to care about anyone else.

Which made sense…but did not put Mob at ease.

"If your clothes don't fit then get new ones." Said Suzuki. She seemed…her aura was pulled in close. That was…he felt like he had said the wrong thing…but he didn't know what. He had not been criticizing her…but maybe even talking about a woman's clothing was dangerous ground. He didn't know. Women, even little girls, were so…complicated.

Not that he would have her any other way.

"I will." Said Mob. She felt better, now, and she had no idea why she had been feeling bad in the first place. The solution was so simple. If she didn't like her clothes then she was free to get new ones…but she did like her clothes. She liked her clothes a lot. But she had been liking these same clothes since she had been little. She had been dressing the same way since she had been little.

And she was not little anymore.

She was ten, now, and ten was not little. Maybe she should have dressed more like the adults around her. She thought that maybe she should have went and put on her President of Claw costume. The sweater and the shirt with the annoying buttons and the skirt that wasn't even good for twirling and the tights that itched and tugged and with the waistband that dug into her skin…but it was too hot out for that. The building had air conditioning but she liked to…to go outside and vape sometimes…since she wasn't allowed to smoke anymore…and she really could use a cigarette…so when she went outside she didn't want to get all sweaty and gross. So she decided to stay dressed the way she was. Because it was so hot out.

Also those clothes felt more like a costume than her actual costumes.

"Daughter…" said Suzuki. He had a piece of bread dipped in ketchup at the end of his fork. He knew that he should have eaten it, food was for eating, and he was forever admonishing Son for playing with his food…but he was not playing. He was thinking. Daughter…had he made her feel…bad? Normally he wouldn't care how he made someone feel but…but this was Daughter. She was not one of the legions of morons that he commanded. She was his Daughter and…and he had a history of miscalculating when it came to her.

"Yes, dad?" asked Mob. She wondered if he was going to eat that ketchup bread. It was starting to look like it was about to drip. If it dripped then he would have had to dip it again…and also there would be ketchup everywhere. Though that might have been nice. It would have been like Sho was with them instead of off on his mission.

She missed him so much.

It felt weird seeing dad so calm at a meal. His aura was calm…or at least it had been. Now it was moving a little…and she wondered if she had done something. It was hard to tell with dad. So many things could upset him, pretty much everything, and nothing good came from upsetting dad in any way for any reason. She couldn't think of anything that she had done to upset him lately…but this was dad and it was always hard to tell with dad.

"You look very nice today." Said Suzuki. There. That was something that you were supposed to say to women…and he also would not have minded the compliment even though he knew that he looked nice every day. Masami had always liked it when he told her that she looked nice. Even though she knew for a fact that she was the most beautiful woman in all of Japan if not the world. Daughter was…well not beautiful in the same way that Masami had been…because she was his Daughter and he did not think about his Daughter like that…and even if they didn't share any blood he had still raised her…and also she was ten and he did not look at ten year olds in that way and hadn't since he had been ten himself…she was pretty.

There, that was a word, the word, the best word for her.

"You think that I look nice?" asked Mob. She knew that she was clean, and that her clothes matched, so maybe nice was the word for it…though it had taken dad a while to say that to her…and she wondered what he had really been thinking in that case. He never lied but…but it had taken him a long time to say that.

"You look very pretty today. That dress is very nice on you." Said Suzuki. He had been watching her aura. She had still been upset. Why? What had he said? Women were so complicated…though Daughter was a bit easier since she was an esper and he could just watch her aura. Masami had been more complicated. She had no aura so he only had her face and body language to go off of…and he had always been bad at reading faces and body language. Yes, Daughter was much simpler to deal with.

"Um…..thanks dad. You look nice too." Said Mob. Dad had never called her pretty before. He had never just told her that she looked pretty….because it wasn't true. The only time anyone ever told her that she looked pretty was to tease her…why Shimazaki was always teasing her she did not know….and she knew that she was not pretty. She was Mob. She was plane and boring looking. She knew that to be true…so why was dad teasing her?

Unless he wasn't.

Because dad didn't tease people. He never told lies and he never teased anyone either. He said what he meant and he meant what he said. She had no idea why it had taken him so long to come up with what to say, though, but she also had trouble coming up with what to say, too, so maybe it was just a family thing. She felt…good. Happy. Happy that dad had said something so nice to her.

Even if it had taken him so long to come up with something nice to say that he had dripped ketchup on the front of his shirt.

"Dad, there's ketchup on you." Said Mob. She pointed, even though it was rude to point, to the spot on ketchup right there on dad's white shirt. It looked like blood…but Mob didn't want to think about that. About how sometimes dad had blood on him that was not his. About how dad had…had come home with blood on him from beating up Shimazaki…

She could feel Shimazaki's aura. He was fine.

He was fine and there was no more reason to think about that. He was fine and she was fine and everything was fine. She decided to stop thinking about this. She couldn't think about things like that because then her aura would show them and dad would get mad. He had been so happy since Sho had been away and she didn't want to make him unhappy. Then he would have been unhappy at Sho when he came back and then it would be her fault.

She passed dad a napkin.

"God damn it. Now I have to change." Said Suzuki. He would have to change. Daughter offered him a napkin but he would have to change. Well he had been just about done eating anyway….but he would have liked to have spent more time alone with Daughter. They would be together at work but it was not the same. He would have liked to have been able to just spend the entire time of Son's absence with her but…but he could not afford to just leave again. He had work to do and he was the only one who could do it.

But he would not be doing it with ketchup on his shirt like he was a child or something. Like he was Son or something.

"It's ok, dad, it'll come out." Said Mob. Dad wasn't listening to her, though, he got up and went to his room to change. Mob used her powers to scrape their plates and put them in the sink. She almost dropped one, though, because…she had a lot to take in. Dad had said a bad word. She had never heard dad said a bad word before. She hadn't even known that he knew any of them. He was dad. He didn't say things like that….right?

Right?

She had learned something new about dad…and she wasn't sure that she liked it. It went against what she had already known about him. He hated cursing and that was why she and Sho were not allowed to curse. Even though she and Sho knew all the curse words, well she probably knew more than Sho but it wasn't a competition that anyone wanted to win, they were not allowed to say them. Dad said that they were Suzuki's and that Suzuki's were better than that.

So it was confusing.

Dad was a confusing person. She had known dad for her whole life and she knew that he was just…confusing. Like how he would care about you and then hit you. Or like how he could love mom one day and then call her a traitor the next. Or like how he could ignore you, run away from home even, and then make you spend all night watching TV with him not matter how late it was or how tired you got.

Dad was confusing.

She learned something new about dad, though, even though he really liked ketchup that didn't mean that he wouldn't curse at it.


	184. This Old House

Fukuda had brought him to a house.

This was a house that he had never seen before. It had two floors. It was painted white. There was a tree in the front yard. There was a car in the driveway. People already lived in this house. It was small, smaller than the houses dad made them stay in, and much smaller than the castle. Sho knew that there were people inside of the house but couldn't feel their auras. That was because this house had normal people in it. Sho knew that most people in the world were not epsers. He knew that he had just been too used to being around other espers that being around normal people felt…weird.

He sort of wanted to go.

But not really because Fukuda wanted to be here. Fukuda had brought him here and it had to have been for a reason. Sho just didn't know the reason. He readjusted his backpack. The notebook in his backpack felt heavy even though he knew that it wasn't. It weighed no more than his sketchbook. Smelled bad, too, kind of like…the ground? And old paper. Yes, old paper. Also the smell that towels got when you left then on the ground for a couple of days. He didn't much want it in his backpack but he had it and now…and now he didn't know what to do with it.

Read it, obviously.

"Fukuda? Why are we here?" asked Sho finally. They had been staring at this house for a while now. Sho had no idea what this was about but he did know that there were other things that he could do. He could climb that tree or get back in the car and go someplace else or…or get back in the car and read dad's notebook…

Or whatever.

"Just…I need a minute." Said Fukuda. He thought that this would be easy. It had been thirty years…and this wasn't even his house! This wasn't even THE HOUSE! This was…this should have been easy. This whole thing should have just been…this easy thing…that he should have been able to do. Someone should have been able to do this. Sho deserved this. Sho deserved….he deserved to know…to know the things that his father would rather he didn't.

"For what? It's just a house. Are we going to visit the people inside or something? Because if they see us standing out here they're going to think that we're weirdos or something." Said Sho. He thought that he saw people from behind the curtains but he wasn't sure. It was hard to be sure when it came to normal people. Espers were easier to sense. He could sort of…but not really…sense normal people. Sometimes they could sense him. When he was little mom said that sometimes she could feel when he was there even if she didn't see him.

He wondered if she would have been able to sense him…

Part of him wanted that to be mom's house. Part of him wanted that to be where mom had moved to after she ran away. Part of him hoped as hard as he could that his mom would come out of that house and scoop him up in her arms like she had when he was little and…and he was going to live in this house with her forever…and then he would have his mom back. He wouldn't have minded it. Getting what he wanted and losing what he had. Getting mom back but also losing dad and big sis…it wouldn't be that bad…not really. Even though he would never see his big sis again….she bossed him around and treated him like he was a baby but he still liked playing with her and hanging out with her…and also the love and stuff…and leaving dad…dad would have him declared a traitor and…and that was why part of him felt bad about leaving dad but…

But he would be with mom again.

He wouldn't even ask her where she had been all these years. He wouldn't even ask her why she had just up and left him one day. Why she had left him all alone with just dad. Why she had told him for his whole life that she loved him but then she had just…left…one day. She hadn't even left a note on the fridge or anything. She had just….gone. She had gone and left him and…and she hadn't even though to take him back…but if she came out of that house and scooped him up and brought him inside to live with her forever….

If she did that then he would forgive her for everything.

"Sho….I really need a minute. This is a lot for me." Said Fukuda. He took a deep breath and tried to keep his aura steady. He kept his aura steady and his breathing steady and just…kept himself steady. He didn't move. He wanted…he wanted to go. He hadn't been back here since…since that day. That terrible day back when he had been…how old had he been? How old had the both of them been? They had been at the very edge of seventeen when…when it had happened.

This should not have been this difficult.

The past was in the past. The past was in the past and…and this was the present. Sho needed to be there. Sho had the right to be there. Sho had the right to know what happened…to know a sanitized version of what happened. To know a version of what happened that a nine year old could comprehend…and also keep to himself. Suzuki would have been pissed, to say the least, if he knew that Fukuda had brought his son to…

To this place.

"That's not a very big house." Said Sho. A lot? That house was tiny. He had gotten used to living in tiny houses, dad said that they were never going back to the Castle, but that was a tiny house even by his standards.

"It's not…it used to be bigger." Said Fukuda. It was smaller now. The house. Whatever of the house was left. It was white, now, this house. It was white and before it had been beige…but now it was white. Smaller. The windows were round, too. Modern. The door was more modern too. Just a large slab of brown wood. The windows were gone. Ugly knocker, too.

The old one had looked like a bird.

"What do you mean?" asked Sho

"This house…it used to be bigger…and now it's smaller. Used to be a different color too. It's all so…it's the same but also…it's different. Different." Said Fukuda

"Are you sure that it's the same house, then?" asked Sho

"Sho…please." Said Fukuda. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe. The air around him was muggy. Sticky. He had forgotten how bad summed in Seasoning City could be. How hot it got. How nice it was to just sit under the shade and just waiting for the sun to set. On those summer days when there was nothing on TV, the arcade was packed, and they'd already spent all their pocket money on manga and games and those weird sugar free milk pops that nobody but Touichirou liked. Heh. The company had probably gone under the minute he and Touichirou…and Suzuki…left for university.

He could do this.

"I mean if it's smaller and different then how do you know that it's the same house? We could be at a totally different house. Maybe if you asked the people inside-" said Sho

"It's the same house." Said Fukuda. He focused on his aura. This was the same house. Half of it may have been obliterated that day but…but it was still the same house. It had been rebuilt. This was the same house. The building was different, the people inside were strangers, and the tree in front was missing a few branches…

But this was the same house.

"How do you know?" asked Sho. They could have been at the wrong house. He could have been standing out in the sun for no reason. He hated the sun so much…why did they have to be in Japan during the summer? It was too hot. His shirt was sticking to him. He could barely breathe because it was so. He wished that they had been looking at this house from in the car. The view was just as good from in the car.

"Because….because I just do, ok?" asked Fukuda. He exhaled as best as he could. There was a tightness in his chest that made it hard to breathe in or out. This was…this was a bad idea. This was…he should have just…he shouldn't have…

Sho had a right to be here.

"But how can you be sure? If it's different then how can you be sure if it's the house that you're thinking of? And why are we here, anyway? Can we at least stand in the shade? It's hot out today. I think it's called high summer but that might come later. Can I at least wait in the car? I'm wearing long sleeves and long pants and-" said Sho

"Because….Sho, I really need you to give me a minute. Ok? Right now…this is a lot for me…and I just need you to…to give me that minute? Ok?" asked Fukuda. He just needed a minute to collect himself. This…he had thought that he could handle this. Being here. He hadn't been here in almost thirty years and he just…he maybe needed another thirty. Maybe he needed another thirty years to be ok with this…when he was sixty four and Sho was thirty nine…and that might not have been so bad. Sho could have brought his son or daughter and then Fukuda could explain to two generations what had gone wrong.

About the biggest mistake that Fukuda had ever made in his life.

If closes his eyes he can feel Touichirou…Suzuki. That was how he'd found his house, by his aura. That bedroom, front of the house on the left, had been Fukuda's second bedroom. Practically. How many sleepovers had they had? How many times had they sat up in the room dreaming of a better world? Playing at what they would do if they could remake the world? Well Fukuda had been playing. Touichirou had been serious about all of his plans…his crazy plans. His plans for the world, the future, what he would do if he ran the world….and how Fukuda would be his left hand. Touichirou and Tadashi, future rulers of the world.

He didn't want that. He had never wanted that.

All he had ever wanted was a friend. A best friend. He'd never had that many friends. He had never met anyone in his life who was like him…and that was what had drawn him to the guy who used to live in this house. When it was his house. When it was THE HOUSE. It may have been destroyed in the…accident. The…that what happened…it had…

Even though the walls had been replaced and the roof wasn't even the same shape and the windows didn't look in to…to what they were supposed to look in to…

He wanted to go.

"It's been one minute." Said Sho. He had set a timer on his phone. He held it up so Fukuda could see. He had been standing there with his eyes closed for a whole minute. The people were looking out their windows, now, and Sho felt sort of like they shouldn't have been there. Also a bead of sweat had gone from his head and down into his eye and it stung because of the salt and…and he just kind of wanted to get out of the sun.

"Sho…I think that I may need another, ok? I know that you're getting very restless and I don't blame you….but I need some time. I thought that I could handle it and…and this is just something I need some time to…to process." Said Fukuda. He thought that he was being reasonable. He thought that he was being very reasonable. He was making himself clear and…

And Sho was just a restless little boy.

That was all. He had been talking to Sho like he was old enough to possibly be able to understand how Fukuda felt. He was only nine. Sho…Sho had a right to be there but also…but also he had no idea why he was even there. Fukuda hadn't told him about this place. He hadn't told Sho that this was the house that his father grew up in. That this was the place where his father had lost control, killed both of his parents, and then gone to Fukuda covered in blood and….

Fukuda could still see it.

He could still feel it.

He could still hear it.

He could still smell and taste…copper. Iron. Blood.

But none of this was Sho's fault. Sho had nothing to do with any of this. Sho was a kid. Sho was nine. Sho had been born over a decade after it happened. Sho was too young for this…but he had no idea when he would have the chance to bring Sho here again. He had no idea when the time would come when he would be able to show Sho the house his father grew up in. The history that he was owed. The history that his father would never share with him. Fukuda…he was not Sho's father. There was no chance in hell that he could be Sho's father. He and Masami had started up with all of that years after he had been born and…and he wished….he wished that he could have just…he didn't even know. That he could have made a deal with God and turned back time and lived the life that he had wished that…that he would have lived…and also he wished that…that he could just…just…

He didn't even know.

But he did know that Sho was his responsibility. Sho was not Shigeko. If he were to bring Shigeko to this place….she wouldn't have given a damn. She didn't care about the past. She was like her father. She hadn't even looked back when he left…or when Masami left. Yes, maybe Shigeko should have been the one that he had brought here. She was more like Touichirou than Sho would ever be. She would have just taken a look around and then gone back to the car…or whatever. He didn't know. He was…upset. A little bit. With this. With himself. With himself for the way he felt.

All the ways he felt.

He turned into the worst sort of person when he was stressed. He was actually getting exasperated with Sho. Masami would have hated him if she knew the thoughts that he was having about her son. About how he was annoyed with him. About how he wanted to stick him in the car until he calmed down and Fukuda composed himself. About how he just…about how he just wanted Sho to…to shut up for just a minute. For him to just be quiet and let Fukuda compose his goddamned self for one goddamned minute. The only thing that he could think about was…was how he just wanted it to stop…already.

This mishmash in his mind of the past and the future.

He was thirteen and he was forty three. He was a grown man and he was a teenage boy. He was freaking out and he was on top of the world. He hated Suzuki Touichirou with every fiber of his being and he couldn't wait to go and visit his best friend. He had fallen in love with Touichirou's wife and he was planning on giving his best friend the pep talk to end all pep talks so his best friend will finally ask out that girl he had been staring at for the past few weeks. He wants to get out of the sun and he wants to go outside and play with his friend. He wants and he doesn't want and…and a lot of it is just…

He doesn't even know.

"I'll set another timer." Said Sho. He wondered what all of this was even about. It was just a house. There were houses everywhere. If they weren't going to live in it or talk to the people inside then what even was the point? The sun was out and it was beating down on him and we wanted to either go somewhere and play or go back to the air-conditioned car.

"Sho…when a person says that they need a minute they don't mean a literal minute. I just need some time to think, ok? It isn't easy for me to be here but I have to be here because…because you have to be here. Because you deserve to be here. Even though you're so young you deserve to be here." Said Fukuda

"What's so special about being here? It looks like all the other houses on this street." Said Sho

"It didn't always. It used to be beige, not white, and before that it was grey. The windows used to be…well the entire front of the house is new so there is no used to. The tree…the tree survived. It's a lot taller now. It's pretty much the only thing that survived." Said Fukuda. He wiped his eyes. He needed a minute but he didn't have a minute because Sho was getting restless and he had to think about Sho. He had promised Masami that he would look after Sho. He had promised Masami that he would be there for her only son. She had trusted him and he was not going to break her trust…he loved her more than anything….

"Survived what? Fukuda, what's going on?" asked Sho. He had never seen Fukuda like this before…and he didn't like it. Fukuda had always been so…happy. Or at least not upset. Sometimes he could be annoyed like when they took long plane rides and stuff. Now he looked like he was going to start crying or something.

Sho took Fukuda's hand in his.

Big sis did this whenever Sho was about to cry. This was what you were supposed to do when someone was sad. He had just never done this for anyone who wasn't big sis before. He had never done this for an adult before. It felt a bit backwards, being there for an adult, but Sho wasn't a baby anymore. Fukuda needed him and he would be there for Fukuda even if he wasn't totally sure how he was supposed to be there for him.

He was only nine. What could he do?

"Sho…this is the house your dad grew up in. Well it was. A long time ago something happened here….something not very nice. Now this house is here but…but it's still the same house." Said Fukuda. He took Sho's hand in his and got down to his level. Sho…Sho was staring at him like he had just grown a second head.

"….no it isn't. Dad didn't grow up here." Said Sho. Dad had been a kid like him once. He had seen the fort. He had been in the Treasure Room. He knew that dad had been a kid once but…but he was having trouble believing it. Dad was DAD. It was easier to think that he had come into the world as an adult. That he had come out his mom's stomach the way he was now, old and boring, and not a kid who used to live in a house and…stuff.

He couldn't believe it. So he didn't.

"He did. The house…the house was rebuilt years ago but this is where your dad grew up…and we used to spend a lot of time here. You see that tree? We used to hang out in the shade all summer and play in the leaves in the winter…well I would play and he would try to drown me in leaves…heh…I thought that he had been kidding. Back then….back then I had always thought that he had been kidding…but he hadn't been." Said Fukuda. He reigned his thoughts in. He needed to keep this to something that Sho could understand. He was just a little boy. He could only handle so much.

Fukuda was a grown man. He should have been able to handle this.

"Fukuda…what do you mean? My dad…he used to live here? Before I was born? With his…his mom and dad…and big sister?" asked Sho. There was so much about dad that he didn't know. There was so much about dad that he had never been told…like that he had lived in this house. Dad used to have a mom and dad and big sister too, probably….just like Sho did…

"No. Your father is an only child…thank God. He used to live here with his parents. Your grandmother and grandfather…they were the nicest people, Sho, and I am so sorry that you will never get to meet them." Said Fukuda. There was so much that he could say about the Suzuki's. They were….they had been such good people. They had just somehow ended up with Suzuki for a son and…and they had been so nice up until the very end. They did not deserve that had happened to them. Nobody deserved that. Fukuda's parents had been lost to illness and a car accident. That was…not a good way to go…but better than by their own son's hand.

"My grandparents? You knew them? Where are they? Do they still live there? Can we meet them? Can we-" said Sho. Suddenly he wanted to know things that he had never really thought about. He knew that mom and dad must have had moms and dads of their own but he had never met them before. He had never seen them with his own eyes and…and he had always just lived his life knowing that he did not have grandparents…he hadn't ever really even thought about them…but now he was.

He was thinking about a lot of stuff.

He was thinking about who dad and Fukuda had been when they were kids. He as thinking about how they used to be kids like he and big sis were kids. He was thinking about how he was a kid now but one day he wouldn't be a kid. He would be an adult like dad and Fukuda were adults and then…and then would he have to bring his son to the Castle? If it was even there? Would he bring his son to the Castle and…and then what? What was the point?

What was the point of showing him this house if…if they weren't going to go inside?

What was the point of any of it? The past was in the past. There was no point in asking Fukuda what dad had been like as a kid. If he had liked fighting movies and art and dart guns and building forts and climbing and…and all of that stuff. Dad was who he was now. Who he had been in the past didn't matter…and that meant that…that the way Sho felt made no sense at all.

Why did he even care about dad? Who he had been? When he knew who dad was now….

"Sho….years ago something happened here. An accident. Your dad...he lost con-he lost his parents. He lost his parents in an accident and…and most of the house, too." Said Fukuda. He wasn't going to tell Sho the whole story. Sho…he was nine. He did not need to know this story because if Fukuda told him the whole truth then…then he might end up being afraid of himself. He saw the trouble his sister had controlling her powers. He had powers of his own. He was Touichirou's son. The same…whatever….that flowed through his father's veins flowed through his and…and while he hadn't been taken by the same…madness? Insane and insatiable lust for power? Just general oddness? He didn't know.

He did know that Sho was normal and he was going to keep him that way.

"So they're dead?" asked Sho. He felt…he didn't really know how he felt. On the one hand Sho knew that he was supposed to be sad. He had heard that people were dead, not only any people but his own grandparents, and he knew that he had to be sad…but on the other hand he had never even met these people so they….their deaths didn't hit him hard…not that he had ever known anyone who had died before…

"Yes…they died before you were born…and I am so sorry. I just wanted…you deserved to know. There's no reason to keep the past from you. You are your father's son and you have a right to-" said Fukuda

"What about mom's parents? Are they dead too?" asked Sho. He knew that he was never supposed to think about or talk about mom but Fukuda would not tell on him. Fukuda cared about him and stuff…and also mom. He seemed even sadder now that Sho had mentioned mom…maybe because she and Fukuda had been best friends back when she had been around.

"Sho. I don-don't know about-" said Fukuda

"Does she have any brothers and sister? Are they alive too? Where do they all live?" asked Sho

"I don't know." Said Fukuda

"Is my mom from Seasoning City too? Did she grown up here too?" asked Sho

"I don't think so but I'm not sure." Said Fukuda. He was trying his best…and his best was not good enough. He didn't know much about Masami's pre Suzuki past…and now he wished that he had asked her more about…about everything. That way he would have had something to tell her son. But there was no way for Sho to know about….about any of that, now, because Masami was gone. She had a different address and phone number and email address and maybe even a new name, too, and possibly even a new face if she had taken enough money with her when she disappeared.

He just didn't know.

"What do you know about her? About her mom and dad and when she was a kid and stuff like that?" asked Sho

"Sho…listen to me. I have no idea about your mom's parents. I have no idea about your mom's parents but…but we need to get going now. There's….there's one more stop that I have to make." Said Fukuda. He knew that they should have stayed longer, that he should have answered any and all questions that Sho could possibly have thought to ask him…but he had to go. He had to go and…and they had…they had one more stop to make…

Because he had no clue if or when they would ever come back.

"….ok." said Sho. At this point he was just going to go with it. Part of him, the stupid part of him, hoped that Fukuda was taking him to mom's house. That mom had a house in this city or an apartment or even a box by the side of the road. He didn't care. He just wanted to see her again…but he knew that Fukuda wasn't taking him to mom. They were on a sightseeing tour of the past, it seemed, but mom would not be on it. She was gone and he knew that he was never going to see her again…so he just said ok. Fukuda had somewhere to take him and, of course, he would go with.

Hopefully it wasn't to another house this time.


	185. Memos and Conversation

Mob liked writing memos.

"How does this sound? Hello everyone. How are you? I am fine. Today is green Jell-O day in the cafeteria. Last time we had green Jell-O day someone got their ear bit off. That was not a good thing at all. There is enough Jell-O to go around. Everyone gets firsts. Nobody gets seconds until they've had their firsts. Please be nice and do not bite anyone's ears off. Also no kicking, scratching, spitting, eye gouging-" said Mob as she read out the first draft of me memo. Dad said that she could write memos just so long as she didn't go off and try to change anything in Claw.

She wasn't dad anymore.

She was glad that she didn't have to make any big choices to make in Claw. Being dad was tiresome. She would much rather have just been Mob. Actually she would much rather have been Mob but when she hung out with Minegishi. This was coffee day. This was the day where they went to Starbucks, it had to be Starbucks because Minegishi liked consistently mediocre coffee and not coffee that was mediocre in unexpected ways they'd said once, and read books and talked about books but also other stuff. Mob wanted to hang out with them so badly….but also she felt awkward because she had walked in on them doing adult stuff with Shimazaki.

Things were still very awkward.

Which was why she was sitting in dad's office writing out memos for all of Claw. She had a chair pulled up to dad's desk, he had a very big desk, so she could work. Shibata was there too, he was knitting something that was either a sweater for an octopus or some kind of weird three man snuggie. She didn't know and she didn't ask because she didn't want to hurt his feelings. Shimazaki had hurt his feelings before by telling him that he was bad at knitting.

And then Shibata told him that he was bad at holding the yarn and then they almost had a fight.

Dad had stopped the fight before it could turn into anything more than name calling. Dad didn't have the time or energy to deal with their antics, he had said, and it had been scary but he hadn't even hit a single one of them. Not that Mob had done anything to earn getting hit. Not that Shibata had done anything either, well anything that bad. Shimazaki had been hit already, though, and she still felt bad about being responsible for that…but dad hadn't hit him then.

Which was nice.

Shimazaki was being really nice, too. He was sitting on the desk or playing with her hair or touching her hands or telling things just to be annoying. He was staying on the other side of the room where he was supposed to be. That was where dad had told him to be and for once he was doing as he was told. Mob was sorry that dad had been mean to him but she was also happy that he was sitting far away from him.

And not just because he could be so annoying.

"You should tell them to keep their clothes on, too. There's this one guy who always gets naked whenever there's a fight…it's weird. Even Shimazaki thinks it's weird…and if he thinks so too…." Said Shibata with a shudder. Mob nodded and then added it to the memo.

"Ok, so now it says 'please be nice and do not bite anyone's ears off. Also no kicking, biting, scratching, spitting, eye gouging, getting naked, or stealing anyone else's desserts. Please be nice to each other and do your jobs. And then after that I have the happy birthday list. Or maybe I should make the birthday list it's own memo. I'm not sure. Are memos supposed to be short?" asked Mob. She had been treating them, so far, like nice little messages that she could send people while they worked. Little ways of making the happy and less likely to kill one another.

They were always so close to fighting one another.

Maybe because dad set such a bad example for them. He had said, before, that the Awakened acted like a bunch of little kids. Well maybe they would have acted better if dad acted better. Maybe if he didn't go around beating people up all the time then the Awakened wouldn't think that it was alright to go around beating each other up all the time.

Not that she would ever say this to him or anything like that.

"They can be whatever length you want them to be, Daughter. I don't really care." Said Suzuki. He really didn't care. Everyone seemed to enjoy receiving these little messages from Daughter. He had no idea why. He also had no idea why they cared who had a birthday that day. Birthdays didn't matter once you became an adult. They just brought you another year closer to death.

Especially if you were in your forties.

He had thought that the existential dread would have passed ages ago but it did, occasionally, come back. Daughter was ten. Son was nine. He remembered when they had been so small that he could hold them each in one arm. He remembered when they had clung to his legs begging him not to leave them. He remembered the day that Daughter joined his household. The way she was so curious about everything. The way that she refused, at first, to call him 'father' even though he had become her father just that day. She had come around eventually and now she was no longer two. She was ten and she was doing her part to run Claw.

Mostly keeping moral up since it had taken a nose dive…and he was not bringing back the chairs with wheels.

"Oh, ok. I'm done in that case. I hope they like this one…and they stop fighting over the Jell-O. I just got them to stop fighting over the cookies…" said Mob

"If you want them to stop fighting over the Jell-O why not just cause another cookie shortage? Then they'll fight over the cookies." Said Shimazaki as he played with the yarn in his hands. He liked this a lot. Not to wear but he sort of wanted to chew on it. He wondered what this would feel like in his mouth. Itchy? He was thinking itchy. He wondered what it tasted like. He wondered if Shibata would notice if he-

"Hey! What are you, a moth?" said Shibata as he pulled his yarn away from Shimazaki. He was either on something or just being weird. One of the two. He hoped that he wasn't on something again. It set a terrible example for Her Little Ladyship….though watching her smoke was cute. But also very, very, very bad…but so cute!

"No, I just have trouble with impulse control among other things. Things that I know that I need help for but have no plans on getting help for. That would just be too much." Said Shimazaki as he pulled on the knot of yarn. Shibata pulled it back and he let him. He wanted to get into a tug of war, it would have been a lot more fun than listening to the clicking of computer keys, knitting needles, and feeling Suzuki glaring at him about…he wasn't even sure.

He was not being creepy!

He had not said or done one thing to Suzuki's daughter that could even be considered to be creepy. He had been sitting there like a good Ryou! Just like Toshi had told him to. He didn't mind getting his ass kicked, well he did but it wasn't like Suzuki was going to kill him, but he did mind Toshi being upset with him. They had been more than upset with him…and even getting a tattoo of them on his arm hadn't made it better…and he had been beginning to think that he had finally ruined whatever it was that they had…

But then sex happened.

Well it would have happened if he had been more aware of his surroundings. He should have sensed the presence of Suzuki's daughter and if he had then sex would have happened but it hadn't happened and the only thing that happened was Toshi got super high after the kid went home and then he had to reassure them all night that they were a good person and not an idiot and also he may have messed with them just a bit.

Just a bit.

Toshi wasn't mad at him anymore but now they were all sad and stuff. Not normal person sad, Toshi sad, which involved being all mad but with a sort of cold undercurrent to them. Toshi never cried when they were sad, they just acted like a wet cat, and while it wasn't boring it was….it made him feel all weird inside. Kind of like he had to do something but he didn't know what but he HAD to do it because when he did whatever it was that he had to do…and he had no idea what he had to DO!

Toshi could be so complicated sometimes.

"I think, maybe, you need help…in the nicest way possible. At least about the thing where you aren't sure if you exist unless someone pays attention to you." Said Shibata. He felt bad for Shimazaki sometimes. Well not about him getting his ass kicked for flirting with Her Little Ladyship, she was ten and he was lucky that Suzuki hadn't murdered him for that, but about everything that was wrong with him. Mainly how he didn't know if he was real if people weren't paying attention to him. That must have been the worst.

Though maybe a professional could help with that…and also some of the other weird stuff that he did.

"It's a serious medical condition for which there is not treatment or cure." Said Shimazaki. He wondered how long he could keep this up for. Shibata was too trusting and it would be his downfall. Shimazaki would make sure of it.

"I'm sorry about that, Shimazaki, but don't worry about anything. I'm paying attention to you and so are Shibata and dad. We're all paying attention to you. You are real." Said Mob. She wished that he didn't have that wrong with him. That must have been the worst thing in the world. She was just trying to be nice but dad's aura flared when she said that…and she didn't know why. She was just being nice. Just because she was nice to a boy that didn't mean that she wanted to be his girlfriend. No way. Not with Shimazaki. He was nice, and he knew where to get the best vapes, and he was tall…but he did not make her heart go doki doki. If your heart didn't go doki doki then you weren't in love. Her stomach sometimes felt all bubbly but that was not doki doki. She didn't know what that feeling was, she hadn't seen that in manga yet, but she knew that it was not love.

She didn't know where dad got these crazy ideas from…or why he refused to listen to her when she said that she did not and would not ever have those kinds of feelings for him.

Dad was so weird sometimes.

"You sure? Because I feel like this might be a Matrix scenario. Yeah, we're in the Matrix, most definitely." Said Shimazaki

"What's a Matrix?" asked Mob

"A movie about the world really being a computer simulation…possibly a documentary. Possibly the greatest documentary in the history of mankind." Said Shimazaki. Honestly, kids these days. He had lived and breathed that movie when he had been her age…and he was blind! And movies for the blind hadn't really taken off back then.

"But…how does that work?" asked Mob. She had seen him listening to TV before. Music, mostly, but also podcasts about music. Also terrible murders…but those might have been the ones that Minegishi liked.

"Yeah, I've been wondering that for a while too. I mean if that's ok to ask." Said Shibata

"Well, no, it's not. You've offended me greatly and I am going to have to immediately dissolve our friendship….you know I'm kidding! If you didn't piss me off when you rearranged the whole bathroom, I will stick your hand in a glass of warm water while you sleep if you ever even think of moving my toothbrush again by the way, then this won't piss me off. Well actually I was kind of pissed off…don't ever move stuff again without telling me or I swear to God that I will do…something…also moies for the blind. Some of them have narration. It's like someone's reading you a story. Also don't you dare rearrange the house again." said Shimazaki. He could feel Suzuki glaring at him. He didn't know why. He was just talking to the kid, not being creepy at all, so what was there to be pissed about?

That guy was way too high strung.

He needed to take a page out of his kid's book. Now that was a fun kid. Little budding stoner and alcoholic. She'd love coke when she got older. Acid, too, and she was old enough for that but Toshi wanted to be the one to take it with her for the first time and only when she was older. Even though slipping people stuff was fun and more fun for them, too. Well at least he had fun when people slipped him stuff just because. Like the first time he tried molly he thought that he had lost his mind but in a good way…

God, he and Toshi had so much fun and she was pretty much like a smaller but nicer version of Toshi that he didn't want to have sex with so she was going to end being tons of fun too.

"I said that I was sorry." said Shibata

"Sorry isn't good enough. I'm going to be bringing this up until one of us dies. Probably me and probably in some ridiculous or awesome way. Or maybe I'll just end up slipping in the shower, hitting my head, and lingering on life support for the next seventy years. Either way when I die I want to be stuffed and put in the natural history museum." Said Shimazaki

"Are you on something right now?" asked Shibata

"When aren't I on something? But yeah I'm not on much right now. Might take a smoke break later. Hey, Your Ladyship? Want to take a vape break later?" asked Shimazaki. His pen, of course, not hers. Toshi got her the worst kind of vape. The kind that was just water and flavorings. What was the point of that? Well to smell like…cotton candy today. Yup, she smelled like cotton candy. Why smell like cotton candy when you could smell like hash oil and tangerines?

"Um…..I don't know if I…" said Mob. She wasn't sure if she was allowed to vape. There was no law that said that kids couldn't because there was no nicotine in what she was smoking, that was what was in the good kind of smoking, but she also knew that people still treated it like smoking. That was why people gave her looks when she vaped out in the smoking break area.

Dad seemed sort of mad.

But he was always sort of mad when other people were around. When it was just the two of them he was always so nice to her. Maybe he just didn't like being around people. That would have made sense. She loved dad and he loved her but…but he might not have liked other people…or something.

"Daughter, your memo?" asked Suzuki. He could not listen to another word of this. If he had to sit through another sentence out of these….well he wouldn't group Daughter in with them because she was his Daughter…but he could not stand another word out of a single one of them. Except for Daughter. She was so much better than the people she called her friends.

The morons she called her friends.

How could she stand to be there? To be there with the two of them and just…sit there talking. She was just talking with them both like it was nothing…including Shimazaki. She was sitting at his desk just to put some space between her and the truly infuriating man that she had fallen in love with…and she was still in love with him. It was obvious in the way that she couldn't even look in his direction when she spoke with him. The way her aura was acting…the way she had a sort of redness to her face…all of it.

At least his message had been received and her feelings would no longer be returned.

"Right. Um…I think that this is going to make them stop fighting….and I want them to stop fighting all the time. It isn't nice and we should all try to get along. That way we can all work hard to make the world better for espers everywhere like dad wants." Said Mob. She looked down at her work while she spoke. She knew that she was being rude, and had been rude this whole time, but she just could not bring herself to look at Shimazaki after what she had seen.

Even if it hadn't been much…which she was very grateful for.

"But it's fun when they fight over stupid shit. Like the time when I brought in a single fork back in the…which Division is the spork Division?" asked Shimazaki

"The first….and that was you? Those guys got into a really bad fight over that fork. Someone ended up with salt in their eyes and ears and stuff and Fukuda had to spend the whole day getting everyone sorted." Said Mob. That had not been a good time at all. She wished that she had been in charge when that had happened. She would have just taken the fork away so that nobody would have had any fork to fork with. If people couldn't handle their forks then she would take away their fork privileges. Like how if she and Sho couldn't agree on what to watch on TV then mom would take away their TV privileges when they had been little.

"Yeah I remember that…" said Shibata with a shudder. Those Awakened….they could be scary when they got all riled up. Like a bunch of little kids but not cute. Like if Little Suzuki was a grown man.

"Hey, it's fun when they fight over stupid shit. They go from zero to a hundred over literally everything. I love those guys." Said Shimazaki. He wondered if Her Ladyship would get pissed if a few Jell-O cups were to 'disappear' or something…that would make for a good time…and also Jell-O had a good mouthfeel comparable to that of pudding.

"I don't want them to fight over anything. Also only put food in your mouth. Food or candles but not yarn." Said Mob. She ducked her head down when she spoke to him. She could talk to him. That was all. She hadn't seen his naked back…well she had because she had seen him in sleep clothes and he slept in just gym shorts…but that was different. She had never even seen Minegishi in shorts…and also she had never seen anyone doing what they had been about to do…and also she was closer to Minegishi and stuff. She was just more awkward feeling when she thought about talking to Minegishi…or even being near them…

At least she could still sort of talk to Shimazaki….sort of.

"Daughter, your memo is fine. Send it out and take a break. On your own." said Suzuki. He didn't want to send his Daughter away but he did not want to have to listen to this for another second. At least Son wasn't there. Son would have had them building forts or playing the game where the floor was made of lava…even though had the floor been made of lava they would all have been dead long before they could even jump from one piece of furniture to the next.

"I don't need a break….but I'll take one if you want me to. I can…um…make sure that nobody is fighting in the breakroom." Said Mob. She wanted to be near dad…and it had been a good conversation even though she couldn't look at Shimazaki for more than five minutes without remembering what she had almost seen…and what had been going on between him and Minegishi….it had still been a good conversation.

But she had to do what dad said so that was what she would do.

"That's a good idea. Do that." Said Suzuki. Seeing her around would be good for moral. Everyone loved her. Who wouldn't love her? She was his Daughter. She was perfect in almost every way. She was intelligent and kind and had good interpersonal skills and had enough sense to choose some very powerful espers for her inner circle and she was very good at caring for Son…

Who wouldn't have loved her?

Though if anyone loved her in anything more than an abstract sense he would have to have a very violent word with them. Especially Shimazaki. Literally anyone would have been better than that man…and he would have Shimazaki in the ground before he had him as a son in law…the thought sends an unpleasant shiver up his spine…but that will pass. That will pass and she would find a better man and…and he does not want to think about that part of his Daughter's life…the part that he had not been prepared for…

He was the one who needed a break.

"Ok….bye everyone. I'll come back with Jell-O." said Mob. She didn't much want to leave….but she also didn't much want to stay. Not with the awkwardness between her and Shimazaki. Not with dad being all mad at him whenever he tried to talk to her and also how she couldn't talk to him without remembering…things. Things that she would rather not have remembered. She wondered if this would pass. She wished that it would pass soon. Normally she would have been hanging out with Minegishi at this time…and they would have probably had read a new book or something else that they would have wanted to talk about…and Mob had things that she wanted to talk about too…

No little brother, no best friend, and a dad who was mad a lot of the time…

At least she was allowed to write memos. She liked to write memos.


	186. Rock Full of Ashes

Sho had never been to a graveyard before.

He had passed by plenty of them before. He had never been afraid of them, even before he got his powers he had never been afraid of ghosts, and msot graveyards didn't even have ghosts. Most of the spirits that he saw out in the world died with unfinished business. The people in graveyards were all dead and buried. Their business was done with and they got visited by people who loved them. This was a good place, Fukuda had said, not a scary place.

He had never been scared of this place in the first place.

"Um….hi." said Sho. He was standing in front of a gravestone. Different countries did different things when people died. Some people put you in the ground, some people sank you in a river, and some people set you on fire and pushed you down the river in a big boat. That was a Viking funeral. When Sho died that was the kind of funeral.

It would be ok, probably, because he would still leave ashes to put in this gravestone.

There were ashes in this grave. The ashes in this grave came not only his grandparents but also dad's grandparents. The Suzuki ones. This was where dead Suzuki's went. When he died he would be in this gravestone. When he died he would be in the gravestone and then his kids would be here and they would leave him stuff and talk to him and pour water over him and then leave.

Fukuda had showed him what to do.

"I got you guys some snacks…Fukuda said that…that grandpa liked mochi and mom likes cheesecake…or maybe it was the other way around. I can't remember…and I um…you guys can trade if I got is mixed up." Said Sho. He didn't know what he was supposed to say to these people. They were dead. He wished that they had been there with him as spirits at least. He never talked to spirits and…and maybe he totally would have…had his grandparents been spirits…

They weren't spirits. They were acid.

"My name is Sho, by the way. Sho spelled with the character for leader. Sho is….is what my mom and dad named me. Fukuda said that you died before you could meet me or my mom. She's called Masami…but she ran away from home. She's a really nice person and…and I think that you would have liked her…or maybe not since I don't know what kind of people you are. I mean you could be like dad for all I know." Said Sho. He felt weird talking to a rock with ashes in it. He felt weird about this whole thing. Fukuda said that it was important for him to be there.

To meet his grandparents.

But this was not meeting his grandparents. These were strangers to him. These were people that he hadn't ever given much thought to in his entire nine years of life. He was hot. He was hot and thirsty and he just…he sort of wanted to go home. Back to big sis…and even dad. What he really wanted to do was go back to baby sis…but he couldn't…

Would baby sis come and see him here?

After he died. He was nine years older than she was. He would get old and die before she died. She would come and see him and pour water on his grave and leave him snacks and stuff. What would he have liked? What did dead people like? What was even the point? It wasn't like they could even eat or take the stuff with them….though when he died he wanted people to leave him artist pencils and a good sketchbook….in case he could bring stuff with him to the other side.

He didn't know.

Fukuda said that nobody, not even spirits, knew what was on the other side. Sho…he didn't want to pass on. Not if he didn't know what was on the other side. Sho didn't think that he could go to the other side and also it was better if he stayed. That way he could have met his grandkids and stuff. That way he could hang out with big sis and baby sis after they died. But not dad. Dad…he didn't want dad to die or anything…

But he did want him to go to the other side when he died.

"I have a big sister, too. She's called Shigeko. That's spelled with the character for nurturing child. She's kind of nice. She's ok. She's so bossy sometimes and she's always on my back about taking baths and eating all the food groups and brushing my hair and my teeth and I don't really like dealing with that but she loves me and I love her and all of that love stuff. She's not here, though, because this is a secret mission and she would totally blab to dad about this if we have brought her. Fukuda said so. He's here too but he's visiting his own mom and dad. They're dead too and they moved on, too, so you might know them up in heaven or whatever." Said Sho. He wondered if that was enough words to say to them. He didn't know what you were supposed to tell dead people. Mom had said, before, that when someone died it was ok because even if you couldn't see them they were up in heaven watching over you and stuff.

But then big sis went and asked what happened to the spirits that she exorcised.

And then mom was all quiet and then they had to watch TV on their own because she was feeling tired. But Sho did wonder about what happened to the spirits that they exorcised. He didn't do that very often, they didn't run into a lot of evil spirits very often, but when he did…he had always wondered what happened to them.

He would know after he died.

"I have a little sister, well she's a pretend little sister, but I love her like a real sister. She's called Mukai and she likes to take off her socks and play with cardboard tubes and stuff. She's so cute and I love her so much…but you guys probably know if you're watching me from heaven…or just dad since he's your kid. I'm sorry that he never visits but there's nothing that I can do about that." Said Sho. He touched the gravestone and then pulled his hand away. There was a feeling, there, that was weird. He didn't know what that had been about.

He didn't know what any of this was about.

"Dad is…dad. He's a jerk but he might have always been a jerk. He's been a jerk for as long as I can remember. Was he a jerk when he was a kid? Was he like…anything? I don't know. I never knew him when he was a kid because he's my dad and I'm a whole other generation. Fukuda says that they used to be friends…or maybe you called him Tadashi. That's his given name…and I had no idea that his given name was Tadashi. I didn't know a lot of things…like the fort in the woods…or about how you died in an accident. You died in an accident and I'm sorry…if you don't know how you died…and stuff. I'm sorry that you're dead and stuff." Said Sho. What was he supposed to say? What was a person supposed to say in these places? What were you supposed to do? He came and left the snacks and poured the water and said a few words. When was he going to be done with this?

Were these jerk thoughts to have?

He didn't know. He didn't know what he was supposed to be feeling right now. These people were, the ashes of people, were his grandparents. He had no idea who they were. He knew who they were to him but he had no idea who they…were. Dad never talked about them. He never told stories about his parents. He must have had some. Sho had stories about mom and dad. He had stories and he would tell his kids, the boys and the girls, about his mom and his dad and he would tell them all. He would talk to them and…and he nice to them and…and then when he died then they would come to visit him there when he was nothing but ashes.

"I don't know what to say to you. I don't even know anything about you. Dad should be here, I think, because dad….you guys made him. You guys made him and took care of him and stuff. Just…why did you…were you guys the ones who made him a jerk? Or was he always like that?" asked Sho. He felt like he was being a jerk. You weren't supposed to speak ill to the dead and stuff…but he had to know. Were they jerks? Were they the reason that dad was a jerk?

Was that why he was a jerk?

Did you have to be a jerk to be a Suzuki? Suzuki was a name that was spelled with the characters for bud tree. Maybe it should have been spelled with the characters for 'family of big fat jerks' or something. Dad was a jerk and now Sho was a jerk…and maybe grandpa was a jerk too…and then maybe Sho's son would be a jerk…and maybe it was just a constant line of jerks one after the other…

He didn't know.

"Dad is such a jerk to me all the time and…and that's what I have to say about him. Since you're watching him from heaven or wherever then you should know this about him. He hits me and calls me names and makes me feel like the gum you find on the bottom of your shoes. It's just…why is he like that! Did you guys make him like that? Is it…is it just something about being a Suzuki that makes us jerks? Just…I don't even know. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. This is a graveyard and I have to be nice…so I'm sorry that I yelled at you. Please don't be mad…if you can even hear me." Said Sho. Even in a graveyard he was such a jerk. He didn't know what was wrong with him.

He wanted to go.

He wanted to leave this place and go literally anywhere else. He would have gone to an all-day showing of those stupid kissing movies that big sis liked. He would have happily gone back home and played the Shoko game all day if it meant that he got to leave. He knew that he had legs and he could walk back to the car….but he didn't. He had no idea how long he was supposed to take. He had no idea how long Fukuda would take. He had no idea how long his grandparents wanted him to visit them for.

He had no idea who they even were.

He smelled incense. Fukuda had lit some. He was still talking to his parents. He had no idea what was being said. He knew that it was none of his business. Mourning was private, Fukuda said, and he said that he would give Sho all the time he needed. Sho hadn't told him that he wasn't mourning. He couldn't mourn, which meant feel bad about, someone he had never met. Even if these people had made his dad he didn't…he didn't love them. Not like Fukuda loved his dead parents…or at all.

He didn't even know these people.

And they didn't know him. They didn't know that he liked to draw. They didn't know that he liked colored pencils the best and paint the worst because paint took forever to dry and also it was harder to make mistakes. They didn't know that his favorite movie of all time was Zootopia and his least favorite movie of all time was Whispers of the Heart or whatever. The one with the bike sharing scene that big sis keep watching over and over again. His grandparents didn't know that sometimes he and big sis were best friends and that sometimes he felt like they were mortal enemies. They didn't know that big sis liked strawberry milk and he liked cola. They didn't know that citrus could kill him. They didn't know that dad had almost killed him in an Awakening experiment.

Those were the things that he was supposed to be telling them.

So, what, he was just supposed to stand here and tell his life's story to a rock full of ashes? Really? That just…he didn't understand this at all. He didn't understand and he wished that someone had explained it to him. He wished that dad had explained this to him. He wished that dad had been the one to take him here. At least then he could have copied what dad said and did so he would have known what to say instead of just…acting like a jerk.

Like a Suzuki.

If being a Suzuki meant being a jerk then he didn't want to be a Suzuki. He didn't want to be turned into ashes and then stuck in this fancy rock. He wanted…he wanted to be sent down the river in a burning boat. Then at least it would be cool and he'd be leaving everyone something awesome to remember him by. He would be remembered by his kids and they wouldn't have to stand in the sun at high noon during high summer when the sun was at it's highest and hottest in the sky talking to his ashes.

Was he supposed to do this for dad?

He didn't know…he didn't know if he could do this for dad. Talk to his ashes. He couldn't even talk to dad now when he was alive and flesh and blood and skin and bone and stuff. Maybe it would be easier after dad died and passed on…and he doesn't want to think about his dad dying. Or his mom. Or big sis, she would go first because she was older, or baby sis or…or anyone. He didn't want to think about his family dying or him getting old and dying. What was even the point of it all? if you just lived to die then why even live in the first place? What was even the point if one day he would end up as nothing but ashes inside of a rock?

He didn't know.

He just didn't know. He wanted to leave. He wanted to just walk away and go…somewhere. Back to baby sis. Back to big sis. Back to Claw. Back to dad. He was even ready to go looking for mom. He would knock on every single door in Japan until he found her. Look in all the windows. Up on top of all the roofs. He would even climb trees and dig holes and look in caves if he had to. He needed…he needed to see his mom. Mom was gone and for all he knew she could have been ashes in one of these shiny rocks. She should have been in there. She was Suzuki Masami and this was there Suzuki's went and mom was…if she died then….then he would be able to visit her. He would be able to leave her some cheesecake with strawberries and whipped cream on her favorite Aristocats plate and then tell her about his day and take his kids to meet her and probably whatever girl he ended up having to marry too just because he and the girl would end up in that rock too one day and…and then if he and mom were ashes in the rock together then they would be together again…and forever.

But then he and dad would be together forever too. There would be no big sis to be there to keep dad's attention on her and make him happy. She was a girl and dad said that when a girl got married she joined her husband's family which was why there could never be a girl ruling the world. That was why even though she was the older Suzuki he was the Suzuki who would rule the world. Big sis would probably end up in the Shimazaki family gravestone because she was in love with him and she'd finally end up with him when she was a grown up just like how it went in the movies she liked…and then he would lose being friends with the coolest guy ever…and that would make him upset…even though he should have been happy for her…or maybe not because little brothers weren't supposed to let guys like his big sister…

He didn't want her to marry Shimazaki because then she would end up in his family gravestone and then he would be alone with dad.

He didn't want that. He didn't want to be all alone with dad…well mom would be there…but no she wouldn't because she had run away. Mom had run away and he had no idea where the…he didn't know what her family name had been before she married dad. No. When he died then he would be all alone here with dad and the grandparents and great grandparents that he didn't even know…and he didn't want that at all…but that was what he would end up having to learn to live with…or die with…

Sho didn't know.

He felt an aura getting closer to his and he heard footsteps. Fukuda. Sho hoped beyond hope that it was time to go.

"Hey, I'm done…visiting. Anyway, do you need more time? Because we can stay for as long as you need to." Said Fukuda. Sho shook his head. It hurt. Sunburn. He had been out in the sun long enough to get a sunburn…but he shouldn't complain because there were dead people around him and they had real problems in their lives…after moms.

"…no. I'm done. Can we go now, Fukuda?" asked Sho. He must have spent long enough there is Fukuda was done. That meant that it was long enough….that he had been talking to his grandparents…meeting them…their ashes. Their ashes in this rock….

"Are you sure?" asked Fukuda. Sho looked over at the ashes rock. At the grave marker. He…he was ready to go. He had been ready to go. Even if…even if not wanting to stay made him a jerk but…but maybe not since he didn't even know these people….

"Yeah. I'm sure." Said Sho. He took one last look at the ashes rock. At the gravestone. At the last place that he would ever live when he died…where dad would stay after he died…and he would die one day. He would die and Sho would die and then…and then everyone would die. After dad died Sho…he would bring his kids here to visit dad…because that was just what you were supposed to do when you had kids. Well he would bring his kids, dad never brought him, but he would bring his kids…

Even though he really didn't like visiting the graveyard.


	187. Fights in the Break Room

The Awakened fought a lot.

Mob didn't understand it. Why did they have to be liked that? They were all a part of Claw together and they were all working towards the same goal. They all wanted to help the world a better a place. Each and every member of Claw from the upper echelon to the guys who chased the pigeons off the open air mezzanine mattered. They all worked together in order to make dad's dream of a world where espers could all be together and wouldn't have to hide their powers or be afraid of themselves. They were all in it together.

So they needed to stop with the fighting already.

"Ok, what happened this time?" asked Mob trying to be as nice as possible. She had just sent out a memo that morning about not fighting but what did they do? They went and fought each other. Now someone was bleeding and the guy that took off his clothes for every fight couldn't find his pants and also someone had stepped on the ping-pong ball so now it was shaped like a croissant. That wasn't the worst of it.

The Wii was broken.

She had let them have a Wii and they broke it. Why? Why did they have to fight all the time like a bunch of little kids? She and Sho didn't even fight this much. Well Sho tried to fight her but she just let him hit her and stuff until he got tired of it. Sho was a little kid, though, only nine years old. These guys were all grown adults.

She knew. She was the one who wrote the birthday memo.

"He started it!" they all pointed to one guy who was trying to hide behind the couch. Mob used her powers to move the couch out of the way. He shrieked and then covered his face. Mob didn't know that guy, she actually didn't know most of the Awakened, and she felt sort of bad about that. Maybe if she was nicer to them and learned their names and made more of an effort to be their friend then they would stop acting like this all the time.

"Why did you start a fight?" asked Mob. She tried to sound like mom then, all nice and stuff, and not like dad. Dad would have just started beating people up. She had no intention of beating anyone up. That wasn't a good thing to do so she would not be doing it.

"I didn't! I only wanted to be the Mii gunner but then Hiro said that I couldn't but he's not the boss of the Wii and then I tried to be Mii gunner anyway but he bit me-" said the Awakened

"You shouldn't have licked the controller!" shouted another Awakened. Mob tried to keep on smiling, keep on being nice, even though that was the grossest thing ever. It was one thing when your little brother did that, it was ok because since you were brother and sister you had the same germs, but another when you did that to your coworker. There were two hundred and fifty Awakened in the Tokyo branch of Claw, she had decided to let everyone transfer to wherever they wanted to when she had been filling in for dad, and they all had different germs. Also not everyone washed their hands after using the bathroom even though she'd had handsanitzer stations but up everywhere.

"You should have let me be the Mii gunner! And you guys shouldn't have made fun of my Mii! It does not look like the bastard child of an aging prostitute and an underage milkman!" said the Awakened. Mob had no idea what any of that meant but she knew that people should not have been insulting one another…even if the Mii gunner was the worst character in the game because you could just spam the shooting nonstop and doing that made the game not be fun anymore.

But she didn't say that.

"All of you guys should be nice to one another. We're all Claw together. Each and every one of us needs to work together and be friends so we can all make dad's dream of a better world for espers everywhere come true." Said Mob. Everyone was looking at her now. They were staring with their eyes and what little auras that they had. Their copy paste auras. She couldn't tell them apart that well, actually, and she tried to focus on their faces and there were so many of them…

"Um…yeah. We need to all be nice to one another. We're all the same here. Everyone here is an esper and…and that means that we're all the same. Even if…um…even if we're from different countries…most of us are Japanese but still….and even if we're boys and girls…but I'm the only girl…and um…" said Mob. They were staring at her even more, now. They weren't even blinking. They were staring at her and…and she had to keep on talking.

"Even if we're different ranks and…and different people all together…and even if we pick different characters in Smash Brothers we're all the same and we should all be nice to each other. Ok?" asked Mob. They were all still staring at her. They were all still staring like they were expecting something and she had no idea what it was. She had told them to be nice to each other…but then what else could she say? They were all the same and they all had to be nice to one another.

What else was there?

"Um….now everybody hug and be friends." Said Mob. They all started hugging one another right when she said that. That was good. When she and Sho had been little kids and they fought mom would make them hug and make up. Since the Awakened weren't going to act their ages she was going to act like they were little kids.

They were hugging, now, and it looked like they were all friends.

"Ok. Now everyone's ok and I'm just going to go and get some Jell-O for my friends-" said Mob. She was about to turn around and leave. She was getting sort of hungry and she had promised to bring back Jell-O so that was what she was going to do.

Well that had been the plan, anyway.

"Our Ladyship wants Jell-O! Bring her all the Jell-O! Then chew it for her so she doesn't choke!" shouted an Awakened. He tried to run and tripped over his feet. Mob caught him with her powers and sat him down on the couch.

"That's ok. I can get my own Jell-O. I just want you guys to get friends and also get back to work because we can't all work together to make dad's dreams happen if we aren't, you know, working…and also please don't try and chew my Jell-O for me. I can chew my own food…and also you don't have to chew Jell-O because it's a gel…o." Said Mob. She was being looked at again. She didn't like it when they all looked at her with their eyes and all of their auras…which looked like the same aura….it was so weird…

"Are you sure, your Ladyship?" asked an Awakened. Mob nodded quickly.

"Yes. I want you all to work and also I can chew my own food and also people don't need to chew Jell-O because it's a gel. Ok?" asked Mob. She took a step back. They were all still looking at her.

"You can stay? The Wii is broken but the Genesis still works." Said an Awakened. He was then shoved by another Awakened….and now Mob understood what people meant when they said 'in one ear and out the other'.

"Hey, I just said not to fight." Said Mob. She felt a headache coming on. She wished that dad took his breaks outside of his office. She wished that he would just leave her alone so she could have a drink, just one, from the fancy bottles in his office. That was all that she needed to get rid of this headache.

"That's not your Genesis. I brought that from home and-" said the first Awakened. He shoved the other one back. Now they were shoving like a bunch of little kids…like a bunch of boys. Boys did this all the time even when they were all grown up. Shibata and Shimazaki shoved each other sometimes too. She didn't get it.

"I said not to-" said Mob. She put up a barrier between them so they stopped fighting….or just pushed against her barrier. She took a deep breath and tried to keep her aura still. She had to be nice. She had to be nice and she had to be nice to them and…and that was what she had to do. Once she stopped them from fighting she could go get the Jell-O for everyone and then she could eat Jell-O and then maybe take a vape break with Shimazaki…or maybe borrowing just one cigarette from him wouldn't be that bad…

But then she would have to be alone with him after….what happened…

Which was better than listening to the two of them fight. The others were taking sides, too, and nothing that she said was making them stop. She tried telling them that she wanted them to be nice. That just made them start fighting over what was and what was not nice…and also if bringing a game system from home made it communal property or if it stayed your property and you were just a jerk who was taking up the communal property that was the couch and the TV and also the snacks that felt between the couch cushions….which they should not have been eating because of the germs….

It was awkward between her and Shimazaki but as long as she didn't look at him for too long it wouldn't be too bad. He had the best vapes.

"Guys….please…." said Mob. They were fighting still and it looked like they were going to keep on fighting for a while and she could not let them fight…but they really wanted to fight…and their auras….aura….because it was all the same aura. It was all the same aura and all the same fight and her head hurt and she just could not…she could not be there but she couldn't go because they needed her and…

And she had to be there for them.

She had to be there for people when she was needed. People were supposed to get along and she was supposed to help people get along because she was in charge of them but not really but also yes really because she was second only to dad and they just kept on fighting and there was nothing that she could do and their aura was so bright and she could see it and feel it and it felt like she couldn't get out and she didn't….she just didn't know.

She felt another aura.

That was a different aura. It cut right through the red. It was there and…and also everywhere. She could feel it in the walls and…and also in her phone? Sort of like Minegishi's aura, how it could always be felt through the plants around them, only with….the lights? And her phone in her pocket? It was…different.

But also sort of familiar…but from where

"What the hell is going on in here?"

Mob felt him before she saw him….but that was normal when it came to other espers. She always felt people before she saw them. She was hardly ever surprised when it came to other espers. She could sneak up on people because her aura was so much….but she could not be snuck up on. She always knew when people were coming and therefore she was never surprised…well not never.

She was surprised now.

The first thing she noticed was his sweater. There was a bird on the front of his sweater. The bird looked like a pigeon and Mob had never given much thought to pigeons but now she decided that they were her favorite birds. Minegishi called them rats with wings but Mob disagreed now. Also her favorite color was blue now, too, because she really liked that shade of blue. He dressed well, this boy, and also he was tall…very tall….well everyone was taller than her but he was tall. Not as tall as Shibata thought…or Shimazaki…or dad…or Minegishi…but this boy was still taller than her and that made him very tall. Also his glasses were square and she had never seen square glasses before. They were cool. He was cool.

Mob didn't know his name but she got the feeling that he was cool.

"Um…they're fighting and the Wii is broken…so maybe you should take your break somewhere else…if you want to." Said Mob. The Awakened were fighting less, now, at least they weren't hitting each other anymore. That was good. She could leave now. She should have left while she had the chance…but she also didn't want to leave.

She didn't know why.

This place was loud and dirty and also everyone was counting on her to bring back Jell-O. He, the boy with the cat sweater, was holding a cup of Jell-O so maybe she should have headed down and got some before it was gone. She had said that nobody got seconds until everyone got firsts but she also knew that desserts made people crazy so, of course, they were going to take as many as they could...and she really needed to do what she said that she was going to do…

But she also really liked meeting new people.

"Believe me, I wouldn't be here if I had a choice. This is the burden of being tech support. I go where I'm needed." Said the boy. Mob didn't know how name. She wanted to know his name. He worked in tech support…she didn't know any of the people in tech support. She needed to start learning people's names. That was what she should have been doing instead of just standing there and doing nothing.

She must have looked so dumb.

"Here, hold my Jell-O while I fix this." said the boy. He handed her his Jell-O cup before she could even say anything. This was….wow. He trusted her with his Jell-O and he had just met her. She watched him, his aura, as he worked. His aura lived inside of electricity, it looked like, since she could see it climbing through the walls and the TV and the Wii. He fixed it fast. She hadn't even seen what he did. She just heard some beeping, saw his aura, and now it was on again. Just like that. He didn't even have to turn it off then on again.

Wow.

"Hey, morons! It's fixed! Also when you bring a console here unless you're brining your own couch and TV then it's communal property! And stop brining your shit from home in. Unless your name is Suzuki we don't have to do shit for you!" said the boy. Mob did not like how often he cursed but that was just what adults did. They cursed and said mean things to each other sometimes and that didn't mean that he was a bad person. She had no idea what sort of person he was but she knew that he was not a bad one.

He couldn't have been if he worked for Claw.

"Thanks, kid." Said the boy as he took his Jell-O cup back. Mob nodded and stood very still as he passed. She didn't know what to say or do so she did nothing, but then as he left she decided that maybe she shouldn't have let him pass her by. She liked meeting new people and she wanted to meet new people and she would meet new people and also it was good to know everyone.

So she followed him.

Well technically they were going the same way. Well the cafeteria was in the other direction but she could always turn around. If he asked, though, she would say that she was on her way to the outside break room. There. That was a thing that she would say. She knew what to say. She knew what to say in the even that he asked her why she was following him.

"Hey kid, you lost?" asked the boy. He stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned to face her. He was looking at her with his eyes and his aura.

What had she been planning on saying again?

"Um….no? I'm not lost. I'm…here. I am here. We are here. Like a 'you are here sign'…heh." Said Mob. She was stupid. She was stupid and she needed to be banned from talking. She needed to be banned from ever speaking to anyone again like those monks that lived on the tops of mountains and took vows of silence. She had sounded so stupid and now….and now he probably thought that she was stupid.

"Right. Well you really should get back to your parents or whatever. You don't want to wander around this place, believe me." Said the boy

"Um….yeah. I should get back to dad…because he probably wants me to come back…but um….thank you for fixing the Wii. That's all…I just wanted to say thank you…so thank you…um…" said Mob. Were those words? Was she speaking Japanese? Did the words that came out of her mouth make sense? Did anything make sense? She didn't know. She just knew that she had to say something. Anything.

"Finally, some thanks. I've had to fix that thing five times this week…and it's only Wednesday. Who the hell thought that giving them a Wii was a good idea?" said the boy. Mob looked down. Right, that had been a dumb idea. Well it had been their idea but she should have known that it would just end up being one more thing for those guys to fight about…and also they would rather play Wii than work…

"That was my idea…I mean my fault. I mean my dad left me in charge and I just wanted to make them happy…sorry for making more work for you." Said Mob. She thought that she had said the right thing. All of her words were in Japanese and they made sense. But now he was being all slack jawed and his aura was all focused on her…

He was looking at her.

She looked down at her shoes. She tapped her heels against the ground and they lit up. She played with her dress as she stood. He was staring at staring and staring and she knew that she should have told him to stop staring because it was rude but she didn't know how to tell him to stop and also she didn't really want to talk…and also her powers were being all weird. She could feel her braids starting to float a little bit.

"You….you're the boss' Daughter? The one from the address?" asked the boy. Mob nodded but did not look up.

"You? Seriously? But you're, what, six? Seven?" asked the boy. Now Mob looked up. She was a lot older than that! She was ten! She was ten and she was not six or seven and….and he thought that she looked that little? She didn't even know his name but she cared what he thought…but that made sense since she cared what everyone thought…but she especially cared what he thought…

Which was weird.

"…ten. I'm ten." Said Mob. She felt warm all over. She felt like she wanted to melt into the floor even though she knew that if she did that the nobody would come back with the Jell-O. It was very important that she come back with the Jell-O. She was the only one who could be trusted. Shimazaki might eat it and Shibata might eat it too and dad would never go down and get Jell-O for everyone. So she had to go and get the Jell-O.

Her legs felt like Jell-O.

"Oh, sorry. You just look younger now. Probably the costume. Getting ready for Halloween or are you just really into cosplay?" asked the boy.

"Um…these are just my normal clothes….that I wear…in life." Said Mob. She wanted to change. She wanted to go home and change into something else. Anything. Why was she wearing this? She looked so stupid. She looked stupid and he probably thought that she looked stupid and-

"Oh. Well you look nice, Suzuki-sama." Said the boy. She loved this dress. She was never taking this dress off ever again. She was going to be buried in this dress. She was going to haunt the world as a spirit in this dress.

"Um…thanks. But you don't have to call me Suzuki-sama. You can call me Suzuki-san or just Suzuki or Suzuki Shigeko or just Shigeko or Mob. I like Mob. That's what my friends call me…or one of them. I have three friends but only one calls me Mob. I have a little brother too but he doesn't count as a friend because we're siblings. He calls me big sis but only he can if you called me big sis that would be weird because we're not brother and sister and also you're a lot older than me and…um…what's your name?" asked Mob. Too many words. Now he was probably bored to death because she couldn't shut up and let him say some words. This was hard. This was very hard. When had talking to people gotten to be this hard?

"Hatori Nozomu. Floating tech support." Said the boy….Hatori. Family name only. Family name only because they had just met and she should not have even thought about calling him Nozomu…she liked that name so much….and she had no idea why.

What was with her?

She had felt like this before…sort of. Like her stomach was about to make its' way out of her body. Even though she hadn't eaten anything weird lately. There was some doki doki to that…maybe. She didn't know. Doki doki wasn't this fast or this hard and…and also it sort of felt like she needed to lay down for a little bit….but in a good way….and just did not get it…

She was so weird sometimes.

"I'm Suzuki Shigeko…but you know that. Um…I work in dad's office and…stuff. I…um….I write memos! That's my job…to write memos." Said Mob. He was looking at her. She was looking at him. She liked his glasses and his hair and his sweater and jeans and the way he held his Jell-O cup and the way the light hit his glasses and also how it reflected off of his hair and forehead and even all the little red dots all over his face and just….all the things that came together to make this person!

She decided that she wanted to be friends with him.

"Yeah, I saw that thing today. That was really nice of you, the thing with the birthday shout outs and stuff. Anyway it was nice talking to you but I have to go and do work. Legitimate work, not War Craft, so you don't have to come up and check up on us or anything. Because we're definitely not playing War Craft in there." said Hatori. Mob nodded. She wanted him to stay and talk to her but also she wanted him to go away because she was having a lot of trouble breathing and thinking and…stuff. All the stuff.

"Um…it was nice to meet you too. Happy….Happy Wednesday. I'm just going to go and….and walk in this direction now. Good bye!" said Mob. She walked and walked and walked until she got to the cafeteria. Then she got the Jell-O.

She took too many.

Now there were four and four was way too many and now everyone was going to fight over the last one…or it could be dad's and then she could just eat it later…his sweater looked so soft….and then that wouldn't be fair though…his skin was so shiny….and she had to make it fair…he had such cool glasses…..so maybe they should divide the extra Jell-O up into thirds….he was so tall…or maybe she should just put it back….he smelled really nice even though he sort of didn't….but she had already touched it…

Jell-O was complicated.

She didn't know what to do with this Jell-O cup and she liked not knowing what to do with this Jell-O cup. At least that way it took her mind off of the new person she had met….and now she was thinking about him again…and she didn't get herself sometimes. She had met someone knew. She met new people every day. Maybe it was because she wanted to be friends with him. Yes, that was it. He seemed like a good candidate for a friend. He had cool powers and he seemed nice and also he hadn't gotten caught up in the Awakened's fight….and that was the best thing about him, she decided then.

About Hatori Nozomu.


	188. Jell-O Cup

Suzuki Touichirou did not understand Jell-O.

He poked it with his spoon. It shook in it's clear plastic cup. He wondered if this really counted as a food. He's had aspic before, he enjoyed aspic, but Jell-O was not aspic. Aspic was made from boiling down animal bones until you got a sort of gel like substance. This was made in a lab and colored green and flavored like…

He smelled it.

Lime? A cross between a lime and an apple. Also there was a strong smell of plastic. Disgusting. This could not have counted as a food. Who would eat this? Well the people around him, obviously. They were eating it up like it was a real food with some real value to it. Especially Shimazaki….he really seemed to be enjoying it.

"You've got to let the flavors dance on your pallet." Said Shimazaki with a spoonful of Jell-O balanced on his tongue. Suzuki couldn't stand to look. Thank God Son wasn't there. Son did that sometimes with ice cream…truly vile. He should have said something, he knew that he should have said something, but he was too consumed with trying to understand the dancing green substance in front of him.

"That's gross, Shimazaki. You're acting like Sho and he's not allowed to do that anymore. It grosses dad out…and also me but mostly dad." Said Daughter. There. She was good at keeping people in line….though he would have preferred if she had never spoken to Shimazaki again for the rest of her life. He looked up. There was a flush to her, the same flush that she'd had all day….and he knew what that was about.

She still had feelings for that moron.

Even now with him acting just like Son….maybe that was it. Maybe she just had zero expectations for male behavior since she had spent her entire life dealing with her brother. That might have made sense. Maybe he needed to find some other men for her to hang around…or maybe just keep her closer to him. She was older now and was becoming more and more of a help to him each and every day. He would keep her by his side where she belonged and Son…

There were always away missions.

"What, you don't like seafood?" asked Shimazaki

"This is Jell-O." said Shibata

"No, I mean see-" said Shimazaki

"Are you the one who taught Sho that?" asked Daughter. She was upset with him. Good. She needed to get upset with him. See beyond whatever it was that she found so attractive about him. The fact that he was unusually tall for someone with no foreign blood in him. The fact that he always dressed very well despite the considerable handicap of being blind. The fact that he was a very powerful esper. The fact that he was actually built very well…

That was an odd wat to think about another man. He decided to stop.

"No, he's the one who taught me that. God, I miss the kid. When's he coming back again?" asked Shimazaki. Daughter was so incensed with him that she had stopped looking in his direction. Suzuki decided to do the same. Jell-O. He was going to stare at his Jell-O, he decided, because it was infinitely more fascinating.

It really was.

What would it have been like to be small enough to walk on it's surface? Would you have sank in? or would a human foot have been able to displace just enough Jell-O to be able to walk on it's surface. Like walking on water. He could fly, yes, but that wasn't…interesting enough. He could walk on water by making sure to displace just enough water to make him buoyant, like a boat, and he wondered if the same thing would have gone for Jell-O. What would the friction be like? He ran a finger over the top of it. Very slick.

He wondered what would happen if he filled a swimming pool with it.

Could you swim in it? He hadn't gone properly swimming since he was a child. He could and had many times in the past dove into the ocean and just…seen what there was to see. Swimming for pleasure was different. He wondered how much resistance there would be if he were to swim in a pool made of Jell-O. He wondered how he would even get so much Jell-O to set. It took time to set and had to set in the refrigerator. Mother had made gelatin desserts every holiday…he remembered….and he had tried it once…when he had been very small…

What had it tasted like?

He had been small, very small then. Small enough that he could not see above the kitchen counters. Mother had made a dessert for…it had been red. Cold. The house had been cold. Snow on the ground. Christmas. The tree inside…and he hadn't known what Christmas was…but he had known what food was when he saw it…but he had been too small to reach….so he'd used his powers….

And then he had eaten the whole thing and mother had been upset with him.

Mother…he exorcises thoughts of her from his mind. All of them. He hadn't thought of her in years. Why think about her now? She was dead and out of this world. She had passed on and that was the end of it. Father as well. Now he was a father. He had no reason to think of his parents. He didn't need his parents. He was a parent. He didn't need anyone but himself. Himself and his own Daughter.

Who had, apparently, been trying to get his attention for some time now.

"Dad? Hey, dad?" asked Daughter. She had abandoned her own food now and was speaking to him. He attempted to backtrack, to figure out what she might have been asking him about, and came back with nothing. Bother. He hated feeling out of the loop like this….though judging by the fact that Shimazaki was still being disgusting he should have been glad that he had not been following whatever they had been talking about.

"Daughter? You need something?" asked Suzuki

"No. We were just wondering if you knew when Sho was coming back." Said Daughter. Suzuki…drew a blank. Son was still gone and he hadn't really given it much thought. Him returning. Fukuda would return with him when the job was done. He hadn't checked is email yet. They could have been done by now…but he didn't know. He was in no hurry whatsoever for Son to come back. There were enough annoyances in his office as it was.

"He's coming back when he comes back. The job will be over when it's over and there's nothing that we can do to make it go faster." Said Suzuki. He didn't much know what else he could say to put her mind at ease. He knew that she missed her brother. He had no idea why she missed him, he was terrible to her, but she missed him. Maybe because he was her oldest companion…though she had new ones now. Ones which were, in so many ways, older versions of her brother.

"Unless Fukuda kidnaps him." said Shimazaki. Suzuki's Jell-O ripples. He's upset that he lost control for a moment but happy that he hadn't done anything noticeable. Though he should not have done anything at all. The statement was absurd and meant only to get a reaction. In giving him a reaction he had let him win.

There was no truth to that statement.

The idea that Fukuda would spirit Son off was absurd. He didn't want children and if he was going to steal a child it would have made much more sense to steal Daughter. She was more powerful than Son and more pleasant to be around. Fukuda was more likely to get sick of Son and abandon him on the side of the road. Suzuki would not have been too upset with him if that happened. Son could get himself home. He knew how to read a map.

"Don't spread rumors like that, Shimazaki, it's not nice." Said Shibata

"Hey, I'm not spreading any rumors. I've just been saying for a while now that it's a little weird how much time he spends with the kid. Alone. Just sayin-" said Shimazaki

"Stop saying things." Said Shibata

"What? I'm just saying that-" said Shimazaki

"Saying what? I don't get it." Said Daughter. Suzuki didn't understand either but he would not say as such. Let Daughter be the one to voice her confusion. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He understood everything….or at least he had to look like he did. Truth be told he was a moron when it came to others….but the only person who knew that was Fukuda.

Who would be coming back.

The thought is as absurd as it is unwanted. Fukuda is coming back….and if not then….then he would be dealt with as traitors were meant to be dealt with. But Fukuda was not a traitor. He had been a part of Claw since it had been nothing more than a shanty in the woods. A notebook full of half baked ideas scribbled down in the middle of class. A series of hypothetical scenarios posed at one of their never ending sleepovers. He still had no idea why Fukuda had always wanted to spend so much time with him. Constantly seeking him out outside of school. Coming over early in the morning and insisting that he sleep over….or that they make the trek to his house.

Suzuki had never understood that man, not once, but he did know that Fukuda would never have stolen his Son from him.

"There's nothing to get, your Little Ladyship, nothing at all. You just eat your Jell-O. He's just shooting his mouth off. Aren't you, Shimazaki?" asked Shibata. Their auras tell the whole story. He can be an intimidating man when he wants to be, Shibata, though Suzuki has no idea what he is intimidating Shimazaki over.

"Maybe I am and maybe I'm not. We'll see. Well you'll see…ok, that last one wasn't that funny. I'll admit it. Not one of my best. I'll have some new material when the kid comes back…or if he comes back….we'll see." Said Shimazaki

"There's nothing to see. Now eat your Jell-O like normal. You're pissing off the boss." Said Shibata. Suzuki watched his aura. Oh. Yes. That was abnormal of him. He had let his aura move too much and become too bright…or too loud as Shimazaki was fond of calling it.

A trip down memory lane tended to do that to him.

He didn't referred to it as a lane. That would imply that a journey into one's memories was a linear progression. It wasn't. The journey into one's memories was more of a series of jumps from one memory to another. A bit like the children's videogames. One memory led to another and then another and then another. A cup of Jell-O led to a memory of eating enough of a gelatin dessert to make himself sick which in turn led to a memory of his mother rubbing his back and singing to him which in turn led to a memory of Masami rubbing his back and telling her that she loved him which in turn led to a memory of holding Daughter in his arms when she had been small…when he had first brought her home….

Had it really been so long?

She had been two. She had fallen asleep in front of the television. Son fallen asleep beside her. Masami had sought him out and asked him to help her carry the children to their beds. He remembered….he had felt annoyed then to be taken from his work….because he had no yet realized what a gift it had been to be able to stand in Masami's presence…but he had attempted to lift the children with his powers…but Masami had stopped him.

He had been told to carry Daughter by hand.

She had been so small and warm in his arms. He had felt….that had been the first time he had felt it with her. The kinship. The instant kinship that he had felt with Son. She had been able to fit in one of his arms. Now if he were to attempt to lift her by hand he would need both arms….and he would not try because she was too old and he'd started having the random back pains of middle age…but back then he had been able to lift her.

Lifting her by hand had been a bad idea.

He had attempted to lift her with his powers but Masami had stopped him. He had warned her that she would wake up but Masami had not listened. Daughter did wake up. Her little eyes flew opened and her lip quivered, which always signaled one of her emotional fits, and she'd said….she'd called him father. She'd looked at him and called him father.

Daddy.

She'd called him 'daddy'. She had been saying 'mommy', 'daddy', and 'Ritsu' since the day he'd brought her home. He had assumed that she was, once again, asking for her birth parents. But no. She'd looked at him when she'd said that like…like she was naming him. Like he had designated her as 'Daughter' she had designated him as 'daddy'. Then she had reached forward to wrap her little arms around him as best as she could….which hadn't been very well at all…but Masami had still seen fit to put Son down and take a photograph even though she knew that Son would wake up and when he woke up it was VERY difficult to put him back to sleep…

He wondered if that photograph still existed somewhere.

He didn't know. He didn't know why he even cared. He had been trying to get away from his memories, not make new memory pathways. The past was in the past and there was no point in revisiting it. Not when he was working towards a new and glorious future. When he got old, when he crossed over from middle to old age, then he would spend his time revisiting his memories. Right now there was no point to it at all. There was not point to anything at all.

Especially not this Jell-O

This was not a food and yet people still ate it. Sugar was disgusting. Sweeteners were disgusting. How people could stand the taste he would never know. He had eaten sweets as a child but he was not a child anymore. No, now he was just surrounded by children. That had been the story of his entire life. Surrounded by children. Even Fukuda had acted like a child back when they had been in school together. He had treated it like a game, planning the future, and that had made no sense. Fukuda knew how important it was to create a future for all espers to live in happiness and prosperity.

Well he knew now, anyway.

Suzuki wondered when he was coming back. It was a when. He could trust Fukuda not to leave. He could also trust Fukuda not to spirit Son away. Fukuda loved children but that did not mean that he wanted to be a parent. He had even given up on women long ago. Suzuki wished that he'd had Fukuda's willpower. Women were his greatest vice…and not just that woman in Korea. He had found his thoughts going back to not only his wife but other women, too.

So it was best that he kept his Daughter near.

It was extremely difficult to get lost in the memory of Masami when Daughter was near. Not the sorts of memories that Daughter brought up, the ones full of nurturing, the other ones. The ones that his mind would not conjure up while his own Daughter was near. The memory of her voice….her skin…the way she smelled when she just got up…the way her hair felt twisted between his fingers…the way her mouth felt against his…

"…green is too a flavor. Just like blue is and red it and…." Yes, it was very difficult to get lost in those sorts of thoughts when she was near. She was ten and she was his Daughter. There. She was a roadblock in the middle of memory lane….maybe that was why they called it memory lane. Either way his memories of Masami when she was near were always of the…what did the children call it? Safe for work? Yes, of the safe for work variety.

Not that he should have been thinking about her at work.

Not that he should have been thinking anything at all at work that did not have to do with work. Work was piling up and he needed to get back to work...but he just could not focus. There was a cup of Jell-O on his desk. Daughter had brought him this Jell-O for…reasons. Reasons which he did not understand. She knew that he hated desserts and she knew that he could not stand sugar in any form but she had brought him this. This had come from her…and he feels…touched? Yes. She had thought of him…even though thinking of the wellbeing of others was her job…well she did her job well. He had taught her well….well Masami had taught her well. There was so much of Masami in her. There was so much of Masami's goodness in Daughter, her perfection, that simple and perfect perfection that seemed to radiate from within her….

He poked at his Jell-O.

Maybe he would end up liking it. Masami used to make things for him, foods and drinks, in the hopes that he would like them. Her cheesecake was the only dessert that he had liked and only then when she had used a third of the sugar. She had been such a talented cook….she had been talented at anything she put her mind to. Daughter was the same way. Daughter was good at everything she put her mind to from caring for Son to writing memos….

He decided to try it.

It was vile.

"Dad?" asked Daughter. Suzuki forced himself to swallow. It was either spit or swallow and he was not going to spit. That would have been undignified. That would have been undignified and he was not going to behave in that way in front of his Daughter or his upper echelon. Even if he had been alone he would not have spat. It would have been undignified.

He forced himself to swallow.

Daughter had been correct. Green was a flavor and that had been it. It had tasted like lime and green apple and even a bit like mint….somehow. Sugar, too, which was what made it vile. He enjoyed lime and green apple and mint as well though he suspected that his mind was putting the mint flavor in for him. He suspected, also, that he may end up getting sick at some point in the future…but not now. Now he had to be the man that his Daughter needed him to be.

He could not let himself go to pieces.

"Daughter. Here. You finish this. You'll enjoy it more than I would." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to pass her the Jell-O cup. She took it in her hands and just stared at it.

"Thank you dad….I do like Jell-O….but you ate from it already." Said Daughter

"Not twice. It hasn't been contaminated." Said Suzuki

"Oh. Ok. Thank you, dad." Said Daughter. She dug her own spoon into the Jell-O cup. He couldn't stand to see her eating something to vile…but he did like to see her happy. Her aura shone a little brighter and she smiled a little bit as she ate. He liked it, seeing her happy, even though he should have been upset that she wasn't controlling her emotions….

He would talk to her later.

Right now he would simply allow her the happiness she felt. He cared for her and he wanted to see her happy. He wanted to see her happy because…..because he cared for her. He cared for her and she cared for him and…and he hadn't felt caring like this in quite some time….and he did not understand it. This caring feeling.

Just like he could not begin to understand Jell-O.


	189. The Last Stop on Memory Lane

Sho did not like this omelet.

Dad loved these when he had been a kid. Well dad loved omelets now but when he was a kid he and Fukuda used to come to this diner at least once a day until their money ran out. Fukuda said that this place hadn't changed in thirty years. Sho didn't know about that but he did know that this could not have possibly been the best omelet in Seasoning City.

If it was then he felt sincerely sorry for the people forced to eat this stuff.

"Yup. Tastes like Seasoning City." Said Fukuda. This had been one of their first missions together, him and Suzuki, finding the perfect omelets. Four large eggs, a cup of cheese, bacon bits on the inside, and a generous handful of green peppers. He hadn't had one of these in thirty years. He could have gone another thirty without having one. Another sixty. Ninety…..he wasn't going to live that long.

At least he hoped not.

He wondered what he would have had to be nostalgic about if he lived that long. Omelets in a diner untouched by time? Taking his surrogate Son there to have him take a walk down memory lane? The way Sho was sullenly picking out the green peppers like they personally offended him by existing? He didn't know. All he knew was that he needed to come here. He needed the nostalgia trip.

Because so far this had been a very depressing day.

"I feel bad for the people who have to live here in that case." Said Sho as he picked out the green peppers. He had thought that he liked them. He liked them on pizza. Well not on their own, of course, but on an everything pizza. This was not an everything pizza. This was an omelet and he liked omelets and Fukuda said that these were the best in the city. Sho had decided to go along with what he wanted.

That had been how this whole mission had been going after all.

Sho sort of wanted to go back to dad. At least when he was with dad he knew what to expect. Fukuda had been….weird. Too quiet. Also he had been taking Sho all over the place showing him things. Things like the fort he and dad played in and the house they grew up in and also the graveyard where his grandparents were buried and now this place. This place where Fukuda and dad ate all the time.

What was the point?

The past was in the past. The past was in the past and the present was in the present and…and he didn't remember how the rest of the song went but he knew that he had never wanted to know these things about dad. Not really. The more he learned about dad the more confused he was. Dad was a jerk who hated fun and liked to hit people. That was the dad who he had known for his entire life. Not the guy who liked to build forts in the woods and had parents and hung out with his friends and stuff. Well, friend, since Fukuda hadn't mentioned anyone else…and Sho had no clue who would even want to be friends with dad anyway.

He was such a jerk.

"Sho, be nice. These are actually really good. Your dad showed me this place. He used to come in here on Sundays with his family. They used to take me with sometimes. If they'd let me sleep over the night before. Your dad-" said Fukuda. He wanted to share this with Sho. He needed to share this with Sho. That there had been a time before Claw. That there had been a time before all of this madness had started. That there had been a time before Fukuda had let himself become an accomplice to…to thinks he would rather not even think about.

There had been a time when things had been normal.

Relatively. Suzuki had never been a good friend. Sure they'd spent time together but he had always been so…distant. Distant but also occasionally clingy. It had been weird. Suzuki had been weird. He had been voted the weirdest kid in school all three years of middle and high school. Those had been informal poles though. The vote had not been unanimous. Fukuda…he'd made excuses for his friend…and now he made excuses for his boss…

He didn't know why he wanted Sho to see something good inside of him.

To keep him from thinking that he had to be like his father. To show him that even his father had led a normal life once. He'd gone to school and hung out with his best friend and led the school kendo team to victory every year that he had been a club member. He'd pissed all his money away on manga and junk food. He'd learned how to cheat the arcade machines and ended up almost giving himself arthritis playing Space Invaders for six hours a day five days a week one summer. He'd gotten tongue tied around God only knew how many girls and if it wasn't for Fukuda's pep talks and makeshift social skills classes Sho never would have gotten there.

At one point they'd both been normal kids.

Maybe this was more for him, then. Maybe he was the one who wanted to take a walk down memory lane. The good parts of it. He had taken Sho to a graveyard and the house his father had grown up in but he'd also sugar coated everything. Everything had to be made so a nine year old could handle it. Everything. There were so many things that Sho could not know about…and so many things that Fukuda did not want to revisit. There were things that Sho needed to know, like the whereabouts of his grandparents, and some things that he did not need to know about.

This diner was not something that he needed to know about…but it was something that Fukuda had wanted to share.

"I'm tired of hearing about dad, ok? I'm just….I don't want to know anything else about him. I mean…I mean I do and I don't. I just…what's the point?" asked Sho. He stabbed his food. He stabbed his food even though he knew that he was being wasteful. Well then let him be wasteful. Sho didn't care anymore. It wasn't like dad was there to hit him.

Even though it felt like he was.

He was sitting in the same spot where dad had sat when he had been a kid. He was eating the same thing that dad had eaten when he had been a kid. He might have even been using the same fork and spoon that dad had been using. Why? What was the point? So dad did things when he was a kid. What did Sho need to know about this stuff for? What did he need to know about dad for? Dad didn't care at all about him…just what he could do.

What he could do for Claw.

Claw was the only thing that dad cared about. Claw and…big sis. She should have been the one that Fukuda brought here, not him. She would have liked it. She would have liked to have walked down the same streets that dad had walked down and sitting in the same spot that dad had sat in and all of that stuff. Fukuda should have brought her, not him.

He wanted to go home.

"I just wanted to share some things from our past with you. Things that your dad was never going to show you. This…this is what you're supposed to do with your son and I know that your dad is a…a very busy man." Said Fukuda. Suzuki didn't give a damn about anyone but himself and his daughter. Fukuda wasn't going to tell Sho that. No nine year old needed that in his head. He was just a kid and he needed to…to believe that there was something good inside of his father…

Because every son needed to believe that there was something good about his father even if it was a bold faced lie.

"Dad isn't busy he just doesn't care about me. He doesn't care about anyone but big sis and anything but Claw." Said Sho

"That's…he does care about you. In his own way." said Fukuda. That was not a bold faced lie. He cared about Sho in the sense that he cared about having a male heir. That was why he had cast Mukai aside. If she had been born male instead of female Sho would have been the one cast aside…but Fukuda was not going to tell him that. Nothing good would come of telling him that.

"He cares about Claw and me running it. Ok? It's just….I don't know why I have to know about him when he doesn't want to know about me. He doesn't….when he looks at me it's like he's looking at a piece of gum that he found on the bottom of his shoe. Like I'm shoe gum. Sho gum." Said Sho

"Your dad cares about you. If he didn't care about you then…then he would have left you back at the old house. He would have hired someone to take care of you and he would have just left you." Said Fukuda. He made sure to keep his voice low. He did not want to cause a scene. Sho was getting close to it, though, the way he was raising his voice and scratching up his plate.

Fukuda slid his plate away.

Now he was tearing up a napkin. Fukuda didn't take that away from him. He was getting dirty looks. Someone muttered something rude about him not being able to control his son or something. The sort of thing that was not anybody's business. Even though Sho wasn't his Son it was still no one's business how Fukuda chose to raise him.

Not that he was raising him.

Just…keeping him warm. That was better. Just keeping him warm. Just keeping him alive so that Suzuki didn't finally see fit to kill him. He had come close so many times over the years but for some reason he just never went through with it. Probably because Fukuda was the only healer and the only one willing to put up with Suzuki's bullshit regularly. The weird places his mind went to. The obsessive feelings he would get towards a particular topic or person. The general weirdness that came with the territory of being Suzuki's best friend.

All of it.

"I wish that he had. I mean….I'm trying not to be a jerk. I'm tying really hard not to be a jerk but I just…I feel bad. I feel bad and I want to go back home…home to dad and big sis….and home to the castle, too. Home to mom." Said Sho

"Sho…you know that I can't take you back to your mom. I can't take you back to her or…or the Castle…but I can take you back to your dad and older sister. If that's what you want." Said Fukuda

"….I don't know what I want. I want my mom back but you can't do that. I want my family to go back to the way that it was before but you can't do that either. I want…I want to get it. To get why you keep on showing me this stuff. Like why you brought me to the graveyard." Said Sho

"I brought you there to meet your grandparents." Said Fukuda

"They're dead though. I didn't meet them. I talked to their ashes. That's not the same. They weren't even spirits. Dad should have been the one to visit them since he knew them when they were alive. Just like how when I have a kid then I'm going to have to take him to visit dad's ashes and stuff…but not mom's because…she's gone." Said Sho. He could feel his eyes getting all prickly. He knew that he should not have been sad. He didn't even know what he was sad about.

He was just sad.

He closed his eyes. He closed his eyes so that he would not cry. Maybe he was just tired. He was tired of going around in the hot sun to places that meant nothing to him and he was tired of carrying that heavy notebook around, too. He was tired of being a Suzuki. That was it. He was just…tired.

Tired of being dad's son.

"Your mother loves you, Sho, she does. She loves you and…and your dad loves you too. He just has no idea how to express it or even recognize it. Sho….I've been dragging you all over the city to show you that…that your dad used to be a normal guy. Both of us did. I'm showing you places that are important to both of us…places that your dad would have shown you if he could. Your dad is…he's a busy man and also…he has trouble just being…human. I suppose." Said Fukuda. He had tried his best to sugarcoat it but he was rapidly running out of sugar. He was using economy brand sweetener at this point.

"Dad's…not human? I mean that would make sense I guess. He doesn't eat dessert and sleeps in his day clothes and the only shows he watches are documentaries." Said Sho. He would totally have believed that dad was a robot or an alien or a zombie or something. He was just too weird. That would make so many things make sense…like, all the things.

"No, he's human, he's just…bad at it. He says that he's been this way for his entire life." Said Fukuda

"But you just said that he used to be a normal guy. Which is it?" asked Sho

"He led a normal life but he was never a normal person. He's a lot like…like what your sister would be if she didn't have you for a little brother and…and your mother for a mom. Your dad was born with his powers and he's always seen the world differently. He sees the world in terms of what he can get from it and he sees relationships in terms of what he can get from people. Even when it's not that sort of relationship and he knows it. Your father…he never had to learn a lot of the things that you and I've learned. He never had to learn how to talk to people or to care about how they felt or who they were. Your dad just sort of….he sees people but he doesn't SEE THEM. If that makes sense. He still has the same feelings as everyone else, even towards you, he just can't show it." Said Fukuda. There. That was the truth that a nine year old could swallow. To tell the real truth Suzuki was an asshole and had spent his entire life so assured of his own power that he actively avoided anything that made him feel weak. Like interpersonal relationships.

Even love.

Masami had told him, once, that Suzuki had told her that without the chance of conceiving it was pointless for them to have sex. He had just said something so cruel to her, the woman who he had told Fukuda privately that he was sure he would die without if she didn't agree to marry him, and he hadn't even realized what he had done wrong. He had seen Masami only in terms of what he could get from her. Emotional validation and offspring. Masami had told him this in the middle of the night when…he did not need to think about this and he certainly did not need to be telling Sho about this.

Yet.

Fukuda wasn't sure if he should keep the truth from Sho for his entire life. The truth of himself and Masami. Right now there was no reason that a little boy needed to know a grown man…that was a whole other story. Sho had no model for what a healthy and loving relationship looked like. His mother had left his father, his father had gotten one of his subordinates pregnant, and his older sister was drinking and smoking with grown men three times her age. Sho needed to know what a good relationship was…

Even if it was between his mother and Fukuda.

"Why not? Why can't he show it? Who's stopping him?" asked Sho. Dad was always talking about how you weren't ever supposed to show your feelings and stuff. He was always talking about how you were supposed to control your powers and your feelings and…and he was always punishing Sho for not doing so. But why? Why did dad hate his feelings so much? Who was telling him that he wasn't allowed to have them?

Had his dad been like him?

Had his dad been like him? Or his mom? Was Sho supposed to be like this to his kids? Well he wouldn't be. He was a pretend big brother to baby Mukai and he had never once told her that her feelings were wrong and that she shouldn't have them. Even when she had woken up in the middle of the night crying for no reason. When she was sad then she was sad and when she was happy then she was happy and he would never tell her how to feel.

That made more sense than slapping someone across the face for being afraid of being slapped across the face.

"Sho…he's just….afraid. Your father is a very scared man. I know that he doesn't look it but he's very afraid. He's afraid of himself and what he can do. That's why he's so hard on you and also…also why he won't get close to you. But that's ok because I will always be here for you. Ok?" asked Fukuda. He was lying through his teeth. Suzuki…he may have been afraid of what he could do but that was not why he shunned any and all bonds with people. It would have been easy to blame it on the accident. To blame his inability to understand human emotions on him being cut off from his own for so long and to blame the walls he put up around himself and his terror at the invisible bonds that others formed the result of him losing his parents in such a tragic way. But the truth of it, as far as Fukuda could tell, was that Suzuki was just an asshole.

He was an asshole.

He had always been distant from his parents even when they had been nothing but good to him. He had always been distant from those around him even before he had met Fukuda. He had only agreed to being friends with Fukuda because they were both espers. Even then he had always been so distant and bossy. Their relationship as boys was the same as their relationship as men with the only difference being how aware Fukuda was of what Suzuki actually was.

An asshole.

And he hated him. The last straw had been Sho's awakening. He had disliked the man since the forming of the first division of Claw and resented him since he had been cruel to Masami but now he hated him. He hated Suzuki and the only reason that he hadn't left yet, risked defecting, was that if he left then Sho would have no one. He had made a promise to Masami and he would fulfill it even if he never saw her again.

The love of his life.

"Ok….I guess. But can you be there for me at home. I really just….I really just want to go home now." Said Sho. He had come on this mission to see baby sis and he had seen baby sis and now he could go back home already. He didn't much want to be around dad but he also didn't much want to go to any more places. He just wanted to lay down and just…be….for a little bit. Just be in his bed…a bed…and just draw or something and not have to think about dad or mom or the past or anything.

He wanted to see big sis, too.

He missed her so much. He missed her and…and he needed to say sorry. He needed to tell her sorry and also…also for the millionth time that he was not going to be a jerk to her anymore. He didn't want him and big sis to end up like…like dad and Fukuda. He was turning into dad, being mean to someone who cared about him and pushing them away, and she was turning into Fukuda. She was still being his friend even after he caused her all of that pain.

He didn't want that. He just wanted to go home to his sis…and some decent food too.


	190. Things Best Done Around Sunset

Gardening was best done around sunset.

Minegishi did enjoy gardening from time to time. It was a great way to experiment with their powers as well as a great way to get seeds. The seeds were good for carrying in their pockets. They helped them feel better on long flights, for one thing, and also they were like tiny little weapons they could carry in their pockets. Yes, gardening served it's purpose.

Also it was a good way to relieve stress.

"So, care to explain to me what this is?" asked Minegishi as they held a wilted stem in their hand. Nope. They had not given permission for any of their plants to wilt. These plants were Minegishi's plants that they had taken the time out of their life to cultivate and grow and nurture. And now this plant just went and betrayed them.

Well then.

"So you think that you can just die whenever you want to? You think that you have the right to choose when your life will end? Well you don't." said Minegishi as they forced their power into the offending plant. They were not going to lose this one. This one was going to turn into insanity flower…Minegishi had not been the one to name them. These flowers were not easy to get right. They could easily become too weak and produce nothing at all…or they could make you think that shadow people were after you if they were too strong….or they could just lock you up in your own head so you thought that you were seven again and….

And they did not know why they did these things something.

"Are your plants misbehaving or are you just losing your mind?" asked Shimazaki as he appeared behind them. Minegishi closed their eyes and let him pull them back against his chest. They knew exactly why they did these things.

"A little from column 'A' and a little from column 'B'." said Minegishi. They exhaled slowly. They made sure that he heard it, that he felt it, just to torment him. He had a thing about breathing. Specifically their breathing. Well probably other people's breathing, too, but they never asked about this. He never asked about them and they never asked about him.

They weren't like that. Neither one belonged to the other.

"Well if they're going to misbehave why not make an example out of one of them? To keep the rest in line." Said Shimazaki Minegishi knew what he meant. God, this man was a fiend sometimes. He had a vial of acid and yet he was still bothering them about this. The acid would work better and would have had less of a chance of breaking his mind….what was left of it.

"They're not done yet. Every day since I planted the damn things you've asked me and every day I've told you that they aren't done yet. These things take time. Go drop acid if you want to hallucinate so badly." Said Minegishi. They fell back a little as he teleported away…to right next to them. He rested his head against their shoulder.

"Toshi, you know that it's better if you make it. It's full of love that way." said Shimazaki. Minegishi shrugged him off. He was a master at saying the wrong thing. The 'L' word. Love. Not the mind rotting show. Love was something that he knew they despised. That feeling…there was no point to it beyond bringing two people together so that could raise a baby and since Minegishi had no intention of ever having babies then there was no point to it. So there.

"Shut up. Why are you even out here?" asked Minegishi. They glared at him. He had killed the mood, possibly for the whole night. Unless the two of them got messed up together again…but Minegishi had been going way too hard lately. Their tolerance was going up and they didn't want that. Also Mob had seen them at their worst…

Well not their very worst but…but not in the way that she should have ever seen them…and not just because she had walked in on them in a compromising position either.

"Do you want me to shut up or do you want me to answer your question. You can't have it both ways, Toshi." Said Shimazaki

"Shut up and tell me why you're out here." Said Minegishi. They were not going to fight him about the whole 'Toshi' thing anymore. He wasn't going to stop and they had to work with him so they had might as well not make it into a big thing. Not when there were much bigger fights to be hard between them.

He had better not have been teasing Mob again.

"What? I'm not allowed outside?" asked Shimazaki. He took his hand rested it on theirs. He began to trace the path of their fingers from knuckle to nail. Next to them a flower bloomed…that was not supposed to. Goddamned Ryou making them lose control…

"For the good of humanity, no." said Minegishi. They took their hand away and rested it on their lap. The wind picked up and they caught a nose full of his cologne. Too much, as usual, though in his defense he had said on numerous occasions that the world stank. Well Minegishi would have rather dealt with the smell of a summer breeze than the smell of whatever cologne he was wearing.

They knew exactly what type of cologne he was wearing.

Because they were the ones who took him shopping. They had only gone because it was easier for him to shop with another person and also they had needed a few things. That was all. They had only gone to the perfume department because he said that he felt like excessively sampling things even though it was murder on what senses he had. He had only picked out the one he drowned himself in because he liked it. Not because Minegishi had said that it was the least obnoxious.

"You just want to keep me locked away all for yourself." Said Shimazaki. He was invading their personal space again. He had found a piece of their hair, they were cutting it down short again soon, and he was playing with it. He had it between his fingers and he was telling it bob and weave while he twirled his middle and index finger. They batted his hand away like he was a pesky mosquito.

They were getting a haircut soon.

They didn't like it when it got this long. Bad to a pixie cut, maybe, or at least down to just below their ears. It was getting longer now, long enough that they could pull it back, and that meant a lot of extra work when it came to grooming. They hated any and all extra work. Plus long hair was just too tempting for him. He had this compulsion to touch everything like he was a child or something.

"Like you'd have a problem with that." Said Minegishi. His hand was back in their hair now. They were too hot to stop him. They could feel their body temperature rising. That was just because what little sunlight that was left was hitting them right across the face. They turned to the side. They were facing him now but it didn't matter. He knew that he'd had their attention since the beginning.

And they knew what he wanted to do with it.

They didn't want to keep him locked away for themselves. He could go out and fuck half of Tokyo for all they cared. They just wanted…part of him. Enough of him for a night, anyway, but anything more would have been too much of a commitment. Minegishi didn't try to make these commitments anymore. They were twenty seven, now, they were old enough to know what they were and were not capable of. The relationship thing went right in the 'not capable of' category.

They were not going down that road with anyone ever again.

"Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn't. Let's try it for a few days and see how it goes." Said Shimazaki. He was closer, now, they could feel his breath mixing with theirs. He smelled like…lime Jell-O. Well then this was certainly going to be pleasant. He had better brush his teeth if he was planning on doing what he had better have been planning on doing. They were not getting another yeast infection just because he had to eat way too much sugar and then not brush his teeth afterwards.

Also they did not want to taste lime Jell-O.

But they did. Of course they did. They were an idiot of the highest order when it came to him. They let him kiss them. They let him burying his hand in their hair, pull them close, and kiss them. There was a desperation to it, like he was trying to consume them, and they let themselves be consumed. It must have been a very boring day if he was being this desperate.

"Like I could ever hold you." Said Minegishi after they broke apart for air. Thank God that this area was nothing but upper level Claw personnel. Anyone else would have had words with the two twentysomething making out in the back garden like a couple of horny teenagers. They didn't need him forever, just for tonight. They were finally ready. Most of the residual embarrassment and violation of having been walked in on had passed. Yeah. They could do this.

Not for forever, no, they wouldn't keep him forever. Only for tonight.

"You could if I let you." Said Shimazaki. He went for their jugular now. They could feel his teeth pressed against their throat and they offered themselves up to him like in a certain vampire novel they would not admit to having read and enjoyed. They always offered themselves up to him. He was just so…much. He was so strong and so much bigger than them and…and they fit together so nicely like this. Them arching back and him going to town…really going to town….thank God there was a healer. Yes, even if he left marks like the horny teenager he was on the inside this still would have been so perfect…

But then he had to go and ruin it.

Let them. A challenge. An offering. Let them. Let them hold him. Let them hold on to him and never let him go. Let them become trapped there with him. Let them become…what? What exactly did he want form them? And what exactly was he not getting? They did a lot for his stupid ass, a lot more than they did for most everyone else, and what else could he want? They put up with him, they slept with him, they told him when his clothes didn't match….hell! They even read him to sleep some nights? What else did he want? And why was he trying to ruin a good thing that they had going?

"Like you'll ever let me." Said Minegishi. They tilted away from him. They were done offering themselves up. If he wanted them then he could come and take them. He could come and take them and shut up about…whatever it was that he had been carrying on about before.

"You never know until you try." Said Shimazaki. He got closer to them. Minegishi closed their eyes, expecting his lips to meet theirs or some other exposed skin, but instead they felt the soft glide of the pads of his fingers against their forehead. They felt their bangs getting brushed away from their forehead before he went down across the spaces where their eyebrows should have been, down over the bridge of their nose, and then over their closed eyes. He had always been fascinated by their eyes. Wanting what you didn't have and all of that.

It felt weird.

They were used to his curious fingers. He got curious and lost what little inhibitions he had when the two of them came together and decided to alter their brain chemistry. These were not curious fingers, though, not. He wasn't poking their closed eyes like he was trying to guess what the mystery prize was, no, now he was going slow…like he was trying to read them. Like they were one of the books in his eclectic collection and he was trying to puzzle them out.

Minegishi felt one of their eyelashes land on their cheek.

"What are you doing, Ryou?" asked Minegishi. He must have felt, or even 'seen', that eyelash fall because he reached down and brushed it away…and then let his fingers linger there. Minegishi opened their eyes and saw him looking back at them. Well at least he would have been. His eyes were opened now. That didn't scare them. It had never scared them. It hadn't even startled them, not the first time. It had been nice of him to warn them. 'By the way, I open my eyes when I finish sometimes.' And that had been that.

This wasn't scary or startling.

There was a sort of…they didn't want to be clichéd and say that there was a beauty to the darkness. To the empty spaces where the windows to his soul should have been. The eyes may have been the windows to the soul but the aura was the soul. Since he wore his aura on the outside then he didn't exactly need windows now did he?

"Looking at you, Toshi, just looking at you." Said Shimazaki. He followed the path of their cheekbone across their face and back to the bridge of their nose. He didn't linger there, no, he followed the slope of their nose down to the bow of their lips. They could have done something juvenile like bitten him or they could have done something seductive like taken those probing, curious, fingers of his into their mouth and sucked, a promise of things to come, but they didn't.

Instead they let him linger there.

They offered themselves up to him just as they always had. Since that first night this had been it between them. They had offered themselves up and he had taken them. He had taken them and he had given in return. If they had been alchemists from a certain manga that Minegishi was not about to admit to reading it would have been an equivalent exchange.

It would always be an equivalent exchange.

"And? You've done this before, you know what I look like. What's the point of this, exactly?" asked Minegishi. Their lips parted when they spoke but he didn't take when he was offered. Instead he let his hand drop lower until he was tracing the path of their jaw. The stayed still, very still, aside from allowing their toes to curl in their shoes. That was all that they could allow themselves. Their aura told the whole story anyway. Their aura and their garden which was becoming rapidly more and more overgrown by the second.

They'd deal with it later.

"Sometimes I forget how pretty you are, Toshiki." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi couldn't help it. They laughed. Just…what else could they do?

"Did you get that out of a book or something?" laughed Minegishi. Shimazaki pulled his hand away and pouted. He actually pouted. That did nothing to stop the uncharacteristic amount of laughter that Minegishi could not stop displaying.

God, he was so ridiculous sometimes.

"….a movie…but that doesn't mean that it's not true. You really are pretty." Said Shimazaki

"Uh-huh. And how many people actually let you touch them like that?" asked Minegishi

"Honestly a lot of people offer to let me touch their faces….and it's not even sexual a lot of the time." Said Shimazaki

"But I take it this was?" asked Minegishi

"Yeah. I came out here to see if you wanted to fuck when you were done gardening. It's fine if you don't want to, no pressure, I can always just go and vape with Her Ladyship if you're not up to it." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi compulsively looked behind themselves…and into the yard next door. Her aura was too damn bright. She was out there watching something on her tablet and vaping…..Minegishi was going to have to put a bell on that kid or something.

"So your big plans for tonight were to either sleep with me or vape with a child….and you wonder why people think that you're a creep." Said Minegishi

"It's not creepy to hang out all night in my room getting stoned with a ten year girl. It's only creepy if you make it seem creepy and you're making it seem creepy, Toshi, and that says a lot more about you than it does about me." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi shook their head. This moron...wait…

"You said vape….and I know that you don't vape. You only vape to blow clouds of smoke in people's faces and then when you get enough people pissed off at you then you put up you're innocent blind guy routine. You're going to smoke up a ten year old….why? Did she have a bad day?" asked Minegishi. They didn't have to be there for Mob, they had no obligation towards her, but they should have been there for Mob. She was just a kid and there were no boundaries in her family, she might have even still been taking baths with her brother even, so she could be forgiven.

Minegishi really should have gone next door and forgiven her so this awkwardness could come to an end already.

"Technically this a vape pen…there's just a hash oil cartridge on the end of it." Said Shimazaki as he pulled one of those godawful pens from his pocket. Minegishi wanted to murder and then process into fertilizer whoever kept on giving him those. He was stinking up the house with that shit and Minegishi could not take it any more.

Also he was going to end up running Mob's life…or at least her tolerance….with that.

"I'm not stupid. That's not a vape pen because it wouldn't be powerful enough for that thickness of oil and yes, I do know about that stuff, and I know to stay away from it. That's going to ruin your tolerance and you have no idea what else is even in there…and you're not getting Mob stoned for no reason! She's ten." Said Minegishi

"Yeah, she's ten. She's ten and we have non sexual fun together. I cannot stress that enough, the fun we have is non sexual and I am not attracted at all to anyone under the age of consent in whatever country we're in." said Shimazaki

"You are so lucky nobody can hear you right now….and you are not getting her stoned. Not unless she's had a crappy day or something." Said Minegishi

"Well she misses her brother a lot so..." said Shimazaki

"That's not good enough." Said Minegishi

"Who made you emperor of getting stoned? Come on, she's a fun kid….well at least she was. I think that she might still feel awkward because she walked in on me getting you off the other-" said Shimazaki

"Do you HAVE to call it that? Really, Ryou?" asked Minegishi

"What? That's what I was doing. We both know that it's better if you-" said Shimazaki

"Just….quit while you're ahead, ok? You're killing what little mood that there was with all of this…and go back inside and take your shitty pen with you. I have to talk to Mob about some stuff." Said Minegishi with a sigh.

"So does that mean that we're going to-" asked Shimazaki. His aura was lit up like the fireworks compilation videos Mob's little brother kept on showing them. Who needed eyes when he had an aura that told Minegishi all that they needed to know?

"Maybe. That depends on how thoroughly the mood has been killed. Maybe next time don't tell me that option 'b' is getting a ten year old high." Said Minegishi

"You know I hate keeping secrets from you." Said Shimazaki

"Well maybe you should get over that, ok? Now go inside. I've got to talk to Mob." Said Minegishi. Shimazaki seemed to be weighing it in his mind. Keep on defending himself or go inside and wait for possible sex. Possible sex won out.

It must have been a boring day.

If he had come begging to them it must have been a boring day…for him, anyway. Mob could have had any kind of day at all. That brother of hers was still gone, praise God, but that changed the already fucked up dynamic of her family. Who knew what Suzuki was like without his son around to take his bottomless well of anger out on? Well Mob, obviously.

She seemed fine.

No bruises but her father rarely harmed her in that way. She was sitting on the grass with her tablet in her lap and her vape pen in the other hand. Real vape, the godawful bubblegum stuff, which was a relief…and they'd have to talk about why she shouldn't hang out in Shimazaki's room getting stoned all night. How had Minegishi not noticed? Well they had been going way too hard lately…

Time to take a short break.

But first, Mob. Minegishi made their way over the fence and across the yard. Mob didn't notice. Something had gotten her attention to thoroughly that it was a little scary. They had never seen her so focused on anything before. Her aura was still and she hadn't blinked in a while and she was biting her lower lip like it had personally offended her.

Minegishi sat down.

"Oh!" said Mob as Minegishi sat down beside her. She quickly closed her tablet…which was odd…but Minegishi was not a nosy person. They had enough of their own business to deal with in life without getting all involved in someone else's.

"Hey." Said Minegishi. This was…slightly awkward. Just slightly. Not awkward enough that they weren't going to make up with Mob, of course. Nothing could ever be that awkward.

"H-Hi Minegishi….I wasn't watching you and Shimazaki kissing! I mean I knew that you guys were kissing and I know that I should have gone back inside but dad's in there and if he finds me he's going to make me watch documentaries about Japan and we've been bingeing this series for a few days now and it's sort of boring and also I had to do….research…for work and….um….how are you?" asked Mob. She was nervous. She always held on to her hair when she was nervous. Minegishi didn't blame her one iota no they did not.

"I'm fine and that's on me if you were. We should not have been doing that outside where God and the neighborhood could see." Said Minegishi

"I still shouldn't have been nosy. I've been working on that! I've been knocking on every door I see even if I know that there are no people at all on the other side of the door. So that way if I ever come to visit you then I won't ever…be nosy again. I really am sorry about that." Said Mob

"I accept your apology and I'm sorry too. For maybe being too hard on you and also…I'm sorry about how messed up I got. You shouldn't have seen me like that." Said Minegishi

"Like what?" asked Mob. Minegishi wondered if she was just playing or….Mob didn't play. Not like this. She played dolls and she played videogames and she also played a very good game of Chinese checkers but she did not play like this. She honestly saw nothing wrong with Minegishi getting so stoned that they couldn't even remember what it was that they had said to her exactly.

Goddamned Ryou.

There was a difference between giving Mob something to help her through her truly terrible life and getting Mob messed up just for the sake of getting Mob messed up. Shimazaki never thought anything through. He couldn't think anything through. If not for his powers he would have died long ago due to his own stupidity.

Suzuki had just kicked his ass for TALKING to Mob. How, exactly, did Shimazaki think that their boss was going to react to his ten year old daughter hanging out all night in a grown man's room getting stoned?

"I was way too stoned and….and I don't know what I said to you…well I have a vague idea but I'm sorry that you had to see me like that and I'm sorry that you saw…whatever you saw. I'm not angry at you…anymore…and I hope that you're not angry with me." Said Minegishi. There. They could be nice. They had interpersonal skills. They could talk about things that they would rather not have talked about but had to for the sake of their friendship with a ten year old girl.

So this was their life.

Eh, could have been worse. The breeze was nice, their shirt was clean, the grass was soft, and they had good company. Sure that company felt sitting next to a lightbulb and smelled like a candy store had burnt down but they didn't care. This whole thing was pretty decent all things considered.

"I was never mad at you. I wanted to hang out with you for so long but I didn't because it felt awkward…and it still does a little….but not as bad as before. I just can't look right at you right now. I'm sorry." said Mob

"No, don't be. You saw a lot of things that you should not have seen. Take all the time you need. Or just walk around with your eyes closed for the rest of your life. It's your choice." Said Minegishi

"Um…I don't think that I can do that because I'd have to learn brail and it's complicated. Also I like to watch TV. I'll just try to make it less awkward…and it's not as awkward as before…and I'm trying…" said Mob

"Mob, seriously. Take all the time you need. You saw me naked. That's never not an awkward thing." Said Minegishi. They were telling the truth there. There was never anything not awkward about being walked in on. Also there was some awkwardness on their side, too. They were somewhat protective over who saw them that vulnerable. Not that Mob was a threat…well she was very unstable….but not malicious. Still, though, they had never planned on Mob ever seeing them in that state.

"I just saw your back. It was more awkward because of um….stuff. But it's less award but still kind of awkward…but we're still friends so it's ok." Said Mob

"Good. Glad we could have this talk. Well I'll just leave you to whatever it is that you're doing." Said Minegishi as they got up. There. They could still be reasonably assured that their ten year old best friend still wanted to hang out…and at some point Mob had gone from unwanted charge to tagalong kid to friend to best friend. Huh. Well what do you know?

"Um…ok….but do you….you know people, right?" asked Mob. She was nervous about something. She was holding her hair down. Well of course she was nervous there was a lot of awkwardness there still. Well they'd probably be even at some point in Mob's teen years when she figured out what guys were for and also that none of the doors in the houses they stayed in had any locks.

"I know a few people. Why?" asked Minegishi

"Just…today I met someone….and I want to be his friend so I've been going through the Claw database but it doesn't say a lot about him. Just when he joined and what he can do and when his birthday is and if he has any allergies. He joined four years ago and he can control technology…which is a cool power…and his birthday was last month…I missed putting him on the birthday list…and I sort of want to get to know him better and…stuff." Said Mob. Minegishi rolled their eyes. This again?

What was it with Mob and guys?

Maybe she was just looking for love since she grew up with Suzuki as a father and his shrieking demon child as a brother. Maybe she had just been watching too many movies and they'd given her an unrealistic portrayal of love and romance. Maybe she thought that she could fill the voids in her life with a boyfriend. Or maybe she was just starting puberty and in a couple years they would have an overly emotional and horny monster on their hands.

Either way she was way too into…all of this…for a ten year old.

"What's his name?" sighed Minegishi. Mob needed to talk to some people her own age. She was going to get someone thrown into traitor's hole or off traitor's ledge or planted in traitor's garden or any of the other creative things that Suzuki did to people he considered to be traitors. Poor Mob. She was going to die a virgin since obviously Daddy Dearest was going to make sure that he was the only man in his precious little girl's life. Poor Mob.

And poor subject of her prepubescent affections.

"Hatori Nozomu." Said Mob. Yup, she had a bad. The smiling and the blushing were a dead giveaway. Poor guy. Minegishi knew OF him. One of the rare teenage espers Claw recruited. That had been the talk of Claw for a while a few years ago. It was always something when you found an esper that young of skill. Minegishi had no clue how young, though. Not young enough for Mob, obviously.

"I don't know him but I know of him…and I know that he's closer to my age than yours." Said Minegishi. Mob was way too young for all of this…and they were sort of being a hypocrite. They'd had crushes when they'd been her age…and on people older than them…and they'd done something about it…but Mob was smarter than that. Mob was smarter than that and Minegishi was smart enough to protect her from that.

From her own stupidity/proto horniness.

"Um…he's nineteen and I'm ten so he's not that much older than me….or younger than you I guess since you're twenty seven….about the same. I don't think that he's too old to be my friend." Said Mob

"Uh-huh. Sure. Your friend." Said Minegishi. They could see right through her.

"Yes. I really, really want him to be my friend." Said Mob. At some point Minegishi was going to have to teach Mob about guys and why you should be careful, especially when you were young…but not tonight. They needed to mentally prepare for that talk…which would probably end up being THE talk since Suzuki refused to do any real parenting.

"Do you know anything about him at all besides his name and age and power set?" asked Minegishi

"He wears nice sweaters." Said Mob. Minegishi stifled a laugh. Mob would take it the wrong way if they started laughing at the sheer adorableness of what she just said. Well there were worse ways to pick men. Sweaters, that was what did it for Mob. God, Shimazaki was going to get such a kick out of this…or maybe not because he was pathologically incapable of keeping his mouth shut. Yeah. Best not to let it get back to Suzuki that his little girl was starting to have not so little feelings about the opposite sex.

They didn't know Hatori Nozomu but they did know that unless he was shamelessly flirting with the boss' daughter he did not deserve to get his ass kicked.

"That's as good of a reason as any I guess. Who the hell am I to judge? Just…you have fun with this and all but remember…you're ten." Said Minegishi

"….I know what age I am. How could I forget my own age?" said Mob. Now Minegishi laughed. Just a little bit. When had Mob ever acted her age? They'd known Mob since she had been eight years old and never once had she acted her age. She was somewhere between an adult and a child. Someone who drank and smoked, Minegishi's fault, and commanded the entirety of Claw but also someone who wore costumes everywhere and thought that strawberry milk was a viable substitute for water.

Mob…

Watching Mob grow up was a little but like gardening. You did your best and hoped that you didn't mess up and end up killing her. Not that Minegishi would mess up that badly. If anything they were keeping Mob from messing her life up in some great and terrible way like Minegishi had. Well they were also messing Mob's life up but they were not a parent. They were not a parent and they were doing the best. Plus their own messed up childhood, too, had probably ruined whatever nurturing skills that they'd ever had.

So maybe not entirely like gardening them.

Something else? They didn't know. All they knew was that they had made up with their youngest and best friend…at some point they had become best friends with a ten year old…and now they were going to go inside, lock their new deadbolt, and just relax…or whatever. They had made up with Mob, gotten rid of some of the awkwardness, and now had a whole new potential problem dropped on their head…they had earned this. Finally.

A lot of things were best done at sunset.


	191. Early Morning Reunions

Sho was home now.

Not home. No, the Castle was home. He was just back at the house where dad and big sis and him had been staying. This was sort of like their home. It was a house with walls and a roof and all of their stuff was in it. Big sis and dad were still inside. He had been worried, a little, that they were planning on moving without him.

But big sis would never have done that to him.

Also they couldn't move. Fukuda had said that big sis had made a big mess when she took over Claw because she let people transfer wherever they felt like and pretty much everyone had decided to transfer to Tokyo. Sho didn't see what was so awesome about Tokyo. Shanghai was cooler. New York too, there was that big Christmas tree. Also pretty much all of Australia was cooler because there were kangaroos and kangaroos were awesome. He sort of wanted to move…

But also not really.

He wanted to just stay in place where things made sense. A place where dad was old and a mean jerk and Fukuda was also old but never a jerk and big sis was big sis and Sho wasn't expected to know about anything from the past or want to know or anything like that. Here he was Sho and dad was dad and big sis was big sis. He missed little sis, he couldn't wait to see her again, but he didn't want to be making any trips to Seasoning City any time soon. He didn't want to hear any more about the olden days when dad and Fukuda were kids and stuff like that.

He really didn't care.

He didn't care if his dad had been the nicest guy who ever lived. Dad was still dad. He was a jerk in the now times and he was a jerk in the olden days, too. Fukuda said that dad was a jerk because he was scared of himself and what he could do. Sho didn't know if he believed that. Why did that need a reason? Somehow it felt like giving him a reason was making excuses for him….unless it was something that he couldn't help. Like when he had been watching baby sis and then she threw up on Minegishi and he tried telling them that baby sis was just a baby and she didn't know what she was doing and then Minegishi said that baby sis had specifically turned her head to throw up on them…

Sure baby sis should not have been throwing up on people, that was never not gross, but she couldn't help it.

Baby sis was a baby though and dad was an adult. He was so old that they didn't even have phones when he was a kid. The fun kind that you could watch videos on, not the boring kind that only called people. Dad was old and there was nothing stopping him from acting like something other than a jerk except for himself…..unless maybe that was just how Suzuki's were. Something else that Sho worried about. Fukuda had said that his grandparents had been very nice people but Sho knew that when a person died you were only supposed to say good things about them.

So he did not know.

He didn't know if he was a jerk because he was a Suzuki or if there was just something wrong with him but he did know that he did not want to be a jerk anymore. He knew that when dad died and he had to take his own son or daughter or whatever to visit dad's ashes he wouldn't have any good things to say. His whole family, him and his kids and whatever girl ended up making him get married to her, would just be standing there in front of the ashes with nothing to say. His family wouldn't even know dad. Sho didn't want to leave his kids alone with dad ever. They wouldn't deserve to be treated the way dad treated them. The girl he ended up having to marry, too, because even if she made him marry her and kiss her and all of that stuff she still didn't deserve to be treated the way that dad was probably going to treat her.

When dad got old he was going to an old folk's home.

When dad became an old man Sho was going to send him to live in one of those places where they put old people to take care of them and wait for them to die and stuff. Either that or big sis could take care of him. Sho didn't want to have to take of dad when he died. He didn't even think that he could. Whenever he pictured dad as an old man and him as a regular man he always imagined doing the meanest things to him like…like treating him the way that he had been treating Sho all of these years. Because dad would still have his powers, unless those got worse when you got old too, but he would be all fragile and stuff. Sho didn't know any old people, dad and Fukuda were the oldest people that he knew, but he did know that they were super fragile and broke their bones easily. Also they took a lot of pills and if dad was mean Sho could hide them…

He did not want to grow up to be a jerk.

He was already a jerk and he was only nine and a half. If he kept on acting like a jerk then he would turn into dad by the time that he was ten or eleven. He didn't want that. He didn't know how to stop that but he didn't want that. He just…had to stop. But it was hard because sometimes he just got so angry and things just…happened. He just lost control when he got angry enough and he just…hit things and broke things and said the meanest things…especially to big sis.

He had to say sorry.

Saying sorry would be the first step that he could make towards being less of a jerk. He just had to walk through the door and say sorry. Even though it was either very late or very early. He wasn't sure. What he was sure about, however, was that he needed to go inside. The bugs were starting to come out and the sky was turning pink and he was very tired. He and Fukuda ended up taking the late train, the cars had to stay near the Seventh Division to take those guys around and stuff, so they'd had to take a train in and trains were impossible to sleep in.

He was tired.

He knew that he had to open the door and he knew that he was being dumb by not opening the door so he was just going to open the door already. He opened it slowly so that he didn't wake anyone up. If he woke big sis up then he would have been acting like a jerk and if he woke dad up then he would have been in big trouble. He opened the door quietly and took off his shoes just as quietly. He let them his the ground as quietly as possible but winced when they hit big sis's. Now both of their shoes were lighting up and he was going to wake up the whole house and-

And he was being dumb.

Nobody could see the tiny shoe lights from where they were sleeping. Everyone was sleeping in their rooms, not the genkan or the living room or the kitchen or anyplace like that, so of course the itty bitty shoe lights wouldn't wake anyone up. Sho was just being dumb, that was all, and that was normal. He was just a dub jerk. The biggest and dumbest jerk in the whole world.

He felt bad.

He wanted…he wanted to be home. Not here but his real home. He closed his eyes. He knew what home smelled like. Even after three years he still remembered what home smelled like. This was not home. Home smelled like cinnamon and floor cleaner and mom's cooking and also that weird smell that was just…their family. This house didn't even smell like their family. It smelled like…paint, sort of, but also…ketchup? There was a ketchup smell to the house. That was normal. Dad liked ketchup. So maybe the house smelled like dad…or whatever. He didn't know.

He did know that this was not his home.

Dad's shoes were there. His shoes were the same. He had been wearing the same shoes for all of Shio's life. Big sis' shoes were there, too. They were blue and lit up. Also they were bigger. His shoes were there too, next to hers, and his feet were actually a little bigger than hers now. Both of them had bigger shoes now. Dad made them throw away the shoes that mom had gotten them when they had gotten too small. They didn't have any of the shoes or clothes or toys that mom had gotten them. Those toys were from three years ago. They were either back at the Castle or in some of Claw houses or in storage. When he grew up he was going to put all of his old stuff in the Treasure Room.

Not the one at the Castle.

Because that house was probably gone or something by now. The Treasure Room in the old house had been full of stuff….dad's stuff. Fukuda said that after the house fell down, that was part of the very bad thing that happened to dad's parents, that he and dad had spent days and days collecting anything that they could and storing it for the future. Sho didn't want his things in that treasure room. He would make his own treasure room in his own house and show it to his own kids when he grew up. Then they would know him and stuff. Then they wouldn't have to be taken on surprise trips to get to know him and the history of his life and stuff.

But that would be in the future.

It wasn't the future, though, it was right now. It was right now and he was tired. He put his backpack down next to his shoes as quietly as he could. Then he started creeping through the house on his tiptoes. The sun was coming out and the sky was turning colors, the birds were waking up too, and he was so tired….he needed sleep. He needed to get to bed…and see big sis. It would be nice to sleep in the same room as her again. They had shared a room since the day that he had been born. Sleeping away from her was…weird. It was weird when he was alone in the room and she slept with dad but it just did not feel right when he was far away from her.

He loved big sis.

He loved her a lot…and stuff. Even if she was bossy and stuff he still loved her. Even if dad liked her best, and he had never not liked her best, he still loved her. Even if he had been such a jerk to, the biggest jerk to her, he still loved her. He loved her and he missed her and…and he wanted to be with her. He had been away from her for days and days…and maybe that was for the best. When he was away from her then he couldn't hurt her. Maybe it was just best for the both of them, then, that he stayed away and stuff….but then if he stayed away he would miss her. The best thing to do would be to stay away but…but he could just work harder at being nice to her. At not having mean thoughts about her. At not thinking mean things like he wanted to hit her or fight her or make her bleed…and he had only thought about doing that because dad…

Sho was not dad.

He went as quietly as he could to the bedroom. He opened the door as slowly as he could and walked in on his tip toes even though that really hurt his feet and stuff. People were not supposed to walk like this but he didn't want to wake big sis up…but her bed was empty. It was still made and her stuffed animals and dolls and stuff were still arranged on it. She hadn't slept in it at all…but he could still feel her aura. She was still in the house but…but he knew where she was.

She was sleeping with dad.

He didn't get why she liked to sleep next to dad. Didn't she get enough of him during the daytime? Why wasn't she in her own bed waiting for him to come back? Didn't she miss him? Didn't she care? Or maybe…maybe she was happy that he was gone. Maybe she was happy that he had left and then she and dad could be happy together. The thought of it hurts…but it would make sense. He was a jerk. He was the biggest jerk in the world…

So of course big sis didn't want anything to do with him.

He took off his clothes and tossed them down on the floor. He needed to sleep and he didn't want to sleep in his daytime clothes because that would be uncomfortable. Also he had sleep shorts and T-shirts. Those were more comfortable than wearing long sleeves and long pants all the time. He hated it when he had to be around normal people. He had to dress like that because they would see his scars and ask questions even though his scars were none of their business. He was so happy to be away from normal people.

Auras all around him.

He could feel dad and big sis in the house, big sis' friends next door, and then Claw people all around in the other houses. He could feel Fukuda, too, and normally he would have wanted to be with him. Normally he would have just gone and spent time with Fukuda and stuff but now…now he just sort of wanted to be with his family…with big sis. She at least never tried to tell him about the past and stuff. No, if she had been there she would have told him that he needed to sleep in socks to keep his feet warm. She would have told him that he had to wear pajama sets that matched. She would have told him to brush his teeth before he went to bed.

She wasn't there to tell him anything.

He went over to her side of the drawers. His socks were there, the ones he had with the flames on them, and he felt scared then. That was where he had hid the baby sock and if she had taken it…she hadn't. His socks had just wandered over to her side. He didn't know how that could have happened. There were no mistaking his socks for hers. His socks were cool. They had his characters on it but also he had a pair with flames and one with blue flames and one that made it look like he was bleeding and also he had a lot of Zootopia socks. Her socks were white or pink or had lace on them or were sparkly or were from Frozen. Boring girl socks.

Why had she had his socks?

She might have been trying to get at Mukai's baby sock. He needs to hide it in a different place, a place where she can't find it and take it from him, because this is all he has…well no. He has another one of her baby socks. He had taken it from her when he had gone to visit. Stealing was wrong and stealing from a baby was even more wrong but he needed it more than she did. She had a whole drawer full of little baby socks. He only had one….now two….of her little baby socks. He didn't know why he had taken it to remember her by since he knew that he would see her again one day…but he had taken it. He had taken it so he could…because he had no idea when he would see her again. What if the next time he saw her she had grown out of her little baby socks? What if she turned into a little kid but the next time he saw her? He didn't know if he could handle that. He didn't know if he could handle the next time he saw her she was walking and talking and drawing and stuff.

But at least he would get to see her again.

Big sis was never going to see her again. Seeing baby sis had to be a secret and big sis could not keep secrets from dad. She was a terrible secret keeper but she especially could not keep any secrets from dad. She had let dad figure out that she liked Shimazaki after all…and the thought makes him so mad…but he needs to stop being mad because he does not want to be a jerk to her. He shouldn't even care anymore since dad had beaten him up and there was no way to un-beat him up so that part was all over with now.

He was not going to be a jerk to big sis.

He takes the baby sock out from it's hiding place and leaves it on her pillow. There. She'll come in and see it and know that he's done being a jerk to her. She could have it. He had one of his own and he had more memories of baby sis, too. That was…that wasn't fair to her but their lives had never been fair. She had been born right and he had been born wrong. Dad loved her and not him. Dad let her do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted but he wasn't allowed to do anything. Things had always been unfair between them…

These were jerk thoughts.

These were jerk thoughts that he was having and he needs to stop having them. He needs to stop being a jerk and just…be a nice person. Even though he's never been a nice person for even one day out of his life. Mom wants him to be a nice person…but she's gone now. She wants him to be her sweet and gentle boy but she's gone and he has no idea where she even is…and it feels bad. Thinking about mom makes him feel bad. He feels cold and alone. He is cold and alone. He's alone in his bedroom and dad always kept the air conditioning turned up as high as it would go. Probably because he wore a suit all the time even when he wasn't working. Big sis always overdressed too. Those dresses that she always wore were so hot and itchy. He didn't know why she didn't just wear normal clothes. There were so many places in the world to buy normal clothes but she wore costumes everywhere. She didn't know how good she had it. She could wear short sleeved shirts and shorts…or skirts which actually looked very breezy for the summer time…and she could dress however she wanted and be however she wanted…and it just wasn't fair and…

And he was thinking jerk thoughts about her.

He wants to be near her but…but he's also thinking jerk thoughts about her. Maybe he is a jerk. Maybe there's no point in trying to change because he is, was, and always would be a jerk. Maybe big sis was just better off without him. Maybe he was better off on his own. Maybe nobody wanted him. His own mom had left him all alone and-

And he doesn't want to think like this.

He doesn't want to think like this and he doesn't want to be alone. So he decides not to be. He knows where big sis is…and he wants to be with her. The only problem was that she was with dad and dad hated it when Sho got into bed with him. At least he had when Sho had been very little. Dad had thrown him back into his own bed and told him that he was being annoying and stuff. Mean stuff…

He missed big sis.

He wouldn't wake dad up. That was what he decided. He was going to be very quiet. He was just….he was going to be very quiet. That was all. So that was what he did. He walked as quietly as he could through the house and to dad's room. He opened the door as quietly as he could. Slowly, too, so he could run away and pretend that the wind did it if dad was to wake up. He didn't wake up, though, as Sho opened the door. He was dead asleep. That was how he looked when he slept, like he was dead, because he slept on his back with his hands folded like the dead people did at funerals. Not that Sho had ever been to a funeral before, no, but he had seen them in movies.

If he got caught it was his funeral.

He didn't want to get caught but he didn't want to be alone either. He wanted to be near people that…that he understood. He had thought that he understood Fukuda, he was nice and fun and stuff, but then he had been all quiet and sad all day. When they had gone to the fort and the house and the graveyard….well it made sense to be sad when he was in a graveyard because it was full of dead people and stuff but still. He didn't like seeing Fukuda all sad like that. It didn't make sense. Nothing about yesterday had made sense. Dad and big sis made sense…even though he knew a lot more about how dad had been who he was now made sense….and big sis had never changed since they had been little so, really, he felt better with his family…

He had never felt better with his dad in his entire life.

But he felt better being with big sis. He walked over to her side of the bed. She was asleep. She was all wrapped around dad's arm and she was asleep. Mom used to sleep like that. Sometimes he and big sis would wake mom and dad up when they slept in. Dad would be asleep on his back and mom would be using his chest as a pillow. Sometimes his arm would be around her like he was trying to keep her safe or something. That wasn't how he and big sis were sleeping next to each other. He was on his back but his hands weren't folded. Big sis was holding on to him like she wanted him to keep her safe from something.

Probably from Sho.

Sho knelt down and rested his head on the bed. It felt sort of like they wanted him there. He knew that if he got into bed with them then dad would wake up and kick him out. That was just how dad was. He didn't want Sho to be near him. No matter how many new powers he got or how much older he got dad would always like big sis best…and it hurt. Why couldn't he like Sho best? His control was better and he could learn things and do things and he wasn't…he wasn't second best….even though dad thought that he was. Dad had always seen him as second best. Second born and second best. If big sis had been a boy, if she had been Shigeo instead of Shigeko, and if he had been Shoko instead of Sho, then dad wouldn't have even kept him around. Like Fukuda said. Dad would have just left him back at the Castle with someone to watch him while he took big sis around with him and stuff.

It wasn't fair.

Those were more jerk thoughts. He was having jerk thoughts even though he had decided not to be a jerk. Maybe that just went to show that no matter what he did he would always be a jerk. Maybe it just went to show that no matter what he did he would always be himself. He didn't know. All he knew was that he wanted to be up on that bed with his family…even though he knew that the only person who would have wanted him in that bed would have been big sis.

"Sho?" He got up fast. Fast enough to make the bed move. Big sis was awake and she as sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. He doesn't think. He just runs out of the room. His powers help him, he picks himself up and runs without making a sound, and he keeps on running until he makes it to his room. He throws himself on his bed and hided under the covers even though he knew for a fact that dad didn't care if he ran and hid.

It just made him madder.

Sho felt all the muscles in his body tense up. He needs to move. He needs to get out of there. He wants to get out of the house and keep himself safe because he knows that he probably woke dad up and now he was in for it and he hadn't even been home for an hour but he was going to get hit and he didn't want to get hit and now he was scared of getting hit and…and he had been able to spend days and days not having to worry about getting hit…but now he did. Now he was very worried. Worried and tense and…and he did not want to get hit…..

He felt an aura.

There was a knock at the door. That was big sis. Dad never knocked…well nobody in their family ever knocked….but if someone was going to start knocking then it would be big sis since she was nice like that and stuff. She was always so nice to him…even when she was being all bossy and boring. He could feel her aura. She was there…but no dad. He was still asleep, it felt like, but Sho wasn't going to check harder because then he might end up accidentally waking dad up and stuff. He doesn't want that…he could never want that…

But he does want big sis.

"You can come in." said Sho. He used his powers to open the door for her. He could do that without looking now. Dad had called it impressive, how he could move things without looking at them, but that had been years and years ago. Dad never called him impressive anymore. Dad never said nice things to him anymore. Dad might have decided to never say anything nice to him again just to be a jerk. He had always been like that. Fukuda had said, but Sho could not help but take it sort of personally sometimes…even though he knew that he shouldn't have.

"Sho! I'm so happy that you're back!" said big sis. Her aura even felt happy. He was still under the blankets but he could feel her standing over him. He decided to come out from underneath his blankets. He wanted to see her and…and she had wanted to see him. Even after he had been such a jerk to her. Even after he had told her that he wanted to beat her up so bad that she bled…she was still happy to see him.

He sat up.

"I missed you too." Said Sho. That was all the he could say. He didn't trust himself to say anything else. He wanted to cry. He hated it so much, him feeling like he wanted to cry, and he had been feeling that a lot lately. He didn't let himself cry. No.

He hugged her.

She hugged him back. There was no delay at all. He was sitting up in bed and hugging and she was hugging him back even though this was not at all a comfortable way to hug someone…but what did he know about hugs? He couldn't even remember the last hug that he had given…to big sis at least. He had hugged little sis goodbye but that was different. He had never once been a jerk to little sis.

But he was always such a jerk to big sis.

"Sho…I'm so glad that you're back…and that you love me again." said big sis. That was such a stupid thing to say and she was stupid for saying it. Of course he still loved her. They were brother and sister. He would never stop loving her. Even when she was a bossy jerk, even when she was treating him like he was a little baby, even when she made them watch boring movies and play boring games he still loved her.

Even when he had jerk thoughts he still loved her.

"I never stopped loving you, dummy. I was just kind of a jerk…like just now…and also before. I'm sorry." said Sho. He let go of her first. She hugged him for a little bit after he let her go before she let go too. She looked at him and then her bed before sitting down on his bed next to him. He made room for her as best as he could. They used to be able to share beds with room to spare but that was when they had been very little. They were bigger now, nine and ten, but right now…he sort of felt like they were little again.

Had it really been that long since they'd hugged?

"No, you don't have to be sorry. You never have to say sorry. I love you, Sho, and I don't care how you treat me. When you love someone then they can treat you however they like because…because you love them." Said big sis. He hated that she had said that. It didn't matter if she cared that he was a grade a jerk. She should have cared but she didn't but that didn't matter because HE cared.

He was not going to grow up to be a jerk like dad.

Maybe that was what Fukuda had been trying to teach him. That dad had lived a totally normal life but even with a normal life and parents who loved him and stuff he had still grown up to be a jerk because he had never tried to not be a jerk. That would have made sense. Maybe dad was so scared of himself that he had to be a jerk or whatever to keep people away from him…or whatever. It didn't matter why dad was a jerk. Sho didn't care about whys and hows of it. Sho just wanted to know how he could grow up to never be anything like his jerk of a dad.

The first step was to say sorry, which he had already done, and the second step was to be nice.

Fukuda had said that it was ok to hit big sis and call her names so long as he was sorry about it. He was sorry about it, he had trouble controlling himself when he got upset but he was still sorry about what he did, but he still did it again and again and again. He needed to be better. He was almost ten, he would be ten on the first day of December and it was only July but still time could move sort of fast sometimes, and he didn't want to turn then and then eleven and twelve and stuff and still be a jerk. If that happened then he would grow up to be a jerk just like dad.

And he didn't want that.

"I care that I was a jerk to you. I'm sorry. Sometimes I just get so mad and…and I don't know what I'm doing-" said Sho

"I know that you don't know what you're doing when you get mad. I don't mind. I still love you and I know that even if you hurt me that you'll always love me." Said big sis

"Big sis just…you should care. I'm trying not to get mad or call you names or anything but I just…you should care. I care so you should care. Big sis…I'm so sorry." said Sho

"Sho, you said that already and I already said that I forgive you. I love you more than anything, little brother, and if loving you means that sometimes you're going to be mean to me then…that it's worth it to have a little brother like you." Said big sis. Sho wanted to slap her. He wanted to slap her so hard that she stopped forgiving him. She never got angry. He hadn't seen her angry in years….and that was the worst part. If she had been angry with him, if she had hit him and shouted at him and stuff, then it would have been easier to…to stop being a jerk…and also he would have felt better about himself.

Because now he just felt like the worst person who had ever lived.

"Big sis…I said that I wanted to beat you up so bad that I made you bleed. I felt that and I wanted it to happen even though I knew that it was wrong and…and I just wish that you would be made about that or about…about everything. I just wish that you would be mad at me." Said Sho

"No. You know that I could never be mad at you." Said big sis

"Yeah, I know. You're never mad because you love me and I love you too but I get mad at you and now I just feel like a jerk because…because I can't be like you. I can't just…never be mad. I get so mad sometimes and it just…it's like I turn into a different person. I do things that I know are wrong and I think things that I know are wrong and I just…don't like myself." Said Sho. He wiped his eyes once and he would have wiped them again if big sis hadn't beat him to it. She took a handful of her nightgown and wiped his tears away with it.

"Sho. No. I never want to hear you say that you don't like yourself ever again. There is nothing in this world that should ever make you dislike yourself. You are my little brother and I want you to be happy. You…you have better control over your powers than me…and you're a lot better at talking things and stuff like that than me…and I just wish that…sometimes I wish that I were you. That's all. Because….because you're such a good person." Said big sis. She was talking nonsense. She was talking like she had gone crazy. She wanted to be him? BIG SIS wanted to be him? Why? Dad loved her. Dad loved her and she got to be in charge and do whatever she wanted. She got to hang out and have fun all day, she thought that work was fun, and she almost never got hit and dad spent time with her without being mean to her and Shimazaki liked her back and everyone liked her better and it just…it wasn't fair!

He tucked his hands under his legs.

He was not going to be mean to her. He was not going to hit her. He was going to be a good big brother to Mukai and not set a bad example, even if she wasn't there he still felt like she was, and he was going to be a good little brother to big sis and not be a jerk to her a millisecond after he said that he felt bad about being such a jerk to her.

"Big sis….Shigeko. Why would you want to switch places with me? You get to be in charge and you get to do whatever you want and…and people like you. Everyone likes you and-" said Sho

"They like you too. Just yesterday we were all in dad's office eating Jell-O, you missed green Jell-O day by the way but tomorrow is double chocolate chip cookie day so that's even better, but anyway we were in dad's office eating Jell-O and we were all talking about how much we missed you. Well not dad, he was just sort of poking at his Jell-O like he thought that it was alive or something, but me and Shibata and Shimazaki were talking about how much we missed you and wanted you back." Said big sis. Sho felt…he didn't know how he felt. Well bad that dad hadn't wanted him to come back but what else could he expect. He felt good that big sis had wanted him back and he was looking forward to Shibata tossing him in the air and…and he felt kind of weird that Shimazaki had missed him.

All squirmy inside.

Because he really wanted to be his friend. He was the coolest guy in the world, aside from liking big sis back and all, and of course Sho wanted to be friends with the coolest guy in the world. Plus he wasn't going to end up being boyfriend and girlfriend with big sis so Sho didn't have to beat him up. Also he was all healed up from when dad had beaten him up so they could hang out and steal cookies or soap up hallways or put the forks in with the spoons or follow people around or build a furniture fort or whatever he wanted to do.

"He…said that he missed me?" asked Sho

"Yes. He said that things were more fun with you around. Also why did you teach him the 'see food' thing? It's gross." Said big sis

"Because it's funny. You just don't understand because you're a girl and for you gross stuff is just gross and not funny." Said Sho

"I don't see what's so funny about the 'see food' thing and dad doesn't either and he's a boy." Said big sis

"Dad doesn't think that anything is funny. He's been that way since he was a kid." Said Sho. He wished that there was an undo button for life. He should not have said that. His trip with Fukuda should have been a secret. Fukuda told him that it had to be a secret. Otherwise dad would find out and get mad. He couldn't tell anyone at all in the whole world. Not even his own big sis.

"Do you really think so?" asked big sis. Sho nodded. He had to lie to her. He knew that lying was a jerk move but he had to do it to keep himself safe. Well he could take whatever dad could dish out. It was more Fukuda he was worried about. He had told dad's secrets and dad…he did not like people who told secrets. He called those people traitors and he did awful things to them…and Sho did not want to be responsible for anything like that happening to anyone he loved. Especially Fukuda.

"Yeah, probably. I mean he doesn't think that anything's funny now so he must have been this way for his whole life." Said Sho

"You're probably right…but I'm glad that you're back. Shimazaki is right, you do make things more fun." Said big sis

"Did he say anything else about me?" asked Sho

"Um…just that he missed you and that things were boring without you. Then we talked about what flavor green is supposed to be. Shimazaki said that it tasted like lime and I said that it just tasted like green and then Shibata said-" said big sis

"But he didn't say anything else about me?" asked Sho

"No….sorry. But you can see him again today. Dad says that we're going to have to stay put for a while because a lot of stuff is all tangled around from when he was gone. Everyone wanted to transfer to Tokyo and dad can't tell who is and is not supposed to be there. He says that it'll take a while to fix on top of the other stuff that he does so you and Shimazaki can have a lot of time to hang out and stuff since dad's mostly just doing office work…and me too…and maybe you too. Dad hasn't said." Said big sis

"Did dad say anything about me at all?" asked Sho

"No. He hasn't mentioned you at all…I'm sorry." said big sis. Sho didn't know what he had been expecting. Dad was dad. Of course had hadn't mentioned Sho…even if it was just to say that he was glad that Sho was gone so he could spend time with the kid who he actually liked and all of that. Sho didn't care. So what if dad hadn't even mentioned his only Son? So what if dad didn't even care about Sho or who he was or how he felt or-or-or anything! So what if he had been happy to be there all alone with his perfect kid, the one he cared about, and had left Sho without any thought at all to him? So what if-

Jerk thoughts were coming again.

He could feel himself turning into the other Sho, the jerk Sho, and he had to stop it now. He could not be like this, act like this, because…because this was not the person that he wanted to be. He wanted to be a good person. He wanted to be a good little brother…and good little brothers did not act like this. Good little brothers did not sit there and get mad at their big sisters over things that he knew were not under her control.

He needed to be much better than what he had been so far.

"Stop saying sorry all the time. You didn't do anything wrong." Said Sho

"But I-" said big sis. Sho didn't want to hear it. When she started talking about how sorry she was and how she had done stuff wrong, even when she hadn't, it just made him madder and madder and he just…he did not want to be mad anymore. He just wanted…he just wanted to lay down and to get some sleep. That was all.

"Anyway I'm tired and I want to go to bed. You should go to your own bed…but be careful because I left Mukai's sock there." said Sho as he turned to face the wall. He made sure not to kick big sis even on accident. He knew that he was being a jerk by turning his back to her but…but he was tired and he needed sleep and….and he was tired of acting like a jerk.

He was just so effing tired.

"Oh…do you want me to put it back in your hiding spot? I mean I know where your hiding spot is but I don't…I mean I wasn't planning on-" said big sis

"No. I want you to have it. Just take it and don't say anything about giving it back because I won't take it. I have…I have my drawings that me and her did together. You only have pictures. So you should take the sock. Now let me sleep." Said Sho. He closed his eyes and pulled the blankets so far over his head that he couldn't even see the light seeping in from the outside anymore.

He could still feel her, though.

He could feel her in the room and he could hear her shifting around on her bed. He wished that she would just take the sock already. Was it so hard for her to believe that he was just doing something nice for her? Was that such a rare thing, like a four leafed clover or a shiny Mew? Actually….he couldn't remember the last time he had done something nice to her….

Well that was going to change.

"I…thank you. If you ever want it back then you can just ask me for it and I'll give it right back an-" said big sis quietly.

"I'm sleeping right now." Said Sho. He just wanted to rest before he said or did some jerk thing. He was not going to be a jerk. He was going to be nice and a good little brother and he was going to sleep. He was going to get some sleep and then he could be nice to her when he got up but for now…for now he just needed sleep.

He was home now.


	192. Being a Good Little Brother is Hard Work

Sho was making an effort to be nice and part of being nice was playing games that his big sister liked to play.

Even if they were pure and utter torture.

"Am I brushing your hair too hard?" asked Mob as she tried her best to get Sho's hair to lay flat. She couldn't believe that he had actually volunteered to play dress up with her. He only did this on her birthday or if he had been very mean to her. But he hadn't been very mean to her in a very long time. He had come home some weeks ago and he hadn't been mean to her once. Sometimes he went to the other room to yell or kick holes in the walls but he had been so nice to her.

She liked it.

She would have loved him just the same even if he hadn't been nice to her. She was his big sister and the job of a big sister was to love her little brother. So that was what she would do no matter how mean he was to her. She would love him when he was nice, too, because it was nice when he was nice. Like today. Dad said that he wasn't going to take them to work with him today, he had something very important to do and Sho would just be underfoot, he had said, and this was not for her to know about because she was a girl, he had said, so she and Sho were home alone.

She had not planned this.

She had been going through her clothes and getting rid of the ones that didn't fit anymore. That way she could get new ones which were mostly the same but still fit. She been doing that all on her own Sho had come in and asked her if she wanted to play the Shoko game. That was the game where she pretended that instead of a little brother called Sho she had a little sister called Shoko. She loved that game so much…but she also knew that he hated it.

But he had suggested it anyway right out of the blue…so of course she said yes.

Who wouldn't have said yes to playing the most fun game ever. She already had a little sister, well a pretend one, but Mukai was a baby and also thinking about her made Mob sad. Even if she had ownership of the little baby sock she still felt sad when she thought about Mukai. This was different, though, because it was even more pretend than pretending that Mukai was her little sister. She had always wanted a for real little sister to do stuff like this with and pretending….pretending was almost as good.

Especially since Sho had volunteered all on his own to play this with her.

"….no. It's fine." Said Sho. He hated this. He hated this so much. There was nothing in the world that he hated more than the Shoko game. This was pure and utter torture. He was in one of her dresses that didn't fit anymore, a purple one since she had said that purple was a better color on him than pink, and he would rather have walked around naked. He didn't like this. He didn't like the dress that he was wearing or the necklace around his neck or the earing she had clipped on to his ears or the nail polish that was drying on his fingers and toes and he especially did not like the brush in his hair.

But he had to do this.

He had gotten mad at breakfast because dad had left them behind. He knew what dad was doing. He was meeting with the shady people. Sho had gone to a million and one of those meetings and he had never been underfoot even once. He had told dad that but then dad had all been 'shut up, Sho' and then Sho had gotten mad and his cereal bowl tipped over and a lot got all on big sis…and he hadn't meant to…so he said sorry and then went to his room to scream and kick holes in the walls…but she still must have been upset or something because once he left their room she went in and started messing with her clothes and stuff.

He had felt bad about what he did and he knew that 'sorry' wasn't good enough.

Sho knew what he had to do. He asked her if she wanted to play the worst game in the history of people thinking up games. And that was what they were going now. She had dressed him all up like a girl and now she was trying to brush his hair even though she knew that his hair didn't like to be brushed. She knew that his hair liked to stand up and she was just going to brush it anyways. Why did girls like to do this? What was the point?

He didn't understand girls one bit…and his sister was the hardest one to understand out of all of them.

"I wish I had hair like yours. It's so pretty how it stands up. Mine just hangs down. It's a very nice color, too. I love it so much." Said Mob as she brushed Sho's hair so it stood up even more. She had wished that she had hair like Sho's since she had first realized that she looked different from the rest of her family. Mom and dad were both half Japanese which meant that she and Sho were both half Japanese but for some reason Mob had gotten all of the Japanese.

She wished that she looked like her family.

She didn't look a thing like mom or dad or Sho. When she got older she was going to color her hair like Minegishi did. Purple was a nice color and she would try that. She would do red first so that she and Sho could look like brother and sister. They were brother and sister but they didn't look like it. She wondered if Sho would play this with her when they grew up. Then they could look like sister and sister too.

That would be so wonderful!

"I don't care about my hair or your hair or any hair. It's just hair." Said Sho. Was that mean? He didn't know. He was telling the truth. He didn't know why girls were always trying to do stuff to their hair and look pretty. When Sho grew up he was just going to leave it the way it was now. He didn't care about his hair at all…mostly at all. He wished that he had hair like hers. Black hair. Everyone else had black hair in Japan but him. Even out in the rest of the world people were always staring at his hair and trying to touch it and stuff since red was such a rare hair color and all.

Also it was really hard to brush.

"Why? You have nice hair." Said Mob as she finished brushing it. She went to her bag of hair ribbons and looked for ones that would match Sho's dress. This was so much fun! She couldn't wait until she had a daughter or Sho had a daughter. Then she could play this all the time. She wished that she didn't have to wait until she was an adult though, she wished that baby Mukai had still been there, because if baby Mukai had been there even if she was too little for this she would have grown up and then she and Mob could have played this all the time.

"I just don't care about hair, that's all. I'm having…fun…though." said Sho. He was lying through his teeth but sometimes you had to lie to make things better. Sometimes people had to lie to the people they loved just to make them happy. He had to make her happy.

He was her little brother.

And he had been such a jerk for their entire lives. He needed to be better. He needed to be better than dad. He was not going to be like dad. He was not going to be mean and stuff. He was not going to tell big sis that he hated this game and wanted to rip this dress off and run around naked. That would have been the worst because he was too old to be running around naked and stuff. That was how much he wanted to end this game.

But he didn't say a thing.

He didn't even say anything when she tied some of her ribbons in his hair. She had been trying to braid his hair but he didn't have enough hair to braid. Thank God that he didn't have enough hair to braid. He didn't want to have his hair braided. He could barely stand the bows that she had braided in his hair. He could barely stand this…but he had to do this. She loved him and she was his big sister and he loved her and…and he was just going to o along with whatever she wanted.

All day.

"We can watch something else if you want to. I know that you don't like movies like this." said Mob. She wanted Sho to be happy and he did not seem happy. She could see his aura, feel it, and he was unhappy. She didn't ever want to make her little brother upset. She'd had enough fun. Dressing him up was the most fun part. She liked watching movies like this but she also knew that Sho didn't and she didn't want Sho to be upset. That was being selfless. She was a very shellfish person and she wanted to be selfless.

She hated being so selfish.

She was selfish for wanting to play this with Sho even though she knew that he didn't like it. Even though he had suggested it she still should have told him that he didn't have to do this. That would have been better. Less selfish. She always felt selfish. Like how she didn't do more to help dad even though he had told her to stay here alone with Sho. She was also selfish because she wanted to smoke even though she had promised Minegishi that she would quit. She was also selfish because….because she just was.

"This is fine." Said Sho After doing his hair and putting jewelry and stuff they were watching one of her movies where people feel in love and broke up but then got back together even though the whole movie would have been hours shorter if when the guy said 'I can explain' the girl LET HIM EXPLAIN.

How could she just….watch this? What good was it to watch people fall in love? It was long and boring. Love was long and boring. Love was…he didn't think that he'd like love. Not if it meant that he would act like an idiot and think about some girl all the time and want to stop doing all the stuff he loved just to make her happy. He didn't think that he could handle it. He had too much going on in his life. If he had a girlfriend she would probably just make him dress up like this and watch things that she loved. Also she might make things that he didn't like for dinner. Like salads with cucumbers in them.

Ick.

He was never falling in love, he decided, and if he did and some girl wouldn't let him explain then he wasn't going to follow her around trying to win her love. He was going to go back to being single and drawing pictures or hanging out with his friends or something. Yeah, he could hang out with Shimazaki all day. He didn't do the girlfriend and boyfriend thing either.

Yeah. That would be great.

Just him and Shimazaki hanging out all day. Just the two of them building forts and petting dogs and seeing who could eat the most pudding cups in one sitting and then making pyramids with the empty ones and then they could climb trees and bother the baby birds….well that was kind of mean but if Shimazaki wanted to do that then Sho would because he really, REALLY wanted to be his friend.

"Are you sure? Your aura is being all…pointy." Said Mob. She felt his aura with hers. Yes, that was definitely pointy. She didn't want him to be upset. She wanted him to be happy. She wished that all of their friends weren't working. Sho could have gone and hung out with Shimazaki and Shibata…though she hoped that Shibata wasn't planning on tossing him in the air again or anything. That was dangerous.

"I know." Said Sho. He forced his aura to be normal. He was not going to be a jerk to her. He was going to scream into a stuffed animal later and kick a hole in the wall but he was not going to be a jerk to her. Not anymore.

"We can watch one of the things you like if you want. It's enough that you played with me for this long. You can change out of that and we can be normal if you want." Said Mob. She didn't want the game to end but she didn't want him to be upset either. There was nothing worse than having a little brother who was upset. She didn't care if he got upset enough to hit her, she didn't care if she got hit, she just wanted him to be happy. What more could she ever ask for in life than a happy little brother?

Well maybe someone who liked her so much that he chased her to the airport to tell her how much he loved her.

But no boy would ever do that for her. First of all they never went to the regular airport, they only took little planes, and second of all no boys liked her like that. Not even…she couldn't even think his name or else she would turn red and maybe even lose control of her powers. He didn't like her like she liked him…if she even liked him like that. She didn't know. She had liked boys before, she had even been kissed once, but those feelings had all been doki doki. There was some doki doki here but also her stomach felt like it was full of soda and pop rocks. This was new and she didn't get it. Also she didn't know if she even COULD like him.

Because she didn't know him at all.

She knew he worked in floating tech support, which meant that he moved around a lot in Claw, and she knew that he sometimes took two desserts even though she had made it clear in the memo that nobody got seconds until everyone got their firsts. Also he had a sweater for every day of the week and all of them had cute animals on them. He only had two pairs of jeans, though. She knew because he got a stain on his pants on Monday and didn't change his pants until Friday and then the next time she saw him, Sunday, he was still wearing the Friday pants but then on Monday he had changed back into the first pants but hadn't washed them.

She didn't get it.

She didn't get him because she didn't know him and love at first sight was not real even though she felt…something…when she first saw him. She knew that she had felt something really sudden and new and…and she had never felt that before…and she knew that she liked being near him and sometimes she even made up reasons to walk by the tech support room just so she could look inside and see him…

But that was not the same as liking someone.

So she didn't know and movies were no help. She could have asked Minegishi but this felt like something that she should keep to herself. After all if this got back to dad, that she liked someone, then dad would beat him up just like he had beat Shimazaki up just because he got the IDEA that Mob liked him…and she did not want to put him through that…so she decided that instead of thinking about him all day she was going to watch movies where people fell in love and got married and lived happily ever after.

But not if Sho didn't want to. If he wanted to change it then she would change it.

"No, it's ok. I like doing stuff that you like. This isn't…that bad." Said Sho. He was going to be a good little brother and good little brothers did stuff that made their big sisters happy. Like this. Good little brothers made it up to their big sisters when they accidentally got cereal and milk all over them and then kicked a hole in their bedroom wall. Good little brothers did not tell their older sisters that their taste in movies was terrible and that they should have been banned from the Netflix for life and then the afterlife.

He was working harder at being a good little brother.

And it was so much hard work. But this was what you did. She loved him and she put up with his boring stuff. Well his stuff wasn't boring but she thought that it was. She hated fighting shows and movies. She hated shooting guns and playing target practice. She hated all of that stuff because he loved him. When you did stuff for people you loved you didn't have to enjoy yourself. That was called being selfless, not selfish.

You had to think about people other than yourself.

That was the thing about dad. He only thought about himself and what he wanted. He wanted them to move so they moved. He wanted them to pretend that mom had never existed so they pretended that mom had never existed. He wanted them to never talk to baby sis ever again and that was what they did…as far as he knew. Sho was not going to be a jerk…even though it was a big effort.

A really big effort.

"You don't have to just say that. I know that you don't like this stuff." Said Mob

"I don't like it but I want you to be happy. I've been too much of a jerk lately…for our whole lives….and I'm going to be nice to you. Ok? Even if this is boring and I don't even get why you like watching people fall in love and stuff. Love is so stupid." Said Sho

"That's just what boys think and you're a boy and you can't help it. Here, let's watch Zootopia. You love Zootopia and I love Zootopia so we'll watch Zootopia." Said Mob. She liked this movie and all but she also liked it when Sho was happy…and she also liked Zootopia. The two main characters were so obviously in love but they couldn't be together because they were two different species and also predator and prey. Society wouldn't understand. The best love was the kind the society wouldn't understand. Like in manga where the student council president fell in love with the delinquent and they weren't supposed to be in love because they were from two different worlds and then they didn't care and they kissed and…and it was really nice.

Love was really nice.

She wished that she had a for real little sister so they could watch movies about love and read manga about love together. They could do girl stuff together. Mob liked girl stuff, she liked some boy stuff too, but she always did boy stuff all the time with Sho. She wanted Sho to be happy but…but she also liked having someone to do girl stuff with….but she also had to think about him.

So they watched Zootopia.

"If we were in Zootopia I think that we would be predators, not prey, I think. Even though I like Judy a lot." Said Mob. They were in the second half now. She liked this movie. She would have liked it better if Judy and Nick admitted that they loved each other but that was never going to happen, probably, because of society.

"What do you mean?" asked Sho. They were halfway through now. He wanted to enjoy this while he could before she put Frozen on. She loved Frozen and they had to watch it at least once a day…and he didn't even know why. They had been watching Frozen nonstop since they had been kids…and also Zootopia but at least this was interesting.

"Because we're espers. There are a lot more normal people than espers and normal people are afraid of us and stuff just because we can do things that they can't. I think that we would be cats if we were in Zootopia." Said Mob

"Nah, I want to be a hamster. Hamsters are awesome…not that we'll ever get one…" said Sho

"Those are prey animals, though." said Mob

"I still would want to be one." said Sho

"I don't think that it's a want to thing. I think that we would be predators and people would be scared of us…I hate how people are scared of us." Said Mob

"Nobody's scared of you. They think that you're cute and stuff." Said Sho

"I mean of us as espers. I can't wait until dad takes over the world and makes everything better. Then normal people and espers can be together and everyone who wants to be an esper can become one…once they figure out how to make Awakened without hurting people….and then things'll be so much better. We might even be able to stop moving all the time…and also when we grow up and get married and have families then we can have pets." Said Mob

"Ugh, I don't want to get married. I mean I know that I have to but I really don't want to. I've had girls telling me what to do my whole life. Mom and then you and then when I grow up I won't even get a break. Whatever girl that I have to marry is going to probably make me eat stuff I don't want to and make me go to bed when I'm not tired and she's going to make me kiss her and stuff. I don't understand why anyone would want to get married." Said Sho

"You get to be with someone you love. You can spend your whole life with that person…and I bet that it's the best thing. If nobody runs away I mean. I guess that people do run away…but your wife probably won't because when you grow up you can take dad's place as ruler of the world and then she won't be able to run away because she'll have no place else to go." Said Mob. She hoped that no girl decided that she was going to play with Sho's heart like that. If some girl married Sho and then decided to run away Mob would do…something. Oh yes she would do something. The things she would do…they would be….mean. Anyone who broke Sho's heart deserved to be called named and maybe even pushed….maybe.

"I don't want to keep someone prisoner. That's even worse than being regular married. At least if I'm regular married she'll want to be around me and stuff. I don't want to be near someone all day every day until I get old and die who doesn't even like me." Said Sho

"You won't have to worry about that, though, because I can't imagine why a girl wouldn't like you. You're the best little brother ever. One day you'll make some girl's heart go doki doki and then yours will go doki doki too and then you'll fall in love and get married and have babies and then your babies will be friends with my babies and I'll be friends with your wife and you'll be friends with my husband and-" said Mob

"I'm already friends with the guy you're going to marry." Said Sho. He sounded a little bit mean there, just a little, but he couldn't help it. Out of all the guys in the world why did she have to like him? Well because he was the coolest guy ever.

"…you know Haotri?" asked Mob

"Who? No, I'm talking about Shimazaki. Who's Hatori?" asked Sho. He didn't know who this guy was but he hated him. He had to hate him because his big sis liked him and it was his job to keep big sis safe. This guy probably was only after one thing…which from Sho's understanding was kissing a girl and touching her boobs and looking at her naked and stuff. Well no guy was going to trick his sister into doing that! Not on his watch!

"Just a person I met…he works in tech support…he knows how to fix the Wii in the Awakened's breakroom…and he wears sweaters…." Said Mob. She held her braids down with her hands and she pulled her knees up to her chest. She did not want to talk about this with her little brother…even though he was dressed more like a little sister than a little brother. She would talk to a little sister about this but not a brother. There were just things that you did not discuss with your little brother.

"So you don't like Shimazaki anymore?" asked Sho. He loved this guy. He didn't know who Hatori was but she loved him. He had gotten big sis to stop being in love with Shimazaki. She wasn't planning on kissing him and marrying him and having babies with him. Sho felt….good. He wasn't going to beat this Hatori guy up too badly, now, just bad enough so he had trouble walking but not so bad that his legs were broken and stuff. That would be too much.

"I never liked him to begin with. He never once made my heart go doki doki. Sometimes I feel weird when I'm around him, like when he gets really close I get this feeling in my stomach kind of, but I know that it's not love….and I wish that people would believe me. Why would I lie about this? We're just friends." Said Mob

"Ok. I believe that you don't like him." said Sho. He believed that she didn't like him like that anymore but she had liked him at some point. That was why he had been acting that way around her. Why else would you act that way around a girl unless she liked you like that first? That was just a thing that you were supposed to do when a girl liked you.

"Good. Finally, someone believes me. Dad doesn't. His aura gets all mad when I talk to Shimazaki and I don't know why he won't just listen to the words that I say." Said Mob

"….what do you talk to him about?" asked Sho

"Stuff." Said Mob

"What kind of stuff?" asked Sho

"Just stuff. Sometimes about funny things that are happening in Claw and sometimes about stuff that he's heard or sometimes about stuff that's happened to him in his life. Normal stuff….and please stop making your aura all pointy. You just said that you believed me." Said Mob

"I do, I do. I don't know why my aura's like this or why I get so…it's like mad and hurt and a little scared at the same time when I think about you liking him and taking to him and stuff. It's like…I don't know." Said Sho. He hated the way he felt sometimes. He didn't know what this was or why he felt it but he did know that it made him say stupid stuff sometimes and also it made him mad at his sister too and he didn't want to get mad at her.

But he was not dad.

Fukuda said that dad was afraid of feelings. Well Sho was not. Sho was not afraid of his own feelings. He had them and they were there but they did not scare him one bit…even if he didn't know what they were. He knew that he wanted to be Shimazaki's friend really badly. He had felt like this before when he met really cool guys and he wanted to be friends with them and stuff. It was just sort of…worse…now. Yeah, that was it. Worse.

But he wasn't dad. He wasn't going to act like he had no feelings at all. He wasn't afraid of his own feelings.

"I don't know either but I am sorry that I made you upset." Said Mob. She didn't know much about these talking sorts of things but she did wish that she could help Sho out. She couldn't, though, because she had no idea how to fix the way he felt. So she did the only thing she could do and just said sorry.

"Stop saying sorry all the time. It's not your fault that I'm like this. It's my fault. But it's ok because I'm trying to be better. To be less like dad. I just…I want to be more like me and to be less like…like dad." Said Sho

"Sho….you are nothing like dad. You're like yourself. Dad is…he's mean and sort of nice sometimes but mostly mean. You're the opposite. You're nice and only sort of mean sometimes. You're nothing like dad. You're like….don't tell dad I said this but you're like mom. Mom was always so nice, sometimes she could be mean but she was mostly nice, and you're a lot like her…and if she were here you would have been her favorite kid. Because you're like her, ok, and not like dad." Said Mob. She hugged Sho when she was done saying that. She would have hugged Sho for the whole rest of the day, or until her arms got too tired to keep the hug up, when she felt it.

Dad's aura.

It was like he had been summoned. He had been teleported back so maybe they had summoned him like the time that they had tried summoning Bloody Mary. Mob and Sho stopped hugging and just sat up as straight as they could. If dad was teleported back that meant that he was in a bad mood and wanted to hide in his room away from them, which was fine, but it also meant that when he came in through the door he would be ready to punish them…or mostly Sho…for anything that he could think of.

Mob took Sho's hand. She knew how scary this was for him.

She held his hand and he held it right back. They tried to stay as still as possible as they felt his aura pass over them as he entered the house. The TV was still going but neither of them were watching. They were waiting for dad to pass through this room and go to his. Mob would join in him later, he liked having her around, but right now her place was with Sho.

They heard him step out of the genkan.

"Son. Daughter. Explain." Said Suzuki. He'd had a VERY rough day and just wanted to sit in his room and wait for his aura to settle and for tomorrow to happen. He did not want to deal with…whatever it was that the children were up to. He knew that, at their core, clothes were just cloth and they meant nothing…and also the way one wore their hair was not indicative of much…and also jewelry could just be jewelry…and also Son was a child…

But also he knew that this might have been something to worry about.

"We're watching Zootopia." Said Mob. She had no idea what there was to explain about. The house was clean and they hadn't been fighting. Still dad was staring at them, though, with his eyes and his aura…and his eyes were doing that thing where they got way too focused.

"Yeah. What, we can't watch TV now?" asked Sho

"No. You can watch all the television you want. What I want to know is….Daughter, why is your brother dressed in your clothes?" asked Suzuki. It was bets to just get right to it. Either this was nothing and he could rest or this was something and he had to rethink his whole plan for Son's future.

"We're playing, dad." Said Mob. That was what dad was so upset about? Why? He had seen them playing the Shoko game before.

"Playing….." said Suzuki. That…that answered none of his questions…not that he was even fully aware of what those questions were. There were too many questions in his mind and he was too tired to sort them out into logical and illogical.

"Yeah, we're playing." Said Sho. He knew that dad must have been a kid at some point and he knew that dad had played games and all but he also knew that dad had been a jerk when he was a kid. He didn't know what dad and Fukuda had played, it might have been written down in the notebook he took but he hadn't been able to bring himself to read it, but he knew that dad didn't understand playing and fun and also how sometimes you had to do things like wear dresses and stuff to make your big sister happy.

"And you….you actually….you want to…to wear that dress?" asked Suzuki. This could be nothing or it could be something but he had to stay calm because either way he was exhausted and when he got this exhausted he tended to lose control and he could not lose control. This was…..this was something or nothing. That was all. Something or nothing.

"No, not really, but I'm doing this to make big sis happy. Haven't you ever done something just to make someone happy?" asked Sho. He knew that he was going to get hit but…but at least if he got hit then it would be the longest possible time before he got hit again. At least for a few minutes he wouldn't have to be worried about when he would be hit next.

"….then take that off if you don't want to wear it. I'm going…to my room. Don't disturb me." Said Suzuki. There. It was not a thing and he could go to his room and rest. Yes, rest sounded wonderful. He would have stayed with Daughter if Son had been away again but he did not want to sit with both of them.

Son was forever finding new ways to be tiresome.

Maybe another away mission would be in his future. Son seemed to enjoy them and did well, too, so it would make sense. Suzuki enjoyed having Son away as well. He could come home to peace with his Daughter. Yes, things were better when it was just him and Daughter. Son…he needed to work on his independent skills too. He should not have been wearing a dress because his sister had asked him to…or at all. It might have affected him in some detrimental way…or not. Suzuki was too tired. He'd worry about this tomorrow.

Or maybe not.

"Sure, I'll take it off…later." Said Sho. He said the last part very quietly. So quietly that dad hadn't been able to hear him. Yeah, he wanted to get out of this dress and back into his own clothes and to clean off his nails and fix his hair and stuff but he wasn't dad. He wasn't dad and he was going to make big sis happy.

Even if he really, really, really hated playing this game. He would endure this torture, though, for big sis. To make her happy.


	193. Playing in the Halls

Mob felt like she hadn't played in a while.

Which was a weird way to feel, she thought, because she and Sho had been playing together a lot since he came back from his mission with Fukuda. They had played things that she liked, mostly, but also some stuff that he liked. Like this. They were playing the game where had to jump from floor tile to floor tile because some of them were lava and some of them weren't. Sho was the leader and he decided which ones were lava and which ones weren't. Mob was happy to let him be the leader. She was always happy to make him happy.

"Sho, slow down. My shoes keep on sliding." Said Mob. This hallway had just been waxed yesterday. It was sort of slippery under her shoes. She was wearing the blue ones that lit up. Sho's were better at being all grippy and stuff. Or maybe he was just belter at jumping.

"Fine, but we're not even halfway done with this floor. We still have all the other levels to jump through." Said Sho. They weren't playing the game right but he wasn't going to tell her that. You were supposed to try and knock the other person off the safe squares with your powers. That was how he and Shimazaki played. He wanted to play with Shimazaki, it was always more fun to play with Shimazaki, but he had to guard dad because someone tried to shoot him on his way into the building.

That had been kind of scary.

But then Shimazaki teleported the guy to the place where people got punished. Sho didn't like dad all that much, he was a jerk most of the time, but he didn't want him to get shot or anything like that. The sound had been loud, too, like fireworks but worse. He would never get used to that sound. Shimazaki even said that you never get used to that sound, it would never stop being loud and scary and stuff, so it was ok that Sho got a little bit scared. If the coolest guy in the world got scared of loud sounds sometimes then it was ok…not that Sho was scared or anything. He wasn't.

He was fine. He was playing with big sis and he was fine.

"Do we have to jump through all of them?" asked Mob. Her feet were starting to hurt a little. Maybe it was because she was in sandals and he was in gym shoes. She didn't know how he could wear gym shoes in the summertime, his feet must have felt like they were on fire, but then again he sort of had to. He had to cover up because of all of his scars.

She wished that Fukuda could have fixed them.

She had asked him about it, fixing Sho's scars, and he had said that he couldn't fix scar tissue. Not without taking off all the skin on Sho's arm and then re-growing it from scratch. Mob would never put her little brother through something so terrible so she said that doing that was not at all an option. Fukuda had said ok. Well he had said 'Understood, Miss Suzuki' which was kind of….she didn't like it when he called her Miss Suzuki. He used to call her by her given name but…but that was just part of being older, she supposed. You became a 'Miss'.

Sho still got called by his given name.

Minegishi said that things were different like that between boys and girls. People expected more from girls and treated them like they were older than they were. It sucked, and Mob agreed, though she was older than Sho…but it still didn't feel nice. Fukuda treated her like he treated dad. She didn't want to be treated like dad. She wanted to be treated like herself. She wasn't' dad. Even when she had been filling in for him she hadn't actually BEEN him. She didn't want to be. Being dad involved a lot of being mean to people and bossing them around. She didn't want that at all.

She didn't want to be older than she was.

She wanted to be ten. Well sometimes she wished that she was older. She wished, sometimes, that she was old enough that dad didn't always tell her what to do. She wished that she was old enough to decide things for herself like what she would be when she grew up and if she could like someone and who that person would be and stuff. She didn't get to decide what she would be when she grew up and dad was going to beat up everyone who he thought that she liked and also she couldn't even decide where she would live or even visit. Dad had been talking about another away mission that Sho could go on but she couldn't go with because dad wanted her to be at his side all the time…for the rest of her life…

At least she got to decide what she and Sho played…sort of.

"Yes. Otherwise we won't win the game." Said Sho

"How do we know who's the winner?" asked Mob. If he was the one who decided which part of the floor was lava and which part wasn't then wouldn't that make him the winner by default? Not that she had a problem with him winning or anything. No, she wanted him to win and to have fun and stuff like that. She wanted her little brother to win at everything.

"Whoever makes it to the end without stepping in the lava is the winner." Said Sho. Actually the winner was whoever didn't get knocked down but he was not about to knock his big sister down. That wasn't a good way to play and he had to play nice with her. Like when they had been little…well he hadn't been nice to her when they were little, either, but…but he could be better now. He could be better now and he would be better now.

"Ok, Sho, that makes sense." Said Mob

"Good. Now come on, let's jump to the cafeteria. It's big cookie day." Said Sho. All of this jumping was making him hungry. That was why he wanted to go to the cafeteria. Not because it was twelve fifteen and that was when Shimazaki usually took his lunch break and he liked to eat in the cafeteria because then he could mess with people and also he liked cookie day because the cookies were the best in the world.

Not an exaggeration.

Sho didn't know who had thought up this recipe but he knew that, in a lifetime of eating cookies, the ones in the cafeteria were the best in the world. He had no idea how dad had come into such a good cookie recipe since he hated desserts and mostly lived on eggs, ketchup, and bread. He wasn't going to question it, though, because then he might end up jinxing it and he did not want to jinx the best cookies in the world.

He'd take two.

One for now and one for later. He had read big sis' memo, he knew that he couldn't have seconds until everyone had gotten their firsts, but that rule was for the Awakened who got in line five or six times just for the cookies. Sho was not going to do something like that, he had better things to do than wait in long lines all day, but he would get two. In case he got hungry later. Jumping around burnt a lot of energy and he needed to keep his strength up or he could pass out or something. It had never happened to him before but there was a first time for everything. Yeah, he would just hold on to the second cookie until he either got hungry or made it back to dad's office.

He could share it too, maybe, possibly….but he was not planning on taking a second cookie for the express purposes of sharing.

"I'm not that hungry…but ok." Said Mob. She usually ate around one forty five, that was when dad had his lunch and usually ate with him, but she would eat with Sho too if he got hungry. She'd eat again at one forty five, though, to make dad happy. He said that one of the best parts of his day was sharing a meal with her. So she had to eat again to make him happy.

But she had to be done by two twenty.

She had times it perfectly. If they were done by two twenty that gave her enough time to take their plates and stuff back down to the lunchroom, she knew that they had Awakened for that but she also knew that exercise was good for her and stuff so she told dad that she needed the exercise which was not a lie at all, and then she would walk down to the lunchroom and she would see…she couldn't even think of him without her hair trying to float away.

Which made no sense at all.

Because she didn't even know him. Not really. She knew what department he worked in and how he liked sweaters and what his powers were and stuff but she didn't KNOW him. She didn't know what his favorite color was or his favorite type of milk or breed of cat or Disney Movie or non-Disney movie or….anything really. She just sort of liked him…even though she knew that it made no sense. She had liked boys before but there had always been something that made her like that. Like how back when she had been seven she liked that boy from her class because he had been nice to her or how she liked that other boy when she had been nine because he had kissed her….she just sort of….liked Hatori….

Just from seeing him for the first time.

There were two felings there when she thought of him. There was the doki doki sort of feeling that was in her heart, she knew what that one meant, but also there was the sort of fizzy feeling that was in her stomach. The fizzy feeling was very new and very weird…but also kind of nice…and she didn't get it. She couldn't ask, though, because it felt like the sort of thing that she should keep private. Well she would have told mom because mom was a girl…but she didn't have a mom and she didn't know any other girls…any other people who she knew for sure were girls. Minegishi was nice and smart and always helped her when she had a problem but they also might have been a boy and she did not want to talk to a boy about this stuff.

So she kept it to herself.

She kept it to herself as she and Sho hopped down the hallways towards the cafeteria. Some people stared at them, some people said 'hi', and some decided to hop along with them. The Awakened were the ones who did that. They waited until she and Sho passed by and then they started following too. It was nice to have someone to play with but…well…she liked everyone. She liked everyone because she was a good person and good people liked everyone but…but she didn't much like spending time around the Awakened. They acted like little kids and she did not need another kid to take care of. She already had Sho to take care of and he was enough for her.

"Why are we doing this?" she heard one Awakened whisper to another.

"I don't know but everyone else was doing this so just shut up and follow." Said another Awakened. By the time she and Sho got to the stairs there was a line of about twelve people following them. All Awakened and all the lowest uniform level. The last batch, the one that dad had sent Fukuda off to see what had made them so…weird, and the ones who Mob felt the least comfortable around. Not that she didn't like them, she liked everyone, but she just…didn't much feel like spending any more time with them than she had to.

"Can you guy get lost or something? We're trying to play here." Said Sho. He didn't like these guys at all. He knew that he sounded like a jerk there but he did not want to have to deal with these guys. They were like little kids but worse. They were so annoying, truly annoying, and when he got annoyed he got mad and he could not afford to get mad because then he might have gotten mad at big sis and he had already decided that he was never going to get mad at her ever again.

Because he was done being a jerk to her.

So maybe it was ok to be a jerk to these guys. They were kind of jerks already. Big sis was always telling them to stop fighting and stop taking too many desserts and eat all the food groups and also to keep their clothes on…which was a weird thing to have to tell someone in Sho's opinion…and he knew that he should have been happy that she was bossing people around who weren't him but the whole thing was sort of…weird. Because they were adults and stuff.

Also nobody got bossed around by his big sister but him. That was just not how it worked.

"Sho, we should be nice to them." Said Mob. She knew that when someone wanted to play with you the polite thing to do was to let them join in even if you didn't want them to. When she had been little, and had still been allowed to play with the other kids, it had always hurt her feelings when they had told her to get lost and that they didn't want to play with someone as weird as her. She didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings…but she also really didn't want to play with them….but also she had to be nice. Like mom would have wanted. She was supposed to be sweet and stuff like mom had said.

"Why? I don't want them to play with us. Besides, they all have jobs to do and when they don't do their jobs dad gets mad and I am sick and tired of dad being mad. Also they're so annoying to be around." Said Sho

"Um…that's right…the part about my dad getting mad at you guys…" said Mob. They were all looking at her now. They were staring at her with their eyes and their auras, which was all the same aura, and she hated how they all had the same aura because it was like they were all clones or something and it was so creepy, and she knew that she had to tell them to go away…because they all had jobs to do…and she really didn't want to hurt their feelings…but also she had to keep people working. She was a part of Claw and they were a part of Claw and they all had to work together to make dad's dream come true.

"Yeah, of course it's true. That's why I said it." Said Sho. Honestly. How hard was it to tell people to get lost? Not very. Besides, it wasn't like they were going to hit them or anything like that. He was trying his best to be a nicer person but maybe big sis was just too nice. Girls were like that. Dad had even said that girls were just naturally nicer than boys….but then again dad was a jerk…

"Ok…um….all you need to get back to work because you all have jobs. When you're on your breaks you can play and stuff but right now…um…you know that you can't all go on break at the same time." Said Mob. She knew that she sounded mean, there, and that she should have been making more of an effort to include people but right now she just…wanted to play with Sho. She wanted to play with Sho and she wanted to get lunch, she wasn't hungry but Sho was, and she just…did not want a bunch of Awakened following her around.

Did that make her a bad person?

She didn't know. What she did know was that she had maybe been a little mean, one of the Awakened cried a little bit, but also she had been right. Everyone had jobs to do including them. Actually they did the most out of everyone. They were the ones who cooked the food and served the meals and did all the cleaning and stuff like that. Dad said that they weren't good for much else, which was sort of mean, but also Mob could sort of see that. Some of them were really bad at following directions and they could be easily distracted and also they fought all the time.

Like a bunch of little kids.

Mob had been sort of like that when she had been little. She wasn't little anymore, she was ten now, and Sho was nine. They acted like big kids. Well Minegishi said that Mob acted like a teenager sometimes but they were just trying to be nice to her. She was a kid and she acted like one…even if sometimes she didn't. Sometimes she had to act like an adult. Like when she had filled in for dad or like when she had to take care of Sho and baby Mukai and stuff. But she was a kid. Even if she didn't always feel like one she was a kid.

Like now. She was a kid and she was playing and that was a normal kid thing to do.

"Here, you can be in line first." Said Sho as they got to the cafeteria. She had been sad, he could tell by her aura, so he let her go first. Also when she went first people just go out of line and let her go right through. They didn't have to stand in line at all, which was nice, but also if she went first then she couldn't tell that he had taken two cookies. He didn't want to get into it with her about what was and was not fair. He knew that he should have waited until everyone had their firsts but lunch ran from noon to two thirty. That was a long time to wait for everyone to have their firsts.

He didn't have all day.

He had important stuff to do. Like he had a lot of squares to jump on and then he planned on visiting Fukuda in his office if dad didn't have anything for him to do and then after that if Shimazaki was free he was planning having him teleport them to the dog park and then they could pet dogs and also climb trees to visit the baby birds and stuff. Also if he still had the extra cookie he could give it to Shimazaki and then Shimazaki would tell him how cool he was that he had thought of him and then they could hang out even more and…and it would be a really fun time.

Yeah, this was looking like it was going to be a great day.

"Are you sure that you don't want to be first? I don't like to be first because when I'm first people get out of line on my account and then I feel bad for making their lunch breaks take longer. Also sometimes they try to carry my tray for me and try to give me extra food that I don't want or need…but when you're in front people are more likely to not notice me…or they do but they don't come near." Said Mob as she and Sho grabbed their trays and plates and cups and stuff. She could see that some people had already gotten out of line even though she never once asked any of them to.

"Just go first. You know how it goes, ladies first and stuff." Said Sho

"But it's also women and children first and you're younger than me so you should go first." Said Mob

"Yeah, it's women and children first. That means that girls have to go first." Said Sho

"But…um…it's not fair that I get to go first because I'm a girl. I think that's not fair at all. What does me being a girl have to do with my going first?" asked Mob

"Well what does me being younger than you have to do with my going first?" asked Sho

"You're little and you need more food than me. Like if we were stuck on a lifeboat I would give you more rations so that you would stay alive for longer." Said Mob

"But this isn't a lifeboat, it's the line for the cafeteria, and we're on land. Lifeboat rules are not land rules." Said Sho

"No but…um…if we were starving to death like…um…if there were zombies outside then I would let you go first…" said Mob

"But there's no zombies and even if there were we wouldn't hide in here. We're start killing them and stuff and then we would be the rulers of Tokyo because we killed all the zombies and then we would have all the food so we wouldn't have to ration it…and also we would be the last two people alive so it wouldn't even matter if I went first." Said Sho

"That's very sad, Sho, I don't want us to be the last two people alive. We'd get so lonely." Said Mob

"We would not. We'd have each other." Said Sho

"That's true…but what if we grew up and wanted to fall in love with people and get married. We can't get married because we're brother and sister. That would be wrong." Said Mob

"Then the human race would have to die out, I guess." Said Sho

"But I don't want the human race to die out." Said Mob

"Well then we'd have to look for survivors because I am not marrying my sister." Said Sho

"You're right, there probably would be a few survivors." Said Mob

"Yeah, and then when we found some we could open the cafeteria back up and then you could be first in line for lunch." Said Sho

"But I don't want-" said Mob. She would have said more about how in the new, post zombie world, they would just have two lines so then they could both go first since neither of them wanted the other to go second, she actually had a very well composed argument in her mind, but it all went out the window when she felt a familiar aura coming near. She felt it in her phone and in the walls and also in the screen on the wall that told people what was for lunch and reminded them that they had to be nice to one another and not have food fights and stuff…and then the screen changed to say…something not very nice.

He was there.

He rounded the corner with his phone in his hand and his earbuds in. He took out his earbuds and wrapped them around his neck. Then he reached over and picked up a tray. Mob could hear Sho talking, he was speaking, and she knew that he was speaking but she couldn't understand a word that he said. All knowledge of the Japanese language left her mind. She had forgotten everything but her name…and also breathing.

"Once the zombies would be gone we would have to rebuild society and in the new society….big sis? Shigeko? Hey? Are you listening to me?" asked Sho. She was staring at…some guy. Sho found no reason to stare at that guy. He wasn't cool at all. His hair was messy and his glasses were shaped like squares and his sweater had a puppy on it and also a lot of Cheeto dust. Sho kind of wanted to play connect the dots with the spots on his forehead though but that didn't mean that he was cool.

Sho stared at people sometimes but only when he thought that they were cool and he really, really wanted to be their friend.

"I-I…um…." Said Mob. Sho was talking to her and she knew that she had to talk back but words were sort of hard for her right now. Hatori was RIGHT THERE even though this was not his lunch time. Also he was there and he was doing something on his phone and she wanted to ask him what he was doing and if he liked phone games and if so which ones he liked and then she could learn which ones he liked and then she could practice and get good at them so then she would have something to talk about with him and then they would be friends and she really wanted to talk to him but she had nothing to talk to him about and his sweater had a puppy on it and now puppies were her favorite animal and-

"Oh. Hey Suzuki-sama. You in line?" asked Hatori

"You-you can go first." Said Mob. She was proud of herself for having made words. They were in the right order and all in Japanese. She could feel her hair trying to float away. She reached behind herself with one hand and kept her braids down. Sho was staring at her now.

"No, it's ok. You and your boyfriend can go first." Said Hatori

"H-He's my little brother, not my boyfriend. I don't have a boyfriend. I'm single. I've never had a boyfriend before. I'm not seeing anyone at all right now. I like your sweater it's very nice." Said Mob

"Gross! What's the matter with you? That's my sister!" said Sho. It was one thing to assume that he would willingly have a girlfriend but it was another thing to assume that his girlfriend was his sister! That was just…not right at all.

"Sorry, my mistake. I had no clue you two were related. You don't look a thing like each other. Like, I can see how he's Suzuki's son, the red hair and all, but you two don't look a thing alike. What, does one of you look like your mom and one of you look like your dad or something?" Said Hatori

"Sho looks like dad but I don't look like either of my parents." Said Mob. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Did he like the way she looked? Did he still think that she looked like she was six or seven? She was wearing the Belle dress today and that one went off of her shoulders…but now she realized that he could probably see her undershirt…and maybe she should have worn the Aurora one again since he had already said that the Aurora dress was nice on her…

"Oh. So are you like adopted or something?" asked Hatori

"No, I came from my mom and dad. I got my powers from my dad. We're just half Japanese and I got all the Japanese but Sho got all the half." Said Mob. She wondered if she was talking too much….or maybe not enough….or maybe she should just take a vow of silence for the rest of her life so she doesn't have to worry about this stuff anymore. She doesn't now. All she knows is that she really, really, wants to talk to him but she also wants to run away and hide so she never has to talk to him again.

And also Sho was staring at her and she had no idea how to explain this to him.

"Heh. Genetics are weird. Anyway you gonna get in line or…" said Hatori

"Oh! Right, sorry, come on Sho! We need to have lunch now…which is why we're here…in the lunch line….right now. To get our lunches…right now." Said Mob. She couldn't stop talking. It was like her brain was giving orders without her telling it to. She felt like she had to say something or things would be awkward but in talking things would be even more awkward and…stuff.

Sho ended up having to drag her to the lunch line.

Mob let herself be dragged through the lunch line and to a table. She saw Sho take two cookies and she decided that she would remind him of the rules later. Her mind was too….messy…right now. She wanted to know why Hatori had been there outside of his usual lunch time. She also wanted to know if that was a new sweater since she hadn't seen it before. She also wanted to know how he got his hair so shiny. She also wanted to know what game he was playing on his phone. She also wanted to know why he ate his dessert first, then his meat, then his salad, and then finally his rice. She also wanted to know what his favorite color was and his favorite food and if he had a girlfriend and if he wanted and girlfriend and if-

"Why are you being so weird?" asked Sho. She was ignoring him again. He had been trying to talk to her about their plan for what they would do if there ever were zombies and she was just ignoring him to stare at that guy. Sho didn't get it. He was just a guy. Not even a cool one. if that had been a cool guy he could understand the staring but he wasn't cool. He didn't have a cool jacket or spiky hair or cool tattoos, probably, and he probably wasn't a lot of fun to hang out with either since he was sitting alone at lunch and playing on his phone and stuff.

Big sis could be so weird sometimes.

"I-I'm not being weird." Said Mob. She looked away from Hatori and stared shoveling rice in her mouth really fast. There. She was not being weird, she was eating, and that was not weird because it was lunch time and at lunch time you were supposed to eat. So she was being normal. The most normal.

"You keep on staring at that guy." Said Sho. He wondered if she was going to choke. Now he regretted not paying attention to those 'what to do if someone is choking' posters on the walls.

"What guy?" asked Mob with her mouth full even though she knew that it was rude to talk with your mouth full of food and stuff. She opened her milk and tried to wash down the rice…and almost spat it out. Yuck. She had been so distracted that she had accidentally picked up some soy milk….great.

"That guy in the glasses. You keep on staring at him and when he was talking to us you got all weird. Why?" asked Sho

"Um…no reason. I just…I just get sort of…like that…when he's near me. That's all." said Mob. She liked Hatori. She knew that she liked Hatori. She wanted to be his friend and his girlfriend and…and a lot of other stuff that she did not want to talk to her little brother about. If he had been a girl, her little sister, then she would have maybe talked about this…or not. Dad did not want her to like anyone and she didn't want to get anyone beaten up or anything like that.

"Oh. He's that Hatori guy you were talking about….I like him. You should be his friend and talk to him and hang out with him and stuff." Said Sho. Also she should hold his hand and kiss him and marry him and have babies with him and stuff like that. Sho liked him. He would have to beat Hatori up, of course, but he was glad that big sis had found a guy who she liked instead of Shimazaki.

Sho felt good about that. He felt very good about that.

"Yes, maybe I'll do that. I don't know. Come on, let's eat and then we can play some more or something. It's very good rice today. You should eat the rice. It's such good plain white rice." Said Mob as she ate more and more rice. Maybe if they ate then they could talk about something else, anything else, because she did not want to talk about this to her little brother. He was a boy, for one thing, and also dad might find out about how she felt and then beat up Hatori.

She didn't want that.

She wanted to…to eat her lunch. She wanted to eat lunch and then play and then just…not talk about this stuff. Sho thought up the best games. They should play those games, yes, and not talk about this anymore at all ever again forever.


	194. Broken DS

When things broke you took them to tech support.

That was the point of having tech support people. They fixed broken electronics and stuff. So, really, it made sense for Mob to take Sho's broken DS to tech support to get fixed.

"It's not broken though. I just forgot to charge it last night and the battery died." Said Sho. They had been playing together when Sho's DS suddenly died. The light had turned yellow and then red but neither of them had brought their chargers. So, well, it seemed that the battery had died and that was why the DS died.

But what did Mob know? She didn't work in tech support.

"We don't know that for sure. We're not tech support people." Said Mob. She handed Sho her DS to keep him occupied. This was another one of those days where they hung out at work with dad. Sho needed to be kept occupied because otherwise he built forts and ran around and stuff. Dad didn't like that and Sho was her responsibility.

So she was responsible for making sure that his DS wasn't broken.

"We do too know that for sure. We've been playing videogames for our entire lives. We can tell when our stuff is and is not out of charge." Said Sho

"Here, just play my DS until I come back. You said, before, that your battery was dying sooner than normal. Maybe it's broken. I don't know, you know, none of us know. So I should go and tell someone who knows. Right now." Said Mob. Sho took her DS and shook his head.

"You just want to see Hatori, don't you?" asked Sho. Mob turned red and pulled her braids down before they could start to float away. She glanced over at dad. He was still working. Well he was doing something at his laptop and she figured that it was work. Sometimes he read things but she was not supposed to be nosy and see what he was reading.

"Sho! I-I am...um…just going to…to see if your DS is broken or not. He might not even be in the tech support room." Said Mob

"You know he will be. Those guys lock themselves in all day. They don't even come out to go to the bathroom. I heard that they just pee in bottles." Said Sho. Mob scrunched up her nose. No way was that true. Who would pee in a bottle? And what if you missed? Or you forgot which bottle was what?

Boys came up with the most ridiculous, gross, and ridiculously gross things sometimes.

"Sho's, that ridiculous and disgusting. People don't pee in bottles." Said Mob

"Yes they do. Well boys can. We're just lucky like that." Said Sho

"That's so gross! Why would anybody do that?" asked Mob

"Because we can and you can't." said Sho

"Sho, please don't ever pee in bottles for as long as you live. We have a perfectly good bathroom. Use it." Said Mob. She stuck out her tongue a little. Sometimes she wished that she had a little sister instead of a little brother. Like not that she wished that Sho had never been born, she could never wish that, but instead that he had been born a girl so the idea of peeing in a bottle was not one that could ever cross his mind. Because it was gross. And wrong. And also probably against some kind of rule…not that she could ever imagine a scenario where 'don't pee in bottles' ever came up to where someone had to make a rule about it.

Boys were so weird sometimes.

"Daughter, go and get yours brother's game fixed. Son…that's disgusting. Never talk about that again." said dad. He didn't even look up from what he was doing. That was good. It meant that he wasn't mad. It was always a toss up about whether or not he'd be mad at them…well mostly Sho. He hardly ever got mad at her these days.

She was still going to hurry back though.

She was still going to hurry back because she didn't want to leave dad and Sho alone for too long. She should have taken Sho with her, it was good to have him walk sometimes to get his extra energy out, but she also didn't like how he teased her about liking Hatori. About how weird she got when she was around him. She couldn't help it, being weird around him, it just sort of happened.

He was just so…him.

She still didn't know much about him but she did know that she liked him…for some reason. She didn't know. She had heard that you didn't need a reason to like someone but she had also heard that love at first sight wasn't real. Mom had said that she had liked dad the first time that she saw him but they didn't get married right away. Dad had never said anything about how he felt when he met mom. Minegishi just said that love was a crock of…words that Mob was not going to use…but that was just how Minegishi felt…Mob was her own person with her own feelings.

A lot of them.

She didn't know why she felt the way she felt. She only knew that she felt like this. She felt all doki doki when she thought about him and her stomach felt all fizzy and it was just…a good feeling and a bad one at the same time. The feeling made her feel all hot and cold all over and she just didn't get it. She'd liked people before but not like this. Maybe that meant that she liked him a lot…or something. She didn't know. She didn't even know him. Not his favorite food or color or movie or anything. She knew that he looked nice…and he wore very nice sweaters…

But looking nice and wearing nice sweaters was not the basis of a good relationship.

She didn't know what, exactly, the basis for a good relationship was but she knew that it had to come from more than thinking the other person looked nice. Not that she had ever seen a good relationship before. Mom and dad had been married and made her and Sho but mom also ran away and dad declared her to be a traitor so that relationship could not have been very good at all. Also when they had been together dad still went away for a long time and that probably made her sad. Mob had only been away from Sho for a few days but those had been so hard on her. The time that dad ran away from home and left her with baby Mukai and Sho had been hard, too.

Poor mom.

Mom and dad had never done any of that couple stuff that Mob had seen and read about. They had never held hands or kissed where Mob could see. Dad never told mom that she loved him and mom…well at some point she stopped telling dad that she loved him, too. At some point they had stopped hanging out together where Mob could see….and stuff. Mob didn't want to be with someone who was like that to her.

She did want to be with someone.

It just seemed so…perfect. Having someone in your life who looked at you and didn't just think of what you could do for them. Someone who loved you for exactly who you were and not the plan they had for you later on. Someone who was there for you no matter what. Someone who would chase you to the airport or parachute from the sky or wrestle an alligator just to tell you that they loved you. Someone who was nice to you all the time, not just some of the time, and someone who you always wanted to be with because they were so nice. Plus all of the kissing and stuff…Mob really liked the kissing and stuff…

She had only been kissed once in her life and that had been the best, well in the top ten, moments of her life.

She was never going to see him again though, the boy she kissed, even though she wanted to. She had kept her promise, she would never forget him, but he was out there in the world and he was better off without her anyway. If she ever found him again then he would have gotten captured again and nobody would listen to her when she said that he wasn't an orphan and that they had to give him back to his mom and dad. Nobody ever listened to her about anything. So, really, he was better off without her. She still liked him but not as much as she did when she had been nine. She couldn't be in love with someone who she was never going to see again. That wasn't how love worked.

Though she couldn't be in love with someone she didn't know, either.

Not that this was love or anything. Love came later, Minegishi said, after the part where you liked someone. When you first started to like someone you spent time with them and went on dates with them and stuff to figure out if there was anything there. Dates were a lot of work, though, and Minegishi said that they didn't bother with that stuff. They either liked someone or they didn't and when they did like someone they kissed them and when they didn't like someone they didn't kiss them.

Adults could be complicated like that.

But Mob was not an adult, she was a kid, and she had no idea if she even liked…well she knew that she liked him…but she had no idea if she would like him after she got to know him…or even if she would ever get to know him. He was older than her, a whole nine years older, and he might not have liked her. She didn't know. Adults could like kids like that. Everyone seemed to think that Shimazaki liked her like that…even though she kept on saying how that was not at all true…so maybe in that case…

Mob decided not to think about that anymore.

Dad would beat up anyone who he thought liked her. He had said, before, that she wasn't allowed to like anyone until she turned thirteen because that was the age that he had first started liking people. That was just not fair in the least bit. She was her own person. She was Suzuki Shigeko. He was Suzuki Touichirou. They were different people entirely and as different people they were leading different lives. Her feelings were different from his and his feelings were different from hers. They were different people entirely and as different people he could not just tell her that she had to wait until she was thirteen to fall in love and he could not just go around beating up people who he thought were in love with her.

Well actually he could because he was dad and he could and would do whatever he wanted.

She wasn't going to talk to him about this stuff. There was no changing his mind and she was not going to change her mind so it was best that they just not talk about this stuff at all. Mob didn't even know if Hatori liked her back or if she even liked him….well she knew that she liked him….but if she would ever like him if she got to know him better. She didn't even know if she would ever even get to know him better. She had walked down the halls and across the building over to where the tech support people were and she was just standing outside of the door holding Sho's DS and she knew that she had to knock and come in…

But she couldn't.

She was too nervous. She could barely even raise her hand up to knock on the door. She…she needed to, though. She felt the DS in her hand. It might have been broken and then Sho would have had no DS to play with and that would have just been the worst and she could not let that happen to her little brother so of course she was going to knock on the door and wait for it to open and then she was going to walk through the door and say hi and then get this fixed and…stuff.

That was what she was going to do.

She knocked on the door because that was the polite thing to do. She knocked and then waited…and waited….and waited. She knew that there were people on the other side of the door, she could see their auras, and she knew that they must have been able to see her aura too. She thought about just going in….dad had said before that knocking was ridiculous and that as his Daughter she could go everywhere in Claw but the boy's bathroom. Well she could go there too but she had to make all the boys leave too. She didn't much want to go in the boy's bathroom, she doubted that it could have been that much different from the girl's bathroom, but she did want to go into the tech support room.

She opened the door.

Oh. There were people in there. They just all had headphones in and were playing videogames…which was not something that they were supposed to do but she wasn't going to tell on them. She did things that she wasn't supposed to do all the time too. So long as nobody was getting hurt, she decided, her policy on people breaking the rules would be to keep it to herself. Nobody ever got hurt from playing videogames…unless you sat too close to Sho when he got mad….but nobody was mad here.

They were all too far in the zone.

Tech support people were not Awakened. Well some of them came from the Awakened, not the lower uniforms though, but a lot of them were just espers who also knew tech stuff. Also some techopaths, which could control technology to some degree. Mob couldn't do that but some people could. Nobody was as good as Hatori though. It said so in his file…which Mob had to read so make up the birthday lists and not because she had been sneaking and spying and stuff. She had read his file because she had needed to know when his birthday was and that was how she found out that he was a prodigy like she was. He just only had one power, he couldn't even put up a barrier, but he was very good at what he did.

Also he was good at playing videogames it seemed.

It wasn't any game like she had played before. It looked sort of like one of those games where you had a bunch of guys and they all took turns attacking. She didn't really like those sorts of games and neither did Sho. Too slow, he said, and the only fighting game that she liked was Smash Brothers but even then she only played when Sho wanted to. Virtual pet games were the best but that was just her opinion. Hatori looked like he was having fun and that could have been a fun game and she would have to get the name of that game from him and then they would have something to talk about and then-

"Oh, Suzuki-sama. What's up?" Said Hatori. He leaned back in his chair and…and he was looking at her…and she had been staring at him for a very long time…

She held her hair down.

"My-my brother's DS is broken…can you fix it?" asked Mob. She practically shoved Sho's DS into his hands. She needed to calm down and stop being nervous. He had on a sweater with a tabby cat today. That was the second best kind of cat ever. That meant that he liked cats…and she liked cats…and that was a thing that they had in common…so now they had a thing in common!

"This DS isn't broken, the battery is just dead." Said Hatori. He didn't even have to do anything to it. He just had to hold it and he could tell. That was so cool! He was so cool. He was so cool and he was so tall even though he was sitting down she could still tell that he was tall and the light was hitting his glasses and his glasses were so cool and he had crumbs on the front of him and she thought that even the crumbs on the front of his sweater were cool and he was cool and-

-and she needed to talk now because he had talked to her.

"My brother thought so too but then I thought that it might have been broken so I thought that you guys would know how to fix it since you guys know about tech stuff and this is tech stuff and we couldn't tell to see if it was just out of battery because we both forgot our chargers because we were in a hurry this morning because we both accidentally slept in because we were watching movies and-and-and that's what happened. How are you?" asked Mob. Right. Air. She needed to put air back in her lungs now. She need to breath and stop talking because she had said too many words and now he thought that she was stupid or something.

"I'm fine, been better, been worse. Next time bring your charger so you don't have to come all the way down here." Said Hatori. She couldn't tell how he felt. His aura was so…different. It was all around him in the walls and the computers and also in her phone and she had no idea if he was annoyed or not and she knew that she should just go because there was no way a guy like him would notice a girl like her anyway and even if he did dad would probably beat him up and-

"You know what? You seem kind of freaked out about this and you are, technically, my boss I guess so here." Said Hatori. Mob wondered what he meant but she didn't ask. She didn't have a chance to ask. As soon as he finished talking the little light on Sho's DS went back to green and it turned its self back on. Hatori turned it off and closed it.

"Don't tell anyone I can do that or they'll never leave me alone." Said Hatori. He handed the DS back to her. It took her brain a minute to get the message to her hand that it was time to move and stuff. She reached out and took it from his hand…and then his fingers touched her fingers…

And every single computer in that room, the monitors anyway, flashed on and off again.

People did not like that. There was yelling and cursing and someone started sobbing….and Mob just felt terrible. Hatori cursed, too, but his computer went back to normal before everyone else's. His game was still going but his character had died….and it was Mob's fault. She wasn't a technopath, she couldn't control technology, but she could mess with electricity. That was why she sometimes accidentally messed with the lights and TV and stuff…and now she had messed with the whole tech room…and she had lost control of her powers…

She had never been this embarrassed in her life. Not since the time when she was seven and accidentally tucked her skirt into the waistband of her underwear and walked around like that on accident.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry…but thank you!" said Mob. She bowed and then ran out of the room. She ran down the halls and up the stairs and then down the stairs again when she realized that she had taken the wrong stairs and then she went down the right halls and up the right stairs until she got to where she was supposed to be. She was out of breath when she got back to dad's office but she didn't care. She had to get back as soon as she could. She had to get out of there.

She was so embarrassed.

"Here you go." Gasped out Mob as she handed Sho his DS. She sat down on the floor next to him and tried to catch her breath. Her bottle of milk, not the special kind even though she really could have used the special kind right about then, was dropped into her lap.

"Was it really that urgent, Daughter?" asked dad. Mob nodded and drank her milk. Yes. There was nothing in the world more urgent than getting back up to dad's office where she had no chance at all of doing something stupid to embarrass herself.

"Yeah it was! It works again! Thanks, big sis!" said Sho. Mob smiled. She was glad that he was happy. That was what mattered the most, Sho being happy, and not her being so embarrassed that she wanted to crawl into a hole and never come back out.

How could she have lost control like that?

And in front of him, too. Now he probably thought that she was so dumb. Now he probably thought that she was just a little kid who couldn't control her powers and now he probably wanted nothing to do with her and now they would probably never be friends and get together and…well they would probably never end up getting together anyway but still. Now he probably didn't even like her or want to be around her or any of that. He was probably so annoyed by her and stuff now. She wanted…she eyed the fancy bottles of things that she wasn't allowed to have.

She needed a drink.

That would have cleared her head. Her aura was being weird and she knew that dad would notice and comment on it and maybe even be upset with her and the thought of dad getting upset with her was making her all upset and she didn't want to be upset but she also didn't want dad to catch her doing things that she was not supposed to do…but she was also so stressed….she felt the vape pen in her pocket. That was not as good as smoking but she didn't have any more cigarettes and Shimazaki was out on assignment, which might have just been dad trying to get rid of him because he had been extra annoying that day, so she couldn't even borrow one from him even though she had promised Minegishi that she wouldn't smoke anymore…but she needed it. Or a turn at Shimazaki's vape pen. He had the best ones.

She needed something to help her calm down.

Regular milk wasn't helping and she couldn't do any of her regular things that helped so…so she just had to…to ride this out. She had to calm down on her own…and she wasn't the best at that. She had never been the best at that even when she had been little and hadn't started drinking and all of that other stuff. She had to calm down, though, because she was setting a terrible example for her little brother.

Sho.

She needed to think of Sho. He was so happy now that his DS was fixed. She had made him that happy. She thought about him and how happy she had made him and how nothing mattered but the fact that his DS was fixed…and she felt better. Sho was who mattered. Not her. Sho. And he was happy and she had made him happy. That was what she had set out to do.

His DS had been broken and she'd gotten it fixed. When something broke you took fixed it. There.


	195. Haircut Day

Haircut day came about once a month.

Mob didn't get proper haircuts though. Only the front of her hair ever got cut. It had been that way for her entire life. In every single picture she had ever seen of herself when she had been little, too little too remember, she'd always worn her hair the same way. Two long braids and then short bangs. Mom said that she'd kept Mob's hair like that because of her powers. It had to be tied back or else it would float around and the bangs were to keep it out of her eyes. She had to have long hair because she was a girl. She'd asked mom once when she had been cutting Sho's hair if she could have short hair too but mom said that Mob's hair was long and beautiful and she could never ever cut it because she was a girl and stuff. Also mom had said that for her whole life she wished that she'd had thick, long, black hair just like Mob's.

So Mob had never gotten it cut.

Not for real. Not like Minegishi cut their hair. Minegishi'd had short hair when she met them and then they had been growing it out, which in Mob's opinion was a good thing because once it got long enough she could braid it for them, but they were chopping off all of their hair today. They said that it had gotten too long and it was getting too hard to take care of. Even though it wasn't even long enough to braid.

"Hold still before I end up flaying you alive." Said Minegishi as they attempted to cut Mob's bangs evenly. She was used to doing it herself with a bowl, she had said, and the results weren't always the most even. Minegishi could not stand looking at uneven bangs so they decided that if they wanted something done right then they had to do it themselves.

Plus it was good practice.

Their hair had gotten too long. They hadn't wanted to go through the work of keeping up with it but instead they had just created more work for themselves down the line. They had spent most of summer with hair down below their jawline. Too long. They hadn't had long hair since they had been a child. They were not a child now and they could chop their hair down to nothing if they wanted to. Not that they would be chopping their hair, now, they would be cutting it down to their preferred length with proper salon scissors.

But first they were going to practice on Mob.

"I am holding still…or at least I think that I am. It works better if you use a bowl. That's what my mom always did." Said Mob. Mom used to make her and Sho sit up on chairs in the kitchen and then she would cut their hair. She did Mob's first because it went faster. Sho's hair was more complicated. Mom had to wash it and then cut it while it was wet and then again after it had dried and spiked up. She was glad that she didn't have hair that spiked up. Haircut day took all day for Sho. Dad went a lot faster because he wore his hair a lot shorter. Short hair looked like it was so much easier to deal with…not that Mob would ever be cutting her hair short or anything like that.

"You really want to have blunt bowl cut bangs for your entire life?" asked Minegishi. They hated what they had done to their bangs last time they'd trimmed them. Slightly uneven and way too short. That was why they were playing mad stylist with Mob. Well not truly playing mad stylist, they weren't going to give her a pixie cut or anything, but they were going to try for something other than the truly unfortunate bowl cut she'd been wearing since the day Minegishi first met her.

"Um….yes?" asked Mob. Honestly she had never really thought about how she wore her hair. She'd had it the same way for her entire life. She left it down to sleep and also when she wanted to look older but aside from that her hair was the way it was and she had no plans to change it any time soon.

She had no idea what she would even do with it.

She wanted to color it red when she grew up. That way she could match dad and Sho. Lavender was a nice color, too. That was the color that Minegishi had. They had dyed their hair earlier that week and had let Mob watch. It was long and complicated, and also the chemicals did not smell good at all, but it was worth it to make their hair all pretty like that. Mob wondered why they were bothering to chop it all off. It was so much prettier long. She wished that she had hair like theirs. Lavender hair. Short hair.

Short hair would have been less work…but mom wouldn't have wanted her to have short hair.

"Whatever, it's your hair." Said Minegishi. They picked Mob's bowl off of the bathroom counter, it smelled vaguely of popcorn, and plopped it down on her head. They cut as quickly and as evenly as they could. They only cut her bangs and left the rest of her hair long even though they could not begin to understand how she withstood the summer heat with such long, black, hair.

Or even how she got such long black hair in the first place.

Maybe she was adopted. It would have made all the sense and also none of the sense. Suzuki didn't like kids, that was obvious, so he had no reason to adopt one. Also the odds of someone as powerful as Suzuki not being his kid were slim to none. As far as Minegishi knew, anyway. They didn't know how esper genetics worked. They were born to two normal parents. So had Shibata and Shimazaki. Mob and her brother had one esper parent. Most people just came from normal people. Minegishi had no idea how power were inherited so maybe they should just not have been speculating on this even to themselves.

Still though, it was odd, how little resemblance Mob bore to the rest of her family.

"Thank you. You did a better job than I usually do. My mom used to cut my hair…but then she left before she could show me how. My dad cut it for me a few times but I don't like asking him for help with stuff that I can do myself." Said Mob. She looked at herself in the mirror. That was a lot more even than she did it too. A little longer, too, she couldn't see her eyebrows at all. She smiled.

"What's so funny?" asked Minegishi. Mob was smiling and her aura had hiccupped a bit. They hadn't done that bad of a job. Besides, they were out of practice. They had gotten lazy lately and let their hair grow up too long. It was so long that Ryou was starting to play with it when he got bored.

So really they had no choice but to cut it short again.

He didn't feel complete unless he was bothering someone. Well he could go and play with someone else's hair if he had to play with someone's hair so badly. They were glad, now, that they could go about their day without someone teleporting next to them and just touching their hair like they were a house pet or something. Also they could survive the rest of summer better now….but then they would have to grow it out again in the wintertime…or just invest in a hat. Or stay inside until it got warm out again…

They really did not like winter for a myriad of reasons.

"I can't see my eyebrows anymore. We're twins…not in real life but…but because we match." Said Mob. She wondered if that was mean, pointing out that Minegishi didn't have any eyebrows. She hadn't meant it in a mean way but then again she was not the best at the whole talking thing.

"Yeah, we kind of do. I can pull it off better, though." said Minegishi as they stood side by side with Mob in front of the bathroom mirror. Mob did look a bit like a young them. Back when they'd had black hair. Of course they had been a much more sullen and morose child than Mob ever could be…which made no sense considering Mob's upbringing up to this point.

How she had not made herself an orphan at this point was beyond Minegishi's understanding.

Suzuki was an asshole. He was a sexist asshole who treated his kids like a cross between a couple of employees and a couple of pets. Minegishi did not know how Mob could put up with it…though the sway in the way she stood gave it away. She'd been at it again? Really? But…well the why went without saying.

It was that very same 'why' that had started Minegishi down that very same river of sin.

It had started when they had been a few years younger than Mob was now. For their entire life they knew that they could talk to plants and that they could talk back. Dear old mom and dad had thought that they were crazy and since this had been the nineties and people didn't, you know, look into these things the best thing to do was to beat the crazy out of them, starve the crazy out of them, try to spook the crazy out of them by going on multi-hour screaming monologues…it had not been a good time. It had been around the age of six that they realized that they could make plants grow.

That they could make their apple tree grow out of season fruit.

By about the age of seven they had mastered the art of making plants grow whatever fruits or vegetables they wanted them too. There were hiccups, even now there were, but they made it past them. So what if the apples were tomatoes on the inside and the bananas had avocado pits? They weren't hungry anymore. They could make anything grow, change anything into whatever they felt like it, so long as they had just one seed.

Poppy seeds worked just fine.

They had discovered opium in a book, and really they needed to be more careful in what they put in children's books, when they were eight. The rest was history. As soon as they realized that they could make themselves feel better, that they could make themselves feel everything and nothing and even both at the same time, they had never looked back. That was what had made the years between eight and twelve bearable. The group home years too. Also their post emancipation years.

And the rest of their adult life.

So, really, there was something to be said about the river of sin. They never would have been able to cope without it. Of course they hadn't stuck to plants for long. Salvation came at the bottom of a bottle or in tablet form. They had been walking the fine line between chemical dependence and just taking the edge off ever since. It could have been worse. They could have been Ryou. They at least could stand to feel nothing, on occasion, but he always had to be feeling something.

So, yeah, at least they had been the one to start Mob down this river of sin and not Shimazaki Ryou.

"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings." Said Mob. She was bad at reading faces and bodies and stuff but she could read auras. Minegishi seemed sort of sad there…well sort of. Their aura pulled in close though since their aura was always stuck to plants it could be a little hard to tell. The spider plant hanging from the ceiling got a little bit droopy though so maybe that meant that Minegishi as feeling all droopy on the inside.

"What? No, you didn't. I am well aware of the fact that I don't have any eyebrows." Said Minegishi as they cut their hair down to something more manageable. Mob decided to be helpful and catch their hair and put it in the overflowing bathroom garbage. Whatever. They weren't going to take it out. They weren't the one who had a surprisingly intricate and also wasteful nightly skincare ritual.

"I know but I just thought that I had hurt your feelings because of how your aura was being. I don't like it when I accidentally hurt people's feelings…and also I would never do that on purpose." Said Mob

"Mob, you are too good for this sinful earth." Said Minegishi with a laugh. Yeah, she may have vaguely looked like them when they had been ten but she was nothing like that. Well the substance abuse and abusive/neglectful father but aside from that Mob was their polar opposite. It had probably never crossed her mind that she could use her powers to kill her father and take his place as the head of Claw.

Which Minegishi totally would have done had they been in Mob's sparkly blue light up Frozen sandals.

"Um…thank you?" asked Mob. She didn't think that she was too good for anything and she also didn't think that the Earth was sinful. The Earth was a nice place filled with all sorts of people. Some of them were good and some were bad and some were very good and some were very bad but nobody in the whole world was too good for the Earth.

Also Mob was not a very god person.

She had stolen one of the bottles from dad's office. Not one of the big pretty bottles, he would have noticed that, but she had stolen one of the little bottles that were behind the pretty bottles. She knew that dad wouldn't miss it…and at the time she had told herself that it belonged to Claw and she was Claw and stuff…but now she knew that she had just been stealing and that stealing was wrong…and also she should not have been drinking…

But she sort of needed it.

It helped to keep her powers in check and it made the world a more fun place. Just a little bit. Not enough that she got sick and threw up or went to sleep and didn't wake up for a long time. She wasn't going to overdo it. Minegishi had told her a bunch of times to be careful never to overdo it. She just…it was ok so long as she drank only a capful or two. Like Minegishi had said. She just…she needed it. She got sort of sad around this time of year.

Late summer.

"You're welcome…and you didn't hurt my feelings. I was just thinking." Said Minegishi

"What were you thinking about?" asked Mob

"Just…things. The past. Things that I don't like to think about." Said Minegishi

"But if you don't like to think about them then why were you thinking about them just now?" asked Mob

"Just some stray thoughts." Said Minegishi as they got to work getting their hair down to an acceptable length.

"About what?" asked Mob. She always wondered what Minegishi was thinking about. They were so smart and they knew so much about things and stuff….and also they were her very best friend in the history of ever. Well next to Sho but Sho was her little brother and little brothers were their own thing.

"Do you have to ask so many questions?" asked Minegishi. They'd made a mistake, there, and now they were going to have to go shorter than they had intended…but that was ok. Just less work for them in the future and less for Shimazaki to play with when he wanted to be annoying.

"Yes." said Mob. She wondered if Minegishi had meant to cut their hair that short. It was as short as a boy's now…but they might have been a boy…and also sometimes girls had short hair. She didn't know how that worked, though, because mom had said that girls had to have long hair and dad agreed.

"Even if you're being nosy?" asked Minegishi

"I'm being nosy again?" asked Mob. She wished that she could have taken it back. She knew that Minegishi didn't like nosiness but Mob never knew when she was being nosy and when she was just asking a question.

"Yeah, kind of." Said Minegishi. They flinched when they saw Mob's aura turn inwards. Right. Mob was a kid and she needed kid gloves…even if she was being sort of nosy. But that was just how kids were. Curious. Minegishi knew that they had been as a kid. They had practically lived in the library back when they had been Mob's age.

"Oh….I didn't mean to. I was just worried about you and stuff. That's all. I'm sorry." said Mob. She said sorry too much and she knew that she said sorry that much but also she meant it every time she said it. She always felt guilty every moment of her life, it felt like sometimes, but saying sorry made her feel better.

"Mob…it's fine. I was just thinking about…about how you reminded me of a younger version of myself. A younger and happier version of myself." Said Minegishi

"I do? Me? But why?" asked Mob

"The black hair and the budding substance abuse issues, mostly." Said Minegishi with a shrug and a flippancy that they did not feel.

"What are substance abuse issues?" asked Mob

"The reason that you're tipsy right now. I'm sorry that I started you down this road, ok? I never should have started you down this road." Said Minegishi with a sigh. They had been trying to help but, instead, they had just ended up making more problems for themselves down the road. They hadn't known Mob that well back then, she hadn't grown so thouroughly on them back then, and if they could do it again they would have stopped themselves….

But did that make them a hypocrite?

They didn't know. They knew that they had messed Mob's life up…but they may have just been seeing themselves in her. They could see her in the mirror but they may have just been seeing themselves in the past. Mob was not them and they….they could not speak for her future. But they still felt like they had ruined that future…even if they were making her present better…

They didn't know. They weren't a parent.

"I don't mind. I'm a lot happier when I drink and stuff. I mean I've been happy lately since me and Sho made up but also I'm kind of sad because…because this time of year makes me sad." Said Mob. She didn't know how much of this was ok to talk about. She knew that dad was back at their house and that his hearing was good but not so good that he could hear all the way next door to Minegishi's bathroom, and also over the very loud music that was coming from Shimazaki's room, or the very loud TV that was competing with the very loud music, but she still felt like she was about to get into big trouble for even mentioning mom and what happened and how she was gone and stuff.

"Your mom?" asked Minegishi. They did some mental math in their head. Yeah, Mob always got kind of melancholic around this time. Her little brother went from Dr. Jekyll to….well actually he went from Mr. Hyde to Mr. Hyde on a three day coke bender. Suzuki just acted like more of an asshole than usual. You would think that such a rich and powerful man would have been able to afford a therapist or something but, hey, what did Minegishi know?

"My mom. She ran away three years ago around this time…and I've been thinking about her and stuff…even though I know that I shouldn't." said Mob. If dad knew how she had been feeling, how she had been thinking of mom and stuff, then she would have been in for it…and she did not like it when she was in for it.

"She's your mother, you can think about her whenever you want to. How's your dad going to find out? What, is he a secret telepath or something?" asked Minegishi. Suzuki had better not have been a telepath or he was getting a piece of their mind.

"No. He says that telepathy is the one power that he never wants. I just feel like he's always watching, you know? Like how if I say something wrong I'll be in for it even if he's not…there." said Mob

"So not only is he the avatar of a God, the most powerful man in the world, and the future ruler of the Earth he's also Santa Claus?" asked Minegishi

"What?" asked Mob. None of that made sense…well those were things that people said about dad sometimes…but putting them all together made it sound sort of…like crazy talk.

"He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake. He's knows if you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sakes." Said Minegishi

"Santa isn't real and if he was he wouldn't be my dad. Santa is jolly. Dad isn't. He doesn't even like Christmas that much. We only celebrate it because he says that our cultural traditions are important." Said Mob

"Well then why do you think he's listening? I mean…there had better not be cameras or something around here." Said Minegishi. They glanced around. That had never not been a possibility…but they had been getting Suzuki's daughter drunk and high for years now. If he had known he would have had a violent word with Minegishi at some point.

"There aren't. Dad says that a surveillance state breeds distrust." Said Mob. That had come up while she and dad had been listening to an audio book about the year 1984. Not a good year at all in Mob's opinion. She had been happy when it ended and she got to choose the next audio book…though dad hadn't really cared about the novelization of Frozen.

"Good. He hasn't gone totally around the bend yet." Said Minegishi

"What do you mean?" asked Mob. Dad wasn't ever going to go around the bend. He got sort of angrier than normal when it got to be this time of year but he wasn't going to go crazy.

"Nothing. I didn't mean anything. There's nothing at all insane in what your father is doing. Anyway you can feel however you want about your mom. Nobody has the right to tell you how to feel. Ok? And if you need to reach for a bottle or whatever to make yourself feel better…try not to. Ok? First try not to and then see if…if you can feel better on your own. Ok?" said Minegishi feeling like the biggest hypocrite in the world. They didn't know where the line was between hypocrite and keeping someone from making your mistakes. They thought that it would just be enough to teach Mob moderation and make sure that she was safe but now she was getting things on her own. Minegishi was no longer in control of the situation and they knew that they couldn't put the toothpaste back in the tube but they also had no clue what to do with the toothpaste now that it was out of the tube.

She was not their daughter.

This was not their child. They were friends, this was the best friendship that Minegishi had ever formed in their life, but they were not parent and child. Her mother should have been the one doing this. Her mother should have been the one cutting her hair and her mother should have been the one teaching her how to drink and smoke and all of that other stuff. But she didn't have a mother. Her mother had run off to parts unknown and her father could not be trusted with a houseplant let alone a human being.

Minegishi had no idea what they were doing here.

They had no idea what they were supposed to do about the mess they'd made. They'd started Mob down this path because they had wanted to make things better in the moment. They hadn't accounted for how out of control things would get…and they were starting down the out of control path. She was doing all of this at ten. What would she be doing at eleven or twelve or…oh God, the teen years were coming…and at that point there would be no stopping Mob from doing whatever it was that she was going to get it in her head to do.

Minegishi had no idea what they were supposed to do without being a hypocrite…so they just decided to say their piece and hope that it didn't fall on deaf ears or end up making them look like a hypocrite in Mob's eyes.

"I do try to feel better on my own…but I can try harder, I guess. I'm not drinking so much that I get sick or that I fall asleep. Things are just sort of hard when it's this time of year. I remember what you told me about only one capful and using moderation and stuff. I listen to you when you tell me things." Said Mob. She didn't think that she could stop now. Once fall came. Things would be better in the fall. Once the leaves turned color and the weather got cold. Then they could all think a little less about mom and how she had gone away and how they hadn't seen her in so long and stuff like that. The bottle she took would last her that long….

She was not going to make Minegishi unhappy with her.

They were best friends and she did not want to go back to not having a best friend. She wasn't going to just forget about all of the stuff that Minegishi had taught her. They were smart and they cared about her. They cared about her enough to teach her things. Sort of like how mom had taught her somethings. It was nice to have someone who taught her the important things in life. Like how to drink but not get sick and how to vape when she craved a cigarette so she could trick her brain into thinking that she was smoking.

Minegishi was really smart and cared a lot about her. Mob was so happy to have them for a friend.

"That's good. Just don't turn into Shimazaki, that's all I ask. Anyway how's my hair looking?" asked Minegishi. They did not want to talk about this anymore so they wouldn't talk about this anymore. They would finish up in there and then play dolls or something with Mob while contemplating what it meant to be an adult and what their responsibility, if anything, was to the ten year they called their best friend.

Good times.

"You have a boy's haircut now…but I like it. It looks very nice." Said Mob. She liked Minegishi's old haircut better but they liked their hair short and it did look nice short too. Still too short to braid, it would never be long enough to braid, but that was ok too. Minegishi was her friend, not her doll, and she had plenty of dolls that they could braid the hair of, too. That would be nice, playing dolls, it would take her mind off of…stuff.

Like mom.

Like how mom had just left three years ago and how if she hadn't come back in three years it looked like she was never coming back. That was ok, though, because Mob was ten now. She wasn't seven anymore and she could do things for herself now…and what she couldn't do she had someone to help with.

She had Minegishi.


	196. Late Summer Nights

Late summer was not an easy time of year.

The heat was unbearable, for one thing, and the mosquitos were a constant nuisance. Apparently in the course of raising his children he had forgotten to teach them how doors worked. No matter, he made short work of the insects that wandered into the house that he would be calling home until the fall at least. There was no reason to move so he wouldn't. He didn't need to pile the stress of moving on top of the stress of late summer.

Stress which had nothing at all to do with the heat or the insects.

He had never marked the date. He didn't have to. He would always carry the memory of that day, the last time he had ever seen Masami, with him for the rest of his life. She was gone. He knew that she was gone. Knowing and accepting that she was gone should have made the whole process easier. She was gone and she was never coming back. It was as though she had died…though it would have been easier if she had died. If she had died then she could have been added to the family grave and then that would have been the whole of it. She was alive and then she had died and that was the circle of life.

If she had died then he could have still seen her.

He could have visited her grave…although he was not good about that. He never visited his parents. Never left them offerings. There was no point to it. Their spirits had passed on immediately, or they had been destroyed, and all that was left in that grave were ashes. They probably didn't even want to see him anyway. He was the cause of their demise. He had lost control and then they had died and that was the whole of it. There was a beginning, a middle, and an end.

They were born, they married, they had a son, and then they died.

Masami didn't have an end. She was alive and she was out there and…and she had left him three years ago to be alive and out there. He hated her then and he hates her now. He loved her then and he loves her now. He wanted to take her in his arms and never let her go. He wants to push her away as hard as he can and tell her to go and die…but he doesn't mean it. He could never mean it. He wants her alive. He wants her alive and he wants her alive with him where she belonged!

Half of his bed is empty.

He feels her loss most acutely at night. Even outside of this time of year he always feels her loss when he retires for the night. Son and Daughter…he has no idea when they feel her loss and he doesn't care. They're children, they're resilient, and Daughter has taken over the role of mother in Son's life nicely. He doesn't' concern himself with the children's emotions towards the subject of Masami. He doesn't want them to have emotions towards the subject of Masami. He can't deal with their emotions on the subject of Masami.

He can't even deal with his own.

He wants to exorcise his emotions. He wants to take them and obliterate them until there is nothing there anymore. He wants her gone from his mind. He wants to exorcise the ghost of her from every facet of his life. The feel of her skin against his. The sound of her breathing as she drifted off to sleep. The way the light would hit her as day broke and she slept. The way her voice sounded, the melodious way she would speak to him about anything and everything, the feel of her hands, the shape of her…just the shape that she had left within him. Like he was one of those simple wooden puzzles the children had been fond of when they had been small. There was a Masami shaped hole in his life and in his bed and…

And he's disgusted with himself.

It's midnight. He's tired. He needs sleep. He needs sleep because he has an empire to run. He can't concern himself with one traitor. He can't just sit there and…and she is and isn't…and he doesn't want to think of her as…but she betrayed him! She left him of her own free will! If she had been kidnapped she would have been found already! If she had been killed her body would have turned up! She had left him of her own free well and she was out there somewhere and he was here and he was not leaving Japan until he found her and-

The room was upending its self.

He hates himself in that moment. He's nothing more than one of the children…not even. The children have better control than him. Even Daughter hardly ever lost control these days. He's ashamed. He should just walk out into the ocean with his pockets full of rocks and…and now he's just being dramatic. He's not going to drown, first of all, and second of all he had things to do in the morning. He had to be awake in six hours and he needed his sleep and he needs to close his eyes and sleep.

But he can't.

She haunts him. When he closes his eyes he can see her. He can feel her. She's there and he's there and…and it is such a gift to be near her. She's laying there beside him. He wants to tell her…he doesn't know. He wants to tell her that she is the very breath that he breaths. She is all he desires and his will to succeed. There is no point to ruling the world without her in it. Without her by his side then what is even the point? He needs to make a world for her to live in, for her to be safe in, and for her to be happy in. She's like a hothouse flower. He will keep her under glass and under lock and key so no harm will come to her. He will tend to her and care for her and make her happy. He will lock the hothouse doors so she can never leave him again. He will lock the doors and keep her safe and she will be safe and she is his.

She is his.

She is his and he is hers. He is hers and he will always be hers and she is the only being in the world that will ever have power over him. He is hers to command. There is nothing in this world that he will not do for her. There is nothing in this world that he will not provide her with. If she told him 'Touichirou, bring me the moon on a string' he will fly to the heavens without a thought to his own need for oxygen and he will bring her the moon and fuck the tides and the effect on human civilization. Masami asked for the moon and he would bring it to her! The sun, the moon, and the stars above! They would all be hers! There is nothing that he could not do, nothing that he would ever refuse her, because the world was his and if the world was his then the world was hers as well!

He was hers.

He was hers and he would always be hers. There was nothing that he would do for her. Nothing was too difficult, too complicated, or too far beneath him. She was the one who made him work for what he was. He had to be strong for her and he had been…but maybe she wanted him weak. If she wanted him weak then he would be weak for her. If she wanted him down on his knees pouring every single bit of weakness from within himself there at her feet he would gladly do so. He would tell her everything. He would tell her how much he cared for her, how there were times when he wasn't sure he could make it through another day without her, how he thought of her morning noon and night, how he had been so weak in her absence. He would tell her how weak he had been and how he had betrayed her and their marriage and then, of course she would want to end him and he would let her! He would let her cut him down where he stood just to have a chance to see her again!

He would be whoever, whatever, she wanted him to be.

If he told her to leave then he would leave. If he told her to stay then he would stay. If he told her to love her then he would love her without shame, without fear, without disgust with his weakness. He would revel in his weakness for her. He would get down on his knees and tell her every day, a thousand times a day, that he loved her. If she told him to hate her then he would hate her. He would…he wouldn't. He couldn't. Hating her was the one thing that he knew he could never do. He had tried to many times, for so many years, to hate her. To see her as the traitor that she was. It was simple. It was black and white. She had left him and she was a traitor!

He didn't care.

She had betrayed him and he didn't care. He had betrayed her right back. He had laid with another. He had taken their marriage and vomited all over it. He had taken another and…and he had enjoyed it. The feel of her mouth as it crashed against his. The feel of her skin under his hands. The feel of her stomach as he undid each and every button. He feel of her stomach as he tossed her shirt from her. The feel of her breasts through her bra. The taste of her flesh as he kissed every single inch he could find. The feel of her hands as they raked across his body, her nails making little pathways in his skin as she arched back in pleasure. The feel of her thighs on either side of him. The warmth that awaited him….the way her breath felt against the shell of his ear as they…as he…how long it had taken, how quickly it had been over, and how the entire time only one name had been on his tongue.

Masami.

Her name had been there on his tongue the whole time. He didn't speak it, not once, not even at the point of orgasm. He held back. Her name was always a prayer when it was just him and her memory. He had held back, then, because he had been with another…he knew that what he had been doing was wrong but he had still laid another…and he had LIKED it…he had liked every single moment of it. He had liked it up until the point of orgasm. Up until his head cleared and he realized where he was…who he was…and who he had been there with. Within. Who he had been within.

Not Masami.

Masami may have left him but at least she had never laid with another. Never shared herself with another man. He was the traitor, not her, and if he could just see her again he would perform whatever penance she asked of him. He would throw himself on her mercy. Whatever she asked of him he would do. He would throw himself off a cliff, nail himself to a piece of wood, eat green Jell-O, anything. There was nothing in this world or the next that was beneath him. Even if he saw her again just so she could tell him that because of what he had done she never wanted to set eyes on him again…that would be fine. Just so long as he got to see her again.

He hated himself.

How could he have allowed another human being to have this sort of power over him? What was the MATTER WITH HIM?! He was Suzuki Touichirou! Heaven itself had bestowed the ultimate power upon him and made him the rightful ruler of this world! Why did he even still care about her?! She was gone! She was gone and he was still there…

And he was alone.

"That's enough of that." Said Suzuki as he stared up at the void. Ok. He was done now. That was more than enough. He had lost control and now he was done losing control. He willed his powers into submission. The bed hit the ground with more force than he had anticipated. The lights above him flickered before darkness covered him once again.

He was alone.

He did not want to be. The choice was simple, pragmatic really. Logical. He was alone and he was losing his powers because he was alone. He was thinking about Masami because it was late summer and he always thought about her during late summer….and always….but especially during late summer. Therefore he just needed to stop being alone and he needed to stop thinking of Masami. Simple. The solution was simple really, very clear, and he wondered why it had not occurred to him sooner.

Daughter.

It was late and she was asleep. He didn't care. If she was tired in the morning then she could have some of that coffee she was constantly drinking. She was his Daughter and he was her father and he was fully within his rights to carry her from her bed and to put her in his. Really it was that most logical thing to do. He was no kind of leader, President, living God, and father when he got himself worked up like this. He needed to stop thinking of Masami and get some sleep.

So he got Daughter.

He walked through the darkened house to the children's room. They were asleep. Son had fallen asleep on his stomach with his phone in his hand. Suzuki didn't bother with him. Daughter had fallen asleep on her side. This would be tricky. He didn't know how he would do this without waking her. He could have used his powers…but he didn't want to. For legitimate reasons. If he used his powers then Son might wake up too and once he got up it was very difficult to put him back down to sleep. So, really, the only thing he could do was pick Daughter up by hand.

So that was what he did.

"Dad?" asked Daughter as she opened her eyes. He had been expecting 'Daddy' and he didn't know why. She hadn't called him 'Daddy' in years. He was just dad now. That was fine. That was who he was. He was her dad and she was his Daughter.

"Keep sleeping. It's time for bed." Said Suzuki softly. He picked her up and held her in his arms like he had when she had been a child….and considerably smaller than she was now. When had she gotten so BIG? She had one been small enough that he could have picked her up with one arm…but now she was just so much…bigger…and heavier…but he could still carry her. He could still carry her and he did still carry her.

"I'm already in…bed." Said Daughter. He said nothing. He simply carried her from her bedroom to his. She drifted right back to sleep at some point. He was glad. He didn't know what he would have said to her if she asked why he had carried her out of bed. Maybe he could have asked her for help with the television, at some point people decided that waiting for programs to air was just too much of a hassle, and she would have helped him….or directed him to the tech support office….she had been going there a lot lately. Young people and their technology.

He didn't have to think of any excuses. She stayed asleep.

He used his powers to pull the covers back for her before he deposited her onto her side of the bed. Masami's side of the bed. Daughter's side of the bed. That was her side when they watched television together. That was her side of the bed when they slept together. He could not be alone. He could…he could admit it to himself that he could not be alone right now.

Could he admit it to her?

She was asleep. He went over and laid down on his side of the bed. He pulled the covers up over the both of them. He needed her to be near him. She banished all thoughts of Masami from his mind. He couldn't think of her, of the ghost of her, when he had his living breathing Daughter beside him. He also could not think about how badly he wanted to…not with his Daughter beside him. That would have been wrong. No, he didn't think of Masami at all.

He thought only of Daughter.

He brushed some hair from her face. His fingers lingered there. She had cut her fringe at some point. He could feel more of her forehead now. Her skin was soft. Her skin had always been soft. He let his fingers trace the side of her face down to her cheek. She stirred but did not wake.

"Sho…lemme sleep…we'll play t'morrow…" said muttered. Suzuki lingered there on her cheek still. She was so small. She had gotten so much bigger but she was still so small. She was…she was his. He felt a kinship with her there through the skin ship. He so rarely shared true skin ship or kinship with anyone…but he shared it with her. His Daughter. His.

His.

The word takes on a life of it's own in his mind. His. His. HIS. Over and over again his. She is his. She is his Daughter and she will always be his. His hand goes from her cheek to her hand. He takes it in his. He can feel her aura. She's still asleep. She's there, asleep in his bed, and she is his. She is his and only his. She will never be anyone else's. She will never go. She will never leave him. She cannot leave him. She's just a child. She will not be able to survive without him. She is his and he loves her so much…because she is his. She is his and she is…she is the one…

She is the one who will make him work for what he is.

The world will be hers one day just as it is his. He will take the world and he will take the world for her. What is even the point of taking the world if she is not there at his side? She will be. She will be there at his side and she will never leave him. She will never leave him and he will never leave her. She will never betray him and he will never betray her. She is his and he is hers.

He is hers.

There is nothing in this world that he will not do for her. The world was hers and she was right to ask it. She was his and…and she was so…she was so perfect. There, in the night, she was perfect. She could be messy and forgetful and she had very strange tastes when it came to the media she consumed but she was still perfect. His most perfect child. His Daughter.

"Daughter…I love you." Said Suzuki. He said it and he meant it and this was the only time that he even COULD say it because…because she could not hear it. How weak he was. How much he needed her. How much…the sort of power that he could feel himself giving over to her…he loved her so much and…and how madly he needed her to be near him. How badly he wanted….how alone he felt…and how much better she made him feel just by being beside him….

And he could not wait until late summer passed and he was in his right state of mind again.


	197. Swiss Cheese Walls

The walls were starting to look like Swiss cheese.

When Sho got mad he took it out on the walls. They were starting to get holes in them from where he would kick and punch them until they fell apart. Dad was mad at him for doing that. He said that Sho was acting like a savage and that he was tired of moving house every time Sho had a fit. That just made Sho even more upset at him. He was mad at dad and at himself and at big sis and…and at everyone!

He always got really mad around this time of year.

Mom was gone. She was gone and he knew that she was gone and she was never coming back and he knew that she was never coming back and, therefore, he shouldn't have been extra upset just because three years ago mom had run away from home. He shouldn't have been especially angry because mom was gone. She had been gone for years. He should have been used to it by now. Everyone else was. Dad didn't care and big sis…she only cared about the things that dad told her to care about.

Which was why she was trying to get him to stop kicking holes in the walls.

"Daughter, make him stop that. He's in there acting like a savage. It's driving me mad." Said Dad. He didn't yell, no, he said that in the same way that he said everything else. He didn't even bother to come into the room and say that. He was too busy working. He was in his room working and he couldn't even be bothered to punish Sho for kicking holes in the walls.

Sho didn't want to be punished.

He hated it when dad punished him. He didn't know why he wanted dad to come in and tell him to his face to stop kicking holes in the walls. Maybe he just wanted dad to…to stop making big sis be mom! She was not their mom! They had a mom! She may have been gone but she was their mom and…and they couldn't just pretend that she didn't exist!

"Sho….dad wants you to stop." Said big sis. She was there in their room. It was late and they had to go to sleep soon, well he did anyway, and he knew that even though she was in her pajamas and even if she laid down in her bed and even if she fell asleep she wouldn't be there when he got up. He would wake up all alone just like he'd been waking up every single morning for the past few days.

"I know, I have ears!" Said Sho before he took one of his stuffed animals and hit it a few times. He had to hit something. He had to hit something and kick something and break something because otherwise he would hit her and break her and…and he was not going to be that sort of person. He didn't want to be that sort of person. He was done being that sort of person.

"Sho…please. You're making him mad…" said big sis. Sho pulled his shirt up over his face and screamed. He had to do that or he would end up screaming at her. She only cared about dad. What dad thought and what he wanted and how he felt. She didn't care about him. She was only in there with him instead of with dad because dad kept on trying to have her replace mom and she didn't even care about him and-

-and he was having jerk thoughts again.

She loved him. She loved him and he loved her right back. They were brother and sister and they loved each other. She bossed him around because she loved him. She cared about him enough to…to want him to stop being a jerk. She was worried about what dad would do to him if he kept on acting like this. That was why she was there. She loved him and he needed to act like he liked her. Like he loved her. He did love her…and he had to be better for her. He couldn't be the sort of person he had been before. He couldn't be the sort of person who wanted to beat his big sister up so badly that she bled.

So he kicked the wall.

"I don't care! I don't care! I have to do this!" said Sho as he kicked the wall over and over again. His foot hurt. He put his powers into it. He needed to keep on kicking over and over again. He had to do this. better the wall than his big sister.

Something held him back.

"Sho, stop it, you're going to make the house fall down. You keep on putting holes in the walls and stuff…and dad doesn't like it. He doesn't like what you're doing now and…and he's going to get mad. Please. You don't have to do this." said big sis. Sho fought against her powers but it was no use. She was stronger than him. She had always been stronger than him and she always would be stronger than him.

That was why dad liked her best.

No matter what happened, how strong Sho got, she would always be stronger. That was because she was the Prodigy and he was just the Awakened Child. She had been born right and he had been born wrong. Dad loved her best and he would always love her best. She had always been dad's and he had always been mom's…but now they didn't even have a mom anymore. It was just big sis and dad…and him. He didn't fit in anywhere with them. Dad had big sis and big sis had dad but Sho…he didn't have mom anymore. He didn't have anyone.

"I have to do this. I have to this or I could….I could end up hurting you. I don't want to hurt you ever again. I just…this is just something that I have to do." Said Sho. He fought as hard as he could with himself to talk to her like a normal person and not start screaming in her face…even though he wanted to scream at her. He wanted to tell her that he could do whatever he wanted, that she was not mom, that she was not the boss of him, that if dad had a problem with what he was doing then he could come in and do something about this himself, that Sho had a good reason to be upset, that….

He wanted to scream a lot of things at her.

She let him go. She let him go and…and he still wanted to scream at her…but he didn't. He had to be a better little brother. He had to be better for her. He had to be nice to her. He had to stop being such a jerk to her all the time. He was not dad. He was not going to grow up to be dad. He didn't know who he would grow up to be but he knew that it could not be dad.

He would never have been able to live with himself if he ended up becoming dad.

"Sho…why do you want to hurt me? Is it because I didn't let you eat your soup by drinking it straight from the bowl? Because last time you did that it went up your nose and then you couldn't breath and then there was soup and food everywhere. I didn't want that to happen again. If it makes you happy I can make you one of our cans of soup and then you can drink it just like a drink. Ok? Would that fix this?" asked big sis

"Do you seriously think that this is about soup? Really? Because it's not. It's about…you keep on leaving me all alone all night to sleep next to dad. Not just sometimes like you used to but…but all the time!" said Sho. He tried his best to not shout at her. He tried his best not to hit her. He, instead, picked up one of her dolls and threw it across the room when he was done talking. Then he felt a little better. He broke it. He didn't mean to break it and he knew that if dad found out that he broke one of big sis' dolls he would be in for it but he'd rather break her doll than her.

She didn't seem to care.

If she had wanted to catch it with her powers, save it from breaking, then she could have. Instead she watched it go flying over her head and against the wall. That one looked like Swiss cheese. They all looked like Swiss cheese. She was right. He was going to end up kicking down the house.

Good.

This house wasn't home. Maybe if he broke the house and then the next one and the next one they could go back to the Castle already…or they could leave Japan finally. He didn't know which one he wanted more. He didn't know if he wanted to go home even though he knew that mom wouldn't be there or if he wanted to leave Japan for some other place because he knew that mom must have been somewhere in Japan and…

He wanted her back. He also didn't want her back.

She had left him. She had just left one day. He had woken up and she had been gone. He didn't know why she had left, he didn't know where she had left to, and he didn't know if he would ever see her again…and he didn't know if he ever wanted to see her again. He wanted to wake up to her making him breakfast or watching TV or just sitting in her bed being all tired and stuff. That was what he wanted. He didn't want to just run into her one day and then just….just see her. Just see her being normal and stuff and…and not with him and…

And he couldn't wait for fall.

When fall came these feelings…they never went away…but they got a little better. The weather would be colder and then he wouldn't think about her as much. He would think about Give Me Candy Day, if they were in America, and also Christmas. They would see the big Christmas tree in New York because they went there every year. Also his birthday would come and then he would be able to do whatever he wanted and…and it would be a good time. When the weather got colder he would feel better…

And he wouldn't be such a jerk.

He had been so good about that lately. He had been playing more things that big sis wanted and he had been nicer to her even when she bossed him around and also he hadn't been making fun of her because she liked a guy even though that was what he was supposed to do as her little brother. He had done so much to make her happy. He had ever worn a dress for her! even though he hated every moment of it he had still worn a dress for her and let her paint his nails and put makeup on him and do his hair like he was a girl….he had been such a good little brother lately! And he could have kept on being a good big brother if she would just leave him alone and let him kick holes in the walls in peace! Why couldn't she just go?!

She showed no signs of having any plans to go anywhere.

Her aura was moving but she wasn't. She was thinking. He knew what it looked like when she was thinking. She didn't make a lot of faces, Shimazaki said that if world domination didn't work out she and dad could make a living as a father and daughter professional poker team, but Sho could read the faces that she did make. Her face and her aura.

She was worried.

"Sho….I don't control what dad does. He just picks me up and carries me to his room. I don't know why he kept on doing that but…but there's nothing that I can do to stop him. I can't even ask him to stop. You know that he never listens to me." Said big sis. She was making sense. Dad was dad. Dad was weird. Nobody stood a chance to understand him. He knew that big sis was speaking the truth but…but he also didn't believe her…

He didn't know.

It was like there were two Sho's and there were both inside of his head screaming at each other. One Sho told him that he was the biggest jerk to ever live for being mad at her about something that she didn't even want to happen. The other Sho said that the first Sho was being stupid and that of course she wanted to spend time with dad. She was dad's favorite. That was what they had decided when they had been kids. She got dad and he got mom and that was just the way that their family worked.

But it didn't work anymore.

Because mom was gone. He had woken up one morning and she had just…left. She had left him and big sis all alone with dad…and then they just had to…to keep on being a family even though she was gone. They weren't a family. Not really. How could they be a family without mom!? She was their mom and she…she was supposed to love them! She was supposed to BE THERE! Why couldn't it have been dad that had left?! Sho didn't care one bit if dad left and took all of his money and stuff with him and then he and mom and big sis had to be poor. He didn't care if dad never made him the king of the world or whatever. He would give up everything that he had just to have mom back!

Just so he wouldn't have to be alone anymore.

But he wasn't alone. Big sis was there and she wasn't going to leave him alone. Not until he stopped kicking holes in the walls. Not until he calmed down. Not until he felt better. Not until he did what dad wanted him to do…and he just could not do that. He couldn't stop and he…he couldn't calm down. Not when he knew that he would wake up all alone. Not when he knew that…that in the morning he would be all alone in this room…and she would be with dad….and that she had dad and he had nobody….

He was just Sho. She was dad and daughter but he was just Sho.

"I'm going, I can't be around you and dad right now. If I stay here I'm just going to keep on kicking holes in the walls…and I might end up kicking you, too, and I don't want that. I just…..I have to go." Said Sho. He walked right past her. He walked right past her and out the door. She followed him to the genkan and asked him where he was going but he just put up a barrier and kept on walking.

He had no idea where he was going.

Next door was an option…but then Shibata would just treat him like he was a cross between a baby and a puppy and Minegishi would be mean to him and Shimazaki…Sho didn't want Shimazaki to see him like this. Sho could feel how red he was and he could see tears collecting in the corners of his eyes. No. Shimazaki couldn't see him cry…well he couldn't 'see' anything…but he would know that Sho was about to cry and then he would think that Sho wasn't cool and he wasn't friends with uncool people, probably, and then Sho would lose any chance he had to being Shimazaki's best friend…

So he wasn't going to go next door.

He was so upset that his perceptions were expanding with his aura…and he felt…Fukuda! How could he have forgotten about Fukuda?! Sho didn't care what time it was and he knew that Fukuda wouldn't care either. He had said, before, that he would be there for Sho no matter what. Well this must have counted as 'what'. Yeah, Fukuda would be there for him and he would make him feel better and then…and then he wouldn't be like…this. He would feel better and he would be better and…and he wouldn't be such a jerk and….

And maybe he wouldn't turn Fukuda's walls into Swiss cheese.

Maybe he would. He didn't know. He got less mad on the short walk to Fukuda's house but…but he was still mad. He was mad at himself for being a jerk and big sis for making him act like a jerk and dad for making big sis make him act like a jerk and for mom for leaving…and he knew that he should not have been mad at his mom. She was his mom and he loved her and she loved him…she had loved him…but she was gone and…

And at least Fukuda was there.

Sho let himself in. The door had been locked but he used his powers to let himself in. He was better, now, and his aura was a lot calmer now. He could tuck it in close like normal. His eyes weren't full of tears anymore and his face didn't feel red. Better. He felt better. He hadn't even said one word to Fukuda yet but he already felt better. Fukuda was good at that, those were his powers, making people feel better.

He would have felt better, though, if he had actually been with Fukuda.

He followed the feel of Fukuda to his bedroom. The lights were on so he was still awake. Sho didn't knock. He just let himself in. He knew that people were supposed knock before they entered a room, big sis had been big on that lately, but he didn't have time for stuff like knocking. He had to see Fukuda RIGHT NOW! Besides, what was the worst that he saw? They were both boys. You could see boys naked. Girls were the ones that you weren't supposed to see naked because they had different parts than boys. Not that Sho had ever seen anyone but his sister naked. Still he didn't care what he saw. He needed to talk to Fukuda right now.

"Sho!" said Fukuda. He had been awake and he had been dressed. Sho was right not to knock. Knocking would have just wasted valuable time and he did not have time to waste. Fukuda was happy to see him, anyway, he slammed his laptop shut the minute Sho opened the door. He was putting his work away to talk to Sho and stuff…which was more than dad ever did….not that Sho cared.

"I kicked a bunch of holes in the walls and then dad told big sis to tell me to stop but I couldn't or I would hurt her so I broke one of her dolls and then we had sort of a fight and then I came here because I didn't want to hurt her and I knew that if I stayed at home then I would end up hurting her and I….I don't want to hurt her or anything like that. So can I stay here?" asked Sho

"Yes, yes, that's fine. But next time call me or text me or knock first, ok?" asked Fukuda

"Ok. I'll do that…just please don't kick me out or get mad at me if I start turning your walls into Swiss cheese." Said Sho

"Swiss cheese? What the…come on. Let's go have some ice cream and talk." Said Fukuda as he got out of bed.

"Ok. I'd like that." Said Sho. He didn't say the part where he wouldn't like that if all Fukuda had was vanilla ice-cream still. He also didn't say that he wouldn't like that if Fukuda was planning on telling him stories about the past either. He didn't want to hear about the past and he didn't want any plain vanilla ice cream, that was worse than literally any other type of ice cream and also it was worse than no ice cream at all. Sho didn't say anything, though, because he wanted to talk to Fukuda more than he disliked hearing stories about when dad was a kid and also eating plain vanilla ice cream…

Though he really hoped that Fukuda something other than plain vanilla ice cream.

He didn't.

"Ok, now tell me what happened. You and your sister got into another fight?" asked Fukuda. Sho nodded and dug his spoon into his ice-cream. Fukuda made a lot of money and he could send the Awakened out to the store to get him whatever he wanted. Why was he still eating plain vanilla ice cream? It was pretty much just a bowl of frozen milk. Sho wasn't going to complain though, not when he had someone who actually cared about him.

Big sis cared.

He cared about big sis and she cared about him but he also cared about not hurting her…and he had been dangerously close to hurting her. He knew what Fukuda had said before, that it was ok to be a jerk to her so long as he said that he was sorry and stuff, but he didn't want to act like a jerk in the first place. He wanted to be a good person. He wanted to be a better person than he had been before. He wanted to be someone other than his dad.

Fukuda would understand. He had known dad since they had been kids.

"She came in and told me to stop kicking holes in the walls because dad told her to tell me to stop. Dad promoted her so now she has all the power that mom had." Said Sho. Fukuda shook his head when he said that. Sho didn't get what was so bad about that. Sure it sucked that she was even more the boss of him than she had been before but that was just how dad was.

"Sho, she isn't your mother, she's your sister, and your dad should never have given her that level of power over you." Said Fukuda

"Yeah, it sucks, I know…but that's not what I'm so mad about…what I was so mad about. I was just…I was mad about how she keeps on sleeping next to dad every night and she leaves me alone and stuff and…and it makes me feel bad." Said Sho. He didn't know if he could talk about mom. He didn't know if he should talk about mom. If he talked about how big sis being gone reminded him of mom being gone then he might have gotten mad again and he did not want to get mad again. He knew that Fukuda had said, before, that Sho could never do anything to make him not care about him anymore and stuff but Sho…he was just…he was tired of being a jerk all the time.

"She sleeps next to your dad….every night? At her age?" asked Fukuda

"Yeah." Said Sho as he picked at his ice cream. Fukuda had stopped picking at his and was just staring at him now.

"She doesn't think that she might be a little bit too old for that?" asked Fukuda

"No, she likes sleeping next to dad. They watch boring stuff on TV and stuff." Said Sho. He didn't want to be there but he also would have liked to have been invited….because he was a part of their family too…right?

"But…at her age? Your dad lets her sleep next to him at her age?" asked Fukuda

"Yeah. Big sis said that he picks her up and carries her to his room and stuff in the middle of the night. She says that she doesn't know why and that there's no point in telling dad to stop because he's, well, dad. I'm not sad that she gets to sleep next to him I'm just sad that she…she didn't think about me. I've been thinking about her a lot and being nice to her and doing stuff that she likes but…but she won't do the same for me…and it makes me kind of…kind of sad." Said Sho. He poked at his ice cream but he didn't eat it. He hated plain vanilla and he wasn't even hungry.

He just wanted to have someone to talk to.

"Sho…your sister's business is her own and your dad's business is his own. If they don't want to include you then….then there's nothing that you can do…and I'm sorry about that. But remember that I'll always be here. If you ever wake up in the middle of the night and you're all alone you can come here and sleep next to me, ok? How's that sound?" said Fukuda

"Ok." Said Sho. He didn't really want to sleep next to someone. He mostly just wanted to stop feeling so alone…and he did, now, feel less alone. He felt….better. He felt a lot better now. He had Fukuda and he felt better now. He always felt better. Big sis could keep dad. He had Fukuda. He may not have had mom and dad may not have liked him very much and big sis might have just done whatever dad told her to do but…but at least he had Fukuda….and Fukuda always made him feel better.

He didn't feel like turning the walls into Swiss cheese anymore.


	198. Writing an Email to Nobody

She never responded.

The emails still went somewhere. He knew that they went somewhere because when he sent them they never returned to sender. He liked to think that there as someone on the other end reading these emails. That was all that he had left, emails. He had stopped calling long ago. The burner that she had been using had been disconnected and she never told him her new number. It would have been too dangerous for him to know. Hell, even this was dangerous.

Thank God the tech department was down there giving themselves arthritis instead of doing their jobs.

Fukuda knew that he should have stopped with all the emails. He knew that he should have just accepted that she was gone. She was gone from his life, from everyone's life, and he should have just accepted that. Out of everyone involved he should have accepted that. He was the only one who knew what became of her after all.

Somewhat.

As of their last check in she had found some part time work as an English tutor. He had no idea where she was living or what agency she was working for or, well, anything. She was fine, though, he knew that she was fine. At least as of their last check in years ago she had been fine. He had no idea if she was still working as a tutor or if she had gone back to working with animals like she liked. She could have done something else. She had gone to university for biology. He didn't know what a person could do with a degree in biology but he hoped that she was doing well. He hoped that wherever she was in the world she was doing well.

He was not doing so well.

Late summer was hard. Dealing with it. With what happened. With what he had done. He couldn't help but feel responsible for the part that he had played in all of this. The part that he had played in ruining Sho's life. He should have worked harder to get Sho to Masami. He had never anticipated how close Suzuki would keep his son. He could have other children. Hell, he had a five…maybe six...month old daughter that he had abandoned. Why couldn't he had gotten on that sooner and gotten a boy? Then Fukuda could have brought Sho back to his mother.

Back where he belonged.

He was not Sho's mother. He wasn't Sho's father either. He was just the person who was trying his best with what he had. He tried to reassure him and keep him safe but…but it was hard. It was hard when his father was treating him like the gum on the bottom of his shoe and hard when his sister was carrying on like she was a grown woman…and with her father's blessing too! Fukuda knew what she and the others got up to. He knew that he had smelled liquor on her numerous times. She was trying to cover it up with the smell of bubble gum but he could tell that she was still going at it. The smaller bottles that he had stuck behind the decorative ones were gone.

Suzuki wasn't planning on doing anything about that it seemed.

Part of him couldn't fault her for…that. She was ten, her father was giving her no guidance, and her only friends were a bunch of degenerates. He had no power over her, though, he couldn't do a damn thing to stop her. She knew that he couldn't. She had even said it, before, that nobody outranked her but her father. She thought that she could do whatever she wanted and…and part of him could not fault her. Suzuki hadn't raised her so much as left her in the care of murderers, drug addicts, and Fukuda didn't even want to say. He should have done more for her…but he had Sho to look out for. Shigeko…she was more Suzuki's child than Sho or his actual sister ever would be. He was not going through that again. Any of it. Any of the bullshit that Suzuki had put him through all of these years.

He was not going to go through that again.

So he tried his best to be there for Sho. Sho needed him. He had no one. At least Shigeko had murders and drug addicts and the dregs of society. Well-adjusted people did not willingly join Claw and they certainly wouldn't willingly spend time around Suzuki. At least Sho didn't spend much time with them. At least he knew, mostly, to stay away from those degenerates…even if it was because he had an adorable but age inappropriate crush on one of them…and Fukuda was not looking forward to the talk that he was going to have to give in the future…or Suzuki's reaction to the fact that he most likely was not getting grandkids from his blood son…

Good.

He would be there for Sho in this and all of the journeys he would have in his life. He would be there as best as he could. There was another away mission coming up. Not for him, no Suzuki liked to keep him close, but Ootski was going on the mission to New Zealand…and Sho might like it. He liked Australia, mostly tormenting the kangaroos, and he liked Ootski…and Fukuda trusted Ootski. He would have to recommend Sho for that mission…but he would have to suggest it just right…because Suzuki was always very erratic and irrational around late summer. The man was insane at the best of times but during late summer the wheels off the crazy train came off.

Poor Sho.

Having to deal with that. At least Fukuda was doing what he could. He'd woken up twice not to find Sho in his bed….which had not been fun because Sho kicked in his sleep….but also that had been good. It was always good to get Sho out of that house. At least his father's attention was focused on Shigeko now. Good. They were two of a kind, her and him, and the more they left Sho alone the better.

He wasn't putting that in the email.

'The kids miss you. Shigeko is becoming more and more like her father every day. Sho is becoming more and more like you every day. It's uncanny, the both of them, but I know that they'll be alright in the end.' Nope. He deleted that. Too many lies. He had no idea if the kids were going to be alright. Well Shigeko wasn't alright. The drinking and the smoking and the fact that she occasionally smelled like marijuana of all things, Fukuda had been to university he knew full well what marijuana smelled like, and also the fact that she was just…different. Masami would not have been able to recognize her own daughter. Sure she still looked the same, he was amazed that they made those dress up costumes in her size and also that she would want to wear them considering how much of a hurry she had gotten herself in to grow up, but she was not the same.

She was just like her father.

An alert popped up on his laptop. Oh. Another internal memo from Shigeko…why Suzuki let her abuse the memos like this Fukuda would never understand. He didn't know why he opened it. He knew what it was going to be. More nonsense from her. She was trying to build her own cult of personality it seemed. She had learned from the best after all. There were some differences. Both she and her father wanted people to be in awe of their powers but where he ruled through fear she ruled through love. She seemed to be trying her best to win people over with kindness and empty but pleasant statements. Also through giving people whatever they wanted….goddamned chair jousting tournaments….

'Hi everyone! This is just a reminder to always separate your recycling. That way someone else doesn't have to do it later. Tomoko and Hiroshi are getting tired of having to stick their hands in the garbage cans to separate everything out. Also please use gloves if you're going to be doing gross work. Also please stop blowing up the gloves like balloons. That's a waste of glove and I know you guys don't want to be wasteful. That's all it was nice talking to you. Also happy birthday to the following people at Tokyo HQ. Kaname Hideo….'Fukuda stopped reading.

Suzuki really needed to do something about this.

She was getting the Awakened and lower level espers on her side. He didn't know what she had planned but she was undermining her father's power base. Either that or she was just ten. But he couldn't think like that. He had underestimated Suzuki for years. It had taken until their last year of high school to realize that Suzuki had been serious about his plans for world domination. He was not making the mistake of underestimating another Suzuki…

Even if she wasn't a Suzuki at all.

She was a Kageyama. She was Shigeko Kagyeama. She was born to Kageyama Hana and Kageyama Ichimaro in the Seasoning City General Hospital on May 25th. She was not Suzuki's daughter in the way that it counted…and that was what made it even more terrifying. She was just as powerful as Suzuki and she was just like him in every way…well most ways. He had never known Suzuki to enjoy drinking and smoking and whatever the female equivalent of womanizing was. She was just like him though down to whatever personality disorder, and he had taken two semesters of psychology he knew that Suzuki had some sort of personality disorder, they shared. He so wanted to believe the best in her…

But he had believed the best of Suzuki and look at where that had gotten him.

Forty three and working to take over the world. Vice President Fukuda Tadashi. That had been his title back when they'd still been in the fort in the woods. That had been who he was supposed to be now. He had turned the title down once the First Division had been founded and it looked like this thing was actually going to get off the ground. Now he mostly just healed idiots and did administrative stuff that Suzuki either didn't feel like doing but also didn't trust his daughter with.

Yet.

He wondered what Masami would think of him once this daft little plan of Suzuki's finally bore fruit. When he was lord and master of the world and Shigeko was his right hand. When Sho inherited the world after his father simply because he was born male and his father wasn't about to go and make another son…hopefully. Masami would hate him if she didn't hate him now. Maybe that was why she never responded to his emails. Maybe she knew that he had failed her and she hated him and she didn't love him…well she had never said that she loved him…but he knew that she did. She loved him and she…she was the love of his life…and this was not at all how he planned on his life going.

Nobody planned on being forty three with non-wife or kids, no legal work history, and an accessory to what must have been literally all the crimes at this point.

He closed his email. He would start on this another day. Right now he had so much to do. Papers to push. Shoes to lick. Another day at Tokyo HQ…God, he hated Tokyo HQ. For one thing it was overcrowded. Shigeko in a bid for everyone's approval simply approved every single transfer request…and guess where everyone wanted to go. Tokyo, Seoul, Sidney, New York, basically far away from all of the outposts in the middle of nowhere….which led to a massive staffing crisis that they were going to be sorting out come New Year…and that was in addition to everything else that she had approved of. The food budget was a mess, payroll was still freaking out, and also there were thirty six holiday parties in the works….some of which now had important backers, cultists, and investors on the RSVP list so off course those couldn't be called off…and also every third Tuesday of the month was bring your pet to work day…that would go over real well

"Damn it, Shigeko." Muttered Fukuda as he looked over the mess that was the internal Claw calendar. She had made a mess of epic proportions and Suzuki didn't even bat an eye. Meanwhile his own son needs some closure on the subject of his mother but that would be far too much to deal with. No, this was fine. Let the drunken ten year old girl run the largest world domination cult in the world. Yeah. Just run off and leave your drunken ten year old future usurper in charge…

Another alert.

'Hi everyone! I missed a birthday! Today is Michaelson Joseph's birthday! He's turning thirty today and he works in the foreigner squad. He likes smoking, hockey, being a mercenary, blue M&M's, and low sodium seaweed crackers. Let's all wish him a happy birthday!'

"Damn it, Shigeko." Muttered Fukuda. Now that he had checked his inbox he was right back in his email…and it would have been so easy to switch over to the tab with his personal email…and then he would have had to get back to composing his letter to Masami…and he had no clue what to say! What was he supposed to tell her? Her son was a ball of rage and her daughter smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and was her father in a princess costume? Was he supposed to tell her that he had failed in every single promise that he had made her? Was he supposed to tell her that it was good that she had gotten on with her life because obviously there was nothing for her here? That she was better off without him? That he would follow Suzuki until the day one of the countless assassination plots worked out and then it wouldn't even matter because without missing a beat his daughter would fill right in for him? That same daughter who he had, in some ways, failed on a level that he had never even had a chance of failing Sho?

"Damn it, Shigeko…" said Fukuda. Apparently he had summoned her. Like Shimazaki if you said her name enough times she would appear. Something the two of them had in common. The basis of a good future relationship. Heh. Maybe she would drive her father into an early grave when she announced, probably around thirteen or fourteen when she finally hit puberty and her rebellious phase, that she was going to marry the bastard and have his probably terrible kids and whatever else Suzuki was afraid of his little girl getting up to.

Oh God…teen years…

Fukuda's face and aura betrayed nothing as Shigeko entered his office. She was trying hard at being cute again. She was in one of her princess dresses, the blue one, and had her cat ears headband on again. She acted like she was twenty, dressed like she was five, but in reality was ten. Masami would have been so proud…

"Something you need, Miss Suzuki?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki-san, never sama, because even Suzuki himself was not sama to him. Still, though, best to be polite. She may have been a child but she was not a child in the same sense as Sho was a child. She was a child in the sense that even Suzuki must have been a child at some point.

"Do you have any broken electronics? If you do I can take them down to the tech support room for you." Said Shigeko. He kept his face and aura impassive while he took apart what she said. What was she doing down there? Nothing but a bunch of pasty faced weirdos giving themselves arthritis playing videogames and watching pornography, some people were not as subtle as they thought they were, on company time. Not that he was going to stop them. He had better things to do than go into that den of sin, corruption, and a general stench of not washing and using body spray to cover up the smell of not washing.

Well-adjusted people did not voluntarily join Claw.

"I'm afraid I don't. Everything's in working order around here." Said Fukuda

"Are you sure? Your computer is making a weird noise…that might be something you want to get looked at….and um….maybe your phone needs fixing….and you don't even know it yet because you don't work in tech support." Said Shigeko. She really wanted to go to the tech support room….why? It stank in there, the company was not friendly, and also it was not the place for little girls. He wished that she had been Sho. If this had been Sho he could have just kept him in his office for the rest of the day. Sho was out, though, he'd been full of angry energy so Suzuki had him taken to a park.

Hopefully he would come back in once piece this time.

He so wished that it had been Sho there in front of him instead of Shigeko. She was…he didn't like to be in her presence for too long. She was too unnerving. He could never figure out what her end goal was. The other day he had seen her hopping along on the floor for some reason…and the day before that she had been trailing after some esper talking about nonsense….some powerful esper he could not recall the name of….

Wait. Was she trying to make another 'friend'?

She was collecting powerful espers. He didn't know why. To usurp her father when she got old enough? To have someone to hang out with? To not feel so alone in the fact that she had immeasurable power? He didn't know. All he knew was that he knew not to take things by their surface appearance when it came to Shigeko. He had made that mistake too many times already when it came to Suzuki.

"That's just the fan and my phone is working just fine. Just got it last week, actually, so everything here is in working order. You can try payroll. They've got plenty of computers in there, some of them might be having problems." said Fukuda. He so wished that she could get going back to whatever it was that she was doing. But not. It seemed like she was going to stick around for quite a while. He's wistful for a moment. He remembers her half a lifetime ago. When she had clung to his leg and asked that he stay, that he play dolls with her, that he watch Frozen with her, that he read her that Hello Kitty book just one more time….

Those days were over now.

"What kind of phone did you get?" asked Shigeko

"What?" asked Fukuda. He was, momentarily, taken aback. Why did she care?

"You said that you got a new phone. What kind is it? I have a new phone too since Sho threw my old one into the road and a car ran it over. It's ok, though, because I keep all of my pictures in the cloud. See? It's an iphone like before but I might get another one. Hatori says that iphones are trash phones and that the only good phone maker is Samsung. Did you get a Samsung? And a case? I have a new case too. See? It's Elsa. My last one was a cat but I got bored of that." Said Shigeko. She had come right up to his desk and she was showing him her new phone…why? This was something that he would have expected from Sho. In fact this was something that Sho had done back when he'd gotten his new phone….because he also threw his in the road and a car ran over it…

He needed to supervise Sho better.

"That's nice. I'm glad you got a new phone. I've got an iphone too. See?" asked Fukuda as he fished his own phone out of his pocket. It was easier if he thought of her as Sho and not Suzuki. Suzuki never got excited about anything…unless obsessive Suzuki was back…and why they had needed to spend the night outside of the manga store just to get some special edition Galaxy Express that only he and like three other people would even want was beyond him…

Those were the days.

"That's funny….you said iphone too and that sounded like iphone two…but that's not a two. We have the same one except for our cases are different. Yours is black and mine is Elsa." Said Shigeko. Fukuda nodded. He didn't like having her this close. Her aura…it could be painful. Too much. Too bright. Bright as her father's. Bright enough that she could have taken down this whole division is she had wanted to…

That had not been her fault.

That's the one thing that had not been her fault. The Eighth Division was his fault and his alone. He hadn't been able to save Sho. He hadn't been able to stop Suzuki. He had just let Sho be put through that…and then Shigeko saw and lost control…and for a moment he had been sure that he would die and go to hell where he belonged for letting that happen to Masami's son….

But he was alive and he was there.

"It's a very nice phone and a very nice case. Is there anything else you need, Miss Suzuki? I have a lot on my plate and I'm sure that you do as well. Those little birthday biographies don't write themselves." Said Fukuda. Getting back to work usually got him dismissed by Suzuki…but once again it seemed as though she was going to stick around for quite a while. Her aura turned inwards. Her braids started to float before she pulled them back down with her hands. He stayed just as impassive as normal.

"Fukuda…why don't you like me anymore?" asked Shigeko. Fukuda momentarily lost control of both his face and his aura. He had never expected that question from her. She…she picked up on that? How? He'd been getting steadily more and more resentful of Suzuki for decades and he never gave even the slightest indication that he noticed. His daughter on the other hand…well not his daughter. Not really. The child that he'd adopted. Yes. She wasn't from Suzuki…she was different…

And she had picked up on what he really thought of her.

"Of course I like you. Why would you think otherwise?" asked Fukuda. He needed to play this like he was totally clueless. Like he was totally faultless. Make her doubt herself. She had always doubted herself as a child. Good. She may not have outgrown that like she had outgrown everything else that had made her Masami's Daughter.

"Because you're just….different. When you talk to me it's different from when I was little. Also you call me Suzuki-san but you call Sho by his given name…and also you never play with me anymore." Said Shigeko. So she wasn't as dense as the man who was raising her. Well Fukuda wasn't dense either. He isn't going to tell her that he's unhappy with the person she's become. He isn't going to tell her that it's hard to play dolls with a ten year old when he's seen her drink and smoke and flirt with a man three times her age. He doesn't tell her that those times are long gone and he just…he can't anymore.

He's got more sense than that.

"You outrank me. You rank directly under your father which is above me and since we work together I have to show you proper respect. Also you're getting older now, you're practically a young woman, and I'm not going to treat a young woman like a five year old. That would be socially inappropriate." Said Fukuda. She chewed on it. He could tell. Suzuki made the exact same face when he chewed on something.

And the same face when he accepted something, too.

"Ok…that makes sense. It was nice talking to you. I'll just go and see if the people in payroll have broken electronics they need fixed. Good bye, Fukuda." Said Shigeko. Fukuda watched her walk out his door. He watched her aura as it disappeared down the hall. Well not exactly disappeared, no, just mixed with the sea of auras that was Claw.

He let out a breath that he hadn't realized that he'd been holding.

What WAS that? How could she have picked up on that? He…he had no idea what he was supposed to do about that. Suzuki was dangerous but he was also, for lack of a better word, socially impaired. He had no social skills to speak of and if women weren't attracted to that for some reason Sho and Mukai would never have existed. This was…she was more socially savvy than her father…and she knew that he didn't like her…and this could have been so bad. The future…the future looks grim. She will rule the world one day and when that regime change happened…he needed to make sure that he survived it…

He had no idea what would happen in the future.

He was going to think about that later. Right now he…he had midsummer to think about. To worry about. Midsummer and Masami and his email and….and how he had failed her and…and a lot of things…

Fukuda never did finish up that email.


	199. Love Can Sometimes be a Little Bit Scary

Mob loved her dad very much.

She loved him even though he could be mean sometimes. She loved him even though he took baby Mukai away. She loved him even though he hit Sho sometimes. She loved him even though he made her cry sometimes. She loved him even though sometimes when she was near him she had trouble breathing and not just because she had hurt her lungs by smoking. She loved him even though she kept secrets from him. She loved him even though she didn't always agree with what he did. She loved him even though he had decided that mom was a traitor. She loved him even though he could just the meanest and weirdest person that she had ever met in her life.

She loved her dad.

That was why she was sitting in his bed, now, and not hers. She was sitting in his bed and waiting for him because she loved him a lot and liked spending time with him and also he had been waking her up in the middle of the night, every night, to carry her to his bed. She had might as well save herself the trouble. It was ok to leave Sho alone because he had gone to sleep at Fukuda's house. She sort of wanted to sleep away from home too but dad wanted her to be near him. Why else would he carry her to his bed every night like that?

She drew her knees up to her chest.

She felt…not good. She hated this time of year. This when mom had left. Sho hated it too. She wondered if dad hated it…but he probably didn't. He had fallen out of love with mom a while ago. Now he thought that she was a traitor and stuff. Mob…she didn't know how to feel about mom. Sometimes she was mad that mom left and sometimes she wanted her back more than anything else in the whole, wide, world. She wanted mom to be here in dad's bed, not her, because this was where she belonged. She belonged with dad and Mob belonged in her own bed in her own room with Sho. She wanted mom back but also she was just so mad at mom…and she knew that she was not supposed to get mad at anyone. She was not supposed to get mad because she was supposed to be sweet and nice like mom said…

It was hard.

She thought about something else while she waited for dad. He was taking a bath now. He did that sometimes before bed even though that meant that he was going to sleep with wet hair and you were not supposed to go to sleep with wet hair because then you could get sick. Mom had said so. Mom had taught her that and some other stuff…but there was a bunch of stuff that mom had forgotten to teach her, too. Like what to do when Sho got mad and kicked holes in the walls. She had no idea how to make him stop…and he had no idea how to make himself stop either. She was so lost sometimes…lost and sad….

She didn't like feeling this way.

She wanted to feel happy. She thought about the things that made her happy. She had to think about good things like how she had the little baby sock now. Also Sho had drawn her a picture of a tuxedo cat and it was very nice like all of the things that he drew. Also she had some very good friends now and she'd never had any friends before let alone very good ones. Also Hatori had said that he liked her phone case. It had taken all day for her to find some excuse to go and see him but it had been worth it because he saw her phone case and told her that he liked it…she was happier now than she had been before. You had to accentuate the positives, like in the song, and that was what she was doing. So what if she felt empty and aching sometimes? She had a lot of good things in her life. She had a dad who would be mean and weird but he loved her and a little brother who could be mean sometimes but who also loved her and good friends and nice things and she liked a boy who was very nice…even though he did curse at his games a lot…and who was very tall…well he was shorter than Minegishi even but he was still taller than her….and he was nice to her. That was the main thing.

Mob liked it when people were nice to her.

Maybe dad had stopped being nice to mom. Maybe that was it. Mob couldn't imagine being with someone who wasn't nice to her. She knew that when she finally met someone who she liked and who liked her back…and who dad wasn't going to beat up…then she would never leave him. She would be with someone who was nice to her but nice in that 'in love' way. The way where he would look at her and see her for who she was and accept her and care about her even though she was clueless and couldn't control her powers all the way and all of that other stuff that was wrong with her.

She wanted to know what that felt like more than anything else in the world.

But she would never know what that felt like. Not if dad kept on beating up people he thought liked her. She was always supposed to be at his side. Even when she got married and had babies she was supposed to always be at dad's side. She was his daughter and that was her job…even though she wasn't sure how she was supposed to grow up and get married and stuff, stuff that he told her that she was supposed to do, if she was right by his side.

But that was all for later.

She would figure it out later. Right now she could feel dad's aura moving. That meant that he was done with his bath. Now he would come to bed and then they'd either go to sleep or watch TV all night. That was fine. She liked watching TV with dad…even the documentary show about Japan. Even though she was Japanese. Even though she had never wanted to know as much about chopsticks as she did now. She would let him pick. If she picked she'd end up picking Frozen.

She liked that movie.

Elsa was just like her only not Japanese and a lot older and also a lesbian. Well Minegishi said that Elsa was clearly a lesbian and the whole movie was about her figuring it out…even though that made no sense. The movie was about having powers that you couldn't control and being scared of yourself. Elsa had a whole song about it. If the movie was about a girl who liked another girl then it would have been a much shorter and much more different movie. If she liked another girl then she could have just met a girl and fell in love and then the whole movie would have been different.

Minegishi just didn't understand Frozen.

Dad didn't understand Frozen either. He said that it was boring and that he was sick of it. Mob didn't understand how anyone could ever be sick of Frozen. It was the best movie ever made. Elsa was the best person ever. She had trouble controlling her powers and she loved her sister and she didn't have a mom and dad but in the end she got past all of that stuff and made friends and also she could totally get a girlfriend if she wanted to. It was a great movie, one of the best ever made, and she really wanted to watch Frozen so badly even though she had seen that movie more than a hundred times, but she knew that dad would not have let her watch it because he only wanted to do things that he wanted…and that was ok because she loved him.

She loved her dad very much.

She sat up normally when his door opened. His aura flared when he saw her. Was he mad? Why would he be mad at her? She was just in his bed. She'd been in his bed before. He had been carrying her to his bed night after night. Did he just like carrying her? Was that it? She didn't know. She didn't understand him sometimes.

"Daughter. Explain." Said dad. Mob didn't like it how he always said that. But she didn't say anything. Dad was dad.

"You always carry me to your bed so I thought that you would be happy if I just…waited for you. I can go back to my bed and fall asleep so you can carry me in later if you want." Said Mob. She didn't much want that. She didn't like it when he woke her up in the middle of the night. She didn't like waking up in the morning not knowing where she was. She didn't like how dad wouldn't just say that he wanted her to be near him…and that must have been what he wanted. After all, he had been carrying her to his bed.

"That…that would be…acceptable." Said dad. He was still staring at her, though, and he wasn't moving from the doorway. Mob could see some water still in his hair. It was weird. She had never seen him with water in his hair before. He was just in his pants and his undershirt, too, which was also weird.

Maybe she looked weird to him, too.

People looked different at night. At night she had her hair down and she wore pajamas. During the day she had her hair in braids and she wore clothes. At night Sho slept without a shirt on, during the summer, and also his hair was even more spiky than normal from how he slept on it. Her friends looked different at night too. Minegishi let their hair be messy and they wore T-shirts and pajama pants with pretty flowers. Shibata wore striped pajamas that matched and were all fancy. Shimazaki hardly wore anything at all. Dad was the only person she knew who looked mostly the same from day to night.

Well except for now.

"Do you want to watch TV?" asked Mob. She saw his shirt folded on top of his dresser. He didn't put it on, though, he just sat down on the edge of the bed. She scooted away from him. She might have been taking up too much room. She didn't want to be a bed hog. That was why she and Sho didn't share anymore. He called her a bed hog even though she always slept so far to the edge of the bed that she even fell out sometimes.

"That would be acceptable as well." Said Dad. She wondered why he was talking like that. His aura was all turned in and he was talking to her like…she didn't know. Not in the way that he usually talked to her. Not that she was that good at these taking things and not that he had been talking to her that often lately. He'd had a lot to do lately. Fukuda had even said that they were extra busy now and would maybe even be in Tokyo getting things sorted out until New Year's.

Mob didn't know how to feel about that.

On the one hand she didn't like it when they moved around a lot. She liked being able to have her body clock align with the clock of the country that she was in. She liked being able to understand what everyone was saying all the time, too, and also looking like everyone around her. She just liked being in Japan and…and she also didn't. Because this was the last place that she had lived with mom…well the only place she had lived with mom….and she just didn't want to think about mom anymore even though that made her a terrible daughter.

She always got upset around this time.

"Do you want to re-watch the episodes of the Japan show that you like? Or we can watch a different documentary…or something." Said Mob. Dad had gotten closer to her now but that was not saying much. He was keeping himself and his aura away from her. She didn't know why. He was always letting her hang on to him while she slept…and maybe that was it.

Maybe he could only be hugged for so long.

Was it possible for a person to run out of hugs? Mob didn't know. She knew that she could hug the people she loved all day. She also knew that dad was a different person from her all together. Dad didn't like to be touched that often. Not when she had been little and not now either…which made no sense because dad had also been carrying her to his bed every night and stuff….

He was hard to understand sometimes.

"We can….you can choose the program. Nothing about rodents." Said dad. He got a little bit closer to her. She got a little bit closer to him. She needed some bed too. She wanted to be near him. She loved him and….and she felt sort of sad inside. Empty and aching. This came and went. It would pass but it passed faster when she was with someone she loved. She wished that she could go next door to see Minegishi but dad probably wanted her near him and also their aura looked like they were asleep and Mob was not allowed to wake them up unless there was an emergency.

The empty and aching feeling she got was not an emergency.

"No Ratatouille?" asked Mob as she turned the TV on. She decided to stay out of the Disney app because then she would want to watch Frozen even though she knew that she couldn't watch Frozen because dad didn't like it.

"No." said dad. His aura showed what he felt. Mob didn't get it. It was a perfectly nice movie even if there was no singing and Remy didn't meet a girl rat and fall in love with her and stuff. Or a boy rat. She wasn't going to tell people, even fictional people, who they could and could not fall in love with.

"Why do you hate that movie so much?" asked Mob

"Because the idea of rodents having intelligence comparable to that of humans is disturbing. I've told you that before." Said dad

"I know. It's just a movie though. Real rats and mice aren't that smart. They have trouble with mazes and stuff. Like when me and Sho played maze with the ones we borrow from the pet store." Said Mob

"I remember that day. What were you two even trying to prove with that experiment?" asked dad

"That running rats through a maze is fun." Said Mob. What else did she need to prove? It had been fun and that was what mattered.

"Fair enough, though you would have had better results with a larger sample size." Said dad

"That's was all the Awakened came back with." Said Mob. She wondered why they had come back with so many different kinds of animals but it had still been a fun time. She had been so little back then. So had Sho. It had been so long ago. Before she had made friends with Minegishi and Shimazaki and Shibata. Before she had gotten too old for Fukuda to be nice to her anymore. Before baby Mukai had been born…Mob missed baby Mukai so much…but she was in a better place now. Besides, Mob still had her little baby sock and her pictures and her memories of their time together. Things were always so much better in her memories.

"They are useless, aren't they?" said dad. Mob frowned. Her aura showed what she felt and she braced herself for mean words…that never came. Dad was still just looking at her. She didn't know why. She decided to keep talking. That might have been what he was waiting for.

"No….I mean they can act like a bunch of little kids sometimes but I don't think that they're useless." Said Mob

"They have few uses, then, that would be more precise." Said dad

"Yeah…they have trouble with stuff." Said Mob. She could admit that. They were like little kids, the newer ones anyway. They had trouble with things that had a lot of steps and also things that they had to work together.

"But you do have a way with them." Said dad

"What do you mean?" asked Mob. They didn't listen to her. The followed her around and tried to talk to her and also they kept on bringing her snacks and stuff but they still fought and were still mean to one another. That was not having a way with them at all.

"They are quite taken with you but then again who wouldn't be. You're you." Said dad. Then he got sort of quiet. Mob wondered why his aura looked like that. He had said a nice thing about her. Maybe he was as shocked as she was that he had said a nice thing.

"Thanks dad. That was really nice." Said Mob. She stopped flipping through shows. She looked at dad with her eyes and her aura. Maybe he was going to say another nice thing to her. Maybe he was going to give her a hug and tell her that he loved her and…and stuff like that. Stuff that mom used to do. Stuff that Minegishi did if she was especially sad. She wasn't that sad now, no, she was happy. Dad had said something nice to her.

"…I shouldn't have said that to you. I apologize." Said dad. Mob blinked. What the H-word was that? She may not have been the best at talking but she did know that there was nothing wrong with saying nice things to someone. You were supposed to say nice things to the people you love. You were supposed to want to make them feel good. That was part of what it was to love another person. You made them feel good and they made you feel good. Love just…was good. It could be like a mirror, it seemed, where you got back the love you gave…or something. She didn't know. She only knew what she had been able to put together from her life and also TV. Nobody had ever sat down and told her what love was. She wished that mom had taught her what love was. That seemed like something more important to teach someone than how to make an omelet and how to braid hair and pair socks so the elastic didn't wear out.

"But….that makes no sense. Why would you say sorry for being nice to me?" Said Mob

"Because…because I just should not have said that to you. I haven't been…myself…lately. I apologize." Said dad. Mob didn't get it. She truly did not get it. Dad was mean all the time. He said things that could make her wish that she had never been born, sometimes, and those weren't even things that he said to her. Those were things that he said to Sho. The things that he said to her, the mean ones, never made her wish that she had never been born. They just made her feel like…like she was empty and aching inside. Dad never said sorry for saying those things but he said sorry for being nice?

What even happened in his mind?

People were complicated and dad was the most complicated person of all. She sort of wished that he was more like Shimazaki. He may have been very annoying but at least he made sense in his annoyingness. He never confused her. Dad…dad confused her. Like right now she was just so confused that she wasn't even sure if they were even still speaking Japanese.

"Dad…..I like it when you say nice things to me. I love you so much dad and…and I wish that you would say nicer things to me. I'm sorry but that's just how I feel." Said Mob. She knew that she should not have been talking to her dad like that but she also knew that…that she wanted to feel loved. The feeling went away when she felt like this.

All loved and stuff.

Dad love, not love-love, which was different. Maybe she felt better because dad love was sort of like mom love. She knew that dad loved her and she knew that dad had trouble showing it…even though he had showed it just fine a few seconds ago. If he could show it just fine back then…he should have been able to show it in the future. She didn't know. She just…she just really liked it when dad was nice to her.

"You…you want me to…to speak to you like that?" asked dad. Mob nodded. She didn't know what was so hard to understand. She wanted him to say nice things to her just like everyone else on the planet. What was so hard to understand about that?

"Yes. I just said so. I like it when you say nice things to me." Said Mob

"How often? I need….be specific. I need specifics." Said dad. He talked slowly and it looked like it hurt him, even, to day that to her. Why? What was so hard so him? To understand that she wanted her dad to love her and be nice to her?

"Specifics?" asked Mob

"What should I say to you? And how often? And…and that's just what I need from you. To know what you want. I am your father and I live to provide for you but I need to know what it is that you want me to provide." Said dad. Mob felt like this was unfair. She felt like dad was just putting everything on her. She wished that he could just be like her and say nice things when he felt them…but dad was a different person from her. Everyone was different and dad was the most different of all and she had to be understanding of him…even though it was really hard sometimes.

"I want….I want you to tell me the nice things that you feel about me whenever you feel them. That's how it works. When you love someone you say the things you feel about them. The nice ones." Said Mob

"I…I can't do that. I apologize but I just cannot show that kind of weakness." Said Dad. He was still talking like he was in pain. Like he had swallowed a fish bone and it was poking at his throat and every time he tried to talk it poked him and stuff. But that made no sense because they'd had omelets for dinner and those had no bones.

"But….I don't know what you mean. How is it weak to love someone? I know you love me and you know that you love me so what's there to…to worry about? I don't understand." Said Mob. She didn't know if she was the clueless one or if he was the weird one or if they were both just incapable of understanding each other. She was close to him now, close enough to press herself to his side, and he was sitting so rigid that Mob was starting to wonder if it hurt.

"Daughter….you don't understand." Said dad

"No. I don't but I want to. I don't see why you're so worried about that. You love me and I love you and you're my dad. You're my dad and…and you're supposed to love me. I don't know what I would do if…if you didn't love me….and sometimes it feels like you don't love me…and it makes me feel sad…" said Mob. She knew that she wasn't supposed to talk about this, bad feelings, and also she knew that she wasn't supposed to let her hair float and her aura look like that and…

And now dad was holding her.

He was strong. He was very strong. He had her by the shoulders and…and she was scared a little. His fingers were digging into her shoulders. His eyes were on hers. They were doing that thing where his pupils got so small that she couldn't even see them. She tried to squirm away but he was holding her still with his powers and his hands and he was so much bigger and stronger than her….and she was so much smaller than him….

She wanted to go back to her own bed.

"No. Never think that. You matter to me more than you will ever know." Said dad. He was talking to her like he was mad at her but he also was saying nice things to her and…and she didn't know what to do…or what was even happening. Was he mad? Was he going to punish her? She tried to close her eyes but she found that she couldn't.

He was so much stronger than her.

"Dad…." Said Mob

"You are my Daughter and I care for you. Never, ever, ever forget that fact. You are mine and I will never, ever, ever stop caring for you. Do you understand?" asked dad. Mob tried to nod but she couldn't. She couldn't move.

"I know-know that I'm your daughter and I know that I'm yours and I know that-that you care about me and I won't ever forget that." Said Mob. She was scared. She was scared even though he was being nice to her….and him being nice to her was somehow scarier than him being mean to her…

"Good. Remember. Even if I don't say it I love you. You need to always remember that." Said dad

"I-I believe you. Um…always knew that you loved me and…and um….do you want to watch the series of Galaxy Express? I know….I know how you like that and I really want to see the whole show and not just the movie." Said Mob. She needed to make this stop. She knew that he liked that show and she knew that she needed to make him forget that she had ever said anything. She wished that she had never said anything. She loved her dad, she really did, bit too much of his love could be sort of…scary.

He let go of her.

Her arms hurt from where he grabbed her. Her aura hurt from how his aura had been against hers. She felt scared and she wanted to go to her own bed in her own room even if Sho was gone and she would be on her own…actually she didn't want to be alone either. She wanted…she wanted to be near dad but not when he was….whatever that had been…and also she wanted her mom even though mom was gone. She just…she didn't want to be scared anymore. She wished that Minegishi had still been up so they could both hang out and stuff…but they weren't. They were asleep for the night and Mob wished that she could have been asleep for the night…but she couldn't.

Because dad loved her and no matter how scary his love was she would always be with him.

She loved her dad.


	200. Breaking Promises but with Good Reason

Mob sometimes broke her promises.

She knew that she had promised Minegishi that she would stop smoking and start vaping instead but…but there were circumstances. Her vape pen didn't make her feel better like smoking did. Well smoking whatever this stuff was. She liked cigarettes, they gave her energy and made her feel better when she was stressed, but she liked whatever this was even better. This was the same stuff that Shimazaki said that his vape pens were made out of. She would have kept on sharing his vape pen but the battery died and it would need time to charge.

Shimazaki called these 'extenuating circumstances'.

So this was ok…sort of. She hadn't set out to break her promise, she was not a promise breaker, but she also didn't want to feel bad anymore. She had been feeling…well not bad but not good either. Dad hadn't been scary since the other night. He hadn't grabbed her and looked at her like he was mad at her since that night. They'd been pretty happy together, or at least dad had been happy. Every night before bed they watched a few episodes of the Galaxy Express together and then went to bed. Dad also told her nice things, mostly that he cared for her, and he never said them in a mean way. They just said goodnight and then dad told her that he cared for her and that she had to remember that.

Of course she did.

She still had the bruises from where he grabbed her and told her that he loved her. That wasn't new. Dad had left bruises on her before. He didn't usually grab her, he just shoved her and stuff, and sometimes that left bruises. Sho always had more bruises than she did but that was because dad punished him more. Dad hardly ever even said anything to Sho these days…because he loved her so much…and that was a good thing. She had dad's love and she knew that dad loved Sho a lot less but…but maybe he was better off. Too much of dad's love could be kind of scary.

Just a little bit.

He hadn't been scary lately and that was good. He hadn't been scary and he hadn't hurt her since that night and she was happy, she really was, but also…also she kind of felt not good. Like…sort of like when Sho held her under the water when they'd played the drowning game…but she wasn't in drowning or in water at all. She felt like that when she was near dad, though, like she was drowning in his aura…like she couldn't breathe. Maybe because she was always supposed to be at his side and stuff. But that was a good thing. It was a good thing that he loved her that much.

Dads were supposed to love their daughters.

And daughters were supposed to love their dads…and Mob did love her dad. She loved her dad so much and she wanted to be with him and she wanted to make him happy…but she also wanted to be happy too. That was why she had come here. She had wanted to spend time with Minegishi because they always made her happy but Minegishi was taking a bath so she was hanging out with Shimazaki.

He was nice to hang out with too.

"You call that inhaling? Your Ladyship, I'm truly disappointed in you." Said Shimazaki. He sighed and shook his head in disappointment. What had Toshi been teaching this kid? She was so lucky to have him….and he meant that in the least creepy way possible in case any telepaths were listening or something like that. Or worse, Toshi had suddenly figured out how to read minds. Toshi was going to kill him, he knew that as soon as they got out of the tub he was a dead man, but at least he would die doing what he loved.

Getting high and improving the life of his youngest friend and future boss.

"What? I did inhale. My throat hurts and my lungs hurt. I know how to smoke." Said Mob. She handed him back the cigarette. You inhaled and then you passed even though it was sort of like sharing germs. That was the social aspect of this. That was what made this different from regular smoking. Also this made her feel really nice, too, like all of the bad feelings that she had been carrying inside of herself had just floated away in a puff of smoke.

Heh.

Her feet felt so good against his bedspread. It was so soft. Not silk, though, she knew what real silk felt like. Dad had gotten her another pure silk kimono because he saw how she liked to dress like royalty, he said, and she should dress like Japanese royalty. Then he told her that she is, was, and always would be royalty and that she would be the princess of the world some day and also maybe the queen if Sho died before dad did…which made her sad because she didn't want Sho to die…but he wasn't going to die because he was with Fukuda and Fukuda would keep him alive…and also she didn't want to be the queen of the world or the princess of the world or anything like that.

She just wanted to smoke and also to wear her own clothes.

She wasn't wearing that kimono dad had gotten for her. She was in her pajamas, the nightgown without the sleeves and also it had a cat on the front and also it was kind of short but that was ok because it was so hot out and humid and even the air conditioners were having trouble dealing with it. This was the last gasp of summer, mom had called the time when it got super hot towards the end of summer the last gasp of summer, and that meant that fall was coming. She would be sad when fall came. Then she would have to wear socks again and she wouldn't feel how nice Shimazaki's bed felt against her skin.

Her skin felt good against her skin, too.

She just felt so…good! She felt good and her aura was being all calm and quiet and not even moving and she was moving, though, she was trying to feel everything at once because it all just felt so good! She wanted to stay her forever but she couldn't. She knew that she couldn't. She had to go home soon and be with dad because dad needed her to sleep next to him to keep the other side of the bed warm even though it was summer and he could just turn the air down if he was so cold and also she was the one who knew how the TV worked even though he could totally learn how it worked too…but that was ok.

She knew that she couldn't stay here forever.

"You've got to keep it in your lungs. Trust me, you'll feel a lot better." Said Shimazaki. She was lucky to have him there to teach her these things. Nobody had taught him and he had been smoking like an idiot when he had been her age. Wasted a lot of very good weed back then, too, and it had been a hell of a lot harder to get when he had been a kid…and not just because he hadn't had Toshi back then. He couldn't let her waste the shit that Toshi grew. Sure the pen was easier and more convenient but this was grown with love, not that they'd ever admit it, by Toshi themselves. They were the greatest weed grower, friend, and all around person that Shimazaki had ever known.

They were also going to kill him.

But what a way to die! He had never seen himself making it to thirty anyway. He had assumed that someone would have killed him by now or that he would have died doing something awesome. Well he was alive, he was pushing thirty, and he was getting high with the second most powerful being in the world while the first most powerful being in the world was none the wiser. The fact that Suzuki would have killed, or at least terribly mangled, him made this whole thing even more fun. Surreptitiously smoking with this kid.

They had fun together.

Fun where he kept his distance, of course, because she was freaked out enough already. He could tell that she had finger shaped bruises right there on her shoulders/upper arms. He could see them if he focused enough. The blood was there pooled just under her skin. Suzuki was such a piece of shit sometimes but then again all dads were. He knew that his certainly had been and the less said about Toshi's the better. Yeah, he was never having kids. Well he liked them and the idea of a fun little person to always hang out with did appeal to him but then he would have to take care of it as a baby and he'd have to be with the same woman for the rest of time and also the vomit…he did not want to deal with the baby vomit.

So maybe it was best that he stuck with borrowing other people's kids for now.

Toshi didn't want any kids anyway. They had made that perfectly clear from the beginning. They did not ever want to reproduce. They knew that they would just end up ruining the kid's life. Shimazaki didn't agree but it was not a subject that he was going to press. He would have been a shit father anyway. His father had been a shit father and his father's father had been a shit father and it was just shit fathers all the way down his family line. He wondered if Suzuki's kids would end up being shit parents. Their dad was a shitty father and all but they were some pretty cool kids.

Especially her. She was a pretty cool kid.

"But I feel pretty good already." Said Mob as she was passed back their cigarette. The room was all hazy and smoky and stuff. She made the smoke dance with her powers even though she was the only one who could feel it.

"That sounds pretty good. What are you doing?" asked Shimazaki. He spun in his chair as her aura reverberated in his skull. That was nice. That was so nice. How did she DO that? God, that was so nice. It felt nice. It sounded nice. God, she was so nice. How she come from an asshole like Suzuki? They needed to preserve that man's genes, just fill a couple milk jugs or something , because he had some world class sperm right there if they were making such great kids. Just save it and preserve it and then sell it in the grocery store so the world could be populated by that bastard's bastards and then he'd have a whole army of kids to get stoned with.

Or something.

"Making the smoke dance." Said Mob. She took it and made shapes. Cubes and spheres and whatever the shape that cans were was called…cylinders! She made cylinders too and diamonds and the thing with six hides….hexagons! Yeah, those things. She could do that. She could do a lot of things with her powers. They were listening to well today. Maybe because had calmed down. Maybe because she had calmed down. She was so calm and happy and she just felt so….good! She felt so good and she wanted to keep on feeling good and she could feel good because the cigarette was being passed back and forth and this was just so good!

"How's it look? Explain it to me." Said Shimazaki. He saw her face cringe and her aura cringe. She was so much more expressive like this. God, her aura was so loud but…nice. Sort of like a soft rock show vs metal. Not that he didn't like metal, he just hated going to metal shows since it was just too damn loud…and he was not going to stop standing right in front of the speakers if there were any telepaths listening.

"Don't say explain. My dad says explain. He always says 'Daughter. Explain' and it's just…please don't say explain." Said Mob

"But I need you to explain because I can't see." Laughed Shimazaki. He was laughing at that approximation of Suzuki's voice that she did and the fact that he was spinning in his chair and the fact that he could feel Toshi and they were getting dressed….God, Toshi had it going on…..Toshi was so going to kill him…but what a way to go.

"Ok….um shapes. I'm making shapes. 3D shapes. Like balls and cubes and stuff….how come you can sense some things but not other? If that's ok to ask. I never know what is and is not ok to ask. Like sometimes I ask dad stuff and he tells me not to pry but then he asks me a bunch of personal questions and that's ok…for some reason…and also sometimes I ask Fukuda stuff like how his day was and he just says 'fine, Miss Suzuki' and then he just keeps on walking and it makes me feel bad but I know that he still likes me because he said so and-" said Mob

"Don't let that guy piss you off. He's an asshole and a hypocrite and also a tattoo ruining…guy. Yeah, a tattoo ruining guy. Did you see what he did to me? He practically deformed me!" said Shimazaki. Well truth be told he had no idea what any of the ink on his skin looked like, there were limits to what his powers showed him, but he did know that he'd had a very long date with the needle to get it all fixed up.

"Um….you look…nice." Said Mob. She did what he asked and she looked at him. She thought that he had too many tattoos to be honest. They were all together and it was hard to tell where one picture ended and the other began. He still looked nice, though, kind of….nice? Nice. She was going to settle on nice. She was going to settle on nice and then she was going to stop looking at him because it was impolite to stare.

"Well yeah, I look nice now, but I have it on good authority that he messed up pretty much everything." Said Shimazaki

"Why does it matter though? I mean since you can't see it even though it's a part of you….and I'm still not sure how that works." Said Mob

"It matters because other people can see it. They're a part of my skin so I can't separate it out from me to see it properly but that doesn't matter. Other people can see and that's what matters. I can't see things that are too…I guess light would be the work. I can't see steam or smoke or fog or clouds and I can't see ink on paper or on my own skin. But, hey, I can see in all directions and it's super hard to sneak up on me. Like now. Toshi's got a plant with them and they're coming to kill me right now." Said Shimazaki

"What do you mean? Minegishi…they would never hurt you. You're their friend and also they like you enough to kiss you and…and stuff." Said Mob. She laughed when she said 'stuff' even though that had not been very funny, what had happened, at all. She ducked her face down and pulled her nightshirt up over her face even though he couldn't see her and also it was warm in there with how she was breathing. The world looked weird, the view through her shirt, she could see the light and the outline of Shimazaki spinning back and forth in his chair and also Minegishi's aura getting closer…and then the door opened.

"You have ten seconds to explain yourself, Ryou, ten seconds." Said Minegishi. They had a spider plant and they were not afraid to use it. In fact they wanted to use it. He had JUST gotten his ass kicked for being creepy with Mob and now he was there in his room getting stoned with her. Minegishi could feel a migraine coming on thanks to the both of them.

Mostly Shimazaki, though, since Mob had a complete and total inability to say 'no' at the best of times….and judging by those bruises these were not the best of times at all.

"Suzuki's being an asshole, well more than normal, and she came here looking for you. Since I know how much you hate it when I intrude upon your tub time me and her got to hanging out." Said Shimazaki. Honestly. They were just smoking a little bit of weed, the same shit that Minegishi had grown, it wasn't like he had taught her how to smoke meth or something. He wanted to show her a good time, not ruin her mouth.

"We were going to vape but then his pen died and mine only tastes like bubblegum, it doesn't make me feel as good, so that's why I'm smoking even though I promised you that I would stop. There were extending circumstance." Said Mob

"Extenuating." Said Shimazaki

"Right. Extenuating circumstances." Said Mob. She looked up at Minegishi. She tried to read their aura. They went from mad to tired….well it looked like tired….and then they sighed and put their plant down on Shimazaki's desk. Mob hoped that they put a brail label on it later. Shimazaki liked to label where things went because it helped him stay organized. It was important to be organized because he hated losing things, well everyone did, but he said that he especially hated it because it was extra hard for him to find stuff when it got lost.

"…fine." Said Minegishi. Those were deep bruises. Mob was pale as all else but those were still deep bruises. Finger shapes bruises. Not her brother. They were spread too far apart. Minegishi knew that if they put their hand up to them they would spread too far apart for even their fingers.

Goddamned Suzuki.

They sat down next to Mob. She needed this. If she was this stoned, and she had five finger shaped bruises on each arm, then these were truly extenuating circumstances. Minegishi hated this, the way they felt, so powerless. They hadn't felt like this since they had been about Mob's age. Before their powers fully came in and they could be strong enough to make sure that nobody even got close enough to hurt them. Mob…Mob was already that strong…but Suzuki was stronger. He was strong enough to do that to her, to leave bruises so deep, and he was strong enough to hurt Minegishi too and anyone else who had a problem with the shit he pulled…

It took a really big man to hurt a ten year old girl, didn't it?

"Yay! Toshi's here! Now smoke this." said Shimazaki. That was surprisingly quick. Good, they were finally coming around. Really his way was the best way. Toshi had this crazy idea that doing this was going to ruin Mob's life. Well her life already sucked dick for a living in a public bathroom for counterfeit hundred yen coins. Much like his only she wasn't going to do anything about it, it seemed, and she was certainly strong enough. She and Suzuki were at about the same power level but she could always fall back on her superior agility. Suzuki was old, he was in his forties, and Shimazaki could tell that he was starting to feel his age.

He hoped that he didn't live long enough to have to deal with back pain.

"Come to our level…it feels nice. Soft. Soft and warm and…and nice." Said Mob. She let her skin rub against the bedspread under her. So soft. It was so soft. She let herself fall to the side until she was laying down on it. It smelled so nice. Sort of like Shimazaki but also like fabric softener. He smelled nice, actually, when she thought about it. She liked his cologne. She liked cologne in general. Hatori smelled nicer. Not that Mob got close enough to smell him that often. He had been showing her his game the other day and she had been close enough to see his screen…and also smell him…and he smelled so nice…and stuff…

She hid her face in her nightshirt again.

"I think that you might need to come back down to my level." Said Minegishi as they passed it back to Shimazaki. There was hardly anything left for them to even use to get on Mob's level…and she should not have been on that level at all. She was way too stoned. Well if they had been normal people she shouldn't have been stoned at all but they were not normal people, as Fukuda was fond of muttering under his breath they were a bunch of degenerates, so this was…not un-ok. Mob had a hard life. She had a life with privilege that Minegishi would never even have dreamt of at her age but she also had a father who grabbed her, it looked like, hard enough to leave bruises….plus just his general weirdness.

Goddamned Suzuki.

If Minegishi didn't have their sense of self-preservation fully intact they would have done what they did best to Suzuki. But they knew that they had no hope of beating him. Nobody did. The man may have been certifiable but he was correct when he said that he was the most powerful man on Earth. Mob would get him one day. He was getting older and she was getting older and one day she was going so snap and probably maim if not kill him. So at least Minegishi had that to look forward to.

"But I like it here. It's soft and it smells nice. You should smell this. It's like fabric softener and Shimazaki. He smells nice. You smell nice too. Because you took a bath. That's why you smell good. I smell good too because I also took a bath today. My brother doesn't smell good though because he only pretended to take a bath. I could tell because his hair wasn't wet when he came out of the bathroom. It's important to take baths." Said Mob as she rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. There were cracks up there. She didn't know why. She moved her feet so she didn't accidentally kick Minegishi. That would not have been a nice thing to do to her friend at all.

"Yeah, don't I smell nice, Toshi?" asked Shimazaki as he passed Mob their rapidly dwindling joint. No matter, he could always roll another one. He could teach her how to, too, because it was a good life skill to have. Yeah, he didn't know what Toshi was always going on about. He was a responsible adult. That was what responsible adults did, they passed life skills down to the next generation.

"You need another cologne bath." Said Minegishi as they snatched it away before Mob could get it. Nope. She was too far gone. She may have had her own demons to run from but there was no need to get her this messed up. Especially because she had to go home eventually. Apparently Suzuki needed to have his daughter sleeping next to him every single night now. Weird, weird for Suzuki and weird for normal people too, but there was nothing that Minegishi could do about that. Besides, the worst Mob said about that whole arrangement was that Galaxy Express 999 was long and boring and even though they were on a space train the show never went anywhere. Yeah, the boredom was probably the worst of it.

Minegishi eyed Mob's bruises.

Mob would have said something if…Mob never said anything. She just waited until things got too big for her to deal with on her own and then she went and did…this. Well who's fault was that? Minegishi knew that this was why they could never be a parent. They had messed Mob up for life without even trying. They shuddered to think of what they would end up doing to their own offspring. No, the world did not need any more messed up people in it. There were already the three of them, what did they need to add to the mess for?

"That sounds expensive, bathing in cologne, and also Minegishi doesn't like to be called Toshi but you keep on calling them Toshi even though you know that they don't like that at all. Also it's my turn." said Mob as she sat back up. She reached for the cigarette that Shimazaki was handing her but Minegishi took it before Mob could get to it. They had messed up the rotation. Shimazaki had said, he had been very clear, that you were never supposed to mess up the rotation. It wasn't nice.

But that was ok.

Because Minegishi needed to get on their level. They felt good and they wanted their best friend to feel good too. They wanted their friend to feel good, to feel as good as she did, and the only way to feel this good was to get on her level. That was a saying that Shimazaki taught her. He was so smart like that. Sure he could be annoying and weird and stuff but he also taught her stuff and was nice to her and stuff. Also he smelled nice. That was important. All of her friends smelled nice. Everyone in the world smelled nice. The whole world smelled nice.

She loved the world.

She loved the world and everything in it. She loved the way it smelled during the summer when she and Sho played outside and she loved how the sky was big and blue and pretty and she loved how the world had cats in it and she loved cats so much! She wished that dad would let her and Sho get a cat, well Sho wanted a hamster but she wanted a cat, but dad didn't want any pets. She wondered if dad would let her get a pet when she grew up. Dad said that he would always be there with her but when she grew up she would be able to do more for herself…right?

When she grew up she was doing this every single day and night and afternoon and evening and whatever other times of the day there were.

"You've had enough turns. Don't you have to go home tonight?" asked Minegishi

"You're right. You need turns more than I need them. I want you to be happy. You're my very best friend." Said Mob. She knew that she and Minegishi were not the kinds of friends who hugged, Minegishi had made that very clear when they had first become friends, she still really wanted to hug Minegishi. They smelled like soap. Flowery soap. They smelled like flowery soap and Mob liked it. They smelled good. Everything and everyone in the whole world smelled so good!

"Hey, what am I then?" asked Shimazaki

"You're also my friend. You're both my friends. I haven't had a lot of friends before and I am so happy to have you guys for my friends. I'm just so happy. I was sad before but I'm happy. Are you guys happy? I'm happy." Said Mob. She started laughing, too, even though she had no idea what was so funny. She wished that she knew what was so funny because then she could explain it to everyone and then they could laugh as much as she was laughing. She wanted her friends to be as happy as she was. She wanted everyone to be as happy as she was. She wanted dad to be as happy as she was, too, because then maybe if he was a happier person he would have been a nicer person, too.

He could be so mean sometimes.

And scary. Him being mean was normal and also scary but him being mean and nice at the same time was just…not a normal kind of scary. She wasn't worried about him being mean and nice at the same time again, though, because she was just having trouble being worried about anything. She was so happy and the world felt so good and smelled so good and everything was just so good…well she was hungry and thirsty but aside from that everything smelled and felt good…but she was kind of hungry.

"Mob, I don't think that there is anyone in the world as happy as you are." Said Minegishi. She wasn't drunk. At least she wasn't drunk. That was…good. She wasn't drunk. You had to take the small mercies where you could get them. She wasn't drunk and she wasn't going to end up with psoriasis or anything like that. So that was…ok. This was ok. Everything about this was ok.

Really, it was.

"But I want you guys to be as happy as me! You're my friends and I want you to be as happy as I am right now. Why can't you be as happy as I am? I wish that I could make you as happy as I am. I wish that I could make all of my friends, so pretty much just you guys and Shibata but not Sho even though I love him but he's too little, to be as happy as I am. I like to help out my friends. I wish that I could help everyone be happy and-" said Mob. She would have kept on going on and on because nobody got it and nobody ever got it when she talked. She was bad at talking so maybe if she talked enough then she would be understood and stuff. She would have kept on going but maybe then she had been talking too much. She also did that sometimes. It was hard to find the happy medium.

"I get by with a little help my friend…get high with a little help from my…gonna try with a little help from my friends…" said Shimazaki

"You know owe the surviving Beatles a lot of money. Hope it was worth it." Said Minegishi as they handed him what was left of their joint. If he started to roll another one they could not be held responsible for their actions. Nope. He was pretty messed up and Mob…there was no mistaking her for sober.

"Always is. Anyway I'm going to roll us another one. Any requests? I've ot Toshi's blend and-" said Shimazaki

"No you're not. She's stoned, Ryou, and she needs to go home tonight. Suzuki already hates you. Why would you give him another reason to kick your ass? Hell, you know he doesn't even need a reason, right?" asked Minegishi

"My dad wouldn't beat you up. He doesn't think that I like you anymore…at least he hasn't said anything in a while." Said Mob. She hoped that dad never brought up his crazy ideas about her liking Shimazaki every again. He was a nice enough person and he was also very tall but she just did not feel that way about him. She felt sort of weird when she was around him but not all doki doki. So that was not love and she didn't think that she ever could love him. He was her friend and that was all. Also Minegishi kissed him and all of that other stuff that adults did together so of course Mob could never like him like that because then things would just be awkward and stuff.

"How about we don't test that theory out. Come on, Mob, you've got to give it a rest. Trust me, you've had more than enough." Said Minegishi

"Ok…but only because you're my friend." Said Mob. She would have kept on going, Shimazaki said that there was no such thing as too much and she believed him. How could you feel TOO nice? She didn't get it. She would listen to Minegishi, though, because she had already broken her promise to stop smoking. She had might as well make it up to Minegishi by listening to them.

Even though she was so happy right now.

She hoped that it never faded but it would. It would face and she would have to go back to dad and stuff. Dad…he had been ok lately. Not scary. Not since that night. But he could be scary at any time….but that was ok. Well it wasn't but Mob felt ok about that. She felt ok about everything. She wished that she could feel like this all the time….

But she couldn't.


	201. Ravenous and Affectionate

Suzuki had no idea how someone so small could be so ravenous.

Growth spirt? Daughter was growing…but then again so was Son and he wasn't eating his dinner like it would be taken away from him. Well he wasn't eating at all. He was too busy deconstructing his meal. Suzuki didn't understand why he needed to take apart his salad and remove all the tofu from his soup but he wasn't going to start with Son. He did not need to deal with another one of his dinnertime tantrums. Well Daughter was the one who dealt with them, she was very good at caring for her brother, but he would have to listen to Son carrying on and he didn't want to.

Though he did wish that his children would find a happy medium when it came to eating.

"This is good rice. Isn't this the best rice ever?" asked Daughter as she used her powers to spoon herself a small mountain of white rice. Suzuki picked some rice up off his own plate with his chopsticks, he had told her time and time again not to use her powers at the table, and tried it.

It was rice.

Which rice. Starchy. Normal. There was nothing at all out of the ordinary about this rice. He did not see what was worth raving about it…or why Daughter needed quite so much. Money was always in abundance but he did not like it when the children were wasteful with their food. Daughter was eating, though, she was demolishing her mountain of rice so quickly that it was more of a hill now, and she had used plenty of soy sauce to do so.

He wondered if that was healthy.

"Put some soy sauce on it. This is the best soy sauce ever. Like, remember from the documentary? Well dad does but Sho doesn't. Ok, so me and dad were watching this documentary show about Japan and stuff and they were talking about soy sauce and did you know that there are five different types of soy sauce? But not only that there are subtypes like…" Daughter was talking and eating at the same time…and it was vile…but Suzuki did not stop her. She must have been very hungry…and also feeling very sociable. She never spoke this much in one sitting. She spoke as she ate and ate as she spoke and it was strangely transfixing but also not something that he wanted to watch at all.

She was behaving so strangely.

For a moment he has a crazy thought. Could she be pregnant? Masami ate ravenously when she had been carrying Son. She used to eat entire boxed cakes, buckets of children, and blocks of chocolate. She also ate entire sacks of oranges as well…which may have contributed to Son's deathly citrus allergy…and for a moment he is simply horrified at the fact that Daughter even COULD get pregnant hat he forgets a very simple but important detail.

She is only ten years old.

He's calmer when he remembers that she's only ten years old. That is far too young to bear a child. That is…the youngest mother in existence was only five…the world was indeed a disturbing place sometimes…but Daughter isn't pregnant. Most ten year olds cannot bear children and if Daughter were pregnant then some man would have had the nerve to…and then Suzuki would have to do some killing because Daughter was ten…and also his Daughter….and no one would ever use his Daughter like that no matter what age she was…

Which was maybe not the best thought to have about his Daughter's future romantic and sexual life because he did want at least ten grandchildren.

He tries to let the truly insane thoughts pass but then all the he is left with a nagging feeling of confusion. He wants grandchildren. He wants the world to be peopled with espers. Preferably powerful espers. He wants the entire world to be people with espers and he wants his family and bloodline to go on…even though she is not a part of his bloodline….he wants her to have children but the thought of any man and some older version of her…

But that was just the way life went.

Maybe this feeling stemmed from the fact that she was just a child now and he was having trouble conceiving of a time when she would not be a child. When he had first met her he knew, of course, that one day she would be a ten year old but he could not see it. He could not see past that fact that she was a two year old. Just like how when Son had been born Suzuki had known that he would not be an infant forever but he'd no way of seeing the person that he would become. He knew that Son and Daughter would grow up and find partners and have children…but the thought of it….bothered him in several ways.

Mostly for Daughter.

Son was Son. He didn't care much about what Son did. He thought of Son on occasion, like when he had been away somewhere for a few hours and Suzuki had no idea where he had gone to, but usually he just sort of let Son be. Daughter, on the other hand, consumed many of his thoughts. He wellbeing and her happiness, her wants and her needs, and her safety as well. He knew that she was a capable esper in her own right but he also knew that she was small and female and he had this instinctive urge to protect her from everything. Sometimes it felt like the world was fraught with danger and the only place safe for her was at his side.

She could never leave his side.

He was glad that they were on the same page about that. He had made himself very clear and she had made herself very clear. She had gotten the impression that he didn't love her because he didn't show her the level of affection that she desired. He then told her that he was not capable of showing the constant affect that she desired but she should rest assured that he would always love her because she was his Daughter and that they would always be together. He was glad that they'd had that talk. She had been clear and he had been clear and now they understood each other.

Mostly.

"Do you want my food too? You look like you need it more than I do." Said Son. Suzuki didn't much care if Son ate anything at all, just that he not make a nuisance out of himself while he was at the table, but this was Daughter's domain. She got final judgement over this and most other things when it came to Son. He trusted her fully and completely. He trusted her the most out of everyone in the world…well aside from maybe Fukuda. Now there was a loyal person. Even if he did overstep…but that was fine. Suzuki cared less and less what his Son got up to over the years. If he had to make a nuisance out of himself then let him go and do it somewhere far away from his father and sister.

"No, you eat it. You need to grow up big and strong, little brother." Said Daughter

"But you're starving. You ate all the rice in the rice cooker and all the tempura vegetables and also a whole fish. Did you eat lunch today? And breakfast? And dinner yesterday?" asked Son

"Of course I ate. I just really, really like this food. Isn't this the best food ever? Just like lunch today was the best lunch ever. I'm so glad that I made milk day. All the food was milk and the drinks were milk and it was all just…milk! Ice cream and cream soups and strawberry milk and choclate milk and dairy free milk product…that stuff is gross but some people can't have milk. I can have milk though and I had…." Said Daughter. Suzuki lost track of what she was saying. At some point she had gone from listing the different kinds of milk to talking about how white rice was better than brown rice, which to be fair there was no contest, before circling back to milk again and then from there somehow jumped over to a one sided debate between that ice queen movie she liked and the one about the princess with the very long hair.

He didn't get it.

"Big sis? What are you talking about?" asked Son, finally, and Suzuki was grateful for once. Now he didn't have to ask. What was….he had no idea what this was. He'd had no idea what this was. She was hungry and rambling and also she was having trouble sitting still. Her aura was very…sleepy? Her aura seemed like it was asleep but she was wide awake. Well her eyes were shutting a bit…overly tired? They had been carrying on late into the night but not that late.

How much sleep did she need again?

The two of them were getting about six to seven hours of sleep a night these days. It was her fault. She was the one who had wanted to watch the original series of the Galaxy Express. He never would have chosen that because as enjoyable as it was, not that he should have been getting enjoyment out of that because he was in his forties and not his single digit years, and he watched for her benefit. So he happened to enjoy the time spent with her, big deal.

Maybe, though, they needed to start going to sleep at a reasonable hour.

"I'm talking about how Tangled if like Frozen but instead of being afraid of herself she stays in the tower because she's afraid of the world which makes the story much less fun even though she and Flynn get married at the end. Elsa could get married in the sequel though but I don't think that she will because the only non evil and not a snowman boy character is Olaf and he's a snowman so that would be weird but then again she is the queen and she could do whatever she wanted and also Minegishi thinks that she likes girls and the whole story is about her liking girls but that makes no sense because then instead of her having powers it would be about her liking girls which would then be a whole different movie and also….." said Daughter. Son looked at him. He looked back at Son.

He had no idea what to tell him.

Masami had never acted like this so it was not some woman thing that he couldn't understand…or maybe it was because he had never taken the time to learn the secrets of the opposite sex. If he had he would have figured out how they kept their skin so soft and also how they could stand to have such long hair. He'd ask Daughter about the hair later, actually. She kept on touching hers now. Did it bother her? She was touching her hair and squirming in her seat and…and also if there had been more food to consume then she would have done it….

This whole thing was very strange.

"Big sis? Are you ok? Because if you're going crazy from hunger or something I can call Fukuda? Or maybe you just got heat stroke? Or were you hanging out with the Awakened too much today and you caught their weirdness?" asked Son. Suzuki wondered the same thing. Her eyes were red and her face was flushed. Could she have taken ill?

The though is terrifying.

He had, for a brief time in his life, been terrified of germs. Of illness. Of tiny pathogens invading his body and taking him down from the inside. There had been a period of two weeks when he ate nothing but prepackaged food, drank nothing but prepackaged drinks, and used telekinesis instead of touching anything. Of course then he, eventually, came to the realization that someone as powerful as him did not have to fear germs, the germs had to fear him, and then came the two weeks of incessant cleaning…which mother had been very happy about….and now suddenly feels like cleaning the house from top to bottom and covering Daughter in hand sanitizer to keep the germs off….but that would be bad for her skin….and she had very soft skin.

"I'm ok. I'm the most ok. Are you ok? You're who matters little brother. I love you so much. I love your little smiles so much and I love your hugs and I just want to hug you for the rest of time but I know that I can't because we would eventually have to eat and sleep and breath and drink water and visit friends and stuff." Said Daughter. Was she craving affection in that case? Oh. Well he could do that. Later tonight he could tell her that he loved her. She seemed to like that. Once every week or so or every two weeks…still sort of a lot…but he could do that.

For her there was nothing that was beneath him.

"I'm…ok. Do you…do you want a hug? I can give you a hug big sis…if you want." Said Son. He slowly got out of his chair and…and he had no idea that Daughter could move so fast. She had caught Son in a hug so fast that he had barely been able to see her. Son's aura was tucked in protectively around them…and he had no idea why. He knew that he was safe.

"I love you so much Sho. You're the best little brother ever and if you weren't my little brother you would be my best friend ever….and you're so warm. Why are you so warm? Your hair feels nice." Said Daughter. She reached one hand up and began to pat Son's hair. Suzuki did not envy him in that moment. He'd had to deal with the same thing as a child before he started cutting his hair too short to spike up. Seemed a big odd for Daughter to be fascinated by it, though, since she had known Son for her entire life.

"You smell weird. Kind of like Shimazaki's house." Said Son as he tried and failed to tug himself free from his sister's loving embrace. Suzuki narrowed his eyes. She had better not have been spending time with Shimazaki…she had said that they were just friends….but Daughter had still had feelings for him at some point. Suzuki didn't fully trust Shimazaki but then again he didn't trust any man around his Daughter.

Which was going to be real problem when it came time for her to marry.

Suzuki could not envision a version of the future in which he did not hate Daughter's future spouse. Some man was going to try and take her away from him, that was how it worked the woman joined the man's family and all, and he hoped that she never married. He hoped that she simply had children but did not marry…and also thinking about Daughter as a sexual being was disturbing as well even though he knew that women were human the same as men and wanted the same things…but the thought of his Daughter actually wanting to do those things makes him want to build her some sort of female only artificial island…under a dome…so no men could get to her and then she would be safe and…but then she would no longer be by his side…but it was a decent idea on paper but…but the logistics of that weren't adding up….

She was only ten. He decided to put a pin in the women only domed island.

"That's because I was hanging out with Minegishi and no other reason. No other reason at all. So don't think that there were other reasons. I like to hug you. I never want to let you go. I wish we were still little enough that we could fit in the same bed and sleep next to each other and also do you remember when we got a new dishwasher and we had that box and we lived in it? I wish that we could be that little again. Don't you wish that we could be that little again?" asked Daughter. Suzuki certainly wished that they could be that small again. That she could be that small again. Small enough that he could carry her in one arm. Small enough that she was happy with what she was given and did not ask for more than he could provide.

He would tell her that he loved her later tonight, though, when Son was asleep.

He hated being weak. He hated being weak when he was alone and he hated being weak when it was just him and Daughter but he especially could not be weak around Son. If he was weak around Son then Son would think that it was alright to be weak and Suzuki could not have that. He had been good about that, hiding his weakness from the children, and he was loathe to change that now. But Daughter had asked him too…

Just like Masami had.

But at least Daughter had been specific with what she wanted and she had also accepted that she had been asking much more than he had been willing to give. That was where she and her mother different….and also in many other ways…but he does not want to think about those ways now. He does not want to think about Masami at all now. The pain is passing, slowly, the wound that she had left him with is beginning to scab over. It will never do more than scab over, though, because she is gone and…and he has no idea where she had gone to. That was the worst part of it, not knowing, being powerless. There was a powerlessness to the not knowing….and he did not like to feel powerless…

So he decides to stop thinking about this and focus on the disjointed ramblings of his Daughter.

"Your hair is so red and pretty I wish that I had hair that was red and pretty when I grow up I'm going to make my hair red and then we can match and then we can finally look like brother and sister and then we won't be mistaken for friends and even worse boyfriend and girlfriend. That's always so weird. You're my brother, that's so gross!" said Daughter. She's incorrect, they have no genetic relation so it would not be wrong, but he knows better than to ever tell her that she'd been adopted. Especially in her current state.

Or if she had been in any state at all.

She could never know. She may not have been his child by blood but she was his. She was his and only his. She did not need to know the truth of where she had come from. He would take it to his death. She was his Daughter, he had raised her and chosen her from all others to be his Daughter, and in terms of pure emotion that was what mattered the very most. In terms of lineage and succession it was a whole other story. If the children ever came to him asking to marry he would say yes…and then privately berate himself for making the many serious mistakes that would have led the children down that path…but the children were perfectly normal so he didn't to sit there debating with himself between thoughts towards his own lineage against the fact that the children were brother and sister.

He felt like he had bigger things to worry about right now.

"You're squishing my skeleton." Said Son as he tried to get free. Suzuki watched the whole thing from the table. He decided not to intervene. The children were old enough to solve these disputes on their own. Well that and also Daughter was somewhat unsettling right now. She was just being too strange…he had never seen her like this before…and he didn't understand it…

He didn't understand it one bit.

"Sho! OH NO! I'm so sorry! I'm sorry that I squished you and stuff! I didn't mean to! I just wanted to hug you! I love-" said Daughter

"Yeah, I know you love me. You're being too weird. I'm going to go…somewhere else. Call me when you're normal again." said Son. Suzuki wished, just a little, that he had that option. He did not understand her at that moment and he wanted to be near her, he always wanted to be near her, but now she was just being….strange.

She had been a little bit different lately but nothing like this.

She had been somewhat lethargic when she came to bed, and also her mind had been elsewhere, but he had thought that she had just been tired or something. But now maybe it was something else…but he had no idea what. All he knew was that this whole thing had him very confused and also a little bit worried and he was not fond of any of those emotions…

So he exorcised them as best as he could.

"Ok….bye! I love you!" said Daughter. She waved, even, which seemed a bit odd. He would have thought that she would have followed Son but she didn't. No, she turned his attention towards him. She was looking at him now and he had no idea what to do. She smiled a bit and then walked over and….oh. She just wanted physical affect.

He hugged her back as best as he could from sitting in a chair.

"I love you so much dad. Even if you can be scary sometimes I love you." Said Daughter. Suzuki was confused. He frightened her? When? He could be frightening when he was angry but he hadn't had any cause to be angry at her in….he couldn't even remember the last time he had ever had cause to be angry with her.

"I frighten you?" asked Suzuki. That was not something that he had set out to do. Maybe she had become frightened by the way that he dealt with the Awakened and other such incompetents. Well she had nothing to worry about in that case. One of her was worth an incalculable number of them. She was worth more than any other human being that had ever walked this earth. She was perfect in almost all ways and she was his and he would never treat her in the same way that he treated others.

"Yeah. Sometimes you can be scary even when you're being nice but it's ok because you're my dad and I love you and you love me and we love each other. That's how love works." Said Daughter. Suzuki let her go. What she had said made no sense? How could he frighten her when he was being nice? He wasn't a frightening person, at least not to her, because he loved her. He cared for her. She was his and he would never have done anything to harm her. She was his and he lived to provide for her. To care for her.

Her and her alone.

He cared for her and her alone. Well he cared for Son but Son was Son. Daughter was Daughter. It was totally different. She was just someone who….who it was easier to care for…and also he cared for her in different ways. Son was Son and he did not need the same level of care as his sister did. Also he had been a difficult child to bond with. Daughter really was the more agreeable child. She had always been the most pleasant and agreeable out of his two children. So it made sense that he cared for her more.

And also that he would be bothered when she said that he frightened her.

How? How could he have frightened her? He wants to know but also…but also she said that it was ok. He did not want to have another talk about emotions and feelings. They'd had one a few nights ago and she'd asked him for more than he could give. He could not handle that again. No, he would just….he would be fine. She had said that she was alright and he would take her word for it.

She was alright.

"I love you too, Daughter." Said Suzuki. He supposed that he could move the 'I love you' up to now. Son was off doing something anyway so he wouldn't pick up yet another bad habit. Daughter hugged him again and…and she did not smell good. She smelled like…clean linen air freshener, bubblegum, and something else which was unpleasant but familiar…but he just could not recall….she broke apart from him before he could remember where he had smelled that before.

"My stomach hurts but I'm also hungry and it's weird. I want ice cream and milk even though all ice cream starts off as milk like in the documentary we saw. The one you said made you sick just by watching it. I'm going to eat ice cream now." Said Daughter. He watched as she went to the freezer and pulled out a pint of ice cream with a spoon already stuck in it…

Vile.

He had no idea how she could stand to eat that, how she could still stand to eat at all, why she had been acting so very oddly that night, and also…just….

How could someone so small possibly fit that much food into their body?


	202. Moderation on the Mezzanine

Mob did too know the meaning of the word moderation.

Moderation meant that you didn't drink a whole gallon of milk a day or smoke a pack of cigarettes a day or use a whole bottle of bubbles whenyou took a bath. Mob knew what moderation meant. She knew how to do moderation. She knew how to be moderate. She just didn't want to be. That was all.

"Well I know someone who's going to be invisible for a while." Said Minegishi as they took the pen out of Mob's hands. They knew where this came from. They knew who had been STUPID enough to give this to Mob. The same person who had taught her how that smoking a pack a day was an acceptable way to live her life.

"How do I turn invisible? And also can I have that back? It was a gift." Said Mob. Shimazaki was so nice. He had let her have his vape pen. He said that she could have it because her life was hard and stuff. She didn't think that her life was that hard but she did appreciate him thinking about her and stuff. He was a good friend, an annoying friend but a good friend, and she was so happy to know him. He was getting the best birthday present ever when his birthday came around.

"I have no clue and, no, you can't have this back. You shouldn't have this here at all. What if your dad catches you? I know the first person that he's going to come after if he finds out about this." said Minegishi. They liked being alive. They had no plans of dying at twenty seven because Shimazaki Ryou was an idiot. If Suzuki figured out that his precious little girl was getting up to things that precious little girls weren't supposed then they knew who he was going to blame first.

Or second.

They didn't want to be blamed at all. This was not…it was sort of their fault. Sort of a lot of their fault. They had taught Mob some terrible coping mechanisms and now they would have to live with this for the rest of their life. Somehow this sat more on their mind than the numerous crimes that they have committed up to and including murder.

"You said that vaping was ok." Said Mob. She wasn't smoking even though she wanted to. They were outside in the smoking/reading/coffee drinking outside space and she could see people smoking and she could smell people smoking and she wanted to be one of them…but she had promised Minegishi and there were no extenuating circumstances.

"I did but this isn't a vape pen. Ok? The stuff I gave you was pretty much just water and flavorings. This is something that is actually something very illegal and also not for kids anyway and I don't want either of us to have to deal with your dad's wrath." Said Minegishi. They tucked the pen into their pocket. Ryou would not be getting this back. How could he be so stupid? Minegishi had expected better from him…

And that had been their second mistake.

Their first mistake was starting Mob down this path. They didn't want to be a hypocrite and they didn't want to make her life any worse than it already was but…but they also wanted to live. Also they didn't want to ruin her life. They had ruined their own life in a lot of ways and they just…did not want that for her. There was something to it, being responsible for a kid, and they just…this was a lot more than they had ever asked for.

There was a reason that they had decided early on not to ever have any kids.

"What is it then? And why can't I vape it? It makes me feel good. Food tastes better and everything makes me happier and I'm not as scared of my dad, sometimes I can ever forget how mean he can be, and also I can watch Galaxy Express and not be bored. Nothing is boring when I vape that pen. I like it." Said Mob. The world seemed to work on that rule. Things that felt good were bad and things that felt bad were good.

It didn't seem fair at all.

"Illegal drugs, mostly, some heavy metals in there too maybe." Said Minegishi. They weren't going to sugarcoat it. Sugar was poison.

"….but we do illegal stuff all the time. Dad says that because we're working in service to his goal it's ok to break laws." Said Mob. That was why there were so many people hiding the money and also why people couldn't know about Claw and stuff. Because most people wouldn't understand what dad was trying to do and then they would try and punish him even though there wasn't anything wrong with the stuff he did because he was destined to take over the world and stuff.

"Touche. You have a point but I raise you this…how about we don't increase our chances of getting caught by breaking too many laws at once? If you have to do this can you at least just do it at home? And also where your dad won't catch you? And also not to the point that you're talking nonsense and eating to the point of throwing up? Please tell me that you can at least do that for me." Said Minegishi. Well they couldn't argue with that logic. They weren't going to sit there and act like a hypocrite…but they could at least get Mob to use her head…but this was on Minegishi too. Maybe they should have mentioned that people would care a HELL of a lot more if she got caught smoking this and not if she got caught sneaking a cigarette.

They were bad at this.

This whole being a fulltime babysitter/best friend/role model to a ten year old. They were in no position to be taking care of anyone other than themselves and even that…that was not advisable either. They had messed up their own life big time, they were a high ranking member of Claw after all, and now they were messing up Mob's too…but then again she was the daughter of the idiot who had founded Claw…so they didn't know.

Maybe it was a 50/50 thing.

"Ok. I'll vape a regular bubblegum vape. Do you want some?" asked Mob. She offered her boring pen over to Minegishi. They shook their head.

"Pass. You just do your thing." Said Minegishi. They sat down in the shade of a mezzanine tree. Mob joined them. That tree liked the smell of bubblegum about as much as they did. Minegishi patted it's trunk and gave it a little encouragement. Well now at least it was complaining less. Minegishi took their book from their messenger bag as Mob tried her best to replace one bad habit with another.

Minegishi really sucked at this.

"What are you reading?" asked Mob. She got the feeling that she had done something wrong…well she had…but she hadn't had any idea that it was the sort of thing that dad would have been mad at her about. She wasn't allowed to smoke but vaping wasn't smoking. They were two totally different things. She didn't much care about the law, dad said that the law didn't matter in the slightest only his laws did, but she did care about getting in trouble with dad. He could be so scary…but he hadn't been that scary lately. Her bruises were even starting to fade. She had been doing a lot better…and she had to spend the whole rest of the day with him in his office…and she loved him but lately he had been sort of…too much. His aura had always been on hers and he kept on looking at her and it was hard to get away from him. She had no idea how much she would miss her walks through the building. It would have been easier if Sho had been around but he was always helping Fukuda and she didn't want to be there with Fukuda. Even though he said that he still liked her she got the feeling that she didn't.

And it made her feel sad.

"A biography about a famous serial killer and cannibal." Said Minegishi as they flipped their page. The sun was bright, the air was clean, and they had plenty of plant life to keep them company. This should have been a good time…and it mostly was. Aside from the fact that their ten year old best friend had picked up some of their worst habits…but there was no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. It was what it was and all Minegishi could do was keep Mob safe and not let her do anything stupid.

"Why do you want to read about scary stuff like that?" asked Mob. Sometimes Minegishi read boing books that were very long and very difficult to understand and sometimes they read books in other languages that Mob also couldn't understand and sometimes they read books with people kissing on the cover that Minegishi said that Mob was way too young to understand but this would be the things about Minegishi that she would never be able to understand. Why they read books about murder and war and death and people eating people.

"Because it's interesting." Said Minegishi simply.

"Why is it interesting?" asked Mob. She wanted to know. Sho liked scary things too. He watched scary movies and movies with fighting in them all the time. Mob didn't like those. She liked movies where people met and fell in love and cared for each other and lived happily ever after. It was hard to pick something that they both enjoyed so Mob mostly just sat through Sho's movies even though she really didn't get it.

"Because I like reading about people more messed up than myself. Raises my self-esteem. I like to feel good about myself.." Said Minegishi. They had always had a flair for the macabre ever since they had been small. It might have been due to their terrible upbringing but they were not about to start talking about terrible upbringings with the Daughter of Suzuki Touichirou.

"You…feel better about yourself when you read about terrible people?" asked Mob

"Yup." Said Minegishi

"Ok…I don't get it but ok. I don't read a lot of books so I don't know. I mostly just read manga." Said Mob

"Did you ever finish that pile of manga you bought a few weeks back?" asked Minegishi

"I'm still working on it. I got through this one series where the boy and the girl fall in love but then the girl is actually a ghost and he finds out later and then he exorcises him because he wants her to be with her family and it's very sad." Said Mob

"Spoilers." Said Minegishi. They heard a crash and looked up. The Awakened were fighting again. Something about a chair. God, these people…

"Sorry. I didn't mean to-" said Mob

"I don't care. You can spoil all of the manga you want." Said Minegishi

"Ok. So then before that I was reading this other manga about this boy who wants to learn how to play piano but he's had at it and he has to get better really fast because if their club doesn't do good then it'll get cut and-" said Mob

"And then the standoffish girl who acts like she hates him is secretly in love with him and then they almost get together in the end but they don't and then there's this bonus chapter that doesn't give you any closure but instead just gets you wanting to read more?" asked Minegishi

"How did you know? Did you read it too?" asked Mob

"No, but I have done my time in shoujo hell. I know how these go." Said Minegishi

"I don't think that shoujo is the H-word." Said Mob. Shoujo was the best kind of manga. No fighting and lots of love. She loved love and she didn't see why Minegishi wouldn't. What felt better than being in love with someone and then they loved you back?

"Well that's because you're ten and this stuff is for people closer to your age, not mine." Said Minegishi. They were not going to shit on her choice of reading materials. There were few feelings worse than having someone shit on what you loved.

"So when I grow up I have to read about murderers?" asked Mob. She didn't much want to read about murderers. There were enough scary things in her life already.

"If you want. It's a free country. You can read whatever the hell you want." Said Minegishi. They had spent their whole life being told that their choice of books was wrong. They had spent their whole childhood being told that everything about themselves was wrong. They hoped that Mob never had to feel the way that they had felt for their entire life.

"I think that I'll still read the stuff I like now. I like reading about love. It makes me happy." Said Mob

"You're ten going on thirteen, you know that?" asked Minegishi. They were not looking forward to Mob's teen years. It wouldn't be so cute when she hit puberty and the creeps started coming out of the woodwork. She seemed to like older guys, there was a world of difference between a teenager and a child, and that did not give Minegishi optimism for her teen years. Minegishi hoped that she met a guy her own age when she hit those years.

"No, I'm ten going on ten and a half. I'll be ten and a half in the wintertime. That comes before thirteen." Said Mob

"Not literally. You've just been really obsessed with love lately. You're like a teenager….in a princess costume." Said Minegishi. She was a walking contradiction. She was as boy crazy as a middle schooler and she was dressed like an elementary schooler…well she should have been an elementary schooler…but she was dressed like a much younger child than she was. How did she even find those costumes in her size? Not that Minegishi was going to say anything. They didn't want Mob to grow up any faster than she already was.

"Elsa is a queen." Said Mob

"A costume is a costume." Said Minegishi with a shrug. They wondered what was up with Mob and all of the costumes. Maybe because she hadn't had enough contact with other kids her own age to feel self-conscious about still acting like a kid.

"Not if it's my normal clothing." Said Mob. She didn't think that it counted as a costume if she wore it in her life. Besides, they came from the clothing section of the Disney Store and therefore these were clothes.

"And if your entire life is a fancy dress party." Said Minegishi with a shrug. Kids and costumes. They could never understand that even when they had been Mob's age.

"Are fancy dress parties fun? I've never been." Asked Mob. She had never been to any kind of party at all. She had always wanted to go to one, any kind of party, even a political party even though those sounded boring and dad said that politics were the useless. She just wanted to know what it was like to be at a party. That was why she had said yes to all of the parties people asked her to approve.

"I have no clue. I hate parties…so thanks for approving all of those holiday parties. I'm going to end up having to go to some of them because I'm in the upper echelon…and also to keep Shimazaki from embarrassing himself, me, and everyone else in the upper echelons." Said Minegishi

"Oh…I wasn't thinking about if people wanted to go…because I didn't know that people might not want to go….but maybe it'll be fun. I don't know. I've never been to a party before. Me and Sho never had birthday parties because dad didn't want us to be friends with the other kids." Said Mob

"These aren't going to be like birthday parties. These are adult parties. Drinking, talking, maybe dancing, and a bunch of people trying not to kill each other. Parties aren't that fun if you're an adult and you have enough sense not to get messed up at a work party…and I hope that you have enough sense not to get messed up at a work party." Said Minegishi

"I do. I know that if dad sees me drinking he'll be mad. It'll still be fun, maybe, if I don't drink…because I hear that parties are supposed to be fun." Said Mob.

"Well if you don't have fun you can come and be a wallflower with me and Shimazaki when he inevitably overdoes it. Probably Shibata, too, because that guy is impossible around the opposite sex. I don't see him working the room and dancing with some beautiful stranger who he'll sweep up off her feet and then live happily ever after with." Said Minegishi. Most likely they would end up glued to Shimazaki's side because he ALWAYS overdid it no matter what the occasion was. They didn't know what Suzuki did to people who publically embarrassed him but they knew that it couldn't have been any better than what he did to people who tried to flirt with his ten year old Daughter.

"I hope that happens for him. I hope that happens for everyone I know. Does that happen a lot fat parties?" asked Mob. She felt her face turning red. She felt sort of like Anna in the First Time in Forever song only she wasn't thinking about a stranger but someone she knew…and who probably didn't like her like she liked him….but she could still think about it.

"Why? Hoping that a certain someone is going to be there?" asked Minegishi. They couldn't help it. Mob was so cute when she started up about Hatori Nozomu…and Minegishi could not begin to understand it. But then again their taste in men wasn't much better.

"Um….I don't know." Said Mob. She did know and she felt bad about lying…but it wasn't a lie because she really didn't know who Minegishi was referring to for sure.

"You know he's nineteen, right? And also you can do a lot better." Said Minegishi. They felt bad for Mob. She was only ten and she liked someone who had better not have had any interest in her…and also for some reason pale, gangly teenage boys with bad acne and questionable style sense were her type. Well at least she would never be lonely.s

"I know how old he is…and I think that he's really great…." Said Mob softly. She felt like everyone was paying attention to her but instead they were all paying attention to the two Awakened that were having a contest to see who could jump over the most chairs. It didn't look like it was going well.

"What do you even see in that guy?" asked Minegishi. They cringed as an Awakened fell on top of one of the metal mezzanine chairs…and now he was screaming about his broken phone…play stupid games and win stupid prizes.

"I just sort of like him I guess….it was like…like I saw him and then I just sort…felt like I liked him. When I saw him I felt all doki doki and also all sort of…have you ever mixed soda and pop rocks and then drank it?" asked Mob. She could talk about this with Minegishi because they were best friends. Also nobody was paying attention to her. One of the Awakened had fallen on his phone and broken it. Mob felt bad for him but also she wondered what he had thought would happen if he had been jumping over chairs with his phone in his pockets. Boys were so weird sometimes.

"No but I know what you're talking about. Be prepared for several years when that's all you'll be able to feel." Said Minegishi. Well then. Yup. It was coming. Great. They had the feeling that they were the one who was going to have to deal with all of that wonderful special time in life stuff. The talk, first real love, first period, first time, mood swings, body image issues, all of that wonderful stuff that came to you during puberty was just waiting for Minegishi to help Mob deal with. Great. Well it wasn't like there was anyone else who could deal with this stuff. Mob's mother had left years ago and Suzuki wasn't really a hands on dad at the best of times…and also Minegishi wouldn't have been surprised if he was so clueless about what was coming that it hadn't even occurred to him to even have told her about….anything.

This was going to be a fun few years.

"Nonstop? How many years?" asked Mob. Well she was glad that this weird feeling was normal but she didn't know if she could deal with feeling that nonstop for years and years and years.

"Twelve or thirteen to about nineteen or twenty." Said Minegishi. They would have to talk to Mob about all of this later. They'd get her a book, too, but later. She was only ten now and it seemed early…or late depending on how much Mob was like Minegishi was at her age.

"That's…a long time to feel like this…but then I'll be old enough that he'll like me…I mean that someone would be able to like me." Said Mob. She held her braids down with her hands. She was thinking about him and now she could feel his aura and she felt all embarrassed and stuff even though she knew that nobody was looking at her but Minegishi…and she knew that Minegishi wasn't going to make fun of her for this or anything.

"Mob….call me when you're back to normal. I don't know how many years I can deal with this for." Said Minegishi

"I am normal. I mean I think that I'm normal. I mean…I don't know. I know that I shouldn't like people without getting to know them but also I know that it's ok to like people because people like other people all the time…and stuff." Said Mob

"It's normal to like people, I just meant that this is new for you. I'm going to miss playing dolls with eight year old Mob, I really will." Said Minegishi. They felt melancholic about this kid growing up…and this wasn't even her kid! They should have been happy that Mob was growing up because the more she grew the more she would be able to cope with life and deal with her own things…but Minegishi would miss younger Mob. Before all of this…

This was why they had no plans to ever have kids.

"Minegishi, we will never stop playing with dolls. I promise you that we will never, ever, ever stop playing dolls together." Said Mob. How could they stop playing dolls? Why would they stop? They had to play dolls because there were very few things in this world that were more fun to play with dolls. Even if they became old people they could and would still play with dolls.

"Well I guess that we'll have to invite him, then." Said Minegishi. They pointed over in the direction of an aura that felt a lot like theirs actually. It traveled through electronics. Theirs traveled through plants. Huh. Well that was interesting.

"Stop looking! Wait, look. Wait, look but don't make it obvious that you're looking." Said Mob. Hatori was there. Someone must have called the tech office even though they had a rule about working on people's personal stuff. Not an official rule they just didn't like extra work. Well he didn't. Mob was staring at him, she did that a lot, but she was also not staring at him. If she looked away every so often then he wouldn't be able to tell that she was looking at him.

"Yeah, you've got it bad." Said Minegishi. It was like looking at a greasy planetarium. What did Mob see in this guy? She could have gotten literally anyone else. Well there was the old saying about books and covers but that book was also shouting at some Awakened so….

"He shouldn't shout like that…but also he doesn't fix people's personal stuff. Well he fixes mine but he doesn't like to do that for other people." Said Mob. She held her braids in one hand and her vape pen in the other. He had on a sweater with a pigeon on it. It was the nicest pigeon that Mob had ever seen. She watched him stomp off from the Awakened…and now they were cursing at him…and he turned to yell at them even though he knew that yelling wasn't nice…or maybe not since he had been yelling a lot…

They made eye contact.

Mob gasped and then looked away. She vaped quickly, trying to look natural, because if he knew that she had been staring at him then he would think that she was weird and dumb and stuff. Mon inhaled too much bubblegum vape fluid and started coughing. Minegishi hit her on the back a few times. She didn't feel any better, though, because she could feel his aura getting closer and closer. This was good. This was bad. This was everything that she had ever wanted. She hated this and wanted to throw herself off the mezzanine. She always came to him, he never came to her, and now he was closer and she needed to stop coughing and she couldn't and-

"Suzuki-sama and….friend. Hey. How's it going?" asked Hatori. Mob stopped coughing as best as she could. She had to look normal and natural and stuff. She was fine. She was fine and she could so this. She was going to do this. She just had to make words.

"Hi Hatori." Said Mob. She choked a little bit when she said that. She needed to look normal and be normal and this was normal because if it was abnormal she'd end up freaking out and…and her knew that this was not normal but she still had to stay calm because this was so BIG!

She wished that Minegishi hadn't taken her good vape pen away.

"This is Minegishi. They're my friend. In case you didn't know them…which you didn't." said Mob. Right. She had to be polite and the polite thing to do would have been to introduce Minegishi. She had to be polite because it was normal to be polite and she had to be normal.

"How's it going, Minegishi?" Said Hatori

"Hello." Said Minegishi. They looked him up and down before getting back to their book. They weren't Mob. They weren't clueless. They knew how they were being looked at. Mob was just an excuse to come over there. He needed to do something about that body language.

"They're fine and I'm fine. How are you?" asked Mob. She was careful not say too much, dad said that she had been rambling lately and she had been difficult to make sense of when she talked that much, and she didn't want to look dumb or anything in front of him.

"Fine, just dealing with those assholes. What brings you two out here? Come to see the show?" asked Hatori

"We were just out here enjoying the day since we have nothing else to do. Not like you. I bet you have all sorts of things to get back to." Said Minegishi. That idiot knew that Mob liked him and he wasn't even looking at her. Minegishi didn't want him to return her feelings, that would mean a lot of extra work for them since they'd have to kill Hatori, but he could at least look at the ten year old that was head of heels for him. At least spare Mob's feelings.

And also they knew when they were about to get hit on and even if Mob hadn't been there they still did not feel like getting hit on.

"Yeah, I should get going…unless you have anything that needs fixing. I can fix just about everything. Laptops, consoles, calculators…phones?" asked Hatori. Minegishi held up their book.

"Can you fix the binding on this? Otherwise please get out of my light." Said Minegishi

"No but I-" said Hatori

"Light." Said Minegishi

"….right. Well I guess I'll get going. Suzuki-sama. Minegishi-san." Said Hatori. Mob had been watching the whole thing, she got the feeling that Minegishi may have been being a little bit mean there but she wasn't the best at talking, and now she felt like she had to say something. She had been there the whole time and she'd had trouble figuring out what to say and the conversation had been going so fast…and she felt like such a kid…

She was a kid.

"G-goodbye! Happy Halloween…in October…." Said Mob. She should have said something else. She couldn't believe that she had said something so dumb and now he thought that she was dumb and she felt bad and her aura was moving and her hair was floating and-

Something was pressed into her hand.

"Inhale once and only once…and only because that was painful for all involved." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't need to be told twice. She inhaled once, which may not have been enough to feel better, but she gave it right back when she was done. She wanted more, she needed more, because Minegishi was right. That had been painful for everyone involved and she was all stressed and stuff and she wanted to ask for more but she knew that Minegishi wouldn't let her have more.

Even though Mob knew the meaning of the word 'moderation'.


	203. A Nest Full of Baby Birds in the Park

Sho liked parks.

He didn't like how he had to have on long sleeved shirts and long pants and gym shoes with socks, it was very hot out, but he did like going to the park. There was space to run around in and lots of people had their dogs with them. There were other animals too, like birds, there were a lot of birds at the park. Momma birds and baby birds.

Sho loved the baby birds.

"Are there any here?" asked Sho. They were in the part of the park with trees now, not the part with the playground. He would have liked to have gone to the playground but he also liked spending time with Shimazaki. He didn't like playground because they had too many screaming kids and also when he was a kid he wasn't allowed to go to the playground because his parents were mean to him and stuff when he was little.

They had that in common.

It was important to have things in common when you were making a friend. Big sis had reading boring books and drinking coffee in common with Minegishi. Sho had liking baby birds and having a dad who was mean to you in common with Shimazaki. Shibata was a friend too but he was staying behind to make sure nobody killed dad. Dad usually sent Sho to the park with Shibata, Shibata REALLLY liked taking him to the park, but then today dad was all like 'you're both being very annoying. Go somewhere else' and then he and Shimazaki decided to go to the park.

They both liked the park.

Did this mean that they were on their way to becoming best friends? Shimazaki had said, before, that they were friends but Sho wanted to be bets friends with him. That was what this was, the feeling that it wasn't enough, and stuff like that. He got the feeling that being friends was just….not what he wanted. So of course the next step would be becoming best friends. He didn't know what the differences between being friends and best friends were but he knew that he wanted to be Shimazaki's best friend more than anything else in the world.

He was just so cool!

"Shh, I'm listening." Said Shimazaki. Sho instantly shut up. Right. He was too loud all the time, like dad had said, and he had to be quiet. Sho hoped that they found baby birds. Shimazaki would pull him close and teleport them both into a tree if they ended up finding baby birds. Also there would be baby birds! They were so little and cute but the important thing was to never touch them because if the mom smelled human on them then she would stop loving them and leave and then they would die. Moms did that sometimes.

Sho always made sure never to touch the baby birds.

You weren't supposed to touch baby anything without the mom's permission. That was why he and Shibata couldn't go to the park with the rocket slide anymore. Sho had told him in plain Japanese to leave that baby alone. He'd been in charge of a baby before and he knew that if someone had just tried to pick up baby sis like that he would have freaked out too. That was why he had to ask her new mom if it was ok to pick her up too…even though Sho had taken very good care of baby sis. If he had to take care of baby birds, too, he would also be careful of who he let touch them. They were so small and they couldn't even fly yet. He didn't blame them, though, flying was hard to do.

"Did you find any yet?" asked Sho. He wanted to see some baby birds and he wanted to be teleported into a tree and he wanted to be near Shimazaki and he couldn't be near Shimazaki until he teleported him into a tree…and he didn't know why he wanted to be so near to him. It just sort of happened one day when they were hanging out that his brain told him that he could be near Shimakai…and then his brain decided to never shut up about it. Sometimes it could be quieter than usual but then it would just start telling him randomly 'hey Sho, we can be close to Shimazaki'.

His brain was a weird place sometimes.

"There, in that tree. The one that smells good." Said Shimazaki. Sho didn't know which trees he was talking about. They all just smelled like tress to him.

"Which one?" asked Sho. He felt so dumb that he didn't know which one he was talking about. Shimazaki probably thought that he was so dumb and stuff. He probably thought that he was dumb and he wanted to be friends with someone else and Sho wouldn't have blamed him one bit.

He always felt a weird combination of good and bad when he hung out with Shimazaki.

Being near him felt good. Kind of like being on the teacups at Disneyland. It's was like spinning really fast and you felt like you were out of control but you knew you were in control but also you weren't and you went faster and faster and faster….and it felt good. But also it could feel bad. Like how the last time that he had been on the teacups at Tokyo Disneyland with big sis and they had tried all the popcorns one or twice or even three times and then they had gone on the teacups and it had been so fun but he just went too fast but it had been fun but then, also, he ended up throwing up the second the ride stopped…but it had been worth it.

Being near Shimazaki was kind of like that.

"Here, come on." Said Shimazaki. He reached over and picked Sho up and then before he knew it they were in a tree. Sho was standing up on his own, his feet had braches and his arms had branches, and that was good. It was good that he had his own branches even though he also sort of wanted Shimazaki to hold him up like he had to sometimes when the tree didn't have enough branches…but this tree had enough branches and he should not have felt disappointed about that fact…

He could be so weird sometimes.

"Hey baby birds. How you doing over there? How's life? Hope you don't get eaten by a cat. You probably will, though, you probably will." Said Shimazaki. He was talking to the birds like he would have to a baby…well not that he talked to baby sis like that…or at all. He hadn't really liked baby sis all that much…but that was ok, he just said that he didn't like babies all that much….which Sho didn't get but he wasn't going to say anything about that. People could like whatever they liked.

He liked him, that was what mattered.

They were friends. Shimazaki had said that they were friends. He had said so back when Sho had helped him after dad beat him up for liking big sis. They were friends and they liked each other and they were going to be best friends…maybe…but he would have liked that. Maybe when he grew up and they were the same age. Then they could be better friends. He was a kid and they could only be friends like a kid and adult could be friends. He sometimes wished that he was friends with other kids but he didn't know any other esper kids because there weren't any other esper kids who he could be friends with so, of course, he was just going to be friends with whoever he could be friends with.

He liked being friends with Shimazaki.

"Um…do you really think that they'll get eaten by a cat?" asked Sho as Shimazaki pulled a slice of bread from his pocket and dropped it in their nest even though they were way too little for people food. He knew babies and he knew birds and he knew that baby birds could only eat the food that their moms threw up in their mouths…so gross…but human babies drank formula and that was very gross too. Still, though, they weren't supposed to have bread and all of that people food….but he wasn't going to say anything.

"Probably. Cats eat birds after all. Circle of life and other such songs." Said Shimazaki as he broke up the bread. The baby birds didn't eat it. They were calling for their mom now. They wanted their mom. He knew what that was like. Their mom was coming to feed them soon, though, because bird moms always came back…unless they got eaten by cats or something.

"Do you think that the mom is coming back? I mean if cats eat birds then maybe she got eaten." Said Sho. He hoped that the momma bird came back. It was hard enough for people when moms didn't come back but it would be even worse for baby birds. They were little and helpless and also needed to be fed by having their food thrown up into their mouths. They were so little and they needed someone and that someone might not come back…and it was the worst when the person who took care of you never came back…

"Yeah. She might have gotten eaten. Don't worry then the cat will be eaten by a dog and then the dog will be caught and then ground up into hotdogs and then a person will eat the hotdog and then the circle of life will be complete. No, wait, the person will die and then their body will be picked apart by birds. Then the circle of life will be complete. Life and death, kid, it's deep." Said Shimazaki. Sho didn't really think that the food chain worked that way, he was pretty sure that there wasn't any dog meat in hotdogs but he avoided them just to be safe, and also that did not reassure him at all. Sure the mom fed a cat who fed a dog, and Sho wasn't even sure if cats ate dogs, but the baby birds were still there and they were still alive and stuff.

But he didn't want to say anything.

He didn't want to say the wrong thing. He wanted to tell Shimazaki that his phone chain was missing a few steps and also that the baby birds were doomed if their mom had been eaten and didn't come back. Dad was always saying that Sho shouldn't care about animals but he did care about animals and also he felt sort of bad, sometimes, about caring about animals because nobody else did and that bothered him sometimes, being different like that, and also he sometimes said the wrong thing and he didn't want to say the wrong thing because Shimazaki would think that he was dumb…

But he did want to say something. For the sake of the animals.

"We should do something, then, if the mom didn't come back." Said Sho. He knew that he wasn't supposed to have any pets, dad said that pets were stupid things to keep, and also dad said that he would get rid of any pets that Sho brought home…and he knew that dad would notice if he brought a nest full of baby birds home with him and hid them in the closet and fed them worms he chewed up himself…but also he couldn't leave the baby birds out there to get eaten or starve or…or anything.

He didn't know if their mom was ever coming back.

"I could leave you in this tree so you can take care of them and then they'll eventually recognize you as their mother." Said Shimazaki

"I can't live in a tree. I mean it's a good idea and I would if I could but I have to go home today and be there for my sister. I think she's going crazy. She keeps on hugging me and telling me she loves me…and also she ate all of my snacks when she knows that I don't like it when she eats my snacks." Said Sho

"Good. She deserves it." Said Shimzaki. Sho really had no idea what he meant by that. He wasn't going to say anything, though, because he didn't want to look dumb. He still didn't get what there was to be happy about. She must have been really sad or lonely if she was hugging him so often and she must have been starving if she kept on eating nonstop. Her stomach always hurt, she said, but then she just kept on eating. She even ate all of his poptarts and drank a whole two liter of his soda.

He got mad and kicked another hole in the wall.

But then he had calmed down and decided that she wasn't being mean, she didn't know how to be mean, she was just really hungry and lonely and stuff. Sometimes people got weird sometimes. Dad even said that girls in general were weird people and men couldn't understand women and women couldn't understand men. Sho wondered how people came together and made babies, then, if nobody could understand anyone else.

So he asked Fukuda and he'd been no help.

Sho knew that when a mom and a dad loved each other very much they got married and did something gross to make a new person. He hadn't been asking about that. He had been asking about how people could be together if they couldn't understand each other. He had never once understood a girl in his life, even his own sister, and he had no idea how he was supposed to meet one and fall in love with her and spend his life with her and stuff. He didn't want to think about that, what his life would be like when he grew up, he was too busy worrying about big sis and worrying about that nest of baby birds and also worrying about staying in that tree. He could feel Shimazaki looking at him with his aura and he was having trouble keeping himself in that tree but he had to, he really had to, because if he fell out of that tree then he would look so stupid and Shimazaki would think that he was stupid and then he wouldn't want them to be friends anymore.

And that would suck worse than anything….well almost anything.

Letting these baby birds die because the momma bird had gone off some place would have been the worst thing ever. It wasn't their fault that their mom had gone away. It wasn't their fault that the mom had to go off to some other place and leave her babies alone. Maybe they had been bad birds and no momma could love them. Maybe the momma bird had just gone off some place and gotten lost. Maybe the momma bird missed them but she couldn't come back to them because she had gotten her wings and legs bitter off by a cat. Maybe she wanted to be back with her babies but she couldn't because of very good reasons….or something.

"We should take these birds home with us." Said Sho. He didn't know where he would put the baby birds or what he would do to keep dad from finding them or what he would feed them since big sis kept on eating all the food and Sho didn't want to have to chew up worms and throw them up into that baby birds' mouths…but he also couldn't just leave them alone to die. He loved these birds. He loved them and it didn't matter if their mom loved them or not because Sho loved them and that was what mattered.

"You want to take a nest full of baby birds home with us and raise them yourself? And then they'll recognize you as their mother and you can teach them to do your bidding?" asked Shimazaki. Sho looked down even though he knew that Shimazaki could see him no matter what direction he looked in. He felt warm…but that was because it was summer and he was in long pants and a long shirt and stuff. That was it. Because there was nothing else that could make sense.

"Um…yeah….I mean I wasn't going to teach them to do my bidding or anything….but if you think that it's a good idea then I'll do that." Said Sho

"Have I ever told you that you're a genius?" asked Shimazaki. Sho felt like he was going to fall out of that tree. He felt like he was going to fall out of the tree and break every bone in his body and he knew that if he fell he would look so stupid but he really felt like he was going to fall because he was having trouble keeping himself up and he had no idea why. Shimazaki just said something nice to him. That was all.

He still felt like he was going to fall.

But he didn't fall. He was grabbed and before he knew what was happening there were no more branches under his feet or in his hands and the world was black and gone…but then it wasn't. The world was green and blue and hard under his feet and he was on the ground now. He had thought, for a moment, that he had fallen but he knew that he had just been teleported. He had been teleported and he was alone on the ground, now, and he just…he didn't know how he felt. Warm and stuff. Kind of nervous.

He felt like he was being watched.

He felt like he was being watched by everyone in the whole world but he knew that there weren't people around him and also that even if there would have been people around him they would have been looking at Shimazaki, not him, because he was much cooler than Sho ever would be. Well they would have looked at him if he had been there…but he wasn't. He wasn't around and Sho felt…worried. He had never been left alone before, and he knew that he could find his way back to HQ on his own, but he was still worried.

Very worried.

"Here you go. Have fun." Said Shimazaki. He teleported back in front of Sho and he was more relieved than anything even though he knew that he should have been mad. He hadn't been asked if he had wanted to teleport and he hadn't been asked if he wanted to be left alone and…and he could take care of himself but….he didn't even know why he felt the way he felt.

And also what he was holding.

It took him a moment to realize that he was holding a bird's nest…the bird's nest with the baby birds inside of it. Sho stood very still. They were so small, so very small, and they needed him. They needed him just like baby sis had needed him and he had to give them what they needed but…but what could he do? He was a human and he knew how to take care of a human but he had no idea how to take care of a baby bird…let alone four of them…and they were very loud.

But he could do this.

"I can do this." said Sho as he held the bird's nest in his hands. He could do this and he would do this. He would take care of these birds until they were big enough to fly and then when they were big enough to fly then he would teach them to fly and he would fly away from him and he would be very sad….but that was ok because things were supposed to grow up and leave you.

But you could never leave them.

He would never leave the baby birds even if they were loud and sort of scary and smelled kind of bad, too. He was their momma bird now. He was the momma bird who was also a human boy and he would take the best care of them and they would love him and he would raise them and…and things would be good. Things would be perfect. He would love them no matter what. He would love them if they were good and he would love them if they were bad and he would love them if they fought with each other and he would love them, too, if they got along…

He would love them.

"That's the spirit! Yeah, you raise those screaming dependents….but also you really should duck." Said Shimazaki before he teleported away. Sho was about to ask him what was up when he felt a sharp pain on the top of his head…and then another…and another….and another.

Oh. The momma bird had been planning on coming back the whole time.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I was going to be nice to them!" said Sho. He held the nest close to his chest as the momma bird pecked his head. He maybe should have waited a little longer before he decided that he was going to raise these birds himself. He was just like Shibata. Just because a baby was walking around without a baby leash that did not mean that you could just pick that baby up and decide that it was yours.

The same went for birds, apparently.

"Run, kid, run!" laughed Shimazaki. Sho didn't run even though he wanted to. He couldn't put the nest down because then the babies would be in danger. He loved these birds so much…but so did their mom…but she had left them all alone up in that tree…but she was a bird and as a bird she had to fly around to find food and stuff.

"Help me put the nest back!" said Sho. He couldn't keep these birds even though he would have taken good care of them. The momma bird was their mom, not Sho, and he had to do what was best for them. When you loved someone you did what was best for them. Even if that meant leaving them behind to have someone else take care of them you had to do that…and he hoped that these birds didn't end up hating him when they grew up and he wasn't there for them.

"I thought that you were going to raise them. Come on, don't let the birds down." Said Shimazaki. Sho, of course, did not want to let the birds down…but they had a mom. They had a mom and she loved them enough to peck Sho's head so hard that he was bleeding.

"Just help me!" said Sho. He knew that he should have been nicer. He knew that he should have been better, a better person, if he wanted to be Shimazaki's best friend…but baby birds mattered more than friendship.

"Fine, if I have to." Said Shimazaki. Before Sho knew it he was being picked up like a sack of potatoes and the world disappeared and then reappeared around him. He was in the tree, now, and he had to put the birds back. So he did. He didn't have time to even say goodbye because before he knew it he was back on the ground again.

And he was being laughed at.

Sho kicked the ground so hard that grass got torn up. He was mad. He could feel tears collecting in his eyes and he kicked the ground even harder. His head hurt and he was mad and he wanted to cry and Shimazaki was laughing at him and stuff and that was the worst out of all of it. He must have looked so stupid. The most stupid. Shimazaki probably thought that he was an idiot and now he would never want to be Sho's friend and….and it sucked so much…..

It really sucked.

"Hey. Are you crying? No, no, no, don't cry I don't know what to do with crying kids." Said Shimazaki. Sho wiped his eyes.

"I'm not crying." Said Sho as he finished wiping his eyes.

"No, it looks like you are." Said Shimazaki. He got very close and poked at one of the tears streaking down Sho's cheeks. Sho batted his hand away.

"Well I'm not and you can't even see anything anyway." Said Sho. He had been mean and he knew that he had been mean but he wanted to be mean. He had to be mean. At least if he was mean he could be alone.

"I can 'see' that you're upset." Said Shimazaki

"No you can't. You've got no idea how I look and how I feel." Said Sho

"No, I can tell. What's got you all upset Suzuki-chan? You pissed off about that bird pecking the hell out of you? You upset about bleeding? Because I can tell that you're bleeding, and badly too." Said Shimazaki. Sho didn't want to talk about it so he agreed. He was bleeding, he could feel it, and he was upset because he was bleeding and his head hurt and stuff. There was more to it, though, the way that he felt.

But he didn't know what it was.

There was a lot to it and he didn't feel about picking it all apart them. His head was bleeding and he felt sad and embarrassed and also sort of like he was going to throw up and stuff. He just…he wanted to feel better. He didn't want to feel like this. He wanted to feel better and he wanted to be with the person who always made him feel better.

"Yeah…yeah. I'm bleeding. I'm upset because….because the bird pecked my head. Can you take me to Fukuda? I just…I want to see Fukuda." Said Sho. He wiped the last of his tears and the blood from his head, too, which was dripping a lot. Birds had sharp beaks. He hadn't known that about them but he knew know. Birds had very sharp beaks and they didn't like it when you messed with their babies.

They pecked your head really bad.

He still liked parks, though, he still did.


	204. Trying and Failing to be Alone

Suzuki Toichirou didn't need anymore.

But his Daughter. He cared for his Daughter and in caring for her then it was completely normal to want to keep her beside him at all times. She was his Daughter and he was her father and as her father it was his job to keep her near to him. It was his job to keep her safe. It was his job to raise her properly and he couldn't raise her properly if she was away from him for too long.

So he had legitimate reasons to keep her near.

"Dad, I'm going to go take a break." Said Daughter. He didn't know what she was taking a break from. She had been watching television on her tablet all day. Well she had sent out some more of her little mass emails and also she'd answered some of his work emails but aside from that she hadn't been up to much at all.

"Do you have to?" asked Suzuki. He had no idea if she had to. He trusted her judgement. He didn't know how she was feeling and she was a child. Maybe she had to burn off some excessive energy. Son had the problem a lot of the time. That was why he had sent him to go and both someone else. He wasn't going to send Daughter out to go and bother someone else. Not that she was bothering him at all.

No, it was the direct opposite.

He enjoyed her presence while he worked. He'd always enjoyed her presence while he worked even when she had been a small child. He could remember those days when she had been small and they all lived in the old house…and she had been just as wonderful then as she was now. Maybe she was even more wonderful now that she was older and she was better for conversation and the like. He wanted to keep her there. He wanted to keep her beside him because…because she was good conversation. He might have felt like having a conversation at some point and then she wouldn't be there and then who would he talk to? Shibata? One of the Awakened? Himself like some sort of madman?

"Um…yes? I'm just going down to the lunchroom to have a snack. That's all." said Daughter. He frowned a bit. She had been eating a lot lately. Not as much as before, she had frightened him a bit before, but she had been hungrier than normal. Fukuda said that she was probably going through some sort of growth spirt. That would make sense. She was almost ten and a half and the internet had said that puberty was right around the corner…not that he was looking forward to that at all…

"You're hungry again?" asked Suzuki. He glanced at the clock. It was only two p.m. and they'd just eaten round noon. How much food did children need? He wasn't sure. He could barely remember how much he had eaten when he had been ten. Once he'd hit his teenage years he had been ravenous, as ravenous that Daughter was now, but he'd been going through puberty then. He'd been growing quickly physically, mentally, and also his powers had been growing exponentially too.

It had not been a good time.

He did not need his children to hit those years. There was no way to skip those years, though, because the children needed to grow up. Daughter needed to grow up. He wanted Son to grow up. He didn't want to deal with Son going through those years, he had been very violent and annoying lately and he was only ten. Suzuki shuddered to think of what his Son would be like in a few years. He didn't want Daughter to grow up. Son, he wanted Son to grow up and grow out of this…whatever he was going through, but Daughter….he wanted to freeze her at ten forever. He wanted a Daughter who…who was this Daughter. Who enjoyed spending time with him. Who did as she was told. Teenagers…he knew what teenagers were like….he had BEEN a teenager. A teenage boy. He'd heard that girls were worse. Whenever he would talk about her behavior back when she had been young Masami had always told him 'you just wait until she's thirteen'.

He didn't want her to be thirteen. He wanted her to be ten.

"Yes. I want a cookie." said Daughter. Suzuki wondered if he should do something about how much she ate. He wondered what he was even supposed to do. Food was not a battle he had ever liked waging with the children. They could eat whatever they felt like, he had always felt, but Daughter had been eating a lot…and also eating food that just was not good for her. He worried for her health even though they had Fukuda in case she ever truly got sick.

He was concerned for her.

He didn't like it. He didn't like caring for another being. He didn't like being concerned for her or for anyone else. It made him feel weak. It made him feel…but this was alright. He was supposed to be concerned for his Daughter. She was his child and he was supposed to worry about the wellbeing of his child. She was his, his, and only his.

She was his.

"But you just had lunch." Said Suzuki. He knew what time it was and he knew how to do basic math. She always left him around two p.m. and he had no idea why. She could just eat more at lunch or something. She didn't have to leave him.

"I know that we had lunch but I forgot to take a cookie. Don't you remember? We had lunch together." Said Daughter. Yes, he did remember, but he still didn't know why she had to leave him. She was always leaving him in some way…not that he cared. She wasn't leaving, not really, and she in fact could not leave. She was a child. She was ten. Where could she even go? Why would she even go? He made her happy. He provided for her and spent time with her and even showed her more frequent affection. What more did she ask for?

"Yes. Why are you eating again? Are you that hungry? Maybe you should eat more at your meals, then, so you don't have to eat between meals." Said Suzuki. He watched Daughter's aura. It had less of that sleepy quality to it. It came in closer to her, she was pulling it in, and he didn't know why. She had no reason to get defensive.

"Why can't I just eat whenever I want?" asked Daughter

"You can. I'm just trying to understand you." Said Suzuki. He didn't much like admitting it, that he was trying to understand her, that he needed to understand her. That was very close to admitting that he needed her. HE had already admitted to her that he needed her…and he hated himself for it…and he didn't want to admit it again. He isn't supposed to need her. He isn't supposed to need anymore. What she must have thought of him, of her father, being so needy and weak.

She must have been thinking something.

Her aura was drawn in much closer around her. Her aura was pulled in closer and she was looking at him, now, and her arms were drawn around her. As she moved some heavy electronic thing, he had no hope of understanding the children's various gadgets, hit the desk as she moved. They were sitting the both of them at his desk. He knew that she needed a desk of her own and probably an office of her own, too, because she was getting older and his desk was getting crowded….but he didn't want to give her a desk of her own let alone an office of her own. Not yet.

He wanted to keep her close. He wanted to keep her right by his side at all times. She was his. She was his and he wanted to be with her…but he knew that it made him so weak and needy. She was just so…her. He wanted to take her and bring her in close. He wanted to hold her close and…and also keep her at arm's length. He had to keep her at arm's length because…because he couldn't be like that…but also….

The whole thing was very complicated.

"Are you going to grab me again?" asked Daughter. She had her arms around herself now. Defensive. Why was she being defensive? He had no clue but he did know that these were defensive gestures. She was pulling her aura in close and also she was using her arms to protect her organs….he didn't understand.

"No. Should I?" asked Suzuki. Did she want him to hold her? She asked that of him sometimes. He didn't know why. Maybe she felt unsafe when she asked him for that. She was certainly acting, now, as though she felt unsafe even though she had no reason to. He was there. He would protect her from whatever it was that she feared.

"No. You don't have to." Said Daughter quickly. She dropped her defensive posture. She did, however, zip up the hooded jacket that she was wearing for some reason. Was she cold? The air conditioning wasn't even going full blast. It was set at sixty five. It could go a lot lower…but then again she was wearing less clothing than he was. She was just in another one of those costume dresses she always wore. He was in a full suit. He wondered when she would start wearing actual clothing. She had worn actual clothing when she had been younger. Now she seemed to exclusively wear these costumes…but he knew not to say anything. It was dangerous ground to criticize a woman's clothing.

"Are you going to leave, then?" asked Suzuki. She was glancing at the time like she had somewhere to be. But she had also zipper her coat and if she was planning on going out into the greater building then she would need to unzip that coat because the rest of the building was considerably warmer than his office.

"I'm coming back. You said 'leave like I'm never coming back but I will." Said Daughter. Suzuki thought for a moment. He was being irrational, wasn't he? She had a point. He was not going to leave him forever. He had nothing to worry about. She was his Daughter. She would never go anywhere. She was just a child. She couldn't leave him.

"…fine. But come back quickly and don't leave the building." Said Suzuki. What else could he say? He had no reason to keep her near him beyond his own feelings and those were irrational.

"Thanks, dad." Said Daughter. She said that and then she left and…and all he could do was watch her leave. She was going to come back. He didn't know why he felt like she was not going to come back. She was his Daughter. She was his. His. The word his calms him down. He clings to it. He clings to it like h wants to cling to her. He wants to cling to her and…and he knows that he shouldn't. She was his and his alone and she would come back. She was his and she was a child and she would come back. She always came back.

He checked the time.

Lunch ended at half past two. She did not have the power to extend lunchtime. She had power, some of it, but she did not have that kind of power. She stopped having her meals brought to her and…and he had no idea why she did that. She could have whatever she wanted brought to her. Daughter…he didn't understand her. Maybe she wanted to…socialize? He didn't know. He had never understood the urge to socialize…but he was not Daughter.

She was a different person from him. She was a totally different person and she was just….she had her own reasons for doing the things that she did. She had her own reasons and they were incomprehensible to him and he just had to accept that about her. He had no choice in that. He should have gotten himself sorted out first, anyway, before he tried to get her sorted out. He had been…he did not like the person who he had been lately. He was usually better at detaching from her, from everyone, from everything but now…

He checked the clock.

She should have been there by now. He should have been better than this. Here he sat with a mountain of work piling up on his desk just waiting for her to come back so they could sit there together again. He never should have given into her that first time. When he had decided to pick her up and carry her to his bed just because he had been missing her. He never should have done it again for the second night or the third and he certainly should not have let her come and voluntarily sleep next to him…but he had. He had and now they were….this.

He checked the clock again.

He never should have allowed her to sleep next to him. He never should have given in to her when she asked him for more affection. He never should have allowed himself to need her. He was supposed to be beyond this, beyond the idea of need, beyond needing anyone but himself. He never should have….he never should have allowed himself to…to give in to this growing need to be beside her. He had been her father for eight years now. Why did he just suddenly now want to be near her? Or had this been growing, insidiously, within him for years. This dependence he had on Daughter, on her presence. He had always enjoyed her presence.

He checked the clock again.

How long would she be gone for? She had already been gone for too long…and he did not like this. That she was gone and the way he was feeling. His desk was starting to rise up off the ground. Thank God he was alone. He didn't know how he would be able to explain this to anyone. His lack of control. He willed his desk to hit the ground. He sighed and rested his head in his hands. He would feel better when fall came. He would feel better when winter came. He would start to feel terrible again once spring came. He would be at his absolute worst as summer came, as it wore on, and he would get worse and worse and worse until fall came and the cycle continued.

He wanted this to stop.

He wished that there was some way to make this stop. He wished that there was some way to exorcise these emotions. He wished that he had better control over himself. He had to have control over himself. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He was the future ruler of the world. He just could not carry on like this. How could he do this? He was falling to pieces just because his Daughter had left him…and she had been worrying him….but he was the one who was probably worrying him. What she must have thought of him. What her mother must have thought of him. Masami had seen him like this, too.

She had seen him like this.

She had seen him weak and worried and alone and….and maybe that was why she had left. He had no idea why she had left, vanished completely, and he wished….he wished that she had just told him to his face that she was unhappy with him. That he had done something to be a bad husband. That she had seen him weak and vulnerable. She, of course, had wanted to go….or maybe that wasn't it. He didn't know. He had no idea what it was that had caused her to leave him. He wished that she had just left him a message or…or something. If she had just given him some indication of why it was that she was leaving.

He checked the clock again.

Daughter at least told him where she was going and why. She was someone who said what she meant and meant what she said. He liked that about her. She was so easy to understand….and also very complex. She had been so ravenously hungry lately…but he could he ask her about that later. He could ask her about it and she would give him clear and concise answers. He loved that about her. He loved her. He loved her so much because…because she was easy enough to understand…and she explained herself when he didn't understand her…and she made her needs perfectly clear. She was his Daughter and he loved her.

He checked the time again.

He decided that he'd had enough of waiting for her. She had been gone for too long and…and something might have happened to her. She could have…fallen and broken her legs….not likely. She could have gotten stopped by some Awakened…somewhat likely. Either way he was Suzuki Touichriou and he could go wherever he wanted and he could do whatever he wanted and he wanted to…to go and take a walk. Stretch his legs. Sitting down for long periods of time was bad for you or something. So he could get up and take a walk whenever he wanted to.

He got up too fast.

Back pain. Lower back pain from sitting too long. Fukuda could fix it but it would just be back again…and again. Forties. He was in his forties. At some point he had hit his forties, probably on 11:59 p.m. on his thirty ninth birthday, and now he was getting older and he would die some day…and he doesn't want to think about it. He doesn't want to think about in a few short years he'll be fifty and then sixty and seventy and eighty and then probably he'll be dead by then and then Daughter will inherit….then SON will inherit the Earth and Daughter…she will have to be without him…and she'll die without him.

He might have been just a bit too dramatic there.

He didn't want to think about it, getting old, the fact that he had hit middle age, and the fact that his Daughter was going to be all grown up soon. He didn't want to think about any of that. He was going to think about….about how she had been gone for a while and he was within his rights as her father to check on her…and also he really did need to get to walking. His joints hurt a little and his back popped a few times…he needed to figure out how to either deal with this or reverse the aging process…but then he could end up living forever as he reversed the aging process…and he didn't want that.

Well he could get a lot more done if he lived forever.

But then he would have to live forever and that meant that he would outlive Daughter. He didn't think that he could have stood to outlive her. That was not the natural order of things. He had brought her into this world and he could not see her leave it…well he hadn't brought her INTO the world but he had raised her…and either way he never wanted to see her dead. He loved her. He loved her so very much….and he had been saying it too often lately. It was detrimental to her, perhaps, or to him. He was the one going to pieces, not her.

He hated himself sometimes.

He hated the way he felt and the way he acted and the weakness he had shown her. She had seen him at his weakest and she must have thought less of him. Who wouldn't think less of their father when he acted like that, needy and clingy? No wonder she wanted to get away from him. No wonder she didn't want to stay by his side for every single hour of every single day. He shouldn't have wanted that from her, though, he shouldn't have needed that. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he shouldn't have needed anyone but himself.

He needed her.

He needed her and he did not have to go far to find her. She was exactly where she said that she was. She was in the cafeteria eating a cookie and talking to someone. The cafeteria was deserted, he spotted her immediately, and he knew that she must have noticed him. She paid him no mind, though, because she was in the middle of a conversation. He had no idea what she was talking about but whatever it was it must have been pretty engaging.

If she wanted to talk to someone she could have talked to him.

But she wasn't talking to him. She was talking to….he really needed to start learning people's names. Someone at that terrible in between stage between being a boy and being a man. All acne and awkwardness. Daughter was talking to him and smiling and her aura was….he had never seen her aura like that before. Hiccupping was the best word he could think of for it. Nervous. Not fear just…nervous. He didn't understand her one bit sometimes.

Also she had been away from him for too long.

He gave her aura a tap. Not enough to hurt, just enough to make her aware of him if she wasn't already. Daughter, to her credit, immediately sat up straight and left the table. Good. She had been gone for far too long. She was holding on to her hair with one hand and clutching her cookie in the other. He wondered what either of those gestures meant. He wondered a lot of things about her.

"Dad? How come you're here?" asked Daughter as she joined him at his side where she belonged.

"It's my building and my organization. I can go wherever I want." Said Suzuki. He wasn't about to admit to her that it had been difficult for him to be away from her. He didn't want to make himself look bad and also he got the feeling if he told her the depth of his feelings for her it would be…putting power over him in her hands? Maybe. That was just the feeling he got. The only person who he had ever let have power over him had been Masami and she had been his wife. Daughter was not his wife and he could not let her have power over him. If it even was that. He didn't know.

"Ok. That makes sense." Said Daughter as she walked beside him. He decided to make a lap around the building just so that people remembered that he was alive….and also because his joints had cried out in protest when he got up and he knew that was not a good sign at all.

Nothing had been a good sign lately.

The way that he had felt physically and emotionally. He had been setting the worst sort of example. Daughter was there at his side where she belonged and he was right there beside her where he belonged, he was leading her, but where was he leading her to? He didn't know. He didn't know where he was leading her to right now or….or even in life. He needed to be better for her, to be a better father, but he just did not know how. Not when he was all twisted up like this. Not when he had this need to be beside her, to cling to her, to spend every moment with her.

He hadn't felt like this since Masami.

He had needed Masami but now…now he had his Daughter.


	205. Lunch with Suzuki-sama

Suzuki Shigeko seemed like a pretty lonely kid.

Hatori would have been too if he had been in her sparkly blue shoes. She didn't seem to have any other kids to play with aside from her brother. That had to have been lonely. Hatori may have been an only child but he'd at least gone to school and had friends and stuff. That kid was either with her brother or an adult or on her own when he saw her. She didn't go to any kind of school, probably, and didn't do normal kid stuff like go to the park or play dolls with other little girls or whatever. Hatori felt bad for her, he really did.

So he let her hang out with him sometimes.

She never stayed long. Not long enough to be annoying, anyway. She eventually got bored and wandered away. She did that a lot, wandered around, and for some reason she always ended up crossing paths with her. She talked to him for a little bit before running off to do little kid things. That was fine. It wasn't like he was about to tell his little girl of a boss to go and find some other little girls to hang out with and stuff. No. That would have been stupid and Hatori Nozomu was not stupid. He was a lot of things but not stupid.

Also he was not an asshole.

"….so then my brother said that he was going to stay up all night even though I try to put him to bed around nine and he ate a whole thing of coffee ice cream and…." Suzuki-san had run into him again. Contrary to popular belief he did, sometimes, leave the tech support room. Mostly to get food or make sure that his blood kept on circulating properly and all of that stuff. He always somehow managed to run into her. Like now. He had been trying to eat lunch, it was breakfast for lunch day….again, and also maybe get caught up in this one game he had started a while ago, when she came and sat down next to him.

And he said 'hi'.

And then she started giving him the update about her life. He was half listening. He always half listened. He nodded sometimes and said 'uh-huh' and 'no way' and 'really' until she got bored and wandered off somewhere else. He was a nice guy like that. Other people would have told her to get lost a while ago but he wasn't that kind of person. People around here sucked enough without him adding to it. Also this was just a kid. If she had been older…but she still would have been his boss and he wasn't going to tell his boss to get lost…but if she were one of the Awakened or something. Yeah, then he would have told her to get lost. Those guys were all permanent kids or something…or just really messed up. He didn't know.

He'd rather deal with her than most of the other people around here anyway.

"….jumped from my bed to his bed because he ate too much caffeine and also he was sad because a bird pecked his head because he tried to take her babies but not in a mean way and then….." said wasn't eating. She was just sitting there and talking to him. He wondered why she kept on talking to him out of everyone else. She was just a kid. She said that she was ten but she looked younger….but then again he knew jack shit about kids….so maybe she just hung out with him because he was closer to her age than anyone else besides her little brother…who from her stories seemed like kind of an asshole. Yeah, she probably just kept on coming up to him because he was the closest person to her age around that wasn't related to her. He knew that feeling. He had been an only child before he had been an orphan. You took what you got and you made do.

"Uh-huh. Really?" asked Hatori. He checked his phone. She'd get bored soon. He was curious as to what it was that she got up to during the day. Well besides making the daily birthday list and reminding people not to act like little kids. Where did she go after this? What was there even for a ten year old to do? He knew that she took over after he dad went missing, Hatori had lost the betting pool on that one since he turned up alive, and he knew that she had been the one to make all of these sweeping reforms…

But what was she up to now?

The other guys in the tech room thought that Suzuki was sending her there to spy on them or whatever. He had no idea how people could be so stupid. If Suzuki knew what they really got up in there he would just come down on his own and start kicking some ass, not send his kid. No, she was coming down there on her own. She was just a poor, lonely kid.

"Yes. That really happened. All of that really happened. Um….did anything interesting happen to you since yesterday?" asked Suzuki-sama. Hatori shrugged. Nothing had happened to him that he could tell her about. She was ten, and a girl, and he was not about to tell a ten year old girl what he got up to in his spare time. What was he supposed to say? I was up until four in the morning doxing some asshole I met online and also other such things that ten year old girls aren't supposed to know about.

"Oh. Well maybe something interesting will happen to you tomorrow. Or even later today. Today my friend and I are going to Starbucks. Do you like Starbucks? That's the place with the coffee and the cakes and the mermaid with two tails and I don't know why she has two tails or why they're up by her head but that's the place that I'm talking about." Said Suzuki-sama. Hatori covered his mouth so she couldn't see him laughing. He was not about to tell her what that picture had been cropped down from…and also the truly ridiculous world of Starbucks rule thirty four. Because she was ten and that would have been wrong. Even more wrong than the stuff he did for a living.

"Starbucks is ok. Should you be drinking coffee though? It stunts your growth." Said Hatori. Also it made you hyper…and he would believe that this kid regularly drank coffee. It would account for her various inconsistencies. Sometimes she said five words to him before she ran away to go to ten year old stuff and sometimes she went on these long monologues that went nowhere….and then she ran away. Kids could be so weird sometimes. Well this was Claw. She was actually one of the more normal people there.

"I don't know if I should but I do. I don't think that my growth is stunted. My dad says that I'm normal sized. You're tall, though, so you probably think that I'm short. You're…you're really tall." Said Suzuki-sama. She laughed a little at the end. Well of course she thought that he was tall. He was nineteen and she was ten. Everyone was probably tall compared to her.

"I'm short as all else. You're just ten, you think everyone's tall." Said Hatori

"You're taller than me though so I think that you're tall. Well I mean you're not as tall as my dad…or Fukuda…or Shimazaki….and nobody is as tall as Shibata….and also you're taller than Minegishi…" said Suzuki-sama. Hatori perked up at the mention of that one particular person. Minegishi Toshiki. One of the boss' favorites. He had, maybe, done some digging around after their meeting. Just for some background knowledge, that was all. Just so that he didn't make an idiot out of himself at their next meeting….which there would be since Suzuki-sama was Minegishi's friend and Suzuki-sama hung around him sometimes.

This time he'd be ready.

She had literally no social media presence. Nothing. Not even Yelp reviews. That made it hard to figure her out but he had done some more digging. He knew plenty about her, she was twenty seven years old, had joined Claw back when she was twenty one, born in Kyoto, raised in a group home from ten to fifteen, legally emancipated at fifteen, former florist, blood type AB negative, had power over all plant life, and was apparently very unpleasant to work with. The only positive work reviews she had were from Shimazaki Ryou…which knowing what that guy was like might have just been jokes considering that nobody else had anything good to say about her. Those were just internal Claw things, work things, and they could only tell him so much. He wanted to know what she was like outside of work.

Because she really had it going on.

He knew that she was a hell of a lot older than he was but then again so was literally anyone who wasn't named Suzuki. Maybe he had a shot. Maybe he didn't. Well you wasted all the shots you didn't take or whatever. He was going to take his shot and he was not going to miss it. Seriously. He had to. The only other girl at this HQ was ten and he was not a lollicon. A lot of people around here were, seriously had nobody heard of incognito mode, but he was not one of them.

Even though it was going to look like that if he kept on hanging out with a ten year old girl.

"What's Minegishi up to these days?" asked Hatori. He needed data and since Minegishi had decided that the internet was not for her he was going to have to get it the old fashioned way. From talkative little kids.

"Um…lots of stuff. They're kind of upset because Shibata used up all the hot water this morning and then they had to go home and shower in the middle of the day and they hate doing that because it throws their whole clothes rotation off. They don't like extra work but they can't just put on the day clothes that they had been wearing back on because that wouldn't be sanitary. Also they're happy, too, because some of their plants that they grow, which I'm not allowed to touch, are done and now Shimazaki will get off of their back. Also they're happy because we're going to Starbucks. They've been busy and they like to relax at Starbucks because it's not Claw. They like to get away from Claw sometimes and also they like Starbucks because the coffee is just as mediocre in Japan as it is in every other country. That means not very good. I don't know what they mean about good coffee and bad coffee since it all tastes bitter to me. I don't put in sugar because Minegishi says that sugar is poison…even though I've seen them drink a whole two liter of orange soda in under a minute and not even get sick once." Said Suzuki-sama before she paused for air.

He'd have to get her something nice if this thing panned out.

If it worked out between him and Minegishi he was showing her how to get unlimited free games on the app store or something. Some of those princess dress up games that they were always advertising. Yeah, those seemed like something she would be into. Just as a gesture of thanks, of course, because he was walking a fine line between nice guy and potential creep talking to her like this. The last thing he wanted was for people to think he was a creep. He didn't know what President Suzuki did to guys who creeped on his ten year old Daughter but he felt like it was worse than what he did to people who played videogames on company time and also looked through his, very boring, search history.

Seriously. With all the sick shit people were into here the worst thing he did was read manga online and Google the weirdest, not in the good way, shit.

And no, people could not swim in gelatin.

"So you guys hang out a lot, huh?" asked Hatori

"Yes. Um…we hang out a lot or maybe the normal amount. I think that it all depends on what you think of as a lot. I don't think that it's a lot but my brother does because we don't play together as much as we used to and also my dad thinks so too but he's been hanging out with me a lot…well more than usually which I think is a lot. Not that I don't like hanging out with my dad because I do. He's…my dad." Said Suzuki-sama. He wasn't about to go and voice his opinions of her dad. He liked having a job and a place to live and also being alive.

"You don't have a lot of friends, do you? I mean if you spend most of your time hanging out with either family or adults." Said Hatori

"I don't…but I have a few friends and a best friend, too." Said Suzuki-sama

"I take it Minegishi's your best friend, then?" said Haotria. Suzuki-sama nodded.

"Yes. They're my best friend. We hang out together all the time. They don't seem like they would be fun because they say mean things to people a lot of the time and also people can't tell when they're happy or not but they really are a lot of fun to be around. Like there was this one time when we went to Starbucks in Sidney and….." Said Suzuki-sama. He wondered how that worked, being best friends with someone almost twice your age, but he didn't say anything. The poor kid was obviously lonely. Hatori hoped that they caught that esper kid that he was supposed to be helping look for. Then Suzuki-sama could have herself a little friend to hang out with.

"….which I didn't think was that bad at all but I didn't say anything and then…." Suzuki-sama had some set of lungs. Well it made sense, she was Suzuki's kid after all, and that man certainly loved to give unnecessarily long speeches. Not that she looked a thing like her dad. Suzuki didn't look Japanese and she was so clearly Japanese. Her brother looked like Suzuki though. Maybe she just looked like her mom…whoever that was. There was actually nothing at all in any of the Claw databases about either of Suzuki's kids.

Weird.

Not that he had been looking too closely. He had mostly just been curious about who would actually want anything to do with Suzuki. He was…well Hatori hadn't exactly gotten up close and personal with the man but he had the personality of a moldy piece of white bread. Who would want that? What girl would ever want to…well the money and the power, probably. Still, even if Hatori had been a girl he would have stayed away from Suzuki.

The man was a certifiable asshole…but he was also the asshole that signed everyone's checks.

"And…um….I've to go. I can feel Minegishi's aura and…um….bye! Happy breakfast for lunch day!" said Suzuki-sama. Hatori could feel it too. He'd never anyone with an aura like his before. One that travelled through things, in his case circuitry and in her case plant life, and he wanted to talk to her about it…and about a million other things. Not now, though, because he had to prepare mentally. He hadn't impressed her the last time they'd met. That was because he hadn't had time to think, to prepare what he was going to say.

He would do better next time.

There would probably be a next time. He sort of knew her, which was good, and he was in good with Suzuki-sama too and that would work in his favor. Yeah, he had this. This was going to work out well. Hopefully very well. Yeah, he had a shot. He had a shot and he had to have confidence and all of that shit that girls loved. He just had to figure out how to get closer to her to where he could actually talk to her and stuff. Maybe he should have gone with Suzuki-sama, she was a pretty lonely kid and it looked like she wanted to make friends with him or something. Or not because then he would have looked like the kind of guy that went out of his way to hang out with ten year old girls and there was not a single person in the world who would find that in any way, shape, or form attractive.

He needed a plan.

He'd come up with one. He already knew, thanks to Suzuki-sama, a little more about the mysterious Minegishi Toshiki. He liked what he heard. He was curious about the gender neutral conjugation, though, he'd have to ask about that later. Next time Suzuki-sama ran into him. Yeah, she'd be a wealth of information. She liked to talk and she liked to talk to him, for some reason, and maybe he would actually start listening now. Yeah, this would work out. He'd see her again ask her a few more questions maybe show her how to get some free games, play a little….what did kids her age like? Minecraft? Mario? Whatever she liked. He'd play whatever she liked with her and take note of what she said…in the least creepy way possible, of course, and he could not stress that enough. He was not weird. He was just going to keep on hanging out with a ten year old…which wouldn't be that weird…because she did seem like she could always use more friends.

She was a pretty lonely kid, after all.


	206. Suzuki-sama and Hatori

Hatori Nozomu was the nicest, most interesting, boy Mob had ever met in her entire life.

"Die! Mother fucker die!"

Even if he did say bad words sometimes.

"Um…aren't you worried about hurting people's feelings? It's just a game…so you don't have to be mean to people….because it's just a game." Said Mob. She was in the tech support room now. Dad was in a very important meeting with very important people and Mob and Sho couldn't be in the room while he had his very important meeting. Sho was with Fukuda, Fukuda needed his help and Sho was a good helper, and Mob had gone to visit Hatori.

It was nice…mostly.

"Not at all. What are they going to do? Mute me? I'd like to see them try." said Hatori. Suzuki-sama had come to hang out again just like he knew she would. She was lonely like that. Her brother was apparently being a dick because a bird pecked his head or something. So she had come to visit him, which was ok. She was on ok kid. He'd give her a turn next right after he defended his rank.

"But…what if they get sad that you yelled at them?" asked Mob. The only person she ever played multiplayer games with was Sho and he could yell sometimes too when he lost. Yell and scream and also break their controllers….he took videogames very seriously. Maybe that was a boy thing. Yes, it must have been a boy thing that boys couldn't help because they were boys.

Hatori was still a very nice person even if he did yell at people, sometimes, over his game.

"Eh, if you can't take the heat then stay out of the kitchen." Said Hatori

"Huh?" asked Mob

"If these guys didn't want to get screamed at then they should go and play Minecraft or something. Getting screamed at is just part of the game." Said Hatori

"Oh….ok. I get it." Said Mob. She didn't get it at all. Why would someone play a game where you got screamed at? It didn't make sense but boys didn't always make sense either. Why did they always have to yell and fight and stuff? Even dad was always being mean to people and beating them up and stuff. She wished that someone could just explain it to her, boys, and why they were the way they were.

But they couldn't.

She still liked Hatori, though, even if he did play games which involved killing people and yelling at them. She was going to sit by him until dad's meeting was over. Dad wanted her to stay near him all the time…and she didn't get why. He had never made her stay with him all the time before. Maybe he just wanted company. Sho's company was different than her company and maybe dad couldn't take any more of Sho's company. He said that, sometimes, that Sho had to go away because dad couldn't take another moment of his presence.

Which was sort of mean.

But not the worst thing that dad had ever said to either of them. That was dad being nice. He didn't shout it at them and he didn't curse at them either. He just said that Sho needed to go away because he was annoying and stuff. So Sho did go away. He was hanging out with Fukuda more often now. He was mad at Shimazaki because Shimazaki had let a bird peck his head…and Mob still wasn't all the way sure about how that had even happened. Sho said that Shimazaki was a jerk and that he had made a momma bird peck his head and Shimazaki said that he was just going along with Sho's idea to take a nest of baby birds home.

Which made no sense because Sho knew that dad hated animals.

She hoped that Sho and Shimazaki made friends again soon. She wanted her friend and her little brother to be friends…but not the sort of friends that smoked together. No, she didn't want Sho to end up doing the things that she did. He had better control over his powers than her so he didn't need to smoke and drink and stuff. He was the one with the better control. He almost never lost control of his powers. He lost control of his feelings all the time but he never lost control of his powers. That was why it was ok for her to drink and smoke but not him.

He was way too little, anyway.

"You want a turn next?" asked Hatori. This did not seem up her alley but, hey, he had to be polite to his boss' kid…and also she was maybe his boss too. Either way he was not going to be a dick. He used to be a dick when it came to games, he was the one who invited people over to watch him play Gamecube with no intention of all of letting anyone else have a turn. Well he was an adult now and he could share.

It was in his best interests to share.

It was in his best interests to be nice to her. Not just because she outranked him and would probably be his future boss once President Suzuki stepped down or was assassinated but also because, well, she was a nice kid. Also she knew the only other girl working at this HQ and, honestly, she had it going on. Minegishi Toshiki, not Suzuki Shigeko, because he was not into little girls and people needed to stop with the gross rumors already. He hung out with her sometimes. That did not mean that he was trying to get ahead by sleeping with the boss' underage elementary schooler Daughter.

A lot of people were soon going to find their private search histories made public if they didn't learn to shut their mouths.

"No thank you. I don't really like games like these. I play phone games and also Mario games and also…um…I play games but just not games like these." Said Mob. She was trying not to say too much. He had been talking more to her now and she knew that it was because she wasn't talking too much like she usually did. She talked a lot because her brain either knew all the words or none of the words.

"Yeah, I guess that your brother would have been more into stuff like this." said Hatori

"No, he doesn't play a lot of killing games. He likes fighting games and games where you take care of a pet and we both like Mario and Wii games, we've been playing a lot of Smash Brothers lately, but he doesn't play a lot of games like this." said Mob. Sho did not need another excuse to get mad and scream and probably smash controller, too, if he liked games like this.

"Well it's good that you two have something in common. It must be hard having a little brother instead of a little sister. Not that I would know. I'm an only child." Said Hatori. He'd have to figure out something he could play with her that they could both like. Minecraft? She might like that. She had said, before, that she liked playing games where she could build things and take care of things. She might like building her own princess castle or something. She might like Princess Maker, too. It was old but she might like it. She had sort of a princess fixation going on. Either that or she was REALLY into cosplay.

"What's it like not having any brothers or sisters?" asked Mob. She couldn't imagine life without Sho. It must have been very lonely being an only child.

"It was lonely, a little bit, but I never had to share so it all balanced out." Said Hatori

"Oh. I guess that's….something. Minegishi is an only child too and they said that they were happy that they never had to share, either. I don't mind sharing, though, but me and Sho don't have to share a lot of stuff. "said Mob

"So you guys just have two of everything?" asked Hatori

"No, we have one Wii and stuff but we have separate tablets and beds and clothes and food and stuff. Well we have to share some stuff. I don't really mind sharing. I don't think that I would have liked being an only child that much….sorry." said Mob. She wondered if she had said the wrong thing. It was easier just to talk and talk and talk because then at least she didn't have time as she was talking to worry about if she was saying the right thing or not. She had never talked to him like this before, or for this long, and she didn't want to mess it up. She knew that he was too old to be her boyfriend and stuff, or rather that she was too young, but she wouldn't be little forever…

"No, don't be. I got over wanting a little brother or sister a while ago. Besides, if I ever feel like having a little sister I can just hang out with you." Said Hatori. He figured that this was what it was like to have a little sister. Some kid who came and hung out with you all the time and stuff. She was an ok kid. He didn't know much about kids but he thought that she was ok. A little weird but, hey, this was Claw. Everyone was a little bit weird, it was one of the requirements for the job.

"Little sister?" asked Mob. That wasn't what she had been going for at all. She didn't want him to be her brother, she wanted him to be her boyfriend and stuff. How was he supposed to like her back when she was all grown up if he thought of her as a little sister and stuff? Brothers and sisters did not get together so even when she did grow up and she was his age and he was whatever age he would be in nine years then he still wouldn't like her because he thoughts of her as a little sister.

"Yeah, I figure that this is kind of what having a little sister is like. You know, there's a kid and she's there and she hangs out with you and you fix her broken electronics and teach her how to play games and stuff." Said Hatori. Her aura got sort of weird there. Did he overstep or whatever? She may have maybe been his boss but she was also a very lonely little kid. Maybe she didn't want another brother, though, since she already had the one brother and from what he had heard from her he was kind of a dick to her.

"Yeah…that's sort of what you do for a little sister…I guess." Said Mob. Well then it was over, it was all over, he would never like her back and she would end up having to spend the rest of her life single. Nobody would ever love her or want to hold her hand or kiss her or anything and she would be stuck with dad forever like he was always telling her that he wanted. She would never have a boyfriend or fall in love or kiss someone or get married or any of that other stuff. Great.

"Or a friend, I guess." Said Hatori. He could be her friend. Well as much of a friend as he could be towards her without being creepy. Was it ok to hang out with her if she asked him to hang out first? Was that how this went? He had no idea. He hoped that people didn't get the wrong idea. He hoped that her DAD didn't get the wrong idea. He'd seen Suzuki briefly a couple days ago and he gave off the shotgun cleaning overprotective dad vibe. Which, to be fair, this was Claw and there were a hell of a lot of weirdos just at this Division alone.

"A friend?" asked Mob. Friend was better than little sister. Friends could become more than friends. She wanted to be more than friends with him. He was so…him. She loved the sweater he had on today, it was another cat sweater, and she loved his glasses and how tall he was and how messy his hair was and even the not so good things about him like how his fingers were orange with either Cheetos or Doritos and also how he hadn't changed his pants in a while and also how he didn't care that his shoes were untied. She even didn't mind all the spots on his face even though Minegishi said that he looked like a greasy planetarium….which was not a nice thing to say to someone at all. She would never say anything mean to Hatori ever. Even if she hadn't liked him she wouldn't have said anything mean to him at all.

"Yeah, we can be friends. I figure that you wouldn't want another brother so how about we're friends, then?" asked Hatori. She nodded. She played with her hair and she nodded. She did that sometimes. She probably wasn't used to talking to people like this. She didn't go to school and the only people she interacted with were in her father's entourage. He had said it once and he would say it again. Poor, poor, poor kid.

"I-I would like that, us being friends. I could always use more friends so let's…let's be friends." Said Mob. She wanted to pull her dress up over her face and hide. He wanted to be friends! She was so happy but she had to keep her powers under control. It was easier, now, because Shimazaki had gotten her another one of the good vape pens. She knew that she was not supposed to smoke these because Minegishi said so but…well she had cut back. That was good, right? Cutting back? She didn't know for sure about that but one thing that she did know was that her losing control of her powers would have been a whole lot worse than her getting caught with one of Shimazaki's vape pens.

"I could always use more friends, too. Cool, we're friends now." Said Hatori

"Cool." Said Mob. She felt warm, actually, very warm. Not cool at all. She had to calm down. She felt the vape pen in her pocket. She sort of wanted to go outside and vape, the good kind of vaping, but she also wanted to be near Hatori…actually she really wanted to be near him. She felt all happy and nervous and doki doki and fizzy and all of that stuff and she wanted it to stop right now but she also wanted it to go on forever and…and it was a lot but…but it was nice and also a lot.

"You sure you don't want a turn? I have other games you might like." Said Hatori

"No thank you. I'm happy to just watch you play. I'm used to it. My brother's been playing a lot of one player games lately but he lets me watch him play. I'm happy to just watch." Said Mob. She didn't think that she could focus on a game, or anything at all, right now. Not when she and Hatori had just become friends. Friends could lead to being even more than friends…not that she was getting her hopes up or anything like that.

"That's kind of a dick move." Said Hatori. She was red, a little, and maybe he needed to invest in a swear jar or something. Yeah, if he was going to be hanging out with little girls he may have had to learn to clean up his language a little bit. He wouldn't want to be responsible for corrupting a kid or anything like that. President Suzuki would probably kill him or stick him in a traitor hole or whatever it was that he did to guys who corrupted his little girl.

"I don't think that it's a…that word…move. I like to watch him play. I like to watch people have fun because it makes me happy when other people are happy." Said Mob

"So you'd rather just sit here and watch me play for hours and hours than play yourself?" asked Hatori. Well she was certainly a sweet kid…and maybe President Suzuki ought to get a paternity test. Hatori didn't know the man well, or in any other way but a work way, but he did know that if the boss had been her age he would have definitely been a….no, not a Gamecube hog since he was old….a SNES hog? No, wait, he might have been even older than that. A Famicom hog? A pong hog? Or maybe he was even older than that…Hatori would look later. The point was that he just could not see the boss ever sharing or taking delight in another human being's happiness.

She really was a sweet kid. Like a sweet little sister type.

"Yes. That's what friends are for." Said Mob. She liked that word, friend, even though she knew that just because they were friends it didn't mean that they would ever be more than friends. She was still just ten. She was short and didn't even have breasts yet and boys loved staring at girl's breasts so, of course, no boy would like her anyway.

"So that's what you and your friends do? You just sit around watching them play videogames?" asked Hatori

"Um….just me and my brother. Me and my other friends just sort of hang out. I'm the only one who likes videogames. Well my brother likes them but a brother is different from a friend…and stuff. Also Shimazaki, he's my friend, he's blind and he can't play videogames at all even." Said Mob. She didn't think that it would be a good idea to tell him what she and her friends really got up to. She didn't want it to get back to dad and also she knew that she was doing things that ten year olds were not supposed to do and she didn't want to get into trouble or anything like that. Also she knew that not every adult was like her friends and she didn't want to scare him off. Not yet, anyway, because she had just become his friend. Maybe when they were better friends she could smoke him up.

Which was what Shimazaki said it was called when you shared your pen and other stuff with someone.

Not that Mob shared with anyone besides Shimazaki. Minegishi said that the pens were bad for you but Mob didn't see how something that could make you feel so good was bad for you. She wasn't overdoing it like before, even though before she had been happier than she had ever been in her life, because she also got kind of weird when she had smoked that much. She ate too much and talked to too much and wouldn't stop hugging Sho….but to be fair there was no better feeling in the whole world than hugging her little brother.

Well except maybe sitting next to the person that she liked….actually there was no comparison to make since both of those feelings were very different as they should have been.

"What about your friend? Minegishi? Does she play anything?" asked Hatori. He played it very casually. Like he was just asking because they were on the subject of games. That was all. Girls, at least the ones that he had known back when he had been a kid and out in the world and stuff, had a sixth sense when it came to this stuff. He didn't need her running back to her friend telling her that Hatori was asking after her just so that he could find some shared hobby and excuse to start to get to know her more organically. Yeah, organic wasn't just for overpriced produce anymore. That was where he had made his mistake with her, before, he had just approached her out of the blue.

Girls didn't like that at all.

Well the internet said that girls didn't like that. He'd never actually had a girlfriend before or been with a girl before but he had been kissed once in his third year of middle school on a dare and….and that was the most pathetic romantic history in the history of romantic histories and if she asked then he was most certainly not going to tell her his real romantic history. Nope, he wanted her to like him, not think that he was pathetic.

Girls didn't like desperate or pathetic guys….and Hatori was neither of those anyway so he had nothing to worry about.

"She?" asked Mob. Was he still talking about Minegishi? Because they were not called 'she' or 'he'. They were a 'they' and Mob didn't really get it but they could be called whatever they wanted to be called. Like they had said the only people who needed to know if they were a boy or a girl were people that were trying to date them and since Mob wasn't trying to date them then Mob didn't need to know. Though she was curious…but also that was none of her business. Asking about if people were boys or girls were really none of her business at all.

"Yeah, Minegishi Toshiki. Your friend with the short purple hair." Said Hatori. He got the feeling that he had said the wrong thing since she was frowning….crap! Was she onto him?!

"Um….they don't really like videogames and their hair is lavender, not purple, and also they're a 'they' not a 'she'. They like to be called 'they'." Said Mob. Did that mean that Minegishi was a girl? Mob…didn't know to feel about that. One the one hand she had a girl to be friends with and that would explain why they were so good at playing dolls and stuff. On the other hand it was also not something that Mob should have cared about, she felt like, because boy or girl Minegishi was still a nice person and a good friend…and also this may have been the sort of thing that was none of her business at all because, well, asking someone if they were a boy or a girl was the same as asking about their privates and you were not supposed to ask about someone's privates because they were private. That was why they were called privates.

"She likes to be called 'they'? Why?" asked Hatori. That was new but he could do that. Actually that made her even more interesting. He liked a girl who was interesting…well he just liked girls in general and she was the only one around…and he was not going to be saying that to her. Nope. He was sure that when he got to know her…them…that the two of them would have a lot in common and start a relationship and all of that stuff. Not that he wanted a relationship if she didn't want one. No, he'd love…accept. He would accept a FWB situation or whatever else she, they, wanted.

"I don't know. They just do. They said that they didn't feel like a boy or a girl and that they wanted to be called 'they'." Said Mob

"Huh. Alright, I can do that." Said Hatori. He'd have to be careful not to mistakenly call them a her. That seemed like the sort of thing that would end up shooting him in foot. He wanted to have a shot with her, with them, and he was not going to blow this. If he couldn't meet a girl in Tokyo then he was just not going to be meeting any girls anywhere end of discussion. Thank God that he had met and made friends with Suzuki-sama or he could have blown it before there ever even was a 'it' to blow.

"You should. They get mad when people call them by their given name. I don't want to know how mad they would get at someone who called them a girl….even if they are a girl." Said Mob. Minegishi only got mad when people who weren't Shimazaki called them by their given name. Mob didn't know why it was ok now but it hadn't been ok before…but she wasn't going to ask. That seemed like it might have had to do with kissing stuff and also bed stuff and she was not going to ask Minegishi about that sort of stuff. It was not Mob's business or anything that she wanted to know about.

"Don't call them 'she'. Ok, I can do that. Thanks, Suzuki-sama." Said Hatori

"Um…you're welcome?" asked Mob even though she didn't exactly know what she was being thanked for. Maybe for warning them? Well Minegishi could be sort of scary when they were angry, angry for real, not that they were ever angry for real with Mob. Not since the time that she had accidentally ate one of their Xanax because she had thought that they were a mint because they were in a mint tin. She shouldn't have done that. It had been very dangerous.

It had felt nice, though.

She had never slept so well in her entire life. She wondered if those were still dangerous even if you didn't drink and then take one. She'd as Minegishi…or Shimazaki. Yes, she'd ask Shimazaki. He was better about telling her about these things. Minegishi just told her not to do them because they were worried about ruining her life. Shimazaki also told her not to do things but because she wasn't ready for them yet. He had a whole bunch of things that she wasn't ready for and, really, it felt better being told that she wasn't ready for something rather than that she was going to end up ruining her life if she tried something.

She wasn't going to ruin her life.

She could be trusted to know when she was and was not going to ruin her life. Minegishi was just overprotective, Shimazaki had said, because they hadn't had as good of a life as Mob had. They had some very mean parents and their life had been so bad that the government said that they had to live in a group home and the government mostly just minded it's own business. Shimazaki had said so and he wouldn't lie about that. He never lied when it came to Minegishi. Mob knew that Minegishi cared about her and that they were best friends and all but Mob could live her own life and she would decide if she was ruining her life or not and if she was ruining her life then she would just stop whatever she was doing.

Besides, she doubted that anything would ruin her life more than if she lost control of her powers and dad stopped loving her.

"Come on, let's do something you'd like. You ever play Minecraft?" asked Hatori. He needed to keep her around and she was not going to stick around if all he did was play games that she had no interest in. She was an invaluable wealth of information. Also she was good company. Also it was just a smart career move to get in good with the boss' kid.

"What's Minecraft?" asked Mob as he exited out of his game. She glanced at the clock. She knew that if she didn't go back to dad then he could come looking for her…but she had also just become friends with Hatori. If she left suddenly right after they had just become friends then he wouldn't want to be her friend anymore.

"Seriously? You've never heard of Minecraft?" asked Hatori

"No. I haven't. I mean I know that it's a game and I know that some people like it but I've never played it before." Said Mob. She knew that she needed to get back to dad but…but he had scooted his chair closer to hers and even though she knew that she was being a very selfish Daughter she would much rather have been next to the boy she liked than with her dad and stuff. She loved her dad, she really did, but she saw him all the time. He was the last thing she saw before she went to bed and the first thing she saw when she woke up and also they went to work together and…and she would see him again at home.

They were halfway through the Galaxy Express show.

Maybe when they finished it then he would be allowed to sleep in her own bed again. She had tried, before, to sleep in her own bed but she had ended up waking up in dad's bed again. She wondered why he didn't just sleep in a smaller bed. That was why he carried her into his room every night, he had said, because he didn't like rolling over and finding the other side of the bed all cold and stuff…even though he hardly ever rolled over…and also he was the President of Claw and if he wanted a smaller bed then he could have just sent someone out for one.

But she was not going to be saying anything like that to her dad any time soon.

"Ok, get comfortable. I have a lot to teach you." Said Hatori. Well this could not be. He had to teach her about good games, it seemed, because he could not let her just go on in her life thinking that the Wii was the end all be all of consoles…and also he just really liked Minecraft but had no one to play with. And that was through no fault of his own. He did not take the whole thing way too seriously and he was not a dick, either. Nobody else took it seriously enough and that made them the dicks, not him.

"Um…ok." Said Mob. She didn't know what he meant by get comfortable, these new chairs were actually very uncomfortable, but she did sit a little closer to Hatori than she had before. Even though it didn't make her feel any more comfortable…actually it made her uncomfortable….because she felt nervous…

But also good because they were friends, now, and he was the nicest and coolest friend in the whole world….and also he was very…um….he made her feel...she liked him, ok?!


	207. Sister, Brother, Minecraft, Talking

Big sis sure knew some pretty boring games.

"What's even the point of this?" asked Sho from his hardly ever used laptop. He and big sis were sitting at the kitchen table playing a game that she had just found out about. This was supposed to be fun…but Sho had no idea what was supposed to be fun about this.

"We mine things to build with and then we build with the things that we've mined with. Hatori says that there's more to it than that but right now he's teaching us the basics." Said big sis. She got all red and played with her hair when she talked about Hatori. He didn't get it. He had seen that guy before and he wasn't cool at all…but maybe he was a really nice guy even though he wasn't cool and stuff.

Maybe he wasn't the kind of guy who would let you get your head pecked by an angry bird.

"What comes after the basics?" asked Sho. She was still playing with her hair and turning red and acting like a girl did when she liked a guy. That was how girls got when they were around him sometimes. Girls he hadn't even said two words to. They played with their hair and they pretended that they needed help being pushed on the swings and climbing the play structure and then he did help them and then they asked him to hold hands and sometimes they even tried to kiss him.

Ick.

Like the last time he had been to the playground. He had been playing in the tunnel minding his own business trying to play secret fort by himself when some girl came up to him and pretended that she was lost, even though the play structure wasn't big enough to get lost in, and then he had offered to help her out, and he did, but then she asked him if he wanted to kiss…and of course he was not going to kiss her because he didn't even know her…and he just didn't get girls sometimes.

Like why they liked you.

"I'll ask….and he's typing….and he says that there's fighting and stuff. He said that you would probably like it…but first he needs to teach us how to play." Said big sis. Ok, so there was more to this game than digging holes and building a house. Yeah, he liked this game and he liked this guy. The base building part could be fun, too, now that he thought about it. He could build the coolest base ever and then he could fight some people and then…..yeah, this could be fun.

He liked this game.

"Fine, I think that I'll play for a little longer." Said Sho. He liked this game and he liked this guy. Well he was going to have to beat him up, of course, because big sis liked him. Not as bad as dad beat up Shimazaki though, not enough to make him bleed, just enough to make his point. He could like big sis back but if he ever did anything to hurt her or break her heart then he was going to have to come back and beat him up even harder….or killed him. Yeah, if some guy ever hurt big sis or broke her heart he would have to die.

Simple.

"Thanks, Sho. I know that you're going to have a lot of fun playing with us." said big sis. She still looked really happy. Good. He liked it when she was happy…and also it was kind or weird, too. She was happy because she was playing this game with some guy who she liked. That was weird for him. Also she was eating a lot of cereal, too, from the box. She had been eating a lot lately…but not as much now as she had before. She was hugging him less, too, which was nice. He liked hugs but not all the time and not the kind that broke his bones. She had been so weird lately.

Maybe it was because she was in love.

She was in love and that was so weird for him. She was his big sister….she wasn't one of those girls who chased you around and tried to kiss you or tried to get you to hold hands and…and that was not who his sister was. She was his sister and she played with him and they were friends and…well they were still friends. Even if she was going to turn into one of those girls who chased guys around and tried to kiss them. He could handle that.

Girls were so weird sometimes, though, and big sis was the weirdest.

Sho didn't know what was with her and this guy. He was so…not cool. She was in love with this guy and he wasn't cool at all. He didn't know how to have fun. Not in the real world anyway. He didn't know how to build forts in the real world, probably, and he didn't know how to climb trees in the real world, probably, and he didn't look cool in the real world either. His hair wasn't spiked up. It was all puffy but also greasy and shiny and he wasn't that tall and he didn't look like he was strong and his powers weren't even that cool. So he could control technology. So what? That wasn't nearly as cool as being able to teleport and pull your barrier in so close that you could get shot right in the face ok and also being able to eat sixteen pudding cups without getting sugar shock.

Girls were so weird.

"Sho, Hatori says not to dig too deep or there'll be lava." Said big sis

"That sounds cool. Ask him what we can build with lava." Said Sho

"Um…he says that lava means death and that if we touch the lava we'll end up losing our stuff and going back to the starting out house." Said big sis

"But I want to dig an underground fort." Said Sho. She ate some more cereal and started typing more. She was typing to that guy again, now, and he…he was fine. He knew that this was fine. She liked this guy, not Shimazaki, and that was the important thing. If she didn't like Shimazaki then he and Shimazaki could be friends…

"Hatori thinks that it's a good idea." Said big sis. She smiled when she said his name. He didn't get it at all…but he liked Hatori. He liked that she liked Hatori. He liked that she liked Hatori. She didn't like Shimazaki and that meant that he and Shimazaki could be friends…even though Shimazaki had let a bird peck his head. Not only that but he laughed, too, like it was funny. But it wasn't funny at all. It had been scary. That momma bird had been really mad at him.

Even though he was going to be nice to her babies.

Fukuda said that moms were like that no matter what the species. When you messed with their babies they got mad at you and pecked your head. His mom hadn't been like that, though. Dad had hit him all the time and mom never stopped him…but then again there was nothing that she could have done. Dad answered to no one. He was always saying that he answered to no one. Dad wouldn't have stopped just because mom told him to and even if she had told him to he had powers and she didn't. He was strong she wasn't.

You weren't supposed to hit girls.

Dad had never hit mom, from what Sho could remember, and also he hardly ever hit big sis. You weren't supposed to hit girls. Sho had been bad about that, he had hit big sis so many times, but now he hadn't hit her in a while and he wasn't going to. Fukuda had said that it was ok to hit her so long as he said sorry but…but he didn't want to be that person….and also if anyone ever tried to fight big sis then he would beat them up so bad they were bleeding and breathing funny and stuff. Because that was the right thing to do.

He wasn't going to beat this guy up, though.

He seemed nice. Well he seemed nice over the game and on that one time that he had seen him in the lunch line. Maybe big sis just didn't like guys who were cool. There was a lid for every pot, he'd heard, so maybe that was why big sis was with someone who was as boring as she was. Maybe he'd end up liking a girl who was as cool as he was. If there was even a girl like that in that world. If he did end up liking a girl she would have to be cooler than him, actually, and she would have to have cool powers, too. She'd have to be the coolest person around.

And also if he got pecked on the head by an angry momma bird then she was not supposed to laugh at him.

Shimazaki had laughed and that had been the worst thing about it. Sho had cried because he had laughed. It just…it had hurt. It had hurt more than getting pecked in the head ever could. That he would laugh like that…and also that Sho had looked so stupid in front of him. Sho had looked like the biggest idiot in the world and now Shimazaki didn't even think that he was cool anymore. Well he hadn't said that but Sho wasn't going to give him the chance to. That was why he had been hanging out with Fukuda so much. Shimazaki didn't like Fukuda, said that he was boring, so that was the best place for Sho to be.

He still wanted to see him, though, even though he had laughed when the bird pecked his head.

"Ok, Hatori says that we have enough stone for the next part of our fort. You can stop digging now." Said big sis. Sho didn't listen. He wanted to keep digging. If you dug down deep enough there was lava. He could end up making a lava pit or something. That would be cool. They could trap enemies in them and then burn them alive. Kind of like the traitor holes only death would be much quicker.

"No, I want to make a lava pit for our enemies." Said Sho

"But Sho, we don't have any enemies yet. We're still learning how to play…and also Hatori says that if you dig down too deep that you won't be able to come back up." Said big sis. Sho stuck out his tongue but stopped digging. Once he learned how to play then he was making his own Minecraft world and he was digging as many traitor holes as he wanted. Also he would build an underground layer and also there would be zombies, which this game had, and then he would fight the zombies and kill them, too.

And also big sis could come over and hang out if she wanted.

She would probably be busy with Hatori and stuff, though, since he was going to be her boyfriend now. That was how it worked, right? If you liked the girl back then you played with her and stuff. That was why he didn't play with girls who weren't his sister. He wasn't going to give anyone the wrong idea. That was the worst thing you could do to a girl besides beat her up or do that thing that guys did where you run up and flip their dresses up, making her think that you liked her and then breaking her heart. Girls had fragile hearts, dad had even said so, and you weren't supposed to be mean like that and make them think that you liked them. If this guy was giving big sis the wrong idea then he was getting beaten up. Also if he was just pretending to like her so he could hold her hand and kiss her and touch her boobs, well she didn't have any but still, then Sho would beat him up so badly that he couldn't even drag himself to Fukuda to be healed.

Sometimes guys could be jerks.

Sometimes they could laugh at you while your head got pecked by a bird. Like it was just the funniest thing ever. Well it wasn't funny at all. It was scary and painful and…and Sho didn't know why he still wanted to be around someone who had treated him like that. It didn't make any sense. He should have just not wanted to be Shimazaki's friend but he did want to be Shimazaki's friend and he wanted to be building forts with him in the real world and digging holes in the real world and collecting rocks and wood and stuff in the real world with him.

But he wasn't, he was going to keep on playing with big sis, because he was her little brother and he was going to be nice to her.

"When do we get to the part where we fight enemies?" asked Sho

"Um….Hatori says later. He says that our building skills still aren't that good." Said big sis

"What's building got to do with killing enemies?" asked Sho

"He says that the point of this game is to build and that if we were just going to fight and kill people that there are a bunch of other games we could play with killing but I wouldn't like them…and he wants me to be having fun too." Said big sis. She giggled at the end of that. That weird giggle that girls did when they liked you. Sho never wanted to hear his own flesh and blood sister giggle like that again. It was too weird. Her liking this guy was too weird. He was glad that she didn't like Shimazaki anymore but…but the thought of his sister liking anyone was just the weirdest thing ever.

He was still happy for her, though.

He was happy that she had found a guy who thought of her and stuff and was as boring as she was. That way they could be happy together. It was just so…weird…though. He sort of wished that they could go back to being little for a little bit. They used to play together a lot more back then but now she had friends and she had to spend time with dad all the time and now she had a boyfriend too, maybe, and it was just…things just kept on changing.

He wanted them to stay the same.

What if she married this guy and then he never saw her again? What if she had a bunch of babies and then she was too busy to be his big sis? He didn't like how she was always bossing him around and trying to be mom and all but…but he also didn't want her to go away and get married and have babies and then never see him again. He liked her even if she could be bossy and annoying and boring. If she went off and married this guy then he would be all alone with dad, too, and he didn't think that he could be all alone with dad.

But he wanted her to be happy.

She was always talking about how she wanted him to be happy and he wanted her to be happy right back. That was what a good little brother wanted for his big sister. This guy made her happy. She had been smiling and giggling all night…and it was nicer than how she had been laughing before. At least now she was laughing at something instead of just laughing. This was nice.

Even if she was laughing at the guy who she was going to marry and stuff.

"Hey, Sho, Hatori just said the funniest thing. He said-" said big sis

"Are you his girlfriend now?" asked Sho. Her eyes went wide and the table tried to jump up off the ground. He stopped it with his powers. He didn't mean to freak her out. He just had to know. That way he could know if he had anyone to beat up and also if he had to expect her to be leaving any time soon.

"What?! Sho! Why would you-" said big sis

"Because you're laughing like girls do when they like someone and also you talk about him a lot and also we're playing this boring game with him. So, are you his girlfriend or what?" asked Sho

"I'm not his girlfriend. I can't be his girlfriend. He's nineteen and I'm ten." Said big sis. Sho didn't get why that mattered. She had tried to make Shimazaki fall in love with her and he was ten years older than Hatori. Fukuda said that sometimes that happened but it was on the adult not to fall in love right back with the kid…but he had also said that big sis should have known better than to fall in love with an adult….so maybe this was her knowing better. Maybe her not asking Hatori to be her boyfriend because he was an adult and she was a kid was just her knowing better…or something. He didn't know. He hoped that she stopped knowing better before she fell in love with Shimazaki again. If she was in love with Shimazaki then he and Sho couldn't be friends…if they even were still friends after what happened with the birds.

"That didn't stop you from liking Shimazaki, though, and he's twenty nine." Said Sho

"Sho, I never liked him. I never liked him and he never liked me. He was just teasing me because he likes to tease people. That's all. I never, ever, even once thought about him like that." Said big sis

"But dad beat him up." Said Sho. Of course big sis liked him, otherwise why would dad have beat him up like he had? Well aside from the fact that he liked beating people up.

"I know. You were already mad at me about that. I told you then and I'm telling you now. I don't like Shimazaki like that and I never did and I never will." Said big sis

"Ok, fine, you don't like him like that even though he's the coolest guy who ever lived." Said Sho

"He's not the coolest guy who ever lived." Said big sis. How could she think that? She hung out with him more often than Sho did. She even smelled like his house all the time. She had even been in love with him. How could she not see that he was the coolest guy ever?

"Then who is? Hatori?" asked Sho

"No. I mean yes. I mean…I don't know…but don't shout or dad's going to hear you." Said big sis

"Hatori is not cooler than Shimazaki. You just think so because you're in love with him and you want to marry him and stuff." Said Sho. He didn't want big sis to be in love with Shimazaki but he didn't want her to say stuff like that about him either. Shimazaki had been such a jerk and Sho knew that he should have been happy to be rid of him…but he wasn't happy to be rid of him…and also he didn't want to be rid of him at all. He wanted them to be friends but then he also…he also sort of didn't…and the whole thing was really complicated. Feelings were really weird and complicated.

"Sho! I don't….I don't want to marry him and I…ok, fine, I like him a little bit but he doesn't like me back because I'm ten and he's not ten. Ok? And I don't want to talk about this with my little brother. If you liked a girl then I wouldn't ask you. I would listen if you wanted to tell me about her and I would make friends with her, too, but I wouldn't just come out and…ask you….and stuff." Said big sis

"Fine, fine, fine. Jeez. I was just asking. I don't hate him or anything like that but if he likes you back then I have to beat him up. It's just something that little brothers have to do to keep their big sisters safe." Said Sho

"Well he doesn't like me back and also how is beating up someone who likes me keeping me safe? That makes no sense at all." said big sis

"It's so he knows that if he ever broke your heart or hurt you that I would hurt him. You're a girl and I have to keep you safe." Said Sho

"No, my job is to keep you safe because I'm older than you. I'm the big sister and you're the little brother. If a girl ever hurt your feelings or broke your heart then I would…well I don't know what I would do exactly but I know that it would not be very fun at all for the girl. Nobody is allowed to hurt you, little brother, no one." said big sis

"Well that's never going to happen because I don't like anyone. I don't even know any girls that I would like." Said Sho

"Oh….because there aren't any girl espers. Dad said that it would be ok if you married a girl who wasn't an esper because there aren't a lot of girl espers. Also he said that if you didn't pick someone then he would pick for you…so maybe you should pick someone." Said big sis

"Dad doesn't get to decide that for me." Said Sho

"Dad decides what he wants to decide. He doesn't answer to you or me or to anyone. He's told us bother that a million times before. There's nothing that we can do about what dad wants to decide for us so the best thing to do is just…to let him decide.." Said big sis

"Is that why you like this Hatori guy? Because if you don't pick a guy dad's going to pick for you and you know that if he ends up picking for you that he's just going to end up picking a jerk like him?" asked Sho

"No….I don't know why I like him exactly….I just like him. I like his sweaters and how tall he is and…and stuff. I don't know. I don't think that you always have to have a reason but I think that having no reason at all is better than the reason being that you're scared of who dad is going to pick for you." Said big sis

"I'm not scared of anything." Said Sho

"Oh…ok. I would be, though, if I was in your place. Dad would pick a jerk, you're right. Don't worry. You'll meet a girl and then you'll love her…or maybe a boy…but I think that dad said that you're only allowed to like girls." Said big sis. Sho wanted to kick another hole in the wall. Dad thought that he was the boss of everyone! Well he wasn't the king of the world yet! And also Sho would like whoever he wanted to like and just because he had never liked anyone did not mean that he would end up liking a boy.

He was already different enough as it was.

"I can't like a boy, dummy, I am a boy." Said Sho trying his best to stay calm. He knew that it was a thing, he had seen families like that before, but he also knew that dad would kill him if he tried to have a family like that. Sho knew that you needed a girl to have a baby and he knew that dad cared a lot about him growing up and having kids that were espers and stuff. Dad would be mad at him if he ended up liking a boy and then he would end up beating him up and stuff…and also probably a lot worse than normal, too, because Sho was talking about messing up the line of succession thing that dad was always talking about.

"Sometimes boys like boys. We've seen families like that. Sometimes boys like boys and sometimes boys like girls and sometimes girls like girls and sometimes people like both and sometimes people like neither. Minegishi says that it's a spectrum." Said big sis. She said it like she knew everything. Well if course he knew that all families looked different. He lived in the same world as she did. He also knew that not only would dad be mad at him but…but he was already different enough from everyone else! He had red hair and blue eyes and people were always staring at him and assuming that he didn't speak Japanese even though he WAS Japanese and also…also he had been born without his powers and…and he was already different enough from the rest of his family…

"Well I can't like boys because….because dad would be mad at me…and also….I'm different enough, ok?!" said Sho. The table jumped a little bit. He had done that. Dad could have seen his aura or heard and for a moment Sho thought that he had…but he was still in his room. Good. Sho did not want to explain to dad what was happening and he did not want to get punished, either. Dad would be mad at big sis for liking someone, mad at him for losing control, and also mad in general that he had been disturbed.

But not mad at Sho for…other reasons.

He was different enough as it was. He was enough of a disappointment to dad as it was. Dad had said, before, that he had no idea how he'd managed to have Sho for a son. Everything he did was wrong. Everything he said was wrong. Everything that he was, all of the things that made him Suzuki Sho, this whole collection of things that made him, well, him was just….wrong…and he didn't need to give dad another reason not to like him. To think that he was 'wrong'. To think that he had been born wrong…and that big sis had been born right.

"Ok. I didn't mean to tell you that you did. That's just a thing that happens sometimes, that's all. You'll like who you like and you'll not like who you'll not like. That's all. I don't care who you fall in love with and marry. I just want you to be happy, little brother, that's all." said big sis. Did she always have to be so nice and stuff? He had just yelled at her and she was back to being nice. Fine. Whatever.

"Fine. Whatever. You can like who you like too. Even this Hatori guy…even if you say that he doesn't like you back. Whatever. Let's just get back to learning how to play this dumb game." Said Sho. He didn't want to talk about this anymore. He had never liked anyone in his life and he wouldn't until it came time for him to like someone because he was NOT marrying the girl that dad picked out for him. Nope. No way. He knew that dad would pick out another girl like big sis and he didn't want to be married to his sister.

He didn't want to be married at all.

And he didn't need to think about this because he was nine and he was too….too young to like someone anyway. Big sis only like this guy because that was just how girls were and there was nothing that he could do about it. She was a girl and she was just like that. Thinking about liking people and love and all of that. Well she should worry about herself and that she liked. He liked her back, he had better like her back, or else.

Sho didn't know what the 'else' was but it was going to be a thousand times worse than learning to play this boring game.


	208. Unwanted Pests

There were a lot of unwanted pests out on the open air mezzanine.

And Minegishi was not just talking about the bugs.

They felt his aura long before they saw him. Mob had felt it to. Minegishi could tell by the way she perked up from her manga. From the smile she tried to force away. That guy…what did Mob see in that guy? Was that just her type? But why would a guy like that be anyone's type? They didn't know. The decided to keep on reading. He was heading right towards them, they could feel it, and they knew that unless they felt like upsetting Mob there was nothing that they could do about the annoyance heading their way.

"Is it ok if I ask Hatori to sit with us?" asked Mob. Minegishi shrugged. They had nothing against the guy, not really, he was just annoying. They weren't about to go and ruin this for Mob, though. She had enough going wrong on her life as it was.

That had better have been a normal vape pen in her pocket.

"It's fine as long as he doesn't bother me." Said Minegishi. They did not feel like being hit on by some nineteen year old kid and they did not feel like being hit on right in front of their ten year old best friend. Either that guy was too stupid to know that Mob had a massive crush on him or he just didn't care about crushing a little girl's hopes and dreams and ruining love and romance for her for the rest of her life.

"Ok. If he starts to bother you I'll send him away…but I don't think he will. He's so nice…" said Mob. Minegishi rolled their eyes. Yeah, Mob had it bad. Either she had it bad or Shimazaki had decided to give her the means to get high on her own….and if he valued his life he had better not have given her another one of those damn pens.

"Calm down, he's heading over. Don't look too eager." Said Minegishi

"Why shouldn't I look too eager?" asked Mob

"Because then he'll know how you feel and, honestly, I don't think that a relationship between a ten year old and a nineteen year old would work out." Said Minegishi. Mob, somehow, turned even redder than she had been before. Minegishi wondered if she was in danger of passing out. They had no idea how they were supposed to explain Mob's state to the healer without revealing the secrets which they had been entrusted with.

Minegishi was many things but they were not a gossip.

"I-I'm not going to confess to him. I'm not dumb, I know I should wait until I'm older." Said Mob. Minegishi was not going to say anything to that. Let Mob have her dreams. Everyone needed to have dreams. Even if hers involved….that guy. She needed something to look forward to for her adult years even if it was just being the girlfriend of Hatori Nozomu. It didn't take a fortune teller to know that her teen years and adult years, the ones in which her father was still alive for, wouldn't exactly be a glass of wine in the park.

"Well then I'd try and act natural before he starts to suspect." Said Minegishi. Though if he hadn't noticed by now then he must have been a moron. Mob could be very obvious with what she was feeling if she was feeling something strong enough…and also if she was drunk and/or stoned. The liquor came from her father's liquor cabinet, Minegishi figured, but what they could not figure out was how her control freak of a father hadn't noticed. The weed was coming from Shimazaki, at least that was Minegishi's best guess, though really it was not hard to find even in Japan if you had enough money and knew enough people who knew enough people.

And Shimazaki was people.

They were people too and they knew how to get much harder stuff than that but Mob didn't need the hard stuff. She didn't even need the soft stuff…well she sort of did. A power that big came with a bigger expense. Control did not come easy to Mob without some outside help. That was why it was…sort of ok…for her to do the things that she did. In moderation. In the moderation that Minegishi was trying their hardest to teach her. She was ten. If she was going this hard at ten then Minegishi shuddered to think about how hard she would be going at eleven and twelve and thirteen. What kind of adult trouble she would end up getting herself into.

That was not a small adult sitting across from them. That was a just a child. A child with many very heavy burdens but a child nonetheless.

"Oh…um….how's this?" asked Mob. She took a deep breath and calmed her aura and her face. Now she looked like something a bit closer to normal. Still a very flustered ten year old girl in love but that was her normal look.

"Perfect. Have fun, your dreamboat is almost here." Said Minegishi. Mob turned red at that and hid her face in her manga. She was attempting to act natural, it seemed, and of course in trying to act natural one never did look natural now did they? Mob certainly didn't. She clutched that manga compilation in her hands like she was holding the answers to human existence. She was red, very red, and honestly it was kind of cute.

Or at least it would have been if she had gotten into this state over someone her own age.

Minegishi sort of got it. They'd never had the patience for people their own age either. They had never really felt their age, more like a very short adult, and as a consequence of that they had never really been attracted to people their own age. They had all just seemed so…childish. So they couldn't fault Mob for the way that she probably felt. She didn't even know anyone her own age besides her little brother and her dad…well the less said about him the better. She was, in so many ways, like something of a tiny adult.

But in reality she was a ten year old girl with a massively adorable crush on the gangly teenage boy heading over towards them.

"Hi Hatori. Here, you can sit with us. There's room." Said Mob as she pulled another chair over with her powers. She didn't look up, she just kept her face buried in her manga. Minegishi didn't say a thing. They weren't going to chase away the guy that Mob liked. Let her have some happiness in her life and all of that. Even if the guy that she liked was this gangly, annoying, pimply faced dork.

"Well alright if I'm not imposing." Said Hatori as he sat down. Minegishi did not tell him that he was imposing. That he was imposing on their solitude. Well their solitude with Mob.

"You're not imposing at all. We want you here. Um…why are you here? You normally take a break and get a soda from the vending machine on the fourth floor by the boy's bathroom that's always out of order because someone keeps flooding it. This is the second floor mezzanine and the only soda machines here have healthy drinks like milk and water and tea. You mostly just drink soda and sometimes coffee but mostly soda. So why did you come all the way here? Not that I don't want you here, because I do, because um…you can be wherever you want to be." Said Mob with her face still buried in her manga. Minegishi did not laugh. They were not going to laugh at whatever that was. Apparently Mob had a bit of a stalker in her. Minegishi couldn't blame her. When they had been ten they had memorized this one man's delivery route because he had complimented their hair after they'd cut it for the first time….

Oh to be ten and in love and to lack any and all self-awareness.

"Just felt like doing something different, that's all." said Hatori. Minegishi rolled their eyes. He hadn't taken his eyes off of them since he had sat down. They were not going to be making eye contact with him. That would only serve to encourage him and they had no intention of encouraging him. They knew what he wanted from them, he was as transparent as Mob was, and they were not so hard up.

Also they would never do that to Mob.

So they just sat there and read. Well they pretended to read. It was a bit hard to read when some teenage moron was focusing his aura on them. Mob's aura was focused on him. To the outside observer this whole thing must have just been hilarious. Well it wasn't. It was painful for all involved.

"Um….what's that book? I mean it's manga, not a book, but um…what is it?" asked Mob. She was playing with her braids now, keeping them from floating away, and Minegishi wished that they could take a picture without being noticed. Then they could torture Mob, in about ten years, with memories of her awkward years.

"This? This the first volume of Evangelion. I just thought that I'd reread it. You know, revisit some old friends. Have you ever heard of it?" asked Hatori. Mob shook her head. Of course she hadn't. She was ten and her world was pastel and princesses. Minegishi knew that the question had been directed at the both of them but they pretended not to notice. Maybe this was the same rules as went for Shimazaki. Maybe if they ignored him then he would get bored and wander away.

"No…but it looks…interesting." Said Mob. That was not her cup of tea and Minegishi knew it. At some point they would have to teach her not to try and change herself for anyone. That wasn't the way to start a relationship. Not that Minegishi was any kind of expert. No, they hadn't even tried since….well it had been ages. They knew, however, that you should never compromise who you were. Especially for someone else's affections.

"It's pretty cool. You might like it. I mean if you like sci-fi then you'll like it. You still watching your way through the Galaxy Express?" asked Hatori

"Yes. Me and my dad area about halfway through. I think he might want to watch it again from the beginning…" said Mob. Minegishi knew her well enough to know how much she didn't want that. Well who would want to spend night after night sitting next to Suzuki watching his favorite show? At least she hadn't had any new bruises lately…and the less Minegishi thought about those the better. The ones on her arms were pretty much faded to nothing now. Minegishi tried not to think about the placement of those bruises, five finger marks on each side, because well…there was nothing that they could do about that anyway.

And Mob would have said something, anyway, if it was something that they should have been worried about.

"That's cool, how you and your dad are so close I mean. I never would have taken him for a Galaxy Express fan….or a fan of anything at all, actually." Said Hatori

"Dad likes things. He likes outer space and he likes documentaries about outer space…and other things…but mostly outer space. He likes space a lot." Said Mob

"So, what, he never became an astronaut so he decided to take over the world?" asked Hatori. Minegishi smiled a little. They couldn't help it. The thought of little Suzuki sitting in a refrigerator box space ship with one of those empty silver oatmeal can on his head dreaming of the stars…and then realizing that the Japanese government only sent ten people into space and maybe, just maybe, he needed some more realistic life goals.

Like world domination.

"No, he never wanted to be an astronaut. He said that for his whole life he wanted to rule the world because he's the most powerful esper who ever lived and that means that he has to rule the world. Dad said so." Said Mob. Minegishi shook their head. Hatori looked like he didn't know what to make of that. Well that made sense. He hadn't been orbiting Suzuki for years. You got used to his insanity eventually.

Hopefully Hatori wouldn't be joining them on their little never ending world tour.

"Right…that makes….sense." said Hatori

"It does. Dad said so." Said Mob. Minegishi wondered when she would wise up and spit the Kool-aide out. She actually believed all of that insanity her father fed her. Minegishi knew how Hatori felt, there, making that stupid face. Those were Suzuki Touichirou's deeply held beliefs. He hadn't started all of this for money or for power or for any other perfectly sane reason.

He honestly believed that he was the rightful ruler of the world.

Really once you got used to it, his insanity, it got pretty boring. Such a cliché. He wanted to rule the world because he was the strongest kid on the playground. They imagined that nobody had ever told him 'no' in his life. Who could have told him 'no'? He had been a kid at some point, as powerful as Mob, but without all of the things that made her 'Mob'. None of that niceness, that need to be accepted, that unwavering belief in the powers of love and friendship. He must have been a holy terror as a kid.

Because he certainly was one as an adult.

Minegishi hoped that Hatori didn't wind up joining them. The Ultimate Four or whatever else Ryou in his infinite stupidity had decided to call them. Mob would probably try and take him with them when they left Tokyo. If they ever left Tokyo. There were times that they moved every other month, or even week, and then times that they stayed put and got bored and lazy…and this was one of those times. They hoped that they moved along soon.

And without Hatori Nozomu.

"So, what are you reading?" asked Hatori changing the subject even though it must have been a much more interesting subject than whatever Shoujo hell that Mob had found herself in.

"This is about a bunch of kids and they're all friends in a club where they don't really do anything but hang out. What's your book about?" asked Mob

"Kids piloting giant mechs and fighting monsters." Said Hatori. Minegishi rolled their eyes so hard that it hurt. THAT was what he got out of Evangelion? Not that Minegishi was a fan or anything. They had dabbled, of course they had they were Japanese, but they weren't exactly a fan. But apparently he was. Well good for him.

"Existential dread, the nature of existence, the need for human connection and how terrifying it can be. You know, and other such topics that a ten year old is absolutely going to love." Said Minegishi

"That sounds very interesting actually. Dad might like that. We might not even have to watch Galaxy express from the beginning again." said Mob. Minegishi smiled again, just a little, because the thought of Suzuki getting into something like Evangelion…it's hilarious. Maybe at his heart he was nothing more than a big dork. Maybe he was trying to take over the world because he had just been a wildly unpopular dork in his youth

Maybe that was why Mob had a type.

Daddy issues. Mob had daddy issues like the sky was blue, water was wet, and Starbucks had constantly mediocre coffee. Yeah, her teen years were going to be a blast. Minegishi got the feeling that they were going to have to fight off a lot of nerds and dorks once Mob hit puberty. Yeah, those teen years were not going to be a fun time. When she stopped looking so much like a child and her crushes stopped being so cute. God. Their work would never be done with, would it? Maybe they should just savor this time now when Mob was ten and the subjects of her affections were too clueless to even realize that she had feelings for them and if they hadn't been they would, of course, not want anything to do with an actual child.

Minegishi thanked God that they still had a few more years where Mob would still be a kid. Visibly, at least. They knew firsthand how some men could be.

"So, what are you reading, Minegishi?" asked Hatori. Minegishi shrugged. Hopefully they had made themselves clear enough for Hatori but not clear enough for Mob. They did not want to be bothered. They wanted to read and let Mob dip her toes in the world of guys.

"A book." Said Minegishi simply.

"What's it about?" asked Hatori. Well, he was persistent…and not in the good way. Not in the Ryou way. At least he could tell when he really was unwanted. Truly annoying…and he could be truly annoying. But also he could just be…himself. He was annoying but sometimes he could be tolerable. Also he knew when to get lost.

"Things." Said Minegishi as they turned the page. Maybe he would take a hint…but he probably wouldn't. Teenage boys weren't exactly known for their mastery of tact and grace. No, he would be persistent, a persistent pest, like a mosquito buzzing in their ear over and over again.

"What kinds of things?" asked Hatori. Minegishi closed their book and tried to put as much annoyance into their face and their aura as they could. Was he really that dense? Was it really so hard to take a hint? Even Mob wouldn't be this clueless. They didn't want to tell this guy off considering Mob's feelings for him…but they might've had to…

"Minegishi doesn't want to be bothered right now. They said that if you bothered them then you'd have to go…and I don't want to kick you out….but I would like to know more about your book….if you'll tell me about it." Said Mob. Minegishi would have to get her some 'thank you' milk or something. She may have only saved Minegishi because they had some kind of bizarre infatuation with Hatori but they were still grateful.

There were a lot of annoyances out there, not just insects, but Mob was proving herself to be a good little friend and wingman.


	209. End of Summer Blow Ups

At the end of summer you were supposed to set off fireworks…even though both Mob and Sho knew that it was dangerous…but it was summer ad this was what you were supposed to do at the end of summer…

So that was what they were going to do. Shimazaki found fireworks and the sun was going down and now they were going to set them off. Mob had seen fireworks more times than she could count, she felt like she had spent half of her life at Disneyland after all, but she had never set any off. Also she had never watched them with anyone other than Sho. Back when they had lived at the Castle mom had just showed them fireworks on the TV. It was too dangerous for them to go and watch them with other people, mom had said, because something could happen. Mob didn't see, though, what was so dangerous about watching fireworks.

Setting them off seemed like something that was A LOT more dangerous.

"Fire in the hole!" shouted Shimazaki as he like another fuse. This was a good time for fireworks. It felt like the sun had mostly gone down. He would have waited until the sun was totally gone but two members of Operation: Don't Lose Any Fingers, were kids and they had to get home and go to bed and other such kid things. He didn't know when their bedtimes were but he knew that Toshi would kill him if he kept them up past their bedtimes.

But, hey, he just wanted to hear some explosions and smell some gunpowder. He could do that at high noon if he wanted to.

"Get back further you moron….or don't. I don't give a damn." said Minegishi from their spot on the grass. There was a reason that Shimazaki had called this Operation: Don't Lose Any Fingers. It wouldn't be too bad if he lost any fingers, it served him right really and they had a healer, but that was a lot of work that they did not want to have to deal with. They'd have to find his severed fingers and then deal with Fukuda because he was the only one who could reattach them, well there were hospitals but why go to the hospital when you had a healer on call?

"I hope he doesn't end up getting blown up." Said Mob. They were in the backyard of the house that her friends lived. Today was the end of summer, well Shimazaki declared it to be the end of summer, and then he had said that they were going to set off some fireworks that he had gotten from his friend in exchange for….well Mob didn't know what. Minegishi had covered her ears and ushered her out of the room. Probably something bad then. She hoped that he hadn't been fighting anyone.

"I don't care if he gets blown up." Said Sho. He crossed his arms and dug his shoes into the grass. Shimazaki still hadn't apologized for the bird thing. He was only there because he liked fireworks. He didn't care that Shimazaki was there. He still hadn't said sorry for letting that bird peck his head. Was it so hard to say sorry!? No harder than teleporting into his yard and telling him and big sis that they had to come over and watch fireworks….

"Sho! That's not nice. Shimazaki is our friend." Said Mob

"I don't care. I hope he gets blown up." Said Sho

"Sho…that's mean. Don't wish death on people. That's not nice." Said Mob

"I don't want him dead I just want him…hurt, I guess." Said Sho

"But you shouldn't want your friends to get hurt. Even if Shimazaki can be sort of annoying sometimes he's still our friend and I don't want him to get blown up and I'm sure that he wouldn't want you to get blown up either. We should be nice to him even if he's annoying and stuff sometimes." Said Mob. She took her brother's hand and tried to get him to listen…but then he pulled away. She wished she knew how to fix this, the way Sho felt, but she didn't. She wasn't good at these talking sort of things…even though she tried very hard.

"Yeah Little Suzuki. I mean he can be kind of…himself…sometimes and he's always jumping out to scare you…even though it's not funny….and also he eats everyone's food even though I specifically leaned brail and got a brail label maker….and also he puts wet towels back on the towel rod…and also…." Said Shibata. Little Suzuki should not have been talking like that! He was such a nice kid! Shibata hadn't hung out with him in so long. It felt like years and years. He was so adorable if he was scowling and ripping up handfuls of the grass.

"If you like him so much then why don't you marry him?" asked Sho as he ripped some grass up from his hands. He reached down to pull up some more and felt something sharp poke him on the hand…a little thorny vine. He felt Minegishi's aura focusing on him. What were they so upset about? It was just grass! There was plenty of grass! There was more grass on the ground than there were people in the world probably!

"Someone's getting married? Who in the hell would want to marry one of us? Suzuki's kids excluded, of course." Said Shimazaki as he teleported to a safe distance away. That fuse was way too long. He didn't like to wait. He wanted to hear some explosions and smell some gunpowder! Ok, he was cutting the rest of the fuses short. He didn't know what Toshi was so worried about. He had been drunk the time he held on to the firework for too long and blew his fingers off.

He was fine, now, those nice people at the hospital had reattached his fingers good as new.

"You guys could marry each other…if you really want to….not that I know why you would want to because everyone's just friends and also you fight a lot…but you could if you wanted to…in some countries…and we go to those countries sometimes…and you could all get married…well then Shibata would be the odd one out…but I made this new friend named Hatori and-" said Mob. She wasn't sure, entirely, where she was going with the. She tucked her vape further into her pocket. That was enough of that. Minegishi said that when Mob's brain stopped working it was time to put the vape pen away.

"Mob, quit while you're behind." Said Minegishi. They leaned in close. Yup. Someone had been at it again. It was difficult to teach Mob moderation when they were being undermined at every turn…and if Shimazaki ended up blowing his fingers off again then it would serve him right.

"Well Toshi if you want to-" said Shimazaki

"Shibata wants to marry you even though he thinks that you leave your wet towels on the towel rack and that you-" said Sho

"Look, it's going up. Come on Sho, look." Said Mob. She pointed at the sky. She didn't want anyone to fight with anyone else and she did not want Sho, especially, to fight. He had been so mad at Shimazaki because of the thing with the momma bird even though Sho had been healed up just fine and also…well….maybe he and Shimazaki should not have been playing with a bird's nest anyway. Not to blame the victims or anything…but maybe they should have just left the birds alone…because birds did not like it when you messed with their nests….

She just wanted everyone to get along.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see it." Said Sho. He crossed his arms and kicked his feet but he watched. He liked the kind that went up super high and then filled the sky with colors. Even though, also, there were a lot of trees around and maybe this wasn't safe all the way because those trees could have had bird families in them and stuff. The bird families could get scared, well the momma bird could, and then the babies would be alone and…

And he and Shimazaki weren't going to be rescuing any more birds together. Sho would do it himself, later, after staking out the nest for a few hours to make sure that the momma bird wasn't going to be coming back.

"Very nice, Shimazaki. Ok, let's all go inside and not get eaten by mosquitos." Said Minegishi as they murdered a bug who dared to try and steal their blood for it's own sustenance. Nope. They needed their blood and they did not need some itchy spot that they would scratch at until it broke open and bled.

"Here, you want some more bug spray?" asked Shibata

"No, bug spray is poison." Said Minegishi

"That's the point though….right? To keep the bugs off of you?" asked Mob

"Of course that's the point! Spray me! Quick!" said Sho. The mosquitos liked him. They thought that his blood was tasty. Maybe it was all the sugar he ate. He had heard about that, that you could give yourself high blood sugar, and that must have been why the bugs liked him so much. He didn't know why the bugs were biting someone like Minegishi, though. Who would want their blood? It was probably all sour like lemon juice.

"That's it, end the bloodline there." said Minegishi rolling their eyes. They wanted to go inside but they couldn't go inside because they were not leaving Mob alone out here. If they left Mob alone with Shimazaki then they knew what she would get up to. She would try and smoke or drink without her little brother noticing and would probably either fail and get the lot of them in trouble or she'd succeed and totally overdo it because she was ten and didn't know the meaning of the word moderation.

So Minegishi had to be the responsible one.

"If I have to end my bloodline in a terrible, fiery, bloody fireworks accident then so be it." Said Shimazaki before teleporting right back to his fireworks hoard. Was this even legal? He had no idea. Well it was all Claw in this area anyway and nobody would dare say a thing to the cops. That would be a one way ticket to the deepest traitor hole.

"Do a big one this time! It'll cheer little Suzuki up!" said Shibata. He couldn't stand to see a little person so very upset. Poor little guy. He was still scared because a bird had pecked at him. Shimazaki should have done more to protect him. That was what you were supposed to when you were with little people. You were always supposed to keep them safe. That was why you were bigger than them.

"I don't need cheering up…I am cheerful…the most cheerful…." Said Sho as he pulled up more and more handfuls of grass. He was cheerful. He was the most cheerful. He was watching fireworks. Who wouldn't be cheerful when there were fireworks going off? A weirdo, that was who, and he was not a weirdo. He was the happiest and the most cheerful, too. He was happy!

"Are you sure? Because your aura feels upset and you're also ripping up handfuls of the grass." Said Mob. She made the grass grow back before Minegishi did. They had accidentally made a thorny vine before and Sho's hand had gotten hurt. That was ok, sometimes accidents happened, and also Minegishi would have said sorry if they had noticed what they did.

"Well I am, ok? I'm not upset about anything at all. The only thing that I want to do is watch some fireworks…ok?!" said Sho. He tried to make himself calm down. He was not supposed to yell at his sister because then he would be upset with himself and then he would have to make it up to her by playing the Shoko game again and he really did not want to wear one of her itchy and uncomfortable dresses. Also if he yelled at her then that would make him a jerk and he was done being a jerk. Dad was a jerk and the world did not need another dad, well his dad, in it.

"Ok. But if you were upset then you could tell me." Said Mob

"He knows. Don't keep bringing it up or you'll just end up pissing him off." Said Minegishi. They did not want to deal with Suzuki's shrieking demon child. They didn't know why Ryou invited him. Well because he had a soft spot for the kid and also Minegishi strongly suspected that he wanted to have kids…even though he knew for a fact that he was the last person who should have been reproducing. Not that they cared. He could do whatever he wanted, they didn't care. He could go out there and get a hundred women pregnant. A thousand. A million. They didn't care just so long as they were not included in that number.

The only kid that they could stand was Mob and even then it had taken years to get to this point.

"No you won't…..maybe you will just….just watch the fireworks." Said Sho. He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to talk about any of it. He wanted an apology but he couldn't ask for one without looking dumb and he had already looked dumb enough around Shimazaki….and he didn't even know why that mattered. Shimazaki had come into his yard and asked him specifically, well him and big sis specifically, if they wanted to watch some fireworks. Of course he had said yes, they were fireworks, and he knew that the fact that Shimzaki had asked him meant that he still wanted to be friends…

But he still could have said sorry for being a jerk.

"Ok…" said Mob. She so hated it when Sho was upset and she especially hated it when there was nothing that she could do about it. Sometimes people needed to get themselves sorted out, Minegishi had said, and Mob….she knew that sometimes people had to get themselves sorted out on their own but she didn't see why people should have had to be all alone like that. There was no worse feeling than being alone.

She took Sho's hand.

He wasn't alone. He had her and no matter how upset he go, or what he was so upset about, he would always have her. She was his big sister and even if she wasn't, even if she had just been his friend or someone he didn't even know that well, she still would have been there for him. She just wished that it was easier, being there for him, but it wasn't.

At least they had fireworks they could watch, though.

"I'm not afraid of the fireworks." Said Sho as big sis held his hand. When he had been little, a lot littler than he was now, he had been scared just a little bit because they were loud and stuff. Well he wasn't six anymore. No, he was nine and he was not afraid of the fireworks at all…but he held her hand because maybe she was just a little bit scared. That last one had hit a tree and then exploded kind of low to the ground.

"Well you should be considering the fact that we almost got incinerated. Shimazaki, come on. Aim away from the trees." said Minegishi. First of all they did not fancy spending the night getting their massive burns healed by Fukuda and second of all trees could feel pain and that one felt pain and Minegishi did not want to deal with that right now or ever.

"Maybe someone who can actually see should be the one doing this. Just a thought." Said Shimazaki as he went through his fireworks hoard looking for a big one. This was fun. The explosions, the bursts of heat and sound, and everyone's reactions to this. He had picked a good night for this. Suzuki was elsewhere so there was no one around to shit all over their fun. Well there was Toshi but they were just worried about him. They were capable of that, being worried about another human being, they just liked to pretend that they weren't.

"You can see the trees. You said that you could sense the world around you and…stuff." Said Shibata. He actually wasn't sure how well Shimazaki could see. He couldn't see that all the food was labeled, apparently, but he could dodge bullets and stuff…and Shibata had no idea how that worked or even if it was ok to ask how that worked.

"To a degree." Said Shimazaki. He could see every single tree within range but he wasn't going to tell Shibata that. He wasn't aiming towards the trees, that would have been stupid, but if a firework happened to hit one of the trees and a fire started well that would be pretty exciting now wouldn't it? Things had been so boring around here since Suzuki's son got all mad at him for some reason. Now there was a kid with a sense of fun.

When he wasn't sulking, that is.

And he had been sulking for a while now. He had been sulking and there was nothing fun at all about sulking. What was even with him? He used to be the most fun…well the second most fun…ever. His sister was a pretty fun kid but he was fun too. Fun in a different way. He wanted the kid to be fun in his way…but for some reason he just…wasn't being fun. It made no sense. He should have been all over this. He should have been begging to set off fireworks and have roman candle fights and all the other fun things a person could do with fireworks.

Well then he would have to do something about this.

"….can't see birds…." Muttered Sho. He maybe shouldn't have said that. He thought that he was being quiet but Shimazaki had very good hearing. Maybe he wanted him to hear. Maybe he wanted him to hear and then feel bad about laughing at him…because friends didn't laugh at friends…even if Sho had made an idiot out of himself.

He felt the energy around him shift.

And then there was grass under his feet again. He stumbled a bit but didn't fall. No, he was caught. He was caught and steadied. He pushed away the hands that were holding him up even though he didn't want to…well he did and he didn't. He mostly didn't. He mostly didn't so he pushed Shimazaki away from him.

"Wha0's you bring me here fort?!" asked Sho. He crossed his arms and stomped his feet and he would have hit Shimazaki if he could. He knew that he couldn't hit Shimazaki unless he wanted to be hit but he didn't want to be hit. They hadn't come here to play fight. Sho had no idea where 'here' even was but he knew that they hadn't come here to play fight.

Even though he wanted to.

Sho didn't know how he felt. He missed hanging out with Shimazaki, he was the coolest guy ever, but also…also he had looked so stupid and Shimazaki probably thought that he was dumb…even though he had brought him there…but also Shimazaki had been a jerk. If he had been a jerk and stuff then why did Sho still want to be friends with him? He just…he didn't know what his feelings even were!

So he stomped his feet and hurt the grass. He didn't care. It was better to hurt the grass than to hurt another person even if that other person was Shimazaki.

"Sidebar. You've been sulky lately. It's really bringing down the mood. So come on, tell me what's up? Want to throw rocks at me until you feel better? Hit each other with sticks? Find another bird's nest?" asked Shimazaki

"Shut up about birds…." Said Sho. He couldn't look at Shimazaki even though he knew that Shimazaki was looking at him. Even if he wasn't facing him he was looking at him so there was no point in Sho turning away but he did because it made him feel better and stuff. He was just…mad. He was mad at Shimazaki and mad at himself and also mad at birds even though the birds hadn't done anything to him besides peck his head and even then that was only the momma bird and only because he had taken her babies out of their tree and stuff….but he was still mad at himself and at Shimazaki and also at birds and…and stuff.

"What? We have fun last time we found birds. Come on, you're usually fun. Get back to being fun already. Suzuki-chan? Little Suzuki? Sho? Come on?" asked Shimazaki. He poked him a few times. He had to get this kid back to normal. That was his mission as of then seconds ago.

"Leave me alone, ok?! It wasn't fun the last time we found birds. It was scary and it was…it felt bad. Ok? It felt bad and I'm….I'm still mad at you! Ok?! You handed me the nest and you let the momma bird peck my head and you….you laughed at me! And it was mean!" said Sho. He didn't want to say it, well scream it, but it was either he scream it out or he hit Shimazaki. He didn't want to start a fight that he couldn't finish and also…also he didn't want to be the sort of person who just beat people up all the time…he didn't want to be like dad…

So he just settled for screaming.

"Whoa, whoa, bring it down to eleven, huh? Come on, it was fun. Finding the birds was fun and taking the nest was fun and even the part where you got pecked was fun. Actually that was the most fun. That bird was so pissed at you…." Said Shimazaki. That whole thing had been fun and hilarious. Besides, the kid had gotten all healed up. No harm no foul. So what was he so worked up over.

"None of that was fun! It hurt and it was scary and then you laughed at me and-and-and-and why did you have to laugh at me! I thought that we were friends!" shouted Sho. He took off his shoe and threw it at Shimazaki. He hadn't been planning on it, his shoe had just come loose in the course of his stomping, and then he had the idea to throw his shoe and then he had to throw his shoe because, well, what else was he supposed to do?! Besides, Shimazaki deserved it! And also this didn't count as hitting because the shoe had been the thing to hit Shimazaki and not Sho's fist!

Well almost hit him.

Shimazaki caught his shoe and teleported in front of him. Sho wiped his eyes and snatched his shoe back. Shimazaki crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side. Sho felt like he was being looked at. Well he was being looked at. He was being stared at and…and it felt like he was being picked apart. Like he was being sized up.

"You throw pretty hard, you know that?" asked Shimazaki. Well then. This kid was well and truly pissed off at him. What was up with him? He's apparently been sitting on this since it happened. Shimazaki felt…not good. He didn't want to piss the little guy off…well not this badly….not badly enough that he stopped being fun.

"Shut up." Said Sho as he put his shoe back on.

"Nope. I can't do that." Said Shimazaki with a shrug.

"Why not? It's easy. You just stop saying stuff to me. It's not even doing anything. It's the opposite of doing anything." Said Sho

"Well I can't shut up because you're pissed off. Normally I wouldn't care, there's a lot of entertainment value in you being pissed off, but we went too far in the other direct. The whole thing went horseshoe shaped and, honestly, it's not a fun shape." Said Shimazaki

"So? What do you care if I'm…if I'm pissed off? Why the hell do you care?" asked Sho. He said the words, the ones he didn't usually use, because he was just that mad at Shimazaki…and also big sis wasn't there to tell him not to curse. He had to curse. This was a cursing situation.

"Well someone's upset. It's a shame Shibata isn't here. He'd be all over this adorableness." Said Shimazaki. There was something oddly adorable about a nine year old's attempt at cursing him out. If Shimazaki ever had a son he hoped that his son was better at cursing him out than Sho was. Also that his son just kicked his ass on the day that Shimazaki pissed him off and didn't just let this stew until he exploded like an unattended to pressure cooker.

"Shut the hell up you…um…asshole." Said Sho. He was bad at cursing. He was bad at cursing and now Shimazaki thought that he was stupid and a kid and…and stuff. Even though he was a kid and stuff. He wished that he wasn't a kid. He wished that he and Shimazaki were the same age. Then Sho could have beaten him up and it wouldn't be wrong…and also he would have a shot at winning…even though he should not have been beating anyone up because big sis would have been mad at him.

"Oh, please, stop. I can't take anymore." Said Shimazaki

"Fuck you! You're a…fucker!" said Sho. That was the worst word that he knew. That was the one that dad had almost put him through a wall for saying. He was a Suzuki and he wasn't supposed to talk like that but Sho would say whatever the…fuck…he wanted to say! Because he was not a baby and he was mad and yelling curse words was a hell of a lot better than kicking someone's ass! Yeah, it was better to take up cursing than ass kicking!

But not where dad could hear because he was scary.

Shimazaki wasn't scary. Even though he was right in front of him now and before Sho knew it he was being picked up. He was picked up and then held upside down by his ankle. He was being held upside down and his whole back was showing and Shimazaki could see his scars…well he couldn't, actually, but Sho felt like he could and it was making feel all…well he was mad and also kind of…red and warm and embarrassed…..even though he liked his scars…

He had a lot of feelings right now and he got the feeling that he couldn't just curse until these feelings went away.

"Ok, listen the fuck up you little asshole. If I pissed you off this badly then you should have opened your god damned mouth you little bastard! Also if you want to start a cursing match you'd be better prepared to finish it you little son of a bitch!" said Shimazaki. Yes, this was good. Fun Sho was back. His sister was fun too but in a different way. She was fun to get wasted with. Her brother was fun to get into elementary school cursing matches with.

Which he would win, of course, because he was twenty years older than this kid.

"Fuck you!" said Sho

"No, fuck you!" laughed Shimazaki

"Don't laugh at me you…you bitch!" said Sho

"I'm a guy, I'm a bastard!" said Shimazaki

"Fine! Shut the hell up you bastard!" said Sho

"Hey! I'll have you know that my parents were married!" laughed Shimazaki

"What's that got to do with anything?!" shouted Sho. He would have said more but he was dropped down onto his face. Shimazaki was laughing so hard that he was doubled over. His face was red and he had tears on his cheeks and his nose was even starting to run.

He looked so stupid.

He looked so stupid. He looked like an idiot. He looked…Sho had never seen him like that. So…not cool. Not all…Shimazaki-like. Sho…he didn't brush the dirt off his face. He didn't brush it off because he felt all red…but not the angry sort of red he turned. He just felt…he didn't know how he felt. He didn't know how he felt and…and he wanted…he wanted to stop feeling like this and…and he also wanted to feel like his forever.

"You have no clue what you're even saying….God….kid, I fucking love you…you know that?" asked Shimazaki. The kid was still pissed at him. His body temperature was rising and his breathing had picked up and his aura was all…yeah, he was pissed off. So pissed that he couldn't even move. Shimazaki tried to stop laughing. The whole thing was just so….they kid didn't even know what he was saying! God, he should have brought Toshi around for this little sidebar. They would have gotten a kick out of this.

"Shut the hell up…." Said Sho. He hid his face in his hands. He didn't want to look at Shimazaki and he didn't want Shimazaki to look at him…but he was looking at him. He was looking at him and now he was patting his hair like he was a dog or something…

"OK, you win this one by default. There. Now don't you feel better?" asked Shimazaki

"….yes…no….I don't know." Said Sho quietly. He felt good and bad at the same time. He felt happy and nervous. He wanted to hit Shimazaki as hard as he could in anger and also he wanted to play fight him…and he had no idea what he was even supposed to call this stupid feeling…

"Well it should have. Listen, I'm sorry, ok? About letting a bird attack you and about laughing at your completely hilarious pain. Ok? I, Shimazaki Ryou, son of Shimazaki Seiko, who was the son of Shimazaki Noromi, who was the son of Shimazaki Kouiki, who was the son of-" said Shimazaki

"Are you going to go through your whole family tree?" asked Sho. He calmed down. His face stopped being red and his heart and lungs went back to doing their job. He wanted….he wanted to run around or something….because even though his body was calming down his mind was telling him to just…run or jump or climb or something….but he didn't. He just stayed there and stayed still and…and stuff….

"Well I was about to but you made me lose my place. Do you have any idea how hard it was to learn my whole lineage? I had to hear it recited, you know. I had to sit and listen….for hours…hours and hours on end…" said Shimazaki

"Well I only know my dad so, no, I don't know." Said Sho

"Well consider yourself lucky. You're lucky not to have a lineage to remember and you're lucky to get one of my very rare and heartfelt apologies." Said Shimazaki

"….are you really sorry or are you just saying so?" asked Sho. He wiped his eyes again. Shimazaki could just say things sometimes. Sho knew how he could be…and he liked that about him…how he just said stuff…he didn't want this to be another one of the things that he just said. He wanted this to be real and…and he didn't even know why….

"I'm sorry I was such an asshole to you, ok? I forgot how kids could be. Next time you get the bright idea to steal a bird's nest then I'll be sure to have your back. Deal?" asked Shimazaki. He sensed the kid nod. Good. That was the end of it.

Now they could go and celebrate the end of summer in their country by blowing up a small part of it!

"You'd better….you bastard." Said Sho. Shimazaki flicked him over the head.

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" laughed Shimazaki

"No! Not for a while! She ran away from home!" said Sho. Shimazaki just laughed at him again and flicked him over the head, again, even though that was annoying.

"Well let's get back before people think that I kidnapped you or something…because apparently people think that I'm creepy…." Muttered Shimazaki. He grabbed Sho and teleported them back to the yard. He smelled…smoke. A lot of smoke. Smoke and also….burning leaves?

Damn it! He had been so busy clearing the atmosphere with a kid that he'd missed whatever the hell that was.

"Sho! I missed you so much! I missed you so much that I wanted to find you but then Shibata tried to set off a firework to make me feel better and then it hit the tree and then it exploded and…um…maybe it was better that you weren't here. Shibata's ok, though, he went inside to see if he got hurt too bad. He didn't want to call Fukuda…because nobody likes him for some reason….but I'm glad that you're here!" said Mob. She was just a little bit…spacey….but that was ok! Little brother was back!

She loved her little brother so much!

She hugged him. He hugged her back. He smelled like grass…she wondered where he had been. Minegishi said that Shimazaki had his reasons and that Mob shouldn't worry…of course when someone told you not to worry then you couldn't help but worry…and stuff. But Sho was ok and that was what mattered.

"Come on…I love you too…now let's just…um…blow up some more fireworks. Yeah, I want to do that next one! I don't care if we all get blown up!" said Sho. He went over to the fireworks pile and picked out the biggest one that he could find. He felt…lighter. Lighter and better but also…also there was this other weird feeling inside of him…and he didn't know what it was but maybe…maybe he could make it go away…by blowing something up!

After all, that was what the end of summer was all about.


	210. A Dad, a Daughter, and a Video Game

Minecraft was not a boring game.

Sho just didn't have a lot of patience inside of himself. That was because he was only nine years old and stuff. That was all. Mob had a lot of patience. She had so much patience that she was going to keep on mining to craft and crafting to mine and also she was going to put another floor on their fort because they needed more space for their chests and stuff. They needed more chests to store their stuff and they couldn't get more stuff until they stored the stuff they had in chests and they couldn't store things in chests until they had more space for the chests.

And this was fun.

It was sort of like the Lego Friends build your own dollhouse she used to have only this was in a videogame and also Sho hadn't smashed this one. Well Sho had minded through their wall but she and Hatori had fixed it. This was more of their house than her and Sho's…and the thought makes her laugh even though there's nothing at all to laugh at. She's just…she's happy…and stuff. She's just happy and stuff. She's just so…so…she feels really happy when she plays this game.

Even when she plays alone.

Hatori had to go because his party was on a raid in another game. He said that he would come back on around one or two in the morning. Mob hoped that dad fell asleep on his own so she could wait up for Hatori to come back. He was so fun to play with….even if he did call her little sister sometimes. She didn't know which one she disliked more. Suzuki-sama or Little Sister. What was so hard about calling her Mob? It wasn't a hard word to say and it wasn't hard to write, either. She didn't understand people sometimes. Like how Shimazaki called Minegishi by their given name even though they didn't like that….well they had stopped trying to stop him so Mob didn't know….

But she did know that she didn't like being called 'Little Sister'.

She didn't want to be his little sister. She wanted to be his girlfriend when she grew up. Then they could hold hands even though his always had stuff on them and then they could kiss, too, and it would be really nice…even though Minegishi told her that he was not worth waiting for because he had probably never kissed anyone before. Well that was ok. Mob knew how to kiss. She'd show him how.

She laughed again.

Well it was somewhere between a laugh and a scream. She pulled her nightgown up over her face even though nobody could see her. Dad was in the tub and Sho was in bed and she had taped over her webcam, too, because Hatori said that people liked to watch you through them. Nobody could see her or hear her and she had no reason to hide her face but she still did. She had been thinking thoughts again, all kinds of thoughts, and maybe she should not have been thinking like that. She couldn't help it. Her mind would just be going along like normal and then out of nowhere it would be all 'wouldn't it be nice to kiss Hatori' and then she would be all embarrassed and stuff.

Her mind was a traitor sometimes.

She wondered if it was normal to like someone this much. She had never seen mom get like this over dad and dad….she couldn't even imagine him and mom holding hands and kissing let alone being married and stuff. Well they had kissed, Sho had seen them kiss when he'd been little, but Mob couldn't picture it…and also she didn't want to imagine that. Mom and dad kissing each other. Gross. Well she wanted them to be happy and if she turned around and mom and dad were back there kissing she would have been happy because mom had come back….

She would have had to be happy.

Because she wanted her mom back. She did. Even if mom had run away and left her and Sho all alone with dad…and stuff. She still wanted her mom to come back to her and…and stuff. She did. Then they could have been a family again. Then mom could be the one to put Sho to bed and wake him up and make sure he ate all of his food groups and did his school work and took baths and changed clothes and stuff. Then Mob could have a break…but there was no point in thinking about mom coming back because that was never going to happen.

She had left three years ago. She wasn't coming back.

Mob accepted this. Dad said that there were things in life that people did best to accept and she accepted that her mom was gone. It would have been nice to have some help around the house and all but…but Mob was ok. She also would have liked to have someone to tell her if this was…if the way she felt was ok. If thinking about someone, about a boy, all the time was ok. She had thought about boys and stuff before but now it was just…worse…and she didn't know if it was ok.

Well Minegishi said that it was but they weren't married.

They'd never even had a boyfriend or a girlfriend, they had said, because they didn't believe that one person could belong to another like that. Mob didn't think that it was one person belonging to another, being in a relationship, but two people giving themselves to each other and stuff. She wanted to care about someone enough that she and him were together and agreed to be together and…and just were who they were together. She wanted someone to look at her and not see the person that they wanted her to be but the person that she was.

She wanted to be Mob.

But she was a whole lot of other people who weren't Mob. She was big sis to Sho and she was Suzuki-san to Fukuda and Her Ladyship to the Awakened and also to Shimazaki because he liked to tease her and Her Little Ladyship to Shibata and Little Sister-sama to Hatori and Daughter to dad…and the only person she was Mob to was Minegishi. At least one person let her be herself….which was nice….and she did love Minegishi but I wasn't the doki doki sort of love. It was like how she loved Sho and dad and mom and stuff.

She wanted the doki doki kind of love.

But there was no point in thinking about something that was never going to happen. Dad said that there was no point in dwelling on the impossible. Hatori didn't like her like that and he was such a great guy that by the time Mob was his age some girl would have probably asked him to marry her and he would have said yes and then he wouldn't have time to have lunch with her or play games with her or even to call her Little Sister-sama or…or anything.

But that was ok.

She had their Minecraft game and that was enough. She pulled her face out of her nightgown and went back to work. She had to get this fort really nice. If she got it really nice then Hatori would come back from his game and be impressed with her…and then maybe he would call her Mob instead of Little Sister-sama…and it would be really nice.

She smiled.

But then she smiled a little less. She smiled a little less as she felt dad's aura move. He was done with his bath. That meant that he would want to go to bed. She had to go to bed with him. She wasn't allowed to sleep in her own bed anymore. She didn't know why. One day dad had just decided that she had to sleep in the bed with him. He said because he didn't like rolling over to the other side of the bed and finding it empty. Even though he could have easily just gotten a smaller bed or turned on the heat or something. He could have turned the air back during summer when he had started carrying her to his bed.

It was fall now.

Winter was coming and winter was even colder than fall so, of course, dad wouldn't let her go back to her own bed. Spring could be pretty chilly too. Spring could be chilly and then it would turn warm and he would put the air conditioning on way too cold and then it would stay that way until fall and then they would just keep going around and around. Even though Mob had her own bed and she…she missed sleeping in the same room as Sho…and Sho must have been bothered too even if he didn't say anything…

She missed Sho even though he was in their bedroom fast asleep.

She kept on playing. She would stay there playing until dad came and got her, she decided, because she didn't feel like waiting in bed for him so they could get back to the Galaxy Express. She liked spending time with dad and all but also…also she had been spending a lot of time with him lately. It was like he was trying to make up for all of that time that he had been away from her or…or something. She didn't know. All she knew was that there wasn't a lot of room to breathe, sometimes, and not just because dad rolled over once and almost suffocated her.

Which had been an accident, he had said so.

If dad asked her to come back then she would. But if he didn't ask her then she would stay on her computer until Hatori came back. She didn't have a bedtime so she could stay up as late as she wanted to….and also she could always put her head down and take a nap if she had to. She still had to get up in the morning and get Sho up and dressed, too, along with sure that he brushed his teeth and his hair and also ate a well-balanced breakfast of more than just soda and pop tarts.

She had a lot to do.

In game and out of game she had a lot to do…and maybe she should have just done her out of game stuff. Maybe she should have just logged off and closed her laptop and put it back, it's home was not the kitchen and things belonged in their homes mom had said so, and then just gone to dad's room and watched TV with him until he got tired enough to fall asleep. That was what she had to do. What she wanted to do was stay there and wait for Hatori but…but she never got to do what she wanted to do…well she did sometimes…but not when it counted. Not that this counted since it was only a game and games were not real life and real life counted…and real life people counted…so maybe she should have just gone to dad…

Dad was coming to her.

She sat up straighter and smoothed down her hair and nightgown. She tried to look normal…even though she didn't know what she was so worried about. It wasn't like she was doing anything bad. She was just playing Minecraft…though dad hated gamed and fun of all kinds…but that was normal for him…and it wasn't like he was going to hit her or anything…well it was always an option…though she could not remember the last time her dad hit her…

But it was always an option.

"Daughter. You're here." Said dad. Mob nodded. What did he want her to say? He could see that she was at the kitchen table. He could see her with his eyes and with his aura.

"Hi, dad. I'll come to bed in a minute. I just have to log out and stuff." Said Mob. She kept her aura calm. She had finished off that vape pen that Shimazaki had given her and now she was back to normal vape…which did nothing to make her feel good if a bit spacey and also hungrier than she had ever been in her life. She needed to stay calm, though, because dad hated it when she was anything other than calm.

"What's that you're doing there." asked dad as he came up behind her. Mob moved the screen so that he could see it. Now he would get mad about her wasting her time with games and stuff. She waited for him to start up with how she had to do school work and help run Claw and stuff like that.

"It's just a game, dad. That's all." said Mob. She waited for dad to say something mean to her. He said nothing. He just kept on looking over her shoulder. She could feel his aura against hers. The hairs on the backs of her arms and neck were standing up. He was really tall and stuff. Much taller than her. She had always known that he was taller than her, he was her dad after all, but she was always most aware of that fact when he stood near her.

"Why is it so….blocky? I thought that today's games had become something closer to photorealistic." Said dad. He tapped her screen even though it was not a touch screen…and now there was a finger print on her screen…but she said nothing.

"This is just the art style I think." Said Mob simply. Hatori had said that this was supposed to be a throwback to the past but also futuristic and he had lost her after a while. She didn't care what the game looked like. She just wanted it to be fun. And it was fun….well it had been. She knew that dad was going to rain on her parade soon. He was good at that.

"So it's the aestic?" asked dad

"What's an aestic?" asked Mob

"The look and feel of something. Was this meant to look and feel like the games from my era?" asked dad. Mob didn't know what his era looked like. He was born in the 70s and she had never lived in the 70s so she had no idea what the 70s looked like…though she was ten now…so he was talking about the 80s…which she had also never lived through. She knew what retro games looked like….but how did he know? Dad had been alive when the retro games had been new and not retro but…but that would have meant that he would have played them….and this was dad. It was hard to think of him as a kid sitting at his kitchen table playing videogames….or maybe he had gone to arcades, maybe? She didn't know. That was a lot to think about at once.

"I don't know why it looks the way it does….it might be trying to be retro….and you played games? You? When you were my age?" asked Mob. She couldn't believe that. She had always imagined little dad as being, well, a smaller version of current timeline dad. Just shorter and stuff.

"Yes. I was a child, once." Said Dad. He had a tone there that Mob couldn't read…and she didn't even have the brain space to try and figure out his tone or his aura. She was too busy trying to think of little dad. She had always figured that little dad was just like current timeline dad…and she…she knew so little about him. She wanted to know more. She had no idea if it was ok to ask but…but she wanted to know and…and if he got mad at her then he got mad at her.

"What did you play? I mean what sorts of videogames did you play?" asked Mob

"All sorts of games." Said Dad. Well that was…not helpful. Mob wanted to know. She wanted to know so that she could….so that she could maybe know more about the kid that dad used to be. She didn't know who her mom used to be, she had left before Mob could have even thought to ask, but dad was there and she would ask him. She just…she had no idea what she would do with that information when she got it but…but she wanted to know.

"Which ones were your favorites?" asked Mob

"When I was ten years old? Space invaders had been a very popular game for some time. I also enjoyed Asteroids, Galaxian, Missile Command, Pong…yes, those were my favorites. Space Invaders alone took up at least six hours of my day during summer breaks." Said dad

"You…you played those games? You? When you were a kid?" asked Mob

"Yes, Daughter. I don't understand why that is so difficult for you to comprehend." Said dad

"Because…because I can only think of you at this age, I guess. It's hard to think of you being my age." Said Mob

"Yes, I suppose that it would be…though you know that I was a child at some point. You and your brother were given my old toys after all." said dad. Mob needed a moment to remember what he had been talking about. The Treasure Room. It had felt like a lifetime ago when she and Sho had first found that room, when they had found dad's old toys, and when they had….when Sho had…well it had been an accident. Hitting her in the face with a shinai had been an accident. She hardly even remembered how much it hurt….because it hadn't hurt that much, probably, and also….also she shouldn't have made a big deal about that. She had gotten Sho punished after all. Even though it hadn't been that serious at all.

I remember. Back when Sho and I found the Treasure Room and stuff." Said Mob

"The junk room, you mean." Said dad. Mob stopped herself from frowning. She knew that it had been one of the many junk rooms in the Castle but…but those had been some fun toys…and also playing in the Treasure Room was one of her best memories. Well not the part where she got hit in the face with a shinai but the parts where she and Sho had gone exploring and played together and…and all of that other fun stuff. Stuff that felt like it had happened a lifetime ago…even though it wasn't at all.

"They were treasures to me and Sho." said Mob

"Well you were small children. I can get you real treasures now. Just name it and it will be yours." Said dad

"I don't need any treasures." Said Mob. She didn't want anything fancy in her life. She just wanted her family to be happy, for Sho to be safe, for dad's dream to come true, and for Claw to find all the espers in the world and bring everyone together. She didn't need fancy clothes and jewelry and art and whatever else was in real life treasure chests. She wanted a lot of things but she knew that dad couldn't just go into a store and buy them so she said nothing. Sometimes it was best to keep the way you felt to yourself.

"Then why does your game have so many treasure chests?" asked dad. He touched her screen again. He touched her screen and he left another finger print but she didn't feel like it, like telling him to stop, because this was just so….so not normal. Him being open like this. She had no idea how long this would last for and she didn't want to pop the soap bubble of whatever this was. He was being opened with her and he was interested in what she was doing…and this was so rare…but nice.

"Those hold my inventory. See? This is all the stuff that I've found." Said Mob. She opened up one of the chests. Dad was still…weirdly interested. He leaned over her shoulder even more. She sort of wanted some space…but she knew better than to ask him for space.

"These look like materials." Said dad finally

"Yeah, you mine things to craft with and you craft things to mine with. Also you build stuff and sometimes there's player vs player but not in this world. This is still just a practice world. Me and Ha-me and my friend and Sho have been building in here for a while." Said Mob. She wasn't going to say anything about Hatori to dad. She didn't want to get Hatori beat up.

"I see…and this entire structure is your doing?" asked dad

"Yes. See, I'm the one who made the Claw symbol…because we're all Claw." Said Mob

"That doesn't look like an HQ though." said dad

"No, it doesn't, because it's not. It's just a fort house we made together. I just put the Claw symbol there because we're all in Claw…but I can take it off if you want me to." Said Mob

"No, leave it. You…you've done something interesting here. I…I have an interest in this…it could be good for…design." Said dad. He did that thing where he didn't look at her and pulled his aura away. She didn't know why he did that. He always did that when he said nice things, he said that he didn't like to show weakness around her. Even though being nice was not showing weakness.

She didn't get him sometimes.

She loved him and she would never think that he was weak. He was her dad and she loved him. She had no idea what was so bad about telling his daughter nice things. When she had her own kids she would tell them nice things every day. She would stay there with them and never run away and tell them every single day at least one nice thing. Even if it was something as simple as she liked the game they were playing. That was what dad must have meant…and she so wished that he would just say it already and not be all…like this.

"Do you like it, dad? It's ok to tell me that you like it. It would make me happy if you said that. I know that you don't want to look weak in front of me but I don't think that it would be weakness to tell me that you like the game I'm playing." said Mob. Dad's aura moved a bit and for a moment she had thought that she had made him angry. She almost put a barrier around herself on accident…but she stopped herself.

Dad wasn't mad.

His aura just looked like that sometimes. He was thinking about something. That was how he was when he thought about things. How he looked when he thought about saying nice things to her. Even though it made no sense for him to be so upset and stuff. She didn't understand him. She wished that mom was still around so she could explain dad to her…but maybe mom didn't get him either. Maybe that was why she had run away. Maybe she had left because

Wondering why mom had left was pointless.

"Yes. This looks like something with a valid application in….life. Please carry on with what you were doing." Said dad. Mob didn't know what he meant by 'valid application in life' but she knew that he did want to watch her play…and maybe he just didn't want to say it that he wanted to watch her play. He could be like that sometimes. He was afraid to say totally normal stuff sometimes…even though she would never think that he was weak even though he was always afraid of that. She may have been misunderstanding, though, so it was best maybe, to ask him what he meant.

"You…you want to watch me play?" asked Mob. Dad dragged a chair over with his powers and sat down in it. He sat close enough so that he could see the screen. Mob could smell his soap and…had he been using her shampoo? Oh. Well she owed Sho an apology. She decided to let it go. She was too busy trying to wrap her head around….this.

Dad wanted to play with her.

Dad never wanted to play with her unless it was something that he liked to play. They had played all night games of Chinese checkers when she had been little. Back when they had lived in the Castle she and dad had stayed up all night playing…would this be like that? Would this be like when she had been little? Did she even want that? Did he even want that? He was the one who was always saying that the past was in the past….and stuff. Even the good parts of the past. When dad had been nice but not all…in her space all the time…and mom had been around…it had been such a nice time….

Would this be a nice time too?

"Yes. Carry on. Show me what you can do." Said dad. He said it in the same way he told people to show them their powers…like he was sizing them up…and Mob had no idea why she was being sized up right now. She was his Daughter, she wasn't one of the people he had to size up…and also this was a game, not powers, and he had no reason to want to see her play this game…or to be so close to her…

"Um….ok. Well I can go outside and get more materials and then I can come back and get back to making the second floor." Said Mob. This was….weird. Why was he so interested in this? Didn't he want to do things that he liked? This wasn't like him at all….but that wasn't a bad thing. That was a nice thing, actually, a very nice thing even.

"Second floor? What's that tall thing then?" asked Dad. He touched her screen…and she said nothing even though everyone knew that you were only supposed to touch a touch screen. This was not a touch screen. This was just a normal screen…but dad might have just thought that every screen was a touch screen. He wasn't that good at computers. He needed her to work the Netflix for him even though he had seen her do it a thousand times.

"That's our viewing tower. It's for viewing the world, not storage, and that's why I have to build a second floor. We need the second floor so we can have more room for our stuff. I mean we could build outwards but it makes more sense to build upwards because-" said Mob

"You get a better vantage point." Said dad. Mob nodded. That was what she and Sho had figured too. A lot of HQs were in tall buildings because dad wanted to be able to see his enemies in all directions and stuff….even though Mob didn't know why anyone would oppose Claw. They were good people and they tried to bring espers everywhere together. Some people just didn't believe in dad's dreams….even though that made no sense. It made about as little sense as having a fort without a viewing tower.

"That's right." Said Mob. Dad reached over and then pulled his hand back. Mob tensed a little even though he hardly ever hit her. The option was always there but he didn't hit her. He put his hand on her back and patted her a couple of times. She felt his hand against the back of her night gown. He was strong, she knew that he was strong, and she expected every pat against her Elsa and Anna nightgown to hurt but it didn't….which meant that he was trying not to hurt her since out of all of her Frozen night gowns this was the thinnest.

"Good thinking. Also you can build underground as well. You can make a strategic retreat underground and then escape through a series of tunnels….are there tunnels in this game?" asked dad. He was leaning into her space now even more so…but this was ok because he was interested in this…and it was nice. She had showed him something new. Usually he was the one who showed her stuff.

This was nice.

It was like he was seeing her…well he must have been seeing her because he was all in her space and stuff….but this was also like he was seeing…Mob. He had seen something that she liked, that Mob liked, and he liked it too. He didn't say that it was dumb or boring. He liked it and…and he liked her. She knew that he liked her, he was always carrying her to his bed so he must have liked her…but now it felt like he liked HER.

It was nice.

"Yes. Sho was working on one." said Mob. She wondered how Sho would have felt if he knew that dad was looking at their Minecraft world….well he wouldn't be that upset, probably, since he said that this game was boring…so this was ok. It was ok to share this with dad.

"Show me." Said dad. Mob did as she was told. She showed dad everything. The more she showed him the more he wanted to see. His eyes did that thing where his pupils shrank but, for once, it wasn't at her. He must have really liked this game…which was nice. She liked this. Even though since he liked this game that meant that she would have to spend more time with him and they would play together but…but she wanted that. Of course she wanted that. This was her dad. This was her dad and she loved him and she loved spending time with him.

Also this was a whole lot better than watching Galaxy Express over and over again.


	211. Three Thirteen in the Morning

Suzuki could remember the last video game he had ever played.

It had been on an unusually warm March day in the year 1991. He had been eighteen years old. It had been Space Invaders. He had been playing nonstop for five hours that day. From the minute the arcade opened. He had needed it, the game, because it relaxed him. He had just graduated high school the day before. He hadn't felt any sort of accomplishment because he hadn't seen it as one. Everyone graduated high school. That was one of the things that one had to check off their list in order to become a respectable member of society. He had been all alone at his graduation ceremony. Well alone aside from Fukuda but he had been more annoying than anything. Also his parents had invited him to come along with them for some lunch thing.

He had declined.

He had declined in favor of sitting alone in the woods with his thoughts. There had been a sort of aloneness to him, to his emotions, that he just could not place. Mother and father had been dead for some months and Suzuki…he had no reason to mourn them…or to feel alone. In fact he had doubted his own feelings, even, because if he had truly felt so alone then he would have taken Fukuda's mother and father up on their offer. They had been going out for Chinese food. He loved Chinese omelets. He could have gone for the meal, saved himself some money from his inheritance too since they would have paid, but he just…he had wanted to be alone.

He had wanted to be with people and he had wanted to be alone.

His home had been gone. He had found a new one easily, mother and father had left him quite a sum of money, and he had an actual apartment to go to…but he had chosen to spend his time in that fort in the woods just…thinking. He hadn't bothered with the radio or the television, even though setting both of those up had been a pain and a half, he had just…sat there. All day. All night. He had just sat there staring and thinking, thinking and staring, until it became dark and then light again. Once those first rays of sunlight had hit him right in the eyes, very unpleasant and he would have blocked out the sun if he'd been able to, he had decided that he would do something productive with his time.

So he had gone off to play Space Invaders.

It had been his favorite game since games had been invented. He'd had it on home console but that console had been destroyed along with much of the living room. The only things which had survived had been things that had been stored in the back of the house. Good linens. Wedding china. Old photo albums. Relics of his childhood. Those things had been all that survived. His consoles, his old Famicom and Atari and the ancient home pong system had been destroyed along with the television, the rest of the living room, and mother and father who had been in the living room. So, really, he had no choice but to go back to the arcade and play Space Invaders for five hours.

It had been an enjoyable time.

He had been able to think while he played. He must have logged more lifetime hours into that game than he had in all of his years of education. He had spent probably days of his life standing at that very machines. There were indents in the rug from his shoes and the joystick had been molded to his fingers. He had loved that game. He had loved the idea of it, defending the Earth, defending HIS Earth. Because it was his Earth. The Earth was his to rule over. With the Earth being his to rule over then he had no reason at all to stay up all night sitting in the woods staring at nothing thinking about two dead people. They had done their part for him already. They had raised him to manhood. They had kept him fed and clothed and housed long enough for him to do his part in getting a proper education, getting accepted into University, and ultimately living long enough to not only pass on the genes that they had left him but also to ultimately pass on his own genes as well. Then he could be free to die, after conquering the world first of course, and then his Son would take over after him and then his Son and so on and so forth.

So, really, they had done their part and everything was set.

It had been easy to think of the future, not the past, of what he would do with his future as he played at defending his Earth against forces from a distant star. He planned his future as he destroyed wave after wave of enemy. He planned the twelve divisions of Claw, the structure of his organization, his role as President. Fukuda Tadashi would be his second in command, of course, because since the day that they had met he had proved himself to be invaluable. Fukuda would be his second and together they would rule the world. Then of course they would marry and have children and also probably marry their houses together, too, because they both had some very good genes and also to cement a multi generation alliance between their houses. His Son would be called Sho and his Daughter would be called Shoko…or maybe something else because that seemed uncreative….and Fukuda hadn't had any idea what he would name his children. He had cited the fact that children were a moot point since neither of them even had girlfriends let alone wives they were ready to reproduce with.

Which was fair enough.

He so wanted one, back then, a wife. A girlfriend. A female someone. Not just for sexual reasons, though he had been terrible about that back then, but just for their presence. Their nurturing presence. The way that they cared for you and kept you grounded and also gave you a reason to go on. You had to provide for them and the children your union with her made. So therefore he had even more incentive to conquer the Earth in real life and also to save the Earth in game. So that was what he did. He played Space Invaders for five hours and planned a better world and he was happy, in a way.

But then Fukuda went and spoiled it all by bringing up the fact that he had not had anything to eat or drink in twenty four hours and also that he was in desperate need of a bath.

Well Fukuda wasn't here to spoil this.

"We need more turrets, don't you agree?" asked Suzuki

"But we don't have enough obsidian." Said Daughter

"So go and find some more." Said Suzuki

"But we ran out." Said Daughter

"There must be more somewhere. Start digging." Said Suzuki

"But I-yes, dad. I'll start digging for obsidian." Said Daughter. Nobody in the word would spoil this for him. This was ok. What he was doing was ok. This was…this was good for….skills. All sorts of skills like…design…and hand to eye coordination. All of the skills that children could learn from a videogame. Also this was good time for them to spend together. They were strengthening their parent to child bond playing that game together. So it was ok for the two of them to be sitting so near to each other at the kitchen table as they had been for the past week or so. It was ok for him to enjoy being near her. It was ok for him to occasionally pat her on the back or the head and tell her that she was doing a good job.

This was not weakness. This was good parenting.

He really was a good father. Daughter needed him. Son would be fine on his own, he was Son, but Daughter needed him. She was his Daughter. Without a good father to Daughter bond, the internet said, she would be more likely so have trouble forming relationships with good men, would be at a greater risk for drug and alcohol dependencies which he absolutely could not have, could go through precious puberty which he did not want considering that he wasn't even ready for regular puberty, and also without a good father daughter bond she would have trouble bonding with her own children. So this was not him being weak and selfish. No, this was just him being a good father.

And there was nobody and nothing that could spoil this for him.

"Dad, can I stop mining now? My diamond pickaxe broke again." said Daughter. Her aura seemed….sad. yes, she was sad. Well of course she was sad. It had taken her a while to mine the materials to craft her diamond pickaxe. This would definitely set them back a bit…and they were behind schedule already because of the lava incident. They would have to work all through the night to make up for lost productivity. No matter, no matter, this was enjoyable for both of them. She was learning valuable design and time management skills, too, so really this was ok.

It was ok.

"We'll have to make another one." said Suzuki

"There's no more diamond left." Said Daughter

"We had a massive cache of it." Said Suzuki

"But then we dug too deep and the lava flooded sublevels four and three." Said Daughter. Suzuki nodded. Yes, now he remembered. That had been his mistake. His thinking had been to hide all of their valuable material deep underground so the raiders couldn't get to it if, by some chance, they managed to breach Fort Suzuki's defenses. Well that had been his miscalculation, not Daughter's, and he did not hold her at fault.

Though he would use her idea of keeping their valuable in the sky tower behind the secret door.

She was the expert after all. She was the one who had showed him this game. To think that technology had come so far. It was nice to see that games, the ones the children liked, had gone beyond that Italian plumber. He had been around since Suzuki had been a boy. Hell, Suzuki remembered back when he had been a carpenter and he had been seeing that first princess that he could not recall the name of but could, in great detail, recall the truly filthy pictures that Fukuda had drawn of her….which may have explained why he had never married or even seen a woman in a romantic capacity since before they had gone to university together.

Thank God that the characters in this game left no room for….artistic expression.

"We'll have to mine for more diamond in that case. As I recall it can be found in the twelfth layer. We have plenty of iron pickaxes so we should be able to mine at least enough diamond to get us through tonight….yes, Daughter, we're going to have to mine at least three diamonds as I recall. Don't worry about the sticks. We have more than enough sticks." Said Suzuki. He patted Daughter on the back again. That way she would know that she was doing a good job. Soon they'd be back in business and then that new turret would be theirs.

Maybe they needed more than one new turret.

Two layers of redundancy. They needed to defend their fortress from other players and from hoards. They had worked too hard to see their fortress fall now. He would not allow it. Daughter would be devastated. Even now her eyes were watering at the thought of losing all that they had created. He would allow her this display of emotion. This fort represented at least a hundred man hours.

It had been a very good time.

"But dad….it's three thirteen in the morning." Said Daughter

"Is it? I hadn't noticed." Said Suzuki. He checked the computer clock. Oh. Yes. That would explain the yawning and also why his eyes hurt. When had it gotten this late? The last time he had glanced at the clock was when they had stared at nine ten after Daughter put Son to bed. Huh. Well he should have gone to bed…but he had to be up at six anyway. No sense in sleeping for three hours. Besides, Daughter didn't want to stop. She was having a great time.

She loved video games.

She loved video games and she loved spending time with him. She was so like Masami in that way. Not that the two of them had ever played videogames together, they had met in their thirties when they had been far too old for such things, but they had stayed up all night on many occasions watching DVDs of Masami's favorite dramas…as well as taking breaks to have various kinds of sex….but he was not going to think about that with his Daughter right next to him. She was like her mother but up to that point because this was his ten year old Daughter and if he started to think about his ten year old Daughter then he would have had to kill himself.

And he didn't feel like killing himself.

So he stopped thinking of Masami and how warm she had been in his arms and how she had laughed when he pointed out the historical inaccuracies in her programs and how she had fallen asleep with her head on his chest just as the sun rose…he doesn't think about that. It was easy to stop thinking about Masami when Daughter was near. She was like her mother but different. In some ways better…no. Not better. No woman would ever eclipse his Masami. She was just…..

Different. But in a good way.

"Aren't you sleepy?" asked Daughter

"Yes." said Suzuki

"Are we going to bed, then?" asked Daughter

"No." said Suzuki

"But you just said that you were tired." Said Daughter

"I did but that does not mean that I will be going to bed. There is no sense in it at all since we're just going to have to get up again in less than three hours. There is no sense in sleeping so little. We'll just have to keep playing all night. Doesn't that sound enjoyable? I know how you enjoy staying up late." Said Suzuki

"Dad….I'm sleepy. I can't play anymore. My eyes are tired and my fingers are tired. Everything about me is tired." Said Daughter

"You're ready for bed?" asked Suzuki

"Yes." said Daughter. The thought of her curled up beside him is a nice one….but it would make no sense to sleep now. Not when they had things to do. Also they would both just be extra groggy in the morning because they had only managed to sleep for not even three hours. No, they wouldn't be going to sleep no matter how tired they were. Besides, they didn't have to be tired.

He had gotten her a gift, well he had sent someone to get her a gift, and he had been waiting for tomorrow to show her but….well…..it technically was tomorrow.

"I'll make us some coffee in that case." Said Suzuki. He got up from his chair…too quickly. His back and knees cried out in protest. He had been sitting in one position for far too long. He so envied her. She could sit there cross legged on a kitchen chair all night and suffer no ill effected whatsoever. Youth really was wasted on the young. He used his powers to pop his spine back into alignment.

There. All better.

"But dad….we only have tea. Since we only have tea, green tea has no caffeine in it the box says so, then we should go to bed and get at least a little sleep." Said Daughter. Suzuki paid her no attention. She was thinking of their wellbeing just like Masami would have. She had come to his office countless times in the past begging him to come to bed and get some sleep. Telling him that the all-nighters he was pulling were unhealthy. Thinking of him…she had always been thinking of him…

Shigeko so took after her mother in all the best ways.

He had thought of her as well. He had gotten her a present and hidden it in the highest cabinet. The one that housed his foods, the ones that the children knew not to touch. Plain rice crackers, dried squid, pickled fish, all of the things they hated with a passion. Really this was the perfect hiding spot.

She would be so surprised.

"Daughter, close your eyes. I have a present for you." Said Suzuki

"Ok….but if it's another doll I'll play with it in the morning." Said Daughter

"It's not another doll. Now keep your eyes closed until I am sitting beside you again." said Suzuki. He took her present down from the high cabinet and put it on the kitchen table beside her. On the way there he stepped in something cold and slimy…on of Son's noodles. Disgusting. Now the boy would only eat plain noodles…he had thought that picky eating was supposed to get better as the child got older….well no matter. Daughter didn't see it as cause for concern and he, of course, would trust Daughter's judgement on the subject of raisin Son. She knew what she was doing. Masami had taught her everything that she knew.

He really did have a wonderful Daughter. The most wonderful Daughter in the world. He had the most wonderful Daughter in the world and she was his and his alone.

"Alright. You may open your eyes." Said Suzuki. He waited a moment. Daughter did not open her eyes. She sat slumped against the back of her chair and…and she does not open her eyes. For a moment he has a crazy thought. Was she defying him?! But no, that could never be. This was his Daughter. What was far more likely was that she had spontaneously died and-

WHAT?!

He shakes her with his powers. Her eyes fly opened and, if not for his proximity to her, the kitchen would have been destroyed. He absorbs some of that excess energy. He doesn't much like doing that. It makes his own powers unstable, for one thing, and also the more he used it the more people would be likely to catch on. No, this was his biggest secret. Bigger than the pictures of Masami he kept in a hidden folder on his laptop. Bigger than the time he and Fukuda figured out that neither of them was homosexual or even bi sexual together, bigger than where he had buried his Ultraman toys when he had been six years old. No, the fact that he had been bestowed with the ultimate ability, the ability to give and take powers as he saw fit, would remain a secret until the day came.

"Dad! I feel asleep! I'm sorry." said Daughter

"Oh. I thought that you had died." Said Suzuki

"But I didn't die. I was just sleeping." Said Daughter

"People die in their sleep all the time." Said Suzuki dismissively. Well when she said it like that she made him sound like an idiot. His ten year old Daughter spontaneously dying was a thing that could happen and…and there were odds of that happening. Not good odds but odds were still odds.

"…..they do?" asked Daughter

"Yes. Millions of them every single day. Now look at your present." Said Suzuki. Daughter was staring at him now when a thoughtfully procured gift was sitting right in front of her. That made no sense. She loved gifts. Every Christmas morning she and her brother woke up at some ungodly hour to open their Christmas gifts and they made such a racket….so this was just…odd.

"But….am I going to die in my sleep?" asked Daughter

"Yes. Most likely unless you suffer mortal injuries or some sort of deathly illness. Now tell me what you think of your present." Said Suzuki

"Dad…I don't want to die in my sleep…." Said Daughter

"You most likely won't at your age. Now look at your present." Said Suzuki

"But dad….you said that you thought that I was dead…that I had died in my sleep….and I didn't even know that I could die in my sleep. I didn't even know that was a thing that happened….and now….how do I not die in my sleep?" asked Daughter

"Daughter. You're being tiresome. Obviously I was incorrect about the probability of you dying in your sleep. Unless you're an infant or an old person it isn't likely. Now look over there and tell me what you think of the gift I got you." Said Suzuki. He didn't understand her. Why did she fear dead? When it came, it came. Maybe because she had so much unfinished business. Yes. Daughter was only ten after all.

She would not be dying any time soon. Not while he was around.

She, finally, turned her head and looked over at her gift. She seemed….confused. But there was nothing confusing about her gift…right? Maybe he should have just gone and gotten her a gift on his own like he had when the children had been very small. Yes….he had enjoyed that…hadn't he? He made a mental note to purchase more gifts for the children outside of birthdays and major holidays.

"You got me…coffee and three water bottles?" asked Daughter

"Yes. Starbucks branded coffee and three travel mugs of the characters from that ice queen movie you love. I didn't know which one you preferred so I had them get you one of the ice queen, one of her sister, and one of the entire cast including that truly annoying snowman." Said Suzuki

"….but I like Olaf…he likes warm hugs." Said Daughter

"He was the worst part of that film and his song makes me want to deafen myself." Said Suzuki

"Oh….ok. Um…thank you? I really like my gift. I like….I like Frozen…and I like coffee….and now that we have coffee we can stay up all night…together." Said Daughter. She seemed odd when she said that. Probably still tired. Well that was what they had caffeine for. Yes, soon they would get right back to normal. They would collect the three diamonds so they could mine more obsidian and then their construction project would be back on schedule and everything would be right with castle Suzuki. Yes, it would be a very good time. Then they would go to work together and be together all day and then they would come home and be together and then they could play some more, but pay more attention to the clock, and it would be a good time.

He so enjoyed spending time with Daughter.

"Yes. That is correct. Also now you won't have to go to Starbucks that often because you can carry their coffee with you wherever you go." Said Suzuki. She was so happy she was speechless. He patted her on the back again. She was so wonderful, his Daughter, he might even tell her that he loved her again…if that wasn't too much.

"But….I like to go to Starbucks with Minegishi…and not just for the coffee. I like to hang out with them. They're my friend." Said Daughter. Right. Minegishi was Daughter's closest companion, their Fukuda, so their bonding activities were important to Daughter…but he did not like her out of his presence while they were in Tokyo for too long. There were a lot of trains in and out of Tokyo. She could have got on one…not of her own free will of course…and she would have been gone from his life forever.

And he could not have that.

"They can visit you while you work or…or you can sit in the cafeteria. You don't have to go so far from me…from HQ. Alright? Now you keep on mining and I'll make us some coffee." Said Suzuki as he got up once again…and there went his back. Right on cue. He wondered if there was any way to permanently fix this. He could have woken up Fukuda….and the idea did look promising….but he knew how Fukuda was. He would try and tell Suzuki that he was acting irresponsibly and that he needed to get a normal amount of sleep. Well he was Suzuki Touichirou and he could do whatever he wanted to.

"Um…sure. That sounds…like a good idea. I'll just do that then." Said Daughter. Suzuki patted her on the head this time….and she looked up at him….and kept on looking. He looked back down at her. Did she want something?

Oh. Right. Verbal affirmations of love and affection.

"I love you, Daughter." Said Suzuki

"I love you too, dad." Said Daughter. There. Now that was done with. He could make coffee and then they could get back to their game.

He so enjoyed spending time with Daughter.


	212. A Very Sleepy Lunch With Friends

Too much of dad's love could be scary.

Mob loved her dad, she really did, but sometimes…sometimes she loved him not as much as she should have. Like when he was keeping her up all night…and when she was telling her how to play her game. She wanted to play WITH him and not FOR him but he didn't seem to understand that difference. Or maybe she just wasn't making herself clear. She didn't know. She was too tired to know.

"Mob? Hey? Wake up!" Minegishi snapped their fingers in her face. Oh. She'd fallen asleep. She had fallen asleep sitting in the lunchroom chair…and now her back kind of hurt. Not as bad as dad's though. His back had hurt a lot last night…probably because he hunched when he sat and also he was kind of old.

"No, let her sleep. She's little and little people need all the sleep they can get." Said Shibata

"She's ten, not two. Mob, come on, you're not supposed to sleep here. I swear to God is Shimazaki gave you anything I am going to murder him." said Minegishi. Mob opened her eyes. She didn't want anyone to get murdered on her account. She had already gotten him beaten up. She didn't want him dead too.

"Hey, the worst thing I've given her is my pen. That's it. Well that and also some sake but that wasn't today. You don't have to blame me for everything you know." Said Shimazaki. Mob was too tired to ask him why he had to tell Minegishi all of that stuff. They hated it when she drank and smoked, they said that they didn't want to ruin her life and stuff, but Mob had to. Dad loved her now more than he ever had at any point in her life…and too much of his love was just….not good.

"I can and I will." Said Minegishi

"You are pretty much the only usual suspect." Said Shibata

"I don't have to sit here and take this. I can eat lunch wherever I want to." Said Shimazaki

"Alright then. Goodbye." Said Minegishi with a wave. Shimazaki didn't go anywhere though. He just picked up his spork and went back to eating.

"I can go wherever I choose and I choose to be here." Said Shimazaki

"Can you choose to be quiet?" asked Minegishi

"I choose to not be quiet." Said Shimazaki

"Well can you choose to choose to-" said Minegishi

"Wait, can you guys go back to the beginning. You lost me." Said Shibata scratching his head. Shimazaki reached over and took his cookie while he wasn't looking. Mob used her powers to put it back. That would start a fight. The last thing she wanted right now…or even…was a fight. She was too tired to deal with that and even if she wasn't tired then she still would not have wanted her friends to fight and stuff.

"Please….don't fight." Said Mob. She was tired. She was too tired to have people fighting. She just…she needed to sleep but she wasn't going to sleep since this would probably be the only time that she got to see her friends all day. Dad had been so weird lately. He never wanted to spend this much time with her before. Maybe he was making up for all the time that he had missed out on before…and also maybe he was spending extra time with her because he wasn't spending any time with Sho…even though Sho was his kid too.

Sho was so lucky.

He was having lunch with Fukuda. He was mad that she and dad had taken over the whole Minecraft world even though Sho had said a thousand times at least that the game was way too boring and stuff. Mob didn't know what he was so upset about. Playing Minecraft with dad was no fun at all. He was way too bossy and stuff. He was bossy and also he didn't need a lot of sleep, it seemed, and he didn't care if she got tired or not. Maybe he was scared of dying in his sleep. That was a thing that happened…and Mob wished that he hadn't told her about that. She had been alive for ten whole years without knowing about that and now that she knew she couldn't un-know. So now she had something new to worry about in addition to Sho being upset, all the school work that she hadn't done, her friends fighting with each other, and also how they had mined up all the obsidian is seemed. Also she broke another diamond pickaxe and those weren't easy to craft.

She needed a drink.

She took a drink of coffee. Plain coffee. Dad had gotten her a bunch of travel mugs. She was using the Elsa one. She liked Elsa. She knew that Elsa would have been happy to spend time with her dad considering the fact that he had died and all. Elsa would have been happy that her dad accepted her and was proud of her powers and didn't make her wear gloves and stuff. Mob should have been happy that dad loved her now more than he ever had before. She should have been happy that she had dad's attention. Hid good attention. Not the kind of attention he gave Sho…when he even got dad's attention. She should have been happy.

But mostly she was just tired.

"Mob, what's wrong with you today? Talk to me." Said Minegishi. Mob made her eyes stay opened and even though she really just wanted to get some sleep. She wanted to go to her own bed, well the bed that was in the room that she shared with Sho, and just get some sleep already….but she knew that she couldn't. Dad had barely let her out of his sight to go and eat lunch. He wouldn't let her just go home on her own and stuff. He used to leave her alone all the time.

What had changed?

He had been weird since he had come back from the mission he had been on back during the summer time. Back when baby Mukai had lived with them and dad had gone somewhere else and she had to be the President. He had come back and had just been so…weird. And getting weirder. She wondered if eventually he would just go full circle. She could not imagine dad getting any weirder than he was now. He was only weird to her, too, and not to Sho…even though Sho was a boy and he was a boy so then by that logic Sho should have been the one who he hung out with.

But he didn't like Sho. He liked her.

"I'm sleepy. My dad wouldn't let me go to sleep last night because we were playing Minecraft….but it's ok. He made coffee." Said Mob. She picked up her travel mug and took a sip. Very bitter. More than usual. Dad mostly knew about making tea and that was….ok. This was ok.

"Should you be drinking coffee? You're so little….but then again you might stay little forever…" said Shibata

"I can drink whatever I want to….drink….and stuff." Said Mob. She wanted to put her head down and go to sleep. It was pasta for lunch today with red sauce. She wanted to just rest her head in her pasta and close her eyes…but she wasn't so tired that she was going to get pasta and sauce all over herself like a baby. Well like Sho had when he had been a baby. That was a nice picture. Sho had been such a cute baby. There weren't any pictures of her as a baby. Dad said

"There's nothing in that coffee, right?" asked Minegishi as they took her travel mug out of her hands and took a sip from it. That was ok. Best friends could share germs like that.

"Irish coffee?" asked Shimazaki. He tried to take the travel mug from Minegishi's hands but they pulled it away. That was good. She and Shimazaki weren't best friends so they couldn't share germs…even though Minegishi kissed him all the time…so was drinking from the same cup as Minegishi the same as kissing Shimazaki? She hoped that it wasn't. He was the last boy in the whole world that she wanted to kiss.

She smiled a little.

She could feel his aura. The first boy in the world that she wanted to kiss. She hadn't been able to see him as often as she had before….which wasn't good because he was finally hanging out with her more and stuff….but he was coming right towards her now. That was good. Even if she was super tired she would always be happy to see him.

"Starbucks coffee….so it's from America I think…and also can Hatori sit with us? We have room but I think that the polite thing to do would be to ask everyone. Especially Minegishi since he bothers them." Said Mob

"That guy's been bothering you, Toshi?" asked Shimazaki in a tone that Mob couldn't place. His aura was all pulled in close around him, now, and also it was reaching towards Minegishi's. They didn't really seem to notice.

"He wants to be friends with Minegishi, I think. He's always asking about them and stuff. Like what they like to read and do for fun and what their favorite color is and stuff like that. I think that he wants to make friends with all of us and stuff but he's just asking about us one at a time." Said Mob. It would make sense to get to know everyone one at a time. That way it would be a little less overwhelming than meeting everyone at once. People could be a little bit overwhelming sometimes.

"Did he actually say that? Out loud? That he wanted to be friends with Toshi?" asked Shimazaki

"No but he's always talking to Minegishi when we all hang out together and stuff and asking about them so I figured that he wanted to be their friend. He's already my friend and I want him to be everyone's friend. We could always use more friends." Said Mob

"You know, Toshi, if this guy's been bothering you I can kick his ass. You won't even have to lift a finger. I know how you feel about extra work." Said Shimazaki

"Pass. I can fight my own battles. I don't need you or anyone else to come and save me. Now back to what Mob was saying about Suzuki not letting her go to bed-" said Minegishi. Mob didn't want to talk about that since there was nothing even to talk about. She was tired because dad hadn't let her go to bed. That was all. She would much rather talk about Hatori. He was much more interesting than she was. He was the most interesting boy in the whole world it felt like sometimes.

"I know you can, I know full well that you can, but-" said Shimazaki

"No, no buts. If I have a problem with someone then I can just deal with them myself. Ok? And he's not even bothering me, he's just an annoying kid, that's all. I have no problem with him sitting here, ok Mob? He can sit here until he dies of old age if he leaves me alone…and also can we please talk about what the hell you just said about the very troubling but of information that you just shared with the group, Mob?" asked Minegishi

"Oh? About coffee? I don't know how troubling it is that Starbucks is from America. I think so, that it's from America, so that's where this coffee came from. It's not Irish." Said Mob

"I think they grow coffee in South America, though." said Shibata

"That's an America." Said Mob

"Yeah but that's not the America you were talking about. Starbucks started in Seattle way back when. I've been to the original Starbucks. It's not special. I don't get you guys. There's so much better coffee in the world, you know, like this place down by where I get my tattoos done. Always just the right temperature, never burnt, goes down real easy. Better than that shit you and Toshi drink. We should go there sometime." Said Shimazaki

"My dad doesn't let me go anywhere anymore." Said Mob. She poked at her food with her fork. She would never go anywhere that dad didn't go to and she wouldn't do anything that dad didn't want her to do. She should have been happy that dad loved her, that she had so much of his love and stuff, but mostly she was just tired.

Dad could be a very tiresome person sometimes.

"Mob, what did you mean by-" said Minegishi

"Me and Toshi, then." Said Shimazaki

"I'd like to come with you gu-" said Shibata

"Me and Toshi. Then." Said Shimazaki. He and Shibata looked at each other for a while. Shibata lost the staring contest. Though Mob didn't think that it had been a fair contest to begin with since Shibata had been the only one doing the staring. Shimazaki stole his cookie back after he turned away. Mob put it back on Shibata's tray where it belonged.

"You want to get a cup of coffee with me?" asked Minegishi. There was something in their tone, too, and Mob was too tired to figure out what all of these different tones meant and looks and aura and…and she just wanted to go to sleep. She just wanted to move her tray to the side and put her head down and go to sleep…but she couldn't. The lunchroom was not a bedroom, first of all, and second of all Hatori was standing sort of behind their table and he might have been deciding if he wanted to eat with them or not. Mob didn't want to put any pressure on him.

Even though there was a free chair right next to her.

He looked different today. Less shiny. His hair was combed, too, and he had on a new sweater. This one had a rose on it. She missed his cat sweaters. He had on new pants today, too, even though the ones he had on yesterday weren't that dirty. They were new from the store new, not new to her, she could tell because they weren't worn in yet. His fingers weren't red or orange or any color at all, either.

She still liked him even though he looked very different.

She wasn't so tired that her heart wasn't going to go doki doki and stuff. She wasn't so tired that she couldn't imagine him sitting next to her and holding her hand and telling her that when they were the same age he wanted to ask her to be his girlfriend and stuff…which she should not have been imagining since she was sitting with her friends now and these were not the things to imagine while sitting there with your friends and stuff.

"I mean, if you want to. I know how you like coffee and we don't, you know, do a lot together. Outside of work I mean." Said Shimazaki. Mob didn't know why Minegishi's aura was being the way it was. That sounded like it would be a nice time…the sort of thing that she would have liked to do…before dad got all weird and stuff.

"We live together. How is that not doing a lot together? Honestly." Said Minegishi

"I know but that's not the same. We used to hang out together more." Said Shimazaki

"That was before we lived together." Said Minegishi

"I know but still, I had fun, and I thought that you did too." Said Shimazaki

"Your idea of fun is not sitting and drinking coffee for hours on end." Said Minegishi

"Hey, I like coffee as much as the next guy. Like that guy. The one that's been standing there and eavesdropping. The one that smells like Lynx and nacho cheese Doritos." Said Shimazaki

"Never mind him. That's just Mob's friend…and no, I will not get a cup of coffee with you. I'll get one with Mob but she's good company. I always know where I stand with her." Said Minegishi

"….is this still about coffee?" asked Mob. She got the feeling that they weren't talking about coffee anymore….but she had no idea what it was that they could have been talking about besides coffee. People sometimes said something totally different from what they meant…and Mob was too tired to figure this whole thing out. She took another drink of coffee. She was so tired it was hardly helping.

"Yes. What else would it be about, Shimazaki? I know you. I know you and-" said Minegishi

"I just wanted to go to Starbucks with you. I didn't ask you to marry me. I just want to get a cup of coffee with you." Said Shimazaki

"WE have coffee at home." Said Minegishi. They seemed upset, now, and Mob didn't know why. She had no idea what was even going on but she wished that she did so she could just make everyone get along and stuff. She wanted nothing more than everyone's happiness…and also to sleep…

"I know but Shibata always makes it and he can't make a cup of coffee for shit." Said Shimazaki. Mob frowned. That wasn't a nice thing to say at all…even though she'd had his coffee before and it really wasn't very good at all…but then again it was all bitter to Mob. She didn't like coffee that much. It was more about hanging out with Minegishi and stuff.

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with my coffee." Said Shibata. He crossed his arms and looked away from Shimazaki. Mob knew what that face meant. Sho made that face sometimes when something was bothering him. She didn't want her friends to fight. She had enough going on and she didn't need her friends being upset with each other to be added on top of that.

"You burn it. You, somehow, managed to burn a liquid. You suck so bad at making coffee that you defy the laws of thermal dynamics." Said Shimazaki

"That's not a nice thing to say. Shibata's feelings could be hurt." Said Mob

"Shimazaki, come off it. I don't know what you're getting at but come off it. Ok? I don't know what you find so amusing about this but if you can't come off it then you can go be amused somewhere else. And you, back there, either sit down or don't your hovering is making me nervous. Shibata, get that look off your face it's not that bad. If he wanted to get to you he would have gone after more than your coffee making skills. Mob, tell me what happened with you and your dad." Said Minegishi. They fired off orders faster than even dad could. Mob hoped that he didn't end up getting jealous….or thinking that he needed to get better at giving out orders…

He was bossy enough as it was.

Mob wished that he would just be less…less bossy. Less weird and less bossy. But there was nothing that she could do about that. He was the way he was and she was the way she was and everything was the way it was. Mob couldn't change anything but she could at least be happy that she could have this time to sit with her friends and have lunch…even though she was tired.

Also Hatori was sitting next to her.

"Everyone, this is Hatori. He's mine and Minegishi's friend. He likes videogames and he works in tech support. Also he's wearing a new outfit today and it's very nice. Hatori this is Shibata and Shimazaki. They're friends with me and Minegishi. Shibata makes sure people don't kill my dad and so does Shimazaki." Said Mob. That was how you were supposed to introduce someone. She had done it right. She had said his name and what he liked to do and where he worked and something interesting. That was good manners. The internet had said so.

"Nice to meet you." Said Shibata. He reached over and shook Hatori's hand maybe a little bit too hard.

"Hey." Said Shimazaki. He wasn't looking at Hatori. He was looking, with his aura, at Minegishi, and Minegishi was looking away from him with their aura and Mob really hoped that they weren't fighting or anything like that.

"Back to Mob. What the hell is your dad on? Not letting you sleep?" asked Minegishi

"We were up all night playing Minecraft….he REALLY likes Minecraft." Said Mob. She rubbed her eyes and yawned. She wondered if they could actually get some sleep. She wondered if dad was planning on skipping sleep all together from now on…but didn't people need sleep to live? They'd find out. Mob wanted to go to sleep but also she didn't want to die in her sleep…because that was a thing that she had to worry about now…and stuff.

"No way. That's awesome that you and your dad can play together." Said Hatori

"Yes…it's great." Said Mob. She wasn't lying. This was everything that she had ever wanted. Dad liked something that she liked and they were spending time together. It was great. This was…it had been great. Dad's love was great. Everything was just so…it was great. It really was.

"Suzuki enjoys something? Is that possible?" asked Shibata

"Yes. My dad likes things. I don't know why people always get so surprised when I say that my dad likes things. He likes stuff…but I guess that he just doesn't like to show it…so that could be why people are always so surprised." Said Mob

"What the hell is Minecraft?" asked Shimazaki

"It's game where you mine things to craft with and you craft things to mine with…and also dad tells me what to do and when to do it and we stayed up all night and it was ok for a little bit because there was coffee and the coffee helped but not forever and now I'm very tired." Said Mob

"So that's why our world is so built up now. I thought that you and your brother were just really into it. That's so cool that you and your dad can hang out like that. Me and my dad used to play together too…back when I was your age." Said Hatori

"This may not be the best place to talk about your happy childhood." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded in agreement. She had no idea what Minegishi's parents had been like but she knew that they had been mean to them and also that the government made them live in a group home, which was like an orphanage, for a few years.

"Minegishi feels bad now. Please don't make Minegishi feel bad or you'll have to sit somewhere else…and I don't want you to have to sit somewhere else so please don't make Minegishi feel bad. Ok?" asked Mob. She tried her best not to yawn. She failed.

"Oh, shit, sorry. Sorry Minegishi-san. Like….I'm really sorry. I mean I know that I should have taken into account-" said Hatori

"Are you planning kowtowing too?" asked Minegishi

"Uh…do you want me to?" asked Hatori

"Would you kowtow if I asked you to?" asked Minegishi

"Um…yes?" asked Hatori. Mob didn't think that what Hatori had said had been bad enough, not bad at all he just didn't know, to make him have to kowtow on the dirty lunchroom floor. But then again she wasn't the one who was hurt, Minegishi was hurt, and she didn't get to tell someone else how to deal with the hurt that they were feeling.

"Don't kowtow, it's boring. Anyway Suzuki was giving up on his dreams of world domination to become a miner or something?" asked Shimazaki. His aura felt sort of….pointy…which was weird for him. Shibata was looking between Shimazaki and Minegishi. So was Hatori. Mob didn't get it at all. Why did people have to talk with their eyes and faces and auras and stuff? Why couldn't everyone just use their words and stuff? It would be a lot easier for people to understand one another if they all just used their words all the time.

"Um…no. We've been playing this videogame and dad really likes it. He likes it so much that we even stopped watching the Galaxy Express show…which I'm happy about because it's kind of long and stuff…and I'm happy that we're playing together, too, even though I'm sleepy. I like how dad loves me now and I like spending time with him and stuff. I just wish, sometimes, that he would be less…bossy…and also that we didn't have to stay up so late. But it's ok because I love him and he loves me and when your dad loves you then you're supposed to spend time with him. Like how Hatori spends time with his dad…well he did back when he was my age." Said Mob

"Wait…he made you stay up all night? Because me and my dad…well my dad never made me stay up. We stayed up together." Said Hatori

"That's the same thing." Said Mob

"No…it isn't. I could have gone to bed whenever I wanted to. Actually he was always asking me if I wanted to go to bed…because I was, like, ten." Said Hatori

"Wait, he asked you? Dads don't ask you things. They tell you things. They tell you what to do and then you do it because they're the dad and you're the kid." Said Mob. That made no sense. Dad asked her things sometimes, like what she wanted for dinner and stuff, but he never asked her what they were going to do together. He just told her what they were going to do together. That was how it worked when you had a dad and stuff.

"That's just how your dad is. My dad…he was a lot like your dad….well actually, no, he hated me…but he was similar in some ways. Everyone's different and everyone has different parents." Said Minegishi. They were making sense. Parents must have been as unique as people then. But there were some ways that they were supposed to act…right? The moms were nice all the time and the dads were sort of mean…but dad could be nice too….and sometimes mom could be mean…well only to her so that was ok…

Families could be complicated and Mob was too tired to think about that right now.

"I'm sorry that you dad hated you…that's very sad." Said Mob. Dad had never hated her and Sho. Well he loved her…he had told her more times lately than he had ever said it in his life…and he only disliked Sho a whole lot…not HATED him…but that was so mean that a parent could hate their child. She gave Minegishi her cookie. They hated sugar, and a cookie was no consolation for your parents hating you, but cookies were valuable in the lunchroom and they could trade for something else.

"Sugar is poison and I don't give a damn about my dad hating me, he and my mom are long dead and out of this world…but thanks for the gesture." Said Minegishi as they handed Mob back her cookie.

"If you don't want your cookie-" said Shibata

"She wants the damn cookie." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't like that. She already had dad telling her what she wanted and didn't want…but she didn't say anything. She wasn't about to be mean to her friend or anything like that.

"I want it but you can have it…what I really want is to go to bed, though. I'm sorry everyone. I'm just sleepy…and I want to go to bed." Said Mob. She closed her eyes and almost did go to bed when Minegishi shook her awake. She wondered if they thought that she had died, too, like dad had…and she wondered also how she had lived for ten whole years without knowing that people could just randomly die in their sleep and stuff.

"Want me to take you home. You look pretty bad…and this is coming from me. I haven't slept in two and a half days." Said Shimazaki

"Why have you been up for so long?" asked Mob

"Cok-" said Shiamzaki

"Nothing that you need to know about. Anyway instead of telling up that you're exhausted why don't you go and tell your dad? Tell him that you're exhausted and that you need to go home and take a nap because you're ten and you shouldn't be pulling all-nighters over some stupid game…I swear to God." Said Minegishi. Mob hoped that she hadn't made them mad. They were friends and friends were not supposed to be mad at one another.

"But…I don't tell dad what to do. He tells me what to do. That's why he's the dad and I'm the kid. If I try and tell him what to do then he might get…he might get mad at me…and I don't want him to be mad at me…" said Mob. Minegishi sighed.

"Mob…you never stick up for yourself…and you need to. Especially with him. Just….if he gets mad at you and he punishes you then…then I'll be here for you, alright?" asked Minegishi. Mob nodded.

"Ok. I'll…I'll try." Said Mob. She didn't want to make dad mad but she did want to get some sleep…and sleep was important…so she would talk to dad. Even though there was no talking to dad…but maybe there would be, now, since he had been so much nicer, lately. He loved her a lot…enough to stay up all night playing games with her and stuff…and he had even told her that he loved her…and she loved him too….and when you loved someone you wanted them to be happy…

Maybe he would say 'yes' since he loved her so much.


	213. Left Out, Left Angry

Fukuda could clearly remember the last videogame he had ever played.

It had been when the kids were small. They'd had a Wii, not this Wii but the one without the tablet attachment, and the kids had tried to show him how to play Mario Party. He had been Luigi, Sho had been Mario, and Shigeko had been the Princess. Surprise of all surprises. He remembered that Sho had won. He remembered that Sho had won at each and every minigame and he had won the board. Masami had been sitting on the couch. Tired. She had said that she had been tired. Really she had just been depressed.

She would have been worse than depressed now.

"I don't know what their deal is…damn it. Like why the hell they would it up all night playing that god damn game without me. Like, I live in the house too…damn it." Said Sho. He was upset today. He had been upset all day. Sho had gone straight to his office that day because apparently his sister and dad had sat up all night playing some video game without him.

Apparently not Space Invaders.

Fukuda would have understood if it had been Space Invaders. Suzuki had been obsessed with that game when they had been kids. He would spend upwards of six hours, from open to close, in the arcade playing that ancient Space Invaders cabinet. If Suzuki hadn't used his powers to cheat the machine he would have ended up pouring millions upon millions of yen into that machine. He had expressed, before, that Space Invaders was the apex of human invention and that he wished that he had a child to share it with.

That had last happened over twenty years ago.

They hadn't even had girlfriends let alone wives that they were ready to settle down with. They were eighteen years old, done with high school, and ready to go off to university and live their adult lives. That was the year that Suzuki had started talking about having a family, probably because he had lost his, and for a while Fukuda thought that maybe there was something inside of him that was….good. That had been the year when it had dawned on him that Suzuki had been serious…and also how dangerous he really was…

That was the year that they had stopped being friends.

Now they were something else. There was a clear hierarchy and that was the only reason why Fukuda didn't take him and shake him and ask him what he hoped to accomplish by upsetting his Son this much. Sho…he was bothered by this. He had been bothered enough to kick a hole in Fukuda's office wall, he didn't care about the wall, and Fukuda…he didn't know what to do about this. Sho had been left out and there was nothing that Fukuda could do to make his father and sister include him.

But he could be there for Sho.

"Sho, don't curse. What would your mother say if she could hear you talking like that?" asked Fukuda

"She would probably have made me sit on my bed for a time out and think about what I've done…but she's gone. She's gone and so it doesn't matter what I say." Said Sho. Fukuda took a moment to think. Sho was upset. He was upset and he didn't know what he was saying. He cared what Masami thought of him, he still cared about his mother, he was just upset and expressing it in the only way that he knew how. The anger and destruction were old but the cursing was new…and Fukuda knew exactly where that had come from. Kids should not have been keeping company with adults the way Sho and Shigeko did…but there was nothing that Fukuda could do about that. For Shigeko, anyway, that ship had sailed. Sho on the other hand…there was hope for him.

"Sho, what if your dad heard you cursing like that? You know how he feels about cursing and you know what his temper is like. I know you want your dad's attention but cursing up a storm is not the way to get it." Said Fukuda. Sho kicked the wall again before throwing himself down onto the floor. Fukuda knew not to bother him yet. When he drew his knees up to his chest. That would be the time to get near.

"….I don't care about dad's attention. I just don't think that it's fair that I got kicked out of our game. That was OUR game that me and big sis had made together…well me and big sis and Hatori." Said Sho. He was sitting up now and he was facing the wall. Fukuda didn't give a damn if he put a thousand holes in the walls. He cared about how Sho felt and also…also that new bit of information.

He knew that name.

That was the name of that esper Shigeko was trying to collect. The one that Fukuda had seen her trailing after. He had done some digging. Useful. Shigeko did know how to pick some useful and powerful espers. He could apparently control technology. Anything with an electrical system. If he had been born a hundred years ago he would have been useless but now he had the potential to be the most powerful esper in all of Claw…baring Suzuki and Shigeko, of course. She was a smart girl, Shigeko, smart enough not to waste a guy like that in tech support. Smart enough to surround herself with the most powerful espers that she could find.

But not smart enough not to alienate her younger brother.

"So Hatori is friends with your sister now?" asked Fukuda. He tried to keep his interest low. Sho wasn't his father or his sister. He picked up on things. Even when he was this upset…which was, actually, not as upset as he could have been. He hadn't taken a swing at anyone that day. That was a good sign.

"She wants to be his girlfriend. She's in love with him and stuff." Said Sho. Fukuda, to his credit, kept his face and aura calm. What in the….why? Just…why? Another one? At least this one was only nine years older than her as opposed to twenty. But still. That was a grown man. What, did she just not like boys her own age? Fukuda wished that Masami had been there to address whatever this was. The fact that Shigeko was attracted to grown men. That wasn't normal, right?

"Did she say that she was in love with him?" asked Fukuda

"No. She never said the word 'love' but she acts like she likes him. She does that thing that girls do when they like someone. She smiles and giggles whenever she talks about him and she talks about him all the time. I don't care. It's weird that she likes someone but I don't mind him. He's not Shimazaki and that's what matters. I didn't mind when it was just me and big sis and Hatori in the Minecraft world. He was the one who was teaching up how to play anyway. It's just…now dad's there and now it's a big sis and dad thing. I would rather play with her boyfriend than our dad." Said Sho

"Sho…did she say that he was her boyfriend?" asked Fukuda. He had no idea what he was supposed to do about this. He had no idea what he could do about this. Nineteen and ten was closer than twenty nine and ten…but still not ok. How did she think that…that an age gap like that was ok? What about boys her own age? She went off into the world sometimes. There were boys out there and…and she could have met one….and….and he wished that he knew what Masami would have done in this situation. She would have known what to do. She always knew just what to do when it came to her son and daughter.

That was not his daughter.

She was not his daughter and he did not get a say in who she had feelings for. Fine. Let her get someone else beat up. She had seen what had happened before and she was choosing to do this again. Fine. She was not his child and he…he had no power over her. She could and would do whatever she wanted. She had grown up watching her father after all. Suzuki had always strode through the world thinking that he could do whatever he wanted just because he was the most powerful man alive and all of that shit. Well that was fine, then.

At least Sho knew better.

Sho was not his son. He knew that Sho was not his son and there was no way in hell that Sho could have been his son. He wished…there were a lot of things in life that he wished for. Wishes did not come true. Sho was not his son…but he was the closest that Fukuda had. Fukuda was not his father but he was the closest thing that Sho had, too. So he had to be there for Sho.

Somebody had to be.

"No, but she wants him to be. I can tell. I don't mind…not really. I mean it's weird that she likes a guy but…but he's ok. I'm not mad about that. He's really a nice guy. He likes videogames and he's just as boring as she is…so I don't mind him. I just don't know why she had to bring dad into it…and why she didn't tell me that she was bringing dad into it." Said Sho

"Sho…I'm sure that they weren't trying to hurt you. They probably just…they weren't even thinking about you. You know how your dad is. Your dad doesn't think about anyone other than himself…and your sister can take after him in so many ways-" said Fukuda

"No. Big sis isn't like that. I mean she's like him, they're both super boring, but she's always thinking about me. She's always thinking about me so she can boss me around but she thinks about me…and I think that I'm upset because….because she didn't think about me. She didn't even tell me that dad was in our game with us. I thought that she and Hatori had built that base, not her and dad, and then…I mean she could have told me. I don't know. I don't want to be mad. I hate being mad. I do….I do bad things when I'm mad." Said Sho. Fukuda got up from his desk and went over to Sho. He had drawn his knees up to his chest. Now it was safe enough to get down to his level.

"Sho, it's ok. It's just a game and…and you know how your dad can be. He probably just hadn't even thought of you and then your sister…well she always goes along with what he wants. She's always been a daddy's girl like that but…but that's ok. So they have this thing together. It doesn't matter. You have a lot of things to yourself-" said Fukuda

"I don't like…..I mean I do like the things that I have to myself but…but I want to…I don't want to be left out like that. I've been trying so hard to be…to be better and…and then I got mad again. I was so mad this morning that I wanted to…to hit her and…and I didn't, that's what matters. I'm a good person because I didn't hit her….but it's hard to be a good person when…when she does stuff like that." Said Sho. Fukuda rubbed his back. He rubbed Sho's back and he had no idea what he could do besides be there for him. He was happy that Sho had been able to not hit his sister, he was getting older and growing out of that violent phase, but he wasn't happy about how Sho was beating himself up over this.

He was only nine.

He put too much on himself. He was nine, well nine and a half, and he was putting so much on himself. He wasn't a bad person just because he had almost fought with his sister. The reason was, to an adult, ridiculous. These were just videogames to an adult but to a nine year old boy…it was a lot. The whole thing was a lot for someone his age. Fukuda…he didn't even know what to do. He didn't want to make Sho think anything that wasn't true about his family but…but he also didn't want Sho to know…to know too much at his age.

To know how little he meant to his father.

Sho knew that his sister was the favorite. He also knew that his dad must have cared about him. Not in that same way that Masami had cared for him but he must have thought that Suzuki cared for him at least somewhat. That was why he continued to seek out his father's attention. He wanted to be a part of that and he was angry that he had been pushed out of that…and also he was nine and videogames were serious business to a nine year old…and this whole thing was just a lot. A lot for a nine year old.

But Fukuda was there for him.

"You're a good person, Sho. You not hitting your sister doesn't make you a good person. You just are a good person. I'm proud of you for not hitting your sister but…but that wouldn't make you a bad person. You're a good person, Sho, and I am so sorry that your dad and sister can't see that." Said Fukuda

"No, big sis…she says that about me a lot. She says that about me a lot and I think that might be why I'm so upset…and why I said so many bad words. It's better if I say bad words, though, instead of hitting someone." Said Sho. Fukuda was torn. On the one hand he didn't want to encourage Sho to curse but on the other hand Sho needed to stop hitting people before he ended up killing someone. He was a violent little boy and violent little boys grew up to be violent men…and his father was already a very violent man…

"I would…I would prefer it if you didn't curse or hit anyone. Your mother wouldn't have wanted that." Said Fukuda. Masami would have been so angry if she had seen how poorly Fukuda had done by Sho. He was such an angry little boy…well he had always been an angry little boy but…but he was getting angrier and angrier the older he got…and Masami would not have allowed this to happen.

"So? Who cares? She's gone and she's never coming back." Said Sho. Fukuda…he kept on rubbing Sho's back. He was nine and he didn't know what he was saying. That was all. He was upset and the first thing a person lost control of when they were upset was their mouth. He had never cursed like this before but…but he was getting older. It was October now. In two short months he'd be a ten year old. He was getting older and…and it was going to take more than a nice talk to cheer him up.

"She's gone but she's still your mom. She's your mom and she wouldn't have wanted to see you like this." said Fukuda

"Well then that's good for her, then, because I haven't seen her in years." Said Sho. Fukuda bit his tongue. Sho was nine and he was about to turn ten and he was getting to that age when he would start pushing boundaries. He didn't need Fukuda to get angry with him. He needed Fukuda to be there for him. He needed someone to be there for him.

"Sho….come on. Why are you even so upset? You said it yourself that the game was boring. I bet that you know a thousand games that are more entertaining than whatever this game is." Said Fukuda. He was going to drop the subject of Masami. He was just going to end up getting emotional and Sho did not need that right now. He was being open, he had been very open lately, and Fukuda was going to keep it that way. He was getting older and…and he needed to get out of this violent phase.

Though it would be a bit difficult considering who his father and sister were.

Shigeko was alienating her brother in favor of her father. Why? She had always been daddy's little girl even back when she had been a little girl. She was still a little girl, of course, but not that little girl that she had been. She wasn't half as clever as she thought she was, though, considering the fact that Sho was the one who was going to inherit the Earth if Suzuki's daft little plan ever came to fruition. She should not have been alienating her brother…or doing any of the other things that she did…but Fukuda was not her father and it was not his place to tell her how to live her life.

He was there for Sho.

Somebody had to be there for Sho and it, obviously, wasn't going to be his own father. That was fine. Fukuda was doing a better job than Suzuki ever could. For all of his talk when they had been younger about how he was going to teach his Son all there was to know he had shaped up to be a pretty piss poor excuse for a father. Suzuki would never have gotten down on Sho's level and helped him talk through his feelings. He would never have even cared what those feelings were. Masami…she would have been there for Sho…but she wasn't there. Like Sho had said…his mother wasn't there anymore….

But Fukuda was.

"I told you why already. Because that was our thing and then dad just came in….well big sis let him come in…and now it's dad and big sis' thing and they never even asked me to play with them or even…or even told me that dad was playing with us…in OUR world. I had to find out this morning and…and maybe I wouldn't be so upset if they had just told me…but I didn't hit anyone. That's what matters." Said Sho

"Sho, I'm proud of you for not hitting anyone and I'm proud of you for talking through what you're feeling. You're really growing up and I like the person that you're growing up to be." Said Fukuda. He omitted the fact that he liked how Sho was growing up to be nothing at all like his father. Suzuki had never been able to articulate his feelings. He always made Fukuda play guessing games until he came upon what it was that had Suzuki all twisted up. Sho was nothing like his father. Good.

He was just like his mother.

Masami had always been very in tune with how she was feeling and what she wanted…and that was what he loved about her. She had always been so straightforward with him and…and just…there. She had needed him and she had made herself clear about that. She had just been so…so…he doesn't want to think about Masami. He can't think about Masami. If he starts to think about Masami then he's going to start getting emotional and Sho doesn't need that right now. Sho needs someone to be there for him, he doesn't need to be there for someone. He was only nine. He was not going to put his burdens on a nine year old.

"Thanks." Said Sho. He wiped his nose. Fukuda wanted to tell him that his sleeve was not a tissue…but he had just put two holes in the wall and cursed like a certain grown man who Fukuda was becoming less and less fond of by the moment. Sho wiping his nose on his shirt was of no consequence in the grand scheme of things.

He was, at least, getting better.

Well he was feeling better now but Fukuda knew how these thing went. He was better in the moment but that moment would pass. He would go right back home to his family and then he would be excluded and alienated once again. Fukuda…he did not want to go round and round and round like this. He had always hated the merry-go-round. It was a pointless ride. He had always preferred the giant drop….and somehow his life had become one big giant drop. Roller-coaster. Something big and uncontrollable.

Better than going round and round.

He rubbed Sho's back and thought. He needed to be there for Sho. He wished that could have just picked Sho up and carried him off. Started new lives with new names. Not even with Masami. Just picked him up and given him the life that she was supposed to have given him, the life that she could have given him if she hadn't been forced to leave him behind, a life full of love and caring. Positive attention and friendships. The normal things that a nine year old should have had. He should have been getting settled into the fourth grade by now. He should have been worried about getting good grades and making friends. Not about how his father and sister were alienating him. He should have been just…worried about being nine. New schooler years, new classrooms, playing sports, playing games, making friends, finding a little girlfriend…or more likely boyfriend not that he would have dug too deeply into that part of Sho's life if he had been the one caring for him. Fukuda would have accepted whoever Sho wound up brining home…and it wouldn't have been a former yakuza member with an impulse control disorder and several substance abuse issues. No, Sho wouldn't have even begun to get close to such a person….Sho would have been friends with people his own age…and he would have had a normal life.

The life that Masami would have given him.

"Sho…how about you show me this game? It's been a few years but I think that I'll be able to get back into videogames. But it's not one of those motion controls, is it? I was never good at those." Said Fukuda

"It's on the computer….do you really want to make a world with me?" asked Sho

"Yeah, I want to see what all the hype is about. That is if you want to show me." Said Fukuda. Sho got quiet for a moment. Fukuda wished that he had the power to read minds. He had no idea what was thumping around in that head of his. Fukuda wants nothing more than to be there for him. To be there for the kid who had no one. If that meant learning to play a game which, honestly, he would probably be terrible at, then so be it. He didn't care if he fell behind on his work.

What was Suzuki going to do? Fire him?

"Ok…I can install it and then we can make a world…but just for you and me, right? Not big sis or dad or anyone else?" asked Sho. Fukuda patted him on the head. His hair sprung right back up as he patted. Suzuki's hair used to do that and it would drive him crazy when Fukuda had done that. Sho liked it. He was so different from his father.

Good.

"Yup. Just you and me." Said Fukuda. Sho smiled. His aura smiled and his face smiled and Fukuda…he felt good. He felt very good. He had been there for Sho when he had needed it and that…that was all that he could do. Be there for Sho…keep his promise to Masami…no matter what. He would always be there for Sho…no matter how he needed him.

Even if it meant playing videogames for the first time in years.


	214. The Gift of Holding You

Suzuki was tired.

He was extremely tired. Next time he was going to watch the clock more closely. He was useless to Claw this tired. He couldn't think. All the caffeine in the world could not keep him going. An early day….he may have had to call it an early day. But he couldn't call it an early day because he had work on top of work on top of work to do. He was the only one who could run Claw. The only other person who would even begin to be fit to run Claw was Daughter but he was not going to leave Daughter here alone.

For her own safety, of course.

Because something could happen to her…or something. Yes, that was the reason. Also for the safety of Claw. She had taken command from him in his absence months ago and he was still cleaning up the mess that she had made. He shuddered to think of what she would do next. He would already have be here until the New Year, no point in moving and no need to anyway, and he didn't want to have to spend any more time cleaning up after her messes. No more setbacks. What she had done…it could have even set back his goals by a year if not more…and he could not have that.

Not that he was angry with her.

He could never be angry with her. She was his Daughter and he loved her more than anything. She was…she was his and…and because she was his then he could admit that. She was his and he could feel any way that he wanted about her. Even if it was admitting weakness and admitting that he had, maybe, given her power over him. He had led his life so far not caring at all for the thoughts or feelings of another human being aside from following the rules of what was and was not socially acceptable. Daughter…Daughter was different. He had always cared for her but now…he had been not himself lately…

Not since Baby, anyway.

This had nothing to do with Baby. Baby was not his baby. She was just a baby. That was all. His children came from Masami and since Baby had not come from Masami then…then Baby was not his baby. She was not his daughter. He had a daughter. She was called Daughter. She was called Shigeko. She was called Suzuki Shigeko and she was his only Daughter and she had come from Masami…not really but she had been raised by Masami…and there was so much of Masami inside of her. So much of Masami goodness, her nurturing, the perfection of her. There was just so much of Masami in Daughter that…that his growing need to be beside her was perfectly normal and acceptable.

She was his and he could feel however he wanted to about her.

He felt her aura getting closer. He rubbed his eyes. He would feel better once she was near. She had gone to have lunch with her friends, that eclectic group she had surrounded herself with, and he had allowed it. He wanted to keep her by his side at all times. He wanted to keep her right there beside him until one of them died but that would not be healthy or practical. After all she did need to socialize. Her social skills had exceeded his ages ago. Therefore it was in his favor to allow her to socialize with her friends.

Even if she wasn't by his side when she did so.

"Hi, dad." Said Daughter as she entered his office. Suzuki felt his mood rise as he saw her…as well as several loose pieces of paper on his desk. That had not been good. That had not been good at all. The more exhausted he got the more his control slipped…and he needed to have good control. Better control than that. What kind of an example was he setting for her?

Not a very good one.

She had been nearer to him recently more than she ever had been before. He enjoyed it immensely. There was a world within her, it seemed, and he wanted to explore it. She had found the most amazing game for them to play. Not that it was just a game. It was a good place to try out new base designs and also…also it was good for planning skills and resource management. Therefore it was alright for him and Daughter to spend hours and hours playing together.

He wondered if they needed more turrets.

"Daughter. How was lunch with your friends?" asked Suzuki. He didn't much care. He knew that if something had gone wrong she would have told him. He just liked listening to her speak. She had the most delightful voice. Nice and level. Like his. Easy to understand. She said what she meant and she meant what she said.

Not like Masami.

Well Masami had been a normal person. There were layers to her speech that he had not been able to decipher. She had expected him to just understand what she was saying…and it had been difficult…but he knew Daughter and he knew what she said when she said it. She was so wonderful to speak with. Even when she was just telling him about her day or the antics that her friends got up to or things which she had seen in her programs.

He could have listened to her for hours.

"It was fine. Shimazaki kept on trying to steal people's cookies and also he and Minegishi got into a fight about coffee…well they said that it was about coffee but I don't think that it was just about coffee. Also today was spaghetti day and nobody threw any at anyone else even though that was what the Awakened did last spaghetti day…and also Shimazaki didn't start a spaghetti fight which was nice…probably because he was too busy fighting with Minegishi." Said Daughter

"Talk about something other than him." said Suzuki. Did she still have feelings for that man? How? Why? There was nothing special about him. He was just a powerful esper, very good looking, and he wore far too much cologne…which women seemed to love for some reason…but Daughter should not have been swayed like that. She should have had better taste than…him. She should have….Suzuki knew that his control was not the best right now and decided that maybe it would be better for himself, his Daughter, and the hundreds of people employed in this HQ along with the thousands of people who lived there in Tokyo and it's outer suburbs that he calm down and stop thinking about Shimazaki Ryou before he exploded.

"Um…ok. Dad….um….I really like my new travel mug and the coffee inside-" said Daughter

"Good. I knew that you would." Said Suzuki

"I do but um….I'm very tired. I'm very tired right now and I want to go home and take a nap and also…also I don't want to stay up all night playing Minecraft anymore. Because I'm very tired and…and I don't think that it's good for me to be awake for so long and also…also it's not fun when we play all night and you tell me what to do all the time." Said Daughter. She was holding her braids down with one hand now. Her dress, she was wearing the blue one from the ice queen movie again, was starting to rise up around her as if she was standing in the wind. Her aura was flaring.

She was losing control.

He exorcised his anger. This had been his miscalculation. He had been the one to keep her awake for far too long. He had been the one to insist that they continue on in their work. Because it had been enjoyable…right? Right? He had enjoyed himself immensely but she had said….she hadn't been having a good time? But she had…no. She must have been having a good time…because he knew her…

He needed to calm down.

"Are you saying that you desire greater autonomy when we play your game together?" asked Suzuki. Desiring greater autonomy was not the same as not having enjoyed herself at all. She had enjoyed herself. She must have enjoyed herself. Otherwise she would not have…have spent time with him. She would have left. She could have left. She could have left and then he would have found himself alone and…and he's getting ahead of himself. She was only ten years old.

She couldn't leave him even if she wanted to.

Which she, of course, did not. He gave her everything that she had ever wanted. He gave her his time and also frequent affirmations of his love for her. He provided for her in all the ways that she had asked. He's a good father. He does all the things that a father is supposed to do for his Daughter. She is his Daughter, his only Daughter, and he will always provide for her.

He cares for her more than anyone else in the whole world.

"Um…yes? I want you to boss me around less and I want…I want us to not stay up all night anymore. Those are the things that I want." Said Daughter. Suzuki thought for a moment. Yes. He could give her those things.

"Understood. In the future I will give you greater autonomy in the world we've built and also we will go to sleep at a reasonable hour." Said Suzuki

"Thank you." Said Daughter

"You're welcome." Said Suzuki. There was a moment there. She calmed herself down, at least, and he didn't know what had gotten her upset. Well aside from the lack of sleep. He had found himself in a terrible mood today as well. He checked the time. Nowhere near his usual leaving time.

She yawned.

He stifled a yawn. He was not going to yawn around her. He wasn't going to and he didn't let himself and that was that. Even though he was probably even more exhausted than she was. She was younger than him and more resilient. He hadn't been able to keep his mind on anything at all today but that was nothing compared to the way his back and joints had been protesting the fact that he had spent an entire night sitting up in a kitchen chair. He was getting so old. Fukuda couldn't fix this, not in a permanent way, because this was just a part of being in his forties. His father had complained of back pain as well. Though he hadn't had to deal with it for so for very long.

"Um….dad? Can I go home? I'm tired." Said Daughter. Suzuki forced himself to stay calm. She was talking about leaving. She was talking about leaving him and…and being away from him…and he had this irrational feeling that if she left him then she would never come back. Even though he knew for a fact that he could love and trust her. She was loyal to him and she would never leave him. Also she was only ten and would not get very far.

He exorcised his emotions.

"You're saying that you want to go home and sleep because you're tired?" asked Suzuki. He knew that she was not asking to leave so she could get away from him. He knew but he just needed to have it confirmed for his own peace of mind. He was not…he was not going to lose control…so long as he remembered that he had no reason to lose control.

"Yes. That's what I just said. I want to go home and go to sleep." Said Daughter. Suzuki glanced at the clock. It wasn't late enough to leave but…but he was useless to Claw if he was this exhausted. He was useless to Claw and he was useless to her. He closed his laptop and stood up.

"Very well. Come along, Daughter." Said Suzuki. Daughter was looking up at him with wide eyes. He didn't know why.

"You want me to come with you? I mean you want to come with me? But why? You don't usually go back home until-" said Daughter

"I am well aware of the time, Daughter, I can read a clock. You and I were both awake for the entire night. We're both in no way fit to run Claw right now. That is why we're going to call it an early day. Now collect your things and we'll leave." Said Suzuki

"Um…ok…that's fine." Said Daughter. He had no idea why she had to attach a value judgement to it. This had been her idea. They were tired so they had to go home and rest. He was grateful to her, he really was, because he never would have gone home on his own. She was nurturing like that. She was like Masami like that. Masami had pulled him away from his work and to bed many times. She had been good at knowing what he knew better than he knew it.

Daughter so took after her mother.

She packed her things away quickly, her devices and chargers and other such bits of technology. She used to bring her dolls with her wherever she went. She used to play with them on the floor. He used to enjoy watching her. The way each doll had it's own personality and motivations and back story. Had truly fascinated him. She had been a fascinating child. She still was. Even though she was bigger now. Even though she had proven herself to be so much more than a child. She had proven herself capable to caring not only for herself and for her brother but for him as well.

Masami would have been so proud.

He knew that he was proud of her. He was proud of her for coming to him and pulling him away from work, amazingly enough, because she was right. It was time to go home. He had been too achy and tired to function. She had thought of him and…and he was grateful for that. She was always thinking of others. He was proud of her for that. He was proud of the person that she had become. So capable. So small but so capable. Even at ten she served him better than legions of grown men ever could. He was so happy, yes that was the word, to have her for a Daughter.

She had even earned herself some more point in his book by not speaking to Shimazaki more than she had to.

He had teleported them home, it was just faster even though he did enjoy a nice long car ride, and Daughter hadn't even taken his hand. She had barely even spoken to him. Good. Maybe her feelings were waning. Maybe now she knew that there was more to choosing her most perfect person than good looks and skill with psychic abilities. He was proud of her for that. Fukuda must have been right. It must have been nothing more than an infatuation.

Wonderful.

She was putting that infatuation behind her and he was proud of her. He was proud of her for so many things these days. The way she cared for Son, the way that she cared for him, even the way that she faced her shoes in the genkan when they came home. Masami had done the same thing…well of course she had faced her shoes the right way she was a very polite woman like that even in her own home, but just in the way that she moved…Daughter moved the same way. She even fixed her shoes by hand. She picked each shoe up in her little hand and faced them the right way.

She had such beautiful hands.

She really did. Her fingers were long and her skin was pale and she didn't have a single callous or blemish. She had painted her nails, too. Blue. The same color blue as her favorite dress. She always wore a lot of blue. Masami had worn a lot of yellow. Daughter had a yellow dress, right? She did. He remembered that she did. It was the one that the French princess…or maybe she was a queen…it was from one of her films. She liked it. He knew that she liked it. He wished that she would wear her yellow dress more often.

He doesn't ask her to, though.

Criticizing a woman's clothing is dangerous business. Women wore what they wore and they did not want his opinion on their clothing. It had taken him a VERY long time to realize a woman asking how she looked was not asking for his opinion. She wanted to be told that she was beautiful. So that was what he always said…and Masami had always been beautiful. Even if she had just been in the stained night shirt with the hole in the collar and her hair spread all around her like a lion's mane she had still been beautiful.

Daughter was beautiful too.

In a completely different way than Masami had been, of course, because she is his Daughter and not his wife. She is his Daughter and she is his and therefore it is ok to think that she is beautiful. There is just something to her. Something perfect about her. So small and so perfect and he just wants to pick her up…but he can't because she's awake and while she has expressed that she would never think of him as being weak he was not going to just…go and do that. Even though he could if he wanted to because she was his and he was Suzuki Touichirou and he could do whatever he wanted.

"Dad? What are you looking at me for?" asked Daughter

"No reason in particular. Come, I'm exhausted." Said Suzuki

"Oh. You still want me to sleep in your bed even if it's daytime?" asked Daughter

"Of course." Said Suzuki. That was where she slept now. She hadn't expressed any displeasure so of course he would allow her to sleep beside him for as long as she needed to. She was small after all. She had always enjoyed sleeping beside him. That was just how children were.

"Um….ok." said Daughter. There. That was the end of it. It felt a bit odd, sleeping in the middle of the day, but he needed it. When he got to his bedroom he took off his tie and suit coat. He couldn't sleep in those. Daughter simply got into bed dressed in her daytime clothes. Right. Too early for pajamas. He was about to turn around before he stopped himself.

He did like the feel of her in his arms.

He took off his button down too. Masami had always said that it was odd, how he slept, and he had never seen anything odd about it. He slept in a button down and slacks because he had been comfortable in a button down and slacks. She slept in pajamas because she had been most comfortable in pajamas. That was just how it was. She had expressed, before, how she couldn't even feel him when he was dressed in so many layer like that. Also her hair got caught in his buttons sometimes.

Daughter's hair had also gotten caught in his buttons on occasion.

He could not have that. He didn't want to cause her pain like that and also…also it was a gift to hold her in his arms. It was a gift to hold her in his arms just like it was a gift to have held Masami in his arms. Daughter will never leave him but…but she's getting bigger. She's getting bigger and one day she would be too big so sleep beside. She would always be his Daughter but one day she would also be a grown woman and he had no idea if it was alright to share a bed with his Daughter when she became a grown woman. He held no sexual attraction to her, and he never would, but there were rules about this.

So he would enjoy her company while he could.

He folded his button down and left it on top of his dresser beside his tie and suitcoat. The air felt cold against his arms. Pale. He was pale. Pale as Son. He had freckles there too, like Son did, even though his arms hadn't seen the sun since he had been a child. No scars, though, because unlike son he had never had to be forcibly awakened. No, he had always had his powers. He had been a prodigy just like Daughter.

His little prodigy.

His little sleeping prodigy. It seemed that she had fallen asleep the moment her head hit the pillow. She hadn't even pulled the covers up around herself. That wasn't good. He pulled the covers around her until he knew that she was comfortable. Then he laid himself down beside her. She did not stir. His arms were cold and…and he had done this so he could hold her…but she was asleep…and that meant that she would not be rolling into his arms…and that meant that he had done this for nothing.

And he could not have that.

He wondered if this was ok. He wondered if it was ok to express weakness like this. He didn't know. All he knew was that it was a gift to hold her and he would not be wasting that gift. After all it had been a gift to hold Masami and…and he hadn't know what he'd had until she had been gone. Daughter would leave him too…time would take her away from him. One day she would meet a man….not Shimazaki….and then he would have been replaced in her bed and in her life. Someone else would know what a gift it was to hold her. Some other man would replace him in her life…and that was just how it went. That was just nature's way. Little girls grew up and left you.

Unless someone invented some sort of anti-growth serum…

No. He wants her to grow up. He both wants to freeze her now, at the most perfect age of ten, and he wants her to grow up. Knowing that she would grow up made this whole thing…better…because now he knew what a gift it was to hold her in his arms. She was so warm and soft and just…there. She was there. He committed every moment of this to memory. The way the sun hit her hair, the rise and fall of her chest, the little smile on her face. All of it. Everything. The perfection that was Shigeko. The gift that it was to hold his Daughter, his most precious possession, in his arms.

He loved her so much.

Her hand opened and closed. He reached over and took it in his. She had such soft hands, such beautiful hand, and he would not take them for granted. He would take no part of this for granted. No part of her for granted. Not her caring, not her nurturing, and not the perfection that was his Daughter. No, he would never take even a single moment of their time together for granted.

He loved her.

He loved her more than anything and…and she had asked him to say it so it was alright. This was alright. The way he felt was alright. She had granted him permission, not that he needed permission for anything, but she had still granted him her permission to…to love her. To love her and hold her and cherish her and never let her go….and he never would. He would never let her go. He would not make the same mistakes again. She was by his side where she belonged and she would never even think of leaving him. Because he loved her. Daughter.

He was tired.


	215. Hatori and Little Sister-sama

Something was wrong with Little Sister-sama.

"Did your parents ever make you feel like you couldn't breathe?"

Yeah, something was definitely wrong with Little Sister-sama. She wasn't actually his little sister, not unless his parents were keeping some BIG secrets, but she had grown on him. She had certainly hung around him enough to grow on him. She was a very lonely little kid with no friends her own age, no school to go to, no clubs to join, and now apparently her dad was trying to smother her or something…hopefully it wasn't literal. Suzuki was nuts…really nuts…but he wouldn't try to…like…hold a pillow over his Daughter's face to suffocate her or anything like that….right?

He'd been playing too many horror games again.

"What do you mean, Little Sister-sama?" said Hatori. She liked it when he called her that. Her aura did this shudder thing sometimes. That meant that she liked being called Little Sister-sama. The sama made it respectful because she outranked him and the Little Sister was there to show her that they had a close thing going on. She had asked him once if they could ever be more than friends. Poor kid. She was lonely and wanted a close connection with someone.

He could not imagine what it was like to walk around in her sparkly blue shoes all day.

It must have sucked being the President's kid. He knew because she had said how much it sucked before. Her brother was mean to her, she made excuses for him but Hatori could read between the lines, her dad expected the world of her, and she had to deal with the fact that one day all of this would be hers. No wonder she wore costumes all the time. He would want to escape, too, if he had to deal with all of that responsibility.

Also, apparently, her dad was trying to suffocate her too on top of everything else.

"You had parents, right? I mean before all of this you had parents?" asked Little Sister-sama

"Yeah. They uh…passed away…when I was in my first year of high school. After that I lived in a group home for a couple weeks before Claw found me. But, yeah, I had parents." Said Hatori. He doesn't like to talk about this with people. They're dead, he knows they're dead, and he knows that they aren't going to respawn just because he doesn't like to talk about the fact that they're dead. He just…doesn't like to talk about them…but she's a kid and she has questions and he's going to answer them for her because he's an adult and her pseudo older brother and that's his job.

Unless she asks him where babies come from or something like that. Then he's lying through his teeth and he's knows that he'd be right to do it.

"Oh. I'm very sorry that your mom and dad died. That must have been very hard on you and I can't imagine what it's like to know that they're dead and you'll never see them again. My mom ran away from home but that's not the same…and also please don't tell my dad that I was talking about my mom. He says that she's a traitor for leaving us and we're not supposed to talk about traitors." Said Little Sister-sama

"Don't worry. If anyone reviews the security tapes they'll just see that gum commercial." Said Hatori as he pointed up at the security camera. His aura was visible for a moment as he set the cameras to play back that annoying commercial, complete with jingle, for anyone that decided to get nosy.

"The one with the song?" asked Little-Sister-sama

"Yup. Gum in the morning-" said Hatori

"Gum in the evening." Said Little Sister-sama

"Gum after supper time. When you're chewing gum it's always a very good time." They both finished at once. He laughed, a little, and she turned red. Oh. He must have embarrassed her. He patted her on the shoulder to try and make her feel better but that just embarrassed her more. He had no idea what to do…oh! Kids loved Doritos! He handed passed her his Dorito's bag, original nacho cheese flavor would always be the best Dorito flavor, and she took one.

She was still red though.

He felt like crap. He had embarrassed her without even realizing it. People used to make him feel like that all the time, back before he had joined Claw, and he had vowed never to make anyone feel bad like that ever again. Ever. No matter what. Especially not a kid and especially not a little girl but especially not a little girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

"Sorry if I embarrassed you." Said Hatori

"No, you didn't. I like…um….I like that song and I like…gum…and also Doritos. Thank you for the Doritos. I love them so much. One time me and my brother wanted to which flavor was the best so we bought all the Doritos and then we tried them and…um….I like this kind the best. He likes spicy nacho cheese flavor the best. That was um…what we found out when we tried all the Doritos." Said Little Sister-sama. He liked hearing these stories from her life. Gave him a little glimpse behind the curtain of the Suzuki family. He had always figured that Suzuki would have been the stern and controlling type. Turns out he let his kids do literally whatever they wanted.

Well he used to.

He had been keeping Little Sister-sama close lately. Hatori had no idea what was up with that. His dad had been a nice guy so when he thought of hanging out with a dad all the time and playing Minecraft with him and watching TV together it sounded like a good time…but Suzuki was not a normal guy let alone a nice one so, yeah, Little Sister-sama was not having a good time. Poor kid.

"That was nice of your dad to let you eat all of that junk food. My parents were always on me about eating healthy. Well jokes on them because I live out of a vending machine." Said Hatori before he tossed another chip into his mouth. He made sure not to choke on it this time. Now that would have been a hell of a lot more embarrassing than singing the gum song.

"You eat in the cafeteria sometimes. Like yesterday. You had a tuna sandwich with an apple, a pint of chocolate milk, and you took two cookies instead of one. You also took extra mayonnaise packets even though the sandwich already had plenty of mayonnaise on it." Said Little Sister-sama. She was just a kid so that wasn't creepy. She was just a kid and she wasn't self-aware enough to realize that she came off kind of…stalker-ish when she said stuff like that…but she would figure it out eventually. Hatori used to follow people around all the time when he had been her age…of course those had been girls he liked…but also he had been kind of an early bloomer when it came to certain things. She was just curious about him and hadn't been taught that stalking was wrong. That was all.

"Hey, I like mayo. It's good for you, it has…egg…in it." Said Hatori

"Minegishi says that mayonnaise is poison because it clogs your arteries and sends you to an early grave." Said Little Sister-sama. Hatori perked up. Something new about Minegishi. She…they. They, they, always they or they will never speak to you again because they are gender fluid or non-binary or…well he would have asked them but he hadn't exchanged more than a handful of words with them and maybe he shouldn't open with his confusion on their gender identity. No, that would they them pissed off at him…more so than they usually were.

He didn't get it.

He was making an effort to get to know them but it seemed like they disliked him…or maybe they were just that way with everyone. They did not have good performance views and they were not spoken of in glowing or even positive terms on their mission reports. Does not work well with others. That came up the most often. Maybe they would like him, though, if he just made more of an effort…or something. Not in a creepy way just maybe trying to get more into things they liked, like healthy eating.

He looked over at the mess that was his desk…they could pry his snacks from his greasy, sticky, hands.

"So they're really into healthy eating I take it?" asked Hatori

"Yes, but only when they haven't been smoking. When they have been smoking then it's ok. All bets are off, they said. It makes sense. Smoking makes you hungry." Said Little Sister-sama. That….that made no sense. Hatori had smoked a cigarette once just to see what it was like and it hadn't made him hungry. Actually it had made him sick.

"Not sure if it works like that." Said Hatori

"It does. It makes you hungry but also it makes the world just…better. Like all the stuff that makes you feel bad is just….gone. And also food tastes better and music sounds better and TV shows are funnier…well everything is funnier….and little brother hugs are somehow even better than usual…but don't tell anyone how I know that. It's a secret…and I trust you with it…and stuff." Said Little Sister-sama. There was….a whole lot to unpack there in what she had just said to him. Just…what? She was TEN! How did she even…she was not talking about smoking cigarettes…and he knew…well he didn't KNOW but he knew people who smoked…but she was only TEN!

Maybe that was why Suzuki was keeping her so close.

Hatori tried not to look shocked. He wasn't going to shame her. She had come to him with the great big secret…he had no idea why she had decided to tell him this at all…and he was not going to shame her. If he shamed her now then she would never come to him with anything again and then he would have alienated her and now he was involved and if anything happened to this kid then he would be partially culpable and he never wanted that responsibility but…but he had it and…and stuff.

Also just….WHAT THE HELL?!

"Are you….are you talking about getting high?" asked Hatori. He spoke quietly even though the guys around him all had headphones on and a few of them were trying to surreptitiously watch…things that they should not have been watching at work…yeah, the polarized screen was not in any way a dead give away…well a ten year old talking about getting high was still worse than that and not something that these morons needed to know about. Hell. This was not something that he needed to know about. What if Suzuki tried to extract information from him? He knew how those 'interrogations' went….maybe he needed to get one of those cyanide teeth put in incase anything ever happened….

He needed to calm the hell down and be an adult here.

"Yes, but don't tell anyone. You can keep a secret, right? You know….maybe I should have started with that…before I told you a secret." Said Little Sister-sama

"Yeah, in the future start with that one…but I can keep a secret. I mean I have no reason to tell anyone. I'm not exactly itching to tell everyone about what you get up to when no one's looking….that's just not who I am." Said Hatori

"Ok. Thank you." Said Little Sister-sama. She was still sitting there like normal in her costume and her braids and…and he was having a lot of trouble comprehending what she had just told him. He was happy that he had been sitting down for that but also he missed his wheelie chair. Then he could have just rolled away and collected his racing thoughts. But he couldn't. He had to sit there with his thoughts, a little girl who regularly got high, and the guy sitting in the corner with his headphones up way too loud.

Ok. He could handle this and he was not going to freak out.

"So…where do you even….I mean you're ten. How are you even doing this?" asked Hatori

"Shimazaki. Well Minegishi lets me smoke with them sometimes but Shimazaki keeps on getting me pens and stuff. Well Minegishi got me a vape pen too but it's just the normal kind, not the fun kind. How come you don't smoke anything? I thought that was what adults did….well not my dad because he's weird…but most adults. All of my friends do, well not you do most of my friends, and they're all adults." Said Little Sister-sama. Once again there was a lot to unpack there. So Minegishi was into that stuff…well he could try that and then they could have something in common…and also they smoked with a ten year old which was…..something. Well she did have a hard life, Little Sister-sama, and even if she was ten she could still have problems.

Her dad was Suzuki after all.

He was going to accept this as best as he could since, well, there was no alternative. He had already agreed to keeping her secret and he had already made up his mind that he was going to be her friend and pseudo big brother so, yeah, he accepted this. He accept all of this. Who was he to judge, anyway? He had done things that she couldn't even dream of.

Nobody in Claw had clean hands…and not just because some idiot kept stealing all the soap in the bathrooms.

"I've…never had the chance to smoke anything I guess. I mean I have nothing against it, you do you and all that, but I've just never had the chance to do…any of that stuff." Said Hatori

"Oh. Well if I can get away from my dad tomorrow I can smoke you up, Shimazaki taught me that it means share, in the smoking part of the mezzanine. Shimazaki got me a new cartridge and it tastes like citrus. I like citrus but I can't have it because if my brother has citrus he could die." Said Kittle Sister-sama

"Uh…no thanks. I uh…don't think that would be a good idea at work. You know, with your dad being here and all…and also terrifying." Said Hatori

"….you're right. Dad would probably come looking for me. He won't let me leave his side for very long….or sleep in my own bed…" said Little Sister-sama

"Well no shit you're out there getting high!" said Hatori before he could stop himself. He felt like if he had a ten year old, which he didn't because he was nineteen and a virgin, and his ten year old was getting high then he would have done everything in his powers to keep his ten year old near him at all times. People could do whatever they wanted, it was none of his business, but he had to wonder if this was….ok.

But then again he worked for a world domination cult so he really had no room to be throwing stones.

"No, he doesn't know about that. He mostly just keeps me near him because….I'm not sure. He's been weird since last summer. He went away for three weeks and then he came back and promoted me and now he won't let me sleep in my own bed…and also he really likes Minecraft….A LOT…and we have a bunch of Claw bases and sometimes it's fun because he lets me sleep and bosses me around less but also….also it's not because I don't play with you and Sho anymore….and also sometimes I feel like I can't breathe when he's near. I feel like I can't breathe and just….it's hard." Said Little Sister-sama. Hatori did not know what he was supposed to say to that. She was clearly going through a lot, so the whole getting high thing could be forgiven, but also…also this was a lot and Hatori had no clue what to do…

Because there was nothing that he could do.

There was nothing that he could do for her but listen to her. All he could do for her was be there…and from what she had said she needed someone to be there for her. He didn't want to jump to conclusions but the whole not letting her sleep in her own bed thing was…weird. Very weird. She was ten. That was just…weird. He didn't want to think about how weird…or what he would do if she were to tell him if things really were as weird as his brain was saying that they probably were…and also…also just….he didn't know what he could even do.

Besides be there for her.

"That…sounds like a lot. But uh….I'll always be here for you? Wait, no, that was a statement and not a question Hatori Nozomu you moron….just I'll always be there for you if you need someone to talk to or if you just want to take a break from your life for a bit. Ok? We can hang out and talk or we can play games or whatever you want. Alright. Just…uh….you have a friend in me? Yeah, just like the song. You've got a friend in me. Ok?" said Hatori. He took her hand in his so she knew that he was there for her one hundred percent.

She nodded.

She was red and her eyes went wide and she stopped breathing…and that had been a lot for her. That had been a hell of a lot for her…and now he had no idea what to do…well something nice for her, obviously…but what? What could he possibly give the girl that had everything but a normal life and a stable family structure? Materially, he meant.

Oh!

"Hey, Little Sister-san. You're using the Elsa skin for your player character, right?" asked Hatori. She nodded.

"Yes. Thank you for getting it for me. I love blocky Elsa." Said Little Sister-san.

"Well then how would you like….every single princess, queen, and female Disney character ever?" asked Hatori

"Really? Even the ones nobody's heard of? Like princess Eilonwy?" asked Little Sister-sama. He had never heard to that princess before but he was sure that if the skin for that one didn't exist then he could make it exist. He knew that it wasn't much but it made her happy and that was what mattered.

"Sure. Whoever you want. When you and your dad login tonight you'll see. But just give me some time, ok?" asked Hatori

"Ok…and thank you. Um…you-you're a nice person and um…I like you…a lot." Said Little Sister-sama. She was still sort of freaked out about opening up to him about her life, that was alright, he didn't care. He reached over and tussled her hair like you were supposed to do with kids. They were sort of like puppies and kittens in that way.

"Sure thing, Little Sister-sama. What are big brothers for?" asked Hatori. Her aura hiccupped and she nodded there. He would have hung out with her more but he had felt Suzuki's aura moving. If he felt it then she definitely felt it and she had to go before her dad figured out that the line for the women's bathroom wasn't this long….or existent since the only two people who could use it were her and Minegishi….or maybe they just used the men's room…or maybe just the secret bathroom in the custodian's closet….or maybe they were daring and snuck into Suzuki's private bathroom that nobody was supposed to know about. Hatori didn't know and knew that it was not the question to ask. Not Minegishi themselves and not Little Sister-san either.

Even though she was a real wealth of information.

He had no idea what to make of what she told him….so he made nothing of it. So she got high sometimes, her life sucked and she was the Daughter of the most powerful man on Earth. She could do anything. Who the hell was going to stop her? Well her father. Her weird and overbearing father….poor kid. Poor, poor, poor kid.

Well at least he could be there for her in some small way….even if it was just to sit and listen.


	216. Bedtime at Nine

Sho's bedtime was nine o'clock.

Big sis had said so. Well dad had said that he needed to get enough sleep so he wouldn't be tiresome in the morning and big sis decided that nine o'clock was a good bedtime for him. Sho didn't want to go to bed at nine. Nine was only an hour later than eight and eight had been his bedtime when he had been a kid and they had lived in the Castle together. He wasn't a kid anymore…well he was nine…but he wasn't a little kid. He should have been able to go to bed whenever he wanted.

It wasn't like he had to get up in the morning for school or anything.

He didn't go to school, not for real, and he only went to work with dad sometimes. There wasn't much point to it now since dad was spending all of his time with big sis. Dad used to teach him how to run Claw and stuff but now all he did was hang out with big sis. They hung out all night, she slept with dad now, and then they hung out all day and then they came home and played Minecraft together and…and Sho didn't care. He didn't care if he was left out. Dad was a jerk and big sis…well she got her boringness from dad so it made sense that they would play together….and Sho didn't care about that anyway.

He had his own Minecraft world and it was way better than theirs!

He loved the world that he and Fukuda made. There were swords and bows and arrows and zombies and also pits to the center of the Earth and other cool stuff. Dad and big sis' world was all Claw bases and stuff. Not fun at all. Why would they want to build a Claw base when they had nothing but Claw bases in real life? It didn't make any sense. Sho had a chicken pit. The chicken pit was way more fun than building a Minecraft version of the Claw HQ bases.

Also the chickens liked it in the pit so it wasn't mean or anything like that…though maybe he should have made the chicken pit a little bit bigger….

"Sorry! I didn't mean to Minecraft you…." Said Sho as he accidentally killed one of his chickens. That was bad. He felt bad. Even though the chickens weren't real he felt bad. Those chickens trusted him and he had killed one of them! This was different than eating chicken in real life. The chicken was already dead when it got to his plate. He wasn't the guy who went around personally killing the chickens. But now he had killed a chicken….

Poor chicken.

He didn't know what that chicken's name had been. They all looked the same and he had a pit full of them. Maybe he would have felt better if he remembered it's name…or worse. He didn't know. All he knew was that he had to be more careful when he mined from now on. At least Fukuda wouldn't be mad at him. Fukuda said that this was his world and he could do whatever he wanted to. Fukuda said that he was just there to help.

He was sort of bad at this game.

Maybe because Fukuda was so much older than him. He and dad were the same age even though dad looked much older. That was because he had healing powers and dad didn't. So Fukuda would look young forever and be able to play with him forever while dad got super old and died, eventually, and stuff…not that he wanted his dad dead or anything. He didn't want dad dead he just wanted him…somewhere else. Somewhere where he could be mean and boring all on his own and stuff. Somewhere where he could give big sis back. He loved big sis and he wasn't mad at her…anymore. Dad had come into their game and…and big sis couldn't have stopped him…because he was dad and he did whatever he wanted. He was going to take over the world after all. If he could take over the real world than taking over the Minecraft world was nothing for him.

It was ok. Minecraft had a lot of worlds.

"Ok, chickens. Now you have more space in your pit. So stop trying to jump out! Do you want the zombies to get you? Now stay in there all night. I have to go back into the house now, ok? I still love all of you. Now goodnight and I'll see you in the morning." Said Sho. Night was coming and when night came the zombies came out…and if the zombies came out then sometimes they mobbed him and he died. He needed someone to have his back and Fukuda was probably either working or in bed by now. He knew not to ask big sis she was too busy playing with dad and her boyfriend, too.

Well he wasn't sure if Hatori was her boyfriend yet.

Big sis liked him. Big sis liked that guy and…and he was an ok guy. Though the thought of big sis wanting to kiss and other stuff with him was still super gross and always would be. She was his sister and it was his job as her little brother to be grossed out by the thought of her kissing a guy and also to beat this guy up when he did start being her boyfriend. Not enough to hurt him but instead enough to make him know that if he ever broke big sis' heart there would be more coming.

He was a good little brother like that.

He was trying his best to be a good little brother. That was why he didn't yell at big sis or hit her or anything even though she had practically kicked him out of their Minecraft world. Also he wasn't going to get mad at her or anything even though it was nine o'clock now and he could feel her aura getting closer. She was coming to put him to bed. She was going to make him go to bed even though she didn't have a bedtime and it wasn't fair and-

"God damn it all to hell." Said Sho. Cursing helped. Cursing helped him get all of his bad feelings out, well a good number of them out, without doing anything mean to her and stuff. He had to be nice to her. He had to be a good little brother. A good little brother and a good big brother. He didn't want little sis to start cursing, it wasn't a good thing to do, but he would rather her hear him curse than see him acting like a jerk.

And also cursing was fun.

He could see why adults did this all the time. Also why dad didn't do this. Dad hated fun, he even sucked the fun out of Minecraft with his boring buildings, and that was why he never cursed. Everyone else did. Even Fukuda did, sometimes, when he thought that Sho wasn't listening. Cursing was fun and it was better than hitting people…and he was not going to stop cursing just because mom didn't like that sort of thing. If she had such a problem with it then she could come back to him and tell him to his face. But that wasn't happening. Mom was gone.

It was just him and big sis.

"Ok, Sho, it's time for bed. Did you brush your teeth already?" asked big sis as she knocked on the door and opened it. He didn't know why she did that. If she was just planning on opening the door anyway than why even bother knocking? And she didn't even have to knock since this was her room too. All of her stuff was here even if she did sleep with dad every single night. He didn't want her to get her stuff out of their room, though, even if she didn't sleep there anymore and he would have had more room for his stuff. This was still her room too.

"I brushed my teeth. You don't have to ask me every single night. I know that I have to brush my teeth every night and every morning or they'll rot out and I'll have to have someone else chew my food for me when I'm old and it'll be really gross." Said Sho. That came out meaner than he wanted it to. He didn't want to be mean. He wanted to be nice…it was just sort of hard to be nice when he was being told to go to bed and stuff.

He needed to try harder.

"Ok. I just ask you because sometimes you forget and I don't want anything bad to happen to you. You're my little brother and I love you. Can I hug you?" asked big sis. Sho closed his laptop and put it to the side. She had been doing a lot of hugging lately. He liked hugs as much as the next guy but not all the time. Sisters. They were so weird sometimes.

"Fine. But don't crush my skeleton again." said Sho. Big sis smiled and climbed onto his bed. She was getting her Frozen pajamas on his Zootopia bedspread but he didn't say anything. Frozen was an ok movie…and he had to think so because he was a good little brother and that was his big sis' favorite thing in the whole world…even though he really didn't get it. Why was Elsa so scared of herself? She had powers! She had super cool ice powers and her parents didn't so she could have been all 'conceal, don't feel THIS' and frozen them into statues.

Then the title of the movie would make more sense.

Because things weren't permanently Frozen so it made no sense to call the whole movie Frozen. It was like how Brave was called Brave even though it didn't make much sense considering that the movie was more about Merida turning her mom into a bear than her being brave. Movie titles were weird sometimes. Lots of stuff was weird sometimes. Like how in Frozen Anna didn't even want to have powers even though Elsa did. Even when they were kids Anna was just playing with Elsa like it was nothing, her sister having powers while she didn't. It made no sense.

Sho would have liked Frozen better if Anna got powers too, in the end, instead of just getting a boyfriend.

"Your my little brother and you like warm hugs." Said big sis. She was hugging him super tight and stuff. Not tight enough to hurt his skeleton but still tight. He hugged her back as best as he could. She smelled weird again. Kind of like that time he and Shimazaki had found the skunk…but then it got mad at them….and also there was something in there that…he knew that smell.

He broke away from her.

"Were you eating citrus!? You could have killed me!" said Sho. How could she have forgotten about his one weakness? How? Citrus was the only thing in the whole world that could kill him. She had been there on the day that he had eaten the grapefruit. She had seen his skin get all red and itchy and how his throat had been closing up….but then she just went off and ate citrus like it was nothing?! He didn't go around eating her weaknesses like…um…well she didn't have any allergies but she really hated it when people were mad at her and stuff. So he didn't just go around getting mad at her for no reason…anymore…

This was a very good reason.

"No. No, I haven't been eating any citrus. I know that I can't eat citrus around you because if I did that then you would die and I don't want you to die. I love you and I don't know what I would do if you died. I love you so much Sho…" said big sis…and now she was crying. There were tears running down her cheeks and Sho felt like the biggest jerk on the planet. He hated it when she cried and he hated it when he made her cry.

It made him feel like the worst brother who'd ever had a sister.

"Sorry I yelled at you, ok? Just…you don't have to cry. It's not that sad. I can think of much sadder stuff right off the top of my head. Just…come on." Said Sho. She was still crying. He pulled his sleeve down over his hand to catch her tears. They still came and not his sleeve was soaked. He didn't know what to do, though, so he tried the other sleeve now.

"I-I'm sorry that you thought that I-I was trying to kill you. I would never, ever, do that! I love you so much….you're the best…" said big sis. She was still crying. Not the kind with snot and stuff, there were just tears coming from her eyes, and he had to make them stop before dad saw. Dad hated crying. Dad hated weakness of any kind but he especially hated crying. Sho may not have liked how she was the favorite and all but he didn't want her to be the un-favorite either. No, he didn't want that at all. Having dad's love was better than not having dad's love. He hadn't had a lot of dad's love so he was used to it but she was used to getting all the love. She wouldn't be able to handle it, living like he did.

"Big sis…you've got to stop. Come on…I'm not mad at you. If…uh…if I was going to have an allergic reaction to you then I would have had it already. Since I haven't had an allergic reaction yet that means that I won't and…and that means that I'm not going to die. Ok?" said Sho. Both of his sleeves were soaked, now, so he used his shirt. He picked up the bottom of his shirt and wiped her eyes with it even though it meant that she could see more of his scars. They hadn't had a bath together in a while. She just cried harder when she saw them.

"You've been my little brother for almost my whole life and I don't know what I would do without you." said big sis

"I'm sorry I freaked out…but I won't anymore, ok? Just stop crying. I just…I freaked out. I'm sure that I won't have an allergic reaction just because you ate citrus before. I don't think that's how it works…I mean I don't know how it works but I don't think that it works like that." said Sho

"I didn't eat any citrus I just smell like it but it's not real citrus so it won't kill you and I don't want to kill you and I don't want you to die in your sleep because I don't know what I would do without you." Said big sis

"That doesn't make any sense. I'm not going to die in my sleep. I'm going to die doing something awesome when I'm like a hundred or something." Said Sho

"I don't want you to die when you're a hundred either! I want you to be with me forever and I never get to see you anymore and you-you're the best little brother that I ever could have asked for and I wish that we could be together for always but we can't because I have to hang out with dad and also you're going to die someday and I'm going to die someday and I don't want to die in my sleep and I don't want you to die in your sleep and-" said big sis. Sho had all he could take and he couldn't take anymore. She was all sad and crying and stuff and he just…he could not have that. He had made her cry and now she was talking crazy talk, she did that sometimes, and he needed to make this stop so he ended it in the best way that he knew how.

She liked warm hugs.

She was always saying that he liked warm hugs but she liked them too. Also there was Olaf on her nightshirt and of course he had to hug her in that case. Also he may have still liked giving warm hugs to his sister and getting them, too. He hugged her and she hugged him back. She hugged him back and told him over and over again that she was sorry.

"Stop saying sorry so much. I'm fine. I'm not freaking out so you shouldn't be freaking out. Ok?" asked Sho. This felt sort of weird. Usually he was the one who freaked out over stuff and then she made him feel better. But now she was the one freaking out. Well he could make her feel better too. He held her close even though she smelled weird and was crying on him. He held her close until he felt the crying stop.

She stopped crying.

She stopped crying and gave him one last squeeze before she let go of him. Her eyes were red, that was normal for her these days he didn't know why, and she just looked so…sad. But that was normal for her these days too. He didn't know what she had to be so sad about. Dad loved her and stuff. Everyone loved her. They had always liked her a lot better and…and he was not going to have jerk thoughts. Mom wouldn't have wanted…he didn't want that. He never wanted to be that person again.

He never wanted to make her cry.

"I'm sorry, Sho, I just…got scared that I would lose you. I don't want to lose you, I never want to lose you, and I'm just…sorry. I'm so sorry." said big sis. She wiped the last tears from her eyes and just sort of…sat there. Sho had no idea what to make of what had just happened. Big sis had been so sad…and he had barely done anything. Even back when he had been hitting her and pushing her and stuff she hadn't ever cried that badly.

This was confusing.

"Why do you keep on saying that? I'm not going to die because you ate an orange or whatever and I'm not going to die in my sleep either. I don't even know why you thought that I was. That's for, like, old people or whatever." Said Sho

"Dad says that people die in their sleep all the time. One time we were up late playing Minecraft and I feel asleep and he shook me awake because he thought that I was dead…and he said that most people, when they die, that they die in their sleep. He says that millions and millions of people die like that each day. I don't ever want that to happen to you and I don't ever want to lose you." Said big sis

"Maybe if you don't want to lose me then….never mind. Just forget I said anything. It just slipped out." Said Sho. Jerk thoughts. Some jerk thoughts had slipped into his mind and then out of his mouth, again.

"Forget about what? What do you mean?" asked big sis

"Nothing just…you and dad kicked me out of the Minecraft world and it bothered me but then me and Fukuda made a Minecraft world so it's all ok now. We made a world to hang out in and…and it's ok if you and dad want to hang out in your world and stuff…and also if you want to hang out with him all the time and move into his room and…and stuff." Said Sho. He didn't want her to move into dad's room and stop being his sister and…and all of that stuff…but he had no idea what he could do…and how to keep jerk thoughts away from his head and stuff…

He just didn't know.

"But Sho…I don't want that. Any of that. I just…I miss how we used to hang out." Said big sis

"Then why are you with dad all the time? You sleep with him and then you work with him and then you stay up all night with him and-" said Sho

"He won't leave me alone. He keeps on telling me that my place is by his side and that he cares about me and he loves me and he makes me sleep next to him. I don't mind sleeping next to him sometimes but no matter where I fall asleep I always wake up next to him. I don't know why he's been so weird lately but…but it's ok because I'm there for him…but I want to be there for you, too. I don't want to ever lose you. Not because of this or…or because of citrus…and I really am sorry about the citrus." Said big sis. Sho hugged her again. She was sad and…and she didn't need to be. Dad was being nice to her. Dad loved her and he was being nice to her. It was one thing to not want to be around dad when he was being mean but he was being nice…

Dad was hardly ever nice to Sho.

Sometimes he stole his drawings and put them up on his office walls. Sometimes he told him that his powers were impressive and stuff. Sometimes he even told him that…that he did something good…but that was rare. Those were rare times. Most of the time dad was mean to him. Sometimes he was even so mean to Sho that he hit him and…and stuff. Big is used to get her hair pulled sometimes and dad would even, sometimes, shove her with his powers but that was nothing compared to what he had been doing to Sho for as long as he could remember. Dad had pushed him around and pulled his hair when he had been little but it had gotten worse as he got older…

She didn't know how good she had it.

The jerk thoughts were coming and he had to stop them. Not because of what mom would have wanted or what Fukuda told him that mom would have wanted. Sho had to be better because he was not going to be like dad. He was not going to be some scary jerk that just went around hurting the people that he was supposed to love. That wasn't who Sho was going to be when he grew up and that wasn't who he was going to be now. He was Sho and…and he was not dad…

He had to be better than that.

"You're not going to lose me…ok? I'm not going to die just because you had citrus and even I did turn red and stop breathing Fukuda lives right over there. Even if you were too freaked out to get him I know that dad would. He may like you best but I'm his only son and he needs me to make more Suzuki's and inherit the world and stuff." Said Sho. He knew that dad only cared about him because he needed a son. He knew that if he had been born a girl and big sis had been born a boy that dad would have just left him someplace and gone off with big sis to rule the world and stuff. So at least his feelings weren't hurt with the way that dad treated him and…stuff.

They weren't.

"Dad love you too…." Said big sis. Sho took a deep breath. He hated it when she did that, when she just told him things that she thought that he wanted to hear and stuff like that. Sure, dad loved him…in the way that he loved having a son and not having to do gross stuff with a girl so he could make another son. Dad loved her best and there was no point at all in denying it. That was like going outside during a blizzard and saying that it was hot out. Just pointless lies that could never come true.

"Dad loves you more. Dad's always loved you more and you don't have to hide it. I'm not dumb. I know that he loves you more and he's always loved you more." Said Sho. He wondered if she was going to deny it. He wondered if she was going to lie to him and tell him that dad loved him just as much as he loved her or something like that.

"Dad…Sho…too much of his love can be…scary. It can be scary and it can make it feel like you can't breath and…and it can be hard to be the person that dad loves…but…but he does love you…but you're right…he loves me more…and I wish that he could just take all the love that he gives me and then they break it in half so we could get equal parts of it. Like splitting a churro. I just wish that…that love could be more like churros." Said big sis. Sho…he thought that her admitting it would be better than her lying…but it was worse. It was a lot worse hearing from her own mouth that…that dad liked her better….

He was starting to get mad.

"I'm tired. I want to lay the hell down and go to sleep." Said Sho. Cursing made it better. He hadn't cured where dad could hear, he wasn't a moron or anything, he just…needed to curse. He needed to curse because otherwise he would have ended up saying something that he regretted…

He was not going to be jerk to her ever again. He wasn't dad.

"Ok Sho….I'll tuck you in…but please don't say bad words. Dad might hear you." Said big sis as she got off of his bed. He used his powers to raise himself up so he could untuck his blankets and lay under them. He put his laptop on the floor, where he liked it, but then she put it up on his nightstand…and he cursed in his head but he didn't say anything mean at all to her.

"I'll say whatever the hell I want to. He can't hear me in here." Said Sho as she tucked him on. He was nine, he could tuck himself in all on his own…but it was nice to have someone else do it for him. Sort of like mom did but she didn't read to him or kiss his head so he would have nice dreams…but that was ok. He was nine now, ten very soon, and he was too old for that stuff now.

But not too old for the hug she gave him.

"Ok just…be careful. I just want…you to be ok. Ok?" said big sis. Sho rolled his eyes. He was fine. She should have been more worried about herself and stuff. She was the one who had started crying just because he said that she smelled like citrus. She needed to…to take care of herself….and also he needed to take care of her. She said that too much of dad's love could be scary…but Sho didn't get it? What could be scarier than dad's anger? He didn't know and he wasn't going to be mean to her so he said nothing. He was a good brother.

"Fine. I'll be careful. Goodnight." Said Sho. She tucked him in and turned off the light. Now it was time for bed…and he didn't want to go to bed. He wanted to know what that had been about. Her saying that it was scary when dad loved her. Maybe it was just because he had always been her favorite and she had never seen the worst of his anger. Or maybe she was just being all weird and stuff. He didn't know. He just knew that he was happy with himself because at least he had been nice to her even with all the jerk thoughts he'd been having.

He was a good little brother.


	217. Cooler Weather

The weather was turning cooler.

Minegishi was not a fan of winter but it was coming. The world, the world of the plant life, went dormant. The grass, the trees, all of it. It wasn't a good time at all. There was nothing that Minegishi could do, however, so they said nothing. Even as the leaves were starting to turn colors and the air had a bite to it. They dealt with it. They dug their hoodie out of their closet, filled their pockets with seeds, and got on with their life. That was what they had always done when they were faced with circumstances beyond their control. They filled their pockets with seeds and they just kept going.

No sense in driving themselves into the ground worrying about things outside of their control.

Winter was coming. It came every year. As a child they had found it much more distressing. The plants had gone quiet and the world had just felt…wrong. There had been a certain sense of wrongness that had permeated everything. There had been no escape and expressing what they had been feeling would have been idiotic to say the least. So they dealt with it as best as they could. They layered as many clothes as they could and waited for spring. They learned the trick with the seeds much later on. Long after houseplant after houseplant had been killed and harsh words had been screamed at them. Long after punishments had been dealt and meals had been withheld until they agreed to stop acting crazy.

There had been nothing that they could have done back then.

Of course the situation had been rectified long ago. They returned to that house one spring as a newly minted adult, planted some trees, and made sure that those trees had plenty of fertilizer. Yes, that was a particularly cruel way to go about killing someone. Stick a tree in them and then let the roots overtake them until there was nothing left. Yes. That had been good. They had dealt with the situation as soon as they could. Their circumstances had changed as they had become an adult and come into their own.

Mob's circumstances would change as well one day.

"So then Hatori hugged me and he told me that we were friends…but also he held my hand before that…but we're still just friends. I asked him if we could ever be more than friends, once, but he thought that I wanted to be brother and sister." Said Mob. Minegishi rolled their eyes but let her go on. They'd let her have this. Everyone had to hope for something even if it was something that would never happen. Hopefully. Because nineteen and ten was a hell of an age gap and Minegishi did not need Mob pulled away from whatever even on in her ten year old imagination to…other things.

She deserved to be a kid for as long as she could be.

Not that Minegishi thought that her feelings would ever be returned. No, that kid she was into had, for some reason, set their sights on them. They had no idea why. It didn't matter. They would never do anything like that to Mob. She didn't need her best friend sleeping with the guy she liked. That was such a clichéd plot. Also he was still practically a child. He was nineteen, he couldn't even vote in this country yet, or drink or…well…anything. Minegishi was not interested in someone that young. Or someone that annoying.

"Well you could always use more friends…and siblings I guess." Said Minegishi

"I know but I don't want that from him…I mean I like him a lot…but I want him to like me how I like him." said Mob. She blushed and giggled and, honestly, she deserved it. She deserved all the happiness she could get after the year she'd had. Ten had not been good to her. The shit with the baby and her dad and then her running Claw and now whatever other insanity was going on over in the Suzuki house…Mob did not need to deal with that. It was a lot to take in for an adult let alone a ten, soon to be ten and a half, year old. Minegishi wished that they could do more but they couldn't. All they could do was sit there and be there for her…but also make sure that she didn't end up doing something stupid like confessing to the teenager she had a crush on and end up getting her heart broken. That was the last thing that she needed on top of all of the other problems in her life.

Also Minegishi did not need the extra work of killing this kid if he broke Mob's heart. They didn't want Mob messing around with a teenager but still they also didn't want her to have to deal with a broken heart. Not at her age.

"Well he's nineteen and you're ten so that had better not happen." Said Minegishi

"I know how old I am and I know how old he is…but I won't be ten forever." Said Mob

"You're right. Net year you'll be eleven and he'll be twenty. I still wouldn't say anything to him. I doubt he'd want to date an eleven year old either." Said Minegishi

"I know not to confess to him. I'm not dumb. Even if he did like me back then dad would just beat him up and stuff." Said Mob

"Most likely. You dad is the overprotective type." Said Minegishi

"I know. I just don't know what he's protecting me from. He won't even let me leave the HQ anymore…or even sleep in my own bed." Said Mob

"Mob…when you say that he won't let you sleep in your own bed…do you mean that he yells at you or whatever when you try to sleep in your own bed…or something like that?" asked Minegishi

"No, he doesn't yell at me. He just picks me up and puts me in his bed. He says that my place is at his side. He loves me a lot. He says that he loves me a lot…and I love him a lot too…but sometimes too much of his love is…kind of scary." Said Mob

"Scary how?" asked Minegishi. They knew that they wouldn't like the answer…but how little they liked it, what the answer would be, would determine if they went on some suicide mission to try and kill Suzuki. He was a mortal man. He bled like everyone else. He aged like everyone else. He was perfectly capable of dying…the only problem was the nobody was capable of killing him besides father time and probably high cholesterol, too, from all of the eggs that he ate. Well if he was up what Minegishi thought that he was up to then they weren't going to wait for father time or a diet consisting mainly of eggs and ketchup to do him in.

"Like…sometimes he looks at me and his eyes get really small and he tells me that he'll never let anything happen to me and that I can't ever leave him and…and I don't know why he thinks that I'm going to leave him. He's my dad and I love him. Sometimes I think that he's scared that I'll go because mom left. He never said that but he makes me sleep on mom's side of the bed and he's always saying how I have to be with him for the rest of my life…and mom was supposed to be with him for the rest of his life…so that's why I think that he's just sad about mom and…stuff." Said Mob

"Mob…God, how do I even say this?" muttered Minegishi. Creepy. This whole thing was creepy. Suzuki was creepy. He had always been off but now he was just creepy. If Minegishi had been in the habit of doing armchair diagnoses they would have said that he had abandonment issues, a God complex, and also some sort of very serious and untreated personality disorder considering the fact that people didn't just wake up one morning and decide that they were going to take over the world.

Suzuki had problems.

But did he had problems to the point where he was going to use his ten year old Daughter as a substitute for his wife? That was the question. He had better not. If he did then…well there had to be some way to kill him. Maybe if they tricked him into swallowing a seed then they could tear him apart from the inside before he could even think. Or they could just wait until he fell asleep and then strangle him with a houseplant…or they could just poison him. They knew what plants were poisonous…and they knew how to make it look like an accident. Like he had just eaten the wrong kind of berry and then, well, accidents happened even to the most powerful man on Earth.

But first they needed to know if he had crossed that line before they put him in the ground and made orphans of his children.

"However you want to. I don't know what you're going to say but you can say it however you want to…but also can you say it in a language that I can understand? That way I understand what you're saying." Said Mob

"Mob…do you remember when you had those bruises on your arms a few weeks ago?" asked Minegishi

"They healed all on their own." said Mob

"I know just…he didn't…do that again? Or hurt you again in any way, right?" asked Minegishi. They had no clue how to ask Mob if her father had been doing anything weird to her. First of all Mob didn't know anything about…that. She was ten. She still thought that babies grew in a woman's stomach and true love was a real thing. She didn't need to know that sometimes fathers could be just….terrible excuses for human beings….towards their daughters.

Minegishi may have been a coward.

Maybe they had been a coward for their whole life. Maybe that was why they had joined Claw in the first place. Maybe they had decided early on to run away from the world and now they were there, in Claw, hiding from life….or whatever. They might have just been a coward. Or maybe they just didn't want to explain to a ten year old how terrible the world could be.

"No. He's been nice. He never yells at me or hits me or anything like that. He's even been letting me go to bed instead of keeping me up all night playing Minecraft. We still play that, too, a lot. He lets me build some more of my own stuff too. I made an ice castle. Hatori showed me how and dad said that it was ok even though it didn't go with the other Claw bases we made. Also I have a whole bunch more character skins and…and it's been fun. Mostly. Dad's been nice…he just won't let me go very far from him anymore." Said Mob. Minegishi didn't know if they should keep it going or just let it go. She hadn't said anything else worrying…well anything more worrying than normal…and Mob would have said something if something was just…not right. Things that weren't any more not right than things were normally in her life…

Mob would have said something.

"I take it the new characters came from Hatori?" asked Minegishi. They had changed the subject with all the grace of a three legged giraffe on roller skates. Mob wouldn't notice. She never noticed. Minegishi…maybe they should have asked more but…but maybe they shouldn't be putting those kinds of ideas in her head. She was ten and even though she had been raised in Claw she could be naive about how the world could be.

So maybe just let her talk about something that made her happy.

"Yes. He knows how to get anything in Minecraft. He even got Sho a dragon egg even though you're only supposed to get them if you kill an elder dragon. Sho does stuff like that. I just build. Sho's happy about his dragon egg even though he wasn't the one who killed the dragon. Oh! And also he knows how to get unlimited diamonds. I need a lot of those because they break when I mine hard stuff. He's really good at getting stuff in the game. He's good at other games too like…." Said Mob. Minegishi let her go on and on and on about Hatori. She was happy when she talked about Hatori. Minegishi didn't know why she had it so bad for this kid but they were still happy that she had someone who made her this happy.

She deserved to be happy.

So Minegishi listened for as long as they could. Mob certainly could go on…and on…and on. But they just wanted her to be happy…even if this was still so…so…well, draining was the word for it. She could go on when someone or something that interested her came up. She had a good time talking about that kid…and Minegishi listened for as long as they could…

Until they couldn't listen anymore. They were only human after all.

"So is he going to be joining us at some point?" asked Minegishi. That was what they wanted to know above all else. They were happy to let Mob prattle on, once you got her going there was no point in making her stop, but they did want to know if the subject of her affections would be joining them. Just so they could prepare mentally. They wished that Mob wasn't so sensitive to people treating each other unkindly otherwise Minegishi would have told this guy in no uncertain terms that nothing would ever happen between them and that he needed to come off it and stop wasting his time. This was Tokyo. Millions of people in Tokyo. Some of them might have even found him attractive. Some of those people might have even been old enough to vote. Some of those people might even have wanted to start up something with him, whatever it was that he was trying to start up with Minegishi.

They had no idea what he was trying to start up with them.

If he wanted sleep with them then he should have just said so. Minegishi could have said no and then everyone could have gone on with their lives. But no. He was asking after them and trying to get into what they were into and it was just…weird. What, did he want to go on a date or something? Well then he was out of luck. Minegishi didn't date. They didn't do the dating thing or the commitment thing or the relationship thing. They didn't believe that one person could belong to another like that and they didn't do monogamy, either, they just were not capable of it.

So, really, Hatori was better off either waiting for Mob to stop being ten or go out and meet a person his own age and who wanted the same things that he wanted…not that Minegishi would ever say these things were Mob could hear. No, she did not need to know the horrible truth of how the subject of her affections really felt.

"Yes. I can feel his aura. Dad's busy today, something happened, so I don't have to be right at his side all day. He said that I could be here but I'm not allowed to leave….I'm never allowed to leave." Said Mob

"Whatever. There's nothing out there anyway." Said Minegishi dismissively. Truth be told there was a lot more to do in Tokyo than there was to do at HQ. Also the people must have been much better company, too. There were some Awakened playing chicken on a ledge, good for them way to thin out the herd, but they weren't the worst of it. They didn't have Mob's range but they could still feel it, his aura, getting closer and closer and closer.

Joy.

Mob went on about the things there were out there in Tokyo and Minegishi listened. Even if Suzuki wasn't being weird towards her…he still had something wrong with him. He was still treating her like a prisoner. He was going to end up messing her up really bad at this rate…and there was very little that Minegishi could do. These were circumstances out of their control. They had no choice but to just…just go with it…until their circumstances changed and there was something that they could do…and they didn't know if they could wait that long. They didn't know if Mob even had that long. They just…they didn't know.

But they could still try.

And they did try. They listened to Mob as best as they could. They listened to her go on and on and didn't stop her once. They couldn't. Even if it did get grating after a while they still said nothing. They actually listened to what she said…which was a hell of a lot more than what they would have done for other people. Like her Prince Charming who eventually decided to join them. Minegishi didn't much listen to him, Mob was good about telling him that they didn't much like to be bothered, but he just could not get it through his head that they didn't want to talk to him or…whatever else he was after.

Which meant that after Mob was summoned back to her father's side they would have to take this time out of their life to deal with Hatori.

Joy.

"So, um….Mob says that you don't eat sugar. That's cool. I've been trying to cut back too since it's poison and-" said Hatori. Mob had been long gone back to her dad. Minegishi had taken to staring Hatori down after she left just waiting for him to say something. They had no idea how they were supposed to do this without it getting back to Mob and her getting upset that her friends were fighting…and also that the boy she had a crush on had feelings for her best friend…Mob did not need this. She had more than enough problems in her life as it was.

"I don't find you attractive and I don't want to sleep with you." Said Minegishi. They decided to get right to the point. Best to be as direct as possible, like ripping off a bandage, because they did not have the time or the energy to turn this into a long, drawn out, affair. They were going to be as kind as they were capable of being, of course, because this guy was Mob's friend. It was going to be an unusually long stay in Tokyo but they would be moving along probably by the end of the year. Hatori would be moving along with them since he had made friends with Mob and Suzuki loved adding her friends two his entourage even if he didn't have anything for them to even do for large swaths of time. Yeah, this kid was going to join them and Minegishi did not need his awkward pining and whatever the hell kind of bullshit that Ryou was on following them around for the rest of their life.

"Uh….." said Hatori, his mouth hanging open like he was some kind of moron. What? What was so hard to understand about what they had just said? What? Did they need to write it down in a book and then beat some sense into him with it? Well they were not risking one of their books for this moron. If he couldn't understand words then he was a lost cause and Minegishi was just going to have to live with this moron pining after them for the rest of their life.

"It's not a difficult concept to understand. I don't find you physically or emotionally attractive and I don't want to have sex with you." Said Minegishi

"I never once asked you to-" said Hatori

"You're transparent. You're nineteen and you're transparent. The answer is 'no' and, look, I saved you the trouble of even asking the question in the first place." Said Minegishi

"I wasn't just going to ask you to-I mean I know that girls…women…people! People don't like that and I would never just open with something like that." said Hatori. Minegishi's eyes narrowed. Well then. There were only so many ways he could have known that. Shimazaki could have opened his mouth, probable, or tech boy over there had gone digging through their personal files. Well wasn't that attractive?

"Shimazaki Ryou likes that. Ask him. He'd probably say yes." said Minegishi. If he just wanted to have sex then, well, Minegishi could be kind. Ryou was a lot freer in who he did that with. Probably because he was less vulnerable than them. He didn't like Hatori, for whatever reason, but he would never say no to sex. Not with a man or a woman or someone in between or someone who didn't even believe in the whole duality of the sexes thing. He'd probably end up doing a much better job of it than Minegishi ever could. He could sense everything about another person when he was that close to them. He could give a person things that they hadn't even known that they wanted. He could make a person laugh afterwards, too, because even after sex he was still such an idiot….

"I'm not into guys…and also he doesn't like me. I mean I get the feeling that he doesn't." said Hatori. Minegishi decided not to tell him that they weren't into people who were into one or the other. The people that they liked…liked people. Well they had always just liked people, their gender was of no consequence, and therefore that was what they liked in a person. If Hatori hadn't figured that out by now then, yeah, Minegishi was right to do this even though they suspected that they were going to end up emotionally devastating him.

"He'll still say yes if you ask to go to bed with him. He doesn't have to like a person to go to bed with them." said Minegishi

"But you do?" asked Hatori. Minegishi was about ready to send him off the mezzanine ledge with that stupid Awakened that was trying to do a cartwheel. What was so hard for this moron to understand? They, Minegishi Toshiki, being of sound mind did hereby declare that they were not attracted to Hatori Nozomu and would never in their right state of mind engage in any form of sexual intercourse with him! What, did they need to write a speech!? Have the Prime Minister read it before parliament? Get the Emperor in on this even though the royal family were just figure heads at this point? What was it going to take to get this teenage moron to come off it already?!

"I have to be able to tolerate them." Said Minegishi evenly.

"You don't even know if you could tolerate me…and it's not about sex. Well, ok, you've really got it going on-" said Hatori

"I'm aware." Said Minegishi. They wondered if he had been talking to Ryou at all. He said that sometimes…what it was that they had going on he never said but they could guess from context.

"See? You're hot and you know it. I think that you're interesting, too, and I've been trying to get to know you. I mean I don't know if I like you, I mean really like you, but I do want to get to know you." Said Hatori. What the…so, what, exactly? He wanted to…ask them out? Leave a note in their shoe locker asking them to meet by the confession tree? What the hell was this kid smoking and where could Minegishi get some?

"What do you mean? If you're talking about a relationship then it's not going to happen." Said Minegishi

"You're seeing someone?" asked Hatori. Minegishi wanted to slap him from ear to ear and then string him up in vines and then dangle him upside until he passed out at which point he would be dropped down onto his face. Maybe that would knock some sense into him. What, they weren't interested in him so someone else must have claimed them? Why would they or anyone else want to be with someone who thought like this? What the hell did Mob even SEE in this guy?

"No. I don't do relationships. I'm incapable of monogamy and I don't believe that one person can even just…claim…another like that. I won't live like that." Said Minegishi

"But what if-" said Hatori

"No, no what if's. There is no hope for a sexual or romantic relationship between us so you need to just come off it now before you end up making things awkward for yourself. Especially since you're Mob's friend now…or older brother. Whatever you want to call it the outcome is still the same. When we end up leaving Tokyo you're probably going to come with us and I am not living with someone who's pining after me, I don't want to deal with that, so I'm killing any hope that exists within you of a relationship between the two of us before it can get any worse." Said Minegishi

"Wait…what?" asked Hatori. He actually blinked his eyes in confusion.

"I'm speaking Japanese here which I assume is your native language. Would you like it in Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, English, Russian, German, or Dutch?" asked Minegishi

"What the fuck….you really speak all of those languages?" asked Hatori. Minegishi shrugged.

"Some better, and some worse, than others. Now which language would you like to hear your preemptive rejection in." said Minegishi

"None. I get it. There is no hope whatsoever of us so much as getting a cup of coffee together. I heard you loud and clear. I'm talking about the part where you said that President Suzuki was planning on promoting me to being in his entourage. Like….what? Just because I'm friends with his daughter?" asked Hatori

"Yup. That's pretty much the only requirement for the job. You get to follow the Suzuki family around the world for the rest of your life now. Isn't that great? So since we'll be working together and living together how about you just forget that you ever had feelings for me in the first place. How does that sound?" asked Minegishi. That moron actually had to THINK. That crater faced, gangly, awkward, CHILD had to actually think about-

"I don't know if I can just…be around President Suzuki like that. I mean I respect him and I know that if I ever stop respecting him he'll stick me in a traitor hole but…she told me some weird stuff about him. Little Sister-sama did. She just…she told me about how he's been really weird to her but not, like, call the cops weird….not that it would do any good, but he's still being pretty fucking weird….and also she says that she's been getting high to deal with it and-" said Hatori

"Damnit Mob, can't you keep ONE THING to yourself!" said Minegishi. She could not go around talking about that! This was Claw! The walls had ears! Literally in the cases where Suzuki had actually imprisoned people in the walls….Mob should not have been telling anyone about that. Ever! Not even the guy she planned on marrying the minute it stopped being socially unacceptable to do so.

"Her dad being weird with her isn't the kind of thing that she should keep to herself. Especially if it's stressing her out enough that she feels like she has to-" said Hatori

"Use your head. That's not what I'm pissed about…and unless you want to end up as plant food you're going to keep Mob's budding substance abuse issues to yourself." Said Minegishi

"Who would I even tell?" asked Hatori. Minegishi wondered, for a moment, if this kid was being serious. There were thousands of people in Claw. He could have sent out a mass spam email if he wanted to. He wouldn't live long with that attitude. If he wanted to sing like a bird then, of course, he would not live long. Claw was not the place for that song. You kept your mouth shut and you minded your own business. Not a difficult concept to grasp at all.

"Whoever the hell will listen? Now will you keep this to yourself or do I have to kill you and tell Mob you went to live on a nice farm out in the country?" asked Minegishi

"….I'll shut up. I won't tell anyone…and I wasn't planning on it." Said Hatori

"Good. I'm glad that we could have this little talk." Said Minegishi

"But what about….the other thing. About her dad. Like….I don't even know what to do. I mean she dropped this big, heavy, thing on me and I don't even know what I'm supposed to even…do." Said Hatori

"Do nothing until you can do something. There's no way to kill Suzuki, not with your power set or mine, and we don't even know how weird he's being with this. Mob hasn't said a thing to me and she tells me everything. Suzuki might just have gone over the deep end because of…a lot of bad shit that happened last summer that I'm pretty sure is on a need to know basis and I don't want Suzuki to kill me so I won't be telling you about." Said Minegishi. Suzuki had been slipping since the thing with the baby. Now he was clinging to the last daughter he had. Not only that but from what Mob said they never even talked about their mother running away…or possibly even dying because they did not see Suzuki as the type to want to deal with explaining the death of their mother to his kids….and he had never been sane to begin with. Everything that had happened must have been enough to finally push him over the deep end into Crazy Town…more so than he had been in the past.

"How do I know when I can do something? I mean…I don't think that the way he treats her is good for her-" said Hatori

"Brilliant deduction, detective Hatori. Another case closed." Said Minegishi

"Fine. I know for a fact that it's not good for her and…and there must be someone who can…I guess talk to him? I mean he must have someone close enough to him to tell him that he's fucking his kid up? Right? I mean he's a dad and dads….they care about their kids….I mean, I know what your life was like from your file, and I know what you've been through-" said Hatori

"You don't know anything and I want to kill you right now. If Mob didn't care so much about you I would end your life right here. If you want to get yourself killed here then keep talking and if you want get yourself killed at another venue then go and tell Suzuki that you think he's a bad father." Said Minegishi

"Fine, ok, I was out of line talking about that but….he's got to have friends and-" said Hatori

"The closest thing that he has is that healer who follows him around. Fukuda. Apparently they went to school together. Go and bother him with this shit. Not me." Said Minegishi. They got up even though they still wanted to be outside. They did not want to deal with that kid. They barely had the headspace to deal with Mob let alone another kid.

Let him get himself killed questioning Suzuki, then. Minegishi had warned them. They had done their best to warn him but he was hell bent on trying to change his circumstance right now and not waiting until Suzuki was vulnerable or Mob was older and stronger…mentally. She was already a powerful esper but she was not strong enough to do what needed to be done. She was not strong enough to plant a tree…but she would be one day.

They'd plant that tree together. In the spring when the weather wasn't as cool.


	218. These Difficult Games

Minecraft was a fun game.

If you could actually play it, that is. So could play just fine. He knew what to do and he knew how he liked to play and he'd been having a good time with it lately. Better than when he and big sis had been playing. Maybe it was better this way. She and dad could do their own thing and then he and Fukuda could do their own thing too. So what if dad had just come into their game and took and so what if dad loved big sis more than him. He didn't care. That was the way that it had always been. Dad was trying to take over the world so of course he would try and take over their Minecraft world.

Sho was fine with what had happened.

"Fukuda, come on. Keep up. We have a lot of stuff to kill." Said Sho. He was in Fukuda office again. He hung out there a lot these days. Dad was always hanging out with big sis and that was…fine. Let them hang out together. Sho had Fukuda and Fukuda at least knew how to have fun.

Even though he wasn't the best at playing Minecraft.

"Hang on, I fell in another hole. Let me climb out." Said Fukuda. He was bad at this. He was really bad at this. He didn't even really like this. None of that mattered. Sho liked this game. Sho was happy and his happiness was what mattered. Also he had stopped curing, thank God, and that was just perfect. He was in a good mood and Fukuda was going to keep it that way. Even if he wasn't any good at this game at all.

"Jump. You've got to jump out. Your guy can't just climb like that. His arms are too short to climb. He can only use his arms for mining." Said Sho. Fukuda wasn't the best at this…but that was ok. He was better than dad, anyway. Big sis sad that dad didn't even try to play or anything like that. He just told her what to do and stuff. That didn't sound like fun at all.

Dad wasn't fun at all.

So Sho didn't care at all if big sis wanted to play with him at all. Dad was dad and big sis was big sis and they were together. They had always been together. It wasn't like Sho didn't have anyone. Sho had Fukuda and he was ok. Not as fun as he used to be but Sho had been a little kid back then. Everything had been way more fun back then. He was older not and this was just a part of getting older and stuff like that. Sometimes stuff got to be less fun. Sometimes your sister stopped playing with you and started only hanging out with your dad.

That was ok. He had Fukuda

"I'm jumping. I think that it's too deep." Said Fukuda. When had games gotten this complex? He had played with the kids before but they had been younger back then. They were older and their games were a hell of a lot more complex and a hell of a lot less fun. What ever happened to Space Invaders? He would have thought that at some point Suzuki would have shared that time sink with his kids. He understood that game. He couldn't play until the blisters on his fingers broke but he could at least understand that game.

And no, Suzuki, shooting through your own shields was stupid.

Not shooting through your own shields and just making sure that your timing was right was a perfectly valid way to play Space Invaders. Not that he and Suzuki were going to be going back to their old arcade and having that debate again. No. Suzuki had moved on to this game…and Fukuda could see why he liked it. He had always liked building things. He liked to design and build and control and also he liked things with a million and one rules. That was why he loved kendo and why he had been so good at it. Fukuda wondered if maybe he should have done more when they had been kids to do wholesome hobby stuff with his friend and not, you know, thought he was just playing at conquering the world and all of that. Maybe instead of playing in the fort in the woods they should have done more stuff that encouraged Suzuki's other, non world domination based, hobbies.

Well he could at least do right by Sho.

"Stay there. I'm just going to kill you so you can respawn at the house." Said Sho. Honestly. He needed to be more careful of the pits. How hard was it to remember that you had to jump over them? No matter, no matter. Sho was happy to have someone to play with even if, now, they had to go back to the respawn house and start all over again. They had a lot of stuff to kill. They had to find and kill an elder dragon. Sho wanted that egg fair and square, not just because big sis' boyfriend was good at cheating at Minecraft.

That had earned him some cool points in Sho's book.

He liked games. Even ones that started off boring and then got fun later on. Sho liked the ones that started off fun and stayed fun the whole way through. Like Street Fighter. That was fun. So was Mortal Kombat…actually Mortal Kombat was the more fun game because it had blood and the blood was cool. Only in games, though, not in real life. In real life seeing blood during a fight was scary…even if you were watching it through the spaces between your fingers…

Sho really hoped that dad went easy on big sis' new boyfriend.

"If you have to put me out of my misery then so be it." Said Fukuda. He had a lot of worked stacked up and…no. This was for Sho. Besides, it wasn't like Suzuki could fire him. Also this would teach him to delegate work to more than one other person….more than one other adult. Shigeko was becoming more involved in the day to day running of Claw…and Sho had no involvement at all. Good. Sho didn't need all of that on his shoulders. He needed time and space to just be nine.

Soon to be ten.

December first. On December first it would be his birthday and he would be then. The double digits. That was something. It felt like just yesterday he had been able to pick Sho up with one hand. Now he was almost ten. It felt like they had just been sitting there in the old living room and Sho had been trying to teach him how a Wii controller worked and now…well now Sho was teaching him how a keyboard worked. He was starting to feel his age, finally. Forty three. Closer to death than birth…possibly. He had no idea how long he would live for. He hadn't been aging, not as fast as other people, certainly not as fast as Suzuki. His back was starting to kill him. Well that was what he got for hunching over all day.

He wondered who would outlive who.

"I'll make it a quick death." Said Sho. He knew that it was just a game but he didn't want to kill Fukuda at all. He liked Fukuda a lot. He knew that it was just a game, though, so he had no idea why he felt like this. He killed people in games all the time. Maybe because he always played against the computer and stuff. He played against big sis sometimes…well he had before dad decided to give her all the love in the world. So much love that there wasn't any left for Sho at all…but that was ok because he had Fukuda to play with him and stuff. Shimazaki too but they played different games together since they didn't make videogames for people who couldn't see. That was the first thing that Sho was going to change when he ruled the world. Everything in the world would work just as well for people who could see as it did for people who couldn't. Then everyone could play together.

And also he would have a third person to play Minecraft with.

"Thank God you get unlimited lives in this game. Am I right?" asked Fukuda. He wondered if he should show Sho some games that they both could play. Things that were easy to learn and didn't have a very complicated craft system that, of course, Suzuki could remember. He lived for this stuff. Things with rules. It was even better when he was the one who could make the rules. Maybe they should have designed games together. Maybe they should have done literally anything else with their lives than what they had ended up doing. Designing games, building impractical buildings with spires and tunnels and murder holes, getting on the professional kendo circuit, locking themselves away to master the game of Space Invaders, literally anything other than this.

He had too many regrets.

He hadn't been right for a while now and he could feel it. Not since the fiasco with the baby. Just…how Suzuki could do that to Masami and to Sho and to…to himself. How he hadn't had enough sense not to make another human being. There was a human being in the world, now, another piece of Suzuki…and he had just let Fukuda…well taking the baby away had been the best thing to do. He had to think in the best interests of the child and being raised by a nine and ten year old along with the assortment of degenerates that orbited them. No, taking the baby away had been the best thing for everyone…

Even if it had meant hurting Sho.

He had hurt Sho and…and he seemed as ok as he could be right now…it still wasn't ok. Sho wasn't ok. He was getting out of his violent phase but now he had started cursing. Shigeko…he had done wrong by her too. Masami would have hated him for this, for all of this. He hated himself a little bit sometimes. Everything had been out of control since the thing with the baby…or they had been out of control for a while and he just hadn't noticed.

"Yeah. If we only had a few one ups like in Mario the game would have been over already." Said Sho. Big sis and her boyfriend may have played the game in the most boring way possible but at least they didn't get stuck places. He wished that dad hadn't gone into their Minecraft world. He wished that dad made his own Minecraft world all by himself. He wished that dad would just give him back big sis. He wished that dad knew how to break love in half like a churro…or just keep it all to himself.

Love was a lot like the giant churros they had at Disneyland.

Love was meant to be shared. Love was way too big for one person. Sure you could keep it too yourself but what were you going to do with all of that churro besides throw it up on the spinning teacups? No, you had to break love in half and share it…but of course dad wouldn't know what to do with that. He hated love and he hated churros. Well Sho didn't know specifically if he hated churros but he did know that dad hated sweets and also he knew that dad had never liked saying I love you. Not even to mom. So dad must not have liked love either…and he liked big sis so much that he could show her love because he loved her more than he hated love and feelings…and it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that dad loved her so much and…and he needed to stop having jerk thoughts. He needed to stop having jerk thoughts because he was not going to be a jerk. He was not going to be like dad. He was going to be like himself.

"Do you maybe want to play Mario? Or something else? I mean we've been playing this for a while now and I was just thinking that you might have been starting to get, you know, bored." Said Fukuda

"But we aren't even close to killing the dragon yet." Said Sho

"I know but we already have a dragon's egg." Said Fukuda

"Big sis' boyfriend got me that. I want to get one on my own. I'm ten, you know, not a baby." Said Sho

"Boyfriend? So he's…he's her boyfriend?" asked Fukuda. Sho must have been mistaken. Suzuki had been pretty deep into obsession lately. The eyes. Fukuda could always tell by his eyes. He had turned that obsession to Shigeko and there was no way in hell he was going to let her have a nineteen year old boyfriend, or any boyfriend, at ten and a half….and also in this stage of obsession. He knew that maybe he should have done something about this but, well, they had both been a lot more pleasant all wrapped up in each other.

When it started to get worrying then he would step in.

But he knew Suzuki. Either Suzuki would lose interest when something else caught his attention, he had been talking about rebuilding the eighth division and also constructing a ninth….Fukuda just could not imagine what spurred on this flurry of building…so that would take up his time more than Shigeko ever could. He knew how Suzuki could be though…but Shigeko would be fine. She had always been daddy's little girl.

Sho was the one who needed him…though he was concerned when Sho told him that his ten year old sister had a boyfriend.

"She never said anything but he gets her stuff in Minecraft, like he got her a bunch of character skins and stuff, and I know that when you like a girl you're supposed to give her presents until she likes you back. He doesn't have to give her presents, she already likes her, so he should just get her a ring already….an Elsa ring because I got mad and threw hers, the one that sang, and I don't know where it went…and she hasn't noticed yet but I know she'll be sad when she does…but she'll be happy when her boyfriend gets her a ring and marries her and stuff." Said Sho. He liked this guy a lot…and it would be shame that dad was going to beat him up so bad he bled. Dad could be such a jerk sometimes. He didn't get it. He got scaring the guy so that he never even thought about breaking big sis' heart but drawing blood was going too far.

In life it was scary when fights drew blood.

Games were more fun because nobody actually got hurt. Sho decided that he was going to beat up big sis' boyfriend in a game and not in life. That way nobody got hurt for real and he wasn't a jerk. Also he liked this guy a lot. He wasn't a jerk. He was a nice guy and he treated big sis right. He was giving her stuff in games and pretty soon he would be giving her presents in real life too and then their relationship would be great and then they'd get married and have babies and Sho could take care of the babies and he could bring the babies over to play with baby sis so she could have some friends her own age and it would be great.

"Well….you just tell me if she makes it official, ok? So I can…talk…to him…or her. To someone." Said Fukuda. He wasn't exactly president of the Suzuki Shigeko fan club but she was her father's daughter and that meant that Fukuda was going to have to save her from herself. She was her father's daughter and that meant that she would end up making some very questionable life choices…and Fukuda would have to save her from them…even though he couldn't stop her smoking and drinking and whatever else she'd gotten up to…

Or maybe he could just leave this guy to Suzuki's wrath.

"Ok, but don't tell dad because he's just going to beat this guy up until he bleeds and I don't want that to happen to him. He's nice to her and to me…and I want her to be with someone who's nice to her…and not Shimazaki. He's my friend, not her boyfriend, he can't be two things at once." Said Sho

"I can think of two things he is at once…" said Fukuda under his breath. That guy….THAT GUY. What in the hell did Sho and Shigeko see in that guy? He was the worst, most annoying, sort of person. He hoped that Sho wound up meeting a nice boy at some point and Shimazaki became just a childhood crush, a footnote in his life. Sho was too young for any of that, though. He didn't even know anyone his own age….

But that would change.

A lot of people Awakened in their teens. Claw's youngest recruit, if you didn't count Suzuki's children, was Hatori Nozomu when he had been fifteen. Kids presented even earlier, of course, but puberty seemed to be a trigger. Sho would meet people his own age as he got older. He would meet people his own age and make friends and just…lead a better life than the one he led now. One with friends and people who cared about him…and then he would be able to put all of this behind him. His childhood.

It was nice to have high hopes, sometimes.

"What?" asked Sho as he looked up from his laptop. He hated it when Fukuda said things so quietly. Sho wondered why he did that. Shimazaki said that he said mean things about people but Sho knew that couldn't be true. Fukuda was nice all the time. He wasn't a thing like dad. Dad said mean things about people all the time…and so they could hear him, too, because he wanted people to hear the mean things that he said…because he was a jerk like that.

"Don't say his name or you'll summon him." said Fukuda quickly.

"No, he's not here or at home. Someone tried to leave a bomb at our building so he's with the team that's getting information out of him….which sucks because we were supposed to go sock skating today. They long hallway is getting waxed and we were going to have a race." Said Sho. He had been looking forward to that for a whole day now. He was going to win. Shimazaki may have been taller but Sho was more aerodynamic because he was smaller. Also he had more agility because he was young and Shimazaki was old.

"Sho, you know that's dangerous." Said Fukuda pinching the bridge of his nose. He would have to save Sho from himself as well. He was nine, almost ten, and he had the judgement of a nine, almost ten, year old boy. Sock skating was fun and not a great way to end up breaking his leg. Why did they wax the hallways during the day? It just tempted people. He would have to do something about that…if he ever got back to work.

"I know but it doesn't matter. You'll always be here for me. You said so." Said Sho. Fukuda always kept his promises. He promised to always be there for Sho so what if he got hurt sock skating. It wasn't like anyone had ever died from slipping down a hallway that had fresh wax in it.

"You're right…I always will be." Said Fukuda. He would always be there for Sho as best as he could on whatever way he could. Right now that meant keeping him close and shielding him from his father's influence and neglect…and also how his father could get when he was obsessed with something…or someone.

Fukuda did not have the energy to deal with that.

Suzuki had gotten obsessed with Masami, actually, when he had first started seeing her. Fukuda had been there to keep him grounded. To tell him that maybe following her around wasn't the way to her heart. To tell him that maybe telling a woman he had been seeing for less than a month that she was the most perfect person to ever have lived…well she was but that wasn't the point….was not a good idea. He had always been strange when it came to women. He idolized them, worshipped the ground they walked on, but then put kilometers of distance between them emotionally because God forbid even the woman he love know that he was a human being with emotions and wants and needs.

He was so glad that any of that weird stuff that they had done hadn't gone anywhere.

It must have been suffocating to be loved by Suzuki Touichirou. Suffocating was a good word for it. Suffocating was a word that Masami had used. Suffocating and lonely. He had built her a house, a prison, and let her all alone in it with the kids. He had kept himself at a distance but his presence had been everywhere. Masami had told him that. She had told him that one night, one of those few nights they'd had together, while he held her and she just…told him. Told him trapped and crushed she had felt for years….but also how alone…and how when she was with him, there in his apartment, she could finally just breathe….

He was so glad that Suzuki didn't even see him as a friend anymore.

It must have been suffocating to be loved by Shigeko as well. Sho…he saw how Sho was when he loved…or at least felt romantically towards someone. Sho was all nervous energy. Daredevil stunts and stupid games. Running and jumping. Cartwheels and summersaults. He asked for attention, begged for it, but did not trap the subject of his affections near him. Shigeko took after her father when it came to love and romance. She kept the object of her affections near her, closer and closer, even though she was only ten. He wondered what she would be like as a grown woman. He wondered what sort of man she would end up with…well Suzuki would probably pick for her.

If whatever was going on with this guy didn't pan out.

"Hatori! Hey! Fukuda, look, Hatori's here!" said Sho. Fukuda didn't even look up from his laptop. Sho had no idea what he was doing over there. He just knew that it wasn't Minecraft and that he needed to be nice to big sis' boyfriend or he might not like her anymore…and then her heart would be broken. Also Sho had no idea how this guy was a building forts in real life or if he liked animals or drawing or how good he was at sock skating and stuff.

"I sense him. Something you need, Hatori-san?" asked Fukuda. He didn't look up. He needed a moment, just a moment. If this guy was here, the tech department was nowhere near his office, then something was up…hopefully nothing to do with Shigeko.

"Just a paper cut." Said Hatori as he held up his finger. He had an excuse, this guy was almost as short with people as President Suzuki was and he really hated people bothering him maybe even more so than the President himself, so it was best to come in with a reason for being there beside what he had come there for.

He got the feeling that this wouldn't end well for him.

But he had to do what he had to do. She was just a kid and she didn't deserve to end up as messed up as everyone else in Claw. She was such a nice kid…and also he was involved and he couldn't just let anything happen to her. He didn't know what he could do besides talk to the one person who he had it on god authority could actually talk to President Suzuki.

"You seriously came all the way here for that? I don't know what big sis sees in you." Said Sho. Well that settled it. He was beating him up in a game and not in the real world. If he came all the way down to see Fukuda just because of a papercut then, of course, he wouldn't survive being beat up. What a baby. Big sis needed a guy who could take a papercut…and a lot worse, too, since dad was going to beat him up and stuff.

"It's a papercut. But a band aid on it." Said Fukuda. He was not a bottomless well of power. He wasn't Suzuki or Shigeko. He had limits to what he could do and he needed to save his strength for the real emergencies. Not papercuts.

"I actually have something else to talk to you about. Something that concerns Suzuki-sama." Said Hatori. He said so quietly so her little brother couldn't hear.

"Sho, why don't you go do some sock skating before the wax dries?" asked Fukuda. Great. Something about Suzuki. Just what he needed.

"Well if you think it's a good idea…bye!" said Sho. He didn't need to be told twice. It wouldn't be as fun as if he were with Shimazaki but it would have been better than listening to big sis' boyfriend and Fukuda talking about whatever mean thing that dad had done now.

"He's gone. What's this about President Suzuki?" asked Fukuda

"No, about his daughter. About Little Sister-sama….I mean Mob. Shigeko. It's about her and…" said Hatori

"Are you seeing her?" asked Fukuda getting right to the point. If he was seeing Shigeko Fukuda didn't know if he should hide him or take the letter opener on his desk and start stabbing.

"No! What the fuck is wrong with you?! I'm not a lollicon! Just because I hang out with her doesn't mean that I want to…what is wrong with you that you would even think that?!" said Hatori

"Well someone could get the wrong idea. Like President Suzuki. You don't want him to get the wrong idea. Trust me." Said Fukuda evenly. He kept his face and his aura neutral. So then Sho was just being nine and jumping to conclusions. Ok then…that was…a relief. Good. She was ten. She did not need that.

"Wait, he thinks that I'm messing around with his daughter? No. I will take a lie detector test right now. I am not into little girls. I'm into weird stuff, really weird stuff, but not loli weird stuff. Check my search history if you don't believe me!" said Hatori

"I believe you. The President may not but-" said Fukuda

"That's who I wanted to talk to you about. Just…can you talk to him for me? About his daughter? Just…she's really stressing out about the way he's been treating her and it's not good for her. Ok?" asked Hatori. So everyone thought that he was some kind of lollicon and that he was after little girls…people had sick minds if that was what they thought! He would do…something….about that but first of all he needed to talk about what he came here to talk about. Later on he would work on clearing his name.

"The way he's treating her?" asked Fukuda. Compared to how he treated Sho she had it easy…fear crept in. He had never been shy about hitting his children. Shigeko…she was closer to her father than ever before….and that left her vulnerable. Stress was her enemy. Stress and pain and fear. She could…she could send them the way of the Eighth Division…but now…this was the middle of Tokyo, not the desert, and more than seventeen people would die if she exploded…

"He's being….if I can speak freely?" asked Hatori. That was a polite way to say it. He had seen that in a movie. Fukuda ranked highly, very highly, and he couldn't afford to mess this up. He could end up demoted and de-ranked…and also bad stuff could be happening to Little Sister-san.

"You may." Said Fukuda. Well nothing good ever came from people asking to speak freely. This was sure to be something big and massive and complicated that had been dropped on his head. He braced himself.

"He's really creepy and it's really fucking her up. He's not giving her space and he took over her Minecraft and he won't let her see her friends or hang out or….well, ok, he won't let her sleep in his own bed…and I hope that it's just because he has nightmares or something. I mean…not to start implying things but I know that she doesn't want to sleep in the same bed as him and if the kid doesn't like it…." Said Hatori. He knew that one wrong word would get him thrown in a traitor hole. Well he could be subtle and polite and all of that shit.

"That's….something. I don't know what you think that I can do-" said Fukuda. That wasn't good…at all. He knew Suzuki and he knew that his type was motherly brown haired women, not little girls, but still…that was, as Hatori had said, creepy. Creepy and weird and…and that wasn't good for Shigeko. He wasn't happy about the person that she had become but…but he also knew how much worse things could be if Suzuki was stressing her out with that kind of weirdness….stressing her out badly enough to possibly explode….

Fukuda could stop her this time.

He hadn't been able to stop her last time. He hadn't been able to stop any of that insanity. Suzuki had tortured his son until he awakened and his daughter….she exploded. She exploded and…and she didn't even remember…but she would remembered if she exploded this time. He wasn't a fan of the person that she had become. He wasn't a fan of….of a lot of things about her but….but even she did not need to be responsible for killing so many people on accident.

"I heard that you guys were friends from childhood. Just…you know. You can like…tell him he's messing his kid up?" said Hatori. He knew that nobody told the President what to do but Hatori knew that if he had a kid he would want to know if he was messing that kid up terribly…and also he would not be making his kid sleep next to him if the kid didn't want to…and also he really hoped that he hadn't gotten himself a one way ticket to a traitor hole…

Fukuda wasn't saying anything…which was worse than if he had just sent him to a traitor hole…

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention. You are dismissed." Said Fukuda. There. He didn't say if he would do one thing or another. He wasn't going to make any promises. He wasn't going to commit to anything. He needed time to think. He needed time to plan. He needed….he needed to assess how deep into obsession Suzuki was. He was starting to disregard social rules…and his own rules about keeping people at arm's length…

And Shigeko was distressed.

He would do something. He didn't know what but he would do something. Talk to him….figure out what to say, first, of course. He couldn't just start running his mouth at Suzuki. No, that wouldn't work. Suzuki…he was a difficult man to deal with but….Fukuda closed his laptop…but he was no more difficult to play than that game.


	219. Two Laptops, One World

It made more sense to have two computers.

Really the whole thing just made perfect sense. Daughter had wanted more autonomy in their world, their world, so he gave it to her. She wanted to play on her own, she had asked, she wanted to build the things that she wanted to build even if they made no sense. Like her ice mountain. She had built that mountain because it was from that movie she was always watching. Same for the ice castle. Even though when you mined ice blocks you just ended up with water she had still built it. Even though she could have been building Claw bases with him.

He didn't understand her at all.

But that was alright. She had taught him the controls. She had showed him how to play on his own and now he had his own laptop to play on, not his work laptop of course because then people would know what he and his Daughter got up to at night, and now he had autonomy and she had autonomy. They were equals in this world…which was difficult for him but…but if he had to be equals with anyone than it should have been his own Daughter. He was so proud of her. She was so…perfect. He just got this feeling of…of perfection when he was near her.

He cared for her so much.

She was sitting up in bed beside him. She had chosen their nighttime television viewing, the ice queen again, and he let her choose since it made her happy. He would sit through the ice queen film over and over again as long as it made her happy. She was so perfect when she was happy…and that was where his mind went when he was near her. Perfect. Mine. The two words that came to mind when she was near….which she was. Which she always would be. She would always be his and she would always be perfect and she would be perfect because she was his. His and his alone. She was his and she was there and he cared for her so much.

His thoughts had been going to her constantly lately.

It was strange to him. The whole thing was just so strange. The way he had just…allowed himself to just…be this way. Towards her. He told her that he cared for her and…and she knew how he felt…but he still told her how he felt. She let him tell her. There was something good in telling her that, in assuring her that he cared for her, and he didn't understand it. It was frightening, in some ways, being so open about how he felt…

But she enjoyed the affirmations of love and affection.

"Dad?" asked Mob. She was sitting with dad again. They sat together every night before bed and played games together. They used to do this at the kitchen table but then she and dad had ended up staying up all night. Mob told him that she hadn't liked that…so now they hung out in his bed together and played Minecraft until they got tired. That was fine.

It was fine.

She loved her dad and she loved spending time with him. She wanted to be with him because he loved her and she loved him…she just also wanted to sleep in her own bed. She had thought that maybe if she showed dad how to play by himself then he would leave her alone. That hadn't been how it went. Now they played together but he had his own guy and he build his own stuff and she built her own stuff. They had a world together and…and it was ok. She liked this. Sho had a world with Fukuda and he was having fun…so she and dad were having fun.

Even if dad sometimes mined in her area.

"Yes, Daughter?" asked Suzuki. He looked up from the laptop balanced on his lap. Was she tired? Thirsty? Bored? Whatever she was he would do something about it. He would give her whatever she wanted, whatever she needed. Anything to make her happy. That was his job, to provide for her, and he would bring her whatever she needed. Even some sort of gelatin dish.

"Dad, you're mining in my ice mountain." Said Mob as dad started to dig into the side of her ice mountain, again, even though he had said that he would stop before. He did that a lot. He told her that he wanted her to be happy, that he wanted to make her happy, but then he did stuff like this. She told him how to make her happy, letting her spend time with her friends and stuff like that, and he didn't listen. Well he did and he didn't. She wanted to be able to go and hang out with people but dad said that he had to be near to her…that she had to be near to him…

All the time….even in Minecraft.

"I know." Said Suzuki. He wasn't hurting it, not really. He just needed to get to the space underneath. She would understand. Sometimes the end justified the means. This was one of those times. He needed to obsidian vein under her mountain. She would fix it again. She had figured out how to get ice blocks and she hoarded them even though they had no value. He didn't understand her sometimes.

But he tried to.

That was why he stayed to the edge of her mountain. She could always rebuild it. He needed to dig just a little bit underneath it. She would allow him this. She was very good at making compromises. In their world and in the real world she was always making compromises. She wanted to see her friends, he told her not to leave HQ. She wanted to take a walk, she couldn't leave his range. She understood that she had to be at his side and he understood that she had things that she wanted to do in her life and people she wanted to see.

Just like in their game he gave her a measure of autonomy.

"You said that you wouldn't do that anymore." Said Mob

"You're sitting on a massive obsidian vein." Said Suzuki

"But you have a lot of obsidian already." Said Mob

"I need more." Said Suzuki

"What are you building?" asked Mob

"Another fortress." Said Suzuki

"But you already have a lot of them." Said Mob

"And you have many castles. I give you autonomy in our world and you give me autonomy in our world. Here we are equals." Said Suzuki. He needed to tell her that they were equals here so she would understand. He couldn't just expect her to know things. He had always hated that when he had been her age, being expected to just know things, and even at his age he hated it. Masami was always expecting him to just understand things. Daughter was not like her mother in that way. She was so like her mother but she was also so…not like her mother. She was…not better but…but different. Enough like Masami to bring her to mind but enough like herself to make her perfect in her own way. She was so perfect.

He loved her so much.

The thought comes to his mind. She was perfect and he loved her. He loved her and she was perfect. His mind is stuck on those two phrases. He doesn't like it, when his thoughts got stuck like that, but…but he also liked it because she would never think less of him for feeling like this. She had said so many times that she would never think less of him when he felt like this…

There was security in that.

"Ok…but can you dig under my mountain? I just got it just like in the movie and it was hard and took a long time." Said Mob. Even when she built things, her own things on her own side of the world, dad still came and did his thing. It was hard to feel like her things were her things when dad was there digging them up. He was always in her life. He was in every single part of her life and…and she loved him and dads were supposed to be in your life…and…and she just…she didn't know. She loved her dad. That was all she knew. She told herself all the time that she loved her dad.

When you loved someone you let them do whatever they wanted to you…because they loved you.

Like how Sho used to hit her a lot but he still loved her. Sho loved her no matter what and he hadn't mean to hurt her, he just lost control, and that was ok. Dad loved her no matter what and he didn't mean to make her feel suffocated. That was just…how he showed love. By being in every single part of her life until she couldn't even turn without seeing dad there or feeling his aura…

At least he still left her alone to vape.

Minegishi had asked her not to smoke but vaping wasn't smoking so it was ok. Vaping let her make sure that her powers listened and that she could sit there with dad night after night with getting upset. Even if sometimes her brain felt foggy and also she didn't smell good at all. Sho had smelled her the other night and thought that she had been trying to kill him. She would never do anything like that. She loved him so much…

She hoped that he never took up vaping.

Minegishi had told her that once you started smoking and drinking it was hard to stop. She knew what they meant. These past few weeks she had been wanting a cigarette more than ever. Drinking was good but she overdid it too much and dad noticed and got worried that she was sick and stuff…and also vaping as easier to hide. She just told dad that she was taking a walk and then she went, vaped, and came back. She felt better afterwards, like all the things that worried her were just gone. They weren't gone, though, but she could ignore them for a little bit.

Dad was still smothering her, suffocating her, and…and that as just what his love was like.

"I can do that." said Suzuki. He would give in to her. There. The autonomy that she had been asking for. The compromises that she was so good at making with him. All of that was right there in that exchange…the most fluid exchange he had ever had with someone who he considered to be his near equal ever. It had never been like that with Masami. It was so much better with Daughter. She made her needs known and then he met them as best as he could. There. Simple. Perfect. Like her.

"Thanks, dad." Said Mob with a yawn. She couldn't help it, it was just kind of late. Not like that terrible time when he had made her stay up all night, it was only eleven twenty one, but that was still pretty late. They weren't going to be pulling any more all night gaming sessions though. That was why they did this in bed now instead of at the kitchen table. "

"Are you feeling tired, Daughter?" asked Suzuki. If she was tired, she had just yawned after all, then they would go to sleep even though he wanted to keep on playing. He would give in to what she wanted. Nobody could see him now. Nobody could see how he was with her. It was…so simple but…so profound. He could breathe when he was around her. Weak. He could be weak when he was around her…and he hated himself for his weakness…but not as much as he had before. Not as much as he had with Masami. She had expected so much more from him. He had never been able to understand what it was that she even wanted from him. Daughter…things were so much simpler with Daughter…and he could give in to her with much less guilt…less shame…because she would not make him feel like that….because she had said that she, in fact, wanted this from him…for some reason.

He didn't care the reason. He would make her happy.

"No, not yet. I want to go to bed after Frozen is over. I don't want to stay up all night but I want to see the end of Frozen." Said Mob

"Understood. I can do that." Said Suzuki even though he had seen this movie a thousand and one times. He would sit through this for her. Out of everything that she liked this was one of the more tolerable movies…though he had trouble understanding what it was that she saw in this. The animation was amazing, the whole thing was done on computers but it flowed so realistically, but the story just made no sense. Why weren't the king and queen proud of the ice queen? She was a prodigy. They had a child with powers and one without, the one with powers was even their heir, but they for some reason but their child without powers, their spare, ahead of their powerful heir.

That part made no sense.

He could understand her struggle with control, though. The thing with the gloves. He wished that it could have been so simple in the real world, just put on a pair of gloves and control your powers, but it wasn't. In life he had to constantly conceal his emotions…aside from now. Now he could let it go…to a degree. The bed they were on hovered now, he felt good, and occasionally the light above them would flicker. He would stop these things, these small loses of control, as soon as he felt himself losing control…and Daughter said nothing towards it.

She should have.

But she didn't. She was very accepting. She was like the ice queen when she came down from the mountain and thawed her sister out. Her control was amazing. Even now. She was so happy but she wasn't losing control at all. She had let it go, maybe, and maybe that was why she did so well. Maybe why Son did so well too…though he was not on his and Daughter's level. Maybe he should take a page out of Daughter's book and….

And maybe he had been watching too many children's movies.

"Dad?" asked Mob. She could feel his aura. She knew that he was happy. Sometimes he messed with the lights and made the bed float on accident, too, like now. It hit the ground when she said his name. She was glad that it had happened when she had been awake. Sometimes he did that in his sleep and it was kind of scary waking up to that and stuff. But she wasn't going to ask him about that, him being happy, no.

She was going to ask him for something.

She asked him for things all the time and she mostly got what she asked for. He was her dad and he said that his job was to provide for her, which meant give her whatever she wanted, because that was what love was. Giving someone whatever they wanted. She couldn't leave his side, though, because he also had to keep her safe…even though she would just be with her friends and, of course, her friends would always be there to keep her safe and stuff.

"Yes Daughter? Did you change your mind?" asked Suzuki. He would ask her if she could fast forward to the part with the song they liked…or rewind, actually, because they had passed it already. Then they could go to bed…and also after he finished this last turret. Then they could go to bed. Also after he finished just one more thing after that. The tunnel network was still incomplete and he could not have that at all.

"Can I hang out with my friends tomorrow? In Tokyo, I mean." Said Mob. She wanted to pick something nice out for Shimazaki's birthday and she wanted to do it herself. She wanted to get him a bunch of his favorite things. Like a whole bunch of original cokes and some of that double chocolate pudding he liked and also some candles to chew on, the long dinner ones, and also a new black shirt because his got ruined in a fight and he liked that kind because it was all cotton and felt nice against his skin, and also she would get him some of that cologne he was always wearing too because he would really like that. She would put brail labels on everything so he knew what it all was right away and he would be so happy.

Because it was his birthday and those were important.

"The HQ is in Tokyo." Said Suzuki. He knew what she meant and he was not going to let her out of his range like that. There were hundreds of trains going in and out of Tokyo. She could get on one of those and leave…not of her own free will…someone could-could take her! Yes, that was it. He was not worried about his Daughter leaving because she was his Daughter and he loved her. He was worried about…about someone taking her from him…because she would never leave him…

He told her at least once a day that he loved her and he spent all the time that he could with her. He provided for her and kept her safe. He even watched the ice queen with her. She had no reason to leave him.

"Yes but…I want to go out into the city…if that's ok." Said Mob. She had hoped that he would have said yes because he was happy…clearly she had been way too hopeful. If he said no again she would drop the subject. No sense in getting him all upset before bed. He needed to calm down before bed, like how Sho had to have an hour of drawing time before bed, or else he would be poking her aura and stuff all night. Also he sometimes had trouble sleeping and she would wake up to him watching her sleep and stuff. She wished that he would have just let her go to her own bed so he could watch TV or something but no, he would rather just stare at her while she slept….which made no sense but this was dad and he never made a lot of sense to begin with.

"No. It isn't. Stay in the HQ. If you need something send people out to get it for you. Money is not a concern. Send the Awakened out for anything. Even some sort of gelatin dish. I know how you like that dancing, sugary, slime." Said Suzuki. He loved her, he cared for her, and that was why he had to keep her close. He had taken Masami for granted and let distance form between them. He hadn't realized what it was to be near her, what a gift it was to be able to see her and feel her and hold her, but he would not make that mistake with his Daughter.

"I…yes dad, I understand." Said Mob. Well she had tried. That was good, at least, even though her trying and wishing and hoping had done nothing at all to change the outcome. She had still gotten a 'no' and…and this was just her life now. That was all. At least she still got to see her friends at HQ and also sometimes she could go next door when dad was in the bath and Sho was at Fukuda's house…so that was ok.

Really, it was ok.

"Good. I'm glad that you understand. Now can you make the movie go backwards until she's singing the song she sings on the mountain? I rather enjoy that one." said Suzuki. There. They had compromised. She wanted something, he gave her an alternative, and she took it. She had autonomy and he could look after her. There. It was perfect. Things were so perfect between them that he wished that there was some way to preserve this, their relationship as it was in this state, forever.

This was perfect and she was perfect and it was such a gift to be near her.

He stopped what he was doing and just watched her. She mouthed the words of the song as they were sung. She so enjoyed that song and so did he. This film was a technical marvel. When he took over the world he was going to force the Disney Company to make one of these movies every single year for Daughter…and they would be made to her specifications. There would be more songs for her to enjoy and more scenes of the snow because it was so well animated and also there would be more dresses from the movie for her to wear, she must have been getting tired of the blue dress that she was constantly wearing, and also there would be more dolls for her to play with…and also there would be a Japanese character too, modeled after her, but he wouldn't tell her about that. No, let her be surprised that there was finally someone like her, there, too. That way she could live out her princess fantasies vicariously.

Even thought she was a princess.

She was a princess and she was his princess. If her brother died then she would inherit the Earth…though hopefully Son wouldn't prematurely die doing something idiotic…but if something happened to him then she would rule the world. The two of them would rule the real world together just as they ruled the world of their game together. Side by side. Together. It would be so wonderful….

He would make her so happy and she would make him so happy…just as they were now side by side with their separate computers creating a better world together.

Father and Daughter.


	220. Possibly Getting Through to You

Fukuda knew those eyes.

It was never a good thing when Suzuki's eyes got like that. When his pupils disappeared like that. Sho got that look sometimes too, when he was concentrating hard on a drawing, but never to the extent that his father did. Shigeko's eyes were normal. She seemed normal if a bit…he let his aura run over hers….well someone had been up to something that she shouldn't have…though Fukuda could not blame her since she had Suzuki's full attention….

Nobody ever wanted that.

Fukuda knew that look well. He was into something and that something was her. Not in the way that Hatori implied, he knew Suzuki and he knew that he would never even dream of anything like….that, but he knew that Suzuki had latched his attentions towards his Daughter. This would pass. He had been this close to Masami at first too but then he had, eventually, gone back to neglecting her. He'd been like that about Sho for a bit too when he had been born. Standing vigil above his crib and repeating, over and over again, 'inhale' and 'exhale' and then when Sho started to breath more slowly waking in because he could have spontaneously died….

Yeah, Fukuda needed to step in for the good of everyone.

"Fukuda." Said Suzuki. He had felt the man long before he saw him. He wondered what this could be. He hoped that it didn't have to do with the amount of work that he had let pile up. He so hated procrastinating but he and Daughter had been enjoying a lot of time together lately. It was a bit like when he had first met Masami. When he had met her, when they had begun their relationship, he had been able to think of nothing other than her. Her, her, and always her. He had let his work pile up in favor of being near her or speaking to her or just thinking about her. She was just so…her.

Fascinating.

Daughter was fascinating as well. The game they enjoyed together, him purely because he could more easily create designs for bases and HQs of course, the movies she watched that weren't the ice queen, the little stories she would tell, all of it. He just…loved being near her. He loved her. He was not happy to admit it to himself but he also sort of….was. There was a freedom to it, being able to just let it go, like the song said. When he was around her he had such contradictory emotions. On the one hand he hated being weak and showing weakness….but on the other hand in finally showing her that weakness that he hated he felt like a man with nothing to lose…and that felt good. Like he could just let it go….

He NEEDED to introduce her to some other movies. Literally any other movies. The ice queen movie was starting to seep into his mind.

"President Suzuki. Miss Suzuki." Said Fukuda politely. Always politely. He was polite and gave nothing away as his eyes scanned the room. Shigeko was sitting there sharing space on her father's desk. Suzuki did not share. The fact that he was sharing with her, his desk, coupled with the other information that he had gotten…well he worried just a bit.

Also he didn't like the look of either of their auras.

Suzuki wasn't anywhere near an explosion, which was good, but his aura was a lot more active than normal. That wasn't good. Suzuki had gotten to this point in his life by having total and complete control over his powers. Fukuda had seen firsthand what Suzuki could do if he lost control. Shigeko, too, though as of now her aura was artificially calm. He knew why. She had taken up several bad habits that a girl her age should not have even known existed….and for once he did not fully blame her. Suzuki had been…off…for a while now…

And it culminated in this.

"Hi Fukuda. Are you here to sign Shimazaki's birthday card too?" asked Mob. Sho had drawn him a card for his birthday. It was a picture of a dog and he had pressed really hard so Shimazaki could figure out what it was. Mob had a brail label maker and she had written the happy birthday message inside…though she had no idea what it actually said since she had just gone off what the internet had said had been right. She couldn't go and ask Shimazaki what it said because then his birthday surprise would be ruined and he'd be bored and he hated being bored.

It was important to think about your friends.

And it was important to think about your dad, too. That was why she hadn't gone into Tokyo even though she wanted to. She just kept on sending Awakened out until they got it right. She wanted to go off into Tokyo, she needed more manga, but this was ok. She was with dad now and dad needed her because…well she didn't know. All she knew was that she had always wanted dad to be nice to her and to tell her that he loved her and now he was and…and it was like Princess and the Frog rules. She got what she wanted but she lost what she had.

But that was ok because dad needed her.

"No thanks. I'm actually here to talk to your dad." Said Fukuda. He glanced down at the card. Sho's work. It looked like he had just pressed down as hard as he could to draw that dog. Fukuda had no idea what the brail labels said. It looked like those were Shigeko's doing. She had been playing with a label marker. It was nice to see her acting like a ten year old for once.

"Yes?" asked Suzuki. He had to get done with this work so he could get back to the world he and Daughter had made. They had found some red power stones and they could use those and the gold that they had found to make powered rails which in turn could revolutionize the way they moved about their world. The possibilities were endless, well they would be, once he and Daughter finished up this work and went to work on their rail system.

Purely for the purposes of designing possible Claw bases and such, of course.

"Are the Awakened fighting again?" asked Mob. She wanted to go and stop them from fighting…well not really because they were always so weird when it came to talking to her…but she did want an excuse to get out of this office. She loved her dad, she really did, and she had wanted to spend time with him and share interests with him for her entire life….and she had always wanted his love but too much of his love could be kind of…scary.

"You know, I can't really tell with those guys anymore. They might be fighting or they might just be playing. Those guys are a mystery to me." Said Fukuda. He gave nothing away. That was bate that he dangled in front of her. She liked being liked by the Awakened. She didn't rule through fear like her father did, no, she had her own little cult of personality going on…and it did no good at all to have a cult within a cult….but he was going to deal with one thing at a time. First he had to gauge what stage of obsession Suzuki was in and then he had to subtly plant the seeds to get him out of that obsession. Shigeko could not deal with the full force of obsessed Suzuki. Nobody could but it was especially dangerous to her, and to everyone else, if she ended up getting too stressed and exploding.

So of course Fukuda had to step in.

"I should go see. I'll be back, dad, I won't go far." Said Mob as she got up. She could feel a big group of them all together in one place….which could have been good or bad. She'd see what they were doing and then take the opportunity to visit Hatori. He was still her friend even if he would never like her the way she liked him. She could still be near him and talk to him and think about him and…and stuff like that. That was all ok even though he would never like her back. Maybe it was even better if he didn't like her back. Dad would just end up beating him up and stuff if he ever ended up liking her back.

"See to it that you don't." said Suzuki. She wasn't leaving the building. He could trust her not to leave the building. He would have felt better with her at his side but…but he had no reason not to let her go. If he told her that she was never allowed to leave his side for any reason whatsoever then that would just be giving her far too much power over him. He had just now started to be able to tell her regularly that he loved her. He wasn't going to tell her that every time she was out of his sight he remembered those days when Masami would leave his sight and just…leave…and how one day she just left and never came back….

He wasn't insane enough to give his ten year old daughter that sort of power over him.

But he had ended up giving her a lot of power over him. She had asked for that power and he had given it…because he trusted her. She was trustworthy. She was his Daughter. She was Masami's Daughter. He trusted her. She…she was a part of him even if she wasn't. She was a part of him and she was also his. She would not leave him or betray him…but he had thought the same of Masami….but she was not Masami…

The whole thing left him feeling all mixed up inside…and these emotions were very difficult to exorcise.

Watching her walk away…there was a pain there that left him aching. The wound was agitated, the one that Masami had left him with, and he didn't know why. Masami was gone and he accepted it. He knew his Daughter and he knew that she would never leave him. She was his in way that Masami had never been. Daughter was only ten years old and did not have the means to leave him…though she would be eleven in half a year…and then twelve and so on and so forth. But she was…she had no reason to leave. He gave her everything she asked for. Affirmations of love and affection, a measure of autonomy in her life, all the material possessions she could even want, and he had even recognized her achievements in the domestic sphere and gave her total and complete power over raising her brother.

She had no reason to want to leave.

Everything that she could ever ask for he could and would give her. She could just never leave him but why would she ever want to? He wished that he could have given her a world like the one which existed within the boundary of their computer. One in which they could create and destroy as they saw fit. One in which she could be his equal but it ultimately would not matter if she became his equal since the world was not one of flesh and bones and aura and life but ones and zeros, yes or no decisions, that came together to create a world where creation and destruction were possible at the click of a mouse. The world of their creation came so much easier, control over it did, than the world of their existence. He wanted to give her this world, too. He wanted to give her this world and every world because she deserved it, she was right to ask it, because she was his Daughter.

Once they, once he had, the world then he would never have to worry about her leaving again.

There would be nowhere for her to go since it would be his world. Right now his world, the boundary of it, did not go past this building. So that was where she could be allowed to roam freely. The world outside of this building was too large. She could find herself on a path he did not know on a journey out of his life…and he would not know that he had lost her until she was gone…

But he would never lose her. Not if he kept her at his side where she belonged.

"Suzuki, can we talk?" asked Fukuda after he made sure that Shigeko's aura was far enough away that she wouldn't overhear anything and try to interject.

"About what?" asked Suzuki. He went through everything that Fukuda could want to talk to him about. Son had injured himself again, the Seventh Division continued to disappoint, another riot over desserts had broken out, literally anything…but something serious enough to warrant an in person and in the middle of the day visit from Fukuda.

"Just some concerns I've been having lately. About Shigeko." Said Fukuda. Suzuki's pupils somehow got even smaller. His aura flared out. Fukuda remained calm.

"What about Daughter?" asked Suzuki. A painful feeling gripped him. The same one that had made him think that Daughter had spontaneously died a few nights ago. Fukuda was a healer and he healed the children when something was wrong and therefore something was wrong with Daughter…one half of his mind told him that. The other half told him that he had just seen her a moment ago and, aside from being somewhat spacey, she had been fine…but she had been very spacey lately…but she was a child and that was how children were…but he had been a child and he had never just lost his train of thought in the middle of a conversation or gone off on very long rambling tangents that went nowhere….

"She seems like she's been stressed lately. You seem like you've been stressed lately too. I was just wondering what was wrong. Work's been piling up, too." Said Fukuda. A place of concern. That was it. He was concerned for the Suzuki family because he believed in all of this insanity. That was a good angle. Suzuki would understand that angle.

"I've been fine and Daughter has been fine. Better than fine. We've actually been doing very well." Said Suzuki. He and Daughter had a very good relationship going. He had thought that things would become more difficult as she got older but they had actually gotten better. She was growing into a woman but she was easier to understand than any woman he had ever known. She said what she meant, meant what she said, and he was even willing to compromise with her when she needed something that he could not give. He was also giving more than he ever had before and she was not taking it for granted, expressing disappointment in him, or pushing for any more. Things were wonderful and perfect and she was wonderful and perfect…just like her mother….

"I'm glad to hear it. She just seemed a little stressed out is all. But then again I don't see her very often these days. Nobody does. Not even her brother." Said Fukuda

"She and I have been busy." Said Suzuki

"With work?" asked Fukuda

"Parent to child bonding. It's important." Said Suzuki. There. There was nothing wrong with building a good bond with his Daughter. He had to bond with her, she was his child, and if he didn't bond with her then she would never be able to form healthy attachments in her adulthood and she would never marry or bear children…and as terrible and as terrifying as the thought of some man taking away his daughter is Suzuki knows that the world needs more espers in it…though if she never married and just had children with some other esper but stayed right where she belonged by his side then that would have been just fine.

"Yes, most definitely…but Sho's been feeling a little left out." Said Fukuda

"He's fine. He has his own things going on." Said Suzuki. Truth be told he had no idea what it was that Son had been getting up to lately. If anything serious was happening to the boy someone would have informed him. Most likely Daughter. She cared for her brother immensely just like Masami had.

"Different from what you and Shigeko have going on?" asked Fukuda

"Yes." said Suzuki. He didn't elaborate. He had no idea what Son had been getting up to and unless he was doing something to undermine Claw then Suzuki really didn't care.

"Sho says that you two have been spending a lot of time together lately. He also says that you took over his Minecraft world…that you and Shigeko did..." Said Fukuda. Yup. He knew those eyes. Those were the crazy eyes. Those were the 'send Fukuda out in the snow to figure out some poor girl who's caught his attention's shoe size by measuring her footprints' eyes. Those were the 'fill several spiral bound notebooks with every possible combination of kendo moves and their counters' eyes. Those were the 'just heard that being gay was a thing in health class better make out with my best friend to figure it out' eyes. Those were the 'just got space invaders for the Atari and have given up eating, sleeping, and bathing' eyes.

Nothing good had ever come of Suzuki having those eyes.

"He wasn't using it." Said Suzuki dismissively. He had seen the things that Son had built. Impractical. He was also the one responsible for all of those holes to nowhere. They had been very inconvenient when putting together the tunnel system, even Daughter had admitted to that, and having Son in their world with them would just be too…much. Daughter would have to focus on caring for him and Son, well, he wasn't good at things like this. Things that required planning and thought. So really it made more sense for it to just be him and Daughter together in this.

"So you and Shigeko have been playing Minecraft together?" asked Fukuda. He could see that. A game with a lot of rules and a complicated crafting system? Suzuki would love that. He wondered, briefly, if he should leave well enough alone. Just leave Suzuki and Shigeko to their game and let Suzuki get obsessed to the point that he drops out of the world…but, no, then it could spill over onto Sho. Also if Suzuki was as obsessed with Shigeko as her friend made it seem then an explosion was inevitable and Fukuda could not let that happen. A lot more than seventeen people would die this time if she were to explode again.

"…she has made me familiar with the game, yes." said Suzuki. He was a grown man. He was not going to admit to playing a children's game. He had to be respected, he could not let himself look like an idiot, and grown men did not stay up late every single night playing games with their children…but maybe it was ok because he was a father and being a father meant spending time with his children to…to make sure that they…they grew up properly. Yes. That was it.

"Yeah, Sho showed me how to play too. I have zero clue what I'm doing but, hey, it makes him happy." Said Fukuda. Truth be told Fukuda was not a fan but it made Sho happy and that was what mattered. He had been, once again, forgotten by his own family…not that Fukuda would ever have let him deal with his father's obsessions on his own. No, he was too young to know how to handle Suzuki when he got like this.

"You've been playing with my Son?" asked Suzuki. He was…he was happy that Son had found a way to amuse himself…and also that he was doing something with his time that did not involve running and jumping and climbing and acting like Suzuki didn't even want to say….but on the other hand that was his Son and…and…well yes, that was his Son but Son could do whatever he wanted.

"Well Sho's been doing most of the playing, honestly. I can barely even make my character walk let alone build anything. I've got all of this iron and-" said Fukuda

"Iron is useful. You can mine any ore with it…any ore but gold, diamond, red stone, and emerald. You have to build the pickaxe first, of course, but that should be easy. Diamond is the best material, though, because that way you can mine obsidian…." Said Suzuki. He's young again, for a moment, just a moment. He's young and his back doesn't hurt and it's sometime in the late 1980s and he's explaining to Fukuda why the ten year old Space Invader's cabinet is that best game ever and how shooting through your own shields is a dumb strategy and that if you could time yourself properly then, of course, you could keep your shields and win. He's called Touichirou again, for a moment, and Fukuda is back to being Tadashi. It's an odd feeling. Not a bad one. Just…melancholic? Wistful? He doesn't know.

"Damn. You could give Sho a run for his money." Said Fukuda. He had been glancing at the clock every few minutes. That had been four minutes and thirteen seconds…which meant that he was getting into the later stage of obsession…which meant that he had been spending a lot of time with Shigeko…which may have been a good or bad thing depending on…on how much of that obsession was tied to her.

"Well Son doesn't have that sort of patience." Said Suzuki. He glanced down at the time. Oh. It had just flown by. He expanded his perception's outwards. Daughter was still in the building. She was surrounded by Awakened. If she wasn't back by the time Fukuda finished up with this social call then he would go and find her. She had been gone for five minutes. That was a long time to be away from him.

"He can be patient when he wants to be. We've been trying to kill this dragon, actually, and he's been pretty focused. I'm pretty useless, though, but I bet that with his sister's help, and yours too since you clearly know what you're doing-" said Fukuda. He was leaving Sho out, that was normal, but Sho was even less of an afterthought to his father now than he usually was. That was…Fukuda stuffed down any anger he felt about that. Sho was actually better off not having to deal with his father when he got like this. Fukuda reminded himself of this. He reminded himself of this and he kept himself calm.

"Daughter and I have our own projects we're working on. Son is fine with your help." Said Suzuki

"What have you two got going on? Must be pretty big." Said Fukuda. Light, friendly, interest. Don't delve too deep too fast or you'll scare him off. He's deep into obsession and when he gets to this point his emotional control starts to slip. So does his grasp of social rules. Peel this away bit by bit like an onion.

"Several potential Claw bases. Now were you concerned about Daughter or is this a social call?" asked Suzuki. Daughter had been gone for a very long time and he needed to bring her back because…because he just did. She was out of his sight where anything could happen to her. Where she could go anywhere and there would be no finding her…even if he sent teams of people then there would be no finding her…and then she could just be gone from his life forever….

"A little of both. I was just worried about Shigeko because she seems like she's been stressed out lately. I was just wondering if anything out of the ordinary's been going on." Said Fukuda. He had over stepped and over played and now Suzuki was starting to close himself off again…which would have been a good thing if Fukuda hadn't known that he was planning on closing himself off with Shigeko. Suzuki had been reaching out for her, for her aura, even though it hadn't even been ten minutes yet. Normally he let her wander wherever she wanted but now…now he was keeping track of her. Keeping her close…

"No. Nothing out of the ordinary has been going on and Daughter has no reason to be stressed. She's been very happy. We both have. I know when she is and is not happy and I act accordingly." Said Suzuki

"How can you tell? I've never been able to get a good read on her." said Fukuda. That last bit…he CARED about how Shigeko felt. He had never cared, before, about anyone's feelings. He had always said that he had no reason to care for others because he was a full and complete person all on his own…but here he was caring about Shigeko's feelings. He had never given a damn about Masami's feelings but he cared about Shigeko's….

Her aura, mainly, and also because she tells me. She tells me when she wants to play and when she wants to rest and when she wants to socialize with her friends, a truly excessive amount in my opinion, and she tells me when she wants to watch the ice queen and when my construction is in her territory and when she needs affection and in what form and frequency and when she wants to go to bed and how much of the bed she needs to be comfortable and-" said Suzuki

"She still sleeps in your bed?" asked Fukuda before he could stop himself. Well her friend had told him but…but hearing it from Suzuki. Masami had always said that sleeping next to him was like sleeping next to a corpse. He slept on his back with his hands folded, which he had done even back when they'd had sleepovers as kids, and he never made an move to cuddle her or hold her while he slept….and she had hated it so much. Suzuki hated sleeping next to other people. Even when they'd had sleepover he'd made Fukuda sleep on the other side of the room. Something about vulnerability or whatever that he had never grown out of…and now he was sharing a bed with Shigeko.

Who was ten years old.

She was ten. That was….well people used to sleep in the same room with their whole families back when his parents….well actually back when his grandparents…had been alive. So it wasn't too weird but…but it also was. Because she was ten and…well if she wanted to sleep next to him then it wasn't so weird but her friend had said that Suzuki was making her sleep next to him…which made no sense because he hated sharing a bed with his wife so why would he want to share one with his Daughter? Also she was ten and…and still clearly a child. She was starting to look a little older, she was getting taller and not that he made a habit of staring at a ten year old girl's chest but she maybe needed to start wearing thicker undershirts or just clothes that weren't costumes…and she was maybe too old to be sharing a bed with her father…because the whole thing was just…weird…

Suzuki Touichirou was a weird guy who had no idea what did and did not constitute normal behaviors.

"Yes. She's good company." Said Suzuki. He did not enjoy being interrupted at all. Also he didn't like the fact that Fukuda had something of a tone there…though it may not have been a bad one since his aura was still as calm as ever. There were too many layers to human speech. Word choice and tone and gestures and body language and all of that…it was just too much. Daughter, well, she was different. She said what she meant and meant what she said and didn't expect him to understand any of those other layers of human communication beyond the meaning of the words she said. She was always so direct and to the point. He loved her for that.

"Does she come to you or do you come to her?" asked Fukuda. He knew Suzuki and he knew that it was not a worst case scenario thing. He just...was really bad at social rules. Also he tended to get very possessive of the things he cared about…and he cared about Shigeko. Ten seemed a little late to be getting all overprotective of her but it was what it was and Fukuda just had to deal with it.

"She used to come to me on occasion but I started bringing her to me. Why does that matter?" asked Suzuki. Was there something there? Fukuda was making that face that he made when Suzuki made some social transgression…but what? What could he have possibly done wrong?

"Well…she's ten. She's ten and that seems a bit…old. To be sleeping with her dad I mean. Most kids have long grown out of that by the time that they're her age." Said Fukuda

"When our parents were young they slept on tatami mats with their entire families. I don't see what's wrong with me sharing a bed with Daughter. She's good company and she enjoys it. She enjoys spending time with me. She's hardly left my side in weeks." Said Suzuki. He hadn't allowed the children to sleep in the bed with him and Masami when they had been small because there just would not have been any room. He had always had his own bed and his own room and could not remember…well vaguely he could remember sleeping in the bed with his parents…but he had been very small…but it didn't matter. His parents had slept on tatami mats with their entire families in the same room. Daughter was not too old to share a bed with him. Besides, she enjoyed it. She enjoyed waking up to someone being there. She enjoyed the warmth of another human being next to her in the night. She enjoyed waking up and seeing him…well she would have If she had been the one who woke up first.

"Yeah, I have been seeing her around the building a lot less. I wonder…." Said Fukuda. He knew how to play this now. Shigeko was losing her freedom and it was stressing her out. She was also having to deal with being the object of her father's obsessions, something that anyone would have found stressful. He knew that he had to play this like he was concerned for her development. Not that he was concerned that she was going to snap one day and blow this place sky high. Suzuki may have hated being told what to do but he also relied on Fukuda to tell him what was and was not ok socially.

And he wanted the best for his Daughter.

"What is there to wonder?" asked Suzuki. He had no idea how to feel. There was something to wonder? If it had been anyone else talking to him like this they would have found themselves on the ground and…and this was Fukuda and he knew a lot about these things. He had always been the expert between the two of them when it came to social things. He was bad at them. He was the worst when it came to socializing and…and Daughter…had he been doing wrong by Daughter?

But how?

He was doing all of the things that a good father was supposed to do. He gave her whatever she wanted and met her needs whenever she voiced them. He enjoyed spending time with her and wanted to keep her by his side at all times. When they were apart he sought her out and when they were together he treasured the gift that it was to be in her company. He would not make the same mistakes with her that he had made with Masami. He had taken Masami, her presence in his life, for granted. He would not do the same for his Daughter.

"If maybe that's what's got her so stressed out." Said Fukuda. He felt like he was playing hopscotch on a minefield. Any little ething could get Suzuki to either shut down or it could end up setting him off. Well Fukuda was going to take his chances. Shigeko was a minefield, or an armed bomb, and being this close to Suzuki all the time…it was not good for her. For her or for anyone.

"What do you mean? Why would she be stressed if she was near me? She should be relaxed when she's near me. I take care of her. I make sure that she's comfortable and happy and I take good care of her and I give her constant affirmations of love and affection. She has no reason to be stressed." Said Suzuki

"Well that's good but…well…she has been pretty independent for a while. It's not good for kids, socially, to go from being independent to dependent. It's a reversal of the natural order of things. I bet that this could be stressful for her. It might even confuse her development." Said Fukuda. He may have overstretched with the last part but that's what Suzuki cares about the most. The kids growing up and serving him, serving Claw, and ultimately ruling the world.

"….she can't leave my side, she can't leave. I won't give her the opportunity…and I won't take her for granted." Said Suzuki. She had been very independent and he knew that in humans as with all other animals children went from being dependent to independent…but he also knew that he could not risk losing her. Maybe she just never needed to be independent. He could take care of her until the day he died…but he would die and leave her alone…and she would have her own children to raise some day…and he had to think of the next generation and all coming generations…but he so cared for her…

"She's ten. Where would she even go? And why would she want to leave you?" said Fukuda. Well that was…not good for anyone. That tone, that aura, those eyes….and also what was going on in his head. Fukuda knew what was going on in his head. So now he cared about Masami. So now he cared that she had left him. Where had this caring been when he had been neglecting her? Where had this caring been when he had abandoned her for weeks or even months at a time? Where had this caring been when he had been sleeping with someone else, unprotected, in Korea? At least he and Masami had been careful. At least Masami hadn't gone and made another human being and-

He forced his aura to stay calm.

"She…she is ten…but she tries to leave. She has people she socializes with and…and she could….but she won't." said Suzuki. Right. He was not with Daughter right now. Daughter was the only person he could be like this with. The only person who wouldn't look down on him…or question him…and he cared for her so much…and he didn't…he didn't think that he was doing anything wrong. She was happy. She was happy with him and he was not doing anything wrong.

"Well, yeah, there's a difference between wanting to be with her friends and wanting to leave you. Come on, she loves you. She's always loved you the most out of everyone and she takes after you, too. It would be a shame if stopped being like you. I mean you don't need anyone. You're a full and complete person on your own." said Fukuda. This was good. Suzuki was thinking. Time to appeal to his warped ideology. That same life philosophy that had been carrying him to hell for all these years.

"I…I am…and I want her to be…but there is nothing wrong with bonding with her. There is nothing wrong with trying to make her happy. There is nothing wrong with succeeding in making her happy. She's so happy. She's the most happy." Said Suzuki

"Hey, I never said that she wasn't. I just seemed that she seemed stressed out. I mean it must be stressful to suddenly have her freedom restricted like this. I mean you've trusted her before to run Claw of all things…but you won't let her sleep in her own bed. Seems like it would be a little confusing for a little girl." Said Fukuda. Maybe he had gone too far before. Time to pull back just a little…or maybe just keep going. He was…Fukuda knew him. He was doubting himself. He always doubted himself when it came to social skills. Good. That gave Fukuda the chance to move in…yes. This was…this was good. This was going in a good direction.

"I…I suppose that it would be…but she's happy. I know that she is happy…" said Suzuki. That was true. He had trusted her to run Claw…well he had never asked her to do so but she had just stepped in. She had stepped in and made a mess but she had also…also made a mess…but she was only ten. She was loyal enough that she had stayed even after he left and she had given up power to him when he came back…and he could trust her…

She was not going to leave…but he couldn't give her the chance…

"Well, yes, she's happy but it's not good for her socially to move backwards like this. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. I mean there's nothing wrong with her being near you if she asks you first and nothing wrong with playing games with her and giving her affirmations of love but, well, she's got to ask for them first. Otherwise you're smothering her and she'll lose all of the independence skills she's been gaining for the past ten years…and also you shouldn't carry her to bed with you. It's not developmentally appropriate for this generation and could actually be detrimental.

"I…she's been happy." Said Suzuki. She was happy and that was what mattered. If she was happy then she would have no reason to leave.

"There's more to loving someone than making them happy. Sometimes you have to do what's best for someone, not what makes them the happiest." Said Fukuda. There. He had him. That was what he needed to hear. Suzuki Touichirou thought that he knew what was best for the whole world so, of course, he would have no problem lording over his daughter…

"I…suppose that there is." Said Suzuki. He loved Daughter so much and he wanted to make her happy…but he also wanted her to grow up and…and he wished that he could freeze her at ten and…and he wanted her to grow up to be useful to him…and he just…he decided to listen to Fukuda. He knew, deep down he knew, that he had been too…too open with Daughter. Open with his emotions and the depth of his feeling towards her…but she liked it…but he was not being the sort of person that he wanted her to grow up to be. He wanted her to be self-reliant. He wanted her to be able to stand on her own two feet and to be able to run Claw…to help run it…and he may have miscalculated. He had factored his own needs into the equation…

And hers.

She asked things of him and he did them. He told her that he loved her and…and he kept her close…and he loved her so much…and she knew it. She knew it and she knew that he had given her that kind of power over him…and he had given her power…and he cared for her…but he also didn't want to miscalculate….

"You can raise your children however you see fit. I just want everything to work out, that's all. You don't have to stop spending time with her but, maybe, just let her be Shigeko…and maybe don't make her sleep next to you. Not unless she comes to you…but that's for a whole different reason." said Fukuda. That last part he had said for his own piece of mind. He knew Suzuki and he knew that Suzuki wasn't like that but also her a gut reaction to that and…and it was just plain weird. That would be the thing that messed Shigeko up. She was already not doing well, those decanters were starting to look a little low again, and she did not need her father making her sleep next to him.

Fukuda wasn't a psychologist but he did know that it couldn't have been good for her.

None of this had been good for her. Suzuki…he knew how Suzuki had been acting towards her and he knew that it could do more damage to her than even the way he treated Sho. She was his favorite child and Sho may have been the male heir and blood son but Suzuki liked Shigeko better…and if he ended up leaving her the world then she needed to come out of her childhood a little more unscathed than she was now…and also if she exploded then the whole thing was a moot point. Yes, that was their biggest concern when it came to Shigeko…

But it looked like that explosion had been avoided.

He knew Suzuki. He knew those eyes. And he knew that he had at least been listening. Whether or not he was actually going to change well…Fukuda had no clue. They could only wait and see.


	221. Sudden Choices, Sudden Changes

Mob didn't know what was going on.

She had come home and her night had gone like normal. She and her family had dinner, she and ho did some school work, she drew Sho a bath, they watched TV, and then she put him to bed. Then she took her bath, like normal, and then dad took his bath. That was normal. That was how their nights usually went. She had thought, from how things had gone, that the rest of the night would be normal. She and dad would sit in his bed and watch TV and play Minecraft until they got tired and went to bed. Then they would sleep and wake up and then they would do it all again. That was life. That was their life together. Their normal, everyday, life.

But then when she went to dad's room with her laptop he decided to be very…not normal.

"I asked you if you wanted to sleep in your own bed." Said dad. Mob knew that he had asked her if she wanted to sleep in her own bed. That was…not normal. He was the one who wanted her to sleep next to him. He was the one that carried her to his bed when she tried to sleep in her own bed. Why was he just asking her now?

"What do you mean?" asked Mob. She knew what the words that he was saying meant, she spoke Japanese, but she didn't know what he was asking her. If it hadn't been dad speaking to her then she would have thought that this was some kind of trick. Dad never played tricks though, he always said what he meant and meant what he said, but the only problem was the Mob had no idea what it was that he even meant.

"Exactly what I said. You've been sleeping next to me every night for the past few weeks. Do you want to sleep in your own bed?" asked dad. Mob knew the answer. Yes. She wanted to sleep in her own bed…for a little bit at least. Was this going to be permanent? Did dad hate her now? Was he mad at her? Why would he just kick her out of bed like this? She had no clue…dad had wanted her to be near him at all time but now…now all of a sudden he wanted her gone….?

"I…don't understand." Said Mob. She knew that dad would get mad at her for not understanding him but…but she needed to understand. She needed to do her best to understand what it was the he even wanted from her. She was just…she had no idea what it was that he even wanted from her right then. To go away? Was this a test? Did he want her to tell him that she wanted to stay? Or did he know that she had been wanting to go back to her own room and now he was trying to test her to see if she would lie to him? But he wouldn't test her….would he? Sometimes he sent people on pointless missions to test their loyalty but this wasn't a mission…and also he didn't need to test her loyalty. She was his Daughter. She was loyal. She would never, ever, ever betray him in a million, billion, trillion years. She loved him and when you loved someone you did not betray them. Ever.

"What don't you understand about what I just said?" asked dad. Mob didn't know where to even start from. She was there, in his door way, and she just wanted nothing more than to climb into bed next to him and…and make this ok. Even though she had been getting tired of Minecraft and tired of sitting next to him all night she still wanted to be there in bed next to him…that was the thing that she most wanted to understand. Her own feelings.

"The part about sleeping in my own bed. You…you want me to sleep next to you, right? Because you still love me and stuff, right?" asked Mob. Had he stopped loving her like he had stopped loving Sho? Well he loved Sho but…but not that much. Not enough to stay up all night playing games with him and watching TV and letting him cuddle up next to him at night and stuff. He loved Sho enough to keep him around and to give him the Earth when he grew up and all of that stuff. He sort of loved Sho…did he sort of love her now, too?

The thought of dad not loving her anymore, even though his love can be so scary, makes her hair try to rise up.

She holds onto her hair with one hand and her laptop with the other. Today they were going to start building their electric rail system. They finally had enough gold and red rocks to make it happen. They were also supposed to watch Mulan because dad liked that movie. He liked the part with the mountain and all of those people died in the snow…and also he called it one of her princess movies even though Mulan wasn't royalty at all but instead she was a normal farmer…..and also he was always making her fast forward or rewind to parts he liked…but she still did like watching movies with him…but now he didn't like watching movies with her anymore….and she had no idea why…or what she even wanted…

She had wanted some space from him for a while now…but now…now she didn't know anymore….

"I asked you what you wanted. Do you want to sleep in your own bed? Yes or no?" asked dad. He was saying words but Mob had no idea what they meant. She knew that he was asking her if she wanted to sleep in her own bed…but she was bad at talking. She was so bad at talking and that was why she didn't understand what it was that dad was telling her…

"Uh….I still don't get it." Said Mob. She knew that dad hated it when she didn't get it but…but he would rather dad be mad at her for not getting it than being mad at her for whatever it was that she had done to make him so mad. Was it because she had stayed with the Awakened to judge their four legged race? Which was just a three legged race but one guy had a broom as a crutch which was dumb and dad hated it when they did dumb stuff and he was always telling her not to encourage them…was that what she had done? Or did he know that she had been vaping fun vapes? Or was it because she was stealing from his fancy bottles in his office again? Or was it because she had snacked on cereal straight out of the box even though he said that it was gross?

She didn't know. She just did not know.

"I'm speaking Japanese. It's a simple question." Said dad. His aura was pointy and she knew that he was upsetting him by not answering his question…but how could she answer his question when she had no idea what it was that he wanted to hear?

"I know that you're speaking Japanese, dad, I just don't understand why you're asking me if I want to sleep in my own bed. Whenever I try to sleep in my own bed you carry me back here. I don't know why you're asking me if I want to sleep in my own bed if you're just going to carry me back here." Said Mob. There. That was to the point. Dad liked it when she was to the point. Dad liked it when she spoke like that, in her normal way of speaking, but now…now his aura was still pointy and his eyes were narrowed like he was mad and not like he was happy being next to her and….and she just wanted this to stop. She wanted this to stop and she could rewind to last night or this afternoon or…or something. She didn't know. She just wanted to go back in time to when things made sense.

Maybe back to being a little kid, then. Everything made more sense back then.

"I won't disturb you if you choose to sleep in your own bed." Said dad. He said that and he meant it, he didn't lie, but she had no idea why he was saying that. Why did he want her gone? She was having trouble keeping her powers together. She hadn't had any fun vape in a while and she hadn't had anything to drink, either. She just…she just…..she just….she just didn't know….and not knowing was really the worst and…and she wished that…that things just made sense and…

Conceal, don't feel. Power is nothing without control.

"Are…are you kicking me out? Did I do something wrong? Is it because I keep on hugging you in my sleep? Because I tried, before, to sleep on my back like you do but it's not that comfortable." Said Mob

"Yes it is." Said dad

"It's comfortable for you but not me…but if I made you mad at me then I can…I can do better." Said Mob. She didn't want to be stuck to dad's side forever but…but she didn't want dad to not like her anymore either. Dad didn't ever do things in half measures, he had said once, and that included loving his kids. You either got all of his love or none of his love…and right now Mob had no idea which one was worse. If she had all of his love then she would have to spend every moment of her life with him and never see her friends and never have a boyfriend or marry Hatori or even hang out with him….or anyone…even her own little brother who would grow up and get married and have his own family and she would never see him again….

But if dad didn't love her then….then he wouldn't love her anymore….

She had never felt more bad for Sho than she did in that moment….and didn't that just make her the worst sort of person? She knew that dad didn't love Sho as much as her and she had known this for her whole life but…but she had never thought about it this much. About how Sho was treated. Not until she knew that it was going to happen to her…and wasn't she just the worst person ever to live? She was so selfish and terrible and no wonder dad didn't like her anymore.

Conceal, don't feel. Power is nothing without control.

"I am not angry at you. I am angry with myself." Said dad. That…now Mob was even more confused. She was even more confused and she just wanted things to go back to how they were before even though she didn't like how things had been and she had bene wanting change…but now…Princess and the Frog rules. She got what she wanted but she lost what she had…but couldn't she have what she wanted and also what she had? Why couldn't dad love her in half measures?

Had she done something?

Had she been a bad daughter and that was why he was mad at himself? Why he was talking his love away? She must have done something…was it because she kept on making ice castles? Was it because she accidentally dug too deep and made lava come up? Was it because she wouldn't let him put turrets and other defenses around her ice palace?

She wished that he would just tell her what she had done and…and how she could fix it. How she could be a good daughter again?

"Why? Maybe I can help-" said Mob. There must have been something that she could do. There must have been some way that she could make him love her again…even if it meant that he would go back to being all…making her feel like she couldn't breathe. She didn't want that. She didn't want to feel like she couldn't breathe, like she was trapped, like there was no way out…she wanted…she wanted dad to love had and she wanted to be able to spend time with her friends and brother…and she wished that it wasn't an either/or thing….

But wishes didn't come true even if you folded a thousand paper cranes.

"You can't. Now what is your answer?" asked dad. Mob could feel tears…and she could see her aura…and she knew that she was just making dad madder…and she wanted to stop…she wanted this whole thing to stop…..and she had no idea how to make it all stop…..but she knew that if she stayed he would just get madder and madder and she would start crying…and he hated crying…

"Um….my own bed….I guess…" said Mob softly. She needed…she had wanted this for so long….but she hadn't wanted to lose dad…but maybe he would ask her to stay and…and then they could go back to normal…but a version of normal where she was allowed to hang out with Sho and her friends and stuff…

"Then go." Said dad. Mob didn't say anything else. She just took her laptop and walked to her room. She knew that if she said something else then she would start to cry. She knew that if she started to cry then dad would never like her again…if he ever liked her again….if he even still liked her now….or if he had stopped liking her and…and he just…she just…she didn't know.

So she went back to her own bed.

She put her laptop down on the floor even though she was always telling Sho never to do that. He was asleep. He had kicked his blankets off. She could see his scars, sort of, in the light coming in from the outside. That was called ambient light. Dad had taught her that. Dad had taught her so many things…and now he would never teach her anything ever again…or maybe not…she didn't know. She did know that she should have been happy, dad was leaving her alone now.

She had wanted this.

She sat down on her bed. She couldn't see the time on the alarm clock. Shimazaki's birthday gift was in front of it. Now she could go and see him tomorrow and give him his birthday gifts and then…then she could hang out with her friends like she had wanted for a while. A long while. She was…she was happy. Now she and Minegishi could hang out again. They could go to Starbucks together even though Minegishi said that the coffee there was consistently mediocre no matter what country they were in…and dad had gotten her coffee so she didn't have to leave him to go spend time with Minegishi…but…but she just didn't know…

She wanted to see her friends.

She didn't want to be alone. She didn't want to be all alone with dad. She didn't want to have dad look at her with his eyes all scary and his aura crushing her and….and too much of his love could be scary…but not having his love at all was just so…sad. Sho…he hardly got any of dad's love…and it must have been so hard for him…and she had thought that she knew how hard it was for him but now that she was faced with being treated the way that he was….she was just so selfish. She was selfish. She loved Sho and she was so selfish.

She loved Sho so much.

She wasn't tired. She wasn't tired and she didn't want to go to bed but…but she didn't want to be alone. She didn't want dad's aura to crush hers and his eyes to get all weird and him to just…keep her by him…but she also didn't want to be alone. She didn't want to be alone and…and she didn't know what she even wanted anymore!

Her hair was floating.

Her laptop floated up off the ground. Her dolls came up from their places in their doll box, they all had their own spots, but now they were mixed up. Sho's drawings were coming up off the walls. A stuffed animal hit her over the head. She took a deep breath and tried to make this stop before she woke Sho up. Waking Sho up would be the worst, the very worst, because he was little and needed his sleep and she had already been selfish enough and…and she didn't want to feel this way…and she didn't want to be alone and…

She reached down in between her mattress and her box spring.

She kept her private stuff there. Some of her mangas, the ones that she liked to read when she was all alone and close her eyes and think about….stuff that she shouldn't have thought about, her vape pen, her fun vape pen, her lighter from when she smoked cigarettes, and a tiny bottle that she had taken from the last time that she had ridden in an airplane. She knew that she shouldn't have had that, she knew that she should have only had a capful like Minegishi had told her, but she also knew that she couldn't lose control of her powers.

Conceal, don't feel. Power is nothing without control.

She drank the whole thing at once. She knew that she was supposed to sip it. Minegishi had always told her to sip it. They said that moderation was important. They said that Mob needed to pace herself. They said…they were such a good friend and she cared so much about them, and she would make it up to them later but…but she had big feelings right now and big feelings meant that she lost control of her powers and…and a power that big came with a bigger expense. Dad said that. Dad said that both of them had to constantly control their feelings because having powers this big came with a bigger expense….

A power that big came with a bigger expense.

Mob hated that. Minegishi said that it was cheap plum wine and that cheap plum wine was terrible. That tasted nothing like plums. It tasted like burning but then again it all tasted like burning to her. That was why she had to mix it in milk and stuff. Minegishi said that mixing was better because it meant that Mob drank less…even though she always ended up drinking more because she couldn't taste it…and she would make it up to Minegishi later, how she had disobeyed them and stuff, but right now she needed to calm down.

Her stomach hurt.

She had drank too fast and now her stomach hurt. It would take some time to feel good, to calm down totally and completely, longer than it had before. Minegishi said that her tolerance was getting better because she was ten now and she had been eight when she had started. That was also why she had to pace herself. She could drink more now without feeling it and Minegishi said that being able to drink a lot was not a good thing…but then Shimazaki said that it was…and the whole thing was contradictory….but she needed to calm down and she would think about this later. She would think about everything later.

She didn't want to think right now.

She felt….dizzy. She liked vaping a lot better than drinking, really, because vaping made her head feel foggy but drinking made her feel dizzy and sometimes sick. Shimazaki said that smoking was better than drinking too but he also said that stuff to drink was easier to get than stuff to smoke. Especially in Japan, he had said. Amsterdam was best, he had said, and Mob wanted to know why but then Minegishi told him to shut up and Mob didn't want to make them fight.

She hated it when people fought.

Had she and dad fought just now? No, he hadn't hit her or pushed her or pulled her hair or anything like that. He hadn't even yelled at her…but she felt like she had been punished. She felt like she had been punished for something and she didn't even know what. Maybe wanted to be away from him. Maybe thinking all the time about how she wanted to be away from him. Maybe always looking for excused to walk through the building to get away from him. She didn't know. She just…she had wanted this…and she still wanted this….she wanted….

She wanted dad to love her but she also wanted to be able to have friends and be a person away from him.

She also didn't want to be alone. She felt dizzy and light, sort of. Her powers had stopped trying to pick everything up and stuff. Sho was still asleep. He was in the deepest part of his sleep. She could tell by the kicked and snoring and drooling. She got up from her bed and immediately fell back down. She had stepped on one of her dolls. It was one of her Elsa dolls, the one that she gave a haircut to so they could match. She needed to go in the box next to haircut Anna and haircut Rapunzel….and she would clean up later. Tomorrow. Right now she needed to get up.

The second time went much better than the first.

She got up and was careful not to step on anything. Not a doll or a drawing or a stuffed animal or a gun dart or a lego, she was especially careful of Sho's legos, until she made it to Sho's bed. His back must have been cold. She pulled his shirt down. He had moved in his sleep and his shirt had ridden up so she fixed it. Now he was ok. Now she could go back to her own bed…but then…then she would be all alone and she didn't….she didn't want that…because a bed with no person in it was a cold bed. That was what dad had said. She had wanted, wished, for so many nights that she could sleep in her own bed…and now that she had what she wanted…

She still wanted it.

She wanted to sleep in her own bed and be with her own friends and have fun on her own and just…just be MOB for once and not DAUGHTER. She had to be DAUGHTER all the time when she was with dad and she…she was so sick of it….but also she wanted him to love her and it was just….too much! This whole thing was too much and if she wasn't so dizzy and stuff then her powers would have been acting up but they weren't and…and that was a good thing and…and she wanted to be in her own bed but she also didn't want to be alone….

She got what she wanted but she lost when she had.

She didn't want to be alone. She wanted…she didn't want to have to be Daughter. Daughter was always with dad and did what he liked when he liked it and always said what he wanted her to say and did what he wanted her to do…like she was his doll or something. But she was not a doll. She was a person and she wanted things too…and now she had the things that she wanted….but she had lost him. He could be ok, sometimes, and…and she didn't know if those times when he acted ok, maybe even nice, outweighed the times when he did not act ok. The times when he did not act like…like he acted all the time….the times when she wanted to be with him…

She didn't want to be alone.

Sho was there. He was there and….and she loved him so much. She loved her little brother so much and…and she had been away from him for so long. They used to be best friends and…and since she had started hanging out with dad they hadn't played together once and…and she wanted to be with him and to play with him…but not play with him because it was in the middle of the night…

She got in bed next to him.

His bed was a one person bed. They used to be able to fit together in a one person bed when they had been little kids. They were big kids now, though, and it was hard to fit in the bed without waking him up. She moved slowly, very slowly, and eased herself into his bed until she was laying down. He kicked her in his sleep. She didn't mind. She reached down and pulled the covers up over them. He loved this Zootopia blanket even though it was old and faded and also there were stains on it from food and stuff. It was nice and warm, though, and it felt nice. This whole thing felt nice. Dad was right, getting into a warm bed was the best. She got as close to Sho as she could without waking him up and closed her eyes.

It was bedtime now.


	222. Learning Important Things from a Friend

There was nothing wrong with teaching a ten year old how to roll a joint.

It was his birthday and on his birthday he could do whatever he wanted to do and what he wanted to do was teach a ten year old how to roll a joint. Mostly because she'd had a bad day and she needed it. See? He could care about someone other than himself once in a while. She'd had a really shitty day and she needed a pick me up and, honestly, better she smoke a joint with him that she had rolled with care with the weed that Toshi had grown with care than smoke crack or shoot up heroin or something. There. He was actually being a responsible adult and teaching her how to ease the pain of living in a way that would not end in her dead or whatever.

Yeah. He was doing a good thing.

"Make sure you break those up really well. Get the stems out but save the seeds. Toshi can make more with those." Said Shimazaki as he bestowed Mob with a very good life skill. This way she could do it herself when she had shitty days like the one that she'd had today. Suzuki could be a real prick sometimes but he was a dad and all dads were pricks. He had actually left her home all alone just like that after he'd spent so much time doing his best to smother her for the past couple of weeks. It would have made sense for her to have been happy but instead he came home after a long day of playing with a nine year old and making sure that nobody put Suzuki out of everyone else's misery to find Toshi and Mob just hanging out watching the let it go movie and Mob's aura looking so sad…

Sadness was boring and it was his birthday and on his birthday he would not be bored.

So he picked her up and carried her to his room and decided to show her how to roll a joint which they would then smoke, because Toshi had a point about the drinking being bad for her, and then she'd feel better and she'd be less boring and then they could do…something. He didn't know what yet. It would come to him later once he'd smoked some. He was smoking more than drinking these days which set a very good example for her.

Toshi worried too much.

"Ok, Shimazaki." Said Mob. Minegishi had been trying to cheer her up all day. It hadn't worked. Not even Frozen could make her feel better. She and dad…she and dad had been hanging out and now they weren't and…and she was happy that she could see her friends again but…but now he was just…gone. He had just kicked her out and…and she didn't feel good. She would feel better soon, though. She had that to look forward to.

"I don't condone this." said Minegishi from their spot on Shimazaki's bed. They were not ashamed to say that they had totally lost control of this situation. She'd had a bad day. The good news was that Minegishi wouldn't have to assassinate Suzuki Touichirou any time soon. The bad news was that instead of doing some self-reflection and then deciding to be a normal human being with normal boundaries with his daughter he instead decided to just up and emotionally abandon her.

"Well you're not stopping it either so….come over here and help?" asked Shimazaki. He spun on his chair so that he was facing Toshi even though he didn't need to be to see them. They were still sitting up there on his bed cross legged with a glass of something that he knew for a fact was not water in their hands. He didn't get what they were so upset about. They were going to smoke together. He was teaching her how to roll a joint, not how to do lines of coke. No, that would come later when she was a couple years older. When had he started? He couldn't remembered. A little older than her. Like twelve or thirteen. Something like that. Some parts of his life could be kind of hazy sometimes.

"Pass." Said Minegishi. There was no way to turn back time to when Mob had been eight and had never even heard of any of this…and Minegishi felt like a hypocrite for even wanting to. They were not going to condemn someone for doing something that they themselves had done. There was no point to it. They had been up to the same thing at ten, well not exactly the same thing but that had not been a good time in their life, and they could not get up on their soap box and tell Mob that she was doing something wrong. Her life was terrible. Her father had just emotionally abandoned her after having spent weeks emotionally enmeshing himself to her. At least Minegishi wouldn't have to kill him now. They didn't want to know what suddenly being orphaned would have done to Mob's fragile emotional state…

And also there was no reason to kill him.

They had asked Mob, well they had come as close to outright asking as they could, if her father had ever been weird with her. Making his daughter share a bed with him and not letting her spend time with other people was very suspicious. Minegishi may have just been seeing certain things everywhere based on their own life experiences but better safe than sorry. They didn't come out and ask Mob straight up because she did not need that in her head, the truth of how terrible some fathers could be to their daughters, along with all of the other shit that was in there. She was weirdly naïve about some things…and a bit too worldly about others…but Minegishi didn't want to shatter her innocence just yet.

Also nothing had happened to it was a moot point anyway.

"It's not done yet. When it is then I can pass it." Said Mob as she frowned down at the pile of sticky green stuff down in front of her. She used her powers to do this. She didn't like the way it stuck to her fingers. The smell stuck to her enough as it was. She brought her fingers up to her face. Yuck. Too strong.

"You're adorable." Said Minegishi as they took another sip of their drink. They needed this. They had enough to deal with in their life…but they also had Mob's shit to deal with too…and that was ok. This was ok and…and also not ok. They were looking at Mob but maybe…maybe they were just seeing themselves. They hadn't liked themselves for so long…they had taken so long to accept themselves…and was that even the same as liking themselves? They didn't know. They were drinking too much again and thinking too much. They were thinking too much but also…also maybe not at all. They didn't know. This whole thing was complicated.

"And a pretty fucking good timesaver, too. Damn." Said Shimazaki. He went into his drawer and felt around for his grinder. The one that Toshi had gotten him for his last birthday when they had seen the state of his. Toshi was thoughtful like that. He was not a difficult man to shop for. Toshi could be difficult too…and they had a birthday coming up next year….yeah. Toshi was the best gift giver ever. A whole jar not only of their perfect blend but also another jar of those flowers that made you see heaven and hell…Toshi was awesome.

And he had no idea what their problem was with this.

Their aura was focused on the kid's. He had no clue what Toshi was so worried about. They were not ruining Mob's life. If anything they were saving it. He knew how terrible life could be when you were little and at the mercy of an asshole. Toshi knew what it was like, too. Why stop Mob from being able to just get away from that for a little bit? Why not let her make her life just a little bit more pleasant? Especially since she was Suzuki's kid. Suzuki seemed hell bent on ruining that kid's life…both of his kid's lives…

Well that was ok. Shimazaki was there.

Those kids would end up inherit this thing and he could not wait. Hopefully it was Mob. She was fun now at ten and she would be even more fun when her dad either stepped down or died, whichever came first. They were going to go partying around the world first thing when she came into power. He knew that best spots. They were going to have so much fun when she grew up!

And now, too.

"Can we smoke this now?" asked Mob. She felt better being with her friends. She still felt all empty and achy and just…confused because she spent so long wanting to be with her friends but now that she was with her friends she wanted…she sort of wanted to be with her dad. She sort of wanted to be there next to him and just…and she just did not know. She also sort of wanted to hang out with Sho, too, but she also didn't because he was hanging out with Fukuda and she knew that she wasn't invited because Fukuda didn't like her that much anymore.

Dad didn't like her that much anymore either.

She wished that he would have just told her what she had done wrong so she could fix it…but she also wanted to spend time with her friends. She loved her friends and she had wanted this for so long…and also it was Shimazaki's birthday and she should have been happy for him. He was another year older and he was her friend and…and she should have been happy for him but she just had this sad feeling inside…

And she didn't want to have this sad feeling inside of herself anymore.

"Not yet, we have to grind it up now. Here, see? Put it in here and just….grind." said Shimazaki. He could feel her eyes on him. Good. She was learning. He'd had to figure a lot of this stuff out on his own when he had been her age. She was so lucky to have him. She was lucky to be away from her dad, too, even though she felt like crap for some reason. She couldn't have fun, proper fun, if she was right there under his thumb.

Really she was much better off now.

"Oh. This is really pretty. I didn't know that you liked Sailor Moon." Said Mob as she watched him grind up the sticky green stuff that she had been pulling apart. The room smelled really skunky now. It smelled a lot better when it was on fire.

"This is a Sailor Moon grinder?" asked Shimazaki. He could feel Toshi shrug behind him. They were smiling now just a little bit. Their aura hiccupped a bit when they smiled. Kind of like a high pitched hiccupping sound. It was kind of cute. Not that Toshi would ever know that he had applied that word to them. Even though they could be cute sometimes. They could be a lot of things sometimes. They had it going on and 'it' was everything that was…everything. They had it all going on.

And if they wanted to sleep with some Cheeto dusted Lynx smelling teenage kid then that was their business.

He didn't care what they did and who they did it with. They could go out and bring half of Tokyo home. He wouldn't care. He might actually jump in if they let him. That wasn't what had bothered him. What had bothered him was the fact that he had actual feelings for Toshi…maybe. That damn kid. He had the nerve to want to be 'friends' with Toshi like…like nobody knew what he meant…and like Toshi would ever have agreed to….

He ground faster.

This was his birthday and he was not going to think about this. He had no reason to think about this. He and Toshi had a good thing going on and he was not going to ruin this. Not that he even knew what he was even going to do. Neither of them did the relationship thing. Toshi didn't believe in it and he was incapable of it. So there was no reason for him to get himself all twisted up over some kid. So he wouldn't. God, he hated it when he got like this.

So he decided not to be like this.

"Yes. Is there a problem with that?" asked Minegishi

"No, not at all. It's actually pretty good." Said Shimazaki

"It's for girls. That's what Minegishi meant, they meant that they thought that you might not have liked it because it's for girls and you're a boy….at least that's what I think that they meant." Said Mob. She might have been wrong. She was kind of bad at this whole talking thing.

"Mob, how many times do I have to tell you? There are no such things as boy things or girl things. They're all just things." Said Minegishi

"Oh. Sorry. I forgot. In my house there were always boy things and girl things. Your house is different." Said Mob

"It's not about houses it's about….I've been drinking too much to explain this to you in any coherent way. Shimazaki, that's ground up enough. Just show her how to roll the damn joint already." Said Minegishi

"So I take it that you've stopped disapproving." Said Shimazaki

"No, I can just acknowledge when I've lost control of a situation. Besides…she's had a bad day…she's hard it rough lately. So just show her how to roll the damn thing." Said Minegishi

"Are you upset with me? Because if you are then I can stop…" said Mob even though she didn't want to stop. She wanted to stop feeling how she felt. She also didn't want another person to be mad at her. She already had dad mad at her…so mad that he had just gotten rid of her…and she didn't want Minegishi to be mad at her too….because that would have just been…terrible. Just the worst and…and stuff.

"Don't get upset at her. Get upset at me. I can take it." Said Shimazaki. Toshi was at best mildly pissed off…but that was normal for Toshi. Still, though, Mob didn't need to end up being upset. Not on his birthday. It was his birthday and that meant that he could decide who was and was not upset and he decided that she was not allowed to be upset on his birthday.

"Mob…I'm not mad at you. Never at you." Said Minegishi. That was the last thing that Mob could have needed. Thinking that someone else was upset with her. She took it too deeply. She took everything too deeply. Even the way that her crazy shithead father treated her.

"Oh. Are you mad at Shimazaki? Because it's his birthday and…and maybe because it's his birthday you can be mad at him tomorrow…and stuff. Not that I can tell you when to be mad. I just…I don't like it when people are mad." Said Mob

"Mob, I'm not mad. Well, ok, I'll admit that I'm always slightly pissed off but I'm not actually mad and if I was I would never be mad at you." Said Minegishi

"No…no matter what?" asked Mob. She had done something wrong and she didn't know what. She wished that dad would have just told her so she could fix it. What was the 'what' that she had done to him? She had no idea. She wished that dad would just tell her already…but he wouldn't. He had just gone to work and told her to stay home and he hadn't even said anything to her or looked at her when she got home…and it was hard.

"Of course no matter what." Said Minegishi. Maybe they did see themselves when they looked at her. Maybe they saw a kid who needed someone to be there for them and other such sappy clichéd things. They didn't know. All they knew was that they had drank too much and they needed to smoke something because otherwise they were going to keep on drinking and if they didn't get to drinking or smoking they would start up with the introspection and nothing good ever came from introspection.

"You guys are giving me the best gift a guy can get on his birthday." Said Shimazaki

"Candles and Classic Coke?" asked Mob

"No, but great gift by the way. You guys have given me the gift of seeing what true love and acceptance looks like. I could cry." Said Shimazaki. He wasn't serious but Mob was still patting him on the back and shushing him like he was that baby that Suzuki had abandoned with them last summer.

"Ryou, either roll that joint or I will." Said Minegishi. They were tired. They were too tired to deal with him or with…with much of anything. They were just too damn tired. They needed a break…but they didn't get a break. This was why they did not want kids. Mob wasn't even their kid but it was still just a constant battle with stress and worry….and it would never get better. Maybe not even when she was an adult. Not when her dad was finding newer and newer ways to mess her up for reasons that nobody could possibly comprehend

"No, she will. Ok, we have enough for two here. First thing that you're going to want to do is to roll a piece of paper to make this filter thing for the end…except it's not a filter because that would be stupid, it's just there to help hold it's shape. Do you follow me?" asked Shimazaki

"Yes. I'm following you." Said Mob. There were a lot of steps but she followed them. She didn't care if there were a hundred steps or a thousand steps, she just wanted to feel better already. She felt bad and…she felt bad for feeling bad…and she just wanted this bad feeling to stop. So she decided to make it stop as best as she knew how…and she didn't know why Minegishi kept on acting like she was doing anything wrong.

What was so wrong with trying to get rid of her bad feelings?


	223. Switching Beds

Sho woke up uncomfortable.

His bed was uncomfortably lumpy. He was uncomfortably warm. Something was uncomfortably digging into his back. He was not comfortable and it took him a minute to figure out why. He tried to roll over but he couldn't. Big sis was sleeping next to him in his bed again. She had done that last night too. That had been weird, she didn't normally do that, but it was ok because she had been there for him when he had needed her…when they had been little…but it had been ok. Even if she had been spending all of her time with dad lately. Even if she had let dad come in and take over their Minecraft world…but then again dad was dad and if dad wanted to take over the world then he would. Taking over a Minecraft world was easier and quicker than taking over the real world…so he wasn't mad at her about that.

Or this.

Sho tried to pull his way out of her arms. He loved his big sister, he always would, but he did need his space. It was way too hot. The heat was on, which was already kind of warm, but also she was very warm while she slept. That was way too much warmth to deal with. People got very warm when they slept. Kind of like the old electric blanket that mom used to put him under when he was little. He needed to get out of this because he was not little and also he was way too warm and also he could sleep in his own bed on his own because he would be ten soon and he didn't need his big sister taking over his bed like she had taken over everything else.

Those were jerk thoughts to have.

She had taken over their family and their Minecraft world and she was always bossing him around and making him do stuff that he didn't want to and dad liked her best and…and he was starting to have jerk thoughts about her and he was not going to let himself think like that. He had to be better than that. He has to be better than dad. When he grew up he was going to be a better person than dad ever was and he couldn't do that if he let his brain think jerk thoughts about his big sister.

He loved her.

He pulled her arms off of him and slid closer to the wall. She tried to hold on to him but her arms were asleep and she was asleep so she wasn't very strong at all. He had succeeded in getting out of her arms but now he had almost no bed at all. He was pressed to close to the wall that he could feel his breath bouncing off of it while he breathed. There was a stuffed animal digging into his stomach. It was a little better than having big sis' arm digging into his back but not by much. What he really wanted was his own bed back and stuff…but she was not going to leave…..because she was sleeping and he was not going to be a jerk and wake her up even though she had already been a jerk first and woke him up and-

And he was not going to be a jerk.

He lifted himself out of bed with his powers. He could make himself fly and stuff, it wasn't hard, but he didn't do it that often. He never really had a reason to. If he ever needed something from up high he could just use his powers to grab it and if he ever needed to be up high then he could just have Shimazaki pick him up. He was strong like that. He could lift Sho up even without his powers and carry him on his back….those times were always fun….and he was always just so much fun to be around…

Sho almost dropped himself.

He needed to focus on what he was doing. He picked himself up and carried himself over big sis and across the room to her bed. He wasn't going to be a jerk and wake her up but he wasn't going sleep all crammed into the corner of the bed either. He would end up permanently smushed and tiny if he tried to sleep like that. So, really, the only thing to do was to trade beds with big sis.

Even if he didn't want to sleep in her bed.

Her bed had a lot more stuffed animals and dolls than his did. She kept them lined up against the wall so, really, they took up about half of the bed. Also she had Frozen bedding and he didn't really like Frozen all that much. Also her bedding smelled kind of like she did a lot of the time. Kind of skunky. Sort of like the inside of Shimazaki's house…which would have made sense since she spent so much time in there…and he didn't know why that made him so mad. She wasn't trying to make Shimazaki her boyfriend anymore. She had a boyfriend now and he was a much better match for her than Shimazaki. He was boring like she was, a jerk thought to have, and also he treated her really well. He was always getting her things in Minecraft and spending time with her and stuff. Also from what Sho had seen he never tried to kiss her or hold her hand or touch her boobs or any of that other stuff you were supposed to do with a girlfriend.

So Sho wouldn't have to beat him up any time soon.

Sho let himself fall down onto big sis' bed. It squeaked kind of loudly but big sis didn't wake up. She just turned around and took up even more of his bed. Well they had well and truly traded then. Fine. Whatever. He could sleep here. It wasn't so bad. She had a very soft pillow and no crumbs in her sheets, either, which was good. It even smelled kind of nice…well not really nice but like Shimazaki…which was kind of nice…even though it only smelled that way because he hung out with her so often and stuff…but that was ok….

Because she didn't like him.

She didn't like him, she liked that other guy, and that was how it was. He was a nice guy and he treated her well and Sho was happy for him and her and he hoped that they got married and had a lot of babies because he really liked babies and then also baby sis could have some friends her own age to play with. That was why he didn't want her to end up married to Shimazaki, he decided, aside from the fact that if she married Shimazaki then he and Shimazaki couldn't be friends. Shimazaki said that he never wanted to have kids because he knew that he would be bad at taking care of them so if he and big sis got married then she wouldn't have any kids and then Sho wouldn't have any nieces and nephews to play with and teach stuff to and also baby sis wouldn't have any friends her own age to play with. So that was why the thought of big sis marrying Shimazaki made him want to start kicking holes in all the walls in the room.

He didn't.

Instead he rolled over and tried to get comfortable. He rolled onto his side, then onto his other side, then onto his back, and finally onto his stomach. That seemed to be the most comfortable way to sleep…well sort of. She had a lot of dolls and stuff in her bed and it was just…he didn't even know. He slept with some stuffed animals too, he planned to stop that once he turned ten because ten year olds did not sleep with stuffed animals, but having the whole other side taken up by dolls did seem to be just a little bit too much. He tried to push them out of the way…but there were just too many…there was no room at all in her bed. Maybe this was why she had been sleeping with dad lately. Maybe that was why she had been leaving him to sleep all alone in this room while she and dad hung out together playing Minecraft and also dad had let her sleep in his bed even though he had never let Sho do that before and Sho was littler than big sis and that was something that little kids did all the time, sleep with their parents, and…and it just hadn't been fair! Why did she get to sleep in dad's bed!? Why did dad always have to act like she was the best person ever to live?! Why did he have to-

Jerk thoughts.

Sho was not going to sit there and have jerk thoughts about his sister. He was going to be a good little brother and a good person. So he was going to stop. So he did stop. He made himself stop. He reached deep into his mind and made all of his jerk thoughts just…stop. All of them. Well he tried to…

He tried his best.

He rolled over onto his side and kept his eyes closed as tightly as he could. He closed his eyes and shook his head and tried to make the thoughts stop. He tried to shake them out like the times when he got water in his ears but he just…couldn't. Something was wrong with him and he just…couldn't stop being a jerk. No matter what he did he just couldn't stop being a jerk and…and he wished that he could have been anyone other than himself.

He wished that he and big sis could have switched bodies or something.

They had switched beds so why not switch bodies, too? He could get used to wearing dresses and brushing his hair every day and peeing sitting down and stuff. He could have gotten used to being with dad all the time, too. That was the only way that dad would ever love him as much as he loved big sis, if he were to become big sis, but that was only possible in the movies. This was real life and he had never heard of anyone with the power to swap bodies so it must not have existed. She was herself and he was himself and dad would never love him as much as he loved big sis. Dad didn't know how to break up love. He couldn't break it in half like a giant churro, the kind with the chocolate inside that they sold at Disneyland and filled you up really fast. You were supposed to break them in half because there was enough for two people. Well dad was bad at sharing since he never broke his love in half even though he had two kids already.

It wasn't fair.

Sho hadn't asked to be born the way he had been. He hadn't asked to have been born less powerful than big sis. He hadn't asked to be born wrong. He had just been born the way that he had been born. What was he supposed to do about it now? He had powers now and…and it still wasn't good enough for dad. Sho used to think that it was all about powers, that if he could just get more powerful then dad would love him, but that was not how it worked. Big sis was more powerful than he was and dad would always like her better. He liked her better, had always liked her better, and had only had Sho because he needed to have a boy so he had someone to inherit the world after he took it over.

Dad was such a jerk sometimes.

Dad was a jerk and Sho wished that he was strong enough to…to be the one doing the hitting for once. He wanted to hit dad. He shook his head more. He couldn't hit dad. If he hit dad then…then dad would probably just kill him and then figure out how to make it so that big sis could inherit the world he was going to take over. Sho was in no way strong enough to hit dad, to hit him and be able to walk away right afterwards, and he didn't know if he ever would be…but he did know that he just…wanted…he wanted….wanted…

He wanted to get these dolls out of the bed!

He reached over with his powers and just threw her dolls around the room. He threw them against the walls and onto the floor and even bounced hem off the ceiling. He was being a jerk and he knew it…but it was better to throw some dolls around than to throw her around. It felt like…like he wanted to pick her up with his powers and throw her…and that was a bad way to feel. He loved her and he never wanted to hurt her…until the times when he did. Like now. Until the times when he turned into the worst sort of person. Until the times when he threw things and broke them because otherwise he would pick her up and throw her and…

And he was not dad.

He was not dad and he was not going to hurt his big sister. He would hurt her toys but he wouldn't hurt her. He had hurt her enough. He had hurt her and…and he did not want to be that person…but it was hard not being that person. Maybe that was why dad was that person. Maybe he was that person because it was easier to be that person, the sort of person who hurt people and acted like a jerk, than the sort of person who kept their feelings inside and was nice all the time even though it made them want to scream. He wanted to scream. He wanted to scream because it just wasn't fair and nothing was fair and no matter how much time changed, no matter how much older he got, things would always be unfair and dad would always be a jerk and-

"Sho? What are you doing?" asked big sis. Oh no. He had woken her up and now…now she was facing him. She was laying in his bed facing him. It was weird to look at her from the right, his bed was always on the left and hers was always on the right, and that was the only thought he had as his powers calmed down and any of her dolls that had been in the air fell to the ground.

He was such a jerk that he couldn't even believe it.

"You have too many dolls in your bed. They were poking me in the back." Said Sho because he needed to say something. He couldn't just tell her that he had been mad at her and dad and himself and just…acted like a jerk again and wrecked her stuff and…stuff. No. He wasn't going to say anything like that at all.

"Oh." Said big sis. Sho waited to see if she was going to say something besides 'oh'. Didn't she think that it was weird that they had swapped beds? Didn't she think that it was weird that instead of kicking her out of his bed he had gone to her bed? She was the one who had crawled into bed with him without asking after all. He was the one who had woken up in the middle of the night to his big sister hugging him from behind and making him feel way too hot and way too squished. He was the one who-

He was the one who was having jerk thoughts, not her.

She wasn't a jerk. She was bossy, she was very bossy, but she was not a jerk. She had never once been a jerk to him so he needed to stop being a jerk to her. Even in his own head he had to be nice to her. Dad was mean to people in his head. Sho couldn't read thoughts but he could tell that if dad was mean to people in life then he must have been mean to people in his head, too. Well Sho did not want to be the sort of person who was mean to people in his head so he had to stop…even though she got everything now. His bed. Their dad. Their Minecraft world…and also maybe she was wearing his socks, too, now that he got a good look at her feet and stuff….but he was not going to get mad. He was going to tally up his mean thoughts and then kick the wall the same number of times that he had mean thoughts and that going to be the end of it.

He was going to kick the wall, not her, never her…because he loved her and she loved him and he wanted to keep her loving him but she wouldn't love him anymore if he went around hurting her…and he wouldn't love himself, either.

"I'm sorry that there were so many dolls in my bed…I guess that I didn't notice that I had put so many in my bed because….because I haven't slept in my bed in a while." Said big sis

"Whose fault is that?" asked Sho before he could stop himself. He bit his tongue after he said that. He needed to be nicer to her. He wasn't dad, he couldn't be dad, he was….a better person than dad. Or he tried his best to be, at least.

"Um…mine, I guess. I don't know. Maybe dad's because he made me sleep next to him but…I guess mine. I'm sorry, Sho." said big sis. He wished that she could have been a jerk to him. He wished that she would take the stuff out of his bed, his stuffed Nick and Judy from Zootopia, the sketchbook he kept under his pillow, the old socks he kept on kicking off in his sleep, his phone, his DS, and that smooth rock he and Shimazaki had found in the park and Shimazaki had let him have even though he had thought that it felt nice…he wished that she had taken everything and the bed too and just picked it up and thrown it all out the window and out into the cold or something!

But she didn't.

She was too nice to do that. She was nice and he just…wasn't. She had gotten that from mom. Probably because she was a girl. He was a jerk, like dad, probably because he was a boy. But he was trying…and trying had to be good for something. It was more than dad did, anyway. Dad never tried. He just acted like a jerk and everyone was supposed to just…just let him be a jerk….and stuff. Big sis let dad be a jerk and…and she let him be a jerk too…

And he knew that he should not have been mad about that but he was.

She was always so bossy! Would it have been so hard for him to tell him to stop acting like a jerk? For her to tell him that he needed to stop being a jerk to her and that he needed to start being nice and…and stuff like that? Why did she always just let him act like this? Why did she have to always be so nice all the time? Even now. He had woken her up buy throwing all of her toys around but she didn't even say anything. She just let him.

She was nice like that…and he was a jerk…and that was just how they were…

"Stop saying sorry so much. Just…I'm sorry that I threw your stuff around and woke you up, ok? Even though I only did that because you were in my bed and you woke me up I'm still sorry." said Sho. That hadn't come out that mean…had it? He had been telling the truth. She had been in his bed and she had woken him up and therefore it was her fault…was that a jerk thought to have? He didn't know. All he knew was that he was always so mean to her…and he needed to stop….and also that he was tired and he just wanted to go to sleep….

"Oh…ok. I'm sorry that I said that I was sorry…please don't be mad at me, little brother. I didn't mean to make you mad and I didn't mean to wake you up…I just didn't want to be all alone…" said big sis

"What do you mean 'all alone'? We were asleep in the same room…and also stop saying that I was mad at you and stuff…" said Sho. She was making him feel bad talking like that. He loved her a lot and all but also…also it made him mad when said that he had been mad at her…and that was just so dumb kind of…because…because it just was.

"Ok, little brother, I'll stop saying that you were mad at me…and I was just lonely because….because dad doesn't like me anymore. He kept on making me sleep with him but then he made me go away and…and he doesn't like me…and I just wanted to be next to you." Said big sis. Sho didn't know what he was hearing. Well he did, obviously, because he spoke Japanese. He knew that big sis was telling him that dad didn't like her anymore but that wasn't true. She hadn't had a bruise on her. Dad still liked her.

Dad would always like her.

He had no idea where this stuff was coming from. So dad wasn't making her sleep next to him anymore. Big deal. Dad had never even once let Sho sleep next to him. Dad had never picked Sho up and carried him to bed to sleep next to him or played with him or spent time with him without being mean and…and it just wasn't fair. She didn't know what it was when dad didn't like you. She didn't know what it was to be treated like a piece of gum that dad had found on the bottom of his shoe. Sho knew what that was like.

She would never know what that was like.

He was mad at her. He was so mad at her that he had to turn around and kick the wall behind him a few times. He didn't care if he was being loud or if he was putting holes in the walls or if he was going to end up with a broken foot one of these days like Fukuda had said. Sho was just…mad. So mad. The most mad…and he could either kick the wall or he could kick big sis. He chose the wall. At least the wall wasn't someone who loved him and who he loved right back. At least the wall wouldn't be all 'Sho, I love you so much and you're the best little brother ever' in the morning when he was done. At least the wall wouldn't have bruises and stuff in the morning.

Better the wall than her.

She was watching him. He could feel her watching him. He kicked until he was done and then…kept his back to her. He had to keep his back to her because if he turned to face her then he would end up saying something mean. He would end up telling her what it was really like when dad didn't like you anymore. He would tell her…he would tell her a lot of things that he didn't want to tell her because he was not going to be a jerk to her anymore. It was hard but he had made up his mind already. He was going to be nice.

"Are you ok?" asked big sis. She was still looking at him and she was still worried about him. Why did she have to be so worried? Why couldn't she just…stop being so nice to him all the time? And stop worrying about him? Why couldn't she just…stop it already?

"Fine. Just tired." said Sho. He didn't want to talk about this so late at night…or maybe it was early in the morning…at all. He didn't want to talk about this at all. He just wanted to go to sleep and then wake up and then it would be tomorrow and then he could pick up her stuff and forget that she had ever said that thing about dad liking her anymore and then he could forget about how he wanted to tell her, show her, what it was really like when dad didn't like you. He just wanted this moment, this night, to pass already.

"I'm sorry if I made you mad." Said big sis. She was still sitting up and she was still looking at him. He could feel her. He still kept his back to her. He didn't want to start fighting with her this late at night…or early in the morning….or ever. He just wanted them to be ok together, that was all, and he wanted to be a good little brother. He couldn't be a good little brother if he was being mean to her…so he decided to stop being mean to her.

"I told you to stop saying that I was mad at you." Said Sho. He wished that she would just go to bed already. He had no idea what time it was but he knew that it was late. He knew that they needed sleep, that he needed sleep, and he wished that she would just let him sleep already….

"Ok. I'm sorry." said big sis. He wished that she would just stop saying that…but he said nothing to her. He still was not going to run the risk of being a jerk. Even if she was still looking at him and…and still in his bed…and he wanted her to just stop looking at him and to stop being in his bed and just…just to stop this already…

"I told you to stop saying that too." Said Sho. He pulled her blanket up over his head. Maybe then she would realize that he didn't want to talk, he wanted to rest, and then that she should just leave him alone before he said something or did something that he regretted.

"Ok." Said big sis. There was some silence there. If he had been anyone else he would have thought that she had gone back to sleep. But he wasn't anyone else, he was Suzuki Sho, and he could sense his sister's aura. He knew that she was looking at him and…and he knew that she needed to stop that right now…for both of their own good…

"Well, goodnight then." Said Sho. There. After he said that he felt her attention to leave him. He heard his bed groan. That meant that she had turned around and gone to sleep. He wanted to be in his own bed on his own side of the room with his own stuffed animals…but he wasn't going to drag her out of his bed so he could sleep. No, he just made himself comfortable. He was a good little brother.

And sometimes being a good little brother meant switching beds with your big sister.


	224. Movies and Gardening with a Friend

Dad went to work without her again.

She had asked him if he was taking her with and he said no and then he took Sho and left. That was it. That was the whole of it. Mob wished that there had been more. He could have said no and then told her what she needed to do to make him like her again. She didn't want him to smother her like before but she didn't want him to dislike her either. But he did dislike her. He disliked her and he wouldn't tell her why. He just stopped liking her one day.

But at least Minegishi still liked her.

"Does the mom end up getting better at the end and then coming home and then making friends with Totoro?" asked Mob. They were sitting on the couch at Minegishi's house. They didn't have anything to do either. Back before they knew Mob they had been bounced around different divisions and bases and headquarters where they were needed. Now they had to stay where Mob stayed. Mob didn't think that they minded. They were always complaining about having a lot of extra work to do. This must have been better on them, then, and they must have been happy…right?

She really hoped that they were happy.

"I'm not giving the ending away. I don't know how you've never seen this movie before but I am not spoiling this for you." Said Minegishi as they took a sip of something that they knew that they should not have been drinking around Mob. They needed it, though, even though they knew that they were just slowly poisoning themselves and setting a bad example on top of that. Well they had never set out to be anyone's role model.

Because they knew that they would just end up doing a piss poor job of it.

They were really were doing a piss poor job of being Mob's role model or best friend or surrogate parent or whatever. They had no clue what they were doing. They were just taking this day by day…and on this day Mob was not going to get drunk. Minegishi knew that they had lost control of the situation a long time ago, thanks a lot Ryou, but they did know that they could at least control their own actions and in their own actions they were going to try and set a better example.

Better late than never.

"I've seen this before but when I was really little. I just remember the part with the soot sprites mostly." Said Mob

"That's all you remember? From this whole movie?" asked Minegishi

"Yes. I don't even remember how it ends even though I saw it when I was little. My mom showed me and Sho this movie. She said that she had liked it a lot when she had been little and that she had even seen it in the theatre. We didn't see it in the theatre though, just at home, and I don't remember what happened but I remembered that it was nice…but I do wish that I could remember….and please don't tell my dad that I was talking about my mom." Said Mob. Dad would have been so mad at her if he could hear what she was talking about…and also that she was talking about when they lived in the Castle…but maybe he wouldn't have even cared because he didn't even like her anymore….but he probably would have because even if he didn't like her anymore he was still the boss of her and if he told her never to mention mom again then she was neve to mention mom again…even though she wanted to. She wanted to remember mom and talk about her and…and it wasn't a good thing because dad had told her that she was not allowed to…and also that mom was a traitor…

And also mom had left.

She had just left one day without even saying where she was going or when she would be back or…or anything. She had just left and she was gone and that was it. She didn't love her anymore and…and she still missed mom so much…but also she was sort of mad…and also she was mad at dad, too. He had just kept her close and now…now he was gone. He was gone but also not gone because he still lived with her but now he wanted nothing to do with her and…and it was hard.

She didn't want to feel bad anymore.

She reached for her glass on the table and finished the last of the milk in it. Her glass was short. Minegishi's was tall. Minegishi said that she got a shorter glass and she had to mix hers in with milk because she had to learn moderation. Shimazaki said that moderation was stupid and that going hard all day and all night until your body gave out and you passed out or threw up or you looked around and had no idea where you were or who's clothes you were wearing was fun…even though none of that seemed fun to Mob at all. She didn't tell him that, though, what she had thought of what he had said. Because they were friends and friends had to be nice to each other.

She wanted her friends to like her.

"Have I ever told him?" asked Minegishi

"No." said Mob

"Then I have no reason to start now do I? You know I'm not going to tell your dad about everything that you get up to." Said Minegishi. They pushed Mob's glass towards the middle of the table. They knew that with her telekinesis being what it was nothing was out of her reach but this just made them feel better. Like they hadn't set her down the path to ruin.

"Friends don't tell on friends." Said Mob. She didn't know why she kept on telling Minegishi not to tell dad. She knew that they were friends and she knew that they wouldn't tell on her but…but she still had to ask just to make sure. Because if dad ever found out that she was still talking about mom then he would be so mad at her…madder than he had ever been in his entire life maybe even. Madder than he was now, anyway, since now he was mad about something that Mob didn't even know about and he had been so mean lately….

Well mean without trying to be mean.

Mean without yelling. Mean without pushing. Mean without hitting. Mean without any of the normal things he did when he was being mean…and that was even worse then why he did hit her and yell at her and push her and pull her hair and stuff. Not that he had done that for a while…but she still would have taken him being that kind of mean to her above the kind of mean that he was being now. The kind of mean where he didn't look at her or talk to her or play with her or…or anything. The kind of mean where he acted like he didn't even have a daughter in the first place.

"That's right. Friends don't tell on friends." Said Minegishi as they eyed Mob's mostly empty glass. Suzuki would kill them if he ever found out about this…which was why Mob had been so good about keeping her mouth shut and all of this a secret from her father…though in Minegishi's opinion he was deluding himself if he didn't notice how drunk and/or high his kid had been for the past few years. It was getting worse now but Mob had been at it for a while now and Suzuki was none the wiser. Heh. He thought that he could take over the world. He couldn't even run his own family.

"And they don't tell their friends the endings of movies either?" asked Mob

"Nope. I'm still not going to spoil it." Said Minegishi

"Ok. I hope that it has a happy ending though. I hope that the mom comes back home since she's sick, she didn't run away, and she wants to come back home to her family." Said Mob

"Yeah, I hope it ends like that too." Said Minegishi. She wasn't going to tell Mob that at the end of My Neighbor Totoro the kids die and visit their mother one last time before being ferried to the afterlife on the cat bus…and now that they thought about it maybe this had not been the best movie to show Mob while she was dealing with all the shit that she was dealing. In their defense they hadn't seen this movie since they were about her age. They had only remembered that there was a giant cat in it and that Mob liked cats.

"I like it when things have happy endings. Not like how life goes. That's why I like movies and manga and stuff. It's always a happy ending…or at least it is most of the time. I don't like things with sad endings." Said Mob. She wondered if her life would have a happy ending. She wondered if dad would ever love her again and if they would be best friends but also not the sort of best friends that dad was trying to be with her, before, when he never let her out of his sight and stuff. The sort of best friends who hung out and watched TV and played games and stuff. Not the sort that smothered each other.

But they were father and daughter, not best friends at all, and it was different between them.

She and Minegishi had that sort of best friends friendship that she wished that she could have had with dad…or Sho, too. She wished that she could just relax and hang out and not have to worry about things when she was with dad or Sho. But that wasn't how it worked. When she was with dad then she had to worry about making him happy and making him mad and if he still loved her and if he had stopped loving her and stuff. When she was with Sho she had to worry about taking care of him. She had to worry about if he had done his schoolwork and brushed his teeth and brushed his hair and taken a bath and eaten all of the food groups and if he had gotten enough sleep and all of that. She could never fully relax because she had to take care of him. She had to keep him happy, too, even though she was bad at it. Like the other night when she had tried to sleep next to him and he had gotten mad and thrown her stuff around.

That had been her fault.

She had been the one to wake him up by trying to cuddle with him and she had been the one to sleep in his bed without asking and she had been the one to keep on saying sorry even though he was mad at her. She had been the one at fault there, not him, and she was still so sorry…she was always so sorry. She felt like she had spent her whole life being sorry. She felt like she had to spend every moment of her life being sorry about everything. Sorry that she had mad Sho upset, sorry that she had made mom leave, sorry that she had made dad stop liking her, sorry that she had been born more powerful than Sho, sorry that she had been born with powers that she couldn't control, sorry that she was always full of feelings and that made it hard to control her powers, sorry for the things that she had to do to control her feelings so she could control her powers, sorry for being so….her. She was just sorry.

She was mostly just sorry for being Mob.

She liked hanging out with Minegishi, though, because they never made her feel like she had to feel sorry. Well when she did bad things, of course, like when she walked into their bedroom without knocking and saw them and Shimazaki doing adult stuff that she was not meant to see and also about the times when she had stolen drinks from them and also about how they had made her promise to stop smoking but she still did smoke and also about how they had made her promise not to fun vape that often but she still fun vaped all the time….

At least she knew what she was sorry for when Minegishi made her feel like she had to be sorry for something.

"Life doesn't have happy endings or sad endings. It just has endings." Said Minegishi. They knew better than most people how abruptly life could end. Stories could just end in the middle of a chapter. Not everyone's life ended in a neat little three act structure. Sometimes people crossed the wrong person and then they died. Sometimes people got in over their heads with a bunch of crazies and then got themselves killed for it. Sometimes people got in over their heads trying to plot against people that they didn't have to plot against and got themselves killed. Sometimes people crossed the wrong person, banked on them being big and that person being little, but then got themselves killed when enough time passed that the person who had been little grew up to be big enough to end their lives.

Really life just sort of ended.

They wondered how their life would end. They had never imagined themselves living this long, honestly, all the way to twenty seven. They had always thought that they would die young, hadn't even imagined what their adult life would be like, and now they were living this adult life and it was…something. This was their life. Sitting with the most powerful ten year old in the world trying to both cheer her up and also make her life just a little bit brighter. They wondered how her life was going to end, Mob's, what her life would be like and what it's conclusion would be.

Hers was easier to predict.

She'd grow up in a cult, drink the Kool-Aid, and end up spending her life chasing her distant father's approval. He would bounce her up and down like a yo-yo and it would mess her up really bad. She'd have trouble functioning without her father and that was what he was banking on. Either he'd keep her by his side forever and turn her into a surrogate for his missing, possibly dead, wife like he had tried out for the past few weeks or he would keep her at arm's length for the rest of her life. She would end up marrying some guy who was just like her father, she already had daddy issues at ten and they would only get worse, and then she'd have some kids she had no clue how to raise and the cycle would continue unbroken. Also there would be substance abuse issues. Substantive substance abuse issues.

So, hey, why not make what was left of her childhood as pleasant as possible?

They didn't know. They just didn't know. They felt like they had been arguing about this with themselves or a hundred years now. Make Mob happy now or make sure that she has the best possible adult life later? They just did not know. They did know, however, that if sitting here watching a movie with Mob was something that she wanted, something that made her happy, then they would do it. They wouldn't be making her another white Russian minus the coffee liqueur. No, one was enough for her. They had to think about her, about what was best for her, and that meant teaching her moderation like they had wished that someone would have taught them when they had been little. Also that meant not telling Mob how My Neighbor Totoro ended.

She could figure it out for herself.

"That was nice. They went to see their mom in the hospital. That was really nice." Said Mob. She reached for her glass but it was empty. Minegishi wasn't going to refill it. They had said that one was enough. She sort of wished that she had been hanging out with Shimazaki. He never said that one was enough…but then again when they watched movies with him they had to turn the narration on and that could be really annoying. Well what was most annoying were the movies without any narration and then they had to do the narration, usually her but sometimes Minegishi if they were in the mood to do extra work, but that was a mean thing to think because she should have been happy to help her friend out whenever she could.

"Right. That's how it ended." Said Minegishi. They were not going to bring up the fact that Totoro was most likely a spirit of death and that the girls had both died in the end. No, that would just end up depressing Mob and she was a pretty depressed kid as it was. They could see where her eyes were going. She wanted to do something about that depression.

"Minegishi, I know that you said that I could only have one-" said Mob

"If you know that I said that I would only let you have one then why are you about to ask me to make you another one?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. They reminded themselves that Mob was ten and that she would act like a ten year old. They also reminded themselves that they had no one to blame but themselves for this. Well they could blame Ryou until their face turned blue but he would never in this lifetime take responsibility for his actions.

"Because maybe you changed your mind…and also I'm thirsty." Said Mob. That wasn't a lie, she really was thirsty, so why not just keep on drinking? She needed to stay hydrated to live after all. There. Now she had a very good reason for wanting to keep on drinking and maybe Minegishi would think that it was a good reason too. Then maybe they could lessen the rules just a little and then Mob could have one more. Only one, though, because she knew that there wouldn't be a third one coming to her. This was Minegishi, not Shimazaki, and even though they were friends who were close enough to kiss and do other stuff together, gross stuff, they were very different when it came to stuff like this.

"If you're thirsty then go in the fridge and pour yourself a glass of plain milk." Said Minegishi. Nope. Not giving in. No matter how much emotion Mob poured into those little eyes Minegishi would not be swayed.

"But also I'm sad." Said Mob. That was also the truth. She was sad and thirsty and she felt better when she drank. So why not keep drinking until she didn't feel sad at all anymore? What was so bad about having just one more? She would stop after one more, she promised herself, and then it would be ok and she could prove to Minegishi that they had nothing at all to worry about.

"Mob…I know. I know that you're sad and I'm sorry that you're sad but I am not going to get you drunk just because you're sad. Ok? It's bad for your brain and your liver and your kidneys and just…it's bad for you. Ok? It's bad for you and I don't want to be a hypocrite but I don't want to ruin your life either so just…is there something else that you want to do right now? Something else that would make you happy?" asked Minegishi

"Something else?" asked Mob

"Not getting high. You can drink or you can smoke but you can't do both in the same day. New rule." Said Minegishi. There. That was a good rule. No mixing substances. She was too young to mix substances. She couldn't overdose on weed but she could give herself alcohol poisoning…and also she could end up mixing the things that she would inevitably get into as she got older…and that would not be good for anyone.

"When we're together or in life?" asked Mob. Shimazaki said that mixing things together was more fun, especially drinking and smoking, because when you started to feel sick from the drinking then you could do some smoking and then you would feel better.

"In life…and I can't believe that I'm even saying this…" said Minegishi. They had come to the point in their life when they had to teach a ten year old not to mix substances….whatever. Their life could have gone a hell of a lot worse. They reminded themselves that their life could have gone a hell of a lot worse.

"Ok." Said Mob. She tried not to seem disappointed. Shimazaki was right. Drinking too much did make you sick but then when you smoked the sick feeling went away. Well Mob had no reason to smoke now because she didn't feel sick so she decided not to make a big deal out of this. She was hanging out with Minegishi and she wanted Minegishi to keep on liking her, they were her very best friend after all, and if this thing with dad had taught her anything it was that people could change their minds about liking you really fast.

"So is there something else, something that does not involve drinking or smoking, that would make you feel better?" asked Minegishi

"Something that would make me feel better…." Asked Mob. Her dad loving her again. Sho being happy. It being Sho's birthday so they could be the same age again. Baby Mukai being there with her. Mom being there with her. Her being able to go and see mom again. A spirit taking her away to go and see mom, it was important that it was a spirit because that way dad wouldn't know that she had gone to see mom. Not like if she had taken a car or something. The spirit could be like a car spirit…or a bus spirit…and it could take her to go see mom…like in the movie that she had just seen…

"I want to ride inside of a cat bus spirit." Said Mob

"….something that I can give you, Mob, something that I can give you…and this is why you shouldn't drink." Said Minegishi

"Oh. Um….in that case…I just want to spend time with you. I don't care what we're doing do long as we can be together. I like being around you. You're always so nice to me and I'm always so happy when I'm around you." Said Mob

"Thanks…" said Minegishi

"So whatever you want to do is ok with me, Minegishi." Said Mob

"Mob…come on. I'm going to show you something." Said Minegishi. They got up from the couch, finished their drink, and motioned for Mob to follow. They walked through the house and out the back door. Mob followed but didn't ask questions. She didn't have the time to even think of any questions, probably, because the walk to the back garden was very short.

"You want to do some gardening?" asked Mob

"No, I want us both to do some gardening." Said Minegishi. They had taught Mob some of their worst coping mechanisms…so maybe it was time to show her one of their best…or at least healthiest. Even if they didn't want to take a stroll down this side of memory lane.

"Ok. That sounds fun. We've never gardened together. You showed me how to use my plant control powers when I was little but we've never actually sat down and gardened before…also why do you garden if you have plant control powers?" asked Mob

"This is why." Said Minegishi. They coaxed a seed out of the ground. It was November, the ground was cold and hard, but with a little push from their powers they could make it work. The keyword being 'little'. A big push, like the one that they were doing, could lead to a mistake. Like the vegetable that they had forced out of the ground and into their hand.

"Oh. We're making tomatoes?" asked Mob as she was handed and unusually heavy tomato with a weird feeling skin. She ran her fingers over it but didn't say how weird it felt. That would not have been nice at all.

"Bite into it." Said Minegishi. Sometimes a practical demonstration was the best kind. They were supposed to be teaching Mob how to use her powers after all and this was a good skill to have in case Suzuki ever stopped feeding her. Not that he seemed like the type but then again nobody ever seemed like the type. If there was an easily identifiable type then there wouldn't be so many parents purposely starving their kids for whatever reasons their sick minds came up with.

"But it hasn't been washed. You're always supposed to wash fruits and vegetables before you eat them. My mom said so…but please don't tell my dad that I was talking about my mom." Said Mob. She remembered how mom would always wash the produce after it had been delivered. She'd let her and Sho help, too, and it had always been a fun time…helping mom and stuff….but now that time was over. Mob was ten, not five and that part of her life was long over. There was no cat bus coming to take her to see mom. Mom was gone. She had left. She had run away because she did not want to be found. She hadn't even left a note. How hard would it have been to have left a note? Just a note telling her family why she had left. Just a note telling Mob why she had stopped loving her? Why didn't she just say something? Why didn't dad? Why didn't either of her parents think to just say something? Things would never get Mob, Mob couldn't get better, unless she knew what she had to fix!

"I won't tell him anything now bite the damned tomato." Said Minegishi. That came out a little more harshly than they had meant. They kicked themselves even though they knew that Mob couldn't read tones to save her life.

"Ok." Said Mob. She bit into the tomato and…and almost spat it out. It was…hard. Hard and starchy and just…not good. She didn't spit it out though, that would have been rude to her friend. Instead she chewed and swallowed because even though she was the more powerful esper it was still very important to be polite. Dad had said so.

"Mob, don't take another bite. That was nasty as hell and we both know it. I'm surprised you managed to even swallow." Said Minegishi

"It was….a food." Said Mob. She didn't want to be mean but she didn't want to tell lies, either. So she told the truth. That was a food. She had chewed and swallowed it and now it was sitting heavy in her stomach. That was a food which she had just eaten.

"It was a mistake. I planted tomatoes and potatoes next to each other and then I forced them to grow too fast and they fused into that abomination. That's why I garden. I have power over plant life but that doesn't mean that things don't go wrong. It's one thing to use plants for fighting and kil-more fighting. It's another to actually make something useful grow." Said Minegishi

"So you garden because you want good vegetables?" asked Mob

"That and….I think that you're old enough to hear this." said Minegishi. Honestly they thought that Mob was still too young to hear it but she regularly drank and got high, too, as a ten year old so really Minegishi didn't have a leg to stand on. They didn't want to talk about this but…well they also did. They had been promising Mob answers to so many questions for so long and also, maybe, they didn't want Mob to feel so alone and other such clichés. Maybe it would be good for Mob to know that she wasn't alone in the terrible childhood club.

"Old enough to hear what?" asked Mob. She scooted closer. She was sitting on her knees and she didn't care if they were getting cold and dirty from the ground. Minegishi was finally going to tell her something from her 'questions not to be answered until she was ten' list. Mob knew how rare this was. She decided to listen as closely as she could. She wanted to record this on her phone, too, but that might have been rude and she didn't want to run the risk that Minegishi would stop sharing.

"Mob when I was a kid….things weren't very nice. My parents weren't the best people. I had powers and they…they didn't. They didn't even know what powers were. From a young age I could talk to plants…well anyone can talk to plants but when I talked to them they listened and talked back. Not with words but with…I guess feelings would be the best way to put it. They talked back and my parents…thought that I was crazy. So they did some very bad things to me and…and it was hard growing up. They didn't treat me well. You can have specifics when you're old enough to understand them but just know that my mom and dad did not treat me well. I spent a lot of time in the back garden once the rest of my powers came in. I spent a lot of time learning how to grow food and just…being somewhere safe. So that's why I garden. Food and safety." Said Minegishi. They didn't look at Mob. They couldn't look at Mob. They couldn't look over and see the look in her little eyes and…and they just wanted to be alone.

They always wanted to be alone when they told someone.

They hadn't even told her anything. Nothing. Not even the surface of it. The only person who they had ever told the full story to had been Ryou and the next morning they had jumped on the first assignment they could get their hands on and spent a month tracking down and killing a rival esper group hiding in central Russian. They would have been there for longer but they had been very efficient. They had to be. That was the only way that they could be alone.

They weren't going to leave now.

They felt Mob's arms around them. They felt her aura around them. They were not the sort of friends who hugged but this…this was ok enough. Nice enough. Or more than enough. She was a nice kid, Mob, and it was a shame how her life would probably end up going.

But Minegishi could at least make what was left of her childhood decent.

"I'm sorry that happened to you, Minegishi, and also thank you for telling me that…and I won't tell anyone else. I feel like it's a secret. Friends don't tell on friends." Said Mob. She hugged Minegishi and then they hugged her back. They didn't say anything else about how they had mean parents too and how they felt bad a lot of the time too. They just showed Mob how use her powers to winter garden.

They worked together to make the garden grow. It was a nice time. Mob always loved spending time with her very best friend.


	225. Her Little Ladyship and Shibata

Mob didn't know anything about knitting.

The whole thing looked complicated. Very complicated. The way the needles clicked together. The way the balls of yarn came together to make something that looked sort of like a sweater. Well it was a sweater. It was Sho's sweater. Shibata was making Sho a sweater for his birthday. A green one because Sho wore a lot of green and also there was what was supposed to be a hamster on the front because Sho loved hamsters. He really did, he had been asking for one for years, but he wasn't going to get one. For almost his whole life he had been asking for a hamster for his birthday or Christmas. Mob didn't know why he kept on asking for a pet when he knew full well that he would not be getting one.

But he could still hope.

And Mob could still hope too. Even though she knew that dad hated animals. He had never once let them have a pet even though they had been asking for years and years. Even back when they had lived with their mom in the Castle they had been asking for a pet, Sho wanted a hamster and she wanted a cat, dad had still said no even though mom agreed and also wanted a pet. Maybe dad would have listened to Mob, she was pretty much mom now dad had said, back when he still liked her then Sho could have had a pet. But he wasn't getting a pet this year for Christmas or his birthday and he wasn't even allowed to get one with his New Year's money either because dad hated animals.

Dad hated a lot of things.

Mob didn't know if dad totally hated her or if he just disliked her. He had just stopped hanging out with her one day and now he didn't even talk to her. He didn't look at her or talk to her or bring her to work with him or any of that other stuff. They hadn't even played Minecraft together. He was still playing, his stuff was on her side of the map now, but as soon as she logged in then he logged out. He was avoiding her and he just wouldn't tell her why. She liked it when he told her what she had done wrong even if it was just to insult her and yell at her and hit her and push her and pull her hair. At least that way she knew what she had done wrong and then she could fix it in the future. But that wasn't going to happen again.

She had no idea what she had done wrong.

"You're doing a great job, Your Little Ladyship, keep it up." Said Shibata. She was very good at holding the yarn, her Little Ladyship, she held it straight and didn't try to tangle it up like a spider's web or kick it around like a soccer ball…not that he had a problem with the way Little Suzuki held the yarn. No way! He was a very good yarn holder! He just…wasn't the sort of yarn holder that Shibata needed right now. Not while he was working on his birthday present, anyway.

He was going to love this sweater so much!

It was green. Little Suzuki wore a lot of green, Shibata figured that it was his favorite color, and also there was a hamster on the front and hamsters were Little Suzuki's favorite animal. It was nice and big, too, so he would have room to grow. The sleeves were extra-long, too, so as better to hide the scars on his hands. The poor little guy was so self-conscious about them that he even wore long sleeves in the height of summer. Shibata had been worried about him, actually, since little people were prone to overheating. This sweater wasn't for the height of summer though, no, this was there to get him through the depths of winter. His birthday was on December first after all. So soon. Shibata hoped that he had enough time to finish this.

And that it turned out better than his last attempts.

"But I'm not doing anything." Said Mob. She was just sitting there on the couch holding yarn and watching Frozen. That was all. How could somebody do a good job of that?

"Sure you are. You're holding the yarn and that's an important part of the knitting process." Said Shibata as he continued to knit Little Suzuki's birthday present.

"I guess…." Said Mob. She didn't really see how she was doing anything by just sitting there and holding the yarn, he was the one doing all of the work, she was just waiting for him to finish this so she could try it on for size. Then she and Minegishi were going outside to do more wintertime gardening even though it was cold and dark out. They had been right. Mob did feel safe when she gardened, though she got the feeling that it had nothing at all to do with gardening. She got the feeling that she felt safe because of who she was with, not what she was doing.

She always felt better over here.

She didn't exactly feel unsafe when she was at home with dad and Sho but she did feel just…not good. Dad was ignoring her and Sho was almost always with Fukuda so, really, it was just her and dad and dad didn't like her anymore so it just felt like she was all alone…and that was the worst feeling ever. Well one of the worst feelings ever. The worst feeling ever was a tie between realizing that your mom was never coming back and having your pretend baby sister taken away from you….and also when your dad held you up in the air by your braids. That hurt too….so maybe it was in it's own category because that was more head pain and not heart pain…or maybe pain was pain.

Mob didn't know.

What she did know was that she felt a lot better when she was with her friends. There was always someone around who wanted to spend time with her or show her something or do something with her and it was all just so nice. Everyone was so nice here, too, nobody ever said mean things to her or ignored her or made her go away. She loved her friends so much. She wished that she could have lived with her friends but that was not a good wish to make because living with her friends would have meant leaving her family behind and she had promised dad that she would never leave. Also someone had to be home to take care of Sho. She hoped that Fukuda remembered to feed him and also to make him take a bath and brush his hair before and after he got up or his head would be one big tangle later.

She hoped that Sho was ok.

She knew that she should have been watching him, that it was her job to take care of him, and that she was the only one who could make sure that he was ok. Fukuda was a nice person to Sho but he wasn't the person who dad had put in charge of him. Mob was. She knew that she should have gone with Sho but she just…she didn't want to. Fukuda was too different from how he used to be. Not like how her friends were to her now. Fukuda was just….not mean but…but not nice, either. Polite. Too polite. Polite and also distant. She didn't like that and she didn't want to hang out with him.

She couldn't bring Sho here either.

Shibata was working on his birthday present. Sho couldn't be here while his birthday present was being worked on because then he would know what he was getting and the surprise would be ruined and it would all be the worst because what were birthdays without surprises? She wouldn't let that happen. Birthdays were important, especially tenth birthdays, because when you turned ten then you were double digits and stuff.

Which was important.

Mob's whole life had changed when she had turned ten. She got to be in charge of Claw and she got to take care of her pretend baby sister and she learned how to smoke cigarettes and also she had quit smoking cigarettes and then she had started fun smoking and then she had been dad's sort of best friend and now he didn't like her…and other stuff….like…like knitting. Yes, and now she was learning to knit. That was what had happened in her first half year of being ten. She wondered what would happen next.

Maybe she would get a turn with the knitting sticks next.

She didn't want to learn to knit, not really, but she didn't think that she could deal with any more excitement. She mostly just wanted to rest and smoke and just…get rid of all the bad feelings that had started to grow inside of her. She was empty and achy and she didn't know how to make it go away. Well she knew how to make it go away for a little bit but not forever. It was like how Elsa froze Anna's heart with a blast of magic. It felt like she was getting all cold and achy from inside of her and she just….didn't know how to make it stop.

An act of true love could thaw a frozen heart.

But that was just in the movie. This was real life. There was no such thing as true love, Minegishi said, not even in families. Love had to be something that you earned. Love was something that you earned and love was something that you worked to hold on to. If someone was being mean to you or not taking good care of the love that they were given then they didn't deserve your love in the first place. That was how Minegishi saw it. Mob knew that true love, the boyfriend and girlfriend kind, wasn't real because you could only fall in love with someone after knowing things about them and even then you could still fall out of love. Like mom and dad had. Mom had seen dad at the train station and then decided that she loved him so they got married and made her and Sho together but then mom fell out of love with dad and left. If that had been true love then she never would have left in the first place.

So boyfriend and girlfriend true love was probably not real.

But there were other kinds of true love, too, like the kind that Elsa and Anna had. Shimazaki thought that they were girlfriends the first time he had heard the movie. That was Nob's fault for not turning the narration on. They were sisters and they had sibling love and sibling love was the real and true kind of love. No matter how mean Sho was to her, he had been pretty nice to her lately though, she would never stop loving him. The same went for him. No matter how much she had to boss him around he would never stop loving her. That was sibling love and sibling love was the real and true kind of love.

But that was not how parent and kid love went.

Mom didn't love her anymore and that was why she had left. Dad didn't love her anymore either and that was why he never, ever, wanted to hang out anymore. That was just the way it had worked out. Mob knew that there was just something about her that made her very difficult for her parents to love. Maybe it was how she couldn't always control her powers and also how she had wished, when she had been getting all of the love that dad could give, that she could have been free of him because he had been making her feel like she couldn't breathe. Maybe that was what was wrong with her. She could never be what her parents wanted her to be. She could only be herself. She could only be Mob.

And also Her Little Ladyship, which was what Shibata called her all the time, even though she was neither little nor a Ladyship.

"Hey, Little Ladyship, which one do you want to watch now?" asked Shibata as her movie went to credits. That had been so beautiful. They loved each other so much and there was so much self-acceptance…he could have cried if he hadn't been in the middle of a very complicated stitch. Were the arms even? Well he could always just lengthen the other one.

"We can watch what you want to now." Said Mob. She wanted to watch Frozen again from the beginning but this was not her TV…well it was Claw's TV and she was a high ranking member of Claw…and her dad was the President….but she wasn't going to be a TV hog. She tended to do that. Sho had told her a million times that she was a TV hog.

"No, you pick. You're the guest." Said Shibata

"No I'm not." Said Mob

"Yes you are. You don't live here so you're the guest and the guest gets to choose." Said Shibata

"But everything that's dads is mine and everything in Claw is dad's….so technically this is my TV…and I don't want to be a TV hog. Besides, what I really want to do is to watch Frozen again but I know that you would probably be bored by it because you're a boy and boys don't like Frozen." Said Mob

"….I would love to watch that movie again." said Shibata. Wow! Could this kid read minds? He wouldn't have been surprised at all if she could. That was exactly what he had been thinking! Well either this or more cooking shows. He was learning so much and the guys loved his chocolate cake, the one he had made last time, they hadn't even been able to taste the tomato paste….though with the way Shimazaki freaked out maybe he shouldn't have said anything…though he did wonder where that cake had gone to by the next morning….

"Really? Or are you just being nice?" asked Mob. Sometimes people just said things to be nice…even if the things that they said weren't true. Mob didn't like that, saying things that weren't true, so she just always told the truth but the nicest version of it. Other people weren't like that even though it was a lot meaner to tell a lie than it was to speak the truth even if that truth was kind of mean.

"No, I really like that movie. Especially the part where the other princess' heart unfreezes." Said Shibata. He could see why she was always dressed up like the main princess. That movie was one of the best examples of foreign animation that he had ever seen. He wondered what other good movies she knew. How had they not hung out one on one like this before? He could see why Minegishi was always hanging out with her. She was a great kid. He hoped that if he ever had a kid, not that it seemed likely since he had zero chance of meeting a woman while he was following Suzuki around, his kid was exactly like Her Little Ladyship…and her brother of course. Both of them.

"I like that part too….do you like the part where Anna gets up and her hair is all crazy? Because I like that part a lot. It's funny. It reminds me of Sho's hair when he gets up only his hair isn't as long." Said Mob

"I love that part too. It reminds me of Shimazaki first thing in the morning." Said Shibata

"Shimazaki's hair can be messy? I've never seen it not all…nice." Said Mob

"Oh yeah, and he spends forever combing it too. I don't know how he does it not being able to, you know, see and all…or why he has to tie up the bathroom all morning if he doesn't need the mirror." Said Shibata

"I always thought he did it by feel. That's how I brush my hair a lot of the time. That's how I braid it too." Said Mob

"You do that by feel? Those braids look complicated as hell….sorry." said Shibata

"I don't know what you're sorry about but, no they aren't complicated at all. I just take my hair and then divide it into halves and then those halves get divided into thirds and then I just braid them together. Here, I'll show you." Said Mob. She undid her braids with her powers and then braided her hair again slowly by hand the way that mom had shown her all those years ago. She separated her hair into the two halves and then the three pieces to each half. She didn't do anything to the two pieces of hair that were just longer parts of her bangs. Those didn't get braided, mom had said, because they were supposed to frame her face and make her look cute. She didn't know if she looked cute or not but they did sometimes get all in her face and eyes, like when she was running or playing and stuff, but this was how her hair was supposed to be. This was how her hair had been for her whole life and that was how her hair was going to be for her whole life. This was how she was going to be for her whole life.

"That still looks pretty complicated." Said Shibata. He would have rubbed his eyes in disbelief if he hadn't been holding his knitting. THAT was how she did that? He was glad that his hair kept it's shape no matter what. Hair was pretty damn complicated. He was never complaining about how long Shimazaki tied up the bathroom for in the mornings ever…but he did reserve the right to complain about Minegsihi's multi hour long baths.

"No, not really. No more complicated than what you're doing. I don't think that I could ever do something like that. I've been watching you all night and I still have no idea how you do it." Said Mob

"It's not easy but it's not hard either. It gets easier the more you do it. See? You just sort of…loop the yarn around the sticks and then just…do that." Said Shibata as he did another stitch. She watched him in fascination. He had missed that, kids watching him in fascination, though it was his own fault that he lost the tiny train conductor job. He maybe should have asked the kids before he picked them up and hugged them…but he knew better now.

"That still looks really hard." Said Mob. If she hadn't been holding the yarn she would have rubbed her eyes in disbelief. It was amazing how two metal sticks could make the yarn just…go together like that. How did he do that? And how did people even invent that? How did people look at yarn and look at sticks and then just decide on a very complicated motion to put it all together? She would never in her whole life be able to do something like that. Never, ever.

"It's not. Here, you try. It's not that bad when you get used to it." Said Shibata. He handed her the knitting needles. It didn't matter if she messed it up, he could just fix it later. It may have been a very important present for her little brother, Little Suzuki was an awesome kid, but at the end of the day it was still just nothing more than a collection of yarn that he had stitched together. That was all. Even if she undid all of his very long and tedious work it would be worth it to see her smile. She had been so down, lately, and a little person like her should never, ever, have been so unhappy.

A little person like her should not have been drinking or smoking either but he wasn't going to tell her not to do what made her happy.

She had been so down lately because her dad had become cold and distant to her…and also almost impossible to be around too but Shibata didn't care about that. He cared about those poor little people. Her Little Ladyship had been so close to her dad and now he had just tossed her out like last week's fish…but maybe that was a good thing because he had been getting a little too close for comfort…not that Shibata was going to start throwing accusations around. He knew how hurtful it was to get those kinds of accusations. Still, though, if the kid was clearly unhappy then you put the kid down. Otherwise you got fired from your job as the tiny train conductor at Wee World….or from being the President of a world domination cult. Not that anyone could fire President Suzuki…

Though he did need a firm talking to about how to treat little people.

He wished that he could have done more for her, she was so clearly sad and just…not weepy sad but more like depressed sad…and she was too little to feel that way. She had her whole life to be depressed because the world was a very depressing place. People hurt people, even the people they loved, and they didn't even realize it a lot of the time. People judged you and decided that they didn't like you without even getting to know you. People were just the worst sometimes and the world could be so depressing…but that was ok. The world would be remade into something better one of these days and maybe people might end up being a little bit better to each other.

Well not with Suzuki ruling it.

But he was getting old. He was constantly rolling his shoulders and rubbing his lower back. He was forty something by now and soon he'd be old and then he'd leave the world to one of his kids. They were both such good candidates. Little Suzuki was so spirited and fun but her Little Ladyship was the sweetest little girl in the whole world….things would be so great once one of them came to rule the world. It would probably be Her Little Ladyship because she was the older Suzuki child.

It would be so great but that time was far away. He had to focus on making her feel better right now.

"Did I do it right?" asked Mob as she did what he did. She got the feeling that she had done it wrong. She had probably messed up and now he wouldn't like her anymore and he wouldn't want to be her friend and stuff like that and she probably should have just quit and she was messing up Sho's present and she would ruin his birthday just like she ruined everything and-

"You're doing a great job! Keep it up!" said Shibata even though she wasn't. But, hey, it was just yarn. She wasn't doing anything that he couldn't fix later. Besides, he had fixed that frown on her face and that was a win in his book.

"…ok…" said Mob. She didn't think that she was doing that good of a job but if he said so then…then that was ok. This was ok. She was ok. Maybe she was doing something right for once. Maybe she was being a good person for once. Maybe he wanted to be her friend and he wouldn't just suddenly stop liking her…maybe she was even good at this….

Mob didn't know anything about knitting but she did know that she was having a very good time.


	226. UFO Catcher Games and Mystery Prizes

UFO catchers were hard.

Mob had never been good at these. Not like Sho. He won these all the time and he always swore that he never used his powers so he must have been really good. Mob wished that he had been there to help her but he wasn't. He hung out with Fukuda a lot these days. She hung out with her friends too but she did miss him a lt. he was probably still mad about how she went to sleep next to him without asking and they ended up switching beds. He hadn't really talked to her since. Not like how they used to talk before. He hadn't even asked her to play since, either, though they had been playing together less and less as they had been getting older.

Maybe this was just a part of getting older.

Fukuda said that he didn't like her as much because she was getting older. That was why he called her Suzuki-san, now, instead of Shigeko or even Little Lady, which was close to being called Her Ladyship but not close enough that it bothered her. She didn't mind being called a Ladyship that much anymore. OR Suzuki-sama. Or even Little Sister-sama. She was just happy that people still wanted to talk to her. Dad was still mad at her. He didn't hang out with her or ask her to come to work with him or anything. He was just so…there but not there. This was Mob's fault because she had complained about the love that dad had shown her. You either got all of dad's love or none of it and she had chosen the 'none' option…and now she had to pay for it.

At least she got to hang out with her friends again.

Dad had been weird about her leaving the HQ to go anywhere with Minegishi. He had said that she had to stay by his side at all times and that if she wanted to see someone she had to stay in the HQ. Well now that rule was lifted and she and Minegishi could at least hang out again. That was good because she had been running low on new manga to read. That was why they were at the manga store now. Mob had already picked out and bought the ones she wanted. Now she was waiting for Minegishi and playing the UFO catcher game.

And losing.

How did Sho DO this? The prizes were in these round pokeball things and the side of the UFO catcher were square so it had trouble catching the prizes and, in Mob's opinion, that was a bad choice of design. How did they expect people to win at this game if the catcher couldn't catch the prizes? She wasn't going to give up, though, because she wanted to win that cat bracelet. She didn't wear a lot of jewelry but she did like cats. Also she and Sho could share it because he liked cats too. Well he liked cats but not as much as he liked hamsters. There was a tiny hamster phone keychain that Sho would have liked. She hoped that she won that too. She had no way of seeing what prize she would get. They were all in these mystery ball things. Still, though, she was happy to just win anything.

But she did hope that she won something that Sho liked.

His birthday was coming up. Mob had already gotten him a present, wrapped it, and hidden it to where he couldn't find it. She had gotten him more art stuff. He went through it quickly. He was always filling up sketchbooks and wearing down his pencils and stuff like that so she got him more art stuff. She got him art stuff most years so she knew that it was a good gift for him. He would be so happy…but also she wanted to win him something now just to make him happy. Maybe if she won him something then he would want to spend time with her and play with her. She had lost mom and now she had lost dad. She couldn't lose her little brother too. What was the point of having a family if everyone was gone? Mom had run away from home and dad didn't even like her anymore…and she didn't know what the point even was of being Suzuki's it they weren't going to BE Suzuki's….

Lots of people in the world were called Suzuki.

But they were all Suzuki's from the same family. What was the point of being Suzuki's from the same family if they weren't going to act like it. This was probably all her fault, what had happened, all of it. Mom leaving and dad not liking her and Sho wanting to spend time with her. Maybe she should just quit now. Quit playing the UFO catcher game and quit trying to keep her family together and then just…quit. She didn't know what she would do if she quit but she was trying and trying and trying to make things better but…but there was nothing that she could do. She had been trying to play with Sho and she had been trying to get dad to even look at her and she just….she had been trying for a while.

So maybe she should just quit already….

But she had already spent twelve hundred yen trying to win this game so she had might as well keep on trying. She pulled another hundred yen coin out and went back to it. She was already in too deep to stop playing this game just like she was already in too deep with her family to quit. She had been trying for as long as she could remember. She had been trying to be a good person and a good daughter and just…had been trying and trying and trying for her whole life. Since she had already sank her whole life into this she had no reason to stop now.

If she did then everything that she had invested would have been a waste and dad said that one of the worst things that a person could be was wasteful.

"Mob, are you seriously wasting your money on that stupid game?" asked Minegishi. So this was where Mob had gone off to. Right along the side wall were numerous crane games. Ones with candy and toys and also for some reason expensive fan merchandise. Mob was standing in front of the mystery ball machine trying her best to win even though she had more money than God and could just buy whatever she wanted. Not to mention the psychic powers….though Mob had very strong views about using her powers to cheat…and that would be the last time they ever played Jenga as a group…fucking Ryou….

"Yes." said Mob as she tried, and failed, to win again. She frowned. She could just walk away now…but she had already put too much of her money into this. Besides, she had a lot of money and if she needed more she could just got and get more so it wasn't like she had to worry about using all of her money here and not having any more to spend on more fun stuff…like more UFO catcher games.

"How much have you spent so far?" asked Minegishi. A ten year old and her money were soon parted. That was the basic economic model of any and all arcade games.

"Thirteen hundred yen so far." Said Mob. Was that a lot of money? She didn't know. She had more money though so it didn't matter and if she ran out of money, there was a first time for everything, she could always go and get more.

"Seriously? You spent thirteen hundred yen on this game?" asked Minegishi. They wondered how Mob could be so…well she was ten and this sort of thing was important to a ten year old. Minegishi had played these sorts of games when they were ten and had figured out how to trick coin slots into letting them play. They hadn't been the most morally upright ten year old in the world. They weren't going to be telling Mob that, though, she'd have a heart attack. She had very, VERY strong views on using your powers for the purposes of cheating.

"Yes. Well it's fourteen hundred yen now." Said Mob as she put another coin in. She was happy to get rid of the coins, they made her bag kind of heavy, but even if she ended up using them all up she could just get more from the change machine.

"How much money do you even have with you? Because that is a LOT of manga by your feet." Said Minegishi. They had been curious for a while now as to how much money Mob even carried with her. She had always spent it without any thought at all to what things costed…and while Minegishi was on the subject they wondered how much the whole Suzuki family was worth. World domination did not come cheap after all…

"This much." Said Mob. She opened up her cat bag and showed Minegishi the pile of coins and bills she kept in there. Also there was gum in there somewhere too but it was buried somewhere under the money.

"Mob, close your bag. You do not want to go showing off that you have that much money…and also you need a credit card….or at least a wallet." Said Minegishi. Those were large bills in there….too large to just leave your ten year old with. Also maybe it wasn't entirely safe to be walking around Tokyo with a bag of loose money. Thank God that Mob had them to look out for her.

"I can't have a credit card because I'm ten, dad said, and it would look suspicious if I had one." said Mob. She knew that people had wallets but she had never really gotten the point of that. It was easier to get your money out when you just had a big bag of it.

"Sure, a ten year old with a credit card is suspicious but a ten year old walking around with hundreds of thousands of yen in her bag is perfectly normal." Said Minegishi. She was carrying A LOT of money. Minegishi wasn't exactly living on a prayer but they did keep their money in their wallet, they didn't have a lot of cash, but mostly in the bank where it belonged. Who the hell let their kid just walk around with that much money? And those had not been small bills in her bag.

"Yes. Dad said so." Said Mob

"Well….at least you get one hell of an allowance." Said Minegishi

"What's an allowance?" asked Mob

"The pocket money your parents give you…wait…your dad didn't give you that money? Mob, what have you been up to?" asked Minegishi

"I haven't been up to anything but playing this game…and also dad doesn't give me money he just says that I can take it if I need it. He has a lot of money in his desk drawers and stuff so I just filled my bag up with money." Said Mob

"Well that's some grade 'A' parenting right there…." muttered Minegishi. You were supposed to teach kids the value of money and about being responsible and all of that…right? Minegishi had no idea since they had never been anyone's parent but they did think that just setting your kid loose with a bag of money wasn't going to teach them good fiscal responsibility…and also maybe that was something that Suzuki should have been teaching his kids since he planned on ruling the world and all of that shit. Ruling the world seemed like that sort of thing that required a degree of basic responsibility.

"What?" asked Mob. She wished that Minegishi wouldn't say things so quiet like that all the time. It made it very hard for her to follow the conversation.

"Nothing. So, can we get going or are you going stand her all day like a businessman in a pachinko parlor on payday?" asked Minegishi

"Um….I've never been to a pachinko parlor before but I am going to stay until I win. It's ok, though, because Starbucks is opened all day and it's not even dinnertime yet." Said Mob

"So you're just going to keep on spending money on that game until you win?" asked Minegishi

"Yes. I've been playing for too long to stop now." Said Mob

"Fair enough." Said Minegishi. They decided that they could add 'gambling problem' to Mob's list of future possibly life ruining vices. At least they could safely say that they were not responsible for this. Minegishi had never been a big gambler. Even if it was boring they preferred to know the outcome of things before they happened. Also they liked not pissing their money away like that. Having money in the bank, and also hidden in the lining of their suitcases incase the shit hit the fan, always made them feel good. They had been without money, without anything, for too long during their formative years. That might have had a bad effect on them. That might have made them the person that they were today.

The sort of person who hung out with a ten year old and enjoyed it.

Mob had been down lately, hence this trip to the biggest manga store within reasonable travelling distance, but that was not the full reason why Minegishi had brought her here today. Also it wasn't just for the reasonably priced manga of an adult nature, either, though that was a draw. They just…they liked Mob and they wanted her to be happy. They had very few people in their life who they cared about and Mob was one of them. Minegishi didn't know how they had let this happen but it had happened. They had gotten attached to Mob.

Eh. Could have been worse.

She was a great kid, a good person, and someone who they weren't ashamed to say that they cared for. Though they were not a fan of the feeling of fear that they got when they looked at her. The fear that they had ruined her life, that she would end up like them, the fear that she would end up worse. Minegishi had never been as naïve as Mob. They had never cared about another human being until very late in their life. They had always been concerned with getting to the next day, that was all, and they had just never had room for another person in their mind or in their life. Well now they did.

They could handle this.

There was a reason that they never wanted to have kids. Even if Ryou went on and on about how great kids were and how great it would be to have them, he never thought things through and also that was more commitment than they were willing to make to one person, they knew that they did not want kids. Not if being friends with Mob was anything like having a kid. They had messed Mob up. Well her dad had messed Mob up but in trying to help they may have made the whole thing worse. They had lost control of the situation and now Mob…she had learned some very bad coping mechanisms….

But there was nothing that they could do about it now so they might as well just make what they could of this friendship.

"I almost had it that time." Said Mob. She had managed to sort of pick up the mystery prize ball. It was closer to the hole at least. Maybe if she tried a few more times she could get it in. Maybe.

"You sure that you don't just want to find a store that sells this stuff?" asked Minegishi. They wondered how long Mob could keep this up for. She had one hell of an attention span. They had watched a Frozen marathon, the other day, which was exactly what it sounded like. That movies over and over….and OVER again. If Minegishi had been in the habit of making armchair diagnoses, which they weren't, they would have said that Mob was engaging in an unhealthy form of escapism because she identified heavily with the main character. Emotionally distant parents, a difficult relationship with a younger sibling, powers that were way too big for her to fully control…but Minegishi was not in the habit of psychoanalyzing their friends. Maybe Mob was just a ten year old girl who loved movies with singing and princesses in pretty dresses and stuff.

"No. I've already been playing for this long so I might as well just keep going." said Mob

"Uh-huh…and I guess that telling you that using your powers is always an option wouldn't be taken well?" asked Minegishi

"No. Well I wouldn't be mad at you but I would be sad that you thought that I was the sort of person who could cheat." Said Mob

"I know that you're not the sort of person that would cheat. That's why I didn't remind you ages ago that you had psychic powers and that you could easily win every single prize in this machine if you wanted to." Said Minegishi

"Oh. Ok. I feel better now. Don't worry. I have to win eventually. If I keep on playing then I'll get better and better and then I'll eventually win." Said Mob. You just had to be persistent, like dad said, and then you would reach all of your goals. Not that Mob had any real goals beyond winning this game and also putting her family back together.

"So you're going to train in the art of claw machines until you get good enough to win?" asked Minegishi

"Yes." said Mob

"And how long is that going to take?" asked Minegishi

"I don't know. Hours, maybe." Said Mob

"Yeah, well, I don't want to stand here for hours and hours while you learn the art of crane games." Said Minegishi

"You could sit down and read? I think that they let people sit on the floor here. Well they let me sit on the floor when I was reading manga from the bottom shelves so it must be ok." Said Mob

"Or you could let someone with decades of experience take a shot." Said Minegishi

"But I don't know anyone with decades of experience. Well I know Sho, he's good at these, but he doesn't have decades of experience because he's not even a whole decade old yet." Said Mob

"I mean me. Now move over because I am not standing here all day." Said Minegishi

"You know how to play UFO catcher games? You?" asked Mob. She had never imagined Minegishi would have been the sort of person to do things like this…but even after being friends for two whole years now she supposed that it was normal not to know everything about another person. They were almost twenty years older than her after all.

"I've played a few crane games in my time." Said Minegishi. More like they had cheated at a few cranes games in their time but Mob didn't need to know that. Once they had learned to make vines, well, arcades were warm and they could hang out there for a while. They figured out how to trick the coin slots and the crane games and also how to part inattentive fools from their money, too, when they had been younger. But Mob didn't need to know all of that.

She just needed one of these damn mystery prizes.

Minegishi didn't even end up needing to use their powers. Maybe it was the difference in height that made it easier but they managed to use the crane to knock one of those prizes down the hatch for Mob. There. Now Mob had a prize and it had only taken almost three thousand yen to get it.

"Wow! You won that on your first try. You're amazing, Minegishi." Said Mob as she was handed her prize. Well technically it was Minegishi's prize but they had been nice enough to win it for her. She held it in her hands and smiled. She felt…happy. She always felt happy when she was with her friend…but she also felt extra happy when nice things happened to her. This really was more Minegishi's prize though. She attempted to hand it to them but they just reached a hand out and pushed it back towards Mob.

"Nope. That's yours. I don't want it." Said Minegishi

"But you won it." Said Mob

"Yes, but I won it for you. Besides, that's kid's stuff. Which one of us is the ten year old?" asked Minegishi

"I'm ten and a half." Said Mob

"Then open your prize and enjoy it, too, because I am not winning you another one. You get what you get and you don't get upset." Said Minegishi

"I won't get upset. Whatever it is I won't get upset. I promise." Said Mob. She opened her prize up and…oh. It was two prizes! Wow, a two for one deal. That was lucky. They were two blue bracelets made of plastic with a dangling blue pendant on the end. They said….that was English for some reason…oh. One said friend and the other said best. Mob put the ends together, they fit like puzzle pieces, and then she got the whole message.

Best friends.

"Hey, look at that. A twofer." Said Minegishi as Mob held up the prize she had won. Cheap best friend bracelets that looked like they had stepped right out of the nineties…that was the thing now, right? Nostalgia for a decade that the kids hadn't even been born in. They thought about maybe winning something else for Mob. They knew that she was not a jewelry person, or even an accessory person, something that they could understand. All of that was just too much extra work plus you'd be screwed if you were even in a fight and someone just reached out and grabbed you by the whatever.

"Here, you can have one of the halves." Said Mob holding out each half so that Minegishi could see them.

"No thanks. You can keep those. I don't wear jewelry." Said Minegishi. It wasn't that they hated jewelry, it looked nice, they just didn't like to wear a lot of things that could be easily grabbed. Same reason they preferred short hair.

"Me neither but there are two of us and two of them. So which one do you want to be? Best or friend?" asked Mob

"Mob…." Said Minegishi. They really didn't want to take that, they would never wear it, but Mob looked so damned earnest. How could anyone resist her looking so damned earnest? Minegishi had never been a jewelry person, or a friendship bracelet person, but they would do this to make Mob happy. So much of her life was shit they had might as well do what they could to make her life just a little bit better.

"You can be friend because you're my friend or you can be best because you're the best." Said Mob helpfully.

"Give me friend. You can be best." Said Minegishi. Mob took their hand, they tensed but did not flinch at the sudden contact, and slid the bracelet onto their wrist. They would have to get used to the dangling pendant and the feel of something cutting off their circulation…but they would deal. They pulled their sleeve down and tucked the pendant into it. There. Less annoying but it also couldn't be seen. No matter, no matter. They knew that it was there and Mob knew that it was there.

"Thank you for winning this for me…and for being my friend…and stuff." Said Mob

"You don't have to thank me for that, now come on. We've been here long enough." Said Minegishi

"Ok." Said Mob. She followed behind Minegishi. Her powers kept on fiddling with her new bracelet. She never wore a lot of jewelry, she had some that came with her costume dresses and she wore it sometimes but not that often, but she could get used to it. She would eventually get used to it being there even though she couldn't see it under her sleeve. She got the feeling that this was not the sort of thing that you could just take off. This seemed special and important, like a way to remember who her best friend was, sort of like how married people had rings….not that she ever wanted to be married to Minegishi or even liked them like that…but it was sort of the same thing. You could love your best friend, Mob knew that she loved Minegishi a lot, so maybe it was the same sort of thing.

Something to wear so you remembered how much you loved your best friend and how much your best friend loved you…and also so she could remember how good Minegishi was at UFO catcher games.


	227. Assurances and Conversations

Things were weird at home.

At least they had been weird at home last Sho had checked. He had gone home with dad after work and then went right to Fukuda's house. He had stayed there for a while waiting for him to come back, and also ate his snacks even though they sucked, and it had been boring. It had been better than being at home though. Home had a weird atmosphere. He didn't like it. Home was all…not good right now. Dad had decided that he didn't like big sis as much anymore and now she was being all weird.

And stupid.

She was being weird and stupid. She was always trying to hold him and hug him and sleep next to him and stuff. He didn't want that. He didn't want to be held or hugged or any of that and he certainly didn't want her sleeping next to him. He needed his sleep and it was so hard to sleep with someone holding on to him and taking up the entire bed, almost. She had her own bed to sleep in and she should have slept there. There or with dad…but dad didn't like her anymore. That was what had gotten her so upset. Dad didn't like her anymore and she was all sad and stuff.

Sho didn't care.

That was a jerk thought to have. He loved big sis, he really did, but he also just didn't care that dad was being a jerk to her. Dad wasn't even being as bad as he could be but big sis was carrying on like dad was treating her the way that he had been treating him for his entire life. She was all upset over nothing and worried over nothing and just…all of that over nothing. Over dad not looking at her or talking to her or playing Minecraft with her anymore or letting her sleep in his bed. Sho would have played her a sad song on the world's smallest violin if he'd had any idea at all how to even begin to get ahold of the world's smallest violin. She had no idea what she was even talking about when she said that dad was treating her like he didn't like her anymore.

Sho hadn't seen any bruises on her.

None at all. They didn't take baths together anymore, not that often anyway, but they still changed clothes in the same room and stuff. She had been perfectly fine. She hadn't had any scratches or bumps or bruises or anything. She had just been normal looking so, really, she had no idea what she was talking about. She had no idea how bad dad could be. She had no idea how hard things could get. She had no idea what could happen to her, what dad could do to her, and if she honestly thought that this was the worst that dad could do then she had another thing coming.

Those were jerk thoughts to have.

Sho loved his sister and he knew that he should not have been thinking about her having another thing coming, about wanting her to have another thing coming, because he knew fully well that was coming if dad ever really and truly decided that he didn't like her anymore. Dad would hit her. He hit her sometimes but never for real and almost never with his actual hands. He mostly just shoved her and pulled her hair with his powers and even those times were rare. Sho couldn't even think of a single time this year when something like that had happened to her. Dad had always been super nice to her. Dad was nice to her because she had been born right and Sho had been born wrong and…and that was just the whole of it.

Even when dad didn't like her anymore he still treated her better than he had ever treated Sho in his life…and he could not begin to understand….any of this.

She must have done something really bad to make dad treat her like this but Sho didn't know what. He couldn't think of a single thing that she had done or that she could have done or…or anything. She was big sis. She never did anything wrong. She didn't even know how to do things that were wrong. Not like Sho. So was always wrong, everything about him was wrong, and dad had never been shy about telling him that everything about him was just so very wrong…the most wrong. Dad had never been shy about trying to make him less wrong, about hitting him to try and make him less wrong, but he wasn't doing anything at all to big sis.

That was something that Sho should have been happy about.

He should have been happy that his big sister wasn't getting hit. That she had no idea how bad dad could be. That she was safe and sound even though dad was treating her like she was invisible. She wasn't invisible, she was very visible, but dad…he was still just being dad. He was still being a jerk. He is, was, and always would be a jerk…but he was more of a jerk to Sho than he had ever been to big sis in her entire life….

And Sho hated himself for feeling this way.

"Sho? Are you alright?" asked Fukuda. Sho had gone all quiet. They were sitting at the kitchen table playing Sho's game again, not what Fukuda wanted to do after a long day of dealing with all the little fires that made up Claw, and even though he didn't feel like it he still did it for Sho. He had just been so down lately there must have been something that Fukuda could do…and it was this…so why not just do this?

Fukuda wished that there was more that he could do.

What he wanted to do was get Sho out of here and give him the life that he should have had. Suzuki was doing something else stupid. Fukuda wasn't sure what but Sho had been coming over every single day upset that his sister was being clingy and also trying to trade beds with him for some reason, and of course this came back to Suzuki and his terrible parenting somehow….and there was nothing that Fukuda could do about that. He had talked to Suzuki and those talks had to be spaced FAR apart otherwise they would rapidly lose their impact. No, it was best to let Suzuki cool down from the last one.

At least he wasn't taking it out on Sho.

The kids were fine. Sho was fine, anyway, because he hadn't come to Fukuda with any new injuries to heal. Shigeko must have been fine though she hardly ever came to him when she was injured these days…either that or she never got injured. Or nobody was injuring her. Suzuki had never been hit as a kid, his parents were too nice for that, but for some reason he had been hitting Sho, and to a significantly lesser extend Shigeko, since the kids had been small. Well he had always been a violent man but still. Anyone could have told him that he was making some big mistakes there….

Not Fukuda, though, because he had already tried to bring this up once before when Sho had been about three or four and that conversation…the outcome had not been good at all.

So there was nothing he could do…and he had to be content with doing a little more than nothing. He had to be content with just being able to be there for Sho in the ways that he could. Like sitting up late into the night with him playing videogames when he would much rather have been sitting in bed with a cold beer waiting for tomorrow to happen. But that was not an option now. He had made a promise to Masami and he was going to do his best to keep it.

Sho needed him.

"No, not really. I feel like shit." Said Sho. There was not any point at all in hiding things from Fukuda. He was Fukuda. He was always there to listen and he always made Sho feel better. Not like how dad asked if there was something wrong. He never meant with Sho. He always meant 'was there something happening in Claw' or something. He only cared if Sho was upset if it had something to do with Claw or whatever.

"Language." Said Fukuda instinctively. At some point Sho had started cursing…and Fukuda knew why. It was the company he kept. He needed to keep Sho close for his own good. He was only nine years old, he didn't need to be cursing or whatever else the adults around him got up to.

"What language do you want me to say it in?" asked Sho even though he knew that was not at all what Fukuda meant. He did his best impression of big sis when he said that even though he knew that Fukuda wouldn't buy it. Only big sis could get away with being so clueless. Probably because she was just, naturally, a very clueless person.

"Come on, you know what I meant. I want you to stop with the cursing already. You're only nine, that's too young to be cursing like that." Said Fukuda

"I'm almost ten." Said Sho. He was nine years and eleven months old. Less than that, actually, but he didn't want to start counting days. He was almost ten and if he wanted to curse then he could curse. He wasn't a baby and he could say whatever he wanted to say. Besides, what was Fukuda going to do? Tell dad on him? Fukuda never did things like that. He was way too nice and he cared about Sho too much. He knew what dad would do to him, how dad would punish him, and he wouldn't want that to happen to Sho.

"Ten is too young to be cursing like that. Besides, I know that you're smarter than that. You can say what's on your mind without curing. You're a good person like that, Sho." said Fukuda. Sho should not have been talking like that. Masami would not have wanted that and Fukuda did not want that. He was only nine. He was not supposed to be talking like that or…or living the sort of life that he was living now. This was just…not the life for him or for any child…and there was nothing that Fukuda could do besides sit there and listen and try to fix things when he could….

"I'm not." Said Sho. That was the last thing that he wanted to hear. He knew that he should have been happy that Fukuda was saying something nice to him but he did not need to hear nice lies like that just to feel better. He would rather have heard the truth, that he was a jerk, than have had to sit there and listen to lies.

"Yes, you are." Said Fukuda. How there could be such a disconnect between how Sho saw himself and how he existed in reality Fukuda would never know. It was like a reverse Suzuki situation. Suzuki thought that he was God's gift to mankind, that he was the smartest and greatest and most powerful man to ever live, and that the world would be better off ruled by him. He couldn't see how near universally hated he was. He couldn't see how much worse off the world was for having him in it. Somehow Sho had ended with all the humility in the world while his father had none whatsoever. He got it from his mother. Masami had always been so humble and hardworking and put upon and…and she had not deserved the life that she had led just like Sho did not deserve the life that he was leading now.

"No, I'm not." Said Sho. This was worse than when big sis said stuff like this to him. At least he expected her to tell him stuff like this. She meant it because no matter how terrible someone was to her she would always love them no matter what. She was a lot like mom like that. No matter how bad Sho had been mom had never once told him that he was terrible or that she was ashamed of him or that she wished that she'd had someone else, anyone else, for a son. Sho was a jerk like dad. He took after dad. He looked like dad and he acted like dad and maybe one day in the future he would look in the mirror and only be able to see dad, not himself, just dad complete with the eyebrows that looked exactly like angry caterpillars.

"Yes, Sho, you are." Said Fukuda. He wished that he could get Sho to see himself for who he was, not who he thought he was, but this was one of the rare ways in which he took after his father. Back when they had been young, when they had just made friends, Fukuda had made it his mission in life to get Suzuki Touichirou to see how weird he was and to get him to take steps to be a nicer and more normal person. Obviously that hadn't worked out at all. Sho was the same way…as much as it pain Fukuda to think about it, Sho could be somewhat like his father.

But he was mostly like Masami.

Sure Sho showed the same violent streak that Suzuki had and sure he could be a little bit overbearing sometimes and sure he only saw himself the way he existed in his own mind, not reality, but he was also a sweet, kind, and nurturing boy. He was the sort of person who tried to save a next of baby birds because he thought that the mother had abandoned them. He was the sort of person who had taken care of a baby at nine years old because she needed him. He was the sort of person who put up with Shigeko alternating between bossing him around like an overzealous nanny and smothering him like it was wartime and the enemy was closing in. Sho put up with a lot and…and he could be violent sometimes…but at least he saw that he had done something wrong in being violent and at least he always apologized.

He was nothing…almost nothing…like his father and Fukuda would be forever grateful for that.

"Will you just stop saying that? I'm not." Said Sho. He was getting mad now…but what else was new? He was always mad about something it seemed. Right now he was just…he was so mad at Fukuda…because he kept on saying things that Sho knew for a fact were not true. He was not a good person. Good people did not have mean thoughts like that about their sisters. Good people did not want their sisters to know just how bad life with their dads could be. Good people did not wish, just a little bit, that she could see just how bad things could get.

He was not a good person.

He had been trying for so long to be a good person but…but he just couldn't. Not with all of these thoughts in his head. Not with so much meanness inside of him all the time. He was trying so hard, so very hard, to be a good person…but maybe in trying to be a good person he was just proving to himself that he was not a good person. Like how people who went around talking about how smart they were actually weren't that smart or like how people who had to tell other people how nice they were really weren't that nice in the first place.

Maybe there was just no hope for him.

"Yes you are. Sho, you are a good person. You're good to all the people around you even when you don't have to be. You're a good person and-" said Fukuda. Sho slammed his laptop shut. Fukuda would have said more but now he knew that he had said too much. Sho was like a tire fire when he got like this. The best thing to do was just to let him burn himself out.

"No, I'm not. You don't know what goes on in my head. If you knew what went on in my head then you would know how bad of a person I really was!" said Sho. He should not have slammed his laptop closed like that. Now it was probably broken. Now it was probably broken and he would need a new one and also his Minecraft guy had probably died and also now he wouldn't be able to play and he had to play because otherwise he would have had no reason to be in Fukuda's house and then he would have to go back to his house and deal with that weird atmosphere and then big sis would try and sleep next to him or hug him or try and talk about how sad she was that dad was treating her like he didn't like her anymore even though she didn't know the half of it and-

There was a hand on his back.

"Sho, talk to me. Tell me what's happening in your head right now. Talk to me about what's bothering you. I may or may not be able to fix it but I know that once you talk about it you'll feel much better." Said Fukuda softly. He put some of his power into that. He helped get rid of some of those stress hormones running through Sho's bloodstream. He didn't like doing this, he tried to use his powers only to heal, but Sho was like a tire fire when he got like this. In a tire fire you had to let it burn because there was no way to put it out…but that didn't mean that you wouldn't have put the fire out if you could. Who the hell wanted a pile of burning tires? Nobody. Just like nobody wanted to see a nine year old boy beat himself up like that over things that…that he probably should not even have had to have been worried about.

"I…I feel really bad. I feel really bad because big sis keeps on trying to sleep next to me and…and we keep on having to switch beds even though we've never done that before…and also I threw her stuff around and…and I was a jerk when I did that. I keep on thinking of doing that again. I keep on thinking of doing all kinds of mean things to her because…because I'm just a jerk. I'm such a jerk to her and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do to change or even if I can change. I just…I have all of these thoughts in my head…" said Sho

"Sho, no, they're just thoughts. We all have thoughts in our heads that we shouldn't have. What matters is if we act on them or not." Said Fukuda. Also if you had good reason to act on them then…then it was ok…but he was not opening up that discussion right now. That discussion was best left to when…when certain things, certain events of the past, we revealed to him…if ever.

"But…but sometimes I do act on them. I kick walls and I throw things and…and sometimes I even think about hitting her and it's like I'm going to hit her so I just kick another hole in the walls or I throw things or I just yell and…and I don't want to have to do stuff like that and I think that I'm a bad person because I keep on thinking like that." Said Sho

"There's nothing wrong with thinking…thinking about doing things like that. We all think about doing things that we know we would never do in real life. You stopping hitting her and you stopped being mean to her. That's fine. I bet that you're sorry that you threw her things around. That's good. As long as you realize that your actions hurt others and then you apologize then you're…you're just fine." Said Fukuda. Sho had a violent streak in him and it was looking to be more than just a phase. What he needed was a psychologist, not a healer, and a mother as well. Well Fukuda was going to do his best by Sho. Besides, it could have been worse. He wasn't anything like his father had been when they had been kids. True he had met Suzuki at thirteen but he knew that the person that Suzuki had been at thirteen had not just appeared overnight. He must have been at least ten times the terror that Sho ever was.

Sho was….Sho could have been a lot worse.

"But…but there is. Big sis keeps on telling me that…that dad doesn't like her anymore and that he's treating her like he doesn't like her anymore but…but she has no idea how dad treats the people that he doesn't like. It isn't good. Dad is just so…so mean to the people that he doesn't like. To me. He hits me and…and he's never once his her how he's hit me and…and when she talks about how sad she is that dad's treating her like she's invisible it just…it makes me want to hurt her." said Sho. He felt like the worst person who ever lived admitting all of that to Fukuda. He should have been a better person than that. He should have been happy that his big sis wasn't getting hit or hurt or yelled at. He should have been happy that dad, even at his worst with her, was nothing at all like what his worst was with Sho. He should have been happy, relieved even that she wasn't being hurt, but he just…wasn't.

Little brothers were supposed to protect their big sisters.

But he was doing a terrible job of protecting her. He was being a terrible little brother. He should have done more for her, been there for her better, done…done better…been better. Thought better thoughts. But he hadn't. He had been…jealous. He had been jealous that even at his worst, the worst that big sis had seen of him, dad did not even some close to treating big sis even HALF as bad as he'd been treating Sho for his whole nine years and eleven months of life.

It just wasn't fair.

"Sho….you're not a bad person for feeling that way. Anyone would feel that way in your position. Your dad has never treated you and your sister fairly and it's wrong of her to compare what she's going through now to what you've been going through for your entire life. She had no right to say that to you and she owes you an apology…but she isn't going to give you one because she doesn't know what she's saying." Said Fukuda. He had never been more angry with Shigeko at any point in time as he was in that moment. She knew what her brother had been going through for his entire life. How could she not know? She had always been right there. She had been his constant companion for as long as she could remember, probably, and Suzuki had not gotten to be the man he was overnight. She had seen the way her father had treated her brother, had been seeing it for her entire life, and then she had the nerve to compare whatever it was that she was going through to a lifetime of what Suzuki had put Sho through.

He had no idea what she even could have been going through.

She had wanted Suzuki to leave her alone and now, from what Sho had said, he was leaving her alone. There. She had gotten what she had wanted. What was she so upset about? It wasn't like she didn't have people in her life to spend time with. She had no reason to go and say something so inconsiderate to Sho. She should have thought about how her little brother would have felt with his big sister talking to him like that. Discounting everything that he had been through. She should not have been so selfish. She should have thought of Sho. She was forever talking about how much she loved him but when it came down to it she loved in the same way Suzuki loved. She wanted to keep Sho near her, that was why she wouldn't so much as let him sleep in his own bed, just like Suzuki had tried to keep her close. She should have seen that she didn't enjoy being treated that way and she should have just…just not done the same thing to her brother. How could she have acted like that? How could she have been so childish and selfish?

Well she was Suzuki's daughter after all.

"How can she not know what she's saying?" asked Sho. She had been speaking plain Japanese, she knew what she had been saying, and she knew…she knew how bad dad could be. She had seen…well she hadn't. She had never seen how bad dad could possibly be. The way he hurt Sho. That was…that was something that he had always tried to keep hidden from her because…because he hadn't wanted to hurt her. So maybe that was what Fukuda meant when he said that big sis hadn't known what she was saying…but even if she hadn't known what she had been saying it had still hurt when she said it.

"Your sister…she's a lot like your father. Your father never takes other people's feelings into account when he says something. He just says whatever's on his mind and expects the other person to just sit there and take it. Your sister didn't think about what you'd gone through, it probably never crossed her mind once, she just said what she wanted to say and she expected you to deal with it. That…that was not something that she should have said to you." Said Fukuda.

"I think….I think that she just didn't know what she was saying because she's never had to go through dad…treating her the way that he treats me and I think that she just feels bad because dad's being all…like that…to her." said Sho. Sometimes when Fukuda talked about big sis Sho got the feeling that he had her confused with someone else, someone he didn't entirely like, and he didn't know why. Fukuda liked both of them. He had always been there for them ever since they were little kids. Sho figured that even he could be clueless about stuff sometimes. He wasn't clueless about big sis loving him, though, he could never be clueless about that. She told him at least a hundred times a day if not more that she loved him.

"Sho…you should talk to her about this. You should talk to her about how you feel, about what she said to you, because otherwise…you'll never feel better." Said Fukuda. There were some things that Sho needed to figure out on his own. Sho was…he thought that best of people, like his mother had, but sometimes he just had to see people for what they were instead of who you wanted them to be. He was so like Masami in that way…it had taken her over half a decade to realize who Suzuki really was…hopefully Sho would realize who his sister really was before it was too late.

"Yeah…I'll do that…" said Sho. Fukuda was right. Instead of being all mad about stuff he needed to talk to big sis about how he felt, about how hurtful what she had said was, and about how she could be sort of suffocating sometimes. He didn't want to talk to her about this but, hey, at least things wouldn't be so weird at home anymore.


	228. Being Near You

Mob didn't want to switch beds. She just wanted to be next to someone.

She didn't know why Sho kept on going to her bed in the middle of the night. When you wanted to sleep next to someone you just slept next to them. Well only family, of course, not strangers or anyone like that. She didn't even know why someone would want to sleep next to a stranger or anything like that. Mob certainly didn't. She wanted to sleep next to her little brother so that was what she did, she slept next to her little brother.

Well she tried to.

Sho woke up and went over to her bed while she was sleeping. She didn't understand why he kept on getting up and sleeping in her bed instead of his. It wasn't like she was getting up and carrying him to her bed to sleep next to her. Dad had done that to her and she hadn't liked it that much. Waking up in a place that she hadn't gone to sleep in. That was why she hadn't just picked Sho up with her powers and carried him over to her bed like she had thought of.

She had wanted to sleep near her little brother.

She loved him and he was her brother and she just wanted to be near him but he kept on trying to get away from her and she didn't know why. What had she done to him? She had been sleeping in summer pajamas so she didn't warm him up too much and she had been sleeping without covers too. But that didn't help. She had also been sleeping at the very edge of the bed, so close that she almost feel off, so that way he would have had enough room to sleep comfortably. He didn't have a reason to get up but he did. She didn't know what she was supposed to do.

She wasn't trying to smother him.

She wasn't trying to be like dad. Dad had smothered her with his love. She had been smothered in his love and she should have loved it and…and she had loved it, for a little bit, but then dad…dad had just kept on giving her love. So much love that she had too much of it but she couldn't get away from it because suddenly he was EVERYWHERE and she had no way of getting out and then the love that she had felt coming from him got to be too much and she just hadn't been able to breathe and…

And then it had all been gone.

It had felt, then, like trying to sleep in her summer nightshirt with no blanket while the cold November wind whipped past the house. Dad was gone and he just…he wasn't coming back. He only took Sho to work with him, locked his door at night to keep her out, and even logged off of Minecraft whenever she logged on. He had built so many Claw bases on her side of the map…and she knew that he had only done that because he didn't want her back…and then she was alone. This must have been how Sho felt. Sho was always all alone because he was the kid that dad liked less. He had never known how smothering dad's love could be…and how cold you could feel when dad's love was taken away.

She just wanted to be near him.

But now he was on the other side of the room. He was laying down in her bed. He had taken her dolls out of the bed, taken them off nicely and not thrown them, and now he was laying there on her Frozen pillows and under her Frozen blankets and on top of her Frozen sheets even though he didn't much like Frozen. He liked more exciting movies, movies that were about something other than feelings he had said, and it would have made more sense for him to sleep in his Zootopia bed. That movie was his favorite. There was a mystery and also animals and even though Nick and Judy were in love but didn't know it yet Sho still loved this movie. So he should have been in his bed too. But he wasn't in his bed. He was in her bed. He was awake in bed, her bed, and he was looking at her.

She rolled over.

Now she was looking at him. They were looking at each other from opposite sides of the room. They had always slept on the same sides of the room ever since they had lived in this Castle. This felt wrong, backwards and wrong, and Mob…she wanted to be with Sho so badly. Her bed, his bed, she just wanted to be with him. She needed to be with someone. She wished that she could have slept next to Minegishi but they said that she wasn't ever supposed to come over when their aura got all tangled up with Shimazaki's and it had been all tangled up before so Mob wasn't going to go there in the middle of the night. She knew that she would end up seeing something that she should not have seen if she went over there. She could have slept next to Shibata but he slept on the couch, he couldn't sleep without a TV going, and also she got the feeling that he would roll over and crush her in her sleep. That was why they hadn't ever put baby Mukai in the bed with them, lots of babies died liked that, and Mob was about the same size compared to Shibata as baby Mukai was to her.

She just wanted to sleep next to someone else.

"Big sis….Shigeko….can we talk about stuff?" whispered Sho. He knew that they needed to talk. He knew that if they didn't talk about this then he would just keep on getting madder and madder at her. The thoughts would keep on coming and coming and coming. She was someone who didn't get things, she was super clueless all the time, so of course she didn't get that she had said something bad when she said that dad was treating her like he had been treating Sho for his whole life.

He had even made sure that she didn't know the whole of it.

He hadn't told her for the same reason that Sho had never told mom how bad things were. He had hidden the stuff that he could hide or he told her that he had hurt himself playing or that he couldn't even remember how he had gotten hurt. He was not a baby. He could take getting hurt. He was not a baby and he didn't need his mom or his big sister to know what had happened. Maybe he should have told her…then if he told her she wouldn't go around saying stuff like…like dad was treating her the way that he had treated him….

But he didn't want to have to tell her.

She lived in the same house that he did and she lived with the same dad that he did. She knew how mean dad could be. This wasn't the Castle. This wasn't room after room after room. They lived close together and even big sis couldn't have been so clueless as to not have noticed how dad was to him…and maybe she was. He didn't know which was worse. Dad was so…so mean to him and if big sis hadn't noticed then…he wanted to walk over there and drag her out of bed by her hair and kick her in the side until she coughed up blood….

He brought his hand to his mouth and bit as hard as he could.

"Ok…but don't chew on yourself like that. You could get hurt." Said Mob. Sho was talking to her again. She didn't care that they were in switched out beds or that it was the middle of the night or that she was freezing or that his bed had crumbs in it. She just wanted Sho to talk to her and be with her and just…they used to be best friends…but now they weren't….and she wished that they could have gone back to the way that things had been between them before. She wanted…she wanted things to be ok…but she had no idea what she had even done to make them not ok.

"It's my skin and I'll do whatever I want with it. If I bite too hard then Fukuda can fix it." Said Sho. He wasn't going to tell her that he had to do this because he had just had the worst thought that a person could have about another. He wasn't going to be dad. He wasn't going to make someone, his future son, with between the spaces between his fingers while Sho beat someone up so badly that they bled….

Sho should not have been having those thoughts in the first place. He wished that he could have been better. Just…better.

"But I don't want you to get hurt at all. I love you." Said Mob

"Now you care if I get hurt or not?" asked Sho. Now she cared? What about all of the times when dad had been hitting him? Punishing him? Making him feel like…like he was nothing more than the gum that dad had found on the bottom of his shoes.

"I never stopped caring if you got hurt or not. I'm always worried about you getting hurt. I'm always worried about you. I love you." Said Mob

"Do you have to say that all the time?" asked Sho. He wished that she would just…stop saying that she loved him. The more that she said that she loved him the guiltier he felt. He should not have been having thoughts, jerk thoughts, mean thoughts, about his own big sis who had done nothing at all to make him feel like this…nothing but act like he knew what it was like when dad didn't like you…but he still shouldn't have been mean to her…but she should not have been saying that…

"Say what?" asked Mob

"That you love me." Said Sho

"Yes…I mean…don't you want to hear it?" asked Mob. Oh no. Was she acting like dad? Was she smothering him? She didn't want to smother him. She didn't want to make him feel anything other than happy. She just wanted him to feel good and safe and warm when he was with her…but maybe that was how dad wanted her to feel when she was with him…and then she had wished all of that love away….and now she got none of it. Well she was not going to take her love away from Sho. She was going to…to break it in half, maybe, but not take it all the way…away. It was going to be like when he couldn't finish his giant churro and she had to help him even though she didn't have enough room in her stomach for more food but she helped him anyway because she loved him.

She loved him but not in the way that dad loved her.

"I…I don't know. I know that you love me but when you say it I just…feel guilty." Said Sho

"But not smothered?" asked Mob. No, no, no. She felt the pendant dangling from her bracelet. She needed to…to calm down. She held onto her pendant and thought about how…how she could calm down…because she was ok. She knew that she had done something wrong and now she could stop herself…because she…she could do that. Minegishi was always telling her that she was a good person and that she was capable and stuff. Minegishi believed in her. If Minegishi believed in her, they were the smartest and nicest person she knew, then maybe Mob could believe in herself.

"No, just guilty." Said Sho. He knew what it felt to be smothered. He knew what it felt like where you just couldn't breathe and…and dad had and had not done that to him. It had happened in the lab and…and she wouldn't have known about that…and he was thinking about it and…and he didn't even know what was wrong with him that he was thinking about that. He was thinking about stuff that happened two years ago. It was over and done with. He was just being weird and stupid and stuff…and that was why he couldn't breathe.

And his shirt was tight.

So he took it off. He took off his shirt and threw it across the room. He was a boy and he didn't have boobs so he could do that. Even if he had scars all one his chest and stomach he could do that. Big sis had been seeing his scars for years. She was used to them. She was looking at him but she was used to his scars…and now he wanted to put his shirt back on…but also he knew that if he put his shirt back on then he wouldn't be able to breathe again…

"Why did you take off your shirt?" asked Mob

"Because I felt like it. I'm a boy, I can take off my shirt whenever I want. It's not like I have boobs for people to look at." Said Sho.

"You're right, boys are lucky like that. I can turn the heat in this room off if you're too hot." Said Mob. She knew that she wasn't supposed to look at his scars but she couldn't help it. There was a lot of light in their room. The blonds were opened and the light from the outside was coming in. She could see the scars on his chest and his stomach…and she wished that there was something that she could do about them. She wished that she could have fixed them…and fixed their relationship…and just fixed everything that had gone wrong throughout their entire life.

"I'm not hot." Said Sho

"Ok…but if you were hot then I would turn the heat off…and if you felt smothered then I would stop smothering you." Said Mob

"I told you that you weren't making me feel smothered! I told you that you were making me feel guilty!" said Sho. He had stopped whispering, now, and he didn't care. Even if the sound of his voice carried through the house and even if dad woke up and dragged him out of bed for being loud Sho wouldn't have cared one bit. Why did she keep on saying that she was smothering him? Why was she making him think about that? About being smothered?

"That's better…well not better….but I don't want to smother you. I don't want to be like that. Like dad." Said Mob

"….dad's never smothered me. He hits me and shoves me and throws me but he's never smothered me…" said Sho. He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to talk about the stuff that dad did to him. The way that dad slapped him so hard that his ears rang. The way that dad picked him up by his hair and throwing him into a wall. He didn't want to tell big sis about all the times that dad had thrown him across the room or hit him or made him hurt so bad…he didn't want to tell her about that but….but maybe he had to. Even though he wanted to keep it to himself for the rest of his life he was still going to…to tell her…because she probably didn't even know…and she could not just go around saying that dad was treating her the same way that he had been treating Sho for all of his life.

"I didn't mean like hurting you. I mean that…that sometimes too much of dad's love can make you feel like you're being smothered and I didn't want to make you feel like that. I love you and I want to be with you all the time…and for us to be friends again…and also I just want…I want to be near you. Please? I just feel so…empty and achy all the time…since dad started treating me like he treats you." Said Mob. She had told the truth and nothing but the truth. She had told him the whole of what she felt and…and she might have said the wrong thing. He was kicking the wall, now, and screaming into her pillow and….and she had no idea what she had said or done to make him do this. She needed…she needed to make him stop. To make him feel better. Because right now he was upset and…and she couldn't stand to see him upset.

She got out of his bed.

She stepped on one of his legos as she got out of his bed, and it hurt a lot, but she had to keep going. there was no pain in this world that could keep her from her little brother. Not when he was like this. Not when he was sad and angry and…and like this. She wanted to make this better. She had no idea what she even could do but…but she wanted to make this better.

She knelt down by the bed and put her hand on his back.

"Don't touch me!" said Sho. He had been able to control it for a little while. He had been able to get his feelings out by kicking the wall and biting his hand and…and he tasted blood a little bit…or a lot…but that was ok. So what if he was bleeding? At least it was his blood that was there, not hers, and that was what had mattered most of all. Big sis should have just left him alone until he calmed down. He could have calmed down really fast after he kicked a hole or two in the walls and then they could have been ok but no. She had to go and put her hand right there over his tree and…

And it felt like the lightning went through his body all over again.

The next thing he knew he was on the ground on top of her. He was on top of her and he was hitting her and she was covering her face and…and that was the next thing he knew. He had skipped all of the in between steps and now he was on top of her and…and he was hitting her and…and she was protecting her face and…and he had scratched her and…and he was a bad person…

He jumped off of her.

He jumped off of her and rolled under her bed. He hit his head on her bedframe and probably broke some of her stuff rolling under so fast but he didn't care. He had hurt her. He had hurt her and made her bleed and scratched her arms and…and he was dad. He was dad now. He wasn't Suzuki Sho, he was Suzuki Touichirou….and he hated himself. In that moment he hated himself more than he had hated everything else and everyone one else in the whole world. He covered his eyes. He dug the palms of his hands so hard into his eyes that he saw spots. He was not going to cry. He couldn't cry. If anything she should have been the one crying.

She was not crying.

"Sho? I'm sorry. I'm sorry for making you hurt me like that. Please come out." Said Mob. She used her phone's flashlight to see him. She was laying down on the floor now. It was cold down there even with the heat going. The floor was hurting her scratches too but she didn't care. She didn't care how much Sho hurt her. She loved him and when you loved someone then you didn't care at all how they treated you. She had cared about how dad had treated her and that was how she had ended up losing all of his love. She didn't want the same thing to happen with her and Sho.

She didn't know what she would do if she ever lost his love.

"Get away from me! Why do you keep coming close to me! Every time you come close to me I just end up hurting you! Go away!" said Sho. He tried to push her away with his powers. She didn't let herself move. Her phone flew out of her hand but she herself did not move. She just laid there on floor across from him. The only difference was that now it was dark.

"I don't care if you hurt me. I don't if you come out from under that bed and hit me or slap me or scratch me or jump on me or push me or pull my hair or…or anything. I love you and if loving you means that you're going to hurt me sometimes then that's ok. I don't want to…to make the same mistake I did with dad. I don't want to make you stop loving me like I made dad stop loving me and-" said Mob. She would have said more but this time Sho pushed her with his powers hard enough to make her slide across the room and into his bed. Her ears were ringing and the back of her head was on fire from here it had hit his bedframe. She had slid into a pile of legos, too, and they were digging into the bare skin of her legs and also she was laying on some and it hurt. A lot. But that was ok because at least Sho was out from under the bed now.

Mob sat up.

Sho was coming towards her now and she felt…she felt a little bit afraid…just a little…but that made no sense because Sho was her brother and he loved her. Besides even if she got hurt she could just go to Fukuda…or Minegishi. Yes, they would go and see Minegishi tomorrow and then they would fix up her scratches and stuff with the first aid stuff they kept in their bag. Fukuda could fix her up good as new but that would mean bothering him and Mob knew that he didn't like it when she bothered him about stuff.

She was fine. Just a little banged up. That was all.

"Wil you shut up about that!? Do you think that I want to hurt you? Well I don't! I hate myself for hurting you and I was trying to be a good brother but you just…you never shut up! You never shut up about loving me and…and about how you want me to love you and…and you won't shut up about dad! You won't shut up about dad and…and how you think that he's treating you like he doesn't like you but…but he's not treating you anywhere close to how he treats the people that he doesn't like! That he doesn't love! He's not treating you like….like he treats me! This is how he treats me!" said Sho. He went to hit her but he stopped himself. Instead of bringing his hand down on her he brought it back over and slapped himself across the face just like that had slapped him before. He slapped himself and hit himself and…

And he couldn't stop.

It was either hit her or hit himself and he chose himself. He had hurt her. Even with what little light was in the room from the opened blinds and her phone's flashlight he could still see what he had done to her. The scratches up and down her arms. The way that his nails had dug into her…he was terrible. He was the worst. Maybe she would have been better off if he had never been born at all. Maybe he had been born wrong in every single way that a person could be born wrong and everyone would have been a million times better off without him and…

And she was grabbing his arms.

"No! Don't you ever do that to yourself! If you want to hurt someone then you hurt me but never yourself! I love you and I will never let you hurt yourself! I don't care if my love is being all-all smothery right now I love you and I will not let you do this to yourself! Do you understand me, little brother?!" said Mob. She didn't care that she was yelling as loud as she could and that it was the middle of the night and that dad could have come in there at any time and punished them both for waking him. If dad thought that he could come in there and make Sho feel any worse than he felt now then he had another thing coming! Nobody had the right to make Sho feel like this! Not even their own father! Nobody had the right to make Sho so mad at himself that he hit himself! And anyone who thought that they did would have to deal with her!

Sho did not get to feel like this!

"Let go of me!" shouted Sho as he tried to get his arms out of her grip. She was using her powers to make herself stronger. No matter how hard he fought she just would not let go…even though he wasn't doing anything wrong! He deserved this! He had hurt her even when he said that he wouldn't! He could either hit her or he could hit himself and he chose himself! No matter what she said he would always make the right choice and he would always choose himself no matter what happened!

"No! Not until you say that you'll never hit yourself again!" said Mob. He was strong but she could be stronger. She had to be stronger. Right now she had to be big enough and strong enough to stop him from hurting himself because there wasn't anyone else to do this. They didn't have a mom anymore and dad was in his room either sleeping or ignoring them…so the job fell to Mob. That was fine. She didn't care what she had to do just so long as she could keep Sho safe. That was her job as his big sister.

"I don't know why you would even care! It's either I hit you or I hit myself and I'm going to hit myself because I shouldn't hit you!" said Sho

"I don't care if you hit me! I don't care if you beat me up even! I just don't want you to hit yourself! Ever! I love you!" said Mob

"If you love me then you'll let me go!" said Sho

"No! Not until you promise me that you'll never hit yourself again!" said Mob

"I can't promise that!" shouted Sho

"Why the H-word not?!" asked Mob

"Be-because if I do then I know that's a promise I'm going to break! I love you and I don't want to hurt you so I have to hurt myself!" said Sho

"I already told you that if someone has to get hurt then that someone is going to be me! Now promise!" shouted Mob

"No!" shouted Sho just as loud

"Yes!" shouted Mob

"No! Stop bossing me around!" shouted Sho

"I will boss you around and as your sister and the second highest ranking member of the family and also as your direct superior in Claw I am ordering you to never hit yourself again Suzuki Sho!" shouted Mob so loud that her throat hurt.

"You're not my superior in Claw! I'm next in line to be President! I'm the son and you're the daughter! You can't outrank me!" shouted Sho

"Well you're not President yet and also I'm the one who dad trusts to write memos so I'm your superior and also your sister and also dad says that I rank as high as a mom in family ranking and-and-and I never want you to do that again! Do you hear me!? Do you understand Japanese!?" shouted Mob. She was…angry. She was so angry and…and she could not ever remember being this angry once in her entire life. Everything not bolted down was flying through the air. Her hair was all around her like she was in the middle of a wind tunnel. She felt like…like she was going to explode….

She needed to calm down but she couldn't.

"Do you understand this? Fuck you! Let go of me!" shouted Sho

"No! I will not let you go until you promise!" said Mob

"Y-you're acting just like dad right now! He's bossy and he tells me what to do and-" said Sho

"I don't care who I have to act like to get you to never do that ever again! You are never, ever, EVER TO HURT YOURSELF AGAIN!" said Mob

"Stop screaming! You're going to wake dad up and then when he comes in here I'm going to be the one who's in for it! Not you! You're never the one who's in for it and even when he does hit you it's like baby hits! He never leaves bruises on you or makes dents in the walls with you and-and-and you shouldn't have been saying that dad was treating you like he treats me! You've never even seen how dad treats me but if you don't let me go then you're going to see firsthand how dad treats me and then you'll never say something as…as hurtful as…as dads treats us…the same…because he just…doesn't…and he never will…because…" said Sho. He was crying, now, like a baby. Like baby sis. He was crying like a sad little baby and…and he couldn't stop. No matter what he did he just could not stop his tears from falling.

Like a baby's.

He felt like a baby, then, while she held him in her arms. She had let go of his arms and then she had pulled him close. She was rocking back and forth and shushing him like he was baby sis. She was rubbing his hair and telling him that she was sorry that she had yelled at him and she was smooshing his head into her chest and she didn't have boobs, not really, but her chest was kind of pointy and uncomfortable and also sort of weird because this was his sister and…and also he was not a baby…but also nice. He was just so…so tired. Tired of being mean and tired of being angry and just…just tired.

"Sho, you're going to be ok. I never should have grabbed you and I never should have yelled at you like that. All of that was so wrong of me and I am so sorry…and I just want you to know that…that if dad does come in here then…then I'll make sure that he beats me up worse than he's ever beat you up. Ok? I'll tell him that this was all my fault…which it was." Said Mob

"No…don't be stupid. If he beats you up just as badly or worse than he beats me up then you'll die. You'll die and I don't want you dead…or even hurt…and I never should have hurt you. I don't know what's the matter with me. It's like I just…explode, sometimes, and there's all of this anger in me and….and I don't know what to do with it so I break things and I hurt you…and I hate myself for hurting you so…so I just wanted to hurt myself then because I deserved it and…and I love you." Said Sho

"Sho….never say that again. Never say to me that…that you hate yourself or that you deserve to hurt yourself ever again. You don't. I don't know why you would think that you would but you don't. it's ok to explode. I exploded to. See what I did to the room? We both explode sometimes and that's fine. I just…I just never want you to explode at yourself, ok? Just hit me if you need someone to hit." Said Mob

"No. I'm not going to hurt you. I don't…I don't want to be that person anymore. I don't want to be dad anymore. I want to be better than that and…and I never want to hurt you. Ever. I love you and when you love someone then you never want to hurt them…ok? So please don't ever let me hurt you…and I guess that…that I'll try my best not to hurt myself anymore…even if I deserve it." Said Sho

"Sho…why would you think that you deserve that?" asked Mob. She wished that Sho could see himself the way that she saw him. She wished that she could do an eye transplant or something so that he could see what a wonderful person he was. So what if he hurt her? She wasn't complaining. She knew that even if he hurt her he still loved her. That was what love was, knowing that no matter how badly someone treated you they still cared about you, and she had made the mistake of rejecting dad's love so now she didn't get any anymore. Well she would not make that mistake with Sho.

"Because I hurt you. Because I exploded when you kept on talking about how you think that dad treats us the same now, it's been bothering me for a while actually, because he just…he doesn't. Even if he's pretending that you're invisible it's still not the same as…as him treating you like you're nothing. Like you're the gum that he found on the bottom of his shoe. Like…just….he treats you better and it really hurt me when you first said it and then…then you kept on saying it and you made me madder and madder…and then you kept on crowding me all the time like how you were in my bed and…and also how you just never stop telling me that you love me and…and I just couldn't take it anymore so…so I just exploded and hit you…and I'm so sorry." said Sho. He was crying again. She was rubbing his hair again. She was rubbing his hair and rocking him back and forth and shushing him and her boob was poking him in the eye and he knew that he looked ridiculous but…but he didn't care. He still loved her and…and he loved how she made him feel.

Like he was loved.

He hadn't felt like this since…since mom. Since he had been little and mom had held him like this. She had rocked him back and forth and shushed him but her boobs hadn't poked him in the eye which made the whole thing better but he wasn't going to tell big sis that. He was just going to cry and be held and be held while he cried and…and he just…he was so tired…

He wanted to go to bed.

"Sho…why didn't you tell me how you felt from the very beginning? I never want to make you feel bad. I never want to make you feel like you're going to explode and…and I never want to make you cry like this. I love you, little brother, and I will never stop loving you…and I will never on purpose make you feel bad. You matter the most to me and…and I love you so much." Said Mob as she rubbed his hair and rocked him back and forth. This was all that she could do. She wished that there was some way that she could just take all of his bad feelings and exorcise them so…so he could just be…be ok already. That was all that she wanted was for her little brother to be ok…and….and she was so mad at herself for not thinking of how he felt. She should have made more of an effort to think about how he felt…and also she should not have yelled at him before….

She was such a bad big sister sometimes.

"I don't know…but I should have. I should have told you and also…and also I shouldn't have hit you and…and I'm sorry." said Sho

"I'm sorry too. I should have thought about you and how you felt and…and I just wish that I could make you feel better." Said Mob

"You-you did. Just…just you did and…and I love you, big sis." Said Sho. He lifted his head up and untangled his arms from hers before he hugged her. He hugged her tight. He knew that she needed a hug….that he needed a hug….that they both needed a hug more in that moment than they had ever needed hugs in their lives. He had been such a bad big brother and he wished more than anything else that he could just hug away all the bad feelings that existed inside of both of them, that he could smother them to death, but he couldn't…well he could try.

He could and would and did try.

"I love you too little brother." Said Mob. She and Sho stayed hugging like that until they just couldn't hug anymore. Until they got too tired to hug, until they could barely keep their eyes opened, until they had to lean on each other to stay upright. It was at that point sometime in the hours between night and day that they decided to go to sleep. In their own beds.

The used their powers to clear off the floor and then put their mattresses down like futons. They took two one person beds and made a two person bed. Then they each laid down on their own mattresses, closed their eyes, and went to sleep.

They didn't want to do anything but sleep and be near each other.


	229. Cleaning Up

Sho was a good little brother.

Well he tried to be. He tried his best to be a good little brother but…but it was hard sometimes. Like the times when your sister made you so mad that you exploded and scratched her arms up real bad. She was still asleep. Sho could tell by her aura. They had put their mattresses down on the floor to make one big bed out of two little beds. That was nice. Last night hadn't been very nice but waking up next to her like this…it was nice.

Even if being this close gave him a clear view the scratches that ran up and down her arms.

She was wearing summer pajamas for some reason even though it as winter. That was how she had gotten so many scratches on her arms. If she had been wearing long sleeves then maybe Sho wouldn't have hurt her so bad…but he shouldn't have hurt her in the first place. He should have been nicer to her. he should have controlled himself better instead of getting so mad at her that he would do something like this. He had been such a bad little brother last night. He had been as bad as he could be and…and she still loved him. Even though he had been so terrible to her she loved him just the same.

He loved her too.

He pulled her blankets up over her. She must have been cold. She was wearing summer pajamas so she must have been cold. He was fine. He had never ended up putting his shirt back on and he was fine but she must have been cold. So he covered her up to her neck witch her blanket. Now he couldn't see her scratches anymore. He hoped that he hadn't left any scars. He had enough scars for the both of them. He could see his when he looked down. He could see the places where his skin had been shot full of lightning or poked or stabbed or….or all of that other stuff.

Stuff that he didn't want to think about.

He didn't know why he thought about that stuff sometimes. It had happened and it was over and the past was in the pat so he had no real reason to think about it. He was the Awakened Child now, it had all been worth it, so there was no reason to sit there and look at his scars and touch his scars and then think about what had happened to give him those scars and…and there was no reason at all for him to be all sad like this. He shouldn't have been sad about his old scars, no, he should have been sad about the ones that he had probably ended up giving big sis during their big fight.

He hadn't meant to.

He hadn't meant to hurt her. He had meant to…to not hurt her. He had been trying not to hurt her but then she came close and touched the tree on his back and…and then the next thing he knew he had been on top of her. But now it was over and…and she loved him. She loved him and he loved her and they loved each other even after they had fought. Even after he had hit her. Even after she had yelled at him for hitting himself. Even after they had both exploded…she loved him and he loved her and they loved each other and everything was going to be ok now.

Right?

Well there was still the question of what today would be like. It was daytime now, the room was full of sunshine and stuff, and now they had to wake up and get dressed and have breakfast and then he would go to work with dad….dad had left without him for some reason…which meant that he had to play with big sis all day today…and that would have been nice. Him and her playing and being happy and stuff. Could they be like that again? Just playing and being happy? He didn't know. He didn't know but…but he was going to try. He had been so mad at her for saying that dad treated them the same, now, but she had said sorry so there was no more reason to be mad…and he wasn't mad…but he did sort of wish that dad had brought him with….and he didn't know why. Unless dad had been sleeping deeper than he had ever slept in his life he must have heard them yelling and seen them exploding and….and it was weird that he hadn't come in and punished them for fighting and waking him up and stuff…..

Sho's glad that dad left.

With dad gone then he doesn't have to worry about being punished….for a while. For a little while at least. He might have been planning on punishing him later when he had the time. Just him and not big sis, never big sis, and he was not going to be jealous. He loved big sis and of course he wouldn't want her to be punished. He cared about her and he wanted her to be safe and happy and stuff…and she cared about him. They cared about each other.

So why did he feel like this?

Why did he feel like he…he wanted to hide from her? Because he still felt bad about how last night had gone. Because when he thought about it, about how he had jumped on her and hurt her, he wanted to hit himself over and over again because he had been bad and that was what you were supposed to do when you were bad, get hit, and Sho had been as bad as he could be….and he was still mad at himself…but he had promised her that he wouldn't do that ever again and she had even ordered him not to…because she outranked him and she could tell him what to do even though he was the boy and next in line to be President she still outranked him in Claw and in the family and she was older and what she said went, dad had said, even though she was only a year older than him and…

And he was not going to be having any more jerk thoughts.

He took his sad and angry and confused feeling and stuffed them down deeper than even the deepest traitor hole and he left them to die just like the worst of traitors. His feeling were traitors to him. Hid feelings made him do bad things. Like now. He was biting the side of his hand again because he was just so mad at himself for having been mad at her and he was still sort of mad because she had said all of that stuff about outranking him and…and he was just upset and he knew that he had made her a promise and he knew that he had to stop and-

She moved.

"Good morning, Sho." said Mob as she yawned and stretched and tried to wake up. She felt…good. Lighter. Happier. She was near her little brother and of course she was happy. They had fought yesterday but today was a new day and she could make the very best of it.

"Hey." Said Sho. He took his hand out of his mouth and wiped it on his blanket. She sat up and pulled her hair out of her face. He watched her aura. She was….happy? Even after that great big fight that they'd had last night she was happy? But why? He had hurt her and scratched her and…and she was still happy….

"What time is it?" asked Mob. There was a lot of sunlight in their room…but that might have been because they had left the blinds opened last night. It was the winter sort of light, very pale and bright, not the warm light of summer. That was weird, it being wintertime, or maybe it just felt weird because they had never stayed in one place long enough to see the seasons change like this. She didn't care what season it was, though, just so long as she got to spend it with Sho. They were ok now, him and her, because they had gotten all of their feelings out. They had let them go. Just like the song said, sometimes you just had to let it go.

"I don't know. Dad left already, though." said Sho. He couldn't feel dad's aura anywhere. Good. He knew that they had been loud and stuff and he knew that dad hated it when they got like that. He didn't feel like dealing with dad being all mad at them. He was glad that dad had left him behind. Maybe he would start pretending that Sho was invisible too just like he pretended that big sis was invisible.

"Oh. I'm sorry that he didn't take you with." Said Mob. She knew that Sho liked it when dad was nice to him. She knew that dad could be nice to Sho when he came to work with him. That was where dad was happiest, when he was at work. He used to be happiest when he was with Mob…but Mob didn't want that anymore. Not just because too much of dad's love could be scary. She didn't want dad to give her all of his love and then none of his love to Sho. She would much rather have had dad never talk to her or look at her again if it meant that dad loved Sho just a little more. Enough to stop punishing him, at least, even though she knew that this was not how things worked in their family.

"It's ok." Said Sho. Dad could do whatever he felt like it. It was better that he was with big sis anyway. They hadn't hung out together in a while. He could play Minecraft with Fukuda later. He would come home eventually and he loved to play Minecraft even though he was so bad at it. The worst. Maybe he and big sis could play together…or something. He didn't really want her in his and Fukuda's Minecraft world even though he loved her. Maybe they could make a world on their own…but also with her boyfriend because he was a nice guy and stuff and also he was good at messing the game to get them rare stuff.

This could be a fun game….if they ended up starting one.

She liked it and he liked it but he had his own game with Fukuda and she had her own game with dad…well dad had took over that whole game so she had no game at all…so it could be fun. It could be fun to play with her again…or they could play other video games….or they could play outside or something. Anything but the Shoko game. He knew that they always played the Shoko game when he was mean to her but….but she was also mean to him and stuff….and also he didn't feel like dressing up in big sis' clothes and pretending to be her little sister and stuff.

He didn't know what they would do but he did know that they could have fun together.

"I should have woken you up and gotten you dressed and made sure you brushed your teeth and brushed your hair and made sure you ate breakfast and stuff. I'm sorry." said Mob. He was her responsibility. She was the one who had to get him up in the mornings but she had been too busy sleeping in, they had been up late, and she had been a bad big sister to him. First she had yelled at him and now she had just not taken care of him at all. That was why dad had left him behind. She had even let him go to bed without a shirt on even though the cold could have made him sick. She was so bad at taking care of him…she should have been fired from the family…or at least de-ranked.

"I said that it was ok. I'm actually kind of glad that he left without me. I don't want to be around him after…after what happened. I know that he's going to be mad at me." Said Sho. He didn't care. He was used to it. The worst parts, really, were the parts when he worried about what dad was going to do to him. It was like reverse Christmas. The best part of Christmas was looking forward to what he would get just like the worst part of being punished was waiting for dad to punish him. But it was fine. He was used to it, to dad, and he would always be used to it. There was no point in not being used to it.

"Sho….I'm sorry. I'm sorry that we fought and I'm sorry about…about how dad treats you. He shouldn't treat you like that." Said Mob. She didn't know why dad was the way he was but she knew that there was no way to make him better. He was dad and he could be so mean…and she didn't understand. Dad could be so mean to Sho but at the same time he could show her all the love in the world. How did that even work? Mob would have had more trouble being mean than being nice….but that was her. Dad was a totally different person than her and he acted however he wanted…even meanly. Even meanly towards Sho…and Sho didn't deserve that.

He didn't deserve to be treated badly.

Not by dad and not by himself. She wished that there was something that she could do about how dad treated Sho. She wished that there was some way to make dad change. To make dad give Sho the love that he showed her….well no, because Sho would not like being smothered like that…why couldn't dad just show normal love? Not the smothering kind and…and enough for both of his kids. Like mom. Mom knew how to love them….well she had until she left….so maybe both of her parents were just bad at this…

But that was ok. She was there for Sho and she loved him and she could…she could show him love and stuff.

"Whatever. It's not like there's anything that either of us can do so it's whatever." Said Sho. He got up and stretched. No point in talking about this now. Dad would come home and punish him and that was that. No point in talking about it or worrying about it. She didn't get it, she never got punished so she didn't know, and he needed to stop being mad at her about not knowing.

"I know but I wish that it wasn't. I wish that there was more that I could do for you." Said Mob. Even when dad had loved her he still would not have listened to her. Dad didn't punish Sho as often as he used to. She was happy about that. Ever since she had been promoted to mom's rank dad had been a lot nicer to Sho…but nicer meant that he wasn't punishing Sho as often…but that was still good…good for them. Good by the standards of their family. She got the feeling that other people's families were different so he could only speak for her family.

"Just don't…don't say dumb stuff like dad treats us the same, ok? Just don't ever say that again." said Sho. He said that sort of meanly…and he didn't mean it. He knew that she hadn't been saying that to hurt him and she knew that they had talked about it and…and he knew that it still hurt when he thought about what she had said. That dad treated them the same. He wished that dad treated them the same, though, but in reverse. Instead of dad

"Don't worry. I won't. I know that it bothers you now." Said Mob. She wished that she had thought more about how Sho had felt. She wished that she hadn't said something that had hurt him. She never wanted to hurt him, she loved him, but she was glad that she knew now that she had said something that bothered him. She wished that he could have just told her how he had felt from the very beginning but she didn't have a time machine and even if she'd had one she wouldn't have messed with time just to keep an argument to happening. Well she did wish that the argument had never happened but it was good that they'd had that argument because now they could understand each other better. Like how Elsa and Anna could only understand each other better after Elsa frozen her sister's heart with magic and then Anna's heart unfroze. Mob looked around the room. She was glad that she hadn't lost control that badly. The room was a mess but at least she hadn't hurt Sho at all. She didn't know what she would have done if she froze her own brother's heart or hurt him in any way.

She loved him more than anything.

"Ok…and I won't hit myself anymore either because it bothers you. We're brother and sister and we should be nice to each other and…and stuff." Said Sho. That was how siblings were supposed to be. He had been a bad little brother but he…he could try to be better to her. He didn't look at her arms. She had taken her arms out from under her blanket and he tried his best not to look at what he had done to her. He wished that there was some way to turn back time to make it so that he never hurt her or….or if he could make her scratches go away. But he couldn't because he didn't have healing powers and Fukuda…he was really weird about big sis. For some reason he talked about her like she was a jerk or something. Maybe he just didn't like her because she was like dad sometimes. They both could be boring and weird but that was the whole of it. Dad was never as nice as big sis. Even at her meanest when she was talking about how she outranked him and…and stuff like that she was nicer than dad had ever been in his entire life.

"You're right. We should be nice to each other…and I should never yell at you like that again because it was wrong of me and…and stuff. To yell at you and to be mean to you." Said Mob. She couldn't believe that she had lost control over herself like that and that she had been so mean to him. She had been mean and…and that was not her. She didn't know where that person had come from, the person that she had been last night, but she hoped that she never became that person again. She wasn't supposed to be like that. She had to be nice and sweet, like mom had said, and even if mom hadn't said so being mean…it felt bad. It felt so bad. Like eating too much junk food and then riding the tea cups over and over again for an hour and then your stomach hurt and you wanted to throw up but you couldn't and…and it felt just like that.

"Yeah…but…whatever. I'm tired of all of this apologizing. It's boring." Said Sho. He didn't like to be bored and people saying sorry was boring. Shimazaki had said so and he was the coolest guy who ever lived so of course Sho was going to be like him. He sort of wished that he had gone to work with dad because he wanted to see him again. They always found something fun to do. Even when it was this cold out they could still find something fun to do. Like climbing trees and looking for birds and squirrels…or staying inside and stealing food from people's trays and putting the food on other people's trays so that they thought that their friends had stolen from them and then they started fighting. That was fun. Big sis didn't have that kind of fun, though, so that was why he wanted to see Shimazaki so badly…but he could have fun with big sis too and he had to be nice to big sis and stuff because he had been mean to her and now they had to make up.

"Oh, ok. What do you want to do today then?" asked Mob. She hoped that at some point they cleaned this room up….or she would just do it herself. She didn't know where any of her stuff was. Everything was just in piles, now, which was normal for Sho but not or her. She wished that she hadn't lost control. She wished that she had been better. She wished that she had done more to keep control of her powers and also…and also that she hadn't yelled at him and…and she didn't know. She got up and put her bed where it belonged. There, that was a little bit cleaner. At least she had her powers. It would have taken a lot longer if she did it by hand.

"I don't know. What do you want to do?" asked Sho as he used his powers to put his bed back where it went. They had to clean this room up because he had no idea where any of his stuff was. His art stuff, his pens and pencils and crayons and stuff, were scattered everywhere. Even with powers it would take him a while to get everything right again. His papers and sketchbooks were scattered everywhere. He was…he tried not to be mad at her. She had lost control and that was ok because he lost control, too, and at least when she lost control she never broke anything or hurt anyone or beat him up…and stuff.

"Um….we can play together. We haven't played anything together in so long. Or we could clean up, too. I mean I could clean up. All of our stuff is everywhere….and I'm sorry about that. I shouldn't have lost control and stuff. That was wrong of me." Said Mob. She used her powers to pick up the clothes on the ground and put them back in their dresser. She was putting them back as best as she could. She could sort them out later. That way she and Sho couldn't end up switching clothes on accident.

"You don't have to clean up my stuff for me." Said Sho

"But I want to. I made the mess so I should be the one to clean it up." Said Mob

"Let me clean my own stuff up. I have to get my stuff back to the way it was." Said Sho. He went around and started collecting his pencils and pens and markers and crayons off the ground. Big sis was cleaning up too. She was getting her dolls the way that she liked them. She had a whole system for putting them away and he didn't get it. At least he had a reason for organizing his stuff. Dolls were just dolls. His stuff was for drawing and that was more important than playing dolls.

Those were jerk thoughts to have.

Dolls weren't always boring. Dolls could be fun when you put them on balloons and made them float away or you had them execute each other like when big sis and Minegishi played dolls…so Sho wouldn't have minded playing dolls with big sis…but he would have preferred it if she played dolls with her other friends. He really didn't want to play the Shoko game that day….or most days. Not just because he didn't want to wear her itchy clothes and play her boring games. He didn't like how she had always wanted a sister instead of a brother and when they played that game then she could pretend that she'd had that little sister that she had always wanted. Why couldn't he be enough for her just the way he was?

Why couldn't he just be enough for himself just the way he was?

Why couldn't he be who he wanted to be? He wanted to be a good little brother and…and he could try again. He had to try again. He wanted to be a good little brother and he wanted to make big sis happy and…and he never wanted to hurt her again. In any way. Even though she had said…what she had said…he still wanted to be a good little brother. A good person. He knew who he wanted to be and that person was the direct opposite of dad.

He hoped that he never grew up to be anything like dad.

A pencil flew down from above him and then into his hands. Then another and another. Oh. They had gotten stuck in the blinds. He decided to help her. She was just putting things in his hands without thinking about the thickness of the pencil or the color or the type. He had to do this himself. These were his things and he had to do them himself.

"Thank you for helping me, Sho, but you don't have to. I can do this." said Mob as she pulled his pencils and pens and stuff from where they had gotten stuck between the half rolled up blinds. The blinds didn't do much for the sunlight. It was late in the morning. They were late to breakfast and getting dressed and doing their school work…but that was ok because they had been up late and…and maybe it would be better if they had a play day. She looked out the window. There was some snow on the ground. Not that much but enough that they could play in it…maybe. Not enough to build a fort or an igloo or a snowman or anything like that…but they could still play outside. She didn't care what they did so long as they could be together.

"I have to because you don't know about my art stuff and you'll just mix everything up…but thanks for helping anyway." Said Sho. Nice. He had to be nice. He hadn't even realized that he had been mean until he was almost done talking. That was a dad thing. He always said mean things without thinking about what he was saying. He was just a jerk like that. Well Sho was not going to be anything like dad. Ever.

"You're welcome. Um…what do you want to do when we're done?" asked Mob as she picked up one of her dresses, her Belle one, and held it up. She could wear this one today. Her Elsa one, all of them, were dirty. She could always wear clothes…but these were clothes. Costumes were clothes. Anything that you could cover yourself with were clothes. So she would maybe wear this today…or maybe the Aurora one because it was purple and she liked purple…or maybe the Merida one because she was starting to grow out of that one so she needed to wear it as often as she could before she had to get rid of it.

"There's snow outside…because it snowed last night…and stuff. Um….do you want to build a snowman?" asked Sho as he pointed out the window to what didn't even look like enough snow to build a snowman…but he would still try. He didn't like the way that she was holding that dress up. She was holding it up like she was planning on making him wear it. She probably wanted him to be Shoko again…but he didn't feel like being Shoko. He felt like being Sho. Not just because her clothes were tight and itchy and also he didn't like clothes without legs because you had to be careful how you moved and stuff. No, he was happy wearing his own clothes and being his own self and stuff.

But he wouldn't be able to say no if she asked him to play that Shoko game with her.

He had to be a good little brother and…and she had those scratches all over her so he owed her one. He owed her and…and that was what he did when he acted like a jerk. Being nice was a lot harder than being mean…but he could still try. He had to try. For her and for himself. He was not dad and he could not let himself be dad. He was Sho, he was himself, and he was sorry for being a jerk.

So the least he could do was build a snowman with his big sister.

"Sho, I would love to build a snowman with you." Said Mob. She was so happy! And not just because he was singing from Frozen, either, but because were ok now. They were friends again, as much as a big sister and a little brother could be friends, and they were going to play together and he felt better from their argument and so did she and…and they were going to be ok again. That was all she wanted was for her and her little brother to be ok. To be friends again. For him to forgive her not just for losing control but for everything, the things that she'd said, even before their fight. She felt the scratches on her arms. They hurt. They hurt every time she moved and she knew that they would hurt even worse when she out something with sleeves on but…but that was ok. She shouldn't have made Sho upset. They were her fault just like Sho being upset had been her fault.

But it was ok.

Because she could be a better big sister to him from here on out. They were going to go outside and they were going to build a snowman and they were going to be alright. She was never going to make him mad enough at her to hit her like that again and she was never going to make him lose control again and…and that was how it was going to be. She was never going to lose control again either. They were going to be ok. They were going to go outside and build a snowman and everything was going to be ok.

More than ok. They still loved each other so everything was going to be more than ok.


	230. First Aid

Mob was the reason that Minegishi's Xanax supply was getting low.

"These are so fucking deep…" muttered Minegishi as they looked over the scratches on her arms. Not good. Not good at all. She'd had these since last night, she had said, but instead of getting them fixed she had instead decided to play in the snow instead of getting them fixed in true ten year old fashion.

"I'm sorry." said Mob. Minegishi shook their head and reached into their bag.

"Stop being sorry. These aren't your fault. You don't control your brother." Said Minegishi. They were so glad that they were an only child. Another kid would have been too much for them to deal with when they had been Mob's age. They'd have probably been in Mob's boat…or her brother's boat…a boat which they did not want to be in.

"I shouldn't have made him mad…but we're ok now. We're ok and stuff. We played in the snow today." Said Mob

"I know." Said Minegishi as they took a piece of Mob's wet hair between their fingers and squeezed some water out. They had never understood enjoying the snow. The wintertime was hell on Earth…but it would pass. It would pass and then they would move along. Hopefully somewhere warm and green and with plenty of places that Mob and her brother could play separately so they didn't get into each other's orbits and things like this couldn't happen.

"You can come out and play with us too. There's not a lot of snow on the ground but if you collect enough of it then you can build a snowman with us. Not enough of it to make a fort or an igloo but there's enough to build a snowman." Said Mob

"Pass." Said Minegishi

"But the snow is really fun." Said Mob. She was such a ten year old sometimes. That was a good thing. She should have been able to enjoy the snow. She seemed like she was in a much better mood than usual today, an organically better mood, and that was a relief. Even though for some reason she was fine after her brother did all of this to her. That kid was lucky he was only nine and Minegishi didn't fight children. If he carried this over into his adult life, well, they could not be held responsible for their actions.

"Not for me. I hate the wintertime. I hate the cold and I hate the snow and I hate what it does to the plants. I can't wait until we get out of here. Hopefully to somewhere warm or at least tolerable." Said Minegishi

"You didn't like to play in the snow at all when you were little?" asked Mob

"Nope. Not at all." said Minegishi

"Not even to build a snowman?" asked Mob

"Not even to build a snowman." Said Minegishi

"Oh…I'm sorry." said Mob

"About what?" asked Minegishi. Mob was forever apologizing. If this was wartime and the enemy was at the gates Mob would have apologized even then. She was just too passive for her own good. She needed to grow out of that…even though Minegishi didn't want her to grow out of it. The world sucked. The world sucked and she didn't need to know how bad the world could be…but also she was young enough that if she didn't know how bad the world could be she could get really hurt.

Even worse than this.

These scratches would leave scars. They were deep enough that her brother must have drawn blood. Minegishi had no clue how they were supposed to deal with this. How they were supposed to help Mob with this beyond cleaning these wounds. They had to do something…and it was just…they had never anticipated being this close to another person. Being this invested in another person. This was just…not something that they had planned on. It was scary in some ways. Feeling like this. Caring for someone like this. They had spent so long taking care of themselves and only themselves…but life had changed. That was what life was, change, and stagnation was death…and they had been spending too much time with Ryou lately.

"That you never wanted to build a snowman." Said Mob

"I'm fine. I'm not missing out on anything." Said Minegishi

"But if you ever change your mind we can build a snowman." Said Mob

"Pass." Said Minegishi

"It doesn't have to be a snowman." Said Mob. She sang that a little. She sang that just a little bit but that was enough for Minegishi to get that song back in their mind…and there it stayed. That movie…Mob had been watching that movie nonstop so therefore Minegishi had seen it and heard the songs more times than they could remember…and they had just gotten the songs out of their head…and now they were back….great. Wonderful.

"Mob, I don't want to build a snowman." Sang/spoke Minegishi. That damned song. Every song from that damned movie. They had managed to displace that gum commercial in their brain…and now the gum commercial was back. Gum in the morning, gum in the evening, gum after suppertime…great. Maybe they just needed to move to a soundless void to get away from all of these ear worm songs. A nice soundless voice with plenty of plants and a nice place to read…and also a little chair for Mob, too, because it wasn't like they could just move into a soundless void without Mob. That would just be irresponsible.

"Ok…" said Mob. Minegishi knew that aura and they knew that expression.

"I'll do literally anything else, anything that's inside where it's warm and there's plant life, but I am not going to go outside of this house unless it's absolutely necessary." Said Minegishi

"Can we watch-" said Mob

"And also if we don't end up watching Frozen. We've been watching that movie nonstop. I can't take it anymore. I need a brain break." Said Minegishi. They knew that it was Mob's favorite movie and all but she could watch it with Shibata if she really wanted to watch it. Shibata loved that movie for…some reason. They didn't get it. They knew that Mob loved that movie because she identified with the main character and also she liked wintertime for reasons that they could not understand but Shibata's enjoyment of that movie was a mystery to them. Well Shibata was a mystery to them. The whole of humanity was a mystery to them.

"OK, you can pick the movie…and also can I paint your nails again? Your nail polish is coming off." Said Mob. Minegishi looked down at their nails. They had gotten pretty much ruined in the course of trying to salvage their garden. Winter gardening was hard but gardening in the snow, well, it was way too much work for them. They did not like any extra work.

Aside from the extra work they had to do for Mob, of course.

They felt their new bracelet pulling at their wrist. That bracelet came with certain responsibilities. Like this. Like cleaning up her scratches and then hanging out with her because she needed it. She needed a friend and Minegishi was going to be that friend. She was ten and she needed someone, someone better than Minegishi, but they only had Minegishi so she had to make do with what she had. Minegishi knew that they were not doing the best job in the world but, in their defense though they had no idea who they were defending themselves from, they had never in their life planned on being in charge of another human being. On meaning this much to another human being.

But here they were.

"Fine, but after I get these scratches cleaned up and bandaged." Said Minegishi as they looked over Mob's arms. Cuts. These had gone from scratches to cuts….and Mob didn't even seem to care.

"They really aren't that bad." Said Mob. She had been saying that since Minegishi had all but dragged her into the bathroom so these could be seen to. Mob was either losing her sight or had terrible judgment, Minegishi would believe either, but they were not going to get into it with Mob right now. They needed to do their best to get these cleaned up and bandaged. That was the best that they could do.

"Hold still. This is going to hurt. A lot." Said Minegishi as they poured some rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball and pressed it to the deep scratches on Mob's arms. She looked like she had gotten into a fight with a cat and lost. Terrible. These scratches ran up and down her arms as deep as they would have been if cats had clawed her skin off…but it hadn't been cats, no, it had been Suzuki's little demon child.

"I don't mind." Said Mob. Minegishi could tell that she did. She shrugged away from the pain and winced. Minegishi had caused a lot of pain to others in their lifetime. They had never enjoyed it, never relished in it, instead they just hadn't given a damn about it. They caused others pain. That was just what they did.

It was just their job however many days a week.

And even before they had joined Claw they had never had a problem with causing other pain. Not when they had to. They never went out of their way to hurt others but if someone had to get hurt then they had to get hurt. That was just how it was. Mob had to get hurt. Minegishi had to clean these scratches because otherwise they'd get infected and she'd get sick. They had a healer on call twenty four hours a day but fuck that guy. He was an asshole. He was a stuck up asshole in the weirdest place to be a stuck up asshole. This was a world domination cult. Who was really trying to act like they were the best member of a fucking world domination cult?

Fukuda whatever the hell his given name was, obviously.

Well Minegishi was not that sort of person. They were no better or worse than everyone else who had done comparably terrible things in their lifetime. They weren't a saint, far from it, but they tried not to be any more of an asshole than they had to be. Hence why they felt guilty about cleaning off Mob's wounds despite the fact that this was for her own good. She was in pain but this was for her own good. It was either let Minegishi clean her wounds or let them get infected and turn gangrenous and then her arms would fall off…or whatever. They didn't know how this worked. They weren't a healer.

They were just good at first aid.

"There. That part's over now." Said Minegishi as they threw the used cotton ball into the bathroom garbage can. They got it in on the first shot, too. They were mildly impressed with themselves. They had managed to get it in on the first shot despite the fact that the garbage can was very close to overflowing…and who the hell was drinking beer in here in the first place? Idiots, they lived with idiots. Thank God for the company of ten year olds.

"Thank you for cleaning up my scratches for me." Said Mob. She winced as she tried to pull her arms in close. Minegishi shook their head as they put the rubbing alcohol back in their bag. They rooted around for their box of bandages. They would need to resupply soon. Getting little cuts and scratches was par for the course for them, the plants could be assholes sometimes, but they were not equipped for something this bad….but they had to do their best. It wasn't like she could go to the healer and get this fixed up.

"Thanks but we're not done yet." Said Minegishi. These scratches were too deep. They would leave scars, most likely, and she would have these for the rest of her life…but it was rubbing alcohol that she was worried about. They would never understand Mob. Their bracelet banged against Mob's as they checked over the last of her scratches. They didn't like it. They didn't like the way it dangled and they didn't like having something pressing against their wrist but they still kept it on. This bracelet carried with it the promise that it would be worn until the friendship was dissolved…at least that was Minegishi's understanding of this particular little girl ritual. They had only seen this from the sidelines back in the distant past of their childhood. They were going to keep this on even though it was annoying the way it moved and pulled at their skin and-

They tucked their bracelet into their sleeve.

"You…you don't have to put more of that burning stuff on them again, do you?" asked Mob. Minegishi shook their head. That part was over now. They knew that they made things that didn't hurt these days but this was what they were used to. They hardly ever even felt the burning anymore…but that was them. They were used to certain forms of pain…and it looked like Mob had her own pain that she was getting used to.

Her little brother was lucky as hell that he wasn't Minegishi's kid.

Suzuki was lucky, too, that he was so much more powerful than Minegishi. Otherwise they would have had a very violent word with him a while ago. Maybe hitting his kids wasn't the best thing to be doing, especially since it had turned his son into a violent little demon child, and it had made Mob so passive that she didn't even care that her brother had done all of this to her.

"No, I just have to cover them so they can heal." Said Minegishi

"Ok…" said Mob

"What is it?" asked Minegishi. They knew what tone. Mob wanted something but she didn't want to say anything because she was polite like that. Minegishi needed to do something about that. Being polite wouldn't get Mob very far in life or in Claw at all. She was too nice, too sweet, too polite, and too passive. She was going to end up with a lot worse if she didn't stop being so…Mob like….even though part of Minegishi wanted Mob to never change. She was just a kid…and Minegishi wanted her to be a kid for as long as she could…but also Minegishi knew how the world could be. They knew how cruel the world could be and Mob…she didn't need this. She didn't need these scratches and she didn't need the little tastes of the world that she had been getting….but there was nothing that Minegishi could do.

They hated feeling powerless.

"Can you put some aloe on too? I like that stuff. It smells nice." Said Mob

"These are too deep for…fine. If it'll make you happy." Said Minegishi. The reached over to the plant they had balancing on the back of the toilet tank and grew a nice thick piece of aloe. She didn't need the salve, not really, but she deserved to be happy. Especially after whatever the hell had caused all of this. Well Minegishi knew that this had been her little brother's doing. The scratches were close together, a child had done that, and Suzuki never scratched anyway. He was mostly about hitting and shoving and hair pulling. That had been her little brother's doing. Minegishi had felt their auras last night and figured that Mob had finally snapped…but she hadn't.

Of course she hadn't.

Because they had gotten up that morning to a pounding headache as well as her and her brother making the world's smallest and saddest snowmen. So either they had made up VERY quickly or they hadn't been fighting to begin with…or they had and Mob had just been letting her brother hit her like normal. Something was wrong with that child, with both of them honestly, but there was nothing that Minegishi could do.

Nothing but try and clean up the aftermath.

"That feels nice." Said Mob as Minegishi covered her scratches in aloe. Minegishi bit back what they had been about to say. About how she should not have had those in the first place. About how it was about time, overdue actually, that she put her brother in his place. She was a powerful esper in her own right and she could easily have but the little monster in his place. She just refused to. She wouldn't even hear of it.

"You should have come to me sooner. Next time this happens, I don't care if it's in the middle of the night, you come to me and get fixed up." Said Minegishi as they finished up on Mob's arms. There. That was a decent job. An instant fix from a healer would have been better but Minegishi wasn't going to send Mob to that scented tampon of a human being. No, she'd have been better off just letting her wounds heal in the open air than dealing with that guy. Minegishi did not understand that guy, not one bit, he made no sense. Wouldn't it make sense, a hell of a lot more sense, to get in good with Suzuki's favorite kid? Her brother may have been the only male heir but Mob was still Suzuki's favorite kid…even if he had decided to start ignoring her after being creepily enmeshed with her…but Minegishi knew that there was no way for them to even begin to understand Suzuki. The machinations of that man's mind were an enigma.

"But I wouldn't want to wake you…and also I would have come and seen you last night but you said not to come over when your aura was all tangled up in Shimazaki's because I would be scarred for life." Said Mob. Minegishi grimaced. Right. THAT night. Thank God they had moved past that…and Minegishi did not EVER want a repeat of that night….but Mob knew to knock first now instead of just letting herself in whenever she wanted.

"Just knock first and I'll kick him out." Said Minegishi as they bandaged up Mo's arms as best as they could. They wished that they knew how to keep these from scarring. They didn't. They weren't a healer and they weren't a parent. They were a friend, a best friend with the bracelet to prove it, and they were doing their very best. Hopefully their best would be good enough.

"But I don't want you to have to kick him out. You like him a lot, I mean you like him enough to kiss him and stuff, and I don't want you to kick him out just because of me. Besides, me and Sho made up so we're ok now." Said Mob

"He'll live. You're more important." Said Minegishi as they finished up Mob's arms. She looked more like a burn victim than anything but, hey, Minegishi wasn't a healer. They were a friend, a best friend, and that was already more than they had ever seen themselves as being. They had no idea what they were doing, or if they were even doing what they were doing right, but they couldn't do any better than their best so here they were. They were a safe place when she got hurt and someone who would listen to her when something was bothering her and…and that was all that they could do. They could only be there for her even though she would just keep on going through this over and over again…but they would still be there. Always.

Though their Xanax supply would definitely run out soon.


	231. Playing Games at the Kitchen Table

Fukuda loved Sho very much.

It hurt to see him like this. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Fukuda had woken up in the middle of the night to the feel of a very angry, and very bright, aura and then nothing. It had taken everything in him not to march over there and see what the hell was happening. But he couldn't. Suzuki was there and he did not appreciate overstepping. Fukuda had to be careful about how many times he overstepped his bounds into the Suzuki family. He couldn't' be fired or gotten rid of, Suzuki was not a sentimental man but he did see the value in having a healer around, but he could be barred from speaking to or being around Sho.

And he loved Sho a lot.

He loved Sho and he cared for Sho and he would always love and care for Sho just like Masami had asked him to, even if she hadn't because he was just a kid caught up in insanity that he couldn't comprehend, but sometimes he had to know when to act and when not to act. So, no, he did not act even when he woke up Shigeko's aura lighting up the sky like the northern lights. He did make a stopover in the morning after he had felt Suzuki leave and the kids had seemed fine. They had been outside playing in the snow like nothing.

That had been hours ago.

Now the sun had gone down and Sho had come around looking for some company. Shigeko had gone to visit Minegishi and the others and had the prescense of mind not to bring Sho. Fukuda thanked whatever God was out there that Shigeko knew better than to get her brother involved in everything that she was doing. Sho was just a child and did not need to be exposed to all of that. Fukuda didn't mind having him around, on the contrary he welcomed his presence, even though it had been a long day of dealing with an unusually short tempered Suzuki. He had been short tempered for a while now. Fukuda didn't pry into why. He still needed to give Suzuki time to reset from their last big talk.

He saved his mental energy for Sho.

He used up a lot of it these days. There had been so much going on…this had not been a good year. For anyone. Especially Sho. First the debacle with the baby and then Suzuki officially declaring that Sho had to answer to his sister as if she were his mother, how that seemed like a good idea even to Suzuki Fukuda would never know, and then Sho ended up getting his first real crush on the WORST possible person he could have had a crush on…and then his sister also had a crush on that person which would have been hard enough on it's own but throwing that on top of Sho figuring himself out was just too much…and then on top of having to figure himself out and deal with the new and weird familiar structure he also has to deal with his father getting weirdly close to his sister…and then his sister went and discounted a lifetime of the shit his father had been putting him through….

It was a lot for a not even ten year old.

Fukuda loved Sho and he would do the best he could…even if that meant having to play the most complicated videogame that had ever been bestowed upon mankind.

"Fukuda…let's play something else." Said Sho. He didn't want to go home, dad was home, but he didn't want to play any more Minecraft with Fukuda. He was a nice person and all but…but he was bad at this game. He and big sis were friends again and they were going to play in their own brand new world together…and maybe he had just been playing with Fukuda because he'd had no one else to play with…and stuff. Now he had her and he and Fukuda could play something else. Something that they would both be good at. That would be good. He didn't want to stop playing Minecraft with Fukuda completely but he did want to play something else. He was so worried about dad and what he might do that he just…he didn't have any space left over in his brain to help Fukuda play a game that wasn't nearly as hard as he made it out to be.

"No, we can keep playing. I bet there are a lot of other missions that we can go on. Like you were telling me about-" said Fukuda. He could feel Suzuki, he was home, and he knew that he needed to keep Sho over until his dad went to bed. Suzuki must have felt the fight that had happened in the middle of the night and it was only a matter of time before he punished Sho even though it had been Shigeko's aura that had turned night into day. She was usually the one to set him off. She didn't set out to do so but she was the one who usually set him off.

"Fukuda, it's ok. Me and big sis, and probably her boyfriend too, are going to get back to playing. I can tell that you don't really like this game so we can play something else." Said Sho

"No, I like it. I love this game. You know that. In fact I spend my days watching the clock waiting for the day to be over so we can play together." Said Fukuda. He felt bad lying to Sho but he needed to keep him occupied. He needed to keep Sho on this game because it was long and complicated. It would keep him staying put for a good, long time. If he played something else then the chances of him getting bored and leaving went up and then he might have ended up crossing paths with his father and…and Fukuda knew what would happen if he let that happen.

"Oh…I didn't know that. I thought that you didn't like it because you still don't know the controls or the crafting system and also your aura looks really frustrated when we play…and so does your face." Said Sho

"It's not that I dislike this game, not at all, it's just really complicated. I'm just too old for this but that doesn't mean that I can't still try." Said Fukuda

"But you're so bad at it…sorry." said Sho. Even after last night he was still acting like a jerk to the people he loved…and not even on purpose. It was so easy to say mean things to the people that you cared about…and it shouldn't have been. Big sis said that it was hard being mean to people, for her anyway, and that just meant that she was a much nicer person than he was…but he could still try. At least he was trying. That had to count for something….right?

"No, you're right. I'm bad at this, really bad at this, but that doesn't mean that we can't still have fun together. You don't have to play with your sister and her…the boy…man…guy. The guy she's interested in. We can still play together you and me. What do you say?" asked Fukuda. Nope. He was not going to let Sho get involved in…whatever was happening there. Whatever was happening with Shigeko. Just…Shigeko in general. Sho always got so angry when he was around her and…and Fukuda knew what happened when Sho got angry. He was just a little kid and he didn't need that in his life. Those feelings. The ones that came when he got angry and lost control of his actions.

"Fukuda…..I like playing with you and all but…I'd rather play with big sis in a new server me and her made and also I would invite you but sometimes it feels like you don't really like her and also you're really bad at this…no offense." Said Sho. He was being kind of a jerk, there, but maybe it was more of a jerk thing to let Fukuda think that he was good at something when he wasn't….and if he really liked playing then he and Sho could play in their own server. Sho didn't want him to play with all of them not only because he was bad at Minecraft and would slow him down but because he thought that big sis was a jerk…for some reason.

"None taken…and I still like your sister. I like her just fine." Said Fukuda lying through his teeth. He obviously wasn't going to tell Sho the truth. She was his sister and he loved her and he couldn't see who she would be, who she was becoming, and who she would become. Fukuda knew that well. He had spent so many years with Suzuki before he knew the truth…and if someone had told him the truth, that his best friend was dead serious about all of this insanity, he would have told them to get lost…and that was just part of being young and close to someone.

"But then why are you always so weird when it comes to her?" asked Sho

"What do you mean?" asked Fukuda. Of course Sho was more observant than the rest of his family. He kept calm. He kept his face calm and his aura calm and just kept…calm. He had to keep calm. Otherwise Sho would figure out what he was really feeling…and then that would open up a conversation that he was not ready to have. Not now. Not when Sho wasn't even ten years old yet.

"You call her Suzuki-san instead of her given name and also you never hang out with her like you hang out with me and also…also sometimes when you talk about her it's like you're talking about a totally different person. Like you have her mixed up with someone else…someone who's a jerk. Big sis isn't a jerk. She can be clueless and bossy sometimes but she's not a jerk." Said Sho

"Sho…I'm sorry if it feels that way to you or her but I don't dislike her. She's just different….getting older. That's all." said Fukuda. There. Shigeko had accepted that excuse so maybe Sho would, too. He thought quickly in case he didn't. He was a lot different than his sister and father after all. He was clever, like Masami, and observant….Fukuda had to be careful how he handled this.

"But I'm getting older too. I'm almost ten. Does that mean that when I'm ten you'll start calling me Suzuki-san and stop playing with me and also you'll think that I'm a jerk?" asked Sho

"Sho, no. I would never think of you like that and we'll always be able to play together and also I'll keep on calling you Sho unless you ask me to call you something else. Alright?" asked Fukuda

"But I'm getting older. You said that you're weird when it comes to big sis because she's getting older but I'm getting older too." Said Sho

"Well it's different for you. We're…we just have more in common because….because we're both guys. Your sister just has a completely different set of interests and they just don't overlap with ours. I mean, come on, do you want to play dolls and watch princess movies all day?" asked Fukuda

"Playing dolls is ok, like if you're playing the doll execution society game, or like if you're playing hot air balloons or something with them…and some of those movies are ok. I like Brave because she has a bow and arrow and she has red hair like me. I like some parts of Frozen, like the part with the wolves or the giant snowman or the Fixer Upper song, and also I like Tangled too because Flynn's super cool and if he were real I'd want to be best friends with him…and stuff. Just because big sis is a girl that doesn't mean that I don't have stuff in common with her. She has stuff in common with me too. We both like playing in the snow and playing Mario Party and Smash Brothers and Mario Kart and also Minecraft and other stuff too." Said Sho

"Well…you see…she's getting older and…and it's normal for you and her to have different social circles. You're getting older so you have me and she's getting older so she has Minegishi and….the rest of them." Said Fukuda

"Yeah….I guess that makes sense. Also I think that big sis and Minegishi are good friends because Minegishi is probably a girl. I heard her boyfriend call them 'she' once and something if you look really closely they kind of have boobs but not really but still more boobs than guys have, even really fat ones, but I didn't look for too long because you're not supposed to look at girl's boobs because they don't like that." Said Sho

"Yeah, don't ever stare at a woman's chest, they really don't like that….actually don't stare at anyone who doesn't want to be stared at." Said Fukuda. He needed to keep Sho from doing that, even to Minegishi, because no matter what Sho ended up being staring at women's chests was not socially acceptable and he got the feeling that Suzuki wasn't about to tell his son that. He had been pretty bad about that when they were kids after all.

"But what if they aren't a girl? It's ok to stare at guys because they don't have boobs. Shimazaki said so." Said Sho

"When did he tell you this?" asked Fukuda. When had that even come up? And also he needed to start spending more time with Sho. He didn't need Sho getting his life advice from Shimazaki of all people. Shigeko….she could do whatever she wanted…but Sho didn't need to get into what that guy was into.

"A couple days ago at the park with all the dogs. He said that you should never stare at a girl because they don't like that and they're going to think that you're a weirdo who's going to try and kiss them and touch their boobs without asking, which you should never do because that's a crime and also people who go around doing that to girls deserve to have their privates nailed to beehives and then covered in honey so the bees and the bears will get to them, but if you stare at guys all you have to do is worry about getting beat up and stuff." Said Sho

"Uh-huh….Sho, don't stare at people. That's not a good thing and you can't teleport away so, yes, you could get hurt." Said Fukuda. He wondered what else he would have to tell Sho not to do. Nothing good was going to come from Sho getting his life advice from Shimazaki.

"Shimazaki said that he'll always have my back so I can stare at whatever guys I want. He says that it's ok to want to stare at guys. Girls too. Whoever I want to. He says that staring at people is part of figuring yourself out. I don't know what he meant by that but it's nice that he'll always have my back." Said Sho

"Sho….maybe don't count on him following you around for the rest of your life…and also please don't stare at people. It hurts their feelings." Said Fukuda. It was socially unacceptable, too, but he didn't want to get into that conversation with Sho right now.

"Yeah…I guess so. Sometimes people stare at me because I have red hair and stuff and it does make me feel kind of bad…like I'm in a zoo or something, but Shimazaki says that I shouldn't let the bastards make me feel bad. He says that people have been staring at him all his life because he was born without eyes, and then because he grew up to be awesome, and that there's no use in worrying about what other people think of me or why they're staring at me because my worrying won't change the outcome. People are going to do what they're going to do." Said Sho

"He tells you a lot of things, doesn't he?" asked Fukuda. He wished that there was some way he could take notes. That way he would at least know what he had to correct. Shigeko…there was no correcting her at this point but Sho was different. Less headstrong, mostly, and a hell of a lot less arrogant too.

"Yeah. He's really smart. He's the smartest guy ever! He knows a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. Like, he knows how to tell dogs apart by just feeling them coming and touching their fur. He knows all the breeds of dogs that there are to know. It's so cool…and other people think that it's cool too. Like this one lady didn't even know what kind of dog she had but then he told her and she was all 'but you're blind' which was kind of rude because you can't just tell someone that they're blind but then he was all 'I can tell' and that should have been the end of it but then he kept on talking to that rude lady…because he can be nice like that…but he did talk to her for way too long." Said Sho

"Well adults socialize differently so he might have just felt like spending time with someone his own age…like he should." Said Fukuda

"But…you're an adult and I'm a kid and we're friends." Said Sho. He didn't get it but then again he didn't get a lot of things about Fukuda these days. Like why he didn't fully like big sis anymore. Her being older and having different interests and her own friends and stuff seemed like not a very good explanation at all…but he trusted Fukuda.

"It's different for us because I've known your dad for most of my life and I've known you since a few days after you were born. I'm closer to being family than a friend, at this point." Said Fukuda

"Yeah….I guess that you're different. You're less fun to hang out with." Said Sho before he could stop himself. He was being a jerk, again, and he just couldn't help it. He just needed to try harder, that was all, he just had to try harder at being a good person.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Fukuda. That had hurt but he didn't show it. Sho was just a kid and he didn't know what he was saying. He was nine, not even ten, and he couldn't think things through like an adult would. That was part of being a kid, not knowing what the right and wrong thing to say, was.

"You don't climb trees or build forts or have pudding eating contests or sock skate or have cursing contests or throw rocks at people and then hide or jump out and scare people and also you'd never let me poke you in the eye." Said Sho. There. Now that he explained himself it would make sense and then Fukuda would know that he hadn't set out to be a jerk.

"Poke me in the…what?" said Fukuda. Just…what? He'd had the stray thought to poke Shimazaki in the space where his eyes should have been but that was something that he would never actually do. He could never get him to stay put long enough, first of all, and second of all it would be socially unacceptable too.

"In the eye. Shimazaki let me poke him in the eye…well where his eye would have been. It was so gross…but I can't complain because he had been telling me since I started asking that it would have been super gross…but I did it anyway. It was gross." Said Sho. He stuck out his tongue at the memory of it. It had been a lot cooler in his head but once Shimazaki said he could, well, he had to go through with it…even if it had been gross. But it had sort of been the cool kind of gross, like holding a handful of earthworms, but it had also been the gross kind of gross, like sticking your finger in a really bad cut, the kind you got after you fell out of a tree, to get the splinters out and stuff. It had been gross and cool and….and once was enough for him. Shimazaki said that most people who asked never went through with it…and Sho could see why.

"Sho….if it was gross then why…why would you ask him if you could do that?" asked Fukuda. He hoped to God that Sho had asked him first…and he also hoped to God that Shimazaki hadn't offered. That was just…well it had to have been painful…and also it was just…stomach turning. The thought of it. Just…why.

"Because I thought that it would be cool…and also I wanted to know if he would let me." Said Sho. Sometimes he asked if he could do stuff just to see if people would let him do it. Like time he asked Shibata if he could ride on his shoulders and help him cook like in Ratatouille. Shibata had said yes…for a while…but then the hair pulling go to be too much so Shibata put him down and let him eat a whole thing of cake batter. He hadn't expected Shimazaki to actually say yes but Sho was happy that he did. He was happy that Shimazaki had trusted him to do that.

"Well he did let you…" said Fukuda. His stomach was turning. Nope. Not ok. Sho…Sho was going to be spending a lot more time in his office. A LOT more time. All the time.

"Yeah, so I'm happy about that but I won't do that again. He says that he doesn't let a lot of people do that to him because it feels weird and also he has to clean his whole eye space out afterwards so he doesn't get an infection and it's boring and stuff dong that. That means that we're good friends. He never even let big sis do that and she wanted him to be her boyfriend." Said Sho

"Did she….did she ask him if he could do that?" asked Fukuda

"No, probably not. I don't know for sure. We don't talk about her that much. She has her own stuff going on like you said. Plus if he still likes her I don't want to hurt his feelings because she has a new boyfriend now and they're going to get married and have lots of babies and then they'll let me take care of the babies. I don't want to rub all of that in his face if he still likes her. Plus she's going to marry Hatori and he's nowhere near as cool as Shimazaki so I don't want to remind him that he lost to a guy who goes running to you whenever he gets a papercut." Said Sho

"Did she say that she was dating Hatori?" asked Fukuda. Nope. None of that either. Shigeko may not have been his responsibility but she was too young for that guy and…and all of that. Well she was too young for a lot of the things that she did but she was especially too young for all of that.

"She said 'no' and that she wasn't going to even ask him because she thinks that she's too young, that he thinks that she's too young, but I think that she should still ask him because you said that adults can like kids like that but they shouldn't but I think that it's ok if he likes her like that because he's a really cool guy. Also she kind of has boobs and I know that you're supposed to like them so he probably won't think that she's too young in that case. I think so, anyway, I don't get boobs. I mean I get that they're for feeding babies and stuff but I don't….get it." Said Sho

"Sho…he's probably going to say no to her so you should probably tell your sister not to embarrass herself….because rejection is very emotionally painful and it's better for the rest of us if she doesn't have to deal with all of that…" said Fukuda

"Well then I'll tell him that if he says no to my sister then I'll find him and beat him up and also I'll delete all of his Minecraft worlds and I'll reset all of his passwords too so he can't get into his stuff." Said Sho

"Sho, no, that's not nice. Just…leave your sister be. Alright? Leave your sister be and let her run her own life. Give her space." Said Fukuda

"But…but I don't want to give her space. I gave her a bunch of space when I was mad at her and then we had a great, big, fight yesterday." Said Sho

"I know. I felt it. Sho….do you want to talk about it? The fight that you had with your sister." Said Fukuda

"I don't want to talk about it." Said Sho

"Are you sure? You might feel better." Said Fukuda

"I said that I didn't want to talk about it." Said Sho

"I'll let you curse if you tell me about it. How's that sound?" asked Fukuda

"Why the hell do you want to know?" asked Sho

"Language." Said Fukuda

"What the hell? You fucking said that I could curse!" said Sho

"I said that you could curse if you told me about the fight that you and your sister had…and also don't say that word. The 'F' word. You can say every word but that one. You're too young." Said Fukuda

"….Shimazaki lets me say it…." Said Sho

"Well I'm not Shimazaki." Said Fukuda

"I know. Shimazaki's cool and he doesn't make me talk about stuff that I don't want to talk about." Said Sho

"Sho…sometimes in life we have to talk about the things that we don't want to talk about, ok? I don't mean to be nosy but I'm very concerned. I felt both of your auras and…and I just want know how things are going between you two. You said, before, that you were angry with her because she said that your dad treated the two of you the same and-" said Fukuda

"We're not fighting about that anymore. We….we talked about it. I mean…I mean we fought and I lost control and hurt her but we talked and…and we're ok now. She knows that dad doesn't treat us the same and I…I said sorry for hitting her again. I hit her again…" said Sho

"Well that's fine. Sometimes in life we make mistakes. As long as you apologized for hitting her then you're fine." Said Fukuda

"I didn't just hit her though…I scratched her too. I scratched her arms up so bad that there was blood and…and then I got so upset that I hit myself…"said Sho

"Sho…no. Don't ever do that to yourself. Ever. You do not deserve that. You have enough to deal with as it with your dad hitting you. Don't start hitting yourself on top of all of that. Kick holes in the walls, break things, hit other people, but never hit yourself. Ok? I need you to promise me that you will never hit yourself ever again." said Fukuda

"Fine! I promise you that I'll never hit myself again….I already promised big sis so I'll promise you, too. At least you didn't remind me that you outrank me…" said Sho

"Outrank you? Sho, no, you're the President's son. You outrank everyone…and rank doesn't matter. Rank only matters in Claw but Claw is not…Claw is not everything." Said Fukuda

"But we're going to take over the world." Said Sho

"…yes…but Claw hasn't taken over the world yet so rank doesn't mean anything." Said Fukuda

"It does in my family. Big sis says that she's older and dad promoted her and she outranks me in Claw so she can give me orders and she ordered me to never hit myself again." said Sho

"Sho…don't hit yourself. Ever. You're right that your sister was right to tell you never to hit yourself but she was wrong to pull rank on you like that. Never pull rank with anyone, ever, unless you want to upset them. Ok? I can't even begin to imagine how upsetting that must have been for you…" said Fukuda

"Yeah…it was…but I'm ok now. Me and big sis are ok now. We stopped fighting and…and things are ok now. We agreed to listen to each other more and spend more time together and stuff like that. So me and big sis are ok." Said Sho

"If you and your big sister are doing so well then why are you here and not at home with her?" asked Fukuda

"She's not at home. She and Minegishi are painting each other's nails at Minegishi's house and I don't like getting my nails painted. Also I…me and big sis probably woke dad up with our fighting, I mean if you felt it all the way over here then he probably didn't sleep through it, and I just…I want to stay here until he goes to bed so that way I won't get punished…and that's why I want us to keep on playing too. Not Minecraft because sometimes I can be frustrating playing with you, no offense, but I want to play something else…or something." Said Sho

"Oh. Why didn't you just say so? Sho, I've told you before, you're always welcome here no matter what. Anytime of the day or night you can come right through that front door and I'll never kick you out…but always knock on my bedroom door though. Ok? Never just let yourself in, I could be changing clothes or something, and that would be awkward for you to walk in on." Said Fukuda

"Yeah, it would be because we're both boys but not family and only family can change together, so I'll always knock….does that mean that I can stay?" asked Sho

"Of course…and we can play something else. You know, I know a really great game. For a few years it was the most popular game in Japan. It was so popular that it caused a coin shortage even." Said Fukuda. He wanted to keep Sho near and also…and also he may have had his own personal reasons for this. For showing this game to Sho. The game that his father had dedicated a portion of his childhood to mastering. Suzuki used to talk about teaching his son how to play Space Invaders…and how to do about a million other things too…and he might have still been planning on it. That is if Fukuda replaced the word 'son' with 'daughter'. Yes, that would have been a lot more accurate. Suzuki was done with Sho and had been done with Sho before he had even started…so he didn't get to give a damn if Fukuda taught the kid how to play Space Invaders.

"What game?" asked Sho. He hoped that this wouldn't be boring. A lot of old games, the ones that came out when Fukuda was a kid, were so boring…but he wouldn't be a jerk even if this was the most boring game in the history of games.

"The greatest game ever invented of course." Said Fukuda. In Suzuki's opinion, of course, this was the greatest game ever invented. He had waxed poetic, as much as he was capable of, about how when he had a son, he hadn't even spoken more than three words to a girl at this point, that he would teach him to be the greatest Space Invaders player the world had ever known. Well Fukuda…he was just doing what Suzuki would have wanted…and if he overstepped and took this from him then so be it.

"Stop suspending me and just tell me what game it is!" said Sho. The suspense was killing him. This game was either going to be really good or really bad but Sho would never know unless Fukuda showed him the game already!

"Keeping you in suspense, I'm keeping you in suspense, not suspending you and-" said Fukuda

"Ok, fine, stop keeping me in suspense and just tell me already…please." Said Sho

"Alright. Here, let me just exit out of this and get to the site I found….." said Fukuda. He felt his laptop slide over to Sho's side of the table. The display of power startled him a little but did not scare him. No, not even back when it had been Suzuki taking things out of his hands had he been scared. He was, however, not going to let Sho have free reign of his laptop. There were a lot of things there, not all of them Masami related, that he did not need Sho to see. No, there were a lot of conversations in that laptop that they did not need not have right then and there.

"Here, let me do it, I'm faster. Did you put it in your favorites?" asked Sho as Fukuda took his laptop back. Sho was hyped about this game, now, but Fukuda wouldn't let him just get to it already. He was much better at this stuff than Fukuda was. It would take him all night just to find is favorites bar.

"I did…but let me get to it. Don't look in my favorites because…there are things that you shouldn't see…like different things that I got you for your birthday. I don't want to ruin the surprise." Said Fukuda

"You got me art supplies." Said Sho

"How did…no I didn't." said Fukuda

"Oh. Ok. I just thought that you did because everyone always gets me art supplies. Nobody gets me what I really want." Said Sho

"What do you really want?" asked Fukuda

"A hamster or a cat or a real life dragon but I don't think that they have dragons so I'll just take the hamster or the cat." Said Sho

"Um….what do you want that's not alive?" asked Fukuda

"A 3DS." Said Sho. It was new and he needed one and he knew that he needed to wait until his birthday to see if he got one before he went and got one himself….even though he was pretty sure that he only got art supplies again. He always got art supplies for every gift giving holiday, he did like art supplies and he did need them too, but there was more to him than art and stuff. Sometimes people just saw one part of him and thought that it was all of him…or something. He didn't know. He just wished that people would see more to him than he could draw…that dad would say 'good job' to something other than a drawing…

"Don't you already have one of those?" asked Fukuda

"No, I have an original DS. I need a 3D one." said Sho

"But…the games were already in 3D…weren't they?" asked Fukuda

"No, not really, that's why I need a 3DS. A green one." said Sho

"Well maybe you'll get one for your birthday." Said Fukuda

"I'll probably just get art supplies…and I'll probably get stuck playing 2D gams until I'm old and I can't see or hear well enough to play games and then my kids'll show me some new games but I'll be bad at them because I'll be your age." Said Sho

"….I'm forty three, not eighty three." Said Fukuda

"Both of those sound old." Said Sho

"Yeah, well, maybe you're just too young to appreciate two dimensional games. Back in my day we only had two dimensions and we were grateful for that. Just two dimensions and two colors. Black and white." Said Fukuda

"That sounds like a pretty shitty game to me." Said Sho

"Language, and it's not. It's actually pretty addictive. Here, give it a try." Said Fukuda

"Fine, I'll try it. What's this called?" asked Sho. He reached for the laptop and put his fingers on the keys. Left and right arrows for directions and the spacebar to fire. Simple enough.

"Space Invaders. It's simple but challenging. Just shoot up at the aliens before the land." Said Fukuda. He watched Sho get started…and bit his tongue when Sho went with his father's strategy of never shooting through his shields. It was best to get through as many as you could while they were up high. The shields would do no good when they were low and moving fats and bearing down on you.

"This is easy. They move slowly and they hardly ever fire. Plus I have these big shields." Said Sho. People were so easy to entertain back when Fukuda had been a kid. He felt bad for people who were alive whenever this game was made. How was something so boring the game that caused a whole coin shortage? He didn't get it. Still, though, he would play this because it was special to Fukuda and he had been enough of a jerk as it was. He was going to be nicer. He had to work at being nicer to everyone, not just big sis, because he had to be a good person.

"Shoot some more and see how slow they move." Said Fukuda. Sho was being surpassingly sparing with his shots. Not like him at all. A bit like Suzuki. He had always lined up his shot and hit specific targets…and he had done that for every shot and never shot through his shields and to this day Fukuda still wasn't sure how he managed it.

"Hey…that's not fair…" said Sho. Now they were speeding up…and they should have gone that fast from the very beginning!

"See? I told you that it would be challenging." Said Fukuda. Fukuda had never seen him look less like Suzuki than he had in that moment. Sho may have had Suzuki's hair and eyes but he was nothing like Suzuki. He had always been strangely calm when he had played, like he was meditating or something, he had never been that animated when he played. He was animated and angry and…and it was adorable. He was adorable. Fukuda wished that he could have thought of some reason to take a picture for Masami…though it would have been useless since she had cut off that burner phone she had bene using and hadn't emailed him in years and years. Still, though, this was something that he wished that she could have been there to see. He wished that she could have been there at the table with him and Sho. A picture of a family. Mother and son and…and him. Mother and son and him. Sho was not his son…but…but he wished that he was. Fukuda had wished, for years, that Sho had been his son…he had wanted that more than anything for so long...

But it would never be true.

"But they move too fast for me to hit. Not unless I shoot through my own shield but that would be dumb because then I would have no shield." Said Sho

"Sho…you can shoot through your own shield. It's perfectly good strategy to shoot through your own shield." Said Fukuda. He knew that he was going to catch shit if Suzuki ever heard the terrible thing that he had just taught Sho how to do but, hey, if he wanted to teach his Son how to play Space Invaders then he should have done it himself like he was always saying he wanted to back when they had been kids. He hadn't so it was up to Fukuda to teach Sho what his father hadn't. What his father didn't care to. What his father never would. His father would never look past himself, what he wanted, to see the amazing person that he had made. The person that he had made and just...treated like…like this.

He loved Sho so very much after all. Like a son.


	232. Not Admitting the Wound

Suzuki did not hate his Daughter.

He could never hate his Daughter. Ever She was practically perfect, his almost most perfect person, and he could never hate her. Masami had been his most perfect person but Daughter was a close second…but not in the same way that Masami had been his most perfect person because it would have been very wrong to think of his Daughter in that way. Even though she had zero genetic relation to him it would still have been wrong. She was still almost perfect in so many ways…accept for this one.

"Dad, why do you hate me?"

Why was she asking him this? He didn't hate her. He had never once given her any reason to think that he hated her. Also he didn't hate anyone, hating people took too much effort that was better spent on other things, but there were people that he disliked. But he didn't dislike her. He could never dislike her. Even now, with her saying this insanity, he would not ever even dream of disliking her. He cared so much for her…he wanted nothing more than pick her up and to tie a rope around her waist and the other end around his wrist and then never let her go.

But he had to.

Fukuda was smart about these things. She needed her independence skills and she would never gain them if he tied a rope around her waist and the other end to his wrist. About three meters of rope would do it, though, keep her near enough that he knew she was there but not so near that she couldn't change clothing and do all the other things that she needed to do in private. Not rope though because that would have been too rough. String, maybe? That might work. Or whatever that material was that they made dog leashes out of. Something strong but thin and also light…

But that would be bad for her so he wasn't going to do that.

Instead he was going to keep walking back to his room. She had been waiting outside of the bathroom while he had been taking his nightly bath. He assumed that she was waiting her turn, not for him, but now she was following him and he didn't know why. She needed to be independent but she couldn't be independent if she was following him down the hallway and to his room. He needed her to be independent or the whole Suzuki family legacy would fall apart before it even got started. His job was to raise her to be the adult he needed her to be, not the child he wished he could preserve her at now, and in order for her to grow up to be a proper adult he needed to give her space to become independent.

Even though what he really wanted to do was pick her up and carry her to bed and just spend time with her.

"Dad, please tell me why you hate me."

Daughter was still following him. We kept walking. She followed. He got to his door. She stopped but stood behind him. He could feel her aura against his. He could see her out of the corner of his eye. She was there and her face was red and her eyes were red….was she getting sick? She had been carrying on with her brother out in the snow for a while…did the cold make people sick? He'd have to look that up later. Right now he had this to deal with. What was he supposed to do? He was supposed to leave her alone the best thing for her was if he left her alone. So he wasn't going to look at her or talk to her or spend time with her ever again so that she would develop independent skills. Son was doing well. Suzuki hardly ever interacted with him and he was a very independent little boy. He had interacted with Daughter too much, been too weak around her, but now he was going to do the right thing and leave her alone.

He opened the door.

He reached behind himself with his powers and immobilized her where she stood. He crossed the threshold into his room and shut the door. This was the right thing to do. Doing the right thing wasn't always easy but life wasn't always easy. Serving his life's goal wasn't always easy. He was going to rule the world and when he did his work would not be done. He had to secure the next generation. Daughter was his, she was alive, and she would grow into an adult but he would have to have her grow up to be the adult he needed her to be….

Even though he was happy with her now.

"Dad, please tell me…tell me why you hate me now?"

He hated it when she said that. He did not hate her. He loved her. He loved it when she was near him. He loved falling asleep next to her at night and waking up beside her in the morning. He loved how she made it ok for him to revisit the things that he had loved in his childhood. He loved the way that she loved the things that he had loved in his childhood. He loved the game they'd play together, he loved working with her in service of a goal, and he loved the feeling that came when they brought their goals to completion. He loved building things with her. He had always wanted to have someone he could build a new world with. Not that he needed anyone, he was Suzuki Touichirou and he needed no one, but he did enjoy having another person there to help him create a better world…even if that world only existed within the confines of a game. He had so wished that Masami…that they could have built the world together. After he took over the world and remade it he would have loved to have had her help…to have had her near while he made a newer and more perfect world for her…and he loved the idea of Daughter at his side as he destroyed the old world and built a new one worthy of her…

He missed her more than anything.

He missed her happiness. He missed the way she would mouth along to her favorite songs from the ice queen movie. He loved the way she was smile as she drifted off to sleep. He loved the way that she turned into an octopus while she slept and held onto him. He loved how soft her skin felt against his. He loved how soft her hair was in those rare instances when he could reach out and feel it. He loved the way her eyes and aura lit up when she saw him. He loved the fact that she sought him out, that she enjoyed being near him, and he loved her so much, the most, when she was at his side where she belonged.

"Dad…please. Please just tell me what I did wrong so…so I can fix it."

He could hear her through the door. He wanted to open that door and pull her close and to tell her that she did nothing wrong. To tell her that he loved her more than anything. To pick her up and to hold her close and…and that's a crazy thought. First of all she's ten years old and however many kilos heavy. He can't just lift her up like he used to. He'd destroy his back. Also it would have possibly even been socially inappropriate. He had never been lifted up by either parent when he had been her age…though his memories from that time are not the clearest. He wants to pick her up, though, and with his powers he could easily lift her. With his powers he could do anything. He's Suzuki Touichirou and he can do whatever he wants…

But she needs independent skills.

She's knocking on the door, now, and he can't take it. He can't take her being near to him. He can't take the fact that he's so near to her and she's so near to him and he wants to be with her so badly…he wants to be with her more than he's ever wanted to be near someone aside from Masami. Daughter…it's such a gift to be near her. It's a gift to have her and to hold her and…and he knows that he can't but…but he wants to. He wants nothing more than to have her and to hold her and to never let her go….

But she needs independent skills.

"Daughter. Go away."

There. Words. Now she will know that she needs to go away and she'll find something else to do. Hopefully she and Son won't become quarrelsome again. They had woken him up in the middle of the night with their carrying on and he had been so close to opening that door, walking down the hallway, and then knocking some sense into Son because Suzuki KNEW that he had to be the instigator. He was always the instigator. Daughter didn't have a quarrelsome bone in her body. Daughter…he had wanted nothing more than to go in there and pick her up and carry her to his bed where she belonged. He wanted that now, too, to pick her up and deposit her on her side of the bed where she belonged and then just to…to sit there and be in her presence….

"Now."

But he can't. He needs to do what's right for her. That's what it is to be a parent. That's why he tries his best to correct Son…well that and because Son pushes him to that point…he's a father and part of being a father is making sure that his children grow up properly. Being a father means that sometimes he needs to put his needs second for his Daughter. He cares for her enough to put his needs second and…and he doesn't like this. This feeling he has for her. It sits close to the wound that Masami left. It sits right there next to the wound and it threaten to merge with that to create a newer and more painful wound than he had ever felt before.

"What did I just say?"

He sits down on his bed. The bed groans under his weight. He leans forward and rests his head in his hands. His elbows are digging into his knees. If he closes his eyes he can feel Masami, there, laying on her side of the bed. Her hand, her incredibly soft hand, would be on his back. She would say something like 'Touichirou, come on' and then she would tug on his shirt and he would lay down beside her…and he can feel her hand. He can feel her hand on his back and he could feel her presence near him and he can even smell her, that artificial berry smell of her lotion coupled with the smell of cinnamon that always seemed to linger on her…and also her perfume, too, the kind she liked…and he closes his eyes and just allowed himself to feel the ghost of her….

"Dad, please. Why do you want me to go away?"

Masami's ghost has been exorcised. The room is cold. He's alone. He hasn't dried his hair well enough. A bead of water makes it's way from his hairline down across his temples and then stops on his eyebrow. He's so alone…and it's painful. Even though he doesn't want or need anyone beside him it's pain. The wound. The admitting of the wound. The admitting of the admitting of the wound. The cause of the wound, the ghost of her, and the living person who makes it worse. She's there. He can see her aura, he can feel her voice, he can see the shadow she casts in the hallway.

"Daughter. Leave me."

She doesn't obey. She doesn't listen. He wants….if this had been Son Suzuki would have just sent him flying down the hallway. But this was not Son, this was Daughter, and the thought of correcting Daughter in the way that he's corrected her in the past, or the way that he corrects Son in the present, feels wrong to him. As wrong as it would have been if he had sent Masami flying…he thought makes him feel ill. He would never, ever, have done anything to hurt Masami just as he will never, ever, do anything to hurt Daughter…even though she's right there where she shouldn't be. Even though she's deliberately disobeying him. Even though he knows that she had can hear and he knows that she hasn't spontaneously forgotten Japanese and that she hasn't spontaneously forgotten that she is the child and he is the father….he cannot bring himself to do what he knows needs to be done.

What's the matter with him?

When had he become…this? This person who would rather sit there and wallow in his…whatever this emotion was…instead of doing what needed to be done. He needed to correct her, to make her better, and to make all of this better. He needed to fix this. He needed to stop admitting the wound. If he didn't admit the wound then there would be no wound in the first place. After all he had not actually been wounded. He had not been wounded and…and he was fine. These were just emotions and emotions were not real. Wounds, physical wounds, were real…and this was not real. This was just…his mind losing control of it's self. This was just his mind attempting to…he didn't even know what.

Another knock on the door.

"Dad, please, just tell me what I have to do to make this better."

Grow up quicker. She could grow up quicker and then he would be able to have her and hold her and be with her to his heart's content. He would be able to have her at his side at all time. He would be able to tie a rope around her waist and then the other end to his wrist and then it would be alright because she would have been an adult and her mental development would be complete. Then he would be able to be near her to his heart's content and he would be able to hold her to his heart's content and then she could go back to being the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes at night and the first thing he saw when he opened them in the morning. She would go back to being right there beside him wherever he looked. She would go back to being there and telling him every day that she loved him and he…he would do the same. To make her happy he would do the same. He would admit his weakness if it would make her happy. He would do whatever it took to make her happy.

He needed her to be happy.

He needed her to be happy and he needed her to be near him and…and he just…he didn't NEED her but he WANTED her and wanting…wanting was alright. A want was not a need. Wanting to be near her, to have her, to hold her, to use her to close this wound which was not a wound at all…that was alright. He wanted things, he wanted a great many things, and it was alright if she was on the list of the great many things that he wanted. Her, her presence, her warmth, her happiness, the feel of her in his arms, the feel of her skin against his, the feel of her aura against his, all of it. He wanted to be with her so badly…but he knew that he had to do the right thing.

"I told you to go away."

She doesn't move. She doesn't move a single centimeter from where she stands. She's there and she's so close and he could so easily get up off this bed and go to her…and he wants to go to her…and he wants to be near to her and…and she's there and so close and so warm and so soft and so perfect…she's so perfect. She's his most perfect person and he doesn't want to let her go or to make her go…and she's so warm and soft and he's so cold…and he doesn't understand himself. Why he's fixated on how she feels in his arms. What is the point of thinking of her like that? What is even the point of…of any of these feelings? She's just so warm and…if he feels cold then he could just out his over shirt back on. He had gotten into the habit of not wearing his over shirt to bed and…and Masami had been the last person who had gotten him to sleep less than fully dressed….

He isn't sure if he wants to examine that.

He isn't sure if he wants to examine his feelings for Daughter like this. How he gives her the same amount of…of himself…that he gave Masami. He's given her as much as he's given Masami and…and it makes sense. She's Masami's Daughter. She may not have a single drop of Masami's blood running through her veins but…but she's still Masami's Daughter. There is just so much of Masami in her and…and that makes the wound worse…even though he knows that the wound will go away if he just STOPS ADMITTING IT…..but he can't.

He just can't.

"Dad….I'll go away when you tell me what I did wrong. Please…please tell me what I did wrong. Please just tell me what I did to make you hate me so much. I just want…I want to know so that way I can fix it and then I can be better for you. I can be better for you and then you can love me again and…and then we can be ok again…and I just think that maybe if we talk about it, what I did, then things can get better."

He can't listen to this anymore.

He doesn't want to listen to this anymore so he won't. She's saying…he has no idea what it is that she's even saying. He has no idea what it is that she….that she even has going on in her mind. The things that she's saying are just…what is she even saying? Why does she even…what makes her think that he would EVER hate her? No. He can't sit there and listen to this anymore. He just can't, he just won't, so he just has no choice but to get up and make her stop. She won't leave so he has to get up and make her stop even though he doesn't want to. Even though he wants nothing more than to sit there and just be near her. He wants to be near her and he wants to feel her aura and listen to her voice and…and he doesn't want to be away from her…

But he has to be.

He gets up from his bed and crosses the room. The air feels cold against his arms. The floor feels hard under his socks. The bead of water which had rested on his eyebrow was now moving it's way downwards. He flicked it away with his powers. He flicked it away with his powers as he walked away from his bed and towards his door and…and he doesn't want to do this but he will.

He opens the door.

"Daughter. I don't hate you. I could never hate you. I love you. Now go away."

There. He opened the door, said his piece, and then closed it. There. He waited on the other side of the door. She was there. She was still there and she gave no sign that she would move…and he had no idea what to do now. Masami…she never did things like this. She never stayed near to him like this when he told her that he wanted her to go away…actually she stayed away from him for much longer than he had ever wanted her to when he told her to leave him alone…and he had no idea how he was supposed to deal with this. What he was supposed to do. What he was supposed to do when his Daughter wouldn't leave him alone, wouldn't go, wouldn't leave him alone and then just…just go off and be independent like she was supposed to be.

"Ok….I love you too….and I'll go now. Goodnight."

She walks away. He can see her shadow and he can feel her aura and he can hear her footsteps…and he can feel the wound. The wound hurts with every step she takes. Even if he doesn't admit the wound it's still there…and it gets even worse with every step she takes. She takes steps away from him and out of his life and…and she's walking down the hall, not out of his life, and he just…he needs to calm down and get himself under control. She's his Daughter and he….he needs to think of her. He needs to think of her because she was his and…and he has to do the right thing and make her into the person that he wanted her to be…that was the right thing to do. He lays down on his bed. It's empty now.

He could never hate Daughter. He loved her.


	233. A Birthday Breakfast with Friends

Today, on this day, Sho was ten years old.

Sho had gone to bed nine and woken up ten. Ten! A one and then a zero! Two digits! He was, officially, a big kid now…though he got the feeling that big kids didn't go around calling themselves big kids. No, it just went without saying that he was a big kid now. Ten. He couldn't believe it…well he could because he hadn't been expecting to wake up dead on his birthday….but this was still so awesome! He was ten now and it was his birthday and he had presents coming to him and pancakes too! He didn't particularly like pancakes but they were for his birthday and everything tasted better on his birthday so….pancakes!

"….and you get ten pancakes because you're ten today Little Suzuki! You're ten…oh…time just keeps passing….I'm ok, I'm ok." Said Shibata rubbing his eyes on his apron and turning back to the stove. Sho didn't get what he was so sad about but he was glad that he had gone back to the stove. There was a worrying amount of smoke coming from it. It would have sucked if he died in a fire on his tenth birthday. Also big sis was there and she would have been sad if he died…and also he didn't much want to burn to death. Especially not in front of Shimazaki. No, he would think that Sho wasn't in any way cool or best friend material if he burned to death in a pancake fire on his birthday.

"Stop crying, it's not that sad." Said Minegishi from their spot at the counter. Sho didn't know why they were there. Maybe big sis had dragged them out of their room for this. Big sis had woken them up, it had been her job since they were her best friend, but maybe it would have been better if they had been asleep. Sho got the feeling that they didn't much like him…or anyone.

Anyone who wasn't Shimazaki, anyway.

"I hear it's your birthday…..it's my birthday too…" sang Shimazaki as he teleported over to the pancake stack and stole one. Sho didn't care. He didn't know if he could even eat ten pancakes. Shimazaki could have one if he wanted, or two, or however many he wanted. Anything so long as he was on the opposite side of the kitchen as Minegishi…and Sho didn't get why he was so mad that they were friends…but this was his birthday and he was not going to be mad on his birthday. Not even if all of his pancakes were black on one side and big sis made him use a fork and knife and didn't let him drink the syrup and also if Shimazaki sat next to Minegishi and talked to them and…and stuff.

Sho was going to be happy on his birthday.

"No it isn't, your birthday was back in October." Said big sis. Sho didn't want her to talk to him either. He wanted to spend his birthday just hanging out with him, just him and Shimazaki, but pancakes were good too. He had been planning on spending the day playing in the snow and the ice with Shimazaki, he might have even been able to get the drop on him since he said that snow and ice made the world look fuzzy, but big sis had woken him up in the morning saying that Shibata was making him pancakes so he had to come…and also he liked Shibata and he liked pancakes and he liked big sis and Shimazaki lived there and he liked Shimazaki and also Minegishi was there and…and they were ok…they were big sis' friend and they were boring and stuff but they were ok.

Just so long as they talked to big sis and not Shimazaki.

"So stay away from Little-Suzuki's birthday pancakes or I swear to God-" said Shibata as he picked up the pancake stack and put it on the other side of the counter. Shimazaki just teleported to the other side and stole another pancake…well he tried to but big sis took it out of his hand with her powers and put it back on Sho's plate.

"I had no idea that you were religious." Said Shimazaki as he stole another pancake. This time Shibata tried to hit him with the spatula but he teleported away…to sitting right next to Sho. He tore off a piece and shoved it into Sho's mouth like he was a parrot or something. Sho wasn't a parrot, or any other kind of bird, but he ate it anyway even though it was a way too big piece.

"Sho, chew." Said big sis. She was bossing him around even on his birthday. Shimazaki probably thought that he was such a little kid and that…well he probably just thought that Sho wasn't cool at all. He probably thought that Sho wasn't cool and that he wasn't best friend material and….

"Hey, come on. It's your birthday, lighten up. You only get so many of those before they stop being fun and you start feeling the cold clammy hand of death on your shoulder…" said Shimazaki. He leaned in close while he said that and he put his hand on Sho's shoulder…and he was glad that Shimazaki couldn't tell that he was turning red…though maybe he could because he could sense things and feel them and…and stuff.

"You're thirty, Ryou, not ninety." Said Minegishi. Sho was about to say something mean but he didn't. Why did they get to call him Ryou? He didn't like to be called Ryou. He liked to be called Shimazaki. If he wanted to be called Ryou then he would have asked Sho to call him Ryou but he didn't like to be called Ryou he liked to be called Shimazaki and he should have told Minegishi that so they would stop calling him Ryou.

"Toshi, Toshi, Toshi, my young friend. When you're my age you'll understand. Life is so short-" said Shimazaki. Minegishi didn't like to be called Toshi…so he was getting them back for calling him Ryou…but then why didn't Minegishi tell him not to call them Toshi? Why didn't they say anything? They should have said something. Not even big sis called Minegishi by their given named and she was their best friend.

"And it's about to get a lot shorter if you don't leave little Suzuki's birthday breakfast alone." Said Shibata. He was trying to sound scary but he was the least scary person in all of the history of people. Also nothing could scare Shimazaki. Like the time when they had been shot at and the guy had his gun right on Shimazaki but he didn't even flinch because he knew his barrier could stop a bullet and then he let the guy unload his whole gun, Shimazaki could tell types of guns by how they sounded when they fired, and then once the gun was empty he beat the guy up really bad…but it was ok because he had been trying to kill dad and stuff…which was a bad thing. A very bad thing. Even though dad hadn't even said happy birthday to Sho or left him a note or a text or…or anything. He must have remembered. Mom said that dad had been sitting right next to her when they had been cutting him out of mom's stomach. You didn't forget a thing like that. He knew that if he had a baby and they were cutting out of whatever lady felt like having a baby with him he'd remember that.

Whatever. Dad hated pancakes anyway.

"Yeah, leave his food alone or he'll never turn eleven." Said Minegishi. Sho glared at them. He would totally turn eleven with or without pancakes! He didn't need their help! Also they were his pancakes and Shimazaki could have all the pancakes that Sho had coming to him! It was Sho's birthday and he could decide who had which pancakes and when.

"It's my birthday and Shimazaki can have my pancakes if he wants them." Said Sho. Shimazaki reached up and petted his hair like he was a dog but he didn't mind. Shimazaki liked dogs a lot and if he wanted to pet Sho like he was a dog then it was alright.

"You heard the kid, pancake me! I'm starving." Said Shimazaki. Shibata's aura looked mad but it was more funny than scary. He was too nice of a person, dad even said so, so the best thing would have been if Shibata never let anyone see how nice he was. That way people would just think that he was big and scary. Shimazaki said that most of the fight was how the other person saw you. That was why he was at an advantage when it came to fighting and why Sho would always be at a disadvantage when they fought.

"You can have pancakes from the stack on the counter after we sing happy birthday to Little Suzuki. Not before. Because it's his birthday and he's ten and he only has so many years of his life left where he can enjoy his birthdays so he's going to enjoy them." Said Shibata. Sho didn't know what he meant by 'only getting so many birthdays that he liked'. Birthdays were awesome. Well some were better than others, the ones that he'd had with mom had been the best, but every birthday was awesome!

Especially the ones with the giant stacks of pancakes.

There were ten candles and whipped cream words that said 'Happy Birthday Sho' with the right character and everything…and it was nice. This whole thing was nice. Even he part where Shimazaki sang happy birthday to him in English…and also a different version than the normal happy birthday song….actually that was really nice. He was really nice. Sho would have thought that he would have been upset having been woken up so early, he hadn't even had time to put on real clothes but then again nobody was in their real clothes so he just didn't feel bad about it, probably. Or about being up so early because everyone was up early.

It was worth it for the pancakes.

Sho didn't care if some of them were black on the bottom and that some of them had lumps…but it was ok. These were ok. This whole thing was ok. This was sort of like the special breakfasts that mom made back on his birthdays…or even on normal days. She made good pancakes. Hers weren't burnt on the bottom or lumpy or stuff like that. She was such a good cook…but Shibata was a good cook too. Even if his weren't round, either, like mom's had been…they were good pancakes. They were good pancakes and this was a good birthday and he was happy that everyone had gotten up early to celebrate his birthday. Especially Shimazaki who Sho was never supposed to wake up on days when he wasn't needed because he liked to sleep in and stuff.

This whole thing was nice.

Present time was…not as nice.

"You made me a….dress?" asked Sho. Presents had come after pancakes and Shibata wanted Sho to open his first. It had been in a big bag that said happy birthday on it in glitter, which was kind of a girl's bag but Sho wasn't going to complain because that would have been rude, though maybe it had been in a girl's bag because it was…some kind of dress made of green yarn with a yellow blob on the front.

"It's a sweater. I just made it big so you'd have room to grow." Said Shibata. Sho raised his hands above his head. The sweater fell down to below his knees and the sleeves touched the ground…well one of them did. Shibata must have made this thinking that Sho would be as big as he was when he grew up…which would have been so awesome….but Sho got the feeling that he was going to be the same size as dad when he grew up. Still not big enough for this sweater.

"I helped." Said big sis. Sho didn't tell her that maybe she should have told Shibata, while she was helping, that Sho was never going to end up growing up big enough to fit into this sweater.

"Thanks guys. I really like it." Said Sho. He hugged big sis and he hugged Shibata and he wondered, though, how long he had to keep this on for. It was hot and itchy and also he must have looked so dumb and Shimazaki must have thought that he looked so dumb and…and maybe he didn't because he couldn't see clothes that well….wait, did that mean that he saw through people's clothes too?

Sho didn't want to think about that for too long.

"Here, Sho, open mine next." Said big sis. She handed him a lump all wrapped up in the same paper that she used for his last birthday. He knew what this was. The same pencils that he had gotten last year. That was…ok. He always needed more pencils and it was nice of her to notice that he needed more pencils…

So he hugged her again.

"Thanks big sis. I needed new pencils. Thanks for thinking about me." Said Sho as he hugged her. She always got him the same thing for every gift holiday but that was ok. She knew that he liked to draw and that was…good. She wasn't dad. Dad got him, well he had other people get him more art stuff, but that was because he liked how Sho drew pictures and stuff. He liked to steal the stuff that Sho drew so he could tack it up on his office walls for some reason. Big sis liked his drawings too but she never stole them. She always asked if she could keep them first before she took them.

She was nicer than dad would ever be.

Dad hadn't even said happy birthday or even bothered to wake Sho up before he went to work. He went to work super early and told everyone to leave him alone. Sho didn't know what was wrong with him…well he kind of did. Big sis had decided that she was going to talk to dad to see why he hated her and how she could fix it. Even though Sho had told her that dad didn't hate her and also even if dad had hated her he wouldn't have told her why or how to fix it. That was just the sort of person who dad was. He just sort of hated people for his own reasons or reasons that a person couldn't control…like being born wrong and stuff….

He was glad that dad wasn't there.

His gifts sucked too because he wasn't the one who gave them. Minegishi's gift wasn't even as bad as the ones dad picked out for him. Dad always just got him random art stuff…well he sent the Awakened to get the random art stuff and wrap it and then give it to Sho…and it sucked. Minegishi may have gotten him a book and stuff but at least they had picked it out for themselves in a store all on their own. Which was kind of nice…even if they only wrapped it in newspaper and also even if they kept on calling Shimazaki by his given name.

"Memorize it." Said Minegishi after Sho opened his gift. It was a book about…he read the title. Oh. It was a book about what to do if you got mad. 'Anger Management Made Easy'. Sho didn't know that they made books like this…but it was nice. That he could just read this book and then…and then he would be able to be less mad. That…that was nice. Even though he felt bad that Minegishi of all people had noticed how mad he was, he hardly ever talked to them, so then it must have been really mad if someone he hardly ever talked to noticed…but this was still a good book. Even though he didn't really like reading and also he didn't know if he could memorize a whole book…but this was still a good gift.

"Thanks." Said Sho. He went in for a hug but Minegishi held up their hand and stopped him.

"We're not hugging but I accept your 'thanks'." Said Minegishi. That was fine. Sho had only wanted to hug them because that was the polite thing to do. That was all. He didn't know why anyone would want to hug them anyway. They were mean a lot of the time and also they smelled not so good, like the time he and Shimazaki found that skunk, and so he had no idea why anyone would want to hug them. Especially not why Shimazaki would want to teleport next to the and start hugging them like…like it was nothing…

"Toshi loves warm hugs, don't you?" asked Shimazaki. Sho could have told him that Minegishi didn't want a hug. Also he shouldn't have hugged them like that because they didn't want to and you shouldn't hug people when they didn't want to be hugged. That just…wasn't what you were supposed to do. If he wanted to hug someone so bad then he should have hugged Sho. He was right there and he was always up for a hug.

"Give the kid his present before he turns eleven, Ryou." Said Minegishi. Sho wanted to tell them not to call Shimazaki by his given name but he decided not to because he had another present coming to him. He could have if he had wanted to, though, he hadn't forgotten words when Shimazaki teleported next to him with a big box in his hands. There was a brail label on the front and Sho had no idea what it said but now he wished that Minegishi had gotten him a how to read brail book instead of a how not to be an angry jerk all the time book. Then he could have known what was in that box.

That he needed to take.

His arms wouldn't work. His brain wouldn't work. Nothing worked. Shimazaki was so close to him that he could see all the little details in his tattoos and he wondered why Shimazaki never slept in a shirt but he wasn't about to question it now because his tattoos were so cool and that was why he was staring like that and….and stuff…

"Are you going to open this or not?" asked Shimazaki. Now Sho's brain decided to work. He took the box really fast and if not for his powers he would have dropped it. But he didn't, he held on to it, even though it was heavy…which was good. Heavy was good. He ran his fingers over the top before he took the top of the box off and there was….paper?

Paper?

"I know you like to draw and you said that you went through a lot of paper so here's some paper. It feels really nice. I have no idea what paper is good for drawing, you know, because I can't draw." Said Shimazaki. Sho just nodded while Shimazaki talked. This was the best gift that he had ever gotten in his entire life. He had never been so happy to have gotten a gift as he had in this moment. That was why he couldn't move. That was why he couldn't think. That was why he was standing there like an idiot holding a very heavy box of paper and-

And now he was being hugged.

He was hugged quick and from the side and he wished that he had put down the box of paper so then he could have hugged Shimazaki for real. He didn't hug Shimazaki that often and on his birthday he gave hugs and he got hugs…and he would have been in his rights as the birthday boy to hug Shimazaki…because he was the birthday person and…and he could hug whoever he wanted…and he wanted to hug….but was it weird to want to hug Shimazaki? Was it weird to want to put the box down and hug him? He wanted to hug him but not like how he wanted to hug other people…but Shimazaki wasn't other people, he was Shimazaki, he was cooler than anyone else on the planet. He was the coolest guy ever so of course Sho would want to hug him.

This was normal…right?

It was normal to want to hug your friends. Shimazaki hugged Minegishi all the time and they were friends…and Sho was probably much better at hugging than Minegishi was. Shimazaki should have hugged him if he wanted to hug someone so bad…and…and Sho wanted to hug him right now but everyone was there and watching him and he didn't know what was so weird about everyone being there and watching him hug someone…and he felt so weird…and he didn't get it and…

And then he felt a familiar aura.

He felt the aura before there was a knock on the door. Sho had never been so glad to see Fukuda in his life! He didn't know why but he felt like he had been saved from something or he had avoided something or…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that in the three seconds between Shimazaki teleporting away to get Fukuda and bringing him to the kitchen with everyone Sho felt more relieved in his entire life.

"Thanks." Said Fukuda after Shimazaki let him go. He should have been nicer but maybe he was just upset that nobody had invited him to Sho's birthday. That would have made sense. Sho would have invited him if he knew before this morning that he was even having a morning birthday party. Still, though, there were plenty of pancakes left if Fukuda was hungry so it was all ok.

"He doesn't have a gift. Should I kick him out?" asked Shimazaki. It took Sho a minute to realize that Shimazaki was talking to him…and then another minute to realize that he had to say something back. Words. He needed words. Ones in Japanese.

"He can stay. He can have pancakes too." Said Sho. Fukuda didn't seem any happier now that he was invited to join them all and have pancakes together. That was sort of normal, though, because Fukuda never really had a lot of fun with Shimazaki and the rest of them. Also for some reason he didn't like big sis all that much…well Sho got the feeling that he didn't, anyway, especially now. Big sis had said 'hi' and all Fukuda had said was 'Suzuki-san' even though they weren't at work and he didn't have to be so formal. They were having breakfast in their pajamas on Sho's birthday. This was the least formal time ever. Well maybe Fukuda had to be formal because he was in daytime clothes.

"I'm not going to stay. I'm actually just here for Sho." said Fukuda

"What do you mean?" asked Sho. On the one hand he liked hanging out with Fukuda but on the other hand he liked hanging out with his other friends. They let him curse, for one thing, and also Shimazaki was a lot cooler than Fukuda.

"Come on, I thought we could do something fun for your birthday." Said Fukuda. Sho didn't know how to feel. On the one hand he liked Fukuda but on the other hand he liked Shimazaki…and also everyone else. It would have been rude to leave his own birthday party…but it also would have been rude to tell Fukuda to go away…and he didn't want Fukuda to go away, either, he wanted Fukuda to stay and have fun…if that was even possible. Fukuda didn't like Shimazaki for reasons that Sho had never understood. He could understand not liking Minegishi, they were sort of mean, and also Shibata could be scary before you got to know him….and Sho didn't even know what was happening with Fukuda and big sis…so Fukuda would not have been happy with them all. Probably.

"Hey! We're fun." Said Shimazaki. Sho felt like he was looking at him when he said that, even though he was looking at everything at once and not Sho specifically, but his aura did this weird hiccup thing. He didn't know why but he felt….embarrassed. Very embarrassed. Fukuda gave him a look, there, so maybe…maybe it was something that he was supposed to be embarrassed about. Even though he didn't even know what 'that' had been.

"Something that would be fun for a ten year old boy." Said Fukuda. He had a tone there. Shimazaki held up his hands like he was surrendering. Sho didn't get it. Shimazaki didn't have to surrender. He could totally take Fukuda in a fight. Not that there was going to be a fight…but maybe there was. Maybe they were going to fight…because Fukuda's aura seemed sort of mad.

"We have pancakes, those are fun." Said Shibata

"Stay and have fun with us." Said big sis. Fukuda's aura got weird when he talked to big sis. He didn't look at her either. She was just being normal…but maybe Fukuda was just…in a bad mood. Yeah, that must have been it. Fukuda did a lot of administrative stuff, which meant a lot of paperwork, and he said that he had a lot more work since big sis filled in for dad and messed up a lot of stuff. So maybe he was tired from over work…and also from not being invited.

"You and I have different ideas of fun, Suzuki-san." Said Fukuda. He had a tone, there, and Sho hadn't liked it. He should have been nicer. Everyone here, well not Minegishi, was nice. Everyone was nice and this was a good birthday and Sho just wanted to hang out with them and also Fukuda…and he didn't want to hurt Fukuda's feelings but…but he always wanted to stay here and enjoy his birthday. He knew that Fukuda would be nice to him and do something fun with him but he did fun stuff with Fukuda all the time. They were friends but Sho wanted to have more than one friend. Big sis got to have more than one friend so why didn't he?

"You like pancakes. I've seen you eat them." Said Sho. Fukuda totally could have stayed. Then everyone he cared about, also Minegishi, could be in the same room. He wanted all the people who cared about him, plus Minegishi, to be in the same room and happy and…and stuff. But Fukuda wouldn't be happy, maybe, because he was never happy around Shimazaki for some reason. Well, he was like that around all of them even big sis, but he especially didn't like Shimazaki for some reason. Maybe he was jealous that Sho wanted to be best friend with Shimazaki and not him.

"Sho, come on. Wouldn't you rather go to an animal shelter than stay here all day eating burnt pancakes?" asked Fukuda. His nose wrinkled at the pile of pancakes on the kitchen table. The worst of them hadn't gotten eaten. It wasn't fair that Fukuda had judged everything based on only the worst of them. Also he should have been nicer to Shibata. He was a very sensitive person. He was so sensitive that he cried during movies and also during TV shows and one time when there was a sad song playing in the lunchroom…Shibata was a really big person so he had really big feelings, Sho figured. Still even if his feelings were easily hurt Fukuda should have been nicer…not that Sho was the person to be telling other people what was and was not nice.

"….they aren't all burnt…said Shibata. He looked sadly over at his pile of burnt pancakes. Sho wished that Fukuda would have kept that to himself but he understood how easy it was to have mean words just come out of your mouth. Sometimes things that shouldn't have been said, that only should have lived in your head, ended up being said anyway. It happened. Maybe Sho should lend Fukuda his new book after he memorized it.

"That sounds like fun. Come on Sho, we'll get dressed and-" said big sis. She went to take his hand but then Fukuda stopped her. He didn't grab her, he just held his hand up, and big sis stopped. Minegishi said some bad words. Sho also felt like cursing. Big sis should have been able to come too. It was his birthday and he could decide who could and could not come with.

"I'm sure that you'd be more happy here with your friends, Suzuki-san." Said Fukuda. Sho wanted to tell him not to call big sis that. What was it with people and calling other people things that they did want to be called? He didn't understand adults sometimes…and he didn't understand Fukuda sometimes. He said that he liked big sis but then he went and talked to her like she was dad. She could act like dad sometimes but that didn't mean that she was like him. Dad was a jerk. She was bossy but also nice. Dad was never nice.

"Um…ok." Said big sis. Sho didn't get it. Why couldn't she come? He didn't know. Maybe Fukuda just didn't want to hang out with her because she was a girl. That made sense. Fukuda had never even mentioned a girl once in the whole time that he'd known him. He didn't have a wife or kids so maybe he just never got over the whole 'no girls allowed' thing. Shimazaki said that they shouldn't make their forts 'no girls allowed' because that was something that little kids did and Sho was not a little kid. Also he said that if there were girls around that would bring guys around, so that would have been good.

"Come on, let's get you dressed and then we'll head out. How's that sound?" asked Fukuda. Sho wanted to stay but also…also Fukuda didn't have any friends. He had no friends at all and Sho was his only friend and…and when you were someone's only friend then you had to hang out with them.

"Uh…sounds good." Said Sho. He wanted to stay. He wanted to stay and hang out with Shimazaki and stuff but…but he also had to be a good friend and a nice person. Even though he hung out with Fukuda all the time….he was going to hang out with him again. Even though Shimazaki could have come with and also big sis and everyone else loved animals…well maybe not Minegishi….but everyone else could have had fun…

Or just him and Shimazaki.

Maybe it was best that he left, then, because his brain got all…weird…when he was with Shimazaki. He wanted to hang out with Shimazaki all the time but when they did hang out he got all…weird…and when they didn't hang out he spent all of his time thinking about Shimazaki. About being near him. About talking to him. About being near him and being carried by him and hugging him and…and other stuff that he had no idea what his brain was thinking by making him think about all of that stuff.

His brain was so weird sometimes.

It had been weird since he was nine but he was ten now. Maybe it would get better. He didn't know. He did know, though, that he loved animals very much and that he loved going to the animal shelter…and he did know that this was going to be a great birthday.

Ten was going to be a very good year. Hopefully.


	234. The Cool Kids' Table

Hatori was used to eating lunch on his own.

He had eaten alone at his desk for all of his years of elementary and middle school. He had eaten alone most days since coming to work for Claw, too. He usually just ate at wherever his desk was. Right now it was the tech room at the Tokyo HQ. He had no idea how much longer he would be in Tokyo for so he really should have been making the most of his time there at his desk. He was the only one that still had a rolling chair after all…and he really should have been back there guarding it before those idiots took it for a joyride. Honestly. Those guys were more like kids than the actual kids sometimes. That was why he was eating away from his coworkers and with, well, his other coworkers…or maybe his superiors? He wasn't sure what to call them.

Little Sister-sama and her friends.

"Hatori! Come here!" said Little Sister-sama. She was waving him over to her table. Well all of the tables in the cafeteria looked the same but that was the one that she and her friends had claimed for themselves and no one there sat at that table. Some of the more devoted Awakened left offerings of milk, cookies, or small toys for her but nobody sat there but those guys. The Ultimate Four.

At least that was what Shimazaki Ryou kept on calling them.

They were President Suzuki's entourage. The espers that followed him around wherever he went and the friends to his kids. Oh. The little brother was there too. So maybe that made them the Ultimate Five. Ultimate Six, then, if he was going to end up joining them like Minegishi had said. They had told him that since he was friends with Little Sister-sama he was going to get a big promotion and end up travelling the world with them following the President around and hanging out with his kids. The whole thing didn't seem like it was true, Suzuki could not have possibly just built his entourage based on people who got along with his kids, but then again Minegishi didn't seem like the type to lie.

No, they were the brutally honest type.

He didn't make eye contact with Minegishi as he made his way to the table. He was not going to be pushing anything with them. No meant no and he was not going to be one of those guys who didn't take 'no' for an answer. He had been on the internet long enough to know that nobody liked those kinds of guys. He would have liked to have gotten to know them better, though, not necessarily sexually…though they were hot as fuck. The short hair, the shape of their face, their legs…they had nice legs…and now he's checked them out and they've made eye contact with him and….

And he sits down beside Little Sister-sama.

There. Now there's a space between the two of them. It was hard to check out Minegishi with Little Sister-sama between them…unless people thought that he had been checking out Little Sister-sama…but maybe that said more about him than other people that he was so afraid of people thinking that about him….but then again who wanted people to think that about them? Maybe it was just the other tech people getting to him. That must have been it. People just saying crazy stuff about him. It wasn't exactly ok but he would rather people say mean things about him than about Little Sister-sama.

She didn't have a crush on him. That was crazy.

She was way too young to have a crush on him. She was just a kid. She still played with dolls and wore costumes out in public and watched princess movies. She might have been too young to have a crush on anyone but if she did have a crush on someone it would be a boy her own age or something or some boy band guy or actor or something. He wasn't going to ask her or anything, it was none of his business, and he wasn't going to tell her the rumors going around.

He wasn't going to embarrass her like that. She had enough problems as it was.

"Happy Birthday, Suzuki-chan." Said Hatori as he sat down. The little brother was ten, now. He had already sent a present, some in game items, and he was happy about that. Well he had said that he was happy about that. The thank you message had been very weird. It had gone 'thank you so much and also be nice to my sister' which was just…weird. He was always nice to her…right? She wasn't looking at him. She was stabbing her chicken sandwich with a spork and not looking at him…but she could be like that sometimes. No matter what age girls were a mystery to him.

"Hi Hatori. Hey big sis, Hatori's here." Said the little brother. Hatori didn't get what he was teasing her about but it was probably some sibling thing that an only child he couldn't understand.

"Hi….Hatori." Said Little Sister-sama. She looked up at him, giggled, and then looked back down at her lunch. Minegishi rolled their eyes and patted her on the back. Hatori was very, very, tempted to ask what all of that was about but didn't want to come off as nosy. He was always the new guy, maybe, he didn't want to be the nosy guy…and he was not nosy. Anyone with unfettered access to Claw's records would have gone through them and made notes of what was interesting.

Anyone would have done it.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hatori's here. Anyway back to what we were discussing." Said Shimazaki. Hatori could feel his aura focused on him. He got the feeling that Shimazaki didn't like him very much but he had no idea why. He had never done anything to him…but he was a notoriously weird and unpleasant person even by Claw standards. The only good team reviews he ever got were from Minegishi.

"We were discussing something?" asked Shibata. The table shook a little as he moved. Hatori didn't show fear because he wasn't scared at all…even though that guy was almost three meters tall and could lift a man above his head without his powers…

"Yes, we were having a serious adult discussion about a serious topic that is very serious and complicated and not something that kids could understand." Said Shimazaki

"I understood the conversation." Said Little Sister-sama

"The French fry thing?" asked Shibata. He had some barely hidden pain in his eyes. Hatori didn't know if he wanted to know what the French fry thing was.

"I can fit-" said the little brother

"Sho, don't, nobody wants to see that." Said Little Sister-sama

"Yes, the French fry thing! This is a very serious discussion that we cannot stop discussing." Said Shimazaki. He seemed…well his aura seemed pissed off. Pissed off and also focused on Hatoru for some reason. He wished that he knew what he had done to piss this guy off…because he was just a little bit afraid of him. He wasn't ashamed to admit that he was afraid of Shimazaki Ryou. Anyone who had gone through his personal files and work history would have been afraid of him. Even now just sitting there at the lunch table with a kid tugging on his jacket he could be just a little bit…scary.

"Yes, how many French fries Mob's little brother can stick up his nose is a truly riveting topic." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes. They picked at their salad with a little more….force…than was strictly necessary.

"Seven in each side…well the ones from McDonald's. From this cafeteria it's only four in each side because they're so thick." Said the little brother. He then proceeded to attempt to cram a French fry up his nose to demonstrate that this was, in fact, possible.

"Sho, no, you might suffocate or poke your brain or something." Said Little Sister-sama. She was holding his arm back with her powers. He envied her just a little bit, well all of them, they had real powers after all. The only thing he could do was mess with tech. He couldn't even put up a barrier.

"Wouldn't that be a tragedy?" said Minegishi. Hatori didn't know if he should laugh or not. They were being sarcastic, right? They might have been sincere. There was just something in their tone that was hard to read. They were deadpanned at the best of times…he liked that about them. He wasn't going to ask them out again…or at all…and he was going to stop looking at them too. Right now. Right this second.

"Don't do that, Little Suzuki, you're at the table with other people. If you want to shove fries up your nose then do that somewhere where people aren't looking…but also with someone who can help you out if you start to suffocate." Said Shibata

"Hey, if the kid wants to shove enough fries up his nose to suffocate then let him stick enough fries up his nose that he can suffocate." Said Shimazaki. Hatori didn't much want to watch a kid shove fries up his nose but when in Rome watch the little kid shove fries up his nose.

"Why do you want my brother to suffocate?" asked Little Sister-sama. She looked and sounded so concerned there. Hatori wondered if he should have told her that he had most likely been joking…but then again he had no idea how serious Shimazaki actually was. The guy…was a lot of things. There was no telling with him, how serious he was or not, and Hatori decided not to get involved after Shibata gave him a long suffering look.

"I don't want him to stop breathing, I just want to see if he can actually do it or if he's just talking a big game." Said Shimazaki. The little brother actually glared up at him like he had been personally offended.

"Of course I'm telling the-" said the little brother. He went to pick up another fry but his sister stopped him again. She shook her head no as she held him still with her powers. Telekinesis always freaked him out just a little but he didn't show it. No need to make her think that he was afraid of her or anything.

"Why do you need to know?" asked Minegishi. There was a tone, there, and a flare of both their and Shimazaki's auras that he could not begin to understand. He didn't ask, though, as Shibata was looking over at him and shaking his head. Right. Not the thing for him to be involved in.

"Because I like to know what's going on, Toshi." Said Shimazaki. Hatori wondered about the use of Minegishi's given name…just their given name. How close were they exactly?

"What is going on, Ryou?" asked Minegishi. They used his given name too….and nobody else seemed to be on given name terms…..

"Is there anything going on?" asked Shimazaki. He felt Shimazaki's aura focusing on him…and he had no clue why. What did he do? He hadn't said a thing to either of them! He hadn't even started eating his own lunch yet. This was more interesting…whatever it was that he was watching.

"Why would you even care if there was something going on?" asked Minegishi

"I don't NEED to know, I just like to know." Said Shimazaki with a shrug.

"Why do you think that you need to know everything?" asked Minegishi. Shibata was shaking his head and focusing on his own lunch. Hatori tried to do the same. This was none of his business….it was interesting but none of his business.

"I just like to know what I want to know. There's no limit on what I can and cannot know." Said Shimazaki

"You know that I can, I totally can-" said the little brother. He was about to try again and he was stopped, again, and Hatori wished that Little Sister-sama would just let him shove the fries up his nose so then this big…awkward…whatever that was…would just be over already.

"You know what's going on, Ryou, I have never once been disingenuous with you." Said Minegishi. There's a narrowing of their eyes, there, and a focus to their aura…and Hatori isn't sure if they're about to fuck him or kill him. It's sort of hot, seeing them like this, though he's also slightly afraid given what their job entails…

"What does 'disingenuous' mean?" asked Little Sister-sama breaking the tension. That had been…awkward. Yes. There was no other word for it. That whole thing had just been awkward and an awkward atmosphere had settled over them but now it was gone and if she had been a few years old he could have kissed her…but he won't because she's ten and also that was a weird thing to think about a ten year old and he needs professional help for even thinking that thought. Well he had thought about her being older but this whole thing was best left between him and a qualified medical professional. Or a priest.

"It means liars." Said Minegishi. Their entire focus shifted to Little Sister-sama. Their aura and body language became looser, less closed off, and a hell of a lot calmer. They seemed….softer…somehow. It was nice. Seeing them like this was nice…and he was looking again. He needed to stop that. They had told him that he didn't have a chance with them, they had been very clear about that, and also based on whatever THAT had been something was going on between them and Shimazaki.

"Hey! I'm not a liar!" said the little brother. This time he did shove a fry up his nose…and then had it yanked out telekinetically by his older sister. If that had been his brother Hatori would have just let him do it but that was not his brother. Also for some reason the President had left her in charge of her little brother even though he was only a year younger than she was….actually less than a year. They were both ten years old now. Oh. Right. It only took nine months to make a baby…but then again when was her birthday in relation to his…

"Ok, we all saw the kid stick a French fry up his nose. Now we never have to see it again. Let's move onto new business." Said Minegishi

"I can stick like four green beans up my-" said the little brother

"Sho, no. Please stop doing that. The only person who thinks that it's funny is Shimazaki and he thinks that everything is funny." Said Little Sister-sama. She sounded like a little diplomat when she said that. She would make a great future leader of Claw….mainly because her father was more of a dictator and that go old fast.

"Well it IS funny. The rest of you just don't know what counts as good humor." Said the little brother with all the maturity that could be reasonably expected from a ten year old boy. It was amazing the difference that less than a year could make. He and Little Sister-sama were like night and day in some ways. That might have been the difference between boys and girls, though, they did say that girls matured faster than boys…though she did exclusively wear costumes so maybe she was just immature in a different way. Either that or she was really into cosplay.

"New. Business." Said Minegishi. The softness that had come to Minegishi's whole person was gone now. All that was left was simmering rage. Their aura projected it. Well Hatori didn't blame them for being upset all of the time. With the life that they had loved who would have blamed them?

"Um….my dad says that he doesn't hate me. He says that he loves me….I mean I asked him what I did wrong but he wouldn't tell me…but then he did tell me that he loved me." Said Little Sister-sama. That was…not something that she should have worried about. Her own father hating her. That was just…weird. Also he had just been sticking to her like glue and now she was worried about him hating her? He didn't get it. He really didn't get it but he couldn't ask about it because, well, it didn't seem like something she would want to talk about in front of every one. She had some pretty heavy problems for a ten year old and she probably didn't want to air them in public.

"I told you that he didn't hate you." Said the little brother. He said that lowly and he stabbed his fries with another fry…hopefully not the one that had been in his nose.

"Nobody hates anybody." Said Minegishi

"People hate other people all the time. Like I think that my dad hates everyone in Korea. He says that we can never go there ever again because of something that happened with someone and…and I guess that he just hates all of Korea now…for reasons." Said Little Sister-sama

"Dad doesn't hate Korean people, he just hates everyone in that division…but don't ask me why. I liked Seoul a lot." Said the little brother

"We're never going to Seoul again? Damn….I love Seoul…" said Shimazaki

"Wait…is this about the-" said Shibata before the table jumped. Presumably because Minegishi kicked him under it.

"Maybe that's not the thing to discuss here." Said Minegishi

"Sorry." said Shibata

"We shouldn't kick each other…because we're all friends here and friends should be nice. We should all be friends with each other….and friends are nice…" said Little Sister-sama

"Fine, that was wrong of me. Now, onto business that has nothing to do with Suzuki." Said Minegishi

"Um….are you guys going to the Chirstmas party? I'm so excited. I never get invited to these kinds of things…" said Shibata. Hatori didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say. After how this whole thing had started he felt like an intruder into…this. He felt like he had stepped into a world that was not for him. That was why he never sat with anyone when he had been a kid. He had been playing his Gameboy while the other kids had been establishing friend groups and then by the time he realized that he had missed the boat it had been way too late.

Sort of like now.

He sat with these guys sometimes but the only people who had made him feel welcome were Little Sister-sama and, amazingly enough, Shibata. Minegishi and Shimazaki seemed to have…something…going on the and the little brother never stayed long. Like now. Right in the middle of the discussion about the upcoming Tokyo Division Christmas Party…which he was not sure if he would even attend….Sho, the little brother, had been spirited off by that healer guy again. He just popped up and took him away.

Apparently that was common.

With the loss of the little brother Shimazaki took his leave. Then he was followed by Shibata as they were both Suzuki's body guards…though why he sent them both to lunch at the same time Hatori would never know…and that left him all alone at the table with a barely picked at lunch and Little Sister-sama…and Minegishi. Now there was some awkwardness. Minegishi had last spoken to him to reject him…before he had even asked them out…and now he was practically alone with them.

"Well I'm going to go commune with nature or something. Mob, come and hang out with me when you're done…and don't forget to use your head." Said Minegishi. Hatori had no idea what they meant by that but judging by Little Sister-sama's aura it must have been some kind of inside joke or something. She seemed weirdly nervous or something. He didn't get it.

"Here, you can have my cookie." Said Hatori. She didn't calm down then…which was weird since kid's loved cookies and all…but at least she took it. She played with it, crumbling it up in her hands, and he regretted giving her his cookie if she was going to do with it. That was a damn good cookie, the chocolate chip cookies were always the best, but that was the risk that he took when he gave a kid is cookie. Kids played with their food, it was just what they did.

"So…um…" said Little Sister-sama. She wasn't looking at him. She was looking down at the cookie crumbs in her hands. He wondered what was bothering her. Maybe her dad was being a shitty parent again. Not that Hatori knew anything about being someone's parent, no chance of that considering that he had never even had a girlfriend before, but he did get the feeling that it wasn't normal or healthy for a kid to have to ask their parent if they hated them….not that he was about to march up to the President and tell him that he was being a shitty excuse for a father. No, it had been hard enough getting the healer to talk to him…which he had been amazed that it had worked out…

Had it worked out?

She still seemed like something was bothering her. With her dad being her dad it could be literally anything. At least he wasn't being weird and making her sleep in his bed with him or anything like that…not that he was accusing his boss of anything but that had been extremely weird…but maybe that said more about him and society…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that if Little Sister-sama, the kid in the situation, was bothered then maybe her dad should have stopped…but then again Hatori knew fuck all about parenting….

He really hoped that she was ok, though. She was only ten and didn't need that kind of stress in her life.

"Um…Hatori…are you going to the party? The Christmas one?" asked Little Sister-sama. Oh. Well that was a relief. He had been worried that this would have been something heavy.

"Maybe, I don't know. I don't usually get invited to parties. This kind, anyway, all night gaming probably doesn't count." Said Hatori. He wasn't sure if he would go. He was technically ranked highly enough to go but he had never been to a party like this…or any party….maybe he should just not go then….

"…me neither. I mean I've never been to a party before…but I'm excited and also….um…do you want to…to go to the party…with me?" asked Little Sister-sama. She didn't look at him when she asked. Oh. She must have been just as nervous, or even more nervous, than he was. She was a lot younger after all. She had to go, she was the President's Daughter, so she didn't even have the option that he did and just not show up if it was too much. She just wanted another familiar face there. Well he could do that.

"Sure. I'd love to go to the party with all of you." Said Hatori. Well now he was a little more ok with going. He knew her and he knew her friends and it was better going as a group. It would be good, too, to get to know the people that he might have ended up working with in the future.

"Really?! I mean…ok. Sure. You can come with me…us…because I invited you. I'm um…going to um….go hang out with Minegishi now…bye!" said Little Sister-sama before she got up and practically ran from the table. He didn't know why she had run away but at least she seemed happier. That was good…even though now he had found himself all alone again. He was alone but that was ok, he had eaten alone before, and he could eat alone again.

At least he was eating alone at the cool kids' table this time.


	235. Getting Some Much Needed Clarification

Suzuki missed his daughter terribly.

But this was for both of their own good. He had been showing her too much of his own weakness, that was bad for her, and in turn it would make her weak. He didn't want her to be weak. He needed her to be strong. He needed her to be strong enough to inherit this world after he was gone…well Son would inherit it but she would help. Son may have been his only blood child but Daughter…she was more competent when it came to the daily running of Claw. She ran their household well, too, and she ran Claw well….and he wanted to tell her this. He wanted to pick her up and hold her and tell her what a good job she had been doing and how proud he was of her…

But he didn't.

He had never even told Masami the things that he told Daughter. He had never even given Masami the affirmations of love that he gave Daughter…he had never even used that word. It was an imprecise word. Caring was a much better word than love. But Daughter liked to be told that she was loved so he indulged her. Masami…he had never even indulged Masami in that way. He had always been very resistant to telling her that he loved her…but he indulged Daughter. Did that mean that she meant more to him than Masami?

No.

There could never be a single human being on this Earth who could mean more to him than Masami. Even if she was a traitor. Even if she had abandoned him. Even if she was off somewhere in the world and he would never see her again…and she had never even left him so much as a forwarding address…she was still the most perfect person ever to have entered his life. She was gone, though, but Daughter was still there. Daughter was there and she was his and…and he had gotten too attached to her. He had gotten attached enough to her that…that he had started to lose himself in her.

So the best thing for both of them was to leave her alone until she grew up.

Things would be better once she grew up. Once she grew up then they could spend time together. They could waste their days doing nothing, or they could be productive, or even a little of both. He honestly didn't care what they did together just so long as they were together. Because her presence was calming, that was all, not that he needed her or anything. He didn't. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he was a full and complete person all on his own. He didn't need anyone…but he did want Daughter near him.

But wanting was not needed.

What he needed to do was get through this pile of work on his desk. What he wanted to do was watch Daughter's aura as she moved through the building. She spent a lot of her time in the tech support room. One of her friends worked there. A boy around her age…not that he was worried…because she was young…though she had…but she was still young…so he didn't worry. He wasn't worried about that at all. Daughter had her companions and he wasn't worried that she had found one close in age. Nineteen and ten was a much smaller age gap than thirty and ten…though he did not approve either way….but he was just one of her companions, that was all, and he would allow her another companion. He indulged her and he enjoyed indulging her.

He enjoyed making her happy.

She had been so happy when they had been together but their happiness had come at a cost. Daughter needed to grow up to be independent. She needed to grow up to be able to stand on her own two feet when he inevitably died. So he needed to distance himself from her until she was grown up. He could still make her happy, though, he could still indulge her. Like how he hadn't put a stop to all of the parties that she had allowed in her time as the President of Claw. No, he would allow this even though he hated large social gatherings…she enjoyed them so he would allow them. He would indulge her in this. He would always indulge her. He would allow her to see her companions and to…to be independent. He had to allow her to be independent.

Even though he would much rather have had her near him.

Bur he couldn't have her near him. Even though the rope idea would have been a good idea he cannot have her ear him. He doesn't like the person he is when she's near him and he doesn't like the person that she will become if he keeps her too near to him. When she grows up…everything will be worth it when she grows up. But she isn't grown up. She's still ten years old. She isn't grown up yet so…so this is just the way that things have to be for now.

Daughter is with her companion and he is by himself.

He needs to get some of this work done. It's piling up. Nothing good comes from letting his work pile up. He had things he needs to do to finish out the year. One more month. One more month and then this year would be over…and it had been a year. Maybe next year would be more peaceful. Maybe next year would be slow and relaxing and…and then nothing would go wrong. Maybe something would even go right for once. He still didn't have the money or manpower to take over the world, sure he had people but most of them were next to useless, but he could at least just…take it slow. Just gather more money and find some more powerful espers and then just…rest. Daughter was good for that, finding powerful espers, so maybe he would leave some of that to her. Some independent work.

Her companion was a powerful esper.

There. She had done her job without him even having to give her the job. She was just that competent. She was one of his best, if not his best, people. She was so…so…she was wonderful. She was so wonderful and he cared for her so much…he takes his attention off of her aura. She's fine. She's been sitting beside her companion for some time now. He would bring that boy along. He so loved indulging her. She seemed to care for him…hopefully not in any serious way…and he did love to indulge her. She could consider it a Christmas gift…but he would get her real gifts, too. More dolls. Ones that looked like her. She would like that. She would also like more cat themed paraphilia and princess paraphernalia too. Children's things. Because she was a child. She was a child still and no matter how much he wished she just wouldn't grow up quicker…

He felt like she should have been older by now.

He felt like he had missed something. Well he had been missing out on quite a bit of her life. He had been giving her all the space that she needed to become an adult. She was becoming more and more independent and in that independence she had stop talking to him…which was good. Which was very good because she needed to grow up…but he got the feeling that he had missed something important in her life. A sequel to her ice queen movie? She had been saying that she was excited for some short film that was coming up. Yes, that must have been it. He had been planning on watching it with her when it was released. He didn't hate that movie, some parts of it were enjoyable, and for her he would sit through a sequel to that movie. Well he would have but not now, obviously, because he was giving her space to be independent.

He wished that she could become independent more quickly.

Like him. He had always been independent for his entire life. From the moment he could do something himself he did. He had been able to dress himself at two and cook his own meals at five and walk himself to school at seven and…and a lot of that was second hand knowledge from his late parents…but still. He had always been independent and aside from recent events…this whole year really….he had always been able to get by just on his own. He didn't need anyone else. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he did not need anyone else.

Not his Daughter or anyone else…even Fukuda…who's aura was getting closer and closer.

He felt the man long before he saw him and that gave him time to look like he was hard at work. Even though he could have just stayed the way he was. He was Suzuki Touichirou, he could do whatever he liked. He could do whatever he wanted to and be however he wanted to….but he did not want to show weakness to anyone. Only his own Daughter…and that had been a terrible thing to do…but also in some ways freeing. He could be…not fully unfettered by mostly unfettered…when he was around her. He could throw caution to the wind when he was around her. Like the time that they had stayed up all night playing games together. That had been so wonderful….

But that part was over now.

"Enter." Said Suzuki as he felt Fukuda lingering outside of his doorway. He opened the office doors with a wave of his hand when Fukuda didn't immediately open them as normal. That must have startled Fukuda. There was a flare to his aura there. Suzuki would have thought that Fukuda would have been used to that after almost thirty years or so but, hey, people were Fukuda's specialty. Not his. Never his.

"Hey boss, I just need you to sign some things." Said Fukuda. Suzuki eyed the stack of papers in his arms wearily. He didn't know which fire Fukuda was currently trying to put out but he knew that it would be a lot of work for the both of them. He wondered if he could conscript Daughter to help…she would be more than able to…but would that be the sort of thing that would hurt her independent development? He didn't know. Parenting had somehow gotten more and more complicated over the years. It had been easier when the children had been toddlers. All he had to do was teach them how to not kill themselves and each other and make sure that they developed language and motor skills. Simple.

This stage of life was not simple.

Well Son was at least simple. Son could be left to his own devices. He would occasionally injure himself but aside from that he didn't need much watching. When the year changed he would have more patience to get back to showing Son how to run Claw. For now he could do…whatever it was he was doing in the long hallway…with Shimazaki….hopefully not sock skating. He never had to worry about Daughter going sock skating and enticing the Awakened away from their work to do stupid things. No, he never had to worry about that at all. Daughter…he had his own things to worry about when it came to her. Making sure she grew up properly. Making sure she chose someone worthy of her as her most perfect person. Making sure that she never left him. Just…a lot of things to make sure of. Son never gave him those sorts of worries. Son never gave him anything at all to worry about. He was grateful for that small mercy.

"Leave them on my desk. I'll see to them by the end of the day." Said Suzuki. Fukuda did as he was told but then lingered. That indicated either some sort of tragedy or Fukuda just wanting to socialize with him. He didn't know which was worse.

"Anything else?" asked Suzuki. He wanted to be alone. If he couldn't be with his Daughter then he wanted to be alone. He needed to be with her…but she was better off without him. Maybe Fukuda knew a way to get her to grow up quicker…or to even be able to tell when she had finished growing up. The age of majority was arbitrary. At around thirteen or fourteen Suzuki had come to the realization that he was not a child anymore and that he didn't need his parents for anything…but Daughter would always need him….but her childhood maybe would not be as long as…as he was thinking that it would be. She had been a child for eleven years after all. How much more childhood could she possibly need?

"Nothing work related." Said Fukuda. Suzuki wondered what there was to talk about, then. They weren't children anymore. They were adults now and aside from work they really had nothing to talk about…unless it had something to do with the children. Maybe it had something to do with…he hoped that it had nothing to do with Daughter. He hoped that Fukuda hadn't come all the way to his office to tell him that he had messed up Daughter in some serious way again…

Though he was grateful to Fukuda for telling him, before, that he was messing up.

Suzuki so hated miscalculating. It was easy to miscalculate when he was unfamiliar with what it was that he was even calculating. He knew that Fukuda was better when it came to social situations. He knew that he could always trust Fukuda's judgement when it came to the children. He would have made a good father, probably, and not just because the world needed more healers. He understood the children, son especially, in ways that Suzuki knew that he never could. He had been born with the ultimate power, yes, but he had also been born missing some fundamental tools that other people had which allowed them to relate to and make connections with others. He, of course, did not need those tools because he was the most powerful man alive but they would have been helpful…

But so was employing someone who had been born with the tools needed for the job.

"You want to socialize then?" asked Suzuki. He had no idea why Fukuda still wanted to socialize with him. They were friends anymore. They were more than friends. Fukuda was, in essence, the person who worked directly under him. The only people in Claw with more power than him aside from Suzuki himself were the children…or just Daughter. Yes, just Daughter. Son could not be trusted with any sort of real power or responsibility yet.

"Well…yes and no." said Fukuda. Suzuki tried not to narrow his eyes and he tried to keep his aura in check. He had heard that expression before. He had been hearing it for his entire forty three years of life and for those entire forty three years he'd never had any idea what it meant.

"That is not an answer." Said Suzuki. Both of those statements existed in opposition to each other. Two opposites could not exist together like that. It just did not work like that.

"It is, Suzuki, it is. It's not exactly a social call, I was just wondering if you were planning on wishing Sho a happy birthday at some point. I know that it would mean a lot to him and I know that you want the kids to be loyal to you and to the organization so I was just thinking that, you know, you should wish your son a happy birthday." Said Fukuda. Suzuki blinked. The teacup on his desk rattled. The picture on his computer screen went to bars. Son…son's birthday…

He glanced down at the date.

December eighth.

"Son's birthday…was on the first…" said Suzuki slowly.

"Yeah. He had a birthday party and then I took him to an animal shelter and an indoor playground and then we went to the movies and got dinner. It was a nice time." Said Fukuda

"I…Son had a birthday." Said Suzuki. His Son had been born on December first. That had been ten years ago. A decade ago his Son had been born.

"Yeah. Sho had a birthday." Said Fukuda. There is an emphasis on the way he says Son's given name that Suzuki just does not have the mental space for right now. He doesn't know what that emphasis means and he doesn't know, either, how he could have forgotten the day that Masami had been gutted like a fish to pull Son out of her.

"He was born on December first…and now it's the eighth." Said Suzuki slowly. His brain was not working. How could he forget the birthdate of his own blood child? Daughter's birthday was May 25th. There. He knew hers…but he had forgotten Son's? How? That had been the day that he had looked over the curtain…maybe he should have done as the doctor said and not looked over the curtain…and saw them pulling Son right out of her body…and he had been so small and red…well that had been the blood…and also he had been covered in amniotic fluid…and he had been so small…

And now he was a decade and a week old.

"Yeah, it's been a week." Said Fukuda. There was another tone, there, and Suzuki did not want to sit there and pick apart the meaning in it. Not now. Son…he'd had a birthday. He had missed Son's birthday. Well he had never been one for celebrating anything but Son had been born a decade ago. A decade ago he and Masami had made a human being together. A son. Leader. That was the name that he had picked out for him. Masami had wanted to call him Yuu, which meant gentle, and was also not the name that he would give to any of his offspring.

They're my kids too, Touichirou.

That was what she had said. He remembered that night. They had been sitting up in bed, their bedroom, and she had been so big that he could see Son moving around…and he had not been imagining things he could see Son's aura shift as he moved…and they had been pouring over books of names and…and it had come dangerously close to being an argument. She had wanted to call him Yuu…he hadn't like the character or how feminine the name sounded…and she hadn't wanted to call him Sho because she said that a name like that would put a lot of pressure on him…and then they had settled on Shoko for a girl already…and Shoya had been considered though he liked Sho better….but then they had come to a compromise.

He would name the boys and then she would name the girls.

But then Daughter had come into their lives pre-named and she had been too old to be renamed. Not like Baby. Mi Cha was not a good name, he hadn't liked it, so he had to rename her. Mukai was a good name. He liked the sound of it and the look of it so that was what Baby was going to be called from now on. She had been born in…he didn't know her birthday…and he didn't know why he cared. That was not his child. His children came from Masami and since Baby had not come from Masami therefore Baby was not his child and someone else was her father and…and now she had a new mother and a new life and that was that.

He didn't even know why he cared about Baby's birthday.

He couldn't even remember his own Son's birthday let alone the birthday of a child who he had nothing to do with the existence of. Son….why hadn't Son said something? He wailed for hours when his sister cut off his soft drinks at seven o'clock every night but he, for some reason, he not thought to mention that he'd had a birthday? Those days were big deals to children. Son should have said something.

"Son never said anything." Said Suzuki

"….you want him to remind you when his birthday is?" asked Fukuda

"Yes. That would be helpful." Said Suzuki. There. If the children told him their birthdays then he could remember and tell them 'happy birthday' along with giving them their obligation gifts. There. Fukuda always had the best idea when it came to things like this.

"How can you not remember his birthday?" asked Fukuda. He had a tone, there, and Suzuki got the feeling that it was not a good one. Fukuda had no right to question him. He didn't have children. He didn't know how maybe things it was that one had to remember when you had children. Son should have reminded him…or Daughter. Yes, Daughter should have reminded him of Son's birthday. She ran the house so that was her job. Masami had never once let him forget an important day. He would have thought that Daughter would have at least picked that up from her mother.

"I know that he was born on the first, I was there when he was born after all, I just hadn't realized that the first had passed already. Time had been…slipping by. Passing more quickly. Daughter…she was good for keeping me grounded and I'm still adjusting to life without her." said Suzuki

"Life without her? I just saw her playing videogames with her…with Hatori an hour ago." Said Fukuda

"Yes, I know that she's there." said Suzuki. He hoped that she wasn't playing in their blocky world…he so missed playing blocky world with her…but this was for the best. Even though he sort of felt like taking a much needed blocky world break but he couldn't if she was in their world right now…but it was for her own good. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made for the greater good.

"…then why did you say that you were adjusting to life without her?" asked Fukuda

"You told me that I was harming her independent development so I cut off all contact between us in an attempt to fix what I had damaged." Said Suzuki

"No, I told you to let her spend time with her friends and sleep in her own bed." Said Fukuda

"Yes. You told me that by keeping her near she would never develop independent skills. So I cut off all contact with her. You said that it would be healthier for her if I gave her space so now I'm giving her all the space that she needs." Said Suzuki

"Suzuki…why do you always….? No, no, this is just the way you are." Said Fukuda

"What's the way I am?" asked Suzuki. If he hadn't known better he would have thought that Fukuda had insulted him just now…but that was insane. Fukuda was Fukuda. He was his most loyal follower and oldest companion. Suzuki just didn't 'people' well as Fukuda had always been fond of telling him. Yes, that must have been it, he just wasn't 'peopling' well. People as a verb meaning to interact with other humans, not to reproduce and populate the world, though he had no idea if he was good at that or not since he only had the one biological child.

"You….you're a smart man. You're a genius, actually, about some things. Planning, managing people, managing money, world domination…but you are, and I mean this respectfully, not that great when it comes to people." Said Fukuda

"Yes. I am well aware of this. You've been telling me this since the day we met." Said Suzuki. He did not need to be reminding of the one area of life that he was poor at. Yes, he was not good with people, but that was just…what it was. He was not good with people but like Fukuda said he was a genius, he had the tests to prove it, and also he was powerful in addition to the hyper cognition so he didn't need to be good with people. That was Fukuda's department.

"Ok, we're on the same page. Just…I never told you to cut all ties with your Daughter, ok? Suzuki…that must have been so confusing for her…and she does not need to be confused. That must have been stressful and confusing for her and the last thing that anyone needs is for her to be stressed out like that. Do you remember the Eighth Division? Because I remember the Eighth Division." Said Fukuda

"Of course I remember. She exploded and killed seventeen people." Said Suzuki. That had been a terrible day and part of him was still angry at her for that…but she had been eight years old then and her power had not been as under control as it was now. Sure her aura had a hazy, sleepy, sort of quality to it now but at least her control was better.

"Then why would you put her under that kind of stress? She's only ten, she doesn't know what's happening or why you did that in the first place. No wonder she's been stressing Sho out so much lately…" said Fukuda. He muttered that last part. Suzuki wondered why. He was much more difficult to understand when he muttered.

"I don't care about Son." Said Suzuki. Son's control was the most impressive thing about him. Even from the day he had woken up from his awakening he had gained almost complete and total control over his powers. It had been amazing, Suzuki had been impressed by him, but he had also been envious. He had envisioned having to help Son to control his powers just as he'd helped Daughter and just as he'd had to learn on his own but…but he had just had total and complete control over himself. Son was impressive that way and Suzuki felt pride in his son for accomplishing such a feat as instantaneous near perfect control as well as pride in himself for making a person who could be so very impressive.

"Yeah, that's obvious." Said Fukuda. Good. He could see it too. He spent a lot of time with Son these days…he had probably been more affected by Baby than he'd let on. Suzuki had offered him Baby to keep but he'd said not out of lack of confidence in his parental abilities. Now he probably missed her and thought about her and worried about what had become of her so he overcompensated and spent time with Son in an attempt at getting back what he'd lost.

"Is Daughter….is she alright? I hadn't mean to harm her in any way…I thought that I had been doing the right thing…but I miscalculated…again." said Suzuki. He cared too much about Daughter and that was why he was constantly miscalculating when it came to her. Son was fine on his own but Daughter was like a rare, exotic, beautiful flower that had grown out of a pot of dirt. She needed the utmost care and attention or all the work that he had put into raising her would have been for nothing.

"She's…I have no clue. I don't spend a lot of time with her socially. Sho says that she's been clingy lately but that's all that I know." Said Fukuda

"She's….she's been happy. I mean I thought that she had been. She's been spending time with her friends and she enjoys…for some reason…spending time with them." Said Suzuki

"Suzuki…she has plenty of friends. She only has one father and that's you. So just…don't ignore her completely but also don't smother her. Just…maybe have one day a week where you smother her and then leave her alone for the rest of the day? You know, get it all out of your system at once? I know how you like schedules so how about….Sundays? You smother her on Sundays but then just leave her alone for the rest of the week? Like a father/daughter day or something." said Fukuda. Suzuki thought for a moment. That seemed like a good idea. Sort of like how instead of having sex with Masami constantly like he had wanted they had set aside Saturdays for that, before Son her been born, so that way they could get things done during the week….only nonsexual because that was his Daughter and not his wife…and now he sort of wants to take a bath…

"Yes. That sounds like a good idea. She would like that too. She'll probably stop asking me if I hate her now." Said Suzuki. Daughter had been asking him why he hated her even though he had made it perfectly clear that he didn't. He could never hate her. She was his Daughter. He could never hate his own Daughter.

"Yeah…you should probably tell her that you don't hate her…and you should probably tell Sho 'happy birthday' at some point. You know, before he turns eleven." Said Fukuda

"That's…a large swath of time. I'll tell him next time I see him. Thank you for your input. You're dismissed." Said Suzuki. Yes, first he would get Son sorted and then Daughter. He wondered if he'd had Son's presents procured for him already and then just forgotten about it…well he'd have to tell him 'happy birthday' either way even though the date of his birth had not been happy…well he had been happy when Son had been placed in his arms for the first time but he had also been horrified and terrified when they'd cut Son out of Masami…and he was never looking over the curtain again. No, when Daughter gave birth he was not looking over the curtain…that is if she had a cesarean section. If she delivered vaginally…he was still not going to look. He would be there for her but he was not going to look.

That is when she grew up of course.

They would have such good times when she grew up. They would travel the world together…well they did that now but she would be old enough to appreciate it…and also they would spend time together. He would be more of an…he would allow himself to be closer to an equal to her. Yes, a bit more like how he and Masami had been…but without the being married part. They would have such good times when she grew up and became an adult…

He was so looking forward to it.

To her having her own desk in his office and being able to help him run Claw in a substantial way. To her being there with him watching television or playing their game or just spending time together. To when she had her own children and she would need him to be there for her. She would need him to be there for her because she would be at her most vulnerable and she would need him to protect her and he would without question. He would watch over her just as he watched over Masami and he would get her whatever strange foods she craved, though he hoped that she would cook the pancakes before she ate them and not just eat the batter with a spoon like Masami had, and he would watch her child's aura as it moved around and then when the day came and he became someone's grandfather he would be there beside her so nothing could harm her but he would not be looking over any curtains this time…or anywhere really because he had no desire to see his Daughter in that state of affairs. Let whatever man she picked out, hopefully not Shimazaki Ryou, see her in that state of affairs…or whatever. Suzuki didn't feel like dealing with any husband or lover of hers. He could be reassigned to somewhere remote so he wouldn't try and take Daughter away from him.

But all of that was in the future.

Daughter was only ten now and…and he had her back! For one day a week he could have her back! He could have her and hold her and never let her go! They would watch the ice queen again or play the blocky world game to just…whatever she wanted. Even eat gelatin…or she could have the gelatin and he could have real food that didn't look like it was some alien creature and taste like a chemical lab….he didn't care what they did just so long as he got to be there with her again. He could hold her again and be with her and sleep next to her and feel the softness of her skin and her hair and watch her aura's soft movements and just…just be with her. Have her, hold her, and cherish her…..

He loved his Daughter so very much and he had missed her so terribly….but he wouldn't have to miss her anymore.


	236. Shopping for a Party Dress

Mob had never seen Minegishi wearing a dress before.

They had never even seen them wearing so much as a skirt let alone a whole dress. They had always worn pants for as long as she had known them. She had known them for two years, two whole years, and that seemed like long enough to know if someone wore dresses. Minegishi wore girl's clothes sometimes. They had a lot of things with flowers on them. They had flowery pajama pants and T-shirts and towels and their messenger bag had flowers on it too. Those were for girls…well Mob thought so, anyway. Minegishi said that there was no such rule that said that something was for girls and something was for boys but she knew that if a boy had gone around wearing girls clothes or playing with girls toys then he would have gotten made fun of.

Because people were mean and stuff like that.

Mob had always though that it was unfair that people couldn't just do whatever they wanted. Minegishi thought that it was unfair, too, which is why they did whatever they wanted and also why they kept it a secret if they were a boy or a girl. Well if they were born a boy or a girl. They were a 'they' now but they must have been born as something….not that Mob was going to be nosy and ask. No, people's privates were private which was why they were called privates and if you asked about people's privates then you were some kind of weird and nosy person so Mob was not going to ask because she did not want to be some kind of weird and nosy person.

But it still was very strange to see Minegishi flipping through a rack of dresses like that.

"I hate work functions." Muttered Minegishi as they flipped through a rack of overpriced and completely impractical clothes. This was why they mostly just picked from the men's side. Better quality and less of this superfluous…whatever. Lace and rhinestones and glitter and either a long length and no sleeves or long sleeves and then half of their ass was hanging out….

They REALLY hated work functions.

They killed people. They tortured information out of people. They disposed of dead bodies. That was their job. They did not want to go to this thing, this was outside of their job description, but Mob was going…and also they had to babysit Ryou…and also free food and champagne….so they were going. They were going and they were going to dress nicely…

Which meant in a gender conforming way because their boss was a sexist asshole and they knew that they couldn't get into it with him for Mob's sake.

"I'm sorry…for saying that we could have a party." Said Mob as they helped Minegishi look through a rack of clothes. They had woken her up and said 'call a car around, we're going shopping' and then Mob had done that and now they were shopping. Well Minegishi was shopping. There was nothing here that could fit her. This was the women's section, not the girl's sections, and Mob had no idea why they were there since Minegishi hated dresses just as much as Mob hated pants.

And she knew that if she had a choice between wearing pants or walking around naked she would just stay in her room or the bathroom or something and be naked until someone got her a dress to put on.

Pants were not comfortable. They were too hot and too itchy and you couldn't bend your legs or cross your legs or anything while you wore them. She felt really bad for boys. Boys had to wear pants or else they would get teased. Girls at least had the option of switching back and forth. If she had been a boy then she would have just done like Minegishi and worn whatever she wanted to. They said that 'boy' and 'girl' shouldn't matter at all unless you were having a specific 'boy' or 'girl' medical procedure done. They said that they were who they were and if people didn't like it then that was their problem and they could go and suck a bag of…um…things that Mob was not going to think about. Minegishi had said that and also they hated pants and also they might not have even been born a girl in the first place so why were they looking at dresses in the first place.

Not that Mob minded. These were some very pretty dresses.

"Mob…you're ten and you never should have had that kind of power in the first place. It's not your fault that you approved so many fucking parties and it's not your fault that you want to go to the biggest one this branch is having because, once again, you're ten, and it's not your fault that your dad is a micromanaging sexist asshole. Ok? I'm not mad at you." Said Minegishi. They were getting nowhere with this. What even WAS this color? Baby puke green? They flipped through the shelves with more force than was necessary. They saw the same offending, baby puke green dress, in Mob's arms…along with a few more that Minegishi would not have worn for all the money in the world.

Mob was having fun with this.

They calmed down for a minute. Mob liked dressing up and she liked pretty dresses, she was in some yellow and blue, sparkly, Snow White inspired mess…no, that was mean. She looked cute. She looked cute and she liked dressing up and she liked dolls so, of course, she was planning on dressing Minegishi up like a living doll…

The things they did for this kid.

"But…you seem mad." Said Mob

"Hey, what did I tell you?" asked Minegishi

"Never let myself into your bedroom because you might be doing adult stuff?" asked Mob

"No…well, yes…but what else?" asked Minegishi

"Never mix substances?" asked Mob

"Not so loud…but what else?" asked Minegishi

"Sugar is poison?" asked Mob

"No, not that either." Said Minegishi

"I'm sorry…but you do tell me a lot of stuff." Said Mob. Minegishi cared a lot about her. That was why they were always telling her the important things that she had to know. Things that would keep her safe and also things that she just needed to know. Like the rule about knocking. She never wanted to walk in on anything like that again. Ever. Minegishi said that she shouldn't ever see that again either or she would never be able to get rid of the mental scars. Neither of them would.

"Well, somebody has to." Said Minegishi. They were the only person parenting this child. Her father couldn't be bothered, her mother was gone and possibly dead, and everyone else just let her do whatever she wanted with zero guidance, Shibata, or gave her the worst kind of guidance imaginable, Shimazaki. Or they just plain didn't like her for some reason, Fukuda, the living scented tampon that he was…and Minegishi almost felt like taking that back. It was an insult to scented tampons everywhere. At least they did their job. Fukuda…the man had the NERVE to exclude Mob from her own little brother's birthday…thing. Also he was rude as fuck, which Minegishi normally wouldn't care about, but he was rude to Mob…and also he had the nerve to touch her…they had been about to kill him that day but then they remembered that they were the only one parenting Mob so they held off on that.

They did not feel like dealing with Suzuki's wrath if they managed to kill the only healer in all of Claw.

"And I listen, too, I just don't know what specific thing it is that you want me to remember." Said Mob

"That I'm never mad at you, Mob, never at you. Ok? I'm mad…well mildly pissed off….that your dad is a sexist asshole and that a lot of important people are going to be there and since I'm a part of the Suzuki family entourage I have to look a certain way…because I want to keep my job…and also I just hate dresses. I have nothing against feminine clothing. I just hate dresses. They're impractical." Said Minegishi

"But…what about this one? It's pretty." Said Mob as she held up a sparkly pink dress with no sleeves and the back cut out. This was pretty and she would have worn this if she could wear a shirt under this because if she wore this now people would definitely see her undershirt. Also it might fall down since it had no straps…how did strapless things stay on anyway…so she would have to wear tights under it too…which were almost as bad as pants…but at least when you wore tights then nobody could see your underwear on accident.

"It's impractical…and also not in my size…and also how in the hell is this even supposed to stay up?" asked Minegishi as they put the pink monstrosity that Mob picked out back on the rack. No freaking way. Not unless they felt like freezing their ass off and flashing everyone within a ten meter radius.

"I don't know…maybe with tape?" asked Mob

"Mob, if you're going to help then find me something practical, ok? Find me something practical and then we can find something for you and then you can find something for your brother and I can find something for Ryou because he asked me to do him a favor and also he can't be trusted to pick out his own clothes." Said Minegishi. They used to kill people for a living. They used to fly to exotic locations and kill people on the orders of a madman. Now they shopped for clothes during the Christmas rush in the most overpriced department store in Tokyo with a madman's daughter. This was their life. Eh. It could have been worse. At least they had food in their stomach, a roof over their head, and good company to suffer through this with.

"What do you mean by 'practical'?" asked Mob. She got the idea that she and Minegishi had very different ideas about what was and was not practical. Minegishi thought that all dresses were impractical, for one thing, which made the job of finding a dress that was practical even more difficult. Mob thought that dresses were the most practical clothes because they left your legs free to move and they were breezy and cool when it got hot out and also you didn't have to wear a belt or spend all day pulling them up.

"Something long enough in the legs and with enough coverage in the top that I won't flash everyone when I walk. Also no sequins, sparkles, rhinestones, fake gems, real gems, or lace….and nothing poufy either. Got it?" asked Minegishi

"I've got it." Said Mob. She bowed and then took off through the racks of dresses. Mob didn't get why Minegishi had to wear a dress for this party. She knew that people were supposed to dress up but boys got to wear pants. It wasn't like a summer festival where everyone had to wear a yukata or like going to the beach where everyone had to wear a swimsuit….and even then boys and girls had different swimsuits…well they had to because of breasts and stuff…but dresses weren't a breasts thing…and also Minegishi didn't even have…well sometimes it looked like they did, like when they wore shirts that were sort of tight…but Mob had never asked about that. That just didn't seem like the sort of thing that you asked your friend.

Also if Minegishi was a girl and then Mob asked them if they had breasts then they would have been very sad if they didn't.

Mom had said, back when Mob had been really little and she used to put balled up socks down her undershirt to be like mom, that she shouldn't be in a hurry and that her time would come…but also that sometimes your time didn't come and then that would be the time to be stuffing socks down her shirt and stuff. So that meant that no everyone's time came…and it also meant that her time might not come either. Not that she gave this much though, she tried not to because if she thought about it too much she might feel bad, even though she knew that there was more to someone than what they looked like. Even then, though, Mob didn't want to look like a little kid forever.

She'd never get a boyfriend if she looked like a little kid.

She wanted to look older. Old enough that she could fit into clothes like this. She took a long and sparkly green dress off the rack…and then put it back. She didn't like green that much, that was Sho's color not hers, and also she knew that she could never fit into anything like that….and also that Minegishi would have hated that because it had no sleeves. She wondered why Minegishi didn't want to wear anything pretty. They were very pretty, in Mob's opinion anyway, and also even if they were a boy they could still wear a pretty dress since they were very pretty. They would have looked nice in her Elsa dress or her Belle dress or her fancy Aurora dress and also her Snow White dress, too, and Minegishi could actually have this one since Mob was only wearing it because she had to get dressed in a hurry this morning. Maybe they made dresses big enough for adults at the Disney Store.

Mob's dresses were both pretty and practical.

She looked for things that looked like her clothes. Minegishi might like something more like that. Also Mob mostly just knew about her own clothes. Some of these dresses….Mob wasn't sure how they worked. Like the one that looked like a towel. That would have been normal sized on her but she was ten. That would have been super short on Minegishi or any other adult. Mob had never understood short dresses. When you moved you ran the risk of showing everyone your underwear and stuff. Who would want to go around showing their underwear off to the world?

Well maybe the people who wore the pretty kind.

To get to here they had to walk past the place where they had the pretty underwear. The kind that was all lacy and sparkly…and also very itchy looking…and also Mob had no idea how you were even supposed to wear some of that…or why. She didn't get the point of nice underwear like that because it wasn't like a nice dress or shirt or even bathing suit. Nobody was going to see that but you…and also if you had to have nice underwear why not wear the kinds with characters on them? Adults could be so weird sometimes.

She would never understand them.

There must have been a Disney Store around here somewhere. Maybe instead of looking here at the adult clothes they could go to the Disney Store and see which princess dress looked best on Minegishi and then buy a bunch of the dress and then find someone to sew them together into one great big dress. Yes, that was a good plan…well it would have been. This was a fancy party and for a fancy party you had to dress fancy and to dress fancy you had to wear something other than your everyday clothes…which was nice but also a bother…so no Disney Store for them…but Mob wasn't going to stop looking. She was going to find something nice even if it took all day.

It hadn't ended up taking all day.

Because she found an Elsa dress! Well the shade of blue was wrong and there were no sparkly things and also there was no cape, some of her Elsa dresses had capes, but this was still a long blue dress with sleeves and also it looked like it would fit Minegishi! Mob took it carefully off the rack, she didn't want to hurt the most perfect dress that she had found so far, and she slowly carried it over to Minegishi. She was glad that she'd had good luck so far…because based on Minegishi's aura and how they were talking to themselves they were not having good luck at all.

"….not wearing a bra. Never wearing a bra again…can't wear boxers with this….damn it." Muttered Minegishi. They wondered if they should just deal with whatever it was that Suzuki did to people who embarrassed him. It couldn't have been any worse than what he did to people who talked during meetings or made too much eye contact with him. Yeah, they could do a few days or whatever in a traitor hole…

Because they were not wearing a fucking dress.

Nope. They were not dressing like this. They dressed for maximum comfort and mobility and this was not maximum comfort or mobility. They were not going to do this. They weren't going to stay home, they had to be there for Mob and stuff, but they were not going to wear a dress. Wearing a dress would involve wearing a bra, too, which they hated and also not wearing boxers, which meant that they would be uncomfortable the whole night, not just physically but in their own skin too and they were never going to feel like that again. They had promised themselves years ago that they would never feel uncomfortable in their own skin ever again.

"I found something practical and pretty at the same time." Said Mob. She wished that she could have done something about how their aura was. It was all….flaring up…like they were mad. Not at Mob, though, never at Mob. She had heard them loud and clear. Still, though, she worried about them. They were her friend and she never wanted her friend to be mad even if it wasn't at her.

"Great, we can be twins. I can look just like a ten year old girl…sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that to you. I'm just pissed and stressed. God…I need a drink so fucking bad…" said Minegishi with a groan. They could feel Mob's eyes and aura on them. Now her little hand was reaching over to theirs. Her nails were blue, theirs were lavender. Her skin was a lot paler than theirs. They were a lot smaller than them…

But she was the one comforting them.

They didn't need comfort. They were fine, they had dealt with worse, a lifetime of worse. Hell, this wasn't even the worst clothing related stressor that they had ever been under. They had worn a lifetime of uniforms after all. They'd had to wear that white blouse and hideous shit brown skirt back in elementary school and then the bright pink children's home jumpers….and that had been a hell of a fight to get them into that thing. Pants. Pants were clearly superior but because they had been born with a vagina it meant that they could pop out a baby at any time, apparently, which meant that the area had to be kept clear which meant no pants for them. Wonderful. Every single facet of their life had to be dictated by that second X chromosome that they had been born with.

Life really sucked sometimes.

"Um…I'll have a drink with you, I would like that too, but I don't see what's wrong with us being twins. I would love to be twins with you! I was actually thinking, before, that since you liked dresses that were long and had sleeves and stuff we could go to the Disney Store and then find a dress that you liked and then we could just get a bunch of those dresses, maybe five or six, and then dew them together to make one big enough for you." Said Mob. She had been serious, the most serious, but all Minegishi did was laugh and then squeeze her hand tighter…and Mob didn't get it. She didn't see why that was such a bad idea. They could ether figure out sewing or find someone who knew how…or something.

"Mob…we don't know anything about sewing…and either way I hate dresses. It doesn't matter what you or I pick out, that's nice by the way you did good, I'm still going to hate wearing dresses and that hatred will be something that I will carry with me for the rest of my life." Said Minegishi

"Oh. Well then why not wear pants?" asked Mob. If Minegishi hated wearing dresses that much then they just should have worn a nice pair of pants. Girls could wear pants…not that she was sure if Minegishi was a boy or a girl…but either way if they were then girls could wear pants. Nobody would tease a girl for wearing pants like they would tease a boy for wearing a dress…even though that was unfair and made no sense….so instead of being upset they should just wear pants.

"Honestly…I'm considering it. If I get screamed at or beaten up or thrown down some God forsaken hole to starve to death then….then so be it. I am not going to wear a stupid dress all evening just because someone else wants me to." Said Minegishi. They had to be there for Mob, and they would be, they would just be there in pants. Suzuki was a sexist asshole, and also batshit crazy, but they would deal with whatever they had coming to them. Come what may and all of that.

"Minegishi. No. I would never let anyone do that to you. You know that." Said Mob. Anyone who wanted to hurt her friend would have to deal with her first. She wasn't someone who liked to fight, Sho got all of the fighting genes in the family, but if someone tried to hurt someone who she loved well…well then there would be no choice. She didn't want to have to hurt anyone, she wasn't Sho she didn't like fighting, but…but she would do what she had to do.

You've got to do what you've got to do.

"Mob, I appreciate the sentiment and all, I really do, but you're ten. You're ten and you don't get…how things are. How the world can just put it's expectations on you and…and how sometimes you pay for not conforming to them." Said Minegishi. Mob was a doormat. They knew that it was a mean thing to think but she let people walk all over her. Her father. Her brother. Even Fukuda and she outranked him. She just let people walk all over her and…and anyway Minegishi did not need a ten year old defending them. They could take care of themselves. They had always taken care of themselves.

"The clothes you wear is a stupid thing for people to get upset about. It's none of their business and if someone gets upset about it then it's their problem…and also if someone tries to do any of that mean stuff to you that you just said then it's going to be my problem. I won't let people treat you like that. You're my best friend." Said Mob

"Mob…don't. I love you but don't. I can handle myself." said Minegishi. They weren't sure what to say. On the one hand Mob looked like a little badass there and even they were slightly afraid of her. She was ten, well ten and a half, but they were also a VERY powerful esper. They could never come close to being what she was at ten and a half and God help anyone who truly pissed her off. On the other hand even if Mob was the second most powerful esper that Minegishi had ever seen, nobody could top the President, they still didn't anyone to defend them. They could take care of themselves.

"I love too…and I will. I won't let anyone hurt you. I'm strong enough to keep you safe and…and even if I don't like fighting I'm going to keep you and everyone else who I care about safe. Dad says that he's going to take over the world because he has the power to do it…and I'm going to keep you safe because I have the power to do that." Said Mob. It made perfect sense. She was strong enough to keep her friends safe so she would keep her friends safe. Like dad said. She was strong enough to do something so then she should do it.

"Mob…you're not going to come off this, are you?" asked Minegishi. She had that look in her eyes, that Suzuki look, and for the first time she looked like her father…but not really. She was a nice kid and she was trying to be nice and…and Minegishi could not fault her for that. Better she use that Suzuki energy for good instead of trying to take over the world or something.

"No. If you want to wear pants then you should wear pants and if people try to make fun of you worse then I'll make them stop." Said Mob

"Mob…never change. Come on, let's go. I'm getting some pants for myself and something for Ryou to wear. Then we'll go to the kid's clothes and find something for you and your brother." Said Minegishi. It felt…nice. Having someone in their corner. Having someone who would defend them. Not that they would be letting Mob defend them, no, Minegishi could take care of themselves. Still…it was nice. Mob was nice.

"Ok, I bet you'll find some really nice pants over in the boy's section. Their pants have deeper pockets and also they'll probably have the baggy kind that you like." Said Mob. She felt better, now, because Minegishi could be comfortable and also nobody would pick on them. She wanted her friend to be happy and it shouldn't have mattered, anyway, if they wanted to wear pants or not. There were other things in the world to worry about. Also it was going to be a party and at a party you were supposed to be able to have fun. So if Minegishi wanted to wear pants they could.

It would have been weird seeing them in a dress, anyway.


	237. Dresses and Mirrors and Compliments

Mob had a new dress.

She liked this dress a lot. It was blue and sparkly and also was fun to spin in. She liked this dress a lot. She had picked it out herself. Usually she just told the Awakened what she wanted and then brought her what she wanted…or something close to what she wanted at least. They sometimes came back with stuff that was nowhere near what she wanted…but she always thanked them and accepted what she got. She would have done that, again, but this was for a party and she had never been to a party before so she wanted to wear something nice.

She had never been to a party before.

The party wasn't until later but she made sure to get the clothes and stuff for it now before she forgot or got too busy or something like that. Also Minegishi had wanted to go and then she had gone with. They needed their own nice clothes and also nice ones for Shimazaki because he didn't know what colors were and that made it hard for him to buy his own clothes. Their shopping trip had been nice. Minegishi had been worried about having to wear a dress but then they decided to wear pants. They were comfortable in pants for some reason. Mob didn't get it.

What could be more comfortable than a dress?

She spun around as best as she could. She didn't have a full length mirror so she was using the one in the bathroom. She could see most of herself if she stepped all the way back until her back was practically against the wall. Not a lot of room for spinning around. She liked to spin around sometimes, if she was wearing the right dress for it, and this was the right dress for it. It had layers underneath the skirt part that made it stand up. It was itchy, though, very itchy. She would have to wear tights with this even though tights were almost as bad as pants. She didn't have a choice, though, because this dress was itchy and also it was sort of shorter than the ones she usually wore and when she spun her underwear showed.

And she could not have that.

She had never been to a party before and she didn't want to embarrass herself at her first party by accidentally showing everyone her underwear. Minegishi worried about that a lot, too, that was why they didn't wear dresses they said. They had said that they needed to wear something long and with sleeves and a back so they didn't end up accidentally flashing everyone, which meant showing them parts of you that only you were allowed to see, and Mob understood that. Though pants seemed very impractical as they could fall down. Still, though, if they wanted to wear pants then Mob was not going to stop them and if someone else tried to stop them…well Mob was not going to let that happen either.

Mob took good care of people.

She took care of her brother and she took care of her friends. She was not going to sit there and let someone make Minegishi feel bad for wearing pants. They felt like they had to wear a dress for some reason, they may have been a girl but that was none of Mob's business anyway, and even if they had been a girl then they could have worn pants anyway. Mob didn't understand all the rules about clothes. About who was allowed to wear what and when. She wore things that made her happy. So did Minegishi. Everyone should have just been allowed to wear things that made them happy. The world was a much better place when people were happy and nobody should have been so bossy as to tell someone what they could and could not wear…unless someone was wearing something showed off their private parts or their underwear or something. Then that would not have been ok at all.

Which was why Mob was going to put on some tights.

Mob crossed the hallway from the bathroom to the bedroom as quietly as she could. She didn't want to wake Sho up. He needed a lot more sleep than she did because he was so young. He was ten, the same age as her, but that was just because their birthdays were so close together. Mom had said that she and Sho had close birthdays because she just hadn't been able to wait to have a boy baby so the family could be complete. That was why she put her mind to it and had Sho so soon. That way that family would have equal numbers of boys and girls and also Mob could have a little brother to play with. At the time she would have preferred a sister but now…well she was happy with her little brother.

Especially when he was being nice to her.

Aside from the big fight that they'd had he had been really nice lately. He had been reading the book that Minegishi had gotten him. That was good. It was nice of Minegishi to think of him like that. Mob should have thought of getting him a book like that but she hadn't known that they even made books like that and also she knew that Sho didn't like to read. He was reading the book, though, he had even started reading it in bed after she had tucked him in. She saw the book on his lap as she opened the door. She marked the page, closed it, and put it on their dresser with her powers as she entered the room. She left the door opened a crack so she could let some light in. She needed to move quick before Sho woke up.

She was glad that she didn't own that many pairs of tights.

Finding the right tights had been easy. They were the only ones that sparkled. These were her blue, Frozen ones with sparkling snowflakes and Olafs on them. They went with this dress. That was good. This was what she would wear. She needed to look pretty. Hatori would be there and she knew that he didn't like her that way she liked him, he was nineteen and she was ten and Minegishi said that he probably wouldn't end up waiting for her to grow up and stuff, but she still wanted him to think that she was pretty. She had also heard that a lot of people, the business people who gave money to Claw and stuff, would be there too and they would bring their kids.

Mob didn't know how to feel about that.

On the one hand she would finally get to be around some kids her own age. On the other hand she would finally get to be around some kids her own age. She hadn't talked to someone her own age since she had been…she couldn't even remember. Back when they had lived in the Castle at least…and Sho didn't count because he was her brother and not someone who wasn't related to her. She had no idea how to talk to someone her own age who was not her brother. She was nervous and scared and…and she had to not be nervous and scared because she was the one who approved this and she was the one who wanted this party and…and stuff.

She would be fine.

And if not she could just hang out with her friends for the whole thing. Well for before the whole thing to. Shimazaki said that you always had to pregame before a party. Mob didn't know what he meant but she did know that he had he best ideas, well sometimes he had the best ideas, so she would do what he said. Minegishi said that Shimazaki was stupid sometimes but Mob…sometimes Minegishi could be a little less fun than Shimazaki. But that was ok because they were nice and a fun person most of the time and she was their best friend and they were hers. So it was ok if they were a little less fun, about some things, than Shimazaki was. That was ok.

She was going to be ok.

She closed the bedroom door and would have gone back to the bathroom…but dad was in there now. The door was closed and she could hear the water running and she could feel his aura. She knew that he was in there taking his nightly bath. He would be in there for a while…but she wanted to wear her dress and spin. She wanted to but she couldn't because the only other mirror was in his bedroom…and she wasn't allowed in there. Well she wasn't sure if she could or could not go in there. Dad had said that he loved her and he didn't hate her…so maybe it was ok.

She missed him a lot.

She didn't miss the part where he smothered her but she did miss the way he was just…nice to her. How nice it was when he was with her and watching Frozen and playing Minecraft and just…hanging out with her and stuff. She just wished that dad could just…not love her so much but not take all of his love away too. She wished that he would just love her like she loved him. Enough to enjoy being around him but not so much that she needed to be around him all the time….and also that he would think about Sho more and give some of his love to Sho. It had taken him a whole week to say 'happy birthday' after all. Sho said that he didn't care that much but Mob was sure that he did.

Birthdays were important.

Dad must have just been busy, that was all, because Claw was a very big place and he had a lot to do as the president. So dad must have had a good reason to forget and stuff. That was all. He loved Sho, he must have loved Sho, he must have just been bad at showing it or something. Sometimes dad had trouble with things like that. Like how he said that he loved Mob but he also stopped talking to her or looking at her or spending time with her or any of that stuff.

Mob didn't understand him sometimes.

But she knew that he would be in the bath for a while and she knew that he had the biggest mirror in the house so she was going to use his mirror…for a little bit. Or maybe until he came back…and maybe she wanted him to come back and she…she maybe wanted to spend time with him. She didn't like, before, how he was always trying to keep her near and stuff. How he had kept her from going anywhere or doing anything…and she didn't want to go back to that…but she didn't him to never talk to her or spend time with her again, either.

She just wanted dad to be…to be more…more like how she imagined other people's dads to be.

She didn't know any other kids but she did watch a lot of TV. She knew that parents were supposed to love their kids and also…also that other people's parents knew how to split their love between their kids like splitting a giant churro. She wished that dad could love her and Sho the same and that he could be nice to her and Sho…but wishing wasn't going to do anything. She had already tried wishing, tried folding a thousand paper cranes, and she knew that wishing wasn't the same as getting. She had been wishing for a lot of things for a lot of years and none of those wishes came true, ever, but that was ok.

It had to be ok.

She knew that she just had to make the most of what she had. She had a dad who loved her and a brother who she loved and friends and…and she had a new dress and he had a tall mirror to play in front of and…and it was nice. This was nice. Being in dad's room was nice. She didn't know why she had expected dad's room to be different. It wasn't. The bed was the same and his shirt was on the dresser like normal and his laptop was on his nightstand like normal and he had left his TV on, too, and he had been watching a documentary about outer space and that was normal too.

Dad wasn't in the room.

That wasn't normal. She could feel him. He was still taking his bath. She was still looking at herself in the mirror. She had stopped spinning and was just looking at herself. It hadn't been that long since she had been friends with dad but…but for some reason she expected something to be different. The room. Herself. But she looked the same. She looked like the same old Mob she had always been. Well of course she wouldn't have been different. She wasn't the one who'd had the birthday. Sho had been the one to have had the birthday and he was older…but he still looked the same as he always did.

Things had and had not changed.

She wondered what next year would be like. She knew that she should have been more excited for Christmas than New Year's because Christmas was closer and also she got presents. On New Year's she just got money and also stayed up late and stuff. Still, she was excited for the next year. This year had been very…very busy. Too much had happened and all she wanted to…to do was have a peaceful year next year. That was all. Just her and her friends and Sho being friends with her friends and dad being nice…as nice as he could be…nicer than he had been lately.

She felt his aura move.

She felt his aura move and she heard the bathroom door open and she had no idea what she was supposed to do. She wanted to hang out with dad, she always wanted to hang out with dad, but only when he was normal. Not when he was smothering her. Not when he was grabbing her so hard her arms had bruises and not when he was telling her that she had to be with him for the rest of her life and not when he kept her up all night playing Minecraft even though he knew that she was tired and also he was tired too…she just wished….

She had no idea what she wished for.

So she stayed put. She stayed there because she knew that dad knew that she was there and she knew that even if she went back to her room she would still have to cross paths with dad and…and she knew that she wanted to be with dad. Not if he was going to be all…weird…but she wanted to be with dad. She missed dad. She missed him so much…even if he had forgotten to tell Sho happy birthday for a week…well she was a little bit angry about that….but dad said happy birthday eventually and also Sho said that he didn't care so it was ok…so this was ok.

Being in dad's room and waiting for him was ok….right?

"Daughter. Explain." Said Dad. He said it in a way that made her think that she had done something wrong…but then again she always felt like she had done something wrong. That was just a part of being dad's Daughter. She had a lot of stuff that she was in charge of and a lot of stuff could go wrong. She had no idea what had gone wrong, though, or what she had done wrong to make dad not like her anymore and stuff. Well he didn't hate her but there were times, like now, when it felt like he didn't really like her.

"I got a new dress for the party and I wanted to look at myself and you were in the bathroom so I came to your room to use your mirror. I didn't know if it was ok or not, being in here, but if it's not ok then I can go." Said Mob. She sort of wanted to go. She could see dad's aura and she couldn't tell if he was mad at her or happy to see her or if he wanted her to leave or if he was going to grab her by the shoulders as hard as he could again. She couldn't tell anything…and she wanted to go…but he hadn't dismissed her.

And also she would have to walk past him to get to the door, too.

"You….you look nice. That dress suits you." Said Dad. She liked it when dad said nice things to her. She felt a little better. He had said that he hadn't hated her but also he had said, too, that she had to go away…and he had never told her to go away before…well he had…but not after he got all…clingy and smothery and stuff. She didn't know what was with dad sometimes but she did want them to be friends, or as much of friends as she and her dad could be, again…but she also didn't want him to be all weird again.

She didn't know what she wanted, actually.

Dad was still there and he was still looking at her and she was still looking at him. She wondered if he was going to say anything else nice to her or if he was going to tell her to get out or what. She hadn't spent this much time with him in so long…and she had expected him to be different…but he wasn't different. He was the same old dad. He still wore the same white short sleeved undershirts to sleep and his hair was still the same sort of red and his eyes were still blue and he still had freckles on his arms like Sho did and he still had an aura that was all red but with some yellow and he was still as hard to read as always. He was the same and she was the same but things were not the same.

Things were different.

And she had no idea if she wanted things to be the same or if she wanted them to be different. She wanted to still be able to be in her own room to sleep and also to spend time with her own friends but…but she wanted to be able to sleep next to him, too, and she also wanted to be able to spend time with him and watch TV with him and all of that…but not if he was going to be all smothery. Also she needed to fix what he had done to her side of their Minecraft world because her ice mountain was almost gone…and stuff…

She mostly just wanted her dad back, though.

"Dad…are you still mad at me? For whatever I did to make you stop wanting to be my friend and all." said Mob. She just wanted to know what was wrong so that she could fix it. She had done something wrong and whatever it was she obviously didn't know and she would never be able to fix it, to fix them, unless he just told her already. It wasn't hard. He told people what they did wrong all the time. It was one of his favorite things, she felt like, to tell people what they had done wrong. Sho especially. He was always telling Sho what he was doing wrong and what was wrong with him…he could remember all of that mean stuff but not Sho's birthday….she wished that he would just give her some of that meanness so there was less left over for Sho. Just like when they had been little and she'd had to spend time with dad and stuff so there was less of a chance that he would notice Sho and be mean to him or punish him or something. That was just what you did when you loved someone.

"We were never friends, Daughter." Said dad. Mob felt her heart explode. Her stomach hurt. She felt like she was going to cry. The mirror behind her broke. How could dad just…conceal, don't feel. Conceal, don't feel. She made her powers calm down. It help that she had hung out with Minegishi all afternoon and they had shared a little with her. Her powers listened better when she had help. They listened very well now. The only thing that broke was the mirror. Well that and whatever it was that had been inside of her.

"Now look what you've done. Honestly. What have I always told you? Power is nothing without control. Now I have to fix that. Move." Said dad. Mob stepped out of the way. She watched as dad went up to the mirror and the pieces went back into their spots where they belonged. Her eyes went over to the door. She could just leave. Fad had just told her that they were not friends, had never been friends, and that was the worst thing that you could say so someone…so she could just leave.

She could go back to her own room.

She could go back to her own room with her brother who cared about her and who she cared about. She could go next door, Minegishi's aura wasn't all tangled up in Shimazaki's, and she could spend time with her friends who she cared about and who cared about her. She could have even gone and put on her shoes and went out to look for mom….or something…but she didn't. She stayed right there and watched dad work.

Because she hadn't been dismissed yet.

"Can I be dismissed now?" asked Mob. She felt bad and she didn't want to feel wore. She wanted to go to her room and get the fun vape pen out from between her mattress and her box spring and calm down before bed. Or maybe she would visit Shimazaki, he always wanted to share and he stayed up pretty late and stuff, or maybe Minegishi because they were always happy to hang out with her and never made her feel like this. Like dad made her feel. All bad and stuff.

"As soon as you tell me why you lost control, Daughter." Said dad. Mob wondered why she had to tell him. He had said something mean and then she had lost control…she hadn't been with dad for this long in a while. She had forgotten, for a second, that his brain worked weird. He had no idea, sometimes, when he was being mean. He just couldn't tell. It was like he said words and he knew what they meant but he didn't know what they really meant…or something. She could be bad at talking too but she would never tell someone that they weren't her friend. Even when she hadn't liked Shimazaki that much, when he had just been that guy who annoyed her, she had never once told him that they were not friends. Dad just wasn't as nice as her. She got her niceness from mom. Dad had given his meanness to Sho. That was how genes and stuff worked. You were either like your mom or your dad and she had to be like her mom right now.

"Because you were mean to me." Said Mob. She tried to talk like mom did when she and Sho had done something wrong. She spoke clearly and made eye contact and just…tried to sound like mom. She tried to stand like mom, too. Mob always stood up perfectly straight, like dad did, but mom sort of leaned when she stood, like Sho did. She did her best to stand like mom. She reach up and put some of her hair behind herself and some of it in front of her. That was how mom had her hair when she wore it down like Mob was now. She didn't know if that would help but she knew that dad listened to mom and she knew that mom was good at talking and she knew that dad had promoted her to mom so he had might as well try to be like mom.

"How was I mean?" asked dad. It took him a minute to say that. He was looking at her like…his eyes were doing that thing again, that thing where his eyes ate his pupils, and Mob hoped that he wasn't going to grab her again. She didn't want that at all. It had taken a while for her bruises to heal from the last time.

"You told me that we were never friends. But we were. We were friends because we played Minecraft together and watched TV and hung out and…and you told me that you loved me and that I was never allowed to leave you." Said Mob. She made sure that dad understood her reasoning. You had to be very clear with dad. Dad was bad at talking, worse than Mob, and he was bad at understanding too. It was sort of like talking to baby Mukai. You had to be clear because you had no idea how much he understood.

"We are father and daughter so therefore we can never be friends. Friendship is a partnership of equals and you are my child. We will never be equals." Said dad. He talked slowly, too. He was close to her now. She took a step back. She didn't want him to grab her again. It had hurt and been scary the last time. He looked like he did then, though, and she didn't want that but…but maybe she should just let him grab her just so that she could get it over with.

"Do you still like me, dad? Because sometimes you act like you do and sometimes you act like you don't and I just want to know that truth. So, do you like me or not?" asked Mob. She had no idea how dad felt about her. One day he wanted to spend all of his time with her and the next he wanted to never speak to her again. She would never be able to understand her own dad for as long as she lived. She wanted…she just wished that he came with an instructional manual or a walkthrough on Youtube or something so she could just understand him already.

He stepped towards her.

She let him. She didn't take a step back. She just let him get closer. She knew him, somewhat, well she knew what he had done before. He had grabbed her shoulders. He had grabbed them so hard that he left finger shaped bruises. She tensed up. She tensed up because he was reaching towards her and she knew that this would hurt but she also knew that there was nothing that she could do to stop him so she had might as well just…let him. She just let him grab her and-

Well at least it didn't hurt.

He had her by her arms, now, right under the sleeves of her dress. She was glad that this was a short sleeved dress and not a long sleeved one because then he might have hurt it and she had just gotten this today so, of course, she didn't want to hurt her new dress. She was glad, too, that he was grabbing her upper arms and not her lower arms. The scratches that Sho gave her had mostly healed. Only the deepest of them were still scabbed over. They had healed nicely, hardly any scars at all, but she didn't want dad to grab her too hard and reopen her scratches. No, she didn't want that at all. But all he did was grab her by the upper arm and look at her. She looked up at him and he looked down at her. He was a lot taller than she was…but that made sense because she was ten and he was forty three. He looked down at her and she looked up and she could feel his fingers pressing into her arms but it didn't hurt…well not as much as last time…and that was good. Maybe she wouldn't have bruises this time.

He looked at her and she looked at him and they just sort of…looked at each other.

"Daughter, I don't like you. I love you. I never disliked you or stopped loving you. You mean the world to me because you are my child. You are the hopes for my future and a reflection of myself. I could never hate you because to hate you would be to hate myself…and your mother as well. You're a reflection of her as well." Said dad. Mob nodded. Dad….had talked about mom? And not to say how much of a traitor she was? What the…how did that even….WORK? Just when she thought that she understood him…he went and talked about mom and…and now she understood him even less than she had before. Why would he say it like that? Like her being a reflection of mom was a good thing? He had been saying for years and years now that mom had been a traitor but now….what? Just…what?

"Dad….thanks?" asked Mob. She had no idea what to say to that so he thanked him. He was still holding on to her and she…she didn't know if she wanted him to let her go or not. She was so happy that he had never stopped loving her…and also he had been talking about mom like he loved her so that was good if he ever found her…but also hearing him talk about mom like that had been weird and hearing him talk to her like that…well he had gotten into the habit of telling her that he loved her but…but that had been…different.

She had no idea what that had been so she settled on different.

"You're welcome. Now don't speak to me again until Sunday. That will be our day together. Understood?" asked Dad. He let her go and took a step back. Mob nodded…and tried to remember what was so special about Sunday…and she couldn't remember. Google would tell her later. She would ask Google or Siri or Minegishi, who was smarter than both Google and Siri put together, but she would not ask dad because if this was something that she was supposed to remember then…then she didn't want to make him mad by not remembering.

"Understood." Said Mob

"Good. You are dismissed. Goodnight…and that dress looks lovely on you." Said dad. Mob didn't have to be told twice. She went back to her own room as quick as she could. Still quietly so as not to wake Sho, of course, but still pretty quick. She laid down in her bed in her new dress and tried to make sense of all of that. Dad was back to being nice again but not the smothering sort of nice…so that was good. But he had still grabbed her and his eyes had still been weird, which was not good, and also he was still a little mad at him, ok a lot mad at him, about how he had treated Sho…even though Sho had said that he liked his birthday better without having seen or heard from dad at all. So this was just so…so very confusing….

At least dad had liked her new dress.


	238. Wanted and Unwanted Feelings

Sho didn't care if dad forgot his birthday.

So what if dad forgot the day that his own son had been born? So what if dad had taken a whole week to remember that his own son had turned ten? So what if dad cared more about work and stuff than his son? So what if dad cared so little about his own son, the human being that he had made with his own two hands, that he forgot that his own son had been born ten years ago? Sho didn't care. He didn't even know when dad's birthday was so it was even!

It was.

When Sho had a son…or a daughter…or whatever babies his wife felt like having he would of course remember when they had been born. How did you forget when a human being was born? How did you forget when you made a human being all by yourself! Well the girl helped…but Sho knew that he would not forget when his own kids came out of their mom's stomachs! He would not forget the day that they came out of her belly button or the doctor cut her open or…or…or anything like that! And he wouldn't forget when they turned ten! He would remember and he would always throw them birthday parties and tell them all day a thousand times 'happy birthday' and also they would have all the pancakes that they wanted and also their big sis and all of their friends would be allowed to come with them on their birthdays! And also there would be…..be….be whatever they wanted there to be on their birthdays!

He didn't care if dad remembered his birthday or not, he would remember his kids' birthdays, that was what mattered.

At least everyone else had remembered. It had been nice how he had gotten a breakfast birthday party and there had been presents and also Shimazaki had been there…well he lived there…but he had gotten him this awesome paper that was awesome and not at all hard to draw on because it was awesome and he was the most awesome guy ever and maybe Sho was a little mad that Fukuda had taken him away before he could figure out fun stuff for them to do but that as ok because he had gotten to do a lot of fun stuff with Fukuda and now there was no point in being upset about his birthday because that had been over a week ago and…and now he had Christmas to worry about and stuff….so he needed to stop thinking about his birthday.

Now he had Christmas to think about.

He always drew his own Christmas cards. That was better than what they had at the store. Mom loved all of the Christmas cards that Sho had drawn for her, she had saved them all in a box under her bed, and they were probably still there. Big sis saved the ones he gave her in a folder. Fukuda had a book he kept his in. Dad….Sho had no idea what dad did with the cards that Sho drew for him. Maybe he kept them, maybe he didn't, Sho didn't care. That was why he didn't put as much effort into dad's cards. His just had the Claw symbol on them and said Merry Christmas or something like that. Dad didn't care about Christmas. Dad didn't care about anybody but himself.

Well maybe big sis too.

He had made up with big sis, she had said so, and Sho was trying his best to be happy for her. He had gotten mad when she had told him but he hadn't hit her or yelled at her or anything. He just went to a small dark place and started counting like the book had said. He had hid in his closet and counted to two thousand six hundred and forty three before he was calm enough to come out and hug her and tell her that he was happy for her…even though he wasn't. He wasn't happy for her even though he knew that she should have been. He should have been happy for her because that was what a good little brother would have felt, happiness for his sister, but instead of being happy for her had had just been…sort of mad…

But mostly just all twisted up inside.

Dad loved her. Dad loved her again and he had never stopped loving her…but he still couldn't have bothered to remember Sho's birthday….but he didn't care. Dad never cared about him, had never cared about him, and dad never could care about him. So why did Sho care? He knew that dad didn't care and…and he knew that he didn't care if dad cared or not. He had no reason to feel bad about dad forgetting his birthday or about dad making up with big sis or…or about anything. He should have been happy. He was ten now and Christmas was coming and also there was a party, Shimazaki said that parties were the most fun things ever and Sho trusted him about what was and what not the most fun thing ever, and he should have been happy.

So why did he feel like this?

He didn't know. Maybe it was just too early in the day, or whatever, for figure out how he felt. He had gotten up early and had decided to draw since he couldn't get back to sleep. It had been sort of light out when he got up and now it was even more light out. He wasn't tired. He just…he wanted to draw. He didn't want to go back to his rom. Big sis was there. Big sis being there…he didn't know what was making him feel like this. Like she should have been in dad's room. Like she should have been with dad since he liked her so much better. Like he wanted her to be with dad. Like he wanted her to be far away from him.

It made no sense.

Sho didn't want to be with dad. Sho didn't want to hang out with dad or talk to dad or be around him more than he had to. Dad was mean. Dad was a jerk. Dad didn't care about him at all. The only thing dad cared about was Claw and the only reason he would possibly have to care about Sho was the fact that he was the only boy in the family. The only reason dad had even made Sho was because he needed someone to make more Suzuki's. Girls couldn't inherit the Earth. Girls joined their husband's families. Girls had the husband's family names and that was the only reason that Sho even existed. That was the only reason that dad had even made Sho, so he had someone to make another person called Suzuki. That was the only thing that mattered. Making more people called Suzuki.

If big sis had been big bro then Sho wouldn't have even existed.

Dad had never once forgotten big sis' birthday. He had never once forgotten her birthday, not once in her life, and if he had then he would have been sad about it. Dad said 'sorry' to her sometimes. Dad was always there for her. Even when he was mad at her he was always there for her. She got a day with him, Sunday, and Sho didn't even get his birthday. Big sis got one day out of the week, one of the seven days of the week every single week, and Sho didn't even get one day out of the year. He only had the one day and he didn't even get that!

Calm down.

"One…two…three…four….four and a half…four and three quarters….four and four quarters…five and no quarters…five and a quarter and then half of a quarter….five and a quarter and then half of a quarter and then…whatever comes before half of a quarter…" counted Sho. The room was kind of dark, the light was barely coming in through the windows, but he closed his eyes for good measure. The book had said that he needed to be in a small and dark place where there wasn't a lot of stimulation. Stimulation was bad because it made his brain work when he needed it to calm down. He needed to make himself calm down…even though it was hard. It was hard to calm down and…and stuff like that. But that was ok. It was hard. It was hard but ok because he was working at it and working at it was…was what mattered.

He kept his eyes closed.

He counted and kept his eyes closed. He could hear himself breathing and he could hear the heater rumbling…and he could feel the floor under him….and he could feel how warm the room was…and he could smell the paper and…and it was nice. He stopped counting somewhere around fifty one and a quarter of a quarter of a quarter of a quarter. He stopped counted and then just…felt. He felt and heard and smelled and listened. He let his aura move away from his body. He could sense…

A lot of things.

He could sense big sis asleep in their room. He could sense dad getting dressed in his room. He knew that dad was getting dressed based on how he was moving. He could feel dad putting his arms through the arm holes of his shirt…and he could tell that dad was in front of his mirror…Sho was getting good at this. He smiled. He was getting really good at this. Shimazaki had showed him how to do this before. How to use his aura to see. How to close his eyes and just see the world…and stuff. It was hard…it had been hard…but it was getting easier. The trick was shutting out the world. Like the book said. In order to be calm he had to shut out the world and…and dad had always said that power was nothing without control and he couldn't have control if he was calm…

He was calm now.

He stopped looking at dad. He didn't care that dad put his left arm in his shirt hole and then his right arm and then…he didn't care what dad did. He moved his aura sight over to big sis…and she was sleeping. She was sleeping and something was in her hand…probably Mukai's little baby sock again…and he stopped watching her now. He wondered if he could see outside of his house. Shimazaki said that he could see everything in all directions and he could see things better the closer they were to him. Sho could see…he had to stop thinking of things as in front and in back and just….let himself see. He had to see and also not see…

Because if he figured this out then Shimazaki would think that he was so cool!

Well he said that he already thought that Sho was cool, the coolest kid that he knew, but Sho didn't want to be the coolest kid that he knew. Sho wanted to be the coolest person that he had ever met in his entire life! Then they could be best friends and hang out all the time and build a fort together but one big enough to live in and they could eat pudding for every meal and have at least ten if not twenty dogs and they could have all the candles that they wanted and also they could have coke instead of water even though that would make their insides rot…it would be great! But that couldn't happen if he didn't think that Sho was cool so Sho had to figure out how to do this!

Sho could do this.

He could do a lot of things. He could do a lot of things and…and he may not have been even half the prodigy that big sis was but he could still do things. She couldn't do stuff like this. She couldn't see with her aura, she had never even tried, and she never tried new stuff. Sure she had really strong telekinesis and stuff but she had really bad control. Dad was always saying, had been saying for their entire lives, that big sis had rally bad control. She had bad control over her emotions and she had bad control over her powers and that was what made her weak and…

And Sho knew that he should not have given a…a fuck…about what dad thought.

Sho was himself. He shouldn't have cared if dad thought that his control was good or if he thought that Sho would be a good leader of the world, which was why he had called him leader, or if he only had Sho and was going to make him leader of the world because he was the only boy, or if he even remembered that Sho had been born in the first place…or if…if he cared or….or….

Sho didn't care.

He didn't give a fuck…and he could say that word if he wanted to. Fukuda was…he couldn't see far enough to Fukuda's house…but he could see far enough to next door. Shimazaki let him curse. Shimazaki had taught him how to curse. How you didn't call a guy a bitch and you didn't call a woman a bastard and how you could use fuck as a noun or a verb or an adjective and how you could just say fuck when you were out of ideas and also how you shouldn't call someone a cock sucker unless you wanted to fight and how things could be damned or goddamned but they couldn't be damned or goddamned in the same sentence…

Sho's aura was getting all fuzzy.

He wasn't mad. He wasn't mad but…but his control wasn't as good. His aura was fuzzy and his vision, well aura vision, was getting fuzzy. He could still see Shimazaki, though, and he was near Minegishi. They were all close and….and they were both in the same bed…and now Sho felt mad. He opened his eyes and tried to start counting…and he couldn't get past five. Why was he so mad? He and big sis shared a bed sometimes. He and big sis shared a bed when one of them was feeling bad about something so it was ok. It was ok and…and they were brother and sister so that was ok. Shimazaki and Minegishi weren't brother and…whatever Minegishi was. They were just friends and…and just friends couldn't sleep together in the same bed. That was only for brothers and sisters or married people….and Shimazaki said that he was never getting married. He said that there were too many people out there to settle on just one. He said that settling on just one person was like going to a buffet and only eating one food. So that meant that he wasn't trying to be married to Minegishi or anything like that…but they were still way too close…

They were friends.

But Sho and Shimazaki were friends too. They were friends too and they had never had a sleepover before. They had never…Sho gets kind of red when he thinks about sleeping in the same bed as Shimazaki…because he's ten now. He's ten years old and ten year olds sleep in the same bed. They sleep in their own beds or sometimes with their sisters to make their sisters feel better but they did not even think about sleeping next to their friends. That was weird.

Sho was weird.

He could be so weird sometimes. He hated it when he felt like this. He hated the way that his aura hiccupped. He hated the way that he got all red. He didn't get it. He wished that he could just figure out why he was being this weird. He always got weird when the wanted to be best friends with someone. It had been this way for his entire life….well not exactly like this. This was worse than it had ever been before. He didn't get it. He didn't get it and he knew that it was weird and he just wished that it would stop. He wished that he could replace this weird feeling, it felt sort of like he had swallowed a goldfish and it was swimming around in his stomach instead of dying because stomach acid dissolved fish, with something else. Anything else.

He got his wish.

He could still only see in one direction with his aura. That was something he would have to unlearn, Shimazaki had said, and maybe Sho should have been working harder at unlearning it. He really should have been working harder at unlearning it because now…now he could feel an aura pressing down onto his…and he knew that aura. He was not scared…he wasn't scared much. Not too much. Dad was….dad could be scary…but Sho hadn't given him a reason to punish him….

But dad didn't always need a reason.

"Son. Explain." Said dad. Dad always just told him to explain like he just expected Sho to know what he meant. Well he didn't, he had no clue what dad had meant, because he had been doing a lot of things. He had been drawing and trying to see with his aura and also trying to count to make the weird feelings go away…he had been doing a lot.

And also he didn't even know how to explain.

He had been doing all of that because of feelings but dad didn't understand feelings. He knew that people had them but he, himself, did not have them. At least not that Sho could see. He was mad, mostly, but big sis said that she had seen him happy. She said that she had even seen him smile. That…that was not something that Sho could even imagine. Dad…smiling? What next, a fish riding a bike? Shibata watching the stove so that his food didn't burn on one side? Big sis not making him take a bath every single night even though he wasn't that dirty and she knew how he felt about water?

Dad wouldn't have been able to understand even if Sho had been able to explain.

"I'm making my Christmas cards." Said Sho. He held up the card that he had been drawing. This one was for big sis. It had Elsa on it and also cats because big sis liked Elsa and cats even though hamsters were better pets than cats because they were little and cute and also Merida the arrow princess was better than Elsa because she had red hair and arrows and also there wasn't any of that boring stuff in her movie about love and stuff. Dad's card would be plain. Just the Claw symbol and Merry Christmas. That was all. He didn't really care about Christmas.

He didn't care about anyone other than himself.

"I can see that but that is not what I was referring to. I felt your aura earlier. Why?" asked dad. He didn't seem mad. He didn't seem like he was anything. He was just normal. Normal dad…which was worse than angry dad. At least when he was angry it was the longest possible time before he could be angry with you again. Dad being all normal sucked because he could be mean to you at any time, he could be angry with you at any time, and he could hit you at any time….but Sho didn't care. He had been bit before and he could take it.

"Because I was trying to see with my aura like Shimazaki does." Said Sho with a shrug. He waited for dad to get mad at him for no reason like he always did. He didn't. Sho didn't know how to feel about that. He almost wished that dad would call him a failure or hit him or something. Just to get it out of the way.

"Oh? And how did that go?" asked dad. He didn't seem mad. He didn't seem like anything. Sho had a crazy thought. Maybe he could just make dad mad. Say something mean or stupid or just throw something or yell or…or something. Anything just to get dad being mad out of the way. Sometimes waiting for dad to get mad was worse than dad being mad.

"I could see as far as Shimazaki's house." Said Sho. He wondered if that would make dad mad. Dad must have been able to see much farther with his aura. He was the most powerful esper alive after all. Dad must have been able to see as far as Shimazaki if not farther. Shimazaki could see farther with his aura than Sho could see with his eyes. Like this one time when they had been in the woods together looking for birds to play with and he had found a nest at the very top of a tall tree and it had been so far away….and Sho hadn't even been able to see it from the ground or hear the babies…but Shimazaki had found it. He was the most awesome person who ever lived. Sho wished that he could have been over at his house, even if Minegishi was there, because anywhere was better than being near dad.

"Impressive." Said dad. Sho didn't know how to feel about that. Why was dad calling him that? Why say 'impressive' like it was nothing. Dad…he didn't tell lies….but he was just so….Sho didn't even know what dad was. He just knew that he had to say something before dad popped him over the head for being rude.

"Yeah, I know." Said Sho. He said it with the same shrug that Shimazaki would have. He was so cool like that. Nothing scared him, not even dad, and dad had made him bleed. Sho looked at dad with the same sort of 'nothing in the world could ever scare me because I'm me' sort of energy that Shimazaki had. He was not going to show dad that he was afraid. He would take whatever was coming to him. After all why else would dad bother talking to him? Dad hadn't even been able to remember his birthday….but he could remember how much of a failure that Sho was…how he would never be even half the prodigy that big sis was….

"Is that for your sister?" asked dad. He pointed to the card that Sho had been working on.

"Yeah, it's for big sis." Said Sho with a shrug. He wondered if dad wanted him to stand…well he wasn't going to do it. If dad wanted him to stand up then he would just have to make him. Maybe this would be the thing to set him off. Maybe once he had been set off Sho could just take his punishment and then relax.

"She'll like it. It has the ice queen on it. That's her favorite movie." Said dad. Sho…he knew that he needed to count. He knew that he needed to stay calm and start counting and go somewhere small and dark so he could make his brain be quiet…and he KNEW that he needed to keep his mouth shut….because he could feel his mouth making words…and he was too slow to make them stop…and then they came out-

"So you can remember her favorite movie but you can't remember my birthday?" asked Sho. He covered his mouth as soon as he said that. He put his hand over his mouth and looked up at dad. He waited for dad's aura to flare. He waited for dad to hit him or throw him or yell at him or tell him that he was a failure and that if hadn't been his son he would have been replaced a long time ago….

But none of that happens.

"I know your birthday. It's December first." Said dad. Sho's aura was the one that was flaring. Sho's hands were the ones balling into fists. Sho was the one to jump to his feet. Sho was the one to jab an angry finger in dad's direction. Sho was the one who had lost control. Sho was the one who was about to start hitting. How could he? How could he?! That….that bastard! That fucking bastard! That bastard fuck! That…that other bad words that he was having trouble remembering!

"If you knew when my birthday was then why didn't you day anything!? Why did you wait a whole week before you said anything!?" shouted Sho. Now dad's eyes were narrowed. Sho lowered his arm and took a step back. He could feel his drawing under his feet. He could feel dad's aura flaring against his. He was in for it.

"I am well aware of the date of your birth. I was there when they fileted your mother like a fish to get you out of her. I know that you were born on December first. I just hadn't realized that the first had passed, I have other things to worry about beside you, but I never forgot that you were born on the first. I told you 'happy birthday' once Fukuda brought the date to my attention and I had the Awakened bring you a gift. My part is done. Also lower your voice before you wake your sister up. She needs her rest." Said dad. Sho glared up at him. That was all that he could do. Dad was so big and he was so little….so all he could do was glare at up dad with his fist clenched at his sides.

"All you care about is big sis. You don't care about me at all. That's why you forgot my birthday." Said Sho. He was all but daring dad to hit him now. At least if dad hit him it would be over with. He could get hit and then get healed by Fukuda and then he could spend the rest of the day drawing and relaxing because it was the longest possible time before he got hit again. That was why he said that, all of that, because he didn't care one bit if dad liked big sis best or forgot his birthday or any of that stuff. He didn't care.

He really didn't.

"I care about you as well. I care about you because you are my child and I want you to become an adult. I care about you. I care FOR your sister but I care ABOUT you….and I just told you that I remember that you were born on the first. I simply hadn't noticed the first passing. That's all. Now keep your voice down and let your sister sleep…and don't antagonize her when she wakes up. I'm leaving. You're going to be tiresome today, I can tell, so you just stay here with her. I'll have Shimazaki stay behind too. He's good at keeping you entertained. Goodbye Son. I'll see you at dinnertime. Don't deconstruct your food, it's strange, and it makes your sister anxious." Said dad. He said all of that and then he just left and…and he just left.

He left Sho standing in the middle of the room.

He was….he was and and…and he threw himself down onto the ground. He threw himself down onto the ground and pulled his shirt up over his head and started counting. He kept losing count at around three so he had to start again. He counted and counted and tried his best to keep on counting and…and it was hard…

He tried his best.

He tried to think of nothing, like the book had said, but his brain kept on going back to what dad had said. About how he knew Sho's birthday…that wasn't the point! Knowing the date was pointless if you didn't say 'happy birthday' on that day! Otherwise what was even the point of having special days!? Why not just say Merry Christmas in July and Happy Children's Day in April and Happy New Year in March and-and-and-

And he needed to calm down.

He closed his eyes and got back to counting. He counted and he tried to redirect his thoughts, that was from the book too. He thought about something else. He thought about…not about big sis that would just make him even madder…he thought about how he could spend the whole day with Shimazaki. How they could spend the day at his house…even if Minegishi would probably be there sitting in the corner and reading and being annoying with their reading and making Shimazaki pay attention to them and stuff…well Sho could deal with that. Big sis would keep them distracted, they were her best friend just like their matching bracelets said, and then Sho would be able to hang out with just Shimazaki and they could be best friends and hang out all the time…

He felt better.

Thinking about Shimazaki always made him feel better. They were good friends like that. They were good enough friends that they could hang out together and not need anyone else at all. Nope. Just him and his best friend. That was normal. Big sis hung out with Minegishi all alone all the time. That was normal. Sho was normal. The way he felt was normal. The goldfish in his stomach feeling was normal. Everyone felt like this about their best friend. They must have. They just never talked about it because it was so normal. He liked this feeling….he liked it because it took away the bad, twisted up, feelings that dad left him with. So it was ok to feel like this. it was good to feel like this. As long as the feeling he had inside of himself wasn't anger then it was ok to feel like this. He liked feeling like this.

Sho didn't care if dad had forgotten his birthday, or at least ignored it, because he at least had a best friend who remembered.


	239. New Roommate

Hatori was used to moving.

Claw was nothing but moving. He was moved around, ping ponged around, between HQs and Divisions and cells and bases all the time. He was the most powerful technopath in all of Claw. He was useful to a lot of people and that meant that he didn't get a permanent posting anywhere. That was fine. He was used to it. That was why he didn't complain when he woke up to an awakened standing over him waving a piece of paper in his face detailing his new assignment.

He knew that Tokyo wasn't going to be forever.

This was a damn good posting. An actual city that he could occasionally emerge from HQ and explore, the Awakened were morons here, not that culty, so there was that, the cafeteria was awesome, and the internet was stable and plentiful. But it was whatever. He had moved before and he would move again. He had no idea what this new posting was, it was just an address, but that was normal too. Sometimes he was just sent somewhere and then he got briefed when he got there. So this was normal. Him packing what little he owned up and then leaving was normal. Him sitting in a random car going down a random road was normal.

This was normal.

He had no idea where he was going but he had a good idea. They had been trying to rebuild the Eighth Division for a while and people were being diverted there. He was fully expecting to get out of this car at the airport and to have to get on one of those tiny planes and be able to relax, and maybe scare the pilots a bit, before touching down at the Eighth Division. What he had not been expecting was that instead of going to the airport, an airport, he instead was being taken into the suburbs of Tokyo. He didn't ask questions, though, because Claw was not the place for curious people. They tended not to last long and he wanted to last long so he kept his burning questions to himself.

Besides, it wasn't like the driver was going to answer them.

So instead he watched the world blur by. He watched the houses get smaller and more spread apart, he watched the city proper disappear behind him, and he watched the other cars pass him as he went off to…he didn't even know where. Maybe he had to do the wifi at another Claw neighborhood. There were neighborhoods that Claw owned to house the upper echelon as well as other important people. Unimportant people like him lived at the HQ. Important people got houses and apartments and stuff. He would never truly be in the upper echelon, he may have been powerful but he was totally useless in a fight, so he never would have guessed what his new assignment would be.

Well, maybe, because he had been warned.

He had been dropped off in front of a house. It was a house that looked just like the ones beside and across from it. Just an unassuming house in an unassuming neighborhood. This place was so unassuming, in fact, that Hatori had not been planning on assuming anything as he stood there ankle deep in the snow while the December wind cut right through his sweater….he needed to invest in a proper jacket…and he did not make any assumptions when he was handed his things, pointed in the direction of the house they had stopped in front of, and not even when the driver peeled out of there like he was auditioning for the live action Speed Racer movie.

He knew those auras.

But he still assumed nothing. Nothing at all. Even though all signed pointed to Minegishi having had been telling him the truth. He was…they had told him that because he had made friends with Suzuki's daughter he would be added to the Suzuki family entourage….and that made no sense. Suzuki surrounded himself with the most powerful espers in the world because he respected…or at least valued, power. He didn't just add people to his personal entourage because his kids like them…right?

Right?

But all signs pointed to that house being his new home. He could feel…there was Little Sister-sama's aura…and her brother's…as well as Minegishi's, which he had no problem with, but also two auras he mostly know in passing…and two auras which he knew that he should have run away from. Shibata Hiroshi and Shimazaki Ryou. Well, ok, Shibata was a nice guy but Shimazaki…Hatori could read and he had read files and he knew what Shimazaki did to people….what he could do to people…and what he did to people that he didn't like…

He could maybe make a run for it and spend the remainder of his life in a traitor hole…

"Hatori! Hi!" a door opened. The door of the house next door opened. Little Sister-sama ran out…and slipped….but then caught herself. The little brother stuck his head out and waved. Little Sister-sama zipped up her coat as she practically ran over towards him.

"Hey, Little Sister-sama….you live here?" asked Hatori. He was having a lot of trouble not making any assumptions. He knew how this looked but…but he couldn't have just been promoted to the near top of Claw because he was friends with the President's daughter….right? Or was this what they called 'networking'? He didn't know. All he knew was that there was a very red and chilly looking ten year old in front of him and he knew that he didn't look much better. He was in jeans, gym shoes, and a sweater. She was beet red and she had on more layer than he did.

He needed to get inside….but he didn't want to.

For one thing he didn't want to have to hang out with Shimazaki Ryou. Everyone….well everyone who wasn't an Awakened, had a story about that man. Even some of the Awakened did. He started fights for fun. He dropped people off the roof and didn't always catch them for fun. He had a weird temper and you never knew what would set him off or if he was even serious about being upset. He may have had something weird going on with the President's daughter at some point…though he thinks that she would have told him that if it were true…but still! Also he had something going on with Minegishi and Minegishi had rejected Hatori before he could even ask them out so there was awkwardness there….

He wondered how quickly he could get himself demoted back to tech support.

"Yes, I live in that house. The one with Sho in it. He doesn't want to come outside. He and Shimazaki are locked in a game of wits, he said, which just means that Shimazaki keeps on teleporting really close and putting snow down his back….because it snowed again and Shimazaki can be like that sometimes….but you should tell him if you don't like it and then he'll stop. That's the thing about him, you have to tell him when something is bothering you and…and…um….are you cold? I'm cold. Here, I'll carry your stuff for you and we can go inside…inside of your house…not my house. My house is mine and…and you can visit if you want but not when dad's home because he hates guests…and…um….you live there now!" she said. She picked up his things with her powers, he only had the back pack and the rolling bag but still she shouldn't have been making things float in public like that, and practically ran to the house next to hers. The house that he had been dropped off in front of….the house with all of the auras inside of it…of people that he didn't dislike but didn't know well enough, or knew too well, to just be living with….

He was trying as hard as he could not to make assumptions….but it was hard not to make assumptions when the boss's daughter was leading him to the house that, apparently, Suzuki's entire entourage lived in.

This was…something. He had jumped through the ranks of Claw in a day, all of them, and now he was as high as he could go without killing and replacing Suzuki…which he would not be doing because he had read the mission reports. He knew how well that went. He knew how well it would go if he tried and he didn't even want to try…even though that would get him demoted…if he even wanted to be demoted. This was what he had wanted, a better job, but…but this was going to be awkward as hell….

For all involved.

"Oh hell no." said Minegishi. Hatori hadn't even had time to take his shoes off in the genkan. Minegishi had stood in front of him, crossed their arms, and just stared glaring. Hatori looked away. They had a powerful glare, like they were looking right through him, and he couldn't even put up a barrier let alone withstand such onslaught.

"Minegishi, please be nice. Hatori is my friend and he could be your friend too if you gave him a chance…also I think he's going to be living with you forever so maybe it would be best if you guys at least got along." Said Little Sister-sama. She was standing in front of Minegishi now, like she was protecting him from their glare, or maybe she was negating it. Minegishi's face got a lot softer, and their aura a lot less sharp, when they started talking to Suzuki-sama.

"Mob, did you have something to do with this?" asked Minegishi. The only way Hatori could describe their tone was 'long suffering'. They looked like they wanted to go back to bed. It was only nine in the morning after all, they could have, and maybe that would have been best. Hatori had been shot down plenty of times before. Usually he just ended up never talking to the girl…person…ever again. He got shot down and that was the end of it.

But now he had to LIVE with them.

Awkward. They had said three words to him and it was already awkward. They had said three words to him and, yeah, message received. They didn't want this either? Who wanted to live with the person who shot them down? Or the person who they had shot down? Plus they had their…boyfriend? Friend with benefits? Really close co-worker? Whatever the hell Shimazaki was to them living in the same house. This was….awkward.

Awkward as hell.

"Um…kind of? I didn't exactly ask dad to add Hatori to the group. We were just hanging out yesterday, dad says that we can only hang out on Sundays now from midnight to midnight, and we accidentally got logged out of our Netflix and dad's not good at that kind of stuff and then I said that if we have someone like Hatori around then we wouldn't have these problems…and now he lives here." Said Little Sister-sama. Hatori blinked. So he was….he was the Netflix guy? Well he had been the Netflix guy before. He had also been the 'my YouTube video froze guy' and the 'why won't this dvd player read an HD dvd I got on clearance in the states?' guy and the 'I'm too lazy to blow into my game cartridge you fix it' guy….so being Suzuki's 'remember my Netflix password' guy wasn't so out of the ordinary. He hoped to God that he never became Suzuki's 'my laptop won't work and it has nothing to do with all the porn on it oh my God I have no idea where all this pregnant cat girl tentacle monster porn came from' guy.

He had been in Suzuki's history before. The worst he had on his computer were pictures of some brown haired woman in a folder marked 'important do not open'.

"Mob….you know better than to give your dad ideas. Please, for the love of God, never give him ideas again. Now I have to live with this-" said Minegishi. Hatori wanted to tell them that he wasn't thrilled with this either. He wanted to tell them that they had nothing to worry about, he knew that nothing was going to happen between them, and he wanted to tell them, too, that he was going to avoid them for the rest of his life just to keep the awkwardness levels low.

He, however, did not get a chance to say anything.

His range wasn't good. His aura mostly just travelled through electrical paths, circuits and such, so he didn't sense Shibata coming up behind him silently like an assassin and picking him up like he weighed nothing. Shibata hooked him under the armpits and picked him up and then just held him there at eye level.

"We have a new roommate!" said Shibata before he pulled Hatori into what as either a hug or an attempt as forcing his skeleton out of his body through sheer strength. His glasses fell off and he braced himself for the crunch of breaking glass but instead felt an aura pass over him. Little Sister-sama had caught his glasses with her powers and had brought them back up to his face. She had put them on him crooked but he could still see Minegishi literally face palming.

"Wee World." Said Minegishi. Shibata's aura pulled in close, a fear response some espers had, and immediately dropped Hatori. Little Sister-sama caught him and gently put him back down on his feet. She had managed to catch him, a grown man, and put him down….she could lift something as heavy as a person with telekinesis. He forgot, sometimes, how strong of an esper she was. How much stronger she was compared to him…but now he realized it. He was weak. Not just compared to her but to everyone else in the room…the house…even in most of Claw barring the Awakened….

He was in over his head.

"Oh shit! Sorry….just…I got excited. I had no idea we were getting a new roommate! Man….if I knew you were coming I'd of baked a cake…" said Shibata. Hatori resisted the urge to reach behind himself and straighten out his back. How was he that strong? And he hadn't even been using his powers, either….

He was in way over his head.

"Why don't you go and do that now?" asked Minegishi. Everything about them said that they wanted to be left alone. He would have left if he could but he wasn't about to go and disobey Suzuki like that…well people could live long lives in the traitor holes….but he didn't want to live in a traitor hole. He didn't much want to live here but he didn't want to live in a traitor hole either….

Cake sounded nice, though.

"I like cake. Sho does too." Said Little Sister-sama. She was such a little kid…and he couldn't blame her for this. She maybe have given her dad the idea to add Hatori to the upper echelon but she hadn't thought it through. Like now. She just wanted him around to be her friend and hang out with her. She didn't think of how awkward…well no, she didn't even know what had happened between him and Minegishi and she probably had no idea what, if anything, was happening between Shimazaki and Minegishi right now because he was ten and stuff, so he didn't fault her for any of this.

On the bright side at least he had someone to play co-op with whenever he felt like it…so….yay?

"That's a great idea! But the new guy should pick which kind. It's his first day in the house after all. What kind of cake do you like?" asked Shibata. He was WAY too close…and Hatori did not think that he could survive another hug…but he didn't show fear. Shibata was a nice guy and he was offering to bake him a cake so, yeah, calm the hell down Nozomu.

"Uh…chocolate?" said Hatori. He didn't much want cake but he did want some room to breathe. He was in over his head. He knew that he was in over his head. He had no idea how not to be in over his head. He was…he was a member of the upper echelon now….and not only that but a member of the Suzuki family's personal entourage….

He felt a little dizzy.

"Hatori Nozomu….I think that you and I are going to get along just fine." Said Shibata. Hatori prayed to whatever God cared to listen that Shibata didn't try and pick him up again…and thankfully he hadn't. He practically skipped over into the next room…which Hatori assumed was the kitchen. There. At least could breathe a little bit better now….

"So. This is a thing that's happening. I have no clue where you're going to sleep or how one bathroom is supposed to be enough for four people but this is a thing that's happening." Said Minegishi

"He can sleep with me!" said Little Sister-sama. Her aura flared out and then pulled in really close after she said that. It was cute. She was ten, she was starting to get things, but he knew what she meant. She didn't mean it like that. She was only ten.

"Mob, slow the fuck down." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes. God…they were so…he needed to stop looking at them like that because they lived in the same house and they had already rejected him and made it perfectly clear that there was more hope for Suzuki's crazy take over the world dream to bear fruit than there was of anything happening between the two of them.

"I-I meant that he can have my bed and then I can sleep with Sho…because we can still fit in the same bed even though we're both ten…this is the part of the year when we're the same age…and that's what I meant…that he can have my bed…I don't think that my dad would notice since he has a little aura…not to be mean or anything…." Said Little Sister-sama

"Uh-huh, sure. Anyway someone else can get his sleeping arrangements sorted out. I'm going back to bed, wake me when the cake is done." Said Minegishi

"But you said that sugar is poison." Said Little Sister-sama

"I know what I said." Said Minegishi. They didn't even look at him as they went down the hallway and back to what Hatori assumed was their room. He wondered how many bedrooms this place had…and also where he was going to be sleeping. He could see the couch from this vantage point…and it looked like it was trying to eat itself. Not a good night's sleep at all…

He had no idea what he was supposed to do now.

"Um….Minegishi likes chocolate. I mean that's why they want the cake…because they like chocolate. I like chocolate too…and so do you….and that's something that we have in common…and also you live right next door…which is something else that we have in common and…and stuff…" Little Sister-sama was rambling again. She did that sometimes. She was nervous but he had no idea about what. He was the nervous one. He had no idea what he was going to do or…or anything! Not that he was freaking out. So far, so good. Shibata was nice and Minegishi was Minegishi and he hadn't done anything awkward so…so this was pretty good. So far so good.

Maybe this would go well.

Yeah, this could be ok. His job just got a hell of a lot easier. He didn't have to deal with the Awakened anymore, he didn't have to sleep in a room with three other guys…most of whom had never seen a can of lynx in their lives…and he didn't have to do his laundry in the communal laundromat anymore…and no more communal showers…and also he lived next door to a couple of very nice kids…and his career was going well…he had gotten as high as he could go and he was only nineteen…but in a good way…

Maybe this would be ok.

There was some shouting from the outside. He felt two auras pass right over him. He stumbled back a little bit. Little Sister-sama steadied him. She was so strong…everyone there was so strong. He hated this feeling, knowing how weak he was. He couldn't even put up a barrier. His powers were useful, in a practical sense, but did nothing at all for him in a place like Claw…but now he was expected to be a member of the upper echelon?

He was in so far above his head that he was going to drown.

"That's my brother and Shimazaki. They're having a snow fight again, I think…but not a real one! Don't worry. Sometimes my brother can seem kind of mean but that's just because he gets mad a lot. He gets that from our dad but he's also a lot nicer than our dad and he already likes you so you'll be ok…um…and Shimazaki is really nice, too. He knows a lot of things about a lot of things. Also he has a lot of neat stuff that makes you feel happy and sleepy and stuff and he loves to share…oh! And if you bring him a can of coke or a pudding cup then he'll be friends with you. He can be a little annoying sometimes, he has a condition where if people aren't paying attention to him he forgets that he exists, so he annoys people just so that they'll pay attention to him and stuff….but he's still a very nice person." Said Little Sister-sama. Hatori was not about to just tell her everything that he knew about Shimazaki Ryou. How his father had been called The Shogun's Executioner and what he had done to earn that title…what Shimazaki had ended up doing for the yakuza back before Claw….all of what he had done….the things that he had done after joining Claw….

She was a ten year old girl in a princess dress and braids. She didn't need to know these things.

He wasn't going to tell her the truth about her friend, no, he had been about to tell her that he was sure that he and Shimazaki would end up being friends, a bold faced lie but a necessary one, when the energy around him shifted…

"What the fuck are you doing in my fucking house you mother fucker?" asked Shimazaki. Hatori wondered if he should have been cursing so much in front of a child. He wondered if he should have been standing so close. He wondered, too, if he should have been opening his eyes like that….because all he had were empty eye sockets and Hatori had known that but knowing and seeing were two different things…and just having his eyes opened like that could not have been healthy…for either of them…

He got the distinct feeling that his life had just gotten a lot shorter.

"I-I live here now?" asked Hatori. There was no point in trying to sound tough. He had never killed anyone and he never would. Shimazaki on the other hand had been doing this since he was at least fourteen. He was thirty now so he had spent half of his life making stronger, more powerful men than Hatori disappear. He took a step to the side…right beside Little Sister-sama. He was relying on a little girl to protect him…but he needed to stop thinking like that. She may have been a little girl but she was also the second most powerful esper alive and if she was going to keep him safe then he would not be ashamed of hiding beside a little girl.

"He lives here now so please be nice to him….and also maybe say fewer bad words too. Dad says that he lives here now and since dad decided it then…then he can't go and since he can't go I think that you should be nice to him, ok?" asked Little Sister-sama. She could be very commanding for someone so small. Not like her dad, that man was terrifying, she was more…fair? Fair was a word that fit…sort of. She didn't dictate, she asked, but she asked firmly and for things that were fair. Not like her dad telling people to jump out of windows just because some woman went missing and, obviously, did not want to be found and Hatori had been sixteen and it had been is first major mission anyway and…and he was not going to get himself all worked up over that again.

"You want me to be nice to him?" asked Shimazaki. There was something in his tone and his aura that Hatori didn't trust at all.

"Yes. Please be as nice to him as you would be to anyone else and please don't treat him any different just because he's new." said Little Sister-sama

"So you want me to treat him like everyone else….ok. I can do that." Said Shimazaki. Hatori did not like the way that he said that, he did not like the way that he teleported away, and he especially did not like what he did when he came back three seconds later.

"Shimazaki! I said to be nice and that wasn't very nice at all." said Little Sister-sama, her aura flaring and her hair trying to float up to the ceiling. She may have said something else, too, but he didn't hear it. He wasn't paying attention. He was too busy jumping around trying to get the cold, wet, hell of out his sweater. That…that…that Hatori didn't even have the words for it! He put SNOW down his BACK like they were in elementary school! What the hell!

Though it had been, literally, the least that he could have done.

"You said to treat him like everyone else. Ergo I put snow down his back to make him feel like everyone else." Said Shimazaki. He smirked when he said that. He smirked but at least his eyes were closed now. His eyes were closed and the snow had turned back to water, so Hatori was uncomfortable but not…not like he had been before…and he wanted to say something or do something but he knew that he didn't have a chance again Shimazaki Ryou. Very few people did.

"Please say that you're sorry. He didn't know that you were playing snow fight with him and he's probably very annoyed or even scared. I can't tell, his aura is hard to read, but I do know that you should tell him sorry for what you did even if you didn't mean to make him upset." said Little Sister-sama. She was one of the only people who had a chance against him. Was that why he respected her? Or were they just good friends like that? Hatori didn't know. He'd figure out their dynamic later when the back of his sweater wasn't sticking to him and he wasn't shivering in the middle of the front room wondering how his life had gotten to this point and trying to figure out how he felt about it.

"Hatori…I'm sorry that you took me putting snow down your back in a bad way. I didn't mean it to be a jerk, I meant it because I like putting snow down people's backs, and if you're going to be living in this house then you need to get used to having snow put down your back. Welcome to the house." Said Shimazaki. He decided, again, that the best way to make his point was to invade Hatori's personal space. He didn't know what to do, what to say, and he didn't even have the chance to do or say anything before Shimazaki teleported away.

That had been…something.

That had been something and this whole morning had been something and he hadn't even been up for two hours! How was he supposed to make it through the whole day!? And tomorrow! And the next day too!? What was he even supposed to do and where was he even supposed to sleep and-and-and what was he even supposed to-to-to-

He was in over his head.

He had been in the middle of quickly freaking out when he felt something being pressed into his hand. It was cold and cylindrical and…and he could feel the wiring inside of it. A small battery attached to a heating element…he opened his eyes. He hadn't even realized that he'd closed them. He opened them and looked down at what her been pressed into his hand.

"That's my vape pen. You can have some if you want. Your aura is little and hard to read but I could tell that you were scared. It's ok, I understand. You're not as good of friends with everyone else and it can be scary being in a new place with people you don't know that well. It's ok. The vape will help. You just hold down the button down and breathe really deep until your lungs get full. Then you hold it in until you can't anymore. That's all, it's easy." Said Little Sister-sama. Hatori did what he was told. He had vaped before, he wasn't sure how it would help, but he would try anything at this point.

He wished that he hadn't.

That tasted godawful, smelled godawful, and now he had this godawful burning in his lungs. He didn't hold it in, not for very long, because he just couldn't. What the hell as she vaping?! Wait…oh. Right. She had told him, before, that she got up to things like this…even though she was only ten. Well then. This was…he was in way over his head. He was in so far over his head that he might as well just let himself drown. He had gone to bed in tech support and he had woken up a member of the Suzuki family entourage, he'd almost had his skeleton squeezed out of him, he'd had snow put down his back, he had to live with the person who had shot him down in the worst and most thorough way possible, and now a ten year old was trying to get him high….

Hatori Nozomu knew that he was in above his head, well above, and he knew that there was nothing at all that he could do but let himself drown.

There was nothing to do now but try and get used to it.


	240. Midnight to Midnight

Sunday was their day.

Dad had said that Sundays were the days that they would spend together. That was what Sunday was now. Sunday was their day. From one midnight to another they had to spend the day together. Mob wasn't complaining. This was better than dad smothering her and ignoring her. She didn't know why dad had picked Sunday, or what had made him ignore her in the first place, or what had made him want to be best friends with her…to give her so much of his love and attention that she hadn't been able to even breathe….but all of that was over now.

Now she and dad were together again.

"Dad, you're on my side of the world." Said Mob

"So I am." Said Suzuki

"Do you have to be?" asked Mob

"Yes. I need this body of water." Said Suzuki

"Are you making a pool?" asked Mob. Dad was building on her side of the world again. That was ok. It was mostly his world now because she had been away for so long. She didn't really mind. She and Sho had their own world that they had been working on with Hatori. She wasn't going to tell dad about that world, though, because he would just take it over. That was what dad did, he took over worlds, that was just how he was.

"No, a lake." Said Suzuki. This was their second Sunday together. Fukuda really had the best ideas. Sunday was the best time of the week. He could spend time with Daughter without damaging her development. She would be able to be independent but also he would be able to spend time with her. He would have to reward Fukuda in some way later.

"Are you going to go fishing?" asked Mob. She leaned over to see dad's screen. The bed groaned as little as she moved. Dad's bed had more springs, it felt like, than hers. Her bed was softer and easier to sink into. She liked beds like that. Dad liked hard beds. She had forgotten how hard his bed was, it had been a while since she had shared his bed, but she was happy to be there with him now. She could go back to her bed later. That made this better. This whole thing was better because it wouldn't be forever.

"No. I just wanted to dig a lake." Said Suzuki. She was leaning over to see his screen even though she had her own laptop balanced on her knees. He let her. He was just grateful to be near to her. When she was near her just felt…better. Calmer. He didn't know what had been wrong with him but whatever it was it had gotten better as soon as she was near him again. He just felt so….

Content.

That was the word for it. He felt content when he was with her. She made him feel content in a way that he had not felt for years. Maybe it was because when she was near her knew that she was safe and happy. That mattered to him, her safety and happiness, because he was her father and he was supposed to be invested in her safety and happiness. That was all. He didn't need her. He didn't need anyone. He just had a job to do so he was going to go ahead and do it. That was all. And he only felt content because when she was near he knew that he was doing what he was supposed to do.

So there.

"Oh…ok. You can have it then." Said Mob. She didn't mind that much. It wasn't like this was her only Minecraft world and also dad was happy and she wanted him to be happy. That was her job, to make him happy, because that way if he was happy then he wasn't mad and if he wasn't mad then he wasn't going to take it out on Sho. Sho had been…not happy…lately. Because dad forgot his birthday. Well dad remembered that his birthday was on the first but he didn't remember that the first had passed…which to Mob was the same as forgetting Sho's birthday all together.

But she didn't tell dad that.

She had wanted to tell dad that he had to say 'sorry' to Sho. She had wanted to tell dad that Sho's feelings had been hurt and this his feelings mattered and that he mattered and that I was wrong of dad to make him feel like he didn't matter. She wanted to tell dad that since he had this much love to give then he should have been giving it to both of his kids equally because they were both equally is kids. She had wanted to tell dad that it was wrong to make Sho feel bad and that when Sho felt bad he got angry and…and that could be a little bit scary sometimes. Even though Mob knew that no matter how angry her little brother got he would always still love her….she still got a little scared sometimes when he got angry.

She still had scars on her arms from the last time she had made him mad.

"Thank you, Daughter." Said Suzuki. He would have to build her something because he was encroaching on her territory. He had said that he wouldn't but he was, he needed her resources, but he would make it up to her if this bothered her. She took these things very seriously, games, because she was a child. She had always taken her games very seriously. He could remember a time when she had been very small and he had taught her to play Chinese checkers. She had been a terrible player at first and she had gotten so upset, her aura had anyway, when she lost…so then he went easy on her because she had only been five or six at the time. Very small.

She was not so very small now.

But he still enjoyed the games they played. He and Masami had never done things like this together. Well they had played endless games of Go in the beginning. She had been good at it. But then Son had come along and then Daughter and then Claw had grown and then he'd had to leave home more and more…and he just hadn't been able to spend time with Masami like this. He wished that he'd spent more time like this with her while he'd still had the chance to. He'd had no idea that he'd been on a time limit with her, that she would be gone from his life in a few short years, but at least he knew now that he was on a time limit with Daughter.

Because one day he would wake up and instead of their being a little girl there next to him there would be a grown woman.

She'd be a grown woman and she would want to leave him. She wouldn't want to play games and watch movies and chatter on endlessly about the antics of her companions and younger brother. She would want to leave him and travel the world, he knew that he'd had a sort of wanderlust in him back in his younger days and she was his child after all, and she would want to be alone and independent, which he was supposed to want, but also she would meet someone and then she'd marry him and have his children and then he would never see him again and-

Exorcism of his emotions.

Those days were long in the future. He reminded himself that those days were long in the future. She was not Masami. He knew, he knew for a fact, that the day would come when Daughter would leave him. After all that was the natural order of things. Children changed and grew and grew away from their parents. She would grow and she would want to leave….so he would give her every reason to stay. There was the stick and there was the carrot and she responded best to the carrot. She was not Son. He wasn't going to smack her upside the head to get her to bend to his will, the thought of striking her makes him feel physically ill, but he would give her every reason to stay. That was why she had added someone new to her collection of companions and why he had promoted her within the family and also why he spent time with her like this.

He was not going to give her any reason to leave.

And he was going to give her every reason to stay. He had no idea why Masami had left. He had no idea where she had gone to. What he did know was that he was just…tired. He was getting of her haunting him. She was like a persistent spirit…but a wanted one. He wished that…that she had actually been haunting him. That way if she had died then he would have at least known what had become of her. Knowing was better than not knowing and not knowing was driving him mad. He refused to lose his mind so he decided to do the only sane thing he could. He was going to make sure that history did not repeat its self.

He hadn't been able to spend the rest of his life with Masami but he would be able to spend it with Daughter.

That was why he gave her so many reasons to stay. He kept her companions near her at all time, even added a new one, and he gave her more autonomy over her life than he was comfortable with. He didn't like letting her go out into the world, something could happen to her, and she could easily leave him, too. She could just walk off into the distance and he would never see her again…but that was not going to happen because he gave her no reason to leave.

She had no reason at all to leave him. Not as a little girl she was now and not as the grown woman she would someday become.

"You're welcome dad." Said Mob. She yawned at the end there even though she had tried not to. It was one in the morning. Dad had picked her up out of bed and brought her here at midnight. That was how their Sundays went. Midnight to midnight. These were the times that she was allowed to spend with her dad.

"Are you tired?" asked Suzuki. She needed her sleep. He had miscalculated, before, that time that they had stayed up all night together. Sure it had been mutually enjoyable but he had almost ruined both of their sleep schedules and that had been wrong of him. He would let her sleep when she was tired. He so enjoyed sleeping next to her. People were most likely not meant to sleep alone. That was why, before, who families would sleep in tatami rooms. He wondered if the children….no. There was no way that he was sleeping in the same room as Son. He hadn't been able to tolerate it when he had been an infant and now, somehow, he had gotten even worse as a child. He kicked in his sleep and kept odd hours and he woke his sister up, too, which was the worst of it all. Daughter needed her sleep. She needed sleep and she needed peace and Suzuki had no clue why Son just wouldn't let her have that. He had always been a very difficult to understand person, Son, but that was alright. Suzuki didn't need to understand his Son, he just needed Son to serve his purpose, beyond that he didn't really matter.

"No, not really. We can stay up a little longer, at least until this episode is over." Said Mob. She didn't want to go to bed because she wanted to make the most of her time with dad. Dad wasn't giving her too much of his love anymore, just the right amount right now, and she wanted to enjoy it before he either gave her too much of his love and it became scary or he took all of his love away and pretended that she didn't exist.

"You've seen this already." Said Suzuki

"I know. We both have." Said Mob

"If we've both seen this already then why do you want to stay up to watch it? We both know how this is going to end." Said Suzuki

"Because I like spending time with you when you're nice like this, dad, and I don't know how you're going to be in the morning so I want to have as much fun with you as I can now." Said Mob. She knew that it was best to tell dad the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She didn't know if she would wake up and his back would be to her or if he would have pulled her close and suffocated her with his body and his aura again so she was just going to enjoy what they had together now.

"What am I like now?" asked Suzuki. He didn't feel like anything in particular. Content, yes, but he would be content with her in the morning too. He loved that, her being the last thing he saw before he went to bed and the first thing he saw when he woke up, and he couldn't think of anything that would put him in a better mood. Well seeing Masami again…no. That would be…he didn't know what he would do if he saw Masami again. If he woke up and she was laying there on Daughter's side of the bed. He would be…confused. He wanted nothing more than to just be in her presence one more time but he knew that…that it wouldn't be enough for him to just be beside her.

Masami. Explain.

He would need her to explain and…and he might not have liked the explanation. She had no reason to leave him, he had never once so much as raised his voice to her, but she had still left him and he needed to know why because he just…he could not understand why she would leave. There had been times when an insane thought had crossed his mind, that there had possibly been another man, but he exorcised those thoughts as soon as they had come to mind. He was the one who had been weak, not her, because she just was not capable of it. She would never give herself to another, not in the way that he had given himself to another, and she would never….she would never even think about that. She was Masami and she was perfect and…

And she was not real.

It's a thought that has never entered his mind before. She is real, they made a Son together so he knew that he had not just hallucinated her, but right now in this moment in time she is not real…well she is because she's a human being out there somewhere, but that's just it. She's out there somewhere. She isn't there, with him, in his bed. She isn't somewhere where he could just reach out and feel. He can't be near her, can't have her, can't hold her, can't even feel the endless soft expanse of her skin…but Daughter is there. Daughter is there and she is real and she is someone who he can reach out and feel.

So he does.

Her hair is soft. He lets his fingers find the ends of a long piece at her back. She's never cut it. It's long and soft and she's just so soft and he knows that he has more adjectives in his vocabulary but soft is the one that comes to mind. Soft. She is soft and she is there and she is someone who he can reach out and feel.

"Um…you're being nice?" asked Mob. Weird. He was being weird. He did that sometimes, just randomly touched her hair or her arm or her hand, and she didn't get it. Shimazaki used to do this to annoy her. Was dad trying to be annoying? That would have been so weird for him….and he did weird things all the time but he never just tried to annoy people….and this was weird but she wasn't going to say anything. Even if it did feel sort of…weird.

Probably because she wasn't used to dad touching her.

And dad wasn't used to other people touching him, either. Mob couldn't think of anyone who would touch him and not be scared. He didn't have any friends and mom was gone. His mom and dad were dead, he had said, and she had no idea if he had any brothers or sisters or cousins or anything. Sho certainly wouldn't touch dad or let him touch him like this. So it made sense that dad was always trying to touch her when they were together. This was fine. When you loved someone you did what you could to make them happy. Even though she didn't much like having her hair touched like this.

When Shimazaki had done it she had been annoyed but when dad did it she just felt sort of…weird.

"I'm always nice to you." Said Suzuki. He could not begin to remember the last time that he had been unkind to her. He loved her so much…and he could admit that now. Only because she wanted him to, of course. He could have gone his whole life without admitting it. It went without admitting. He cared for her. He cared for her more than he cared for anyone else living or dead. More than anyone else who is, was, and ever would be. He loved her even though he didn't want to use that word. That was her word for it, love, and it did not encompass all that he felt for her.

"Um…sometimes you can be mean, like when you would pull my hair and push me, and also…um…when you wouldn't let me see my friends and leave the HQ and stuff…but you're mostly nice to me." Said Mob. Maybe dad just didn't know how mean he was. That could have explained everything. That could have explained how mean he was to Sho and how he could be mean to her…and to everyone else…and she hoped that he was just confused about the difference between being mean and being nice. That would have been an easy fix and then she could have had a regular dad who loved her without smothering her and loved Sho and didn't hit him and stuff and also just spent time with her like normal people spent time together…not that she was complaining. She loved her dad so much….

"Oh…well I pulled your hair and pushed you in order to correct you…and because I was angry with you…but I can't see myself treating you in that way again. So you don't have to worry about that. Nothing that you do warrants punishment…and also I kept you in the HQ to keep you safe and near me. Now I realize that in keeping you near my I was hampering your independent development and I am truly sorry for my miscalculation. It is…it can be a daunting task, parenting, and you'll realize this too when you have your own children. I'm sure that you'll miscalculate too but don't worry because I'll be here and I'll keep you from failing in the same ways that I have." Said Suzuki. Daughter with her own children….he has always imagined it. Since Son had been born, and Daughter had been adopted, he had imagined their adult lives. Versions of the children that were not dependent on him for their every need. Versions of him that could carry on his legacy. Versions of himself that could carry on all that he was working for…

But he hadn't gotten versions of himself.

Son was Son. He was loud and messy. He was tiresome and quarrelsome. He was also a very talented artist, an area in life that Suzuki had never had much interest or ability in, and also he had much better social skills than Suzuki had ever had. There was so much about him that was different from both himself and Masami…and if he had been a more suspicious man he would have sworn that Son was, well, not his Son. But Masami was trustworthy and Son looked almost exactly like him so, yes, that was his child. Daughter was more like Masami than anything. She had Masami patience, her caring, her domestic skills, her sharp intelligence, and the simple perfection that…that was Masami.

Daughter had been adopted, he knew that she had been adopted since he was the one who adopted her, and he knew that she didn't share a drop of blood with Masami….

But she was so much like Masami it was uncanny. There was that same calmness and joy he felt when they were together…well not exactly the same because, obviously, this was his Daughter and not his wife but he did still feel very good when he was around her. Less like he was on the edge of an explosion. Less like he could lost control at any moment. She kept him grounded in ways that Masami used to. Well of course she was the one who kept him grounded. Now, because she was the one who was there. She was real. She was someone who he could reach out and feel.

And he would always be there with her…and she would always be there with him.

She would grow up. She would grow up and have her own children and he would be there. He hoped that she never took a spouse. Thinking of her as an adult with everything that it entailed…he did not want to think of her like that. As a grown woman. As a grown adult in the same way that he was a grown adult…with those same thoughts about the opposite sex that he had all the time that he just COULD NOT exorcise….he really doesn't want to think of that version of her. He knows that it's nature's way and if women didn't have those same feelings that men did then the species would just die out….so he knows that he can't fight nature…

But he really hoped that she never took a spouse.

He hoped that she just had a lover or several that he wouldn't be expected to meet and socialize with and eventually give his blessing too when she found her most perfect person and decided to marry. No, he would much rather she just have some lover he had no idea about and then she ended up having a child with that man, and anyone who had anything to say about his daughter getting pregnant out of wedlock would have his tongue cut out and fed to him, and then he would help her raise her child or children, he hoped she had between one and ten but really she could have as many as she wanted, and it would be wonderful. He could help her, he had been through the whole raising children thing before, and then they could just…be together. He would give Son the world maybe a bit sooner than planned. That way he would have time to enjoy his time with Daughter and her children. He could have nights like this with her all the time. They would be able to spend time together all the time like this because she would have grown up, her independent development would have been complete, and they could have spent time together like this all the time.

She would be the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes and the first thing he saw when he woke up.

Her. Not Masami. When he slept alone he woke up expecting Masami. When he went to sleep beside her he expected to see her when he woke up. Waking up beside her did not aggravate the wound that Masami had left. Holding her in his arms as she slept, he only did it because she asked him to, also healed the wound. Masami was gone, she wasn't something that he could reach out and feel, but Daughter…she was someone that he could reach out and feel. She would always be someone that he could reach out and feel…and this was alright because parents slept with their children all the time…

Though he would have to ask Fukuda later if it would be odd to share a bed with his Daughter once she stopped being a little girl and became a grown woman.

"…I don't think that I'm going to hit my kids when I'm all grown up and I have them…and also I don't want you to hit them either. I think that…that I would be upset if you hit my kids." Said Mob. No. Dad was not going to hit her kids. She would…she would hit dad if he tried to hit her kids. She had taken care of Mukai and…and if dad or anyone else tried to hit baby Mukai then…then Mob had no idea what she would do but she knew that it would be bad. Nobody hurt baby Mukai and nobody would hurt the babies that she made herself. Nobody would ever hurt her kids and…and they would be her kids. She could stop dad from hitting her kids because she had made them. She couldn't stop dad from hitting Sho because he had made Sho. She wished that there was something that she could do for Sho…something to make dad stop being so mean to him…but she could at least do something for her own kids.

When she had them.

She was going to be someone's mom someday in the future. She had never really given it that much thought. That had just always been the facts of her life. She would grow up and be a mom like her mom was a mom. That was just what girls did. They got married and became moms. Well sometimes they didn't, when nobody wanted to marry them, but dad had said that she had to get married and have kids so that was what she was going to do. She had never given it much thought but now…now the future felt closer. Maybe because Sho had just had his birthday or maybe because it was almost New Year's or maybe because she hadn't felt like a kid once since turning ten. She had turned then and then there had been a baby that she had to take care of and then she had to take care of all of Claw and Sho and then also she had started drinking more, she drank less because smoking made her a lot less sick, and she had started and mostly stopped smoking cigarettes, and also…also just…everything else! She hadn't felt like a kid once this whole year…

Maybe she would be able to feel more like a kid when she was eleven.

She wanted to feel like a kid again before she had to find a boyfriend and then get married and have a kid. She hoped that Hatori waited for her to grow up but Minegishi said not to pin her hopes on that and she was going to listen because Minegishi was smart and they knew a lot of things about a lot of things. She didn't know who she would end up being married to but she hoped that he was taller than her and liked to play fun games and liked the same movies she liked and also….also that he was nice to her. That was the big thing. She mostly just wanted him to be nice to her. No mean words, no hitting, and no smothering either. That was the sort of person that she wanted to be married too…but she had a long time before all of that.

She hoped that she got to be a kid for a little bit longer before she had to be an adult…even though she had no reason to think that being eleven would be any easier than being ten.

"They're your children. Discipline them as you see fit. I trust your judgement. You're doing a very good job raising your brother." Said Suzuki. He had no idea how she would correct their children without striking them but she had her ways. She got Son to eat and sleep and bath without striking him once. Masami must have taught her how to do that…or it must have been a mother thing. Mothers were the softer parent. Fathers were the ones who did most of the discipline. Not that he would be undermining her when it came to their, her, children. No, she was a good parent to her brother at ten so she would be an amazing parent to her children at…

At whatever age it was that women were capable of bearing children.

"I'm…raising Sho? But how does that work? I mean I watch him because I'm older and you promoted me but I can't raise him….because I'm ten…and he's ten too. We're both the same age." Said Mob

"No, you're older. You'll never be the same age as him. Your birthdays are just very close together." Said Suzuki. He wondered if she would ever do the basic math needed to figure out that she and her brother were only half a year apart. Did she know that it took nine months to make a baby? What did she even know about human reproduction? She must have known something since she had never asked him, thank God, and anyway he wasn't about to start that conversation up with her.

"Ok…but I'm not old enough to raise my brother…and also he's my brother." Said Mob. She had no idea what dad was even saying. She was taking care of him but she wasn't raising him. She made him do his school work and take baths and eat his food groups and change his clothes and stuff but she wasn't raising him or anything like that. She was just a kid.

"You need to have more confidence in yourself. When I was your age I had boundless confidence and look at where I am today. You are very capable, the most capable little girl that I know, and I….I love you for that. You're impressive Daughter, remember that, you are the most impressive little girl that I have ever met." Said Suzuki. He moved their laptops to the side and hugged her after he said that. He had seen Masami do that, before, when the children had been small. She said something positive towards them and then she embraced them. Daughter did the same thing to Son. Fukuda did the same thing to Son, too. This was socially acceptable. Also she had asked him, before, to show her more physical affection.

This was alright.

He could see why people enjoyed this. She was warm and soft and there. Her aura was there and his aura was there and this was nice. He didn't hold her for long, though, because he didn't know how long it was socially acceptable to do this for and he didn't want to harm her in some way. Her independent development was a very fragile thing, it seemed, and no matter how badly he wanted to hold for the rest of her life he knew that she would be useless to him if she never developed the ability to stand on her own two feet.

"Um….ok. Thanks dad. Let's….let's play some more before bedtime." Said Mob. Dad could be so weird sometimes. His hugs were weird. Kind of stiff, very stiff, and short. Also he never hugged her so being hugged by him was weird…and he had been saying weird stuff again…but he was bad at talking so that was ok. He was bad at making himself understood. She wasn't actually raising Sho, she was a kid and Sho was a kid and kids did not raise kids, so dad must have just been messing up what he was trying to say.

She was dad's kid after all.

She was bad at talking too and she wasn't going to tell dad that he was worse. No, that would have been mean, and she was not going to be mean to him. Not when he was trying to be nice. He had been so nice to her when he had said how impressive she was. That was…that was nice. Him telling her that was nice…and him saying that he would never hit her kids was nice too. That was nice. He had been nice to her lately, very nice, and she wasn't going to complain. Dad hadn't hit Sho in a while and he was letting her spend time with her friends again and also he was letting her have that big party and…and a lot of other stuff. Things were better now. Things were better now and…and she had to make sure that they stayed as good as they were now. That meant sitting there with dad and being nice to him and…and letting him be nice to her.

So she would, every Sunday, from midnight to midnight. It wasn't so bad. Pretty ok, actually.


	241. I Loathe Parties

Suzuki Touichirou loathed parties.

Well he loathed any and all large social gatherings. Small and medium sized ones too. He hated them so much….more than even he could express. He wanted to go home, he was going to go home, as soon as he made his speech he was going to go home and just…leave everyone else to their social gathering. This was something that people enjoyed. He had never enjoyed these sorts of social gatherings but he was not like other people. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He didn't have the same social needs as everyone else and therefore he, of course, had never needed to learn to socialize and there he, of course, did not need to learn how to enjoy a party.

This was fine.

Masami had dragged him, tried to drag him anyway, to so many social occasions in the beginning of their relationship. She had tried to get him to go to work parties and family parties and an assortment of other random social occasions. He had gone with her at first but they both realized how bad of an idea that was. He had never been able to talk to people socially and he had never wanted to learn. Not once. Not even when he had been young and all of his peers were pairing off into their own couples and friend groups. He had been content to be alone. There was no one else in the world like him, or so he had thought in his young, so naturally it would have made sense that he had to be alone.

Also he had not been eager to waste his time on everyone else like that.

His time had bene valuable. As a child and as a grown man his time had always been very valuable. His time was still valuable. That was why he had no plans at all of staying. He was just going to make his speech, that part he enjoyed, and then he was going to leave. The children could find their own way home. Well Son could. Daughter…he was loathe to leave Daughter but he just could not stay. Too many people, far too many people, and he had no idea what to do with so many people. He could command legions of people, that he understood, but speaking to them…especially so many important backers and cultists and investors of various degrees of importance…he couldn't do it, not socially, not unless he wanted to lose control….

His aura was shaking.

His aura was shaking and he was shaking. Not because of the speech, no he could do this on his head, but because of the sheer number of…of people….and the thought of having to speak with them socially. He was…fear. Fear was not an old friend, a bitter enemy really, something to be exorcised because it was a useless emotion. In other people fear would keep them alive. There were reasons to be afraid of heights and water and fire and strangers and even the dark. People, even other espers, could be so fragile…their lives could end in an instant. Well he was not like everyone else. His life was not fragile. He could, would, and had withstood things that would have killed any other man. Normal or esper. Suzuki Touichirou had no use for fear.

So he exorcised it.

He gave his speech and he exorcised his emotions. Daughter helped. There was a sea of auras there but hers was the brightest. She was sitting there with her brother, she looked wonderful as always and her brother…she had managed to get him dressed in something at least somewhat acceptable….but he didn't much care about Son just so long as he didn't do anything to embarrass his sister. She had been the one to approve this…and just about everything else that had been put in front of her…after all. She had been the one to want this and this was her party and her brother had better not mess this up for her. But he wasn't. He was sitting there playing on his phone. Daughter was paying attention to him, though, and she smiled at him too. At least he figured that she was smiling at him. She had made eye contact with him and their auras had made contact too.

He could do this.

The speech part. Not the talking to other people part. Let her do that. There had been more of these social sorts of things before, back before Son had been born, and he had thought that he would have gotten past the need for these social events. Well he hadn't totally, there were still times when he'd had to meet with people socially, but never on this scale. That was why he would leave this to Daughter. She had been the one to want this and she was much more of a social being than he had ever been and…and he would leave all of this to her. She had her companions, there, with her so she would be fine. Also there were other children there too, apparently he was not the only man who'd had the idea to reproduce, and she could socialize with them. Children were supposed to socialize with other children….right?

Or would that make them too childish?

He had never been terribly childish even when he'd been a child. That was because he had never socialized with the other children. Son and Daughter only socialized with each other as well as with adults…and that had gotten him some very mixed results. He had Daughter, who was in so many ways like a small adult, and then he had Son who seemed more content to act his shoe size than his age. Suzuki had no idea how it all worked, socializing, but he knew that he would not stop either of his children from doing it.

It was important for them to learn to socialize...not him, of course, only them.

Fukuda hated parties.

Claw parties, anyway. They hadn't had one of these in years. A chance to meet all of the important backers and cultists. A chance for everyone to meet the great Suzuki Touichirou and the other espers he'd collected. A chance for everyone to eat way too much and drink way too much and just make morons out of themselves. Not that all of the people in that room needed help in that regard. No, there was a whole table of people over there who were glad to make morons out of themselves at the best of times. He watched Suzuki with his eyes and Sho with his aura. His attention wasn't on his phone, no, it was on the moron a table over trying to surreptitiously steal champagne from those around him and also smoke…or was it called vaping…inhale whatever from a small electronic…thing.

Fukuda was going to have two jobs tonight.

He was going to have to keep Sho from spending time with Shimazaki and all the others, first of all, and second of all he was going to have to babysit Suzuki if he tried to stay. He usually left these things as soon as possible, well he had when they had been younger, but now Shigeko was there and he got the feeling that she would be doing this until six in the morning if she could. She was not Suzuki's daughter, not by blood anyway, but she did take after him…so why couldn't she have taken after him when it came to not being able to handle large social gatherings? Why did she even approve this? She must have known…well she hadn't know, really, because she was ten and not good with logistics or thinking things through. Because she was ten. For her a party was a chance to wear a pretty dress and meet lots of new people and get drunk and whatever else with her friends, too, some of whom looked like they had already gotten a jump on that. She could and would do whatever she wanted to. She had a glass of sparkling cider in front of her, he could tell by the color, but he knew that she would swap it out for a champagne flute soon enough…

Which was why he had to keep Sho away from that whole group.

Shigeko…she had already gotten into these sorts of things. Things that she should not have been into. Things that the adults around her should not have introduced her to in the first place. She was only ten and had been doing…all of this…for some time now. The idea had not just popped into her head at random. She had seen what the adults around her had been getting up to and instead of telling her no and being responsible the adults around her, the people she called her friends, had decided to include her in everything that they had gotten up to. Even though she was so young…and also she should have known better in the first place. She wasn't like Sho. Sho…he was impulsive. He had almost zero impulse control sometimes and Fukuda knew that it was only a matter of time before he started imitating his sister, her friends, and especially the man he had a precocious and bizarre crush on.

Fukuda was not going to let that happen.

He knew what he would do. As soon as Suzuki finished up his 'plans for the glorious future number three' speech Fukuda would get up, grab Sho, and take him home. He hated it here. He hated getting all dressed up, he hated being forced to sit down, and he hated being so near to his dad. Sho would be happy to go back home and hang out. They could play some of the new games that Sho had gotten for Christmas or they could play in the snow or Sho could draw something…anything other than hanging out with those degenerates that Shigeko called her friends. The espers that she had collected. Fukuda would not let Sho end up in that collection, he would not let Sho fall in with that crowd, Masami would have hated him if he had let that happen to her only son.

He would have hated himself if he had let that happen to Sho.

Fukuda felt Sho's aura. Oh. He had been too focused. Sho looked up from his phone. Fukuda waved. Sho waved back. Good, he had his attention. He looked bored. That was good too. Fukuda knew that he couldn't order Sho to leave, Sho did not handle orders at the best of times and in front of almost the entire financial body of Claw was not 'the best of times' so….yeah. He was not going to set Sho off on one of his tantrums now. He had been getting better about those, though, he had gotten a book about anger management from Minegishi of all people for his birthday. Not that he needed it. He didn't have an anger problem, he had a problem with all of the people around him. His father treated him terribly, his sister was…his sister, his mother had disappeared from his life when he had been six, and his first real crush was a man twenty years older than him and also just so…terrible. Just a terribly all around person. Also it must not have been easy on Sho to realize, or at least be coming to the realization of, the fact that he didn't like girls. Especially with how Suzuki carried on about wanting grandchildren and a legacy and all of that. In Fukuda's honest opinion he should have just enjoyed the children he had…and also spent five minutes with his Son and realized that he was most likely not getting any grandkids out of Sho. Poor Sho….Fukuda was not looking forward to his teenage years. Not with how he was and how his father was….it would be a shit show plain and simple…and Fukuda would have front row seats.

As usual.

He was tired of his reserved, front row, center aisle seat to the shit show that was the Suzuki family. That damn speech was over now, a toast had been made, and Shigeko was looking very disappointed at her champagne flute full of sparkling juice. She was ten. She should have been happy with juice. He remembered the time that he had come over and showed the kids how to make juice from scratch. That had been fun…but she'd turned her nose up at it, actually, now that he remembered. She had always been a milk person….which was probably why there was a strawberry milk fountain over in the corner. Good. He hoped that she drank strawberry milk until she got sick. He was tired of watching the shit show that had become her life. Ten years old and…and getting up to what it was that she had been getting up to. He had been sitting there watching Suzuki's life become….this…and now he was watching Shigeko's life become…this…and he got the feeling that he may have had to watch Sho's life fall apart, too…

He didn't want to.

He got up as fast as he could…but not fast enough. Kids were faster and he almost ended up stepping on one that had been crawling under the tables…there were a lot of kids here….which maybe was a good thing. Maybe he ought to let Sho stay and socialize with some people his own age for once. None of these kids were espers, Suzuki would have a problem with his kids socializing with non espers, but Sho needed to spend time with people his own age before he ended up like either his sister or his father. There were lots of kids and they were starting to do kid things, crawl around on the floor and such, and Sho still did kid things so maybe he ought to just let Sho stay…

He followed the path that Sho's eyes took.

Sho had no intention, it seemed, of playing with the other kids. He seemed to have every intention to following his sister over and spending time with that group of degenerates. Why? What did either kid see in those people? Well Shigeko was Suzuki's daughter. She collected espers just like her father did. Sho…Sho just wanted to be included in something. He had always been a social person. He had taken after Masami. She had always hated it, the isolation of being Suzuk's wife, and Sho had always hated the isolation that they'd had to live under. There were other kids there. Why wasn't Sho getting up to talk to some of them? Why wasn't he getting up to-

Oh.

Suzuki moved fast when he needed to. He was talking to his children. Fukuda stepped over a kid…and almost on to another kid…before making his way through the crowd over to where Suzuki and the kids were. People were giving him a wide berth…at least his body guards were doing their jobs for once….which was good. It meant that Fukuda could make his way over…and also that Suzuki wasn't going to have one of his melt downs that he got, well used to get when they were kids, when he had to speak to too many people at once. Sometimes Fukuda got the feeling that Suzuki just wanted to rule the world so he could rule from on high and not have to deal with the people below him. He could barely deal with his own children, after all, let alone a whole world full of people. Ruling over people was so much easier than engaging them as equals after all.

And Suzuki Touichirou did not engage people as equals.

Suzuki was not equals with his children. They did not command him, he commanded them, not that he wanted to command Daughter. No, he wanted to tell her to shut up of course, but he would hear her out.

"But I want you to stay, dad, please? It's a party and the point of a party is to have fun…and I want you to have fun." Said Daughter. She was so thoughtful like that. Masami had been the same way when they had been young. She had gotten the idea in her head that he would enjoy socializing with her at different events instead of being at home alone getting some work done. She was so like her mother.

"If dad wants to go then let him go. He doesn't like stuff like this anyway. He doesn't like anything…" said Sho. Well he was mistaken about that, there were plenty of things in this world that he liked, but this party was not one of them. Son seemed to be in a mood, but that was normal for him, he had been so moody lately. Whatever. Daughter could deal with him.

"But-" said Daughter. She was upset about him leaving….and he was loathe to leave her…but he had to. This was the socializing portion of the night and he did not socialize. He shook, his aura shook, just thinking about it. No, he had to go home….and he so wanted to take her with him…but it was not a Sunday and Sunday was their day together and also she had been looking forward to this for some time. She had even bought a new dress. That was a big thing for women, purchasing clothing for a new occasion, and he was not going to upset her by making her come home with him…even though he wanted her to…

"No buts. I've done my part and now I am leaving. Daughter, look after your brother. Son…don't ruin this for your sister." Said Suzuki. He knew Son, how he acted, what he was like when he got into his moods…and also what he was like when he got sugar and caffeine in him….and the food that Daughter approved was mostly sugar…and he hoped to God that Son did not ruin this for Daughter. She had been looking forward to this for so long. He knew that she would be upset if this was ruined for her and he was loathe to see her upset. He wanted nothing more than her happiness. That was why he allowed this, to make her happy, because nothing in the world mattered more to him than his Daughter's happiness.

Not even the world.

"I'm not going to ruin anything…." Muttered Son. Suzuki so wished that his Son would stop muttering and just say what he had to say. Normally Suzuki would have corrected his Son and gone over his many failures over the years but this was not the time or the place. Too many people, too many auras, and too little of his patience. He was used to auras, of course, but this was just…too many in a small space and all of them were trying to get his attention and…and it was a lot. He resisted the urge to grab onto Daughter's aura, she was so bright she practically filled the building, but he didn't because he was in public and he could not show that kind of weakness in public…and also it wasn't Sunday anyway….

It was too much.

He felt a familiar aura cut through the crowd. Green, he knew that green, that was Fukuda. He was aware of Fukuda. There was a…a sort of comfort there that he didn't want to feel. Fukuda had always saved him whenever they had been in big social situations together…not that he had needed saving…but he had always saved him. Suzuki doubted that he would have made it through university without him. He doubted he would make it through this night without him.

"I can your son home if you want, boss, Shigeko can probably handle this. It is her party after all." said Fukuda as he made it through the crowd and over to the Suzuki family. Shigeko was the only person who looked happy…well she seemed happy. Her aura seemed happy. Her face was as frozen as every but her aura seemed happy. Why wouldn't she be? Attention, lots of it, and free flowing champagne too. She was and was not Suzuki's daughter. Suzuki would have been a thousand times more dangerous if he was less socially impaired, if he had any idea how to gain influence through anything other than fear, if he had been a small and trustworthy looking little girl…

Calm. Down.

"I don't ruin things and I don't want to go home!" said Sho. Fukuda stepped to the side and let Sho crawl under a table. There was no calming him down sometimes. He had taken to hiding in cramped, dark places when he got upset. Fukuda would fill a plate with cookies, get him a soda, and then coax him out later. Before Shigeko started ordering him to come out or whatever else she was planning on doing.

"Fukuda, be me for this…thing…and arrange for Son to come home when he decides to stop…carrying on like that." Said Suzuki. He took a step towards Daughter and then a step back. He was…fine. He was fine and this was fine and he was fine and everything was fine. He was not afraid, no, he was just making a…a strategic retreat. That was all. He just needed to make a strategic retreat and…and get home so he could…attend to other matters.

Yes. That was acceptable.

He bid Daughter goodbye. This was her party and he was in her element here. She had very good social skills. Maybe it was her gender or maybe it was because she didn't come from him. Either way he knew when he had to delegate responsibility. Daughter would be fine, she would be happy even. She could handle whatever questions the various investors, supporters, and overzealous cultists asked of her. She had been able to run Claw in his absence at only ten years old, of course.

He was so proud of her.

He kept his aura on her as he left. Yes, she would be fine…but to be safe he would leave her both Shibata and Shimazaki. He could trust her around Shimazaki…well he had to. Whatever feelings she'd had for the man seemed to have faded, she spoke about her new friend more than she spoke of him, and if they hadn't and he overstepped again….well then the beatings would continue until either his behavior improved or he died from his injuries. One of the two. He so wished that he could have been there at Daughter's side…but he couldn't. Not with this many people around.

He'd make it up to her later.

On their day, the one that they had together, he would make it up to her. Right now he just needed to…to be on his own. Daughter would be fine. She was capable. She was his most capable child. Out of three…two. He had TWO children and out of the two of them she was the most capable and the one he trusted the most. Besides. Fukuda was there and he would not let anything happen to her. Fukuda loved the children and of course he would look after them in Suzuki's absence.

He could trust Fukuda.

Fukuda could trust Shigeko.

With this, anyway. She wanted to be her father then he would let her be her father. He had posted up not too far from her. She was at her table, now, with a glass of what he could tell from here was not sparkling juice at all and a plate of cookies and other desserts in front of her. The whole menu was desserts, fried foods, and about fifty difference kinds of soda or flavored milk. Because the details of this party had been approved by a ten year old. Now the party was being officiated by a ten year old. That ten year old over there in the Elsa dress and braids.

Maybe this would be how Claw fell.

Claw had always been in danger of falling apart. Be it from rival esper groups, nose governments, spies, assassins, or just the stupidity of the people who made up the organization. Claw is, was, and always would be in danger of falling…and that was normal. Fukuda had been wishing and hoping and praying for an end to this nonsense since the day he had realized that Suzuki was dead serious about taking over the world. Maybe the collapse would be internal. Maybe people, all of these very important people, would in fact be very pissed off at the fact that they had been left with a ten year old girl. She was there, not Suzuki, and they should have been annoyed at best and ready to wash their hands of all of this insanity at worst. After all how could you back a man who left his ten year old Daughter in charge?

Easily, apparently.

People lined up to speak to her. She was there, alone, at a table shaking hands and answering questions. She didn't get up and bow back, no, she never did that and neither did Suzuki. She took after him in some ways. In some ways, like these ways, she was even more dangerous. She smiled when she had to, played up the fact that she was just a cute little girl, and her face gave away nothing. Her aura…was not the most stable….but her face gave away nothing. She knew how to take care of her aura spikes too, it seemed. Every single time there was a ripple or a spike or a flare she took a drink of champagne. She took a drink of champagne and smiled. He watched this play out over and over again.

Fukuda took his own drink of champagne.

He couldn't get drunk. Not without A LOT of alcohol, anyway. He had been a legend in university. Suzuki had, too, but for a whole different reason. The man could not hold his liquor for the life of him. He'd seen Suzuki get completely wasted off of two cheap beers. They had been little more than kids back then but he assumed that Suzuki was still abstaining. Even on his wedding he'd drank plain sparkling water. Fukuda wondered what he would do on his daughter's wedding day. Probably hold her hair back when she got drunk and sick.

She started to look sick.

Shimazaki, God he hated that man with an intensity usually reserved for Suzuki, kept on popping back over with a full champagne glass for her. When he wasn't doing that he was harassing Hatori…who looked sicker than Shigeko. Hatori always had a glass of champagne in his hand. He'd also seen Shimazaki hand him something white and round to take as well as letting him surreptitiously smoke whatever it was that was in that electronic smoking…thing. He felt for Hatori, he really did. He had only been dragged into this because Shigeko collected espers and called them her friends…though obviously she wanted much more than that from him. God, she was getting to that age. He had no idea what they were all going to do when she got to that age. Well he knew what she was going to do. She was going to get a lot of men either beaten up or killed. Suzuki was entering what Fukuda liked to call stage four. There were five stages to obsession, six if Suzuki really felt like losing it, and he was entering stage four. Shigeko was starting to dominate what few conversations the two of them had. Stage five would involve Suzuki monologuing about her, keeping near to her at all times, and calling her his most perfect person…though he prayed to God that it wouldn't go that far. Suzuki usually only got obsessed with people when he was romantically attracted to his Daughter, he didn't have those sorts of feelings for Shigeko he had been perfectly clear about that, but even without this being…Fukuda feels sick even thinking of it…this still could not have been good for Shigeko.

Being cast in these adult roles.

But she seemed to enjoy it. She seemed to enjoy speaking to the important people and drinking her grown up drinks and having grown ups fawning over her…so maybe Fukuda was worried about nothing. Well not nothing, a drunken ten year old was in no way shape or form 'nothing', but maybe he should have focused his attentions on the person who truly needed him. Maybe he should have focused on Sho. Shigeko…she had body guards to save her if she needed it. Sho had no one. He had been under that table for some time now….and maybe he needed Fukuda to check on him.

So that was what he did.

He felt Shigeko's aura on him as he got up. She was looking at him. He could not read her expression. He pointed over to where the food was hoping that she would get the message. Even Suzuki gave him the luxury of meal breaks. She said nothing, did nothing, as he got up…and at some point he had gotten to the point in his life when he needed a ten year old girl's permission to get up and get something for her brother to eat. Honestly. He could remember a time when she came up to his knee, she was about diaphragm high now, and she clung to his leg and begged him to play with her and make her pork miso and read her the Hello Kitty book. Now she was nursing her fourth glass of champagne and answering questions about Suzuki's 'take over the world' timetable.

Fine then.

He felt somebody sick as he crossed the room. He instinctively latched onto that person. Oh. Hatori. He was being led to the bathroom. He was pale, sweating, and slurring something incomprehensible. Shibata was practically carrying him to the bathrooms. Hatori…well he had let Shimazaki get him into that state. Sho needed him more. Besides, if something were truly wrong with him then someone would know to fetch Fukuda. That crowd knew about whatever it was that he was on. They would get him if it were truly serious. Sho needed him now. He must have been so sad and lonely all on his own under that table.

Fukuda would be there for him even if it meant hiding under a table all night.

He loaded a plate up with some things that he knew Sho would like. Cookies and chips and fries and gummy worms and cupcakes and all sorts of things that he knew Masami would not have wanted him eating. She had tried her best to give the kids good eating habits. Fukuda maybe should have been on that better…but he had a lot on his plate as it was. Sho was….going through a lot. Sho was going through a lot and his main mission at this point was keeping him from ending up like Shigeko. If she wanted to drink and smoke and do God only knew what then that was fine. He knew that he should have stopped all of that before it even started but he had to prioritize and he chose to prioritize Sho. Somebody had to look out for him. He had no mother, his father was Suzuki Touichirou, and his sister was the second coming of Suzuki Touichirou. Someone needed to be there for him. Someone needed to actually be raising him. Someone needed to be there when he was all alone and hurt and hiding under tables probably feeling like shit and-

Or when he was sitting under tables playing games with a bunch of other kids.

"Hey! No room!" shouted a little boy as Fukuda crouched down and lifted up the table cloth. The entire table was filled with little boys and girls a little older than Sho. He almost dropped the plate that he had been holding. It had been so long since he had seen Sho interacting with kids his own age….it was nice.

"Awww…..it's someone's dad." Said another little boy. Sho shook his head. He was so adorable then Fukuda wished that there was some way to take a picture of this without looking like a creep who went around taking pictures of other people's children. Sho was red as a lobster and, yes, there was not a lot of room under that table but he didn't have to be pressed quite so close into that other kid. That was so cute. He was getting to that age and Fukuda knew that it wouldn't be cute for much longer….though he did wish that he could have taken a picture of that moment to embarrass Sho with in ten or so years…and also for Masami. Even though she hadn't emailed him back in years….

"He's not my dad. He just takes care of me sometimes." Said Sho. Fukuda felt like he had been kicked in the stomach. Sho had been asking him over and over again to be his dad…saying that he wished that Fukuda had been his father…but he was not going to dwell on it. Sho didn't mean it, probably, he was just embarrassed at having been caught. That was all.

"Brought you something to eat, Sho." said Fukuda. He could feel it. He knew when he was not wanted. That was…that was ok. Sho was older and the older he got the less he would need Fukuda. Better he was sitting there with a boy his own age than the likes of Shimazaki. He had been looking forward to spending time with Sho, waiting out this party playing those games Sho liked and Fukuda had no idea how to play, but this was ok too. Sho…he deserved to be with some kids his own age. To socialize with people his own age.

"Thanks, you can just leave it here. Um…I'm just playing Smash with these guys…and I don't think that you'd like to play too because…um…you probably didn't bring your DS and also whenever we play together you throw yourself off of the world on accident and it makes the match too short…but we can hang out later! Also there's other adults here for you to hang out with so…so you won't be so lonely." Said Sho. Message received. Sho had never just dismissed him like this but…but this was just the way that things had to be. Independence skills and all of that.

"Just come and find me when you're ready to head home." Said Fukuda. He lowered the table cloth and left the kids to whatever it was that they were doing. On his way back to his table he felt another sick person…the same sick person. There. in the wallflower corner. Hatori was talking to Minegishi…and apparently striking out. Striking out and…well thank God that Shibata was there to catch him. He was probably fine. That group knew what they were doing when it came to things like that.

They may have been morons but they wouldn't just let one of their own die.

Thought there may have been trouble in paradise based on whatever it was that Minegishi was saying to Shimazaki. They were too far away to hear and Fukuda had never learned how to read lips but he could read auras just fine. Lover's quarrel? He didn't know, he didn't care, and he wouldn't get involved unless someone got hurt. He would do his job and nothing more. Let those morons deal with whatever it was that they had gotten into…and whatever it was needed to stay the hell away from Sho. He was just a kid and those morons had better not have been thought about going near that little under the table clubhouse that Sho had made with his friends.

He needed to be a kid for as long as he could.

Because his sister was most certainly not a child anymore. Chronologically and biologically yes but emotionally she was practically an adult. She was still there, and still drunk, and getting drunker. Shimazaki had replaced her glass again…but then for some reason Minegishi came up and took it out of her hand. They, well she technically but Fukuda may have been drunk enough to refer to them as 'she' in his head but not nearly drunk enough to do so out loud, was saying something that Mob obviously didn't want to hear. There was a tug of war that ended with Minegishi downing Shigeko's champagne glass.

"Alright, show's over folks. Direct any questions, comments, concerns, and death threats to that guy over there. The one making a face like he's sucking on a rotten lemon and hating the fact that he's enjoying himself." Said Minegishi. They said it loud enough for him to hear…and judging by the way he was being glared at he wondered if they had someone heard that 'she' comment. Not that he was afraid of them. He couldn't be killed, not easily, and they were notoriously lazy. He wondered what their game was, there, grabbing away Shigeko's glass like that and sending her adoring crowd away.

It wasn't like she couldn't just get another glass of champagne.

He had no idea if she did or did not end up getting another glass of champagne. He didn't have time to keep an eye on her. He was mobbed by the crowd…and he could see why Suzuki hated this. He could see why Suzuki had chosen to run away rather than speak to the people who had gotten this thing up on it's feet. Fukuda wished that Suzuki, in all of his awkwardness, would have stayed. Maybe seeing what their beloved leader and future lord and master of the world really was would make them reconsider going along with this insanity.

He hated the lot of them.

He hated, or at least really disliked, most of the people in that room. It was exhausting and he did his best not to let it show. Whether he liked it or not he had to deal with these people. He had a lot to deal with. He had to deal with the people asking him questions about the future that Suzuki himself did not know the answer to, he had to deal with the sick person passing into his range every so often, he had to deal with Shigeko being in the room and her aura being so very loud, and he had to deal with the anxiety that came with not being able to see Sho.

Sho was both the most and the least of his worries.

He had no idea how much time passed but he knew that Sho's aura had moved. Fukuda focused as best as he could…oh. The under the table party had moved to the cloakroom. That was fine. Let him get away from his sister for a while. She had tried, Fukuda had caught glimpses of, her attempting to speak to the other children. She had been talking to another little girl, the one with the pink streaks in her hair and the dress that maybe someone her age should not have been wearing, though it might have been Shigeko who was out of step considering that her attempt at socializing apparently had gone about as well as her father's previous attempts when he had been about her age. The apple apparently didn't fall far from the tree…well at least one apple had fallen far from the tree. Sho was at least doing well.

Which was the only reason that Fukuda stayed.

He really should have taken Sho home as the night wore on. The crowd that had been around him eventually dissipated. He found himself alone, at his table, with no choice but to sit there and watch the world around him. The people who backed this insanity, the upper echelon, the drama happening between Shigeko's friends, all of it. He wanted to go. He wanted to leave. He needed to leave. He didn't want to be here…but that was the story of his life. Being places that he didn't want to be. Following Suzuki and his family to places that he had never asked to go. All of it. He couldn't leave, though, he could never leave.

He stayed for Sho.

He could feel Sho's aura flaring. Not angrily. No, he was happy. That was good. He knew that as the responsible adult he should have gotten those kids out of the cloakroom, they could have been going through people's pockets for all he knew, but he didn't feel like being anything other than what Sho needed him to be. Sho needed him to be there. The night wore on but Sho needed him to be there. Sho needed him to be there and….and he wasn't going to leave until Sho asked him to. That was who he was there for. Sho.

Not Shigeko.

She left on her own, eventually. She left with Shimazaki. He felt it, the energy shift from is teleportation, and then suddenly Shigeko's aura was gone. Totally gone. Out of his range. She had probably gone home with him. That was fine, better actually, because she was….she had been enjoying this too much. She had been having too much fun with this and maybe it was better that she went home and off to bed…or whatever it was that she had been planning on doing. He didn't know and he didn't care. He had enough to worry about when it came to Sho.

Sho was enough for him to worry about.

He didn't need to worry about anything else or anyone else. Shigeko, wherever she had gone off to, was fine. He wasn't; worried about her. He was worried about Sho. Even though he knew that he had no reason to be worried about Sho, he was having fun with some other kids, he was still worried. Because he couldn't see him. Because he only had his aura to go off of. Because he knew how quickly Sho's moods could change. He was a lot like Suzuki in that way. Emotional control did not come easy to him…and Fukuda was worried…he was so worried that he didn't have room in his head to be worried about anything else…

Not even the very sick person that had been dragged in front of him.

"Can you fix him? I think he's getting worse." Said Shibata. He was practically carrying Hatori. He was speaking nonsense. He was sweaty and speaking nonsense. His shirt was opened and his fly was down and he couldn't keep his eyes opened. Fukuda felt sick just being near him…and also that may have been the smell of piss that clung to him. Poor kid…

Though he had gotten himself into this state.

Even in university Fukuda had never been able to understand the appeal of it, getting yourself into that state, and it was one of the few things that he and Suzuki still had in common. Hatori could have said no at any time. He had gotten himself into that state and now he needed Fukuda's help. He was a nice kid and all, he still cared about Shigeko even though she had gotten him into this mess, but he had still gone along with all of this. Claw was not the place for compassion. Claw was not the place for…for a lot of things.

"He shouldn't have gotten himself into that sate in the first place." Said Fukuda. He downed another glass of champagne. He could sort of feel it, which meant that he maybe should have been counting his drinks, but at this point he didn't care.

"Shimazaki got him into this state, not Hatori himself, so it's not his fault. Now fix this because I can't deal with this anymore. I'm really losing control of this situation. So do something about this." said Shibata. He was standing over him, looming really, but Fukuda wasn't afraid. He healed fast. He was done, for now, being told what to do…but he was not done drinking. No, not at all. Even though he was having thoughts that he should not have had and he was acting in ways that he should not have acted…

He could worry about this tomorrow.

"Let him walk it off." Said Fukuda. He was tired. It was late and he was tired. He was tired of cleaning up other people's messes and he was tired of being obligated to other people. He was just tired. It was late and he was tired. He was tired and he just did not have the energy for this. Let Shigeko deal with this. These were her friends, the espers that she collected, so let her deal with them. He just could not deal with these people like this. Right now he only had enough room in his mind to worry about Sho. His wellbeing.

"I can-can-can-can-can-can-" said Hatori. Fukuda would have let him go on until he tired himself out. He was curious to see how long it would take. Hatori was fine, Fukuda knew what people felt like when they were near death and Hatori was going to stick around for quite a while, and Fukuda really did not have the energy to deal with this. Not with Hatori being all messed up on…whatever. Not with this whole thing that Shigeko had organized and then abandoned. Not even with the pair of hands picking him up by his lapels.

"Fix. Him. Now." Said Shibata. Fukuda knew that if it came down to it Shibata would not kill him. Sure this would hurt a whole lot but he wouldn't get killed. He could live through a lot. He could and had lived through Shigeko's explosion and the ones her father had gone through, too. He would live through this.

"Shibata. Sorry to interrupt, I really am, but I need to know if you've seen Mob anywhere." Said Minegishi. It was amazing how quietly they could move. It was amazing how little of an aura they had. Or maybe it was amazing that it took…Fukuda counted the empty champagne flutes…fourteen glasses of champagne to get him this drunk. Huh. He hadn't felt like this since…he didn't even know. That one party that he had dragged Suzuki to all those years ago…

"Little Sister-sama?" asked Hatori. Minegishi shook their head. They seemed more tired than anything…which meant that Hatori was most likely fine.

"Yeah, Mob. I haven't seen her in a while….also what did Ryou give you?" asked Minegishi. Fukuda felt himself fall back into his chair as Shibata let him go. Now his attentions were turned towards Minegishi, which was good for him, and now he just needed them to take whatever this was somewhere else so he could just sit there and wait for Sho to decide when he felt like coming home.

"I don't know what he gave him but I know he's had a lot to drink." Said Shibata. He was supporting Hatori now. Hatori seemed fine…is. Muttering nonsense and trying to pull on Shibata's hair, he was too short, but fine. Not close to death. He was way too hot and his heart was beating way too fast but aside from that he seemed fine. Nowhere near death. Fukuda knew what it felt like when people were close to death.

"I feel good and bad at the same time and I'm sorry that I called you what I called you and I'm sorry that I asked you out and I'm sorry that I made you uncomfortable and I'm sorry that you're upset with me and I'm sorry that I asked if I could eat you and I'm sorry that you got into a fight and-" said Hatori. He was babbling sweating through his shirt and Fukuda was maybe about to fix him up just so he didn't have to deal with this anymore. This was a lot, this was more than he wanted to deal with, and he just wanted to be literally anywhere else in the world than where he was right now.

If Masami could see him now….

"I didn't get into a fight. What I was up to is none of your business. Now, Shibata, tell me when the last time you saw Mob was. I can't see her or feel her and I know that my range isn't that good but…well never you mind why I care. Just tell me when you last saw her." said Minegishi

"I haven't seen her in a while. I've been too busy babysitting him. I think Shimazaki took her home or something. That last I saw her was after you went over to talk to that woman in the blue dress. Shimazaki and her were talking for a little bit and then they just left. Sorry, that's all I know. I have bigger shit to worry about." Said Shibata

"For the love of…you. Fix whatever's wrong with him right now." Said Minegishi. They were focused on him now. Glaring at him now. They were trying to intimidate him…and it worked. Just a little. They knew that despite being considerably smaller than Shibata they were capable of considerably more. He had read the mission reports, he had patched people up after they had finished with them, they were capable of more than Shibata ever could be…

"Fine." Said Fukuda. He didn't feel like getting into it with all of them. He didn't feel like getting into it with anyone end of discussion. He let his aura pass over Hatori until whatever was wrong with him passed. It didn't take long.

"What the hell…what did I DO?" asked Hatori. Shibata looked at him and then shook his head. Minegishi didn't say anything. They just fished their phone out of their pocket, how they got away with coming to this thing dressed in slacks and a dress shirt Fukuda would never understand, and handed their phone to Hatori.

"Use this phone to find Mob's phone. Do that find my iphone thing right now." Said Minegishi. Fukuda wondered what they were so worried about. This was Shigeko, she could take care of herself, and she could make her own choices in life. If she wanted to abandon her own party then so be it. If she wanted to run off in the middle of the night with a man three times her age then so be it. He didn't care. That wasn't his daughter. If Suzuki cared, he was the one who should have cared, then he should have stayed behind and actually parented his child.

"She's….somewhere in Tokyo. Sorry, she's jumping around a lot. Just…what happened? My whole mind is a blank…sorry. Did I….I'm sorry. I'm just-Just…I feel like I said something to you and-" said Hatori

"You said a lot of shit to me, I don't care, right now I need to find where in the hell Mob went off to. You two can either come with me or stay here. Whichever." Said Minegishi. Their aura, what little aura they had, was concentrated on their pockets. Seeds. Someone was going to die…more work for him….

"I…I still feel sort of sick…" said Hatori. He wasn't sick at all but Fukuda wasn't going to get involved in whatever this was.

"Fine. Shibata, keep babysitting him. I don't need two kids to worry about." Said Minegishi. They didn't even give Fukuda a second look as they left. The other two dissipated as well. Fukuda, once again, found himself alone. He was alone and…and he didn't much want to be alone. He let himself get up. He let himself get up and he let himself look for Sho. He knew that he should have been giving Sho his space but it was late, people were leaving, and he himself wanted to go. If he wanted to go then…then it must have been pretty late for Sho, too.

He looked for Sho.

He wasn't in the cloakroom, no, just a lot of very jumpy kids in there. No, he sobered himself up and followed the feel of Sho's aura. He was, amazingly enough, sitting under the main dessert table. He had his knees up to his chest and his head resting on his knees. There was a half drank glass of soda and most of a slice of chocolate cake beside him. He looked and felt exhausted.

"Hey, you ready to go?" asked Fukuda. Sho nodded. He nodded and he crawled out from under the table. He moved so slowly…Fukuda worried for a minute. But he didn't feel drunk or anything like that. Just tired. Exhausted. The sort of tired the bone exhausted that Fukuda had felt many times before. Poor Sho…

"Yeah. I…I want to go." Said Sho

"Yeah, it's late. Come on, let' get you home. You want to say goodbye to your new friends?" asked Fukuda. Sho shook his head.

"No, I-I just want to go. I…I um…I did…I mean…I just want to go." Said Sho. Fukuda could see it in his aura, he was worried about something. Sho looked fine physically. Wait, was he bleeding….? No, that wasn't blood. That was…it was either fruit punch of….lipstick? Btu why…oh.

Fukuda knew what kids did alone in cloakrooms together.

Sho had just turned ten. He was too little for all of that. He was just a kid and should not have been kissing, amazingly enough, girls in cloakrooms. Fukuda had been twelve the first time he had ever…well that had been decades ago…and also girls had always bothered Sho. Fukuda remembered the first time Sho had ever run up and hidden behind him because some girl had decided to play catch and kiss with him….

He was growing up and there was nothing that anyone could do about it.

"Fukuda…can we have a sleepover? I don't want to go home. Can I sleep at your house? I just…I feel tired…and stuff." Said Sho. He was so tired. So very tired. Fukuda could relate. He could relate and…and he would let him. Of course Sho could sleep over. Even if once they got him Sho would end up bouncing off the walls again. Fukuda would let him. Let him bounce off the walls and play videogames and just…be a kid. Fukuda would let Sho be a kid for as long as he could. He was growing up so fast…not as fast as his sister but faster than he should have.

"Sure thing. Come on, let's get you home." Said Fukuda. He patted Sho on the back and off they went. Fukuda got their coats and then…and then they left. They found a car and they left. Sho, that was who he had to worry about. Shigeko was out there too but…but Sho needed him. Sho needed him. Sho needed him and he would be there for Sho. No matter how Sho needed him or what Sho needed from him he would be there.

He was glad, though, that Sho needed him to leave this godforsaken party. He really, really, really hated parties.


	242. I Think Parties Suck and I want to Go

So this was a party, huh?

Sho would have imagined that it would have been more fun. Shimazaki had said that parties were fun. He said that even a stuffy work party like this could be fun if you had the right kind of help. Sho had no idea what he had meant by help but he nodded and agreed anyway. He always agreed with Shimazaki even if he wasn't sure what he was talking about. Like when he said about how he didn't like or trust big sis' new boyfriend even though he was soft as a baby kitten. He went crying to Fukuda for a papercut of all things. Shimazaki always got weird when Hatori was around and stuff. Sho didn't get it.

He hoped that Shimazaki had a good time at this party, though.

And he hoped that he let Sho hang out with him, too. Fukuda said that they were going to be party buddies for this thing. He had said that Sho and big sis would probably be the only kids there and that it would be long and boring. Well he was wrong. There were other kids here, too, they were sitting with their parents and stuff. Sho was sitting alone with big sis. Dad was making his speech about how great the future would be once Claw took over the world and stuff. So boring.

The most boring.

Shimazaki must have been so bored. Sho knew that he and Fukuda had to be party buddies but he would have rather been party buddies with Shimazaki. He was just more fun. That was probably because he was younger than Fukuda. Shimazaki said that dad and Fukuda were middle aged and once someone became middle aged they stopped being fun because they were starting to get old and stuff. Maybe that was why Fukuda didn't know how to have fun. That may, also, have been why Fukuda didn't get along with anyone at Claw. Maybe it was because the only other person his age was dad and dad didn't get along with anyone.

Anyone but big sis.

Dad and big sis had made up again…and he knew that he should have been happy for them but he was having a hard time being happy for them so he just said nothing. She got a whole day with dad, Sundays, and he didn't get any day at all with dad. Not a Sunday or a Monday or a Tuesday or even any other day of the week. That was fine. He didn't care. Dad was a jerk anyway. Even now in his speech he was being a big jerk. He was talking about how Claw was going to rule the world and when Claw did he would be the boss of everyone. He didn't know why people clapped at the end of his speech. That sounded terrible, having to be bossed around by dad until the end of time. It was hard enough having spent the last ten years of his life being bossed around by dad.

These people were so weird.

Shimazaki said that a lot of people thought that dad was God. He said that a lot of people worshipped him because he was super powerful and stuff. He also said that those people were crazy. Fukuda said that Shimazaki had just been exaggerating and that people only were very in favor of dad's dream. He said that a lot of the people here were financial backers, which meant that they gave dad the money he needed back when he was getting Claw off the ground, and that parties like this were to make them happy. To show them that Claw was a thing and stuff. To show them that dad was doing good work with their money and stuff. Sho didn't get it. Why would someone give dad money just so that he could rule the world someday? Who actually wanted to be bossed around by dad for the rest of the history of the world?

Well these people, apparently.

Sho looked around the room. People were listening to dad like he was saying something interesting. Even big sis was watching dad, listening to dad, and mouthing along with the words, too. She said that dad had practiced that speech on her. If that was true, it probably was considering the fact that big sis had no idea how lying worked, then she should have been the most bored of all. But no, she was the most interested of all, even though she had heard this whole speech already. Whatever. She was boring and weird. That was fine.

He shifted in his seat.

Those were jerk thoughts. He'd been having jerk thoughts all night. Maybe his bowtie was too tight and cutting off blood circulation to his brain or something. Big sis had tied this for him. The whole thing had been awful and it had taken almost a whole hour. Dad told her to let him do it but Sho was not about to let dad anywhere near his neck. Big sis figured it out eventually….though he had no idea why he had to wear fancy clothes. Dad was just in his normal suit. Sho hated fancy clothes. Especially the ones that big sis had picked out for him. He hated the shirt because it was white, which meant that he would have to work extra hard at keeping it clean, and also the collar poked him. He had on too many layers, too, and he was hot. He had on a green suit coat over his shirt and it matched his pants, which were also green, and that was way too much green anyway. He looked like a leprechaun with his red hair and green clothes. He wished that he could have just worn his normal clothes.

He hated fancy clothes.

Shimazaki said that fancy clothes were a necessary evil. He said that when you rose as high in the organization as he had then you had to get into your fancy clothes and go to things like this. He said that it was ok, though, because people loved fancy clothes. Especially girls. He said that getting girls was mostly just about dressing nice, working out, and smelling good. All of those things said to a girl, to her brain, that you were a well put together guy and that they should kiss you and all of that other stuff….so gross…and that was the point of fancy clothes. He said that and then he made Sho tell him how he looked because Minegishi had picked his fancy clothes out for him and they sometimes pranked him by making him wear dumb stuff.

He looked fine.

His shirt was black and his pants were black and his suit coat was black and he looked fine. Well he looked like Halloween, and Sho had been mean to say that but it was the truth, but Shimazaki hadn't gotten mad at all. He had just laughed and then undid his top two buttons and told Sho to go home and get dressed because there would probably be girls his age at this party. There were but Sho didn't care. He looked around the room. Most of these kids were either a lot older than he was or a lot younger. Still, it was…sort of weird actually…to be in the room with so many kids his own age, but he wasn't freaking out or anything. Not like dad. That was why his aura was like that. Fukuda had told him, before, that dad was afraid of being around people because he was so bad at it. Sho couldn't imagine dad being afraid of anything…and also he was really good at talking to people. Ordering them around, anyway. Sho had never seen dad just talk to someone like normal. He hadn't even talked to mom like normal back when they had lived in the castle. No, dad was just a mean jerk. That was all. Sho knew it, all of these people knew it, but they still clapped whenever he said anything…and Sho just did not get it.

He played with his phone.

He was bored so he played with his phone. At least big sis had found him something with pockets. She had her blue Elsa bag with his because girl's clothes didn't have pockets for some reason and he was not about to let her use him as her pocket slave. He had enough stuff to carry. He had his 3DS, his phone, the chargers to all of that, a little notebook, and also some colored pencils. That was all in case he got bored. Shimazaki said that this would be fun but Fukuda said that it would be boring….and while he liked Shimazaki a lot better than Fukuda he knew that Fukuda was more likely to tell the truth.

This whole thing was starting off pretty boring.

Big sis was whispering at him to put his phone away. He whispered back that he wouldn't. He felt someone looking at him. Fukuda. He waved again. Sho waved aback again. He hoped that Fukuda got tired soon so they could go. Fukuda was old and old people needed their sleep and stuff. Even with all of the other kids here he had no idea what was supposed to be so much fun about this. He looked around the room again. Some girl with pink stripes in her hair smiled at him. He looked away. He knew what it meant when girls smiled at you.

He didn't get it.

Girls. He didn't understand girls one bit. They were always trying to hold your hand and kiss you. Sometimes it felt like all they ever thought about was holding hands and kissing. Even big sis. She had a guy and all she ever talked about when she talked about him was how awesome he was and stuff…even though that wasn't' awesome at all, the way he was, and she could have had a much cooler guy…but whatever. She was just like all the other girls. All she ever thought about was kissing and hand holding. Well Sho had better things to do with his time than kiss girls and hold their hands and stuff. He'd been kissed by plenty of girls before. It wasn't anything special.

He just didn't get it sometimes.

Why people kissed and held hands. Even Shimazaki liked that stuff. Well he liked the stuff that came afterwards, too, that adults did together. Sho wasn't really sure how that worked. He said that he liked kids but he never wanted to have any of his own but then he went and kissed girls, and probably did all of that other stuff with them too, but didn't have any kids. Wasn't that the point of doing any of that stuff? To have a kid? He didn't know and all Shimazaki had told him was that he would understand when he was older. Sho was so sick of hearing that. He was ten now. How much older would he have to be before he was old enough to understand stuff? Even Fukuda said that to him sometimes. When he was older he would understand why dad liked big sis better. When he was older he would understand why dad wanted to take over the world. When he was older he would understand why they had to do things like throw dumb parties and stuff. When he was older he would understand why dad had forgotten his birthday. When he was older he would understand why mom had left.

Older, older, always older!

Well even if he lived long enough to see the sun burn out he would never be able to understand some stuff. Like when everyone clapped like crazy when dad's stupid speech was over. Dad was bossy and his speech was a bossy person's speech and everyone should have been telling him that he was a bossy jerk instead of clapping for him like he had been saying good things or whatever. He hadn't. He had just been saying all of the things that he had been saying for as long as Sho could remember. The crowd wasn't even all espers, there were a lot of normal people there, and they had still been clapping. Some of them even followed dad when he came down from the speech making place, too, which was just…..why?

Seriously. Why?

People were trying to talk to dad but, instead of talking to the people trying to talk to him, he just went right over to him and big sis. Sho didn't get it. If there were all of these adults here then why was dad coming to talk to them? They were his kids. They lived with him. He could have talked to them, bothered them, at any time. Why did he have to come up to them now? And why while his aura was all like this? He wasn't mad but…but his aura was acting like he was mad and….and Sho didn't like it. He didn't like it at all.

"Son. Daughter. I'm leaving." Said Dad when he got to their table. The people were still saying dad's name and trying to get his attention and stuff. Sho didn't get it. He didn't get why they wanted to talk to dad, he didn't get why dad was talking to them, but he especially did not get why big sis wanted dad to stay.

"But I want you to stay, dad, please? It's a party and the point of a party is to have fun…and I want you to have fun." Said big sis. She wanted dad to stay. Of course she wanted dad to stay. She wanted dad to stay because he liked her best and she liked him best and-and-and-it just was so-so-so-he didn't even know. Dad wasn't even looking at him. He had said son and daughter but he only meant daughter. He always only meant big sis. He only meant Sho when he was mad about something. Sho was tempted to do…something. Something to make him mad. Something to show people what dad was really like…even though he had just been showing everyone what he was really like.

"If dad wants to go then let him go. He doesn't care about stuff like this. He doesn't care about anything." Said Sho. He crossed his arms and made himself feel small. Look and feel small. Smaller than he was. Dad's aura was focused on him, now, and it just…didn't feel good at all. None of this felt good. Nothing about this felt good and he just wanted to…to go away. To go far away from dad.

"But-" said big sis. She was going to try and get dad to stay even though he didn't want to stay. She didn't want to be alone with him….why? What made her want to be with him all the time? Dad had ben smothering her, he had heard her loud and clear, and then dad had ignored her…and she needed to make up her mind already! She needed to make up her mind because…because he just…he didn't know how much longer he could just sit there and listen to her-

Deep breaths.

She loved him and he loved her. So what if she always went crying to him whenever dad said or did something that made her mad. So what if she couldn't decide if she wanted dad to love her or not? He didn't care. He didn't care if he as stuck at this dumb party with her and dad and her begging dad to stay and him wanting dad to go and dad probably going to end up staying because he liked big sis best. Fukuda said that dad liked big sis best because when he looked at her he saw himself. That made no sense, big sis didn't look a thing like dad or anyone else in their family, but Fukuda said that Sho would understand when he got older. Well Sho wanted to understand now. He wanted to understand why she liked dad so much when she had just been upset about how he treated her…and he wanted to know why dad didn't care about him at all…

Dad hadn't even been able to remember his birthday.

Dad hadn't even bothered to remember his birthday but he remembered to come to this stupid party that only big sis wanted and he remembered to come and tell them, well big sis, that he was leaving and he remembered to spend time with big sis every Sunday and….and for some reason he couldn't even remember Sho's birthday. He had just forgotten and…and Sho had no reason to be upset because he didn't' care about dad or what he thought or how he felt or…or anything. He just…he just didn't care…so why did it still hurt? Why did he still hurt?

And why was the hurt getting worse for every second that dad was there?

"No buts. I've done my part and I'm leaving. Daughter, look after your brother. Son…don't ruin this for your sister." Said Dad. Sho's aura flared. He couldn't help it. Dad just assumed that he would ruin this for big sis? Why? Why did dad just assume that he would ruin everything like a-a-a ruiner? He loved big sis and he knew that she had been looking forward to this party for a while and-and-and even though he thought that it was a boring waste of a night, even if there were snacks and other kids and stuff, he still wasn't going to go and ruin stuff for her!

He loved her…even if he was thinking jerk thoughts about her he still loved her.

"I'm not going to ruin anything…" muttered Sho. He crossed his arms and sank down into his chair. He could feel Fukuda coming. Good. Then he and Fukuda could be party buddies like Fukuda had said and then dad and big sis could have fun together and then everyone would get what they wanted and then…and then he could go eat cookies and drink soda even though he wasn't supposed to have sugar or liquids this late at night…and then also he would stuff his pockets with snacks like Shimazaki had said that you were supposed to….and then he would go home and sleep and this would be over and then everything would just get back to normal and…

And maybe some of the jerk thoughts that he'd been having would go away.

He wished that he knew someone who could just go inside of his head and make his thoughts all better because he was having some very mean ones. There wasn't anyone like that in Claw, though, because telepathy was a rare gift and dad didn't like telepaths anyway. So he was stuck with his mean thoughts. At least Fukuda was coming. Sho would rather have gone over and hung out with Shimazaki, it looked like he and big sis' boyfriend were trying to see who could drink the most fancy bubble juice, and Sho wanted to be over there…but he also wanted to be with Fukuda. Even if Fukuda was more boring, a lot more boring, Sho didn't care so much about how he looked or acted when he was with Fukuda. Being around Shimazaki made him kind of nervous because Sho wanted him to think that he was cool and he knew that if he did something dumb then Shimazaki would not want t be his best friend…and he really want to be best friends with Shimazaki…

He was just so cool…and stuff…which was a mean thing to think with Fukuda being right there and all.

"I can take your son home if you want, boss, Shigeko can probably handle this. It is her party after all." said Fukuda. Sho…he knew that Fukuda wanted to be his friend and all but…but that was just…Sho balled up his fists and hid them in his suit coat. He didn't want this to happen, him to get mad, but Fukuda….Fukuda was talking like Sho was a ruiner, like he was going to ruin this party, like he was just someone who was put there on this Earth to ruin things. Like everything wrong in the world was his fault because he had been born wrong and big sis had been born right. Like…like…Sho took another deep breath. Then another. Then another…even though they weren't enough to make him calm down. Fukuda was talking like dad talked. Fukuda…any minute now he could be like dad. Any minute now he would start to talk about everything wrong that Sho had ever done in his life and how much of an embarrassment he was and…and all of it…and Sho knew that Fukuda wasn't like that but now he just…he had that feeling inside of him and no matter how many times he breathed in and out he just could not get the bad feelings to come out. Maybe the part where he breathed in was keeping them stuck inside of him. Maybe if he stopped breathing then he would feel better. Maybe everyone would have just been happier if he stopped breathing and-

And he needed to go somewhere small and dark.

"I'm not going to ruin anything and I don't want to go home!" said Sho. He needed to get away. He wanted to get away. He needed to get away from there because there was just…just so much happening. Dad was there and Fukuda was there and he was talking like dad and then big sis was there and she was asking dad to stay and it was just…too much. It was even worse with all of those people who were trying to talk to dad and be near him and…and asking for him even though he was such a…a lot of bad words…he was a goddamned mother fucker. That was what he was…and the minute he thought that he pulled his head into his shirt because he got the feeling that dad could hear him…but he didn't because he couldn't hear thoughts…and he also wished that Shimazaki could have heard him too because that was some very good cursing he had just done.

He kind of wanted to curse some more.

He wanted to go up to dad and start calling him every single curse word that Sho knew. Shimazaki had taught him some good ones and he knew that dad would be mad if Sho started curing him out but…but maybe he deserved it. No, there was no 'maybe' about it. Dad did deserve it. He deserved to be cursed out in every single bad word that there was in Japanese and also a few of the ones in English that Shimazaki had taught him too…but Sho doesn't curse dad out. He doesn't do it because….because he isn't a ruiner like everyone thought. This was big sis' party and she had been excited for this for a while…and he was not going to ruin it for her. He wasn't going to be what everyone thought that he was.

It had nothing to do with being afraid.

This had nothing at all to do with him being afraid of dad. He wasn't afraid to get hit. He wasn't afraid to get slapped. He wasn't afraid to get yelled at. He wasn't afraid of dad at all. He just…was not going to ruin this for big sis. No, he was not some ruiner that just went around ruining everything. He was….he was not that person. He was not going to go out there and ruin everything and he was not going to…to be what dad thought that he was.

He closed his eyes.

He closed his eyes and looked around. There were so many auras…and dad's was leaving. Dad's was leaving and big sis' aura was still there…and still like normal….and then Fukuda was there and…and he could sort of feel Shimazaki but he kept on teleporting…and also his aura felt really mad and also kind of….snappy? Fizzy? Poppy? It was hard to focus on. It was like the end of a sparkler. It got like that sometimes…and Sho didn't know why. He didn't know why but he wanted to know why. He wanted to crawl out from under that table and ask Shimazaki why his aura was being like that. He wanted to crawl out from under that table and hang out with him and…and he knew that he had promised Fukuda that they would be party buddies but…but he should not have agreed with dad like that. It was supposed to be him and Fukuda on one side and dad and big sis on the other side. Just like how back when they'd had a mom it had been him and mom on one side and then dad and big sis on the other.

He wanted someone on his side.

But now….now it seemed like no one was on his side. Being ten sucked. He was all alone and…and it sucked! It sucked a whole bag of dicks! Which was a gross way of saying that something really sucked. Shimazaki had taught him that one. Sho didn't get it. Why would anyone want to suck on those and also why was there a while bag of them? And how had they gotten in the bag in the first place? Was there just some chainsaw maniac going around chopping them off and putting them in a sack and then making people suck on the sack full of other people's-

Sho laughed.

Even though he knew that it wasn't funny, the thought of someone chopping his off and putting it in a sucking on sack made him cross his legs in horror, but it's also just a little bit funny because…because it was just crazy. Crazy things were funny. Therefore it was ok to laugh. So he did laugh. He laughed and….and now he felt better. Better enough that maybe he could come out from under the table and go and see what Shimazaki was up to…or go be party buddies with Fukuda because he was lonely and old and stuff. He was lonely and older than everyone there and he probably needed someone to hang out with. He wouldn't even be able to mess around on his phone he was so old. He was always making Sho show him how Youtube and stuff worked on phones…so Fukuda needed him more than Shimazaki…and he really wanted to go and see Shimazaki…

But Fukuda needed him more.

Sho lifted up the table cloth and was about to crawl out from under the table when he bumped into something…or someone. Another kid. That was weird. No aura. That was even weirder….or maybe it wasn't because kids didn't usually have powers unless they were prodigies. So a kid without an aura wasn't weird…but being this close to another kid and talking to someone who didn't have an aura at all…that was weird. That was weird and that was why Sho had made that squeaking noise and thrown himself back….and stuff….

"Oh! Sorry, I didn't know that someone else was under here. I'll just go and-" said the other kid. Sho….he didn't want this kid to go. He never talked to the other kids, there were never any kids around Claw for him to talk to, and when he was out in the world he was out with Shimazaki and when he was with Shimazaki he never wanted to talk to anyone but him….so it would be nice to talk to another kid. He looked like he would be a cool kid to talk to. His hair was spiked up and he had a 3DS in his hand…so maybe he was cool…

And maybe he would think that Sho was cool too.

"You-you can stay. There's plenty of room under here." Said Sho. His voice came out weird there. He was out of practice when it came to talking to the other kids. He couldn't even remember the last time that he had spoken to a kid his own age. Well one who wasn't his big sister but she didn't count because they were siblings and also she thought that she was an adult and stuff.

This was weird…but in a good way.

"Are you sure? I can leave if you want. I mean the last kid who's table I tried to crawl under threw a cookie at me." Said the kid

"He threw a cookie? Why? These cookies are awesome." Said Sho. Big sis had specifically asked for the cafeteria cookies to be served here. Who was stupid enough to just throw one?

"I know, right? But then he was all 'get out of my fort big kid' and I was all 'this is a table, little kid' and then he threw a cookie at me….but it's ok. He was like six or seven or something and that's just how little kids are. Am I right?" asked the kid. He was under the table now. There was plenty of room but Sho got the feeling that one of them was too close to the other…but he also didn't want either of them to move. This was a big kid…bigger than Sho…but he was a big kid too now. He was ten. Double digits meant that you were a big kid now…and this kid certainly thought that he was a big kid now…so he had to act like one…because suddenly he felt like the biggest baby on the planet!

He had been such a little kid just now.

"Y-yeah…little kids can be such babies sometimes." Said Sho. He sat normal, looked normal, even made his aura normal even though this other kid couldn't see it. This other kid was a normal person…and he was not supposed to talk to normal people…but dad was gone and big sis was too busy with the party that she had planned to tattle on him to dad…not that she did that…so this was ok. He was ok. This whole thing was ok.

"Tell me about it. I have this little brother, well I call him my little bother, and he's here too. He's hiding over there with the cookie thrower and they've got some kind of secret fort clubhouse thing going which is just…whatever. Who still builds forts? I'm just looking for a place to play Smash in peace without my dad being all 'don't embarrass this family' and stuff. Dads, am I right?" asked the kid

"Yeah…dads suck. Well mine does, anyway. Um….you like Smash Brothers?" asked Sho. He suddenly felt like a little bother, not a little brother, and also he felt like he was seven. Big kids didn't build forts? But Shimazaki was thirty and he loved to build forts…and Sho didn't know why he cared what some kid he just met thought but…but he really cared…he cared a whole lot…and he didn't know why.

He didn't even know this other kid's name but suddenly what he thought felt like the most important thing in the whole world.

"Hell yeah! I just got it for Christmas for the 3DS and I've been playing nonstop. You like Smash too?" asked the kid

"Um….yes? I mean yeah. I play it all the time. I got it for Christmas too. I mostly just play against the computer because my sister kind of sucks. Her main is Peach but he always just spams the umbrella smack and when she thinks that she's going to win she just throws herself off the world a bunch of times." Said Sho

"That's stupid as hell. Why's she do that?" asked the kid

"She thinks that she has to because she's so much older than me." Said Sho

"How old is she?" asked the kid

"Ten…we're both ten but our birthday are super close together. I just turned ten and she's going to be eleven soon." Said Sho. That felt weird saying it out loud. Was May soon? It was still December. He didn't know. He probably sounded so stupid that this kid was never going to want to play with him ever and…and also Sho didn't even want to be there with himself because he had said something so stupid…

"That's cool, you guys are almost twins. Hey, who's your main? I'm usually Mario but sometimes my little brother throws a tantrum because he wants to be Mario but, like, the only Mario because even with color variants he still gets confused and I have to do what he wants because I'm twelve and he's five and I have to be the bigger man or whatever. God, it sucks being the oldest." Said the kid

"Um…I'm mostly Kirby but also sometimes Toon Link…but not because I throw a fit or anything. My sister is just always Peach or sometimes some other girl character…because she's a girl…but I guess that you figured that because I said that she was my sister…and stuff…and sisters are always girls or else they'd be brothers…and stuff." Said Sho. He was stupid. He was so stupid. That was why that other kid had started laughing at him. Because he was stupid and he'd said something stupid and now this kid thought that he was stupid and-

"You're really funny, you know that? I'm Hideki, by the way. Hideki Yuta." Said the kid. Sho caught his breath and tried to remember what he was supposed to do now. The kid had introduce himself and now it was Sho's turn…but how did that work!? What country was he even in? Um…Japan! They were speaking Japanese so this must have been Japan so in Japan they…they were supposed to bow! But they were sitting under a table…shake hands? But they weren't old people…..they were big kids but not old people….

Say. Something.

"Suzuki Sho. It's a pleasure to meet you." Said Sho. He wanted to crawl into a hole and die the minute he finished talking. He wanted to get a spoon from on the table and start digging…event though they were on the top floor…but still! He wanted to dig a tunnel and live underground with the mole people and then…and then…and then just get out of here already before he made a bigger idiot out of himself than he's already done!

"Man, Suzuki, you're funny as hell. You know that?" said Hideki. Sho made a weird noise that might have been a laugh and turned red. What was WRONG with him?! Was he this out of practice when it came to talking to someone his own age who wasn't his big sister? Seriously? He needed to pull himself together. He needed to stop acting like an idiot. He was not a moron. He was not a moron and he was not going to sit there and make a moron out of himself like this. He was Suzuki Sho and he was…boy was he going to do something….

Because now there was silence.

Was this an awkward silence? How much silence did there have to be before it became awkward? Was it awkward already? Was he somehow making it awkward by thinking that it was awkward? But then how was he supposed to judge if this silence was awkward or not? And what was he even supposed to say to that? He couldn't just tell Hideki that he agreed, he thought that he was really funny, because then he would seem full of himself and people hated it when other people were full of themselves. But then if he disagreed and said that he wasn't funny at all then he would be a dower and nobody liked a downer….so was he supposed to say 'thanks'? But that didn't seem right either?

Why was this so HARD?

"Um…thanks? Do…you-you want…to play? With me I mean?" asked Sho. He held up his 3DS in case Hideki didn't know what he meant…even though he obviously knew what Sho meant because they had just been talking about Smash Brothers and stuff. Well Sho had other games in his case but…but he knew that Hideki liked Smash Brothers and that he also liked Smash Brothers so why not play some Smash Brothers!? There was nothing weird about wanting to play Smash Brothers! There was nothing weird about Sho! He was normal! This was normal! There was nothing at all abnormal about this or the way he was feeling!

He was normal damn it! He didn't know who he was arguing with but he knew that he was normal!

"Hell yeah! I like the way you think, Suzuki!" said Hideki. Sho…he felt good. He felt good and like…like he could float away. But he wasn't going to. No, he wasn't supposed to show his powers to normal people. He wasn't supposed to freak normal people out like that so that was why he made sure to keep his powers in check no matter how hard it got…

And boy did it get hard.

More and more people started showing up. The more people that showed up the less room that there was. The less room that there was the closer that he had to get to Hideki. He had to get close to him otherwise…otherwise there wouldn't be room for the other kids. Sho hadn't invited them and neither had Hideki. They just sort of came. This was a boring party, an adult party, so they decided to have their own DS party under a table.

Well most of them.

Some of them were just on their phones. Some of them were eating. One girl kept on complaining about how boring it was under there until another girl told her to leave. Sho told her that if she was so bored she could go and talk to his big sis. There. That would show the pink haired girl the meaning of the word 'boring'. It was many things under that table but boring was not one of them. Sho's heart was beating too fast and his stomach had too much of the live goldfish swimming around in it feeling to be bored. That was because these were close games, that was all. Big sis never played him for real and playing against a computer program was nowhere near as close to playing with another person. He was ok. He was having fun. That was all. That was why he felt sort of like he wanted to run far away from Hideki but also how he wanted to be close to him for the rest of his life…

What was wrong with him?

Sho didn't know. All he knew was that there was a goldfish in his stomach and…and maybe it had invited friends. Or maybe it had laid eggs. Maybe his stomach was full of live goldfish and…and there was no way to make them stop. Did he even want them to stop? He didn't know. He didn't even know what this was. All he knew was that it just would not quit…and that was….that was ok. He didn't know what it was but it just would not quit…and he didn't know if he wanted it to quit. He didn't know if it would go on forever or if he wanted it to go on forever…well he wanted to play Smash with Hideki and these other kids forever…but he also knew that he sort of wanted it to end because this was just so much and…and he had no idea what to do with this feeling now that he had it inside of himself…like he had swallowed a million goldfish and they had laid a million eggs and-

"Hey! No room!" Sho died. The minute that other kid, Sho couldn't remember his name, said that he died. He died because he had been distracted. That was the last time he could fall off the world. Now he was dead. He was dead in the game and now he felt like he was dead, or soon to be dead, in the real world. He knew that aura. He had been too distracted with what he was doing to notice but now that he felt him….Sho knew that aura and he knew that he was dead…

Why, though?

He wasn't doing anything wrong…well he wasn't supposed to be with normal people. That was it. That was why he suddenly wanted to scoot far away from Hideki. Because he was so obviously a normal person and Fukuda would be able to tell that he was a normal person and Sho was not supposed to be near normal people and…and that was why he wanted to scoot far away from Hideki. That was it and nothing more.

"Aww…it's someone's dad." Said Hideki. He threw the match….sort of like he was done playing…but they couldn't have been done playing…because Sho didn't want to be done playing. He wanted to play all night. He loved this party. He loved this party and he loved playing with the other kids and…and he loved this and…and he loved….

He loved Fukuda but he wanted him to get lost, too.

"He's not my dad. He just takes care of me sometimes." Said Sho. He knew, by the look on Fukuda's face and aura, that he had said something mean…but it was the truth. Sure he wished that Fukuda had been his dad and all but wishing was not something that could, you know, change reality. He wished for a lot of things but that didn't make them real.

"Brought you something to eat, Sho." said Fukuda. The sad look passed from his face as he passed Sho a plate of food…which he did not need. He was a big kid and he could feed himself and he did not need these other kids, he did not need Hideki, to think that Sho was a little kid. Because he wasn't. He was ten and ten was not little.

"Thanks, you can just leave it here. Um…I'm just playing Smash with these guys…and I don't think that you'd like to play too because…um…you probably didn't bring your DS and also whenever we play together you throw yourself off of the world on accident and it makes the match too short…but we can hang out later! Also there's other adults here for you to hang out with so…so you won't be so lonely." Said Sho. He wasn't trying to be a jerk. If he had been trying to be a jerk he would have told Fukuda to get lost because he was being all embarrassing. The only thing more embarrassing would have been if it had been big sis telling him to eat…or rather not to eat because he wasn't supposed to eat or drink this late at night because then he would wet the bed maybe….and, yeah, that would have been a thousand times worse…

"Just come and find me when you're ready to head home." Said Fukuda. Sho was so glad when he put the tablecloth back and went back to doing whatever it was that he was doing. Sho loved Fukuda, he really did, but he was a big kid now and he could do things on his own. He didn't need to be Fukuda's party buddy because he already had a party buddy…and he knew that it was mean of him to ignore Fukuda like that…but he would make it up to him. They could play some of those boring games that Fukuda liked when he had been a kid or something. Later. Not now. Sho had some more Smash to play now.

Or at least he would have if the stupid table cloth hadn't been lifted up again.

If not for the lack of aura Sho had been about to say something that he shouldn't have. He had been about to tell Fukuda to get lost and to hang out with someone else for a change. He had been about to tell Fukuda to go home if he wanted to leave so badly. He was about to tell Fukuda that Sho would either teleport home with Shimazaki or just call a car on his own. He was about to say all of those things but, thankfully, he didn't.

Because that hadn't been Fukuda at all.

"Hey, if any of you feel like having some real fun a bunch of us are going to go and play in the coatroom." Said that annoying girl with the pink stripes in her hair. Sho didn't know what could be more fun about a coat room than under a table. Under the table made for a much better clubhouse and also-

"Hell yeah!" said Hideki. Sho was…so confused. He was confused when Hideki said that and did a fist pump. He was confused when Hideki closed his DS and put it in his pocket. He was confused when Hideki and a couple of the other older kids started to crawl out from under the table. He was confused and…and the only way to stop being confused was to get to the bottom of this already.

So that was what he did.

He followed Hideki out from under the table. The world looked too bright, now, but that was because he had been hiding under a table covered in a Claw red tablecloth. There were fewer people around, now, and fewer auras too. Big sis' aura was still there but it was all…fuzzy. Sho didn't pay much attention to her. He lived with her, he would see her when he got home, right now he had someone new to pay attention to…and stuff….

And he needed to know what was even going on because then seconds ago they had been having the time of their lives and now he was just…getting up and leaving…and stuff.

"Hey, where are you going? Come on, I was totally going to kick your ass in the next round." Said Sho. He tried not to show what he was feeling….and it was hard because he didn't even know what he was feeling. He was just…he still had the goldish in his stomach, all of them, but now it felt like they were trying to eat each other. He felt…he didn't know how he felt but he knew that he wanted to make it stop…

Somehow.

"Didn't you here her? Coatroom games can only mean one thing." Said Hideki

"Hide and seek?" asked Sho. The minute he said it he felt like a moron. That was the only thing he could think of, really, to do in a coatroom that you couldn't do underneath a table. Really what else was there? Well there was always wearing the coats while they were hanging and then pretending that you were a scarecrow…but he got the feeling that doing that was even more babyish than playing hide and seek.

"Suzuki, you're funny as hell. Come on, you know what I mean." Said Hideki. No. Sho had no clue what he meant. He went over everything that could be played in a coatroom….and it all seemed babyish the more he thought about it. Maybe his brain was still nine even though the rest of him was ten now. That would have made sense. That was why he didn't have the first clue what Hideki was even talking about….

But he was not going to look like a baby.

"Yeah…I know what you mean. I totally know what you mean." Said Sho. He had no idea what Hideki meant but since it was some big kid thing that all big kids knew he was going to go with it. It was just playing more games. Maybe the wifi was better in there or something. Maybe they were going to play a more gown up fighting game like Mortal Kombat or something. Or maybe they were going to play a horror game together or something. Whatever it was Sho was up for it.

How bad could it be?

Bad. It could be very bad. It could be the worst. Apparently coatroom games were just…kissing. Just spinning an empty bottle around and kissing whoever it landed on. This was…he had seen this game before in movies and stuff but he hadn't known that it was real. When would he have ever had the chance to play this? And who would he ever have played this with? His own sister? He wanted to throw up at the thought. He wanted to throw up in general. The goldfish in his stomach were still eating each other but they were not going down without a fight. This was…this was a lot. He'd been kissed by girls before but that had been when he had been little.

He wasn't little anymore.

And this was different. This wasn't some girl chasing him around so she could kiss him and stuff. This was….this was like some crazy random chance game where…where he could end up kissing any one of these girls…and he didn't want to kiss any of these girls…he didn't want to kiss any of them at all even if he was a ten year old now and this was what ten year olds did, they kissed girls. He just wanted to get back under the table and play more Smash Brothers….

"I'm going to try and get it to land on that girl, Asagiri, the one with the pink stripes in her hair. I can't believe she's your age." Whispered Hideki

"Um….yeah. She's pretty. I like her…hair." Said Sho. She looked normal to him. Well she had boobs but he wasn't going to look at them…because that was rude. He wasn't going to look at them….or any of the other girl's boobs…and how did all of these girls have boobs? And why was everyone else staring? Didn't they know that it was impolite to stare at girl's boobs? That they didn't like that and that they called you a pervert and slapped you when they caught you looking?

Sho wasn't staring because it was impolite to star.

"Ok, so we can either play spin the bottle of seven minutes in heaven. I say we play seven minutes in heaven since I'm the one who found the bottle but I'm going to be polite and let you guys vote." Said Asagiri, the pink haired girl. Sho wondered if he should just come clean and say that he had just turned ten a few weeks ago, he had no idea what he was doing, he didn't like girls yet, and he really just wanted to play videogames….but Hideki was sitting right there and if he said that then he would look like the little kid that he was inside…

"Oh my God Minori, no fucking way. I don't even know any of these guys, there's no way I'm letting them feel me up. If you want to get felt up then you just go and do that. I have standards." Said the girl sitting across from Sho. Sho decided that he liked her the best. He didn't know what she meant but if even someone older than him wasn't comfortable doing it than it must have been something really bad.

"I-I don't want to get felt up! I don't just go around letting random guys feel me up! Who do you think I am?! I was just trying to take everyone into consideration. I mean some of us are ready to do more than kiss and all. That doesn't mean that I'm just going to let random guys do whatever to me. Honestly!" said Asagiri. Sho hoped that she and that other girl ended up beating each other up so he would have an excuse to leave. He didn't want to do anything with anyone….but maybe that was weird. Those were girls. Those were girls who wanted to kiss. Those were girls who had boobs. He was supposed to want to kiss them and touch their boobs and stuff. That was the normal stuff that he was supposed to want to do…so why didn't he want to do it?

What was wrong with him?

"Come on, let's just play something before people start coming in looking for their coats." Said Hideki. Sho wished that someone would come in looking for their coat right now. They were in the very back of the coatroom sitting under a rack of coats. They could have made an awesome fort out of all of this…but they were not going to because they were not little kids. They were big kids and big kids didn't build forts. They kissed.

So that was what he was going to do.

"Since Akemi is so morally opposed to seven minutes in heaven let's play spin the bottle. The rules are simple. You spin the bottle and you kiss whoever it lands on. No exceptions. No respins either. You get who you get and you don't get upset. I'll go first." Said Asagiri. She spun the bottle. Sho watched it spin. He wondered if it would just end up going on forever. That would have been cool. Maybe she spun it too hard and it would end up spinning for a thousand years or something like that. That would have been so fucking awesome…

It didn't spin forever.

It slowed down…and down…and down…until it stopped on him…and he had to act fast. He gave it a tap with his powers just as it was about to slow down. It went past him, past Hideki, and it landed on another girl…and that sucked because now she would have to spin again and then it might end up landing on him again and….

"You made up the rules, Minori, and now you have to follow them." Said the girl, Akemi, the one that Sho decided was the best one of the lot. She seemed ok…but also she was making no sense now. Girls didn't just kiss other girls. That was…not how it worked. Girls kissed boys. If girls could kiss each other then why were they always trying to kiss him!?

"Akemi Yuki I will fucking kill you…" muttered Asagiri. Sho hoped that they did end up killing each other. Sho hoped that they ended up having a great big fight and then he could go back under his table and play some more videogames with Hideki and then they could just forget this whole big kissing…mess…that they were about to get themselves into.

But they didn't beat each other up.

No, Asagiri kissed the girl that she landed on. It was quick, super quick, but she still made noises like she was going to throw up. Sho didn't get it. If she didn't want to have to do that then why did she make the rules that you had to kiss who you landed on? Also…how did that even work? Two girls kissing? Did that mean that, in this game, two boys could kiss? Did that mean that in this game….in this game…he could end up kissing another boy?

The lights above them flickered.

"Hell yeah! Even God approves!" shouted Hideki. Sho didn't say that it had been his powers that did that. He didn't say that it had been an accident. He didn't say that the thought of kissing another boy…it made the goldfish in his stomach go crazy. He had never kissed another boy before…he had never even thought about it before…because he couldn't kiss another boy. Because he was supposed to kiss a girl. Because that was what boys did, they kissed girls, and he…he knew that sometimes boys could kiss other boys….but he was different enough as it was….so it was not ok for him to kiss another boy….

But it would ok now…because that was just how the game was played.

"That's just the faulty lighting in this dump. God, don't blow your load." Said Asagiri. Sho had no idea what that meant or why it was so good that two girls had kissed…or of anything. Maybe he wasn't a big kid after all. Maybe he was still a little kid. Maybe he should have just gotten up and walked away and gone off to throw cookies with all the other little kids…

Hideki elbowed him in the side.

Right. He was ten and this was what ten year olds did. They played this game. They sat in coatrooms and they spun bottles and kissed each other. So that was what Sho was going to do. He was going to spin the bottle and he was going to kiss whoever it landed on. When it was his turn, of course, because they were taking turns and he wasn't…well he did and he did not want to play. He mostly just wanted to get his turn out of the way, he decided, because at least when it wasn't his turn he could nudge the bottle away from him. Not in a big way, no, just enough so that he didn't end up having to kiss anyone.

And he didn't.

He made it through the circle without anyone else landing on him. He nudge the bottle just enough to get it out of the way but not so much that people suspected him. Not that they would. Nobody there knew that he had powers. Nobody there knew that he could do things that they couldn't. They thought that he was just like them, that he was a normal person, even though he wasn't. This was what it felt like to be just like everyone else….

Well he imagined that it felt a little less like there were live goldfish in his stomach but it was still a nice feeling.

He had never once fit in anywhere in his life. Here he could…no. He wanted to fit in here but he couldn't. He was the youngest in the room. Well Asagiri was supposed to be his age but she didn't look like she was his age at all. She looked older and acted older. As old as all of these other kids. He was the youngest in the room and of course he didn't fit in….

Well he had to.

He had to try harder to fit in. He was sick and tired of being different. He had spent his entire life being different and for once he just wanted to be like everyone else…and that meant taking his turn and playing this game and not thinking weird thoughts like what it would be like to kiss another guy and stuff like that. He was not going to kiss another guy and…and the thought of it should not have been riling up the goldfish in his stomach! He was not going to think about this! He was going to take his turn like normal and…and that was what he was going to do!

It was his turn.

Sho took a deep breath and spun the bottle…maybe too hard because it just spun and spun and spun. Round and round and round it went. He didn't care where it stopped. He would kiss any of those girls. He didn't care. He was supposed to want to kiss girls and…and that was what he was going to do. Kiss a girl. Like he was supposed to. Yes. That was what he was going to do…if it ever stopped on a girl…which it would. Any minute now it would stop on a girl. Any second now.

He was not nudging the bottle with his powers to make it keep on spinning.

He was just…sometimes he lost control of his powers and this was one of those time. He was fine. He just had to…he made himself stop…and it spun. It made one more pass before it slowed down in front of him…and that was where he stopped it. If it landed on him then he would have to kiss himself…he wasn't sure how that worked but he would figure it out when it came to that….but first he just had to make it stop on himself…

Or a little to the left.

He had done it because…because he had been nudging that bottle away from himself all night. That was all. He hadn't wanted to kiss anyone at all that night so he had been nudging the bottle out of the way…and that was why he had sent it a little to the left. That was why it had landed on Hideki. It had been a complete and total accident. A force of habit. Asa force of habit he had used the force to make…this…happen.

This was happening.

"Spin it again Suzuki. That doesn't count." Said Hideki. Sho felt like he had been kicked in the stomach. He felt like he had been kicked in the stomach and not his stomach goldfish were freaking out and trying to chew their way out through his stomach and…and he didn't know why. He should have been relieved. Now he didn't have to do something as weird as kissing another guy…because he was not supposed to want to kiss other guys…because guys were supposed to kiss girls. He was supposed to kiss girls and…and think about kissing them and stuff…and all of that other stuff too….but he couldn't. He looked from Hideki to the girls around him. He settled on the girl with the pink stripes in her hair. She was pretty and she had boobs and stuff and….and he was supposed to want to kiss her. Not Hideki

He wanted to kiss Hideki.

It explodes in his mind. The thought of it. He wants to kiss Hideki. He wants to kiss him. Sho wanted to kiss HIM and that…that is not ok. He's supposed to want to kiss girls. There are girls all around him but he doesn't want to kiss them. He wants to kiss…he wants to kiss Hideki. Because he's cool. Because they have the same taste in video games. Because Hideki said that he was funny. Because his hair looked cool all spiked up like that. Because he just…because he was just….someone who Sho wanted to kiss.

He wanted to kiss Hideki so badly….and he just didn't get it.

"Uh, no, it does. It's my bottle, I found it, and what I say goes. You get who you get and you don't get upset." Said Asagiri. Sho liked her a lot, he decided, and that…that was just not something that he should have liked her for. He should have been arguing against her. He should have been saying that he was not going to kiss another guy because….because that was not ok…and he should have been trying to kiss her or one of the other girls…but he just….didn't want to….

What was WRONG with him?

"Come on, he's only ten. It's wrong as hell to make him kiss me…and also I don't want to kiss him because, like, he's ten." Said Hideki. Sho felt, once again, like he had been kicked in the stomach. He wondered how many times he could feel this before the goldfish inside of him ate through his organs and left him with no stomach or anything at all. He wondered how long it would take before he just…died. Because he wanted to die. This was a lot. This was too much. He wanted to kiss Hideki and Hideki didn't want to kiss him and…and that bothered him so much even though he knew that it was so weird that he was bothered by this and….

And he wanted someone to come and rescue him.

But he was in the coatroom. The party was outside of the coatroom and that was where anyone who could rescue him was. Fukuda was probably having fun talking about finance or strategy with the other adults, so boring but also good for him for being less lonely, and big sis was probably still talking to all of those adults or hanging out with her friends or something….he couldn't even feel her aura actually…and Shimazaki….

He didn't even want to think about Shimazaki right now.

"I'm ten but you've been trying to make the bottle land on me all night." Said Asagiri

"Minori, just drop it." Said Akemi

"No fucking way. You get who you get and you don't get upset. Those are the rules. If you don't want to follow the rules then you shouldn't have come and played with me. You should have found your own bottle to play with in that case." Said Asagiri

"I am not kissing him. We're both guys." Said Hideki. Sho, once again, felt like he had been kicked in the stomach…or maybe this was an even worse feeling. Yeah, maybe it was an even worse feeling, because now Sho was just…more aware. Yes, no he was even more aware of how different he was. He was more aware of how much….how much more different he was than everyone else. He was an esper, he had red hair and blue eyes, his dad was going to take over the world, he was covered in weird scars, and now he wanted to kiss boys instead of girls. How much more different could he possibly get?!

"So? I kissed her and we're both girls." Said Asagiri

"That's different." Said Hideki

"No. It's the same. You either follow the rules or you don't play at all. Now come on, you're holding up the game. I don't know how much longer we can be in here for. My dad's going to be looking for me. I don't know how much longer he'll think that I'm in the bathroom for so, just, kiss already." Said Asagiri

"Well then I'm not playing anymore. Come on, Suzuki, let's get the hell out of here." Said Hideki. Sho…he had no clue what he even wanted anymore. He knew that he wanted to kiss Hideki. He knew that he wanted to kiss Hideki more than he had ever wanted to kiss someone in his life…which was at all because he had never wanted to kiss someone before…and he also knew that he should not have wanted to kiss Hideki in the first place because they were both guys and that was not ok….

What was wrong with him?

"You know….if you kiss him then I'll kiss you. I mean, outside of my turn. For real. I'll kiss both of you if you want." Said Asagiri. Sho didn't get it, why she wanted to see them kiss and stuff, but he was…a lot of very confused feelings. That was what this was. The goldfish in his stomach weren't fighting, they weren't trying to eat each other, they were just very confused about this whole thing. He wanted….maybe it was ok to want to kiss Hideki…because then he got to kiss that girl…and he was supposed to want to kiss a girl….so then it was ok for him to want to kiss Hideki.

"Minori, just drop it. If they don't want to kiss then don't make them kiss. You're being really weird right now." Said Akemi

"I am not, you're the one being weird." Said Asagiri. In Sho's opinion this whole thing was weird…but nobody had asked for his opinion and he wasn't going to give it because he got the feeling that his opinion was weird…and stuff. No, he wasn't going to say anything. He was just going to….going to….

He had no idea what he was going to do.

"If I kiss him then I get to kiss you? For real?" asked Hideki. Sho didn't get what was so exciting about that. They'd been playing this dumb kissing game all night. So what if he got to kiss her…and that was just him being weird again. Why as he being so weird?! What was….what was his brain thinking?! His brain was always making him think jerk thoughts and now it was making him think weird thoughts and…and why did he have to be so different!? Why couldn't he just be normal for once in his life?!

"Yeah, for real." Said Asagiri. There was something in her eyes and her tone and….and Sho felt as clueless as big sis. He had no idea what she meant and he had no idea what Hideki was so excited about and…and he had no idea how he felt. If he had no idea how he felt then he knew that he wouldn't be able to understand the feelings of others, either, so there was no point in trying to make sense of….of all of this. If he couldn't make sense of his own goldfish then why did he think that he could make sense of other people's?

"Hell yeah! Ok, Suzuki, don't freak out. I'm going to make this quick. Just….close your eyes." Said Hideki. Sho did as he was told. He wanted to tell Hideki that he wanted him to be quick…and also that he wanted it to go on forever….and that was before it even happened. He closed his eyes and…and he saw with his aura…but he couldn't see with his aura because they were just normal people. Shimazaki had said that it took a lot of practice to be able to see normal people because they had no auras. Shimazaki had said that it would get easier with practice…and Sho wished that he had practiced with more normal people. All he could hear was breathing. All around him he could hear breathing. From the people around him and…and his own. He could hear his own heartbeat too. He could hear his heart beating and he could feel his heart beating and it was beating so fast and….and….and….

And then it stopped beating.

He was being kissed. He had been kissed before, girls liked him for some reason, but now he was being kissed again…and his heart had stopped and his breathing had stopped and he had just…just stopped. His entire body was short circuiting. This felt….good. This felt better than anything that he had ever felt before. Was this…was this IT? That thing that people were supposed to feel when they kissed someone? Well then no wonder girls were always trying to do this to him! This was amazing! This was the best thing ever! He wanted to do this every single day at least a thousand times a day because it felt so good and-

-and then it was over.

Quick. Hideki had made it quick. Too quick…and Sho should not have been sorry that it had been so quick. Sho should not have been sitting there with his eyes closed leaning forward long after Hideki pulled away. He should not have just been sitting there listening to everyone breathing, listening to Hideki breathing, and listening to himself breathing. He should not have just been sitting there with his eyes closed just…listening. He should have opened his eyes. He should have opened his eyes and then pretended that he was going to throw up or something because that had been gross….that should have been gross…because he had kissed another guy and kissing another guy should have been the grossest thing that he ever could have done…..

He kissed a boy.

He kissed a boy and he liked it.

He kissed a boy and he liked it and he wanted to do it again.

But he didn't do it again.

"I think I broke his brain….sorry Suzuki." Said Hideki. He wanted to tell Hideki that, no, his brain was not broken and that he had liked it more than he had ever liked anything in his entire life….and stuff. But he didn't. He couldn't. He needed….he needed to just….just be normal. So he didn't open his eyes and lean in and kiss Hideki again…even if he wanted to. No. He just…he just opened his eyes….and tried to make words…

And he couldn't.

Because he didn't have any words for this. For what he felt. The goldfish in his stomach were just swimming around in confused circles now. They didn't know what to do or where to go and neither did he. He had kissed a boy, he had liked it, and now what was he supposed to do. He felt like dad. Dad was always saying 'I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this information' and now Sho…Sho had no idea what he was supposed to do with this information. He kissed a boy, it felt good, and now he wanted to do it again…and he just didn't get it. He needed….he needed to talk to someone about this. someone who knew what to do with this information…but he couldn't tell anyone. He couldn't tell big sis because she would probably end up telling dad and dad…dad could never know about this. That was why he couldn't tell Fukuda either, because he and dad were close and stuff, and also…and also he couldn't tell Shimazaki because…well he wouldn't tell dad but…

He REALLY did not want to think about Shimazaki right now.

"I-I-I'm fine. That was just….I've never done that before. So it's…weird. That's all." said Sho. There. He had said something and it made sense but also it made sense without making him sound as weird as he felt. He had kissed a boy, he had liked it, and he wanted to do it again….but he also knew that he was never going to do ANYTHING like this ever again…because it was weird…and he was not supposed to do stuff like this…

Even though he REALLY WANTED to….

"Aw hell…that was your first kiss? Sorry. You should have said something. Seriously! I don't want to be your first kiss….just….I'm sorry as hell, ok Suzuki?" asked Hideki. Sho…how many times was he going to get kicked him the stomach tonight? That…that hadn't been his first kiss, his first kiss had been in preschool when that girl he didn't even know kissed him on the rug when the teacher wasn't looking, but…but it had felt like his first kiss. The first one that he had ever wanted. The first one that had ever felt good. The first one that….that he ever wanted to repeat….

But Hideki had hated it.

Hideki had hated it and he had been right to hate it. Guys were not supposed to kiss guys. Guys were supposed to kiss girls and…and that was how it was supposed to be…and there was just…there was always something wrong with him. There was something wrong with him and there had always been something wrong with him. He had been born wrong and…and everyone else in the world had been born right…and that was….that was just the way that it was with him….

He felt sort of like he was going to throw up…or cry…or wet himself….or just run away.

But he didn't get a chance to do any of those things. No. There was a moment when he saw her move, Asagiri, and then she was on top of him. She was on top of him and he was laying down and…and he wanted to push her off….but he stopped himself. He forced himself not to push her off because….because it was one thing to be meant to your sister but it was another thing to be mean to some girl that you didn't even know. That was why he didn't push her off. Well that and also…also…

Also this was what he was supposed to want.

A girl on top of him. He had seen this before on TV and in movies…and also in life, too. Well the other way around. Sometimes Shimazaki laid down on top of Minegishi and made them read to him and stuff…and probably other stuff too. The stuff that happened when Shimazaki told him to get out of the room because if he stayed he would end up needed to describe what he saw to a therapist in ten years or something. He had never stayed and seen what happened….and TV never showed what happened….past kissing….and he really hoped that this girl didn't want to do any of the stuff that came past kissing…

Because he didn't even know what those things were.

But he was supposed to know…right? Wasn't he? This girl was his age and…and she knew. She knew and everyone else know…but Sho didn't for some reason. Even though this was the sort of thing that everyone knew…and he felt so dumb. He felt like a dumb baby and also a weirdo for not liking this…and he had to like this…even though he mostly just felt pinned down and trapped and…and this was like a play fight but…but she wasn't playing and also he couldn't fight…because she was a girl who wasn't related to him….

Only the biggest losers in the world smacked around women.

Shimazaki had said that. He said that if a woman asked you to fight her then it was a different story but you weren't supposed to just go around hitting them. That was wrong. That was wrong because unless she was an esper she was a lot weaker than you, most likely, and it wasn't a fair fight. Also real men only fought fair because otherwise what was the point of fighting? So he wasn't going to fight this girl…even though she was on top of him…and that was the same as starting it….

He wasn't going to push her off or hit her or anything….even though he wanted to….but he wasn't supposed to want to…so he just went with it….

"Um….what are you doing?" asked Sho

"I promised that I would kiss you for real, didn't I? Your first kiss shouldn't have had to suck like that. Now shut up and be grateful." Said Asagiri. Sho wanted to tell her that it hadn't sucked, that it had been the best thing that he had ever felt in his life, but he didn't. He knew that it would have been a weird thing to say…and he knew that he was weird enough….so he just went with this. With whatever this was….

Kissing. This was kissing.

"Damn Suzuki….you're lucky as hell." Said Hideki. Sho didn't feel lucky at all. He felt…trapped. He felt pinned down and trapped. She weighed too much. She wasn't fat but she weighed way too much. He had no idea what he was supposed to do now. With this or with her…and he just sort of wanted to go home. He wanted to go home and just lay down in his bed and wait for tomorrow to happen. He wished that there was some way to make time go faster. He wished that he had a fast forward button for life so that way he could fats forward past this kiss.

This very long kiss.

Wet. This was wet. This was wet and gross…and not in a good way. It was like she was trying to lick him or something…and that was just…too much. That was too much. She was trying to lick him and also…also she took his hand and put it on her back and…and that was way too much. The whole thing…the whole thing was just too much and…and he didn't know what he was supposed to do…well he knew what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to touch her boob like she wanted him too and he was supposed to do what she was doing, lick her back and stuff, but he just…he couldn't…

His stomach was full of goldfish and now they were trying to escape.

And now he was trying to escape…and he did escape. He pushed her off. He pushed her off even though he wasn't supposed to push people, especially girls who were not his sister, and he wasn't supposed to stop girls from kissing him either…and he was supposed to want to kiss girls…and he was supposed to have enjoyed that…and he was supposed to want to do it again…but mostly he just wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

Everyone was looking at him.

"God. You kiss like a ten year old." Said Asagiri. She wiped her mouth and glared at him…and he was suddenly so mad…so very mad…because it wasn't like he even WANTED to kiss her in the first place! And now she was complaining! Maybe she was the one who was bad at it! Because it was supposed to feel good! It was supposed to feel good and-and-and Sho knew how good it could feel now! And that hadn't felt good at all! That had felt weird and gross and also…also sort of scary a little bit and…and…and….

And he wanted to go.

"I am ten!" said Sho. That was all that he could day before he ran away. As he ran away he heard that Akemi girl tell Asagiri that she was ten, too. Sho didn't stay and hear the rest of it. He just ran out of the coatroom. He needed to find a place…a place where he could be alone…but there was no such place. The party was emptying out but…but there were still so many people and…and he just didn't want to be around people right now!? Was that so bad?! He just…he just wanted to be alone already! He wanted to be alone so that the goldfish in his stomach could be dissolved by his stomach acid already and…and he could just be done with this and with everything! That was what he wanted! He wanted…

He wanted his sister.

Big sis…she was bossy and she thought that she was mom and she was dad's favorite but…but stuff always made sense when he was near her. She always took care of him whether he needed her or not…and she was…she was his sister and there was no chance at all that she would try to kiss him in any way…well she kissed him on the forehead a lot but that was a sister kiss, not a girl kiss, and he just…he didn't want to be around anyone right now. He wanted…he wanted his big sister…

But she was gone.

Her aura was big and bright. He would have seen it if he had been in range…and he wasn't in range. She must have gone home. Shimazaki was gone too. He must have taken her home….and he sort of wanted to be near Shimazaki…but also not at all because…because now he was thinking about Shimazaki and…and also about stuff that he should not have been thinking about and…and he just needed to…to stop it!

He needed to stop thinking.

He went over to the dessert table. He needed to stop thinking and…and he still hadn't eaten anything. So that was what he was going to do. He felt Fukuda's aura…and it felt weird. Fuzzy. A lot of people had fuzzy auras right now. That was…this whole thing was…weird. He wanted to be alone. He didn't want to be near Fukuda right then because he was fighting with Minegishi…and also Shibata looked mad at him too…and also Hatori looked…he looked like he had the flu or something. He had sweated through his clothes and his hair was messy and his clothes were messy…and also he had broken the zipper on his pants or something and now everyone could see that he wore Mario boxers…and Sho was going to stop looking over at…whatever that was. Even though Fukuda looked like he needed rescuing…

Well Sho had needed rescuing too.

Sho made a plate and just…sat under the table after he had made it. He needed to be in a cool, calm, dark place. He needed to calm his brain down. He held his head in his hands for a while, then ate something, and then repeated. Over and over again. He just…he needed to calm down. He needed to calm down and just…just be done with all of this already…he needed to make the goldfish in his stomach stop swimming….but he couldn't. Not after all of that…

He wished that tomorrow would happen.

He wished that he had a fast forward button and that he could just hold it down and wait for tomorrow to happen. Then things could go back to normal. Then he could go back to playing with big sis and building forts and drawing pictures and just…just being normal. The normal things that he used to do. The things that he had done back when he had been nine. He was ten now…but he wanted to be nine again. He wasn't ready at all to be ten. No, he wished that instead of a fast forward button he had a rewind button…or something. Some kind of magic remote that could make him nine again. Being ten….being ten was just too much….

He wanted more than anything, he wished in that moment more than anything, that he could go back to being nine.

But instead of rewinding or fast forwarding time he just…he ended up with Fukuda. He had been so sitting there in the dark with his eyes closed but he hadn't been trying to see. No. He didn't want to see. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to pretend that he was alone and that…and that none of that had happened…but it had happened. All of that had happened and now…now he had to move forward. He didn't have a magic remote that could fix this, that could rewind him back to nine or fast forward him to being in the next day, so he just…he just had to sit there and wait for time to pass…

And be alone.

But he wasn't alone. Fukuda was there. Fukuda was there and his aura was there and Sho…he pulled away from his aura. He wanted to be alone…and he wanted to go home…but he also didn't. No. Big sis was probably home and she…she would ask him what was wrong…and he didn't want to talk to her or anyone about this…and he certainly didn't want any of this to get back to dad. Any of it. The part where he had kissed another boy and liked it, the part where he had kissed a girl and hated it, or the part where all of the people who he had kissed had been normal people…

Dad could never know. Nobody could ever know.

"Hey, you ready to go?" asked Fukuda. Sho…he was ready to go. He had been ready to go. He had been more ready to go now, from this party, than he had ever been ready to go from anything else in his entire life. He needed to go home…but also not home. Just…away from here.

"Yeah. I…I want to go." Said Sho. He didn't know where he wanted to go but…but he knew that he wanted to go away from here. Away from all of this. Away from the other kids and…and away from the goldfish in his stomach and…and away from being ten. Being ten was too much. Being a big kid was too much. He wanted to be a little kid. He wanted to go back to being a little kid….but he couldn't. He had no clue how to go back to being a little kid…and he had no clue where he wanted to go…and he had no clue where he even could go. He could walk for a thousand years but no matter where he went or what he did his stupid brain with it's stupid thoughts would still follow him…and he just…he wished that…he wished that….

He wished that he had never even heard of kissing let alone….let alone done it.

"Yeah, it's late. Come on, let' get you home. You want to say goodbye to your new friends?" asked Fukuda. Sho shook his head. Nope. No way. He never wanted to see or hear from any of those kids ever again…even Hideki. Especially Hideki. He was…Sho had no idea how he felt about Hideki. He had no idea how he was supposed to feel about Hideki. He was…he was a cool person and…and Sho wanted to be his friend…but also…also he wanted…

Sho had no clue what he wanted.

He wanted to kiss him again. He wanted to kiss him and hold his hand and…and he didn't want to feel this way. He was different enough. He was weird enough. He didn't want to be any more different, or any more weird, than he had to be. Than he was now. He was…he was different. He was different enough and he just….he just wanted to go home. He just wanted to go home, or at least away from here, and he just…he wanted to make sense of this…of all of this…

"No, I-I just want to go. I…I um…I did…I mean…I just want to go." Said Sho. He wanted to tell Fukuda about what happened. Fukuda was always there for him and…and he had always helped out Sho when he'd needed it…but also…also he just…he didn't know. He didn't know and…and he wanted to know…but he also didn't want to do…and…and all of that….he just…he didn't want to….

He didn't even KNOW anymore.

He just knew that he wanted to get out of there and he wanted to be alone…but also not. He wanted to be alone and he also wanted to be around…around someone who could…who could just be there for him. He wanted…he wanted someone. Anyone. He did and did not want to be alone. He didn't want to talk about what happened…but he also did. He wanted to talk his feelings through, like his book said that healthy people did, and he also wanted to exorcise them like dad said that he was supposed to. He just…he wanted….he wanted….he didn't want…he didn't want but he wanted….

He wanted to have a sleepover.

"Fukuda…can we have a sleepover? I don't want to go home. Can I sleep at your house? I just…I feel tired…and stuff." Said Sho. He didn't want to be alone with dad and big sis and his goldfish. He wanted to be alone with someone…someone who understood him. Someone who would be there for him. He didn't want…well he did want…he just wanted….

He wanted a lot of things and most of them involved going home.

"Sure thing. Come on, let's get you home." Said Fukuda. Sho went with Fukuda. He let Fukuda help him out from under the table and he let Fukuda pat him on the back and he let Fukuda get their coats and…and he just left everything to Fukuda. He didn't want to have to do anything or think about anything or anything like that. He just…he wanted to turn off his brain and also get rid of his gold fish and just…just…just forget.

He just wanted to forget about everything that happened.

Sho just wanted to forget about this whole party. About kissing and feelings and all of that. He wanted to go home and go to sleep and wake up and just…just be in tomorrow. Just be in a tomorrow where he had never kissed another boy, never liked it, and never wanted to do it again…but he knew that it could not happen that way. He didn't know how to travel through the multiple universes, that wasn't in his power set, so he had no idea how he could even do that…and so he knew that when he woke up tomorrow he would be in this same universe. The same one where he had kissed a boy and liked it, kissed a girl and hated it, and had a bunch of goldfish living in his stomach….

So this was a party, huh? It sucked. He wanted to go home.


	243. A Failed Attempt at Being a Wallflower

Suzuki sure could make world domination sound boring.

This was another one of his long winded speeches about their glorious future. They were used to it. He loved pontificating about his dreams for their future, about how great things would be when he was the lord and master of the world, and Minegishi was sick of it. They'd heard enough of these speeches back when they had joined. Back when they had been an aimless, directionless, early twenty something with nothing better to do than follow a maniac's crazy vision of their new and glorious future. Well now they were a late twenty something and they still had to sit there and listen to their boss go on and on and on….

God. They needed a drink.

No drinking until the toast. Once the toast was over then the champagne could flow free like water. There was an open bar at this thing, too, at least that had better have been an open bar. They needed a drink so bad. Parties were just so…draining. They would rather have been doing literally anything else, even sitting there and listening to a high off his ass Ryou tell them about things that had happened in a land called his own fucked up imagination. They would rather have been watching Frozen over and over again on a loop with Mob. They would rather have been sitting there trying to read while Shibata sat perched on the edge of the couch with his notebook taking notes from the cooking channel. Hell, they would rather have been listening to Hatori try to stammer his way through small talk with them….

Ok, maybe not the last one.

If they hadn't had such a soft spot for Mob, if their whole head hadn't been a soft spot, then they would have had words with Mob about asking her dad to just add Hatori to the group like that. She really could have at least asked. There wasn't enough room for him, he had Shibata's room since he mostly just slept on the couch, but now the living room was a bedroom. Also there was one bathroom for four people and Minegishi needed to take their baths. They hoped that the next play they lived had enough bedrooms and bathrooms and also just…enough space so they could ignore the pimply faced nerd that had some kind of an idea in his head that something could happen between them!

It couldn't.

Nothing would ever happen. They had made themselves perfectly clear. They did not have feelings for Hatori Nozomu. They would never have feelings for Hatori Nozomu. They would never have feelings for anyone. They might have gone to bed with Hatori Nozomu if he had been older and less…himself…but they would never have feelings for him. They were done with that. Nothing good had ever come of that. Not for them, anyway, and not for anyone that they had ever known. They'd hurt, they'd been hurt, and they knew that the cycle of hurting and being hurt would never end so why not just step away from all of that? They knew what they wanted, what they were capable of, and what other people were capable of giving them. That was why they had no interest in what Hatori Nozomu wanted from them.

Also he was nineteen, thought lynx was a substitute for bathing, stayed up until all hours screaming at his computer, and also for some reason he had managed to steal the heart of Minegishi's ten year old best friend.

So, yeah, there were plenty of idiots at this stupid party and Hatori was better off making eyes at one of them. Really it was just too much. What was even the point? No matter how much staring he did, how many hours he frittered away on hopeless pining, there would be no way to change the outcome. Minegishi had said no and no meant no. No meant no, not sit there and pine for the rest of his life. Honestly. Teenagers. This was why Minegishi had never had any use for teenagers even when they had been a teenager. They tended to skew older. Not as old as Mob skewed, and at some point Minegishi would have to look into that, but they did tend to skew slightly older.

Chronologically, anyway.

They smelled citrus and shame. Shimazaki. Again with that damn pen. This stupid party hadn't even really started yet but he was already going. He had one of his stupid weed pens slipped into his inner pocket and he thought that he was being so sneaky….well he wasn't. He wasn't and Minegishi wished that he could see the disapproving looks that Shibata was sending him….which he may have been able to. Minegishi still had no idea how much facial expression he could sense. They knew that he wouldn't have cared either way. He was such a child like that. He never thought things through. Their boss was, most likely, a sociopath and he would mess them up if not kill them if they did something to embarrass him…like get stoned out of their minds at this big Claw shindig….

And also Mob had been very excited for this party.

They could see her, there, front and center mouthing along to her father's speech. They were cool again, her and her dad, and Minegishi had no idea how they were even supposed to feel about that. On the one hand Mob loved her dad for reasons that Minegishi could not begin to understand. On the other hand her dad was possessive, creepy, and may have been trying to replace his most likely dead wife with his living daughter. Not something that Minegishi would have wanted to encourage. Not something that they wanted to encourage at all…but on the other hand Mob was happy again. As happy as she could be, anyway. Minegishi did not like how she was eyeing her glass of what had better not have been champagne.

She had better have had a glass of sparkling juice in front of her.

And she had better not have had one of those goddamned mother fucking cock sucking weed pens in that Frozen bag of hers. Minegishi had nothing against the occasional pick me up. A power that big game with a bigger expense. Mob had better control over her powers when she was a little drunk, or a little stoned, or a little…well she was only getting drunk and stoned. Minegishi hadn't lost control of the situation THAT badly yet. They still…they still had some control over the situation. Some. Ryou was trying his best to take control of the situation, he seemed to think that giving Mob carte blanche to do whatever she wanted was the best idea that anyone had ever had, but Minegishi knew better. Controlling your powers through chemistry, controlling your emotions through chemistry, was like walking a tightrope. You needed to be careful or your next step could be your last. That was why, baring their late childhood and teenage years, they had always tried to practice some form of moderation.

Ryou on the other hand…it was a miracle that he hadn't died yet.

He was going to die if he kept that smoking up. He was going to get himself either killed or beaten up and Minegishi had no idea why they even cared. Let him ruin his life. Let him piss off the boss. Let him get himself beaten up so badly that he had to see their pathetic excuse for a human being they called a healer. Minegishi had no reason to care. Ryou was his own man. He was a grown man and he could be responsible for himself. They were responsible for themselves. In Claw it was every man, woman, and person of neither gender because the male/female dichotomy was idiotic, for themselves. Not every little girl for themselves, though, because Mob needed them. She needed them and she had grown on them and they were involved, now, so instead of wasting precious mental space on Shimazaki Ryou of all people they should have been more worried about Mob. She seemed fine now sitting there in her little blue dress while her father droned on about his plans for world domination and her little brother sat there beside her trying to crawl out of his skin….and maybe she was fine. Maybe this whole night would go off without a hitch. Maybe this would be a calm and peaceful night and Minegishi could just sit there and be a wallflower until this whole thing ended and then they could go home and rest and wait for the New Year to happen….

Shimazaki downed his champagne before it was toast time.

Minegishi didn't know why they even cared. Better him getting drunk and making an idiot out of himself than Mob. Better him turning into a stoned moron than Mob. Better him ruining his life than Mob. Better him incurring the boss' wrath than Mob. Mob was the person that they had to worry about. They didn't particularly want to have to worry about anyone but if they had to they would rather worry about the naïve ten year old than the thirty year old who acted like a ten year old.

He stole Shibata's champagne glass.

"You are such a drunk right now I can't even." Said Minegishi. Shimazaki shrugged and downed Shibata's champagne glass in a way that would have been impressive if they hadn't seen it a thousand times before. So he could drink. Big deal. The only people who would be impressed by that were nineteen year old pizza faced nerds.

"That was so…should you be doing that?" whispered Hatori in what looked like equal part horror and awe. If there had been a table then Hatori would probably would probably have been hiding in the corner or something. He had long ago made the mistake of paying attention to Shimazaki Ryou. He had brought this on himself, all of it, the constant torment that Shimazaki put him through time and time again.

Not that Minegishi had even the first idea of what he was on about.

Well they had their own crazy theories. Ryou was….not like that. Ryou was not someone who got attached, who caught feelings, who wanted more than they had originally agreed on. They had agreed upon, ages ago, that this was just…what is was. Neither of them did the relationship thing for their own reasons that neither of them had gone into. Not back then. No. Those talks had come later. Why Minegishi couldn't sleep without chemical help. Who that woman was on Ryou's arm. How Minegishi had gotten that scar above their hip. What that list of dates tattooed onto Shimazaki was about. Why it took them so long to find a good sleeping position. Why they always…why they never….

A lot of why's had been answered over the years.

So, really, there were no more why's between them. There were no more why's between the two of them and…and there was no way for them to…to start all of that up again. They why talks. Why Ryou was acting like this. Why Ryou seemed to hate that pimply faced nerd even though he knew for a fact that he was in no way shape or form Minegishi's type. They had a type and Ryou knew it. Pansexuals, or at least bisexuals, who didn't a disingenuous bone in their bodies. He couldn't stand it, disingenuous people, because they just did not have time for that shit. They did not have the time or the energy to deal with that shit. No, all they needed to be happy was a non-disingenuous pansexual….or bi sexual since finding other pan people was like trying to find the hay in the needle stack. They knew what they liked and Hatori Nozomu was not that.

That wasn't even counting the fact that Mob was madly in love with this guy.

"The question is, Hatori, should you be doing this?" said Shimazaki. He reached over and handed Hatori his glass of Champagne. They hoped, they really hoped, that Shimazaki hadn't done something stupid and put something in his champagne. He liked to dose people without them knowing it. Not Minegishi, no, they'd kill him if he even considered it. Other people….young impressionable idiots who were about to piss themselves whenever he got too close…well that was another story.

Whatever. Not Minegishi's problem.

"Uh…." Said Hatori. God. Was it so hard to just tell him to fuck off already? He should have just told Ryou to fuck off and then just…acted like the adult he kept on trying to be. He was in charge of himself and if he didn't want to drink then he should have just told Ryou that he didn't feel like drinking. It wasn't exactly complicated.

"Come on, it's a party." Said Shimazaki. He was getting close, very close, to being much too loud. The clapping was starting up. Not the end of the clapping, no, the beginning of the clasping. The beginning of the clapping was marking the end of the speech and the beginning of this…thing that they called a party.

"But…I'm only…" said Hatori. Minegishi rolled their eyes so hard that they were in danger of going blind. Seriously? He was going to bring up the age thing? They were sitting there, in the middle of a cult party, listening to their boss go on and on about his plans to take over the world. Obviously nobody in this room gave a fuck about the underage drinking laws.

If they did then someone would have gotten that glass of what was most likely champagne away from Mob.

"What? You think I poisoned it or something? You think that I just, I don't know, get my kicks from drugging people without their knowledge or consent? You think that that's the kind of man I am? You really think that about me. Hatori?" asked Shimazaki. Minegishi shook their head. He was too easy to manipulate. Hatori's skin was so thin that there was no point what so ever in trying to get under it. There was no sport in it. It was like taking candy from a baby or shooting frozen fish in a bucket or setting off Suzuki's shrieking demon child. What was even the point of upsetting this kid? Ryou knew that they had rejected him. Ryou knew that they wanted nothing to do with him?

So why was he acting like this?

"Shimazaki, leave him alone. Come on, it looks like the boss needs up. I think public speaking freaks him out." Said Shibata. Now the last of the clapping was done with. Good. They could get this party started…and by started they meant over with quicker. Work parties. They so rarely had work parties and even then they so rarely went to work parties. These were a chance to see the upper echelon, the big bosses, and feel important for a night. Well they were in the upper echelon now and they saw the biggest boss of them all every day. They wished that they could have just gone home but they couldn't. They had to be there for Mob…who was talking to her dad about something….something not good based on the way that her demon child of a brother dove under the table. Well then. Wasn't this a nice harbinger of things to come?

"Um….so. This is a party, huh?" asked Hatori. Speaking of harbingers of things to come….this guy. This fucking guy. He was straight, he was nineteen, and he thought that 'covered in orange powder' was a food group. Well then. Whatever. This was a free country, for the time being, and Hatori could talk to whoever he wanted. That didn't mean that Minegishi had to be their usual charming self.

"Yes. It is. Now why don't you go and talk to someone else. Lots of women here." Said Minegishi. They looked around. A sea of dresses and perfume and makeup and perfectly coiffed hair. Things that Minegishi couldn't be bothered to bother with because it was all just too much of a bother. They scanned the room. If they had been younger and less secure in who they were they would have felt self-conscious.

They were twenty seven and long past that.

"I wasn't hitting on you. I mean I wasn't trying to. You're just…ok. I think that you've really got it going on and I think that you're an interesting person but that doesn't mean that every time I talk to you I'm hitting on you." Said Hatori

"You say that while you tell me how attractive and fascinating you think that I am." Said Minegishi. He was being disingenuous, most likely. They knew that they weren't what he was into. Not compared to the people around him. No, they had not put on a dress for this occasion and they were never going to put on a dress for any occasion ever again for what remained of their life. They were in slacks and a shirt and they had combed their hair and put on a fresh coat of nail polish. That was what they were wearing and they did not feel anything at all about this. About who they were as a person. They didn't care if they were getting looks, a lot of looks, they were used to it. People were always looking at them in either curiosity or disgust. They were used to it. They hardly even noticed anymore.

Which was why when someone looked at them in a way that was the direct opposite of curious disgust it was something to take note of.

"Well…you are. I mean I know that you are but I also know that you're with Shimazaki and…yeah. I know that you're with Shimazaki." said Hatori. They knew how he was looking at them. He had been looking at them like that since the day that they had met. Through Mob. The person who was constantly making those same eyes at him. The person who…huh. She was, for once, not giving Shimazaki a ten year's best 'take me now' look. She was…maybe they should have saved her from that. Now was the Q&A portion of the party…and Mob was taking every Q and giving every A. She was surrounded by people, normal people who followed Suzuki's insanity for some reason, and she looked like she might have needed saving….

Minegishi watched her aura.

Or not. Mob was a big girl now. Well she tried to be, anyway, and she seemed to be handling this whole thing just fine. Fine enough that her aura wasn't flaring or freaking out or anything like that. Fine enough that she seemed almost…happy. Well of course she was. Even with all the extra work that came with it part of her enjoyed being her father. Part of her enjoyed this life. Well Minegishi wasn't going to just swoop in and save her when she didn't need saving. They would monitor the situation, of course, but they knew when to give her some space…and also they didn't much feel like getting up, crossing the room, and drawing any more attention to themselves then they already had.

Some woman in a blue dress was staring at them.

"I'm not 'with' anyone. Me and Ryou sleep together sometimes. The walls are paper thin. I know that you know that we sleep together. That doesn't mean that we're a couple. That just means that we're good in bed together. People don't always have to be in relationships to do that sort of thing but I suppose that you may be too young to know that. Excuse me." Said Minegishi. They downed their champagne glass and then went up to get another. There was a table covered in them. One side for champagne and one side for sparkling cider.

They, obviously, drank the champagne.

They were a wallflower. They found a spot up against the wall and drank from their champagne glass. They had a tiny book in their interior pocket and this was how they planned on spending the night. They were a firmly rooted wallflower. There were so many perks to it that they didn't understand why everyone didn't just root themselves to a wall and read until it became acceptable to leave this parody of a social gathering. Men in their too expensive suits and women in their paper thing but still outrageously expensive dresses. Everyone coifed and perfumed to perfection. Everyone trying their best to put on another face, another costume, for the night. People trying to get close to, to show their appreciation to, the man who promised them the world once he took it over. The man who promised them the sun, the moon, and the stars above so long as they bankrolled this insane dream of his.

So this was their life.

It could have been worse. They could have been Hatori. Every so often Minegishi felt Ryou teleporting. They didn't even need to train their aura on him. The oohing and ahhing gave him away. Really. Normal people….they so rarely spent any substantial amounts of time with normal people. No, they actually spent most of their time with either a ten year old or a thirty year old who acted like a ten year old. Like now. Now he was acting somewhere between twelve and ten and one and twenty. Young. Young and impulsive. Young and stupid and impulsive and not Minegishi's concern.

If he wanted to go around stealing champagne glasses off of other tables and getting Hatori wasted then so be it.

"Toshi, come on. It's a party. Come back to the table." Said Shimazaki. He hadn't popped right in front of them like usual. No. He had walked across the room. He had walked across the room so that he could be noticed. Miss Blue Dress over there seemed to notice just fine. Minegishi had caught her staring a few times. Well that was fine. Lots of people stared at them. They had been an object of curiosity for some years now. They were used to it. Lots of people stared at Ryou too. They were used to it. Let Miss Blue Dress stare all night if she felt like it. Unlike him they did not get jealous.

And they knew for a fact that he was jealous.

They had no idea what he was so jealous of. They didn't have feeling like that for Hatori or for anyone. Especially not him…and it wasn't like him to have those sorts of feelings either. That was what they had agreed on when their paths had first crossed. They were two people who had agreed to sleep together whenever their paths crossed in this crazy mixed up world of theirs…and that was how they had carried on together since they had met…but for the past few years their paths had done nothing but cross…because they lived together. Sure, fine, their paths crossed every single morning while they waited in line for the bathroom together. That didn't mean that their lines would have to cross.

That didn't mean that Minegishi would be crossing any lines for him.

"I'm aware that it's a party." Said Minegishi

"So why don't know, you know, party with me?" asked Shimazaki. He came in close when he said that. They could smell his cologne. It was nice. They could see the strand of his hair that had come down from their spiked prison. He could have fixed them but he didn't. They had said, once before, that they liked him slightly disheveled. That it made him look more real. That was before they had realized that he was incapable of being anything other than real. That he hadn't been capable of being disingenuous. That he literally hadn't even known the meaning of the word…

He still didn't.

"Pass." Said Minegishi. They did not want to go back to that table. They did not want to sit there in the jealousy circle. Shimazaki would be jealous of Hatori, Hatori would be a combination of jealous of Shimazaki and also ready to piss his pants in fear of the man, and then Shibata was going to do his best impression of a mother hen and cluck over them nonstop until someone broke and went off to decompress. Woo. Fun times.

"Come on Toshi. We've done this before and at stuffier parties than this." said Shimazaki

"Define 'this', Ryou. We've done a lot of 'this' over the years." Said Minegishi

"Well I have a little of this and a little of that with me tonight." Said Shimazaki

"Uh-huh. What makes you think thatI'm up for a little of 'this' and a little of 'that' tonight?" asked Minegishi

"Because it's a party and I know that you're bored out of your mind." Said Shimazaki

"No, I'm not. I was actually enjoying myself before you came here." Said Minegishi

"Come on, Toshi, you're not a wallflower. You're a wildflower. So come on, let's be wild plants together." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi tried their best not to smile in any way that he could perceive. They had their aura in close but…he had always been so good at reading them. He was a psychic after all. He wasn't the kind who could read minds, though, because he didn't have to be. He could read their body and their aura and that was enough.

"You're stoned if you think that's clever." Said Minegishi. It wasn't easy to tell when he was well and truly stoned. High, yes, but he was always a little bit high. He was swaying in place a little thought that could have either been drunkenness or…whatever it was that he had been going on about. He hadn't been lying, they had gotten up to some shenanigans of the 'taking party drugs at work functions' variety but that was before the kids…the ones that had come into their lives. Not children that they'd had together. No, Minegishi never wanted kids. Ever. They hadn't had that piece of copper jammed into their innards for nothing. He never wanted kids either, that was something that they had agreed on, but he had been going back on so much of what they had agreed on…

They spent the night together.

They hung out together socially.

He called them Toshi without fear of retaliation.

He kissed them on the mouth just because.

They kissed him on the mouth just because.

He was starting to get jealous.

Too many lines were being crossed and Minegishi did not know what to do. They wanted…they wanted things to just stay the same. The normal way that they had been since….since living with him had become their normal. They wanted idiotic Shimazaki, fun Shimazaki, drunk Shimazaki, high Shimazaki, weirdly wistful and melancholic Shimazaki….

Ryou was becoming someone else entirely.

"And you're too sober if you think that it's not. Come on, Toshi, let's have fun together like we used to." Said Shimazaki

"Things are different now." Said Minegishi. They were still watching Mob. She seemed fine. She had a healer watching over her after all. The man was a piece of burnt toast but he still valued his life enough not to let anything terrible happen to one of Suzuki's kids…and they did miss…certain things. Being able to do certain things. Not that spent hours and hours wishing for their old life back. There was parts of it that they missed, the lack of responsibility over another human being and all of that, but there were some parts that they liked. Being able to see him every day…even when he was being a moron…

What had become of them?

"Are they really? Because as far as I can see it's still just me and you, Toshi, and I know you. You're bored. You're dying. You're wilting. You're not a wallflower, you're a wildflower, so come on. Be a wildflower." Said Shimazaki. He looked at them when he said that. He actually looked at them. He traced his hand down their face. He was trying to actually see them…

Their insides turned to Jell-O.

He was the only person who could do that to them. That didn't mean anything. That just meant that if that coat check room hadn't been full of horny kids he could have taken them right there. That was all. There was nothing to it beside the fact that he was very attractive. He dresses well, well they had dressed him, and even without the cologne he smelled nice and he was in no way disingenuous.

He was their type. That was all.

He was their type but that didn't mean that he was a good person. Well Minegishi knew that they had zero room to throw stones but they, at least, didn't get a nineteen year old drunk for fun. That was what they had come back to the table to find. A very drunk Hatori being fretted over by their very own two and a half meter tall mother hen.

Wonderful.

"You're so pretty….aren't they so pretty? Well!? Aren't they so fucking pretty….God I want to kiss you so bad…" said Hatori. Minegishi downed a glass of champagne. Shimazaki had gone to check on Mob. Hatori was the one who needed to be checked on. There were seven empty champagne glasses in front of him…and they knew that Shibata had not been responsible for all of them. It took three bottles of wine just to get that man slightly buzzed. Economy sized bottles of wine. No, Shibata was the most sober person at this table…

And he looked like he needed a drink more than anyone else in that room.

"Ok, I think that Minegishi gets it. You think that they're pretty. Hey what do you think about….about…uh…this table cloth! Boy our boss sure does like red huh?" asked Shibata. Minegishi rolled their eyes and took another glass of champagne that had been left on the table. Shimazaki was such a magpie. He had thought to stock them up on snacks, drinks, and even fruit salad. He could be thoughtful when he wanted to be.

He could also be a complete and utter moron.

"It's red….red is nice. I like lavender better. Look at their hair…it's lavender…it's so pretty. I think that you're pretty and…and I like you a lot." Said Hatori. Minegishi balled up their napkin and threw it at him.

"Hey, hey, calm down. We all like you Minegishi. I mean you take forever in the bathroom…and also your plants have pretty much taken over the house…and you leave crumbs in the butter…but we all like you." Said Shibata. Minegishi cocked the space that had reserved for an eyebrow that never bothered to show up. Well then. Someone needed to take a long look in the mirror. He took showers that were just as long as their baths, he upended the kitchen every single day with his never ending cooking projects, and as far as taking over the house went, well, it was called a living room but that didn't mean that he had to do all of his living in it.

Honestly.

"Whatever." Said Minegishi. They were glad that they had a chair with a wall behind it. Maybe it they focused they could root themselves to it and become the wall flower that they had been born to be. When they weren't messing with their already messed up brain chemistry they tended to rot themselves to the wall…and they couldn't believe that they had let Ryou make them feel like there was something wrong with that.

Honestly.

They had no idea who they were becoming sometimes. Since the age of fifteen they had known exactly who they were and who they had wanted to be…at least they'd thought so. At least they had thought so back then…and maybe even not back then. If they had known exactly who they were and who they wanted to be then they would not have gotten themselves into this predicament, they would not have joined Claw in the first place, so maybe they had never had even the first clue who they were and who they wanted to be. Maybe they had just been aimless for their entire life. Maybe they had just been going from one thing to the next just trying their best to survive…or whatever…

They didn't know.

"Bathroom….I gotta piss. I gotta piss right now…give me a bottle." Said Hatori. He looked scared, honestly scared, and that was just…not attractive. There was nothing attractive about getting so drunk that he needed to piss in a bottle…or maybe he just regularly did that…which was just…even Shimazaki at his worst had always had the decency to piss somewhere else even if it was just against a wall or onto a tree or something…

"Use the toilet like a functional human being. God. What the fuck is wrong with you?" asked Minegishi

"A lot of stuff…sometimes I stay up all night because I dream about when I came home from school and my house was on fire…and sometimes I cry at night…and also my skin is really oily and I have no idea how to fix it…and I think I have a cavity on my back left molar…and everyone thinks that I'm a lolicon just because I hang out with a kid…which makes no sense! Anyone who's gone through my search history knows that I like pregnant-" said Hatori

"I was curious to see when you'd stop on your own but just…for the love of God…stop drinking. You're bad at it. Hatori, go take a piss. Shibata, go hold his dick for him because I don't know if he can even be trusted with it at this point." Said Minegishi. Wow. How was this guy still a virgin? He was just so attractive….God. Mob had the shittiest taste in men that Minegishi had ever seen. THIS did it for her? This guy right here? This was why she had someone like them in her life. Someone to save her from her own stupidity.

Which was what they had to do right now.

Shibata had been sitting in front of them. The man was two and a half meters tall, actually maybe even taller, and he had blocked their entire view of the room. Well now they had a clear vantage point on Mob…and they could see just how many empty champagne glasses were in front of her…and the one Ryou was handing her…and just…that healer…that human tampon…no! That was an insult to tampons! That human SCENTED tampon…because who wanted a scented tampon?! The man was a living yeast infection! The man was a scented, improperly fitted, off brand, menstrual cup! The man was just….the man was just so…he was just…

Worse than useless!

He was sitting there and staring at Mob like a creeper….which was something that they would address later…but right now he was just sitting there and watching Mob get drunker and drunker and drunker…but wait he was getting up…to get something to eat. Yeah, sure, just watch Mob go way over her limit. Mob needed a little help sometimes. She was more powerful than any kid should have been and she should have been able to, in a more perfect world, been able to control her powers on her own. But she couldn't. She couldn't control her powers on her own. She needed help but…

But not four glasses of champagne's worth.

Minegishi got up. They could move fast when they needed to, or maybe people just had brains enough to avoid them, which as fine by them. Miss Blue Dress's eyes followed them across the room…but she could play the 'what's in Minegishi's pants game all on her own all night. Right now there was a little fire that needed putting out.

"Mob, give me that." Said Minegishi. Her reflexes were slower, she was at least a little buzzed, and Minegishi easily took the champagne glass out of her hand and downed it before she could do anything about it. They were getting looks, they knew that they were getting looks, but really those people should have used those looks when they had been watching a ten year old girl get drunk. What? Did they think the little girl with the two braids, the blue tutu dress, the Frozen cross body bag, and the two mosquito bites was just a very short woman? Well she wasn't a midget or a dwarf or a little person or whatever you were supposed to say. No. She was a little girl and she should not have…

Well Minegishi should not have started her on…

Minegishi had been teaching her moderation. Ryou had been teaching her how to get drunk. Minegishi had been trying to help her. Ryou had been trying to amuse himself. Mob had just been trying to get through this as best as she could…and Minegishi should have been there for her…and they wanted to be there for her. They wanted to be there for her and they cared about her…but looking after another human being was just so exhausting…but they had to do it. They did it for her because she had no one else who could rise up to the occasion and take care of the deeply troubled ten year old that they had seen getting all…

They really hated Fukuda whatever his given name was.

"Alright, show's over folks. Direct any questions, comments, concerns, and death threats to that guy over there. The one making a face like he's sucking on a rotten lemon and hating the fact that he's enjoying himself." Said Minegishi. They glared at Fukuda when they said that. He at least had the decency to look ashamed of himself. As he should have been. What had he even been thinking? He had been sitting there on his ass just…just watching Mob drink way more than she should have been drinking.

"Minegishi…why'd you do that? I was talking to those people…and also drinking that champagne. It's real champagne, too. Shimazaki told me to make sure that they ordered real champagne and not sparkling wine. He says that there's a real difference and that I needed to make sure that they got the fancy kind…so the party would be good." Said Mob. Buzzed but not drunk. Not slurring. She was…her tolerance was going up. She should not have had a tolerance to begin with but it should not have been going up like that.

"Mob, you've been drinking way too much. Pace yourself or you're not going to even be able to remember this party. You're buzzed, good, don't get drunk or you'll regret it. I am not holding your hair back if you get sick. We're regular friends, not vomit friends. Now go and talk to the other kids or something. Try and make some new friends. Talk to them about Frozen or something." Said Minegishi. They scanned the room…and there he was. Ryou. Tormenting Hatori. Well fine then. They'd deal with him as soon as they dealt with this.

"Um….ok. That girl over there…I could talk to her…since I think that Sho made a secret club and I'm not invited…so I'll just get up now…Minegishi can you help me get up?" asked Mob. Minegishi rolled their eyes but lent a helping hand. There. Off Mob went to talk to the little girl who looked to be about ten going on thirty. Well then Mob would have gotten along with her like a house fire considering what it was that Little Miss Suzuki Shigeko had been getting up to…

She was only ten. There was no point in blaming her.

No, Minegishi wasn't going to blame her. They had a bone to pick with the adult in this situation. Well they had a bone to pick with themselves, obviously, but they were not going to play the 'which bathroom will I get less shit for going into' game so they could find a mirror and yell at themselves. No. They were going to deal with the adult who had taught a ten year old that it was ok to get blackout drunk at a WORK party in the first place.

"….trust me. You'll have the time of your life. Have I ever steered you wrong? Don't answer that." Said Shimazaki. He was hand Hatori something small and white and ominous looking. Whatever. Hatori was, barely, a grown ass man. Let him take the mystery drugs. He was an adult and he knew what he was getting into. Mob was just a kid and only knew what the adult that she trusted told her was ok to do. That was…that was why Minegishi never wanted kids…but they had a kid and they had to take care of her and…and as hard as it was they were involved and being involved meant doing things like this.

They grabbed Shimazaki by the arm and spun him around.

He let them do that. They knew that he must have had been able to sense them from across the room. They knew that he could feel them beside him. They knew that he could read their aura. They knew that he might have even been able to tread the look on their face. Pissed off. They were pissed off and they were showing it in every way that they knew how.

"Hey Toshi. Don't freak out there's plenty for you too. Ok, so I'm pretty sure that this is-" said Shimazaki. Minegishi was pretty sure that he would have said more if they hadn't smacked him upside the head.

"I think you pissed her off…them! I think that you pissed them off…sorry. They don't want people to know that they're a girl." Said Hatori. Minegishi took a deep breath and jammed their hands into their pockets and felt the loose seeds that they had left in there for just this occasion. They were not going to murder Hatori because Mob liked him and they were not going to murder Shimazaki because then the house would have been a hell of a lot more boring. They didn't have to murder him. It was truly amazing the sort of damage that human beings were able to survive.

"It's not that I don't want to people to know, stupid, it's just that it shouldn't matter….but that's not what this is about. Shimazaki Ryou! What did you think that you were doing?" asked Minegishi through clenched teeth. A dentist. When all of this was over they would need to see a dentist because their teeth would be ground down to nubs, a doctor because they knew that there were on their way to a lovely heart attack soon, and a psychologist because they knew that there was no way in hell that they were coming out of this mentally unscathed.

"Trying to make the kid's night a fun one." said Shimazaki. He said it with the same lackadaisical attitude he said everything with. Minegishi jammed their hands into their pockets. The seeds started to germinate.

"I-I'm not having…I mean…" said Hatori

"No, this isn't about him. This is about Mob. What are you on giving her that much to drink? She's ten and that stupid healer was RIGHT THERE! How were you planning on explaining that one to Suzuki?" asked Minegishi

"Honestly I hadn't thought that far ahead." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi had never been so angry in their life. Didn't he know what Suzuki would do to him if he found out that Shimazaki had been getting his only daughter and favorite child drunk? Didn't he care? Suzuki had already beating him up once because of his Mob related stupidity. He did not need to get beaten up again!

"Guys…I can-can't think…" said Hatori

"No. You never think that far ahead, do you?" asked Minegishi. How could he be so stupid? Well he was always so stupid…but now it was like he was trying his hardest to set entirely knew standards of personal stupidity!

"I don't. You know that I don't, Toshi, you've known me for years." Said Shimazaki

"Right. You don't. I don't know why I expected anything else from you, Ryou." Said Minegishi. They swore a look of…something passed over him.

"Come on, you love that about me. You even said so. You love how I always just stay true to myself and don't act all disengenous and shit. That's why you like me." Said Shimazaki

"Right now I can't stand the sight of you. You…you have zero sense of self-preservation…and also you're fucking with a kid and she doesn't need that in her life right now. I'm trying to teach her how to moderate and be responsible and you're teaching her how to win herself a one way ticket to rehab just in time for her to turn eleven." Said Minegishi

"Guys…I feel weird." Said Hatori

"You're freaking out over nothing, Toshi. So she had a little to drink? So what? She has a lot going on in her life. Let her have fun. The more fun she has now the more fun she'll be when she gets older." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi was about to slap him into next week. That was his best excuse? That he wanted to party with her when she got older so he partied with her while she was ten? Seriously?!

"I-I think that I need something to drink….it's hot…why is it so hot…why?" asked Hatori. He was trying to rip his coat off. Shibata was helping him and looking like he was about to pass out from sheer worry. Really. That was what he worried about? Hatori was just freaking out over nothing. Whatever Shimazaki had given him should not have been taking effect yet.

"Shut up. You're fine. Whatever he gave you shouldn't be kicking in that fast." Said Minegishi. They gave him their best withering glare. He pulled his shirt up over his head and hid in there like a frightened turtle. Minegishi had a lot more to say than he could probably handle and they would have said it and…and maybe they should have…but they couldn't. There was Mob, there, coming closer…

Minegishi had to calm down for her sake.

"What's wrong with Hatori?" asked Mob as she came up to them. She seemed…her aura seemed closed off. Well then. Apparently it hadn't gone well for her and that other kid that she had been trying to make friends with. Well it looked like nobody was having a nice night. At least she wasn't stumbling or slurring...which was good….

"Nothing. He just went too hard. That's why I try to keep you from going too had. Do you want to be a human turtle too?" asked Minegishi

"No. Not really." Said Mob. She smiled as she looked over at Hatori…and Minegishi would deal with Mob's shitty taste in men later. Seriously, what was it about this guy? He was….Minegishi had no idea what went through Mob's head sometimes. They would try to figure out Mob's head when they figured their own head out…if they ever figured their own head out. Even now they had no idea what they were even supposed to say or do or…or anything…

They were so fucking tired.

"Hey, don't try to talk her out of it. Maybe she wants to be a human turtle. Maybe it's fun." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi wondered if he thought about the words he said before he said them. They wondered why they wondered when they knew that the answer was a resounding 'no'. That would require far too much thought and planning and Ryou was just not capable of that level of focus.

"There is nothing fun about what Hatori is going through." Said Minegishi. He was sweating a lot. He was sweating and trying to unbutton his shirt. They shook their head. He was either in for a good time or a bad time depending on his mental state. OK then. Maybe seeing the stupid prize that he'd win himself would teach Mob not to play stupid games…or have feelings for the sorts of guys who played stupid games.

"I'm not having fun. You're right. I'm not having fun at all. You get me. You get me and I want to get you-" said Hatori. Shimazaki started laughing. There was nothing to laugh about. Thank God that Mob was socially inept. Thank God that Mob was too drunk and socially inept to pick up on anything.

Now to shut Hatori up before he really pushed it.

"Well you'll never get Toshi so maybe you should just come off it." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi took a glass of champagne off the table, they had no clue who's this was and they didn't care, they just downed it.

"You come off it. Mob, come on. Let's go post up somewhere and-" said Minegishi. They were pissed off, they would only get more pissed off, and they needed to extract themselves from this situation and calm the hell down. They would go home when all of this was done. They would go home and go to sleep and then wake up and their whole friend group/coworker dynamic would go back to normal. Hopefully. They just needed to get out of here and put some space between themselves and everyone else before they, or someone else, said something that would come back to bite them.

"Can I post up with you? Please?" asked Hatori. Shibata shushed him. Hatori didn't notice or didn't care. Minegishi wondered if Mob would have minded if they grew some vines and sewed that moron's mouth shut.

"That's probably not a good-" said Shibata

"Sure! That would be great!" said Mob

"No. No it wouldn't. You can stay right here and ride out whatever it is you're on. Ride it out with Shimazaki. He's the one who got you into this state." Said Minegishi

"But-" said Mob

"I said no." said Minegishi. They sounded more like a parent then than they had ever wanted to at any point in their whole twenty seven years of life. Which was not at all. Mob was ten, she had never seen anyone on whatever it was Hatori was on, and she didn't need to deal with that. Also she didn't need to see the guy she liked like that. Also she didn't need to see the guy she liked hitting on her best friend. The best friend bracelet came with a lot of responsibility and Minegishi was going to rise up to the responsibility. That was just what they had to do.

"Why? Why don't you like me? I like you…I mean I want to like you…I mean I want you to like me. I mean I know that you don't do the relationship thing and I know that if you did do the relationship thing you'd do it with Shimazaki because he's…him. He scary but he's got it going on….and I know that I can't even come close to him but…but I still really like you and I think that you're hot and it's not a sex thing…well it's kind of a sex thing because I really want to eat you and I think that I'd be god at it too…I mean I've never done it before but I've seen it done before…so I think that I've got it down…and even if you didn't want to I just….I like you and…and…and I need to take a piss again…like…right now!" said Hatori. If there hadn't been a party going on around them Minegishi could have sworn that they would have been able to hear a pin drop.

Well above Shimazaki's laughing.

"He…he's really drunk. He's drunk and on drugs and…and also he's crazy and…and he really has to use the bathroom…so I'll just take him there…" said Shibata. He, thankfully, picked Hatori up and carried him away. Hopefully forever. Hopefully Shibata would carry him deep into the woods and leave him there.

Not that it would help.

Because Mob's aura was…thank God that she was a drunk as she was. Thank God that she was at least four glasses of champagne in. Thank God that she had probably been hitting that pen of Shimazaki's too. Thank God that…that they weren't about to tall die because Hatori couldn't hold his liquor or whatever drugs he took like an idiot.

"He…he likes…you?" asked Mob. Her voice broke and the glasses on the table beside her fell apart. They didn't shatter, no, they just fell apart. They fell apart as her face fell inwards and…and tears collected in her eyes. Minegishi reached out to her…and she took a step back.

"Mob…come on. I know that this sucks and I know…I know that it hurts. I know that it hurts but you need to know that I don't like him back, I don't want him to like me, and I will never hurt you like that…and I wouldn't have wanted that from him even if you didn't like him." said Minegishi. This was the best that they could do. They were tired, they were more than a little drunk, and they just wanted so root themselves to a wall and just…just rest already.

"I-I-I feel really sad and….and I…you're still my best friend but…but I'm sad and I want to be away from you for now but not for forever…so I'm going to go away now." Said Mob. Minegishi felt like they had been slapped in the face. She had pretty much given them a big, fat, fuck off…and they just…they did not want to deal with this right now.

So they didn't.

They just did not have the mental capacity to deal with all of this. First of all they had just gotten the worst confession in the history of confessions. Second of all they had just been an accomplice to breaking their ten year old best friend's heart. Third of all they had just….well they hadn't done anything. That was the problem. They hadn't done anything even though they knew that they should have, they just let Mob walk away…and then they had walked away too. They had walked away to post up at a wall and just…wait. Wait for Mob to calm down, Minegishi knew that when someone needed to be alone they needed to be alone, and just…wait for their own self to calm down too. The champagne helped…it helped a lot…and they were drinking way too much. No wonder Mob had no concept of moderation….and no wonder she had such shit taste in men too.

What was with them?

Shimazaki Ryou. He was the one who…they were thinking about him. They were always thinking about him these days. Well it was hard to not think about him. He was, well, Shimazaki. He was Shimazaki and he was…he was there. He was always there to pick them up or piss them off and…and at some point they had slowly started crossing all of their lines…just one line after another…without even realizing it they had been crossing line after line after line….just over and over again…..and the whole thing was just….

They drank.

They drank and stared at their book but did not read. They couldn't read. Their mind was a mess. They wanted to go home. They wanted to go home but they couldn't go home. Not now. Not until Mob was ready to go home. She was sitting at a table talking to Shimazaki and eating way too many cookies. She was eating her feelings…which was better than drinking her feelings…and better she talk to him and calm down than unload onto Minegishi….and this was….

Exhausting.

They were exhausted, they wanted to stop being exhausted, and there was no way to stop being exhausted. At least not while their mind was still going in a loop around and around and around over what had happened. This was why they should not have had parties or socialized in any way. They should have all done the smart thing and found spot along the wall and just sat there until their whole lives had passed them by. It was working pretty well for Minegishi.

Or at least it had been going well for Minegishi.

Apparently their 'leave me alone' signals weren't going through…or apparently they were too used to espers. Miss Blue Dress was there. She was there standing right in front of Minegishi. They could smell her perfume and see the glitter on her eyelids…and they wondered if that was itchy, that glitter, or if she ever got sick of that artificially floral perfume. They much preferred real flowers…but they could get used to this…if only for a little while…

They didn't need to read an aura to know a person's intentions.

Apparently Miss Blue Dress made it a habit to pick up strangers at boring work events. She owned some company or other that was in bed with Claw for some reason or other, Minegishi really did not care, and she made it a habit to pick up fascinating strangers and having sex with them. Well Minegishi was fascinating, they were a stranger, and they needed some kind of a distraction from whatever it was, they didn't even have words for it, that was happening in their mind. They had no clue what they were supposed to do about what happened or how they felt about it or how they felt about….about people….a certain person…so they decided to clear their head and do what they usually did at parties.

It was ok.

They had gotten used to someone who knew what they wanted before they even knew what they wanted. They had gotten too used to someone who's body they knew inside and out, literally, and they had gotten too used to being with someone who was so different from them…but they made do. It wasn't as though they were unfamiliar with the anatomy that they were born with and it wasn't as though they had never gotten familiar with someone else's similar anatomy. It wasn't as though they felt guilty, either, because out of all the things that they had done wrong so far in their life this was not even in the top one hundred. Also they knew full well that Ryou knew that they had left with someone and they were not going to feel guilty about that.

Because that was not what they were about.

They were not an anything with Ryou. They were friends who sometimes went to bed together. That was the hell of it. They were friends who went to bed together, had amazing sex, and then sometimes spent the night together. They were friends who sometimes kissed and cuddled for no reason. They were friends who sometimes got jealous…he was someone who got jealous. Not them. They didn't get jealous. They didn't get attached.

They were not going to go back on that.

They were, however, going to tell him off and then reassure Mob and probably spend the whole night up with her playing dolls or watching Frozen or whatever else would make her feel better. Well she'd feel like shit for a while, she was ten and this was one of the worst things that had ever happened to her, and eventually time would pass and then this would just be an embarrassing footnote in her life that they would laugh over in five or ten years or whenever.

They just had to find Mob first.

They hadn't gone far, Miss Blue Dress's room was just in the hotel down the street, but at some point in the five minute walk from there and the fifty six minutes of somewhat pleasurable sex and then awkward conversation on top of that, Mob had vanished….with Shimazaki….off to somewhere….

"Shibata. Sorry to interrupt, I really am, but I need to know if you've seen Mob anywhere." Said Minegishi. They had no idea what was wrong with Hatori and they did not care what was wrong with Hatori. Mob was gone. Minegishi's range was terrible compared to other espers but…but they weren't going to rely on their aura. No, it looked like they were going to have to do some detective work…

Because Mob could have been literally anywhere. Shimazaki had zero common sense, the ability to teleport, and he was fucked up on…whatever. He and Mob could have literally been anywhere.

"Little Sister-sama?" asked Hatori. Minegishi shook their head. They were not going to deal with this…even though maybe it was a good thing that Shibata had dragged him to the healers. That looked like, at best, some pretty serious dehydration…but it served him right for taking random drugs that he didn't even know the names of.

"Yeah, Mob. I haven't seen her in a while….also what did Ryou give you?" asked Minegishi. They weren't concerned, just curious, and also….Mob still cared about this guy and she would have been devastated if anything happened to him. At least Minegishi figured that Mob still cared about this guy. Their information on Mob was more than a little dated considering the fact that they had no idea where she even was! She could have been literally anywhere and-and…and Minegishi needed to calm the hell down. They needed to calm down because they could not freak out even though this was their fault for leaving him alone with her and he should have known that Shimazaki would have pulled some shit like this because they had known him for years and…and….and-

And they had to be an adult here because they knew that nobody else was up to it.

Well, no, that wasn't fair at all. Their resident mother hen seemed to have been doing his best with what he had. He had kept Hatori alive…enough…and he had the presence of mind to bring him to the healer…the drunken healer. Seriously? Whatever. They were supposed to teach Mo moderation, not this moron, and they were supposed to care for Mob, not Hatori.

They were doing a piss poor enough job dealing with one kid let alone two.

"I don't know what he gave him but I know he's had a lot to drink." Said Shibata. Minegishi rolled their eyes. That was way more than being drunk. That was…MDMA? Maybe. Ryou had always been kind of a fiend for….well he was a fiend for just about everything…and he loved dosing people and not telling them what to expect….because he was a moron…and now he was out there alone with Mob…the human time bomb…

They wondered, for a moment, if that Akira thing was an accurate portrayal of things to come.

"I feel good and bad at the same time and I'm sorry that I called you what I called you and I'm sorry that I asked you out and I'm sorry that I made you uncomfortable and I'm sorry that you're upset with me and I'm sorry that I asked if I could eat you and I'm sorry that you got into a fight and-" said Hatori. He motioned to Minegishi's neck. They resisted the urge to cover what the leech in the blue dress had left them with. Covering that up would have been an admission of guilt and they had nothing to be guilty over. Well…they had been out having lackluster sex while Mob had been spirited away to do God only know what but…well…it all could have been worse so…well they had no idea how it could have been worse than this but they were not going to feel guilty.

"I didn't get into a fight. What I was up to is none of your business. Now, Shibata, tell me when the last time you saw Mob was. I can't see her or feel her and I know that my range isn't that good but…well never you mind why I care. Just tell me when you last saw her." said Minegishi

"I haven't seen her in a while. I've been too busy babysitting him. I think Shimazaki took her home or something. That last I saw her was after you went over to talk to that woman in the blue dress. Shimazaki and her were talking for a little bit and then they just left. Sorry, that's all I know. I have bigger shit to worry about." Said Shibata. He motioned to Hatori. He was talking about how soft Shibata's hair was and how he wanted to touch it…and Minegishi could not deal with this on top of everything else. A wallflower. They had wanted to spend this party as a wallflower…but the world was not going to just let them be a wallflower now was it? No. Now they had to be a detective and a nanny and a-

A best friend.

They felt the bracelet around their wrist. This bracelet game with some pretty big and pretty clear responsibilities…and they were going to live up to those. They needed to find Mob and they needed to make all of this right…and they needed to do it sooner rather than later because it was late as hell, this party was starting to really clear out, and Suzuki would probably notice if his favorite kid went missing. With as weirdly codependent as he was with Mob it was amazing that he hadn't sent out search parties already. Why couldn't Shimazaki have taken Suzuki's son? At least if he ended up taking the son then Suzuki might not have noticed for a couple of weeks at least. But no, he had to take Mob, and this looked so bad. Suzuki had already beaten him up once….and this looked a hell of a lot worse than what Shimazaki had been up to before…

Ryou was a moron plain and simple.

They were surrounded but morons. What was it? Lead in the water supply? A gas leak? Did everyone but them escape from an experiment where they slammed you head in a car door until your brains turned to soup? They did not have the mental space to deal with this. They hadn't had the mental space to deal with this since it had started. They couldn't just post up at the wall and drink this stress away and disappointing sex with a stranger had only led to a disappointing orgasm, not worth it at all, so now they had to deal with this….right now. Even though they did not have the mental space to deal with this…they still had to.

They had to think.

Why couldn't this have been the dystopian future where everyone was chipped? Instead of that they got the dystopian future where Suzuki Touichirou ruled the world. God. Why couldn't that controlling, paranoid, asshole have gotten his kids chipped or something? If they did it to dogs then it must have been possible to do it to humans. It would have been so much simple…Minegishi felt their pockets. They had a phone…an iphone….because Suzuki's shrieking demon child had thrown theirs into the street….but they had an iphone and an iphone could be used to find another iphone….

Huh. Tech boy may have been…a hell of a lot of things…but he might also be useful…

"For the love of…you. Fix whatever's wrong with him right now." Said Minegishi. They were not going to deal with this guy. He needed to be better than useless. Right now he was a scented tampon with a cardboard applicator and a broken string. They needed him to be one of those decent ones with no scent and a plastic applicator. Not even one of the nice ones with the leak guard string and the quiet wrappings. They just needed him to function. That was all. They just needed him to serve his purpose and nothing more.

And if not then the two of them were going to have a very violent talk.

"Fine." Said Fukuda. There. At least something was going right. The man was made of margarine, an imitation of a decent human being, but he served his person. He fixed whatever Ryou had broken. Hatori was still covered in about a gallon of sweat, true, but at least he didn't look like he was on death's door anymore.

He even had the decency to look ashamed of himself.

"What the hell…what did I DO?" asked Hatori. He had crushed a little girl's heart, said some things that he should have kept in his mind like a normal human being, insisted that watching a lot of porn made him good at sex, which did nothing to endear him to Minegishi, and also all of that could have maybe been classified as sexual harassment…but Minegishi wasn't going to get into it with him now. Right now they needed to figure out where Mob and Ryou had gone to. When all of that was over then the two of them could talk about his MANY mistakes.

"Use this phone to find Mob's phone. Do that find my iphone thing right now." Said Minegishi. They handed him their phone and, thankfully, he didn't say anything more about what had transpired. Good. They could talk about it when they got back to the house…and this was going to be a very awkward rest of their working lives…

"She's….somewhere in Tokyo. Sorry, she's jumping around a lot. Just…what happened? My whole mind is a blank…sorry. Did I….I'm sorry. I'm just-Just…I feel like I said something to you and-" said Hatori. He held Minegishi phone out to them. They took it back. Well at least they had some way of tracking her now. Good. Time for some detective work. They didn't want to go out there in the December cold searching Tokyo from top to bottom but they also didn't want to have to live in some sort of Akira style future Neo Tokyo either.

So it was time to do some midnight detective work.

"You said a lot of shit to me, I don't care, right now I need to find where in the hell Mob went off to. You two can either come with me or stay here. Whichever." Said Minegishi. They had their phone, they had money, and maybe they should have brought a proper coat….whatever. That was what drivers were for. They didn't care if they had to keep some Awakened up all night driving around looking for Mob and they didn't give a damn about blowing Claw's fuel budget. They had to find Mob before something terrible happened. To her or to someone else.

"I…I still feel sort of sick…" said Hatori. Ok. Fine. Ether he was a liar or Fukuda was incompetent. Whatever.

"Fine. Shibata, keep babysitting him. I don't need two kids to worry about." Said Minegishi. They didn't even give Fukuda a second look as they left. They left, found a Claw driver, and went out into the night to look for Mob and the idiot who was probably teaching her how to freebase or something right then at that moment. God. How had it come to this? They were out in the cold looking for a ten year old kid, one who wasn't even their kid at all, when three years ago they would have been living it up with Shimazaki. They would have snuck away and done something fun, he knew Tokyo like the back of his hand considering that he had grown up here, and he knew where all the fun was…and then they could have ended their night all tangled up in….

Why were they STILL thinking about him?

Why were they still thinking about him even though he was the cause of all of this? He had taken Mob off to do things that she was way too young to do. She was only ten and she was too young for the things that Shimazaki considered to be fun. Well obviously he wasn't going to sleep with her. He skewed young sometimes but not that young. But still…Mob was ten…and Minegishi knew that Shimazaki was going to get her up to things, non-sexual but still not age appropriate things, and this all could have had disastrous results.

They wished they had stayed a wallflower….but it was too late for wishing and hoping now. They were on a mission. Time for some midnight detective work.


	244. With a Little Help From a Good Friend

Shimazaki Ryou did not like sad people.

They were boring. Sad people were boring. The only thing more boring than a sad person was being friends with a sad person. The only thing more boring than being friends with a sad person was being a sad person yourself…but he was not a sad person. He wasn't sad at all. So what if Toshi was pissed at him, legitimately pissed, that was…Toshi had a right to their feelings. Besides, it was coming up on…well no, it wasn't actually, because it was the twenty eighth….but still. Toshi just got moody sometimes. That was fine. Toshi was Toshi and Toshi sometimes got moody and if he didn't like it then he could just stop hanging out with Toshi. There. Simple. Right?

It wasn't.

He didn't know. He didn't want to think about this. He didn't want to think about anything. He didn't want to think about how mad he had made Toshi. Angry, legititmately angry, wasn't a good look on them. Heh. Blind humor. Maybe he should have said that one out loud. The kid's aura sounded sad. Mob's aura sounded sad. Her brother…well his aura had been all over the place. He might have been the more fun kid to hang out with but he was in the horny kid closet with some guy he'd been talking to all night and Shimazaki wasn't about to ruin that for Sho. He'd earned it putting up with all the shit he'd been putting up with. Though Sho would have been more fun to hang out with than Mob…

Not that she wasn't fun in her own way.

"Shimazaki….I'm cold. It's cold out here." Said Mob. She had wanted to be anywhere but that party. So Shimazaki had taken her anywhere but that party. Now they were outside in some park and she was so cold. She hadn't taken a coat. Well not her thick one. She had the thin blue one that came with her dress but that coat was mostly to look nice and stuff. She was very cold but she still didn't want to go back. She couldn't go back.

Not after what had happened.

Hatori had been in love with Minegishi the whole time…and they had known. It felt like…like Minegishi had pulled on one of her braids and stolen the hair tie at the end so that she couldn't tie it back and then half of her hair would have to be down and…and stuff. She didn't know. All she knew was that this was not a good feeling. She was still Minegishi's friend, nothing would ever make her stop being Minegishi's friend, but…but that had been a lot to take in…and stuff. Her best friend, the person who she was closest to in the whole world beside her own little brother, had known that the boy that she had been in love with had been in love with them…

And they hadn't even said anything.

The whole party had been going…ok…until that. Sure dad's speech had been long and boring and stuff but that was ok. The speech had still been nice even if it had been long. Dad said that all good speeches were over fifteen minutes long. The speech had bene long, very long, but he had still said nice things. Well not to people, like when she had to give her speech she made sure to make people feel good and stuff, he mostly just talked about how good the future was going to be when he ruled that world. That had made people feel good but she really thought that he should have ended it with telling everyone that he cared about them….but she wasn't the boss, he was, and she didn't get to tell him how to make his speeches…

And he wouldn't have, anyway, because she hadn't wanted to hurt his feelings.

Which was maybe why Minegishi hadn't told her that Hatori had been in love with them. Maybe they had been trying to save her feeling because…because they knew how much she liked Hatori…even though it was so…so much not nicer that….that they had just let her have good feelings about Hatori and stuff…even though they knew that he liked them…and stuff. He liked them and he had said so and when he had said that it had felt like her heart had been ripped out from her chest and shown to her like in Mortal Kombat…

But she was still best friends with Minegishi.

"Here, wear my coat." Said Shimazaki. He took off his suit coat and covered her with it. She couldn't keep her barrier in close enough to the point where she stopped feeling hot and cold. Well he could teach her how to fix that. There. He could help. He would help. He would help her stop being sad because sad people were boring and being in close proximity to them made him feel sad…and he did not do sad…

Not even when Toshi was mad at him.

He had just been having fun with the new kid, that was all, it wasn't like he had actually done anything wrong. He had shown the kid a good time. It wasn't his fault that the kid couldn't hold his liquor. Hell, this kid, the ten year old girl he was sitting on some freezing cold bench in the middle of Tokyo at some unholy hour of the night, could hold her liquor better than he could….and that hadn't even been liquor. It had been champagne! Who got that messed up after a few drops of champagne?

No wonder Toshi didn't like him.

Toshi didn't like the kid and he knew that Toshi didn't like the kid and he didn't expect Toshi to like the kid but…but the kid liked Toshi. Well why wouldn't he? Toshi was awesome. Toshi was the best. Toshi was smart and funny and thoughtful and was never boring even though they were so weird about stuff now….like with Mob…and having fun…and stuff. They had gotten sort of weird now but…but they were still so interesting…even if they were mad at him…

It would pass. It always passed.

"Thank you." Said Mob. She put his coat on over her thin one. Dad said that when she got older she would be able to keep her aura close to her and she would be able to protect herself from the real cold. Well she wasn't big enough to do that yet….and she wished that she had brought her actual coat. She was less cold but…but she still wanted to go inside…but she didn't want to go inside. She didn't want to go back to the party and she didn't want to go home but…but she also wanted to be warm.

His coat was kind of warm.

She pulled it in close. The inside was all…bulgy. She reached in to even it out and found some pockets. She didn't stick her hand inside even though she wanted to. She knew that she was not supposed to go into other people's pockets. She wasn't a little kid. She knew not to go into other people's pockets and….and stuff…and she knew that she was not a little kid…even if the other kids had thought that she was a little kid. That pink haired girl had said that she had been a little kid…and she had only asked her if she liked Frozen and what kind of dolls she liked…and stuff like that. Normal questions that she has asked other kids before…but that had been back when she had made regular contact with the other kids…when she had been in the first grade. She was ten now, not seven, and she should have been…well she was close to eleven now…so she should have been in…she didn't even know which grade she was supposed to be. She hadn't been in school for a while…but also she knew that she was not a little kid just because she liked Frozen and played with dolls and…

And she was a little kid.

That was why Hatori didn't like her. That was why he would never like her the way she liked him. She liked him so much but he liked Minegishi…because they were an adult. They were an adult and…and Mob was not an adult. Mob was a kidult and she was not Minegishi and of course Hatori like Minegishi better…and stuff. She wasn't dumb. She knew that he would never get…get those feelings for her…the ones that she had for him…

But that didn't mean that it didn't hurt when she had to stand there and listen to him talk about how much he loved Minegishi….

"You can have whatever you find in those pockets." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. He didn't care what she took. He didn't have anything dangerous in his pockets. MDMA, coke, another weed pen, a joint he had rolled, a random handful of pills…that maybe he should have kept away from her. Whatever. She could take whatever she wanted. He wasn't Toshi and he wasn't going to keep her from having fun. There was nothing wrong with having fun. There was nothing wrong with teaching her how to have fun.

"I won't go through your pockets. That's not nice." Said Mob. He passed her the pen in his hand. She knew that she shouldn't. She knew that she'd already had champagne to drink and she knew that Minegishi had told her never to mix substances…but she also knew that her hair was trying to float and the snow around her feet was trying to float and…and there were little flurries all around her…and she was cold…and she needed to keep her powers and her feelings under control…

And also she was sort of not entirely happy with Minegishi.

So she inhaled from his pen. It tasted worse than the one that he had given her…and also it sort of had his spit on it already which was kind of gross…but she still inhaled because she needed it. She'd had a rough night and it was ok to do this when you'd had a rough night. Shimazaki had said so. He said that he could tell that she had been having a rough time answering everyone's questions about dad and his work, and that was why it was ok for her to have so much champagne. It had made her feel better and she had been so happy….and then everything had gone wrong but she had been so happy then….

And she could be happy again now.

"Oh. Sorry. That hits kind of rough. Yeah, I usually give you the best shit. You know, because you're you." Said Shimazaki. Her aura still felt sad. It would take some time before it hit her. Her tolerance was going up again. Toshi didn't get tolerance because they were always trying to keep theirs low and shit. Well Mob's tolerance was going up so of course she needed more. Toshi worried over nothing…so Shimazaki was in the right…and Toshi had no right at all to be mad at him. There. So if Toshi came up to him and chewed him out for sitting on a bench in the cold with the kid and smoking her up then he would look them in the where their eyes were and he would tell them that…

He would tell them that they were right because he wanted them to get along.

He couldn't imagine not being with Toshi. The way that they were now, of course, not the way that the new kid wanted to be with them. Toshi didn't do relationships and neither did he. Toshi…Toshi could fuck whoever they wanted to, and they did, but this thing with the kid…it was…different. Toshi was an attractive person and sex was…it was sex. Other things were just more…more meaningful…and stuff. That kid wanted something meaningful with them…

And he knew that they weren't going to give it to him…

And he knew that…he had no idea what he even knew anymore. He knew that it was cold out. He knew that he had left without a plan. He knew that he had taken the kid with him because she had felt like crap, he hadn't wanted to be alone, and her brother had been busy getting some in the horny kid closet. So, really, this was the best thing that he could have done at the time. Now they were here and they were smoking and neither of them felt any better.

So maybe kick it up a notch?

"You can have some of mine if you want. I have it in my bag." Said Mob. She untucked her hand from his sleeves. His coat was warm and stuff if not a bit lumpy…but that was ok. She was ok. She reached into her purse but he put his hand over hers.

"Finish off mine first, then we'll see where this goes." Said Shimazaki

"But…there's still a lot in here. I mean I know that you can't see and all but there's still a lot of vape oil in here and stuff." Said Mob. It usually took her a very long time to finish her pens and she didn't think that she could finish the whole thing in one night even with help. Aside from one big air bubble his was practically full…and also Minegishi had told her a hundred times not to overdo it. Finishing the whole pen would have most certainly been overdoing it.

"So? The more the better." Said Shimazaki

"But Minegishi told me not to overdo it…and also I don't want to…to make myself too sick or anything." Said Mob

"You can't get sick from smoking too much. You're thinking of drinking…and just about everything else…but not smoking." Said Shimazaki

"I…I won't end up overdoing it like Hatori did?" asked Mob. She doesn't want to talk about it but she also doesn't want to get herself into that state. She didn't want to get herself so upset and…and stuff…and just not being able to stop saying things…things that hurt…and Hatori…he had hurt her…but maybe she didn't….maybe she didn't….maybe she didn't have the right to be hurt because…because Hatori was nineteen and she wasn't even eleven yet…and she was still such a little kid…

Just like the pink haired girl had said.

She was a little kid who liked Frozen and played with dolls and…and she was such a baby and…and that was why she was told to stay away from whatever fun big kid game that everyone was playing in the coatroom…and also she didn't have pierced ears or wear makeup or shoes with heels or a bra…and she was such a little kid…

So no wonder Hatori didn't like her the way that she liked him.

"No. First of all I gave him MDMA. We are not on MDMA…and I don't think that you're ready for that yet anyway. Second of all it's a completely different high. This relaxes you. MDMA makes you…well it's like the ultimate sugar rush. Yeah. That's putting it in words that you can understand. It's like the ultimate sugar rush…on a rollercoaster…and also it's the hottest day at the height of summer so you should always hydrate." Said Shimazaki passing down his wisdom to her. Maybe a little bit of MDMA….no, she wasn't ready. Her aura was still all over the place. Maybe she needed to be sedated, not keyed up, because her powers were unstable at the best of times…

But then again you had to walk before you could run, right?

"Oh. It didn't look very fun…so I won't do that." Said Mob. She inhaled some more of the pen. She tried to stop but he held it in place. She kept on inhaling until her throat and lungs burnt. Then he took his hand away. He wasn't being mean or anything like that, no, he just did that to teach her how to hit it the right way. That was very important, hitting it the right way and stuff.

"Oh no, it's fun. It's the most fun that you will ever have in your life. I swear on the bible." Said Shimazaki. He had to make sure she got a good hit off of that. She passed it over to him. He showed her how it was done. No boring people on this bench. Sad people were boring people and therefore there would be no sad people on this bench. This would be the party bench. The party bench in the party park and they were the two best partiers that this bench in this park had ever seen!

"I didn't know that you were a Christian." Said Mob before she inhaled from the pen again. She didn't need him to hold it for her. She knew to do it for a long time. Even if it hurt she had to keep going. The heady feeling was coming back. She liked it. The heady feeling meant that her bad feelings were being chased away and stuff.

"No, I'm agnostic. If there is a God out there then I don't want to fuck with him. Toshi's the opposite though. They're an atheist and if there is a God out there then they want to fight them and shit….heh. You know Toshi and I…back when we first met we were on…well not MDMA but we were coked out of our minds and we started fighting about religion. They wanted to fight God and I want him to leave me the hell alone…God. That was so fucking weird….Toshi was so fucking weird….Toshi is still so fucking weird…" said Shimazaki

"I don't want to talk about Minegishi right now." Said Mob. She felt the friendship bracelet around her wrist. She had been so mean to Minegishi…and also she had lost control of her powers…but she had just been so sad…so very sad…because she really liked Hatori but he liked Minegishi…and of course they would end up liking Minegishi, they were an adult, and she was just a kid.

Just a little kid.

"Why not? You love Toshi and Toshi loves you. Seriously. You guys are like best friends or whatever. You have those matching bracelets. Aren't they like wedding rings for girls or whatever?" asked Shimazaki

"Um…I guess. We wear them to show that we're best friends…and we still are. I just…needed to get away from them…because of what happened." Said Mob

"Yeah. They were wrong to just cut you off like that. They just think that you're going to grow up to be a drunk or something and they don't want to be responsible for ruining your life or whatever. I mean I know that you can handle yourself but Toshi underestimates you." Said Shimazaki. The rotation was somewhat messed up now. He had been holding on to it for too long. She could have the rest. He needed something stronger. The plan had been, well his plan had been, MDMA for everyone…or maybe for some and coke for others…and then just making the most out of that stuffy work party. But then Hatori had to go and be a little bitch about it and then Toshi had gotten pissed off about Mob even though there was much worse stuff in his pockets that he could have given her…and that he would probably end up giving her actually. She needed it and he needed it.

If Toshi didn't want to have fun with him then that was fine. He had other friends…like Mob. She was a friend.

"That's….I wasn't very upset about that, I was just upset that…that Hatori likes them and that he said that he liked them…well they had no control over that but…but they knew that he had liked them and…and they still let me like him…" said Mob. She didn't want to talk about this but they knew that they could…because Shimazaki was a friend and he would not make fun of her and stuff. Also she really wanted to get this off her chest before it got stuck there. There shoes were full of snow. She was still making a flurry all around them with her powers on accident. He didn't mind. He couldn't see it and he kept his barrier so close that he couldn't feel it either. She wished that she could have been more like him. She wished that she could have just…not felt things…but he did feel things…but also he didn't. She had never seen him scared or upset…

Probably because he was either drunk or high or both all of the time like Minegishi had said.

"Wait…you and…and that guy? Hatori? Hatori Nozomu? The brail faced nerd who lives in Shibata's old room and spends his nights screaming at his computer screen? That Hatori Nozomu?" asked Shibata. He blinked when she had said that. It was a reflex. Cold air got into his eye sockets when he did that but he didn't hold his body's natural reactions to shocking news against her.

Even if he got the feeling that she had bene fucking with him.

If she had been anyone else then he would have thought that he was being fucked with. That kid…she was INTO that kid? For real? Her? The Daughter of the most powerful man on the planet wanted to fuck…well the ten year old equivalent…with THAT brail faced nerd? Even his skin told a very long and sad story that was most likely a reflection of the madness within or whatever. Seriously. What did she even SEE in him?

He felt vaguely offended, actually. Not that he would do anything with her at her age but, yeah, he was right there and he knew what he was doing.

She was a great kid and all but he knew that she would grow up and when she did, well, what was it like to fuck a God? He had been asking himself that since he had met Suzuki. What was it like to fuck someone so powerful? Not that he would with Suzuki, no, the man was a dumpster fire of a human being. Mob on the other hand was a nice kid and she would grow up to be a nice woman and also she liked to have fun and he liked to have fun so, yeah, he was always an option for when she grew up. In three or four or five years. When she stopped being such a kid.

But, for some reason, she was into Hatori of all people.

"Yes…I like…well I liked him. He's nice…and he's taller than me…and I like his sweaters…and we play games together….and he always listens to me when I talk…and he's never been mean to me once." Said Mob

"He also can't hold his liquor for shit and always smells like at least half a can of lynx." Said Shimazaki

"What's lynx?" asked Mob

"A kind of really shitty body spray that guys his age use instead of, you know, showering and putting on real cologne." Said Shimazaki

"Oh. Well I don't think that it's…that word. I think that he smells nice." Said Mob

"So you seriously think that he smells better than me?" asked Shimazaki

"No, you smell nice too, but in a different way. I like your cologne a lot. He's just…he smells good in a different way and…and I really liked him…and I don't know why I'm so upset. I mean I knew that he was an adult and I was a kid and…and that he was too old for me but I guess that part of me just thought that he would…wait for me to grow up….I guess. That's dumb." Said Mob. She had been thinking like a little kid. He was older than her so of course he wouldn't want to be with her. That was….that was how it worked. Adults were with adults and kids were with kids…and stuff….

"If he had half a brain he would. Three or four years is not a long time to wait and, honestly, he has a better shot with you than Toshi anyway….I don't know what he thinks is going to happen between him and Toshi…nothing is going to happen between him and Toshi…" muttered Shimazaki. He felt…bad. He felt really bad and…and he had no clue why. Toshi had rejected him. The whole thing was over. The only way that it could have been more over was if they had killed him on the spot. So why did he still feel like…this?

Because if one guy was into Toshi than another guy could be.

Or girl, too, but he didn't feel as threatened. He felt threatened by Hatori but not a girl…he'd have to do some soul searching later when he was less high. Right now he needed…he needed to get even higher. Because he did not want to think about it, the fact that Toshi could change their mind about the whole 'not wanting a relationship thing' and then…and then where would that leave him?

He smoked harder even though he knew that he wasn't making himself get high any faster.

"If Minegishi did fall in love with him then…then I would be happy that they found love…but they rejected him…and also it would be more than three or four years that he would have to wait. I mean I won't be his age in three or four years because I'm only ten and stuff. I mean you might have forgotten my age….and stuff. Because you can't see me…that I'm a kid….just a little kid…" said Mob

"No, I didn't forget. The age of consent here is thirteen but that's kind of young for me. Fourteen is better." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. He reached over for the pen. She was hogging it, which he would not have minded, but she also wasn't smoking it, which he did mind. Either smoke or don't smoke, kid, but don't hold onto it for the sake of holding onto it. We've all got problems that we need to smoke out.

"What's an age of consent?" asked Mob. She knew what consent meant. That was the agreement box you had to check when websites used cookies to mine your data so they could sell you stuff that they thought you would like. Minegishi said that those boxes were a form of coercion because you couldn't use the website unless you checked the box…but she got the feeling that they weren't talking about the internet.

"That's the lowest legal age that it's ok to sleep with someone. In Japan it's crazy low but in some places it's crazy high. That's pretty much the only law I try my best to follow. It's best not to break too many laws at once…this doesn't count. Trespassing and smoking in a no smoking zone aren't real laws." Said Shimazaki. He reached over and took the pen from her. He needed it more than she did considering the fact that she wasn't even using it.

"Wait…so I didn't have to wait until I was all grown up? But….he probably still wouldn't have liked me. I'm just a little kid….just like that girl said…" Said Mob. She pulled her jacket in close around her. She was just a little kid and even in three or four years she would still be just a little kid and, of course, he wasn't going to like her and…and it was hard…and she really wished that Shimazaki hadn't just snatched that pen out of her hands. She wasn't done with it. She needed it. She just got her powers to calm down, the flurries were done with and her hair wasn't trying to float away anymore…and she needed to keep that up because she might lose control again.

"Who said that you were a little kid? I mean you're ten but…who the fuck said that to you? Do I need to fuck somebody up? Because I will. Anything to get my mind off of…whatever." Said Shimazaki

"Um…I don't know her name. She had pink hair and pink lipstick and pink eye stuff and a pink dress and really high shoes and…and I don't know her name but she called me a little kid. I asked her if she liked Frozen, also which of the Disney girls was her favorite, and about what dolls she liked…and she told me that she didn't play with dolls anymore and that I was a little kid and that I wasn't worth her time and…and also that I couldn't play in the coatroom with the rest of them…because I was too young." Said Mob. She felt sad now, remembering what that girl had said. They were both ten, almost eleven, and she had just been so much more grown up…also she had really big breasts but that was not the polite sort of thing to notice…even if Mob felt bad now that she still wore undershirts. She didn't even need a bra, her breasts were just pointy…things…and she was such a little kid in all of the other important ways too….

She needed to smoke some more.

"I have no idea what pink is but, and I mean this with all my heart, fuck that bitch. Seriously. You're Suzuki Shigeko. You organized that whole fucking party! That's your father who founded it and you've run it before. That bitch thought that she could come into your party and disrespect you like that? Fuck her!" said Shimazaki

"D-Don't say so many bad words…and she didn't say anything that wasn't true. I am a little kid and-and…stuff." Said Mob. Shimazaki was facing her now. He did that sometimes. He said that even though he could see he still had the same instincts and stuff. That was why he still smiled and frowned and stuff. He looked at people when he needed their attention and now he was trying to get her attention…

This could be good or bad.

"You're a kid, Mob, but you're not little. Ok? You…you have so much going on for you…but you have zero self-confidence….and I can't let this be." Said Shimazaki. Well not this was a bitter crime. How could someone as amazing as her, seriously she was the most powerful kid esper in the world and she had all of Claw worshipping the ground she walked on, have so little self-confidence? Where had he gone wrong? Toshi had been the one to go wrong. This poor kid…he needed to show her a good time. He wanted to have a good time and he needed to show her a good time…and also just sitting here on this bench was getting kind of boring and he did not do boring.

She'd thank him when she was older and they were partying around the world together.

"Please don't beat her up. She's my age…and also you're thirty…and an esper…and that's not a fair fight at all…" said Mob

"What the fuck is the matter with you? No, of course I'm not fucking up a ten year old. I'm going to give you confidence and self-worth so this way you'll be able to defeat your own enemies. Now hold still because I have to get something out of my coat and I don't want you to end up freezing your ass off by taking it off. Toshi would never forgive me if I let you freeze to death." Said Shimazaki. He did his best not to make her too cold while he dug around his interior coat pockets. He needed to find his various goody bags….

And there they were.

"Um…what are you doing?" asked Mob. She sat perfectly still. He was close again. He had gotten this close a lot to tease her…but he wasn't teasing her now. He was getting something from his coat pockets, whatever was making those lumps, and he had to be close to do that…so this was ok…even though she sort of wanted her personal space….

She wondered if Hatori had even been this close to Minegishi.

She wondered if Minegishi would mind if she was this close to Shimazaki…and then she exorcised those thoughts from her mind because they were weird and stuff. They were really weird thoughts to have and…and stuff. She should not have been thinking about whether or not something would hurt her friend….or if her friend had done something to hurt her…or if…just…she should not have been thinking like that. She just…if Minegishi was in love with Hatori then Mob wished them the best but if Minegishi had been serious about rejecting Hatori then she was very happy and if…if Minegishi had…if they'd had a good reason to keep what Hatori had said, about confessing and stuff, then…then that was ok too…even though Mob…she wished that Minegishi had told her…

But she didn't want to think about this right now.

Instead she thought about what Shimazaki had in his hands. He had plastic bags with brail labels on them. He ran his hands over the labels and muttered to himself. One of the bags had candy in it. She hoped that he shared. She had barely ate at that party…and now she was so hungry….and also kind of thirsty too. Thirsty enough that the snow as starting to look good…like a snow cone without the syrup.

Or something.

"Thinking. MDMA is fun but coke is a hell of a lot easier to dose…but what even is a kid's dose of coke…and no, before you say anything I'm not talking about that soda. Ok? Just…do you want to feel on top of the world right now or like you want to go to bed?" asked Shimazaki. What was he doing? He was being an idiot. Maybe Minegishi was right and he didn't think things through…of course they were right. He didn't like to think because thinking led to overthinking and overthinking was boring and he did not do boring. He needed to stop and think for a moment. He was going about this all wrong. Really he was being a complete and utter moron about this whole thing.

He hadn't even asked Mob how she wanted to feel.

He, obviously, wanted to feel on top of the world after what happened with Toshi but he had someone else to think about. There. He was capable of thinking. He was capable of thinking and he needed to know how she wanted to feel…and also he needed to think of what he would do if she started to lose control of her powers….probably just take her to a part or an open field or something. Yeah. Way from the city so, you know, nobody died.

He wanted to show her a good time, not ruin her life.

"I want to feel like I'm on top of the world…but if you want to go to bed then that's fine too." Said Mob. It was late and she was sleepy. Maybe she would feel better in the morning after a good night's sleep. That was a thing that you were supposed to do, sleep on it, she had heard. Maybe if she slept on her feelings then they would be better in the morning and then she could focus on all the good things from the party…and stuff…

"Mob slow down. You're ten." Said Shimazaki. Coke it is then. Toshi was going to kill him…but Toshi already wanted to kill him so it was whatever.

"Huh?" asked Mob

"Never mind. Anyway, do you have a key? Because I don't have keys, you know because I can literally go anywhere, and it's not a key bump without, you know, a key." Said Shimazaki. He didn't know why he was still feeling his pockets. He knew that he didn't carry keys. Stupid brain.

"What's a key bump?" asked Mob

"And incredibly low dose of coke which I think would be safe for you to try. Now do you have a key or not?" asked Shimazaki

"I don't have any keys, I usually use power powers to open doors…sorry." said Mob

"No, no, no. Don't just say sorry like that. Just…well looks like I'm going to have to eyeball this. Ok, watch me. This is coke, not the soda, and you snort it so you feel like you're on top of the world…or you'll get crazy anxious….but maybe I shouldn't have said that. Self-fulfilling whatever and all…anyway. Whatever. Just watch me, do what I do, and tell me if you feel like your powers are starting to go out of control…and also if you're going to have a heart attack." Said Shimazaki. Well it looked like he was portioning this out onto his hand like ketamine….which he wished he had but he would make do with this. He expanded his barrier out so the wind couldn't get them. He could feel her watching. Good.

She was so lucky that she had him to teach him these things.

"Heart attack? Um…Shimazaki…is this….is this dangerous?" asked Mob. She knew that Shimazaki wasn't afraid of most things but…but they didn't want to have a heart attack. People died of those and she did not feel like dying. She felt like living…and that was what she wanted to do for a long time…but also she trusted Shimazaki because he was her friend….and she could always trust her friends…even when they didn't tell her when her other friends had confessed to them….

"No, this is perfectly safe. I know what I'm doing. Now watch closely." Said Shimazaki

"Ok." Said Mob. She watched him. It looked easy enough. She could do that. She did do that. She did that and….and then….

And then everything got really, really, REALLY great.


	245. Out in the Cold

This was a party.

A real party, Shimazaki had said, and he knew a lot of things about a lot of things. Like parties. This place was bright and dark at the same time and very loud and there were a lot of people but Mob wasn't scared. No, she wasn't scared or nervous or anything. She felt good. She felt great. She felt better than she had ever felt in her entire life…even though her face was kind of numb. Her face was numb and her legs were bouncing to the beat of the music and she felt warm, way too warm, but also…happy.

She had never felt so happy in her entire life.

She had a whole pile of napkins in front of her. She was folding paper cranes over and over again with her hands and with her powers. She had no idea what she was going to wish for but she knew that whatever it was couldn't be any better than the feeling that she had right now. This was amazing! She felt warm and happy and good and safe and-and-and she was wide awake and not hungry and at all and-and-and-

"Mob! How's my favorite person!?" asked Shimazaki as he teleported right in front of her. She wasn't scared. She had been able to feel his aura all night. She could feel his aura and her aura but no one else's aura because these were all normal people. Sometimes she forgot that most of the world was made up of normal people. Sometimes she forgot because she lived only with other espers. Well now she remembered…until she forgot again. Things inside of her head had been sort of slippery for a while now. She didn't care.

She didn't care about anything.

Well she did and she didn't. She cared that she was warm and dry, otherwise she could have gotten sick, and she cared that Shimazaki was happy. Those were the things that she cared about right now. She also cared about how squeaky her shoes were against the ground, how many napkins she could fold and unfold, and about this song! This was the best song ever! Well it had no words and just the same sound over and over again but she still wanted to get up and dance and stuff!

But she couldn't because she was only ten and they were at this place in secret.

"I'm thirsty and also kind of bored. I want to get up and move and stuff. Can't I go where you keep on going?" asked Mob. She didn't want to be alone right now. She wasn't scared, just bored, and he was the one who was always saying how terrible it was to be bored anyway. She wanted to follow him out into the crowd and gone where he had gone and done whatever it was that he was doing. It seemed fun.

"Bored? How in the hell are you bored? Mob, come on, this is a real party!" said Shimazaki as he made himself comfortable in their booth. He had two drinks in his hands. One was for him and one was for her. It looked like a smoothie and smelled like one too. Mob pulled it over with her powers. The top looked like snow. She made tiny snowmen at the top.

"The party we came from was real too." Said Mob. They had come from a party…and it hadn't been as fun as this…but nothing in her entire life had ever been as fun as this so there was no comparison.

"It was real….dull. A nice, long, stuffy, work affair. This is a real party! Come on, can't you feel the beat? And smell the people? And drink your fruity drink…thing. Seriously, drink that thing. I asked for whatever the fruitiest, girliest drink they had and there it is. Now hydrate! Hydrate before you dehydrate and shrivel up like a raisin!" said Shimazaki

"Does that really happen?" asked Mob

"Yes! Now you need to hydrate before you dehydrate and Toshi kills me…well more than they're planning on killing me already since, you know, the coke." Said Shimazaki

"Why would Minegishi be mad at you? This is a good thing. I feel good and you feel good and I'm happy and you're happy and we're both happy." Said Mob. Why did it seem, sometimes, like all the best things in life were bad? Drinking and smoking and now this? She had more control over her powers now than she ever had in her entire life. She could feel them. She could feel them there just under her skin and she knew that they would listen to her no matter what. She pulled her drink over to her with her powers. It slid across the table and stopped right in front of her. Perfect. The foam at the top wasn't even disturbed.

"Because they think that I'm going to ruin your life with this shit or whatever. That's just Toshi worrying about you since, you know, they love you and all of that. They see themselves when they look at you, I think, and they don't want you as heavy into drugs as they were….are. Me, I don't care. I've had the best times in my entire life all messed up and now I want to share those with you." Said Shimazaki

"I…I don't want Minegishi to be mad or sad but…but I feel really good and I have a lot of control over my powers and I…I just feel really good." Said Mob

"Me too…but you know what would me us both feel better? Not getting dehydrated. Now drink you little lush." Said Shimazaki. Mob picked at her drink with her powers. She poked the top. She…felt…it. She felt it with her powers and her brain told her that it was cold and wet…like snow. She was getting the feeling of snow from his drink. She had always been able to feel with her powers but…but she had never been able to feel this clearly…

What else could she do?

She made a little mountain on the top of her drink. What could she do? She could…she could make little snowflakes out of the frozen part of her drink and make them rain down…and she could…she could make a little Olaf. He liked warm hugs. So she made a friend for him. Then they hugged. Then she made two more friends and made them hug. She liked warm hugs. She wanted warm hugs. She wanted to give and receive warm hugs. The world did not have enough warm hugs in it. She would have to fix that.

She made more snowmen and they were all giving warm hugs just like all good snowmen would.

She wondered if the snowmen that they had made in the park were cold and lonely. She wondered if she should have made them hug. She wondered if they could go back so she could fix her snowmen and make them hug again. She wondered if she was cold. She wondered if he was cold. She wondered if she should get up and give him a warm hug. She wondered if he would give her a warm hug. She wanted a warm hug. She loved warm hugs.

"Your aura sounds….busy. Busy and kind of like…high pitched? And soft? What are you doing?" asked Shimazaki. Mob tried to listen to her aura. All she could hear was the music around her. It made her thumb her feet against the ground. She wondered if he could see her doing that. She wondered if he could hear her doing that. She wondered if her hearing and aural sense would get as good as his if she closed her eyes forever. She closed her eyes. She could feel everything around her with her aura. The one hundred and thirteen people around her. The six hundred glasses both full and empty. The electricity in the walls. The millions of snowflakes just outside. All of it.

There. That wasn't so hard.

She had done all of that while building snowmen. It wasn't so hard, splitting her focus, not now. Dad had always said that splitting focus was hard but dad never did things like this. She could easily split her focus because she had no focus at all to begin with. She could feel and see the whole world around her with her aura. She felt like she could do anything…because she could. She was Mob. She was and she was sitting there and she could do anything.

She wanted to build a snowman.

"Do you wanna build a snowman?" asked Mob as she made tiny snowmen in the fruity ice having on the top of her drink. She liked to build snowmen. She couldn't make them come to life, she had already tried that, but she liked to make them with her powers. They were listening better than they had ever listened before in her entire life and she did not want to waste this. She wanted to do…stuff. All of the stuff. She wanted to go back outside to do stuff and things. All of the stuff and all of the things.

She felt like she could do anything.

"You wanna go back outside and make more snowmen?" asked Shimazaki before he gulped down his drink. Shimazaki said that it was very important that they stay hydrated or else they could get really sick. So that was what they did. We'll they had been drinking snow, before, and this looked and smelled a lot better than snow…but she also REALLY wanted to build a snowman.

"Yes! I want to build all the snowmen! I don't care if we were all wet with snow!" said Mob. That's what they had been doing in the park before coming here. She had felt sort of numb for a little bit and then really good. Then her powers had been listening better than ever and she could feel every single snowflake, so, of course, there had been nothing else to do but build a snowman.

And sing.

And they had sang and built snowmen until their clothes were soaked with snow that had turned back into water, because of science, and then Shimazaki said that he would bring her to a real party. And now they were here. The music was loud and there were a lot of people and this was a 'no kid zone' or something and that was why she had to sit here and sit still and not tell anyone that she was only ten because they would get kicked out and Mob didn't want them to get kicked out. Shimazaki was so happy here. She could tell by his aura.

And she wanted her friends to be happy.

"That sounds fun! You sound fun! You're fun! You're here and you're fun and I love you and I want to build a snowman with you and I want to pick you up and throw you and I want to dance with you but I can't dance with you because you're ten and you're too young to be here with me and if someone catches you here then we're getting kicked out and I want to dance with you so bad…so we will later! We'll build a snowman later too! It'll be big and tall and come to life but not kill everyone even though Frosty should have killed everyone….hasn't it always sound kind of like a threat? Like he'll be back next winter? Like he'll kill those kids for giving him life like how kids kill their parents? Well I guess not everyone kills their parents…anyway! I want to leave with you right now and I want to do stuff with you but let me dance some more. I've just got to dance some more but then we can go outside…but keep staying here and don't look at anyone or talk to anyone…and for the love of God don't tell anyone you're only ten!" said Shimazaki. He leaned across the table and kissed her on the top of the head. Mob wiped it away after he teleported away. Even as good as she felt now she still didn't want to kiss him or anything like that.

Gross.

She would never do that to Minegishi anyways…and Minegishi hadn't done that to her…so why was she still upset? No. She was not going to think about that. She was not going to think about that because she was having fun and she didn't want to think about that and she didn't want to think about anything that she didn't have to think about and also she was thirsty and hot and hot and thirsty and she wanted to move and she needed to move but she couldn't move and she was so thirsty.

So she drank her drink.

She felt good. Well she felt a little sick after drinking her whole drink at once, dizzy a little bit, but she also felt good. She wanted to feel this good for the rest of her life. She wondered if she could. She didn't much like the numb feeling in her face but she could get used to that if she could feel this good for the rest of her life! She closed her eyes and saw with her aura. She could do anything. She could feel everything. She could tell her powers what to do and they would listen. They would listen and not do their own thing like they kept on trying to, well they had been before. Now her powers listened. They listened and she could make them listen.

Because she was Mob and she was awesome and this was awesome and life was awesome!

Minegishi hated their life. It was awful.

This night was awful. They were about ready to kill someone. They were about ready to jump out of this car and kill the next person that they saw. They were in a neighborhood that Mob should not have been in. They knew that this had been Ryou's idea. Ryou had brought her HERE of all place. Mob's dot had stopped moving. It had stopped moving for a while. She was…the car slowed and stopped. She was in a club of all places….

Minegishi hated clubs.

But Ryou loved them and he knew never to bring them…so he brought Mob. She was in there. Minegishi could see her aura. It was bright but….sharp? Not spiking. Not spiking or flaring or…or anything. Focused. She was very focused…which could have been good or bad. Well this whole situation was bad. Mob was ten and Minegishi knew what Ryou got up to in those sorts of places…and it was stuff that Mob should not have been getting up to. They knew what sorts of people hung out in places like this…and they knew that Mob was Mob and she should not have been anywhere near this place…

"Leave it running." Said Minegishi before the climbed out of the car and slammed the door. They shoved their hands in their pockets. They were freezing, they should have worn a proper jacket, and the lack of plant life was even worse than the cold. Ryou was going to die…or at least suffer. Mob…Mob was Mob and she'd be fine. Minegishi knew that she had been through enough, first heartbreak was rough when you were ten, so she would not be lectured about the fact that she should not have under any circumstances gone off with Shimazaki…no, they weren't going to make this night any harder for her. For either of them.

God, that hated clubs.

They hated large social gatherings. They had been planning on being a wallflower until the damn party had been over and then they would have gone home, gone to sleep, and then woke up tomorrow and went about their normal day. That had been the plan but now that plan was just…gone….and now they had to go into a very small space packed with drunk, horny, and often handsy people looking for the idiot they worked with/lived with/were unfortunate friends with. Well him and the ten year old girl who should not have been in there….

And then she wasn't.

Minegishi didn't even step insde before Mob's aura was gone. Great. Mob, or rather Shimazaki, was running from them…and of course he would run. He had messed up. He had messed up and he knew that he had messed up so of course he was running…or rather teleporting. Great. Well now they had to get back on the road and play detective all night…or follow the leader…or some other children's game that Mob should have been playing instead of going to clubs in the middle of the night with the worst possible person that she should have been with.

God. This night.

"God! This night!" shouted Shimazaki. He had to shout, really, because he just…had to shout. So he shouted. Even though she, the little she who made them a we, shushed him for reasons he could not understand.

"Don't yell! You'll wake people up and then they won't be able to go back to sleep and then their sleep schedules will be messed up and then it'll be my fault for not stopping you from shouting so please just stop shouting." Said Mob. Shimazaki reached down and patted her hair like she was a dog. He could feel her aura. She felt sort of like raw tripe. Like really fresh raw tripe. It was weird. He liked it. He reached out and touched her again. He let it get caught in his aura. She pulled away.

"Come back! You feel good!" shouted Shimazaki

"You're shouting! Please, stop shouting! I asked you to stop shouting! Now I'm shouting at you for shouting! That's not right of me! I need to stop shouting! And I will….now. There. Now I'm not shouting anymore and my voice is normal and in my normal voice I'm going to ask you not to shout because it bothers people." said Mob. She did that thing that people did when they wanted you to shut up. The turn it down motion. Well he was going to pretend that he didn't see that.

"So!?" asked Shimazaki. He felt the snow under his shoes. It was cold. It was cold and also kind of slippery. He didn't much like it when it was icy and snowy outside, it made seeing fuzzy, but she was there and she was going to take care of him. She was like Toshi like that. Like a smaller version of Toshi who wore dresses and drank milk and always smelled like bubble gum but also who he was not going to have sex with because that would be wrong and he had done a lot of wrong things in his life but not that.

God, he missed Toshi.

Toshi would have just let him shout. Toshi might have even shouted along with him. Toshi was fun like that. She was fun too, Mob, but not as fun as Toshi. There was no one in the world that was as fun as Toshi. He missed them so much. He wished that he could have shared this with them. They would have been so much fun! They would have had fun or complained or just…he just wanted Toshi to be near him! That was all! He needed Toshi to be near him! He needed Toshi like he needed air and water and sugary snacks but not now because he wasn't hungry!

"It's in the middle of the night. People are going to be upset if we wake them up and then what if the dad wakes up and he's upset and he beats up his kids? I don't want to be responsible for people being upset and beating up their kids…and even if they weren't going to beat up their kids then I still don't want to be responsible for waking people up in the middle of the night." Said Mob. He put his hand on her head and let it stay there. Her hair was wet. She smelled like stale sweat. She was warm. She was like a little heater. Her hair felt weird, though, a lot smoother than Toshi's. Toshi's hair was kind of dry. That was because they colored their hair. Their hair was lavender. He knew what lavender was. Lavender was Toshi and Toshi was lavender and he missed Toshi so much!

And Toshi missed him too because Toshi knew how awesome he was and Toshi needed him just as much as he needed Toshi.

"Who the fuck cares!?" asked Shimazaki. She cared too much, that was her problem. Toshi cared about things too but not to the point that they became boring. Well they were sort of boring now since they had bonded with this kid….but that was ok. Toshi would never be boring to him no matter how boring they got and how much time they spent with a kid instead of him….did they want a kid….?

He could do that!

It would be great! Their kid would be the most fun kid ever! He could teach his kid all of the important things that he was teaching Mob now! Also his kid would be fun, like her little brother, and they could do fun stuff every single day and it would be the best! Then when the kid got older they could do even more fun stuff together and it would be the most fun ever because it would be half of him and half of Toshi and it could just enjoy it when things were fun and not freak out over nothing!

Because, really. Mob was freaking out over nothing.

"Me! I'm the one who cares! If you wake people up then they won't get enough sleep and if they don't get enough sleep then they won't be able to go to work and if they can't go to work then they can't feed their families and then their children and pets will starve to death and I don't want to be responsible for that! I've got enough stuff to be responsible for…." said Mob. Shimazaki shook his head. This kid worried too much. Not good. She needed to learn how to let go and just…let it go. Like that song she sang all the time.

"Let it go…let it go…something about snow and letting it go….and also maybe coming out….let it go…" sang Shimazaki. There. Now she would get it. That was her favorite song from her favorite movie and now she would understand that she had to just let it go already and have fun. This was the shit that Toshi should have been teaching her!

"Do you want to play Frozen? I want to play Frozen. You can be Elsa because you're my friend and I can be Anna and then we can find some snow and then make a mountain…but, ok, so in this game it'll be like the movie but instead of going up the mountain and coming back down she just stays up the mountain, ok? And then Elsa and Anna live on the mountain together and Anna has ice powers too and they have a new kingdom where they can be sisters and nobody is afraid of themselves and also they wear pants because I play this with Sho sometimes and he wears pants even though that's not accurate to the movie. So it's ok if you wear pants. I'm not going to wear pants though because I don't like pants." Said Mob

"Aren't you cold? Aren't you freezing? How are you not cold like that? I can't feel the wind but you can and you've got to be cold…what if I kill you? Shit…ok, don't die. That's my big rule. Don't die….and also don't tell Toshi." Said Shimazaki

"I won't die but I don't keep secrets from Minegishi. They're my best friend. See? Well you can't see but you can…you can tell where things are with your aura…and stuff. Well I have this bracelet and Minegishi has this bracelet and that means that we're best friends and friends don't keep secrets from friends…even though they kept a secret from me…." Said Mob. Shit! No, she could not tell Toshi! If she told Toshi then Toshi would be even more pissed at him! And they could stay pissed for a long time!

"Just keep this a secret from Toshi, would you!? And don't be pissed at them either! And get over that brail faced nerd already! It's only been….without being able to feel the sun I have no idea how long it's been…but it's been long enough to forgive Toshi and get over that guy! And before you say anything I will not stop shouting!" said Shimazaki

"I am not going to keep secrets from Minegishi! We don't have any secrets…well we have things that I'm too young to know about…but I don't keep secrets from them because we're friends and they know everything about me…and I wish that I knew everything about them….but that's not how it works.." said Mob. Great. Now she sounded sad and stuff. Well whatever. She wanted to know about Toshi…and he knew about Toshi! He knew all about Toshi!

"Toshi is one hundred and fifty seven centimeters tall. That's something to know about Toshi. Let's see what else….they like so sleep under and open window in the summertime….they sometimes dream in black and white….they have fillings on their back three teeth…they're pansexual which does not mean that they like to fuck in kitchens…well they do but it means the same as being bi….I think…I don't know all I know is that we're compatible and Shibata is weirdly protective of his kitchen…even though it's my kitchen too and I can do whatever I want in it…and I'll leave my pudding cups wherever I want to…" said Shimazaki. These were the things about Toshi that nobody knew but him and Toshi…and certainly not that kid that everyone seemed to be into…not that he cared. That kid could feel however he wanted about whoever he wanted. Toshi would never feel the same way back….so why did he still feel like….

Stop thinking. This is what the coke is for.

"Um…please stop telling me things about Minegishi. That's more than I ever wanted to know about Minegishi….so please stop telling me things." Said Mob

"I'll stop talking about Toshi but I am not going to stop telling you thinks. I have a lot of important wisdom to impart on you." Said Shimazaki. That was what you were supposed to do with kids, impart wisdom, so that was what he was going to do. He liked doing that, being smarter than someone, and being able to make someone into someone even better than the someone that they had been. She was going to grow up to be the perfect friend when he was done with her or so help him God!

"What's your wisdom about? Is it about where we're walking to? Because I really want to know where we're walking to." Said Mob

"See? This is what my wisdom is about. You've got to just let it go sometimes, like your song, like now. You're all worried about where we're going instead of just letting your feet do the walking. Just follow your feet and they will lead up to where we need to go." Said Shimazaki

"My feet have blisters." Said Mob

"That's good. That means we've been walking for a while." Said Shimazaki

"But they hurt." Said Mob

"That's good. Pain is weakness leaving the body. I heard that on TV once and TV has a lot of wisdom." Said Shimazaki

"But my feet really hurt. My legs want to walk but my feet hurt." Said Mob. He looked her over. Yup. Those were some nasty blisters. Well he was not going to stop walking. He needed to walk because…because he just needed to walk. He needed to walk and he needed to outwalk Toshi because Toshi had almost caught him before and he was not ready to end the night and deal with them being all pissed off and shit at him.

"I'm not going to stop walking. If I stop walking then the night's going to be over and I don't want the night to be over." Said Shimazaki

"But we don't even know where we're going." said Mob

"What's it matter where we're going? What matters is where we are." Said Shimazaki

"Where are we?" asked Mob

"No fucking clue. Somewhere in Tokyo, maybe, but we're fine. It still smells like Japan so we're good. Come on, don't stop walking. Whatever you do don't stop walking." Said Shimazaki

"What happens if I stop walking?" asked Mob

"You're going to start bouncing in place again and watching that give me a headache….but if your feet hurt so bad then I guess I can carry you." Said Shimazaki. He didn't wait for her answer, he just picked her up and threw her over his shoulders. She wasn't that heavy. Or maybe he was just that strong. Either way now they could get back to their very important walking mission of walking.

Which they did.

The back of his neck itched where the puffy part of her dress rubbed against him. He could feel her shoes dripping onto his chest….and he didn't much like that. He had to expand his barrier around her physical body. It was the only way to have her this near. He never did this for anyone. Well for Toshi…and he was still thinking of Toshi. He needed to get on a higher level. He was still thinking about them and…and he never really stopped thinking about them. Even at night when he tried to drift off he always focused on the feel of their aura when they were apart and the feel of their breathing when they were together. Toshi was really good at breathing. Some people were good at breathing. Some people were bad at it. Some people were just neutral. Toshi was very good at breathing.

God he missed the way Toshi breathed.

Not enough to let them find him, of course, because that would have been bad. He teleported a few times just to throw them off of his trail. He needed….well he had no clue what he needed. The kid needed things, right? She was telling him about how that bitch at the party was a bitch to her by being all bitchy. Girls were scary like that. Guys he understood. They kicked your ass or you kicked their ass. Girls got inside of your head and broke you down until you were nothing…or they just got inside of your head end of discussion.

Toshi was inside of his head and they weren't even a girl.

Toshi was Toshi. He didn't always get it but he respected it. They were one of the few people on this Earth who he respected. Toshi was one of the few people on this Earth who could get inside of his head…and now that they were there he didn't know how to get them out. Like the raccoons that had gotten into the walls when he had been a kid. He knew that they were there, he could hear them and feel them and sense them, but he hadn't known how to get rid of them…and he hadn't wanted to. They had been his friends. He had fed them and let them sleep in his bed when he got lonely…which he had been…and Toshi was the same.

Toshi was his raccoon.

"…but if strawberry milk did come from pink cows then that would be against nature's laws and-" said Mob

"Toshi's a raccoon. Toshi is my raccoon. Toshi is my favorite raccoon. You know what I mean?" asked Shimazaki. She would get it. She was a nice kid like that and she would get it. She was good at getting things. God, he loved this kid. He loved her now and he would always love her. Why weren't there more people in the world like this kid?!

"….I don't know what that has to do with milk…" said Mob. She actually sounded a little put out there. Heh. This kid was so fucking adorable!

"It doesn't. I was just thinking about how much Toshi was like a raccoon. How warm they are and how they're always there for me and how if you leave food out for them they'll eat it because they're in a constant war with themselves every single day not to overeat because their parents never fed them and that's why they think that sugar is poison because they know that once they start they can't stop and that's what all the fruit is about." Said Shimazaki

"Um….can we go back to talking about milk?" asked Mob

"I want to talk about Toshi. Why would you want to talk about milk when you could talk about Toshi?" asked Shimazaki

"Because I'm thirsty." Said Mob. Huh. Fair enough. They hadn't hydrated in a while…and he was thirsty now that he thought about it…and not just in the Toshi way…in the thinking about Toshi way…God he missed Toshi so much…and he needed to see Toshi like he needed water…and also he needed water…

"Come on, let's hydrate. You have money right?" asked Shimazaki. She held her bag next to his ear and shook it. He heard coins and also…was that the crumpling of money? He didn't know. They'd figure it out when they got to…a place that sold liquids. Yeah, liquids. He just needed a place the sold liquids!

So that was where he took them! To a place with a lot of liquids!

"…and then the kid drank a gallon of milk right in front of me and tried to pay with a ten thousand yen note! And when I told her that I couldn't change ten thousand yen at this hour the guy, the one with his eyes closed, just started stacking drinks on the counter! And he wouldn't stop until I told him I had enough in the register to make change….maybe I should have held out." said the most chatty cashier Minegishi had ever met. Well at least he was a wealth of information. Mob had definitely been here. How many other ten year olds in blue dresses traveled with blind men dressed in all black and paid in ten thousand yen bills?

They had just missed them.

"Did they say where they were headed?" asked Minegishi. Ryou…where he was off to next depended on what he was on. Coke and MDMA made him want to be around people. DMT made him want to be alone…and God have mercy on them all if he'd given Mob some DMT to smoke…acid made him want to be in nature….and mushrooms made him want to hide under a blanket…

And the only thing Minegishi had to go on was that they were very sweaty and very thirsty.

"Probably to a bathroom but hopefully to bed. Honestly. What kind of a man would bring his daughter out at this hour? Well…I hope she was his daughter…." Said the cashier. Minegishi was about to start breaking either things or people. They had nothing to go off of. They had been here, Mob could apparently drink a gallon of milk in one sitting, and Shimazaki was apparently being creepy towards her again. Wonderful.

"Thank you for your help. Now give me a box of long Peace's and a black coffee." Said Minegishi. They rested the head in their hands as they waited for what they would need to get them through a long night. Suzuki got up around five or six depending on his mood. It was around one last they checked. They did not have a long time to get Mob and bring her home before her dad woke up and noticed that his favorite kid was gone.

What had Shimazaki been thinking?

Mob had been, according to the cashier, just as sweaty as he had been. Sweaty and thirsty could mean almost anything. They had no idea what Shimazaki carried on himself in any given day. Mob was a ticking time bomb….and at least she hadn't gone off yet. Downers and depressants suppressed her powers…so it stood to reason that uppers and euphoric would set them off…

So the first thing that Minegishi was going to do when they found her was stuff her full of Xanax and pray that she didn't develop an addiction.

"Excuse me? Ma'am? Your coffee and your cigarettes." Said the cashier. They were too damn tired to correct him. Minegishi took their wallet out as quickly as they could. That damn bracelet got caught in their pocket. They got it out with a yank and winced at the feel of fabric tearing.

"Thank you." Said Minegishi. They took a sip of their coffee. Lukewarm and burnt. Wonderful. The cashier shook his head. Well if he didn't want people to make weird faces then he should have invested in a better coffee maker.

"That's the exact face that the kid made when she tried it. Not that the kid needed any more coffee in her. She was practically bouncing up and down. The man, too, though that may have been because he cleaned me out on canned coffee and energy drinks." Said the cashier. Minegishi stopped drinking. Their eyes went wide.

"Jittery? How jittery?" asked Minegishi

"The girl was shaking so hard that she ended up knocking over my whole counter display and the man was moving so fast I didn't even see him go from one end of my shop to another. I swear. The people who come in at night…" said that cashier. Minegishi looked around. Time for some detective work. Ryou had no idea what was in cans at the best of times. He went by feel…and canned coffee felt just like those tiny Asahi's he liked to carry around in his pockets sometimes…and the energy drinks….he could smell the sugar in those through the cans….

They were good for when you came down.

He wouldn't bring Mob up to his level. No, not if this was the first time. He knew how dangerous fucking around with this could be and he had this fixation on Mob growing up to be the perfect friend and boss…he had brought her to a store and paid with money…because he knew how she felt about stealing…he was taking care of her…

There had been one set of 28.5 centimeter men's dress shoe footprints outside.

He was carrying her. They had been walking for a while…and she had gotten tired…so he carried her. Wait, no, not tired. There were all of those snowmen outside…and she had been jittery. She wasn't tired at all. She had been wearing these little blue Mary-Janes….not good for walking around all night through the Tokyo snow. She couldn't go on…but she was still going on if not walking…and she had been sweaty and thirsty…

Right next to the register sat an untouched box of Frozen themed milk chocolate bars with the whole cast on the front.

Mob wasn't hungry. She would have bought the whole box if she had just been high…and she would have been lethargic if she had been drunk…so Shimazaki had decided that this was the best time to introduce her to the hard stuff…but WHAT hard stuff?! Minegishi took a deep breath. They needed to know what kind of danger they and everyone else in Tokyo were in. They needed to know how to bring Mob back down from whatever she was on.

Also they needed to know what they were going to be executing Shimazaki Ryou for doing to her.

"Did they say or do anything else interesting? Think. Hard. I need to find this kid. It's way past her bedtime like you said." Said Minegishi. This was also coming close to being a shot for shot live action remake of the climax to Akira but they weren't going to say that. No, that would not have gone over well at all…just like the drugged up ten year old wouldn't go well for the good people of Tokyo. Maybe Ryou was trying to destroy it. He had grown up here and his life had been just as bad as theirs…no. That wasn't like him. That required introspection, planning, and thought. He was capable of neither of those things.

"You sure are interested in these people….wait! I've got it! You're Toshi!" said the cashier. He snapped as he said that…which had not been necessary to snap them out of their thoughts. No, the much hated abbreviation of their first name had been more than enough to do that.

"I am. They mentioned me?" asked Minegishi trying their best to sound friendly and personable…which they had to be because the best detectives were and they had to be a detective tonight. A detective tonight and an executioner tomorrow.

"The man did. He was worried that you would find out about something…and the little girl kept on saying that she would not keep secrets from you….I know! That's your daughter, isn't it?" asked the cashier. Minegishi didn't have the energy to correct him.

"Thank you for your help. You're coffee's burnt." Said Minegishi as they left the warm of the store. They could see the footprints, Ryou's footprints, going off to the left. They motioned for the car to stay put. The footprints went into an alley. His…and then, suddenly, hers. They stopped at a dumpster…

Mob must have been drinking milk all night.

She was not going to piss in an alley. She had more sense and decency than that. Well then at least now there were more clues than what they had started off with. Sweaty, jittery, but still with enough sense not to piss in an alley…worried, too. Anxious. Not a lot could make Ryou anxious….and he was the anxious one. They were mad at him…and usually it rolled off his back…but now something was making him jittery and anxious….and there was a broken weed pen sitting there in the snow…which meant that one of them had been trying to come down….but too jittery to calm down…

That coked up moron.

He had never admitted it and never would but coke made him anxious. Uppers, euphorics, all of it made him anxious. He had trouble sitting still at the best of times. They knew him and they knew…they knew where he was headed. He was jittery about them and thinking about them…and he had someone with him who needed a bathroom…and he didn't have a lot of friends in this city…or in the world…but there was one person who would always tolerate his presence…because he let them use him as a canvas for their 'art'…..if that creepy skin portrait of Minegishi could be called art…

If Mob came out of this with a tattoo then Shimazaki was losing one of his.

"….no more weed for tattoos! I'm too far in the hole, Shimazaki…" Mob could hear arguing through the bathroom door. This was the grossest bathroom she had ever been in. There wasn't even any soap to wash her hands with, just a bottle of dish detergent, which was a kind of soap…though she would have preferred real soap.

She would have preferred a lot of things.

"….you know that I don't carry money around on me. Who do you think I am? A functional member of society? Come on, man, you've known me for years." Said Shimazaki. Mob's head hurt. It had been hurting for a while. The top of the world feeling had gone a long time ago. After that she had just been jittery and thirsty….and now she was just jittery and thirsty and tired. At least she didn't have to pee anymore. There was that. She wanted to feel that on top of the world feeling again. Even if it made her face numb and the world move too slow and also too fast at the same time. She wished that she could feel it again but Shimazaki said only once, maybe twice, but that was it because she was a kid and he didn't want her to die and stuff…..

How could something that made her feel good be bad for her?

"…and what do you think this is? A charity? Shimazaki, I need money. I'm running out of room to practice on you anyway. Either pay me or get out…and take the kid with you. I don't even WANT to know what the story is on her." said Shimazaki's friend. Mob's hair rose up at the mention of her. Her powers were coming back…well they had never gone…but they were back to doing their own thing now. The water in the sink was trying to rise up. She wasn't trying to do that. She wasn't making the cabinet rattle either. She wished that her powers would just listen. They had been listening so good before but now it was like they were making up for lost time.

She rinsed her hands.

"….she has money. Calm down. She's got more money than God and I know that she'll buy off of you. The kid's a budding fiend I swear…" said Shimazaki. A fiend was someone who did this too often. That was why she could only have seconds and not thirds. He had been trying to teach her moderation so she wouldn't die, like Minegishi was, but she didn't need to be taught moderation. She knew herself and she knew her limits. Washing her hands in a dirty bathroom with lime scented dish soap and water that wouldn't even get hot enough to steam would probably kill her long before thirds and maybe fourths would. The water at home was hotter. This water was barely warm. Shimazaki was being just like Minegishi. She didn't know why he was telling her 'no'. He said that if you took too much at once you could die but…but she had a bigger chance of dying from catching something in this dirty bathroom than she did of the stuff that Shimazaki has given her. He was still doing it. He had only let her do it once more and then he said that the rest was for him. That wasn't nice. Mob always shared with her friends.

Like how she had tried to share her pen with him but then he dropped it and the cartridge broke.

"….nine? Ten? Why is a kid that young looking to buy? And….are you on coke? Is she? Shimazaki…what the hell, man? Why are you involving me in this? I am not going to prison because you brought me a coked up ten year old!" Mob was not happy. She was not happy about how weird she felt and about how dirty this bathroom was and about how she was being called a kid…well she was a little bothered, she couldn't help it…but she was not going to be mad about any of that. She was not going to be mad about anything. When she got mad then she lost control of her powers and she needed to keep her powers under control because…because otherwise she could do something bad. Her pen would have helped, or something to drink, or maybe she just needed sleep…but she couldn't sleep. She got the feeling that sleep would not come easy at all tonight…if she ever made it back home…

She had no idea where she even was.

"Stop asking questions and just go with it. She's a kid, she's got money, she's looking to buy, and I'm mostly sure she's coming off the coke. That's what the pens are for. I kind of dropped hers and…well…she's like me but worse. A lot worse. So it's in our best interests to smoke her down. So stop freaking out. She's got money, you know I'm not going to say anything, and then once our business is done we'll be out the door and you can get back to jerking off with the sound on way too loud. Sound like a plan?" asked Shimazaki. Mob had no idea what a lot of that meant but she did like the leaving part. She wanted to go home and she would have gone home on her own if she had any idea where she even was. She knew that she was in Tokyo but she didn't know where and her phone battery was low. If she knew where she was then she could check the map app and get directions…but she had no idea where she was. Well Shimazaki's friend's house. That was where she was. But she had no idea where that was in relation to her house. It was late and Sho must have been so worried. She hadn't been there to tuck him in. She should have thought of Sho. She had been so focused on her own hurt and getting away from it all that she had forgotten about her own little brother…and she was such a terrible big sister. She would make it up to him in the morning. No school work tomorrow and he could use her for target practice. Good. He would like that. She would have to get home first, of course, and to get home she would need to ask Shimazaki to take her home…

Even though she didn't want to take him away from his friend….even if they were arguing like cats and dogs…or maybe cats and cats that they didn't know….because cats fought a lot…even when they were friends they fought. Sort of like people.

She needed to say sorry to Minegishi. She had been so mean to them and she needed to say sorry. They had kept Hatori liking them a secret but…but that was ok because…because they were friends and friends forgave each other. If Anna could forgive Elsa for freezing her heart with a blast of magic then Mo could forgive Minegishi for not telling her that Hatori liked them. That was just what it meant to be someone's best friend. Forgiveness no matter what.

"….you're telling me that the kid has eighty thousand yen just sitting there in her little pockets? How stupid do you think I am?" asked Shimazaki's friend. Mob could hear their voices as she walked down the short hallway. She felt her Elsa bag. Did she have that much? She had no idea. She had never sat down and counted it or anything like that.

"Hi." Said Mob as she made it into the living room. It was messy, like the rest of the house, but that was because a boy lived there. The art was nice, though, even if a lot of the girls in the pictures had no clothes on. That was fancy art, Mob had seen some the time that she and Minegishi had gone to the art museum, and in fancy art the people never had any clothes on….for reasons…

"There's the girl of the hour! Mob, I need eighty thousand yen." Said Shimazaki. Mob nodded and country out eight ten thousand yen notes. She liked big bills because that way you had to carry around fewer of them. She handed them to Shimazaki who handed them to his friend.

"Um…Little girl? This is…a lot of money…." Said Shimazaki's friend. Was it? Mob didn't know. She had just always had money. She knew that she could get more if she needed it. Dad said that she shouldn't carry big bills like that because it was suspicious but she didn't see what made it so suspicious. It just made buying things easier…well until people wouldn't give you change….and stuff…but that was ok. They just had a lot of drinks now and she could carry them with her powers so it didn't matter.

"And that had better buy us a lot of shit." Said Shimazaki. Mob wondered if he had to curse so much. She wished that he could curse less. Sho was starting to curse now and she did not want Sho to even know the meaning of those words.

"It will….but….you know I have questions about this. I mean I've known you for years and I know you've done some fucked up shit but….this is a ten year old…" said Shimazaki's friend as he handed Mob more pens than she could ever smoke in a lifetime. She put them in her bag. She would divide them up later once she tasted them all. He could have the ones that tasted bad and she would keep the ones that tasted good. That was fair.

"Oh my God I know she's ten! Why does everyone think that I'd go after a ten year old? What about me makes you think that I would try and get with a ten year old? I am not a creep and if you see me with a ten year old and that's the only thing that comes to mind then there's something seriously wrong with the way you think." Said Shimazaki

"…I know you, man, that's all I'm going to say. I mean what am I supposed to think when you just show up in here at two in the morning with a kid all coked up and shit? Come on, I know you. I know you and I know why you can't show your face around the family anymore." Said Shimazaki's friend

"There's a big difference between ten and fifteen and if you can't see it then you've got problems." Said Shimazaki

"Whatever man. You've got your stuff now take the kid and get the hell out of here. I'm tired." said Shimazaki's friend

"You're a lot of things but you're not tired. I'm a lot of things but I'm not tired. Wanna not be tired together?" said Shimazaki. There was a tone there that Mob could not place. Low but…but not mad low. The sort of low that made her feel sort of weird when she heard him talk like that. She didn't want to feel weird. She already felt weird and she didn't want to feel any more weird than she had to. She mostly just felt like she wanted to go home. At least that way she could feel weird from the comfort of her own bed.

"…there's a kid right there, I know that you're blind but you must know, right? Doesn't she need to be in bed or something right now? Or, you know, anywhere but here?" asked Shimazaki's friend. Mob frowned. She was not a little kid…well she was….well she was and she wasn't.

"Nope. She's a free agent. Doesn't whatever she wants. Takes after me in that way. Just put some TV on and leave her be. Come on. It's been a while and I have a lot of emotional stuff I've been trying to run from." Said Shimazaki. He nudged his friend and apparently that was all the persuading that he needed. Space was made for Mob on the couch and she was told to keep smoking until she forgot who she was. Well she was going to smoke but she was not going to forget who she was. The sounded terrible, scary even, not knowing your own name.

She knew who she was.

She was Suzuki Shigeko. She was Mob. She was Mob and she was watching someone else's Netflix on a dirty couch in a room that smelled like smoking, and not the fun kind, at two in the morning with the sound turned way up because she was not as little as people thought that she was and she was mostly sure what she was hearing….she hoped that it was fighting but she also knew that adults fought in public but went to private places to do…private adult things…

She wanted to smoke to forget all of what she was hearing.

She had no idea what was even happening in the other room and she did not want to find out. She knew, from mom, that moms and dads fit together like puzzle pieces and that was why there were boys and girls. She also knew that boys and boys could be in love and stuff but she had no idea what…happened…and she did not want to find out. Nope. She wasn't even going to Google. Not that she could. Her battery was almost dead. She should have asked Hatori to do the charging trick for her back when they had been at the party…

Before he had confessed to Minegishi right in front of her.

There were sad thoughts in her head. The top of the world feeling was gone and now she just felt…bad. She felt like she had been walking around Disneyland all day in her plastic dress up shoes in the sun with no shade or water. Her whole body hurt, her head was ringing like there was a woodpecker inside of it, and her face was still kind of numb. She was all sticky from sweat and no matter how many of the milks that they had gotten at the store she drank she still felt thirsty.

Also she had to pee. A lot.

It had been fun being on top of the world but now she was coming back down…and she wanted to head out and head home….and she might have been able to make it on her own. she didn't have very long before dad woke up…so she had better start walking. She'd use her map for as long as she could but she'd figure it out just from feeling auras. Dad's aura was bright. She'd be able to feel him eventually and if he asked why she hadn't been home she would just…tell the truth. That she had been exploring the city with a friend. Dad didn't need to know about the top of the world feeling or the smoking or the drinking or the heartbreak or about what she was listening to right now.

No, dad did not need to know about that at all.

She checked her phone…and it would be a very long walk…but she would make it. Even though her feet had gotten wet and that had made blisters…and also it was cold out and she didn't have a proper coat and wasn't overheating for no reason anymore…and also she didn't know if it was ok to just up and leave….well she wanted to go home and she didn't want to wait and see where Shimazaki took her to next. He was a good friend and she liked him a lot and stuff…but also she wanted to go home and not on any more adventures. So that was what she did. She put on her shoes, made sure she had her bag and a few things to drink, and left down the path for home….

It wouldn't be such a long way home at all. If she walked fast she could be back before dawn.

Minegishi had a hard 'dawn' time limit and they knew it.

Suzuki got up early, sometimes VERY early, and he would notice if he got up and his favorite kid wasn't home. He would notice and he would ask questions and then, well, some traitor holes would be filled. They were getting closer to Mob, at least, and hopefully Ryou would stop running and just confront the fact that this night had been one big screw up from start to finish….but that would involve taking personal responsibility and that…that was not something that he would ever do…

But it was fine.

They had Mob to worry about. It was late and they had to find Mob. She had been in one spot for a while…and now she was moving again…but slowly. Not teleporting. Good. Maybe Ryou was coming down and at that point where he couldn't trust his perceptions of the world…or maybe he was just too high and he knew that he could wind up literally anywhere if he tried in his state…but that was whatever. They could deal with him later. They'd kill or maim or seriously injure him….or just give him the silent treatment and leave mental scars that would never heal….yeah…that would be best…but first they had to catch up to him and…

Or maybe just Mob.

He was nowhere to be seen and his aura was nowhere to be felt. He had left Mob all alone to walk through the snow covered streets of Tokyo at two in the morning without a proper coat on….and Minegishi was about to kill someone. They were about to kill someone and that someone was named Shimazaki Ryou. Didn't he know what could have happened to her? Her aura seemed calm but…but there was always the threat of other people. Mob was a little pacifist…and the world was full of wolves…

Mob had better not fight them about being rescued. They did not have the energy for that shit.

"Mob! Get your ass in this car!" said Minegishi. They opened the door and, if Mob didn't come in of her own volition, they were prepared to drag her in kicking and screaming. Better them than the wolves who stalked the night looking for unattended little girls.

"Minegishi? Why are you here?" asked Mob. She had thought that she had felt them…but her aura was being all tucked in and weird. Probably because she felt all weird…and also from the cold. She was happy…happy-ish….to see Minegishi. She felt sad when she saw them but…but they were still best friends…even if Hatori did like them better.

"Get your ass in this car. That's why I'm here." Said Minegishi. Fine. If Mob wanted to do this the kicking and screaming way then they were going to do this the kicking and screaming way if they had to.

"Um….ok." said Mob. She didn't want to be close to them right now but she also didn't want to be out in the cold, either, so she got in. She closed the door and then Minegishi told the driver to go home and ignore all speed limits and traffic laws…which seemed sort of dangerous to Mob but she didn't say anything. She could feel Minegishi's aura and they felt mad…even though if anyone was going to be mad it was Mob because she was the one who had to see the boy she liked the most stand there and confess to her best friend.

That had hurt.

But not being friends with Minegishi would hurt more. They were friends and…and friends did not fight. They did not keep secrets but they did not fight. They just…they made up. Mob knew that she wanted to make up…but she also knew that everything hurt and her feet were wet with melted snow and blister goo and her brain was ringing and she just wanted to lay down…

But she couldn't because she was wearing a seatbelt.

"Mob…."said Minegishi. They needed….they needed to know a lot of things. Like what in the hell had happened that night. They knew that Mob was not their biggest fan right now. She may have been getting up to some very adult things but she was only ten years old and it was hard for a ten year old to deal with rejection like that. They knew that Mob had run away because it had been a lot for her, and it probably was still a lot for her, but Minegishi needed to know what in the hell had happened.

"Yes?" asked Mob. Minegishi felt mad. They had been mad at her before…and they had every right to be mad at her now. She had been mean to them and she had mixed fun stuff and also they had made them drive around the city at two in the morning looking for her. Of course they were mad at her. She would have been mad at herself too.

"Mob...how do you feel right now? Talk to me." asked Minegishi. They were going to be nice. They were going to suppress the rage that they were feeling. They were also going to make a mental note of getting their blood pressure taken soon because this was not a healthy way for their heart to be beating. All of this suppressed rage was not good for them…

"My brain hurts and my feet hurt and I have to pee." Said Mob. That was easy to answer. She had been expecting them to be mad at her…and they still felt mad…but not as mad as they could have been. Maybe things would be ok between them…even though she still felt sad about what had happened with Hatori…well he could like whoever he wanted and Mob was ten, not thirteen or fourteen, so she was still too young for him to like her like that…but she just wished that Minegishi had said something instead of just…just letting Mob carrying on feeling the way that she'd felt.

"What did he give you?" asked Minegishi quietly. They eyed the driver. He was rocking out to 90's pop rock in the front seat but he could still have been listening…and they did not need this getting back to Suzuki. No, maybe it would have been fine if it was his other kid but this was the one he cared about.

"I forget what it was called but it made me feel like I was on top of the world and the most awesome person to ever live…and then also the regular stuff…and I'm sorry that I mixed stuff. Please don't be mad at me." Said Mob. She would have drawn her knees up to her chest but her shoes were all wet. Her feet were numb, anyway, and she didn't know if she even could life them that high.

"Coke. He gave you coke….I'm going to kill him…" said Minegishi. No. No way. He knew how dangerous that was. It was one thing for them to mess around with that stuff, they were adults and they could make their own choices in life, but Mob was a kid. Not only that but she was an unstable powerhouse…who was surprisingly stable…but they would try to puzzle out how her powers worked later. Right now they needed to just…fix what went wrong between them and get her home…

And then they could finally rest already.

"Please don't. He was just trying to make me feel better after…after Hatori said that he liked you. I was just really upset and he saw that and he tried to make me feel better by taking me on an adventure. We went to a place with music…that I don't remember so well…and then we went for a long walk and then we went to the store and then we went and saw his friend…who might have been his boyfriend or just another person that he does kissing stuff with…sorry….maybe I shouldn't have told you that…because it hurts when the person you like likes someone else…" said Mob. She couldn't believe that she had told Minegishi that. She knew that Minegishi had said, before, that they were not in a relationship with Shimazaki…but both of them acted like they were. Mob had seen enough movies and read enough manga to know how people in love acted. They kissed and cuddled and spent all of their time together and talked about each other all the time…and she knew how much it hurt when the person you like liked someone else…

"Mob, we aren't like that. He can do whatever he wants with whoever he wants. I don't care. I care about you. I care about you and I have been worried sick all night-" said Minegishi. They were turning into a mother hen. They could have given Shibata a run for his money. Worried. They had been worried about Mob…but that was normal. This was normal for them. Caring for her had become normal and…and they were used to it by now. They were going to be there for Mob no matter what…and it looked like there was going to be a lot of 'what' over the years.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you worry…or drive around all night and miss your bedtime…or make you get into a fight." Said Mob

"I wasn't in a fight." Said Minegishi

"Then why do you have a bruise on your neck?" asked Mob

"A leech in a blue dress." Said Minegishi before they could think. Right. Mob was ten. She had no clue about…anything. Hell, she had been too young for whatever dirty games those kids were playing in the coatroom. She was too young to know about the things adults did when they were drunk and trying to escape emotional pain. She could figure all of that out in her teen years.

"Um….I don't understand…but ok. I'm sorry that happened to you…and stuff…" said Mob

"Don't be sorry. I'm sorry. Just…way to make a backhanded comment by the way. I've taught you well. Anyway I'm sorry about Hatori. I didn't tell you that he had feelings for me and I should have. I thought that by not telling you I was sparing your feelings…but I guess that I had just been prolonging the inevitable." Said Minegishi

"I…I wish that you had told me so I could have stopped liking him…because I really liked him. He was just so…so nice to me…and tall too…and I really liked him….but I know that I'm too young for him to like me back but…but I was just being dumb and hoping that he would like me when I grew up. I was so dumb…" said Mob. She had no idea how she could have been such a dumb little kid. Why would he have liked her back? She was just a kid. She shouldn't have…have had hopes about…about them.

"Mob, shut up with that. You weren't being dumb. You're ten, you were being ten, and you want a boyfriend and he's the only guy within ten years of your age that you know. I should have told you that he had feelings for me but…but I guess that I just liked…seeing you have hope for something. I mean….you go through a lot and I just wanted to see you being happy about something….even if it was Hatori Nozomu." Said Minegishi. Their words tasted like ashes in their mouth. Too much emotional realism. Too much emotional rawness. Too much emotional honesty. They'd had a lot to drink and it was late….and they had been worried out of their mind…and also they cared about Mob. They cared about her and they had might as well own up to the way that they felt.

"He's not as bad as everyone says…" said Mob. Well she…she had never seen him drunk before…and she didn't much like it. Minegishi had said that you weren't supposed to ever get that drunk…and now she knew why. She still liked him…but not as much. As a friend…and someone she could imagine kissing….but maybe not someone she could imagine marrying and having babies with.

"He's not my type. He's your type…and maybe when you grow up you'll be his. I don't know. He's not mine." Said Minegishi. They liked seeing Mob hopeful about the future, or about anything, and she did need this. She needed something good in the shit show that was her life.

"I…I don't know if I still like him. I mean he liked you and…and I like him but…but not as much. I mean I know that you don't like him but I just feel like…like maybe I don't like him as much as I did before." Said Mob. She didn't know how to say it. She didn't know how to say that she liked him but also didn't. She didn't know what this feeling was….what a lot of her feelings were…and stuff. She didn't know. She was tired.

She wanted to lay down.

"Well if you still like him in a few years give him a try. For now just…just know that I am never going to have feelings for anyone you have feelings for. Ok?" asked Minegishi. They both had shitty taste in men but at least it wasn't the same shitty taste in men. Thank fucking God.

"Ok….and I never thought that you did. I just…it just made me feel sad when he said that he liked you…but I know that you don't like him back…and I can't believe that I said something so mean to you over a boy." Said Mob. She rested her head back and closed her eyes. She wanted sleep but also couldn't sleep…but she still closed her eyes.

She felt an arm over her.

"Yeah, there's no way a guy is coming between us. Good, we're ok, we've bonded, and now let's just get you home before your dad wakes up and starts wondering where you are." Said Minegishi. That was…that was more loyalty that they had ever shown anyone or anyone had ever shown them. They didn't know what to do so they put their arm around Mob careful not to get their bracelet caught in her hair.

That bracelet came with certain responsibilities.

"I don't want to go home….can we have a sleepover?" asked Mob. She didn't want to end up going home and waking dad and Sho up and then dealing with them asking where she had been. She wanted…she wanted to rest with her best friend. That was all she wanted. She always felt so nice and goof and safe when she was with Minegishi.

"Fine. Whatever you want." Said Minegishi. Their bed could not fit two comfortably and they didn't have a nightgown for Mob to borrow, just actual pajamas, but if Mob wanted to have a sleepover then they would. Anything to make Mob happy. They were best friends after all, they had the bracelets to prove it, and those bracelets came with a certain set of responsibilities.

Which included letting you best friend recover from a party in your bed at two thirty in the morning.


	246. Lucky Charms for Breakfast

Sho had kissed a boy and he liked it.

He wasn't supposed to have liked it. He was supposed to have been grossed out. He had kissed a girl and that should have been the thing that he liked. He had kissed her and…well she had kissed him. She had kissed him and she had been on top of him and she had boobs, which he was supposed to have wanted to look at and touch and stuff, and she had been on top of him too which was something that he was supposed to have wanted…but he hadn't wanted it…and that made him weird. He had been so weird and…and he just…

He wanted to go back in time and tell past Sho not to even start talking to those other kids to begin with.

When he was all alone he could think of himself as being normal. He didn't have anyone else to compare himself to so then he could think of himself as being normal even though he knew that he wasn't normal. He was ten now and he was supposed to like girls but the only girl around was his own sister so, of course, he had never liked a girl in his life. The last time he had gone to school he had been a little kid and therefore he had been too young to like girls…and now he only had his sister and he wasn't supposed to like his sister like that because they were related. So then when he was on his own it was ok not to like girls. Yet.

But it really wasn't ok.

It wasn't that he didn't like girls yet…he didn't like them at all. He never thought about kissing them or seeing them naked or…or any of those other thoughts that you were supposed to have about girls. He didn't even like kissing him. That girl had kissed him for real. She had kissed him on the mouth for real and he hadn't like it at all…but kissing Hideki had been…good. The best thing that he had ever felt…and then it had been the worst thing that he had ever felt. Because he was weird for liking that, weird for having wanted to do that in the first place, and weird for wanting to do it again.

He really wanted to do it again.

And that was the weirdest part! He was different enough already. He was different enough from everyone around him…so he didn't need to be any more different! He was different enough from the rest of the world…from the rest of his family….from the rest of everyone that…that…that he was different enough! He was different enough as it was so why did he have to be so…so…so…different!

He didn't know. So he stabbed his cereal.

"I thought you liked Lucky Charms." Said Fukuda. Sho was in a bad mood. He'd been in a bad mood since coming home last night. There had been no cheering him up. No amount of videogames or Zootopia could cheer Sho up…and he had no idea as to why. Well probably something in his family, obviously, because they were the biggest stressors in his life. The man he had a crush on, God he hated even thinking about it, had gone off with his sister too so that must have been rough. Plus he'd had to leave all of the new friends that he'd made, too.

So there was a lot that could put him in a cereal stabbing sort of mood.

"I do. They're magically delicious." Said Sho. He stopped stabbing his food and forced a spoonful of cereal into his mouth. It tasted good. So he ate another spoonful of cereal. He needed to get back to normal. He needed to stop being like this. He needed to get back to normal before Fukuda started asking him questions that he didn't feel like answering. Nobody could know about how he had kissed Hideki and liked it and was up half the night thinking about it. About how good it felt and about how weird he was for thinking that it felt good. If someone knew then dad might know and dad…dad would not like this it all…

Sho was different enough as it was.

"Then why are you stabbing them?" asked Fukuda as droplets of milk and tiny little marshmallow pieces flew across the table. It was too early for this…but this was Sho so it was worth it. Even though he'd gotten, at best, five hours of sleep last night…it was worth it for Sho. He'd been up half the night trying to cheer him up…and also waiting for Shigeko to come home. She had disappeared from her own party. Not only that but she had gone off with a grown man of….dubious moral character…and he had been worried…

But she had come back around three in the morning, it had felt like, so she was ok.

Suzuki could sort her out. He must have been up half the night worrying about Shigeko. He never even sent a text seeing if Sho was planning on coming home…but maybe that was for the best. The last thing that Sho needed in his emotional state last night…and this morning…was his father sticking his nose where it didn't belong. Let him mind his daughter for once. She was the one who needed taking care of. She was the one drinking champagne and going off with grown men in the middle of the night. She was the one who…well he had no idea what she had gone off to do…but he prayed to God that it wasn't anything in the vein of whatever it was that Sho had gone off to the cloakroom to do…

He was growing up, that was normal, but she was growing up way too fast.

He had one person to worry about and that was Sho. Shigeko…what was he even supposed to tell her? Suzuki was the only person she listened to and even then she was drinking and smoking and going off with grown men the second his back was turned. Honestly. When had she gotten so…fast? Fast was the word that they had used when he had been young. That was why Masami's daughter had become. Fast.

Suzuki could address this. Let the man parent at least one of his kids.

"Because….I have a spoon." Said Sho. That was the only thing that he could think of to say. What was he supposed to say? That he was all confused inside? That he had kissed a boy and not only liked it but wanted to do it again. The he never wanted to brush his teeth again so he could keep the feeling with him for the rest of his life? That kissing was the best thing ever and he wished that he had liked it when that girl kissed him because then he could have been normal for once in his life? That whenever he thought about how that girl kissed him he got all sick inside but when the thought about how Hideki had kissed him his insides were filled with goldfish that were swimming in soda and pop rocks? That he knew that these goldfish in his stomach meant that he liked someone….and he wished that he hadn't? That he had no idea how to feel or how to be and he just needed to stab something because he had so many feelings to get out that he didn't even know what to do with?

He wasn't going to say any of that.

Fukuda couldn't know. Fukuda would tell dad and…and even if he didn't then he would know. He would know that Sho had kissed Hideki at the party. He would know that Sho wanted to do it again. He would know that Sho was weird, weirder than he was already, and then…and then he would look at Sho like he was weird. He would be all 'oh gross you kissed a boy' or something…well maybe not because this was Fukuda but…but that was the way that he should have reacted. Sho knew, from last night, how people reacted when you kissed a boy.

He didn't want people to ever know, to ever look at him like that, ever again.

"Wouldn't a knife be a better stabbing tool than a spoon?" asked Fukuda with a laugh that he didn't entirely feel. It was early, very early, and for once in his life he was feeling his age. Forty three was too old to be staying up for half the night entertaining a ten year old boy who just would not talk about what was bothering him…but that was alright. He loved Sho and he'd made a promise to Masami and…and he could deal with whatever Sho was going to throw at him….at seven seventeen in the morning.

"Yeah I guess so….I don't know." Said Sho as he swirled is cereal around. He didn't know what he wanted. He didn't know anything anymore. He didn't know what he wanted and he didn't know what he liked and…and he didn't even know if he liked lucky charms anymore, either, because they hardly gave you any marshmallow pieces. Big sis always let him put the non-marshmallow pieces in her bowl and then he could have all of her marshmallow pieces. He sort of wished that he had been back at home with big sis…but if he had been back at home then she would have asked him a bunch of questions that he didn't want to answer.

"What's on your mind? Bad night's sleep?" asked Fukuda as he ate his own bowl of sugary cereal. Sho food. He'd made sure to have plenty of Sho's favorites on hand just in case. He even had something other than vanilla ice cream in his freezer even though vanilla was clearly the best out of all the flavors. This, whatever was wrong with Sho, did not seem like the sort of thing that could be fixed with ice cream. He knew. He had been up for half the night trying.

"No…I slept ok…your couch sucks though." said Sho. He knew that he had said something mean but it was true. Fukuda's couch was way too hard and was made of leather, not cloth, so it was cold to sleep on and then when it warmed up it got sticky. His own bed would have been better…but then he would have had to have been around dad and big sis and being around dad and big sis had been the last thing that he had wanted to do last night.

"Language." Said Fukuda with a sign. He stirred his own cereal, he was too tired to make something with actual nutritional value, and sighed. Sho could be so…much…sometimes…but he still loved him. He loved Sho and Sho was just…going through a lot. That was all. He was getting older. This was just a part of him getting older.

"I didn't curse. I said 'sucks' not 'fucks'." Said Sho. Sucks wasn't even a curse word! He'd said so many worse words in his life! He'd beaten Shimazaki in so many cursing matches that it wasn't even a contest anymore! Sho knew more curse words than Fukuda had ever heard in his life! But somehow sucks was the one that was wrong? How did that make sense? He wished that Shimazaki had been there, he would have said so many bad words that Fukuda would have run from the room, but he wasn't there. Sho couldn't feel him at this range but he assumed that Shimazaki was at home asleep. He said that after a party he couldn't be disturbed for a whole day because he had to recover.

Sho didn't know how to feel about that.

He wanted to see Shimazaki again. He wished that he'd had a sleepover with Shimazaki. He wished that they'd stayed up all night building forts and playing in the snow even though Shimazaki was bad at playing in the snow because he had trouble seeing it, and he wished that Shimazaki would have been there to save him when he'd…when all of that stuff had happened. He just really wanted to be near Shimazaki. He wanted to be near him and…and stuff. Sho…he just wanted to be near him…because…because…

Because he wanted to be friends with him.

Not because he liked him or anything like that. No. Sho wasn't supposed to like guys and…and if he did like a guy then…then it would have been someone who could like him back. Shimazaki was three times his age and stuff. They were friends and only friends and…and he didn't even like guys like that…because if he did then dad…he wouldn't be ok with that at all. He'd get mad. He would get madder than Sho had ever seen him in his entire life…and then…and then….well bad things would have happened. Bad things would have happened to Sho and to Shimazaki and…and Sho didn't even like him like that anyway!

He just wanted to hang out because….because this was one of Shimazaki's eye cleaning days!

Yeah, that was it. He just wanted to hang out and watch Shimazaki clean out his eye sockets. He wanted to hang out and watch the whole….all of the steps of it. Because it was cool and not gross, well it was gross, but it was gross in the cool way and there was nothing wrong with wanting to sit on the side of the tub and watch Shimazaki clean out his eye sockets…and stuff. And it had nothing to do with the fact that he only wore gym shorts to bed and not pajamas…and Sho only like that because…because he had a lot of tattoos and he was a cool guy and….and…and Sho just wanted…

He just wanted to hang out with Shimazaki and look at his tattoos and poke him in the eye sockets! Was that really so weird?!

"Language, Sho, again." said Fukuda. He tried to keep his face and his aura calm at that. At some point Sho had picked up casual cursing…and he knew the cause. Shimazaki fucking Ryou. Fukuda was glad that he'd run off last night. Otherwise he wasn't sure what he would have done to that man back when he'd had those fourteen glasses of champagne in him. Sho was getting over him, that was good, hopefully this little crush would fizzle out into nothing and then Sho could look back at this time in his life and wonder what in the hell he'd been thinking. Sho could have feelings like that about whoever he wanted, it was obvious that he was….something….at this age, but he could not have those for Shimazaki Ryou!

Fukuda needed to find a way to get him around more people his own age.

It had been so nice seeing Sho playing with some other kids. Even if he had gone to play cloakroom games with them…which was normal for his age. He was still a kid but that was what kids got up to. Hell, he would have been happy if someone had dragged him into the cloakroom when he'd been ten. Sho hadn't been happy though…and Fukuda got the feeling that this long bad mood had something to do with that. Sho'd had A LOT of lipstick on him…and Fukuda knew how girls could be. Apparently the time old tradition of catch and kiss had never fallen out of style. Sho had never liked that. Cute as it had bene Sho had never liked being on the receiving end….

Had he been on the receiving end of something that he hadn't wanted?

Fukuda wonders, for a moment, what the even could have been. These were kids and he'd kissed a girl, adorable but also worrying, and Sho had no scruples about hitting girls. Shigeko could attest to that. But Fukuda still wondered. He wondered and…and he had no idea how to even begin to address that. If Sho had been a girl then it would have been easier. Even at that age he knew how boys could be. Not that he'd even been that sort of boy…but he'd known plenty who were. Girls though…he had never known a girl to be forward let alone pushy…but the times had changed….right? He didn't know. He wasn't a parent, not for real, and he could only address one thing at a time and right now that thing would be the nonstop cursing because this was the thing that was going to get Sho punished by Suzuki and Fukuda…he was getting tired of putting Sho back together after his father got through with him.

"Why can't I curse? Everyone else gets to!" said Sho. He kicked the table and his cereal bowl bounced. He knew that he neded to go to a cool and dark place so he could calm down…but there was no cool and dark place he could go to. It was morning and it was hot in the house because of the heat and…and he knew that there was no cooling down from how he felt. Mad and sad at the same time.

He didn't like it.

He could handle being sad and he could handle being mad but he couldn't handle being both at the same time. He just…he was so…his feelings were tangled up and confused. He wanted…he wanted to be normal but he also…he wanted to feel that again but…but it had been wrong to feel what he had felt…and no matter what he did he was still wrong. He was still born wrong, different, and everyone else in the world was born right. Normal people did not kiss other guys and then stay up half the night thinking about it…and wishing that it would happen again. He wished that he could see Hideki again because even though he hadn't like it, of course he hadn't liked it he was a normal guy not like Sho, he still just…wanted to play Smash with him again.

And also kiss him again.

Kiss him and…and kiss him again and again and….and now that he knew what it was like…it was the worst! Now he knew what he was missing. He knew, understood, why big sis was so in love with her boyfriend and stuff. If she had done stuff like that with him, Sho wanted to kick him in the stomach for kissing his sister but also to hug him for making big sis feel all happy inside, then of course she would be all obsessed with kissing and love and stuff. He got it, now, why girls were always so into love and kissing and stuff. Even the one with the pink hair who'd climbed on top of him and licked him and stuff. He got it and…and he wished that he didn't get it. He wished that he had never found out what kissing was like, how good it felt, and that way he could have felt something other than this. He could have been happy. He could have had a sleepover with Fukuda and just had fun and been happy…

Instead of all mad and sad and confused inside like he was now.

"No, nobody else gets to. I don't, your sister doesn't…I hope not, your dad doesn't. Actually he can't stand it." Said Fukuda. He punched the bridge of his nose. He needed to stay calm. He was so tired…not hung over, thank God, just tired. That party had taken a lot out of him and then staying up half the night trying to get Sho cheered up…it was a lot. It was a lot but this was what he had signed up for when he had made that promise to Masami. He had promised to take care of Sho and keep him safe so that was what he was going to do for the rest of their lives. He was going to be Sho's father because his actual father had no interest in anyone who wasn't Shigeko.

"I don't care what dad can and can't stand." Said Sho. That was how he was supposed to live the rest of his life, wasn't it? Worrying about dad and what he wanted and didn't want and what he thought and didn't thought. He would be worried about how dad felt and what he wanted until dad died and Sho had to go and visit him in the graveyard and then he would probably be haunted by dad, too, for the rest of his life and stuff.

"Well just don't let him hear your cursing. I've known your father for most of my life and I know that he won't take it well." Said Fukuda. He needed to get Sho knock it off with the cursing sooner rather than later. He had no idea why Sho had to curse, there really was no good reason for it, and he was going to put a stop to it…somehow. Masami wouldn't have liked it, first of all, and second of all neither did he.

"I am tired of hearing about what dad does and doesn't like!" said Sho. He pushed his cereal bowl away. he didn't mean to push it so hard but he did and it toppled over. The table was covered in marshmallows and milk. If big sis had been there then she would have freaked out. But she wasn't there. He hadn't felt her aura all night. She was back now. He could sort of feel her. She was back in the direction of the house. Good. Let her and dad be together. She was the kid that dad had wanted. She was born right and he was born wrong.

Well if she had been born a boy then she would have been born right.

He'd only had Sho so that he could have more Suzuki's. That was it. Big sis was a girl and she would make babies for someone else's family. He had to get married to some girl and then have more Suzuki's with her and then that was it. That was the whole point to him being alive. He was only here because dad hadn't gotten it right on the first try. He had a big sis, the Prodigy, but because she hadn't been born a boy dad had to try again and he got Sho. Sho was only there because dad needed more grandkids. That was it. Sho…he didn't know if…

He knew that if dad knew….if dad knew what he was really like…then he would be in for it worse than he had ever been in for it in his entire life.

"Sho…come on. Help me clean up this mess." Said Fukuda before getting the paper towels and all-purpose cleaner out from under the sink. He pulled some paper towels of the roll and handed them to Sho. He hung his head in shame. Fukuda was torn. On the one hand he was getting mature enough to understand that his behavior wasn't the best…but on the other hand he should not have been feeling bad about himself. He had enough people making him feeling bad about himself that he did not need those feelings coming from within.

"….ok." said Sho. He helped Fukuda clean up the cereal and milk that covered the table. If he had been at home big sis would have cleaned this up by herself…and if she hadn't been there then dad would have tipped him back on his chair and kicked him into the wall, too, maybe. Fukuda wasn't like that. Fukuda was nice and he cared about him…and stuff…

Would it be ok to tell him?

He didn't know. Fukuda was the person who cared about him the second most in the world. The person who cared about him most in the world was big sis. He couldn't even tell her. If he told her and then she told dad….he would be in for it. So he couldn't tell anyone…even though he wanted to tell someone. He wanted to tell someone and then they would tell him…he didn't know what they would tell him but he got the feeling that it would be…something that he wanted to hear. He wanted someone to tell him what he wanted to hear but…but also he had no clue what he wanted to hear.

So he just helped clean up his mess.

"Do you want to talk about what all of that was about? You've been upset about something since last night and…and I promise you that no matter what it is I'll be here for you." Said Fukuda. He knew that Sho had been fine, he'd kissed a girl at some point, and now he was not fine. Those were the facts as they had been known and Fukuda…he had no idea what to do. He wasn't Sho's father, he wasn't anyone's father, and maybe if he had been someone's father then he could have handled this better. Maybe if he had been someone's father then he could have known what to do….

That wasn't how this worked.

Look at Suzuki. Those kids would have been better off if they has been raised in the woods by wolves instead of him. Making children did not grant you magical fatherhood knowledge. Well either that or Suzuki was just a shitty father. It should have been helping Sho through…whatever this was…but it wasn't. It was better Fukuda than Suzuki, honestly, because when it came to matters of love and physicality….well….creepy was a word that could be applied to Suzuki. Creepy and awkward…and how he managed to father two children with two different women was beyond the scope of Fukuda's knowledge.

What had Masami SEEN in that man?

It didn't matter. Fukuda may not have been the most qualified candidate but he was going to do his best. Fukuda knew that if this had been up to Suzuki then he would have had Sho measuring some poor girl's footprints in the snow or filling her desk with her favorite kind of chocolate on White Day….or just writing her a fifteen page missive of his feelings towards her and why they would be very good together as a couple. Yeah, Suzuki knew nothing about girls…and now that Fukuda thought about it…Sho may not have even been upset over a girl. He had been very close to that other little boy and….

Oh.

Yeah, Fukuda was out of his depth. He had seen the lipstick that had been on Sho yesterday and assumed that his troubles had come from a girl…but they may have been from a boy…and Fukuda had no clue how to handle that. He'd only kissed one other guy in his life…and that was not a story that Sho ever needed to hear. No. What happened between him and Suzuki in that fort in the woods back in '86 was not something that needed to be passed down to the next generation….because then Sho would end up describing it to a therapist in his adult life….and also if he was ever going to tell him the truth about what happened between him and Masami then…yeah. Sho didn't need to know about that.

Nobody needed to know about that. EVER.

"Uh….I can't tell you. If I tell you then you'll….I just can't tell you!" said Sho. Nobody could know about this because there was nothing to tell. So what if Sho had kissed a boy and wanted to do it again. It wasn't like he was ever going to do it again. It wasn't like he would ever get the chance to see Hideki ever again…even though he wanted to. Not to kiss but to play Smash…because he was good at it…and stuff…and…

And he cleaned harder.

"Well when you are ready to talk about, if there ever is something to talk about, then I'll always be here for you." Said Fukuda. This was hard, he had no idea what he was doing, but he would try his best. After all what else could he do? At least whatever Sho was getting up to wasn't anything close to what Shigeko was getting up to. Thank God for those small mercies.

"There's nothing to talk about. Now will you help me clean up already?" asked Sho. There was nothing to talk about and even if there was then…then he couldn't tell anyone. He couldn't tell anyone anything. There was nothing to tell. He would never do it again. He would never kiss Hideki or any other boy again so there was nothing to talk about! Nothing at all!

So he kissed boy and he had liked it….so what?


	247. Sleep is Necessary to Recover

"Mob?! What the hell?!"

Mob woke up with a start. She threw himself back into Minegishi as their entire room shook. She had been asleep, fast asleep, and now she was awake. Judging from where the sun was it was not at all time for her to be awake. No, it was too early…and she hadn't wanted to be awake in the first place. She had just now managed to get some sleep and that was after Minegishi gave her half of one of this rectangular sleeping pills. She could only have half because if she had the full bar then she might never wake up, Minegishi said, especially since she had been drinking. She hadn't wanted to go to sleep forever, just for the rest of the night, and she would have been fast asleep if not for the person right in front of her shaking her and shouting in her face.

Oh. Right. She had kind of ditched Shimazaki back there.

"Good morning, Shimazaki." Said Mob. She didn't know what else to say. Well she could say sorry….and she would say that later. When her thoughts got less foggy. She was sorry for leaving him…but to be fair he had left her on some stranger's couch in the middle of the night so he could go off and do kissing stuff…but she still should have said sorry. Two wrongs didn't make a right but two rights made a left and she had a lot of the day left for sleeping so that was what she was going to do.

She closed her eyes and put her head back down.

And then was shaken awake. Shimazaki was shaking her…and he did not smell good. She shrank back from him into Minegishi. They were still asleep. They had taken two full bars. They said never to do as they had done but their tolerance was higher, they were an adult, and they had trouble getting to sleep at the best of times. These had not been the best of times, they had said, because they were two people sleeping in a one person bed and that was not comfortable at all.

"No, no, no! You do not get to sleep right now! Seriously! Where WERE you last night!?" asked Shimazaki. No, she did not just get to go back to sleep like that. She had just up and left and vanished! He had spent the whole night looking all over for her! He had looked in every big house, little house, playhouse, treehouse, and dollhouse for her! Well maybe looking in dollhouses hadn't been the best use of his time…but in his defense he hadn't been doing much thinking towards the end.

"Here. With Minegishi. Now don't talk so loud or you'll wake them up." Said Mob. She could feel Minegishi stirring next to her. Minegishi was tired and she was tired and…and also she felt…not good. She felt more than tired. She felt kind of foggy…and she just needed to put her head back down for a little bit…

"Hey! No falling asleep! Do you have any clue how worried I was about you? Do you have any idea where you were? I thought that you'd been kidnapped and sold. I thought that you'd died. I thought that you'd run away to start your own esper cult. I thought that you'd fallen into the spirit world! I thought…well I thought a lot of things…and they were all about you. Well you and Toshi. I thought about Toshi a lot. You and Toshi and then I found this party and then this other party and then I was in a tree…but I mostly thought about you!" said Shimazaki. She was not going to put her head back down. How could she have just left him like that? He had only left her alone for a few minutes and then she just vanished! Gone into thin air! She should have known better than that.

"I'm here and I'm safe and I'm tired. Can we talk about this in the morning?" asked Mob. She didn't even bother to open her eyes. She just felt his aura. He was…he had been worried. Also his aura felt…tired? Not sleepy tired but like exhausted tired. He smelled like…pine trees? And drinking. That too. And the ocean for some reason…and wet dog…and also something that she couldn't place the smell of…but that didn't matter. She just needed rest….

"It is the morning! Suzuki, I'm mad at you! You just up and left me! I had no clue where you were!" said Shimazaki. He may have been too loud, then, because he could feel Toshi waking up. He could feel Toshi waking up and he could feel them reaching out to the plants around him…and he decided to teleport out of the way before they could catch him. He teleported to the other side of the room and knocked over Minegishi's dirty laundry pile…great. Now they had something else to be mad at him about…but to be fair Mob had been the one who started all of this. If she had been planning on heading home then she should have just told him and he would have taken her home. Well after he had gotten done with what he had been doing, of course, after all of that then he would have been happy to take her wherever she had wanted to go. Even home.

How could she have been so inconsiderate?!

"Ryou. Get. Out." Said Minegishi. They needed sleep to live. They could start hacking pieces off of him in the morning but right now they needed rest. They needed to rest and sleep and all of those things which were necessary for life. He would pay for his many, MANY mistakes later but right now they needed sleep….

"Toshi…God. There are so many things I want to tell you. Like…how much I missed you….and how it would have been so much fun if you'd be there….and how if you want to have a kid then I'll totally-" said Shimazaki. He saw the vines coming. He dodged the vines. The only problem was the other vine that hit him in the back of the head. He felt a stinging pain. He smelled blood.

God, that was so Toshi.

He reached behind his head and felt his blood. God, Toshi was the only person who could make him bleed. Well Toshi and the boss but that was different. Toshi was…Toshi. Toshi was Toshi was Toshi was Toshi and…and what? He had been thinking about….right! That damn kid! She had just up left him in the middle of the night without so much as a note! Well he couldn't have read it but…but it still would have been a nice sentiment at least!

"What are you on about?" asked Minegishi. They sat up and opened their eyes. The sun was too bright. They needed to go back to the darkness that existed behind their eyelids. Ryou was lucky like that. Also he was lucky that he didn't have any eyes for them to gouge out. That could come later, though, after they had gotten some much needed sleep…

"Toshi! Don't fall asleep! There are so many things I want to yell to you!" said Shimazaki. Toshi could not go back to sleep because if they did go back to sleep then he would forget all of the things that he had to say to them. All of the epiphanies. He'd had so many epiphanies and he had to share them with Toshi before they got replaced by new epiphanies! All of the epiphanies! He needed to tell them all to Toshi right now!

He teleported over to the bed and picked Mob up.

"What's happening?" asked Mob. She had been warm and comfortable and now she was cold and her feet weren't touching the ground….bed. She opened her eyes. She was face to face with Shimazaki again.

"Sorry but I need to tell Toshi things. You have to sleep somewhere else." Said Shimazaki. Was he mad at her? Right, right, right…about how she had just up and left him! She had just left him and he had thought that she had died or been kidnapped or sold or…or…or…or all of the other things that could happen to a little girl!

"Also I'm mad at you for ditching me so…go think about what you've done…or something." Said Shimazaki. He put her down on the floor. He felt her lay down on Toshi's floor. She smelled like Toshi, too. Probably because she had been sleeping next to Toshi…in his spot. She had taken his spot! Well now he was taking his spot back!

"Get out of my bed, Ryou." Said Minegishi. They did not have the energy for this. They needed sleep. They needed to sleep to live and they needed to live to make sure that he stopped living. Honestly. Did he honestly think that he could just go crawling into bed with them after the stunt he pulled? Did he think that any of what he had done had been ok? Well it wasn't.

"But Toshi! I had an epiphany! I had a bunch of them! Ok, first of all I think that you're a great person! Like, you're the whole package! You're smart and funny and you know me and you get me and you're good at breathing and your skin is soft and your hair isn't but I still love it and you…the whole time I was with her I was thinking about you and I decided that you're a very important person and stuff and I know you and I know you and I know you and-" said Shimazaki. He couldn't think of what to say next to he just repeated over and over and over again. He had never had this much to say to another human being before but…but he had to say this to Toshi and…and it was important!

And now he was being smothered.

"Ryou. Shut your mouth. I'm tired, I need sleep, and I need you go get out of my bed." Said Minegishi as they smothered him with all the strength they could muster…which was not very much of it at all.

"Can I come back in the bed? My legs are cold." Said Mob. She was laying down on Minegishi's floor. She was wearing one of their T-shirts as a nightshirt. It was too short and she wished she could get back under the blankets and back with Minegishi in the comfy bed and just…rest.

"Mob. In. Ryou. Out." Said Minegishi. They took the pillow off of Shimazaki's face and put it back under their head. They closed their eyes and went back to sleep. They needed sleep.

"But Toshi! My epiphanies!" said Shimazaki. Now he was having trouble remembering them. Now he would forget and he would forget all of the things that they had to know. All of the things that he had to say to them.

"You're high." Said Minegishi. They knew him and they knew about his 'epiphanies'. They were too tired to deal with this nonsense.

"No! Well…yes…ok, so I was coming down and then I thought, you know, I can't just come down because I had to see where the kid had gone off too and then I kept on looking for her and…and then ok, so I kept going and there was this party….and then I was in a tree…and then I felt her aura and I came here….and I'm mad at her still for ditching me…and also there are just so many things that I want to say to you but I don't know how so you just have to let me say them because….because I have to. I have so much to say…" said Shimazaki. He reached over and rested his hand on the space where their waist met their hip and stuff…God, he had missed them so much. Their shirt had ridden up. He knew this one. There was a thing on the front that was soft and shaped like a big circle. He stayed at their waist. They had such soft skin. He reached down and felt the hair they had on their stomach. They were so soft, like a kiwi, but warm. Like a kiwi that had been left in the sun for a while and the inside was all warm and juicy. He leaned in close to them.

They were so soft.

They were good at breathing, too. They were good at breathing and he let himself get lost on it. Their breathing, The ebb and flow of the energy of their aura. The softness of their skin. He scooted in closer. He could smell them. They still smelled like the party. Champagne and sugar…and they had been smoking, too, last night. They had been…oh. They had been doing a lot last night. He rested his head under their chin. They had been up to a lot last night but that was ok. That had been one of his epiphanies. Toshi was Toshi and Toshi would never leave him because they had never had Toshi in the first place. Toshi was like a wildflower and Toshi could grow anywhere but if he tried to bury Toshi alive in a pot of dirt then they would die.

He loved Toshi so much.

Even when they were pulling his hair.

"Get out of my bed. You're high. You've been going all night. You need to get out of my bed, go to your bed, and sleep off whatever the hell this is. You need to apologize to Mob, too. You gave her coke, dragged her all over the city, and then let her just walk right out into the snow at two in the morning." Said Minegishi. There. Those were their thoughts on the matter. Now they could rest.

"She had fun! Didn't you have fun, Mob?!" asked Shimazaki

"I had fun until you left me alone. Then I went home. Then Minegishi found me. Then we had a sleepover. Can I come back in the bed now? My legs are cold." Said Mob. She tried to sit up. She still felt sort of foggy…and also she wanted to get back in the bed. She tried to stand up. It took her a couple of tries. Why was she so foggy?

"See? She had fun." Said Shimazaki

"That's not the point. I'm upset with you and I'm exhausted. Go to your own bed, Ryou." Said Minegishi in a tone that left no room for argument. He had better not start arguing. He had better not have thought that he had a leg to stand on. If he started arguing with them about this then he wasn't going to have a leg to stand on. Literally.

"Why are you so mad at me? I didn't let anything happen to her. She had fun. I took good care of her. I kept her hydrated and carried her when the blisters on her feet broke and I brought her to a bathroom when she had to piss and everything. I was in total control of the situation until she decided to leave on her own, not cool by the way, but she was with you so she was safe. Come on, Toshi, don't be like this." said Shimazaki. Maybe they had said the wrong thing. Toshi tensed up, every muscle in their body got tense, and not in a good way. Their aura reached out to the plants that surrounded them. Also not good.

"She could have died. Ryou, she could have died. There is no reason for you to give her coke. There is no reason that you had to drag her all throughout the city in the middle of the night. There is no reason you had to take her to your dealer's house and there is no reason why…why any of that should have happened. Now. Get. Out. Right now I cannot stand the sight of you. Right now the sound of your voice is filling me with a terrible rage. You need to get out of this bed and you need to let me sleep. I was awake until three in the morning last night…more like four…and I need sleep. You coming in here high as a fucking kite is not helping. Now go to sleep and then we can talk about this whenever I feel like getting up. Go." Said Minegishi. They glared so hard they knew that he could feel it. They extended their powers into the plants the filled the room. Either he got out or they would throw him out…

And it looked like he was going to need to be thrown out.

Minegishi would have thrown him out if they hadn't felt their control being overrode. Mob's doing. They forgot, sometimes, how powerful of an esper she was. Even there, exhausted, she could still easily take control way from them. Minegishi stared at her. She was upset about something…and she had better not have started up about how much she loved doing coke now because Minegishi did not want to deal with a ten year old coke fiend. Nope. That would just been too much.

"Stop fighting. Friends shouldn't fight. I shouldn't have left on my own and I'm sorry. I did have a lot of fun and I want to do it again…but also I won't because I know that you were worried about me. You're my friend and you worry about me and….and he's my friend too and he was worried about me too. When you worry you try to keep me safe and when I worry I try to make you happy and when he worries he tries to get the person he's worried about to have fun. Please don't fight. Friends shouldn't fight. If you want to fight then you can fight me because I was the one who was upset and I was the one who went along with everything. So if you want to be mad please be mad at me…and that's all I have to say about that…and now I have to go to the bathroom." Said Mob. She meant everything that she had just said. Friends should have been friends and friends did not fight, she'd had a very nice time, and also she really did have to go to the bathroom. She'd been drinking water all night.

"Fair enough. Take a piss and come back to bed. Friends shouldn't fight but sometimes they do. Just go to the bathroom and then when you come back you'll have somewhere to sleep. Ryou and I need to talk." Said Minegishi. They did not want to have the conversation, or any conversation, with him but they had to. Mob hated it when things stewed and, really, so did they. There was not any point at all in letting things stew. They lived with Ryou. Maybe the best they could do was sit there, listen to Ryou epiphanies, and then wait for him to be more sober before they told him why it was such a bad idea, a terrible one really, to give a ten year old child coke.

This was what their life had come to. They had to explain to a grown man why it was wrong to put a child in danger like that.

"Ok…but please don't fight." Said Mob. She didn't know what they had ended up talking about. They could have been fighting or making up for all she knew. All she knew was that she needed the bathroom. She was so glad that their bathroom was clean…well it wasn't. No, the towels were always wet and the bathmat was always squishy and there were spit speckles all over the mirror and stuff…after that bathroom that she had been in last night she was grateful for any bathroom at all with real hand soap. She would never complain about a bathroom again and she would not have complained about this bathroom if she could just get in…

But she couldn't.

There was a line. Shibata was standing in line ahead of her. She didn't mind too badly. She could hold it for two days if she had to. She could beat Sho…not that they were going to have that contest ever again. That was bad for their insides. Mob didn't want to hold it for two days or anything like that but she would have liked to get into the bathroom soon.

"Hatori…come on. You can't stay in there for the rest of your life. Other people need to use the bathroom….a line is forming." Said Shibata. He knew that he could have just broken down the door and dragged him out but that would have been wrong. It was the bathroom and in the bathroom there were rules that needed to be followed for the good of society.

Hatori needed to learn these social rules.

Because you were not supposed to lock yourself in the bathroom for ages. You weren't supposed to do a lot of things in bathrooms that Hatori had been doing. Especially the pissing in the sink part. That…that had been something. That was something that he should not have been getting up to. That was…that was getting to the limits of this friendship. He hoped that the next work party they had was dry, bone dry, and also that Shimazaki was not invited. Either that or he was keeping Hatori home.

Because this was getting to be just a little too much.

"They can go in the yard! I'm not coming out. I can't come out! I'm too ashamed!" said Hatori. He could not come out. He was going to spend the rest of the night in his bathroom. He was going to spend the rest of eternity in this bathroom. Who could ever show their face in public after doing what he had done? After saying what he had said? And in front of everyone. Including Little Sister-sama. He had said all of that in front of a kid! A little kid! Also he had no idea what he had done in that bathroom but it must have been bad if Shibata wouldn't tell him.

He was never going to any parties again for as long as he lived…which may not have been long if any of this had gotten to the boss yet.

"Can't you be ashamed somewhere else? Come on…it's been all night with you. You don't have to be that ashamed. I mean, ok, you said some really embarrassing things to Minegishi…where everyone could hear…and also all of that stuff that happened in the bathroom…but that was my fault for not holding it for you….not that I wanted to…just come out! Come on, I'll make you waffles…" said Shibata

"The waffle iron is still broken. You're just going to make square pancakes." Said Hatori

"….you still like them." Said Shibata. What was wrong with his square pancakes? He cut the waffle pattern into them. If they wanted actual waffles then one of them, he suspected Shimazaki, needed to stop melting caramels together into a caramel waffle. He knew how to make caramel waffles! Shimazaki didn't need to melt a bag of caramels together in the waffle iron to make a caramel waffle!

"….yeah….I do…but I can't come out. You don't understand. You heard what I said. You heard what I said to them and now I have to face them…and the rest of the world, too. Everyone knows what I said and what I did…and also I pissed in a sink…and I'm not proud of that or anything else that I did." Said Hatori.

"Why did he do that?" asked Mob. She wrinkled her nose at that. She liked him…less…now. She liked him less but she still liked him as a friend…but she couldn't see herself being the girlfriend of someone who not only liked her best friend but also peed in a sink. That was….that was not ok and it was too early for this.

"Sometimes when you've got to go you've got to go….and I think that he's going to be in there for a while so maybe you should head back to your house. This…this is going to take a while." Said Shibata

"I am never coming out!" said Hatori. He wanted to stay in there forever. If he lived in his room for the rest the his life then he might end up running into Minegishi on the way to the bathroom and then, therefore, the bathroom was where he would live…and he was thinking. He was not acting in a way that was in any way irrational. He could never show his face in this house, let alone society, again. Therefore he would live in the bathroom. There. Simple.

"I don't really want to go home…but I can try and talk to him." said Mob. She wasn't good at talking but she knew how to get Sho out of the bathroom when he needed to hide from the world. She hoped that the next place they lived had locks on the doors. Then people would be able to hide in their own rooms and not in bathrooms.

"Well you can give it your best shot. If you need me I'll be making waffles…square pancakes…for everyone." Said Shibata. Maybe she would have more luck than him. Who could say no to a kid? You couldn't. It was physically impossible. Like passing by a dog and not petting it. Or passing by a baby and not wanting to pick it up…well you had to resist the urge to pick up other people's babies. They…did not react well to that at all. The parent or the baby.

"Ok. I'm not hungry but I'll eat later. Did you hear that Hatori? There's going to be square pancakes." Said Mob. The promise of food could sometimes get Sho out of the bathroom when he was hiding…but not now.

"You eat them. More for you." Said Hatori

"But you need food, too." Said Mob

"Little Sister-sama, I don't deserve to eat. When you're older you'll understand." Said Hatori

"I don't know what there is to understand but I do know that Shibata makes good pancakes and that you like them…so please come out." Said Mob. She wondered why he didn't just hide in his own room…but then again his room didn't have a bathroom…but still. Other people needed the bathroom. Like her. She could go home but…dad was there.

"I can't come out. When you're older you'll understand." Said Hatori

"Um…we can play games together if you come out." Said Mob. That worked too. That worked a lot with Sho….but Hatori was not Sho…because he was older than Sho and also not her brother….but she was still going to try. She wanted to go to the bathroom but she did not want to go home because dad was there and was too tired to be answering any questions.

"Little Sister-sama….I can't come out. I said and did a lot of things that I'm not proud of so I'm going to stay in the bathroom for the rest of my life. I hope you can understand. It's been an honor crafting and mining with you." Said Hatori solemnly.

"Have you been drinking? I mean still. I know that you were drunk last night and I was wondering if you were still drunk today. Not to be mean but you sound drunk right now…or high. Or both." Said Mob. Sometimes when you went too hard you broke your brain. Shimazaki had said that. He had said that sometimes your brain just stopped working but that was ok. Your brain not working was letting the rest of you have fun…even if you did end up talking a lot of nonsense while you waited for your brain to start working again.

"I'm fine…just…ashamed. Very ashamed. I'm sorry that I said all of that in front of you, by the way, I shouldn't have said that in front of you." Said Hatori. He was never going to forgive himself not only for confessing in the worst way imaginable but also for adding some new terms to a little kid's vocabulary. No, that had been wrong of him. Every part of that had been so wrong…and Suzuki was going to kill him once he realized the colorful new words he had added to his little girl's vocabulary. Yeah…he was a dead man…he knew that he wasn't right for this! His life was over!

"Um…it's ok. You're in love with Minegishi but that's alright. I knew that you didn't like me like that…and that's ok. We can still be friends. So if you're embarrassed about that then you can come out." Said Mob with a yawn. He should have just said something to her if he thought that it was going to be awkward. He knew that she liked him…right? Minegishi had told her, before, that her crush had been obvious…and also of course Hatori wouldn't have liked her like that. She was just a kid after all.

"I'm not in love with them I just…like them a lot…and I should not have talked to her, them! I should not have talked to them like that. That had been wrong of me and…and don't ever let a guy talk to you the way I talked to them! And also don't ever repeat a work I said…or ask me what those words meant…ok?" asked Hatori. He could hear her yawning through the door. It was early and she should have been in bed. He should have been in bed. Maybe…he should have come out of the bathroom….because a ten year old thought that he was being ridiculous.

Maybe he was being just a little bit overdramatic.

After all a kid thought that he was acting like he was either drunk or high or both. Maybe he hadn't thought this through. Maybe he had just been a little….not right. Well then he had to…to face what he had done…by hiding in his room instead of the bathroom and then just avoiding Minegishi for the rest of his life. There. Simple.

He could do that.

"Ok…and thank you so much for coming out of the bathroom." Said Mob. She hadn't gotten most of that but she was grateful to have use of the bathroom. She didn't know why she wasn't supposed to ever let anyone confess to her…but she would ask Minegishi later. Right now she just wanted to go to the bathroom and then go to sleep and then wake up and go home and stuff like that. Normal stuff. Hopefully everything would be back to normal and everyone would be back to normal and then the whole party thing would be a distant memory. Even though aside from the part where her heart had gotten ripped out like in Mortal Kombat it had been a very nice night.

Well it had been for her, at least, the rest of her friends….well they might have more fun at the next party.


	248. A Rousing Success

The party had been a rousing success.

Suzuki could tell. Daughter had handled herself well, he had been told, and a good time had been had by all. He scrolled through his emails absently as he sat in bed. Nothing but good things to be said. He had been missed, but that was not a bad thing, it would have been a bad thing if he had stayed. No. He could give speech after speech after speech but staying and socializing….that was best left to Daughter. She did have the better social skills after all. She knew more about these things and she had done well. He would have to reward her in some way. Tomorrow, on their day, he would watch the ice queen movie with her. Yes. She would enjoy that. Then he would play a game with her. Then they could…well he didn't know what he would do next but he knew that it would have been something which she would have found enjoyable. That was all he ever wanted, for her to be happy, what more could he want.

From her, he meant.

He wanted the world, of course, but she could not give him the world. There were times at which he felt that she was the world. That there was a world in her aura, her smile, the warmth and softness of her physical self as he held her. There could be a world in that and he had found himself lost in it so many times. Her. The world that was Daughter. He had her but he did not have the actual world…but he would. He would take it and then he would give it to her when it came time…well he would give it to Son, obviously, but she would have her part in it. They could rest together, though, once he gave the world to Son. Then every single day could be Sunday.

It would be wonderful.

This, however, was not wonderful at all. Being away from her like this. He had left her alone last night…and that had been difficult…but he had done that under the assumption that she would have come home at some point. She hadn't. He knew where she was, he could feel her aura, so he was not worried. Not in any serious way. Not as worried as he would have been if he had woken up and she had been nowhere to be seen. No, that would not have been good at all. He knew where she was and he knew that she was safe and…and he knew that this was not their day together…

But he still worried.

He worried because she was not there where he could see her. He cared for her, he would always care for her, and…and once he allowed himself to care for her as much as he did now, once he allowed himself to love her, she had been taking over more and more of his mind. He cared so much for her…and he loved her…and she had taken up residence in his mind. She was like a plant that had rooted itself in his mind…and he needed to let her go…but he didn't want to let her go. If he let her go then…then Masami would take up that same space in his mind.

He still cared for her.

Masami was in his mind. Masami was everywhere, she haunted him, and…and he never wanted her to stop. He did and did not want her to stop haunting him, his mind, his thoughts, his everything. He cared for her so much…and he never would stop caring for her…and he just….he wanted to care for her but…but he also wanted to care for someone he could reach out and feel. Someone who was there not as a ghost but as a physical being. Someone there who could be beside him. Someone who could look up at him and smile. Someone who would hold onto him in the night and just…be. Just be there. That was what he wanted and…and he could not get that from Masami. She was gone and…and she was not forgotten…but there was nothing that he could do. She was gone and there was nothing that he could do. But Daughter was still there….

Not that he thought about Daughter in the same way that he thought of Masami.

She would always have her own place within his mind and within himself. She would always be his, his wife, for as long as he would live. Even if she had died….the thought makes him want to die…he would always be hers and she would always be his and they would always be husband and wife because…because he can't even imagine the idea of her with someone else. The idea that she would ever be with another…that's him. He's the one who stepped away from their marriage. He's the one who stepped away from…well she physically left but…but he's the one who slept with someone else. He can't imagine her ever doing the same. The same…the same would have been…unimaginable….

She will always be his wife.

He spins the wedding ring around on his finger. He spins the wedding ring around and around and around. It doesn't end. It doesn't end and his marriage had no ended….even though he hadn't set eyes on her in years…and…and he…he needs to stop thinking about her. He needs to stop thinking about her and he needs to…to think of someone else. She haunts him like a ghost and he welcomes and does not welcome her presence…

Because she is not someone who he can reach out and feel.

He will never take another wife. He will never take a lover…another lover. He doesn't need anyone ever again. He has Daughter. He had Daughter and he needs…he doesn't need anyone but he wants her to be near to him. She fills a void in his life. There is a void in his life where Masami had been but now she is…not beside him…but Daughter is, was, and ever shall be beside him. Even when she's right next door. Even when she's not there within his sights…he can still feel her aura…

He closes his laptop.

He leaves his wedding ring alone. He decides to get out of bed. He doesn't want to work that day…well he does, he always wants to work…but he knows that everyone will be useless today. He knows that anyone who had been at the party would be useless and he does not want to deal with useless people…and also he himself has had enough of people for a little bit. Too many people at once. He just needs to…to rest. That's all. Sometimes he needs rest and this is one of those times. He would have preferred to rest with Daughter but she isn't home.

She'll be home eventually.

He decides to have breakfast on his own. Son isn't home either. If Son had been home then he would have just skipped the whole meal all together. Eating with Son is always tiresome, ten times as much when Daughter isn't there to control him, and he does not want to deal with that today. Thankfully he doesn't have to deal with that. Son is with Fukuda, their auras are very near to each other, and that's fine. Fukuda could deal with him for a little bit. It's good that Daughter has a break. Masami had expressed that before, that it was difficult for her to deal with the children day in and day out, and he now understands what she meant. Being with Son day in and day out is very tiring. He doesn't know how Masami did it. He doesn't know how Daughter does it.

She's very good with him.

Daughter is very good when it comes to caring for her brother. She's so like Masami in that way. If she had been home she would have been in the kitchen already. She could have been pouring their cereal, hers and Son's, while Suzuki himself ate toast and tea or a grapefruit. Daughter may have made them breakfast, she could make a very good omelet, and he wished that she had been in the kitchen making breakfast…but she wasn't, she was somewhere else, and he would have to feed himself. That was fine.

Bread and ketchup it was.

An old favorite. Bread and ketchup for breakfast. Just like when he had been young. He had been young and this had been a common meal for him. He knew that it was undignified, and not even real food, but he enjoyed it. There was no one there to judge him…not that there was anyone in this world who could…and even if someone had then he wouldn't have cared. He hadn't even cared when Masami had said something the first time she had seen him eating this. When she had come into the kitchen on their first morning as husband and wife…and she had brought her hand to her mouth and laughed…even though he had loved her smile…

'Touichirou, let me make you some real food'

That was what she had said. Then she had made him an omelet. She had made him an omelet and…and it had been the best omelet that he had ever had in his life. She had used four large eggs, a cup of tea, half an onion, half a green pepper, three strips of crispy bacon, half a cup of mushrooms, and so much butter that it had glistened…nobody could cook like Masami. Daughter could come very close but nobody could cook like her…

Daughter could come close, though.

Daughter could come close and that was good enough. Masami was gone and he needed to remember that she was gone. He had to remember that she was gone. He had to remember that he needed to remember in the mornings when he woke up that she was not on the other side of his bed, that she was not in the kitchen cooking him breakfast, and she was not anywhere in his home or in his life. She was gone and…and he had Daughter. The wound hurts now, he's been picking at it, and she is the person who gave him this wound. This wound is…

Is…

He stops picking at it. He's reminded of Son picking his scabs off. He does that, sometimes, if he injures himself and he doesn't have Fukuda tend to it. When he just lets himself be injured even though he's always in Fukuda's presence. Son would pick off his scabs while he sat at the table, his feet braced against it, his pant cuffs hiked up or his sleeves hiked up…and then he would just pick them off. He would pick them off even though it pained him. Suzuki understood. He was disgusted by the action, he had told Daughter time and time again that she had to find some way to make him stop, but he understood. There was a sort of…not pleasure but…there was something to picking at the wound. To not letting it properly scab over. The pain reminded him that the wound was real. The pain reminded him of the person who had given him that wound in the first place.

He didn't know which was worse, having Masami haunt his every waking moment or waking up one morning and not being able to remember her at all.

He didn't know what would be worse so he just picked at the wound that she had left him. It's red and sticky, like ketchup against white bread, and it will not heal. He will run out of ketchup long before he lets this wound rest…and he does. Soon his ketchup glass is empty, the loaf of bread has been finished, and he's ready to get back to the work that he can do from home. He leaves his dishes in the sink, Daughter will take care of those, and he makes his way back to his room. He'll be moving soon, they all will, and he needs to work out the logistics of that. Daughter has added another person to her entourage so there's a whole new set of logistics for him to figure out.

Thank God they're all willing to live in the same house.

That's one less thing to worry about. Where to house them. They'll be headed to England next. There's another cell of Claw he's building and another esper he needs to look into. There are things to be done in other places as well but…he can delegate that. Son's presence has not been enjoyable lately. Maybe another away mission. Something inconsequential. Something just to get him out of the way. Something which will give Daughter a break. Yes. Then they could be together more often…if that was healthy. He would have to ask Fukuda how much time he was supposed to spend with her before it became unhealthy. More logistics to worry about.

His whole life was logistics.

But that was alright. He liked it, the thinking portion, the planning of it all. Building the world could be just as fun as running it. Like that game that Daughter had showed him. They played often, played at creating the world, and it was always so much fun. He always had so much fun when he was with her. Maybe she would find enjoyment in the logistics of planning their next move. Maybe it would be better if she planned the logistics of housing and caring for her entourage. She knew them better than he did. He barely even knew them.

Well he knew that one of them could not hold his liquor.

He had sat down with his laptop and decided to check his email again, sometimes he had that compulsion to constantly refresh it, and he had been greeted by…a long list of complaints. A lot of yelling, broken champagne glasses, someone…he didn't even want to read that last part. In a sink? Really? What in the….just…he was not dealing with that. Those were Daughter's friends and she could deal with them…and also the next party would be dry. No more free flowing champagne. Obviously some people could not be trusted. That was why he didn't drink. He was bad at it. He lost control of himself, his powers, and his mouth. He had never befouled a sink but he had lost all self-awareness a few times. University had been…something. Thank God for Fukuda. Suzuki didn't know how he would have made it through his few attempts at drinking without the man.

If you couldn't drink then you shouldn't drink.

Daughter kept company with…well the strangest of people. There had been other children at that party but apparently Daughter had spent the night with her friends. He decided to delete the email detailing her friend's many social failures. There was one that spoke of Daughter in glowing terms. Apparently she had done well to promote the glorious future and all while sipping champagne and-

What?

Daughter…what? How old was she? That was what people were asking him. Was she only ten? Of course she was only ten! She had been born ten years ago and that made her ten! Well she was closer to eleven but…she had been DRINKING?! His mirror shatters. The lights above him flicker and pop. She had been drinking. His Daughter had been drinking. She had been….she was ten!? How could she have been so irresponsible!? She could have lost control and killed everyone in that room! She could have made a fool of herself! She could have-

Exorcism of his emotion.

He is angry with Daughter. He does not want to be angry with Daughter. It's not a good feeling. He wants to strike her and the thought of striking her horrifies him so he does not. He knows that he's her father and that he's fully within his rights to strike her but…but the thought of striking her makes it feel like he's doing something wrong. Like he's striking Masami or something…and that would be wrong…so he forces his emotions down until they're nothing. He goes over the facts as he knows them. Daughter drank.

His Daughter had drank.

She's only a child but she drank and…and she's a child! She is not supposed to…calm down, Touichirou, calm down and think. This is…not something that he had ever imagined her doing. She was like him, too powerful, and constantly at war with herself to keep the powers that she had been born with under control…and she had risked her control to….he feels another spike of anger. He's been spending the past eight years teaching her control and she just threw it out the window! How could his own child be so irresponsible! He would have expected this from Son but not Daughter! She had drank and he wanted nothing more than to-

Exorcise his emotions.

The facts of the matter were simple. Daughter drank. He did not want Daughter to drink. She was a child and her control was not the best. Now he had to examine his feelings towards that and see if they made any sense. She was a child and children did not drink. He is angry at her about this. He does not want to be angry with her about this. But she is a child and she will be until she stops being one. Children….they did drink, sometimes. His parents had let him have a sip or two of champagne as a child at New Year's…and that had never ended well….but she was not him. Fukuda had drank while they were under aged many times…but the man could and had drank paint thinner and walked away unscathed. His powers were different, that was why he hadn't lost control and killed anyone…but Daughter mostly had the same power set as him…and she was still a child and while children did sometimes drink it wasn't sanctioned…

He does not want to be angry at her.

Being angry at her opens the wound. He's not picking at it like a scab, no, he's taking a butcher's knife to it. He does not ever want to be angry with her…but she had done something wrong. She had deliberately disobeyed-no, she hadn't. He had never explicitly told her that she could not ever drink…and also she knew that they were espers and had no need to respect the laws…so she had drank and…and therefore it was alright. She may have been a child but that was not a good reason…and he needs to exorcise the part of him that feels like it's a good reason to stop her from drinking…because it's not. He doesn't want to be angry at her so he won't. There. Simple.

She could have lost control.

It's like his mind is trying to make him angry. Yes, she could have lost control, and she should have known better…but she had better control than he'd ever had at her age. Her control…it was amazing. She had done something to keep her powers in check to the point of her aura hardly ever even spiked. There was a sleepy, slow, sort of quality to her aura…and to herself…and he didn't understand it at all. Not that he would question it, no, of course not. He was so glad that she had eclipsed him, younger him, in that respect. He was so proud of her…and he cared so much for her…and he was not going to be angry with her. She hadn't lost control and she had held her liquor, another way in which she eclipsed him though he doesn't know how to feel about that, so he's….not going to get angry with her.

He cannot get angry at someone he loves.

He loves her just as he loved Masami. Without the sexual component since she was only ten and also his Daughter. He loves her and he cannot get angry with her. He will hurt her if he gets angry with her and he doesn't want to hurt her…so he won't get angry. Even though he has no idea why she would drink or what she got out of it….a social thing? She socialized only with adults…and she was something of a smaller adult without any of her secondary sex characteristics…so maybe she had just been trying to blend in socially…and he could understand that. There. He understood and…

He didn't understand.

Why had she even gotten the idea to…well social expectations…but…but why? He felt….he felt…he didn't feel any logical way at all. He felt like a part of her had slipped through his grasp. He felt…he felt like….like he had lost her but…but he had not lost her. She was right there. She was not lost. She was not lost at all. She was right there and…and she was not gone. He could feel her aura. She was there and…and she was….he felt as though a part of her had slipped away. This was the same feeling he got when he realized that he could no longer lift her without using his powers unless he wanted to throw his back out. The same feeling he got when he realized that she hadn't called him 'daddy' in years. The same feeling he got when he realized that she was tall enough that she didn't need a stepping stool to reach the bathroom sink anymore….

Like he had lost a part of her forever….

But this was…she was meant to grow up. If there was some way to slip antigrowth hormones into her food to keep her ten years old forever he would have done it but there were no such things as antigrowth hormones which were commercially available and safe for human consumption so he would not. Also….he wanted her to grow up. He looked forward to it. He often fantasied about their future together. About her as a grown woman. About how they would be able to spend every moment of every day together. About how he could wake up every morning and see her sleeping there…unless she stopped sleeping so much. Her sleep schedule would change as she got older….but that would just mean more time together. They would eat every meal together and have conversations, she was a very skilled conversationalist, and then they would also plan together. Plan the new world together. They would spend every waking moment of their lives together and it would be wonderful. He wanted to be with her as a grown woman….but to have that grown woman he would have to let go of her as a little girl…

And he didn't know if he was ready to do that.

But each year brought closer to adulthood and farther away from girlhood. When would she stop playing with dolls? Wearing costumes? Playing games? When would she stop obsessing over that ice queen movie? When would she stop keeping her hair in braids? He did so like watching her braid her hair, such intricate motions, and she had such beautiful hands. Every year brought her farther and farther away from childhood….and it felt like just yesterday he had brought her home…and now she was this person. Now she was becoming a woman…and he so wanted her to stay a little girl…

But this was what he wanted.

She would grow up and be a companion to him. She would be there for him every single day. The last thing he saw before he went to sleep and the first thing he saw when he woke up in the morning. She would be there in the kitchen making him the second most perfect omelets in the world. She would always be there with him. Her and her children. She would have children, he hoped many, and then he would be there to help her raise them. She would probably have a husband but…well he could be sent elsewhere. He couldn't imagine what man could possibly be a better companion for her than him…or why she would even need a husband in the first place. He provided for her. He kept her safe. He kept her company. She didn't need…right, right, right. The children would have to come from somewhere.

Donors, maybe?

That was a good idea. He could find the best men that Japan had to offer. Intelligent men, power espers, good looking, athletic, tall because women seemed to care about height a lot, and also whatever else she wanted. There. She wouldn't even need a husband in that case. She could just flip through some sort of catalogue…or maybe some sort of tablet thing since did like her apps….and then she could choose from the very best men in Japan to have children with. There. He had solved the problem before it even became a problem. Now she had no need for a husband. Well sexual needs…he does not like to think of that part of Daughter's life at all…so he doesn't. She can live without sex. It wasn't that hard. Not if you almost never interacted with members of the opposite sex and had plenty to keep you busy. There. Now she would never need a husband and they would always be together.

He felt better about the future.

He didn't feel good about how close the future was coming but…but he did feel better about how it would go. She would not leave him. Yes. It was mostly his fears about her leaving, not the drinking, and now that he could be reasonably assured that she would never leave him then he could stop caring about the drinking….but he did still sort of care. He sort of cared and…and maybe he should talk to her about it….because she must have had a good reason and…and if he expressed his displeasure then she would stop.

There. That was a good idea.

He didn't have to wait long for her to come back to him. No, he felt her aura getting closer…and Son's. He opened his door with his powers. It wasn't Sunday but….but maybe it would be alright to speak to her on a day outside of their day. Yes. This couldn't have been too damaging towards her. Just a few words and she could go back to being independent. Well independent and caring for Son. He was home too but that didn't matter. Maybe he would go back outside and find someone else to bother.

"Why would you ask me about the party? Nothing happened at the party!" said Son. He had better not have been antagonizing Daughter or there would be hell to pay. He had no scruples striking Son. He needed it.

"I was just asking if you had fun, that's all. I didn't mean anything by it." Said Daughter

"Well stop being so nosy and stuff! I'm going to our room. Don't bother me!" said Son

"Wait…can I ask you something? Just…I know that this is a weird question but can I ask you…" Daughter's voice became inaudible then. He sat up and craned his neck towards the door as if that would allow him to hear better. It didn't. He got a good view of the children, though, and they looked disheveled. That was….abnormal. Daughter was usually fastidious about her appearance and Son…she wrestled Son into something approximating proper attire. Now they were in their clothes from the party and their hair was all over the place…well they had slept away from home…even though he didn't know why since they had perfectly good beds here…but Fukuda had dragged him to enough sleepovers to know that there was, supposedly, something fun about sleeping on your friend's bedroom floor.

He didn't understand it.

And he didn't understand what the children were saying, either. He wished that he did based on how red Daughter's face was and the look of pure disgust on Son's face. That was a big emotion. He could read those on people's faces with some degree of reliability. Smaller emotions were more difficult and they had been Masami's area of expertise. Daughter had taken after Masami in that regard. She had always been so good at socializing.

"What?! No way! That's gross! I can't believe he did that. Your boyfriend is so weird." Said Son. He may have said some words after that. Suzuki didn't know. His mind had stopped working after the word 'boyfriend'. Romantic male companion. Daughter….she had found a romantic male companion? A future husband? Already? No. He was not ready for this at all. Nope. He needed…he needed to find this man and make him disappear. He needed to find this man and chain him to the wall so he could never leave Daughter. He needed to find this man and implant a bomb in his chest that would detonate if he ever left a two meter radius of Daughter. He needed to find this man and make him dig his own grave and then put him in the grave and then fill in the grave with concrete so he couldn't escape. He needed-

He needed to calm down before he broke something.

A boyfriend. When? How? Why? Well the why was obvious, she was female so she wanted to be with a male, and she was getting older…and he'd had those same feelings at her age…but still! When had this happened? Recently if he was just hearing about this. Very recently. At the party? There had been boy her own age there….and now he knows what to do. Find whichever boy that was, add him to her entourage, and tell him that if he ever had thoughts of leaving Daughter or being unfaithful to her then he will never grow up because he will be dead. There. Simple.

He could fix this.

"Daughter, come in here please. There are some things that I want to discuss with you." Said Suzuki. He was going to stay calm. They were both going to stay calm. This was a time to stay calm….and that was what he was going to do.

"Hi dad…what's up? It's not Sunday…and also your mirror is broken." Said Daughter as she entered the room. Even as disheveled as she was there was still a beauty to her. She looked lovely in blue. She looked better in yellow though.

"I am aware of the day and I am aware of my mirror being broken. That is not why I called you in here. I have two things which I would like to address in this conversation. The first of which being the fact that you drank champagne at the party last night." Said Suzuki. Her reaction was instantaneous. Her eyes went wide and her aura pulled in close….and that was a fear reaction….but why was she afraid of him?

"Dad! I-I'm sorry! Please don't be mad at me!" said Daughter. Of course. She was afraid of being punished…but why? He so rarely pushed her. He loved her, he would not hurt her, and she knew that. Right? Maybe he should tell her just to be sure.

"Daughter, I won't punish you. I love you. I simply wanted to confirm that you had been drinking and then…and then I wanted to tell you not to make it a habit and also to warn you not to drink to excess. Now that I have said that we can move onto the next order of business. Your boyfriend." Said Suzuki. He sat up and decided to treat this like any other meeting. He so wished that he had been behind his desk but sitting on the edge of his bed would have to do. Her fear dissipated. Now she was quite a bit calmer.

"Boyfriend? Dad…..I don't have a boyfriend." Said Daughter. He felt a flare of anger at the fact that she would lie to him…but maybe she just…did not define her relationship in that way? Or perhaps it was too soon? Or perhaps it was one of those strictly physical things….that his Daughter should not have been having at her age….

Because she was only ten years old.

"Your brother just said that you did." Said Suzuki

"Oh. Um….he means this boy I used to like…he's an esper so don't be mad! I just used to like him but then he said that he liked one of my friends…and also he drank too much and said some stuff and did some gross stuff and I don't like him like that anymore….so he's not and never was my boyfriend. Just a boy I…liked." said Daughter. She had romantic feelings for the opposite sex. That was something good….but also not….because she would leave him…but he had solved that problem already…

So he didn't have to worry.

"Very well. You are dismissed." Said Suzuki. Daughter left the room quickly. He was sad to see her go but it was for the best. Sunday was their day and this was not a Sunday so they could not be together….but that was alright. Once she grew up then every single day of their lives could be a Sunday…and it would be wonderful. They could do whatever they wanted, whatever she wanted, whatever made her happy, and he could see her happy and then it would just be so…wonderful. They could ever have parties if she wanted to. She did so love parties…even if she drank at them…and aside from that the party had been a rousing success.

In ways he hadn't even imagined.


	249. Moving Buddies

Because big sis' boyfriend could be kind of a baby sometimes now they had to have moving buddies.

He was avoiding Minegishi. Sho didn't know why he was avoiding them, the specifics of it, but he could imagine that it had something to do with how mean they were to everyone all the time for now reason. Would it have been so hard to be nice once in a while? If they had been nicer then they could have found some other friend and not tried to take Sho's from him. Why did they need to be friends with Shimazaki for? They had two other people in their group that they could be friends with. Shibata was nice and big sis' boyfriend was…a person who was alive….no, that wasn't nice. He was a nice guy even though, now, everyone had to have a moving buddy because he tried to hide and not move because he had to avoid Minegishi.

Which made no sense at all.

When you had a problem with someone you had to talk to them and stuff and then the problem got better. Shimazaki said so. He said that if Sho ever had a problem with someone then the best thing to do would be to beat him up. Shimazaki said that he would back him up and make him a good alibi too. Sho didn't really want to beat anyone up, well ok he wanted to beat a lot of people up, but he wasn't going to just go around hitting people. He was not going to be like dad. That was what dad did, he just hit people all the time, even though it was a jerk thing to do. Well Sho was not going to go around beating anyone up….

Unless Shimazaki said that they had a really good reason to beat up a particular person, that is.

Because teaming up with Shimazaki would have been the coolest thing ever! He fought so good! That had been his job since he had been a kid, fighting, so he was like this cool blind master type! And then Sho could be his student and then….then it would be so cool! They could go around beating up people who deserved it and then they could have other adventures too just the two of them and it would be the coolest thing ever and nobody else would be there. Especially not Minegishi with their meanness all the time and bad attitude and stuff. They could make their own friends. Like big sis. They could go off and have big sis adventures and then he and Shimazaki could go off and have Sho adventures. Also Hatori and Shibata could have their own adventures and then dad and Fukuda could also have adventures and then everyone would be off having adventures with everyone else! Like moving buddies only for adventures!

That would be a good idea.

Also it would be totally normal for Sho to have wanted to be all alone with Shimazaki then. Because they would have been off together having adventures and everyone loved adventures. Even big sis loved adventures. She and Minegishi had boring people adventures that were just going to Starbucks and reading….and Sho didn't even get it! Why did they go to Starbucks but then complain about how much the coffee sucked? Seriously! They said that they liked it because it sucked the same in every country…and that was so dumb! Why not find something that was awesome in every country! Like the fries at McDonalds or the chicken at KFC but not the pizza from Dominos. It sucked. Well Sho hadn't always thought that it sucked but then Shimazaki said that it sucked so now it sucked. The best pizza, he had said, was thin and you could fold it up and stuff…which kind of sucked but Sho had to agree with him because they were best friends.

Him and Shimazaki. Not Shimazaki and Minegishi.

He didn't know why they were always hanging out together. Even now. They had just gotten into the tiny plane that was going to take them to England, an ok place but the English they spoke there sounded weird but they had fried fish served in newspapers so it was ok, and then almost at once Shimazaki sat down next to Minegishi and he was trying to get them to read to him. Sho knew how to read. He would have read to him. It didn't even matter that they weren't moving buddies. Being best friends was way more powerful than being moving buddies.

He just wanted to be best friends, that was all.

"Read it again Toshi." Said Shimazaki. He had his head on their shoulder. They didn't want to be bothered. They wanted him to go away. They had said so. So he could have just gotten up and sat somewhere else and it would have been ok. But he wasn't. Why? Sho was right there. Sho knew how to read. He had much more interesting books in his table than…he turned his head to the side so he could read. That books sounded so boring. Les Miserables. The miserables. Why would someone want to read a book about people being miserable? Sho had a book about cats being warriors and going off to war and stuff. That was way more exciting about a book in French about people being miserable.

"No. I'm still upset with you. Now get off." Said Minegishi. He wished that Shimazaki would have listened to them. When someone told you to go away then you were supposed to go away. Also they should not have been talking like that to Shimazaki. They were always so rude.

"But I like this book. It's the one about the woman who has to eat her own children during the pacific war, right?" asked Shimazaki. Big sis gasped. Sho could have gasped too but he wasn't going to. Sure that book sounded terrible, eating people was scary and moms were not supposed to eat their kids because they were good people who loved you no matter what even if they did have to run away, he would not gasp or freak out in any way. He was ten now and ten year olds did not do that stuff. He couldn't look uncool in front of Shimazaki…and anyone else.

"No, this is the one about starving French people." Said Minegishi

"Is that a real book?" asked Shibata. He was knitting again. Sho really hoped that the green thing that he was knitting wasn't another sweater for him. He still hadn't grown into his birthday sweater and the scarf that Shibata had made him for Christmas was so long that Sho had to loop I around his neck four times before it stopped dragging on the ground. Shibata needed to stop using himself to measure out his knitting projects. Sho couldn't tell the future but he got the feeling that he would never be as big as Shibata. Most people in the world weren't.

"No, it's not. Sometimes I just tell him terrible stories in the hopes that it'll drive him away." said Minegishi

"Nothing could ever drive me away from anything ever. You know that. Remember the time when we were in that hog fat rendering plant? You said that I would leave before the stench made me pass out. You were wrong." Said Shimazaki. Sho didn't know what a rendering plant was but he bet that he could outlast Shimazaki. Nothing made him pass out. Not even that time when they had hung from trees like possums for over an hour and their heads turned colors.

"I said that we should leave before we passed out. You're the one who took it as a personal challenge, Ryou." Said Minegishi. There they went again using his given name like they were best friends or something. Sho didn't even use his given name and they were super close friends! Not best friends, though, and that kind of sucked…but there was still time to be best friends. Best friends and only best friends and nothing other than best friends and that one time Sho had thought about kissing him was just his brain being weird because he did not want to kiss his best friend. That would have been weird. Sometimes his brain was just a weird place, that was all.

"You guys go on the weirdest trips. Why were you even at a rendering plant in the first place?" asked Shibata

"I don't remember. One minute we were in a garden and the next we were in a rendering plant." Said Minegishi

"I think I just wanted to go to a rendering plant for some reason….nostalgia?" asked Shimazaki. Sho had no idea what nostalgia meant but he liked the way Shimazaki said that. Like he looked kind of confused there like he didn't even understand himself…and it was funny. Sho didn't laugh. He just put his hand over his mouth. He felt Fukuda looking at him. He pretended to get back to his game. It was rude to eavesdrop, Fukuda had said so.

"What's nostalgic about a rendering plant?" asked Shibata

"Don't ask. For the love of God don't ask." Said Minegishi. Who died and made them the boss of the plane? Why did they think that they got to be the boss of who asked what questions and when? Well dad was the boss of everything but when he died Sho would be the boss of the plane and he would be the one to be able to tell people what they were allowed to talk about and when and he would tell Minegishi that unless they had something nice to say then they needed to shut their mouth.

"Now I'm afraid to know…." Said Shibata

"Well when I was a kid, about fourteen, I finally got the whole teleporting thing down. So my father had to execute this guy and he let me have this one. I had to prove myself to the family so I just teleported this guy to the rendering plant and then-" said Shimazaki

"Please. Stop talking. I can fill in the blanks myself. God…that's….that's really messed up. You're lucky Hatori wasn't here to hear that. He's very fragile." Said Shibata. Sho wanted to hear the rest of the stories. Shimazaki always had the best stories. Like the time when his dad left him in the woods to die but he found his way back and stabbed his dad in the stomach and then twisted the knife. That was a good story. Not that dad would ever leave him in the woods to die, he only had the one son after all, and also Sho didn't think that he had it in him to stab dad in the stomach and twist the knife. Also he didn't get the feeling that dad would respect him as a man if he tried to do that.

"Where is the little grease ball anyway? I've got something for him." said Shimazaki

"It had better not be a speedball." Said Minegishi. He didn't know why Fukuda tensed up next to him or why he was looking over Sho's head and giving those guys dirty looks. Maybe he was just getting old. Sho had heard that about people before, that they got grumpy as they got old, and Fukuda was going to be forty four this year. That was pretty old. Maybe he was upset about being left out of their conversation and stuff…Sho knew that he was. But he had to stay with Fukuda because he was old and lonely and he had no friends besides Sho and maybe dad. Sho knew that it could have been worse, though, because he would have been next to dad like big sis was. Flying with dad was the worst because you had to be near him and he never let you have any fun. Also he was a jerk on the ground and being in the air made him even more of a jerk than he already was.

"How'd you know, Toshi?" asked Shimazaki even though he knew that Minegishi hated being called by their given name.

"Because I know you. Grease ball rhymes with speedball and you had better not give him anything. You know that he can't handle it. He's still ashamed of himself from the party…and rightly so. I can't believe that fucking grease ball actually-" said Minegishi

"Don't make fun of his skin, he's very sensitive about it. He can't help it that he has oily skin." Said Shibata. Sho didn't think that it was that bad, big sis' boyfriend's skin, it was fun to stick pieces of paper and candy wrappers to him and stuff. Also it was mean to make fun of other people, Shibata was right.

"But he IS a grease ball. He knows it, I know it, and if he didn't want people to make fun of him then he should stop being a grease ball." Said Shimazaki. He did have a point there. If he didn't want people making fun of his greasy skin then he shouldn't have had skin in the first place….wait…no. That didn't make sense. His brain could be like that sometimes. When he was around Shimazaki or Shimazaki was around him his brain just…didn't work as well as it should have, and he had no idea why. Because he thought about Shimazaki a lot…but in a normal way. He didn't want to kiss him or anything like that, he really didn't, and if he did that was just his brain playing tricks on him. Maybe he had broken his brain when he fell out of that tree, or when the bird pecked his head, or when he had been trying to jump over the house but instead hit his head on a tree branch…or any of the other times that he had hit his head.

"Come on, be nice. He can't help that he has oily skin and-" said Shibata

"Witch hazel. Clay. Oatmeal. About a million other things." Said Minegishi. They needed to learn how to stick with a conversation instead of just talking nonsense. Even big sis was better at talking than they were. They should have just found their own part of the plane to be all alone in. Yeah, that would have been good for everyone.

"Huh?" asked Shibata

"Toshi knows about skin." Said Shimazaki. He said a nice thing to them, which was fine he could say nice things to whoever he wanted to, but then he did that thing that he did when he wanted to see what people actually looked like. He could see where people were and how they were moving and stuff but he couldn't see their faces. Sho didn't know why he was doing that to them now, he knew what they looked like, and also it was rude to just do that to someone without asking.

"You should tell Hatori about that….that is if you forgive him…for everything. I understand if you don't. He really…he said a lot of things to you that were not ok…and also the thing about the sink…and some other stuff that I don't think that he remembers and I am not telling you about because then you'll tell him and it's already hard enough to get him out of the bathroom these days…not that he shouldn't be ashamed of himself for what he said to you. I mean…I know that I would be angry if…you know…if I was a…if I were you." Said Shibata

"I don't care. If he wants to make an idiot of himself then he can make an idiot out of himself. I don't care. If he wants to go around saying that watching hentai makes him good at eating people out then he can go around and scream it to the heavens. He is Hatori Nozomu and he has spent more hours watching porn than he has within one meter of a woman." Said Minegishi. Fukuda aura flared at that and Sho didn't get it. Sho had no idea what they were talking about but he knew that it had to do with eating people…which was wrong, very wrong, and stuff.

"May I remind you that there is a child here." Said Fukuda. Sho wished that he would have gone back to whatever it was that he was doing on his laptop. He shrank down in his seat as best as he could. He wished that he had been wearing his birthday sweater. Then he could have just disappeared inside of it. It wouldn't have mattered, though, because Shimazaki would still have been able to sense him. He was not a child. He was ten. Damn it.

"No, Mob's over there." said Shimazaki pointing over to where dad and big sis were. Sho smiled. Shimazaki thought that big sis was a child. He knew that Sho wasn't. Well he was because he was ten but he wasn't as much of a child as she was. Well he was younger than her but…but it was nice that Shimazaki didn't think of him as a little kid!

"I was talking about Sho. He can hear you…and so can his father." Said Fukuda. Sho wished that he would just stop talking already. This was Sho's fault for not keeping him busy enough. If he was kept busy then he wouldn't go around saying stuff like that to people. So what if they were talking about things that he got the feeling that he was not supposed to know about? It didn't matter in the least bit. Sho wasn't a little kid anymore. He could listen to adults talking. He had no idea what he had to add to the conversation, so he added nothing, but he could still listen.

"Yes, and I can hear thinly veiled threats. If you want to threaten me then threaten me. If you don't want to threaten me then don't. Honestly you're setting a terrible example for the future lord and master of the world over there." said Minegishi. They said the whole like they were bored…they said everything like they were bored. That was boring. Shimazaki was bored all of the time but he didn't show it at least…and also they should not have been mean to Fukuda like that. Even if he had been mean first by eavesdropping.

"I'm not threatening you, I'm warning you. Cut. It. Out. Not in front of Sho. Talk however you want to in front of Shigeko but not in front of Sho." said Fukuda. Sho was not a baby and he had no idea why Fukuda was talking about him like he was a baby. He wasn't that much younger than big sis. Big sis had been born in May and he had been born in February. They were only a year apart and if there was something that she could hear then there was something that he could hear too!

"Hey! Look out there! That sure is an ocean out there! And clouds, too!" said Shibata pointing out the window. He was doing that thing where he tried to distract people from how they were feeling. Like when Baby Sis got upset and he made faces at her and showed her his toys.

"I feel mocked right now." Said Shimazaki

"I didn't mean to-" said Shibata

"Don't tell me what to do." Said Minegishi. Sho looked away from them. They had scary eyes, sometimes, and their aura…could also be scary. He hoped that they didn't get into a fight with Fukuda. Sho would have to have Fukuda's back but then Shimazaki would have Minegishi's back and then he would have to fight his best friend…and he did not want to have to fight his best friend. Nobody should ever have had to fight their best friend…and also if he had Shimazaki's back then nobody would have had Fukuda's back and he couldn't just let Fukuda go into a fight without backup. That would have been a mean thing to do. Fukuda may have treated him like he was a baby, and may have disliked big sis for reasons Sho could not begin to figure out, but he was still Fukuda and someone had to have his back and that someone was Sho.

"Actually I can. Don't talk that way in front of Sho. He's too young for-" said Fukuda. Sho wanted to take him and shake him and tell him to cut off his leg and count the rings…or whatever they did to figure out how old people were. He was not a little kid anymore and Fukuda needed to stop embarrassing him like this! Big sis didn't even embarrass him like this! And she was big sis!

"I'm not a baby, Fukuda! Stop talking about me like I'm a baby!" said Sho. Fukuda was looking at him like he had slapped him in the face…for some reason. Sho didn't get what he was so upset about. He had been treating Sho like a baby in front of…Sho had been mean. Sho had been mean and he shouldn't have been mean and he shouldn't have shouted either because dad was there and now he could feel dad's aura and stuff….and that was never a good thing.

"Sho…come on, let's play that fighting game you like. Let them talk about…whatever it is that they're taking about." Said Fukuda the hurt face that he made was wiped away like words on a chalkboard. That was good. Sho was worried about hurting his feeling but now that it was all done with he could rest easy and play Smash…even though he didn't really want to.

"Don't get too into your game, kid, when Hatori comes out of the bathroom…if he ever comes out…I'm going out on the wing of the plane and I know you get a kick out of that. And, before you ask, no I can't take you out there with me anymore. Your sister was very clear on that and me and her…well we're cool but it's a shaky sort of cool so…yeah. Not risking your life for shits and giggles on this plane ride. Maybe next time we move." Said Shimazaki. Sho felt like someone had stepped on his stomach in pointy shoes. He…..he liked it when he went out on the wing of the plane with Shimazaki. It was fun. It wasn't scary at all because he knew that Shimazaki would never let anything bad happen to him. He was a nice person like that. He would never let anything bad happen to Sho….ever…

He felt weird.

Bad weird. He felt like…kind of like Shimazaki might have liked him less…or something….but that made no sense. Big sis was just worried about him dying for some reason. He hadn't died from being out on the wing of the plane yet and he wouldn't die ever. If he was going to die then he would have died already…and also Shimazaki would never have let him die. He would let a bird peck his head, he would let him fall out of a tree and hit every branch on the way down, but he would not let him die.

Friends did not let friends fall off of airplanes or get sucked into turbines.

"You go have fun with that." Said Fukuda in a tone that could not have been mistook for anything either than mean. Sho had no clue what he was being so mean for. This was why he had no friends. Even Minegishi, who was the emperor of meanness, had friends. Fukuda needed to work on being nicer for his own good. No wonder he and dad had been best friends when they had been kids and stuff.

"And you have fun over there with your passive aggression…you human spit sink." Minegishi muttered the last part but Sho had heard it. Fukuda heard it to and his aura flared when Minegishi said that. Sho didn't know why. That was such a weak insult. If they had called Fukuda a fucking human spit sink, or a god damned human spit sink, or a cock sucking human spit sink, or a god damned mother fucking cock sucking human spit sink then those would have been real insults. Not that Sho was going to give Minegishi any pointers when it came to cursing. If he gave them pointers then Shimazaki might have considered them a worthy opponent and Sho knew that he could not let that happen. Shimazaki spent enough time with them as it was.

"What did you just-" said Fukuda

"It's been a long flight and I think that we're all just a little tired. How about you and Little Suzuki play your game and then Minegishi you can go back to reading to Shimazaki and I'll just….try and get Hatori out of the bathroom. Yeah, that's what I'll do." Said Shibata. He got up, Sho could swear that the whole plane rocked, and went over to the bathroom. He knocked on the door and started talking to it in hushed tones even though he was strong enough to just break down the door and drag him out…though that wouldn't have been a good thing because he was in the bathroom and he might have been doing actual bathroom things instead of just hiding…and stuff.

"I do not have the patience for that man right now…that living scented tampon" muttered Minegishi like they were mad…which they probably were. They were always mad at something. They were mad and Shimazaki should have just gotten away from them…but no. He stayed right there with them. He stretched his legs out and leaned his head on their shoulder and…and he did that thing when his eyes were a little opened, because it was a reflex that he had been born with the same as everyone else, and he did that when he was relaxed…but he shouldn't have. Because they were mean and…and Sho tried to understand…but he felt Fukuda's hand on the top of his head turning him around like he was a doll or something.

"Hey!" said Sho. He was not a baby and he was not a doll and he could look wherever he wanted to. He was watching to understand. To understand what it was the Shimazaki saw in them. Maybe it was because he couldn't see….that was mean and he should not have been thinking mean thoughts about him like that. You were not supposed to think mean thoughts about your best friend…not that they were best friends yet. He didn't know when they would be…but he wanted that time to come quicker.

"Ignore them, Sho, they aren't worth it." Said Fukuda. Sho had no idea what he meant by not worth it. Sho had no idea what Fukuda was on at all. Minegishi was a jerk a lot of the time. That was just how they were. What else did Fukuda expect? They were a jerk but for some reason nobody seemed to realize this. That nobody, not even Shimazaki, could see what kind of a jerk they were. They were just so…so he didn't even know. Mean words. Stuff like that. Mean words, curse words, all the words. The words that Shimazaki had taught him. Well he had known some of them but Shimazaki had been the one to teach him how to put those words together.

He really wanted to have a cursing match with Shimazaki again.

Or whatever he wanted to do. He must have wanted to do something besides sit there and just let Minegishi read a boring book about miserable people in France to him. Why was he just sitting there with his head on their shoulder listening to them read? He knew how to read. He read brail and that was still reading. He had books he could have read by himself. His phone could read stuff to him too. Hell, Sho could have read him whatever he wanted to hear. Sho knew how much he hated being bored but he was letting Minegishi read a long and boring book to him…and Sho just could not begin to understand…and he wanted to understand. What made them so much better than him? Why did he want to hang out with them and not him? He didn't know. He didn't know but he had to know.

He kept on dying.

He was dying because his mind was over to the other side of the plane. Why did he keep on wanting to hang around them for? They were mean and boring. He hated boring people. Sho wasn't boring, he was interesting, and he was super interesting! But still Shimazaki just sat there and let Minegishi read to him. He sat there for the whole time it took for Shibata to get Hatori out of the bathroom. He sat there with them for so long that Hatori not only came out of the bathroom but also wrote a whole apology speech on his arm!

"Everyone, I would like to apologize for what I did at the winter holiday party. I said things that I should not have said an acted in a way that was not alright. These instances began at approximately…" He was reading from his hand…and then when he ran out of words on his hand he pulled his sweater sleeve down and read his arm. Jeez! What was with this guy? And what did big sis see in him? He was a crybaby!

He really was.

He yelled at the screen while he played his games regardless of whether or not he won or lost. He ran to Fukuda when he got a little baby papercut on his finger like he had chopped it off with a knife or something. Shibata hadn't even cried when he had cut the top of his finger off when he had been cutting meat for a meat pie, which Sho hoped to God he never made again, he had just gone to Fukuda and had him put his finger back the way that he was supposed to have it. With the tip on and all of his blood inside of his body where it was meant to be. Shibata hadn't cried once. He hadn't even been afraid even though he had lost a lot of blood…and stuff…

Hatori was such a crybaby.

Seriously. Why was he such a crybaby? And why did big sis LIKE that? Why did she like him? She said that she didn't like him as much anymore but he knew her and he knew that she loved love and really wanted a boyfriend. He…kind of got that about girls. Wanting to be with someone. Wanting to have someone to kiss and stuff. Kissing could feel good. Kissing could be so good. No wonder she wanted to kiss someone…even though he got the feeling that Hatori had never kissed anyone in his life. He didn't look like he would be good at kissing mainly because he just wasn't cool or good looking or anything like that. He was nice, though, when he wasn't being a baby. He was good at games, he was REALLY good at Minecraft, and he was always nice to big sis. He had really nice sweaters. This one had a mouse on it and rodents were awesome, well hamsters were the most awesome but rodents were awesome in general, and he was kind of tall…and stuff….

He was ok. Not as cool as Shimazaki but then again who was?

He was a crybaby though. He gave long crybaby apologies and he also he freaked out like a crybaby when Shimazaki did the look on the wing of the plane thing….and Sho wished that he could have been out there with him so bad…because that would have freaked Hatori out more and it was fun to freak him out because he was such a crybaby…even though it was mean to do to the him because he was going to be married to big sis someday and then they'd be brothers and stuff. So he should have been nicer…but he wanted to mess with him with Shimazaki…

Because Shimazaki was awesome…and Sho wished that they could have been moving buddies…and best friends…and stuff like that.


	250. Watching TV with Good Friends

Mob and Hatori were still friends.

She still liked him, she always would, but not like she had before. He was still a nice person but she had seen him very drunk, which had not been very attractive, and also he was in love with her best friend. So it never would have worked out between them. They were just not meant to be. That was ok. He was still a good friend. It was fun to play games with him, he had been the one to introduce her to Minecraft, and also he knew the best shows. Like this. It seemed like it would be something more like a show Sho would have liked, kids in robots fighting monsters, but she liked it too. She liked the main boy. She didn't like him like she liked Kristoff from Frozen but she liked him. They both had dads that could be sort of…bossy…and also he had a power that he had never asked for but still had to use.

Well being a very good giant robot pilot was sort of like being born with psychic powers.

He was a prodigy at piloting his robot and she was a prodigy at having powers. Also he had friends and stuff and she liked about his friends…well most of them. She didn't like this new character. She was very mean for some reason. She didn't get those sorts of characters, the ones who were super mean to everyone for no reason but then they still had friends and stuff. Why would anyone want that? Also the scene where they met her made no sense. Why would she wear a dress with no tights if she knew that she would be out on a windy boat?

"That is so fucking hilarious. I love that part." Said Hatori. Mob nodded. She didn't get it but she nodded. She was sitting on the couch next to him watching what he said was a 'really great show' and also he said that she would love it because 'there were characters she could cosplay as' even though her dresses from the Disney Store weren't cosplay. These were her daytime clothes that she wore during the day. Therefore these were not costumes.

"Um….it's ok. I don't know why she had to slap everyone though. I mean she's the one who isn't wearing any tights. She knew that it was windy so she should have worn some tights." Said Mob. Minegishi laughed from their place on the floor. They were laying down on the floor reading one of their long and complicated books that Mob didn't understand. She knew that book, War and Peace, she had read it when she was eight. It was about war…and then peace…or something. She didn't know. She had been eight, her English hadn't been that good, and she had been mostly skimming so she would have something to talk about.

"But then if she wore tights the joke would be ruined. The best comedy needs a truly absurd set up. Don't you agree, Hatori?" asked Minegishi. Mob was very glad that Minegishi and Hatori were getting on again. She liked it when her friends were happy together. Now they could get along and everyone could be friends and…and stuff.

She didn't get why Hatori shrank down in himself.

The picture on the TV went weird and the audio went back to Japanese. They were watching it in English because Hatori needed to practice his English and Mob liked hanging out with her friends. She wished that Sho could be there, he would have had a great time, but Fukuda had taken him to a place that Sho would have thought was fun but she wouldn't. That was what he had said when she had asked if she could come. It must have been some boy thing that she wouldn't like. Minegishi said that Mob was very girly. Some people liked boy things, some people liked girl things, and some people liked both. Mob really liked girl things but she also liked some boy things. She liked this show, she liked Minecraft, she liked some videogames, she liked to build forts sometimes, and stuff like that. She didn't much like fighting, though, and doing crazy stuff like climbing up houses and climbing tall trees and stuff like that. The boy stuff that Sho liked. That was ok.

She wished that she could have come with, though, she could have pretended to like whatever it was that they were doing.

"Um…yeah. I agree." Said Hatori. He still went red when they talked to him. She didn't get it…well she did. He was in love with them. Well he said that he wasn't in love with them but she knew that he was in love with them. That was how adults were. Kids fell in like and adults fell in love…and that was ok. That was fine. She didn't want to be his girlfriend anymore. She might have just wanted to be his girlfriend because she liked the way he looked and also he was nice to her and stuff…and Minegishi said sometimes these sorts of feelings hit you hard an strong so the best thing to do would be to just get to the kissing.

Not that she wanted to kiss Hatori anymore.

She stopped thinking about that, kissing him, when she heard about how he had peed in a sink because he hadn't been able to make it to the bathroom. Shimazaki said that, sometimes, when you drink too much and take too many things you have to pee in weird places. That was a normal thing that people did. They peed in strange places and that was why he had wanted her to pee in the alley. There weren't any open bathrooms so sometimes you had to pee in the alley…and that was not something that Mob was willing to do.

But she understood that sometimes emergencies happened.

Sometimes you took too much and drank too much and emergencies happened. That was just how it went. That was just something that happened, Shimazaki said, and that was why you had to be careful when you drank and did things, Minegishi said. That was why they were teaching Mob about moderations…and she was very grateful for their teachings. She never wanted to have to pee worse than she had ever had to pee in her entire life and only have an alley…that was the worst. So she could be sympathetic to Hatori…

But that didn't mean that she was going to lay in bed and think about what it would be like to kiss him.

"I think I like the bleu haired girl better. She's nicer to the boy and I like shows where people are nice to one another." Said Mob. She had a nice school uniform too. She wondered if she would ever end up wearing a school uniform…she knew that she wouldn't. She didn't go to school and she would never be able to go to school. She didn't even know if she could. She…was not good at being with people her own age. Like at the party. At the party she had talked to a girl who was the same age as her but…but she had been so different. She had been more grown up and didn't play with dolls and stuff like that….

Maybe Mob was just a kid.

She was a weird person. She still played with dolls and stuff and that was weird, the other girl had said, and Mob…she knew that she could never go to school and hang out with the other kids and have school adventures and stuff. She was just…not good at it. She would never be good at it. She wasn't like Sho. He had made a bunch of friends at the party. Mob hadn't been able to make any friends…and that was…she accepted that about herself. She was like the boy from this show. He was bad at being around people too but he had made some friends and he was good at his job and stuff. Like she was good at her job. He had friends from his job and she had friends from her job…

So she liked this show, she decided, and she liked the people who she was watching it with.

So she didn't even want to be around the other kids, she didn't, because she already had some very good friends…and they always lived right next door, too. They were in a row house now. That meant that their houses shared a wall. Mob had never lived so close to everyone before…and she was lucky. She may have been weird, and she may have still played with dolls and stuff, but she got to live right next to all of her friends. That was more than a lot of other kids got to do. So she was happy. She really was.

She did wish that she could have with Sho and Fukuda thought.

"Well…maybe we should stop watching here in that case. People in this show can kind of be assholes to each other." Said Hatori. He rubbed the back of his head when he said that. She used to get that doki doki feeling when he did that. Now she just felt…normal. She was even sitting right next to him but she wasn't thinking about him holding her hand and telling her that he loved her and that he wanted her to be his girlfriend and that he wanted to kiss her and stuff…she wasn't thinking about that at all. She was mostly thinking that his skin looked a lot nicer now. He smelled good too. Minegishi had told him how to fix his skin even though it hadn't been that bad. He still had some spots but less of them and also he wasn't as shiny as he had been before…and she liked how shiny he had been…but he looked nice now.

He looked nicer but she didn't get that doki doki feeling again.

She missed that feeling. She had no idea who she would feel it again for but…but she really like that feeling. The feeling of liking someone. The feeling of wanting to be liked by someone. The feeling of wanting to kiss someone….she really wanted to kiss someone…but not Hatori. She wanted to be kissed but she just…didn't want to kiss Hatori anymore. She had been thinking more and more about kissing lately ever since she had been kissed….but she didn't know anyone who would ever want to kiss her…and she didn't even know any boys her own age…

But she needed to stop thinking about this.

She watched TV, she thought about TV, and not the loss of the feelings that she had liked…and she had maybe liked having those feelings more than the person she'd had those feelings for and….and that was just…she didn't know. She didn't want to think about that. It made no sense to miss feelings. Feelings came and went. Missing things was for people and places and stuff. She had to control her feelings or they would control her just like dad had said.

She had to do what dad said.

"Kind of? Are we still talking about the same show?" asked Minegishi

"Well…I mean they can all be sort of assholes…but that's just people." Said Hatori. Minegishi put their book down on their chest and looked over to Hatori. Mob couldn't read the look in their eyes but they might have been being mean based on Hatroi's reaction. Mob would have to ask them why they didn't seem to like him. He had apologized on the plane ride over. She had been able to hear his apology from her spot on the plane. She had to be near dad for the whole plane ride because it had been their day together. She wished that she could have been with her friends and stuff, especially since they had been fighting, but she had to stay with dad. She got the feeling that he was very lonely and that was why he smothered her. She got the feeling, also, that he wouldn't have been so lonely if he had been able to be nicer to people…but she didn't say that to him because he would not have taken that well.

"I'd accuse you of being passive aggressive but I've seen firsthand how dramatic you can be." Said Minegishi. Mob frowned. She had no idea what passive aggressive meant but she knew that they should not have been calling each other names like that…even if Hatori could be kind of dramatic. Sho called him a crybaby. Mob didn't think that he was a crybaby but she knew that he…he had a lot of feelings. Like how he always shouted when he played games and also when he got embarrassed he ran and hid and stuff…but that was ok. Mob was still going to be his friend and stuff.

"Please don't call each other names. I don't want you guys to fight. You're friends…right?" asked Mob. She didn't know if they were still friends. She was ninety nine percent sure that they were but he also knew that Hatori had said some stuff to Minegishi that he shouldn't have. Not just the whole being way too drunk and confessing in front of every one thing, she knew that if a boy had confessed his love for her drunk or not in front of everyone she would have been very embarrassed, but also in what he had said.

She got the feeling that he had said something wrong.

She knew what he had said, he had been speaking Japanese, but she hadn't had any idea of what it had meant. All she knew was that it had made things awkward and also she was never supposed to let a boy talk to her like that. Hatori had said so. Also whatever he had said had been so bad that he had to kotow for the rest of the plane ride after his confession. Dad said that all of her friends were ridiculous and stuff but she didn't see what was so ridiculous about saying sorry when you did something wrong….but she did wish that she knew what it was that he had done wrong.

Minegishi said that it was something that she could know about when she turned eleven….in May…and it was only January.

"If Minegishi wants us to be. It's…still a little complicated. You'll understand when you're older." Said Hatori

"What's there to understand? You're either friends with someone or you aren't." said Mob. She wished that she could just grow up faster. Her birthday wasn't for months. Maybe when she turned eleven she could understand all of these complicated adult things….even though she really had no idea what was so complicated.

"Mob, relax. We're friends…or at least friendly. Ok? Now watch your show. Trust me, you do not want to miss any details. It's dense. Think of it like one of Shibata's sponge cakes." Said Minegishi

"It sounds hollow when you drop it on the floor?" asked Mob. She didn't mean anything mean in that. She just remembered the funny thing that had happened when Shibata had made a traditional British sponge cake. He had to do it because they were in England, he had said, and that it was a traditional thing that they had to have. But then Shimazaki had popped out in front of him and he dropped the cake and it hit the ground, made a hollow sound, and spun around a few times as it bounced. That had been funny…but maybe she should not have laughed…because Shibata had worked hard on it…

Even if he had forgotten a couple ingredients.

"It'll crack the wall when you throw it?" asked Hatori. He laughed, then, and now Mob felt bad. She hadn't been trying to be mean but sometimes she said things but the meaning behind what she had said was different from what she had meant. People made meaning from you said, sometimes, so you had to make things as clear as possible. Dad had said that. Dad had told her that he loved the way she said what she meant and meant what she said…and stuff….but sometimes she still had trouble talking. Like now. She didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings…but she might have….because she felt his aura getting closer.

"Hey! I'm going to figure this out one of these days…and you both love my cooking anyway." said Shibata from the kitchen. He was making them dinner. Mob didn't know what he was making but she hoped that he was watching the stove this time.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be mean." Said Mob. She got up off the couch and bowed to him. She didn't know if this was one of those bowing times but she was going to because she had to be nice to her friends. She also had to set a good example for people. Dad was always saying that she had to set a good example for Sho and that probably also meant that she had to set a good example for everyone, too, because it was important to be what you wanted other people to be. She had read that in one of Minegishi's books. It made sense.

"I know you weren't, your Little Ladyship, and don't worry. I've got another cake going for dessert and this time I remembered to use cake flour…and eggs." Said Shibata

"Watch the stove." Said Minegishi from behind their book. Mob wrinkled her nose. She smelled….she hoped that wasn't dinner that she smelled. That had smelled really good before.

"Oh no!" said Shibata. She felt the house shake as he ran back into the kitchen. She wondered if dad could feel it back at the house. She wondered if he was lonely. Well he didn't have to be. He could come over there and be with them if he wanted. He was the President of Claw and he was going to rule the world someday, he could do whatever he wanted, and maybe he would have been a nicer person if he was less lonely. He used to be friends with Fukuda, Sho had said, but now they weren't. She wondered why. She also wondered why Fukuda had been so grumpy lately. Sho thought that it was because he was getting old and old people got grumpy. Probably because they knew that every single birthday brought them closer to death. Shimazaki said that.

He said that after thirty every single year of your life just brought you closer to death.

Mob didn't want dad to die. She wanted dad to live a long time and be her dad and hang out with her and stuff. He could be sort of nice when he wanted to be. Kind of like how he hadn't punished her when he found out that she had been drinking at the party or like how he hadn't gotten mad when he figured out that she liked someone. He could be nice….to her….now she just had to figure out how to get him to be nice to other people….and then eventually to Sho…

Maybe if she spent more time with him.

They could watch this show together. He would have liked it. There were robots and monsters from space and fighting and stuff. Also there was a dad in the show who was kind of like him but not as nice. So maybe this could be their new thing to watch together…because she was getting tired of documentaries and watching Galaxy Express on a loop….he would like this a lot. The new girl defeated the angel with hopscotch. Dad would think that it was funny, absurd was his word for funny, and then he would tell her about giant robots all night. It would be a good time.

But not nearly as good of a time as she had with her friends.

She always had the best times with her friends. Even now that they were just watching TV together. Even though they weren't even all together. Shimazaki would come back later, he had gone out to find fun he'd said, and then he would come back and they could all smoke and watch more of this and eat caked and just….have fun together. Like friends were supposed to. They were all friends there and they would all have fun together. They could have fun together today and tomorrow and the next day and the next. They could even all hang out with Sho too…if Fukuda would let him…but Fukuda could join them too if he wanted to. They could all have fun together. Things were always more fun when they were together.

Especially when they were all together….because that was the best thing about having friends now wasn't it? Just being able to have fun together.


	251. TV, Fries, Ketchup, Cuddles,and Love

Dad seemed like he would be a boring person but he wasn't.

Dad could be mean to a lot of people a lot of the time. He could be mean to Sho and everyone else but…but he was nice to her. Well he mostly ignored her but on their days together he was very nice. Like now. They were sitting in bed together eating fries and ketchup. Dad didn't like to eat in the bed, normally, but he would eat in the bed if there was ketchup involved. He loved ketchup. He loved ketchup and her and watching TV in bed with her late at night. That was what they did on their days together. This was something that they had done together when she had been little. She wasn't little anymore. She was ten now, almost eleven, and she still stayed up late with her dad.

She liked spending time with dad. He could be fun….sometimes.

"Do you want to watch another one?" asked Mob. She would have thought, if she didn't know dad, that he wouldn't have liked this show. It was an anime and all the main characters were older kids and also fighting robots had no basis in reality, dad had said, but he liked this. He had said so.

"Yes. Let's see what happens next." Said Dad. He dipped his fry in his ketchup. He held everything up with his powers, he was careful not the ruin the bed, and Mob did the same. She didn't want to get kicked out of the bed. This was nice. Having one day to spend together was nice. Not like how before he had been ignoring her and pretending that she wasn't alive…or before that when he had been smothering her with his love. Well she still got smothered with his love but now she only got smothered with his love for one day a week.

"Ok." Said Mob. She let the episode roll over to the next one. They were watching it in English with Japanese subtitles to see what was different. Dad did that sometimes. He said that it made things more interesting. It just gave Mob a headache but she wasn't going to tell him that. They were having fun together and she didn't want to ruin it.

"This is one of the better theme songs." Said Dad as he finished off the last of their ketchup. He put their ketchup glass off to the side on his nightstand. Mob kept on eating her fries. She would have liked some more ketchup but she didn't say anything. She and dad were having fun and she didn't want to ruin it.

"I think so too. I heard an all English version on YouTube the other day, Hatori showed me, and it was even nicer than this…but I like this too because it's in Japanese and it's easier for me to understand. But I've been practicing my English. I can mostly understand what the people around here are saying. They just have funny accents is all." said Mob

"To them we have strange accents…though yours is more pronounced than mine. That's my fault, though, for not making more of an effort to teach you. I apologize for that, Daughter." Said Suzuki

"It's ok. I already know a lot of English. I know more than some of my friends, anyway. I had to write down a whole recipe in Japanese for Shibata and one time Hatori got lost so I had to be the one to lead up home." Said Mob. There's a flicker in dad's aura, there, and she wondered for a moment if she's said the wrong thing.

"Hatori is the one with the glasses and the skin condition?" asked Dad. Mob wished that people would stop making fun of Hatori's skin. He couldn't help that his skin was the way it was. He was trying to make it better and it didn't seem very nice at all to make fun of people's differences. Dad had weird eyebrows but nobody ever made fun of him about them….well not where Mob could hear. She wouldn't have let anyone make fun of her dad's eyebrows if she had heard. He couldn't his eyebrows just like Hatori couldn't help his skin or Sho couldn't help his scars or she couldn't help that she still looked like a little kid even though she was ten.

"Yes, that's him, but please don't make fun of his skin." Said Mob

"I wasn't making fun of him, I was stating a fact, he has a skin condition. It's very noticeable. If I were making fun of him I would have said that there were entire constellations and galaxies which existed on his face. That's making fun of someone." Said Dad. That made sense…for dad at least. Sometimes he didn't mean to be mean, sometimes he did, and it was hard to tell with him what he did and did not mean. Still, though, it wasn't nice to be mean about something that he couldn't help. He was doing the best he could and his skin looked a lot better these days….and she hoped that when she grew up she didn't have those sorts of skin problems.

"I guess that you didn't mean to make fun of him…but it's still not nice to point out other people's differences. He's my friend so please be nice to him." said Mob. She wasn't in love, or like, with him anymore but they were still friends and she could not just let people make fun of her friends like that…even if they didn't mean to…and even if they were her own dad.

"I'll point out whatever I want to point out…but if it upsets you then I'll make more of an effort to be tactful when talking about your friends." Said Dad. Mob didn't know what tactful meant but she was happy that dad was going to try and make an effort for her. He was always doing things for her. He even said that she could drink so long as she didn't get drunk. Now all she needed to do was figure out how to get him to be nicer to Sho…but not so nice that he let Sho drink. He was too little and also…also he should have been able to control his powers on his own without help. Mob didn't want Sho to ever do the things that she did.

Because he was better at controlling his powers than her.

He had said so many times before that she had been born right and he had been born wrong but in Mob's opinion he had it backwards. He looked like both dad and mom, mostly dad though but without the eyebrows, and also he had been born a boy. Boys got to do whatever they wanted to whenever they wanted to. Mob had to stay with dad for the rest of her life and stuff. Once Sho grew up and ran the world then…then he could be able to do whatever he wanted to. He could rule the whole world and then he could be on his own and he wouldn't have had to spend time with dad….

Not that she didn't love her dad.

She did. She loved him and she knew that he loved her…and she also knew how smothering his love could be. She knew how much love he had to give and she knew what it was like when he gave it all at once. Right now he was keeping his love mostly to himself and only loving her on Sundays. That could change. People thought that dad was boring but he wasn't. He could go from nice to scary, from smothering to gone, in an instant…and it was kind of scary sometimes. Kind of very scary sometimes…and she knew that just because he wasn't scary now that didn't mean that he couldn't just go back to it tomorrow…or even in the next ten seconds…

So in some ways Sho was the lucky one.

Dad hit him and called him names and stuff but at least when Sho grew up he could be done with dad. It would be over when Sho grew up and took over the world when dad was done with it. Mob was stuck with dad for the rest of her life. She had no idea what he would be like when she was a grown up. She knew that he was being nice now but she also knew how fast he could change…and she had no choice but to spend her life with him…because she was Daughter. She was Daughter, not Son, and Sho had been born a boy and he had been born right. He could control his powers so he had been born right. He had been born right and she had been born….Mob….

But it wasn't all bad, at least, sometimes dad could be nice enough to be around. Like now.

"Thank you. I would like that." Said Mob. Dad went back to watching TV but his aura was on her. She didn't know why. She was just eating her fries…well they were called chips here but they weren't chips. She had made these herself in the oven. Shibata had showed her how. Hers came out better than his but that was because she watched the stove. Shibata was always doing too many things at once in the kitchen. Mom had told her, back when she had been showing Mob how to cook, that you shouldn't do too much at once until you were more confident in what you were doing.

Mob thought that she had done a pretty good job on these fries.

Dad had eaten most of them. He had also eaten most of the ketchup. Maybe she should have gotten him ketchup for Valentine's Day. A whole gallon of it. That way he could have it with everything. She wondered if he was thinking about what to get her for White Day since that was coming up too….well it wasn't as close as Valentine's Day but it was coming up….or maybe he would get her a Valentine's Day present since girls got those sorts of presents in this country.

She hoped that he was thinking about presents and holidays and not mean stuff.

"You've been spending time with your new friend, haven't you?" asked Dad. Mob looked away from the TV, not that it was a good idea because Minegishi had said that this show was dense, and over at dad. She wondered, for a moment, if dad was going to go back to the way that he had been before. If he was planning on telling her that she wasn't allowed to see her friends anymore. That she had to stay by his side for the rest of time.

She didn't want that.

She wanted to spend time with him, especially when he was being nice like this, but she didn't want to have to be by his side for the rest of time. She wanted….she wanted to be able to hang out with her friends. She wanted to be able to explore the city. She wanted to be able to play with Sho. She couldn't do any of that when she was with dad for the rest of time. She wouldn't be able to do any grown up stuff when she was with dad, too, not that she even knew what she would do when she was a grown up…but she didn't think that she wanted to spend her whole life with him. She knew that she wanted a boyfriend when she grew up and she knew that dad would never let her have one….

So she really hoped that dad and her stuck to Sundays as being their day. Not every single day of the week for the rest of time.

"Yes. Thank you for letting him come with us. I like hanging out with him a lot." Said Mob. Dad was looking away from her but his aura was still focused on her. She wished that he would just come out with it already. She knew that when he got like this, really quiet with his aura focused on her, and also he was starting to fidget with his powers, that something was on his mind. She wished that he would just come out and say it so she could focus on the show. She needed to know what happened next. She had to know so she would be able to make sense of the ending, Minegishi had said that it was very complicated, but it was hard to focus when dad was staring at her like that.

"He is…only your friend, right? I heard you and your brother speaking and….and I was just wondering if Hatori was only your friend." Said Dad. He still wasn't looking at her. She was glad. She was so glad. She was the most glad. She didn't want to talk about this with her DAD! Who she liked and didn't like….and this was even worse than they time that he had thought that she liked Shimazaki! At least then it hadn't been true! Mob drew her legs up to her chest, they itched as they rubbed together, and she rested her head on her knees. Why did dad have to go and ask her something like that!

At least it wasn't true anymore.

If it had been true then Mob would have had to tell dad the truth….and then dad would have beaten Hatori up. That was what dad had done when he had THOUGHT that she liked someone…so then it me sense that he would do it again to someone who she actually liked…and she didn't get it. For her entire life dad had told her that she had nothing to worry about but getting married to an esper and then having babies and being someone's mom…but none of that would happen unless she fell in love with someone and they fell in love back. Well she could go to an orphanage…but dad said that because she was a very powerful esper she would need to have babies of her own because then they would be powerful espers and then the world could be full of nothing but powerful espers…and stuff.

"I don't like him like that….ok? So please don't beat him up or anything like that. We're just friends and stuff and not boyfriend and girlfriend…and we can't be boyfriend and girlfriend anyway because he's nineteen and I'm ten." Said Mob. She hoped that was enough for dad. She really did. She didn't want to talk about this with dad. Maybe mom, because she was a girl too, but not dad. Dad should have asked Sho if he liked someone…or maybe not because she was pretty sure that Sho didn't like girls and only liked boys and she was pretty sure that dad would not be happy about that at all…even though he should have just been happy for Sho when he found love because love was the best thing ever…

Dad had better not have even thought about beating up Sho's boyfriend if he ever got one….and if he did Mob would do….something.

"Very well….and I wasn't planning on beating him up. I was planning on telling you that you could do so much better." Said Dad. Mob did not want to talk about this. She never wanted to talk to her dad about liking someone….ever! If she ever ended up liking someone and becoming his girlfriend then dad could find out on the day of her wedding…or when she had a baby in her stomach…or when she was at the hospital having the baby….or after the baby had been born. But not before. She knew how he would be if he found out that she liked someone….he would be mean like he had been just now or he would beat him up…and Mob didn't want any of those things.

"That's not nice either, dad. Please don't say things like that. He's a very nice person. You just don't know him. He knows a lot of really fun games and cool shows and he always has nice sweaters on and also his glasses are cool…and stuff. But I don't like him like that…but you should still be nice to him…or at least not mean." Said Mob. She knew that she was on dangerous ground…or rather bed. She knew that she shouldn't have been telling her dad what to do…but he should not have been mean to her friends. If she got punished for this then she got punished for this. She just could not let dad be mean that.

"I can act in whatever way I want to…but I'll take your feelings into consideration when I interact with your friends. I don't know why you're so attached to those people but I know that they mean a lot to you and as your father I have to encourage your social development." Said Dad. That was dad speak for 'sorry I was so mean and I'll be less mean to your friends from now on because I love you' or something like that.

"Thank you, dad." Said Mob. She yawned and leaned back in the bed. Her fries were done and dad's fries were done and now they could get to the part of the night where she cuddled up with him and they got tired and went to sleep and stuff. Well they would go to sleep later. She liked this show and dad liked this show and dad was in a good mood and she was not going to waste that. Dad had been in a such a bad mood all year…or maybe more like a weird mood.

Dad had been weird all year.

Maybe he would be more normal…or less weird…next year. Well it was next year. After her birthday, maybe. He had been weird since her birthday. Since he gave her baby Mukai. He had given her baby Mukai for a birthday present and…and that had been a very weird present to give her for her birthday. Yes, that had been when it started. First he gave her baby Mukai and then he went away…and then he took baby Mukai away…and then…and then she didn't want to think about it. She didn't like to think about baby Mukai and how she was gone now…well not gone. She was just on to bigger and better things. She had her own family now with a mom who loved her very much…and Mob missed her…

And she really hoped that dad didn't give her another baby for her birthday.

And she wished, too, for him to be normal next year…or at least as close to normal as he could be. He had always been sort of weird but he had never been weird to her like he was now. He was weird in how he wanted her near him and he wanted her away and he was always ignoring her and then he was holding on to her really tight and then he wanted to cuddle her and then he was kicking her out of bed…and she just didn't get it sometimes. She just didn't get him sometimes….

But maybe next year would be better.

She snuggled in close to dad. He put an arm around her and rested his head on top of hers. He reached down and held her hand. He did that sometimes but not usually when she was awake. She woke up in the middle of the night sometimes and dad was holding her hand and keeping her close. Sometimes when she tried to get up he just held her tighter even though she knew that he was asleep. She didn't get it, why dad kept her close but pushed her away, and she never would.

So she wouldn't ask.

She yawned and rested her head above dad's heart. She could hear his heart beating. It was beating fast. What was he thinking about? This episode wasn't scary. Not like the one before when the blue haired girl almost died. This one was just about them learning to dance and stuff so they could beat the twin monsters. That wasn't scary at all but dad's heart was still beating really fast. She…she actually had no idea what scared him. She had never seen him scared not once in her entire life. Even when people tried to kill him he was never scared…well Sho had said so. Mob had never been there when anyone had tried to kill dad but…but she took Sho's word for it. Dad was the bravest person she knew. He hadn't even been scared when mom left. Just mad.

Dad didn't have a lot of feelings…but he did have feelings….but they were just hard to understand.

"Dad?" asked Mob

"Daughter?" asked Dad. He never used her name. Even when she had been little he had never used her name. Even when they were alone together he never called her by her name. She wondered if he had called her by her name when she had been a baby. She couldn't remember. She remembered that when she had been really little he called her 'Girl' and Sho 'Boy' but never by their names…but he must have known their names…but that didn't matter. There was no changing dad's mind about this.

"Are you ok?" asked Mob

"I'm fine. I'm enjoying our time together." Said Dad. He ran his other hand through her hair. She liked it when he did that. He liked her hair and her skin and stuff. He said that she was soft and stuff. She didn't think that she was soft, she thought that she was normal, but dad's skin was dry and stuff. He needed some moisturizer. Minegishi had taught her about moisturizer. Skin was your most important organ, Minegishi had said, and you had to take care of it or you'd end up like Hatori…and she didn't want to end up like Hatori. Everyone made fun of him.

"Me too. Do you want to watch another episode?" asked Mob. She yawned and leaned more into dad. He was warm. He was comfortable, too, since he stopped sleeping in his shirt with buttons. He slept in his undershirt and daytime pants. She wondered if she should get him some pajamas for his birthday.

"We can stop watching whenever you start to get tired. You've been yawning. I know that you need more sleep than me. I know that now, I mean. I've been doing some research." Said Dad. He did that a lot. When he didn't understand something he looked up the answers on Google and in books. He had wanted to know why she kept on falling asleep during the day after they had been up all night…even though Mob didn't think that he should have needed to Google that. Of course she would be tired after being awake all night. What else would she be? She didn't say anything though. She didn't want to be mean to dad.

She didn't want to be mean to anyone.

She tried not to be mean. Sometimes she said things that came out wrong but she never tried to be mean. Dad could be like that too. He said mean things sometimes, like whenever someone messed up he called them a failure because they had failed…and also he said mean things to Sho even though he could never be a failure or fail at anything…but that was just dad not being sure how to talk. Mob had the same problem sometimes. She got it from him. She just had enough of mom inside of her that she could try and be better. She saw when she had said or done something wrong and then she tried to fix it. Like mom used to.

Dad was always saying how Mob had a lot of mom in her. It made her happy when dad was nice like that.

"I hope the red haired girl learns to be nicer. She's always so mean to the main boy. I don't get why." Said Mob. She didn't get it when characters were like that, all mean for no reason, but dad might have. He had been watching TV since before she had been born. This was a really old show, too, it had come out when Minegishi was little and Hatori had been a baby. Dad might have seen it…or something. Maybe not. He didn't watch a lot of things that weren't the Galaxy Express and other REALLY old stuff.

"Well he is spineless. I can't stand spineless people and neither should you." Said dad. He ran his hand through her hair while he said that. Mob didn't get it. How he could say something so mean but also act so nice at the same time.

"Why is he spineless? He seems like a nice person. He does stuff to help people and he's a good giant robot pilot and also he lets the red haired girl be mean to him because he's a good friend to her. What's so bad about that?" asked Mob

"Everything. He just lets people walk all over him. If he didn't want to pilot the robot then he should not have piloted the robot. Simple. Though I have no idea why he wouldn't want to pilot a giant robot." Said Dad

"Because it's scary. I mean I think that it would be scary. Fighting monsters from outer space in just a giant robot and not having any powers. I mean I could do it if I had my powers but not without them because with my powers I can fly and also I think that I might be strong enough to just pick one of those monsters up. I mean…I don't know. I don't know how strong I am but I get the feeling that I'm that strong." Said Mob

"Yes, our powers would make it easier, much easier. You're right. You could very easily defeat one of those monsters all by yourself….but we don't have to worry about fantastical like that…and even if we did I know that you or your brother would never be so spineless." Said Dad

"But we would get in the robot if you asked us to. Well I know that I would get in the robot….and I think that Sho would get in the robot if you asked him to. I don't see what's so bad about that. What's so spineless about that." Said Mob. Dad kissed the top of her head.

"You're a good Daughter. You obey me and that's not spineless, that's smart, you're right. You're right. You're right and…and I love you for it." Said Dad. He kissed the top of her head again and then just sort of stayed there in her hair.

"I love you too, dad. Do you want to watch one more before bed?" asked Mob. She sort of liked that dad loved her…and also she sort of…didn't. She sort of felt smothered then. Smothered and sort of…not good. But that made no sense. She loved her dad and he loved her right back. So she should have been happy that her dad loved her…and she was happy. She was so happy. She was the happiest person in that bed.

"I would enjoy that." Said dad. Mob let the next episode roll. Dad was still holding her hand and he was still holding her on his chest…and this was comfortable. She had seen mom and dad laying together like this sometimes before when she had been little. She saw Minegishi and Shimazaki laying together like this too. This was comfortable. Sort of smothery….but comfortable. Like dad. He smothered her with his love but that didn't mean that it wasn't nice.

Dad looked like he wouldn't have been a very loving person but he was. His love wasn't always the nicest, or the most comfortable, but he still loved her more than anyone else in the whole world.

And she was happy about that…she really was.


	252. Mushy Peas

In this country fries were called chips.

Also an elevator was called a lift, gym shoes were called trainers, girls were called birds, chips were called crisps, cookies were biscuits, and the biscuits that were actually biscuits were called rolls. Mob and Sho both felt like they couldn't speak English when they came to this country. They didn't come here that often, to England, and most of their English came from America. That was across the ocean. There were here because there was another esper group here and dad had to do diplomacy, he had said, which meant that they either joined him or bad thing happened to them, Sho had said. That was work that Mob couldn't be a part of and neither could Sho.

So they were eating fish and chips.

Which was not real chips. Mob and Sho had figured that out the hard way when they had first come to this country when they had been little. They also hadn't spoken very good English back then too. They had only known English from books and school stuff. So they had thought that they had been the ones who had been wrong but then it turned out that they had been learning American English for their whole lives. The world had been a lot bigger back then, because they hadn't gone all over it, but now the world felt….not small. Not to Mob at least. The world felt a little smaller than when she had been little but not small like it was tiny or something like that. There were always new things to discover.

Like this fish and chips place.

This place was right next to an arcade that she and Sho had gone to. They had gone because they said, on the website, that it was the biggest arcade in London. It was big, sort of, the not as big as the ones in Tokyo had been. Mob knew that she would always miss Tokyo, they had stayed for a very long time, but there were good things about London too. Like fish and chips. They didn't have this in Tokyo and Mob liked it a lot.

Though she didn't know why the guy had said that she would have liked the fish better raw.

But she said nothing. Neither did Sho. Well he might not have been listening. He had been in sort of a bad mood all day. Dad had took both Shibata and Shimazaki with him, which Mob was sad about a little bit, and also Fukuda which was not something that she had strong feelings about. Fukuda was…a person. He was a person who healed their…Sho's injuries and hung out with them…Sho…and stuff. He didn't seem like he liked her very much but it was because she was getting older, he had said, and they were drifted apart…and stuff. She didn't know. She didn't care. Fukuda was Sho's friend and that was what mattered…even if he was sort of…not nice to her. That didn't matter. What mattered was, on that day, Sho had been without all of the people he usually hung out with.

So she and Sho had gone to an arcade and then gotten lunch.

"If you don't like it we can eat something else." Said Mob. Sho was making faces as he separated all of his food. He put his dish of mushy peas on the table far away from the rest of his food and then put his fries, no they were chips here, he put his chips on one side of the plate and his fish on the other. He made sure that they didn't touch. That was kind of his thing now, making sure that food didn't touch, and Mob didn't understand. The whole thing just seemed like extra work. If Minegishi hadn't been laid up, they were going to be laid up until at least the seventeenth they had said and Mob had to find a way to carry on without them, they would have said something about Sho making extra work for himself. If Shibata had been there he would have taken Sho's peas away and brought him more fries, chips, or something because Sho hated peas. If Shimazaki had been there then he would have been stealing off of everyone's plates even though he would have had his own food in front of him. If Hatori had been there he would have been asleep at the table because he was still trying to fix his sleep schedule. Those times that they stayed up all night watching TV and playing videogames didn't exactly help…

She missed her friends.

And she even sort of missed dad, too. If dad had been there then…well if dad had been sitting at this table with her and Sho then he would have told Sho that he was being ridiculous and that he had to eat his food and stop being like this. Dad hated it when Sho did this and he had told Mob to tell Sho to stop but, really, Mob just wanted him to eat food so that he would grow up big and strong. Also she wanted him to eat all of the food groups. Not just the deep fried and sugary food groups but also the green and mushy food groups too.

Mushy peas were the worst kinds of peas but they both needed to eat all of their food groups or they would never grow up to be big and strong like mom had always told them for as long as Mob could remember.

"No, I like it. I just don't like it when my food touches. It's gross." Said Sho. This was his food and eh would eat it however he wanted to. Like dad always said. He had two options, eat or starve, and he chose to eat. He just had to keep his fries on one side, his fish on the other, and his peas far away from everything else.

If Shimazaki had been there then he would have stolen his peas.

He would have been stealing off of his plate but it would have been ok because Sho would have stolen his food right back. Sho and him would have made a game of it. That was just something that they did. They would have pretended to steal from each other or actually stolen from each other…and it would have been fun. Then they could have gone outside and played in the snow or they could have gone back to the arcade. They had skeeball and pinball and crane games there. Games without screens. Shimazaki could play games without screens because he could see things that existed in life. He was really good at pinball and sometimes when they versed each other he sang that song about the pinball wizard and also sometimes they played air hockey but Shimazaki was such a cheater at that because he could teleport and read Sho's movements so Sho would use his telekinesis….

He wished that Shimazaki had been there.

And the rest of them, too, they could have come around if they had wanted to. If they didn't have anything better to do. Even Minegishi. They could have played crane games with big sis or something. She had spent like a million British yen trying to win a stuffed cat. Minegishi could have helped her with that and then Hatori and Shibata could have played on their own and then Sho and Shimazaki could have had fun…not to be mean but that was just how the group divided up.

So it was normal for Sho to want to be all alone with Shimazaki.

"Oh. Ok. I just thought that you didn't like it because of how your aura was…but of course you like it. We've had this before. Remember? The last time we were in London?" asked Mob as she started to eat her mushy peas. You always had to start with the worst first. That way once you got to the best part, the fish you had been looking forward to it for a while. Mom had said that. Dad just said that if you didn't like something then you didn't have to eat it because they were Suzuki's and Suzuki's could do whatever they wanted to. Mob knew that she could do just about whatever she wanted to do…but she also knew that being a Suzuki didn't mean that she didn't need to eat all of her food groups. Sho had to eat all of his food groups too.

She eyed his peas.

He was going to fight her about those peas. She knew that he was going to fight her about those peas. He would eat nothing but Cheetos and Doritos and soda and energy drinks if he could, like Hatori, but then if he did that he would end up with skin like Hatori's. Minegishi had been teaching her about skin. They said that she was getting older and she needed to start taking care of her skin now or else she would end up like Hatori. She really wished that people would stop making fun of Hatori…but she was also glad that he was trying to take better care of himself too.

But that was why she had to teach Sho how to take care of himself now, at ten, so he wouldn't have to start learning when he was nineteen and all grown up.

"Last time we had this they gave it to us in a newspaper. That's cooler than on a plate…even if it touched." Said Sho as he dumped all of his white sauce on his fish. He'd had this before, it had been good, but this was….different. There were peas with this. He knew that the pees were in their own little dish and stuff, and not touching the rest of his food, but he just…did not like peas. They were gross and also they sounded like pee and who would want to eat a food that sounded like pee?

Shimazaki would have thought that it was funny.

He thought that everything Sho said was funny. Sometimes he laughed really hard at everything Sho said even if he wasn't trying to be funny. He was a lot of fun during those times, when he was in a really good mood, and Sho and him had the best times when he was in one of his super good moods. Like the time when they had that pudding eating contest and Shimazaki ate seventeen cups of pudding in half an hour…and he was still hungry! Or the time when they went to that store and chewed on all the candles and then put them back in the boxes….and he didn't care what big sis thought. It was a funny prank. Like the people would buy their candles and then go to light them but they would have been chewed on already. Or like the time when they went to that animal shelter after closing and played with all of the dogs…well that had been fun until it came time to put the dogs back in the cages.

Sho couldn't remember which dog was which.

And Shimazaki was no help because he couldn't read. Some of the dogs had collars and some didn't and come knew their names and some didn't and some wanted to go back in their cages and some didn't…and it had been a mess….so Sho just put the dogs back in whatever cages they fit into and let the workers sort it out when they came back. That hadn't been funny because not only were the poor dogs sad to be in cages but also they were in the wrong cages…

But most of the time he and Shimazaki had a lot of fun together.

He must have been so bored hanging out with dad all day. Sho wished that he could have gone with but dad said that he would have just been underfoot….and Sho really wanted to go with. Then he and Shimazaki could have been here and they could have stolen food off of each other's plates or thrown food into each other's mouth or seen who could eat the most food or play the game where they said a curse word louder and louder and louder until someone complained. The winner was the one who got the most complaints. Big sis wouldn't have wanted to play that with him. She cared about rules and disturbing people and stuff.

Shimazaki thought that it was fun to disturb people and Sho mostly agreed…but that didn't matter because Shimazaki was working and he was hanging out with big sis now…and she had better not have been thinking about making him eat those peas because there was no way in hell that he would.

"We can go back to the newspaper place tomorrow if you want. They had pretty good fish and fries, chips, but these might be good too. You really should eat something, Sho." said Mob

"I will in a minute. I have to get my food right so I can eat it." Said Sho

"Ok….but be sure to eat everything." Said Mob. She was about to use her powers to slide his peas across the table but instead decided to use her hands. She was in public and when they were in public she couldn't use her powers for things. Not yet. They still had to hide what they really were and stuff because dad wasn't the king of the world yet. When he became the king of the world then he would be able to make it so that espers didn't have to hide who they were and also he would bring all of the espers in the world together and he would make the world such a better place…

Mob couldn't wait.

She couldn't wait until Dad ruled the world. Then they wouldn't have to move around all the time. Then they wouldn't have to hide their powers all the time, either, because she just…didn't like hiding who she was. She was Mob, Suzuki Shigeko, and she had powers. They were a part of her and having to hide a part of herself just felt…not good. But that was ok. Dad would take over the world soon and then things would get better for all of them.

Maybe Sho would even eat his peas by then.

"I will. That's why I'm separating everything." Said Sho

"The peas too. You haven't had a vegetable since last Tuesday." Said Mob

"Not true. I had a vegetable with breakfast this morning." Said Sho

"No you didn't, I remember. You had an omelet with bacon and ketchup and a glass of milk with a spoonful of sugar in it." Said Mob

"Ketchup is a vegetable." Said Sho

"No…it's a condiment. That's why it comes in bottles and little packets and…and is not at vegetable." Said Mob

"No, it comes from tomatoes so it's a vegetable. Things that come from things still are those things. Like how if you mine ice it turns back into water. If I mined ketchup it would turn back into tomatoes." Said Sho

"Um…I really don't think that it works that way. If it did work that way then your berry burst pop tarts would be a fruit. Just…please eat your peas. They're good for you. They'll make you grow up big and strong." Said Mob. She didn't want to fight with him. Why did every single meal have to be a fight? She gave in too often, that was the problem, but he just got so upset and she couldn't stand to make him upset. She had read on the internet that she had to be firm with him to get him to eat right. She didn't want him to end up with bad skin and stuff. She had seen how hard a go of it Hatori had. She didn't want people to make fun of Sho like they made fun of him…and also she didn't want him to have to put oatmeal and witch hazel on his face every single morning. That looked like it took up a lot of time and also it was a waste of oatmeal.

"Well then I guess we should call a scientist because I think that it works that way." said Sho. He didn't know why every single meal had to be a fight. It was a fight he could win, he usually won these fights, but he was getting tired of fighting with her about every little thing on his plate. She was trying to be mom again. Why couldn't she try to be like dad? Dad may have been a jerk but at least he let Sho eat whatever the hell he wanted to.

"I don't know any scientists but I can Google it later. For now just…please eat your peas, little brother. They're good for you. Things that are green are good for you." Said Mob

"I'm going to need to ask a scientist about that too." Said Sho

"Sho….I don't even know where we would find a scientist. Can you please just eat your peas? They're mushy and I bet that they'll go down easier. Like mashes potatoes. I know that you like mashed potatoes." Said Mob

"Peas are nothing like mashed potatoes." Said Sho

"They're mushy." Said Mob. She was running out of ideas to get him to eat these peas. Why wouldn't he just eat what was put in front of him? It wasn't like she was serving him citrus or anything like that. She had even made sure to tell the people who made the food not to give them any lemon because if Sho had citrus then he could die. They had been very nice and understanding…once they had been able to understand her. She didn't think that her English had been that bad…but maybe it was because she was used to American English and stuff. Yes, that was it.

She would go out and learn every language in the world if that was what it would take to get Sho to eat his peas already.

"I hate peas. They'd disgusting and if I try to put them in my mouth then I'll throw up everywhere and it'll be gross." Said Sho as he pushed his peas away. He did it by hand, too, because he had to hide his powers when he was in public. Well not always, Shimazaki said that people never noticed things and when they did notice they tried to explain it away because they didn't want to think that they were going crazy, but big sis wasn't as cool as Shimazaki. She didn't have a lot of chill, Shimazaki had said, just like Minegishi.

But for some reason he liked people who didn't have a lot of chill.

Sho had a lot of chill! He was freezing cold! But no, Shimazaki still liked to hang out with Minegishi and big sis. He'd even taken big sis on a nighttime Tokyo adventure. Sho would have wanted to go and he would have been a lot more fun than big sis! But no, he just went and took big sis, and while he was in a closet with some girl trying to stick her tongue in his mouth and make him touch her boobs and stuff big sis was out there having adventures with Shimazaki…and it was totally normal for Sho to feel this way…because of….reasons. The reasons being very reasonable….reasons…of…reasoning…

He liked adventures!

Yeah. That was it. There were girls everywhere! There were girls in every single corner of the world and…and girls had tried to kiss him in every country he had ever been to…and so that was just not anything unusual. If he wanted to he could get a girl to kiss him and stuff…and a lot of girls had boobs so he could touch a girls boobs whenever he wanted. Well he would have to ask, first, of course because otherwise he would get slapped but he could totally kiss a girl and touch her boobs if he felt like it. Shimazaki said that the trick to getting women was to ask every single woman you met out and then eventually one would say yes…and the only reason Sho didn't do that was because he had better things to do…like go on adventures…and stuff….

He was normal. He was the most normal person in the whole world.

"Please? Just take…um…two bites. That's all. They're good for you." Said Mob. Mom had said that, when they were little, they had to take two bites of something new and if they still didn't like it they could leave the table. She didn't want Sho not to eat his vegetables but…but two bites were better than no bites at all.

"…fine. Two bites." Said Sho. He picked up his spork and took two, tiny, baby sis sized bites. He wondered if she ate food yet. If she did then this would have been the kind of food that she would have eaten. He missed her and he felt sad when he thought about her, she would have loved this place there were napkin for her to rip up and windows for her to look out of and a TV in the corner for her to watch…but he would see her again. Fukuda said that the next mission, the next away mission, was going to be in Korea and he would go in dad's place because dad hated Korea for reasons that Sho was too little to know about. On the way back from Korea they would make a stopover in Seasoning City to inspect the Seventh Division again. Then he would see baby sis.

He couldn't wait.

He was a good big brother to her and he knew that if she was big enough to eat real food he wouldn't make her take even a single bite of food that she wouldn't like. He would only feed her things that she liked even if it was only junk food like cake and cookies and ice cream. What did it matter if she got sick? Fukuda could heal her if she got sick and died from too much sugar like Shimazaki's dog had when he had been a kid. Sho knew how to be a good big brother. He was going to take such good care of little sis…

And also he had to be a good little brother too.

He took his two bites. He could tell that big sis wasn't going to give this up. He usually won the food wars but, sometimes, you had to let your big sister win so that her feelings didn't get hurt. Like when he let Fukuda win their Smash matches even though he sucked more than an after work businessman in a public bathroom near a middle school on a Friday night…whatever that meant. He didn't know. All he knew was that Shimazaki had said that to Hatori and then Shibata had covered Sho's ears and carried him out of the room like it was on fire…so it had to have been really bad. Sho would use that one later.

But not now because good brothers, little or big, did not tell their big sisters that they sucked in any way.

"Thank you." Said Mob even though those were the tiniest bites that she had ever seen in her life. Those were like the polite bites that everyone had taken of Shibata's curry. He had made a British curry, which was really an Indian curry, which was really a spicy curry that made your eyes water and your tongue swell up really bad. Mob had taken as many bites as she could before she couldn't take it anymore and her tears had started to make the curry salty. Everyone had thought that it was too spicy. Shimazaki had even cried. She hadn't even known that he could cry but he could. He hated it because he had to clean out his eyes afterwards but he could totally cry. Sho shouldn't have had to take such tiny bites. There were no spices at all in mushy peas.

And if there were she knew that the restaurant people would have made sure to take the seeds out of the peppers before they put them in.

"Whatever….trade with me. Give me your fish for my peas since you like the peas so much." Said Sho. She would say no and then she would be exposed…but not the kind of exposed where you had to be careful when you peed on a tree so girls didn't see and then freak out and slap you. The kind of exposed where she would be forced to admit that peas sucked, green vegetables sucked, and he was right about everything. Nobody in their right mind would trade disgusting mushy peas that looked like they game pre-chewed and digested with a delicious piece of crispy fish-

Big sis wasn't in her right mind.

He should have seen this coming. She was too nice to him. She had always been way too nice to him. Here she was giving him her whole piece of fish. Not only a little portion of it but the whole thing. She was just handing it over without a fight….she was way too nice. Like Shimazaki had said, she was way too nice, and…and it made no sense! Why did she always have to be so nice to him all the time!

He took the fish.

She was nice and she was offering so she got his peas and he got her fish. She could have said no…but she never said no…but that was ok because she must have liked these peas…because she could be sort of weird sometimes. She slept in high socks, she liked to do school work, she watched the same movie over and over again on a loop, she had been in love with Hatori when someone as cool as Shimazaki was one of her closest friends, and she liked to eat peas.

His sister was a weirdo. A generous weirdo but a weirdo…and he wouldn't have had her any other way.

"Here you go." Said Mob. She had wanted that fish. She had really wanted that fish. That had been a very good looking piece of fish…but there would be others. There would be other pieces of fish at other fish and chips places in the future. She only got one little brother and…and if he wanted her fish then he could have it. She still had her fries…and double the peas…so…so this was ok. This was what love was. When you loved someone then you tried to make them happy. Dad had said that and dad was always trying to make her happy.

And she had to try and make Sho happy.

He deserved that, someone in his life who made him happy, and she would be that person to him. Even if it meant giving up the best part of her meal. She would gladly give up the best part of every meal if it made her little brother happy. That was all that she wanted, his happiness. Who could ever ask for more….like another piece of fish…no. She was not going to ask for more because she was his sister and it was her job to make him happy.

Besides, she at least still had plenty of fries…no, wait, they were called chips here.


	253. Costume Dramas

Masami had always loved costume dramas.

She loved them no matter what country they were set in. Britain included. She loved the history and the pageantry of the costumes and the sets and the intricate plots and such. Suzuki had always found them boring. He either watched TV to learn something or to see something so fantastical that it had no hope at all of existing in life. That was why he liked the show that Daughter had shown him, Neon Genesis Evangelion, a name that was far too long in his opinion but a show with a plot that fascinated and fight scenes that could put every season that he had seen of Gundam to shame….thought that was not saying much at all. That had always been Fukuda's show. He didn't understand it. There was a much richer world to explore in the universe of the Galaxy Express…

But that was not what they were watching now.

They were watching a costume drama. A re-airing of a show that Masami had loved. They were airing a marathon in preparations of a new season. It was a show about a family living in a manor house with their servants at the turn of the last century. Masami had been enjoying it…before she had left. He had only flipped to this show on accident but…but Daughter might have enjoyed it. She liked shows with good costuming, romance, and people relating to people. She was her mother's Daughter too, after all, and she had so much of Masami in her…

Even though she did not share a drop of blood with Masami.

She was so much like her mother down to the nightgown she was wearing. A yellow on tonight. Masami had loved the color yellow. They'd had yellow flowers and table cloths and decorations at their wedding. Her insistence. He hadn't cared. He had been there to marry her and he had achieved that goal so what the room they held their reception in looked like was not something he cared about at all. She had cared, though, even though it had been ridiculous….but it had been worth it to see her smile…

He had no idea what she had been wearing that day, what her dress had looked like or how she had worn her hair, but he would always remember the pure and utter happiness she had radiated clear as if she'd had an aura of her own.

He wondered what Daughter's wedding would be like. He hoped that it would be yellow. He hoped that it would be yellow and she would be happy and that she would be marrying….a man worthy of her. There were no men worthy of her, of course, but that wouldn't stop her from marrying. She would just end up marrying beneath herself…but that was fine. She had him to take care of her. Her husband was of no consequence. He would be there but it would be Daughter's day. He hoped that he could remember what she looked like…

How happy she would be.

She was happy now. He could tell. She her a little smile on her face and her aura was calm and…and she was happy. She was always happy when she was with him. He was always happy when he was with her. Not deliriously happy, he had rarely been deliriously happy in his life, but he was a…content…sort of happy. She made him feel content. She made him feel like everything was going to be alright…well he knew that everything was going to be alright, he was Suzuki Touichirou and everything would always work out for him…but when he was with her he found it so hard to worry about the day to day of his life…the things that drove him insane. The things that made him want to start kicking people in their ribs until they spat blood. He wanted…he didn't have those same sort of violent impulses when he was with Daughter. How could he? She was so small and perfect in his arms…

He loved her so much.

He kissed the top of her head. She liked to receive affection…and he liked to give it. There was a gift to it, being able to show her affection, and he would not take it for granted. Not like he had taken it for granted with Masami. He closed his eyes as he kissed the top of her head. He focused on the feel of her. He focused on the softness of her hair. He focused on the softness of her skin under his fingers. Her small hand. The polish on her nails. She colored her nails blue now. She liked blue. She liked blue a lot…

But she would have looked better in yellow.

"Dad?" asked Mob. Dad was getting sleepy. He kissed her a lot when he got sleepy. She had been sleeping in the same bed as him long enough to be able to tell when he got tired. He pulled her in close and held her hand and kissed her and stuff. Not like when Sho got tired. When he got tired he fought against sleep. He tried to stay up and draw or play games even though being tired just made him make mistakes. He was sort of like baby Mukai like that. She always fought against sleep too. Mob had to rock her to sleep because even though she was tired all the time, babies were the sleepiest people in the world it seemed, and Mob was not a baby…but sometimes it felt like dad was trying to rock her to sleep sometimes.

She didn't need to be held and stuff to fall asleep….but that was ok because she loved dad and dad loved her and this was just how he showed his love.

"Daughter?" asked Suzuki. He still had his eyes closed and he was still kissing the top of her head. He didn't know why he was disappointed at the sound of her voice, at her speaking to him, because he was always happy to hear her speaking to him. Even when she was chattering on about the banalities of her day he was still happy to hear from her. From his Daughter. He was happy to hear from her…though he had wanted her to just….be quiet for a moment.

But this was nice too.

"Are you sleepy? We can go to bed if you want to." Said Mob. It was late and he'd had a big day. So had she. She and Sho had gone ice skating, she was bad at it but he was good at it, and then they got ice cream because winter was the best time to have ice cream because it wouldn't melt. Then they had gone to a park to play in the snow. It had been nice but tiring…and she was tired…

But dad wanted to spend time with her.

He'd had a big day too. Shimazaki had said that dad had gotten into a big fight. It had actually happened because Shibata backed up his story and Shibata never told lies. He didn't know how. He was too nice to tell lies. Minegishi said that the sugar that he put in most of his cooking made him sweet. Mob didn't know how that worked, sugar making you sweet, but he was a nice person. He had been nice enough to not tell her the details of what had happened….

Mob didn't like that details.

Dad always got into fights. That was just part of being the boss of Claw. Dad was the President and because he was the President people came after him. Some people didn't want to become a part of Claw, she had no idea why, but those people sometimes needed convincing. Fighting was the best way to convince people to follow you, dad had said, but that was because he was a boy and most espers were boys. If Mob was the President, she knew that unless dad decided to go on another away mission she would never be the President of Claw, she would be nice to people. She would give people the things that they wanted and she would be nice to them and then they would want to join Claw and then they could all be a part of the future that dad planned together. Dad was going to be the best President of the world ever.

She just wished that all of the espers in the world would see that so dad wouldn't have rough days that made him tired and cuddly…not that she minded the cuddling that much…

"I'll go to sleep when you go to sleep. We can watch this for as long as you want to." Said Suzuki. He used to go to sleep when he couldn't take any more of Masami's programs….and that had been a miscalculation. He had thought that his time with her had been infinite. Obviously it was not. He would have spent more time with her if he had known that she would leave him…but he could always learn from his miscalculations. His time with Daughter was both limited and unlimited so he had to treasure the gift that was being near her.

Because he wasn't sure if this would be alright, holding her and being held by her, when she grew up.

He so looked forward to the day that she grew up and he could be with her all the time…but on the other hand she would be a grown woman. He knew that it was socially acceptable to sleep in the same bed as your child and hold your child….when your child was a child. Eventually children grew up. He knew that he could hold Son like this if he wanted to, it would be fully within his rights as Son's father, but the idea of holding Son like this felt…not right. Not just because he kicked and tossed and turned in his sleep, according to Daughter anyway. He just…could not imagine sharing himself so freely with his son. Or even his Daughter had she been male….

So of course he wouldn't have held Son like this if he had been a grown men.

Men did not do that. That must have been it. Men held women, not other men, unless those men were homosexual but he did not and would not ever understand that. He had been trying to wrap his mind around homosexuality since the year 1986 and the only progress that he had made was realizing that he was not a homosexual and Fukuda was a terrible kisser. He could never and would never understand homosexuality but he did understand heterosexuality. He understood that men held women because women and men married and reproduced and…and it was a pair bonding experience. He was pair bonding with Daughter…

But it was a parent to child pair bond.

He had no idea what sort of pair bond it would be like when she grew up. What sort of bond that he was supposed to forge with her when she became a grown woman. She was a little girl now but one day she would be a grown woman. He would be a grown man and she would be a grown woman and the only women that he had ever held like this had been women he had been involved with…and obviously he would never have those sorts of feelings for his Daughter because no matter how old she got she would always be his Daughter…but she would also be a grown woman…but even when she stopped physically being a child she would always be HIS CHILD…but she had no genetic relation to him…but she was still his child…and he so wanted to spend every single remaining night of his life with her…but she would also be a grown woman…

He always got a headache when he thought about this so he decided to stop thinking about this.

"OK…but we can change it if you want. We've been watching this for a while." Said Mob. She loved dad, she really did, but this was sort of boring. She didn't watch a lot of shows with real people in them. She liked anime and non Japanese anime and Disney and stuff. She sometimes watched shows with real people with Minegishi. Minegishi liked to watch shows where the people fought but were friends and always acted crazy whenever they were laid up. Mob liked it when the people in those shows got along but she would have preferred anime of some kind. She never said so, though, because Minegishi was the one who was sick all the time so they got to pick.

Well not all the time but in the middle of every month they get laid up and Mob had no idea what was wrong with them….but she would make it as easy on them as she could.

Dad wasn't laid up but she still wanted to be nice to him. This seemed like something that he would have liked. It was sort of like a documentary about British people who lived in a big house with a lot of servants. They wore pretty dresses. Mob was mostly watching for the pretty dresses. She didn't like the sisters in this because they didn't get along. The oldest one was mean to everyone, the blonde one wasn't nice either, and neither sister took care of their youngest sister. Not a very fun show at all. Well that made sense, this was an adult show after all, and dad was an adult…

But Mob wasn't.

She was a kid and she wanted to watch anime. She and dad still hadn't finished their new show. They had missed too many details and now they had to start from the beginning again. She and dad were on the part where, again, Asuka joined the group. Mob didn't like this episode. She liked the one where the robot went for a walk on it's own and they had to stop it. That episode was why they had to watch the whole series again. Minegishi had told her that the robot hadn't just decided to go for a walk, it had been sabotaged by Gendo and the blonde lady, and that was why they had to watch the whole show from the very beginning again.

Giant robots and the kids who piloted them would have been an H-word of a lot more interesting than this.

"I know. It's a marathon. Twenty four hours a day. We can stay up all night if you want." Said Suzuki. She must have wanted to stay up all night. He could see the way her aura rippled when he said that. She was the easiest person in the world to read. He wished that Masami would have been more like her. Then he might have been able to understand her. She had always been so complicated. She had always been so…unreadable. She had been like the time that he had picked up one of Shimazaki's brail novels. Suzuki knew that he was looking at words, Japanese words, but he had no idea what they meant. The novel had been unreadable. Masami had always been unreadable. He had loved her, he had loved the mystery of unraveling her, but…but he also loved having someone near to him who he could understand in always. Someone who understood him in all ways. Auras made things easier.

"Um….we need sleep. Remember how you said that, tomorrow, you were going to take me somewhere and show me something interesting?" asked Mob. She didn't think that she could stay up all night watching this. Her eyes would have to be held open with tape. This was an adult show and she was not an adult so she had no interest in this…but dad did and she was not going to ruin this. He was happy. He was happy and she wanted to keep him that way.

"We can always postpone that trip until next week. We're going to be spending quite a lot of time in London. Things are…not going according to plan. So we'll be here for a while." Said Suzuki. He was not going to go into the details of his MANY miscalculations when it came to the London problem. There were more espers in this organization and they proved to be less…enthusiastic…about joining him than he had thought. This was such a stressful trip. He would have gone to Korea before…no. No. Once this was over he would be moving along to…anywhere other than Korea. He'd rather send Fukuda and Son than set foot back in the country.

And it had nothing to do with that baby.

She was going on a year old now. She might have been able to stand if not walk…and she would have been eating solid food…and she may have even been speaking. She may have been able to respond to her name. What were they calling her these days? Was she Mi-Cha again? Or was she still Mukai? Or were they calling her something entirely new? He didn't know and he didn't know why he cared. That was not his child. Just because he'd ejaculated inside of Pang Sujin that did not mean that he fathered her Daughter. His children came from Masami and that baby had not come from Masami so, therefore, that was not his baby. Simple. Him not wanting to go back to Korea had nothing to do with that baby.

It had everything to do with her mother.

He hated where his mind went sometimes. He was a man and he thought about women and that was just the way things went. He thought of Masami almost constantly. The sound of her voice, the way the light got caught in her hair, the way she felt in his arms, the way he felt inside of her…and she was his wife so that was alright. The thoughts that he had about other women…about Pang Sujin…that was not ok. The way his mind would go to how it felt, the pure filth of it, taking her on his desk….the feel of her soft skin under his hands…the way she had said his name…the feel of her thighs on either side of him…

He hated his mind sometimes.

He hated the way that it betrayed him. Sex was not a need. Sex was not something that should have entered his mind. He had a wife and she was gone which meant that he had no reason to think about having sex. So those were not the thoughts and memories his idle mind should have conjured up. He had a wife and…and she was gone so he should not have been thinking about her and what it was to hold her and be near her….and he should not have been thinking about Pang Sujin either. He should not have been thinking about what she would have been like in the morning. What it would have been like to hold her. If she had ever finished that novel she had been telling him about. What she thought about the second Galaxy Express film, in his opinion she would have found it inferior to the first, and what she would have thought of this new series Daughter had shown him…

He held Daughter closer.

"Um….but I'm really looking forward to going on this trip with you and stuff…and I don't want to wait. I already laid out my clothes for tomorrow too. So I think that we should go to bed tonight. We can watch this show another time. It's probably somewhere on the internet. Everything is on the internet." Said Mob. She wanted to watch their show, their anime, and she did not want to stay up all night. She had just gotten her sleep cycle to match the clock in England and she did not want to mess it up again…and also she didn't want to watch these sister not get along. The little sister wanted to hang out with the older sisters, it was obvious, and she wanted her older sisters to be into the stuff that she was into. Even if you didn't care what your little sister was into you still had to try. She didn't like fighting games but she still played them for Sho. That was what big sisters did.

She didn't know how much more of this show she could take.

But she would try and take it for dad if he really wanted to watch this. She figured that he liked it. She knew mom would have. She liked stuff like this. Mom hadn't really asked Mob to watch with her but she had just been little…and also Sho was for mom and she was for dad so there was that. She wished that moms and dads could share their love with both of their kids…but that was not how this worked. Well she would try to make it work better, she would share her love equally, with all of her kids…and if her husband couldn't then he needed to work harder at it.

She loved her parents with all of her heart but…but she was a different person than the both of them and she knew how to share her love equally.

"You're right. Very well then. I'm sure that your friend Hatori could find this on the internet for you…and other shows in this vein, too. Your mother…she was very fond of these. I remember the names of some of the ones she followed. You might enjoy them as well." Said Suzuki. He pulled her even closer. She used him as a pillow sometimes, like Masami had, and he found it comforting. She was so warm and soft. He had always shied away from Masami. He had found it uncomfortable having her on his chest like that, and his arms had gone to pins and needles when he had held her like this, but…but that never happened when he held Daughter.

She was small now.

She was small and one day she would not be small…and then he didn't know what he could do. She would share her bed with another…and he knows that it should not bother him the way it did. She would find another and….and that was nature's way. Since the day he had signed that papers that made her his he knew that she would meet someone, marry him, and have his children. The children would be espers and that was what he had been looking forward to. More espers in the world. He still wanted that but…but the thought that someone could just take her away…..away from him….

He would have held her tighter but he did not want to crush her bones.

He can feel her there with him. She is resting on his chest. He can feel the weight of her in his arms and on his chest. He can feel the cotton of her nightgown against his arms. He can feel the glittery thread in her socks, it's itchy, against his legs where his pant legs had ridden up. She was so soft and warm in his arms…and he loved her so much. She was there and…and he had no idea how much time he would have with her…but he would treat the time that he had with her as the gift that it was.

"Right…ok. Let's watch Evangelion now…because if we fall asleep it'll be ok…because we're re-watching the first half." Said Mob. She really hoped that this didn't become their new show…but if mom had liked this then she would like it too. She wished that she had spent more time with mom when she had been around…but not so much that she took mom away from Sho. Mom was for Sho and…and Dad was for her but…but she also wanted to have had more time with mom….

She had been gone for so long.

She had been gone for years but Mob had not forgotten her. She would always remember her mom and…and how much she had loved her…and it was just so weird when dad talked about her. He had said, before, that she was a traitor for leaving but then he just went and talked about her like….like she wasn't a traitor. She didn't know what to make of that so…so she made nothing of it. She didn't want to risk asking dad more about mom. She didn't want to risk asking him if he and mom had laid up in bed together all night like this and cuddled. She had seen them cuddling so few times that if she counted them on one hand she would have had spare fingers…and stuff…and she wanted to know what mom had been…like. Had she and dad hung out? What did they do together? What had mom been like as a kid? Had she had friends? What had it been like when she had met dad? She had asked before but…but mom had gotten mad at her…

And she would never have answers.

She knew that if she asked dad about mom he would get mad. So she didn't ask him. He might have missed her and he might have thought that she was a traitor. Mob didn't know. She didn't know and she would never know so she might as well have just…just sat there and hung out with dad. He was playing with her hair again. He was touching her hair again and…and that was fine. He kissed the top of her head again. That was fine too.

He loved her so it was fine.

"That would be wonderful." Said Suzuki. He kissed her on the top of her head and lingered. She was so like her mother. Masami had always been so happy to spend time with him...and he hadn't realized that it was such a gift to be near her…but he knew that it was a gift to be near Daughter. She wasn't Masami, she liked to wear blue and watch anime, but she was…she was also so much like Daughter…and in some ways she was better.

Daughter liked costume dramas…but she also liked other things….things they had in common…and in some ways that was better.


	254. Walking Through a Big, Fancy, House

Mob was bored.

Not that she would show it, of course, because then that would have hurt dad's feelings. It was Sunday. On Sundays, from midnight to midnight, they spent time together. So she was not going to complain even though she was bored. Very bored. Dad had brought her to a big fancy house, in England people had big fancy houses that they opened up for tours so that people could see their big fancy houses, and she was supposed to be enjoying exploring this big fancy house. Dad had said, last night, that he was bringing her here because mom would have liked it…which had been weird….

Very weird.

He never talked about mom. He had never talked about mom before except to say that she was a traitor and that she and Sho should never talk about her ever again. That was normal. Normal for dad. But then last night when she was about to go to sleep dad told her that he was going to take her to a place that mom would have liked to go to. This big fancy house. This big fancy house from the show the she liked about the British people who wore pretty dresses and lived in big fancy houses and stuff. She liked that show and…and Mob tried to like it too…because mom liked it…and she wanted to be like mom.

Mom had liked some very boring shows, though.

Mom…she would have liked this. Dad had said so. He knew mom better than she did. She sort of remembered mom….sort of. She wore a lot of yellow and liked to paint her nails red and she liked to watch boring shows about fancy people in fancy houses but she also liked the Aristocats a lot and she cooked all the time and she wore perfume and her lotion smelled nice and she had the fuzzy socks that Mob had worn once when she was little but then they felt weird so Mob took them off…and also one time she had put on mom's yellow dress and it had been too big and mom had been upset because Mob should not have been in her closet and…and stuff like that…so she sort of remembered mom….

But dad must have remembered her even better that Mob and Sho put together did.

Dad was lucky. He knew all of these things about mom that Mob didn't know. Like what her favorite show had been and how she had always wanted to come and see a big fancy English house and stuff. Mob should have known that mom liked big houses. The Castle had been so big that there were parts of it that she and Sho had never even gone to. It was three houses put together. Dad had done that for mom. You were supposed to live in a big fancy house when you had a lot of money and stuff. Mob didn't really understand it. Why would anyone need that much house? The Castle she had lived in and also this house? Who needed that much space?

When Mob grew up she hoped that she could live in a Claw house.

Dad had houses and stuff all over the world for people to live in. Where they lived in England right now was called a row house. Dad hadn't built this one, he had bought it, but the ones that he had built for Claw were called prefabs. They all looked the same and were just big enough for the people living in them. She lived those best. You could move from house to house, they did that sometimes when Sho put too many holes in the walls or the house got too dirty, and also if you broke it you could just have it built again. That would be good if Mob ended up having boys. Boys were always breaking things and putting holes in the walls and stuff. She hoped that she lived in a Claw house but she got the feeling that after dad took over the world he would have a big fancy house like this built for them to live in. Her and him. Not her and him and Sho because Sho was a boy and boys got to have their own houses and stuff. Girls had to stay with their parents for the rest of their lives…or their parent's lives. Whoever died first. Mob didn't like to think about it but she figured that dad would di first because he was over thirty years older than her. Also people were always trying to kill him. But then again Fukuda was always there to heal him and stuff….

Mob wished that dad had brought Fukuda along.

He and Fukuda were the same age and they had both been friends with mom, well dad had been married to mom which was a level above even best friends with matching bracelets, so maybe they both would have had fun here. More fun than Mob was having. One room and then another and then another…this was an adult thing. Mob was not an adult and….and she was not having fun but…but she had to try. She had to try and have fun and stuff because dad had brought her, not Fukuda, and she was supposed to be having fun here just like mom would have had fun here….

She was trying as hard as she could.

She was looking around the room at all of the old furniture and paintings and just trying to have fun. She knew this room from the show. This was the room where the one sister had slapped the other because she had kissed a boy without being married to him…which was a thing in England. She didn't know why that was such a big deal here. She had kissed a boy without being married to him and nothing bad had happened…well she had never seen him again and she had spent a lot of time in love with him…but it hadn't been a bad thing. Minegishi had said that some people kissed a lot of people before being married, some people only kissed the person that they were going to marry, some people just went around kissing people with no intention of marrying them, some people only kissed one person but had no plans on marrying them, and some people never kissed anyone at all. All of those options were equally valid. So she really didn't get it but like she'd been told her whole life she was very clueless.

That was not something that she could help about herself.

If she could get a clue then she would have gotten one a long time ago. There was so much in life that she just…didn't get. She didn't get the big things like why mom had run away from home or why dad all of a sudden was talking about her again or even the little things like why Sho had to take apart all of his food, these days, before he ate it or why Minegishi let Shimazaki call them Toshi now even though they hated it. Mob wished that she could get a clue and had thought that she would be able to once she got older but, obviously, that was not going to happen. Dad hadn't been able to get a clue either, he had said, but it didn't matter because he was going to take over the world and stuff. It mattered to Mob, though, since she had no plans of personally taking over the world and also…also it was hard not being able to understand stuff.

There was so much stuff that she could not understand.

She caught sight of herself in the window. She could see her reflection but also the world outside of the window. There was so much snow on the ground, even more than had been in London, and she wanted to play in it. Preferably with Sho because they always had fun in the snow together. She wanted to go out there with Sho and make a snow fort and a snowman and a snowwoman for the snowman and then some snowkids to make the family and then some pets and then Sho would kick it down and stuff but that was ok because it was only snow. They could throw snowballs, well Sho would throw snowballs at her anyway, but that was ok unless he decided to put snow down her back again…but that was ok too because it made Sho happy even though she hated it…and sometimes you had to put up with things that you didn't like to make the person you loved happy. That was just part of loving someone. Like how she loved dad so she wore her yellow Belle dress even though it was getting too small and she came to this place with him because mom would have liked it and she didn't even ask to play in the snow even though there were kilometers of untouched snow on the grounds…

So. Much. Snow.

And this house was on a hill too. Sho would have loved this. They could have gone sledding together. They could have used their powers to go faster, well Sho did that, to go so fast that they shot off into the air. It wouldn't have been scary at all because she could have caught them. They could have used their powers to go up the hill backwards, too, so that they wouldn't have to get tired walking up and down the hill again. They had done that for Sho's last birthday, his ninth not his tenth, well not the part with the powers because there had been other kids there…but still. Snow was fun. Snow was a lot more fun than walking around through someone else's big, fancy, house….

But mom would have liked this…so Mob was going to try to like this…and also she was going to do her best to make dad happy.

"The view is very nice, isn't it Daughter?" asked dad. He hadn't snuck up on her, she had been able to feel his aura, but she still tensed up when he came near. She didn't know why. She knew that he wasn't going to hit her, and he had hardly ever hit her, but she still tensed up when he came near. She didn't know why. She couldn't understand herself sometimes.

"Huh?" asked Mob. She hadn't been listening. There was snow coming down again. Not a lot of it but a little bit. It was pretty. This place must have been so nice during Christmastime. She wondered if when they shot the Christmas special of this show it had been during the actual Christmastime. They should have, it was so pretty, and also when they stopped shooting the show they all could have gone and played in the snow…but adults didn't play in the snow. Well not most of the time. Shimazaki and Sho played in the snow but Shimazaki was always a little drunk or high, he had said, because it made life more interesting.

But dad didn't care about making life interesting.

"The view. You're looking out the window. It's nice. I enjoy it, anyway, being able to see for kilometers. They had the right idea when they had built this house." Said dad. Mob nodded. She didn't looked over at him. She could see him reflected in the window. The windows were tall enough to reflect them both. He was tall…or maybe she was just short. She was growing, her dress was kind of short now, but dad would always be bigger and taller than her. Even his aura was bigger than hers. She could feel his aura all around her. He was around her and his aura was around her. She stood still and watched them both. She watched herself watching herself. She watched dad watching her. Dad wasn't watching himself. He was watching her. Sometimes it felt like he was always watching her.

She could always feel his aura on him.

For this whole day his aura had been on her. His aura had been on her even if his eyes hadn't been on her. She wanted…she wanted him to pay attention to someone else…but she also wanted him to pay attention to her. She wanted him to pay attention to her because she knew how hard it was, how much it hurt, when dad stopped looking at her or talking to her or…or even letting his aura touch hers….and she didn't want dad to ignore her again…and that meant that he would smother her…but it was ok.

It was Sunday and he smothered her on Sundays.

"I like it." Said Mob. She liked the snow, she liked the trees, and she liked how if she looked out the window for long enough, if she looked at her reflection in the window, she could sort of see herself as being outside. She could see herself being outside and in the snow….but she wasn't. Dad was beside her. She knew that she was beside him. She could feel his aura. She could feel him.

He put his hand on her back.

She wondered if he was going to kiss the top of her head again. He had been doing that a lot lately. When she had been little dad had hardly ever hugged her let alone kissed her but now it felt like she was always being held and touched and kissed and stuff. She had always wanted that, for dad to love her and stuff, and she knew that this was how your parents were supposed to be….but it just felt…weird. Mom had held her when she had been little and kissed her and stuff like that. Dad hadn't. But then when she had gotten older mom had stopped…but dad had never started…so maybe he was just making up for lost times. She held Sho and kissed him all the time…but maybe she should stop. Maybe he didn't like it.

Not that Mob didn't like it. This was how dad showed love and she had spent her whole life wanting dad to show her love…so this was ok.

"When I build a house for you you'll have a view just like this." said dad. He had his hand on her back now. She could feel how warm he was. She felt sort of cold. She didn't know why. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with dad…and stuff. Really, she did. She loved her dad and…and stuff. She just…she had always imagined living either in the Castle or a house she had picked out herself…but this was ok too. She had to stay with dad for the rest of her life. That was what he wanted and she was his Daughter so she had to be with him for the rest of his life. She wasn't going to run away from him or anything like that. She knew how much t hurt when the person you loved just ran away one day. She didn't think that she could ever do that to anyone.

"Um…ok. We can just like in Claw houses." Said Mob. She didn't want to live in a house this big. She would never see her kids when she had them. Everyone would get lost in this house and they'd spend the rest of their lives trying to find each other. She had lived in a house so big that there were rooms she had never even seen, rooms that her family had never even used, and rooms that you could get lost in…and she didn't want that. She wanted to live in the Castle, if she had to live in a great big house, and then only…only with Sho. With Sho and dad, because she had to live with dad for the rest of her life, and also her friends because there was the room…but of course not while dad was still alive…

But really she just wanted a regular sized house where her family could live.

"No, you deserve better. I'll build you a house bigger than any that has ever been. Even a British manor house if you want. Your mother might have liked a real British manor house….or one better than the one she had." Said dad. Mob wanted to tell him that she had no idea what mom would have wanted. She wanted to tell him that if he wanted to know what mom wanted he should have found her and asked her himself…but she was sort of in a bad mood from being bored and also having to get up early after staying up late. She would never tell dad what she was actually thinking. She wasn't a mean person like that. Especially not to her own dad.

"Dad….I don't care where I live just so long as I live with Sho…and you…and my friends are there too." Said Mob. She didn't like it when he talked about the future. Well she liked it when he talked about how good the future would be for them and all of the other espers in the world and stuff but she didn't much like it when he talked about the future that they would have together. She didn't want to think about how she would spend the rest of her life with him and not be able to pick her own house or life or…or anything.

Mom had said that she could grow up to be whoever she wanted to be.

Mom had said that she would grow up and go to university and get a job and meet someone who she would love and then get married and have babies and stuff like that. Dad said that she had to spend the rest of her life with him and marry an esper and then she would have her husband and her kids and her dad and stuff…and she didn't get to pick…and she wanted to pick. She wanted to pick for herself but she couldn't. She couldn't even pick when she went outside to play in the snow so of course she wouldn't be able to pick her own life.

"Well I care where you live…but I will take what you want into account. There will be room for your friends…next door. Not in the house. Even if there is enough room in the house." Said dad. Mob smiled. At least her friends would be next door forever. That would be good. They could hang out together forever. She could hang out with Minegishi all day and all night and whenever she wanted…well when she wasn't hanging out with dad, too. Dad would want to hang out with her all the time. He would have more time once he took over the world and gave it to Sho…and that would be…something.

She didn't know what that would be.

For her whole life she had wanted to spend time with dad. Even when she had been really little and dad had lived in the house but had also been gone for weeks and weeks and weeks and stuff. She had always wanted dad to be there and to be with her…but now she had him and he smothered her…but also he had ignored her and that had been worse…and she just…she had no idea how she felt. She wanted to be with dad and she wanted to not be with dad and…and she also really just wanted to be out there playing in the snow. Even if it would have been all by herself because it was just her and dad not her and Sho….and stuff. She would have been out there all on her own. Dad wouldn't have wanted to play in the snow with her.

Probably.

"I would like that a lot, dad. Being near my friends I mean. But I like to be with you too! I mean I'm…I'm happy to be here with you." Said Mob. She was not lying. She had been about to say that she had been having fun but that would have been a lie. She was not a liar. She wasn't good at it and she didn't like to lie. So she told the truth. She liked being with dad. Even though he was smothering her again, with his aura and his hand, she still liked being near him. He was being nice…or at least trying to be. He had taken her to this place because he thought that she would like it here….because mom had…and Mob didn't know why dad thought that she would like something just because mom had liked it. They were mother and daughter but Sho and dad were father and son and they weren't alike it all.

"I'm happy too. I knew you would like this place. Your mother would have loved it. Come along now, we have so many other rooms to see. You can get some ideas for the type of house you'll want for us when you grow up." Said dad

"How many more rooms?" asked Mob. She was tired. She was bored. She wanted to go home to play with Sho…well she really wanted to play in the snow…but she also missed Sho. She didn't want to see any more rooms…but dad did. She knew that he did and she wanted to make him happy. Everything was just easier when dad was happy.

"Twenty." Said Dad. Mob made herself stay calm. She could…she could try to see all of the rooms...even though they had already seen so many…and seeing them in life wasn't really that interesting.

"Twenty? Do we have to see them all?" asked Mob. She had to walk through TWENTY more rooms? She knew that the Castle had been big but…but she'd didn't think that it'd had twenty rooms. That was…in addition to the rooms that they had seen…who needed that much space? Maybe people with big families. Maybe British people just had really big families. She had a little family, just her and dad and Sho, but she knew that some people had big families. There were even some families with twenty kids…so that was why someone would need that many rooms she imagined.

Mob didn't think that she wanted to have twenty kids

She had no idea how many kids she would have but she knew that more than ten was too many kids. She knew that she would love them all and stuff but…but it was hard enough to take care of Sho sometimes. She didn't know what she would do with twenty little brothers…but maybe she would have a bunch of girls. Baby Mukai hadn't been that hard to take care of when Mob had gotten the hang of it….but maybe that was because she was a baby. Babies were easy because they couldn't run away and stuff….

Or maybe she could now.

Mukai was almost one now. Mob had read, before, that one year olds could walk ad stuff…and she had missed her own sister's…pretend sister's….first steps. She was going to do so much and Mob would never see it…but she had her own mom who was there for her and who would take care of her and stuff…and Mob should have been happy about her having a family and stuff. They were just pretend siblings after all. She may have looked a lot like dad and Sho but she hadn't been her sister. She hadn't come from mom and dad so she was not her sister. She had come from Korea, not Japan, and her mom had been Korean. Mom was not Korea. She was half Japanese. So was dad. So was Mob and so was Sho. But Mukai was Korean. She was Korean with red hair and blue eyes…and not Japanese…and not her sister….

So why did Mob miss her like this?

Mob didn't know. She didn't know why she felt like this and she didn't know how to make it stop. She leaned into dad's hand. Dad was there. She had been so alone and…and now she was less alone. She was with dad and…and he was there for her and she was there for him…so there was no need to have this alone type feeling inside of herself. She leaned into dad's hand. He pulled her close and moved his hand so he was holding her across her body. He was strong and she was small but…but him being there for her was better than him ignoring her.

"Are you getting tired? If you're tired I can carry you….possibly. How much do you weigh?" asked dad

"Thirty seven kilos." Said Mob. She knew that dad could lift her with his powers but they were in public now. She didn't know if dad could lift her on his own though. She weighed a lot, Minegishi couldn't lift her, and she knew that dad was a lot older than Minegishi and also his back hurt him a lot. Sometimes he even hurt his back getting out of bed. She didn't know what would happen if he tried to lift her up.

"No, I can't lift you out of my own strength, I don't know if my back could take it, but we can rest if you want to." Said Dad. Mob looked out the window again. She mostly just wanted to play in the snow. It was just so…nice. The snow in city had already been stepped in and played in and stuff. The snow here was white and smooth and she would have been the only person to have played in the snow….but they were not here to play in the snow. That was a Mob thing. They were here to look at stuff and get ideas for what their house would be like when she grew up. That was a dad thing. Well they were here because this was the house where mom's favorite show had been shot…so really this was a mom thing….and maybe he should have brought mom here when she had been here and-

And she was tired and bored and she was having mean thoughts and she was not supposed to be mean so she just…stopped thinking mean thoughts like that.

She calmed down. She was tired and when she was tired sometimes she thought mean thoughts. Like how Minegishi could be especially pointy when they were tired or if it was their laid up time. She had to think of dad. She had a lot of friends to do the things that she liked with but dad had no friends at all. That meant that she had to be his friend and do things with him that he liked. Mom had run away from him too so she had to do mom things. She had to go to places mom would like and stuff…

But what about what she wanted?

She had friends to have fun with and…and that should have been enough…but she just…she knew that she had to do what dad wanted. Dad was the boss and she was just the kid so she wasn't the boss…and also dad was the President of Claw and she was just the under vice president. That meant that she had power second only to dad and the vice president. She couldn't tell dad what to do…but what she wanted to do…did that matter? She wanted it to matter….and stuff….she wanted to do things that she liked to do. She wanted to play in the snow…and also she had a fun vape pen in her bag but she would not be smoking that now….but she really wanted to play in the snow…and she wanted…

She wanted to at least ask.

"OK…we don't have to rest but when we're done….can I go outside and play in the snow? I just…like to play in the snow." Said Mob. She thought that maybe it would be ok to ask. Even if he got mad he had said that he would never hit her…and he had hardly ever hit her to begin with…and stuff…so maybe she could ask.

"They don't allow people to play in the snow here, I apologize…but we're in the country. I can find a place with snow for you to play in if that's what you want. If that's what would make you happy." Said dad. Mob blinked. He had just…said yes? But he never said yes…he never said yes to Sho. She wasn't Sho. She was Daughter and Sho was Son and…and dad liked her better. Dad had always liked her better and…and she wanted dad to like Sho as much as he liked her…and stuff…but also she was sort of happy to play in the snow…even though if Sho asked he would have said no…

Was it ok to play in the snow?

"Um….I would like that. Let's go and…and see the twenty other rooms." Said Mob. She held dad's hand so they wouldn't get separated. Dad held her hand tight, he was the one who had been worried about them getting separated since he was the one who started the hand holding thing, and she let him. Even though he was strong and he was holding her hand too tight…but that was just how his love was. His love was too much sometimes, and sometimes it was hard, and…and stuff. But that was ok because sometimes it was nice. Sometimes she had to go to boring places from shows she didn't like and also wear dresses that didn't fit because dad said that she looked nice in yellow. Sometimes she had to do things that she didn't like but….but that was ok because sometimes in doing things that she didn't like she could do things that she did like…and that made it all worth it….

Even if she had to be bored a lot of the time.


	255. Convenience Stores Can Be Stressful

Sho was the Seeing Eye kid.

He had to be, sometimes, because they didn't put brail labels on things. He and Shimazaki had gone to a combini, which in England was called a corner shop, and Sho had to be the one to read labels on things and also he had to pay, too, because Shimazaki didn't carry money on him. He said that there was no point to it because he stole when he needed things or he had other people get him things and stuff. Sho was seeing for him because he really wanted double chocolate pudding, spicy cheese chips, and cherry coke…and Sho was the only person who could help him.

"Sho, what's in this can?" asked Shimazaki. They were over at the fridge section now. They had baskets full of snacks, Shimazaki had decided that when they got there he wanted everything that tasted good and right, and Sho was happy to read all the labels on everything in the store for him.

This was kind of like they were on an adventure.

Big sis had gone on an adventure with Shimazaki and now it was Sho's turn. Their adventure had taken them to a combini. He had no idea where big sis had gone with Shimazaki on their adventure but it must have been less fun than this. Big sis was kind of boring and stuff, even when they went for snacks she always got the same thing, not like Sho. He would try anything, eat anything, and do anything. He was fun like that.

And Shimazaki liked fun people.

"Come on seeing eye kid, I need you." Said Shimazaki. Right. Sho out down what he had been holding and took the can from Shimazaki's hand. Their fingers brushed. Sho felt their fingers touch…and he felt sort of warm…but that was just because of how they had just shared body heat after having been standing in front of the fridge section for a while. He knew that they had been there for a while and that other people would have wanted a turn but…but he wasn't going to move. Not when he hadn't read every single can on the shelf. He didn't care if his basket was heavy, or that he wasn't sure how much all of this cost, or if he wasn't sure how much British money he had…or even how their money worked…he didn't care. He and Shimazaki were on an adventure, a combini adventure, and he was going to keep this adventure going for as long as possible.

"It says that it's…Vitmo." Said Sho as he read the can. He had thought that his English was better than that. He had thought that he had good English but, obviously, he needed to practice. Shimazaki probably thought that he was so dumb. Minegishi spoke a hundred languages or something. They were his closest competition for being best friends with Shimazaki. Sho was going to do his best to win, though, even though he had just made an idiot out of himself.

"What the hell is a Vitmo?" asked Shimazaki. Sho flipped the can over and red the ingredients. That wasn't helpful. The can had fruit on the front but, like, all of the fruits. He had no idea which fruit it was supposed to taste like…or if it was supposed to be fruit punch…and if he gambled and said that it was fruit punch but instead it was grapefruit or something…and then he would have looked like a complete and total moron and…

"Uh…I think…" said Sho. He had no clue what he was supposed to say, maybe fruit punch? It seemed like it would be more likely to be fruit punch flavor but things were different in this country and nothing was as it seemed. Like how fries were chips and chips were crisps and people wore their shoes inside and also biscuits were cookies and cookies were biscuits cookies weren't for gravy but he had wanted biscuits for his gravy because he'd had a glass of gravy for breakfast and that was not weird because dad ate ketchup out of glasses and gravy was a liquid so it belonged in glasses and they should have canned it and-and-

"It might be…uh…" said Sho. He had to make words so he made words but they weren't the words that he had needed but he needed to stall for time and he needed to figure this out and he was being so boring and Shimazaki hated boring people and he was going to teleport away and leave Sho alone and-and-and-

"It's fruity flavored vitamin drink. Sort of like punch but not as sweet. You'd be able to tell if you opened your eyes. Just saying." Sho turned around and almost jumped. There was a girl right next to him. How long had she BEEN there? How had not sensed-no aura. She had no aura because she was a normal person. Right. There were normal people around him now. It was hard getting used to being around them, being this close to them, and stuff.

Especially other kids.

"I doubt that would help but if you insist." Said Shimazaki. Sho knew what he was going to do and he knew that there was nothing that he could do to stop him. He always did this when people asked him to open his eyes. It was sort of mean to do it to girls and stuff. They hated gross stuff. This girl would probably yell or cry or something and then Sho would feel like a jerk even though he hadn't done anything. Not that he would tell Shimazaki to never do that again. That was just a thing he did.

And Sho didn't mind when he just randomly opened his eyes anyway.

His eyes were cool when he opened them. Sho had been a little freaked out when they had first met but he had gotten used to it. It was gross in the cool way. He was the only person that thought so. Everyone else thought that it was gross but everyone else was super boring and stuff. That was why he was Shimazaki's best friend…well the best candidate for being his best friend, because he wasn't a boring person at all.

And he was not going to freak out when Shimazaki opened his eyes.

"That's bloody brilliant. Were you born like that or did you both your eyes in an accident? Or a fight? Or did you see something terrible and you had to gouge them out?" said the girl. It took Sho a minute to figure out what she was saying. The English that they spoke here was so weird…but then again most of his English practice came from books and TV. Still, he spoke good enough English to answer before Shimazaki did. He just…didn't much like Shimazaki talking to other people…and stuff. But that was just what it was like when you tried to make someone your best friend. That was why Fukuda never let him talk to other people when they were together. That was normal and Sho was normal.

"He was born like that. Sometimes people are just born like that for reasons." Said Sho quickly. He tried to turn around and get back to looking at cans with Shimazaki but…for some reason Shimazaki wouldn't let him turn around. He pressed his hand to his back and kept him from getting back to what they were doing. He didn't get it…but it was nice being this close. Even if Shimazaki smelled all skunky again…but you were supposed to want to be near your best friend so this was normal.

"I think it's brilliant…and I'm not taking the piss or acting the prick. I really do think that's brilliant. One time I saw a person who'd been born with six fingers but that's not nearly as brilliant as not having eyes…sorry about you being blind though." said the girl

"Um…" said Sho. He was still translating in his head what she had said. He knew what taking a piss meant but he got the feeling that taking the piss meant something entirely different…and he had no idea what acting the prick meant. He went through all of the English he knew…and came up with nothing at all.

"No offense taken, I'm brilliant and I know it. My English is pretty limited though, his is much better than mine." Said Shimazaki. Sho turned to face him even though his hand was on his back trying to get him to face that girl for some reason. He turned fast and faced him even though he didn't have to face him, since he couldn't see and he still had his eyes opened so the whole world could tell he couldn't see, and was about to ask him what he was on about, his English was better than Sho's, but Shimazaki cut him off.

"I can only do so much for you as your wingman. Come on, talk to her, you have her attention and that's seventy five percent of it." Said Shimazaki in Japanese. Sho had no idea what a wingman was, apparently he was bad at Japanese too, but he didn't have time to argue because Shimazaki turned him around so he could face the girl. He was strong, very strong, and a lot bigger than Sho too. That was why Sho let himself be turned around.

"What were you speaking? Chinese?" asked the girl. Sho could feel Shimazaki walking away. Great. Now he was stuck talking to some girl in a language he was bad at. Great. This adventure sucked. Shimazaki had better have been getting a loaf of bread for them to throw at the winter park ducks. That was the only thing that could have made this worth it. Sho didn't dislike girls, he just didn't have a lot in common with them, and also they had a habit of trying to hold his hand and kiss him.

He really hoped that this girl wasn't going to try any of that.

She was acting like she might. Her face was all red and she was shifting in place…but maybe because she had come in out of the cold. Her face might have just gotten red in the cold like his did. She was pale like him and she had red hair too. Red haired people were pale. That was neat, actually, seeing another person with red hair.

"Japanese." Said Sho. She leaned in really close…and he took a step back. Girls only got that close if they were trying to kiss him…and he did not want that…he stopped taking steps back. There was nothing wrong with girls kissing him. Girls were supposed to want to kiss him. He was supposed to want to kiss girls. That was normal and he was normal and…and if she kissed him then he would let her…and he…he wanted her to kiss him…

He really did!

She didn't kiss him though, and he was relieved, even though he shouldn't have been. He should have been wanting to kiss her and hold her hand and stuff. He was ten now, not nine, and not a little kid anymore. He didn't know what was wrong with him and stuff. He had no clue. He was as clueless as big sis. He sort of wanted to, wished that he had, gone with her and dad on their trip to wherever dad was taking her…but…no. That would have involved hanging out with dad and he would rather kiss a hundred girls on the mouth with all of that weird stuff that the pink haired girl had tried to do to him at the holiday party….and he SHOULD have wanted to do that more than wanting to hang out with his dad…

He didn't understand himself.

And he didn't understand her, either. She was so close to him that their noses were practically touching. He could see her freckles. She had them on her face like he did but she had more of them. Her hair, the hair that he could see peeking out from under her hat, was red but not as bright as his. He had no clue why she was so close. Was he supposed to kiss her? But he had just met her…but that was how things went sometimes. Like in movies where two people met at a party and then kissed and did all of the other stuff and then the guy neve called the girl again so the girl went crazy and killed the guy and…

…and he needed to stop thinking about this. It was weird.

"Yeah, I can see it, in your eyes at least. They're nice." Said the girl. She was close to him, still close to him, and he could smell the gum that she was chewing.

"Um…thanks? Your eyes are nice too? They're….blue." asked Sho. This was…he had no idea what he was supposed to do here. You were supposed to tell girls that they had pretty eyes…and her eyes were…eyes. Blue. Like his. So they were nice…right?

"Thanks for noticing. I'm Emmy McBride by the way." said the girl. She took a step back. Sho felt better. He had felt all…smothered…and stuff. Now he had room to breathe. Were all British people like this? All close and stuff? He had no idea. He felt around behind him. Shimazaki was pretending to read a magazine. He did that sometimes to mess with people. Sho wanted to be over there messing with people and not here talking to this girl….but he was not a jerk. He was not going to be a jerk to a girl that he had just met. He was going to introduce himself and-

How did that go in this country?

Bow? No, that was Japan. Shake hands? But she hadn't offered. Just…say his name? But that couldn't have been right….but still, that was what she had done, and this was her country so maybe he should just….copy her? Yeah, that must have been it. He should just copy her. He didn't much want to talk to her but he didn't much want to be rude either.

"I'm Suzuki Sho….uh…Sho Suzuki. Because family names are last here. Um…it's nice to meet you." Said Sho.

"Nice to meet you too. I've never met anyone who's Japanese before. This is so brilliant. What brings you here?" asked the girl, Emmy, her name was Emmy. Right, people liked it when you remembered their names. He felt around for Shimazaki again. He wished that he would just come over and teleport him away. He wanted to hang out with him, not talk to some girl, but Shimazaki was ignoring the way his aura was so clearly saying 'get me out of here'.

"Just getting snacks." Said Sho. He held up his basket to show her. Why else would he have come to a combini? Was she clueless…or was he? He didn't know. He didn't talk to a lot of kids his own age…and they made him nervous…even though they shouldn't have. Girls made him especially nervous. Well guys made him especially nervous but nervous in a different way….because he wanted to be friends with them. Girls made him nervous because he had never been able to predict them. One minute you're helping them up or pushing them on a swing or whatever else they asked you to do for them and the next they're leaning in to kiss you and stuff. It would have been a different story if they had just asked. Maybe he would have wanted to if they asked. Then he could have had the time to prepare himself and stuff.

Yeah, that must have been it.

"No, I mean why are you in London if you're from Japan? For the snacks? Because your snacks are much better. There's this Japanese shop over on the high street and they've got, like, fifty flavors of just kitkat. We've barely got anything here." Said Emmy

"Um….I'm here because of my dad's job…and you have a lot of…um…sodas." Said Sho. Maybe if he pretended that he was talking to big sis it would be easier. Maybe. Or maybe not because this wasn't his sister. This was a girl and she was pretty….well she wasn't ugly…and he was supposed to be trying to get her to hold his hand and kiss him and stuff…even though he didn't want…and he was sick of not wanting to! He was sick of just…being so weird. He was ten now and he was supposed to like girls and…and that was just what he was going to do. He hadn't liked vanilla ice cream but that was all Fukuda kept in the house most of the time so he had learned to like it…

So this was just like learning to like ice cream.

"No, we've barely got anything...and what's your dad do? I mean if he can't see." Said Emmy

"Him? No, that's Shimazaki. He's just my friend. Well he's my friend and also he's my body guard and stuff." Said Sho. He had thought that he was doing better. He had thought that he had been doing well but now she was making this face….well she was smiling….and now she was coming in really close again…

He wanted to take a step back but he didn't.

If she kissed him then she kissed him. He had gotten used to vanilla ice cream, he had gotten used to wearing long sleeves in the summer, and he had gotten used to take baths after…everything that happened. He could get used to kissing girls. He would have to, anyway, because he was going to have to grow up and get married and stuff and he knew that his wife would want to kiss him and also do all of that other stuff so he had better get used to it now. Dad had told him that he had to grow up and get married, and he was planning on picking out a girl for him to marry, so he had might as well get used to this. Being kissed.

She didn't kiss him.

"You've got a body guard? Bloody hell….that's brilliant! But why's he blind? Or is it like, he's a blind master or something?" said Emmy. She leaned in really closely and spoke really quietly…and he had no idea what she was doing that for. She could have just talked normally and at a normal distance…and stuff. But he wasn't supposed to complain so he didn't.

"He's a blind master. He's really cool, actually. He beats up people who try to kill my dad." Said Sho. He felt a lot better now that they were talking about Shimazaki. He was so cool. He could talk about Shimazaki for hours and hours and hours…and he had…though that was to big sis. She never told him when to stop talking but…but maybe he should. He knew that he couldn't tell her why dad was in danger all the time and why he needed body guards and why people kept on shooting at him and…and a lot of stuff. That was why he never talked to other kids. Well he wasn't allowed to first of all, but dad never stopped him…but there was no point because he moved around so much and also he had to keep a lot of secrets from people and…and that got kind of hard.

"Why are people trying to kill your dad? Are you in the Japanese mafia? Or, like, is there a big international conspiracy? Or-" said Emmy. Sho knew that he was not supposed to talk about this and she was talking about this and…and he knew that she was a normal person and he was not supposed to ever talk about his with normal people…and he needed her to stop talking…

"I think that you look really pretty." Said Sho. There. That was how you got a girl to stop talking. Just tell them that they looked pretty because girls cared about that stuff. Sometimes you just had to say stuff to get people to stop talking. She probably liked him anyway. Girls only talked to him when they liked him.

"Oh…thank you. I just got a haircut…um…you're pretty good looking too. I like your…hair…too…because it's all spiky like Goku's. So….yeah...I'm going to get some sweets. See you around Sho Suzuki." Said Emmy. Sho had never been so happy to see a girl walk away in his life. She was red and walking really fast, he had probably said the wrong thing but it wasn't like he was ever going to see her again, so he tried not to care…though he hoped that he hadn't been a jerk….

The last thing that he wanted to be was a jerk.

Which was why he didn't throw anything at Shimazaki. He was still standing there and still holding a newspaper upside down pretending to read it. Sho wanted to take the stuff from his basket and throw it at him until he ran out of stuff….and then he wanted to pick the stuff he had thrown up, put it in his basket, and throw it all over again…but he didn't. Because he was not going to be a jerk. Not to the person who he wanted to become best friends with.

He tried to stay calm….so he calmly tore the newspaper out of Shimazaki's hands.

"Hey, I was reading that." Said Shimazaki even though he knew that Sho knew that he couldn't read. There was no point in messing with him. Not about pretending to read or…or leaving him alone with that weird girl.

"No you weren't you can only read brail and that was in English. What the hell!? Why did you leave me all alone with that girl?! She was so…weird." Said Sho. He kept this conversation in Japanese in case she heard him. He had been trying to practice his English before but now he would not have minded if he forgot every single word of the English language. At least if that happened girls would leave him alone! The ones in this country, anyway.

"Hey, a good wingman knows when to step away and I am the best wingman there is." Said Shimazaki. He leaned back when he said that and he looked so cool…and Sho felt all weird….but that was just because he wished that he looked that cool. Also he was confused because he didn't know that word…so that was why he felt like this. He was confused and also he wanted to look as cool as Shimazaki did.

"What the fuck is a wingman?" asked Sho. He cursed to show Shimazaki just how upset he was…and also that he was good at cursing. Because he was.

"The friend who helps you pick up girls, you ungrateful little asshole, and you had that…mostly. Seriously. Smooth you are not…but you're like, ten, so you have an excuse." Said Shimazaki

"What?! Why would you…..I don't need help with that!" said Sho. The last thing he needed was help getting girls to like hi. Girls had always liked him, he didn't need help with that, and especially not from Shimazaki. He didn't need a girlfriend! He and Shimazaki didn't need girlfriends. Shimazaki had said before that he didn't do the boyfriend and girlfriend thing. So neither would Sho. Not while he could avoid it…because he wanted to focus on…on his friendships! Yeah, he was only ten and…and he had his whole life to find a girlfriend…and he just…didn't have the time. Yeah. He had Shimazaki adventures to go on…and stuff.

"Everyone needs a little help and since I'm, like, forty percent sure you like girls so-" said Shimazaki. Sho's aura flared. The magazine rack next to him almost tipped over. Forty percent…..? What?! No, that was….that was a hundred percent! Because he was normal like everyone else and…and dad could not know about…nobody could know about…because there was nothing to know about! He liked girls! They were…girls! And he liked them!

"I like girls! I like them a lot! I want to kiss them and marry them and-and-and do all that stuff that people do with them! Ok?!" said Sho. He was shouting, now, and maybe he should have been quieter…and stuff…because he knew that he was being looked at. At least he was shouting in Japanese.

"Ok, ok, ok. I must have been imagining things. Anyway come on. I'm starving and you're freaking people out. Pay for this shit and then we'll eat in the park and feed the winter ducks." Said Shimazaki. Sho took a deep breath and nodded. He knew that his face was red and he knew that his heart was pounding and…and he had no reason to feel like this because Shimazaki had been wrong. He liked girls all the way not just some of the way…and also there was no some of the way. You either did or you didn't and Sho did.

He didn't really have a choice.

Because it wasn't a choice. He was normal and he had to be normal. He didn't have a choice in the matter just like he never had a choice in any matter and…and that was it. That was it and…and he was not…he was…he just…he didn't want to think about this. So he didn't. He bought his junk food and left….well that girl had waved to him as he left…and he waved back because he had to be polite…but then he left. He left and he had never felt so good to have left a place.

Maybe the rest of their adventure wouldn't suck as much as being the seeing eye kid had.


	256. A Bad Back is the Least of Our Problems

Suzuki Touichirou managed to throw his back out playing in the snow.

This was not the strangest way he had ever injured himself. No, he had come to Fukuda with much stranger injuries. Like the noodle incident. That was…how he had even managed to mangle his in a noodle maker was beyond Fukuda. Also there was the time when they'd mixed bleach and ammonia together because they had learned at school to never do that…and Suzuki in his infinite wisdom decided that he would be immune because of his powers…and actually it turned out that he was, in fact, not immune to chemical warfare. No, chlorine gas was, in fact, very dangerous. So, really, in the history of…whatever their relationship could be called this was not the worst or strangest injury that Suzuki had ever come to him with.

Well, aside from how he had managed to injure himself.

"There you go, good as new." Said Fukuda as he pulled his aura in closed. He felt drained. Partially because he had just used his powers and partially because Suzuki was a very draining man to be around. Especially when he did things like this. Things like take one of his children off to play in the snow but not the other. Not that he wanted Sho to spend time with his father, Suzuki seemed incapable of giving his Son even the most basic form of positive attention, but he did wish that Suzuki wouldn't rub it in Sho's face like that. Every single Sunday, from midnight to midnight, he spent the entire day with Shigeko and had never even offered Sho-

Calm. Down.

Sho was better off without his father and sister. There wasn't enough room in that pod for a third pea. No, Sho was better off on his own…he just didn't see it yet because he was ten. He only saw the unfairness of the situation. He only saw how unfair it was that his dad favored his older sister above him. Things were better when Masami had been around. She had at least been there for Sho. Well she was gone now and Fukuda was all that he had.

Well the only good influence that he had.

Sho had gone off into the city with Shimazaki. Fukuda…he needed to keep a better eye on Sho. Sunday had been his day of rest, Suzuki cleared his calendar for his favorite child every single week, and he needed that rest. He may not have been feeling his age as badly as Suzuki was starting to, spending most of your day hunched over a desk tense as all else would do that to a person, but he wasn't as young as he used to be. Chasing after Sho…it wasn't easy. Well it had never been easy but now they were both getting older. He couldn't just pick Sho up and carry him anymore. He was ten and Fukuda was going on forty four these days…but he would still have to try. For Sho's sake. He hadn't done enough for Shigeko and now look at where she was. He couldn't let that happen to Sho. He wouldn't let that happen to Sho. He had to look after Sho.

Somebody had to look after Sho and it looked like it would be Fukuda.

"Can't you do something to keep that from happening?" asked Suzuki

"I can't reverse the aging process. Believe me, I would if I could but I can't." said Fukuda. If he could do it all again, with both of the kids, he would. He wasn't Shigeko's biggest fan but maybe if he had done more for her when she had been a child then maybe she wouldn't have turned out the way she was. She was Suzuki's daughter but not by blood. She probably had, based on the similar power sets and mannerisms, the same disorder that Suzuki had…but maybe there was something that could have been done for her…maybe. He didn't know. There was no point in dwelling on the past. She was what she was and he just had to learn from all of his failures and move on.

"So this just going to get worse?" asked Suzuki

"Maybe. I don't know. I'm a healer, not a doctor, and all I can tell you is that you're forty three." Said Fukuda

"I know what age I am. I don't see what that has to do with anything. I'm not old." Said Suzuki

"I was just saying that we're getting up there. Maybe playing with the kids in the snow isn't the best thing to be doing these days." Said Fukuda. What he wanted to say was that he should either play with both of his kids or neither of his kids. Fukuda had played in the snow with Sho plenty. He loved the snow. He loved snowmen and snow forts and putting snow down people's back because that's what his thirty year old best friend/ first crush did for fun. Sho…he would have enjoyed himself…if his father had been a normal person that is. Or not even a normal person. Just a person who was capable of showing love to his children.

"Death is coming for me soon." Said Suzuki as he straightened out his back. Fukuda didn't roll his eyes even though he really wanted to. Suzuki was both the master of the non sequitur and of being unnecessarily over dramatic. They were almost forty four, not a hundred and four, so they didn't have to worry about death or dying for a while…yay. Just three or four more decades together. Wonderful. Three or four more decades of….this.

Or even longer.

Fukuda aged. He just aged more slowly than the people around him. He had started to notice sometime in his mid-twenties. He was in his early forties and looked about ten years younger than he should have. No grey hair yet, no back and joint pain yet, and he could still read and look at screens just fine. Suzuki on the other hand…well Fukuda had seen him squinting and had heard him pop his back on more than one occasion. Of course he was too proud to admit that he was getting older, probably would need reading glasses soon, needed to take up yoga for the good of his poor joints, and would probably start to go grey soon…or white. Did red heads grow white or grey? He had no clue but he knew that when this happened Suzuki would have one of his existential crises and demand that Fukuda try his best to restore him to the prime of life.

Lovely.

"I don't think that anyone ever died of a bad back, boss." Said Fukuda as he gave Suzuki a once over. He was fine. Well fine for now. There was only so much Fukuda could do for the aging process. For other people, anyway, he still looked about ten to fifteen years younger than his actual age. It was starting to get harder to keep up with Sho, though, but he would do his best. Someone needed to spend time with Sho…someone who wasn't Shimazaki Ryou. Someone who could take care of him and wouldn't get him into God only knew what kind of trouble. Well Fukuda knew what kind of trouble. The same kind that her sister had been getting herself into for a year or so now. Good help them all once these kids got to be teenagers…

"No, but people do die of old age. I am not looking forward to it." Said Suzuki. Fukuda physically bit his tongue. He could taste copper. He had been very tempter to tell Suzuki that a lot of people were waiting for him to bite the dust. His enemies, his allies, his employees, his trusted upper echelon, probably even his own precious Daughter. But no, he didn't, because there was no need to get Suzuki paranoid. Paranoid Suzuki was worse than obsessive Suzuki. Nobody needed to deal with that least of all Fukuda.

He had enough on his plate as it was.

"Well nobody looks forward to it-" said Fukuda

"Daughter will be devastated when I die." Said Suzuki. Fukuda bit his tongue again. Well at least he knew that Sho, when the time came, would be relieved. He would probably be happy, even, to be free of his father. Not because he would rule the world one day, either, but because the world would finally be free of Suzuki Touichirou. Because he would finally be free of Suzuki Touichirou.

"She would be." Said Fukuda in a tone that gave nothing away. He kept his aura as calm and as still as possible. Of course Shigeko would be devastated. She was daddy's little girl after all. She was more Suzuki's child than his actual child…children. He had two blood children. The baby would have been about one now…and he would have to check on it soon. When it came time for that away mission he would take Sho and check on that baby. She was a baby prodigy after all, born with an aura, and he had no idea what it was that Suzuki had made.

He really didn't.

Well he knew what Suzuki had made. A person. He had been stupid and made a person and then he had abandoned the person that he made…which was for the best. Sho had been devastated to lose his little sister but it was in the best interest of the baby to give her as stable a home as a member of Claw could provide. Fukuda had no idea what would become of that baby. She was half of Suzuki and half of Pang Sujin, Fukuda didn't know that woman at all but he got the feeling that she couldn't have been all there if she had found Suzuki of all people attractive. At least Masami, when they had met, hadn't had any idea of what Suzuki really was and when she figured it out she had tried to leave…but the baby's mother had actually been attracted to him…

He hoped to God that this baby wouldn't grow up to be the second…third….coming of Suzuki.

They already had Shigeko, she was the second coming, and the world did not need a third. Suzuki…Fukuda hoped to God that he wasn't planning on having anymore unprotected sex. The world did not need any more of his children. No, he had enough to worry about when the kids that he had came to that age. He had been talking about wanting grandkids for so long, even though he already had three kids that were nowhere near adulthood, and he knew that Shigeko would probably end up being just as stupid as her father had been. Neither of his biological children had been planned and Shigeko already kept company with grown men….

Fukuda wondered if anyone would notice if he filled his pockets with rocks and walked out into the river.

"I don't know what she'll do when that day comes. Hopefully she has enough independent skills to take care of herself. I've been trying to give her space to build those skills….so hopefully she'll be alright." Said Suzuki

"I don't think that you have to worry about that. Shigeko's going to be just fine. She took over in your absence, remember? Yeah, she'll be just fine." Said Fukuda. He had to reassure Suzuki now before he got paranoid. He was already deep into an obsession with Shigeko. He didn't need to get paranoid over her too.

"She did…but I still worry. She's very small. She's very small and very soft and our time together is limited. I worry." Said Suzuki. This was…not a good sign. Fukuda…time for some damage control. Thank God that they were in his house and not Suzuki's. He didn't know if he would have been able to do this kind of damage control is Sho had been around. If Sho had been around then he would have been reminded of the sheer hell Suzuki had put that child through….

But they were alone in his house.

So he could be there for Suzuki. Well for everyone else, really, because it was in the best interests of everyone Suzuki came into contact with that his mental state be…well not sane, the man who had spent the better part of his life planning how he was going to conquer the world was not sane, but not as…insane…as he could have been….

He was worried. That wasn't good for anyone.

"What's there to worry about? She's a good kid." Said Fukuda. She drank and smoked and got high off of God only knew what. She kept company with grown men and stayed out all night with them. She was a very fast little girl…but Fukuda was not going to bring that up. Suzuki was…not well. Not if he was openly saying that he was worried about another human being. Fukuda had always been the go to guy for these sorts of things but Suzuki…he was not an emotionally opened man. Hell, all he'd had to say when Sho was born was 'I looked over the curtain. My wife had been fileted like a fish. I saw her organs. I feel ill. I also have a son now. He is called Sho.'

"I know that she's a good person. She's the best person to ever live. She has an infinite capacity for kindness and patience. Her control is better than even mine was at her age. She is a fascinating conversationalist even when she talks about things which I have no interest in. She is very good company. She's a good cook. At her size she fits perfectly in my arms…though I shouldn't try and lift her. She's the best person currently alive in this world." Said Suzuki. Fukuda forced his face and aura to remain still. That was…not a good sign.

At all.

If Shigeko had been some woman that he had been talking about then he would have told Suzuki to go and tell her all of this…but Shigeko was not some woman. She wasn't even a woman at all. She was ten. She was Suzuki's ten year old…well she was closer to eleven now…but that was not the point. The point was that Suzuki was…Fukuda had no idea what to make of this. He needed a minute. This was not…it was not romantic but Suzuki had always just gone straight to obsession…but normally his obsessions fizzled out…

When the person he was obsessed wanted nothing to do with him.

Suzuki had always needed to be told, when it came to people, when to leave them alone. To his credit at least he had respected it, back when they had been kids, when a girl told him to leave her the hell alone. That was how his obsessions with people went. His obsessions with books and games and shows and objects always passed when he got bored. Shigeko…she was his Daughter. She was his Daughter and she was never going to tell him to leave her alone….

Fukuda should have taken that into account.

"So…have you told Shigeko any of this?" asked Fukuda. He needed to do some damage control. He needed to put this fire out before it got any bigger. Suzuki…Suzuki was a strange person. Fukuda suspected that he had some sort of disorder. He wasn't such a strange person that he would do anything to his own Daughter…but he was getting obsessed with her…and that could not have been good for her. That could not have been good for anyone.

It wasn't going to be good for Sho at all.

Suzuki had always been a very bad father. He had always looked at Sho and seen the person that he wanted his Son to be, not the person that his Son was, and while he had always been neglectful he had at least shown some small modicum of caring for his son….well he had before. Fukuda couldn't even remember the last time that Suzuki had told him off for overstepping. He couldn't remember the last time Suzuki had told him that he had been spending too much time with Sho or showing him too much affection or….or anything.

This was not going to be good for Sho.

Also Shigeko would probably end up messed up from being the object of her father's affections. He wasn't' keeping her chained to his side twenty four hours a day anymore but that level of…not romantic love but something that definitely was uncomfortably close to it…not that Suzuki would ever but…but still it was just…not going to be good for anyone.

"Yes. She knows that I care for her above all others. She knows that I value her. I tell her whenever we are together. She likes affection. I'm getting more used to showing it to her. That's good, right? You know more about these things than I do. Is it healthy to show her affection? She wants affection and I want to give her the things that she wants but I also don't want to harm her independent development." said Suzuki. Fukuda…one of the things that Masami had complained about was how cold and distant Suzuki was to everyone. Especially her. How he had always been uncomfortable initiating holding her or kissing her or…or a lot of other things that Fukuda did not want to think about the woman he loved doing with someone else let alone Suzuki Touichirou. He'd even had trouble telling his own wife that he loved her…

But here he was telling his Daughter that she was the best person in the whole world.

"It's…good to show your children affection. So that they know you love them. Both of your children could always use some more affection." Said Fukuda. Sho…Sho was getting used to…to this. Fukuda had been trying to compensate but he wasn't Sho's father. He wished that he could have been, he wished that he'd started whatever he had started with Masami back when she and Suzuki had first been dating, that way there could have been a chance that Sho could have been his.

But he wasn't.

He was Suzuki's. He was Suzuki's and Suzuki…he was too…himself….to see what a good thing he had there. How amazing his Son was. How, even after everything, he was still so…so Sho. He cared so much for others, he was always thinking about others, and he just…he was just a good kid. Even though sometimes he could throw tantrums but that was normal for a ten year old. He was just a kid and kids got upset and broke things or kicked holes in the walls or fought with their siblings. Sho was such a good kid…

And Suzuki did not deserve a son like him.

"Daughter enjoys affection but I worry that I'm showing her too much of it. I don't want to harm her in any way…but I do enjoy being with her. You know more about these things than I do. What quantity of affection should I show her?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda wanted to sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose and just…just show Suzuki how exhausting he was to deal with. Thirty. Years. That was how long they had known each other. For thirty years Fukuda had been trying to teach Suzuki how to be a person. Thirty. Years.

He still came to Fukuda with ridiculous questions like this.

After thirty years he was still coming to Fukuda with questions like this. He felt…he felt almost like they were kids again. Like they were kids sitting up in his bedroom planning world domination. Like they were kids and Suzuki was taking a break from playing Claw to present Fukuda with an entire notebook page, front and back, of social interactions which had confused him. But they weren't kids. They were middle aged men. Suzuki and he was almost forty four and…and he was seriously asking for explicit directions on how to show love to his favorite child.

This was life.

"More than you show Sho." said Fukuda. He couldn't keep the bitterness inside. He was seriously asking about Shigeko when he had his own son….he forced himself to calm down. He needed to keep calm. He needed to just…deal with this. Sho was….Sho was better off without him anyway. He had to deal with this and…and put out this fire…and the nest one and the next one and the next one…just like he would have to do until he and Suzuki were either really old or really dead.

"I don't show Son any affection. He doesn't need it. Daughter does. She's Daughter." Said Suzuki. Fukuda forced himself to stay calm. He had been about to tell Suzuki had his children had names. They had names and they were people and they both needed love and affection from their parent. They needed…they needed Suzuki to be a father for once in his life…and they needed their mother too….but they didn't have one of those because Suzuki had driven her away. Where had these questions been when Masami had been around? When she had been too depressed to move because her husband had told her that he, essentially, didn't care about her. That making love to her was pointless…

Not something that he wants to think about.

He does not want to think about the woman he loves in that state of affairs. He knows that she and Suzuki'd had sex together, they had made Sho after all, but he also knew that he didn't need to think about it…because he loved her…and they'd…well not the thing to be thinking about right when he was sitting there with Suzuki trying to help him through his latest crisis. He had no idea why he wished that Suzuki would have had this crisis about Masami. That he had come to Fukuda before she had left. Fukuda…he had no idea what he would have done. He…he would have…he would have done the right thing and tell Suzuki to be a better husband to his wife…maybe. If had had done that, if he'd had the chance to do that, then Masami would have stayed and…and things would have been better for Sho. Masami may not have carried on with him as she had but at least she would have been there for her Son. Sho's life could have gone a lot better. He could have gone to school and made friends his own age. He would have had a mother to be there for him. Even if Suzuki had wound up getting obsessed with his Daughter it would have been ok because Sho would have still had Masami. She would have been around….

He missed her more than anything.

He wondered if she missed him, if she ever thought about him, if she ever thought about…about what could have been. What could have been if he hadn't separated from Suzuki at the train station that day? He could have been the one to meet her. He could have….but then Sho would have never been born…or he would have been born but…different? Fukuda didn't know. He had never been big on the big questions like that. Souls and stuff. All he knew was that maybe things would have been better if they had met…and maybe she wished that too….

But it was a big difficult to know what she would have wanted since she had stopped responding to his messages years ago.

"Sho's a person too. He needs positive attention." Said Fukuda. He kept his voice level. He needed…he needed to come off of this…but Suzuki was so rarely this vulnerable. Maybe if he could just plant the seed in Suzuki's mind that his son was just as in need to of love as his daughter…

"Son is fine. He's Son. Daughter needs me. She said so. Son will be fine no matter what. Daughter…she's very fragile. She's female. She's fragile in ways that we can't even imagine. She needs me but also…also one day I won't be here. One day I will die and I need to know that she can be alright on her own." said Suzuki. Fukuda…well that was a lot of confidence to have in Sho…but at the same time Sho was just a child and…

And he had Fukuda.

"She'll be fine. She took over when you were unavailable. She's going to be just fine. You just…keep on showing her the affection that you've been showing her. It'll be good for her to know that you love her. Everybody needs to feel loved." Said Fukuda. There was some passive aggression in there but, as usual, it went right over Suzuki's head.

"So keeping doing what I've been doing. Alright. Thank you. I knew that I was right to come to you." Said Suzuki. Well that was rare praise…bitter praise. That praise used to assure Fukuda that, yes, Touichirou was his best friend. Touichirou may have been the biggest weirdo in Seasoning City, possibly even the world, but they were still best friends. Now it just felt bitter and hollow.

"You're welcome. Anytime." Said Fukuda. What else could he say? He could tell Touichirou that he was still a grade 'A' weirdo. He could tell him that he needed to crack open a parenting book because he was terrible at it. He could tell Touichirou that maybe if he had taken the same interest in his wife that he had taken in his Daughter that, maybe, they would have still had Masami in their lives.

He's not going to say any of that.

He's just going to sit there in his living and wait for Suzuki to leave. Then he's going to start making dinner. Then he's going to invite Sho over for dinner. He had seen Sho walking around with Shimazaki carrying very full bags of junk food. He needed to sit down to a real meal with someone. Someone who cared about him and had his best interests at heart.

Someone who could be there for him in all the ways that he needed it.

"I was wondering, also, at what point I could go back to spending time with her every single day. I miss our time together and I know that she does too. I know that when she's a grown woman we can be together always but I have no idea when that point will be." Said Suzuki. Fukuda wondered if he would hit weirdness bedrock at some point…and he knew that he wouldn't. There was no end to the weirdness of Suzuki Touichirou. If after thirty years he still hadn't hit bedrock then he knew that there just…wasn't any. It was infinite weirdness all the way down.

"I guess when she hits the age of majority?" said Fukuda

"No. That's arbitrary. The age of majority is different in every country. I need some other metric to measure her by." Said Suzuki

"Maybe just enjoy the time you have with her now and then…and then worry about her growing up. She'll probably tell you, anyway, when she wants to spend more time with you…or less." Said Fukuda. He could imagine a teenage Shigeko having enough of her father smothering her. She would probably be much deeper into the things that she was into. She would probably want to be actually independent. She would want to do that things that teenagers did and she wouldn't want her dad sticking his nose where it didn't belong…

Fukuda was going to have to have so many talks with Touichirou in the future….

"No. She will never want to spend less time with me. When she grows up we're going to spend all of our time together. Once I give Son the world that is. I'm already planning what sort of house I'll build for her. it's going to be a combination English Manor House and Japanese Castle. She's always wanted to live in a Castle, that's why she called her childhood home 'The Castle' and Masami had always wanted to live in an English Manor House for reasons that I have never understood. Daughter will enjoy the house that I'll build for us." Said Suzuki. Fukuda wanted to hit him. How dare he mention Masami! How dare he talk about her like he knew her! Ok, fine, she had always wanted to live in a big manor house but she also loved living in the city and hated the house that Suzuki had built for her and every single day she had imagined leaving and-

And he needed to calm down.

"So you plan on living with her and her husband after she grows up?" asked Fukuda. It took everything that he had inside of him to keep calm. He needed to…to see he depths of Suzuki's planning. He had said, before, that he was looking forward to the time when the children wouldn't be underfoot all the time…and now he was talking about keeping Shigeko with him for the rest of his life…it sounded like, anyway.

"No, just her and I…and her children when she has them." Said Suzuki. That was…worrying. Fukuda wondered if there was going to be an end to his worry. If one day he would wake up and he would have just burnt out his capacity for worry. This was….he wasn't Shigeko's biggest fan but he knew that she would not have been too on board with this plan if she could hear it. Nobody would have been. Suzuki's family had been more traditional than his but even he should have realized that nobody wanted to live their entire life with their father….

Or with him. Specifically.

But no. Suzuki had no clue that nobody liked him. He had no clue how overbearing he could be. He had no idea how insane he sounded right now. He didn't sound like a normal father who was anxious about his little girl growing up and leaving him. He sounded like…Fukuda didn't even want to say.

"So…where is her husband going to be in all of this?" asked Fukuda. He was afraid to know the answer. He hoped that Suzuki wasn't going to say something that was just plain wrong like they had no genetic relation so….no. He would never say anything like that. He was weird, he was the weirdest human being that Fukuda had ever had the misfortune of meeting…but he also would never say anything like that. Hell, Shigeko had originally been for Sho before Suzuki decided that setting up an incest precedent was a VERY bad idea.

At least he hadn't fully gone off the deep end. There was still time to pull him back before he drowned in his own insanity….and dragged the rest of them down with him.

"I don't know and I don't care. Away from her. She doesn't really need one, does she? I mean she has me. She just needs a man to have children with and she could have any man she wanted for that…not Shimazaki Ryou. Never him. Any other man in Japan would be hers if she wanted him. She only needs a man to have children with. I can be there for everything else. I'll help her raise her children and I'll be there to help her when she gives birth to them…but I won't look over the curtain. I will never make that mistake again." said Suzuki. Fukuda blinked. That was…not normal. At least he thought that it wasn't normal. He didn't have any daughters, or any children at all, but he knew that if he'd had a daughter he would not have wanted to be in the room while she was giving. He had seen the birthing video back in health class. That was a husband's job. He never wanted to see that…well if Masami had…if they'd had he lie he'd imagined he would have been there for her…

And he would have had enough sense not to look over the curtain.

But he and Masami would never have that life and he would not just let his mind go there while he was listening to Suzuki describe his plan for his and Shigeko's future…a future where he planned on being there while she gave birth and…and that was worrying. Suzuki was always worrying but that was especially worrying.

"Yeah…don't look over the curtain…and maybe just wait in the waiting room while…all of that's going on." Said Fukuda

"No. She needs to have someone there with her. You've never been there while a woman brings a child into the world. I have. It's terrifying. She's in pain and there's so much blood and so much that can go wrong…she needs me there for her when she has her children. She needs me by her side and…and I ne-I enjoy being by her side." Said Suzuki. Fukuda wanted to go out, by a book, and then beat Suzuki over the head with it until he was normal. That was just…Fukuda knew that he didn't mean it like it sounded, he had explicitly said that he never wanted to set an incest precedent, but that was…not right. That was just…Fukuda understood that Shigeko needed someone to be there for her but that was what he husband would be for…or if she didn't have one honestly Minegishi would have been the best bedside moral boosting candidate. Or even Fukuda himself since he was an actual healer…no. Suzuki wouldn't let him in the room. He hadn't let him in the room when Masami had been giving birth because Fukuda was not her husband. Hell, if the doctor who delivered Sho hadn't been a woman then Suzuki would have probably kicked him out of the room too….

He tended to be possessive of the women in his life.

The little girls too, apparently. Fukuda reminded himself that he knew Suzuki best out of everyone else in the world and he knew that Suzuki would never…but this was still…it left a bad feeling. Not a bad, something unspeakably awful was going to happen feeling, but a bad 'Shigeko was either going to explode or grow up really messed up…more so than she already was…feeling' and he…he had another fire to put out.

Wonderful.

"I'm sure that she would be happy to have you near her but…I'd ask her before you just invite yourself into the room with her. She may want her husband or the man who's responsible for it all to be there…that doesn't mean that she doesn't love you or anything. She'll just be a grown woman and she'll have her own life and want her independence." Said Fukuda. He was not looking forward to the day Shigeko had children…and it may not have been too far away considering how she carried on….

So. Many. Fires.

"No, she'll want me there. She enjoys being near me. That's why I'm so greatly anticipating her growing up and I wish that there was some way for me to have a date or a timeline so I know when that time will be." Said Suzuki

"What's going to change when she grows up? Why not just enjoy her now?" asked Fukuda

"Because then I will be able to spend every day with her. She needs me and I enjoy spending time with her. Those times when I could spend every day with her were the best days of my life, recently anyway, and I want to live like that all the time. Sharing every meal with her. Being able to look up and see her no matter what time of day it was. Her being the last thing I saw at night and the first thing I saw in the morning. I am greatly looking forward to those times and I want to know when they'll come." Said Suzuki. Fukuda wished that he kept alcohol in the house. He had a hell of a tolerance but he would gladly clean out a liquor store if it meant that he could forget what he just heard. That was…essentially that was what his relationship with Masami should have been. His wife Masami. The wife that he had left alone for weeks if not months at a time. The wife that he had told to her face that making love to her was pointless unless they were trying for a baby. The wife that he had practically turned into a ghost…the wife that had might as well have been a ghost…the wife that he had driven away…

He wanted to kill Suzuki Touichirou.

It took everything he had to keep from standing up and strangling the man. NOW he decides to be a good husband? And to his fucking DAUGHTER?! That was…well it wasn't incestuous since he wasn't planning on marrying her….but it was something! It had to have been something because that had not been right at all! What the hell was WRONG with Touichirou? What even HAPPENED in his mind? He'd had a wife, he most amazing woman in the world, and now…now after driving her away he just decided to…to what, exactly? Try again this time with his own Daughter? Just…Fukuda needed to calm down and think. He had to think up a solution to this problem before it became even more of a problem than it already was. He just…he had no idea what he needed to do?

Introduce Suzuki to a woman?

He was not a good wingman. Well not for Suzuki….and who could be? No woman in her right mind…aside from Masami….would want to be with him…but this was….maybe he just needed a woman in his life. Maybe he just needed someone to fulfill that need. Maybe he just needed someone to take care of, provide for anyway, and to spend time with him…on his terms of course…and also someone to put up with his insanity and the constant moving that came with running Claw and the terrible things that Suzuki did to people and…

And there was no such woman in all of existence who could put up with that.

Also he would have been cheating on Masami…but that ship had sailed and circumnavigated the globe already. There was a person out in the world now because Suzuki had found a woman who would willingly take her clothes off for him. So it wouldn't be impossible but…but then he would have the problem of any and all future children to worry about. Sho did not need the competition. He was the only male heir which was why Suzuki had kept him around for all of these years. No, Sho did not need another little half sibling…and there would be more because Suzuki was a moron when it came to safe sex….

Fukuda was getting the mother of all stress headaches.

"That sounds like a lot of work…and work that nobody would expect you to do. That all sounded like something that you would do for a wife, not a Daughter." Said Fukuda slowly. He could appeal to Suzuki's sense of efficiency or the fact that he counted on Fukuda to teach him any and all social rules…and he just…he couldn't think clearly enough to come up with anything better than that.

"No, it's something that any father would do for his Daughter. Well if they had a Daughter like my Daughter. She's the most perfect person…Daughter. She is the most perfect Daughter that a father could ask for. Other fathers wish that they could have a Daughter like my Daughter." Said Suzuki. Fukuda almost wanted to tell him that his perfect little girl drank, smoked, got high, and stayed out all night with men three times her age….and all of this before puberty! But no, he didn't, because that would just cause him more problems. Either Suzuki believed him and he had Shigeko to deal with or Suzuki thought that he was a liar and then he'd get it….so he kept that information to himself….but he just needed….he needed to do something to get Suzuki out of the depths of his obsession…

They had never gone to these depths before.

"Most perfect person? I thought….I thought that Masa-that Mrs. Suzuki was your most perfect person." Said Fukuda. He braced himself for the inevitable explosion. He knew that he hadn't just stepped over the line, he had thrown up on it, and that Suzuki would probably lose control and try to kill him…but that was better than him carrying on like he had before. He just…he needed a good shock, that was all, maybe a good shock would bring him out of the depths of his obsession.

And if Fukuda wound up in the middle of one of his explosions then so be it.

"Masami is my most perfect person…but so is Daughter. In a different way because she is my child, not my wife, and my feelings for her are completely different. She's so perfect, Daughter, and in some ways she's more perfect than Masami…because she has a different role. She understands me and I understand her better than I ever understood Masami…and never mention my wife again. Ever." Said Suzuki. His aura turned dark at that, dark like he wanted to kill someone, not dark like he was going to explode.

Fukuda would have welcomed the explosion.

"Sure thing, boss. You want a cup of tea? I was thinking of putting some tea on." Said Fukuda. He could kick Suzuki out but he could, at least, put some distance between them before he did something stupid.

"What sort?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda almost groaned. Suzuki didn't like to eat and drink socially but now….now he was in one of his rare social moods. Probably killing time before he could see Shigeko again. She was taking a warm bath, he had said, because they had been playing in the cold snow. So now he was just killing time until he could see his favorite child again…even though he had another child right there…who he never wanted to see. Fukuda had an idea as how to get Suzuki out.

"Green tea. Sho likes it and I plan on having him come around for dinner. You know, since it's your day with your daughter and all." said Fukuda. He had never been more grateful for whatever personality disorder that Suzuki had than he was in that moment. He was wearing his emotions out there on his face for the world to see. It was either he control his face or he control his aura…and he chose to control his aura. That was the part of him that Suzuki could read.

Good.

"I'll be leaving in that case. Thank you for your help." Said Suzuki. Fukuda watched him get up and leave. He waited until he felt him get far, far from the center of his range….and then he threw himself face first down onto his couch.

He needed a drink.

He wanted to break something. He wanted to yell and kick and break something….but that would have set a terrible example to Sho. He couldn't do that. He needed to set a good example and…and he needed to keep it together. Suzuki….he had said something so terrible…and before that he had been talking like he was crazy….crazier than normal. This whole thing was…too much. This whole thing was too much and he had no clue what to do. He had thought that he would be able to put up with Suzuki's craziness, he had been putting up with it for years, but this….this was just too much. The way he just…was….and what he had said about Masami. Fukuda knew that he should have been grateful that Suzuki wasn't looking for her as much as he had before, that he seemed to be letting her go, because now she would be able to live in peace wherever she was but…

But Masami was….

Masami was better off not having to deal with all of this. She was better off not having to deal with Suzuki's insanity. He didn't wish that on anyone. Not even Shigeko. He may not have agreed with the person she had become but he still did not wish her father's insanity on her or anyone else in the world…but there was nothing that he could do. Not now. He needed to think. He needed to calm down and think…but after he and Sho had dinner. Sho is, was, and always would be his first priority. Once he got Sho settled then he would figure out how to pull Suzuki out of the depths of…this. Yes, once he got Sho sorted out then he would think up a plan…a better one than introducing him to a woman so he would stop transferring all of this shit onto his Daughter…but that would bring with it it's own set of problems….problems that Fukuda would have to sort out….

So many fires everywhere.

But he would put them out. There was no problem in this world that did not have a solution and he would figure it out. Some problems were worse than others, some fires were bigger than others, but he was used to them. He had been doing this for thirty years after all. He was practically an expert. Yes, this had a solution, he just had to figure it out. That was his job, to fix Suzuki's problems for him…

Though he wished that every problem was as easy to fix as a bad back.


	257. Not Knocking and Becoming Best Friends

Sho wanted to go to the park.

So that was where he was going to go. The snow was starting to melt so he had to get as much park snow time in while he could. He didn't know how much longer he would be here, sometimes they moved around a lot and sometimes they hardly moved around at all, but he knew that when it came time to move he wouldn't get a lot of head's up. So really he should get as much time at the park as he could. The next place they could have ended up living might have been in the middle of nowhere with no parks. He hated it when they stayed at those bases in the middle of nowhere. He liked it when they stayed in cities. There was always something to do in a city.

Like go to the park.

Sho didn't care if it was early. It wasn't like he had anything else to do with his time. Well he did have school work to do…and he had to take a bath at some point before big sis ran one for him…and he had to finish his drawing of a dragon fighting a train….and he had to get the candy out of his bed since he thought he felt ants on him last night…and also he had to figure out where his markers that smelled like stuff went….but all of that could wait!

It was time to go to the park!

He would have time for all of that stuff if he went to the park early. So that was what he was going to do. He was just leaving the house to go to the park. It had nothing to do with his dad had woken him up early in the morning by putting big sis back in her bed. He didn't care about that. Who would want to sleep next to dad? Who would want to spend any time with dad at all when they didn't have to? Not Sho. No, he didn't care if dad spent time with big sis and not him. He had someone to spend time with! Fukuda! Well not now, no, because….he was old and needed his sleep. Also if Sho woke him up then he would be all 'eat your breakfast' and 'take a bath' and 'brush your hair' and 'eating toothpaste is not the same as brushing your teeth' and stuff like that. Shimazaki never made him do stuff like that. He was the one who taught him about eating toothpaste.

If they didn't want him to eat toothpaste then they shouldn't have made it bubblegum flavored.

That was what Shimazaki had said. He was smart like that. He was smart and cool and all of that stuff. That was why he was going to wake Shimazaki up and ask him to come to the park with him. Dad might not have needed him that day. Sho didn't know what dad had planned for today but he did know that Shimazaki had said, before, that hanging out with Sho was way more fun than being with dad. Anything was more fun than being with dad.

But Sho still got that weird feeling in his stomach when Shimazaki had said that.

So he felt like he had a goldfish in his stomach whenever they were together. So what? That was a totally normal way for him to feel. That was just because…because he wanted to be his best friend. That was all. He just wanted to be best friends with Shimazaki and that was why he got the goldfish feeling in his stomach whenever they were together or when they were about to be together or when he thought about them being together…it was a normal feeling to have!

If he told himself something enough times then maybe it would be true.

It WAS true. He knew that it was true. This was the same sort of feeling he had been having his whole life when he really wanted to be friends with someone. He just never felt this way about girls because he had never wanted to be friends with girls. He had a sister, what did he need another girl to be friends with for? He had big sis if he wanted to play girl things with. He just liked being friends with boys more because he was a boy and…stuff. That was all.

He was normal.

He was normal and he was being normal and it was normal to want to hang out with your friend. So that was what Sho was going to do. He was going to wake Shimazaki up and then ask him to come to the park and feed ducks or climb trees or climb up high in trees and then throw pieces of bread at people like they were ducks and then when people got mad at them Shimazaki would say that he was blind and thought that there were ducks and that Sho was a kid and he didn't know any better and then it would be so much fun!

But first he had to find Shimazaki.

It was early in the morning. It was so early in the morning that Shibata wasn't even cooking yet. It was so early in the morning that Hatori had gone to sleep. It was so early in the morning that, thankfully, Minegishi should have still been asleep. They didn't get to sleep easily, Shimazaki had said, so they slept whenever they could. Shimazaki might be up though. He said that he'd always had a weird sleep cycle because unless he felt the sun on his skin he had no idea if it was day or night. The sun went down early these days because it was winter so Shimazaki could have either just gone to sleep or was about to wake up. Sho didn't know which. He just knew that he had to creep through the house very quietly so he didn't wake anyone up.

Like Minegishi.

Sho could see that their auras were really close together. He could tell…he closed his eyes. Sometimes people's aura just felt like they were close together even when they weren't. He closed his eyes and felt round through the house. Shibata on the couch, Hatori in his room….sitting up? Oh, he had fallen asleep at his desk again. Minegishi was…was with Shimazaki. They were having a sleepover again. Their auras were all mashed together. That was….if Shimazaki wanted to sleep over with someone then Sho lived right next door. He was way more fun to be around than Minegishi. He was way more fun and…and he was nice…and he didn't go around calling people by their given names and…and he was a much better best friend candidate than Minegishi!

Oh well, time to go back home….

But he didn't want to so he wouldn't. He had come over with a mission and that was what he was going to do, complete his mission, because…because he had to. He had to go and ask Shimazaki to come to the park with him. So what if he would be waking up Minegishi too? If they wanted to be left alone then they shouldn't have been having a sleepover with Shimazaki and…and stuff. They should have been sleeping alone or having a sleepover with big sis. Yeah, then if big sis had been here then dad wouldn't have had to carry her back to the room and Sho wouldn't have been awake this early in the first place!

So, really, he had no choice.

He went to Minegishi's room and opened the door. It had been locked but he could undo locks easily with his powers. He could have broken down the door too but then that would have woken everyone up and he didn't want that. If everyone woke up then Shibata would make breakfast and he would invite big sis over and then it would turn into a big group thing and he didn't want a big group thing. He wanted to just be with Shimazaki…because they were friends.

The goldfish feeling meant that they were friends.

Sho opened the door slowly. He didn't want to wake Minegishi up because then they would be all mean to him and stuff. He was just going to wake Shimazaki up and ask him to go to the park, he would of course say yes, and they could spend the whole day there…or at least long enough to have some fun before dad called Shimazaki and told him to do his job. Dad was a jerk like that….so really he had to wake Shimazaki up right now. Any minute now. Yup, any minute now he would cross this room and wake Shimazaki.

Any minute now.

It was weird being in Minegishi's room. That was it. That was why his feet were having trouble moving. He felt like their aura was all around him but that was just all of the plants. It was a jungle in there. How did they ever find anything? There were ceiling plants and plants on the floor and plants on shelves and just…way too many plants. Their aura was in everything. It felt like they were all around him and it was sort of suffocating and…and stuff….but he needed to wake Shimazaki up so he could get out of here. So that was what he did. He put one foot in front of the other, quietly, and made his way across the room. He was careful not to make any noise that could wake Minegishi up. They had so many books on their floor just in piles. Clothes on the floor too. The floor was not a hamper. Big sis was always saying that. She should have said that to her friend and not her little brother.

There were a lot of clothes on the floor.

He almost slipped as he stepped on a black shirt. That was….Minegishi never wore black. They wore every color but black. That was…why was Shimazaki's shirt on their floor? Sho looked over at them. Shimazaki and Minegishi were sleeping all curled up like big sis and he did, sometimes, when they shared a bed…only…more cuddled up it looked like. Shimazaki had his back to Sho but he could tell that they were very close…and it made him feel like throwing up and kicking holes in the walls at the same time. Sho…he didn't like this feeling. Like the goldfish in his stomach were trying to swim out of his body through his chest and belly button. He could see Shimazaki's back and…right. He never slept with a shirt on. He just slept in gym shorts no matter how cold it got. That was why he was sharing body heat with Minegishi like that….

He really needed to start wearing clothes to bed.

Or not. Sho…he liked the way his back looked…because it had that cool tattoos of a dragon. He had two dragons, one on his back and one on his chest. He had a bunch of tattoos. He said that he had gotten them for other people to look at…so it was ok for him to look. He just thought that they were cool, that was all, so it was ok for him to tug the blanket down just a little so he could see the rest of the dragon on his back…because it was cool. It was a dragon flying through a burning sky. The one on his chest was just sort of hanging out there but this one looked like it was escaping the burning sky…or setting it on fire. It was weird in some places. In some places the colors faded or didn't match. There were so many different shades of red, also someone had written 'if you can read this tattoo then you are literate' across his shoulder and then the name of a person, probably the person who had done the tattoo…or maybe work on it. Shimazaki said that he'd been getting these since he had been fourteen. A lot of different people had worked on them. Sho could tell.

That made it cooler.

The red went all the way down his back. The red and the dragon and the fire…and also the scales were cool. Sho had never been able to look this closely at it before. The scales looked sort of…scaly. Sort of. The closer he looked the more some of the red parts looked like…like stripes, almost. Like stripes of colored skin…but that made sense because that was what a tattoo was, colored skin. But…those looked like….

Sho hiked up his pant leg.

This was where the worst of it was, on his leg. Well he had been told that his back was pretty bad, and he was covered in scars, but the one that wrapped around his leg felt the worst. Shimazaki…but it wouldn't have made sense. He was a natural esper. He had gotten his powers slowly. First he learned to sense the world around him, then he learned to put up a barrier, and then he had learned to teleport. He had learned all of that on his own and hadn't had to have been Awakened….but….but then how did he get those scars. The more Sho looked the more he could see…but those were different. They looked different. Stipes. They were equal on both sides and also….also they didn't look like Awakening lab scars….

How had he even gotten so many scars? He was Shimazaki!

His barrier was so good that he could take a bullet to the face and live. He could teleport away from any danger. He could take on five guys at once and fight them without even messing up his hair. He shouldn't have had any scars at all! He was so cool! Nothing should have been able to hurt him…but then something had hurt him…or someone….and Sho wanted to find the person that had hurt him and then he wanted to do to them whatever they had done to his friend. Those were…the more Sho looked the more he could tell how many of those scars he had…and that was just…just something that was not…not good.

He had a lot of them.

Sho reached out to touch one. That had been a bad idea and if he had been thinking at all he would have realized how bad of an idea that was. Shimazaki couldn't always sense people when he was asleep. Sho had guarded him, sometimes, when he had been up all night and he needed to sleep on the job. He could sense people when they got really close, though…like Sho was doing now….

There was a hand around his wrist.

"What the fuck do you-oh. It's you. Sorry." said Shimazaki. He let go of Sho's wrist. He was…strong. Very strong. The whole thing had happened in one second but…but that second had been long enough for him to be able to tell how strong Shimazaki was. He had always known that Shimazaki was strong, he could do a hundred pushups without getting tired and he could even carry Sho around afterwards, but he had never been that strong….been strong like that…towards Sho. He felt his wrist. It hurt. His friend had hurt him…and he felt….not good….

"Fuck. Sorry, ok? Just…don't ever touch me when I'm asleep. Ok? You brought this on yourself and if you had been anyone else I would have kicked your ass for that…so feel lucky!" whispered Shimazaki. He ran a hand through his hair. It wasn't spiky. That was weird. Sho had never seen his hair not spiked up…well not usually….this was weird. He could see the dragon on his chest, too, and he didn't have any scars there. Sho wondered if this would leave a scar…well of course it wouldn't…and if it did he was covered in them anyway.

Sho was fine.

He just…his eyes were just watery was all. His eyes were all watery and…and stuff. For reasons. Reasons which had nothing at all to do with the fact that his friend had hurt him. Sho shouldn't have touched his back without asking. Sho knew how much he hated it when big sis touched the tree on his back. So touching Shimazaki on the back was the same thing…and he was sorry. He wanted to say sorry but…but also he knew that if he opened his mouth to say something he would have started to cry…and he didn't want to cry at all….

So he didn't.

"Kid…Suzuki….Sho. Sho, come on. I didn't mean to hurt you…and I barely touched you! Just…God, what the hell am I supposed to do to fix this?" whispered Shimazaki. Sho let go of his wrist and wiped his eyes. He was not going to cry in front of Shimazaki…and not about something as stupid as his own mess up. He was the one who had messed up and…and he was not going to just start crying like a baby about this. He wasn't a baby, he was ten, and ten year olds did not cry.

"I'm fine. I'm sorry." said Sho. Maybe he should have been whispering too but he couldn't think that far ahead. All he could think about was that his wrist hurt….but maybe his wrist just hurt because he was thinking about it. He'd had so many worse hurts in his life. This was not the worst of it, not even the hundredth worst hurt of it, so he should have been fine.

He was fine. He really was!

Even though now there was a hand over his mouth. If he had been big sis Sho would have just licked his hand…but he was not big sis so Sho would not be licking his hand. He was sitting all the way up now. His aura was focused on Minegishi. They had pulled the blanket up over their head. Sho wondered how the two of them could fit together in that bed like that. Really Shimazaki should have invited Sho over if he wanted to have a sleep over…even though the thought of it makes his insides feel all weird…

He feels weird but he is perfectly normal.

"Don't wake Toshi! Just….close your eyes until I tell you to open them again. Seriously. If you open your eyes before I tell you to then you'll be scarred for life and everyone's going to think that I'm a creep…again. So just keep them closed!" said Shimazaki. Sho nodded and closed his eyes. He felt the floor creek as Shimazaki got up. The floor creaked and the bed squeaked and then the energy of the room shifted…the plants kept on trying to reach over to Shimazaki for some reason, but for the whole time Sho kept his eyes closed. He didn't know why he had to keep his eyes closed but he did.

"My pants….Toshi's pants. These are my pants…good…now one of these shirts should be mine…everything smells like me." Said Shimazaki. Sho decided to risk opening his eyes. He knew where Shimazaki's shirt was and he knew that it would just be easier if he went and handed it to him. He could feel Minegishi moving, he could see their aura with his, and he did not want to be in that room when they woke up.

"Here." Said Sho. He only opened his eyes long enough to pick up Shimazaki's shirt and hand it to him. That wasn't bad enough to scar him for life…right? Not that he had any idea what Shimazaki was on about. He already had a bunch of scars, what was one more?

"Hey! I told you to keep your eyes closed. I felt them opening." Said Shimazaki

"Sorry. Why do I have to keep my eyes closed anyway? I've already seen the inside of Minegishi's room. I don't see what's so scarring about it." Said Sho

"Well you haven't seen me naked and I know that if you did then everyone would think that I'm a creep again…and also you'd probably end up describing this day to a therapist in, like, ten years. I'd rather not scar you for life thank you very much." Said Shimazaki. Sho…he had no idea what to say to that. He felt all hot and cold all over. He felt warm because…..because….because the only person he had ever seen naked was his own sister and that was ok because they were family….and that was why he felt all hot all over…because he was embarrassed….and also why he felt all cold all over too. Because he could have accidentally seen Shimazaki naked…and he had been naked…right there….with Minegishi….who was probably also….

Sho regretted opened his eyes.

They had turned over onto their side…and Sho really wished that he had never opened his eyes. They were naked. Yup. They were definitely naked…or at least not wearing a shirt…and they were a girl. Sho had been wondering what they were since he had met them and now he knew that they were a girl…because they had boobs…and he was seeing their boobs…which meant that Shimazaki had seen their boobs…and Shimazaki saw things by touching them with his aura and…and also for real…

He wanted to both throw up and start kicking holes in the walls.

He was….angry. He knew that he needed to get to a dark place and do all of his calm down stuff like he had read about in the book he had memorized. He knew that he needed to just…just not be there….but he was there. He was there and…and he didn't want to be there. He knew that adults did stuff together like that, gross stuff, but just…not because it was gross….because they…loved each other and stuff. That was what mom said. People came together like that in an act of love and…

And Sho wanted to start hitting people.

But he didn't. He didn't have a chance. He felt the world fall away and then reappear under his feet. He had been teleported. He had been teleported and…and he opened his eyes. He was in Shimazaki's room now. He was in his sleep sorts and a black shirt, the one that Sho had found…and he wished that he had never found it. He wished that he had never gone looking for him and…and he wished that he had never come into this knowledge…

He wanted to throw up, break something, hit someone, and also cry for some reason.

He wiped his eyes. Shimazaki cursed, Sho didn't feel like having a cursing match, and then he picked him up and sat him down on his bed. Sho didn't trust himself to say or do anything. He knew that if he said or did anything then he would have said or did something that he would end up regretting…and he was not going to act like a jerk towards his best friend. Even if his friend had…hadn't done anything to him. Why did he feel like Shimazaki had done something to him? He hadn't. He had just been doing all of that gross adult stuff because he was an adult. He was an adult and he was being a normal adult and doing all of that gross stuff that you were supposed to do with a girl. You were supposed to want to see them naked and want them to see you naked and also touch their boobs and…and also do that thing that mom had told him about that made babies….

Were they going to have a baby?

Sho…he loved babies. He loved babies so much and he loved to play with them and take care of them…but also…also he didn't want Shimazaki and Minegishi to have a baby. He didn't want them to have a baby because….because then….because then Shimazaki wouldn't want to be best friends with him anymore…and that was why Sho felt bad. How was he supposed to be best friends with him when that spot was taken by his…by…by Minegishi?

"Here, drink this…and listen to this. You'll feel better. Also…also maybe don't tell your sister that I let you drink this. You know what? Just keep this to yourself." Said Shimazaki. He handed Sho a little bottle from his desk with clear stuff in it. Sho got the feeling that this was not water. He didn't trust himself to say anything. He barely trusted himself to take the bottle from Shimazaki's hand and take a drink…

And then spit it right back.

"If you don't like it then don't spit it back in the bottle. Germs, think of the germs…can germs live in straight vodka? I have no clue…I'll ask Google later. Right now um…here." Said Shimazaki. He went into his desk and pulled out what looked like a really skinny cigarette. Sho wasn't going to smoke it. He knew he wasn't supposed to. Mom had said so when he was little. She had told him to never start smoking. Fukuda had been reminding him for years, too, of what mom had said so he knew that he was not remembering it wrong.

"I can't smoke. I'm ten." Said Sho. That was all that he trusted himself to say. He felt so…betrayed? He felt betrayed and…and he had no idea why. Shimazaki hadn't done anything at all to betray him. He was just doing what adults did. He was just being normal. It was Sho who was the weird one. Shimazaki was just doing the stuff that you were supposed to want to do with girls…Sho was the weird one….not him.

"So? I started smoking when I was your age…younger, actually." Said Shimazaki

"My mom wouldn't like it." Said Sho

"Fair enough, your life is your own and all, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to do to make you feel better if you won't drink and you won't smoke…and Toshi just now forgave me for the coke thing so I'm not doing that again…for a while. Yeah, I'm at a loss." Said Shimazaki. He ran a hand through his hair. It was all limp and…and not spiky…and that was just…weird. This whole thing was just….Sho just felt weird…because he was weird.

"I feel fine." Said Sho

"I can tell that you're lying. You're about to cry, I can sense it, and…and I'm sorry I grabbed you like that, ok? I just…Toshi is pretty much the only person who can touch me like that and even then I still freak out if I'm not expecting it. Just…sometimes when I let my guard down, like when I'm asleep or fucked up or whatever, I just get jumpy. Ok?" asked Shimazaki

"Ok." Said Sho. He wasn't going to tell him that he had it wrong, that he was more upset that Shimazaki and Minegishi had been doing gross adult stuff together, because then he would have known what a weirdo Sho was and then not only would he not be in the running for being Shimazaki's best friend they wouldn't even be regular friends either. Sho….he didn't want them to stop being friends…so he would just keep this to himself.

"Just….here. This song kind of explains it. Just…here. Sighted people have an easier time with this shit. It's called veteran of the psychic wars. Your English is pretty good you'll get the gist of it. Just…that's the way I get sometimes and you do, too. I mean both of our dads are pieces of shit. I mean your dad never sprayed you with a hose and then beat you with a belt until…but he's a piece of shit in his own way. I mean he put you in an awakening chamber and, yeah, I've felt the scars those leave. So…yeah. Just…yeah." Said Shimazaki. He sat down next to Sho and handed him his phone. Sho did as he was told. He wasn't about to correct Shimazaki and…and he was still upset and all but…

But he also felt good, too, because Shimazaki was near him and telling him stuff….

He felt good and bad at the same time. He felt good because Shimazaki was near and telling him the sort of stuff you told you best friend….but also he had been like that with Minegishi…who was a girl. They were a girl and Sho could not compete with that. They had boobs. Sho couldn't compete with boobs…if he had been a girl it would have been different. If Shimazaki wanted to then Sho would have let Shimazaki kiss him and hold his hand and touch his boobs and all of that other adult stuff. If he had been Shoko, not Sho, then he would have….because that would have been normal. That would have been normal and…and it was not normal to think about this so he was going to stop.

Because he was being weird.

"See? This is kind of like…sorry. I suck at this. Just…it was a reflex. Ok? I would never do anything to hurt you, ok? I know how it feels when someone you care about and trust and shit hurts you and…and it's too early and I'm too sober for this. Just….listen to the song and shit and know that I care about you and shit, ok?" asked Shimazaki. He pulled a lighter from his shorts' pocket and lit the tiny cigarette he'd had in his hand. Sho pulled his shirt up over his nose. That smelled like the time that they had teased a skunk until it sprayed them.

Gross.

"I know you would never hurt me. I mean we're….we're friends, right?" asked Sho. He didn't look at Shimazaki when he said that even though it was pointless. Shimazaki's aura was on him and stuff. He was being looked at either way.

"Yeah. We're best friends, kid." Said Shimazaki as he exhaled. He offered Sho the cigarette but took it away when Sho made no move to take it. He couldn't. He couldn't move. Best friends. They were best friends. He and Shimazaki were best friends and…and he had wanted this for long….and he was so happy…but also he just…he just…he felt so…he didn't even know. He had wanted to be best friends with Shimazaki since they had met but…but there was something above best friends…and Shimazaki and Minegishi were that.

Sho wished that he had been born a girl.

That way then he could have been to Shimazaki what Minegishi was. Not his girlfriend, because he had said a million times before that he didn't do the girlfriend and boyfriend thing, just…if he had Sho…well Shoko…then he wouldn't have needed Minegishi…and stuff….and probably not while he was a kid but…but when he grew up and stuff….then he could have been with Shimazaki the way Minegishi was…and stuff…because that was normal. That was the normal way for boys and girls to be and…and stuff…

But Sho was not a girl, he was a boy, so he was not going think about this anymore.

"But…what about Minegishi. What are they?" asked Sho. He held his breath as he waited for Shimazaki to say something…but he didn't say anything. He just laughed. He laughed as he exhaled and Sho thought of a chimney when he did that…and he smiled because it was funny…and stuff….it made his insides feel less…like there was a confused goldfish inside of them swimming around trying to get out.

"Kid…I have no fucking clue what Toshi and I are." Said Shimazaki

"Are they…are they your girlfriend? I mean because they're a girl….because they have boobs…and not fat guy boobs. Girl boobs." Said Sho. He had never seen girl boobs in person before that day but he had seen plenty of fat guy boobs on the beach and those were not fat guy boobs. They were little but they were all…round…and stuff. He didn't get what everyone was always going crazy about…yes he did. Those were boobs and boobs were awesome and….and if they hadn't been attached to Minegishi he would have been happy to have seen them.

"First of all never call Toshi a girl. You get a pass because you're a kid….unlike some greasy morons….they're a 'they' and they are Toshi, ok? Second of all me and Toshi aren't like that. Neither of us does the partner thing. Third of all I told you to keep your fucking eyes closed! When I tell you to do something then you do it you nosy little bastard! Also just…never tell Toshi. Ever. You can NEVER tell Toshi that you saw their tits, ok? Ever. They have a big thing about only people who they've given permission seeing them naked…well everyone does….well not exhibitionists and nudists….but Toshi just has this thing about people seeing them naked and shit so, just, never tell them that you saw their tits." Said Shimazaki. Sho nodded. He wasn't stupid. He knew that no girl…or anyone with boobs…would want someone to tell them that you saw their boobs while they were asleep. Even if it was an accident. Even if you didn't even care. He was going to keep his mouth shut about that.

"Ok…I won't tell them…and I didn't need you to tell me not to tell them anyway. I'm not stupid." Said Sho

"You say that but then you went into Toshi's room without even knocking. God, you really are Mob's brother I swear. Anyway, are we cool now? You're not freaked out by me and shit?" asked Shimazaki

"We're…we're still friends. Best friends." Said Sho. He had waited for so long to say that….and saying that had felt so good….and he felt so good. He felt mostly so good. He was also worried, so worried, or just…nervous? He didn't know. He was having a lot of feelings and some of those feelings were opposites….but he also felt good….because he was with Shimazaki…and stuff….but also Shimazaki had been doing all of that adult stuff with Minegishi and…and they weren't boyfriend and girlfriend but…but still…..

"Exactly. Nothing is ever going to come between us. Especially not my stupid reactions to shit. God….I feel better. You really should try this. You're the most high strung person I know." Said Shimazaki. He offered Sho his cigarette. He shook his head. Best friend or not he was not going to smoke something that smelled so terrible.

Besides, he had to know something.

He had no idea if this was ok to ask. He had no idea if he was being weird for asking….but he had to know. Mom had said that it was an act of love, doing that adult stuff with someone, and Sho…he had to know. Did Shimazaki love Minegishi? Sho cared because…because if they were in love then…then Minegishi was on a level above best friend…and stuff. That was all. That was why Sho needed to know…and stuff…that was all.

"Hey….Shimazaki? Are you in love with….with them?" asked Sho. Shimazaki shook his head as he exhaled.

"Kid…don't ask me shit that I don't know the answer too. Toshi and I are complicated as hell. I care about them and they care about me…and I guess that's love? I don't know. Love is complicated. I care about them a lot and they care about me but it's not like…like in the movies. It's not like romantic love, the kind you're talking about. I don't even know if I can feel romantic love. I mean I care about them and shit but I don't want to marry them, I don't even want to be their boyfriend, and I don't care who they sleep with and they don't care who I sleep with…so it's not romantic love…but the thought of someone loving them and…and them possibly feeling it back…fuck. I can't believe I felt threatened by that brail faced nerd….but it's whatever. We're ok now and I just…care about them? I don't know. I really have no clue about this. I'll tell you when I figure it out, ok? This is heavy for a kid and…and yeah, it's heavy. So I don't expect you to get it. You'll get it when you meet someone…and get older. You're ten. You've got your whole life to worry about this shit. You just focus on having fun and shit. Ok?" asked Shimazaki

"….ok." said Sho. He had no idea what any of that meant. He focused on how he had said that he didn't want to marry Minegishi or even be their boyfriend. He felt better…because he would not be replaced. That was why he felt better so….so he felt normal….

Really, it was normal to not want your best friend to replace him.

"Anyway once I finish this joint let's go to the park and pet some early morning dogs. Then if we have time we can get go explore the tunnels under London. There is so much shit under there…literally because I want us to go down into the sewers. You up for it?" said Shimazaki as he nudged Sho. Sho swallowed. He felt so…so weird. Being near him and stuff. He was there and…and he was close…and Sho just….

Had a goldfish in his stomach.

"Sure. That sounds fun…if dad doesn't need you. We can go play in the sewers. That's what best friends are for. To hang out…and stuff." Said Sho. He didn't want to play in the sewers. He didn't want to go anywhere but this bed. He wanted to be on this bed with Shimazaki for the rest of his life….and he just…that was normal. He was comfortable and stuff and he…he had just become his best friend…and best friends were supposed to hang out together...because they're best friends…..

And he had wanted to go to the park in the first place anyway.


	258. The Girl in her School Uniform

Seeing all the kids walking by in their school uniforms was weird.

Mob had worn a school uniform once, and she had loved it, but that had been years ago. Now she wore whatever she wanted to wear whenever she wanted to wear it. She didn't have to go to school or…well….anything. She was just herself. Well she was herself and Sho. She had things to do with her time even if those things did not involve going to school. She still had to get Sho up and dressed in the morning, make them both breakfast, find schoolwork for them to do, make them lunch, and a bunch of other stuff. So she wasn't exactly doing nothing…but she did wish, sometimes, that she was a part of those kids she saw sometimes, the ones who would walk to and from school in their uniforms, even though she remembered how much time school took up and how she had no freedom at school and stuff like that. At least without having to go to school she could hang out with her little brother all day. They could do whatever they wanted to.

Like go to the park.

Going to the park in the wintertime wasn't as fun as going during literally any other time of the year but they still liked to go. Sho liked it a lot better than she did, he had said, because he blended in with everyone else. He always had to wear long sleeves and long pants because of his scars and stuff. So she was glad that he felt good about blending in…even though she hated how she had to wear tights because it was cold out and stuff. Still, it was worth it to see her little brother smiling.

Nothing was worth more than seeing him smile.

If she had been in school then she would have missed out on so many of his little brother smiles. She would have been in a different room than him because she was a year older. They hadn't gone to the same school since he was in preschool and she was in kindergarten. If they had still been in school then they would have been in different rooms….or different buildings even. She was almost eleven now…so they would still be in different grades but the same building. They would have….

There was no point in thinking about what could have been.

She thought about what her life could have been like, sometimes, when she watched the other kids coming back from or going to school. She thought about how when she had been little mom had walked her and Sho to school. She thought about how she had learned to put her own uniform on even though there had been a lot of steps. All of the buttons and tying her ribbon and stuff. She got to wear whatever she wanted now, she was glad for that, but sometimes she thought about how if mom had never left then…then she would have been walking back to the Castle from whatever school she would have gone to…and she would have been walking back with Sho…or maybe he would have stayed afterschool and played with his friends…or something like that. She would have walked home alone. If mom had never run away then she never would have made any friends.

She didn't know how to feel.

So she decided to get back to what she had been doing. She and Sho had been trying to see who could swing the highest without using their powers. She had been letting him win, she had the most fun when he was happy and he was happiest when he was winning, but then he told her that she needed to put up real competition…so that was what she was doing. He was just so much better at this than her. He wasn't getting distracted by a bunch of kids walking home from school. She knew that she should have kept her head in the game, like Sho kept on telling her to do, but she just…part of her wanted to be those kids and part of her wanted to be grateful that her life had gone in this direction. She had friends, now, and she knew that she never would have been able to make friends if she had been in school and stuff. Kids her own age had never liked her. They still didn't like her. They had thought that she was weird when she had been little and they thought that she was weird now. She had tried, before, to talk to some kids back at the party.

It hadn't gone well.

That pink haired girl had told her that she had been a baby for playing with dolls and liking Frozen. She liked dolls and she liked Frozen and stuff. She was a kid and she liked kid things and…and maybe she was weird but…but if the other kids thought that she was weird then it was ok because…because she had her own friends. She even had a best friend and her best friend was going to be twenty eight and they still played dolls and watched Frozen with her so…so it was ok. She had a friend and that was ok. She didn't need to play with kids her own age. She didn't even want to and she knew that no kids her own age would want to play with her either.

She knew that the red haired girl coming up to her was not looking to play with her.

"Come on! Stop letting me win!" said Sho. Mob was slowing down, now, so she didn't accidentally kick the girl who was walking right up to them. She probably just wanted to play on the swings too. That was fine. Part of going to the park that everyone used was letting everyone use the park things. This was not their personal park. This was not their backyard back at the Castle.

"Sho, slow down. Someone's coming. I'm going to give her a turn." Said Mob switching to English because it was more polite that way. The girl was right there in front of them now and it was more polite to speak a language that she could understand. People sometimes thought that you were talking about them when you spoke a language in front of them that they didn't understand.

"Oh….just let her have both swings." Said Sho in Japanese. He dragged his feet down against the ground until he came to a stop. Mob did the same. It was easier, and easier on their shoes, to use their powers to stop but there were normal people around so they could not use their powers. She couldn't wait for dad to take over the world. Then espers would be able to use their powers around normal people and not hide who they really were.

Hiding who you really were was not a good feeling at all.

But dad said that they had to for the time being. The time being had been their whole lives up to this point. She wanted to just be able to be herself but she knew that it would not be happening any time soon. If she used her powers now like she used them in her normal life she would be stared at and people would think that she was an object of curiosity, which was dad speak for people would stare at her like she was a freak.

Like this red haired girl was doing right now.

She was staring at her and Sho like she had never seen other people before. Mob got that sometimes. When they went to places where most of the people looked like Sho people stared at her sometimes. It was because they weren't used to seeing Japanese people. That was the same reason why people stared at Sho when they were in Japan and stuff. They weren't used to seeing people who looked like him. That was all. Mob knew that people had their reasons, that this girl had her reasons, but she also knew that it was rude to just stare at people like that.

But she wasn't going to say anything to this girl because correcting people who you were not in charge of was rude too.

"My brother says that you can have both swings if you want." Said Mob as she came to a stop. She was going to be polite even though that girl was still staring. She was staring at Sho now…oh. Right. Another one of those girls who liked Sho. Mob…she had no idea what to do. Sho might have liked girls…maybe. He had never mentioned one before but she didn't know what happened in his head and his heart. So maybe it would have been mean of her to chase away the girls who liked him…but also she knew that girls like to chase him and catch him and kiss him because it was a game….well no, not realty, because Minegishi had said that it was wrong and that if they had been adults or even teenagers then they could have gotten into serious trouble.

So if it came to that, this girl trying to play catch and kiss with Sho, then Mob would step in.

"Oh, I thought you were his girlfriend for a moment. Sorry. Sho just never mentioned a sister." Said the girl

"How do you know my brother?" asked Mob. Sho really was a lot better than her when it came to making friends with people and stuff. He was just so much better at it. They had barely been in England, just for a few weeks, and he had already made a friend…even though he knew that they were not supposed to make friends with normal people…but Mob could keep a secret. She could keep Sho's friend a secret.

Or maybe more than a friend?

Because Sho's aura was being weird and that girl was smiling at him a lot…but Sho didn't like girls yet. Or maybe even at all. Mob didn't know. She had no idea what went on in his head or in his heart. All she knew was that she wanted him to be happy and stuff. If this girl liked him and tried to kiss him and he didn't want it then Mob would politely tell this girl to get the H-Word away from her little brother and if Sho wanted this girl to kiss him then Mob would keep it a secret from dad.

She didn't want to jump to any conclusions yet even though Sho deserved someone to love him and also if he married this girl their babies would be very cute.

"We met at the corner shop. He was with his blind master body guard buying fizzy drinks and sweets." Said the girl. Sho's aura was all weird. He took a deep breath before he got up off of his swing. Mob did the same. Right. Manners. She had to be polite and make a good first impression on Sho's friend. She knew that this girl probably wouldn't have wanted to be friends with her, nobody her age wanted to be friends with her, but that was ok because Sho deserved to have all the friends in the world.

"Big sis this is Emmy. I met her while I was getting snacks with Shimazaki. Emmy this is my big sister Shigeko." Said Sho. His aura was all nervous. Wow. He must have liked this girl….he liked a girl? Mob couldn't wrap her head around it. For their whole lives he had said how gross kissing and holding hands and all of that other love stuff was but now…well maybe she was just jumping to conclusions. Maybe she just had love on the brain because Valentine's Day was coming up soon. She didn't have anyone she wanted to give special chocolate too, just obligation chocolates, but that didn't mean that Sho wouldn't get any special chocolates. She just wanted him to find someone to love and be happy. He would most certainly find someone, he was the best little brother in the world. She knew that she probably wouldn't find anyone, she didn't know any boys her own age and all of the people she had liked before hadn't liked her back…well Hatori hadn't. There had been that boy that she had kissed back in the Seventh Division but she was never going to see him again.

But that was ok. Dad said that she would never be lonely because she would be spending the rest of her life with him…so….yay….?

She loved her dad, she really did, but the love that she had for her dad was different from the kind of love she wanted to have. She wanted a boyfriend. She wanted a boy who loved her and who she loved back. She wanted a boy who would look at her and think that she was pretty even though she wasn't. She wanted a boy who could see her for who she was and not who he wanted her to be. She also wanted someone who she could kiss because kissing was the best thing ever. That person could not be her own dad, super gross, and she just…wanted to find that person.

She hadn't had much luck so far.

She had thought that it would have been Hatori but then he got way too drunk and peed in a sink because he couldn't make it and….and that was not attractive at all. She didn't know exactly what her grown up life would be like but she was not going to spend it cleaning up pee filled sinks. Disgusting. She also didn't want to be with someone who drank so much that they thought that peeing in a sink that everyone had to use was a good thing to do. So she wasn't going to be giving Hatori special chocolates and asking him to be her boyfriend when she grew up or anything like that. No, she knew that she would probably never get a boyfriend, it was sad but true, and she accepted it.

Just because she would never find love didn't mean that Sho couldn't.

"It's nice to meet you, Emmy." Said Mob. She bowed, too, because that was good manners. She may not have been in Japan but she was still Japanese and that was good manners for a Japanese person. Dad said that no matter what country they were in they had to remember their manners. So that was what she did.

"It's nice to meet you too….Shih-gey-koh." Said Emmy. That was something that foreign people did when they heard her name, they tested it out, even though she knew that it wasn't really a weird name…in Japan, anyway. She just gotten to used to being in Japan. They had spent too long in Tokyo. She would have to get used to being around people who looked more like Sho than her again.

"That's right….Ehm-ee." Said Mob

"You've got a funny accent but that's ok because I bet to you I've got a funny accent too." Said Emmy. Mob wasn't sure what to say to that…or how close Emmy was standing. Mob took a step back. She felt the swing hit her in the back of the leg. She knew that you were supposed to give people a hula hoop of space, she had been taught that when she had been little, but apparently it was different in England.

"Here, you can have both swings. Me and my sister can go play somewhere else if you want." Said Sho. Mob didn't get it. Maybe he didn't like this girl like that, that would have made sense, or maybe he just wanted to play with her and her alone. That would have been very nice of him but she wanted him to be able to play with the other kids. So what if Mob had never learned to play with people her own age? She wasn't going to stop Sho. Besides, she wasn't sure if she even could play with the other kids. Well she knew that she wasn't allowed but she also got the feeling like…like she and this girl were just too different. Not because they were from different parts of the world or looked different or spoke different languages but because Mob hadn't felt like a kid since…since she had been really little. She had felt, for a long time now, like this mixture of being a kid and an adult…and she was leaning more towards being an adult. After all her friends were all adults and stuff…

But she would let Sho have this.

"Don't be daft. I don't need two swings, I'm only one person, and anyway I didn't come here to swing. I came here to ask you some questions." Said Emmy. She took off her backpack and pulled out a notebook. Her backpack was army pattered and almost as big as she was. Mob was reminded of her old school satchel. Hers had been a satchel, not a backpack, because it had been made of leather and opened with a clasp. She had only seen those in Japan.

"I can't tell you about my dad's work, so don't ask. She can't tell you either." Said Sho. Mob nodded. Sho was right to say that, and in English too, because they were never allowed to tell anyone that they were espers or about Claw or anything like that. That was one of dad's big rules. Nobody could know because then if it got out that dad was going to take over the world people would try even harder to stop him and then all of the espers in the world wouldn't be able to come together and come out of hiding and also none of dad's dreams would come true. Mob wanted dad's dreams to come true more than anything else in the world. Then he would be happy and maybe if he was happy then he would take some of the love he gave to her and give it to Sho. He needed all the love he could get.

"Oh…well I figured it was one of those 'if I tell you I have to kill you' sort of things'." Said Emmy as she flipped to another page in her notebook.

"We wouldn't have to kill you. We just aren't allowed to tell you." Said Mob. She had to say something because, well, she couldn't just let someone go around thinking things like that. She might have said the wrong thing, though, or maybe she shouldn't have said anything at all. This was Sho's friend, not hers, and back when they had been very little and Sho'd had friends they had never wanted to talk to her or play with her because she was so weird.

"That's brilliant." Said Emmy as she leaned in very close, again, and Mob tried to take a step back, again. Mob hoped that they stayed in this country for a while so she could learn how talking and stuff worked here. Personal space was difficult, well it had been when she had been little, and now she felt like she was three years old at preschool getting way too close to the other kids again.

"Um…thanks?" asked Mob. She wasn't sure if that was brilliant but she decided to keep her cluelessness to herself. She wasn't going to ruin this for Sho.

"Did you want to ask me anything else?" asked Sho. Emmy looked away from Mob…and then got really close to Sho. Sho had room to take a step back but he didn't. That must have meant that he wanted this girl to get close to him. That was…Mob wasn't sure if she was ready for Sho to be grown up enough to want to spend time with a girl…but she wanted him to be happy. She would always treasure the times that they had when they had been little but now they were both ten, she was almost eleven, and if she wanted to have a boyfriend then it was ok for Sho to want to have someone to love him and hold his hand and kiss him, too.

"Are you kidding? Of course I've got loads of questions for you. It wasn't as though we'd had time for a proper chinwag when we met…sorry. For just running off like that. I was just being daft. Anyway I've got…this many pages of questions for you…and more, too, because now I know that you've got a sister and now I've got even more questions." Said Emmy. She was talking to Sho so Mob decided not to interject. She just sat back down on the swing and let them talk…or was she too close? Did Sho want privacy? Or did he want her to be near in case this girl decided that she was going to try and kiss him? Did he want her to save him from that if it happened? Was he still grossed out by that? Mob had no clue…but being clueless was normal for her. So she decided that the best thing to do was just to sit on her swing and make sure that Sho was ok…but also not step in because she did not want to ruin whatever it was that she was sitting there listening to.

"Well you can ask whatever you want just so long as it's not about my dad's work….I guess." Said Sho. He kicked the ground with his foot a little. She didn't know what he was trying to do but he just got his shoe dirty. The snow was mostly gone and now he was just getting dirty…which meant that she would have more work to do when she got home…but that was ok. Keeping him clean and stuff was just part of her job as his big sister.

"Brilliant. Alright, first of all….which one of you is adopted? You or your sister? Because you don't look a thing alike." Said Emmy. Mob thought that maybe that wasn't the best question to ask…but maybe she just didn't like that question because she had been asked that for her whole life. Brothers and sisters didn't always have to look alike. Mom and dad were both half Japanese. She just got all of the Japanese and Sho just got all of the half. That was all.

"…neither of us. We're brother and sister, we just don't look alike." Said Sho

"Oh. So one of you looks like your mum and one of you looks like your dad? Me and my sister are like that." Said Emmy

"No, I look like my mom but she doesn't look like anyone. That's just because our mom and dad are half Japanese. She just got all of the Japanese." Said Sho. He was just as sick of explaining that to people as she was. He was just as sick of explaining and stuff….but he didn't get mad. That was good. He got mad sometimes and while she didn't mind it if he got mad at her she did mind it if he got mad at someone else….well not 'mind' but if he had to be mad at some then it should have been at her. She could take it. That was part of being a good big sister, sometimes your little brother got mad and stuff and you just had to wait it out, though he had been very good about that lately.

"I didn't know it worked like that. Brilliant. Well I've got loads more questions. Which one of you is older? I think her because she's taller." Said Emmy. Mob didn't know if height was a good way to measure age. Sho was sometimes taller than her. Well he had been for a little bit but then she had started growing again. She was just a little bit taller than him. She knew that it bothered him but she also had no idea how to stop growing. The whole thing was just annoying. A lot of her dresses were getting too short and stuff. Even the Belle dress that dad liked it when she wore.

"She's ten. We're both ten but she's almost eleven. Do you have a lot more questions? Because I don't know if I want to stand here all day answering questions." Said Sho. Mob got the feeling that he had just said something rude. He should have been more polite to her. That was no way to talk to a friend…or someone you might have liked…or someone who might have liked you.

"I've got loads more…but you're right. I shouldn't just ask you questions. Sorry…I can be a bit odd sometimes. I mean people tell me that I'm odd sometimes. I'll go away if you want." Said Emmy

"It's ok. People say that I'm weird too." Said Mob. Maybe she shouldn't have said anything since nobody had been talking to her. You weren't supposed to just start talking when nobody had said anything to you. That was rude and she was being clueless but she didn't want anyone, even someone who she had just met and might have been planning on kissing her little brother, to feel that way about themselves. That they were weird. She knew how it felt to know that you were weird. It was not a good feeling at all.

"Not as odd as people think that I am. It's alright. I don't always know when to go and-" said Emmy

"Um…you can stay. If you want to. I mean…um…I want you to stay?" asked Sho. Mob didn't know why he was asking. He knew his own feelings and stuff….oh….oh…..oh! He DID like her! Mob was going to give him so many hugs later. All of the hugs. She had always wanted him to like someone and now he did and now he would know how good it was to like someone and…and stuff…and she was just so happy for him!

"Oh….alright. Um…I was just going to ask you about how you liked England, what was different, if you missed Japan, what eating raw fish is like, if you like Dragon Ball, things like that…" said Emmy. She brushed some of her hair behind her ear. Sho wasn't looking at her and she wasn't looking at him and…and Mob felt like maybe she shouldn't have been there. She felt sort of like she was out of place, like she was an extra person, like when she went to visit her friends and Shimazaki and Minegishi were laying together on the couch listening to the TV or music or a book or something and Shimazaki was using Minegishi as a pillow and they had their hand in his hair and stuff….

She felt sort of like she should not have been there…but she didn't want to just leave Sho…but she also didn't want to be an extra person in…whatever this was.

"I like England ok, it's not that different from Japan….well not super different….um….I guess I miss Japan a little. Raw fish is good. It's like…eating raw fish I guess. Dragon Ball is ok. I mean I haven't seen that much of it but I like the fights…I like anime with a lot of fighting in it. Fighting games too." Said Sho

"Oh! Do you like Mortal Kombat?" asked Emmy

"Yeah, of course I do….you do too?" asked Sho

"Of course I do. It's bloody brilliant. I like it when they get injured and bleed and such. I used to play a lot of Smash but-" said Emmy

"Nobody ever got hurt for real!" said Sho

"See? You get it. It's like…I just blew you up with a bomb. You should at least be bleeding or something. Plus it' hard to find someone to have a good match with. Most people just fall off the world all the time. My sister is such a booger like that. She really winds me up, you know? Mum and dad make her play with me and then instead of just playing she throws herself off the world. I swear, she's mad. She completely mad." Said Emmy. Mob didn't think that it was such a bad thing, to throw yourself off the world so your sibling could win, but she knew that it bothered Sho…but she had no idea what she was supposed to do in that case. She wanted him to feel good and win…and also Sho got mad when he lost, too, so it was best to just let him win so he could feel good about himself. She wanted him to feel good about himself…and also she didn't like fighting games that much…and also she didn't think that Sho should have been playing fighting games because he liked to fight in real life too…but that was…whatever made Sho happy. That was what mattered. Whatever made her little brother happy.

"Yeah my big sister does that too. She just wants me to win because she's nice like that." Said Sho. Mob smiled. Sho thought that she was being nice and not annoying. He hadn't called her annoying in a while. He had been really nice to her lately. She hoped that he was nice to her forever…but if he mean to her again then that was ok too.

"Lucky. Mine's a booger. Have you got any other brothers and sisters?" asked Emmy

"No, just big sis." Said Sho

"Does she play too?" asked Emmy

"Um…I don't really like those kinds of games." Said Mob. She didn't much like being talked about like she wasn't there…but that was ok. Sho was making a friend, or maybe more than a friend, and that was ok. She was so happy for him!

"Bloody hell…I've not got my Gameboy. Next time I see you I'll bring it. I mean if I see you again. I mean I will see you again, right?" asked Emmy. She was smiling at Sho and looking up and she was red…but maybe it was just the cold. She turned red in the cold. Maybe because she had red hair and Sho had red hair…and she had never seen two red haired people together and stuff. She was happy for Sho, that he had someone who looked like him. He was lucky like that. No matter where they went nobody ever looked like him. Now someone looked like him. She knew how it felt when nobody looked like you.

"Yeah. We come to this park a lot. Well I do. I mean I do while I live here. We move a lot so if you don't ever see me again it's because we moved." Said Sho

"You just move all of a sudden like that? For your dad's work?" asked Emmy

"Yeah…it kind of sucks but-" said Sho. Mob wished that he wouldn't say words like that…but she had heard him say so much worse than that…so maybe 'sucks' was ok….but maybe he shouldn't have been saying that stuff at all…but they would just talk about that later. Not now.

"I know that you can't tell me but can you give me a hint? Like are you in the yakuza, I Googled, or-" asked Emmy. She should not have been asking and if she knew that she should not have been asking then why was she asking. Mob didn't know of a polite way to ask someone to shut up…so she would leave this to Sho. Even if he was a little bit impolite. People were not supposed to ask about Claw. Dad had been very clear about that.

"You look really pretty today." Said Sho suddenly. Mob held down her braids with her hands. That was…she was so HAPPY for him! She was so happy that he had found someone he liked, and that was something that boys said when they liked you, and she loved him and she love anyone he loved even if they were sort of weird….she was so happy for him!

"Um….thanks. I didn't do anything different um…you look nice too. I like your coat…and….um…hair." said Emmy. Mob knew how she felt. She knew that feeling where you were all nervous and your brain stopped working and you had no clue what to say and stuff. She decided to go and play on the play structure. She had been in Emmy's place before, not with her brother because he was her brother, but Mob knew how it felt when you insides turned to mush and your brain stopped working and stuff. She knew how it felt and she decided not to make that feeling any worse for her. It was sort of weird that someone felt like that about Sho, about her own little brother, but…but that was ok. She wanted Sho to be happy. She always wanted Sho to be happy and if having a girlfriend made him happy then she wanted him to have a girlfriend.

She went over to the climbing thing.

She climbed to the top and watched Sho and his girlfriend. They were swinging together. They were swinging on the swings together and…and it was weird. It was weird because…because she almost never saw him playing with another kid. Seeing him with another kid was weird, seeing him with a girl who he liked and who liked him, and….and stuff. She was happy for him but also…also this was just a little bit weird…because he had a girlfriend now and…and she was just a regular girl in her school uniform. She knew that dad would be upset that he had met a girl, that he liked a girl, and probably that she wasn't an esper too…but she would keep a secret. She was happy for Sho, one of them should have had someone at least, and she just wanted him to be happy. That was all….

But if she just wanted him to be happy then why did she feel weird?

She wanted him to be happy, she wanted him to have a girlfriend, she wanted him to be loved…but also she wanted to be loved too. She wanted to be loved and…and to have a boyfriend…and stuff. She wanted to have someone to talk to and hold hands with her and kiss her…and she just wanted….it was getting close to Valentine's Day. That was it. She just….had love in her head because it was Valentine's Day. She wanted good thing to happen for Sho, she loved him, and what could be better than her own little brother getting everything that she had ever wanted?

Nothing, nothing at all could ever be better than that.


	259. Afternoon Tea

Mob liked tea.

Well she had nothing against tea. She didn't mind green tea at all. She would just have preferred coffee. But that was not very Japanese of her, like dad had said, but green tea didn't have caffeine in it, she had said, and then she had been worried that dad might have gotten upset because she had talked back to him but he just kissed her on the top of the head and said 'that is doesn't, Daughter, that it doesn't' and then they had gone on with their day. That had been something that had happened between her and dad. She wasn't with dad, now, she was with Fukuda and she knew that if she asked for coffee Fukuda would not kiss her on the top of her head and agree with her.

Something which she was glad for.

Dad was the only one who kissed her on the top of her head. Well Sho had kissed her on the forehead at New Year's and said that he loved her and stuff, but that was after she had kissed him on the forehead, but she didn't do that regularly because he really hated it and she didn't want to upset him. It didn't upset her when dad kissed her on the top of the head. Sometimes it felt weird, like when he kissed her on the top of her head and just stayed there, but she didn't hate it. She liked it when dad showed her how much he loved her….and she was glad that it was only once a week where he showed her enough love to smother her and stuff and not the rest of her life.

She didn't like feeling smothered.

She hated it, actually, but dad couldn't help it. He just didn't know how showing love worked. Maybe when he was a kid nobody showed him how to show love. He never mentioned his parents, only that he had parents and that they were dead, but maybe he didn't mention them because they hadn't been nice to him. Mob wished that mom was still around. Maybe then mom could have explained to dad how to show someone love without smothering them. Then dad could have showed her love without smothering her and maybe then he could have showed Sho all of his extra love and stuff. Then things could have been better and stuff. Then everyone would be loved and nobody would be smothered.

That would have been great. Mob hated being smothered.

She felt like she was being smothered with now. There was an atmosphere in this house that made her feel all smothered. She was in Fukuda's house. He lived in the house on the other side of theirs. His house looked different on the inside than hers and Sho's. His walls were green, not blue, and he had a fireplace and stuff. His house looked different because his was not a prefab. That meant that other people, not Claw people, had lived in this house before. She could sort of feel them. She could sort of feel the people who had lived in this house before…their spirits.

Neutral spirits.

She didn't bother them. There were neutral spirits everywhere. Sometimes she sensed them, sometimes she didn't, sometimes they sensed her, sometimes they didn't. Mob only exorcised evil spirits because they liked to hurt people. These spirits were just hanging around. They might not have even known that they were dead. If they were the sorts of spirits who thought that they were still alive then Mob was not going to burst their bubble. She had done that before when she had been very little and then the spirits got so upset that they had turned evil and stuff. Then she'd had to exorcise them…and she had felt bad…but dad had said that she had done the right thing, so it was ok, even though it hadn't felt like it was anything even close to being ok. She had felt so bad…and dad had said that she had been being ridiculous. He had been meaner back then. He was a lot nicer now. Sometimes he could be too nice, he could smother her with his niceness, but she wasn't going to complain. Dad loved her and that was what mattered the most.

So it was the ok kind of smothering.

This, however, did not feel like the ok kind of smothering. This felt like the whole atmosphere was pressing down on her. She didn't know why. She was just having tea with Fukuda. Maybe it was because he was being so formal. Not as formal as a real tea ceremony, Mob had seen them on TV and they looked very formal and very boring, he was just formal like they were at work…which in a way they were. She was pretty sure that she outranked him. Dad said that the only person she had to answer to was him…so maybe she outranked Fukuda and stuff…but that didn't matter. She had only brought up how high she ranked once, when Sho had been hurting himself, and she hadn't liked it. Being bossy and stuff. But that had been for a very good reason.

Though afternoon tea was not a very good reason to even think about ranks. In Mob's opinion, anyway.

"I wasn't sure if you still liked green tea or not, Suzuki-san." Said Fukuda. He poured her a cup of tea and then sat down opposite of her. This had not been how he had wanted to spend his day off. He would much rather have been taking Sho to the park like he had asked….but this was important. Fukuda knew that Suzuki didn't give a damn if he overstepped with Sho but this was not Sho. This was Shigeko.

This was Suzuki's favorite child.

The man had three children, two biological and one adopted, and his adoptive daughter was his favorite. This was the only one of his children that he gave a damn about. He had abandoned one and the other wasn't much better off. Hell, the baby was the lucky on in this situation. She could have either been neglected or smothered. Fukuda wondered which one was worse. Sho…at least Sho had him. Shigeko had to deal with the new level of obsession that Suzuki had discovered. There was no way that this was going to be good for her…or anyone else. There was no way that this was anything other than a bad thing…

So he had to figure out just how bad things were and then he would be able to act from there.

"I like it. You did good." Said Mob. She smiled. She thought that maybe if she smiled then Fukuda would be less formal. They weren't at work, they were having afternoon tea, and that was not a formal time at all.

"Thank you very much for your kind words." Said Fukuda. It was best to start from a place of politeness. Suzuki liked that, when people were polite to him, even people that he had known for his entire life. He decided to start from here with Shigeko. He knew the crowd she hung around with, that raucous group, but he knew not to start from that place…or even to go to that place. That was not who he was and Shigeko knew it. Pretending to be on that level with her…no. He needed to stay in his comfort zone. He knew that he needed to be careful. He knew what could happen if he messed this up.

Well he knew what it was like when he messed up with Suzuki…and he was not itching to find out just how much like her father she was like.

"Um…you're welcome?" asked Mob. Well that had just made him even more formal than when they had started out. She had no idea how she was supposed to fix this, to fix them. They had used to be friends. They had used to be friends when she had been little…but she was older now…but they could still be fiends. Maybe. She didn't know any reason why they couldn't be…and she also didn't know any reason why they weren't. There must have been something that she had done or something that she could do to make things better between them. He knew that he had said that things had changed because she had gotten older and stuff but she and Sho were practically the same age and the two of them were the best of friends….

Maybe she could fix whatever had gone wrong between them over tea.

"How have you been lately? We haven't spoken in some time." Said Fukuda. He took a sip of his tea to give himself time to answer. Suzuki and him used to talk over tea. He used to check in with him, see if he was getting any closer to the deep end, but then time had happened and Suzuki had a wife and a child and then they had drifted apart somewhat…and it had been the best time of his life…but now it looked like it was time to revive an old favorite.

"I've been pretty good. I've been going to the park a lot with Sho…um…me and Minegishi have been doing indoor gardening….and um…Hatori and I are playing a game called Dark Souls now but I don't think that it's very fun because we keep on dying and…um….I got the caramel out of the waffle maker for Shibata so he could make cake waffles. They were very good. He's been watching this show about British people who bake and now he's just been baking all the time, which is good, but it's not good when Shimazaki also tries to bake and stuff…because he does stuff like put straight caramels in the waffle maker and it makes Shibata mad. He can't say anything, though, because Shimazaki said that he's blind and he can't cook….even though I've seen him cook and also you don't have to see to know that caramels melt and then harden…but I didn't say anything either in case it really did have to do with him being blind." Said Mob. She wasn't sure how much she was supposed to say. She had heard that people didn't like short answer…but she had also heard that people didn't like people who talked too much. There were so many contradictory rules when it came to talking with other people. It was enough to make her head feel like it was going to explode, like she was a shook up soda bottle, but she knew that she was not going to explode. No, she took care to keep her powers under control. Dad was always telling her to keep her powers under control so that meant that it was ok so smoke her pen before she came here because talking to Fukuda could be so stressful sometimes.

And she had no idea why.

She wished that he would have just come to her with a list of the things that she had done wrong so they could fix it. He had used to be there for her like he was there for Sho. They had used to play together. She had been the one to show him how to play Mario Party back when she had been little. He had played other things with her, like dolls, and he had even done the funny voices too even though her dolls didn't need funny voices. It had still been nice, though, back when she had been little…

But she wasn't little anymore…and…and that didn't mean that things couldn't still be nice between them.

"And how about you and your dad. How have you two been?" asked Fukuda. He had forgotten how she could go on. She'd had that problem when she had been a child, too. She had either said nothing or said everything. It was important to be precise with the questions he asked her. She wasn't Suzuki. Suzuki, for all of his social faults had built up something of a rapport with Fukuda. Thirty years together would do that. He and Shigeko, on the other hand, rarely spoke. Not like this, anyway. Not like anything.

"Me and dad are doing good. He took me to a big and fancy house, it was called a manor house, and we looked at all the rooms…and then we played in the snow. But then dad hurt his back because he's forty three and can't play in the snow anymore. Um…then I took a bath and we watched more of mom's favorite show but then I got bored so we watched more of Neon Genesis Evangelion, that's a show we're watching together, but then we got to this episode that didn't make any sense so we decided to play Minecraft and listen to a documentary about rice and then we went to bed and then I woke up in my own bed because it was Monday…and um…I had a lot of fun with dad. I don't know what we're going to do next week but I had a lot of fun." Said Mob. She didn't get why he wanted to know about dad. If he wanted to know about dad then he could have just asked about dad to dad himself. They had known each other for longer than Mob had even been alive. Still, though, it was nice talking to him. Even if he was being all formal like they were at work together or something. She thought that this was going well. Maybe if this went very well then they could go back to being friends again.

"Sounds like you two have fun together." Said Fukuda. He watched her aura, not her face, because like Suzuki her aura would give it away. What she really felt about all of that. Her aura….was neutral. He…he knew why. She smelled like skunky citrus. Again with this. He wanted to take her and shake her and remind her of the fact that she was only ten years old…but that was not is place. She would do what she would do. She was Suzuki Shigeko. She was the second most powerful being on Earth. Suzuki had said, before, that he had come to the realization that he could do anything, nothing could ever stop him, when he had been around that age…and then he had decided that he would take over the world just because he could. There was no one on Earth who could stop him.

And there was no one on Earth who could stop his daughter.

So he didn't. He didn't address the drinking and smoking, and had no plans to address the drinking and smoking, but instead he was just going to stick to figuring out how close she was to exploding and then he would work from there. If she was close to an explosion then he would figure out what to do about Suzuki and if she wasn't then…then he would plan his next move while operating under the idea that an explosion was building.

There. Simple.

"We do." Said Mob. She had been saying too much. Now it was time to say less. People didn't like it when you dominated the conversation like that. People liked to have their own turns to speak so that was what she was going to do. She was going to give Fukuda a turn to speak and then maybe he would be less formal and then maybe he would go back to liking her and being her friend and stuff.

"But you know if you're ever not having fun you can tell your dad to leave you alone, right?" asked Fukuda. He cut to the point. Her aura was unreadable so he just got to the point. He knew how Suzuki was about his time being wasted.

"Why would I tell my dad something as mean as that?" asked Mob. That made zero sense. Dad didn't look it but he did have feelings. He had a lot of them, actually, and he had to keep them locked in tight or he could lose control of his powers. Even if he didn't have to keep them locked in tight Mob would still never have told her own father something so mean. Leave me alone was such a mean thing to say. Mob didn't even like thinking it so, of course, she was not going to say it.

"Because I know how…overbearing…he can be sometimes. I've known him since we were in middle school and I know that sometimes he can be a little…overly enthusiastic. He can be that way about a show he likes or a game or…or about people." Said Fukuda. He watched her aura again even though he wasn't sure what he was trying to see. Suzuki was like a pressure cooker. It was easy to see what was just below the surface a lot of the time. Shigeko on the other hand was like a slow cooker. It was hard to tell that she was building to an explosion until it was about to happen…thanks to the magic of chemistry. Maybe he shouldn't have disparaged her. Suzuki might have been a more tolerable man if he hadn't been so high strung and…no. They had gone to university together. Suzuki could not have so much as one drink or he would lose control….and that would not have been good for anyone.

She had better not have been thinking of getting Sho into all of that.

She was into what she was into. The ship had sailed long ago. Sho, on the other hand, was still just a child. He had better control over his powers than she ever would, which was largely why she did what she did he suspected, and he did not need to be introduced to all of that. He was Suzuki's son and…and who knew how he would react to all of that? And also he was just a child.

"Oh. You mean the smothering feeling. I get that sometimes but we only spend one day together so that's ok." Said Mob. She didn't know what she would do if she had to go back to being with dad all the time day in and day out….but she also didn't want to go back to him pretending that she wasn't even alive. She didn't want to go back to that. One day a week was good.

"But it won't always be one day." Said Fukuda. He didn't know if she was ok with what her father was planning for her life or if she was just too dense to notice. He had no idea…but he needed to figure out what she was feeling….and then he could plan accordingly.

"What do you mean?" asked Mob. She didn't get it an she would rather have just asked then try to figure it out. She hadn't even been able to figure out what had gone wrong between them when she had been trying for years. She wasn't going to try and figure out one more thing.

"What do you know about your father's plans for the future?" asked Fukuda

"First we're going to kidnap the Prime Minster but we're not going to hurt him. We just need to have someone valuable around so people don't try to kill us. Then we'll take Japan first because that's where we were born. Then after that we're going to-" said Mob

"No, I meant for your future. Has your father ever talked to you about his plans for your future?" asked Fukuda. He puts an emphasis on 'your' even though he has no idea if she can even hear it. Suzuki can't hear tones, most of the time anyway, and he has no idea how much she takes after her father. This is his fault. He should have made more an effort to get to know her. She'll grow up one day and all signs pointed to her being the second coming of Suzuki so he had better figure her out sooner rather than later.

"…my future is Claw's future." Said Mob. She and Sho were the future of Claw, dad had said so, and because they were the future of Claw they were the future of the world and because they were the future of the world then they would have to do what dad said all the time and follow his plans for their lives. He had been very clear about that. Mob didn't see the point in feeling one way or the other about it. Claw was going to take over the world and make it better, that was a good thing, but it wouldn't work out if Mob and Sho didn't do their parts. So they just…had to do their parts to make everything work out for dad and for Claw and for the world.

"I mean about his plans for your personal life. Has he given you any indication about what he wants for you when you grow up?" asked Fukuda. He wanted to sigh but he didn't. She was either being intentionally dense, high as a kite, or honestly had no clue what he was even talking about. He would never be able to figure anything out if he got frustrated…so he just chose not to get frustrated.

"He says that when I grow up he's going to build a great big house for us to live in and then we'll be able to hang out all the time and then when I grow up and have kids then he'll help me take care of them. My husband too, I guess, but I don't know who that'll be. I don't even have a boyfriend." Said Mob. She could see the tea in her cup start to swirl around. She didn't want to talk about this with Fukuda. That was almost as bad as talking about this with dad. She had liked someone and now she didn't. Mob didn't know what everyone was so fascinated about. People fell in and out of love all the time. Mom and dad had fallen out of love and they had been married. If Fukuda wanted to know about people falling in and out of love then he should have talked to dad.

"You broke up with Hatori?" asked Fukuda. As soon as he asked he realized that he may have overstepped. That was none of his business. He knew how protective Suzuki could be over his private life. He had no idea how protective his Daughter was over hers.

"…we were never a couple." Said Mob. She wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Just because she had liked Hatori it didn't mean that they were a couple! Also she didn't even like him like that anymore. She could still be friends with him but she didn't know if she could be with someone who acted like that…and also he wiped his hands on his sweater when they were dirty, only drank soda and energy drinks, and also could be a little bit overly dramatic. They were still friends though! Just friends.

"Well I'm sorry either way. I suppose that you'll be spending Valentine's Day alone then." Said Fukuda. He hoped to God that she had found someone else to have feelings for. He really hoped that she had not been planning on spending Valentine's Day with Suzuki. He knew Suzuki, knew that he wasn't capable of anything…like that….but there was an emotional component to his relationship with Shigeko that Fukuda worried about. She was wearing yellow. Masami had loved yellow. Suzuki remembered that Masami had loved yellow. Fukuda knew that he was trying to recreate Masami…and he did not like it.

There was no recreating Masami.

Also this could not have been good for Shigeko. If she exploded then she would take them all with her. He had been in the middle of one of her explosions. He would have died if not for his powers. She had killed seventeen people on accident. That base…a lot of people had been elsewhere at the time. Now they were in the middle of a major city. If Suzuki ever pushed her too far then it would all be over…

"No. Maybe. I don't know. I haven't planned that far ahead. Minegishi said that if I had nothing better to do then I could eat chocolate and watch TV with them. I might go somewhere with Sho but he…he might be busy. So I don't know." Said Mob. She had been about to say something about that girl who may have been Sho's girlfriend. She knew not to tell Fukuda because he could tell dad and then dad could be mad. She would never ruin things for Sho like that.

"That sounds like a really fun time. Tell me how it goes." Said Fukuda. There. That was good. Suzuki wasn't going to do something unbelievably creepy like take his Daughter out for Valentine's Day. That had been…well Fukuda didn't like to think about it but that had probably been when Sho had been conceived. He had been the one to give Suzuki the mother of all pep talks that day. He had been nervous, as nervous as he let himself be, about his date with Masami. If Fukuda could have gone back in time he would have…left everything alone. He would have left everything alone because that had been when Sho had been created and he loved Sho like a son. Suzuki should have loved his son like a son….or at all….and he should have loved his daughter like a daughter…

Not like a smaller version of his wife.

Fukuda might just have had a bad mind to be thinking that way about Suzuki. He knew him and he knew that he may have been capable of some truly terrible things, Fukuda didn't even want to think about the terrible things he had done, but doing things like that to children…to his own daughter…well that was a line the man would not cross. One that he had never even thought about crossing. No, it was all emotional…but at least Suzuki knew that taking his daughter out on Valentine's Day would have been going too far…

Thank God for the small miracles.

"Do you still like assorted chocolates the best?" asked Mob after she finished sipping her tea. Shimazaki's was better but Shimazaki but liquor in his tea so that made sense. She wasn't going to complain about the tea…even though she felt like she needed a drink really badly. The atmosphere in here was getting to her. She sort of felt like opening a window even though she knew that opening a window would not have done anything to fix this feeling she had.

"What?" asked Fukuda. He had been thinking too much. That was his problem…well he had to think too much. When talking to Suzuki it was best to always be one step ahead, preferably three, but one would do. Shigeko…he had no clue how many steps he had to be ahead when it came to her.

"I wanted to know if you still liked the assorted kind of chocolates." Said Mob. She knew that she was spoiling the surprise but she also knew that if she gave him chocolates that he didn't like then they might have ended up drifting even further apart than they had already. She wanted things to go back to how they had been before…or at least back to something close to how things had been before.

"Right. For Valentine's Day. I like assorted chocolates but you don't have to get me anything, Suzuki-san." Said Fukuda

"I want to. You're one of the people that I've known the longest in my whole life. I've known you for as long as I can remember and…and I want to give you something for Valentine's Day." Said Mob

"You really don't-" said Fukuda

"Please don't tell me that I don't have to. I want to. One Valentine's Day you're supposed to give gifts to people who you love and who are important to you. You're important to be me because I've known you for my whole life and…and also you used to play with me and Sho a lot…and now you just play with Sho…and I don't know why." Said Mob. She hoped that she was making herself clear. She wanted them to be friends. She still cared about him and she wanted him to care about her…not even as much as before. Just a little. Enough to at least call her Shigeko or even just Suzuki instead of Suzuki-san. They weren't at work. He didn't have to call her Suzuki-san.

"Well….alright then. I suppose that there's nothing that I can do to stop you." Said Fukuda. He has no idea what she was getting at. None at all. He just…could not understand her. Trying to understand her…it was like trying to understand Suzuki…but when he was drunk. She was even harder to predict than her father…

But at least she wasn't going to explode.

There. That was what he had set out to find out and now he knew and now…now he could just rest easy. He could rest easy knowing that she was not going to explode any time soon and now he could get back to figuring out how to get Suzuki's mind off of his daughter. Maybe he could get him playing Space Invaders again. He had always been able to get lost in that game…or maybe just introduce him to a woman who could stand his presence and also knew how contraception worked. Or maybe something else…he didn't know…

But at least he knew that once Shigeko left he would have time to think.

"I guess so. I mean….it's Valentine's Day." Said Mob. She didn't get it. What did Fukuda see in her that was so wrong that he didn't even want a Valentine's Day gift from her? What had she done that was so wrong? And if she had done something so wrong to Fukuda that he didn't even like her anymore then why didn't he just come out with it already? How was she supposed to fix something when she didn't even know how she had broken it? And if things were so broken between them then…then why had he invited her over for afternoon tea in the first place?

She didn't know. Maybe just because he liked tea too.


	260. Birds and Bird Watching

Sho liked birds.

He liked them a lot. They could go wherever they wanted to go, do whatever they wanted to do, and they loved their babies so much that they threw up food into their babies mouths because they couldn't get it themselves. That was love right there. Human didn't do that. Humans just fed their babies the same way that cows did, that was what boobs were for, and that wasn't nearly the same as throwing up food from your stomach that you had taken your time finding and catching and digesting right into their mouths. No, it was different for humans and birds. They were such good animals. He loved them so much.

And he loved to climb trees and watch them.

"Be careful, you might fall….and stuff." Said Sho. Climbing trees and watching birds was one of his favorite things to do at parks. He liked it best when it was warm out and the leaves could hide him from the world. That way he could just pretend that it was him and the birds and…and the person that he was with. Usually it was Shimazaki. Not today, though, because Shimazaki had stuff to do. No, now Sho was with his new friend…

"If I fall I'll just grab a branch on the way down." Said Emmy. Sho…they were friends. They were friends because he was normal and this was normal. It was normal to want to be friends with a girl…and to like her…and stuff. You were supposed to like girls and that was what Sho did. He liked this girl. He liked her a lot. She was pretty and she liked him so he liked her. That was a good enough reason!

It really was.

He had climbed this tree with her. He hadn't set out to do this, he had gone to the park on his own because Shimazaki had ditched him to do stuff on his own, and then she had passed by after school and now they were in this tree together. He wished that there had been leaves. If there had been leaves then he could have been hidden better and nobody would have been able to see him…but that made no sense. He wanted everyone to see him. He had a girl and he liked her and she liked him and why would he want to hide that from people? It wasn't like he was doing something weird. It wasn't like she was a boy and they were kissing in a coatroom or anything like that. This was normal. This was normal and he was being normal!

"You'd break your arm if you tried that." Said Sho. He was helped her keep balance. She didn't have powers so if she fell she would be in real trouble. It was weird, being his close to someone with no aura. He could feel how warm she was and stuff. She was just warm because she liked him. When you were with someone you liked you felt all warm all over…he had heard. He hadn't like anyone before or…he liked her! He did! He had no reason not to like her!

"Well then that would be brilliant. I'd get one of those glow in the dark casts then. Maybe even some screws in my arm or something." Said Emmy

"They put screws in your arm if you break it?" asked Sho. He was so glad that he had Fukuda…even if he wasn't always the most fun guy. At least with Fukuda around nobody had to put screws through his arms or anything like that.

"Yeah, it happened to this guy in my class. He fell out of a tree and they had to screw his bones back together. It was brilliant. He had scars up and down his arm from it and everything." Said Emmy.

"Poor guy." Said Sho. Having scars sucked. When you had scars then you had to hide them from people. That got so annoying especially when it got hot out.

"Why? Scars are brilliant." Said Emmy

"What do you mean? They suck. When you have them then you have to hide them from people and you can't wear short sleeves or shorts. It sucks." Said Sho

"Are you daft? You're supposed to show scars to people. That way you can warn people not to mess with you and stuff." Said Emmy. He had heard that before, that girls liked scars, but he hadn't known that it was true. Maybe that was why girls liked him, because he was covered in scars, but that didn't make any sense because he never showed them to anyone else. He could have showed her but…but he wasn't supposed to show anyone.

"Don't talk so loud. You'll scare the bird away." said Sho. They were watching a pigeon. The pigeon was watching them. He wondered what the pigeon thought of him. Did it think that he was normal? Did it think that he was just like everyone else? That he was just a normal guy with a normal girl doing normal things? Birds must have been good judges about what was and was not normal. They flew around the whole city and saw all sorts of people. They must have been able to tell that he was a normal person and he liked a girl and he didn't like boys or a specific boy or his best friend or anything like that. He was normal.

He was the most normal.

He was hanging out with a girl. He was keeping her safe in the tree, keeping her from falling out, and that was what you were supposed to do for a girl. He was close to her and he liked being close to her. The goldfish in his stomach was just…not awake right now. That was it. The goldfish that should have been swimming around in his stomach wasn't awake but he was and he was being normal and…and stuff like that.

He was the most normal guy in the whole world.

"Wil not." Said Emmy

"Yes you would. I do this a lot. You have to be quiet or the birds can get scared off." Said Sho

"This is what you do all day? You just sit in trees and watch birds?" asked Emmy

"Yes." said Sho. He wanted to know what was so bad about that. It was better than sitting in school all day, in his opinion, but he was not going to be a jerk to her. He was not going to be a jerk because….because he was through being that sort of person. Also he wanted her to like him. That was what he was supposed to want so of course he wanted it.

"You're brilliant." Said Emmy

"You don't have to be sarcastic." Said Sho

"I'm being serious. I think that you're brilliant. That your life is brilliant and all. I mean you go all over the world and you don't go to school and also the shady things your family does. I think that it's all brilliant and that you're really lucky. I'd give anything to have what you have. I've never even left London before." Said Emmy

"Um….thanks." said Sho. He had no idea what he was supposed to say to that. He would have given anything to have what she had. A mom and dad who loved her and…and being able to be in the same place every single day. She was the lucky one, not him, but he wasn't going to say that. He wasn't going to say anything. He just kept calm and…

And his aura flared.

His aura shook the tree branches around them. For a minute he expects her to notice but…but she's a normal person and normal people can't see auras. Normal people don't even think that powers are real. He's not supposed to talk to normal people. Maybe he should just help her down from this tree and then just…never talk to her again for the rest of his life. Like dad would have wanted. Dad would have been so mad if he knew that he was hanging out with a normal girl. Maybe he should just help her down and then…

No.

He can't do that. He can't do that because he feels like he wants to do that and it's not normal for him to feel like he wants to do that so he won't do that. He hates being ten. It feels like since he had turned ten he hadn't been able to just…be himself. He felt like everything he had said and done and thought was wrong. He used to know who he was, Suzuki Sho, but now he had no idea who Suzuki Sho was these days….

But he knew that Suzuki Sho was normal and if he wasn't then…well not being normal was not an option for him.

"Aww, it's flying away. Do you want to run after it? Maybe it'll take us to it's flock. Maybe we can catch a couple and train them to be messenger pigeons and then we can, you know, send messages to each other and stuff. Only if you want to." Said Emmy

"How do messenger pigeons work? Pigeons can't talk." asked Sho. Parrots and ravens were the only birds who could talk like people and even then they just imitated what they heard. Was that her plan? To catch some birds and talk to them enough times so they could imitate messages? That was…she always had crazy plans like that. Like the time she told him that she had tried to fly away by attaching balloons to a chair like in Up and stuff. She was fun like that…and he liked fun people. Like Shimazaki. He was the most fun guy ever…not that Sho liked him like that. No, they were just best friends and that was all.

"Of course they don't talk. You attach messages to their feet and they bring them to other people. You know, so then we could talk to each other…if you wanted to talk to me like that." Said Emmy

"Why don't we just text? Wouldn't that be faster?" asked Sho

"You're asking for my phone number?" asked Emmy. There was something to her voice, there, that Sho hadn't heard before…well from other people. He'd heard that in her voice before. He thought about what he had said. Oh. Right. You were only supposed to ask for the phone numbers of the girls you liked…but that was ok. He liked her…enough.

"Yeah, I guess. If you want to give it to me that is. If not that's cool too." Said Sho. Maybe she didn't like him like that. He hoped that she didn't like him like that…and then he got angry with himself for hoping that she didn't like him like that. He was supposed to want her to like him like that. He was being such a little kid. He was ten and he was supposed to like girls already and he was getting tired at having to get mad at himself all the time for being such a weirdo.

"I don't have a phone. My mum says that I can't get a phone until secondary school." Said Emmy

"That sucks." Said Sho. Why did he feel….relieved? Maybe because if he couldn't text her then there was less of a chance that he would get caught. He wasn't supposed to talk to normal people and he…he wasn't supposed to have a normal person for a girlfriend. Dad had said so. He had said that Sho needed to find a girlfriend who was, preferably, and esper so then that way he could be sure that his kids would be espers too. So he had to keep this a secret.

Which was fine by him.

He could do this. Shimazaki said that doing the boyfriend thing was boring. So then it was normal for Sho to have been bored right now. Without a bird to watch then he was just sitting in a tree in the cold with a girl. The sun was starting to go down and stuff. He had never liked watching the sunset. Sure it was pretty but there were a million other things he could have been looking at. Maybe he was supposed to watch it, though, because girls liked that sort of stuff. The boyfriend thing was boring, Shimazaki had said so, so that meant that it was normal for him to be bored out of his mid right now.

"It does…but there's nothing that I can do. I have an email if you want to email me…you know…after you move." Said Emmy

"Yeah, I can do that. After I move." Said Sho

"….when will that be?" asked Emmy. There was something in her voice like she was sad. Sho didn't get why. So the bird had flown away. It was just a pigeon. Plenty more where that came from.

"I don't know. Nobody tells me anything. Why?" asked Sho

"Because…because you're very nice and all but…but if you're going to be gone tomorrow then…then I suppose that it would be pretty daft of me to get used to this now wouldn't it?" asked Emmy. She wiped her nose with her sleeve. Sho made sure to keep her steady. He had an arm around her waist and the other one in the branches. This was in no way comfortable for him but he had to keep her steady. He may not have wanted to marry her or anything, which made sense because he was ten and that was normal, but he didn't want to see her fall out of the tree and then end up having to have screws shoved into her arms. That would have sucked.

"Used to what? Being in a tree? You could probably get up here on your own, you know, if you practiced." Said Sho. She had asked for his help to get into this tree and he had helped her. She could have gotten up there on her own if she just practiced more…and wore pants. She had on a dress, her school made her wear it, and if Sho lived for a million years he would still never understand why girls just didn't wear pants. They were easier and more comfortable and all of that stuff.

"No I mean…can you let me down, please, I'd like to go now." Said Emmy. Sho did what she asked. She got out of the tree just fine on her own. He had no idea why she had asked him to help her up when it looked like she could climb just fine on her own. He didn't get it. Girls asked for his help when they didn't need it all the time but that was when they were trying to kiss him…but she hadn't tried to kiss him even once….but she liked him…and he was…relieved.

He was sick of being relieved.

He was sick of how weird he felt about this. He knew that he was supposed to have control over his emotions, like dad was always saying, but he had no idea how to force himself to feel the way that he was sure that he was supposed to feel. He had no idea what to do to make himself normal. All he knew was that the girl who liked him was climbing out of a tree and…and he was happy to see her go….and he was unhappy to be happy to see her go…

So he decided to do something normal.

He jumped out of the tree so he could beat her by the time she got to the bottom. He jumped out and used his powers to make sure that he didn't break any bones and end up needing screws in them or anything like that. He was fine, he had shooting pains in his legs from landing, but aside from that he was fine. He was more than fine, actually, because he was normal.

He was going to be normal.

"Whoa. Did that hurt? It looked like it hurt." Said Emmy

"Not that much. Just….did I say something or do something to make you want to go?" asked Sho. He had seen a million of big sis' stupid love movies. When the girl ran away the boy was usually the reason why. He needed to figure out what he had done so he could fic this and he had to fix this because, well, fixing this was the most normal thing that he could have done….so he was going to do the normal thing for once in his life…and just…be normal.

He was beginning to get sick of the word 'normal'…but that was weird too….because normal people didn't think that being normal was an annoying chore…or even think about being normal at all…because they just were normal.

"I'm just…sorry. I can be sort of daft sometimes. It's just that…you're really nice to me. Most people think that I'm weird and annoying but you're nice to me and…and nobody's ever called me pretty before…and I like it a lot. I like…I like you a lot." Said Emmy. Sho nodded. Well it was nice of her to confess with words instead of by chasing him around and kissing him. So that was good. She liked him. That was also good. That was what he was supposed to want. That was the thing that every guy was supposed to want all the time. Even Shimazaki used him as bate sometimes to get girls, well women, to talk to him. He would pretend to be a blind single father and then women would let him pet their dogs and also give him their phone numbers…even though he said that the boyfriend thing was boring…

That was just what you were supposed to do.

"Thanks. I like you a lot too." Said Sho. Well that wasn't so bad. He didn't know why guys on TV were always getting nosebleeds when girls talked to them and stuff. This wasn't hard at all. He had a girl who liked him and he had said that he liked her back, he might have the boyfriend thing was supposed to be boring after all, and this was….he was normal. Right now, in this moment, he was normal. He liked a girl and he was normal. He'd shown them all! All the people who had thought that he wasn't normal! Shimazaki only being forty percent sure that he liked girls…

Why did he have to think about him?

Why did he have to think about HIM of all people!? He was…Sho was his best friend and there was nothing wrong with thinking about your best friend all of the time. Nothing wrong with that at all. Big sis and Minegishi were best friends and they probably thought about each other all the time. They even had best friend bracelets. So it was ok to think about Shimazaki and how stupid he had been to only have been forty percent sure…

It was weird to think about a guy while a girl was confessing to him.

"But it's stupid to like you because you'll just…move again and then I'll never see you again. That's why….that's why I climbed out of that bloody tree. I'm sorry to have left so suddenly like that. I just…you know how I feel. It's just hard for me to like you when I know that you'll be gone soon." Said Emmy

"But I'm here now." Said Sho. He was happy to have been gone soon…and that was a dumb way to feel…but at least he could make someone else happy. He could make her happy now so what did it matter that he was going soon? That was a good thing, making someone else happy, and…and he would do that. He would make her happy while he was here and then he would have had a girlfriend and then he could finally be able to forget how weird he had been at the party and…stuff. Once he had a girlfriend, even for a little bit, then he could pretend to be normal and stuff.

"But you'll be gone soon." Said Emmy

"But I'm here now and I can like you for now and then we can have fun together for now and stuff. I mean, you want to be my girlfriend, right?" asked Sho

"Of course I do, you booger, but it's pointless if you're just going to be gone one day." Said Emmy

"How is it pointless? I mean if I can make you happy now then why is it pointless?" asked Sho. Relationships didn't have to last forever. Shimazaki had said so. He said that sometimes you met someone and it became a regular thing and sometimes it didn't. Like with big sis and Hatori. They had been together but then he had been stupid and she had broken up with him. Not everything had to last forever. Like with mom and dad. Sometimes things lasted a long time and sometimes they didn't and that was all ok.

So this was ok.

"I…I guess so." Said Emmy

"But if you don't want to then I get it." Said Sho. You were also never supposed to be pushy with girls. Shimazaki had said so. He said that the best thing to do was ask out all of them, all the ones who you liked, and then hope that they liked you. But when they told you to go away you were supposed to go away otherwise the stench of desperation would cling to you forever and then nobody would want to be around you and you'd be kicked out of society and stuff. Maybe you didn't get kicked all the way out of society but if she didn't like him, if she changed her mind, then he would never talk to her again or whatever she wanted.

"I do you. I just said that I did. I guess I could try it…or whatever. I don't know. It could be brilliant or it could be so bloody awful I have to bang my head in the car boot until I forget." Said Emmy. Sho wasn't sure what a car boot was but he was sure that he was finally normal and he liked that. He liked that and he liked her and he couldn't wait to rub it in everyone's faces that he was normal. Well everyone who could keep a secret. He wished that she had been an esper. Then he could rub it in dad's face that he could too do something right for once in his life.

"Well I hope that it's not awful." Said Sho. He smiled. She smiled too. Then she looked away. It was mostly dark out by now. That didn't mean that it was late, it just meant that it was wintertime, but she would have to go home soon. So would he. He would go home and have dinner with big sis…or with Shimazaki. Then he could rub it in his face that he had been wrong to only forty percent think that Sho was a normal person who did normal things like have a normal girlfriend in the most normal way possible. He loved that word, normal, it was his new favorite word in any language.

"So…what do we do now? I mean…nobody's ever liked me before. Liked me back I mean." Said Emmy

"Girls usually kiss me when they like me." Said Sho. He didn't NOT want to kiss her…it could be really good…if you kissed the right person…and Sho didn't want to remember that. He didn't want to remember what it had felt like to kiss the right person. He didn't want to remember how good it had felt…and then how everyone had made a big deal about it…how weird that it was…and how weird and out of place and just…not right…that he had felt afterwards.

He wanted to replace it with a better memory.

Maybe kissing her would be better. She was a lot nicer than any girl who had ever kissed him before. Mostly because she hadn't just run up and kissed him. Also she liked the same games he did, which was a plus, and also they both liked climbing trees to look at birds. He liked birds and she liked birds. They both liked birds and that was reason enough to kiss someone. That was a good reason to kiss someone. A great reason. The best reason ever!

It was a better reason than a bottle pointing at you, anyway.

"What do you mean 'usually'?" asked Emmy. Well not she looked mad…but he had no idea what she was so mad about. He had only been her boyfriend for a millisecond. He hadn't been kissing any other girls since they'd been together. Besides, people kissed all the time. What, did she expect him to have never kissed a girl before? He was ten. What kind of a ten year old had never kissed a girl before? He was normal, damn it!

"Girls chase me around and kiss me and run away. it's a game. They don't have that here?" asked Sho

"Well, yeah, in bloody nursery school. That's just odd, someone our age doing that." Said Emmy. Sho wished that he could have been born in England. Then at least the girls would have been less crazy. They were crazy everywhere but here they were sort of cool. Sort of like they could be friends. If Emmy had been born a boy or if he had been born a girl then they could have been friends. But boys and girls couldn't be friends unless they were brother and sister or something. That sucked but that was just how it went.

"Things are just different here I guess." Said Sho

"Yeah, a lot different. I'd never do anything like that. I've never…done anything like that." Said Emmy. She was looking down at the ground now. He didn't know why. Maybe she was embarrassed about being ten and having never kissed anyone. Girls weren't supposed to be embarrassed about that. Girls were just different like that. He got the feeling that they never gave each other grief about kissing and stuff like that. It was different for guys. Shimazaki was always making fun of Hatori because he'd never had a girlfriend…and Sho figured that big sis didn't count because Hatori had never kissed her…he'd better have never kissed her…but nobody ever made fun of girls for not having boyfriends and…and it was weird. The rules for boys and girls were weird and he was not going to stand there all night trying to understand them.

It was too cold out, first of all, and second of all he had a girlfriend now and when you had a girlfriend you kissed her…so that was what he was going to do…because it was just the thing you did…

"Do you want to kiss me? I mean since you like me and…stuff." Said Sho. Now he felt…weird. Sort of like when that girl had kissed him in the coatroom and stuff. Sort of like he didn't want to do this…but he wanted to do this. He had to. Maybe this would be good. Maybe it would be like when he had kissed Hideki…

Don't think about that.

"….sure. Capital…." Said Emmy. Sho knew what sure meant and he got the idea that capital meant the same as sure…so he kissed her. He leaned in and kissed her and expected to feel….good. He expected the goldfish in his stomach to wake up. He expected to feel all hot and cold all over. He expected to feel like time had stopped. He didn't. All he could feel were her chapped lips on his…which were also chapped…it was way too cold out.

He sort of wanted to go home.

There was heat there. The sun was almost all the way down and the temperature was dropping. He still kissed her. He had no idea how long he was supposed to do this for, Hideki had only kissed him for a second….and he needed to stop thinking about that because it was something that happened which was not ok and not something that he should have been thinking about…but he just couldn't help it. That had been the best kiss of his whole life. This was…just a kiss. Just him kissing someone. He didn't feel anything…but he might not have been doing it right…but he had no idea what he could have been doing wrong…

Shimazaki had kissed a lot of girls, he said he'd lost count, so he would know.

Sho doesn't want to think about Shimazaki doing this, kissing someone, so he just…stops thinking about him. He focuses on how his lips feel pressed against hers. He opens his eyes. Hers are shut. He closes his again. Is he doing this right? Maybe he's supposed to hold her hand, too. Maybe that would make this feel good. It's worth a shot.

He holds her hand.

She holds his hand back and then steps back from him. She probably needed air. He knew that he needed air. The feel of her breathing had tickled, he feel of himself breathing against her had been weird too. So he had stopped breathing. Not in the good way. Not in the way where he had forgotten how to breathe when….he needs to stop thinking about this. Her face is red. She's looking down at her backpack on the ground where she's left it.

"That was…really nice…but I have to get home. My mum…she's going to want me home for dinner. We're getting curry takeaway. Just…goodbye!" said Emmy. Then she ran away. Sho waved after her. So that had been what it was like to kiss a girlfriend….and Shimazaki had been right. The boyfriend thing was boring. So the way he felt had been normal. The boyfriend thing was boring and…and married couples on TV were always fighting with each other…and mom had run away from dad….and Fukuda had never gotten married….and big sis had broken up with Hatori….so maybe Shimazaki had been right and relationships just sucked dick in a public toilet for ten yen coins…whatever that meant….

He'd ask Shimazaki when he got home.

He'd tell him, too, that he had been wrong. Some best friend he was. He didn't need help getting girls, he could get them on his own, and Shimazaki had been wrong to say that Sho only forty percent liked girls…or that he had been forty percent sure that Sho liked girls. He had been wrong and Sho had been right and he had been normal and that…that had been the most normal thing that he had done in his whole life. He felt good, being normal, very good. That hadn't been as good as kissing Hideki but…but he wasn't going to think about this anymore. Sho had a girlfriend now, temporarily, and he had kissed her and…and she would probably want to do it again….but that was ok. He liked her, they had things in common, and she liked him too. If they had both been boys then she would have been perfect, the perfect friend, but she was a girl so they would have to be boyfriend and girlfriend…and that was ok. He could do that. He could kiss her and hold her hand and help her climb trees and all of that. He didn't mind doing any of that. Not at all….

He hoped that they just stuck to bird watching. though. He liked watching birds a lot more than kissing…but that was ok because at least he had kissed her.


	261. The Pink Box

There was a box on Mob's bed.

The box had pink paper on it. There was a red bow around the box. This was a gift. This looked like a Valentine's Day gift. She had used paper like that to wrap everyone's Valentine's Day gifts. Everyone but dad got boxes of their favorite chocolates. Dad hated chocolates so Mob got him a new tie. She had figured that he needed one since he had been wearing the exact same tie for as long as she could remember. She didn't remember getting anyone anything that came in a big box like this…maybe this wasn't for her. Sho had a girlfriend now, Mob had seen them holding hands at the park once, so maybe she had gotten this for him.

There was a card.

It wasn't Valentine's Day yet, that came tomorrow, so it would have made sense that Sho wouldn't have opened it yet…sort of. Sho's girlfriend might have told him not to open it yet. She might have told him that he needed to open his gifts on the actual day just like Mob had to tell him every single birthday, Christmas, and children's day. She took the card from the box. It wasn't addressed to Sho, like it should have been, it was addressed to her.

To Daughter.

Oh. This was from dad. He was away. He said that he had to put an end to something and then when he was done they would move and stuff. They would move and then they would be in a new place, dad had said Russia but Shimazaki had been singing a song about being back in the USSR for a while…so were they going back to the USSR? Mob couldn't even remember being in the USSR once. She didn't know. She was confused. She was confused about where dad was going and where they would be moving to but she was especially confused about the big box on her bed.

"Alright, I brushed with real toothpaste, not just water, can I please be ready for bed now?" asked Sho. She had sensed him before she heard him. She got off her bed and nodded. She used her powers to pull his covers off of his bed for him. It was his bedtime. He couldn't stay up past nine or he would be grumpy in the morning.

"You didn't drink any liquids after eight did you?" asked Mob

"No! I didn't…and I don't wet the bed anymore anyway…..I'm not a baby." Said Sho. Mob knew for a fact that he did still wet the bed, sometimes he had bad dreams where he kicked and used his powers and told someone to get away from him and then he wet the bed, but she wasn't going to say anything. She knew how sensitive he was about that. She didn't get what he was so sensitive about. Sometimes he wet the bed, that was fine, that didn't mean that there was something wrong with him. it just meant that he couldn't have any liquids after eight.

"Ok. Come on, I'll tuck you in. Do you want a story?" asked Mob

"No, because I'm ten. You don't need to read me a story…but if you wanted to read something out loud while I was going to sleep then that would be ok." Said Sho as he climbed into bed. Mob didn't get why he had to pretend like he didn't want her to read him a story. He was ten, not a hundred and ten, and there was nothing wrong with him letting her read him a story. Sometimes she needed a story to fall asleep. Sometimes when she and dad slept together they put on an audio book. Sometimes she had Minegishi read to her, too, whenever they had sleepovers. There was nothing at all wrong with being read to.

"Do you want me to read you the Zootopia chapter book again?" asked Mob

"No, read me something in English. I think my English sucks, I can barely understand Emmy sometimes. She kept saying 'bob's your uncle' and…and I still don't know what that means. I mean I know what it means but I think that it means something different in England." Said Sho

"The English they speak here is weird. It's sort of like in Australia but also…not. Don't worry, we'll be moving soon…sorry." said Mob. She knew that Sho had a girlfriend. She knew that he didn't know that she knew, too, and she wasn't terribly hurt that he hadn't told her. He probably didn't want people to know because then dad would know that they had been talking to a normal person. That would have been bad. She expected Sho to be made that they were moving, or sad, because she couldn't imagine anything worse than leaving the person you loved…but he seemed…she watched his aura. He seemed fine.

"Where are we moving to?" asked Sho

"Dad says Moscow, that's in Russia, but Shimazaki says that we're going back to the USSR…and I don't remember ever being in the USSR in the first place." Said Mob

"Oh, that's why he's been singing that. He said that Russia used to be called the USSR back before we were born…when did you talk to Shimazaki?" asked Sho. He had a tone there that Mob couldn't place. She didn't know why had would have a tone about her talking to Shimazaki. Sho knew that they were friends.

"This afternoon while you were at the park. We were sm-we were hanging out and he kept on singing that song." Said Mob

"Damn it. I knew that I felt him come back but I was too busy playing Mortal Kombat with Emmy…damn it." Said Sho. Mob didn't like it when he cursed, she wished that he would stop, but she knew that there was no getting him to stop it. At least he wasn't using the F-word or the H-word or the C and S word...which Minegishi said that she didn't want to know the meaning of. She had no idea why Sho kept on cursing like that and also she had no idea why he was cursing about spending time with his girlfriend instead of Shimazaki. Maybe they were just as good friends as she and Minegishi were. Back when she had been in love with Hatori even if he had asked her to run away with him and be his girlfriend right there on the spot she would have said no if it ate into her time with Minegishi. Boyfriends were good and all but friends were forever.

Because the person you married could just run away one day and not even leave a note telling you where they were going but friends didn't do those sorts of things to each other…permanently…she maybe needed to apologize to Shimazaki again for what happened at the party…

"Why are you upset about being with Emmy? I mean…ok, don't get upset because I know that she's your girlfriend…and I won't tell dad so you don't have to worry about that." Said Mob. She didn't mean to embarrass him. He pulled his shirt up over his head to hide his face. She didn't know what was so embarrassing about having a girlfriend. Love was the best thing ever. There was nothing that was embarrassing about love or kissing or…well she would be embarrassed, actually, if her little brother had caught her kissing…which was why she would not be telling him about. No, she would just be embarrassing him worse than he already was. He might even act like Hatori and hide in the bathroom for the rest of his life…and stuff.

"I don't want to talk about this." said Sho

"Ok…but if you ever wanted to talk about it I'm here. I'll always be the one to talk to if you ever have questions or worries or-" said Mob. She knew that she had never had a boyfriend in her life, she had only kissed on boy and she knew that he was gone forever from her life, but she had seen a lot of movies and read a lot of manga. She knew a lot about love, she figured, and what she didn't know she would Google. Sho was younger than her and she didn't think that he had all of the love knowledge she did, he didn't read the same manga or watch the same movies she did, but if he had questions then she would have the answers for him that he needed.

"I'm fine. Everything is great. She's great. She likes me and…and I like her. I guess. I don't know. I don't want to talk about this." said Sho

"Ok. I get that you're embarrassed and-" said Mob. She was about to tell him that he could tell her anything no matter how embarrassing it was. They were brother and sister, they were supposed to be there for each other, even when those things that they were supposed to be there for each other for were embarrassing love related things. She didn't get why boys were so embarrassed about love. Minegishi said that boys hated love and kissing until they turned about twelve or thirteen and then a switch flipped in their heads and all they could think about were girls. Boys were complicated like that. She had never had a switch flip in head, she had just always liked boys, but that was just how she was. Sho was different.

"Who's that big box for? Hatori? Are you going to get back together with him? Are you going to kiss him? Are you going to marry him? Are you guys going to have a bunch of babies and move somewhere with a lot of space for them to run around? Are you-" said Sho. He pulled his shirt down from his face. Mob pulled her nightgown up. Now she was the one who was embarrassed. How could he just…SAY…all of that? That was…she had never even been Hatori's GIRLFRIEND? Were people going to be asking her about this for the rest of her life?

"Sho…no. We were never a couple….and why are you even asking this stuff?" asked Mob from under her Olaf nightshirt. She did not want to talk about that with her little brother. She was the one who was there for him when it came to things like this because she was older. It went one way and…and maybe she needed to stop being embarrassed. If he wanted to help then she would let him help…even though there was nothing that she needed help with.

"Well you were asking me a bunch of private questions so now I'm going to ask you a bunch of private questions…and also what's with that big box? Who are you going to give that to?" asked Sho

"That's not for anyone. Dad got me that. I don't know why." Said Mob. She pulled her nightshirt down from over her face. She could see him now. She could feel his aura. He was annoyed. He shouldn't have been. If he wanted whatever was in that box then he knew that he could have it. She always shared her stuff with him. Even her present from Christmas and stuff.

"Because in this country you're supposed to give the girls you love presents for Valentine's Day." Said Sho

"Oh. Well that makes sense…but you can have it if you want it. I didn't ask for anything. Also I know how you like opening presents." Said Mob. Sho shook his head.

"I don't want your present. Now read me a book so I can go to bed." Said Sho. Mob got the feeling that he did want her present. She got the feeling that he was still upset that dad loved her more. Well there was nothing at all that she could do about that. She didn't control dad, dad controlled dad, and if dad wanted to get her presents that she had never asked for then he would get her presents that she had never asked for. Sho had no idea how lucky he was, not having dad smother him, and Mob knew that she was not thinking nice thoughts. She should have been grateful that dad had gone out of his way to get her a present. She should have been grateful that dad cared enough about her to get her things…

Even if he was smothering her.

That box was smothering her. Even though it was just sitting there on her bed minding it's own business it was still smothering her. She could feel it there, in the corner, as she read to Sho from their English Minecraft game guide. That put him to sleep super fast, he was just pretending she could tell by his aura, she read and read on…on and on….and on.

Until her voice got scratchy.

She read until she couldn't read anymore. The whole time she was reading she could feel that box just sitting there in the corner watching her. She felt almost like dad was there watching her. He did that sometimes, he watched her, with his eyes and his aura. That was just him loving her. He wanted to keep her near him all the time. That was just how he showed his love. He had no other way of showing his love. So she was grateful…

So she opened the box.

She put in Sho's bookmark, the one that looked like a dog, and then went over to her bed. As quietly as she could she took the box out of the room and out into the hallway. She opened her present slowly, she was careful not to rip the paper and accidentally wake her brother. When she finally got the paper undone and slid the box from it she could see...a white box. The box was taped shut too. The box was even harder to undo than the paper but she got that done with too and found…tissue paper.

She was happy that Minegishi couldn't see this.

This was way too much wrapping. How many trees had died to wrap up a present that she hadn't even asked for? A lot of them. Wrapping paper, a cardboard box, and then tissue paper and all for a…dress? Mob took it out of the box with her powers and held it in front of her. A yellow dress. The top had puffy capped sleeves and a bow…and there was a bow in the back too. And a yellow satin sash, not silk she could tell the difference, and the skirt was…that puffy stuff….tulle. She knew tulle. Her Elsa dress from the party had been made out of tulle…

This was nothing like her Elsa dress.

This was mom's dress. If it hadn't been small enough for her to wear she would have thought that dad had gone back to the Castle and gotten mom's favorite yellow dress….no. She had worn her favorite yellow dress when she had left the house. She had worn this dress, without the bow in the back and on the front, when she had run away forever and now…and now dad had bought one for her and…and she had no idea why he would do this?

This was mom's dress.

Mob wore blue. She wore blue, sometimes pink, but mostly blue. She wore Elsa's shade of blue because Elsa was her favorite out of all the Disney girls. Elsa had powers that she couldn't control and she had a little sister who she sometimes didn't get along with and she had parents who hadn't been nice to her and…and she liked Elsa best. Yellow was Belle's color. Belle was a jerk who went poking around in the west wing of Beast's castle even though she knew that she wasn't allowed and she barely ate any food in the dinner song and also she should have gone on the trip with her dad because good daughter's went everywhere with their dads. She wanted to be Elsa, not Belle!

But this was a gift and she needed to be grateful for her gift.

She carried the box and all the wrappings to the kitchen and put them in recycling. There. Now it wasn't bad for the environment anymore. She was still holding her dress up with her powers. Dad had gotten her this dress…why? Why had he gotten her mom's dress? Maybe he just…noticed that her Belle dress was too small and then…had a yellow dress almost exactly like mom's ordered for her as a present? Why not just go to the Disney Store and get her a new Belle dress, then? Why not just-

Dad was a very confusing person sometimes.

It did nobody any good to try and understand him. He was complicated. Mob wasn't going to stand there all night trying to figure him out. No, that would have been a waste of time. It would have been rude, too. When you were given a gift you didn't ask why it was sent. You get what you get and you don't get upset. Mom had said that a while ago. Mob…she had this new dress…and she was supposed to wear it…

So that was what she did.

She changed right there in the kitchen. Dad wasn't home and Sho was asleep. She didn't care if her brother saw her changing anyway, they changed together all the time, it was ok because they were brother and sister. She just changed with her back to him these days because her chest was getting all…pointy. Not like she had breasts but more like…cones? She didn't know. All she knew was that before she used to sometimes be able to not wear an undershirt but now that wasn't an option anymore. She didn't mind now but the summer was going to be…not good. But she could worry about all of that later. Right now she had to try this dress on.

It fit.

It fit because dad had her and Sho measured every so often. That way they could just send people out when they needed new clothes. Mob didn't know why she hadn't expected this dress not to fit. She had expected to be drowning in this dress. She and expected it to be too long to walk in and for her shoulders to have slid right out and…and she had been expecting that because she had been expecting mom's dress. But this was not mom's dress. This was her dress. This was her dress and it just looked like mom's favorite dress and dad had gotten her this dress and….

And she wanted to go.

So that was what she did. She went over to the space in front of the door where they had put a plastic protector down to be the genkan, slipped on her Frozen boots, and went next door. She kept the dress on, she didn't want to take it off, because she knew that if she took it off she would never want to put it back on because….because this was like mom's dress….and she had to wear this. This couldn't just be like when the Awakened brought her clothes that she hated, clothes that didn't fit right or were just…not nice, this was something that dad had gotten for her and something that she had to be seen wearing so that he could be happy and she could be grateful and….

And she felt like dad was smothering her with this dress.

So she went next door. The minute she stepped through the doorway to Minegishi's house she could breathe again. The glow of the TV, the sound of Shibata's snoring, the feel of Minegishi in all the houseplants, even the sound of Hatori screaming bad words from in his room made her feel better. She took off her shoes and faced them the right way with her powers. She felt better now that she was with her friends. The only one missing was Shimazaki and that because he had been called away with Fukuda to help dad. She missed him. He always took her mind off of things.

She could take her mind off of things all by herself.

He had given her an open invitation to his room and to his desk drawer, he said, but with rules. She wasn't allowed to take any of the pills ever for any reason. She also wasn't allowed to eat any of the sugar cubes or the pieces of paper….why she would want to eat paper she would never know…and also she was supposed to be careful not to mess anything up in his drawer because he went by feel, mostly, and he could end up getting really messed up in the bad way if he took something thinking that it was something else.

She wanted to spend time with Minegishi but first she just needed to feel better.

Though maybe she should have gone to see Minegishi first. She had just opened Shimazaki's desk drawer when Minegishi opened the door and crossed their arms. Mob decided that she had better close the drawer. Minegishi said that they understood that a power as big as Mob's came with a bigger expense but they had also said that if she wanted to smoke or drink then she had to do it with them where they could make sure that she was safe. They didn't want her to end up like Hatori at the holiday party. She didn't want to end up like Hatori at the holiday party either.

"Mob, care to tell me why you're stealing from Ryou's stash?" asked Minegishi

"I wasn't stealing. He said that I had an opened invitation to smoke or drink anything in his desk but I just can't make a mess or take any of his pills…or eat anything." Said Mob

"Yeah that sounds like something Ryou would say…" muttered Minegishi. Mob nodded. Of course it sounded like something that Shimazaki would day. He had been the one to say it.

"Are you mad at me? Because I have his permission to be in here." Said Mob

"Mob…why are you even in here in the first place?" asked Minegishi. They did that thing where they sighed and their aura got all….not mad but not happy…and Mob knew that they weren't mad at her, never at her, but she didn't want to make her best friend even the least bit unhappy. That was not how friends made each other feel.

"Because my dad got me this dress." Said Mob. She was bad at talking, she knew that she was bad at talking, and she also knew that she had no way of putting all of it into words. Why she had to do something to get away from the big feelings that this dress was giving her. Why it was giving her so many big feelings in the first place.

"I feel like there's a story here. Just…come on. Let's go talk about this somewhere that doesn't smell like a cologne factory exploded." Said Minegishi. Mob followed them back to their room. She didn't know why they were complaining, they had said that they liked the way Shimazaki smelled, but she wasn't going to say anything. She just followed them down the hall to their room. Hatori was still cursing and stuff. She wanted to see if this was good cursing or bad cursing. She may not have been in love with him but she still cared about him, but she decided to keep on following Minegishi. They were good at making her feel better, better than any of her other friends were, and she knew that Minegishi would help.

They did.

"Sit." Said Minegishi as they pointed to their bed. It was warm where they had been laying down. A book was sitting on the floor in front of their bed with a leaf for a bookmark. Sense and Sensibility. Mob wondered if that was a good book. Probably, if they had been reading it. Mob wondered if they were mad that she had interrupted their reading…possibly. She didn't know. All she knew was that Minegishi was looking for something in the pile of stuff on their desk.

"Here. We will share one bowl, and only one bowl, because I can tell that you're freaked out by something. Ok? One and only one…if I can ever find my….there it is." Said Minegishi. They pulled out a purple glass pipe…thing. Mob watched them work from there. They had a bunch of those fun smoking plants and now they were separating out the stems and seeds. It was sticky, that was good, and it smelled really strong. They was good, too. Mob used her powers to help, she was good at this, Shimazaki had even told her so.

"Thanks. Well at least Ryou will be happy to see that I'm getting some use out of his Valentine's Day present." Said Minegishi

"Shimazaki got you this?" asked Mob

"Yeah, he did. He's owned me a new pipe for a while though I don't know how much of a gift this is since he's the one who broke my last one…but it's whatever. You should change out of that dress unless you want it to stink. I get the feeling that it's dry clean only and, yeah, I don't feel like running down to the late night dry cleaners." Said Minegishi as they packed the leaves that Mob pulled off into their purple pipe thing. The pointed over to the laundry basket full of newly washed clothes, she could tell because they were folded, and Mob knew what they meant.

"My eyes are closed. That big t-shirt of mine that you like should be in there. The one with the violets on it. You can wear that or whatever." Said Minegishi. True to their word they were working with their eyes closed. The worked a lot more slowly with their eyes closed than Shimazaki did. That was because he was used to doing things by feel. Mob wondered if she should help Minegishi. She'd do that after she changed.

She felt a lot better.

That dress had been itchy. It had been itchy around her legs which meant that she would need to wear tights with it. Well her legs were always itchy these days but that dress made it even worse. Also it had hurt her chest to wear that without an undershirt. She didn't know how she was supposed to put the dress on and wear it when dad came home….well she knew how she would put it on. She would step into it and do the zipper with her powers and also she would wear and undershirt and tights with it. She knew how she would put it on…but she didn't know how she could wear it…

She folded it up and buried it in Minegishi's laundry basket.

She put her dress down at the very bottom so it wouldn't end up smelling bad and then she sat down onto Minegishi's bed. They sat down next to her and handed her their purple pipe thing. The held the lighter up to the end and…oh. Mob knew what to do. She inhaled as the fire touched it. Shimazaki had shown her how to do this before but his pipe hadn't been purple and also had been shaped different. The basic concept was the same, though, and Mob got it. She inhaled really deep and for a long time. Shimazaki said that you were supposed to smoke like that. She may have been inhaling for too long, though, because Minegishi took it away from her.

"Hey, I said share." Said Minegishi

"Sorry. Shimazaki just always lets me smoke like that when we share his pipe." Said Mob

"Well I'm not Ryou, alright? When I say share I mean share. Don't overdo it. Do you want to end up like Hatori at the party?" asked Minegishi

"I thought that he was drunk." Said Mob

"He was drunk off his ass and high as a kite. Do you want to end up like him?" asked Minegishi. Mob shook her head. No, she didn't. She didn't know if she could survive that kind of embarrassment.

"No…I'll listen to you." Said Mob

"Good. Now tell me, Mob, what's going on about that dress. I thought you liked girly crap like that." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded. She nodded and tried to think. She felt…a little better. Her big feelings were getting smaller. She could think again. She was thinking….she was thinking about the dress that was in the hamper. How even though it was buried she could still feel it smothering her….feeling dad smothering her…and if she really focused she could even feel dad kissing the top of her head…and staying there…

She ran her powers through her hair. No dad. Just knots.

"I….my dad got me that dress." Said Mob. Minegishi nodded and then passed the pipe.

"I heard you the first time. What about your dad getting you a dress is so sorry that you had to raid Shimazaki's stash." Said Minegishi

"Um….it's yellow." Said Mob

"You don't like yellow?" asked Minegishi. Mob shook her head. It wasn't about the color…well it was and it wasn't…but she didn't know how to say that it was and it wasn't. She didn't know what the word for this feeling was. It was like she was worried and also she was being smothered at the same time and…and she smoked some more to make it stop.

"Also it has tulle." Said Mob as she exhaled. There. She felt better. She felt a little better and once it kicked in more she would feel a lot better. She loved Minegishi so much. They always made her feel better.

"And you don't like tulle?" asked Minegishi

"It itches….and I don't like yellow all that much…because I like blue…but yellow was my mom's favorite color…and that dress looks almost exactly like her favorite dress…and dad got it for me." Said Mob. Minegishi stopped inhaling and just stared at her for a minute. Mob got the feeling that if they'd had eyebrows they would be raised.

"Go on." Said Minegishi as they exhaled a mouth full of smoke.

"My dad got me that dress as a Valentine's Day present and…and it looks like my moms and…and he made me watch my mom's favorite show and…and go to a manor house my mom wanted to take me to…and also…also he keeps on touching me all the time and-" said Mob. Minegishi's aura was mad. They were mad. A couple plants broke out of their planters. There was dirty and sharp pieces of planter everywhere. Minegishi didn't care. Mob did. She pulled their pillow onto her lap. She could have pulled her knees up to her chest but then they could have been able to see her underwear since she was wearing their t-shirt and it didn't make a very good nightshirt at all.

"Touching you where?" asked Minegishi. Their eyes were narrow and their aura was spreading through every single plant in the room. They were holding their pipe so tight in their hand that Mob was worried it would shatter. Then there would be sharp things everywhere…more so…and neither of them had slippers on.

"He kisses my hair, mostly, and he touches me too. He holds me a lot when we go to sleep, too, but the head kisses are what bother me." Said Mob. She didn't know what Minegishi was so mad about. She didn't know but she wished that she could fix it. She hated it when she messed up…and she messed up all the time it felt like…

"He just kisses your hair? That's the only place?" asked Minegishi. Mob nodded.

"Yes, he kisses me on the top of my hair and he touches my hair a lot too." Said Mob. She didn't know what she had been expecting but she didn't expecting Minegishi to lower their head like they were bowing while sitting down.

"Show me." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't know why they wanted to know but she kissed Minegishi's head the same way dad kissed hers and for just as long, too. Minegishi smelled like flowery shampoo and also witch hazel. They had taken a bath earlier. They smelled nice.

"You should smoke. Then you'll be less mad…and I don't know what I did to make you mad but whatever it is I'm very sorry." said Mob as she pulled away from Minegishi's head. She could see the black of their roots. They would have to color their hair again soon.

"I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at him. He kisses you on the top of the head for that long?" asked Minegishi. Mob nodded. She didn't know why it was a thing to make them mad. She only felt a little bit uncomfortable when dad did that, not a lot uncomfortable, but Minegishi was acting like dad had hit her or something. He hadn't. He had said, before, that he would never hit her again…so that was good…if only she could get him to never hit Sho like that again. Then things would be perfect.

"Sometimes longer." Said Mob

"And….and you don't like this?" asked Minegishi

"I…I don't know. I like that he loves me and that he's not hitting me but sometimes I don't like it. Sometimes I just feel…weird…when he does that. When he touches my hair, too, but he mostly just touches it weird when we cuddle. Like this." said Mob. She used her own hair to show Minegishi how dad ran his fingers through it. She didn't know what was so bad about this. She felt uncomfortable but not like she was upset with him or anything. That was just how dad showed love…but she might have done something wrong based on Minegishi's aura and how big some of the plants in their room were getting.

"Mob…how often does he touch you like this?" asked Minegishi

"Every Sunday on our days together…but please don't get mad. It's not that bad, not really, and I don't even know why I'm upset. Dad loves me. That's why he's been so nice to me and that's why he got me that dress. He must have remembered how much I liked that dress, how I sometimes tried it on even though didn't like it when I did that, and he just bought one for me…and stuff. And I don't mind that he touches my hair and kisses my head when we cuddle. I don't mind at all….and I'm not ungrateful…so please don't be mad at me." Said Mob. Minegishi sighed and put the pipe to the side. It tipped over and got the bed dirty but they either didn't mind, didn't care, or both.

"Mob…there is no reason why I or anyone would be mad at you in this situation. Ok? You haven't done anything wrong and I want you to get the idea that you've done anything wrong out of your head. Ok? Your dad making you feel weird is not your fault….because he's the one being weird." Said Minegishi

"Ok…but dad isn't being weird. He just doesn't know how to show love. That's all. Sometimes I don't like it but I never say anything because he just has trouble showing love and stuff." said Mob

"Mob….tell him. The minute your dad, or anyone really, touches you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable you have every right to tell them to get their fucking hands off of you." Said Minegishi. Mob shook her head.

"No, Minegishi, I can't say the F-word. That wouldn't be nice." Said Mob

"Fuck being nice. Mob, your body is your own and nobody has the right to touch you when you don't want to be touched, ok? Not even the person who made you. Mob...Shigeko….you don't have to say fuck but you do have to say no, ok? Can you at least say that?" asked Minegishi

"But he's my dad-" said Mob. He was dad and nobody told him what to do. Not even her. He was dad and he was going to rule the world someday. She was Mob and she was his daughter. How could she ever stop him? Command him?

"I don't give a fuck who it is! I don't give a fuck if he's your father or Father Christmas or the All Father! You are not going to end up like me, you hear? If someone touches you and you don't want to be touched then you tell them so! And if they don't listen then you fuck them up! It took me too many years to even be able to fuck anyone up! You are not going to end up like me, do you understand!? If they won't leave you the fuck alone after you fuck them up then you tell me and I will fuck them up so bad…you don't want to know what I'm capable of…and I need to calm the fuck down….just. Sorry. I'm sorry….but still!" said Minegishi. They were close, now, very close. Mob had never seen them this mad before. Had she really done something so wrong by not telling dad to stop? Maybe instead of complaining about her problems she should solve them herself….no. That wasn't what Minegishi meant. They were best friends, they had the bracelets to prove it, and part of being a best friend was solving your best friend's problems….

Mob didn't understand, though, why they were so upset.

"Um…ok. I'll tell my dad to stop if I feel bothered." Said Mob. She wasn't going to curse at him or yell at him or fight him, though, but she would tell him to stop. Since it meant this much to Minegishi. She would do this for her friend. Minegishi was willing to hurt someone really bad for her so the least she could do is tell dad when she felt bothered…even though she didn't know why it was such a big deal…

She was just a clueless person in general.

"Good. Sorry I freaked out there. Just…when I was your age…well younger than you….a lot of things happened to me. Things that I'll tell you about when you're old enough to handle them. Things that…that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I let happen to you, ok? I love you, Mob." Said Minegishi

"I love you too." Said Mob. She knew that a lot of bad things had happened to Minegishi when they had been a kid. She had heard some things from Minegishi firsthand, not a lot but some things, but most of what she knew came second hand from Shimazaki….and she hoped that Minegishi's parents had passed on, for their sake, because she would exorcise them if she ever found them. Nobody hurt her friend. Nobody.

"Good. Also that shit with the dress, with your dad getting you his wife's favorite dress, is weird as fuck. I have no idea what's going through that head of his but…don't wear it if you don't want to. That's just…weird. That shit with your dad making you watch her favorite show and…and he cuddles you?" asked Minegishi

"Yes. Like you and Shimazaki do sometimes when you listen to things together." Said Mob. Minegishi shook their head, picked up their pipe, and cursed. They put their pipe down on the floor and came back up with a bottle of clear liquid.

"Mob…you want a drink? Because I need one. That's…this is all I can do for you. Just…if your dad cares about you then you should tell him how truly weird he's being and if he doesn't….I'm always here for you. Best friends forever, right? This bracelet carries with it a lifetime of responsibility…I just wish that there was more that I could do…" said Minegishi. Mob took that drink even though Minegishi had told her never to mixt things up like that, smoking and drinking, because she needed a drink too. She both did and did not feel better. She felt better because she was with her friend who she loved and who loved her right back but also….also Minegishi was right. Mob had been feeling weird for a while…and she would maybe talk to dad about how she was feeling…and if he loved her he would stop…and if not…well she didn't want to think about it. He loved her though, so he would listen, and he hopefully wouldn't think that she was ungrateful….

Because she had liked the box that he had left on her bed…she just hadn't liked what was in it.


	262. The Yellow Dress

Mob wasn't good at being mean.

She didn't like meanness. She didn't want to be something that she did not like. She was a lot like mom like that. Mom had never been mean once in her entire life. Dad was mean all the time. Sho could be kind of mean sometimes, he took after dad, but she took after mom and she was not mean. She didn't even know how to be mean.

But Minegishi had said that sometimes you have to be mean.

Well they had said F-word being nice….which was a mean way of saying that sometimes you had to be mean. She didn't know why they said such mean things they were a really nice person. She didn't know if she could be like Minegishi and just got from being mean and then back again. She didn't know if she had it in her. Well she did, because she was half of dad, but she was half of mom, too, so she had to say something….

Because she really didn't like this dress.

"Ok. Here I am." Said Mob. Dad had sent her to her room to try on the dress that he had gotten her. He said that he didn't mind that she had opened it up the day before Valentine's Day. He had said that he just wanted her to be happy….but the only problem was that she was not happy at all in that dress. It itched. It was too yellow. The tulle made her legs all scratchy. She had to wear tights with it. She looked just like mom….

Which should have been a good thing.

Mob loved her mom so much. She loved mom and she missed her every single day…but also mom had just left without telling anyone and…and she had just gone and…and Mob did not have good feelings about that. She did not have good feelings about her mom when she thought about how mom had just left her and Sho and dad like…like she didn't even want them anymore. Like she was done with them. Like she was done having a family and…and stuff. Mob loved her so much but was also mad and…and also…

Also really did not like this dress.

"Wonderful." Said Suzuki. That was all he could say. He'd had A HELL of a night, had spent most of the day sleeping, and…and seeing her there, like that, made him feel like all of his troubles had just melted away. He had his Daughter and he would be ok. She looked so wonderful…he knew that he had made a smart move getting her a new dress instead of the customary box of chocolates. She loved dresses and took great pride in her appearance. Of course she would.

She was Masami's Daughter.

She was half of…well she wasn't half of Masami but he sometimes thought of her as being half of Masami and half of himself. Sort of like Son but….well he had no idea how Son had turned out the way that he had turned out. If he had been a stupider man he would have sworn that Masami had slept with someone else, that someone else had fathered Son, but that was insanity. Son was his Son but he was also himself. Daughter was Masami….some of her.

"Um…it is….I guess." Said Mob. She wanted to take this dress off and get back into her normal clothes. She wanted to put this dress in the bottom of her dresser drawers and forget that she'd ever gotten it. She wished that dad had just gotten her a box of candy like he did every time they were in a country where girls got Valentine's Day presents. She wished that dad had just asked her what kind of dress she would have wanted…..

She just had to tell him. Even if it was mean.

"Does it fit?" asked Suzuki

"It fits….but…." said Mob

"Do you like it?" asked Suzuki

"I do but…" said Mob

"You look beautiful. Just the way your mother was…is….was." said Suzuki. Masami was gone. She was gone and as the years went by he lost more and more hope that she could be found. She was somewhere, everyone was somewhere, but he had no idea where in the world that somewhere was. She was gone and…and she haunted him. He had allowed her to haunt him for years now, welcomed her, but now….now he was getting tired of ghosts. What was the point of allowing a ghost to haunt him when he had someone real, someone who he could reach out and feel?

He kissed the top of her head.

There was a gift to it, being able to kiss her, to show her affection without judgement. Not that anyone had the right to judge him. Not even the Gods had the right to judge him…but people still did and he would rather not be judged. He would rather not have people see him and think of him as weak. He was not a weak man…in most cases. The exception, the sole exception, was his Daughter. He hadn't even shown his own wife this level of weakness…

But it was ok to show his Daughter this level of weakness.

"Dad….you don't have to kiss me for so long." Said Mob. That felt weird, when he did that, and that was because it was weird. She had done this to Minegishi and they had said that this was weird…even though it was normal for dad's to show you affection and stuff. It was normal for dads to kiss you and hold you and give you presents…but dad wasn't always the most normal person in the world. Neither was Mob. She liked it when people warned her that she was doing something weird. When she did weird things she never realized it so she was glad that she had been corrected when she was…so it was ok to tell dad when he was being weird. Not mean at all.

She didn't know if she could ever stand to be mean to her own dad.

"I know that I don't have to. I want to. You enjoy receiving affection and I…I enjoy giving it to you. It's a gift to be able to show you affection, one which I have gone too long without realizing, and one which I will cherish while I still have it." Said Suzuki still buried in her hair. She smelled….citrusy and skunky…and he had no idea how to tell her that she smelled bad without offending her. People did not like being told when they smelled terrible. Well he did. Well he hadn't enjoyed it but he had been grateful when Fukuda told him that he had been awake for three days and he needed a bath because he could be smelled from across the room. Daughter couldn't be smelled from across the room but…but she did need a bath…

Or maybe he should get her a bottle of perfume, too.

Women liked perfume. That was one of the gifts that Masami had enjoyed the most. Next year's Valentine 's Day gift…or maybe he could get her some for her birthday…or maybe just because. Yes, a just because gift. He had always enjoyed giving gifts to Masami. He had always enjoyed providing for her. He was a good provider.

Daughter thought so too.

"Dad….I like it when you show me that you love me but when you kiss me for so long…it's sort…weird." Said Mob. She should not have said that. She should not have been so mean to her own dad. She should have just let him kiss her for as long as he wanted to even though it made her feel all weird. That was part of being loved by someone. Sometimes when they showed their love you didn't always like it but you accepted it because they didn't have to love you. They could leave you at any time.

"Weird?" asked Suzuki. He kept control. He had to keep control. She had called him…she had said…well it wasn't as though he had never heard that before, that he was weird, but it had been years…and now he was hearing it again and again and again…..and the loudest voice of all had been that of his own Daughter…..

His own Daughter had called him weird.

He was…not angry with her. He could never be angry with her. He loved her. He loved her and…and she had still called him that. It hurts, the wound is aggravated, and he has no idea how to close it…he had never closed it…and he never would be able to close it. This was…this was his life now. His own Daughter had called him…had said that he was….he just….

He felt her hand in his.

"No, dad, I didn't mean it in a mean way. I really didn't. I just meant that….that you're not supposed to kiss someone for that long because…that's not how it works." Said Mob. She could see and feel his aura. She had hurt his feelings. She could see it in his eyebrows too, his caterpillars were coming together, and she knew that she had hurt his feelings. She hadn't ever wanted to do that. This was her dad and she loved him more than any other dad in the world…

She had been too mean.

Minegishi had said that nobody could touch her if she didn't want them to, not even her own dad, but….but Minegishi hadn't taken into account how easy it was to hurt dad's feelings sometimes. He had a lot of feelings like he had a lot of powers and…and he had trouble controlling his feelings and his powers and…and stuff and….and she had been too mean. She loved Minegishi, she really did, but Minegishi didn't know dad and the advice that they gave came from their own life. They didn't know how dad could be. How he could be scary and sad and…and how he loved her and he just had no idea how to show it.

"Oh….I broke a social rule?" said Suzuki. His aura calmed down instantly. Well that was different, better even, because she had not been calling him weird but had been describing his actions as being weird. He had broken a social rule, he had done that countless times before, and…and he was grateful to have been corrected. He was always grateful to have his less than stellar social skills corrected…especially by someone who knew what she was doing…

"Um….yes? When you kiss someone on the head you should do it quick or else it's weird….and stuff." Said Mob. Dad's aura had calmed down now. Dad seemed better, fine, happy maybe even. She was glad. She was glad that he was better because she did not want to be responsible for upsetting him. She didn't want to be mean.

"Oh. Alright then. Thank you for correcting me." Said Suzuki. She was so much better at these things than he was. Of course he would listen to her. He should have known that she had not actually been calling HIM weird. It had bene like when he and Masami had first moved in together. When they had just been married and still hadn't learned each other's idiosyncrasies. When she had seen him dipping his bread in his ketchup glass and said 'Touichi, you are so weird' and he had taken her literally…and then she had reassured him that she would never think anything like that about him…and then he had been so angry at himself for not trusting her…

He kissed Daughter again.

But he did not linger. She had said that he shouldn't linger so he did not. Even though he wanted to. Even though it was such a gift to be able to hold her and have her and kiss her and just…be with her. He cared for her and he knew that their time was limited. They did not have a lifetime together, not hers anyway, and maybe not even his. She would grow up and…and she would try to grow apart from him…and she would be able to leave him just as Masami had…

He kissed her again.

She would be able to leave him just as Masami had. She would be able to just get up and leave…he would wake up in the morning to find her side of the bed empty. Her side of the bed would be cold and empty and she would be gone from his life….and that was always a possibility…..he had no idea if it was a possibility or not. He had never imagined that Masami would have left him….but she had…and Daughter was his child, not his wife, and she was supposed to leave him. That was nature's way. He had so little time with her and….

And this was his Daughter. He had all the time in the world with her.

"That's….better….I guess." Said Mob. So now he was going to kiss her a million times instead of one long time. That was…better? She didn't know. All she knew was that she had hurt his feelings before when she had told him that he was being weird. Well to be fair he was being weird. He was a weird person. He ate ketchup out of a glass and he slept almost fully dressed and he hated sweets and also he was always kissing her and touching her and stuff. She had been mean when she had called him weird and….and she maybe have had to tell him, again, that he was being weird. She may have had to be mean again…

She didn't even know if she could be.

He stepped away from her and straightened the neck on her dress. Mob wished that he would have just given her space but he didn't. Instead he reached over and brushed one of her braids behind her back. She had tied them off with yellow ribbons because they matched her dress and dad…dad had asked her to put this dress on….so she did…but she also wanted to take it off and get back into her regular clothes.

"You look just like your mother, you know that?" asked Suzuki. How was there such a resemblance? She didn't share a drop of blood with Masami but she looked just like her. Well not physically, no, she didn't look a thing like Masami physically, but she just….looked like Masami. He didn't know. Maybe it was just his irrational feelings towards this holiday. Yes, he had spent this holiday with Masami and yes he they had conceived Son on this day, most likely, but he should not have had to have these irrational feelings….

He was so irrational sometimes.

Was the way he felt about Daughter irrational? He didn't know. He loved her and he should have loved her, she was his child after all, but maybe he had been…he didn't know. He loved her and he was doing the right thing by loving her. She was the best of all of his children…of BOTH of his children….and that was…that was….he loved her.

He loved her so much.

"I don't. Mom had brown hair and my hair is black. Mom wasn't as pale as me too. Also her hair was wavy and stuff. Mine hangs straight down. Also her eyes were shaped different from mine." Said Mob. She had spent so long staring at herself in the mirror trying to see some part of her mom and dad in her.

"You still look like her." said Suzuki. Daughter couldn't see it. How much of her mother was in her. She had no idea how much of herself Masami had poured into her. She may not have had to have been cut out of Masami but she was still Masami's Daughter just the same. Even if she had come from two nobodies from nothing.

"No, I don't. I don't look like either of you. You're both half Japanese. So am I but I just got all of the Japanese." Said Mob. She wished that dad had been telling the truth, that she looked like mom, that she looked like anyone in her family….but she didn't. Sho had said, before, that she had been born right because she looked like everyone else….but she didn't want to look like everyone else. She wanted to look like her mom and dad.

"….you look like your mother. Never forget." Said Suzuki. He was not going to correct her. She was not half Japanese, she was fully Japanese, and she was not going to come into this information now. She was not supposed to ever come into that information. It didn't matter that she had been adopted. She was his Daughter the same as if she had been the one that he had conceived in a manor house themed love hotel a decade ago.

"Because I'm wearing this dress?" asked Mob. She didn't get what dad meant. Maybe he was seeing what he wanted to see. Maybe he was seeing mom when he looked at her. She felt like that sometimes. She felt like dad only saw mom, or he only wanted to see mom, and that was why he had gotten her this dress and he was trying to get her into mom's favorite shows and stuff….but that made no sense because dad had said time and time again that mom was a traitor and that he didn't care about her anymore…and stuff….

"Yes. You look wonderful. Just like your mother." Said Suzuki

"Thanks…dad. I like it…I like this dress….sort of." Said Mob. She wished that dad would stop saying that she was like mom. She didn't get it. Was he sad that mom had left? But that had been years ago. She had been gone for years and if he wanted to be sad then he should have been sad years ago when she and Sho had been sad. Then they all could have been sad together. She didn't understand him at all sometimes.

"Good, I'll have another made for you. You could always use more clothes. Women and clothing…I will never understand it." Said Suzuki. Masami had filled their closet with clothing. He had never understood it. Daughter had a lot of clothing too. He had never understood it. He had one suit, one pair of shoes, and one tie that he liked. Well he changed his clothes but everything he owned was the same. He didn't understand her sometimes but he would still get her all the dresses that she wanted. That dress. An entire wardrobe of that dress.

"Dad….you don't have to." Said Mob

"I know that I don't HAVE to. I don't have to do anything. I want to. I like to make you happy." Said Suzuki. He wondered what else she would like. Masami had always been partial to perfume…but Daughter was too young for that….right? He'd see. Daughter deserved all of the best things that the world had to offer and he would give them all to her. Even if it wasn't a holiday he would still give her all of the nice things that she deserved.

"I don't want another yellow dress, though, so please don't get me one." said Mob. The words tasted bad as she said them. She wished that she could take them back, catch them from the air and shove them back down her throat, but she couldn't. She could only watch them hang there in the air in front of her….and dad….who was looking at her like…like she didn't even know.

"But….you just said that you did. I heard you." Said Suzuki. He must have just been mishearing or something. Or misunderstanding. Or…or something. Something other than miscalculating. He could not have miscalculated again. He…she had said that she liked it…and he had heard her….and he was not so old that he was going deaf….though it was easier to watch television with the subtitles on these days…

"I…I like it. I think that this is a very pretty dress. I think that this dress looks like moms and…and she had a dress like this that I always wanted to wear but…but this was MOM'S dress." Said Mob. She was trying not to be mean. She was trying her best to make herself heard and understood without being mean…and she was really bad at this talking sort of stuff. She was bad at talking and being understood and….and dad wasn't the best listener…or even a good listener…and…and…

And maybe she would have been heard, better, if she said the F-word….but she would not be saying that any time soon.

"No. This is not your mother's dress. It just looks like hers. I would never get you a secondhand dress." Said Suzuki. Well that would have been enough to upset even him. She did not deserve anything less than firsthand. Expensive things. The things that costed millions of yen and had labels which he did not understand the significance of but Masami had. Things that mattered to women. Things that had mattered to Masami. Things that mattered to Daughter.

"That's not….what I meant. This is…this is something that mom would have liked and…and it's her yellow dress. I like….I like my dresses….." said Mob. She had no idea how to tell dad that dressing her like mom made her feel weird and was a weird…and she had no way of telling him any of that without using the word 'weird' again…

"Oh…so it's the color…you do wear a lot of blue….yes. I suppose that…the color…that you-you like blue…" said Suzuki. She was not Masami. Masami had loved yellow but Daughter…she loved blue. That was because she was a different person. There was so much of Masami in her and…and she was also her own person and…and he loved the person that she was.

He loved her.

He loved the way she braided her hair even though it looked better long. He loved the way she knew how to make the most perfect omelets in the world, she used more butter than Masami had and put ketchup in the egg mixture, he loved the way she rolled over onto him in her sleep, he loved the way she mouthed along to movies that she knew by heart. He loved so much more about her. The games she played. The games she introduced him to. The movies she introduced him to. That television series they had been watching for some time now. He just…he loved her. There was so much to know about her and…and he loved it. Learning everything that there was so know about her. About Daughter.

About Suzuki Shigeko.

"I do. I like blue a lot….like my Elsa dress…because I like Frozen. I like Disney and anime about school life and friends but also space and giant robots…also… and documentaries about cats and…and I don't like mom's shows about people living in big fancy houses that much and…and I like to watch with you but also….also I like to watch things that I like…..and you like…but not the stuff that mom likes…" said Mob. Dad's aura was being weird. Was she saying the wrong thing? Was she messing up? Was she….she didn't know. She didn't know if she was doing something good or bad, right or wrong, this or that. She had no clue. She just….she just had to tell dad how she felt…because she had felt so bad last night….

And also Minegishi had said that talking to dad was a good idea and they were very smart.

"Yes….you like…you like things that we have in common. Alright. I understand. Take off the dress and leave it. I'll have it dyed blue for you. Also we can watch some more of that show you've been showing me. We both enjoy that. We have…we have things which we both enjoy." Said Suzuki. She was so smart, his Daughter, so socially intelligent. She knew that he enjoyed figuring her out and she enjoyed figuring him out. It was mutual that way. She was a part of Masami but she was not the whole of Masami. There were so many things about her that he could learn…and he wanted to learn those things…and there was so much about him that she wanted to learn….

So why not learn from each other?

"Thanks Dad….I'd like that…and also I can give you your gift too. That'd be nice." Said Mob. She had no idea how she had gotten through to him but she had. Now he would stop trying to make her be like mom. Now she could be like Mob, not like mom, and that was just the best. He loved her and that was what love was, in her opinion, looking at someone and seeing them for who they were and loving them. Dad loved her so much….and she loved him…and he had managed to understand her. As bad as she was at talking she had managed to make herself be understood.

And she hadn't had to be mean to him like Minegishi had said that she would.


	263. Valentine's Day Sucks

So this was what it was like to have a girlfriend on Valentine's Day.

It wasn't really anything. He'd had worse Valentine's Days, the ones where girls had chased him around, and he'd had better too. Like the ones where mom made them red velvet cake. Those had been good Valentine's Days. This was….normal. This just felt like a normal day…aside from the fact that he had a present for a girl who was not his sister and a girl who was not his sister had a present for him. He had gotten his chocolates from big sis and he had given her a hug and normally that would have been the extent of his Valentine's Day. But now he had another girl in his life with a gift for him…and he had one for her too because that was how they did it in England.

"This feels heavy? What is it? A rock?" asked Emmy as she held her gift in her hands. Sho had used the paper from big sis's gift from dad and a box that used to have shoes in it for her gift. He would not have gone through the trouble of doing all of that if he was just going to give her a rock.

"No. Why would I give you a rock? You're my girlfriend. I'm supposed to get you nice things." Said Sho. He may not have ever had a girlfriend before but he knew that girls liked nice gifts. Why would she want a rock….unless she meant like fancy jewelry or something…but he hadn't gotten her anything like that in case she got the idea that he was asking her to marry him. They were ten. That wasn't allowed. Also he didn't want that…and it was not weird to not want to get married at ten.

He was not weird.

"Hey, rocks can be nice gifts. Last Christmas my dad got me this rock with a bunch of crystals inside. I like rocks…but I didn't get you one…but I know that…that you'll like it." Said Emmy. She was looking down at her shoes, now, and kicking up dirt from the ground. She had a paper bag in her hands. She had drawn a heart and written 'show' in the middle with glitter.

"I don't know what you got me but I know that I'll like it. I mean it's a gift from you." Said Sho. He knew how to accept a gift. When someone gave you a gift then you were grateful and accepted it. That was basic manners. He may not have been the most mannerly guy but he at least knew how to accept a gift.

"Thanks….um….thank you. Arigato." Said Emmy. She laughed when she said that and got all red again. Were all girls this giggly? He didn't know. He didn't mind, not really. That meant that he was doing this right. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing and he was doing it right. Dad had been wrong. Sho was capable of doing things right.

"You're welcome. Do you want to trade gifts now? It's getting late and I know that you have to be home for dinner and stuff." Said Sho. He wondered what that as like, people expecting you home for dinner, having to be at a certain place at a certain time every single day. Having to be at the same place at the same time every single day. It must have sucked. Nobody told him what to do…most of the time. He wasn't supposed to have been outside the house without someone protecting him. Also dad bossed him around all the time…and stuff…but at least he didn't have to be home at the same time every single day.

"Um…I'd like that. You're going to love your gift. It's brilliant. Well I think that it's brilliant. I don't have a lot of money…and I just spent twenty quid on sweets…but I know that you'll like it so…so open it already." Said Emmy. She shoved his present into his chest. He handed her gift to her and then peeled the bag apart to find….

Oh.

"You got me binoculars?" asked Sho. Well he knew what they were but he had no idea why he had gotten these for Valentine's Day. He had been expected chocolate or something…but then again he hadn't gotten her chocolate either….

"Yes. I just know that you like birds and watching them so I got you these so you wouldn't have to climb trees. I mean I know that you like climbing trees and stuff but not in the winter, you said, because there are no leaves so…here. My old binoculars. They're real from the army, not toys, so….so here." Said Emmy. Sho…this was a good present and he had no idea what he was supposed to do. She'd given him a really good gift and…and he was supposed to do something…

He bowed.

Which may have not been the thing to do with a girlfriend but it was the first thing that had come to mind. He usually just told people what to get him. This was a good gift, something that he hadn't even known that he'd needed, and he was grateful. As he came up from bowing to her he thought that maybe kissing her would have been better…but he didn't want to kiss her and…and stuff. She was his girlfriend and he was supposed to kiss her and…and stuff.

That was what he was supposed to do.

He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, too, as he came up. There. She liked that. This wasn't so hard. Girls were easy. Maybe that was why he boyfriend thing was so boring. Al he had to do to get her to smile and laugh was kiss her. Maybe this was why Shimazaki said that the boyfriend and girlfriend thing sucked. It was just so…he wasn't even trying and she was all happy and…and he wasn't but…but that was ok because he had made her happy. Making another person happy was what mattered the most. Big sis said that all the time and maybe it was time he listened to her and stuff.

"What're you kissing me for?" asked Emmy still all red and smiley and stuff.

"Because you're my girlfriend and you like it. It makes you happy and I like to make you happy." Said Sho. Emmy laughed again and pulled her hat down over her face.

"Just enjoy your bloody gift." Said Emmy. Sho put them around his neck and looked through. He could see….he was way too close…but he could see her freckles. She had freckles the same as him. Maybe that was just a redhead thing. Dad had freckles too but his were mostly on his arms and stuff. Big sis had seen them. He hadn't. Sho had freckles on his face, arms, back, and neck. He wondered if Emmy had freckles there too. Not in a wanting to see her naked sort of way….but maybe it should have been a wanting to see her naked sort of way. Why didn't he think about her like that? You were supposed to think about girls like that.

Maybe he was just weird.

Or ten. That might have been it too. Maybe he was just slow. Fukuda had said that big sis was fast because she liked Hatori and stuff. So if she was fast then maybe he was slow….or normal? He didn't know. All he knew was that he did not have any desire at all to see his girlfriend naked...and wanting to see people naked made you fast…not that big sis had ever said that she wanted to see Hatori naked….and if she ever had then Sho would have been obligated as her little brother to beat him up…but that was what boyfriends and girlfriends did. If you didn't want to have a baby but you still wanted to do adult stuff then you took off all of your clothes and looked at each other naked. Also you touched her boobs and stuff, too, but Sho didn't want to do that either. Maybe because she didn't really have any. Maybe it was normal for Sho not to want to do that sort of stuff since wanting to do that sort of stuff made you fast and being fast was not good.

He didn't know. He'd think about this later.

She pulled her hat just up over her eyes. They made eye contact and she pulled it back down again. He didn't get her. He thought that she liked being kissed. She had asked him to kiss, before, and she had said that she liked it. He didn't get this one bit. The boyfriend thing. Maybe he should have just been single for life. Shimazaki was single and Shibata was single and so was Fukuda and they were all really happy. Also Hatori was single but that was different. Shimazaki said that Hatori had singlehood thrust upon him because he didn't know how to take care of himself and stuff and girls liked guys who took care of themselves. That was why it was important to bathe regularly, wear a lot of good cologne, dress nice, and also be good at stuff that Shibata had interrupted Shimazaki to tell Sho that he was too young to know about. Then he gave him an apron and told him that he needed someone to taste test some desserts.

Sho, really, Sho hadn't had a choice in the matter.

He wondered what Shibata was going to make tonight. Last night he had tried to make beef wellington. It hadn't gone well. He needed to stick to desserts. Maybe he'd be making something red for Valentine's Day. Or maybe he would be making chocolate. That way he would have some that weren't obligation chocolates from big sis. She was the only girl they knew. Well there was Minegishi but they were a 'they' which meant that they didn't give chocolate on either Valentine's Day or White Day and they never got chocolate either, because they said that sugar was poison, which was a good thing. That meant that Shimazaki hadn't given them chocolate….not that Sho knew why he would even care.

Shimazaki could give whoever he wanted all the chocolate in the world.

Sho needed to stop thinking about his best friend. He was with his girlfriend now and he only had so much time with her. Dad had come home that morning while he and big sis had been eating breakfast, said that his work in this country was finished, and then passed out. Shimazaki had been passed out, in his own bed thankfully, and he had told Sho that some crazy stuff had happened and that he would need to sleep for the next hundred years. Sho hoped that he would be awake when he finished up with Emmy…and there he went, again, thinking about his best friend instead of his girlfriend who he would have to leave behind. This was supposed to be sad, like in a war movie how the girls were always sad when their boyfriends went off to war, but he didn't feel sad at all.

He felt sort of relieved.

He felt relieved and he had no idea why. She was his girlfriend and he knew that he was supposed to feel something but he had no idea what. She was playing peekaboo with her hat like he was a baby…and she was smiling….and he had seen enough to big sis' anime and read enough of her stupid girl manga to know that this was the part where his heart was supposed to go doki doki and he was supposed to get a nosebleed or whatever but…but he didn't feel much of anything. A little cold. Sort of hungry. But nothing about her.

What was the matter with him?

"Alright. I'm better now. Since it doesn't look like you're going to kiss me again then I'll open my present." Said Emmy. Sho wondered if she did or did not want to be kissed. Girls were so confusing. He wished that she had been a boy so they could have just been friends. He knew how to be friends. He wished that girls could be friends, but they couldn't be, they were girlfriends…and he had a girlfriend, not a friend, and now…now he was starting to regret getting her what he had gotten her…

"Binoculars?! Sho, you're brilliant! How did you know I needed new ones? Oh! Did you have me followed? Are you really a family of spies or-" said Emmy. She was starting to go off into her own head again. He was going to stop her before it started. He did not need her digging into this part of his life. The less she knew the better…for both of them.

"This way you can see birds without climbing trees. I mean you're a good climber but you had to have me help you…and I don't want you to fall if you try to climb a tree after I'm gone." Said Sho. She had been putting her binoculars up to her eyes when he had started talking and by the time he was done she had let them fall and hit her on the chest. That must have hurt, he had gotten her real metal ones from the army surplus place, but she didn't notice…or maybe she did….because her eyes were getting glassy. He wished that she'd had an aura he could read. Then he could know what was wrong. He knew that she was about to cry…but why?

What had he done this time?

"You…what do you mean by that? Are you….are you moving already?" asked Emmy. Right. She was sad to see him go. His feelings were not hers and her feelings were not his…and they had separate and unequal feelings. She was crying and he…he was happy to go….and something was most certainly wrong with him. Deeply wrong.

"My dad said that his work in this country is finished so…yeah. He just told me today so I didn't have time to tell you since you've been in school all day but…but I guess that I'll be moving soon." Said Sho. She didn't start crying, thankfully, she just wiped her eyes on her sleeve a bunch of times. Sho felt bad so he pulled his sleeve down over his hand and helped her with the other eyes. They were close, their binoculars clattered together, but he didn't mind. She was more important. He hated it when girls cried.

"So…so you're breaking up with me? On Valentine's Day? Right after you kissed me? That's….that's bloody cold you booger! You groty booger! You daft groty booger!" said Emmy. Sho didn't know why groty meant but he knew what a booger was….and she was mad at him…and he had to fix this. He hated it when girls were sad or mad…and it was the worst when girls were sad or mad at him. He had intended to give her a gift and then tell her he was going and then be her boyfriend for as many days as he had left in England but….but now that he saw her sad face and he heard her voice….he didn't want to hurt her like that….

He never wanted to hurt anyone ever again.

"I'm not leaving right away. We can still be boyfriend and girlfriend and…and…um…after I go we can still be together? I mean…not like we are now but I can still be your boyfriend. I can email you and stuff." Said Sho. She stopped wiping her eyes and looked at him. They were close enough to kiss. Should he kiss her again? That might put her in a better mood…but then she might have hidden in her hat again.

"Like…a long distance relationship? But I heard that those never work out. My aunt tried that with her boyfriend when he had to move to Sussex for work…and you're going back to Japan." Said Emmy

"I think that we're going to Moscow now." Said Sho

"That's still across the bloody water." Said Emmy

"I know but…..but I might come back to England and….and I can still email you and call you when you get a phone and….and I can send you presents and stuff from the places I go. So then that way you won't be upset because we won't be broken up." Said Sho. That was a good compromise. Then they would still be together and…and stuff. Then she wouldn't cry anymore. He hated it when girls cried. When he became the ruler of the world he was going to make sure that no girl ever cried ever again. He would assign them boyfriends or something who would treat them nice and get them presents and kiss them but never try to touch their boobs because girls hated that. Then they would all be happy and he would never have to see another girl crying in his life.

"That's…ok. If you're going to come back then…then that's ok. I just…don't want us to break up. I mean I barely know you and I wish that we could have spent more time together but…but I can try to do that." Said Emmy. She leaned in like she was going to kiss him but then she stopped halfway. Sho had no idea what he was supposed to do.

"What are you doing?" asked Sho

"If you want to kiss me you can." Said Emmy

"Ok….but you could have just kissed me…and stuff." Said Sho

"I know but I thought that this would be better. That way I know you want to kiss me so…so can we kiss again? Because it's Valentine's Day and also…also I don't know how many more chances I'm going to get to kiss you." Said Emmy

"Um….sure." said Sho. He leaned in and kissed her. Still nothing. The goldfish in his stomach was still asleep. It stayed asleep for the whole time that they were together. It stayed asleep for the third time they kissed and also the part where they held hands until they got to Emmy's neighborhood. She wasn't allowed to have a boyfriend, she had said, because she was ten and stuff so he couldn't walk her home. That was fine, she lived sort of far anyway. He just kissed her goodbye and then walked home.

That had been something.

That had been Valentine's Day with a girlfriend…a girlfriend who he still had. Whatever. He could be her boyfriend from far away. He could send her emails and presents and maybe write her letters, too, even though he had never written a real letter in his life. He could do that. He could still see her. Now that he had binoculars she would be easy to see….heh. If Shimazaki had been around he would have laughed. He laughed at everything but not in that way that girls laughed at everything. He laughed at everything in his own way…that way that made Sho laugh at everything….that way that woke up the goldfish in his stomach…

There is was.

Where was this stupid thing while he was kissing his girlfriend? He didn't know. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe he had been poisoning it with sugar. Maybe Minegishi had been right and sugar was poison. Maybe that was why they were so mean all the time, they had poisoned all of the good feelings out of their stomach with sugar, and now they were just this sour purple haired person who Shimazaki was friends with, not best friend, but was friends with.

Maybe more than friends with.

Sho didn't know. He tried not to think about it as he walked home with his binoculars over his eyes. He didn't want to think about what he had seen. He didn't want to think about what Shimazaki had said. How he had said that he didn't know how he felt about Minegishi. How he had said that he didn't even know if he could be in love. Sho didn't want to think about that, or about how he had broken into Minegishi's room and seen stuff that he shouldn't have, or how he felt…he didn't want to think about that so he looked at the world and walked and….and didn't think about that.

He watched the world as he walked.

He watched the sky and the birds and the people too. He watched them walk down the street and drive by in their cars and also in their houses. A lot of them were watching TV. A lot of them were cuddled up. A lot of them were eating dinner. Some people were eating dinner in front of the TV. Some people were cuddled up and watching TV. Some people were cuddled up naked in bed together eating and watching TV-

He decided to stop looking in people's windows.

He had seen things that he never wanted to see. Nope. People needed to close their curtains if they wanted to do gross stuff like that. Honestly. The nerve of some people. He didn't get it. He didn't get why people did that and why they did that where people could catch them. People needed to close their curtains and blinds and also lock their doors in more serious ways so that people knew to stay out. With big heavy locks or…or maybe they should just nail their doors shut if they didn't want people to see what was happening. Yeah. People needed to just…lock their doors and close their blinds and wear clothes when they hung out with his best friend.

Simple.

Sho knew not to give Minegishi a piece of his mind about that. Shimazaki had sworn him to secrecy and he took a promise to his best friend very seriously. He really wanted to though. As soon as his feet found the neighborhood that he was staying at his brain started planning out what he was going to say. The closer he got to Shimazaki's house the more words came to his brain. Curse words, mean words, words in Japanese and English and Mandarin and Korean and also words that weren't even words. He wanted to tell them all to Minegishi the minute that he walked through Shimazaki's door!

But he didn't.

The first thing he did when he came through the front door, if he wasn't meant to be there then it should have been locked in a more serious way, was cover his ears. Shibata was watching British people baking things again but he had the volume up as high as it would go. Maybe he was competing with Hatori's videogame….big sis should have gotten him headphones instead of obligation chocolates….and also with whoever was banging on the wall. Sho didn't blame whoever that was. It was loud as heel in here!

"Little Suzuki! Maybe you should come back later!" shouted Shibata. Sho didn't even have one shoe off when Shibata came running over to the makeshift genkan from the kitchen. He had on an apron with a lot of flour on it….dessert! There was a dessert in there and Sho would gladly go deaf in exchange for slightly burnt desserts! Shimazaki could be the ears and he could be the eyes and together they would have all six senses.

"I'm hungry!" shouted Sho. Shibata pointed to his ear and shook his head. Sho rose up from the ground with his powers until they were eye to eye.

"Feed me desserts!" shouted Sho

"Not today! It's a bad time! Come back tomorrow!" shouted Shibata. A bad time? What could be bad about this time? They were having a loudness war! And also there were desserts! Sho was getting a headache, a bad one, but if there was a loudness war going on then he and Shimazaki could totally-

"Ryou! Fuck!"

-could totally win….on a team…because they were best friends….

"Ok, out you go!" shouted Shibata. He picked Sho up out of the air and carried him out the door. He closed the door behind him but Sho could still hear….well he could hear the TV but he could also hear…that had been Minegishi and….and their aura had been all tangled up in Shimazaki's…and they called him Ryou all the time for some reason and….

And they had never sounded like that before.

"Listen, this is a bad time. We're…um….all celebrating the holiday in different ways. That's it. Some of us are celebrating alone, some together, but um….it's an adult's only thing in there so…so…um….how about this? I'll make you a pancake cake tomorrow for breakfast with frosting and cookies and gummy words and homemade Pepsi and all of your favorites. Tomorrow. In the morning. Not tonight at night. Do you understand, Little Suzuki?" asked Shibata. Sho nodded. He understood. He understood just fine.

He couldn't compete with boobs.

"Yeah…I'd like that…but not the homemade Pepsi because that stuff is gross." Said Sho

"What's wrong with my homemade Pepsi?" asked Shibata

"It's too thick and it loses it's bubbles too fast." Said Sho

"Everyone's a critic…" muttered Shibata

"I'll come by tomorrow though, not tonight, I don't want to be in your boring adults only loudness war, later." Said Sho as he walked off

"Be careful getting home! And don't look in any windows with those binoculars! It's a crime….I'm pretty sure!" said Shibata. Sho waved as he walked off. He didn't go home, though, because home shared a wall with their house so he would just hear the loudness war…that Shimazaki was winning…and he knew how he was winning. Sho was not stupid. He watched TV. He knew that when you did gross stuff with a girl she screamed your name and stuff. He had seen enough TV to know what sick, twisted, vile, wrong, gross things adults did together!

And he could not compete with boobs.

Sho was Shimazaki's best friend but he could not compete with Minegishi because they had boobs and Shimazaki was a guy and guys touched girls' boobs and that was what you were supposed to do on Valentine's Day and….and Sho could not compete with that and he didn't want to hear that and now he felt like the goldish in his stomach was swimming straight down and taking all of his organs with it and…and he just wanted to feel better.

So he went to see Fukuda.

Fukuda hadn't locked his door in any serious way either. Sho let himself right in and took off both of his shoes. The TV was on but it wasn't loud. The loudest sound was Fukuda's laptop keys clicking…and that was nice. He hadn't replaced Sho with someone who had boobs. Sho was still his favorite person in the whole world…which was good even though Fukuda treated him like a baby sometimes, only had vanilla ice cream in the house, and also was sort of not nice to big sis….

Fukuda always made him feel better.

"Sho? What brings you here?" asked Fukuda. He closed his laptop really fast and put it off to the side. Sho let himself fall down onto the couch. Fukuda was watching a show that Sho didn't know. At least it was British people baking stuff at the highest volume setting. His head still hurt from that…and so did his stomach and heart…

Everything hurt.

"I feel bad." Said Sho. He put his binoculars up to his eyes and tried to watch TV. Too close. He could see the pixels on the TV screen. They were cool. They didn't do anything at all for the all over ache he had, though. Maybe Fukuda could fix it.

"You don't feel injured….so I take it you didn't stare up at the sun with those?" asked Fukuda

"No. It's dark out and I'm not an idiot. I just…feel bad. I don't know. I just…feel bad. I don't like this feeling so…so fix it." Said Sho. This feeling felt like a million and one feelings all at once. He felt all of his feelings at once and he could feel them all trying to come out of his body through his chest and bellybutton. Sort of like in the movie about the aliens who laid eggs in people's stomachs and stuff.

Sho felt the energy around him shift.

Fukuda was closer now and his aura was all around. Sho rested his head on his arm. He felt…tired. Tired and just…not good. He didn't even know why. He knew that he couldn't compete with boobs. He didn't even know what he had been planning on doing with Shimazaki…well winning the loudness war but…but then he didn't know what they would do after that. It wasn't like they could share his binoculars. Heh. No, that was mean. They could have done a lot. They could have stolen food from other people's plates or gone down into the sewers or chased nighttime birds like…owls…or bats…well bats weren't birds but still. They could have had a good time and…and stuff but…but he was too busy with Minegishi and…and Sho wanted to beat them up so badly! But then Shimazaki would have been mad at him because he cared about Minegishi…cared about them enough to call them Toshi and to let them call him Ryou….

Valentine's Day sucked.

"Well I can't fix it until you tell me what's wrong." Said Fukuda. Sho didn't know what was even wrong. He knew that he couldn't compete with Minegishi and…and stuff. He knew and he felt terrible and…and he knew why and…and he knew that he needed to feel better….

"…this day sucks.." said Sho. That was the best he could come up with. That was the best that he could say about all the feelings that made his heart want to burst out of his chest.

"Language." Said Fukuda. Sho started counting in his head. That was just a thing that Fukuda said. He didn't mean to be a mother fucking cock sucking bastard. He just didn't like Sho cursing for some reason…even though he hadn't cursed.

"Sucks is not a curse word." Said Sho

"Well it's not appropriate." Said Fukuda

"Why not? This whole bloody day sucks!" said Sho. He said that part in English like Emmy would. He had been listening to her talk too much. Bloody was a good word. It was like fuck. It could be good or bad. It could fit anywhere. Here it was bad. Fukuda had better not have said that Sho was still cursing or he would show him some real curse words.

"Bloody? Where'd you pick that up?" asked Fukuda with a laugh. Sho had no idea why the laughing was worse than the telling him not to curse…he had no idea about any of his feelings anymore.

"From my girlfriend…a girl I know." Said Sho

"Oh. A…girlfriend?" asked Fukuda. Sho wanted to run and hide. To run out and never return. Fukuda knew and….and then dad would know and…and he had no idea how dad would react. Dad had said that he needed to find a girl but he had said that the girl he had to pick should have been an esper…but he had said that he would be happy with any girl…but the thought of Emmy meeting dad…..that would….would have been the worst!

"Don't tell dad." Said Sho in his most serious voice. Fukuda knew how dad was. Fukuda had known dad since they had been kids and…and he knew dad. He knew how dad could be.

"No. I won't. Your secret is safe with me. All of your secrets are safe with me, you know?" asked Fukuda. He even did the 'cross my heart' thing…and that made Sho feel better.

"I know." Said Sho. He did the cross my heart thing back. Fukuda may have been sort of a jerk to big sis, and also sort of boring, but Sho knew that he could be trusted….with a lot. Not everything. Not the feelings that Sho had…or didn't have…or should have had…because then Fukuda would know how weird he was…and he didn't want anyone to know how weird he was.

"So, you know, if you ever feel confused about how you feel you can talk to me." Said Fukuda. Sho wanted to take him up on that offer right then. He wanted to ask Fukuda why he was feeling the way he felt. Why he got the goldfish in his stomach whenever Shimazaki was around but not when he was around Emmy. Why the goldfish in his stomach was trying to come out of his chest now. Why he had ever thought that being best friends with Shimazaki would have been ranked than whatever Minegishi was ranked to Shimazaki.

"I'm talking to you right now, aren't I?" asked Sho crossing his arms and throwing himself against the couch. He

"So….you're having a lot of feelings right now?" asked Fukuda

"Yeah, I just said so." Said Sho

"Well then let's talk about them. This girl…you like her?" asked Fukuda

"She's nice and fun and stuff. She got me binoculars and I got her binoculars. We both like to look at bird and stuff…that's why we have binoculars." Said Sho

"Well don't go looking at any birds with those." Laughed Fukuda. Sho frowned. He had no idea what was so funny or why he wasn't supposed to look at birds with these. Fukuda should have been happy. He was the one who had told him not to climb trees with Shimazaki to see birds. He was the one who had told him that it was dangerous. He had no clue if he would ever even be able to climb trees with Shimazaki again…since he had someone even better than a best friend….and he just….hated all of these bad feelings inside of himself.

"….the point is to look at birds." Said Sho

"I know, I was just trying to be funny. You know because in England 'bird' is slang for girl?" asked Fukuda. Sho shook his head. What kind of a joke was that? Did he look like the kind of person who could cheat? Who was capable of cheating on someone who cared about him? On someone who he had agreed to be with? Did he think that Sho was seriously the sort of person who could take someone who liked him and then just…hurting them like that? Putting this terrible, organs trying to climb out of your chest, feeling? Was THAT what Fukuda thought about him?!

"Don't joke about that. Of course I'm not going to look at any other girls. That's cheating and cheating is wrong. I am not a cheater because cheating is wrong." Said Sho

"Well yes…in most circumstances…" said Fukuda tugging at his collar. Sho wondered why he didn't just turn the heat down if he was so hot.

"No, in all circumstances. There are no circumstances when it's ok to cheat on the person that you care about and who cares about you. There will never be an ok time to cheat. I am not that kind of person and…and I can't believe that you would say something like that. If I wanted to look at a bunch of girls when I would just stay single. I only want to look at her so I'll only look at her….I mean it don't want to…but that's fine because I'm ten and…and maybe I don't want to look at my girlfriend naked! Is that a crime!?" asked Sho. He was reminded, again, about how weird he was….and he didn't need to add those feelings to the feelings that were already inside of him. Too many feelings. All the worst feelings.

"Well….not at all. Sho, you just turned ten in December, so it's normal at your age not to want to see a girl naked…not now or…or even ever. If you never want to see this girl naked then that's fine and if she's pushing you-" said Fukuda. He was all red and pulling at his collar and stuff. What, was he embarrassed because he had said 'naked girl'? Because there were much worse things that he could have said.

"Emmy isn't like that. She doesn't even make me kiss her." said Sho. He loved that about her. She never chased him and kissed him or made him kiss her. He had never known that a girl could be nice like that. He had never known that a girl could be a friend like that. He wished that boys and girls could be friends like that but…but they couldn't and that was why they were boyfriend and girlfriend and not just friends.

"So her name is Emmy and you've kissed her." said Fukuda in a tone that made Sho think that he had done something wrong….but he hadn't. He had kissed a girl and that was what you were supposed to do.

"Yeah, I've kissed a million girls before…well they've kissed me…but she asks first and I like that…and she's nice and…and I don't really feel like kissing her but I still want her to be happy….but she's not what's upsetting me." Said Sho

"If she was what was upsetting you then you can talk to me. You don't need to have a girlfriend just because a lot of other people your age do…and if you do want to have her for your girlfriend I know how hard leaving her behind must be-" said Fukuda

"We're not breaking up. We're in a long distance relationship now but I just said that she isn't what's upsetting me. Can't you listen?" asked Sho

"Sho….you know that I will always listen to you no matter what the problem is…so please just tell me what's wrong." Said Fukuda

"….I can't compete with boobs…" said Sho quietly. How could he have been so stupid to think that he could compete with the person that Minegishi was to Shimazaki. Everything had ranks, even families, and friendships too, apparently, and whatever Minegishi was to Shimazaki it ranked above best friend.

"What?" asked Fukuda

"I can't compete with boobs!" shouted Sho as loudly as he could. He shouted so loudly that if he had stayed for the loudness war he could have won.

"I…am lost." Said Fukuda scratching his head. He had no idea what Fukuda had no idea about. He had been speaking plain Japanese. What was hard to understand?

"I don't have boobs and I never will because I'm a boy and I don't want them anyway because then I would be a girl and have to have long hair and wear dresses and….and I want to be Sho, not Shoko!" said Sho

"Is your sister trying to put you in a dress again? Because if she is then you have every right to say-" asked Fukuda. He was getting all mad, now, his aura was getting all pointy and his tone was all low and Sho was not in the mood to hear him talk mean about big sis.

"No, not lately, but that's not what I'm talking about." Said Sho. If he started up about big sis then…then he would have had to say something…and he didn't want to say anything because then he would have had even more of these bad feelings and…and he did not want to have any more bad feelings inside of his stomach. Maybe if he had one more bad feeling he would end up with an actual chest buster…or something.

"What's all this about, then?" asked Fukuda pinching the bridge of his nose and breathing out for a really long time.

"I….I wanted to hang out with Shimazaki but I think that he and Minegishi are doing gross adult stuff together because it's Valentine's Day and also they have boobs and that's the kind of stuff you're supposed to do with someone with boobs and…and I can't compete with that." Said Sho. Fukuda put an arm around him and patted his back like he was a baby who needed to burp.

"Sho…that's ok. You know that they're adults and….and this is what adults do…" said Fukuda

"I know what adults do, I'm not stupid, I just…feel all hurt. It's worse than when I broke into Minegishi's room because Shimazaki was there and then I didn't know that they had been doing gross stuff but they had been and Shimazaki made me close my eyes but I opened them and saw Minegishi's boobs and then I felt like I do now but…but even worse and…and I don't know how to make this feeling stop. I just…the only reason he likes them better is because they have boobs! He said that he wasn't in love with them so it must be because-" said Sho

"Sho, calm down. You're hurt, I know that you're hurt, but…but this is why maybe you shouldn't be friends with him. Ok? You have a lot of feelings and you…you've gotten very attached to him but he's not as attached to you as you are to him and…and that's why things like this happen. Why you're feeling like this. This is why adults and kids shouldn't be friends like that." Said Fukuda

"But you and I are friends." Said Sho. They were friends. Not as good of friends as he and Shimazaki were but they were still friends. At least nobody would ever outrank him when it came to Fukuda.

"Well….this is different. I take care of you. I held you when you were a baby, you know, I'm a different part of your life. The way you feel about me is different than the way you feel about him, I'd imagine, and maybe….maybe it's time to just let him be with another adult and-" said Fukuda

"So you agree? I can't compete with boobs and Shimazaki's always going to put Minegishi ahead of me in the best friend rankings and I'll always just be second best, or not even second best, just like I have been my whole life. Only this time I'm not second best to big sis, I'm second best to Minegishi, and that's even worse because the only thing that they had going on for them is boobs. They aren't nice, they don't do fun stuff, and they'd rather watch Frozen with big sis than play in the sewers-" said Sho

"You…were in the sewers….?" Asked Fukuda wrinkling his nose up.

"Yeah, it was really fun and stuff….but now I feel like I mean nothing to him and our friendship means nothing and I feel like nothing and it feels like my organs and my heart are trying to pop out through my chest and…and I just feel bad and I want you to make me feel better but I'll never feel better because now I'm second to Minegishi of all people and-" said Sho

"Sho. No. Just….you are not second best and….God I can't believe I'm saying this…um…you're his friend in ways that Minegishi can never be and they're…well they're in their own category that you will never be in…God willing….and those catagories will never intersect so…so your friendship with Shimazaki is safe…." Said Fukuda

"But they have boobs and-" said Sho

"So? They're nothing to write home about anyway. Just…don't think that you're competing with them or with anyone. You're Sho and when someone tries to compete with you they'll always lose. You're a great kid…and you're not competing with them anyway because there is no competition." Said Fukuda. Sho nodded. He knew that Fukuda would make him feel better. Yeah…he was awesome…and Shimazaki had said so. So what if he did gross stuff with Minegishi. Sho was the one he had fun with. Sho was the one who he was best friends with.

"Yeah…I'm awesome….and stuff. Thanks, Fukuda. I…I feel better." Said Sho. He felt…less bad. Better. He was still Shimazaki's best friend and…and there was no competition because if there was he would win…because he was ten times the friend that Minegishi could ever be. Yeah. Even if he didn't have boobs he was still the most awesome friend that Shimazaki had and…and he felt good about that…and he was Shimazaki's best friend and….

And this was what it felt like to have a best friend on Valentine's Day. It was awesome.


	264. Good Investments

The greatest investment Suzuki Touichirou had ever made was in a pair of earplugs.

They were a necessity on these plane rides. Being so near to Daughter's friends…it was always a headache. They just never. Shut. Up. No matter how short or long the plane ride was they always just carried on and on and on…and he had no clue how Daughter could stand it. She spent so much of her time with these people…and he had been trying to figure out why for years now….and had been making no progress.

"Are you ok, dad?" asked Mob. She and dad were sitting next to each other with laptops balanced on their laps. That was why they were called laptops. Mob had never noticed that before even though she and dad had spent a plane ride like this already. His aura had been all weird then, too. His aura was weird now and also…he was ignoring her?

"Dad?" asked Mob. She didn't know if dad was ignoring her or not. His aura wasn't even reacting to her. Maybe he just couldn't hear her over Shimazaki's singing. He had been singing about being back in the USSR since the plane took off…and they weren't even going to the USSR. The USSR had been dissolved at the end of the cold war, dad had said, which was not a war which took place in winter. So really Shimazaki should have been singing about being back in the USSR but also if they had gone back in time to when dad and Fukuda had been kids. Or maybe he should have been singing about being back to Russia. Or maybe he shouldn't have been singing at all because it really bothered dad.

Mob hated it when dad was bothered.

"Hey, dad?" asked Mob again. She tapped her aura against his. He looked up really fast from what he had been doing. They were in a new world now, this one was mostly underground tunnels, and it was a lot of work. They kept on going too deep and hitting lava or going up too high and hitting water. They had to try and build underground, though, because they had been doing a lot of above ground construction lately. Dad had said so and he was the boss and she was just the kid.

"Daughter? Something you need?" asked Suzuki. She had gotten his attention. She must have needed something. Was she alright? Ill? Airsick? Dying? Was she dying? Was she-no, she was not dying and he had no idea why his mind kept on going there. She was not going to die. Ten year olds did not spontaneously die. Fukuda had assured him of that.

"You were ignoring me and also your aura was being all weird. I was just worried, that's all." said Mob

"Don't worry about me, I'm fine. I just couldn't hear you over your friend's incessant singing." Said Suzuki as he popped his earplugs out with his powers. There. Now he could hear her clearly….and everything else happening on that airplane. The roar of the engines, the incessant singing, Minegishi's incessant orders to Shimazaki to stop that incessant singing, the incessant noise of whatever game Son had roped Fukuda into playing with him, the incessant click of a keyboard, and the incessant incessantness of the incessant noise that was enough to give him the beginnings of what was sure to be an incessant headache.

Incessantly.

"Shimazaki likes to sing sometimes. He likes the Beatles, too, and that's a Beatles song about going back to the USSR so it sort of fits." Said Mob. Well it did and it didn't but she wished that he would sing something else. Like the song about the diamond lady who lived in the sky. That was a nice one. Or about yesterday…well that one was kind of sad. She just wanted him to sing anything else because even she was starting to get annoyed. She wished that she could just go over there and tell him to stop…and then also to stay over there, but dad needed company on plane rides because nobody ever wanted to be his moving buddy. So the job fell to her because he loved him….and stuff. Because she had to be a good Daughter.

"It would have fit if we had been making this trip thirty years ago." Said Suzuki

"I thought so too. They really should change that song so it makes sense in today times." Said Mob

"No, it's a good piece of history if anything…if Shimazaki weren't singing it on a loop. I used to enjoy that song….and music in general…" said Suzuki. He had enjoyed music in the past. On a 'this sounds good' level. He had never been good at the technical aspects of it and his attempts at playing it in school, the recorder was truly an instrument of torture, had been abysmal failures. Still, though, he could enjoy music…just not when it was the chorus to a song that he'd heard a thousand times sung over and over again with the occasional improvised lyric.

"You can still like music. Shimazaki knows a lot of good music…it's just better when he isn't singing it…not to be mean or anything like that." Said Mob

"That's true. I didn't even know that you liked the Beatles. If you had been born sooner I would have had them perform for you. Daily performances if you had wanted them." Said Suzuki. He was not going to indulge his more violent thoughts about Shimazaki Ryou. He was not going to tell his Daughter that he would never be good enough for her. He was not going to think about her growing up and leaving him for the likes of Shimazaki Ryou. He was going to think about the wonderful world he would build his Daughter so she would never want to leave him. If there was some way to bring people back from the dead, there wasn't he'd tried, he would put on daily Beatles concerts for her…or whatever other groups she liked. Constant concerts that she could wander into and out of at her leisure. He'd build her a movie theatre too with incessant showings of the ice queen and all of her other animated favorites. He would build a playhouse for her too. Did she like theatre? She might. There was a stage show called Cats which she may have liked because she had an affinity for those creatures. He would even allow her to get a real cat….well there was the island of cats…and he would preserve it so she could go there when she needed to spend time with cats so she wouldn't bring them to their house.

He would build her the biggest house he could.

He would build her a house bigger, even, than the Taj Mahal…though that was a tomb…but he would still build her something bigger than that. He would build a house big enough for her and her children and him as well…and her husband could live in a shed in the backyard or something….and Daughter would be happy and he would be happy and he would spend the rest of his days just…being with her. Figuring her out. Learning her. There was so much about her that he didn't know…and he wanted nothing more than to learn all that there was about her…

Because he loved her.

"That's ok. I think that they would have gotten tired of singing for me even if I had been born sooner and they had been younger." Said Mob. She didn't think that she would like that. She didn't want that because then people would be bored of playing for just her all the time and she didn't want to make anyone feel bored or anything like that.

"Still living. I think that half of them are still living. I don't know, I was never really much of a fan." Said Suzuki. Mother had been a fan back when she was still alive. He and father, however, had enjoyed more traditional Japanese music…though the Kotoro was an instrument or torture even worse than the recorder would ever be.

"Oh…we shouldn't tell Shimazaki that some of them are dead. They're his favorite." Said Mob. He would be sad if he knew that. He would maybe even cry. He didn't like to cry, he said that it felt weird, and also when he cried he had to clean out his eyes too which was a real pain even if it wasn't painful. Also he would have been sad and she never wanted any of her friends to ever be sad ever for any reason at all.

"They've been dead for some time. I'd imagine he's known for some time." Said Suzuki. He wasn't so old that he was the only one who remembered the death of John Lennon…right? That was in…he had been young…mother had been quite upset…it had to be been in 1980. He couldn't be the only one to have been old enough to remember…or even alive. He did some mental math. He was forty four, time to start rounding up, and he had been born in…he came to a realization that he should have come to ages ago. He was the oldest person on that plane.

Well what did you know?

He and Fukuda were the same age but he was…he was the oldest person on this plane. His children were barely more than a decade old. His Daughter's friends…he oldest friend was thirty…which placed his birth year in 1985…well then. There was something…existential about it. He had been in his last year of elementary school when his Daughter's oldest friend had been born. He didn't think about this often. Different eras, aging, himself aging and his era passing…and he was not going to think about it now. He was not aging, he was not getting old, and his back did not hurt so much…because he was not getting old…

Time kept on passing and there was nothing that he could do about it.

"We still shouldn't tell him in case he didn't know. It would hurt his feelings. Sometimes it hurts people's feelings when you tell them things that they don't want to hear." Said Mob. Like how she had told dad, before, that he was weird. He didn't like to be called weird, who did, so she would not be calling him that…even though he did weird stuff all the time. Like how he'd had someone dye her yellow dress blue…and now she was an itchy blue dress…but she wasn't going to say anything else about this because dad…he didn't need to have his feelings hurt again.

Dad was a person with a lot of feelings.

"Well maybe you should tell him that nobody wants to hear his creative interpretation of Back in the USSR for the thousandth time." Said Suzuki. He would let Daughter deal with her friends. She had this way about her, this way of getting people to do things without even having to threaten them with violence once, and he had no clue how she did it. Maybe it was her gender. Women really were the kinder sex.

"I'll tell him to stop if you want me to…but I'll be nice when I tell him to…because he's my friend." Said Mob. She wasn't going to be mean but she was going to ask him nicely to sing something else. She got up from her seat and pulled her dress down as she walked. Tulle was clingy. She was wearing tights but she would rather her dress not get stuck to the backs of her thighs. She wished that she didn't have to wear this dress. It was blue now, which she liked, but it was still mom's dress. Or maybe not. It was blue and mom had mostly worn a lot of yellow so…so this was her dress now? She didn't know. All she knew was that it had to be in her clothes rotation now to make dad happy. That was her job, to make him happy, because she was a good Daughter like that.

Sometimes it was hard to be a good Daughter.

Good Daughters sat with their dads on long plane rides, and short plane rides, because nobody else wanted to be moving buddies with him. Mob didn't blame them, though, because dad wasn't exactly nice to people. He used up all of his niceness on Mob…even though it would have done better for him if he used some of that niceness up on other people too. Like Sho. He could sure use some niceness. He had to leave his girlfriend behind in England and he said that he was fine but Mob knew that he wasn't. He must have been so sad and hurt…

And she would be there for him if he needed it.

She would have been there for him now but dad needed her. In a way being there for dad was like being there for Sho. If she distracted dad then he wouldn't find things about Sho to get mad at. She would be there for Sho later. Right now he had Fukuda to be there for him and that was good. He needed all the people who he could get to be there for him and stuff. Even if Fukuda could be a little bit mean sometimes. That was probably just because he was getting old like Sho had said. He was just turning into an old person and they could be really grumpy and stuff. Probably because they knew that they would die soon.

She didn't want Fukuda to die.

She didn't think that Fukuda liked her as much as he used to but he didn't need to be dead or anything like that. Minegishi was always saying that they would kill him if they could but that was just them saying stuff. They would never actually kill someone, they were too nice for that, and either way it would have been wrong to kill Fukuda anyway. Well killing was wrong all the time, unless someone was trying to kill you first but even then you should try and be nice, but Fukuda hadn't done anything wrong but be a little grumpy and a little too formal. That wasn't reason enough to kill someone.

Also he was really nice to Sho.

He and Sho were sitting together in the back of the plane playing games. Mob would have liked to play too but she knew that she couldn't. Fukuda didn't really like to play with her anymore but that was because she was older these days and also a girl. She didn't know what either of those things had to do with being allowed to play games with everyone else but she wasn't there to argue with him. She wasn't there to argue with anyone. She was just there to stop Shimazaki from singing…or to get him to sing something else already.

"Back in the USSR….you don't know how lucky you are….being back in the USSR….where we are…." Sang Shimazaki. He couldn't help it. The setup was just too perfect. Besides, who didn't like the Beatles? Well everyone he was annoying, obviously, but they were a bunch of philistines or whatever. They wouldn't know good music if it walked up and spat in their faces.

"If you have to sing can you at least sing the right words?" asked Minegishi with a groan. They had their hands shoved in their pockets. The seeds didn't help. Winter was making it worse. They were flying over land but that land was cold and dormant. Their plants down in storage were cold and dormant too. Everything was cold and dormant.

Well aside from the warm person beside them.

They kept their eyes closed and leaned more onto Ryou. He raised an arm so they could rest their head against his shoulder. He brought an arm down over them. They would feel his barrier against their skin. He kept it close when he was awake. He wasn't the biggest fan of flying, the world got a lot smaller for him when he was up this high, and he hated a small world. It bored him. He hated being bored.

Something that they had in common.

Minegishi hated being bored too but they were better at keeping themselves entertained than he was. All they really needed was a good book and they were fine. They couldn't always read though, like now, they just felt too crappy. Too much winter. Too much distance between themselves and the ground. Too much of…of too much. Too little. Too much and too little at the same time.

"I am singing the right words. Back in the-" said Shimazaki. They felt Toshi raise their hand and made no move to stop them. He wasn't going to move a muscle until they landed. Not unless Toshi moved first. Toshi was…a lot of things and those things were Toshi and for them he could sit still…even though he hated it. Even though there was a plane wing right there and the kid was clearly pissed off about something, his aura was doing the high pitched shriek it did when he was pissed off, and he really wanted to take the kid out onto the wing of the plane….

But Toshi needed him and they felt like crap and Toshi…was Toshi.

And Toshi had a hand over his mouth. They had really soft hands. They smelled nice, too. New moisturizer. This one smelled like peonies and spring time. Their last one smelled like lilies and lilacs. Toshi always smelled so nice. Toshi always smelled so nice and they were always so soft and…and he just didn't get himself sometimes. The had always liked Toshi the best out of everyone else in the world…that he had met, anyway, it wasn't like he knew all the billions of people in the world or anything, but now this was just…he didn't know the hell this was….

This was Toshi's hand over his mouth.

"Ryou, enough. Come on. I have a headache." Said Minegishi. He held them closer. He extended his aura around them. Minegishi let their aura mix with his. They saw red, a lot of it, and not just Ryou's. What was that kid glaring for? They could feel him glaring, feeling him focusing on them, and they didn't get it. He was weirdly possessive over Ryou. Minegishi didn't get it. They weren't in the habit of psychoanalyzing people but they figured that it stemmed from a distant and abusive father who favored his sister and a mother that had either run away or just died and nobody told him…either way it made for a very possessive little boy with some very big anger issues…

But at least their birthday present seemed to have been serving them well…since the little demon child hadn't started anything with them yet.

"Don't worry. We'll get there eventually. We'll get back to the USSR and we won't know how lucky we are." said Shimazaki. They liked it, he knew that they liked it, he could hear their aura hiccupping. He could feel them smiling just a little. He knew them. He knew them and he knew what they liked. He knew what he liked too and it was them. Everything about them. He focused on the sound of their aura. He focused on the sound of their aura giggling and hiccupping.

God, he loved that sound.

"You're lucky I don't have my plants." Said Minegishi. They kept their eyes closed. Just a little longer…or a lot. They weren't sure. Knowing wouldn't make this plane fly any faster. They focused on the feeling of him. Not the fact that they were flying through the air in a metal tube far from the ground, the dead ground, the cold dead world…he was there and he was warm and they…they were there too and…

And this was nice.

"No, I think I know how lucky I am." Said Shimazaki. He said it because he felt it. He was lucky. He had Toshi, for one thing, but also the rest of his life was pretty sweet too. He had a job where he got to meet a lot of interesting people, and kick their asses, and when he was done he got to hang out with Toshi and Mob, who was a fun kid, and Sho who was an infinitely more fun kid. Also he got to hang out with those other two, too. Shibata had grown on him and Hatori was always good for a laugh at his expense.

"You're lucky Suzuki only sent Mob over here and didn't come here himself. I told you to knock it off." Said Minegishi. They could feel Mob getting closer and they knew that Ryou could feel it too. They had warned him. Now he had pissed off Suzuki and rather than deal with it himself he sent his ten year old Daughter to deal with it….not that they wanted Suzuki to come over and start dealing with things. No, nobody could want that.

"Hey, Mob's here. Hey Mob." Said Shimazaki. He thought Mob was a cool kid, he really did, but now Toshi was sitting up and had stopped using him as a pillow and he felt weirdly….cold? Well it wasn't cold on the plane but he felt a cold spot where Toshi had been resting. Maybe because had been so warm. Now they were farther away and he couldn't feel them anymore…well he could hear their aura. He could hear their aura but it had gotten muddled in Mob's. Her aura was always screaming. It was always screaming and it filled whatever space they were in.

If he hadn't been used to her he would have been afraid of her.

Her aura did not match her body. She was little but her aura was loud and heavy. He had never seen a kid that powerful. The only person he had ever seen more powerful than her was her father but at least that made sense. He was a grown man. This was a little girl. She had always been too powerful for her own good. Amazingly enough Suzuki's other kid didn't have that problem. He was a powerful kid but more gifted than pants pissingly terrifying. Not that he was afraid of Mob, no, who could ever be afraid of her?

That kid was way too nice.

"Hi. Um…my dad says stop singing. He's getting annoyed and bad things happen when he's annoyed." Said Mob. She wondered if she should tell Hatori to stop cursing at his laptop while she was at it…but at least he had headphones on and was cursing quietly. She wondered, too, if she should tell Shibata to turn down whatever he was listening to. She could sort of hear it through his headphones and that meant that he was going to end up hurting his hearing and stuff…and she didn't want that at all.

"I told you to knock it off. Now Suzuki's pissed off." Said Minegishi

"He's not…that word. Just annoyed." Said Mob

"Who's being annoying?" asked Shibata as he took off his headphones. Great. He decides to relax for one minute and Shimazaki ends up doing something. At least he hadn't been doing anything to Hatori. No, he was still playing his game. Thank God for the little things. At least Hatori was ok…he was so fragile for someone his age. Like a really tall kid.

"Who do you think?" asked Minegishi

"I am not being annoying. I'm filling our otherwise dreary lives with the gift of song." Said Shimazaki

"What's happening?" asked Hatori taking off his headphones and looking up from his laptop. Were they there already? He looked out the window. Nope, still high up. He looked away and made brief eye contact with Minegishi. He immediately looked back down at what he had been doing.

"Shimazaki is filling our dreary lives with the gift of song. Unfortunately we can't return this gift." Said Minegishi

"Toshi, come on. You love my singing." Said Shimazaki

"Wait, he's STILL singing? We're been flying for an hour. What's even happening anymore?" asked Hatori

"Nothing. Keep playing. Shimazaki's just being annoying again." said Shibata. He wondered if there was any way to help with Shimazaki's condition. That must have been pure hell, needing people to pay attention to you twenty four hours a day or you thought that you had stopped existing. He could forgive him for how he acted…most of the time…but he could be so grating sometimes….most of the times. At least he had ben leaving Hatori alone lately. That guy was too fragile for all of that.

"I don't mind but my dad does and-" said Mob. She had to make sure that he knew that she wasn't the one who was bothered. Dad was the one who was bothered and he was the one who had made her come over and be all mean to everyone and stuff. She would never have been so mean if she could have helped it. She would have just put up with the noise until they landed and then she would have gone to her new room and put everything the way she liked it in silence so her head could reset and stop hurting. That was what friends did, they put up with each other no matter what.

"Who cares what dad likes? Shimazaki can sing for the whole trip if he wants to." Said Sho. He wished that dad would just sit in his own corner and mind his own business…and stop sending big sis to mind other people's business for him. He should have just sat there with big sis, since they were moving buddies, and left the fun part of the plane alone.

"Sho, stay out of it." Said Fukuda. He was about ready to open the emergency hatch and take up amateur skydiving. He hated these plane rides. Long or short they always drove him to the brink of insanity. He could have handled playing this game with Sho over and over again. He could have handled the feel of all of those auras pressing down on him at once. He even could have handled wrangling Sho to keep him both away from Shigeko's friends and also away from the drink cart, he loved soda but did NOT need any more sugar or caffeine in his system, but it was the singing that got to him. The never ending singing….

He hated the Beatles now. He used to like them, had even lit a candle when Lennon died back in the 80's, but now he never wanted to hear another Beatles song again for as long as he lived.

"I don't mind the singing but dad does so maybe you could sing inside of your head until we land?" asked Mob. That seemed like a good compromise. She knew that if she wanted to she could have ordered him to stop, she outranked him in Claw after all, but she didn't like to do that. She had only brought up her rank once and she hadn't even wanted to then. She had just wanted Sho to stop hurting himself…and this wasn't nearly as important or serious as Sho hurting himself…

But dad's feelings were still very important.

"Seconded." Said Minegishi. They opened their eyes…and wished that they hadn't. Right. Mob was still in that dress…that had been dyed blue. Why? They wondered what sort of insanity they would find if they cracked Suzuki's head opened. That was still his dead wife's dress. He was still making his daughter wear his dead wife's dress…and apparently their little overly emotional best friend talk about saying 'no' and the importance of telling someone when they were being weird went in one ear and out the other…or maybe Suzuki was the one who had the problem with listening. They would believe ether.

"I vote 'yes' too." Said Shibata raising his hand. He accidentally bumped into Hatori. He hadn't meant to. These plane seats were not designed with someone as big as him in mind. He hoped that they landed soon. He needed to get up and move…and also once they got home he was going to try his hand at making Russian food. How complicated could it be? He'd make everyone a good meal and then they'd be at each other's throats less. Well they weren't there yet but he could see it coming. Minegishi was in a bad mood so Shimazaki would just act more and more obnoxious to try and fix it and then he'd end up messing with Hatori and Shibata himself would get pissed off and at that point the boss would notice and then the shit would really hit the fan.

"I vote 'yes' too! Uh...what are we voting on?" asked Hatori. He whispered that to Shibata. He needed to follow what was happening. Apparently this was now a democracy instead of a cult. He hated using that word but that was what they were, a cult, but not the Kool-Aid drinking kind…thank God.

"Shimazaki shutting up." Said Minegishi

"Well now I feel personally attacked." Said Shimazaki with his hand over his heart. Fine if they wanted to sit there in silence and contemplate how awesome Toshi was then they could do that…or maybe that was just him doing that…that had better just have been him doing that. Toshi was…well not HIS but…Toshi was Toshi and only he was allowed to think about how awesome they were. Nobody else. Certainly not that brail faced dork who thought that he had a shot with them. Not that Shimazaki still felt threatened…or had even felt threatened in the first place. He didn't feel threatened at all. He was Shimazaki Ryou! Nothing threatened him! He threatened others!

But maybe it was time to shut up since Toshi had a headache.

"Stop voting! Nobody's allowed to vote for anything!" said Sho. He tried to stand up but Fukuda held him back. They were all being so mean to Shimazaki and for no good reason. Who cared what dad wanted? If dad had it his way then all of the fun in the world would have been hunted down and killed and then it would have gone extinct and they would have all been as boring as he was!

"Sho, I said to stay out of this." said Fukuda. He was doing his best to hold Sho back. He was amazed that Suzuki wasn't doing anything. No, he was completely engrossed in whatever it was that he was doing. It was like he couldn't hear or sense what was happening….or maybe he couldn't. Maybe he was just drowning it out because he figured that Shigeko had this.

"We would have noticed by now if this was a democracy." Said Minegishi. They could feel themselves being glared at. Again with this? What was this kid's problem with them? Was it because they were friends with his big sister? Because he had years to be mad at them about that.

"Don't help me. I don't need your help." Said Sho. He knew that he had been mean but he didn't care. He didn't need from anyone least of all from them. He could handle himself. Shimazaki was his best friend and he could defend his best friend from anything. He wished that he could have been over there to defend Shimazaki better but he had to stay near Fukuda because nobody else wanted to be his moving buddy because he was sort of mean to them sometimes. He couldn't help being a grumpy old man so Sho wouldn't hold it against him. He was almost forty four, that was practically ancient.

"Sho, that wasn't nice. Say sorry to Minegishi." Said Mob. Sho must have just been in a bad mood because he had to leave the girl he loved behind. That would put anyone in a bad mood…but he still should have been nice to Minegishi.

"Fine, I'm sorry that I told you that I don't need your help and I'm sorry that you so obviously can't see that I don't need your help." Said Sho through gritted teeth. He didn't want to fight with big sis. There was enough of a fight going on already. He didn't need to have another one.

"Toshi, don't kill him. He's just a kid." Said Shimazaki. The kid was in a bad mood, he could tell, and he knew that he had to make it better before this plane ride got unbearable. He could sympathize with the kid, he really could, plane rides sucked. There was nowhere to go, the world shrank down to nothing, and it was enough to drive even him insane. Yeah, he was taking the kid out on the wing of the plane again. Mob would understand. If it was to make her little brother happy she'd understand…or he could just smoke her up so she'd forgive him.

"Let's everyone just calm down." Said Shibata. Little Suzuki was just a kid and kids didn't do well on long plane rides. Well Her Little Ladyship did but she was a weirdly mature kid. She was even keeping cool under all of this. He wondered why the boss was just letting all of this happen…and then he decided not to question it because nobody wanted to deal with the boss all pissed off on an airplane thousands of kilometers in the air with no escape.

"Don't say that, it just pisses people off more." Whispered Hatori. Nope. He did not want to deal with a fight while they were this high in the air. He reached out with his powers. He could fly this thing if he needed to…but his powers would do no good if this plane exploded and they all ended up living out some Alive style thing in the mountains or wherever they were flying above…not that he would survive to that point. Nope, he couldn't fly. He couldn't even put up a barrier. He'd be one of the guys that would end up getting eaten.

"Shibata has a good idea. We should all just calm down and um….play….eye spy? No, wait, that leaves out Shimazaki. Um…we can play I Hear? That's better. We could just-" said Mob. Friends were not mean to fight. Friends were meant to get along. That was why they were all friends. Enemies were meant to fight but they weren't enemies, they were friends, and she had to figure out a way to get them to act like friends.

"Good idea. I hear the sound of Toshi realizing that Little Suzuki is just a kid and accepting his apology." Said Shimazaki. They could be so high strung sometimes. He knew how they could be and he knew how Sho could be, that was the most high strung kid he knew, and he didn't need either Toshi or the kid getting upset at each other. It would be like the time he tried to fight fire with fire as a kid and burnt that house down. Fun to watch but not fun to deal with the aftermath of.

"That's not how you play. You're not supposed to give it away." said Mob

"Well I just did." Said Shimazaki

"Suzuki, I accepted your empty, backhanded, apology." Said Minegishi. That little…if he had been older then it would have been a different story. He was a kid. He didn't fully know what he was saying. He knew full well that he was being a little asshole but he didn't realize that he shouldn't have been a little asshole. Well that was fine. Let him carry this into his adult life and he'd see what happened. For all of that healer's fretting he was doing an even worse job raising Suzuki's son than Minegishi was of raising Suzuki's daughter.

"Ok, now we can all be friends again and play I Hear. I hear something with my little ear that sounds like-" said Mob

"Don't talk to him like that." Said Fukuda. He didn't want to get involved but he couldn't just let them talk to Sho like that. He didn't need that. He had enough going on in his life. He'd had to leave his first girlfriend behind, Fukuda had no idea the depth of Sho's feelings for this girl but he knew that even if she had just been a friend it must have been hard, being packed into this plane like sardines with everyone else, the disruption to his sleep cycle that was coming, the three sodas he'd had already, his sister ordering around, and having to watch his crush sit there cuddled up with the person his crush had a crush on. It was a lot for the little guy.

And of course Fukuda would defend him.

Because, really, who said that sort of thing out loud to a child. It was one thing to be backhanded in your own mind but another to speak that way out loud. Sho didn't need to hear this. He had enough happening in his life already. He wasn't like Shigeko. That was the most disaffected child that he had ever met…well next to Suzuki. How was he not NOTICING this? How was he just sitting there clickity clacking away on his laptop without a care in the world?

Well, obviously, because Shigeko was handling this.

"Is it the engine? I think that it's the engine. Am I right, Your Little Ladyship?" asked Shibata. Nope. Now that guy was getting involved. He got it, he really did, you had to keep the little people safe and all of that but you also had to, you know, not sit there fanning the flames while someone else was getting the water buckets. Really.

"Don't talk to Toshi like that." Said Shimazaki. Toshi was not his but…but in the moment he felt like they were. Like this guy had no right to talk to them like that because it was like…like he was talking to HIM like that…and he didn't like this feeling and he wanted to make it go away…and he had no idea how to make it go away. If anything it had only gotten worse as time had gone on. This weirdly possessive feeling that he had towards Toshi.

"Don't fight my battles for me, Ryou." Said Minegishi. They could fight their own battles and that sticky public men's room floor of a human being was not worth it. They knew when they needed to defend themselves and when they were making extra work for themselves. Now Ryou was making extra work for them when they did not need it…well they never needed it…but now they especially did not need it.

"Don't talk to him like that." Said Sho. Fukuda was holding him back. He wanted to get up but Fukuda was stronger than him…well he could be stronger with his powers…but that would have been mean to Fukuda and he wasn't going to be mean to Fukuda even though he didn't need to be held back. It wasn't like he was going to beat Minegishi up or anything. No, he just needed to get up. That was all…and even if he did beat Minegishi up it wasn't like Fukuda couldn't heal them when Sho was done.

"How about everyone stops talking to everyone else? We could all….look out the window or…something." Said Shibata

"Wow. Sounds like a real good time. Can I sit in front?" Said Shimazaki. He didn't get why Shibata was so opposed to this fight, and there was a fight coming. This was Claw. In Claw they fought. Claw was a very violent cult where they proved themselves by fighting in the most violent way possible. This guy…sheesh. The kid had the right idea. Not about fighting Toshi of course, Toshi didn't need this, but about fighting in general.

"Stop fighting. Friends shouldn't fight. I think that we're all just in a bad mood because….um….we're all just in a bad mood. That's all." said Mob. She had no idea how to fix this. Friends weren't meant to fight. Maybe if they drank some of the tiny bottles on the drink cart. Dad said that she was allowed to drink socially and never to excess, which meant no acting like Hatori at the Christmas party, so it would be ok…but no, because Sho was there, and she didn't want him to start drinking too.

"I-I'm going to go to the bathroom!" said Hatori. He was just going to hide in the bathroom and if the plane went down then maybe he would be safe there. That was the safest part of the plane, right? Or was it a boat? Train? House with wheels? He didn't know. All he knew was that he did not want to be in the middle of whatever fight was happening. On his way to the bathroom he passed the boss….who was too busy playing Minecraft to deal with this…and he had wireless headphones…no, just earplugs, in too. Oh. Well that would explain his uncharacteristic lack of involvement.

"Remember to come out eventually!" said Shibata

"Great, now he's going to be in there for the rest of the plane ride. Wonderful." Said Minegishi. Well now they had two problems to deal with. Great. Just great. This was just what they needed. They wondered if they should take another Xanax…no, that would be sliding into addictive behavior and that was wrong. They had a kid looking up to them now. A very stressed out kid.

"It's ok. He'll come out on his own when he stops being scared. Sometimes when people have a lot of feelings, like fear, they have to hide in small places. Like Sho does-" said Mob

"I'm not afraid of anything!" said Sho. What was she doing going around talking about how he had to go and hide when he had too many feeling?! He didn't go around telling her personal business about…well she couldn't think of anything embarrassing that she did but when it came to him then he would keep it to himself like a good little brother was supposed to.

"I never said that you were. I was just saying-" said Mob

"Suzuki-san, why don't you go talk your friend out of the bathroom. There's only one bathroom on this plane and he likes to lock himself into small spaces when he feels overwhelmed. Why don't you deal with him instead of talking to your brother like-"said Fukuda

"Don't talk to her like that. She may be tone deaf but I'm not. Mob, stay put. If that idiot wants to go panic in the bathroom then let him panic in the bathroom. You're not responsible for him. We're all grown adults here and if we need to we can just drag him out. You focus on yourself for once in your life." Said Minegishi. The nerve of that asshole. Mob did not need any more on her plate and that pointed end of a double ended dildo was heaping more onto her plate? And while Suzuki was doing his best to use her as a vessel for the spirit of his dead wife or whatever? Minegishi was about to get up but Shimazaki held them back.

"He's not worth it Toshi. Let me deal with him. I bet he'll change his tune after riding on the outside of the plane for a little bit." Said Shimazaki so only Toshi could hear. They pulled their arm out of his hand and threw themselves down onto their seat.

"Ryou, shut up. I can deal with this shit on my own." said Minegishi

"Please don't fight. Friends shouldn't-" said Mob

"Big sis we heard you the first million times. Your best friend isn't going to stop starting things so maybe you should just go sit with dad and let me and my best friend handle it." Said Sho. He was trying his best not to be mean. He and Shimazaki had this. Minegishi might have been the person that he did gross adult stuff with but Sho was his best friend. He would defend him…even if it was from Fukuda…but he was being kind of a jerk…but he had always been there for Sho…but he was still acting like such a jerk…so Sho wasn't too sure what to do….well stick with his best friend, obviously!

"I'm not going to go back to dad because I know that if I do then everything will just get even worse than it is now. Minegishi and Shimazaki are fighting and Shibata is upset and you're upset and Hatori is hiding in the bathroom…and I have to fix this before it gets any worse." Said Mob. She was not going to sit with dad, not until this was fixed, even if it took the whole plane ride. She didn't care if she had to pick up the plane with her own powers and fly them around in circles until this got resolved. She was going to fix this because these were her friends and she had a responsibility to them. She had a responsibility to Sho, too. He was someone who was little and already liked to fight as it was. She wasn't going to make him think that it was ok to fight and stuff…even if Fukuda was there and he was setting a terrible example by being a part of this fight in the first place.

"Suzuki-san, maybe it would be for the best-" said Fukuda. Her being there was making this worse. She was bossing Sho around, which he hated, and she was bossing everyone else around too. Including him. She and her 'friends don't fight'. Was this really Suzuki's daughter? The man lived for a fight, that was how he controlled people, but there she was trying to make everyone 'friends'…he did and did not understand her. She was the most powerful…the second most powerful being on Earth. Even now at not even eleven she was second only to Suzuki. Fukuda could feel her aura pressing down on him. She was getting stressed and she was making this whole thing worse and she needed to either start giving real orders or go and sit down next to Suzuki…who was still doing nothing. Still off in his own little world. Well maybe he and Shigeko should go off to their own little world together. Then that way this whole little conflict could just fizzle out and they could spend the rest of this plane ride in awkward silence.

"She hates being called that. She hates being called that and she hates being condescended to. You know what would be for the best? If you stayed out of this. If you stayed out of this and maybe, just maybe, taught that kid how to pick a fight. That's what you're supposed to do with kids, you know, teach them things and be a good role model and all of that shit. Not, you know, sit there and escalate fights for no good reason…you human, light days, weak stringed, off brand hotel tampon." said Minegishi. They were about to open that emergency exit and start tossing idiots out one by one. They did not need this. They were tired. They were drained. They needed to close their eyes and listen to Ryou's annoying renditions of Beatles songs until they made it to land where at least there would be dormant plants for them to interact with. That was what they needed. Not to sit there and listen to that human roll of single ply off brand toilet paper sit there and talk to Mob like that.

Minegishi didn't know what his problem with her was but he had better fix it or else they would fix it for him.

"Um…I don't hate-" said Mob. She didn't much like being called Miss Suzuki but she didn't hate it. Minegishi was just in a bad mood because there were no sky plants. They had to make all of their plants dormant before the flight because air travel freaked them out. They had seeds in their pockets but that only helped a little bit. Maybe they could take a boat next time. It would make for a longer trip and all but at least with a boat there would be seaweed and stuff for Minegishi.

"You can't talk to Fukuda like that! He may be grumpy and sot of boring but he's not a….what even is a light days, weak stringed, off brand hotel tampon?" asked Sho

"Nothing that you'll ever need to know about." Said Fukuda. Well now it looked like they were trading middle school insults. Wonderful. He'd have to have Sho tag in for him in that case. Then Minegishi would be able to verbally spar with someone on their level.

"Yeah, you just keep on doing a better and better job with that kid." Said Minegishi

"Hey everyone! You know what we haven't talked about in a while? Politics. Yeah, let's have a lengthy political debate." Said Shibata grasping at anything, anything at all, to make this stop.

"I've never voted in my life but I do like to mess with ballot boxes." Said Shimazaki. Gross. Politics. Why not just recite their bloodlines while they were at it? He would much rather fight with their only healer than talk about something as dull as politics.

"Well then let's discuss that terrible crime you've committed at length." said Shibata

"What? Like you've done such a good job with Shigeko? Yeah, you've taught her so much. Should I do the same with Sho?" asked Fukuda. How dare they lecture him on caring for a child! What did they know? They were the ones who had gotten Shigeko drinking and smoking! They were the ones who had probably gotten her running around with men three times her age too! If anyone was a terrible influence it was them! He had at least given Sho some actual stability in his life and hadn't taught him that the answers to all of life's problems could be found at the bottom of a bottle or the end of an electronic cigarette….marijuana smoking…thing that young people used! The nerve of that-that-that he didn't even know how to insult them! He didn't know an insult that would completely encompass the sheer blood boiling rage that he felt when he looked at them.

"Fukuda, come on. They aren't worth it. Like you said before they aren't worth getting upset over." Said Sho. He had never seen Fukuda upset and he did not want to. He wanted everyone to just get along like big sis said. Friends were not supposed to fight…but Fukuda wasn't friends with anyone….but Sho wished that he would stop fighting….and he wished that Minegishi would stop getting him going.

"Toshi, come on. He's not worth it. You're exhausted. You're exhausted, you feel like crap, and you don't need this shit. Here, put your head down and close your eyes for a little bit." Said Shimazaki. He needed a drink. He'd send the kid to raid the drink cart after Toshi fell asleep. They were so tired their aura was practically screaming it. They needed rest and so did that kid, too. That healer really should not have been escalating shit. He knew that Toshi never felt good on these long plane rides. Whatever, he would get his. Someone was itching for a ride on the wing of the plane…and not just Sho.

"Shimazaki, stop…stopping Minegishi from fighting! Just because they're a 'they' who is also a girl that doesn't mean that they can fight on their own! So stop letting them use you as a pillow!" said Sho. Girls could fight just like boys could so if Minegishi wanted to fight then he would fight with them for the rest of the plane ride. Fukuda could tag out, Sho hated seeing him this mad, but Sho could keep the fight going all day and all night if he had to.

"You know what we haven't ever done? Let's all go around in a circle and talk about our life stories. I'll go first. My name is Shibata Hiroshi and-" said Shibata

"Shibata that sounds nice and all but right now I think that everyone should maybe….just stop talking to each other all together. Because talking seems to lead to fighting and I don't want anyone to fight. So maybe we should all be quiet until we land. That way we'll calm down and stuff." Said Mob. Nope. Nobody was allowed to talk about Minegishi being a girl…because they weren't a girl. They didn't feel like either a girl or a boy and they didn't see why something totally out of their control and stuff should have defined them. They were just Minegishi and it was not nice to call them a girl so…so now nobody was allowed to talk anymore because this fight was getting out of hand.

"Kid, I told you, Toshi is Tosi and Toshi can use me as a pillow if they want to. I don't mind." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. The kid was right. He had been trying to fight Toshi's battles for them. They could fight their own battles and shit. They weren't his, they didn't belong to him, and it took a kid calling him on his shit for him to see that. See? This was why you had a kid for a best friend. They had, like, kid wisdom and shit. They could see past all the bullshit and shit.

"He has a point Ryou. Stop fighting my battles for me." Said Minegishi. They were going to excuse certain things that Mob's little brother had just said because he was a child. He may have been a little demon child but he was a child and, yeah, it was a simple concept but also a lot for most adults to understand. At least the little monster was making an effort.

"Sho, come on. Let's go back to playing-" said Fukuda. He did not like the look of Sho's aura. Not before and not now. No, now he was even more pissed off. Well why wouldn't he be? The person he had a crush on was cuddling, again, with the person that the person Sho was crushing on was crushing on. Sho's crush was obvious as all else. Why put the kid through that? Why not just…not do that in front of the emotionally volatile ten year old with feelings that he couldn't even begin to understand? And why not just sit him down and talk to him about why he felt what he felt and why nothing could ever come of it?

Fukuda was ready to start tossing people out of this plane.

"You shouldn't call him Ryou. I don't even get to call him that and he's my best friend. You don't get to call him that just because you have boobs." Said Sho. He glared at Minegishi and kept that glare up even after Minegishi opened their eyes…and they had very scary eyes when they wanted to…probably to make up for their weak aura….

Sho was not afraid.

"Sho! No! You can't say things like that!" said Mob. Why had he said something like that!? That was not ok. She should have done more to teach him what was and was not ok to say to people. This was her fault for not being a better big sister to him. He was lucky that dad was ignoring all of them.

"Yeah, Little Suzuki, that was…not a good thing to say." Said Shibata. Huh. So he had been right about Minegishi…not that it changed anything. It didn't. Though he was going to have to tell Hatori to stop walking around in nothing but boxers and an undershirt. That may not have been ok. He wasn't sure. He'd worry about this later. After he figured out how to have a talk with Little Suzuki about what was and was not appropriate to say. He was just a little boy, that was all, and he was still learning how to talk to people. This was really something that his father should have been teaching him but President Suzuki was a very busy man. He was so busy that he didn't even have time to deal with everything that had been happening.

"What did you just say to me?" asked Minegishi slowly. What had just come out of that kid's mouth? What the ever loving…had he been raised by WOLVES?! No. He did not just get to say that. He got away with a lot because of his age but even a ten year old should have known better than to just SAY something like that!

"Toshi, come on, he's just a kid. He didn't mean anything by it." Said Shimazaki. There was a time and a place to talk about someone's tits like that and on a plane thousands of kilometers in the air in front of God and Fukuda was not the time. Well it looked like he was going to have to teach the kid what was and was not ok to say and when and how. The hard and boring parts of taking care of a kid. Well this was what happened when you had a kid as a best friend. Maybe he would need to make more adult friends….nah. Kids were more fun. Even now. He may have been running his mouth like it was training for a marathon but at least he was causing an interesting commotion.

"I said that you didn't get to call Shimazaki by his given name just because you have boobs. Best friend outranks friend with boobs. Fukuda said so." Said Sho. Everyone who had been staring at him was now staring at Fukuda.

"What? He needed someone to reassure him that he still had Shimazaki's friendship after he heard him and Minegishi carrying on together back on Valentine's Day. You two aren't exactly subtle." Said Fukuda. Sho should not have said that but it was a conversation for another day that they would have to have about that. Not now.

"You're jealous? Kid, you and Toshi aren't in the same category and if you want to call me by my given name then that's fine…but shut the fuck up about Toshi's tits. There is a time and a place to talk about tits and this is not it." Said Shimazaki

"Please just say 'breasts'…." Said Mob. She didn't want anyone to talk about this either. She was about ready to turn this plane around if they didn't start getting along. Like when she and Sho had been little and they had gone out with mom she had been all 'if you two don't stop then we're turning around and there will be no library or pool or park for anyone' or something like that.

"How about they just aren't a topic of conversation to begin with." Said Minegishi crossing their arms over their chest. They felt vulnerable in a way that they didn't like. Their aura, what little they had, retreated around them. They could feel Ryou's barrier encompassing them. They let him cover them in his barrier. They were not happy, not at all, and if it had been anyone else then they could have made him pay for what he said….but this was a child being raised by another child. They were not going to continue this with Mob's little brother. They were not going to stress Mob out any more than she was…and they were not going to fault the kid for acting like he was being raised by wolves. He was being raised by his older sister because his father couldn't be bothered to get off his ass and do some parenting. Even now after his son had said something VERY inappropriate he was still off in La La Land.

"Yeah. Fukuda said that they weren't anything to write home about anyway." Said Sho. He knew that he had made them feel bad…and he wanted to make them feel worse…but he had no idea that he had said something bad enough to make everyone start shouting at each other…because that hadn't been that bad…right? Right? He hadn't cursed or said something truly terrible like telling Minegishi to go and die or anything like that…but big sis had still put her hand over his mouth….and everyone was shouting now.

"What the fuck…what the ever loving FUCK!?" shouted Minegishi. They reached into their pockets and felt a handful of seeds. They could kill a man with these. They could easily kill a man with these.

"Don't kill him! There are kids watching!" shouted Shibata blocking the way. He could block Minegishi easily, they were tiny, but Shimazaki was bigger than them and he could teleport….right past Shibata…

"Well it looks like someone wants to go for a nice ride on the wing of the plane." Said Shimazaki. There it was again, that possessive feeling, it was back with a vengeance. Well he would deal with this later. How dare he say that about Toshi's tits?! They were great! They were the perfect size! There was plenty to write home about and he would have written home, pages and pages and pages, about Toshi's tits…if he had been able to write and if he'd had anyone at home to write to. He would have written pages and pages and pages about Toshi's tits for whoever would read them….and also how dare this idiot go around talking about Toshi like that! Toshi was…not his but…but still! That wasn't the way to talk about Toshi! And now he went splat. And now he went out on the wing of the plane and fell off and went splat.

"Try it and see what happens." Said Fukuda. He was glaring at Shimazaki. He knew that it was pointless, glaring at a blind man, just like it was pointless to even try and fight. He couldn't even put up a barrier and Shimazaki had been kissing people since at least the age of fourteen if his file was to be believed. His only hope was the fact that he could feel Suzuki's aura…well better late than never.

"Stop it! Stop fighting or-or-or-or I'll turn this plane around and then nobody gets to go back to the USSR!" shouted Mob. She knew that shouting was wrong. She knew that covering her brother's mouth with her hand was wrong. She knew that she was being mean and wrong and stuff…but she also knew that she wanted everyone to just stop fighting already!

They did stop fighting.

Not because of her but because of dad. She didn't know why he had let this go on for as long as it had. Maybe because he trusted her. He trusted her a lot and stuff…but also….also she would have liked some help. She would have liked some help back when the fight had been ramping up but…but it was better late than never she supposed.

"What is going on over there?" asked Suzuki as he popped his earplugs out. He had been trying to ignore the dull roar around him, the stab of flaring auras, but now he could not ignore this. Apparently they were killing each other now. Honestly. He was surrounded by adults more childish than his own children.

"Dad, everyone keeps on fighting. Can I have the pilots turn the plane around until they stop?" asked Mob. Dad trusted her to handle this so she was going to handle this. She was going to handle this just the same way that mom would have handled it. Mom had been very good at handling things.

"That's fine." Said Suzuki. There. Daughter was handling it. She was handling this and he could go back to his very important work. If he dug deeper to the east then….

"Suzuki…what? Are you seriously going to let your Daughter throw us off schedule?" asked Fukuda. No. There was no way in hell that Suzuki was going to let his Daughter just turn this plane around like they were a minivan full of unruly sixth graders. He couldn't just be giving her this kind of power…right?

"Do as my Daughter says and either settle this conflict or we're going back to England." Said Suzuki. They could always go back, land, and then take off again. He would have rather just kicked them all in the ribs until they stopped but that was not her way. He would trust her judgement when it came to this. She really knew a lot more than he did when it came to social things like this. She was so good at managing people.

"You heard my dad. Now no more fighting. Fukuda, stop talking about other people's breasts. Especially not Minegishi's. It's not nice and when you do that then it makes Sho think that it's ok. Shimazaki don't kill him, killing is mean, and also we need a healer. Minegishi…you said a lot of mean things to my brother and other people but also your feelings have been hurt so it's even. Shibata can you please get Hatori out of the bathroom. I know him and I know that he's going to be in there forever if you let." Said Mob in her best 'mom' voice. The same sort of voice that mom used when things needed to get done right now right this minute or else. The same sort of voice that she used when Mob and Sho had been bad. She felt so much like mom…and not just because she was in her mom dress that had been dyed blue.

"You'd actually turn this plane around?" asked Fukuda. She wouldn't. She knew how important it was to keep on schedule and also…also he would follow Suzuki. They were both grown men. This was a little girl. He was not going to live is life according to the whims of a ten year old girl.

"If you don't say sorry to Minegishi and if you don't stop talking about their breasts then, yes, I will go and tell the pilots to turn the plane around right now and then there won't be any USSR or Russia or Moscow for any of us….and also everyone will have to stand in the corner. Everyone but Minegishi and Sho." said Mob. She was being fair, she thought, well she was being unfair. When people were bad then you punished them. The concept wasn't hard to understand. Everyone was being bad so…so it was time to be a little bit mean.

"….I'm going to go sit with your father." Said Fukuda. He got up quickly. He could hear all of them exchanging apologies. He wasn't going to. Fine, he had been out of line with the comment before, but he had never expected Sho to repeat it. What he said in private was his own business…and if she wanted to give orders then she shouldn't have let that fight go on for as long as it did. He made his way through the plane and sat down next to Suzuki…

Who was playing Minecraft?

"Suzuki…?" asked Fukuda. Was he being ignored? No, Suzuki had never ignored him. He had been told by him, before, to shut up because his voice had been annoying but he had never been ignored by him….but Suzuki wasn't even looking in his direction.

"President Suzuki? Suzuki Touichirou?" asked Fukuda. His given name seemed to have been the thing to get his attention. He reached up and….oh. Ear plugs. That had been the reason why that had gone on for as long as it had. Well there was the genius level intellect that he was so fucking proud of.

"Yes Fukuda? Why are you disturbing me from my work?" asked Suzuki. He closed his laptop just a bit so that Fukuda couldn't see just what that work was. He felt with his aura. Less murderous intent. Good. Daughter had managed to settle this without them having to turn around. He knew that he could trust her.

"You got another pair of those ear plugs?" asked Fukuda. His head was killing him. He needed to rest and just…he would rather deal with Suzuki Touichirou than his Daughter's entourage. He was taking his own plane from now on. He and Sho. This was…he could not deal with that again. He was either taking his own plane or bringing ear plugs because he could not deal with this.

"Here. These are the greatest investment that you'll ever make." Said Suzuki as he handed Fukuda his spare earplugs from his pocket. He wasn't usually this generous but he could be a kind man when he needed to be. The fighting was over, the singing was over, but now they were all just….apologizing to each other? He had no clue what he had missed but he knew that Daughter had been able to handle it better than he ever could. That was why he trusted her. He had trusted her before and he trusted her now. He popped his earplugs back in and went back to his very important work.

Daughter had, objectively been the best investment that he had ever made in his life….but earplugs were most certainly a close second.


	265. Hiding Under the Bed

Their room always had two beds in it.

For as long as Sho could remember he had shared a room with big sis. They had probably shared a room for their whole lives, well his whole life, only he couldn't remember it because he had been a baby while she had been…well an older baby. They were only a year apart. Sometimes they were even the same age. Like now. They were both ten. He had just had his birthday in December and she was going to have hers in May. Then she would be eleven and they would be a year apart again. No, not even a year. Just however many months separated their birthdays and stuff.

She would always be older though.

She would always be older and she would always be able to boss him around. Like on the plane. Big sis had bossed him and everyone around…and to be fair to her they had been fighting. He had read, in his book, that when you were mad at another person you had to try and walk a mile in their shoes. Well he wouldn't be literally putting her shoes on, he did not want to wear girl's shoes even if hers did light up, but he would try to see things from her point of view. They had all been fighting and she hated fighting so she had bossed everyone around to keep them from fighting.

So what he did made sense.

She had been upset because they had been fighting and they had been fighting because they had been upset. He had been upset. He didn't know why he had been so upset. Because Minegishi had been there…they always made him so upset. He didn't know why. Well he did know why, they were trying to deraknk him and become Shimazaki's best friend, but Fukuda had said that nobody could ever beat Sho and also Minegishi wasn't that sort of person to him. Even Shimazaki had said that Minegishi wasn't that sort of person to him. So why did Sho feel this way?

He didn't know.

He stared up. There was nothing to look at. It was dark under here. This room had two beds and he was laying under one of them. He was laying under his bed and just staring up at the wooden slats that held his mattress up. He could feel wood below him and see wood above him. He had his binoculars around his neck. He picked them up and put them to his eyes and, yup, he just saw a whole lot of nothing. He closed his eyes. Now he still saw a whole lot of nothing. He closed his eyes and felt the world with his aura. Dad was in the room down the hall. Big sis was in the living room. Above him was the roof. Something alive up there, and small, probably birds. Below him were auras. This was an apartment building, a Claw apartment building, and Sho could feel all the people who lived there. He filtered them out. He just needed to feel the people who were living on the floor below them. In the apartment below theirs.

He filtered out everything that wasn't another esper.

He saw the world with his mind's eye. This was a hard trick. He couldn't keep it up for long. He felt…everything…and then he told it to go away. Now he could feel…there, below him, was everyone. Right next door was Fukuda but he was mad at him…for some reason. Sho didn't know what Fukuda was so mad about. Shimazaki said that a man always stood by what he said. Never say anything that you don't mean, ever, because then you had might as well be lying. Sho didn't know what he had said. He had just said what Fukuda said….but then Fukuda had just told him that there were some things that were never supposed to be repeated…and that was that. He had been mad, not at Sho he had said, but Sho knew that he was just being nice. Sho had done something wrong. Well he had apologized, at least, and now everyone was ok with everyone else.

They had made up before they landed.

Big sis had told them to make up before they landed. She had said that it was important that they land as friends and put their fight behind them. She was always trying to make everyone get along…and Sho didn't blame her. Sometimes things were just better when everyone got along. He agreed…and he felt like a jerk. He had just been so mad…and he didn't even know why. Well he did know why. Because Minegishi had been using his best friend as a pillow…and Shimazaki had been letting them. Shimazaki had been letting them use him as a pillow and they had done much worse stuff together and Sho had no idea why he even cared.

He really didn't.

Sho was in a different category than Shimazaki. There were your best friends and then there were your friends that you did gross stuff with. Sho was a kid, and a boy too, so he was not and would never be in the same category as Minegishi….and that hurt him…for reasons. He didn't know why. He tried not to know why. He pulled his goggles up and opened his eyes. Now he was back to seeing nothing. He wasn't supposed to see nothing out of these, he was supposed to watch birds, but he didn't want to watch any birds. He wanted to look at nothing. He wanted to stay in this small, dark, place and think of nothing until he felt better. That had worked in the past.

He couldn't think of nothing.

How could he think of nothing with his sister constantly walking in and out of the room? He turned on his side and watched her though his goggles. All he could see were her sparkly snowflake socks and that dress that dad had gotten her for Valentine's Day….dad hadn't gotten him anything…but that made sense. Dad couldn't even be bothered to remember his own son's birthday so why would he care about getting Sho something for Valentine's Day…also dad had never gotten him a Valentine's Day present before so it made sense that he hadn't gotten one now. Valentine's Day was for love and he got the feeling that dad didn't love him. Not in the real way.

Not like how he loved big sis.

He watched big sis's feet as she walked around the room. He could have watched her with his aura, too, but he didn't feel like doing that. He just used his binoculars. Fukuda had said not to watch any other birds with them but that was his own sister so it was fine. Besides, he would never cheat on Emmy. He didn't want to and he didn't understand why anyone would. Being a boyfriend was boring, kissing didn't feel like anything, and the only parts that were fun when you did friend stuff with your girlfriend. Well whatever. He had a girlfriend now so if anyone asked he was a normal guy with a normal girlfriend and he did all of the normal things that a normal guy did. Normally. In the most normal way imaginable.

He was normal.

The way that he felt was not normal. He had never liked Minegishi. They had always been big sis' boring friend who was mean to everyone but her. He had never liked them that much but he also had never…disliked them this much. He didn't know what was the matter with him. It was like…like knowing that they had kissed Shimazaki and stuff made him mad at them…and stuff…but that made no sense. That, all of the kissing and adult stuff, put them in a different category than Sho would ever be in….and that was fine. They were just best friends. It wasn't like he wanted to kiss Shimazaki or anything. That would have been weird. That would have been weird and Sho was weird to even think about it.

Now the goldfish in his stomach decided to show up.

There is was, swimming, and he needed it to stop. It always started swimming when he remembered how good that kiss had been…the one that he'd had before…the one that he'd had in the coatroom. The way it felt. The way his heart raced. The way he wanted it to go on forever. He just….needed to stop thinking about it. He just…but now it was there. The fish. He thought about Emmy. He thought about how kissing her had been. She hadn't made him kiss her. That was enough of a reason to like it. He hadn't like it when the pink haired girl kissed him because she had just climbed on him and…and stuff. Emmy asked him if he wanted to kiss….

But she never got the goldfish in his stomach swimming.

He hated this fish. He wondered if maybe his was just broken or stupid or something. Like maybe his fish had escaped from an experiment where they banged it's head in car trunks or something. His fish never swam when it was around his girlfriend but when he thought about some kiss that he'd never should have had or enjoyed…there it went. I just swam and swam and swam and…he hated it. He wished that he could have just been normal already! It shouldn't have felt good, kissing Hideki, and it shouldn't have felt good thinking about kissing Shimazaki either!

Not that he ever thought about that.

No, thinking about that would have been weird. He never laid awake in bed and though about what it would feel like to kiss Shimazaki. He never thought about how it would have been nice and how much he…he never thought about that. He would never think about that. He had never thought about that once in his life and he would take a lie detector test to prove it! He didn't want Shimazaki to pick him up and kiss him and tell him that he was the best friend he would ever have and the coolest guy that he had ever known and-

"Sho? Are you ok? Your aura is being weird." Said big sis. She was standing in front of his bed now. He didn't have to wear his binoculars to see her sparkly socks with the snowflakes on them. They were there and she was there….and he kind of wished that she would go somewhere else because he needed to calm down.

"I'm fine. Go away….please." said Sho. The 'please' at the end made it nice and not at all mean. When you said please and thank you then everything you said was nice…mostly. Maybe if he had said please to Minegishi then the fight wouldn't have gone on for as long as it did or have gotten as bad as it had.

"But…ok. I'll go away if you want me to but…but if you want to talk then I'm here. I know how had everything must be for you. You had to leave your girlfriend behind and also there was that big fight and-" said big sis

"I said that I was fine. I'm not upset about leaving my girlfriend….and why don't you say that a little louder? I don't think that dad heard you." Said Sho. What, did she want him to get in trouble? Dad would kill him, or at least beat him up really badly, if he knew that Sho had a girlfriend who wasn't an esper. Dad had always asked him to try and meet and esper so that his babies would be espers because Suzuki's had to be espers. Even though mom hadn't been an esper and she had still made big sis. She was the Prodigy and Sho was just the Awakened Child. So there was no point in dad telling him who he did and did not have to marry. There was no guarantee that he would even get esper grandkids…and what was so great about being an esper, anyway!?

He didn't know.

He wished that he could just yell all of these things at dad. He wished that he could just go to dad and tell him that he was a fucking jerk and nobody liked him. That everyone wanted him to just go to hell already. That he was a cock sucking mother fucking jerk bastard that nobody in the whole word would ever like. He wanted to beat dad up so bad that…Sho needed to stop thinking about this. He knew that he should not have been thinking about beating anyone up, even his own father, because that was not a road that he wanted to go down again.

"I don't want dad to hear about this….so I won't say it a little louder. Because then he would know and you know how dad is." Said big sis

"Big sis…that means that I DON'T want dad to know that I have a girlfriend. God. Learn sarcasm." Said Sho. She was annoying like that sometimes. Like she had no idea what sarcasm was even though it was her best friend's native language. He didn't know how they were related sometimes…well he did. Through dad. He never understood when people were being sarcastic either. Why should he ever have to learn how to talk to other people? He was dad. He was the boss of the whole world. Who cared what other people had to say?

"Oh. Wait if you meant the opposite then why didn't you say what you meant and mean what you said?" asked big sis

"Why do you have to ask so many questions?' asked Sho

"Because I am very, very confused right now." Said big sis

"What's there to be confused about? You should pipe down about my girlfriend before dad hears…unless you want him to hear. Unless you think that it'd be a good idea to tell him." said Sho. She wasn't a traitor but she did say a lot of things that she shouldn't have. Like how back on the plane she had told everyone about how Sho had to hide when he got scared and stuff. He could not think of one reason why people needed to know that. If Fukuda wanted to lecture someone about running their mouth about stuff that they shouldn't have then it should have been big sis, not him.

"Um….Sho? Dad is in his room playing Minecraft….so he can't hear us. Also I don't think that it would be a good idea to tell dad about Emmy. I think that he would be upset because she's not an esper. I don't think that you should tell dad about her until we take over the world. That would be better, dad'll be too busy running the world to care, and also if he does I'll be there to distract him. Then you can get married and have babies and call them Shoko and Shigeo and Souichirou and Masa and Asami and Toshi and Ryouko and Hiro and-" said big sis. Nope. He was not even going to think about this. He didn't want to think about what his future would have to be, the one that dad had picked for him, and her own ideas of it. Why couldn't she just think about her own future if she had planned it this far ahead? What made her think that she could just plan his future too just like dad did?! Well she couldn't. She couldn't just sit there and plan what his future kid's names were going to be and stuff! At least even dad had never tried to name his future kids…and not after people they he KNEW! That was even worse!

"Will you stop it? I'm ten. I don't want to think about that stuff. God! You're just like dad!" said Sho. He saw her aura pull away…and now he felt like the biggest jerk on the planet. He had upset his sister again…and he was the worst brother in the world now wasn't he?

"I-I'm sorry. I don't meant to be…" said big sis. He felt bad for talking to her like that but…but she shouldn't have just….just said all of that stuff about his future! She wasn't dad and she didn't get to just tell him what his life was going to be!

"Get married, Son. Have more Suzuki's, Son. The whole family legacy depends on you, Son. I've been hearing that for my whole life and I'm so sick of it!" said Sho. He was talking so badly to her but…but he had no idea how to stop. It was like she had been dad and…and stuff. She had been dad and…and she had been telling him what his life would be and…and he was mad and…and sitting in the dark wasn't helping….

"Um…I didn't mean that you had to do that right now-" said big sis

"But I have to one day. It's like…I don't want to think about this! I'm ten! If dad wants there to be babies around so badly then he can go and find mom and make some more with her…or he can bring back baby sis…or he can just…just not bother me about this!" said Sho. He was breathing hard, now, and he just wanted to be alone…but he wasn't alone. She was there, he could see her, well he could see her socks…and he wanted to see her socks walking away and leaving him alone.

"Sho…I didn't mean to sound like that. That was just something that I thought about, sometimes, what the future would be like for you. Or for me. Those are mostly just names that I want for my kids and…and you can have them." Said big sis. That didn't make it any better. He wasn't a girl. That was stuff that girls thought about, who they would marry and how many babies they were going to have…and he didn't even think about stuff. He had a girlfriend and he didn't even think about that…not that he was going to marry Emmy or anything…he was just…he just didn't know!

"Then you use those names for your future kids and leave…leave me out of it. Ok? I don't like to think about stuff like that. I just…I just want to think about….I don't even know." Said Sho. Big sis was still standing there…and now she was kneeling down. He could see where her dress was hitting the ground. Now she was there kneeling next to his bed and he just wanted to hide there and…and stuff.

"Sho….come out of there. I'm sorry I upset you, little brother, and….and I want you to come out of there." said big sis. She was right there and if he had been meaner he would….he would have kicked her away and…and he was not that sort of person anymore. He was not supposed to hurt her and…and that would have been a jerk move…and stuff….and he loved her and…

And he wanted to leave her alone.

"I'm upset. I'm upset and if you stay here then I'll just….be upset at you…and I don't want that. I don't want to be upset at you and….and stuff. You shouldn't even want to be near me. I was mean to your best friend. Don't you want to leave me alone after that?" asked Sho. Why did she still want to be around him? She had seen what had happened on the plane. She had been a part of it. Now she was just there for him, trying to make him feel better, like she was always doing….

She had always been there for him.

For his whole life she had been there for him….but this was not something that she could help with. She could be there to make him feel better if dad hit him or he wet the bed…which he didn't do any more because he was ten…but she couldn't help him with this. For how he felt. For how he should have felt.

She couldn't help him with this.

Nobody could help him with this. These were his weird and stupid feelings. These were just his feelings that…that he should not have had. What was he supposed to do? Tell his sister that he felt bad because Fukuda was mad at him? The he still wasn't sure what he had done? That the big thing, the very biggest thing, that bothered him wasn't even that Fukuda was mad at him. He felt bad because…because the thing that had upset him the most was how Shimazaki had let Minegishi let them use him as a pillow….

He could not tell his sister about how that had made him feel.

That was her best friend, for one thing, and even if they hadn't been her best friend the he still wouldn't have told her about how he felt. How he had felt on that plane. How he thought that he felt. If he didn't know any better he would have thought that he….liked….but that would have been stupid. Boys liked girls. Well some boys liked boys but dad would never have let him be like that…and also people would make fun of him. Because it was gross. It was gross just like how…how everyone had said that it was gross…back in the coatroom…

But none of that mattered because he did not like Shimazaki like that.

"Sho…I wish that you had been nicer to Minegishi, they're my best friend, but if something is bothering you then I'll always be here for you. No matter what. I mean…that was a lot and…and I'm sorry about how mean I was to you and to everyone on the plane and…and if you want to talk I'm unpacking our stuff so…so you can talk or help me or whatever. Oh! And don't worry, I won't touch your toys or your art supplies. I put your Zooptopia bedding on your bed so…so if you want to come and sleep on the bed instead if under the bed then…then you can come and lay down on the bed. I'll fluff your pillow, too, while I'm up here." Said big sis. He could see her using her powers. He had closed his eyes again and he could see her with his aura. She was so bright. He could barely make out what she was doing. It was hard to see her…

But it was easy for her to see him.

He didn't want her to see him. He didn't want her to see him being all…like this. She was totally clueless but…but he didn't want her to see him like this and then just…just see how he felt. How he had been feeling. How he just…wasn't normal. She was his big sister and she would love him no matter what but…but he didn't want there to be any 'what' at all. There had been enough 'what' between them over the years and he didn't want to add any more 'what' to the list.

He just wanted to be like everyone else.

"Ok. Thanks for making my bed. I'll come out when I come out." Said Sho. He opened his eyes. He watched her get up. Her dress rose up from the floor and he could see her socks now. He could see how one of her socks had come down. She didn't fix it. She just walked away from his bed. She walked out of the room and…and he didn't need to watch her to know what she was doing. He heard a dresser drawer opening. She was putting their stuff away.

He didn't want to help.

He knew that if he got up then….then his own feelings would make him say or do something mean…just like on the plane. Fukuda was right. He shouldn't have said what he said…and also he shouldn't have felt what he felt. Fukuda hadn't said that. He had said, before, that he shouldn't have been friends with Shimazaki because of how he felt, how attached he was, and maybe that was a good idea…but he just didn't want to stop being friends with Shimazaki. He was the coolest guy ever…and he was nice…and he was…he was always really fun to hang out with and…and Sho wanted to hang out with him even though he had let Minegishi use him as a pillow…and that shouldn't have even bothered him but it did…sort of like…

Sort of like he liked Shimazaki.

But he didn't. He didn't because that would have been a stupid way to feel. Not only were they both boys but also Shimazaki was thirty and Sho had just turned ten. Even if Sho had been allowed to like another boy, even if Sho had been made for some other reason besides making new Suzuki babies and ruling the world, Shimazaki would never have liked him. He was just a kid. Shimazaki could be his best friend but not his…more than best friend. Not his Emmy. He would never have been Shimazaki's Emmy because he was so much older…but he had liked big sis…well he had said that he hadn't like big sis like that but then if it hadn't been true then why had dad beat him up? Well maybe dad had been wrong…but dad was never wrong. He was dad…and stuff….but either way there was no way that someone as cool and awesome as Shimazaki would ever have liked someone like Sho. He didn't even like people like that.

He had said so.

He didn't like people in the boyfriend and girlfriend sort of way. He had said that he wasn't even sure if he could feel that sort of feeling…and even if he had been able to feel that he would never have wanted to be with Sho…and Sho didn't care because he didn't like Shimazaki like that. He had a girlfriend anyway. He had a girlfriend now and…and even if he didn't like her…well that was normal because the boyfriend thing was boring…Shimazaki had said so.

So Shimazaki would never have wanted to be his boyfriend then.

Even if it was in some ultimate, alternate, universe where Sho had been born in a different family where he had a brother instead of a sister so then there was someone else to make new Suzuki's….even then Shimazaki would never have wanted to be with him like that. He was Shimazaki Ryou. He could be with anyone he wanted…and he didn't even like guys like that. He liked Minegishi and stuff…well he liked hem enough to do gross stuff with them….and he never would have done that with Sho even if he had been Shoko…

Not that he wanted to be Shoko, no, he was happy being Sho.

He just wanted to be a better Sho than he was. He wanted to be a better Sho but he wasn't a better Sho, he was this Sho, and he was stuck being this Sho…and that was just the way that it was. This was who he was, he was this Sho, and…and he just had to try and be a better Sho than he was. He had to try and…and maybe he should have just come out already and tried but…but…

But for now he was just going to stay here in this room. This room had two beds and he was going to just stay under this bed for now.


	266. Let's Take a Walk

Fukuda was not a fan of this trip.

First of all he hated it when they stayed in apartments. Apartments were worse than row houses. Sharing one wall with Suzuki was bad enough but now he was stuck in this box and Suzuki's box was right next to him…and worse than they the entourage's box was under his…and then there were more Claw boxes below that. This whole apartment building was nothing but Claw. Claw all the way down. At least when they stayed in those prefabs he could, at the end of the day, get some space from all of this insanity. He could unwind and just…not think about Claw for a while.

But now he couldn't.

That brought him to the second thing he hated about apartment buildings. He couldn't unwind at the end of the day. Not only was Suzuki right there and he could sense him Suzuki was able to sense Fukuda as well…well he was always sensing every esper around him but now he was close enough for Suzuki to pay attention. This was…he liked having his privacy. Being this close to Suzuki meant that he always felt like he was right there even when he was in his own apartment. He could feel Shigeko that closely too. It felt like she was watching him, right there watching him, when he knew that it was not the case. She had her own entourage to spend time with, to watch, and she didn't care for him at all…so at least he was safe from that. At least until Suzuki took the world and gave it to her…which it looked more and more like he would….then he would be at her side because he was the only healer in Claw….and he….at least he would get to be near Sho.

The only good thing about this trip was how near he could be to Sho.

Sho was ten, he reminded himself, and a young ten. A young, poorly socialized, ten. He hadn't known what he had been saying, what he had been repeating, and that was…Fukuda just had to teach him what was and was not alright to say. That was all. He was his father's son and Suzuki…well Fukuda had been the one to teach him pretty much everything about when it came to dealing with people….well at least he hadn't had to teach Suzuki not to comment on a woman's breasts in her presence…but Suzuki'd had actual parents actually raising him to become a productive member of society. Well Mr. and Missus Suzuki had tried their best….but he was not going to think ill of the dead. They had done the best that they could with the son that they'd made. They were doing their best back in the day and if they had been alive today none of this would have gone as far as it had.

None of this insanity.

But this insanity had gone as far as it had. Suzuki was going to rule the world, Shigeko was probably going to inherit it, and Sho was currently being completely neglected by his own father. So it would fall to Fukuda to teach him what was and was not appropriate to say and do when it came to the opposite sex….amongst other things. Other parental things that his parents should have been teaching him…but he didn't have any of those, now did he? His father was Suzuki Touichirou. Even without the world domination plans he was not and had never been playing with a full deck. No, even if he hadn't been trying to take over the world he would have still been totally useless when it came to raising Sho. Masami…she would have made sure that Sho knew never to repeat that kind of talk. That was just…there were things that you said in private and things that you said in public and Masami would have known to explain the difference to Sho….

Masami wasn't there.

Sho had no father to speak of and his mother was gone. So the duties of both mother and father fell to Fukuda. That was in addition to his duties as Suzuki's right hand man, personal healer, social skills teacher, guy who wrangled him in when he got too weird, former best friend, and occasional babysitter when he got too overwhelmed…yup. He was adding mother and father of his son to that list of job titles…oh. Adoption agent too in case Suzuki ever decided, again, that having unprotected sex was a good idea….and that was something else that he would have to teach Sho about in the future.

Great.

He did not want to have that talk with Sho but if not him then who? Suzuki? They had both sat through the same health class but Fukuda was the only one who learned anything. Suzuki had been too busy freaking out over the prospect of getting AIDS, it was the eighties so it could make sense…aside from the fact that to his knowledge Suzuki hadn't used a public bathroom since 1986, trying to figure out how homosexuality worked, Fukuda was still trying to forget that one, and being in awe of the fact that women had factories inside of themselves and only needed the raw materials from men…and maybe Fukuda shouldn't have messed with him by telling him that as espers girls would chase them down for their genetic material…but he had been kind of a little shithead back then…and also that should have been enough to scare Suzuki into exploring the wonderful world of contraception.

Not to wake Fukuda up at midnight to tell him that he'd just had sex and condoms sucked.

That had not been a fun time. Suzuki shaking him awake at midnight and just sitting there on his bed going over….in vivid detail….exactly how his date with the brown haired girl in his kendo club had gone. Yeah…even several decades later Fukuda…he still didn't like knowing so much about…any part of that…and he hoped to God that he wasn't going to be that person to Sho…but he also sort of did. Sho needed to talk to someone about this and God knew Suzuki would probably just tell him to go out and get as many women pregnant as possible or something so the world could have more espers and he could have more grandkids…even though he had done a pretty poor job with the kids he had…and then Sho would….

Yeah. That day was coming and Fukuda was not looking forward to it.

But one talk at a time. Tomorrow he would have the private versus public talk with Sho. Once he calmed down. He had been angry with Sho…and he could not be angry with Sho. He was a little boy with a very difficult life ahead of him and a very difficult life behind him. He didn't need Fukuda getting mad at him for…for saying things that he never should have said in front of him. He should have known that Sho was going to be a little mocking bird. Well that was fine. He was just a child, truly a child, and Fukuda…he would have to remember that. Sho needed him. Without him who did Sho have? His sister who was so blatantly favored by Suzuki that he explicitly said that she outranked everyone. Logically Sho as the only male blood heir should have outranked them all….but Suzuki's neglect and casting aside of his only son was a blessing in disguise…for all of them. Sho with that sort of power…Fukuda shuddered to think. No, it was a lot better for Sho to at least be allowed to be something of a child. Look at what that power had done to Shigeko? No, Sho did not need that.

Sho was just a little boy.

A little boy who needed Fukuda. Tomorrow…or maybe once he was done unpacking…then he would talk to Sho. He would talk to Sho about what was and was not appropriate to repeat and also…also about how possessive he was getting about Shimazaki. That was…that was the Suzuki Touichirou in him. Suzuki had always been possessive of the girl's he'd had crushes on…and it looked like Sho had inherited more from his father than just his eyes and hair. Well it looked like they would have to talk about appropriate feelings to have towards friends. Not that Fukuda had a problem with what Sho was, and he was definitely something, he just needed to not be whatever he was towards Shimazaki. He was…even without the drinking, drugs, and whatever he was towards Shigeko he was still not a good person for Sho. Fukuda knew what his life had been like before Claw. Everything that he'd been involved in…that he'd decided to disclose. He was just about the only person in Claw that the investigators had found nothing on. Nothing that he hadn't said….

Which meant that either he was proud of the life that he'd lived before Claw or there were skeletons in that closet that nobody in their right mind would WANT to find.

Sho did not need that in his life. Sho did not need a man who had been killing people since fourteen or maybe even younger. Sho did not need someone who was covered in yakuza tattoos even though he didn't even need them. What was the point if he couldn't even see them? Fukuda had no idea and he knew that Sho thought that they were cool and Fukuda was not going to let him cover himself in tattoos. No, Shimazaki was a terrible influence…and that wasn't even getting into the real reason that he could never show his face around his yakuza family again. That was…Sho could not be around Shimazaki in a few years. If he tried that shit with Sho then Fukuda would kill him…

Somehow.

He closed his eyes at the memory of it. He had come very close to dying today. If Suzuki hadn't been there…and he hated himself for needing Suzuki to rescue him, he would have ended up going for a nice ride on the wing of the plane…and that….Fukuda went back to putting his clothes away. He was alive. He was alive in this shitty apartment in Moscow and he needed to put his clothes away because he did not feel like living out of a suitcase and…and then he was going to lay down and try and get some sleep even though he knew that he needed to adjust his internal clock to Moscow time…and then he would wake up and try and fix things with Sho…and that was just…what he was going to do…

What he had been planning on doing.

There was a story about a ghost called 'Bloody Mary'. When you said her name three times in a mirror she would appear before you and drag you to hell. Well if he hadn't heard that story when he had been a child he would have assumed that Bloody Mary had been based off of Shimazaki Ryou. He seemed to sense when people were talking about or even just thinking about him and then he would appear…like now. There was a shift in the energy around him and then a pair of arms wrapped around his waist.

"Let's you and me take a walk."

And then the world fell away. The world fell away and there was no air…and then the world was back and there was air. Fukuda fell to his knees and gasped for breath. Cold. He was so cold…because he hadn't been wearing a coat or shoes in his own house…and he couldn't put up a barrier. He felt his feet going numb as snow melted and seeped into his socks. He was standing….he had no idea where he was standing. Trees. There were trees all around him…and it was so dark…too dark to see….

He didn't have to see Shimazaki Ryou to know what had happened.

"So I'm guessing that with your powers you can't freeze to death. Good. The kid would be so pissed at me if you died." Said Shimazaki as he felt Fukuda scrambling around in the snow. God, he hated the snow. It made everything look so fuzzy. Still, this was a good place for this little talk. He wasn't going to kill Fukuda, no, but it always amazed him what the human body could take and still come back from.

"What the fuck do you want from me?" asked Fukuda. He felt around…and he hated that he had to do this…but he had to. He had to feel around for Suzuki…and he couldn't…he had no clue where Suzuki was. He couldn't feel him anywhere….which meant that…

This was going to hurt.

"I want you to feel as crappy as you made Toshi feel." Said Shimazaki before he grabbed Fukuda by the back of his shirt and hauled him into the air. He wasn't doing this for himself he was doing this for Toshi. He was no letting that stupid, possessive, felling he got for them control him. He was just….getting revenge in ways that Toshi never could because they couldn't fly and weren't this strong of an esper. Not in this way. They could use plants and all but there was something to be said about being able to fly up in the air and drop someone.

Repeatedly.

He never let Fukuda hit the ground. No, he just dropped him and let him hit a few tree branches on the way down. At the very last second he caught Fukuda and then he did this all again. He did this again and again until he got bored. There were other things that he could have done. He could have dropped him into the ocean and left him there. He could have beaten Fukuda up so badly that he coughed up his own lungs. He could have even dropped him into a traitor hole and let him starve to death if he wanted to…but he didn't.

The kid cared about this guy.

And he cared about the kid. Sho may have run his mouth about Toshi's tits but he was just a little guy. He didn't know that he had to keep his opinions about Toshi's tits, really anyone's tits, to himself until the person who's tits he had all the opinions on wasn't there to hear your opinions on their tits…and he shouldn't have had opinions on Toshi's tits anyway! Only that they were the best tits in the world! Like someone had taken two kiwis and shaved them and then stuck two gumdrops on the end…not that the kid should have had any opinion on Toshi's tits because he was a kid…and also those has been Fukuda's opinions…

Which he was now going to pay for…and had paid for….because Shimazaki was bored.

"I'm tired of this." said Shimazaki as he grabbed Fukuda before he hit the ground. He held him by the back of his shirt and teleported him back to his apartment. He threw Fukuda down onto his bed, well it felt like a bed, and then he sat down on what felt like a desk. He didn't know. His perceptions were still sort of fuzzy. Toshi was taking up a lot of his headspace again. Toshi was hurting on the inside, he could tell, and he needed to make Fukuda hurt on the outside…but he had to be careful because if he hurt Fukuda too badly on the outside then Sho would be hurting on the inside…and that kid had enough pain inside of him as it was.

"What the hell was that!?" asked Fukuda as he scrambled across his bed and pressed himself up against the wall. It was an instinctive fear response…and one which he should not have listened to. Now he was trapped….well he had been trapped for quite some time. Shimazaki could teleport. He could teleport, he could fly, he could press his barrier down on you hard enough to kill you, he could….he could and would kill you without a second thought…..and there was no way to escape. No way to fight him off. You just…you dealt with whatever he did to you…..

Fukuda knew that he could live through a lot but….but he had never intentionally tested it before…

"Me warning you." Said Shimazaki as he flipped through a book that was on the desk. Yup. Paper. That was a bunch of paper. He needed….he needed to think. Was the mortal terror of falling enough to get him to never talk about Toshi's tits again? Or maybe he should drop him in the ocean…and stuff….but then he would be hard to find and if he drowned or was swept away then Sho would be sad and the little guy was going through a lot. His dad may not have been the type to spray him with a hose and then whip him with a belt or leave him out in the woods to die or fill a pillowcase with rocks and wake him up by beating him with it he was still having a pretty hard go of it…and this was one of the people in his life making shit a little easier….

But he did not get to talk about Toshi like that!

"Fine, message received. Can you go now?" asked Fukuda. He could feel Suzuki there, right there, on the other side of that wall…so he must have known what was happening…and he had better not have been playing Minecraft again or something. He was tempted to ask him for help, to just start screaming…but Suzuki wouldn't help. No, he was just send his Daughter in to deal with this….and Fukuda did not need that. He did not need to get another lecture about friendship from a ten year old girl.

"In a minute. I'm thinking about what else I should do to you. The punishment has to fit the crime but I have no idea how to punish you badly enough for what you said about Toshi." Said Shimazaki. He flipped the pages of the book as he thought. He liked paper. He liked the sound of it and the smell of it. He had no idea what was written on it but….doing this helped him think. Toshi loved books. Toshi loved books and reading and they were so smart because they were always reading and their voice was at it's most perfect when they read to him and….and now they felt like crap. They felt crappy from the plane ride and they felt crappy that everyone had been talking about their tits and now they were in their room feeling all crappy and-and-and-and Toshi was not supposed to feel crappy! He had to fix this!

He teleported next to Fukuda on the bed.

"What? You're going to fuck me now?" asked Fukuda as he got as far away from Shimazaki as he could. He smelled like…like he had gotten drunk and then wandered into the cologne department and sampled everything excessively. He did not want to be near Shimazaki at the best of times but especially not when he was drunk and…and Fukuda did not want to think about how close he had come to hitting the ground…

"What, you want to? Because if so that's going to be a hell to the no. There is no way that I'm becoming eskimo brothers with Suzuki, first of all, and second of all if I'm going to be with another guy then I'm going to be on the receiving end of that. There's no way I'm doing all of that work if I don't have to…and I wouldn't let you fuck me either because, honestly, I feel like you'd be really selfish in bed." Said Shimazaki as he picked up Fukuda's pillow and threw it up in the air and caught it. He needed to think. He wasn't going to fuk Fuckuda….fuck Fukuda…because then he would end up being eskimo brothers with Suzuki and he did not want that. Plus there was a lot of prep that went into it that Shimazaki was not in the mood to do and also he was more in the mood to receive than give and…and he wasn't letting this asshole in his asshole anyway. He had standards. High standards….medium standards…not this guy. Suzuki could have him.

"Well then get out of my bed, out of my apartment, and just…out of here. Ok? You made your point. I was out of line talking about your girlfrie-you partners breasts and I'm sorry. I won't do it again, ok? Now can you please leave?" asked Fukuda. He had no idea what eskimo brothers meant but he got the feeling that he didn't want to know. He wasn't going to ask the drunken, possibly high, murderous esper sitting beside him about that.

"Toshi isn't my partner. We're just friends who fuck sometimes and I don't want anything else…well I don't know what I want, honestly. Them to be happy, mostly, I mean all the time. If I just want them to be happy ten that should be enough and…and I have no clue what I want and…and what am I talking to you about this for?!" asked Shimazaki. He threw Fukuda pillow at him and threw himself back down onto the bed. He had no idea what he even felt and…and he was not discussing his life with this asshole. This was not about him anyway, it was about Toshi, and it didn't matter what he was feeling about Toshi or what he had felt about Toshi….this was about Toshi being all hurt and stuff. That was all.

"I don't know, maybe you're drunk?" asked Fukuda. Yes, now that he was close and calm…Shimazaki was messed up. He was messed up and drunk and…and Fukuda had no idea if purging this from his system would make him better or worse. He would maybe get even more upset and then God only knew what he would do to Fukuda…or God didn't even know. Even stone cold sober he had impulse control issues. This was…he had no idea what this was….

"Yeah, a little bit. I think better when I'm drunk…or maybe not. Toshi says that I don't…but I think that I do. I don't know. I want to drop you in the ocean and shit but I know that I might not be able to get you out again so…I'm a loss." Said Shimazaki

"You can leave. How about that?" asked Fukuda

"I could but I won't. If I don't leave then I know that you're still going to be spouting off about Toshi's tits, which are perfect by the way, and I can't have you doing that. Especially around Sho. Like…why would you say that around him? if you talk like that then we're going to get another Hatori and we don't need another Hatori." Said Shimazaki

"Don't talk about Sho." said Fukuda. He wanted to kill Shimzaki in that moment…but he wasn't strong enough. He was young looking, about ten years younger than he was, but he was not a fit man. Shimazaki on the other hand could have killed him without his powers.

"Why not? He's my little bestie. We're going to be best buddies for life so you had better get used to me talking about him." said Shimazaki

"He's a child." Said Fukuda. His voice was low and dangerous even though he had no idea how he was going to back this up. He couldn't.

"Yeah, and he's my friend. He's a fun kid. He's always got the best ideas. Like one time this guy rode by on an old timey bike so Sho picked up this big stick and-" said Shimazaki. God, that had been a fun day. Sho'd had the idea….or maybe he'd had the idea…one of them had gotten the idea to throw a stick through the old timey bike guy's spokes…it had been so funny. He didn't know why Fukuda's aura was like that…or why he was just such an asshole all the time. Really. Sho was a fun kid and there was nothing wrong with having fun, real fun, with him.

"He is not your friend. He's a child and he needs to be a child. He needs to just…be a kid. Not smoke and drink and do whatever it is that you do with Shigeko…and if you don't stop-" said Fukuda. He would have said more but then there was a hand around Fukuda's neck. A strong one.

"If he wants to smoke and drink then he will. He doesn't want to so we don't. Also don't you dare put Mob down, she's a fun kid. She's a fun kid and when she takes over this whole thing it's going to be a good time…and I am not doing anything with Mob! She's a kid! I don't know what's going to happen in a few years but I am not messing around with her. Got it?" asked Shimazaki. His voice was low and his eyes were opened. He could smell the dust in the air. He should have closed his eyes. He would need to clean them out, now, based on how dusty it was…and maybe he should have closed his eyes…but this scared Fukuda so he would keep doing this. How dare he think that Shimazaki would mess around with a kid? What was it about him that made people think that he would mess around with a kid? And especially not with Sho of all people! Even when he grew up Shimazaki could not see himself ever sleeping with the kid. Just…no….Mob yes but Sho no….

What was WRONG with Fukuda?

"I…get…it…" gasped out Fukuda. He took in the deepest breath he could draw into his lung when Shimazaki let him go. That…might have been the one thing that could kill him. He had never been strangled to the point of passing out but….but he got the feeling that it would have been the one thing that could kill him.

"Good. You know, you need to learn to keep your opinions to yourself. Your opinions and crazy theories. Seriously. I don't fuck kids! What, do I have to get it tattooed on my dick? Because there's no more fucking room and I am not going through that again." said Shimazaki

"You…have a tattoo…on your….?" Asked Fukuda, his eyes going downwards. He crossed his legs compulsively. This was…he would gladly thank God if Shimazaki decided to take him back out to the woods to kill him.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I got it done after Suzuki kicked my ass because he thought that I was messing around with his Daughter. Want to see?" asked Shimazaki, his hands going to his top button. He could feel Fukuda shaking his head.

"No, no, for the love of God no. Keep your pants on, please." Said Fukuda. This night….maybe he had hit the ground and died. Maybe this was just his brain doing whatever it needed to do as he died. Maybe he was in hell. Maybe this was what hell was. Shimazaki Ryou sitting next to him on his bed ready to both kill him and show him his dick tattoo….that couldn't have actually been on his….because that was just….what?

"What? Now you want me to keep them on? Five seconds ago you were asking me to go to bed with you. Make up your mind." Said Shimazaki

"You…you make up your mind…you….you just are you going to kill me or not? Because if you're going to kill me it would be nice if you got on with it. It's late and I would like to get some sleep at some point tonight." Said Fukuda. He knew that there was no talking to this man. He was….Fukuda had no words for what this man was. Impulsive. Not entirely there. All of it. He as a terrible influence on Sho and…and what did Sho even SEE in this man? Just…he didn't know. He didn't know anything.

"I'm not going to kill you and I'm not sure if I'm going to mess you up, either, because if I mess you up too bad then Sho's going to get upset and I do care about the kid…and I can care about him without wanting to fuck him! Seriously! Not him and not his sister. What even happens in your mind that it's even an option?" asked Shimazaki

"Forgive me for being a little nervous about you. Forgive me for being a little nervous about you when I know for a fact that you get a ten year old girl drunk and high. Also forgive me for being a little nervous when I know exactly why you got kicked out of your yakuza family." Said Fukuda. He could live through a lot. He could live through one of Suzuki's explosions so therefore he could live through whatever Shimazaki threw at him.

"I didn't kill my father, I just didn't save him, and I have no idea what that has to do with-" said Shimazaki

"No, the other reason. You were very open about this and, yeah, I'm a little nervous about you and Sho. Especially with the crush he has on you-" said Fukuda

"Wait, what? The kid has a crush on me? No way." said Shimazaki. Sho didn't have a crush on him. He was way too old, he had a little girlfriend, and if Sho'd had a crush on him he would have said something. As was obvious from their most recent plane trip Sho could not keep things to himself. No, Shimazaki would have been informed if Sho had a crush on him.

"Don't play dumb. You know that has a crush on you. It's obvious. Even you should be able to see it." Said Fukuda

"Hey, only I can blind jokes. Only me, and Toshi, but not you….and also there is no way that kid has a crush on me. He would have said something. He can't keep things to himself." Said Shimazaki

"Fine, only you can make blind jokes…but are you telling me that you have no clue…that you haven't been able to tell that Sho has a crush on you? Honestly? You haven't been able to see the way he's possessive over you? And jealous of Minegishi? How he's always finding excuses to be near you? You haven't heard the way he talks about you?" asked Fukuda. How could he not have noticed? Sho had the most obvious crush in the world on Shimazaki! He was more obvious than Shigeko was with Hatori.

"No…but whatever." Said Shimazaki. Whatever. So Sho had a crush on him. Whatever. He was ten and shit. He got crushes and Shimazaki was not going to go off and tell him how he could and could not feel. The kid was something, he was right about that, but he can go and be whatever he was with some guy who was not Shimazaki.

"Whatever? What the hell does that mean?" asked Fukuda. There had better not have been any 'whatever' not while Sho was ten and not when he got older either. Sho was…he was what he was…and he could be whatever he was with someone other than Shimazaki.

"Whatever. A word which is used to emphasize a lack of restriction in referring to any thing or amount, no matter what." Said Shimazaki like he was reciting for an exam. He could feel Fukuda's surprise. What, did he think he was a moron or something? He had never been to real school in his life but he wasn't an idiot.

"What…?" asked Fukuda. He pinched the space between his eyes and exhaled. This was…he had no clue what this even was. Besides draining. Very draining. This was worse than dealing with Suzuki at his worst. This was worse than the time when he'd put on his mother dress and walked through a date with Suzuki so he knew what to do. This was worse than the time Suzuki had dragged him out to the woods at four in the morning to show him the base he'd build. This was worse than the time…this was worse than all the times that he'd ever had with Suzuki at any point in his almost forty four years on this Earth….the most draining….

"I've read the dictionary cover to cover a few times." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. He had a lot to think about. Well there was Toshi, there would always be Toshi, but also…the kid had a crush on him. That was…well it was whatever. So the kid had a bunch of feelings for him. That wouldn't change the outcome. They were still friends and shit.

"You're being intentionally dense. You know what I mean. What the hell did you mean by 'whatever' before? I just told you that Sho has a crush on you and all you can say is 'whatever'?" said Fukuda

"Yeah, whatever. He's a kid. He's going to get crushes, a lot of them, especially since he's getting closer to that terrible age where you just have to hump everything that's even vaguely humpable, and I don't care if he's got a crush on me. That just doesn't matter. It's not like I'm ever going to fuck him so, yeah, it's whatever." Said Shimazaki

"So this is a nonissue for you? How is this a nonissue for you? I tell you that Sho has a massive crush on you and you don't care but I make one offhand comment about someone who isn't even your partner and you try to kill me?" asked Fukuda. He was trying to understand the incomprehensible. Suzuki Touichirou….he was a strange man but he had his own internal logic he worked off of. Shimazaki….he was like…it was like he had stepped out of some terrible Wonderland. He had no sense of logic or consistency or…or anything. There was no speaking to this man because the things he said would make no sense even with years of intensive study.

"Why is this an issue for you? He's himself and I don't give a fuck if he has a crush on me or not. I'm flattered a little bit, actually, but it's not like I'm going to fuck him or make him feel like crap about this. He's at the age I was when I was figuring myself out and I'm not going to do anything about this because you just get sort of…weird…when you're figuring yourself out. He's a kid who I care about…and that's why this isn't an issue. You spouting off about Toshi to that kid, on the other hand, is an issue. Toshi feels like crap and I can't stand it when Toshi feels like crap…and I thought that killing you would help but that would piss off the kid….and I know that Toshi won't accept your apology because they kind of hate you, so I am at a loss." Said Shimazaki. He sort of wished that Mob had turned that plane around but Minegishi had been right, that would have just meant more time all cooped up together on a plane, so to Moscow they went.

Here they were.

But Toshi still felt like crap and Shimazaki had no idea how to make them feel better beyond killing this cock sucking dickhead….but if he killed Fukuda then Sho would be upset…and he needed another drink so he could think. It was like his thoughts were all…slippery. All slippery and fast, like trying to catch eels, and he just…needed a drink. Well he needed a drink and he needed this guy to say that, yes, Toshi's tits were something to write home about. They were perfect. It was like someone had shaved two kiwis, good kiwis, the kind that were really sweet on the inside. Or maybe more like avocados…but they weren't as bumpy….smooth actually. All of Toshi's skin was so smooth…and they sort of wanted to hold Toshi…the wanted to hold Toshi more than they wanted to kill this guy…more than they wanted to beat this guy up…he was on a bed and he wanted to be in this bed with Toshi, not Fukuda, and just hold them and feel them breathing and touch their hair and smell them, they smelled really good, and also just be there with Toshi….

Toshi was worth more to him than senseless but cathartic violence. Huh. Who'd of thought?

"Maybe you should just go and ask Minegishi what they want? Maybe you should just go to them and leave me alone already?" asked Fukuda. It was like a switch had flipped…sort of like Suzuki but…worse. He understood Suzuki. He didn't understand this man at all….and he sort wished that it had been Suzuki about to explode at him…because he knew how to diffuse that. This was…he back more towards the corner.

"I know what Toshi wants. They want you to have never said anything about their tits and they want the kid to never have spouted off about what you said…gotta talk to him about that at some point….but I don't think that you can take it back…and also Toshi's tits are plenty to write home about! So just…write home about them!" said Shimazaki. There, that was a good idea. He had good ideas, the best ideas, and nobody had ever had better ideas than him.

"….what?" asked Fukuda. He wondered if maybe he was the crazy one and everyone else made perfect sense. Shimazaki was…well Fukuda must have been the crazy one, then, if he was going to sit there and expect Shimazaki Ryou of all people to make sense. His train of thought was unfollowable. It was as off the rails as he was. He knew crazy. He'd been dealing with Suzuki's crazy for thirty years now, but this was a whole new brand of crazy and he had no idea what to even do…what to even begin to do.

There was nothing that he could do.

He was weak as far as espers went. He could heal himself and others but that was it. Suzuki had always been the stronger of them. Even before he had known that Suzuki was the most powerful being on Earth he'd always been stronger…and he was right there. He could have…but he knew that Suzuki would just sent his Daughter…and he it would have been bad enough being rescued by Suzuki let alone his own daughter.

"Toshi has perfect tits so just…write home about it. There. That's better than killing you since it won't piss off the kid. Write pages and pages and pages about how awesome Toshi's tits are and then never talk about their tits again." said Shimazaki

"What are you even….you can't even READ." Said Fukuda. He was grateful that he had a hell of a time getting himself into this state. If it hadn't been so much trouble he would have taken up drinking long ago…but it was a lot of trouble so he would not be ending up like Shimazaki anytime soon.

"I know. It's not for me it's for you. You said something that wasn't true. Now you're going to have to write home about Tosh's tits. Then you're never going to mention them again because Toshi has a lot of very complicated shit about their body that I don't feel like explaining to you. So you're going to do what I said or maybe next time I won't catch you after I drop you." Said Shimazaki. He could be a scary man when he wanted to be. He knew that he was scaring that healer right now. He was close, close enough that he was sure Fukuda could feel him breathing, and his eyes were wide open. His aura was pressing down on Fukuda. He could feel Fukuda. The way his heart was racing, the way he was trying to control his breathing, the way he was muffling his aura, the way he was about ten seconds away from pissing himself. Good. He should have been afraid. He should have been very afraid. Maybe now he would know better than to talk about Toshi like that.

"That wouldn't kill me." Said Fukuda. He knew that it was senseless, trying to put up a brave front, but he would not just sit there and cower in fear. He didn't do that for Suzuki, openly, and he wasn't going to do that for Shimazaki either.

"No but it would hurt. Now get up, go over to that desk, and write pages and pages about how Toshi's tits are perfect. I like to think of them as shaved kiwis but you can use whatever fruit you want…but not avocados. They're the right size and shape but way too bumpy. Maybe…peaches. Yeah, like if someone shaved a peach." Said Shimazaki

"Do you mean a nectarine?" asked Fukuda shaking his head. How could he just go from being terrifying to just…whatever the hell this was? Sitting cross legged on his bed tossing a pillow in the air comparing his partners breasts to various fruits. If Fukuda wasn't sure it would get him maimed or seriously injured he would have told Shimazaki that they were currants at best…but he didn't feel like getting maimed or seriously injured.

"What's a nectarine?" asked Shimazaki. He went through his memory. Toshi had never grown one of those for him. Toshi grew him a lot of apples, actually, really tart ones but he wasn't going to complain. He liked the limes with the lemon inside that they grew…and the potato melons. People said that you weren't supposed to eat raw potatoes but nothing bad had ever happened to him. Maybe that was Toshi keeping him from getting sick. They were great like that even though they didn't really like to let it show.

"A hairless peach." Said Fukuda. How had he never had a nectarine? And why…why did this offend him? That he was being threatened by a man who'd never even heard of a nectarine. That was…Shimazaki had kidnapped him, thrown him through the woods, threatened his life, worn shoes in his house and ON HIS BED, but the thing with the nectarine….that was the one step too far.

"That's weird. I don't think that's real. I think that some guy shaved a peach and they're just messing with you. I should do that. I think I will do that…but you're distracting me! Now get to writing! And it had better be about Toshi's tits and it had better be good! I'll have someone read it to me when you're done!" said Shimazaki. He had no idea what a nectarine was but now he knew that he had to have Toshi make him one. Because he wanted to know if they were real. Yes, that was it. It had nothing to do with this growing need that he had to be beside Toshi. He just…wanted to know if nectarines were a real fruit and not just some guy shaving peaches…

So he would ask Toshi…and that was what he did.

"You're completely insane, you know that right. You crazy…drugged up….drunk…annoying….I don't even know. Just…fuck you. Fuck you and leave Sho the fuck alone…and…whatever." said Fukuda once he was sure that Shimazaki had left. He had no idea what that was but…but he knew that he was not going to be writing a multipage missive about Minegishi's breasts. That was just….no. He was not going to do that.

He laid down and turned to face the wall.

There was no way he was going to write that. He was going to lay down and go to sleep and wake up at some weird time because his internal clock wasn't on Moscow time. He was going to talk to Sho about what happened tomorrow and he would do whatever Suzuki had brought them here to do and then he would live his life like he had been living it for the past few years…his lifetime….and that was just what he was going to do. He would not be picked on like a sixth grader. He would-

There was a shift in the energy around him and a dip in the bed beside him.

"Write it in Japanese too, not Russian, because Toshi is the only one who can read Russian and I don't want Toshi to read this. This is just so I know that you know that Toshi is awesome and everything about them is awesome including their tits…and also fuck you for making me think about tits." Said Shimazaki

"….fine….just get out." Said Fukuda. He breathed a sigh of relief when Shimazaki left. He was….he was afraid of him and…and he decided to make his life a little easier and just write the damn thing.

He really wasn't a fan of this trip…and it hadn't even been a day yet.


	267. Putting Up Plants Together

Minegishi had a lot of plants.

Mob was happy to help hem hang all of them up. Some of them lived on the floor, some of them lived on bookshelves, and some of them lived hanging from the ceiling. Mob was in charge of hanging them from the ceiling because she had telekinesis and Minegishi didn't. That was fine. Mob was happy to help. Especially after how bossy she had been on the plane…and how mean her own little brother had been to Minegishi.

"Minegishi-" said Mob. There were no such things as too many apologies. Especially not when your little brother, you own little brother, said something that was just so not ok to your best friend that you didn't even have words for it. She had no idea how she was supposed to fix this. Sho was sorry but Minegishi's feelings were probably still hurt. Mob knew that her feelings would have been hurt if she had not only had her breasts pointed out to everyone she knew, not that she had any yet but still, and not even that but if she were to have found out that Fukuda had been talking about them…and if he had been saying that they weren't very nice…well…

She sort of understood why Minegishi wanted to exorcise Fukuda.

Also why they were wearing a shirt under their t-shirt. Mob could sort of see the strap of it poking out from where their shirt had ridden down over their shoulder. She couldn't blame Minegishi for wanting to wear two shirts even to bed. Mob sort of felt weird about the whole thing too and it hadn't even been her that Fukuda had been talking about. Well Sho had been talking about but he just thought that it was ok because Fukuda said it. Why he would say something like that Mob would never know but she did know that the whole thing made her feel weird so she was wearing an undershirt under her nightshirt.

Which wasn't that comfortable but was a lot less uncomfortable than she had been feeling before.

"Mob, this had better not be about how sorry your brother is. I get it, he's sorry, you're sorry, everyone's sorry. Can we just drop it?" asked Minegishi as they stacked some books on the floor beside their bed before putting a potted plant on top. This was precarious but they needed all of the plant life near them that they could get. They felt crappy. They felt vulnerable and crappy and they just needed to get their room to the way they liked it so they could just get back to laying down and resting. They had wasted too much time feeling sorry for themselves and now it was late and their room was nowhere near ready for them to get some actual sleep in.

God damned Fukuda.

And God damned Ryou, too, for going out there and 'defending their honor' or whatever the hell he planned on calling it. They knew what he was doing, teaching Fukuda a lesson, but he wasn't worth it. They had more important things to deal with…like not pissing off Suzuki. Fukuda was apparently his best friend fuh-evrr or whatever. Minegishi did not need to be demoted or thrown in a traitor hole or shot into the sun or whatever else Suzuki did to people who roughed up his healer, best friend, and most valuable ass kisser. No, Minegishi knew when to fight and when not to fight.

And that lump of sun dried sidewalk gum was not worth it.

"But…but you're so upset. I can tell by your aura that you're upset and I don't want you to be. I just want to know what I can do to make this all better. I mean I talked to Sho and he's sorry and he knows what I said was wrong…and I don't know what else I can do." Said Mob. She felt little and she hated it. Her friend had been hurt and she couldn't do a thing to make them feel better. Nothing at all. Fukuda was such an A-word sometimes…and Mob knew that she was being mean but that was just how she felt in the moment.

He should have just said sorry.

Because then, if he had just said sorry, then Minegishi could have forgiven him and then everything would have gone back to normal and they could have finished their game of I Hear. But, no, he went over to sit with dad and watch him play Minecraft…and also he took Mob's seat so she couldn't go back to playing Minecraft….but that wasn't the point. Mob had been about to turn the plane around and bring everyone back to England because of him. She only hadn't because then they would have been on the plane for even longer and they had already been getting on each other's nerves bad enough to fight. So she hadn't turned the plane around but….

But he should have just said sorry and stopped being a….not very nice person.

"Do you have a time machine?" asked Minegishi

"No, dad tried to have one made before I was born but the science didn't work out…but maybe if we found a wormhole…but then we would need to go into space…so this would take a lot of time but if you wanted me to start up the Claw space program ahead of schedule I will." Said Mob. They weren't supposed to go into space until twenty years after domination day…but maybe dad would give her the power to advance their timetable. Anything to make Minegishi feel better…even though dad had said that wormhole travel was only theoretical…well she would figure it out when they got to space and found a wormhole.

"Mob…never change." Said Minegishi as they woke their plant up. They felt better just being near it. Stronger. Their headache was gone but they were still off kilter. They tugged at this chest. This stupid sports bra wasn't helping…but it did flatten their chest…what little chest they had…and they were being ridiculous.

"Um….I'll try? But I keep on getting taller and stuff…but if you want me to stay little forever it might not be something that I can control." Said Mob. She didn't know why people wanted her to stay little forever. She was getting taller and stuff. Shibata was always saying how little she was and how he wished that she stayed little forever…and then he always threw her up in the air like he did for Sho…and then dad was always saying that she was perfect now and how he wished that he could keep her this age forever….and then he said stuff like he couldn't wait for her to grow up so they could always be together…and now Minegishi was telling her that they always wanted her to be little…and stuff….and it was just…

She didn't want to be little forever.

She reached over with her powers to hang another plant. She had much better control than when she had been little. She was taller, too, which didn't really help with what she was doing but she liked. She didn't, however, like how short her stuff was getting. This had started off as a nightgown but now it was a nightshirt. The sleeves only went to the middle of her arms and the bottom only went to her knees now. It had been long sleeved and to the floor when mom had gotten it for her. It had been so long, actually, that she'd had to fold over the sleeves…and now it was too short. It was tight, too, and the undershirt she was wearing didn't help. She had to wear it, though, to feel better…or at least less like she was being looked at. She didn't have breasts yet, just these weird sort of bumps that hurt a lot of the time, but she still felt like she was being looked at…and she didn't like it. Would this get worse as she got older?

In that case maybe she wanted to be little forever then.

"No, I didn't mean stop aging just…always be like this. Nice. You'd waste an exorbitant amount of money going to space just to make me feel better. I can't think of anyone else who would do something like that for me." Said Minegishi

"Shimazaki would. He's always talking about you and how great he thinks you are. Like when we went to all of those places in Tokyo together after the party he mostly just talked about you…so I think that he would do that for you. He was about to throw Fukuda out of the plane for you too…but then that would have been bad and stuff…but he likes you a lot." Said Mob. Sometimes Mob thought that Minegishi and Shimazaki liked each other. That would have made sense since they were always together and cuddling and stuff…but they weren't together. If they had been together then they would have been boyfriend and boyfriend/girlfriend/they-friend, not just friends who kissed sometimes. Minegishi didn't like relationships, they had said, because they didn't think that one person could belong to another.

Mob didn't see it as one person belonging to another, though.

It was two people finding each other and deciding to spend their whole lives together to make each other happy. Dad said that when she got older she would find her most perfect person and then she would get married and have babies. Dad had also said that she didn't need to find her most perfect person to have babies, though, and that no matter where they came from he would be there while she had them and then he would help her take care of the babies…but Mob did not want that for a million reasons. She wanted to find someone who loved her and also who would want to kiss her and stuff, because kissing was the best thing ever, and also…she sort of didn't want to spend the rest of her life with dad…

She loved him a lot and she loved spending time with him but too much of his love could be sort of…smothering.

So maybe that was what Minegishi meant by one person belonging to another. Mob wished that they would reconsider. Then they could find someone who loved them and get married and have babies and then their kids could be best friends with Mob's kids and they would be best friends and also Minegishi wouldn't have to wear a dress if they didn't want to because it would be their wedding. They would wear pants and everyone would be there and she would keep Hatori away from the champagne because he didn't know about moderation and it would be great and everyone would be so happy.

Or something. Mob didn't know. She just mostly wanted her friends to be happy.

"Oh I know he would do anything for me….even shit I never asked him to." Said Minegishi

"What did he do?" asked Mob. She hoped that he wasn't out there doing more bad things. Like the time that he and Sho had gone to play in the sewers and came out smelling like…well like the sewers. Or the time that they went to the icr cream and got kicked out for excessively sampling. Or like the time when they picked up that skunk and it sprayed them but instead of putting the skunk down they chased each other with it…or the time with the noodle….Mob didn't want to think about the time with the noodles.

"He's out there doing something stupid, that's all, forget him. Here. Help me hang the rest of these spider plants." Said Minegishi. If Ryou had been there that would have been his cue to start singing the Spiderman theme song in English. Spiderman, Spiderplant, does whatever a Spiderplant does…Minegishi smiles just a little at the memory of it. God, how was he so ridiculous all the time? So ridiculously….ridiculous.

"But…he always does stupid things. That's just how he is as a person." Said Mob. After she said that she realized how mean it had come out. She hadn't meant to be mean to her friend. Sure he could be annoying and sure he could do stupid stuff sometimes but he was still her friend. He was Sho's friend, too, Sho's very best friend…and she needed to be nice to him. Even though he did stupid stuff sometimes like all of the times when he ruined Shibata's waffle makers by putting caramels in them….or when he and Sho had been microwaving eggs specifically to make them explode….or the time when he trapped Hatori in a revolving door just for fun….

Boys were weird.

"Yeah, he's an idiot…but he's an honest idiot." Said Minegishi as they woke up the plants that Mob had just hung. There, their room was done. Now they just had to do the rest of the house…tomorrow. They could work on it tomorrow. Right now they just needed rest. The flopped down on their bed and stared up at the ceiling. Grey. There was a crack there, too, across the ceiling. They focused on it. Maybe if they focused hard enough they would go off to another dimension….heh. Then not even that idiot Ryou would find them. He'd look, oh how he'd look, but he'd never find them. That idiot. Didn't he know that if they were to let themselves slip away into another dimension they wouldn't want to be found? Not even by him.

She just…they just…wanted to be alone.

They wanted to be alone. They wanted to be alone but also they wanted to be with people. They wanted to move to the fourth dimension with their books and their plants never to be seen again but also…they wanted to be there with Mob…and Ryou. Even though he was an idiot. Even though he was out there defending them when they didn't need to be defended. Even though he had been holed up in his room discovering new ways to alter his already unstable brain chemistry. They still wanted to be with that stupid, crazy, annoying, unbelievably honest, earnest, sickeningly sweet when he wanted to be, idiot.

They felt the bed dip beside them.

"Are we done hanging the plants up?" asked Mob as she laid down next to Minegishi. Their aura was all…tired but also…hiccupy? She didn't know. All she knew was that Minegishi still felt bad about what had happened. The rolled over onto their side and pulled at the shirt that they had on until their shirt.

"Yeah, for now. I need rest. It's been…a day. It's been a day Mob…and I don't want to hear any more about how sorry you are or your brother is. Ok? Let's just…rest." Said Minegishi as they rolled over onto their side. This stupid bra was digging into their chest and arms and back…and they hated it but also they were not going to take it off. They felt…less vulnerable his way. It wasn't that they hated their breasts, they hadn't been afflicted with any a-cup angst since they were thirteen, they just…didn't like the attention they brought. Didn't like being defined by them. Didn't like the fact that having breasts seemed to mean that every idiot within seeing distance could offer up his opinions on them.

They were a person with breasts, not breasts that just so happened to be attached to a person.

"Ok….I won't say that anymore. Also why are you wearing an undershirt under your shirt if it's uncomfortable? Wouldn't it be better to just wear your hoodie?" asked Mob. They had been tugging and tugging and tugging since even before Mob had started helping them set up their room. Mob knew that they always had trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep and she didn't think that being uncomfortable would help matters.

"It's not an undershirt, it's a bra, and I'm wearing it for my own stupid, irrational, emotionally driven reasons that I don't think that you'd be able to understand because you're ten. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just stating a fact." Said Minegishi. Mob was just a kid and she didn't need their emotional shit rattling around in her head. She wasn't there yet. She was just a kid and she hadn't even been anywhere close to there yet. Things would change as she got older, very soon if Minegishi wasn't imagining things…and then Mob would get it…

They didn't want Mob to know how they felt, to get it, but she would and there was nothing that Minegishi could do about it.

And if that seven day long, extra heavy, menstrual cycle of a human being said one single word about Mob's body to anyone Minegishi wouldn't hold back. Let Suzuki demote them or throw them in a traitor hole or shoot them into the sun or make them sit there and watch home movies of what was sure to be his very fucked up childhood. They didn't care. It was one thing to talk about them, they were a grown adult, but Mob was a child…even though nobody else seemed to understand that fact.

"Oh…ok. Um…but if you were wearing that for the same reason that I'm wearing an undershirt then I understand." Said Mob. That didn't look like a bra strap. She had seen mom getting ready for her day before. Moms bras had been all pretty with lace and bows and the straps had been made of lace and silk and stuff. That strap looked like it was made out of the same stuff her undershirt was made from and didn't have any silk or lace at all…but that made sense because Minegishi didn't like that sort of stuff. They liked simple things, they said, because proper outfits took too much work.

"Why are you wearing an undershirt with your pajamas? That can't possibly be comfortable…especially since you grew out of the nightgown years ago." Said Minegishi

"I know that this doesn't fit anymore but my mom got it for me before she left…and it was bigger back then…but I'm not wearing an undershirt because of my mom…well sort of because she made me and I turned out to be a girl…but I'm wearing this because…I just sort of feel weird. It's like I know that everyone was talking about your breasts and not mine but….I just feel weird. So I'm wearing an undershirt." Said Mob. She wasn't good at talking but she thought that maybe she had made sense. It was like…like they had been talking about her but they weren't…and she didn't even have anything to talk about…but they still could have been talking about her…and stuff….

"Mob…I get it. I get it and it sucks and….and if anyone ever talks about you like that then tell me and I'll ki-I'll make them regret it. Ok?" asked Minegishi. Mob got it. Mob was only ten, not even eleven yet, and she got it. Well everyone had to get it eventually, this inevitable fact of life when you were born with a second x chromosome, and now Mob got it. How truly disgusting some people could be. Well at least he had her father. They got the feeling that in a few years Suzuki would start executing people on the spot for so much as looking at his sacred virgin of a daughter. So at least his creepy overprotectiveness would work out in her favor for once.

"Ok…but I want to make things better for you too…but I feel like you're talking about beating people up and I just…don't know if I could do that. I mean…I don't know. I don't like fighting." Said Mob

"Well, Mob, one day you'll have to fight. I don't know when that day is going to come but it will come and you need to be able to fight. And I want you to. You're stronger now at ten then I will ever be in my whole life. Just…defend yourself when the time comes and remember what I told you about telling people to fuck off if they touch you and you don't want to be touched." Said Minegishi. They did not want to think about the shit show that her teenage years would be. They did not want to think about all the creeps that would come out of the woodwork for her. She was young, naïve, rich, powerful, and the daughter of the future ruler of the world….and they never thought that they would ever say this but thank God for Suzuki's overprotective paranoia when it came to his dearingest, darlingst, daughter.

"I remember what you said…but I hope that it never happens. I hope that I never have to fight anyone ever." Said Mob

"I hope so too." Said Minegishi. Mob was too little, too sweet, and too…herself….for Minegishi to start dropping the big truths on her. The world was a dark cruel place. Most people would sell you down the river for a ten yen coin and a pat on the head. People turned into pigs when they figured out you had breasts. One day you'd wake up and the whole would think that they had the right to put your body under a microscope and discuss their findings. No, they were not going to drop those sad truths on their ten year old best friend just yet.

Something else dropped on to them.

"Toshi, quick, it's an emergency! Oh, hey Mob." Said Shimazaki as he teleported down onto Toshi's bed…and on to Toshi. Well that had certainly been off target. He felt Toshi lift their legs and he knew that a kick to the chest was coming. He let himself be kicked to the end of the bed. It didn't hurt. Toshi was trying to move him, not hit him.

"Hi Shimazaki….please don't fight with Minegishi. They've been having a bad day. Also is this a real emergency or is it like the last time you said that it was an emergency but you just couldn't find your other shoe? Because that wasn't a real emergency." Said Mobas Minegishi kicked Shimazaki down to the end of the bed. That looked like it hurt…but then again he had started it by teleporting on top of people.

"We're not fighting and this is a real emergency…and also not being able to find my shit because people move shit without telling me is an emergency…but also so is this. Toshi, quick, make me a nectarine!" said Shimazaki. He say up on the end of the bed. He could feel Toshi's aura. They were….he loved it when they aura did that. The hiccupping laugh thing. God, he could listen to that all day…but he had to figure out this nectarine thing.

"Yes, Ryou, this definitely sounds serious." Said Minegishi as they picked pine needles up off their bed and tossed them onto the floor for them to step on later once they forgot about them.

"Right, it is. Like….are they just hairless peaches from hairless peach trees?" said Shimazaki

"Were you climbing trees?" asked Mob as she picked up pine needles and then tossed them in an empty box so nobody stepped on them and ended up hurting their feet.

"It is. Just…are nectarines real? Because I've never had one and I need to know if they're real." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi sat up and rolled their eyes. They knew that he couldn't see them. They knew that he wasn't focused enough…oh. He was. Even in his state he was still able to focus on them…but in a nice way…God. What was with them?

"They're real. Sho can't eat them even though they aren't a citrus fruit, one time he tried to eat the pit and almost choked so he can't have any fruits with pits, but they're real." Said Mob. She watched Minegishi and Shimazaki's auras. They were coming together and getting all tangled now…and Mob got the feeling that she wasn't supposed to see this. They weren't doing anything, they weren't doing anything but looking at each other, but Mob felt like she was not supposed to be seeing this.

"Toshi…can you make me a nectarine?" asked Shimazaki. He put on his best begging voice, the one that Toshi acted like they didn't like but their aura gave them away. He nudged them with his foot. They were going to be mad at him later, they didn't like other people fighting their battles for them, but they also didn't like extra work…so it all worked out. He didn't know. He would deal with it later. Right now he was just so happy to hear them and feel them and smell them and just…he was just so happy to be near Toshi….

"Do I look like a fruit cart to you?" asked Minegishi. They still reached down to the plant beside them and did their best to make him a nectarine. He smelled good, like pine, and they wondered if he'd left Fukuda out in the pine forest to die in the Russian winter. It would have served him right. Ryou didn't need to fight their battles for them…but it was nice of him to go out of his way for them.

"No, you look like some kind of nature…being…who can make fruit." Said Shimazaki. They looked like nothing because he had no idea what he would describe them as if he had to use his sense of sight. He didn't have one but he knew what they sounded like. Their voice was the best sound that he had ever heard. Sort of like the little bells that people wore around Christmas time mixed with the sound of someone stirring stovetop pudding. They felt soft, like really good silk, really good raw silk. They smelled…well they smelled like a bunch of different things. Their hair smelled like flowers, their skin smelled like a different kind of flowers, their clothes smelled like flowery detergent, their nails smelled like acetone, the back of their neck smelled like…like he didn't even know. Like Toshi. They smelled best in the morning when they were just getting up. The never smelled bad but the best time to smell them was when he was the big spoon and they were the little spoon and they were just getting up…

Toshi was Toshi and Toshi was amazing.

"Fine, I guess I am. Mob, you want a nectarine while I'm breaking the laws of nature?" asked Minegishi. They felt better with him near…and they had no idea why. He had come crashing down onto them asking for a late night fruit delivery…but they still felt much better having him near. Having him there. Ryou. Stupid Ryou. That stupid, crazy, idiot. That stupidly honest, ridiculously transparent, idiotically thoughtful…..when he was capable of thinking….idiot…

Stupid Ryou making them feel things.

"No thanks….I'm just…going to go to bed. Goodnight." Said Mob. She got up off of Minegishi's bed and went back home. She didn't know what she had been there for but she got the feeling that she shouldn't have been there for that. That had been a weird sort of atmosphere. She had never been good at reading the atmosphere but that had been…not usual. She did want a nectarine though….but she could eat one later…or she could make it herself maybe. She didn't know. She'd figure it out later, not now, but later.

Tomorrow when she came back to help Minegishi put up the rest of their plants.


	268. Things that Need to be Done

Sho liked to watch when Shimazaki cleaned out his eyes sockets.

He really thought that it was cool and not at all gross. This was cool because it was gross and gross things were cool. Like when he and Emmy found that dead bird in the snow and it had half of it missing and junk. That had been gross….well also very sad and they'd had a bird funeral of course….but it had also been cool. Gross things were cool. They really were. So this was cool and this whole thing was just…cool.

It really was.

This was what Sho wanted to be doing first thing in the morning. He and big sis had come over for pancakes, Shibata's homemade pancakes, and Shibata was still making them. Big sis was helping Shibata cook, she was watching the stove because Shibata kept on getting distracted, and Sho was helping Shimazaki clean out his eyes. It was kind of mean how nobody would let him do this at the kitchen sink. It wasn't that gross. Not as gross as the time that big sis forgot her bottle of milk under her bed and they didn't find it until they were about to move…and then Sho had opened it….that had been gross. This wasn't gross, it was cool.

It really was.

He watched Shimazaki wipe off the outside of his eyes. That was the part that came first. That way he wasn't going to end up just shoving more dirt in there. Sho was sort of glad that his job wasn't to help with that. No, he was the one who held the eye socket cleaner. He wasn't sure if Shimazaki really needed someone to hold that for him and stuff but he was happy to have the job. He was happy to be there. He was happy that everyone was done fighting, Shibata had specifically invited everyone over for forgiveness pancakes, and he was happy to be able to be there with Shimazaki. He had been afraid that he would have sided with Minegishi but he hadn't. Everyone had been on their own side and now they were all getting along so side didn't matter anymore. The fighting was done and they were done and they were all friend again.

They had never stopped being friends in the first place, he and Shimazaki.

"God, I hate doing this." said Shimazaki as he finished step one of a very long and very tedious multistep process that he had been doing a week, or as needed, since he had been old enough to be trusted to do this himself. He had, in the past, tried to forgo it all together but then he'd ended up with infection after infection, he'd opened his eyes a lot more often as a kid, so he'd learned his lesson eventually.

"I'll do it for you if you want!" said Sho. He didn't want to do that for him, he really didn't, but that was what friends were for and he was a good friend. He knew that Shimazaki would have done the same for him. Sometimes you just had to help your friend out. Like the time at the party when Hatori had gotten way too drunk and Shibata had to stop him from doing dumb stuff and also made sure that when he peed he didn't do it in any more sinks, Sho had heard anyway he had been busy hanging out and…stuff. Well he and Shimazaki were way better friends than Hatori and Shibata anyway because Shimazaki would trust him with this!

"No thanks, I got this. You just be ready with that eye solution…and don't drink it or you'll get fucked up…and not in a fun way." said Shimazaki as he wiped his eyelids with the end of someone's towel. Maybe it was his maybe it wasn't. If people didn't want him using their stuff then they should have hidden it better from him.

"I'm not going to drink it. Why would I drink eye cleaner?" asked Sho. There was one of those symbols on the front that made sure that even people who couldn't read could tell that it would poison you if you drank it. Seemed kind of stupid to put a drawing on the front of the bottle when it was supposed to be used by people who couldn't see.

"Because sometimes it's fun to drink things and see what happens. You'll see when you get older. God, we are going to have so much fun together when you get older." Said Shimazaki. The kid's aura giggled there. The kid himself did not but his aura did. Could have been nothing or it could have been something…but even if it was something then it was still nothing. He had no idea what Fukuda had been spouting off about. The kid with a crush on him…flattering but nothing would come of it.

"Yeah…we'll have fun." Said Sho. He felt weird. He felt all warm and not warm all over and stuff. His aura did a weird thing, too, but maybe it wasn't weird because it had been doing that a lot lately. He didn't know why. Of course they would be still friends when they got older. They would be friends until the end of time. Just like dad and Fukuda only they would still hang out and neither of them would get grumpy when they got older. They would hang out and be friends and…and even if they never built forts or played at the park together or went down into the sewers together Sho would still want to be friends with him. Even if he had to help clean out Shimazaki's eyes when they were old and stuff then he would still his best friend ever.

Also Sho would have a girlfriend and stuff because he just would.

"Kid, do I have any more eye goo?" asked Shimazaki. He made sure to actually face the kid after he asked. Not that he'd had to. The kid's eyes had been focused on him for the whole time. The kid had been focused on him and it could have just been that fascination that all little boys had with the gross and macabre when they were his age…or it could have been something else that happened to little boys at around his age.

Well, whatever.

The kid could feel however he wanted. It was a free country…right? He had no idea. He wasn't a travel guide. Well to him the kid could be whoever and whatever he wanted. If he was gay or bi or pan…he wasn't sure how that one worked but it was what Toshi was…Shimazaki didn't give a damn. He wasn't a hypocrite. What, was he supposed to tell the kid that he had to take all of the weird and confusing feelings he was undoubtedly having and then stuff them in a sack and drown them like they did to guys who talked? Nope. He was not a hypocrite. The kid was what he was and Shimazaki didn't give a fuck who he was or what he was or who he wanted to fuck or if he wanted to fuck Shimazaki at some point in the future. It wasn't ever going to happen so, yeah, this was still his best little friend.

And also he was good for telling Shimazaki if he still had goo around his eyes.

"No, you're good." Said Sho. Next was the part where he actually cleaned out the inside of his eyes…and it was not gross. Nope. It was cool because gross stuff was cool. So he would totally watch and stuff but…but also Shimazaki's tattoos were even cooler. So he decided to look at those for a little bit. Not the one he had of Minegishi, though, because it wasn't that good. The color had faded from their hair and they never looked that happy. He focused, instead, on the way that the dragon on his back wrapped around his side to meet the dragon on his front.

It was so cool.

When Sho grew up he was totally going to cover himself in tattoos just like Shimazaki. He would get all of the exact same ones he got…but not of Minegishi because they and him didn't get along…but he would get…well he had to get one of a girl. Maybe his mom? Yeah, that would be like spitting in dad's face. Mom may have run away without telling anyone where she was going…or saying goodbye….or even leaving a note…or anything…but she was not a traitor. She had just decided to run away from home and leave all of them behind so she could go off and do…mom stuff…or whatever she was doing out there…

Maybe not a tattoo of mom.

Maybe of big sis then. She had always been there for him and she was always talking him though the things that made him sad and she was always hugging him and telling him that everything was going to be ok even when it wasn't…and she loved him and he loved her and they both loved each other…so, yeah. He would totally get a tattoo of his sister on his arm. With clothes on though because otherwise it would be weird. The last girl that Shimazaki had on his arm, the one before Minegishi, had been naked. Minegishi was dressed in that tattoo. That was good. No matter the person Sho thought that it was a little bit weird to have a naked picture of them on your arm and stuff.

But maybe you were supposed to do that for a girlfriend.

Shimazaki had said, before, that the girl on his arm was someone he used to care about and not a girlfriend. He had said that he'd never had a girlfriend in his life…so Sho had no reason to be mad at some girl that he had only seen a naked picture of tattooed on his friend skin and stuff. What did he care if Shimazaki had a girl tattooed on him before? They were friends and friends did not care if their friends had girlfriends. Friends were happy when their friends had girlfriends and besides…he was the only out of their whole friend group with a girlfriend.

So, really, he had no reason to feel this way.

He had a girlfriend now and she was cool and stuff and they were friends and stuff so, really, he had no reason to be upset about Shimazaki spending time with some girl that had meant a lot to him in the past or with Minegishi who meant a lot to him in the present. He had no reason to feel all mean and weird about that so he wouldn't. He was Shimazaki's best friend and that was it's own category so…so that was that.

Besides, he was the one who Shimazaki trusted to hold onto his eye cleaning solution for him so take that Minegishi!

"Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning my eye sockets out. I got some dirt and dust and shit in them so now I clean them out….with eye solution…Sho give me my eye solution…" sang Shimazaki. He held out his hand towards Sho and did the 'gimme gimme' motion with his hands. He didn't really need the kid's help for this but he liked to help so why not let the kid help?

"Here….and I didn't drink any of it." Said Sho. He handed it over and their hands brushed…and he hadn't meant for their hands to brush…or maybe he had…no he hadn't. He hadn't because that was what you did with someone you liked…and he did not like Shimazaki. He didn't like Shimazaki because…because he couldn't…and he didn't care about how Shimazaki's hand had felt brushing against his hand. That had been…just skin touching skin.

Everyone had skin.

Feeling Shimazaki's skin wasn't any different than feeling anyone else's skin. He hadn't even felt his skin! Not for real, anyway, because he still had his barrier up. He always had it up when he was awake. It was there and thin and Sho had felt it…which was sort of like touching someone's aura…and stuff. That was just…it was something that he couldn't feel with anyone else…or whatever. He didn't know. He was just being weird again. He had been so weird lately.

He needed to knock it off already.

"You're no fun." Said Shimazaki. There it was again. That aura giggle thing. Huh. Well now he had a choice to make. Talk to the kid or don't talk to the kid. On the one hand the kid could end up living the rest of his life thinking that he had a shot with Shimazaki and then he would be inevitably crushed when he grew up and nothing happened or had any hope of happening….or maybe this would just fizzle out after the kid got a little older, took a layer or ten of skin off of his dick thinking about Shimazaki, and then moved on. Talking to the kid would involve a lot of hurt feelings and heavy feelings and…yeah, he didn't want to deal with that right now.

So he wouldn't.

"Yes I am! I'm the most fun!" said Sho. How could he say something like that? Sho felt like he had been kicked in the stomach. His stomach was full of angry goldfish and-and-and-

And a bar of soap hit him over the head.

"I'm kidding, kid, you know I'm kidding. You're the most fun kid who ever lived. How's that sound?" asked Shimazaki. Maybe he should have some kind of talk with the kid. Maybe it would be better to talk to him now instead of dealing with him later…but that was going to end up being one of those heavy conversations that he did not want to deal with…but maybe he would have to have it. Maybe that was one of those things that had to be done, like cleaning out his eye sockets, and it wasn't fun but he would have to do it….or something.

"Sounds good. Can you say it again?" asked Sho. Shimazaki did that thing when he looked up at the ceiling, sort of like he was rolling his eyes. Sho sort of felt like…hiding? He didn't know why. There was just something in how he said that and…and Sho hated feeling this way. He hated acting this way. He was acting like big sis did when Hatori had been near. Back before she had broken up with him. All giggly…but without the giggling because he was Suzuki Sho and Suzuki Sho did not giggle. Shimazaki would have thought that he was idiot…or a weirdo…if he just started giggling like a girl did…when she liked someone…

Emmy giggled at him a lot.

He liked…he didn't like Shimazaki. He couldn't like Shimazaki. What would Shimazaki even say if Sho just came out and…and what? Asked to be his boyfriend? Asked to hold hands and kiss and stuff? Asked to exchange gifts on Valentine's Day? Asked to spend all of their time together and…and stuff? What would he even say? He'd be all 'no way what's wrong with you!' and stuff like that. No, even if Sho did like him…not that he liked Shimazaki…then he would never say anything.

Besides, he had a girlfriend now and he wasn't going to just go off and hurt her and stuff.

So, no, he wasn't going to be saying anything…at least he wouldn't have said anything if there had been something to say…but there wasn't. Shimazaki was just his best friend who he liked to hang out with and…and to look at…because he had so many cool tattoos and also….also um….other stuff that was for friends and only friends and….and stuff and….

And he had a lot of really cool tattoos and stuff and that was why Sho was staring at him.

"Suzuki Sho is the coolest, smartest, funnest, most humble human being who has ever lived." Said Shimazaki. Yup. That was it. How had he mistook….well he hadn't known what it was that he was supposed to be looking out for. To talk or not to talk…that was still the question.

"That's better." Said Sho

"Well then most awesome human being to ever live, you wanna poke me in the eyes before I get to cleaning them out?" asked Shimazaki. If they were going to have themselves a nice long talk then he had might as well put the kid in a good mood.

"Um….no thanks." said Sho. He had asked to do this once before just because he had wanted to know what the inside of someone's head felt like. Now he knew. Wet, warm, weirdly gooey almost…and just….not good. Not something that he wanted to repeat. It was a once in a lifetime thing like being born. No repeats.

"You sure? I know you get a kick out of this." said Shimazaki. It felt weird, very weird, and also he didn't much see the point aside from the grossness factor. Kids had always been trying to stick their fingers in his eye sockets when he had been a kid. Some things never changed.

"Um….ok. Maybe a little." Said Sho. He didn't want to, because it wasn't the nice kind of gross, but he didn't want to hurt Shimazaki's feelings or anything like that…and also it wasn't that gross…or stomach turning…or…

"Pancakes are ready and-WHAT THE HELL?!" said Hatori. Nothing good came of anything having to do with Shimazaki. He hated being the new guy. He hated being the one who had to go and get Shimazaki and to end up having to see….Shimazaki about ready to get poked in the eye…..which was just…

He would be describing this to a psychologist in a few years….if he even lived that long.

"Hi Hatori! Hey, Hatori's never done this before. Maybe he should get a turn…you know…because he's never done this before." Said Sho. Whew. Saved by big sis' ex-boyfriend.

"No thanks! I...um…..no thanks!" said Hatori. That was stomach turning and he wanted to go and hide in the bathroom…which was occupied…and now he felt like he was about to…

"He's going to throw up." Said Shimazaki as the sound of Hatori's footsteps could be heard through the apartment. Then the retching. Then Toshi telling him to aim for the sink. Heh. He let his aura wander over. Toshi was sitting at the table…and they were so pissed off. It was…cute was a word that could be applied to Toshi. They were pissed off and…and he wished that he could have been closer. Close enough to feel…to feel them better….to touch their face….to see their smile.

"I hope he's not throwing up on the pancakes. I don't know what big sis ever saw in him." said Sho. He could tell the Shimazaki was watching what was happening with is aura…and Sho looked where he was looking. He had to close his eyes to do this. He closed his eyes and watched…Shibata was rocking Hatori like a baby and big sis…on the floor like she was cleaning and Minegishi was….being watched by Shimazaki.

Fine. Whatever.

"God, you sound like Toshi." Said Shimazaki. There. A flare of his aura when he mentioned Toshi…and yeah, he was an idiot. The kid had it bad and what was worse he was jealous. The jealousy would end up messing him up. Shimazaki knew how poisonous jealousy could be…and not at all in a fun way. Not that he didn't stand by what he did to Hatori at the Christmas party. It might have been the one step too far but that was the fun of it, going that one step too far, you got to see and do some funny shit. No, he stood by what he did and all…but the kid was not him.

And also he did not want the kid to mess with Toshi.

"Yeah. They say a lot of stuff." Said Sho. He didn't want to talk about Minegishi. He would rather have talked about literally anyone else other than Minegishi. What did Shimazaki see in them? They were mean to everyone and boring and also…and also a lot of other things that he would think about later.

"So do you, you know. Did you apologize to Toshi for real?" asked Shimazaki. God, he sounded like a dad or a teacher or some other adult that lorded their powers over kids. Still, though, it was good to teach the kid to apologize sooner rather than later. No sense in making an enemy out of Toshi…and also Toshi's feelings had been really hurt by all of that and he could not just sit there and see their feelings get hurt.

"I…they know that I'm sorry. Big sis told them. I don't know what they're so upset about. I mean I know that I said something wrong but I…don't get it. I didn't call them names and I didn't tell them to go off and die or anything like that. I just said that Fukuda said that their boobs weren't anything to write home about." said Sho

"Well Fukuda was an asshole for saying that and you were a little asshole for repeating it." Said Shimazaki

"Hey! Am not!" said Sho

"You were. There is a time and a place to talk about someone's tits and on a plane in front of everyone, God, and you dad was not the place for it…and also don't ever insult or talk about Toshi's tits. Ok? It's just not right to talk about someone's tits and Toshi has their own stuff going on about their body and shit. Ok? So you should say sorry for real." Said Shimazaki. There. That was one thing done with. There. He knew that he had been cut out for this. He knew what he was doing. He was a god role model or whatever for this kid. Fukuda didn't know what he was talking about.

"Fine….I'll say sorry…because they're important to you…and stuff…" said Sho. He was going to say sorry to their face for real just because Shimazaki said so. He wanted things to be ok between them and he wanted them to always be friends…so he was going to make nice with Minegishi.

"They are….but you're important to me too, ok? We're friends, ok? Best friends and only best friends…ok?" asked Shimazaki. How was he supposed to start this conversation? He was not a tactful guy. He was not the sort of person who thought about what he was going to say before he said it. He never handled people with kid gloves…but now he had a kid and he had to handle this kid with kid gloves. Gloves made for handling kids, not gloves made from kids, because that would be a waste of perfectly good kids. Human children.

"I know that we're friends. I'm not dumb." Said Sho. What was Shimazaki going on about? And why was he just…why were his eyes closed, now? And why was his aura all pulled in? And why was he facing the ceiling? He didn't know but…but he felt like he had done something wrong or…or something.

"I know you're not…most of the time." Said Shimazaki

"Hey! I'm smart all of the time!" said Sho

"Uh-huh, and what about the time with the skunk?" asked Shimazaki

"I only wanted to pet it, you're the one who wanted to pick it up." Said Sho. He could be so dumb sometimes. Sometimes it was like his brain didn't work or something…and also sometimes Sho's brain didn't work either and when both of their brains didn't work then they had their best adventures…and also they got sprayed by skunks.

"Fine, fine, we'll call that one a draw. We both had fun and we both had to take tomato sauce baths. Ok? We were even." Said Shimazaki. That hadn't been fun. Toshi had been so pissed at him for stinking up the house, and Shibata had insisted on making the tomato sauce himself instead of just getting the stuff from the can, but it had all worked out in the end. Things always worked out for him and the kid in the end.

"Exactly." Said Sho crossing his arms. They were even. Even if he had told Shimazaki not to pick that skunk up they were even.

"You know, kid, we have a lot of fun together. We'll always have a lot of fun together. As friends, ok? You can feel however you want about me, I don't care, but we'll always just be friends." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah! Yeah, I know. We'll always just be friends. Best friends! Just….uh….clean out your own eyes! I want pancakes!" said Sho. He got up and ran out of the room as he shouted. He didn't…there was no way that he KNEW! Who…how…when….where….why…..no! He didn't know! He didn't know because there was nothing to know! He did not have…he was not…he was not in love with Shimazaki! He didn't want to kiss him or hold his hand or cuddle with him or…or…or….or…!

He just wanted to help Shimazaki clean his eyes out! That was all!


	269. Emails to Girls Left Behind

Sho didn't write a lot of emails.

Who would he have written too? Everyone he knew traveled with him. He mostly just had his email address for logins to stuff. He got plenty of emails, a lot of them junk, but this was the first time he would ever send one. The only problem was that he had no idea how to even begin to write an email. Was it like writing a letter? He had never written a letter before either. Well he had written a Mother's Day letter to mom back when he had been really little but he could barely remember how he did it…and also he was not writing a letter to his mom anyway.

He was writing an email to his girlfriend.

His laptop was sitting there in front of him. He was in a fort that he had made out of Fukuda's couch. Fukuda was sitting on the floor with his laptop on the coffee table. He had his own work stuff that he was doing. Moscow was sort of important for some reason. Sho didn't know and he didn't care. That was dad and Fukuda stuff. He had his own Sho stuff to worry about. Like what he was supposed to say to Emmy. He wished that she'd had a phone. Then he could have called her or texted her or something. He knew how to do that. He had no idea what he was supposed to do here. He wished that he could have just sent her a 'what's up?' message and then she could have said something and then he could have said something back like a normal conversation.

Email sucked.

Maybe he should have asked big sis for help. Dad let her do his emails for him. She knew about this stuff…but he didn't want her help. She got all weird when it came to him and Emmy. She was always asking him how she was and if he loved her and if they were going to get married and stuff like that. He didn't get it. What the obsession girls had with love was. Maybe that was because they got more out of the relationship thing than boys. Shimazaki had said, before, that when it came to being with girls you always had to give twice as good as you got or you wouldn't ever get anything. He knew a lot about this stuff…and Sho had no idea why he cared.

It wasn't like he liked Shimazaki or anything.

They were just friends, like Shimazaki had said, and he was crazy for thinking that Sho had ever thought about them as anything else. Of course he knew that they were just friends and they would always be just friends. What else could they possibly be? It wasn't like Sho ever thought about what it would be like to be more than friends with Shimazaki. It wasn't like Sho ever thought about what it would be like to use Shimazaki as a pillow or to hold his hand or to kiss him like he had kissed Emmy or to…or anything at all because those would have been really weird thoughts to think and Sho was not going to be weird like that. He was normal. He was a normal guy with a normal girlfriend who he was going to write a normal email to in the most normal way imaginable.

So it was time to start this email normally….whatever that was.

'Dear Emmy,

How are you? I am fine. I'm in Moscow now. It's cold. All of the buildings look the same. There are stray dogs everywhere. They don't like to be petted. That's all I have to say about Moscow. It was nice talking to you. Goodbye.'

….maybe he should type this out in English.

Yeah. She couldn't read Japanese so maybe English, a language that she knew, would have been better. He switched over to the English keyboard. This would be a little harder. They read weird and wrote weird and it was just weird but…but he would get this. His English was ok and stuff. She could understand him. He couldn't always understand her but he could be understood. Maybe he should put more of her British stuff in there so she would understand better.

'Dear Emmy,

How are you? I've been brilliant. I'm in Moscow now. The weather is groty. All the buildings look the same. There are strays dogs everywhere. That's brilliant. They don't like to be petted. It's not brilliant. That's all I have to say about Moscow. It was brilliant talking to you. Goodbye.'

That was better….right? He had zero idea. He had no idea if that was a good or a bad email to send to his girlfriend. Wasn't he supposed to tell her that he loved her or something like that? He didn't know. He wasn't in love with her, he had never been in love with anyone, but wasn't he supposed to tell her that he loved her? Maybe he loved her and he didn't even know it yet.

What did love even feel like anyway?

Like there was a goldfish in his stomach. Like his heart was going to jump out of his chest. Like he really needed to run and hide but also he never wanted to go. Like he was standing next to the most amazing person in the world. Like he was going to die but in a good way. Like he was-

He slammed his laptop shut.

"Sho? Something wrong? If you died again I'll be able to come and help you in one second." Said Fukuda, his fingers hovering over his laptop keys. He didn't write a lot of emails but this was an important one. Masami never replied, he had no idea if she was even getting these, but he still wrote her periodic updates. He didn't mind, he enjoyed it actually, it was better than the multipage missive that he'd had to write about Minegishi Toshiki's breasts…which he still wasn't sure why he even wrote. Shimazaki couldn't kill him just…maim or seriously injure him….but he had still wrote out his missive. Well copy and pasted Shimazaki Ryou made me write this a few hundred times.

This was better.

He forgot what he had been about to write. He didn't have a lot of good to write about but he did his best. She might have still been reading these, this was still an active email address, and she may have even been sitting there at her own computer on her own living room rug in her own apartment in some strange city in some strange country trying to figure out what to say to him. Maybe she had so little in her life good to talk about…no. This was Masami. She must have been happy. She was free of Suzuki. She'd left her children behind but…but at least she was free of Suzuki. She was out there living the best life that she could have had…

Her best life.

Maybe she was sitting there on her own rug in her own apartment with…with another little boy sitting there in a fort made out of pillows. Maybe another little girl, too, sitting there with her. Maybe another man in her life…the thought stings…but she's Masami and she deserves all the happiness that she could get. She deserved someone who could make her happy. She deserved someone who could be there for her. She deserved someone who could help her raise her…her children. Not that he had any idea at all if she'd even had other children. He knew that she would have done a better job of it than he ever would….if she'd had any other children.

He hoped that she hadn't had any other children….and he hated himself for hoping that.

"I…I didn't…." said Sho. He didn't need help. He could do this himself. What kind of a guy needed help messaging his own girlfriend? He knew what he was doing!

"We can get back to Minecraft or whatever you're playing now in a second, ok? I just have to finish this up." Said Fukuda. He had no idea what he was doing. He had no idea what he was supposed to write. He had no idea what he was supposed to tell her. So far he had nothing, just words on a page, and not even a page. Just a screen. Maybe it would have been better if he had bene writing a letter. He knew how to write letters. He must have written thousands of letters in his lifetime. There hadn't been any other option. Now he had to write her an email and…and it was hard.

It was always hard.

"I'm not playing anything just…." Said Sho. Could he ask Fukuda for help? What was wrong with him, of course he could ask Fukuda for help. Fukuda would always be there for him, he had said so a thousand time already, but this was not something that he should have needed help for. This was something that he should have been able to just…know. Even if the boyfriend thing was supposed to be boring it was still something that he just should have known….

It was hard.

This was hard and it should have been easy. What was wrong with him? Why did everything have to come so hard to him all the time? Why had he been born wrong? Everything came easy to big sis, everything that mattered anyway. She had gotten Hatori like her and to be her boyfriend until he messed it up and before that she had gotten Shimazaki to like her…and then she stopped liking him when dad beat him up….and why did he even care if Shimazaki had liked her? Why did he even…..ugh!

What was the MATTER with him?!

"Just a second, ok? This is…this is important…" said Fukuda. Nothing. He had a whole lot of nothing.

'Dear Masami,

Things are mostly the same here. Suzuki is still headed off the deep end but that's been his destination for as long as I've known him. Shigeko is still Daddy's little girl as always. Sho is….'

That was all he had. He couldn't tell her the truth, the truth would devastate her. Suzuki was getting closer and closer to his goals every single day. He was getting closer and closer each day and Fukuda could do nothing to stop him. He was getting closer and closer to Shigeko each day and if she had been a decade older and not Suzuki's daughter then he would have sworn that Suzuki had replaced Masami. That he was honestly worried about what was happening there mentally for the both of them. That Suzuki's relationship with his daughter looked like some sort of sexless incestuous mess. That Shigeko had more power now than she ever had in her life and she had been about to turn an entire plane around just because he wouldn't apologize for something that he had said in confidence? That Sho needed her now more than at any point in his life? That her son had an intense, young Suzuki Touichirou level, crush on a man three times his age? And an ex yakuza member with a long body count and even longer rap sheet to boot? That Sho also, amazingly enough, had a little girlfriend that he had been forced to leave behind because Suzuki had to drag everyone around the world with him? That Fukuda had lost control of the situation years ago? That he was starting to hate himself for losing control of it? That sometimes he looked at the person he had become and-

And he would not be telling Masami any of that.

But he had to tell her something. He was overdue to send her an update. If she actually read these then she may have been worried. That is if she actually read these. She was off living her own life and she could have just….moved on. Moved on in ways that he knew that he was not capable of. How could he move on from her? From anything? He was still playing Claw after all, just like he had been when he'd been a kid, only now it was for real. How could he move on from someone as wonderful as her when he couldn't even move on from something as horrible as this?

He didn't know.

But he did know that Sho needed him. Sho had been clingy to him as of late. Something had upset him. Fukuda had no idea what, it could have been anything, but the 'what' of it didn't matter. Sho was there in a fort that he had made and he had slammed his laptop down in anger and it was Fukuda's job to be there for him no matter what. Sho needed someone in his corner, and in his corner for real. Someone with his best interests at heart. Someone who would always put him first.

Fukuda got up.

"I didn't die I just…..I don't know what to…to email to my girlfriend!" said Sho. He reached up to the roof of his fort and pulled down the blanket. That was as close as he could come to slamming the door. He wanted to slam a real door….and that was a jerk thought to have. He had no idea what he was even so upset about. He just had to say something to his girlfriend. Then she would be happy and she would message him back and then that would be how their relationship would be.

He was in a relationship now.

He liked her. He had to like her because she was his girlfriend. She was nice. She had red hair like him and plenty of freckles. She liked to play Smash and Mortal Kombat and also she had introduced him to Street Fighter, which was awesome, and she was a good opponent. She didn't just throw the match when it looked like Sho was going to lose. She actually beat him. She liked to climb trees and look at birds, too, and she wanted a cat but she couldn't have one, too, and also she hated mushy like he hated mushy peas and…and she was really nice and he liked hanging out with her. The kissing and handholding were just a thing that he had to do so that he could keep on hanging out with her….and so was this.

This was just a thing that he had to do.

So he had to just do it already! He had to get on with this so that…so that he could do what he had to do to be her boyfriend. Then if he was her boyfriend then everyone could see how normal he was and nobody would know all of the weird things he felt and thought about. How he thought about, sometimes, kissing people he shouldn't have ever thought about kissing or holding their hands or what it would be like to use them as a pillow or how cool they were and…and he just….he had a girlfriend now and that proved that he was normal and now he had to keep on proving how normal he was but for some reason he just couldn't! He really couldn't do anything right just like how dad was always saying. He was a disappointment of a human being. He was pointless and being him was pointless and….and he just sucked!

He pulled his shirt up over his head.

He closed his eyes and started to count. He was getting mad again. He was in a small, dark place so now all he had to do was count until he got better. There. He could do that. He could and would do that. So that was what he did…only it was hard. With his eyes closed his aura was trying to see for him. He could see Fukuda getting close, he could see big sis downstairs hanging out with Minegishi, he could see dad sitting on his bed, he could see Shibata in the kitchen, he could see Hatori hiding in the bathroom again….

But he couldn't see Shimazaki.

He was gone. Sho had no idea where he had gone off to. He could have been out making a new best friends and having all kinds of adventures with him. The thought hurts. He could have been climbing trees with someone else or petting stray dogs with someone else or switching the mail in mailboxes with someone else or playing in the sewers with someone else or jumping out and scary people with someone else or letting someone else help him clean out his eye sockets…and the thought of someone taking Sho's job makes him feel like the time that he had seen Shimazaki and Minegishi all curled up asleep and naked and…

And he can feel Fukuda's aura pressed up against his.

"Sho….it's ok. Let me help." Said Fukuda as he sat outside of Sho's couch fort. He felt Sho's aura extending out in all direction before being quickly pulled back. Not a pleasant feeling at all. It was reminiscent of someone he didn't want to think about. Someone who was gone, for now, thank goodness. He didn't know where it was that Shimazaki went sometimes and he didn't care. Anywhere was fine just so long as it was far away from Sho. Sho didn't need all of that in his life. He had enough going on as it was. He didn't need all of those sorts of feelings getting stirred up again for that man. What was it with the Suzuki family's terrible taste in men? First it was Masami and Suzuki, then Shigeko and Shimazaki and then Hatori, and now it was Sho and Shimazaki….they could all have done so much better…

"You can't help. You can't help because I shouldn't need help." Said Sho through his shirt. Breathing into his shirt made his face feel weird. Well he was rebreathing the air that he was breathing out. Maybe he would run out of air and die….no. Fukuda would never let that happen. Fukuda would always be there for him. He had said so a million times before.

"Everyone needs help sometimes Sho. You know even your dad needs help…sometimes. Back when we were kids he needed help all the time and I was the man to help with so I had might as well help you too." Said Fukuda. There was some stirring from inside the fort before Sho popped his head out.

"My dad needed help?" asked Sho. He knew that dad liked to give orders, telling people what to do was his favorite part of being President of Claw, but dad….asking for help? Admitting that he didn't know how to do something? Well something for real, not like when he forgot their Netflix login and stuff, the thought of it was….it made no sense. Dad was dad. He could do anything…for good and for bad. What could he ever need actual help with?

"God yes. Not a day went by, back when we were kids, when he didn't need my help with something. He needed my help building our fort and talking to people in our class and to take out extra library books since they capped you at ten back then. There was this one time, though, when we got caught and he tried to pin it all on me but the librarian knew him. She was all 'Suzuki Touichirou, you borrowed this copy of Race to the Stars forty three times this year. I've had to add multiple check out cards just because of you. Do you expect me to believe that Tadashi suddenly wants to borrow it?' and then he was all 'Yes. That's exactly what I expect you to believe.' With that same poker face he's always had….and oh my God I thought Missus Sakamoto's head was going to turn all the way around." Said Fukuda. He laughed, a little, at the end of it. He couldn't help it. The entire exchange really had been hilarious….even if later on he did end up with huge library fines since Suzuki was REALLY bad about returning books…which was why he was at his limit in the first place…but at the time he had been glad to help out his friend.

Now he wished that they just had overdue books and extremely costly library fines to worry about.

"But….why didn't my dad just by the book, then, if he had checked it out all of those times? Wouldn't it have been easier to just order it from Amazon?" asked Sho. He lifted the blanket off of his fort with his powers. He felt better. The counting had helped a little but Fukuda had helped a lot. He gave him something to help take his mind off of everything for just a little bit….God….Dad was such a fucking weirdo when he had been a kid. Well he still was. Maybe being a weirdo was just in his blood. Dad was weird, big sis was weird, and now he was weird. He was just the sort of weird that made him want to kiss other guys and stuff…not that he wanted to kiss other guys and stuff.

"Because he was constantly either burning through his pocket money on nonsense or getting it cut off for doing…well nonsense. Also it was the eighties and Amazon didn't exist yet." Said Fukuda. Sho did not need to know that his father had constantly had his pocket money cut off for beating people up with his powers over nonsense. Fukuda had tried to heal his victims as best as he could but he had just come into his powers back then and couldn't do much. There was only so much he could do….and he had to focus on Suzuki for those rare times when his victims managed to get a shot in. They hadn't even been planned fights. Suzuki had just always been violent…sort of like Sho…but at least Sho had a good reason for being the way he was.

"My dad did nonsense?" asked Sho. Now he was fully out of his fort and sitting across from Fukuda. He couldn't picture dad ever doing nonsense. He was always accusing him and big sis, if anything, of doing nonsense. Being nonsensical, he called it, which was sort of a compliment because he always said that when they were having fun. Like that time when they had found all of those garden snails and built a track so they could race them….that had taken a while….because snails did not like to race. Turbo was a movie of lies, ninety minutes of lies, and now he and big sis knew the truth.

"All the time. Like, get this, you've been to candy stores, right? And you've seen those ice pops where every third one or whatever is a winner?" asked Fukuda

"Yeah. Me and big sis ate a until we got sick because we kept on getting winners." Said Sho

"Well back when we were kids they didn't just have that promotion for ice pops. They had it for honey sticks and sugar suckers and chocolate licorice sticks….they had that a lot. Now your dad, he loved Space Invaders, I mean he would play from when the arcade opened until it closed. He found out how to use his powers to cheat the machines at the big arcade so we had to move over to the candy store with the Space Invaders cabinet in it but old lady Minamoto said that we had to buy something first so your dad gets, well he gets me, an ice pop and it turns out that it was a winner….so you know what he does?" asked Fukuda

"Tell you that you're ridiculous and that you need to eat something that has nutritional value?" asked Sho

"No." said Fukuda

"Lick it, make a face like you collected a punch of cat pee and froze it into a popsicle to prank you, say that it was vile, and then lick it again even though he hated it?" asked Sho

"….no….and never do that. That is not a funny prank….actually I think that might be a crime…" said Fukuda

"Use his powers to make it melt right in your hand just to be a jerk?" asked Sho

"No. He bought another one….and you and I have a lot to talk about later…." Said Fukuda. He needed to spend more time with Sho…for his own good.

"Why would he do that? Dad hates sweets. He says that they make him want to throw up when he even thinks about them." Said Sho

"Because he likes to win. So he bought another one and it turned out to be a loser…but the one that I got for free was a winner again…and then he bought another one and it was a loser…and my next free one was a winner…so then he spent all of his money trying to get lucky…and he didn't." said Fukuda. That had been one way to waste a summer's day. Watching Suzuki spend almost ten thousand yen, his entire allowance…..Fukuda missed the eighties….on popsicles trying to get a winner. Seeing him get more and more frustrated….that had been long before he knew just how dangerous Suzuki could be when he was frustrated….it had been sort of funny, even.

"Well of course dad lost. The universe hates him." said Sho simply. Why would the universe reward dad with anything? He was a jerk.

"He has always been pretty unlucky. He spent ten thousand yen, a lot of money even nowadays but back then…wow. He spent all of it on popsicles and I couldn't eat them fast enough so, really, he just wasted a whole month's allowance….and then after that he tried to mathematically quantify luck so it all worked out in his favor." Said Fukuda

"Dad figured out the secret to being lucky?" asked Sho

"No, your grandmother just decided to reward him for working hard on his studies and not getting into trouble so she slipped him twenty thousand yen in his school bag." Said Fukuda. That had been the first time he had ever seen Suzuki slip down the path of obsession. He stopped doing everything other than trying to figure out how luck worked, going to school….but just because they let him mess around on the school computers, and occasionally eating and bathing…though once the bathing stopped Fukuda stepped in. That had been…scary…but he had gotten used to it. How weird Suzuki could get about things…well he liked to think of himself as having gotten somewhat used to it. This latest obsession was…troubling…but he would step in once things got…to a worse point than they were at now. If he went to more than one day a week of being obsessed with Shigeko.

"Did he spend it on popsicles again?" asked Sho

"No, he spent it on a girl this time." Said Fukuda with a shake of his head. He felt Sho's aura focus on him. His eyes were forced more, now, too. His pupils had shrank down to almost nothing….not the best look for him…but nothing like Suzuki. Well a little…but nothing like Suzuki.

"Dad bought a girl a present? Was it mom? Did dad know mom when you guys were kids? What was she like? Did she go to the same school? Did she have a lot of friends? Did she-" asked Sho. His mind was going a mile a minute. Mom as a kid. What had she been like? The thought of her as a kid….well he knew that she must have been a kid at some point, everyone started off as a kid, but he had never really imagined her as a kid. He could imagine dad as a kid because Sho had played with his old toys back in the Treasure Room and also he had visit dad's old places back in Seasoning City. Mom was…a mystery to him….and he wished that she wasn't.

"No. He didn't meet your mother until much later. She grew up in….I don't know where she grew up….but this was another girl entirely. I don't remember her name but I do remember that your dad followed her around for three weeks trying to figure her out and then when he thought he'd gathered enough information he had me help him write her a love letter…and then he waited behind the school with this huge box full of her favorite foods. Not normal stuff like candy and chocolates, no, he had her favorite instant cup noodle, her favorite soy sauce, her favorite brand of long stem rice, her favorite brand of short stem rice, her favorite color of apples….just….a lot of her favorites." Said Fukuda

"Girls like that?" asked Sho. Gifts. Right. You were supposed to send them gifts. Who would have thought that dad knew about girls? Well he must have, obviously, because he had gotten married to mom and made him and big sis with her. Girls didn't make babies with just anyone….right? No, that was a very special thing that two people who were in love did, mom had said so. She had sad that one day he would meet someone that he loved so much that he wanted to do gross stuff to but also make babies with...and Sho did not want to think about this anymore. Himself growing up and doing that or…even worse….his PARENTS doing that….

He could still hear mom calling dad Touichi….and nothing would ever make that right.

"The gifts, yes, the following them around, no. That was why she had ended up breaking up with your dad after two weeks, actually. He...came on a little too strong." Said Fukuda. He didn't know how to tell a ten year old boy that his father managed to, over the course of a lifetime, creep out the entire female population of his elementary, middle, and high school. Thank God Suzuki had taken such a heavy course load in university. Thank God that he was so busy running Claw now. Well the female population could thank God, anyway. Fukuda had no idea how Suzuki had managed to be more romantically successful than him…though it may have had something to do with the fact that he hadn't been trailing after someone completely out of their mind since middle school…not that Fukuda was bitter…and it didn't. At the end of the day he'd gotten Masami so…so maybe if this whole Claw thing imploded or whatever he could tell Suzuki, before he met his doom or end or comeuppance or whatever, that he'd made love to his wife in his bed in his house and…and now was not the time for that revenge fantasy.

He felt Sho's aura on him.

He forced himself to stay calm. Right. Sho hadn't suddenly developed the ability to read minds…and if he did Fukuda was screwed. Sho…he was too young to know the truth, to know why his mother had left, to know what a shit show his parent's marriage had been, and to know how much Fukuda loved his mother….Sho was way too young for the truth. It would devastate him. When he got older…and Suzuki was dead, cremated, and interred with his parents, then Sho could know the truth.

But not now.

"Hey Fukuda….I was just…I was…um..do you think that my girlfriend is going to break up with me?" asked Sho after a while. He didn't know how he felt about that. On the one hand he didn't really like kissing her that much but on the other she was a really cool person…and also he had to have a girlfriend so then people would think that he was normal. Then Shimazaki would stop thinking that Sho liked him….and he had been acting like he thought that Sho liked him…even though they were both guys so, of course, Sho couldn't like him like that. Of course Sho didn't sit there and imagine what it would be like to actually hold his hand instead of brushing against it. Sho didn't sometimes lay awake in bed and imagine Shimazaki next to him holding his hand and saying something like 'Sho I think that you're the coolest guy to ever live. You're smart and funny and good at a lot of things and not at all a disappointment or a failure. I decided that I like you, not Minegishi, and also your dad died choking on an omelet, he suffered a lot, so now we can be together even though we're both guys so let's get matching tattoos and also kiss….' or something like that….

Sho had never once imagined that in his life.

"Probably not. You're a great kid and I have no idea why any girl wouldn't want you as their boyfriend." Said Fukuda quickly. First break ups? So soon? He had thought that it had been about videogames….but, no, it had been about…poor Sho….well he would help him through this. Even if he went full Suzuki and moved to a fort in the woods to hide his shame at his own hurt feelings….or went to the twenty four arcade all the way in Tokyo and played Space Invaders for two days straight….or decided to lead a life of celibacy as a monk, that last one hadn't ever lasted for more than a week, Fukuda would be there.

"She might not like me anymore because….because I promised her that I would email her but I just…I don't know what to say. I don't know what I'm supposed to say or do or…this whole being a boyfriend thing is really hard. I just don't know." Said Sho. He wiped his eyes. He didn't know why he was so sad. Well, obviously, because Emmy might break up with him. Not because he could feel Shimazaki's aura now and he missed him so much…and he hadn't seen him since he got suspicious about how Sho felt…and he just wanted to see him and be with him and….and stuff….and junk….but just as his friend…because they could only ever be friends….

"Sho….let me help you. I'm sure she doesn't dislike you just because your email is late. I'll help you write this out and then later on you and me can go out and find a present for her and I bet that after that everything's going to be just fine. Right as rain, as her people say. Right as rain." Said Fukuda. So that was it. This was….good. Sho was being normal, not at all like his father, and that was good. He had tried to write a love letter…upon reading it felt more like a mission report but that could be fixed….he had tried to do it on his own. His goal was to make this girl happy, he cared about another person, and that was good. A girl person. Fukuda…he didn't give a damn who Sho fell in love with but the rest of the world, including Suzuki, sure as hell did. He hoped that, for his sake, he had real feelings for this girl. He wanted Sho to be happy, that was all he had ever wanted, and….and he walked a hard enough road as it was.

His life didn't need to be any harder than it was now.

Being Suzuki Touichirou's son came with it the terrible burden of knowing that one day you would have to rule the world…and all that came with it. Suzuki had been obsessed with his bloodline, his powers, and how they were passed down since they had been kids. He had been obsessed with having children and then those children being espers and then eventually peopling the world with espers….and also just seeing what he would make….

And now he was putting all of that on Sho and there was nothing that Fukuda could do about it.

Fukuda didn't give a damn who Sho loved just so long as it wasn't Shimazaki Ryou. He was not a good person for Sho or in general. He frequently got a ten year old girl drunk and high and was probably planning on sleeping with her at some point, too, if his track record was anything to go off of. Shigeko…Shigeko was Shigeko and….and could try and warn her but she had power over him, not the other way around. He could tell her to her face that what she was doing was dangerous, that there were things coming in her future that she was not ready for, but she was under no obligation to listen to him. Not like Sho was.

He could protect Sho from himself.

Sho still listened. Sho still thought of himself as a child. Sho may have outranked him, he had never asked but he was Suzuki's blood son, but he still listened. To a degree. He knew that if he outright ordered Sho to stay the hell away from Shimazaki and all the others Sho would never speak to him again. No, he wouldn't ignore it but he wouldn't order Sho to do anything, either. He would just…let the whole thing fizzle out. It was a kid's crush, that was all, and it would pass….especially since he had someone now. A sweet girl, from what he had heard, and a kid living a normal life. Something that Sho needed in his life. Fukuda didn't care who Sho ended up loving, well anyone other than Shimazaki Ryou, but no matter who he loved Fukuda would be there for him not matter what he needed help with.

Even writing an email to the girl he'd left behind.


	270. Chicken Kiev

Shibata Hiroshi had always liked to cook.

People liked him when he cooked for them, it put them at ease, and he liked to feed people. A good meal could bring everyone together and calm even the worst tempers….and he was used to dealing with the worst tempers. People could get so crazy when they got hungry. When you got hungry enough your brain started to eat its self and that was the only explanation he could think up as to why things had gone so very wrong on the plane ride in. They had all been way too hungry and way too tired and Shimazaki hadn't helped anything with his endless singing….

Literally endless.

Shibata could hear him over the pounding of his meat hammer. He had been wandering through the house singing since he had come back from wherever he had been. Possibly a store. He had come back with a plastic bag full loose chicken breasts and told Shibata to make a meal out of them. They were having chicken kiev since they were in Russia and he was pretty sure that they were Russian. He hoped that Shimazaki liked them…but if not then he should have given Shibata more direction than 'here's meat, make food out of it' and then a wet slap to the back….and Shibata really hoped that he didn't have salmonella now…

Was the headache from the pounding of the meat hammer, Shimazaki's singing, or the coming salmonella? He didn't know. His money was on the singing, though.

"Back in the USSR….don't know how lucky you are, boy….back in the USSR…." Sang Shimazaki as he teleported into the kitchen and opened a can from the fridge. He took a sip and put it back. He did this sometimes. Shibata had no idea why. Shimazaki could sense him. He knew that Shibata could see what was written on the cans. There was no need to start a million and one cans of that energy drink thing Hatori drank instead of water…though getting him back to drinking water would be for the best. All of that sugar and caffeine could not have been good for his kidneys…and finding out that Shimazaki had opened and sipped all of his energy drinks would not be good for his stress levels.

"What are you looking for?" asked Shibata

"Beer, preferably Toshi's beer but I'll take anything at this point." Said Shimazaki

"You're holding one of Hatori's energy drinks…actually he's claimed the whole shelf. If you're looking for beer-" said Shibata

"I can find things just fine on my own, thank you. I know what a beer can feels like." Said Shimazaki. Shibata was about to tell him that he had said so many times before that he had no idea what was in cans…and also obviously he could not find the beer just fine on his own because he was sampling everything like that time he got them kicked out of Thirty One Flavors…though maybe Shibata had helped with that just a little bit…..

How was he supposed to know which of the thirty one flavors he liked if he didn't get to sample them all?

"You know that I can just tell you what's in those cans, right?" asked Shibata as he turned away from the counter top. He almost banged his head on the cabinet. This was one of those tiny old soviet era kitchens from one of those grey apartment blocks. This place must have been bought before Suzuki got the money to just build Claw housing. He couldn't imagine him just willingly living like this. In such a tiny place and crammed in like sardines with everyone….not that he minded having Hatori for a roommate or anything like that. It was either Hatori shared with him or they all drew straws to see who would end up needing to bunk with Shimazaki…and not even Minegishi wanted to do that…

Shibata just could not begin to imagine why not.

"Hey, I'm not helpless. I can do things on my own." said Shimazaki. Shibata quickly backtracked. Of course he hadn't meant to call Shimazaki helpless! He was anything but….right? Honestly Shibata had no idea what he could do on his own. Sometimes he did his own laundry and made his own breakfast and even managed to get his hair so perfect every single day…but then he went and did things like open every single can in the fridge looking for beer or something….or microwaved a raw egg….or filled the waffle maker with caramel….or made Hatori narrate TV for him at four in the morning….

Still, though, he hadn't meant to offend.

"I-I didn't mean to imply that you were helpless-" said Shibata

"Well you did. Oh, sure, the poor little blind man can't be trusted to find his own beer. Better come in and help him." said Shimazaki. Shibata had no clue if he had actually offended him or not. It was so hard to tell when he was being serious and when he was kidding. Like the crazy stories he told about his childhood. Shibata wasn't sure if he had actually burnt his house down or been left in the woods to die or been forced to dig graves at three a.m. naked in the rain or fed his seeing eye dog enough cake to give it diabetes so it died slowly in his arms or…any of that other stuff. Shimazaki was a hard guy to get a read on.

Especially when he wasn't sober.

"I didn't mean it like that. You were just opening up literally everything….again. Everything of Hatori's. You know how fragile he is. He hates it when you do that." Said Shibata. He figured that Shimazaki had been kidding because he hadn't thrown anything or tried to hit him or anything like that. Good. He hated fighting people when he didn't have to and, like Her Little Ladyship had said, friends shouldn't fight…even when one friend was constantly picking on another friend for no good reason.

"If he's got a problem with me then he can just come and kick my ass like a man." Said Shimazaki

"You know that's not how he is. He's terrified of you…and for good reason." said Shibata. He knew…some…of that Shimazaki did for Claw. The missions he'd been on. He hadn't been a member for nearly as long as the others but even he'd been warned about Shimazaki Ryou…and while he wasn't as bloodthirsty as the rumors made him seem he was tarrying in a totally different way. He was just so damned unpredictable….

Though that might have been because of the drinking and the drugs and not some sort of natural inborn…thing.

"What? So I gave him MDMA without telling him what it was….and so I sometimes climb into bed with him at night and whisper to him that I'm death and I've come for him…and so what if I held him upside out of a window-" said Shimazaki. Shibata didn't want to hear anymore. He hated doing this, being like this, being what everyone thought that he was but sometimes he had to do what he had to do.

Even if it was just a little too slow.

He had been intending to pin Shimazaki against the fridge and tell him not to do things like that to Hatori. He was just a kid. He wasn't even twenty yet and he was very emotionally fragile. He had a lot of feelings inside of himself, as Her Little Ladyship would have said, and he could be a little dramatic….and he maybe got too invested in his games….but he was not someone who deserved to be treated like that. He had no idea what Shimazaki's problem with Hatori was. He had apologized for what he had said to Minegishi and now everything should have been ok in the group.

Things were almost never ok in the group.

Especially not now. Shimazaki had teleported out of the way and was now dipping his fingers into the garlic butter and sucking them….and now Shibata would have to make more garlic butter for the kievs….and also he really hoped that Shimazaki had washed his hands after handling all of this raw chicken….but he probably hadn't.

"What, you're going to fight me now?" asked Shimazaki. Shibata sighed. No, he was not going to fight Shimazaki. They had to work together so they had might as well get along…even if he could be sort of an asshole for no reason. Well not exactly no reason, he did have his very serious disorder where he forgot that he existed if people weren't paying attention to him, but maybe he should have seen a professional about that instead of making everyone else's lives more difficult.

"No, but I am going to ask you to leave Hatori alone and to get your fingers out of the butter bowl." Said Shibata

"This isn't butter. This is all salty and garlicy. I've eaten butter before and this is not it." Said Shimazaki. Shibata was tempted to tell him that, until very recently, he had never even heard of a nectarine so maybe he wasn't the guy to ask about food…but that would not at all be good for the group.

"It's garlic butter I made for the kievs…now give me back my mixing bowl." Said Shibata. He reached for it but Shimazaki teleported so he was standing in the doorway.

"Nope. It's mine now and forever. You just focus on beating your meat and forget all about little old me." Said Shimazaki before he teleported away. Shibata rolled his eyes and went back to pounding chicken breasts flat. How did Minegishi put up with him? And what did they even see in him? Hatori was at least nice and while he said things that he shouldn't have it wasn't a regular occurrence and he had said sorry. He had no idea why Minegishi had chosen Shimazaki. Well aside from the fact that he was a pretty attractive guy….when he was quiet. He was tall and muscular in a lean way and his hair was always perfect and he wore the world's tightest pants…but still. He was so…

Annoying.

Shibata would never call him that to his face, of course, but he could be so annoying and so draining, too. Like now. Now he had a fridge full of opened energy drinks to deal with and he had to make more garlic butter too. Whatever. He liked to cook. He would get out another mixing bowl…even though that had been his good metal one and he missed it…and he would make more garlic butter after he pounded these chicken pieces flat and-

And also removed the chicken pieces from the pieces of shattered meat hammer…and cutting board.

Damn. That cutting board had been a gift from Her Little Ladyship after he shattered his last one. This one was supposedly made of super strong plastics. It had been stronger than his old wooden one but it too gave up the ghost. No matter, no matter, he had spares. Just something that he had to deal with and plan for, times when he forgot his own strength, and this didn't piss him off in the least bit. No, he was fine. He would just dig through the box of kitchen stuff, they still weren't fully unpacked, and find his spare cutting board and then pound more chicken breasts and then make more garlic butter and then heat up the oil on the stove and preheat the oven….and also watch the stove and the over because sometimes he forgot to and that was how he had gotten banned from so many cooking classes…

He was fine.

He bent over, hit his head on the counter, and dug through the kitchen stuff box for the spare cutting board. He needed to use a cutting board or he'd ruin the counter like he did last time he tried to make this. He wasn't about to ruin another counter just because he still didn't know his own strength even at his age. He was going to dig out the cutting board and-

And also deal with whatever that was.

"Shimazaki! What the hell!?" he heard Hatori shout. There was the slamming of a door and then hurried footsteps. Shibata stood up, careful not to hit his head on the counter this time, and instead managed to bang it on the cabinets. He knew that he was an unusually large man but the soviet people who had originally lived here must have been tiny. He could barely turn around to face Hatori…whose aura, what little he had, seemed upset…which was bad….but he hadn't gone to hide in the bathroom so this was progress.

"What did he do now?" asked Shibata. What, did he need to put Hatori in one of those baby backpack things so Shimazaki would leave him alone? What was even the point of messing with him? He was a little guy who startled easily. There was only so much fun to be had there…not that Shibata had ever been able to understand that sort of fun. The sort that happened at someone else's expense. Shimazaki was either just having fun or he was still being weirdly jealous because Hatori had a little crush on Minegishi. Shibata would believe either.

"He spilled garlic sauce on my bed….can you show me how to do laundry again?" asked Hatori. Shibata was happy to help. He didn't mind the extra work, not for Hatori, he needed all the help he could get. His parents had died before they could teach him how to take care of himself. It had been tragic…and also very suspicious….but Shibata kept that part to himself. Let him think that it had been a freak accident, the fire that killed his parents, and not….some of the stuff Shibata had heard about. The ways that Claw would persuade some espers into joining. No need to get him paranoid.

He had enough going on in his life anyway.

Well they all had a lot going on in their lives but Hatori especially had a lot going on in his life. He was the youngest and he had never even learned how to do his own laundry or cook a meal or even organize his own clothes. He mostly just kept them in a garbage bag and when they all got dirty he had one of the Awakened wash them. Poor Hatori…

Well Shibata was there for him and always would be. Like Her Little Ladyship would have said, that's what friends were for.

"Sure thing. Just let me finish up here. Strip your bedding and leave it by the washer….and if Minegishi has their basket next in the que just leave it behind their stuff. You know how they get about people touching their clothes….or their anything, really." Said Shibata

"I-I know! I mean I did that already I mean…I mean I know not to touch their stuff…or go near them. I mean especially after…what happened. Hey Shibata? Do you…do you think that they still hate me?" asked Hatori. Shibata knew that he had to tread lightly. Hatori felt things very strongly. That was why he was up until three or four in the morning every morning screaming at his games. He was still ashamed of himself, and rightly so, there was a time and place to proposition someone sexually and at a company Christmas party in front of the entire upper echelon, the important financial backers, the kids, and people who spied for Suzuki was not the place….but Minegishi had forgiven him so he should have forgiven himself.

Well Minegishi hadn't brought up being angry with him so he figured that was as close to forgiveness as anyone would ever get from them.

"I think that if they hated you then you'd be dead right now. They probably don't like you but, hey, at least they dislike Fukuda a lot more." Said Shibata. There was no excuse for it, what Fukuda had said, and in front of Little Suzuki, too. Now he would grow up thinking that it was ok to say those sorts of things to people. There was nothing at all wrong with Minegishi's….chestal area….not that Shibata had any sort of opinion on their….on any part of their body at all. No, he had learned a long time ago to keep his eyes above the neckline when it came to everyone. People were always making assumptions about him as it was. It was best not to give them any more fuel for their fires.

"Yeah, at least Fukuda said something worse than what I said…right? I don't know exactly what he said, I was in the bathroom." Said Hatori. Shibata wondered if it should have been a contest. Who wanted to win that? Or even be a part of it. They should not have been talking that way to each other, especially when they had Minegishi around. They weren't a woman, they didn't believe in all of that, but it still felt especially….not right….for them to be spoken to like that….but he wasn't HR, they didn't even have an HR, so he kept that opinion to himself.

"No, it was worse….I think…because he had said it to Little Suzuki first. He's so impressionable and little and he doesn't need to go around talking like that….and also you're not going to hide in the bathroom again, right? You're good?" asked Shibata

"Yeah….I'm ok. I think he went back to his own room. I'm….I'm ok." Said Hatori

"That's good. If you're feeling overwhelmed hide in the hall closet, ok? I can sense Her Little Ladyship and you know how she gets when you hide in the bathroom." Said Shibata. She had helped him, on the plane, to coax Hatori out of the bathroom. It had taken the rest of the flight to get him out but they had done it. He needed to get Hatori a blanket or something to hide under when he got overwhelmed because he could not keep worrying people and tying up the bathroom all day like that.

"Ok….but I'm fine. Thanks, by the way, for the laundry help. I don't know what I would do without you." Said Hatori. Shibata reached out to pat him on the head. He was a great kid, really, once you got past the emotional issues and the fact that he still used about a quarter can of lynx a day…but he was still a good kid. He tensed when Shibata reached out and for a moment he thought that he'd scared Hatori when he realized why he'd tensed up like that. The real reason.

"Get back to stinking to high hell, most likely." Said Minegishi as they entered the kitchen Hatori practically hit the ceiling. Shibata didn't blame him. They could be scary sometimes…a lot of the times. They were a perfectly nice person and all but that didn't mean that they still couldn't be scary….that and the fact that Hatori was very emotionally fragile.

"Yeah….I guess so….hey Minegishi. Little Sister-sama. How's it going?" Said Hatori. He waved a little bit at the two of them. Shibata resisted the urge to pick her up. She was so cute today! Well she was cute every single day but today she was in a new costume and she had her cat ears headband and she was just so cute and-

And he remembered why he had gotten fired from Wee World.

"It'd be going better if you moved out of the way….God, I hate these soviet apartment buildings…" said Minegishi. They scooted past Hatori with Her Little Ladyship following close by.

"They meant to say please. They would have said please if they remembered it…and it's going great. We painted each other's nails. Do you like them." Said Her Little Ladyship. She held up her hands to show everyone…and she was so CUTE! She was so proud of her blue glittery nails! He just watched to pick her up and throw her into the air! But he didn't because the ceiling was low here and also he didn't want to freak her out. Kids didn't like it when you randomly picked them up. He knew that now.

He had learned his lesson long ago.

"You look adorable, Your Little Ladyship." Said Shibata. He so wanted to pick her up and twirl her around…but he would not because that was not his kid and also there was no room. She didn't like to be picked up. Minegishi had told him before that she just put up with it to make him happy. That was why he had stopped picking her up even though she was the most adorable little girl in the whole wide world! Yes she was! Yes she was! Yes she-

He wished he had kids of his own.

He would pick his kids up all the time and toss them in the air and take them to the park and push them on the swings and play with them and all of that other stuff you did with kids. Unfortunately kids weren't in his future. Meeting women who weren't freaked out by his size was hard enough but meeting a woman in Claw was damn near impossible. Most espers were men, the figure was something like nine out of ten, and any women he did meet he would just end up leaving behind when Suzuki had them move again. So for the time being he would just have to enjoy someone else's kids…which was fine by him…

Though he did wish that he had some of his own.

"They look nice. Very…blue." Said Hatori. His eyes kept on looking over to Minegishi. They had made their way over to the fridge and were picking up the opened energy drinks and shaking them. The plant on top of the fridge shuddered as they shook their head. Hatori shuddered along with it. Shibata couldn't tell if it was out of fear or any residual feelings they had for Minegishi. Shibata didn't get it. Sure they were attractive. They had great skin and pretty eyes and they pulled off the short hair look well and on the rare times when they wore something other than jeans and a baggy shirt they cut a nice figure….but they were normally in a pretty bad mood, had let their plants take over the house, took very long baths, and had very loud sex at odd hours of the day or night. Also they were a coworker and it was always a bad idea to even begin to think of a coworker like that.

"Damnit Ryou….I'm guessing he did this?" asked Minegishi as they held up an opened can of energy drink. Hatori mad a noise like someone had slapped him in the face.

"Who else would?" asked Shibata with a shake of his head. The drink hovered across the room and placed itself in Hatori's hand. He wished, sometimes, that he'd gotten telekinesis instead of psycho strength. The telekinesis looked like it was much handier.

"And I'm guessing he's the reason the whole apartment smells like garlic too." Said Minegishi with a sigh. Shibata was tempted to ask them why they put up with that guy if he drove them crazy. They didn't seem like they were a shallow person. There must have been something about him that kept them coming back….and not the same thing that woke the whole house up at four in the morning. Shibata had wondered for years what it was that brought Shimazaki and Minegishi together….though he didn't dare ask. Minegishi might think that he was trying to get with them, which he wasn't, and he didn't want. They probably wouldn't believe that he was just trying to puzzle out the love story that he saw unfolding right in front of him like in a daytime drama.

"He spilled garlic sauce all over my bed and I left the sheets and bedding by the washer….sorry." said Hatori

"It's ok. We'll just get the sheets and bedding washed and then I'll make more garlic butter and it's all going to be alright." Said Shibata. Poor Hatori. Even then he sounded so fragile….poor kid.

"Why didn't you just put them in the washing machine? Are you out of detergent? Because if you are I have some you can have. It's citrus scented and Sho won't let me use it since he's allergic…even though the smell won't kill him just the fruit…I miss citrus…" said Her Little Ladyship. Shibata forgot, sometimes, just how deadly that kid's allergy was….and he made a mental note to remove all oranges and other citrus fruits from the shopping list just to be safe.

"I…don't remember how. Shibata said he'd show me again after he finished up here." Said Hatori. He said it like he was ashamed of himself. There was no reason to be ashamed of himself. He was learning. He had lost the people who were supposed to teach him how to be an adult when he was just a kid. It wasn't his fault.

"For the love of…" muttered Minegishi as they got one of the secret beers out of the vegetable drawer. They had a second one in their hand, probably for Her Little Ladyship. Shibata held his tongue. If Minegishi was giving them a beer, and had painted their nails, then either they were having a spa day or something else had gone wrong in the Suzuki household. He held his tongue about Her Little Ladyship drinking. She had a lot going on in her life, it helped with her powers, and also…in some countries kids could drink….so maybe that was ok? He didn't know. He wasn't anyone's father yet.

"I'll show you how to wash clothes. Come on, it's not hard." Said Her Little Ladyship. It made him sad, sometimes, how fast she'd had to grow up…but President Suzuki just wanted her to be independent and stuff. Still, though, she did a lot more and put up more than a kid her age should have had to…and he wished that there had been more that he could do…besides make dinner…but dinner was good! She was a growing girl and she needed food to live!

"Mob, wait, you can't read Russian." Said Minegishi as they closed the fridge and put the extra beer in the front pocket of their hoody. They pushed past Shibata but stopped and looked over his ingredients. They shook their head, reach out, and amazingly enough a bulb of garlic grew down from one of those spider plants they had hung everywhere. He forgot, sometimes, how amazing their powers were….how amazing everyone else's powers were….

"I like a lot of garlic in my keivs. Put some salt on top when you bake them so they crisp up nicely….and for the love of God watch the fucking stove when you fry them…and bake them…and then after you turn it off for good measure. I swear to God you're trying to kill us all…" muttered Minegishi as they walked off.

"Thank you!" said Shibata. His thanks carried down the hall but he didn't get a 'you're welcome'. Either they didn't hear, they didn't care, or they were in a worse mood than normal. He would easily believe any of that. He sighed as he went back to looking for his cutting board. They were what they were.

All of them were what they were.

And he liked cooking for all of them.


	271. Do Svidanya

You were supposed to get presents for girls.

That was a boyfriend thing. Boyfriends were supposed to give their girlfriends presents. Nice things. Like flowers and chocolates. White Day sort of gifts. But it wasn't White Day…and she didn't even have White Day in her country. She only had Valentine's Day and he had already given her a gift…and she had given him a gift…but he had to get her a gift now. Because he was away from her. Dad used to send gifts home all the time back when they had all lived in the Castle. That was what you were supposed to do when you had a girlfriend or a wife or a family or…or people that you had left behind. You got them gifts…and that was what Sho had to do…..

He just had to figure out what to get her.

He had a list in front of him. He had been working on it since before the sun came up. His body was still getting used to Moscow time. That and this had been keeping him up for a while. What to get her. How to be a good boyfriend. All the stuff that he had to do. All the stuff that she had probably been expecting of him. It was a lot of work. He would have to email her all the time and then call her when she got a phone and then he would have to visit her, too, and then when they grew up…well he didn't want to think about what would happen when he grew up. How he would have to marry her, probably, and then have a family with her and rule the world and…and stuff. It was a lot. The whole thing was a lot. This whole boyfriend and girlfriend thing.

But this was what he had to do.

Sho used his powers to lift a poptart over to his mouth. He chewed as he poured over his list. So far he just had the word presents on top and then drawings of gift boxes…and that wasn't helpful at all. He was supposed to go out with Fukuda today to find a present for Emmy…but he had no idea what to get her. The binoculars had been a good gift but he hadn't been thinking like a boyfriend, then, he had just been thinking like someone who didn't want his friend to fall out of trees. So he got her binoculars because they were useful…so maybe he should just get her useful things….like….like….

Poptarts!

He took another bite out of his poptart. Yeah, these were great gifts. These were….they were useful and tasty and a good food…and she needed to eat. She needed to eat like everyone else needed to eat and…and that might have been a good gift, something to eat, and…and they sold poptarts in Russian too…but they also had those in England so that might not have been a good gift at all…or maybe it would have been. Dad had gotten a girl he liked, gross by the way, a bunch of foods and stuff that she had liked…so food was a good gift. Dad might have been a jerk and stuff but also he'd been married to mom so he knew what to do….

Or something.

Well Fukuda knew what to do and dad knew what to do from Fukuda…so maybe he should just ask Fukuda what to do…but he was still asleep. He didn't get up until later and Sho didn't want to wake him up. It might make him even grumpier than normal. Sho didn't want him to be grumpy. He wanted him to be in a good mood so big sis could maybe even be allowed to come with…and that would be good….and she wouldn't be allowed to come with if Fukuda was in his usual grumpy mood…

So he didn't wake Fukuda.

It was way too early to be waking people up, anyway. The sun was barely up. Everyone was asleep. Sho could sense them when he closed his eyes. Big sis was asleep in bed…he could see her sort of with his aura. He could tell where people were but that was only the half of it, Shimazaki had said, the rest was seeing them. What they were doing, what they were going to do, and what you had to do in relation to all of that. Once you learned to see all of a person with your aura when you would be able to know what you had to. You would be able to predict what they were going to do and then once you could do that then you would be unstoppable.

Big sis was just in bed asleep.

She was on her stomach asleep. That was all that he could tell. That was boring, watching his sister sleep, so he decided to watch someone else. Dad's aura was just as bright as big sis'. He was….he didn't want to look at dad or think about dad…so he didn't. He let his aura look past dad through…that was a wall. Walls were harder to see because they weren't alive…but he was looking through it and now he could see…Fukuda was still asleep. He was laying down too. Everyone was asleep. It was early in the morning. Why would they be awake? It wasn't like anyone else had a girlfriend to worry about. Dad had mom but she was gone, big sis had broken up with Hatori, Fukuda had never had a girlfriend in the ten whole years Sho had known him, Shibata said that girls were scared of him, Hatori was scared of girls it seemed like, and Shimazaki….he didn't like Minegishi like that and nobody would ever like Minegishi like that because they were mean all the time….so really Sho was the only one with a reason to be awake at this crazy time.

He wasn't the only one awake.

He could feel Shimazaki. He could feel Shimazaki teleporting around. He let his aura rest on him. He was….Sho watched him moving. He was sitting at his desk and…those were his hands…and he was…he was combing his hair. Sho was proud of himself, there, for being able to see what he was doing. Sho watched him combing his hair so it stood upwards. He had seen Shimazaki do this before but in person. He covered his hair in that stuff that smelled nice. Not gel because that got all crusty, something with a 'P' sound…something with a 'P' sound that smelled so good when Sho got close to him…like the times when he rode on his back and…and it was so….

He should not have been thinking about this.

He should not have been thinking about the time when he had been riding on Shimazaki's back. He should not have been thinking about how it felt to have his arms around his shoulders and his face pressed into his hair…and it smelled so nice….and he always smelled really nice. Because he wore a lot of cologne, which was perfume for guys, and it smelled so good and…and he smelled so good and….and Sho should not have been thinking about this….

Shimazaki was looking back at him.

His aura slammed back into his body. His face was red. His face was red and his whole body was warmed and his poptart was crushed into crumbs….and he had to hide in his shirt…even though he knew that there was no point to hiding in his shirt because Shimazaki was still looking at him…and he couldn't hide and…and he felt…he felt a lot and…and he just….

He didn't know what to do.

He felt the energy around him shift. He still had his head in his shirt when he felt someone tap him on the back. He knew that he had to come out of his shirt. He knew that he had to come out and…and say something….and he would do that. In a minute. Once he just….could come out of his shirt. He could see Shimazaki with his aura. He could see him sitting cross legged on the ground next to him. He was reaching for something…and then Sho heard chewing. The poptart box. He couldn't see the poptart box. He could only see Shimazaki.

He couldn't see past him.

Sho opened his eyes. He was seeing with his eyes, now, and his aura was…he was making it stay tucked in. He kept his aura in and…and looked with his eyes. He could see through his shirt. Shimazaki was there and he was still in his nightclothes, well just sleep shorts, and…and Sho was looking at him. He was looking at Shimazaki and Shimazaki was looking….well he was looking at everything. He was looking at everything and he was eating one of Sho's cinnamon chocolate explosion poptarts…and Sho wanted to stop him….but also he didn't….

Sho didn't know what he wanted.

"I'm going to finish these off if you don't mind." Said Shimazaki. He missed the kid. He hadn't seen the kid in a while, he was bored, and it felt like the kid wanted to see him. This was good. They could go on some early morning adventures. The stray dogs should have been getting to sleep right about now. They could play with them and ride them…well he was too big to be riding dogs…but the kid wasn't. Yeah, it would be a good time. Well it would be if the kid ever stopped being…however he was being. Shimazaki hoped that this didn't turn into a regular thing with him, turtling up like this, because it was so boring.

And boring did not suit this kid at all.

"Yeah…um….you can have them." Said Sho. He pulled his shirt down from over his head. He felt…less warm and red….but still just so…not normal. He knew that he shouldn't have felt like this. He knew that he shouldn't have had a goldfish in his stomach when Shimazaki was near. It was weird. Sho…he was just so weird when it came to Shimazaki….

And Shimazaki had noticed.

Shimazaki had noticed how weird he was, before, and that was why Sho had been avoiding him since a few days ago. He had all but told Sho that he knew about the weird thoughts and the weird feeling and the feeling of the goldfish in his stomach….and Sho never wanted anyone to know! Nobody could ever know how weird he was and…and all of the stuff he wanted and…and all of the stuff that he didn't want and….and he just wanted to be left alone!

No he didn't.

"So, what's up?" asked Shimazaki as he unwrapped another chocolate cinnamon rectangle. He liked the wrappings. They sounded nice. He folded up the wrappings and put them in his pocket to listen to or be surprised by later.

"Nothing's up. You just came here and started eating my poptarts….and be quiet or my dad's going to hear." Said Sho. His eyes went right over to the hallway. Dad was awake and if he found out that Sho had someone over then he and Shimazaki would be in for it….and Sho remembered what had happened the last time that Shimazaki had been in for it. The way he had coughed up blood…and how he had trouble sanding up….and how scary it had been.

"Nah, he can't hear us. He's busy." Said Shimazaki. He made sure that Suzuki didn't notice him. Shimazaki knew how not to be noticed by people who were locked in their rooms with laptops on their laps. He didn't know or want to know what Suzuki got up to all alone…and also it wasn't Wednesday at two in the morning and he wasn't muttering something about a woman named Masami.

"Busy with what?" asked Sho

"Either playing videogames or shit you're too young to know about." Said Shimazaki

"Oh….ok….but still! If he catches you in here then you're in for it. Dad hates it when we have people over." Said Sho

"Toshi comes over all the time." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah…but they're big sis' friend…and I don't want to talk about them." Said Sho

"Alright…but I have no idea why you wouldn't want to talk about Toshi. You and them are cool now, right?" asked Shimazaki

"They hate me." Said Sho

"No, they don't. If they hated you then you would have been suffering by now. Besides, you're a kid. They won't admit it but they like kids. Toshi likes…well Toshi doesn't hate you." Said Shimazaki

"I don't want to talk about Minegishi." Said Sho

"Fine, fine, whatever you want." Said Shimazaki

"I want….I don't know what I want!" said Sho

"Well now who's going to get your dad in here?" asked Shimazaki

"Shut up." Said Sho

"You shut up." Said Shimazaki sticking his tongue out.

"Bastard." Said Sho. He stuck his tongue out farther.

"Double bastard." Said Shimazaki as best as he could. The kid thought that he could win? Hell no. As he had been told before he had an unnecessarily long tongue.

"Triple bastard." Said Sho sticking his tongue out as far as he could. He was going to win this. He always won when he did this back in school….when he had been little. Maybe he had been too little…or maybe he was too big for this now. He was ten but…but he was having fun…and maybe that was all that mattered.

"Quarduple bastard." Said Shimazaki. He knew that he was being childish but, hey, kids had the best lives. They got to live in blissful ignorance of how terrible and terribly boring life was. Even when he had been a kid he hadn't had any idea how terrible his life had been. No, he was going to be as childish as he wanted to. He was Shimazaki Ryou. Who the hell thought that they could tell him what to do…well aside from the crazy guy who had fathered his ten year old best friend….somehow.

"Infinity bastard." Said Sho. He bit his tongue but it was worth it. Good. He won. You couldn't beat infinity. Well you could do double infinity but he and big sis had ruled that illegal back when they had been four and five…well mom had told them to make it illegal because they had just been going over and over again saying double infinity.

"Hey, you can't just go right to infinity. You have to work up to there. You've got to go to quintuple and then sextuple and then-" said Shimazaki

"I don't have time for that. I have important stuff I have to do." Said Sho. He felt that weird feeling in his stomach and now he just needed…he needed to…to get back to what he had been doing. Figuring out what to get his girlfriend…who he liked…and not his best friend….who he didn't like. Not like that. Not in the way where he wanted Shimazaki to just lean over and just….he was NOT thinking about that!

"Ooh, can I make it more difficult for you?" asked Shimazaki as he picked up one of Sho's pieces of paper. Hey! He'd gotten Sho this! This really was some good feeling paper.

"You already are." Said Sho taking his paper back. He tried to sound all bored and mean and stuff, like Minegishi, because apparently that was what he liked. He liked people who were mean and boring and told him to go away and stuff.

"Hey, you're the one who's been staring at me all morning. What's up with that? I don't see you for days and days-" said Shimazaki. What was with this kid? Well he had no idea what it was that had gotten into him but he needed to help him and stuff because he was not going to be best friends with a boring kid.

"You can't see at all." said Sho. Fine. If he wanted someone to be mean to him then Sho could be mean. If that was what he wanted and stuff. Sho didn't know why he wanted that, why he cared so much about that, why he just wanted someone to be mean to him like that….

"Ok, ok, I walked into that one…but still. What's up? You never stare like that." Said Shimazaki. This kid. This kid was so…he didn't know. He had better not have been turning into a teenager this early. Nope. He was not dealing with a sullen teenager. He hadn't even been a sullen teenager back when he'd been a teenager. He'd been….his memory of that time in his life was spotty…but he hadn't been sullen. Not even when all of that shit went down….so he was not going to let this kid end up sullen and boring!

"I didn't mean to stare. You were just the only person up and….stuff." said Sho. He played with his pajama shirt. He had to do something. He had to move so he played with the hole in his pajamas shirt. He just…he couldn't sit still and big sis was going to be so mad about him making the hole worse since they didn't make these anymore, they were a Christmas exclusive, and he didn't want to make her mad…well big sis' version of mad where she sighed and pretended that everything was ok when it wasn't. He didn't want to make her mad but….but he just had to move. Maybe if he moved then the goldfish in his stomach would leave him in peace already.

"Fair enough, but be careful with that. You're going to end up sensing shit that you never wanted to sense if you just go looking around with your aura like that." Said Shimazaki

"All I saw was you combing your hair." Said Sho

"Yeah, well, I do a lot worse in my life than comb my hair." Said Shimazaki

"Fine, I won't do that anymore….sorry." said Sho

"No, no, I didn't say never do it again I just said be careful and shit." Said Shimazaki

"But how do I be careful?" asked Sho

"That's…hard to explain….it's like….if I sense something that I don't want to sense then I just dip…it's like…when you feel something gross so you pull your hand away. Like you're looking through the fridge and you end up feeling someone's leftovers that they forgot about a month ago and now they've come to life. It's like that." Said Shimazaki. God, this was hard. It was weird, actually, to be on the other side of this. How many times had sighted people tried to explain color to him? More times than he could count. It was hard to explain a sense, especially to someone who didn't have that sense, even though the kid sort of had that sense. He could see other espers but that was about it. He couldn't see where the floor met the wall, he couldn't see where the rug ended, he couldn't see the normal person walking his dog outside the window, he couldn't see the roaches making their way through the floorboards, he couldn't see the birds on the windowsill of the apartment below them. He could only see what was loud, what as easy to feel, and not….it was very hard to describe.

"I have no idea what you mean." Said Sho. He felt sort of like how Shimazaki must have back when Sho had been trying to explain color to him. Color was just…color. He had tried using crayons and skittles and stuff but in the end Shimazaki had never learned what color was and Sho had learned that he was not a good teacher.

"Eh, ask me again later when I'm more awake. It's early, right? It feels early…but then again everyone might be sleeping in." said Shimazaki with a stretch. He hadn't asked his phone what time it was. It didn't matter. Suzuki might not have even needed him that day. This might have just been a chill with the kid sort of day….and those were the best days ever. Almost as good as chill with Toshi days. Those were heaven on Earth.

"No, it's early. My dad isn't even out of bed yet." Said Sho

"So what's go you awake so early? Drawing pictures?" asked Shimazaki. He dragged his fingers across the page the kid had been drawing on. He felt…he felt wax…and he had no clue how to tell what the kid had drawn. That was the one thing he really disliked about not being able to see, that and not being able to tell what the hell was in cans and boxes and shit, not being able to see what the kid drew. He was supposedly a very good artist and shit.

"I just…I'm trying to figure out what to get my girlfriend….because that's what you're supposed to do, I guess. I mean my dad would bring me and big sis things back from his trips…and mom too…but don't tell him I was talking about mom." Said Sho

"Hey, I don't tell him anything." Said Shimazaki

"Ok…thanks. Um….hey, Shimazaki? Do you…do you know what I'm supposed to get her? I mean….I guess food because she needs to eat to live…but that's not, like, a gift that you get a girl…so I'm stuck." Said Sho. Shimazaki probably knew a lot about girls. He was always giving Sho advice and stuff. Sho didn't really want that advice most of the time but…but he did know a lot. Why wouldn't he? He was so cool. He had probably kissed a million girls and stuff. He was always so cool and he had all of those cool tattoos and he was always up for something fun and…and stuff…and Sho would have definitely been his girlfriend if he had book Shoko instead of Sho….but he was Sho so he was not going to think about that anymore.

"Coke….wait, you still ten?" asked Shimazaki

"My birthday is still in December." Said Sho. Did Shimazaki forget his birthday? Had Shimazaki just…forgotten? Was he going to just…not say happy birthday next year? Was he going to just…just…Sho knew his birthday! It was in October! He knew Shimazaki's birthday and he…and he had no idea how Shimazaki could have just….

There was a hand on his back.

"December first." Said Shimazaki. This kid was way too high strung. He was like an overfilled balloon or an over stuffed….whatever that chicken thing that Shibata had made that had exploded in the oven but still tasted so good…God, he needed to eat more garlic butter…after he got the kid out of this funk he was in.

"Thanks…I don't know why I care but thanks. I just…you can remember or not remember my birthday. I don't care. It's just a birthday. It's not like I care that you remember my birthday or that you got me this really good paper or…or anything…or um…um…" said Sho. Shimazaki hand was still on his back and he just…he still had his hand there and Sho couldn't think and…and now there was a hand messing up his already messy hair.

"Yeah, no coke for you. I mean it's good shit but, yeah, I don't think you need coke. Your sister maybe but definitely not you." Said Shimazaki. God, what a shit show that would be. No, if anything this kid needed to be smoked down…but later on, not now.

"Emmy likes carbonated fruit punch better anyway." Said Sho. He had no idea why Shimazaki was laughing now, he didn't think that he'd said anything funny, but he was happy to hear him laugh.

"You know what? Just get her something she likes. That's just about what I know. I don't really get women gifts. I mean I've done the White Day thing and the Valentine's Day thing and shit but mostly I just stick to boxes of chocolate and shit. Not that Toshi minds. They love dark chocolate. They pretend that they don't but they love it." Said Shimazaki. Maybe he needed to mention Toshi less, he was getting some seriously pissed off vibes from the kid, but he couldn't help it. Toshi was just…Toshi. Toshi was amazing and he just…always wanted to be talking about Toshi. When he wasn't talking about Toshi he was trying to talk about Toshi and when he was talking about Toshi he was trying to keep the conversation about Toshi for as long as possible.

God, he had problems.

And so did the kid, apparently, if his aura was anything to go off of. God, why did the kid have to have a crush on him of all people? He had better not get all pissy and jealous like this all the time. Nope. He was not going to deal with that. The kid needed to be fun and to stay fun. He could be sullen and pissy in his teenage years like everyone else. Not now when he was ten and full of energy and fun and no judgement when it came to his own personal safety.

"I don't want to talk about Minegishi…and why do you keep on calling them by their given name when you know that they hate it?" asked Sho. He had his arms crossed and his legs crossed and he was just….not happy. Just because…for reasons. Reasonable reasons.

"Toshi doesn't hate it when I call them Toshi. It's…sort of complicated and heavy and not something that I'm going to get into with a kid…a kid who is my best friend. You. You're my best friend and only my best friend and nothing but my best friend." Said Shimazaki. There. That was a tactful way of handling that. He knew how to be tactful. He had tact. Shibata didn't know shit. He had all the tact in the world. He knew when to and not to tell the kid stuff and he knew not to tell the kid that, yeah, he had a crush on him but nothing could ever come of it. He wasn't going to just punch him in the heart like that. No, he was going to gently poke him in the heart until he dropped whatever these feelings were.

"Yeah, I get it. We're friends. I know that we're friends so you don't have to keep on saying that we're friends….and I already said that I don't want to talk about Minegishi." Said Sho

"Ok, ok, whatever you want. Just remember that you and I are best friends, Toshi gets their own category, and you don't have to be jealous." Said Shimazaki. There. He was the master of handling sensitive topics. Shibata didn't know jack shit. Shimazaki knew how to handle something as delicate and sensitive as this kid with his explosion anger issues and stuff. He was the best at handling this shit!

Or maybe not because he was hiding in his shirt again.

"I'm not jealous of Minegishi. I don't care that they're your friend too or that you let them call you by their given name or…or any other stuff that you let them do. I don't care." Said Sho from inside of his shirt. He had made the hole way to big. He could see out of it now like I was a shirt window. It didn't matter. Shimazaki was still looking at him anyway.

"Uh-huh, sure you don't care. That's why you're all turtled up in your shirt." Said Shimazaki. He pulled the kid's shirt down from over his head. Nuh-huh. None of that. He could be sullen when he got to be older, when he turned into teenage Sho. Right now he didn't want teenage Sho, he wanted kid Sho, and that was what he was going to get.

"Um….my head was…cold." Said Sho. He was warm, very warm, and he didn't know why. He was just so warm and…and he felt weird. Like…like the goldfish in his stomach had eaten a bunch of mentos…and then drank some soda….and then went to a trampoline park…and stuff….and he had no clue what this was or how to make it go away….and he needed to make it go away because this was not the way to feel about his friend at all….

Not at all.

"Then get a hat, don't hide in your shirt. Come on, I thought that you didn't hide from anything. God, how could my teachings have fallen on deaf ears." Said Shimazaki with a shake of his head.

"I-I don't hide from anything! I don't hide and…and I am not jealous of Minegishi. I swear on good set of colored pencils." Said Sho. He was not jealous…he just wanted to be as good of friends with Shimazaki as Minegishi was, that was all, he didn't want to hold his hand or kiss him or call him Ryou or any of that other stuff…he really didn't!

"Ok, you're not jealous of Toshi. I get it. You are not, have never been, and will not ever be jealous of Minegishi Toshiki. I read you loud and clear." Said Shimazaki as he raised his hands up in surrender.

"Good." Said Sho. There. Now they could forget about all of this…and he could forget about this weird feeling that he had….that wasn't gone yet. He wanted….he wanted to be near Shimazaki…but he was already right there…but he wanted to be…closer? It made no sense. He made no sense.

"You know you don't have to be. You can call me Ryou if you want to. I mean I already call you Sho so it had might as well go both ways." Said Shimazaki. If the kid was so hung up on calling him by his given name then he could do that. He didn't really care. He got called a lot worse than 'Ryou' on a regular basis.

"Um….ok. Ry-Ryou…" said Sho. He was as red as his aura…which was showing…and also pretty red. Why was he so red? It was just a name. Ryou. There were a lot of people called 'Ryou' in the world. He had met a Ryou before back in school and a Ryoko too….so he shouldn't have been all…like this…but it was…it was his GIVEN name…and it was just…

Sho felt like he was going to throw up.

But in a good way. He felt…wow. Wow was the only word for how he felt. He wanted…he wanted to run up the wall and across the ceiling. He wanted to fly through the air. He wanted to swing from the ceiling fan…but he wouldn't because there was no way he was light enough to be able to do that…but still! His first name! Wow! Just…it felt like Christmas and his birthday were happening at the SAME TIME!

"So about this girlfriend of yours. I'd say just get her something she likes. That shit goes a lot farther than just flowers and chocolate and all of that other shit you're supposed to get them. Get her something that you know she'll like and if she likes you then she'll like it and then…well you're still ten but when you get older then you'll get it. Anyway your dad's getting up so I'm going to get far away from him. If you need me I'll be around Moscow petting stray dogs. Do svidanya." Said Shimazaki before he teleported away. He hadn't been lying, he really did not want to have to deal with Suzuki first thing in the morning, but he also didn't want to deal with whatever that kid had been feeling towards him. God, he hated feelings. There had to be some way to make this stop…he'd figure it out later. Right now he had stuff to do. Important stuff involving getting dressed and petting stray dogs that may or may not have had fleas.

"Um…Russian goodbye too." Said Sho. He stared at the spot where Shimazaki had been. He wanted…he wanted to…he didn't know. Follow him? Be with him? Turn back time so they could be together for longer? He just…he didn't get it. He didn't get himself or his feelings and…and he just needed….he needed…

He needed to get back to thinking up gifts for Emmy because she was his girlfriend and he was supposed to get her things. So that was what he was going to do. Get presents for girls, always girls, and only girls.

So that was what he had to do.


	272. Soviet Army Helmet

Once Sho stopped thinking of Emmy as a girl and started thinking of her as Emmy the perfect present finally came to him.

"You…want to get her an army helmet?" asked Fukuda. Sho had dragged him to a military surplus shop, how Sho's Russian was better than his he would never know, and declared that an army helmet was the perfect gift for his girlfriend. A ten year old girl. Fukuda had no clue where Sho got these ideas from. Well this was what he had Fukuda in his life for.

"Yeah, she'll love it. This way if she falls out of a tree and hits her head she'll be fine. Also if she finds a bird's nest and the birds peck her head then she'll be ok too. Also it matches her backpack and girls care about their stuff matching." Said Sho. This was the greatest gift ever. She would love this. Then she'd be happy and his job would be done…for now. He had no clue what to get her next. After Russia Fukuda was taking him on an away mission to Korea while dad and big sis and the others were headed….he didn't know where. All he knew was that they were going to meet up in the Claw compound off in the Australian dessert…or maybe the one outside the capitol…he didn't know. All he knew was that he didn't have to pick out any more presents until Korea.

"That's very….practical…but maybe she'd like something else? Like candy, maybe? There's a lot of candy here that I bet she can't get in London." Said Fukuda. A soviet military helmet, a used one if the sign was anything to go off of, was not at all a gift for a little girl. Sho was still such a kid. He was thinking of things that he would have wanted, not what she would have wanted, but this was….better than the alternative. He hadn't inherited Suzuki's tendency towards stalking so that was a plus.

"That's a good idea. I'll fill it with candy. She likes candy. She only gets twenty quid, that's a lot of yen but not a lot of pounds, a week for money and she keeps on spending it on candy and stuff. That'll save her some money." Said Sho. Fukuda really did know a lot about this sort of thing. He had been the one to help dad after all and dad may have been a jerk but he had gotten mom….gross by the way….and now Fukuda could help Sho. He was always helping Sho out.

Even if he could be sort of a jerk sometimes he was still a good person and stuff.

He had been a jerk that morning, though, when he said that big sis couldn't come. He said that big sis would probably be busy with her friends and that they shouldn't bother her and stuff. She hadn't even been busy. She and Minegishi had just been planning on going to Starbucks and stuff which wasn't doing anything at all. She would have liked this, she liked hanging out with him, even if she probably wouldn't have liked the army store. She didn't like fighting and stuff like this…but she did like him…

But for some reason Fukuda didn't seem to like her at all anymore.

"Or, maybe, you could just get her a normal hat." Said Fukuda. He did not want Sho to mess this up. He had no idea if he had a crush on this girl or if he was in love with this girl or if he was just pairing up with her to feel normal but he did know that Sho did not need to deal with heartbreak at his age on top of everything else that he was dealing with.

"Why would I get her a normal hat when this is so much cooler than a normal hat?" asked Sho. Emmy liked things that were cool. She was cool like that.

"Because a normal hat would be something that she could wear in her daily life. You can't wear an army hat out in the world, well you could, but I can't think of any little girl who would." Said Fukuda

"Emmy would. She has an army backpack so she'll like an army hat to go with it." Said Sho. Fukuda just didn't know Emmy, that must have been it. She already had a normal hat anyway so she wouldn't have wanted two. She didn't have an army hat, however, and this was even better than one from her own country because it came from Russia. She had never been to Russia. She had never been anywhere, she had said. Sho would fix that when they grew up.

He'd have to take dad's place after all.

Sho had no idea if dad was really going to end up ruling the world but he knew that dad would give him Claw when he got too old to run it. If Sho had Claw then he would have to move around all the time like dad did…and then of course he would take Emmy. She was his girlfriend and that meant that she would probably be his wife when they grew up, even if she wasn't an esper she was a girl and that was good enough, and once that happened Sho would of course take her with him. Him and all of the kids that he had to have. He remembered how when he had been really little, before he realized what dad was really like, it had been hard for him to have dad away for so long.

He wouldn't put his kids through that.

They would be happy to see him all the time. He would never hit his kid or make them feel bad about themselves even if they weren't espers or if they were just really weak espers like he had been when he had been little. He would be nice to them and he would take his whole family with him all around the world. They would have a lifetime of around the world adventures together as a family and nobody would ever be sad or lonely or left behind or…or anything.

And if he had to be married to someone it had might as well be her. She was good at climbing trees.

"Are you sure? Sho…most girls wouldn't like an army hat as a gift. Girls…they don't really like these sorts of things. You're got to think of things that she would like not that you would like. Things like flowers and chocolates, you know, you can't mess with the classics." Said Fukuda. God, this took him back. He felt like he was thirteen again helped Suzuki through his first White Day. He had wanted to give this girl he liked an entire economy sized box of hairclips since hers were constantly falling out…and then being stolen by Suzuki himself and tucked away in a shoebox under his Atari…but he had talked Suzuki into getting her chocolates like you were supposed to give someone on White Day…so he had gotten her ten boxes of assorted chocolates…and it had worked.

Thirty years later here he was.

There was something slightly….melancholic about this. There was something about history repeating itself. Sho was and was not like Suzuki. He was just as awkward about this sort of thing but he was a hell of a lot less creepy…and a hell of a lot more successful. Fukuda was happy for him. He had no clue if any of this would go anywhere but he was happy for Sho…and happy to help him through this part of his life. God, he had grown up so fast. It felt like yesterday that he had been walking Sho to his first day of kindergarten, fixing up broken bones and scraped knees, pushing him on the swings, playing endless games of menagerie….and now he was here.

Standing in a Russian military surplus store helping Sho pick out a soviet era army helmet for his first ever girlfriend.

"No, she'll like this. I know her. She'll like this and then she'll be all 'Sho, you're brilliant' and then I'll be all 'thanks, so are you' and then she'll be happy until it's time to get her another present. That's what you're supposed to do when you have a girl that you leave some place, get her things, and that way after you get her things she'll be happy and she won't leave you for a guy who's actually there. Shimazaki…Ryou told me that." Said Sho. He turned around and pretended to be very interested in the pile of helmets even though he had already picked out Emmys. He got her one with the red star on the front since he figured she would like the decoration. He was done and ready to go but he had to wait until he stopped being so warm and red. He got the feeling that Fukuda wouldn't believe that he was all red from the cold and stuff.

"Sho…don't call adults by their given names. It isn't polite." Said Fukuda. There was so much more he wanted to say but he would leave it at that. Sho was…at the beginning of a very long and complicated part of his life and Fukuda knew that he needed to tread carefully. Yes, he had gotten himself a little girlfriend, but he was still obviously something and that something was not something that Fukuda ever wanted him to think was something wrong with him.

But he needed to come off it when it came to Shimazaki Ryou.

He was thirty, he had done things so terrible that even Fukuda was disturbed by what he had heard and read, and also he tended to bring out the worst in Sho. The jealousy was making him say and do the worst things…not that Fukuda hadn't forgiven him for that. That whole thing had been his fault. He should have kept his opinions to himself and he never should have said that out loud to Sho of all people. Still, though, even if he hadn't said what is was that he'd said this jealousy was still just…not good. This was not good for Sho or the people around him….

And Fukuda had no idea how he was supposed to fix this.

"He said I could." Said Sho. He wasn't doing anything wrong. Shimazaki had given him permission and that was all that he needed. It wasn't like he went around calling Fukuda Tadashi or Shibata Hiroshi or Minegishi Toshiki…they would probably kill him if he ever eve thought about calling them Toshi…but there was nothing wrong with calling Shimazaki by his given name. Not when his best friend had given him permission.

"Well…that was wrong of him…to teach you something so impolite." Said Fukuda. It was wrong of him because he was trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Shimazaki must have known that Sho had a crush on him, he must have believed Fukuda, but he was still letting Sho carry on like…like this was fine. Like it was ok for Sho to have a crush on him…and Fukuda had no clue why Shimazaki would let him…

Well he hoped that he had no clue why he let Sho carry on like this.

"You just don't get it." Said Sho. Of course Fukuda wouldn't get it. Fukuda didn't have any friends at all beside Sho. He used to be friends with dad but nobody could be friends with dad. Dad was….dad. Who would want to be friends with dad? Fukuda had no clue what to do when it came to being friends with someone.

"Sho…you're young and there are a lot of things that you don't understand yet." Said Fukuda. This was not the place for this conversation. This was not the time for this conversation. Sho was young, too young, and he didn't need to know about….those sorts of things. Not yet. He was only ten. He needed to keep his mind on yen year old things like playing games and drawing pictures and getting presents for his girlfriend.

"Or maybe you're just too old. When was the last time you had a friend…or a girlfriend?" Said Sho. He was being mean and he knew that he was being mean…but how could Fukuda just…say that stuff? So what if Shimazaki…if Ryou...gave Sho permission to call him by his given name? There was nothing wrong with that if someone gave you permission. Fukuda didn't know. For the whole of his life he had never even heard Fukuda call dad 'Toichirou' even though they had been friends since before Sho had even been born. Fukuda had no clue what to do with fiends and he had no idea what to do with a girlfriend, either. He kept on trying to get Sho to get something else for Emmy, it felt like, even though you were supposed to get girls stuff that they wanted.

Fukuda knew nothing about girls.

Fukuda had probably never even kissed a girl. At least he had never mentioned kissing a girl or dating a girl or even knowing a girl. Fukuda had never gotten married or had a kid or anything like that. He was worse than dad. At least dad had mom. Fukuda had been the one to give dad advice and all but maybe he didn't know as much as he thought he did.

"Sho, that wasn't nice." Said Fukuda. Well that stung….but it was ok. Sho didn't know what he was saying. He was only ten after all. He just sort of said things, lashed out, when he was hurt…and he was hurt. Fukuda knew how he got whenever Shimazaki came up. He'd drop it. They'd talk more about this once they went on their away mission. They'd have themselves a long talk, stop by and see Sho's baby sister, and then maybe make a stopover in London so Sho could see his age appropriate love interest. Maybe all of that time away from Shimazaki would make it easier for Sho to finally get over him already.

He'd had this crush for way too long.

And it was only getting worse. It would only get worse the older that Sho got. He was ten now and then next year he'd be eleven and then twelve and then he'd be a teenager and…and Fukuda was not looking forward to that time at all. He'd have a teenage Sho on his hands…and he'd be in that special time of life where, as Shimazaki had so colorfully put it, Sho would have a hell of a lot of even newer feelings that would take this beyond blushing, giggling, and whatever the hell happened inside of his ten year old head. Fukuda needed to put a stop to this before he got to the age. Before he got to the age when he would try to do something about this….and when Shimazaki would let him….

And then Fukuda would have to figure out a way to kill him.

"I know…..I'm sorry…but I know that I'm getting Emmy a nice present and I know that I'm not being rude when I call Ry…Ryou…when I call Shimazaki by his given name. I'm ten, not two, I know how stuff works. Now come on, I have to get this for my girlfriend and you know their money better than I do." Said Sho. He didn't really see what was so wrong about calling Shimazaki by his given name. He had been given permission. He did, however, see what was wrong about what he had said. He had to be less of a jerk. He was done with being a jerk. If he didn't stop now he would never stop and then he would grow up to be like dad. His eyebrows might even turn into caterpillars because he was such a jerk that they were trying to escape…and stuff.

"You're right, you're a big kid now. Come on, let's go find a candy store and then we'll find all kinds of weird candy to fill that helmet with. Then we can find her a nice doll or some jewelry or something and I bet that she'll be really happy. Who knows, you might even get a kiss out of this." Said Fukuda. He knew when to step back. They'd talk on their trip. They'd talk like they had before. This was not the time or the place. He had to pull instead of push, he decided, pull Sho away from Shimazaki and towards this little girl who was his own age. That was the best part out of all of this. He didn't care about anything else aside from the fact that she was his age.

That was the best part.

He didn't have the father issues that it looked like Shigeko had. That was good. He was with a little girl and he seemed to care about her. That was good. He wasn't like his sister who seemed to be exclusively attracted to people at least twice her age. This really was good for Sho. He was doing something normal and age appropriate…and also this was so cute, too. Cute and good for some light teasing.

"You-you-you-just pay the man, Fukuda!" said Sho. He practically ran away from Fukuda. He did not need Fukuda to be talking about that part of his life. So he kissed his girlfriend, so what?! He was supposed to kiss his girlfriend! He was a normal person who was going to kiss his girlfriend normally and there was no reason to make fun of him….and….and….and he needed….

He needed to get his girlfriend all of her presents and then she would be happy and then he would kiss her and-and-and…and then she would kiss him and he would kiss her and it would all be nice and…and….and….

He got her a present!


	273. The Winter Palace

Suzuki's business was in Moscow, not St. Petersburg…but that didn't matter.

He had much more important business in St. Petersburg. It was Sunday and on Sundays he did things with his Daughter. This Sunday they would be seeing the winter palace. She liked palaces, he liked history, and they both liked architecture. They both liked it in the same way, a purely aesthetic level. He couldn't tell what any of it meant, the height of the ceiling, the shape of the windows, the height of the building, but he did know that it was beautiful. So did Daughter.

"People really lived here, dad?" asked Daughter. She held his hand as they walked up the steps of the winter palace. Her hand was warm in his. He could feel it through her little blue gloves. She was wearing all blue today. A blue dress, blue boots, blue tights, a blue hat, blue gloves, and a blue jacket. She stood out in a sea of black. He didn't know why she still let the elements affect her…but he wasn't going to complain.

She looked beautiful in blue.

"Yes, Daughter, they did." Said Suzuki. He held her hand tightly so they didn't get separated. There were other people around, not many in this dreary weather but enough to worry him, and he needed to keep her close. She was so small and so fragile and she could get swept away in the crowd or lost or…or she could leave…but he had to stop thinking like that. She would never leave him. She loved him. She loved him and….sometimes when people loved you they left…but she was not Masami. She was not her mother.

"It's so big. It's even bigger than the big fancy house we went to in England. I can't believe that one family lived her." said Daughter. There was some wetness to the steps. He kept her steady with his powers. He couldn't have her falling down and breaking a bone or dying. Fukuda wasn't around. He was off with the others. He was loathe to go so far from his only healer but this was his time with Daughter and Daughter alone.

"That was a manor house, this is a palace, and more than just the royals lived here. Their servants, the royal court, hundreds of people lived here. Of course when I build you your own palace there will be far fewer people in our space." Said Suzuki. They were inside now. The sudden burst of warmness was slightly uncomfortable but he didn't mind. Daughter must have minded more than he did. She was in full winter clothing. He wondered why she didn't just adjust her barrier to keep out the elements…but perhaps she just liked the way she looked all dressed up like that. She was…perfect….well she was always so perfect but she looked especially perfect in blue.

Because it was her favorite color.

He had been able to figure that out after going through her wardrobe. Eight seven percent of the clothing she owned had some blue in it. That was a very large percentage so therefore that must have been her favorite color. He liked her in blue because it was her favorite. Well he liked her best in yellow but blue was good too. She liked blue best and he liked to see her happy.

He wouldn't have wanted to see her any other way.

"You're going to build us a palace? I thought that you were just going to build us a really big house. You know, like when we lived in the Castle." Said Daughter as she unbuttoned her coat. He reached over and helped her out of it. She seemed confused for a moment. Hadn't anyone ever helped her out of her coat before? That was a thing that you were supposed to do. He had helped Masami out of her coat numerous times in the past. Back when they had gone places together. She had so liked it when they went out together…and maybe they should have travelled more together…

It would have been far too dangerous.

Even now he was uneasy. Daughter was so small and fragile….physically at least. She was a powerful esper in her own right but also something of a pacifist. That was why he had never truly shared kendo or naginata with her. She hated conflict of all sorts. He had no idea where that had come from. He had no idea what he was supposed to do about it. To change that aspect of herself was to change, well, who Daughter was as a person. He loved her for who she was. He loved her for the puzzle that she was. She always had something new for him to learn and he wasn't about to go changing her.

He never wanted her to change.

"The old house was just that, a house. You deserve a palace and I can give you one." said Suzuki. He took the hat from her head and put it in her coat pocket as he had seen her do time and time again. He brushed her bangs out. Her hair had taken on the shape of her hat. He didn't like it. He put her hair back to the shape it should have been. She stood still as he ran his fingers through her bangs. The long stands at the ends of them, the ones she never added to her braids, were thrown behind her shoulders. He put them the way they should have been.

There. Now she was perfect.

"I...ok dad, whatever you want." Said Daughter. Her hair was perfect now. Good. He reached down and pulled her gloves from her hands. He expected her nails to be red but they were blue. They were blue and they caught the light and they were….her. Blue. She loved blue. He had been expecting red but he got blue...and that was fine. Blue was fine because she liked blue, it was her favorite color.

She preferred blue dresser to yellow and she preferred blue nails to red nails…and that was alright too.

"Good. Now come along. Let's see the rooms they have opened for the public today. Maybe you'll get some ideas." Said Suzuki as he took his Daughter's hand once again. He held her little hand in his. He was amazed at how small her hand was in his. There had been a time when she had been able to wrap almost her whole hand around his finger. She had once been so very tiny….and she was small now. She was so small…but not as small as she had once been.

He missed it when she had been small.

He had no idea where these thoughts had been coming from. He had always been so anxious for her to grow up quicker, and he still wanted that, but he had found himself becoming more and more melancholy for those days when she had been small. She had been so small that he could lift her with one arm. She had run to him and thrown herself into his legs demanding to be picked up and held. She had called him 'daddy' in those days. 'Daddy, upsie' she would say. He would pick her up but…but he would put her down almost immediately. It had been such a gift to hold her and he had taken that gift for granted. Now she was too big for him to lift…

But she was not too big for him to hold her hand.

"I'm not going to run off, dad, you don't have to hold my hand." Said Daughter.

"I know that you won't….but I want to." Said Suzuki. He held Daughter's hand as they walked through an unnecessarily ornate hallway. There was a reason why most of the hallways at the HQs were bare. He was not a decorator. He just was not creative in that way. Son was very artistically creative. He was curious to see what he would do to the great buildings of Claw. The HQs. The Division HQs. Son would probably build his own divisions of Claw…and Suzuki couldn't wait to see what he did with them. Claw would be fine under his leadership…so maybe it would be already to give him the reigns a little earlier than planned….

Then he could spend more time with Daughter.

"But…none of the other kids' dads are holding their hands." Said Daughter. Suzuki looked around. Yes, some children were holding on to their parents. Smaller children than she was but children just the same. Children were supposed to hold on to their parents when they were out. On the rare times when he accompanied Masami and the children out in the world he had been told to hold on to either Son or Daughter. He simply kept them tethered to him with his powers. He hadn't known what a gift it was to hold onto Daughter back then. He had taken so much for granted…

But not anymore.

"There. I can see some children holding on to their parents. Therefore this is socially acceptable." Said Suzuki. She worried more about that, being socially acceptable. She was better at figuring out what was and was not allowed….but he had powers of observation too. He had to hold on to her. The children's Russian was terrible and this country was very foreign to what they were used to. Therefore he had to hold on to them…to Daughter. Son could take care of himself, mostly, and when he couldn't that was what Fukuda was for. Daughter…there were so many dangers around her…and he would protect her.

"Those are little kids. I'm not a little kid, I'm ten." Said Daughter. He watched the path her eyes took. She was glancing over at children her were closer to her age, if height was anything to go off of. She cared about blending in with others her own age…and he could understand that…somewhat.

"…as you wish." Said Suzuki. He slowly let go of her hand. He felt cold without her. She stayed by his side but she did not put her hand in his…even though there was nothing wrong with him holding on to her. What did she care what her close in age peers thought? She was Suzuki Shigeko. She was royalty, practically, and she should not have given a damn what others her age thought about her. She was her. She was the most perfect person…the second most…the most perfect person to him in her category…

He loved her so much.

And he so wanted to hold on to her. There was a gift to it, holding on to her, and there was not a time in which they were together when he did not wish that he was holding her in some way. Holding her to keep her safe. Holding her to keep her warm. Holding her to affirm affection. Holding her to make her feel what he felt for her. Just…holding her in some way. She was so very small and warm and soft….

But she did not want to be held.

And he would respect that. Even though the distance between them, only a sliver of light, felt like lightyears which separated them. She was there beside him, he could feel her aura and see her there physically, but…but at any moment she could stop being beside him. She could turn a corner and leave his sight and then just…leave. He had no idea where she could possibly go as a ten year old stranger in this strange land but he didn't want to find out. He wanted to grab her hand and keep it in his so she could not leave him….

But he didn't.

He watched her, though, he watched her as she watched everything. Her eyes were drawn to the walls, the paintings, the views out the window. She may have been looking out the window, though. She loved to play in the snow…and he would have loved to play with her if he hadn't lost that ability years ago. His back was beginning to betray him. He couldn't get down and dig and build and all of that….and he wished that he had spent more time playing with her when she had been younger…

But he was spending time with her now and that was what mattered.

"If you're thinking of playing in the snow you'll have to play with your brother. Stooping down like that is…not as easy as it used to be." Said Suzuki. He tracked the path her eyes took. She was looking past another family, one larger than his with three sons and a baby daughter, and out the window.

"I know, dad, I remember what happened before. About your back. I wasn't looking at the snow I was….looking around." Said Daughter. She tucked her chin into her chest and her face took on some color there. He didn't understand. Was she still cold? There was a chill which came in from the windows. They were in Russia, the winters were even more brutal than the ones of his childhood, and he would have thought that the people here would have done more to keep out the elements.

No matter, no matter.

There was a room opened for viewing. Everyone was on their way to the ballroom it seemed, and it was supposed to be amazing but she was chilled here and he did not want to see her chilled. He put his hand on her shoulder and attempted to lead her off into one of the other rooms, one full of paintings, but she…did not allow herself to be led. She stood still as he attempted to turn her around…and he didn't understand. He had led Masami like this so many times like this.

"We should follow the group, dad." Said Daughter. Her eyes followed the same family that she had been following this whole time. She did enjoy being around others…but she was chilled here. She was chilled and he could take her to a place where she would not be chilled…and she did not want that…and he did not understand.

"You're chilled. It's warmer in that room." Said Suzuki. His hand was still on her shoulder but she was still not moving. He didn't understand. He didn't understand her right then…but that was alright. Not understanding her was….was something in and of its self. Not a bad thing. There was a puzzle to her and he was simply picking up another one of her pieces. He had her piece in his hands, this piece of her, and he just needed to see where it fit in with the rest of what he knew about her.

He knew so much and so little about her.

He knew that she liked royalty. She was royalty so, of course, she would have an affinity to royalty. She was a princess, his princess, because one day he would rule the world. This was a European palace and she was obsessed with European royalty….and she liked it. She was happy but chilled but….but she didn't want to go. She wanted to go where everyone else was going and…and she was a much more social creature than he had ever been….so it made sense….he supposed….

He let go of her.

"I'm not cold." Said Daughter even though she was so clearly flushed.

"Yes you are. You skin flushes when you get cold. That's your body sending more blood to your outer layer of skin in an effort to ward off hypothermia. It's very pronounced because you have skin like a porcelain doll." Said Suzuki

"Um…I'm not red for…for that reason. Can we just…um….can we just keep walking in this direction? Where the…the other people are going? Maybe it's something good." Said Daughter. Her eyes followed that same family as they rounded the corner. Suzuki let go of her.

"As you wish." Said Suzuki

"Thanks Dad, we can come back here in a minute. Don't worry." Said Daughter. She spoke as though she were the one in charge…and he would let her speak that way. She was, in some ways, in charge. This was her day after all. This was the one day out of the week that he took from his busy life and gave to her….and she deserved it. She deserved this day and every other day. She was there and he hoped that she would always be there, right there, at his side. He cared so much for her….more than he had ever cared for anyone else…aside from Masami….

But there were ways in which he cared for Daughter more.

Daughter was someone who he could share every part of his life with. She was so much like him. An esper of unimaginable power and strength. Someone who knew that importance of emotional control. Masami had never been able to understand it. She had always been asking him to emote more, to share his emotions more freely, to show what he felt….and he couldn't. Most of the time he couldn't. Even when they were together sexually he couldn't. Not fully. Not without putting her in danger. Daughter understood him. She understand that she could not ask that much of him.

He could give her what she did ask for.

He wanted to give her everything in the world. She was his and he treasured her and she deserved all that he could give and more. Unlike Masami she was someone who he could fully share every part of his life with. His powers, his dreams, his travels…all of it. She would always be there by his side. Masami would have loved this but he never could have been able to bring Masami to a place like this. To any place. There was a reason that he had been making some very serious plans to construct a walled in city for her.

She was fragile.

She was a normal human. Daughter abhorred conflict but if worst ever came to worst then she would be able to at least put up a barrier. Masami did not have that ability. She was helpless, a sitting duck out there, and he could not be by her side twenty four hours a day and she had refused guards time and time again. He may have disliked all of Daughter's friends but they were, mostly, capable of keeping her safe. Hatori was there mostly to keep her company and also to fix the Netflix when it froze and remembered the password for them. He also suspected that Daughter still had feelings for the man but, well, she could do better and that was why she never started anything romantic with him. There really was no man that was good enough for him but he would see her married to a department store mannequin before he saw her married to the likes of Hatori Nozomu. The children….the poor children such a union would create….

Not that he had to worry about anything like that now.

She was a child. She was still a child, a child on the cusp of the worst period in anyone's life was still a child, and she acted as a child did. He didn't have to worry about her meeting a man and running off with him and replacing him in her life with some moron who had no idea how wonderful she was and what a gift it was to love her. No, he didn't have to worry about any of that at all.

He wasn't worried about a thing.

No, only her happiness. He had followed the people to the grand ballroom. An exhibition of clothing and other artifacts from the tsars had been set up. Yes, this was interesting. Seeing how people lived in the past. The spiritual energy attached to these objects. Only the most sensitive amongst them could feel this. He was no medium, of course, so he could just feel the energy. They said that Mogami Keiji, the most powerful medium to ever live, had been able to tell the history of an object just by touching it.

He had never been so talented.

No. That man…that man and that show had been the first time he had ever opened his eyes to the existence of others like him. Mother and father had gotten him a VCR so he could tape the show, they had indulged him so and he did the same for his children, and he had poured over it religiously trying to copy what the man did. Aside from exoticisms and being able to push his soul from his body, always an unpleasant experience, he was no medium…and that had been….not a good feeling. Understanding that there were things in life that he could not do…but that was alright. Eventually he realized that he didn't need to have every power to be the most powerful being on Earth…and also he was grateful to have figured it out before he had met Fukuda or he might have been jealous of his power set.

Suzuki Touichirou was jealous of no one.

So what if he couldn't tell the history of an object just by touching it. He could grant and steal power at will. That was a much greater ability than anything that old, dead, medium had ever had. It had been such a relief, though, when he had hung himself…less competition….back when he had been afraid of such things. No, now he knew what powers mattered and what didn't….and besides. All of those objects were behind glass anyway so it didn't matter in the least bit.

That was a lovely dress.

He was here to enjoy things on an ascetic level so that was what he was going to do. That dress was lovely. He liked the pearls all down the front. Perhaps Daughter would like something like that. In blue, of course, because it was her favorite color. Even though she looked so much more perfect in yellow….no. Blue was her most perfect color because it was her favorite. She looked best in blue and….and he would have a dress made for her like that in blue. With the pearls…or maybe she didn't like them. Masami had always hated pearls. She said that they made her look old…even though of course they didn't….but women and their fashions were such a mystery to him even after all of these years so he had better ask Daughter.

"Daughter, would you like-" his words died in his throat. She had just been beside him….and now she was gone! Gone from his sight! The room rattled and the electricity cut out for a moment. Right. Power is nothing without control, Touichirou, you're almost forty four years old. It's time to put all of that behind you and…and find your Daughter before it's too late and she runs away from you forever….

She was in the room.

He felt her aura. He would have slapped himself across the face had it been socially acceptable. She was right there. She was right there not three meters away from him. She was there, a dot of blue in a sea of black and grey and other such muted winter colors, and she was…she was fine. She was standing next to another child talking and looking at an exhibit….

A male child.

He…he had the very irrational impulse to pull her away. She was talking to a male child and…and that was normal. She should only have spoken to other espers but….but she was a social creature…so that was normal. She was heterosexual, or at least he assumed that she was, so talking to members of the opposite sex was normal….and he should have encouraged it. He should have encouraged her to be heterosexual to secure the next generation…well she could reproduce as a homosexual but that was more steps and also if she chose a wife he would have to live with another woman and they were confusing and he had no idea what he would even say to a woman he was not related to or married to. He needed to encourage this…not walk up, pick her up his bad back be damned, and carry her away….

He let her speak to that boy.

Not without him being there, of course, because it was his job as her father to protect her from suitors…unwanted suitors…and she would have many suitors. Who wouldn't have wanted to be on the arm of someone as intelligent, thoughtful, kind, soft, warm, and perfect as her? No, she would have suitors and he would….he would chase them away if they became unwanted….and then when she grew up and had her family he would move her away from any and all men so nobody could try and take her away….take advantage of her. He knew how men thought, he was a man, and he wasn't sure if he would be able to control himself and not murder any man who thought about debasing his Daughter….

But she was just a child, still, and he had a while before he had to worry about any of that.

"My name is Suzuki Shigeko. I'm here with my dad, we're not Russian, we're Japanese, but we travel a lot. What about you? I mean I can see those adults there and they look like you but are they your parents….I'm sorry, Alexei, that was dumb….." He heard her say in stilted but passable Russian. Well now that was a surprise…but then again the children did have a greater capacity for learning than he did. Her Russian was very good and he was proud of her for that….but he still wanted to throw her over his shoulder and carry her away….

But he settled for eavesdropping even though he knew that it was socially inappropriate.

"No it wasn't, your Russian is very good. Yes, that's my family. My mom and dad, my brothers Timofey and Viktor, and my sister Anastasia…named for the princess. I don't know why my mother had to name her after a dead person. Seems like a bad omen to me but what do I know? I'm only twelve so what I say, apparently, means nothing." Said the boy. Daughter giggled at that. Suzuki had no idea what she was giggling about and if it hadn't been socially unacceptable he would have told her to stop.

"That's funny…you're funny. Um…I have a brother too, he's called Sho, but he's not here. He's ten. I'm ten too but we're not twins. I'm almost eleven…um…almost eleven." Said Daughter. She was flushed bright red and playing with her hair…and he wanted to reach other with his powers and tear her hair from her grasp but he didn't trust them in that moment.

"So….how are you liking Russia? Must be very different from Japan." Said the boy

"Um…it is…but I like it a lot. I like…um…this place and the snow and….and chicken keivs. I like those a lot…um…I like Russia." Said Daughter. She was stuttering and red and…and he had never seen her like this before….and he did not like it one bit.

"Well on behalf of my country I would like to express my gratitude that you like the chicken." Said the boy. She giggled and she flushed bright red and he wondered if she planned on stopping that anytime soon.

"Um…have you ever been to Japan?" asked Daughter

"No, I've never even left Petersburg. I bet it's nice there. Especially if all the girls are as pretty as you." Said the boy. Suzuki wanted to drag Daughter away….but he knew that he needed to give her space to…to develop properly….but he did not like the way she was laughing or the way she was letting that boy talk to her or how flushed she was getting….and he was bad at reading people socially but he and Fukuda had spent hours going over the cues a girl gave when she liked you. Fukuda had even put on his mother's dress and hat and they acted out a date….and they maybe had gone a bit too far acting out that day…but the lesson had still sunk in.

"Um…thank you? I mean….um…..I forgot Russian…for a minute there. Sorry." giggled Daughter

"No, you're still speaking it and very well, too. Maybe you could teach me some Japanese, though, that way we could understand each other better." Said the boy

"Um…you want to keep talking to me?" asked Daughter

"Of course. I've never met a Japanese person before. The only things I know about your people is that you wear wooden sandals all the time and you love tea." Said the boy

"Um…we wear regular shoes….sorry." said Daughter even though she had nothing to apologize for. Suzuki had encountered that assumption time and time again. Why did the rest of the world still think that they wore geta? He would never understand that…just like he did not understand this. What he was seeing. She was too young for this? Right? Well there had been Hatori…and that mess with Shimazaki…so she was getting to that age….but he was not ready for her to get to that age.

"Oh, well I was right about the tea, wasn't I?" asked the boy

"Um…yes. We like tea…I mean I like tea…I mean…" said Daughter

"Well there's a teashop in the palace. They have little cakes and biscuits and things too. It may not be Japanese but I think you might like it….if you'd be willing to have a cup with me. My treat." Said the boy. Suzuki….was about to pick Daughter up and carry her away. No. Nope. None of that. She was too young and…and that boy was not an esper or Japanese and….and she was only ten. There. Those were socially acceptable reasons to pick her up, toss her over his shoulder, throw out his back, and carry her away.

"Um….I am kind of hungry…." Said Daughter. And that would be the last thing that she ever said to that boy.

"Daughter. Come along. Now." Said Suzuki in Japanese so he would not be misheard. He had her by the hand again. Daughter looked up at him. He looked down at her.

"….this is my dad…and he says that I have to go now….but it was nice meeting you….bye." said Daughter. That was the last thing she ever said to that boy. She walked beside him. He had her by the hand. Maybe he as walking a little too fast. Maybe he had her hand gripped too tightly in his. He didn't care. He wasn't going to let her say one more word to that boy. She was too young for all of that. She was too young to let herself be taken advantage of. She was too young to get mixed up in all of that. She was too young to even think about all of that.

"Dad? What's wrong? Where are we going? Why are we going? We just got here? Where are you walking me off to?" asked Daughter. Suzuki slowed down and then stopped. Where was he going? Right. He needed a destination. She had…she had said that she was hungry…so he would feed her. She liked chicken, she had said, and he knew a very nice place in St. Petersburg….better than some little tea shop…and that was where they were going.

"Lunch. You said that you were hungry. You're hungry so I'm going to feed you. Right now. Do not argue with me." Said Suzuki. He would eat something and she would eat something and then in the time that their meal took he would be able to emotionally regulate like normal again. There. That was a good plan.

"But I don't….I mean I was….yes, dad." Said Daughter. Good. No arguments from her. Compliance. He loved that about her. She so rarely fought him….which was so good because he so constantly gave in to her. He….would not have allowed her to continue speaking with that boy let alone to share a meal with him….because he was a man and he knew what that meant…but he so hated seeing her upset….

But he hated seeing her with another man, with a boy her age, even more.

He held out her coat. He had been carrying it for her. He had carried Masami coat for her a thousand times….even though he was perfectly capable of keeping her warm…and now he carried Daughter's. He held it out for her like he had held Masami's coat out for her a thousand times. Daughter looked at him confusedly for a moment before putting her arms through the arm holes. He turned her around and did her buttons.

"Dad….I can dress myself." Said Daughter

"I know you can but I want to dress you." Said Suzuki as he did her buttons. He usually used his powers for this but he was out in public. Time to look normal when he was out in public. He didn't mind doing this by hand for her. He didn't mind doing this at all for her. He loved her.

"…yes, dad. Whatever you want." Said Daughter. He reached into her pockets and put her hat on her head. It took a few tries to get it absolutely perfect but it was worth it when he did. There. Now her hair wouldn't be smashed down into her hat. Her gloves came next. She lifted her hands for him and he got them on, the ice queen on top and the snowflakes on the bottom just as they went, and then he even made sure that she had enough finger room as he'd seen her do a thousand times. There. Now she was perfect.

He took her hand in his, this time she said nothing, and they made their way back out into the cold that was Petersburg. It didn't matter that this was a cold and strange land. He had her by his side, he always would have her by his side, and that was what mattered the most of all.

Her little hand in his.


	274. Pizza Should not be this Stressful

There was pizza in every country.

Or at least every country that Sho had been to. He figured because everyone everywhere liked pizza. Who wouldn't? There cheese and bread and sauce. Everyone liked cheese and bread and sauce? Even him. He just didn't really like them together. That was why he was taking his slice of plain cheese pizza apart while everyone else ate theirs. This wasn't a planned thing. Shibata had just ended up forgetting dinner in the over and it got too burnt to eat. Then everyone started arguing over whose fault it was and now they were in a Dodo Pizza in Moscow eating pizza that was, in fact, not made from dodos. They were extinct. That was why.

This was just normal pizza.

Well of course it was normal, it was pizza. Sho had only had bad pizza once in his life and that was at this place in San Francisco, which was a part of America, where they ,made their pizza with fake cheese and fake sauce and put vegetables on top of everything. Not normal pizza vegetables like peppers and olives and onions, which he could pick off easily without them contaminating his pizza. At that place they put on broccoli and asparagus and squash and eggplant….and it had not been a good time. That was why he was never getting pizza with big sis and Minegishi again…well big sis and Minegishi alone. They were here now but they were eating normal pizza just like everyone else.

"I can't believe we came all the way to Moscow….to eat pizza." Said Minegishi. They complained about everything. Sho wondered if, in the mornings, they wrote out a list of things to complain about just to keep it fresh. That was the only explain that Sho could think up for why they never seemed to run out of things to complain about.

"It's Russian pizza." Said Hatori. He made a scared noise and looked down at the table when Minegishi looked at him. Sho didn't get what he was so afraid of. He'd seen Minegishi act much scarier than that.

"I'm sorry I forgot about dinner….again. But, hey, at least I didn't set the apartment on fire….again." said Shibata

"I know. Couldn't you have left it in for a little longer? That could have been so much more exciting…." Said Shimazaki as he reached over and at the cheese from Sho's pizza. He had his own pizza, if anything they had too much pizza, but Sho was happy to let Shimazaki pick off of his plate. It made him feel all….swimming inside. It was a good feeling…and he liked this feeling…and he hated liking this feeling.

"Yeah, there could have been a fire….and stuff." Said Sho. He agreed because….because he liked to agree with Shimazaki. Actually he liked pizza better than fires but if Shimazaki liked fires better than pizza and that was ok.

"Which is why someone needs to learn to start watching the goddamned stove." Said Minegishi

"Hey, I was watching it…I just got a little distracted." Said Shibata

"I'm sorry, Shibata, I didn't mean to distract you." Said Hatori

"No, it's ok. It's not your fault." Said Shibata. He was glaring at Shimazaki when he said that. Sho didn't know what to do. Shimazaki could probably tell by Shibata's aura that he was giving him a look but he wasn't doing anything…just eating pizza…so maybe he wanted Sho to defend him and stuff…but Sho didn't want to be mean to anyone let alone Shibata. He was always so nice and he threw Sho in the air even though he was ten now. Fukuda wouldn't even pick him up anymore because he was too big now. Well Shibata was super strong and stuff….and Sho didn't want to say anything mean but…but he had to defend Shimazaki….

"It's not Shimazaki's fault that Hatori keeps on forgetting how to do laundry." Said Sho. He felt big sis' aura on him. She was frowning, now, and he had no clue why. He could have been a lot meaner…and he wasn't even her boyfriend anymore. Minegishi said meaner stuff all the time.

"Sho, be nice." Said big sis

"Yeah kid, be nice. Like Shibata is always saying; Hatori is very fragile. Like a china doll or one of those weird plates that people put up on display even though plates are for eating." Said Shimazaki as he picked up another piece of Sho's pizza. This time the bread part. Sho didn't mind at all. He did, however, mind the way big sis' aura felt on his.

"Be nice to Hatori, Sho, we're all friends and friends should be nice to one another." Said big sis

"And he really is a very emotionally fragile person." Said Shibata

"Guys….I'm not fragile…" said Hatori as he picked at his pizza. His had way too many toppings. Maybe Shimazaki should have stolen off of his plate instead…since Sho had pretty much nothing left on his plate at this point…but the thought of Shimazaki stealing from anyone's plate other than his makes him want to hit someone…and he doesn't want to hit anyone so he decides to let Shimazaki eat everything that he had.

"You shouldn't tell lies, Hatori, it sets a bad example for the kids." Said Minegishi as they took another slice of their stupid, gross, veggie covered waste of perfectly good bread and cheese and sauce.

"Won't somebody please think of the children?!" said Shimazaki in a high pitched voice. Nobody said anything. Minegishi just rolled their eyes even though they knew that Shimazaki had to have been really focused on someone to be able to see them doing that.

"Eat your pizza, Ryou, you're getting delusional with hunger." Said Minegishi. Sho would have kicked them under the table if they hadn't been sitting too far away for him to catch himself before his foot was halfway there. He couldn't kick Minegishi because that would be mean and he was done being mean like that….even if they should have been nicer to Shimazaki

Who had just kicked him under the table.

"Don't start shit with Toshi you can't win." Said Shimazaki. He hadn't kicked Sho hard but it had been hard enough for him to feel it…and now he was red….very red. He took another slice of pizza to cover up why he wasn't saying anything. So what if he had tried to kick Minegishi? He had stopped himself at the last minute and that was what mattered.

"See? They're impressionable." Said Minegishi. Sho glared up at them. They thought that they were so cool just because they were mean all the time and Shimazaki liked that for some reason. Sho didn't understand it but he did understand the way that Shimazaki's aura reached over and met Minegishi's for a little bit…and he didn't like it. He didn't like it one bit. It twisted his stomach all up in knots and he hated this feeling. He hated a lot of his feelings. Why couldn't he just be like big sis? She was normal. She had liked someone who she was supposed to like, not that he liked Shimazaki like that or anything, and she was having a good time even though she had to sit across from the guy who she had wanted to marry, before, and have babies with and stuff. Why couldn't he be more like her? She was…she had been born right and he had been born wrong and…

And he shoved a whole slice of pizza in his mouth.

"Sho! Be careful! You could choke and Fukuda isn't here!" said big sis. Sho didn't need to be saved. He was just…having some trouble….because he had bitten off more than he could chew….but he couldn't spit anything out because that would have been gross and then big sis would have been on his back about his table manners…but maybe stuffing a whole slice of pizza in his mouth had been a bad move…

"It's ok, I still know CPR. You're going to be ok, Little Suzuki…and if not…well…Shimazaki can teleport you over to the healer." Said Shibata

"Oh God no. Kid, you had better not choke…..can't stand that guy…" said Shimazaki. Sho got it, sort of, and he didn't really want to see Fukuda either. He was a nice person when it was just the two of them but when any of his other friends were there Fukuda just got really grumpy even though he didn't have to be. He really needed to learn how to give people a chance and stuff. Everyone, well not Minegishi, was so nice here.

It would have been nice to have Fukuda around.

He liked pizza. He would have liked it here because he liked pizza. He said that in Korea they were going to go to a laundromat that also served pizza. His friend Oostski found out about it, he liked Kpop and they shot a lot of Kpop music videos and stuff there. Sho didn't really care about Kpop but he did care about pizza and also about making Fukuda happy. It was nice to see him with some other friends. Maybe then he could make friends with Sho's friends since he proved that he had the ability to make friends. Then everyone could be friends together and have fun and eat foreign pizza together.

God, he was starting to sound like big sis.

"If he dies then Suzuki is going to kill us….if we're lucky…." Muttered Hatori. He was rocking back and forth and his eyes kept on darting to the bathroom. Shibata reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. Sho knew that he was only doing that so Hatori wouldn't run and hide. Sho didn't blame him, dad was sort of scary….ok, he was very scary….but Sho honestly doubted that dad would kill anyone if Sho died on their watch. Dad would probably beat them up and make them suffer but then he would just sigh, divorce mom, marry some other lady, and have a Son with her and then he would probably call that Son Sho and it would be like Sho never existed.

Well big sis would remember him.

"Sho isn't going to die, he just does this sometimes. Remember the other day when he fit an entire kiev into his mouth and we thought that he was going to choke? Sho just….does this sometimes…and I don't know why. I think that it might be a boy thing." Said big sis

"No, just an immature thing." Said Minegishi

"Hey, there is nothing immature about seeing how many slices of pizza you can fit in your mouth. My record is four." Said Shimazaki. Sho nodded as he chewed. He really wished he had taken this pizza apart. Now all the parts were touching and it was weird and….stuff. But he had to chew and swallow and then try this again with two slices of pizza and then three and four and then five and six and then he could break Shimazaki's record and then he would be so impressed and he would think that Sho was the coolest guy ever…the thought makes him all happy and swimmy inside….

He chews harder.

"Triangles or those little pub squares?" asked Shibata

"Triangles. Who do you think I am? Pub squares….I swear." Said Shimazaki

"Thin crust or thick crust?" asked Shibata

"Thick crust. Who the hell eats thin crust pizza? The crust is the best part." Said Shimazaki. Sho thought that the cheese was the best part, how it was all greasy and salty from the meat but also warm and sort of melty…but he wasn't going to disagree with Shimazaki. If he liked the bread part best then Sho would give him the bread part of every single slice of pizza that he would ever eat in his life from this moment forward.

Sho reached over and started to take apart another slice of pizza.

He felt big sis's aura on him. She was using her powers to hold his hand back. What was with her? Even he if he had a mouthful of pizza should still have been allowed to take more. They had plenty of pizza. They had more pizza than they had people at the table. They had just decided to get everything because they didn't know what was and was not good. Also he and big sis carried a lot of money with them. Sho didn't think that it was so much money, he'd seen more, but it was enough for all of this pizza…which Sho could take as much of as he wanted because he was hungry and he needed to eat to live…and stuff.

"Sho, don't. You already have a whole slice of pizza in your mouth. You don't need two or you'll choke and die and then I won't have a little brother anymore." Said big sis. She was always being dramatic like that. No wonder she had been in love with Hatori. He was the king of being over dramatic.

"I-Is he going to be ok? He's not going to choke to death is he? Oh God….Suzuki is going to kill us…or worse…I don't want to go in a traitor hole…." Said Hatori. His eyes kept on darting to the bathroom. Shibata wasn't going to let him go, though, because once he went in there it was VERY hard to get him out. Well it was easy, he was tiny enough to lift and Shimazaki could teleport him out….but then he just ran back in the first chance he got and then it was the same thing over and over again, which was boring, and Shimazaki didn't like boring things so neither did Sho.

"I'm not going to choke so you don't have to hide from my dad in the bathroom….and that's the boy's bathroom anyway so he could just come in and get you. If you want to hide from my dad then just go hide in the girl's bathroom. He probably wouldn't go in there. I mean he might send in big sis but he won't go in there on his own." said Sho

"I-I don't think that would be a good idea…and I'm fine…" said Hatori

"It's ok if you aren't. Suzuki is a scary guy…but please don't hide in the bathroom again." said Shibata

"I-I'm not going to-" said Hatori

"It's ok. Sometimes people get scared and want to hide places. There's nothing wrong with that, we all get scared sometimes." Said big sis even though she didn't have to. He had no clue why she had ever liked someone who was just so….not cool. He was such a baby, Hatori, and big sis liked that for some reason. He would never understand girls….or at least her. He had a girlfriend now and he sort of understood her. She liked to get one update email a week and then every day she liked a shorter conversation email. She also liked presents but he couldn't send her too many or her parents would wonder where all of the stuff was coming from. She wasn't allowed to have a boyfriend and stuff so he didn't want to get her in trouble. He knew what it was like to be in trouble with your parents, dad at least, and he didn't wish that on anyone let alone his own girlfriend.

Who he totally liked!

He was looking forward to seeing her, he really was, because that was just…how you were supposed to be when you liked someone. You wanted to be with them all the time and when you were apart you spent all of your time trying to figure out how to be with them again…and when you were together you thought about how much you liked sitting next to them even though they were picking off of your plate and eating all of your cheese even though they liked the bread better and how nice they smelled and how-

And he thought about his girlfriend like that. Not his best friend.

He thought about her like that, he just didn't show it. Like with Hatori and big sis. Hatori obviously still liked her. Why wouldn't he? She was big sis. She was the nicest big sis in the world. She was forgiving and she was always there for you and stuff and anyone who didn't like his big sis was a mother fucking cock sucking bastard and deserved to get beaten up! And also he would beat up anyone who did like her because that was what little brothers did….but not in any serious way….unless he did something like pretend to like her just to kiss her or something….then he would have to get beaten up and put in a traitor hole….and that would never happen because Hatori liked big sis and Hatori was a baby. He liked Hatori for that. He would never do anything to hurt her…well he wouldn't have the chance because she had broken up with him.

She really should take him back.

She still cared about him. Like now she was being nice to him instead of telling him that he needed to stop hiding in bathrooms and be a man about things. She was nice like that and she liked to take care of people, she took good care of him, so she should have been with Hatori…and he didn't think that just because she had liked Shimazaki before. She didn't like him anymore but she could have liked him again…but that would never happen because Hatori liked her….and he just needed to shape up so she would take him back…not that he was worried about her liking Shimazaki or anything….

Because she didn't and even if she did he wouldn't care because Shimazaki was the coolest guy ever so of course Sho wanted him to marry his big sis and the thought of Shimazaki being married to big sis and kissing her and stuff did not make him want to start breaking things!

"He just gets scared all of the time, he can't help that, it's his greatest flaw as a human being." Said Shimazaki as he reached over and took a piece of pizza break from Sho's disassembled pile. Big sis reached over with her powers and took it out of his hand…and she couldn't do that! Sho was not a baby and if he wanted Shimazaki to eat from his plate then he could! He was so mad he could….he didn't do anything but put the bread back on Shimazaki's plate.

"I-I'm not scared all the time…" said Hatori. Shimazaki lunged forward in his seat and Hatori threw himself back so hard he would have tipped over if Shibata hadn't caught him by hand and big sis hadn't caught him with her powers. He had been caught but a piece of pizza had flipped over onto his sweater….which Sho felt sort of bad about. That was his blue sweater with the bird on it. He looked nice in that sweater, actually he had been looking a lot nicer lately. His skin wasn't so shiny and he didn't have so many spots on his face and stuff. He smelled better too, well less like he had before, and all he needed to do now was to stop being such a fraidy cat and then maybe big sis would like him again.

She might have liked him now.

She had dipped a napkin in her water and she was cleaning him up now. That was something that girls did when they liked you, right? He had seen mom do that for dad before. He had seen her clean ketchup and stuff off of his shirt….and she had liked dad because she had agreed to marry him…so maybe big sis still liked Hatori. Yeah, of course she did. Who else was she going to like? Shimazaki?

Sho tore a slice of pizza in half on accident.

"Hey, come on. You know how fragile he is." Said Shibata

"He's very fragile." Said big sis

"Guys….I'm not…not really…." said Hatori as big sis cleaned him up. She shook her head as she dipped her napkin back into her water glass.

"There's nothing wrong with being afraid of things…but you shouldn't be afraid of Shimazaki. He's actually really nice." Said big sis. Sho accidentally ripped his pizza into quarters. Nice? Why did she say that he was nice? What did nice mean? He had been nice to her? When? When they hung out without Sho? Had they been hanging out without him? What had they been doing? Why hadn't they invited him? Did he like her again? Did she like him again? Was everyone in love with-

He took a nice, long drink of soda to clear his head.

"Yeah, that's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Ryou. He's just an unending wealth of niceness." Said Minegishi as they ate their gross veggie pizza. How could they say something like that about him? What made them think that they could call Shimazaki…that they could call RYOU…nice? He wasn't….well he was. He really was a nice person and a cool person and a fun person and…and other people couldn't just say that about him!

"Yeah, Ryou is nice…to ME." Said Sho. Minegishi didn't say anything. They just raised the space where they would have had an eyebrow if they hadn't been such a jerk all the time and made their eyebrows afraid to grow in….and stuff…and went back to eating…like it was nothing. Like they were so sure that they were right….not that Sho knew what there was to be right about exactly…that they were just going to go back to eating…like they were right!

"Sho, you shouldn't call people by their given names. It isn't nice." Said big sis. She had finished cleaning Hatori up and now she was cutting up a slice of pizza for him even though he said that he didn't need her to…and she was doing that because she still liked him…and because she still liked him then it was ok for her and Shimazaki…and RYOU…to be friends…because she still liked Hatori…but she just wouldn't take him back because he was a baby…and stuff….

And also he could call his fucking friend whatever the fucking hell he fucking wanted to for fuck's sake….fuck….and another one for good measure…because like Shimazaki said you could never have too many fucks in a sentence.

"Nah, it's ok. I said he could." Said Shimazaki as he took a slice of Minegishi's veggie pizza. Sho was happy, he didn't know why, when he made a face like the time he had eating the grossest thing in the world, like if cucumbers and mushy peas had a baby and covered it in plain vanilla ice cream, and Sho felt…good. He felt weirdly good that Shimazaki would rather eat his pizza than the one big sis and Minegishi were sharing….and stuff…he felt all swimmy…and feeling swimmy felt….good and bad at the same time.

"Oh. Ok. Do you want me to call you Ryou too?" asked big sis. Sho didn't think. He couldn't think. All he could hear was the beating of his heart in his ears…and all he could see was his aura….and he just….he knew that he was being a jerk but…but he still did it.

He knocked her glass over.

Well he had been able to stop himself from hitting her, that was good, but he had still knocked her glass over….and she had caught it. She had caught her glass and the water that had been coming out of it and she had put it back upright where it belonged. She looked around but nobody was looking at them. Everyone had their own stuff to worry about…but she was still mad at him.

As mad as big sis could get, anyway.

"Sho! You should be careful….people could have seen. Also you almost got me wet." Said big sis

"I'm sorry, it was an accident." Said Sho. He was sort of telling the truth. He hadn't meant to get so mad so that was the accident part.

"But I saw you-" said big sis

"Mob, leave it. Trust me on this. You do not want to dig into that here." Said Minegishi. Sho glared at them as hard as he could. There was nothing to dig into because there was nothing wrong with him. He had just lost control for a little bit, it happened sometimes, and it wasn't like he was mad that Shimazaki would probably let her call him by his given name too and…and that she might have liked him and…and he did not LIKE Shimazaki Ryou!

"You can call me whatever you want. I don't care. My friends can call me by my given name, it doesn't matter." Said Shimazaki. There's an emphasis on the word 'friends' but all Sho heard was the part where he said that it didn't matter. It did matter! It mattered the most out of anything in Sho's whole life! It mattered and for Shimazaki to just say that it didn't…Sho didn't even know! It felt like his insides were becoming his outsides. It felt like he was going to yell and scream and cry and throw up and flip the table over and-

And he didn't want to do that.

So he went to the bathroom. He decided that he was going to be a baby like Hatori and hide in the bathroom until it was time to go. They had a lot of pizza so they would be there for a while. Sho could just hide in here and if anyone asked he would just say that he had been doing soap art or something. There wasn't anyone in there to say otherwise. Sho went to the big handicapped stall and had been about to hide in it but then he remembered that he needed to stop being a jerk and stuff. It would have sucked if someone who needed the big stall couldn't have it because he was being a big baby for no reason.

So he hid in the corner by the garbage can.

He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his head on them. What was the matter with him? Of course big sis didn't still like Shimazaki. She would have been his girlfriend if she had still liked him. She had just been asking because he was allowed to…and of course it didn't mean as much as he had thought that it did, Shimazaki saying he could call him by his given name. Sho didn't know why he thought that it did. Shimazaki didn't like him, not like that, and he didn't like Shimazaki like that….he couldn't…

He didn't know how he felt.

Hurt. He felt hurt. Shimazaki letting him call him by his given name had been…had been one of the best moments in his entire life…and it shouldn't have been. That had just been Sho being weird and stuff. Sho was just…weird…like that. Whatever. He didn't know. All he knew was that he had made a total idiot out of himself and now he had to live in the bathroom like Hatori did when he was upset…and now he was turning into such a baby…and Shimazaki probably never wanted to be friends with him again…and the thought of never being friends with Shimazaki made him want to cry….

He didn't.

He just sat on the floor until he felt…an aura getting closer. Oh. Well there was no point in hiding. Shimazaki was already looking at him. Shimazaki was looking at him and getting closer and…and he just sat there. There was nothing he could do and nowhere else that he could go. So he just sat down on the bathroom floor all scrunched up like a pill bug. He sat like that until the footsteps stopped and he could see a pair of shoes when he lifted his head a little bit. He didn't dare lift his head up anymore, he didn't trust himself to life his head up anymore. He didn't need to, anyway, since he could feel Shimazaki looking down at him.

Then he sat down next to him.

He could see Shimazaki with his aura. He was digging through the inside pockets of his jacket, the one he always wore, until he found what he was looking for. Sho heard a plastic cap being unscrewed. He still didn't look up. He didn't trust himself to look up. He didn't trust himself not to cry or yell or…or something. Something stupid. Something that would make Shimazaki not like him anymore. He wouldn't have been surprised if Shimazaki totally stopped liking him. He had no idea why he was even there in the bathroom sitting on the floor next to him.

He felt a hand on his back.

"If anyone needs a drink right now it's you." Said Shimazaki as Sho looked up. He held out a little clear bottle with a label in a language that Sho couldn't read. He knew what that was, that it would taste like burning, but Shimazaki was offering him some…which meant that he still liked Sho….which meant that he still wanted to be around Sho…

He took a drink.

It was as awful as he remembered it. He drank it down as fast as he could. It tasted like burning and he hated it and he had no idea why Shimazaki would carry that around with him or drink it himself. Sho had no idea how much of this he was supposed to drink so he just took a mouthful and passed it back hoping that it was enough.

His throat burned.

"Do you feel better now?" asked Shimazaki. Sho shook his head. He felt…his stomach hurt a little…and his head…he felt sort of….dizzy? Like he was getting dizzy. Like he had been spinning around and around even though he had just been sitting down…and he felt…he didn't want to drink anymore of that and he hoped Shimazaki didn't give him anymore….but he also sort of did because now that he thought about it if he had drank from the same bottle that Shimazaki had drank from then wasn't that just like-

He hid in his shirt.

"I'm guessing that's a 'no'….God…I suck at this…and my pen is dead too…um….I suck so bad at this…" muttered Shimazaki. Sho shook his head.

"You don't suck, you could never suck. You're awesome. You're the coolest person I know. You're so cool and fun and…and you know a lot of fun stuff and…and I always want to hang out with all the time because you're so cool. Even when we're not hanging out together I still want us to be hanging out together." Said Sho. He didn't know why he had just come out and SAID that. Usually he thought about what he said so that Shimazaki DIDN'T know how he felt about him. It was like the little Sho in his head who was in charge of separating out thoughts and words had decided to quit in the middle of his job…stupid lazy quitting head Sho….

"Yeah, same. You're the coolest KID I know, ok? Kid. Listen…I suck at this. I really suck at this. I have no clue what the hell I'm doing here but I am going to try my best. So just….I've never done this before." Said Shimazaki. Sho could see him with his aura. He ran a hand through his hair. Sho peaked out from his shirt just enough so he could see him with his eyes…and he was just so…the swimming feeling in his stomach was back but…worse? Different. Weird. Weirder than normal…and he didn't know why….

"Done what?" asked Sho

"This. Just…you're a great kid and I like you a lot…because you're my friend. You're my friend who's a kid and….and really you're the coolest kid I know. Ok? We're friends and…and yeah, I have other friends, but nobody's ever going to be as good a friend as you and…why the fuck is this so hard….um…be nice to Toshi and be nice to your sister and know that I'll never replace you and…uh…just keep figuring yourself out I guess." Said Shimazaki. Sho pulled his shirt down the rest of the way. He leaned his head back against the wall behind him. He felt like….like he needed to lay down….

"I don't feel so good…" said Sho

"Yeah, that's part of it. You're ten and being ten sucks. It's like…you're still a kid but also you're getting to not be a kid…and you're figuring yourself out and it sucks. Well you're starting to figure yourself out and the starting is the hardest part. Like…like you know that you should be one way but you're too young to just say 'fuck it' and be whatever way you want to be, you know?" asked Shimazaki

"Uh-huh…" said Sho even though he wasn't really listening. He ate too much. He ate too much and now he REALLY needed to lay down…

"But, yeah, you are what you are and there's no point in fighting it…but also try to be who you are but….I don't know….within reason? God…who the fuck am I right now….just….you're great and I want to be your friend but I want you to know that we're just friends…because you're ten….and we'll always be just friends so…..yeah. You're my best ten year old friend….ok? You get it?" asked Shimazaki. He shook Sho when he didn't respond….and that had been a bad idea…because Sho hadn't said anything because he had been focused on how much his stomach hurt…

And not just because of the swimming feeling.

There was the swimming feeling and the stomach full of angry goldfish feeling and also the feeling like he was going to throw up. Maybe from what he said, maybe from what Shimazaki had said, and maybe because of all the pizza he ate….but he knew for a fact that the second Shimazaki started to shake him that he was going to throw up…

And he did.

He turned his head to the side and threw up. He mostly made sure that he didn't throw up on himself….but he hadn't been totally in control of how he threw up…because he had been throwing up…and now he just wanted to die. He had thrown up in front of Shimazaki and he was pretty sure that Shimazaki had just said that he didn't like him in the way that Sho liked him and Sho was pretty sure that he liked Shimazaki in that way that he wasn't supposed to like other guys and now he had been such an idiot and Shimazaki wouldn't like him at all and also he threw up!

"Fuck! Ok, ok, this is my fault….I suck at this….ok. I'm going to take you home…your sister is going to kill me…well to my house because your dad is going to kill me if he finds out I got you this drunk….maybe straight vodka was a bad idea for a ten year old…and just…you're going to Hatori's bed because I do not need my room smelling like vomit? Ok?" asked Shimazaki. Sho shook his head.

"Good. Now don't throw up on me or I'll throw up on you and then we'll both end up covered in vomit and I don't think either of us wants that." Said Shimazaki as he picked Sho up. The world fell away and was replaced by a room…not his room…but there was a bed and that was all he needed. There were crumbs in this bed, and dirty clothes, but he didn't mind. He just needed to lay down.

"Ok…not getting the healer he'll tell Suzuki…um….water! I'm getting you water!" said Shimazaki. Sho just closed his eyes. He wanted to go to sleep and just forget that today had happened. Forget that he had been such an idiot. Forget that he had gone to hide like a baby. Forget that he had thrown up in front of Shimazaki. Forget that he was pretty sure that Shimazaki knew how he felt….that he knew how he felt…that….that Shimazaki probably wouldn't want anything to do with him anymore.

Shimazaki left a glass of water on the floor in front of the bed.

"Ok, I'm going to go shower and change. You just stay here and try not to throw up again, ok? I'll be back. You just…be ok." Said Shimazaki. Sho nodded. He didn't trust himself to talk. He would probably end up saying something stupid again….or something. No, he just….he needed to close his eyes…and just wait this out. He knew that Fukuda could have helped him but he didn't want Fukuda to know what had happened…and not just because he had drank. He just…he knew how he felt….maybe…and maybe Shimazaki knew too….and that was two too many people who knew about this already…and now Shimazaki probably didn't even like him at all anymore…

He was sat up.

"Come on, drink something. If you die of dehydration then who am I going to be best friends with? You hear me, Suzuki? No dying for you." Said Shimazaki as he pressed the glass of water to Sho's mouth. He drank even though it did nothing to help his stomach.

"You…you still like me?" asked Sho

"What? Yeah. You're not the first person to throw up on me and you won't be the last….but try not to do that anymore. Anyway I have to shower and change and then think up some excuse as to why we suddenly disappeared….your sister is probably freaked out….so you just…try not to die? Alright Sho?" asked Shimazaki as he laid Sho back down. He did his best to nod.

"Ok….Ryou." said Sho. He felt sick. He felt like he was going to throw up again…but he also felt better…because Shimazaki still liked him. They were still friends. Even after Sho had been so weird they were still friends…and that was good. Shimazaki had said a million times before that they were still friends and always would be….and of course Sho didn't want anything more from him than that…nothing more at all…that was all he wanted….

Well that and not to have thrown up all of that pizza.


	275. A Plane Ride for Two

Sho was happy to have left when he did.

Dad finished up his work and then it was time to move. That was normal. What wasn't normal was the fact that Sho wasn't moving with everyone else. He and Fukuda had an away mission while everyone else was going on to the new place. Sho knew that wherever dad was going it wasn't going to be that dangerous. Sho was with Fukuda, so if dad thought that he didn't need Fukuda then he wasn't going to be doing anything dangerous. So Sho wasn't missing anything….so he was glad to have left when he did.

He really was.

"This is great, isn't it? Just you and me with a whole plane to ourselves." Said Fukuda as he stretched out in his seat. This was the way to fly. No Suzuki, no Shigeko's entourage, no Shigeko flexing power that she should not have been given in the first place. Just him and Sho flying through the air together on their way to deal with some bullshit in Korea. Bullshit that he may have exaggerated to Suzuki in order to get some time to take Sho on his own little world tour.

He had places to be.

Stop number one would be Korea, stop number two would be Japan under the guise of inspecting the Seventh Division, and then stop number three would be back to England so Sho could spend some time with his little girlfriend….God, where had the time gone. It felt like just yesterday he was carrying Sho on his back and now he had a girlfriend and he was going on away missions and he was sullenly staring out the window…

Well that last one wasn't really a good thing.

"Yeah….I guess so." Said Sho. He was happy to be gone, he really was. He had been avoiding Shimazaki since what had happened and…and he missed him a lot. He missed him but he didn't….know what to do. About the way he felt and stuff. If he did like Shimazaki, and that was a big if, then….then that meant that…they he was fucked. Shimazaki was his friend and didn't like him back and if he liked him like that then it would be really hard for them to be friends…and stuff…and he didn't know what it would be like to not be friends with Shimazaki…

It would suck.

And he didn't want things to suck. He wanted things to be awesome and not suck but they would never be awesome and not suck if…if he didn't just…stop feeling the way that he did. Shimazaki was the best friend that he had ever had in his life. He was a better friend than big sis because they had more in common. He loved his big sis, would always love her, but she was a different person from him. She hated climbing trees and whenever they played together she let him win and she never had great ideas like playing in the sewers or throwing rocks at cars and then running away or spitting over an overpass or switching people's mail around or going to the shoe store and putting the wrong size shoes in the boxes. He knew that she would be mad at him if she even knew that he liked doing stuff like that….but Shimazaki was fun like that.

He was the most fun guy ever and Sho never wanted to stop being friends with him.

"Come on, what's wrong. We have this whole plane to ourselves. We can play videogames with the sound turned up or we can watch one of your shows or a movie or something. Come on, there's nobody here to complain or distract us. Come on, let's play that fighting game you like. The one with all the blood and…dismemberment." Said Fukuda. Truth be told he missed the days when Sho's favorite games had been the ones with Mario and his friends in them but he would play anything with Sho. It wasn't like it would kill him to get dismembered over and over again in some blood soaked post-apocalyptic hell scape for a few hours while they flew to Seoul.

Anything to make Sho happy.

He was too young to be al sullen like this. He needed to save this for his teen years. Really he had a lot to be sullen about, of course, but he had always had more energy than this. Angry Sho had at least been little ball of energy Sho. This Sho was just…he didn't know. Maybe his life was catching up to him. Maybe he was old enough now to see that things would never get better, in fact they would probably get worse, and this was his life until the day he died.

Or something.

"You're not any good at that game. I'll play that with Emmy once I see her." said Sho. There was nothing fun about playing against someone who couldn't even remember how to fight back. He was happy that they were going back to London. Then he would be able to see Emmy again and have a real match. That was the part about having a blind best friend that sucked, he couldn't play videogames, but it was ok because he had a girlfriend to play videogames with….a girl who liked him and who he liked….who he had to like because he had already started this thing wither and he had to be with a girl anyway so it had might as well be that.

She wasn't so bad.

She was a nice person, she was good at games, and she had red hair like him. That was reason enough to like her and stuff. So he was ok and he was normal and he didn't like Shimazaki and…and stuff. He didn't like Shimazaki like that and…and it was still normal to miss his best friend and stuff…but he needed to get excited. This was exciting. He was going to be on a mission countries and continents and oceans away from dad, he was going to get to see baby sis again…and he was going to have an actual opponent to play games against and…and it was all going to be good and exciting and he was excited and…and yeah. He was excited and stuff.

So why wasn't he feeling like that for real?

"Looking forward to seeing your girlfriend again?" asked Fukuda. He tried to sound a lot less interested than he was. This was a development in Sho's life that he had never expected…but this was a good thing. He was happy. He had found someone who could make him happy.

"Um…yeah. I guess so. She got the helmet and the candy and stuff and she's really happy about that. Um…she's looking forward to seeing me I guess. I still have to get her presents from Korea and Japan, too, though." said Sho. He would get her more candy, probably, and more army hats. She liked those. Some stickers, too, girls like those too. Scary ones because she liked scary stuff. Like war photos. She loved war photos.

"You don't have to get her presents from every single country we go to. You don't have to try to buy her love." Said Fukuda. He did not need Sho to pick up that habit, and other less than savory ones, from his father. He had no clue how much of it was genetics and how much was life…but he didn't need Sho to be showing up at some girl's house with a television box full of hair clips, instant ramen cups, and hundreds of perfume samples torn from magazines.

"I'm not buying her love, she liked me before I started getting her stuff, I'm just being a good boyfriend. That's what good boyfriends do when they're away, they get presents for their girlfriends and stuff. So that's what I'm going to do. She's going to be so happy and I'm going to be happy to have made her happy. That's how it works, right?" asked Sho

"Well yes, making someone happy can make you happy too, but you have to be able to connect with someone on an emotional level. You can't just shower someone with gifts and expect that to be enough." Said Fukuda

"I know, you're supposed to kiss girls and stuff. I can do that too. I know about girls." Said Sho with a shrug. He knew what he was doing. It wasn't like it was hard or anything like that.

"Really? You know?" asked Fukuda with a shake of his head. He didn't mean to be dismissive. Sho was just so adorable there. He wished that he could have taken a picture or recorded that. Masami would have loved that. Her son with his first girlfriend. God, it was precious. Better than Shigeko and…whatever the hell she got up to.

"Yeah, I know about them. I live with one. Big sis likes guys all the time. You just have to be nice to them and stuff and they'll like you. Girls have liked me my whole life and I haven't even been trying to get them to like me. I know how to get Emmy to keep on liking me and stuff." Said Sho. He felt vaguely insulted that Fukuda would think that he had no idea what he was doing. If dad could someone get mom to like him the he could get Emmy to keep on liking him. Dad had let mom run away. Well he was going to give Emmy zero reason at all to run away. He liked her…enough…and she liked him and he was not going to make her run away like dad had made mom run away. He knew how to be a boyfriend. He knew what he was doing.

"Well if you ever have any questions I'm here to answer them." Said Fukuda with his hands raised up in surrender. He'd hit a sore spot…though to be fair that would be a sore spot for anyone….well anyone at that age….which Sho was at right now. God. Was there a pause button for life yet?

"But…you don't have a girlfriend. You've never had a girlfriend." Said Sho. Fukuda didn't know anything about girls. If he did then Sho would have seen him with one. He didn't need anyone to tell him anything about girls. He was normal. He knew what he was doing and he was doing a good and normal job in the best and most normal way imaginable.

"What makes you think that? I've had girlfriends, I just don't have one now." Said Fukuda feeling vaguely insulted….but Sho was little and he had no idea what he was saying. It wasn't that outlandish of an assumption that he'd made. He'd never seen Fukuda with a girlfriend and therefore he'd never had one. Well he had…forever ago…it was hard to keep a relationship together when he had to deal with Suzuki's insanity on a daily basis. It had been that way since they had been kids in school together. Suzuki had taken up so much of his time….and he still did….

"Why not? You're supposed to have a girlfriend. That's the normal thing to do." Said Sho. Fukuda was the most normal guy he knew. Did this mean that Sho was even more normal than Fukuda? He had Emmy and she liked him and…and that was good and normal and stuff. He felt sort of bad for Fukuda. He'd end up all alone when he got old and stuff. Well Sho would still be friends with him but he would never have a girl there to take care of him like big sis or mom. Girls were good at taking care of people, dad had said so.

"Sho…not everyone pairs up. That little friend group of yours is nothing but singles….lifelong singles…so you don't need to have a girlfri-a partner to be normal. Some people pair up, some don't, that's just how life goes." Said Fukuda. Well that was….not what he wanted to hear. He, in a perfect world, would have wanted to hear that Sho had chosen this girl because he had met her and formed a genuine emotional connection with her…but this was not a perfect world. He knew that Sho was something…and he knew that this was something that Fukuda had to tread lightly through…and he knew that above all else he wanted Sho to be happy.

"Oh. Well I'm one of the people who has to pair up because I'm the only Suzuki boy and I have to keep the bloodline going. Dad said so." Said Sho. He wasn't like everyone else. He had to rule the world when he grew up. He didn't just get to throw that away and stuff. Dad had said so. That was the only reason that Sho was even around for. If big sis had been big bro then Sho would never have even been born.

"I doubt that you'll be the last Suzuki." Said Fukuda dismissively. Suzuki had been obsessed with his bloodline since before he'd even so much as kissed a girl. Sho didn't need that hanging over his head. The world was better off, actually, without that Suzuki dynasty that had been planned for the past thirty years.

"No, I will. I don't have a little brother, just a big sis, and she can't make more Suzuki's because she's going to end up making Hatori's. Girls make babies for their husband's families. That's how it works." Said Sho. He didn't know what he said but Fukuda closed his eyes and sat back.

"She got back together with him?" asked Fukuda. He…did not feel good about that. He wanted to take Shigeko and drag her away by her pigtails. She was too young. She was just a little girl and she needed to…to do little girl things. She needed to play with dolls and wear costumes and just…not date grown men.

"No, not yet, but I think she will soon. Did you see how his face is less spotty? And how he's less shiny? And he smells better? I think that he's trying to make himself into a better person so that big sis will take him back…but if he tries to kiss her or touch her boobs I'll beat him up…but not in a serious way unless she doesn't want him to." Said Sho. He liked Hatori. He was great and he would be good for big sis and that way she would never like Shimazaki again. Ever. Big sis didn't like cool guys. She liked guys who were fragile and cried when they got papercuts and went to hide in the bathroom when things got hard…but that was ok. She liked what she liked and she liked Hatori and Sho liked Hatori. He was…less shiny and spotty and….and if he and big sis had a bunch of spotty, greasy, kids with weird square glasses who cried whenever anything went wrong then….then Sho would be a good uncle and play with those kids and teach them stuff and….and love them.

"Sho…leave your sister to that part of your life. She's chosen to live the way she does and it is not your responsibility to keep her safe. You're the younger brother, not the older brother, alright?" asked Fukuda. Sho did not need to know about that part of his sister's life. She was…she did what she did. She did what she did and the only person on Earth who could stop her didn't give a damn. Well Sho did not need to get mixed up in that…and he did not need that normalized for him. Sho had feelings for a man three times his age…and he did not need that normalized. He didn't need to think that there was any hope at all. He needed to focus on that girl…or a boy his own age…or anyone other than Shimazaki Ryou…and he certainly didn't need to know about what his sister got up with the man he had feelings for.

"I know what age I am, I can remember my own birthday, and I'm going to keep my sister safe. Guys suck. They tell girls that they love them so they can kiss them and touch their boobs and also see them naked and stuff too and I don't want some guy to do that to my big sis. I mean unless she wants him to and stuff but even then as her little brother it's my job to beat them up for doing that stuff with my sister. Just not bad enough that they spit up blood or their bones break or anything like that." Said Sho

"Who told you that? Your dad?" asked Fukuda trying his best not to roll his eyes. That sounded like Suzuki. He'd die before he let anyone take his Daughter away from him….and yet he had no idea what happened under his nose. Not that Fukuda was going to open his mouth about any of that. That was Shigeko's business and if she wanted to carry on that way then she could deal with her father herself.

"No, I just know that I'm supposed to keep her safe." Said Sho. He didn't need to be told how to be a good little brother, he just knew.

"Her life is her own. Sho, you can't save someone from their own mistakes, trust me I know, you just worry about yourself…and that girlfriend of yours. I can tell that you care about her a lot so maybe just take the energy that you would spend keeping your sister safe and use it on her. Ok?" asked Fukuda

"Yeah…I guess….but she's all the way in London…and also she wouldn't have guys bothering her because she already has a boyfriend, me. I'm her boyfriend. Big sis doesn't have anyone so I have to keep her safe….but it's ok. It's not that hard to keep her safe because she's going to be with Hatori and he's fragile and stuff. He would never try to kiss her or touch her boobs. He'd be too scared. He's scared of everything." Said Sho. That was good. She could be safe with him. He was scared of girls and stuff. He had probably never even kissed a girl. Big sis was ok with him and he would make her happy and keep her safe…and stuff….so it was ok that she was going to take Hatori back and marry him.

"Are you scared?" asked Fukuda. Sho….wasn't there yet? Right? Sho was ten and he didn't think about that...right?

"Of what?" asked Sho. He was afraid of very few things. He was afraid of people finding out what happened in his head, he was afraid of making dad mad, he was afraid of dad killing him like in his nightmares, he was afraid of anything happening to big sis, and he was afraid of accidentally eating citrus and dying….but people didn't need to know about any of that.

"Doing…things like that." Said Fukuda. This was….the beginning of a very awkward talk. Well it was supposed to be a series of talks now, he had read, not the one embarrassing talk the school had given him. Well that was fine, better he be the one to have these talks with Sho than Suzuki. God only knew what insanity he would try and fill Sho's head up with.

"I'm not going to kiss my sister or try to touch her boobs! What the fuck is the matter with you?! You mother fucking cock sucking bitch fucking bastard fucking fucker fucking-" said Sho. What was WRONG with Fukuda?! Did he wake up and slam his head so hard his brain got all scrambled up?! Nope. No way. how could he ever even THINK of thinking of something like that?! There were not enough curse words in the Japanese language for him to even begin to say what he felt! He'd have to learn more later. Many more because not he was just saying fuck over and over again and Shimazaki said that just saying fuck over and over again wasn't creative.

"Sho! For the love of God! Language!" said Fukuda. What….what was he even….what happened to the little boy who jumped on his back and demanded an airplane ride? What happened to the little boy who watched Zootopia over and over again on a loop? What happened to little Sho? Well, obviously, he knew what happened. Shimazaki Ryou happened.

"Me? You're the one talking about me kissing my sister and touching her boobs and stuff….and you had better not say anything about her boobs either! Or I'll have to beat you up and I don't want to have to do that because I care about you and stuff!" said Sho. Fukuda had better never talk about big sis like that or Sho would have to beat him up….and he didn't want to. He didn't want to but he had to. It was wrong to talk about girl's boobs, Shimazaki had said so, and even if Shimazaki hadn't told him so he still would not have let Fukuda talk about big sis like that.

"Sho! She's ten! I wouldn't dream of it! And yes, please, beat me up if I ever do!" said Fukuda. Is that what….why would he think….what?! Shigeko was ten!

"Well now I kind of have to-to beat you up for saying-" said Sho

"Sho, I meant with your girlfriend. Obviously I meant with your girlfriend! Brothers and sisters….they don't DO that. You're right to be disgusted with me, too, I should have made myself more clearer." Said Fukuda

"Oh. Ok. Yeah, you need to be clear about that stuff because I was about to beat you up…well not in any serious way…but still!" said Sho

"And I would have deserved it, too. I was just wondering how you felt about…all of that…with your girlfriend. That's all." said Fukuda

"I don't really feel any way about that. I mean I kiss Emmy, don't tell anyone about that by the way, and she likes it…and I don't hate it…so it's ok." Said Sho. What was with all the personal questions? There were too many. He had a girlfriend, he kissed her, and that was all that there was to it. He liked her and she liked him and that was normal. The whole thing was normal and Fukuda should not have been asking any of these questions because things were so normal that he shouldn't have asked!

"Well as long as you aren't doing anything that you don't want to do…and she doesn't make you open your mouth, does she? Because you are too young for that." Said Fukuda. Was Sho that old? Was it time for that conversation? The internet had said that it was a series of conversations but he would have liked a schedule or something for those conversations.

"What? No. People kiss with their mouths opened? Why? That's how you get someone else's spit in your mouth. Why would I want that?" asked Sho. He stuck his tongue out. That was even worse than when Shimazaki had to flush out the stuff from his eye sockets. Yuck. Girls. He would never understand them for as long as he lived.

"Good, you're still ten." Said Fukuda with a sigh. Good. He was still just a kid.

"That doesn't answer my question." Said Sho with his arms crossed.

"Right. Well….it's part of…the sorts of things that boys and girls…or boys and boys…or girls and girls…do together. When they're older than you are not. It's just….a thing. That's done." Said Fukuda

"But why? I don't get it. That's how you get someone else's spit in your mouth and that's gross…and not in the good way." said Sho

"Well…it feels good. It's an expression of…of love…" said Fukuda rubbing the back of his head. Why did he have to have these talks with Sho? Why did he…well who else would? His father? His sister? Masami was the person who should have been the one to do this…but she was gone and he was the best that Sho had.

"Oh. It's a part of making babies….why would I want to do that? I'm ten." Said Sho. He was grossed out now beyond belief. Even worse than the time…he couldn't remember, even, a time when he had been more grossed out than he was now.

"Well…it's not always about that. Sometimes people kiss like that…and do other things…because it feels good." Said Fukuda

"Oh. So it's normal to do stuff like that?" asked Sho

"Yes, it's perfectly normal to want to do that with a girl…or anyone, really. There's nothing wrong with wanting to do that." Said Fukuda

"Oh. So that's why that pink haired girl climbed on top of me and kept on licking me while she kissed me." Said Sho. So he had been the weird one in that situation….he knew it. Well at least now he knew that if Emmy ever tried to do that to him he'd have to let her…to be normal…and maybe it wasn't going to be so bad…if everyone else was doing it…

"….come again?" asked Fukuda. What in the hell had he just heard? What in the hell had he just….what? He was…he was a kid and he should not have been….and Fukuda needed to calm down. This was a normal part of being a kid, things like this, and Fukuda needed to stop freaking out.

"This girl kissed me like that back at the party. I just…well I got freaked out but that was just because I didn't know that she was being normal." Said Sho

"How…old was she?" asked Fukuda

"My age." Said Sho

"Yeah, no. That's not normal from someone your age and you were right to feel upset." Said Fukuda

"But…you just said that it was normal." Said Sho

"Well, yes, it's normal to…to think about maybe doing…when you get older. Not ten. Ten year olds aren't meant to do that. That girl was just fast, that's all, and you just stay away from fast girls." Said Fukuda

"Oh…ok…I guess. So then…it's wrong for Emmy to want to kiss me?" asked Sho

"Um…well that's not…well…you wanted to kiss her so that makes it….this is very complicated." Said Fukuda

"So if I want to it's ok but if she wants to then it's not? But then why is it ok for boys but not for girls? That doesn't seem fair." Said Sho

"Well…the thing about that is…you see things are very…there are things that….you're ten. You're ten and she's ten and ten year olds do not kiss like that and…that's all. Whew. So glad we could have this talk. So, do you want to play that game where condemned criminals rip out each other's organs with rusty hooks now?" asked Fukuda

"No, you're bad at that game. I'm going to play with Emmy later…and…and now I'm just confused. I thought that I was supposed to want to kiss girls and stuff. So it's not normal?" asked Sho

"No, it's normal. You can think about kissing….whoever you want to kiss…just…don't get ahead of yourself. You just…stick to whatever you've been doing now…and don't kiss her…like that….or do anything else. Ok? Because you're only ten." Said Fukuda

"So when I'm eleven it'll be ok?" asked Sho

"No. That's still too young." Said Fukuda

"What about twelve?" asked Sho

"No, that's too…well…in my opinion…" said Fukuda

"How old were you, then?" asked Sho

"How old was I when?" asked Fukuda

"When you kissed a girl." Said Sho

"Well…God that's going back a while. Twelve or thirteen I'd have to say. The last day of elementary school." Said Fukuda

"Did you…did you love her?" asked Sho

"Her? No. I mean I liked her and I thought that she was attractive but I wasn't in love with her or anything. I was too young to know what love even was. I just liked her a lot and I kissed her…but then a week later she had a boyfriend….but it was what it was." Said Fukuda

"Oh yeah…girls leave you. I guess my dad was smart like that, only kissing mom and stuff." Said Sho

"He told you that?" laughed Fukuda

"Well…no….but he was married to mom and he loved her….I mean as much as dad knows how to love a person…so I thought that she was the only girl that he ever kissed." Said Sho

"Your dad….God your dad…he kissed anyone who would have him. Anyone. He just…well he just went around asking until he found girls who took enough pity on him to date him and then he'd kiss them….and regale me with the details…no matter how many times I begged him to keep it to himself." Said Fukuda

"Wait….girls…liked my dad?" asked Sho

"Some of them did. Some of them just felt sorry for him. Like there was this one girl, she was the middle school kendo captain actually, you dad was in absolute love with her. He'd follow her around, leave her notes and presents, give her the weirdest compliments-" said Fukuda

"Like what?" asked Sho. Dad? Saying nice things? Had Fukuda fallen and hit his head at some point? Was he getting dad confused with another Suzuki Touichirou? It made no sense. Dad complimenting someone. Sure. Right after big sis got into a cursing match with dad and the sun went cold.

"Like….he told her that her face was just symmetrical enough to be attractive but not so symmetrical that he found it disturbing to look at. He just walked up to her and said this during….God what were we even…oh yeah. This stupid kendo exhibition thing that I got dragged to. Well I was there for moral support and also your grandparents…they liked having me around….anyway your dad tells her this and I could tell that she was weirded out and she was all 'Oh Touichi, you're so sweet', he let her call him 'Touichi' he liked her that much…anyway he asked her out and then she said yes and then he took her to the Cultural Tower, he wanted to take her to the Space Center but I set him straight, and then she brought a friend for me and…yeah. It was a nice time. I mean she broke up with him because he was really….intense…but it was a nice time." Said Fukuda

"Wow…a girl liked my dad….who wasn't my mom….and a girl liked you, too." Said Sho. That was…did cats like to swim, too? And did dogs meow? And had Minegishi been faking being mean all this time and really they were a good and nice person underneath it all?

"You say that like you're amazed." Said Fukuda

"Well, yeah, of course I am. Dad never says nice things and I don't even know why mom liked him for as long as she did or as much as she did…also you've never had a girlfriend or even talked about a girl in the whole ten years that I've known you. I didn't even know that girls liked you. Shimazaki said that they probably didn't because nobody likes you…..but that's not true. I like you and dad likes you and big sis likes you….well she likes everyone…but I like you." Said Sho

"Sho…that's…well that shouldn't…don't let my life affect yours. I'm not married because I'm not married. I…I've loved someone for a while now…but it would never work out with her." said Fukuda

"Why? Does she hate you?" asked Sho

"No…at least I hope she doesn't." said Fukuda

"Does she think that you're boring?" asked Sho

"No, she's never called me that before." Said Fukuda

"Did you try to kiss her and she ran away? Because if she ran away then you really shouldn't try to kiss her again. Then she'll think that you're desperate and pushy and Shimazaki says that once someone thinks that you're desperate and pushy then that just won't ever wash off." Said Sho

"No, she never said that either." Said Fukuda. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He needed to stay calm. He needed to stay calm and just...just not talk about this anymore.

"Then why won't it work out?" asked Sho. He needed to know why stuff didn't work out. Mom had left and big sis had left Hatori and…and Emmy could have left him. Emmy…he wasn't in love with Emmy. He didn't want to marry her or anything like that but he also didn't want her to break up with him. He was going to be a better person than dad. He was going to do better than dad when it came to everything. He was going to be nicer and have a girlfriend who would never leave him and when he had kids he would never hit them or yell at them or make them have nightmares about him hurting them.

"Because….because she…she was with someone else for a long time. She cared about this other person…until she didn't….and then she just…had to leave. She had to make some very difficult choices along the way, had to say goodbye to a lot of people she cared about….and I was one of them." Said Fukuda

"That sucks…but maybe you'll find someone else. There's a lot of girls out there and getting them to like you is really easy. You don't even have to do anything most of the time. You just have to be nice to them and tell them that they're pretty, girls love that, and then they like you. So just find a lady and tell her that and then she'll like you and stuff….but don't make fun of her boobs. Girls REALLY don't like that." Said Sho

"Duly noted." Said Fukuda

"Don't worry, I can be your wingman. Then you can meet a new girl and forget all about the old one that you're in love with. Then you can get married and have kids and do all of that other normal stuff that guys are supposed to do." Said Sho

"You know you don't have to do that. You can live your life however you want to. There's no right or wrong way to do it. As long as you're true to yourself and that you're happy then you can…you can be whoever you want to be." Said Fukuda

"I want to be normal, that's how I want to live my life. I want to be normal because I am normal and I want…I have to do what dad says…because he's dad. Ok?" said Sho. He didn't know how to tell Fukuda just how he felt, how powerless he felt, how….just how he felt.

"Alright." Said Fukuda. He wasn't going to have that conversation with Sho yet. He just did not have the mental energy for this.

"Good…and let's play the game where you rip people's organs out with rusty hooks. You could use the practice." Said Sho. He didn't want to talk about this anymore. What was Fukuda on? Sho had to live his life in a very specific way because…because his life had a very specific outcome. He had to do what dad said because when he grew up he would be in charge of Claw and the world and…and stuff….and that was just the way that it was supposed to be…and stuff…and he didn't want to think about the future. He didn't want to think about how the person that he had to be had already been decided and…and how it was going to be so hard to be that person…especially when the person who he was…was just so…wrong. Especially since he had been born wrong, big sis had been born right, and there was nothing at all that he could do about it…

Besides play videogames.

He was glad to have left when he did…but now he sort of wanted to leave again.


	276. Hopefully this Plane Ride Goes Better

This plane ride needed to go better than the last one.

Dad was counting on Mob to make this one go better than the last one. He had said so. He said that he didn't want to be disturbed by everyone no matter what. Not even if the plane was falling out of the sky. Not even if they ended up going too fast and flew into the future. She was not to let anything disturb dad from his work….his work was Minecraft but she wasn't about to make fun of her dad's important work. Minecraft was important. That was where dad designed new Claw bases and stuff. So it was important work and Mob could not let anything bother him.

Well she was allowed to bother him whenever she wanted to but she wouldn't either.

"Ok, so again that's not fighting, no arguing, no talking about stuff that you're not supposed to talk about, no going off on the wing of the plane, and no going to the bathroom. Any questions?" asked Mob. She had waited until after the plane took off to give her speech. She had the whole thing written down. It was mostly just a list of what not to do. There. Now that there were rules they could have a safe and happy ride and nobody would fight ever again.

She was being a very good leader.

Dad said that the only person above her in Claw was him. Mob didn't like to think about that, who ranked where, but she did it when everything went well. She needed this plane ride to go well. The last one had ended in hurt feelings from everyone….and she'd almost turned the plane around. She knew that Fukuda had never said sorry but she just…didn't want to have to be bossy towards everyone and make them turn the plane around and stuff. That would not have been a good thing because then they would have all been on the plane for longer and they would have all gotten into an even worse mood….and also the pilot probably had a wife and kids he wanted to see and she wasn't going to make people lonely for their families and stuff like that….

She really hoped that she wasn't going to end up having to turn this plane around.

"Can we revisit the 'no bathroom breaks' rule again?" asked Hatori raising his hand. He knew that she had made that rule about him…and he didn't hide in bathrooms that often! Just…when things got to be too much and he knew that he needed to go for his own safety. Not now. He was safe now. There was no chance that anything was going to get started and-

-and Shimazaki was looking at him.

So maybe he would spend just a little bit of time locked in the bathroom because Shimazaki was looking at him and there were already a couple tiny vodka bottles on the seat next to him and…yeah, Hatori knew when to run away. He knew that he'd rather run away and live to see another dad than deal with whatever Shimazaki had planned for him.

"He's getting ready to make a run for it. I can feel it." Said Shimazaki as he pulled yet another tiny bottle of Russian vodka from inside of his coat. God, he loved Russia. He loved the food, the beer, the vodka, the stray dogs everywhere….well this new place would be fun, too. It would have been more fun with the kid but he'd gone off with that healer and shit. Maybe that would be good for him. Maybe he'd meet some guy in Korea and then drop whatever it was he was feeling for him. The kid…Sho was a great kid and Shimazaki didn't want to have to stick a hot poker in his heart, because that was a wound that never really healed, but he didn't know how much more of a lovesick ten year old he could take. Fuck that healer for drawing this to his attention. Ignorance is bliss, people said, and they were right to say it. He did not need to know how the kid felt and now that he knew he couldn't un-know so he had might as well deal with it in the best way possible.

Lots of very small bottles of Russian vodka.

"I swear to God if you set one foot in that bathroom I will drag you out with my bare hands." Said Minegishi as they reached over and took a tiny bottle of what was hopefully grain alcohol out of Ryou's hands. They were not dealing with that shit again. Nope. They were hurling thousands of kilometers in the air trapped in a metal tube with these idiots, and Mob, far from the ground in the middle of winter with all of their plants dormant and what felt like a live rat chewing through their insides. They were not dealing with some teenage drama king hiding in the bathroom for whatever reason.

"Hey, be careful of Hatori. He's fragile and sensitive." Said Shibata. He held onto Hatori just to be sure he wouldn't end up going anywhere. Shimazaki's aura was focused on him. Nope. That was never a good thing. They had better not get into a fight like they'd gotten into on the last plane ride. He was going to pick everyone up and sit them far away from each other if that happened. At least that healer guy was gone. They were fucked if they got into a plane crash but he had been a big shit stirrer, well not as bad as Shimazaki of course, but maybe things would be better without him…but he did miss Little Suzuki though. He was always such a nice kid…even when he wasn't.

"I'm not-" said Hatori. Everyone talked about him like he was some kind of baby or something. He wasn't! He was a grown man and he would be treated as such! There were actual kids in the group but everyone treated him like he was the kid. He wasn't. He was going to be twenty years old soon and-and-and there were two ten year olds for everyone to baby if they had to baby someone.

"Shimazaki, don't do anything to scare him. He gets scared really easily. It's ok, Hatori, we're all here and we're all your friends and we're all going to keep you safe and stuff." Said Mob. She let her aura rest on his just to make him feel safe. She knew how scary it could be, sometimes, when you weren't used to people and stuff…and she knew how annoying Shimazaki could be sometimes. It wasn't his fault, though, Minegishi had said that Shimazaki had some kind of serious brain disorder. So it was ok for him to be the way he was…mostly. There was a limit to what she would put up with…

If he tried to take anyone onto the wing of the plane she would turn the plane around.

It was dangerous for anyone who wasn't Shimazaki and also when he did that then Sho thought that it was ok…well Sho wasn't there but still someone could get hurt. She knew that he was bored, plane rides were boring enough when you could mess around on your phone and play games and stuff, but that was no excuse to put Sho's life, anyone's life really, in danger…and also there was no excuse to scare Hatori. He was very fragile.

"I wasn't going to do anything to him. I was actually going to offer him one of my many pilfered bottles of genuine Russian vodka. Here. Have fun." Said Shimazaki as he tossed a bottle into Hatori's lap.

"Check to see if it's been opened before…and if it's actually vodka." Said Minegishi

"Wh-what else could it be?" asked Hatori as he held the little bottle in his hand. Shimazaki pulled another one out of his coat like it was a bag of holding or something. Knowing him he could have poisoned this…..and he had no reason to! Hatori had apologized to Minegishi already! He was sorry and he was never going to say anything like that to them again. They didn't like him, they would never like him, and for some reason they were into Shimazaki of all people. Message received. He was not their type and they were not attracted to him. What, did he have to write it on his forehead and have someone read it to Shimazaki?

"Acid." Said Minegishi. Ryou had come into a vial of acid years ago and Minegishi wouldn't have put it past him to put some in a tiny bottle, where in the hell had he gotten these from in the first place, and then give Hatori enough to keep him tripping for days.

"What?!" asked Hatori. He dropped it but it stayed floating in the air. Little Sister-sama caught it and held it in front of herself.

"But if it was acid wouldn't it eat through the bottle? Acid can eat through anything, can't it?" asked Mob as she held up the tiny bottle with her powers. The seal around the cap wasn't broken so it was probably vodka and not acid, which was good. She reached over and held it in her hand. Maybe she could keep this…because traveling without Sho was stressful. He was off in the world without her and, yes, Fukuda could heal him if he got hurt but would Fukuda play with him when he got lonely? Would Fukuda know to check his hair after he got out of the tub to make sure that he had actually taken a bath? Would Fukuda know to feed him at least one vegetable a week so he could have his food groups? Would Fukuda know that he couldn't have liquids after eight or he'd wet the bed? Would he know that even if Sho said that he didn't need a story before bed he still sort of did?

Would Fukuda know that Sho needed her?

He was so little and he was off in the world without her…was this how dad felt all the time? Like when he took her by the hand and dragged her away….was this what he felt while he did that? She didn't want to smother Sho but she wanted him to be ok. There was so much that could happen to him. Like when they all had pizza together and she wasn't watching how fast Sho was eating and he made himself so sick that Shimazaki had taken him home….she hoped that he wasn't sick…wherever he was. She hoped that he was ok and safe and happy and warm and also that he was eating his food groups because he needed to grow up big and strong.

Mob wanted Sho back….but she also didn't want to smother him like dad was always smothering her.

"Not that kind of acid, Mob." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. That was not something that they were going to explain to Mob right now. They needed to rest. They needed to do something about the pain in their internal organs and the feeling of being cut off from the plant life of the world….and they just needed…..

They needed a drink.

"There are other kinds of acid? Besides the kind that you can dissolve bodies in?" asked Mob. Acid was scary. One time she and Sho had been watching a show about a man who killed people and then melted him in acid….and she had no idea why Sho put those movies on…or why anyone would want to drink acid of all the things in the world to drink….

"Yeah, there's the chemical acid that you're talking about and then there's the fun sort of acid that you-" said Shimazaki. How had he not tripped with her yet!? God, it was like his mind had been full of eels lately. All of this thoughts had been so slippery and hard to hold onto….and he was going to do his best to hold on to this though. He leaned over and put his arm around Toshi. There. Toshi made things easy to remember. The warm, safe, and happy feeling that Toshi gave him would help him remember that as soon as they landed he was going to get some sugar cubes, a toothpick, and that vial of acid and then he was going to put on Yellow Submarine and he and Mob were tripping together for the first time. Better him to pop that cherry than Toshi. They never wanted to have fun with it. They tripped to get their head in order and stuff. He tripped to hear things and feel things…and also sometimes he got stuck walking down memory lane…and he remembered bad things….but Toshi always made them better!

Maybe he should include Toshi in on this.

But they weren't in the right headspace for all of that. No, they were in a terrible mood first of all and second of all it was scary Toshi time. God, he was so glad he didn't have to deal with that. No, he'd trip with Toshi again later when they were feeling better. After the seventeen at the earliest and the twentieth at the latest. Poor Toshi…well at least he had plenty of tiny bottles of grain alcohol and also maybe there was dark chocolate on the snack cart. Yeah, that would help.

Poor, poor, poor Toshi.

"Ryou, shut up. She doesn't need to know about that." Said Minegishi. Mob was not at all in the right headspace for that. She was separated from her little brother, her dad was being creepy, and she already had all of that shit from her past that she hadn't even come close to processing. A bad trip could be traumatizing. A bad trip mixed with Mob's powers….yeah, nobody needed that.

"What don't I need to know about?" asked Mob as she pulled the tiny vodka bottle up her sleeve. Dad wasn't looking at her, he had his earplugs in and he was playing Minecraft again, but she didn't want him to see her drinking and then ask questions….or get mad at her friends.

"I'll tell you later…and get that bottle out of your sleeve. That is way too strong for you." Said Minegishi. No. Mob was not going to drink straight vodka while her father was sitting right there off doing…whatever it was he did over there on long plane rides. Minegishi was putting their money on either plans for world domination or more weird cartoons that he would never admit to watching. A strange man, their boss, a strange and often times very creepy man…

Mob was sitting with them for the rest of this plane ride.

She wasn't wearing yellow again, or anything that looked like that copy of his dead wife's dress that he made her, but he was just…very creepy with her. There was nothing that Minegishi could do for Mob besides keep her right there with them, so that was what they were going to do. They were going to keep her right there with them and also they were going to find something to mix that vodka with because they knew that Mob wanted to drink so they had rather she drink safely than down that whole bottle while their back was turned.

That was the responsible thing to do.

"I can handle it. I won't be like Hatori at the party. I know how to drink. You taught me how to." Said Mob. She wished that Minegishi would have just had more faith in her. She wasn't little, she knew what she was doing, and she never wanted to end up like Hatori at the party. Well she wasn't going to confess her love for anyone on that plane because she wasn't in love with any of them, and also she wasn't going to say that she wanted to eat anyone because that was cannibalism and was wrong even if the plane crashed and it was like that Alive movie that Sho made her watch, and also she was a girl so she didn't even have the option of peeing in a sink….but she still never wanted to be that drunk in her entire life. It didn't look fun at all.

"Can we please stop bringing up the party?" asked Hatori. Ok, so he overdid it. It wasn't his fault! Shimazaki had given him something and then he had been thirstier than he had ever been in his entire life…and he had made some mistakes but that had been last year. This was a new year and he knew not to get drunk on a plane in front of his boss, his boss' kid who was also his boss, and all of his coworkers….and also there wasn't a healer there to fix him if he overdid it! He was not a child and he did not need to be treated like one!

Not that he even wanted to drink….but he was also not going to be told that he couldn't drink.

"But back at the-" said Mob

"To be fair I did give him MDMA. Who knows, maybe he's actually really good at holding his liquor. Maybe he can drink us all under the table and he's just been keeping it a secret. There's only one way to find out." Said Shimazaki as he pulled another tiny bottle of vodka from in his coat and tossed it to Hatori. This time Shibata caught it in midair.

"Shimazaki, stop it. Everyone on this plane knows that Hatori shouldn't drink. Nothing good comes of Hatori drinking." Said Shibata solemnly. He was happy to help out his friends in any way he could but he did not want a repeat of the holiday party. He did not need Hatori spouting nonsense and coming onto people they had to work with…and also he was not holding it for him even though he had been so messed up that he had barely even been able to make it to the…..yeah. That was where he drew the line. Hatori was way too young to drink…well so was Her Little Ladyship but….well she was better at it than Hatori was.

"Exactly. Ryou, you know he can't hold his liquor…or his anything, really. Don't make this plane ride any more unbearable than it has to be. I still haven't fully recovered from the last one." said Minegishi as they downed the tiny, hotel sized, bottle of vodka that Ryou had, apparently, stolen from an actual hotel if the label was to be believed…and they didn't care. He could steal from wherever he wanted and he could go to hotels with whoever he wanted.

"I'm sorry that people were mean to you…but it's ok because we have a rule about that now. Everyone has to be nice to each other for the whole plane ride. That way nobody will fight and also Hatori won't go and hide in the bathroom." Said Mob

"Good show of leadership, Mob, you're really going places….now go to the drink cart and get a bottle of milk or soda or something for me to mix this vodka with. You can't have straight vodka but….God….you can cut it with something. How about that? Does that sound fair to you?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. They were doing the responsible thing, they told themselves, because otherwise she would just drink in secret and overdo it. They had been the ones to teach her to drink…and they could not drop an atomic bomb and then whine when Godzilla came to stomp all over Tokyo for the millionth time.

"And bring Hatori a soda too, please, or one of those green energy drinks he likes." Said Shibata. He would have gotten up to get the drinks himself but he was a very big man and this was a very small plane. He wouldn't be able to get up without bothering everyone….and also he had to be there to keep Hatori from running off to the bathroom to hide. He had a lot of emotional difficulties to work out but he could not work them out in the only bathroom on this plane. What if someone else needed it…though Her Little Ladyship had said that nobody was allowed bathroom breaks…but she could not possibly have been talking about legitimate bathroom breaks…right?

"Hey!" said Hatori. He was not a baby and he did not need to be babied! He could drink! He was almost twenty years old God damn it! If a ten year old girl could drink then so could he!

"Wait, sorry, one of the blue ones he likes. He likes blue better. Sorry that I forgot, Hatori, I'll remember next time." Said Shibata

"No, it's not that! I'm-I'm almost twenty years old!" said Hatori

"I'm almost thirty one! You know, since we're going around saying our ages." Said Shimazaki

"Your birthday isn't until October so shut up. My birthday is before yours. I'm going to be twenty eight long before you turn thirty one." said Minegishi rolling their eyes. They knew what Hatori was getting at. He was a grown man and all of that. Well adults didn't go around talking about how they were adults. They just acted like adults. If he wanted to drink then there was probably a drink cart on this plane fully stocked. If he wanted to go wild and make a moron out of himself then, by all means, he should make a moron out of himself again.

"Mine is the soonest. I'm going to be eleven…well my dad's birthday is the soonest since he's going to be forty four soon…and then Fukuda's….and then Shibata's birthday is after mine he's going to be twenty nine. That's everyone's birthdays." Said Mob. Baby Mukai's birthday had passed a while ago, she was one now, but Mob didn't want to think about that. She knew that there was no point to it, thinking about her baby sister, so she focused on her friends and how much she loved them and how nice it was that everyone was having a birthday this year…well they had birthdays every year…unless they died…but they were too young to die…well dad and Fukuda weren't they were super old…and Mob wasn't sure where she had been going with this so she was just going to stop thinking all together.

"You remembered my birthday? You're so sweet, Your Little Ladyship." Said Shibata. Oh if they weren't on a plane he would have gotten up and hugged her and squeezed her and never let go!

"You're just now realizing this about Mob? God, you could grind her up and bake her in a cake and it would be too sweet." Said Minegishi. They had known Mob for years now. She was a supernaturally sweet little girl. How had he not realized it yet?

"But that would be cannibalism and that would be wrong." Said Mob

"Yeah…wait. Are we talking about some kind of plane crash, lost in the woods, or lifeboat situation because I don't want to paint myself into a corner." Said Shimazaki

"Wait, if we were lost in the woods we could just eat plants and stuff. We don't have to eat each other." Said Mob

"Yeah, you would think so. You'd be surprised how many plants are inedible. Especially when you can't see what you're eating. I know that the green berries are poisonous but I have no idea what the hell green even is…but I lived. I got really sick but I lived…and then I found my way back home and twisted a kitchen knife into that bustard's stomach." Said Shimazaki

"I'm glad that you lived…but it's wrong to stab people." Said Mob

"Eh, you wouldn't be saying that if you had met my father." Said Shimazaki

"You stabbed your dad?" asked Mob with a gasp. Her eyes went over to her dad. She wasn't always happy with him but she would never stab him.

"Mob, don't go digging into this area of his life. Trust me. There is nothing in Shimazaki Ryou's childhood that needs to be revisited." Said Minegishi. Why did he tell these stories? For the attention? He was covered in tattoos, his pockets were full of liquor and drugs, and he was very flexible when he needed to be. He didn't need to regale them all with fucked up stories from his childhood for attention.

"Hey! There is plenty that needs to be revisited. Besides, Sho likes that story. He said that it was cool." Said Shimazaki

"Oh. Well if a ten year old boy thinks that you trying to kill your father after he left you out in the woods to die is cool then, yes, by all means keep talking." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes. Mob did not need to hear this story. She had enough going on in her head without hearing this story. Plus this was the sort of thing that would send Hatori running for the bathroom and they were not going to deal with that again.

"That's…that's messed up man…I'm sorry." said Shibata. Sometimes he forgot about how difficult everyone's life had been compared to his. Well now he felt sort of bad about all the bad thoughts he'd had toward Shimazaki.

"I'm sorry too…but please don't tell Sho those stories. He doesn't need to have ideas like that." Said Mob. No, Sho did not need to think that stabbing dad was even an option. It wouldn't kill him anyway, just make him mad, and then he would punish Sho worse than he had veer been punished before…and also Sho should not have been going around stabbing people.

"Yes, Ryou, keep it to yourself. Mob's little brother already has enough issues with violence and also you're scaring Hatori. Like everyone says he's very fragile emotionally and the slightest thing will send him hiding in the bathroom…and you know full well why I need the bathroom on this plane ride." Said Minegishi

"Because you've already drank two little vodka bottles?" asked Mob

"That and….things which I'll tell you about when you're older." Said Minegishi. Nope. They were not going to have that talk with Mob…but it looked like they were going to have to be the ones to have THE TALK with Mob at some point. Even at the best of times Suzuki couldn't be bothered to get off his ass and do some parenting…and honestly Minegishi had no idea if he even knew what a menstrual cycle was. They were amazed that he had any idea where children came from, that a woman would have wanted to actually….the world was instead a strange and incomprehensible place.

"You always say that." Said Mob. She wondered when she would be older. She was almost eleven but that might not even be old enough to know what Minegishi was talking about. Sometimes she felt like she would be little forever….

"Exactly. Now go to the drink cart already." Said Minegishi. They needed a drink. They needed a drink so badly…and they knew that Mob needed a drink and they would rather she drank responsibly….as responsibly as a ten year old could drink….and they knew that this was their fault…and they just needed a drink. They loved Mob, they really did, but they did not like how the whole future looked like it was stretched out in front of them now. They'd be the one to give Mob the talk, all of the talks, and they'd be the ones to help Mob through the hell that was coming for her…and they had essentially been raising Mob since the age of eight…and they had never wanted to raise a child in the first place…and they just….

They needed a drink.

"Ok." Said Mob. She went over to the drink cart and looked for milk…and didn't find any. She would have to make sure that the next plane ride they took had plenty of milk…and also that red stuff that Hatori liked. They didn't have the green stuff, the red stuff, or the blue stuff…but she hoped that he liked the orange stuff. Especially since it sounded like there was another fight happening….even though she had said no fighting…

She really hoped that she wasn't going to end up having to turn this plane around.

"She's ten! She's ten and she gets to drink but I make one little mistake and then for the rest of my life I'm just 'the baby' of the group? How is that fair? We have actual kids in this group but you all treat me like I'm five." Said Hatori. Maybe he shouldn't have crossed his arms at the end of that if he was trying to look like a respectable adult and shit.

"…it wasn't just one mistake…but let's not talk about that now." Said Shibata. He knew that Hatori had a point, he was an adult and they couldn't stop him, but he also should have had some idea of how just…not ok…his behavior had been. It was hard having friends sometimes.

"Hey, if you want to drink then drink. Go crazy! Suzuki's not paying attention anyway." Said Shimazaki. Yes! Now this would be entertaining.

"That ten year old can hold her liquor better than you can." Said Minegishi with a shrug. Mob did surprisingly well when she was drunk…and high….and coked up….and they had no idea how they were supposed to feel about that. On the one hand anything that could ease the burden her powers placed on her was a good thing but on the other hand she was only ten and should not have been getting drunk or high…or coked up…in the first place.

"I can hold my liquor just fine." Said Hatori. He took the bottle out of Shibata's hand, uncapped it, and downed it like he had seen Shimazaki and Minegishi do time and time again….and then instantly regretted it. Burning. The whole thing made him feel like his mouth and throat were burning. His sinuses got clogged. His eyes watered…but he was not a child. He was not the baby of the group, he was a grown man, and he did not need to be treated more like a child than the actual child.

"What an idiot." Said Minegishi. Honestly. He knew that he couldn't handle his…anything…so why put himself through that. Also even if that was a hotel minibar sized bottle of vodka it was still a lot for someone who was less experienced drinking than even the ten year old.

"If you're going to throw up try to land as much of it as you can on Shibata." Said Shimazaki. Hatori made this too easy. He brought this on himself, really, and he had done this to himself too….but he had better not say anything to Toshi or he really would end up having to drink from the acid vial…wherever it had gotten to.

"No, aim for Shimazaki because this is all his fault." Said Shibata. Hatori was too fragile for all of this. Great. Now he'd need to be taken care of…and he had wanted to listen to his baking podcast for this trip….but it was fine. This was what friends were for….keeping their other friends from making idiots out of themselves in front of the boss.

"How about he vomits in the bathroom like a functional human being?" asked Minegishi. Nope. They were not going to be trapped in this tin can with the smell of vomit everywhere. They would rather have been sitting right next to Fukuda while he went off on some tangent about how he felt that their chest left much to be desired.

"Guys…I said not to fight….and why does Hatori look like he's going to be sick?" asked Mob. She felt like mom a little bit. Like when mom would go off to do stuff and then she and Sho would do the stuff they did when they had been little kids, like draw on the walls or get into the sugar and stuff like that, and then mom would be all 'I can't leave you alone for five minutes' and she'd cross her arms and tap her foot.

Mob put the drinks down and crossed her arms but did not tap her foot.

"Because he decided that if you got to drink then he got to drink…and now here we are." Said Minegishi. God. He was worse than Mob. At least Mob sort of had some concept of her limits.

"Hatori, no, you shouldn't drink. You're going to get sick…and stuff." Said Mob. She didn't know why he even needed to drink. He had total and complete control over his powers. He must have remembered what had happened the last time he had drank…and also he must have remembered why it was a bad idea…and he must have remembered that they didn't have Fukuda with them now….

Right?

"I-I know what I'm doing….now give me another." Said Hatori. He was not going to sit there and be told by a ten year old that he could not drink. He could drink and he would drink and that was what he would do because he was not a child.

"Hatori…haven't you had enough?" asked Shibata

"He'll tell you when he's had enough. Here you go, have three more." Said Shimazaki as he reached into his coat and pulled out three more bottles partially because he wanted to get Hatori drunk off of his ass and partially because he hated the clinking sound that all the bottles made when he moved…and how they dug into him…and how they made his coat feel heavy.

"…I wash my hands of this. Come on, Mob, let the idiot brigade deal with this shit." Said Minegishi as they got up. If that was how Ryou was going to be then he was going to sit alone for this plane ride. Fine by them. They'd had enough of him on the ground anyway. Hatori brought this on himself, true, but Ryou needed to learn how to think things through. His sense of smell was so sensitive that he had to drown himself in cologne every single morning to drown out the stench of the world. Let him deal with the smell of vomit in an enclosed space…and let him explain to the boss why Hatori would soon be puking his guts out for the duration of the plane ride.

"But…but Hatori-" said Mob as Minegishi got up and pulled her by the sleeve. She let herself be led to the part of the plane that Fukuda and Sho usually sat together at. Minegishi held their stomach as they sat down. Mob wished that Fukuda had been there. Even if he didn't like her anymore he still wouldn't have let anything bad happen to her friends.

"Hatori is a grown man, like he said, and he can handle his own shit. Let him make himself sick, I don't care, and neither should you. You have enough to deal with as it is, now give me that soda or whatever you got yourself and let me mix you up a drink before you end up like that idiot back there." Said Minegishi as they sat down and put their feet up on the seat across from them. Mob ha enough to deal with and they had enough to deal with.

"Um…but my dad left me in charge and I can-" said Mob. She could always turn the plane around…even though she didn't want to. She was the boss, dad had made her the boss, and she just…didn't want that. She just wanted to be able to relax…but she was the boss.

"Mob, just leave it. Now do you want me to make you a drink or not?" asked Minegishi

"Um….I do." Said Mob. She wanted a drink but she also wanted to make sure that her friends were ok. She hated being in charge sometimes, she really did, but she also hated it when things went wrong. She was the one in charge of this plane ride and she was the one who had to make sure it went well. Dad had put her in charge, he was the one who trusted her, and she would not let him down. She had to make sure this went well….

It was hard being in charge.

It was hard being the one who had to be responsible all the time but…but dad had put her in charge…and she would be in charge if anything went wrong…but right now she just wanted to sit there and relax with her friend and…and she hoped that her friends were ok….and she hoped that dad wasn't lonely all the way over there playing Minecraft by himself in the corner…and she hoped that Sho was alright wherever he was….and she hoped that baby Mukai was alright wherever she had gone off too….and she just…

She really hoped that this plane ride wasn't going to be any worse than the last one.


	277. The Perfect Gift for Baby Sis

Baby sis liked paper towel rolls.

Well she had liked them the last time Sho had seen her. She had been so happy to put her arm through them, She had laughed her little baby laugh and smiled her little baby smiles and she had licked her little baby legs she had been so happy…and he missed her so much….and he had missed her birthday too. That was why he was getting her all of these paper towel rolls. She liked them and she would be happy to have them to stick her arms through and…and then she might forgive him for not being around on her birthday

He hadn't forgotten, he just hadn't been around.

He had been on the other side of the world when her birthday had passed. She lived in Japan and he lived…well he lived everywhere…and he was still too little to just hop on a plane on his own and see her…so he had missed her first birthday. He had missed her first Christmas and her first birthday and she…she may have been mad at him…but maybe if he brought her enough empty paper towel rolls then she might have forgiven him. Then they could be friends. He just had to make sure that she understood that he hadn't forgotten her birthday. He was still a good big brother.

He was the best big brother ever.

Or at least he was trying to be. That was why he was unraveling all of these paper towels. He and Fukuda were in a house in Korea, he was too little to stay in a house on his own even though he was ten now, and in this house was a storage cabinet full of paper towels. Sho knew that if big sis had been there she would have told him not to be wasteful like that. She would have told him that those paper towels needed to stay on their rolls because otherwise they wouldn't be able to go on the paper towel holder in the kitchen. Well Sho already had a counterargument to that even though big sis was on her way to Australia or wherever. This wasn't wasteful because once he was done he planned on folding them back up and putting them in the cabinet where he had found them. There. Now if she tried to tell him to stop he could just tell her that he wasn't being wasteful and then-

Well there was no 'and then' because big sis wasn't there with him.

Big sis was off with everyone else. He was all alone…well Fukuda was there…but she was gone. The house was quiet, nobody was watching Frozen or Tangled or any of her other stuff. Her aura was gone too. No matter how much he spread his aura out he couldn't feel her…because she was far away. She was in one place and he was in another. She was gone and he was gone and they were both gone and they would be together again and he had no reason to feel like this but he did and-

And he unrolled the paper towels faster.

He was not a baby. He didn't need to have his big sis with him all the time. He was ten now and he could be away from her for a little while. He could be away from her and he would….he would be fine. He could take care of himself. He didn't need her to tell him when breakfast and lunch and dinner were ready. He didn't need her to draw him a bath and then check his hair to make sure that he had actually washed it even though she knew how much he hated getting his hair wet. He didn't need her to put him to bed at nine o'clock each and every night after reading him a story that he didn't need to hear because he could fall asleep just fine on his own. He was ten now and he didn't need anyone to take care of him.

He was fine.

He finished unrolling one roll and started up on another. Baby sis was going to love these. Yeah, he had to think about her. What kind of a big brother would he had been if he freaked out just because big sis wasn't there with him? No kind of big brother at all. Well he was her pretend big brother but that didn't matter. He still had to be a big kid for her. She looked up to him, and not just because she was very small, and he had to show her what she was supposed to be when she grew up….if she even remembered him….

He hoped that she still remembered him.

He hoped that she still remembered all the times that they had played together. He hoped that she could remember all the times where he had put a blanket over his head to trick into thinking that he had disappeared but then he took the blanket off of his head and she laughed….and she had been so happy to see him…and he hoped that she was happy to see him now. He hoped that she wasn't mad at him for missing her birthday. He hoped that she still liked to play with empty paper towel rolls. He hoped that she would still smile when she saw him. He hoped that she would still want to be his baby sis…even though she wasn't. Even though it was just for pretend….

Sho wasn't too old to play pretend.

He played pretend all the time. He pretended that he was ok even when he was so mad he wanted to just hit everyone around him. He pretended that he didn't have the swimmy feeling in his stomach whenever he thought about Shimazaki. He pretended that he still loved hanging out with Fukuda as much as he had when he'd been little. He pretended that he wasn't scared of dad. He pretended that he wasn't worried that one day dad would just have enough of him and just say 'fuck it' and decide that big sis could inherit the world and stuff even though she was a girl. He pretended that he was looking forward to seeing his girlfriend again, and he sort of was, but he pretended that he liked her as much as she liked him…

He played pretend a lot.

He was good at it. He should have been a professional pretend player. He was good at pretending and he was good at taking paper towels off of their rolls so that was what he was going to do. He unrolled them one sheet at a time and tried not to think of anything else besides how much fun baby sis was going to have with these. She was going to be so happy and he wanted nothing more than her happiness. She was his baby sister after all. His pretend baby sister…

But he was very good at playing pretend.

Like now. He pretended that he couldn't hear Fukuda's footsteps getting closer and he pretended that he couldn't feel Fukuda's aura pressing over onto him. He…he liked Fukuda a lot but right now he had stuff he had to do. Fukuda was one of the people that he had known the longest. He had always loved Fukuda and cared about him and stuff but….but Fukuda was still treating him like he was a little kid. He was always telling him what to do and stuff….and he didn't want to be told what to do and stuff. He was always trying to get Sho to play with him and spend time with him instead of his other friends…but that was just because Fukuda was lonely. Sho hadn't been able to see it when he had been little but Fukuda was super lonely and stuff so, of course, the nice thing to do would have been to have spent time with him and stuff. Like when he had been a kid. Back when he would have done anything to have been able to hang out with Fukuda like this….but now….

Now he mostly just wanted to be alone.

He wanted to get this done and then…he didn't know. He could draw something. He could draw a picture for baby sis, she would like that, and he could draw something for big sis too. He hadn't drawn her anything in a while. Her birthday was coming up. Maybe he could draw another picture of her hanging out with Elsa and Anna again. She had liked that. Yeah, he could put in the girl from Tangled, too, while he was drawing girl characters. She'd like that a lot…and he could draw baby sis a picture of the princess from the cauldron movie she liked…if she still liked that movie….and also he would draw something for Emmy too since he was drawing pictures for girls…

Yeah, he'd have to draw her something too.

He had a lot to do and he didn't have time to play with Fukuda. Maybe later. Sho wished that he would play on his own so he could put up a good game. Sho wasn't little anymore. Fukuda had been good at pushing him on the swings and playing menagerie and stuff like that. Sho was ten now and he liked videogames and stuff. Fukuda….he was bad at videogames. Very bad. Worse than big sis, even, and she let him win all the time. Sho just…did not want to play with someone who couldn't even remember the buttons…and stuff…

Which was not a mean way to think at all.

If someone couldn't do something then they couldn't do something. That was why he never got sad that Shimazaki couldn't play videogames with him….even though Sho got the feeling that he would have been really good at Mortal Kombat…or at least he would have really liked it. Shimazaki couldn't play anything that relied on a screen but they had fun together. They played outside a lot. Fukuda wasn't good at laying outside because he couldn't teleport and got all scared when Sho climbed trees and picked up wild animals and stuff. Shimazaki never got worried. Not even that time when they had found that family of skunks and Shimazaki had thought that they were cats because they felt like cats to him…but they hadn't been cats….

And then the tomato sauce baths….

Fukuda would never have let him do that. So it was ok for him to wish that Shimazaki had been coming towards him, not Fukuda. It was ok for him to wish that it was him and Shimazaki all alone in this house in Korea. It was ok for him to wish that he and Shimazaki were all alone and hanging out…and also…also stuff that he knew that it was not ok to wish for. Stuff that he knew that Shimazaki knew that he wanted. He wished that he had never kissed Hideki…well no he didn't…but also he did! Because if he and Hideki had never kissed at that stupid party then he never would have known how good kissing could be and he never would have even thought about kissing another boy and…and then he wouldn't be in the mess he was in now!

He ripped the paper towels on accident.

"Sho? What are you…doing?" asked Fukuda. He had unpacked, gotten settled in, and had been about to see what Sho wanted for dinner…or lunch….or whatever meal this was going to be for them. He hadn't expected to see a mountain of paper towels on the floor and a pile of paper towel holders….but this was….ok. It wasn't like he had made an actual mess and it wasn't like he had never done this before. He had loved unrolling paper towel rolls when he had been about two or three. He had been so cute then. He wasn't cute now, no, all he looked like now was a vaguely pissed off little boy…but that was normal for him these days.

Unfortunately.

There was a lot in his life for him to be upset over. His father, his sister, his lack of a mother, the no doubt very confusing crush he had on a man three times his age, and the upset to his internal clock that this move had done. Well that was ok. Fukuda could handle this. He could handle whatever Sho threw at him, and thankfully he wasn't throwing anything so it was already going well. He wasn't shouting, either, or kicking holes in the wall. So he was doing better…well he had been doing well for a while now. Ten was a good year for him in terms of his anger issues. He was finally growing out of it. Thank God.

Fukuda hadn't been sure how much more of angry Sho he could take.

"Getting the paper towels off of these rolls for baby sis. She likes these and I missed her birthday….and Christmas….and I hope that she's not mad at me." Said Sho. He hoped that Fukuda wasn't going to go off on him for being wasteful…even though he wasn't being wasteful at all it just looked like he was.

"Right. Mukai had a birthday." Said Fukuda. He had almost forgotten…was that why Suzuki had been so…off kilter….lately? He had been off since Fukuda had brought him the baby…and Fukuda didn't blame him. It had to have been Earth shattering to find out that he was responsible for another human being's existence…but that was why they had invented safe sex. That baby was Suzuki's fault….well him and that woman…but that still might have been what had sent him running to his Daughter…..his adopted Daughter….

Well there was nothing that Fukuda could do about that.

Suzuki did not want to take responsibility for the baby and Fukuda didn't want to make him take responsibility for the baby. Suzuki had already messed up two kids already. What did he need a third one for? The baby was better off with its new mother…and Sho…well Sho loved her and he wasn't about to keep Sho from his sibling….even though one day he would figure it out. He would notice that his so called 'pretend' sister looked almost exactly like him. Red hair. Blue eyes. Red aura. Freckles. All if those very rare and very distinctive features that he had gotten from his father…

And that would not be a fun conversation for anyone involved.

"Yeah, she's one now. That's why I'm doing this for her. She likes these a lot and if I give her a lot of them then she won't be mad at me for missing her birthday and Christmas and stuff. We can play or something later. Right now I have to finish doing this and then I have to wrap them up for her to open and stuff. This should be enough to make up for Christmas and her birthday and stuff." Said Sho

"You know she's only a year old, right?" asked Fukuda. Sho was thinking way too much into this. She was a baby. She didn't even know what a birthday was.

"Yeah, I know. The note that came with her said when her birthday was. It's not like I forgot her birthday. I would never forget a birthday." Said Sho

"Really? When's mine?" asked Fukuda. Did Sho remember? He didn't have to. It would have bene nice if he did but Fukuda wouldn't have minded if he didn't know. He was only ten after all. He wasn't Shigeko. She always made a big deal out of birthdays. She liked people to like her. She was more of a carrot to Suzuki's constant use of the stick. It was ingenious, really, playing the part of the sweet little girl to secure Claw from right under her father. She did play it a little too heavy, though, especially around birthdays. She had been trying to get him to her side for a while now. He was useful to her as a healer. Well he would join her after Suzuki died and only if he decided to scrap his plans for his bloodline and have her inherit the world….not that there was a chance that it would happen. Not unless he married her or something….which Fukuda would definitely talk him out of if the thought ever crossed his head. He knew the mental gymnastics Suzuki was capable of. He knew that the thought could pop into his mind, the memory of the fact that she had been adopted, and he knew that if Suzuki ever let himself think like that….well…something would have to be done and Fukuda would be the man to have to do it…as usual.

"March seventeenth. You're turning forty four." Said Sho. He had already done Fukuda's birthday drawing and gotten him one of those big chocolate bars he liked. Dad had a birthday coming up too but he didn't care about that. He would throw a card together for him and then that would be the end of it. Sho didn't even care if dad liked it or not. What was the point? He only cared about big sis anyway. Sho was just that kid who lived in the house with him.

"Wow. You actually remembered." Said Fukuda. He hadn't expected Sho to remember. That wasn't normally the thing that a ten year old would have been expected to know. Well Shigeko knew everyone's birthdays but she was a little information banker. When Fukuda had been ten he hadn't even been fully aware that the adults around him even had birthdays.

"Of course I did! I'm not my dad! I can remember someone's stupid birthday!" said Sho. He threw the paper towels that he had been holding on the ground and then dove under the kitchen table. He was mad, he wanted to kick the walls, he wanted to hit Fukuda, but most of all he didn't want to be anything like dad. Dad hit people when he got mad. That was wrong and Sho…he was not going to be that person anymore. He was not going to hit Fukuda. He was not going to kick a hole in the wall. He was going to do what the book had said. Minegishi may have been a jerk but they had been….they had been nice when they gave him that book. It was a good book and it was good….it was good for teaching him things….

Like how counting could help him calm down.

"Sho….I didn't mean anything by that…"said Fukuda. He crouched down by the table. He was unsure of what else he could do. Sho was doing that thing where he hid, closed his eyes, and started counting. He had started doing that a few months ago in an effort to calm down. Fukuda didn't know how he felt about that. On the one hand Sho had some very real anger issues that he needed to move past but on the other this was very close, scarily close, to the emotional exorcism thing he knew Suzuki did. His powers were tied to his emotions and that was why it was better for everyone if he kept a hold of himself…

And Sho was his father's son.

But he was not his father. Sho's control had been a hell of a lot better than Suzuki's had ever been. He didn't need to exorcise his emotions because it didn't seem like his powers were tied to them. He just had to learn how to control his anger. That was all. Fukuda…he had no idea what he was supposed to do to help Sho beyond just being there for him. He had so many very real reasons to be angry at the world. He was just a kid and he had to deal with his father's neglect and favoritism of his sister, his own new feelings that he couldn't understand, his lack of a mother….all of it. Sho had to deal with all of that at he age of ten…

And Fukuda had no clue what he could do for him but just be there.

"Hey….Sho? I didn't mean that you had forgotten her birthday. I just meant that….a one year old baby has no idea when her birthday even is…or even what a birthday is. That's all." said Fukuda. He got as close as he could without getting into kicking range, Sho tended to kick. He didn't seem like he would kick now, though. He opened his eyes and stopped counting.

"So…so she isn't mad at me?" asked Sho. Right. She was just a baby. They didn't know a lot of things. He hadn't even known what his birthday was until he was four. He sort of remembered his third birthday but he hadn't known that there would be another birthday and another and another until he was four. So baby sis didn't know when her birthday was or even what a birthday even was….so he was ok.

"No, she's one…and I think that your idea about the paper towels rolls….it's a good one but how about we get her a real toy, too, since you can never have too many presents. Am I right?" asked Fukuda. He didn't really want to spend his time unrolling paper towels but he wanted to be there for Sho. Ok, birthdays were a thing now. He had some feelings around birthdays and….and of course he did. His own father had forgotten his birthday….Sho was such a good person not wanting to put anyone through that.

Fukuda was so proud of him.

"Yeah….you're right….now help me finish. Baby sis may not know when her birthday is but I do and I am so late!" said Sho as he climbed out from under the table. He couldn't let himself get upset, not now, because he had a job to do. He had to be there for baby sis and he had to get her a good present. She deserved all the best things…and she would have them….the things that she thought were best….

Like paper towel rolls. She loved paper towel rolls.


	278. Feeling Good with a Little Help

Mob's feet felt very good in her socks.

She loved these socks. They were the best socks ever. They were her knee high socks with Elsa on them. She had gotten these the last time she had been to the Disney Store. That had been a fun trip even if Sho had been upset about having to try on new clothes. It wasn't her fault the Awakened always came back with nonsense. It was just easier for her to buy their clothes. She was good at buying clothes. She was good at buying socks. She was good at buying these socks.

These were the best socks in the world.

"Shimazaki….you're supposed to pass it." Said Mob. She reached over as far as she could until she was practically on top of him. He kept on forgetting to pass the pipe to her. That wasn't nice. He had asked her if she wanted to hang out while Minegishi was communing with nature. So that was what she did. She hung out with him in his room and they were smoking and everything was great and her socks felt good around her feet and her feet felt good in her socks.

"What?" asked Shimazaki. He had been trying to find Toshi. They were out back laying down in the garden. They were happy. This was Australia, which meant the southern hemisphere, which meant summer. Summer meant plants and plants meant a happy Toshi. He could feel it, a little bit, at the edges of his aura. Happy Toshi. Toshi felt so good when they were happy…and they sounded so good…like someone had shoved one of those little Christmas bells in a pudding cup but it could still ring sometimes…he had no clue he was high as fuck what did he know?

Well he knew that he was supposed to pass the fucking pipe.

So that was what he did. He could barely hear or feel Toshi over the aura next to his. That was Mob. She was supposed to be ten but she did not feel ten. So it was a little confusing. What was also confusing was where he was supposed to hand this pipe too. She was…he had to focus on her….but how could he focus on her when Toshi was outside communing with nature? They were so…so….so….

He loved feeling like this.

"You have to pass it to me because that's being nice. You…you're a nice person Shimazaki….and I know that you can be nice….so please pass it…and also feel my socks." Said Mob. She nudged him with her foot. He reached out like he didn't know where she was. Of course he knew where she was. He was Shimazaki. He always saw her. He saw and did not see and she saw him and he had on socks too and his were black and they didn't look as soft as hers. She nudged his foot with hers. Yup. His socks were not as soft as hers by a longshot.

"Take it from me….I can't see shit right now….this is good shit. This is really good shit." Said Shimazaki. God, he couldn't remember the last time he and the kid had done this. Toshi had been all worried about her lately. They didn't want her to overdo this. Well then what was the point of being friends with a kid if you couldn't get them high? Honestly. Toshi was the best human being to have ever lived and all but they needed to get their priorities in order. A kid that you got high with today was a boss that you could get high with tomorrow….or whenever one of Suzuki's kids ended up turning on him.

"This is good…now feel my socks. These are the best socks in the whole world. I have never worn socks this soft in my whole life. Feel them." Said Mob. She took the pipe from his hands and inhaled. It was still on fire from the last time. She got a lot of ash on that inhale…he had finished another one. OK, so that made…three he finished…and two she finished…and one was kind of a draw…so…was it even? She didn't know. She did most of her math on her phone.

"No Mob….you don't know what you're talking about. Toshi has the world's softest socks. They have these socks with lotion in them, like the fibers or something, and they are the softest things in the world…Toshi is the softest person in the world…Toshi is just so….Toshi…" said Shimazaki. He couldn't shut up about them. He didn't want to shut up about them. They were…Toshi. They were so…Toshi. They were he Toshi-est Toshi to ever be Toshi….also fuck Fukuda their tits were the most perfect tits that he had ever felt in his life and he had felt approximately two hundred and fifty pairs of tits in his life that he could remember.

"Oh! I know those socks! We got them when we went to the underground mall in Seoul! I had a pair like that too but then I lost one in the move…so I stopped wearing them….and stuff…." Said Mob as she shook out the bowl. She reached over with her powers and started to grind up more. You could smoke it without grinding it but it wasn't as good, Shimazaki had said, and she would always listen to him when it came to this stuff because he was the master and she was just the person who he smoked with him in his room on his bed in comfy socks sometimes.

"Seoul is…Toshi likes Seoul. Toshi likes Korea….I bet Toshi would have liked to have gone to Korea…" said Shimazaki. That was…the kid was there…and he missed the kid. Even if he was being all awkward and stuff now he was still a great kid. He was definitely smoking the kid up next time he saw him. He'd be so much fun high! They'd do fun stuff like to go the airport and switch around the luggage! Or go to the aquarium and swim with the fish! Or go to the grocery store and excessively sample things!

God, he missed that kid.

Mob was fun in her own way but the kid was fun in his own way and it was amazing that they had both come from someone like Suzuki. That man was no fun. No sex, no drugs, no women, no fun at all. Hell, he even had a jerk off schedule he followed which was, in Shimazaki's opinion, some serial killer shit…and Shimazaki was not a serial killer! He was a hit man! He was a hit man and there was a difference! He never killed for pleasure! He had never once killed a man for the pleasure of killing him!

He hadn't!

"Shimazaki….you're being weird…your aura is weird. Sort of mad. If you don't want to feel my socks then you don't have to. I believe you about Minegishi's socks." Said Mob as she finished grinding. They were running low. They had already smoked so much, almost a quarter of the gallon bag, and that was a lot…also her teeth felt weird against her tongue….so she needed to drink something. She reached over and picked up her gallon of milk and took a drink.

It was good milk.

"I'm fine." Said Shimazaki. He was fine and he was himself and he was himself and only himself and….and he was fine. What was the scraping noise? He tensed up. He followed the sound and he focused on her movements…she was drinking milk and that was not what was making that sound…oh. She was grinding more for them. Good girl. She was going to be such a good boss some day. They'd get high together every single day and they'd party around the world and she'd send him on missions to fun places and he'd kill her enemies for her and Toshi would be there too and it would be a fun time and then he'd be able to see Toshi every single day like he did now and he wouldn't get kicked out of Claw like he had the Family…and it would be a good time….

"Are you sure? You can tell me anything, you know. We're friends and friends can tell each other everything. That's part of being friends…and friends….and stuff. I don't know. Do you want to start it?" asked Mob as she held up the pipe.

"No, you can have greens since I've been hogging it. You deserve it tiny boss lady." Said Shimazaki. He felt the lighter being taken from his hand and then he heard it click on. He focused on her, on her body. He focused on the way her lungs expanded outwards. He focused on the way her throat moved as she inhaled. He focused on all the little muscle groups that moved as she coughed. God, people were so fascinating sometimes. He could just watch her for hours. He sort of had to. Toshi was fully communed with nature now. He couldn't tell where the nature ended and Toshi began. He could feel them in the grass outside his room and he could hear them and he wanted to have them near so badly that it hurt….so fucking much….

But in a good way.

"Don't call me that….my name is Suzuki Shigeko….or Mob…but not tiny boss lady…" said Mob as she coughed. She put the pipe and the lighter in his hands and then reached over for her gallon of milk. Her throat was all raw and stuff…but that was ok because it was worth it. She felt good now. She had been feeling bad without Sho in the house but now she felt better. She needed Sho but she wasn't going to smother him….and that meant leaving him alone to his mission…and finding people who wanted her around.

Like Shimazaki.

She was with her friends because it was not Sunday. On Sunday she and dad spent time together but because it was not Sunday then that was not an option. It was time for her to spend time with her friends and Shimazaki always made her feel better. Well Minegishi did too but Minegishi was out communing with nature and also they never let her smoke this much. Her eyes were all squinted up and her skin felt good in her clothes…which meant that she had smoked too much….even though she felt so great….and a little hungry…..a little very hungry…but still great!

She laid down on the bed.

This was the softest bed ever. This was the softest bed and it smelled nice, too, like Shimazaki's cologne. They had barely been here but the room already smelled like him. It was so nice. No wonder Minegishi was always cuddled up with him. It smelled so nice in here and his bed was so soft…and this was all so nice! She wanted to take this feeling inside of her for the rest of her life! She wanted to take it and bottle it up and then she would be happy for the rest of her life and then she wouldn't miss Sho anymore and she wouldn't want to call him or text him during his mission because she just wanted to be with her brother so badly….

Shimazaki had better pass that back soon.

"You, Suzuki Shigeko, are my tiny boss lady. You are the boss of me and you always will be the boss of me and when you replace your dad you and I are going to have so much fun….just you wait. We're going to do this every single night and then during the day we'll do more of this, and I guess do some work too, and then it'll be the best time ever…and shit. You and me and Toshi and those other two and your brother...God I miss Sho so fucking much…." Said Shimazaki before he took his turn. Right. Gotta keep the rotation going or they'd start to come down and then there was no fun in that at all. What a waste of a…whatever time of day it was. He didn't know. He'd ask his phone later.

"I miss Sho too….I miss being with him…and I miss his smiles…and I miss how he'd draw pictures of things all the time and they would be very good and even if they weren't good I would still miss him drawing all the time….and stuff…." Said Mob as the pipe was passed back to her. She wished that Sho could have been there with them. Well not with them right now, Sho was not allowed to do this ever for his whole life, but she wished that Sho hadn't gone on the away mission…or that she could have gone with him…but dad would never let her do a thing like that. Dad loved her and the only way he knew how to show his love was by smothering her.

And that was why she wasn't going to smother Sho.

Even though she needed to know if he was ok. Fukuda was a healer and all so he could take care of Sho if he got hurt or something like that but what about all the other stuff? What about if he got lonely? What about if he got scared? What about if he wet the bed? What about if he only wanted to have cake and ice cream for dinner? What about…she kept on going over the 'what abouts' in her head. There were just so many and…and she had no idea how to keep him safe without smothering him…and she didn't want to smother him…

Because she knew what it felt like to be smothered.

Like now. This wasn't the sort of smothering that dad did to her. This was the smothering that came with someone as big as Shimazaki trying to lay down next to her in a one person bed. She made room for him. She was so close that she could see the marks where one tattoo had been put over an old one…and she liked this one of Minegishi being all happy a lot more than the naked lady….but she would keep that to herself because you weren't supposed to comment on people's bodies like that. It was rude.

And she didn't want to make him feel bad.

Even though he made her feel squished. She was squished between him and the wall. He was really big. She was too big to share a one person bed with her own brother let alone a grown up…but here she was. There they were. She could see more of his tattoos where his shirt had gotten all messed up. She rolled over onto her side. Now she had more room. She smoothed his shirt down with her powers. He tensed, his whole aura tensed, but then he relaxed.

"Warn a guy when you're going to do that." Said Shimazaki

"I'm sorry. I was just fixing your shirt. I do that for Sho all the time." Said Mob

"Well still warn a guy. My barrier is weird right now, you actually touched me." Said Shimazaki

"Oh….I'm sorry. I know that you're not supposed to touch people without asking them and I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable." Said Mob

"You didn't make me uncomfortable, you just freaked me out a little bit. The only person who can touch me without asking is Toshi and that's just because they're Toshi. You are not Toshi….you're Mob…and also I don't mean to lay next to you in a creepy way so if Toshi or anyone asks I didn't mean to be creepy, ok?" said Shimazaki

"Ok." Said Mob. She didn't know what was creepy about this. People shared beds all the time. She shared a bed with dad and Sho all the time and she had shared with Minegishi too and they weren't family. Well sometimes it felt like they were but they weren't family, just best friends. She and Shimazaki weren't best friends or anything like that, just good friends, but she still didn't see what was supposed to be creepy about this. She didn't feel creeped out at all.

She felt good.

She felt good with her socks in her feet and her gallon of milk up by her head and the way her hair felt as it grew out of her head and the way her sleeves felt against her arms. She would have felt perfect if not for the fact that her socks had ridden down as she laid down and now her legs were rubbing together and getting all itchy and stuff. Itchy legs were the absolute worst but she had no clue how to make them stop.

She rubbed her legs together.

They were all itchy and pokey and scratchy now. She didn't like it. She reached down and pulled her socks up. There. That was better. She went back to laying on her back as best as she could. She looked up at the ceiling. She saw a white ceiling and a ceiling fan going around and around because it was summer here, not winter, and that meant that it was hot out. She wondered what Shimazaki saw. Probably a lot of black. He had no eyes so he saw a lot of black. He saw things that she didn't, though, with his aura so they were even. He heard things, too, like auras. They had sounds to them, he had said, and hers was like screaming.

She closed her eyes.

All she could hear was her breathing and his breathing and the ceiling fan going around and around. She could hear the TV going in the other room. She could hear Hatori cursing at his game. She could hear the gunshots from his game. She could hear it all in her brain, not with her aura, and she could see auras with her brain but not with her aura…so there were things that he could see that she couldn't….and stuff….

"I will never see what you see." Said Mob

"What?" asked Shimazaki

"There are things that you see with your aura that I will never be able to see. There are things that you hear that I will never be able to hear. It goes both ways too. There are things that I see that you will never be able to see. There are things that I can hear that you will never be able to hear." Said Mob

"You're too high, Mob, you are way too high if you think that there is something in this world that you can hear but I can't." Said Shimazaki

"Can you hear the ceiling fan?" asked Mob

"Duh, of course." Said Shimazaki

"What about the TV in the living room?" asked Mob

"It's on the cooking channel as usual. They're talking about making crepes so I guess that we're having crepes tomorrow." Said Shimazaki

"Um….what about Hatori cursing and shooting people?" asked Mob

"I can hear that and a whole lot more….and trust me, you don't want to listen to what's going on in that room. That is something that I pray to God that only I will ever be able to hear." Said Shimazaki

"What's so bad about listening to Hatori?" asked Mob

"You'll know when you're older….and how dare he say Toshi's name…not that I care." Said Shimazaki. His thoughts had been sort of dark tonight and he had no idea why. Toshi wasn't really mad at him about the plane ride and hadn't been at the time. Australia was great, it was summer here, and the kid was being good company. Was it because he missed Sho? Well that and….and for some reason he always felt like he missed Toshi…and they had been consuming his every thought lately…and he had no clue why. They had always been someone special to him but now it was like….like they were someone extra special to him…or something….he didn't know….

Toshi was Toshi.

"Why can't he talk about Minegishi?" asked Mob

"Because….I don't know. My own stupid thoughts. That's something that I can hear, you know, my thoughts. So therefore I have the better hearing." Said Shimazaki

"Well I can hear my thoughts too so….so you can't hear mine. It's like…like there's a world in my head and it's only for me…and you can't see it or hear it or…or anything. Because it's mine alone. It's like everything is mine in my head and in your head everything is yours and…and everyone just has this whole world inside of them…and they will never know my world…and I will never know theirs." Said Mob. She stared up at the ceiling. How had she never realized this before? She had no idea what anyone else was thinking. Shimazaki was a person who was laying right beside her and he had thoughts in his head and she would never be able to hear them…she would never be able to see the world that was inside of his head…and stuff…

"Mob…get me on to your level." Said Shimazaki. God, he envied her. He wished that he could have been ten again. Then he could have really felt it, felt her, felt what she was feeling…though like she had said he would never truly know what it was that she was feeling and the reverse was true as well. They would never know each others feelings just like Toshi would never know his…

What even were his feelings?

Toshi. Toshi was his feeling and Toshi had been his feeling for a while now. Maybe even since the day he had met them. That first mission together. God….had he known how great they were back then? He didn't know. All he knew was that they were great now and…and he always wanted to be with them. Now and forever. He felt better when they were around. He felt better about himself and better about the world and just…better…when they were near. There was never a time when he didn't want to be near to them. They were in his head and in his bed and in him and he was in them…well he wasn't….but he wanted to be…and not just like that. He wanted to be in their head like they were in his head. He wanted them to think about him all the time like he thought of them. He wanted them to…to want him…like he wanted them….

But how did he want them?

"If you want to be on my level then you need to smoke more. It's been your turn for like….a bunch of turns of the ceiling fan." Said Mob

"No…no I'm pretty sure it's your turn." Said Shimazaki

"No, it's yours…so take your turn already." Said Mob. She hadn't meant to sound mean there but she wanted her turn and she would never get her turn unless he took his turn already…but she should be nice because he was nice enough to let her smoke with him and stuff. She should be nice in general. She had to be sweet and nice because mom had wanted her to be…and because people liked her better this way…and because she wanted the world to be nice, she wanted everyone in the world to be nice to each other, so she had to be nice to everyone.

"God…you sound like Toshi almost…God I miss Toshi…" said Shimazaki. He wanted to share this moment with Toshi…and there he went thinking about them again. But why? They lived with him. He didn't have to think about them, he could be with them at any time. So why did his mind keep on turning back to them like this? Why were they just…inside of him….like this? Why was he…like this? He didn't know. This was too much thinking.

"I miss Minegishi too." Said Mob as she felt the bracelet around her wrist. She wished that she could have shared this moment and this feeling with her best friend….but she knew that she had overdid it and she knew that Minegishi would have been upset with her for overdoing it like this when she knew better than to overdo it…but she did miss Minegishi…and she missed Sho too…even though she knew that Sho could never be a part of this….

She just missed everyone.

"God….Toshi….I can't stop thinking about Toshi. They're just so…Toshi. Like…like when they're around I feel so good…and when they aren't around I just can't stop wishing that they were around….and I wish that Toshi were here right now….because Toshi is…is Toshi…" said Shimazaki

"Wait….if you bring Minegishi here then they'll see that I overdid it…and then I should go before you bring Minegishi here…" said Mob as she fiddled with her bracelet. She shifted in the bed and she heard something hit the ground. She didn't know what it was. She didn't want to get up. She kept on laying down. Shimazaki lifted one of his arms and it took her a minute to realize that he wanted her to use him as a pillow.

Which she did.

He didn't make a good pillow, a pillow would have made a good pillow, but she was less cramped now. She had some room now and that was good. She could smell him more now. He wore a lot of cologne because the world smelled bad, he said, and he liked to smell things that were good. She didn't really care all too much. She was just happy not to be smothered and stuff.

"Toshi's communing with nature and I'm not going to take them away from that…I can barely see past you I'm so fucked up…God, how is your aura so bright? You brother's aura isn't nearly as bright…God I miss him….I bet he would have gone to the hospital with me and played with the machines…." Said Shimazaki. He didn't like hospitals, they smelled bad and were full of death and rot, but he did like all of the machines that they had there. The way they sounded. He had gone to the hospital a lot as a child, before he could put up a barrier, and he wondered if they still remembered him. Maybe. That was in Japan though and he didn't trust himself to start teleporting all the way to Japan.

"Don't….don't do that stuff with Sho…because it's not ok and…and he might think that it's ok…and I'm his big sister. I have to take care of him. He…he needs to know what's good and what's bad and I have to be the one to teach him….and stuff…" said Mob

"You are nothing like Sho….God I miss him….I mean I like you but…yeah, he's a fun kid…like the time with the old timey bicycle and the big stick….that was fun….we have fun together…" said Shimazaki

"Don't worry. Sho's going to come back and then when he does you and him can have more fun together….and stuff." Said Mob. She wanted Sho to have a best friend…but she also wanted him to stop cursing and to stop doing such mean things…and stuff. Like the time when he made the man fall off the bike….that hadn't been a good thing at all….and she wanted to tell him to be nice but she didn't want to smother him either….and it was hard to both take care of someone but also to not smother them.

"Yeah….we'll have fun….hopefully like before. God…please let this crush end soon." Said Shimazaki. He had no clue what he was supposed to do about this. The kid had a crush on him, which was whatever, but no matter what Shimazaki said to him it never seemed to get any better. He needed it to end…yesterday! The kid had been a lot more fun before he'd gotten all lovesick and jealous and shit.

"Crush? You have a crush? Who do you have a crush on?" asked Mob. She turned to face him. He was IN LOVE?! That was the best news that she had heard since the thing about Shibata making crepes tomorrow. Love was the best thing in the world. All you needed was love. Now he was in love and he could be happy and live happily ever after with the love of his life and this was the best thing ever!

"Me? Nobody…maybe Toshi….but it's not about me. Just…never fall in love with me, ok? Never fall in love with me, never have a crush on me, just never have any romantic feelings about me whatsoever, ok? Rub one or two or twenty out to me, that's fine, but never catch feelings for me." Said Shimazaki. Maybe he should have just had this talk with the kid when they'd met….but he'd had no way of knowing that the kid was bi….at least…let alone that he would catch feelings like this. He was ten. He should have had a crush on a guy his own age or something. Shimazaki didn't care who the kid jerked off to, he could scream his name to the heavens for all he cared, but he did not know how to deal with the kid's feelings without hurting him and shit. It was complicated.

"Um….ok? I mean I've always just liked you as a friend…and stuff….and I don't think that anything will ever change between us so….ok? Also what does that mean?" asked Mob

"To love someone? I have no clue. I used to think that it meant that shit they have in books, you know. Long speeches and going into battle for someone and stuff….or like getting married and wanting to, like, own someone….but now I just don't know. Like…I care about Toshi more than anyone in the world and I always want to be with them and….and I have no idea what light is but I think that…that's what they are. Like I know that the sun is warm and lightbulbs are warm and shit…so that's why I think that Toshi is light…and I don't know what I would do without them….but I don't want to own them. I mean…the thought of someone being in love with Toshi, making them their partner, it makes me want to start committing murders….and I am not a serial killer I don't kill for pleasure….but I would…take pleasure…in killing someone who thought that they could own Toshi like that….and that might mean that I want to own Toshi…or something? I don't know. It's complicated. It's a very complicated thing, love, and when I figure it out then I'll tell you." Said Shimazaki with a sigh. He could feel her aura on him. What? That was the best that he could do. Let's see her do better then.

"No…I mean what does 'rub one or two or twenty out' mean?" asked Mob. That had been the most beautiful thing that she had ever heard…and she wished that Minegishi had heard that because then they might have become more than friends who kissed and did other things together….and then that would have been the best….but that hadn't been what she had meant and she had to ask about what she had meant to ask about before she forgot.

"Uh….you still only ten years old?" asked Shimazaki. Well he had certainly fucked up now hadn't he? Right. She was a kid and not every kid was him and she didn't do that yet and he had just talked about that with a kid and now everyone would be all 'I told you so' because he looked like such a creep.

"I'm going to be eleven in May." Said Mob. This had better not have been one of those things she could only know about when she got older things…she was getting so sick of those.

"Yeah…that's too young and I fucked up real bad there." said Shimazaki. Toshi was going to be so mad at him…and also Toshi was going to think that he was a creep! Which he wasn't! He didn't fuck kids! He had it tattooed right there on his dick for the world to see! If there's no grass on the field then he was not going to play ball! He did not spend all that time with needles being shoved into his dick just to have people think that he fucked kids!

"What do you mean?" asked Mob. She didn't see how he had F-worded up…but she was bad at talking things and also the feel of her toes in her socks was very distracting right now.

"Just…forget I said anything, ok? And don't you dare ask Toshi what that means or they're going to be so mad at me…for real mad not Toshi's ketchup packet times mad…just…you'll figure it out on your own when you get older, ok? Now let's find where the hell that bowl went to and finish and….I don't know….listen to the Beatles?" asked Shimazaki as he sat up quickly.

"I don't know what you're so worried about but ok, I can keep a secret, and we can listen to the Beatles if you want…even though I would rather listen to either the Frozen soundtrack, the Tangled soundtrack, or the My Neighbor Totoro soundtrack." Said Mob. Shimazaki shook his head and stuck out his tongue.

"Soundtracks. Disgusting. I am ashamed of you, Suzuki Shigeko, you're an embarrassment to my forefathers." Said Shimazaki. Honestly. Soundtracks? Had she bene raised by WOLVES? Why not just ride elevators all day for the music? Why not just follow an ice cream truck? Why not just hang out in an old folk's home and….actually the oldies could be pretty good. That classical stuff they listened to, too. That traditional shit could be good too, like that shit Suzuki listened to when he thought that nobody was around. The traditional stuff he liked, not the soundtracks to shows that had gone off the air before Shimazaki had even been born….and there was his answer. She had been raised by Suzuki and Suzuki was a total weirdo.

"But…we're not family….so why would I embarrass your forefathers? Also you said that your family was yakuza all the way back, not musicians, so wouldn't they be embarrassed that I'm not in the yakuza? And also wouldn't they be more embarrassed at you for quitting the yakuza?" asked Mob

"First of all there were probably some musicians back there, I only know the names of my forefathers not what they did, and also I didn't quit the yakuza, the family kicked me out." Said Shimazaki

"Oh….I'm sorry that your family kicked you out. I'm sure that you didn't deserve it." Said Mob. That was the saddest thing that she had ever heard. Family didn't kick out family…that wasn't how family worked. No wonder he had stabbed his dad in the stomach….though maybe that was why he had gotten kicked out in the first place…

"Oh, no, I totally deserved it. I let my dad die…and well in letting him die I also had to let a bunch of other high ranking people die…and also my whole existence was an embarrassment to the old bastard…and I stuck my dick in a lot of places where it was wanted but did not belong….let some people stick there's where it was definitely wanted and definitely belonged….and then there was the time I burnt my house down on accident….and the drugs…I was HEAVY into drugs for a while…and also the thing with the other thing….just I did a lot of stuff and my getting kicked out was totally well earned….anyway I don't like to talk about this! Now, what's your favorite Beatles album?" asked Shimazaki. He'd been having dark thoughts all night and he did not need to make them any worse than they were now. He was going to smoke a bowl with the kid and wait for Toshi to stop laying naked in the garden and he was going to listen to the Beatles because they always made him feel good and then that was just what he was going to do.

"Um…I don't know any albums but I like the song that goes 'hey Jude, don't be afraid' I like that one and I like the one about the Blackbird and I like the one about where the man sings about yesterday…and also the one where the man sings about being a jealous guy…those are Beatles songs that I like…but I don't know a lot of Beatles songs so you can pick." Said Mob. She could feel his aura and he felt unhappy….and also she knew what some of that stuff that he had said meant and she did not want to talk about sex with him…..so gross….so she would gladly listen to every song that those English guys had ever sang in their entire lifetime than talk about sex with Shimazaki….or anyone….because it was gross…the grossest thing ever.

Ick.

"Jealous Guy isn't a Beatles song, it's a Lennon song, and you only like their depressing stuff. I've been having a lot of dark thoughts lately so we're going to be listening to Yellow Submarine because it's my favorite, and then we'll be listening to Help, and then if we have time and you want to listen to something heavy Revolver. Ok? And….I guess we can listen to some of Lennon's solo stuff since you seem to like it? Ok? Good plan?" asked Shimazaki. Her brother would have gone right to Yellow Submarine….and then they would have gone and built a fort and pretended that they were in a Yellow Submarine…but she wasn't her brother. Toshi would have picked Revolver and Let it Be since they liked heavy shit…but she wasn't Toshi. She was Mob and she was herself and she was his friend and he needed to get out of this Toshi/dark thoughts spiral he'd been in for a while….

Maybe get higher? Yeah. That would work.

"Um….sure. That sounds like a good plan….it does." Said Mob. She had no idea what he had just said but if it got them talking about other things and it got them back to smoking then she was happy. If it got her to stop wanting to smother Sho with love, to call him and see how he was doing, to interrupt his important mission, then she was happy. If it got her to forget that Minegishi would be mad at her, very mad, if they found out that not only had she smoked without them but also overdid it….and not just overdid it but was going to keep on overdoing it then she was happy. If it kept her feeling this good, if it kept her thinking about how good this bed felt and how soft her socks felt against her feet, then she was happy. If it got her feeling good and kept her feeling good then she was happy.

Mob felt very good when she smoked….and she felt very good in her socks, too.


	279. Playing Pretend at Midnight

Fukuda had played his share of pretend over the years.

When he had taken an old refrigerator box and pretended that it was his cave and he lived on the moon all alone. He had been pretty alone back then. He had thought that he had been the only one in the world…and then he had gotten a little older and then a whole new game of pretend had started. Pretend that Suzuki is normal. Pretend that Suzuki likes you. Pretend that you're actually friends. Pretend that everything is fine. Pretend that Claw is just a game he won't let go of. Pretend that you're still friends. Pretend that you're loyal. Pretend that you aren't in love with his wife. Pretend that you don't have fantasies every single day of taking his son and running away…..

Pretend that there's even somewhere that you can run to.

Pretend, pretend, pretend, and pretend again. It felt, sometimes, like there was no end to playing pretend. That there was nothing real in his life. That this isn't his life. That he's going to close his eyes, fall asleep, and then wake up in his bed and it'll be 1986 and he'll have never met Suzuki Touichirou…or something like that. That he was someone else. That he was someone better. That he was someone that he could like. That he was someone other than himself. That he was someone who could be with the woman he loved. That the other side of his bed was warm, that she was there, and he could just roll over and…and hold her….like he had been able to in those wonderful days when she had been hiding with him….when she had been his….

She had never been his.

They had never been….they could never be what he wanted them to be. He was forty four years old staring up at the void in a strange room in a strange house in a suburb of Seoul and she was…wherever she was. Japan, maybe, or maybe somewhere else. Maybe from wherever her people had come from. She was half Japanese, the same as Suzuki, but he had no idea where her other half had come from. He had no idea where she was even from. She was…so much of her life was a mystery to him…and he wished that he had asked her, before, because then he would have had some idea of where she had gone to….where she could have gone to….

Which was probably why she had never volunteered the information.

She had gone to Sapporo. That was the last he had heard from her. She had chosen to go to Sapporo…and he had no idea why. Maybe that was where she was from. He didn't know. He wished that he had asked. He wished that she had told him. He wished…he wished that he had something that he could tell Sho about his mother. He deserved to know about his mother. Fukuda…Fukuda had told him about his father, about his grandparents, about Seasoning City…and he had nothing to tell him about Masami. Sho…he was owed some part of that history….and Fukuda….he wasn't going to pretend that he had anything to give Sho…

He didn't.

Well he had…he had the truth but even staring up at the void at midnight, Seoul time, he didn't think that telling Sho the truth would be a good idea. Shaking him awake and telling him that his mother had run away from his father because she hadn't had a choice. Tell him that his father had been a terrible husband to her and had beaten her down, emotionally, until she was almost nothing. How the person who had been caring for him since he had been a toddler had been the one to help his mother escape. That Fukuda loved Masami more than anything else in the world and that he would always care for her…that not a day went by when he didn't wish that Sho had been his son….Sho didn't need to know that. Not at the age of ten. Not when he already had enough that he was going through. No….Sho did not need that information…

Later, not now.

Fukuda was not going to pretend that he was never going to tell Sho…because he was. When he was older enough to deal with that information. When he was better from all that he had been going through. When Suzuki was dead, cremated, and interred in the Suzuki family grave marker. When Shigeko ruled the world through smiles and love and Disney songs. When Sho had his own family and someone he cared about….when he was old enough to deal with it all…if he was ever going to be able to deal with it all….

Fukuda just didn't know.

He rolled over onto his side. He could feel Sho's aura. It flared. It flared and…and he could hear tossing and turning. That happened sometimes. Sho….he had terrible nightmares sometimes. They'd had enough sleepover for Fukuda to know that Sho…that Sho needed someone when he had nightmares like this. When he got like this. Sho needed someone and Fukuda wasn't going to pretend that Sho had anyone else in his life that could be there for him…and Fukuda was not going to pretend that he didn't know that Sho needed him….

Fukuda got up.

He rolled off of the bed and got up. He pulled his shirt down where it had ridden up and stood. Maybe too quickly. He saw spots in his vision. Heh. Maybe he was starting to get old, too. Maybe he was going to start throwing his back out, soon, and maybe he would start squinting too whenever he tried to read his phone. Maybe he was starting to look his age, finally, and maybe….he crossed the room. No time for maybes. No time for speculations. No time for anything other than getting up and seeing what Sho needed. Nothing else but being there for Sho.

He would always be there for Sho.

The hallway was short, dark, and cold. The winter season was in it's last gasps. March was in it's last throws. It would be April soon. April and then May and then he would have to staple a smile to his soul and wish Shigeko a happy birthday and deal with…whatever it was that she was planning on dragging Sho around for on her birthday. He had used to love her birthdays. She had been such a sweet little girl. She had always been so happy to see him, happy to share the day with her, and there had been nothing else to it. Suzuki hadn't gotten to her yet. Suzuki hadn't been there slowly molding her into the child that he had always wanted. A perfect reflection of himself.

A near perfect reflection.

She wasn't exactly like her father. She drank and smoked and did a million and one other things that a girl her age should not have been doing…things that he should have stopped her from doing. He had promised Masami that he would look after her children…but what was he supposed to do with someone who had power over him? Shigeko had power over him and he could not begin to tell her what to do. She was living like anyone would have without any real rules. Drinking, drugs, men….all of the vices Suzuki would have had if not for the fact that he was a very strange man…well not men, obviously, and he had done his fair share of womanizing…so maybe she was more like her father than he realized….and maybe this was more his fault than he realized. He didn't know. His mind went to the strangest places at night, when he walked through the darkness, when he walked through the void.

It was dark.

He stepped on something round. One of Sho's colored pencils. He maybe should have turned on the light. That may have been the thing to have done considering the fact that he couldn't really see in the void that was this hallway. He stepped on a piece of paper. It got stuck to his foot. He hoped that he hadn't ruined anything important…and he so wished that Sho would have cleaned up after himself…but he was not going to get on Sho's back about that. He had enough of that in his life. He had his father breathing down his neck all the time. He had his sister bossing him around the time pretending that she was his mother. Running his baths and checking his hair to make sure that he had actually bathed, portioning out his toothpaste for him, forcing him to eat food that he hated even though even she must have known that eating one vegetable a week wouldn't do anything, laying out his pajamas and his day clothes, not letting him have liquids after eight p.m. and the rest of it…

Fukuda almost tripped over Sho's pencil box.

He fell through the void and braced himself against the wall. He could feel his toenail growing back quickly. He had ripped it off….no matter, no matter, he could heal. He wasn't going to wake Sho up and breathe down his neck about leaving his things out where people could trip and die. No, he was just going to walk more carefully through the void. That was all. He made his way more carefully through the void until he made it to Sho's door.

He felt Sho's aura flaring again.

He shuddered as it hit him. That was never pleasant. For a moment the color, the pain, and the fear…for a moment he smells blood. He smells the heavy copper smell of blood. He feels the sun on his face. His hands sting as he digs through splintered wood and…and he's fine. He's fine. Sho isn't his father and he isn't losing control. He's just having a bad dream, that's all, and Fukuda has been there for his bad dreams before. He had these frequently…and now he had someone to help him through this. Whatever was happening in his mind. Whatever he was feeling. Whatever was making him toss and turn. Whatever was making his aura flare….

"Mother fucker!"

And whatever was making him cure like a sailor on shore leave. Fukuda sighed as he opened the door. He had no clue what he was supposed to do about the cursing besides just telling Sho to stop with all of this. Fukuda knew that he could reprimand Sho until he was blue in the face but Sho would never listen. He was given carte blanch by the thirty year old blind man he was in love with to curse a blue streak so of course he would….Fukuda shook his head. Sho needed him. He would address the never ending stream of profanity later.

Right now he had to see what was wrong.

"Sho? Can I come in?" asked Fukuda with a knock. He wasn't going to let himself in. No, then Sho would have thought, still thought, that it was ok to just let himself into people's bedrooms. He didn't need another Valentine's Day on his hands….and also all those times that Sho had almost walked in on things which he did not ever need to walk in on. Sho was getting older now, too, and he deserved his privacy. It wasn't like when he had been a toddler running around like a little jay bird…

God, where had the time gone?

"No….yes….I don't know!" said Sho. Well there had been a 'yes' in there and that was good enough for him. He opened the door and stepped from one void into another. He had to be careful as he stepped across the floor. If the hallway was bad then this room would be worse. Every single step he took he either wound up with a piece of paper under his foot or a drawing implement. Still, though, he followed Sho's aura like a lighthouse at sea until he made his way to the bed.

"Don't sit down!" said Sho. Fukuda rested his hand on the bed…and then immediately pulled it back. Wet. The whole bed was wet…and for a minute he thinks that Sho took that whole two liter to bed with him and it broke open…but then he remembered that Sho downed that whole two liter that night before bed….and Fukuda had thought that it would have been alright because it had been caffeine free….

Also because that had been one of Shigeko's rules.

Suzuki made up rules sometimes just to amuse himself. Just to prove to himself that he was still the boss and he could still do anything. He had assumed that Shigeko had been the same way…that she had been lording her power over her brother because, well, she was a ten year old girl with unchecked power. It had just seemed like such a stupid rule. No liquids after eight p.m….Sho wasn't a baby. Sho was ten and he should have been able to drink liquids whenever he wanted to….

Well obviously not since he, apparently, still wet the bed from time to time.

"Sho…..you wet the bed." Said Fukuda for lack of anything. Yup. He could feel it and he could smell it. Yup. Sho was a ten year old boy who still wet the bed….alright then.

"Shut your fucking mouth! I did not!" said Sho. Fukuda sighed and pulled his hand up off the bed. These mattresses all had protectors, thank God, and there was a washer and dryer in the house….and now he would have to be up all night doing laundry….and he had a full day tomorrow….a full day he had to get up bright and early for….and he couldn't believe that Sho had wet the bed…

Was he sick?

Fukuda gave him a once over with his powers. Sho was the picture of health. No concussions, contusions, or abrasions…or other underlying medical conditions that could make a boy his age wet the bed like a toddler. This was…not normal. Well Fukuda assumed that this was not normal. He had been done wetting the bed by the time he had been five and Suzuki, if asked, would probably still swear up and down that he had never wet the bed in his life. Sho was too old for this…and this should not have been. This was not normal. This was…

This was a common enough occurrence that Shigeko had restricted Sho's access to liquids after eight.

"Language." Said Fukuda automatically. There was something hilarious in this, a ten year old boy cursing him out after having wet the bed, but he was not going to laugh. He wasn't even going to chuckle. This was humiliating for Sho, he didn't have to feel his aura to know, and he needed to be there for him. What usually happened when he wet the bed? Did anyone even notice or care? Suzuki….this was not something that he would have dealt with and Shigeko….well this would have given her the perfect opportunity to pretend to be the little mother….and Sho didn't need that. He needed someone who would take care of him without judgement and that was what Fukuda was there for.

"Fuck you…..you fucking….person." said Sho softly. He had drawn his knees up to his chest. Fukuda's eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the void. Sho was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest and his aura pulled inwards defensively. Fukuda was about to reach over and pat him on the back before he remembered where his hand had just been.

"Sho…ok, just this once you can curse me out. How's that sound?" asked Fukuda. He needed to get Sho in a better mood first and foremost. Then he would….well wash the bedding and get Sho changed…bathe him, too? No, wait, he did that by himself now….right? He had that same hydrophobia the Awakened had…because he was one of the Awakened…and Fukuda hadn't been checking his hair after he got out of the tub. That had just felt needlessly controlling. Sho…Fukuda wasn't sure if Sho had been bathing, even. His hair had been sticking up more but…he was ten. It wasn't like he would stink if he went a few days or weeks without a bath….

Well now he would.

He was going to have to run Sho a bath at midnight….and that was fine. He had always wished that Sho had been his son and…and this was a very parental thing to do. He wasn't going to give Sho a bath obviously, even Shigeko didn't go that far, but he was going to encourage Sho to get in that tub and bathe before he spent the rest of this trip stinking of urine….and he so hated bossing Sho around like that, like his sister would have, but this was for his own good.

"Pretty fucking awesome….and I didn't wet the fucking bed….and fuck you for thinking that I wet the bed….you fucker…." Said Sho. Fukuda shook his head. Sho was usually more creative than that…not that he was going to sit there and critique Sho's cursing. No, no, he had enough problems to deal with as it was.

"OK, you didn't wet the bed. Someone else climbed in through your window and wet your bed for you. Ok, that's fine. I don't care who wet this bed, I really don't, I just care about getting you out of it. Ok?" asked Fukuda

"….yeah…..ok." said Sho

"Good. Now come on, I'll wash all of this and then you can take a bath and then…and then you can sleep with me. You know. In case they come back and finish the job." Said Fukuda. He laughed at the end of that…but that laugh did not put Sho in good spirits. His aura was still miserable and he still had his knees drawn up to his chest and he was still sitting in that soaking wet bed….and Fukuda had no clue what he was even supposed to do….

"Um….I can sleep here…..in case it was me who did this but….but I don't remember….so maybe I should just sleep here." Said Sho. Fukuda was proud of him for being honest but he wasn't so proud that he was going to let him be impractical like that. This bedding would take forty five minutes on the wash cycle and then an hour on the dry….and he did not need Sho to be up for that long. There was other bedding around her somewhere….maybe….or maybe not. He didn't know. The bed had been made when they got there and the Claw houses he stayed in…he had never had to look for extra bedding. He just washed what was on the bed. He had no idea where the extra bedding would even have been. Masami would have known. She would have known where the extra bedding was and she would have known how to calm Sho down and she would had had this bed stripped and in the wash instead of standing there like an idiot.

God, he missed Masami so much.

"Sho, no. I'm not keeping you up all night. Besides, if this was you then, judging by how soaked this mattress is, I don't think that this is going to happen again…and it was my fault for letting you drink a whole two liter before bed. I should have just poured you out a glass or something." Said Fukuda. No liquids after eight was a stupid rule but…but maybe he had gone too far in the other direction. Maybe he had been all too happy to rebel against the reign of a ten year old. He didn't know. All he knew was there Sho had wet the bed and now he was the man who would have to deal with this. He would have to channel his inner Masami and deal with this.

And he would do just fine.

Because he knew Sho. He knew Sho better than his own father knew him and he knew how to lift his spirits. Yes, ok, he was humiliated and all but it wasn't like Fukuda was going to tease him or anything. This was not a big deal. Sho was a kid and this was what kids sometimes did. This was not a big deal, in fact it was a little deal, such a little deal that Masami would have shaken her head and said something like 'Fukuda, you idiot' and laughed and smiled….and he had this. He had the hell out of this.

Language.

"No…it's my fault. I shouldn't have broken the rule….even though it really fucking sucks….and I shouldn't have had that dream….because I am such a baby sometimes….I'm an even bigger baby than baby sis…." Said Sho

"Everyone has bad dreams, Sho, they're nothing to be ashamed of. They don't make you a baby. I'm forty four, you know, and I still have bad dreams you know." Said Fukuda

"What….what do you dream about?" asked Sho. Fukuda needed to think up a lie. He dreamt about waking up and Suzuki had taken over the world. He dreamt about waking up and being surrounded by blood. He dreamt about waking up back at his old apartment and Masami was still with Suzuki. He dreamt about waking up and Sho was dead….Sho did not need to hear any of that.

"I dream that I'm a kid in school again and there's this big test that I forgot to study for….and it's for a class I forgot that I was taking….and I show up naked and everyone laughs at me." Said Fukuda going with that old cliché. It was better for Sho, that way, even though he was loathe to lie to him.

"That sounds pretty bad…but it's not as bad as what I dream about." Said Sho

"What…what do you dream about?" asked Fukuda bracing himself for the worst. He had been through the Awakening process. That would be enough to give anyone nightmares.

"Sometimes….before I was dreaming about when I was in the Awakening machine and…and the part with the water….the part where they fill it up with water and you can't breathe…that's what I was dreaming about before…and also sometimes I dream that I wake up and dad took big sis with him and left me all alone…and sometimes I wake up and I dream that big sis is gone…and sometimes I wake up and there's this stranger in my room and everyone says that she's my sister but she's not because I've never even seen her before and I want to leave my bed but I can't and my mom is holding her and all I can think is 'who the fuck are you and why are you touching my mom' and…and I know that it's big sis but I don't know her…and sometimes I dream about other stuff, too. People…a person….finding out something about me…and then never wanting to talk to me again. That's what I dream about." Said Sho. Fukuda wiped his hand off on the dry part of Sho's blanket and then patted him on the back. He knew that this was not wise or sanitary but he also knew that Sho needed him.

"Those are enough to make anyone wet the bed, Sho, and if you did then nobody would hold it against you. I would never hold it against you. Now come on, let's get you cleaned up and we can forget that this ever happened. I won't tell anyone either. That's a promise." Said Fukuda

"Even if you get tortured you won't tell anyone?" asked Sho

"Even if I get tortured." Said Fukuda

"Even if they put you in a Saw room and it's either you tell them what happened or you have to take your own organs out and put them in jars?" asked Sho

"….no…and I don't want you watching any more of those movies…" said Fukuda. At some point he would have to figure out those parental control things…because THAT was the sort of thing that would make even him, a middle aged man, wet the bed….

"Even if they lock you up in a room for fifteen years and then they trick you into doing gross adult bed stuff with your own daughter and then when you figure it out you cut off your own tongue?" asked Sho

"What the….even if that happens…and I don't have a daughter but…Sho, is that a movie or…or what?" asked Fukuda

"It's a movie." Said Sho

"Just…don't watch that movie anymore…and if someone tries to do any movie style torture then…then I'll still keep my mouth shut." Said Fukuda. He wondered if any of this was having a detrimental effect on Sho…and he wondered what he could do about it…besides standing over his shoulder for the rest of his life making sure that he never saw…any of that…ever again.

"Ok….but what if they try to chop off your finger?" asked Sho. He held his pinky finger up to the pale light that streamed in through the blinds. Fukuda shook his head.

"Even if they try to chop off my finger…and no more yakuza movies for you…" said Fukuda

"No, that's not from a movie. That happened to Shimazaki's friend when he was a kid. They chopped off his little finger and then he said that he wanted the other one done so it was even and now they call him eight fingers…well they did until he became seven fingers but that wasn't a punishment, a lady bit his finger off because he was doing gross adult bed stuff with someone else." Said Sho. Fukuda tallied up his evil thoughts towards that man and did not let them show on his face or his aura. At least Sho felt better now…so….yay? But still. In what universe was it appropriate to tell yakuza stories to a ten year old?

"Let me guess….that friend was Shimazaki?" asked Fukuda. He wondered what Shimazaki was even playing at when it came to Sho. Well he had an idea…and he hoped to God that he was wrong. Fukuda knew what he was playing at when it came to Shigeko. Befriend her, make her think that drinking drugs and whatever else they got up together was normal, and then when she came into whatever adult power Suzuki was planning on giving her she'd have her good friend at her side and in her bed….and Fukuda was going to figure out a way to trap and kill that man if he ever even THOUGHT about doing any of that with Sho….

"No, that wouldn't make sense. They were both boys." Said Sho. Fukuda was not going to correct him or open up that discussion. Not now. Not for a while. Right now he needed to focus on his immediate problems and stop with his fantasies of murdering Shimazaki Ryou.

"Right. Well, anyway, come on. You go shower off and then…we can watch a movie while the bedding gets washed if you don't want to sleep next to me. Not a violent one." said Fukuda

"Can we watch Zootopia in Japanese?" asked Sho

"Yes, that's fine." Said Fukuda even though he had seen that movie a thousand times before. Anthropomorphized animals as a metaphor for racism and interracial relationships was much better than whatever horror movie Sho had on his mind…and if Shigeko felt like playing the part of the little mother then maybe she should have been working harder to keep her little brother from being exposed to all of that.

"Ok…and is it fine if maybe I get tired and then fall asleep next to you? I mean I'm not a baby, I can sleep on my own, and even baby sis has her own crib in her own room….but I might get tired and fall asleep. So if that happens maybe don't wake me up." Said Sho. Fukuda smiled and almost patted him on the head before he stopped himself. It would be hard enough for Sho to rinse off without having to get his hair wet…and also Fukuda was washing his hands after all of this.

"That's fine. Now come on. I'll get this going and you go rinse off…with soap in the shower. Ok? Then we'll watch Zootopia until your bedding is done and if you fall asleep then, hey, it's fine." Said Fukuda. There. Masami would have been so proud of him. He was handling this better than Sho's own father would have. Suzuki…he was equal parts as likely to ignore or beat Sho over this…so thank God this hadn't happened where he could have noticed….

Thank God for that.

"Ok…and remember! You promised never to tell anyone!" said Sho before he jumped out of bed and ran out the door. He stripped his clothes off as he ran. Fukuda heard him curse, slide into a wall, and then get back to running before the bathroom door slammed shut. Fukuda sighed and turned on the bedside lamp.

Yup. That was a lake.

Hoe could one little person possibly have room inside of them for that much liquid? Fukuda didn't know. All he knew was that he had to get this bed stripped and washed and then he had to be up for the next two hours doing laundry…and then for the rest of the night too because Sho was going to fall asleep in his bed and he kicked in his sleep like he was practicing for the world cup. No matter, no matter. He had spent years wishing and hoping and pretending that Sho was his Son…and this was just a part of that. A part of being someone's father. Something that Sho's own father would never have done for him. No, Suzuki would have either beaten Sho up or pretended that he'd never had a son…but Fukuda could at least help Sho pretend that he had a father.


	280. Doing Nice Things for Your Friends

It was important to do nice things for the people you loved.

Mob loved Minegishi a lot. They were her best friend and they had the bracelets to prove it. When you were someone's best friend that meant that you had to try and make them happy. Minegishi had been unhappy lately. Well more unhappy than usual. Winter was very hard on them because all the plants went to sleep. This was the southern hemisphere and in the southern hemisphere it was summer and not winter…but Minegishi didn't seem to feel any better.

Which was worrying.

They should have been happy. Sure they were in a Claw compound out far away from everyone and everything but it was warm out and there were plants everywhere. The first thing that Minegishi had done when they got here was take all the seeds out of their pockets and spread them around until they had a garden. Then they too off their shoes and laid down in it to commune with nature, they had said, but that didn't seem to help. That was what they were doing now. They were laying down in the sun on their bed of flowers but their aura still felt pointy and they were still holding their stomach and they had still been drinking all day even though when you drank too much your stomach got upset.

And Mob didn't know what to do.

"Here. See? I made you those purple flowers you like." Said Mob as she made some purple flowers grow next to Minegishi's head. They weren't the exact purple flowers that they liked but Mob was not the best at making specific flowers grow. She had tried her best, though, and she hoped that her best was good enough…and she hoped that her best made Minegishi feel better.

"Thanks." Said Minegishi as the opened their eyes. They put their weight on their elbows as they tried to sit up….and instantly had to lay back down. Stupid biology. Stupid reproductive system. Stupid piece of copper shoved into their reproductive system that made all of this worse than it had to be. Stupid Ryou for being stupid good at the stupid things he did which necessitated this stupid piece of stupid copper through their stupid reproductive organs that were stupid.

They'd get more poetic when the pain subsided.

"Do you want me to call….well not Fukuda because he's in Korea….but maybe if I ask my dad really nice I can have a plane and then I can carry you to the plane with my powers and then I can make you all better." Said Mob. She wished that there was something that she could do. Did they need more plants? More Russian vodka? Or…what did they drink in Australia? She had no clue…but Shimazaki would know. He'd know and he'd help Minegishi because he liked them, and he had said so, and when you liked someone you would do anything for them. Even get them Australian vodka or even teleport them to Korea because they had been holding their stomach for a while now and it was really starting to get worrying.

"Mob, I don't need a plane, I don't need you to carry me, and I don't need to see that cup of food residue from the bottom of the dishwasher after it's been left to sit for a few days. I just need to commune with nature, ok? I just need to commune with nature and I just need to let this pass." Said Minegishi. They hoped that Mob had literally no follow up questions because they did not need to explain the terrible facts of life to Mob just yet. No, let that happen later on when their organs weren't in the process of betraying them.

"Ok….and I won't tell Fukuda you said that…because that might hurt his feelings." Said Mob. She knew why Minegishi didn't like Fukuda, he had made fun of their breasts and hat had been a very rude and sort of…gross feeling…thing to do to anyone let alone someone as nice and wonderful as Minegishi. So it made sense that they didn't like him…but Mob was not going to do like Sho and repeat what they had been told.

Especially not on Fukuda's birthday.

He was turning forty four. First him and then dad. Mob had gotten him a present…and she wished that she had thought to give it to him before he left…but she could give it to him when he got back. Then maybe he would like her again. She didn't know what she had done to make him not like her, his reasons for being the way he was made no sense, but she would fix it and then things could be the way that they had been when she and Sho had been little. Then she could add Fukuda to the friend group and then everyone could get along and be happy…and stuff….

She would worry about him later, though, because their best friend needed them and Minegishi was way more important to her than Fukuda…not that she would ever say that to his face….and not that she should have been thinking thoughts like that because they were not nice….even if they were true….

"Mob, by all means hurt his feelings. I don't care about him and neither should you." Said Minegishi with a groan. Mob was too nice for her own good. She would end up in real trouble some day because of that…or she'd just end up snapping one day and then the rest of the world would end up in real trouble.

"I care about everyone. You especially, though, and I just wish that I knew how to make you feel better. You get like this sometimes and I just wish that you would tell me what I can do so that I can make this better." Said Mob. She hated seeing her friend hurt. She felt so…powerless. She wasn't powerless at all, though. She ranked second in Claw only to dad and she was the second most powerful esper ever, dad had said, but sitting there on the ground watching Minegishi hold their stomach like that…it made her feel like she couldn't do anything at all….maybe because she really couldn't. Not in this situation….and that was the worst.

"God…" said Minegishi

"What about God?" asked Mob

"Never change." Said Minegishi

"I'll try but I don't think that I can help that. I think that I got taller again. my favorite Elsa dress is too short now. Also I didn't think that I would like Evangelion but I do. I mean I don't understand it but me and dad are doing a third rewatch. I like some of it. I like the blue haired girl. I think that she needs to get together with Shinji. They like each other, I can tell." Said Mob

"It begins." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head.

"No, it doesn't. She never tells Shinji how she feels. Not even at the end of the series. She just congratulates him…for something. That's it. She never tells him how much she loves him and how they would be perfect together." Said Mob

"The shippening….the shippening…" said Minegishi in mock horror even though they knew that Mob couldn't read tones to save her life. Yup. That special time in her life was coming…and Minegishi would put up with all of it. Even the shipping. It was a good outlet for all of that romantic stuff that she wanted but her father would never let her have. Let her be happy at least in her own mind. Besides, Minegishi wasn't a hypocrite. Somewhere out there in the wide expanse of the internet existed an old account full of erotic Sailor Moon fanfiction novels.

SeiyaXUsagi for life.

"What?" asked Mob. She didn't think that it was fair that Minegishi knew so many more words than she did just because they read books all the time and had been alive for seventeen years longer than her.

"You're trying to put Shinji and Rei together. I don't know why, Asuka and Rei are clearly the superior choice, but to each their own." said Minegishi

"But…Asuka is mean. Really mean." Said Mob. She had been about to say that they were both girls but girls could love other girls. Mob didn't love other girls like that, she loved everyone of course but she loved boys like that, but it was ok to like both. Some people liked both like Sho and Shimazaki and Minegishi…well Shimazaki had said that Minegishi was something called 'pan' and that it was very complicated but it also meant that they liked both…well they said that they didn't care if a person was a boy or a girl and to Mob that seemed like liking both but she wasn't sure what the difference was. The whole thing was very complicated to be honest.

"She's just mean because her mother went crazy and gave all of her love to a doll. You'd be mean to if something like that happened to you….or maybe not because you're, well, you. If I were you I would have put your father in the ground a long time ago." Said Minegishi

"But…but if I did that then I would be an orphan….and also dad isn't so bad. I can't remember the last time he hit me and he stopped making me wear yellow and when he kisses me on the top of the head he only kissed me for a little bit and not for a long time like before." Said Mob. Things with dad had been pretty good lately. He hadn't been so smothery. He saved all of his smothering for Sunday…and even then he had been…a little better. He kissed her on the head less, which was good, and they went more places instead of being cooped up inside playing Minecraft all the time….he REALLY liked Minecraft….and she did too but it was nice to get out of the house…

Even if he had dragged her away more than once just when she had started making a friend.

She knew that she wasn't supposed to talk to normal people and stuff but…but sometimes it was nice to talk to people her own age. Dad didn't like it, though, not even when she gave him the excuse that she had been practicing her language skills. He said that she could practice with him if she wanted to practice…even though her Russian had been better than his…and Alexei had been very nice…and she had really wanted to get a cup of tea with him…

But that was in the past and there was nothing she could do about it and she just needed to be grateful for dad not smothering her as badly as he had been before.

"Does he still make you sleep in the same bed as him? And you two still cuddle?" asked Minegishi. Their childhood had been a shit show so bad that the Japanese government had removed them and stuck them in a group home….and they almost never did that. So, yeah, they knew that they weren't exactly the supreme authority on what was and was not normal in families but in their opinion Suzuki was trying to turn his Daughter into his dead wife. A better version of her. They weren't in the habit of psychoanalyzing people but they got the feeling that Suzuki had problems with intimacy and relating to other human beings, because he saw himself as a living God or whatever, so he was using his Daughter as a safe replacement for his dead wife because he couldn't just out himself out there like a normal human being.

Poor Mob.

Minegishi was getting very close to just laying down on that wire so Mob could have some peace from…whatever it was. Whatever it would end up being. They had their own past shit with all of this and…and they might have just been seeing themselves when they looked at Mob…but they were getting close to just laying down on that wire if they had to. If it ever got that bad. If Suzuki starting crossing lines….more lines than he had already crossed….then they would….

If it ever came to that.

"Yes but I don't mind cuddling with dad. He's warm and it's the only time that I can hug him. He's really nice….he can still be kind of smothery but he's nice. Besides, when he's with me then he's not getting mad at Sho and that's good for Sho…and all I want is for Sho to be happy because he's the best little brother in the whole world." Said Mob. She wondered if he was ok. She wondered if he had eaten his weekly vegetable. She wondered if he'd been taking his baths. She wondered if he'd been changing his clothes. She wondered if he'd been using too much toothpaste again. She wondered….

She wondered if he missed her as much as she missed him.

Missing people was not good. She missed mom and now she missed Sho…and she missed baby Mukai, too, even though she was in a better place now. Not dead or anything, that was what it usually meant when you said that someone was in a better place, no she was with her new family and she was happy. So Mob shouldn't have missed her because she was better off with her family so she could grow up and be normal. She could grow up and make friends and have a boyfriend, or a girlfriend if that was what she liked, and she would have her own school uniform and hang out with people after school and boys would tell her that she was pretty….and she would be very happy…and Mob knew that if she had kept baby Mukai with her then there would be no chance at all that she would have a normal life like that….

But Mob still couldn't help but wonder if baby Mukai ever missed her…or thought of her…or even remembered her.

"Mob, you have got to learn to put yourself first. It's like….you'll never be happy, truly happy, unless you start putting yourself first. You don't have to let your dad smother you just to keep your brother safe." Said Minegishi. If they didn't know how bad Suzuki could be they would have said that the little demon child needed to learn that his actions had consequences….but Suzuki was liable to put his son in the ground so maybe it was best that he just continued to be a little shrieking demon child for the time being.

"But…sometimes I am happy with dad. He makes me happy when he tells me that he loves me…well he also smothers me…but I love him. It's…love can be complicated sometimes. Besides, I don't want to be selfish. It's better to care about other people than to be selfish." Said Mob

"You and I have different definitions of selfish." Said Minegishi. They had no clue how they would get through to Mob…and the pain wasn't helping them think at all. Maybe this was a conversation best had when they weren't about to start writhing in agony on a bed of flowers. God…Mob was so lucky that she was only ten…but it sucked that every member of her family had some sort of serious personality disorder. Minegishi had no clue how Mob had come out the way she was. Maybe she took after her mother…or maybe she was adopted.

"What's your definition of selfish?" asked Mob

"A lot less restrictive than yours. You think that doing anything for yourself is selfish. I think that as long as you're not screwing someone over in any serious way then you're not being selfish…..but then again I'm a pretty selfish person so-" said Minegishi

"What? No you're not. You're the least selfish person I know. You're always there for me when I need you. No matter how I feel you're always there to make me feel better. Even when I feel good you make me feel better. You always want to hang out with me even now when you have a stomach ache and you have to commune with nature to feel better. You're there for other people, too. Like how you make fresh produce for Shibata or how you help Hatori fix his skin or how you do a lot for Shimazaki. Like how you help him buy clothes because he doesn't know what colors things are and how you put the narration on movies for him and how you always make him more fun stuff to smoke and how you're always there for him, too….you're not a selfish person at all. Please don't think that about yourself. Please don't ever think bad things about yourself." Said Mob. She didn't know if she had said that right thing or not because Minegishi got really quiet and they pulled their aura in really close. She was about to apologize, even though she had no idea if she had said anything wrong or what that could have even been, when Minegishi sat up. They hissed in pain but they still sat up.

And they hugged her.

Their bracelet got caught in her hair but she didn't care. She hugged them back even though she had no idea what this hug was even about. She hugged them back because they seemed like they needed a hug. She had no idea how they could ever even begin to think such bad thoughts about themselves. Minegishi was the least selfish person in the whole wide world and the best friend that she had ever had in her whole life who wasn't her little brother.

"Mob….you're made of sugar, aren't you? You've eaten so much sugar that you've become sugar." Said Minegishi. Great. Now they were getting all emotional just because Mob had been her usually, sugary sweet, self.

"Um…I think that I'm mostly water." Said Mob as Minegishi broke the hug. They laid back down really fast and made the flowers around them grow tall. They also brought the ones that they had squished back to life. They weren't laying down exactly as they had been before, there had been an imprint of here they had been laying, but they fixed it. Mob helped as best as she could. She tried her best to make purple flowers. She made some of them purple, some blue, and some pink. Well that was alright. Minegishi didn't seem to mind. They just liked flowers.

"You're mostly sugar, never forget that." Said Minegishi. Mob couldn't forget that. She could not stop being this person, the person that she was now, because Minegishi had no clue what they would do with themselves if Mob ever stopped being, well, Mob. If the world beat her down. If this life beat her down. The life that they led did not lend itself well to sweetness, to kindness, to goodness. The world did not lend itself well to sweetness, kindness, and goodness. The world took everything good and right in it and just plucked it, like a flower, and left it to die a slow death. Minegishi could not see that happen to Mob. Sometimes when they saw Mob they could see themselves. They knew that they were just projecting their own childhood shit onto Mob in those times….and they didn't want to wake up one day and actually see themselves….

But they had no idea what they were supposed to do.

"Um….ok….but I saw in a documentary that people are mostly just salt and water…but there's some sugar in us too. I ate a whole box of Elsa cereal today….I didn't really see the point in making a meal because Sho is gone…and I miss him so much." Said Mob. She had poured milk into a box of cereal and spent that morning watching Australian TV because she had been too tired to find something in Japanese. She had been tired since Sho left for his away mission. Not tired in the sleepy sort of way but tired in a sad sort of way…because Sho was an ocean away from her…so she had poured milk into a box of cereal and spent the day eating that until Minegishi woke up and their aura stopped being tangled up with Shimazaki's….

And maybe she should not have been thinking about him.

Maybe thinking about him summoned him, like the time she and Sho had tried to summon bloody Mary. It would have made sense since as soon as she had thought about him he appeared right in front of her. he squished Minegishi's garden with his shoes and also he threw big cans at the both of them. Mob caught them with her powers and set them down gently. Minegishi sat up and picked up their can.

"Fosters? Really Ryou?" asked Minegishi as they opened their can and had a sip. It was hot and they were thirsty…even though this tasted just like what they assumed the urine of an Australian drunk would taste like.

"It's Australian for beer! Also it's in a pretty distinctive can….and I have been drinking all day and I did not want to play that 'what the fuck is in this can' game." Said Shimazaki as he sat down next to Toshi. He loved Australia. He loved this country and he loved the people and he loved….well whoever he had been hanging out with…and he loved whatever he had been doing that day…and he did not need a ten year old kid to have fun!

Though maybe switching the baby kangaroos around would have been more fun with another person…people didn't realize how sharp their teeth and claws were….

"This is….a drink." Said Mob. She put hers off to the side. She would have to finish it to be polite, also because Minegishi never let her drink these days and she needed to enjoy the occasion, but it would be hard. This tasted like….not good. Mob didn't like beer that much, she liked hard liquor or champagne best, but she'd had much better beer. Sapporo was good beer….well everyone said that it was bad but she liked it. She liked it a lot better than this anyway.

But she would still drink because that was the polite thing to do.

"Mob, you're too damn polite." Said Minegishi

"Hey, no she's not. This isn't so bad. Remember the time we had that lake water beer over in…wherever we were in the States? Now that sucked." Said Shimazaki before downing a good amount of his. He'd tasted worse things in his life. Toshi was just being grumpy because they were a ketchup packet right now and would be for the next few days. No matter, no matter, he had something for them. He dug through his pockets and felt some sand…or something….falling off of him.

"Were you at the beach?" asked Mob as Shimazaki got her all sandy as he dug through his pockets like he had lost his phone…and if he had then she gladly would have found it for him. She could have called it or had Hatori find it…well when he stopped being busy. Shibata was teaching him how to do his laundry again. Last time he tried he used dish soap and it made a great big mess everywhere.

"And a…bachelorette party?" asked Minegishi as they picked some…creatively shaped….confetti out of his hair. He had left that morning saying that he had something important to do…and that important thing turned out to be a bachelorette party on the beach….and also he smelled like….had he been petting dogs again? And what the hell was he looking for in pockets? Hopefully nothing that he was planning on getting Mob into.

"Oh? Was that where I was? Part of this day is kind of a blur…but at least I proved to you that I don't need a ten year old to have fun! I had all kinds of fun! And also I thought of you….here." said Shimazaki. He couldn't exactly remember that day but he did remember Toshi, and he did remember to carry cash on him, and he did remember to ask the pharmacist what was actually in those bottles, and he did remember to ask in English too….and he had not been making fun of their accents he had just been trying to speak their language.

"What's that?" asked Mob. She read the bottle. Motrin. Not for her. Shimazaki said that if she took pills she would probably end up dying because she was little and she didn't know what she was doing. That was why she had to stay out of his pills and stuff. She didn't want any anyway. She had a beer and it….stayed down…and that was good enough for her.

"Motrin…thanks…Ryou. This is…actually really useful. Better than a lukewarm Fosters, anyway." Said Minegishi as they took a sip of their beer. He was looking at her, now, with his aura and…and they took a drink because they were thirsty and fro no other reason.

"I know that's Toshi speak for 'thank you, Ryou, I will be forever grateful'. I've known you long enough to be able to understand you." Said Shimazaki. At least he thought that he understood them. He understood them and….and he didn't understand himself. Yeah, he was the problem. He was…he had no idea what he was. He had a crush on Toshi, probably, and he had no idea when this happened or how it had happened or even what he was supposed to do with this now that it had happened….

He took another drink.

Toshi was Toshi. They were….they were Toshi. Even when they were a grumpy little ketchup packet they were still Toshi. How could he not have a crush on Toshi? He…this was….he had no idea what this was. He and Toshi had been good together for years. Now he was going to ruin it all with his stupid feelings that he had never asked for….whatever. This was whatever. So he had a crush on Toshi, big deal, it didn't change the outcome. They were what they were and they would always be what they were…so he needed to just keep drinking and keep on…remembering that Toshi didn't like things like that…and that he wasn't good at relationships either…

He wondered if any of these flowers around him were the kind that made you hear God.

"And no matter how long I live I will never be able to understand you. I mean…I make one remark this morning and you decide to spend your day doing God knows what just to prove that you're capable of having fun without Mob's little brother? Ryou…God…" said Minegishi. They took another sip to cover u the fact that they had been smiling. Ryou was…he was Ryou…he was Ryou and he was ridiculous and honest in his ridiculousness…..and they would not have had him any other way…and they didn't HAVE him at all.

And they didn't want to.

They didn't want to have him, to possess him, because that just…that would have been hypocritical of them. They never wanted to be owned like that so, of course, they would never want to own another person. Relationships just…why were they even thinking about this? Because their body was betraying them. First their organs and now their hormones. It was a full on mutiny in the body of Minegishi Toshiki and there was nothing that they could do but wait this out and hope that it wasn't this bad next time.

"It's hard to have fun without Sho….I miss him a lot." Said Mob. She thought that maybe she should have gone. She felt like the atmosphere was getting weird…but she also had this giant can of beer to finish. She had to finish this to be polite even though it tasted bad…and stuff….and also she never got the chance to drink. She couldn't drink at her house because dad might come home and then he would be mad because she was only allowed to drink socially, not on her own, and she couldn't drink inside of Minegishi's house because Hatori was in there and if he saw her drinking then he would want to drink….and he could not handle drinking at all.

So she just drank a little faster.

"We all miss him." said Minegishi even though, really, they had been enjoying the peace. No shrieking demon child, no passive aggressive healer, just them and Mob and the idiot brigade and the heat of the Australian summer and the plant life around them….and Ryou next to them….

"I didn't think that I would miss him this much…I mean he's gone on away mission before…..well once before….and I know that he's safe with Fukuda but I just…miss him. I think because now my family is just me and dad. No mom…don't tell anyone I talked about her…no Sho…and no baby Mukai, either, even though I know that she was just my pretend baby sister and also that she has her own family now…I don't know. I've been thinking about her a lot….because I missed her birthday….and stuff…" said Mob before she drank some more of her not so very good beer. She wished that her whole family would be able to come back together again. If mom had been back then they all would have been living at the Castle again and dad wouldn't have been so clingy and also they could have adopted baby Mukai. She would have fit right in with their family, she had red hair and blue eyes and freckles like Sho and dad, and she would have even fit in better than Mob did and she came from dad and mom loving each other very much…

But it was ok. At least she had friends.

She felt Minegishi's hand on her back. They would always be there for her. They would never leave, they couldn't, because their friendship bound them together. That was what the bracelets were for, they said, to bind their friendship together. Those bracelets were sort of like wedding rings only she wasn't in love with Minegishi and also they actually meant something. Mom and dad had wedding rings but mom had still just left…but that was what moms did, they left, but best friends were forever. Just like the Beatles had sung about….before they broke up….did everyone just end up breaking up and leaving? Was everyone going to leave her?

Minegishi's bracelet got caught in her hair.

No, they would never leave her. They had promised. They hadn't ever even thought of it, they had said before, and they loved her…well mom had loved her…but Minegishi loved her in a best friend sort of way. Minegishi still loved her even after the time she had eaten one of their pills thinking it was a mint, or the time that she had walked in on them doing private adult stuff with Shimazaki, or the time she had worried them by doing coke and having a Tokyo adventure with Shimazaki after the party….no matter what Minegishi would always be there for her….

And she loved them for that.

"He's coming back and then we'll be back to our regularly scheduled mayhem, ok? And don't feel bad about that baby. She's probably a hell of a lot happier in a stable home with people who know what they're doing….well you knew what you were doing but I sure as hell didn't…and who knows. Maybe she'll look you up when she gets older." Said Minegishi. They were trying to be nice. Mob knew what she was doing when it came to that baby…as much as a ten year old with access to Google could know. That whole thing had been a shit show and fuck Suzuki with one of Ryou's chewing on candles for ever even just up and abandoning his own daughter with what Minegishi suspected was his other daughter.

"Ok….I'll try…but I still feel sad…." Said Mob before she took a big drink of her beer. When you felt sad you had to chase the feelings away. Hard liquor was better, it worked faster, and also it may have tasted like burning but at least it didn't taste like this…but she was grateful for what she had. She was grateful to have had friends who gave her beer and gave her comfort and gave her love.

"Damn it Mob, you know how I feel about sad people…so boring….but I can fix this." said Shimazaki. He teleported away as soon as the idea popped into his head. He had to. The little man in his head who told him when he had bad ideas was starting to pipe up and Shimazaki had been ignoring him for thirty years. He wasn't about to let that whiny little nobody push him around.

"Is….is he coming back?" asked Mob

"I have no clue…but he had better not come back with coke or something because you are too young for coke…and we're not even doing anything today so that would just be a waste of coke." Said Minegishi. They wondered where Ryou had been off to. Hopefully to go crawl inside of an airport x-ray machine or something. Hopefully he wasn't going to come back with coke or meth or MDMA or acid or mushrooms or something else that a ten year old was not supposed to have.

He came back with something worse.

"Here. Since you like babies so much then you can play with this one." said Shimazaki as he handed Mob a sleeping baby. He wasn't going to keep it, that would have been wrong, he was just going to borrow it…and also keep it away from dingos because they were in Australia and dingos ate babies.

"What….what….what the H-WORD Shimazaki!?" said Mob. She regretted shouting because as soon as she did the baby in her lap woke up. This was not baby Mukai. This baby had brown hair and…and also judging by the little baby pajamas this was a boy baby but she wasn't going to invade it's privacy and check…and just….what the H-Word?! And F-word?! And M F Words!?

"What the fuck Ryou?! What is this?!" shouted Minegishi as a baby, someone's baby, started to cry. No. Nope. Not doing this again. It had been bad enough when Suzuki had dumped his love child on them and now…they were not dealing with this! And also kidnapping was a VERY serious crime!

"Mob wanted to see a baby so I brought her a baby to play with….and be careful with it. A dingo might try and eat it. They do that, you know." Said Shimazaki. What was everyone so pissed off about? It wasn't like he had stolen a baby from his other's arms and now it was a permanent member of the group. No, he had just borrowed one out of a crib. He was going to put it back.

"Yes, Ryou, I was alive in the nineties too….and you need to put this baby back before I feed you to a dingo! And that's if you're LUCKY!" said Minegishi. The crying was already getting to them. The crying, Mob's aura slamming into theirs in a panic, the pain of their organs…this was too much.

"I'll put him back when Mob's done playing with him. Come on, I'm not going to kidnap a baby. That'd be a fucked up thing to do." Said Shimazaki

"I-I'm done with him…please put him back! And don't let a dingo eat him….I don't know what a dingo is, animals are Sho's thing not mine, but….but I don't want him to be eaten….and I don't want him to be here either!" said Mob. No…no! Now Little Baby Boy was crying and….and he wanted his mom and….and it was a terrible thing to want your mom but not have her!

"Are you sure? You just barely-" said Shimazaki

"Ryou! Put that baby back where it came from or so help me-" said Minegishi. Drugs were a hell of a drug. Obviously this would serve as a cautionary tale for future Mob. Never do as many drugs as Shimazaki did or you'd end up stealing babies….renting babies….and maybe in the future they'd all kick back with a cold one and laugh about this…

But not now, though, now they just wanted to murder him.

"Ok, ok….God…..you try to do something nice for once in your life…" muttered Shimazaki as he teleported away with the baby and put him back. He had been trying to help, that was all. Mob had been sad and he couldn't stand sad people. Toshi had been upset for Mob, too, and sad Toshi…it was like getting a dick tattoo. It hurt. It hurt and you wanted to make it stop but you couldn't because the only thing worse than getting a dick tattoo was getting a messed up dick tattoo so you just held your dick along the length of the wooden spoon and let the needle do it's thing….

Toshi was mad at him…

Maybe if he brought them some plants….or something. Then they would be happy with him again. Or more Motrin. Or maybe if he showed them those pages he had made Fukuda write about their tits….no, that would have been a bad idea….but he had to do something…..beer? Good beer? Liquor? More soft socks? Lotion? Toshi like lotion…he'd figure it out. He'd fix this, he's figure out some way to fix this, because he could not have Toshi mad at him….

He had just been trying to help.

"I feel bad shouting at him…he had just been trying to help." Said Mob as she drank some more of her giant, terrible, Australian beer. She hoped that the baby was ok and back with his mom…and that the mom hadn't noticed that her baby had been gone…because that must have been scary for her….like the times when Mob had woken up and Sho had taken baby Mukai out of her drawer…and stuff…only worse because she wasn't baby Mukai's mom.

"Don't. Just because he was trying to help, the fact that he was trying to help, doesn't excuse the fact that what he did was stupid, ok? Stop being so fucking nice all the time….sorry, sorry. Just….I'm in a lot of pain, and before you say something there's nothing I can do but ride it out, and you can ride it out with me just…don't beat yourself up for giving Ryou what he deserved…ok?" asked Minegishi

"Um…..ok." said Mob. She still felt bad, though, because he had just been trying to help. That was what friends did, they helped each other, and their ideas weren't always good but….but they still tried. They tried because they cared. That was what friendship was.

Doing nice things for the people you loved.


	281. Things Don't Always Have to Make Sense

Sometimes things just did not make sense.

Sometimes it was the big things that just did not make and sometimes it was the little things. This was one of those little things which did not make sense. This show. One minute they were trying to save the world because the new boy was a secret angel and then the next it was all…Mob didn't even know what this ending was. Not even an ending. Did the world end? Did Rei and Shinji get together? Did Gendo ever stop being all mean to his son and tell him that he was doing a good job?

None of these questions were answered.

Which meant that they were going to have to do another rewatch. They had been watching and watching and watching this show over and over again but they never figured out anything about the ending. Maybe it was art. Art didn't always have to make sense. Like those paintings that were just splashes of color everywhere. Those made no sense. Mob didn't know. All she knew was that she was confused and that if she was confused then dad was, of course, very confused. This whole thing was very confusing. She didn't blame him for being confused…and she hoped that he didn't blame her either.

Because it was not her fault that the ending to this show was just…not something that made any sense.

She wondered why he was so confused though. He was her dad and he knew everything. Well not everything, he just knew a lot of things about a lot of things, so maybe this was one of those things that he didn't know a lot of things about. She could tell that he didn't. His caterpillars were coming together but not in a mad way. His aura didn't feel mad either. It was pulled inwards around him even though his arm was around her and she was half laying down on him. She could have gone to sleep like this, it was certainly late enough, but she got the feeling that nobody would be going to sleep any time soon.

Not until this started to make sense.

"Dad? Are you ok?" asked Mob. She knew that he was confused but she was just asking to get him talking. Dad didn't talk about how he was feeling unless you asked him first. That was because he didn't like to look weak even though feelings did not make you weak at all. She had been telling him that for a long time now. Maybe he would start listening to her at some point.

"I'm fine, I'm just thinking." Said Suzuki. That had been….incomprehensible. There was something there that he was missing but he just did not know what….but he needed to know what. He needed to figure out what it was that he was missing for Daughter's sake. He could not shatter her image of him. He was her father, he knew everything, and he could and would guide her through anything that she did not understand….

Even when it was something that he himself did not understand.

The plot had always been a bit difficult to this show. The angels came from space and attacked humanity. That was simple enough to understand. Only a select few could pilot the giant mechs…which were not mechs at all but clones angels…and one was kept at the bottom of the facility…and also one of the pilots was part angel…and also the mechs had the souls of the pilots' mothers inside of them….and then….at some point the whole thing became incomprehensible. That was just what television had become these days. It had been a lot simpler when he had been young. You had a space train, you rode the space train, you learned about yourself and existence, sometimes there were battles, and then you got off the space train and they tried to turn you into a bolt to serve the robot planet. There. Everything was simple and logical…

Not like this.

Masami might have been able to explain this to him. She had always watched more television than he had. She understood the conventions of it, the plots and characterization, and she had always been able to explain the things that he missed to him. Her dramas had been surprisingly complex…but of course they were. She had been a very complex and intelligent woman…not that Daughter wasn't a complex and intelligent woman…little girl…she was. She was also very young and there were limits to what she could explain to him…

She was only ten after all.

So maybe they would just never understand and it would be one of life's great mysteries…like why people ate Jell-O…or why the ground in Minecraft never became unstable even though he had built a very complex system of tunnels….or why Daughter was constantly whining about missing Son even though she knew that he was coming back….yes. Life had many mysteries to it. Many strange and mysterious mysteries.

Like this show.

"Oh….so am I. Do you think that we have to watch it again? Maybe if we do that then we'll be able to understand what happened better." Said Mob

"Perhaps….but no. The definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over again but expecting a different outcome…" said Suzuki. He knew that he would to be able to understand it any better if they watched it again for…he had lost count of how many times he and Daughter had watched this show together. Not that he minded, of course, he lived for their Sundays together. Sometimes it just felt like he was going through the motions of his week until he could see Daughter again. He did his work whatever it may be, played Minecraft….used Minecraft as a tool to design new Claw bases and also go fishing on occasion, and just waited for his time with his Daughter. So, really, it didn't matter what they did together just so long as they were together.

"Also it would get sort of boring, maybe, watching the same thing over and over again….um….do you want to watch Frozen before bed?" asked Mob

"We can watch the ice queen again if you want, I know how you love that film, but I doubt that I will sleep at all tonight. There are just too many unanswered questions and I so dislike unanswered questions." Said Suzuki

"I…I can get some answers, then, if you want…so we don't end up staying up all night. We could mess up our sleep schedules then…like that one time when we stayed up all night playing Minecraft." Said Mob. She did not want dad to keep her up all night again. That had been back when he had been smothering her. He hadn't smothered her in a while but…but she did not want to end up staying up all night again. She was getting tired, it was late enough as it was, and she just wanted to cuddle with dad and go to sleep….

But that wouldn't happen unless she got them some answers.

"Answers from where? If you don't know and I don't know, and Fukuda isn't here, then who can explain this to us?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda was usually very good at explaining things. He was more intelligent than he let on. He always had been ever since they had been children. If this show had aired just a decade earlier Fukuda would have explained it to him just like he explained everything else….including Gundam….which was just as long and complicated as this but not nearly as incomprehensible. Yes, if Fukuda had been there then he could have explained this.

Which was the only reason he wanted Fukuda around, of course.

It wasn't as though Suzuki had grown accustomed to the feel of his aura again. No, he had been beside Fukuda since they had been in school together. He, if anything, should have wanted a break from the man. He overstepped constantly and that could be so annoying. He was overstepping with Son now but that was fine. Son was his only So and he needed to learn how to do these away missions…and also it was nice to have him out of the house so he wasn't bothering Daughter…and it made sense for Fukuda to go with him because Suzuki was not about to father any more children. He had no idea where Masami even was, got the feeling that she wanted nothing to do with him anymore, and even when they had been together she had said time and time again that she didn't want any more children…so there. Fukuda had a legitimate reason for being away with Son and not being there to explain this to him and Daughter…

And that was the only reason why he wished that Fukuda had been near. That was it.

"Um….Minegishi might know. They know this show and they're really smart, too. Or maybe Hatori because he's the one who showed this to me…even though he's not as smart as Minegishi." Said Mob. She sometimes felt like Hatori wasn't that smart in general…but that was a mean was to think about her own friend so she tried not to think thoughts like that. So what if he had trouble doing his own laundry, drank even though he knew that he was bad at it, and also he kept on expecting hiding from Shimazaki even though everyone knew that Shimazaki was a very nice person? Hatori was…he was a good friend. Just a friend. A very tall and very nice friend who wore very nice sweaters and knew about very nice shows and games…but still just a friend.

"Good. Go get someone who can explain, then." Said Suzuki. Daughter was so smart like that. She was smart like him. When he didn't know something, and there was very little in this world that he did not know, then it made sense to find an expert. Like how Fukuda had been the person to explain social skills to him. If not for Fukuda then the children might not have been there….well Son would never have been born. Daughter would have been adopted by some rival esper group or something. She was a very powerful child and anyone would be happy to have her…

And he wanted nothing more than to tie a rope around her in that moment so that he would be able to drag her back at the first sign of trouble.

He has no clue, of course, what that trouble could possibly be. This was a Claw compound. Houses for upper echelon members of Claw out in the middle of nowhere. Daughter was safe. There was no chance that anyone in Claw would even think of harming a single hair on her head. There was nothing bad that could happen to her…well she could get bitten by some of the venomous Australian fauna…or she could injure herself somehow…or she could spontaneously die as people tended to do….

He forced himself to calm down. She would be fine…he needed to believe that she would be fine or he would lose his mind.

"Ok….I'll be back." Said Mob. She could feel dad's aura sticking to her as she climbed out of bed. She didn't know what he was so worried about. She went and saw he friends all time and he knew that. She would never be able to understand him, it felt like sometimes, because he was just…not someone who made sense all of the time. Like why he sometimes smothered her and sometimes ignored her. Or why he let his aura cling to hers but he let Sho go across the world all on his own…well with Fukuda…but still. She should have gone with too. She and dad could have gone with and stuff….and then she could have been there to make sure that Sho was safe and ok…and stuff….

She was smothering him.

She was smothering Sho without even being in the same room as him. She was smothering him because she was thinking about keeping him with her all the time just like dad tried to do to her. She didn't want to smother him. She knew how to show her love better than that. She knew how to show her love for someone without smothering them…and she had to. Even though she needed to see him, to hear from him, to make sure that he was ok. Their family was so little and so broken already that she just…she couldn't lose him too. She had already lost her own mom and she had lost baby Mukai who was not her sister but still someone who she loved with all of her heart….she couldn't lose her little brother too.

She walked fast past her room.

Just her room now. There was no Sho to share it with. That was a room with one bed and the bed was hers. She only had to wash her own bedding now, not his, and she only had to wash her own clothes now, too. She didn't have to make him breakfast anymore or make sure he did his school work or chase him around trying to brush his hair or…or hide the soda from him once it got to be nighttime because he couldn't have liquids after eight…and she could even eat citrus again if she wanted to. She was all alone. That great big room was all hers. She had room for all of her toys, and she didn't have to fold her clothes up really small anymore, but she didn't care about having room for her stuff or being able to eat citrus or….or anything. She just wanted her little brother back.

But she didn't want to smother him.

He was out having a good time. He was on an away mission, which he liked, and he was with Fukuda too. Fukuda was one of his best friends and favorite people. Sho was one of Fukuda's favorite people too. They were probably out having all kinds of fun in Seoul….or wherever it was in Korea that they were…and Mob was not going to interrupt their fun to start smothering her own little brother. No, she would not be doing that at all. She was going to walk through the house and put on her shoes and then go next door and see who was awake and could explain Neon Genesis Evangelion to her.

And she would do it all with dad's aura stuck to her.

His aura was still stuck to hers as she put her sandals on. This was the southern hemisphere and that meant it was time to wear sandals instead of boots. She wished that she had taken into account how hot it would be before they left England. She could have gotten a new pair of sandals then. These pinched her feet and also her toes were starting to hang over the edges. She pulled her toes in close so they wouldn't touch the outside ground. That would have been gross. Your bare feet were never supposed to touch the ground outside no matter what country you were in. Also it was uncomfortable. She didn't know how she had grown so much since last summer. It hadn't even been a full year ago. She had been growing a lot this year, more than normal it felt like, and she had no idea why. Wouldn't it have made more sense to grow slowly? That way she wouldn't have to buy new clothes that often and also Sho wouldn't be jealous that she was taller than him. She had never asked to get taller, it was a pain really, and she hoped that she finished growing soon.

She was tired of growing out of everything.

She knew that she had to grow up, and she was looking forward to it, but also she wasn't. When you grew up then you grew out of things…and Mob wasn't sure if she was ready to grow out of things. Sometimes she felt like she was growing out of Frozen but then she got sad and remembered how much better it made her feel. She had grown out of her Frozen chapter books, though, and sometimes her dolls felt a little bit boring. She had been playing with the same ones for years after all…so maybe they just needed to come out with new versions of her dolls. She wasn't ready to grow out of them yet…even though it was weird that she still played with dolls…the pink haired girl at the party had said so….

But Mob wasn't ready to grow out of things.

What if she grew out of all the things that she loved? What if she grew out of playing with Sho? What if she grew out of all of those fun times when she would dress him up like she had a little sister and they would do sister stuff together? What if she grew out of being friends with Minegishi? What if one day they just…stopped being friends…or something? That happened sometimes, she had seen it on TV and stuff….but she never wanted that to happen so she wouldn't let it happen. People grew out of clothes and toys…but not other people, she decided, or at least she wouldn't. She would never grow out of her friendships or her sibling ships or…

Or anything.

She would never grow out of spending time with her dad, either. Even though she got the feeling that she might have been too big to share a bed with him. He had said, before when she had been, little that she and Sho were too big to sleep in the bed with him and mom…and stuff. Maybe he had only said that because the bed already had two people in it and she hadn't been needed to warm up mom's side…or maybe four in a bed was just too much…or maybe he just hadn't wanted to share a bed with Sho because he had kicked in his sleep since even before he had been born, since he had been in mom's stomach, and dad just hadn't wanted to deal with that.

Mob didn't know.

She didn't know a lot of things. She had no idea if she was too big to sleep next to her dad. She had no idea if she was supposed to have outgrown sleeping next to her dad and hanging out with her friends and playing with her brother and playing with dolls and watching Frozen….and stuff. She didn't know. If she had been in school or with other kids she would have known, it had been the other kids in first grade that had called her a baby for sharing a room with her little brother and stuff, and maybe if she had still been in school…she would have been in sixth grade maybe if she was remembering right…then the other kids would have called her a baby for sleeping next to her dad and wearing a Frozen nightgown and Tangled socks and stuff…and maybe she was a baby…she didn't know….

But she did know that she had to be very quiet.

She had to be very quiet because she was in her friends' house and it was very late. It was late enough that Shibata had already fallen asleep in front of the TV…and why he didn't just put a TV in his room Mob would never know….and even though he was snoring really loudly Mob still had to be quiet. She slid quietly out of her sandals and left them in the makeshift genkan with everyone else's shoes. She faced her shoes and also everyone else's the right was. She could see Minegishi's purple gym shoes, Shimazaki's shiny black shoes, Shibata's giant shoes, and Hatori's beat up shoes all there. Everyone was home…or at least nobody was running around barefoot outside and stuff.

Which was good.

Mob was barefoot, almost barefoot, inside. She was still in her socks, she had to wear socks, even though it was hot out she still had to wear socks. If she didn't wear socks she would end up being all itchy. Her legs had been so itchy lately and she didn't know why. Itchy and prickly. She would worry about that later. She walked through the house as quietly as she could. That was what she had to worry about. She had to worry about waking up the people around her. She knew that she had come over to find someone awake…but it felt like nobody was awake at all.

Well it was very late.

It was late enough that she could feel that Minegishi was asleep. She could feel their aura. She could feel them and when she got close enough she could hear them breathing really deep and slow…like they did whenever they were asleep…and that was not good because they were the only one who could explain the show to her and dad. Mob knew not to go into their room while they were asleep. She knew that she wasn't supposed to wake them up. She knew how hard it was for them to get to sleep…and she didn't want them to be tired the next day….but she also couldn't come back alone…

She heard cursing.

There was a sliver of light down the hall. That was Hatori's room. Shimazaki never put the lights on and even if he had been awake he would have been with Minegishi. Their auras weren't all tangled up but Mob still knew not to go and just walk into Minegishi's room. Shimazaki was sleeping, she could tell by his aura, so she had to move extra carefully and extra quietly. She made sure not to make any noise since he heard very well and good friends did not wake their friends up in the middle of the night just to explain TV shows to them….

But it was ok to ask Hatori because he was already awake.

That was not way to get his sleep schedule on Australian time, Mob thought, though she would never just come out and tell him that. He stayed up late a lot of the time even though he knew that he would just be tired in the morning. He just had trouble taking care of himself, that was all, and a lot of boys were like that. Dad could be like that. He stayed up light and when he worked he hunched over even though he knew that hunching over like that was bad for his back and also he was mean to people but that just made him so lonely that he had to smother Mob and stuff to get rid of all of the lonely feelings. That was just how some boys were. They needed girls to take care of them, dad had said so, and Mob didn't mind taking care of her friends…not that she would be telling Hatori that it was bed time or anything like that.

She needed him awake, anyway, so she could bring him back to dad and stuff.

"Hatori?" asked Mob as she knocked on his door softly. Well she had been trying to knock softly but the minute her hand made contact then the door swung opened on it's own. Well that didn't count as sneaking around, Mob decided, because the door had opened of it's own free will…or maybe the universe had done it…either way the door was opened now and she couldn't close it…well she could…she could but she didn't because she needed Hatori.

"Hatori?" asked Mob again. She stopped herself for a moment. Was it ok to step inside of his room? Minegishi had told her not to do that unless it was an emergency…and this might have counted as an emergency. Or a mission, even, because dad had sent her here to find someone who could explain their show to him…so maybe she was ok…

She stepped inside.

This room was about the same size as hers and Sho'. There were two one person beds across from each other. One was made and one had a bunch of clothes and stuff on it. That must have been Hatori's. She'd have to show him how to do laundry again later. Right now she had to get his attention. He had his headphones on and he was playing something, something that made him curse a lot, but that was normal for him. Why he played games that made him mad enough to curse she would never know. He had headphones on so that was why he hadn't heard her. She didn't know if she should bother him or not…well dad wanted her to so she would.

She crossed the room.

There were crunching noises as she walked across the floor. That was because it was covered in chips. No wonder Shibata didn't want to sleep in here. It was like the floor was alive with chips. Every time she stepped there was a crunch, then another crunch, and then another. Step, step, step….crunch, crunch, crunch….one chip after the other after the other. She knew that her socks would be orange on the bottom once she got to Hatori….but that was ok. She could always change her socks. She walked up to him and watched over his shoulder.

Oh. He was playing Minecraft.

Well he was killing a Minecraft dragon…which was more like how Sho played Minecraft. Mob and Hatori, when they played, mostly just built stuff together. Well they had built things together back when they had been playing together all the time. Back when she liked him. She didn't like him like that anymore, like she wanted to be his girlfriend, but she still liked him as a friend. A friend who was her friend and…and could be really nice even though he cursed a lot and threw up whenever he drank and also he wanted to eat people….which was wrong outside of some kind of survival situation…but they were still friends….

And also he was still pretty tall.

Even sitting down he was still taller than her. She had been growing but he was still taller…and stuff. But that was just…a thing that was a thing about him. He was older than her so of course he would be taller. That was just how it worked. The older a person was the taller they were…well until you got to be an adult. Lots of people were taller than her so a boy being taller than her was no reason to get all doki doki about him…and she wasn't even being all doki doki. She was just…noticing him. That was all. She hadn't been this close to him in a while. Him or any boy that wasn't related to her…and also who wasn't Shimazaki. Hatori was…he was a lot of things. Some of them were good, some of them were bad, and some of them involved him spending a whole plane ride in a bathroom throwing up because he had never had anyone in his life to teach him about moderation and stuff.

Mob had no clue how she felt in that moment.

She didn't want to be his girlfriend, not anymore, but…it was nice being near him. Probably because he was a boy and stuff…and she liked boys…and she wanted a boyfriend….but she didn't want him as a boyfriend. So then why was she still staring at him like this? Why did she wanted to be closer to him than she was now? She didn't know. She felt weird. Not love…she wasn't in love with him. He could be so weird sometimes. He could be weird and he could be kind of a little kid sometimes and…and also he wanted to eat people…

But nobody was perfect.

She didn't like him…well she liked him…but she also didn't LIKE him…but she also didn't dislike him…and he could be a very nice person when he was being normal…and she didn't dislike him or anything like that. Even after he had confessed his love for Minegishi she hadn't disliked him….just…not liked him in the same way. Outgrown him. Outgrown the way he made her feel…but she had liked feeling that way…and she didn't feel that way right now but she felt some way….she was near to him and she felt some way but not that way….and stuff….

And maybe she was leaning in a little bit too closely.

"What the hell!?" shouted Hatori as he felt an aura pressing down onto him…and then someone watching him…and breathing on him. His range wasn't good, it was fairly terrible actually, and he hadn't noticed her until it was too late. For a moment he had thought that it was Shimazaki come to mess with him again…but it was her…and he regretted shouting at her…and also hitting her with his chair…or just her barrier…and now she had caught him too…and he did not need her to take care of him…

But it was preferable to falling flat on his face.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to sneak up on you….I was just…watching you…play Minecraft." Said Mob as she caught him and put him back in his chair. Right. People didn't like to be snuck up on like that. Well now she knew and she knew never to do that to him or anyone else again.

"Hey…Mob….it's nice to see you again…at two in the morning." Said Hatori as he took stock of the situation. Right. It was two in the morning and his friend/ tiny boss was in his room…and he thanked GOD that he had just been playing Minecraft and not doing something that would have scarred her for life.

"It's nice to see you too….um….I like your shirt." Asked Mob. She almost never saw his shirts since he always wore this nice sweaters. Well his shirt was nice too. There was a kitten on it and it looked so cute and happy….and Hatori always had the nicest clothes….

"Thanks….I like your…pajamas. They're…blue." Said Hatori. He had no idea what she could have possibly been doing in his room at two in the morning….was she lonely? Usually she went to Minegishi or Shimazaki when she was lonely. Had her laptop frozen again? Well that was the kind of thing that could wait until morning…or until he had some pants on…but there was no point at all in wondering what she was doing there. She was there and that was what mattered.

"Thank you." Said Mob. She didn't know what to say after that. She felt….not doki doki weird….but just sort of weird. Maybe because usually when she spent time with him, lately at least, everyone else was around and also she was taking care of him in some way. Now they were just…alone….and she didn't know why this was making her feel so…weird….but not in a weird way…well yes in a weird way…but not in a 'bad' weird way…just a 'weird' weird way….

"So…what are you doing here?" asked Hatori. He hoped that she didn't take it the wrong way or anything. He just…had no idea what she was doing in his room at two in the morning…and also this looked sort of…not good….

"Um….my dad and I don't understand Neon Genesis Evangelion….so we need someone to explain it to us and Minegishi is asleep…so um…can you explain it to us?" asked Mob

"The President…is asking me to explain Evangelion to him….at two in the morning?" asked Hatori. That was…unexpected. The President was asking for him, specifically, and to explain a show….well that was his new job then, he supposed. He was tech support, the guy who did the Netflix, and also the guy who explained TV….ok then.

Could he be the guy with pants on, though, that was the question.

"Yes. Now come on before dad gets upset…and bad things happen to people when my dad gets upset." Said Mob. Dad never punished her or said mean things to her or anything like that anymore…but that didn't mean that he was nice to other people. He wasn't. He could be really mean sometimes and she didn't want dad to be mean to Hatori. Hatori was a very fragile person. There was no way that he would be able to handle dad even saying one mean word to him. He'd hide in the bathroom for the rest of his life and they'd have to give him his meals pushed under the door…and also nobody would have anywhere to go to the bathroom, too.

"Right…I hear you. Just…let me put on some pants." Said Hatori. He felt like maybe wearing pants was best when having an audience with the President of Claw and also the man responsible for such innovations as the traitor hole, the traitor barge, and the Awakening Chamber. Yeah….Hatori didn't feel like dying, getting his ass kicked, or ending up in some bizarre torture experiment.

"Oh….I thought you were wearing sleeping shorts. Yeah you should…do that." Said Mob. She turned around quickly and held down her braids. She hadn't realized that he hadn't been wearing pants…but that was such a weird thing to get all…like this about. She and Sho had been changing together in the same room since they had been babies. She had seen a boy not dressed before….but Hatori was not related to her…but she was still being weird. Shimazaki always slept in just gym shorts and she never felt like this…this weird feeling…when she was with him…

Was she in love with Hatori again?

She didn't think so. This wasn't a doki doki feeling. This was like…embarrassed? Embarrassing? She didn't know. All she knew was that he'd had no pants on and she'd been in the room with him when he'd had no pants on and now he was putting pants on, or looking for some in the clothes pile on his bed, and then when he put on his pants she would bring him to dad and dad would get his explanation and then they could watch Frozen and go to bed…and also dad didn't need to know about this part. She got the feeling that he would not be happy about this part…even though she hadn't done anything….

Well she had snuck into his room in the middle of the night.

That was something. So, really, it was her fault. She needed to stop doing this like Minegishi had told her to time and time again. She needed to start knocking…well she had knocked. She had just knocked too quietly and then he hadn't heard her. She knew that if he had heard her then he would have been weird pants and then nobody would have felt weird or embarrassed or anything…or maybe she was the only one who felt weird and embarrassed. He just seemed nervous to talk to dad. She could tell by his aura and also because people were always nervous when they had to talk to dad.

Mostly because he could be a very mean person at times.

"You don't have to be scared of my dad, Hatori, he won't hurt you. You're coming to help him…and also he knows that you're my friend. He knows that you're important to me…and stuff. He's very nice to me so I know that he won't hurt you. He doesn't even have any reason to. He's not mean to people who don't give him a reason to be mean to them. You'll be fine." Said Mob. Dad also knew that she used to be in love with him but Hatori did not need to know that. No, she could live a long life without Hatori knowing that she used to get a doki doki feeling when she was near him.

"…yeah. Your dad…he's great. Just great." Said Hatori as he walked out the front door and through the field of flowers…which Minegishi was probably going to yell at him for crushing. The flowers had spread again…but he wasn't going to complain. Let them spread. Whatever made them less likely to kill him in his sleep…or while he was awake.

"He is, he really is…most of the time. He'll be nice to you, don't worry, and try not to step on the flowers too. Minegishi needs them so they can commune with nature." Said Mob as she hopped over the flowers. They had started in the back garden and moved to the front of the house. She wondered if the flowers would spread through the whole compound. That would be good. That way the next people who lived here would have all of these pretty flowers to look at. Even in the dark they were so pretty, like when they caught the moonlight….

Hatori's glasses were pretty too, when they caught the light.

She had always liked his glasses. They were just so…square. She had never seen square lenses before but now that she had seen them she had decided that they were her favorite kinds of glasses ever. When she got old and needed glasses she would get square ones. Dad was old, he sort of needed glasses, but he would never admit it let alone get square ones…and also she sort of wanted dad to get round ones because Hatori had square ones and she used to like him…and it would be weird if dad started to look like a boy she used to like.

Very weird.

She knew that she was supposed to spend the rest of her life with dad and all, he had made that very clear, but she also wanted to spend her life with…well not Hatori specifically because she didn't know if she could be with someone who didn't know about moderation…but she did want to be with someone like him. Someone who shared her interests. Someone who wore nice clothes. Someone who smelled nice, and she didn't care what Minegishi said she liked lynx better than real cologne, and she sort of missed the way he used to smell. He used to just put on more body spray every morning but now he was showering more and using a soap that wouldn't aggravate his skin and also he was using less body spray…and she missed the lynx…and stuff….but there was nothing that she could do. She wasn't going to say anything because that would have been weird.

It wasn't like she liked him or anything.

She knew that she didn't. The whole, and very short, walk to her house had given her some time to think. She used to be near him and she would think about spending her life with him and being his girlfriend and holding his hand…and she wanted to hold his hand but also…maybe she just wanted her hand held. Maybe she just wanted her hand held and to be kissed and all of that other stuff…or something. Well she had always wanted that for as long as she could remember, to have a boy loving her, but…but she had never wanted it like this before…she wanted…

She really wanted him to take her hand and kiss her…but also to have an undo button so it wouldn't affect the future or something.

But there was no undo button. She knew that an undo button wouldn't turn back time at all but would, instead, take her to another dimension in which she had never done the thing that she had tried to undo. In traveling to the dimension she would end up switching places with the Mob in that world. That would make the multiverse unstable and stuff, probably, like in that movie she and Sho saw. So she would not be doing that…and also she would never kiss Hatori either because kissing was for boyfriends and girlfriends…and she didn't want to be the girlfriend of someone who drank four tiny bottles of vodka even though he knew that he could not handle it and then spent the plane ride throwing up in the bathroom.

No, she didn't want that to be the rest of her life.

She also knew that friends sometimes kissed and stuff…but she would never just…ask him to kiss her…or however Minegishi and Shimazaki started up whatever it was that they were. They were friends who kissed and did other things, Mob wasn't sure of what those things were exactly but she knew that she didn't want to do them, and Mob didn't know if she could just….be friends with someone in that way. She didn't even know how two people could do all of that without being in love…well Minegishi wasn't in love with Shimazaki…but he had said that he had a crush on Minegishi and he never told lies…and Mob wasn't about to go around telling his secrets…

This whole thing was complicated and not what she should have been thinking about when she was about to see her dad.

"Hi dad. I brought Hatori. He's going to explain the ending of Evangelion to us." Said Mob. She bowed, too, because politeness put dad in a good mood. He needed to be in a good mood. He always got in a bad mood when she talked to boys…and Hatori counted as a boy because he was the closest to her age.

"Good night…evening…early morning….sir!" said Hatori. He bowed too after she bowed. Suzuki…even sitting there in bed in his undershirt with his laptop on his knees playing Minecraft he was a scary guy. Maybe it was the eyes…or the aura…or the fact that he had commissioned plans for a machine that shot people into the sun…or maybe the fact that he was insane enough to plan on taking over the world.

"Daughter. Come back to bed." Said Suzuki. His eyes narrowed. Daughter had been interested in this boy. He didn't see why she would have ever even entertained those sorts of feelings for him. He was…well his skin condition looked like it was clearing up…and he smelled a lot better…which would only increase his value in Daughter's eyes….

He would die before he saw his Daughter tied down to the likes of Hatori Nozomu.

"Ok…um…so you guys got to the ending?" asked Hatori. He got the feeling that Suzuki didn't like him…and that was the worst thing that could possibly happen to him. Suzuki…people who he disliked never lived very long…and he had no idea what he had done! Well aside from embarrassing Claw back at the holiday party…yeah, ok, he had every reason to be pissed off.

"Yes. Explain it. Right now." Said Suzuki. Daughter was beside him in bed where she belonged. Good. He put his laptop on his bedside table and folded his hands. He could feel what little aura Hatori had. The TV went to static…digital static…bars. It went to the bars it went to when the transmission was disrupted. Nervous. The boy was nervous. Why? Suzuki hadn't even done anything to him.

"Please." Said Mob. Dad thought that because he was the president and also because he would be king of the world someday he didn't need to say 'please'. Well somebody had to and it looked like that somebody was going to be her.

"Um….ok. So in the end they couldn't stop instrumentality so…so that's instrumentality. Um…it's very unclear so…um….if you watch the movies then you'll see better what happened." Said Hatori. His eyes darted towards the door. If this house was set up anything like the one he was staying in then the bathroom should have been just down the hall…and nobody would disturb him there…because it was a bathroom. He could make a run for it and-

"Movies? Explain further." Said Suzuki. Well that was good. Now he and Daughter had something new to watch together. He so looked forward to that. They would have something new to watch and then they could talk about what they watched and it would be good. They would have a nice time together. Well they always had a nice time together but now they would have an especially nice time together. Good.

"Um…you guys like Galaxy Express, right?" asked Hatori

"Yes." said Suzuki. He didn't much want that information getting out but if anyone asked then he could just say that he watched it with his Daughter…not that anyone in their right mind would ever think of questioning him. No, that would have been quite suicidal.

"Well they finished the first movie before the anime so…so the first movie spoiled the ending…sort of." Said Hatori. He was doing his best but it was just so hard to think with Suzuki staring at him like that…how small could one man's pupils BE? He had seen that look before, on the little brother when he got excited…or mad, but it looked just…scary…on Suzuki.

"So it's like that?" asked Mob. She knew that dad was scaring him…and she didn't know why. Dad was being very nice right now.

"Yeah, they made a bunch of movies to explain what happened in the anime and…and I wouldn't spoil them for you so…um….watch the movies I guess?" asked Hatori. He wanted to run and hide and just…get away from Suzuki. He had never seen him this close up, never in his own home, and never without his suit on…and somehow he looked even more imposing without his suit…and also he had a lot of freckles on his arms…and Hatori didn't know what he was supposed to do with this information.

"Thank you, Hatori. We'll do that." Said Mob. Well she had bene hoping for a more in depth explanation, not another excuse for dad to keep her up all night, but this was fine too. She liked spending time with dad…she really did.

"You're dismissed." Said Suzuki. That had been informative. More movies of this show…which he rather liked. He had missed out on a lot of media being stuck in his own era for as long as he had been. Well that was alright. He had Daughter and she knew the best games and the best shows.

"I'll walk you out." Said Mob. She tried to get up but dad held her back with his powers. She didn't know why. Hatori was her friend. She hung out with her friends all the time. Dad could be so weird sometimes…not that she would ever call him weird to his face again or anything like that.

"He can walk out on his own." said Suzuki. He was going to keep Daughter at his side. She had already gone off before and had been gone for almost ten minutes. That was entirely too long for them to be apart on those days which they had together. Things would be better when she grew up and she would be by his side at all times.

"But-" said Mob. That was rude, letting him walk out on his own, and she had no idea why dad was being the way he was. She had always had trouble understanding him. It was just Hatori. It wasn't like she was going to run away with him. No, he would be too scared and she would never leave dad alone like that.

"It's ok. Goodnight President Suzuki…and um….Miss Suzuki…glad to be of assistance and…um…that's a cool Minecraft world you guys have. The base is…cool." Said Hatori. He knew, as soon as he finished talking, that he had said the wrong thing…because he felt President Suzuki's eyes and aura on him…

And it had been the wrong thing.

As it turned out President Suzuki was REALLY into Minecraft.

"See? And if you do this…" said Hatori as he walked through the President's meticulously crafted world. He was still scared, of course, but…well he would live to see another day. What else could he ask for?

"…so that's how that works…" said Suzuki. Well he didn't…hate…this boy. He could sort of see what Daughter saw in him…or had seen in him at one point, he didn't know. He disliked talking to her about her feelings towards the opposite sex so he just never would. He would simply meet her husband when she presented him and then he would decide where to reassign him to based on that meeting. Hatori was…not a terrible human being…not someone he would see Daughter spending the rest of her life with…but he could be allowed to live on the same continent as her if this ended up being the man she chose to be her husband….at least he had his uses…

"Um…I'm going to watch Frozen now…if nobody minds." Said Mob. Dad and Hatori said that they didn't mind. They were sitting next to each other on the bed playing Minecraft…and that might have been a good thing. It was so weird seeing dad getting along with someone. Well he was still giving orders and stuff but he wasn't being outright mean…so that was good. Still, though, it was weird seeing dad just…getting along with someone…but it was weird how things turned out sometimes.

Like the fact that her weird feelings had come back.

Or just never gone away. She still wanted the whole kissing and handholding thing with Hatori…but she didn't want to be his girlfriend…and that made no sense. It made about as much sense as making movies to explain a show that they had over twenty episodes to explain…and stuff. But that was ok. This was ok. Everyone was getting along and…and that was ok. Dad was getting along with Hatori and they were playing Minecraft and…and she wasn't that tired…and she had always wanted her dad to get along with her friends…so this was all ok.

It didn't make sense, not all the way, but it was still ok.


	282. Presents for Both Sisters

Sho wasn't getting a birthday present for his dad.

He already drew dad a crappy picture and big sis would give it to him on his actual birthday so there was no point in getting dad anything. Besides, he wouldn't be getting dad anything from this store anyway. This was one of those stores that big sis liked, the kind that sold fancy dolls, and there was nothing that ad would have liked in there. There was nothing that Sho liked in there anyway. But this wasn't about him or dad or even big sis…though he would get her something because he loved her and stuff….this was where he was going to get a birthday present for baby sis.

She could never have too many presents.

And he had to get her a lot of gifts, too, because he had missed her birthday and Christmas and he would probably miss White Day too…so he owed her a lot of gifts. He'd get her a doll. Girls loved dolls. They loved playing with dolls and dressing them up and stuff. Boring stuff like that. He would have rather gotten baby sis something cool but she was a girl and girls liked dolls.

He knew what kinds of things that his baby sister would like.

She would like a doll that looked like her. She was too little for him to know her favorite shows or what she did for fun besides put things in her mouth and stick her arms in paper towel rolls so, really, her being a girl was all that he had to go off of. She was a girl and girls liked dolls so he was here, in a fancy doll store, getting her a doll that looked like her. He hadn't thought that it would be so hard, finding a doll that looked like her since she was Korean and this was Korean, but he supposed that like in the rest of the world Korea didn't have a lot of people with red hair, freckles, and blue eyes.

Well whatever! He was getting her a goddamned doll!

"This looks kind of like baby sis, I think. At least it would if she had black hair." Said Sho. He didn't get it, why all of these dolls had black hair. There were people in the world with other hair colors. It wasn't fair to red haired people like him and big sis if all the dolls in the world had black hair!

"Sho, maybe we should get her something else. These dolls seem a little bit too advanced for a baby." Said Fukuda. He saw Sho's aura flare. He handed him his soda which he should not have had, he was a little ball of energy at the best of times, but it helped calm him down. Fukuda knew that he had work to do, a lot of it, but he also knew that he didn't want to leave Sho all cooped up in an HQ or let him wander around Seoul on his own.

"No, she'll like it. She a girl and girls like dolls." Said Sho with a shrug. Maybe she would want a baby doll instead because she was a baby now…or maybe she would want a kid doll because she was going to become a kid soon. People weren't babies for very long, it felt like, and he knew that the next time he saw his baby sis she might even be a kid or something. Well he was going to be ready for that. He went with the kid doll. He knew that she was a baby and babies weren't good at playing with toys and stuff but he also knew that time moved forwards and she'd be a kid soon. She'd be a kid and then she would want kid toys to play with, not baby toys. Fukuda didn't think sometimes.

"Maybe a doll would be a better gift for your little girlfriend instead of your little sister." Said Fukuda. He wished that he could take it back as soon as he said it. Little sister…that was how Sho referred to her, and it was who Mukai was to him, but he wasn't supposed to come out and say it…but he wasn't at the base, there was no one to overhear him, and that was just him being paranoid over nothing.

"I don't know what kind of dolls Emmy likes…and also if the dolls here don't look like baby sis then they definitely won't look like Emmy." Said Sho. He knew how girls were about dolls. Big sis had a few dolls that she liked to play with. She had a million Elsa dolls and Anna dolls…and Sho had no idea why girls loved the dolls that they loved but he knew that Emmy probably had a preference and he didn't want to get her a bad gift because then she'd be upset. Like how mom got when dad sent her a gift that she didn't like. She'd huff and say something like 'really, Touichirou?' and then she'd be sort of upset for the rest of the day…and he didn't want Emmy to be upset. It was bad enough that he had left her behind…

She would have liked this place.

She would have liked the tall buildings and stuff. She would have liked how there were pigeons everywhere and trees to climb and stuff. She would have liked that it wasn't London. She had said before that she never left London and that must have sucked, feeling caged in all the time, and he didn't want her to feel like that. She was his girlfriend and it was his job to take care of her. That was the boy's job, dad had said so, the boy took care of the girl and made her happy and kept her safe. Well Sho was going to do a good job because he was normal and this relationship was normal and he was the best at having a normal relationship!

He really was!

"You know a doll doesn't have to look like the girl who plays with it. Your sister is just…very strange like that. Having so many dolls that look like her." said Fukuda. Shigeko and those little Shigeko dolls…he didn't understand them and he never would. He had never been a little girl, had no sisters, and had no daughters so he didn't pretend that he understood the culture surrounding little girls and their dolls but he did know that if he'd had an action figure or something that looked just like him down to the last detail he would have been extremely creped out.

"Only I get to say that big sis is weird." Said Sho. That came out meaner than he had wanted it to. He had been pretty mean today. He didn't know. Maybe because he was tired. Fukuda didn't believe in bedtimes, he said, not while they were on vacation…though Sho had no idea how this counted as a vacation since they were supposed to be working. Maybe the travelling? But that made no sense, they'd been travelling around the world for years now, so that wasn't it…but it didn't matter. He was just tired because he had been up all night. Maybe big sis had a point when she made him go to bed at nine…she had been right about the no liquids after eight thing…

Not that he would ever tell her that, of course.

Nobody could know that he'd had a bad dream and wet the bed the other night. He would take it to his grave and so would Fukuda. He was ten. He had been too old to wet the bed since…well he had no idea when people stopped wetting the bed but he knew that he was too old to be doing that. But at least Fukuda could keep a secret. If this had happened at home then big sis would have made a big deal about it because everything was a big deal with her and then she might have let it slip out where Shimazaki could hear and then he would think that Sho was the most uncool, most babyish, person ever and then he wouldn't want to be his friend…or he'd be made fun of until the end of time like Hatori…and he didn't want either of those things to happen.

Thank God Fukuda could keep his mouth shut…about somethings at least.

"Sorry, sorry, my mistake." Said Fukuda. He raised his hands up in mock surrender. Sho was so protective of her sometimes…and Fukuda didn't understand it. He would have been resentful if he had been in Sho's place. His father so blatantly favored Shigeko that it was just…sad. Sad to witness. Shigeko wasn't even his child, not biologically, but he neglected his own son and daughter for her….not that the alternative was good either. Sho being crushed under his father's thumb…thank God that Sho wasn't an only child. The neglect was, in a lot of ways, better than the….he hated this word but it fit…pseudo incest between Suzuki and Shigeko. At least Suzuki wasn't trying to recreate Masami in Sho…and thank God that Sho had someone to take Suzuki's attentions from him….

Sho would really have been better off with anyone else.

He wished, he had been wishing for a number of years now, that Masami would have taken Sho with her wherever she went. That there had been some way for her to spirit Sho off and to start a new life with him. A life where he could have been normal. A life where he could have had plenty of friends his own age and plenty of love and stability….and all of the other things that he deserved. The life that he should have had. He should have had his own stories to tell, as Fukuda did, about stupid shit he did when he was a kid in school. A best friend who he equal parts loved and hated, at the time, and just the perplexing situations they would find themselves in….Sho deserved that…

But people didn't always get what they deserved.

"Well don't say stuff like that again. She's weird but only I can say that she's weird…and you're weird too. It's a weird world we live in. I'm weird, you're weird, those people who don't like animals are weird…the world is weird." Said Sho. He ran a hand through his hair. He felt like yelling at Fukuda and he didn't know why…well he sort of did, he was tired, but he just….knew that he should not have yelled at Fukuda. Not at him or at anyone. He was just…tired.

He drank some more soda.

The caffeine would help. He'd wake up and then be back to normal and less grumpy and then everything would be good as new. Yeah, that would be good. Fukuda didn't stop him from drinking his soda. That was good. Big sis was always like 'no Sho, you can't have more than one soda a day or you'll get weird' but he knew his limits. It wouldn't be like that time he had drank a whole bucket of soda at Disneyland and then his heart started beating funny. No, he was fine. He was ten and he could take care of himself.

"Ok, I won't. Your sister is a…lovely girl." Said Fukuda. Sho was just in a bad mood because he had been up all night watching TV and playing videogames…and maybe nine wasn't too early a bedtime for a ten year old. When he had been ten his bedtime had been eleven but he had often stayed up late watching TV….so he thought that maybe it would be ok for Sho since he didn't have to worry about getting up for school….but maybe he needed to get back on a bedtime. Fukuda didn't know. He'd never had to care for Sho for this long before….and it hadn't even been that long to begin with. God. How had Masami DONE this?

Well she had been his mother.

Fukuda wasn't his father, he wasn't a parent, and he supposed that this was easier when the child in question had come from you. He wanted to make Sho happy, his life had bene anything but happy, but limits…Sho did not do well with limits and Fukuda was not good at putting them down…like now. He was about to spend an insane amount of money on a doll, not that Sho's backpack wasn't full of money and not that he didn't have access to the whole Claw slush fund….because Suzuki just let his kids have money free s the air…but still. This was a lot of money to throw away on something that a baby wouldn't even have been able to play with. She would only be a baby for so long so the thing to get her were baby toys…..

But he wasn't going to press the issue too hard. Nothing good would come of upsetting Sho like that.

"She is….she really is…" said Sho. All of these dolls were making him think of big sis. She was in one place and he was in another…and he would see her again…and he needed to stop being a baby about this. She was fine and he was fine and they were fine. They were….they were….they were normally always together and….and he had been away from her for so long….

He picked up a doll off the shelf.

This one would be for her. He decided. She would like this doll. It looked sort of like her…maybe. He didn't know. It was a princess doll and she liked princesses. He would get her a princess doll and he would get baby sis a doll that was wearing those pajamas that looked like a bear costume. There. Now he knew what to get. Now he could calm down. Now he could just…be calm. Be calm and not miss big sis and not…not want to yell at Fukuda…even though Fukuda was kind of a jerk when it came to big sis sometimes….and he could feel whatever he wanted to just so long as it wasn't anything mean about big sis and he kept it to himself.

"So…you're getting those?" asked Fukuda. He could see Sho's aura…and that was one grumpy little boy. He wondered if Sho still took naps. Was he too old? Fukuda honestly had no clue. Kids were….a lot more complicated than he had ever imagined. They, or at least Sho, could not self-regulate worth a damn, it seemed. Fukuda wished that his parents had still been alive. He really needed to thank them for putting up with him when he had been Sho's age. He'd thank them later once they got back to Seasoning City. It was about time he visited his parents' graves.

Sho could stand to visit his grandparents, too.

Mr. and Missus Suzuki would have loved Sho. He would have run circles around them, of course, but they would have loved him. Suzuki's father would have loved to have someone to share kendo with…someone who wasn't a total perfectionist and, even when he won, spent the whole car ride home telling himself off for not winning by more points or for getting points against himself. No, Sho would have just been happy to play and be a part of something. He would have brought the mood in the car up, not down, after his matches. Mr. Suzuki would have been happy to have a grandson as boisterous and energetic as Sho. Missus Suzuki would have been so happy to have a little boy she could share her love of art with. She could have shown Sho how to do those ink wash paintings she had been so good at…and they could have sketched, too. Missus Suzuki had always been so creative…and Mr. Suzuki had always been such a happy man….

They would have loved Sho.

His own parents would have loved Sho too. Well not mom, mom never had always been the sort to say one thing to your face and another behind your back, but dad would have loved him. Mom….there had been times when Fukuda had worried that she had never liked anyone. She had always been on him about being friends with Suzuki. She had always been on him about making friends with normal people, about how she could tell just by looking that Suzuki had something wrong with him, and maybe he should have listened to her. Dad…he had loved that Fukuda had finally had a friend. He had always loved having Suzuki over even if he agreed with mom that Suzuki was kind of…off. Dad had loved kids and he had always gone on and on and on about how his one regret in life had been marrying mom. She could only have the one kid for medical reasons that he had been too young to know about. They would have been happy, though, to have Sho in their lives. They would have been happy to have had a grandson…and they would have loved Masami too.

And he needed to stop thinking about what could never be.

"Yeah. These are good….I think. I don't know. Gifts are kind of hard." Said Sho with a shrug. He had to pick out something nice…but it was hard. The things that he thought were nice baby sis probably wouldn't like and he had never been able to understand girl stuff like this…and it was kind of hard…but also he knew that even though it was hard he couldn't just give up. His options were either pick something or give up and he chose to pick something.

"They can be but I think that you're doing a great job." Said Fukuda. Reassuring. He had to be reassuring. Even if Sho had been grumpy all day….but that was alright. This was part of taking care of a child. You had to put up with a lot. You had to put up with their moods and their fits….and at least Sho hadn't had any fits yet. He was just…in a bad mood. That was all. He could deal with this. This was easier, actually, than dealing with Suzuki's bad moods.

Anything was better than dealing with one of Suzuki's bad moods.

As violent as he was in his forties he had been even more violent in his childhood. That had always been his first impulse…and Fukuda had no clue where that came from. His parents had been such nice people. They had always been so nice to him, they had always treated him so well, even though he had always been so cold to them. They had always been nice to him even though Fukuda doubted that he had ever said so much as 'I love you' even once. No, they had always been so warm and loving…the most loving people that Fukuda had ever met in his life…and they had given him whatever he wanted…but he had still been the way he was. He had still been cold….either hot or cold. He could have been either cold or unresponsive, as he had been when his parents told him something that he had not wanted to hear, and he ran hot when he was all alone in a place where he could be free to break things…

Sort of like Sho only he hadn't had an excuse.

Well Sho had an excuse and Fukuda would be right there for him. He would be there for Sho in the times when he cursed like a sailor and kicked holes in the walls and he would be there for Sho now in the times when he was just tired and grumpy. A nap would do him some good. A nap and…and he would make have to start watering down the soda or transitioning him to sparkling water or something because all the sugar and caffeine could not have been helping….and Fukuda was a healer but there was only so much he could do for exhaustion. Sho needed sleep. He could put Sho to sleep…and maybe that would be the thing.

Later, once they finished up here.

"I don't feel like I am." Said Sho. He wished that he knew the perfect gift to give to baby sis…and the perfect gift to give to big sis too. Both of these gifts said the same thing. That he was sorry. Sho was sorry that he had missed so much of baby sis' life and he was so sorry that he had been such a jerk to big sis back in Russia….and also for most of their lives. Maybe he was just a jerk and it was his destiny to be a jerk to everyone around him. Maybe he couldn't escape being a jerk because it was in his blood…like dad was….

But he didn't want to be a jerk.

He wanted to be nice person, a good person, and a good brother. He was going to be a good little brother and a good big brother. Even if dad's jerkiness was in his blood….it was Sho's blood and Sho was not dad. He was half of dad but that didn't mean that he was a clone of dad or something. He was himself and…and he needed to be better…and stuff…and also he needed to find some way to let Fukuda know that he was sorry for being a jerk earlier, too.

"Well I think that you are, Sho. I think that you picked out some great gifts and that your sisters are going to love them." Said Fukuda

"You….you aren't just saying that?" asked Sho

"No, I think that you're doing just fine." Said Fukuda

"Thanks." Said Sho with a yawn. He was tired…kind of very tired…but he would sleep at night like a normal person. He didn't take naps. Naps were for little kids and babies. He was neither of those things. He was ten and he didn't need a nap. Sleeping during the day….he could do that if he ever turned back into a baby or when he turned into an old man.

"How about after this you and I head back to the HQ? I'll get some work done and you can take a nap in my office. How's that sound?" asked Fukuda. Sho was yawning and he had these pronounced grey bags under his eyes….and Fukuda just now realized that he had no clue how Sho had been sleeping this trip. He knew that Sho had been carrying on late last night….and then there had been the time he wet the bed…and Fukuda always tried to go down around ten in whatever country he was in and Sho was always up while he went to bed…

Sho needed a nap.

But, apparently, it had been the wrong thing to say. Sho's aura snapped to life at that. Fukuda had no clue what he had said wrong now. There was nothing wrong with taking a nap. Hell, he wished that he could take naps. Doing the work he had to do and taking care of a kid at the same time…it was all exhausting! Very exhausting! And he just needed a nap or something…but he was the adult here and he had to get all of this work done in record time so he would have time to cart Sho around the world to see his baby sister and girlfriend.

The things he did for Sho…but it was a labor of love.

"I don't need a nap. I'm ten, ten year olds don't take naps. You just don't know that because you don't have any kids." Said Sho. That had been mean, he knew that he had been mean, and he wished that there had been some way for him to grab the words out of the air and cram them back into his mouth because he couldn't believe how mean he had been…but there was no way to do that because he was not a wizard and this was not an anime. Still, though, he should have been nicer. Fukuda couldn't help that he didn't know about kids because no girl had ever wanted to marry him and have kids with him. That was just the way that it had worked out and Sho should have just….been nicer.

"Sho…that wasn't a very nice thing to say….but I'll let it slide because you didn't curse and you're tired. When people get tired or stressed the first thing they lose control of is their mouths…and I'm not going to be mad at you." Said Fukuda. Well Sho certainly knew how to hit him where it hurt…but that was alright. He was tired, he was little, and he didn't know what he was saying. Sho was just a child and he as not going to read too much into what he said. He had been lashing out, that was all, and Fukuda…he was not going to let it get to him.

Sho was just a little boy.

He was a little boy who had gone through a lot. He was a little boy who didn't know how to self-regulate and…and he had no clue that his bedtime had been important. Shigeko…it pained him to even consider it but….but she was good at playing the part of the little mother. Somewhere in his things he had to piece of paper with the instructions that she had written out. She had given him a list of instructions like she was the adult and he was some babysitter…which in some ways he was. Yeah…he needed to look over that list again…especially since they were looking at weeks of this.

Until the end of April at least….yay….

"I'm sorry….it just came out. I didn't mean to be an asshole." Said Sho. He didn't get what Fukuda looked so freaked out for. He had been speaking Japanese, not Korean, so it wasn't like anyone around there could understand him…and even if they could who cared? He was pretty sure that he was in the free part of this country.

"Language." Said Fukuda. He wondered if there was some way to make this stop….or at least get Sho to cut down on it. A more powerful esper or not, blind or not, he was going to make Shimazaki Ryou pay for teaching Sho that it was ok to do all of this goddamned cursing.

"Sorry." said Sho even though he wasn't. He got the feeling, sometimes, that Fukuda wanted him to be little forever…but that was not how it worked. Fukuda was not the boss of time and Sho would grow up and he would curse as much as he wanted. That was what happened when you got bigger, you got to curse, and you got to get good at it too. He wished that Shimazaki had been there. He had always said that Sho was good at cursing.

"It's alright. How about we pay for those and then just…take a rest. Not a nap but a rest. We could have some green tea and watch Zootopia again or…well anything other than a scary movie. How's that sound?" asked Fukuda. If Shio fought him he would go as far as watch the one about the Korean zombie train. That was it. No more of these gory movies…they were poisoning Sho's mind and he'd grow up weird…or something. They could not have possibly been good for him.

"Ok…we'll watch Zootopia again…and rest." Said Sho. Fukuda was old and he deserved a rest. They had been out for a while and Fukuda had been busy with work before all of this. They could take a rest if he needed it, he was forty four now which was very old, and Sho….well he couldn't let Fukuda rest alone. He was getting pretty tired. Who would have thought that buying presents could be so exhausting…and he had only been shopping for the girls in his life…

He hadn't gotten anything for dad's birthday…and he had no intention of getting anything for dad's birthday. Sho was tired enough and dad wasn't worth the effort.


	283. Trying to Give Dad a Happy Birthday

Dad was forty four now.

He had been forty three and now he was forty four. That was very old, in Mob's opinion, but she was still going to celebrate his birthday. Even if it wasn't Sunday she was still going to celebrate with dad because, well, birthdays were special occasions. They were like little holidays that were all about you and celebrating the day that you were born. Mob was very glad that her dad had been born forty four years ago today. She was glad that he existed because if he hadn't existed then Sho wouldn't have existed and she loved Sho very much….well also if dad had never been born then she would have never been born and she was very happy that she had been born.

That meant that she got to be Sho's sister.

She got to be Sho's sister and dad's daughter and Minegishi's best friend and also Shimazaki and Shibata and Hatori's very good friend…and what else could she have wanted in life? Well to be able to see her mom again…and to be able to see baby Mukai again…and to be able to go to school…and to be able to be friends with people her own age…and to be able to live in the Castle again…and to have a pet cat…and for everyone in the whole world to be friends and not have any more wars or fighting or mean words…and for the whole world to speak Japanese so she wouldn't have to learn all of these other languages…and for her legs to stop being itchy all the time…and for her little brother to have eternal happiness and joy….

She went back to cooking.

Ok, so she could wish for a lot of things out of life….big deal. This was not her day to be making wishes, it was dad's day, and she was going to make it a good one for him. She knew when he usually came home and she had everything all made for him. Miso soup and nato and bread with ketchup and a big fluffy omelet just like he liked it and warm tea…he would be so happy. He would be so happy and he would have the best birthday ever and he would be so happy and she would make him happy and then…and then they could be happy together. The only thing that would have made her happier was if Sho had been there…but he was off doing his own thing….

So it would just be her and dad.

She could feel dad's aura getting closer. She could feel him coming home and….and everything was done. She played the food up and washed her hands quickly. Dad would be so happy! He liked it when she cooked, he had said so, and also she was wearing that dress that he had gotten her and then dyed blue. He would be so happy to see her in this. He would be so happy and…and that was all she wanted. She practically ran to the door, she had to slow down because she slipped in her sock feet, but she made it just in time for dad to open it and step into the genkan.

"Happy birthday, dad!" said Mob as dad stepped inside. He looked up at her and then took off his shoes. Her smiled shrank down into her normal face. Right. It wasn't Sunday. On days when it was not Sunday he mostly just pretended that she didn't exist. She didn't know why. She didn't know why he had to save all of his love for Sunday…well she didn't want to be smothered either….but she also didn't want him to ignore her….she didn't know what she wanted, actually, since it seemed to be an either or thing…

And she had no clue at all why it had to be an either or thing.

Her love was not an either or thing. She just loved everyone. She loved them when they were nice and she loved them when they weren't. She loved them when they did good things and when they did bad things and when they messed up the thing they had been doing and when they were just plain lazy and hadn't done anything in a while. She loved everyone so much and it was so hard not to smother them…but she didn't. She knew how to spread her love out…

But dad didn't.

He just walked past her. She knew that he was going to go and take a bath now, he did that every night, and she knew that she was not supposed to bother him but…but it was his birthday. The least he could have done was say 'thank you' for saying happy birthday…and also for the birthday dinner that she knew that he could smell…but he didn't say anything. He just tried to walk right past her. He was treating her like she didn't even exist…but she did exist. She wasn't Shimazaki, she didn't have a condition where she thought that she had stopped existing if people didn't pay attention to her…

She was Mob and she existed.

"Dad, wait. I made you dinner….you know…because it's your birthday." Said Mob. Dad stopped walking but didn't turn to face her…and she didn't understand why. She didn't understand why he had to be like this. She knew that the alternative was him smothering her and stopping her from seeing her friends or even leaving his side…but she also knew that…that love could be spread around…like jam on bread…but dad didn't know that. He never spread things on his bread.

No, he dipped.

He always stuck the bread in the ketchup until it was soggy enough to break apart. She had seen him do that time and time again and it had always seemed like too…much. She never dipped her bread in anything. She always got a knife and spread things onto her bread. She knew that things could be spread around and she had been trying to show dad for years but…but he didn't care.

He either didn't notice or didn't care.

"Thank you. We'll revisit this on Sunday. Goodnight." Said dad. He said goodnight even though…even though he hadn't even said 'good morning' or thank you or…or any of the stuff that you were supposed to say and…and she knew what he was like…and she didn't know why she had expected him to be any different on his birthday. She had just wanted to make him happy but…but she should have known that she couldn't…because dad was…well he was dad.

Dad was dad and she was only Mob.

"Ok…I guess. There's dinner on the table if you want it and…and me and Sho got you presents…well I got you something, Sho drew you something….and it's all on the kitchen table for you along with your dinner. Goodnight dad. Happy birthday. I love you." Said Mob. She watched dad's aura. It flared out, then tucked in, and then flared out again…and she had no idea if he was sad or mad or glad or…or what. He was just…he was someone who was very hard to read sometimes.

Even by his own daughter.

She wondered if this was how mom had felt. Mom had been the total opposite of dad in a lot of ways. She had always been very open with how she felt and she had loved her and Sho both…but she had never smothered either of them. She wished that dad had taken some love lessons from mom…or that mom had never left in the first place. If mom had been there then she would have made dad a cake even though he hated sweets and she would have had a bunch of presents for him and…and it would have been nice. Mob only had two presents for him and she had only made him a few things for dinner, the things that she already knew how to make, and…and she had thought that she could have made him happy….

But it wasn't Sunday so he wasn't going to let her make him happy.

"Thank you. I love you too. Now goodnight." Said Dad. He went back to walking down the hall and, just as Mob predicted, he went right into the bathroom to take his after work bath. Mob stayed in the genkan, not even a real genkan just a rug on the floor, and listened to the water running. She felt…dad had thanked her and that was what she had wanted…but she had also wanted dad to sit down at the table and eat dinner with her and then open his presents and then be happy…dad happy. Not even real happy. Just dad happy…

But it was not Sunday.

Mob took her feelings and tried to squish them down. She should have known that because this was not a Sunday that dad would not have wanted to spend time with her. She should have known that good times were only for Sundays. That smothering times were only for Sundays. That unless she kept the smothering times only to Sundays that…that dad might either ignore her or get the idea that he needed to smother her again…and she did not want that…

She just wanted dad to love her like normal.

But dad did not love people like normal or do anything like normal because he was dad and he was not a normal person. He was better than normal, he had said so many times before, but in times like these Mob could not see it…and that was a terrible way to think about her own dad. Her dad was her dad and unless she wanted to become an orphan then she had better get used to him. She was almost eleven now, it was only a few weeks away that she had her birthday, and….and she needed to have gotten used to dad by now…since he would be this way forever…

Including on her birthday.

Yes. She was used to this. She was….used to dad. She was so used to dad that she was going to go to her room and…and lay down, maybe. She didn't know. She could go next door but part of her, the hopeful part, hoped that dad would feel better after his bath and then that he would want to celebrate his birthday with her and that…that everything would be ok….and for that to happen then she had to stay home. So she did. Nobody had to be all alone on their birthday.

That was just too sad.

So Mob went to her room. Dad would know where she was, he could sense auras even better than she could, and if he wanted to talk to her then he would. She wanted to talk to him, she wanted to be near him and talk to him, but she didn't because not only was this not a Sunday dad was also taking a bath and she could not see her own dad naked in the bath because that was just…gross. Very gross. She didn't even take baths with Sho anymore and he was her very own brother….so no, she would not be bothering dad.

She went to her room.

She went to her room and took off her dress. Even if dad had dyed it blue for her she still didn't like it. That was a copy of mom's dress and she did not want to wear a copy of mom's dress, she wanted to wear her own dress, so that was what she did. She hung up the dress that dad got her and went digging through her drawers for one of her nightshirts that fit. These were her summer clothes from last year, she hadn't gotten around to getting new ones since it had been winter where she had been staying, and not everything fit right. A lot of it was either too short, too tight in the chest and arms, or both. She didn't know why she had done so much growing at once….but it wasn't all bad.

She looked at herself in the mirror.

She was taller now, which was good, because she was older. She had always been excited to get taller especially when mom would mark her and Sho's heights in the doorway. She had no idea how much taller than Sho she was now, it felt like she hadn't seen him in years, but it had never been about being taller than Sho. It had always been about just being…taller. Being tall enough to swim in the big people pool, being tall enough to go on the big kid play structure. Being tall enough to….she was tall enough to see over the top of the stove now…and she was tall enough to climb onto the counters without a chair…though she just used her powers to get things from up high these days….being tall was still nice in and of its self though….

So growing up wasn't all bad.

She pulled her undershirt in close to her stomach…and then let it go immediately. She should not have been looking at herself like that. She knew that they were there, the bump things, and she had no reason to be looking at herself like that. Well at least she felt more embarrassed at herself than hurt at how dad had been…so that was good. She got dressed quickly. She should not have been looking at herself like that and she had been right to have been embarrassed. She knew that she was going to grow up to look like mom and…and it was nothing to be looking at herself in the mirror over. It was a thing that was happening to her. Just like how her legs were starting to get all fuzzy. She was growing up, she was almost eleven, and she had no reason to just…stare at herself in the mirror like that.

Getting older was nothing special.

Dad had said, before, that when you got to a certain age birthdays stopped being special. Shimazaki had said that same thing about turning thirty…and Minegishi just plain was not a big fan of celebrating things….so maybe dad was right not to get excited. Maybe birthdays, getting older, these things were maybe not important enough to break the rule about Sundays for…so maybe Mob shouldn't have been excited to grow up, too. She pulled her nightshirt up over her head…and then took it off again. This one was too tight, too, and also it had no sleeves. That was good, usually, for the summer but bad for her now.

Great. Now she could only wear things with sleeves.

She went over to her drawers and took out her short sleeved nightgown with Hello Kitty on the front. She had gotten this a year ago and it had been too big then…but it fit just fine now. Good. She had never been a big fan of no sleeved shirt but now….well now she could never wear them again. Great, maybe getting older did suck…not that she should have even though about the word 'suck' but, well, it sort of did. She couldn't wear no sleeved shirts, had to wear socks all the time now even in the Australian summer, a lot of her favorite clothes didn't fit, and she couldn't sleep on her stomach anymore without her chest hurting. Maybe that was why dad was never happy about his birthdays too. Aging…it sort of…was not good. It sort of sucked. Dad was getting older too. He squinted whenever he had to read things on his phone, his back hurt all the time, and he even threw his back out if he moved wrong…

So it made sense for him not to be happy on his birthday.

So then it wasn't Mob's fault that he had been unhappy. It wasn't Mob's fault that he hadn't wanted to break the rules about Sundays to spend time with her on his birthday. It wasn't Mob's fault that she wouldn't be able to see him open his presents. It wasn't Mob's fault that she wouldn't be able to have dinner with him.

It just wasn't her fault.

She felt better, then, as she went through her clothes and separated out what did fit from what did not fit. She knew that she should have done this with Sho, that way she could get both of their new sets of summer clothes at once, but Sho wasn't there and she needed….she needed to do something. She needed to do something because she felt better that things weren't her fault…but she knew that the feeling would not last. She knew that her brain would find something else for her to feel guilty about and she knew that if she didn't keep moving, keep doing something, that her brain would catch up to her and start telling her that she wasn't doing enough for dad and that she hadn't done enough for Sho and that there was just too much to be done and she just was not good enough and…

And she worked faster.

She took a big handful of clothes out of her pajama drawer and heard something rolling. She heard it rolling before it hit the end of her drawer. A tiny bottle. She knew what that was, that was from the plane ride from Russia, and she had forgotten that she even had that. She read the label. It took her a minute because Russian was very complicated. She'd had to try and learn a whole new set of sounds and characters, before, and…it took her a minute to read the label. Oh. This had come from a place called the Hotel Moscow. Maybe that was why the bottles were so tiny. She had seen on TV that hotels had tiny things though she had never stayed in one before.

It looked sort of cute, to be honest.

Tiny things were cute. This could have been a bottle of vodka for dolls…but it wasn't a bottle of vodka for dolls, it was for people, and Mob was a person. She knew that Minegishi had told her never to drink alone, that she had to have moderation or else she would end up like Hatori, but she knew what she was doing. She was just going to have one, not four, and also she wasn't going to drink this super fast like Hatori had. He could be so…she didn't know. He was so…she didn't want to call him dumb but…not smart. He could be sort of not very smart sometimes…

So why did she kind of like him again?

She didn't know. She did know that she didn't want to feel bad feelings so she uncapped her tiny bottle of vodka and had some…and drank it down as fast as she could. No wonder Hatori had gotten sick. This tasted like burning…more so than usual. That was good, Shimazaki had said, the worse it felt going down the better it would make her feel…if she used moderation, like Minegishi had said. She was happy to have had such good friends in her life….and stuff. She wanted to see her friends so badly but…but she wasn't going to leave dad alone on his birthday.

She couldn't so something that sad to him.

Maybe she could invite her friends…or just Hatori…over. Dad liked Hatori. Last time when he had come over dad had made him hang out and play Minecraft with him while Mob sat next to them in bed watching Frozen. They weren't good friends, Hatori had still had to sit in a chair and not on the bed with her and dad, but it felt good knowing that she had a friend who dad didn't want to beat up…but she didn't really get Minecraft…

Well she did, it was fun, but dad REALLY liked it.

She wished that she could have been playing Minecraft with him…and Hatori too she would have to invite him…and then dad could have been happy…but it was not Sunday…and also playing Minecraft with dad wasn't very fun. He liked to stay up all night playing. He had kept Hatori up all night. Mob had fallen asleep sometime during frozen and had woken up before the sun, she had needed more blanket but dad was sitting on it, to them still playing Minecraft….and as much as Mob loved Minecraft she didn't want to play it all night with dad being all bossy…well he was the President he could boss around whoever he wanted to…but still…

It was his birthday and if he felt like coming into her room and telling her to play Minecraft with him then that would be fine….

But he didn't. She could feel his aura moving through the house. She could feel him in the kitchen…and he was eating the food that she had made…but he didn't even ask her to join him….she finished her tiny bottle of vodka. She felt a little sick from drinking so fast, and her eyes were getting all watery, but…but she felt better. Dad could do whatever he wanted, he was dad, and it was his birthday. On his birthday he could do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted…which was also what a normal day for him was because he was the President of Claw and he would be king of the world and stuff soon….

So this was ok.

She would stay in her room not to leave him alone but if he didn't talk to her until Sunday…well that was ok. She was ok with that. She really was. Even though she wished, as she went through her clothes, that he would knock on her door with his laptop in his hand and tell her to get her laptop and to get Hatori because he knew Minecraft things and then they were all going to go and collect materials for him so he could make another Claw base then…then that would have been fine too. Because he was her dad and she loved him so much and she just wished that he could have a happy birthday…

And maybe she had wished too hard.

She hadn't thought anything of it when she had felt his aura moving from the kitchen and down the hallway again. She had just thought that he had been getting ready to either work in his room or relax. She would have expected her laptop to come to life and tell her that dad was in their shared world or something. She would have expected him to walk right past her door and get to his own room…but he didn't. He stopped right in front of her door…and he just sort of stood there for a while…and she stopped what she had been doing. She stuffed her tiny vodka bottle into her pile of clothes, she was only allowed to drink socially, and she waited for dad to let himself in like he always did because he was her dad and the boss of her and he could open whatever doors he wanted to whenever he wanted to and there was nothing that she could do about it….and she shouldn't have wanted to do anything about it because he was her dad and she didn't get to tell him what to do.

He told her what to do.

But he wasn't telling her anything. He was just standing there….and this was weird, even for him, not that she would ever call her own dad weird or anything like that. No, that would have been mean…and especially on his birthday, too. She loved him and she would never call him weird or point out that hanging out in front of her door and not even saying anything or knocking was weird…

Maybe he was waiting for her to say something.

"Hi dad…you can come in if you want." Said Mob. She stood up and walked to her door. She would open it for dad if he asked her to…or he would just open it himself. This was her room but…but it was his house…and she had never cared if he came into her room before…and she was just being weird and stuff. She wanted dad to come in. She wanted to spend time with dad…she really did.

She did….even if he had been sort of mean to her she still wanted to spend time with him…

"No I…I just wanted to…to thank you for dinner. You are a very accomplished cook and you should be proud of your skills….so thank you. Also I will open your gifts on Sunday. Sleep well, Daughter." Said dad. His aura was all pulled in like he was scared of something…but she had no idea what. Of her? No, that made no sense. Dad loved her and he wasn't scared of her. She would never do anything to hurt him, anyway. She couldn't have ever even hurt him if she had wanted to. He was bigger and stronger than she was.

"Dad, we can hang out together if you want to." Said Mob

"No…it's not Sunday. On Sunday I can spend time with you so…so wait until Sunday. It's for your own good. I know how you like to watch others open gifts so we can do that on Sunday…and we can visit with your friend again…and we can watch those films you like….but on Sunday. Only ever on Sundays and…and I shouldn't even be thanking you now but I will…so thank you, Daughter." Said dad.

"Thanks dad….we can do presents on Sunday if you want….and happy birthday. Have a good sleep." Said Mob. She felt….better. Maybe it was the warm and light feeling she got from the vodka or maybe it was about how dad had talked to her and stuff…but she felt better. She felt like….like maybe that was what it was supposed to feel like when your dad loved you without smothering you. She felt so good…and the only thing that could have made her feel better would have been if Sho had been there…and she loved him so much….but that was ok because she was not going to smother him. Dad hadn't smothered her so she was not going to smother him.

She was just going to be happy.

She laid down in her bed and just….let herself feel happy. She would go back to what she had been doing in a minute. Right now she just wanted to feel all happy from dad being nice but not smothery…and also the warm swimming feeling she was getting from drinking…she was just going to be happy and forget. Forget how bad she felt about dad and getting older and dad getting older and just…feel good for a little bit. It was dad's birthday and…and she had made him happy...

And that was all that she had ever wanted….to give him a happy forty fourth birthday.


	284. Lavender Hair, Black Roots, Best Friends

Mob had always thought that Minegishi had very pretty hair.

Their hair was lavender. This wasn't an anime, Mob knew that their hair wasn't actually lavender, but it was always weird seeing the black peeking out from under the lavender. Those were the roots. Minegishi had black hair just like she did, and Mob was sure that the hair that they had been born with looked very pretty, but Mob just liked the lavender better. Everyone had black hair, well it felt like that anyway, but not a lot of people had lavender hair. It was so pretty. If Mob had been allowed to color her hair then she would have had lavender hair too.

But she wasn't allowed to color her hair.

Dad had never told her that she wasn't allowed to color her hair but she got the feeling that dad wouldn't like that. She wasn't even allowed to cut her hair, any part besides her bangs, so of course dad wouldn't let her color it either. Even though that made no sense because it was her hair and it grew out of her head…but she wasn't going to argue with dad. Nothing good ever came from arguing with dad. So her hair would be long and black for the rest of her life…even though lavender was a very pretty color…and red would have been nice too so she could match the rest of her family…

Sometimes she wished that she hadn't gotten all of the Japanese.

She was half Japanese just like mom was and dad was and Sho was but she looked like she was all Japanese…and for her whole life she had wished that she had red hair and freckles like dad and Sho or wavy brown hair like mom had. She knew that she should have been grateful to look like she was all Japanese, mom had told her that when she had been Mob's age all she had ever wanted was long black hair like everyone else, but she wanted to look like she fit in with her family. Sometimes it felt like she had just been copy and pasted into them, like when she looked at old family pictures and stuff, or like the hospital had made a mistake and given her to the wrong family….

But she was who she was.

She had to be who she was and who she was, who she would always be, was Suzuki Shigeko with the black hair and brown eyes who looked like she was all Japanese even though she was only half Japanese. She was Mob and she was Suzuki Shigeko and she was the way she was…and that was just how things were….and stuff. So she couldn't cut her hair or color it red or lavender…but that was ok. She had a best friend who colored their hair and Mob could help and maybe that was as good as if she had been coloring her own hair…and stuff.

Besides, she was a good helper anyway.

"Mob, how's the back looking?" asked Minegishi as they worked on their hairline. God, they hated doing this. They wondered if they could just let it get back to black….no. They could be lazy but they weren't THAT lazy. They'd had lavender hair for almost ten years now. They weren't going back to black hair. They had might as well just let it go long and braid it if they were getting back to that look. Heh. Mob would have had a good time with that. She'd had her hair in braids, mostly, since Minegishi had met her. It amazed them that Mob never got tired of it…but then again they totally saw Suzuki as being controlling enough to tell her how to wear her hair. He had been controlling enough to tell her that she had to wear a copy of his dead wife's dress after all.

God, they hated that guy.

But there was nothing that they could do about that. He was their boss and the most powerful man on Earth…and also his garden had a few too many weeds in it…and not in the fun 'Ryou' way. No, he was just….unpleasant. Understatement of the century. Suzuki Touichirou was unpleasant. In other news the sky was blue, water was wet, and bleach wasn't meant to go on hair. They felt for Mob, having spawned from that man, but at least one day he'd be old and then a new tree would be planted…which they would plant for Mob if she didn't feel up to it…and then things could be better than they were now.

Or whatever.

Things right now, right in this moment, weren't too bad. Mob was sitting there on the edge of the tub watching them do their roots. She was still down about her little brother being gone, Suzuki's love child being off God knows where, and also apparently her dad had been the human equivalent of a pair of wet jeans on his birthday…but at least Mob wasn't…well she was sad but she was usually lowkey sad. Like a young, much less vengeful, them…and they wished that there was something that they could do…something besides just hanging out with her like this…

But there wasn't.

"You put all the white stuff over the black parts. I can't see any more black." Said Mob. First Minegishi had to put bleach over their black roots. Then they would turn white and then they could put the lavender on. It was a lot of steps. Maybe she wouldn't have liked to color her hair, then, since it took so long and she had a lot more hair than Minegishi. She wondered what it was like to have short hair. Probably a lot colder in the winter but also not as hot in the summer. Also Minegishi didn't have to spend nearly as much time brushing their hair as Mob did. Not even back when they had let their hair grow really long until it almost touched their collar. They were lucky like that. Mob would never be able to change her hair for as long as she lived.

"Good. Ok, set a timer for half an hour." Said Minegishi as they looked themselves over in the mirror. That was fine. Could have been worse. Just so long as they got all of the black they didn't care that there was some overlap to the parts that they had already colored. Lavender, pink, yellow, or white. Anything was better than black.

"What song do you want the timer to play when it goes off?" asked Mob

"I don't care." Said Minegishi

"Are you sure? You can pick whatever song you want." Said Mob

"Do I have to pick something?" asked Minegishi

"Yes, it's your timer." Said Mob

"Anything but let it go. Mob, you're a great person and all, but if I have to hear that song one more time I am going to murder everyone in this house but you." Said Minegishi

"Um….ok….I guess…it's still a good son though…" said Mob. She didn't know how anyone could ever have gotten sick of that song. It was the best song ever. It was just so…nice. How Elsa could just stop being scared of her powers and how she could just use them like and figure out what she could do and stuff. Dad eve said that it was a nice song and he was dad. He said that it was nice how Elsa, well he never called her Elsa because he never could remembered anyone's names from her movies, how she could just use her powers and be free and stuff. He said that it was a good feeling being able to sue your powers to make things and stuff like that. It was the good way of letting it go, not the explody way of letting it go, because the explody way of letting it go was not good at all.

That was what dad wanted for espers everywhere.

Mob wanted that too. She wanted every esper in the whole world to just be able to let it go and be free with their powers and not have to be scared of themselves even if they lost control sometimes and also for normal people not to be afraid of espers either. Normal people and espers would get along and then nobody would have to hide. Things would be better once dad took over the world. All the espers in the world would be able to come together and espers and normal people would be able to get along and then everything would be better…and stuff…

And also they would be able to stop moving all the time.

They would be able to find one house to live in. Another castle. The one that dad kept on saying he would build for her. They could live in the new castle just her and dad and Sho…and also all of her friends…and then they would be able to stop moving all the time and also Sho wouldn't have to go on away missions, she wanted him back so badly, and even Baby Mukai and her new family could move in too since there would be room for everyone….and it would be so great…

But that was in the future and this was now and instead of worrying about the future Mob needed to set this timer for Minegishi or else their hair would end up being all messed up and then they would be upset and stuff.

"Do you wanna set a timer?" sang Minegishi. They forgot how personally Mob took Frozen. They weren't in the habit of psychoanalyzing people but to them it seemed that Mob identified with the lead character because of her own barely controlled psychic powers, poor relationship with her father, annoying younger sibling, and lack of female role model…but still, she shouldn't have taken that movie so personally. There were so many better movies out there…not that they were going to stand there and critique their ten year old best friend's taste in movies.

"Yes I wanna set a timer. Do you wanna pick a song?" Sang Mob right back. Minegishi had a pretty voice when they sang….the only trouble was that they never sang. Well Shimazaki said that sometimes they sang to him but Mob had never heard them sing a whole song. Just little pieces, like this.

"Do you have anything from Sailor Moon?" sang Minegishi right back. It was about time that they showed Mob one of the greatest things to come out of Japan since Peace cigarettes and vending machines with tiny cans of coffee in them.

"I have everything the internet has. Do you wanna hear the original theme song long version in the original Japanese?" Sang Mob. She wondered when the singing would end. She never wanted it to end. The singing was fun. Minegishi was smiling, too, which they didn't do that often since they were usually in a bad mood. Well it looked like they were in a bad mood a lot of the time. Mob knew better. She knew that they were tired a lot since they didn't sleep and also because Shimazaki was always doing nonsense but that didn't mean that they were mad. They were just prickly, like a porcupine or a cactus, and that didn't mean that they were upset or anything like that.

"Yes I want to hear the original song long version in the original Japanese." Sang Minegishi. Mob was smiling now. Good. It was always a good thing when she was happy. That was all Minegishi would be able to give her. Just these little moments of happiness in her otherwise dreary life that she would be able to string together at some point in her adult like so she could say something like 'yeah, I had a pretty crappy childhood and all, but it wasn't all bad because I had my best friend' or some shit like that. Yeah, she'd say it while Minegishi was on their death bed and then it would be a beautiful end to their life and their friendship with Mob…

Or something like that.

They didn't know. All they knew was that Mob needed to smile more often. If she kept up the frowning, and yes she did frown a lot, her face could get stuck like that. Then she would end up like them or something. They didn't know. All they knew was that Mob was too much like a younger version of them. Circumstance, of course, they didn't see Mob getting put in a group home to nearly killing some asshole who had it coming….or any of the other shit that Minegishi had gotten up to at nearly eleven…but the world had dealt her a pretty shit hand. She lived in a gilded cage which wasn't as bad as what Minegishi went through…but this was not a contest that anyone would want to partake in, who had it worse, let alone win.

Especially not with a nearly eleven year old kid.

"OK, I set it. I can't wait until your hair is done. It's going to be so pretty when it's done…I mean it's always pretty, but now it's going to be extra pretty." Said Mob as Minegishi unclipped the towel from around their neck and sat down on next to her on the side of the tub. Mob wrinkled her nose as she smelled the bleach from their hair. She wondered how it felt, to have that in her hair, but she knew that she could never ask Minegishi to show her. Dad would get upset and nothing good ever came from making dad upset.

"Thanks, but I'll just settle for anything other than black. Not that there's anything wrong with black hair, I just don't want my hair to be black." Said Minegishi

"I've never even seen you with black hair." Said Mob

"It's nothing special." Said Minegishi with a shrug. They looked like they did now with black hair. They didn't know what Mob was expecting. It was the same but black.

"Is that why you color it? Because you want to look special?" asked Mob. She had always wondered about that, why Minegishi went through all of this work, because they had always hated extra work for the whole time that Mob had known them.

"No…well maybe. There's a very complicated story behind my hair…" said Minegishi

"Is this one of those things that I'm too young to hear about?" asked Mob

"Yes…well yes and no. There's some shit in there that you're too little to know about but…well…" said Minegishi. They had been telling Mob for years and years now that there were things that they would tell her about later when she got older…and it looked like Mob was just about ready for later to come…and Minegishi didn't blame her. She'd been hearing this since she had been eight so that was about three years now…and maybe she was ready to hear…a few things…maybe. They didn't know. They didn't want to be disingenuous but they also didn't want to fill her head with things that she wasn't ready to know about…..and this was why they were never having kids.

"I'm almost eleven. I'm not a little kid anymore. I can know about things." Said Mob

"You know if you have to tell people that you aren't a child anymore then you're most likely still a child." Said Minegishi

"If you don't tell people when you aren't a kid anymore then how are they supposed to know that you aren't a kid anymore?" asked Mob

"They just know. They can just tell that you aren't a kid anymore." Said Minegishi

"Oh. You mean getting taller and looking like an adult and stuff." Said Mob. She pulled at her shirt a little bit. She looked older now but…but she still looked like a kid. She didn't even know why she cared if they grew or not. People would just look at them and say stuff, like Fukuda had said stuff about Minegishi, but she just…wanted them to grow…and faster…even though if they grew faster then more of her clothes would stop fitting and stuff…she didn't know. The whole thing was very confusing.

"More like your actions. You're a girl so…well a lot of people are going to look at you and treat you like you're older than you are very soon…and it sucks. Believe me, it sucks, but don't…don't go by how you look. Go by how you act. That's the real measure of adulthood." Said Minegishi. Mob was a tiny adult in so many ways. She had been raising her own little brother for years, had been left responsible for a baby as well for a time, had run Claw, and had been given unimaginable power by her father….in so many ways she was an adult…but she also played with dolls, got emotional over movies, believed in the powers of love and friendship, and hadn't seen even a tenth of the terrible shit the world had to throw at her. She was…she was a child with some very adult like qualities….but not a small child…so maybe she was old enough to hear some things that she had been asking about for a while.

"But…I already act like an adult. I take care of Sho and I'm second in command of Claw…but also I'm eleven and short…so I don't really get it…but I do feel like, sometimes, you treat me like a kid, like when you won't tell me some things." Said Mob

"Mob….fine. Get comfortable because you're getting an abridged version of why I dye my hair." Said Minegishi. Mob immediately shifted in place and folded her hands in her lap. Minegishi shook their head. Mob was too eager and too cute.

"Are you sitting comfortably?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. Mob nodded…but then she put on her thinking face…

"Yes. I mean it's hard to get comfortable sitting on the edge of the tub, the backs of my legs are kind of cold, and also it smells like bleach in here, but I think that I'm as comfortable as I can be." Said Mob

"Ok, then I'll start. I dye my hair because…well because I want to dye my hair." Said Minegishi. There was no one reason why they did this, there were a million small ones, and they needed time to sanitize those million small reasons for Mob to understand because she was only ten, not even eleven yet, and certain things were just not ok to tell her…and also there would be follow up questions that Minegishi would not have been able to in good conscience answer.

"That's it?" asked Mob. That maybe came out mean…and she hadn't meant to be mean…but also that hadn't been an answer. She knew that Minegishi wanted to dye their hair, that was why they did it, but she had no clue at all WHY they wanted to dye their hair.

"Well, yes. I dye my hair because I want to and I want to because…well like you said I do want to look different. When I was a kid, and for part of my teenage years, I spent my entire life being told that who I wanted to be was wrong. When I got emancipated I thought that things would be better, and in a lot of ways they were, but I still had to follow a lot of rules…a lot of rules which made no sense." Said Minegishi. They were sanitizing as they went. They felt like Shibata following Ryou around on those rare times when he tried to cook just wiping up spills and putting things away as Ryou tore through the kitchen like a monsoon. That was what Mob was doing now, tearing through their past, but unlike Shibata and Ryou they were letting Mob tear through their past…

A sanitized version of it.

"They wouldn't let you color your hair? Who? Emancipated means that you get to live on your own like in anime but…but if you were on your own then who was telling you what to do?" asked Mob. She thought about it a lot, well more than she should have, living on her own without all of dad's rules and smothering…but she tried not to think like that because she loved her dad. Still, though, being able to b who you wanted to be…that must have been pretty great….

"Everyone. I was emancipated when I was fifteen and…and the world was a different place then. Japan was a different place….I mean it's still a lot of stifling rules, especially when you leave places like Tokyo, but back when I was a kid it was just…it sucked. It sucked a lot and I…well I had to go along with a lot of shitty rules because I was fifteen years old working part time in some shitty flower shop trying to make ends meet." Said Minegishi. They didn't much like this part of their lives. It was, in some ways, worse than their time with their parents or their time in the group home. It was worse because it was supposed to be better. They had spent their entire life thinking that if they could just get out from under their parents and from under the group home then…then everything would be better…but it had just been more bullshit for them to deal with.

"But still…it was your hair….and you should have been allowed to color your hair whatever color you wanted it to be. You weren't like me. You didn't have a dad telling you what you could and could not do. That wasn't fair at all. When my dad takes over the world I'll ask him to fix that rule for you." Said Mob

"Thanks. You're sweet and all but you don't have to. I don't give a fuck about any of that. I am done living under rules like that. It's my hair, like you said, and I'll do whatever I want with it." Said Minegishi. Well that had been painless. Maybe Mob would go off on one of her 'when dad rules the world and make it a better place' tangents and then they could get off the subject of their teen years.

"When did you start coloring it, though? When you were done growing up?" asked Mob. Maybe she could color her hair when she was done growing up and dad was really old. He was already getting old, he was forty four, and he would be forty five and forty six and then on and on and on until he got all old and bent over and tiny like an old person from an anime. Then she would be able to do whatever she wanted…or maybe she would have to wait until after he died….

"No….before I hit the age of majority. I met this girl...this blue haired girl…and she…well she dyed my hair and then…well I was about sixteen or seventeen, the edge of it, when that happened…and yeah. That when I started living outside of society. Dyed my hair, cut it short, started dressing….well like I'm dressed now…moved with her to Ni-Chome….got another job and…yeah. That's the story of my hair. So, what's new with you? Your dad still being a dick? Still miss your brother? Any new developments in the world of Frozen merch that I should know about?" asked Minegishi. They needed to change the subject NOW. They had said too much and now….well now they needed to start talking about literally anything else…

Right this fucking second.

"Um….I have new socks...that's new with me. I still miss Sho a lot…they're coming out with a whole bunch of Frozen Fever stuff that I'm going to get…and dad was sort of mean but he's not a…that word…and that's all of your question. I'm glad that you had such a good friend and that you colored your hair the way you wanted it and stuff. Are you and her still friends? Is she an esper too? And what's Ni-Chome?" asked Mob. She thought that it was ok to start asking a bunch of questions because Minegishi had been asking a bunch of questions…but now that she saw their aura she got to thinking that maybe she should not have asked a bunch of questions…and she wished that she was better at the whole talking thing…she really did.

"Mob…you're getting into some shit that I don't like to talk about…." Said Minegishi with a sigh. A story about how they had started dying their hair was now turning into why they didn't do the relationship thing…and Mob didn't need to know about that. She didn't need to know about the tangled mess that adult relationships were, she didn't need to know about the many, MANY ways Minegishi tended to fuck relationships up, and she did not need to know….to know things that would shatter her image of them.

"Oh…I'm sorry. I just wanted to know more about you. You know everything about me and I just wanted to know more about you but if you don't want to tell me then that's ok too. I don't want to make you feel bad. You're my best friend." Said Mob

"Thanks….your my best friend too…and I guess I can tell you…some things. Her name was Jun…Taniguchi Jun…and she was someone…who I cared about a lot. I cared about her and she cared about me but I messed the whole thing up in ways that you are too young to know about. She wasn't an esper but…but she always thought that my powers were just…she liked them. She was the first person to ever look at what I could do and like it for…for what it was. Not what I could do for her…and she didn't get freaked out when I showed her, either, which at the time was just…a lot for me. I cared about her a lot and that was why I moved with her to Ni-Chome…which is a part of Tokyo where people….like me live. We moved there together when I was seventeen and…yeah. It was…a nice place to live." Said Minegishi. They checked the timer on Mob's phone….and they wished that they had the power to control time, not plants….but they didn't and now they just had to calm the hell down. It was easier thought than done. They needed to calm down before they freaked Mob out…and also the bathroom was becoming overgrown.

"Why are you making so much aloe?" asked Mob as an aloe plant poked her in the side of the head. She tried to read Minegishi's aura but it was all tangled up in the plants and stuff…and she got the feeling that she had something wrong or done something wrong…and she wished that she knew what it was so she could fix it.

"I…don't like to talk about this. That's just me losing control like you lose control sometimes." Said Minegishi. They had been telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help them God but maybe they should have said something else. Mob's aura flared out and various bottles of product rained down from the shower shelves. They didn't care. Let someone else clean it up. They didn't need any more extra work. They had enough work to deal with getting their stupid emotions back in order.

"I'm sorry! For making you upset and also for-" said Mob. She put everything back with her powers as fast as she could. She wished that people's feelings were as easy to put back together. She wished that she knew how to make Minegishi feel better….but she didn't. She really didn't. She was so mad at herself. They were upset and it was all her fault!

"Don't be. This is on me, not you, ok? And calm the hell down with that. I'm fine. It's not that sad." Said Minegishi. They should have been over this long ago. They'd had something great with someone, they messed it up, and that was that. It had been years ago. There was nothing more pathetic than holding on to the memory of a woman that wanted nothing to do with them. It had ended almost eight years ago now and there was no need to dwell on it. No need for all of that extra work.

"It is. You're sad because you aren't with your best friend anymore. That's very sad." Said Mob. She didn't know what she would do if she and Minegishi weren't best friends anymore. It wasn't like she could just go to the store and get a new Minegishi. If she woke up one day and Minegishi was just gone….she didn't know what she would do…besides be very sad…

"You're my best friend, Mob, otherwise why the hell are we wearing these bracelets? You're my best friend and I'm not sad….not really. All of that shit happened years ago. I'm over it." Said Minegishi. They put a hand on Mob's back. She was getting herself worked up again. Why? She should have been depressed over her own shitty life, not Minegishi's, Minegishi should have been the one to be expressed over both of their shitty lives. They were older. Mob was just a kid. She had enough to deal with in her own life and she did not need to get herself worked up because of Minegishi's shit….shit that they brought on themselves.

"Ok…but it's still sad. You lost your old best friend." Said Mob. She couldn't think of anything sadder than losing your best friend….well Sho dying….and dad dying….and how mom had run away…and also if a kitten died…all of those things would be pretty sad but…but losing your best friend was up there.

"Mob, you're the only person I have ever called my best friend in my life. She was…well she was my girlfriend…now she's my ex-girlfriend….and honestly I don't blame her. I was not ready for any of that…and honestly I never will be. There's a reason I don't do the relationship thing….and you are WAY too young to know why. Trust me on this. Ok?" asked Minegishi. Mob nodded…and Minegishi thanked God that Mob nodded. They did not want to get any deeper into this than they had already gone.

"Ok….but I am sorry that you got dumped. That's got to be hard. I've never been dumped but I think that it must be hard…but it's ok. Other people like you like that." Said Mob. She had never been dumped but there was that time in the first grade when that boy liked her but then he ignored her after kissing her and holding her hand…and that had been hard. But it was ok. Minegishi probably felt worse than Mob had back then but she would make them feel better. She had never had or wanted a girlfriend before but she did know that if a boy dumped her she would want to hear that she was still a person who could be loved, that other boys would want to be with her, and that she wasn't some kind of unlovable person who would die alone and lonely…that was a terrible way to feel and Mob would not let Minegishi feel that way. Ever.

"Mob, I've told you before. You can have Haotri. Take him. I don't want him. He's yours." Said Minegishi. Hatori was, somehow, Mob's idea of a good catch. He cleaned up nicely. His skin was clearing up, he was using a soap that worked for him, and he hadn't been coating himself in lynx every day. He was still a nineteen year old crater faced overgrown child, how he thought that dish soap and laundry detergent were the same thing was beyond them, so Mob could have him.

"I-I don't like him like that anymore…at least I don't think so….I mean I think about him sometimes but not as a boyfriend just…just like how he's a boy and I like the way he looks and smells and I want to know what his skin feels like and also what it's like to…to kiss him and stuff…but not in a boyfriend way…if that makes any sense." Said Mob. She played with her braid and looked away while she said that. She didn't know what that feeling was but she got the feeling that it was something embarrassing.

"You think he's attractive, that's what that feeling it. I don't know why you think that he's attractive but you do and, honestly, he's all yours. I cannot emphasize this enough." Said Minegishi. Well Mob was certainly getting close to that special time in her life….and they were going to have a talk…later. They were mostly talked out for today. Besides, the only guy even remotely close to her age who wasn't her brother that she knew was Hatori and as he had sworn over and over again he was not into little girls. Minegishi didn't know what he was into but they had heard the word 'pregnant' back at the party during his confession and…yeah…they didn't need to hear anymore. If Mob wanted to drag the not so greasy little weirdo to bed with her when she got older then she could have at him.

"Oh….ok….but I wasn't talking about him anyway. Um…what would you do if boy who wasn't Hatori liked you?" asked Mob. She thought that her feelings for Hatori went past thinking that he was cute but she didn't want to talk about that anymore. Besides, she had to figure out if Minegishi liked Shimazaki back. If they liked him back then it would be the most perfect thing ever. They could get married and have babies and then Mob could be friends with their babies and play with them and take care of them and then Minegishi and Shimazaki would be happy for the rest of their lives and then Mob could watch their happy lives…..and it would be great.

Not that she was going to just come out and ask Minegishi if they liked Shimazaki like that.

Shimazaki had trusted her with his secret and she was going to keep it to herself. She wasn't good at talking but maybe if she just never said that it was Shimazaki who liked them…or maybe if she never let on that she knew that Shimazaki liked them….then she could figure out if Minegishi liked her back. Yeah. Like if it was all hypothetical situations or something. Then if Minegishi did like him then Mob could tell him that they liked him and then he could ask them to be his partner and they could get married and have five or ten babies and the Mob could play with the babies and everyone would be happy!

That is if Minegishi even liked Shimazaki back in the first place.

"Depends on the guy." Said Minegishi. Well they were well and truly off the subject of Minegishi's romantic failures…and onto the subject of their future romantic failures. Mob and love….Mob and boys…and it would only get WORSE as time went on…and it was already pretty bad now…well they'd weather the incoming hormonal storm. They had to…even though they saw their future revolving around conversations about boys…and Mob's thoughts on them….and it would be even worse than her obsession with Frozen…but Minegishi could handle it.

Bring it on.

"What if he…was really nice…but also acted like a crazy person all the time? Like he didn't think that he acted like a crazy person but everyone else did but he was just trying to be nice…and also he really liked music and…and was fun but also crazy…and a little annoying…but still a really good friend. Oh! And also what if he wore a lot of cologne?" asked Mob. There. She hadn't named any names or put in any details, specific details, that would let Minegishi knew who she was talking about. She felt good, actually, because she had never been that good at talking before.

"Hmm…that would depend." Said Minegishi. They knew EXACTLY who Mob was talking about. Subtly was not Suzuki Shigeko's strong suit. God. One of these days they were going to sit Mob down and tell her that adults could have sex, and kiss, and cuddle, and just enjoy being with one another without being in love or a relationship. They didn't blame Mob for being confused now, though, because she was eleven and had zero frame of reference for even a traditional relationship let alone whatever they were with Shimazaki. Whatever their situation was…their….situationship. Yeah, that fit. Their situationship.

"On what?" asked Mob. She leaned in close. Depend? There were deal breakers? Those were important. She had seen in a movie once where a man had a bunch of deal breakers, which were things about a woman that he would not have in a relationship, but then he met the perfect woman and he let them all go. He didn't mind that she had four kids or that she had been in prison or that she only had one leg or that she was six feet tall or that she had type B blood. He still loved her just the same and she quit her job at the ramen shop and married him and they had a baby at the end…so people could get over their deal breakers….

But Shimazaki had a lot more deal breakers than that….even if he was a very nice person….

"Does he like the Beatles? Because if he likes the Beatles then there's no way." said Minegishi. They were messing with Mob just a little bit…nothing serious. Just for fun. She really needed to learn to be more subtle…and to not ship her friends. Besides, everyone knew that HaoriXShibata was the more viable ship anyway the way those two were always hanging out.

"Um….is that a big deal breaker? Because he likes them a lot…I mean he would if I were talking about a specific person." said Mob

"Well I suppose that I could overlook that just so long as he doesn't have any tattoos. I'm not a fan of tattoos at all." said Minegishi. They smiled a little as Mob's eyebrows came together. It was cute. Even though she looked just like her father did when he tried to comprehend such incompressible things as Jell-O. Thank God she hadn't gotten Suzuki's eyebrows…though that might have made it even more adorable…and now they have to try not to laugh at the thought of Mob with her dad's eyebrows.

"Um…what if he has a bunch…and stuff." Said Mob. This was…not good. Maybe Minegishi only wanted to kiss Shimazaki, that was it, and they could only overlook all of his deal breakers for kissing reasons….oh no. Shimazaki would be so sad….

"I suppose I could overlook them if he didn't chew on strange things….like candles. Who wants to kiss a man with a mouthful of candle wax?" asked Minegishi. Mob was making this too easy...they'd stop in a minute, though, so they didn't end up upsetting her. She needed a boyfriend. A boyfriend her own age…or at least a boy her own age for her to kiss and whatever else, Minegishi was not going to open THAT box up anytime soon, she felt like doing with. At least then she could get all of this out of her system and she could stop shipping her friends.

"Um…what if he brushed his teeth before he kissed you? I feel like that would fix the candle wax problem…" said Mob. Well this…this was not good…but she could fix this. She could just tell Shimazaki all the things that he needed to change to get Minegishi to like him back…but then he wouldn't be himself anymore and she had heard that you had to be yourself…but you also had to fit in…and this whole thing was very complicated….

"Ok. Go tell Ryou to brush his teeth after he finishes chewing on candles." Said Minegishi. Mob's jaw dropped. She pulled her braids down and held onto them for dear life. Her aura retreated inwards….and Minegishi tried their best not to laugh….even though Mob deserved it for trying to play matchmaker with her friends.

"I-I-I….how did you know?" asked Mob. She had been so sneaky…but she had never been good at being sneaky…and now Shimazaki would know that she had let Minegishi know that he had a crush on them and then his heart would be broken and it was all her fault! She had broken her friend's heart and she…she had just been trying to help!

"How many guys do you know that like the Beatles, wear too much cologne, have more tattoos than they have room for, and chew on candles? Come on…and also no playing matchmaker. Ryou and I are what we are. You can have…well I won't get into what it is that we have…but you can have it without being in love…ok? Without doing the relationship thing? You get it?" asked Minegishi

"I…I get it. You don't like him like that…but if you did and you told him I bet he would be happy." Said Mob. She wished that Minegishi liked him back but they had said that they didn't do relationships…even though she could see that they were sort of in a relationship with Shimazaki….and also they would have been so happy together…but Mob didn't even have time to think of a sneaky way of telling that he was in love with them, one where they would love him back, because her timer went off.

That was ok, though, because now she got to help Minegishi paint the dye onto their hair!

"Yeah, he'd be over the fucking moon, Mob. Now come on, help me get the bleach out of my hair." Said Minegishi. Honestly. They were going to have to go through…..how long did puberty even take? Too long. They were going to have to deal with years of this….well they would, obviously, because they cared about Mob…but still. They needed to help her find a guy her own age or something because this living vicariously through people could not have been healthy. They would have to do that under Suzuki's nose, of course, because they got the feeling that he was one of those 'no man will ever be good enough for my precious little girl and I will murder any horny teenage boy who even thinks about her' dads….which was why Mob REALLY needed to find someone. Really.

"Can I help you do the paintbrush too?" asked Mob. She liked helping paint their hair…and also the part with the tinfoil…and also rinsing the dye out later…they just loved helping Minegishi with their hair so much….

"If you want. Now come on before I damage my hair…further." Said Minegishi. They got up and clipped the towel back around their neck. Good, the heavy discussion was over and now they could get back to normal. Back to what they had been doing. Back to wat was simple and easy and made sense and had nothing at all to do with their many romantic failures.

"Minegishi, don't say things like that. Your hair is really pretty." Said Mob as she got up. Minegishi had the prettiest hair that she had ever seen. It was lavender…and even if it wasn't lavender it would have been the prettiest hair that she had ever seen. Short or long, black or lavender, they had such pretty hair. Mob had always though so for their whole friendship.

Mob had always thought that Minegishi had very pretty hair…and was a pretty person on the inside, too.


	285. A Strange Conversation

President Suzuki was a very strange man.

Hatori knew this firsthand now. Sure, there had always been secondhand stories about him. About his temper, his infamous temper, and how literally anything could set him off. The things that he did to people…and the reasons that he did those things. Like that guy who got up in the middle of a meeting to go to the bathroom….that had been…well he had lived and that was what mattered. He had lived and…and Hatori might live, too, if he set off President Suzuki's temper. He was friends with the President's Daughter after all…so…so if he pissed the President off then…then maybe he wouldn't be hurt too badly…

He wondered if he could survive jumping out of a moving car.

You were supposed to tuck and roll, right? Tuck and roll…or something. He wished that he had looked it up before getting into this car with the President. He wished that he had looked up how to jump out of a moving car and survive in the dessert and…and how to disappear completely and never be found because nobody defected from Claw. Once you were in then you were in for life….but he wished that he had bothered to think up an escape plan or something….

He needed to get out.

"Um….Mr. President? Wouldn't it be faster to teleport?" asked Hatori. He cringed after the words left his mouth. This was not the time to ask. He should have asked before they left, not in the middle of their trip, because there was nothing that he could do about this now. The President probably thought that he was a moron or something now…and he hated morons. He hated morons, cretins, people who thought too highly of themselves, and people who had to go to the bathroom…and Hatori had to go to the bathroom. He wished that this car had a bathroom or…or that there had been some way to climb into the trunk…or something. Some small space he could have ran and hidden in until they got to where they were headed to….

Hatori maybe should have paid more attention when the President told him where they had been headed to.

He had stopped listened after the President had summoned him, well he had sent his daughter to get him which was the same as formally summoning him, and now he was in a car driving through the dessert with a laptop balanced on his knees being Suzuki's Minecraft materials slave. He knew that he would be expected to do something else when they got to wherever it was that they were going but he was not going to open his mouth and start asking any more stupid questions. The boss couldn't stand people who asked stupid questions…

He couldn't stand anyone at all.

"Yes, it would have been faster. Now bring me more diamond." Said Suzuki. Hatori swallowed and nodded. Had he sounded mad there? Was he mad right now? The boss's aura was big and red and it pressed down on him but it gave nothing away as far as his mood went. He could have been ready to dangle Hatori out the window by his ankle or kiss him on the mouth, he had no clue, but what he did know was that it was best to just get more diamond like he had been told. The best thing to do with Suzuki was to just follow his orders to the letter and then just…pray that he didn't secretly hate you. Pray that he wasn't going to demote you or send people after you or…or whatever else he did to people he didn't like….

Hatori wondered if anyone besides Mob would miss him if he were to die right then and there.

If not by Suzuki's hand then from the sheer amount of water he was losing through this nervous sweat he had worked himself into. He tried swallowing. His throat was stuck together…or maybe he had just stopped making saliva to preserve precious liquids. People did that….right? He had seen that on a survival show once, maybe, he couldn't remember. It would have made sense for his body to have been preserving liquids since he was in a desert…but then why did he feel like he was going to piss himself? A fear response? Like cats did to you when you picked them up too fast? Well he was afraid….Suzuki was a terrifying man…

Even when he was just sitting there played Minecraft.

There was a shift in the energy around him. Hatori practically threw himself back into his seat as he felt the President reach past him telekinetically to…oh. The back of the seat in front of him was also a mini fridge. Huh. So that was what he had been feeling. There were tiny bottles of water and soda and little cans of coffee…and beers…which he would not touch…and also little chilled wine bottles…which was weird because he had never seen the President drink. Not even through security cameras. Maybe his daughter had stocked this car…she did have sort of a drinking problem…in the sense that a ten year old drinking was a problem to begin with…but he wasn't about to say anything…

He got the feeling that whatever President Suzuki did to people who criticized his parenting was a hell of a lot worse than what he did to people who had to go to the bathroom.

President Suzuki was looking at him now…and he thought for a moment that he was going to reach out and strangle him…well force choke him…which he had done to people before. The President could kill him at any time and just…leave his body out in the desert…and then the dingos would get to him…or maybe not since they only ate babies…or maybe future generations would study his mummified corpse. Maybe Mob would make him a nice grave marker back at HQ. 'Here lies Hatori Nozomu. He had to take a piss.'

Wow. His eyes were REALLY blue.

"Drink something. You're dehydrated." Said Suzuki. He was still staring….and he had really nice eyes…well he would have had nice eyes if they hadn't been so crazy. Hatori would not have been surprised if the President either killed him or kissed him in that moment. He was just…just that crazy. Hatori hadn't even been to psychology school or anything but no sane person started up an organization like Claw. Also all the murders….and stuff. Those were also not the sorts of things that sane people would do….not that he was going to call President Suzuki insane to his face or anything….

Could he read minds?!

Hatori couldn't move. He couldn't think. The President was still looking at him. He was still staring at him with those same eyes, those same blue eyes that would have been nice but…but were just…crazy! Hatori was going to die. The President was taking him out into the desert to die….or maybe he was the one who was losing it. Maybe this was just where he went to…play Minecraft? No, he played it all the time…maybe he was just…there was a new Division that he was building out here since the old Eighth Division had exploded….maybe he needed to do the tech stuff for the new Eighth Division. Yeah, that would make sense…or maybe Suzuki was taking him out here to do weird sex stuff…Hatori didn't want that at all….Shimazaki had been lying. He must have been lying. Hatori would have noticed through the security footage if President Suzuki regularly took people off to do weird, disturbing, sex stuff with them…but then again a man as smart as him would have avoided cameras…by going into the desert…

Shimazaki always lies.

Shimazaki was a liar. He was nothing but a liar. Monster did not smell or taste like gasoline, Shibata had never hugged a cat to death on accident, and the cookies in the cafeteria were not made with butter rendered from the fat of traitors. Shimazaki was a liar and the President was more likely to have been driving him off to the desert for work shit…or to kill him….not to sleep with him. He had other people for that…like that healer…though that might have been another one of Shimazaki's lies…and Shimazaki always lied and he had to remember that Shimazaki always lied….

"I know that the custom is to deny a gift when it is offered to you but you're useless to me dead. So drink something. I don't care what." Said Suzuki. Hatori sprang from his seat like it had bit him. Right. He had to drink something…water. He hated water but…but water was the most polite thing to drink…and also it would keep him going the longest in the desert if Suzuki tried to throw him out of the car…though he had no idea what he could have done…but Suzuki didn't need a reason. He was Suzuki.

And he was terrifying.

Hatori uncapped his water and drank. He hated water. He mostly drank pop or energy drinks, sometimes tea, but he had been making an effort to drink a glass of water every other day at least for his skin. Even though it tasted bad. In every single country he had been in the water had just been…bad. Too metallic, too mineral-y, too soft, too….too plain. He was not a big water guy and never would be. But he had to drink it now because it would hydrate him and he needed to be hydrated…not only because he had to survive in the desert but because he had sweated through his sweater, practically.

"Drink slowly or you'll choke and I know that my daughter would be very upset if you were to die." Said Suzuki. Hatori did as he was told.

"Y-yes sir. I wouldn't want to upset Li-I wouldn't want to upset Suzuki-sama….Suzuki-san….Suzuki-kun…Suzuki-chan….um..." said Hatori. He called her Mob and Little Sister-sama but neither of those were her name and if he called her anything other than her name Suzuki would think that he was disrespecting his Daughter…and he didn't know what Suzuki did to people who disrespected his Daughter but it must have been worse than what he did to literally every other group of people that pissed him off. It was obvious who his favorite kid was.

"My Daughter is sama to you." Said Suzuki

"Right. I wouldn't want to upset Mob-sama….I mean Suzuki-sama! Suzuki-sama…" said Hatori. Suzuki was still staring at him. He really wanted to go back to being the Minecraft materials gatherer. At least that way Suzuki wouldn't be looking at him…like he was now….like he wanted to show Hatori was his organs looked like…but in a serial killer way not an angry way…

"Why do you call her that? I hear all of you calling her that and I have no idea why. She would be Suzuki-kun to you if you were on friendly terms…which you are…or Shigeko-kun….her name is Suzuki Shigeko. Explain this to me right now." asked Suzuki. Hatori wondered if he was angry…of course he was angry. Why wouldn't he be? That was a weird nickname. He had no idea why she wanted to be called Mob but he respected that…but maybe in respecting what she had wanted to be called then he had, in fact, been very disrespectful of her…and now he would pay the ultimate price….

He was too young to die…he wasn't even twenty yet…and he hadn't even kissed a girl…woman…in his adult life…

"I-I'm only doing what she asked. I don't know why she likes to be called Mob…but I can ask her next time I see her and then tell you what she said!" said Hatori. His voice may have broken towards the end…and he had no idea why that had happened he had thought for sure that his voice had been done changing by now…but at least he had proposed something that might grant him another day at least…unless Suzuki took out his phone and just texted her himself…that was always an option…

"Yes. Do that and then explain to me what she said. She's asked to be called that for her whole life…and I have never been able to understand it…though I suppose that doesn't mean much when not even her closest companion understands it." Said Suzuki. Now his eyes were less crazy…so maybe they were just crazy by default…and his aura was the same as it ever was. Hatori had rarely ever seen the President's aura so much as flare…and even then only when he was punishing his son or his subordinates…or at two in the morning on Wednesday nights but that had nothing to do with the lies that Shimazaki told. Suzuki was….not going to kill him…because he was…wait, what?

"I'm her closest friend? Me?" asked Hatori. Of course he regretted speaking as soon as he opened his mouth. The President did not like people who spoke out of turn. He didn't like anyone but he especially did not like people who spoke out of turn.

"Her closest companion. I suspect that Minegishi is her closest friend based on how often she speaks of them…but you are her closest companion…and I suppose that I must accept that." Said Suzuki. This was a nod and get back to work situation. He had no idea what Suzuki meant but he also knew that bad things happened to people who questioned the boss. Well Hatori wanted to live, thank you very much.

"So you said you needed more diamond? If I get you some obsidian and a book I can make an enchantment table and then you could-" said Hatori. There was a magic system in this game that Suzuki hadn't even begun to work on yet. Maybe once Hatori got him into the more non sandboxy parts of this game he would go back to sitting there in silence broken only when he needed to order Hatori to build him something. Yeah, that would be awesome.

"Do no pursue my Daughter romantically or sexually." Said Suzuki. Hatori choked. He choked on nothing. He had finished his water bottle long ago, a minute or two ago, and now he was choking on nothing. On air. His lungs had stopped working and he desperately needed them to work because….that was what Suzuki THOUGHT!? Hatori was going to die. Suzuki thought that he had been messing around with Mob…with his DAUGHTER. Suzuki was taking him out to the desert to kill him….

He wasn't even twenty yet and he was going to die.

Another bottle of water was placed in his hand. Suzuki was still staring at him. He still had the crazy eyes and his aura was still calm and somehow it was the calm aura that made the whole thing all the more terrifying. Hatori knew that he was going to die and….and there was still so much he hadn't done! He'd never finished the first Dark Souls or slept with a woman or learned how to iron his own clothes or kept a pigeon as a pet…there were so many things that he hadn't done and now the President was going to kill him and-

And he needed to fix this.

He took another drink of water. He wanted…he wanted to go somewhere small and dark so he could think. He wondered if he could climb into the trunk of the car if he ripped the seat off…no. That would be stupid since Suzuki would still be right there. He just…he just had to tell Suzuki that he wasn't into little girls…but that was exactly what someone who WAS into little girls would say! Who the hell was out and proud about how much they liked little girls!? Well the out and proud lolicons….which he was not one of! He needed….he needed to….to say something….

"She's ten! I'm not into ten year olds!" said Hatori. He said it louder than he had meant to…and his voice had cracked there…and he had spilled water all down the front of his shirt…and maybe his delivery could have been better…but it was the truth! He was not into ten year olds…well she was almost eleven…and that was still wrong! This was so fucking unfair! He was going to die and he hadn't even done anything!

"I'd imagine not or I would have beaten you terrible if not killed you. She will grow up and when she does she will be the most intelligent, kind, powerful, and beautiful woman in the world and when she does you will not pursue a romantic and sexual relationship with her. Is this in any way unclear to you? Because if it is then I can make it more clear to you." Said Suzuki. Hatori wanted to tell him that if anyone in that car sounded like they wanted to sleep with his daughter it was him…but then he would most certainly be a dead man. Suzuki had threatened him towards the end…and he would have to live with that threat hanging over his head forever…and Suzuki had made something out of literally nothing now…what would happen when she got older? When she grew up? He was not going to die because Suzuki projected…whatever that was…onto everyone. He needed…

He needed to convince Suzuki that he would never even dream of touching Mob even when she grew up.

"I'm gay! I'm really gay! Like, I don't like girls at all! " shouted Hatori. Suzuki blinked. Well now the crazy eyes were gone….and his aura was less oppressive…so…win? There. Now they could either play Minecraft and Suzuki would never accuse him of that…wrongness…ever again or….or Suzuki would get uncomfortable with him and kick him out of the car…because he may not be cool with the whole 'gay' thing…even though he was weirdly close with Fukuda…supposedly…and his son had a pretty damn obvious crush on Shimazaki…but then again Suzuki was socially impaired and might not have even noticed….

But at least he probably wasn't going to die now.

"Oh. I didn't know that about you. Daughter never mentioned that you were a homosexual." Said Suzuki simply. He didn't seem pissed off…or grossed out….or like he was about to come onto him…he just looked…he looked kind of like a kid killing ants with a magnifying glass…

"Um….it never came up?" said Hatori. Well now he had dug himself into a nice hole now hadn't he? Well this was a hell of a lot better than the alternative. Live a lie for the rest of his life or don't live at all. He was going with the lie. Besides, it wasn't like Shimazaki had been telling the truth about Suzuki. He wasn't about to sleep with his boss in the back of a Claw car going through the desert at a hundred kilometers an house with a driver listening….was he?

"That makes sense." Said Suzuki. There was some silence there. Suzuki was still staring at him…and he had no idea what that 'kid with a magnifying glass' stare meant. Hopefully Suzuki wasn't about to tell him to prove it…and then this whole thing turned into a bad porno….

"So, if I make you an enchantment table then you can-" said Hatori trying to get him back to Minecraft because he liked Minecraft. He crafted like a master. He had logged more hours into Minecraft than he had in raising his kids, probably, and…and he should have been ready to jump back in…but instead he was still just sitting there and staring and-

"Explain." Said Suzuki. Hatori relaxed. Ok, good, they were back to Minecraft. This wasn't going to turn into a bad porno. This wasn't going to turn into something that he would be describing to a psychologist in ten years. Good. Now they could move on with their lives.

"Well an enchantment table is-" said Hatori

"No, explain homosexuality to me. Right now." Said Suzuki. Hatori needed a drink. He needed all of the tiny beer and wine bottles in the mini fridge because he just did not have the mental stamina to get through this. Maybe if they stopped the car he could run and hide in the trunk…no. That was stupid. Suzuki would notice.

"Um…that's when a guy is into another guy. Romantically." Said Hatori. He hoped to God that Suzuki wasn't going to ask him how it all worked….because Hatori knew that his heart would not be able to take that. He would die. He would die and then that would be it. 'Here lies Hatori Nozomu. He lied about his sexuality so his boss wouldn't think that he was a pervert. It worked too well.'

"I know that. What I need to know is how it works." Said Suzuki. Hatori's eyebrows raised up so high he could feel them above his glasses. Well then…he was going to give his boss the talk. He wondered what this must have sounded like to the driver….this bizarre…not even a conversation. This Q&A session.

"Um…do you mean mechanically?" asked Hatori. He wasn't even sure how it all worked mechanically. Shimazaki was the guy to ask about this. Yeah. He would just come clean about being a nineteen year old virgin and then send all sexual questions Shimazaki's way. There.

"No, I know how that part works. Seems painful to me but that doesn't matter. I just want to know…well a great many things. I've never spoken to a homosexual before. I have many questions." Said Suzuki

"Well...um….ask away?" asked Hatori. He wondered if this was ok…impersonating a gay man to make his boss think that he wasn't into little girls…which he wasn't! He didn't know. He would worry about the ethical ramifications of this later. Right now he just needed to live through this conversation.

"Good. Now tell me how it works. How do you choose a partner? What parameters do you look for?" asked Suzuki. Hatori was NOT the man to ask about that. He'd never even come close to having ANY kind of a partner…..actually women, and Minegishi, really did not like him….but he was in too deep now. Time to keep up the lie.

"Um…I just like…guys who I like to be around? Guys I fall in love with…I guess. I mean it's the same for straight people just…nobody is a woman." Said Hatori. Was that how it worked? He didn't know. He just asked every single woman he met out in the hopes that one would say yes…and that hadn't been working out for him…mainly because he didn't come into contact with a lot of women to begin with.

"Oh…so it's all based on emotions…that is…interesting. Yes. I suppose that makes sense. How do you decide who controls the domestic sphere and who provides for the family?" asked Suzuki. That was…a weird way to put it. Did he mean who worked and who took care of the kids? Well both obviously….but Suzuki was old. He was over twice Hatori's age. He had been born during the pacific war or…well not that long ago but…but he was really old. He probably didn't know that women had jobs and stuff now.

"It depends on who wants to do what…I guess…or they just split up the chores and stuff…equally." Said Hatori. Suzuki must have liked his answers since his eyes hadn't gotten any crazier. That was a good sign…right?

"That makes sense since you're both male. I understand." Said Suzuki

"So getting back to Minecraft-" said Hatori

"Am I considered to be attractive? By the standards of your people I mean." Asked Suzuki. Hatori…had no clue how to answer that question. Honestly it was a miracle that a woman had found him attractive enough to have his kids. He was strange, and insane, and also the crazy eyes weren't helping…but telling Suzuki this to his face was a deathwish…

"I…um….you're my boss so if I tell you that you're attractive it could be…seen as me trying to proposition you….to get ahead in Claw?" said Hatori. Suzuki practically recoiled. Good. Maybe now this would be the end of it.

"I would never. Not even if you were female I would never even dream of propositioning you for anything." Said Suzuki. Well that hurt just a little…and he had no idea what there was in there to be hurt by. This was….this whole thing was just too weird. He needed…he needed a drink. Maybe if he threw up everywhere Suzuki would let him shut up.

"Ok. So I was thinking that if I got you more diamond I could-" said Hatori. There was no end to it, to the questions, and even Minecraft wasn't fixing this. No wonder nobody ever wanted to work in close proximity to Suzuki. They had only been talking for a few minutes and Hatori was ready to crawl into the trunk and hide.

"How did you come to this conclusion about yourself? That you're a homosexual. How did you know?" asked Suzuki. Well that one was easy to answer.

"I was born this way. I don't know why I was born this way but I was." said Hatori. Just like the song. There. People were born what they were born….and how did Suzuki not KNOW that? Well he had been born in a different world than the one Hatori lived in. He was a pretty old man…well middle aged man. Still, though, he maybe needed to learn a little bit more about the world before he took it over…not that Hatori would ever say anything like that out loud. He wanted to live.

"So it's genetic then. I see." Said Suzuki thoughtfully.

"Yes. I think that it's genetic…but I'm not a scientist so I can't say for sure." Said Hatori. Good. He was quiet now. He hoped to God that this was the end of the questions…but he also knew that God had it out for him.

"Do you think that my Son is a homosexual? Because I've seen him in his sister's clothes on numerous occasions and I have my worries." Said Suzuki. Hatori bit back the truth. He had no clue what Sho was but it was something and it had the mother of all crushes on Shimazaki…for some reason. He wasn't about to go telling the kid's dad about all of that, though, because he got the feeling that Suzuki wouldn't react well to his own male child being anything other than perfectly straight. The whole bloodline thing and all.

"He's ten. I don't think he's anything yet." Said Hatori. He was handling this well. He hadn't even pissed himself once. Even though he crazy eyes were starting to get to him…but he was fine. He was going to live and that was what mattered. He would live to see another day.

"Yes…he is ten. I'm worrying over nothing. Daughter would have told me. She tells me everything…well everything she is aware of…but Son would not keep secrets from Daughter." Muttered Suzuki. Hatori was very tempted to ask him why he never referred to his kids by their names, it seemed sort of hurtful, but he also knew that Suzuki would take it as criticism

"So uh…back to Minecraft-" said Hatori

"Don't pursue my son romantically or sexually when he gets older either if he does turn out to be a homosexual…and I pray that he isn't…but either way don't pursue him or you'll wish that you were dead." Said Suzuki. Hatori nodded so fast that he glasses almost flew off…and then Suzuki caught them for him…and that was somehow the weirdest part of this whole car ride. Not the whole explaining being gay to Suzuki thing, no, it was the glasses. That was the weirdest part of this whole thing. He had lied to save his ass from Suzuki's crazy assumptions…and then he just went and made more crazy assumptions…and now he would have to live this lie for the rest of his life…great.

"He's ten…and even if he wasn't I wouldn't be attracted to him…because I knew him when he was ten." Said Hatori. He was out of lies. If Suzuki didn't believe this then he was a dead man…or maybe not. He loved his daughter a hell of a lot more than he loved his son…so maybe Hatori would just end up being maimed or seriously injured….

"Yes. Son is rather grating. Very well then. I have many more questions for you but I'll have to write them down and then have Fukuda look over the list to see if they're socially acceptable. I wouldn't want to give you the wrong idea. Now get back to work. Tell me more about this item you want to craft for me." Said Suzuki

"Well it's an enchantment table and with it…" said Hatori. He was sending the people who designed Minecraft a fancy bottle of sake or a big gift basket or maybe one of those cakes that had a girl in it that popped out. Thank God for Minecraft. Thank God that Suzuki was so obsessed with Minecraft. Maybe now he would stop being so…

Strange.

That was the only word for it. Hatori shuddered to think of what questions Suzuki was going to come up with…especially if he had to have someone look over the list…and now Hatori was the Netflix guy, the tech support guy, the Minecraft guy, and now the sexuality Q&A guy…but at least Suzuki didn't think that he was into his Daughter. At least he wouldn't wake up to a sack thrown over his head and he himself being tossed into a traitor hole…even if he had to live a lie now…but it was worth it to get to live…even though he shouldn't have had to lie in the first place….but he was not about to go and come clean. Suzuki….he would not take being lied to well…

Suzuki Touichirou was a very strange man. You just never knew what he was going to do.


	286. Picking Your Battles

Fukuda was not anyone's father.

Maybe if he had been someone's father then he would have had a better idea of how to do…anything. He hadn't ever watched Sho for more than a few hours at a time over the years. It had been two weeks now…and Fukuda….he was ready to admit that he had not been doing the best job of it. Well it made sense, he was not a father, but he had always thought of himself as something of a father to Sho. He was the one who got him through his various emotional crises, he was a safe place to go whenever his family got to be too much, and he was good at that. He had been doing that for years now. He had it down and could do that in his sleep.

It was everything else that was getting to him.

"Sho….come on. Just please at least stop un-tossing your salad…and there's ranch. You like ranch." Said Fukuda. He had gone to Subway specifically for ranch dressing. That was the only place in Korea that sold ranch dressing. The only way Sho would eat salad was if there was ranch dressing. It was in the notes.

The goddamned notes.

Shigeko was a lot of things…and one of those was good at caring for her brother. She wasn't just playing the part of the little mother, she was his little mother, and that was not good for anyone involved. She may have been bossy, and had power that no child ever should have had, but she knew how to care for Sho and that…that was something. That was more than Suzuki could do. He hadn't been the one to write out pages of notes for every single aspect of caring for Sho. Every. Single. Aspect. Including how to clip his nails for him without him getting upset….and Fukuda got the feeling that he should have been clipping his own nails at ten years old…

And also he should have been able to eat a salad without ranch dressing.

"I have to make it stop touching. I don't like it when my food touches." Said Sho as he picked his salad apart. He had a plate for the lettuce, a plate for the tomato, a plate for the carrot, and a plate for the croutons. There was already no cucumber because they made him throw up inside of his mouth. He had no idea why Fukuda was riding him so hard about what he ate. It was his mouth and he could put whatever he wanted in it. He could even eat a candle if he wanted to…

Not that he was going to be eating any candles.

He had candles, a whole bunch of them, but those were for Shimazaki….Ryou. Those wee for Ryou. He liked the feel of chewing on candles. Sho didn't know why but if he wanted to chew on candles then when they met up again Sho would chew on candles with him all day and listen to music and play in a fort and maybe even jump out and scare Hatori. First one to send him running to the bathroom won. They had so much fun together…Shimazaki was so much fun….Ryou was so much fun…

He was a hell of a lot more fun than Fukuda.

"Sho…come on. You didn't even do that when you were little. Remember? You were such a good eater back then." Said Fukuda. He was a healer. If Sho ended up hurting himself by only eating things which had been fried, chocolate covered, sugar blasted, or dipped in caramel then he could heal him…while he was still alive. Fukuda had no idea how long he would live for but he was forty four now, and Sho was ten, so he didn't see himself living to see Sho make it to forty four. He had to teach Sho how to eat and take care of himself and all of those other things that his father didn't feel like teaching him…that his sister had been trying to teach him…

Though he had no clue if the ranch was helping with the healthy eating aspect.

"Back then I didn't get to pick what I ate. I don't like it when my food touches, it's gross, and I shouldn't have to eat anything that's gross…and also the ranch here sucks." Said Sho. He wanted to have fries and pop tarts for dinner…but Fukuda was making him eat his food groups. Just like big sis would have. He didn't know why he needed to eat all of his food groups. It wasn't like he was eating entire sticks of butter. That was gross. You had to put something on the butter…and stuff.

"There's nothing wrong with having food touch…and there's nothing wrong with the ranch here. It's…not that bad. It could be worse." Said Fukuda. Truth be told the ranch dressing was terrible here…and he should have thought to bring some with…because he had known that he would only have eaten vegetables with ranch…well he hadn't known that it was such a problem….

He maybe should have read the notes.

Suzuki was a genius. A book smart genius. He had literally memorized all of their school books at the beginning of the year every year all through university. He had never once underestimated Suzuki's intelligence…and he should not have underestimated Shigeko, either. She was a little girl, true, but she was an intelligent little girl. She had been smart enough to sow the seeds of her own influence in Claw and she had her father wrapped around her finger….so she was smart enough to know how to take care of her own brother…

And he really should have read the notes when he had gotten them.

Because it had been a HARD two weeks. He'd had to juggle work, juggle Sho, and juggle himself. That was a lot of juggling and he had never been good at it. He could deal with Suzuki. He was a simple man all things considered. Sho was…he was a good kid…but he was obstinate in a way that his father had never been. Masami…she had been able to deal with him…but he hadn't been ten years old. He hadn't been a ten year old with his own ideas of who he was and what he wanted…and also Fukuda had no way of punishing him because he was ten…it wasn't as though Fukuda could just pick him up and put him in the corner…

And also according to the notes Shigeko didn't believe in punishment of any sort.

"When people say that something could be worse they're just trying to find a nice way of saying that it sucks. It sucks di-" said Sho. He didn't get what Fukuda was so mad about. He didn't get what was so bad about taking his salad apart and he didn't know what was so bad about what he was about to say. It sucked dick in a public bathroom for yen ten coins. It was funny. Ryou always laughed. He had been the one to teach Sho that and he always laughed. Fukuda never laughed…and Sho didn't know why. It wasn't like dad was there to kill all the fun like he always did.

It was so nice to be away from dad.

He'd been away from dad for two weeks now…and it was great. No dad there to hit him or call him names or tell him that he was grating or annoying or troublesome or quarrelsome or whatever else dad was going to insult him with. He could do whatever he wanted without having to worry. He could walk around naked if he felt like it! Well he didn't, because Fukuda was there, but dad wouldn't even let him sleep without a shirt on even though big sis said that it was ok. Big sis said a lot of stuff was ok even though dad said that it wasn't….

She was cool like that.

Like she let him eat in the bed and stuff. Also she let him jump on the bed and the couch and…and a whole lot of other fun stuff that dad said not to. She was bossy too, she was always making him take baths and change clothes and brush his hair and not eat sugar straight from the bag…and stuff….but she could be cool too. He wondered what she was doing right now without him to boss around. Probably hanging out with Minegishi or something…or Shimazaki….

Not Shimazaki because…because she would never do that to him…because she loved him…and she wouldn't be a best friend stealer…

"Language! Sho….for the love of God…stop saying that." Said Fukuda. He knew that there was no way to harm or kill Shimazaki Ryou…but he would find a way. There must have been a way. He had to have a weakness. Everyone had a weakness…and he had to have one…and then he would pay for teaching Sho all of that. Fukuda had no clue how to get him to stop. He couldn't have punished Sho even if he wanted to…but he had to get him to stop. God help him if Suzuki ever heard him talking like that.

"Why? Shimazaki thinks it's funny." Said Sho

"Well that's him. You can't talk like that. What if your dad heard you talking like that?" asked Fukuda

"He's not here." Said Sho

"But what if he was? What if he was and you slipped and talked like that in front of him?" asked Fukuda

"He'd be pissed….but he's always pissed at me." Said Sho. The only time dad ever said anything to him was when he was pissed off. That was fine. That was dad. He didn't care. He didn't need dad. He had been away from dad for two weeks and he hadn't missed him even once.

"Well….what if your sister heard you cursing like that? How would she feel?" asked Fukuda. He didn't want to bring up Shigeko, it felt somewhat manipulative, and also he just did not like to bring her up…but maybe that would get Sho to knock it off already. Sho…..he was a good boy…he just said some very bad things…and Fukuda was getting tired of hearing it. What happened to little Sho? Sho who needed to sit on a book to see over the table? Sho who ate all of his dinner and then begged him to play? Sho who went to bed and woke up and did it all without fighting? He missed that Sho….and he loved ten year old Sho….but four year old Sho had been a lot easier to deal with….

"….she'd be pissed off…..well her version of pissed off which is mostly sad…but she isn't even here! She's over with dad and everyone else and she's probably playing Minecraft or watching Frozen or painting Minegishi's nails or something. She's not here and I don't have to follow her rules…and there's nothing wrong with saying that something sucks dick in a public-" said Sho

"Sho…just eat your dinner. You have no idea what any of that means anyway. Just…please eat all of your dinner." Said Fukuda with a sigh. Sho went back to deconstructing his salad. He had already deconstructed his chicken, there was a pile of meat and a broken up bone on a plate, and he had even taken the ice out of his soda…and Fukuda had no idea what this was. He suspected that it went beyond picky eating and being obstinate. Maybe it was a manifestation of something. He didn't know. All he knew was that he was tired…so very tired….

"I will eat it. I'll eat it once I get it right." Said Sho. He liked Fukuda a lot, he really did, but he did not need to be bossed around like that. He already had dad and big sis bossing him around, he didn't need Fukuda to boss him around too. This was hid food and he would eat it…once he got it right…and maybe with the gross ranch, maybe not with the gross ranch, and make he would just hide his vegetables in his shirt and throw them out later when Fukuda wasn't looking. That one always got big sis.

"Sho….do whatever you want….just finish your dinner already. I'm going to go run your bath now…which you need. It's been three days and you need to take a bath for your own health." Said Fukuda. He didn't want to have this fight with Sho anymore. His own meal had been long over…and he should have read the notes. Shigeko had been very clear that the best thing to do was to try and get Sho to match your pace while you ate. That could be achieved by talking to him about his day, things he liked, drawings he had done, and other things…

And then the back of the page had been a written list of conversation topics.

As if Fukuda didn't know how to talk to Sho. He had been talking to Sho since before Sho had even been able to talk….but Shigeko did talk to him more. Suzuki was a genius and Shigeko…she knew her stuff. He wasn't president of her fan club, he wasn't going to join her entourage, but after two weeks he could acknowledge that she knew what she was doing when it came to caring for Sho. She had been right about the no liquids after ten thing, right about not giving him too much caffeine during the day, and right about reading him to sleep. She knew what she was doing….

And he was loathe to admit it.

"I don't need a bath. I don't stink." Said Sho. He didn't know what was so important about taking baths. He didn't stink and he wasn't dirty and he had changed his clothes today so what was so bad about skipping his bath for another day or two or ten? Big sis wasn't there to make him take a bath. She was the only one who cared if he was clean or dirty. She was far away and she couldn't tell if he had taken a bath or not…and why should he have to be in water like that when Fukuda knew he didn't like it?

Fukuda knew why he didn't like it.

"Sho…either you take a bath or you wash yourself with a rag on a stick. Which sounds better to you?" asked Fukuda with a sigh.

"The rag, obviously." Said Sho. He hadn't even known that a rag on a stick was an option. Then he wouldn't have to get in the water and have it up high…and then there were the walls of the tub…and then it was so hot…and then it was cold…and then he couldn't breathe….

Obviously he would pick the rag every time.

"I wasn't being serious. You can't wash yourself with a rag on a stick. That's not hygienic. You have to take a bath, a real one." said Fukuda. Why had he given him a choice? The rag would have been easier but…but it just wasn't clean. You washed off and then soaked in the water. That was how you took a bath…or you just took a shower….but those never got you as clean.

"Don't promise me things that aren't going to happen." Said Sho. He was not getting in that tub. He was going to sneak his DS in with him in his sock or his phone or something and he was going to sit in the bathroom for half an hour. Then he was going to sprinkle some water in his hair and tell Fukuda that he'd had a bath. If it could work on big sis it would work on Fukuda. He wasn't nearly as smart as big sis was. He never even checked to see if Sho was really asleep. He just believed the fake snoring. Big sis knew how his breathing was when he was asleep and she always sat next to him and read until she could tell that he was really asleep…and also she took his phone and laptop and DS out of the room so he couldn't wake up in the middle of the night to play and stuff.

Fukuda wasn't nearly as smart as big sis when it came to that kind of stuff.

"You knew I was kidding. Come on. You know that you have to take a real bath. You have to rinse off and then get in the tub just like everyone else." Said Fukuda

"Some people take showers." Said Sho

"Do you want to take a shower?" asked Fukuda

"Hell no." said Sho. Showers were worse than baths in some ways. He hated the feel of water on his head, in his hair, and running down his face. It made him feel like he couldn't breathe even though he knew that he could. He wished that he could have washed himself with a rag on a stick. That would have solved a lot of his problems.

"Language." Said Fukuda

"Regualr no." said Sho

"Then you're getting a bath. Finish your dinner and then I'll make you a bubble bath and I'll get one of those shows you like going….with all the gore…and I'll even read to you through the door if you want." Said Fukuda. That was how Shigeko got him to take a bath. He got one episode of this horror anthology show he watched, or an episode of something else he liked, and that served as the timer. Reading to him helped keep him calm. The bubbles helped keep him occupied and helped him remember that he was not being drowned in an Awakening Chamber. Also as a last resort, that had been written in red pen with a lot of underlining, he could get in the bath with him…but he would not be doing that because Sho was not his kid…and also he was ten and old enough to take a bath by himself. Shigeko had written that she hadn't had to do that in almost a year hence why it was a last resort….of course if it got to that point then Fukuda would rather just chase him around with a bucket of water and a bar of soap.

Because he needed a bath. Badly.

The soles of his feet were black and his hair was droopy with grease….he needed some soap and water and he needed them NOW. Fukuda…he was supposed to be taking care of Sho….and it was hard. So hard. Well more like truly exhausting. How one human being could be so contrary and obstinate was beyond him…but that was ok because he loved Sho and he would do anything for him…though he had no idea how Masami did it…

Probably the same way Shigeko did it.

He forgot, sometimes, that she was Masami's child too. Well not really, she had been adopted, but she had spent a lot of her formative years with Masami. She had picked up a thing or two about taking care of Sho. She had picked up enough to practically write Fukuda an instruction manual…which made him feel more like a babysitter than…whatever he was to Sho…but still contained useful information. If he could acknowledge that Suzuki was a, book smart, genius then he could acknowledge that Shigeko had picked up a thing or two from Masami.

Skills that Fukuda was still honing.

"….I'll eat but I don't want to take a bath. Ok? Please? I don't want to take a bath and I don't see why I have to take a bath in the first place. Dad and big sis aren't here and they're the only ones who care if I'm clean or dirty." Said Sho as he poked un-tossed salad with his fork.

"Sho…how about….I know what you've been through, believe me I know, and I know that you don't like water. Pretty much all of the Awakened hate water for the same reason…but they also take baths…or showers…most of them…anyway you have to be clean for your health. For your health and also nobody wants to hang out with someone who doesn't bathe. Like your sister's boyfriend. People tease him all the time for not bathing. Do you want to be teased like Hatori?" asked Fukuda. If he didn't get Sho to see the important of regularly bathing now then he was going to end up spending his teen years putting on can after can of body spray in lieu of bathing….and nobody needed that.

"No…but I also don't want to take a bath." Said Sho. He really didn't want to end up like Hatori. He had bad skin and everyone made fun of him for it. Well not big sis. She was in love with him. That had been nice of her, falling in love with the guy everyone made fun of, she was a nice person like that. That was why she would never like Shimazaki like that…well he would never like her like that. She was too nice and it was boring and he didn't like boring people. He liked Sho just the way he was, he had said, and nothing would ever stop them from being friends and hanging out and throwing sticks into people's bike wheels and stuff.

"What about that girlfriend of yours? I doubt that she'll want to be with someone who doesn't bathe. Girls are very clean people. They like things to be clean and neat and orderly." Said Fukuda

"Emmy hates baths too. She only takes one bath a week and her mom has to chase her and catch her." said Sho. Fukuda's left eye twitched a little for some reason. Sho didn't get it. He thought that Emmy was pretty fucking lucky. She only had to take a bath once a week and also she had a mom. That was pretty fucking lucky in Sho's book. Maybe Fukuda was jealous because he was an adult and adults had to take baths every day or else they stank and also both of his parents had died a long time ago.

"Well then what about your…your best friend. Would Shimazaki like hanging around you if you stopped bathing? I know that's why he drowns himself in cologne every single day, because the world smells bad to him, and I know that you wouldn't want him to stop hanging out with you." Said Fukuda. He would have to add this to Shigeko's Sho sitting manual. That was the true last resort right there. He hated it, the crush that Sho'd had on Shimazaki for the past he didn't even know how long, but if it got Sho motivated to take a bath then…then it was time to use the nuclear option.

"He said that?" asked Sho. He pulled his shirt up and smelled himself. Ok…not great…but he hadn't seen Shimazaki in weeks…but he wanted to see him again. Sho wanted to see him again and to hang out with him and…and he didn't know what he would do if Shimazaki stopped wanting to be his friend….

"No but he might so how about you finish eating and then take a bath and then we'll play for a little bit before I put you to bed and read to you….in the same room as you? How about that?" asked Fukuda. For some reason Sho didn't want to be told that he was being read to. Instead he just had to believe that you just happened to be reading aloud in the same room as him…and Fukuda didn't get it but, hey, whatever got him to bed before midnight.

"Fine….I guess…but do I have to wash my hair? I hate getting water on my head or my hair or my eyes…for reasons….and I don't like to be in the water for too long…so can I just do the rinse off with soap and water thing and not the bath part?" asked Sho. The rag on a stick had been a good idea. He didn't mind getting clean, he just minded the water. It was like being in a swimming pool but worse because he had to be in a smaller place an also his face got wet and he hated that. It made him feel like….like stuff that he should have been over. Stuff that had happened years ago. He was ten now.

"That's…that's fine…but how about you soap up a rag and at least run that through your hair. It's starting to get oily." Said Fukuda. He knew that he should have had Sho take a full bath…and not because it was in the Sho sitting manual that Shigeko had written. He was going to take what she had written under consideration but he was still an adult and he was the one who ultimately called the shots. She knew why he hated water…and maybe instead of the whole production she had thought up maybe…maybe concessions should have been made. It wasn't as good as a full bath….

But it was better than nothing.

Fukuda did not take orders from a little girl but….but he would acknowledge that she knew what she was doing. Well so did he. Despite never having had watching Sho for this long he knew what he was doing. Well he was figuring it out. He wasn't going to put Sho through that, being in water, if he didn't like it. Even though a proper bath would have been better…his feelings were more important. Making Sho feel safe and happy was the most important thing.

Fukuda may not have been Sho's father but he at least knew that making sure that he was safe and happy was the most important thing.


	287. Hypothetical Survival Scenarios

Mob really needed to talk to people her own age.

Minegishi loved Mob, they really did, but she needed to at least talk to someone her own age once in a while. She was elven, almost, and she needed to learn how to talk to other eleven year olds. Also she needed to find a boy her own age to crush on because now it looked like she was either pining after Hatori or dealing with a whole new set of emotions towards him and Minegishi would rather Mob get that out of her system with someone her own age. They did not need Mob heartbroken again when she realized, again, that there was no hope for anything between her and Hatori. She was just into him because he was the only person even remotely close to her age. Ryou was….Ryou and Shibata was their resident mother hen. She needed to meet a boy her own age and she needed one now.

Hence this little trip into the city.

Well technically they were here to get Mob some new clothes since she had grown out of last year's summer clothes. Also Minegishi needed some new T-shirts just for the sake of having new T-shirts. One could never have too many florals in their wardrobe after all. Mob shared their opinion, though with her it was Elsa shirts and dresses and skirts and socks and hair ribbons and whatever else they good people at Disney would slap Elsa's face onto and sell for several thousand times the cost to produce. That had been an interesting romp through the world of Disney merchandise….and why anyone would need a Frozen ice cube tray was beyond them…it was just so on the nose…but if Mob wanted it and she was the one with thousands of Australian dollars in her bag then Minegishi was not going to tell them that a Frozen ice cube tray was way too on the nose.

They weren't going to shit on her joy. Life would do that to her later.

"What should we put the ice cubes in first? We can make lemonade now that Sho isn't here and won't die. Or we could make pink lemonade too. We could make tang, too, if you like tang." Said Mob as she held her new ice cube tray in her hands. They were at Starbucks now. Minegishi had wanted some mediocre coffee after the day they'd had. There had been plenty of kids at the Disney Store but Mob hadn't talked to any of them. Not even the guys though she had done a lot of staring. A lot of staring and blushing and not a whole lot of anything else. They didn't get it. Mob was ten, not even eleven, and things were as low stakes as they got at her age.

But this was why Minegishi was there.

She wanted a boyfriend….well she said that she wanted a boyfriend but Minegishi suspected that she just wanted male attention from someone who wasn't her father and also she wanted to kiss someone badly. God, to be young again….Minegishi wasn't going back and nobody could make them. This was the age where Mob had to get comfortable around people, especially guy people, since that was what she was into and it would only get more awkward from here. Minegishi was not going to let her end up like Hatori. Even though her dad was the over protective 'nobody goes near my daughter but me' type she still needed, and deserved, all the things she wanted.

And also the world did not need another Hatori.

"Sugar is poison. Let's just make ice tea when we get home." Said Minegishi. That did sound like a nice time. Them, at home, drinking some ice tea in the garden and reading. Communing with nature. The house filling with smoke because they were outside instead of reminding Shibata to watch the stove. Hatori hiding in the bathroom because Ryou wouldn't leave him alone. Ryou pacing a hole in the floor because he did not deal well with boredom and Suzuki's son was still off with that healer. At some point he'd come outside and bother them…or just rest his head on their lap and have them read him a book…or he'd just start singing out of tune with half the words wrong….or he would just sort of be there and….and it would be a nice time….

But they did that every single day.

"Ok….but I want to put sugar in mine. I like it better with sugar. Yours doesn't have to have sugar in it though…and I won't put any sugar in the pitcher. Hatori isn't supposed to have sugar anymore, you said, because of his skin." Said Mob

"I didn't day that he couldn't have sugar I said that he shouldn't have sugar…or he should at least cut back. The man doesn't drink water." Said Minegishi. The fact that Hatori Nozomu had lived this long was a testament to teenage metabolisms. He would have been dead years ago if he had just been ten years older. He didn't like the taste of water…WATER of all things. Yeah, Mob had found herself a real winner there. He was a nice enough guy when he wasn't being an overdramatic teenager or propositioning them sexually but Mob…she deserved someone who drank water, didn't need to be reminded that clothes needed to be washed, and didn't hide in the bathroom whenever something upset them. Also she deserved someone her own age.

Like those kids over there.

They could see where Mob's eyes had been going. There were some kids over by some artificial pond thing feeding ducks overpriced Starbucks desserts. Mob either really wanted to feed the ducks or she wanted to talk to those boys. Minegishi would believe either. It was always love, love, love with Mob. It had been bad enough when she had been reading her shoujo hell mangas and watching her sappy romantic movies. Now she was shipping them with Shimazaki. They were well aware that Ryou was a nice person, that he cared about them, and that he was a good friend when he wasn't acting like a crazy person. They were very aware of Shimazaki Ryou and they were also aware of the fact that he didn't do the relationship thing either.

For reasons that Mob was WAY too young to know about.

Mob was so…whatever the ten year old equivalent to being hard up was….that she was shipping her friends. She needed to get this out of her system and with a boy her own age. Not a boyfriend, her father would go on a killing spree, but she could at least smile at some boy and hold hands and probably kiss him too…which Minegishi was not going to watch because they had other things to do with their life than watch kids flirt and kiss like a creeper. No, they'd just let Mob get what she needed to get out of her system and then hopefully the shippening would come to an end….

Because they did not know how much of that they could take.

"I've seen him drink water. There's water in soda." Said Mob

"Not enough of it. Drink a ton of water or you'll end up with skin like his." Said Minegishi

"I know that this is a mean thing to say but…I want my skin to be more like yours and not like his." Said Mob. Minegishi shook their head. Their skin was terrible. Mob had never seen how terrible their skin could get but she had seen the long, multi step process it took to get their skin this way. They reached up to their hairline. They were broken out a little…and they had no idea how that had happened. Mob was lucky. She was in her last years of clear skin.

"You don't want my skin. It's a lot of work to get it to something close to acceptable." Said Minegishi. They did and did not care about how they looked. If people had a problem with their hair or clothes or body or whatever then they could bend over and fuck themselves raw with a potato peeler for all Minegishi cared. They didn't like to look….not nice….though. They took care of themselves. Self-care was the most important form of care or whatever. They didn't know. They just really liked skincare.

"Yes but it's fun work…and also you're very pretty. Can we do skin masks when we get home? I have a whole can of oatmeal that nobody's touched. Then we can do avocado face masks after that. That way we won't have wrinkles or signs of aging. I saw about them on Youtube." Said Mob. Minegishi shook their head.

"You don't have wrinkles or signs of aging, Mob, you're ten years old." Said Minegishi. They took a sip of their coffee to cover up their smile. They weren't laughing at her expense, it was just such a weird thing for her to worry about. The oatmeal made sense, she was getting to the oily skin age, but avocado? They'd have been better off eating them…and actually that sounded pretty good…and they could freak Ryou out with one too. He hated the texture for some reason…and it would serve him right for waking Hatori up in the middle of the night pretending to be a wandering murderer….well he sort of was…God, he was so ridiculous sometimes….

"I'll be eleven soon." Said Mob. One of these days Minegishi would have to tell her that it didn't make her sound older when she said that, in fact it made her look younger, but it was still pretty adorable.

"You still won't have any wrinkles or signs of aging." Said Minegishi with a shrug. They wondered, briefly, if they….no. Ryou would have told them. He had been looking at them a lot lately. Looking at them and cuddling them and kissing them….and they had no idea what had gotten him so amorous but they didn't really mind. It was sort of nice….really….him being near them. Waking up in the middle of the night as the little spoon. Him holding them and just….being there. Inhaling and exhaling. Being still for once in his life. His barrier down for once. Their aura touching his….it was nice…..

They took a big drink of coffee.

"Yes but the lady on Youtube said that it was never too early to worry about aging." Said Mob. Yup, Mob was getting to that age. Minegishi didn't blame her. They too had gone through a period of time when they had been obsessed with their appearance. That was just part of growing up. Thank God it had been a short phase for them. They were done living by other people's ideas of what was and was not attractive. They did what they did for themselves…and now they had to teach Mob how to do the same. For someone as powerful as her she really cared what people thought of her.

Part of the age.

Minegishi would have shot themselves in the head before they went back to that age…and not just because their life had been pretty hellish back then. No, not because of the external factors but the internal ones. Their body had begun to betray them and then their mind followed…fuck puberty. Someone should have invented a way to fast forward through it by now. But no, they were too busy making phones into tiny computers and figuring out how to teach cats to play piano.

This was not going to be a fun few years…but they'd help Mob get through it.

"You're better off worrying about oily skin. Trust me on this, your skin is about to get really oily really soon, and it might stay that way." said Minegishi. Mob's eyebrows knitted together. She was thinking. Her dad made that same face but it wasn't nearly as cute. Disrobing, actually, because it was never a good thing for anyone when Suzuki Touichirou started thinking.

"…how soon?" asked Mob. She reached up and touched her face. Still surprisingly clear. Minegishi had started breaking out when they had been her age….though taking care of their skin hadn't really been a priority for them.

"It's different for everyone. For you I'd give it a year, tops, before you really have to worry about your skin getting oily." Said Minegishi

"…then I'll look like Hatori? Not to be mean to Hatori, he's my friend and I like him a lot, I just don't want to be like he used to be before." asked Mob. The horror on her face was blatant. She didn't usually wear her emotions on her face like that. They almost wanted to take a picture. Then when they were middle aged or whatever they could pull out that picture and tease Mob with it. In a good way, of course, they weren't going to be waving her awkward years in her face. No, that would be Hatori…if the President didn't kill him soon.

They had no clue what the President kept on borrowing him for but they knew that it couldn't be kinky illicit sex.

Suzuki had higher standards than that, first of all, and second of all Hatori would not have been able to keep it to himself. Maybe they were just playing Minecraft like Hatori had said….though Minegishi was slightly more inclined to believe Ryou's graphic tales of illicit, kinky, HR report worthy sex. Whatever. He was a bizarre man their boss and he could do whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted because he was the most powerful being on Earth…but he had better not have been doing anything to hurt Hatori because Mob cared about the former grease ball and she did not need any more pain in her life than she already had.

And if someone decided to cause her more pain well then Minegishi would have no choice but to pay it back on Mob's behalf. With interest.

"No, not if you take care of yourself." Said Minegishi

"Ok…and I really am sorry about what I said about Hatori." Said Mob

"Don't beat yourself up. He's not even here to hear you." Said Minegishi

"I know but I still feel bad. He's my friend and friends are supposed to be nice to one another. He's never been anything but nice to me…well he confessed to you…and also he wants to eat you….but he's still very nice. He made me an enchanting table in Minecraft." Said Mob. Minegishi dropped their coffee. Their grip went slack. They didn't have the mental energy to process what Mob had just said. How could she…did she KNOW what that meant? Well Minegishi had known that that had meant but they had been exposed to a lot of shit that a ten year old should not have been exposed to….and Mob was ten in the age of the internet where anything, and they meant ANYTHING, was only a click away. She knew how Google worked….and she could have seen….the things she could have seen….

Next time Ryou gave Hatori some of those random pills he was always finding they were not going to lift a finger to stop him.

"Mob….do you have any idea what that even...is?" asked Minegishi. Well now it looked like they were going to have the talk in the middle of a Starbucks in Australia on the hottest day of the year. They wanted nothing more than to send Mob off to feed the ducks with the other kids but they also knew that they had to correct whatever the hell she had learned on the internet as soon as possible. The internet was not the place to learn about sex. These things were best learned from people who knew about these things and could explain them in a mature and straightforward matter….and Mob's father was useless and her mother was dead to it fell to them.

"An enchanting table is a thing in Minecraft where-" said Mob. Minegishi shook their head. No more Minecraft. Never again.

"No, not Minecraft. The other thing." Said Minegishi

"What other thing?" asked Mob.

"You're not making this easy….the eating thing. That's what I'm asking you about." Said Minegishi. This was…not a conversation they wanted to have with her…but they were going to have it because it was better that she learned these things from them than from the internet. If the internet was to be believed you just had to do a little tongue stabbing before going right to the jack hammering….maybe these sex scenes should have been written by people who'd actually had sex before….or maybe they should have a woman consulting because the whole thing was so….dick centric. Really it was and it had taken Minegishi too many years to realize that the only thing that mattered was both parties having fun….

And also dental dams were a thing.

Did they need to tell Mob about that too? Was she too young? Well Minegishi had been about her age when they had started…well a year older but that was nothing….so maybe it wasn't too early to teach Mob about…but Minegishi had been way too young and in a bad place when they had started….but it was never too early to know about safe sex…but they didn't need to put ideas in Mob's head….but judging by the looks she had been giving Hatori she already had some ideas percolating in her mind…but she was only ten….but they could not be hypocrite…did they even have a dental dam on them….wait they had used their last one up at the damn party…she hadn't even been worth it…God it had been a while for them…they'd have to go to a pharmacy later…always best to be prepared….did Mob need to be prepared….she was only ten….did Mob even need to know about…if they taught her about that then did they need to teach her about condoms too….they only had vaginal condoms on them….Mob was way too young to know about…did she even need to know about…..well yes because….well no because….yes….no….yes…no….

They needed a drink.

"Oh. That's called cannibalism. You're not supposed to eat people unless it's a life or death situation. Like me and Sho watched this movie called Alive where this plane crashed and the people had to eat the dead and…and it was so sad and gross…but it's ok to eat people if the plane ever goes down. Me and Sho decided that if one of us dies then we can eat the other. If I die then you can eat me...but I don't think that Hatori was talking about a plane crash situation. I think that he just wants to eat you and I don't understand why but he's still me friend. He's never going to do it. We all think about things that we'll never do. Like how Sho thinks about stabbing dad sometimes." Said Mob. Minegishi had never been more relieved in their entire life. Good. Mob just thought that Hatori was an out and proud cannibal…and also she was a little too accepting of one of her friends being a cannibal…and that thing with her brother was worrying to say the least…

But at least they wouldn't have to have the talk with Mob in an Australia Starbucks on the hottest day of the year with cups of mediocre coffee and overpriced bread products in front of them.

"Yup, that's cannibalism alright." Said Minegishi. They were not going to tell Mob the truth just yet. No use in getting her all bothered up about sex when there was nothing that she could do about it at her age….and nothing that she should have been doing about it at her age. She was not them and they had been in a very bad place at her age. Their normal was not her normal. Her normal was kissing and holding hands and other such normal ten year old things that Minegishi had skipped over.

"I don't mind that he wants to eat people just so long as he never does it. We can still be friends…but if he eats a person then I don't know…" said Mob

"Trust me, Mob, Hatori Nozomu won't ever be eating anyone." Said Minegishi

"Good. People are friends, not food." Said Mob

"That's right." Said Minegishi. Truer words were never spoken. From the mouths of babes and all of that. Also they really hoped to avoid any and all future Alive style scenarios.

"Unless we're in some kind of survival situation. In that case I give you permission to eat me." Said Mob

"That's never going to happen. For one thing even if the plane did go down I know that your dad is strong enough to lift it…and you might be too. Also I can make food. Even in the dead of winter I can make food grow, it just takes more effort, and third of all…no. If it comes to it you're eating me first." Said Minegishi

"No, you need to eat me first. That way you'll live long enough to be saved." Said Mob. That was….that level of self-sacrifice could not be healthy. Also Mob couldn't keep a flea alive. She was too small and also she was ten. If anyone was going to be eaten it was going to be them.

"That makes no sense. Mob, I'm almost twenty eight, I've lived my life. You're not even eleven yet. You need to live on and see your brother grown up and see Frozen 2 if they ever make it and go to your dad's funeral and find the nerd of your dreams to marry. You can't do any of that if you're dead." Said Minegishi

"But I don't want to live on knowing that you're dead. I would be happy knowing that you lived on because you ate me." Said Mob

"How about we just compromise and start hacking pieces off of Fukuda? I mean he probably tastes like rice water and piss but I've seen him heal from some pretty serious damage." Said Minegishi

"Um…I don't think that he would taste like that…but that's a good plan. We can cut pieces off of him to survive until help comes." Said Mob

"Wait…are we both alive and well in this scenario?" asked Minegishi scratching their head. This was…how had they even gotten here?

"Yes. We're alive and cutting pieces off of Fukuda, well once we get his permission of course, to keep ourselves alive until help comes." Said Mob

"Then why the hell are we eating people?" asked Minegishi

"Because there was a plane crash and we have no food." Said Mob

"….we both know how to make food grow from almost nothing. We don't need to eat that living piece of soggy tofu." Said Minegishi

"Oh….I guess you have a point. Not about Fukuda being soggy tofu…he can be sort of mean sometimes but Sho loves him…but I guess that we wouldn't have to eat him in that case if we were both alive and well…but maybe Hatori would want to just because he likes to eat people…." Said Mob

"Yeah, maybe he'll engineer a plane crash so he has an excuse to cook and eat one of us." Said Minegishi. Mob put her thinking face on…right. She was deaf to sarcasm.

"I'll add that to the plane ride rules. No causing accidents on purpose so that you can have an excuse to eat people. There. Then he won't do that." Said Mob. Minegishi drank down the last of their coffee so they wouldn't laugh. Thank God that they were speaking Japanese or they would have gotten so many looks.

"You do that Mob. You do that." Said Minegishi

"I will. Also I'll make a rule about everyone having a scheduled bathroom time. That way Hatori won't hog it the whole time. Everyone gets to be in the bathroom for ten minutes and we rotate so everyone gets a turn." Said Mob

"Or you can just tell Hatori that the bathroom is not a panic room. Honestly, what do you see in him?" asked Minegishi

"…..I like how nice he is…and I like his glasses…and his sweaters…and also I… don't want to be his girlfriend but….I told you before how I feel." Said Mob. She turned bright scarlet and then began to drink down her hot milk, vanilla syrup, caramel, drink with just the tiniest bit of coffee added so they could legally call it a coffee drink. How could Minegishi ever have thought that Mob was ready to know about all that? She was getting ready to have a heart attack over thinking a guy was cute. She was not Minegishi. Her normal was not their normal.

Her normal was normal kid normal.

"Ok, ok, don't pass out. We don't have a healer anymore, remember. Anyway I'm not going to finish this croissant almond…thing. Go feed it to those ducks over there." said Minegishi. She pointed over to the group of kids feeding/terrorizing the ducks. Mob's eyes widened and her aura flared. She held her braids down with her hand and shook her head.

"It's too crowded. The ducks have enough food. If I feed them too much then they'll get too fat to fly and then they'll be caught and eaten and I don't want that. Sho would never forgive me, he likes birds, and also…also this is really something that I should do with him. He would be upset to know that I had fed ducks without him." said Mob. Minegishi wondered if it was healthy for siblings to be so dependent on each other…but then again what the fuck did they know about family. They were, thankfully, an only child.

"Why not just call him and ask if he'd mind. He's your brother so I figure you have his phone number." Said Minegishi

"Um….I don't want to smother him…so that's why I don't call…and also…um…I want to stay here with you." Said Mob. Minegishi was touched, honestly, but they knew that Mob wanted to go over there. She needed to talk to other kids at least. It was good for her. She needed all the socialization she could get having spawned from Suzuki…and also they wanted her to be happy.

"You sure? Because there's guys over there…guys not named Hatori…guys your age…" said Minegishi. They held the croissant up to Mob. She took it and then tucked her head down low and stared at her lap.

"Not so loud….people can hear you." Said Mob

"We're speaking Japanese." Said Minegishi

"You never know who speaks Japanese. Anime is very popular. People might learn to speak it just so they can watch anime." Said Mob

"They can just watch with subtitles." Said Minegishi

"They could but subtitles are annoying." Said Mob. Minegishi rolled their eyes. Well the mark of a good wingman, according to Ryou anyway, was to know when to pull back. Maybe Mob just wasn't there yet, that was fine, she could get all of this out of her system when she felt like it. She was still such a kid in so many ways even though she was on the cusp of that terrible time in life when she would stop being a kid. She was ten, almost eleven, and she was not Minegishi.

"You know you don't have to go over there if you don't want to. It was just a thought." Said Minegishi

"Um...I mean I don't NOT want to…I mean…" said Mob. Nope. Minegishi was not going to be pushing her into doing anything that she didn't want to do. She had her own timetable and she was going to be following that and if that meant that Minegishi was going to have to live through the shippening until however long it took for Mob to get all of that out of her system then so be it.

"Give me that back. I changed my mind, I'm hungry." Said Minegishi. Mob looked at them, and then at the croissant, and then at the ducks.

"Um…do you want half? Because….um…maybe I want to feed the ducks after all." said Mob

"Go for it. Take the whole thing." Said Minegishi with a wave of their hand. Mob got up and went over to where those kids were. She stood off to the side for a little bit. She was surprisingly withdrawn when it came to being near other kids…and Minegishi couldn't blame her. All of her friends, barring her little brother, were in their twenties and thirties. Of course she would be awkward…and Minegishi had the urge to run in and save her…but she could handle herself. She had been noticed. Room was made for her. A boy around her age was showing her how to feed ducks…and they would have to talk to Mob later about looking helpless. That was not a good flirting tactic at all even if it did work. She shouldn't wanted someone who thought that she was helpless, she should have wanted someone who thought that she was capable.

Because she was.

She was pretty damn capable for a kid her age. She did a lot. She took care of her brother, put up with her dad, had quit smoking, cut down on her drinking….that Minegishi knew about, still smoked way too much of the good stuff but a power that big came with a bigger expense though…..even with that she did a lot and she was capable of a lot. She was like a younger and happier version of them. She worried them, she always would, but they didn't need to be worried about this. She had dealt with worse than a preteen boy treating her like she was too helpless to feed a duck…and hey if it worked…well then good for her. She deserved it.

She deserved to talk to people her own age every so often.


	288. A Very Strange Man

Hatori Nozomu was a very strange man.

Not just because he was a homosexual. They made up ten percent of the world's population so that was not what made him strange. Statistically. To Suzuki that was one of the many things that made him strange. He was strange because of his proclivities as well as the fact that his aura was constantly pulled around him defensively even though there were no threats around, he seemed to be in a permanent state of perspiration even though the thermostat was set at eighteen degrees cold, and he seemed to have some kind of nervous disorder based on the way he jumped whenever he was addressed. Those were strange things about him.

Also he wore square glasses.

Why were they square? What purpose did square lenses serve? Did it have something to do with his poor vision? Did he just have square lenses in an attempt at being fashionable? But if he were trying to be fashionable then Suzuki would have noticed other people walking around with square lenses. He didn't…but then again he didn't notice a lot of people. The construction of the new Eighth Division did not give him a lot of time to mix with the general population…not that he had ever enjoyed doing that. Still, though, square lenses just seemed….strange.

Strange lenses for a very strange man.

"Um…boss? Everything alright?" asked Hatori. His voice wavered and his aura was pulled inwards. Suzuki would have thought that Hatori had been afraid, he had the markers of a few response there, but he had nothing to be afraid of. This was as close to a casual setting as Suzuki allowed himself to have with another human being outside of his family. He was playing…well designing Claw bases and working on his hand eye coordination….with Hatori. They were sitting there at the kitchen table side by side working to build a better virtual world.

Nothing to be afraid of there.

Suzuki so wished Fukuda had been there. He had always been very good with people. He would have been able to see how Hatori was acting and then tell Suzuki what it meant and what he was supposed to do about it. He was getting a strong sense of fear but that could not have been right. Hatori had nothing to be afraid of. He hadn't given Suzuki any reason to do anything to him, he and Daughter were sexually incompatible so there was no reason to tie a heavy stone to him and toss him into the ocean, and he said that he would never express interest in Son as well because…he was Son. No, Hatori had nothing to worry about when it came to Suzuki. He may not have understood the other man's proclivities, he had done his trying in his youth and come to the conclusion that homosexuality was both incompressible and not for him, but he wasn't going to punish him for it. Suzuki really didn't care so long as nobody asked him to do anything.

Also he wasn't going to harm one of Daughter's friends….especially when she was sleeping right there in her bedroom.

"Yes." said Suzuki. He didn't know why Hatori was looking at him like that. His pupils were so blown out that his irises could barely be seen. His eyes were brown, a very dark shade of brown, they bordered on black. It was difficult to tell when his irises ended and his pupils began…and Suzuki needed to be able to tell. That was important. That was another fear response. Wide eyes. Fear or arousal. He hoped that it was the former and not the later. He knew how to instill and deal with the former. The later…he had no interest in the later and he had thought that he had made himself clear about that. He so wished Fukuda could have been there. He was good at this sort of thing. Well so was Daughter but it was not Sunday and it was also past the hour when she usually retired. She needed sleep, she was a child, and he was not going to wake her up outside of their time together to explain why Hatori looked the way he did.

Maybe his eyes weren't afraid. Maybe it was just the lenses.

"Do you…do you want me to do something else?" asked Hatori. He stuttered then. That was something else that was odd about him. He stuttered even though he had no reason to. He was a very powerful esper. He had been born in the right generation to be a powerful esper. The world was reliant on technology, on the threads that phones and computers and whatever else he controlled could spin together, and Hatori could so easily cut those threads and sent their society spinning into chaos. He had no reason to stutter.

He was such a strange man.

"No, I need more wood. Keep cutting down trees. Mining them." Said Suzuki. He kept on watching Hatori. His eyes were brown, his irises were almost as dark as his pupils, but there was an odd sort of glare across his glasses. Maybe because they were square. How did lenses work? Convex or concave? Well how did the lenses being square effect that? What was even the point? He could see that Hatori's lenses were concave in shape. They reduced the focusing power of the eye. They were thinnest in the middle and that meant that light-

"Um….sir? Are you sure that you're ok?" asked Hatori. Suzuki kept his aura still. Now he had lost his train of thought. Wonderful.

"I'm fine. I have no idea why you're asking. Stop." Said Suzuki

"Sure…uh…it's just that you're staring at me." Said Hatori. Right. That was socially unacceptable…well it was when you stared at a woman. Fukuda had told him back when they had been in school together. Back when he'd had a new object of his affections every single week, it had felt like, and he wanted nothing more than to observe them and learn all that there was to know about them. That was an unacceptable way to treat a romantic partner, Fukuda had said, because women found it unnerving….but Hatori was not a woman…but he may have taken his staring not as fascination but as attraction….and Suzuki could not let that be. He did not sleep with his subordinates…..outside of an isolated incident….and that person had been female…and even if he had shared Hatori's proclivities he certainly could have done better.

"I'm not attracted to you." Said Suzuki. There. The air was cleared. Now they could go back to clearing this fortress. He was going to make houses here, a little Claw village, and he needed a lot of wood. Well stone would have been better but wood was more abundant.

"Um….ok?" asked Hatori. Was he hurt by that? Rejection could be very painful…but Suzuki really did not care if he caused Hatori pain. Daughter cared, though, about this man…so he needed to be…nice. Treat him like…well not an equal…treat him with care. Yes, that was what he would do. He would not harm him in any way or threaten to. Because he was special to Daughter and also he was very useful.

"Don't ever think that I am because I'm not. You're not attractive even if you were female." Said Suzuki. There. The air was clear and now they could get back to their very serious work. There. He didn't need Fukuda. He could handle this on his own. He didn't need to wake Daughter up. Well he wanted to, he wanted nothing more than to wake her up and have her bring her laptop and then she would work on her kingdom of ice and snow, or help it was her choice, and she would be so happy and also she could make them coffee because it was truly an obscene hour….

No, it was not Sunday.

When Sunday came then the two of them could play together….or do whatever she wanted. It was her day after all. Sundays were her day and he would focus on her and making her happy….he missed her so much….but he could at least distract himself. This game was both a good distraction and a good learning tool. He had so many new base designs…maybe he should knock the new Eighth Division down and start again….

But first he would have to design this new Claw village…as soon as Hatori got back to work.

"I…I didn't think that you were….I mean you have two kids so I know that you're….not interested in me." Said Hatori

"Good. I'm very glad that we understand each other." Said Suzuki

"But…um….if I do something wrong…I can change! I mean I can fix it! I mean only if you want me to! I mean….I mean that I'll do whatever you want me to." Said Hatori. He was breathing heavily now and the collar of his sweater was soaked through with sweat. Suzuki wondered why he didn't just take his sweater off if he was overheating so badly….but telling another man to get undressed…that seemed like the sort of thing that could be taken the wrong way. He didn't tell Hatori to get undressed but he did reach over with his powers and turn the thermostat down a tick.

Hatori jumped as his aura passed over him.

Which was not so unusual. People were instinctively afraid of him. He was just that powerful. He was used to people jumping when his powers and his aura passed near to them. That was the most normal thing that Hatori had done all night….but his aura was still turned inwards. Suzuki could feel it in the laptops on the table. It was like they were focusing only on Hatori….even though they were machines and couldn't focus on anything because they were not alive.

Hatori was so strange sometimes.

"You need water too." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to pour Hatori a glass of water. He knew that he should have told Hatori to get it himself but, well, this was simpler. Hatori was a jumpy man and a clumsy man….and it made no sense for him to be that way. He acted as though he expected Suzuki to do something terrible to him…but he had given Suzuki no reason to do anything terrible to him. Also he was Daughter's friend and Suzuki would never damage him in any serious way. Daughter's emotions would not be able to recover.

"W-what?" asked Hatori. He practically choked out the word. His voice was still breaking. He was little more than a boy…and Suzuki forgot how close he was in age to Daughter…but he could not be interested in Daughter because she was female. He would not be interested in Son, too, because he was Son….and also Son was probably not a homosexual and Suzuki's fears were unfounded. So he wore his sister's dresses and had never once, to his knowledge, expressed interest in the opposite sex…he was a boy and boys were slower than girls when it came to things like that…

Though he wished that Son and Daughter would swap places when it came to the opposite sex.

Daughter had noticed the opposite sex and they had noticed her right back. Suzuki had seen boys chatting her up on more than one occasion. That was what it was called when you spoke to a girl solely for the express purposes of getting a date with her and all the things that came later. Daughter did not tell these suitors to leave her alone, nor did she turn to him for help, she smiled and giggled and SPOKE to these boys, and…and Suzuki would not allow this. Not until she was older. She was a child and she needed to stay a child…and she did not need to be talking to boys like that…

He had been a boy at one point. He knew what they had on their minds.

He was a man now and he knew what he had on his mind…and it was not nearly as bad as when he had been her age. No, he had taken leave of his sense between the ages of around eleven or twelve until he started university. He had a brain, he had a penis, and all of his blood had only been going to one place. He knew how boys her age could be and she did not need to be the object of anyone's desires. She was his Daughter and…and he knew that one day she would be old enough for all of that…and he knew that the world needed more esper children in it…

But he would agonize over that when she chose some boy to present to him.

Daughter was getting ahead of herself and Son…Son was very worrying. He spent all of his time now just as he had when he had been a child. Playing games, building forts, and drawing pictures…and without even the beginnings of any interest in the opposite sex. Daughter would have told him if her brother had his eye on anyone at all. She seemed to have an obsession with love and romance…and he did not understand it…but he knew that she would not have been able to keep her mouth shut if her brother had been interested in anyone. He knew her. He knew her and he worried for her brother. Son…he also occasionally wore her clothes….and that may or may not have been worrying. Suzuki had worn yukatas before…and robes…which were similar to dresses….

But they were not dresses.

They were not female coded articles of clothing…and he did not want to worry about this. So he wouldn't. This was why he had this game, and he had the person beside him who was good at this game, because he just wanted to forget. When he entered this world, this world of his own creation and control, it seemed like all his troubles just faded away into the old world. He could understand young people better now, he thought, how they always had their noses buried in their phones. Their phones provided a much needed portal into the virtual world. The virtual world was one of stress free control and responsibility. Not like the world he lived in where he had children to raise and an organization to run.

He so wished that Hatori could put more of an effort into being less strange….because then he would have been able to focus on the game and not on the nervous, stuttering, sweaty man beside him.

"This is a cup of water. You need to drink it because you seem to have some sort of nervous disorder and you're going to dehydrate yourself. You are useless to me and my Daughter dead. Now drink this water." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to slide the glass across the table and over to Hatori. He took the glass with both hands and gulped down his water like a dying man in the desert. Suzuki looked away. He wanted to get back to what he had been doing.

"Thank you." Said Hatori breathlessly. Of course he was breathless. He had gone some time now without oxygen.

"You're welcome. Fill that cup when you get thirsty again. Now get back to work." Said Suzuki

"Sure thing President Suzuki…but….um….just to make everything perfectly clear….you're not mad at me, right?" asked Hatori. Suzuki…he had no clue what Hatori was on about.

"No. You have done nothing to make my angry…that I know of." Said Suzuki. It was a bit suspicious that he would think that Suzuki was angry with him. He had been getting up to something that would have made Suzuki angry? He was a small man, a nervous man, and he didn't look like he had a traitorous bone in his body…but if traitors were easy to spot then there would not have been any traitors to begin with.

"I haven't done anything! I mean I didn't break any rules or…or anything." Said Hatori

"Then why would you think that I was angry with you. Explain yourself to me right now." Said Suzuki

"You…you were staring at me…and I thought that you were angry with me…because of the staring. Not that you can't stare at me! I mean you can stare at whoever you want, you're the President of Claw, and this is your house! I mean they're all your houses but this house is the one that you're living in now and you invited me over…ordered me over….to play Minecraft with you and that means that you're in charge…not that you're not always in charge! You're the boss! I was just-" said Hatori

"You're growing tiresome. I was not staring at you out of anger. I was staring at you because you're strange to me. Your lenses are strange to me. They're square." Said Suzuki. Well at least Hatori hadn't gotten the wrong idea. That would always be a danger in….whatever this was. Him getting the wrong idea. Suzuki had no idea what to call Hatori but he knew that he would be spending quite a bit of time with Hatori in the future. He was good at Minecraft, like Daughter was, and his presence wasn't…unbearable. He was useful, very useful, and he filled a Fukuda shaped space.

He was sort of like Fukuda.

Not a companion. No, Fukuda was and would always be his one companion. The person who knew everything about him. The person who he could trust to know everything about him. Fukuda knew all of the little humiliations that Suzuki had gone through during his formative years. He had been there for every rejection, every social misstep, and all of those times in which he had lost track of himself and gone down various rabbit holes. Not literally, of close, but there had been times when he had discovered something new and fascinating and then before he knew it had had been awake for a week and he hadn't bathed or eaten in that time. Fukuda was good for pulling him out of his passions and back to the real world. Fukuda had always been his lifeline to the real world. So Hatori would never be Fukuda to him…

He was more like a Sherpa to the virtual world, not a lifeline to the real world.

"I'm sorry! I won't wear my glasses anymore!" said Hatori. He took his glasses off and immediately began to squint….and Suzuki wondered if he was slow or intoxicated or just a teenager. They were not a bright bunch, teenagers, well he had been but he had always been smarter and more rational than everyone else.

"Put your glasses back on. You're squinting which means that you can't see without them, I need you to be able to see. If you can't see then you can't play and then you're useless to me." Said Suzuki. He surpassed a sigh when Hatori immediately tried to put his glasses back on and stabbed himself in the eye. Honestly. He used his powers to put Hatori's glasses on the right way. He was such a child….because he was nineteen….he was old enough to be Suzuki's son…

Well then.

If he had met Masami back when he had been twenty four he could have had a son Hatori's age. He wished he had known about her back then. He would have sought her out. He had been securing funding for Claw back then. Securing funding and building the first division….and he so wished that he'd been aware of Masami's existence back then. He could have met her and they could have had some adult children by now. They could have raised their biological children to adulthood and then it could have just been him and her and Daughter. It could have been a perfect family…but he had met Masami in his thirties, not his twenties, and there was no use thinking of what could have been. He was here now and this was the life he was living.

So he had better make the most of it.

He had weapons to enchant and a Claw village to build and also he needed to maybe get some sleep at some point tonight because he had a big day tomorrow. He had to wrap up what he was needed for here because he had to move along…and also he wanted to be able to be all there for Daughter on Sundays. His mind wandered. He was easily distracted and he needed to be all there for Daughter. They would only have so much time alone together before Son came back. Fukuda has asked to take Son back to Japan to inspect the Seventh Division. Suzuki had of course allowed this. Son could be away for weeks and months and years. Suzuki didn't care. Just so long as he didn't die, undermine his work, or make the quality of Fukuda's work suffer. It would be difficult being without a healer but…but this was the price to pay to have Son out of his presence for a while.

"S-Sorry! Anyway you wanted me to clear out some forests? I-I'll do that. Sorry." said Hatori. Well at least he had apologized. He was a child. He could be forgiven for being odd. He was young enough to have been his son if his life had gone in a different direction. If there existed another version of himself who had married Masami when he had been ten years younger and then they had started their family immediately. He could have had ten more years with Masami…and he could have had several adult children by now…

But that was neither here nor there.

"See to it that you do. I want to get some real work done before it's time to go to sleep." Said Suzuki. He needed sleep. It was after midnight. He needed to get some sleep or he would be useless in the morning. He was forty four, not twenty four, and he needed sleep. He envied Hatori, just a bit, for his youth. He could do just about anything and still be able to get up in the morning. Getting old…even he could not stop his own extinction. He had to work faster, move faster, do more…in the morning. He would do more in the morning. When he was done here. He was…in a way he was working. Less stressful work. Stress…he had been dealing with so much of it…

Thank God he had a Sherpa into the stress free digital world.

"Um….sure. When…um…when do you think that would be? Now that this isn't awesome! It is! I just….know that you're a bust man." Said Hatori. Suzuki checked the time. He should have been in bed…well that was done now. He should have been in bed and the responsible thing to do would have to get some sleep and get back to work…but…well…he didn't understand himself sometimes. There were times when it felt like he was just going through the motions of his life until he got to spend time with Daughter. Until he got to hold her again. Until he got to make her happy again. It was such a gift to have her…and he wanted to spend every moment of his life with her…and he knew that he could not. He had things to do and she had to grow up.

So he had work to do.

The dream was still alive, it would never die, but…but there were two dreams now. There was the dream of taking his rightful place as ruler of this world but also the dream of being able to just…be with Daughter. Being able to rest. Being able to spend time with her. To have her and to hold her for the rest of his life. He just felt…good…when he was around her. She brightened his life. His mood was better and his control was better…and then as a consequence his mood and control had gotten so much worse in the rest of his life….

But Minecraft, ruling the world of it, really helped.

"Whenever I want it to be. Why? Do you need sleep? If so go make yourself a cup of coffee." Said Suzuki. He didn't need anyone with him…but having someone else there to gather materials really made time go faster. Also he knew a lot more about the game than even Daughter did. He was very useful, Hatori, even if he was very strange. Like now. Why would he want to go to sleep? He was a child. Children fought sleep every step of the way. How many nights had he sat awake in his bed listening to Son carrying on about not wanting to go to sleep, about how he didn't even need sleep?

Hatori was such a strange person.

"I…don't know how to make coffee…but I can Google it if you want me to make us some coffee." Said Hatori

"No, the coffee would be for you…and if you don't know how to make coffee than make yourself some tea then if you're so tired. If not then get back to work." Said Suzuki

"Work….you mean Minecraft?" asked Hatori. Suzuki had seen Son rolling his eyes before…and he wondered if he had inherited that from him and Suzuki had just not realized it. He felt like rolling his eyes. Hatori was….he was either slow or a child, Suzuki would believe either.

"Yes. What we've spent the past five hours and some minutes doing." Said Suzuki

"Five hours and twenty six minutes…..sorry. I didn't mean to correct you! I would never do that!" said Hatori. Good. He had better not have ever thought about correcting him. The only person who could correct him was Daughter and even then only under limited circumstances…well he had no idea what those limits were but he would find them...and it was really two people, only two in this world, who could correct him. Fukuda could correct him because, well, Fukuda knew more about social things than he did.

And he complained yes.

If they had been born in this era he and Fukuda would have spent hours if not days on this game. It would be like those times when they had stayed up all night on his floor playing Atari games. Well it had been Atari games at first. Atari and Pong though they had only played the Pong console a few times because he had Pong for the Atari. It had been Atari at first and then he had gotten a Master System and they had spent hours of their lives on that….but then Fukuda had gotten an Atari 7800 and they had spent one glorious weekend without sleeping once…well Suzuki hadn't slept until Fukuda had dragged him to the guest futon and ordered him to sleep because they had school in the morning…

Not that Suzuki was going to stop sleeping altogether again…and he did not need Fukuda to tell him when he did and did not need to sleep.

"If you know how long we've been doing this for then why would you ask if we would continue on the path we've been on? You aren't making any sense at all." said Suzuki

"I-I'm sorry. I just…we've been playing this for a while and…um….I wouldn't want you to get bored! I mean I have other games like…um….Miss Suzuki said that you liked Space Invaders and-" said Hatori

"Space Invaders? People still play Space Invaders?" asked Suzuki. He made sure to make eye contact because Fukuda said that you were supposed to do that. He had told Daughter about that…but they hadn't played….but she would love it. If they even still made Ataris. He didn't know. He had stopped playing games when he went to university. He hadn't thought that her generation would have had any interest in games from his era. Her era was…complicated. Three dimensional. Full of rules. There were entire shows on her YouTube network dedicated to explaining how her games could be played in the most efficient way. He hadn't thought that she would even have been interested in playing….

He knew what they would be doing this Sunday.

"Yeah, retro games are really cool right now. It's like everyone's looking back to the eighties and nineties and stuff and, yeah, those games were important historically but there's not a lot to those games when you get down to it. They're really simple." Said Hatori. It was like he was a different man. He wasn't stuttering, his eyes had stopped darting around, and his aura had relaxed with the rest of him. It was strange and unnerving, too, just a bit.

"There is nothing 'simple' about Space Invaders." Said Suzuki. Children. Well of course they would see simplicity in it. They were completely overstimulated. There was nothing simple about defending the world one pixel at a time. There were movements that needed timing and memorizing….there was a lot that needed to be done…not as much as this but….but there was still a lot.

"They only move in two directions and you can only shoot in one direction." Said Hatori

"Children. There is a lot to memorize there and it's a test of reflexes, too. Reflexes and memory." Said Suzuki

"Ok, it's good for reflexes and memory but we've made so many strides in gaming. Like…ok you like fixed shooters so you have to have played Galaga." Said Hatori

"I've dabbled." Said Suzuki. That had been more Tadashi's….more Fukuda's game. There was just too much going on there. Too many enemies to memorize and then when you memorized them you got even more new ones…and he just hadn't had the time for that game. That was why he had stopped playing. Not because New Friend had been able to get to stage twenty one on one hundred yen coin when he hadn't even been able to get past stage seven.

"Well then you've got to admit that even between 1978 and 1981 there were HUGE strides in terms of graphics, game play, enemy AI…it makes for a more interesting experience." Said Hatori

"Interesting is a subjective term." Said Suzuki

"Come on, it was a more challenging game at least." Said Hatori

"Yes, it was more challenging but that doesn't mean that it was a more enjoyable experience. Your generation has a fascination with everything being newer and bigger. There is a beauty to simplicity." Said Suzuki

"Well then why not just stick with Pong?" asked Hatori. He was leaned back in his chair now and his aura was less tense. He should have been more tense, though, because he had just said something truly ridiculous. Stick with Pong? Suzuki had no idea how he could have wasted so many hours of his life playing that ridiculous game. Well he had only been three when he had received that console for Christmas…but still. There were only so many days he could spend batting that square around. Also it had been very difficult to find an opponent. Father and Mother had never been able to keep up with him and New Friend hadn't been any better than playing against the computer. Pong. Honestly. Hatori was such a strange boy sometimes.

"Because it's a tedious and tiresome game." Said Suzuki

"Exactly, you've got to have something new. Like if they hadn't improved on Galaxian then we never would have gotten Galaga! Or…what's another game you'd know….you know Donkey Kong?" asked Hatori

"I'm Japanese aren't I?" Said Suzuki. Of course he knew Donkey Kong. He had beat that game in an afternoon when he had been…it had been 1981 so he had been….small. Eight years old. That game had been so short and not even worth using his powers to trick the game into thinking that he had put a coin in.

"Then you must know that if they hadn't come out with Donkey Kong, and improved on it then-" said Hatori

"You're very strange, you know that? How could anyone improve on Donkey Kong? It's such a short game. I finished it in an afternoon and didn't even bother getting it for the Atari." Said Suzuki. Young people. They knew nothing at all. What was the point of a game with an end? The only ending, the most satisfying ending, was when the game simply could not make any more levels. Then you knew that you had achieved something. Any idiot could get to a pre scripted ending. It took skill to get a game to break, to come to the limits of the computer, and he had been the one with that skill…and they had no right to throw him out of the arcade for what happened to the Pac-Man cabinet.

"The Famicom version was better." Said Hatori. Suzuki wondered if he was intoxicated or something. Why would he wasted his time on that game…let alone waste a Famicom on it? Games were expensive and parents could only provide so much while still making sure that they could keep a roof over your head. Of course he never had those problems but his parents had and he assumed that Hatori's parents had too before they perished.

"There were so many better games for the Famicom. I don't know why anyone would waste their money on something like that, a game with an ending." Said Suzuki

"What's wrong with an ending?" asked Hatori

"Any moron can get to a scripted ending. It takes skill to get to the point at which a game simply cannot create any more levels." Said Suzuki. Hatori was such a child…and a strange one. Something had gone wrong with his generation….and the one before his as well. New Friend…Fukuda had been the same way. He had been more interested in trying to get to the end of that roleplaying game he had gotten for the Master System while Suzuki had been trying to see how many levels Ms. Pacman could make before the game broke. 141…and it had been worth it to get to that point even though he had missed breakfast and lunch and also had been kicked out of the arcade nearest to his home and given a permanent ban. He had no clue what Tadashi had been so angry about. There had been plenty of other arcades around. So what if they had to walk more? They had working legs.

"Well that's only arcade games." Said Hatori

"Exactly. Arcades have always been where the best games are. The hardware is just better." Said Suzuki. He would have moved into the arcade as a child if mother and father hadn't asked him to come home…and also if they hadn't had all of those cameras….and if he had been smart enough at the time to do something to the cameras. Arcades had the better controllers and the better graphics and they always worked every single time. Cartridges were so annoying. The constantly blowing….and disks weren't any better. There was no greater waste of time or money than the Famicom disk system…and he couldn't believe that he and Best Friend had actually spent an entire day looking for a shop that had the disk system.

"So, wait, this is the only non-arcade game you play? That you've ever played?" asked Hatori. He reached under his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"Yes…and I'm not playing a game, I'm designing bases for Claw…and also I need to keep my skills sharp so I can keep up with Daughter." Said Suzuki. He was not playing because forty four year old men did not play. They worked. They did not have time for such frivolity….and also they sometimes played games but that was only because they had Daughters who they needed to bond with. Men his age did not play games…and if they did then he would not be like those men because he had very serious work he did.

"Ok….we're not playing…but if we were then I'd point you in the direction of Terraria. You'd like it. It's a lot like this. There's action and fighting and magic and building." Said Hatori. Suzuki focused his full attention on him. There were more games like this? Why hadn't he been informed!? This was what Hatori was for. Everyone had their uses and Hatori…this was what he was for.

"Explain. Tell me more. Daughter might like that game." Said Suzuki. He was excited…because this could be a new activity for him and Daughter. That was all. He enjoyed spending time with his Daughter and she liked games and he liked to make her happy so, of course, he would make her happy by playing a game with her which was like her favorite game.

"Ok, so in Terraria-oh! It's 2D, I forgot to say. It looks like a Super Famicom game and also it's a sandbox game, which doesn't mean there's actual sand it means it's like this where you can do whatever, well not WHATEVER whatever…well there's modding you can do but actually modding is best done in Minecraft because-" said Hatori

"Hatori. Explain better." Said Suzuki. It was almost three in the morning. He did not need a long, rambling, disjointed explanation. He needed a cup of coffee. He needed a cup of coffee, a glass of ketchup, and a loaf of bread. Hatori could have some too. He was useless dead or hunger or sleep deprivation. He needed to wake up and he needed to know about this game and then he needed to play this game that way he could keep up with Daughter.

"Oh, sorry. I just got excited. Ok, so in Terraria-" said Hatori. Suzuki had been about to tell him to slow down so he could commit what he said to memory but he hadn't had the chance. He could feel a very familiar and very….perfect…aura moving through the house. She was so very perfect…but she should not have been up this late…or early? He didn't now. He just knew that she needed her sleep…but if she wanted to come in with her laptop and join them then….well he wouldn't STOP her. She was her own person and she could do whatever she wanted….

Even lurk in doorways.

"Dad….? Hatori….? Ex-explain…?" asked Daughter. He did not like being told to explain himself…but this was Daughter. She was a child and needed to have things explained to her and it was his job as her father to explain them. There. Simple.

"Hey Mob-kun…..Shiegeko-san…Suzuki-sama…" said Hatori. There it was again, his aura acting all strange like that. Suzuki would never understand this boy for as long as he lived.

"Hatori….why are you in my house? Talking to my dad? At three eleven in the morning? Drinking from Sho's special Zootopia glass?" asked Daughter. She was so perfect. Even with her hair sticking up in all directions and the neck of her nightgown pulled so far off to the side that he could see her undershirt, he fixed it for her with his powers, she was still so perfect. The most perfect Daughter who had ever lived. For a moment he wants to tip Hatori back in his chair for daring to speak to her…but then he remembers that Hatori is a homosexual so it's fine. He can trust Hatori around her. He's one of the few men immune to her.

"Sorry, I didn't know it was his glass….and your dad and I are just…working on Minecraft. Yeah, we're just working on Minecraft together at three in the morning. Normal stuff." Said Hatori

"Yes, we're working. Would you like to….why are you awake at this hour? Did we wake you? Can you go back to sleep? Do you need Fukuda? I can summon him for you. Shimazaki may be able to teleport that far…or I can send a plane. Or do you want a sleeping pill? Or a story? Do you need me to read to you? Get your book, the one about the cat, or the one about the ice queen." Said Suzuki. It was alright to spend time with her outside of Sunday if he was meeting her needs, he decided, because Fukuda was not there to put her to sleep….and he would gladly read whatever banal drivel she put in front of him so long as he got to get some sleep…and as long as he got to be near to her.

"Um…..I was just getting water…and I'll do that…and then I'll go back to bed…and then…um…you guys can just….do this…" said Daughter. She walked backwards to the sink, pulled a glass down….a blue ice queen glass, and filled it. She did all of that with her powers and all of that while facing him and staring at him. She probably wanted to join them but she knew that she needed sleep. She was a very responsible child like that. She was responsible enough that she drank her water, put her glass in the sink, and then went back to her room. She did it all while walking backwards. She really wanted to join them…

But she was too responsible for that.

She was a very responsible little girl and he…had been somewhat irresponsible…but…but he needed to go to bed. He would in a minute. He just had to get a few more things done like….like information gathering! Yes, that was what he was doing. He would listen to what Hatori had to say and then he would go to bed because he had to be awake and ready to start his day in less than three hours. He could live on less than three hours sleep. He would be fine, he was fine, and he just…Hatori was an important source of information.

He may have been a very strange boy, for numerous reasons, but he was a good source of information….and conversation as well.


	289. It was a Strange World Sometimes

The world was a very strange place sometimes.

It could be strange in ways that Mob had never thought possible. Like the times when she caught dad drinking ketchup when he thought nobody was all alone. That had been strange. Or like the time she had caught Shimazaki chewing on a candle for the first time…well not caught because he had just pulled a candle from his pocket and gotten to chewing. That had been strange at the time. There had also been the first time she had seen Sho take apart a piece of pizza because he didn't like all the parts touching. That had been strange but she had gotten used to it eventually because he was her most favorite little brother in the world, she only had one little brother but the world was full of other people's little brothers and out of all of those little brothers Sho was her favorite. Her favorite friend could even be strange too. Like how Minegishi seemed to really hate sugar but then could drink a whole two liter of orange soda at once when they smoked together or like how they said that manga was not actual books but then they got Mob a Sailor Moon compendium….or also how they said that they were sick of anime but now they had put on the Sailor Moon show from when they had been little….

The world could be very strange sometimes.

Her friends could be very strange people sometimes…but that was ok because they were her friends and she loved them all very much. They loved her too and everyone loved everyone else. That was why she was sitting on the couch with her best friend eating a waffle cake made by her other friend while another one of her friends was laying down on the ground listening to the TV with her and her best friend. Everyone loved everyone else….and she knew that she loved her friends even though they could be very strange sometimes. She loved her friends even though they could be very strange sometimes.

She loved Hatori even though he could be her strangest friend of all.

"Somebody narrate. I have no idea what's going on. Do you have any idea how weird it is to hear dialogue and sound effects and have no idea what the hell is happening?" asked Shimazaki from his space on the floor. This was another one of those lazy days…and he hated those lazy days. The President had woken him up at some crazy hour of the morning just to tell him that he wasn't needed that day….which was like the day before that and the day before that. He wasn't exactly itching to spend hours and hours at Suzuki's side but boredom and Shimazaki…they went together about as well as toothpaste and orange juice. Baking soda and vinegar. Hatori and…well…anything. He needed something to do. Anything to do.

Anything besides listen to the TV and eat waffles.

Well he got to be near Toshi, which was always a positive, but he wanted to be nearer to them. He wanted to at least be able to do that thing where he laid down on the couch and then Toshi laid down on top of him and rested their head on his chest and then he could touch their hair and their face and feel them breathing and just…be with them….God. He had it worse than the kid. Crushes sucked, that's why they were called crushes. If they didn't crush you then they would have been called something else. How did he have a crush on Toshi? When had this even happened? And how did he make it stop? Did he even want to make it stop?

He focused on their presence.

He could feel them right there beside him. They were sitting slouched on the couch, they had their head resting on their hand, and they were so relaxed…chill Toshi was the best Toshi. Well any Toshi was a good Toshi but chill Toshi was one of his favorite Toshi's. He also liked sleepy Toshi, just getting up Toshi, fresh from the bath Toshi, high as a kite Toshi, drunk of their ass Toshi, reading in the garden Toshi, and even ketchup packet times Toshi. He liked every single flavor of Toshi they could think up….he liked Toshi….

God, he liked Toshi….but that was fine. It didn't change the outcome.

"Ok. Right now they're doing their magical girl transformation dance. When Usagi says 'moon power makeup' there's these colors….well you don't know what colors are…but…um…" said Mob. She was not good at narrating shows. This was Sho's thing. He always narrated what happened to Shimazaki when what they were watching didn't have a narrate button. It had always seemed sort of annoying to Mob, having to hear Sho talk over the whole Sho, but she had never said anything because it had to have been more annoying for Shimazaki not to be able to know what was going on. TV must have been so strange to him. He couldn't see it, not like he saw he world, he could only hear it….so Mob didn't really feel bad about having to narrate. She felt worse about not doing a good job of it.

"Are you sure you and Sho are related? Because he is one hell of a narrator while you…are putting forth effort. So, yay effort….I guess." Said Shimazaki. He was not about to tell Mob that she sucked at this even though she did kind of suck. If he told her that she sucked then she would get all sad and there were very few things in this world more boring than a sad person. Also If he made Mob sad then Toshi would be mad at him and then not only would he be bored he would be Toshi-less. He was already Sho-less, he wouldn't be Toshi-less too.

"Ryou, shut up. If you want it professionally narrated then go and find a professional narrator." Said Minegishi. Honestly. Mob or her little brother having someone narrate a show was just annoying and they did not feel like being annoyed right now. The boredom of it all was starting to get to them. Suzuki had no use for them and while they would normally have been happy about the lack of extra work being aimless was…well it was work in and of its self. One day bleeding into the day before. Over and over again…though it could have been worse. They could have had whatever Hatori's new job was. Whatever the President had him stumbling through the door at six in the morning for….

And no, it was not illicit sex.

Ryou had been convinced that the President was trying to get with Hatori…which made no sense. First of all Ryou could tell when people were having sex, fucking voyeur, and second of all if Suzuki was planning on taking his subordinates to bed he would have chosen better than Hatori. Not that Minegishi was volunteering themselves as tribute or anything. They would lay down on that wire if they had to, if Suzuki ever got close to starting to cross lines with Mob like that, but they were not going to lay down on that wire for Hatori Nozomu. He just wasn't worth it.

But nothing was happening anyway.

Well something had happened. They had woken up to Mob sitting in their living room with the TV still where Shibata had left it on the cooking channel. She had been waiting from them to get up, she had said, because sometimes strange had happened last night. Hatori had been in her house talking to Suzuki. Not being lectured by Suzuki, not being screamed at by Suzuki, and not being tortured by Suzuki. He had been talking to Suzuki. With words. Like normal people talked to each other….and Minegishi had been just as confused as Mob. They were sure that nothing was happening between Suzuki and Hatori…but there still had to be some explanation…but the only person who could explain was passed out in his room….and Minegishi was not about to go into that den of trash and filth so shake him awake and ask him what the President had wanted from him all night…

They would, however, watch Sailor Moon with Mob because Sailor Moon made everything better.

"My professional narrator is halfway around the world….God….I miss the little guy so fucking much." Said Shimazaki. He would come back eventually, and hopefully he would come back with the crush he'd developed withered and dead from neglect, but until that time Shimazaki was bored and would remain bored.

"I miss him too….but this is for the best. He's growing up and he likes away missions and we shouldn't bother him and tell him that we love him and miss him and that we wish that he would come home…because that would be smothering him and smothering people is wrong." Said Mob. She had a phone, Sho had a phone, and they both knew how to make phone calls but she was not going to smother him like dad smothered her. He was probably off having the time of his life in Seoul and she was not going to be so selfish as to stop him. He was happy and he was with his friend, he and Fukuda were still friends, and she was not going to take him away from that just because she was selfish. They had spent their entire lives together and…and it would have been selfish of her to smother him just because she missed him and missed spending time with him and missed seeing his drawings and how happy he got when he finished a drawing and also his little smiles….she would always miss his little smiles the most…just like she missed Mukai's baby smiles the most….

She leaned her head over on Minegishi.

She knew that Minegishi had said, before, that they were not the sort of friends who hugged…but they had hugged before….and she needed a hug now. Sho was halfway around the world and she knew that she shouldn't have wanted to smother him…but she did. She wanted to smother him with all the love she had in her heart because he was her little brother and she could not lose him. She could not be apart from him….and that was just so very selfish of her. To want to take his happiness away like that….

She could be so selfish sometimes.

"Yeah, then Suzuki would kill us." Said Shimazaki

"What?" asked Mob

"Nothing. Ignore him." said Minegishi as they let Mob rest her head on them. They kicked Ryou, he let them kick him.

"What? If we smothered Suzuki's kid then he would kill us. I mean that's his only son. Who's going to carry the bloodline if he's gone? You know how Suzuki is about this stuff." Said Shimazaki. Suzuki was going to be in for a big surprise when the kid was ready to be honest with himself. Could there have been a more ironic twist of fate? Suzuki plans world domination for decades only to have his bloodline end, possibly, because his only son is…something. Shimazaki had no clue what but the kid was something and that something had a crush on him and he needed that something to stop having a crush on him. It was a waste of the kid's time since nothing would ever happen, ever come of it, because he was just a kid. He was only ten and not even in a few years would Shimazaki want to. The kid was just…a kid. They were friends and they would never not be friends. Since the day that they'd met Sho had always been just this fun kid that Suzuki'd inexplicably had. Not like Mob. Mob had always been above him in her Claw hierarchy as well as Toshi's friend.

Not that he wanted Mob to have a crush on him either.

Crushes sucked. Romantic feelings sucked. He had never been able to return them….not in the way that people wanted him to. He had never been able to keep to one person, to keep his pants on if the opportunity to take them off came, and most people did not like that. Those that did got turned off, eventually, by the way he was. Not that he thought that there was anything wrong with the way he was. He was a lover of life. When had that become a crime? At some point it had and between his inability to be monogamous and the fact that he didn't treat life like a spectator sport it had been very hard to find a romantic partner…and also he just….aside from Toshi he just hadn't felt anything close to that since…all of that. That shit that he had taken and locked down in the recesses of his mind. Underneath all of that other painful shit. The shit that Toshi didn't even fully know about….and not that he would tell them…not that he was keeping secrets…they just didn't need to…well if they asked he would tell them….

Crushes sucked.

He prayed that nobody else got one on him. It wouldn't end well, it never did, and it never would. He hoped that crushing on him was not a family trait. Mob wasn't Sho. She wasn't that sort of person to him. Nothing would ever happen between him and Sho but Mob…well he'd revisit that when she got older. She was going to be his boss some day and when she was they were going to have a hell of a lot of fun. What sort of fun would be up to her but he was up for anything….just so long as she never caught feelings. He hated it when people caught feelings….

He hated it when he caught feelings.

Toshi kicked him again. He let them. He just liked it when they paid attention to him. When they acknowledged him. They liked to mess with people and tell them that he had a condition where he forgot that he was alive if nobody was paying attention to him…and that was sort of true. It was hard to remember who he was without them, that he was there, because sometimes he just felt…nothing. Boredom. That absence of stimulation. Well that wasn't the case when he was with Toshi. When they were together then he felt everything. Every feeling that he had ever known….

God, he had it bad…and he wished that he didn't.

"I didn't mean in real life. I just meant that he might feel like dad makes me feel sometimes. That's all." said Mob

"No, you were being literal. You've had enough of him and now it's time to make yourself an only child. Sister killing brother in a grab for power. It's a tale as old as time." Said Shimazaki with a laugh.

"Shimazaki! I would never do that! And also why are you bringing Beauty and the Beast into this?" asked Mob. She would never kill Sho even for all the power in the world. She didn't want power, it was hard being in charge, but even if she were offered something she loved like her own milk factory or a basket of kittens or Minegishi offering to get their own Frozen dress, which they would wear pants under, so they could be twins Mob would never have agreed to that. She loved Sho and she would never have done anything to hurt him!

She really hoped that Shimazaki had been kidding because if not then they would have to have a talk.

"Yes you were, we all know you were." Said Shimazaki. If she had been Sho then she would have hit him or thrown something at him and then they could have fought, not seriously of course, or she would have started cursing at him…and Sho always thought up the most hilarious combos….but she was not Sho. All that he had gotten from that was a kick to the side from Toshi.

"Ryou, shut up." Said Minegishi. There. Short and to the point. Not even he would be able to misinterpret that as 'keep running your mouth'.

"Fine….and are you sure those two are related? Because Sho would have been all over that." Said Shimazaki

"I'm not Sho. We're related but we're different people. Also I love him and I would never do anything to hurt him…and I don't want us to fight so I'm going to believe that you were just kidding. Ok?" asked Mob. She didn't want to fight with him, she never wanted to fight with her friends, and he said crazy things all the time…so he must have just been kidding…and stuff. Like he did with Sho.

"You can believe whatever you want but, yeah, I was kidding. When's he coming back? Things are so dull around here without him." said Shimazaki

"If you're so bored then go find fun. Go to a hospital and climb inside of an x-ray machine or something." Said Minegishi with a shrug. If someone were to ask them, not that anyone would ever ask them, they thought that Sho brought out the worst in Ryou. He had always liked performing for an audience and now he had found the most captive audience imaginable. A ten year old boy with the mother of all crushes. This could only end well.

"…that's actually a good idea. Thanks, Toshi." Said Shimazaki. He wasn't going to play with the x-ray machine, there was no point unless Sho was there, but hospitals could be fun. Lots of people there and lots of charts to switch around and medicine to borrow. He hadn't done this since he had been a kid. Toshi always had the best ideas. He'd bring them back something fun. God, Toshi was so smart.

"…he's not really going to play with an x-ray machine…is he? Because we don't have Fukuda anymore and I heard that radiation can make people sick…and it also makes people giant…and I don't want any of those things to happen." Said Mob

"He's a grown man. If he wants to play with an x-ray machine then he'll play with an x-ray machine and if he won't then he won't. Stop worrying so much about other people." Said Minegishi. Ryou probably wasn't going to play with an x-ray machine, he couldn't see them anyway, but he was an agent of chaos and hospitals provided vast opportunities for chaos…..if he had even gone there. He could have just gone to hang out in a theatre and watch plays all day again or maybe he found a dog shelter and now he was making new friends. Hell, he could have gone to that giant grocery store and he could be on his way back now with one of those economy sized boxes of pudding.

"I can't stop worrying about other people…and I don't want to. If I don't worry about other people then I won't care about them and I don't want to become the sort of person who doesn't care about other people." Said Mob. She was always worried about something, it felt like sometimes, but that was a good thing. If she wasn't worrying then she wasn't caring about the people around her and she had to care about the people around her. What was the point of having friends if she didn't care about them? People needed other people and she needed her friends…and she needed her friends to be safe and happy and ok and she knew that they wanted the same for her.

That was what friendship was and stuff.

"Mob, you can care about someone without worrying yourself to death over them. I care about you but I acknowledge that you make your own choices and…bad example. You're ten, you're different. I care about Ryou. There. I care about him and, no, I don't want him to get hurt, but I do know that there's no way for me to control him and I don't want to. He's responsible for his own actions and the consequences of those actions because he's a grown man." Said Minegishi. Mob took on too much responsibility, that was her problem. Like that thing with her dad and Hatori. Nobody was going to dispute how weird it was that Suzuki had kept him out all night, but he was not Mob's responsibility. Minegishi wished that Mob could have just been a carefree kid for once in her life…even though they knew that the picture of an idyllic, carefree childhood was just that, a picture. Not everyone got that, in their experience very few people got that, and they so wanted Mob to join the ranks of those few select people who got to have good childhoods…

But that ship had mostly sailed by now.

"You care about him?" asked Mob with a smile. That was great! Well Shimazaki maybe thinking that she would kill Sho for power was not great, and him playing with an z-ray machine was not great, but Minegishi caring about him was the best thing ever! That meant that maybe they liked him back and then they could go out and be in love and go on dates like Mob had seen on TV and they would get married and have babies and be happy together for the rest of their lives!

"Of course I do. I've known him for longer than I've known you….and not like that. I don't care about him like that so you just get those ideas out of your head right now." Said Minegishi. Well Mob was in a better mood…that was always good. They just wished that they couldn't see the wheels in her head turning. They didn't know if they could deal with the shippening for much longer. Mob neeed to come off of this. Thank God for Sailor Moon. She liked Tuxedo Mask….for some reason….and she shipped him with Usagi even though she didn't have to…but she did and hopefully she would learn to live vicariously through TV shows like a normal person instead of trying to get her friends together. What she really needed was a guy her own age who she was interested in but that wasn't going to happen, it seemed, so TV was the next best thing. Hopefully she got more used to talking to people her own age…

Because this would only get worse as time went by, not better, and Minegishi didn't know how much more of this they could take.

"Which ideas? I have a lot of them." Said Mob. Dad said that she was good at having ideas. Like how she had written up a whole year's worth of birthday lists and then just set them to go out on a schedule, Hatori had showed her how to do that, or like how she had gotten the idea to keep everyone's plates and glasses on separate shelves because Sho REALLY did not like anyone eating off of special plate and drinking from his special glass…and there was no reason to tell him about the mistake that Hatori had made. She would have warned him if she'd had any idea that he would be hanging out in her house with her dad like that. But she'd had no idea. She didn't even know that it was possible for dad to just sit around and hang out with someone who wasn't her…and it had been so weird…

She knew that she should have been happy for dad, he was making a friend, but the whole thing was just too weird.

"The ones about me and Ryou getting together. It's not going to happen." Said Minegishi

"But if you wanted it to-" said Mob. Minegishi had said, before, that they didn't want to be in a relationship because their girlfriend had dumped them. They didn't see why anyone would want to dump Minegishi but for some reason they just blamed themselves…and she didn't know why. Minegishi was a good person and they had no reason to go blaming themselves just because someone else couldn't see how wonderful they were.

"Mob, what did I just say? It's not going to happen. I don't do the relationship thing and neither does he. You're ten, I get it, and you've been fed a very steady diet of monogamous relationships for your entire life but me and Ryou aren't like that. Neither of us does the relationship thing and neither of us ever will. Now let it go already." Said Minegishi. Mob needed a boyfriend or a boy for figure stuff out with or just one to pine after. They wondered if anyone had seen or heard from that guy she kissed back when she was nine. Whatever happened to that kid? Mob had liked that kid. That kid had been her age and, well, they weren't a big fan of kidnapping but how great could that kid's parents have been if they let Claw take him in the first place.

Not that they were advocating for kidnapping a kid so Mob could have a boyfriend….but the idea was on the table.

"Let it-" said Mob

"No. Not that song. Anything but that song." Said Minegishi

"Do you wanna-" said Mob

"Watch more Sailor Moon? Yes, I do. We have over a hundred episodes to get through before we can get to Crystal and I'd like to get back to it. Unless you want us to sit through Frozen for the thousandth time." Said Minegishi

"I do like Frozen…but I want you to be happy. We can keep watching this if you want because I know that you're getting a little bit tired of Frozen." Said Mob. She sometimes felt a little bit tired of Frozen too….but then she just remembered how great the movie was and how much better it made her feel and then she stopped being tired of it…but Minegishi was a different person from her and they had their own things that made them feel better. Like this. They really liked Sailor Moon. That was why they had a Sailor Moon t-shirt and pajama pants and why they kept on getting Sailor Moon grinders, too, but also because Shimazaki kept stealing theirs…which was not nice at all…and she would have to talk to him about that later.

"Good." Said Minegishi. There. Now they were at the end of it. They didn't hate Frozen….they had just seen it so many times that they could probably transcribe it from memory.

"But also, um, what if he liked you? Or what if someone liked you? Would you still never want to be in a relationship with them? Even though you don't want to get dumped again? Because you might not be. You're a good person and I don't know why wouldn't want to be with you forever." Said Mob. Shimazaki would have wanted to be with Minegishi forever, she had thought, because he had already been with them for years. They already kissed and cuddled and did adult things together so why not become boyfriend and theyfriend? And then they could go one dates and get married and have babies and then Mob could be friends with the babies and when she got older and had babies her babies could be friends with their babies, best friends, just like she and Minegishi were best friends. It all worked out so well….well it would have. Was there some way to fix Minegishi fear of being dumped? Mob had never been dumped before but she couldn't imagine a pain worse than the pain of being in love with someone and then them one day deciding that they didn't love you back. Well Shimazaki wasn't like that so Minegishi would be fine….if they even liked him back….

Relationships were sort of complicated.

"Nope. I'm happy the way I am. Now stop projecting." Said Minegishi

"Projecting?" asked Mob. She checked her phone really quick even though she got the feeling that Minegishi meant a different kind of projecting then when her phone decided to play stuff on the TV on it's own.

"You want a boyfriend so you think that I want a boyfriend. I don't." said Minegishi

"Oh…what about a girlfriend? There's got to be a girl out there-" said Mob. She didn't understand how anyone could be happy all on their own without being with someone else. Dad married mom, Sho had found a girlfriend, and she wanted a boyfriend…so why wouldn't Minegishi have wanted to be with someone? They were a good person. They were smart and nice and always knew what to do. Who wouldn't have wanted to be with them?

Well besides crazy people, probably, and those people who hated other people so they lived alone in the woods and stuff. Also Fukuda but he didn't like anyone who wasn't Sho.

"So, any progress on the Hatori front?" asked Minegishi. Mob was ten, they reminded themselves that she was ten, and she only wanted to see them paired off because she was ten. She was ten and in the beginnings of puberty and she just wanted to build an arc and pair the whole world off and then sail off to love island where everyone would live happily ever after in neat little pairs. They couldn't fault her for that. They could, however, change the subject.

"What about Hatori?" asked Mob. She and Hatori had made progress in their Minecraft world the other day, they were building a sky tower and it was so tall that the game was having trouble generating it, but that was the only kind of progress that Mob could think of.

"Is your intricate flirting plan, which consists of equal parts staring and giggling, working out for you at all?" asked Minegishi. They knew that they were being mean but there was no faster way to get Mob to come off of this than to let her know how it felt when someone went prying into your personal feelings…which they did not have for Ryou anyway. He was a nice guy, when he wanted to bed, and he was good in bed. That was all. He also made for a great heater when it got cold and sometimes he could be so…they did not have feelings for Shimazaki Ryou.

"I-I'm not….I don't have a plan about….I don't flirt with him! I don't even know how to flirt? I don't even know what that means! I mean I do but I don't know how to do it! And even if I did I wouldn't do it with him! Also…also he's getting up and maybe he knows were talking about him so…so let's talk about something else…um…Shibata sure made good waffles today!" said Mob as her eyes, which had been darting around the room, landed on her empty waffle plate. There. That was a good subject of conversation. Hatori could not know about the way she thought about him sometimes. He could not even suspect. She could feel him waking up and…and if he had heard Minegishi then she would have no choice but to dig a hole and live in it for the rest of her life. Yes. That would be the only way.

"See? How do you like it when people pry into your feelings like that? And say things that aren't true. I don't have feelings for Ryou and you don't want to date Hatori anymore. You think he's attractive…God only knows why…but you don't want to date him anymore. So I'm going to drop it and not make anything out of the fact that he hung out at your house all night." Said Minegishi. Sometimes you had to be hard on people. They didn't like embarrassing Mob but they didn't know how much more they could take of Mob trying to put them together with Ryou. It wasn't going to happen and she needed to accept that.

"He wasn't hanging out with me, he was hanging out with my dad….and stuff." Said Mob. She didn't know why she was so sad about that…and also this other feeling. Dad was her dad. Dad was her dad and if he wanted to play videogames and talk about them then he could have went and got her…even though it had been three in the morning and stuff…but still. She would have spent time with dad…unless he planned on smothering her. She didn't like it when dad ignored her and she didn't like it when he smothered her…but she did like spending time with him…if he could just be normal. But he was never normal. He was a very strange person, she loved him but he could be very strange, and now he was being strange towards Hatori…and she hoped that dad didn't plan on smothering Hatori or anything like that….

Being smothered was never a good feeling.

And she hoped that Hatori wasn't planning trying to be best friends with dad, either, and she…she didn't know how she had gotten such a selfish thought inside of her mind. She didn't know how it had gotten there, how it had taken root, and why it was growing into it's own whole selfish plant. She wanted her dad to be happy, she really did, but she also just…she wanted Hatori to be happy and…and also she wanted…she wanted to be happy with dad and…and she wanted dad to spend time with her but…but not like he was smothering her…

She didn't know what she wanted.

"They were hanging out? Like, hanging out hanging out? Him and your dad?" asked Minegishi. Well then that…the President of Claw did not make social calls with his subordinates. He was above such things. But if Mob said….they would have believed Ryou's sordid tales of illicit sex over….that. What reason could Suzuki possibly have to hanging out with Hatori?

"Yes. They were playing Minecraft and talking about videogames….and dad's aura was all…well he was normal but Hatori's aura was all….relaxed. Like when we hang out. It was weird." Said Mob. She shook her head. She wanted Hatori to be happy but also she didn't want dad to smother him…and also she would have liked to have been invited…that is if dad hadn't been planning on smothering her or anything like that. No, she didn't want to be smothered by dad at all. She just wanted…she wanted dad to be normal….but dad wasn't normal at all…so she had no clue what she wanted.

Well she wanted everyone to be happy…including herself.

She needed to stop talking about this. Not only was talking about this making her unhappy but also she had heard a door open and now she could feel Hatori's aura getting closer and closer to her. She felt….well she always felt all gooey inside, like she was made of waffle batter, when he was near her…well no because there was doki doki in that. Maybe more like a box of crayons that had been left out in the sun? She felt something like that when he was near her…but also…also she sort of wanted to tell him that…that he shouldn't hang out with dad because he would end up getting smothered….

And also because that was her dad and not his…but that was a terribly selfish way to feel…so she needed to exorcise that feeling.

"What about Hatori?" asked Hatori as he walked through the living room and stretched. He raised his arms high above his head when he stretched and Mob could see his stomach…and it was all fuzzy and stuff….and now she felt all fuzzy because she had never seen his stomach before…and she had no idea why that would make her feel all fuzzy inside but it did….

She had been feeling like that a lot lately…hopefully these feelings would go away on their own like when she got sad for no reason sometimes.

"Mob says that your aura is weird." Said Minegishi. They reached over with a vine and pulled his shirt down before Mob drowned in a puddle of her own drool. That was her type, apparently. Pale and inexplicably skinny. This was indeed a strange world they lived in.

"No I didn't! I mean….I just said that it was weird last night when you were hanging out with my dad. Usually your aura is all…scared…but when I went to get water you were all…calm…and stuff. And also you were in my house at three in the morning playing games and talking to my dad. That was really weird." Said Mob. She hadn't meant to be mean, she had never meant to be mean, and she hoped that Hatori didn't think that she was a mean person.

"Oh, that. Yeah, that was weird as hell." Said Hatori with a yawn. What time was it? Maybe he could go back to sleep…after he saw what Shibata had made. He always kept breakfast in the microwave for him even if he slept through it. He was a good guy like that.

"Wait….so you were seriously up all night playing games with Suzuki?" asked Minegishi. They wondered if they had taken something and then forgotten about it. They could not see that. They had seen Suzuki kicking the literal shit out of people, they'd seen him kill people, they'd seen him do all kinds of terrible things…and they could see him doing that. They could see him keeping Hatori around to do something terrible to him, even to have weird illicit unimaginably kinky sex with him, but just hanging out with him…that was….they didn't even think that Suzuki was capable of hanging out with anyone…

"Yeah, I don't think he needs sleep. We played Minecraft and we got to talking, too. Hey, do you know what's for breakfast?" asked Hatori. He needed more sleep…especially if he was going to show President Suzuki Terraria tonight. Or maybe tomorrow, it depended on if he got summoned or not. He could pull another all nighter with him. He was…he was a weirdo…and he could kill Hatori whenever he wanted…but he also liked games…weirdly enough. Hidden depths and all of that, Hatori supposed. Either way he would gladly take going over the history of games or whatever with Suzuki instead of fearing for his life and shit.

"Waffles today, not square pancakes. Shimazaki didn't try and make caramel waffles again." Said Mob

"He's not home, is he?" asked Hatori. Now he was awake. Was Shimazaki there? Was he planning on teleporting Hatori somewhere and leaving him out in public in his pajamas? Or was he planning on making him drink something or take something or…or something?

"No, he's the world's problem now….now what in the hell did you and the president have to talk about all night?" asked Minegishi

"Games, mostly, game history. You know he's actually kind of interesting when you get to talking about something he cares about. I mean he's weird and lowkey terrifying but he can be sort of….well…not that bad. I don't know. We had a nice conversation about early arcade games and stuff from when he was a kid. It was nice." Said Hatori with a shrug. He knew why he was being stared at. He knew that Suzuki was not the sort of person that you could imagine being into games and stuff…or being easy to talk to…but he sort of was. When he wasn't staring at you like he wanted to kill you or asking you weird questions it was sort of…easy….to talk to him.

Sometimes you could even forget who you were talking to.

Hatori had been way too tired. Eventually he had forgotten that he had been talking to his boss, his boss who was planning on taking over the world, and he had just been talking to….a guy. A Guy who had weird taste in games but another guy. Really when you got past the weirdness, the creepiness, the world domination plans, and the violent tendencies…he was a guy. He was a guy who….had gone to arcades and shit when he'd been a kid. He had interests besides taking over the world and shit. He had been a guy…and he was a guy…and he was kind of an interesting guy. Also he was kind of an early adopter, too, from what Hatori could tell…and he did kind of like retro tech….and he could talk about retro tech all night if it kept Suzuki liking him….

And not wanting to kill him.

"That….makes no sense….but I know that you're telling the truth….I think." Said Minegishi. That was….well they had seen Suzuki playing Minecraft….and actually a few pieces came into place in their mind as far as Mob went. Her dad was apparently a murderous, socially awkward, geek….which was why she was into a non-murderous socially awkward geek. Huh. Well then that would explain…a lot. Also what the fuck? Hatori was…making friends it sounded like…with Suzuki.

Acid flashback maybe….no, those weren't real….well obviously they were….and if they were on acid in any way then they would have been tasting unpleasant childhood memories…so, no, the universe was just being weird again.

"Hatori….I'm glad that you and my dad are getting along but please don't let him smother you….because he does that sometimes…and also…um….I'm glad that you and my dad are friends." Said Mob. She had to be happy that dad and Hatori were getting along, she had to warn him about how dad could be, and also…also she had to not say something crazy like 'are you trying to be my brother or something' because obviously he was not. She had been wanting dad to show other people how nice he could be for so long now…and now he was…and she was happy for dad and Hatori and their new friendship…she really was….but she also would have liked to have been invited into the friendship.

"We're not friends but…but he can be kind of cool. I can see where you get it from, Little Sister-sama." Said Hatori. She liked it when he called her that. He got that she was worried about him and he had to put her fears to rest…even though Suzuki could smother him at any time and then dump his body in the desert…or something. But he wouldn't so long as they got along. Besides, one on one at three in the morning Suzuki was different from middle of the day 'let's take over the world' Suzuki. He was…well he was still a weirdo but…well he was a less angry weirdo. Maybe because it was his house and his kid was there and he could be himself…or something. Hatori didn't know. He was tired and he wanted pancakes.

"Thank you." Said Mob. She was cool…Hatori had called her cool…and he had also called her his little sister again…and he had also called dad cool…and he had also been hanging out with dad all night…and now she had no idea what to say or to do or to feel so she just said thank you…because what else could she say?

Well she didn't have time to say anything else because it was at that moment that Shimazaki had decided to come back home.

"Hatori, good, I need a guinea pig. Take these pills." Said Shimazaki as he shove some of these tiny little pills he had found in a square case into Hatori's hand. He had no idea what they were and he was not going to use himself as a Guinea pig…that would have been stupid.

"But you said never to take pills because they're dangerous." Said Mob. Shimazaki had said that pills were fun but also you could die if you took the wrong ones or you took too many. She didn't want anything bad to happen to Hatori. If he died then everyone would be sad….including dad now…and also he would be dead.

"Yes, they are. Hatori listen to the ten year old and get rid of those. We don't have a healer right now so, yeah, like Mob said this may not be the time to be taking random, and potentially dangerous, pills. She's a hell of a lot smarter than you'll ever be." Said Minegishi. Where to begin with the stupidity of Hatori? Trying to be friends with Suzuki? Being too much of a pushover to tell Ryou to fuck off? Or the fact that he was actually going to listen to Ryou and take the random pills while they had no healer.

They needed a drink.

"We don't know if they're dangerous until Hatori takes one. He's the Guinea pig so come on, down the hatch." Said Shimazaki. He took another one of those tiny pills from the blister pack and fed it to Hatori himself. That had been a hell of an adventure…and he wished that he'd had someone to share it with….but Toshi didn't like nonsense, Mob was too cautious to live her life, and Hatori was no fun unless you gave him something….hence why he was being given something right now.

"Maybe you shouldn't be doing that." said Mob. She sort of wanted to grab him with her powers and make him stop…but that would have been wrong. There was nothing scarier than when someone bigger and stronger than you used their powers against you. She knew. Dad had done that to her before…back before he had gotten all smothery and stuff.

"Morons…you're all morons. What are you even taking?" asked Minegishi as they pulled the pill pack from Shimazaki's hands. Well this could either be really fun or they were going to have to hold Hatori upside down until he threw up and then they would have to stuff him full of activated charcoal until he either got better or they had a funeral to plan….wonderful….and to think this day had started with Sailor Moon and waffles…

"Um….maybe this is a bad idea…and maybe you shouldn't take medicine if you don't know what it is….and maybe you shouldn't let him make you take medicine when you don't know what it is. Because this seems like it's kind of…not a very smart thing to do at all." Said Mob. She was bad at this, being hard on people, but this struck her as a very bad idea…Fukuda may have been sort of mean sometimes but at least if he had been here then this would not have been happening….and stuff….because from what she had been told something very bad could happen…and here was nothing she could do because she didn't have healing powers….

"Eh, you worry too much. Come on, worst thing that happens is we have to make him throw up." Said Shimazaki. How could such a worrywart have been related to Sho? He would have thought that this was hilarious! Honestly, he would never understand how those two could possibly have been related…or how they could have possibly both some from Suzuki of all people.

"He'll be fine. These are just birth control pills." Said Minegishi. They tossed the pill container back to Shimazaki and then turned to face the TV. Since nobody was going to die any time soon they could get back to….well they had missed the episode….but that was what the back button was for.

"What?" asked Hatori, his eyes wide. The picture on the TV went blue. What in…what was WRONG WITH Shimazaki?!

"Minegishi just said that they were birth control pills." Said Mob

"WHAT THE HELL?!" asked Hatori after spitting out the bitter pill that had been dissolving on his tongue. What in the hell was wrong with Shimazaki? What had he been thinking?! That…that could have been so bad! He didn't know what happened when you took birth control pills when you didn't even have any birth to control but it could not have been good.

"They are not. I remember when you were on the pill and the thing for them was round. This is square." Said Shimazaki. If those were birth control pills then that was hilarious and if they weren't well then he needed to find a more cooperative Guinea pig…maybe some actual Guinea pigs…Sho would have been all over that. He loved animals and picking them up and petting them and stealing them from pet stores and setting them free and stuff. Maybe he wouldn't have minded using them to test medicine. This was safe, right? They made sure that stuff was safe for animals before they tried it on people? Or was that just with chimps? Were there chimps that they could have borrowed? God, Sho would have loved that.

"They can make other container shapes, Ryou, that's the wonder of plastic, now put these back where they came from before someone gets pregnant and, actually, all of you get out of here. Mob and I are trying to fritter our lives away in front of the TV and you're both being very distracting." Said Minegishi with a sigh. They reached over and turned Mob around too. There was no reason for her to get all upset over nothing. She had said all that she could and now those idiots would have to deal with their own consequences. They knew that you couldn't die from taking those…unless you had a blood clotting disorder or something….but those idiots knew the risks. God, Ryou was so stupid sometimes…such an idiot….their idiot.

"Um…should we do something about that?" asked Mob as Minegishi turned her around. She felt like she should have done something about that. This felt like something that she needed to fix….but Minegishi wasn't letting her….but maybe they had a good reason. They were very smart about a lot of things.

"Nope. Not our problem. Don't create extra work for yourself, Mob, now watch TV with me and let them get all of that sorted out. Honestly. Ryou knows that he can't read, he knows that I can read, I have no idea why he's such an idiot sometimes. He could just have me read to him but no, he has to go and almost poison Hatori." Muttered Minegishi. Ryou was such an idiot sometimes. He was an idiot and a moron and a cretin and…and they needed to stop thinking about him. They could hear him getting chewed out by Shibata, Hatori had apparently decided that the best course of action was to run and hide behind Shibata's apron, and they needed to focus on this and less on Ryou's….Ryou-ness…

They turned the volume up.

"Is…is Hatori going to be ok? Fukuda isn't here and…and what even are birth control pills? I don't know about medicine, I've never really needed it." Said Mob

"They're exactly what they sound like. They're pills that people take, well people with working female reproductive systems take, to keep from getting pregnant. I'm sure he'll be fine and it's not our problem anyway." Said Minegishi. They were not going to have this talk with Mob. They did not want to have this talk with Mob so they wouldn't. They would in the future, they were apparently the only person in her life who resembled a functional adult, but not now. Now they just wanted to sit and relax and deal with the headache those idiots were giving them.

"Wait…so they make pills to keep you from having a baby grow in your stomach? But I thought that you had to do….stuff…with a boy for that to happen." Said Mob. It had been her understanding that people fit together like puzzle pieces and that was where babies came from. Mom had told her that to her face. When two people loved each other very much they did something very special that only adults were allowed to do and then they made a whole new person together. That was how it worked.

"Mob, first of all just say 'get pregnant' and second of all yes, you have to have sex first, if you have sex without being on the pill or taking other precautions that I don't have the mental energy to deal with right now. I'll tell you when you're older, ok?" said Minegishi

"Um….ok." said Mob. She sort of wanted to know now but she knew what it meant when Minegishi aura got all tired like that. They didn't always have the most patience and stuff because they didn't get a lot of sleep and also they had to put up with a lot of nonsense, they had said. Still, though, Mob did want t know…and Minegishi would tell her when she got older. Medicine to not have babies? Why would you do something so gross with a boy if not to have a baby? Well because it felt good…she had heard….but it also sounded very gross and embarrassing. Another person had to see you naked and stuff. Why would you let another person see you naked and do all of that other stuff with you if you weren't going to at least get baby at the end of it…or however long it took for them to grow inside of their mom's stomach. Well it did supposedly feel good and stuff….but Mob didn't get it….and maybe that was why it was an adult's only thing.

A very strange adult's only thing.

Adults sure were strange sometimes. They did strange things with each other, acted weird towards each other, and also could be sort of mean to each other. For as long as she would live she would never understand adults. Not her dad, who was making friends with Hatori, or Shimazaki who was always picking on Hatori, or Minegishi who couldn't see how much Shimazaki liked them and how he would never, ever, dump them for as long as he lived.

Really, all of the adults in Mob's life were just very strange people…except for Shibata. He made waffles and that made perfect sense.


	290. Disassembled Soup

Sho would do whatever he wanted with his lunch.

He didn't care if it made the meal take forever. He didn't care if he made a mess. He didn't care that he was out in public where people could see him. He didn't care if he hadn't even done this when he had been a baby. This was his lunch and if he wanted to take it apart and eat each part on it's own then that was what he was going to do….and he didn't know why Fukuda cared.

He didn't know why anyone cared.

"Does he want to go somewhere else? I mean it doesn't look like he likes the food here and kids are notoriously picky." Said Higashio. He was one of Fukuda's friends…well sort of friends. He and Fukuda and the other guy. Ootski, worked together sometimes. They had all been fixing something that had gone wrong in Korea, Sho didn't know what, all he knew was that it involved a lot of filing and papers and was really boring. This was the boring kind of mission, not the fun kind that Shimazaki and the others went on sometimes, but it was still nice to get away from dad and his meanness and also Shimazaki and the weird feelings he made Sho feel….well actually he really missed Shimazaki….

He took another noodle out of his bowl.

He liked kong-gutsku. Big sis liked it too. It was cold soup in milk and soy broth and they both liked noodles and milk, well she really liked milk, it made sense that they both would like this. They had come here back when they had first come to Korea…it felt like a million years ago. Now he was here all alone and she could never come back because she went where dad went and dad hated Korea for some reason, probably a stupid one, and so he would never be able to eat this with big sis again. He would never be able to eat this with Shimazaki, either, even though this really would have freaked him out. It was cold and had noodles and sometimes, like when he was really tired or he had a lot to drink, Sho could convince him that cold noodles were really dead worms….and it would have been so funny if he brought Shimazaki a bowl of this and told him that it was worm soup. He'd laugh and stuff and…

And Sho felt weird again.

He took another noodle out of his bowl, used his powers to make all the soup drip off, and then put it in the empty bowl next to him. He didn't like it when his foods touched. He wanted everything to be separate in his mouth. This was his food and he could do whatever he wanted to it. He could throw it across the room if he felt like it…well he wouldn't do that because he was out in public and if he did that then they'd get kicked out and Fukuda would be all pissed off and stuff….but if he didn't care then he would have totally thrown his stuff across the room because it was his and he would do whatever he wanted!

"No, I heard that you aren't supposed to give into the pickiness because then they develop an unhealthy relationship with food. I think that you're just supposed to make kids eat and then they'll get used to eating a more varied diet." Said Ootski. Sho didn't much like being spoken about like he wasn't right there but that was normal for most adults, he'd noticed. It had been the same with mom and dad when he had been little. Dad would say something like 'is Boy hungry' and mom would decide if it was time for him to eat or not. Dad had called him Boy a lot back then…which was worse than Son…but better than Failure or Disappointment or Mistake that Makes Mistakes….or any of the other things that dad had called him over the years….

Better than 'Your Brother'.

Dad called him 'Your Brother' whenever he was talking to big sis about him. He would say things like 'Control Your Brother' or 'Your Brother needs something' or 'Should Your Brother be doing that' or 'Either force Your Brother to eat or let him starve I don't really care' and other stuff like that. He would say that stuff to big sis even though Sho was always right there in front of him. Dad never talked to him…adults were just like that it seemed. Normal adults. Not the adults he knew. Not his friends.

These were Fukuda's friends, not his friends.

"But I mean if he's hungry he deserves to have something that he can eat. I feel like forcing someone to eat when they don't want to it'll create an unhealthy relationship with food more so than just letting someone eat whatever they want to." Said Higashio. Sho wondered if anyone was going to actually ask him what he wanted. He wondered if anyone cared that he was fine, perfectly fine, and that he didn't care if they had to sit here until Christmas. He was going to get his food the way he wanted it.

"He's eating though, he's just taking it apart. We should be happy he's not eating kongee or we'd be here all night." Said Ootski

"Don't tease him like that. You'll just make him do it more if you tease him like that." Said Higashio. Sho pretended that he wasn't listening. He wasn't doing this because of what people were and were not saying. He was just doing this because…because he wanted his food he way he wanted it. He could decide things for himself. He could eat what he wanted when he wanted. He wasn't stupid. He wasn't a disappointment. Not everything he did was wrong.

He took another noodle out of his soup and cleaned it off.

"I'm not teasing him, don't get yourself all worked up over nothing. I'm just saying that if he had to pick apart kongee instead of soup we'd be sitting here until we were as exhausted as Fukuda." Said Ootski

"He's fine. He just….does that. There's nothing that anyone can do to stop him." Said Fukuda. He took a drink after he said that. He was tired…well that was his own fault. He shouldn't have been up half the night trying to get Sho to go to sleep. He would sleep whenever he felt like it. Big sis wasn't around to put him to bed and Fukuda didn't know how…not that Sho needed to be put to bed or anything. Of course not. He was ten and ten year olds did not need to be put down to sleep. But if he had still needed to be put down to sleep then he would have wanted big sis to have been there. She always made sure that his bed was just right and that she left the light on until she was done reading, she liked to read out loud, and also that she left when he told her to. Fukuda said that he wasn't reading to him, that he was just reading out loud in the same room, but Sho knew better. Big sis always read out loud sitting on her bed because she needed to do that to get tired. Fukuda always stood above him and read and it was obvious that he thought that Sho was a baby who still needed a bedtime story and wet the bed and woke up all sad and lonely because big sis wasn't there on the other side of the room….and stuff.

Sho was not a baby.

He could feed himself and he could put himself to bed and he did not wet the bed. He had just…forgotten that he had been asleep when he'd had to pee that one time, that was all, or someone had broken in to play a mean prank on him or something. He had not wet the bed and he could decide for himself what he ate and when he ate it and also if he wanted to stay up all night watched movies where people got chopped apart with axes and drawing pictures, then he could stay up all night watching movies where people got chopped apart with axes and he could draw pictures until the sun came up.

He wasn't a baby anymore.

"I don't like it when my food touches." Said Sho as he pulled out more of his noodles. He didn't care that everyone was already done, mostly, because it wasn't like anyone was being held prisoner. Sho was ten now. They could just leave him all alone here. He could find his way home by himself. He was ten, not two, and he could take care of himself. Dad didn't even care where he went or what he did. He had even said that to Sho's face. Big sis was the one who worried about him and she wasn't there anymore.

"But…Leader, it's soup. If you take it apart then you just have noodles and broth." Said Higashio. He and Ootiski called him leader a lot. That was because his name was the character for leader. That didn't mean that his name actually was Leader but, hey, it was better than being called any of the stuff that dad called him.

"I want my broth and my noodles to be separate." Said Sho. What was everyone's obsession with how he chose to eat his food? He could put it in a blender and drink it like a smoothie if he wanted to. He could bake it into a pie and eat it face first like a dog. He could cover it in chocolate and pretend that he was eating a really gross melted ice cream sundae if he felt like it.

"But they're all ending up in the same place, your stomach, so why take everything apart?" Said Ootski

"Yeah, well, they don't have to start out in the same place." Said Sho

"He has a point. I mean you'll eat squid for dinner and then butterscotch pudding for desert but you wouldn't dip your squid in butterscotch pudding." Said Higashio

"I wouldn't eat butterscotch pudding in the first place. Are you secretly eighty or something?" asked Ootski. He kicked Higashio under the table but not meanly. He just sort of tapped his foot with his. Sho didn't get it. If you were going to kick someone then go big or go home…not that he felt like kicking anyone under the table. He had done that to big sis a lot when he had been little but he wasn't little anymore and he didn't do stuff like that to people anymore. Well to anyone other than Minegishi but they deserved it…and then he would have landed a good, too, hit if Shimazaki hadn't stopped him…and he shouldn't have stopped him anyway because Minegishi had been mean first…

Sho pulled out a hunk of noodles and pulled the broth off so fast it sloshed out of the bowl and onto the table. Fukuda sighed and cleaned it up with his napkin. Sho put his clean noodles in their separate bowl and when he finished that he totally would have helped….but Fukuda just worked too fast. He finished and sighed and sat back down in his chair. He was way too tired…but it served him right for trying to make him go to bed like that. He wasn't a baby. He could decide when and when not he felt like going to sleep.

"We're the same age and you know it. If anyone's secretly eighty it's Fukuda." Said Higashio. Fukuda shrugged.

"Fukuda's only forty four though." said Sho. He had no idea what was so funny about what he said. He had only been telling the truth. Fukuda was forty four, the same age as dad, and he was not going on eighty anything because eighty was very far away from forty four. He was old, he was as old as dad, but he wasn't THAT old. Just old enough that he didn't really know how to play videogames and he couldn't stay up very late and he didn't climb trees or do anything fun like that. He was just…old-ish. Not super old just old-ish.

"I'm forty four going on eighty four." Sighed Fukuda. Sho had no idea how that worked. If anything he would have been forty four going on forty five. You didn't get to skip birthdays and you didn't get to have an advance on your birthdays either. You just had to have them in order.

"You look it. What happened?" asked Higashio

"Don't pry." Said Ootski

"I'm not prying I'm just asking a question." Said Higashio

"It's nothing, I'm fine. It's just…it's been a lot more work than I thought that it would be." Said Fukuda. Sho didn't get what everyone was giving each other looks for. Adults were weird like that sometimes. The ones that Fukuda knew, anyway. The adults that Sho knew, aside from Minegishi, were way more fun than this. nobody was fighting or stealing food from each other or freaking anyone out so they hid in the bathroom or talking about interesting stuff…like…um…what life would be like if we all lived underwater or why you could walk a dog but not a cat. Important stuff like that. These guys just talked about work, which was super boring, and people who Sho hadn't ever heard of. Who had a girlfriend, who had a boyfriend, who got promoted, who got reassigned, boring stuff like that. He missed Shimazaki so much…

The weird feeling again.

He decided to eat some of his clean noodles. He could feel the goldfish in his stomach swimming around when he thought about Shimazaki. When he thought about how funny it would have been to throw a noodle at him and tell him that it was a worm. How they could have dumped a whole bowl of noodles into Hatori's head and told him that they were worms…or dumped a bowl of worms onto Hatori's head and told him that they were noodles and then he would be all 'ha-ha very funny' but then the worms would star crawling around on his head and it would be so funny and then he would hide in the bathroom and it would be funny, too, even though big sis would be mad at him. Well Shimazaki had always said that it was better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. He would just say that he was sorry and then she wouldn't be upset with him and then he and Shimazaki could go and find something else funny to do to Hatori or just fun to do together and…

And he hated this weird feeling.

He hated it and he wanted it to go away. It made him think things that he should not have thought and it made him want things that he should not have wanted. It was ok for him to want to hang out with Shimazaki and make fun of Hatori and stuff. It was not ok for him to want to be picked up by Shimazaki and held really close…like when Shimazaki teleported him into a tree and held onto him so he wouldn't fall out even though Sho could keep himself up with his powers. It was not ok for him to want that or for him to want to see Shimazaki's tattoos…well that was ok because they were awesome and when Sho grew up he was getting all of his scars covered up with tattoos too….but he should not have wanted to look at them close enough that he could see the scars that they covered up. The long stripes on his back, the thing on his stomach where he got stabbed, or the long slice from when he got into a knife fight when he had been little, or the ones that Sho didn't know the stories behind. Shimazaki never told him the stories until he asked and….and maybe it was ok to want to look at him and touch him and stuff because he just wanted to know all the stories. To know all of the stuff that had happened to him before he had gotten good at putting up a barrier. Back when he had been a lot younger, closer to Sho's age, and stuff…and it had been before Sho had been born…and maybe it was ok for Sho to…to want to be near him because…because he just wanted to know…

He wanted to eat his plain noodles so he that was what he did.

Well that was what he would have done if Fukuda hadn't nudged him. Sho slurped up the rest of his noodles, which was not impolite at all and it wasn't like he was getting broth anywhere because his noodles were broth free, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, which was not rude because there had barely been any broth on those noodles. He still didn't know why Fukuda was all…like that. Making that face. He made that face every time they shared a meal. Sho would have thought that he would have gotten sick of making that face by now.

"Why don't you get some pictures? There's a pretty cool aquarium over there." said Fukuda

"What would be the point? Shimazaki's blind." Said Sho. That was a neat aquarium and all but Shimazaki would have enjoyed it better if he could have been there in person. He liked aquariums a lot. He said that it looked cool, being able to feel the fish and stuff, through the fuzziness of the water. He liked to ride in boats for that reason too. Sho wished that he could have brought Shimazaki with. There was so much stuff around here that he would have liked. They could have had so much fun together. They could have had so much fun just the two of them while Fukuda worked and stuff. Just him and Shimazaki…

Stupid weird feelings.

"….I meant for your sister….or your girlfriend. Yeah, I think your girlfriend would love to see pictures of that aquarium. You should go take some pictures to show your girlfriend." Said Fukuda. Sho had no idea what he was saying 'girlfriend' so many times but he did have a point. Emmy had never left England, she said, and she'd probably like some pictures. Big sis would like to see some pictures too.

"Does he mean…Shimazaki Ryou? Suzuki's hit ma-" said Ootski

"Take some for me too, ok Sho? Take a lot of them." Said Fukuda. He gave Ootski a look and Ootski gave one back. Sho didn't know what that was about and he didn't really want to ask. He figured that if he had been about to say something mean about Shimazaki then it was better that Sho didn't know what it was. When people said bad stuff about Shimazaki it was hard for Sho to not yell at them…and throw stuff…and other mean things.

"Alright…but don't dump my noodles back in the broth bowl or I'll get mad." Said Sho as he got up. They started talking after he left, really low and quiet, but he didn't care. They were probably still talking about boring work stuff or boring stuff about people he didn't know. Whatever, he had pictures of fish to take. They were a bunch of colorful fish, tropical fish, and stuff. They were cool. He wished that Shimazaki could have seen them. They were suck cool colors.

It sucked that he didn't know what colors were.

Sometimes Sho drew stuff for him. They wouldn't start out as pictures for Shimazaki, they would start up as pictures of just dogs and other stuff, and then Sho thought that Shimazaki would have liked the picture that he was drawing….but then he remembered that no matter what he drew Shimazaki would never be able to see it. Sho was a good artist, even dad said so, but no matter how good he got or what he drew or how well he drew Shimazaki would never be able to see it. He couldn't see things on paper. He couldn't see things unless they were something that he could also reach out and feel. Sho only knew how to draw….and he thought that he was good at drawing….and no matter how good he got Shimazaki would never be able to enjoy something that he drew. Maybe it was for the best, though, because if Shimazaki was ever to get at one of his sketchbooks then Sho would have no choice but to run away.

Because Sho may or may not have had a sketchbook that was mostly just pictures of Shimazaki.

He drew people sometimes, they were hard to draw so he had been practicing, and he had pictures of big sis and stuff. So it was ok to draw people…but this felt…different than drawing big sis. Well of course it was different. He never felt like this about his sister, that would have been wrong, and he shouldn't have felt this way about Shimazaki. Like he just…wanted to be near him all the time. Like he just wanted to reach out and touch him. Hold his hand. Touch his tattoos. Touch the scars they covered up. Feel how his hair stood up. Weird stuff like that.

Sho took a bunch of pictures.

He hadn't seen Shimazaki in a while and he wanted to see him so badly…and he missed him…and he wondered if Shimazaki missed him to. The thought of Shimazaki missing him makes his stomach feel like it was full of all of the fish from this aquarium. He had an aquarium inside of his stomach and he wished that there was some way to just let the fish free in the ocean. He hated these fish and he wanted them out and…and stuff. He didn't like the fish but…but he also sort of did, maybe, a little bit. Because the these fish were like the fish that showed up when he'd kissed Hideki…

All the fish swam away.

The ones in the actual aquarium, of course, not the ones in his stomach. The ones in his stomach were swimming harder and faster than they had in a while….and that was because he hadn't thought about kissing Hideki in a while. How god it had felt. How it had been good and bad at the same time but the most good and the most bad…and how he wanted to…again. He didn't think that…he didn't think that he should have been thinking about that. So he stopped. So he made himself stop. He took a deep breath and…and made himself stop….he made himself think about…

About how hungry he was.

He hadn't eaten a lot because it took a while for him to get his food just right. So that was what he did. He went back to where Fukuda and the others were sitting. It wasn't a long walk but it felt like it. It felt like he was being looked at, like everyone knew what he had been thinking about, and all he wanted to do was climb on onto a table and start screaming 'I have a girlfriend!' and 'She's named Emmy' and 'I'm normal because I have a girlfriend and her name is Emmy' and stuff….but he didn't. He just walked faster. He walked so fast that he was practically running…and then when he got to his chair he practically threw himself down.

Everyone was staring at him.

"I'm super hungry." Said Sho before he went back to taking his noodles from his broth. They really gave you your money's worth here. He wondered how many centimeters of noodles he had. If Shimazaki had been there then they would have taken out all the noodles and stretched them across the place and out the door and around the world together because it would have been fun and Shimazaki and him always had the most fun when they were together…

He stopped using his powers and just shook the noodles out himself.

He didn't care if he got broth everywhere. It was just broth, not toxic waste, and it would dry on it's own. Really it wasn't that bad and he wasn't getting it on anyone else. Big sis would have been mad if she had seen him doing this, though. She would have used her powers to take his bowl away and she would have gotten the broth off of his noodles for him. Well Fukuda wasn't big sis and no matter how much he pretended to be big sis he would never be able to come close to being her.

She would never had tried to make him stop. Not even if dad said something like 'tell Your Brother' to eat normally or let him starve. I don't care.

"Sho….you know when you do that it makes the whole meal take longer, right?" asked Fukuda. Sho shrugged. He knew how to read a clock. He didn't know what the problem was, though. It wasn't like when he had been little and he'd had stuff to do. When he'd been a little kid and Fukuda came over to help mom make dinner on those times when he accidentally bought extra food. Sho was ten now. He didn't need to finish dinner so he'd have enough time to play before bedtime.

"You guy can go if you want. I know how to get home from here. I can read Korean, I'll be fine. It was nice seeing you guys again." said Sho. He would have been happier on his own. Then he could sort his thoughts out…and maybe call….no. He did not need to call big sis. He was not some little baby that couldn't be away from his big sister for more than ten seconds. He was fine and he didn't need to call her and…and he didn't want to call Shimazaki either…because he had never done that before and he missed him but not that much…and stuff…

"No, Sho. I'm not going to leave you alone. I was just saying…well it's kind of boring sitting here while someone takes their soup apart….since there are so many parts…and I know how you hate being boring. I mean I know that your friends hates boring peop-" said Fukuda. Sho stopped listening. Boring. He was being boring…and Shimazaki hated being around boring people….

Sho drank his soup.

He hated it. He hated how there were hard pieces, noodles, in his soup. He hated how he had to chew and drink at the same time. He hated how he couldn't just be able to eat his food the way he wanted to. He hated how wrong he felt. How he felt like everything that he ever did was wrong. He was wrong in the way he did…everything. He had been born wrong and everything that he had ever done was wrong and there was just something wrong….there was just something wrong about him and….he hated that about himself…but he kept on drinking his soup. Shimazaki at least liked him. Shimazaki said, he had said a million times before, that Sho was great the way he was.

But maybe it was better that he didn't eat his lunch however he wanted to…because he had been sort of boring before…and he never wanted to be boring.


	291. Yet Another Awkward Plane Ride

There were a lot of rules for airplane rides.

"Ok, so now there's some new rules for plane rides. First new rule is that Hatori can't get drunk and nobody can get Hatori drunk. He can't drink, he's very fragile like that and-" said Mob. The plane was done taking off, they were in the air, and it was time to go over the rules. She was the boss of the plane, dad had said, because these were her friends and stuff. She was the boss of the plane and she had to make sure everything went well…and she didn't much want to be the boss of the plane because it meant being, well, bossy…

Leadership was hard, dad had said.

"I'm not fragile!" said Hatori. So he got too drunk last time they were on a plane together. So what? It wasn't like it was going to happen again. He had only drank so much because Shimazaki had told him to…and he knew better now….and besides, if he sat next to President Suzuki then Shimazaki wouldn't go near him anyway. So there was no reason to even bring up what happened!

"You couldn't hold your liquor if your life depended on it." Said Minegishi. Nope. They were not dealing with a drunk Hatori again. He couldn't drink, he shouldn't have been drinking, and nothing good would come of him drinking. They closed their eyes and stuffed their hands in their pockets. This plane ride was going to be a long one. Australia to America. They didn't know what all the moving was about. America was just like Australia just with a different accent set. Yay.

"Minegishi has a point….you were throwing up a lot last time." Said Shibata. He wanted to be able to finish one podcast episode on this flight. Just one. He loved Hatori, he loved all of his friends, but he just wanted one plane ride where nobody threw a fit, nobody started a fight, nobody insulted anyone else, nobody got drunk, and nobody sent Hatori running to the bathroom. That was not so much to ask for….right?

"And crying. He was crying in that bathroom. We all heard him." said Shimazaki. He wasn't going to get Hatori drunk again. Toshi was mad at him for messing with Hatori and making more work for them…it took mental energy to deal with him when he got like that. He knew how hard flying was for them and the last thing he wanted was to make this worse on them. This was a twenty hour flight and Toshi was planning on being knocked out for it…and he wanted nothing more than to have them resting their head on him and just being….peaceful. That was all he wanted….and he had it so bad….but it was what it was. He had always liked it when Toshi rested their head on him and that wasn't going to change now just because he had a crush on them like an idiot…and he was not going to mess with Hatori….but it would distract him from these stupid, mushy, gooey, melty feelings that Toshi made him feel.

"Yes….that wasn't nice….ok. Hatori isn't fragile but he still shouldn't drink so nobody should get him drunk. Ok? Hatori doesn't get drunk? Is that an alright rule?" asked Mob. She had spent the last plane ride next to Minegishi while Hatori was sick and crying in the bathroom…and Minegishi hadn't let her help because she hadn't been the one to get Hatori into that state…but she had still wanted to help…and it was hard knowing that you can help but then not helping….

So he just wasn't going to let that happen again. There. Simple.

"….fine. I won't get drunk…but I can drink if I want to. I'm an adult. I may be the second youngest but I'm an adult." Said Hatori. He was well aware of the fact that adults didn't have to tell other adults that they were adults….but he had to remind everyone that he was an adult anyway because for some reason that was hard for everyone to comprehend. He was nineteen going on twenty, not nine going on ten, but everyone treated him like he was younger than the actual ten year old!

"Are you planning on holding your liquor or are you going to drink until you're a vomiting, sobbing mess again?" asked Minegishi. They had a headache. They were less than an hour into a twenty hour flight, plus longer because they had to stop and refuel, and they needed sleep. They just wanted to close their eyes and sleep but also have access to a bathroom when they needed it. If Hatori was such an adult then he should have been able to hold his liquor.

"Yeah, are you going to be a man and do as the little girl says?" asked Shimazaki. Toshi's aura was getting all pulled in. They needed to find a way to have plants be comfortable on planes. Toshi said that their plants freaked out when they were in the air and that was why they all had to be formant on these flights. He wished that he could make them happy. He liked it better when their aura made that ringing sound, like a Christmas bell stuck in a pudding cup, not when their aura was all pulled away from him so tight that he could barely hear it even though they were resting their head on his shoulder. He could feel them breathing and smell them, they smelled like dirt but in a good way, and he could have leaned down and kissed them too if he wanted to taste them, but he just couldn't hear them. Not metaphysically…and he did not like this at all. Not even a ripple since he was still messing with Hatori even though they had asked him to stop.

"Hey, be nice to him. We all have to listen to Mob…and even if she wasn't the boss's Daughter she still has a good point. Suzuki is right there and I know he gets pissed off when you guys get too rowdy. Also we don't have our healer with us so if one of you gets hurt you'll have to get better in the normal way. So maybe don't get drunk or give Hatori anything to take, alright?" asked Shibata. He was glaring at Shimazaki with his aura. Minegishi never did anything wrong on these plane rides. They just wanted to be left alone. Shimazaki on the other hand….he did not do well on these long plane rides at all…and he seemed to have gotten worse without Little Suzuki around.

"Get off my back! I won't get drunk, ok? I can drink but I won't get drunk….stop treating me like a kid…" said Hatori. How long would it take before people started to see him as something other than a kid? He hadn't even been a kid when they'd met him but for some reason just because he was the youngest, and he had messed up a couple of times, he was suddenly this little baby who couldn't handle himself. It wasn't fair.

"Um…ok. But moderation. Please use moderation…and stuff. Anyway the other new rule is that nobody can engineer a plane crash so we all have to eat each other while we wait for help to come." Said Mob. That was the second most important rule. She knew that sometimes people did weird things like want to eat other people but she couldn't let that happen. This was real life, not the movies, and sure the people eating worked out for the people in the movie but in real life eating people could make you very sick. She knew. She had read about it and stuff.

"What's happening? What's she saying?" asked Shimazaki. Was he going deaf, too? Well then that would suck. Toshi wasn't done reading him that book about the hobbits. Did they ever make it to the place to get rid of the ring? And did Sam and Frodo ever fuck? Because there was some definite sexual tension there….and he would never know if he went deaf on top of everything else!

"Ryou, let it go." Said Minegishi. Mob…why did you have to remember these things?

"I know that some of us want to eat people, and that's ok we're all different, but please don't ever do that. People are friends, not food. Ok? I won't call anyone out but I just want everyone to know that there's a no cannibalism rule. People are friends, not food." Said Mob. She really didn't want to make Hatori feel bad but she just couldn't let that happen. He could easily bring the plane down and then leave them stranded out in the mountains and then they would have to eat each other….and she didn't want that. He was a good person, he just had one flaw, but that was ok. He couldn't control what went on in his head. Like how she'd had that weird dream last night where he told her that she was pretty and kissed her and then they were at this dairy farm run by cats and also everyone was dressed in her pajamas. She would never actually kiss him, and he would never tell her that she was pretty because he wasn't a liar, and also cats could never run a dairy farm because they were lactose intolerant.

"Mob, let it go." Said Minegishi. Nope. They had a headache and their Xanax were kicking in. They did not need someone, probably Ryou, telling Mob what Hatori meant when he said that he wanted to eat them. They did not want to explain to a ten year old what that meant while they were sealed up in this tin can twenty thousand meters in the air without a single plant in aural distance.

"I can't. I don't want anyone to get eaten. If you guys need to eat someone then eat me. I don't want to go on knowing that you guys had died because we have no food." Said Mob

"Mob, we talked about this. If both of us are alive and well then we're just going to make food grow and then nobody was going to end up having to eat anyone else." said Minegishi. They opened their eyes. Everyone looked confused, and rightfully so, but hopefully nobody was stupid enough to ask any follow up questions. If someone was then they could explain oral sex to Mob because Minegishi was tapped out...

Oh, who were they kidding?

They were the only one who could be trusted to explain anything to Mob. Ryou would probably go into an unnecessary amount of detail and throw in some stories that nobody had ever wanted to, or needed to, hear. Shibata would probably just tell Mob some nonsense about storks brining babies or whatever and then he'd try and toss her in the air because that was his solution to everything. Hatori would just freak out and lock himself in the bathroom. Through this whole thing Suzuki would just be obliviously playing whatever game he was playing on his laptop.

How much longer was this flight supposed to be for again?

"But we might both be dead. Then if we're both dead I give the rest of you permission to eat my body until help comes. Please give Minegishi a proper burial." Said Mob. She knew that people came back as spirits instead of moving on when they didn't get a proper burial….and she hoped that they exorcised her quickly…and also she hoped that Minegishi passed on to the next life and was happy and stuff. Also she hoped that the nutrients in her body could keep her friends alive until help came.

"I'll do my best but I don't know shit about performing funeral rites." Said Shimazaki. The thought of Toshi dying…he didn't like. He tried to sound normal, he had tried his best, but Toshi heard the strain in his voice and the little gasp of his aura…and it was still gasping. They couldn't die. He wouldn't let them die. There were very few people in his life like Toshi, people who cared about him fully and completely, and even if he hadn't gotten this stupid little crush on them he still would have flown up to heaven and kicked God's ass to get Toshi back if they died. He didn't care if they came back as a ghost or a zombie or a mannequin or a voice in his head. He just couldn't lose Toshi…

A hand over his.

He laced his fingers in Toshi's. This had always made him feel all gooey inside, holding their hand, and it was even worse now since these stupid feelings had decided to exist. They were stupid but….but they didn't change the outcome. He and Toshi were still just…just what they had always been. Toshi was still there with their head on his chest and their hand in his and their breath seeping in through his shirt. They were still there with him and that was what mattered.

"Calm the fuck down, Ryou, it's a hypothetical scenario. I'm not going to die and if I did I'd want you idiots to eat me instead of wasting precious time and energy burying me or precious fuel burning my body." Said Minegishi. If there was any kind of a survival situation they were all fucked. Suzuki would take Mob and let the rest of them fend for themselves…and they wouldn't last a night.

"I could never eat you even if I were dying." Said Mob. Eat her best friend? She would rather eat her own fingers like in that movie that she and Sho had seen about the man who ate himself until there was nothing left.

"Guys, we don't have to eat each other. I've been watching this wilderness cooking show on YouTube and I'm pretty sure that even without Minegishi and Her Little Ladyship around, God forbid, I can keep us alive until help comes. We don't have to eat each other." Said Shibata. There was no way he was letting his friends, and Shimazaki, starve. They were not going to have to resort to eating people when the wilderness had plenty of foot to eat and he knew how to cook over an open fire and also he was strong enough to fashion a cooking pot from the twisted metal of the wrecked plane so, yeah, they'd be fine.

"Why would we just be sitting around eating people anyway? You guys know that I can teleport, right? I can just get us all to the nearest town or whatever." Said Shimazaki as he held Toshi's hand. He wouldn't let them die. If he let them die then who was going to read to him about hobbits? Who was going to tell him where the tea was? Who was going to let him play with their hair? Who was going to let him cuddle up with them when the nights got cold and lonely? Who was going to let him play with their tits when he felt like playing with tits? Who would tell him if his eye socket fluid was running clear? Well Sho but Sho wasn't always around….so he needed Toshi and he would not let them die!

"Sometimes people want to eat people….but I don't want to eat Minegishi. I want them to have a normal burial so they can pass on." Said Mob

"Nobody's eating anyone….and if we were going to eat someone let's just start with whoever died in the plane crash and then work our way from there." said Minegishi

"Plane crash? Why did you say plane crash? Why did you HAVE to say plane crash?" asked Hatori. His eyes darted over to the bathroom. Would he survive if he hid in there? That was supposed to be the safest room to be in…or maybe that was earthquakes. He didn't know. All he knew was that he didn't want to eat anyone, not like that anyway, and he didn't want to be on the menu either. It was a possibility, though, one that he did not want. He reached out with his powers. This plane felt fine…but if worse came to worst he could control it like an RC plane if he had to. There. He would be fine…but he also had to hide in the bathroom just to be safe…

"Because a plane crash is the only scenario, the only acceptable time and place, in which it's socially acceptable to eat a human being." Said Minegishi. He was scared. Good. Let him be scared. He was the cause of all of this. He just had to announce to Mob and the rest of the world that he wanted to eat them, didn't he? He just could not stand to keep that little fantasy to himself. Well if he had even the slimmest chance, which he hadn't, then he'd shot himself pretty thoroughly in the foot with all of that talk. This conversation was his punishment…and also he had better get his aura out of that plane before he caused a terrible accident just from his own nerves.

"Who the hell wants to eat people, though? Why does there even need to be a socially acceptable time and place to eat people?" asked Shimazaki. He could understand laying someone down and eating them out while they were all 'Fuck Ryou' and 'That feels good Ryou' and 'You brushed your teeth right Ryou' but he couldn't imagine actually wanting to kill and eat someone. Kill, yes, but not eat.

"Cannibals love to eat people…but as long as they never do it then it's ok to have those kinds of thoughts. We all have thoughts that we don't like, and that can be confusing and scary, but that's ok so long as we never act on them." Said Mob. She could feel Hatori's aura in the plane…and as much as she cared about him she could not let him make any bad choices. She reached out and held the plane up with her powers. She wasn't lifting it, no, she was just being there to catch it like when she caught Sho with her powers when he went tree climbing and stuff.

"Um….you…aren't talking about yourself are you? I mean you don't want to eat us…do you?" asked Shibata. It was ok if she did. They had all sorts of child therapists now. They could just find her one and then the doctor could cure her and then everything would be ok….but he had also heard that people tasted like pork…so maybe he could just make her pork chops and tell her that they were human chops. Yeah. That would work out.

"No. I'm not a cannibal but some people are and those people…they want to do bad things…but they aren't bad people unless they do the bad things that they think about. So if someone was to take this plane and make it crash so that we all had to start eating each other because they really wanted to eat another person, even if they were out friend, we would still do everything we could to stop them from becoming a bad person. Because we love them no matter what." Said Mob. She looked at Hatori when she said that. That was he would know that she was talking about him but then nobody else would. She felt so bad about him, how he felt, and stuff…but she also knew that she had to save him from making the worst mistake of his life. Worse even then when he had put a red shirt in with the whites.

"Why….why are you looking at me like that?" asked Hatori. Now everyone was looking at him, even Shimazaki, and he had no clue…unless Shimazaki was off telling lies again…and he had better not have been running around telling people that he was some kind of cannibal or something. First of all that was just…bizarre…and second of all it made no sense. If he had been a cannibal then he would have been down in the Claw morgues eating people not up in a plane where the boss was sitting right there and could stop him at any time from going crazy and eating everyone. Third of all…just…he was over Minegishi so Shimazaki didn't have a reason to treat him like this anymore!

"It's ok to want to eat people, we're your friends and we love you no matter what, but please don't actually do it. You're a good person, Hatori, and I want you to stay that way." said Mob. There. Now everything was out in the open…and maybe she should have put it back where it had been hiding because the plane shook…and for a moment she thought that it was going to go down but she caught it. She held her hand out while she kept the plane steady. She could feel another aura…dad was also keeping the plane steady. She let him take it. He held it without moving a muscle. He was staring at her now, and she saw him take his earplugs out with his powers.

"I'm ok." Said Mob across the plane to dad. He nodded and let go of the plane. It shook a little but steadied quickly.

"Never do that again." said Minegishi. They had been gripping Ryou's hand so hard that they had left little crescent moons with their nails…and he had been pulling them so close that his aura had completely covered them. They were flying over an ocean now. They had no idea what his range was but they knew that being in his arms was the safest place for them….or at least they felt it. They could feel it, the muscle of his arm, pushing against them as he still held them tight. They forgot, sometimes, how naturally strong he was…and they had no clue how they had ever forgotten…

"I agree!" shouted Shibata. He let go of the armrest. It fell off. Right. He had forgotten, once again, how strong he was. Great. Well to be fair he had thought that he had been moments from either death or cannibalism….or just drowning in the ocean. He was strong, not buoyant.

"I didn't….it's not my….why would you SAY something like that? Why would you think that I'm a cannibal?" asked Hatori. Ok, so he had almost caused a plane crash…but to be fair he had just been accused of cannibalism! That was one of the worst things that a person could have been accused of! Worse than being into little girls or dead bodies or-or-or something else he would think up later! He couldn't breathe…he needed….he needed to go…his eyes darted over to the bathroom. The small, safe, bathroom where nobody could speak to him or look at him…because everyone was looking at him…he could even feel the President's aura on him…and the bathroom seemed like such a better and better option every single second….

"Because at the party you said that you wanted to eat Minegishi." Said Mob. The atmosphere got…weird…there. Everyone was staring at her, then they all stared at Hatori, and then that stared at her again. She could even feel Shimazaki's aura switching focus from her to Hatori and then back again. Hatori was staring at her with eyes so wide she was worried that they would fall out. His glasses had slid down to the very edge of his nose and she wondered why he wouldn't just push them up. She knew that it was shocking to know this about your good friend, that he was a cannibal and all, but really everyone'd had since the party to get used to it…or maybe it was just awkward that she had brought everything out into the open….that might have been it…she was so bad at talking that she had just gone and made everything awkward for everyone now….

"Guys, I'm sorry that I made everything awkward. I thought that everyone knew that Hatori was a cannibal by now….or is he not a cannibal because he hasn't eaten a person yet? Or is he a cannibal for wanting to eat a person? How does this work?" asked Mob. Maybe asking questions had been the wrong thing to do because now Shimazaki was laughing. He was laughing so hard that he was sliding out of his chair and he almost took Minegishi with him. They pulled away from him and now they were glaring….at Hatori. Well that made sense. They were the person that Hatori had been wanting to eat for a while. Mob knew that if someone had wanted to eat her then she would not have been happy with them at all. She wouldn't have been mean to them or anything, she just would not have been happy with them even if they were her good friend.

"That's….um….that's one way to interpret what Hatori said…" said Shibata. This was…she did NOT need to know about that! She was a child and she did not need to be all freaked out by the things that adults did! She did not need to be taken away from her dolls and games to…to know the truth about THAT! This was….this was….not good….and he had no clue what he was supposed to say…and judging by how hard Minegishi had slammed into his aura it was maybe best that he said nothing at all.

"That's the only way in which we will be interpreting what Hatori had said. He's a cannibal. We have a cannibal friend. That's what this is." Said Minegishi. Ryou was making an idiot out of himself…and they did not feel like dealing with that…or anything. This was…this was going to be a long plane ride. For all of them.

"What the fuck!? What the fuck!? I can't breathe! This is too perfect! Someone record this! Someone record this audio! I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" said Shimazaki as he rolled around on the ground. He didn't know what else he could do. That was…that was perfect. Toshi had to have been in a better mood now! It served the little former grease ball right for saying that shit to Toshi right out in the open like that! Everyone knew that when you wanted to eat someone you didn't just come out with it! You took them someone nice and secluded and then you kissed them and worked your way down and then when they were worked up you asked…not that he was going to be telling Hatori that. Let him get his own moves and battle plans! And he'd better not even begin to think of using them on Toshi!

"Um….please breathe?" asked Mob. This was bad. They didn't have a healer and Shimazaki was going to die and it was all her fault and-

And Minegishi out their feet up on Shimazaki.

"He's fine." Said Minegishi through gritted teeth. Every. Single. Plane. Ride. Did this have to happen to them every single plane ride? Really? What was this, divine punishment? Why? For the murders, the stealing, the cheating, the premarital sex, or the hypocrisy obviously. God…they were tired, their head hurt, and they had nineteen more hours on this plane…great.

"But he says that he can't breathe…and I'm worried…and I didn't mean to make things awkward. I just…I didn't think that you guys still weren't used to Hatori. It's ok, Hatori, I'm used to you and I accept you for who you are." Said Mob. Hatori was staring at everyone and his glasses were close to falling off. She reached over and pushed them back up but he said nothing. This was bad. Hatori was very sad, Shimazaki couldn't breathe, Shibata was turning a weird red color, and Minegishi looked tired and stuff…and dad was staring at her and he was probably sitting there thinking that Mob was bad at making plane rides run smoothly and stuff….

She'd had one job and she'd messed it up.

"Yeah Hatori, Mob's used to you." Said Minegishi. They were glaring at him now…and he looked like he had just stepped off of a battle field. He was not ok…and it served him right.

"Ok, ok, I'm better now. What's Mob used to?" Said Shimazaki as he climbed up into his seat again. That was….he was ok now. God, why did he have to have been sober for that? That had been the most hilarious thing that he had ever heard in his life. Nothing would ever top that moment…and now he was sort of sad…because that had been peak comedy and now his life would be downhill from here…well they did say that it was all downhill from thirty on…huh. Well now he was sad. He lifted his arm for Toshi to rest their head…and they weren't…and now he was extra sad…

"Um….uh….um….uh…." said Hatori. Well this was….not good. He had two options here. He could live the rest of his life with everyone thinking that he was a cannibal or he could come clean and explain what he had meant…to Mob…his ten year old friend…and his boss's Daughter…the boss who regularly killed people….

He needed to go to the bathroom.

"Nothing! Nobody is used to anything! Um…how about we all…get to sleep now! Yeah, so our sleep schedules are on the right time when we get to where we're going…or something…" said Shibata. He felt bad for Hatori, he did, but he also just wanted this all to end. Why did something always have to happen every plane ride? He needed to figure out some way to make this stop…maybe putting sleeping pills into cupcakes or something….

"Uh…..I….uh…." said Hatori. He wanted to go to bed and wake up and then everything…everything was going to have been just a dream….but he knew that this was real and he was alive and he was not asleep…and maybe he had lost his mind…and now…and now….and now….and now….

And now he had to go to the bathroom…if only his legs would work.

"I really am sorry….I'll go to sleep in a minute if we're all taking a group nap…but I just want everyone to know that I'm sorry." said Mob

"Mob….you have no reason to be sorry. You haven't done anything wrong." Said Minegishi. They pulled Mob close and patted her on the back. She took too much responsibility. This was all Hatori's fault…him and his big mouth. Ryou was focused on them…and he did look comfortable…and they were tired. They didn't break their glare once as they laid down on Shimazaki…even though he should not have been rolling around on the ground like a moron.

"But…neither did Hatori…because we love him. We love you no matter what Hatori." Said Mob. He was still not talking and still all embarrassed…and everyone knew his secret already but now it was out in the open and….and of course he would feel embarrassed and stuff…and she should have been more careful…and this was all her fault…

She reached over to put her hand over his…but maybe that was a bad idea too because his aura flared out worse than she had ever even thought that was possible.

"I-!" said Hatori. He would have said more, if he had been capable of, but he was…thankfully….saved.

"Daughter, what is happening over there?" asked Suzuki. He would have cleaned out his ears if he hadn't had more sense than to do that where people could see. This plane was loud but…but he had heard enough to know that something ridiculous and disturbing was happening over there. He had heard cannibalism mentioned…which made no sense. If they were hungry there was a snack cart.

"Um….we were talking about how if the plane goes down who we're going to eat…and then I let it slip out that Hatori was a cannibal…and now it's awkward and I'm sorry." said Mob. Dad was going to be so disappointed in her. She'd had one job, make the plane ride good, and she had messed it up. Now dad would be so disappointed in her and…and he was right to be disappointed in her. She had embarrassed her friend and now he had forgotten how to talk.

"That…makes no sense. That makes no sense for many reasons. The first of which being that if something were to happen to this plane I am perfectly capable of keeping it aloft. The second of which being that even if this plane did go down it would make no sense to eat you because you're the smallest…and also I would murder anyone who wanted to eat you so, yes, we would have plenty of food. Third of all it would make more sense to eat Shibata because he'll feel the most people and he's mostly muscle so he'll keep us going for longer. Fourth of all you and Minegishi are capable of growing food under your own power. Sixth of all Hatori is a homosexual, not a cannibal. There's a difference." Said Suzuki. There. Now he had set…whatever that had been….right. Now he could get back to his very important work….well he would have….but now he was being stared at…but that was normal. People looked to him for leadership.

"Carry on as you were." Said Suzuki before he looked back down at his laptop. Honestly. He had no idea how Daughter could put up with them…well aside from Hatori. He was the most tolerable of her little group. He was actually enjoyable to be around at times. Maybe whenever they were done discussing their irrational fears of a plane crash and then subsequent cannibalism Hatori could come over and they could try that other game he had been telling him about….or he could inform Suzuki of these Space Invaders sequels he had been talking about before….

Yes, that would be good.

"Yes dad." Said Mob. She didn't really want to carry on as they were, they had been very awkward, but dad had told them to…and now it was even more awkward. Oh. She hadn't known that Hatori had been one of those boys who liked boys…and maybe he had only liked Minegishi because he had thought that they were a boy….and also he would never like her…because she was a girl and not a boy…and now she wanted to sit down.

"So….you know, it's ok to be gay. Shimazaki's bi and Minegishi's pan…so you don't have to keep this from us anymore." Said Shibata

"Well, yeah, Suzuki just outed him." said Minegishi. Well that was it. They were tapping out. This was too much shit to deal with.

"Are those two things exclusive? Being a gay cannibal I mean. Just…I mean that there have to, statistically, be gay cannibals." Said Shimazaki. This was…he had thought that he had reached peak comedy but now…now he knew that he had been worried about nothing. This was…he wished that he had been recording that…and also how did Suzuki HAVE that information? What had happened on those long car rides in the desert?

"I don't know. I'm at my limit. Good night, I'll see you all in America. If the plane goes down please consume my body for sustenance." Said Minegishi. They closed their eyes and turned their head so they were tucked into Ryou's side. He let his aura cover them like a blanket. They went out like a light.

"Yeah….let's all follow Minegishi's example. Goodnight everyone!" said Shibata. He pulled his sleeping mask out of his pocket and put it on. This was too much for one plane ride. He would as Hatori later why he hadn't felt comfortable coming out to him, he had thought that they were friends, but maybe not because sexuality was personal and complex…but he would have liked to have been trusted enough…but that was ok. He didn't know. He needed to rest.

"Goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs lay eggs in your brains…and also don't eat Toshi. Eat Shibata, he'll feed more people like out wise and fearless leader said. Anyway, night, I'll remember you all as you were." Said Shimazaki before he tucked in to Toshi. He would have kept going with that but…well Toshi was warm and there. He kissed Toshi on the top of the head and tried to settle down. He wasn't going to sleep, no, he was just going to enjoy being this close to Toshi. Toshi or teasing Hatori…Toshi won.

"Goodnight…um….I'm not tired so I'm going to play games with my dad now…and…um….I didn't know that you liked boys…and I accept you for that too." Said Mob. She spoke quietly and took Hatori's hand in hers. He needed to know that she would always be his friend no matter what. Mob knew what it was like when someone you loved left you, when someone you loved didn't accept you, and she would never walk out on anyone. Even if one of her friends wanted to eat people she would never walk out on him.

Ever.

"Mob…you're a good friend. Let's go hang out with your dad. I'll show you guys Terraria or something." Said Hatori. Well…at least he always had someone in his corner…someone who was VERY open minded….so….hooray? He didn't know. That had been….a lot…and he wanted to hide in the bathroom because it was small and safe and he would be safe and small and cramped….and he knew that if he went and hid in the bathroom Mob wouldn't leave him alone…so he had might as well just…well…being under Suzuki's aura was sort of like being in a small, safe room. It was small and cramped…and nobody would bother him…nobody but Mob but she would always be in his corner at least.

"OK. I would like that a lot." Said Mob. She wondered if there was some way to save this plane ride…she didn't know. At least Hatori felt better…even though she had messed up and stuff. But it was ok, she could learn from her mistakes, and…and she was there for Hatori now and that was…that was being a good friend and being a good friend would never be a mistake.

Maybe the next airplane ride would be better...if she made up a no awkward conversations rule.


	292. Traitors and Emails to Nowhere

Sho was excited.

"Are we there yet?" asked Sho. He was practically bouncing up and down in his seat. They had said goodbye to Korea, finally, and now they were on their way back to Japan. Well not back to, he had come to Korea from Russia and then from England to Russia before that, but…it had been a while and he was Japanese anyway. He was headed back to Japan with Fukuda, finally, and he just could not wait…and not because he was Japanese and he would finally be back where he knew what everyone was saying all the time.

No, that wasn't it at all.

He was going back to Seasoning City, back to the Seventh Division, and back to see his baby sister. Well not his sister for real, no, but he liked to pretend. It was easy to pretend. She had red hair and blue eyes like him. She'd even had some freckles when he'd last seen her. He wondered if her new mom knew to keep her out of the sun. Her skin might burn and she might end up with even more freckles…not that he minded her freckles. No, he just knew how hard it could be to grow up in Japan being all different and stuff….how hard it could be…

And he couldn't be there for her to make it any easier.

He couldn't be there to tell her that it was ok not to look like anyone else. She looked like herself and that was what mattered. She was the best baby sister in the world and that was what mattered. That was what you were supposed to say to a younger sibling. That was the stuff that big sis was always saying to him. She was always telling him how it didn't matter what he looked like, how it only mattered that he was a good person, and that she loved him. He had been listening to her for his entire life and now he was glad. Even if she could be annoying and bossy and she could treat him like a baby sometimes she was still good at being a big sis.

And he was going to use what she had taught him to be a good big brother.

As good as he could possibly be, of course, considering the fact that this was not his little sister. She was an orphan that dad had brought home before his big three week away mission. She had been their pretend sister only but it had been very easy to pretend. She had fit right into their family…and he wondered if he fit into hers. He wondered if she even still remembered him. He wondered if she could walk yet, or talk, and if she would walk away from him and never talk to him again…because he had missed Christmas and her birthday…and she might not have even been able to remember that he even existed….

He needed to stop thinking that way.

He pulled at a thread in his sock as he pressed his head against the cool glass of the window. He could see the ocean underneath them. He had no idea how close to Japan they were. It felt like they had been in the sky for days and days now even though he knew that it hadn't been that long. Fukuda had said that it would be a short flight. Well how short was short? Sho wanted to see baby sis NOW before she forgot about him even more than she had before. Before she got any angrier at him than she must have been right now. He had missed some very important times in her life after all. He had been no kind of a big brother to her…and it hadn't been his fault. He wasn't even supposed to be seeing her, Fukuda had said, because if people thought that she was a for real Suzuki then she would be in danger. He couldn't keep her safe, bring her back with him, because then she would have a life like his. She would be dad's kid and then he would tell her mean things about herself and hit her and put her in an Awakening machine and then….and then she would have scars all over her body like he did but they wouldn't be cool because she was just a baby and a baby should not have had to go through what he'd gone through. She was better off with her mom and…and he hoped that one day she would be able to forgive him for not being there for her.

For leaving her.

"Are we at least almost there?" asked Sho. Fukuda was still looking down at his laptop. He had better not have been playing Minecraft or something over there. Sho didn't get what adults loved about that game. What dad loved about that game. Maybe because he was such a bossy jerk that he needed a whole game where his bossiness would be rewarded. He had to control everything after all. Dad was the sort of person who always had to be the boss, that was why he was going to take over the whole world, so of course he would love a game where all he did was build things. Seriously. He never went on quests or killed things or anything. He just built stuff over and over again. He sucked like that.

And Fukuda had better not have started to suck too.

Well he sort of….he had been so bossy on this trip. Telling him when to take baths and when to change clothes and when to eat and what to eat and how to eat and that he needed to pick up his stuff and that he shouldn't watch movies where people got their organs ripped out and eaten and stuff. Fukuda had been on his case for weeks now, weeks and weeks, but maybe this was just what he was like after all of this time together.

Even the last away mission hadn't taken this long.

And they weren't even anywhere near done with this. He had to do some stuff at the Seventh Division and while he was working then Sho could spend all the time with baby Mukai that he wanted to. They could watch her baby shows and play with paper towel roll holders and they could make socks talk and scribbled on pages and he could feed her…but not change her. That was what her new mom was for. He could maybe give her a bath again. She had liked bath time. He would be careful not to get any water in her eyes or hair or on her face. That was the worst…

Well for him.

She was not hm. She would never be awakened….even though they made awakened at the Seventh Division. If her new mom tried to put her in an awakening machine Sho would take her and run away with her. He didn't care if he was only ten. He didn't care if dad would hunt him down. He didn't care if he would be taking her from her mom. She did not need to be put through what he had bene put through. Even if she had no powers. Even if she barely even had any powers. She was not going to end up like him…and he would seriously hurt anyone who tried to hurt her.

He would keep his baby sister safe.

"Fukuda, can you at least tell me how much longer?" asked Sho. He got the feeling that he was being ignored. He got the feeling that Fukuda was just sitting there doing something stupid and pretending that Sho was just a mosquito buzzing in his ear or something. He got the feeling that Fukuda didn't want to talk to him or to be near him. He got the feeling that he had wished too hard, in those times when he was all alone in the night feeling small and scared and so painfully alone even if big sis was right there in the bed next to him, that Fukuda was his dad. For his entire life he had been wishing that Fukuda had been his dad and not dad. That Fukuda had been the one married to mom. That Fukuda was his dad and that…that….

Things that were not true.

But he was acting like dad now. He was sitting there and typing something and just….not looking at Sho or talking to him. This plane was so big. This plane was built for more than two people. They took the same kind of plane everywhere. This was where he and Fukuda would have been sitting if the others had been there. Minegishi would be using Shimazaki as a pillow, because they were just a jerk plain and simple, over there. Shibata would have been keeping Hatori calm in the seats across from them. On the other side would have been dad and big sis. Now it was just him and Fukuda….but it felt like it was just him. He was Sho and he felt all alone….

He needed to calm down.

He would be seeing big sis soon. He would be seeing her soon and then they would be able to play and have fun and…and they would have fun. It would be just like old times, Sho and Mukai, being brother and sister. But pretend. The only person missing was big sis but she couldn't have come even if she had wanted to. This was supposed to be a secret and she couldn't keep a secret even if her life had depended on it. So she couldn't know. Sho was alone in this secret. Sho and Fukuda….even though Fukuda was off in his own little world…and Sho was still there. He was still there with his face pressed against the cold glass of the window….

He didn't want to be alone.

Fine. If Fukuda was planning on ignoring him then Sho would make himself un-ignorable. Sho got up and thought about climbing out onto the wing of the plane….but then he thought about how stupid an idea that was. He couldn't teleport and Fukuda would totally notice the emergency door opening…and also he had no way of catching himself if he fell off because he couldn't fly from this height and at this speed….probably. He had never tested it out before.

He didn't go out onto the wing of the plane.

But he did go across to sit next to Fukuda. Fukuda didn't notice him. He was typing something out and then erasing it and then typing it out again. He always hit the keyboard way too hard when he typed. Dad did that too. Fukuda had said that it was because he and dad had learned how to type on old mechanical keyboards and typewriters. You had to strike the keys hard in those days, Fukuda had said, and he had never broken the habit. Even though it was way too loud, and sort of annoying, he hadn't broken the habit….but then he went and told Sho that cursing was a bad habit and that he needed to break it.

The hell with that.

Sho was good at cursing. Shimazaki had told him so and Shimazaki had never told him one lie in their entire friendship. He said that lairs were boring. He said that telling people lies could be fun, like when they told Hatori that they had put a poisonous snake in his bed when it had only been a garden snake, but most of the time the truth was much more interesting than fiction. Sho knew that Shimazaki had never lied to him and never about anything as serious as telling him that he was good at cursing. He was.

He was the best at cursing. The fucking best.

He thought about cursing to get Fukuda's attention. Telling him to type like a normal fucking person. Telling him to stop ignoring him like a goddamned mother fucking cock sucker. Sho had no idea what cock sucker meant but he knew that it would get Fukuda's attention. Fukuda always turned white when he said that, when he said that someone or something was a cock sucker, and Shimazaki had always said that there was no greater joy than freaking people out.

He was smart like that.

He was smart and fun and funny and he was always up for something no matter how crazy. Big sis said that he acted like a crazy person and she was right. He said that when he had been very young he had vowed that he would live his life as freely as possible. He would do whatever he wanted to whenever he wanted to and he would live without any consequences, either, but that part was harder, he had said. Consequences were why he was in Claw. Well he was in Claw because he had let his dad die, because he had done a lot of drinking and smoking and stuff, and also because he had done gross stuff with a lot of people that he had not been allowed to do that stuff with. He had done all of that and now he could never go back.

And Sho knew that he should have been sad that Shimazaki had been kicked out of his yakuza family and all but he was happy, selfishly happy, because if Shimazaki had never been kicked out then he and Sho would never have made friends.

Sho felt it again, the swimming feeling in his stomach. He got this whenever he thought about Shimazaki. He got this feeling in his stomach and…and he wanted….he wanted something but he didn't know what it was. He wanted to be near Shimazaki but also…more. He sometimes had this weird feeling that he just had to be next to him. Like he wanted Shimazaki to pick him up or something. Pick him up and hold him close…and also kiss him…and that was when he woke up. He woke up after that part of the dream or daydream and did something. Anything. Sometimes he played videogames, sometimes he watched TV, sometimes he jumped on the bed, and sometimes he drew….but drawing pictures could be very dangerous. Sometimes his pencil had a mind of it's own. Sometimes he drew Shimazaki. Sometimes he drew….well he drew a lot of things…

He would not be drawing now.

He needed to stop thinking about Shimazaki so he decided to be nosy. He knew that he was not supposed to just go around looking at other people's screens but he did a lot of things that he was not supposed to do. He leaned over, Fukuda was too busy typing on his laptop like he was mad at it to notice, and he started to read what Fukuda was writing…

And he didn't get past the first two words.

"Dear Masami…..?" said Sho quietly. He must have been seeing it wrong. That said Masami. He knew that those three characters, the ones for true and fine and beauty, Ma Sa Mi. Masami. Mom. That was mom's name. He leaned in closer. Maybe he needed to get his eyes fixed. That was mom's name. Fukuda had written down mom's name…and not much else because he kept on restarting….but no matter how close he looked the characters didn't change.

Ma. True.

Sa. Fine.

Mi. Beauty.

Sho knew his own mom's given name. That had been one of the first given names he had ever been able to write. Dad had taught it to him, actually, when he had been little. Mom's name meant true, fine, beauty because that was what her parents had wanted for her. Parents have their kids names for the things that they wanted them to be. That was why he was called Sho with the character for leader. That was why big sis was called Shigeko with the characters for nurturing child. People's names were a reflection of who you were.

So did Fukuda mean 'guy who slammed a laptop shit in your face like a jerk'?

"What the fuck!?" shouted Sho. He jumped back into his seat. Fukuda had slammed his laptop shut and now his aura was flaring and he was breathing heavy….and if anyone had the right to be upset it was Sho! That had been HIS mom that Fukuda had been writing to! His mom! The mom who was his and no one else's! Well she was also big sis' mom….but she was his mom and not Fukuda's!

"Sho! Don't just lean over and look at people's private screens like that! It's impolite!" said Fukuda as he popped some ear plugs out….and THAT was why he had been ignoring Sho….so he was a friend ignorer and a mother…email….writer….guy….

He was a cock sucker that was what he was!

"Fuck you! A thousand times fuck you! You're a mother fucking mother email writing cock sucker!" shouted Sho. He stood up on his seat. He didn't care if his shoes were on the seat and people were supposed to sit there and he was getting it dirty and stuff….he didn't care! He just cared that…that…that FUKUDA had been emailing MOM!

His own mother….

She had been gone for so long…and the whole time….the WHOLE MOTHER FUCKING TIME Fukuda'd had her EMAIL ADDRESS! Like…..like….what!? Why hadn't he told anyone!? Mom could have been back with them! All Fukuda had to do was tell Hatori to tell dad where mom's emails were coming from, he could tell with his powers, and then they could have gone and picked her up and then…and then everything would have been better! Just like it had been before! She could have been back with them and then…and then they could have pretended that she had never left…and they could have gone back to the Castle…and they could have pretended that she had never left….

But Fukuda had been keeping this from him...from big sis….from dad…..from EVERYONE!

"Language!" said Fukuda. Sho didn't mean to do what he did next. He didn't mean to pull his fist back, he hadn't meant to make one at all, and he certainly hadn't meant to send his fist flying right into Fukuda's face. He hadn't meant to do that at all but he had done that and then Fukuda's laptop fell to the ground and he had a mark on his face….which healed…

And then he grabbed Sho's arm so he couldn't hit him again.

But Sho had another arm and this one also had a fist at the end and that fist also made contact with Fukuda's face. He knew that if big sis had been there she would have been so upset with him…he knew that she would have been telling him that hitting people was wrong. He knew that if baby sis had been watching him that she would have probably thought that hitting was alright because she was the baby sis and he was the big brother and if he did something then she would automatically think that it was alright.

He needed to stop.

He forced himself to stop. There was no fun in fighting someone who didn't fight back, Shimazaki had said, and if he had been there then he would have said…he would have told Sho to keep on hitting Fukuda because he liked a good fight and also he didn't like Fukuda for some reason….unless Fukuda was secretly emailing his mom too….like if he could email people from this side and his emails would get to the other side….or something….Sho didn't know!

He just didn't know…..

"Sho. Stop it. I can explain….well I could explain if you would just stop this. You are acting like a child right now and I need you to stop." Said Fukuda. He was talking like…Sho had never heard him talking like that before…but then again he had a right to talk like this. Like he was mad at Sho. Sho had hit him in the face a bunch of times after all….but for good reason! He hadn't just gone nuts! He had a good reason to hit Fukuda!

"I AM a child! I'm ten!" said Sho

"Then act like it and stop trying to hit me. Stop screaming and stop trying to hit me." Said Fukuda

"No!" said Sho

"Stop it and let me explain!" said Fukuda

"How the hell are you going to explain that you were writing MY MOM an email!? My own fucking mother fucking mother!" said Sho. He didn't know if he had been insulting Fukuda or mom then but he didn't care. He just needed words that could show how he felt inside. He felt…he felt like Fukuda had kicked him in the chest until his heart came out through his nose….and he needed words to show how he felt!

"Sho….stop cursing." Said Fukuda. He let go of Sho's arms and sat back in his seat. Sho pulled his arms into his shirt so that he would stop hurting Fukuda…even though he deserved it. Even though Fukuda had been keeping a very big secret and….and he'd just….he'd betrayed Sho. He knew what this feeling was. This was like when he had heard Shimazaki doing that stuff with Minegishi but….different…and also somehow WORSE.

"Why? Why should I listen to you when you've been keeping this a secret from me? Huh? Huh!?" asked Sho

"Because….you haven't let me explain. Sho your mother…she loves you and….and the thing she did…all the things she did….were because…." Said Fukuda. What the ever loving fucking fuck did that fucking bitch…bastard because he was a guy…think that he knew about mom?! Huh?! Mom was not his mom, she was Sho's mom, and Sho knew his own mother! Fukuda…Fukuda had been able to talk to her the WHOLE TIME! So maybe….maybe….maybe he knew mom better now….

Or something.

"You've been able to talk to mom this whole time….the whole time….and you never said anything…." Said Sho. He could feel tears coming from his eyes. He felt one run down his cheek and then onto his shirt. He reached his hands up through the neck hole of his shirt and wiped his eyes. Fukuda pulled his sleeve down over his hand and reached over to dry Sho's tears. Sho moved back out of his range. Fukuda could have reached farther but he didn't. He just sat back in his chair and sighed.

"Sho….sometimes things are more complicated than they appear to be at first." Said Fukuda. He had his head in his hands. Sho wiped more of his tears. He didn't care that he was stretching out the neck hole and that big sis would be mad at him for doing that. Mom would have been mad at him too…and maybe Fukuda should put that in the email…the email to mom….and then maybe she would come back…if only to tell him not to mess up his clothes….

"What's complicated? You've been talking to my mom….you betrayed me. You knew….you knew how to talk to mom this whole time…and you….you betrayed me. You're a traitor. You're a traitor and you belong in a traitor hole….you traitor." Said Sho. He stared at Fukuda. He stared at Fukuda the way dad stared at him. With all of his focus…with all of his angry focus. Because he was angry. Fukuda…he was a traitor. Fukuda who he had loved more than his own dad for all of these years….he was a traitor….and traitors rotted in traitor holes.

"Sho…you would really throw me in a traitor hole?" asked Fukuda. He was scared then, good, he should have been. He had been keeping secrets, a big secret, not some little secret like he bit his toe nails or used girl shampoo, a big secret about mom. About how he had been getting into contact with her. That was….that was the sort of thing a traitor would have done….and traitors rotted in traitor holes.

"Yes. You know how to talk to my mom. You're been keeping a big secret from me, the biggest secret, and that's something that a traitor would do…so that means that you deserve to be in a traitor hole." Said Sho

"Sho…that's very hurtful." Said Fukuda. Sho didn't care. Sho didn't care if he made him break down and cry like baby sis when her bottle ran out. He didn't care how bad he made Fukuda feel. Sho felt bad…he felt so bad…and he wanted to make Fukuda feel WORSE.

"So is what you've been doing! You've been talking to my mom behind my back. You know where she is!" said Sho. He didn't care if he was talking too loud or if his aura was flaring or if Fukuda was getting scared of him. He wanted Fukuda to be scared of him. He had been keeping….keeping this secret…this huge secret from him…like it had been….ben nothing.

"Sho-" said Fukuda

"How could you just keep something this big from me? Do you…do you know….I haven't seen her in so long! I haven't seen her or spoken to her or…or anything! And she's my MOM! And you've been talking to her this whole time like it's been nothing at all! Like…like…like you've been….like you've been talking to someone else…someone who's just like everyone else….but my mom….she's not like anyone else in the whole world…because she's my mom…and she's gone. She's my mom and she's gone and I just…I want my mom back! I want my mom back and you've been keeping her from me! You've known where she's been this whole time and you've been keeping this from me for….for how long?! How long have you known where my mother is!? What the FUCK is my MOTHER?!" screamed Sho. Fukuda put a hand on his shoulder. Sho pushed it off so hard he wouldn't have been surprised if he ripped his arm from his socket.

"I don't have the first clue where your mother is." Said Fukuda. Sho narrowed his eyes. Of course he knew. He had been emailing mom for…well he didn't know how long this had been going on for but he knew that it would not have been any trouble at all for Fukuda to ask her for her new address.

"Liar." Said Sho. He hated being lied to…and now Fukuda was lying to his friend….and he had claimed that he and Sho were friends…but now he was lying. Lying was bad enough but lying to a friend was even more terrible than usual lying.

"No, I'm not." Said Fukuda. That was exactly what a liar would have said. A liar would never have said that he was lying. That was the point of being a liar, for people to always think that you're telling the truth even though you were lying like a big, fat liar!

"Yes you are." Said Sho. He kept his eyes narrowed and his aura focused. Fukuda had been lying before, for years, and he was lying now. Just lies on top of lies on top of lies…like a big, fat, mother fucking, mother emailing, liar!

"No, I'm not." Said Fukuda. He was still trying to be calm but Sho could see the cracks in his aura. He could see how Fukuda was grabbing his knees so hard that his knuckles were turning white. He could see how Fukuda's nails were digging into his pants and how his aura was trying to flare….and stuff….and he was a liar because if he hadn't been a liar then he wouldn't have had to try and make himself calm like that!

"Are too!" Yelled Sho. He yelled so loud that his throat hurt. Spit flew out of his mouth and onto Fukuda…and maybe that had been the last straw…because now Fukuda was letting his aura flare. His aura was flaring and…and Sho was not afraid.

"No! I am not a liar! I….I have no clue where your mother is. I swear on my life that I have no clue where your mother is." Said Fukuda. His hands went wrong being fists to just being normal hands. He was leaning back in his seat now. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Sho saw….Sho saw what looked like a tear collect in the corner of his eye…or maybe that was a spit glob…either way Sho felt like a jerk…because even if Fukuda had been a lying betrayer….Sho had still hit him and spat at him…and that had been a lot of very jerky stuff to do to someone who he loved and who loved him.

"Then…then why are you emailing her…..behind my back…and stuff…?" asked Sho through a sniffle.

"Sho….these emails…they don't go anywhere. Your mother…she hasn't checked this email address in years. She hasn't replied to one of my messages since…since she left." Said Fukuda quietly.

"Then….they why are you even sending them? If she can't read them then what's even the point?" asked Sho. Fukuda…..he was telling the truth….but the truth made no sense. Mom….mom never emailed him back…..because she was gone.

"Because…because I miss her. I miss her and when I write these out….I just…I feel better. I write these when…when there's a lot going on in my life…or yours…and your sister's. I like to pretend that she can read them. That she's out there somewhere reading them and thinking about me…thinking about all of us." Said Fukuda. Sho sniffled again. Fukuda missed her too. He missed her and…and Sho missed her…and big sis missed her…and maybe it was like how he missed big sis. How he would wake up in the middle of the night, roll over, and not see her there. How he would bring his phone over with his powers and just…send her text messages but delete them…or how he would just…hold his phone and pretend that he was talking to her….and stuff. He couldn't call her. He was not a baby. He was not the useless baby that dad said he was. He could do an away mission. He was not a baby….even though he did feel like one sometimes….and so did Fukuda…and that made him feel….sort of….better. At least a little bit better….because at least he wasn't the only baby on that plane.

"That….that makes sense. Like how sometimes…sometimes when I wake up and I'm lonely I pretend that big sis is there….even though she's not." Said Sho

"It's not quite the same." Said Fukuda with a dry laugh. The kind of laugh that had no happiness or joy in it at all.

"How do you figure?" asked Sho. Missing someone was missing someone…..and missing someone made you a baby…so they were both babies together. Right?

"Because you can call your sister whenever you want to. Your mother….not a day goes by that I don't wish that I could just…call her." said Fukuda. Sho frowned. He missed mom like that too…but he had come from her. He had been her son for most of his life. He loved his mom and it made sense that he missed her that much…and he knew that big sis missed her too even though she knew that she was not supposed to miss their mom and stuff….and also dad missed mom too because if he hadn't missed her at least a little bit then he wouldn't have made the rule about not talking about her. He would have just not cared at all….or maybe not because he didn't know how to love anyone other than himself….himself or big sis….

"Why?" asked Sho

"Why what?" asked Fukuda

"Why do you miss my mom so much? I mean she's my mom and I miss her…and she's big sis' mom and she misses her…and she's dad's wife but he doesn't know how to love anyone other than himself and big sis….so why do you miss her so much?" asked Sho

"Because…she was a very good friend to me…and I cared about her a lot. It's painful having someone you love leave you…and you know that more than I do. You lost your mother….I just lost….a very good friend." Said Fukuda

"Oh…I guess….it makes sense…but don't tell dad that we were talking about mom." Said Sho. Dad would put them in a traitor hole together if he had heard even a word of this conversation…and it wasn't fair. He couldn't even talk about his own mom…but dad was dad…and nobody argued with dad about anything ever….unless they were big sis….

"I wouldn't dream of it. I know how he is about her…and you know how he is, too. Please don't tell your dad about me having had been friends with your mom. Your dad…he can't tell love from…from wanting to possess someone. He never let her have friends because he wanted to be her everything….and that's unhealthy. When you love someone you want them to be happy….and I know that if he knew that your mom and I were friends then…then he would get upset." Said Fukuda

"I get it…dad would get mad because he only wanted mom to be friends with him." said Sho. Dad was the same way with big sis. She had to be his only friend and she had to spend her whole Sunday with him and she had to sleep in the same bed as him and watch TV with him and go places with him…and stuff. Yeah, Sho knew how his dad could be.

"Exactly. So you should keep this to yourself. Ok? Don't tell your friends or your sister, ok? You know what your dad would do to me…and it would be worse than a traitor hole." Said Fukuda. Sho knew what he meant. Dad….he did all sorts of things to traitors…but it made no sense for dad to be mad at this. He and Fukuda had been friends before, when they had been kids, and then it would have made sense for dad to have wanted his wife and his best friend to be friends. Like how he wanted Emmy and big sis to be friends…or maybe it was like how he didn't want Shimazaki and big sis to be friends….and stuff. Yeah, he could see it now. How upset dad would have been to know that he hadn't been invited to all of those dinners and movie nights and sleepovers and stuff.

"OK, I'll keep to myself. I get why dad would be upset. You and mom were having dinner and hanging out with me and mom and having sleep overs and stuff back when me and big sis were little." Said Sho. He hadn't known that Fukuda had cared so much about mom…but he had. He had cared so much that his normally calm aura was slamming into Sho's now like it was trying to run away.

"You….remember all of that?" asked Fukuda. He looked so sad now…and Sho didn't blame him. Dad was no kind of friend to him now and he hadn't been any kind of friend to him then, too, so it made sense that Fukuda would have picked mom to be his new best friend…and it made sense that Fukuda would have been sad to see his best friend gone.

"Yeah. You and mom would have sleepover sometimes where you would hang out all night and jump on the bed and stuff. I remember." Said Sho. Those must have been fun. Mom had been sort of sad and tired all the time, sick, he remembered but Fukuda had made her feel better when he had been around. They had done friend stuff. Maybe it was like no matter how sad he was feeling being with Shimazaki could always make him feel better. That was what best friends were for.

"Sho….don't ever tell your dad about that. Ever. Or he will kill me. I am not exaggerating. If you ever breathe a word of that to your father he will murder me with his own two hands and then you won't have me anymore. Do you want that?" asked Fukuda. He had Sho by both shoulders now and he was staring into his eyes….and Sho didn't get it. He wasn't stupid. He knew what dad did to people he didn't like.

"I'm not an idiot and I'm not a traitor. You know that I don't want dad to kill you. I can keep a secret. God!" said Sho as he shoved Fukuda's hands off of him. It was hard because his arms were still in his shirt…and he put them back through his sleeve holes.

"I never said that you were….and you're right. You can keep a secret. You're old enough to keep my secrets…and I'll keep yours." Said Fukuda

"Well, duh, we'd both get in trouble if dad knew that we were talking about mom." Said Sho

"Not only that, I'll keep any and all of your secrets. Ok? Just….I will never betray you. Everything that I've done, and everything that I will ever do, has been and will be for you. Ok Sho? Remember. It's always for you." Said Fukuda. Sho knew why he was saying that. Accusing someone of betrayal….he had gone very far. Too far. He knew that being a traitor was the worst thing that you could be. That was why traitors rotted in traitor holes and were used for experiments and other stuff. Traitors were the worst sort of people….and he had accused Fukuda of being the worst sort of person.

He had fucked up.

But he could fix this. He got up on his knees and leaned over. He didn't care that his dirty shoes were getting all over the seat. He didn't care how stretched out the neck hole of his shirt was. He didn't care about any of that. He just cared about leaning over and hugging Fukuda as best as he could. About making this better.

Because he had fucked up.

"Fukuda….you're not a traitor…and I'm sorry that I called you that. I'm sorry that I called you a traitor and that I said that you betrayed me. You didn't and you never will. I'm sorry about all the things that I said and did." Said Sho quietly. He felt Fukuda's arms around him after a delay. Fukuda was holding him close. He was holding him close and rubbing his back….and Sho held him close right back…

"Sho….it's ok. It's ok. It's….it's always going to be ok. You and me….we're ok. We're always going to be ok so let's….let's just put all of this behind us. You're going to see your sister again. Aren't you excited? Think about that. Think about…about her and how much you love her. How we're going back to Japan. Aren't you excited?" asked Fukuda. Sho nodded. He nodded into Fukuda's shirt and then he pulled away and nodded like normal.

"Yeah…I am. I'm excited." Said Sho. He was excited. He was going to see his baby sister…his pretend baby sister…again. He was going to see her again and they were going to spend time together and…and if she had forgotten him then she would…she would never forget him again. She would always know that she had a brother and his name was Sho. She had a brother named Sho and he loved her and even if they couldn't be together he always wanted to be with her…and then one day when she got older, old enough to write, she could email him…and he would email her right back….

And he was so excited for when that day would come.


	293. Sugar Cubes

Mob considered herself to be a very good friend.

She was always nice to her friends, always thought of them, and was always there when they needed her. She was always there to protect Hatori when Shimazaki messed with him, she was always there when Shibata needed a taste tester, she was always there when Minegishi needed someone to hang out with, and she was always there when Shimazaki needed someone to help him clean out his eye sockets.

Well, ok, this part was new.

She helped him out in other ways, before, like how she told him what was in boxes and cans or like how she rolled his joins from him because she had better telekinesis than him and tiny fingers and stuff. She didn't mind being helpful, she was a good friend like that, and she wanted to keep being a good friend…so of course if Shimazaki needed help cleaning out his eye sockets she would agree to help him. She was a good friend like that.

And, besides, this wasn't that gross….or gross at all…because Shimazaki was her friend and she cared about him.

"Do I have any more eye goo?" asked Shimazaki as he finished cleaning out the outside of his eyes. He could sense Mob sitting there on the edge of the tub. She was watching him. She was watching him quietly like she was watching TV or something. Sho would have been talking about something. Some fun idea that he had or something that had happened to him or just….something. Mob was just sitting there quietly holding his eye cleaner and watching him.

God, he missed Sho.

Her aura was pulled close around her. He didn't get it. Sho loved watching him do this, he thought it was cool, but he was getting the vibe from Mob that she wanted to be anywhere but there….and probably not anywhere fun, either. It was hot where they were and when it was hot out that meant that there was fun to be had! They could catch some birds and tie strings to their legs or they could take fish from people's fish tanks and put them in the ocean or they could take fish from the ocean and put them in people's fish tanks or they could dig a hole and live in it or they could throw rocks at people and run away or they could throw rocks at people and frame other people for throwing the rocks or…or other such things. Other such Sho things….

God, he really missed Sho.

Not in a weird way. It was really more of a 'he's the most exciting out of all the people I work with and also my job is to guard him but since he's gone I have no one to guard so therefore I have no job and no purpose in life' way. Sho always had something fun that he wanted to. Even if he had been beyond lovesick lately he was still fun. Mob was fun too but in a 'let's get high and chill and listen to music' sort of way. He didn't feel like being chill. He'd been chill for weeks now. He wanted to do something fun! Something Sho would have liked!

And also he really did not feel like going through the tedious weekly multi-step eye socket cleaning process.

"No, you're fine. Are you done now?" asked Mob. She didn't…dislike….it when he had his eyes opened. He did that sometimes even when he wasn't cleaning his eyes. He blinked when he got startled and he sort of half opened his eyes when he was really relaxed and stuff….and also he opened his eyes and stared at people….and this was more like when he stared at people. She didn't dislike it when he did this but she didn't really like it either. Not like Sho. He thought that it was cool when Shimazaki opened his eyes and also he was usually the one to help Shimazaki do this, not her.

But she was there and Sho was not.

Sho was off on his and Fukuda's away mission. That left her as the only Suzuki around. Well the only kid Suzuki. Dad was off doing work stuff, she didn't know what, and Shibata and Hatori had gone with him. Minegishi had their own work stuff to do and Shimazaki was supposed to be guarding her, dad had said, so that was how she had found herself sitting there in Shimazaki's bathroom helping him out like Sho usually would have.

"Not even close. Here's the part where you hand me the eye cleaner and tell me when it starts to run clear." Said Shimazaki. He held out his hand. It seemed to take her a minute to understand what he was asking. Sho never took a minute…but he was Sho and she was not Sho. She was an entirely different person from her little brother….but there must have been some similarities? Right? They were still part of the same family, they were all Suzuki's kids, but they were so different…but then again neither of them was a thing like their father so genetics were weird like that, he supposed.

"Um…what do you mean by runs clear?" asked Mob as she handed him his eye cleaner. She did it with her powers. She didn't much want to move from her spot. If she got up then she might have left the room and it would have been very rude of her to leave the room while her friend needed her. She was not going to be rude like that…even if this was just a little bit…not entirely not gross….

"I'm going to flush out my eye sockets and when the cleaner runs clear then I know that the job is done. After that I have a second thing that I have to put in and then I have to let that sit for a while and then flush that out and then I have to keep my eyes closed for an hour." Said Shimazaki. He'd been doing this since he had been a kid, since he had been old enough to do it himself, and it never stopped being tedious and boring and annoying. Hard, too, well without help. Dear old dad had decided at some point that mom wasn't allowed to help him with this because it was making him weaker than he already was….bastard….well that didn't matter now because he was a corpse and what was weaker than a corpse? Well a skeleton, and maybe he was a skeleton by now, Shimazaki didn't know. Maybe next time he was in Japan he and Sho could grab some shovels and exhume his father's dead body.

Yeah. That would be a good time.

"But….you can't see." Said Mob

"Well spotted." Said Shimazaki

"No, sorry, that came out wrong. I meant that you can't see if it runs clear so how can you tell if you're done?" asked Mob

"It's harden on my own. When I was a kid I used to go by feel but honestly it's just much father with someone else's help." Said Shimazaki

"Um….maybe Minegishi would be a better help…they'll be back….I don't know when they'll be back but I think that…that they would be more used to this." said Mob. She did not want to watch that…and she was so selfish for not wanting to watch that. Her friend needed her help and now she was just going to run away in his hour of need. She was the most selfish person in the world. She should have been happy to….to watch…that….like Sho always was. He was always very helpful to Shimazaki because they were friends and now Sho was gone and she was the only friend that Shimazaki had…and stuff.

"Nah. I don't want to wait that long. I want to get this done with and then….I don't know. Do something else. What do you want to do today?" asked Shimazaki as he felt the unpleasantly cool sensation of liquid in his eye sockets. Having someone else hold the bottle to warm it up helped but, yeah, this was not pleasant at all. He kept his head tipped back as he filled his eye sockets and let the stuff swish around for a while. He hadn't wished to be sighted, not in a while, but he did wish that he had eyes so he wouldn't have to deal with this all the time. He could see just fine, mostly, on his own with his powers…but this was just annoying.

"Um…..we can….do…stuff…" said Mob. She knew that he wanted to do Sho stuff with her…but she didn't much want to do Sho stuff. She had never liked climbing trees, she didn't like that people could see up her dress when she did that, and she also didn't like to bother wild animals because they got mad and bit you and stuff. She also didn't like pranking people like Shimazaki and Sho did because it just seemed sort of…mean. She also didn't much like building forts anymore. She had liked that more when she had been little but now she was bigger now and the whole fort thing was kind of boring…

But she would do whatever Shimazaki wanted to because he was her friend.

"Want to catch some birds and then tie strings around their legs and tie the other ends to ourselves?" asked Shimazaki

"Um…..won't that be bad for the birds?" asked Mob. Also they would get their heads pecked on like the time that Sho had stolen that bird's nest.

"Yeah, probably." Said Shimazaki. It wasn't like they'd be killing them. They'd let the birds go when they were done. They weren't cruel. They were just going to have some fun, that was all, and tying birds to strings and then just having birds tied to you wasn't a crime….and if it was now was not the time where he suddenly developed respect for the law.

"In that case maybe we can do something else." Said Mob. She hoped that his next suggestion involved doing something that didn't bother the animals. She liked animals, not as much as Sho did but nobody liked animals as much as Sho did, and she knew not to bother them. They didn't like that. Mom had said so when she and Sho had been little and they had been chasing ducks and geese in the park and stuff.

"Ok….want to free some fish from people's aquariums? We can catch them and let them go in the ocean." Said Shimazaki. She'd like that. She was all about helping out the little guy and doing the right thing and shit like that. Yeah! She'd be all over that!

"Is…the ocean by us is the Pacific Ocean….and that ocean might not be the fish's original home…and also that's stealing and stealing is wrong even if it's to set fish free." Said Mob. She knew that fish lived in the ocean but she had seen enough documentaries with dad to know that not every ocean was the same. Even the different parts of the ocean housed different kinds of fish. She knew that if someone had taken her from her home and put her in a new place she would have been sad. Like if someone looked at her and saw that she was Asian but then sent her to China she would have been sad….and also she would never understand why people thought that China and Japan were the same…and also why so many people seemed to think that she looked Chinese.

"Fine. How about we go to the ocean, catch some fish, and then put them in people's aquariums?" asked Shimazaki

"But…then the fish would be sad because we took them away from their families and put them in small aquariums….and that would be mean." Said Mob. She had always thought of aquariums and being very mean places. She knew that she would have been sad, anyway, if someone took her from her family and put her behind glass. Dad said that aquariums were pointless, not mean, but he didn't like them either. He said that unless you were planning on eating an animal then there was no point in keeping it. Sho thought that aquariums were neat because you could see fish and also nice because the fish could be safe in their home. Mob didn't know what her mom's opinion on aquariums would have been. She hadn't thought to ask while she'd still had the chance.

"Tough crowd. Ok, how about this. We throw rocks at people and-" said Shimazaki. Come on, who could say 'no' to throwing rocks at people? Not hard enough to kill them, obviously, but hard enough for them to notice that someone had thrown a rock at them. Honestly. Mob was such a weird kid sometimes….maybe it was because she was a girl. Yeah, he hadn't ever hung out with many girls when he'd been her age. Not platonically anyway.

"I don't want to hurt any people. That's wrong too. Hurting people isn't fun." Said Mob. Boys. She would never understand boys sometimes. She liked them, she liked the way they looked and also how they were sometimes really nice to her even if she didn't know them, but she didn't understand them. Sometimes she wondered how people could ever like each other enough to be boyfriend and girlfriend let alone get married. Maybe that was why there were people like Hatori and stuff. It was probably a lot easier to understand someone who was the same as you than it was to understand someone who was completely different.

"Mob…you're killing me here." Said Shimazaki with a groan. What were they supposed to do? Sit in the yard and feel the ants going by? Sit there and feel the ants go down into their little ant cities and live their ant lives not knowing that he and Mob would be up there with sugar for them if they were good and a hose for them if they were bad. Sort of like how god worked if his paltry understanding of religion was correct. They would be the masters of the ant's lives and their deaths and…and Mob probably wouldn't want to be an ant God either.

"Oh. I didn't mean to. I just….I like to hang out with you and I like being your friend but I just don't like to do things like that." Said Mob. She was being selfish and she knew it but…but she just wasn't that sort of person. She wasn't Sho. Sho was Sho and he did Sho things. Mob was Mob, well she was Shigeko, and she did Mob things. Also she was a girl and girls were different from boys. That was why none of the things that Shimazaki suggested sounded even the least bit fun.

"Are you sure you and your brother are related?" asked Shimazaki with a shake of his head…which may have been a bad idea because now he had eye cleaner on his shirt. Great. That stuff stank like a hospital….or even worse. He didn't know. He tried not to get this stuff on him if he could avoid it.

"Yes. Me and Sho both came out of our mom's stomach." Said Mob. She knew that they were very different, they didn't look alike and even their auras were different, but they were still from mom and dad. She was more like dad and he was more like mom but they were brother and sister just the same. They were Suzuki's the both of them.

"Well then maybe there was a mix up at the hospital." Said Shimazaki as he leaned forwards and let the cleaner drip out of his eyes. How were those two kids related again? He wished he knew what Suzuki looked like. Then he would have been able to compare his kids to him and see which one the hospital switched around….or maybe his wife had just been running around on him. That would explain the differences between the kids…but that also made no sense. Who the hell wanted to be eskimo brothers with Suzuki?

"There wasn't. I'm a Suzuki and he's a Suzuki. We're just different people and like to do different things…and stuff. I'm sorry that I can't be more like my brother…but I can hang out with you and stuff as long as we don't do any stuff like that….sorry." said Mob. She wasn't Sho and if she tried to be Sho then it would have just been awkward. She didn't know how to be Sho, she only knew how to be herself, and she wished that Sho could have been there to hang out with Shimazaki in all the ways that he wanted. Then he could have been happy.

"Want to smoke and chill?" asked Shimazaki with a sigh. She was Mob, not Sho, and he did different things with her than he did with Sho….and that was just the way that things were between them. He didn't much feel like being chill, he had been chill for a while, but she always felt like being chill so it looked liked they were going to have a chill sort of day today. Great.

"I would like that a lot." Said Mob. There. That was something that they could both enjoy. Finally he had a good idea.

"Well then tell me if this shit comes out clear and then go to my room and start rolling joints if it does." Said Shimazaki. Well chill wasn't always a bad thing. He could use this time to teach her about good music. She was always listening to soundtracks of all things. Not even proper albums. No. He'd have to show her what music could be. He'd start with the Beatles, of course, and then maybe he'd move to something that she'd be able to understand. She was Japanese, he was Japanese, so they could try…city pop? Yeah, she was a chill person. She'd like city pop. Yeah, this could still be a good day even if they had to spend the day being chill.

"You don't have any more pens?" asked Mob. She knew that she smelled bad when she actually smoked…and she didn't want Minegishi to know that she had been smoking without them. They might be upset with them…or with Shimazaki for letting her smoke…and also she didn't want Minegishi to be upset with him. They would never get together and get married and have babies if Minegishi didn't start to like him back.

"Nope. I'm out until I get more." Said Shimazaki. He didn't know anyone here. He knew people mostly in Japan and on that side of the world. Well whatever, he just liked those because then he could smoke wherever the hell he wanted to.

"When will that be?" asked Mob. She was out of pens too. That wasn't good because….dad could be sort of…stressful…sometimes. She had been worried about Sho and dad had been…dad…and she had run out of pens…but she was ok. She just…had to be ok.

"No fucking clue. Why? You don't want to smoke?" asked Shimazaki. Well then if she didn't want to smoke they could get so drunk they forgot their own names. That could be fun. Maybe he had more coke, too. She liked coke.

"No, I do. I just smell bad when I do. It doesn't smell as much when I smoke the pens." Said Mob

"Well then we'll open a window or something. Sorry but I only have the stuff Toshi made me so, yeah, you'd better get to rolling." Said Shimazaki

"Ok…how many should I do?" asked Mob. Spending the whole day smoking and hanging out….this would be a good day. Well just so long as Minegishi didn't find out that she had overdone it…and she knew that she would overdo it. It had been a while and she knew that she had to have moderation but Shimazaki said that she was the only person who knew her limits. So she would be fine and she wouldn't end up like Hatori at the party…but Minegishi didn't need to know about this.

"As many as you can." Said Shimazaki. He wanted this to become one of those days that was just a blur of noise and smell and sound and feel and taste. Yeah. This could still be a very good day. He dipped his head forward over the sink. He could feel Mob's aura recoil from him…and, yeah, she was not Sho. He knew that this was disgusting, even Toshi had told him that this was disgusting and Toshi had done a number of things to him, and had allowed him to do a number of disgusting things to them, and even they thought that watching him do this was disgusting…..

God, he missed Sho.

"Ok….and also it's clear….so I'm just…going to go now." Said Mob. She hadn't wanted to watch that but she had watched that and she had done her part to help and now she was still going to be helpful…just helpful in another place. Helpful in another place and in another way. She loved Shimazaki, as a friend of course, but she….she had just….she had helped and now she was helping in another way.

And that was ok.

She wasn't Sho, and she couldn't be Sho, and she couldn't help him out as Sho but she could help hum out as Mob and…and that was good too. Sho couldn't help him out like this. He wasn't allowed to. She had to do stuff like this because her control wasn't very good. She wasn't Sho. Even after he had Awakened, right afterwards, his control had been nearly perfect. She still lost control all the time. Usually in little ways like making things float or messing with the lights but she could always lose control in bigger ways, too. She could always lose control and do something….something big. Something big and terrible and….stuff….

But she wouldn't do that.

She had no reason to lose control anyway. Things were great for her! They really were. Sho was away with Fukuda and she knew that he was happy. He loved spending time with Fukuda. They were really good friends and also Sho was away from dad and she knew that dad and Sho didn't get along….because dad didn't like him and stuff. Dad loved him, he must have, but he just didn't like him very much…so Sho was happy. If Sho was happy then she was happy. She loved him and when you loved someone then you were happy when they were happy. That was love.

She was happy because Sho was happy and that was enough to keep her from losing control.

Well it should have been but it wasn't. That was why she was in Shimazaki's room, sitting at his desk, going through his drawers. She made sure not to mess anything up. She knew that if she messed things up then he would have trouble finding them and then she wouldn't have been a very good fiend at all. She was a good friend, she had to be, so she was careful to only take out the things that she needed. The bottom draw at the side had the gallon bag and the grinder was in the top drawer. It was under some sugar cubes. She didn't why he had a bag of sugar cubes but she knew not to disturb them in case he had trouble finding them again later.

She got to work.

She got to work as best as she could. It went faster when she used her powers. They were both telekinetic but she could do fine movements. He couldn't. He could push things and pull them and break them but he couldn't do fine movements like this. He couldn't pull out stems and seeds, and save the seeds too, and then grind everything up until it tuned into green powder. Well almost like green powder. More like flour. Sort of like flour or maybe….powdered sugar? But that was still a powder. Either way, not matter what it seemed the most like, she was getting this done. The next part would be to roll it up and she had to do that by hand. She was good at doing this part by hand because her fingers were long and thin and her hands were smaller than his.

She liked being helpful.

She could be helpful like this. Sho…Sho was not allowed to do this and if he showed Sho how to do this then she would be very mad at him. Sho didn't need to do this so therefore there was no reason to teach him. His control was good enough as it was. He didn't need help like she did. He was too little for all of this. She knew that she had been littler than him when she had started, she had been eight and he was ten now, but…but she was not going to let her little brother do stuff like this. He was just a kid and kids were not supposed to smoke. So therefore Sho wasn't ever going to smoke.

Well not now.

Maybe when they were both adults or something. She wouldn't be able to stop him from smoking when he grew up so she had might as well smoke with him to make sure that he didn't end up overdoing it and stuff. Or maybe Shimazaki would be the one to teach him. They were best friends after all. Sho even called him Ryou even though you were not supposed to call adults by their given names. Well that was regular adults. Shimazaki wasn't a regular adult. He was more fun than a regular adult.

Except for when he teleported behind you.

He did that to surprise her…and she had been surprised. Her hair had risen right up to the ceiling. He reached over and pressed her braids down to her shoulders. Then he leaned over and reached a hand out over her shoulder. She kept on working. She let her powers take over since there wasn't enough room to actually move around when he was this close. His arms were on either side of her, there was a chair behind her, and a desk in front of her. She was pinned in. She didn't mind. She could get out whenever she wanted to. She was stronger than him….not that she would ever use her powers against another person. That would have been wrong. Even if her friend was in her space.

"Wow. You work fast." Said Shimazaki as he ran his hand over the tiny pile of joints on his desk. Damn. Mob could roll tight. This was why you had a kid as a friend. They had tiny hands. He reached out and started to count. Damn. Mob worked very fast. Well if the whole world domination thing ended up being a bust they could always just go into business with Toshi.

"Is this enough? I can make more if you want." Said Mob. Shimazaki reached his other arm out and then wrapped both of them around her. He hugged her from behind as best as he could with a chair between them.

"You did fine…but roll more if we need more." Said Shimazaki. Ok, so she wasn't Sho but she was still a pretty great kid. There was no way that Sho would have had the patience to sit there and roll joints all day. No, he had more energy than she did. Apparently she had gotten all of the chill in their family….and he had no idea where she had gotten it from considering who her dad was. Maybe her mom had been running around on Suzuki. Heh. Suzuki's wife had been running around on him…maybe. Shimazaki wasn't sure and he wasn't exactly itching to go and tell Suzuki his little theory to his face. No, he liked being alive.

"Ok…but please stop hugging me. I can't breathe." Sais Mob. That was half true. It was sort of hard to breathe when he did that…and also she felt weird. Not doki doki, never doki doki for him he was Shimazaki, but just…weird. Sort of like….weird. Not bad weird. Maybe sort of good weird. Maybe. She didn't know. All she knew was that she had always known that he was strong but she had never thought about how strong he was before…and now she kind of thought about it…and stuff…and it was weird sort of.

"As you wish…now where the hell is my lighter?" asked Shimazaki as he let her go. He reached across from her and felt along his desk with his powers until he found his lighter. It was hard to feel through her aura when he was that close to her. She was probably Suzuki's kid. His aura was the same. Just as big and heavy and loud and…there. Sho was different. He was different because he had a normal aura. Heh. Different for being normal…

God, he missed Sho.

He needed to smoke Sho up at some point. As fun as he was now, normal, he would be even more fun messed up. Mob certainly was more fun messed up. She wasn't like Sho but she was more….fun? Freer with being fun? Just freer? Kind of like Toshi when Toshi smoked and drank and had fun with their life. Not that they weren't always fun. They were. They were so fun….but sometimes they could be even more fun…but they were always fun. They were always fun and great and….and he missed them too and…and he needed to smoke right the fuck now!

He picked Mob up and tossed her on his bed.

Sho would have laughed. He would have laughed and then asked to have been thrown again. Toshi would have told him that he was being an idiot and then they would reach over and pull him by his shirt or something….but he didn't expect that from Mob because she was ten and he was not into that….but he would have expected something more than her just sitting up and staring at him.

"You threw me." Said Mob. She didn't know if that had been a good throw or a bad throw. She knew that he threw Sho and Sho liked to be thrown….and also he throw Minegishi but that was for kissing reasons…and she really hoped that he didn't have any plans of kissing her because she would not have wanted to kiss him if he asked and then it would be all awkward and stuff. He threw Hatori, too, but that was just to mess with him….so maybe he had just been messing with her. He teleported right onto the bed next to her and she scooted over. She didn't want him to mess with her…and also she didn't want to be thrown again…and she REALLY didn't want him to kiss her….the thought makes her feel weird….and not good weird. Weird like she wanted to scoot over to the edge of the bed….and stuff. Because he could kiss her. He was a boy and she was a girl and he could kiss her…and this was just her brain being weird. She'd been thinking about kissing a lot lately. It was like kissing had taken over her brain and stuff…and she had no idea how to make it stop.

Something was pressed into her hands.

"I did. Now smoke. Come on, you can go first since you did all the work." Said Shimazaki as he pressed the joint and the lighter into the palm of her hand. She was really tense for some reason. He could fix that.

"Um…ok." Said Mob. She lit the end and smoked like they had done a million times before. She scooted closer to him to make passing easier. She had no idea what had made her scoot so far away from him. Obviously he wasn't going to throw her on the bed for the same reason he threw Sho on the bed. Obviously he was not going to throw her on the bed for the same reason he threw Minegishi on the bed. She wasn't Minegishi. Obviously he was not going to throw her on the bed for the same reason he threw Hatori on the bed.

She was not Hatori.

She was Mob and he had thrown her on the bed for the same reason that Shimazaki spent time with her. He wanted to smoke with her and it was easier to smoke with him when she was sitting next to him. So here she was. She was Mob and she could only be treated like Mob. She smoked like Mob and passed like Mob and then smoked again like Mob and passed it back like Mob and she did Mob things over and over again.

Because she was Mob.

She was Mob and she could only be Mob. She could only be Mob and he could only be Shimazaki and she could only be herself and he could only be himself. So this was ok. Her being herself. Even though she got the feeling that h would have much rather have been hanging out with Sho. He missed Sho. She missed him too. She had her phone in her pocket, she could feel it, and she knew that she could have pulled her phone out at any time and called her little brother…but she wasn't going to. She would have been smothering her little brother just like dad smothered her if she were to call him…so she didn't call him. She didn't call him because she didn't want to smother him….well she did….she did want to smother him…and that was wrong.

So she smoked more.

"You can finish that one, I'll start another. This is our day. This is going to be our day for the whole rest of the fucking day!" laughed Shimazaki. He made sure not to open his eyes while he laughed, he did that sometimes, because he did not want to have to go through the whole eye cleaning thing again. That was done and now he was having fun with Mob…even though he would much rather have been out doing something….but Mob wanted to be in and that was what they were going to do….because she was herself and not her brother and he needed to get over the fact that he hadn't hung out with the kid in…he didn't even know how long. Too long. The kid…he just liked the kid. He liked kids. Not in a weird way, he just liked kids…and maybe he wanted some. Maybe he wanted to have a son who was just like him or a daughter or a kid like Toshi who rejected the concept of gender entirely for reasons that even Shimazaki at this point did not understand….or something. He didn't know. Well he did know. He knew that he couldn't have any kids. He knew that he shouldn't have any kids. He doesn't know how to raise a kid….but he gets the idea that you aren't supposed to smoke your kids up.

Toshi wouldn't let him smoke their kids up.

Toshi was great with kids. Toshi was great with Mob and she was ok with Sho even though he knew that Sho annoyed them. Toshi was really good at taking care of people and planning ahead and shit like that. They would balance him out…if they had kids together….which would never happen. Shimazaki knew that Toshi didn't want kids. Toshi had said a thousand times before that they did not want to have any kids. Even during their ketchup packet time, that time when he had been half kidding, that time when he had been sort of kidding or maybe not he didn't even know why he did the things he did or said the things he said….well he had said it.

What if we had a kid?

He had said it and then Toshi had hit him over the head with a plant and that had been it. Toshi did not want kids…and he should not have had any kids. Kids were people and…and he couldn't just stop being their dad when he got tired or bored…and kids came with some heavy stuff that he did not like to deal with. Kids were people and maybe he had no business making a new person…even though he knew that making a new person with Toshi…it would have been pretty fucking great….

He needed to make his brain stop working. Now.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Us spending the day like this, I mean." asked Mob Minegishi had told her so many times never to smoke without them…and maybe they were doing a bad thing. Maybe they were right when they said that…that they had to be the one to teach her moderation….but then Shimazaki had said that only she could know her own limits….she just didn't know…..

"A good thing….now get back to smoking. Smoke until you can't feel your body anymore." Said Shimazaki. He was thinking about her and how she was a kid and her brother was a kid and how he liked kids and how he liked Toshi and how if he and Toshi had a kid then it would have been the best thing ever…he needed to stop thinking about that. To stop thinking about them like that. To stop thinking about things that could never be…and he needed to be stoned right fucking now right this fucking second.

"But I like the way things feel when I smoke." Said Mob. She wiggled her feet in her socks. She liked these socks. These socks weren't her softest socks, she was wearing her purples ones with Rapunzel and Pascal on them, and her Elsa ones were softer but those were in the dirty clothes hamper. These were still sort of soft…sort of. She could feel all of her sock threads against her feet. She wiggled her feet some more. She wiggled her toes and then she wiggled her feet and she could feel almost all the threads and….and also she could feel her feet against his bedspread….and it was so soft too…..so very soft….

"Yeah, shit feels awesome, but shit feels even more awesome when you're stoned. Everything feels better and your brain can just shut off and then you can't think or feel but you also can think and feel…and shit. Does that make any sense? I don't know if I make sense. Toshi is the one who makes sense…because Toshi is Toshi…and Toshi is so fucking smart." Said Shimazaki. He had not sounded wistful there because he had nothing to feel wistful about. Toshi was gone but then they would come home and then they would be there with him and…and shit…and then he could be with Toshi and….and he just….

He had this growing need to be beside them….and he didn't know what in the hell he was supposed to do…or feel…or say….or be….besides what he was now.

"But….I still want to be able to feel things…like….um…like….." Said Mob. She could feel all of her sock threads and they were mixing with the threads of his bedspread and there were threads here and there and everywhere. She tucked a foot under his blanket. Now she could feel his sheets and they were soft and his sheets had threads and it was just threads and threads and even more threads. Threads after threads after threads after threads. Threads all the way down.

"Like your socks?" asked Shimazaki. He could feel her moving around. She was always so squirmy when they smoked. It was a sensory experience. Apparently it was mostly her sense of touch. His too. He could feel….Toshi. Toshi was there, in the house, the houseplants that surrounded him. There were plants in every single room but his. He wanted one in his room. He needed one in his room. Toshi kept their plants to their room and the common areas…and he wanted a plant in his room. He wanted to bring all of the plants into his room until it was almost like having Toshi beside him….in the room with him…near him. Near enough to him that they were….that they were something that he could reach out and feel. Someone that he could reach out and feel.

Because Toshi was a person, not a thing to possess.

But he did want to possess them. Why else did he feel like this? Toshi….he didn't care who they slept with but….but the thought of them with someone else. Feeling the way that he felt about them for someone else….that was the last thing that he wanted to think of…but he was still thinking about it. He was still thinking about it and he had started smoking like one of those industrial chimneys, the kinds that birds died if they flew over, so that he could get stoned enough not to think these sorts of possessive thoughts about Toshi….thoughts about how he felt….

He needed to do more than smoke.

"Yes. They feel nice. I can feel the threads and then more of the threads and then my skin….and skin is sort of like…like threads. For organs I mean. Skin is like socks for your organs. To keep them clean and safe and warm. So you don't have to have your organs on the outside….or something." Said Mob. She picked up his blanket and rubbed her hands against it. This wasn't silk, not really, it was just soft like silk. She knew what actual silk felt like but she didn't care. Soft was soft and she liked soft. Thread was thread. So what if this blanket hadn't been made from bugs that had been cultivated from mulberry trees thousands of years ago? This was still soft and that was what mattered.

"What's with you and your socks? Every time we smoke you always go on and on about your socks. What is it with you and socks?" asked Shimazaki. He felt his own feet in his own socks….and they felt…these were the socks that Toshi had gotten him. Toshi got him most of his clothes because they could see colors and he couldn't. He had been told that he looked good, that he dressed well, and that had been all Toshi. He only cared if something felt good against his skin…he loved this shirt…but Toshi wanted him to look good…and he wanted to look good for Toshi…because Toshi…he had no idea if other people could see Toshi the way he did, if they could see how they had it going on, but that didn't matter. Toshi had it going on. Even when they were overdue for a bath, even when they were all earthy and sweaty smelling from working in their garden, even when they were covered in the blood and viscera of their enemies, hell even when they were all doubled over from their ketchup packet times they always had it going on….

Brain. Shut up. Don't make me poke you.

"I just like the way my socks feel against my feet. These are the softest socks in the world…well no, my Frozen ones are, well my favorite Frozen ones…but these are good too. There are just so many threads…threads and threads and threads…and they feel good against each other…most of the time. Not now." Said Mob. She had been rubbing her legs together but then she stopped. Her sock had slipped down and now her legs were rubbing against each other and they were all itchy and scratchy and pokey, too. She hated it. She didn't know why her legs were like this now. They had been one way her whole life and then it was like she woke up and they were different.

She pulled her sock up.

"What happened? You stopped moving…and shit…and I can't see past you….but I sort of can….it's weird. I'm weird. You're weird. This is weird." Said Shimazaki. She had stopped moving and now the world was silent….and he needed to put an album on. Yeah. That must have been it. He just needed to put on an album and then he forgot Toshi….he never wants to forget Toshi….but he does want to get his mind off of Toshi and….and shit that can never happen…shit that he doesn't even know if he wants to happen….shit that he knows that Toshi will never want to happen….

"My legs are itchy. Well they're itchy all the time because they're fuzzy now but when they touch it's especially itchy." Said Mob. She pulled her socks up as high as they would go but that was not high enough. They were knee socks….well they had been when she had bought them. She was growing again…well she was always growing….but now she was really growing…and she sort of hoped that she was getting all of her growing done at once so it could be over and done with already. She didn't care. She just wanted her clothes to fit again….or well they wouldn't fit because she had outgrown them already….but she wanted to get new ones and have them fit forever. Like how dad had found the suit he loves most in the world and now that was all he wore.

"Let me see." Said Shimazaki. He reached over and felt the leg closest to him…huh. What do you know? He ran his hand over a collection of bumps. Two rows of four, one row up and one row down, an ellipsis. He ran his finger over it a couple of times. Yup. That was an ellipsis…but what was it…ellipsis-ing? He ran his hand down her leg. A hell of a lot of nonsense. Sounds that he could barely put together. Apple. Cat. Death. Igloo. That was what he was getting out of the dot patterns on her legs. They told a story of complete and utter nonsense.

"Um….what are you doing?" asked Mob. She felt….weird. Good and bad weird. Sort of…warm and cold at the same time…almost. She felt like she wanted to scoot away from him and stay where she was…and also scoot closer. He was dragging his fingers up and down her leg, from knee to ankle, and he was muttering….and….and she didn't know what to make of it…or what to make of herself….or what she was supposed to do with herself or how she was supposed to react or…or anything!

"Reading. Your leg stubble doesn't tell anything close to a coherent story." Said Shimazaki. He scooted closer and picked up her other leg. Maybe he needed to read both sides. Maybe then he could figure out what it is that he was supposed to have been able to read. He didn't know. At least this got his mind off of Toshi…and now his mind was back on Toshi again….because not only had he just thought of them he had found a collection of dots that was maybe supposed to say 'red' which was close to orange…which was Toshi's favorite flavor of soda…and he had gotten them a two liter of orange soda last time they had been together like this….

What was the matter with him?

"Um….that's because I'm not a book…so maybe don't…try and read me like one?" asked Mob. She wanted to pull her legs back and tuck them under herself like how ducks sat down but that might have been rude or mean of her. She wasn't going to be rude or mean to him. He wasn't even trying to make her feel like this. He was just trying to read her. This weird feeling was her problem and she needed to get rid of this….but smoking was just making it worse.

Because she could feel more.

She could feel his skin against hers…and how long his nails were…and she could feel the leg of his pants under the heel of her foot…and if she pressed down she could feel his leg…and he had a lot of muscle to him…and she had never thought about that before, how strong he was, but now she was thinking about it…and she had no idea what she was supposed to do with this information. She was as confused as dad was when he said that he didn't know what to do with information. Shimazaki was strong, she had known that already, and he could read braille…she had known that already too. She hadn't known that she had been made out of braille, though, and now she knew…and now that she knew she had no clue what she was supposed to do with this information.

She really didn't.

"Well I have to do something." Said Shimazaki. He let her go. Well that had been uninformative. He'd maybe just read Hatori's face again. It was clearing up but maybe it still told a very sad story…or maybe his back told a story. He had never felt his back for any length of time but he knew that it was bumpy. Yeah, he'd read Hatori's back…when he came back….because everyone but him was gone…him and Mob…

"We could keep on smoking." Said Mob. Maybe if she smoked enough she would go back to normal. She wanted to scoot away from him and she wanted to scoot towards him and she wanted to stay put. It was like in anime where there was the angel on your shoulder and the devil…but she had three people….and she wasn't sure who was the angel, who was the devil, who the third person was, and if they were even angels and devils to begin with!

"Nah, something else." Said Shimazaki. This wasn't helping. He needed something to take his mind off of Toshi and getting stoned should have helped but now all he could think about was Toshi. Toshi, Toshi, Toshi. Toshiki. Minegishi Toshiki. Minegishi Toshiki with the softest skin in the world. Minegishi Toshiki who could read a book in a day and still have time to threaten their plants. Minegishi Toshiki who had tits like someone shaved two kiwis and stapled them to the softest skin in the world. Minegishi Toshiki who hated sugar unless they were stoned but also ate at least a kilo of chocolate every month for reasons they did not like to talk to people about. Minegishi Toshiki who liked to get stoned but would also most likely try to maim is not kill him for getting their ten year old best friend stoned…said ten year old best friend who was doing fuck all to get his mind off of Minegishi Toshiki….

God. He needed….he had no clue what he needed.

"We could eat something." Said Mob. Her stomach was trying to eat its self. It tried to do that a lot when she smoked. She had to be careful how much she ate, though, because if she ate too much she wouldn't noticed later until she woke up with a stomach ache.

"Shibata's not here to feed us and I can't find anything in that kitchen…and as far as teleporting somewhere goes I can't see past your right now. I'd probably wind up in the ocean or something." Said Shimazaki. Food…that was a thing that he needed to live…maybe Shibata had left food in the microwave or on the counter or in the fridge….or something. God. The one time he wants to be fed.

"And I guess that the Awakened might tell on me if I ask them to get us something." Said Mob. Those guys could be very nice…but they also couldn't keep secrets at all. Like the times when she would be at the office or the HQ or whatever and they would tattle on each other and themselves to her…and stuff. No, she didn't need them tattling on her to dad at all.

"Not if I drop them in the ocean after they bring up whatever we ask for." Said Shimazaki. There were plenty of Awakened and most were completely disposal to Suzuki. He really only cared about the highest level, the Awakened Soldiers. Everyone else could go off and suck each other's dicks in the ocean for all he cared.

"That's mean. Don't do that." Said Mob. She knew that he must have been kidding but even kidding it was still a very mean thing to say. The Awakened were people too even though nobody but her treated them like people.

"Well then what are we going to eat?" asked Shimazaki

"We can eat those sugar cubes in your desk? Sugar is a food…well Minegishi says that it's a poison….but sugar is also a plant so it's ok to eat." Said Mob. She didn't know what she had said but she knew that it must have been the right thing. She knew that it must have been the right thing because Shimazaki had sat up, grabbed her by the shoulders, and come in really close…but his aura wasn't mad so he must have just been doing this to show her that he was happy…or something.

"Mob….I platonically love you…and if you were three or four years older I would be kissing you right now." Said Shimazaki. She was a genius. She was a wealth of perfect ideas. After she died they needed to crack her head open and scoop all of the ideas out of her brain and then eat them as to gain her idea having powers.

"Um….but then I would be…thirteen or fourteen…or fourteen or fifteen….and stuff…and also what does platonic mean?" asked Mob. She did not want to be kissed by him. He kissed Minegishi. She could not kiss someone who her best friend had kissed and was still doing kissing things with. That wouldn't have been right…and also she didn't like him like that.

"It means that I don't want to marry you." Said Shimazaki. Yes, he could do basic math too. That didn't matter. She was a genius and if she had been older then, yes, she would have earned herself the best kiss of her life for her idea. Her brilliant, genius, idea of a genius person who she was!

"Oh….ok." said Mob. She didn't know what else she was supposed to say to that. She didn't want to marry him either. She didn't say that, though, because that would have been mean and she was not a mean person. That was the same reason that she didn't ask him to let her go, either, because that would have been mean. He wasn't hurting her so he could hold on to her for as long as he wanted to.

"Not that there's anything wrong with you I just don't believe in marriage….well I don't know…..God, Toshi's got me all mixed up…..anyway! Come on, I need someone with eyes to dose something for me." Said Shimazaki as he pulled her out of bed. He picked her up, he didn't even need his powers she weighed so little, and sat her down on his chair. He sat her down and then rummaged through his desk until he found a box of sugar cubes, a metal teaspoon, and a glass vial. He put them all out on the desk in front of her.

"What's all of this for?" asked Mob as she looked over the things in front of her. Ok, so maybe the spoon was for the sugar cubes but then what was in the little glass thing? There was a braille label on it but she didn't know any braille at all.

"Your idea. Well you gave me the idea." Said Shimazaki

"Um…what idea did I give you? I just wanted to eat some sugar cubes." Said Mob

"Well, yeah, we're going to be eating them but first we're going to have to dose them. You know this entire time I've been trying to get my mind off of Toshi but I just….can't. So that's why you and I are going to trip." Said Shimazaki

"Um….where are going?" asked Mob. She wasn't really dressed for a trip, this dress had a big strawberry milk stain on it but she still wore it because it was comfortable, and also she was really high and really hungry…and stuff. Also she would have liked to have been home when Minegishi got back. Then they could hang out and stuff.

"Deep into our minds. You're old enough to take acid….I think….yeah, you're old enough. Are you in a good place mentally?" asked Shimazaki. This was a good idea. Both Ryou's on his shoulders agree. He had heard that you had an angel and a demon on your shoulder. He had also been told that he had two demons and his angel had never showed up for work. Well then at least there was a consensus. He was going to trip with Mob. She needed it anyway. Toshi was such a worrywart sometimes. What was the worst that could happen? Besides Mob experiencing ego death….that would have been bad….

"Um….I guess so? And won't acid kill us?" asked Mob. She eyed the glass thing on the desk. She knew that she had a stomach full of acid, that was how she dissolved the food she ate, but she also knew that acid as a chemical could be very dangerous….and stuff….and Shimazaki…he didn't really believe in thinking things through.

"Nobody has ever died from taking acid…well those guys who think that they can fly…but that's fine because we can actually fly. Anyway, you need to be in a good place mentally right now, ok?" asked Shimazaki

"Um…I think that I am." Said Mob. She had no idea what he meant by that. She wasn't crazy or anything…..but she got the feeling that he wasn't asking her if she was about to go crazy or anything like that. He had turned her to face him and now he was close again. He smelled like cologne, smoking, and eye cleaning medicine. It wasn't that good of a smell but she wasn't going to say anything. She wasn't going to be mean to him like that. Nobody wanted to be told that they smelled bad…and he didn't smell…that bad. He didn't smell that good but he also didn't smell that bad.

"Do you trust me?" asked Shimazaki. She nodded without delay. Good.

"I trust you Shimazaki. You're my friend." Said Mob. What kind of a question was that? You were supposed to trust your friends. That was why they were friends in the first place. Did she trust him? What else could the answer be but 'yes'?

"And you know that I love you, right?" asked Shimazaki

"Um…I do. Platonically." Said Mob. She loved that word. 'Platonically'. It was a very good word to describe what she felt for him…and stuff. Platonically. She didn't want to kiss him or to hold his hand or anything like that but she did like spending time with him and she would like to keep on spending time with him and being his friend…just with no kissing. Not now and not when she tuned thirteen or fourteen or fifteen or any-teen.

"Good. You know that I will suck Hatori's dick to completion before I let anything bad happen to you, right?" asked Shimazaki

"Um….what?" asked Mob. She knew what those words meant on their own but together…she didn't know…and she would have asked Google but she was scared.

"Right…you're too young to know what things mean. Well that's something that I would do, something that I don't want to do because he doesn't bathe that often, but it's something that I would do before I let anything bad happen to you." Said Shimazaki. Right. Maybe don't say that shit to a ten year old….but then again she had no idea what he was even saying so it was ok.

"But….um…..ok?" asked Mob. She knew what those words and now her brain was putting them together and….just…..GROSS! What was it with boys and gross stuff!? Pee came from there! That wasn't right at all! Mob hoped that when she grew up and had babies she only had girls because girls would never, ever, EVER think of something that gross!

"Good. Nothing's going to hurt you, not while I'm around, and I love you. You are safe and you are loved now pour acid onto the spoon and then let it drop down onto the sugar cubes." Said Shimazaki. There. He knew what to do. He knew how to be someone's acid Sherpa. He had been doing this since he had bene fifteen, so half his life, he knew what he was doing. Toshi had told him specifically that this was not the cherry to pop but he had been told for his entire life not to go around popping cherries that he was not supposed to pop and he had no ruined his life doing that and he would pop whatever he….wait, too sexual. That was a little too sexual for this….and what did that say about him that he could only relate big, life changing events to sex?

Eh, he'd explore this more while he tripped.

"Like this?" asked Mob as she used her powers to do what he said. She didn't trust her hands for this. She didn't know about this kind of acid but she had seen acid on TV before and one false move and it could eat right through you….and she had no idea why she was pouring this onto sugar cubes….but Shimazaki knew what he was doing and like he had said he wouldn't let anything bad happen to her so she trusted him. You were supposed to always trust your friends. That was what the point of having friends was.

"I don't have a fucking clue. I'm not focused enough to be able to see liquid dropping. Just make sure it only gets on the sugar cubes and when you're done pass me one….oh! And don't eat it, let it dissolve….oh! Get out of my chair, too, I have the perfect mix for this. It's mostly Beatles but there's some other nice stuff in there….some Japanese shit too which I think you'll like better….actually just the Beatles and Japanese one because I don't want to freak you out switching between too many languages. Alight?" asked Shimazaki. This was going to be so great! This was always better with another person and Toshi hadn't wanted to do this in forever! Thank God he had another friend!

"Um…..here?" asked Mob. She held up a sugar cube with her powers. He ate it from midair. She did the same and at the last minute stopped herself from chewing on it. It tasted….weird…and also maybe she had put too much on it…or not enough….because it didn't burn…and she didn't want it to burn but….well she had been expecting it to burn.

She didn't know.

She did know, however, that the nest step to this was sitting down on his bed so he could put some music on. So that was what she did. She liked watching hi use his computer. He talked to it and it talked back. That was interesting. He was interesting. She didn't know what she was supposed to be feeling or doing but she knew that this was going to be interesting. Things were always good and interesting when she was with Shimazaki. He knew the best things. Like the time after the party. She had been feeling bad and then he had made her feel better…but then he had left her all alone….but he won't do that again.

She trusts him.

She sat down on his bed and closed her eyes. She was mostly just….she didn't know. Thirsty? Yes. She was thirsty….and also maybe Shimazaki could read minds because he teleported away and came back with quickly with….Mob opened her eyes. He had turned his shirt into a basket and he had taken all of the drinks out of the fridge. The orange juice and Hatori's energy drinks and the cans of soda and the jug of milk. He put them all down at the foot of the bed and then he tugged on the blanket.

"Get up, I need this." said Shimazaki. Mob picked herself up with her powers and then let him tug the blanket off the bed. That was a shame, it was such a soft blanket. He tugged the blanket off the bed and then took off his shirt. She watched him. He had a lot of tattoos and she had never really looked at them before. They were so….colorful….and then she felt bad. He wouldn't ever be able to know just what he was covered in. Especially the picture of Minegishi he had on his arm. It looked just like them….and he would never know just how much like them it looked….especially since he had no idea what they even looked like….

And that was so sad.

"I'll be right back. Ok? Don't freak out. I'm going to change into my sleep shorts because, yeah, I always end up down to my boxers if not naked and people already think that I'm a creep so….yeah. You just sit tight and remember that the world outside of this door exists. Ok?" said Shimazaki. He knew that Toshi would literally murder him if he ended up tripped down to his boxers with her in the room….and he liked being alive and in Toshi's good graces. So he left the room to change. He changed in the hallway, of course, because he was the only one home and even if he hadn't been he didn't care who else saw him naked. Just not the ten year old because then that would have been wrong. He made sure to walk. This was not the time to teleport. Toshi wasn't here to make sure that he didn't go anywhere else or do anything stupid.

Go, he missed Toshi.

He missed them and….and he needed to think about something else. He needed to have his mind on something else because if he had his mind on Toshi then it would ruin the whole thing…or make it better. He didn't know. All he knew was that he had to get back in that room and…and…and Sherpa Mob through all of this. She was so little and she must have been freaking out…or something. She needed someone there and shit. Yeah. This was not the thing to do all on your own.

So he went back to her.

He walked back into the room and he could feel her eyes on him. She was laying down on his bed and she was playing with her hair. It felt like. Good. She was in a safe place and she felt safe. She had plenty to drink….and eating on acid was never good for anyone…and there was music playing….the Beatles could make anyone feel good….good. He had this. He was the master of fist times, be it acid, other drugs, sex, murder, or picking up a dog by it's hind legs and pushing it around like a vacuum cleaner. Yeah he had this.

He had the hell out of this.

He picked up his blanket from the ground and laid down next to her. He covered them both up. It was a tight fit so he picked her up with his powers and laid her head down on his bicep. Yeah. That was better. He maybe should not have lifted her like that. His telekinesis was nowhere near as good as hers, but then again the only person who could match her in terms of skill and raw power was her dad, but he hadn't sent her flying into a wall. No, she was there and she fit securely there on his bicep. He wrapped an arm around her. She curled into his chest.

"Are we taking a nap?" asked Mob. She felt….good. Warm but in a good way. Warm in a warm way, too. It was warm in that room and the blanket didn't help…but it made her feel better. The weight of it. It felt like without the blanket she was going to float away…and she was. As soon as she thought about it she began to float off the ground….but he pulled her back down. Her head was on his chest. She wouldn't see the dragon but she got the feeling that the dragon would not hurt her, it would keep her safe.

Because Shimazaki would keep her safe.

He may have acted like a crazy person most of the time, and also he could be very mean to Hatori, but he was also her friend and he would keep her safe no matter what. He was there for her and she was there for him. That was what friends were for. That arm, the one around her, was the one with the picture of Minegishi on it. She knew that she would be safe if both of her friends were with her…well she had two other non-related to her friends but they were her two best friends in the whole world…and she felt so safe….

And also dragons could be good and bad but if the dragon was attached to Shimazaki then it must have been good.

"Nope. You can't sleep while you're tripping. It's physically impossible. Right now your brain is working overtime. Usually it filters out enough of reality so that you can't see everything at once…and shit. Anyway sounds have a taste and you're going to be seeing shit and hearing shit and smelling shit and tasting shit…and since you're sighted then you'll probably see shit too…and I have no fucking clue what your powers are going to do. I can't teleport, I can't be trusted to teleport, when I'm like this…and also my barrier goes down….but you're different. You're different so I don't know but I'll be here for whatever happens…and also if you have to get naked then just do it. I'm blind. I can't see shit and if you want to get naked then just go to the other end of the bed where I can't feel you….or maybe the floor because having a naked ten year old in my bed…it's not a good look….but whatever. Fuck what other people think. Whatever makes you feel best, ok? You got that, Mob?" Said Shimazaki. He liked this, being able to help her. Did he like helping people? Maybe. He liked having something to do with himself. For his entire life he had been told that he was useless. Worthless. Because he was blind. Well he wasn't blind. He wasn't sighted but he wasn't blind. He wasn't blind and he wasn't useless or worthless. He was Shimazaki The Blind Executioner Ryou. Son of the Shogun's Decapitator….bastard. Spent his whole life living up to his father….that piece of shit had been long dead before Shimazaki had even been born….and then what happened?

He died.

He died with money in the bank and the respect of the people around him and a son who was useful to the stupid family that they had been a part of since the beginning of time…and then he died. What was it all even worth? Being such a piece of shit…well Shimazaki was not a piece of shit. He was a good person. He helped people. He made them happy.

He made this person happy.

"Got it…but I don't want to be naked….even if you are blind. I want to keep my clothes and I will keep my clothes on…so that's what's happening….I'm in a bed with my clothes on and one of the Beatles is singing about some girl named Penny Lane." Said Mob. She felt good and warm and warm and good…and also…also she could see lights and patterns when she closed her eyes…and also when she opened them, too. They had never hung around before. She reached out with her powers to try to catch them…and it started to snow! She could see white raining down from the ceiling….and she could taste…coconut. She could taste and smell coconut.

"Penny Lane is the street. It has a barber selling photographs with every head he's had the pleasure to know….God. I want to live on Penny Lane so bad. Just me and John and Paul and Ringo and George…..living on Penny Lane…." Said Shimazaki. He opened his eyes and felt the air. He knew what the air felt like in Liverpool, sort of salty but also like….smoke? Smog? He didn't remember. When he had been little he had thought that it would smell like a record. He had listened to this album back when he had been locked in his room….and he only had his records for company…and they smelled so good….God, he loved the smell of vinyl…

He smelled vinyl.

Penny Lane smelled like vinyl. It smelled like vinyl and dust and piss because he sometimes spent the entire day locked in…mom couldn't get a chance to let him out….and he had to stay in because he was such an embarrassment…..he was such an embarrassment that the bloodline would end with him because the worst thing that a man could do was bring a son like him into the world….someone as useless as him….and now he smelled piss and vinyl and he didn't know if he was actually smelling Penny Lane or that room and he doesn't know which room he's in and-

A very small hand in his.

A small hand in his and a pressure across his chest. One of his arms is wrapped around her. This is a girl. This is Mob. He tucks his head down. Weed. He smells weed and now he knows where he is and he knows who he is. He isn't useless. He's Shimazaki Ryou. He's not worthless. He's Shimazaki Ryou. He's not blind. He's Shimazaki Ryou. Just because he wasn't sighted it didn't mean that he was blind. He could see this person in his arms. He could extend his aura around her. He could see the blood rushing through her veins, the way her lungs expanded and contracted, even the way her tongue pressed up against her teeth as she spoke.

He wasn't blind. He just wasn't sighted.

"It sounds like a nice place….but your aura feels so upset. Oh no! Did I do something? I feel like I did something. Sometimes I do things without even knowing what I did. Like when I was little and I would be talking to my mom and then she would get mad at me. Or like how Sho used to hit me all the time…but I deserved it. I always deserve it. I always will deserve it. I always do something. No wonder Sho's gone and mom's gone and everyone's gone….I always do something wrong…." Said Mob. She was amazed that she even had friends. She was Mob. She had powers she couldn't control and she couldn't take care of Shio and she hadn't been able to take care of baby Mukai and that was why she had been taken away and mom had left because she was a terrible daughter…..and she was just the worst person ever and when Shimazaki realized it he would leave her all alone too….

She didn't want to be alone.

She clung to him. She clung to him as tightly as she could. She held him close and he held her close. The song had switched. This one wasn't about Penny Lane, this one was about Eleanor Rigby, and how lonely she had been….and Mob was lonely. Even when she was with people she was lonely. She was lonely for mom. She was lonely for Sho. She was lonely for the Castle and the school satchel that she was supposed to have and the Hello Kitty book he had read every night and the Treasure Room full of stuff to explore and the mom who was supposed to be in the Castle and the dad who never smothered her and was mostly gone and Fukuda who came to visit and always played with her and never called her Suzuki-san or made her want to get away from him and never talk to him again and she was a terrible person for wanting to get away from Fukuda and never talk to him again because he liked Sho and Sho was gone….

Sho was gone.

Her little brother was gone. Her little brother was hurt. She was in a place that smelled bad. Little brother was hurt and momma was hurt and they had to sleep there and she had sleep somewhere else and daddy was talking her home and she was all alone in her room and her walls were yellow and there was a happy duck family on the wall across from her but that made no sense because the walls in her room had been blue….but the walls here are yellow and there's a happy duck family like her family with momma and daddy and Ritsu and who's Ritsu she doesn't know a Ritsu she knew a person named Ritsuki in school but she's too little for school and it takes three tries to get out of bed without her powers and….and she did…

She did something with her powers….

Little brother had been happy but then he had been sad and then he had cried and momma had cried and then they had owies and she didn't have any owies but they were gone and she got out of bed and her bed had been yellow and there had been more happy ducks on her blanket and her blanket was blue and had Elsa on it but was a yellow blanket with happy ducks and she's wearing yellow pajamas also with ducks and she IS NOT A DUCK but there are ducks everywhere and she has duck slippers and she needs momma to help put them on and momma wakes her up but momma isn't there and she leaves the room and WHERE THE HELL IS SHO!?

Sho is her little brother.

She goes to her little brother's room and it's green and he has happy frogs on his wall but that makes no sense because she has ALWAYS shared a room with Sho and now Sho isn't there and his bed is empty and it's a bed with bars and she floats up into the bed and it's empty and WHERE IS RITSU?! Ritsu was supposed to come home in the morning with momma after their owies got better but he's not there but he might be in momma's room and she goes to momma's room and the walls in the house are brown but that makes no sense because the walls of the castle were not brown and the floor is not the floor and the windows are not the windows and momma's room is not momma's room and momma ISN'T THERE and momma is gone and not momma and daddy is there but he's not daddy and WHERE IS RITSU?!

….who is Ritsu?

"Who's Ritsu?" asked Shimazaki as he pried her eyes opened with his fingers. He got slapped on the aura for his trouble but even in his state he knew a bad trip when he felt one. He needed to snap her out of it. She had been muttering about her parents and her brother and someone named Ritsu for an entire album now.

"I….I don't….know. I messed up. I don't know. I messed up." Said Mob. She held herself being pulled closer. She buried her face in the crook of his arm. She could smell his sweat and his cologne and also the salt of his skin….and also….pepper? Black pepper. He had a thick black line here, where one dragon met the other, and dragons smelled like pepper.

"No you didn't. No negative self-talk. That's the enemy. Think positive. You didn't mess up. You're awesome. I love you. Remember that. You are love. You are so loved. I love you, Toshi loves you, Hatori loves you, Shibata loves you, your dad loves you….a little too much….your brother loves you….you are very loved…" said Shimazaki. He was talking to himself. He was holding himself and he was talking to himself but a version of himself who was also Mob…he didn't know. Mob was herself and she was small and he was himself but he was also not small and he was big but he had once been small.

And he held himself when he had been small.

He had been small and he had been alone and nobody had ever even LOOKED AT HIM and he COULD TELL he didn't know how but he JUST COULD but they never looked at him or talked to him…because he had been a mistake. He should have been drowned at birth. Mom had stopped dad from drowning him and dad had only listened to mom because he loved her but dad hated him and he was a mistake and he never should have been born and why should anyone look at the MISTAKE. The useless MISTAKE. The MISTAKE is crying. The MISTAKE is hungry. The MISTAKE is talking. The MISTAKE is out of his room. The MISTAKE is still alive. The MISTAKE is your problem. The MISTAKE won't turn the damn HI-FI down. Drown the MISTAKE. Let the MISTAKE die. Let the MISTAKE die in the woods. The MISTAKE made a shelter. The MISTAKE found food. The MISTAKE followed the road. The MISTAKE made it home.

Hey Ryou, don't be afraid. Sing a sad song and make it better…..

The MISTAKE is singing again. LOOK AT ME. The MISTAKE is talking to me again. LOOK AT ME. The MISTAKE is in the house again. LOOK AT ME. Why won't you look at me? You're looking at the wall. You're looking at mom. You're looking down. You're feeling your gun. You're pointing your gun at me. I know you're pointing your gun at me. I can feel it. There's a gun pointed at me. I know that you're pointing your gun at me. Mom, why is dad pointing his gun at me?

Mother superior jumped the gun….mother superior jumped the gun…..

"Shimazaki? Shimazaki? Ryou!?" said Mob. She used her powers to get him to let go of her. He had been crushing her. He had been trying to squish her into the colors on his chest. He had been trying to feed her to the dragon. He had been trying to add her to his colors collection. She was colors. He was colors. There were colors everywhere. She could see the colors. She could taste the colors. She could taste the colors of light and feel the taste of sound and it tasted like McDoanld's fries with black pepper which was a good way to eat them and Sho had been wrong…

She loved Sho and Sho was never wrong.

When you loved someone then they were never wrong. When you loved someone then you gave your whole self to them. You gave and you gave and you gave until there was nothing inside of you left to give…and that was alright. That was alright because you got love. You had a life and that life was for all the people that you loved….so it was ok for her to become colors now. She wanted to become colors. If he loved her then she would gladly become colors for him.

Because that was what love was.

"11/12/95." Said Shimazaki. He muttered it over and over again. Or maybe he screamed it. He didn't know. Maybe he was screaming or whispering. He didn't know. He couldn't hear anything. He couldn't hear anything above the bang and mother superior jumped the gun! Mother superior jumped the gun!

"No, it's 4/5/2015. The date you said was almost twenty years ago." Said Mob as she counted on her fingers…and then she counted again and again because her fingers felt left out even though the fingers who weren't being counted were lucky because she wasn't smothering them and being smothered sucked but being loved sucked too and there was no medium and nothing was medium and she was a medium at the Disney Store in America but in China she was a large.

"I'm ten." Said Shimazaki. He was ten and he was ten and he was ten and he was ten and his birthday had passed and mom had brought him a cake and he had remembered and she had cleaned out his room and she had emptied out his piss bucket and he had a new album and this one was just Ringo because they had broken up and he would never be able to move to Penny Lane to be with them and he would never visit Eleanor Rigby's grave and oh! Look at all the lonely people! Shimazaki Ryou singing the words of a song that no one will hear because no one comes near because he's a mistake and all the lonely people belong in the woods and dad says don't eat the green berries and he has no idea what green even is but he eats berries and he gets sick and here comes the sun and I say it's alright! The sun comes out and he's sick and he's been throwing up and he stinks and he's sick and he wants to be away from there and he wants to be home and he can feel the sun and he can see the sun and it's there and it's the warm thing and it's up there and here comes the sun!

It's alright.

"Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…." Said Shimazaki. He felt movement and then he felt warmth. He sat up and went to the warmth and he pressed his hand against….glass…and he can feel the sun and he made it out and he's home and he has no idea how he even made it home because the world had moved and he hadn't but he's home and here comes the sun! It's alright!

"Yeah, there's the sun…and you're not ten, I'm ten. You're thirty. Remember? You're thirty….and you're an adult….and I'm a kid….but I'm not a kid….I haven't been a kid for so long….but I want to be a kid…but maybe I should just let it go…." said Mob. She was not a child anymore. She was not a child and she hadn't been a child. People needed her. People needed her and they depended on her and she was not going to walk away.

She was Suzuki Shigeko.

She was not going to walk away from the people who needed her. She was not going to walk away from Shimazaki when he needed to feel the sun and she was not going to walk away from Sho no matter how badly he had treated her before and she was not going to walk away from dad even though he smothered her and she was not going to walk away from Claw just because there were so many things that she had to do…and sometimes she felt like she was too little to do them…

But somebody had to.

There was only her. She was the girl. Mom had been the girl but now she had to be the mom. She had to be the one to take care of everyone and she had to be the one who made everyone feel better and made sure that everything was ok. She was Sho's mom and everyone's mom and that was who she was and she did not get to just let that go. She did not get to climb the ice mountain and she did not get to live in her ice castle. She had to go back. She maybe have hit her brother in the head with a blast of magic but

He had been red on the inside.

A lot of red had come out of him. Red was a color and it tasted like cinnamon hearts and those tasted like Valentine's Day and she had only gotten Valentine's day chocolates once and it had been the best day of her life no wait that had been White Day and that was also a chocolate day and she had gotten some from Sho and he had red hair but the black haired boy was red on the inside and there had been a lot of red and then a lot of white and then a strange place and then more red and the man with the red hair was back and he had milk this time and that man was dad but he was not dad and she had a daddy and that was not daddy but he was and he was red and she was pink and blue and now she was blue and she was Mob and she was blue and she tasted like Sprite.

She drank a Sprite.

She crawled to the edge of the bed and drank a Sprite while Shimazaki shouted at the sun. He shouted at the sun and she drank a sprite and then she put the bottle down and then when she put it down it was full again and she took it and she drank it and she put it down but then it was full again and it was full of green and it tasted like Sprite but only when she closed her eyes but when she opened them it tasted like mushy peas like she and Sho had eaten in England and she loved him and she loved him so much and she was gone and now…

Now she was being pulled back into bed.

She was pulled back onto Shimazaki's chest and he covered them both with the blanket even though he had just been yelling at the sun. Well maybe he had greeted it. You had to greet the sun before his lovely daughter moon. Now goodnight, sleep tight, mommy and daddy love. Mommy and daddy love Sho and Shigeko. Mommy and daddy are in the next room. Mommy and daddy will always be there. Mommy loves you.

Mommy loves you.

Mommy loved you. Mommy is gone. Mob is here. Mob loves you. Mob loves Mob. Mob loves her friends. Mob loved everyone. All you need is love. Love is all you need. Mob is loved. Mob is loved by Shimazaki and Shimazaki is loved by Mob and also they are both loved by the Beatles. All you need it love. All you need is love. They come from the land of submarines and the love you. They come from Penny Lane. They come from England. In England all you need is love. Love is all you need.

Love is an open door.

Say goodbye to the pain of the past because we don't have to feel it anymore. Love is an open door. Love is all you need. Love is an open door and the door is closed and Mob doesn't know what's outside of this door and there's nothing that she can know that isn't known and she knows that she doesn't know any trolls so if she does freeze Sho's heart with a blast of magic then she's out of luck and she never should have left her tower because mother knowns best listen to your mumsy on your own you won't survive but she does survive and she's been surviving and she's been living and life is to live and all you need are the bare necessities but she isn't a bear, she's a cat, and she needs to know her scales and arpeggios and mom loved those cats and she should have stayed because Mob doesn't know her scales and arpeggios and she has no idea what those even are!

"Shimazaki! What are scales and appregios? Tell me now!" shouted Mob. She shouted and she felt him pull her closer and now she's laying all the way one his chest and he's very warm and sweaty and she's getting him sweaty and he's getting her sweaty and their sweat is mixing and his colors will run and he's got so many of them and he tastes like rainbow sherbet when she looks at him for too long and rainbow sherbet is not vile like dad said and she's never been this close to dad before but she has but dad's never been this undressed before and thinking about dad feels super gross right now or maybe she just feels super gross because that weird feeling is back and now she feels super gross and she just needs to let it go for the first time in forever and then there were will be a yellow submarine and she can go to the land of submarines because she knows that Shimazaki wants to go there even though she wants to go and live with Elsa and Anna in their castle and be their sister and she would bring Sho too and he would come and her skin is wet and their colors are mixing and whenever she puts her head down on his chest her hair gets stuck and her braids have come undone and her hair it everywhere and it's floating and she would have been floating if not for how both of his arms were around her and it was still snowing inside and the white stuff came down from the ceiling and the ceiling was the house sky and it was a whole new world! A new fantastic point of view!

And it was sweaty.

"No one I think is in my dream. I mean it must be mine alone. I mean you can't tune in, you know, but it's alright. I mean I think it's not too bad. That was scales and arpeggios. Those are music. Music is life. Music is here. I'm ten." Said Shimazaki as he held her close. She was trying to float away because she was alive and things which were alive tried to float away and they left like Toshi left and Toshi was gone and he needed Toshi and he needed to hold Toshi and all you need is love and Toshi as love and beauty and truth and pain and pleasure and love and pudding and candle wax and dog fur and seamless t shirt and all he needed and also strawberry fields.

Toshi could make strawberry fields.

Toshi could make them last forever. Just him and them in the strawberry fields. They would be able to live there. It was near the land of submarines after all. Everyone one of them would all have all they needed. He could sing out of tune and Toshi would not stand up and walk out on him. He could smell them. He could taste them. Toshi was there and he loved Toshi so much. Toshi was everything to him. Here comes the sun and the sun is Minegishi Toshiiki!

Minegishi Toshiki was their sun.

Minegishi Toshiki was their strawberry field. They needed him and they went on forever and he needed somebody to love and he had someone to love and he believed in love at first sight and he was certain that it happened all the time. He had loved Toshi from the moment he saw them. He loved them then and he loved them now and he would love them for the rest of his life! He loved Minegishi Toshiki and he wanted….he wanted….

"I want to hold your hand Toshi. All I've ever wanted to do was hold your hand. I want to hold your hand for the rest of my life. I love you Minegishi Toshiki. I love you and I want you to love me right back. Please….please love me." Said Shimazaki. He held his hand out and it was held. He could feel who was holding his hand and it wasn't Minegishi. It was Mob. She was there. She was sitting up now, on top of him, and he has the vague feeling that Toshi would be mad at him for this….he has the vague feeling that Toshi would be mad at him if they knew that he loved them…he had the vague feeling that he was mad at himself for loving Toshi….

I love you yeah, yeah, yeah….

"I'm Mob….but you can hold my hand. That's ok. Just don't kiss me. I don't want that. Not with you, anyway." Said Mob. She held his hand in hers. She was sitting up on him now. His hand was up and it met hers and she laced her fingers with his. He was all sweaty and sticky and slippery and wet and so was he…and this was gross….but also not…because he loved her and she loved him and they loved each other…and also he loved Minegishi…and she loved Minegishi too…and who didn't? They were the best person ever.

"I want to kiss Toshi! I want to kiss them and never stop kissing them! And I suck for it! God, I suck! I couldn't saw John Lennon and I can't be in love with Toshi!" said Shimazaki as he held Mob's hand close. He could see her blood moving through her body. He could see his blood moving through his body. Their blood but close but it did not mix…because they did not mix blood…but he wanted to mix blood with Toshi…he wanted….he wanted to have a baby….or a kid…or maybe a grown adult so he didn't have time to fuck it up…..or something.

"You don't suck! Don't ever say that! None of my friends are allowed to talk about themselves like that….ok? And if you want to kiss someone then you can kiss me but don't ever tell yourself that you suck because you don't." said Mob. She didn't want to kiss him at all but if kissing her made him feel better than he felt now then she would let him kiss her. It wouldn't be so bad…and Minegishi would understand…and also it had been a very long time since she had last kissed someone…..but still….ick….this was Shimazaki…but if she made him happy, if this made him happy, then she would kiss him.

There was a hand over her mouth.

He sat up so fast that she almost toppled over. He put his hand over her mouth and then he kissed his hand. Mob was happy. This was better than actually kissing him. That would have been gross and stuff. Yuck. Her head felt light…but not in the kissing way. Just…light. Like she had been running for a long time but now….she felt…she knew where she was again. She was in the room. What was on the other side of the door of the room? She didn't know. She did know, however, was that there was sweat on both of them….and they both needed to drink something….

When you loved someone you took care of them.

Like now. She had been about to let him kiss her for real because she had wanted him to be happy. Who cared what happened to her so long as the people around her were happy? That was her job, to make people happy, and no matter how hard the job got she would never walk away from it. No, she would always be there for everyone around her no matter what. She was Mob. She was there for people. That was what she did.

The hand moved from her mouth.

"You're ten. I'll kiss you for real when you're older." Said Shimazaki. He was thirty, not ten, and he could not go around kissing ten year olds. He was thirty and he was in love with Toshi and Toshi was almost twenty eight and he was thirty and he…he was in love with Minegishi Toshiki….and he….he had to tell them…and he had to keep this to himself for the rest of his life….

"Ok, if you want to. Here, you need something to drink. This is a magic Sprite. No matter how much you drink from it the bottle never runs out." Said Mob as she handed Shimazaki a green bottle from off the floor. She didn't want to kiss him when she was older, not at all, but if he wanted to kiss her then it was alright. Well so long as it didn't bother Minegishi of course. She could never hurt her best friend…but in not hurting her best friend she may have had to be mean to her other friend…and this whole thing was very complicated…

"This is green tea." Said Shimazaki as he took a drink.

"No, it's magic Sprite. I know. I've been drinking it and it hasn't stopped refilling its self. We live in the land of submarines now like in the song and in the land of submarines each one of us has all we need." Said Mob

"If we're in the land of submarines then where's the sun? If each one of us has all we need then where's the sun? I can't feel it." Said Shimazaki

"It went down because you greeted it. You have to greet the sun before his lovely daughter moon." Said Mob

"You can't forsake the journey for the safety of your room." Said Shimazaki

"You know that book?" asked Mob

"It's a song." Said Shimazaki

"Words can be two things." Said Mob

"Yes they can." Said Shimazaki

"We have to forsake the journey for the safety of your room." Said Mob. Mom had said that….a long time ago…when she had been very small.

"No, we have to go out there." said Shimazaki

"Why? In here each one of us have all we need. Sky of blue and sea of green in the land of submarines. Like the song said." Said Mob

"No, we have to go out there. We both have to piss and I am not pissing in a bucket in the corner of my room ever again." said Shimazaki. He finished his tea and then tossed the bottle somewhere. It hit something. He didn't care. He was coming down now…and his playlist had gone back to the beginning….and now he had to piss and he had to take care of Mob to that was what she did. He picked her up and opened his door, he was only a little bit afraid, and….and he was the happiest man alive when he opened that door.

"Toshi!" screamed Shimazaki as he dropped Mob. She was fine. She caught herself with her powers. He reached over to pull Toshi into his arms and to never let them go and-

And they slapped in across the face.

"What the ever loving FUCK happened here today?! I leave for one day and I come back to…..the house is TRASHED! We have to LIVE HERE! The refrigerator is SOMEHOW sticking out of the living room wall! Why is there plaster EVERYWHERE!? Who tore up the CARPETING?! Carpeting is…it's….it's everywhere….and WHO THE FUCK WAS IN MY ROOM?!" screamed Minegishi. They were going to have a heart attack. They could feel it. This was…..what even was THIS?! Mob was talking to herself about magic Sprite and Ryou….he was trying to hug them….

And he had succeeded.

"Toshi, I love you. I want you to know that I love you. You're the sun and here you come and you're the sun and you're here and I want you so bad it's driving me mad! I want to hold your hand and hold you and make love to you and make you feel loved and don't let that fucking moron eat you because I can and I will eat you and you'll love it because you always do and I have to take a piss and so does Mob and the Sprite is not magic and I'm thirty." Said Shimazaki as he held Toshi as close as he possibly could. He needed to hold them and squeeze them and never let them go. Just like how Shibata had been fired from Wee World and just about every other job he'd ever had.

"What the….I am not fucking you! You trashed the house….my ROOM and you think that I'm going to let you go down on me…and Mob is in the ROOM! Watch your mouth!" shouted Minegishi. Well this room certainly smelled like someone had been trying to relive the sixties…and also…why were there sugar cubes everywhere….

That. Moron.

"We're all in the room. The room is this place. The Sprite is all we need. I need to pee." Said Mob as she looked at the wall. She could hear Minegishi but if she saw Minegishi then Minegishi might have left and she didn't want that. She didn't think that she could deal with another person leaving.

"Mob…..how are you feeling?" asked Minegishi as they broke out of Shimazaki's death grip. They got down onto Mob's level…and her pupils….her eyes were pretty much all pupil….and now they were being pulled into another attempted hug.

"I love you yeah, yeah, yeah. I love you yeah, yeah, yeah." Said Shimazaki as he tried to pull Toshi close. Didn't Toshi get it? He loved them!

"Ryou…..go lay down in bed until Mob is done in the bathroom…and then you take a piss….and then we're all going to be here together until you two come down from this…and then you and I are going to talk…after Mob and I talk…and then I am going to bed for the foreseeable future. Is that clear?" asked Minegishi through clenched teeth. They could not tear into either of them. Not that Mob was the guilty party in this. He'd been hanging on to that vial of acid for years now….and he had been talking about dosing a kid to see what would happen for years…and that kid had been Mob….and now the house was trashed and they were going to have to move to the one on the other side of Suzuki…and then he might ask questions….well Hatori had his ear now they could just have him spin some story about a fight or something….something that did not involve giving his precious little girl ACID….and then….then they would have to talk to Mob about going along with Ryou's plans…and then they would have to talk to him about…..

They would ignore him.

They would ignore him until they could stand to look at him again. They would ignore him and let him lose his mind. He deserved it for doing this to Mob…and for what he did to their bedroom….and for all the damage control Minegishi was going to have to do. Thank God that this other two weren't back yet…and that it wasn't anywhere near Sunday….or Suzuki would make them all dig their own traitor holes.

"Sure…but Toshi….I love you." Said Shimazaki as he let Toshi go. God….he loved them so much….and he just wanted to hold onto them forever….but he also did not want to ever have to piss in the same room he slept in ever again.

Ever.

"Yeah….I heard you….now let me take Mob to what's left of the bathroom…." Said Minegishi. They helped Mob to her feet. She clung to them too…and they could not stay mad at her. They hadn't even gotten mad at her. She had been just going along with this and….and she was the child in this situation. Ryou had no excuse.

"Minegishi….I love you." Said Mob as she hugged Minegishi as hard as she could. She loved them so much…and she would never leave them…she would always be there for them….and she also had to leave the room too so she could pee…but she also wanted to be with Minegishi….and she wanted to never let them go….

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love you too. Now come on, Lucy, let's get you out of the diamond sky and to the bathroom before you make a mess for me to clean up." Said Minegishi as they took Mob by the hand. The glared at Ryou with their aura as they left. After tonight he'd be lucky if they so much as glanced in his general direction for….for until he learned his lesson…

"My name isn't Lucy, it's Shigeko, but you might have forgotten since everyone calls me Mob….but that's ok. You can call me whatever you want. I'm a good friend like that." Said Mob. She had always considered herself to be a very good friend…and now she knew that she was. She was always there for her friends and she would never walk out on them. Because she loved them. When you loved someone you stuck with them no matter what. You helped them out no matter what. Everything that you were and had you gave and you were happy to do so. That was what it was to love someone, to be a friend, to be a very good friend….

And Mob had always considered herself to be a very good friend.


	294. Baby Sis Can Walk

Baby sis could walk now.

She could put one foot in front of the other and make herself go forwards. She had been too little to sit up on her own when he had last seen her and now she was walking. That was the first thing that he had noticed, the only thing that he had noticed, when he had walked through her door. Baby sis could walk. She could sit and stand and walk.

That was what she did when she saw him.

He came in through the door and saw her right there at the end of the hallway. There was some kind of baby fence thing that separated the living room from the kitchen. That was how these apartments, the ones in the Seventh Division, were set up. The door opened to a genkan which had a hallway that went to the kitchen and then attached to the kitchen was the living room and then there was another hallway and then the bedrooms and bathroom. Each apartment only had two bedrooms. They should have had more in case baby sis's mom decided to have another baby or something….

That would have sucked.

He knew that he was being a jerk thinking that it would have sucked, baby sis having a little brother or sister, because having a sibling…it wasn't so bad. Some parts of it could actually be pretty great. You had someone who was there for you, who took care of you, and who loved you no matter what…but that was what it was like being the little sibling. Mukai would have been the big sibling and then she would have had to take care of all of her little brothers and sisters, which would have sucked, and also if she had for real siblings instead of pretend ones then she would forget all about him and big sis….

And that would have been the worst thing in the world.

"Whoa…" said Sho as he stood in the genkan. That was all he could say….well he could also say 'holy fucking shit' because that was what he was feeling right now…but if he said that then baby sis might have said that and then that would have sucked. So he said whoa.

Because baby sis could stand up now.

She was standing behind this baby gate thing that seemed sort of mean…but his eyes danced around the kitchen. There was a stove there that she could burn herself on and a knife block with knives that she could have cut herself on and a sink that she could have filled with water and drowned herself in and also the fridge could have tipped over and crushed her to death….so maybe it was better that she was in her little baby gate place….

Which had A LOT of toys.

He could see the doll that baby sis gave her. It was in a pile of stuffed animals and rag dolls….and also she had other soft toys like nerf balls and sock puppets and building blocks made of foam and….and he felt the gift box in his hand. Maybe he should have gotten her a rag doll or something. She seemed to like soft things….and also maybe he should have gotten her more paper towel rolls, too, because the gift bag that he had felt sort of small….because he hadn't gotten her enough stuff to make up for missing Christmas and her birthday….and he knew that babies could not read calendars but that was no excuse to have treated her like that.

He had been such a jerk.

"Hey, kid, take your shoes off already." Said Baby Mukai's mom. Sho kicked his shoes off quickly. Right. He had to get out of the gekan. Baby sis's mom wanted him to get out of the genkan and baby sis was standing up and reached her chubby little baby arm through the bars of her baby gate. She was reached out and she had a little hand…well he had known that she had a little hand…but now her little hand was an even bigger little hand and he wondered if she still had to sleep with socks taped to her hands. If she still scratched herself with her sharp baby nails. If she still needed to have a bottle before bed and also a story, too. If she got up fifty times a night to scream and cry….or maybe twenty five now because she was so much older….over a year older…..

She could walk now.

"Well go on then, she's been missing you a lot." Said Baby Mukai's mom as she faced Sho's shoes the right way. He felt his face burning just a little bit. Right. He had to set a god example for baby sis. Even her little baby shoes were facing the right way…and she had little baby shoes now. They were pink and had Hello Kitty on them….like how big sis had Hello Kitty shoes back when they had been little and she had liked Hello Kitty…and if she had been there then she could have told baby sis about Hello Kitty and her friends and the adventures she had and about her family and big sis could have read her the books and showed her the show and all of that stuff…..

But big sis was not here.

Big sis was in a whole other country. She was with dad and the others and he was here. He was here with baby sis and she would have liked this, liked being here with baby sis, loved it in fact….but she could not be here. This was a secret. This was a big secret and he knew that if big sis was ever to hear about this, to know about this, then it would all be over. Fukuda had warned him. Being older was about keeping secrets, it seemed, but Sho could do it. He was not a baby.

Mukai was the baby, not him.

"She remembers me?" asked Sho

"Of course she does. What kind of a person would I be if I let her forget her own big brother?" asked baby sis's mom. Sho didn't correct her. They were just pretend brother and sister. Really he was more of an uncle than anything since dad had given big sis baby sis as a birthday present originally….which was sort of messed up because people were not presents…but dad was a sort of messed up guy so it all made sense. The fact that he thought that a human being could be a gift.

Well she was sort of a gift.

He felt all happy inside when he was near her. Not the happy inside that he felt when he finished a drawing or he beat big sis fair and square at a game or he was near Shimazaki….no this feeling was a million times removed from that one….it was just so….good. It felt sort of like Christmastime when he woke up and all of his presents were there and stuff. Big sis had said, before, that the best gift in the world was having him as a little brother. That was after he had gotten mad and torn up a drawing that he had made for her…and at the time it had seemed like she had just been saying nice things for the sake for saying nice things….because that was what she did. She told people what they wanted to hear so that they would be happy….and that was what he had thought that she had been doing on that day…

But now he got it.

Having baby sis in his life was a gift. So what if she hadn't come from mom's stomach? Not everyone in the world could have come out of his mom's stomach but that didn't mean that he couldn't care about them….and also it didn't matter that she wasn't a Suzuki. Dad was the only person in the world who thought that Suzuki's were the best people ever and his bloodline had to stretch until the end of time or whatever….none of that mattered to Sho….

The greatest gift in the world was having a little sister…and even if she wasn't really his sister…having her in his life was a gift.

But he also had actual gifts for her. He walked over to her baby gate and her mom told him to try and climb over it, that she would show him how the latch worked, but he didn't climb over it. No, he flew over it. He used his powers to make himself fly right over the gate. Baby sis sat down hard, her butt made a thud as she let herself fall back, and her little baby legs started to kick as he flew over her gate. Her aura, her little baby aura, felt happy.

Which made him feel happy.

"Come on, don't show her how to do that. I have a hard enough time with the walking and climbing." Said baby sis's mom as she unlatched the gate and stepped through. She felt bad, sort of, because he needed her mom to like him. If her mom didn't like him then she could tell him that he wasn't allowed to visit anymore….well he was Suzuki Sho and he could do whatever he wanted to…but he didn't want to go where he wasn't wanted.

"I'm sorry." said Sho even though he wasn't. He hadn't been around to teach her how to walk but he could at least teach her how to fly….and also she could CLIMB?! That was GREAT! There were so many trees outside that they could climb together! They could build a tree fort, better than the one that dad had in the woods from when he was a kid, and that could be their castle and they could have adventures and hang out and be friends and then he could visit her all the time and then maybe when big sis got older and learned how to keep a secret, if she ever learned how to keep a secret, and then it would be great!

Or something.

"It's ok, just don't teach her how to fly. She's hard enough to keep track of. Aren't you Mukai? Who's mobile now? You are, you are?" said baby Mukai's mom in a baby voice, the kind of voice that you were supposed to talk to babies in because it made them smile. Like now. Baby Mukai was smiling…and now she had all of these little baby teeth…and he had missed her getting all of her little baby teeth….and he had missed her learning how to stand and walk and….and he was going to miss everything else about her life….wasn't he?

Because he could be no kind of big brother to her.

Dad sucked. If not for dad then she could have been a part of their family. If mom had been around then she would have made dad keep baby sis. She would have put her crib in one of the rooms in the Castle that they hadn't been using…or maybe she could have made room in his and big sis's room…and she would have been so happy to have had another baby in the house. Plus Mukai was a girl baby and then mom could have done girl stuff with her. Yeah, if mom had been around she would not have let Fukuda take the baby away. She would have told Fukuda not to follow dad's orders, to follow her orders, and he would have listened because he and mom had been best friends…and then Mukai could have been his little sister for real….

Dad sucked.

If they had been with mom, or if dad had been a better person, then baby sis could have been a part of their lives…they could have been a part of her life…more than she was now. She was all the way here in Seasoning City instead of being with them at the Castle or even in the Claw houses they stayed at. She could have been happy-ish….happy to have him as a big brother and big sis as a big sister….but she would have been sad to have had dad as a dad…

So she was better off here with her mom that loved her and stuff.

Her mom picked her up and hugged her and then she put her back down next to Sho. Big sis looked up at him and for a moment he didn't know what to do. She was there. She was right there next to him and she was looking at him…and they had the same eyes. They both had blue eyes but, like, the same kind of blue. Super clear blue with really small pupils. That was cool. She had the same eyes and the same hair as him and her aura was red too….they could have been for real brother and sister if he hadn't known any better. She would have fit right in with their family better than his own sister did….

But she had her own family now.

Her mom sat down on the couch and put the TV on. There was a fighting show on…and maybe that wouldn't be good for baby Mukai. She didn't need to know about fighting. That was why he had stopped fighting, because he had to set a good example, but what kind of an example was her mom setting by putting fighting on the TV. Also she was in a dojo uniform thing…because she had been a champion fighter, Fukuda had said, so maybe it was ok when she fought then…he didn't know. He knew that he didn't want her to fight and he knew that big sis would have brought her up not to fight and then even if he hadn't been able to change she could have still grown up right because big sis would have shown her the way to be…and stuff….

But big sis was not bringing her up and neither was Sho so he didn't have any right to say anything.

Also if he did say something then that might have gotten him kicked out of her home and he didn't want that. This was the only time when he got to see her and he needed to make the most of it…but the only problem was that he didn't know how to make the most of it. She was there, with him, and she was looking at him and now her finger was in her mouth and…and maybe she would end up biting it off because she had teeth now….and she still drooled….and she had been such a drool machine before…and she was still such a drool machine….and he loved her so much…and he had to do something….

"H-Hi….Mukai…." said Sho. He waved at her. She reached her hand up and he almost umped back. She was so small and what if he had accidentally hit her while he had been waving? Then she would have gotten hurt and then…and then if she had gotten hurt then…then it would have been the worst thing in the entire fucking world…

And now she would end up saying bad words!

What if she could read minds? What if that was her power and nobody knew it yet? What if she had the power to read his thoughts and now she had bad words in her head and then she started saying all kinds of bad words and then she would be the cursing baby and people would make fun of her for being the cursing and then her mom would be mad at him for turning her into a cursing baby and-

"She's saying 'hi'. You don't have to freak out. She's just a baby, she can't hurt you, yet." Said baby sis's mom. She had her phone out and Sho heard the camera do the shutter noise. Baby sis still had her hand out. She was waving it and he waved his hand back at her…and then she waved harder…and he waved harder…and then she waved both hands…and now he had to wave both hands…and now she wave her hands harder…and then he waved his hands harder….

He didn't understand the rules of this game but he knew that it was fun.

She was smiling and laughing now. She had drool all down the front of her shirt. It was pink and said 'I'm a baby, what's your excuse?' in pink glittery writing…and he wondered if she even liked pink. He had no idea what her favorite color was or if she even had a favorite color. She might have liked blue or red or yellow or green or purple or…or some other color. He didn't know. He didn't even know if she could tell him. Maybe she would tell him her favorite color next time he saw her.

She might end up being a little kid by then.

He didn't know when you stopped being a baby and started being a little kid…maybe when you could talk good and walk good and stuff. She couldn't walk so good. He had seen her fall down on her butt when he first came in. She was still so little and she had these short little bay legs…and stuff. He wondered what it would be like when she was bigger. Would she remember him? Her mom had said that she hadn't let Mukai forget him….

But he had no idea how long it would be until his next visit.

So he should just enjoy the time he had with her while he had it. He would play her little baby games and hang out with her in her little baby cage and just…love her. He would love her. for as long as he could be with her he would love her and then he would love her for even longer after he left and he would love her until the next time he saw her and then he would keep on loving her no matter what. She was his baby sis and he would love her no matter what.

If she was tugging on him now.

She was tugging on the leg of his jeans. She had her little baby hand in the rip on the knee and she was making it sort of worse….but that was ok. These were just pants. The world was full of pants and he could always get another pair. Right now she was what mattered and he would never be able to get another baby sis. Not another one of her specifically and not another sister in general since mom was gone and dad was a jerk and no other girl would ever want to be in the same room as him let alone fall in love with him and marry him and make a baby with him….which was so gross….the grossest thing ever….

Even grosser than getting baby drool on his pants.

Mukai was using his pants as a napkin now…and he didn't mind. She was such a drool machine sometimes…and he had missed it, this, her being a little drool machine. He hoped that she wasn't still a little vomit machine though because that had been so gross…and also it couldn't have been good for her to have been throwing up as much as she had before. She seemed fine now…but she was drooling on him a lot. He crouched down and put her pacifier in her mouth. It was the kind that clipped to her shirt…and he knew this one. This was the one that she had come with when dad brought her from Korea. The pink one that looked like a butterfly. She liked it, maybe, because she took it right in her mouth…and then she reached up and tugged on his hair.

She was strong.

She had always been super strong even when she had been a little baby. She had been able to yank out pieces of big sis's hair when she had been little….and Sho could feel her yanking out his hair now, maybe, but that was ok. She was using him to stand up…and now she was standing up…and she put her little baby knee right in his eye but that was ok…and this was ok. She had probably never met another person with red hair beside him before. Well him and dad but she probably couldn't remember dad…and also it was for the best that she didn't remember dad. It was best that she never even knew who dad was. Not before she had to, anyway, because if her mom was a Scar then she was probably going to grow up to be a Scar….or maybe something bigger like a division leader…she could be whatever she wanted to be. When dad died after he took over the world and he left it to Sho he would give baby sis whatever job she wanted.

Maybe professional hair puller.

"Mukai, no. No pulling. That's a no-no." Said baby sis's mom. She sounded just like his own mom when she said that. He could hear mom's voice in his head now….that's a no-no Sho….don't climb up there Sho…don't pull on Shigeko's hair, Sho….don't wake daddy, Sho….and all of that. He didn't want her mom to ever tell her no. When he had his own kids he would never tell them no or anything like that….

Baby Mukai was not his kid.

If he told her mom to stop telling her no then he would end up getting kicked out. He would end up getting kicked out and then he would never see her again….and that would have sucked so hard….so he didn't tell her mom to be nice to her…and at least Mukai didn't seem upset. She let go of his hair and now she was tugging on his shirt with her little baby hands…

And he had to make her stop then.

Because she could have seen his scars then. She could never, ever, EVER see his scars. If she saw his scars then she would have wanted to know how he had gotten them….and she never needed to know how he got them. There was an Awakening Lab here and if he let her see his scars then she would ask him about how he got them and then he would have to explain to her what they did here….what had happened to him…and he just did not want to ever have to explain that to her.

She was better off not knowing.

She was better off not knowing where the Awakened came from. He knew that he had been better off not knowing back when he had been little…and he had been better off….no. He was better off now. He was better off now because he had his full powers and he was a strong esper and now dad…well dad didn't hate him….well not in any serious way….so that was….it was ok. What had happened to him was ok. It would not be ok for that to happen to her, though, because she was just a baby. She was just a baby and she had an aura….and she would have one when she got older…but if she never got any more powerful than this then….then that was fine…and if anyone tried to put her in an Awakening Room then he would kill them….or skin them….or boil them alive….or let them rot in traitor holes….the ones up where it was cold and snowy all the time where the people froze to death….or something. Something worse. When he ran the world he would think up a punishment bad enough for anyone who tried to awaken his baby sis….

He would never let that happen.

And he would never even let her know that things like that happened to people. He tried to pull his shirt out of her grasp but she was so strong…and he knew that he was stronger but he would never hurt her. He would rather have taken a citrus bath than hurt his own baby sister…and that was that. He didn't make her let go and he didn't tell her to stop like her mom kept on saying. No, that would have been mean, too. No, instead he distracted her.

Because she was really easily distracted.

They had learned the distracting trick back when she had first come to them. She had always been a very wiggly baby and it was bad during diaper changes. Big sis would do the changing part, Sho avoided it when he could because it was super gross, and then Sho had distracted her with a toy or something until it was over. That was she didn't put her little baby feet in her diapers and make herself all gross and stuff. The same thing might work again now even though she wasn't being changed. He brought her gifts over with his powers. She stopped tugging.

She sat down on the floor.

She reached out with her hands and he saw her aura flare. She was trying to do like him. He had no idea what her powers would be once she got them. He wished that there was some way to tell but there wasn't. Not without knowing who her mom and dad, the ones who made her, were. Parents passed their looks down to their kids so maybe they passed their powers down too. He had dad's aura and his telekinesis and stuff. So did big sis…well her aura was different…but they had the same powers…aside from the plant thing….so he guessed that even if he knew who her mom and dad were he still would not have been able to know what her powers were….

Well that was ok because he would love her just the same if she had his powers or unique powers or no powers at all.

"Hey Mukai, look. I got you presents. See, the bag has your birthday present in it and the box has your Christmas present. I'm sorry that I haven't been back for very long…and I'm sorry that my gifts are so late…and I'm just…sorry for not being much of a big brother to you…but I'm trying, you know? I'm trying my best and…and when I get older and stuff and I can just go where I want to go and do what I want to do…then we'll hang out more, ok? But for now…let's just open your presents up." Said Sho. He had no idea how much Mukai understood, maybe he should have spoken Korean since she originally came from Korea, but she seemed happy. She started laughing and also she slapped him on the arm…so that must have been good.

She must have been happy.

She smiled and laughed…and then she smiled and laughed some more when she unwrapped the paper towel rolls…though her mom hadn't been the happiest about those…and she smiled and laughed when she got the doll, too, even though she didn't really play with it. She just tried to eat it's hair…but that was how she played with things. She was just a baby after al. maybe the next time he got her a doll she would be able to play with it for real….because the next time he saw her she might have been a grown kid…or something….

He didn't know what she would be when he would see her next, he only knew what she was now. A baby who could walk…but also who still loved playing and drooling.


	295. Being Awake and Being Apart

Mob couldn't sleep.

She just couldn't. It was late, the sun had gone down, and it was long past the time when she would have put Sho to bed if he had been there. But he was not there. She had no idea where he was. Well Korea, probably, but she had no idea where in Korea. Well Seoul, probably, but she had no idea where in Seoul. The Claw houses in Seoul, probably, but she had no idea which Claw house. They were all the same, mostly, but she had no idea which specific house he was staying in. She had no idea if he was awake or in bed or even what time it was in Korea….she just didn't know….

She didn't know a lot of things.

She rolled over and looked across the room. No second bed. No Sho meant no second bed. There was just empty space there. She had tried setting up her dollhouse there to fill the space but that had just felt more wrong than there being an empty space where Sho should have been. She had no way of filling the space that he had left behind so…so she didn't. She just stared at it. At the white wall across from her. Her phone came to life every so often and showed the time. Eleven at night. Eleven even. She needed to go to bed.

She didn't have anything to get up for but she needed to go to bed.

Her sleep schedule was still messed up from the sugar cube. She wished that Shimazaki had told her that her brain wouldn't be able to go to sleep at all even after she came back from wherever it was that she had been. That strange house. The strange house with the strange walls and the strange floors and the strange person called….what had he been called? She didn't know. All she remembered was that she had been in a very strange place….and the people had been strange…and she had been small. She had been smaller than she had ever remembered being in her life…so small….and Sho had been smaller. Sho had been smaller than her and Sho had been….

Where was Sho?

Who was Sho? Well she knew who Sho was, he was her own little brother, and also in her…in the place she had gone….well she hadn't gone anyplace at all. She had been in Shimazaki's room the whole time but she had also gone somewhere….and it was….the whole thing was hard to understand. It was sort of like when she smoked a lot and she forgot where she was for a second but it had been for more than a second…and also she had forgotten where she was and even WHO she was for a little bit. She had been small…well she was small….but she had been very small…and also she had no idea where she had been…and she remembered…yellow. A yellow room. A yellow room with ducks on the walls…

She had never lived in a yellow room with ducks on the walls.

She had lived in the Castle and in the Castle she and Sho had stayed in a blue room with nothing on the walls. Just shelves and also Sho's pictures when he had gotten old enough to be trusted with the tape. She had stayed in so many Claw houses, too, but none of them had yellow walls with any kind of decoration…so where had she been? It felt sort of like she had been dreaming…but also not dreaming. Not like daydreaming but dreaming for real, like when she thought that the dream was real, and it had been real….and also it had not been real…and then she had woken up and….and then she'd had to pee…and Minegishi had been there…

And it had been a very weird experience.

She didn't think that it had been a bad experience…not really. Not like the times when she drank too much and got sick. That had just been….a lot…and it had left her tired and thirsty and also with a kind of a sort of a sense of….loss. Like something was missing. She had lost…she had lost her little brother…and that made sense because Sho was not there…but he was not her little brother, the person she had lost, because her little brother was named Sho but this person…

Was and was not Sho.

She couldn't remembered what he had been called. She could barely remember what had happened. She remembered….she remembered that she had dreamt a lot of things. Like kissing Shimazaki. Yuck. She had dream that she had been sitting on top of him, well sort of, her legs had been on either side of him and his stomach had been under her and then he had leaned up and kissed her….and that was gross so she knew that she must have been dreaming….and they weren't good dreams….

Weird dreams.

Well some of it had been dreams and some of it had been real. She was pretty sure that Shimazaki screaming at the sun had been real…and also he kept on saying 'mistake' over and over again…but he hadn't made one. It had been…ok…she liked smoking better but it had been ok…ok-ish. She was sorry about the house but Minegishi had said that it hadn't been her fault…and also it hadn't been a problem because there was a house on the other side of theirs that everyone moved to that very night….and that was ok….

And Minegishi was not mad at them.

They had said, over and over again, that they were not mad at her…they were mad at Shimazaki…and they had called him Shimazaki….and Mob's head had been so full of…it had felt like her whole head was full of good or something….well it had at the time…that she hadn't even been able to tell Minegishi properly that it had all been her idea and that Shimazaki had just been trying to find something fun for them to do together…and stuff. So it hadn't been his fault…and also Minegishi should have been nicer to him because he was in love with them….and stuff….well Mob was pretty sure that he was in love with them since he said it over and over again….

A lot of times.

Mob wondered if she was remembering that right. She was pretty that she had heard him tell Minegishi that he loved them after she had come back form that place….wherever that place had been….and that meant that it had happened…and stuff. Right? She didn't know. She didn't know anything at all except for the fact that she had gone somewhere and now she was back and the only thing that she had come back with was this sort of…loss. She had lost something but she had no idea what it was….and the loss felt real. This wasn't like when she woke up from a dream about mom and went looking for her but then realized that she was gone. The loss was staying.

She had lost something.

She had lost someone. She had lost…not Sho….a little brother who was not Sho…but that made no sense. She had one brother and he was named Sho not…what had she been saying…she closes her eyes. She closes her eyes and tries to go back to the place….and she tries…but she can't. She can't. She just remembers a weird house and a boy with black hair with a different name and she herself being so very small…and none of it makes sense. She has a brother named Sho and she has not lost him…she just…hasn't seen him in weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks…..

And weeks.

She calls her phone over with her powers. Maybe she had dreamt up a new brother. Maybe she had dreamt up a new little brother because she hadn't seen hers in a while. Maybe that was what this loss was. She didn't know. All she knew was that she hadn't lost Sho…she just….hadn't seen him in a while…which was not the same as losing someone…..and now she can hear Shimazaki shouting that he's not blind, he's just not sighted, which now that she thought about it meant the same thing but what did she know? She wasn't blind and also she wasn't as good of friends with Shimazaki as Sho was….

And she missed Sho…

And maybe Sho could explain what he meant better because he and Shimazaki were such good friends and stuff….and that was a good reason to call him…and if she were to call him now then she would not have been smothering him at all…and that was the last thing that she wanted. She knew what it was to be smothered and smothering him was the very last thing that she wanted to do. She would rather kiss Shimazaki on the mouth than smother her own brother….so much yuck….and maybe this did count as smothering….because she didn't NEED to call him…she knew that he was in good hands, she had written out an entire instructional manual for Fukuda and all, and maybe this wasn't right….

She just really wanted to hear his voice.

Just this once wouldn't be too bad. Just once, not all the time, and not for very long. She just…she wanted to talk to her brother. Her dream place had a different brother because she missed the brother that she had, that was all, and so…so maybe her dream place had been telling her to call her little brother. Once would not be so bad. It wasn't like she was going to keep him up all night like dad kept her up….no. She wasn't even sure if it was day or night, even, where he was…or whatever….she just….

She needed her hear his voice.

She went into her contacts, not very many, and clicked on Sho's picture. He was very happy in that picture. This was taken at Disneyland when they had gone for the first time and…and it had been fun…even if they had ridden the teacups until they had gotten sick…Sho had still been so happy there and if he was happy then she was happy…and she really hoped that he was happy…but there was only one way to find out…

She hit the call button.

Sho's phone was ringing.

He almost jumped when it did. The only person who ever called was Fukuda and he said that he wouldn't be back for him for hours and hours…and it had been hours and hours…but not so many hours and hours! He and baby sis had just started playing the game where she threw empty paper towel holders and he caught them with his powers. This was a really intense game, she could throw hard, and he did not need Fukuda calling him and telling him to come home now because the day was done…he didn't need that at all….

But he had to answer his phone.

He held the paper towel roll in the air with his powers. Baby sis was standing up as tall as she could, which wasn't very tall at all, trying to get at it. He wasn't teasing her, no, he was just distracting her. She liked phones. She liked to hold them and chew on them and throw them and hide them so you freaked out trying to find them…and how she had managed to throw it on top of the high bookshelf he would never know, but he was also proud of her….but he didn't want her to do it again.

She had her own toys to throw.

They would throw some toys when he was done telling Fukuda that he needed just five more minutes. Five more minutes, of course, being as much time as he could get out of him. Fukuda wasn't big sis, he never set a timer, so Sho could just keep asking for more and more time. Sort of like if you found a genie you could always just wish for infinitely more wishes. So maybe he could have infinite time with baby sis….that was have been so fucking awesome….and she could not read minds so that was ok….and she was suck a fucking awesome little sister…

And big sis was a fucking awesome big sis.

She was also calling him. He didn't even have to read her name, her picture was right there. He had taken that one when they had gone out for pizza at some place that was supposed to have been famous but every single pizza place said that. It had been good pizza though. It had been so good that they had ate it so fast that big sis ended up with pizza sauce all over her face…and she had begged him to delete that picture but he kept it because it was funny…and usually he laughed a little inside of his head when he saw that picture…but not now….

Because she was not supposed to be calling him.

Well he had never ordered her not to call him, he would never say that because he was done being a jerk, but….but she could not be calling him now. He was with baby sis…and she could never know that he was with baby sis…but it must have been important if she was calling him….something really big must have been happening….maybe dad had died! Or at least gotten really hurt!

He was never so lucky.

Maybe it was something else big. Maybe she and Hatori were getting married! That would be the best thing ever. Then she could stop liking Shimazaki…well she had used to like him and she probably still liked him at least a little because he was the coolest guy ever and he was fun and he was really strong and stuff, like he could lift you, and also….and also big sis couldn't like him because….because nobody wanted their sister to like their best friend. Besides, Hatori was more like her and they were probably getting married or something and that was why she was calling him….

Or something.

He didn't want to answer the phone…but he had to. He had to because if she had just wanted to talk them she would have just texted him…so this must have been important. He would just talk to her, not facetime, because baby sis would try to get in on the call and this was supposed to be a secret…like all of the other secrets…secrets on top of secrets on top of secrets….

He was getting really sick of all of these secrets.

He was also getting sick of the sound of his phone ringing….so he hit answer. It took him a couple of tries, his hand was all sweaty for some reason, but he answered. He kept on bouncing the empty paper towel roll up and down above baby sis's head. That would keep her busy, she wouldn't come over and try to play with him or anything, but he really wanted to be back to playing with her…to playing with his baby sister…

But his big sister needed him.

"Hey, what's up?" asked Sho after he managed to answer the phone. He could hear big sis breathing on the other line. He wondered if something so bad had happened that she was speechless…like maybe dad fell down and broke his head opened and now he had amnesia and he thought that he was a totally different person….that would have been great…because he wouldn't wish death on his own dad…because that was what jerks did….and stuff….

"Um….hi, Sho." said big sis. That was all she said. He could still hear her breathing on the other end after that….and he wondered when she would get on with it. Baby sis was getting kind of bored. She wasn't trying to reach the paper towel roll anyone, no, now she was tugging on her pacifier. It was clipped to her shirt so she wouldn't lose it….but she just wanted to off…even though she must have known that she would lose it if she unclipped it…and he wanted to distract her with something else but he was on the phone….and stuff…even though all big sis was doing was breathing…and he had missed her so much…but if he had wanted to listen to her breathing he could have just waited until it was time to go home.

"So….what's up? Did something happen?" asked Sho. He crossed his fingers for dad with amnesia or dad having been shot in some place that wouldn't kill him or dad getting carried away by birds or dad choking on an omelet…and living because it was wrong to wish death on people….or maybe it wasn't if those people were jerks…and he would think about this later. Baby sis was getting mad at her pacifier now and Sho turned away from her and cupped the phone to his ear so big sis wouldn't be able to hear baby sis getting all fussy.

"Um….I don't….I just….um….I just wanted to talk to you." Said big sis. Sho blinked. She had never called him just to talk before…and she hardly ever called him…because they were always together…but they weren't together right now so it made sense…and he wanted to talk to her too. There were so many things that he wanted to tell her….so many things that he could not tell her. Secrets on top of secrets on top of secrets….

One of those secrets was pulling his hair.

Baby sis liked to tug on his hair. She tugged on his hair when she was happy, she tugged on his hair when she was mad, she tugged on his hair when she was bored, and she tugged on his hair when she wanted to play. She wanted to play right now. She was tugging on his hair with one hand and hitting him on the head with the empty paper towel roll. She wanted to play and…and he was talking to big sis…and now she was fussing….

She wanted to play with him.

"Sho? Are you somewhere with babies? Are you playing with the babies at the park again? Are they cute? What are they doing?" asked big sis. Fuck! She could hear baby sis…and Sho….he wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to tell her about how he was with baby sis and how she lived in the Seventh Division and how she could walk now and how she liked to throw paper towel rolls…and stuff…but he didn't. He couldn't. He had to keep a secret.

He had to keep a lot of secrets.

He wants to tell big sis about how he found out that Fukuda had been sending mom emails…and he wanted to tell her that Fukuda missed mom as much as they did…and he wanted to tell her that he had talked about mom….but he didn't. He couldn't. He had to keep secrets. His. Other people's. All the secrets in the world. He had so many to keep and they were so big….and sometimes it was hard to keep them….

But he kept them.

"That's just….the TV. I have to go now because of….reason. It was nice talking to you." Said Sho before he hit the hang up button. He hit the button and then put his phone back in his pocket. He felt bad, he just hung up on her like a jerk, but….but he would be able to see her when he got back. He would always be able to see her….

He only got so much time with baby sis.

Mob only got so much time with Sho.

Maybe that was what her dream had meant. Maybe that was the feeling of loss that was sticking to her. Maybe that was why she had dreamed she had a different brother with a different name. Maybe…maybe she had realized that she only got so much time with Sho. They would always be together, she had thought, but she hadn't thought about what would happen when they grew up. Maybe that was why she had been so little in her dream. Maybe she wanted to go back to when she had been little and things had been easier and nicer…and Sho had always been with her…and he hadn't gone on any away missions…and he would only go on more and more…..because he was getting older….

And one day they would be apart forever.

One day they would be adults and she would be with dad and Sho would be off ruling the world…so maybe her dream meant that things would change one day and…and things had changed so much already…and life had so much change in it…and the change could be so much sometimes. Sometimes you grew up and…and everything was different from how it started. She had been so little and now she was not little…and Sho wasn't with her. There was an empty space where Sho should have been.

And Mob couldn't get to sleep.


	296. Cuddles in Front of the TV

Mob didn't like ignoring people.

She didn't like pretending that someone who was in the room was not. She didn't like not responding to people when they talked to her…especially not her friends. So she didn't much like treating her friend this way. She didn't know why he was being treated this way anyway. She loved Shimazaki and he loved her, not in the way that he loved Minegishi of course, but they did love each other. She remembered him saying that before they ate the sugar cubes together. He loved her and he would do really gross stuff, the grossest stuff that had ever been imagined, before he let her get hurt….so really she should not have been ignoring him….

But Minegishi said that she had to.

"Ignore him." said Minegishi as they ran their hand up and down her back. Mob nodded, her head resting on their lap. They were watching TV now, well Mob was sort of watching TV. It was hard to watch TV when Shimazaki was teleporting in and out of the room leaving things in front of Minegishi's feed. Mostly plants.

Minegishi liked plants.

A lot of their plants had gotten hurt after Mob had ate the sugar cube…and that had all been her fault. She had been the one who had suggested that they eat sugar cubes and she was the one who had lost control of her powers and trashed the house. None of that had been Shimazaki's fault. None of it. He had just been trying to show her a good time. That was all. She had just been hanging out with him and then they'd had…a time…and then she had lost control of her powers and now…now they all lived in another house and Minegishi's plants had been saved and everyone else's stuff had been fixed or replaced….and Mob just wished that things could have been better….that everyone could just go back to the way that they had been before….but they couldn't go back…

Because Minegishi was still mad at Shimazaki.

"Toshi, come on. Look, these ones are alive this time. Come on, talk to me." Said Shimazaki. He left a potted plant at Minegishi's feet. This one was really pretty purple flowers. She wondered if that was on purpose or if it had just been a lucky coincidence. It must have been a lucky coincidence because he didn't know what color was. She didn't know. She couldn't ask him.

She was supposed to be ignoring him.

She didn't want to make Minegishi upset…but she didn't want to make Shimazaki upset either. He had said that he loved Minegishi and…and Minegishi didn't have to love him back but ignoring him seemed sort of mean…and also Minegishi had said that this was all because of the sugar cubes. They had said, when Mob had come down from the sugar cubes, that she had been too young for that and that Shimazaki knew better than to give her sugar cubes….and Mob didn't think that she had been too young…well she had lost control of her powers….but she wasn't a little kid anymore.

She was almost eleven.

She had lost control of her powers and that was on her. She should have worked harder at not clawing the plaster off the ceiling or throwing things around the house…and she had only done that because her powers had been looking for…she had been looking for Sho and not Sho. Maybe the house had been why, being in a different place, and that was why she hadn't recognized anything….or something. She didn't know. Nothing made sense and everything made sense….and a lot of stuff still didn't make sense…

This feeling of loss didn't make sense.

She'd been carrying this feeling with her for days. She felt like she had lost something, someone, and she didn't know what it was. She had thought that calling Sho would have made her feel better but it hadn't. Sho had been busy and….and she should not have smothered him like dad smothered her. Sho was off helping Fukuda do really important work and Mob should not have been distracting him. Sho needed to learn how to run Claw since he was the one who would inherit not only Claw but the whole world….and she needed to stop smothering him….

And to stop wanting to smother him, too.

She felt almost like she was ignoring him….was that what this feeling of loss was? That she had lost her brother? That she wasn't calling or testing or facetiming or emailing or….or anything like that? But she wasn't supposed to smother him….and he didn't have time for her anyway…and stuff. She didn't know. All she knew was that she wanted her brother…that she missed him more than anything…..that she wanted him back…

And that she wanted her friends to get along.

"Ignore him." said Minegishi. They didn't even look at the flowers that Shimazaki had brought them. They didn't care, it seemed like, but that made no sense. Shimazaki was the person, the boy person, that they cared about most in the whole world. That was why they kissed him and cuddled with him and helped him buy clothes and told him what was in cans and told him if his hair looked nice and read to him whenever he asked them too….but they hadn't done any of those things since the sugar cube times….

And Mob wished that she had never seen those stupid sugar cubes, that she had never gotten hungry and then gotten the idea to eat them, because if she hadn't anted to eat them then none of them would have been in this mess.

"Minegishi, look. There are flowers and they're purple and-" said Mob. Shimazaki was still standing there and his aura was pulled in as close as his barrier was….and his barrier was extra thick now. She could see it. He was trying to keep himself safe….and he didn't need to. Mob was there and she would keep him safe, he knew that, though she had no idea what she was supposed to be keeping him safe from. The bad feelings, maybe, or something. She didn't know. She just knew that she wanted things to go back to the way they were.

If that was even possible.

Because Minegishi had never acted like this before. Mean. Mean in the real way, not the Minegishi way, and Mob had no clue how to fix this. How she was supposed to make things better between her friends. They were fighting….fighting and not fighting, and she would have done anything, even the really gross thing Shimazaki had said about, to make things better. There had to have been something that she could do…but she had no idea what. She had never been good at these sorts of things, these talking things, and it seemed like it would end up being one of those talking things since the gifts were not working at all…and Minegishi didn't have to accept them but they could at least say 'no thanks' instead of letting them pile up at their feet.

It was like Christmas but sad.

"Mob, want to watch another one? Or do you want to pick this time. Anything but Frozen." Said Minegishi. Mob would have picked Frozen if she could have picked Frozen. She would have picked Frozen because Frozen made sense. Elsa was afraid of herself but then she got older and learned to control her powers and now she wasn't. Also she had a sister who she loved. She understood Frozen.

She didn't understand this at all.

Shimazaki had told Minegishi that he loved them. They should have been happy. But they weren't. They were so very unhappy that they were ignoring Shimazaki…and he didn't like to be ignored. He had done a lot of screaming, mostly telling her to look at him, and she knew that he hated being ignored. Plus he had that thing, Minegishi said, where if people weren't paying attention to him he forgot that he was real. So there was that. It seemed so mean to ignore him after he had declared his love for them….and also knowing that he didn't like it.

And Mob hated being mean.

This felt wrong, meanness, it felt so wrong. It felt like wearing pants. It felt like she was wearing pants and walking around in pants and she had no choice because in her drawers were more pants. Jeans and dress pants and shorts and leggings and those leather pants Shimazaki wore a lot of the time. This whole thing felt like pants on top of pants on top of pants. It felt like they were all wearing pants….well Minegishi always wore pants….so it felt like she was wearing pants and Minegishi was wearing a dress and Shimazaki wasn't wearing black and…and everything just felt so wrong….

And she had no clue how she was supposed to make this right.

"You can pick….and also Shimazaki left flowers for you. See? They're alive this time." Said Mob as she used her powers to lift up the potted plant Shimazaki had left down on the rug at their feet. There was dirt on the rug now, and it would show since this rug was white, and then Shibata would be upset because he was the only one who did any cleaning around here….but Minegishi should have been happy. Purple was their favorite color and they loved plants.

But why weren't they happy?

They had been super upset about their plants getting ruined. They had shouted at Shimazaki about that…and all he had done was hug them and tell them that he loved them…and also he kept on asking to do more than kissing stuff with them…which had been very gross and stuff….but at the time Mob had just been happy to have seen Minegishi. The loss feeling had gone away when they had been there….but they had not been the person who she had lost. No, she had lost Sho…Sho and not Sho….and she had already lost one person. She did not want to lose two….or three….or anyone at all!

She just wanted things to be ok. Was that so much to ask?

"I see what Shimazaki left on the floor. Now ignore him." said Minegishi. They sounded mad but they were petting her hair now like she was a cat or something. Mob didn't know why. She wasn't that tired. She had been having trouble sleeping but she wasn't going to just fall asleep from being petted like a cat. How could she fall asleep with everything that was going on?

They had called him Shimazaki.

They had called him Ryou for a while now but now he was back to being Shimazaki…and it was all her fault. This hurt him, even if she hadn't been there when he confessed his love for them Mob knew that it would have hurt him, and he teleported away. Mob sat up. Maybe he would come back. Maybe he would come back and then Shimazaki would say sorry again and then Minegishi would call him Ryou and then things would be good between them again and then everything would be ok. That was what Mob wanted. It was so easy for things not to be ok…and that was not ok. She needed her friends to be ok…and she was so sorry for all the things that she had done….

She was just so sorry.

She wondered if kowtowing would make it better. She wouldn't mind it. She would spend the rest of her life kowtowing if that made everything all better. She just….there was enough loss. Any more loss would have been too much loss…and she already felt maybe too much loss. The loss of Sho….this feeling of having lost Sho and not Sho….it felt sort of….sticky. Like no matter where she went or what she did the feeling of loss would stick to her like gum on the bottom of her shoe….and stuff. Maybe the fact that it felt like Shimazaki and Minegishi were losing each other….

And Mob was getting very sick of loss.

Losing mom….losing Sho…..so much loss…and she didn't want to lose anyone else. She didn't want to feel any more loss. She didn't want to feel any more loss. She just….she wanted everyone to be together and to be happy and if….if she had to kowtow for the rest of her life in order to make things better then….then she would do anything. She just wanted everything to be better and she didn't care what happened to herself just so long as everyone was happy.

That was what mattered. Her friends being happy.

"Minegishi-" sais Mob. She needed to say sorry. She needed Minegishi to know that she was so very sorry for what happened and that it was ok for them to be friends with z again. They didn't have to love him back but she still wanted them to be friends. She had ruined everything and it was all her fault and no wonder Sho didn't want to talk to her.

"Mob. Drop it." Said Minegishi

"But…..but I just want…" said Mob

"I said to ignore him." said Minegishi. They had a tone, there, and Mob didn't know what it meant but she knew that it was not a good tone at all. They were upset…and Mob had made them upset.

"I'm sorry about-" said Mob. She just needed to say sorry. When you messed up then you had to say sorry. So that was what she was doing. Saying sorry.

"Mob, leave it. I said to ignore him so ignore him." said Minegishi. Mob didn't get it. Shimazaki had gone off to wherever it was that he had gone off to. Probably to get more plants for Minegishi. Mob didn't want to ignore anyone but it was easy not to pay attention to someone when they weren't in the room.

But she wanted to pay attention to Shimazaki.

Her memories from that time weren't the best but she knew that he had asked her to look at him. She looked at him. She had looked at him and he had still asked her to look at him even though she had been looking at him…and he really did not like to be ignored. It made him upset…and she didn't want him to be upset. Ever. For any reason.

"But….but how can I ignore someone who's not in the room…and I don't want to ignore him anyway. I want…I want you guys to be friends again." said Mob. She just wanted all of her friends to get along…because if they stopped getting along….then they would stop being friends….and she didn't know what she would do if they stopped being friends. They had to be friends with each other and they had to be friends with her, too….well not HAD to be. Nobody had to be friends with her if they didn't want to be friends with her…

But she really wanted them to be friends with each other.

Well what she really wanted was for Shimazaki and Minegishi to be in love and to be boyfriend and they-friend and then married and then they could have babies and then she could play with the babies and the babies would love her and she would love them…and then maybe they could be friends with her babies when she had them….if she ever had them…and then they could be friends with Sho's babies when he and his girlfriend Emmy from England got married and then everyone would be together and happy and the feeling of loss would be gone forever.

Which would have been the best thing ever.

"Mob….we are friends. Ok? He and I….we're friends. I'm just angrier at him now than I have ever been in my entire life." Said Minegishi

"But….but he said that he was sorry." said Mob

"That doesn't change the fact that I'm mad at him." said Minegishi. Mob didn't know why they were still so mad…and she just…she just wanted to make things better…and she had no idea how to make things better…but she had to!

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry that I made you mad at him and I'm sorry that you guys are fighting and I'm just….sorry." said Mob. Minegishi shook their head 'no' and Mob had no clue what they were shaking their head about. Did they not believe her? She was sorry! She was so sorry!

She just wasn't showing it the right way.

She slid off the couch and was about to kowtow, her forehead had almost touched the ground, when she felt Minegishi's aura moving. She could feel it all around her, in the plants hanging from the ceiling and on the walls and piled up in front of her….she could feel Minegishi aura around her and one her, too, in the vines that wrapped around her and sat her back up on the couch.

Mob didn't get it.

When you were sorry you had to show it. So that was what she was had been doing….but maybe…maybe Minegishi didn't want to have it shown. Shimazaki had been showing how sorry he was and Minegishi had just been ignoring him…..and stuff…and Mob had messed up again and…and stuff. She was always messing up…she knew that she was always messing up…she had…she had felt it and…and she knew that before…a long time before…maybe in a different world, even, or a dream or…or this world when she had been little…..she had messed up….

She had messed up before…she didn't know how but she had…and now she was messing up again….

"Stop that. I've told you before that you have nothing to be sorry about. That shit show is on Shimazaki, not you, and you have nothing to apologize for….well for going along with his stupid idea…but you're a kid. He's an adult and he should have known that giving you acid was a TERRIBLE idea." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't think that it had been such a terrible idea. She had lost control of her powers, before, and…and it was never a good thing…but she didn't think that it was worth ignoring Shimazaki for and making him sad.

"But….I said that I was sorry for ruining the house…I didn't mean to and-" said Mob. This was all her fault and if Minegishi had to be mad at someone then it should have been at her. Shimazaki had just been thinking up things for them to do, that was all, and they didn't need to be so upset at him. They should have been upset at her, even though the thought of them being upset at her makes her insides hurt, because she didn't care what happened to her so long as her friends were happy.

What could be better than her friends being happy?

"That's the point. You didn't mean to. Mob….smoking is one thing. Drinking is one thing. That….what you two did was a whole other thing entirely and you are way too young for that…and we're lucky that you only destroyed one house. With your powers being what they are….and you being as young as you are…and the life you've been living…that could have been so much worse than what it was…and you don't need to be risking yourself like that." Said Minegishi. They ran a hand through their hair. It was getting longer again. They made it messy when they ran their hands through it. Mob fixed their hair with her powers. They didn't seem to notice because they did it over and over again. They did and they sighed and Mob knew that she had to say something but…but what? She had already said sorry…and she had no idea what else she could say. Maybe….Minegishi was worried about her…but they had no reason to be worried about her….

Because she had never been in danger.

"But Shimazaki said that nobody ever died from eating sugar cubes. Only people who thought that they could fly and he and I can already fly so….well I don't know why it's so dangerous for people who think that they can fly but can't….but he and I can fly so we were safe." Said Mob. Shimazaki would keep her safe, she trusted him, and Minegishi should have trusted him too. He acted like a crazy person a lot of the time but he was still a good friend.

"Mob…first of all that's a myth. They say that people would take acid, think that they could fly, and then they would jump off of buildings or something…but that's a myth. Nobody actually did that. You'll feel like you're flying…you'll feel a lot of things…and the danger is in what you feel." Said Minegishi

"Because my powers could go out of control." Said Mob. That made sense…and they had gone out of control…but that was just it. Those were HER powers that she was responsible for. There was no need to make Shimazaki feel bad just because she had trouble controlling her powers.

"That and…and you could have seen things or felt things that…that you didn't want to feel. I have no idea what you saw or felt or went but it could have been bad. It's like….I'm guessing Ryou did a lot of screaming and singing?" asked Minegishi

"He was doing both at the same time." Said Mob. She could sort of remember….but not clearly. She had been too busy in her own place, being in wherever that place had been, to think about how he had been until he pulled her out of wherever it was that she had been.

"Yeah, I figured…he always does that. I have no idea why he thought that he wouldn't, why he always thinks that he won't, but he does. He does and I'm sorry if he scared you." Said Minegishi

"I wasn't scared. I felt bad for him. He said mean stuff about himself and also….also he got kind of mad or sad or something about the sun…." said Mob

"He'll get like that…and worse." Said Minegishi

"Why? Why does he get like that? How do it fix it?" asked Mob

"You don't fix it. Unless you have a time machine you can't fix his terrible life….and it was terrible. Don't ever ask him about it. Ever. You do not need to know what he's been through. You have enough problems as it is." Said Minegishi

"But I don't have enough problems. I don't have too many problems to not want to fix-" said Mob. What was the point of having friends if you weren't going to help them out when they needed it? She would always be there for her friends no matter what. She was a very good friend like that. She had always considered herself to be a very good friend.

"No. His terrible life is not your problem. The fact that he won't acknowledge, actually acknowledge, how shitty his life was….and then he does shit like that…and he KNOWS that he shouldn't do shit like that…and he knows that I need to be there for him when he doesn't shit like that. You are ten years old. You are not equipped to handle him when he gets like that." said Minegishi. Mob just did not understand. What was so bad about what had happened? She had trashed the house, like Minegishi had said before, but they just moved. Really it was only a house, Claw had plenty of them, it wasn't like she had hurt a person or anything. She had never hurt a person before….with her powers….at least…

Red.

She had been little and there had been red….and that was all she remembered. Had she hurt someone? She didn't…she didn't even know if that had been real. She had been dreaming, it felt like, the sort of dreaming where you were in so deep that you thought that your dream was reality….so maybe it had all been a bad dream…or something. She didn't know. She didn't know what it was or what it meant…but she knew that even though she had lost control of her powers it wasn't so bad since she had only hurt the house, not a person, and houses were easily replaceable.

People were not.

"But…I don't understand why you're so mad at him. We ate the sugar cubes and it made us both weird…and I ruined the house….and I said sorry….and I just….I'm sorry. I'm sorry about the house and I'm sorry that you're mad now….but I didn't get hurt or hurt anyone…and I just think that maybe…you should accept Shimazaki's apology." said Mob

"I already told you that you have nothing at all to be sorry about. This is on him. Not you. This is all his doing. He's the one who did something stupid, he's the one who put you in danger. He thinks that giving me a bunch of plants is going to make up for the danger he put you in? If that's what he thinks then he has another thing coming. "said Minegishi

"But I wasn't in any danger. He said that he would suck-that he would do something really gross before he let anything bad happen to me. He said that I was safe and loved and stuff." Said Mob

"Mob…do you know why he said that?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. Mob shook her head. Well she sort of knew why he had said something so gross…but she had no idea what possessed him to even think up something like that. Boys were so weird.

"The gross thing? I guess to show me how much he wanted me to know that he would protect me. I don't know what he was protecting me from but he said that he would always keep me safe. I don't know why he thought up something so gross, though. Boys are so weird sometimes." Said Mob

"What exactly did he say to you?" asked Minegishi

"Um….I don't want to say….because it was gross…and I know why he said it but…but I don't know why he thought it up…or even how he thought it up….but it's ok. I know that he just wanted me to feel safe and loved and I did." Said Mob

"And do you know why, exactly, he told you that you were safe and loved." Said Minegishi

"He said that I had to be in a good mental place." Said Mob

"Exactly. You have to be in a good mental place because….because acid messes with your mind. You see things and hear things and smell things and taste things….you pretty much lose your mind for a little bit…and sometimes things can go wrong. That stuff….smoking is for fun. Drinking is for fun. Acid is….acid is for figuring yourself out. Processing things. Achieving enlightenment….if you're pretensions. You could have really messed your mind up. You could have ended up going to a bad place, a very bad place, and being as powerful as you are a bad trip…like the one he had….that could have messed you up." Said Minegishi

"But…but I'm fine. I didn't go to a bad place….I don't know where I went but it wasn't a bad place….well I mean I don't think that it was…..I don't really know where I went. The room was yellow." Said Mob. She held her hands in her lap. She looked down at them. They were bigger now, and her nails were blue. Her hands had been smaller then and her nails had been normal. She had been little then….maybe she had been little then because she felt little now….and maybe because she was little now. She was little compared to everyone around her…and she always would be. All of her friends were older than her…aside from Sho….but he was gone.

"Mob…where did you go, exactly? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to but…but I just want to know. Where did you go and why…why did you trash the house? That's what I'm so pissed about. You went to a place that you shouldn't have and…and you had no reason to be there. So just…where'd you go off to?" asked Minegishi

"Um….I didn't really GO anywhere. I mean I went to like this…dream place….in my head but I thought that the dream place was real…but really I was in bed with Shimazaki the whole time and he was holding on to me and I was holding on to him…but it was like…like I was outside of me and inside of me at the same time…and I went to a place where….where everything was different and everyone was different and I was looking for….I think for Sho…but Sho was called something else….but I needed to get Sho back….and I think that it was Sho, anyway, and I don't know what the whole thing was or meant…and also I was really little….and I don't know what the dream meant….but it wasn't bad. I don't know why I trashed the house and…and I don't think that me trashing a house is worth being mad at Shimazaki for….that was my fault and you should be mad at me and not him." said Mob

"Mob….I'm never mad at you, you know that. You're the child in this situation and he's the adult and he knew how…how badly that could have gone. I know the life you've lived and I know how much bad shit is there…and when you take acid it can bring up a lot of bad shit. You can get trapped in the worst moments of your life. You can relive every moment of pain you've ever had. You can sit there and have all of your failures stretched out in front of you for an eternity. Acid fucks with your perception of time and yourself and….and you can just…not come out the other side ok. I'm glad that you went to a place that…that wasn't like that." Said Minegishi

"It wasn't bad…but I don't know what it was. I don't know if it was a dream or a…a memory….or a memory of a dream…or a dream of a memory." Said Mob

"Mob…don't look too deep into it. Not at your age. Acid is not for someone your age and it…it's for introspection. It's for figuring yourself out….but you're only ten. You're still figuring yourself out and you don't need to mess your head up….so please don't do that again. I don't want you to…..to end up messing your brain up and…and I don't want you to do that again. Ok? Not even if Ryou asks you to." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't get what they were still so upset about….but also she didn't much want to do that again. She didn't much want to do that again. Smoking was fun, didn't make her head hurt, and didn't give her bad feelings that hung out for a while afterwards.

"Ok, I won't do it again….but can you…can you please stop ignoring Shimazaki. It hurts his feelings." Said Mob. She would never do it again. There. Now everything could be alright again. Now Minegishi would stop ignoring Shimazaki and they would stop being mad and then everything could go back to normal.

"Mob….I'm mad at him. If I look at him, speak to him, then I know that I'm going to say something…something that I might not be able to take back. I might tell him that he needs to think things through for once in his life. I might tell him that since most of his life has been one big shit show acid might not be for him. I might bring up the fact that he put you in danger when he was supposed to be watching out for you and how bad of a fuck up that was. I might….I might bring up a lot of things that I shouldn't. I need some space from him…and he needs to learn to give me some fucking space….and before you say anything I know that I'm being an asshole by ignoring him. it's better that I ignore him now, like an asshole, instead of saying things that he and I might not be able to come back from. Do you understand?" asked Minegishi

"Um….sort of. You're mad and you need space….does that mean that you won't ignore him for the rest of his life?" asked Mob. She hoped that they made up soon. Then things could be normal around here again….or something close to it…or maybe even better than normal because he had confessed to them…and they might have liked him back…and then it could be the most wonderful thing ever….

"No, not unless he ends up dead soon. I just need to calm down and…and I have some things that I need to process. Nothing about you just…some things that he said so me. I need to process them and it's a whole thing that you don't need to know about." Said Minegishi

"Oh. Do you mean how he said that he loved you? Because if you don't love him back you should say so right away. That was he can get his heartbreak out of the way and stuff. I don't think that heartbreak is a good feeling, I've never been dumped or rejected so I don't know….well it hurt when Hatori confessed to you…but he likes boys anyway and he doesn't even like you because you weren't born a boy…but I guess that being rejected would hurt….so if I were him I would try and get my hurt out of the way fast. Like ripping out a loose tooth." Said Mob

"Mob….don't rip your teeth out. Let them come out on their own. Sometimes things need to happen on their own….and sometimes things don't need to happen at all." said Minegishi

"But your teeth need to fall out so you can have new ones." Said Mob

"Not always. Sometimes things need to stay the way they are. Sometimes you're happy with your teeth the way they are and sometimes…sometimes you think that you might want adult teeth….but adult teeth are a lot of work that you won't know how to do…and you mess up and they get ruined and then you have nobody to blame but yourself." Said Minegishi

"But what about brushing and flossing?" asked Mob

"What?" asked Minegishi

"If you brush and you floss then your teeth with be healthy and clean. You just have to brush and floss the right way and if you don't know how then that's ok. There are lots of video on YouTube that you can watch." Said Mob. She wondered if they were talking about teeth still…or why they were talking about teeth in the first place. Minegishi had some very nice teeth, they were all normal colored and where they were supposed to be and stuff, but maybe they wanted them to be….better? Mob didn't know. She'd never gone to a dentist before.

"Mob….sometimes it's not enough to know about brushing and flossing. Sometimes you do it wrong or sometimes it's too much….and sometimes you just…you wake up and you realize that no matter how much brushing and flossing you did it wasn't enough and you messed up and it's on you and maybe you never should have tried in the first place." Said Minegishi running a hand through their hair again. Mob didn't get it. She really, truly, did not get it.

"Minegishi….are we still talking about teeth? Because it feels like we might be talking about something else and I just missed it." Said Mob

"Mob…just promise me that you'll never do acid with Shimazaki again. Promise me that if you want to do acid…you'll ask me…and only when you're older. Old enough to handle it. Ok?" asked Minegishi

"Um…ok. I won't eat sugar cubes again unless I'm older and with you….um….let's watch more TV now. I like this show but I keep forgetting which Sailor Girl is which." Said Mob. She didn't like it when they treated her like a kid…even though she was a kid…and stuff….and she just…she didn't know. She didn't know what else to say or what else to do so she watched TV.

She rested her head on Minegishi's lap and watched TV.

This was warm. This was soft. This was nice. She felt….warm and loved and safe. She knew that Minegishi was keeping her warm and loved and safe…and she was happy there. She was happy and…and she was relaxed. She still felt…nagging at the back of her head was the loss….but she wasn't….feeling it so much…because she had Minegishi there. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it had just been a memory of a dream or a dream of a memory…and maybe it had only happened because she missed Sho…and stuff…

She didn't know.

But she did know that she was safe and warm and happy….and she just felt so relaxed. She eventually felt her eyes closing. She felt her eyes closing and she felt her breath slowing down and she just…felt. She felt Minegishi's hand on her back and she felt their stomach pushing against them when they breathed in and out…and she felt…she felt good. So good. So good and safe and warm…

And she felt even better when Shimazaki was there.

Well she felt bad that he would be ignored again but…but she was happy that he was back. She remembered how…how nice it had felt…when she had been there in his arms and safe and warm. There had been so much trust there…she might have even trusted him more than anyone else in the whole world back when they had been eating sugar cubes. There had been something else there, too, something like a sort of…fluttery feeling? She didn't know. She didn't really feel that now. Now she mostly just felt like she could have just gone to sleep…

Well she could have if there hadn't been so much talking around her.

"Toshi…come on. At least look at me." Said Shimazaki. Mob kept still. He wasn't talking to her, he was talking to Minegishi, and she wanted to tell him that Minegishi was ignoring him…but maybe he didn't want to hear that. He knew already and…and is feelings must have been hurt enough as it was.

"You had better not be holding another plant, Ryou, and keep your voice down. I think that she might have finally fallen asleep." Said Minegishi. Mob kept herself as still as she could, even her aura, because….because they had called him by his given name…and that must have meant something good….right?

"No, chocolate this time. Or something rectangular and wrapped in paper. Here." Said Shimazaki. Mob felt something hit her on the back. She kept still. Minegishi took their hand off of her back and there was silence for a moment.

"I hate the kind with nuts in it, you now that." Said Minegishi

"And they don't make braille labels for candy. You know that." Said Shimazaki

"Then don't steal me any candy if you know that it's not going to work out." Said Minegishi

"It did end up working out, though." said Shimazaki

"How? You know I can't stand it when my chocolate has nuts in it." Said Minegishi

"You're talking to me again, aren't you?" asked Shimazaki

"I suppose I am…not that you deserve it. Not after the shit you pulled." Said Minegishi

"I said I was sorry. I know that I fucked up. I just….I wasn't thinking and-" said Shimazaki

"Big surprise there." said Minegishi

"I wasn't thinking and I messed up. I shouldn't have popped-" said Shimazaki

"Ryou, if you phrase it like that then I am getting up and leaving and not speaking to you for at least a month." Said Minegishi

"Sorry. I shouldn't have given her acid. I thought that….Toshi I couldn't stop thinking about you and then I wasn't thinking at all and then I messed up and…and I'm sorry. I know that I did something stupid. I know that she could have done more than destroy the house and yell about some guy she likes or something…and I know that I shouldn't have been tripping without you to ground me because, yeah, I went to a very bad place and…and shouldn't have gone there with her since she has enough shit going on. I fucked up and I'm sorry so…so please forgive me. Please, Toshi….or if not then at least look at me." Said Shimazaki. Mob felt Minegishi shifting under her…and then Shimazaki's aura got really bright. Bright like the time she had given him that whole box of dinner candles…but somehow brighter.

"Don't think that I'm forgiving you, Ryou, because I'm not. I'm looking at you now because I know what you've been through and I'm not heartless. I can be an asshole but I'm not going to send you down into that emotional shit. You're here, I'm looking at you, and I'm not going to ignore you anymore…but I need space. I need space to calm down and forgive you…and I need to process…all of this." said Minegishi

"Toshi-" said Shimazaki

"You may not remember what you said but I do. You really ran your mouth the other day. You did." Said Minegishi

"Toshi….I'm sorry. I said shit that only should have stayed in my head." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah, no shit. You asked to go down on me right in front of a TEN YEAR OLD. I thought that you and Hatori had switched bodies or something! Ryou, I would ask what possessed you to say something like that but I know-" said Minegishi

"That's not what I'm talking about, Toshi." Said Shimazaki. There was some silence and now both of their auras were pulled in as close as they could be. Mob didn't get it. What did they have to be so scared of? They were talking about their problems. You should always talk about your problems so that they can get better. Things never work out if you just let them grow and fester. Like when you left a bottle of milk under your bed for a long time. You needed to get rid of it even if it was gross. It would only get grosser and grosser and grosser until it exploded.

"I know what you're talking about." Said Minegishi

"It's true, you know…but that doesn't mean that it has to change the outcome. I know how you feel about all of that and….and I have no clue how I feel. Toshi…when I'm with you I'm happy. I feel all good inside. I feel like…like I can do anything. I feel like….I feel like I'm just…better when we're together. I like to be near you and I like to talk to you and touch you…and that's all I want. I want to hold you and talk to you and, yeah, occasionally go down on you….and don't freak out I'm mostly sure she's asleep….and just….yeah. I love you and we don't have to do anything with that. Neither of us does the couple thing and I know you don't want to have kids…and I have no clue how I feel about having kids…I mean I like them but….but I don't know how to take care of them. I mean I'm not going to lock them in their rooms all day with a HI-FI, a box of records, and a bucket to piss in but….there's a lot about them that I don't know and….yeah. I'm not going to ask that or anything of you." Said Shimazaki. Mob had never heard his voice like that. Low and….kind of…gravelly. Sort of like he might have been sick or something. She had never seen his aura like that either. All pulled in so close…and she had no idea what was happening because….because this was such a weird atmosphere…and she sort of wanted to get up and go to her own bed….but then they would know that she had been awake this whole time and listening to their conversation…..and then things would have been awkward and she did not want that at all.

"Then what's the point of even telling me?" asked Minegishi

"Because that was my acid epiphany. I love you. I love you and I have loved you for a while." Said Shimazaki. It took everything inside of Mob not to jump up and start hugging them. This was so great! Now he had confessed and they could confess and then they could be boyfriend and they-friend and…and it would be the best thing ever!

"I know you do….and I….I don't have a fucking clue. You're honest. You don't have a disingenuous bone in your body and…and I love that about you. I love how you own up to your mistakes, too, and there's just…there's never any bullshit with you….but I don't know if I love you….so I'm not going to say it back…and I don't know how I'll feel about you when I stop being pissed…..and you had better believe that I'm pissed. A few nice words and an 'I love you' is not going to change the fact that you fucked up in one of the worst ways possible. So, yeah, you're not off the hook just because you got all sappy on me." Said Minegishi. Mob could feel their aura and it felt…she didn't know if it was happy or sad or mad or scared or…or anything. It was like their aura was everything at once…and she didn't get it. He had confessed. What could be better than a boy confessing to you? Well a girl, if you were into that…but still. Shimazaki may have acted like he was crazy, like the time she gave Sho coffee but worse, but he was still a good person…but Minegishi might not have felt that way….

But it would have been really nice if they had.

"Yeah, I figured, but it was worth a try." Said Shimazaki

"Shut up." Said Minegishi. They sounded mean there, their words were mean, but their tone wasn't…and Mob didn't really know what to make of that or anything at all about this.

"That's what I love about you, Toshi, that and about a million other things…and you have no clue how good it feels to be able to say it." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah, well, I don't know if or when I'll ever be able to say it back." Said Minegishi

"I don't expect you to…but if you did then I'd be so fucking happy. Happier than the time we tripped and your tricked me into thinking I saved John Lennon." Said Shimazaki

"Thanks for warning me, Ryou, now how'd you like to go on tour with us? This brush with death has reminded me what's important and now we're getting the band back together and we'll be putting on nightly shows just for you." Said Minegishi in English and in an accent that made them hard to understand…but Shimazaki seemed to understand…because his aura was so happy then…and she could hear him laughing…and then he got really close…

And then she heard that smacky sound that they made when they kissed sometimes.

Which was good. That meant that they were back together as friends at least…even though she wanted them to be together as more than friends. That was almost as good as her having a boyfriend, her best friend having one, and then Mob could have been happy through them. But that might have just been a friend kiss, a friends who sometimes kissed, kiss. She didn't know and she knew enough not to go and ask. That would have been awkward.

And also if she said something now then they might have stopped talking to each other…and Mob needed them to talk to each other for as long as possible so that they got along again.

"Hey. I'm still mad at you." Said Minegishi

"And I still love you." Said Shimazaki

"And I'm still not sure if or when I'll ever be able to say it back." Said Minegishi

"I'd love to hear you say it back but, hey, we have a good thing going and I wouldn't want to make you say or do anything that you're not comfortable with, alright? Maybe you won't ever feel it back and maybe you will. Maybe it'll take a really bad trip for you to say it back or something but, hey, at least it would come from a better trip than mine…and I need to stop doing that…" said Shimazaki

"You think? I can't believe you did that…and in front of Mob…and you risked her going to the same place you went to." Said Minegishi. Their aura was pointy again…and it seemed like they had lost their good feelings from before…which was sort of sad…because they had been so happy…and Mob didn't want them to fight anymore. Friends shouldn't fight. It wasn't right at all.

"She didn't, though. I was getting lost in my crappy childhood and she was talking about some Ritsu guy she likes or something. Personally I think that she had a great time." Said Shimazaki

"Uh-huh, yeah. Just don't give her any acid ever again for any reason. Got it?" asked Minegishi

"Fine, if it'll make you happy." Said Shimazaki

"Good….not leave me alone until I'm not pissed at you anymore." Said Minegishi. They sounded mean when they said that but Mob didn't say anything. She couldn't. She still had to pretend to be asleep with her body and her aura…even though so much good stuff had happened…and not so good stuff….because now that she had a name more of the dream memory was coming back…about….he had black hair…whoever he was….

Whoever this Ritsu person was.


	297. Throwing Things and Learning to Talk

Baby sis sure did like to throw things.

She was stronger now than she had been when she was little. She was strong enough to pick herself up, walk over to him, take his pencils, walk them over to her baby gate, and then throw them. She did that a lot, it made her happy, and Sho….he didn't mind. She was the little sister and he was the big brother and being the big brother meant that he had to do whatever he could to make his little sister happy. Just like how big sis had let him use her for target practice and fighting practice and also…also he had been sort of a jerk to her for a while….so of course he would let baby sis throw his stuff around if it made her happy.

Besides, it wasn't like he couldn't just catch them with her powers.

She threw another one of his pencils over the gate. He caught it with his powers and brought it over. She laughed and clapped while he did that. She liked his powers…and he got it. He remembered, back when he had been really little, he thought that dad's powers had been the best thing when he had been a kid. He had thought that dad was the coolest guy ever and moving things without touching them was the coolest thing ever…and he wanted to be like dad….he had wanted more than anything else to be like his dad….

He had been little and dumb back then.

Baby sis was little but she was not dumb. She was really smart actually. She was smart enough that she put the cylinder through the circle hole and the pyramid through the triangle hole and the cube through the square hole. She could also point to her nose and her eyes too. Her ears were a little more tricky, she mostly just pulled at her hair, but she was getting better at it. Also she could put her own socks on now. She put them on her hands but what were mittens but hand socks? She was so smart…she was the smartest little sister that a guy could ask for.

Pretend little sister.

She was just his pretend sister because she didn't come from mom and dad. Dad didn't put her in mom's stomach….truly disgusting and he had no clue why his mom had let him do that to her….baby sis was from other people. She just looked a lot like him. She was like him if he had been Shoko…well sort of like him if he had been Shoko. Her face was really chubby and her hair stood up even more than his and her eyes were shaped different too….but she still looked so much like her and if dad had been a better person then she could have lived with them and everyone would have totally believed that she was a Suzuki.

She looked more like him than big sis did.

Big sis looked like…well like no one. She had black hair and brown eyes and she didn't have any freckles and her eyes were shaped like…well not like anyone's. Not even baby Mukai's…but she was Korean, not Japanese, so that made sense. Well sort of. She looked more like him than big sis….but genetics were weird that way. Maybe his kids would look nothing like him…or maybe not because Emmy had red hair and he had red hair…not that he knew if she was the girl he was supposed to marry….well she was a girl and she liked him so why not? He was ten now and he had to think about his future…not that there was much to think about. Dad had already told him what his future was. Grow up, inherit the world, make more Suzuki's so that those Suzuki's could grow up and rule the world and then repeat as necessary. That was his lot in life. It wasn't a lot but it was his life…and there was no point in complaining about it…because it had already been decided…

It wouldn't be all bad. At least when he grew up he could spend more time with Mukai.

She was following his pencil back. He was moving it slowly so she would follow it slowly. If she tried to walk too fast she could fall down and if she fell down she would end up crying, maybe, and he could not let her cry. He had been put in charge for one whole hour while her mom went to lay down. Nobody had told him to set a timer but he did. He set his timer to the doomsday siren so she would hear it and get up. That way she wouldn't get sick like his mom had gotten sick….because that was the worst…and even Fukuda hadn't been able to make mom all better….

Sometimes moms got sick.

He hoped that whatever girl agreed to marry him, probably Emmy, wouldn't get sick like mom had…sick and tired…because he was sick and tired of people being sick and tired…and that was selfish. People couldn't control it when they got sick and it was wrong to be mad at them for getting sick…but if his wife ever got all sick and tired…then he'd just have big sis come and take care of his kids. She loved taking care of people and she was good at it. If there was some way for them to live together and take care of each other's kids together then he would to that. They'd have people they married, he wasn't going to marry his sister because that was wrong even if you did like girls…which he did. He totally liked girls.

He would have just rather adopted some kids from an orphanage and then raised them with his sister and all of their friends.

She'd probably have a bunch of kids with Hatori since she loved him and she loved taking care of people. She was a lot like mom like that…only without the running away. She would never run away from him or from her kids or from his kids or from anything. She'd probably end up having a bunch of Hatori's kids, like ten or twenty, and they'd all have glasses and not be able to see and thye'd play videogames all day and watch Frozen and stuff and then he would be a good uncle and play videogames and watch Frozen with them and then baby sis, well she would be little sis, and then she would have some kids but later and she'd live in the house with all of them…well everyone but dad. Just him and big sis and Hatori and Shibata and…and Ryou…and also Minegishi but they could live in the attic or something. All of them in the house with big sis and Hatori's kids and his kids…and Shibata would probably meet some lady and have kids with her since he REALLY loved kids and also he could cook and girls liked that stuff…and Shimazaki of course wouldn't have kids because he said that he never wanted to get married….and then they would be friends forever….

And it would be great.

Not that things weren't great now at this moment. Baby sis was back and she was tugging on his hair again. She just liked to tug on his hair. He didn't tug on her hair right back because that would have been a jerk thing to do and he was not a jerk. He was a good big brother. He had to be. He just let her tug on his hair. Even though she was very strong….and he didn't know how fast it grew back but he didn't want to end up with no hair at all….but he wanted to make her happy…

And she was making a lot of happy noises.

"I love you too." Said Sho. He tried to pull his hair from her little baby hands but she just tugged harder like she thought that this was a game…and that was ok. She was happy and that was what mattered. Big sis had let him use her as target practice so many times before, and also she had put up with a lot more than that, so he could put up with getting his hair pulled for a little bit.

This was ok.

"Yeah…..that's my hair." Said Sho as she tugged on his hair like she didn't know that it was attached…and she might not have known that. She didn't know how hair worked. She didn't know how anything worked. She was a baby. Babies knew baby things like how to find their noses and how to put their baby puzzles together…and also she knew how to get to YouTube on a phone and then she got sort of upset when she couldn't find her songs and stuff….but that was ok because he helped her. She was a baby and she only knew what babies knew….

She didn't know that this hurt him and he wasn't going to stop her….he wanted her to be happy. He loved it when she was happy.

He loved her little baby laughs and shrieks. Happy shrieks. Not the ones that she made when she tossed her ball over the baby gate or stuck her finger too far up her nose or when she put things behind the couch and then couldn't get them out….and he didn't know why she did that when she knew that she couldn't get things from behind the couch…but that was ok. That was what he was here for. That was what big brothers were for.

And he was a good big brother.

She took a step forward and put her foot on his sketchbook. He had been drawing a picture of her chewing on one of his pencils. They all had bite marks in them, she had a lot of teeth now, but that was ok. She chewed on things. She was a baby and babies chewed on things. He must have done the same thing when he had been a baby way back ten years ago. He didn't know. Nobody who had been around back then…well he wasn't going to talk to them. Mom was gone and dad…why would he ever want to talk to his dad about anything?

Well there was always Fukuda.

He had been there when Sho had been a baby. He had held Sho the day he had been born, he had said, because he had to come to the hospital and make mom better from where the doctor had cut her open to get him out of her. Sho didn't know why that was such a bad thing, though. So he had gotten stuck on the way out of mom's belly button, Fukuda had fixed her up, and he didn't know why dad was so upset about it. Mom had been ok….but that was still scary though the more he thought about it…and he hoped that big sis's kids could fit out of her bellybutton. Fukuda could fix big sis up if her kids were born wrong, though, even though he could be sort of a jerk…but he was just a grumpy, lonely, old man and that was just how old people were. Sho hoped that he wasn't too old to remember when Sho had been a baby…what he had been like….

Mom would have known better but she was gone now.

Well Sho wouldn't go anywhere. No matter what his kids were like. Sho wanted to adopt a bunch of esper orphans because they needed homes, like shelter cats, and he had a home that he could give them…but he had to make more Suzuki's…and he didn't want to. It was just…he liked girls. He had to like girls. Just doing…..stuff like that with them….it was just so…he didn't want to. The thought about it…nothing about that appealed to him. Maybe because he was just too little. Adults were always thinking about stuff like that. It was like there was a switch in their brains or something that just went on at some point. Even Shimazaki could be like that. Sho was the bait and he pretended that he was Sho's blind single father and then they got unlimited dog pets, which Sho didn't mind, and then Shimazaki got girl's phone numbers….which Sho didn't like. Why even bother with girls if he didn't have to get married and have more kids…well he did because his dad used to tell him that his bloodline was important and stuff….but he never wanted to get married….

Sho didn't see the point of doing stuff with a girl if you didn't have to.

But he was a kid and kids were different from adults. That was all. There were good reasons for being with a girl…and stuff. Like you got people like Mukai. He loved her so much and her original parents had been complete morons for letting her go. She was such a great person even when she stepped on his sketchbook and wrinkled the pages and stuff. She was too little to know that she was ruining his sketchbook and stuff….

So he picked her up.

He picked her up carefully with his powers. She laughed and slapped him on the top of the head…and it hurt…but not that much. He had hurt big sis even worse and then he had been doing them out of anger. Baby sis was doing this out of happiness. She was happy to have been picked up with his powers. She was so happy and…and he loved her for being so happy…and she loved him…and they loved each other just like real brother and sister even though it was just pretend…

But he didn't really love having his sketchbook trampled.

"I love you too…but you have to stop stepping on my sketchbook. You're going to ruin the picture. See? This is you. That's what you look like." Said Sho. He held up his sketchbook as he put her down. She laughed and slapped his sketchbook…and she only did that because she couldn't talk yet. That was sort of like how dogs barked when they were both happy and sad. She just couldn't talk yet. That was all.

He could help with that.

"See? That's you. Mukai. Mu-kai." Said Sho as he pointed to the picture. He pointed to the picture, then he pointed to her…and she just smiled and slapped the picture as hard as she could. Which was hard. She was strong enough that it almost came out of his hands. Her aura glowed when she did that. Maybe she was going to be a super qigong user like her new mom….or something. He hoped that she got telekinesis like he did…but if she got no powers at all, only an aura, he would love her just the same. He loved her so much….she was such a good little sister…

Even if she mostly communicated by slapping and laughing.

"Mu-kai. That's who you are. You are Mu-kai." Said Sho. He pointed to the picture and then at her. She took his finger and tried to put it in her mouth…and he let her…even though now his finger had baby drool on it…and also she bit hard. She had a lot of teeth and her teeth were very sharp. Maybe her parents had been vampires or werewolves or shark people or something. She was strong and she had sharp teeth…which were good things because then people wouldn't mess with her…but he hoped that she didn't end up a jerk like him. A jerk like he used to be when he had been little. She had been little for a while…and she would always be little…at least for a while….but he didn't want her to be a little jerk like he had been when he had been little…

But he didn't want to be mean to her either.

Sho bopped her on the head with an empty paper towel roll with one hand. He took his hand back while she was distracted. She poked herself in the stomach with the paper towel roll. She laughed even though she was going to scrape the words off of her shirt. This shirt said 'There's no crying in my dojo unless you're me'. Sho wondered what the point of words on her clothes were when she was just a baby…but she did look cute. She was just so cute and stuff…and he loved her…

She smacked him on the face with the paper towel roll.

But that was ok. She was just trying to play. She was little and she just didn't know how to use her words yet. Everyone started off as a baby. Even dad. He had seen a picture of dad as a baby once…and he'd actually been a really…boring looking baby. He had that same face he was always making, not even smiling, and his eyes were all….the same…and also he had the same eyebrows he had now…and they didn't make him look funny. The whole thing had been this old boring black and white picture….and he couldn't imagine dad ever being a baby like Mukai was now…even if she did sort of look like him….but maybe all red haired people looked alike because there weren't a lot of them in the world and stuff. That would make sense. Dad…he would see dad hitting as a baby…but that must have been because he had been a mean jerk of a baby like he was a mean jerk of a man…

But baby sis was not a big jerk of a baby or even a little jerk of a baby.

She was just a baby and this was the only way that she knew how to communicate. Well Sho was going to help her out with that. Sho put his sketchbook aside and turned so he faced her. She smiled and hit him on the face a couple of times. He let her. It didn't hurt at all. It was sort of annoying and stuff but he had been an annoying little baby, and an annoying little boy, and an annoying big kid to big sis. This was what it was to be a big kid. You just had to put up with stuff…but you also had to try and make them better and stuff.

Like what he was doing now.

"Mukai. Your name is Mukai. Can you say Mukai. Mu-kai. Mu-kai." Said Sho. He said her Japanese name, Mukai, because that was who she was now. Her Korean parents had called her Mi-cha but she wasn't Korean anymore…well she sort of was…but she was Japanese now and he was going to call her by her Japanese name.

"Come on. Mu-kai. Come on baby sis. Mu-kai." Said Sho. He pointed to her. She took his hand in hers and started to say….stuff. She drooled a lot when she tried to talk, and also she kicked him a little, but her little baby kicks didn't hurt that much…also she was strong but not strong enough to break his finger off.

"Mu-kai. Mu-kai. Come on, you have to be able to say your own name at least. Mu-kai. Mukai." Said Sho. She shook his finger like she was saying 'how do you do' and he let her. She was making noises and shaking his finger….and she knew her name. She responded to her name. She just needed to learn how to say it. What if she never learned how to talk? He didn't think that he could handle her hitting him for the rest of her life…and also she would have no idea how to talk and talking was very important to living in the world and stuff. He needed to get her to talk. He was the big brother and being the big brother meant that he had to teach her things…and he was a good big brother. He would be the best big brother in the whole world. Of course he would. He was Suzuki Sho!

He just didn't know how to teach her how to talk.

How did you teach someone who didn't know words how to talk? This was going to be hard. This was going to be hard like the times when he'd tried to teach Shimazaki what colors were. All of the times…and he was going to get him to understand color…and he was going to get baby sis to at least be able to say her name. If she learned her name then she could learn other words after he left…and then when he saw her again she would be talking…and also she would stop smacking him and biting him and stuff like that.

He was going to teach her. He was.

"Muh….muh….moo….muh…." said baby sis through a mouth full of drool. Yes! Success! He was teaching her words! Once he taught her how to talk then he would teach her how to read and write and then he'd teach her how to draw and then…and then he would teach her other things…and it would be great. He'd be great. He'd be a great big brother.

He was a great big brother.

But maybe her name was not the thing to start with. It had too many syllables. She needed something shorter to say…like his name. His name was important too. He needed to make sure that she never forgot him. He didn't have any memories at all from being one and he knew that most people didn't. Things were easy to forget when you were this small…and he didn't know what he would do if his own baby sister forgot him. She was so little and she forgot things so easily…and her mom said that she wouldn't let Mukai forget her own big brother….but moms said a lot of things. They said that they loved you forever and that they would never leave you….but then they did. Moms were good people and all but…but they could also be…well not bad people…but people who were not as good as you thought that they were. If his own mom could have been like that then…then anyone's mom could be like that…and he didn't want her to go through that…

He would always be there for her.

"Sho. That's me. Sho. Shuh-oh. Sho." said Sho. He pointed to himself now. She pointed to him too. She poked him right over the heart. She smiled and poked him some more. She liked his shirt. This was a Zootopia shirt, more of his shirts were Zootopia shirts because he liked Zootopia and big sis got most of his clothes from the Disney Store. Maybe he would her something from the Disney Store next time he went. She would like that. She liked getting presents….and he would get her all the presents…and then she would never forget him…

Especially not if she learned how to say his name.

"Come on. Sho. I'm Sho….I'm your big brother…well for pretend….but I'm still going to be a good big brother…and you have to remember me….so say my name. Sho. Come on. Sho." said Sho as he pointed to himself. She looked at him and then stuck her tongue out…and that meant that she wanted to make funny faces…and he wanted to teach her to talk…but she wanted to make funny faces and she was the baby after all.

"Shhhhhh…." Said baby sis while she stuck her tongue out. There was baby drool everywhere, all over him, but he didn't mind. She wanted to spit on him and that was fine…and she wanted to make funny faces and that was fine. She was happy and she was waiting for him to stick his tongue out…and he wanted to teach her how to talk…but he also wanted to make her happy…to play with her…and he loved her so very much. She was his little sister….

So he decided to make funny faces with her.

He wanted her to know his name, to remember his name, and to remember him…but also he wanted her to be happy. If she wasn't ready to talk then she wasn't ready to talk. Sho…he would try and teach her how to talk…but later. Not now. She was fine the way she was and he was not going to push her. He was not going to make her feel bad about who she was. He would never, ever, ever make her feel like that.

Like there was something wrong with her.

Like she had been born wrong or something. She was baby sis, she was Mukai, and he loved her. So what if she threw things and hit him and drooled and stepped on his sketchbooks? She was still his baby sis and he loved her. Even if it was for pretend he still loved her and part of loving someone was accepting them for who they were….and big sis had always accepted him no matter what…and he would accept baby sis even if she never learned how to talk.

But he was still going to try and teach her so that she never forgot him.


	298. Loss, Weird Feelings, and Questions

Regular sugar cubes didn't help.

She had promised Minegishi that she would never do acid, that was the sugar cube thing, without them again….and also only when she was older….but she just…needed to get back to that place. She knew that there was still plenty of acid in the glass thing in Shimazaki's desk and she knew that he said that she could have things from his desk…but she also wasn't going to cause any more trouble. So that was why she had just gotten herself a box of sugar cubes….because they had been a part of it…or something…she didn't know. She knew that they played a part but she didn't know what part….and she needed to go back to the dream place. She needed to go back to the dream place and figure out who Ritsu was. Was he a real person? Or had her brain just dreamt up a little brother to replace the one who was gone? Had it been a dream….or a memory? Like…there hadn't been any pictures of her before she had been two….so maybe she'd had another brother and he died…or ran away from home….or was stolen or…or something.

Maybe she had just been watching too much TV.

Mom and dad…they would have said something if she'd had another little brother. They would have…well dad kept his secrets close and mom…mom wasn't the sort of person who liked to talk about sad things…so she didn't…know. She just didn't know. She put another sugar cube in her mouth and let it dissolve. She knew that sugar cubes had played a part in it….but they weren't taking her to the dream place. Of course they weren't. She had been eating sugar for her whole life and she had never gone to the dream place before….so why would she go now? She didn't know. She just did not know…and stuff…she just knew that she needed to get back there but she was not going to take acid behind her best friend's back and cause more trouble for them…but also….also she had no idea how she was supposed to get back to the dream place….

She didn't know.

Mob didn't know what had made her think that eating regular sugar cubes would make her brain go back to the place where it had gone to before. Really the only thing she was doing was raising her blood sugar. Minegishi had told her before that raising her blood sugar was bad for her body and that she was poisoning herself…and she knew that eating straight sugar was bad for her…and stuff…but she just…she needed to go back to that place. She needed to figure out what that house had been. Where it had been. Where she had been. Who she had been.

And who Ritsu had been.

She had a name. Ritsu. She had googled, she didn't know why she had thought that googling would help but google was usually good at teaching her what she needed to know, but she didn't know what she had been expecting to learn. There were millions of people named Ritsu with black hair…and the person that she had been thinking of might not even have existed. She might have just dreamed up a different little brother because she missed hers so much. She really did miss him…and he was so far way…and he would come back…and she should not have been thinking about smothering him…but she missed her little brother so much….she missed his smiles and how he would kick at night and how she would have to chase him around sometimes to brush his hair and how he would watch scary movies even though they were disturbing and how he could sometimes be mean, and also meals took over an hour now, but…but he was still ok and she missed sitting there with him for over an hour while he argued with her about what was gross, what he needed to eat, and why he had to take everything out of his soup before he could drink the liquid. She even missed dinnertimes with him…which would take so long that they had to have dinner at four in the afternoon if they wanted to have enough time to be able to do bath time and stuff….she missed…she missed Sho….she missed him….

She missed him more than anything.

She missed him so much and…and that was what this sense of loss was. Like something was missing. She felt like something was missing and that someone was her little brother. She was a year, less than a year actually, older than him…and she had been with him for as long as she could remember…and she wanted to be with him again…but this was how life went. Things changed. People got older. Sho was old enough to help dad by doing away missions…and she was happy for him, she was, and because she was so happy for him she was not going to smother him.

Even if he would have been all about this.

He would have been all about eating sugar cubes in the middle of the night. He would have probably taken the whole box from her and just ate them all up so fast, faster than she ever could have imagined, and then they would have been all gone by the time she noticed…and stuff. She wouldn't have minded though because he would have been happy…though all of that sugar might have made him thirsty and he wasn't supposed to have liquids after eight because then he would wet the bed…and if he wet the bed then she wouldn't have minded…and dad never asked her why she was doing night time laundry…

Dad hardly ever spoke to her this late at night….or anytime outside of Sundays.

Dad was up this late, he was a lot of the time, and he was in a good mood…but that was because he was hanging out with Hatori. They were friends now, it seemed, and it was weird but Mob was happy that dad had made a friend. Also he was playing more games besides Minecraft. He had been a lot nicer lately. Maybe it was because he had made a new friend or maybe it was because Sho wasn't around to upset him and stuff. He was always either mad at Sho or mad about something that he did. Sho…..he made dad mad….so maybe it was better that he wasn't around.

For his own good.

Mob wanted him back, why wouldn't she have wanted her little brother back? She wanted him because she loved him but she also knew that it was better that he was away…because she loved him. She loved him and she didn't want dad to get mad at him and stuff. Yes, if Sho had been up this late eating sugar cubes then he would have had a sugar rush and he would have been jumping around or shouting or something…something that dad wouldn't have liked….and then dad would have gotten mad…and stuff. Or even if he didn't end up with a sugar rush he would have ended up thirsty and he would have wanted to go to the kitchen for a drink of water and dad was in there and nothing good ever happened when dad and Sho crossed paths…

Even if it was just to get a drink of water.

She needed a drink of water just like Sho would have needed a drink of water. All of that sugar…but getting herself a drink of water would have meant that she would have had to cross paths with dad. She love her dad, she really did, but she also knew that it was not a Sunday. It was sad seeing him on days which were not Sundays because he just…didn't really want to talk to her or look at her or be around her. She felt like Shimazaki did, maybe, when he kept on screaming at her to look at him. She wanted dad to look at her and to see her and to be there for her and to love her…but also…also she wanted him not to smother her…

But he always smothered her.

He didn't know how to show love…and she didn't blame him. She didn't know how to show love too. She wanted to call her little brother more than anything, anything to get rid of this feeling of loss, but she knew better because that would have been smothering him and she did not want to make him feel the way that dad made her feel…but her phone was right there…and she knew how to use it. She knew how to pick it up and call Sho…and it was there in the charger…and it would not have been hard at all…and maybe just a quick 'hello' or a…well he was on a mission so she could ask for a mission report or…or something….but asking her own brother for a mission report felt weird…and she didn't even care about the mission. She just wanted to see him again….

She got up.

She needed to get up and get a drink of water because her teeth were all fuzzy from the sugar. She would get some water or…or she would get a glass of milk…and then mix it up with the stuff she kept between her mattress and her box spring. Then she would be able to sleep and also think less about….everything. The feeling of loss she had. The feeling of loss that as just…hanging out around her…like when you popped a dizzy plant in Yoshi's Island, the old game for the Gameboy not the DS and the effect still hung around you for a while…but she wasn't dizzy. She was just…lonely. There was a sense of loss and loneliness and…and she didn't like it.

So she got herself a glass of milk.

She got up carefully even though she didn't have to. She always put things away when she was done with them. Sho didn't. Sho always left his pens and pencils and crayons out. Those weren't so bad to step on but she did trip on them sometimes. The legos were much worse. Stepping on those….the pain was so bad that she almost felt like calling Fukuda when that happened….but he was busy with stuff and she didn't want to bother him just because she hadn't thought to look where she had been stepping.

She didn't have to look where she had been stepping.

Another reminder that Sho was gone. The space across the room where his bed would be, the space where she had put her dollhouse and dolls, was enough of a reminder that he was gone. For as long as she could remember they had shared a room. Since mom and dad had brought him back home from the hospital. She couldn't remember a time…the yellow room….the yellow room with the happy duck family…she could remember….she could and could not remember. That had been…she had never stayed in a yellow room in her life…but there it had been…but that might have been a dream….or a memory from when she had been little….like….like maybe when she had been a baby, before Sho had been born, her room had been yellow. That would have made sense since mom's favorite color had been yellow…and then….

People had come over to work on the Castle.

When she had been very small she had accidentally made a bathroom explode. She had bene trying to run a bath for her and Sho and then she had just…she had made the water so hot…and then her powers had gone out of control and she had made the bathroom explode…and then she and Sho had to use the farther away bathroom with the deep tub while some people came to fix the bathroom that she had ruined…there had been….a man with yellow hair she remembered….so people had come to do work and stuff on the Castle before….

So it wouldn't have been such a crazy thing to think that mom and dad had hired some painters.

So maybe it had been a baby memory…or something. A baby memory of a room that had been….Sho was a boy and boys liked blue and their room back at the Castle had been blue so…so maybe they had painted the walls…and stuff…and she had felt alone before….because….because she hadn't had her little brother and…and her dream had made a new little brother for her…because she missed Sho…and the whole dream was about missing Sho….or something….

She didn't know.

She didn't even know if her room had ever been yellow to begin with. Dad would know. He would have remembered. It had been his house after all. He would have remembered what color the walls had been…and where she had slept when she had been a baby…and if he'd had any more kids back when she had been a baby…even though she might have just dreamt Ritsu up…she didn't know. Mom would have known but she was gone off to…to wherever she had gone off to…so it was just dad now…and he would have known….and maybe….maybe it would have been alright to ask him.

He did seem to be in a good mood.

His aura was happy. Well dad happy. He was never super happy but he was dad happy…and that was good. He and Hatori were hanging out. Hatori was happy too. She had felt Hatori's aura plenty of times before when he had been hanging out with dad and stuff. First he got super scared and then he was super relaxed….which was good….but also sort of weird. Dad had only ever been relaxed around her…and Hatori was always so jumpy….but maybe he was just jumpy because Shimazaki messed with him when he got bored because boys were like that. Like the time that Shimazaki had jumped out and scared him while he had been taking a shower and then he had run naked through the house back to his room…well Mob hadn't seen him naked for sure, Minegishi had been covering her eyes even though their nails had gotten ruined, and they told her what she wasn't supposed to see….and it wasn't like she wanted to see….

Because that would have been gross because Hatori was not her brother.

She didn't like him enough to want to do…all of the stuff, the super gross stuff, that adults did together with him….and stuff….and also only brothers and sisters were supposed to see each other naked…and stuff. Also now she wished that she hadn't remembered that because her face was all red. She stopped walking in the middle of the hallway. It was dark. Nobody could see her face…..and she wanted to keep it that way. She hadn't even been noticed, anyway, and she wanted to keep it that way. She could hear them talking and stuff….and they didn't even notice that she had left her room.

She moved a little closer.

Her face wasn't red anymore. As quick as the thought came it went. Now she could keep going. She was just going to get her milk and get out. A simply mission. She would go in, get her milk, and leave like an extraction mission. The sort of thing that Shimazaki did when someone got captured. She didn't think that this would be so hard. Besides, it wasn't like dad was going to talk to her. He never talked to her, not really, aside from Sundays. He just….he had other things to do…and that was good. He wasn't smothering her anymore and that was what she had wanted….and stuff. So her extraction mission to save the milk…by mixing it with vodka and then drinking until she fell asleep, would go fine.

It would.

She wanted to ask dad about the dream world…but also she did not want to tell him about the dream world. How she had gotten there. Dad couldn't know about the things that she did. She knew that if he knew then he would beat her friends up and stuff. He had already beaten Shimazaki up last summer when he thought that Shimazaki had liked her and stuff. She knew that if he knew about the dream world, the sugar cubes, the smoking, the cigarettes, and how she drank outside of social events…he would not have been happy with her….so she wasn't going to tell him…

But also she…she wanted to know who Ritsu was….

Maybe she could just ask him without talking about the dream world. She was bad at talking but he was the one who she had gotten that from. He was bad at talking and listening and all of that stuff. Since he was a bad listener then…then maybe he wouldn't even think to ask her how she had dreamt all of this up…and stuff. Maybe he didn't even know about sugar cubes. He didn't seem like the type who would, he didn't even drink after all, so maybe if she just asked him….well me might not even answer….but he was in a good mood it seemed like….so she didn't know.

She kept on walking.

She could hear dad and Hatori talking clearly now. They hadn't noticed her. They were too wrapped up in what they were doing. Playing a game. Dad liked games, he liked Minecraft and other games where you could build things…and also Space Invaders….and from the music it sounded like Space Invaders….and he would be very wrapped up in playing that. He hated to tell the truth about it, that he liked to play games, because he was forty four. Men his age didn't play games, he said, even though there were no maximum age rules. There were minimum age rules to some games, which she would follow because she didn't even like those sorts of games anyway, but no maximum age rules. So dad had nothing to be worried about. People his age liked games.

Mob wouldn't have minded if she ended up with a boy who played games.

When they were adults and they had all the time in the world to do whatever they wanted, her and whatever boy wanted to be her boyfriend, then they could play games all the time. That was an important thing she decided, playing videogames, but ones without a lot of killing and fighting. Like arcade games and point and click adventures and stuff. Also he would have to be tall, tall enough to pick her up, she decided. She liked that. He would have to be tall and he would have to play videogames….and also he would have to be nice. He would have to be nice and…and they would be friends first. She knew that in movies people had love at first sight because that made movies go faster and stuff…but this was not a movie, this was life, and love took time to grow. Like the way that love had grown between Shimazaki and Minegishi…and that was the best thing that had ever happened to them….and she wanted that so badly. She wanted that with a tall boy who was her friend first and who liked videogames…and also he had to be friends with dad. He had to be friends with dad because dad was always talking about how he wanted her to spend her life with him…so if she had a boy hanging around then it would have been best that he liked dad…that he loved dad….that he thought that dad was the greatest thing since they had added strawberry to milk….but not Hatori.

Her future boyfriend also had to like girls.

She didn't want to have to get an operation to turn into a boy, and those were real she had seen them on TV, so her future boyfriend had to like girls. That was maybe the most important thing….but if he liked boys and girls then that was ok….and if he just liked boys then she would back off. She knew that Hatori didn't like girls now…and she knew that she didn't have a chance…and also she didn't like him like that because of a lot of reasons….

But she did like looking at him.

She could see the back of his head now. His hair was sticking out now and it was messy….and she decided to add messy hair to her list of things. At the end, too, because it wasn't as important as liking girls or being friends with dad or being tall or liking videogames. Messy hair…and also…she could smell him from here and he smelled like lynx again…and she liked lynx even though Minegishi said that it was worse than not bathing at all. She didn't agree with that….but that was ok since they didn't have to agree on everything…and she didn't want them to feel this way about Hatori…

Whatever this way was.

Minegishi said that this feeling was how you felt when you thought that someone was attractive. It felt like that….but more. She saw boys something and she thought that they were attractive but this was….different. This was more….fluttery? That same feeling that she got when Shimazaki had gotten super close to her…and stuff. It was like…she wanted….she wanted something but she didn't know what it was….and she had no idea who she could ask. She knew that she could ask Minegishi anything…but she had and they had already told her what this feeling was and….and she got the feeling that they had been wrong and she didn't want to tell them that they had been wrong because that would have been mean….and stuff….but she wanted to know…and she got the feeling that Google would have been just as unhelpful about this as it had been about all the other stuff she had been asking it lately….

She could ask dad…..

But she wasn't going to do that. She would have asked mom if she had been around because mom was a girl and she was a girl and this whole feeling felt private…for reasons….all sorts of reasons. She didn't like to think of those reasons because they were embarrassing…and not just because she had them about a boy she used to be in love with. There was also…she didn't even want to think about the rest of this feeling…so she wouldn't…and she of course wouldn't ask dad about this because he was a boy. He might not even have understood what she had been talking about…and she was not going to explain it to him.

If he said 'Daughter. Explain.'….she would die. There was no other option.

But he didn't tell her to explain. He didn't even talk to her. He was still talking to Hatori…and she was not going to ask her dad about the weird feelings that she had about Hatori while he was sitting right there next to dad eating ketchup bread and playing Space Invaders. No, she was not going to ask about that…or the Dream World….or maybe it was a memory….and maybe that would be ok to ask him about…because it had nothing to do with weird fluttery or tingly feelings that she got sometimes. Yeah, that would be the better thing to ask him about…if it was even ok to ask him things….but he was in a good mood and that….that was always a good thing. He was in a good mood and he was talking nicely with Hatori…and stuff….

"Why do you keep on shooting through your shields? You know that you need those, right?" asked Dad. He was playing Space Invaders on his laptop and Hatori was playing on his own laptop. They both had cups full of ketchup in front of them but Hatori's was a lot fuller than dad's. There was less bread taken from his loaf, too. Maybe he wanted a real snack….maybe he wanted her to make him a real snack….or maybe he wasn't hungry at all. She couldn't tell.

"Because sometimes you have to make the pragmatic choice, boss. What use are my shields if the aliens take over the world?" asked Hatori. He laughed when he said that…and he had such a nice voice when he was relaxed…and she wished that he could have been this happy all the time. He really was a nice person….when he wasn't drunk or throwing up or hiding in the bathroom or peeing in sinks…and she could forgive the bathroom thing because people got scared sometimes and that was normal….but not the drunk stuff or the throwing up….well maybe the throwing up since that happened to everyone….but the sink peeing was the thing that made her heart stop going doki doki….

But then again he was very good with dad.

Dad was being nice to him and he was being nice to dad right back…and what were the odds that someone who she liked would make friends with dad? But he had peed in a sink and…and she did not want to spend her life cleaning gross sinks and she didn't want to hire someone to do something so gross like that. So her heart didn't go doki doki…but she wasn't feeling all doki doki now…she felt all….well the fluttery feeling didn't get rid of the loss feeling…they sort of just….sat on top of each other….

Feelings were weird.

"Fukuda said the same thing. Then he shot through his shields, had nothing to protect him, and then he died." Said Dad

"Well my reflexes are better than his, I think. I mean not as good as yours boss, seriously you're amazing at that, but they're good enough that I can dodge and…..now I'm dead." Said Hatori

"As I predicted." Said dad

"Yeah….well maybe it's just because it's so late. You know it might be time to call it a night. I mean you're a busy man and I don't want to take up too much of your time." Said Hatori

"It's not so late. If you're so tired that your motor skills are suffering then go and make some coffee." Said dad

"I…I don't know how." Said Hatori

"Then have my Daughter show you. She's standing right behind you. Daughter, make coffee….if you want to. You make a very good cup of coffee." Said Dad. Mob almost jumped….and Hatori jumped for real. He jumped up out of his chair and he knocked his ketchup glass over when he fell out of his chair. Mob caught him, he was more important than the glass, and it didn't even matter because dad caught the glass before it tipped over and ruined is laptop.

"Are-are you ok?" asked Mob as she put him back onto his feet. His glasses were crooked. She reached over with her powers and put them back on the way they were supposed to be. She felt fluttery at the thought of it, of standing up on her tiptoes and fixing his glasses….and then she would be close to him…

And this was not the way to feel when your dad was looking at you.

"I'm fine, just got a little freaked out. You move quietly, you know that? Like a ninja." Said Hatori. She had fixed his glasses but not all the way right because he was fixing them again…and now she was thinking about fixing them for him…and dad was still looking at her….

"Um….I'm glad that you aren't hurt and stuff…um…it would be bad if you were because Fukuda isn't here…and stuff. So I'm glad that you're fine and if you weren't….um…that would be bad…and stuff." Said Mob. She was just saying words and hoping that they made sense….and now she was back to feeling like this…and she didn't know why she was like this again! Or what dad was staring at her for.

He was really staring at her.

She wondered if she should have thanked him for saving Sho's Zootopia glass….or maybe not because then dad would have been upset about her mentioning Sho…and she didn't want to upset him…even though she wished that dad would have been at least a little upset about Sho. About him being gone. About how his only son was gone on the other side of the world. About how he hadn't seen his only son in weeks…and stuff….

But she wasn't supposed to tell dad how to feel.

"He's fine. Show him how to make coffee….if you want to. If you have the time. I assume that you're awake at this hour for some reason." said Dad. He was looking at her….and then he looked away from her…and then he looked at her again. She didn't know which she wanted more. She wanted…she wanted dad to look at her and be nice to her…and stuff….but she got the feeling that if he looked at her then he would know what she had been thinking about….about the weird thoughts and feelings…and stuff….and she just….didn't ever want him to know about that. Ever.

"Um….I have time." Said Mob. She had time and…and she wanted….she wanted dad to just….talk to her and not talk to her. She wanted to tell him that she was happy that he had made a friend. She wanted to tell him that she was happy that he had cared enough about either Sho or Hatori to save Sho's Zootopia glass and Hatori's laptop. She wanted….she wanted to ask dad if he ever felt a feeling of loss, too, since his son was gone…and also his wife…

But she didn't say anything.

She just showed Hatori how to make coffee. She wasn't going to have any. She was planning on drinking milk and vodka until she went to sleep. Coffee would only keep her up worse than the feeling of loss and all of her questions and stuff. She just showed Hatori how to make the coffee…and there was nothing to it. Just put the grounds in the filter and then put the water in the water place and turn it on. There wasn't anything to it but Hatori had trouble with a lot of the stuff that she had been doing since she had been little….

And she didn't know if she wanted to spend her life with someone who didn't know how to make coffee….

But she knew that she shouldn't be mean, or picky, and also that she didn't even like him like that. He was someone who was older than her and he didn't even like girls…so these feelings made no sense. That was just how feelings were. They sometimes made no sense. Sometimes you felt all doki doki and sometimes you felt something even worse…or better…or more confusing than doki doki. Something that she didn't even know the name of….and might never know the name of…and didn't know what she would do when she learned the name of….

Knowing the names of things didn't mean that you understood them.

She knew the name of the person she had seen in the dream work but she also…also had even more questions. Knowing a name wasn't the same as knowing everything….and she knew…she knew that she would never know anything….well she would never know unless she asked….and it may have been ok for her to ask….because he was in a good mood…and he had saved Sho's special Zootopia glass….

She didn't know….but she would never know until she tried.

"Um dad….I know that it's not Sunday yet but…um…can I ask you something?" asked Mob. There was a moment where dad didn't say anything….and also his little ship died…and she knew that she had messed up because Sho hated it when he died and she had never once seen dad die at Space Invaders….he took it very seriously…..but he had died….and he wasn't looking at her…

"Anything, Daughter. You can ask me anything." Said dad. Mob used her powers to pour herself a glass of milk. Whole milk. It tasted funny in this country but she didn't mind. She just poured herself a glass of whole milk and stared at dad the whole time. She never knew quite what he was going to do…and she didn't want to upset him…or anything like that….but she just…wanted to know.

"Um….before Sho was born…were the walls in my room yellow?" asked Mob. She held her breath, practically, as dad thought. She knew that he was thinking. His caterpillars had come together. Sho did the same thing but his eyes brows were regular, not caterpillars, and she did the same thing too. She hoped that neither of them ended up with dad's caterpillar eyebrows…even though that was a mean thing to hope for.

"No. I don't recall…but I don't recall what state that house was when I bought it." Said dad. That was…not helpful at all. She wished that they hadn't lost the baby pictures of her before Sho had been born. Those would have been helpful. A lot more helpful than dad telling her that he didn't even remember….and she knew that she needed to go to bed…but she knew that she needed…just one answer. Just one answer then she would go to bed.

"OK….and….um….just one more thing. Did I….did anyone ever live in the house with us? When I was a baby? Someone named Ritsu?" asked Mob. She maybe should have just stuck to the one question because, obviously, she had said the wrong thing. That question had made dad's aura flare out…and then both of the laptops went to the blue screen of death…and then Sho's Zootopia glass shattered….he would be so mad….and also Hatori might have gotten hurt. He yelped when dad's aura flared and dove under the table…and this was all Mob's fault…

Everything was always her fault.

"Ritsu? Why did you say that name?" asked dad. He seemed….not mad….just…she had never seen him like this before. She would have said that he was scared but…but this wasn't like anything that she had ever seen before.

"Um….I…had a dream….where there was a person called Ritsu in it…and stuff…and I thought that it might have been the dream of a memory…so I thought that it would be ok to ask you…and stuff." Said Mob. Hatori was still hiding under the table….better there than the bathroom….and dad was…calmer….but not like how he had been before. All dad happy…and she had messed his good mood up…and she was so sorry about that….and about Sho's Zoootopia glass…..he'd had that glass since he had been little….and maybe she could replace it before he came back….and stuff…..she just had to fix this.

"Dreams are not reality. Nobody named Ritsu has ever lived with this family. Ritsu is a very common name, I have known seven people in my life called Ritsu that I can recall off the top of my head, and you simply may have been recalling someone you knew in the past. Now if that's is all then you should go back to sleep. You're eleven, almost, and you need nine to ten hours of sleep. Now back to bed with you." Said Dad. Mob nodded. She didn't want to hang around long enough to ruin something else.

"Yes dad. Goodnight, and goodnight Hatori." Said Mob. She wanted to stay and clean up the mess and to make Hatori feel better….but she knew how dad was sometimes….and about how he wanted her to go and she had to do what she was told.

So she went to bed.

She had…she had gotten an answer…but it hadn't been worth it. The feeling of loss was still there with her and dad's answer….she knew that he didn't tell lies…but also….also she felt like that answer wasn't…enough. If she had been dad then she would have told him to explain further….but she was not Mob, she was dad, and she had gotten an answer….so it was time for bed. Special milk until she fell asleep….

Even though she was still full of loss. Loss and weird feelings and questions that she might never get any answers to.


	299. Houses Under Glass

There were thousands of glass eyes staring at him.

Pairs of them. Pairs of them in every single color eyes came in. Browns and blues and greens and also some blacks and purples, and yes eyes could be purple, and this would have been beautiful if those eyes had belonged to living people. Not that dolls could be living people. Not that he wasn't already surrounded by living people.

He much preferred the dolls.

Dolls, at least, weren't alive. Dolls were plastic and glass and wire frames and all of that. Dolls were not people. Dolls did not get up and walk around and talk and breathe and live.

It was a Sunday and on Sunday he made his Daughter happy.

Which was why he was spending his day at a multi-story doll museum and shop. He was surrounded by normal people, little girls, and dolls. He was in hell. This was hell. Hel was little girls and normal people and a thousand dolls and a million eyes and the eyes were dead and the people were alive with no auras and….and this was what hell was….

But Daughter was happy so that was what mattered.

Her happiness was his happiness. She was happy here. This was her sort of place. She loved dolls. She loved those little representations of human beings. She didn't think that they looked dead at all. No. She found them pleasing. They were her favorite playthings….and she was still young enough that she still had playthings. She was still a child. He was so grateful that she was still a child. She was a child…not like the children around them were children…but she was still a child and that was what mattered. Still young. He had seen the way she had been looking at Hatori, he wasn't the best at reading faces but he could read auras, and she had been taken with him. She had been looking at him with her aura and her eyes like she had been completely taken with him….and if Hatori hadn't been a homosexual he would have….well he didn't know what he would have done. On the one hand Hatori was in no way shape or form worthy of Daughter….no man that he had ever met was….but on the other hand he wanted her to grow up and have children….he did….but he didn't want her to….well he did…but he also didn't….but it was normal for her to get older and want to be with someone of the opposite sex…but he just was not ready for that…

But it was a moot point.

No matter how taken with Hatori Daughter was he was still a homosexual and therefore he would never be interested with Daughter. So Daughter could be interested in him…which she might not have been. She might not have been because she was only eleven…well almost eleven…and she still played with dolls. She still played with dolls and watched animated movies and still held his hand when they were out and about in this hellish crowd….she was still a child and that was what mattered. She was his Daughter. She was his Daughter and only his Daughter….and she only knew herself as his Daughter.

She knew that she was his Daughter.

He'd had almost lost control the other night. When she had come to him asking about a person called Ritsu. A person from a memory from a dream, she had said, and that….he had felt years get shaved off of his life…and he had also shaved several years off of Hatori's life as well. She had come to him in the night and asked about Ritsu…her brother…the brother who she should not have been able to remember. She had been two, only two, when he had adopted her. When he had brought her into his family. When she had become his Daughter. She should not have been able to remember her biological family. Her only memories should have been of her new family, her real family, but somehow she had just….she just remembered….he had remembered….

Hopefully she never remembered again.

He would have taken sitting there and watching her talk to Hatori like she he feelings for him, gladly taken it, if he never had to hear her ask about her old life…memories that she'd had from her old life. He hadn't imagined that she would ever have been able to remember….he himself couldn't remember being that young….but she had remembered. In a dream. Well….well she'd had thousands of dreams in her lifetime, most likely, and she'd have others…and he just….if he never said anything then maybe she would forget….or maybe if he just….gave her more things to remember….

Then maybe she would forget again.

She tugged him to the side. She wanted to look at another doll display. Well this was certainly the place for her to make new memories. This chaotic….chaos….place. Little girls everywhere. She was a little girl in a sea of other little girls. She was a little girl and this must have been her heaven. Her heaven and his hell. Too many people around. He could command legions of people, his own people, but being out and about with people….being out like this…it was hell. It was hell but he would endure it just to be near to her. Just to know that she was happy….that this was a place which made her happy….

"Wow. Hey dad, look. That dollhouse has electricity and running water. Why would dolls need electricity and running water?" asked Daughter as she pointed to what wasn't even a dollhouse anymore. It was a house for small people. Borrowers…like the stories his mother would tell. The little people that lived in the walls and borrowed things from the family…but really stole….and also had the tails of mice. That was the worst part, the mouse tails, because people were not mice….

Disturbing.

"To show that you can have such an expensive thing, perhaps. Some people have the need to display their wealth copiously like that. Yes, that's the reason. Not for borrowers." Said Suzuki. He wondered if she would have wanted a dollhouse like that. It would have been difficult, logistically, to move such a thing whenever they moved but it would have been worth it for her. He would have given her whatever she had wanted and then some just to make her happy. To make her content. To help her to be content. To help her be content enough that she could forget what she should have forgotten nine years ago.

"Borrowers? Like from the Arrietty movie?" asked Daughter

"I've never seen that film. I'm referring to the people who live in the walls and steal things when the family is asleep." Said Suzuki

"Yes, that's Borrowers like from Arrietty. But they borrow dad, they don't steal." Said Daughter

"They never plan on returning what they take and therefore that is stealing…also they have the tails of mice and I find that exceptionally disturbing. Intelligent mice are disturbing enough but people the size of mice with the tails of mice….that is just not right." Said Suzuki with a barely perceptible shudder. She took her free hand and patted his hand, the one that was holding her hand, and it was…nice. She was….offering him comfort. Comfort which he should have rejected, he was forty four and he was her father as well so therefore it was his job to comfort her, but it was a gift to receive comfort and affection from her…and it was one that he would not take for granted.

He had taken it for granted before.

Masami has always initiated bonding activities like that. She had always touched him and held him…and in an effort not to be weak he had shrugged her off even though he had enjoyed it…and then she had just left him one day. Their relation had been under a time limit and he hadn't even realized it. Well now he did. Daughter was not his wife, she was his child, and their relationship was…and was not….under a time limit. She would grow up one day and then….and then he had no clue at all what they would become. If she would still hold his hand. If she would still be affectionate towards him. If she would still even be with him…and she had to be with him….but she would meet someone else….

And she might have been upset with him if he were to send her husband far away with no hope of him ever returning….

So he allowed her to show him this bit off affection. He would enjoy it while he could. There were so many children around, little girls, and they were just….around. Most were not with their parents, physically with, and the ones that still clung to their parents were much younger than Daughter. He was bad at aging children so he went by their heights. The one's who were Daughter's height were either holding onto younger siblings or standing off in a corner on their phones. So he was grateful to have what he had with his Daughter…

For however long it would last.

"Don't worry dad, mice aren't as smart as people and borrowers are only stories. The ones in Japan, or the ones in Arrietty anyway, didn't even have tails…but they aren't even real anyway so it doesn't matter. Come on, let's see the next dollhouse. That one has a real swimming pool it looks like….even though I don't know why dolls need a swimming pool…but that would be cool to have." Said Daughter. Suzuki made a mental note to have a dollhouse built for her which had all the amenities that a human being would need but in miniature. Yes, that would make her happy and he wanted nothing more than her happiness…

She was so beautiful when she smiled.

Really she stood head and shoulders above all of these other little girls in every single measureable way. She was more well dressed and in better spirits and more well behaved as well. She didn't run around, she didn't bang on the glass displays, and she didn't carry on like some of these other little girls were. Honestly, so many of them behaved like Son…and he would have expected better from little girls. Maybe Daughter was just exceptional. Yes, that made sense. His Daughter was simply the greatest little girl to ever live. Well that made sense. She was the Daughter of the greatest man to ever live…and she was his Daughter even if he did not father her….and she knew that she was his Daughter….and she thought that he fathered her….and she would never know the truth. No, she would not even get close to it. He wouldn't let her. Suzuki didn't give a damn how many days of his life he would have to spend at the doll museum, how many hours he would have to spend packed in with the masses, if it made his Daughter happy….and it made her forget….everything which he should have forgotten long ago.

There's a piercing scream and then a small shoe hits the display behind him.

He held her hand a little tighter as a group of little girls ran by being chased by an even smaller, and shoeless, little girl. He had forgotten how…childish…children could be. Not his Daughter, of course. Never Shigeko. No. She took the time to look at each and every doll display in order. One display and then another and another. Another and another and another. All day. For his entire day. Dolls. Tiny little people with dead eyes and dead skin and dead auras and no auras and….and this was a hell. This place was hell but her land in his was heaven. The warmth of her, the sense of….there-ness….that came with being with her. She was like a rock in an ocean and a tsunami was going on but she was there and she was safe, not the he felt unsafe or anything like that, no he was surrounded by a crowd of normal people and dolls…

And he was fine.

Really he was. He had no reason not to be fine. No reason at all. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He was fine and he was always going to be fine…so why did he feel like this? Why did he feel like….he didn't feel like anything. He didn't feel like he was trapped and stuck and….and those words were synonymous…and now his thoughts were all….fine. His thoughts were fine and he was fine. He was the most fine. He clutched Daughter's hand in his. She was soft, so soft, and so warm. She was soft and warm and she was like a beacon of warmth and light in this storm of people. Her physical body and her aura, too. He let his aura meet hers. He held on to her. He held on to her aura and kept himself there with her. She was the only other esper within his passive range. No one else. Nothing else. Just him and her there together. Her hand in his. His hand in hers. Her aura in his. His aura in hers.

And the thousands and thousands of glass eyes staring at him.

Now there was a pair of brown eyes meeting his. A pair of living brown eyes looking up at him. Her eyes were almost black, Daughter's, and his were blue. Had she noticed it yet? That her eyes were different. She must have. She wasn't blind. She could see and she must have seen, by now, the differences between her and him. Her and her brother. Her and her mother…if she could even still recall her mother. If she could still conjure up the image of her mother within her mind. He could….he could see Masami if he tried hard enough and for long enough…

He didn't have to try very hard.

He could see her there, in Daughter's eyes, in her brown eyes. Masami's eyes…they had been different….not as close to black as hers….but her eyes were black-ish….but he could still see Masami. This was the sort of place she would have loved. She loved museums. She loved them and she loved going places with him….and he hated going places. He hated being surrounded by people, normal people, and he hated being so far removed from other espers. So far removed from people who were like him….

You're being ridiculous, Touichirou.

That was what Masami would have told him. She would have told him that he was being ridiculous just like she had always said when they had been out and about. He remembered….they had been at a museum. The Tokyo museum of art. She had been big with Son then….and maybe that trip had some effect on him. He did turn out to be an amazing artist. Better than Suzuki had ever been, anyway. He could recreate images from life and he could create them on his own, too, from his own mind. Son was so gifted…and it had been a while since he had gotten some of his creations….he so wished that Daughter could draw. Then he could have had some of her creations adorning the walls of his office. Then it would have been like having her near him always…

He always wanted to have her near him.

She was so like Masami in this moment. He had taken her to the Tokyo art museum when she had been…he had no idea how many weeks pregnant she had been but she had been very big with Son. She'd have been better off being at home and off of her feet but she had told him….what had she said? That she was beginning to feel completely cut off from the world. She had said that it was hard being all alone in the house all day…he had been making an effort to be near to her since she was bearing his child and he hadn't wanted Fukuda in the house with her…not that he didn't trust Fukuda he just hadn't like the idea of another man anywhere near his wife. It had been a primal urge, there, the urge to keep his wife all to himself. He trusted her, he always would, but it was the rest of the world he could not trust. Masami was the most perfect woman who had ever lived. What man wouldn't have wanted her? No man could ever have resisted her perfection, her kindness, her intelligence, the softness of her skin and her hair…and the way he could just stare at her for hours and hours and never get bored of her…

He feels a hand struggling in his.

"Dad, can I be the one to hold your hand….I mean I like it when you hold my hand but your hand is a lot bigger than mine and you're stronger than me….so can my hand be on the outside and yours be in the inside?" asked Daughter. She was facing him now. Her back was to one of the glass displays, this was a castle and she loved castles so this much have been something important to her to get her to turn her back on a miniature version of her dream home, and….and maybe…..maybe he had been holding on to her hand too tightly….

His knuckles were white.

He'd hurt her. He had been hurting her…and small hairline fractures form in the glass in front of him. He had been hurting her…and it wasn't as though he had never punished her before…but he hadn't had cause to punish her in a while…and the thought of punishing her makes him feel sick….and he hadn't even been punishing her. He had been trying to keep her near him, to keep him safe, because this was a big place with a lot of people and she was so small and it would have been easy for her to just slip into the crowd and disappear from his life forever….and he didn't want that at all…

He didn't know what he would do without her.

"Yes. That's fine. Look at the castle." Said Suzuki as he let go of her hand….and he feels cold….but then she takes his hand and he feels warm again. Her hand is holding his now…and she has such small hands. She's so small. She's taller now than she had been before but she was still so small compared to him. He could have lifted her….if he had wanted to either use his powers in public or break his back in half…..and he doesn't…but he wants to. He used to have had the ability to pick her up with ease…when she had been small. She had been so small and he had been 'daddy' to her and not dad…

Why couldn't she had remembered that?

Why on Earth could she not have remembered the times that he had spent with her when she had been that small? The time that he had taken to show her how to use her powers. The time that Masami had forced him to spend with her so she would bond with him as a parent. All of those stories he'd read. The hours he'd spent throwing balls and disks and such to her in the backyard to teach her hand eye coordination. The times where she would sit on his lap during meals and pick off of his plate even though she had her own food right there…with that cat on it…and when she had been small she had been obsessed with that white cat….and now it was the ice queen….

She was still dressed like the ice queen.

A blue shirt with her picture on it and a blue skirt. Her shoes were blue too and they sang when she walked, well he had asked her to turn that feature off, but they could….and she loved the ice queen now…but she was getting older and there was the chance that…that she would like something else. That this time in her life would just be a distant memory….a memory that would come to her in the night….but better this time come to her in the night then…then the times that had come before these. The times when she had lived in Seasoning City. The times when she had been called Kageyama. The times….the times before these times…

These were the times for her to remember.

"Dad….if you don't want me to hold your hand you could just say so…I mean…please don't break the glass. I like it here and I think that if we break things then we'll get kicked out." Said Daughter. So she did notice the cracks in the glass…but that's fine. She's fine.

"You're fine. This is fine. Do you like that castle? I think that you would if you spent more time looking at it." Said Suzuki. He pointed to the castle. The one in front of them under glass. Was that what she wanted them to live in? He knew that she liked European royalty…and she called their old home the castle. Yes, he could build her something like this.

It would be wonderful.

Just him and her….and whatever children she had of course. Just him and her and the children. Eating meals together, watching television together, playing games together….and it would have been socially acceptable since he would have been bonding with his family, and they would also teach the children to use their powers together….and he so looked forward to that…and then after a long day they would retire to their room and watch whatever new and fascinating show she had found for them, he'd have to put them to making more ice queen movies for her and also more Evangelion movies….also for her….but he would also partake if that was what she felt like watching….and then he could hold her and they'd drift off to sleep and she would be the last thing he saw after closing his eyes and the first thing he saw when he opened them again in the morning….

And it would have been perfect.

"I think it's great, dad, I really do. I like castles a lot. Well castles and palaces….I think that I like palaces better, though, but castles are nice too." Said Daughter

"Well there's no reason that you can't have both. Our home will be whatever you want it to be." Said Suzuki. He didn't care what she built just so long as she was happy. Why would she leave a place that she had designed herself? Maybe he should have let Masami choose their home…..he had just bought the biggest one and then the two next to it…but maybe if she had designed it then she would have been happy enough to stay….

But that didn't matter. He'd build Daughter the house of her dreams and then she would be so happy that the thought of leaving wouldn't even cross her mind.

"You've said that but…um…what if I wanted to go back to the Castle? I mean….I mean our old home….where we lived…before here." Said Daughter. Suzuki…remained calm. He remained calm and his aura did not flare and his powers stayed under control and he did not pick Daughter up, shake her, and tell her that they were never going to go back there because that was Masami's home and they were not going to disturb it. Ever.

Ever.

Under glass. He would put it under glass. He would have the whole thing put under glass. He would have the whole thing kept exactly the way that she had left it….well as best as he could keep it. He had been there before…and he had disturbed the whole thing….but…but he would never return. He would let the dust settle again and nobody would ever set foot in that home again. Ever. For the rest of eternity.

Ever.

"No. We're never going back…now look at the houses." Said Suzuki simply. He wouldn't even entertain the idea. They were never going back. If she wanted their old home then he would have it recreated for her. He would have it recreated down to the furnishings for her if that was what she wanted. She could have it all. Masami's closet, her wardrobe, her vanity table, her perfume shelf, all of it. She could have it all….in replica.

In replica.

"Um….yes, dad." Said Daughter. There. Problem solved. She would stop asking him about the past…about going back to the past….and she…she just….she needed to forget the past already. The past was in the past, he had heard her say that a thousand times…from her song….but she must have believed that at least a little bit. She had to. It was the truth.

The past was in the past.

And he hoped to God that she would just forget the past already. Just….forget their old home and…and the one she'd had before it. Every time she brought up the past he feared, not that he ever feared, that she would just…just remember it all…and then he would lose her forever.

And he could not have that.


	300. Gross Baby Mush with no Ranch

Sho hated peas.

Well he hated a lot of vegetables. The only vegetables he could eat were bok choi, but only in stir fry, and then lettuce, but only with ranch, and spinach, but only in spanakopita, and also tomato but only with ranch or in a sauce, and also carrots also with ranch. Sometimes plain, if there was no ranch, but he preferred ranch dressing….on just about everything. Ranch dressing was the best thing that people had ever invented as far as food went. If he'd been allowed to he would have had a glass of ranch to dip all of his food in…but he didn't do that at meals now because Fukuda said no…and Fukuda wasn't here but Mukai's mom didn't keep any ranch in the house.

And he wasn't about to tell her to get some, either, because that would have been rude.

It also would have been rude to not eat the lunch that she had made for him. It was baked chicken, peas and carrots, and also a slice of bread with butter. Not Sho's idea of lunch. He would have had pizza and fries or a box of cereal or a couple poptarts with extra frosting….with an apple or a slice of lettuce to make it healthy. Something besides this. He just….he had to be polite and he had to eat it. If he had been with Fukuda he would have just refused to eat until either he or Fukuda got sick of this. If he had been with big sis he would have been negotiating bites and also he would have had some ice cream or cake or something as a reward for his good eating. If he had been with Shimazaki they would have just eaten pudding cups or custard or mashed potatoes, stuff that Shimazaki said had a good mouthfeel, and Sho would have eaten whatever he wanted even though he didn't much like eating mush as a meal….

Because that was the polite thing to do.

Also he didn't want Shimazaki to think that he was a baby….or boring. That was why he needed to stop taking his food apart….even though the peas and the carrots were touching. They were touching and their flavors were mixing and he knew that everyone would get mixed up in his stomach…but his mouth was not his stomach. His mouth had a tongue and his tongue did not like too many tastes at once. Also it was his food and he would eat it in whatever way he wanted to….but he couldn't. Boring people made everyone wait while they took their food apart for hours and hours…and he was not going to be a boring person.

And also baby sis was watching.

"Come on, Mukai, here comes the airplane. It's coming in for a landing….if you'd just open your mouth already." Said baby sis's mom. She had a spoon that looked like an airplane and she was doing that thing that you were supposed to do when babies wouldn't eat…and he didn't blame baby sis for not eating. She didn't want to eat this and neither did he….but he had to eat it. He was the big brother now and he had to show her how to be a good eater. She didn't have Fukuda around. Sho knew that eating unhealthy foods could make you sick but for him it didn't matter because Fukuda could heal just about anything.

Baby sis wasn't so lucky.

She was lucky enough to have a mom that put her dinner in the mush machine and stuff but she wasn't lucky enough to have a Fukuda in her life. A person who could heal her no matter what happened. So she would need to learn how to eat her fruits and vegetables and also how not to take her food apart. She needed to be a good eater and he needed to eat a good example….right now. He had been eating his chicken, the chicken was ok even though it was baked, not fried, and also there wasn't any ranch for it…but it was ok. It didn't really taste like anything.

The peas and carrots on the other hand…

He held his fork in his hand. Baby sis had her mouth closed and she was shaking her head. Sho wanted to tell her mom to give her a cookie, she liked cookies, and then after she had one she could have one when she was done with her food as a reward. Or after every bite like big sis did to get him to eat cucumbers. Baby sis was shaking her head and she slapped her spoon away….and now there was mush everywhere on her high chair…and Sho wanted to tell her mom to just give her a cookie already…

But he didn't.

Sho could have all the cookies he wanted because he had Fukuda. Sho could live on chips and fries and cookies and ice cream but baby sis was not so lucky. So he needed to set a good example. He finished chewing the piece of chicken in his mouth and swallowed. He swallowed twice just to make sure that he was done swallowing…and then he drank some water too just to make extra sure. Also he wished that he could have had a soda but baby sis's mom poured him a glass of water without even asking him…and he knew that she had soda in her fridge….but she didn't want Mukai to have any because she was only baby…and if Sho had been in charge of her then she could have lived with him and drank all the soda she wanted and eaten all the cookies she wanted…because Fukuda would have been with them…but he was not in charge of her…

So he had to be a good big brother about this.

"Baby sis, look. See, it's not so bad." Said Sho. He got her attention and then stuck one pea on the end of his fork…and then he put it in his mouth…and then he started to chew. His eyes watered and his stomach felt like there were goldfish in it….but in a good way. Not in the way when he thought about how good it had felt to kiss Hideki or how awesome Shimazaki was….this was more like…like the time he ate four churros and then rode the teacups and used his powers to make them spin faster….but he held his throw up inside of his stomach and the pea inside of his mouth…..

Even though he would have preferred to have been eating actual pee instead of this….

He did a thumbs up as he chewed. Baby sis laughed and did a thumbs up too. Good. She was learning that…that something you had to eat disgusting things in order to make the people around you happy. Sometimes you had to choke down something sick and wrong, obviously you weren't supposed to eat a plant named after pee, to be healthy and to make someone else happy…like when he had been little and mom had made stuff that he hadn't liked….

You had to eat what your mom made you. That was a very good lesson to learn.

"See? It's delicious." Said Sho after he swallowed. He drank some water really quick after he said that just to get the horrible taste out of his mouth. Great. One down and about a million more to go. Maybe if he mushed them all up into one big pea and then swallowed them…or maybe he could fill his pockets with peas and then flush them down the toilet later….or maybe if he hid them on the bottom of his plate and then offered to do the dishes….

But that would have been setting a bad example for his little sister.

Big sis never did bad things. Ever. Not even in secret. She hadn't even kissed Shimazaki even though she had the chance…not that he wanted her to kiss Shimazaki…and not that he had ever thought about kissing Shimazaki either! Because he hadn't! Because that would have been a weird thing to dream about! He never had dreams where he and Shimazaki were sitting in a fort eating pudding cups and throwing the empty pudding cups at Hatori and then they ran out of pudding and then Shimazaki kissed him…but it was for a good reason, he tasted like pudding, and not because he wanted to kiss him or anything…and also Sho didn't want to kiss him either! He did not have thoughts like that and…and he was going to set a good example like big sis set!

You don't kiss your friends.

You kiss whoever you're told to kiss. Sho had a girlfriend and he was supposed to have a girlfriend and he kissed his girlfriend. Big sis had a boyfriend, well she probably did by now since she was so in love with Hatori and stuff, and that was setting a good example. He didn't want baby sis to felt how he felt…not that he felt any way at all! He felt exactly like he was supposed to….but if he ever felt like…like maybe he wanted to kiss other boys….well then baby sis would have felt the same and then her life would have been very hard because people would be upset with her for that…and they'd make fun of her…and he didn't want that for her….

And he had to set a good example for her like big sis had spent her whole life setting for him.

"Here, you give it a try." Said baby sis's mom. She turned and handed him Mukai's little baby plate and baby soon. She couldn't have her plate on her high chair or she would throw it, she liked to throw things, and Sho was careful to keep it out of her reach when he took it from her mom. He stood there in front of her with a spoon on one hand, a plate in the other, and baby sis looking up at him with her matching eyes, matching to his, and normally he would have thought that it was cool how their eyes matched but now he just felt bad.

Because he was about to feed her something awful.

This was good for her. The best things in life tasted bad and the worst things in life tasted good. He had no idea why food followed that rule, only that it did, and that there were was escaping it. Food was something that you needed to live and good food made you live a long time…so it was time to feed baby sis some good food. Good for her foods. He just had to get some mashed peas and carrots….they were even worse mashed together…and then he just had to…to bring it over to her mouth…

She slapped the spoon away.

He caught it with his powers before she could make a mess. She clapped when he did that. She always clapped when he used his powers. That was how she showed how happy she was…and also she hit but she wasn't hitting now. She was clapping and laughing. He held the spoon in the air with his powers. She clapped and laughed as he swirled it around and around her head.

"Round and round and round it goes….where it stops nobody knows." Said Sho. He spun the spoon around in front of her face…and he felt guilty. He was going to feed her something she hated…but it would be good for her…and at least she was being entertained. That was good…even though if it had been up to him she would have had a cup of ranch dressing to wash her food down with or a cookie or something as a reward for her good eating…but he was only her pretend big brother, not her real big brother, so he didn't get that kind of say. What would have happened if she had stayed with them? Would he have been in charge of her like big sis was in charge of him? Would he had been the one in charge or would they both have been bossed around by big sis? He didn't know. Back on the days when he'd watch her he had been in charge…but big sis had been at work….

And even though formula had been gross it had been easier to make her a bottle than to feed her like this.

It had made him feel less guilty. When he fed her the bottle at least there hadn't been any other options. He knew that there was a whole world of food out there for her and she didn't have to eat this…or at least not without ranch…but he wasn't in charge of her. He wasn't the for real big brother or the grown up. So he fed her what her mom decided that she had to eat. He made the spoon go into her mouth…and she didn't spit up. She swallowed. She swallowed and blew drool all over her bib…but she kept it down.

She was so awesome like that.

"You did so great, bay sis! You did ate and you didn't even spit up. You did good! Go-od. Good." Said Sho. Maybe he could get her to say 'good'. She couldn't say her own name, and she spat when she tried to say his, so maybe she could say this. She had to say something. She had to learn how to talk.

And he wanted to be there for her first words.

He had already missed her first Christmas and her first birthday and her first steps and her first solid foods….and he didn't want to miss her first words either. He knew that once he left he wouldn't be able to come back for a while….and he knew that he needed to spend as much time as he could with her. He needed to spend as much time as he could with her and he needed to teach her everything he could and he needed to hear her first words. He knew that he needed to make the most of his time with her…

And also he had to set a good example for her.

She didn't try to say good but she did try to kick the plate out of his hands. Judging by how her little baby aura flared she also wanted to use her powers….or the powers that she had seen him use, to knock her plate on the ground…and he sort of wanted her to knock the plate on the ground. Then he could get her a cookie from the cafeteria. She had taken a bite and that was enough to earn a reward…in his opinion, anyway. When he grew up and he had kids with whatever girl wanted to have kids with him, probably Emmy since she was his girlfriend and stuff, he would let them have a reward cookie for every single bite they took.

That seemed like it would be good.

They would have dessert, too, because cookies were more of a snack than a dessert. Whatever they wanted. In fact his kids could eat whatever they wanted whenever they wanted and in whatever way they wanted…but with a salad and ranch to keep it healthy. It was important to have something healthy on the table. Yeah, his kids would eat whatever they wanted and so could everyone else. They would eat at one long table, like in movies, with him and his family and big sis and his family and also Shimazaki and Hatori and Shibata and Minegishi…they could sit over by big sis….and also Fukuda if he felt like coming over every once in a while. When he got lonely and only if he didn't tell people what to eat or how to eat it. Yeah. It would be good. Dad wouldn't be there. He would be running the world or dead or something. That would be good. Baby sis would be able to eat with them then and he wouldn't make her eat anything this gross…

He would be the best big brother in the history of big brothers.

"Here, have some more. It's healthy…and stuff." Said Sho. That was good. Healthy food was good. She liked this, she liked it when he made the spoon fly, and he could do this. At least he could make her happy. At least he could make her smile…and he loved her little baby smiles. He loved her little baby smiles more than anything else in the whole world. She had her little baby teeth and they may have been green and she may have had mush all over herself but her little baby smiles were the best smiles in the while world….

He heard a camera click.

Her mom took a picture of them. That was just what moms did. They liked to take pictures….and that was ok because she could keep a secret. Fukuda wouldn't have sent baby sis to someone who couldn't keep a secret. She took pictures of them, him and baby sis, and that was ok….because then baby sis would remember him better. She had to remember him. He had no idea how much of this she would remember…but he just needed her to remember him….

He needed to remember this and so did she.

"Shh…shuh…..shuhhhh…" said baby sis through a mouthful of mush. She got mush all over her bib, it used to say 'The baby, the myth, the legend' but now it just said 'the legend'…and she was a legend. She was awesome. She would be the best, most amazing, most legendary baby sis in the whole world!

"Sho. Come on, baby sis, you can say it. Sho. I'm Sho. Sho." said Sho as he pointed to himself with her spoon…and he got green much on his shirt….but that didn't matter. That wouldn't matter just so long as she said his name. Would this be it? Would this be the first word she ever said? His name?

"Shush….shuuuush…." said baby sis. She was going to get it. She was smart, the smartest baby sis in the entire world, and she was going to say his name. He was going to be the first word that she had ever said. She was going to say his name and then he would be her first word and then if he was her first word then she would remember him for the rest of her life.

Even if they weren't really siblings he still wanted her to remember him for the rest of his life.

"That's it. Sho. Sho. You can say it, say my name, Sho. You're so smart, the smartest baby sis in the world, and you can totally say my name." said Sho. He was only going to tell her good things. That way she would know that she had been born right. Even though her parents didn't want her, they had given her away to dad after all, she was loved and she had been born right and anyone who dared to tell her that she had been born wrong could go off and rot in a traitor hole.

She had been born right.

"Shush….shush….shush…." said baby sis. It was more like spitting than words but she was getting it…sort of. Maybe she was just too little…or something….but he needed her to talk…he needed her to say his name…he needed her to remember him….he really did. She wouldn't be able to remember big sis, even though she had that doll that looked like her and also Sho had left her some sketches of big sis baby sis wouldn't be able to remember her….but she would at least be able to remember him. At least he had done that right. She would remember him and…and he had no way of making sure of that…but he would try. He would try his very best…

What else could he do?

"Hey, kid, one thing at a time. How about you just get her to eat and then work from there." said big sis's mom. Sho sort of wanted to tell her to mind her own business, that he was trying to teach his sister to speak, and that he had this….but that would have been the sort of thing that would get him kicked out and he didn't want that.

"…sure…but maybe it would go easier if you had some ranch. Everything tastes better with ranch." Said Sho as he loaded her little baby spoon up with mush and made it float again for her. She had been so close…but he could try again later…or tomorrow…..if he was even here tomorrow. He had no idea when he would be going….and he needed to make the most of this….he was trying to make the most of this….

He loved her so much.

"I'll put it on the list." Said baby sis's mom. Sho blinked. Well that had been easy. Now baby sis could have ranch and then she would eat her food and she could be healthy and then she would live a long time, long enough to see dad die, and then they could be together because dad would be dead and she could live in the house with him and the others and it would be great.

It would be the best thing ever.

But first he had to feed her. He had to finish feeding her so she could go down for her after lunch nap and he could sketch her sleeping. Then they could play until dinnertime and then he would help give her a bath and then…and then he could read her a story and go home…and then maybe do it all again. Yeah…again and again and again. He missed big sis, he missed Shimazaki, he even missed Hatori and Shibata, though not as much, but he also….he also knew that when he left here it would hurt so much, he would miss her so much, and even being with her now made him all…not the best…

Or maybe that was because he was feeding her gross baby must without any ranch.


	301. Doing a Nice Thing for a Friend

Two wrongs didn't make a right.

Minegishi had said so. That was why they were sitting in the kitchen getting it organized and labeling everything. Every single box, bag, and can. Everything needed to be labeled and organized so that Shimazaki could know where things were and what they were and also he would stop opening every single can to know what was inside of them. That would make life easier to everyone. Especially Shimazaki.

And Mob loved to help out….even if she wasn't sure that she was good at it.

She had a piece of paper in front of her and a braille label maker. She just had to make sure that the dots on the paper matched the dots on the paper. She just had to make sure that she was doing this right or the entire thing would be pointless and their whole morning had been wasted. She and Minegishi were organizing the kitchen and labeling everything for Shimazaki so he could actually know where things were and what they were. It was a lot of work, and braille was a very complicated language, but she was going to help out as best as she could.

Even though she sometimes made mistakes.

"Um….I think I messed up again. I think that a dot is in the wrong place…sorry." said Mob as she picked up a box of black tea. She had been trying to write communal black tea but instead one of the dots looked like it was in the wrong place and now she had no idea what it said at all and then when Shimazaki went to get some tea he wouldn't be able to find it and it would be all her fault and she was such a bad friend sometimes….

She was the one who had gotten him in trouble with Minegishi in the first place.

She was the one who had given him the sugar cubes idea and then that had made him and Minegishi fight…and they had made up and stuff….but still she had made them fight. Also she had made Minegishi ignore him and he really hated being ignored and stuff. They had made up but she had still made Minegishi act sort of mean, sort of very mean, to Shimazaki…and now at least she could help make up for it…

Well she would have been making up for it if she could just stop making so many mistakes.

"That's fine, just try again. I doubt Ryou's getting up any time soon. He didn't come in until around dawn. You're fine." Said Minegishi as they froze in front of the open fridge. They were tempted to swap jobs with Mob….no, they should have been the one to do this. Let Mob have the easy job of labeling all of their tea…and why they had do many teas would never be understood…while Minegishi went through the fridge that hadn't been cleaned since they moved in. They had only been in this house for a little over a week and somehow it was full of rotting leftovers….wonderful….

Well they had to do what they had to do.

They had been an asshole to Ryou. He had done something stupid, dangerous, and stupidly dangerous…but they had been an asshole to him, too. They had treated him terribly, had been aware that they had been treating him terribly, and they should not have been treating like that….because they knew what he had been through. He had been through hell plain and simple. He may have been blasé about it but he had been through hell….and they should not have made him relive that…and he had always been careful not to make them relive anything….so they had…both….messed up. Well two wrongs did not make a right. So here they were, sitting in front of the open fridge labeling everything and cleaning out leftover that had somehow started to rot despite the fact that they had barely been living in this house.

"What was he doing all night?" asked Mob. She hoped that he'd been ok. She'd been on an adventure with him before, she knew how he could be, and the thought of him getting hurt or lost or…or anything. It makes her sad. He's her friend and she needs to keep him safe…even though she knew that he was more than capable of keeping himself safe….

She just wanted her friends to be ok.

"I have no idea but I'm pretty sure that I smelled the ocean this morning so I don't think that he knows either….and I have no idea why he keeps going into the ocean when he gets fucked up." Said Minegishi as they labeled some more of the energy drinks they had found. So apparently the vegetable drawer was the place for these now. Whatever. They could make fresh vegetables….but it would have been nice to have had a place to put them so they didn't have to play green grocer every time they got hungry.

"Maybe he felt like going swimming." Said Mob

"He hates the ocean. He doesn't trust it and water makes everything look fuzzy to him." said Minegishi

"Oh….so why did he do that?" asked Mob

"I have no clue why he does half the stuff he does….he's such an idiot." Said Minegishi. He was, he really was. He was an idiot and he was annoying and he had done something stupid beyond words….but here they were labeling the entire kitchen in braille for that idiot…that complete and total idiot….

"Are…are you still mad at him? I mean you called him an idiot…" said Mob. She held a box of tea close to her chest. She wanted them to get better. Minegishi and Shimazaki….and also she hated it when Minegishi got upset. She hated it even though they had said, time and time again, that they weren't ever going to be mad at her….it didn't matter if they were mad at her or not. She just didn't want them to be mad….though she didn't want them to be mad at her either.

"I'm not angry with him, I'm just stating a fact. He can be a total idiot…and I guess that I can be too." Said Minegishi with a shrug.

"No, you're not. You're one of the smartest people that I know. Please don't say mean things about yourself….and also please don't say mean things about Shimazaki. I think that he can act like a crazy person sometimes but that doesn't mean that he's an idiot. He knows a lot of things about a lot of things and also he can read all of this complicated dot language….and stuff." Said Mob. She wished that Minegishi would stop saying such mean things about themselves. They were smart and nice and a good friend…even though they also could be sort of mean sometimes….but that didn't mean that they got to say mean things about themselves.

"Alright, Rou's a genius and so am I. That's why I decided to spend my whole day putting this kitchen back in order and labeling everything." Said Minegishi

"Um….I don't know if he's a genius….but I think that you said a very nice thing about him….and I think that it's good for your to say nice things about him…and also maybe you should say nice things to him…because he likes you and…and stuff." Said Mob. She smiled and looked down at the box of tea in her hands. She wanted them to say it back to him, that he loved them, but she knew that she couldn't make people fall in love with each other and that you had to say I love you from the heart, not just to say it back, because that would have been lying and Minegishi was not a liar…and certainly they would never lie about something as important as love. What could be more important than love?

"I'm fixing this entire kitchen for him. That's nice enough." Said Minegishi. They stopped themselves from rolling their eyes. Mob could be so transparent sometimes. They knew what she was getting at and they knew that she needed to come off of it. The shippening was getting worse…and it would only get worse and worse as the years went on. It was bad enough at almost eleven….what would almost twelve be like? Almost thirteen? Puberty was such a bitch and they were glad that they never had to go back to that terrible time in their life.

"Ok. He's going to be so happy when he wakes up and he can find things again. I can't wait." Said Mob. This was going to be so great. Minegishi had been sort of distant from Shimazaki since what had happened, they had stopped ignoring him but Mob hadn't seen them cuddling in a while and she hadn't seen them kiss since that time when they had been fighting and that just wasn't right at all. Friends were never supposed to fight…and especially not them. Shimazaki was in love with them and he might not be in love with them…and also their friendship would suffer…and then she had no idea what that would do to the group…

They needed to get along.

Because they were her friends and friends always needed to get along. Plus Shimazaki was in love with Minegishi and that was the best thing ever! If Mob had been in their place then she would have forgiven him and been his girlfriend….well if she had been Minegishi…maybe. She didn't really want to be his girlfriend…that was mean and she knew that it was but she just….didn't like him like that. She wanted Minegishi to be his theyfriend, though, because then they would have someone to love them and be their boyfriend and what could be better than having a boyfriend?

Well a lot of things like being able to play with Sho again or being able to see Baby Mukai again or having a mom again or having a dad who didn't smother you…or a bunch of pet cats…..

But having a boyfriend must have been pretty great. She wanted Minegishi to be happy and to have someone who would love them and take care of them and make them happy and then they could get married and have a wedding, Mob liked watching weddings on TV and Minegishi wouldn't have to wear a dress since it was their wedding and they could wear whatever they wanted so they wouldn't have to worry about that, and then they would have kids and then Mob could help take care of them and then her kids could be friends with their kids and also Sho would be there and he liked to help take care of babies and also he would have kids and then they could all be happy together….and stuff….

So Mob was very glad that Minegishi had forgiven Shimazaki…and her too even though Minegishi had said that they hadn't been mad at her…Mob had still gotten that feeling.

"He had better be…and he had better stop opening everything and putting it back in the fridge after this." said Minegishi as they got up and dumped out a flat can of whatever the red sugar syrup Hatori drank instead of water. They were going to have to section out the fridge for everyone….and it wasn't that big….God. This place was not designed for four people to live. Suzuki had a bunch of family homes built….for some reason. Wishful thinking, maybe. Or just plain stupidity.

It wasn't like anyone high ranking enough in Claw to live here would be having kids anytime soon.

Claw was not the place for those sorts of people. Family people. People who should have been allowed to have kids. Really building a bunch of apartment buildings or something would have made more sense. Easier to house people. Easier to give them space from each other. Or maybe even just making these places bigger…that would have helped….but no, Suzuki had to go with prefabs of single family homes…and not very big ones either. Well he did only have the two kids that lived with him, and the love child nobody was supposed to mention even though everyone could tell plain as day that the baby was his…but whatever. It was whatever. Let him have as many kids as he wanted. Let him try and people the world with espers. It wasn't like anyone else in Claw was going to. There was a gender imbalance between espers they had noticed, not a lot of female ones and way too many male ones, and most espers themselves seemed a little too unstable to be having kids in the first place….

Or maybe that was just the lives that they'd lived. Nobody with a stable life joined Claw after all.

"He'll probably still open Hatori's stuff just to annoy him…and I don't know why he does that. I mean I guess because Hatori used to like you but he only likes boys, dad said so, and…well….I think that you're a good person and I think that Hatori would be very happy if he was your boyfriend…but I just don't think that he would like to be your boyfriend. Sorry." said Mob. She didn't want them to think that there was something wrong with them. She just wanted them to know that they didn't have to worry about Hatori liking them….because he liked boys only…and that made Mob feel vaguely…not happy. Disappointed. She didn't know why. People could love whoever they wanted to love…and he didn't love her…and she didn't love him…

So why did she feel like this?

Like she wanted…well she wanted to be near him and stuff….but not like she wanted to be his girlfriend. She mostly just wanted to look at him a lot….and Minegishi had said that she just wanted to look at him because she thought that he was attractive….she had felt that way about boys before, though, and she had never felt like this….whatever this even was…

She went back to labeling before she thought any more about this.

"Mob, I've said it before and I'll say it again. You can have Hatori. I have no interest in Hatori. I have never had any interest in Hatori." Said Minegishi as Mob started labeling like her life depended on it. They hoped that she was labeling those boxes right…but it was tea. He could smell tea through the box. He'd be fine.

Mob on the other hand…..

She needed to find a guy her own age…and soon. What about that Ritsu guy she had apparently been talking about? She had never mentioned him before but Minegishi didn't know everything about Mob that there was to know. This kid that she was into had better have been her own age. Daddy issues were a thing…and apparently Mob was getting them…and that wouldn't be good for her in the long run. She seemed to have a thing for socially awkward nerds…which her father was. No wonder he and Hatori got on like a house fire. Well there were plenty of awkward nerds out there that were Mob's own age. She was ten now, of course no grown man would give her a second glance, but she was getting older and she'd be a teenager and…yeah. Minegishi felt like they were going to have to be grinding up a lot of creeps for fertilizer. Well at least their plants would do well.

Maybe they could move to one of those all woman islands until Mob finished growing up….that wouldn't be so bad.

"I-I know…and I don't want to be his girlfriend. I mean I know that he's a good person but…but he doesn't do a lot for himself. I don't mind heling people out but….but I also like to show people how to do things. Like how I used to have to tie Sho's shoes for him but now he can tie them himself. Or how my dad didn't know how to log into the Netflix but I taught him….but he kept on forgetting….and Hatori does that for him now. But I still like it when people can do things for themselves…and stuff. I like him and all….but I don't want to be his girlfriend….and stuff. I know that's mean but that's how I feel." Said Mob

"You don't want to spend your life doing his laundry and tying his shoes for him. There's nothing mean about that." Said Minegishi

"There is. You're supposed to do things for the people you care about. Like now. You care about Shimazaki and that's why you had the idea to do this for him." said Mob

"This is different. I fucked up. I was pissed at him and I did something…well…cruel. I was cruel when I ignored him and I have to make it up to him. Don't get me wrong, he fucked up too…but two wrongs don't make a right. I'm not mad at him anymore and I'm making it up to him. That's the difference." Said Minegishi

"But you're going to have to do this for him again because we move a lot. I'll help too, you know I will, but having to do this again and again is the same as me having to take care of Hatori if I was his girlfriend." Said Mob. She wouldn't have minded if she had been in love with him, she would have done anything for someone she loved, but having to take care of someone all the time….that seemed like a lot and it also seemed like something that would keep her from loving someone like that…but she didn't know. It was a lot to think about.

"The difference between Ryou and Hatori is that Ryou has actual limitations. You might have forgotten but he can't see. Hatori can see. He can see and he can make his way through the kitchen without everything being labeled and organized and he can do pretty much everything else for himself, too, considering the fact that he's twenty years old practically. He's a grown man and he's perfectly capable of taking care of himself. He's just been babied his entire life." Said Minegishi. At least Mob had more sense than to get involved with Hatori. They weren't trying to get her involved with Hatori, he was about ten years too old for her, but they did need her to stop thinking that she had to be everyone's caretaker and that she was being mean when she didn't want to be. She did a lot for a ten year. She was a lot for a ten year old. Caretaker to her brother, second highest ranking member of a multinational, criminal, esper cult….Daughter of the world's biggest megalomaniac and weirdo…and also pseudo wife to said weirdo….and that was the word for it. Minegishi couldn't think of another word for when Suzuki dressed his Daughter up in his dead wife's clothes and made his Daughter sleep next to him, watch said dead wife's favorite shows, and just….he was creepy plain and simple when it came to Mob…and she did not need any more on her plate…

And she needed to learn to realize that.

"I guess…but I still feel bad…about the way I feel. Like….I don't know. I sort of…wish that I liked him again…because there's a lot about how I feel that I don't…get….and I want to like him and I know that I should be able to be there for whoever needs me….but I don't want to be with someone who can't do a lot for themselves…and also…well maybe I do like him. I don't know. It's complicated. It's more complicated then braille." Said Mob as she made another label. Braille was complicated, there were a lot of dot patterns and she had no idea what it all meant, but at least all she had to do was copy what Minegishi had written down for her.

She didn't have a guide like that for her feelings.

She knew what love was. She had seen love time and time again in movies and in anime and manga and stuff. Sort of in life, too, since Shimazaki loved Minegishi. Also her mom and dad must have been in love at some point. They had gotten married….and stuff…but she had never seen mom and dad kiss or cuddle and she had never heard dad tell mom that he loved her. Shimazaki and Minegishi made more sense even though they weren't married or even boyfriend and theyfriend. They seemed like they were more in love than her parents had been, though. They kissed and cuddled and did nice things for each other just because. Dad gave mom money and bought her things but he had said that his job as her husband was to provide for her. Mom made food and took care of her and Sho and kept the house nice but she had said, when Mob had been really little, that she had to do all of that because she was dad's wife and that was what wives were supposed to do.

Mob didn't think that it should have been like that.

When you loved someone you did things for them just because. Like how she picked the non-marshmallow pieces out of Sho's cereal for him or how Sho drew pictures for her sometimes. That was brother and sister love. Love-love should have been the same way. Minegishi sad that they were doing this because they had been mean but they did nice things for Shimazaki all the time. They read to him and they moved his laundry to the dryer when he forgot about it and they put the narration on for Shimazaki when they could and he didn't even have to ask….and he did nice things for them all the time too. He brought them plants, not only when he messed up, he would come home with potted plants or seeds or weeds, he liked dandelions and stuff even though they were weeds, and also he would bring them stuff to drink and smoke and he would bring them medicine, too, when they got sick. He was really nice to them when they got sick, the kind of sick where they laid down all day holding their stomach, he would bring them medicine and chocolate and rub their stomach and their back and cuddle them and stuff….and it just seemed…..nice…

She wished that someone would do that for her…even if she never got sick she just wanted…something like that from someone who loved her.

"Yup. Braille is easy, feelings are hard, and I don't want to sugar coat it for you. They'll only get harder. But that's ok because you'll get older and you'll understand better….ok? And no, you don't have to be Hatori's girlfriend to feel this way about him. You can feel however you want to…but don't expect anything to come of it." Said Minegishi. That was good…right? They had no idea if they were saying the right thing or not. This was complicated. They wished that someone had said something to them when they had been her age besides 'don't kiss girls it's not right' and 'stop messing around with boys you're acting like a slut' and so on and so forth. Well they at least knew what NOT to say….and they never would have said anything like that to her in the first place…but they still had no idea what to say. This was like a minefield. They didn't want to scare her, they didn't want to make her think that there was something wrong with her, but they did want her to stop chasing after guys who were way age inappropriate….

They needed to find some guys her own age…but they didn't know any other kids…and also they didn't much want to be a ten year old's wingman since that would involve interacting with other ten year olds who were not Mob.

"I know. He likes boys and I'm not a boy and I don't want to become one, either. I like being a girl. I don't have to wear pants and I can have long hair and play with dolls, too. Also my shampoo smells better." Said Mob

"You can do all the things that you do and still be a guy…but that's not the point. The point it…he's a hell of a lot older than you. You deserve a guy your own age. Like…what about that Ritsu guy you were talking about? Ryou said that you mentioned him a lot." said Minegishi. They were not going to go into gender politics with Mob…nor were they going to speculated about Hatori's sexuality with her, either. That as Hatori's business…also apparently it was President Suzuki's business too….and not for the crazy reasons Ryou thought up…it was not something that they were to speculate with Mob about.

"I…think I might have dreamt him up. I think. I don't know. I asked my dad if anyone named Ritsu ever lived with us before, in my dream I was in a house that was mine but also….not mine…and I was looking for him. Well I was looking for Sho and I was looking for him, too. It was…weird. I think that because I miss Sho so much I dreamt that I had a new brother….or something. I don't know. It was just a dream. Dad said so. He said that dreams are not reality…and I know that…so no matter how much it feels like a memory it was just a dream." Said Mob. She still felt that loss feeling…but that was just because Sho was across the world in Korea doing very important work and stuff. She would stop feeling it once he came back…and she hoped that it was soon. Dad didn't seem to care but she did. He even said…he said that things were nicer without Sho around…and that….that had been such a mean thing to say…

Dad could be so mean sometimes.

She had no idea how dad could be so mean to Sho but so nice to her. He took her to the doll museum and also they watched Frozen together and played Terraria, she liked Minecraft better but said nothing since it made him happy, and he also said that he ordered her a dollhouse with water and electricity and stuff…not that she knew why she needed it but it was still nice…and also next week he said that they could have another outing to another doll place since she liked dolls…and she was happy…

But also she wasn't.

Because he was still such a jerk to Sho. No wonder her brain had made another brother. Sho was the best brother in the world but dad treated him like he was the worst. Why? So what if Sho could be loud and he used to hit her all the time and he never cleaned up after himself and she had to pour him a drinking glass of ranch to get him to eat all of his food groups…he was still the best little brother ever. She loved him so much…and she just wished that dad had loved him, too. Dad…dad had always been for her and mom had always been for Sho and it had worked out when they each had a parent but now they only had dad and dad….well he needed to learn how to share his love between both of his kids. Mob had shared her love between both of her parents, and she had shared it between Sho and baby Mukai too when she had been living with them…and it wasn't that hard…but dad was a totally different person from her. Dad….he was just….different….

Not very nice at all….to Sho.

"Yeah…acid is a hell of a drug. Sometimes you see things that happened, you relive them, and sometimes your brain just lets go of the wheel and makes up whatever the hell it feels like. It sucks about your brother and I'm sorry he's gone. But he's coming back….eventually. You've just got to remember that he's coming back." said Minegishi offering up the only world of comfort that they could. Mob missed her little brother, he was a little demon child but he was still her little brother so of course she would miss him, and Minegishi…they offered up the comfort that they could. Even though they had no idea when the little monster would be back. Even though they had no idea why Suzuki would let his only son be gone for this long.

Almost a month now.

This had been hard on Mob, everything was hard on Mob, but this was especially hard on her. She had abandonment issues most likely stemming from not being able to process her mother's death….not that Minegishi was in the habit of psychoanalyzing their friends. She needed to be with her brother though, they didn't need to do any psychoanalyzing to know that, but they also knew that the only thing that they could do in the time between now and her brother coming back was to make her happy.

So that was what they did.

They reached over and pulled her into a one armed hug. She needed it. She had seemed ok but, yeah, acid was a hell of a drug. She was doing better than Minegishi usually did…but her brain had decided to slip off into fantasy it seemed. Not the endless parade of every moment of humiliation and pain that she had ever felt. She had thought up a different world with a different brother, and hopefully different parents, and that was the best they could have hoped for. Also she hadn't accidentally killed anyone, another plus, though she was NEVER doing acid with Ryou again…

And maybe they should have made him a label dictating as such.

"I know…and you make me feel better. I just feel a sort of…loss feeling….but it'll go away once Sho comes back. I know it will." Said Mob as she hugged Minegishi back with both of her arms. She missed Sho more than anything but at least she had friends to help her through this. What could be better than having friends? Well having a little brother of course…

But friends were a close second.

Friends could give you advice and give you reassurance and also give you hugs. Like now. Minegishi was good for all of that…they were the best. They were the best friend that she had ever had…not that she didn't have any other good friends. Like now. She felt a shift in the energy around her. She felt a shift in the energy around her, another aura pressing down onto hers, and then a pair of arms around her and Minegishi. She smelled…the ocean. The ocean and…what was that. Not bad but…not good either.

"Ryou, get off and go take a shower. You stink." Said Minegishi as they slid free. They ended up bumping into a pile of tea boxes….who was hoarding all of this tea…..and the pile fell down. Great. Well at least those were labeled.

"That's not nice, Toshi, I smell great. I smell like the ocean. Everyone loves the ocean." Said Shimazaki as he let go of Mob. He felt around the kitchen with his powers. Everything was so crazy it felt like they must have been cooking…but they were on the floor…and also he didn't smell any cooking. He smelled….glue? Glue and….someone had left the fridge opened. Probably him at some point, last night was a blur after all.

"You smell…ok." Said Mob. She had no idea what he smelled like. Well the ocean and also….not normal. Well that was…that was because….oh. He didn't have any cologne on. All of that must have been washed off in the ocean. So that was what he smelled like without cologne…it was sort of…nice? She didn't know.

She fixed the pile of tea that had been knocked over. Someone in this house must have really liked tea.

"Mob, stop being polite." Said Minegishi as they went back to labeling cans. Ryou was looking at them now. They could feel it. They…didn't dislike it. He was….he was alright. They were alright with him. Everything had been forgiven. Mob was fine and she knew never to go along with that craziness again and everything was alright.

So they could look at him again.

They did. They glanced at him while they worked. Mob went by their example. They worked and Mob worked and he watched them working. They looked at him, there, and now they could get back to it. He was…well he was a lot of things. In his sleep clothes for one thing….and in love with them for another. That was what hung between them in the atmosphere. They had seen him dressed like this before, and they were used to what that made them feel, too. They were used to that but now…now there was something new between them. They would have made up with him like normal if Mob hadn't been there. They would have pulled him over and kissed him and…everything that came after. Those things that he liked, those things which were terribly one sided and they didn't do that often, those things that they did to make up….and of course they would. When Mob was gone. When she was off doing Mob things. They would make up with Ryou….

But this….this love thing…it would hang around between them.

It was hanging there between them now. Mob was glancing between the two of them. The shippening….God…the shippening. Mob was having a field day with this. She would have been over the moon if Minegishi were to turn around and kiss him. Kiss him and tell him that they loved him too. Tell him that they loved him and would always love him….and other such things that may or may not have been true. They didn't know. To quote his eighth favorite song when they touched them they felt all happy inside….but there was more to it than that. More to this than that. More to this than anything. They didn't know…well they did know…they just…didn't want to fuck this up. They didn't want to fuck everything up. They liked this…they liked being near him and being…whatever they were now…

And they were not going to fuck this up.

"What's going on? What's everyone on the floor for?" asked Shimazaki. The atmosphere was weird…but that was what it was. He didn't care. He was near Toshi and Toshi wasn't ignoring him anymore. Toshi was looking at him. They were looking at him, he could tell, even though they were pretending that they weren't. They were pretending to…it felt like they were making labels….sounded like it too.

"We're fixing the kitchen so that you can tell where things are and what they are. Minegishi's idea. They wanted to show you that they were sorry about being mean to you." Said Mob. She handed him a box. This one had cookies in it. Chocolate chip ones. She had followed the guide that Minegishi made and she hoped that she had done it right.

"Chocolate chip cookies. Thanks. Really, you have no idea how annoying it is not to know what it is that you're holding." Said Shimazaki. Toshi did care. He had always known that Toshi cared about him….but it was nice when they showed it. Usually they just made up in bed, or through copious drug use, so this was….nice. This was the kind of nice that made him feel all happy inside. The kind of nice that made him want to hold them and kiss them and rest their head on his chest and play with their hair. To just be there with them and other such things….and also sex. Always sex. But not if they weren't in the mood. Sex was sex, he could have that with anyone, Toshi cuddles on the other hand…those were special.

God, he wanted Toshi cuddles.

"Well you have no idea how annoying it is to come into the kitchen and have everything opened and stale and flat." Said Minegishi as they loaded the fridge back up. They maybe should have actually cleaned it out, gotten right of the spills and the stickiness and whatever it was that was growing in the butter compartment, but they didn't feel like it. That would have been too much extra work. They had enough to do as it was.

Like get hugged from behind.

They felt him shift so he was behind them. They could feel both of his arms wrapping around them and they went very still. Mob looked like Christmas had come early…and at some point they would have to talk to her about living vicariously through her friends. Not now, though. Now they would just…slowly sink back into him. The floor was cold and hard, sitting in front of the open fridge was cold, but he was warm…and he had better now have ended up with a fever from messing around in the ocean…but maybe it was them that was warm. Maybe they were warming him. They didn't know. All they knew was that they were comfortable here….

They were comfortable the way they were.

"I do actually…and thanks. You're the best Toshi. I love you." Said Shimazaki. They heard that, the way Toshi's aura hiccupped. They didn't have to say anything. They weren't pissed at him, they were happy, and that was enough for him. Toshi just being…..Toshi.

"Yeah, I know. Now take a shower or a bath or whatever and then we can hang out…you can hang out with me and Mob. We can watch Yellow Submarine with the narration on. How about that?" asked Minegishi. They didn't want him to go….but they didn't want to stay, either. He had to go and…and just say that, didn't he? God…fucking Ryou….stupid, annoying, wonderful, impossibly sappy Ryou….

"I'll go get the movie started up!" said Mob as she got up. She knew that she should not have been watching that. They were getting all cuddly and she knew that if she had been like that with someone she liked she wouldn't have even wanted her best friend to see that. It would have been embarrassing…and that was on both sides.

She didn't want to embarrass Minegishi and she didn't want to get embarrassed either.

So she went back to the living room. Once she felt Shimazaki teleport away she would go back to the kitchen and finish up. She wished that Minegishi would have liked him back…but she couldn't make them feel anything….but she did want them to be happy. She wanted everyone to be happy…and she was so happy that everyone was better now. That they weren't fighting anymore. That things were ok now.

Two wrongs didn't make a right but doing a nice thing for a friend did.


	302. Baby Stroller Rides

There were some people who didn't go where they weren't wanted….and Fukuda was not one of them.

He went where he needed to go, he was where he needed to be, and right now where he needed to be was the Seventh Division. He'd been here for a while, longer than he'd had any reason to be, and he knew that he was well overdue to move along…but he couldn't. Not now. Not when Sho was as happy as he was.

"Faster? Do you want to go faster, baby sis?" Fukuda could hear Sho down the hallway. He had an office here, he had an office everywhere, and his door was opened. He could hear Sho running up and down the hallway pushing his baby sister in her stroller. He had told Sho time and time again not to call her that where people could hear him…but he never listened. He did what he wanted to do. He did what he had to do. He was a lot like his mother in that way…and his father too. Not that he ever wanted to think of Sho as having anything at all to do with his father.

Besides in looks, of course.

"Shush….shushhhh!" shouted Mukai. Fukuda could hear the squealing of her stroller wheels and the squealing of that baby. She was having the time of her life it sounded like. He was glad that she could be happy. That she could have a time in her life that she could be happy. He had no idea what the years would bring for her. She was Suzuki's daughter, his real Daughter, and her parentage would do her no favors. She had a brother who loved her and a sister…who loved her. Who had loved her. Shigeko had no idea where Mukai was but she had been loved…even though that time was coming to a close. She was getting older, Shigeko was, and she must have noticed that she looked nothing like anyone in her family….and that she wasn't really a Suzuki. Not by blood. She had a little sister and she looked so much like her father….so much like her brother. Shigeko….he didn't even want to think of what would have happened if he had left Mukai in that house. Suzuki was close enough to the child he had adopted….and Fukuda shuddered to think of how close he would be to the Daughter he fathered himself….

"Sho! Come on, you can say it! Sho!" said Sho. He heard the stroller turn a corner. This place was round. He'd be back around. He'd be back around and then he'd be gone and he'd be back around. That was…he was making a nuisance of himself, Fukuda knew that everyone else who lived and worked on this floor must have been sick of this already, but he didn't care. Let him make some pleasant memories with his little sister. Let that little baby make some pleasant memories….if she was capable of forming memories at this age…let both siblings be happy together before they would have to be apart again. He loved Sho, he loved it when Sho was this happy, and he didn't want to take this happiness away from him…

Even though it would have been the much safer thing to do considering how much the both of them looked like their father.

He looked so much like Suzuki it was uncanny. He had Masami's soft face, and her eyebrows too thank God, but he had gotten his hair color, eye color, freckles, and aura from his father. The resemblance was striking….it was striking between both of Suzuki's biological children. Mukai looked just like her father as well. She had a very round face, and her eyes were shaped differently, but she was Suzuki's child. Her hair, her eyes, her freckles, even her aura…they all came from Suzuki. Anyone with eyes could see that…and probably someone without eyes as well…not that he knew how Shimazaki even saw the world. Still, even he would be able to tell that Mukai and Sho were siblings.

Which was why Fukuda said nothing.

He didn't stick his head out the door and tell Sho to keep it down. He didn't tell Sho to take his sister and go back to her mother's home. He didn't tell Sho that this was not the place to be rushing back and forth pushing a baby in a stroller. He didn't tell Sho that he needed to be careful with her because she was so small and fragile and she could have gotten hurt so easily…and it was just so amazing to think that Suzuki had made something so fragile….

Fukuda said nothing.

He went back to work. He didn't just heal, no, he did a lot of administrative work as well. A lot of the stuff that Suzuki either couldn't or wouldn't deal with. Most of what he did could be done from anywhere. Right now he was working at the Seventh Division under the claim that he was monitoring the newly Awakened. The machines had been reset and recalibrated, too many people had been dying during the process and the ones who had come out acted like children….but that had been a while ago. He knew that his excuse was paper thin and he knew that, really, nobody believed him…

But that didn't matter. Nobody would be stupid enough to question him.

It was no secret that he worked closely with Suzuki, that he had been with him since the beginning, and that as a healer there was no one closer to Suzuki than him. There was no one who had his ear besides him….well there was Shigeko but she was his child. Fukuda was the only person who wasn't called Suzuki that had his sort of power, and rank, and everyone knew to stay out of his way.

Well most people did.

He felt an aura getting closer. Red and black and unpleasant. Sho's running stopped. His baby sister's shrieks of joy were replaced by fussy sounds. Fukuda wanted to stick his head out of that door and tell Sho to carry on. To tell Sho that Fukuda ranked above even a Division Leader, that Sho was the heir to this insane asylum and he outranked everyone, but he didn't. He kept still and quiet. Maybe then the very unpleasant little man who was coming his way would keep on moving right along.

Because he did NOT want to talk to Ishiguro.

"This isn't a playground. Go do that somewhere else." Said Ishiguro. Ok, now Fukuda was going to get up and say something. He did not like taking to Ishiguro, he was an unpleasant little man, but nobody talked to Sho like that.

"I can be wherever I want to be. I'm Suzuki Sho. My dad owns this place and I can go wherever I want in it. Now get out of my way, Mukai wants to go for a ride." Said Sho. Fukuda sat back down. He could handle himself. Sho…he may have been very rude but Ishiguro was Ishiguro. Also Sho had a point. Who was he to tell him what to do? Sho was Suzuki's son, his only son, and one day this would all be his…hopefully. He had to say it and these things should have went without saying…not that he wanted Sho to inherit any of this. No. If Fukuda'd been able to have his way this whole thing would have burnt to the ground long ago.

But he so rarely got his way.

This was what it was. Suzuki had built this place up from a fort in the words thirty years ago to…this. A bigger fort in the woods. A bigger fort in the woods and more playmates and a longer game, one not confined by the barriers of school time and dinnertime and bed time and all of the other times that had ruled their lives when they had been young. This was just an extension of their game….only it was real. There were times when Fukuda could just close his eyes and pretend that this was all just a game. That he would open them again and he would be a kid again and Suzuki would be a kid and they'd be in the middle of playing and that would be that…

Of course this was life, not fantasy.

"Does your father know that you speak to his subordinates like that?" asked Ishiguro. Now Fukuda was up again. Suzuki…if he knew that Fukuda was here then he hadn't said anything. Too wrapped up in Shigeko, most likely. He treated her like she was the only thing in the whole world that mattered. He acted like the sun rose and set with her. It was unnerving, to be honest, but it also made him sloppy. Weak. Unfocused. Well hyperfocused to be honest. Tunnel vision. He couldn't see past that little girl and it made him…well in many ways it was an improvement. He had been a lot nicer lately, or at least less overtly violent towards people, and that was always a plus.

But he could change.

Suzuki was predictably unpredictable. He could take things in stride, he could hyperfixate on how to fix them, or he could just explode….and Fukuda did not Sho to have to deal with that. He had his excused for being here. He was checking on the new Awakened, he was taking Sho to teach him how a Division was run, he felt like visiting Seasoning City to visit his parents' graves….all valid excuses and all acceptable….well there was a good chance that they would be accepted. Sho was with him. Sho was with him and Suzuki had told him time and time again about overstepping…but then he had slid down the rabbit hole of Shigeko obsession.

So maybe it wouldn't matter, maybe it would, but either way Fukuda had some damage control to do.

"Does my dad know that you're talking to me like this? His kid?" asked Sho. Fukuda wondered where he had learned to pull rank like that….and how he was so comfortable with it. Fukuda wondered if this would develop into a problem. He never pulled rank, ever, and as far as Fukuda knew he hadn't even been aware that he even HAD a rank but there he was.

Fukuda had to put a stop to this.

He stepped outside of his office and found Sho standing protectively beside his sister. She was pulling up his shirt, that baby, and slapping him right on a very deep….very red…scar on Sho's side. Fukuda wished that he'd had telekinesis. He would have stopped her, he knew how Sho felt about being touched, and also he would have pushed Ishiguro back too because he was close to Sho….and Sho's aura was flaring…and even that baby looked like she was gearing up with a fight…or she just liked slapping people. One of the two.

"Is there a problem out here?" asked Fukuda. He was useless in a fight. He was a healer, he as support, and if Ishiguro ever decided to fight a ten year old boy…which of course he would he had certainly taken enough head wounds to have been able to think that it was a good idea…..but Sho…well he could hold his own. He had never seen the upper limits of Sho's power but he had come from Suzuki and there was no esper in the world more powerful…

This could go so bad so fast.

"Not at all. I was just reminding President Suzuki's son that this wasn't a playground." Said Ishiguro

"It's whatever I want it to be." Said Sho. He was glaring. He was trying to stare Ishiguro down. Even though he was still wearing that damn gas mask. Fukuda was about ready to rip that stupid mask off and give him a piece of his mind…but he wasn't telekinetic. He could fight Ishiguro and his gravity control…which was just using telekinesis to make a gravity sink…Sho might have been able to reverse those but Fukuda wasn't so talented.

And God only know what that baby would be able to do.

"Don't you have somewhere to be, Ishiguro? Shouldn't you be training the Awakened or looking for the Gifted Child or one of the other things that President Suzuki put you to?" asked Fukuda. He puts an emphasis on the Gifted Child. Ishiguro's biggest failure. An esper child of actual skill had been found, an esper child was rare enough on it's own, and Ishiguro let him walk right out the door. Sho was responsible for that, he knew that he had been, but Ishiguro didn't know that. All that he needed to know that he would never be back in Suzuki's good graces ever again unless he found that boy and brought him back.

Not that Fukuda was in favor of kidnapping.

No, he hoped that the Gifted Child was safe and happy with his family…wherever he was in the world. He hoped that Claw, or other people stealers, never found him. He hated that, how they did business with the people stealers. He hated…well he hated a lot of things about Claw but he especially hated that. Not that there was anything that he could do. Even with his head stuck in La-La Land Suzuki did not react well AT ALL to being questioned…not even to being questioned by the person who had been there from the beginning. He hoped that nobody ever found the Gifted Child, that nobody ever learned of Sho's involvement in all of that…

And he also hoped that Ishiguro took the hint and didn't start anything with the son of the most powerful man on Earth.

"I suppose that I do…though it would be easier if Suzuki would stop leaving his children here. Good day." Said Ishiguro. Fukuda felt the gravity shift around them as Ishiguro walked past. The stroller attempted to follow him down the hallway but Sho stopped it. He focused his aura and the gravity in the hallway returned to normal.

"Yeah, you'd better run!" said Sho before sticking his tongue out. The baby did the same. She shrieked and stuck out her tongue. Sho turned to face her and crossed his eyes. She laughed and did the same. It was cute…but Sho should not have been talking like that.

"Sho, come on. You know not to talk like that." Said Fukuda. Sho shrugged and put is tongue back in his mouth where it belonged. The baby did the same. God…she was so cute. It was amazing to think that she had come from Suzuki. Well aside from the looks…the eyes. Her pupils were small, almost non-existent. She was focused on Sho. Well of course she would be. They were siblings.

"Why not? She started it." Said Sho

"That doesn't matter, you should be nice to people, especially people who work under you….and you shouldn't pull rank on people like that. It isn't polite." Said Fukuda. That was all he could say. He couldn't just tell Sho that he hated hearing that, hearing Sho being aware of who he was in relation to everyone else. He wanted Sho to be little boy for as long as possible. He would join Claw, work for real in the organization, but that would be years from now. When he was older. He was a little boy now and he needed to be a little boy for as long as he could.

"I know but she was a jerk first. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was just pushing my little sister around. There's nothing wrong with that." Said Sho

"Sho…just don't do that. Do you remember when your sister pulled rank on you? How it made you feel? Don't make people feel like that…even if they deserve it. It sets a bad example for the baby." said Fukuda. The baby looked up at him. She smiled down at her. She smiled back. That was a good sign. He never smiled, Suzuki, when they had been kids. Not even when good things happened. He just sort of…existed. His face was always frozen, well mostly, and Fukuda had always imagined that he had been that unnerving even as a baby.

So it was nice to see that his children hadn't inherited whatever was wrong with him.

"Yeah…I guess…but she shouldn't have been talking to me like that. I had to remind her who my dad was because I knew that she wouldn't have taken me seriously if I told her that I'd kick her ass….sorry Mukai…but I still could have. She's got powers but she can't do anything with them. That girl is so weak. She can't do anything with her telekinesis besides push and pull. Big sis could do more than that when we were little." Said Sho. Fukuda shook his head.

"That's the division leader, Ishiguro, and he's a guy." Said Fukuda. Sho shook his head. Fukuda nodded yes. Sho shook his head no. The baby looked between the both of them, shrieked her happy baby shriek, and then began to imitate Sho. Maybe she knew that they were related. Maybe she looked to the person who looked like her for guidance. Or maybe she was just happy to have a playmate. She must have been a lonely child, or she would be when she became a child, considering the fact that she would be raised here.

The first child raised in Claw.

Raised properly in Claw. Suzuki…when they had been young he'd had this idea about a society made all up of espers. That was before he realized, well it became obvious, that there just weren't female espers. One in ten, and of the ten one in that ten was powerful and one in…they hadn't even bothered to run the numbers, but they were low. There were very few espers that could be in the upper echelons. And then in the top of the upper echelons there were only Shigeko and Minegishi. Since it looked like Minegishi wasn't about to have any children any time soon, there was a God out there, and Shigeko was only ten Mukai was the only child to be properly raised in Claw.

It would be a very lonely life for that baby.

She would be raised in Claw. She would be the only person her age in Claw. She would be the only child and then she would grow up and rise through the ranks until she made it to the upper echelons, and she would because she was Suzuki's Daughter and would be a very powerful esper…and then it would be so lonely. Suzuki would never accept her as his child and Shigeko…she wasn't stupid. She knew, well she would figure it out, that Suzuki wasn't even her father. That he'd had a biological child….and he had no idea what she would do then. If Suzuki didn't marry her by then…a thought that sickened him to the core of his being but also one that could become reality at some point. She wouldn't be a child forever and Suzuki…he was treating her better than he had ever even treated his own wife….

Fukuda was not looking forward to the future in any way, shape, or form.

"Stop lying. I don't want my baby sister to learn how to lie. I want her to be a good person and, you know, not lie." Said Sho. He stood above her protectively. Fukuda raised his hands in surrender. He was so proud of Sho. He wished that Sho could have been there to teach that baby good from bad, right from wrong, and just…to have someone to care for….he was such a caring boy…but he couldn't. They would have to move along at some point.

"I'm not lying. That's not a girl. That's a very short old man." Said Fukuda. Sho did a double take. The hallway was empty but Sho still did a double take…and Sho couldn't have been blamed. Fukuda himself had done a double and triple take after he put Ishiguro back together after his first fight with Suzuki. He's been wearing the mask then, too, and the rest of the costume.

"Seriously?" asked Sho

"Seriously. There's a voice changer in the mask or something." Said Fukuda with a shrug. He had no idea why some people did the things they did and at this point in his life he could just accept anything…like the fact that Suzuki had two kids. Two wonderful kids. Sho, who he loved, and the baby. The perfectly normal baby. She had powers, or at least an aura, but also…she was just so adorable. So adorable and expressive and just….she was such a good baby. Such a cute baby. Such a normal baby.

"Why? Why not do a scary voice….and wear stilts or something? He's not that much bigger than I am…and also girls aren't scary. Sorry Mukai." Said Sho. The baby may not have been able to understand her brother…but she seemed to be happy to be spoken to. She smiled and kicked and just…was happy. She was so happy…and it was just…Sho was happy too….and it would be so hard to go. To take Sho from this.

"Sho…I have no idea why any of these people do any of the things they do. I swear this division…." Said Fukuda. Maybe the Awakened were just…weird….here because the entire Division was weird. Claw wasn't exactly the place for normal people but a lot of the people here….they were on another level.

"Yeah, they're all weirdos here. I don't know how baby sis can put up with them." Said Sho. The baby seemed to know that she was being spoken to…she responded to being called 'baby sis'…they had been here long enough for her to respond to being called 'baby sis'….and he had no idea how long it took for a baby to respond to being called something…but they had been here for a very long time….

"I….I don't know either. Sho….you won't have to put up with them for much longer…we may have to leave soon…because we've been here for a while." Said Fukuda. He saw Sho's face fall. He knew that Sho's face would have fallen and his aura pulled in….and the baby reached out and put her hand on his arm. She didn't hit him, she didn't tug on his shirt, she just put her hand there on his arm.

"Shush….shush…" said the baby. He didn't know if she was trying to say Sho's name or if she was telling him to shush. He wondered how much of this she understood. He wondered how much of anything she understood. He wondered how much of this Sho understood. He wasn't trying to be cruel, he wasn't a cruel man, but Sho….he was only ten. He was a child and…and there was so much to understand about all of this. Too much to understand. Too much that someone his age could never be expected to understand. Mukai…her relation to him…how Sho….how Sho couldn't be with her….how she had come into this existence. There was so much that Sho didn't know…..and so much that Fukuda was not about to tell him. Not now.

"….she's been trying to say my name…and I want to be here when she says my name. I want her to say my name so….so then she can remember me. I just want to stay until she says my name….ok?" asked Sho. He was so small there. He was ten but…but he just seemed so…small. Small enough to pick up. Small enough to hold. He wanted to hold Sho. He wanted to pick him up and hold him and make him all better.

But there was no way to make this all better.

The longer they stayed the more likely it would be that Suzuki could step away from the black hole that was his Daughter. He would notice that his son had been in the Seventh Division, not Korea, and that he was where Mukai was…she was his other child, the one he didn't want to acknowledge, and the one that Sho was not supposed to know about…..and if he knew that Sho was here…there was no telling how he would react. It would depend on his mood. It would depend on what had happened in the interim….it had been a while….it had been a long while…..

And they needed to get back.

"Sho…you know you didn't say a word until you were almost two. She might not even be ready to talk yet…but we can give…a week. How about a week? And then we have to keep on moving. We still have to see your girlfriend too you know…and also…we have to get back. I bet you miss your sister and she misses you." Said Fukuda. He didn't want to hurt Sho's feelings, to cause him any pain, but this couldn't last forever…even though it should have. It should have lasted forever because that was his little sister.

"What…what did I say? When I was two, I mean." Said Sho after a moment. Fukuda had to think for a minute. It had been dada. It had been dada and he had been one….but that had not been a real word, just a collection of sounds. His real first word had been daddy and it had come out clear as a bell and he had been two…and Sho did not want to hear that.

"It was mommy. When you were about two you said 'mommy'…and your mom was so proud. She had been trying to get you to talk for a while but, really, you just…didn't do well under pressure. Under a time limit. Your mom tried and tried and tried to get you to talk….she tried to get you to talk and you just clammed up…until one day you just started talking." Said Fukuda. An abridged version of what had happened. About how it had been Suzuki who had been trying to get him to talk…Sho didn't need the whole story.

"Oh…so it took me a while to talk…when I was little?" asked Sho

"Yes. A long while…so it might take her a while to talk, too, and we just…we can't stay here forever. We have places to be and your dad…he might catch wind of this….and we should get going. People miss us, they miss you, you know. I bet your sister misses you. I bet she's been worried sick about you." Said Fukuda. Things had been so much better here. They had been good…and Sho had been so happy…and now…well now they had to go. Things never got better, well they never stayed better. Things never stayed better. They got a little better and then reset back to their base level of whatever he wanted to call their lives. They'd go back and Sho….well happy Sho…he wouldn't see Sho this happy…not for a long while.

"I….I get it. Big sis misses me…and I miss her…and I'm going to miss little sis too…and also she's going to miss me. But I have to go….I get it." Said Sho. Sho seemed so…sad. Fukuda knelt down and pulled him close. Sho clung to him for a minute before pushing him away. The baby began to kick them both.

"She wants to walk some more….I'm going to walk with her some more." Said Sho. He wiped his eyes and then went back to the stroller. Fukuda let him go. He let him go. Sho…he was…taking this well. She wasn't yelling or screaming or breaking things….he was just…walking away with his little sister…

Fukuda wished that there was some way he could stay.

But he couldn't. He couldn't stay because then Suzuki would know. He knew how Suzuki could be. He knew that he didn't need to be in Suzuki's bad graces. He knew that Sho didn't need to be in his father's bad graces. He knew that this was for the best. Leaving.

Fukuda didn't care about where he was and was not wanted…but he cared about taking Sho away from where he needed to be.


	303. A Gift of a Square Watermelon

Mob had seen square watermelons before.

She didn't understand them. Why they were supposed to be such great gifts. Sure they looked cool but they tasted just like normal melons. She understood wanting something that looked cool, for decoration, but this was something that you were meant to eat….so why make it look cool? You would just feel guilty for eating it, sort of like those cool cupcakes that all the Disneylands had, but worse this time because this was a gift. A very expensive gift, dad had said, and that just confused Mob more. She knew that things could be cheap or expensive, she didn't know what counted as what since she just got more money from the drawer if she needed it, but she didn't understand why something that you ate had to be very expensive.

Or why someone would get dad a very expensive gift, fly all the way from Japan with it, and meet them in America just to give it to him in person.

"Thank you very much for the gift. Here, Daughter." Said Suzuki. He bowed, accepted the gift, and then gave it to Daughter. There. Social obligation fulfilled. He hated doing these things, these social things, and usually it was Fukuda who accepted gifts on his behalf. He got a lot of them and he always let Fukuda keep them. He never refused them, that would have been terribly rude, especially considering who they came from. It was best not to upset Claw financial backers.

Even if they gave the most useless of gifts.

The only reason a watermelon should be square would be for easy transport. That was all. They didn't taste any better than round watermelons, all sweet fruit was vile to him, and Daughter had told him on the occasions when she'd had them that they either tasted just like a normal watermelon or significantly worse since thy harvested these things before they were ripe. It was such a pointless gift, he would have much preferred a normal grapefruit, but he accepted it. That was the polite thing to do. Besides, Daughter liked novelty fruit. She seemed very happy.

"Thank you so much for the gift. I'm sure that it's going to be delicious…and…..um…would you like to eat it with us now? Dad doesn't like sweet foods but I'd like to share it with you….you know…since it's a food." Said Mob as he held this heavy and oddly shaped melon in her hands. She didn't know if she had said the right thing or the wrong thing, the people in front of her didn't have auras, but the man got very sweaty very fast. It wasn't hot in there, well it was sort of warm outside, but inside the air conditioning was on so he should not have been sweaty. The girl next to him, the very familiar pink haired one, didn't seem sweaty. She was just on her phone like normal.

"That's for you Daughter, you eat it. When accepting a gift you have to enjoy it yourself." Said Suzuki. Well now Asagiri was stumbling over himself apologizing. His Daughter was rolling her eyes as she scrolled through her phone. A disrespectful action and one which he did not know why Asagiri tolerated from his child. She had also colored her hair and wore makeup….something which he did not want Daughter to ever do. Well she would end up wearing makeup…not that she would ever need it because she would grow up to be the most beautiful woman in the world just the way Masami was, but he sincerely hoped she never colored her hair. He hated dyed hair. Her hair was perfect the way it was…and he wondered if he should preemptively forbid her from coloring her hair…but then that might give her the idea to color her hair…and also it was dangerous ground criticizing a woman's physical appearance. They did not like that at all….but he really wanted her to stay the same…or at least not to be like Asagiri's disrespectful Daughter. He was so lucky to have her the way she was….

Even if she wasn't the best at accepting gifts.

"We don't want it. Square watermelons suck." Said Minori as she looked up from her phone. God, there was so much to do in this country but instead they had to invite the weirdos dad gave money to over for 'networking' or whatever. She didn't get the point. They had already gone to the stupid party and the only good thing that happened there was she kissed a cute red haired guy. She remembered that girl from before, doll girl.

Weird doll girl.

She as just as weird now as she had been before. She had seemed interesting before, people lined up to talk to her, but then when Minori finally got to her she was all 'do you like Frozen?' and 'what kind of dolls do you have?' which was just….weird. Minori had been ten then and was eleven now. Who the hell still played with dolls and watched Frozen at their age. God, she was so weird. She had her hair in braids and she had on this weird Frozen T-shirt and tutu dress and she had a Frozen backpack that had better not had dolls in it. Dad had told her that she had to make friends with her because the Suzuki family was very important or whatever….

But if he had wanted to hang out with people named 'Suzuki' then they could have just stayed in Japan and not tracked these weirdos down to California and brought them stupid square fruit.

"Minori! She doesn't mean that, President Suzuki, she's just a little bit cranky from the flight the other day. Just a little bit jetlagged. You know how kids are." Said Masashi with a laugh. Minori could be so….well she was very strong willed and very young. She didn't get the importance of this meeting. It was a very rare thing to be able to speak to Suzuki Toucihirou in person, usually he sent his envoy, and he was a very difficult man to track down. But he was there, in his home….well a home, and he had his ear. The ear of his favorite child and the heiress to Claw as well. A shame the son couldn't be there. It would have been wonderful for Minori to befriend both children but the Daughter would do.

She seemed like a sweet girl.

She didn't look a thing like her father but he wasn't going to comment on that. She seemed a lot…warmer…than him. She bowed to him and passed the gift off to one of Suzuki's bodyguards, a man who had to be at least three meters tall, and then told him that when this was over she would share it with everyone….so she was kindhearted. That was good. It was important to not only get in the good graces of the President but also of the heiress. She was the oldest child and one day she would run everything.

So it was best that Minori made friends with her now, while they were children, it could be very advantageous for the Conglomerate in the future.

"If you're jetlagged then the trick it to stay up all night until your body clock gets fixed. That's what I do." Said Mob. She knew that girl from somewhere….oh! The party. Well then maybe she should have kept her advice to herself because she remembered that pink haired girl not being very nice at all. She had been….she had called Mob a baby…but she was not a baby….so it had been a mean thing to call her…and not true…and also now she wanted to go back home and paint Minegishi's nails since theirs were all chipped and stuff and then they could have a movie night too and watch Totoro again since that was Minegishi's favorite or they could watch Across the Universe but with her narrating since that movie didn't have narration….but not Yesterday because that movie was much too sad and Shimazaki couldn't be allowed to know that it existed because then he would cry and he wasn't supposed to cry because it felt unpleasant, he said. She would rather have helped him clean out his eyes after crying than be there with that pink haired girl and end up insulted by her again….

And she REALLY did not like helping Shimazaki clean out his eyes.

"Gee, thanks." Said Minori. She checked the time. Did this count as enough networking? She didn't want to be friends with Suzuki. She was such a baby, it seemed like. She was one of those super sweet types. Those super sweet 'look at me I'm so good' types. They were so boring and not only that but such tattletales too and she didn't need a tattletale who dressed like she was six as a friend.

"You're welcome….I think." Said Mob. She wondered if she had said the wrong thing. She got the feeling that she did. It was so hard to say the right thing, to know what it was, and to know if she had said the right thing when the person in front of her did not have an aura. That was so weird. Well to her it was weird. She went out into the world all the time and she was around people without auras but she was never this close to one of them, never really talked to them, and it was weird. Like there was a missing piece to her….even though she knew that there wasn't.

Normal people were normal.

She was an esper. She had a sixth sense when most people had five. That meant that she was the weird one. She was a weird person in general, she knew that she was, because for her whole life people had said about how weird she was. She felt weird being near that other girl. She seemed so….different. She was so pretty. Her hair was pretty and she had on makeup and her clothes were….well different from Mob's. She was different from Mob but Mob as the weird one.

It wasn't a good feeling being the weird one.

"Minori! Be…make friends. Why don't you and Miss Suzuki go and…have fun? Why not show her your room? I have some things that I would like to discuss with President Suzuki." Said Masashi. Minori could be a little grouchy sometimes, he knew, and she was too young to know the magnitude of this meeting. That was fine. Maybe she would do better hanging out on her own with this girl. They would get on well….well hopefully. Not everyone understood Minori like he did. She could be a little difficult sometimes but no more than any other people….but others didn't see that. She was just a child and she was still learning how to make friends. Well this girl seemed sweet. Minori was a sweet girl, too, when she relaxed.

They would get on well and be the best of friends….hopefully.

"Whatever. Come on, I guess." Said Minori. Dad wasn't going to let her have any fun unless she made friends with this girl. Great. An afternoon spent braiding hair and playing dolls. Maybe they could find some elementary schoolers, they'd probably want to get in on that.

"Um…." Said Mob. She didn't know if she could be friends with Minori. That was her name. Minori. Mob didn't know if she would even want to be friends. They were so different. She had friends, she knew that she could make friends, but she didn't….know how to make friends. Her friends were….well she had met them and stuff…and they were friends…but they were also older than her…and that helped. She knew that it should have been harder to make friends with people older than her instead of someone her own age and stuff….but older people were just easier to talk to. She didn't know how to hang out with someone her own age that wasn't Sho….

It was hard.

She wanted to be back home hanging out with Minegishi. Minegishi and everyone else, of course, even Shimazaki even though he would probably be in one of those moods where he was sort of mean to Hatori. She knew that she would have had to break them up, make Shimazaki say sorry, and make Hatori feel better…but she knew how to do that. She knew how to be friends with her friends. She knew her friends and they knew her…

And she didn't know this girl at all.

"Go on, Daughter. A friend for you." Said Suzuki. He did not want to be alone, socially, with Asagiri….but he did want Daughter to socialize. She had no female friends. She needed female friends. She needed all the female friends she could make. All of her friends were men…and she was Daughter. She needed a friend who she could not be attracted to, who she would not want to go off with, and…and this was good for her.

Besides, he could handle himself.

He was not weak, he was not afraid, and he did not need to hide beside his Daughter. He was fine. He pressed a hand to her back but she did not take a step forward. Not until he pressed his aura against hers. Not hard, never hard, because the thought of causing her pain….it's distressing. He loves her. He loves her and he would never hurt her. He hasn't had cause to in years, it seemed like, and he does not like to think about how he had to punish her. Well she didn't need to be punished anymore because she was special and should be cherished for the gift that she was. Also she never did anything to upset him, to deserve to be punished.

She was such a good Daughter…and she deserved a friend.

"I….yes dad." Said Mob. She followed Minori. She didn't much want to follow Minori. She wanted to thank Asagiri-san for the gift again and then go home and then spend time with dad or her friends or on her own or just…somewhere that she understood. She understood dad. She understood her friends. She even understood herself….mostly. She understood herself enough to not be all…scared. She was a little bit scared as she followed Minori down a hallway. This house was big, maybe even as big as the castle, and Mob…..she liked the walking. She understood walking. She knew how to walk. She knew that right now she had to walk. She knew that she had to walk and…and also she had to talk. There wasn't supposed to be this much silence. There was silence and she had to break it because she knew that a silence could be awkward and she had no idea how to make a silence awkward or when to tell when it was….

So she had to say something.

"Um….I like your house. It's very…big." Said Mob as she followed Minori down a hallway. Her socks felt cold against the floor. She wondered if she should have brought slippers. That was polite, right? When you were in someone else's house? She didn't know. The only other person's house that she had ever been in was her friends' house but she always just went in socks or bare feet though. She didn't even know if the same rules for politeness went here as they did in Japan. They were in America but they were also both Japanese, well she was half Japanese, but that still meant that she had to have Japanese manners…and she had no idea where the other half of her came from anyway.

"I've lived in bigger. Dad just got us this house because he was in a hurry. There isn't even a pool." Said Minori as she came to her door. This house sucked. She wanted to go back to Japan already. At least they had a pool there, a heated one, and also she didn't have to sit through English lessons. Why did she have to learn English? She could just hire someone to translate for her….and while she was hiring people she could just hire someone to make friends with Suzuki. She didn't even know what she was supposed to do?

Play dolls?

She didn't know. She opened her door. Suzuki just sort of stood there. What? Was she a vampire? Did she have to be invited in? She was certainly pale enough. God, did she ever get any sun? She looked like she was a ghost or a vampire or something. Her dad did too. She wondered why they had to make friends with these weirdos just because they had money or whatever. There were plenty of people with money and they were a hell of a lot more normal than these weirdos.

"Um…can I come into your room?" asked Mob. She thought that asking you make sense. She knew that she wasn't just supposed to let herself into places, Minegishi had said so, and she didn't want to mess this up. She hadn't ever been to someone her age's room….or with someone her own age all alone…someone who wasn't Sho. Someone who was….not related to her at all…

Mob didn't know what the H-word she was supposed to do.

"No, I want you to stand out in the hallway for the rest of the day." Said Minori rolling her eyes.

"Oh. Ok." Said Mob. She didn't much want to stand out in the hallway all day but this was at least something that she understood. She hoped that dad wasn't busy for too long. She didn't even care if Dad decided to smother her again after this. She at least understood being smothered and stuff.

"I don't know if you're being slow or funny or whatever but come in. My dad says that I have to be friends with you so come on. Let's get this over with." Said Minori. Suzuki stared at her for a minute…and she had no idea what was even happening in her head. The hair on her arms stood up sort of like there was static electricity in the air or something. It got worse when Suzuki walked past her. She walked past and then just sort of stood in the middle of the room and looked around like she was in a museum or something. Minori didn't get it. This was just a room. She hadn't even finished putting her posters up yet and half of her stuff was still in boxes.

What? Had she never been in anyone else's room before or something?

"I like your room. It's nice. You must really like…bears." Said Mob. She had teddy bear posters on her walls and she had a bunch of them on her bed and she had a teddy bear rug and there was a teddy bear hoodie thrown over her computer chair and a teddy bear backpack sitting on the floor. She…she liked teddy bears too….sort of. She didn't dislike them. Sho liked animals more than her. He would have had more in common with Minori and stuff. He would have been able to talk to her and play with her and stuff and then Mob could have just hung out in the hallway until they were done….but Sho was not here…so she had to make a friend all on her own…and she had no idea how. She'd never made friends with another kid before….

This stuff was really hard.

"Yeah, they're ok." Said Minori as she sat down on her bed and pulled out her phone. She scrolled through Instagram…and she really needed to up her game. She needed….well she needed a lot of things….she'd start a list later. If she had to end up dragged to this country she could at least get some new clothes out of it. Things would have been so much easier fi dad would just give her a card…and also things would have been a hell of a lot easier if there wasn't some weirdo standing in the middle of her room staring at her. Didn't she have a phone? Didn't she have some Frozen, princess, elementary schooler flash game to play or something?

Dad owed her bigtime for this.

"Well? Aren't you going to sit down?" asked Minori gesturing to her bed.

"Oh…right! Sorry. I just….I've never been in someone's room before…well my friend's rooms but…well I've never been in someone my own age's room before…and I don't know what to do. Sorry." said Mob. Sometimes it was best to come clean. That way she wouldn't be in too deep and stuff. There. Now she had come clean and then things would be less awkward….or maybe more awkward. She didn't know how awkwardness was measured in these situations.

"Sit on your side of the bed and do….whatever…until my dad says that you can go home. It's not hard." Said Minori. She probably only had, like, first graders for friends or something. She certainly dressed like it. Seriously. Who liked Frozen? Such a boring movie. Nobody even made out or anything. So boring, like Suzuki. She even sat down all boring. Like she was going to break the bed or something if she moved too fast. She even put her backpack down like it was a bomb or something. God. It wasn't hard. Just sit down already.

Dad owed her so much for this it was going to take all of those accountants to figure out just how big.

Suzuki still stared at her. What? What was there to stare at? She never blinked….and it was so creepy. She was like a creepy ghost or doll or something. That stupid hime cut thing didn't help. Like, braids or hime cut. Pick one. God. She had better not have wanted to braid Minori's hair. She had better not have had a bunch of those ribbons she had in her hair or some Frozen hair ties or something in her stupid backpack and she better not have been getting ready to start braiding hair so they could match and be elementary school twins together or something dumb like that.

God. The things she did for dad.

"What do you keep on staring up me for?" asked Minori

"Um….I like your…bed? I like the teddy bear bedspread. Um….it matches your phone case." Said Mob. People liked to be complimented. Maybe if she just complimented Minori nonstop then they could be friends…or something. She didn't know. She didn't even know how she made friends with the friends she had. Minegishi had decided on the first day that they met that they were going to be best friends…and now all these years later they had the bracelets to prove it. Shimazaki had sort of just started to hang out with her. Shibata had just moved into the house and he had been more of Sho's friend at first, too. Hatori…well she had fallen in love with Hatori and then dad had made him join their group….and all of her friends were at least ten years older than she was….and stuff…..

"They're ok. My mom really liked them best. My dad just keeps on getting me stuff with bears on it. It's whatever." Said Minori with a shrug

"Oh. My dad is like that too. He keeps on getting me dolls and blue stuff even though I don't ask him to…but it like your room. It's nice. Your shirt is nice too. The bear on the front is cute." Said Mob. She really did like Minori's shirt even though it looked like it didn't fit. It was somehow too tight but also sliding off of her shoulders…but she was still super pretty and stuff. Mob wished that she could have been that pretty. She felt so plain looking next to Minori even though there was nobody there to look at her.

"Thanks, I guess. I like your backpack, or whatever. It matches your whole…look. This first grade aesthetic you have going on." Said Minori. Did that come out bitchy? Who cared, really. She knew that she could be kind of bitchy sometimes…but people were just so sensitive. Suzuki had better not have been sensitive. She had better not have started crying or something like that.

Minori could not deal with that right now.

"Um….thank you? You look pretty too. I like your hair. It's pink…but you know that already. I think that dyed hair is cool. My best friend dyes their hair but it's lavender, not pink." Said Mob. She didn't know if she had been complimented or not so she decided to just say thanks. Just in case she had been. She would have been very rude to Minori if she had rejected her compliment.

"You have a friend old enough to dye her hair?" asked Minori looking up from her phone. Huh. Well she had figured that Suzuki hung out at playgrounds and nursery schools or something. Unless she was lying…but she didn't look like she even knew what lying was.

"Yes, my best friend Minegishi, they're going to be twenty eight this year. They're a 'they' though, not a she, even though they were born a she. It's kind of complicated but also sort of easy to remember. Just always use gender neutral conjugation." Said Mob. She didn't know what she had said wrong. She knew that she must have said something wrong because now she was being stared at…and she didn't much like being stared at. She held her braids down with her hands. She wasn't supposed to use her powers, even on accident, around normal people. Even ones who knew about Claw. She wasn't supposed to freak people out and stuff.

"You have a twenty eight year old non binary best friend?" asked Minori. Ok, she must have been lying. She didn't even look like she knew anyone above the age of six let alone some twenty eight year old non binary person….how could she know someone so cool? Minori didn't even know anyone non binary…and she wished that she did. She needed more cool friends. Well more friends in general but nobody was cool enough to be her friend and the people who were cool enough were so, incredibly, sensitive.

"Yes?" said Mob. There was a tone there to how Minori had asked…and Mob didn't know what to make of it. This whole thing would have been much more helpful if she'd had an aura…or if Sho was there. He was the best when it came to talking to people.

"Prove it."said Minori. She put her own phone down and crossed her arms.

"Um…..see? Here. Only best friends can have these." Said Mob. She was being stared at and she didn't like being stared at but there was nothing that she could do, not even think, and she had to think of something…and she felt her bracelet get caught on her skirt. There. That should have been proof enough….

"I meant like a picture of you guys together or something. Anyone can wear half of a best friend bracelet…and who the hell wears best friend bracelets?" asked Minori

"Um…people with best friends? You can see some pictures if you want…I just have to get my phone out." Said Mob. Minori was still staring at her as she got her phone out of her skirt pocket. She almost accidentally got it out with her powers she was so nervous. She needed a drink…or some of her pen. Shimazaki had brought her a bunch of them. He said that this was the greatest country on Earth because it was legal here, for adults in this prefecture…state. They were called states here. It was legal for adults and he didn't have to do anything too shady to get them…which made Mob hope that these weren't stolen. Stealing was wrong…so she hoped that they weren't stolen…and also asking where a gift came from was wrong so she was not going to turn down a gift.

Especially one so desperately needed.

She felt her barrier try to form as Minori got closer. Suddenly Mob felt…embarrassed…about her phone case. It was Elsa and Anna and they were hugging…and she liked Frozen and had liked it since she had been little…but she wasn't little anymore. Minori was eleven and she was almost eleven…so they were practically the same ae….but she just felt….so much younger. Like a little kid. When Minori was this close she could see all the makeup that she was wearing and how pink her hair was and also her shift was hanging down low and Mob could see her bra strap…not that Mob was looking…or jealous. She wasn't. She was who she was and there was nothing wrong with not wearing a bra. Minegishi had said so. They had said that bras were more trouble than they were worth and that it was pointless to get all worried about who needed one and who didn't.

Even though Mob felt like such a little kid in her Frozen shirt and Frozen skirt and Frozen socks and Frozen undershirt and Frozen underwear and Frozen hair ribbons and Frozen backpack.

She clicked her phone on and it went to her lock screen. It was a picture of Sho and her with Nick and Judy at Disneyland, well not the real Nick and Judy because that had only been a movie, but the people in costumes. She went to put in her unlock code fast. She knew that she looked like a kid there…because she had been a kid there. She looked the same then as she did now. She had just still been able to fit into her Elsa dress then…and also Sho had been the same height as her….and stuff. She went to put it in, and she would have put it in, if she hadn't been stopped.

"Hey! I know that guy!" said Minori

"You know Sho? How do you know Sho?" asked Mob as Minori jammed her finger onto her phone screen. She must have been mistaken. Mob and Sho knew all the same people because they were always together…well almost always together. They hadn't been together in so long…but if he had been there then this whole thing would have gone a lot better since he knew her already.

"We made out in the coatroom back at that stupid Christmas party. Why? What is he, your boyfriend or something?" asked Minori. She flipped her hair back and narrowed her eyes. Well if he had been her boyfriend then he should have said something…and also Suzuki should have tried harder to keep her boyfriend. That was what happened when you didn't do what you had to do to keep your guy. It wasn't Minori's fault that Suzuki was probably a bad kisser or a total virgin or something….well kissing virgin. Minori was still the other kind…but that was whatever.

"No, he's my brother…and what does that mean? I feel like it means kissing but Sho hates that…well he hated that back then…at least I think that he did. I don't know. I'm his sister, we don't talk about stuff like this." said Mob. Well now this was awkward. Even Mob could tell. Sho had kissed this girl…and now he had a girlfriend…and Minori would be so heartbroken…and also Sho was the sort of boy who went around kissing girls and then leaving them…which was not something that she had ever imagined for her little brother….and not just about the kissing girls part. She'd have to talk to Sho about how fragile people's feelings could be and how you had to be careful with them and stuff.

"It means when you tongue kiss someone…how do you not know that?" asked Minori as she studied the picture in front of her. They weren't brother and sister. They didn't look a thing alike. He looked more like their dad…and Minori was such an idiot. Red hair, blue eyes, and his family name was Suzuki….she should not have had that glass of champagne. She had been way too sloppy. She could have played it better, then she could have had him as a boyfriend by now, but no she just had to go and try drinking. God, she was so stupid sometimes.

"I've just never heard of that before….also…you did that? With my brother? Why? Why would he…or you…or anyone want to do that?" asked Mob. She…had no idea what to do with this information. She didn't know what to do or…or how to get it out of her head. She did NOT need to know these things about her little brother. No. Just….no. She now knew that he went around sticking his tongue in girl's mouths….yuck….and also…also she didn't know if she should talk to him about this or tell him to stop, because that could not have been good for him, or tell him not to stop because he could kiss whoever he wanted however he wanted. She didn't want anyone to tell her how to kiss, or talk about her kissing, even though she had no one to kiss…and she would not do that to anyone else….also….Sho….

Sho did THAT?

"Because it feels good, duh. That's what you're supposed to do. We were playing spin the bottle and, yeah, that's just how it goes. You've seriously never heard of this?" asked Minori

"No. Never. I had no idea that people kissed like that…well I knew that they opened their mouths sometimes…but I never knew that…that they touched tongues…." Said Mob with a shudder. Her body shuddered and her aura shuddered. She didn't know why anyone would want to do that. It sounded so…gross…and also weird. Just letting someone put their tongue in your mouth…that was where your tongue lived…and also there was spit in there too. That was like spitting in someone else's mouth. She hadn't gotten any of her spit anywhere but inside of her own mouth when she'd had her first kiss…her only kiss…the only kiss she would ever have…..

"You are such a virgin." Said Minori rolling her eyes. Suzuki probably still thought that babies grew in mom's stomachs and stuff too. How did she live this long without knowing any of the important things in life? What a weirdo.

"What's a virgin?" asked Mob. She had heard that word before, olive oil could be virgin or extra virgin, but people were not olives and olive oil was not made out of people. They would have called it people oil in that case.

"Seriously? You don't know that either?" asked Minori

"No." said Mob

"What you don't know could fill a warehouse." Said Minori

"Probably." Said Mob. She knew that it could fill several warehouses and an HQ…and she didn't much like that. It was like Minori was speaking a different language sometimes…or maybe Mob was just the weird one.

"Well a virgin is someone who's never done anything before. There's kissing virgins and being felt up virgins and messing around virgins and virgin-virgins. I'm a messing around and virgin-virgin, I've never met a guy who's worth it and also my dad has his stupid guards follow me around all the time. It's whatever." Said Minori. Also she was eleven but Suzuki didn't need to know that. Suzuki needed to know that she knew what she was talking about, which she was.

"Um….I have guards too….which is probably why I've never heard of any of this. What's….what's a messing around virgin? And a virgin-virgin?" asked Mob. She was such a baby and she was so weird. What she didn't know could fill a warehouse. She was such a little kid, it felt like, because Minori knew so much more than she did…and also she was a few months older than her since she was already eleven…and stuff…but Mob felt like she was a million years younger.

"A messing around virgin is someone who's never messed around, that's doing stuff with a guy under your clothes and below your waist. A virgin-virgin is someone who's never done it before. How do you not know any of this? Don't you, like, have a twenty eight year old best friend or something?" asked Minori

"Minegishi is my best friend…but we don't talk about this stuff…and also done what, exactly? For being a virgin-virgin?" asked Mob. She wondered why they had never said anything…well they didn't really talk about this stuff…and also this seemed like the sort of stuff that went without saying based on the way Minori was talking….and stuff.

"You know….doing it? Sleeping with someone? Having….sex…with them." Said Minori. She whispered that last part. Dad didn't like her talking like this. Dad didn't even like her talking about kissing…and he kept on threatening to send her to an all girl's school for middle school. He would have loved it if she switched bodies with Suzuki or something. How could she have lived this long without knowing anything? Minori didn't even know a lot, compared to her friends at least, and Suzuki knew even less than she did.

"Oh! Um….I know what that is…but that's only for adults. I mean all of my friends, besides my little brother, are adults but we don't talk about that stuff…because I'm a kid…and also I wouldn't want to ask any of my friends about that…because it's private…." Said Mob. She held her braids down and kept her aura in check. She needed to smoke. She needed to calm down and smoke. The thought of taking to anyone about…the adult stuff they did….it made her want to dig a hole and live in it for the rest of her life.

"I honestly doubt you have adult friends." Said Minori. There was no way she had cooler friends than her, first of all, and second of all if she did have adult friends then she would have been a lot cooler. Minori didn't even have adult friends, most of her friends were in middle school. She needed some adult friends. She could not let someone like Suzuki be cooler than her…if she was even telling the truth.

"I do. See? Here's….hold on….here's a picture of me and Minegishi at Starbucks…and here's us when we grew that big fern in the garden…and here's us after we painted each other's nails…and here's just them…well that's just them reading but we're still friends." Said Mob. She felt weirdly….like she had to prove it. That she and Minegishi were friends. She wished that she had more pictures. She wished that Minegishi liked having their picture taken. She hoped that this was enough to prove to Minori that she and Minegishi were friends…even though she knew that she should not have had to prove it….but she also sort of did. They were best friends and….and the thought of anyone doubting that…it made her…not happy.

"Ok, ok, I believe you. You have a twenty eight year old non binary best friend. It's whatever. I have older friends too. That's probably like your only friend or whatever anyway." Said Minori. She was not cooler than her! No way. There, in picture evidence was her doing all of that friend stuff with someone who was way older than anyone Minori even knew! Nope. How did someone like Suzuki make a friend like that?!

"No, I have other friends. See? That's Shibata and a cake he made…he forgot the sugar but it was…ok. Um…and that's Hatori hiding under a table…he gets scared easily. And that's-" said Mob as she went through pictures of her other friends. She could too make friends….and she felt like she needed to prove it…but she didn't know why. She knew that she could make friends so why…why want to prove it to someone? Someone she had just met? She didn't know. She just kept flipping…well she would have kept flipping if Minori hadn't stopped her.

By putting a hand over hers.

Mob almost put up a barrier. She stopped herself at the last minute but the light above them flicked. It wasn't that she didn't like Minori, she was ok, she just…didn't much want to be touched unexpectedly. Especially by someone she just met…and also….not a lot of people touched her. She didn't touch a lot of people either. The person who touched her the most was dad, actually, and then Minegishi and Shimazaki…or Shimazaki and then Minegishi because he could be very touchy sometimes….but those were all people that she had known for years and years.

But still, there was no need to freak out.

"Who's that? The guy with his eyes closed?" asked Minori as she pointed to a picture of a guy with his eyes closed sitting upside down on a couch…and even sitting like that he was so…whoa. Suzuki knew someone like THAT? Ok. This friendship had to happen. She knew hot guys. That was reason enough to be friends or 'network' or whatever dad wanted her to do. All of her friends would lose their shit if she ended up with a guy like that. She might even be able to make some high school friends if she had a guy like that.

"That's Shimazaki. He's my friend. He's being kind of silly in that picture but he's always kind of like that…he acts like a crazy person most of the time, actually, but we're still very good friends." Said Mob. She prepared to flip to the next picture but then Minori grabbed her hand…and she could have just asked…but Mob wasn't going to say anything. You didn't make friends but complaining.

"Do you have any more pictures of him?" asked Minori. She tried not to sound too eager. So he looked like he could have been a member of B.T.S., it was whatever.

"Um…yes. Hang on. Let me just go through my camera roll and-" said Mob. Minori reached out and tapped her screen as soon as she went to the camera roll…and she maybe needed to think about how personal space worked…or whatever…but Mob wasn't going to be mean to her. She could be awkward too sometimes. Still, though, she knew not to go around touching other people's phones and looking at their pictures.

Especially since people could have pictures on their phones which were…not very nice.

This wasn't a bad picture. It wasn't a naked picture or anything like that, Mob didn't have any of those on her phone or anything, but it was one that maybe she should not have been showing to people. She didn't fully remember taking it. This was a picture of her and Shimazaki in his room smoking. She had taken it because…well she had thought that they looked funny there…and they had…but still. She should not have been showing people that…but then again she had never imagined that anyone would be going through her camera roll.

"Are you guys smoking? Also…is he in the yakuza? Those are yakuza tattoos, aren't they?" asked Minori as she took Suzuki's phone from her hands and zoomed in. She knew that she was being rude but it was whatever. That guy…wow…also…what the fuck? They said that you couldn't judge a book by it's cover but…what the fuck? Suzuki apparently liked Frozen, played with dolls, and also smoked with hot shirtless yakuza guys….

Yeah. This friendship had to happen.

"Um….yes, we were smoking…but please don't tell anyone." Said Mob. Dad knew that she drank sometimes, not about all the times she drank but he knew that she did, and he had taken it well…but she did not need him knowing that she smoked, too. Especially not the fun stuff. Minegishi said that people were even more against fun smoking than they were again normal smoking.

"I'll keep my mouth shut as long as you tell me more about that guy." Said Minori

"What do you want to know?" asked Mob. Also why did she want to know what she wanted to know? Shimazaki was interesting and all but Minori seemed REALLY interested in him…but Mob didn't know how talking to people worked. Minori was probably the normal one and she was the weird person.

"Everything. What's his name? How do you know him? What's he like? What's with those tattoos? Why does he close his eyes for every picture? Come on, Suzuki, we're friends. This is what friends talk about. Guys and stuff." Said Minori

"Oh. I didn't know that we had made friends already….um…thank you. Anyway his name is Shimazaki Ryou, he going to be thirty one this year….um….he's really…interesting. He acts like a crazy person a lot of the time but that's just because he hates being bored and likes attention. Also because he's drunk or high a lot of the time since he says that his job it boring now that my brother's gone…he's my brother's best friend and also he keeps him safe…also my brother isn't gone he's just away and-" said Mob

"Yeah, yeah, your brother sounds great. Tell me more about this guy." Said Minori

"He is….but…um….he likes the Beatles a lot? Well he specifically likes English rock and pop music from the sixties to the eighties. He says that Japanese music peaked at city pop in the eighties but I don't agree…um…he likes music a lot. He likes music and chewing on candles and dogs because they're soft and loyal….um…he used to be in the yakuza but he got kicked out of his family for doing bad things…um…we became friends after he started guarding my dad and brother….uh….he's blind, too. He keeps his eyes closed because he doesn't have any and when he opens his eyes stuff gets in his eye sockets and he has to clean them off…and it's gross…and sometimes I help and then we smoke together afterwards…and that's all I can think of right now." Said Mob. She wondered if she had said too much…or maybe not enough…or maybe she hadn't been specific enough…or maybe she had been too specific….or maybe…she didn't know…

She didn't want to mess this up.

Because now she had a new friend. She had a brand new friend and she had no idea how she had made this new friend but she had a new one and…and this was great! She could always use more friends…even though she had no idea how to be friends with someone who was her age…and also she knew how…how she could be. Why did Minori even want to be friends with her? She knew so much more about things…and stuff. Mob was a baby compared to her…

But you weren't supposed to question it when good things happened to you.

"Wait….so you're friends with a bunch of adults, including a thirty one years old blind ex yakuza member who looks like he could be in B.T.S. or Wanna One or Exo or….whatever. He's hot and he's your friend? And you smoke with him? Like he lets you have cigarettes and stuff?" asked Minori. She wondered if maybe she had slipped and hit her head and now she was in some alternate reality or something where someone like SUZUKI could be cooler than her….well it was whatever. She was Asagiri Minori. She'd be back on top soon.

"Um….he's my friend…and we used to smoke cigarettes but my friend Minegishi wanted me to quiet. Now we mostly just smoke fun stuff, and also vape pens, and one time he gave me coke but I'm not supposed to do that anymore…and one time we had sugar cubes with acid on them, not the dying kind but the kind that makes your brain stop working, but I'm not supposed to do that anymore either. So that's…um…what we do together…but please don't tell anyone, ok? Also…um…I guess he's nice looking but I don't notice him like that and also….um…what's BTS? And Wanna One? And Exo?" said Mob. Minori was….someone who she had trouble understanding…but that was ok. She was her friend and that was what mattered…also she thought that Shimazaki was….what? Mob didn't see it. Well he was tall and strong and…and stuff…but he was also Shimazaki.

"So…you….do drugs…and get high…and you have no idea how hot this guy is…and you don't know what KPOP is? How are you…how are you alive?" asked Minori. Suzuki was a weirdo but…but she was also…well they could be friends. She was so lucky that Minori had come into her life. Now she could show her what was important…and also she had never done worse than smoke a cigarette and gave a glass of champagne before…and she could not let Suzuki beat her. Not when she was all….dressed like a mentally challenged first grader or whatever.

"Um….because I am? I'm sorry. I don't understand the question." Said Mob. She knew what KPOP was, she just mostly listened to Disney soundtracks and whatever Shimazaki felt like singing about. She didn't know what that had to do with being alive, though, but what she didn't know could fill a warehouse.

"I mean how do you do….all of that…and still just…not know ANYTHING? God, you are so lucky to have me for a friend. We should hang out more, Suzuki, we really should. We could….do stuff. Like hang out with your friends and smoke and stuff. Or play dolls and braid hair. Whatever." Said Minori. Dad was right about this 'networking' thing. Once school came back in session she'd have so many stories and pictures…she'd totally win her friends back from that stupid transfer student. So she came from abroad, who cared? So she had all the guys after her…that was just because she let everyone under her shirt. It was whatever. Minori would be back on top soon enough…well first she'd have to do some work on Suzuki.

How someone who did all of that cool stuff could dress like a mentally challenged first grader made no sense at all.

She needed new clothes, and a new attitude, and then they could hang out, and document everything. And then when the time came to go back to school she could one up little miss transfer student. No more leaving dead birds in her desk and pouring red paint on her chair before she sat down….well more of that if this didn't work. She'd ruin what was left of her reputation if one upping her didn't work. Then she'd be back on top or whatever.

It was worth it to have to be friends with Suzuki to get there.

"Um….I like being your friend too…..Minori…and you can call me Mob…and um….stuff. Uh…I thought that you didn't like dolls but if you want to play with dolls I have some with me…and I have some pens too if you want to smoke…but please don't tell on me." Said Mob as she opened up her backpack and took out her dolls. She had brought two Annas, two Elsa's, and then one of everyone else. She had packed them before she had known who she was going to be meeting….but this had still turned out nice. Once she had her dolls laid out she took her pens out of her backpack…and she had been letting them lay down on their sides for too long. All the oil had collected in the top. She fixed it fast with her powers before Minori noticed.

She was busy picking which dolls she wanted to play with.

She picked up short haired Anna, Sho had given her a haircut but then he had said sorry so it was ok, with two fingers….and Mob didn't know why. Well it did look sort of gross being all short haired…and also she hadn't been able to get all of the scars that Sho had drawn in permanent marker off of her…so it made sense that Minori would hold it like that. She wanted to play dolls. She must have. She was the one who had suggested it.

"Let's smoke first. Is that weed or vape juice?" asked Minori as she picked up one of the pens.

"Um….that's hash oil. It's made from the same plant though. The one you're holding is…well actually I haven't tried that one yet. We can try that now." Said Mob as she reached over and turned her pen on. Wow. This day had gone better than she ever would have imagined it. She had made a new friend. She hadn't had a new friend since Hatori…and she hadn't had a friend who was her age since Sho had been born. This was…this was great.

It was.

Even though there were a million and one ways, it felt like, that she could mess this up. She didn't know how to be friends with someone her own age…but she could try. Minori wanted to be her friend and…and nobody her own age had ever wanted to be her friend. Even Sho hadn't been the nice to her for a big part of her life. This was….it was scary…but it would be nice. Friendship wasn't scary. She just…had to remember that she knew how to be a good friend. She knew how to be a good friend because she had friends and she'd had friends for a while…so she knew what to do….

She'd just do the same stuff that she did with her friends now.

She wasn't going to mess this up. Besides, Minori had been the one who had wanted to be friends with her….so she had this. She hadn't been the one ask first…so this was ok and she was not going to mess up. So far she had done everything right…..and she had remembered to let Minori have the pen first. That was good manners. She had good manners and she could be a good friend and she would be a good friend and she would not mess this up. This had been…this had been a good day. She'd made a new friend…

Which was a lot better than getting a square watermelon.


	304. Sad Goodbyes and Happy Tears

It was always hard to say goodbye.

Sho knew that this day was coming, he had known for a while, but knowing did not make this any easier. Saying goodbye to his baby sister…it had been hard before…and it was hard now. The hardest thing that he had done in a while…and also the hardest thing that he had ever had to do. Saying goodbye to her on that day, that really bad day, when Fukuda had taken her away from him forever….well seemingly forever…it had been the worst day of his life. Saying goodbye to her again for the second time had been a little bit easier. He hadn't hit anyone. Saying goodbye the third time….

He was mostly just trying not to cry.

He was feeding baby sis her lunch now. She was having more mush, this time broccoli and potato mush. He got the normal kind because he could be trusted to chew his food and stuff. He hadn't been able to eat it. Who could eat when they knew for a fact that by the end of the meal they would have to leave their own pretend baby sister behind forever? Well not forever….

Just for a really long time.

He had no idea how long it would be until he got to see her again. She would be older then and maybe she would be able to eat food that hadn't been mushed up. Maybe she could be able to sit at the normal table and eat all on her own with her own fork and spoon and bowl and stuff. Maybe she would be able to…to do everything for herself. Maybe the next time he saw her she would be a kid or something. Then she would have been too old for him to…to be able to feed her and play the game where he caught the things she threw…and also she could be too old to remember him….and he needed her to remember him….

Because he was her big brother.

"Come on, here comes the airplane. It's gotta land before it runs out of fuel and it crashes and all the people on it die. Come on, you're got to open up right now so the plane can land." Said Sho as he made her little baby spoon fly around with his powers. She clapped and reached for it. She wanted to catch it in her hands and he couldn't let her.

Even though he wanted to.

If she didn't eat then the meal would never be finished. If the meal was never finished then he could stay forever. She would never go down for her nap if the meal was never finished and if she never went down for her nap then he would never have to leave. He could stay with her forever. They could play games and draw pictures and go for little baby stroller rides all day. She'd love that. He'd love that. They could be happy together. She was so happy right now. It wasn't fair. Why didn't he ever get to be happy? Sometimes….sometimes it felt like he ever got to be happy. Like every time something good in his life happened something bad came along to take it away….

And that really sucked.

Baby sis was the best thing in his life right now. Well her and big sis but big sis took care of him. He got to be the big brother when he was with little sis, he got to take care of her, and even though it wasn't always easy he still took care of her. He rocked her to sleep when it was time for her nap, he fed her the baby mush she had to eat even though she deserved all the cookies in the world, and he played whatever games she wanted for hours and hours and hours…even though the catching things game did get kind of boring after a while. He was her big brother and he was there for her no matter what…even if they were pretend siblings. Being there for her…having someone who he had to be there for…it was a good feeling….

But everything good in his life came to an end eventually.

"Mukai…baby sis….after you finish your lunch mush you're going to have to take a nap and I'm…going to have to go. Ok? I'm not going to be here when you wake up but…but I still love you and care about you and stuff. Ok?" asked Sho as she batted her little baby spoon away. He had no idea if she even understood a word he said. She was little, so little, and she couldn't even talk yet. She didn't understand why he would have to leave her. She would just wake up and then he…he would be gone from her life and stuff…and that would suck. It would suck and she would think…she would think that he didn't love her anymore….

Because that was what it felt like.

That was what it felt like when you woke up alone. When you woke up and the person who you loved the most in the world, the person who took care of you, was gone. They were gone and you waited and waited and waited…but they never came back. You blamed yourself and everyone around you. You thought about what you could have done different, how if you had just been born right, born better, things could have been different. How if you had tried harder, been better, then you wouldn't have been all alone….and stuff….

He was going to make his baby sister feel like that.

"I'm coming back, ok? Never forget that I'm coming back. I'm going to be coming back to see you again. I don't know when but….but I'll be coming back." Said Sho as he managed to get some food into her mouth. She started to chew and she stared at him. Her eyes did the same thing his did when he focused, her pupils got really tiny. Good. That meant that she was listening. He put more food on her spoon even though he didn't want to and she watched him with complete baby focus. Maybe she was just hungry. Maybe she didn't care about a word he had to say and she just wanted to eat her lunch.

He fed her.

He wanted to stay with her forever but he knew that she had to eat. She was little and she needed food and stuff. She needed to eat and grow up big and strong and his feelings didn't mean a thing. He was not going to starve her. He was not going to keep her up all day. He was not going to be selfish. He loved her. He loved her and he was not going to make her feel bad or hungry or tired or anything. That was what love was.

When you loved someone you put them ahead of yourself.

"Ok? Big brother is coming back and when I do I'm going to have all kind of stuff for us to play with…and a new doll for you…and even more drawings. Maybe you'll be big enough to draw for real, not just baby scribbles. Won't that be great? You'll be able to draw with me, your big brother. Well your pretend big brother. We're not really brother and sister but….but I love you just the same." Said Sho as he fed her some more baby mush. She was still looking at him with all of her baby focus. He wondered how she could focus so much on him…but she was smart. She was smart and she was his little sister and he loved her the very most out of all the other babies in the whole world. Who wouldn't? She was baby sis. She was so smart and cute…and she was so focused on him…that he knew that she was listening. She was listening to him and…and he had to say stuff. Good stuff. Stuff that she had to remember.

She had to remember him.

"Ok? You're almost done, ok? You're almost done and then you'll have to take a nap and…and then I'll be gone…but I love you. Ok? I love you. Sho loves you. Your big brother Sho loves you." Said Sho as he scraped the last of her baby mush onto her spoon. He brought it up to her mouth and she didn't fight. She didn't swat the spoon away with her hand or kick it away with her feet or even shake her head and screw her mouth shut. She just opened her mouth and ate.

She was such a good baby sister.

He put the spoon down in her little baby bowl and wiped her face with her bib. This one said 'my mom thinks that she's in charge….she's so cute' and it was funny and a lot of her clothes said funny things and she had so many other clothes that said funny things…and he just wished that he could have hung around long enough to read them all. He wished that he could have hung around for long enough to read all of her funny clothes and play with all of her toys and just…make her happy. Make her happy and….and know everything that there was to know about her. He wished that she had just stayed with him and…and then he could have taken care of her.

But she was better off here.

She had a mom who loved her and would never leave. She had adopted her after all. That meant that out of all the babies in the world her mom had picked her. That meant that she was wanted. That meant that her mom would never leave her…and Sho wanted her. Sho wanted her and Sho would never leave her…but he was just a kid. He was just a kid and…and she needed a mom. She needed a mom like he needed a mom…but she was lucky enough to have a mom….

She was the luckiest little baby sis in the whole, wide, world.

"Ok…you're all done…and now…now you have to take a nap and…and I have to go. So…so goodbye baby sis. Big brother…he has to go now…Sho has to go….ok?" asked Sho. He turned his back. He couldn't stand the way she was looking him. She was looking at him like she expected him to be there when she got up. Like she expected that she would be there to play the catch game or draw pictures or go for baby rides in her stroller…or something. Anything. Well he wouldn't be there and…and she would be hurt…if she even remembered him.

Maybe it was better that she didn't remember him.

Maybe it was better that she forgot him. Maybe it was better that she forgot her big brother. She deserved someone who was there all the time…or at least someone who knew when he was going to visit. Maybe her mom would adopt a new big brother for her and a big sister and then she would have people who loved her and could be there for her…and stuff. Stuff like…like being there when she woke up…because there was nothing worse than waking up and the people who…who loved you…the person who loved you….weren't there. They were just gone and…

And he wiped his eyes.

He heard baby sis' mom get up. She was probably going to get up and take baby sis to her room. She had a rocking chair there and her mom rocked her to sleep and told her stories. Sho…he got to do that…he had gotten to do that. She had gotten to go to sleep while he rocked her back and forth and…and she was so happy and…and she had gone to sleep and…

And he could feel her aura on him.

He could feel baby sis's aura on him. She could feel him and he could feel her…and his back was still to her. She could not see him cry. There was no way that he could let her see him just…just crying…because then she would cry. Not the crying she did for attention, not the crying she did when she was hungry, not even the crying she did when her arm got stuck in the paper towel roll even though she loved having her arm stuck in paper towel rolls….

He didn't want her to cry.

He wanted her to smile…so he didn't turn around. Even though he could feel her aura on him…and he could feel her mom moving around the kitchen…and he could see it all through his aura…and he sort of wished that Shimazaki had never taught him how to see with his aura. He wished that Shimazaki had never taught him this…and also he wished that…that Shimazaki didn't dislike sad people so much…and he needed to stop being sad…but he…he just was and…and he couldn't let baby sis see him but…but he knew that she wanted him to turn around and….

"Sho!"

The kitchen shook. Pots and pans fell out of their cabinets. The milk carton on the table tipped over…and it was closed…but even if it wasn't Sho would not have cared. He couldn't care. He couldn't care and he couldn't think. He…he must have been losing his mind. She had…she had….he was losing his mind. He was losing his mind and now he needed to go and see Fukuda to get his brain fixed and…and he had brain worms or ear worms or those insanity worms that he had seen about on the medical channel….

Because he could not have been hearing her correctly.

"Sho!" she did it again. She said his name and…and maybe he didn't have brain worms and ear worms and insanity worms. Maybe….maybe he was hearing her and….and…and he turned around. He knew that his eyes must have been red and his face must have been red and…and his nose must have been red and also all full of boogers…and stuff…and he needed to look happier because…because she deserved that. She deserved someone who could be happy. Who could be happier for her…happy for her when she had finally…finally…finally said….

Her first word.

"Hey kid, someone's trying to talk to you." Said baby sis' mom. Sho wiped his eyes and looked up. Baby sis…she had something in her hand…and she was reaching out towards him. He wiped his eyes again and wiped his nose on his sleeve. She had…she had actually said his name. She had actually said his name and…and he had wanted it for so long and….and now he had what he wanted…

But he didn't feel any better.

"Sho! Sho! Sho, Sho, Sho, Sho, Sho!" said baby sis. She waved her arm at him and…and she was giving him a cookie. Where had she gotten….oh. Her mom was holding the cookie box….and she was sharing with him…either that or baby sis thought that his name was the same as the word for cookie. He'd believe that….he wanted to believe that…

Because this hurt.

Her saying his name hurt. It hurt like a kick to the ribs. She…she was saying his name….he had been teaching her to say his name and now she said it and…and now she would never forget him…but that meant that she would never forgive him. She would remember him and she would never forgive him for leaving her. He loved her so much…the most…the very most…

And she would never forgive him.

He couldn't cry. Even though he felt like he was going to cry, even though he wanted to cry, he was not going to cry. He was not going to make baby sis cry. He would never forgive himself if he made her cry. The last memory that he had of her would not be her crying…and her last memory of him would not be him making her cry. He knew that he would see her again…but he had no clue when. He had no idea when he would see her again and…and they would not end on this…

He wiped his eyes.

"Th-thanks….Mukai. Thanks baby sis….for the cookie and…and for making me your first word. I love you. I….your big brother loves you. Sho….Sho loves you….and I'll see you again later" Said Sho. He took the cookie. He took the cookie and then her mom picked her up and then…and then that was it. That was what happened. She went off to take her nap and he…he had to go now. When she woke up he would be gone….

But at least she knew that he loved her.

He had loved her from the moment they first met. He knew that it made no sense but that was just how he felt. From the moment they met he knew that he loved her and that…that he always wanted to be with her. That was how big sis had felt when he had been born, probably, and he had left her…and now he was leaving baby sis…and maybe that was just what Suzuki's were good at doing. Leaving the people who loved them the most. Maybe he was just doomed to leave and be left or…or something.

He didn't know.

All he knew was that he had a cookie in his hand and he had to go…so that was what he did. He left her apartment and walked down the bright white hallways to where he and Fukuda had been staying….well mostly Fukuda. Sho had only been coming back to sleep. He didn't care about leaving this place, no, he only cared about leaving baby sis….leaving her and…and she would never forgive him….

He almost crushed the cookie in his hand.

He couldn't crush the cookie. He had to save it forever…he put it in his pocket. He had to save that cookie forever because…because it felt like….like this was all he had left of his sister. That was crazy talk, he knew that, but…but that was just how he felt. Like he needed something to remember her by. This wasn't fair…but his life wasn't fair….so this was ok. Life was unfair but at least he got a cookie…a cookie covered in baby droll but still a cookie….

Besides, it wasn't like he was going to eat it.

He kept it in his pocket and opened the door to where he had been staying with Fukuda. His backpack was all packed up and by the door where he left it. He closed his eyes. Fukuda was there too. He kept his eyes closed and let Fukuda get closer. He let him get closer and he did his best to stay calm and not cry…because he couldn't cry. This wasn't so sad…this was a happy day…

He had gotten to hear her first word…he had been her first word…..

He felt Fukuda stop in front of him. He head the heaviness of his footsteps and the sound of his breathing. He could feel and see Fukuda's aura. He couldn't hear it, Shimazaki could hear auras but to Sho they had no sound, and that was good. It made it easier to pretend that he was alone…even though he had no idea why he wanted to be alone. He should have been happy….but he wasn't….

A hand was on his shoulder.

There was some weight and a groan. He could see Fukuda moving. He was knelt down now so he and Sho were the same height. Sho didn't open his eyes. He didn't want to. He knew that if he opened his eyes he would have started to cry. He knew that he could cry with his eyes closed, that he didn't even need eyes to cry, but if he kept his eyes as shut as they could be then….then he could just….just keep his tears inside….

He could keep his tears inside his eyes where they belonged.

"Sho….if you have to cry then you can cry. You can cry if you have to and when you do I'll be right here for you this whole time." Said Fukuda

"I'm not crying…my eyes are just….leaking eye fluid." Said Sho. He kept his eyes closed. This was just a thing that his eyes did. He was not crying. He had no reason to cry. So what if baby sis was going to remember him now? And now she would never forgive him for leaving? He….he had to go. He wasn't the guy who made the rules, he just had to go along with them.

"Are you sure? Because if you poked yourself in both eyes hard enough to start leaking eye fluid everywhere I can fix that right up…but if you're sad then the only cure is to cry it out." Said Fukuda

"….they're my eyes and I'll do what I want with them….and besides, I'm not sad. Baby sis…she finally said my name. She said my name and she gave me a cookie and I'm happy….so there." said Sho

"Ok, then those are happy tears…but if they were sad tears I would completely understand. You're going through a lot. You've been here for weeks and now we're leaving and you have to leave your little sister behind. That's hard and I'm here if you want to talk about it, ok?" said Fukuda

"….can we just go now? Is the car here yet? Can we just take the care to the plane and the plane to England already?" asked Sho

"The car is here but…we have to make a stop on the way out of Seasoning City. I thought we could visit your grandparents' grave again." said Fukuda. Sho opened his eyes now. What was Fukuda on about? He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and didn't are that he ended up getting boogers on his face. No way. He just wanted to go. He was not going to just….just stay here where baby sis lived…and not see her! Especially dead people that he had never met before!

"No way! I just….I want to go. I don't see why I should have to visit them, it's not like they're there. They're dead and they passed on already. Talking them is as pointless and sending emails to mom." Said Sho. Fukuda took a deep breath. He was still down at Sho's level. He could feel Fukuda breathing. He didn't get what was so upsetting. They were dead and gone…and he had never met them in the first place.

"That…was hurtful. Sho…they would have loved to meet you. Even though they're dead they would have loved to meet you. They were…they were good people. They were good people and they would have loved to meet their grandson." Said Fukuda

"But they're dead. They're dead and gone and…and I don't want to be here if I have to be away from baby sis. I don't want to spend time with dead people I don't even know when I have my alive little sister…she's going to….to never forgive me….and I just…I either want to go right now or I don't want to go….and I don't even know what I'm feeling right now. I just want….I want to go." Said Sho. He didn't move and neither did Fukuda. They just looked at each other for a while. He wished that he could read minds. He wished that he knew what Fukuda was thinking…

He was probably thinking about when he and dad were kids.

Sho knew what was coming next. Fukuda would show him around the city and all the places that he and dad had gone to together. The places where they hung out. The places where they had played. Sho…he didn't really care. He didn't care at all. He just…he wanted to be with little sis…and big sis…and his friends…and also his mom even though he knew that dad would never have let him see mom again even if she had been found….because she was a traitor…and he had left baby sis…and now baby sis thought that he was a traitor…because she would get up and he would be gone….

He needed to go…before he went back to her.

"Sho…alright. I….I have a grave to visit but…but if you aren't comfortable coming with them…there's a playground near the graveyard. You can wait for me there. You can wait for me there and…and then after I'm done we can get on the plane and move along…and if at any point you want to talk to me about what happened or how you're feeling then…then you can. No matter where we are or what time it is I will be there for you." Said Fukuda

"…ok. Whatever. Come on, let's go." said Sho. He turned around and out his backpack on. He needed….he needed to go. He needed to get out of here because if he stayed then….then he didn't know what he would do. Run back to baby sis and take her with? Hide under her crib forever? He didn't know. All he knew was that it was so hard to go…

And knowing that she would remember him….that made it even harder.


	305. Rocket Ship

Normally Sho liked playgrounds.

This should have been a good time. It wasn't hot out so he didn't stick out in his long sleeves and long pants, the sun was shining but it wasn't beating down so hard that he needed sunscreen, and also he wasn't being watched by anyone. No big sis there to baby him and no Fukuda there to baby him either….because he was not a baby. He knew a baby but he was not a baby. He knew a baby and she was the best baby in the whole world and she would have loved it here so much and-

He needed to stop thinking about her.

He needed to distract himself. He needed to find something else to think about. How long would it take for Fukuda to say goodbye to his parents' grave? How long did it take to say goodbye to death people anyway? Pour the water, light the incense, leave the offering, say something nice and then go. There. It shouldn't have taken that long….not that it had been a long time. Or maybe it had. He didn't know. All he knew was that he needed to get out of there, out of this city, before baby sis woke up from her nap.

He should have been there.

He should have been there when she woke up. She always woke up slowly. First she kicked her feet and then she started to sit up and then her eyes opened and she started crying. She must have been sad to get up. She must have had good dreams. She must have gone somewhere really great in her dreams. She must have been sad to come out of her dreams and back to the world. He didn't blame her. It sucked out here…

And it would suck even worse when she woke up.

She would wake up and he would be gone….and she would never forget him. She would never forget him now and he had thought that…that this was what he wanted….but it wasn't' fair to her. She didn't know what time was, that a lot of it would pass before he saw her again, and that….that sucked. It sucked. It sucked how she would wake up asking for him, because she could say his name now, and then she would look around and he wouldn't be there…and he should have stayed. If he had been older he could have just gotten assigned to the Seventh Division or something. He certainly had enough scars.

Heh.

Sho felt like his shirt her been riding up in the back. That was where his tree was. He had scars everywhere but the tree was the worse of them…or the best depending on how you saw it. Sho didn't know how he saw it. He had a thing on his back and it scared people. It was cool, scars could be cool, but people couldn't see. If people saw then they would ask questions that he was not supposed to answer. He didn't care what people thought…he only cared what baby sis thought…and she could not know about these. Maybe he could just tattoo over them. Maybe he could do like Shimazaki and get all of his scars tattooed over so good people thought that they were a part of the picture. Then baby sis would think that he looked cool and when she asked about his tattoos he would have something better to tell her than the story of his scars.

Or something.

He didn't know. That was for the future. This was not the future. This was the present and in the present he had to…to do something. To kill time until Fukuda got done with his the whole visiting his dead mom and dad thing. Sho wished that he would hurry it up already….but he wasn't going to go and tell Fukuda to hurry it up already, that would have been such a jerk thing to do, even though he wanted to go so badly….and he had nothing to do but wait….

Well he was on a playground.

He was on a playground so maybe he should just play already. He had been sitting on a bench like a weirdo for too long. He liked playgrounds. He liked to run and jump and climb and stuff….and he liked to go to these with…with big sis. They played on playground sometimes but always when they were empty. They didn't go to school so they went to places like this when there was no one else around. There were people around now, lots of people, and Sho….he sort of didn't want to be here. He wanted to be alone…but this was a playground, not an alone ground, so he had better start playing. So he had better get up and walk over to where everyone else was and just….play. Play like normal and…and forget. Forget about how much he missed baby sis, about how much she would have liked it here, about how she had just said her first word, about how she would wake up and he would be gone and-

And he went over to the swings.

He had always liked the swings. It felt like flying…well he could fly now…but when he had been too little to fly he has always liked the swings. He had liked standing up and swinging so hard and fast, hard enough and fast enough that he could have gone over the bar, though he never did. Never without big sis's help…and she stopped helping after he got hurt. Would baby sis have wanted to swing over the bar? There were baby swings on the other side of the park…but he would not have swung her over the bar. She was little and she could have gotten hurt…and nothing was going to hurt her…not while he was around….

But he wasn't around.

She had a mom. She had a mom to take her to the playground and push her on the swings. She had a mom to be there for her when she woke up. She had a mom to carry her from her crib and put her in the living room and put on her baby shows and play the catching things game and read her books and teach her how to draw and stuff….and Sho…he wasn't there but…but at least she had a mom. At least her mom would never go. Sho wished that he had been adopted. If he had been adopted then dad would have wanted him. Sho had no idea if it was easy or hard to make a person, the TV showed shows where it was easy and hard, but even if it was easy…well of course you would love someone you adopted more. You picked out an adopted person. When you made a person you never knew what you were going to get….

Sometimes you got disappointed.

Sho went over to the swings and stood on one. He knew that the polite thing to do would be to sit down but….but he wanted to stand. It felt more like flying this way. He could have flown away, he wanted to fly away. He wanted to kick off from the ground and fly away…and leave all of this behind. This place, baby sis, the way he felt…all of his memories. No wonder dad never came here. There were a lot of memories for him, ones about when he was a kid, and maybe this place would have too many of Sho's memories too. Memories of how he and baby sis had so much fun…memories of the time when he was here before and Fukuda dragged him around showing him stuff from the past, even memories now of standing on a swing and going higher and higher and higher….flying almost….but not really. He knew how to fly but he also knew not to do that around normal people. They didn't even know that powers existed. They thought that everyone was normal like them. Sho wished that he could have been normal. Not without powers but just…he wished that he could have been them. He saw them all. The moms and the dads, the big brothers and the big sisters, the little brothers and the little sisters….even the baby brothers and the baby sisters.

He had never gone to the playground with his whole family before.

He wished that he could have. Mom used to take him to the playground. Even after she got sick and had to spend her whole day sleeping because she didn't have any strength…she took him to the playground. Just him, eventually, not even with big sis. Like the one time they spend the whole day at the playground by the train station. It had been just him and her…and even back then he had wanted big sis there. He had…he had even wanted dad to have been there…..even though his dad was a jerk. He remembered….he had been little, a lot littler than he was now, and he had been standing on the swing going higher and higher…and he had been looking down at the people….

And he had wanted to be one of them.

He had wanted a dad who was nice and went to the park with you, a big sister who didn't boss you around all the time, and a mom who wasn't sick all the time. He had wanted a family…the sort of family that normal people had. Where dads were nice and moms weren't sick and your whole family was together all the time…and some stupid part of him still wanted that. Some stupid part of him still wanted that but only with baby sis. She looked enough like him and dad that she would have been able to blend in with their family…and she would have had such a great time. Mom would have pushed her on the swings or helped her ride the springy things and then he and big sis could have helped her crawl through the baby tunnels and go down the baby slide…and he could have taken her up on the big kid jungle gym with him even though everyone would have told him over and over again that it was dangerous…and stuff….

It would have been great.

But that was just a daydream. He did not have that life. He had a dad who didn't care if he lived or died….well beyond the fact that he needed a son to make more people named Suzuki…and he had a sister who acted more like a mom than a sibling but…but it was still good because she cared about him…and also he had Fukuda who was sort of like a dad but also wasn't his dad…and he had a baby sister who wasn't even his for real sister…even though he felt like she was…and even though he thought that she was….he wished that she was….

He swung higher.

Maybe he would make it over the bar on his own this time. Maybe the people below him would blur into nothing as he swung right over the bar and then…and then maybe he would swing back in time, back to when he had been little and he had been….happier than he was now…or maybe he would swing forward in time. Maybe he would swing forward in time until he was old enough to have his own job in Claw and he could work at the Seventh Division….but then baby sis wouldn't have been able to remember him because he had swung forward in time. She would have aged. Like all the people in front of him would have aged. The kids would have grown up and then they would have brought kids of their own. The happy families would be replaced by other happy families and then he would be on his own like usual…and then that would be that. Maybe Fukuda would have been waiting for him. He would maybe turn into an even grumpier old man…or maybe if Sho swung back in time he would be able to see dad and Fukuda here at this park. Dad would be a kid….a weird thought…and Fukuda would be a kid too…probably a grumpy kid. He was a nice person…to Sho…but he was a jerk to everyone else. That made sense since he was dad's best friend after all and dad was the king of all jerks. Maybe if he went back in time then he could teach dad not to be a jerk and he could teach Fukuda to be nicer and then everything would be better…or not. Messing with the timeline never worked out….

He could accidentally erase baby sis from existence.

So maybe he shouldn't swing over the bar. Maybe he should just swing like normal….or maybe he should just jump off. That was something else he liked to do on swings. He liked to get to the highest point and jump off…and it was fun. It felt just like flying…until he hit the ground….but he could catch himself now….but he didn't. He couldn't. He was surrounded by normal people now and normal people didn't have powers….

So he just let himself fall.

He tried to land on his feet like a cat but instead landed on his hands and knees….also sort of like a cat. If big sis had been there she would have rushed over all worried…and if baby sis had been there she would have clapped her hands and laughed…and he missed her little baby laughs so much. He missed her little baby laughs and he missed big sis's worry, how she was always so worried about him and stuff….how she was always trying to take care of him and stuff…and she only worried about him and cared about him because she loved him…..

He loved his sister…he loved his sisters….he loved both of his sisters….

But he did not love being on the ground. He pushed himself up until he was standing. This was one of those playground where the ground was made out of rubber. That was good. If the ground had been concrete or something then he would have gotten hurt…and maybe that would have been a good thing. If he had gotten hurt then he could have gone to Fukuda to get all healed up and then he could have told Fukuda that he wanted to get on the plane already and go on their last stop before he went back to big sis and everyone else…but that wasn't what happened. He was fine. He was perfectly fine; no concussions, contusions, or abrasions. He stood up. He was fine and he was normal and he was not normal and-

-and someone was looking at him.

He felt it. It felt like….sort of like another esper was focusing on him. A baby esper. Like when baby sis used all of her baby focus and watched him…but that did not feel like baby sis. He couldn't even tell the color of the aura of the esper that was watching him…and he couldn't feel….he closed his eyes. He could hear the normal people all around him, they were talking and laughing and playing, and if he focused hard enough he could even be aware of them….and stuff….but only a little bit. They didn't have auras…but someone here did….sort of like a baby aura….or like a very new Awakened….or something.

Maybe he was just imagining things.

His attention kept on getting drawn up to…to the left and then up…he opened his eyes. Oh. The big kid jungle gym. It looked like a rocket ship. The outside was all metal for climbing but the very top was like a treehouse….he wondered if dad had ever played here when he had been a kid. It would have been a thing that dad would have done, since he liked space and rockets and stuff, and maybe he was just feeling thirty year old energy that hung around from dad and stuff….it certainly felt weak enough to have been thirty years old….but it didn't feel a thing like dad. It didn't feel like much of anything. Sort of like having a bug land on you….or something…

Still, he climbed the jungle gym.

He went over to the jungle gym and started climbing. This was weird. Usually he climbed with big sis and usually they couldn't go up very high since she worried about people looking up her dress and stuff…and Sho didn't get it. If she was so worried about people looking up her dress then why not wear tights? Or pants? Sho had never once in his life understood dresses…or wanting to look up them. There was a girl climbing in front of him but he didn't look up her dress. That would have just been weird. Well he knew that he was supposed to want to but it seemed pointless. So girls wore underwear, big deal, so did everyone else in the world. It wasn't like they were naked or anything like that…and even then he wouldn't have looked because that seemed weird and also like the sort of thing that you got slapped in the face for like on TV…and also it wasn't weird that he didn't care about that, about the girl in front of him, because he had a girlfriend and he only cared about her…not that he wanted to see her naked or up her dress either…but he was ten and also not a weirdo. He was normal.

Well sort of normal.

He was normal enough to move so he wasn't climbing behind the girl anymore, he wasn't a weirdo or anything like that, but he was only climbing this stupid thing to get to the top to see if he had been feeling an esper or not. If he had been feeling another esper….well if there was an adult hiding up there he'd tell Fukuda so he could tell the Division guys to get over there and recruit him but if it was a kid….he remember the Gifted Child, that was what they called the kid who escaped from Claw all those years ago, and he never wanted to be responsible for a kid getting stolen and stuff. Shimazaki said that there were people stealers everywhere and he used to be one of them before he became a hit man. Sho didn't ever want to be a people stealer.

So if this turned out to be another kid he would keep his mouth shut.

Even if the point of Claw was to collect new espers Sho would not sell out another kid. Breaking loyalty was bad, Shimazaki said that he almost lost a finger for that when he had been a kid, but Sho….he had more loyalty to other kids than to Claw. He didn't run Claw, dad and big sis did, and he didn't even rank. Dad's son was not a rank. Big sis had a rank, she was a vice president along with Fukuda, but Sho was just….dad's son. Dad wanted to find more espers, especially kid espers, and Sho….he thought that…well dad could go fuck himself. That was what Sho thought.

He wasn't going to sell out another kid even if he ended up in a traitor hole or with a finger cut off or anything like that.

And it was another kid he had been feeling. There weren't any adults up there at all. When he had been little, very little, mom had brought him to the playground and climbed to the top of the tower, the playground by the old house had a castle theme, and then she'd had someone take a picture. He had been a baby then, six months old mom had said, and he hadn't even seemed very happy….probably because big sis hadn't been in the picture. She hadn't been in any pictures until she was two, well she had but mom said that she had lost all of those pictures, but maybe she would have liked it too…to climb up here with big sis…or maybe not because there were only kids here. No moms, no babies, and no big sisters who thought that they were moms.

Just a bunch of kids.

The girl who had been in front of him, the one with the long black hair and the really big hair clip, said something to some guy sitting in the corner and then went down the slide. That looked like a fun slide, it went from the very top all the way to the bottom, and Sho…he wanted to go down that slide….but also not really. Because he might have found another esper. Yes, that was it. Because he might have found another esper and not because he just….if he went back down to the bottom then he would have to come back to the top again…and then he would go to the bottom again…and then the top….again and again and again….

And it just seemed sort of….

Fun and not fun. Playgrounds…they were not fun when your big sis wasn't there. When your little sis wasn't there. When it was just you. When you didn't know any of the other kids. He wanted….for the first time in his life he didn't want to play at a playground…..for the first time in his life he wanted…he just wanted to go…but that was just because he couldn't feel the other esper anymore. The one with the little baby aura…and it hadn't been a baby. There were no babies up here.

Just a lot of kids.

Someone pushed past him. We went over to the wall where that other guy was sitting and just…sat down…because that seemed like the place to sit if he was sitting there. Big hairclip girl had gone and now that guy was all alone…and he was just sitting there with his knees drawn up to his chest and he seemed….tired. Mad and tired. Sort of like he had been mad for a while and now he was tired of being mad…so he was just tired. Sho wondered what was up with him. Sho wondered why he wanted to be near him. He felt…sort of like a prickling at his aura…like a big was walking along it…

Better a bug walking on his aura than a goldfish in his stomach.

Because he sort of felt that too. He felt like that the nearer he got to the other guy but he also wanted to be near to the other guy so he got closer…to see if he was an esper or if Sho was just imaging things….and that was why he wanted to be near. Not because he liked the other guy's hair or his hoodie or his eyes…they were that same sort of blackish brown that big sis's eyes were….and not because he just…liked his Zootopia hoodie….or anything like that. He just….had to see if this guy was an esper.

So that was why he scooted closer and closer until he was next to him.

He had scooted so slowly and so subtly that the other guy might not have even noticed. Shimazaki had said that the trick to sneaking up on people wasn't too move so fast that they didn't notice but, instead, was to move so slowly that they didn't notice. That they had no idea that you were even there. He said that it worked on girls really well, that sometimes if you slid up next to them slowly enough like when you were dancing with them or something, they would think that you were there the whole time and even if you did surprise them they still wanted to be with you…but that might have just been because Shimazaki was really good looking.

Not that he noticed if other guys were good looking or not.

Not that he noticed it when other guys were taller than he was…or had really nice faces…nice hair….nice clothes…he didn't notice how other guys looked because he didn't notice other guys like that. He certainly didn't notice this guy like that. The way his hair stood up and went forwards and defied gravity. The way even though he had sort of a Minegishi look on his face it didn't make him look like a mean, eyebrowless, bastard…well also because he had eye brows and they were nice….and Sho had never noticed eyebrows before and he had no idea what counted as nice as far as eyebrows went….but this guy had nice eyebrows….

But Sho didn't notice these things about other guys so, of course, he was not noticing his eyebrows or how nice they were….or anything at all….and he was only getting so close because he just wanted to know if it was this guy with the baby aura, he Awakened aura…..the little baby Awakened aura….the aura that felt like ants walking across his aura….

Though he may have gotten a little too close.

"Can I help you?" asked the other guy. Sho….he had been leaning in close…and he scooted back as soon as he was noticed. The other guy took his knees down from his chest and then faced him. He looked…..a lot like big sis. They had the same eye color and theirs eyes were shaped the same….and also they had the same nose and mouth….and that was why Sho had been staring. Because he looked so much like big sis. That was all.

He was not weird.

But the other guy was looking at him like he was the biggest weirdo in the world. Sho didn't blame him. Sho had been the one staring at him like a weirdo after all so therefore it would have made sense for the other guy to think that he was weird…and he didn't want the other guy to think that he was weird. Sho…Sho wanted this other guy to like him…and they hadn't even met properly…but he still….

He didn't want to look like a weirdo.

"Um…..sorry. You uh….your hoodie is nice. It's Zootopia. I like Zootopia." Said Sho. He thought up a lie and he thought it up quick….well more of an excuse than a lie. What was he supposed to say? 'I think that you might be an esper and also you look just like my sister but even though you look like my sister you make the goldfish in my stomach swim and stuff and now it's even weirder than normal' or something like that? Yeah, that would have gone over REALLY well.

"Um….thanks. My mom got it for me I don't really….but thanks…" said the other guy. Well now Sho had screwed up. He had screwed up and now he needed to just leave. He needed to go down the slide and run away and just…not come back. He had messed up and Shimazaki had always said that when you messed up you had to try again with someone else….but he had been talking about trying to get girls to like you…and Sho was not trying to get a girl to like him…and also….also Sho didn't want to go because…um….

He might have been an esper!

If this kid was an esper but he hadn't awakened yet then…then he was in danger! He could have gotten caught by Claw's people stealers. Sho wished that they didn't have people stealers but he wasn't in charge yet….and he had to….to warn the kid…but only if he was an esper. If he wasn't an esper then Sho…well he would have running his mouth about Claw and all of that. He wasn't supposed to talk about all of that so…he needed to stick around for a while and…and see if this kid was an esper.

"So…um….I'm Sho. Suzuki Sho." said Sho. That as what you were supposed to do when you met someone. That was normal. That was normal and a normal person would have expected him to be normal…and he had to introduce himself like normal. Not like how he had introduced himself to Hideki all the way back at the party…and this was not like that…even though he felt all….

He didn't know how he felt and he didn't want to know how he felt.

"Kageyama Ritsu." Said the guy…said Ritsu…and now that Sho knew his name….he didn't know what else he was supposed to say. He had introduced himself and then Ritsu had introduce himself…and now he had no clue what to say. He wasn't going to give him the Claw speech, no, even if Ritsu had bene an esper Sho knew that he would have been weirded out if he went on about how great dad was going to make the world when he took it over….and also he didn't want Ritsu to join Claw. He was a normal person and he had a family and they were probably normal people, dad had said that having even one esper parent was rare, and Sho didn't want to take a kid away from his normal mom and dad and brother and sister who loved him…and stuff…..

No. He didn't want to be responsible for that at all.

"So…um…." Said Sho. Those were just placeholder words because he didn't have anything to say. Talk about Zootopia? No, he said that he didn't really like it. Talk about games? But that would have been pointless since he didn't even have his DS on him so…so he had nothing to talk about…and even if he did have something to talk about…he had no idea what to say….and….

"Don't take this the wrong way but what do you want?" asked Ritsu

"Um….I don't really want anything. I just climbed up here and….yeah. I'm up here." Said Sho. He sounded like an idiot. He was an idiot and Ritsu thought that he was an idiot….and they would never be friends now…and he really wanted to be friends with Ritsu….

"You can go down the slide, you know." Said Ritsu motioning towards the opening of the rocket ship they were in. If they had been in space for real then Sho would have gone out the airlock if he had gone out there….and he was just playing pretend…and that was why he was having trouble breathing. That was all.

"I know." Said Sho. He eyed the slide. He could have just slid down and pretend that he had never felt another esper and never met this kid…and it would have been easy….but he didn't want to. He didn't want to go down there with all the normal people and…and stuff. He didn't want to leave but…but he also didn't want to stay where he was not wanted.

"So why don't you?" asked Ritsu. There was something in his tone…and the look in his eyes…and Sho felt like…like someone had kicked him in the chest. Like he had been kicked in the chest with a really big shoe and it hurt and…and he just….maybe he should just go.

"Do you want me to go? Because I can I just…wanted to talk to you, I guess. I don't know. I don't talk to a lot of other people….sorry." Said Sho. He had messed up and maybe, even if he had been an esper, the best thing to do was just leave Ritsu alone. Don't be desperate, Shimazaki had said, because people could smell desperation on you from a meter away….and that probably went for making friends, too. Shimazaki had said that girls and guys could smell desperation so he had been talking about making friends…and stuff…and maybe Sho smelled so desperate that the thing to do would be to go.

He started to scoot away.

And he felt something press against his aura really fast. He had no idea what that had been, it felt like the time a dragonfly had flown into his hair, and that might have been Ritsu….or it might have just been his imagination. He didn't know. He didn't know what was with him. The way he felt. The way he just…he felt like staying forever…and he felt like running away too. He felt like….like flying away…and he could fly away….and he wanted to fly away…but he couldn't fly away. Ritsu may have been a normal person and as far as normal people knew people did not fly away.

And Sho had to be a normal person.

"Sorry. I was being a jerk." Said Ritsu

"You weren't. I was bothering you. I can go if you want me to." Said Sho

"You can stay. It's not my playground, I'm not going to kick you out or anything….sorry. I don't talk to a lot of other people either." Said Ritsu. He sighed and turned to face Sho. He put his hands in his hoodie pockets and slumped against the walls of the rocket ship….and Sho almost wished that it had been a real rocket ship because at least that way, if they had actually been blasting off, then he would have had an excuse for the way his heart was beating and the way his stomach was absolutely alive with goldfish.

"But what about that girl from before?" asked Sho. He asked before he could stop himself from asking. So he had been talking to a girl. So what? There were girls everywhere and that didn't mean that Ritsu was going out with that girl or anything like that…and Sho didn't even know why he cared if Ritsu was going out with that girl or not.

"That's just Takane. She's my neighbor and she talks to me sometimes. I think that she likes me…..I don't care. I'm not going back." Said Ritsu. Sho…well now he had even more goldfish in his stomach than before. It was like he had swallowed a whole aquarium…and he didn't know why. He didn't know what this was or how to make it better…and he didn't want to think about it. He knew what had happened last time he had met someone and felt like…this….

He tried his hardest not to turn red.

That had been…that had been so very…he had no idea. He had no idea how he felt now or how he had felt then….well he knew how he had felt then…but he didn't want to think about…about it. About how he had felt….about how he felt now. He closed his eyes and let his aura do the seeing for a minute. He saw….huh. Ritsu had sort of an aura…and some people were just like that. People who hadn't Awakened yet, people who may never awaken, people who would need to be shoved into awakening chambers….and Sho was going to keep his mouth shut about all of this….because he didn't want anyone to go through what he had gone through….

But at least he knew why he wanted to be near Ritsu…he was another esper….and that was that.

"Go-going where? I mean going back where? Where….where did she want you to go back to?" asked Sho finding some more words. That was something to say. He wasn't going to say something ridiculous like 'do you like anyone'….because he didn't even know where that one had come from. It had just popped into his head and…and he didn't know why. What did he care if guys had girlfriends? What did he care if this guy had a girlfriend? He had a girlfriend.

"Home. She wants me to go back home…she lives near me…and I guess she heard me and my parents fighting." Said Ritsu

"Shit. You ran away from home?" asked Sho

"Yes….no….I don't know. I just needed to leave. My parents….they get weird in the spring. I don't even know why…well I do know why…and it's so stupid! It's just….sorry." said Ritsu

"No, you don't have to be. I know how bad parents can be….well it's just my dad now….but he's an asshole and….and I've thought about running away before but I never had the guts to do it." Said Sho

"I…..I didn't run away. I didn't run away I just….couldn't take it anymore. They never let me go anywhere or do anything….and I get it. They don't want anything to happen to me because…." Said Ritsu

"I know how that feels. My sister never lets me do anything sometimes. She treats me like a baby and I hate it." Said Sho

"At least your sister is still alive." Said Ritsu lowly. Sho wished that he had an undo button. Fuck! Well to be fair how was he supposed to know that Ritsu's sister was dead…but fair had nothing to do with this or anything else because…because life wasn't fair! If life had been fair then he wouldn't have said something so…so…so…stupid!

"Oh…fuck. Sorry. I'm…I'm really sorry. I didn't know." said Sho. He needed to figure out a way to backtrack, to make this better because right now he had said something so stupid…and Ritsu was probably really hurt, too. Sho didn't know what he would do if his sister died. If either of his sisters died. Baby sis might not have come from mom and dad but she was still his sister and the thought of her dying…of never seeing her again…not for a long while but never again….it really hurts. Like he swallowed a fork and tried to get it out with a knife but then the knife got caught in his stomach so now he had to dig all of that out with a spoon…or something.

"No….I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. It's just…my parents get really weird in the spring because my sister was born in the spring and…yeah. They get really weird about me because of her…and yeah. That's why I'm up here." Said Ritsu. The feeling was still there and Sho…he hated this feeling. He had messed up and he hadn't even realized it…and now…well now he needed to figure out what to say…if there was even anything that he could say…to make this better….

"Oh…well I'm still sorry. I don't know what I would do without my sister….sisters. I have two. I have an older sister who takes care of me and another one…well she got adopted and I don't see her very often….and that's not as bad as them being dead. I haven't seen my older sister in a while and I won't see my little sister in a while….but that's not as bad as them being dead…so sorry." said Sho. He just…said words. He just said words and he hoped that these were the right words to say because they were the only ones he had. They were honest words, the most honest, and…and he didn't want to lie so he had might as well be honest. He never spoke this honestly with anyone….not usually….but it was just sort of…easy to talk to this Ritsu guy…even though they had just met. Maybe because they had just met. Maybe because he didn't know who Sho was and he didn't have any idea of who he had to be….any expectations….and it was…it was nice…

And he could see his aura.

He couldn't see Ritsu's aura…but he was mostly sure that it was there. His aura seemed to be mostly sure that it was there because his aura kept on touching Ritsu…and it was….a good feeling. He did feel like he had an aura but not much of one. That was why his aura kept on picking at Ritsu's non aura. It was like they were trying to touch….like his aura was trying to touch Ritsu's because they couldn't touch in real life…

Not that Sho wanted to touch him or anything.

Not that Sho wanted to pretend that this rocket was theirs and theirs alone and they were one a deep space mission or something…even though that would have been a fun game and all…but he couldn't pretend that they were alone because the fact that there were other people around…that's what kept him a normal distance from Ritsu. There were other people running past them. They climbed up the jungle gym, went into the rocket ship, and went down the slide. They ran and laughed and pushed and screamed…and now there was kind of a traffic jam since some kid was trying to go up the slide like a jerk. Sho wanted to be alone with Ritsu….

And that was not the thing to want.

He was just the biggest jerk in the world, now wasn't he? Here he is listening to Ritsu talk about his poor dead sister and all Sho wanted was to reach over and hold his hand…to comfort him. That was all. Not because of any other reason than that. He had a girlfriend, anyway, and he was not a cheater. Cheaters were traitors and traitors rotted in traitor holes. He did not want to hold Ritsu's hand for the purposes of hand holding not only because he had a girlfriend but also because he was a guy and he was different enough as it was and even if he did like another guy that would just make him more different and dad would hate him more than he already did and everyone would think that he was a weirdo….well not big sis since she liked everyone….but everyone else would think that he was a weirdo and no guy would ever like him back anyway so there!

He put his hands in his pockets just to be safe.

"No, I think that's worse…being away from your sisters, I mean. I at least never knew my sister, she died when I was one, so I don't really miss her. I don't even know her. All I know is that mom and dad have a picture of her up in the family shrine next to my grandparents. It'd be worse if I knew her…I guess. I don't know. Maybe it would have been better if I had some real memories…then my parents wouldn't have all the memories…I think. I don't know. They're just…so weird in the spring. It's like…like they lost her and they think they'll lose me…I don't know. Sorry to drop all of this on you especially after we just met." Said Ritsu. He was red, now, and he was looking down. Sho didn't get what he was so upset about. He was talking about something that was bothering him, that wasn't embarrassing, and even if it was Sho was imagining things that were a million times more embarrassing than talking about your feelings so there! He won…not that he wanted to win.

"It's ok. I don't mind. Youre going through a lot and it sucks. I wish I knew what you were going through….well not really because my sisters would have to die…but also kind of because it looks like it sucks…and stuff." Said Sho. He had been trying to sound like big sis, how she could just be so nice all the time, but instead he ended up sounding awkward like her…and now he was glad that he'd be going soon…because then at least this guy would forget him and how awkward he was….

He actually didn't want to go.

He didn't want to leave baby sis and he didn't want to leave this park and…and he wanted to get to know this guy better. He wanted to…to be his friend. He knew what this feeling was. He had gotten this about people he wanted to be friends with before. Since he had been really little. He just….really wanted to be his friend…that was all. And maybe Ritsu wanted to be friends with him too. He was sitting closer now….well he sort of had to. A bunch of kids were shouting down the slide now, apparently the jerk climbing up the slide wasn't going to give up and now they were at war, so Ritsu had to scoot closer to be heard…or he could have started shouting…

Sho was not complaining.

"Thanks for listening. Nobody ever listens to me." Said Ritsu

"That sucks. People don't really listen to me anyway…well my best friend does…but most people don't." said Sho. He had been about to say that big sis listened to him but this did not seem like it was the time or the place to bring up how awesome big sis was. This maybe wasn't the time or the place to bring up how awesome Shimazaki was…because then he'd start thinking about him…and stuff. How awesome he was…how much he missed him….and other stuff that he should not have been thinking about.

"People suck…but yeah, most people don't. You….you don't." said Ritsu. He got a little closer and now…now Sho knew he was feeling his aura…and he could almost see it. He could see blue, dark blue, and he could see red…and his aura was touching Ritsu's and…and it was….weird. Weird in a good way and weird in a bad way and weird in a way where he was glad that he was surrounded by normal people who couldn't see this.

"Th-thanks….you don't suck either." Said Sho. That was just….how he felt. He didn't think that Ritsu sucked. He thought that Ritsu was…he was…he did not suck. He didn't suck at all….in fact…it was…this was the opposite of sucking….and it didn't blow either…it was just…this was…

Warm.

He was warm and he knew that he was red…and maybe it was just hot out. Even though he was in a hoodie and everyone was in a hoodie. He was in a hoodie because it was kind of cold out…but maybe it was hot out and nobody realized it…because Ritsu was all red too….and Sho was close enough to him to see how red he was…and he wanted to scoot back…but he also didn't.

"Really, you don't. Thanks for listening to me. I mean you don't even know me but…thanks for that. Nobody's ever listened to me like that before." Said Ritsu. He took his hand out of his hoodie pocket and put it down in front of him. Sho…he did the same. He did that to be polite…or something, Fukuda had said before that it was rude to keep your hands in your pockets when you talked to someone…so he was just….not being rude. That was why he took his hand out of his pocket and put it down by Ritsu's. That was why. No other reason.

None whatsoever.

"A-any time." Said Sho. His voice came out weird there, weirdly high, and he didn't know why. He swallowed. He was….he had only gotten closer because…because it was crowded in there…and that was why he was so close…and so warm…and of course he was warm. He was in a small space and someone was close to him…and he was only close because…because there were so many other people around. People wanted to go down the slide and up and slide and…and it was just crowded….and stuff…and that was why he was so close…

And that was why Ritsu's hand touched his.

Sho couldn't breathe. He felt Ritsu's middle finger poking his middle finger…and that had probably been an accident…and also it was an accident when his middle finger and then his ring finger….and his pointer finger…and then his whole hand…his whole hand was on top of Sho's…and he knew that he should pull his hand away….because he was….he was thinking thoughts that were not true and getting into things that…that he should not have gotten into. This was just…just because it was crowded. That was all….

And Sho was the one being weird.

He was being weird because he was the one leaning in closer now and he was the one who wasn't pulling his hand away and he was the one with a whole aquarium in his stomach and he was the one thinking things that could not be true. He was the one thinking that maybe Ritsu wanted to hold his hand for the sake of holding hands. He was the one thinking that maybe he wanted to hold Ritsu's hand for the sake of holding hands. He was the one thinking that….a lot of thoughts that he should not have been thinking. Cheater thoughts. Thoughts about another guy that he should not have had. Thoughts that he wished he could just exorcise from his mind like spirits from the world….

Thoughts like kiss me.

"I-It's crowded in here. I should climb down now." Said Sho quickly. He pulled his hand away from Ritsu's quickly…and Ritsu snatched his back and….and he seemed sort of hurt…and stuff…and Sho…he just….Sho didn't even know.

He just didn't know.

"Yeah….I should climb down too. People are probably wondering where I am." Said Ritsu. He didn't look at Sho. Sho didn't look at him. They both just sort of looked off in opposite directions for a moment before Sho remembered how to move. He crawled backwards and climbed down the side of the jungle gym. The war for the slide was going on. He could see it if he turned his head to the side as he climbed down. There were a bunch of little kids trying to climb up, a bunch of big kids trying to go down, and one guy hanging off the side and swinging back and forth…and Sho watched what was happening over there. He watched what was happening over there because otherwise he would have to look up and see the person climbing down…the person who he had held hands with…because it was crowded…and the person who was also climbing down….

But maybe he should have been paying attention.

Because he head a slip, a yelp, and then…and then he didn't think. He just reached out and caught Ritsu…with his powers. He caught Ritsu with his powers as he fell down beside him…and then quickly took his hand and put him back on the jungle gym where he belonged. Sho hadn't been thinking. He had just seen someone, another esper falling….and then he had caught him…and now he was being stared at. He fucked up. Even if Ritsu was an esper, he was barely an esper, using his powers in public like this….and in front of someone who didn't even know what powers were….and he didn't or he would have said something….that was….

This was not good.

Also his catching could use some work. He had heard the hollow sort of sound metal made when you hit it….and now he knew why. Ritsu had a big red gash on his forehead…and Sho was glad that a bunch of kids had just fallen off the slide and people were freaking out over there….that way nobody would be freaking out over here….and they had every reason to freak out since…since Ritsu had a massive gash on his head….but for some reason he wasn't freaking out….

He was just staring.

Sho didn't know what to do or to say so he just….did something. He jumped. He jumped down and it felt like flying, for a moment, but he didn't fly because he had already used his powers in public once and once was bad enough. He hit the ground on all fours like a cat and then ran for the nearest along place that he could find. The tunnel. He ran for the tunnel and just….hid.

He caught his breath.

He brought his knees up to his chest and caught his breath. That was…..he didn't care if Fukuda was done or not. He was going to find him and then he was going to drag him kicking and screaming to the airport and then they were going to get on that plane and fly away. That was what was going to happen. He was not going to stay in Seasoning City for a moment longer. He needed go and he needed to…to stay and…and calm down…

But he couldn't calm down.

He felt someone near to him…and he had been about to tell whoever it was to fuck off and let him freak out in peace…but then he saw who it was. He saw who it was and he felt who it was and…and he didn't want to tell him to fuck off…but he didn't want to see him again. He was the one who made him feel like this and he was the one who had fallen off and he was the one with the blood on his head and shirt and he was the one who…..who….

Sho didn't even know.

He lifted his head up and tried to breathe. He tried to calm down. He wanted….he wanted to kick Ritsu out and also…and also a big part of him wanted to kiss Ritsu still. To lean in and kiss him like he had been about to do in the rocket ship…but he didn't because not only would that have bene weird it also would have made him a cheater and he was not a cheater. He was….he was a lot of things but he was not a cheater.

He was a lot of things.

"How did you do that?" asked Ritsu. He sounded serious there and he was serious. That was the same face that big sis made when she was deathly serious about something…and it was so weird how much he looked like big sis….but Sho just wanted to see big sis again. Maybe he had just been praying really hard that big sis stuck her head in the tunnel and told him that it was time to go home and do school work or eat dinner or take a bath or something…anything. But big sis was in a whole other country and Sho was in a whole other country and there was no way that she was going to be able to come and save him from this….

From his own stupidity and his own feelings.

"Do what?" asked Sho stupidly. He just…maybe if he played dumb then Ritsu would stop asking or think that he had hit his head and went crazy or something. Sho knew that he was not supposed to talk about what he was, about what he could do, with people who weren't espers…and Ritsu barely counted. Baby sis had more of an aura than he did and she was only a little baby. Ritsu…if he got caught then he'd definitely be put in an Awakening machine…Sho felt the scars on his arms….nobody deserved that fate.

"You saved me….well you broke my head opened but you saved me…and I want to know how. Tell me how you did that and don't try and tell me that I'm imagining things because I know that I wasn't." said Ritsu

"I'm not supposed to talk about this…and you don't want to know anyway. If I tell you then…then I don't know what's going to happen." Said Sho

"That just makes me want to know even more. You know that right?" asked Ritsu

"Well you shouldn't want to know! Just…I don't know. If I tell you then you'll look for us and then they'll find you and if they find you they'll catch you and do experiments on you and then…then you'll never see your parents again and stuff." Said Sho

"What the hell are you talking about?" asked Ritsu

"Just…can you move things without touching them? Or, like, sense people when they're near? Or fly? Or put up a barrier? Or any of the other stuff that…that normal people can't do?" asked Sho

"….sometimes I get a weird feeling off of people….like I know that they're there….and sometimes I can see….colors? If that makes sense. Like you. You're red." Said Ritsu

"That's my aura….ok. You can see auras…and even my baby sister can do that…but that's not going to be good enough." Said Sho

"For what? You aren't making sense." Said Ritsu

"For Claw…that's where…where I come from. Listen, you…you might be able to do the stuff that I can do and you might not be able to and if you can't then…then they'll do experiments on you until you can…and I don't want that to happen to you or to anyone." Said Sho

"Now you really aren't making sense…" said Ritsu slowly. Sho…he had to say something…because he could not let anything happen…..

"I am. Just…don't ever tell anyone what you can do and if you sense someone else like me just…run away, I guess. There's a whole division here and….yeah. Just…just be careful and…and you didn't hear any of this from me!" said Sho

"I-I get it…and I didn't hear it from you. I don't know who these people are or….or even what that was but…but you seem scared so…so I'll just keep this to myself." Said Ritsu. Sho…Sho could have kissed him then. He was listening. He was listening which meant that he was going to be fine…and now there was a new kind of scared inside of himself. Well he had been scared for Ritsu and now for himself…because he had betrayed Claw…and also because he had betrayed…betrayed himself…his brain was betraying him…and stuff….it had been betraying him back then and

"Good. Just….sorry. I'm just sorry." said Sho. He crawled out of the tunnel and just…ran. He ran towards the direction of Fukuda's aura. He ran and he didn't look back. How could he had been so stupid? Well he was always stupid but back there he had been extra stupid. He had almost told someone from the outside…well he had told someone from the outside…and also he had betrayed Claw…he was a traitor…if dad found out that not only had he found another esper but a kid esper…and not only had he found a kid esper but he had warned him to stay away from Claw…

Sho wondered who would be looking through the spaces between their fingers while dad beat him up…maybe even to death….

And he didn't want that. He knew, he had always known, that dad could kill him. Dad was the strongest esper around and he had killed people before…traitors. Sho was now a traitor…at least he would be if dad ever found out….and he wouldn't. He couldn't. Sho…he ran to Fukuda's aura. He felt like if he put some distance between himself and this place it would be better….like he expected dad to pop out at any time and be all 'got ya' and…and stuff. He needed….he needed….

He needed Fukuda.

It was not a long run to him. He was at grandma and grandpa's grave and he waa….it looked like he was praying and stuff…and Sho didn't care. He ran up and…and then…and then he did care….because he needed to be calm. He needed to be calm because then Fukuda would know. He was still dad's best friend and if he knew that Sho had betrayed dad….well dad did not like to be betrayed….so he had to keep this to himself. Another secret. Sometimes it felt like his life was just secret on top of secret on top of secret….

But that was just the way things went for him, it seemed.

"Hey Sho. I was just about to come and get you, actually. Is everything…did you run here?" asked Fukuda. Sho wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

"Yeah, I ran here. So what?" Said Sho simply. What, was he not allowed to run now? Why did Fukuda have to be so suspicious? Why did he have to be so nosy all the time? Hadn't he ever heard of privacy!?

"Nothing. I was just wondering if you were ok…or if something had happened." Said Fukuda. Sho looked away. Fukuda had always been good at getting stuff out of him…but he could not get this out of him. Any of this. The hand holding, the weird feelings, and especially how he had messed up and used his power. He loved Fukuda and trusted him…but there was no one in the world he could trust with these feelings.

"Yeah, lots of stuff happened. It's a big world, things happened in it. Let's go." said Sho

"I meant to you, Sho, did anything happen to you? Not even something bad? Did anything good happen? Did you have fun? Make any new friends?" asked Fukuda. Sho…he wanted to dig a hole and then stay there until it became his grave. Did he know? No, that was crazy. He didn't know…nobody knew…and Sho was going to keep it that way.

"Yeah, I met a guy and we hung out and that's all that happened. Let's go already. We have places to be." said Sho

"Oh, I get it. Alright, I've been here long enough. Just let me say goodbye to your grandparents." Said Fukuda

"Well come on. Before they get any deader." Said Sho. He shifted in place as he waited. He needed to et going before he messed something else up. Baby sis should have been awake by now and she must have been missing him…and also he had messed up not only in leaving her but….but yeah. Mess up after mess up after mess up…and now he just wanted to go already…

Normally Sho would have been happy to be with Fukuda, to have seen baby sis, and to have gone to the playground….but now he just wanted to go.


	306. Playing Dolls and Dress Up

Minori was Mob's new friend….and she was….ok.

She was…a person in Mob's life who wanted to spend time with her. Minori had said that they were friends and that meant something. People didn't just go around saying that they were friends with other people. That wasn't how it worked or else everyone in the world would have been friends with everyone else in the world. It was hard to make friends, to decide who you wanted to be friends with, well at least Mob thought that it was. No kids had ever wanted to be friends with her before.

And being friends with Minori was ok.

She wasn't that good at playing dolls….but that was ok. Not everyone could be good at everything. She didn't seem to be having fun. She didn't make them fight like Sho did when she convinced him to play with her, she didn't dress them up and brush their hair like Shibata did when he played with her, and she didn't even make them live in a terrible dystopian future world where Elsa was a dictator and Anna led a resistance against her like Minegishi did. Even Shimazaki was better at playing dolls even though he mostly just felt their clothes and their hair and made them fall in love with each other when the only ones who liked girls were Merida and Mulan.

Still, though, Minori could still be her friend…she was just her friend that wasn't good a playing with dolls and that was ok.

"Do you want to be someone else? You can be one of the Elsas if you want. One of them is the evil twin but I can never remember which." Said Mob. Minori might have just not found the right doll yet. She had said, before, that she didn't like to play with dolls but then she called Mob today and asked her to come over to play with dolls and braid hair and smoke….so that was why Mob was here. Minori must have liked playing with dolls a little, even Minegishi liked playing with dolls and they were almost twenty eight now. Minori might just have not found the right doll yet. The right doll was everything. Like how Mob hardly ever played with those dolls that dad kept on getting her that looked like her but she could play for hours with her Disney dolls.

Maybe she should have brought more kinds of dolls, though.

She wished that Minori had some dolls in her room. She mostly just had teddy bears and stuff. Not even a dollhouse. If she had at least one doll then Mob would have been able to get a feel for how she played with dolls and then she could have brought some others from her collection. Minori might not have liked dolls…but then again if she didn't like dolls then why would she invite Mob over to play with dolls? She had specifically said to play with dolls…

Friendship could be very complicated sometimes.

"No, I'm fine. I'll be Anna or whatever. What were we doing again?" asked Minori as she held her doll as best she could. She hadn't expected her to actually want to play dolls for this long. Seriously. This was what she did with her time? God. Minori could feel herself dying of boredom. She hadn't played dolls since she had been at most seven and now here she was.

God, this friendship.

Suzuki was surprisingly boring for someone who hung out with adults and drank and did drugs. She played dolls and braided her hair and that was about it. So fun. Minori wondered how much longer she had to humor her for. That was the thing about making a new friend, you had to make them think that you liked them. That way they would want to hang out with you. She didn't hate Suzuki….she just would have ignored her if they had been in the same class. But they weren't in the same class and she had hidden depths or whatever.

Really hidden depths.

"Um….they were going to go to the movies but first they had to go to pick up Ariel. She was protesting the sushi restaurant because they served her subjects. It would have been ok if they had just been the condemned criminals but instead they went back to fishing and now she's protesting them and if they don't stop then she's going to go to war but then that's going to be a problem because the restaurant is in Arendelle and that would mean going up against Elsa but the whole things was thought up by Elsa's evil twin and….sorry. I gave the whole game away." said Mob. She was playing her and Minegishi's game, well a recap of it. The war was over and now Atlantica was subject to harsh sanctions and Ariel was losing power so her daughter Melody was staging a coup….that was why she was in a recap game. She and Minori could just have a divergent timeline. She knew that she was being bossy but Minori wasn't really doing a lot of world building.

Mob had never heard of someone being bad at playing dolls before but what she didn't know could fill a warehouse.

"….wow. When I was little I just had them go to the mall or whatever." Said Minori

"Oh…uh…we can have them do that too. We can built a mall…um…do you have any old shoe boxes? They could be the stores and I brought some extra clothes so we can set up some stores and then we can decide who works where and who's just visiting." Said Mob smiling. She made herself smile. Minori had said that her face was all frozen and creepy. That was true. She didn't smile a lot…she was used to people with auras and when you had an aura people could just tell how you were feeling…but normal people were different.

It was sort of hard having a normal person for a friend.

For her whole life she hadn't been allowed to be friends with normal people. Dad only wanted her to be friends with espers but now he changed his mind. He said that she could be friends with normal girls because there weren't really any girl espers. She could be friends with all the normal girls she wanted but not any boys because she could only marry an esper, he had said, even though Mob was talking about making friends with people, not marrying them….

But she wasn't going to argue with dad in case he decided to change his mind and tell her she couldn't have any friends at all.

"I don't have any shoeboxes, sorry." said Minori distractedly. She had been distracted by her phone vibrating on the rug next to her. She clicked it open…and then stopped herself from throwing it across the room. She could have thrown it and she should have thrown it but dad was being completely unfair. He was all 'you get one new phone a year' even though it wasn't her fault that they made these things so flimsy that they came apart whenever you threw them.

God, dad could be so unreasonable sometimes.

And so could everything else in life. This was not fair. She clicked her phone off and slammed it down onto her rug. She could feel Suzuki staring at her. She never blinked. God, she was so creepy sometimes. Maybe she had a disorder or something…but that was whatever. She was a weirdo and she acted like she was in the first grade but she wasn't a total time sink.

She was just sort of a fixer upper, that was all.

"Did you get bad news? I'm sorry if you did." Said Mob. She hoped that nothing bad had happened to Minori. She had slammed her phone down pretty hard. Thank God the rug was soft. Her phone was so nice it would have been a shame if anything happened to it. She didn't get why people did that, smashed their phones, but it wasn't Minori's fault. She just didn't have a big sister to teach her not to do that like she had taught Sho and she didn't have a mom either. Mob had no clue where her mom was but she wasn't going to ask.

That would not have been polite.

And you always had to be polite to your friends. Especially your new friends of only a few days. She wondered if maybe she shouldn't have asked if Minori had gotten bad news. Maybe it was none of her business…but of course her friend being happy was her business. It was her business and she had to be a good friend and she had to ask…but maybe she had been nosy there. Even Minegishi said that she could sometimes be nosy….

Friendship was very hard sometimes.

"Just this bitch transfer student from my class. She's posting these pictures of herself drinking some fruity drink on some island or something with this guy from the middle school our school feeds into…it's complicated. She's a total bitch, that's all you need to you." Said Minori. God. How was she supposed to top that? Dad's guards wouldn't let her off the grounds and even then where would she go? She was in the middle of nowhere and nature pictures were so stupid. She needed to go and be somewhere or do something or….something!

Because what was she supposed to post about? Playing with Frozen dolls with a super tall first grader?

"Ok." Said Mob as she tried to follow what Minori had told her. She learned something new about her new friend. She could talk really fast when she wanted to.

"I mean like who the hell would do something like that? Like….seriously. So tacky. We're in the same year and she's on a trip with her parents. Of course there's nothing but juice or whatever in that coconut." Said Minori

"There could be water….coconut water. That's inside of….coconuts." said Mob. Maybe she had said the wrong thing because Minori was giving her a really long look.

"Who's side are you on, Suzuki?" asked Minori

"Yours….um….if there are sides then I'm on yours. Not your friend's…and also you can call me Mob." said Mob. She hadn't been aware that there were sides….but she had never had any friends her own age besides Minori before. She seemed mad but Mob didn't know what she was mad about…but then again she had never done any of that internet stuff. Take pictures and post them. She was too shy to make YouTube videos, and also she had nothing to talk about. There was all of that other social stuff but she didn't have that since she lived with everyone she knew and was friends with. That wasn't normal though, was it? Well her life wasn't normal…and she herself wasn't normal….

"She's not my friend. Well she could have been if she hadn't been a total bitch but right now she's not my friend. Got it?" said Minori. God, Suzuki was socially impaired or something. Well better a socially impaired friend who liked dolls and shit than a backstabbing little bitch.

"Oh….I'm sorry that the other girl is being a b-word to you. That's not nice." Said Mob. Poor Minori. She knew what it was like when people were mean to you for no reason. That was the only reason why she was glad that she wasn't in school anymore. She didn't have to deal with people like that. She only had to talk to her friends, her family, and Awakened now. Only people who were nice to her….

But normal people did not have that luxury.

Minori had to deal with people all the time that she didn't want to. Even now when she was away from everyone she still had her phone….Mob wasn't sure why she kept on scrolling if this other girl had been mean to her…and that must have been so hard. She wished that there was something that she could do. She had wanted to ask Sho to make a law, when he ruled the world, that everyone had to be friends with everyone else but then Minegishi had told her that forced friendships would only make people resent each other so Mob was at a loss about how she was supposed to do.

Friendship could be very hard sometimes.

"Will you just say bitch? Oh my God you sound like a kid." Said Minori rolling her eyes. She kept on skimming through these pictures looking for…something. Something stupid. Some mistake. God…she was such a bitch. Well whatever. Anyone could take a trip. She was on a trip! She had to get this. she had this! She was Asagiri Minori!

"Sorry." said Mob

"It's whatever." Said Minori

"Oh…ok…and I really am sorry that she's being a…bi-bit-being a that word to you. She shouldn't. People should be nice to one another. They should be nice to you." Said Mob

"You're right. She should be. I mean I made her. She came into our class mid-year and she was all scared so I so graciously allowed her to sit next to me and my friends at lunch and then next thing I know she's got all my friends going to karaoke with her after school and they were all like 'Minori, we would have invited you too but we knew that your dad wouldn't let you' which was complete and utter bullshit. I mean if they knew I couldn't go then they shouldn't have gone without me. Right?" asked Minori as she got up and began to pace.

"Um…right." Said Mob. She didn't know if that was right or not. On the one hand it was wrong not to include people but on the other hand it was wrong to tell people what to do….so maybe they cancelled each other out? Mob didn't know. She just knew that sometimes you had to agree with people to keep the peace. Like how she had to nod and say ok, Minegishi had told her, when Shimazaki told them things that never happened because he was all on stuff that Mob wasn't allowed to have.

She understood this part of friendship.

"Exactly. Like, if everyone in the group can't do something then just don't do it. Well if everyone important can't do something then don't do it. It's not my fault Miki's parents made her take concert clarinet or whatever. What were we supposed to do? Not go to our nail appointment? God, I should have known that she would be the first to betray me…" said Minori. She was pacing back and forth now kicking anything and everything out of her way. Suzuki had been smart enough to clean up her dolls really fast. Good. She did not need someone else complaining that she had broken something of theirs. If they didn't want their stuff broken then they needed to get it away from where she was walking. There. Simple.

"It's not nice to betray people." Said Mob. She didn't know what she would ever do if she got betrayed….probably be upset. Maybe as upset as Minori was right now. Mob didn't know what to do. Sho sometimes pace around like this when he got mad. It was best to just let him pace when he got like this. That way you didn't end up accidentally making him madder.

"Exactly! God, there is no loyalty. She was the first to jump ship on me. Then it was Mari and Yoko and, like, who the hell just goes around stealing friends?" asked Minori. She turned around and pointed for emphasis. Even socially impaired Suzuki got it! Was there no more loyalty in the world!? What the fuck was the MATTER with people!? God, if even Suzuki got it….

"That was very mean of her." said Mob. She was so glad that she didn't have to deal with any more mean people in her life…well there was Fukuda but he couldn't help it. Sho said that he was getting old and old people were always upset because their youth was over and the world was different and scary from what they were used to. She would gladly have hung out with Fukuda at his grumpiest if it meant that she wouldn't have to deal with any mean people her own age. At least the worst Fukuda ever did to her was be way too polite.

"Yeah, no shit. She's such a bitch. Like, they even made plans without me. I was the one who decided what we did. My house, my actual house in Japan where we live, has a pool and a home theatre and I can to a few specific places but my dad is always so worried about me…but I still made the plans. But then one night I get added to this group chat and they're all talking about going to the arcade downtown, where they know I can't go, and it's like….who the hell does that?" asked Minori as she went back to pacing. She needed more friends, loyal friends, they kind that didn't betray you! Dad had told her about people like that. He had said that you had to be nice but also you had to make sure that you were on top all the time because your enemies were waiting like snakes in the grass for you to slip up and then they but you on the ankles…which for dad meant that people lost him money and for her meant that people took advantage of her and took her friends away. She needed those friends! She was going into the sixth grade. It was too late to start over with new friends and she needed to go to the middle school where most of the people she knew were going to or else she'd start off at the bottom…and an Asagiri was never on the bottom.

"Um…traitors? Because they betrayed you?" asked Mob. She wondered if she was meant to answer that question. She knew that answer, though, so she answered it. Traitors betrayed you. Dad talked about traitors a lot. He said that they were surrounded by traitors and when they were found they were shown no mercy. That meant that they got kicked out of Claw. She didn't know why anyone would betray her dad. He just wanted what was best for the world. He would make a world with people who could be together, normal people and espers, and then espers wouldn't have to hide their powers. She wouldn't have to hide her powers. She never used them in public…but it was weird not using them with her friend…but she knew not to use them around normal people even if they knew about powers…which she assumed that Minori did because she was the daughter of an important financial backer…but Mob didn't use her powers. She didn't want to freak her out or make her jealous. That was not the way to treat a friend at all.

"Yeah, traitors! Like you said! A bunch of fucking traitors. God…and now she's with this guy….I guess their parents are friends….and he's in middle school and he's so hot….and she just got him because she lets anyone up her shirt." Said Minori with the same disdainful sniff mom used to do. She had to be. Getting felt up was nice and all but nobody stole from her, first of all, and second of all since little miss transfer student let everyone feel her up now all the guys assumed that she would let them all feel her up too….which she would not! But then nobody wanted to go out with her….they were all a bunch of pigs. Guys were pigs in clothes….but they were also guys….God they sucked…

"Up her shirt?" asked Mob. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. She didn't know why anyone would let a boy do that. It just sounded…embarrassing. The most embarrassing. Boys…they were weird. She knew that they liked breasts but…why touch them? Those were for feeding babies, mom had said so, they weren't handles or whatever boys wanted with them. The thought of a boy wanting to do that to her…it was…embarrassing….embarrassing and also…some stuff she didn't want to think about right now.

"Yeah, she just lets anyone feel her up. You can't do that because then, like, everyone expects it and, yeah, it's fun and all but you can't just let anyone feel you up…and under her bra, too. Like, what the fuck is this? High school?" asked Minori. She would never do something like that…and the Christmas party didn't count because she had been drinking. Everyone knew that it didn't count if you'd be drinking.

"That's….bad?" asked Mob. She knew that people did…bed stuff…and she knew that you had to be naked to do that…but Minori was talking like it was bad. Minegishi had said that doing things like that with a person was an expression of love or commitment or to make a baby or just to have fun….they had never said anything about it being bad….but they only knew about these things in terms of the rules for adults. Mob was a kid. She had different rules to follow….rules that she had not even been aware of…but it was good that she had someone to teach her the rules for someone her age.

"See, even you get it. That's just for when a guy is your boyfriend and even then only if you're been going together for a while…and she hadn't even been going to our school for long enough to have been going with any of those guys for that long. Plus she stole, like, every guy. I liked some of those guys. I just hadn't decided which one I was going to go out with….and she just swooped in like a witch on her broomstick and stole all of them. God. She is such a witch-bitch." Said Minori. Even socially impaired Suzuki got it….God. Life sucked. She needed more of Suzuki. At least she got it even though she probably still thought that babies came from storks and only married people could mess around. Still, it was sort of nice having her around. At least she wasn't going to turn into a traitor anytime soon.

"Um….that girl sounds very mean and I'm sorry that all of those things happened to you. It isn't fair. People used to be mean to me when I went to school…so I know how it's like. Nobody stole the boy I liked…well he liked my best friend…but they didn't steal him." said Mob. She was so glad her best friend was such a nice person…and also that they hadn't liked Hatori. She wanted everyone to be happy but…well….she had a lot of feelings about Hatori, embarrassing ones, that she didn't understand and didn't want to think about right now and she knew that if Minegishi had fallen in love with Hatori then she would have had even more confusing feelings…and also Hatori might have eaten them and then she wouldn't have had a best friend anymore…and that would have been very sad.

"It's the same thing. If a guy likes you then you stole him from someone who liked him because you made him like you." Said Minori shaking her head. She had probably never even had a boyfriend before. Of course she didn't know. She was such a little kid…but at least she was a little kid who wouldn't stab her in the back.

"It works like that?" asked Mob. That didn't sound right at all…but she had only seen adult relationships, she had no idea how it worked with people her own age. Also she had never had a boyfriend before, either.

"Yeah, obviously." Said Minori. How did she not understand that most basic rule…maybe because she was homeschooled. Yeah, homeschool kids were always the weirdest. Poor Suzuki. It wasn't her fault that she was all socially impaired like this. She just never had anyone to help her. Well now she did.

"Oh…I hadn't realized it worked like that for people our age…well he's ten years older than me so it's different. I'm sorry that the girl you don't like stole the boy you did like. That was very mean of her and you seem very upset…um….do you want something to drink? Or smoke? When I get upset my friends give me things to drink and smoke." Said Mob. She reached over to her backpack and pulled out the tiny bottle of rum that Shimazaki had let her have because when he got it he had thought that it was vodka and he didn't like rum. Mob liked it ok. It went good with milk but she liked vodka and milk better. She put the bottle next to her and then pulled out the pencil case with pens and joints she had. Shimazaki had said that she could have anything from his desk besides the coke and the pills and the acid. He was very generous like that.

And she was generous too.

When your friend was upset then you made them feel better. That was just what it was to be a good friend. She had always considered herself to be a very good friend. She knew that she was only supposed to do this to control her powers, Minegishi had said, but Shimazaki had said that it was ok to do this for fun…and Minegishi had said that everything but acid and coke were ok in moderation…and even dad had said that it was ok for her to drink socially….

So this was ok.

"Suzuki…you are so lucky to have me for a friend….and I guess that I'm happy to know you too or whatever. You're socially impaired, you dress like a first grader, and you're sort of weird but you really come through when I need you to…so thanks." Said Minori. There. Hidden depths. Minori got up and shut the curtains. She was up on the second floor but she didn't want to risk any of dad's guards seeing what she was doing. Dad was suspicious of her since that first time she had smoked and then ate all the cookies in the house and fell asleep on her rug.

She could not afford to get caught.

Dad would never believe that this was Suzuki's idea. She had the sweet and innocent routine down…and it wasn't even a routine. She was just…like that. All sweet and innocent and weird. Well she wouldn't get in trouble but Minori would. It would be over. Dad would send her to the all girl's school where they wore hideous uniforms and couldn't even dye their hair or wear makeup. Why not just kill her and hide her body in the garden? No, she could not get caught…

But dad didn't know about her Instagram so she was fine.

"Um….thanks. I'm happy to have you as a friend too. So…what do you want to do? This is rum and you have to mix it with something or you'll get sick…and the joints are the stuff that give you energy….and the pens make you tired." Said Mob as she laid everything out in front of her. She expected Minori to come over and pick something but instead she went over to her closet. Mob watched as she pulled out some clothes, held them up, and then tossed them on the floor.

"You and me are about the same size, right?" asked Minori as she went through the secret part of her closet that dad didn't know about. She needed something that said 'this is Suzuki and she hasn't been repeating the first grade for the past million years'. She needed to show the world that she had friends and that the friends that she had were way cooler than her friends, the ones she'd had before. She was cool and she was fun to hang out with and she did fun stuff and she deserved to be on top. An Asagiri was always on top.

"Um…I think so? I'm a medium in most places." Said Mob as she watched Minori take her closet apart. She didn't want to say something wrong but it seemed sort of….not good…to put clean clothes on the floor like that. But she didn't say anything because those were not clothes which she was responsible for.

"Get over here and put this on and then get a pen or a joint or something." Said Minori as she pulled a crop top and some shorts out of her secret closet space. There. Now Suzuki would look like she could be seen with her. They needed to go shopping one of these days. It was just plain cruel to let Suzuki dress like that and also Minori could not be seen, even in a foreign country, with someone who dressed like Suzuki. Also the world could not be subjected to that. It was for humanity.

"Ok." Said Mob. She got up and did what she was told. She took a very short tank top and shorts from Minori…and just stared at them. She hated pants. They were just…uncomfortable. Also she couldn't wear tank tops anymore because they had no sleeves and she had to wear things with sleeves, even if they were just short, or people could see her armpits and stuff.

"Well? Come on, I'm not into girls if that's what you're so worried about." Said Minori. Well she was pretty sure that she wasn't….but Suzuki didn't need to know that. Even if she was like that she could do better than Suzuki.

"No, I'm not worried about that and that doesn't bother me at all….I just don't wear pants….and also this shirt has no sleeves…and I think that it would show my stomach too because it's so short. Well my undershirt, the part that covers my stomach." Said Mob

"Well we need to take pictures so, come on, get changed…and lose the undershirt too. You don't really need it and if you did…come on. You're almost eleven." Said Minori

"Um…can I maybe borrow a dress? With sleeves? I mean this is nice but…I don't dress like this. Sorry." said Mob. She could maybe wear the tiny shirt if she kept her arms at her side the whole time but she was not going to wear shorts. She hated them. They were terrible, all pants were, and the most she could tolerate were tights. Not even leggings. She had no idea how people could stand to have something rubbing up on them like that all the time. Plus it felt like your legs were tied together….it just…was not good for her. She'd been this way for her entire life. She didn't know why she was the way she was, just that she was that way.

"Seriously Suzuki? Come on, we have to look like we're partying and that means party clothes…or at least not kid clothes….but fine. Since you're the guest and you brought the stuff….but let your hair down. You look better like that." Said Minori before she went back into her closet. She pulled out a pink dress…with sleeves as requested. She had to be nice to Suzuki. She had brought the stuff, she could tell on Minori, and also she wasn't a classmate. She could just leave whenever she wanted. Sometimes you just had to be nice.

Like now.

"Um….sure Minori. I can unbraid my hair….I guess." said Mob. She let her hair down from her braids and shook it out so it got back to it's shape. Then she as handed a short pink dress…with short sleeves…and it looked like it would be tight but she turned around and put it on. Minori went over to her makeup table and got some things out. Mob changed quickly….and wished that she could chance back. This was short…and tight…and it felt like her arms were tied to her when she tried to lift them…but her friend wanted to play dress up so that was what they were going to do…

And also they were doing makeovers….apparently.

"Come over here and sit down." Said Minori. Suzuki didn't have a problem with this, thank God, and she sat still while Minori went to work. No foundation, concealer, or highlighter. She was too pale and nothing that Minori had worked with her skin tone. They were totally going shopping together, they had to. She needed makeup and clothes and also she needed a new hairstyle because the hime cut was just…weird. What was she trying to do? An anime look?

Maybe that might work for her.

Like she could be a cool cosplay friend…or something like a Harajuku girl. Yeah. Mob would work well as a Harajuku girl since she had this weird paleness and the long hair…because this look was not working for her. The pink eyeshadow and the blush and the lip gloss….none of this was working with her. Well Minori was not going to give up. An Asagiri never gave up.

Even when the odds looked impossible.

"You're really good at this, Minori. I don't even know what most of this stuff is for. I've never put on makeup before." Said Mob as she opened her eyes. She felt her face being tickled….something pink was being brushed onto her cheeks. She hadn't worn makeup since the time when she was really little and she put on mom's makeup. She was….she looked….she looked so…

She looked so pretty.

There was pink stuff on her eyes and her eye lashes were so long and Minori had outlined them with black stuff like mom used to…and now her eyes looked so big…and her lips were pink too like she'd been eating a cherry lollipop…and stuff. She looked so pretty…and she hadn't knowing that she could look so pretty…and now she did…and even this dress looked nice. This dress made her breasts look like she had some…sort of. She didn't know why she cared about that, when you had them people looked at them and said stuff about them like Fukuda had said about Minegishi, and she didn't want that….but she did want them…even though she didn't need them since she had gone her whole life without having them….but she did want them…and to be pretty…even though she had no idea who she was even trying to look pretty for. Herself? She liked the way she had looked before. Boys? She didn't know any boys she liked…well she sort of liked Hatori….or something. She didn't know…

She didn't if she would have minded all that much if Hatori looked at her.

"Of course I'm good at it. I've been doing this for a while now, since I was ten. I want to have a YouTube channel where I do this but dad said no. Dad says no to everything….he can suck sometimes….but it's whatever. We have to go shopping since most of what I have won't work for you…and we need to et you some new clothes too since you're going to be seen with me….and stop talking now. I have to set your makeup." Said Minori. Did you have to do the setting spray if you didn't do the foundation and stuff? Well she would do it anyway to be safe. She had to make this look good. She had made everything pink though, to match the dress, and that was good.

Like Suzuki said, she was good at this.

It was about time someone told her that. Really. Everyone was too proud or whatever to say that she was good at what she did. She could make even the ugliest of ducklings into the most beautiful of swans…or maybe just into a show duck. Swans were bitches. Back when they had them on the grounds when she had been a kid they would always get so angry when she tried to pet them and then they would get even angrier when she threw the rocks to punish them. Stupid fucking birds. Suzuki was more like a fancy show duck. All harmless or whatever.

Harmless was the word for her.

Even all dressed up she looked like a little kid in her big sister's clothes or whatever. They'd go shopping later. Right now she would work with what she had. They had to look like they were partying and having a great time. They had to look like she didn't need any of her friends. She could make friends wherever she went. Cool ones. Ones who knew how to smoke and drink and whatever.

Ones who she could dress up and take pictures with…sort of like playing dolls.

"Thank you so much…I didn't know that I could look so pretty." Said Mob. She felt like a doll….but in a good way. She got up and looked at herself in the full length mirror. She could see her legs, how fuzzy they were, and her dress was too tight…but she still looked pretty. This was….this was fun. Minori was fun. She could be a little hard to understand sometimes, and she was bad at playing dolls, but she was fun once you understood her idea of fun.

She liked to play dress up.

She liked to play dress up and take pictures…and that was fun. Especially when you smoked. That always made everything more fun. Hanging out with a friend her age….it wasn't so hard. Not when she figured out what to do, what she liked to do, and what they liked to do together….even if it wasn't playing dolls…

But she had lots of people to play dolls with.


	307. The Conversation a Table Away

Fukuda had never seen anything so adorable in his life.

He wasn't Shibata. He wasn't going to coo over the adorableness, take a million pictures, and then start picking kids up and hugging them and squeezing them until they stopped breathing. Well he was going to coo, in his mind, and he was going to give Sho a hug later…and taking a picture or two couldn't hurt, not if he wasn't noticed, and he made sure to make himself unnoticeable. He didn't want to ruin this for Sho.

His first date.

This was…he wished that Masami could have been here to see this. It was adorable plain and simple. Sho there with his little girlfriend, and she was adorable too. A little red haired girl in an army hat. Sho sure knew how to pick them. The two of them were sharing a nice lunch together, and Sho hadn't deconstructed his, and occasionally holding hands…this was so cute. This was so cute and…and this was just what he needed to take his mind off of everything. About how stressful the past year or so had been. All the shit with Suzuki disappearing and the baby and Shigeko taking over after him…and just….all of it.

He needed this.

And so did Sho. He needed to just sit with someone his own age and just…be his own age. Just two ten year olds on a ten year old date. He wasn't sure if ten year olds were even meant to date but this seemed ok. It seemed a hell of a lot more age appropriate than what Shigeko got up to these days….not that he knew the whole of it….and not that he WANTED to know the whole of it. He knew that if he knew the whole of it then he would have to step in, maybe, and then that would cause a conflict with Shigeko and he just did not want to fight with her….even though he knew that Masami would not have wanted her to have been doing…whatever it was that she was doing beyond the drinking and the smoking and the drug use.

But he didn't want to think about that now.

He focused on the kids. He was chaperoning this date from a table away. He hadn't gone on a date, a proper date, in a while…since before Sho had even been born….but he knew that if he were ten years old on his first date with his first girlfriend then he would not have wanted someone hanging out at the table telling him to eat his peas and to get that fry out of his nose and to wipe his mouth and to stop hogging all the sauce….no, Fukuda would not have wanted that at all.

Which was why he said nothing.

"I don't know why they give up mushy peas, it's like someone's been sick in a bowl. Disgusting." Said Emmy, Sho's little girlfriend, as she pushed her bowl of peas away. Sho did the same. Even that was cute. They were two peas in a pod….why was he only this clever in his head?

"I think to make it healthy….I don't know. I'm not going to eat mine." Said Sho as he took their bowls and put them over on the side of the table. Fukuda reached over and brought them over to his table. More for him then in that case.

"Me neither. If I eat something that looks like sick then I'll get sick and it'll be everywhere and they'd be rightly miffed." Said Emmy. She was red, a little bit, and she made an effort not to make eye contact with him…and Fukuda didn't blame her. Kids were so sensitive about these things. This, going on a date, was the biggest thing in the world to them. They were at that weird age where they were interested in the opposite sex but also they could still be teased about being interested in the opposite sex. God, Fukuda was so glad that he never had to go back to that.

Not a good age at all.

Well the whole period between ten and eighteen was pretty much the worst. Sho was getting to that age and Fukuda…well he could be there for Sho. Help him through this…though he seemed to be doing well on his own. He had gotten himself a little girlfriend. She was his age. That was what mattered. She wasn't a thirty year old blind ex yakuza member….and Fukuda wouldn't have to have a very difficult conversation with Sho, now, so that was a plus.

A plus to Sho being happy, of course.

"Then we'll get kicked out." Said Sho as he reached up…and Fukuda thinks that he's going to get the fry out of his nose, but he just wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve….and Fukuda bites back the urge to tell him to use a napkin. Nope, he was not going to ride Sho about lunchtime now. Not in front of his girlfriend.

That was not being a good wingman.

And he was a good wingman. After Suzuki…well now he could start his own wingman business. Getting him a date…and making sure that he didn't ruin that date, and then listening to Suzuki go over….in great detail…the play by play of said date….no matter how many times he asked him to stop. God…thankfully aside from an age inappropriate crush Sho was doing a lot better romantically than is father ever had. He had himself a girlfriend and he was treating her well and not firing off a bunch of intrusive questions or telling her that she was the most perfect person that he had ever met. That was….better than Suzuki would have done….

Thank God Sho had turned out so normal.

"Banned for life. I don't know what I'd do, I'd be gutted. I can't live without chips." Said Emmy. She smiled at Sho and he smiled at her and Fukuda surreptitiously snapped a picture. He wished…Masami should have been the one doing this. She would have been so happy to have been her for Sho and to know that he had found himself a little girlfriend….that one of her children was doing well romantically. Shigeko…she would have died right on the spot if she knew what Shigeko had been getting up to….but this was about Sho. This was about Show and he needed to remember that fact and stay present in this moment.

This very adorable moment.

"They'll ban our spirits too, probably. Then we'll never be able to pass on and we'll haunt the world as evil spirits." Said Sho

"No, we could just make an evil movie tape that'll kill people seven days after they watch it." Said Emmy

"You've seen the Ring?" asked Sho. His eyes lit up….and Fukuda shook his head. Sho and those movies. Fukuda had given up on trying to stop him a while ago. Shigeko had written down a list of movies which he was absolutely not supposed to watch. Beyond that list Fukuda had decided to just let Sho win. It just made their lives easier. He had enough things to fight with Sho about and scary movies were not going to be one of those battles. There was the battle over bedtime and bath time and vegetables and school work, he didn't need to add another battle to the pile….no wonder Shigeko drank…

No. He was having….he was enjoying his time with Sho. He was.

"Yup. I've been watching loads of Japanese movies so I can understand your language and culture better…and your spirits are odd. Why make a whole movie just to kill people? Why not do it yourself?" asked Emmy

"Spirits can be sort of weird sometimes. They do things that only make sense in their heads…if they can even still think. Most spirits are just sort of on a loop. A lot of them don't even know that they're dead." Said Sho. Fukuda bit back the urge to warn Sho not talk about things like that with normal people….because he did not need Sho saying things that he should not have…but he stopped himself. Sho…he knew not to talk about certain things. He knew to keep his secrets.

And he was going to keep a lot of them if he was going to date normal people.

"You've seen the Others too then?" asked Emmy

"What's that?" asked Sho

"A movie where there's this family and they live on a foggy island and they think that they're being haunted but really they're the ones doing the haunting….oh bloody hell. I've gone and spoiled it." Said Emmy

"It still sounds cool. I'll put it on my life….so can you come out of your shirt?" asked Sho

"No, I can't. This is my home now." Said Emmy

"This fish and chips place?" asked Sho

"No, my shirt. I went and buggered it all up." Said Emmy

"No you didn't. Come on, I'll let you have some of my fries if you come out." Said Sho

"Alright…but not the chip you've got up your nose." Said Emmy

"….I honestly forgot that I had that there." said Sho

"Put another one in so you'll match." Said Emmy

"I am the walrus." Said Sho

"Huh?" asked Emmy

"You don't know that song? It's from England. You know, the Beatles." Said Sho

"Oh, them. Yeah, my mum and dad like them. They're alright." Said Emmy

"Alright? They're the greatest band that ever lived. My friend said so. He's thirty so he's heard a lot of music…and also he's blind so he didn't have much else to do when he was a kid." Said Sho

"The blind master, you mean?" asked Emmy

"Yeah, Shimazaki. He knows about music. Well old music. He says that a lot of today's music lacks…um….complex lyrics and stuff." Said Sho

"So he only likes old music?" asked Emmy

"No, he likes some new stuff. He just really likes the Beatles." Said Sho

"That's odd. You would have thought that he'd like Japanese music since he's Japanese….and I would have thought that you would have liked it too." Said Emmy

"I do. Shimazaki showed me city pop and he says that Japanese music peaked there." said Sho

"But what do you like?" asked Emmy

"The same stuff Shimazaki likes. He's the coolest guy ever….well you're cool too. You're the coolest girl ever…um….and the prettiest." Said Sho

"Bugger off with that…do I look like a mug to you?" said Emmy

"No, it's true…and you don't look like a mug. You look super pretty." Said Sho

"You're fooling." Said Emmy

"I'm not." Said Sho

"No, you're taking the piss. I know. I'm not pretty and I'm not cool. You don't have to tell me things like that." Said Emmy

"I think that you're pretty and I think that you're cool. You have red hair like mine and it's pretty…and you look good in that helmet….um….and I like your eyes I guess…and you are too cool! You can beat me in smash and you like to climb trees and you're always sending me cool medical pictures and stuff." Said Sho

"Thanks….um….I've got another one I'll send you. It's of a twin that they found growing in this man's stomach. He looked like he was up the pole before they took it out and then when it was out I bet they didn't know if they should toss it or put it in a cot." Said Emmy

"You've got to send me that. That sounds awesome." Said Sho

"I will….I just wish I could send you something…you know…real. I mean you send me things from all over the world, this helmet is tops by the way, and I just….I can't send you nothing. I'm always skint and when I'm not I've got no clue where to even send the post since you're always traveling." Said Emmy

"It's ok. I'm the guy. I'm supposed to get you presents. That's how it works, my dad said so. You're supposed to buy girls things so they know that you can take care of them." Said Sho

"Well no offense but your dad sounds a bit sexist to me." Said Emmy

"What's sexist mean?" asked Sho

"Someone who thinks that girls aren't as good as boys. Just because I'm a girl that doesn't mean I need someone to take care of me and if you're going to get me a present just get it because you fancy me and not because you feel like you have to." Said Emmy

"Oh….ok….but I like getting you stuff. I like being a good boyfriend…and I am being a good boyfriend…right?" Said Sho

"Don't be daft, of course you are. I mean it would be nice to see you more often but I think that we can make a long distance relationship work. I mean if we keep on working at it. I read in a book that long distance relations only fail because people get bored or they start to stray….and I would never do that. You're the only boy I fancy and people who stray are the worst." Said Emmy. Fukuda….he didn't know how to feel about that. On the one hand part of him, an irrational part, felt personally attacked. On the other hand he was glad that Sho had someone in his life who wouldn't….hurt him in that way. God, Fukuda hated this feeling. The guilt. He had nothing to be guilty about. Suzuki had been the one to neglect Masami. He had neglected her, he had been cruel to her, and she'd had no choice in any of what she did. Sho…he had someone who wouldn't hurt him like that…

He didn't know what he would do if someone hurt Sho like that.

He was the biggest hypocrite in the world, he decided as he took a sip of room temperature soda. He needed to do something with his hands, something to distract from the fact that he was eavesdropping. Something to distract from how he felt. He could keep his aura still and usually that was enough…but Sho could read him. Sho could read him like a book and this was not a chapter that he needed to turn the page on. Sho…he was happy…and he did not need to worry about the girl he cared about betraying him.

Not that he would ever drive anyone to that point.

"Worse than people who declaw cats." Said Sho seriously.

"Worse than people who cut off dog's tails so they'll be short." Said Emmy

"I hate it when people do that. Let's cut off their tails…or whatever…and see how they like it." Said Sho

"People are the worst. I never understood how people could hurt animals….they don't even understand why they're being hurt." Said Emmy

"People suck." Said Sho a lot more lowly than Fukuda was comfortable with. He'd seen the worst of people, of his own father...and Fukuda wished that he hadn't. He wished that there had been something that he could do…he wished for a lot of things.

"They do. People are the worst sort. When I grow up I'm going to adopt all the dogs from the shelter that have short tails and all the declawed cats. I'll get a big country house and let them all run free." Said Emmy

"Can we have hamsters and birds, too?" asked Sho. Fukuda cringed. That was…dangerously close to something that his father would have said to a girl. Suzuki…he had always moved too soon too fast. He had always gone right to the forever…and now Sho was too. At least Sho had an excuse. He was ten and he'd been abandoned and of course he was looking forward to his adult life with someone he cared about….and Fukuda…well he would have to have a talk with Sho later.

"Of course….if that's what you want." Said Emmy. Huh. He had been expecting her to make some excuse to leave. That was what girls had done when Suzuki came on too strong too fast. A lot of pretending to get paged, pretending that she forgot she left her oven on…and one memorable instance where a girl faked a seizure. This girl was just sitting there tucking her helmet down over her face and turning a very bright shade of red.

"What's wrong?" asked Sho. Good. He could pick up on what she felt…and now he would learn not to come on so strong and Fukuda wouldn't have to walk him through how to talk to girls. God…that day. He loved Sho and all but he was never putting on a dress and wig and pretending to be a girl to help him figure out how to talk to them and basic date etiquette….the things he did for Suzuki….

The things he still did for Suzuki.

He had never imagined that he would be raising Suzuki's son but here he was. He was sitting there a table away watching Sho sit there on his first real date with his first girlfriend. He was sitting there biting back advice, good advice, because this was not the place for advice. Also Sho…he didn't need as much as his father had. He had some awareness how to talk to girls…and also that girl seemed to really like him. Well of course he did. Sho hadn't swept her off her feet with an insane number of gifts or a shoe locker stuffed full of love notes. He had met this girl and now he was with her. It was all so….normal.

And adorable.

"Nothing." Said Emmy quickly as she covered her face completely with her helmet. Sho leaned forward and tried to look at her…and Sho was getting sort of close…and now Fukuda felt like he should have had a measuring stick to put between them like an overzealous class rep.

"You're hiding under your helmet." Said Sho as he tipped her helmet up over her face. She squeaked and tucked her head down into her shirt….and Fukuda took a quick picture because those two were just so cute….and that was all. He knew that Masami never read his messages, that she had a new life now, but he still liked to hope.

"Well….what if there's incoming enemy fire? Better to have a helmet on than to end up with my brains splattered everywhere." Said Emmy

"Are you really worried about that? Because if you are then I can sit by the window." Said Sho

"But you've not got a helmet. You'd be killed." Said Emmy

"No, I'd be ok." Said Sho

"You're mental. You've gone mental if you think you could take a bullet to the head." Said Emmy

"Well better me than you." Said Sho. She pulled her helmet down over her head again. Sho had been right, it had been a good gift. She was hiding but not for the reasons girls had hid from Suzuki. No, she was just embarrassed. Sho could come on a little strong but he really seemed to like her….and that was just plain adorable.

"…..thanks." said Emmy

"You're doing it again. What's wrong? Tell me and I can make it better. That's what I'm here for." Said Sho

"It's nothing. You've just got me all….well in Japanese t's called doki doki, I've been doing research, and…yeah. I just…it makes me feel all…weird inside when you talk about us being together when we're grown up and stuff…and just…the nice things you say to me….nobody's ever said stuff like that to me before…but it's good." Said Emmy

"Oh...so when I say nice stuff to you it feels like…there's a goldfish in your stomach?" asked Sho quietly. He turned his head to the side and Fukuda looked busy with his own food. Sho was embarrassed…and Fukuda didn't blame him. Ten and a half. It was not a good age. He was getting those sorts of feelings…and it was so…Fukuda wasn't fully ready for this. For Sho to feel this way. To help Sho get through feeling this was. He was just a kid, he didn't need a goldfish in his stomach….but he had one and it was there and once that damn fish started swimming then there was no way to make it stop…and it would only get worse.

"More like an axolotl…or like….a bunch of them." Said Emmy softly.

"Oh those are so fucki-they're really cool." Said Sho. Fukuda bit his tongue. He had been about to correct Sho on his language…and that would not have gone over well. Correcting him like that in front of his little girlfriend.

"I know, right?! Did you know that they can regrow whole limbs?" asked Emmy

"Yeah, and they're the only amphibians to spend their whole lives in the water." Said Sho

"They're brilliant! I've wanted one as a pet for so long but my mum says no….but I really think that they're brilliant." Said Emmy

"Me too. It'd be cooler to have one of those swimming in your stomach than a goldfish, anyway." Said Sho. The excitement had petered off. Now they were just sort of looking at each other. Sho poked at his fries, the one from his nose thankfully gone, and his girlfriend did the same. God, he forgot how awkward things could be at that age…well he hadn't had a girlfriend at that age….but he knew that it would have been just as awkward for him as it was for Sho.

"Yeah….um….Sho? Do you ever feel like that? I mean…" said Emmy

"I do…sometimes." Said Sho. He was kicking his feet under the table. His girlfriend did he same. Hopefully they wouldn't collide…though it would have been less awkward than the moment that they were having right now.

"Um…" said Emmy, her feet getting dangerously close to hitting Sho's. They didn't, though, because the minute she spoke Sho sat up very straight, he practically bolted up from his chair. His pupils were small…and they had been for a while. An idea. He had an idea…and that could have been a good one or a bad one….

"Do you want me to hold your hand? Because…when I get that feeling I want to hold hands." Said Sho. Well he was bold….but in a good way it seemed since his girlfriend didn't look like she wanted to bolt.

"….yeah. That would be brilliant….holding your hand I mean." Said Emmy. They looked at each other and then their hands met across the table. Slowly. Her hand met Sho's first and she laughed. Sho just seemed….pensive.

"Sorry…my hands are kind of greasy." Said Sho. He pulled his hand back and wiped it on his shirt…and now that would need to be washed….but that was ok. At least Sho'd had the presence of mind to wipe his hand. At least he thought about his girlfriend, what she wanted, and he saw her as a person. Sho'd be fine. He'd been doing well, better than his father had at any point in his life, and Suzuki might have even been proud if he'd been there…or upset that Sho hadn't found an esper girl. He didn't know. It depended on Suzuki's mood. He might not have even cared that he even had a son. It depended on how enmeshed he'd gotten with Shigeko…but that was fine. They were what they were. Sho had him and he had Sho and that was what mattered. Sho had someone.

"Mine too. It's fine. We've been eating fish and chips all day. It's bound to happen." Said Emmy with a shrug.

"So….um…" said Sho as he reached over and took her hand again.

"Um….so…" said Emmy

"We could get one of those too…or a bunch. When we're adults I mean." Said Sho

"That….that would be pretty brilliant…" said Emmy. She reached up and pulled her helmet down again.

"Do you still feel weird? Because you're trying to hide under your helmet again." said Sho

"I still feel all….like I have a whole family of axolotls in my stomach…sorry." said Emmy

"No, don't be. That's….that's how your supposed to feel…..and stuff." Said Sho

"I know….because I fancy you…and you fancy me…and it's brilliant to um…to have someone you fancy…" said Emmy

"It is…" said Sho

"So…um…yeah….um…so…uh…" said Emmy. She looked at Sho, then at the table, and then at Sho again. Sho….he was focused. He had his focused eyes on and his aura was focused too. Fukuda…he didn't much like it when Sho made that face. Suzuki made that face…and nothing good ever happened when Touichirou made that face….

"Do you want me to kiss you?" asked Sho suddenly. Fukuda bit his tongue, literally. Yes. That was Suzuki's son. The sudden…asking of it all. How many times had Suzuki just randomly asked some girl who'd he'd barely been out with….and then that of course meant that Fukuda had to spring into action and save what was left of their double date…and they were always double dates….and he wanted to spring in and save Sho….but he also knew that Sho….he did not want to be saved…but that was what it was to take care of a kid, wasn't it? Sometimes you had to save them from themselves…..

"What?!" asked Emmy. She practically jumped up from her seat. Now people were looking…and Fukuda got hit phone out. He went into the sound library and went to his ringtone. Time for the old 'my mom's paging me, we have to go now'….or whatever excuse would fit better in the year 2015. Whatever excuse would best save Sho from his own awkwardness.

"Just…sometimes when I feel like that….I just…really wish that…the person who makes me feel like that…..would hold my hand and kiss me and stuff…" said Sho quietly. Fukuda thought up some excuses….and he settled on a call from home. That was something that his little girlfriend wouldn't question….and Sho might be disappointed that Fukuda had lied….but Sho would thank him in ten years on his wedding day. Sometimes you just had to save a person from themselves….even though….huh. It didn't even look like Sho even needed saving. She was shy looking but…but her eyes were darting to the door. It didn't look like she was in any distress at all…Fukuda put his phone away. Sho had this. Sho had this and Fukuda….he needed to have some faith in him.

"….that's the nicest thing that anyone's ever said to me…and I would kiss you if your nanny wasn't staring." Said Emmy softly. Fukuda didn't much like being called a nanny but he said nothing. He just pretended that he was completely unaware of what was happening a table away. He pushed his food around and pretended that he hadn't heard a thing and that Sho's aura wasn't resting on him now…

Even though he didn't much think that Sho was old enough for that.

But he didn't get to decide what Sho was and was not old enough for. He was not going to discourage this. If he discouraged this then Sho would grow up weird. He would grow up as weird and repressed as his father…and the world did not need another Suzuki Touichirou. The opposite sex did not need another Suzuki Touichirou. Sho…he could do whatever he wanted…and at least he was doing what he was doing with a girl his own age and not a thirty year old blind ex yakuza member with a pretty serious personality disorder and drug problem.

Yes. It could have been so much worse.

"Ok. Fukuda, stop staring." Said Sho. Fukuda didn't need to be told twice. He turned around and buried his face in his phone. He wasn't sure how he felt about that fact that Sho was kissing girl, and in pubic, but he decided to be happy for him….and also maybe talk to him about discretion….later. Right now he would just be happy for Sho. He deserved to have someone in his life who made him happy….and he deserved….well he deserved a lot of things considering how his life was going….how it would go….Fukuda didn't want to think about that now. About the future.

He decided to focus on the adorableness in front of him.


	308. Weird and Embarrassing Feelings

Sleep didn't always come easy.

Not for Mob, anyway. How could it come easy with Sho being gone? He was away from her…and she had no idea when he would come back…and she knew not to smother him…but she just…she wanted him back. She had so much to tell him. So much had happened! She had made friends with someone their age! This was great because then Sho could be friends…with….ok, Mob hadn't thought that part through since Sho already knew her and had kissed her…in a really gross sort of way…and he had a girlfriend now so things might be awkward between him and Minori…but other things had happened! Lots of things. Shibata had learned how to make pancakes without burning them, that was a good thing, and Shimazaki and Minegishi were almost a couple now and….and Sho was a boy and boys didn't care about stuff like that…

Well other things had happened.

"…work better if you aimed….."

"….gotta have faith in myself boss…."

Dad and Hatori had made friends. That was a thing that had happened. Mob could hear their voices coming from down the hall. She opened her door with her powers. Now she could hear them better. She didn't know what she expected to hear, what she wanted to hear, but she just…wanted to hear. Even though she was being nosy, Minegishi had even called her nosy before, she just…wanted to know what was going on. So she could tell Sho…if she ever found a way to call him without bothering him or interrupting his work….she could tell Sho when he came back.

He would want to know about this.

Out of everything that happened since he left this was the weirdest. Dad and Hatori…they were friends now. Sort of. Night time videogame friends. Also dad liked videogames now. Well he had always liked them but now he felt better about liking them. He had been a lot nicer lately….maybe because Sho wasn't around to make him mad….but that was not something that she was going to tell Sho. Nobody needed to know that things were better when they were gone…and really they weren't. Just for dad. He had made a friend and he had been nice to Mob and stuff….but Mob missed Sho and that was not better. Shimazaki missed Sho a lot too and since his job had been protecting Sho…well he had nothing to do and when he had nothing to do he just…did everything.

Also he did mean things to Hatori.

Mob had no idea how someone so nice could be so…mean…sometimes. Well more annoying than mean but…still. That was why Hatori spent so much time with dad these days. Shimazaki didn't like to be around dad since he was boring and dad didn't like Shimazaki because he was annoying, dad had said, and also dad thought that she and Shimazaki had liked each other. So they didn't really get along and now this was a safe place for Hatori to go….being next to dad and staying up late and stuff….

Sho would definitely want to know about this.

"I don't blame you for being poor at this. A gun is a coward's weapon." She heard dad say. She wondered what they were playing. She wondered what was happening in there. She wondered why dad got along so well with Hatori to even be able to sit with him and play with him and stuff. She had never seen dad get along with anyone that well before….just her….and it was good that Hatori got along with dad. Dad needed more friends and Mob was glad that…that they got along. That one of her friends got along with dad. Just her friend. Nothing more than her friend….

"Hey, it's easier with an actual light gun. At least it was when I was a kid." Said Hatori. Mob smiled and pulled her blanket up over her head. Hatori hadn't even been talking to her and now she felt all….warm…and stuff. She felt all weird when she heard his voice sometimes. Especially when he was in her house…and it felt weird being near dad and feeling like this about someone….and she didn't even know what this feeling was.

Not doki doki.

This was not doki doki. She knew what doki doki was and this was not it…and she couldn't tell anyone about this. She couldn't tell anyone about how she felt, not even her best friend, because then….then the whole world would know how she felt. This weird, warm, and sometimes tingly feeling that she got sometimes. Usually about Hatori but sometimes when she read about people falling in love and kissing or watched people on TV fall in love and kiss….or just when she watched people kiss…because then that made her want to kiss someone….

But not in a doki doki way.

She wished that there had been someone she could ask. She couldn't ask Minegishi even though they were her best friend because then they would know…and she couldn't ask Minori even though they were friends now and Minori had kissed eight boys already because then she would know, and she of course couldn't ask dad even though he had been married to mom and probably knew what all the feelings were because then he would know, and she couldn't ask Fukuda even though she might have had something medically wrong with her based on this weird warm and sometimes tingly feeling because then he would know…and also she didn't want to talk to him since he didn't like her….so she had no one to talk to…

Maybe these feelings would go away on their own if she just ignored them.

So that was what she tried to do. She kept her blanket over her head and tried to ignore what she felt. She knew that she thought that Hatori was attractive, that was what Minegishi had told her this feeling was, but…but there was something more than that. She saw boys that she thought were attractive but she never felt like this….well not normally. It was like when she and Minori watched kpop videos. She was always talking about which of the boys were attractive….and Mob could sort of see it…but none of them made her feel like this…

She was weird.

She was weird when it came to Hatori. Everyone said that she was weird when it came to Hatori. They thought that his skin was bad, it was getting better, and that he was a weirdo…and he could be a weirdo….but he was also very nice. He played games with her and dad and he always had nice things to say….when he wasn't yelling at the screen…and also he was less weird now. He only went and hid from things when he got scared and he hadn't gotten scared in a while…and stuff. Also he could do more things for himself and he smelled nice and his glasses were cool and he had so many sweaters and they were all so nice with birds and dogs and cats….and he was just….so nice. That was why she had liked him and wanted to be his girlfriend….but she didn't want to be his girlfriend….but things would have been so much easier to understand if she had just wanted to be his girlfriend….

Sho didn't need to know about this.

She hoped that Sho came to her if he ever had feelings like this. If he had feelings like this then she would not have wanted him to figure them out on his own…so she needed to figure these feelings out so she could help him. Sho didn't have anyone else who could know about this sort of thing either. She would never make fun of him or be mad at him or embarrass him for how he felt….but he didn't know, need to know, how she felt right now….

All warm and stuff.

"….you really never had a light gun? I thought you had a Famicom." Said Hatori. Mob loved the way his voice sounded when he wasn't scared. She loved the way his aura looked when he was calm….and she loved it when he was in her house playing games with dad. Dad scared everyone, she didn't know why he didn't stop since he knew how scary he could be, and he did scare Hatori sometimes…and sometimes he didn't. Like now. Maybe she felt like this about Hatori because….because dad liked him….

Dad didn't like most people.

And he especially didn't like people who liked her. He had beaten up Shimazaki so bad he was bleeding, Sho had said, and that was because he had thought that Shimazaki liked her. Dad didn't like it even when she talked to boys….well they talked to her sometimes when she and dad were out together…..and dad was always saying how she only needed him and how he would take care of her and he would build her a house and they could live together and take care of her kids together….and she didn't know where those kids would come from since he said that she didn't need anyone….and she got the feeling that if she met someone and fell in love and he loved her back then dad would hate him and stuff….

But dad did not hate Hatori.

"I had a Famicom I just never had a light gun, a gun is a coward's weapon. Fukuda though, he was always good at those sorts of games. He had always been strange like that." Said dad. The only other person who dad liked was Fukuda….and Mob did not think that she could ever like Fukuda in any way for as long as she lived. Even if she hit her head and went crazy she would never like Fukuda like that. He was….not very nice to her these days…and as old as dad was….and also she had known him for her whole life…and also he had made fun of Minegishi's breasts and that was the worst thing of all.

She could never like someone who had been mean to Minegishi.

And she could never like someone who wanted to eat her best friend, too. That was another reason not to feel like this…but she had no idea what this feeling even was…and also Hatori was who he was and he could not help being a cannibal so there. That was what it was. That was that and this was this…and stuff. All sorts of stuff. She didn't know. All she knew was that she might have just felt….whatever this was….because dad wouldn't hurt Hatori if he knew that she had been in love with him before….and she was….whatever this was….with him now….

This weird, warm, good feeling.

"Do you think he'd want to get in on this, boss? I mean when he comes back?" asked Hatori

"Perhaps…we used to pass the time together like this…but maybe not because we are a bit old for this. Besides, this is serious work we do. It's…hand eye coordination….and conversation. Both of which are very important." said Dad

"That and you're establishing your superiority over me at most everything." Said Hatori. He never sounded like that when he talked to anyone…anyone but her…and she could imagine, almost, that he was talking to her. That they were sitting together and talking…but that was not the thing to imagine so she stopped. She took her blanket off of her head and looked up at the ceiling. She didn't need to imagine talking to him….she was his friend and she could just go and talk to him whenever she wanted to…well not now because dad was there. Dad was there and she did not want to feel…all of this…right where her dad could see her feeling all of this.

He could ask her to explain.

And her aura flares, for a moment, because it does sound like he's telling her to explain. She reached over with her powers and got her pen off of the charger. She woke up it, opened her window, sat up, and inhaled really hard and fast. She hated it when her powers stopped listening to her. She knew that she was supposed to use moderation but this seemed like one those times when maybe she could use a little less moderation.

Minegishi would have understood if they had been there and they had been able to know how she was feeling.

"Most? Explain." Said dad. Mob closed her door…and then opened it again. She had the window opened and also dad was all the way in the kitchen. It smelled like toast and ketchup even all the way to her room. They had been snacking all night again. Dad wouldn't have been able to smell this and if he did…well…she could just tell him that she was vaping….which she was. Vaping wasn't as bad as smoking and…and dad didn't need to know what it was that she was vaping. She got the feeling that he would not like her vaping hash oil. She knew that most adults weren't even allowed to do this and as much as she felt like an adult her birthday was only a couple of weeks away….her eleventh birthday…so maybe this was really not the thing for dad to see her doing….

Also she was supposed to control her powers on her own.

"Space Invaders 3D." said Hatori. She didn't know how she was supposed to control her powers on her own when Hatori was so….not scared. Not scared or freaked out or shouting mean things at his computer screen. His voice was sort of deep and also sort of not and…and she couldn't describe it but she liked listening to it…even though he was just talking to her dad about videogames that had come out before she had even been born. She wanted to hear him talk about….about stuff she liked….no. She wanted to hear him talk about stuff he liked. He was almost a totally different person when he talked about stuff he liked. Like the time when she had gone to visit him and she had sat beside him while he explained Terraria to her…and she had been so close….close enough to see the screen reflecting off of his glasses…

She inhaled again. It didn't really help.

"That was an unnecessary conversion to the third dimension. You said so yourself. You spoke at length about how the conversion to 3D destroyed many beloved franchise. Space Invaders was merely one of them and therefore the three dimensional version of the game was not worth my time." Said dad. Hearing dad's voice helped. The sound of his voice chased a lot of this feeling away and let the smoking help to calm her aura down. She could not feel this way when she was around her own dad. It felt wrong. Kind of….embarrassing and gross…and stuff. Like he might have known how she felt…and she did not want anyone to ever know how she felt...and she didn't even know how she felt.

She felt like being near Hatori.

"Yeah, I guess. You're from a different era." Said Hatori. She wanted him to stop talking and she wanted him to talk all night. She wanted him to come and sit on her bed with her and talk to her about whatever he wanted to talk about. Games or anime or why blue monster drink was the best kind of drink because they had reformulated red…even though she hated energy drinks. She would have listened to him talk about grass growing if it meant that he was near to her…and she just….she just didn't know why she had this…feeling….that she wanted to be near him.

She coughed into her blanket. She had taken too much in at once.

"Exactly. Simple works best." Said Dad. He hadn't heard her coughing. That was good. One time she had been vaping in the yard at night and she'd been coughing and then dad had practically run over to her and asked her if she was sick or dying….and it took a while to talk him down. He was always so worried about her. If he heard her coughing and saw her in this state, how warm she was, he probably would have thought that she had a fever. He would have called Fukuda and made him and Sho fly back from Korea right away and then Fukuda and Sho would know how she felt…

And she needed to slow down.

"I know. Why didn't they just stop at the original Atari…or maybe even that was too much. The Odyssey, now that was a system." Said Hatori. She needed to slow down but she felt her heart speed up. She drew her knees up to her chest and felt her socks sliding around. She slid them around a little more. They felt soft, her bed felt soft, and she liked her bed…and she felt good. The happy, swimmy, feeling was there…and she did like feeling like this…but also…also there was something else there. That other feeling was still there….just…calmer? She didn't know. She just…she felt like….like she wanted something but she didn't know what it was….

It was sitting in her kitchen, wearing square glasses, and eating ketchup bread with her dad.

"No, the Atari was perfection. The Odyssey was very repetitive and also there was no color. There is no point in doing something in black and white on a color television. Especially on one as large as my parents had." Said dad. Dad's voice helped make the feeling go away. She decided to stop smoking. She had managed to make her aura calm down but now the feeling was just…hanging around. It felt like the feeling was hanging around…her skin? Her skin had always gotten very sensitive when she smoked. She could feel the softness of her socks and the softness of her bed through her socks and the softness of her skin through her bones and…and she could feel the softness of her skin with her skin…and that made her wonder about other people's skin. She liked to cuddle when she got like this, she and Shimazaki cuddled all the time because he was the only person who let her get to this point, but this was….different than when she cuddled with him. The thought of cuddling with Hatori….it made her feel all…different.

Warm and tingly and also sort of embarrassed.

"You had a color TV when you were a kid? Weren't those, like, really expensive." Said Hatori. Mob wanted to slam her door shut and she wanted to leave it opened forever. She liked his voice, she wanted to feel his voice and she liked…she liked his aura. He didn't have much of one but she liked the way it felt…and she pulled her aura back in close before he noticed. Embarrassed. She was embarrassed and she had every reason to be embarrassed. She had been about to…she didn't even know what she had been about to do. Do…what she wanted? But what did she want? She wanted….she liked the way her skin felt. The way the skin of her arm felt against her hand….and she wanted to know what his skin felt like…and what he thought her skin would feel like….

And also she wanted to crawl into a hole and live there forever because that had been the most embarrassing thought that her brain had ever thought up in her whole, entire, life.

"Yes, they were, but my parents were wealthy people and they never said 'no' to me." Said dad. Dad's voice just made her feel even more embarrassed. Thank God that it was not a Sunday. If it had been a Sunday then dad would have come and seen what her aura was being all clingy for. He would have worried about her and….and she had no idea what to tell him. He was older than her, he was an adult, and he did have feelings. He may have pretended that he didn't but he did. He was forty four, he'd probably had every feeling that there had ever been, and he maybe could have explained this to her…but then that would involve him knowing! No one could ever know about this! She didn't know what it was but she knew that it was embarrassing…

It was like the feeling she got when she read about people falling in love and kissing….only…different.

"Well, yeah, you're the most powerful esper in the world." Said Hatori. This was…she had thought about kissing him before….but always in the way that she had been kissed before. He leaned in very quick and then kissed her. That was it. She never thought about touching him before. Well beyond the kissing part…and also the part where they held hands…but this was….different. This was different from hand holding and kissing. This was….something else….something embarrassing….

And something that she did not want to feel.

"No, they didn't fear me. They made it very clear…they had made it very clear for my entire life…that they never feared me. They simply did their duty and provided for me. When you have children then you will understand." Said dad. She wished that she had been better at exorcising emotions, like dad was, but she was not going to ask dad to teach her how to exorcise her emotions now. Usually she smoked them away and drank them away but the smoking had just made her feel all….like this. Aware of herself. She knew that she had skin but now…now she was thinking about having skin…and thinking about how he had skin…and she was thinking about how when people kissed in the movies the boy held the girl…and how much she would have liked that…

With Hatori.

"Not likely." Said Hatori. With him or….with….she didn't know who else it would have been with. Shimazaki? Yuck. She would never do that to Minegishi and also…also she didn't ever see herself being like that with him. She knew that his tattoos were cool and he was nice…and stuff…but she just…he was no Hatori. He hadn't once laughed so hard at an internet joke, one that Mob hadn't gotten, that energy drink shot out of his nose. He hadn't stayed up all night with Mob once to teach her how to play Terraria….she had known how to play after the first couple of hours but she had just liked being with him. He didn't wear super soft looking sweaters with kittens or baby birds or puppies on them. He didn't have really cool square glasses that caught the light…and his hair didn't look all shiny and soft…and he didn't smell as good…

She wondered if there was some way to exorcise her brain.

"You could have children and you should have children. Many children. You're a powerful esper, and you're young, so you really should get on that. That's a regret of mine, and I have very few regrets, I did not have children when I was your age. I could have had so many children by now….and Son and Daughter could have been adults too. You really should meet your most perfect person and get on that before you get to be my age." Said dad. Dad could exorcise anything, he had said, and the sound of his voice did exorcise this feeling….but not all the way…it just made her feel embarrassed and also sort of….not good. Like she was being watched even though he was not focused on her at all…and she needed….she needed….

She had no idea what she needed.

"That's never going to happen for me." Said Hatori. She knew that she needed something….but she had no idea what it was…and she knew that it had to do with Hatori…and kissing…and kissing Hatori…and thinking about kissing Hatori was making her feel all….weird inside. All tingly around her stomach. Like her stomach and her chest. Just all of her organs…and she had no idea what to do. She pressed a hand to her stomach. Her stomach felt normal…and her nightshirt felt soft…and she wondered….

She pulled her hand back before she could wonder anything.

"Homosexuals can reproduce. I have nothing against your people reproducing and coupling up and it's my world so I say that you can." Said dad. Dad's voice helped her not wonder anything. The embarrassment at the thought of dad catching her feeling this feeling, whatever it was, chased away any wonder that might have started to exist in her brain. Wonder at what it would have felt like to him, her night shirt, if it was as soft as his sweater looked…and she could only say looked before she had never touched his sweater before…

And now she sort of wanted to.

"I don't think that's in the cards for me. I can't see anyone ever wanting to have kids with me. I mean I've never had a gir-partner and…yeah. Not going to happen." Said Hatori. She wondered what sort of sweater he had on tonight. She wondered if it was the one with the kittens on it, the blue one, that was so incredibly soft. She wondered if his sweater was as soft as her nightshirt. She put her hand back on her stomach.

It was soft.

"Oh. Well you don't need a partner. Raising children is not that difficult. They mostly just take care of themselves. Be sure to have a girl child first. Daughters are very capable. Sons…not so much….but a Daughter is a godsend. Or at least my Daughter is. I cannot think of anyone in this world more intelligent, thoughtful, and capable than my Daughter." Said dad. She wished that dad would talk more or talk louder or tell Hatori not to talk because….because her shirt was soft and not even the thought of dad coming in and seeing her and knowing what she was thinking and feeling could make her shirt any less softer than it was. The blue parts where there were no snowflakes. This was a new nightshirt. It was blue and had snowflakes and said 'let it go' on the front and she knew that it was for kids….and she didn't want Hatori to see her in this…because then he would think that she was a little kid…or something..

Or maybe she just didn't want him to see her in this for any reason at all.

"…right. Well she's going to make someone very happy someday. Her husband or her boyfriend or someone…." Said Hatori. She just….felt…not dressed. She was in her pajamas and people saw her in her pajamas all the time…but this was….kind of short….and also she wasn't wearing an undershirt because these were her pajamas and it was hard to sleep in an undershirt…but now she wanted to wear an undershirt….she wanted to go into her drawers and wear all of her undershirts at once…

Even though that would have been terribly uncomfortable.

"Yes, she will. You will too. I have no idea how your people chose partners but you seem like a good one. You're intelligent, good company, good conversation, and your skin condition is improving by the day. I'm sure that one day some man will want to be with you and then you can get married…you people want that I think…and then you'll have children and you'll know the joy of having a Daughter….and also you should have at least one Son to keep your bloodline going….or would it be your partner's son? How are these things decided?" asked dad. She knew that she wasn't being looked at, not by dad or Hatori or anyone, but she felt like she was. She felt all….like she was being stared at…and she wanted to put all of her clothes on at once…even though she was already wearing clothes. Nightshirts were clothes. Even though one was short sleeved and short and thin…and maybe she should change…even though she didn't know why she wanted to change….

Feelings made no sense sometimes.

"Um….both of our swimmers would just fight it out inside of a test tube and whoever's swimmers win become the baby?" said Hatori. Her feelings made about as much sense as their conversation. She hadn't been paying attention to what was being said, just that words were being spoken, and that Hatori had been doing a lot of talking…but now she wished that she'd had. Hatori being there was making her feel this way and smoking hadn't helped, in fact she had just made it worse, and now…well it as mean but she wanted him to go home so she could forget about how she had been feeling and then she could go to bed and then she could forget that any of this had ever happened….

Even though nothing had happened.

"That would make the most sense. Whoever is stronger gets to have their bloodline continue. Your people are truly fascinating and when I rule this world your people will have the same rights to marriage and reproduction as mine." Said dad. She hadn't done anything but it felt like she had….and she had the vague sort of feeling that she was going to get into trouble…even though she hadn't done anything to get in trouble for. She had just….been feeling feelings that she knew she would have been embarrassed if dad had caught her feeling them….but also he would never punish her…he had told her that he loved her and because he loved her he would never punish her…..but this just felt…it felt like she had been doing something wrong even though she hadn't even done anything. She had just touched her skin, and it felt nice, it always felt nice when she smoked…was the smoking why she felt so…so….

Weirdly guilty.

"Really?" said Hatori. She had been thinking about him kissing her, she had done that before, but it had never made her feel guilty before. Maybe because she had been imagining him touching her….but not anywhere bad. Minori had said that you weren't supposed to let boys touch you under your shirt unless you had been their girlfriend for a very long time….but she hadn't even been thinking about that. That thought hadn't even crossed her mind…

But now it had.

"Yes. I don't see why you shouldn't. I don't understand you fully but the world needs more espers and you're a very powerful one. So is Shibata actually. Do you have any plans of pursuing him romantically? He seems to enjoy your company and Daughter has told me that he is oddly domestic." Said dad. It crossed her mind quickly. It ran through her mind fast, very fast, because dad had been talking and…and if dad had known that she had just imagined…thought about….what she had thought about…..then she would have died of embarrassment and Hatori for sure would have gotten beaten up so badly that he bled…because that was what dad did to people who he thought she liked….

Did this mean that she liked him?

"Um….he's not like that…and I don't like him like that…um….he's not my type…" said Hatori. Minori had said that you were only supposed to let the boy you liked, the one who was your boyfriend, do that to you…so did that mean that she wanted to be Hatori's girlfriend again? She didn't….she had only thought about it…but thinking about it had made her feel all…weird. Weird and embarrassed. Well that made sense, she had just thought of a weird and embarrassing thing. She had no idea why she would ever even think of something like that.

Nobody had touched her there since back when she had been too little to give herself a bath.

"Oh. Pity. You seemed so compatible." Said dad. She didn't want to think about this anymore. She knew that dad couldn't read minds….but what if he could and he had just never told her? Wait, no, dad would not have kept that to himself…and also he would have killed Sho a long time ago since Sho thought some very not so nice thoughts about him…and stuff. So dad could not read minds…but she needed to stop thinking about this right now, right this second, because what if he read her aura or-or-or-

She needed her brain to shut up already.

"Right….so…uh…..it's getting kind of late. I mean I'm starting to get tired…" said Hatori. But how could her brain shut up when Hatori was right there? He was still in her house and he would be there for a while. He was tired but she knew that dad would not care. He never cared. The next thing that he said would have been for Hatori to go and make coffee. He never told Hatori that he could go home and sleep, no, because he could be kind of a boss friend like that. No, Hatori would be up all night with dad and they would drink coffee and talk and then Mob would be up all night with this feeling…this weird feeling that made her think about weird and embarrassing things…

This feeling WAS a weird and embarrassing thing.

"Go and make coffee." Said dad. There, she knew that he would say that. Now they would be up all night in the kitchen and she would be up all night in her room with this feeling…this thing…this weird and embarrassing thing…and she knew that shutting her door would not help. She needed…she knew that she was being mean but she needed Hatori to get the H-word out of her house right this second.

But she couldn't just say that….because nothing could justify being mean enough to tell someone to get the H-word out of your house….even whatever this feeling was.

"Aren't you tired, boss?" asked Hatori. She wondered if dad would get annoyed by him and tell him to get the H-word out. That was something that dad would do…well not with the cursing because dad did not curse….but he would tell Hatori to get out if he got annoying enough….or he could just make Hatori stay forever and put up with it. It was hard to tell what dad as going to do sometimes….all of the times…

She needed to figure out what she was going to do.

"Yes, that's what the coffee is for. Make coffee but not the caramel or birthday cake coffee. Those are Daughter's and they're vile." Said dad. She was not going to sit there in this feeling all night. She couldn't. She didn't want to. The more she had this feeling the more weird and embarrassing stuff she would think about….and she just….she wanted to go to sleep and wake up tomorrow and spend time with Minegishi or her other friends….not Hatori….or maybe with Minori because she was far away from all of her friends or maybe she would try calling Sho again…and figure out what to say to him….or maybe she would….

She would get nothing done at all if she was up all night with this weird feeling.

"But…yes boss." Said Hatori. She knew what was going to happen…they were going to be up all night even though dad was tired…and he would be cranky in the morning if he stayed up all night…and nothing good had ever come of dad being cranky…so she needed to…to do something. She would…she would not tell Hatori to leave because that would be rude…but she would just….make dad want him to leave…

But not meanly.

It was not Sunday. She had a plan, a plan that she had thought up in five seconds but a plan, and she thought that it would work. It was not a Sunday but dad loved to cuddle. He loved to be hold onto her and he loved to cuddle and….and stuff. So that was what she was going to do. She was going to as to sleep next to him…and if she got a 'no' then…she knew that she wasn't supposed to pester him about things and all…but she also didn't want to have this feeling anymore….and he had said before that he would never punish her again….

She left her room.

She tugged up her socks with her powers as she walked down the hallway. Her legs had been rubbing up against each other and it had been itchy. That was an annoying feeling but one she understood…but not one that she had wanted to have been feeling. She tugged up her socks and went to the kitchen. Her aura was calm, it was always calm after she smoked, so it took dad a moment to notice her.

A moment too long.

"Daughter. Do you need something?" asked dad. Mob had been looking at Hatori, her eyes had been drawn to him the moment she entered the room, but then she focused on dad. There. Being near dad was good for getting rid of these feelings. There. This had been a good idea. Even though she was pretty much kicking Hatori out of her house….

Well he had been wanting to go home for a while anyway.

"Dad, I want to sleep next to you tonight. Can I please? I can't sleep on my own." Said Mob. She knew that if dad agreed to sleep next to her then Hatori would go home….and she would be all squished up in the bed next to dad but that would have been better than being up all night all alone with her thoughts.

Anything would have been better than that.

"It's not Sunday." Said Dad. Mob was glad that she had smoked so much or her aura would have flared. She had thought that he would have said 'yes' since that had been his answer to just about everything lately…and she knew that she should not have been pestering him like she had been planning on doing…

But she had heard, before, that desperate times called for desperate measures.

"I know. I still want to be next to you. Please?" asked Mob. She knew that dad loved her now and she knew that he loved to smother her. She didn't much want to be smothered but she knew that being smothered by dad would have been better than being bothered by all of these thoughts and feelings that she had never asked for in the first place. At least now she was asking to be smothered….though she didn't want to be smothered…

But at least if she was being smothered there wouldn't be any room left for this feeling….or was it a set of feelings…or…well whatever it was there would be no more room left over for it at all.

"No Daughter. It's not a Sunday. You know perfectly well by now that our day together is Sunday. Now go back to your own bed and try and get some sleep because it is very late and children your age require eight to ten hours of sleep to function." Said Dad. Mob was bad at pestering. She wasn't the pesterer, Sho was, but she wasn't going to act like Sho. He never got his way with dad when he did that…and she had never had to act this way to get her way with dad. But she could, now, because he loved her….but she had never pestered him before….and she didn't know how to even….she'd never had to know….

But she knew someone who did.

"Please, daddy?" asked Mob. She hadn't called dad 'daddy' since she had been really little…and it was weird to call him that now…but Minori had taught her that. She had said that if she wanted dad to do something or to let her do something then she should try calling him 'daddy'. Dads loved that, she said, it made them think that you were little again.

Mob didn't know why dad wanted her to be little again but at least it had worked.

"Daughter….alright. Just this once. Hatori, go home. Remember what this conversation was about and where we were in it. We'll resume this at a later date. Daughter, come to bed now." Said dad. Mob didn't need to be told twice. She said goodnight to Hatori, without looking at him of course because she didn't want to make those weird and embarrassing feelings wake up again, and then followed dad to his room where she laid down on her side of the bed, let him pull her in close, and then closed her eyes.

It wasn't always easy falling asleep with dad holding onto her like that…but sleeping came easier like this than it would have with Hatori in her house….even though that was sort of a not so nice thought to have about someone….

It was better than the alternative.


	309. Letting Hair Down

Mob didn't wear her hair down that often.

She liked her braids. They kept her hair neat and not tangled. They kept it out of her face too. Also the braids kept her head from getting all overheated. Having long hair was sort of like wearing a hat all the time. It was nice in the winter, she hardly ever had to wear hats in the winter, but in the spring and summer it wasn't the most comfortable. But that was ok, she looked better with her hair down. Her new friend Minori said so.

And she knew a lot of things about a lot of things.

Like clothes and makeup and stuff. Things that Mob was clueless about. She'd had her hair the same way her whole life and her clothes the same way her whole life. It had been almost eleven years of sameness and she'd been happy….but she looked like she was in the first grade. Minori had said so and she hadn't said it to be mean. Sometimes friends could say things that sort of came out mean but weren't. Like when Minegishi called everyone idiots or morons when they did dumb stuff.

Like that morning.

They had called Shimazaki a moron because he tried to melt together a bunch of caramels in the waffle iron again. He said that if you got the timing right it was delicious but he hadn't gotten the timing right and now the whole house smelled like burnt caramels and Shibata wasn't happy with him. Minegishi had called Shimazaki a moron for what he had done. They hadn't meant to be mean to him and his feelings hadn't been hurt. He had told Minegishi that he loved them, kissed them, and then went off to do Shimazaki things. So sometimes your friends could be kind of mean to you but that didn't mean that they didn't like you.

And also square pancakes could be just as good as waffles.

Square pancakes could be just as good as waffles and wearing her hair down could be just as good as wearing her hair up. She just had to get used to it. She just had to get used to how warm she was and how heavy her hair felt and how her hair kept on sticking to the back of her neck. That was the worst part, feeling it against the back of her neck. It felt like every ten seconds she had to reach back and push her hair away.

It was sort of annoying.

"Mob, you want a hair tie or something?" asked Minegishi as Mob flipped her hair for the millionth time. She had it down today, she'd been wearing it down lately, and Minegishi had no idea why. She didn't seem to like it and the constant hair flipping was getting annoying. This was why they had chopped their hair short years ago. Maybe the day would come when Mob asked them to just cut her hair into something more practical…well hopefully not soon since her father had some fixation with her hair….God, he was always touching Mob's hair…and Minegishi got the feeling that they would end up in a traitor hole if they ever cut Mob's hair down from it's current Rapunzel length….

But then again it was Mob's hair and she could do what she wanted with it.

If he had been any other man Minegishi would have knocked some sense into him long ago. He was creepy, possessive, and in the end he was just going to give Mob a lifetime of psychological problems with his creepy and possessive behavior towards her. That could not have been good for her. Thank God that she had been spending less time with him. Apparently she'd made a new friend. Good. Anything to keep her away from her dad.

And his, frankly, creepy fixation with her and her hair.

"I have some in my pockets…but I don't want to tie up my hair. It looks better this way. Minori said so." Said Mob as she flipped her hair away from her neck again. She wished that she could have just braided it….but it looked better this way. Minori had said so.

"Your new friend?" asked Minegishi. She had made a friend and that was good…because Mob needed a friend her own age. She needed to be friends with other kids but…there was a lot of bullshit that came with being friends with someone her own age.

"Yes….but we're still friends too. She's just also my friend but you're my best friend so you don't have to worry about me replacing you or anything like that." Said Mob. She didn't know tones, Minori said that she was socially impaired, but she thought that Minegishi might have been jealous. She knew that sometimes people got like that….but she also knew that no matter how many friends she made Minegishi would always be her best friend in the whole world.

"I was never worried about that. I'm honestly glad that you finally have a friend your own age." Said Minegishi

"Oh….ok. I was just worried. Also I'm glad that I have a friend my own age too. I mean you're a good friend and everyone else is a good friend…even Shimazaki even though he almost burnt the house down….but I like having someone my own age to hang out with. She's really smart about a lot of things and she teaches me things…things that I already should have known about." Said Mob

"Such as?" asked Minegishi

"She taught me about how kpop is the best kind of music because it has the best guys…even though I thought music was about how things sounded and not how the guys looked….and also she taught me about how I should wear clothes that don't have Elsa or Anna or Olaf on them because I'm too old….and she taught me about makeup and why I should wear my hair down and also about all the rules with boys…it's a lot of rules." Said Mob. She had no idea that there were so many rules for how to….be. Dad had said, before, that social rules were very complicated. He had always said, before, that it was impressive how much she knew and how good she was socially. Well she wasn't that good socially since there were rules that she hadn't even known that she had to follow. Rules that she hadn't even known existed.

"Rules? Such as?" asked Minegishi. They paused the TV and turned to face Mob. The rules. Ah yes, the rules. The never ending rules for how to look and talk and act and live. The rules that Mob did not need to live by. The rules that nobody needed to live by.

"Rules like how you're not supposed to let them kiss you unless they take you somewhere or buy you something first….unless you're playing a game but I don't think that I would ever kiss someone in a game. Also you're never supposed to open your mouth when you kiss someone unless they do it first because then otherwise boys will think you're easy also youre never supposed to let them touch you unless you've been going out with them for a while. Also you're not supposed to tell them that you like them, you have to wait for them to like you, otherwise-" said Mob

"Mob, stop. This is painful. I think I just felt part of my brain die." Said Minegishi. No. mob did not need all of this garbage in her head. Those so called 'rules' about how you were supposed to relate to boys. About how you were some prize for them to win. Like you had zero agency in the whole thing beyond making him jump through hoops….and God forbid you want anything from HIM. No, girls had no role in this beyond making him jump through hoops to get to what you both wanted….God. That shit had been ridiculous when they had been Mob's age and it was ridiculous now. Well now they had something else to talk to Mob about…and sooner rather than later.

"Oh what?! That's…um….I bet if I called Fukuda then-" said Mob. She didn't want to make Sho come back, that was smothering him, but she also didn't want anything to happen to her friend….did that mean that she was putting her friend ahead of her brother? She didn't know. She just wanted everyone and everything to be ok.

"No. Not literally…and even if I had been literal don't call that stale piece of candy corn from three Halloweens ago. I can't stand him." said Minegishi. Maybe instead of putting all of his energy and resources into finding more espers Suzuki, instead, should have put that energy into finding more healers. There had to have been another in the world and whoever that person was they had to have been better than Fuckuda.

"I don't….I don't like him as much as I used to too….because he made fun of your breasts and stuff." Said Mob. That had not been a good plane ride at all. Fukuda should have just said sorry…and maybe she should have turned the plane around…but then if she had turned the plane around they would have had to spend even more time in the air and then ever more fights would have happened and she did not want her friends to fight at all. Ever. Friends did not fight.

"Don't remind me." Said Minegishi with a groan. That had been the plane ride from hell….well most of their plane rides sucked. There was something about being hermetically sealed in a tin can with everyone twenty thousand feet up that just brought out the worst in everyone. Who would have thought that close confines and recirculated air could make people crazy?

"Sorry….but he was wrong to say stuff like that about you." Said Mob. She still felt all weird thinking about what had happened. Well bad for Minegishi, of course, but also just….weird. She knew that Fukuda had not been talking about her but…but he COULD have been talking about her….and she felt like it was selfish to think like that…..but the thought that he could have been talking about her…since hers were nothing to write home about either….it just…made her feel all weird. Not good. The thought of someone she had known for her whole life….the thought that they could think about her like that…and be mean to her like that….well she was just being selfish since it had actually happened to Minegishi and they had felt absolutely terrible.

"Yes, yes he was…but he'll get his eventually. Your dad won't live forever." Said Minegishi before they thought about what they had been saying. Right. Mob loved her dad….and she was the only person not looking forward to the day the great Suzuki Touichirou left this world.

"That's….that's a sad thought to have. I love my dad. I don't like it when he smothers me but I don't want him to die…." Said Mob. She loved her dad so much…even if he was mean to Sho and he smothered her….and she didn't want him to ever die. She loved him and the thought of being without him….she didn't know what she would do without her dad. She already had no mom….and with no dad then she would be an orphan….and she didn't want to be an orphan.

"Death in inevitable. Death, taxes, and Shimazaki doing stupid shit in the kitchen are all unavoidable parts of life…but I wasn't saying that I want him dead. I was just stating a fact. One day he won't be here to protect Fukuda and then he'll get his." Said Minegishi. They weren't sure if they were going to kill him…he was annoying but he was one of the people that Mob cared about…and they weren't excited at the prospect of whatever it was that they were going to do…but they had their reasons for doing whatever it was that they were going to have to do.

"Are….are you going to hurt him?" asked Mob. Fukuda may have been sort of mean lately but that didn't mean that she wanted him to get hurt or anything like that. She just…wanted him to be nicer…and to say sorry.

"Possibly. It depends on how much groveling he does." Said Minegishi. Why did Mob still care about that asshole? She was too nice. She was too nice and it would be her downfall. She was getting older and….yeah. The future was worrying.

"Um…I agree that he should not have said that stuff about you…and especially not to Sho…but um…maybe don't hurt him. Maybe just make him say sorry from the heart and stuff and then…and then he'll be sorry and stuff. I mean he was wrong to say that stuff to you…but hurting people is wrong." Said Mob. She may not have been Fukuda's best friend or anything, actually he was one of the people she liked the least out of all the people she knew, but she didn't want him to get hurt. Also she didn't want Minegishi to hurt someone. They were her best friend and they didn't need something like that hanging over them for the rest of their life.

"Mob, sometimes people need to be hurt. Some people can only learn things the hard way and sometimes teaching someone something that hard way involves hurting them." Said Minegishi. Mob still had no idea what they actually did….how she had no idea they didn't know. She had access to all of Claw's records and she could read. Well whatever. If directly asked they would not lie. Keeping secrets never worked out. They always had a way of getting out and at the worst times too. They would not volunteer this information, what they did for a living, but if asked they would not lie.

Though they did hope that Mob didn't ask.

Though she didn't even have time to ask. The energy around them shifted. Some of their plants wanted to recoil…and they did not let them. No, they were the boss of their plants…and Mob could override their control without even realizing it. She was the one who was startled. She was startled and she could just override their control like it was nothing…..

God help anyone who Mob had to teach a lesson to…the hard way.

"Who are we hurting?" asked Shimazaki as he popped into the living room. He leaned down over the back of the couch and felt some of the sand on him begin to fall off. Well this day had been a bust…and it was only noon it felt like. God. He missed Sho. There was always something to do with Sho around. Also Sho was good at seeing when caramels were done melting in the waffle iron, too. He could not wait until that kid came back from whatever grand adventure he was on….though not nearly as grand as the one they would have when he came back. Not that he knew what they were going to do but man were they going to do….something.

"Fukuda because he said mean things about Minegishi…well Minegishi is going to hurt him. I'm trying to get them to not hurt him and just make him say sorry." Said Mob. She may have said the wrong thing because she felt Shimazaki's aura flare against hers. Also he opened his eyes just a little bit before he closed them again. He did that instinctively sometimes, he said, and he hated doing that because that meant that eye cleaning day would come sooner. She hadn't meant to make him mad. She never wanted any of her friends to ever be mad for any reason at all.

"Again with this guy? Well he was warned. He brought this on himself. Mob, Toshi, if either of you want to say goodbye to him them say your goodbyes now." Said Shimazaki. Well not it was time for him to go splat. He couldn't get to Seoul from here on his own but he could find a way and then he would teleport as high up as he could stand then he would go splat on the ground. Nobody talked about Toshi unless they were talking about how awesome they were…and nobody talked about Toshi's body in any way end of discussion because they did not like that.

"Calm down, Ryou, we're talking about what happened before…and where have you been? And why are you tracking sand everywhere." Said Minegishi. He smelled like the ocean again…and he had forgone his usual coat. They made a mental note to make some aloe for him for later. He somehow burnt and tanned at the same time.

"I went to the beach." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. Why else would he have been covered in sand? It wasn't like he had gone to the sand factory…no…that was something best done with Sho. They always had the best times together. Collecting shells and throwing them at people would have been a lot more fun with the kid around…but he was living it up in Seoul. Well as much as a ten year old could live it up. He'd have to show Sho how fun Seoul could be…and also how to meet guys or whatever he was into because if he came back and he was still all lovesick and shit Shimazaki….he had no idea what he was going to do.

"Why? You hate the water." Said Minegishi as they sat up on their knees, reached over, and shook some of the sand from his hair. They forgot how long his hair was sometimes. It wasn't very long but it was…different seeing it all flattened down from sand and ocean water. They brushed some of the sand from his hair and then sat back down quickly. Mob's eyes had been on them the whole time….the shippening….the constant shippening….

"I don't hate it…it just don't trust it." Said Shimazaki as he shook some sand off and onto Mob and Toshi, mostly Mob since Toshi hated getting all sandy. They hated the beach. They hated anywhere that was hot and crowded. He would have taken them with him if he could…but at least now he got to be near them.

"But then why did you go? And also everyone can see your tattoos." Said Mob. She knew that people were not supposed to see your tattoos. That was because only people in the yakuza and people who wanted to live outside of society got tattoos, dad had said, and that was why Shimazaki always had to wear his coat. Also because it made him look cool. Well she thought that it made him look cool, Minori thought that it made him look attractive, and Mob didn't get it. It was just a coat…but she didn't understand a lot of Minori's stuff about boys. Especially Shimazaki. How many times could she stare at a picture of him and say that he looked nice without getting bored. He dressed the same every day, almost the same anyway, not like Hatori. You never knew what sweater he was going to wear on any given day.

"I know they can. That's what I love about this country, they don't kick you out of places just for being covered in tattoos." Said Shimazaki. He poked his Toshi tattoo as he said that. He could feel the raised lines, the ones that he had been trying to cover in the first place, and honestly the tattoos probably looked better than the scars some of them covered up. He knew that this one, the one of Toshi did, because it was Toshi.

"Yeah, it's so unfair that people don't want the yakuza hanging around." Said Minegishi

"Hey, ex-yakuza. I got kicked out thank you very much…and I got to keep all of my fingers." Said Shimazaki. He wiggled his fingers for emphasis. Toshi batted his hands away…but they let their hand linger on his. He noticed. He reached over and held their hand in his. God, their skin was so soft….

"Why would you not have all of your fingers?" asked Mob. She tried not to look at them holding hands. She liked it that they were holding hands…and also she knew that people didn't like to be watched when they held hands. Well she knew that she would not have wanted to be watched when she held hands with someone…not that she had anyone to hold hands with.

"Because when you do as Ryou has done they cut off your fingers so you have to live with that shame for the rest of your life…and don't ask him what he did. You don't want to know." Said Minegishi. They let go of his hand and shook their head. He had better not have said a word to Mob about what he had done. They had accepted it, he was who he was and all of that, but that didn't mean that everyone else would…or that Mob needed to accept it.

"Ok….I won't." said Mob. She kind of wanted to know, now, but Minegishi had told her not to ask…and she knew that he had done something bad before….but she didn't know what….but that was ok. Whatever it was he would always be her friend.

"Eh, Toshi likes to exaggerate. I do worse on a daily basis." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. So he let some people die, stuck his dick where it didn't belong, and accidentally burnt down a house or two…and also the drugs….and the stealing of the drugs…but it wasn't so bad. Toshi exaggerated.

"Like get sand everywhere?" asked Mob. She could feel some of it in her hair. She flipped her hair away from her neck again and tried her best to get the sand out. Great. Now she was warm and itchy and sandy.

"Yes Ryou, getting sand everywhere is much worse than…all of those things that Mob does not need to know about and that you had better not tell her about." Said Minegishi

"Alright, Toshi, message received. Anyway it doesn't matter why I got kicked out anyway. What matters is….this." said Shimazaki as he dug around in his coat and pulled out a really nice feeling seashell. It was all smooth and stuff. It might have had a clam in it or something at some point. Now it was all smooth and soft and nice. Just like Toshi was.

"A seashell. Lovely." Said Minegishi as a perfect seashells was put into their hand. What were they supposed to do with this? Just…well Ryou liked to feel them…and it was smooth. They ran their hands over the shell. This was….this was alright. Nice even. This….well they'd do something with this….well right now they would just hold on to it.

"I felt it and thought of you." Said Shimazaki. He had heard that, the way Toshi's aura hiccupped. They liked it. He had known that they would like it. Well he had hoped that they would like it, anyway. He didn't know. He had just felt like doing something nice for them.

"You went to the beach for seashells? I like to collect seashells…" said Mob. She would have liked to have gone too…she hadn't even known that Minegishi liked seashells….or the beach. Well actually they had said that they hated the beach….so it would have been her and Shimazaki. They had fun together. The thought of being alone with him….it's weird. She knows that he's supposed to be very good looking and she's supposed to like him, Minori had said so, but….well she didn't think he looked bad…he just didn't make her heart go doki doki or anything like that. Probably because she was Minegishi's best friend and friends didn't do things like that to each other.

"Sorry. I didn't know if you were going to be around today…and also I was throwing them at people and I know how you hate shit like that." Said Shimazaki. He would rather have taken Sho….he would have had the time of his life…God, he missed the kid. Maybe he should have a kid of his own….no, that was a bad idea. Toshi didn't want kids and he didn't want to make Toshi do anything that they didn't want to do…and also kids started out as babies and he wasn't a big fan of taking care of babies. Too much crying and too much vomiting and too much being responsible for keeping another human being alive.

"Um…I would have liked to have been able to go with you…but you're right. I would not have liked it if you had thrown things at people. That isn't nice." Said Mob. Shimazaki had kind of a meanness to him sometimes. Minegishi said that they weren't in the habit of psychoanalyzing people but if they were they would have said that it had something to do with how mad his life had been when he was a kid and the fact that he had been raised in a yakuza family, which was like Claw but much worse Minegishi had said. Mob was sad that he'd had a hard life…but she also didn't like how he could just do mean things to people for no reason and stuff. She didn't understand it…and a lot of other things about him….maybe that was why she didn't like him. Well not like she was supposed to like him…well like how everyone else seemed to like him.

"Well not as bad as Fukuda shooting his mouth off about Toshi. Seriously, I can mess him up if you want me to." Said Shimazaki

"Don't. I can handle myself, Ryou." Said Minegishi

"Well let me help at least. I want to. I love-" said Shimazaki

"Ryou, go take a shower. You smell like the ocean and you're covered in sand." Said Minegishi

"Alright, I'll take a shower…but just because I-" said Shimazaki

"Now." Said Minegishi. They waited for him to protest again. He didn't. He just leaned over and kissed them. His hand found their cheek and he tilted their head up and kissed them…and then he teleported away. They lingered in that positon for a moment before turning around and sitting back the way that they had been before. They unpaused the TV and went back to watching. Mob…they had hoped that she would have taken the hint….but she hadn't. She was still sitting there, facing them, staring with her eyes and her aura….at least her eyes didn't do that creepy thing that her father's and brother's did. At least she still had pupils. Minegishi held eye contact with her. An impromptu staring contest started….

And Mob won.

"Hey Minegishi? Can I ask you something?" asked Mob. Minegishi had been staring at her and normally people only stared at other people when they had something to say. She had been waiting for Minegishi to say something but maybe they had been waiting for her to say something. Maybe they had almost ended up sitting there in silence for the rest of their lives. That would not have been good at all.

"You just did." Said Minegishi. They knew what she was going to ask about. They knew that she was at the special time in her life, all the new feelings, etcetera….and they knew that it was normal for her to be curious about love and such…but they did not want to go into what, exactly, there was between them and Ryou….because they weren't entirely sure what was happening between them and Ryou.

They put their seashell down on the coffee table.

"Um….can I ask you something else?" asked Mob

"Is this going to be about me and Ryou?" asked Minegishi

"Yes." said Mob

"Well fine, come on, let's get this over with." Said Minegishi

"Um….ok. I just wanted to know why you never say it back when he tells you he loves you. Minori says that when a boy says that he loves you then you have to say it back. That means that you have a boyfriend now and if you don't say it back then he'll move onto someone who will. Boys are like that, she said. They don't like to wait around so you have to-" said Mob

"Mob, I say this as your best friend, alright? You need to forget everything, very single thing, that you've been told. Ok? That girl has no clue what she's talking about." Said Minegishi. They rubbed their temples and groaned. They could feel a headache coming on. Mob did not need all of that bullshit in her head. Minegishi wanted to find where the source of all of this was, all of these stupid rules that someone had thought up, and destroy it so that nobody had to deal with this crap ever again.

"No, Minori knows. She's kissed eight boys." Said Mob. That was seven more boys than she'd kissed. Minori knew a lot better than she did. She also went to school and had friends who were their age…well all of her friends were b-words that stabbed her in the back, she had said, but she still knew more about being with people and the rules and stuff than Mob did.

"So? I've kissed….God I don't even know how many people at this point….so I think that I know a little bit better than an eleven year old." Said Minegishi. They had also done things that Mob couldn't even imagine but they were not going to bring that up. No, let Mob stay young and innocent for a little while longer. She had a phone, she knew how the internet worked, she'd figure out what adults did together in her own time.

"You're right, you do know….but also there might be new rules…there are a lot of rules. There are rules that I never even thought about." Said Mob

"Those rules are bullshit, Mob, complete and utter bullshit. Ok? Nobody is obligated to do anything. Ryou is in love with me. That's fine. He can say it if he wants to. He can teleport up onto the roof and scream it so the whole world can hear. His feelings do not dictate my feelings…and before you ask I have no idea what my feelings on the subject are. So don't ask about them." Said Minegishi

"Ok….but aren't you worried that he's going to find someone else? Minori said that boys are like that." Said Mob. Boys could just leave you at any time for someone else. That was why you weren't supposed to just kiss boys or let them touch you and stuff. Because then they expected that from everyone and it wasn't fair to everyone else. You had to think about other people. Minori had said so.

"Ryou can fu-Ryou can be with whoever he wants to be with. So can I. Even if he is in love with me he knows how I am and I know how he is…and even if we were like that I wouldn't waste my time with someone who was liable to just get up and leave because I wasn't going on his timetable. Don't indulge people like that, Mob, they aren't worth it. If someone tries to make you do something that you don't want to do or you're not ready to do then you have every right to tell them to fuck off." Said Minegishi. Maybe it was best that Mob didn't know any guys her own age. They were pushy at her age…well there were a lot of pushy men out there too…and if you looked up pacifist in the dictionary Mob's picture would be right there….maybe they could move to an women only island until Mob was done growing up. Minegishi had never had that problem with women and other such feminine individuals….but isolating Mob from the opposite sex would only make it worse….was this what it was like to have a kid? The constant worry…they didn't much like the constant worry….but this was what it was. They were going to be there for Mob no matter what….and it looked like there was going to be a lot of 'what' in the coming years….

Responsibilities of the bracelet.

"I know, if boys try stuff then you can slap them like on TV…and I don't want to slap anyone but I don't know any boys so I guess I won't have to. Minori's never had to slap anyone either-" said Mob

"Minori is eleven. Mob, don't take romantic advice…or life advice…from another eleven year old." Said Minegishi. Kids did not need to learn these things from kids…and they would have thought that Mob would have been smarter than that…but that had been hypocritical of them…or at least unfair. It was unfair of them to expect Mob to be smarter than they had been at her age.

"But…she knows stuff. She knows the rules for boys and friends and clothes and posting pictures and putting on makeup and stuff." Said Mob. Those were the important things about being a girl, it seemed, and they were important to her. She just…wanted to be normal. Normal and also….she wasn't a little kid anymore and she didn't want to be treated like one anymore.

"Who makes these rules?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. Mob should not have had to deal with this. This was the one good thing, Minegishi had thought before, about living the way she did. She didn't have to put up with bullshit from the other kids. Well now she did. Now she was acting like there was something wrong with her and there wasn't. You were who you were and there was nothing wrong with who you were. Minegishi hadn't had anyone to tell them that when they had been a kid, they had been told the direct opposite in fact, but Mob was luckier than they had been as a child.

"….I don't know….she didn't say. I guess normal people. People who go to school and stuff. I don't know…." Said Mob. She knew that she was not a normal person, and she knew that she should not have wanted what the normal people had, but she just…she sort of did sometimes. She sort of wanted to go to school and have friends who were kids like her and to have had a boyfriend and to be able to wake up in the same place every single day and all of that normal people stuff….but dad had said that she wasn't supposed to have wanted any normal person stuff because she was supposed to be better than normal…but she didn't want to be better than normal. She just wanted….she didn't even know what it was that she even wanted….

"Mob, if you don't know who makes these rules then why are you following them?" asked Minegishi

"I guess….I don't want to be weird. I mean….I'm weird. I know that I'm weird and…and I had no idea how weird I was. I mean…I like the same stuff and I dress the same way since…since I've been little…and I don't know how I didn't see how weird that was….dressing like a first grader." Said Mob

"Is it any weirder than getting all of your clothes from the men's section? Or wearing a leather jacket year round? Or wearing sweaters all the time because you're too lazy to change your clothes? Or wearing the same suit day in and day out…and even to bed? Mob, the only person here who dresses 'normally', and I say that in quotes, is Shibata and he's been in the kitchen all day binge watching YouTube videos about waffle making hacks. Mob, nobody here is normal because normal doesn't exist." Said Minegishi

"But…if normal doesn't exist then why are there so many normal people?" asked Mob

"Everyone's different. Everyone has their own sense of self and self-expression. Everyone has their own way of being in the world, of being comfortable in it. Don't let someone else tell you how to be. I mean…for the love of God, you're the second most powerful esper in the world. If anything you should be the one making the rules." Said Minegishi

"But….I don't want to make the rules. Making rules…it seems kind of bossy. I don't even like making rules for Sho but I have to for his own good. I don't think that I would like making rules for the whole world…I don't even know what rules I would make. About stuff like that I mean. I don't know anything….I didn't even know that it was weird to have my hair in braids." Said Mob

"What's wrong with braids?" asked Minegishi

"Only little kids have them." Said Mob

"That's ridiculous. I had my hair in braids until I was about your age." Said Minegishi

"You did?" asked Mob. She blinked and tried to imagine Minegishi in braids….or with hair long enough to braid. She couldn't. She had seen their hair get pretty long, it was almost to their shoulders once, but they mostly just cut it short. Now it was to their ears. They'd had braids when they were a kid….whenever she had pictured little Minegishi she had always just thought of Minegishi as she knew them now but shorter….but of course they had bene different when they had been a kid. They had been a girl when they had been a kid.

Would they have been friends back then?

They may have looked different but they would have been the same person that they were now. Just with braids…and black hair…and maybe they would have worn a dress too…no. They hated dresses because you had to be careful how you moved and stuff. They would still have been the same person as they were now…just a little different….but they still could have been friends and stuff….they would have been friends but not like her and Minori were friends now…

She would not even begin to imagine Minegishi being anything like Minori.

"Yeah, but then I got sick of it and chopped it off. It's just hair. You can do whatever you want with it. If you want your hair in braids then braid it and if you don't you don't…and if someone has a problem with your hair then they can go fuck themselves." Said Minegishi

"I…I wouldn't ever tell anyone to…do that…" said Mob. She knew that people said bad words but she wasn't one of those people. She knew those words, she knew what they meant and how to put them together and stuff….but she just could not do it. Minori had said that she sounded like a little kid but….she just couldn't curse.

"Well you should. Don't live your life according to what other people want or you. I've lived like that. It's not a good time." Said Minegishi

"I'm not living my life by other people….bossing me around….not really. I just….don't want to be weird. I was weird and I didn't even know it and….and I just don't want to be weird. But it's hard because I just…I feel weird all the time….well some of the times…and I don't like to feel weird…out of place." Said Mob. She didn't know how to say it. She felt…out of place…that made sense. She had felt so out of place since she had made friends with Minori. She was a normal person who did normal stuff and knew how to be normal. Mob…she hadn't ever been normal in her life. She liked dolls and Frozen and braiding her hair and stuff like that. She liked that same stuff now as she had when she had been a little kid…and she wasn't a little kid anymore. She was almost eleven. She was almost eleven but she felt so much older sometimes.

"Mob…everyone feels like that. Well not Ryou but he's…Ryou. Most people feel out of place like that but, you know, you're just going to feel more out of place trying to become someone you aren't. If you want to wear Frozen clothes then wear Frozen clothes and if you want to braid your hair then braid your hair and if you want to do something else then do something else. Just do it for you, alright? Because you think that you have to follow some rules or whatever….and definitely not for guys. If a guy wants you to do something you don't want to do or to change who you are then he's not worth it. You got it?" asked Minegishi. They may have started speaking a little too harshly there….but Mob had to understand this. She had to. Being who she was…how she was….she was liable to go along with whatever…and do whatever…and Minegishi could not let that happen to her.

"Um…..I get it…" said Mob. She did and she didn't. She knew that she shouldn't let herself be bossed around but also…also she didn't see what was so bad about trying to fit in. Trying to feel less out of place. If everyone in the world felt out of place then….then maybe there were no places to begin with…but maybe there were and everyone was looking for their place…she didn't know. This whole thing was very complicated.

"Good. I'm sorry to sound like such an asshole but I just….don't want to see you wasting your life trying to be someone you're not. God only knows how much of my life I wasted like that…trying to be someone else…" said Minegishi

"Why would you try to be someone else? You're you. You're one of the nicest, smartest, funnest people I know." Said Mob

"Where were you when I was your age?" asked Minegishi shaking their head. Mob had been taking about herself there. She was a good friend….and something of a doormat…but she was a good person. She was one of the best people that Minegishi had ever met….and how she had come from Suzuki of all people Minegishi would never know. They wondered what their life would have been like if they had met Mob, or someone like her, when they had been her age. They probably could have shaved off a few years of pain and heartbreak that was for sure.

"Not born yet." Said Mob. Minegishi had been a teenager when she had been born…but sometimes she thought about what her life would have been like if Minegishi and her had been the same age and friends and stuff. She would have had someone her own age to be friends with….a best friend her own age….and also Minegishi's life would have been better. Their parents had been very mean to them, they had said, and if they'd had Mob around back then…well then their parents would have been a whole not nicer to them. Or else.

"Well I wish I had known someone like you when I was your age. It would have been nice. Back then it was a shit ton of people telling me that who I was, who I am, was just….wrong. Adults, kids, my parents, people I knew, people I didn't know….guys I did stupid stuff for….girls I did even stupider stuff for…it wasn't a good time. I just…don't want to see you waste as much of your life as I wasted of mine." Said Minegishi

"I won't." said Mob even though she didn't know how any part of someone life could be a waste. Life was life and even when you weren't doing anything, even when you were just siting and talking, you were learning something and growing and stuff. You even learned and grew from the painful stuff…like mom leaving. Mob didn't know who she would have been if mom hadn't left…well a lot happier…but also maybe not because if mom had never left then she never would have met any of her friends and stuff. She never would have made friends with Minegishi…and that's not a version of reality that she wants to live in.

"Good. Now do you want me to braid your hair? You've been flipping it all day." Said Minegishi. Too much heavy conversation. Too many memories. Just…too much. They were trying to distract Mob, maybe, or just trying to distract themselves. They didn't know. All they knew was that Mob really liked having her hair braided and the constant hair flipping was getting on Minegishi's nerves.

"…..Minegishi….I would love that." Said Mob. She pulled a handful of ribbons and hair ties out of her pockets and handed them all of Minegishi. Then she turned around quickly and let Minegishi work. She had no idea that Minegishi even knew how to do this but they did. Sure her braids hung crooked, by the end, and one had more hair in it than the other…but still. Minegishi had done the braiding and therefore they were perfect.

Mob would have to let Minegishi braid her hair more often.


	310. The Clash of Memory and Reality

Masami had always turned into an octopus at night.

Suzuki had always preferred to sleep on his bad with his hands folded. It was just the most comfortable way to sleep. No part of him was immobilized. Masami had never liked that. She had always laid on top of him or pulled him over so he was holding her in some way. They would always become a tangle of limbs at her insistence. Their legs tangled together, his chest pressed against her back, his arms around hers. Her arms wrapped together. Her hand in his. Her fingers laced through his. It was not a comfortable way to sleep at all. He had always woken up in the night to the pins and needles feeling shooting up his arm. To her saliva seeping through the arm of his shirt. To her hair in his eyes and nose and mouth. He had always, at some point in the night, woken up and had to disentangle himself from her.

Carefully.

Always carefully so as not to wake her. She had things to do in the morning and she needed her sleep. He could give her that. She needed sleep and she needed to bond with him, too. Her stomach…her stomach was still so flat. They had just gotten married then. Son was in there. He was in there but he wasn't ready to come out yet. To be cut out of her. He wasn't ready to be cut out of her like organs from a fish. She would be on her back with a curtain draped over her…and she would hold his hand and tell him that she was going to be fine….but she would not be fine. She would not be fine at all. She would….she would be….her organs would not be inside of her where they belonged and….and there would be so much blood….

He has to warn her.

She needs to know what's coming. She needs to know that she will not be ok She needs to be warned about…about everything…but he just…he needs to warn her. To speak. He needs to…why can't he speak? He feels like he's being weighed down….that's the weight of her against him…but he just…he needs to SPEAK….he forces himself to…to say something. To tell her that she will not be ok. To tell her that…that she and Son…that they will not be ok….

"Masami." He manages to choke out. He gets her name out and then not much else. But now she knows, at least, that she will not be ok. That things will not be ok. She will be laying down on her back in a place that smells like death and is surrounded by death and has an aura of death…and maybe he should have let Tadashi handle it after all…but Tadashi told him to go to a hospital because he knows nothing of delivering babies…but how can he not know? People have been delivering babies since the beginning of time. It wasn't complicated. They came out the same way they got in.

They had made a human together.

He feels her stomach. Flat, very flat. Son is still tiny. Son started off so small…just two cells…and then four….and then eight. He divided up endlessly under he was the person he was today. He needs to warn Masami about what Son will grow up to be. Such a troublesome little boy. How he could have made such a troublesome little boy he will never know. He's born red and crying and Son is put into his arms after he's cleaned off….and Suzuki stops vomiting…..and Masami is stitched up and Tadashi shows up and says that he'll fix her when she's out of the hospital and Son is in his arms and he's so tiny and red and his eyes are blue and he looks at him and Masami like he knows them….and he does know them because Suzuki has been speaking into Masami's stomach for at least an hour a day so that his Son will recognize his voice and Son is there and Masami's stomach is flat now.

Where is Son?

Son is baby. Son is born and he's a baby and Suzuki can't take the crying anymore but it's his only means of communication and Masami knows what his cries mean but he isn't crying now at all. He's silent and the silence is worse than the crying because at least when he cries then Suzuki knows that he's alive and he's only got the one Son and he MADE a HUMAN and there's a human in the world and he's so small and fragile and he fits in one hand and his little hand wraps around his finger and his name is Sho and he's got an awareness to him that Suzuki never expected and he will grow up to do great things and that's why his name has the character for leader well it will have the character for leader once he's born.

Masami's stomach is flat.

He presses his palm to her stomach. There's some give to her. He lets his hand rest there. Son has been born and he's asleep and they're in blissful silence. They're laying together in blissful silence and he knows that he will never get to sleep all tangled up in her like this but he knows also that…that being tangled up in her like this is a gift. That she is a gift. She is a gift and she is his and he will never take her for granted again. Take this for granted again. Being tangled up in her limbs. Her body against his. The flat of her stomach against his hand. Son has been born and his daughter has been born and she is his daughter. She is his daughter and the sun rose and set with her. The world turned for her. He lived for her.

She is all he desires and his will to succeed.

She is the very breathe the he breaths. She is all he desires and his will to succeed. He mustn't roll over. He mustn't disturb her. He must stay still. He must stay still beside Masami. He must not move even though he knows his limbs will go to pins and needles under her weight. Her weight is there. Her weight…she weights so little. He doesn't remember her weighing so little. He pulls her closer. She won't be there. He mustn't move or she won't be there. She will be gone. She will be gone from his. Masami will be gone from him….and he doesn't know why…he loves her. He cares for her. The sun rises and sets with her. She is all he desires and she is his will to succeed.

He holds her closer.

A leg tangles with hers. She feels small. She has always been smaller than him. He keeps her close. He feels her stomach under his hand. He feels the expanse of cotton beneath the palm of his hand. He expands his fingers out like a starfish. He pulls one out of the ocean as a child. It's a fascinating creature. Mother says to put it back before it dies. He listens. Mother knows best. Masami knows best. She is intelligent. She will do such a good job raising Son. Daughter. He has a Daughter.

Blue eyes looking back at him.

Eyes impossibly blue on a person impossibly small. Hair impossibly red. A voice that is impossibly loud. A name that is not Son's. A child that is not Son. A child that is not his. This cannot be his child. This is not the child that he feels under his hand. This is not the being made of two rapidly dividing cells that he has created in a moment of pleasure and trust and love and the culmination of emotions, of is emotions, of her emotions. Of the smooth expanse of her skin beneath his hands. Not cotton. Skin. Warm and slick with sweat and a voice that calls out to him and hands on his back and his sides and his hair and just EVERYWHERE and she is everywhere and he is everywhere with her and he has felt that again and again and he's in his office and he knows that he is making a MISTAKE and he doesn't care until it's over and it is over and he is with Masami and he would never do that to her.

He would never do anything to hurt her.

And he would never do anything to hurt the person he can feel growing within her. He can feel an aura. He can feel an aura all around him…and it's comforting. He lets his aura meet this one. He lets his aura meet this one and he lets his hand meet the cotton. He lets his hand find the expanse of her stomach…and he finds the bed. Because her stomach is flat. Her stomach is flat and she is smaller than him and that is why she is so small. She is so small and he has to keep her there and with him and safe and he needs to hold her so close that she can never leave. He needs to build her a beautiful cage and never let her out because she cannot leave him.

She cannot leave him.

His hand is back on her stomach. There is a future within her. There is a future within them. They are the makers of their future. They are the makers of this person who will then go on to make more people and then those people will go on to make more people and round and round they will go. Around and around and around and around. He will see her when the spool has turned another turn. It's not that he's confused, he knows, he knows what he is. He knows who she is. She is the one who makes him work for what he is. He knows who he is and he knows what he is and he knows what he must do.

He will give her the world and she is right to ask it.

He does not despise the world. He despises very little. Despises his place in it. He is the most powerful being on Earth. The world is rightly his. It's not the world that he despises but the way it is run. The way it turns. It will turn for her. He will make the world turn for her. She is his. She is his and she is perfection and he loves her. He loves every single thing about her. He loves the way he smiles at him. He loves the way she brushes out her hair. He loves the way she always….always stays there with him. There is an idea in his mind that she will be gone from him but….but that idea is so insane that he cannot even articulate it.

She will never go.

He finds her hair. He can feel her hair against his face. This annoys him. This is the part of the night where he will turn away from her. He cannot sleep like this…but he cannot let her go. She is his. She is his and he will never let her go. She is his and she makes him feel everything and he shouldn't feel everything because nothing good ever happens when he feels…when he feels everything….but she is his and he can love her. He is hers….he is hers and she is his and they are each other and she makes him feel so…this is a good feeling.

He presses himself closer to her.

He presses his face into her hair until his nose is pressed right up against the base of her skull…and he wants to pull away. He wants to pull away but he doesn't know why. He stays. He stays even though she smells….different. There is supposed to be a smell to her….not the artificial berry scent but…he inhales. She is not…she is not supposed to smell like this. He has spent countless nights pressed into her and she has never smelled like this before….his hand raises up from her stomach to where her waist flares into her hip. He knows this dip. He enjoys holding her by this dip. It's like it's been molded for his hand…but he finds…he doesn't find it. His hand goes from her waist to her thigh to her ribs…and she is very small…and he knows that she is not supposed to be this small….and she is this small…and she does not….this is not….

He opens his eyes.

He rolls over.

He sits up.

"Dad….are you ok?" asked Daughter. She is sitting up too. She has turned the light on, now, and it burns. He doesn't want to look at her. He wants to look at her. He wants her out of his bed. He wants to hold her. He wants to be alone. He wants to tie her to him so she can never get away. He wants Masami. He wants Daughter. He wants….he wants a great many things…

But mostly he just wants a time machine.

He wants to go back in time and wake himself up before he can….he hadn't even done anything….but he still feels like he has done something wrong. He mistook Daughter for Masami but…but he hadn't done anything. He had dreamt of Masami. It happened occasionally. He woke up about once a week having had dreamt of her….and at least he hasn't woken up in the state that he usually does…and he was never in that state to begin with. If he had been in that state then Daughter would have left….because nobody wants to be around their father when he is in that state….but he was not in that state to begin with….and Daughter…he knows that Daughter is not Masami…

He wants to wake up.

"Fine." Said Suzuki. He found some words. After a moment, and some swallowing, he finds some words. He needs to calm down. He is calm. He is fine. Daughter is Daughter and…and he held her…but that is normal. He's held her before. He's supposed to hold her. She's his Daughter. Why wouldn't he hold her? He cared for her…he loved her…and she enjoyed being held….and he should not have felt the way he felt…and he felt….he felt…

He felt, vaguely, like he needed a bath….

"Are you sure? You felt like you were having a bad dream." Said Daughter. She scoots closer to him. He scoots away. He doesn't know why he scoots away from her. He's on the cool side of the bed. He's on the cool side of the bed and…and he wants to be near her…but at the same time he doesn't…and he doesn't know why. He feels….he feels a sort of loss as he looks at her. Well he had been expecting Masami but he had gotten her…and he's happy to have her. When she's around he feels happy and content and…and he loves her….and she…she loves him too….

But he still feels, vaguely, like he needs a bath.

"I'm fine." Said Suzuki. He forces his aura to calm down. He exorcises his emotions as best he can. He doesn't even know why he has to have them. He'd been having a dream. Dreams are not reality. Masami….she only came to him in dreams now…and she is gone….but Daughter is there. She is something that is real. She is something that he can reach out and feel….and she is so small and so soft and so there and he cares for her so much and he wants nothing more than to pull her into his arms and press her to his chest and keep her near…but part of him wants her to be far away from him…at least until he settled his aura…his emotions….

Whatever they were.

"It's ok if you aren't. You can cuddle me some more if you want. I want you to feel better." Said Daughter. The lights flicker. He does not want that. He does not want that…and he does…but right now…he feels…he feels like a tangled up cord. Like a tangled up controller cords. Like the controller to a system that he hasn't played in a while….well of course he hasn't he's forty four….but he feels all tangled up….because he is tangled up. He tangled up the memory of Masami with the existence of Daughter….and now he just has to….get himself all untangled…

And it would have been a lot easy to do that if she would just leave him be.

"I told you that I was fine. Why can't you listen?" asked Suzuki. He hates himself the minute he says that. Her aura pulls away from him. He hates himself for speaking to her like that. For making her pull away. For making her want to leave. She cannot leave. He will not let her leave. He reaches out and takes her by the arm. She looks at him…and her aura is still trying to pull away…

Why is she trying to pull away?

"Oh….I'm sorry. Please don't be mad at me." Said Daughter. Her voice is small there….and he has no idea why. He has no idea why her voice is so small or why…why she is letting her aura pull away from him. For a moment, a terrible moment, he worries that she may have been able to hear his thoughts. That she hear how he wanted her gone from him. That she knew….that she knew that he had wanted her away from him…and now she was planning on going away from him. That she was planning on walking out that door and out of his life and….and then he would be alone….so alone…and she would be…he had no idea where she would be….

He has to fix this.

"No. I am not angry with you. I will never be angry with you. I care for you. I care for you more than words can ever express." Said Suzuki. There. Now she would know that he cared for her and that he is not angry with her. He can never be angry with her. He doesn't even remember what it is to be angry with her. He knows that in the past he must have been but now the thought is incomprehensible. She is his. He can never be angry with her. Why would he be?

She is his and he is hers.

"Oh…ok. I love you too, dad." Said Daughter. He let go of her wrist. She is looking at him. He is looking at her. She needs an explanation, maybe, because why else would she still be awake at…whatever hour of the night this was. She needed sleep and he needed sleep but….but he cannot go back to sleep. He doesn't know how he can go back to sleep when Masami is still inhabiting his mind. Masami, the memory of her, and also the memory of Daughter…the reality of Daughter. She is not a memory, she is a reality, and she is there in reality looking up at him with her brown eyes….that shade of brown that was almost black…the way her eyes met his. She was in need of an explanation…but he had none. He had no idea what he was even supposed to tell her. He could not tell her that he dreamt of her mother from time to time and that those dreams of her mother had overlapped with their time together….she could never know about that. Her mother was gone and she had moved past that….and now he had moved past it to. She needed to believe that he had moved past Masami….

Because he could not show her weakness….the weakness that he felt…weakness for a memory of all things….

"Make breakfast. Right now." Said Suzuki. He needed to have her do something besides be near him. He wants her near him…but he also…he needs her to take her eyes off of him. He needs her eyes and her aura off of him. He needs her to just…not look at him. He needs to…he needs her to find something else to do…besides look at him….

Even though he wants nothing more than to hold her and never let her go.

"But it's in the middle of the night." Said Daughter. Suzuki forced his aura to keep still. He wants to tell her that, yes, it is in the middle of the night and that she needs to go back to bed…but he knows that he can't go back to bed…and he wants her near him…but he can't have her near him and get himself sorted out at the same time…and just….just….

He needs a moment.

"I'm aware. No go make breakfast." Said Suzuki. Doesn't look at her when he says that. He keeps his aura away from hers. He picks a spot on the blanket to look at. It's blue. There's a loose thread. He can see the loose thread and he wants to pull it but he isn't going to pull it because if he does pull it then the whole thing will fall apart…and he doesn't want anything to fall apart…

He hates it when things fall apart.

"What should I make?" asked Daughter. Suzuki can't think right now. He focuses on the loose thread of the blanket. Why is this upsetting him? Threads come lose. It's just a thing that happens in the course of existence. Threads come lose and when they come lose they need to be fixed….or pulled….but he doesn't know how to fix it and he doesn't know what he'll do after he pulls it…and he wants to pull it…..but he knows not to pull it because nothing good will come of that…because then it will fall apart…and he hates it so much when things fall apart…..

He takes his eyes off of his bed.

"Food." Said Suzuki. He's looking at Daughter, now, but not in the eyes. He's focused on the bridge of her nose. That's a trick Fukuda taught him years ago. When you looked at the bridge of someone's nose they thought that you were making eye contact with them. Eye contact was very important. Daughter expected him to make eye contact with her…and he had to….but he couldn't. For some reason he just couldn't. Not after….after what had happened….but he hadn't even done anything! If he hadn't even done anything then….then what was this feeling….this feeling like he HAD done something…..

He was having trouble exorcising these emotions.

"I….yes dad." Said Daughter. She looked like she wanted to say something more. She opened and closed her mouth but she did not say anything more. He had no idea what she even could have said to him. There was nothing to say. She was the child and he was the adult and he had told her to do something and he expected it done….but…but it felt wrong just giving her an order like that. It felt wrong just telling her to do something even though he was in his rights too. He hadn't given her an order in so long….and she didn't need orders…she just did things. Still, this felt wrong. Even though he was within his rights to give her orders….this still felt so very wrong to him….

Maybe because she was leaving now.

"Thank you." Said Suzuki. He watched her. He watched her get out of bed. He watched her walk across the room. He watched her open the door. He watched her walk through it. He watched her close it. He listened as she walked to the kitchen. He watched her aura. She was cooking. She was cooking and she would not be coming back…and he had no clue how to feel about that.

Good.

He should have felt good. With her gone he could get his emotions under control and he could get everything untangled…but he had no idea how to do that. He needed….he needed her back…but he could not have her back. Not when he could still feel the ghost of Masami there with him. The ghost of Masami had been haunting him for years…and now….did he want…did he want her? Did he want her to haunt him or….or did he want to be left alone? What did he even….what could he even want? He had no idea. He just….he didn't know….

Masami had always turned into an octopus at night….and he had always complained about it…but now he wanted….he wanted….

He wanted to hold her and be held by her….but all he had there was Daughter…and he wanted to hold Daughter and be held by her….and was that….was that alright? He had always enjoyed holding her but….but that had been…..Masami had been there with him and….and also not with him…and he didn't have a clue. He didn't have a fucking clue what he was supposed to say or do or feel in this situation. He ran his hands down the bedspread….and he felt the loose thread. It was there, right there….

So he pulled it.


	311. Back Home But Also Not Back Home

She was not home.

Home was the Castle and Sho knew that he could never live in the Castle again. He would never set foot in his real home…if it even still counted as his real home. Mom was gone. Without mom could it even be counted as home? Or was it just a collection of floors and walls and pipes and furniture and stuff? Was it even still there? Maybe it had grown chicken legs and ran away like the house in that show he had seen back when he had been staying in Moscow. He didn't know. He just knew that this house, the one in front of him, was not his home.

"Are you alright, Sho?" asked Fukuda. He pressed a hand to Sho's back. They were back now….if this even counted as being back since everyone had moved about a million times since Moscow. Twice within this country. They were in more Claw houses, they were all pretty much the same, and they were in another country….though those were all pretty much the same too. This was just another house in a long list of houses that he would be staying in.

He was fine.

This was fine. This was a house. This was the house that his family….part of his family lived in. This was where big sis was. He could feel her aura. She was asleep, probably, since this was in the middle of the night and stuff. Fukuda hadn't planned this, usually he planned for them to get where they needed to go in the daytime, but Sho…he'd asked to come back. He'd asked to rejoin the others and Fukuda….well he'd called a plane and now they were back.

Back but not back.

"I'm fine. Just….tired. It's late at night here." Said Sho as he pulled the straps of his backpack tighter. He could feel big sis…and he could feel dad…and he didn't want to feel dad. He didn't know what he had bene expecting to feel but it had not been dad. He hadn't been near dad for so long…and now he was. Dad was probably sleeping. It was nighttime and his aura felt like he was asleep….though Sho was not going to sit there and feel his aura for any length of time. No, he didn't want to be around dad at all for any length of time.

Maybe he should have still stayed away.

Maybe that would have been best. Nobody had been asking after him. Big sis had called once but not again after that. Maybe he should have just stayed away forever and let everyone just be there without him. Maybe he should have just let dad be without him. Dad didn't love him, like him, or want him. He just…had him. He had Sho because he had to have a boy and that was the end of it. Sho….he knew that big sis wanted him. She wanted him there and…and maybe she just hadn't called because she had been busy doing big sis stuff. Maybe she had been too busy hanging out with everyone….not Shimazaki. She must have been too busy hanging out with Hatori because she loved him and stuff…

And he could understand that.

"You know you don't have to go inside right now. I didn't tell your dad that we were coming since it's past the time when he can stand being disturbed….so you can just crash with me. I've probably got a very comfortable couch at my new place." Said Fukuda. He sounded hopeful there….and normally Sho would have been up for a sleepover. Normally he would have jumped at the chance but now…well they had been on a sleepover for weeks now. Sho loved Fukuda, he really did, but he really just wanted to be back in his own space….well space with his sister…right now. They could have sleepovers later. Much later.

"No thanks. I'd rather sleep in a bed." Said Sho. He wanted to sleep in a room with his sister. He was tired of going to bed on his own in a room that was not his. This room….it was not his either…but at least it had the stuff that he hadn't taken with him when he split off. His toys and some of his art stuff and his Zootopia bedding and his clothes…he was getting kind of sick of these...it was more his room, the room in that house, than Fukuda's new living room would be.

"You know I probably won't get much sleep done anyway. Most of my stuff is probably still all boxed up….and I could use some help getting everything unpacked and put away." said Fukuda. Sho knew that Fukuda was asking him if he wanted to help. He knew that the polite thing to do would have been to help…but he didn't want to. He wanted to just lay down in his Zootopia bed and just…sleep. That was all he wanted. He wanted to lay down in a room with his big sis and just sleep and wait for tomorrow to happen. Then he could help Fukuda out…even though he wanted to see Shimazaki again….

Maybe it was better that he helped Fukuda out.

He could feel Shimazaki's aura. He could feel him and…and he was awake. He was awake and he was right next door and Sho so easily could have gone over and visited…but he didn't. That would have been….that would have been the best thing ever. He could have pulled his aura in real close so it was quiet and then he could have jumped out and scared Shimazaki and then he would have been all 'what the fuck' and Sho could have been all 'got you' and then they could have listened to some of Shimazaki music and make a pudding cup pyramid or thought up funny stuff to do to Hatori or just….been together.

The thought of being with Shimazaki makes the goldfish in his stomach come to life….and that's why he's probably going to spend tomorrow helping Fukuda unpack his stuff…and stuff.

"I'll help you tomorrow, maybe. I just want to sleep in my own bed now. Goodnight. Thanks for hanging out with me." Said Sho. He gave Fukuda a side hug and walked up the path to the house. Not his house, no, just the house. The house that he was going to be staying in until they moved again. They moved so much….but that didn't matter. All that mattered was getting back inside of the house where his family…where his sister was. His sister. His sister was there, inside of that house and….

And he missed her more than anything.

She had been an only child before he had been born. She was used to being alone….well she had been….but then he had been born. Had he been missed? She had called him…but then she hadn't called him….but he hadn't called either…so they were even. He hadn't called but he had still wanted to….but he was not a baby….and she hadn't called because….because she knew that he was not a baby. He was almost ten and a half. He was too old to be sitting up at night missing his big sister….and stuff….so….yeah…she still wanted him around…and stuff…

She must have.

Her aura pressed down on his as he got closer to the door. He had forgotten what it was like to be near her. She had the biggest aura of anyone he had ever seen….anyone but dad. Dad's aura…he was avoiding dad's aura. He didn't want anything to do with dad or his aura and he knew that dad felt the same way. That was fine. He didn't care. He didn't need dad. He didn't need dad to care that he had been gone for weeks and weeks. He didn't need dad to tell him that he'd missed him. He didn't need dad to have even missed him at all. He didn't need dad and dad…..dad didn't need him….

So it was fine.

He didn't need anyone. He was not a baby and he could take care of himself….and he had been taking care of himself….and he wanted….he didn't need big sis to take care of him, he just wanted to be near her. Sine he wanted to be near her then he should have just opened the door. He could feel Fukuda looking at him. He could feel Fukuda's eyes on his back and his aura focusing on him…and he needed to open the door. It wouldn't have been locked, they never locked the door since no one in the world would try to rob their family…and he could have gone in at any time…

But he needed a minute.

He needed a minute to get used to this. The smell of this country, the warmth of the air, and the feel of big sis's aura…and dad's. He just needed a minute to open the door and step through and…and be back. He was that Sho again, the one that existed when he was with his family…and he didn't know the difference between this Sho and the Sho he had been when he had been away…but there was one. Maybe it was because this Sho had more secrets. Maybe it was because this Sho was…..this Sho had too many secrets to keep. He wanted to throw the door open and run through the house until he found big sis and then he wanted to shake her awake and tell her his secrets, all of them.

He wanted to tell her about how baby sis was so big now that she could walk and talk and eat her meals off of a plate and with a fork…even though most of it got on her….

He wanted to tell her about how he had seen Emmy and how….how he never got that goldfish feeling when he was with her…but she had it for him…and now he had no idea what to do besides make her happy until she either got tired of him or married him…and he had no idea which he even wanted….

He wanted to tell her about the boy he had met in the rocket ship jungle gym, the esper who looked just like her, and he wanted to tell her that he had betrayed Claw by not only not telling anyone about the other esper boy but also telling him about Claw and how he had to stay away….

He wanted to tell her about how he had held hands with that esper boy and he still got all warm and swimmy when he thought about it…about how he had put his hand over his…about how they had been so close….about how they had been close enough to kiss…even….

He wanted to tell her about his first kiss, the first one that he had enjoyed, about how it had been so perfect….until it wasn't…because he had enjoyed it when he knew that he wasn't supposed to….and how he thought about it all the time…about how good it felt….and about how he wanted to do it again…..

He wanted to tell her about how he wanted nothing more than to kiss Shimazaki….for Shimazaki to just lean in and kiss him like he did to Minegishi…about how he wanted to hold his hand and kiss him and be near him all the time….about how he had felt like this for so long and it was getting worse and he wanted it to get better but he also didn't….about how he was pretty sure that this was what love felt like but he was also pretty sure that this was not what love felt like because he was not supposed to have fallen in love with another guy…..but he had….

And he wanted to tell her that he was sorry for having kept all of these secrets from her.

He wanted to tell her all of that but he knew that he couldn't. Nothing good, nothing at all good, would come of telling her all of his secrets. She would be hurt. She would be hurt that he had kept all of that from her. She would be hurt that he had kept their own pretend baby sister from her…that he had been able to visit her….and that he had been her first word. She would have been mad at him for betraying Claw because betraying Claw was betraying dad and she had been dad's favorite kid for her whole life….and most of all he wanted to tell her that he was pretty sure that he didn't like girls at all and that he knew that there was something wrong with him and that he had kissed a boy and it had been the greatest moment of his life and now he wanted to kiss almost every boy he met….and she would still love him…but she would be upset that he had kept something so big from her…

So he knew not to tell her his secrets.

He had no idea what he was going to tell her but he knew that his secrets were not on that list. He probably would have started with 'hi' and he should have started with 'hi' but he didn't get a chance to start with 'hi' or with anything at all. Her aura go closer and the door was thrown open and then her arms were thrown around him…and she was taller than him….

And also she was hugging him.

He hugged her back…even though he was not a baby and he didn't need hugs…but he would do this for her because he was a good little brother. Also he may have been a little bit chilly…that was all…so he needed a hug to keep him warm…..and also she might have been chilly too because she was just in her night shirt….so he hugged her back…..

And it was nice.

This was nice. Being there all wrapped up in her arms…being in her aura…seeing her. Seeing her again for the first time in forever, it felt like. She had gotten taller than him. They had always been around the same height. This wasn't fair. She could not have grown so much…but he would be pissed off about this later. Right now he had a sister to hug….and that was what he was doing. He hugged her and she hugged him and they hugged for way too long. They hugged for so long that he had felt Fukuda go into his house. They had hugged for so long that a bug had flown into their porchlight and gotten stuck. They had hugged for so long that a cloud had gone in front of the moon. Sho didn't care. They could have hugged until they got old and died for all he cared….

Because it would have made her happy….and him too.

He was not a baby. Babies needed hugs and…and babies got sad when they didn't have their big sisters around to tuck them in or read in the same room as them when they were trying to fall asleep or….or make their cereal just right. Fukuda put the milk on first like some kind of crazy person. Big sis…she knew how to make his cereal…and she knew how to make his other foods…and she knew how to make his bed…and she knew how to run his baths….and she knew how to run around and play with him….and she knew how to hug him…and she knew how to be with him…to make him happy….

And he had missed her more than anything else in the whole world.

"Sho….Sho….little brother. I missed you so much….thank you." Said big sis as she hugged him. She pulled him even tighter when she said that. She smelled bad, like she had been playing with a skunk or something, but he didn't say anything. She just smelled bad sometimes and now was not the time to bring attention to it. No, that would ruin it. Besides, he didn't smell too good himself. Emmy had shown him how to eat kippers early that day…and they were really good….so, yeah, he didn't smell the best either….

Who cared?

"I missed you too…and what are you thanking me for? You didn't even open the present I got you." Said Sho

"I'm thanking you for coming home….and also you didn't have to get me anything. Just being able to be with you again is enough for me." Said big sis

"You're…you're welcome. Big sis…can we….can we go to bed? I'm tired." Said Sho. She had something so nice….the nicest thing that anyone had ever said to him…and she meant it. If she knew about all the secrets that he was keeping then…then she would have known that she should not have said that to him. She should have told him that he was a terrible little brother and that he needed to fuck off….because he deserved that for being a secret keeper….

He just wanted to go to bed.

Her hug got all slack like she was tired….she must have wanted to go to bed too. She must have been tired…and she had not just suddenly figured out that he had been keeping secrets from her. She had not figured it out and she was not going to run back into the house and tell him that he had to live with Fukuda now. She was not going to go to sleep and then he would go to sleep and then he would get up in the morning and she would be gone without even so much as a note…..or a text….or whatever….

That was not going to happen.

She let go of him and her aura got all close…and she held her hair down with her hands. She held her hair down and looked down at her feet. He looked down at them too. She had painted her toenails…and also she wasn't wearing shoes. This house had no genkan, American people wore their shoes inside for some reason, but she still should not have been standing right there so close to the outside with no shoes on….because that was gross….but she had been so excited to see him that she had just….forgotten to put her shoes on…

And now she had let him go.

So he let her go. She was still looking down at her feet…or maybe she was looking down at his feet. He had doodled on his shoes in the way in. Mostly just lines and patterns and stuff. There was a hamster on one of them and a dragon on the other. He had drawn Shimazaki's dragon, the one on his back, without even realizing it….because he had been thinking of Shimazaki then…and Sho didn't know what she would have been the maddest about. Him betraying her by keeping baby sis a secret, him betraying Claw by keeping the esper kid a secret and warning him to stay away, him liking boys instead of girls….maybe, him having had kissed a boy and liked it, or him having been in love or whatever with Shimazaki for maybe years and years and he just hadn't realized it….and she had been in love with Shimazaki before too….

He wanted her to just get on with it. With being upset at him.

"Sho?" asked big sis. Sho braced himself for her to tell him off…even though she had never told him off before even when he had been hitting her all the time like an asshole. There was a first time for everything though….and maybe this would be the first time in her life that big sis told him…or anyone….off.

"Yeah, what's up?" asked Sho. He closed his eyes and waited. There was a first time for everything and this would be the first time that big sis told him off. This would be the first time that she had ever gotten mad at him in the real way. This was it. This would be the first time….

"You don't have a bed." Said big sis. She said it fast and she hadn't looked at him when she said that….but he had still heard her….and what she had just said didn't make sense. Of course he had a bed. Where was he supposed to sleep? On the floor? On the roof? In the bathtub? A tent in the backyard? He was a part of this family so of course he had a bed!

…..right?

"What are you talking about, big sis? Where am I supposed to sleep if I don't have a bed? You're messing with me, right?" asked Sho. She had never messed with him before…but also she had never been this tall before. There was a first time for everything….right? So that meant that there was a first time for his big sis to mess with him. For her to take the piss, like Emmy would have said if she had been there and not back in England.

"Sho…..we didn't think that you would be back so soon." Said big sis. She wanted him to think that…well of course she did. This must have been the truth. She really hadn't expected him to be back so soon….but it hadn't been soon at all!

"Soon? I've been gone for weeks!" said Sho. What, did he need to pull up his calendar? Weeks. He had been gone for weeks and now he was back and she called this soon?! He needed….he needed to calm down. He was starting to get jerk thoughts and nothing good had ever come of him having jerk thoughts. He needed to calm down and shut up and just….not ruin this. Not ruin being back.

"I know but….well we didn't know if you would be staying here with us…so there's just one bed." Said big sis. Sho didn't know if she had been planning on saying anymore. He didn't give her the chance to say anymore. He had to see. She was kidding. She must have been kidding. Of course he had a bed. Of course dad had expected him back. Fukuda hadn't warned dad but….but dad must have known that Sho would have been coming back soon, right? It had been weeks and weeks and weeks…

He had to see for himself.

These houses were always small and always had only two bedrooms. Theirs was always the first bedroom and dad's was always in the back. It was easy to find their bedroom and easy to open the door and easy to see what was inside….and what was inside was not easy to look at. So at first he doesn't. At first he just focuses on the boxes with his name written on them stacked in the corner. He focuses on how one of the boxes is opened, the one with his clothes, and how the dresses is at least big enough for two. He focuses on how her stupid dollhouse and doll mall and doll cars and dolls….all of her dolls are in the space where his bed should be. He focuses on the feeling that he has inside of himself, the feeling that he wants to smash those dolls and stuff, and he focuses on closing his eyes and counting until the feeling goes away. As he focuses on his counting, as he focuses on keeping his eyes closed, her aura comes into focus. The feel of it. It's big and heavy and THERE and now she's there and he can heard her breathing and feel her just standing there…and he focuses on counting and keeping his eyes closed until it's safe to stop.

That takes a minute.

He opens his eyes when it's safe to do so and just….focuses on her. She hadn't gotten him a bed…because she hadn't been expecting him to come back…and now…now he knows that he's getting close to thinking jerk thoughts. She had missed him. She didn't know how to tell lies so he knew that she had been telling the truth…but she still hadn't thought to get him a bed….and she had only called him once….and she had…

He had done a lot worse.

"Where am I supposed to sleep?" asked Sho. There. He had no yelled or screamed or cursed. He knew that his aura had been loud. He knew that his aura had been bright. He knew that dad must have noticed his aura even if he had been asleep. Dad didn't care. He didn't care enough about Sho to come in and see what was wrong and he didn't care enough about him to get him a bed for when he came back, too. He didn't know why he had expected anything else from dad.

But he had expected more from big sis.

She had always been the one to take care of him. That was why dad had promoted her to mom rank in their family. She had all the power of a mom without being a mom…and she should have used that power to get him a bed….but he could not be mad at her. Not with the secrets that he had been keeping. No, he was just….tired. That was all. He was so tired that he let his backpack slide off of his shoulders and hit the floor. He knew that dad must have heard that too….and that he hated to be bothered at night….

Sho didn't care.

"Tomorrow I'll have them bring you a bed, ok? First thing in the morning. Before I brush my teeth even…but for right now you can have my bed. See? I was just in it so at least it's nice and warm for you. You can take my Frozen stuff off and unpack your Zootopia stuff…or I can do it for you. Ok? Does that sound good? Please say that it sounds good because I don't want us to fight. I haven't seen you in so long and I just want things to be ok between us. I would ask for a bed for you right now but it's in the middle of the night….ok? Please say that this is ok." Said big sis. Sho looked over at her bed. Her Frozen blanket and sheets and pillows and dolls and stuffed Olafs were on it. Also she had been reading one of her girl mangas in it too. The cover had people kissing. He didn't want to sleep in her bed all alone…and also he was not going to be such a jerk as to make her sleep on the floor or on the couch or the roof or something.

Or with dad.

He didn't want to sleep on his own…and he didn't want her to go off and sleep with dad either. She always did that…and he didn't know why he cared. Dad had never once asked Sho to sleep in the bed with him….and Sho didn't care. Dad was probably a bed hog or whatever. He was probably as much of a jerk asleep as he was awake…and Sho did not want to deal with that. Sho wanted….he wanted….

He didn't want to sleep alone anymore.

"You can have it too." Said Sho. He pointed to the bed just in case she didn't know what he meant. She looked at the bed, and then at him, and then at the bed again…and then for a moment he thought that maybe she had gotten even more clueless than normal since he had been gone and she really had no clue what he meant…and then he got mad at himself for thinking jerk thoughts like that about his own big sister.

"But….but we're too big." Said big sis. Sho could see that. He had eyes and he knew that they didn't both fit in the same bed anymore…but he still wanted to be next to her. He had been sleeping in a room by himself for weeks now…and he wanted a break. He had been taking a break from sleeping in the room with her and now he needed a break from his break…even though only babies needed someone to stay in the room with them when they were trying to fall asleep. Like baby sis….she needed someone to rock her back and forth in her rocking chair…and Sho had been that person. He had rocked her back and forth in her rocking chair and sang to her and told her stories until she fell asleep…

And big sis would never know what that was like.

"I don't give a damn. There are two of us and only one bed and we're brother and sister so it won't be weird. Ok? Do you want to sleep next to me or not?" asked Sho. That came out mean and he knew that he should have been less of a jerk….but it was late at night and he had been on a plane for a long time and there was a lot of stuff going on in his head….

He did not want to fight with her right now.

"I would like that a lot…but please don't curse." Said big sis. Sho wanted to tell her that he could say whatever the hell he wanted to…but he didn't. He just changed into some pajamas, she had gotten him new Zootopia ones, climbed into bed next to her, and tried to go to sleep. He didn't want to fight with her. He didn't want there to be any bad feelings between them….because he had enough bad feelings inside of him. He had so many secrets inside of him and they were so….so big….but he had to keep them. He had to keep his secrets inside of himself and he had to be a good little brother and he had to be nice…and he had to go to sleep.

He was back but not back. He was home but not home. He needed to sleep….but he also couldn't sleep.

But he would try his best.


	312. Sho Finds Seashells by the Seashore

The beach was hot and it was full of sand.

But Sho still liked it. Even though he had to be in long sleeves and long pants. Even though he had forgotten to put on sunscreen so his face was getting all red. Even though the bottoms of his jeans were wet and heavy and they were really annoying. Even though sometimes he stepped on pieces of shells and they really hurt. Even though he really wished that he could go swimming and he could have if not for these stupid scars. Even though while he was hot the water was cold and standing in it in wet jeans and no shoes wasn't really a good feeling. Even though-

-there's sand in his hair.

Someone dumped a hand full of sand in his hair. Wet sand. Now there's wet sand in his hair and on his back and his back is wet…and he can't just let this be. No, now he has to retaliate. It's the rules of sand. He reaches into the water with both hands. He raises his left and….yup. He went right…

-and got a handful of sand to the chest.

"Well somebody got clever." Said Shimazaki as he wiped the wet sand off of his chest. He was just in his shirt now, not his jacket, and it was weird seeing his tattoos after all this time…and in the light of day. There were people around, not a lot of people but enough, and it was just…weird that he was showing his tattoos to everyone. Tattoos were different here. People didn't care. Some people looked at him…and that wasn't very nice…but nobody said anything or tried to kick them out…so that was good.

He really wished that people would stop looking at Shimazaki though.

When people looked at him Sho got this feeling…like he was mad. Like he was mad and scared at the same time. He didn't know what was making him feel like this. Shimazaki was cool, and his tattoos were cool, and so of course people would want to stare….and he probably didn't even know that people were staring. Yeah. Sand made things look fuzzy and water made things look fuzzy so things just….looked fuzzy. He probably didn't even notice that guy over there who looked like he was reading the list of dates on Shimazaki's arm….dates that Sho didn't even know the importance of….it didn't matter. Sho was the one with wet sand in his hair.

And down his back too….but that was fine.

"No, you just got predictable. You can read my movements but then that just makes it easy to trick you." Said Sho

"Or maybe I just let you have that one." said Shimazaki

"You didn't. I got you fair and square." Said Sho

"Yeah…well water makes things hard to see. Just get back to collecting shells." Said Shimazaki. Sho reached back into the water and pulled out another shell like Shimazaki said. They were going to throw these at people later and then teleport away so they thought that they were going crazy. Just the broken ones. The perfect ones they were going to save. Sho didn't know what they were saving them for…maybe to put in people aquariums? He didn't know. He just knew that Shimazaki needed shells so that was what he was going to do, collect shells.

He would collect all the shells he needed.

He didn't care if his face was getting red and hot or his jeans were all wet and heavy and clingy or his hair had sand in it or his hands and feet had little cuts on them from all the broken shells. Shimazaki had asked him to come here and collect shells and that was what he was going to do. Shimazaki had asked HIM specifically. Not big sis…well she was off with some new friend she'd made…and not Minegishi. That was the big thing. He hadn't asked Minegishi.

Sho didn't know what he would have done if Minegishi had come along.

They didn't, though, because they hated the heat and they hated crowds and they hated ding extra work. They would have hated it here so they didn't come and Sho didn't know why he was even thinking about some alternate universe where they had come. They would have been sitting there on the sand reading a book, probably, and then Shimazaki would have been there too. He would have done that thing where he laid his head down on their lap and they put their hand in his hair and called him an idiot, which was mean, and instead of getting up and getting away from the person who called him an idiot he just kept his head there on their lap and….

Sho threw a shell.

He threw on at Shimazaki. He caught it. He didn't even turn his head…well he didn't have to. He saw in all directions with his powers. That had been so cool…and it hadn't been a jerk move either because that was just something that they did together. They threw things at each other for fun. That was just…a thing that they did. That was all. He never did things like that with anyone else. Not Minegishi, anyway, because they were boring. All they wanted to do was read books and paint their nails and color their hair. Well reading books was boring unless they were about animals or had gory pictures in them and there was no point in painting their nails or hair because Shimazaki couldn't see colors anyway. So really they were boring and if they had come they would have just made the whole day boring.

So what did he care if Shimazaki spent time with a boring person or not.

Something hit him on the back. Another shell. One of the spire kinds. Shimazaki had thrown that at him. Well now this meant war. Sand war and shell war but not splash war. They hadn't said anything but Shimazaki knew why a splash war would have been a bad idea. He knew that Sho didn't like the feeling of water on his face. He knew that Sho had been in an Awakening lab and he knew…well Sho didn't know if he knew what happened there since he was naturally a very powerful esper….but he did know that Shimazaki knew that he didn't like water on his face so he just didn't splash him.

And Sho wasn't going to splash Shimazaki either.

No water or sand in his face because it could get into his eyes. He could have water on his face when he took a bath or something because that water was clean. This water had sand and dirt and gunk in it. This was beach water and Sho didn't want to have to make him clean out his eyes ahead of schedule. He didn't like watching that and Shimazaki didn't like cleaning his eyes out so, yeah, nobody was getting splashed in the face anytime soon. It was important to be considerate of people like that. Your friends and stuff.

And they were friends.

Even though being near Shimazaki made him feel like he had an ocean's worth of goldfish in his stomach. Even though Sho wanted nothing more than to go over and just…..be near him. Hold his hand stuff. Even though he was mostly sure that this was what love was. Even though he was mostly sure that if Shimazaki knew that Sho was in love with him he wouldn't want to be friends anymore. Who would want to be friends with a guy who was in love with him? That was weird…and not the cool weird like the medical pictures that Emmy kept sending him. Like the twins who were conjoined at the head. That was cool. She was so cool….

And she was in love with him.

She loved him and he didn't love her back but…but that didn't matter because he could still make her happy. That was what his job was since he was the guy. Dad had told him, before, that the guy's job was to make the girl happy. He gave the girl a big fancy house and money and kids and stuff and then she took care of the big fancy house and spent the money and raised the kids. That was just what it was, how it went, when you were normal…and Sho had to be normal. What was he supposed to do? Rip his girlfriend's heart out like she ripped his out in Mortal Kombat? Tell his dad that he didn't like girls at all and that he had better find mom and make a little brother for him because he wasn't going to be making any new Suzuki's anytime soon? Yeah. Dad would take that VERY well. Sho would be lucky if he just got beat up for that….

And he didn't want to get beat up.

But most of all he didn't want to hurt anyone. Emmy liked him and she got that goldfish feeling in her stomach about him and he wasn't going to break her heart. Besides, she hadn't done anything wrong and she did not deserve to have her heart ripped out. She was a nice person and he made her happy and he was going to keep on making her happy since that was what the normal thing to do was and he was normal…well he had to try to be…..

And even if he wasn't, even if it was ok not to be normal, it wasn't like Shimazaki would ever have wanted to be anything other than friends with him.

He had liked big sis before. He said that he didn't but then if he hadn't then why had dad gone through the trouble of beating him up until he bled and stuff? Why would dad do that if it wasn't true? And why would big sis have let him get so near to her and touch her and stuff if it hadn't been true? She had liked him and he had liked her….but she was in love with Hatori now and she wanted to marry him and live in a big fancy house with him and have ten or twenty of his kids and the kids would all have square glasses so it would be easy to tell that they were his kids, not that big sis would ever cheat on him, and they'd be a family and then Sho could play with their kids and she wouldn't like Shimazaki so then he and Shimazaki could be best friends forever and nothing else because that's not how this works and-

-and there's a shell down his back.

"You let your guard down." Said Shimazaki. Sho stuck his tongue out and fished the shell out of his back. This one was nice. It didn't have any chips or cracks…and it was this really nice pearly white color. This was…this was a really nice shell. Shimazaki couldn't tell, though, what color it was. The way it was like white but also all the colors. That was pearl colored. He had a crayon that said that it was pearl colored but no crayon could really be pearl colored. It was a pretty color….and Shimazaki couldn't see it….because he couldn't see colors…

He couldn't see how red Sho was getting.

"Shut up, I did not. I just let you have that one to make you feel better." Said Sho

"You keep telling yourself that." Said Shimazaki

"No, I'm going to keep telling you that." Said Sho

"Well you can tell me whatever you like, that doesn't mean that I'm going to believe you." Said Shimazaki

"Believe this." said Sho. He reached down deep, very deep, until he got a big handful of wet sand. His sleeves were soaked and his pants were soaked, and he was glad that he had a waterproof phone case, but it was worth it to get a big glob of sand...which did not make contact. Shimazaki didn't have to teleport to dodge, and he did dodge, and then all Sho did was make a splash….and also his phone fell out of his pocket.

He felt around for it.

It sank to the bottom. The water was, thankfully, shallow. That meant that his phone hadn't been carried off to sea. That would have sucked…or not. If his phone had been lost forever then he and Shimazaki could have spent forever here. It felt like they had spent forever here. They had been there long enough for the sun to get low in the sky, low enough to hit him in the eyes if he looked up, and low enough that he was sure that Shimazaki could feel it. It would be time to go soon. He was hungry and…and stuff. He was hungry and he knew that they had to go back…

But it was nice here.

"What'd you find?" asked Shimazaki. He came up close now. He made splashes when he walked though, thankfully, no water hit Sho's face. Most of it got on his shirt. He was all salty, he could smell it, and he could feel it. Big sis would probably make him take a bath when he got home….and then he would just take the damn bath and not fight with her because he was covered in salt. He wished that he could have just take a bath in the ocean. At least here the water was shallow.

"My phone." Said Sho. He held his phone up so Shimazaki could sense it. He knew that shape of things and that was about it. He could tell by the shape, probably, that this wasn't a shell…unless they made square seashells.

"Fuck. I'm sorry." said Shimazaki. Sho smiled. He smiled but not so big that Shimazaki could tell that he was smiling. He just….didn't want Shimazaki to be able to tell that he was smiling. He didn't know why.

"What the fuck are you sorry about?" asked Sho. He tried not to smile. He tried not to smile and he just…he tried and he failed. He had missed this so much. He had missed everything about Shimazaki but this…the way that he could just….be. The way that he just let Sho be and how he just…was….and how they were and….stuff…it was complicated.

"You're fucking phone got wet." Said Shimazaki. He motioned towards his phone and…oh. He couldn't tell that Sho had a case on it. He could only tell so much and Sho would have to get used to it again.

"I'm not a fucking moron. I wouldn't bring my phone to the beach without a fucking waterproof case." Said Sho

"Well aren't you a clever little bastard." Said Shimazaki

"Maybe you're just a moron, you bastard." Said Sho

"Well am I a moron or a bastard?" asked Shimazaki. He laughed when he said that…and Sho….he felt that all the way from his stomach to his chest and then down to his toes. It was like the goldfish had moved from his stomach to….to everywhere….before settling back down in his stomach where it had been living for…he didn't even know how long.

"You can be both. Morons can be bastards and bastards can be morons." Said Sho. It was so nice to be able to talk to someone without them going 'language' every ten seconds. He could curse if he wanted to. He wasn't a baby. He could say whatever he wanted to say and do whatever he wanted to do. Shimazaki didn't care. He was fun like that. The most fun person that Sho had ever met.

"Well of the both of those I am neither. My parents were married, first of all, and second of all I'm not moron. I left my phone at home." Said Shimazaki

"Well then you are a moron. What are you going to do if someone needs to talk to you?" asked Sho

"Well then they can just wait. I'm hanging out with you, anyway, what do I need to talk to someone else for." Said Shimazaki. Sho didn't have anything to say to that. He couldn't say anything to that. If he tried to say something he knew that he would have just said something stupid so he said nothing at all. He just stuffed his phone in his pocket and went back to looking for shells.

The water was cold.

The water was cold and he was warm. He was sunburnt. He was sunburnt on his face and hot under his wet jeans and shirt, long pants and long shirt, and that was why he felt like this. Not because of….of whatever the name for this feeling, this feeling's real name, and he didn't even care about this feeling's real name….because he was just…

He was just warm! That was all!

"Well this bucket's full. Come on, help me sort them. I need someone who knows what color is." Said Shimazaki. He patted Sho on the back and left a wet handprint. Sho knew that he must he left a perfect handprint because h could feel it on his back. In a good way, not the way he could feel dad's handprint when he hit him really hard, this was….this was good…

He went back to the shore.

Shimazaki walked. If they had been all alone then Shimazaki would have teleported with him. But there weren't so they walked even though it was a lot slower. He reached over when they got to the shore and took Sho's wrist. He couldn't tell which spot had been where they had been sitting and leaving their shells. The sand was too shifty, he said, and he had trouble seeing where things were. Sho didn't mind. He was happy to lead him.

He was happy to help out his best friend.

The walk to their spot was both too long and too short. Shimazaki was holding onto his arm right above his wrist. They were both wet and both slippery and maybe if they had walked more he could have slipped down so they were holding hands…and that's the thought that made Sho practically start running. He didn't know what was wrong with him. He KNEW that Shimazaki couldn't like him like that…and he KNEW that he had a girlfriend who loved him and stuff and he knew that he was having cheating thoughts and cheating thoughts were wrong to have….and even if he didn't like her like that he still didn't have any right to cheat on her. When you agreed to be with someone then you were with them until…until the agreement ran out. You didn't just leave without any warning. You…you didn't just…hurt people like that.

Also you didn't have cheating thoughts about your best friend.

"Arrange the perfect ones by color for me, would you?" asked Shimazaki. Sho just nodded. He didn't trust himself to talk. He knew that if he said something, if he said anything, it would just turn into….it would turn into him saying something stupid like 'I'd do anything for you' like he had seen in that movie that big sis liked where the people fell in love and kissed and stuff…and he was already thinking about kissing Shimazaki again….and he didn't even know WHY. He just….he didn't even know. He didn't know what he was feeling or how to feel about how he was feeling or-

He sorted the shells.

He sorted them by how perfect they were and by shape and color and….and sorting made him feel better. Feel better in the way that he didn't have to think about anything. There was just him and their buckets and piles of shells and his beach buckets and his Zootopia beahc towel and Shimazaki sitting there…and he sorted faster. The sun was going down and he was facing it and…and he looked really nice there. He looked nice all the time. He said that he faced the sun when it went down because he liked the way it felt….and not because the light hit him all nice….

And Sho was out of shells to sort.

He dug his fingers into the sand. Shimazaki was facing the sun while he sorted out his shells by broken and not broken. Sho would sort his perfect ones by color later. Right now he just….dug his fingers into the sand. It was itchy and got under his fingernails but he didn't care. He just…had to dig his fingers into the sand. He watched the people walking by as he dug his fingers into the sand. Both sets of fingers on both hands. He dug deeper and deeper into the sand a she watched the people walking by. People with kids, people alone, people holding hands, people running, people walking. People. Just…people. There were normal people all around them and they were harder for Shimazaki to see so…so he was watching people for a reason. He was digging his fingers in the sand and watching people and-

And he dug too far.

He hadn't been paying attention. He had been digging sideways until his hand met Shimazaki's leg. He had his pants rolled up because they had been in the water…and Sho had never just poked him like that…but he had and…and he pulled his hand away fast. He pulled his hand away and he pulled his aura close…and as he did that he realized how suspicious he was being. He could tell. Shimazaki could tell…and maybe he couldn't…..but he had no idea at all what he would do if Shimazaki knew how he felt…

He would just die right there on the spot if Shimazaki…if he ever found out.

"What's up?" asked Shimazaki. Sho's eyes darted around. He needed to think up a good reason for poking Shimazaki and he needed to think it up quick. His eyes darted around until he settled on a guy walking over His eyes settled on the guy and then the shells and then the guy.

"Um…there's a guy coming and…he looks like a good target." Said Sho. There. That was a normal thing that they did. They threw things at people and then pretended that they didn't. There was nothing at all out of the ordinary in what Sho had said. So he was safe. Shimazaki had no idea what he had been thinking about or wanting or…or anything. He was safe and he was fine. He'd had a good idea. Shimazaki's aura went over in the direction of the guy….and he smiled a little…which meant that Sho was in the clear.

"Hold your fire. This guy's walking with purpose." Said Shimazaki. Sho didn't get it. He really didn't. That guy was the perfect target…but what Shimazaki said went. Even though the things that he said didn't always make sense. Like when he drank a lot and they did super fun stuff that sounded crazy but wasn't. Like when they went to that mattress store to jump on the beds. That had been fun. Swinging from chandeliers…that had been fun….until they fell and stuff…but it had still be a fun time! He trusted Shimazaki.

So he didn't throw the shell.

Even though, yes, he was walking with purpose. That guy reminded Sho of how, sometimes, girls would come and talk to Shimazaki. Those were the times when Sho had to be the bait. That was only so Shimazaki could get dog pets….Sho told himself. Because that usually happened when they went to the dog park. Girls with dogs let him pet their dogs and then they have him their phone numbers…and Sho really wanted to believe that it was for more dog pets….but he wasn't a baby….and he hated knowing what he knew…

But that was what you were supposed to do with girls and he wasn't a girl…

Well sometimes he wished that he was. When he was with Shimazaki and girls talked to him. Sho wished, in those times, that he had been Shoko. Then Shimazaki could have liked him…and the way that he felt about Shimazaki would have been ok….and stuff. Then it would have been ok for him to want to hold hands with Shimazaki and kiss him…and all of that other stuff. He wasn't entirely sure what all of that other stuff was but if he had been a girl and Shimazaki had asked him to do all of that other stuff then he would have…even though from what he knew it was sort of gross….but he still would have…

But he was not Shoko, he was Sho, so that wasn't going to happen.

So Sho just started sorting out Shimazaki's shells by color. He started on the broken pile just because those were going to be projectiles for later…or maybe tomorrow. They had been here all day…but they had gotten sort of distracted. Shimazaki may not have been able to see the sand that well but he did like to play in it. They had made a really cool sandcastle and then they had stomped on it and then they had built another one and then stomped on it….and it had been so much fun….

Shimazaki was always so much fun.

Which was why it made perfect sense that people sometimes came up to him and just…tried to talk to him. Like now. Sho kept on sorting. This wasn't a girl so he didn't have to act like a cute little kid. He didn't have to be the bait. That was good. He didn't like being the bait. Not even for dog pets….well yes for dog pets…but not for the stuff that Shimazaki did after the dog pets. The thought of Shimazaki kissing someone…and all of that other stuff…made him want to start throwing shells at him…but he wasn't going to do that because then Shimazaki would ask him why and he did not want to explain at all.

So he just went back to sorting shells.

"Hey, sorry to bother you. I just wanted to say that your sleeves are amazing." Said the guy in English. Shimazaki didn't need Sho to translate even though his English was much better than Shimazaki's. Sho didn't look up. Shimazaki did, though, he faced the guy…and he didn't even open his eye to freak him out even though he had the perfect opportunity. Freaking people out was always fun…but there was sand everywhere and of course he wasn't going to open his eyes with all of this sand blowing around.

"Thanks." Said Shimazaki in Japanese….which Sho didn't get at all…and then he laughed and said it again in English….which Sho also didn't get.

"Oh! You're Japanese." Said the guy

"Well spotted." Said Shimazaki

"Sorry, I just didn't want to assume." Said the guy

"Hey, assume away." said Shimazaki

"Well then I'm going to assume that you know how amazing both of your sleeves are." Said the guy. There was a look to him and a tone….and Shimazaki had the same look and tone….and Sho had no idea why he wanted to start throwing sand at people. They were just talking….even though it didn't seem like just talking. Shimazaki was talking to him the same way he talked to girls…but that made no sense because that was a guy and not a girl.

"If you think those are amazing you should see my back." Said Shimazaki

"I would like to…if I'm not imposing." Said the guy

"You're not. Here, check this out." Said Shimazaki as he pulled his shirt up over his head and tossed it over to where Sho was sorting shells. He caught it and put it down next to him. He stuck to what he was doing. What did he care if some guy thought that Shimazaki's tattoos were cool? They were. They were the coolest tattoos ever and of course people liked to look at them….and it didn't matter. Sho was the one who knew that stories about some of them. Like how the dragon on his back was to cover up where his dad had sprayed hi with a hose and then hit him with a belt. Or like how the dragon on his chest covered up where he had been shot and stabbed and stuff. Or like how the dates on his arm were important stuff that had happened to him or people he had met. Or like how the picture on his arm of Minegishi was just because they let him touch their boobs, which weren't anything to write home about anyway, and all of that other adult stuff that Sho wasn't entirely sure of….and stuff….

What did he care if someone thought that they were cool?

"Wow. Those are amazing….and I know that I said that before but just…wow. I've been meaning to get something besides, well, this but I can't think of anything." Said the guy. Sho turned and looked over. That guy just had an arrow on his arm…and not even in color. So stupid. When Sho grew up he was going to cover himself in tattoos from his wrists to his feet even though he'd probably end up living in Japan and nobody liked tattoos there….well whatever. He would be the king of the world and he would be able to do whatever he wanted.

And he'd get something better than some arrow in black and white.

"He's blind, he can't tell that that's an arrow." Said Sho before Shimazaki could say anything. He felt Shimazaki's aura against his. Sho didn't get why. Shimazaki was blind and he never had any problem with people knowing that he was blind before. Sho didn't know what he was being so weird for.

"Oh shit….seriously? I thought you were just closing your eyes….sorry. Wait if you're blind then why….that's none of my business. Just…your tats are amazing. Sorry to bother you and your son." Said the guy before he walked off. Sho hated that, when people thought that he was Shimazaki's son, because he so clearly wasn't! They were friends…just friends….and being friends was better than being his son…and stuff….

Whatever.

Sho went back to what he was doing…and then ended up with a bunch of sand in his hair.

"What the fuck was that for?!" asked Sho as he shook the sand out of his hair. He spat as it got into his mouth and he blinked as it got into his eyes. He took a handful of sand with his powers…and then put it back down. That would have been a jerk thing to do, throwing sand in Shimazaki's face, even though he was the one who started it. Sho had no idea where that had come from. Some guy had said that his tattoos were nice. It had happened and it was over and now they could go back to hanging out and stuff.

"For being a terrible wingman. Seriously, I set you up with the love of your life and this is how you repay me?" asked Shimazaki. Sho blinked? Huh?

"Emmy is my girlfriend not the love of my life…and how was I supposed to know that I was supposed to be your wingman? And how could I even be your wingman in the first place? That was a guy!" said Sho. Shimazaki made no sense at all…and also Emmy was the last person he wanted to talk about now! He did not want to talk about his girlfriend when he was with his bets friend!

"So?" asked Shimazaki

"What do you mean so?" asked Sho

"So what? Yeah. I know that was a guy. I'm not sighted by I'm not blind, and I like people to figure that out on their own by the way for future reference, I know when I'm taking to a guy. You were still a shitty wingman…but you're ten so I'm going to let you off the hook." Said Shimazaki. Now….Sho was….a lot of things. Confused but also….very confused…and…..good? Because Shimazaki had just admitted to…but….what? Why would he admit to….? And if he did then….but he liked…..and he could…and how could he just…..and….and….

Sho had a headache.

"This….doesn't make any sense. You like girls. I've seen you talk to them! And you like Minegishi! You have a picture of them tattooed on your arm!" said Sho. He pointed just in case Shimazaki forgot about the picture of Minegishi that he had on his arm. Shimazaki faced him now and his aura was focused on him and Sho didn't get why Shimazaki thought that he got to be the confused one here! Because he didn't!

"Toshi is Toshi." Said Shimazaki. Sho wanted to throw sand and shells and whatever else at him. He knew that Minegishi was Minegishi but he also knew that Minegishi had boobs and if they had boob then that meant that under their clothes they were a girl and that meant that Shimazaki liked girls and not boys and if he did he would have said something and also Shimazaki had liked big sis and she was a girl and…and Sho was right there and he was only a year younger than big sis. If Shimazaki had liked boys then…then the two of them….they could have….Sho wouldn't have had to have lived in an alternate universe where he had been Shoko….

He could still just be Sho.

"Minegishi has boobs and I know that under their clothes they're a girl and you like them…well you kiss them and all of that other stuff….and…just….I know you like girls!" said Sho. No. If Shimazaki could like him then…then the way he felt…well it wasn't ok. It wasn't ok for him to feel this way about him because…because even if he could feel the same way….Sho still couldn't feel this way in the first place!

"I like both." Said Shimazaki with a shrug…and Sho….he felt like the time he had plugged his phone in and it caught fire. It was just…what….what….WHAT?! How was that even POSSIBLE!?

"What…..?" asked Sho

"I'm bi like you are…well I assume you're bi anyway I never sat down and asked you. None of my business. I just assumed by the girlfriend that you were bi." Said Shimazaki

"What are you…..what? Just…I'm not-" said Sho

"Well you are what you are and what you are is none of my business, kid. You be you and I'll be me." Said Shimazaki

"I-I-I….why didn't you ever…ever tell me?" asked Sho. He didn't know how he felt or what he thought or…or anything. Shimazaki….he could have…he could have liked Sho back this whole time. He could have…but he couldn't have. Sho still…the way he felt was not ok. Not for him. The way he felt was….it was….it was not ok…even though Shimazaki thought that it was ok….and stuff….

"I thought you knew. It's just not one of those things that ever comes up, really. Anyway are you sorting those shells yet?" asked Shimazaki

"But…I don't get it. I just….I don't really get it. You like…but why would you just…say that you liked guys…like that? Aren't you worried about people thinking that you're weird or…or making fun of you…and stuff." Said Sho quietly. He drew his legs up to his chest even though his pants were still all wet and he was all sandy. He felt Shimazaki scooting closet to him.

"Kid, look at me. Does it look like I give a fuck what other people think? I don't. I wasted a lot of my life living under people who told me that the way I am, my existence, was wrong and I am never living like that again. I'll fuck who I want and I'll like who I like and I'll fuck who I like. Ok? And you…you are who you are and you like who you like and that's alright...and also you're not a bad wingman if I take into account your age….ok? Now come on, don't turtle up like that. Let's go throw some broken shells at people and then we'll go home and have Shibata feed up. How's that sound, kid?" asked Shimazaki. Sho nodded and brought his knees down from his chest.

"Sounds good." Said Sho. He had to say something so he said that…even though he had so many things that he wanted to…to say…but he didn't know how. He wanted to ask Shimazaki how he had figured it out, that he liked guys, and how he could just….say it. How he could just say it loud and clear where anyone…anyone who spoke Japanese could hear. How he could just….be like that…just admit it and…and admit it to Sho. He had trusted Sho with this information…and stuff…and Sho….he had never felt so trusted in his life. The goldfish in his stomach was trying to swim away through his chest…and his heart was beating fast to stop it and…and he just….there was some hurt there, too, because….because he knew that Shimazaki had liked big sis….and Sho….he had been right there….and….and Shimazaki could have liked him back this whole time….and…and….

And he stopped thinking about this. He focused on the beach. It was hot, full of sand, and….that was perfect.


	313. Neither of Us Can Sleep

Sho had no idea what he was even hearing…but he knew that it was weird.

"….think so, boss…."

"I know so."

Well he knew what he was listening to. Hatori was in his house. Hatori was talking to dad. Hatori was in his house talking to dad. The world had gone crazy. Sho had to pinch himself to make sure that he was still awake….even though he had no idea why he would dream about Hatori being in his house talking to dad. He dreamt about dad sometimes, bad dreams where dad beat him up and good dreams where he beat dad up, but never about dad hanging out with Hatori. Also he never dreamt about Hatori, either. Why would he? Hatori was big sis's boyfriend. He wasn't going to just lay there and dream about his own big sister's boyfriend.

Or anyone's boyfriend.

Or any boy at all. He didn't dream about boys, especially not Shimazaki, and he certainly hadn't had recurring dreams where Shimazaki told him he liked him and they certainly hadn't gotten worse since the time that Shimazaki and him went to the beach….certainly not. Not at all. In fact if he were to close his eyes and go to sleep then he would have dreamt about something other than him and Shimazaki and the two of them being together and….yeah. He did not have those sorts of dreams. He would dream…he would dream of other things.

But not dad and Hatori hanging out.

Sho rolled over. He could hear dad and Hatori talking about….something….through the door. He didn't know what. All he knew was that he was supposed to be asleep. Big sis had put him to bed, well he had let her put him to bed he was ten years old he could put himself to bed, but it made her feel better to put him to bed so he let her put him to bed. In his own bed. He had a bed now. True to her word she had gotten him a bed…and he had no idea why he had thought that she hadn't been telling the truth. She was his sister and she loved him so of course she had gotten him his own bed…

Even though it had been nice sleeping next to her.

She was in her bed under her covers. He could tell, by the glowing, that she was on her phone. That wasn't fair at all. If he had to go to sleep then she had to go to sleep. She as awake and she was on her phone and…and he would not get mad at her. Maybe she couldn't sleep. Maybe the weirdness of all of this was keeping her up too. He didn't know why it wouldn't have. This whole thing was just…it made no sense. Dad was Fukuda's best friend and they didn't even hang out like this. Just….sitting together and having fun and stuff. It seemed like they were having fun, anyway, based on their tones and auras and the fact that Hatori wasn't hiding in the bathroom like a scaredy cat. This was too weird and he couldn't blame big sis for not sleeping.

He couldn't sleep either.

He reached over with his powers and took his phone off the charger. He could watch something or read something or play something….his 3DS would have been better for games…he sat up. The little light was still red. Damn. Well he could at least be on his phone until the sun came up or dad and Hatori shut up or he fell asleep, whichever came first. He didn't bother hiding under a blanket. If she got to be up then he got to be up too. It was only fair. He minute he clicked his phone on she pulled her blanket off from over her head and sat up. Her phone vibrated in her hand. She was messaging someone….and Sho wondered who. Minegishi maybe…but they lived right next door. Who else did she know? Well Hatori…but he was hanging out with dad….

Which was weirdness beyond any level of weirdness that he had ever known.

"Sho, go back to bed. It's in the middle of the night." Said Mob as she got up. She had been talking to Minori, another one of her friends was being a b-word to her, but now she was talking to Sho. Minori would be mad that Mob wasn't texting back fast enough but maybe she would understand…or not. She didn't have any brothers or sisters. Well then she would just have to deal with her friend being mad at her in that case.

Because Sho needed her.

Sho needed her and she needed to be there for him. She had made a big mistake in not thinking to get him a bed…well she'd had no idea if he'd be joining them….but still. She had made a mistake and now she was never going to make any other mistakes again. Ever. She was going to take the best care of her little brother, the very best care, because that was what he deserved. If he needed to be tucked in again she would tuck him in and if he needed another story then she would read him another story, well she would read aloud in the room with him because he liked to say that he was too old for stories, and if he needed her to sleep next to him then she would sleep next to him. She would do anything for her little brother.

Even if Minori would get mad at her for not texting back fast enough.

"I can't sleep." Said Sho. Big sis's phone vibrated again. She put it face down on her bed. She was looking at him now. He could see her face in the light that came in from the outside. Her aura was on him too…and he used to dislike it when she paid attention to him….and when she bossed him around. That had been back when he had been little, back before he had been someone's big brother. Now he knew that she did this because she cared about him….and who else would? Dad? No, he didn't care about Sho. He only cared about what Sho would be able to do for him once he grew up.

"Do you need me to tuck you in again? Or another story? Or do you want me to sleep next to you?" asked Mob

"No, it's fine. Just let me be awake. You're awake." Said Sho. He had been able to stay up as late as he had wanted to back when he had been staying with Fukuda….but he wasn't about to go off and spend the night with Fukuda again. No, he was back with big sis where he belonged.

"I'm awake….but you need more sleep. You're littler than me." Said Mob. Little people needed more sleep. Sho may not have been a lot younger than her but she was still the big sister and caring for him was her responsibility.

"This is that part of the year when we're the same age." Said Sho

"That's true but….I just don't want you to be tired in the morning. So please just tell me what I can do to help you go to sleep." Said Mob. She was supposed to help him get to sleep. That was one of the things that she had to do for him. She was out of practice, maybe, since he had been away for so long….but now she was going to have go get back in practice. She had to be a good big sister. She had to be.

"Can you tell dad and Hatori to shut up…and to stop being weird. Seriously. That's just…it's just weird." Said Sho motioning towards the door. Dad and Hatori were talking…about games it sounded like…but that made no sense. Last time Sho had checked dad didn't like games because they were fun and dad was allergic to fun. How could big sis be so…normal about all of this? That was her boyfriend sitting out there with dad. Dad who beat people up and even worse. Didn't she care about him? About what dad could do to him? Didn't she think about how dad would react if he found out the truth? Didn't she remember what had happened to Shimazaki? About how dad had beat him up so bad that he bled?

Sho knew that he would be able to forget.

"Um….I can. I mean not tell dad and Hatori to shut up…because that would be mean…but I can have dad sleep next to me. Then he'll send Hatori home….and I'll do that if you want me to but I want to be near you since you've been gone for so long." Said Mob. She also wanted to keep on talking to Minori…and also she didn't want to have to make dad breakfast at three in the morning again. That hadn't been fun at all. Dad had woken her up because he had been having a bad dream, about mom it sounded like, and instead of talking to her he had sent her to make him food. Maybe he had been eating his feelings. Sometimes people ate their feelings but that was not a good thing to do because it wasn't healthy. Minegishi had said so. She wished that dad would have just talked to her, it wasn't like she had been planning on making fun of him or anything, she would have helped him through whatever bad feelings that he had been feeling….

But dad liked to pretend that he didn't have any feelings.

She didn't want to have to make him middle of the night breakfast again. She wanted him, next time that happened, to just tell her what he had been feeling. She had been sleeping but then dad had pulled her close and started talking about mom and kept on telling her that he loved her and stuff. She loved him and if he had just woken up and told her what had been wrong….but that wasn't what dad did….

She didn't understand dad at all sometimes.

"And you have to talk to whoever you're talking to." Said Sho motioning towards her face down phone. He didn't know why he said that. He didn't know why he cared if she had been talking to someone else. He didn't know why it bothered him that dad let her sleep next to him. He didn't know why he cared that her boyfriend was in their house talking to dad. He didn't know….he didn't know a lot of things. All he knew was that….that he had been very close to sounding like a jerk then and he could not let himself talk like a jerk, be a jerk, to his big sister.

She loved him and he loved her and when you loved someone then…then you were always nice to them….even when you got upset in the middle of the night for no good reason.

"That's just my friend Minori. She'd be mad at me if I didn't respond to her but that's not why I don't want to sleep next to dad. I want to sleep next to you…or at least in the same room as you." Said Mob. She felt her phone vibrate again. She knew that Minori would get mad at her, probably think that she was being a b-word, and she didn't want Minori to talk about her like she talked about her other friends….and stuff….but Sho was more important.

"Minori….she doesn't have pink stripes in her hair, does she?" asked Sho. He knew someone named Minori. He would never forget that name. That had been….that night had been the best and the worst of his life.

"No, her whole hair is pink…but she might have had stripes in her hair…when you met her." said Mob. She didn't know what she was supposed to say about that…so she said nothing. Sho could kiss whoever he wanted in whatever way he wanted….and she did not want to even begin to think about her own little brother going around kissing people….especially not like how Minori said that it happened. Mob could have lived a nice, long, comfortable life without knowing that her little brother had kissed someone….like that.

Not that she didn't want him to be happy, she did, she just didn't need those sorts of details.

"Wait…how are you….how do you KNOW her?" asked Sho. He made no move to keep his voice down. How could he? Big sis knew that crazy girl? The one who ha d climbed on top of him and had tried to cram her tongue into his MOUTH!? That girl? How had….Sho wondered if the universe was punishing him for all of those cheating thoughts he kept on having. That would have made sense. That would have made all the sense.

"Her dad is one of Claw's financial backers and he's staying here for business and stuff. He invited me and dad over and gave us a square watermelon, you can have it by the way I don't want it, and then Minori decided that we were going to be friends." Said Mob

"A square watermelon? Those things suck they're never ripe enough and the corners just make eating it hard...also how are you friends with her?!"" Said Sho. He didn't care if dad heard him. Dad didn't give a damn if he was awake or asleep. He would just tell big sis to put him to bed again….or whatever. He had to figure this out. Big sis had made friends with that crazy girl? Her? She had been….Sho had been kissed a million times before by a million girls before but no girl had ever kissed him like she had…and he never wanted a girl to kiss him like that again.

"She invited me to her room and then she decided that we were friends." Said Mob

"But….why? What do you…what do you even DO with her? And why did you keep this a secret?" asked Sho. That was the worst part, that she had been keeping this a secret from him, even though he had no idea why that even bothered him. He had been keeping secrets from her, so many secrets, so he had no right to be there getting upset with her for keeping secrets from him.

"We play dolls and paint each other's nails and play dress up and she does my makeup and we take pictures….she loves to take pictures….and that's it. I wasn't keeping it a secret I just….well she told me that you kissed her….um….that you guys kissed a lot and I know you have a girlfriend now and I didn't want things to be awkward. Also the way she talks about boys….I didn't want her to talk about you that way….and stuff." Said Mob. She was not going to tell her own brother that she knew all about how he had tongue kissed her friend…..and also she knew how Minori was about boys. She didn't think that it was wrong to try and kiss a boy with a girlfriend….and also talking about which boys were hot and what she wanted to do with that…that was one of her favorite things to talk about…and she did NOT need Minori to talk about her little brother like that.

"She said that I kissed HER?" asked Sho. That was not how it had gone at all…but he didn't want to talk about any part of that night with his own big sister. He didn't want to talk to her about how just….really fucking not good…kissing Minori had been. He didn't want to tell her about how kissing Hideki had been the best moment of his life…how it had felt so good and right….and stuff. He didn't want to tell her how wrong it had felt, how wrong he had felt, when it was over and it felt good….when he realized that he had felt good….how everyone had been reacting…and stuff. She didn't need to know any of that. She didn't need to know and he wasn't going to tell her…so….so…

So maybe it was better that she thought that he had been the one to want to kiss her friend….that way at least she wouldn't know the truth…even though he didn't like lies and secrets….

"…yes…and I just…you can kiss whoever you want. I mean you have a girlfriend now and you only kiss her but you can….I mean when you were single you could have….you could have kissed whoever you wanted…even….um….in the way that she said you guys kissed. I love you and all but I just….don't want to know about how you kiss girls and stuff…and all. Um….and that's why I never asked you to come and hang out with me and Minori. You have a girlfriend and she's kind of like an ex…sort of. It wasn't a secret though…not really." Said Mob. She hoped that Sho wasn't going to get mad at her….and she had never meant to make him mad…she just didn't want things to be awkward.

"Yeah….I don't want to talk to you about that either…because you're my sister and stuff. So let's not talk about this anymore. I mean I don't ask you about kissing Hatori so-" said Sho

"Sho! I've never kissed….not so loud! He might hear you." Said Mob. She glanced over at the door. Hatori and dad were still talking about which was better, Galaga or Galaxian, and that was good. Hatori could not know that she had been in love with him…or that being near him made her feel…a lot of different feelings. Nobody could ever know about that. Ever.

"He can't hear me…and you never kissed him? Aren't you guys in love or something?" asked Sho

"Sho! Don't talk about that! You just said that you didn't want to talk about that." Said Mob

"I know, I know. It's just….I thought you guys were going out. I thought that you guys were in love or something…." Said Sho. No. She had to like him. She had to like him because….because she didn't like Shimazaki like that anymore. Since she didn't like him anymore she was Hatori's girlfriend.

"I….I liked him before but….but then I stopped liking him…and it's complicated and….and also it's just…he's not my boyfriend, ok? Let's talk about something else. Um…Shibata says that he's going to make crepes….so maybe he'll make us crepes…and stuff." Said Mob. She loved her brother, she really did, but she did not want to talk about love with her own little brother. She wanted to talk about….about crepes. Crepes were good. Crepes were…they were good with strawberry…and stuff….

"Yeah….ok. Crepes are good but he had better not put anything on mine." Said Sho. He would rather talk about crepes than some guy who didn't have the guts to go out with his sister. What was so complicated? She liked him and he didn't exactly have girls chasing him down the street. He should have been jumping up and down that a girl liked him. What? Was something WRONG with his sister? Huh? Did Hatori think that he could do better? What, was he holding out for a princess or a movie star or one of those girls who took their clothes off for money? Well he had better stop holding out!

Sho knew that he was supposed to beat up guys for liking his girlfriend but he wondered if it was ok to beat up a guy for NOT liking his big sister.

Hatori…Sho wondered if he had brain worms or something. He must have had brain worms or maybe he had broken his brain with too many energy drinks and videogames or something. Sho had to knock some sense into him. Big sis…she liked him and he had to like her and that way she wouldn't like Shimazaki again….so there had to be something that he could do to make sure that never happened….because if she fell back in love with Shimazaki then…then….

Sho didn't know what he would do.

"A least have some fruit. At least some strawberry or something. Ok?" asked Mob. Good. They weren't talking about her love life…well the love life that Sho thought that she had…anymore. She understood taking care of Sho. She knew how to make him eat his food and all the food groups and how to take care of him and this was what she was going to talk about for the rest of the night if she had to. Even though she knew that she had to get back to Minori or else she was being a b-word….but if being there for her brother made her a b-word then….then she was a b word.

"…fine…but on another plate." Said Sho. She deserved to be happy. She deserved to be happy and if she wanted to be with Hatori then he would make sure that big sis ended up with Hatori….because he was a good little brother, that was all, and not because he knew that if she got back with Shimazaki his heart would break in half….and stuff….

"Ok. Whatever you want." Said Mob. She would make sure that he had at least one plate of strawberries. In syrup, of course, because otherwise Sho wouldn't eat them. He didn't like fruit because of the time with the grapefruit…but strawberries would not kill him….and she needed fruit because they were a food group and stuff. She would make sure he was ok and happy and stuff. She was his big sister and that was her job, to take care of him and make him happy.

"Ok….and if you want to sleep next to me…if you want…then you can sleep next to me." Said Sho. He loved her and he wanted her to be happy. If she wanted to sleep next to him then that was fine. Even if they didn't both fit it was fine. He just wanted her to be happy.

"I would like that a lot." said Mob. She put her phone on the charger, Minori would be mad but Mob could deal with that in the morning, and climbed in bed next to Sho. She knew that they were too big to share a bed. She knew that they didn't both fit anymore. She knew that he kicked in his sleep and also wet the bed. She knew that he could wake her up at any time and then she would be tired the next day…but she didn't care. She just wanted to be near her brother….especially since he had been gone for so long.

She loved him so much.

"Yeah, ok, me too I guess." Said Sho as he put his phone on the charger with his powers and then made room for big sis. Dad and Hatori were still talking and it was still weird…..but big sis was near him and that was normal. She was near him and they had been apart for so long….but now they were together. They were together and he was making her happy…and he would keep on making her happy.

He heard Hatori laugh.

Dad and Hatori liked each other enough to be friends….which was so weird…but that was good, too. If dad liked him then he wouldn't beat him up bad enough to bleed once he started going out with big sis. He would end up going out with big sis, Sho would make sure of it, and then big sis would be so happy. She was going to be happy and then…and then she wouldn't try and go out with Shimazaki again…and stuff…and Sho didn't want to think about the way he felt about Shimazaki. No, that was just…not something that she needed to hear about and not something that he wanted to talk about….because it was weird…

Even weirder than dad and Hatori being friends.


	314. The Makeup Store

Mob know nothing at all about makeup.

Minori had called her that morning and told her that they were going shopping. Mob had assumed that they were going clothes shopping, Minori was always talking about how she hated all of her clothes, but they weren't. No, they were at a makeup store. It was big and bright and the music was loud and there were people everywhere and Mob really wanted to go to the Disney Store down the street, she could always use more merch and clothes, but Minori had said that the Disney Store was for kids and that they were here to buy makeup…

Even though they were only eleven.

Well Mob was almost eleven. She would be eleven soon. But still, they didn't really need makeup. Mom had told her, back when she had been very little, that makeup was for adults. Mom said that adults wore makeup to hide all the ways that they were getting older and stuff. Mom had also said that makeup was so that girls could look pretty for boys and that Mob wouldn't have to worry about that until high school. Well Mob was never going to go to high school, she hadn't gone to school since the first grade after all, so maybe it was ok to wear makeup…

She didn't know. She mostly just wanted to go to the Disney Store.

"Give me your arm." Said Minori. She didn't wait for Mob's answer, she just reached over and took her by the arm. Her nails were kind of sharp but Mob didn't say anything about that. She didn't want to make Minori mad at her. She got mad sometimes and then she could be sort of mean…but that was ok. Sometimes people got in a bad mood. Besides. Minori wasn't a friend that she had to see that often anyway. They'd move soon, too, and then so would Minori. Mob had no idea where she would be moving too but she knew that Minori would be going back to Japan soon. Her school's year started in June so she would have to be heading back soon…and Mon should not have been as relieved as she was.

That was not being a good friend at all.

Minori was just trying to be nice to her in her own way. She was trying to show Mob how to be normal, like everyone else, that was why she was drawing a line in pale white cream on her arm and then rubbing it in. That was also why she had told Mob that she looked like she was five when her hair was braided and that she looked like she was six when she wore her Frozen t-shirts and dresses and skirts. Minori was trying her best to be nice. She just wasn't very good at it.

But that was ok, Mob could be sort of clueless about stuff too.

"Thank God. Good news, I finally found a foundation that's pale enough for your skin tone. You need more sun, Suzuki, like all the sun." said Minori as she tossed the foundation into her basket with a shake of her head. Suzuki was so lucky to have had someone like her to guide her through this stuff. It was hard when you didn't have a mom or a big sister to help you, she and Suzuki were in the same boat like that, so she had better have been grateful.

Not everyone would do this for their friend.

Especially one as weird as Suzuki. She was such a project but an Asagiri never gave up, dad had said that. There was no project too big for an Asagiri to take on….and Mob was one hell of a project. But progress was being made. She had stopped braided her hair and she was painting her nails in the lines and she wasn't wearing one of her Frozen outfits so, yeah, progress was being made. She was in a Tangled shirt and purple tutu skirt…but that was still progress. At least he stuff was purple, which was a better color for her than blue, but pink was her best color. Minori already liked purple…but she would maybe let Suzuki like it too. Maybe.

She had to be a good friend.

"I don't get suntans or sunburns. I'm just always pale…sorry." said Mob. She had no idea why her skin never turned any color either than this one. Mom had told her, before, that being pale was a good thing. That women would have killed for her skin….which was just…weird. Skin was skin. Hers was just so pale that she could see her veins if she looked hard enough.

"Seriously?" asked Minori. Well she could work with that. God, when they needed to get back to Japan already. If she wheedled hard enough she could get dad to let the guards take her up to Harajuku and then she could get Suzuki into something that matched her style better. Then they could really up their Instagram game. Then everyone would see that she had moved on and she didn't need any of those other friends she'd had before.

Those bitches.

Well, those traitors. That was Suzuki's word for them, traitors, and she was right. What kind of a friend just up and left you? No kind of a friend. Suzuki knew a lot about being a good friend. She always did what Minori said because she knew that Minori knew best and also she brought something to the friendship, too. Minori's friends had mostly just hung around her for her house and her playground and her pool and her home theatre and all of that. Suzuki wasn't like that. Her dad was just as high up as dad was in his company, whatever they did, and Suzuki didn't need to use her for her money or whatever. Also she had weed, a lot of it, and she always had something to drink too.

So, really, this was a very good friendship.

"Yes…sorry." said Mob. She felt her arm, where the cream was. She could hardly see it. That was good. She remembered what foundation was for. That was what Minori put on her skin to hide…well her skin. She had said that you wanted to make sure that none of your skin showed when you put on your makeup. Mob didn't get it but that was what you were supposed to do so she wasn't going to question it.

She was happy to have a friend her age who knew what she was doing.

Because Mob didn't. She had never been in a makeup store before. This was a place where people her age went to get makeup and makeup was something that people her age were supposed to wear. She could see other people her own age there. Girls her own age with their friends or maybe their sisters and some women there that might have been their moms or maybe their friends like Minegishi was her friend. Not that she could ever see Minegishi setting foot in a makeup store. They never wore makeup or dresses but they still made themselves look nice. They had pretty hair and pretty nails and they wore pretty t-shirts with flowers on them and stuff….but they still never wore makeup.

That was fine. Mob had someone to teach her about this stuff now.

"Stop apologizing. It's good to be pale….well not as pale as you are but pale is still good. It'll be better once we get back to Japan. They'll have more stuff that works for us. I don't like how they do the makeup back home though but it's whatever." Said Minori as she dragged Suzuki over to where the fun stuff was, the eyeshadow palettes. Eye shadow was the easiest and most fun to by. You didn't have to swatch and swatch and swatch. You could just find colors you liked and then mess with them when you got home.

This was going to be a fun day.

"Um….I don't know if we'll be going back to Japan at the same time…because we move all over the world and stuff…but if we're in Japan at the same time I would love to hang out with you and go shopping and do our makeup and stuff." Said Mob as Minori put little things of eye color in her basket. Mob decided to grab some too. She took some blue stuff. Minori barely looked over as she took the blue eye stuff out and put some pink stuff in.

"You look better in pink and purple, Suzuki." Said Minori. God, she was so lucky to have someone like her. She needed to stop dressing like Elsa. She was too pale for that blue. It just brought out all of her veins and it looked so weird. She needed to look like a person, not a ghost.

"Oh…thank you." Said Mob. She liked blue a lot…but if she didn't look good in it then she didn't look good in it. She was glad that Minori had told her that. She was glad but….but she also used her powers, when Minori wasn't looking of course, to sneak some Elsa blue stuff into her basket….but then she put it back. If she didn't look good in blue then she didn't look good in blue.

"You're welcome. Anyway whenever you get back to Japan you had better hit me up. America is nice and all but the best stuff is in Japan, Makeup, clothes, shoes, everything really. Well the best stuff is in Korea, actually, but I've already been this year." Said Minori

"Um….sure. I mean if we're in the same part of Japan, I mean. Usually when we go to Japan we stay in Tokyo. Dad built up the Tokyo office so we spend a lot of time there." said Mob

"We go to Tokyo a lot too. If I wheedle hard enough dad'll let me come and visit. We can hang out and stuff…and bring your friends for once. Especially that yakuza guy. He seems fun." Said Minori. She knew hot guys. Why not hang out with the hot guys she knew? She wasn't gay, and having a gay friend would have been cool she didn't have any gay friends and if she had one then people could stop thinking that she didn't like gay people, Suzuki just didn't like guys or something yet. Well she liked guys. She had about a million pictures of some geeky looking guy taking up valuable space on her phone. Suzuki had no idea what she had right there under her nose. Well that was ok, Minori would help her see what she could have had. You had to help out your friends.

"Um….I don't think that he would like to come. He mostly hangs out with my brother, technical his job is to keep Sho safe, so…um…he might not want to come with." Said Mob. She didn't want Shimazaki to come because Minori liked him…or at least thought that he was attractive, and Mob…she didn't want to see what she would be like when she was with him. Also Sho went where Shimazaki went and she didn't want to see Sho and Minori together since they had kissed before and it would be awkward.

"Well ask him. What's the point of knowing someone like that if you're not going to bring him with?" asked Minori. She didn't care if he was older than her, he was hot, and she'd kiss him or whatever. All of that stuff that Suzuki had probably never heard of. This was why they worked so well together. She didn't need her friends, any of them, because she had a new friend and, yeah, she was a fixer upper but she had drugs and booze and hot guys and her guards weren't nearly as annoying so, yeah, they were going to be best friends now.

"Um….I don't know….um…do you really think that I don't look nice in blue?" asked Mob. She knew that it was impolite to change the subject like that….but she really wanted to change the subject.

"No, it brings out how pale you are. You need soft pinks and purples, like me." Said Minori

"But I thought that being pale was good….you said." Said Mob

"It is but not when you're pale as a ghost." Said Minori

"Ghosts aren't really pale, though, a lot of the are green actually." Said Mob. She wondered if that had been the right thing or the wrong thing to say. Minori must have known that she was an esper….right? She must have known because her dad a big financial backer for Claw and stuff…but even if she did then Mob shouldn't have been rubbing her powers in a normal person's face.

"Whatever. Green then. Well whatever. You still look like that girl from the ring." Said Minori. She hoped that Suzuki wasn't going crazy on her or anything like that. She didn't need a crazy friend. Ghosts weren't real. She knew that ghosts weren't real. Dad had pissed away enough money trying to get to the other side. Mom was gone, gone and dead, and there was no other side. It was whatever.

"Oh…I'm sorry." said Mob as she brushed her hair out of her face. She had seen that movie. She wished that she could have braided her hair or something. That way he would have looked better and stuff.

"It's whatever. Come on, I'll get you the same stuff I'm getting and then we can work from there. After this we can get some new clothes…from the real store. Not the Disney Store." Said Minori with a wrinkle of her nose. Suzuki would never be hot but she could be cute….which was why she was going to get some of the stuff that dad liked her to wear. She'd show Suzuki how to make actual outfits. Not just putting on clothes with the same color or character. She was eleven, not one, and she could have been really cute if she tried harder. Then they could have gone and found some guys. God, it had been so long since she'd been out with a guy….Suzuki needed to bring her brother around. He was cute.

"Oh. We can be twins, then, even if we aren't going to the Disney Store." Said Mob. She wanted to go to the Disney Store….but she could go on her own later….or maybe not. She needed a new Elsa dresses, she needed new costume dresses for all of her characters, but maybe….maybe she was too old like Minori said. She had been dressing like that since she had been little…and she wasn't little anymore. It was almost her birthday. She was going to be eleven and she had never been eleven before….so maybe she should take advice from someone who had been eleven for a while now.

"Yeah, and you can be the evil one." said Minori with a laugh. Suzuki laughed too, it took a second but she laughed. Minori liked that about her. She didn't take things too personally. Everyone was always taking things so personally.

"That's funny…how you were kidding. Because there's no such thing as evil twins…right?" asked Mob. That seemed sort of mean but Minori could just be sort of mean. That was just how she was. Mob was bad at talking too. That was something that they had in common and that was good, really, because the more things that they had in common the better. They would be better friends and stuff.

"Oh my God, I don't know Suzuki. Maybe I've been replaced with my evil twin. Maybe the Minori you love is gone." Said Minori. She didn't know if Suzuki was just doing a bit or if she was this clueless. Either way she was entertaining.

"Um….can you show me how to pick an eyelash stuff again? One that won't make my eyelashes all crunchy?" asked Mob. She didn't know if she was being made fun of or if Minori was just trying to be funny. Either way she wanted to talk about something else, anything else, so she had might as well steer the conversation to something that Minori would have wanted to talk about. She liked to talk and she liked to show Mob things, she was a good friend like that, even if sometimes well….

She could be sort of mean.

But she could also be sort of nice. She was nice enough to tell Mob what was wrong with her and nice enough to try and make her better. More normal. She wanted to be normal. She knew that Minegishi had said, before, that trying to be normal wasn't worth it. That she was fine the way she was. Well she still wanted to be who she was just….just a better version of who she was. She felt, sometimes, like she had gotten stuck as this person, this version of herself, when she had been little. She had liked Frozen since she had been little and she had been wearing her braids since she had been….she didn't even know how long…

So maybe it was time for a change.

Maybe it was time to try something new. Maybe it was time to be who she wanted to be….once she figured out who she wanted to be. She liked Frozen and her Frozen clothes but there was a whole world of other things that she could like, too. Like how she hadn't had a single sip of coffee before she had met Minegishi. They had started going to Starbucks together when she had been eight and back then she hadn't liked coffee at all but now she liked it just fine. She liked makeup now, too, and she never would have known this about herself if Minori hadn't taken the time to show her how makeup worked.

And what did and did not work.

Mob liked the eyelash stuff, the mascara, in the big pink tube just because it looked pretty and the end looked like a magic wand. Minori told her that her eyelashes were too thin for that. She was right, she knew about this stuff, and she may have been mean sometimes but that was just how she was. Mob was glad that she had a friend who knew about this stuff, who knew about all of this normal stuff, and she liked hanging out with Minori.

They went to fun places together, like the makeup store.


	315. Happy Eleventh Birthday, Mob

Mob went to bed ten and woke up eleven.

She felt the same but she knew that she was different. Eleven. Two ones right next to each other. Eleven years ago she had been born. She had been a baby and now she was a kid…well she had been a kid for a while…but now she was an older kid. She was an older kid and…well she was the same height as she had been when she had gone to sleep…and nothing else had changed really…but she was a whole year older now and that was something.

And also there were pancakes.

"Today is your birthday….it's my birthday too…." Sang Shimazaki as he reached over and stole one of the pancakes from her stack. Now she had ten. She'd had eleven before and now she had ten but that was ok because she hadn't been sure how she was supposed to eat eleven pancakes all by herself. She wasn't even sure how she was supposed to eat ten pancakes all by herself. She would have asked her friends to help but they all had their own pancakes.

Even Shimazaki.

"You can have it." Said Mob after he stole her pancake. She had plenty. She had plenty and she was always happy to have something to share with her friends. This may have been her birthday but everyone was there and everyone deserved to have a great time.

"Hey! Is it your birthday? No, it's hers. Now you put that pancake back where it came from of so help me-" said Shibata from his spot in front of the stove. He was making more of the strawberry in syrup topping that she liked. He had made this whole breakfast for her and he didn't have to make anything else but he had said that he'd wanted to. It was her birthday and she got whatever she wanted.

She mostly just wanted everyone to get along.

"You can have all of my pancakes….you didn't have to take one from my sister." Said Sho. He pushed one of his pancakes, he got ten because Shibata didn't want him to feel left out, onto Shimazaki's plate. If he noticed he didn't say anything…but maybe he should have said something because Sho was staring at him. He might have been staring at Shimazaki because he was waiting for a thank you. Shimazaki forgot those sometimes. Sho might have been staring for a whole other reason though. She didn't know why he stared at Shimazaki all the time, and it was all the time, and she wanted to ask but this seemed like something that she should not have been nosing into. She tended to be nosy, Minegishi had said before, so Mob was trying to fix that.

She was eleven now so she might as well fix all the bad things about herself before she turned twelve.

"Better yours than mine." Said Hatori as he pulled his plate in close. That wouldn't stop Shimazaki. He could teleport, move fast without teleporting, and was a lot stronger than Hatori. Hatori must have known by now that he couldn't stop Shimazaki….but it was still nice to see him try. He was so…he made Mob's chest and stomach feel funny. She didn't know why. He was just hunched over his pancakes like he was protecting them or something. She didn't know why she felt like this…maybe because he wasn't in a sweater. He was just in a t-shirt and sleep shorts…and she never saw that much of him…and she didn't know why she cared. Shimazaki slept in just sleep shorts and staring at him didn't make her heart and stomach feel funny and he was a boy too. Maybe because he was in love with Minegishi….that might have been it. Mob didn't know what this feeling was but she knew that she could never let herself have it for a person who was in love with her best friend.

So then why did she have it for Hatori?

He had been in love with Minegishi, also he wanted to eat them but he couldn't help being who he was, and she still felt….she didn't want to be his girlfriend…but she felt….she didn't know how she felt. She felt like…like she liked looking at his arms…they were pale and thin and she wanted to touch his skin to see…well to see what it felt like….and she had no idea why she felt all…this feeling. This feeling which was very personal and embarrassing that she was never going to tell anyone about ever for as long as she would live….and also she needed to stop looking at him because the more she looked at him the worse it got.

She hoped that she could fix whatever this was by the time she turned twelve. That would have been very nice.

"What pancake?" asked Shimazaki as he stuffed the pancake he stole from her into his mouth. Mob hoped that he didn't choke. That would have been a terrible way to start off being eleven. Her friend choking and dying and then she'd never be able to hang out with him again…..that would have just been the absolute worst thing to ever happen on anyone's birthday ever.

Or in general.

He was a good friend and she didn't know what she would do without him. He was Sho's best friend but they were still friends…but sometimes she got the idea that Sho didn't want her to be friends with Shimazaki because they were best friends. Like now. His aura was focused on her and it felt…not happy. She didn't get why. People could have lots of friends. They all liked each other and they were all friends with each other.

There was enough friendship to go around just like there were enough pancakes to go around.

"Oh grow up. You're thirty years old, you have access to food now. Stop being a scavenger." Said Minegishi as they reached over and took a pancake from his plate and put it on Mob's. Shimazaki had covered his in so much syrup that they were in danger of falling apart….and also she didn't really want another pancake. She was happy with what she had. Ten was a lot and eleven was even more than a lot. She had no idea how she was even supposed to finish all of these on her own….but that was ok. This was part of their birthday tradition. You got pancakes equal to however many years you've been alive. It was a nice tradition.

She missed the old traditions though.

She missed how mom used to wake her up by blowing a birthday blower and telling her 'happy birthday'. She missed the special birthday breakfast of whatever she wanted. Even a non breakfast food like pizza or fries. She missed how they would go to whatever places she asked to go like the pool or the library and places like that. She missed how they would do presents after birthday lunch, whatever she wanted, and then they would watch whatever she wanted on TV before birthday dinner. She even got to stay up late on her birthday too….

She liked the new traditions though.

Even the part where Shimazaki stole food off of her plate. She knew why he did it, when he had been really little he'd had to take food from wherever he could get it because his parents locked him in his room for all day and didn't even let him out to go to the bathroom. So she didn't mind it when he stole food at all sine he had a good reason. She didn't know why everyone else made a big deal out of it. It was her birthday and she would decide what was and was not a big deal.

And Shimazaki stealing one of her eleven pancakes was not a big deal at all.

"I'm not a scavenger, I'm just someone who takes food from others at the first opportunity." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah! He's not a scavenger, he's a food thief, now why don't you just leave him alone and go back to your pancakes with gross fruit on them?" asked Sho. That was not a nice thing to say at all…and she wished that she knew why he would say such a thing to Minegishi. They had never been anything but nice….Minegishi nice….to him. They had even let him have their spot at the breakfast table. Usually they had breakfast sitting next to Shimazaki but they had let Sho have their spot. Now they were sitting next to Hatori even though he was probably thinking about eating them right now. Minegishi was so nice like that.

And she really wished that Sho would have been nice to them right back.

"So….you planning on doing something about this at some point, Ryou? Or is this just what life is now?" asked Minegishi. They pointing at Sho with their fork…and Mob didn't get it at all. Sho was Sho and he hadn't been THAT mean…she'd seen him be meaner…but Minegishi wasn't used to him and stuff…..but still they should have asked Mob to do something….but Sho listened to Shimazaki more than he listened to her. Probably because they were best friends.

"Leave him be, Toshi, he's fine." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. Mob looked between them three of them, Sho and Shimazaki and Minegishi, and there was something there in the atmosphere and she wished that she knew what it was. There was some silence now and it felt heavy. Hatori was scraping his fork and knife against his plate, even though that ruined the plate, but the sound of that didn't break the silence, no, it just seemed to make it worse. Sho was glaring at Minegishi and they were staring at Shimazaki and Shimazaki…he was folding pancakes in half and eating them like tacos.

Mob didn't get it.

But there were a lot of things she didn't get. That was just part of being friends with people. They were people in your life who you cared about, true, but you didn't know everything about them. You couldn't ever know everything, the whole of everything, about another person. She didn't even know everything about her own little brother. So it was ok that she had no idea what was going on there. Why Sho was making such a mean face at Minegishi, why Minegishi was looking at Shimazaki with one eyebrow raised up even though they didn't have any eyebrows and also Shimazaki wasn't good at seeing people's expressions, why Shimazaki folded his pancakes in half and filled the middles with syrup before eating them like tacos, or why Hatori was eating so fast even though he knew that he was going to give himself a stomach ache and also pancakes weren't at all like human flesh so he shouldn't have been so enthusiastic.

Mob didn't understand, also, why Shibata had to slam the bowl with the strawberries in syrup down onto the table to hard her plate and glass of strawberry milk jumped.

"Who wants more fruit!? I bet you do, Minegishi, since you grew it yourself. Here, have lots more fruit." Said Shibata. He tried to ladle some strawberries in syrup onto Minegishi's plate but Minegishi made the table plant grow into a roof for their plate.

"I can serve myself, thank you." Said Minegishi as they made the plant go back to normal. They weren't looking at Shimazaki anymore and Sho wasn't glaring at them anymore. Good. Mob felt like a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders even though she had no idea why. Maybe because it was her birthday. Maybe because it was her birthday and all she wanted for her birthday was for all of her friends to get along. Maybe that was it.

She also wanted fruit.

She held her plate out with her powers to get more fruit. Shibata gave her a big ladle full and Mob didn't have it in her to tell him that he had given her too much. Wasting food was bad because there were people in other countries that had no food at all, mom had said, and Mob had never understood the point of that. If the people in the other countries needed food so badly then how did it help them if she and Sho ate all of their food? Wouldn't it have made more sense to send them the food that she and Sho didn't want to eat? Things didn't always make sense….but she knew not to waste food….

So she ate as much as she could.

She managed to eat five pancakes with syrup and fruit before she just couldn't anymore. That was half of her stack not counting the one that Shimazaki stole. She would have eaten more but Minegishi stopped her because it looked like she was going to throw up, they had said, and Mob was happy to have had an excuse to stop. If she had been smoking then she could have eaten more but this was not the day to smoke. Sho was there and she did not want him to start smoking, at least not until he was a grown up. He didn't have to control his powers, well he did, but he didn't have trouble with it like she did….so there was no reason for him to smoke. When they were adults they would smoke together because that was something that was ok for adults to do. She knew that she had smoked with Minori…well she had smoked a little bit with Minori. She had trouble with moderation so Mob had to be sneaky and switch out the cartridge for vape stuff. Still it was….different. Minori was not her responsibility. They weren't siblings so it was ok.

You always had to think of your sibling.

That was why she didn't make Sho put any fruit onto his pancakes and also why she didn't try and make him stop glaring at Minegishi. Minegishi would have told her if they had a problem with it, and she would talk to him about being nice after her birthday, but today….today she wanted to relax. She wanted to have pancakes and presents and cake and hang out with her brother and her friends and just…not have to worry about anything at all. She just wanted things to be good and easy and just….she didn't want to have to be in charge for just one day.

Even though that was sort of selfish.

But on your birthday you got to be sort of selfish. Like how when they had lived in the Castle mom had let her and Sho do whatever they wanted on their birthdays. They could go and swim in the pool all day, well until all the family swims were done with, and they could go to the playground or just stay at home and have unlimited screen time. Mom had said that a birthday was the celebration of the day you had been born so that meant that you could do anything that you wanted to do and be whatever you wanted to be…and Mob….

She just wanted to not be in charge for just a little bit.

And also she wanted to open presents. Present time came after pancake time. When the pancakes that they had eaten had been cleared, Hatori finished hers off and she had tried not to feel weird at that even though she had no idea why she even felt this weird sort of feeling she had about him eating her pancakes, and the dishes had been washed….or at least stacked in the sink in a leaning tower of dirty dishes…after all of that it was present time. Mob didn't need presents, having her friends around her and stuff was presents enough, but she did like presents….

And her friends gave great presents.

Shimazaki went first. He handed her a gift bag, it was blue and said 'it's a boy' in English on the front…and had a picture of a baby….but she wasn't going to say anything. He had obviously picked it out himself and that meant that it came from the heart and Mob didn't care that this bag was for a lady with a baby in her stomach. She was just happy to have any present. Even if it was just a….

…a giant bag of socks?

"You had better like it. I spent all day feeling socks trying to find the softest ones." Said Shimazaki as Mob laid out all of the pairs of socks on the table. Some were white, some were black, some were blue, some were with dots, some were with stripes, some had characters that she knew, some had characters that she didn't, some were for boys, some were for girls, and some were just….odd. Like the rainbow colored ones with individual toes that looked way too big even for Shimazaki's feet. Some had tags and some were just balled up or tied up…and Mob didn't want to think about how he had gotten these socks.

"Hey! That's where my Metroid socks went!" said Hatori. Mob quickly slid them across the table with her powers. She had to return them to their rightful owner, Minegishi said that Shimazaki was part magpie which meant that he stole all the time, even though she wanted to keep them…sort of. She didn't know what Metroid was but those had been Hatori's and they had been near his skin and she had been thinking about his skin a lot lately…

And she started sorting her socks so she could think about something else.

"Well now they're hers. If you wanted to keep them then you should have hidden them better." Said Shimazaki. He teleported over and snatched the socks out of Hatori's hands…and Mob could not let him do that. It wasn't nice. She used her powers to put them back in Hatori's hands…and then Sho used his powers to hand them back to her….

She really didn't want everyone to fight over a pair of socks on her birthday….or ever.

"But….they weren't hidden at all….because I was never expecting anyone to steal my socks…that's just…weird." Said Hatori. Mob felt bad for him. She didn't want his socks….well she sort of did…she did and she didn't. What she wanted, to borrow, was his sweater with the kitten on it. It was probably warm and soft and it probably smelled like him too….and Mob didn't know why she cared whether or not it smelled like him. That was a weird thing to care about and she needed to stop thinking weird thoughts like that.

"Welcome to your life." Said Minegishi as they took a pair of lavender socks out of the pile, looked at them, and then put them back. Those weren't their socks. They only wore seamless socks because seams bothered them. Even if those had been their socks Mob would not have kept them. She knew that it was rude to refuse a gift and all…but she didn't want to just take socks from her friends. That wasn't a nice thing to do at all. Stealing was wrong.

"Yeah, well, it's Mob's birthday and she needs socks and you left yours unguarded so I had no real choice." Said Shimazaki like that was the most natural thing in the world….and for him it was. He just took things sometimes and Mob…well she had told him that stealing was wrong and she had wanted him to listen but she couldn't watch him every second of the day. He was going to do what he was going to do…though she really didn't want him to go around stealing for her and stuff. That wasn't something that she would ever want.

'Yeah! Give my sister your socks! All of them! Even the ones off of your feet!" said Sho. He stood up quickly as he said that and made the whole table rattle. Mob steadied it with her powers.

"But I'm not even wearing socks." Said Hatori. Mob looked under the table. Nope. He wasn't wearing socks at all…and she had never seen his bare feet before….well not that she could remember. He had hobbit feet, like from the book Minegishi lent her, hair on the tops of his toes and stuff. She had never noticed that about him before….but now she couldn't un-notice.

"Well then go and put some on so I can give them to her." said Sho. Mob didn't want him to steal for her either. He just thought that it was ok to steal because Shimazaki made it seem like it was ok….and she would talk to him about that later. Right now she just needed to put a stop to this.

"I don't want-" said Mob. She wanted new socks, hers kept on disappearing in either the washer or the dryer, but she didn't want to take socks from her friends. She just needed to make herself heard….somehow.

"Or we can all just wear our own socks and Ryou can stop stealing from everyone." Said Minegishi. They took Hatori's socks from her and passed them back to Hatori. He made a weird noise, sort of like a cross between a squeak and a yelp, and tried to bow while he was sitting down. Mob slid some socks under his head before he could smack his head on the table. His hair bounced when he put his head down and lifted it…and then that made her stomach bounce….

He was cuter than all the kpop boys in the world.

"I didn't take any of your socks, Toshi." Said Shimazaki. Mob wondered if he had avoided taking their socks because he was in love with them or if it was because he knew that they would attack him with plants if he stole from them.

"That's not the point, Ryou." Said Minegishi with a sigh. The sort of sigh that they did when they were very tired…but it was only ten in the morning. But then again they were always tired. Dealing with nonsense was their fulltime job, they had said, and Ryou did a lot of nonsense. Mob wondered why they complained about his nonsense when they had also said, before, that they loved that about him. How he always had something going on and how he was never dull. How he was honest in whatever he did. How nothing he did ever had an ulterior motive. How he wasn't even capable of having an ulterior motive. They had been sort of quiet and reddish when they had said that, which based on what Mob knew about herself meant that they liked him back, but for some reason they didn't even admit it let alone become his theyfriend and stuff.

Sometimes it was hard to understand her friends.

"Guys, really-" said Mob. Sometimes it was hard to be understood by her friends, too. It was like they weren't even listening to her. It was like she just said words and they died in the air before they could reach their targets. That wasn't fair. It was her birthday. If there was ever a day where people were meant to hear her it was this day.

"That's where my rainbow socks went….you can have them if you want, Your Little Ladyship." Said Shibata. Mob shook her head. First she shook her head a little…and then a little more…and then a little more from there….and then she shook her head so fast and so much that her hair was smacking her in the face over and over again.

She needed a smoke.

"I don't want any socks! I mean…I don't want any socks that were stolen from you. Thank so very much for the gift but I don't want me feet to be warm at the expense of others." Said Mob. She managed to calm down by the end of that…and everyone had heard her. They had all heard her and they were all looking at her and…and she didn't know what she was supposed to do now.

Or when Shimazaki started clapping.

"You're too good for this sinful Earth, you know that Mob? You were sent here to die for our sins-" said Shimazaki. Minegishi reached over, past Sho, and put their hands over his. Sho glared at them and they rolled their eyes as they pulled their hands back.

"Mob, open another gift already." Said Minegishi. As they motioned to the pile of gifts at the end of the table. Mob used her powers to put her socks back into their gift bag. As she did that Sho used his powers to drop a box in front of her. This one was wrapped in newspaper comics and had a pink ribbon around it. She didn't want to undo Sho's handiwork so she undid the bow slowly and then slowly began to undo the tape. He had worked very hard on this.

The newspaper was not torn or anything.

"Mob, come on, before you turn twelve." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't want to go too fast. The paper lined up and it looked like this had taken him some time. He'd had to pick out all the comics and then line the paper up…and that had taken a lot of time…and Sho didn't like to do things that took a lot of time…but he had done this anyway….

"Hey! My sister can take a whole year if she wants to!" said Sho. Mob sped it up. She ripped the paper a little bit but ripping the paper was better than letting a fight break out at the table. Once she got the paper off she saw a doll. A Korean doll based on the words on the box.

She loved it.

Even though it was one like the ones dad got her, the ones that looked like little people only….not alive…she still liked it. It had come from her little brother and she could and would love this doll until the end of time. She loved Sho and she would have loved any gift from him. Even the time he had painted a bunch of rocks and then put them in a shoebox. She loved Sho so much. He was the best little brother that she could have asked for and if she had nothing on her birthday but him right there with her then she would still be happy.

So she kissed him on the forehead.

"Thank you so much, Sho. I love this doll but not nearly as much as I love you." Said Mob. She kissed him on the forehead again. He wiped it off as soon as she was done. She didn't mind. She knew that he was too old for big sister kisses. He as ten and he had a girlfriend and stuff. Well no matter how old he got he would always be her little brother. She'd be kissing him on the forehead even after he got married and had a bunch of kids and named all of the boys Shoyo and the girls Shoko. He would never be too old for her to love him.

Ever.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…just open another present before it's my turn to turn eleven. Here, why don't you open Hatori's present? I bet he got you something nice like a diamond ring or a necklace or a crown or something." Said Sho as he wiped off her kiss like it had been made of acid. She didn't want to fight with him. Not about the forehead kisses and not about what he thought Hatori had given her.

She didn't know what she would do if it was a diamond ring….or any fancy jewelry.

That was the sort of gift that you gave someone you wanted to marry…and Mob was eleven. She didn't want to think about marrying Hatori. She had thought about it before, when she had been ten and she hadn't known him as well as she knew him now…and about all the things she knew about him….she didn't want to marry him but…but she wanted something. She wanted something but she had no idea what that 'something' was.

So she decided to open her present.

"….it's not a diamond ring….or a necklace…or a crown…" said Hatori as she carefully picked the tape off of her present. She maybe needed to speed up, especially with how Sho was carrying on, but this was really nice paper. Minecraft paper. That was their game. She still played with him sometimes…and they still had fun together…but that didn't mean that she was ready to start planning their married life together…

But married people could kiss….and she ripped the paper a little bit there….

"What is the matter with you? Are you saying that my sister isn't good enough for fancy jewelry?" asked Sho. Him bumping the table was a good cover for her ripping the paper…and cutting herself just a little. It wasn't a bad cut, not bad enough to call Fukuda, not that she ever called him these days. She just didn't much like to talk to him. He didn't much like to talk to her either. She hoped that he didn't come and break up her party like he had broken up Sho's. She wondered why he didn't like her…Sho said that he had turned into a grumpy old man because he was forty four now…but Mob felt like it was something else. Something she couldn't put her finger on….but that was ok. It wasn't great, he had always been fun at parties when she had been little, but it was ok…

Because she didn't need one more thing to worry about at this birthday.

"…um….she is…but…that didn't seem like…something she would…want?" asked Hatori

"You are hopeless!" said Sho. He picked reached into Mob's sock bag, took out a balled up pair of socks, and sent it flying at Hatori's head. Mob caught it with her powers and put it back. Sho….he should not have done that. She didn't know why he had been so mean to people all day but he had to stop. This was her birthday. When it was his birthday then he could act however he wanted to but right now this was her birthday and she needed him to be nice.

Not that he ever should have been mean to anyone on any day ever.

"Sho! Be nice to Hatori! I'll be happy with whatever he got me…and I don't even wear jewelry let alone fancy jewelry." Said Mob. She knew why Sho wanted her to het fancy jewelry from Hatori. He wanted her to be Hatori's girlfriend because he knew how much she had liked him back when she had been ten. Well she understood wanting someone else to be happy but this…this was not the way to go and try and make her happy.

Really he was just making her stressed.

"….well his gift had better not suck or I'm going to make him get down on his hand and knees and suck a bag of di-" said Sho. Mob had no clue what he had been about to say but based on the shocked face Shibata was making, the way Hatori kept looking under the table like he wanted to dive under it and hide, the way Shimazaki was laughing like his lung were in danger of exploding, and the way Minegishi's hand covered his mouth she knew that he had been about to say something bad.

She would have to talk to him about that later too.

"Mob, just open the present. Ryou…talk to him later about…all of what was about to come out of his mouth since you're the one responsible." Said Minegishi. She didn't know why Minegishi kept on glaring at Shimazaki when they knew that he either couldn't sense it or wasn't paying attention, Mob would believe either, but she wasn't going to say anything. Sho had stopped being mean, now he was just glaring at Minegishi with his eyes and his aura, and Mob decided that the best thing to do was to open her present.

Oh.

Two videogames. Both the same. She read the covers. One of them might have just been a sequel but…no. The same game. What did that mean? Was that like how couples had his and her stuff? Like how mom and dad had his and her tea cups and coffee mugs? Did Hatori want to be a 'his and her' with her? But….why now? Why now and not back when she had been ready to be his girlfriend, when she had spent hours thinking about what it would be like to kiss him….well she still did that….but with the doki doki feeling instead of the warm and kind of tingly feeling? Maybe because she was older now. Maybe because she was finally old enough for him…or something….

She had no idea what she was supposed to do.

"You have a 3DS right?" asked Hatori. Mob nodded.

"I-I do…" said Mob. Was this his way of saying that he was ready to be her BOYFRIEND? Was that her birthday present? A boyfriend….actually that sounded pretty good….but he was….he had peed a sink at the Christmas party and he had confessed to Minegishi and also he wanted to EAT PEOPLE and….and maybe she could have looked past one or two of those things but all three together…well they were VERY hard to look past….but she couldn't reject him. She couldn't hurt him like that…and also she wanted to kiss him. Well she wanted to be kissed in general but she wanted to kiss him…and he was so cute…and maybe she could look through all of those things…but then dad would beat him up…but he and dad were late night videogame friends now….

Mob didn't know what she was supposed to do so she just smiled and nodded and tried to keep her powers and aura in check.

"Good. That's Animal Crossing. I thought that you might like it because I know that you don't like games with fighting in them. It's a nice life sim. Lots of making friends and helping people, I thought you'd like it. I gave you two so you could play with your brother. I figure he'd like it too since he loves animals so much." Said Hatori. Mob swallowed and nodded. She had been an idiot. Of course Hatori didn't like her like that. He was twenty and she was eleven. He could get girls who were twenty, and he didn't EVEN like girls…and she had been such an idiot….

She was an eleven year old idiot.

She didn't move as Sho took his copy of the game from his hands. This was…this was really nice of him….and now….now she had that doki doki feeling and….and it was back and…and now she felt like…like she really wanted to hold his hand and…and also she wanted to kiss him and….and this was not the way to feel at her own birthday party in front of all of her friends, minus Minori, and her own little brother. She needed to make words. She needed to say something. She needed….she needed….

Minegishi's aura tapped hers.

"Thank you so much Hatori. I'm sure that I'll love it and so will Sho….so…um…..I'm going to open Shibata's gift now!" said Mob. She practically shoved his present into the pile and she nearly lifted the table when she reached for Shibata's gift. It was in a pink bag that said 'birthday princess' on it in English. She practically upended the table but he held it down. He even reached over and took the bag to her. Glitter fell everywhere, including onto Minegishi, who then glared at it like it had fallen onto them on purpose.

"Here you go. You're going to love it." Said Shibata. He handed her the bag and then went back to taking pictures. Mob didn't have to open the bag to know what it was but she did so anyway because this was present time and during present time you were supposed to open your presents. She reached into the bag and pulled out a sweater dress. Well she knew that it was supposed to be a sweater and not a dress but just by holding it up she knew that it would fit her like a dress.

She would grow.

She would definitely keep this one long enough for her to grow into it. Shibata had gotten the sleeve length right, well at least they wouldn't be dragging on the ground, and even if he had made hers as big and long as he'd made Sho's she still would have loved it. She would have loved it even if it hadn't been blue, Elsa blue, and she would have loved it even if there hadn't been what looked like it was supposed to be a snowflake on the front.

This was a gift made by hand from someone who cared about her and she would cherish it forever.

"Thank you so much Shibata. I'll try it on now." Said Mob. She pulled her sweater over her head…and it fit. It fit her like a dress. The sleeves went down over her hands and the bottom went down to her knees….and also the neck hole was big enough that it came off of her shoulder…but she still loved it. She loved it and she loved the person who made it for her.

And he loved her too based on how he picked her up and squeezed her.

"Wee World." Said Minegishi. They said that and Shibata put her back down in her chair instantly. A present was put in front of her. This one was from Minegishi. They had used the same paper they had wrapped her Christmas gift in…and Mob liked this paper so she didn't rip it. It was Frozen wrapping paper which made it extra special….even though Minori said that eleven was way too old for Frozen….but she still loved it. She opened it slowly it was small and rectangular. Too small to be a book, unless it was a short story, and too small to be a movie too…unless it was a short film….but those came on normal sized disks….and she had no idea what it was until she took off the paper….

Whoa.

Double whoa.

Triple whoa.

Quadruple whoa.

All the whoa.

"Since you're starting to get into makeup, not that you need it, I thought you'd like that." Said Minegishi. The pointed to her present like she didn't know what it was. She knew what it was. That was an eye shadow palette. That meant that inside of that case, it was plastic and it looked like ice and….and it was so beautiful….there were eye shadows…she flipped it over to where the guide was….there were eye shadows from Frozen. There were….there was a war tones palette for Anna and a cool tones palette for Elsa…and she was supposed to wear warm tones because she was pale….but she liked the Elsa palette…and she had both…and she liked doing eye makeup best….and Minegishi had told her that she didn't need to wear makeup or try to fit in….

But they had gotten her makeup…and they knew that she was starting to like makeup….

Mob got up and hugged Minegishi. They hugged her back after a moment. She hugged them so close and so tight and they hugged her back so close and so tight and…and she loved Minegishi so much….and they loved her so much….and this was…this was…

This was the best birthday ever.

"Thank you much, Minegishi. I love your gift. I love your gift and I love you." Said Mob. She hugged Minegishi with all of her strength. They hugged her back. They hugged her back and she heard a camera click. Shibata was taking pictures. She was glad, so glad, that this moment was saved forever. She would be able to look back at this day and then Minegishi could too and…and this was the best birthday ever. She decided. This was the best birthday that she had ever had, even better than the ones she'd had back when she lived in the castle, because this birthday….she had her friends at this birthday. She had friends who knew what she liked and…and friends who loved her and paid attention to her…and even though they could fight sometimes…

She still loved her friends with all of her heart.

Mob was going to like being eleven, she decided, not because of gifts but because she had so many people in her life that loved and cared about her and who she cared about too.


	316. A New Dollhouse for Daughter

Suzuki Touichirou did not get excited.

He couldn't afford to. He couldn't afford to feel much strong emotion, any strong emotion at all. He needed to keep himself in check…and it was hard. How could he when Sunday was just a few minutes away? Daughter's birthday had come and gone. It had not fallen on a Sunday so he could not have done more than wish her a happy birthday as he walked out the door. Well that had been then and this was now and now…now he could barely contain himself.

His bed was flatting.

Everything that wasn't nailed down was floating. He forced everything to ground and it stated there….for a bit. His bed, the dresser, all of it. It went back up to hovering about a meter in the air. His fault. He needed to calm down, to calm himself down, but he just couldn't. He had always looked forward to their time together, he cared for her more than anything else in the world, but this was different. Her birthday. Her birthday had passed and he had gotten her a gift but he hadn't been able to present her with her gift since it hadn't been a Sunday…and he wanted to present her with her gift now…but time…time would not pass any quicker no matter how much he willed it. He needed…he needed time to pass faster….

He needed to give her the gift he had gotten her.

He needed to see the smile on her face, her perfect little face, and he needed to see the way her aura would light up…and then she would be so happy…and he wanted nothing more than to make her happy. She was so sweet. She was so wonderful. She was so perfect and once the clock struck midnight he would be able to see her, to have her, and to hold her. He so wanted to hold her. He so wanted to scoop her out of bed and pick her up and hold her close. She was so….perfect….and he wanted nothing more than to be with her.

And it was alright because it was Sunday.

He sat up. That thread was still there, he could feel it under the palm of his hand, and he left it alone. He wouldn't pull it. If he pulled that thread then the whole bedspread would come apart. If the bedspread came apart then she would have nothing to cover herself with while she slept and neither would he. He could sleep on top of the bed with no covers if he had to, he could sleep just about anywhere, but she deserved to be warm. She could always bring her ice queen blanket with her if this bedspread were to fall asleep…but then she would be the only one covered. He so like being able to hold her while she slept and it would be difficult if they did not share a blanket…and it was alright to hold her so long as he stuck to a schedule. So long as he stuck to a schedule he could avoid going to that place halfway between awake and asleep. That always happened midweek, usually Wednesday, and she had been sleeping beside him on a Wednesday which was why he had gone to that place between being awake and asleep and accidentally mistook Daughter for Masami….but not in any way at all because she was his Daughter and he woke up before….

Well before nothing at all.

That night had been nothing at all. He had gone to the place between awake and asleep, a place he should not have gone to while his Daughter was there in bed beside him, but he had woken up the moment he realized that Daughter was not Masami. Then they'd had breakfast together. Then they had gone their separate ways. That was that. That was that and now they could both get on with their lives….not that she even realized…well there had been nothing for her to realize. She was a child and she had no idea what it had meant that he had held her and called her by her mother's name…and it had meant nothing aside from the fact that he still occasionally dreamt of Masami….

But she was gone now.

Daughter was there in her place. Daughter was there and he loved Daughter. He loved her and she…she wasn't Masami…but he didn't need her to be. Masami was her own person and Daughter was someone else…and she was in some ways…he could not compare the two. There was a difference between his Daughter and his wife. There was no comparison. Masami had been…still was….had been…his wife but Shigeko…she was his Daughter. He was her father. He loved her so much and she would never leave him. She was a child. She couldn't leave him.

She was eleven now.

She was eleven years old now. She was eleven and she was a child…an older child. He'd seen her wearing makeup….and she was so young….but criticizing a woman's appearance was dangerous ground. She was not a woman yet…but he knew not to breathe a word about her makeup. Even though he thought that she was too young. What was she even wearing it for? She was beautiful as she was. She was beautiful and any man would be happy to have her, she didn't have to paint her face, but any man who thought that he could have her….well….he had no idea what he was supposed to do about that….

She was only eleven.

She was only eleven but she was…older. An older child than she had been before. Older and taller. She had been getting taller for some time now, as children tended to do, but she was nowhere near as tall as Masami had been…and that should have been his first clue that she had not been Masami. Masami had always intertwined their legs when they slept. Daughter was still too small. Her legs were too short. She was still so short. She was taller but she was short. She was only eleven years old but…but she would be twelve soon. She would be twelve and then thirteen and fourteen and…and then he didn't know. He didn't know what he would do but he did know that she was only eleven and he didn't much want her to wear makeup….or grow up…

And he had no idea why.

She would grow up and when she grew up then they could spend all of their time together just like he and Masami had…well Masami had wanted. He had been busy. He had been building Claw up…and he was still building Claw up…and he so wished that Masami had been an esper. If she had been an esper then he could have brought her with him…and then she wouldn't have been able to leave. Then she could have stayed with him…but it was pointless entertaining these thoughts. She was gone. She was gone and he had his Daughter and she was wonderful and…and he loved her so much and he just wanted to see her and to hold her and…

And he reached up and caught his phone.

It had been floating in the air along with everything else. He caught it and checked the time. Eleven forty five. There. That was almost midnight. Close enough. He couldn't wait. He had to go and see her…and she would understand. She would be happy. She had gone back to seeking him out. She would never leave him because she had gone back to seeking him out. She would never leave him because he had not given her any reason to leave him. She would not leave him because he gave her every reason to stay. She would never leave him because he gave her every reason to stay. Like the reason that was currently taking up a large portion of their living room.

She would love her gift.

He got out of bed. He felt his back pop and he ignored it. What could he even do about it? Daughter was more important than his aching joints and back. He loved Daughter and she would love her gift and…and he was going to wake her up right now because he just…he had to see her. He had to be there beside her. So he stood up, left his room, and off to her he went. He could feel her aura…and she was asleep….but she would be able to sleep later. After she saw her gift. Logically he knew that her gift would be there for her in the morning and that she would be there in the morning and he would be there in the morning…but he didn't want to wait. He didn't want to lose any time with her. He got so little time with her as it was.

So little time.

She had turned eleven. She had been ten before and now she was eleven. She would be twelve and then thirteen and so on and so forth as the passage of time went. There was nothing that he could do about time, the way it marched forward, and part of him….part of him was looking forward to her growing up. She would grow up and he would conquer the world and then the two of them would be able to spend their days together and it would be wonderful but she would also be older and she would want to do what women did…and she would meet someone….and he would be the wrong person for her. There was no right person for her but whoever she picked…he would be wrong for her.

There was no man worthy of her.

He passed by the bathroom as he made his way to her room. She had left her makeup on the counter. He had no idea what any of that was for, he had spent countless cumulative hours of his life watching Masami put on makeup, and he still had no idea what any of it was for. The individual components of it. The steps. He had no idea what the tubes and powders and brushes and sponges…and now there were sponges involved for some reason….and he had no clue what he was even looking at…but he knew what it was all for. What it all came together for.

She was trying to look more attractive for the opposite sex.

What else would be the point of it? The whole thing had always seemed complicated and time consuming so there must have been a point and the point, obviously, was to seem more attractive to the opposite sex. It worked, well he had thought that Masami had been beautiful the first time he saw her, and he had continued to think so the first time he had ever seen her barefaced. She was just….Masami was a beautiful woman and Daughter was a beautiful woman…well she would be….she was a beautiful girl and she didn't need to paint her face like she had been doing lately but she was and-

-and Suzuki walked faster.

He was not ready for this. This…whatever this was. This interest she was taking in the opposite sex. This actual interest. Not whatever she had been feeling for Shimazaki...and he thanked God that she no longer had these feelings for Shimazaki….and she…she didn't. Right? He was blind. He couldn't tell if she was all painted up or not so this was not for him….thank God. Not that man. There was no man worthy of her but that man….that was the worst man for her. She didn't need anyone, of course, because he could care for her in all ways. He could feed her and clothe her and keep a roof over her head and protect her from anyone who would want to hurt her….he was her father and he would do that for her…but she was getting older now. She was getting to the age where she needed more than he could provide. She would want love and companionship and children of her own and….and he could not provide those things for her because he was her father, not by blood but she didn't know that, and it would be very distressing for her psychologically if he tried to be that person towards her. So this was….her getting older was normal….

It was normal but that didn't mean that he was ready for it.

He wasn't ready for her to grow up….so he would enjoy her as she was. Enjoy her at eleven. He would enjoy the time they had together before she grew up and presented him with some man who, of course, would not be worthy of her. Someone who wouldn't know that she liked to be held as she fell asleep. Someone who didn't know that she liked to watch the ice queen at least once a day. Someone who didn't know that she detested violence to the point that she wouldn't even learn kendo or naginata, his own father would have been rolling over in his grave if he had not been….if what had been left of him had not been cremated, which was such a shame because she could have been so good…and he had so wanted to teach his child. She would end up with someone who didn't know her. Who didn't know how she took her coffee and tea. Someone who didn't know that her favorite color was blue. Someone who didn't know that her favorite sorts of shoes were the sort that lit up even though they were annoying. She would wind up with someone who had no idea what a gift it was to be able to have her and hold her and love her. She would end up wasting her life with someone who had no idea what sort of a person, a wonderful person, that she was….

But that was a ways off.

Right now he would just enjoy her as she was. He made it to her bedroom door. He could feel her and Son's auras. Both were asleep. Good. He did not want her to have to deal with Son right now. He wondered when the next away mission would come up….well he was the President of Claw he could send people anywhere…but he would have to send Fukuda with him to watch him and make sure he didn't kill himself doing something idiotic. He didn't know when something that Fukuda needed to see to would come up…but he would find something. The Boy had been back for some time now. He was becoming tiresome. Daughter could use a break.

Suzuki knew he definitely needed one.

Suzuki opened the door slowly and took a step inside…and felt something break under his feet. He looked down. The room was filled with the ambient light of the outside world. He could see that he had stepped on one of Son's pencils. Oh well, he needed to learn to stop leaving his things on the ground. What if Daughter had stepped on that and fallen? She would have been injured…and that could not be. He doesn't wake Son up to tell him to be more careful of his sister, no, because that would involve dealing with him. Son is asleep in his bed. He's kicked the covers off…and he's sleeping in nothing but shorts…and Suzuki can't stand the sight of him. He forgot, sometimes, just how many scars Son had been left with. Even in the ambient light of the outside, he would have to do something about those overly bright streetlights later, he could see just how many scars Son had on himself. His arms and legs…and the lichtenberg figures all along his back. He kicks and rolls over. His stomach is not much better. Grotesque.

He looks away.

Daughter, by contrast, is a sleeping angel. That is if they slept. He didn't know, he wasn't a theologian, but if they had the need for sleep Daughter would have fit right in with them. She was on her back and one of her devices, the one that played games, was in her hands. He used his powers to take it from her grasp. She stirred but did not wake. Instead she clutched her blanket and moved her eyes behind their sockets. She is so perfect. She is the most perfect person he has ever seen. He doesn't know why she paints her skin, she is beautiful as she is, even in the darkness of the ambient light he can see how flawlessly pale she is…and how soft her hair is…

He brushes her hair from her face.

Her skin is so soft. He lets his hand linger there on her cheek. How can one person possibly have been so soft? There was a gift to being able to touch her. There was a gift to being able to know just how soft her skin was. She herself was a gift. She was a gift and he was grateful to have her…for as long as he could. Someone else would be near her, near enough to touch her, near enough to know just how soft her skin was…and he would have no idea the gift it was to touch her. To be near her. He, whoever 'he' was, would just….take her for granted. Take her from him and take her for granted….

And he doesn't know how he'll be able to handle that.

He lets his hand travel upwards to her hair. She has so much of it. It's soft and thick and there and hers. Masami had a lot of hair, too, but hers hadn't been so….thick. Dense. Her hair was so dense and thick and soft that he could just get lost in it. His hand. He ran his hand through her hair, her bangs, and she was just so soft….he could have stayed there forever. He could have spent an eternity just standing over her and touching her….

But she stirred again.

He pulled his hand away. He knew what she had said before, that there was a time limit to how long he could kiss her and touch her for, and he didn't want to break any social rules. He needed her to be happy. He wanted nothing more than her happiness. She was his Daughter, his reason and his life, and he would devote a portion of his life to her happiness. Another portion of his life. Her life, his life, their life. His life was her life and her life was his life and their lives were each other lives…if he even could spend his life with her….

He didn't want to think about the future.

He thought about the present. He thought about how she had a birthday present waiting for her in the living room, he had waited until after she had gone to her room to set it down, and she needed to see it. He couldn't spend any more time not knowing how she would react. He couldn't spend any more time anticipating her happiness, seeing her happiness, and sensing it too since her aura as just like his…even though she wasn't actually his child. She was and she wasn't his child and she was there and…and he needed to….he didn't want to wake her. He had been so eager to bring her to the living room but then he had seen her sleeping there, like a peaceful little angel, and he just needed to…he needed to let her sleep but he also wanted to see her happy, to sense her happiness, to be there for her when her eyes lit up…but those eyes were closed. Her eyes were closed and she was sleeping. She had a little smile on her face as she drifted back down to that place where dreams were born. He had no idea what she dreamt about but seeing her happy like that….it was perfect.

He traced her smile.

He let his thumb trace over the bow of her lips. She was so soft and she was asleep and she was so perfect while she slept…and she was also so perfect when she woke up…and she was just perfect. She was perfection. She was perfection in a way that Masami had never been. Masami…he had never been able to understand Masami. He had never been able to understand when she did and did not want affection, to talk, to be near him. Daughter was someone who was clear with him. She was clear and refined in her communication. She was so easy to understand.

He loved her.

His own feelings for her…they were more difficult to understand. He love her. He traced the bow of her lip. He loved her so much…and love was such an imprecise word. It did and did not encompass all that he felt for her. He would kill or die for her. He would conquer the world for her. He would keep her near him. There was a world full of people who would want to hurt her…and he would lay down his life for her. He would conquer this world for her. He would give her whatever she wanted. He would give her what she needed. He would give her the moon on a string if she asked it….if she woke up and said 'dad, I want you to give me the moon on a string' then he would get out a pencil and paper and figure out how much string he would need. He would do anything for her.

She was perfect.

His hand went over to her cheek. She stirred again. This time she reached up to touch his hand…and he pulled it away. He did and did not want to wake her up…he did and did not want that…but he just….he didn't know. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. He could feel her aura. She was so peaceful. Her aura was as peaceful as she was. Her aura was just…he let it wash over him. He loved that, he loved her aura, he loved that about her. He could always know how she felt. He had never been able to understand how Masami had been feeling at any given time. Even when she had been telling him to his face that she had been fine….he had gotten the feeling that she had not been fine…but she had never told him what she wanted from him….

But Daughter always made herself perfectly clear.

He wished that he could have made himself perfectly clear…to himself. He made no sense. He made no sense at all. He made no sense to himself and since he made no sense to himself he made no sense in general….he was absurd. He was being absurd. What, was he going to stand there watching her sleep all night? Well he would have wanted….he would have wanted to and he would have loved to….but he couldn't…because he had set out to do something and he was going to do it.

He always did what he set out to do.

He picked her up. He tried to pick her up with his own strength, his back had not liked that at all, and midway through rolling her over he just used his powers. He used his powers to lift her and carry her like she had been small. Like she had been small and he could lift him up with one hand. Those times when she had been small and he had pressed her to his chest because she had found that soothing…and he wondered if she still found this soothing. He could feel her stirring into his chest. He used his powers to bring her arms up so they wrapped around his neck. She had done that when she had been small….she had been small and she had tried to wrap her arms around him….and now she could because she was eleven, not two, and he had last done this years ago….

He would cherish the time he had with her now.

He carried her out of her room, down the hall, and to the living room. She hadn't woken up at any point. She slept as he walked to the living room and as he sat down on the couch. How could she have been so tired? It was only midnight. They had stayed up much later than this before…but she was still so tired. She was so tired and…he pulled her close. She smelled….not good. That skunky, citrusy smell that clung to her sometimes…not that he would ever say anything to her. He just held her.

He held her.

He held her and rubbed her back. She stirred again but did not let him go. She was so warm and soft…and it was such a gift to hold her…a greater gift than he had ever gotten in his life. Just being able to hold her while she slept…and stirred. She was stirring now. She was stirring and pulling away from him. Instinctively he pulled her close. Instinctively his aura wrapped around her. Instinctively he clung to her. She could have left and she would have left…and she's trying to leave…and for a moment he can't do anything but keep her close….but this is his Daughter. She was his Daughter and she would never leave him.

He let her go.

"Dad? How'd….how'd I get here?" asked Daughter as he let her go. She looked up at him. She was so close he could have counted her eyelashes…and she had such long eyelashes. How could he have never noticed how long her eyelashes were? She was so beautiful.

"I carried you." Said Suzuki. Daughter looked at him, and then around her, and then down. She got up off of his lap and sat down beside him. She smoothed down her nightgown. Another blue one. She loved blue. He watched her hands. She had blue fingernails. She had such long fingers.

"Ok…why?" asked Daughter. She looked around the room. He watched her. The way her pupils, it was hard to pick her pupils out of her irises but he could, darted around the room. She was so inquisitive.

"Because it's Sunday and we spend time together on Sunday." Said Suzuki. He reached over and brushed a lock of hair out of her face. He lingered there on her cheek for a moment. He watched her aura. She was more sleepy than anything.

"Ok…can we go to bed now?" asked Daughter. He shook his head. That could come later. He would have loved to have held her close and felt the rise and fall of her back against his chest…but right now he needed to see her face, her aura, when she saw her present…which she seemed to be too tired to notice. Her eyes were half lidded…quarter lidded…and then finally closed. They closed and her eyelashes were practically long enough to touch her cheeks…and she was so perfect. She was so perfect…but he didn't want her to sleep…not now. Later. Not now. Later where he could hold her.

"Daughter. Wake up and look over there." said Suzuki. He shook her awake. Not hard, no, because he would never hurt her. Just enough for her to open her eyes and follow the path he pointed out for her. He watched her face. It took him a moment to put emotion to expression, it always took a minute, but he knew that she went from sleepy to….angry? No, that was confused. She was confused. Then she rubbed her eyes.

"Oh I get it, I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming that you bought me the house we saw at the doll museum. This is the part where I go outside and the sky is purple." Said Daughter. So that was what she dreamt about. He didn't know what he was supposed to do with that information but he was honored that she had shared that with him.

"You're very much awake, Daughter." Said Suzuki

"No, I'm asleep." Said Daughter

"No…you're awake. This is reality. This is reality because I know that I am myself. If this were your dream then I would not be myself." Said Suzuki. He knew that this was reality because he knew that he was real…but what if…what if he was just a figment of her reality? What if he had never existed? What if…he felt like that one time in university when he had tried smoking…well something other than a cigarette…and at some point he would have to talk to her about drugs and why she would never take them…but because he had the memory of questioning his existence back in university he was real. Daughter would never have imagined her own father in that state…or any state that he had been in that night….especially not what came after that….no. He was real. He was real and this was real.

"No one I think is in my dream. I think it must me mine alone. That is, you can't, tune it but it's all wrong…that is I think it's not too bad." Said Daughter. She sang that and…he knows the melody….but not the words…because the words are wrong.

"That's not how that song goes." Said Suzuki with a shake of his head. That was one of Shimazaki's rewrites…and she had been spending enough time with Shimazaki that she knew his Beatles rewrites…and that made him want to do…something.

"That's the way Shimazaki sings it….I wonder if he'll be here too. I like it when we're together." Said Daughter. Suzuki cannot breathe, he cannot move, he just…cannot. Shimazaki…she dreams about him? Shimazaki featured in her dreams? But…no. No. He was not allowed to feature in any of her dreams. She was not allowed to dream about him…and she's only eleven…but he knew what he dreamt about…and had dreamt about at her age when it came to the opposite sex…and it had been more sensual than sexual when he had been her age…but she should not have been having sensual or sexual dreams about him or any man.

He needed to calm down.

"…why?" asked Suzuki. There is a house made out of blocks on the floor in front of him…and it collapses. The blocks splinter until they're nothing but sawdust. He needs to calm down. She is herself and she has her own mind and her own dreams…and she can dream about any men that she wanted to…and this was normal. This was a normal part of her sexual development….and the last thing he wanted to think about was her sexual development…and she had better not have planned on involving Shimazaki in any part of that…and she was just too young to be dreaming about men…

"Because I like to smoke." Said Daughter. Suzuki let out a breath he had been holding…and hadn't realized that he had been holding. Oh. She just liked to smoke…and that was not good but…but at least she wasn't planning on doing anything but smoking…but she should not have been smoking. It was a filthy habit…but at least he had only gotten her smoking cigarettes. At least she had only been smoking cigarettes and not doing….not acting on any of the feelings that she may have been having towards him. He was an attractive man, Shimazaki, he was good looking and a powerful esper….and Daughter was beautiful and a powerful esper….

He would rather she smoke a carton a day than let that man anywhere near her.

"Don't smoke. It's a filthy habit." Said Suzuki. He had never seen the point of it. Even when he had been young and Fukuda and him had found that half empty pack of cigarettes behind the gym…it had always seemed pointless and unpleasant…like so many other things they had tried in their youth.

"It makes me feel good." Said Daughter with a shrug.

"But….fine. But in moderation." Said Suzuki. He indulged her so…but he loved her. When you loved someone you indulged them.

"You sound like Minegishi….ok. Anyway since this is my dream I'm going to play with my dollhouse now before I wake up and it's gone." Said Daughter. She slid off the couch…and this was not her dream. This could not be her dream. If this was her dream then nothing in the world was real and he wasn't real and…and then his world was not real and then his purpose in life was not real….

He held her by the wrist.

"This is not a dream." Said Suzuki. She looked at him, and then his hand, and then at him again…and her aura….he could feel her aura and she felt…he did not like how she felt. He was…he was holding onto her much too hard…and he had to let her go. So he did. He let her go. Even though he didn't want to let her go…he still did. He loved her. He loved her and he would never hurt her…and he had been holding her hard enough to hurt her…

He let her go like she had been on fire.

"Wait….I'm awake?" asked Daughter as she felt her wrist…and he hated himself in that moment. He had hurt her. He had hurt her, the woman….the girl….the person who he was going to spend his life with. He hated himself and he would never…he would never hurt her.

"Yes." said Suzuki. He reached over and took her wrist in his hand. No bruises…and he hadn't broken it. She was fine. She was fine and he loved her and…and she was fine. But she was still looking at him with wide eyes. She was looking at him with wide eyes and…and her aura was pulled in close…

"Are-are you mad at me?" asked Daughter. Suzuki held her wrist gently. He had hurt her…and he had no idea how to make this better. Maybe another dollhouse. Maybe another dollhouse or more dolls or another blue dress or just…something. Maybe perfume since she often smelled just….terrible. He didn't know. He always got Masami gifts when he upset her….he had never hurt her before…but he always got her a present every time he had felt that he had upset her…

"No. I grabbed you to make sure that you knew that this was reality. If I hurt you then I am truly sorry and I will do anything to make it up to you. I love you." Said Suzuki. He held her hand in his. She let him. She didn't seem frightened of him….at least it didn't seem like it…but he was bad at this.

"Um…it didn't hurt that much…but…um…not getting mad at me for smoking…or getting mad at Shimazaki for letting me smoke with him…that would make it up to me." Said Daughter. She looked at him and smiled…and she seemed…..he had no idea what she seemed. She was…she was a lot of things…but she should not have been in love with Shimazaki. She could have done better. Well nobody in the world would ever be worthy of her, of course, but even Hatori would have been better for her and he was a homosexual with a skin condition and some sort of disorder where he was afraid of everything. Anyone would have been better for her than Shimazaki Ryou….and if that was the type of man he was attracted to then he had failed her as a father.

"Alright Daughter…I won't get angry….but….do you want me to spare him because you…care for him?" asked Suzuki. He did not like asking her about this. He did not like digging into this part of her life…but he had no idea what he would do if she had feelings for Shimazaki. It wasn't like he could be buried in a traitor hole…and beating him up hadn't helped…and also he was just about the only person who could care for Son….

"He's my friend, dad." Said Daughter. Suzuki…he would have preferred if she maintained a strictly working relationship with Shimazaki…but he knew that she enjoyed spending time with him and…and she would be sad without him…

"Just your friend?" asked Suzuki. Friends. That was hard enough for him to deal with…but it was better than the alternative. Her spending time with him and smoking cigarettes, he felt that she was too young but he had promised not to get upset with her, was better than her going to bed with him…the thought makes Suzuki want to both murder someone and vomit uncontrollably…..so…so he could deal with their friendship…so long as it was just friendship….

"Yes. Dad….I don't LIKE him like that….yuck." said Daughter. She wrinkled her nose…good. She didn't have feelings of those sorts for him….hopefully not for any man….because she was still so small….and he was not ready for her to grow up. He let go of her hand. He was not ready for her to grow up. He was…he wanted…he wanted…his eyes crossed the room and landed on her new dollhouse. He hadn't had time to get it made with working plumbing but it did have working lights and everything else that the one at the museum had…and she would love it. He would make sure that she loved it. He wanted….he just wanted to see her happy. Happy and playing like that child he hoped that she would stay for a long time….

"Good. Now, why don't you play with your new dollhouse?" asked Suzuki. He let her go and she looked over to her dollhouse…but did not walk over to it. Why? Was it not grand enough for her? Maybe she noticed that the plumbing didn't work…and he had no idea why a dollhouse needed plumbing but he was not a girl. He had no idea what her games required…and he should have had it built with running water. She would have been happier that way. All that he had ever wanted was her happiness.

"But it's in the middle of the night." Said Daughter. She motioned to the window. She was correct. Sunrise was a still a few hours away. That shouldn't have mattered to her. They'd stayed up later than this together. They could go to sleep later. Right now…right now he just wanted to spend time with her.

"I know. I want to watch you enjoying your new dollhouse." Said Suzuki. Daughter looked towards him, and then the dollhouse, and then to him again. He braced himself. He braced himself for her telling him that this was not what she wanted. He expected…for a moment he expected to hear Masami's voice. She told him, sometimes, that the gifts that he got her…that she hadn't wanted what he had gotten her….and then…when he asked her what she wanted…she just…she just told him that….that she shouldn't have had to tell him what she wanted. That it had been obvious. That…that he should have just known…but he was not a mind reader! He had just about every power but mind reading was not one of them…and Daughter…he closed his eyes. He expected to see Masami. He expected to see her and hear her and…and for once he didn't want to see or hear her…even though he loved her so much…but the thought of her replacing Daughter…or the thought of Daughter acting like Masami at her worst…

He didn't know what he would do.

He could feel her aura focusing on him. He could feel her but he could not see her. If he saw her then…then he would have seen Masami too…and normally he loved seeing Masami in her. Normally he would have taken whatever bits of Masami that had been inside of her and held onto them for dear life. Her kindness, her softness, the love she had given him…the love and caring and devotion…he could feel all of those things within Daughter. He loved seeing those things within Daughter, the best parts of Masami, the best parts of his wife…but there had been parts of her that…that he had never been able to understand. Parts of her that had worried him, scared him, even…even frustrated him….

He needed Daughter…he needed her to be….to be more perfect than Masami had been….and…and he hoped that she was…

"Um….ok…but can you play with me?" asked Daughter. He opened his eyes. He felt all the tension in his body leave him. Daughter…all she wanted was to spend time with him…so of course he would spend time with her. He loved her. He loved her more than anything and…and of course they would be together. They would but…but he could not sit on the floor like that. His back…his back would not allow that…and also he had no idea how to play with dolls. He was not female. He had never played with dolls before. He'd had tiny plastic soldiers and robots and action figures but that play…that had been violent play. The sort of play that boys did. She played in the way that girls did. She played to practice her social skills….

And he had never done that before.

But she was so….Daughter. She was Daughter and…and even though his back would hurt…and he had no clue how to play dolls…she was his Daughter. She was his Daughter and he would kill or die for her. He would conquer the world for her. He would promise her the Earth and she was right to ask it. He would give her the moon on a string if she just gave him the word, if she just asked for it…

So playing dolls with her should have been nothing at all.

"But I'm….yes. If that would make you happy. The only thing I want in this world is your happiness." Said Suzuki. He said it and he meant it…and he needed her to know that he meant it. He loved her more than anything and the only thing that he needed was her happiness. She was his reason and his life. She was all he desired and his will to succeed. He would conquer the world….for her. He had known for his entire life, for most of his life, that he would conquer the world. He would conquer the whole world for himself, he had decided, because he was the most powerful esper in the world, but then he had met Masami…and then he had decided to conquer the world for her….but then she had left….but now he had Daughter.

He would give her the world.

He had promised her the world, before, and she had been right to ask it. She was his Daughter. She was his Daughter…and she was his….and he was hers. He would gladly spend his life by her side. He would rule the world, spend the rest of his life by his side, and then…and then whatever else he needed. Even sitting here on the floor with her even though his back and knees were aching….if he would conquer the world for her then he would certainly be able to play dolls with her for as long as she asked of him.

It was Sunday, after all, their day….her day.


	317. The Shoko Game Volume 2: Now with Makeup

Sho considered himself to be a very good little brother.

He never hit his sister anymore, or yelled at her, or made her feel bad in any way. He did his best to listen to her when she bossed him around, went to bed at his bedtime without much of a fight, and sometimes ate his salad. He was a good little brother, a better little brother than he had been before, but just because he was a good little brother now that did not mean he could slack off. Being a good little brother meant always trying to do better, be better, and make things better. Even if that meant doing the unthinkable.

Play the Shoko game.

Play the Shoko game but worse. So much worse. There was a whole new step to the Shoko game that he had never imagined would come. Ever. He still had to put on a dress for this game only this time he wasn't in one of her costume dresses, no, he was just….in blue dress. Just a normal blue dress. A costume would have been better. A costume would have been, well, a costume. This was actual clothes…but that wasn't what was bothering him the most. No, he also had a cat ears headband on, clip on blue earrings, a blue Frozen necklace, and his nails were blue and glittery….but all of that didn't come close to being as bad as what she was doing to him now.

She was practicing her makeup.

She was painting her face. She had poured some skin colored paint, she had called it foundation, into her hands and then patted them all over his face. From his forehead to his chin she had covered him in so much skin colored paint that he feel it seeping down into his veins and blood stream. If she were to cut him open right now skin colored paint would come out. She was trying to cover up his freckles…and he had never liked his freckles…but he had never wanted to put on MAKEUP! Sure he had painted himself when he had been little…but this was different. This was MAKEUP!

But he loved big sis.

For big sis he would endure anything. Even big sis smearing skin colored paint all over his face. Sho wouldn't have minded so much if this had been the last of it. It wasn't, though, because she had covered the whole bathroom counted in paints and powders and pencils and crayons and books of colors, sort of like his books of water colors, and also brushes and round sponges and little cotton circles and cotton balls and…and a whole bunch of other stuff, too. Stuff that he didn't think that anyone ever needed, at this point just buy a mask, but if this was what would make her happy then he would sit through this.

Even though he wasn't the biggest fan of this.

It felt, almost, like when he got water on his face. Not as bad, though, because it didn't drip. It didn't drip from his head like he'd been pulled out of…and it didn't get in his eyes and ears and mouth like he had been put back in….but this wasn't as bad. This was just…wet. It was wet but she said that it would dry. She just had to finish….whatever it was that she was doing. Covering up his freckles. Make sure that not a single one could be seen.

It was sort of nice.

He looked up at himself in the mirror. His skin was….normal. No more dark spots. Sho'd always had freckles all over his face. People had always stared at him or tried to touch them….one time a teacher in preschool had tried to get them off with lemon juice…that had been the worst…but now…now he looked like everyone else. Well not that he was the only person in the world with freckles, obviously, he had gotten them from dad. Redheads got freckles, that said, because that was just how it went. Dad was a redhead too, his hair had just gotten darker as he got older he'd told Sho once when he was little, and Sho had been…it had felt good. He had hoped that his hair would darken to black and then his freckles would disappear and then nobody would ever put lemon juice on him again….shit burned like a mother fucker….but of course there was no chance of that happening.

He was who he was.

His kids would probably have red hair and freckles just like he did. He'd gotten this from his dad and then his kids would get this, the red hair and freckles, from him…him and Emmy too, probably, since she was his girlfriend and it didn't seem like she was planning on breaking up with him at any point. So his kids would deal with all the staring and touching and lemon juice like he'd had to….

Or not because he would be the king of the world by then.

By the time he grew up, got married, and had kids dad would either be really old or really dead. That meant that he would inherit the world and then…and then he could decide that freckles were normal. Yeah! Then nobody would ever make his kids feel weird! Then people would have to draw freckles onto themselves instead of hiding them under skin colored pain!

It would be awesome.

"Sho, hold still. This is the most important part and I don't want to mess up." Said big sis as she rubbed more of the skin colored paint onto him.

"I think that you're done. I can't see any of my freckles anymore." Said Sho. She took her hands off of his face and then stared at him.

"I think so too. OK….so that's step one. Minori says that you shouldn't be able to see any of your skin at all…and I think I got that right….so now I have to…um….let me think for a minute it's a lot of steps." Said big sis. Sho was going to wipe this off if she didn't get this show on the road…and that was a jerk thought to have. She was doing this because she had to practice…and she liked makeup….and he had been kind of a jerk to her friend on her birthday….so this was what he had to do to make it up to her…to be a good little brother.

"Come on, do something already." Said Sho with a groan. He had sounded like sort of a jerk but sounding like a jerk was better than wiping all of her hard work off of his face.

"Um…ok. Now I remember. Now it's time for concealer…but your freckles are already covered….but a step is a step." Said big sis as she started to pick up crayons from on the table. She picked them up, held them up to his face, and then put them back down. She was trying to match colors…he knew how to do that….well he did with drawing. He didn't want to wear makeup but he was a good little brother…and he liked making big sis happy….so that was what he was going to do.

"You should pick a color that's the same as the paint you used…and also crayon doesn't stay on paint until it dries." Said Sho. He knew about drawing and painting and stuff. This was sort of like drawing and painting and stuff….but just for girls. This wasn't for boys and he was a boy….but he was going to be a good little brother and go through this. He had no idea why girls liked this, it was sort of itchy and sticky feeling, but girls were incomprehensible.

Shimazaki had said so.

He had said that girls were complicated and that was ok. Guys were easier to understand, he had said, because he thought the same way they did…even though nobody thought the way Shimazaki did. He was always trying to have fun and nothing ever bothered him, not even when he did stuff that he knew would get him in trouble. Little stuff like throwing rocks at people and teleporting away or switching fish out of aquariums or tying birds to strings and trying to walk them like dogs…well fly them like dogs…if dogs could fly….and stuff….

Shimazaki didn't care about what people thought.

Not about the big stuff, either. Sho knew something about him, something that should have been a secret, but something that was not a secret. He didn't care if Sho or anyone else knew that he liked guys. Well he liked girls and boys….which was….not something that he should have gone around telling people. Because then people would know and then they would make fun of him…and Sho never wanted anyone to make fun of his friend…and also….also…also you just…you weren't supposed to feel that way. But he did…well of course he did. He didn't care at all what other people thought of him. He just did things because he felt like it. He just acted…the way he acted…because he wanted to act like that…and….and….

And Sho wished….

Sho didn't know what he wished. For his sister to hurry up with doing his makeup, maybe? She was holding up different bottles of paint, a different kind of paint she had said, and now she was trying to match it to his skin even though he had no clue what it was for. He already couldn't see his freckles anymore. He didn't know what she was trying to hide now. His face was already sticky and she was going to make it stickier and Shimazaki hated sticky. He said that sticky, well sticky and slimy, were his least favorite feelings. If he were to touch Sho now-

-which he would never do.

Sho wasn't….he wasn't someone who Shimazaki liked like that. Sho may have possibly been in love with him maybe just a little bit but he didn't feel the same way. He just…didn't want Sho. He wanted him for a friend and only a friend. It wasn't because he was only ten, he had liked big sis when she had been ten, so maybe….it hurt. Thinking of…of how Shimazaki might have been able to tell that there was something wrong with Sho. That he had been born wrong. That he had been born wrong and this wrongness meant that people could just leave him or hate him….everyone but big sis. She loved him and she would always love him…

And that was why he let her cover his skin in this stuff.

"Ok, now your freckles are covered….not that there's anything wrong with them. It's just that you have to cover up everything in your skin that doesn't match. Spots and stuff…freckles are the 'stuff'…and stuff. You look really nice." Said big sis. Sho didn't think that he did…but he didn't say anything. He didn't look like himself. He looked like what he would have looked like if he had been a girl. He used to think about it, what life would have been like if he had been a girl, and he had decided that it would have sucked. Hell, this sucked. He hated this dress, bottoms needed legs, and he hated how the headband felt on his head and the jewelry was annoying and the nails…well he sort of liked the nails, but still! This would have been a lot to have to go through every single day.

He didn't get it.

Shimazaki said that he couldn't see it when a girl was wearing makeup. He could smell it when he got close enough, and Sho didn't want to think about the times when he had been close enough to smell if a girl was wearing makeup, and that he didn't really care about it. He was blind after all. He said that what he really liked, the only makeup that he cared about, was when girls wore those flavored chap sticks. He said he liked those a lot and…and Sho had been ready to break something when he'd said that…but also he had wished that he could have been a girl so he could have word flavored chapstick…

He wondered if big sis had any flavored chapsticks.

He hated himself for thinking about that. Shimazaki would never want to kiss him. Shimazaki….he had already gotten beaten up by dad hard enough that he had been coughing up blood…and Sho didn't want to know what dad would have done to Shimazaki if he had kissed Sho…and also Sho didn't know what dad would have done to him if he found out that Sho liked boys instead of….AND. He liked boys AND girls.

Because he was supposed to like girls.

He had a girlfriend and she was a nice person so, of course, he would marry her and whatever else she wanted. He had a girlfriend and he should not have been thinking cheating thoughts like this while he was her boyfriend. Some people liked both…and he could admit to himself that he liked both….because sometimes people liked both. That was what Shimazaki had said and he'd had no reason to lie. Sho…he was one of those people. He really was! Not that he knew who he was arguing with. He was. He…he really was. He was just….he was and also…he was just thinking cheating thoughts about Shimazaki because…um….he wasn't going to cheat on his girlfriend! He just….he had spent a long time thinking about…about how Shimazaki would have been able to like him if he had been a girl and now he was dressed up like and a girl and-and-and-

And he was not going to cheat on his girlfriend!

"Sho? Are you ok? We can play something else if you want. I like to play this with you but we can do something else. You don't have to get mad." Said big sis. He felt like crap. He shouldn't have been arguing with himself and he shouldn't have worried her and…and he was a good little brother and he would keep on being a good little brother.

"No, this is fine. Just do the next step already." Said Sho

"Ok. Now over all of that I have to put foundation powder…and I know it looks like a lot but Minori said that I have to put it all on at once." Said big sis. Sho stuck his tongue out at the mention of Minori. He remembered her. She was such a bitch. She was such a….well he just didn't like her. Kissing her had been the worst kiss of his entire life…and he was counting the time when he had been four and that girl from his preschool that had always been chasing him around trying to kiss him and then one time she did during playtime and everyone had laughed at him….kissing Minori had been worse than that…not that he was going to be telling his sister about that. No way! She already knew too much because Minori had to go around talking about stuff….stupid Minori…..

"Sho, don't do that. It isn't nice." Said big sis

"Sorry." said Sho. He was right to do that, Minori was a bitch, but he didn't want to start with big sis. Not when she was this happy. Even though her friend really was a bitch.

"It's ok, now hold still. This is the last foundation layer. After this I do the bronzer and the blush and then the highlighter and then the eye shadow and eye liner and mascara and then the setting powder and then we'll be all done and you'll look so pretty." Said big sis. Sho eyed all the stuff on the bathroom counter. He was going to be eleven by the time she was done with this….but he was making her happy and nothing could be better than making his own big sis happy. He was a good little brother after all and this was what a good little brother did….

Also maybe a good big brother if baby sis ever ended up putting on makeup.

He hoped that the next time he saw her she was still too little to put on makeup. He hoped that the next time he saw her she was still a baby. He hoped that by the next time he saw her big sis was better at keeping a secret. Then he could tell her. He knew that she missed baby sis. He knew that sometimes she slept with baby sis's little baby sock in her hand. He knew that baby sis was probably going to end up forgetting big sis no matter how many pictures he drew. He also knew that there was nothing that he could do about that unless big sis got a lot better at keeping secrets…but she couldn't keep a secret to save her life. So he would have to keep baby sis a secret…..and he just…..there were so many things that….

He had to try his best to be a good little brother…

"That all sounds great, big sis, just great. Now get back to work." Said Sho as he stared at himself in the mirror. She had said that he would end up looking pretty. If anything he looked way too pale…but he wasn't going to say anything. He didn't know what she was even trying to do. He had seen mom do stuff like this before. He knew that there were a lot of steps to it, he had no idea what any of those steps were for, but he knew that it was complicated. No wonder she needed to practice. He wished that baby sis had been there. Then big sis would have had a real girl to practice on. They could have done all of this girl stuff together and stuff….

But she had her new mom now.

Baby sis had a mom and he was trying his best to be happy for her. She had a mom and her mom had picked her out of all the other people in the whole world to adopt. That meant that she was loved and that she would always be loved. She would have been loved in their family, if she had been Suzuki Mukai, but she was loved where she was too. Sagami Mukai. That was her name. Sagami. Not Suzuki. She was happier as a Sagami than she ever would have been as a Suzuki. If she had been a Suzuki she would have had no mom and she would have had to deal with dad. She didn't have a dad now but there were a bunch of guy Scars there so her mom could pick one out and marry him. He didn't see why she needed a dad. Dads were for providing for the family and keeping the moms and the kids safe. Well baby sis's mom did all of that. She didn't need a dad…especially not one like his. Even though she had gone to someone else and he would hardly get to see her, and big sis wouldn't ever get to see her at all, she was still better off…and he was selfish…he was selfish to want her to be there with them. He was selfish to wish that she had been in the room making a mess out of everything like she liked to do or hitting him with her happy baby fists or throwing things for him to catch or….or anything…

She was better off where she was.

"I think that you'd be better off with a little bronzer and a lot of blush. Really pink blush, I think, this color. It's called bubblegum storm. What do you think?" asked big sis. Baby sis was better off not getting painted up with something called 'bubblegum storm' that was for sure. That was way too pink. He knew about colors. He knew that since he was so pale the pink would stick out too much. He was like a stark white piece of paper. He needed something warmer or it would stick out and stuff and then everyone would stare at the pink instead of everything. You had to balance color. How could she not know that?

Well maybe makeup was different than drawing.

He knew about drawing, he knew about art, but she knew about makeup. She was the girl after all. If he had actually been Shoko instead of Sho then he would have known about this stuff too. He was a boy and he didn't have to….and he was so lucky that he didn't have to know about all of this. It would have been pointless anyway since Ryou was blind….and also because he would have been super pretty if he'd been a girl and then it would have been ok for guys to like him and for him to have wanted guys to like him and then dad wouldn't have been all 'you have to continue the bloodline' even though there were already so many people called Suzuki and then Shimazaki could have picked him up and kissed him and-

-and things that he was not going to think about.

Things that he wasn't even sure about. His brain always cut out when he got to the part where Shimazaki picked him up and kissed him. He knew that stuff came next…and he knew that if Shimazaki ever asked him to do that stuff then he probably would….but he had no idea what that stuff was. Also if Shimazaki ever liked him that much…enough to want any of that…then he would break up with his girlfriend first. That way he wouldn't be a cheater. It was less hurtful to tell someone the truth than to play with their trust like that. Trusting people was hard and once you had someone's trust then you had to take care of it and never break it. So he would never cheat on anyone…not that Shimazaki would ever like him like that….like him…..

Like him back.

"I can use a different color if you want, you don't have to get upset. Here, see? I have all of these colors. You pick whichever one you want." Said big sis. Sho was grateful that she couldn't read minds…and also that she was as clueless as she was. She had no idea what went on in his head, how he felt, any of that. Good. She could never know. She could never even suspect. She had to…she was happy and he wasn't going to make her unhappy. He was going to make sure that she was happy and he was going to be a good little brother….

And he was going to go along with this because it made her happy.

"Use that one, the soft pink. It's less of a contrast." Said Sho. She got right to work painting him up. He had no idea why she was painting him in pink. She had just gotten through painting him in brown, he had no idea why the edges of his face needed to be brown but they were, and now she was painting his cheeks all pink….and he just….well it made her happy. He was making her happy and that was what mattered. She looked happy. She was smiling and her aura felt happy and she just…she was having a good time. How many games of target practice did she play with him? How many times did he hit her or pull her hair or break her dolls? How many times did he yell at her? How many secrets was he keeping from her? How many big secrets? He could sit through this if it meant that she was happy…

And she was happy.

Once she was done with the blush, it looked more like powdered sunburn to him, she went over to one of her piles on the counter. He had no idea what was coming next. She had listed out all the steps and he hadn't really been paying too much attention. All he knew was that this was going to take a long time. He didn't know why she did this. Hatori wasn't cute at all. He should have been grateful that big sis even gave him the time of day. If anyone needed makeup it was him…but Sho had to be nice. One day big sis would take him back and then they would be brothers…or something.

That wouldn't have been too bad.

He knew some great games. Sho had no idea how he could have gone so long without playing Animal Crossing. There were other games in the series and he wanted to play them all….even though he had just started this one….and, yeah. Hatori knew good games. He was also nice and, yeah, he was a scaredy cat but big sis could protect him. He just needed to be a better boyfriend so she would want to be his girlfriend. She was putting all of this work into herself when he was just sitting around playing videogames and eating Doritos. Girls weren't complicated. You just had to tell them that they were petty, give them gifts, and talk to them like you would to another guy. Then they kissed you and agreed to being your girlfriend and stuff. Also you had to take baths and stuff. Hatori just needed to work harder, that was all, and then he would end up married to big sis and she would be happy….and stuff.

Also Sho wouldn't even beat her up even though once they started going out he would kiss her and probably touch her boobs, too, because he was older and stuff…disgusting….but since that was what big sis wanted he wouldn't beat Hatori up even a little bit.

It wouldn't be too bad when big sis ended up getting back together with Hatori.

"Hold still. Now I have to do the highlighter…and I think that this liquid high lighter would work best because it's the stickiest….so hold still." Said big sis. Sho did what she asked of him. He wondered if Emmy would start doing all of this for him….he hoped that she didn't. He didn't care if she wore makeup and also….also he wasn't worth it. When he was near her he didn't get the goldfish feeling in his stomach at all. He never daydreamed about what it would be like to kiss her or anything like that. He never sat in a fort and imagined that the world was ending and because there were bombs and zombies outside it was ok to kiss her…because it was ok to kiss her. He had kissed her a million times already. It was ok to kiss her…and stuff….

And he should have wanted to.

So he hoped that she never went through this kind of effort for him. He hoped that nobody ever went through this kind of effort. There was a whole other layer to this. Now big sis was putting this white stuff on his nose and his cheeks and his eyes and above his mouth and across his forehead…actually it was kind of cool how shiny he looked…and he sort of wished that she had left the shiny stuff on instead of taking another one of her weird sponges to it…but this was ok. She was ok. All of this was ok. He looked….he looked less shiny but that was ok. Actually it looked sort of like he had taken someone else's face and was wearing it like a mask….but not in the cool movie way…and he wished that it had been in the cool movie way…..but this was fine too….

She must have been almost done, anyway, because this stuff was starting to melt off it felt like.

She put the cream down and went back to the counter. She went over to her color books and picked up two. Those were the ones that Minegishi had gotten her for her birthday. They should have kept it for themselves. Then they could have drawn on some eyebrows and went out and found a guy who wasn't Ryou and then they could have left him alone instead of always trying to talk to him and be with him and stuff. Didn't they know that you had to give people a minute to themselves sometimes? They could be so annoying. They were always 'Ryou, do something about this' and 'Ryou, put that snake back where it came from' and 'Ryou, croquet wasn't meant to be played inside' and 'Ryou, stop tormenting Hatori you're giving him psychological issues that'll follow him to the grave' and stuff like that.

Honestly.

What was their problem? Shimazaki liked to have fun and he didn't like someone always telling him what to do all the time. Minegishi was so bossy all the time. Bossy and boring and mean. Also they had no eyebrows and that was weird. Also like Fukuda said they had really little boobs and that was probably why nobody else wanted to be with them. So really Shimazaki shouldn't have bothered with them. He should have told them to fuck off instead of always talking to them and kissing them and touching them and laying his head down in their lap and doing whatever it was that they did together to make their aura get all tangled up like that….and also why was their hair lavender? They knew that Ryou didn't know what color even was!

Honestly.

"Do you want Elsa or Anna? I think Anna because you look best in warm tones but it's up to you." Said big sis. Sho didn't want to be painted up in anything that Minegishi had given big sis. He just wanted this to be done with…and also he wanted Shimazaki to come back from wherever he had gone to today…but also not because whenever they hung out Sho….he thought about stuff….stuff that he knew that he should not have been thinking about….and stuff.

Kissing thoughts.

Cheating thoughts.

Thoughts about what it would be like if he and Shimazaki were the last two people in the world and…and then with dad dead it would have been ok for them to….to be together and…and stuff….

Thoughts that he should not have been having. He needed….he needed to figure out some way to just….to just stop thinking. He needed to think of something else. He needed to think about…about all of this complicated stuff that big sis was doing to him…and stuff. Maybe this was why girls did this. He knew how girls were, how they were always falling in love and stuff, and they probably did this stuff so they could focus on something other than the feeling of having a live goldfish in their stomachs…and stuff.

He hated that stupid goldfish.

But it was swimming in his stomach now. He looked at himself in the mirror. He had thought that maybe if he looked at himself and saw how different eh looked, and thought about how much he hated this whole game, that he would stop feeling like this….but now all he could think about was how he used to imagine how if he had been a girl then Shimazaki would have liked him and…and how they would have been just….all the ways that they would have been. All of the fun stuff they would do. They would still mess with people and pet dogs and build forts and climb trees and stuff but Shimazaki would….well the things that Sho thought about he would think about too…and it would have been ok….and….and….

And he needed to stop thinking about this.

"The Elsa one because I know that she's your favorite. Now hurry up, I feel like this stuff is melting." Said Sho. He pointed to the Elsa colors. He didn't much want to look like Elsa but he knew that Elsa was her favorite out of everyone. He knew that painting him up like Elsa would make her happy and….and he owed her that much after everything that he had put her through….and was still putting her through.

"That means that you have enough on. Minori said that once you start to feel like a melting candle you're almost done." Said big sis. Sho didn't think that was true, he couldn't imagine that anyone could stand to feel like this all day every day, but he said nothing. He also said nothing when she mentioned that bitch Minori…especially the part where he thought that she was a bitch. Well she was a bitch and a bastard and also a liar…but he was not going to tell big sis that Minori had lied about the whole kissing thing. That whole night wasn't anything that he wanted to talk about with anyone let alone his own big sister.

He didn't even like to think about that.

That whole night was a secret from everyone. It had to be. He knew that big sis loved him but also….also that night was his and his alone. He didn't even like to think about it, the way that kissing Hideki had felt so…so good. The way that he had never even imagined that kissing someone could ever feel good. The way that he sometimes thought about it when he was all alone at night. She just…she would always love him but….but this was not a part of his life he wanted to talk about. She didn't know his secret, she didn't need to know any of his secrets, and…and as much as he just wanted to get these secrets off of his chest…he just couldn't.

A good little brother did not tell his big sister things that he knew would hurt her.

"Whatever, just do whatever you have left to do and then we can….play with that big dollhouse or something." Said Sho. There would be less time to think if they played with that dollhouse dad had gotten her….or at least he would be able to think about something else….like how dad had forgotten her birthday too…even though good little brothers did not think about…about how now she would know how it felt to have dad forget about her….because those were jerk thoughts to have and he was done having jerk thoughts.

"Ok. Thank you for playing this with me today….it means a lot to me. I know how much you don't like this and just….the fact that you would do this for me really means a lot. I love you, Sho." said big sis

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love you too. Now paint me already." Said Sho. Big sis didn't say anything else after that. She just put blue on his eyes. Well first white and then blue on the lids, purple in the outer corners, and then black in the back to make his eyes pop, she had said, and then glitter on top of that…and he didn't say anything but he didn't think that he looked much like Elsa. The bright red lipstick she put on him at the end didn't help either.

It really didn't.

It looked like he had ripped someone's throat out with his teeth…and not in the cool way. He looked like he had taken someone's face, dipped it in wax, and then put it on over his own face….and he didn't say anything. Nothing mean, anyway, because he knew how much this meant to her. That was why he did this, because it meant a lot to her. He owed her big time. He owed her for everything that he'd put her through over the years, for all the secrets he had been keeping, and for whatever secrets he would end up keeping from her in the future.

He had been a pretty bad little brother over the years…but he was changing now. Now he was trying his best to be a good little brother…and he hoped that his best was good enough.


	318. Makeup and the Feelings it Brings Up

Minegishi knew nothing about makeup.

They had never seen the point of it. They were who they were. Even when they had been young, Mob's age, they had never wanted to wear makeup. Aside from a short period of time in which they had drawn on their eyebrows, and had figured out that they looked better as they were, they had never even thought of touching the stuff. Not on their own, anyway. They had been a guinea pig, before, back when they had been young. Back when they had been…well when they had been a lot younger than they were now. Back when there had been someone in their life who lived for this. Back when there had been someone in their life who….back in a period of their life which they chose not to think about. A period of their life which they which they would not be thinking about. A period of their life which they were done with, which they were going to leave behind, and which they had left behind years ago.

They had left all of that behind years ago.

This was their life now. Sitting in the bathroom they shared with three other people, three people who were in a silent competition to see who could make the biggest mess, getting their face painted by an eleven year old. Their eleven year old best friend. Their eleven year old best friend who should not have even been INTO makeup yet. Mob was just a kid. She was just a kid and this was not something that someone her age even needed….not that Minegishi was going to say anything. No. Mob was having fun. She deserved to have fun. Her life was…well it was a shit show…so she deserve to enjoy what portions of it she could.

Like this.

Like them sitting there in the bathroom waiting for Mob to get all of her instruments out. They sat there under the harshness of the bathroom vanity lights, the antiseptic smell of whatever it was the Ryou used to clean his eye sockets out with, the dripping of the shower head, and the shaking of the house. That one was due to the spin cycle going, though. Ryou had put a load of laundry in but then he popped away….somewhere with Mob's little brother in an effort to save him from Mob. She had been using him for styling practice, apparently, which was much better than the games of target practice that he used to put Mob through. Not that they had said anything.

They were never going to say anything when it came to that kid.

The kid had issues. Issues with rage, issues with jealousy, and issues with his sexuality….whatever it was. Minegishi didn't know what that kid was but he had a crush on Ryou, which was getting out of hand, and also he was in that deep in the closet stage. Seriously. The kid was living in Narnia he was so deep in the closet. Not that Minegishi blamed him, he was Suzuki's Son after all, and Suzuki didn't seem like the kind of guy who would have been accepting of his only son being anything other than perfectly straight and ready to carry on the Suzuki family name….because God knew that the world needed more people called 'Suzuki' in it….

Poor kid.

They weren't a cruel person. At least they didn't think that they were a cruel person. They didn't set out to be a cruel person….in their personal life. Work Minegishi was different than personal time Minegishi. Personal time Minegishi….didn't set out to be cruel. They could be cruel, in fact their first impulse was often to be cruel, but they always managed to catch themselves. They hadn't been blatantly cruel since the shit show with Ryou, Mob, and the acid…and they had made it up to him. Mob's little brother…he hadn't done anything nearly as bad, lately, as Ryou had. Nothing to earn their cruelty. So they did not give it to him. They just….let him be. They let him be and they left Ryou to deal with the eleven year old boy who was in love with him. Even though he wasn't doing ANYTHING about it and Sho was becoming IMPOSSIBLE so deal with-

But they said nothing.

They could handle an eleven year old being a little shit to them. They could have shown him why he didn't need to be picking on someone older, stronger, and more powerful than him….but they didn't. He was just a child being raised by another child and in love with a thirty year old child. He probably had his own shit going on, figuring yourself out was always hard, and Minegishi was not cruel. Even though it would have been easier to tell him that Ryou wouldn't return his affections ever….or at least for a few years…a part of Ryou's past that they did not like to think about…..but they didn't say anything. This was between the two of them.

Besides, they already had a kid to worry about.

"Ok, the lighting it good. Now I just need to pick out what's going to work best for you." Said Mob. Minegishi certainly hoped that the lighting was good enough, for the sake of whoever paid for the electricity at least, and they hoped that Mob got on with it. They did not like….well they didn't like a lot of things…but they could put up with this. They had put up with this before. They had put up with this back when they had been….a lot younger. Back when they'd been working as a florist, well a florist's assistant. Back when they had been living in that single room….not big enough for two….so of course they moved….they'd had to move since Jun had gotten a job in Tokyo….

"I like lavender." Said Minegishi. They were fine. They were fine and this was fine. Mob….she was happy and if she was happy then they were happy. They were…content. Ok with this. They hated makeup…well disliked it…well they hadn't always disliked it. They had disliked the idea that they had to paint their face to be found acceptable by society. They had hated how much money they had been expected to spend, and being a newly emancipated fifteen year old they hadn't exactly been in the money, and they had hated the fact that since they had been born without eyebrows they had to draw them on because some people found their actual face disturbing….

Come on. Toshi, you know you're exaggerating.

That was what…someone…would have said. That was what they would have said, what she would have said, after sitting Minegishi down and getting the lighting right and going through their tools…and it had been a lot of tools. A lot of tool in a clear carrying case. The tools of her trade. Minegishi had always been a little jealous. They'd been born with their powers but Jun…she'd had to learn…and she had learned so fast…and Minegishi had always been a little upset about having to sit through this ritual but…but also…

Also they had liked it.

If they closed their eyes they could have seen….they could have seen themselves….but they didn't close their eyes. They left their eyes opened. They left their eyes opened because that was then and this was now. They were in the bathroom they shared with three other people, not one other person, and it smelled like antiseptic, mango body scrub, and lynx….so much lynx. The person in front of them was their eleven year old best friend not their…not a person who had been special to them back when they had been younger and stupider and more selfish…..God they had been selfish….they had been so selfish and they never…they never wanted to be that selfish again…..

They hadn't liked themselves then.

"Ok. I have lots of lavender. I have lavender eye shadows and lavender highlighter and lavender concealer, that's for correcting yellow….and you're not really yellow….but I can still use it. I have a lavender, well violet, foundation….well there's some violet in it….but I haven't tried that yet because I don't have any yellow in my skin." Said Mob. She was getting into this….and that was fine. She was fine. She was getting older and….and it was normal for someone her age to get into this. it was also normal for someone her age who had access to millions up millions of yen to have built up a truly massive collection in only a few week's time. Mob had, at some point, gotten a carrying case for all of her makeup. All. Of. It. She had, also, at some point collected more makeup than Minegishi even knew what she could possibly do with. She had a whole layer just for foundations….which she would not be putting on them. Nope. Even Jun had said that their skin was much too finicky, too temperamental, for any kind of foundation. She had also said that Minegishi was too finicky, too temperamental, too quick to anger, too quick to escape, too much….

But that was then and this was now.

"You can paint my eyes all you want but don't go near me with that foundation." Said Minegishi as Mob held up several powders and tubes. Nope. No way was she going to put any of that on them. They were not going to end up breaking out again. They were just a couple years shy of thirty, their skin should have settled down at this point, but it hadn't. Their skin was just as finicky and temperamental as ever. They were just as finicky and temperamental as ever.

"But….you need it. I mean your skin is very nice but Minori says that you always have to start with foundation….well you have to start with primer and then foundation." Said Mob. Minegishi shook their head. They worked hard on their skin and they did not feel like spending days, if not weeks, reversing what Mob had done. They had only met one foundation that had agreed with them and that had been some obscure professional formula that they didn't expect Mob to have.

She wasn't a professional after all.

"Foundation doesn't agree with my skin. If you have to paint me up then focus on my eyes." Said Minegishi. They did not feel like breaking out. They were happy to help out but they were not going to put their skin on the line. Maybe they were just vain like that…or something. They did care about their appearance. They had been told, shouted at, that they didn't give a damn about how they looked but that wasn't true. They just wanted to be the best version of themselves that they could be. Themselves. Themselves at their best.

So barefaced with clear skin and lavender hair.

"But….ok. But if you ever want me to do your foundation I will. It's not that many steps. It's just primer, then liquid foundation, then concealer, then powder foundation, then bronzer, then blush, then eye makeup, then setting powder, then lipstick makeup, and then also concealer or foundation on your lips, not too much, but just enough to seal the color in…..oh! I forgot the highlighter. That's the most important part." Said Mob as she put the foundations in her hands away. Minegishi stared at her. Well that would explain the spots they could see forming around her hair line and eyebrows. That was….a lot of makeup. Minegishi may not have been an expert or anything but they could remember how it had been done….and it hadn't taken so many steps….

But then again the last time they had worn makeup had been about ten years ago.

They had seen Mob caking it on before, really caking it on, but they had assumed that she had just been overenthusiastic. But no, they had gotten more advice from their new friend Minori. Minegishi was glad that Mob had found a friend her own age, God knew she needed to talk to people her own age, they weren't sure about what she had been learning from this new friend. Mainly that, before, she had known exactly who she was and who she wanted to be and now there was a sort of….doubt…within her. She was doubting herself and changing…or maybe she was just growing and Minegishi was projecting. Maybe this was just something that Mob was doing in order to grow, experimenting with herself and figuring out who she was, maybe this was just what it looked like when growing up wasn't a trial by fire…

It looked like caked on makeup.

"Mob, don't use such heavy makeup. You're eleven, you don't need it, and you're ruining your skin." Said Minegishi. They reached up and tapped one of the red spots on her forehead. They mostly hung out near her hairline and her eyebrows…places where she had trouble getting all of that makeup off from. Minegishi felt the spot under their fingers. That was deep…and probably painful. They stopped poking it. After this they were mixing up some oatmeal and witch hazel. Mob was not going to end up with skin like Hatori's. They wouldn't let that happen to her.

She was only eleven after all.

"But I need to." Said Mob

"More than you need healthy skin? Come on, you must have noticed those spots." Said Minegishi

"That's from makeup? I thought that was just something that happened." Said Mob

"Well yeah, it just happens sometimes, but you shouldn't wear heavy makeup. It's bad for you, your skin needs to breathe, and you definitely don't need two different kinds of foundation….and what the hell even is 'highlighter'?" asked Minegishi. They imagined Mob taking a neon yellow marker to her face….and with makeup being what it was these days they would have believed it.

"It's for making your face look brighter…and you do need two kinds of highlighter. Minori says that you need to make sure that none of your skin is showing at all." said Mob

"She's the one who told you to cake it on, huh?" asked Minegishi. Eleven year olds were not meant to teach other eleven years olds these things. This should have fallen on Mob's mother…but her mother was dead, most likely, and she didn't have any older sisters…so it looked like it fell to Minegishi…even though the last time they had worn makeup had been 2005.

"Yes. She taught me everything I know. She says that I still need a lot of practice, though, because I'm still not ready to be seen with her." said Mob. Minegishi wanted to tell Mob that her new friend sounded like a bitch, not that they were in the habit of calling eleven year old girls bitches, but they held their tongue. Mob was happy that she had met this kid….and Mob needed more friends her own age….but at the same time they didn't want Mob to have to deal with all of that mean girl shit that girls her age pulled…but then again if they just came in and saved Mob then she would never develop coping skills…but then again what did she need coping skills for? Her father was going to take over the world…or at least he had the audacity to try…and anyone who tried to pull that mean girl shit was probably an idiot….but they didn't want Mob to deal with idiots either….

They didn't know what to do about this. They knew about skincare. They were going to stick to skincare.

"Uh-huh, and I'm guessing that Minori's all spotty underneath all of that makeup?" asked Minegishi

"Yes….but I don't say anything so I don't make her feel bad. She covers it with makeup, anyway, so it doesn't ever show. She says that I'm the only person who sees her skin…but I wasn't supposed to talk about her skin like that….and please don't tell her that I was talking about her. If we all ever hang out together, I mean, she wants to. She's always saying that she wants to meet my other friends." Said Mob.

"I won't say a word, I don't really like embarrassing eleven year olds…and don't cover your whole face in makeup like that. I'm sure that this girl thinks she knows what she's talking about but, well, she's eleven. The blind are leading the blind here….and Ryou would have had something to say to that if he had been home." Said Minegishi

"He would have said that only he got to say things like that…and then he probably would have told you that he loves you." Said Mob. She smiled while she said that….and the shippening was still going full force…and worst of all Ryou was feeding into it. He was telling them that he loved them at least five times a day…and it never got old….but he was saying it for himself. He was saying it because HE felt it and not because they felt…they had no idea what they felt. They felt like they didn't want to go down that road again. They felt like they didn't want to cause that sort of pain to themselves or anyone else again….

They also felt like they maybe should have said….

They felt like they needed to spend less time talking to an eleven year old girl who was obsessed with love, romance, and the G-rated things that kids her age got up to. They knew who they were, they knew what had happened last them they had said that to someone, and they knew that they never wanted to cause anyone that sort of pain again. They had been down this road before. They'd woken up every morning to someone they…they cared for…saying 'I love you' and they had heard it throughout their day…and they had been down this road before. They had loved before. They had been loved before. They had even sat down and been painted before…

But that was before and this was now.

The person standing in front of her was her eleven year old best friend. The place they were sitting in was the bathroom they shared with three of the messiest people on earth. It smelled like mango body wash, whatever antiseptic chemicals Ryou used to clean out his eyes, and the lynx that Hatori occasionally used as a substitute for a hot bath. The room was harsh and messy and the house shook not from the fact that there were people living in units all around them but because someone, Ryou, had put an uneven load in the washer. This was their life now. This was them at twenty eight, not their teens or their early twenties, and this was…this was now.

This was now.

"Yes he would have." Said Minegishi simply. Maybe they would be lucky enough that Mob would drop it. Maybe she would get back to explain why someone needed…however many layers of makeup on their face. Maybe she would explain all the tips and tricks she had learned from the only other eleven year old she knew. Maybe she would, for once, not pry into Minegishi's love life….

Who were they kidding? This was Mob.

"Um…what would you have said? If he had said that to you?" asked Mob. Minegishi wondered if any of that makeup she had was toxic. They hoped that it was. If it had been then they would have eaten it all just to avoid this conversation. They had no idea what they would have said to Ryou. Most of the time they pretended like they hadn't even heard him say anything. They didn't want to start….whatever it was that Ryou wanted to start with them.

They just wanted….they had no idea what they wanted.

They wanted to wake up with him beside them again. That had been more sensual than sexual, them waking up wrapped up in his arms, and it had also been warm and…and there had been a sense of safety there too. Even though he always dropped his barrier in his sleep there had still been some safety there. They were smaller than he was and…and it had all been instinct…and that was why they stayed there all wrapped up in his arms even though they had been awake….

And then he'd had to go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like 'I love you'….but Mob didn't need to know about all of that.

"I would have told him to put his laundry more evenly in the washer." Said Minegishi. The thumping was almost done now, they could tell by how long it had taken, and now all that was left was putting it in the dryer and then dealing with the noise from that…they had a headache. They had such the headache now….but they could go and deal with it later. Right now they had to hang out with Mob.

"But….that doesn't have anything to do with him being in love with you." Said Mob

"No, but maybe I would like him a little more if he could put in an even load." Said Minegishi

"Oh….I get it. It's like how I'm happy to show Hatori how to do laundry but I didn't want to spend the rest of my life doing his laundry. You just don't want to spend the rest of your life doing Shimazaki's laundry….but it's also different because you said, before, that you were happy to help him out with the things that he couldn't do on his own." said Mob. God. She had a Dictaphone for a brain. Did she have to remember EVERYTHING that they said? Mob…she was a good kid…and she just….absorbed everything that Minegishi had told her…

And they weren't sure if they wanted that.

When they had met Mob she had been eight and they hadn't expected to be anything more than an occasional babysitter. Now they were friends….as much as an adult and a child could be. They were friends but this friendship carried with it a certain responsibility on their part. Mob looked up to them, Mob listened to them, and Mob cared for them…and they cared for Mob. They had already gotten her drinking and smoking, they had done that before they had realized how much Mob meant to them and how much they meant to Mob, and…while it was a necessary evil they still felt like they had started her down the path of….well a bad path. They had given her their substance abuse issues, well nowhere near as bad as they had been when they had been young but still, and they were not going to give her their terrible taste in partners too….

Because she already had questionable taste.

Not Ryou, no, she didn't have feelings for him. She liked her men pale and spotty smelling of lynx and Doritos. Minegishi had no idea what she saw in that guy….well hormone goggles could make anyone look good….but still. She would get older and she would looked for something more in a partner than cute sweaters and square glasses. Hopefully she would. Hopefully she never got involved with anyone like Ryou…or Ryou himself. Ryou was….well he never said things that he didn't mean…and that was the tip of the iceberg when it came to him. He was a good man, he was impulsive and could do terrible things but he could and was a good man underneath it all, and Minegishi…well they had been with him…in some capacity long enough….long enough to be all clichéd and see who he was on the inside…and who he was on the inside was who he was on the outside but sappier and also with A LOT of issues that he would rather teleport from than address. Mob…Minegishi could handle him, or someone like him, but Mob…she deserved better….

Because she was smarter than Minegishi….and she had to stay that way.

"He can do his own laundry…mostly. But this isn't about laundry. Mob…it's complicated. Things between me and Ryou are complicated and I know that you want me to be happy, and I know that you want him to be happy, and I know that you want to put us together like we're your dolls so we can be happy…but adult relationships aren't like that. Ok? Adult relationships are complicated, too complicated for a kid to understand, to just…let it be. If I feel like I love him back then I'll say so but as of now I won't, ok?" asked Minegishi

"Um….ok. I just don't get it. He likes you so much, he loves you, and it seems like you love him back. You're always with him and kissing him and touching him and letting him kiss and touch you and you guys are always doing nice things for each other…and isn't that what people do when they love each other?" asked Mob. God. What a question. Minegishi reminded themselves that she was a child at the beginning of that terrible time in life and she needed guidance….and Minegishi was the only person in her life to give her this guidance. Better her best friend than the eleven year old she had been getting her advice from lately. This was a part of having a kid for a friend, you guided them through things, you didn't just let them figure everything out on their own in some terrible sink or swim scenario.

Ryou would have to talk to Mob's little brother at some point.

Mob had Minegishi and she…she may have been asking some questions that Minegishi didn't want to answer…and she may have been trying to push them into a relationship with Ryou…but she was just a child that needed guidance and Minegishi was the adult in this situation. They would tell her…well they would tell her something…and then they could get back to playing makeover or whatever.

"Mob, I've told you before that there are different ways for people to be together. Ryou and I…we have our situation and it is what it is and what it is, Mob, is a lot for a child to accept. I do things for him because I care about him and he does things for me because he cares about me. Love…it's a very complicated emotion and it's not something that…that comes easy, ok? Now can we please get back to putting on makeup? I'll even let you cover me in….God….foundation if you agree to stop shipping me and Ryou for the rest of the day at least, ok?" asked Minegishi. They had a headache and they only had so much mental energy. Mob was a child and she acted as a child did. Minegishi….they would talk to her later. Right now they just wanted to relax.

And also maybe move those clothes to the dryer.

Ryou was out and he couldn't tell him. He could ask his phone and feel the movement of the sun but well, he just had trouble with feeling time passing. Probably because he was high or drunk all the time. He would end up leaving his clothes in the machine all day and then they would smell like mildew and then he would have to wash his clothes again and he'd tie up the machine all day….so really the thing to do would have been to have moved his clothes to the dryer….

And then probably fold them up and put them away for him.

….and they would do that…because they cared for him. They didn't care that the last person that they had done this for had been….they didn't care what else they had done to that person…and they certainly didn't care that they could mess everything up again. God. Why were they even thinking about this? Because they were getting all made up for the first time in ten years? So what? The past was in the past. Minegishi had watched Frozen enough times to know about saying goodbye to the pain of the past and all of the other lines from those songs. They were…they were fine. They were just….slipping down memory lane for some reason….

Maybe they would just end up letting Mob cake that makeup on.

"Ok…but I won't do the foundation steps because you said no." said Mob. She seemed down when she said that, people thought that she didn't have a lot of expression but she did…you just had to know what to look for.

"Mob…if it'll make you happy then you can put foundation on me….but only a layer after the primer and none of that other stuff….and only the powder. The liquid foundation doesn't let your skin breath and makes it look way too wet. I'd rather not look like I'm literally sweating my face off thank you very much." Said Minegishi

"Ok….I can do that if you don't want me to do all the layers." Said Mob

"Good. Also don't put any lip gloss on me. I'll tolerate lipstick but not lip gloss. I hate how sticky it feels." Said Minegishi

"Me too….I can do that. I have lip tint and lip stain, too. Also liquid lipstick and matte lipstick and lipstick that comes on a sticker…but that doesn't work so well." Said Mob

"…what the….just the lipstick….I don't even know what most of that stuff is." Said Minegishi

"I'm surprised that you know what any of this stuff is….sorry. That came out mean. I just meant that I never expected you to know about makeup since you wear boy clothes and have your hair short like a boy's…and also you hate things that make you do extra work." Said Mob

"I…know some things. I spent about half of my life as a girl before I started living life on my own terms after all and….well…my ex-girlfriend was a stylist. She did hair and makeup for a living, I mean." Said Minegishi. She didn't need to know about that but….but Mob was always happy to hear about their life and…and also all of that was in the past. They could talk about this. They were over it, over Jun, and over what had happened. They could be as blasé about this as Ryou could be about the fact that he spent the first five years of his life locked in his room pissing in a bucket with only a record player for company. That had been a chapter in their life, that was all, and of course they could turn to that chapter and…and share what had happened….and stuff.

They were ok talking about this.

They were ok with what had happened. They took responsibility for what had happened. Hell, if they were ok with taking responsibility for Ryou's laundry then they could take responsibility for what had happened back when they had been young and stupid and insecure and ridiculous and trying to be something that they couldn't be. They were ok….with what had happened. They were ok with what had happened and they had learned from it which was why they were not going to tell Ryou what he wanted to hear….even though they wanted….

They had no idea what they wanted.

They knew what Mob wanted. She had abandoned her makeup collection entirely and now her full attention was on Minegishi. Maybe this would stifle the shippening…or maybe Mob would meet some woman and then ship them with her….God. Mob needed a healthy outlet for all of this….this hormonal-ness. She really did. She needed to stop living vicariously through people…..through her friends….

So maybe this would help put a stop to the shippening….for at least a little bit.

"Are you talking about the same lady from before?" asked Mob

"Yeah. Jun. She was, probably still is, a stylist. She did hair and makeup back in Tokyo last I checked…and don't ask me why we broke up. I'll answer any question other than that. You're trying to learn about love and relationships and all of that and, yeah, I accept that I'm the only one qualified to teach you but there are some parts of my life that you are just too young to hear about." Said Minegishi

"I'm eleven now." Said Mob. She looked put out when she said that…because she was put out. She always got so put out when Minegishi treated her like the child that she was. Well Minegishi was not going to treat her like an adult. Everyone else did but everyone else was a moron. This was an eleven year old child, a little girl, not a short woman.

"I know. I was at your birthday party. I gave you eyeshadow palettes." Said Minegishi

"I know. I love them. But that's not what I meant. You keep on saying that I'm too young to know things, that you'll tell me things when I'm older, but I am older but you still keep stuff from me." Said Mob

"You're not old enough to hear that story. You're old enough to hear some stories but not that one." said Minegishi

"Why?" asked Mob. Minegishi wondered what they had done to deserve this….oh. Right. The murders.

"Because there are parts of adult relationships that you're too young to know about." Said Minegishi

"Oh…you mean….bed stuff?" asked Mob. She actually looked around before she whispered 'bed stuff' like she was talking about giving cocaine to schoolchildren….and Ryou had better not have been planning on repeating that stunt…Mob was not mature enough for that and she was not mature enough to hear how badly Minegishi had screwed up their first real relationship. They hadn't been talking about sex, well it had been a part of it, but Mob wasn't mature enough to hear any of the details. She could hear about the good, she could handle the good, but not the bad.

She was still too little for the bad.

"See? Not old enough. You can ask me anything you want but not about why we broke up. Ok?" asked Minegishi

"Ok." Said Mob. There was some silence while the wheels in her head turned. That silence grew and grew and grew until Minegishi just could not take it anymore.

"Mob, come on. While you're young." Said Minegishi

"Um….ok. I just want to know….did you say 'I love you' to her?" asked Mob. Minegishi sighed. Of course she would ask about that….but there was no question that Minegishi was not prepared to answer. That was their job, this was what you did when you were someone's best friend, especially when that someone was just a kid.

"I did." Said Minegishi simply. There was no other way to say it but simply. The fact of the matter. The flat fact of the matter.

"Oh….why?" asked Mob

"What do you mean?" asked Minegishi. There were more 'whys' there than Minegishi was even prepared to go through…and a lot of those whys were…well not easy to articulate.

"Why did you love her?" asked Mob. That had been….well that had been a question that they knew that she would have asked, they had expected her to ask, but it had still felt like a kick to the side of the head when she had asked it.

"Because….she was honest. She was always upfront with what she wanted from me…and she also…she accepted me. She saw me for who I was and she accepted me. That's pretty much it." Said Minegishi with a shrug that they did not feel. That was, is and was, all that they had ever wanted from someone….and when they had gotten it they hadn't know what to do with it. They'd never had anything so good in their life up to that point and once they had it they had been so busy worrying about the other shoe to drop that they had become their own self fulfilled prophecy…and they were never doing that again. Ever.

"Oh…I understand that." Said Mob simply.

"You do?" asked Minegishi. They blinked. How could Mob possibly understand? She was just a kid….

"Yes. I want that too. If I ever love someone I want them to love me for who I am and not who they want me to be. I don't know. Sometimes it feels like….like I can't be Mob. When I'm with dad, mostly, because he wants me to be 'Daughter' and then also with Sho because he wants me to be 'big sis' but with you guys….I can be Mob and stuff…and if I ever find someone who wants to be with me, who wants to be my boyfriend and stuff, then I want him to love me for me. For Mob….if that makes sense." Said Mob. There were moments to her where she made all the sense in the world. Moments where she could be weirdly mature for someone who ate Frozen cereal out of the box and thought that cat ear headbands and princess dresses were the height of fashion. Moments where somehow she could make all the sense in the world despite being only eleven, only a kid, and the one who always went to Minegishi looking for guidance.

This had been one of those moments.

"Mob…never change. Just…never change and….wait here a minute. I have to go put some laundry in the dryer." Said Minegishi. They patted her on the head as they got up and walked past. They needed….they needed a minute. That had been….it should have been easy to talk about. They had been talking to Mob of all people and if anyone was easy to talk to it was her…and that should have been easy for them to talk about. The past was in the past…but this was not the past, this was the present….and the past was in the present and….and it had felt sort of like opening up an old wound….

But that was ridiculous.

They could talk about things. They were not so hung up on the past that they could not talk about things. They also weren't all twisted up inside over Ryou saying three stupid words to them. Words that…that they had heard before…and words that they had never expected him to say before. Words that he meant. Words that he said for himself but still meant….words that they couldn't say back….

Even if they wanted to.

They wanted….they wanted a lot of things. They wanted to say it back and…and they also wanted him to never say that to them again. They wanted him to just shut up…and they wanted him to say it to them every day a thousand times a day….and they wanted…they wanted to get this laundry in the dryer for him….so that was what they did. They put the laundry in the dryer, you're welcome Ryou, and then they went back to Mob to get painted up…and hopefully to talk about something besides their train wreck of a love life.

At least they sort of understood makeup.


	319. Issues to Some, Non Issues to Others

When Suzuki Touichirou had left the house that morning he'd had only the one Daughter….

…and now he had two.

Son and Daughter were playing. That was normal. They were playing with Daughter's new dollhouse. That was understandable and acceptable, he had played dolls with her too. Daughter was wearing one of her blue dresses, the one he had gotten her. That wasn't anything out of the ordinary and, actually, and he felt good seeing her wearing something that he had gotten for her. Daughter also had her face painted up in makeup…which was becoming normal for her…and something which he was not going to argue with her about because he knew that criticizing a woman's appearance was dangerous ground. No, he was not going to say a word about her appearance or her actions.

There was nothing strange about what she was doing.

Son on the other hand…he occasionally wore his sister's clothes. This was not the first time that Suzuki had come home to see his Son wearing one of his sister's dresses over his clothes. No, this was not new at all….nor was the fact that he was wearing his sister's costume jewelry….he would have to get Daughter some real jewelry at some point….or his sister's headband. That….Son had done that before. The fact that he was wearing his sister's socks, too, wasn't that strange….no. He had seen this before. A dress was just a garment without leg holes. It didn't mean a thing, he knew that it didn't, and he knew that….that Daughter would never do anything to harm Son….

But wearing that dress could not have been good for him.

At least he was wearing pants. At least he was still wearing his own clothes underneath his sister's. Even though he was dressed up like a girl and playing with dolls and…and everything else. All of those things. All of those things put together….they weren't what bothered him. No. What bothered him was the fact that Son was just as painted up as Daughter was. If not for the fact that he could recognize his own Son's aura he would have thought that Daughter had made another friend. That she had found another female playmate….but no. That was Son.

That was Son.

She dressed Son up like that because she had been lonely for other girl children to play with. That had been his understanding of it, anyway, but now….now he didn't know. She had a friend. Her name was Asagiri Minori. Daughter spoke of her often. She was the one who had introduced Daughter to makeup and such…and Suzuki was just glad that she was spending less of her time around the opposite sex…and he may not have liked this development but he had assumed that with the addition of a new female friend, one her own age as well, that she would have stopped dressing Son up like this.

It could not have been good for him.

Suzuki could excuse the dress. He had worn robes before and they were basically the same as dresses….well he had felt that way before. Now that he thought about it dresses were a purely female garment. The decoration they had to them, the cut of them, and the fact that socially only women wore them…..yes. That could not have been good for Son. Not good for him at all. He was already….Suzuki worried for him. Well he had thought that he had been worrying for Son. What he had felt before…it didn't even come close to the worry that he was feeling right now in this moment in time. Son…he trusted Daughter when it came to raising Son…and if she didn't think that…that she should have worried about this, that it was a nonissue, then maybe it was a nonissue….but it didn't feel like a nonissue to him…but he didn't know much about raising children. That had been Masami's expertise. She…she would have known what to do…

She had taught Daughter.

Daughter had been taught by Masami and Masami was the greatest mother that the world had ever seen. In Suzuki's opinion. She always knew what to do when it came to raising the children and they had been very good to her. She had reminded him of his own mother, actually, or at least what his memories of her had been. Masami would have known what to do, she would have told him what to do, but she wasn't there…..she wasn't there anymore but Daughter…she was there. She was there and Masami had taught her what to do…and she wasn't doing anything….but it just…didn't feel like she should have been just…sitting there and playing dolls with Son….

Suzuki didn't know what he was supposed to do.

He really didn't. Daughter…she knew what to do. She was good with things like this, taking care of Son, and he trusted her judgement as much as he trusted Masami…so maybe this was fine…and maybe it wasn't. He honestly did not know. Daughter…she was good when it came to Son. He obeyed her and she never once had to raise a hand to him. Masami had taught her that…and he had no idea how she had managed that….so she knew what she was doing. She was doing….well…but this…this didn't seem like…like something that he should have let happen but….but if Daughter thought that Son….that Son was fine then….then this was fine?

Suzuki had no clue.

He had no clue what he was supposed to say or do or…or anything. So he just sort of…stood there and watched the children playing together. That was normal. He could have pretended that this was normal. He could have closed his eyes and pretended that this was normal and that his children were normal and that his Son was dresses like his Son and…and if he closed his eyes he almost could have made that into reality. He could have just closed his eyes and then…and then that was what he did. He closed his eyes and imagined that he had come home to the children playing and…and then Daughter would have gotten up and gotten dinner started…and then Son would have done something normal like…like drawing something or destroying something or just….some other normal thing that Son did….

And then things would have been normal again in his household.

"Hi, dad." Said Daughter. She brought him back to reality. She made him open his eyes even though he would much rather have been inside of his own mind where things were normal and they made sense. But things didn't make sense and he couldn't hide from them…and also he wasn't going to ignore Daughter. She was his Daughter and it was always a gift to be able to speak to her.

"Daughter." Said Suzuki. He didn't know what else to say. Masami had always hated it when he questioned her parenting. Daughter…he didn't want to question her. He trusted her as much as he trusted Masami…but this was…he wasn't even sure what this was…but he knew that it was not normal. It was not normal and…and also it was beyond his understanding….and he hated it when things were beyond his understanding.

"Sho's here too." Said Daughter. He didn't know why she said that. Of course he noticed his Son. How could he had not noticed Son when he was in that state of affairs? He was in his sister's dress and painted up with her makeup. Who wouldn't have noticed that?

"I know." Said Suzuki. Son was looking at him…and he made an effort not to look at Son. If he looked at Son then he would say something to Son…and he knew that if he made something out of this then Son would do something like exclusively wear his sister's clothing just to be contrary. Suzuki couldn't have that. He had enough to worry about when it came to that boy.

"Sho, I think that dad's waiting for you to say 'hi' first." Said Daughter. Suzuki wasn't waiting for a greeting but it was nice how Daughter corrected him, how she took such an interest in her brother's social development. She cared so much for him even though he acted so terribly to her. She was so caring, his Daughter, the most caring person in the world. She would make a good mother someday. She had been taught by the best after all.

"Fine. Hi." Said Son. Now Suzuki would have to say something to him. 'Hello'. There. One word. That was all he had to say…so he had better get to saying it. He just…he had to say something…and that something was a normal greeting….but how could he just…use a normal greeting…in this situation? Lost. He felt lost. He hadn't felt this socially lost since…well since he had been young. There was something here, something that he was missing, and…and he just needed to figure out what it was that he was missing….so then he could understand what he was supposed to do in this situation…and he knew that he was supposed to do SOMETHING….or maybe nothing…because Daughter was treating this whole thing as a nonissue….

"Hello Son." Said Suzuki. There. He had said something…but not the something that he wanted to say. He wanted to tell Son to wash his face, put on his own clothes, and do something else. Something normal. To go and draw something or break something or play one of his videogames or…or something that did not involve playing dolls with his sister while dressed up like a little girl. He was not a little girl, he was a little boy, and Suzuki did not need one more thing to worry about when it came to Son.

He had enough to worry about.

Such as the fact that he had never so much as mentioned a girl. Not to him, they didn't speak that often, but to Daughter. Daughter…she was enamored with the idea of love. With the opposite sex. Most of the media she consumed ended in a romantic pairing, she had started painting her face to be more attractive to the opposite sex, and he had seen the way her aura looked when she was near Hatori….thank God he was a homosexual or Suzuki would have had two things to worry about when it came to his children, so Daughter was at least normal in that regard when it came to her development. She had never mentioned a boy to him…and he didn't know if he could mentally take that so, really, he was grateful that she kept that to herself. Son…he had never once mentioned a girl to Daughter.

Not once.

And he never seemed to seek them out, either. Daughter said that he spent his free time with Shimazaki doing all manner of childish things….because he was a child still…but he should have been an older child. When Suzuki had been his age he had already met the girl he had been planning on marrying. They both liked the Galaxy Express and it's expanded universe, they both thought that the laserdisc was the superior format to both VHS and CED…though it had taken a trip to his home to convince her that CED was not superior to laserdisc….and after that day he had decided that when he grew up he was going to marry her…and that had, obviously, not worked out but he had at least been interested….but Son seemed to show zero interest at all in the opposite sex. He would have told Daughter and Daughter would have told him, she told him everything and she had an obsession with love that he did not understand, so he would have been informed….

He worried.

"Do you want to play too, dad? I mean it looks like you want to play…since you're just standing there and stuff…and maybe you don't know how to ask if you can play…so you can play with us if you want to." Said Daughter. She was making reference to something he had shared with her. He had told her, before, that in his youth he'd had trouble asking the other children to play with him or asking to join in on their games. He hadn't wanted to, of course, since nobody understood what he wanted to play and he hadn't been able to understand them wither, but mother and father kept on asking him to play with the other children even though it never ended well…and Daughter…she isn't mocking him. She isn't bringing up the weak little boy he used to be just to tell him that he shouldn't have cared what the other children had thought of him.

That is not who she is.

She is his Daughter and she would never be unkind of him. She was merely asking him to join her because he loved her company and she knew it. She loved his company as well. He had no enjoyed the game of dolls, before, when they had played it. The entire game was modeling various social interaction and he had gotten no enjoyment out of that in real life so, of course, he would not have enjoyed making a game of it…but he had still played for her. He is not going to play now, though, because Son is there and he does not want to play with Son. Being around Son is always so draining…

And also he does not want to normalize that sort of behavior for him.

"No thank you. You and your brother can carry on with that until you feel like making dinner." Said Suzuki. Daughter…he hoped that she felt like making dinner soon. He was hungry...a bit hungry. He had spent time with Hatori and spending time with Hatori always meant compulsive eating….and there was nothing wrong with eating ketchup bread….so he wasn't that hungry but…but he did want to get her occupied with something else…and then Son would find something else to do…

Like change his clothes and wash his face.

"Are you hungry now?" asked Daughter. She was thinking of him, again, and he loved her for it. There was a simple….a simple joy to it. Coming home and having someone there who thought about you, who cared about you, and who wanted to take time from their life to make you happy…just because they loved you. Not out of the loyalty based fear that the people who surrounded him felt but out of a genuine sense of caring and affection.

"I could eat." Said Suzuki. Her in the kitchen making something for him…the thought of it makes him…well it makes him happy…and he should not be this happy. Especially for no good reason. So she cared about him…she was supposed and he was supposed to have better control over his emotions than this…but he didn't. He needed to calm down…but she had….she had offered and…and it was ok for him to feel this way because if she was in the kitchen making dinner then she would not have been in here playing with Son…and maybe she should have been too busy to notice Son carrying on if he were to scrub all of that mess off of his face and dress him in his normal clothes and just….do everything in his power to make Son normal….

If that was eve possible.

"Do you want me to make breakfast for dinner again?" asked Daughter. Suddenly he was very hungry. Her omelets were like heaven to him. She always used four large eggs and beat them until they were light and fluffy and then she always used butter, a lot of it, and then she would mix in all of his favorites…and she would draw him something in ketchup on his omelet when she was done making it…and she was so talented…

She was such a talented little girl.

She was talented in all of the skills which Masami had worked so hard to teach her…and having her there was almost as good as having Masami there…almost. Masami was…she was Masami…but Daughter was Daughter and…and he knew that it was wrong to compare the two in his mind. One had left him and one would never leave him. There was no comparison to be made…but he needed to love Masami. Even if she had abandoned him he had to love her…not that he had any hope of her coming back or anything like that…but if she did come back then he would be there and ready and waiting for her….but she was never coming back….

But at least she had left him Daughter.

His only Daughter. The only Daughter that he would ever have and ever need. He had a Daughter, he did not need two of them, and he wanted to grab Son and drag him into the bathroom and scrub all of that mess off of his face and put him back in his normal clothes…but he doesn't do that. Daughter…she knows how to take care of Son…and she so hated it when Son carried on. Son would have carried on his Suzuki had taken him by the arm and dragged him kicking and screaming to the bathroom to sit him down and scrub all of that mess off of his face…or maybe just hold him down under the bathwater until he was normal again….Son would have carried on and then Daughter would have been bothered. He could never do anything like that to his own Daughter.

Even though he really wanted to.

"That would be wonderful." Said Suzuki. He knew that she would notice if Son carried on…and there was no way to stop him from carrying on. Even if he held him under the water his aura would still flare and he would still lose control over his powers and then Daughter would notice and she would be upset and then dinner would be ruined…and he didn't want any of that…so he would leave Son be and….and hopefully whatever this was got better on it's own.

"So you're just going to leave me because dad wants dinner?" asked Son. Suzuki wondered if there was some way to shut him up without Daughter noticing…and there probably wasn't…but he could still try…or not. Daughter…he hate upsetting her…and he wanted nothing more than her constant and never ending happiness. That wasn't a lot to ask…was it?

"I'm just going to the kitchen. We can play later, ok?" asked Daughter. She said that and…and Son…he could have agreed….he would have agreed…and then in agreeing with her he would have been saying that he enjoyed…whatever this was…and then…well…that would have been the worst thing that he could have said. He had given Suzuki nothing but worry…and now he had even more worry…even though Daughter wasn't worried so there might have been nothing to worry about….or something…he didn't know…

All he knew was the he needed Son to wash his face and take the dress OFF.

"But-" said Son. Suzuki was not going to let him say another word. If he kept on protesting that meant that he had wanted to…to stay like that…which could have meant so many things. It could have confirmed all of Suzuki's greatest fears for his Son and only biological child…and he had no idea where Masami was so he couldn't have another child…and he would have preferred literally anything in the world to…to his worst fears being confirmed. Hell, he would rather Daughter have told her that she was carrying Shimazaki's child and she planned on marrying him above Son…about Son confirming his worst fears.

"Daughter, please go and make dinner now. Son….since your sister is no longer playing with you then…then you can take the time which she will be spending cooking to…to take a bath or something." Said Suzuki. If he told Son flat out to go and wash his face and change…then Son would have just gone on dressing up like a girl just to be contrary…and if he dragged Son kicking and screaming to the bathroom himself then Daughter would have gotten upset with him…and he had no idea what to do about any of this….

Parenting was hard.

Daughter was much better at it than he was. He trusted her in all things….even these things…and she…she seemed fine. She seemed like she was perfectly fine and that she…she understood these things better than he did…and he knew that if she saw this as a nonissue then it must have been….but it felt like an issue, a big issue, to him…and he just…he had no clue what to even do….and he wished that he could have asked for some guidance but Masami was long gone…..

Daughter knew what to do.

"I don't want to take a bath." Said Son. Suzuki…he forced himself to remain calm. He had told his Son to do something and now he had to do it…but he was being disobedient as always. He did this because he knew that his sister would protect him. As long as Daughter was around then there was nothing that Suzuki could do without running the risk of hurting her feelings and making her….just making her so upset…and he never wanted to see her upset…and he loved her so much….

"Sho….please? I won't check if your hair is wet this time." Said Daughter. Suzuki had no clue what the significance of that statement was but it sent Son off and that…that was what mattered. Son went off to take his bath and Daughter went off to make dinner and that just left Suzuki there in the living room staring at Daughter's dollhouse with nothing but his racing thoughts for company.

He wished that he'd had dolls instead of children.

In the most abstract sense, of course, he knew that he couldn't literally have dolls for children. He needed his flesh and blood children to secure his future. He needed his flesh and blood Son to secure the next generation….and that generation needed to be secured. He had nothing against homosexuals, one of his closest people he could maybe begin to call something of a friend was a homosexual, he just needed his Son to not be one. That was all. He needed more Suzukis and he only had the one Son and no way to make another….so there. That was that. Son…he had his worries about Son…but Daughter didn't seem to have any worries…and she knew more about these things than he did….but he still worried…and his worries made no sense….and this made no sense…

So he went to someone who could make sense of it.

He walked out the door and over to Fukuda's house. He always knew how to make sense of the unexplainable. Son was unexplainable. He knew Son, he had always enjoyed spending time with him, and his social skills were just as good as Daughter's so he would know what to do. He could not discuss this with Daughter. She might take it as a criticism of her parenting and he knew that criticizing a woman's parenting was dangerous ground. Even more dangerous than criticizing her appearance. He needed a second opinion and it could not be hers…

So he would ask the next best person.

He didn't care if he was disturbing Fukuda. He could disturb whoever he wanted to…and also he had a good reason to be disturbing Fukuda after a long day of work. Not that he needed one. He had never needed one, he had just always had one, even when they had been children. There had been so many times when he would just turn up to Fukuda's house at all hours and he had never been turned away. Not even those times when he let himself in through Fukuda's bedroom window and played his Famicom until he woke up. It never took long, thankfully, because all the games that he'd had back then had been terrible, and Suzuki…well there was a sense of déjà vu there…even though he was at the door and not the window…

He half expected Fukuda's mother to open the door, usher him inside, and make him sit at the table and eat with the family.

Which had been a stupid thing to expect since Fukuda's mother and father had been dead for some time now. They were just a couple of orphans now…that is if men their age could be considered to be orphans. Well they were orphans by the strictest of definitions, they had no parents, but now they were the parents. Well he was the parent. Fukuda had never married and never had children…and Suzuki had never been able to understand why. Women had always liked him better and he'd always wanted to be father. He had certainly done enough practicing with his children…not that he minded. Son needed the supervision and Daughter….Daughter didn't really mention Fukuda or spend time with him anymore…

Which was fine. He was here to ask about Son anyway.

"Suzuki. Hey….what's going on?" asked Fukuda after he finally came to the door. He had gotten dressed again…and Suzuki didn't know why he bothered. They had seen each other less than fully dressed thousands of times. They had even lived together briefly in university…and the less said about that the better. Suzuki hadn't had the time to wait for Fukuda to get dressed again. He barely had the time now to speak to him. Daughter cooked fast and he could not let her food get cold. She was an amazing cook and letting her food grow cold would have been a waste of her talents.

"I need to speak to you about something of great importance." Said Suzuki. Fukuda made room in the doorway for him. His aura was still, perfectly still, and Suzuki wished that his was the same….but it wasn't. Well it wouldn't have been if he had been able to just…keep it in his death grip. Calm. He needed to look and stay calm…and maybe he had no reason at all, none, because Daughter had treated the whole thing as a nonissue…and if she thought that it was a nonissue then it must have been….but if it was a nonissue then he would not have been feeling the way he was feeling now.

"Come in." said Fukuda as he made room. Suzuki stepped into the genkan, well the space that served as a genkan, but went no further. He didn't have the time or the inclination to go any further. He just needed information and then that was it. They weren't children anymore, he wasn't going to stay, and he knew that Fukuda didn't expect him to want to…right?

He didn't know. He had enough on his mind as it was.

"Do you think that Son wearing makeup and his sister's clothing is going to be detrimental to him in some way? Also do you think that he's a homosexual?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda turned around. He had been making his way into his home…so maybe he had meant for Suzuki to follow, but that didn't matter now. He turned around and stared at Suzuki….and he would have thought that he had said something wrong….but Fukuda's aura looked and felt fine….

So he didn't know.

"Sho….is wearing his sister's clothes?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki nodded. He didn't believe Fukuda for not believing him. The entire thing was unbelievable. Son in a dress….it had to have been seen to have been believed….and he did not want Fukuda to see. He did not want to have anyone see. He was Suzuki Touichirou, he could do whatever he wanted, but Son was not Suzuki Touichirou. He was Suzuki Sho and he was not going to…well he had no idea if this was even an issue…but this….it was….

He had no idea what this was.

"Yes. Her dress, her jewelry, her headband, her socks, and her makeup. Also he was playing dolls with her. I don't know if this is an issue or not. Daughter is treating this like a nonissue and I generally defer to her judgement…but this feels like an issue to me. You know Son and you know people so is this something that I should be worried about?" asked Suzuki. He may have spoken too quickly, or said too much at once, because Fukuda spent some time being silent. Time which they did not have. He had seen Daughter cook. He knew that she would have been on her own omelet by now, and then Son's plain one, and then…well it the rice would take time unless she used instant rice….he loathed instant rice…

He didn't have a lot of time.

"Sho…is ten. It probably doesn't mean anything." Said Fukuda. Son was ten. Suzuki knew that Son was ten. He was a decade old. Suzuki knew what he had been like at a decade old. He had been nothing like Son was at a decade old…but then again he had never been a thing like Son was. Ever.

"I know how old my own Son is." Said Suzuki. He sounded defensive there, mainly because he felt defensive there, but there….in there he could have sworn that Fukuda had implied that he hadn't known hold old Son was…or maybe that had just been residual emotion from Son's outburst back around his birthday.

"Then you know that ten year olds do weird stuff. Shigeko probably made him dress like that. He's fine." Said Fukuda. Fukuda…he hadn't been there. He hadn't been there and he didn't know. Son…in the past Son had been happy to get out of whatever dress his sister had put him in…but not this time….

"…he protested, though, when I told her to stop playing with him and make dinner." Said Suzuki

"Well….I guess he just wanted to play with his sister." Said Fukuda with a shrug. He knew what that shrug meant. It meant that Fukuda was being dismissive. It meant that Suzuki was blowing things out of proportion, which Fukuda had accused him of doing on more than one occasion, and it meant that….that maybe he was….but he felt like he wasn't. He felt like….like…

Like he was about to watch thirty years of work go down the drain.

Thirty years. That was how long he had been working at this for. Since he had been around thirteen or so and he had realized that he stood head and shoulders above all other espers as well. When he had realized that he could store power, give it, and take it away. He had been planning this since he had been a little boy with one single follower and a fort in the woods. He had been working up to this point for most of his life….and his work was still nowhere near complete…and when he did complete his work then it would have all been for nothing if he couldn't secure the next generation and the next and the next…and he did not feel like having any more children.

Masami was gone.

Masami was gone but they were still married. He would not be unfaithful to her…any more than he had been already. He had one biological child, just one, and that one biological child needed to have more than one biological child…and that child needed to be his. He needed to make sure that Son's child was from his bloodline…and if he were to spend his life with another man then there would be no guarantee of that…and also his children would grow up without a mother…unless he gave them to Daughter to raise….but then she would be stuck raising her brother's children as well as her own….and then he would be stuck raising his Son's children as well as the ones he and Daughter would have together….and that would have been a lot. He'd planned to leave the world to Son once he got too old or too tired to rule it and then he would retire and spend the rest of his life with Daughter. That had been the plan, the version of the future he had seen before…but now…

He had always been so…assured of what the future would bring…but now he was just….worried.

"I worry. I worry about him." said Suzuki. Fukuda was one of the few people in this world who had seen him lose control….so therefore it was alright to talk about how out of control this whole situation made him feel. He had a Son and with the existence of that Son the next generation should have been secured…but now all of that was up in the air. Maybe. He didn't know. He didn't know if it was going to go as planned or…or he didn't even know. Homosexuals could have children, it was a lot more steps, but….it would be easier if Son had been heterosexual…a lot easier. …

"So now you worry and Sho?" asked Fukuda. He had a tone there that Suzuki could not read. His aura was just as calm and placid as normal…so maybe it wasn't a bad tone…though it had seemed like one…

"I worry about the future and he is a key point in the future. I worry about him. I wouldn't worry…I mean if I couldn't worry then I wouldn't…but I do. Daughter….she's treating this like a nonissue and I know that I should defer to her…but I thought that I could use a second opinion." Said Suzuki

"Sho's fine and the future is fine. You don't have to worry about him. He's a good kid." Said Fukuda. Suzuki….wasn't sure if that was an accurate assessment of Son. Son was just….a handful. He was loud and he fought with his sister and he was defiant and…and he had been this way his whole life. It made it very difficult to even get close enough to judge if he was or was not a good child. Suzuki had seen him at his worst but Fukuda….had seen other side to him…so Suzuki didn't really know if he could make an accurate summation of his Son's character.

"I…will take your word for it. I haven't spent enough time with him to be able to accurately describe his character. Maybe he's different when he's with you." Said Suzuki

"You know…you could spend time with him. He could use some positive attention from you." Said Fukuda

"If he wants positive attention then he can behave in more positive manner. He can be kind to his sister and not make her life more difficult, he can be quiet, and he can stop acting like such a-" said Suzuki

"A ten year old?" asked Fukuda

"He acts younger than that. I never acted the way he does, not once, when I was ten." Said Suzuki

"Well you were an unusually…mature….kid." said Fukuda

"That is true…but he has you and you give him attention. He speaks of you often and he's always spending time with you…and you know him better than I do. If you say that I don't have anything to worry about, that he's not a homosexual, then there is nothing for me to worry about. Thank you." Said Suzuki

"Wait! Just…hypothetically. If Sho were….what would you do?" asked Fukuda

"I…have no idea. It's inborn, I think, and….and I know that it's not something that can be beaten out of him…so I don't know what else I could do to fix this if it even can be fixed." said Suzuki

"Yeah….maybe don't try that. I thought you had stopped hitting him all together actually." Said Fukuda

"I've left correcting him to Daughter. She gets better results than me." Said Suzuki

"Maybe because she doesn't hit him." said Fukuda. There was a tone there, too, and he couldn't read that tone either.

"You think?" asked Suzuki. Hitting Son had been the only thing that had seemed to work. Since he had been about three or four…or maybe even two. He didn't know. All he knew was that it had been the only thing that worked and when something worked you stuck to it.

"Yeah….anyway….Sho's….it wouldn't be the end of the world if he were gay, you know." Said Fukuda. The end of the world, no, that would come when the sun exploded. The end of his bloodline, yes, and that may as well have been the end of the world. Fukuda didn't understand. No woman had ever wanted to have children with him. When he had someone who wanted to continue his bloodline, and then when his bloodline was continued, he would realize how important it was without even having to have been the ruler of the world.

"It would possibly be the end of my bloodline. I know how homosexual reproduction works. This could be the end of my entire bloodline." Said Suzuki

"They…don't reproduce. I mean not with each other…remember? Health class back in middle school?" asked Fukuda

"I know that they don't reproduce with each other. They find a surrogate and then each man inseminates her and then whoever's genetic material can swim the fastest wins." Said Suzuki. It had amazed him when he had first heard it too, that was why Fukuda was looking at him like that. Suzuki hoped that he didn't have a lot of follow up questions. He only knew so much. He would direct any follow up questions to Hatori. He was the expert after all.

"What?" asked Fukuda. He blinked, there, a lot. Suzuki didn't blame him for being shocked. The whole thing was very shocking.

"That's how it works. It's a race to the egg. It makes sense since you'd want to have the strongest offspring…and that's what worries me. I need my grandchildren to be MY grandchildren." Said Suzuki

"So…your understanding is that each guy….goes at it…with the surrogate and whoever's…guys…swim best are the winners?" asked Fukuda

"I assume that they use some sort of medical tool since the men involved are homosexual but that is what happens, yes." said Suzuki

"Uh-huh…and where did you hear about this?" asked Fukuda

"Hatori told me." Said Suzuki

"Hatori….the kid with the glasses and the acne?" asked Fukuda

"Yes, though his face is clearing up nicely." Said Suzuki

"Right….can I ask….when did this even come up?" asked Fukuda

"We were talking." Said Suzuki

"Talking….what were you talking about that this even….came up?" asked Fukuda

"Videogames." Said Suzuki. That was what they usually talked about. The two of them talked about game and their history but also life as well. Sort of like the things that he and Fukuda used to talk about back when they had been young.

"So…you were talking about videogames with Hatori of all people…and then….you got to the subject of how surrogate pregnancies work?" asked Fukuda

"Yes." said Suzuki

"You know….you might want to google that. Hatori might not be the best person to ask about…anything sexual. I'm pretty sure that he's never even been with a woman before." Said Fukuda

"Obviously not." Said Suzuki

"Right…." Said Fukuda

"So you can see why I'm worried about Son. I need to secure my bloodline. I need my bloodline to continue and it won't without Son." Said Suzuki

"What about your daughter?" asked Fukuda. There was a tone there, too, and he wished that Fukuda would just speak normally. He knew for a fact that tones gave him trouble. He said Daughter so oddly. What about Daughter? She was a child but she was not his child. Not in the way that counted. She wouldn't continue his bloodline. She was just…herself. She would continue someone else's bloodline...and he accepted that. He had no choice but to accept that. She was and was not his Daughter.

"Daughter is not my biological child, you know that." Said Suzuki. He so wished that she had been but she wasn't and that was what it was. She was adopted and he knew that…but he couldn't blame Fukuda for forgetting. Suzuki himself forgot sometimes.

"No I meant…never mind. If you're so worried about your bloodline then why not just…have more kids?" asked Fukuda

"Masami is gone. You know that." Said Suzuki

"…yeah. I know. I meant….with someone else." Said Fukuda

"I would never be unfaithful to my wife." Said Suzuki lowly. His aura…he kept his aura close. He had to keep his aura close. He could not lash out at Fukuda. He had no reason to. Fukuda had never been married. He didn't know, didn't understand, that even when your wife was gone you had to still be faithful to her…and Suzuki was going to be much better about that. He had slipped once, an only once, and he would never slip up again. He never even thought about Pang Sujin and if she had ever finished that novel or what her thoughts on-

He loved Masami and he hoped that she would forgive him if….if she ever came back.

"Right. I never said that you would have…I just…forgot that you were married. I mean you never mention her….so…" said Fukuda

"You're not married so I'll forgive what you said. I don't have to mention my wife to be married to her and even when she is not here she is still my wife. You don't understand. You're single and you always have been…and I don't know why. You're an intelligent person, you look normal, you're very loyal, you're always very punctual, and you enjoy spending time with children. If I were a woman I would have been happy to have you." Said Suzuki

"Sorry. I didn't know what I was saying." Said Fukuda quickly.

"That's alright, I forgive you." Said Suzuki. He didn't care. Fukuda sometimes spoke out of turn but that was just a flaw that he had. They had been together for decades. They were used to each other's flaws.

"Thank you. Anyway, about Sho…he's fine. He's perfectly fine. Just…you want him to be interested in girls, right?" asked Fukuda. He looked away, now, and Suzuki just did not know why.

"That would be best, yes." said Suzuki

"Well….how would you feel if he had a girlfriend?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki would have been happy…but when would that have even happened? He was only ten years old…..

"That would be a weight off of my shoulders." Said Suzuki

"You wouldn't try to kidnap the little girl or anything, right?" asked Fukuda

"If she were an esper, of course, but if she were a normal person then of course not." Said Suzuki

"Well….Sho's normal. Back in England he met a little girl…and he started something of a relationship with her." said Fukuda. Suzuki…had no idea what to think. On the one hand that was a major weight off of his shoulders. On the other hand…this had been kept from him? Secrets were being kept from him? Daughter had been keeping secrets from him?

He feels like is heart is being ripped out.

He forced himself to stay calm. Daughter was keeping secrets from him. Daughter could not be keeping secrets from him. Daughter….was his child. She was his child. She was his companion. She was his reason and his life. She was the person he was going to spend his life with. They were going to live their lives together in happiness and….and they could not do that if…if she was keeping secrets from him.

"Daughter kept this from me….Son kept this from me…and you kept this from me….I hate secrets…" said Suzuki. Daughter….she….he needed to trust her….but how could he trust her if she was keeping things from me…and how could….he forgave her. He loved her and he forgave her. She must have had her reasons.

"I'm not sure if she knew but Sho….well you never talk to him so why would he have told you? And me, I'm telling you now." Said Fukuda. Suzuki felt himself calm down. Right. He never spoke to Son. He never spoke to Son without getting upset with him and…and Daughter knew how he got upset when she spoke of Son….and Fukuda was telling him right now….but still….

He would have liked to have been informed.

"Right. Well…thank you for…assuaging my worries. I'm going to have dinner now, Daughter's making dinner. So thank you very much." Said Suzuki before he left. He felt better now…mostly. Son…he had found his most perfect person. He was only ten and he found his own person and…and that was….Suzuki had missed this. He had missed this and….and he would have wanted to….to have at least have heard about this….but this was….alright. This was alright. Son was doing exactly what he should have been doing….though he would have preferred it if Daughter had said something…..

It was Son's birthday all over again.

He would have to talk to her about keeping him informed of the happenings of their household. He would have liked to have been informed…but this was what it was. He didn't even know why he cared. Son was doing what he should have been doing. This was a nonevent. This was a nonissue. Son had found his most perfect person and….and it was a nonissue….so of course Daughter hadn't told him. He…he was oddly curious about this girl. Her name, what she was like, why Son had been drawn to her….but if this was something that he needed to know about then Daughter would have told him.

She always told him the important things.

"Dad, dinner's ready." Said Daughter as he came through the door. He took his shoes off in the genkan and made his way to the kitchen….where he found his Daughter. His one Daughter. His Son was his Son again, in his normal clothes sitting at the table sketching something out while his food cooled in front of him. Good. So it really had been a nonissue. He had no clue what all of that had been about. He trusted his Daughter and if something was a nonissue to her then it was a nonissue end of discussion. He trusted her in all ways. She was his Daughter.

She was his only Daughter. He had come home, again, to find that he only had the one Daughter…and that was just the way that things were supposed to be.


	320. The Battle Over Baths and Hair Washing

Mob and Sho hadn't taken a bath together in a while.

Not since they had been little…well not little-little but younger. Not since they were eight and seven….maybe. She didn't have an exact date for their last bath…and that was sort of sad. Their last bath had happened and she hadn't even noticed. If she had known that they would have been taking their last bath together then she would have done something special. Put in a cool bath bomb or poured in a whole bottle of bubble bath or just let him skin his hair or something. Their last bath had come and gone….and she wondered how many other 'lasts' they would have without her even realizing it. The last time they played together or…or ate together…or watched TV together…or even saw each other…

Mob didn't like to think about that.

She didn't like to think about how fast things could change between them without either of them even noticing. One day they would be too old to play together or….or eat together…or just…be together. They didn't have forever. They would grow up and Sho would rule the world and she would be with dad…and she doesn't like to think about that. She doesn't want to think about how things will change in the future. She had enough changes going on right now.

Too many changes.

Too many changes with herself. Things, changes, that she didn't want people to know about. She knew that she would always have to wear socks, long socks, and shirts with sleeves…so no more trips to the beach for her. That was fine. She could live without going to the beach. She could live with always having to wear long socks or tights, too, and she could live with never wearing a sleeves shirt or dress again in her life. Minori said that her arms were chubby anyway. Yes, Mob could live with being…like this. All….well she had no idea why she was suddenly turning into a werewolf or something but she could live with this….she had no choice.

Sometimes things changed….that was just how life went.

Mob assumed that this was just how life went. She knew that mom, when she had been around, had shaved her legs and armpits sometimes. Mob had seen her do it. That was just a part of getting ready like doing her makeup or brushing her hair. So Mob wasn't too worried about turning into a werewolf….mostly. She had never seen her mom naked, at least not when she had been old enough to remember since there were pictures of mom and Baby Sho in the bathtub together so there must have been pictures of mom and her when she had been a baby too, so she couldn't speak to if everything about turning into a werewolf was normal….and there was no one she could ask. The only other girl around, well person who had been born a girl, was Minegishi and she didn't want to ask them about this…then they would KNOW if she asked them about this…and also she didn't want to ask Google either because Hatori could go through people's search histories, he did it for fun even though it seemed sort of nosy, and then he would KNOW and if he knew then she would just die on the spot.

She'd had had no choice really.

So she couldn't ask anyone. Well maybe Minori because she knew a lot of things about a lot of things…but if this was as weird as Mob figure it was then Minori would have made fun of her, she had a bad habit of making fun of her friends, so she probably wouldn't ask Minori either. She probably would have had no idea what Mob was talking about, anyway, since she wasn't anything like a werewolf. She could wear shorts and short skirts and no socks and sleeveless shirts and dresses and stuff…not that Mob was jealous. She was how she was. She mostly just wanted to know if she was normal…jealousy didn't come into it at all. She wasn't jealous of people who weren't getting all werewolfy. She wasn't jealous of people who could look at themselves naked in the mirror without freaking out. She wasn't jealous at all in any way.

She really wasn't.

Change was just….a part of life. Sometimes you knew what changes were coming, like when you were going to move or when they were taking your favorite kind of strawberry milk off the market, and sometimes changes made no sense at all and came out of nowhere. Like when you got out of the bath and you had to dry off and get dressed quickly without looking because if you did look then you would see what else was different about you and then you would worry because you had no idea if you were supposed to look like that or why you looked like that all of a sudden and you wish that you could ask someone but you can't because this is private, the most private, so you just have to wait and see if it'll get any worse. If you'll wake up one morning all covered in hair like a werewolf….or something.

Or maybe this would be the end of it.

She didn't know. All she knew was that she was taller and she sort of had breasts now, they were there and they hurt when she touched them, and also she was all werewolfy now….and maybe this was just what happened to you when you grew up. She didn't know. She wished that mom had been there. Mom would have told her if she was normal or not. It was ok if mom saw her naked, she was her mom and moms gave you baths and stuff, and then she could have told Mob if she was supposed to be like this or not…and then Mob could have stopped worrying and been able to look at herself naked in the mirror again and stuff…

But she didn't have a mom anymore.

Mom was gone. That was a change that she had gotten used to. Now she was the one in charge. That was another change that she had gotten used to. Things in life changed sometimes and you had to get used to them. If they were outside of your control. Sometimes things were outside of your control. Sometimes your mom left in the middle of the night, sometimes your dad left you permanently in charge of your little brother, and sometimes you woke up one day, went to take a bath, and then got a little freaked out because all of a sudden you were turning into a werewolf and stuff. Change was just…something that you had to get used to…especially since there was nothing at all that you could do about it.

Things changed all the time.

Some things hadn't changed. Sho still really hated bath time. She knew that something bad had happened to him when it came to water but…but that did not mean that he got to just not bathe anymore. He would be sick and dirty and stuff. Also he had been to the beach that day and that meant that he smelled like the beach and also he was covered in sand and she could not just let her little brother get away with being all covered in sand and beach smell and stuff. She was just…she was just not going to let that happen. She was going to be a good big sister even if it meant that she to stand outside of the bathroom all night waiting for Sho to take a bath.

At least she had her DS to keep her busy.

She loved the game that Hatori had gotten her. He knew a lot about games and it was amazing that he had found a game with no fighting at all that wasn't a puzzle game or something. He was so smart like that. He was so smart and thoughtful…one of the most thoughtful people she knew…and she needed to stop thinking about Hatori. She needed to focus on Sho, on making sure that he took his bath…and also about how she couldn't hear any water moving at all.

She really didn't like it when he did things like this.

"Sho, are you actually in the tub?" asked Mob. She felt like she already knew that answer to that question. She couldn't hear any water moving. The facet was off and Sho…she knew that he was still in there. He hadn't climbed out the window and run away, she could still sense him, so he must have been out of the water again….

She really didn't want this to turn into one of those all night things.

She would have to text with Minori later. She was mad at her dad because he was being all unfair and talking about not going back to Japan once her school started up again even though all of her friends were there and stuff. Mob knew how she felt. It was hard being moved around all the time and stuff. She knew how bad Minori must have felt so she was happy to have been there for her friend….and she would have been there for her friend if her little brother hadn't decided that this would turn into an all night fight sort of thing….

But that was a mean way to think about her own little brother. She loved Sho more than anything.

"Yeah, totally!" said Sho. She didn't hear any water moving….but maybe he was just being super still. Maybe he was in there and taking a bath and….and she looked down at her DS. His guy was in her house…and his guy couldn't do things on his own, computer people weren't alive in there contrary to what a lot of movies wanted you to think, so Sho must have been playing with his DS…but she had checked his pockets before he went in….but maybe he had hid his DS in the bathroom again….

Sho was a very smart person like that….but Mob wished that he would have done more to use his intelligence for good.

"But Sho…then why is your character in my Animal Crossing house?" asked Mob. She wished that he would have just taken a bath already. It had been a lot easier when they had both been small enough to fit in the tub together. Then she could have washed him herself and then that would have been the end of it….but they were too big to take baths together these days…and also even if they had both been able to fit she still would not have wanted him to see her naked. They must have taken hundreds and hundreds of baths together before but now…

Now she got the feeling that they might have been too old to be taking baths together.

"Because…um….I'm playing DS in the tub." Said Sho. Mob…hoped that he had been lying to her. If that DS fell in the water then he could have gotten very hurt if not killed. Also the DS would have been ruined but she could always go to the store and buy him a new DS. She couldn't just go to the store and buy herself a new little brother. There was only one Sho in the whole world and he was irreplaceable.

"Sho! You could get electrocuted and then die!" said Mob. She didn't hear any water moving….so hopefully he had been lying to her though. She didn't want him to tell lies, telling lies was very wrong, but she also didn't want him to die of electrocution….or of anything. She wanted him to live for at least a hundred more years.

"That's a risk that I'm willing to take." Said Sho. He wasn't afraid of taking risks. That hadn't changed. He had been little, very little, and he had been able to walk on top of the garden wall without being even the tiniest bit afraid of falling. He had fallen so many times, though, time after time after time…and then he had always been able to get back up again. Even that scary time when he had broken his arm. She had seen it…and if she closed her eyes she could still see it…and if his DS fell into the water with him in the tub then he would have ended up with way worse than an arm with extra corners in it….and Mob didn't want that to happen.

Well she could always call Fukuda.

But then that would involve going over to Fukuda's house to talk to him….and she would do it if it were life or death…but she would have preferred it if Sho didn't end up in any life or death situations. Fukuda would have told dad that she had messed up. That she had let something bad happen to her little brother. Yes, that was why she didn't want to talk to Fukuda. That was the only reason. It didn't have to do with the fact that she sort of had breasts now, they were tiny but they were there, and then he would see them and then he would say something mean about her breasts like he had said about Minegishi's breasts. Mob didn't want him to say mean things about her breasts…or anything at all. She didn't even want him to notice that she had them at all. She didn't like the idea of him…or anyone really…looking at her breasts and then talking about them….even though she knew that they were unusually tiny, Minori had said so, but so were Minegishi's and he had still made fun of them….

So she REALLY hoped that Sho wasn't doing anything that would get him so hurt that she would have to call Fukuda.

"Sho….please stop playing DS and just bathe. You have to take a bath…come on. You can play Animal Crossing with me after your bath is done with." Said Mob. She really wanted him to just….listen to her. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't. This was one of those times when he didn't. It would have been a lot easier if she had been in the bathroom with him…but then if she had been in the bathroom with him then he would have wanted her to take a bath with him and she couldn't do that. She knew that it wasn't weird for brothers and sisters to take baths together, and that they had taken plenty of baths together when they had been kids, but they…they were still kids but they were not little kids anymore…and she maybe felt like they were too old to be taking baths together like that.

"I can do two things at once." Said Sho. She knew that he could do two things at once, like when he did his homeschool work and watched TV at the same time even though she wished that he wouldn't have…or when he ate dinner and drew at the same time even though she wished that he shouldn't have…or all the other ways that she wished that he just…would stop trying to multitask. She loved him, she really did, but sometimes she wished that he would have listened to her more…even though that made her a very bad big sister, maybe, because sometimes she was…not all the way happy with the way he was acting….like now.

"But…why not just do one thing at once? I feel like that would be easier." Said Mob. She tried to sound patient. She was patient. Even though she wanted to take her own bath. Even though she wanted them to have some time together before is bedtime. Even though she wanted to be able to do something besides sit outside the bathroom all night…and even though she wanted to be able to feel less…unhappy….right now. Frustrated…but she couldn't be frustrated with him. He was her little brother and she loved him and when you loved someone then you were nice to them and stuff…and she was not being very nice right now….

In the way that she felt.

Sometimes you had to be hard on someone. That was also a sign of love, Minegishi had told her, which was why they never forgave Shimazaki easily when he really messed up. But that was them. They weren't brother and sibling like she and Sho were brother and sister. Mob was a big sister and she had a little brother and big sisters always had to be nice to their little brothers. They had dad and dad was mean enough to Sho for at least ten people if not more. She had to balance dad out like mom had balanced dad out. That was something that hadn't changed since they had been little. There had to be someone there to balance out their dad and stuff and before mom had left she had been that someone...but now that someone was Mob.

"You'd think so but no." Said Sho. Mob….she loved her brother so much. She made herself stop being frustrated….even though she knew that he was still playing DS. Mom had never been frustrated with Sho, not once. So Mob couldn't be frustrated with Sho ether. That was just how their family worked. She had to be the nice one because mom had been the nice one. Dad could be nice too but he had never learned how to be nice to Sho…even though he'd had ten years to figure out how to be nice to Sho…so it fell on mom to be nice to Sho when she had been around and now that she was gone the responsibility fell on Mob.

"Little brother….please just take a regular bath. Please just scrub with soap and then use shampoo and conditioner and then….and then you can come out and we'll play Animal Crossing together. How does that sound?" asked Mob. There. She had been nice there. She had done her very best to sound nice and maybe now that she had sounded nice then Sho would listen to her and then they could just stop fighting and being frustrated….and stuff….

"I'll use soap but if you want me to wash my hair then you're going to have to come in and take a bath with me like when we were kids because I am not washing my hair tonight. I washed it last night and then two nights before that. It's clean." Said Sho. Mob wanted to tell him that hair was not something that you could just…not wash. His hair was going to get all greasy…and also it had been plenty dirty when he had gone in. He'd spent the day at the beach with Shimazaki and while Mob had no idea what it was that they had done there, she couldn't go to the beach anymore for reasons, she did know that he had come home smelling like the beach and totally covered in sand. So he really needed a bath and he could not skip his hair tonight like he had in the past….and also he should not have been skipping washing his hair on those past nights either.

"Sho…you were at the beach again today. Your hair is all sandy." Said Mob. He couldn't argue with that. He knew that his hair was sandy and he knew that he had to wash it. These were facts, not opinions, and Mob had not gotten her facts and opinions mixed up. That rarely happened to her…and she still thought that it was a fact that strawberry milk was the best kind of milk in the world even if Minegishi had said that it was just Mob's opinion that strawberry milk was the best and that, as mammals, they should not have been drinking milk past the point of being weaned and also that they should not have been drinking the milk of other animals because they were humans and not animals. That had been Minegishi's opinion…and also that had been the closest that they had ever come to having a fight in their whole friendship.

"It comes out on it's own. It always does. It's not like I glued the sand in my hair or anything. Gravity is going to make it all come out on it's own." said Sho. Mob sighed and made her aura stay still. Yes. She knew that gravity made things fall, she was the one in charge of homeschooling them, and she also knew that nobody like it when there was sand all over the house. She hoped that the next place they lived was far from the beach…and also that Sho stopped being bothered by the water. It was just a bathtub. It was too shallow for him to drown in and also if anything happened he knew that she would save him. She was his big sister, it was her job to save him, and that included saving him on the off chance that he actually ended up drowning in the bathtub….and also she had to save him from whatever the long term consequences of not taking baths were.

She was responsible for him. she was his big sister.

"I know it does. All over the house and dad complains about there being sand on his socks and also it gets all over you when you're asleep and then you wake up and you can't get back to sleep. So please just wash your hair on your own." Said Mob. If they had been younger then she could have just washed his hair on her own. She knew how to go really fast, so fast that it was done before he even knew it, and she knew how to use her powers to keep the water off of his face too. She could have gone in there with him and stuff…nothing was stopping her…well she was stopping her. if she went in there with her clothes on she would get wet and if he felt like taking a bath with her then she would end up hurting his feelings by saying 'no'….so she would stay put out here where she belonged.

"Nope. The only way my hair is getting washed is if you do it." Said Sho. Mob…knew when she had lost. Sometimes you lost and you just had to accept it and wait to try again another day. She knew that she would have to wash his bedding tomorrow because it was going to get all sandy, now, and it was going to smell like that beach…and also she knew that he was going to be itchy all night…but she didn't want to fight with him…

She loved him and when you loved someone you hated fighting with them.

"But….fine. At least….at least run a wet washcloth through your hair….I guess." Said Mob. She just wanted him in the tub at this point…but she still didn't hear any water moving. Well she had tried. She would try again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day until they grew up and Sho's wife became the person who had to give him his baths. There was always tomorrow and tomorrow…they would fight again. Sometimes they fought. They had fought for their entire lives, sometimes big fights and sometimes little fights, and that hadn't changed.

Well they fought less.

That was a thing that changed. Sometimes things changed, sometimes they stayed the same, and sometimes they stayed the same in their changes. Like how she had changed. Like how she was older and taller and her body was being all weird but she was still Mob. She was still the person who loved her little brother and took care of him…and would take care of him until…until whenever the last time she had to take care of him would be. She didn't know. She didn't know when their last bath time fight would be. She didn't know when their last dinnertime fight would be. She didn't know when their last fight over changing clothes or doing homeschool work or going to bed would be…but she did know that she wouldn't notice. She wouldn't notice just like how she hadn't noticed their last bath, either. It would pass her by…and she would be sad when she did notice….but maybe she would just had to either start noticing things or start getting used to being sad…or maybe she should just accept change.

Changes happened.

Sometimes things changed suddenly like you woke up and your mom was gone. Sometimes things changed gradually like you woke up and you had turned into a werewolf. Sometimes things changed quickly but you didn't even notice….like when you and your brother took your last bath together. Change was a thing that happened and you had to get used to it. No matter how much you hoped and wished things were always going to change….and you had to get used to the changes….even if they were unwanted or you didn't know why they were even happening….

Because, really, you didn't have a choice.


	321. A Mean Friend but a Good Teacher

Mob and Minori were friends….even if she could be sort of mean sometimes.

But it wasn't that bad. Sometimes people who you liked and who liked you could be mean. Like how Sho had been mean to her for years or like how Minegishi could be mean to people even if they liked them. Like how they called Shimazaki and idiot even though they were probably in love with him and just hadn't realized it yet. Sometimes when you liked someone, were their friend even, they could be sort of mean to you…but that was ok.

It really was.

They weren't great friends, not like she and Minegishi were friends, but they were friends still. They hung out together and did fun stuff and all of that. Minori taught her things, too, like about makeup. Mob hadn't given much thought to makeup before meeting Minori, it had just been a thing that mom had put on sometimes, but now she liked it. It was fun. Eye makeup was fun anyway. The rest of it was hard and she was still learning but she liked eye makeup…even if she did it wrong sometimes.

"Seriously? I told you that we wear pinks and purples, not blues." Said Minori. Mob nodded before she could stop herself. Minori was wiping the makeup off of her face. It was just eye makeup. Minegishi said that wearing makeup on her face was bad for her skin and she believed them. They knew about skin and stuff like that.

Well Minori knew too but Mob trusted Minegishi when it came to skin.

She trusted Minori when it came to makeup though. She knew so much about all of this. She was the one who taught Mob after all. Mob would have worn pink or purple if she had known that she would be coming here. She hadn't, she had been planning on spending the way watching TV with Minegishi and trying not to freak out because they were sick again, but then Minori had called and told her to get…herself…down there with pens and drinks so that was what Mob had done.

And that was why she was getting her face scrubbed with a makeup remover wipe.

"I'm sorry. I forgot to change my eye makeup…because you called so suddenly." Said Mob. She didn't think that she had done anything bad…that bad…but she wasn't going to argue or anything with Minori. She wouldn't even dream up of. Minori called people who argued with her b-words and Mob did not want to be a b-word.

"Yeah, well, you should have been listening to me from the start. We wear pink and purple. Got it, Suzuki?" said Minori. She sounded mean there….but that was ok. She got that way sometimes. That was just how she was as a person. Sometimes people just got mad and that was ok…even if they didn't have to get mad at you for something as simple as wearing a color they didn't like. It seemed sort of like an overreaction to Mob, the way Minori was scrubbing her face really hard and had a really mad look on her face, but Mob would never say something like that to her face. She just wanted what was best for Mob, that was all, and Mob should have listened to her. It was like how dad had to be hard on people when they didn't realize that he only had their best interests at heart.

"I get it. I'm sorry. I'll listen to you more in the future." Said Mob. That was what she said to dad when she messed up…well when she used to mess up. Dad never told her that she messed up anymore because he loved her more than he ever had before. Still, though, it worked with Minori just liked it worked with dad. Minori stopped wiping so hard. Now she didn't look so mad anymore, either, at least Mob didn't think that she looked mad. People without auras were hard to read.

"Good. See? Is that so hard? I swear….some people." Said Minori. She threw the used makeup remove napkin in the trash and then got out a tissue. She was wiping off the makeup remover, now, and she was a lot gentler. It paid to say sorry when you did something wrong….even though maybe Minori was overreacting…but that was ok. She had a lot going on that was making her mad.

Someone had been a b-word to her again.

Mob could tell. When Minori said 'some people' she meant people who had been b-words to her…which was everyone. Sometimes it felt like that anyway. All of her friends had been mean to her in some way and Mob….she couldn't even imagine what that must have been like. Friends had to get along. Friends had to always…well not always get along…but they had to get along most of the time. Even Shimazaki and Hatori got along…sometimes. Hatori was afraid of Shimazaki but Shimazaki could be sort of nice to him sometimes….on occasion…once in a while…..Mob would help them mend their friendship once she figured out how to. Mob was lucky that she only had two people in her friend group who didn't get along….

None of Minori's friends got along.

Everyone was always being a b-word to everyone else. People could be sort of mean like that. People had been mean to her, too, when she had been in school. School put you in a room with a bunch of other people and the only thing that they had in common was their age. Mob's friends all at least had being espers and working for Claw in common. They all also liked hanging out and watching TV and smoking and drinking, well that was her and Minegishi and Shimazaki, or playing videogame…well that was her and Hatori, and helping to cook sometimes and holding the knitting yarn….well that was just her and Shibata….but still. It was better to make friends the normal way than to make them from in school. She'd never had any friends when she had been in school…

But then again back then she hadn't been allowed to make friends with anyone who wasn't an esper….

But things were different now. She was Minori's friend and she was a real and true friend. She would not backstab or betray Minori in any way. She needed a real and true friend and Mob considered herself to be a real and true friend. She would always be there for Minori even if sometimes she could overreact and be mean. That was fine. Nobody was perfect. Minori got really mad for very little reason. Shimazaki acted like a crazy person. Shibata liked to pick her up and throw her. Hatori had trouble taking care of himself sometimes and also he got really scared or little to no reason sometimes. Minegishi was great though. Well sometimes they could be mean to other people, and they kept on making Mob use moderation, but they were still great.

When you had friends you put up with the bad so you could enjoy the good.

And there was good to Minori. She was nice enough to teach Mob all the things that she didn't know. Also she was always up to hang out. That was good…even if they didn't really play that much…it was still nice to hang out with her. She could be nice sometimes and Mob couldn't blame her for being as mad as she was all the time…most of the time…some of the time…sometimes. She just had a bunch of friends who were mean to each other and also her dad wasn't doing what she wanted him to, she wanted to go back to Japan but he didn't, so Minori had every right to be upset….she didn't have to take it out on Mob but that was ok too. Sometimes people took stuff out on you when they had a lot going on.

That was ok, though, because you were there and you were ready to help them in any way you could…even if you were just sitting and listening.

"What happened? Was someone mean to you again?" asked Mob. She knew that someone had been mean to Minori again. Minori only got like this when someone had been mean to her. Mob only asked because she needed to get Minori talking. She needed to get all of her mean feelings out so she could be nice again. Sort of like how Sho used to have to hit her and shout and break things before he could be nice again.

"No…well…yeah. God. This stupid bitch I went to school with complained to her parents like a baby and now her parents complained to my school and then the school complained to dad and now…now dad wants to keep her here. Like, I didn't even do anything. Some people are just too sensitive." Said Minori

"Some people are more sensitive than others." Said Mob

"Yeah, and some people are just babies. I mean, who goes running to their mom and dad about school stuff?" asked Minori

"Kids?" asked Mob. That was the only group of people she could think of that would tattle to their parents…but she also got the feeling that she had answered a question that might have been one of those statements disguised as a question….or something. She didn't know. Minori was better at talking then she was.

"Exactly! God, she is such a kid…and nobody even asked my side of the story!" said Minori. She was done wiping Mob's eyes off and now she was rubbing the primer on…a little too hard in Mob's opinion but what did she know? All she knew was that her friend was upset and getting all worked up and…and that was ok because Mob was there to help even though the only way she could think of helping was to listen. To just be there and listen…which was enough sometimes.

"It's important to get both sides of the story." Said Mob. It was also important, in addition to listening to Minori's troubles, to agree with her too. It wasn't like she was saying things that made no sense. She was right. It was always important to hear both sides of the story when dealing with stuff. That was why she always listened to Shimazaki's side of the story before she made him say sorry to Hatori for whatever mean thing he had done. He had his reasons, they just weren't ever good reasons, and that was why he had to say sorry.

"Yeah, exactly! I'm a Japanese citizen and I have the right to a full trial! Where was my representation?" said Minori. Mob blinked. Had she missed something? Trial? There had been a full on trial? Well they probably didn't just kick you out of school like that. There was probably a trial like system before they kicked you out like how you had to have a trial before you got kicked out of society….or something. She didn't know. Maybe she had misheard again. It was easy to mishear when talking to Minori. She talked really fast and used a lot of words which meant something different than what Mob expected them to mean.

"You were on trial?" asked Mob. She hoped that she hadn't actually been on trial. That sounded scary…and also Minori was not guilty. That other girl had stolen all of her friends first. She hadn't even tried to become friends with Minori, Minori had said, she had just came to her school and started stealing friends…and stealing was wrong but stealing friends was worse than wrong. Your friends were practically your family and for someone else to just come in and mess up those bonds….Mob couldn't think of a bigger crime….well besides murder and betraying dad, of course, but those went without saying.

"Ex-fucking-actly! Why was I the one on trial? I didn't even do anything! It's not my fault that little Miss 'Oh, I didn't know they were your friends' never shaves her legs. If she didn't want me to draw attention to them then she should have shaved them like a normal person…and I wouldn't have said anything if she had just stayed in her lane and stayed the hell away from mine!" said Minori

"…what?" asked Mob. She pulled her legs in under herself. She knew that it was weird, how werewolfy she was, but she didn't know that this was something that was….wrong. Well he knew that she hadn't had to deal with this before but she hadn't know that it was WRONG. Something that people would make fun of her for….mostly it had just been annoying….but at least now she knew. She pulled her socks up with her powers, these were the new ones that Shimazaki got her and they were meant for someone taller so they went up over her knees, she was glad that Minori had said something to her. She was a good friend like that, warning her about stuff, even though if Minori noticed her legs then she would make fun of her….

But that was just how she was.

"Yeah. That stupid transfer student is from one of those countries where they don't have, like, basic hygiene I guess. I bet she just gets into the tub without washing off first, too, and wears her shoes all through her house…and eats with her hands…or whatever." Said Minori. Mob…didn't always scrub off before getting in the tub because mom hadn't really made her when she had been little…and also she ate finger foods with her hands….but she at least took her shoes off when she was in the house….though she didn't have any house slippers….and also she'd had no idea that shaving her legs was a part of hygiene…but now she knew. Minori was good at these things. It hadn't even occurred to Mob that leg hair could be a hygiene thing…but maybe that was why mom had shaved her legs. Not just because the hair, the itchiness of it was annoying, but because it wasn't supposed to be there….but wait…then why didn't boys have to shave their legs?

"Um…Minori?" asked Mob. She knew that she shouldn't have interrupted like that but she had to know. Why was it ok for boys to have hair on their legs but not girls? Every boy she knew, well not Sho…well sort of. He had a really light coat of hair on his arms and legs that was hard to see. Dad did too. Well on his arms. Mob had never seen his bare legs once in her life. The other boys she knew did, though, and it just…didn't seem fair….but life wasn't fair.

"…thinks she can run me out of the country…yeah? What? This had better not be about how you want to wear blue eyeshadow. You can't. It looks terrible and you cannot be seen with me if you're going to look terrible." Said Minori

"Um….it's not about eye shadow….and you can put pink on me if you want to." Said Mob

"I was going to anyway but come on, what is it? What are you being rude and interrupting me for?" asked Minori

"I didn't mean to be rude. I just meant…um….the leg shaving thing." Said Mob

"It wasn't my fault. She shouldn't have been going to gym with her legs like that. If she didn't want me to say anything then she shouldn't have been such a bitch in the first place. She shouldn't have started things that she couldn't finish." Said Minori

"You….have to shave your legs? You don't have a choice?" asked Mob. So that was why mom went through the trouble of shaving her legs every single day…and it would have been nice of mom to have thought to tell her about that…or warn her…or something…but maybe she had been too…too sick to think of teaching Mob about that. She had been really sick when Mob had been little….

Sometimes moms got sick.

That was what had happened to Minori's mom, she had said. Her mom had gotten sick and all the best doctors in the world hadn't been able to cure her and then she had died and then that was it. She had died and then her dad had spent a lot of money trying to talk to the other side, to talk to her mom again, and he was still spending money on that. She wondered, sometimes, if her own mom was alive…and sometimes she felt mad thinking of mom being alive…even though it made no sense for her to be mad that her mom was alive. She wanted her mom to be alive…she just wanted her mom to be alive where she could be with the family….

But that was a selfish thought to think since her friend's mom was dead.

"Well, yeah, if you call being gross a choice." Said Minori with a shrug. She finished with the primer and now she was going through her eyeshadow books. She knew a lot of things about a lot of things…and Mob was happy that someone was there to teach her…especially since she knew that she didn't know a lot of things about a lot of things….about the things that a girl was supposed to know about…because nobody had ever taught her the things that a girl was supposed to know about….well someone was teaching her now and that was ok.

"It's….gross not to shave your legs?" asked Mob. Well that was nice to know….even if it made her feel gross. Her legs had never made her feel gross before…but nobody had told her that having hair on her legs was gross before. She had seen mom shaving her legs at least a thousand times in her life but mom had never stopped and explained what she was doing that for. She knew why dad shaved, he said that he couldn't have grown a beard even if he had wanted to and he didn't want to grow a beard because it didn't look neat. He had told her when she had been really little. Mom hadn't said a thing about shaving her legs even when Mob had asked. She had just said that that's what women did….which was no answer at all…not really. How hard would it have been to say that, yes, leg hair was considered to be gross and people would make fun of her if she had it? Why hadn't mom thought to say anything? Why hadn't mom….had she even cared? Had she even been thinking about what…what Mob would do when she got older? Had she even cared? No, she cared. Of course she cared. She was mom and mom…mom cared about her. Well she cared about Sho the most but she care about Mob at least a little bit….even if she had left…run away from home…

"Exactly. It's so gross. Like, who walks around like that?" asked Minori. Mob used her powers to pull her socks up even farther. She was…gross? She was happy that Minori had never seen her without her socks on. She was glad that nobody had ever seen her without her socks on…well Shimazaki had seen her…and he saw things by feeling them….and that had been weird but sort of nice but also weird…and stuff…but that was ok because he was Shimazaki and he didn't care if things were gross…but still. She had no idea that her legs were gross. Just…hairy…but not gross.

"Um…boys? I mean they don't have to shave their legs…and that's not really fair…I mean that it doesn't really seem fair." Said Mob. She wanted to ask Minori why it was ok for boys not to shave their legs but not girls….but she got the feeling that she was supposed to have already known the answer to that question…that it was just something that girls were supposed to know….

Mob didn't know everything that girls were supposed to know.

She wished that mom had told her all of the things that girls were supposed to know before she left. That way Mob could have been more like…like Minori. Like Minori and everyone else. Mob…she didn't spend a lot of time with people her own age, Minori was the only friend that she had ever had her own age, but…but she still would have liked to have known the things that a girl was supposed to know. Who had mom…who had mom thought….who had mom been expecting to….to teach….to teach her this stuff? Dad? He was a boy and he only knew about boy things. Mom…this was her job and….and Mob had to make her aura stay still….because she was starting to get a little bit mad a mom. There was no point in getting mad a mom, she was gone now, and also she was a good Daughter and she should not have been mad at her mom…

Even though she sort of was.

Minori didn't have a mom either but her mom was dead….and Mob knew that she had no right to get mad at her mom. At least her mom was still alive and stuff…maybe. She didn't know. She had no idea where mom had gone to or why she had gone away….and also she had just gone away without…without even saying goodbye or making sure that Mob would be ok. She hadn't told Mob about how she would have to shave her legs or that her breasts would hurt all the time…and she didn't even HAVE any yet…and also her skin had read bumps along her hairline and eyebrows…and also she had just know learned about makeup and…and stuff…and mom…she could have taught her SOMETHING before she had left….

But that was ok.

Mob had a friend to show her this stuff and…and she could not be mad at her mom. Even though mom had just left one day without a single warning…but Mob was still learning the stuff that she had to know. She was just learning it late and from her friend, not her mom, and that was fine. Mom…she must have had more important things on her mind…or something….when she had gone. Even though Mob had no idea what she had even been thinking when she had left….

Mob does NOT want to think about that anymore.

So she doesn't. She focuses on her friend. On what her friend is saying. On the makeup desk behind her. On the tall stack of eyeshadow books. On the way her hair is black at the roots and pink at the ends. Mob focuses on herself, too, on the way her hair is long and black…and it's been the same her whole life since mom never taught her how to do anything but braid it…and she thinks about something else because she's thinking about mom again….

She stops thinking and then goes back to listening.

"Well, yeah, it's not fair but that's life. Besides, it's not gross for boys anyway. Just girls….and boys are so gross anyway. Like, ok, there was this guy in my class who asked me out but of course I said no because he kept this tuna sandwich in his desk since the beginning of the year. I think he said that he was trying to see if it would mutate or something but really he just ended up stinking up our whole classroom and…." Minori told her more about this boy from her class…and Mob was sort of listening. Sort of. She was listening and thinking….and at some point thinking had taken over…

She had a lot to think about.

She was glad to have a friend like Minori. She was the person who told Mob these important things. She didn't have anyone else who knew about this stuff….well Minegishi knew about some stuff because they had been born a girl…but they didn't know everything. That was why Mob wasn't upset about how they hadn't warned her about how her legs were gross…or that they would get all hairy and gross…for some reason. Mob didn't know why she had gotten all hairy for no reason, it seemed like it would have been easier if she had been born like this instead of turning into a werewolf, but the why of it didn't matter.

What she did about it mattered.

What she would have to do about it mattered…and she had to do something. She couldn't be gross. She didn't want Minori to make fun of her…or anyone else…and also hygiene was important. She still wasn't entirely sure what made girl leg hair unhygienic and boy leg hair hygienic but that was just one of those things in life that made no sense, she decided, and that was ok. She just had to…to fix this. She had to figure out how to shave her legs, that was all, and how hard could that be?

Mob was glad to have a friend like Minori even if she could be a little, or very, mean sometimes…but that was ok because she taught Mob about all of the important things that she had to know about.


	322. Figuring Things Out and Making Mistakes

Stealing was wrong.

Mob knew that stealing was wrong. Nobody had ever had to sit her down and tell her that stealing was wrong, she just knew, so she knew that it would have been wrong to steal shaving cream and a razor from dad. He was the only one in the house who shaved and she knew that she was free to get her own…but then people would know that she had hairy legs and other people could not know that because then they would make fun of her….so she had no other choice….

Well it was more like borrowing than stealing.

Stealing was when you took something and kept it forever. When she had been little, when she and Sho had been little, they'd only had one ipad to share between them. Mob had been playing…well she had no memory of what game she had been playing but she knew that she had been playing on it….and then Sho had gotten very mad at her and accused her of stealing it. He had said that because he had wanted a turn with the ipad right then and there at that moment…and Mob had been a bad big sister back then because she had told him that he could have it after she had been done with it…and then he had gone to mom and told her that Mob had stolen it…

And then mom had explained about sharing and borrowing.

When you intended to give something back that was borrowing. When you were a family then you always had to borrow and lend and share because that was a part of being a family. Mob knew that mom had been talking about ipads and toys and stuff because she and Sho had been so little back then…but maybe that applied to other stuff too. She didn't know. Mom hadn't told her about this stuff. She had never asked to borrow mom's razor before…so she had no idea if this was ok…but this was dad, not mom, and he was ok with just about everything. He loved her and he let her do whatever she wanted. That was how he showed love…well that and the smothering and the cuddling and the belly rubs. Those were new. In his sleep he seemed to think that she was a cat or something….or maybe mom since he had called her by mom's name….but she isn't going to wake him up and ask. She also isn't going to wake him up to ask if it's ok to borrow his razor either. She just…isn't going to wake him up.

She does NOT need her DAD to know about this.

She doesn't even know if dad knew about things like this. When she had been little he had been gone for most of the year. He had probably never even known that mom shaved her legs and stuff. He had always been working in his office when he was home and he and mom never hung out, certainly not when she had been getting ready, and then when she had gotten sick she had just….stopped getting ready. She spent most of her day in pajamas…so dad probably didn't know about this stuff and she didn't want to have to be the one to teach him….she didn't want that at all….

And also he would know.

She didn't want dad to know anything about this part of her life. The personal part…and this felt very personal. More personal than anything else that had ever happened to her before, that she had ever had to do before, and dad…well he was dad. It would have been nice to have had someone to show her how to do this, though, but she didn't have anyone to show her. Minori would probably end up making fun of her and mom was gone…and Minegishi probably didn't do this since they didn't do a lot of girl stuff….but she could figure this out on her own.

She had no choice.

Mom hadn't thought to show her this…and she has no anger inside of her heart towards mom even though she left and never told Mob that she would get hair on her legs and under her arms…and also places that she didn't want to think about….and were you supposed to get rid of all of that hair too? She eyed dad's razor. It looked sharp. She nudged it away with her powers like it was going to jump off of the sink and attack her or something. She knew that it wouldn't come for her but…it was sharp.

She didn't trust it.

It was sharp. It had three very sharp blades and it looked like it would have taken off layers of her skin, like peeling an onion, if she gave it half a chance. She knew that people shaved their legs…and also under their arms…but she had no idea if people got rid of…all of the other hair that they had…and she didn't want to try. That was NOT a place where she wanted to put a sharp blade. Not…there…or under her arms, either. Mom had a machine for there, anyway, Mob remembered…and she wished that mom had explained what she had been doing back when Mob had been little…little enough to be able to watch her get ready. Back before she had gotten sick and stopped getting ready all together….

She didn't have a mom anymore.

She just had herself. She had herself and…and she could do this. She reached over and took dad's razor in her hand. She could do this. She could do this and this was ok. She was…she was just borrowing and…and if he had known that she had been borrowing his razor he would have been ok with this since he was ok with just about everything. She was his Daughter and he loved her…and he would not wake up and come right up to her and ask her what in the h-word she thought that she was doing holding his razor in the bathroom so early in the morning that not even the birds had woken up yet.

She had no idea what she was doing.

Well she knew what to do. She had seen mom with her leg up on the edge of the bathtub a thousand times before. You did the shaving cream and then the razor part and then you wiped whatever was left off with a washcloth and then you were done. Well Mob…she was not going to borrow any of dad's shaving cream since there was no way to give it back. What if he got up that morning and then noticed that some of his shaving cream was missing and then he figured out that Mob had taken it, since Sho was too little to shave so he wasn't a suspect, and then he asked her why she took it? Then he would know and the last thing that she needed was for dad to know. If dad knew then…then she wouldn't be able to face him again…

So she was not going to borrow any of dad's shaving cream.

You didn't need shaving cream….right? In the commercials there wasn't always shaving cream….but none of the ladies in the commercials had legs like Mob's. She pulled her socks down with her powers…nope. Nobody in the whole world had legs like hers. She had started off with legs that were a little itchy, and then very itchy, and now she had itchy werewolf legs. She could see so much black…and the black stood out against her skin…and maybe if they had been white they would have been easier to live with…but she knew nothing about bleaching hair. Well, no, she knew some things. Minegishi had taught her how to bleach and color hair before but the whole thing was complicated and hard to remember and Mob was not about to start messing around with bleach at four forty five in the morning. They had bleach by the washing machine…but that was clothes bleach…and also she had enough to worry about when it came to figuring out how to shave. She had to figure this out and then…and then once she figured this out then she would be ok….

She could do this.

She tried to make her hand stop shaking as she put the razor to the middle of her leg…well she picked it up and put it more towards the bottom because you were supposed to start from the bottom and move up…she had seen mom do that before….so that was what she was going to do. Any minute now. She had to get on with this. Dad was going to maybe get up soon, he got up between five and five thirty to go to the bathroom and then he went back to bed until six, so she had to get on with this before she had some explaining to do. She could do this. She had done harder stuff than this. She managed to get Sho into the bathroom every night, get him to eat at least one green thing a week, and also she had managed to teach him all the kanji she knew…she could do this. This was easy. This was so easy that anyone could do this…

Anyone but her.

"Mother f-wording h-word!" hissed Mob. She dropped the razor and started to jump around. She hissed over and over again, she wanted to yell but she knew better than to wake up the whole house, so she just hissed and jumped and tried to keep her powers under control-

And the laundry hamper tipped over.

The laundry hamper tipped over and now there were clothes on the ground. Mob ended up slipping on one of dad's white button down shirts and wound up on her back. She was careful as she got up. She wasn't good at getting blood out of things, Sho's blood anyway, and she figured that her blood was the same as his blood since they both had dad's blood….and she knew that he did not want his blood back so she was very careful not to drip it onto his shirt. She laid down on the ground and grabbed her leg with both hands. She could feel the blood seeping out between the cracks of her fingers…

She knew what the shaving cream was for now.

She turned her head to the side and saw that she had gotten some blood on her Olaf nightshirt. It was right there in the middle of Olaf, it looked like someone had stabbed him in the chest, and that made no sense because Olaf was a good snowman and he liked warm hugs and nobody would stab someone who liked warm hugs. She almost wanted to apologize for bleeding on him but she didn't because she was not a little kid. She was an eleven year old…who wasn't smart enough to know that the shaving cream was a necessity. Now she had blood on her Olaf nightshirt…but better her nightshirt than one of dad's every day shirts.

Dad could not know about this.

If he were to come in and he ended up seeing all of this blood he would freak out. He would pick her up and carry her to Fukuda, which he should not have done because then he would end up hurting his back, and then Fukuda would see that she had cut herself and then he would know what she had done. Also he would see her legs, which still had hair on them, and then he would probably make fun of her for them. If he made fun of people for having little breasts than he would probably also make fun of people for having hairy legs…and also he would see her breasts since she was only in her Elsa nightshirt which was sort of tight on her…and then he would have an opinion of her breasts, which was to make fun of them most likely, and she didn't want him to make fun of her breasts….or to form any opinion of them at all.

So she needed to get up.

She needed to get up and…and she needed to use her powers to clean this mess up. Cleaning the mess up was the easy part, she just put everything back in the hamper without organizing it. She would do that later since she was the one who washed all the clothes. That would be easy too. Anything would have been easier than getting up. Getting up involved moving and moving involved making sure that her blood didn't get everywhere…and also moving her bleeding leg….and it hurt so much…it hurt enough to make her curse, almost, inside of her head…

But she got up.

She got up and she pulled her socks back up to keep the blood in. They were white but…but they were all she had. She didn't have any bandages in the house. Sho was the one who was always getting hurt and when he got hurt he went to Fukuda. Mob…she let herself heal naturally when she got hurt…and she almost never got hurt in any serious way. When she did get hurt enough that she needed help she went to Minegishi. They had a whole first aid kit for when they hurt themselves gardening…and they had always been ok with helping Mob…but if she asked them for help they would KNOW and…

She felt her bracelet.

Minegishi was not the same sort of friend as Minori. They were not the sort of person who made fun of others. They told people when they were being stupid, and Mob knew that she had been stupid, but they never made fun of people…so it would be ok to…to ask them for help. They were friends after all, best friend, and it would be ok to ask them to help them stop bleeding and stuff….even if it wasn't even five in the morning yet….then again they maybe wouldn't be happy about being woken up so early especially when they had trouble sleeping…..but…

Mob could wait.

She could wait. She would rather have waiting in their house on their bedroom floor for them to wake up than to have dad or Sho wake up and see what she had done to herself. Sho would freak out, maybe as bad or even worse than dad, and then they would both try and take her to see Fukuda…and she didn't way to see Fukuda. She would rather have dealt with this all on her own with only socks to keep her leg blood in than t have had to see Fukuda and explain to him…and then have him think stuff about her….and stuff…

She made her way to Minegishi's house.

Walking was hard, putting on shoes was harder, and taking them off again was hardest. Doing all of that without making a sound was even worse. She had her powers, she used them to take off her shoes, but she had to keep her voice in as much as she could. It was very early and everyone was asleep…and she didn't want to wake them up. They were all boys and she did not want to explain this to a boy. Minegishi…was not a girl…but was the closest thing Mob had to a girl who could help her. They were a they but they had also not been born a boy and…and Mob just felt more comfortable with them knowing than anyone else in the whole world. If mom had been around she would have helped…maybe. She didn't know. Sho…Sho had been for mom and she had been for dad…and she had no idea how mom would have treated her if they had still been in the Castle. If she had still be there with them and…and stuff. If she had been there she could have made sure that this had never happened….or maybe she would have been too busy with Sho. Mob didn't know. All she knew was that she didn't want her mom right now, she wanted Minegishi, and Minegishi was actually there.

They were there and they were asleep.

Mob felt their aura as she slipped her shoes off in the genkan, well the space that they had made a genkan out of, and they were asleep. Mob was careful to face her shoes the right way with her powers. Just because she was in pain didn't mean that she got to be impolite to her friends. She decided to face everyone's shoes the right way while she was there. Shibata's had been the only shoes facing the right was. Minegishi's had been facing the wrong way, Hatori's had been on top of one another, and Shimazaki's had been pointing towards Minegishi's. She left his shoes where they were, she just turned them, in case he forgot where they were. Even in pain she could not do something so mean to one of her friends…

Even if she caught him doing something mean.

She made her way into the living room from the genkan as best as she could. She had expected everyone to be asleep, it was very early, but she felt the familiar shift of energy that showed Shimazaki was awake and teleporting…and she was glad that he was blind. He couldn't see the blood on her sock…and also he already knew what her legs looked like. Well felt like. He had felt them that time when they ate the acid covered sugar cubes…and he had been trying to read them…and stuff…and thinking about that, about how his skin had felt against hers, it made her stomach feel all…sort of like when she thought about Hatori only not as bad…

And the feeling went away just as fast as it came.

Because she had walked in on him doing something mean. Mob could sense him with her aura and see him with her eyes. There wasn't a lot of light in that room, just the TV that Shibata left on, and she could see that he was still in his sleep clothes…if shorts counted as sleep clothes….and she could see that he was trying to steal the waffle maker from Shibata. Shibata slept clutching the waffle maker in his hands now because Shimazaki kept on taking it to melt caramels in even though he knew full well that caramel waffles were not made that way….

Five in the morning and already there was going to be a fight.

"Shimazaki! Stop that!" whispered Mob. She did not want there to be a fight. This day had already started off badly enough. She did not need a fight on top of what she had done to herself. Shimazaki stopped what he was doing, He still had his hands on the waffle maker but he had stopped pulling. Now his aura was on hers. He was paying attention to her. He wasn't facing her, he didn't have to, but he was still paying attention to her.

It made her feel weird.

He could tell, probably, that she had hurt herself. She wasn't worried about him making fun of her. They weren't like that. The only person he ever made fun of was Hatori but that was just because Hatori had confessed to both being in love with the love of Shimazaki's life and also wanting to cook them and eat them, and Minegishi was probably the love of Shimazaki's life since he had spent a lot of their sugar cube time trying to tell them he loved them, so it was understandable that Shimazaki would have had sort of a problem with Hatori…a problem which Mob would fix as soon as she figured out how to. She didn't feel weird because he knew that she had gotten hurt, or that he was going to tease Hatori later, no she just felt….weird. Not as bad as when Hatori was near but just….that same sort of feeling….but less…

Maybe because he had kissed her.

Well he had put his hand over her mouth and then kissed his hand…which was not the same….and also he'd told her not to tell Minegishi and she didn't see why she had to hurt her friend like that…if that would hurt them….it hadn't been a real kiss and Mob hadn't felt like this at the time, because of the sugar cubes, but now when she thought about it…and about how Shimazaki had said that he would kiss her for real when she got older….well she didn't want that. She didn't want to kiss him or be his girlfriend or steal him from Minegishi, best friends did not do that to each other, she just felt sort of….

Warm and slightly tingly inside.

But that feeling wasn't that strong and the pain in her leg, mixed with the annoyance she felt at the fact that he was going to break another waffle maker even though he knew for a fact that it bothered Shibata when he did that, chased that feeling away. She was mostly just…well it was there but not as bad as it could have been…and she mostly just focused on the pain in her leg. It hurt. It hurt and she could feel the sock sticking to her cut…and she didn't know how she could have had that much blood in her body…but there it as seeping through her sock at about five in the morning while she stopped one of her friends from breaking her other friend's waffle iron.

This was not at all how she had seen her morning going.

"Hey, you want some waffles?" asked Shimazaki. People had always said, for as long as he could remember, that he had no sense of tact. Stupid people said that. Well stupid people and Toshi, who could never be stupid, said that. Well he did have a sense of tact. He smelled blood. At this point in his life he knew exactly what blood smelled like and he smelled it, fresh blood, on her. Someone without tact would have been all 'oh my fucking God you're bleeding'. Well he had more tact than to draw attention to when he smelled blood on someone who could have ketchup packet times. That didn't smell like ketchup packet blood, and actually once he focused on her he could sense a very nasty cut on her leg, and he was glad he didn't say anything.

Because he had more tact than that.

And also if that had been ketchup packet times he would have been an asshole to draw attention to them. He had learned years ago never to bring that up. He wondered if he should bring up the cut on her leg. He knew how to dress a wound, he had done it before, but also he wanted waffles…but wounds were worth more than waffles….but once Shibata woke up it would all be over…but also caramels melted into the shape of a waffle and then dunked in pudding were delicious…..

He needed a minute to think.

"No thank you…because I know that you're just going to melt caramels together. Please don't do that. You know that it bothers Shibata when you do that…and also he'll make you waffles if you ask nicely enough." Said Mob. She watched him as he sighed and let go of the waffle maker. She watched his tattoos move as he sighed. She had never given much thought to them…but she liked them, she decided. They were pretty…and also she didn't taste black pepper when she looked at them…anymore. She had back when they'd had sugar cube times….and those had been good times…even if her brain had decided that she missed her little brother so much that it had to invent a new one for her. She wondered what other stuff her brain would come up with if she did that again….

She had promised Minegishi that she would never do that again.

Not without them around, anyway, and that was…she wanted to do that with her best friend. To see what they saw and to have them see what she saw…she got the feeling that was what had happened even though she knew that her mind was hers alone….it had still been a nice time. She wanted to do that again…and stuff. But she wasn't going to because she had made a promise…even though she had felt more scared, more confused, and also more safe and more loved then in that bed with Shimazaki holding onto her and telling her to look at him, shouting at her to look at him, then at any other time….well it was in the top ten times of her life.

It had been nice.

But it was not going to happen again. She was in pain and she was bleeding and she needed to do something about the fact that she was in pain and she was bleeding…and she also had to save the waffle maker…and also everyone's sleep because if he tried to make a caramel waffle then the whole house would fill with smoke again and everyone would be tired and grumpy and stuff…and she did not want that…she did not want that at all….

She just wanted everything to work out ok.

"Fine, you win. You're lucky that it's too early for me to argue with you. Anyway, you want me to dress that cut for you? It feels like a nasty one." said Shimazaki. He teleported over and felt her leg…well the wet sock the covered it. What the fuck even was this? Had she gotten into a fight with a potato peeler or something?

"Um….no thank you. Minegishi…they know how to fix my cuts….um…but thank you for your offer. I'm just going to….to go and see if Minegishi is up yet. Good morning." Said Mob. She felt….weird. She felt weird and she didn't know what to do with this weird feeling so she went off to Minegishi's room. She knew that she had been rude there, she would say sorry later, but she really….needed to get this cut looked at.

So that was what she did.

She knew that she was not supposed to let herself into Minegishi's room unless it was an emergency…and maybe this was an emergency. She had no idea what she was going to do about this, and also she had no idea how much blood she could safely lose and still be able to be alive, so this maybe counted as an emergency. So it was ok for her to let herself into Minegishi's room, close the door of course because they liked their privacy, and then make her way across the room, and then gently shake them awake so they could help her fix their bleeding leg.

At least that had been the plan.

Minegishi kept the blinds shut when they slept. Also they didn't have a nightlight, not that she and Sho had a nightlight, sometimes Sho just needed to have a light on to sleep for reasons that had nothing at all to do with being scared of the dark. He wasn't, he just needed to be able to know where he was when he woke up sometimes, and he thought that needed a light for that was worse than being afraid of the dark. Well that was just something that made no sense….but Mob didn't argue with him. Having a light on was better than being in the dark.

Especially when you had to cross a room with piles of books on the floor.

Mob had almost made it to Minegishi's bed when she tripped and fell. She fell into the mattress and the bedframe….and that ended up being the opposite of what she had wanted. She had wanted to wake Minegishi up gently so they wouldn't be mad, and also they didn't react well to being woken up suddenly for reasons that they had said they would tell Mob when she got older, but now they had woken up suddenly….

And Mob was all tied up in vines.

It had happened so fast that Mob hadn't even had time to react. One minute she had been dealing with the pain of falling and the next she had been all tied up in vines…and they sort of hurt. She could hear Minegishi getting up and she knew that they were not going to be happy with her…because they had told her a bunch of times before that they didn't want her to just walk into their room….but this was an emergency! Or at least really important.

"Mob? What the hell? It's not even dawn yet!" said Minegishi. They spoke in a normal tone of voice even though they knew that people were trying to sleep. They didn't care. They had been trying to sleep. Mob knew that sleep did not come easy and then she had just let herself in and…and Minegishi let her go. They had reacted without thinking. She was Mob, not a threat at all, and she probably had a good reason for waking them up at this godawful hour of the morning.

Hey, maybe Suzuki had died and everyone could walk away from this madness…they were probably not so lucky.

"I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you….but I cut myself and…and usually when I cut myself you fix it." Said Mob. She hoped that they weren't mad at her. They didn't feel mad….at least their aura didn't. Mob didn't know. She turned on the light so she could see them better…and now they felt upset…but that was probably because of how she had turned the light on just now….and she hadn't been thinking….but she hadn't been doing much thinking at all this morning.

"Mob! Fuck! Warn a person when you're going to do that!" said Minegishi as their eyes burnt in ways that they had never thought possible. This was not how they had planned to be spending the wee hours of the morning. They had planned to have been sleeping like all of the other sane people in the world. Well now that dream, like so many others, was dead and buried….but that was fine. Mob had cut herself….somehow…and she needed help and she didn't want to go to that healer and Minegishi could not blame her. That guy was a two day old microwave reheated French fry with no salt. They were amazed that Suzuki kept him around considering how much his favorite kid disliked the guy.

But they were not awake enough to try and understand the mind of Suzuki. It was too early for that shit.

"Sorry! I just….I'll go. I wasn't thinking and I haven't been thinking all morning and I'm sorry for waking you up and also for that thing with the light and…and I'll just go now." Said Mob. She turned around but a hand around her arm stopped her. She heard the bed creak and then Minegishi turned her around.

"No, it's fine, you can stay…and you said something about a cut?" asked Minegishi. They checked the time on their phone. Five something in the morning….how had Mob managed to hurt herself at this ungodly hour? Heh. Maybe she and that brother of hers really were related after all.

"This cut." Said Mob a she nodded and put her leg up on the bed. She rolled down her sock and showed Minegishi the cut on her leg…and it looked worse now in the light. She could see the strip of her skin where she had tried to shave….and at least the hair was gone….along with the skin….

It was gross looking.

She knew that Minegishi thought so too. She knew that her leg was all bloody and gross and now she would have a scar and then not only would people think that she was gross because she had werewolf legs but also because she would have a scar there too and this….this was the worst! Minegishi probably thought so too. That was why they sighed and got up from their bed. They probably thought that she was so gross and-

Oh, they were just going to their messenger bag.

"Mob….do I even want to know how that happened?" asked Minegishi. It looked like someone had tried to peel her like a carrot…and for a moment they wonder if her brother was back to being a little monster. He had never done anything that bad before but he was getting older and bolder and he had it out for anyone Ryou showed positive attention towards…and at some point Ryou was going to have to do something about that….and if her brother had done that then…well…Minegishi didn't know what they would do since that was not their way, hurting kids, but they were not just going to let that slide….if it had even been that kid in the first place.

"I…tried to shave my legs." Said Mob quickly. Minegishi was staring at her now. They had their first aid box in their hands and Mob wished that they would come over and help her already. She knew that she should not have done any of the things that she had done, she knew that she had been really dumb, and she knew that she had made a mistake…and now she just needed her friend to help her, that was all.

"With what? A butcher knife?" asked Minegishi. That was….well first of all Mob was eleven and should not have had to worry about that and second of all somebody needed to teach Mob that you were supposed to shave off your leg hairs…not the skin they grew out of!

"…my dad's razor. Can you fix it and…and not tell me that I was being dumb? Because I knew that I was being dumb when I did it…and I know now that I was being dumb…so please don't tell me that I was being dumb." Said Mob. She closed her eyes and drew her knees up to her chest. She felt Minegishi's aura getting closer and closer until she felt a dip in the bed and a hand gently pushing her legs down below her waist where they belonged.

"I'm not going to tell you that you were dumb. You messed up, that's all, happens to everyone." Said Minegishi. They had to be nice…even though she really wanted to know how someone got that bad of a cut shaving. They hadn't shaved their legs since….well since they had been about sixteen or seventeen…but even then they had never made quite such a mistake….but then again they hadn't been eleven years old shaving with whatever crap razor Suzuki used. Mob was just a kid and she needed guidance and understanding and….and Minegishi was the closest thing to an adult with half a brain in her life…so certain responsibilities fell to them….

Like teaching Mob how to shave, apparently.

"It does? This happened to you, too?" asked Mob. She felt….better. She felt better and Minegishi hadn't even started to clean her cut or anything yet. It felt….good…to know that someone else had messed up as badly as she had. She couldn't ever picture Minegishi worrying about people making fun of them for the way they looked, they didn't care what most people thought actually, and she couldn't picture Minegishi at her age borrowing their dad's razor and cutting themselves on accident…but she didn't need to picture it to know that Minegishi was telling the truth.

"I've cut myself shaving before….but not this badly…but it happens. Come on, I'll get this cleaned up for you and then after we get some sleep I'll show you how to shave. Alright? Sounds good?" Said Minegishi. Yup. They were going to teach Mob how to shave before she skinned herself alive on accident. Even though they hated shaving…it was for Mob. It was for Mob and for Mob they would do…a lot of stuff that they hated doing.

"Minegishi…thank you. I would like that a lot." said Mob. She had messed up but…but Minegishi was going to show her what to do…and she wished that she had just gone to them in the first place. They were her friend and…and she didn't care if they knew that she had gross, hairy, werewolf legs. They would never be mean to her, they were her friend, and they would always be there for her. They would never be mean to her and they would teach her the things she needed to know.

She was so happy that she had a friend like Minegishi.

She was happy that she had someone who was there for her, who would teach her how to do things, and who…who would always be there for her. If she needed to know something then Minegishi would teach her and…and Minegishi would always be there for her whenever she needed to know something or just….just needed someone. She wouldn't wake up one day and they would be gone and she would be all alone to figure stuff out….

Minegishi would always be there for her. They were her best friend.


	323. Shaving Lessons for Beginners

Mob had never seen Minegishi's legs before.

Well she must have, at some point, and maybe she just couldn't remember. This seemed sort of like the thing she would have remembered, though, since her legs weren't nearly as werewolfy as Minegishi's. No wonder they always wore long pants. Mob would have too. She forgot, sometimes, that their hair was black. She had half been expecting Minegishi's legs to have been lavender like their hair was…but this was not an anime, people did not have naturally lavender hair, and Minegishi's hair was black like most people's was in Japan. They had black hair and she had black hair and they both had black hair on their legs and now they were going to get rid of it.

Because that was what you were supposed to do.

Minori had said so and Minori always knew best about these things. She was the one who went to school with people their own age and she was the one who had friends their age and stuff. Most of Mob's friends were adults and they treated her like an adult…and in a lot of ways she was an adult…but she as still a kid and she didn't know all the things that adults knew. Nobody had ever thought to teach her…and really nobody was around to teach her. Mom was gone and all of her friends were boys.

Well Minegishi wasn't a boy.

They did boy things but that didn't make them a boy. They weren't anything. Mob still didn't fully understand that but I wasn't for her to understand. Minegishi was a they and in being a they that meant that they did boy things and girl things, and didn't count themselves as either, and that was why Mob had never thought that they would have done this for her…and also she had been worried about them knowing but now she knew that she had nothing to worry about. Even if they did know they would never make fun of her for this…or tell her that she was gross or anything like that…and not just because they were in the same boat, either, no.

Best friends did not make fun of best friends.

So Mob wasn't embarrassed or worried or anything like that even though her socks were down and Minegishi could see what had become of her. They were her friend and they would never make fun of her and she would never make fun of them. They had it even worse than her, actually, but she didn't draw attention to that either. This might have been something that they had been embarrassed about since they never wore shorts and stuff. She didn't know. They might have just not thought to get rid of their leg hair because they didn't consider themselves to be a girl. Mob didn't know. All she knew was that she was glad that she had someone to teach her what to do about all of this.

Because she did not want to end up cutting herself again.

"Are you sure you want to do this? Once you start it's hard to stop." Said Minegishi. They felt exposed standing there in some short they had borrowed from Ryou. They hated shorts. They didn't like people seeing their legs, they didn't like having their legs all exposed to the open air, and they especially didn't like shaving. They were an adult, they had body hair, that was just how adults were meant to look. Shaving irritated their skin and left them with itchy stubble that they knew was going to keep them up for however long it was going to take to get back to this level of growth….but for Mob they would go through with this. She needed them and they…well they were the closest thing to a stable adult in her life. Her mother was dead, most likely, her father wasn't winning any parenting awards, and Mob could not be trusted to teach herself this so this, amongst other things, fell to Minegishi. God, they were never having kids. Mob was enough kid for them.

"I want to…and I already started. See?" asked Mob. She put her foot up on the rim of the tub and showed Minegishi her cut. It had seemed worse than it was because of all the blood. She had been worried that she had cut down to the bone or something but she hadn't. she had just taken off some skin from the middle of her leg but Minegishi had wiped it down with an antibacterial wipe and then taped some gauze over it. It wasn't that bad, not really, but she didn't want to have to go through that again….and she wouldn't have to.

"Yeah, I've seen it. Very…thorough." Said Minegishi. That had not been fun. Who wanted to be woken up at five in the morning to Mob bleeding everywhere because she had tried to skin herself alive? That had been worse than waking up at seven in the morning to Ryou trying his best to burn the house down because he liked to melt caramels together for some unholy reason….and that hadn't been fun either…actually this whole morning had not been fun….but this was life and life was not always fun.

This was not going to be fun.

"Well Mob, this is not going to be fun. Just warning you." Said Minegishi. They had one of Ryou's razors and his shaving cream beside them. They had to steal from someone and that someone was going to be him. Hatori wasn't at the point where he shaved yet and Shibata…well he was touchy about his stuff thanks to Ryou and his complete lack of respect for other people's property. Not that Minegishi was one to talk. Yes, they were being a hypocrite. It had nothing to do with the unspoken agreement between them and Ryou that what was theirs was his and what was his was theirs. It had nothing to do with whatever upgrade their…situationship…had gone through….

It was way too early for any of this.

They had two things to deal with right now, Mob and Ryou, and they were choosing Mob. Ryou had been an idiot again, he brought it on himself, and Mob at least had an excuse. She was eleven and nobody had thought to teach her not to shave dry. So that was where Minegishi came in. They were going to help her through this and then they were going to lay down with a beer, a bar of chocolate, and a hot water bottle…and that was going to be the end of that. A quick shaving lesson and then they could lay down and just….be still for a very long time.

Still and itchy, very itchy, because they going to end up with a one way ticket to stubble city…and they hated stubble city…but it was worth it. For Mob.

"I didn't think it was….I mean it never looked fun when I saw my mom do it." Said Mob. She touched her leg. It hadn't been fun when she had done it either. The whole thing seemed like a lot of very dangerous work, maybe, but it was necessary work.

"Didn't seem like you were having fun when you were trying your hand at it, either." Said Minegishi. They put their leg up on the tub next to Mob's. That cut…they hoped that cut didn't end up getting infected. Then she would have had to deal with Fuckuda and that was a fate that Mob did not deserve.

"I think that maybe I should have used shaving cream for this." said Mob as she felt the gauze on top of her cut. It still hurt when she touched it but it had stopped bleeding a while ago. That was good. She had been worried, when she and Minegishi went back to sleep, that she would have ended up getting blood all over their bed. She hadn't, though, so that was a good thing.

"You think?" asked Minegishi rolling their eyes like they were the one who was eleven. This kid….well Minegishi didn't blame her. What did she know? She was just a kid and…well Minegishi had taught themselves…but they were a different person than Mob was. Mob needed guidance and that was ok. Mob needed someone, an adult in her life, who could guide her.

And Minegishi was the only person who could provide it.

There was so much, so very much, that Mob was going to have to be taught…and Minegishi was going to stick to the shaving lesson for now. They were on day three, the worst day, and they didn't have the energy to give Mob the full talk…and they had no idea what the full talk would even entail. The only talk that they had gotten pretty much boiled down to 'it bleeds, babies come out of it, and boys aren't allowed in it' and that had been it. Well Mob…she was eleven. She could only handle so much and Minegishi…they had no clue what Mob could and could not handle. Love, sex, reproduction, body image, giving consent, getting consent, all of it. There was so much that Mob needed to be taught…

And Minegishi…they needed time to prepare…and to marshal their energy too…

"Yes. I think that they invented shaving cream so people didn't cut themselves." Said Mob. She wished that mom had told her what the shaving cream had been for back when Mob had been watching her…but maybe that was just the sort of thing that she should have known on her own. She didn't know. Without mom around it seemed like she had to figure out everything herself…or from her friends. Minori told her what was important but Minegishi helped her out when she needed it…

Like in times like these.

She needed help and Minegishi was going to help her. She wondered if dad was planning on helping Sho with all the stuff that boys were supposed to know, that Mob didn't know, because that was dad's job. That was why people had both a mom and a dad, she thought because there were things that boys were supposed to know and things that girls were supposed to know…and she wished that mom had taken the time to show Mob the stuff that she should have known….

But that was ok….because it was what it was. Mob had Minegishi, at least, and Minegishi was way better at this sort of thing than mom would have been…even though that was a mean thought to think about her own mother…and stuff…

It was mean but it was true.

"Why didn't you use it, then, instead of skinning yourself like a potato?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. They wondered if her skin was just as finicky as theirs. Ryou's shaving cream was not going to be easy on their skin, they knew as much, and they were going to have to deal with…for Mob. This was all for Mob and she was worth it.

"Because then my dad might have noticed and then if he had noticed he would have known that I had shaved my legs…and I don't want my dad to know.' Said Mob

"Your dad doesn't have the right to tell you that you can't shave your legs. It's your body and you're the only one who can make choices about it." Said Minegishi. Suzuki seemed like he would have been the type to tell Mob what she could and could not do with her own leg hair. He already forbade her from cutting and coloring her hair. He was a controlling asshole…and Minegishi wished that there had been something that they could do about that controlling asshole…but they had fought him before and lost…so they were doing whatever they could for Mob now in whatever way they could. He seemed like the type to lose his mind over this but…well….it was better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. Not that Mob ever should have had to ask permission to shave her own goddamned legs.

"He didn't say anything about me not being allowed to shave my legs….I just don't want him to know that my legs are all gross and hairy and stuff." Said Mob. Dad knowing….dad knowing would have been the worst. Dad could not know about the hair on her legs or under her arms or….or other places which of course she would never talk to her own dad about. She wondered if she had to get rid of all the hair….but this was already a lot. She loved Minegishi and she knew that Minegishi loved her too…but she didn't want Minegishi to know about anything else that was different about her. Private. The whole thing was just…private.

"There's nothing wrong with having hairy legs. There's nothing gross about it. You're supposed to have hair on your legs, it's part of growing up." Said Minegishi. They should have warned Mob about this. God. They should have warned her about this….but they hadn't thought to warn her about this. Nobody had warned them about this. They had figured it all out on their own…and they had to warn Mob about…about so much…but they would stick to one thing at a time. Certain talks were best had when they'd been able to stand upright without pain shooting through their body….and they needed to sit down…and they would. In a minute. When all of this was done.

"I figured that it was a part of growing up since my mom shaved her legs…but it's gross if you're a girl. Minori said so." Said Mob. She wondered if she had said the wrong thing. Minegishi didn't have a lot of an aura but they could still make their aura flare…and also it flared on it's own….and maybe it didn't have anything to do with her. Sometimes their aura just flared for no reason when they got sick. Mob could tell that they were still sick. They would stop being sick by the seventeenth. Monthly illness, they had said, it never got any easier….but Mob still felt sort of guilty for putting them through this. When this was all done with then they could camp out all day in the living watching that anime that Minegishi liked a lot and stuff.

"Again with Minori?" asked Minegishi. God, that girl. Minegishi had never met the famous Minori but they didn't much like what she had been teaching Mob. She didn't need to be self-conscious about something as stupid as leg hair. It was hair, it grew on her legs, that was it. Mob didn't need to feel self-conscious about her body…but there was nothing that Minegishi could do about that. Growing up sucked and it seemed that there was nothing that could be done to avoid it, it seemed…but Minegishi still felt crappy that Mob had to feel this way about herself.

"Yes. She said that it was gross for girls to have hairy legs. Boys can have hairy legs but not girls, she said, and she knows about stuff." Said Mob. The rule didn't seem fair but rules were rules. She didn't decide the rules yet so she just had to follow them…but when she made the rules she was going to tell people that they could do whatever they wanted to with their own legs.

"Seriously?" asked Minegishi. They shook their head. They could not have heard that right. Where had Mob even HEARD that stupidity?! They made themselves calm down. The spider plants were becoming overgrown. They needed to keep calm and…and undo whatever stupidity Mob had been taught.

"Yes. That's the rule." Said Mob  
"Uh-huh. You know I was born a girl, right?" asked Minegishi. Well now that was just the stupidest thing that they had ever heard. Double standards. All the fucking double standards that Mob should not have had thunking around in her head. It. Was. Hair. It grew. It grew no matter what you were. The value of it did not change just because you had one x chromosome or two.

"I know. But you aren't a girl anymore. You're not anything. Well you're non binary, Minori taught me that word, and that means that you're not a boy or a girl." Said Mob. She was happy that she knew the right word for it. She didn't understand it, not fully, but she was going to do her best. Minegishi was Minegishi and boy or girl they were her friend.

"Well I was still born a girl and, hey, look at this. Lots and lots of leg hair." Said Minegishi. They patted their leg for emphasis. God, they were going to miss this. It had taken years to get this hair this soft. They were not looking forward to the stubble and then the coarse new growth…but this was for Mob so it was worth it.

"More than me." Said Mob. She didn't know if she was being mean when she said that. It was just a fact. Minegishi had hairy legs than her. Maybe it was because they were seventeen years older than she was. Maybe that was just how your legs looked when you grew up. She didn't know. But she did know, however, was that she didn't want werewolf legs like that. That must have been so itchy all the time. No wonder Minegishi always wore long pants.

"Exactly. There's nothing gross about it for anyone. If you're just doing this because you're worried about what other people think then….well it's your body and your choice…but make sure that you're making this choice for the right reasons." Said Minegishi. Peer pressure was a bitch and a half. Minegishi hadn't had to deal with that since they had been Mob's age. The group home uniform had come with long socks but still, everyone had found other reasons to make fun of them, and they had been young enough to care somewhat. They had stopped caring, eventually, once they had that last growth spirt with their powers….and they did not want Mob to end up like them….but they also didn't want her to grow up insecure….this was hard. This thing, this close to parenting thing, was hard to figure out. They were trying to do their best….and hopefully their best was going to be good enough.

"But….Minori said it was gross." Said Mob. She trusted Minori because Minori knew about stuff like this. Minegishi knew stuff….but maybe not about stuff like this…or maybe they did. She didn't know. She just didn't want to get made fun of.

"Did she?" asked Minegishi with a shake of their head. Mob could have filled books with all of the things that this Minori girl had told her. Minegishi wanted to tell her that her friend was starting to, had sounded for quite some time like, a little bitch but they weren't going sit there and go on and on about all the faults they had found with an eleven year old they had never met.

"Yes. She says that it's gross and a girl in her school got made fun…well she made fun of that girl…because her legs were all hairy. Minori said that she had to because her friends betrayed her to hang out with the transfer girl. Minori said that she needed to be like that…and she can be sort of mean to other people…but that's just how she is. She says that sometimes you have to be hard on people about things. Minori says-" said Mob. She could have gone on all day about the things that Minori had said….but they didn't have all day. She was hungry and she had help get the caramel out of the waffle maker…and also if Sho hadn't eaten any poptarts she would have to go home and feed him…and other stuff that she had to do.

"Minori says a lot of things, doesn't she?" asked Minegishi. They had heard about enough out of Minori….and they had never even met the little monster.

"Yes. She tells me important things like how we have to wear pinks and purples and why only she can wear crop tops and why all of her friends and b-words and about-" said Mob

"Mob, I get it. She says a lot of things. You don't have to listen to everything she says, you know. Your life is your own." said Minegishi. That was the best way that they could say it. Mob's life was her own and she needed to take as much control over the life as she could…as much as she could with how her father controlled her. Mob…she needed to stop taking everything that she was told as gospel. Especially the things her eleven year old friend told her about life. Children were not supposed to learn from other children.

"I know…but I want to be normal. I want to be normal and she knows about being normal…and I want to get back to normal, too. I don't like it when my legs get all itchy and stuff. It's annoying and it wakes me up and I have to wear long socks all the time…and I don't like wearing long socks all the time. I hate having werewolf legs." Said Mob. She shouldn't have complained. She knew that she should not have been complaining because Sho had it a lot worse. He had to wear long pants and long sleeves all year round because he was covered in scars. She knew that having werewolf legs was nothing compared to how Sho was covered in scars….but she still didn't like having werewolf legs.

"Werewolf legs?" laughed Minegishi

"Yes, I look like a werewolf." Said Mob

"Then what am I?" asked Minegishi

"You're a werewolf too…sorry." said Mob

"Should I ask Ryou if he has a silver razor, then?" asked Minegishi with a laugh.

"Should we use one?" asked Mob

"Well do you know of any other way to cure being a werewolf?" asked Minegishi

"I didn't mean for real. I just meant that we were all furry and stuff like werewolves." Said Mob

"I knew, I was just trying to be funny." Said Minegishi

"Oh. Ok. You were very funny….but do we really need silver razors?" asked Mob

"No, this is going to do just fine. What you really need is a good body razor. There are differences between men's razors and women's razors, not much but the little differences add up." Said Minegishi

"Um…should we got get a girl's razor then?" asked Mob

"No, this is going to work just fine. Next time we're at a store I'll show you what to get. The kind with the moisturizer in them, those are good, and the kind with the swivel head…what you want is something that can move with your skin. Ryou's are ok for now." Said Minegishi

"He's not going to be mad is he? That we're borrowing from him?" asked Mob

"Probably not." Said Minegishi

"Pr-probably?" asked Mob

"Mob….fine. Ryou! Hey!" shouted Minegishi. They didn't have to do much shouting, he could hear like a safecracker, and he always came when he was called…and also when he wasn't. He either had a sixth sense for when people were talking about him or he could just hear that well. Either way he always came when he was called.

And Minegishi did not feel self-conscious.

Mob did, they could tell. Her body language became more closed off and her aura came in close, too. She tugged her socks up, too, even though she knew that Ryou didn't really see clothes…or maybe she didn't, actually. It had taken them a while to figure out how Ryou's 'vision' worked. He could see the shape of things, he could see movements, and the more he focused the more motion and shape he saw. Clothes didn't really factor in when he saw people. He could see the shape of things but he saw bodies before anything…so people were always essentially naked to him…and maybe it was best that nobody told Mob about that.

For everyone.

"I've been summoned?" asked Shimazaki as he teleported in and took in what was going on. He could feel Mob and Toshi but he couldn't smell any of their skin stuff…so not a spa day. Damn, he liked spa day. It always smelled so good around here. Not that Toshi didn't always smell good, of course, because they did. They were Toshi of course they did.

"Can Mob and I use your shaving cream and razors?" asked Minegishi

"Yeah, if you need to…but you never shave your legs." Said Shimazaki

"Well Mob needed a practical demonstration." Said Minegishi with a shrug. They knew that Ryou liked them, the hair on them, the way it felt under his fingers. He liked fuzzy things….and they felt almost guilty but…but their body was their own and what Ryou liked and did not like about them did not factor into their decisions about their body. He didn't factor into their decisions just like they didn't factor into his decisions….God…that damn skin portrait….they made an effort not to look at good but very creepy portrait of themselves that Ryou had gotten. They still didn't know why he had done that to himself. They saw each other every day. He was never going to see that woman again. He had loved her…and now he loved them….

And Minegishi did not want to think about this right now.

"Wait, is that how you cut yourself?" asked Shimazaki. He tried his best to stifle a laugh. That was hilarious…and he was only laughing because he had done the same thing to himself. Not his legs, no the forest would grow long and tall for at least a thousand more years, but he had taken a hold of his dad's razor when he had been fourteen and he was amazed that he hadn't left a scar from that. Shaving cream. If you thought you'd put on enough you'd better put on even more just to be safe.

"Yes…but don't laugh. It was an accident." Said Mob. Shimazaki thought that it was funny…and it wasn't. It had hurt a lot. That was why Mob didn't stop Minegishi from elbowing him in the stomach even though hitting people was wrong.

"I'm not laughing at you. I'm just laughing because the same thing happened to me. Not the leg shaving thing, no, I accidentally took a chunk out of neck back when I was like fourteen." Said Shimazaki

"I can't tell." Said Mob. He had scars but none of them were on his face. He had scars on his back on his chest and some were on his arms and legs too but none were on his face.

"I know. I'm amazed I didn't end up with a scar." Said Shimazaki. She was being weirdly closed off. He hated it when she got like that. She was so boring when she was like that and she didn't do boring...well he didn't do boring and he hated it when she was boring…and how she could possibly be boring when her brother was so much fun he would never know. He wondered what Sho was up to today. Maybe they could go and throw rocks at people or set birds free from cages or something. Fun Sho stuff like that.

"You didn't." said Mob. She stopped looking at him. She liked looking at him, his tattoos were very interesting, and that was why she liked looking at him…though why she got weird Hatori feelings when she looked at him sometimes.

"Don't know why you want to shave your legs though. That's not going to make them tell a coherent story, you know." Said Shimazaki. There, that got her smiling again. He could hear her aura and when he focused on her he could see her expression.

"Stop reading people's skin, Ryou, it's never a coherent narrative." Said Minegishi. They could tell how Mob was looking at him and…and they did not need another one on her hands. Nope. Ryou was Ryou, he was an attractive guy, and Minegishi was not going to end up mopping up more Suzuki drool. Well at least now they could tell how she and her brother were related….great. Just great.

"Hey, Hatori's face tells a very sad story…or at least it did before you got him to wash his face and stuff." Said Shimazaki

"Um…it does?" asked Mob. She had never felt Hatori's face before, and also she couldn't read braille either, but now she wished that she could have read braille…and now she is thinking about stuff that she knows she should not be thinking about. Hatori was home, she could feel him, and he was there and…and for some reason she wished that she had been wearing more clothes. She was in her nightshirt and long socks…and she wanted…she wanted to put on more clothes even though she was fully dressed…and it made no sense at all…

"It did and now it doesn't. Thank you very much for the use of your razors and shaving cream, I'll put everything back where I found it when we're done, so you can get back to doing whatever it is you were doing." Said Minegishi. Nope. They were not going to deal with whatever this was turning into. Mob was eleven and on the cusp of the worst time in her life…and Minegishi was not mopping up any more drool. Nope. Not dealing with this.

"Ok…but can I say goodbye?" asked Shimazaki. He was going to miss the soft, Toshi fuzz. He had always liked that about them, how soft they were. The soft coating of hair they had everywhere…and he really hoped that they weren't going to chop down the whole Toshi forest. He liked the Toshi forest, all of the Toshi forests, and it would take him a while to get used to the lack of Toshi forest. It would grow back…unless Toshi kept on chopping it down, all of their forests, but he could get used to that. Toshi was still Toshi no matter what they changed about themselves.

"Fine, if you have to." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes even though they knew that he couldn't see it. He got down and ran his hand up and down their leg. They shook their head. He could be such an idiot sometimes. The biggest idiot. Their idiot. Their favorite idiot.

"Goodbye soft Toshi legs, you will be missed." Said Shimazaki

"Um…you know it grows back…right?" asked Mob. That seemed sort of overdramatic…but then again Shimazaki was an overdramatic person. She didn't get why he was sad to see all of that go, though, since Minori had said that boys didn't like it when girls had leg hair…but maybe that was just because Minegishi wasn't a boy. Also Shimazaki liked to touch things.

"I know…but I'll still miss it." Said Shimazaki. Toshi shook him off and he got back up. He was going to miss how soft Toshi was. Their hair, well not their head hair, was so soft…and their skin was so soft…so maybe this was a good thing. He would be able to enjoy more soft Toshi skin. He did like their soft skin…but not in a make a blanket out of their skin way. Just an appreciation for the person he loved most in the world, that was all.

"Ryou, come on. You're being ridiculous. It's my hair and I'll do whatever I want to it." Said Minegishi. They did what they did for their own reasons and they didn't give a damn about how he felt…and anyway it would grow back on it's own. They didn't have to take him into account for this just like he hadn't taken them into account when he'd gotten that skin portrait of them on his arm.

"I know, I just love how soft you are. That's all. I still love you, though, no matter what you do." Said Shimazaki. Well now someone's aura was shouting…and not just Mob's. She liked to live vicariously through people, probably because her dad was going to lock her up in a tower or something when she got older, but it wasn't just her aura that was being all loud and happy for once. Toshi's aura was happy and they were happy. They acted like they didn't want to hear it, when he said that he loved them, but he knew that they did. They never said it back but they didn't have to. He knew how they felt.

"Yeah, ok, it's a love fest in here now." Said Minegishi. Well Mob was going to have a field day with this. Wonderful. The shippening…the never ending shippening…..and it wouldn't end. Not until she either finished growing up or met a guy her own age. Stupid Ryou….he was such a moron…why did he have to go and just say something like that….stupid crazy idiot…their stupid crazy idiot.

"I thought it was a leg shaving party." Said Shimazaki

"Well are you going to stay for the leg shaving party?" asked Minegishi

"Hell no. I hate stubble." Said Shimazaki. He reached down and felt his legs just to make sure that they were normal. That was why he had so few leg tattoos. He had t deforest the area before it could be tattooed and the way his skin felt while it was growing back was the worst. He didn't get people sometimes, how they could stand that feeling, but then again he had a very sensitive sense of touch.

"Then go and throw rocks at strangers with Mob's little brother or something." Said Minegishi. They cared for him, they really did, but he could be a lot sometimes and they did not have the energy right now. They needed to lay down and they needed to do it soon…and also they needed to, at some point, explain to Mob why they were laid up five to eight days a week every single month…but that conversation could come later when they were up for it.

"Um…maybe don't teach Sho to do that." Said Mob. She loved Sho, and she loved Shimazaki, but she didn't like the things that he taught Sho. It was wrong to throw rocks at people. She didn't know how someone as nice as Shimazaki could have such a mean streak but she would have liked it if he stopped teaching Sho to do stuff like that. It wasn't very nice at all.

"Hey, what I do with my time is my business just like what you two do with your time is your business…but Toshi, you're just getting rid of the leg forest, right? Because I actually like the-" said Shimazaki

"Ryou! Child in the room! And no, of course not. Why would I put sharp objects near that whole…area? God, can't you ever think?" said Minegishi. Nope. They were not talking about this now. They, of course, were not going to take a sharp piece of metal to that area. That was stupid. That was a type of stupidity that they had never tried and never would try because, yeah, they did not want to have to explain to the healer or whoever how they had managed to get a cut in that particular area…AND Mob did not need to hear about this because the cut on her leg was bad enough….and also that whole thing was not Minegishi's business…and their whole thing was not Ryou's business. They didn't care that he liked running his fingers through it or whatever else he felt like dong. They did not exist to make him happy…and also he knew that they liked the attention that he paid to…and now they were going to stop thinking about this now.

"Sorry, just some people like to chop down all the forests. I like forests and I just wanted to know if you were planning on-" said Shimazaki. He knew full well that there was a child in the room. He also knew that she was only eleven and had no idea what they were even talking about. She was too young to know things yet and Toshi was just over reacting like usual. They got really overprotective when it came to Mob.

"Ryou! Child in the room! Do you not see the child in the room? And no, don't even think of making any blind jokes." said Minegishi. They had no idea what Mob understood but they did know that they didn't want to have to explain any of this to her. They just didn't have the mental energy.

"She's eleven, she doesn't know what things mean yet." Said Shimazaki. Even if she did then so what? He didn't get what it was that she wasn't supposed to hear about…but then again he wasn't the best when it came to taking care of kids. He could have fun with them and all, that was the part he liked best.

"Will you get out of here already!?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. They did not have the mental energy or the physical energy for all of this. They needed to lay down and they needed a couple handfuls of Motrin and a stiff drink and a bar of chocolate…and also a fast forward button so they could just get through all of this already.

"Alright, alright. I'll leave to the deforestation." Said Shimazaki before he teleported away. He could sense Sho playing out in his yard. He was bound to be up for something fun…like collecting rocks or shells and then throwing them at people. That was always a good time. Then when they were done Sho could be the seeing eye kid and he could help find that chocolate that Toshi liked. Without nuts since they hated nuts. Yeah, this would be a good day.

"Um….you guys weren't talking about the woods…right?" asked Mob after Shimazaki teleported away. Mob wasn't good at talking but she did know when people were talking about something other than what they were talking about. She wished that people would have just said what they meant and meant what they said all the time but that just wasn't how things worked. Maybe when she made the rules, well when dad made the rules, he could make a rule where people could only say what they meant and they had to mean what they said. Then people could understand each other better and stuff.

"Mob….come on. I said that I would teach you how to shave and, unless something changed in the past five seconds, we're still doing that. Ok?" said Minegishi. They needed to lay down…well they needed to do this and then they needed to lay down…well they needed to do this and then they needed to get back into their own pajama pants and then they needed to lay down. Maybe they were iron deficient or sleep deficient or something else deficient…or something. They didn't know. They just knew that they needed to lay the fuck down.

"Um…right. Ok. Now that we have permission we can start." Said Mob. She got the feeling that Minegishi didn't want to talk about whatever all of that had been about…and that was ok. They could talk about whatever they felt like talking about and if they didn't want to talk about that then that was ok. Mob wasn't going to be pushy, especially not when Minegishi was helping her with this, and especially not when Minegishi was helping her while they were sick. It was hard to do things while you were sick. Mom had been sick for years and she hadn't been able to do a lot of things…and maybe if she had been there, if she hadn't run away from home, then she wouldn't have been able to teach Mob about this because she would have been sick…but there was no point in thinking about all of this since she had Minegishi to teach her stuff….and stuff.

"Ok, step one run a wet washcloth over your legs. Mob, wet a washcloth for me." Said Minegishi. They watched as Mob grabbed a washcloth from the clean communal pile and ran it under the sink for a few seconds before wringing it out with her powers and passing it over. Minegishi decided that a practical demonstration would work best. Then Mob would know what to do and then she would do it and then they could go lay down.

"Ok I did it….but why did I have to do that?" asked Mob

"Because you want as much moisture as you can get. Never shave dry unless you want to skin yourself." Said Minegishi motioning to the cut on Mob's leg. Mob nodded. Good. They weren't going to have a repeat of all of that.

"Oh…ok. Now I get it. Um….can I use water instead of shaving cream? Just because I think that my dad will notice if I use his shaving cream and I don't want him to ask questions…and I know that he's going to ask questions if he notices." Said Mob

"No, you need shaving cream first….and we'll go to a store when I feel better, ok? Then you can have your own stuff and if your dad has a problem with it then you can tell him to choke on it because it's your body and you can do whatever you want with it." Said Minegishi

"Ok….but I won't tell my dad to choke on it because that would be mean and stuff…and also I don't know if he'll say 'no' since sometimes he says yes to stuff that I thought he would say 'no' to. Like how he says that I can smoke but only with moderation." Said Mob. She wondered if she had said the wrong thing. Minegishi stopped working and stared at her. Mob wanted to tell them that their leg was going to dry off and that they should get back to it because they said o use as much moisture as possible….but that might have been the wrong thing to say, too, and she didn't want to say anything else wrong.

"Mob….what, exactly, did your dad say that you could smoke?" asked Minegishi. This was…what? Just…what? Suzuki….what? Minegishi didn't know. They just…had no clue what they were even supposed to do about this…if anything….just….what?

"He didn't say. He just asked me if I had to smoke and then I said that I did and then he said that it was fine but I had to use moderation." Said Mob

"Mob…don't smoke hash oil pens or joints around your dad…or anything really…just….here. Let's get back to it. Step two is the shaving cream and this is the most important part. If you think you have enough on then you should put more on just to be safe. Just like this." said Minegishi. They did not have the energy to deal with Suzuki's terrible parenting right now. Hell, they were already dealing with Suzuki's terrible parenting. Why did he even have kids? Minegishi knew that they would have been a shitty parent and that was why they had taken precautions so they never became anyone's parent. Suzuki was shit it everything that wasn't planning on how he was going to take over the world. If you don't want to parent then don't have kids. There. Simple.

"OK." Said Mob. She wondered what had been wrong with what she had said. She loved how dad hadn't gotten mad at her and she would have thought that Minegishi would have been happy about how she wasn't going to get in trouble and also dad was trying to teach her about moderation too. But she didn't understand people sometimes, even her best friend.

"Then, and only then, you take the blade to your skin. See?" asked Minegishi as they pressed the blade down and dragged it upwards, slowly, so Mob could see how it was done. They wondered if they could just do one strip and leave the rest be…but then the new growth would feel different from the old growth and then they'd just be picking at that all the time. No. They did another line. Once they started they had to keep going.

Great.

If Mob had been anyone else they wouldn't have done this…but Mob wasn't anyone else. She was Mob and she was just a kid and she was getting zero guidance in any area of her life…and Minegishi was the only adult in her life with any sense so these things fell to them. They wondered if this was what parenting was like, good parenting, the kind you say in sappy movies. The kind where you did something you hated, really hated, for the kid in your life. They didn't know. They didn't want to be Mob's parents anyway. No, they had enough responsibility towards her as her friend. A parent…that was way too much. This was a lot, the responsibility that came with her friendship, but parenthood…no. No way.

This was already a lot.

"Wow. That's a lot…" said Mob. That was amazing! They had gone from werewolf to person like the moon had set. Mom had shaved her legs too but the change had never been so dramatic. That was so cool.

"Yup. That's pretty much it. Shave up, not down, and always use water and shaving cream. Oh, and never use a dull blade either. So…yeah. That's all I have to teach you right now." Said Minegishi. There was still so much more to teach her. How to get rid of those spots on her hairline and around her eyebrows, what to do with the weird feelings she had probably started having if her constant drooling over just about anyone with a dick who came within a meter of her was anything to go by, how to buy a bra is she chose to wear one, what to do about her period when she got it, how to say no, how to say yes, how to accept when someone else said no, what to do when someone else said yes, how to avoid getting pregnant, how to avoid getting sick, how to avoid getting caught by her possessive and over protective father, and about a million other things that Minegishi hadn't thought of yet. There was so much that Mob needed to know, so much that Minegishi had to teach her, so much that nobody else was qualified to teach her…

And not just because they both had two x chromosomes.

Her father should have been the one to teach her this shit. He had been married, presumably to a woman, so he must have figured that this was coming. He knew, at least they hoped he had noticed, that his wife must have shaved her legs and taken care of her skin and also that once a month blood came out of the same place he had, amazingly enough, stuck his dick on more than one pity filled occasion. He must have noticed at some point that his daughter and his wife were the same sex. He also must have thought, hey, my daughter won't be a little girl forever so maybe I should make an effort to teach her things before she takes my razor and skins herself alive. But that would have required Suzuki to get up off of his ass and do some parenting. He couldn't even bother to raise his own children….

Poor Mob's little brother.

Well at least boys had less to deal with. Let someone else deal with all of that. Minegishi was tired. They were tired and their insides were trying to become their outsides. They needed to finish this and lay down. Then they could worry about the talks they would have to give and the stuff that she would be going through in the coming years…and how much of a bitch puberty was….God. They were so tired.

And also they nicked themselves…..wonderful.

"Ok. Thank you, Minegishi." Said Mob. She couldn't thank them enough. They helped her out so much…and she wanted to hug them…but they were holding their stomach. They did so much for her and they were sick…which was more than mom had done when she had been sick. Mom had been sick for a big part of their time together….Mob didn't know with what…but she hadn't been in pain. She had just been tired. Minegishi was in pain but they were still standing there in the bathroom teaching her how to shave….and also they didn't like to do stuff like this it seemed like…..but they were still doing this for her…and it was…nice. Minegishi doing this for her.

She had never seen Minegishi's legs before in her whole life. Now she was. But that wasn't what made her happy, no, not even the fact that she could see her own legs again. She was happy because even though they were sick and tired they still did all of this for her….and they didn't even have to.

They wanted to…because that's what friends were for.


	324. Two Suzuki's in a Kitchen

Suzuki liked it when his Son drew pictures.

Drawing pictures kept him quiet. That was the best part of it. When he drew he sat down quietly and didn't say anything or do anything. When he had been young, when he had been a baby, it had terrified Suzuki when Son had been still and quiet. He had been so small and he could have spontaneously died, babies did that, so when he had been still and quiet as a baby Suzuki would poke him or shake him awake and then he crying would start again and while the crying was terrible the thought of his Son having had spontaneously died was worse.

He could appreciate the silence now.

Son was sitting up at the table drawing something and eating some kind of truly disgusting looking breakfast pastry. Daughter had gone next door, that was why there wasn't breakfast on the table, and he was tempted to tell her to come back home where he could watch her and also where she could make breakfast, because she was an amazing cook, but he let her be. They spent time together on Sundays and this was not a Sunday.

So it was just him and Son in the house.

Daughter was next door…and she…things were better when she was there. She could be there to talk to him and to talk to Son…and to deal with Son. She was the only one who could deal with him. Suzuki had no patience for the Boy. He'd never had any patience for the boy. Not when he had been small and not now. When he'd been a baby…things had been easier when he had been a baby. The constant crying was annoying and the mess was almost unbearable but he'd had Masami to deal with all of that. Son had been a baby and he'd had an excuse, at least, for being nothing more than a collection of wailing needs. That had been easier to understand. Son was still a collection of needs. His needs just went beyond being fed and changed and spoken to and rocked until he fell asleep. When he had been a baby it had been understandable.

He wasn't a baby anymore.

He was a child now. A ten year old boy. He had a ten year old boy. Half of his genes. Half of him and half of Masami…and he was nothing like either of them. He was messy. He was loud and messy and a handful…and Suzuki did not want to deal with a handful. They were father and Son. They were father and Son…and he had no idea how they could even be father and Son. Son looked like him. The same gravity defying red hair, though Son kept his longer, and the same blue eyes…the pale skin…the freckles…the red aura….that was his Son. Somehow that was his Son sitting right there drawing….something

Suzuki liked it when his Son drew.

Not just because he was quiet when he drew….though that was a plus…but also because he was an amazing artist. He had never been able to draw, not like that, and neither had Masami. Son was somehow half of him and half of Masami…and he could draw like that. Suzuki wanted to get closer. Suzuki wanted to get closer, to stand behind Son and see what he had been coming up with now, but he didn't. Suzuki had never liked being close to him. Even on the day he had been born, on the day he had been placed into his arms, he had felt terror….unending terror. Terror because the baby in his arms had almost killed his wife, terror for the fact that he'd brought another human being into the world, and terror because he had no idea what he was supposed to do with this new human. The terror had come first but then Masami had put her hand over his…and everything had felt like it was going to be alright…

Obviously he had been wrong to feel that way.

Obviously things were not alright. Obviously there had been something that he should have foreseen that day…or in any of the days that followed. He should have seen the signs or…or the something…there must have been something that could have told him that she was going to leave and that Son was going to become….Son. Masami had left and she had left none of herself in their Son and now he had their Son and…and he had no idea what he was supposed to DO with him. Well he knew what would become of Son, he would inherit the world once Suzuki was done with it, and…and that was the future. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with his Son right now at this moment in time. Daughter wasn't there. She always knew what to do.

She was so much like Masami in that way.

But she was not Masami. She was there, first of all, and second of all she was his Daughter. She was his Daughter and he loved her but he did not love her in the same way that he had loved Masami and he could not love her in the same way because she was his child. She was his child and…and she was so much more than that. Son was his child. Son was a person who he had made and who he was obligated to take care of until he grew up and then he served his purpose. Daughter…she was so much more than his child. She was his companion. He loved being with her, speaking to her, hearing her speak. Learning the world that was within her. The things that made her smile, the things that made her laugh, the things that mattered to her…she was…

As close to his equal as a human being could get.

She was almost his equal. He loved her. He planned on sharing his life with her….he was sharing his life with her. She was his child but even if she hadn't been, even if she had just been someone he had met in the course of his life, he would have still wanted to have been by her side for all time. He loved being near her, with her, and he wouldn't have traded the time they had together for anything less than the whole world….and when he had the world…he was going to share it with her. He should share it with her. He already shared every other part of his life with her. His work, his home, raising his Son…all of it. They were….they were almost equals.

He loved her so much.

But she was his child. She was his child and…and he had almost mistook her for his wife once but he had been in a half asleep dream state and he would never have done that had he been awake and in his right mind…and a brief moment of terror grips him. Was that was she was staying away? Did she think….or maybe…he calms himself down before it shows. Daughter enjoyed spending time with her companions….for some reason…and that was why she was gone. That was why she had left him all alone with Son…and no breakfast….but he can dip his own piece of bread in ketchup…and he can be alone with own Son without becoming enraged…

Or he could try.

"She's not here." Said Sho. He had felt dad back there for a while now…and he had no idea what dad wanted. It wasn't like he was doing anything. He was just sitting there eating poptarts and drawing. He could have gone next door where big sis was…but he would wait until he was sure that everyone was awake and stuff…for reasons. Reasons that he was not going to get into with himself while his dad was standing behind him staring.

And staring.

Sho had no clue what he was staring at. Sho drew stuff, it was what he did, and Dad had seen him drawing a thousand times before. Maybe even more. He must have drawn more than a thousand pictures in his lifetime. He had been drawing since he had been a little kid. He remembered, back when he had been little, that he had drawn…something…for dad. He didn't know what he had drawn but he remembered that dad had taken it and folded it up and put it in his pocket….and dad had always liked it when he drew stuff….and he was always stealing his drawings and stuff….

But Sho didn't care.

He wanted to sit down and eat poptarts and draw dragons because Shimazaki liked them and he had been thinking about Shimazaki and…and drawing something that he liked was stupid because he was blind and he couldn't see drawings….but he was drawing this more for himself than Shimazaki….and stuff. Shimazaki was….he was a lot of things…and he was on Sho's mind….

And he was not supposed to be on Sho's mind…especially when dad ws standing right there staring at him.

"I know." Said Suzuki. He could sense auras, he had eyes, and he knew his Daughter's routine. She would have been at the stove making breakfast if she had been awake. Omelets, usually, because that was what Masami had taught her…but she could make other things. Hot cereal. Scrambled eggs. Plain pancakes with no sugar or syrup but a lot of butter. Over baked grapefruits with no sugar but plenty of butter. Avocado and ketchup on toast…..

God, what he wouldn't have given for a Daughter-cooked breakfast right about now.

He wondered if he could have sent Son next door to get her…but it was not Sunday and he was only supposed to see her on Sundays…unless she sought him out. But she was not there, she wanted to be with her friends, and he knew that he would have been fully within his power to send for her…but he had to think about her needs. Not his. She had her own needs and she needed to develop socially….even though he wanted her near him….

But he could dip his own bread in ketchup.

"I don't know when she's coming back." Said Sho. He knew that dad wanted breakfast. Big sis made breakfast sometimes. Well she wasn't home so if he wanted someone to make him breakfast than he either had to call her and make her come home or he could have gone next door and had Shibata make him something…the thought makes Sho smile a little. Dad going over there and having breakfast…but then he frowns. Shimazaki lives there and dad…he had beaten him up so badly that he had bled just for liking big sis….

What would dad have done to him if he knew how Sho felt about him?

Kill him. Kill Shimazaki and then kill Sho, or at least badly hurt him, because that was just…not the way to feel. Sho was not Shimazaki. He couldn't stab dad in the stomach and twist the knife. He couldn't let someone plant a bomb in a car and just let it go off. He couldn't accidentally set the house on fire while dad was asleep. He couldn't, definitely couldn't, tell dad that he liked boys and girls and if dad had a problem with that then he could suck it. Sho wasn't Shimazaki, he wasn't that brave, and…and he wished that he was.

Shimazaki would have liked him better if he had been brave.

Sho would have liked himself better if he had been brave…but he was not brave. He was himself. He was Sho and he was scared, even now, and he just wanted dad to leave him the hell alone already. Sho knew that he was not what dad had wanted in a Son. He knew that he had been born wrong. He knew that if big sis had been big bro dad would never have made him in the first place. He knew that if he had been anyone else, anything else, anyone or anything other than himself that dad…dad wouldn't have even wanted him for Claw. He was wrong. He was wrong and everything that he said and did was wrong and dad didn't like him anyways so why was he still there and-

And he made a mistake.

A line. A line which should not have been there. Sho had drawn, on accident, a heavy and dark line where he had been shading. He had messed up and…and that was that. He had messed even this up. He had messed up his drawing, the only thing he could do right, and now this meant that there was nothing in this world that he could do right….and if big sis had been there then she would have told him not to talk about himself like that…and she would have told him that she loved him…and stuff….but that was not what he needed to hear….well he had no idea what he needed to hear…

He needed to hear why dad was bothering him.

"She is coming back though." said Suzuki. A statement. A statement and nothing more. She is coming back. If he says that she is coming back then she is coming back. She is coming back and…and this fear is irrational. She has no reason to leave him….and Masami'd had no reason to leave him…but she was not Masami. She was easier to understand than Masami had ever been. She was easy to understand and…and he loved her…in a different way than he had loved Masami…and he isn't going to try and quantify his love for either his wife or his Daughter because…because he isn't entirely sure who will win.

And he doesn't want to think about it.

"Yeah, she lives here." Said Sho. What was dad asking him for? If he wanted to know if she was coming back or not then he should have just gone next door and asked. Maybe she had gone to live with Hatori or something. Maybe she had decided to run away with him and marry him and now she lived there…and he wanted her to be happy, and with someone other than Shimazaki who of course she still liked, but he didn't want her to run away. When she got married then she and Hatori could live in the house with him and dad and then all of her kids, all ten or twenty of them, and then he and her could still share a room and Hatori could share a room with his kids and dad….well dad wouldn't want that many people in the house so he would probably move out.

It would be great.

"She does." Said Suzuki. He wondered why Son felt the need to state the obvious. She lived with them. She lived with them and she would always live with them…with him. Son would move out someday. He had a girlfriend now….somehow he had gotten a girlfriend…and she would be his wife one day and he would have his own home built according to whatever this girl wanted and then he would raise his own children, at least six, three of each sex, or maybe more depending on how things worked out, and then it would be just him and Daughter. Son…he would grow up and have his own life…a life that Suzuki knew that he would not be privy too. He didn't much care what Son did with his life so long as he lived it the right way. So long as he ruled the world…well Suzuki could rule it through him…and so long as he had his own children. He didn't really care too much about the details of Son's life…

Though he would have liked to have bene informed of the big developments.

Like the existence of some girl who Son had chosen, at the age of ten, as his most perfect person. Suzuki knew what he had been like at ten and he knew that he should have been expecting this from Son…he had expected Son to have had more trouble when it came to the opposite sex actually….and he was happy. He didn't have to worry about Son being either a homosexual or as wildly unsuccessful in his romantic life as Suzuki had been for most of his life. He was happy and…and he would have liked to have bene informed. Suzuki liked to know what was happening in his own household. Son and Daughter…and Fukuda…had kept this from him…because they thought that he had been uncaring….well he was…but not SO uncaring….

What was this girl's name, even?

"What do you want, dad? I don't know how to make breakfast, if that's what you want, but if you want a poptart there's another box in the cabinet. Help yourself." Said Sho. He didn't care about dad and what he wanted. He just wanted him to either say whatever mean thing he was planning on saying or doing whatever mean thing he was planning on doing and just…he wanted dad to get it over with so he could go. What else could he possibly have been standing there for? Unless he was waiting for big sis to come back or something. Well then he'd be waiting all day because she was probably hanging out with Minegishi or going to her friend's house or something. Dad was probably just there for big sis. Dad only cared about big sis.

That was fine. Sho didn't care.

"Those things are vile." Said Suzuki. If he had been Son's age…he still would not have wanted one. Sugar. Disgusting. How Son could eat something like that…or maybe that was the little bit of Masami that must have been inside of him somewhere. He wondered why Son enjoyed those things, how he could stand to eat them, but he knew that Son would not tell him. If he hadn't thought to tell his own father that he had found the girl he was going to marry and reproduce with some day then…then he wasn't going to explain cinnamon s'mores poptarts to him either.

"Yeah, ok, whatever. What do you want?" asked Sho again. If he had come over just to be mean about his breakfast then, well, there. He had said something mean and now he could move on with his life. They both could.

"I want to know why you didn't tell me." Said Suzuki. That was the first thing that came to mind. Why hadn't Son told him? He didn't care about the minutia of Son's life but he did care about things that would affect this family and their future. He had met a girl and now he loved her and they had coupled together. A non esper but that was to be expected considering the fact that the ratio of male to female espers seemed to be about ten to one. Was that why he had kept it a secret. Fukuda said that he hadn't expected Suzuki to care…but the children….they must have known that he would have cared….or maybe not. Daughter…the thought of her keeping a secret, any secret at all, from him…it's…he just cannot allow himself to think of such a scenario. It's too painful.

"Tell you what?" asked Sho not even looking up from his drawing. Maybe if he smudged the line then it could look like a cool wind affect or something. He didn't care what dad was one about. He was probably pissed off because Sho hadn't warned him that big sis was going to be next door that morning…well Sho hadn't even known that either until he woke up and her bed had been empty and her aura had been next door. Dad had better not punish him for not knowing things that he hadn't been told in the first place.

"About your girlfriend." Said Suzuki. Son drew a thick line through his drawing, from this vantage point it looked like he had been drawing a dragon, and that had been such a shame. It had been such a nice drawing, too. Well maybe it could be salvaged or it was part of the artistic technique. Suzuki didn't know about art and he knew that Son wouldn't tell him why he did that or why his aura was flaring out the way it was. Son never told him anything….even when there were important things that he should have been informed of…like the future of their bloodline.

"….I don't know what you're talking about." Said Sho. Dad….how did he KNOW?! Someone must have told….someone had betrayed him. A traitor. Only a few people knew about Emmy. Fukuda, big sis, and Shimazaki…and one of them was a dirty, rotten, no good, cock suck, mother fucking, dick wallowing traitor! And…..and those were the people he trust most out of everyone else in the world…and they had told…..and he had TRUSTED THEM!

He started counting in his head.

Dad…dad knew and…and he needed to stay calm because….because maybe he could talk his way out of this or…or something. He didn't know. He just knew…he knew that….that he had to stay calm because…because he wasn't old enough, big enough, or strong enough to fight dad. Hell, Shimazaki had been a teenager when he had stabbed his dad in the stomach and twisted the knife…Sho eyed the knives on the counter…big sis would have been mad at him if he stabbed dad and…and if he was going to stab dad then he needed to finish the job, too, and Sho didn't think that he had it in him. Shimazaki had said, before, that he wished that he'd had it in him to finish the job when he stabbed his dad…but Sho…he didn't think that he could ever kill anyone. Especially not his own dad…and that made no sense.

Dad had been nothing but terrible to him for the whole ten years that he had been alive.

So why did he care if dad lived or died? So why did he care about dad at all? It made no sense. He should have hated his dad. He should have wished that dad was dead. Shimazaki's dad had been just as bad, if not worse, than dad was to him and he was happy that his dad had died…but when Sho thinks about dad being dead…he doesn't know. He dreams about it, about dad being dead, but the thought of dad just being dead in life…he doesn't know how he feels about that…and it's just…something that he just…he cannot begin to understand….

He understands that he needs to stay calm.

"Your girlfriend. You have one. You have one and you didn't tell me." Said Suzuki. He didn't know what was so hard to understand about that. He had been speaking plain Japanese, their first language, and he had been speaking as precisely as possible. Son had not told him about his girlfriend. There. What else was there to understand? Daughter hadn't thought that he had wanted to know….but Son must have known that he would have wanted to know. The only reason that he existed was because the bloodline needed to continue. That was why anyone reproduced. They reproduced to keep their bloodlines going. Even a ten year old child should have been able to understand that simple fact.

"….So? What, am I not allowed to have a girlfriend?" asked Sho. He was trying his best to stay calm. He was clutching his drawing in both hands…..and his powers kept on trying to put up a barrier…and he wanted to just….hide. He wanted to hide, to disappear, to just….to pull a Hatori and try and live in the bathroom…but….but he is not going to do that. He was not going to…to do that. He was not going to look weak. Shimazaki had said, before, that his dad hadn't started to respect him until he proved that he was strong, that he could hurt him, and that he would hurt him without a second thought….

He couldn't hurt dad.

He wanted to hurt dad, to hit him and stuff, but maybe not stab him. That was…the one step too far. He knew that dad would have killed him, divorced mom, and then met another woman and had a son with her if Sho did that. So he wasn't going to hurt dad but…but he wasn't going to show dad that he was afraid, either. Shimazaki said that the best thing to do when you were scared of someone was to act like you didn't give a fuck about them. That took away their power. Once their power was gone then they lashed out at you and you could kick their ass….so maybe this wasn't the best thing to do because he couldn't have kicked dad's ass even if he had wanted to…and he did…and stuff…

He just wanted to be alone….and not to have been betrayed…and he had been betrayed….by someone…..someone who he loved most out of everyone else in the whole world….

"No, I just wish that you would have said something." Said Suzuki. He had no idea why Son would think something like that. Of course Suzuki wanted him to be successful when it came to the opposite sex. What father wouldn't want his bloodline to continue? Through his Son. Daughter….the thought of Daughter with a boyfriend….he doesn't want to think about that. If he thinks about that he knows that he'll lose control…and he can't allow himself any loss of control at all…

"Why do you even care? You don't care about me." Said Sho. The counting was working. He wasn't breaking anything or trying to hit dad….and that was good. That was better than he would have done when he had been little…and he knows that…that he can't hurt dad….but he wants to hurt someone. He wants to hurt the person who betrayed him. It was either his own sister or Fukuda or…or Shimazaki…and that….the thought of Shimazaki hurting him…it makes him feel like he swallowed a block of ice. All cold and numb inside…..that's how it feels…and he just….he doesn't want to have been betrayed by anyone but especially not Shimazaki!

"I do. I care that you've found someone. I just would have liked to have been informed." Said Suzuki. Son was so tiring. Even without doing anything he was tiring. He had no idea how Daughter put up with him day in and day out. He had no idea how this girl he was planning on marrying was going to put up with him day in and day out. He knew nothing at all about this girl….and he wanted to. He knew that all he needed, really, was Son to pick out one of the billions of girls on this planet to be his most perfect person but…but now he finds himself….curious. Curious about her name, about what she enjoys, about why she is even with Son in the first place….and he wants to ask….but he also knows that having this information will not change the outcome. He and Daughter are going to have their own family, their own household, and Son will not factor in at all. Son will have his own family and Suzuki will have no part of it. Not when he and Daughter will have their family and their life together. What would be the point? Son doesn't even need him, anyway, he's never needed him.

"Why the fuck do you even care? You've never given a damn about me before and I don't know why you give a damn now." said Sho. He knows that he's not supposed to curse around dad EVER but…but it just comes out. How dare he?! How dare he think that he can know anything at all about Sho's life?! He has never once given a damn! And now he was just going to stand there and start complaining that Sho never told him anything! Who the fuck did he think that he was!?

"Don't ever speak to me like that again." said Suzuki. He forced himself to keep calm. He wanted to send Son flying into the wall for that…but what if Daughter came home and found Son injured? She would have been very upset about that and she would have been upset with him and she may even have been so upset that she decided to spend their day with her friends…and that would have been the worst. Son was not worth that. He was not going to lose time with his Daughter just because his Son had to be…well….his Son.

He just wasn't worth it.

"Why not? Are you going to kick me in the stomach again? Or smack me around? Or hit me so hard that I bleed?" asked Sho. He was standing up, now, at some point he had stood up. He doesn't remember standing up. He doesn't remember when his hands balled into fists. He doesn't remember deciding to say that stuff. He's glad the knives are over on the counter. He's glad that he doesn't have one where he can reach. He comes up to dad's stomach now, he could stab him…and he wants to…and he just…he doesn't want to be the sort of person that wants to stab people! That wants to make them bleed! He just…he cannot become that sort of person!

But he wants to hurt dad….and he wants dad to get on with hurting him…so then all of this could be over already.

"I won't. I should but I won't. If I were to punish you, and believe me you deserve it, your sister would be very upset and you aren't worth it. You're tiresome, very tiresome, and I'll leave you to whatever you have planned for today. Just know that I am pleased to know that you've met someone. I almost didn't believe Fukuda when he told me, with you being who you are, but I am pleased and amazed that someone like you managed to find a girl who could stand to be in your presence for more than five minutes." Said Suzuki. He turned his back on his Son and left. The Boy was having some sort of fit as he left, a mess for Daughter to clean up was made, but Daughter could deal with that. She could punish her brother as she saw fit. Suzuki knew that if it had been up to him the Boy would have been on the ground bleeding right now.

But it was not up to him.

Daughter knew better than him when it came to taking care of Son. He would let her deal with the fit he was throwing, the mess he was making, and the terrible language he had learned from somewhere. This was her job after all. She was a good mother and she wasn't even a mother yet. She would be soon, though, she would meet a man and then…well he didn't want to think about what she would do when she met a man….and he didn't want to think of the day when Fukuda or whoever told him that she had met someone….he didn't know what he would do then….and he…well he knew that this was nature's way. If Son had begun to show interest in the opposite sex, had even chosen his most perfect person, then Daughter would be finding her most perfect person soon…

And that person will not be him.

He loves her so. He wants…he wants nothing more than her happiness…but the thought of some sticky fingered little boy laying a hand on his Daughter…it makes him want to….well he doesn't want to lose control but it makes him feel like this loss of control is imminent. Daughter….she needs…she needs him. She needs him and if she hadn't been his Daughter then she would have been his most perfect person….well not in the same way Masami had been because Daughter is just a child…but still….he wants to spend his life with her…without someone else getting in the way….but that cannot be. Someone else will get in the way, at some point, because she is the most intelligent, powerful, and beautiful girl in the world. They already can't go anywhere without some little boy trying to get her attention…and one day she will enjoy that attention….

And that day is coming soon….

He can feel it. He can feel it and he knows….he knows that if Son has someone then she will have someone too….and then he will be forced to…to spend time with that person. To know that person. She would find a man and he would be expected to put up with that man long enough, at least, for her to get some children out of him. Suzuki didn't want to know that man, that hypothetical man, and…and his feelings on the subject were odd. Here he was hating some hypothetical man while Son…Son had found a flesh and blood person who he was curious about….somewhat. Son had someone and he didn't need to know about her…well he sort of wanted to know about her. What was her name? What was she like? Was she an artist too? He didn't know. He didn't even know why he even wanted to know. He cared about the fact that Son had someone, that was all, and he didn't care what else the boy did with himself just so long as he did what he had to do.

Well aside from drawing pictures. He liked it when Son drew pictures.


	325. Seven in the Morning

Fukuda never slept in.

He had too much to do. He wasn't just a healer, no, he had an insane number of administrative duties to see to as well. There was a surprising amount of paper pushing that went into taking over the world and Fukuda was the only man Suzuki trusted with all of that paper. He never slept in but he did take his sleep when he could get it. Seven a.m. did not count as sleeping in, no, not for normal people. It did for Suzuki, sometimes Fukuda thought that he got up before the sun just to feel superior to it, but not for Fukuda. No, seven in the morning was a normal time to be asleep when he didn't have anything time sensitive to do.

"You betrayed me!"

He should have been asleep. In fact he had been asleep. He had been fast asleep when the sound of a very angry voice, and the feel of a very angry aura, woke him up. His eyes burst open and he bumped his head on the headboard as he got up to see….Sho. Sho standing beside his bed, his face red and streaked with tears, his aura flaring, and his hands balled into fists. Fukuda…he was at a loss. He had no idea what had brought this on but he knew that it didn't matter. Reasons didn't matter, it was the aftermath that mattered, and the aftermath of whatever happened to Sho….it had led to him stifling back tears….and Fukuda hated to see him cry…

There was very little worse in this world than Sho crying.

"Sho? What's going on?" asked Fukuda as he got out of bed. He could see Sho's aura flare and then it turned inwards. A barrier. He was putting up a barrier…and he only did that when he had been VERY hurt. Physically. Fukuda climbed out of bed and knelt down in front of Sho. He was taller now, they could be eye to eye like this now, but Sho did not want to be eye to eye. He motioned like…like he was going to hit Fukuda…but then he stopped himself.

He took both hands and put them behind his back.

Fukuda got as close as he could before Sho's barrier stopped him. He could pull his barrier in very close these days…and he knew just who had taught him that. Sho was crying but he didn't have a scratch on him…Fukuda thought back to what he had shouted. Sho….did he know? The thought is terrifying. Yes, he did, in a way, betray Sho…but it was for his own good. Telling Shimazaki about how he felt…and telling Shimazaki to leave him alone. He knew how Shimazaki was, exactly why he had gotten kicked out of the yakuza, and he knew that Sho was coming up on the lower limits of what Shimazaki considered to be an acceptable age for….all of that….

And Sho did not need that in his life.

Not just for the fact that Suzuki might have gotten angry enough with his Son to accidentally kill him…and the fact that Suzuki would purposely kill Shimazaki if he so much as laid a finger on his Son. Shigeko…..Fukuda had no idea what he had going on with Shigeko but he did know that if Suzuki knew about it, whatever 'it' was, then Shimazaki would have been a dead man long ago. He keeps his mouth shut about that, no need to make an enemy out of Suzuki's favorite child, but if it came to Sho…he would not be able to keep his mouth shut. Sho did not need that in his life, he did not need someone taking advantage of him like that, and he just…Fukuda had told his secret but it was for a good reason and he hoped that Sho could be understanding….as understanding as he could be. He didn't look very understanding right now at all. He looked like he was ready to kill Fukuda. Like he wanted to kill him and…and that was understandable…..

Though Shimazaki could have been so blind as not to notice Sho's obvious crush on him was beyond Fukuda.

But he had told…he had told Shimazaki…and it had not been his secret to tell….but that didn't matter. He had done what he'd had to do. Masami would not have wanted her Son to end up with a man in thirties who had done things that made even Fukuda's skin crawl…and he had been an accomplice to A LOT over the years. His hands were dirty but Shimazaki's…there was no washing that off. Sho did not need that and, yes, Fukuda had betrayed him but it had been for his own good. That was the thing about kids, the thing that he hated, sometimes you had to hurt them for their own good.

Sometimes you had to be cruel to be kind.

And sometimes you had to be kind to be kind. He would put up with whatever Sho threw at him. He would listen to whatever harsh words he came up with, deal with whatever blows Sho felt like dealing, and then after that they would have a couple bowls of that all marshmallow cereal Sho liked so much and they'd make up and then things would go back to something close to normal….or whatever passed for close to normal around here. Sho…he would be angry for a while but when he grew up, or at least got older, he would be able to see that the things Fukuda did, all the things he did, were for him. Were in his best interests.

Fukuda only had his best interests at heart.

"Sho, come on. Talk to me." Said Fukuda. Sho's barrier was still up. He pressed a hand to it…and pulled back. Suzuki's barriers were like solid walls. Impenetrable. Sho's barrier….it hurt. There had been some give to it and when he pushed he got something close to an electrical burn, it felt just like that, in the process. He pulled his hand away and watched the skin on it grow back quickly. Cosmetic damage. Nothing serious. Sho was just lashing out as he tended to do…and that was fine. Fukuda had deserved it.

"You betrayed me. Can't you hear!? I told you already that you betrayed me!" shouted Sho. Fukuda sighed. Sho would see this as a betrayal for a while, a long while, and picking the non-marshmallow pieces out of cereal was not going to help. Fukuda…he knew the pain of a broken heart all too well…and he knew that Sho, being as young as he was, had nothing to contextualize this pain. As far as he could see he liked someone, Fukuda had told that person that he had feelings for him, and then that person had finally, FINALLY, decided to reject him and had spilled the beans in the process….and Sho was having an understandable amount of trouble with all of this…

But it was for his own good.

Sho…he was who he was and he liked who he liked but he could not like that man. He could not have feelings for that man. If this had been a boy his own age then Fukuda would have kept his mouth shut. Hell, he had kept his mouth shut long beyond the point at which he should have said something. If this had been a normal situation, if Sho had been a normal kid with a crush on a man three times his age, then Fukuda would have told Suzuki a while ago. He would have told Suzuki that he needed to keep Sho away from Shimazaki. The man was a terrible influence, had done terrible things, and Sho did not need to be the next in a long string of people that man had done terrible things to. Suzuki, of course, was not normal and of course would not have taken the fact that Sho was…whatever he was…well. Then he would have beaten Sho half to death, probably, and then saved the rest of his strength to beat Shimazaki to death….and that was why Fukuda had kept his mouth shut. Hell, he had even covered for Sho to a degree. He'd told Suzuki about his little girlfriend because, after forty four years on this Earth, he had finally figured out how to see the obvious.

So, really, Fukuda had done more than most people would have done in this situation.

"Sho….I didn't mean to. I said…I said the things I said for your own good. I was only thinking about you." Said Fukuda. His words seemed to mean nothing to Sho. His aura slammed into Fukuda. Hard. Hard enough that he felt his teeth smacking together and he saw stars. He knew that he should have gotten up, put some distance between himself and the angry little esper in front of him, but he didn't. He loved Sho like a Son, like you were actually supposed to love your child, and when you loved your child then you were there for him for both the good and the bad.

"You told…you told on me. I can't believe you told on me!" said Sho. He sounded so young there…and he was so young. He was so young and all of this…it was hard. This would have been hard on a grown man and, of course, it was hard on a ten year old boy. Not only the heartbreak, and Fukuda knew a thing or two about heartbreak, but also…Sho coming to terms with what he was. He was something, it had been obvious since he had been a little boy in preschool. Back then there had been a boy in his class, Fukuda forgot the name of him, but Sho had gone on and on and on about how he was the coolest person that he'd ever met. How this kid was the best at climbed and could swing really high and wasn't afraid of the fire alarm and all of those things that had been important to a little boy his age. He and Masami, of course, had just listened in amusement. No need to embarrass him, he would figure it out on his own, they'd thought…

And he had.

He had figured himself out….and it was at the worst possible time in his life. If he had figured himself out as a grown man, when he could have been strong enough to stand up to Suzuki, then it would have been different. But he was ten now. He was a ten year old boy at his father's mercy. Sho….he was what he was, he was who he was, and that was just how it was. If Masami had been there then she could have tempered Suzuki. If she had been there then she could have told him that he needed to come off it when it came to bloodlines and the glorious future. She would have told him that Sho was his son and that it was high time he acted like a father and accepted his son for who he was…

But she was not there and Fukuda…he could only do so much.

"Sho, I did what I had to do. I…sometimes I do things and they're for your own good. Sometimes…sometimes adults can see more of the big picture than kids can. I know that I hurt you, and I'm angry at myself for hurting you, but I had to do what I had to do for your own good. You can be angry at me, in fact it would have been strange if you hadn't been angry at me, and I won't stop you from being angry….ok? You can be as angry as you need to be right now." Said Fukuda. He deserved whatever Sho threw at him. He had betrayed Sho…and not just in the sense that he told Shimazaki that he had a crush on him. He had….Sho didn't need to know the full version of events that had led to his mother's leaving…but Fukuda's had a hand in it. He had hidden her, he had helped her escape, and he had….things that a ten year old boy did not need to know about. Fukuda took Sho's anger, let his barrier slam into him, because he deserved it. Masami….he knew that her life would have been worse, so much worse, if she had stayed….but in leaving Sho…in leaving him without a mother…his life had gotten so much worse…and Fukuda couldn't help but feel partially responsible for that….

So he let Sho lash out at him.

"Why! What did you have to go and tell on me for!? Why couldn't you just keep a secret? I keep all of yours!" shouted Sho. Fukuda ended up flat on his back with that one. Sho….he was a powerful esper in his own right…and Fukuda couldn't even put up a barrier….but this was fine. He could heal. He had healed through so many of Suzuki's explosions, and the one from Shigeko, so he could live through this. Even though on his way down he had hit his head on the bedframe…and he was a little dizzy…but that was to be expected when one hit their head that hard. It wasn't a problem. He could heal.

But Sho couldn't.

He didn't know…well he did know. He knew that even if he spent the next hundred years picking the non-marshmallow pieces out of that sugary leprechaun cereal that Sho loved it would not begin to make up for what he had done. Sho…he was a good boy….and he didn't deserve this pain…but it was a necessary pain. He did not need to be involved with men as old as Shimazaki. He didn't need to take up drinking and smoking and drugs and whatever else Shigeko got up to with that man. Fukuda…he never wanted to see that again. That day when he had opened the door to Suzuki's office to find Shigeko sitting there at her desk letting Shimazaki play with her hair…and the two of them drinking and smoking together…the thought of seeing Sho like that…

He never wants to see Sho like that.

Shigeko…Fukuda had made a lot of mistakes when it came to Shigeko. He hadn't done enough to keep her from Suzuki's influence and he knew that Masami would never, ever, EVER forgive him for that. He knew that he should have done more for her….but the past was in the past. What was done, was done, and unless Fukuda had an undo button for life he could not fix it…but he could keep Sho from going down the same path his sister was on. He could at least do right by one of Masami's children. He could at least do something right with this miserable life of his.

He had to do the right thing.

"Sho….we keep each other's secrets-" said Fukuda. He tried to get back up but ended up on his back again. This time he hit the nightstand. His phone fell off and hit the ground….charger port down…but he didn't care. Getting a new phone charger was the least of his problems. Sho…he just needed to get Sho to see it his way. He needed to contextualize all of this for a ten year old without going into the whole 'your best friend slept with a lot of teenage girls and that was the last straw that led him to getting kicked out of a den of lowlife degenerates and that's why he's in Claw' because a ten year old did not need to know about that…even though Shimazaki was such a degenerate that even the yakuza had gotten disgusted by his behavior….

He needed to figure out how he was going to tell a ten year old that he had betrayed him for his own good.

Sho….he was hard to talk to sometimes. Not in the way that his father was hard to talk to, though there was no talking to Suzuki unless you knew the right words, Sho was just…he had trouble listening. He could be very hard headed sometimes. He could be very stubborn and hard headed in the way that his father…sometimes he could be worse than Suzuki. Suzuki at least listened to logical arguments and deferred to people who knew better on a subject than he did…and he had always been like that…but Sho…he let his emotions rule him in ways that Suzuki never could have afforded to…and that made this whole things all the more tricky….

But he would do this for Sho.

"No. I've been keeping your secrets. I didn't tell dad about you taking me all around Seasoning City to show me things from when you guys were kids…and I don't tell dad about how you take me to see baby sis…and I don't tell him about how you still try and send emails to mom even though she was his wife and not yours and he'd throw you in a traitor hole for that….and I kept your secrets! So why couldn't you keep mine!" said Sho. Fukuda….he was not going to tell Sho that if he told Suzuki about all of that then Sho would go down too….because he was only ten years old. He was only ten and….and he didn't know what he was saying…and he was hurt. He was very hut and…and in ways that Fukuda could not imagine. He wasn't gay, he had never even thought about another man like that, but Sho was. Sho was and…and Fukuda knew that Sho needed to confess that to people on his own…and Fukuda had told Shimazaki…

But it was for his own good.

Fukuda got up. He got up and sat on his bed. Sho was still glaring at him. Sho was glaring and Fukuda let him. He was right, it had been a betrayal, and Fukuda deserved the anger that Sho directed at him. He deserved it and…and he needed to figure out…how to explain that he had done this for his own good. Sho…he was too young to know the truth….and if Sho ever found out the truth….Sho….he would not be able to handle it. Any of it. The truth about Fukuda…which would never be told to him until he was old enough to handle it….or the truth about his best friend. All of the truths about his best friend. Sho…he was young and…he could not handle that either…..there was just so much that he could not handle and…

And Fukuda had to make this into something that Sho could handle.

He patted the bed beside him. Sho looked at him, at the bed, and then at him. Fukuda patted it again…and Sho wiped his nose. He wiped his eyes and his nose and he took his barrier up and…and then he walked over to the bed. He walked over to the bed and sat at the very edge of the other side. He sat there and crossed his arms…he wasn't shouting or crying…and that was….progress….

And now Fukuda had to make progress.

"Sho…..I'm sorry. You do keep a lot of secrets, you've kept a lot of my secrets, and I should have kept yours better…and I am truly sorry for hurting you. This hurts me too, having had to hurt you, and I am truly sorry." said Fukuda. He folded his hands and looked over at Sho. His arms were still crossed and he was still glaring…and Fukuda knew that he had earned that glare. He had earned that glare and he had no right to tell Sho to stop…even though he wanted to. Even though he wanted to tell Sho that it hurt him when he looked at him like that…but this was not about him. This was about Sho. He had to put Sho first. That was what happened when you had a child…not that was his child…but it felt like it. It felt like Sho….like Sho was his son…or maybe that was just wishful thinking. He didn't know. The only thing he did know was that Sho was the closest thing he had to a child in and he was the closest thing that Sho had to a father…and now they were here. They were here and Fukuda was here for him…and he was going to do his best….

"How about nobody gets hurt….why isn't that an option?" asked Sho. Fukuda….he wanted to move closer…but he didn't. Sho's body language and his aura were both closed off…and he knew not to push him. Not now. Sho was angry, he was hurt, and he felt betrayed…and the last thing he needed was Fukuda invading his space on top of everything else.

"Sho….I wish that it was. I wish that neither of us could have gotten hurt but…but I did what I had to do…for your own good. I didn't want to see you get hurt. Sho…sometimes when you're young you can't see everything. You can't see past yourself, past the present, and it's an adult's job to…to keep you from getting hurt." Said Fukuda. That was the best that he could do, the best that he could say, and he…he had no idea if he had said the right thing…but maybe he had. Sho's aura relaxed and he uncrossed his arms…but now his eyes had gone all glassy….

"That's what dad said. I'm not worth it. He didn't even punish me for cursing at him. He just said that I wasn't worth it…and stuff." Said Sho softly. Fukuda….he kept calm. Suzuki knew. Suzuki. Knew. He knew and…and he was taking this whole thing rather well….and that was…that did not sound like Suzuki at all. He had been going on and on and on about how, when he had a son, he would have secured the entire future and all of that shit. Well now….now this was….what? Suzuki….what? No. He…what? Sho was his son and…and he had just come knocking at the door worried out of his mind that his son was gay…and now he was….what?

What?

"Sho…what did your dad say to you exactly?" asked Fukuda. He knew Suzuki. He knew how to deal with Suzuki. He knew how to…how to deal with this….well actually he had no idea how he was supposed to deal with this but he would try his best. Suzuki was…unpredictable….but he hadn't thought that Suzuki would have been THIS unpredictable. He only had the one Son….and he had no plans of remarrying….so just….what?

What?

"What I just told you! Dad told me that I wasn't even worth punishing because it would upset big sis…and he only cares about big sis! He told me that I was tiresome and he…he said that I wasn't worth upsetting big sis over…and just….he SAID THAT TO MY FACE!" shouted Sho. The room shook, the dresser toppled over, and the windows cracked….but through the whole thing Fukuda did not move. He had been through a lot with Suzuki. He had been through a lot and he knew how to keep his cool in the face of the oncoming explosion…

No, not an explosion.

Tears. An explosion of tears. That was what this was. Fukuda….he knew to keep his distance from Suzuki…but this was not Suzuki. Not Suzuki Touichirou. Suzuki Sho. This person was….was not his father…and Fukuda wasn't afraid of him. He loved Sho. He loved Sho so much…and he pulled him close. He scooted over and pulled Sho close…and he smelled like cinnamon, like Masami, she had usually smelled like cinnamon…and he loved Sho so much….

He would always be there for Sho.

"Sho….you are worth it. You're worth upsetting your sister over….I mean we shouldn't be upsetting anyone…but you are worth upsetting her over. Your dad…he just understands her better because she's so much like him…and that's not a good thing. You don't want to be like him. You….are yourself. You're Sho and…and there is nothing wrong with you. No matter what happened, or what's going to happen, you are who you are and…and who you are is a good person." Said Fukuda as he held Sho close. Suzuki….he could be one cold bastard sometimes…but to say that to Sho….Sho being who he was…that was a lifetime of work gone up in smoke…..and he was just…he was so enamored with his own Daughter that he didn't care that his own Son, his own blood Son, wasn't going to give him the grandkids he had been hoping for since before he'd even had children….

What?

"…..dad said that I wasn't worth it. He doesn't care about me. He only cares about the future. He cares about…about how I was just a…just a…I don't know….I don't know and why…..WHY DID YOU HAVE TO TELL HIM!?" shouted Sho. He hit Fukuda in the chest….and Sho was so strong these days…and Fukuda did nothing. He just let Sho hit him…as he tried to understand….because Sho had just said….that Suzuki….

Fukuda hadn't said a word to Suzuki.

What motive could he possibly have to tell Suzuki that his Son was nothing less than perfectly straight? No. He would never have betrayed Sho like that. He knew how Suzuki was…well he had thought that he knew how Suzuki was….now it felt like he knew nothing at all and the whole world had gone pear shaped…and he just…had no clue…he didn't have a fucking clue….

But he did know that he hadn't said a word to Suzuki about Sho being…something….in fact he had said quite the opposite.

"Sho….what do you think that I told your dad? Because I….and having trouble figuring out what you're referring to." Said Fukuda

"You told him about my girlfriend." Said Sho. Fukuda….felt a weight come off of his shoulders. He calmed down in an instant. Oh. So that was what this was about. Good. Very good. This was all…very good. Sho…he didn't know what he had said to Shimazaki on that day back in Russia. He hadn't known that he had told Shimazaki about his crush…and about how he needed to stay away from him…and this was….this was….

Fukuda could work with this.

"Sho….your dad…he was worried about you. He was worried about…a lot of things." Said Fukuda. He didn't know if he was even supposed to know that Sho liked Shimazaki. He wasn't sure if Sho had even figured himself out yet. This was a process, he had done his research, this was a process that Sho had to go through on his own. Figuring himself out. Figuring out….a lot of things….and Fukuda…he didn't know what to do in this situation….so he would just do his best.

"Dad doesn't worry about me. Dad doesn't care about me. The only person he cares about other than himself is big sis." Said Sho. Fukuda….was not going to lie to Sho. Suzuki cared about Shigeko but in a totally different way than he cared about Sho. It wasn't a question of more or less. Sho….he cared about Sho in a different way. A totally different way. When he cared about Sho it was about the future. When he cared about Shigeko it was about the present. The two could not be compared. Apples to oranges. The future to the present.

Sho didn't need to hear that.

Sho was only ten and…and he knew how his dad could be already…but he still needed his father's love. He needed his father's love and….and whatever that love may have been. Sho was still so hurt, so very hurt, but at least it wasn't the hurt that Fukuda had thought that he had been feeling. The worst kind of hurt that a person could feel….Sho at least didn't know that Fukuda had betrayed him in one of the worst ways that a person could be betrayed…

This could have been a lot worse.

"No, your dad…he came to me worried…because your sister dressed you up in her clothes and makeup…and he was very worried about….some things about you…and I told him that you had a girlfriend…because I know how he would react if he knew that you liked….who you liked." said Fukuda. He had said the wrong thing. He knew, as soon as he'd said it, that he had said the wrong thing….

Because Sho's aura flared.

He could see Sho counting. Sho was muttering under his breath. One, one and a quarter, one and two quarters, one and three quarters, one and four quarters, one and five quarters, and Fukuda….he did not have the heart to correct him. Fukuda just….let him count. He let him count even though his counting was nonsensical and…and all of this was…it was something. This whole thing was something and Fukuda…he had no idea what to make of whatever this thing was….

But he did know that maybe he was making a mess out of this.

"…shut up. I don't like anyone but Emmy…..so shut up already." Said Sho. He wiped his eyes and scooted away. He had….he had no clue…and he just….Fukuda let him scoot away. He let him scoot away because he needed the space…and Fukuda needed to give him all the space that he needed….so that was what he did….he let Sho scoot away and…and as much as it hurt he knew that Sho needed his space…

Because this was a lot for one little boy to deal with.

Fukuda was totally out of his depth when it came to things like this. He had never gone through anything like this before…and he had no idea how he was supposed to help Sho. He had told Sho time and time again that he accepted him no matter what…but how much did that matter when Sho couldn't even accept himself? There was nothing wrong with how he felt, who he was, no matter what he had been told…but he was a ten year old boy dealing with a lot…and nothing could make this any easier on him…

Not even Fukuda unending support.

"Ok, you don't like anyone but her…but your dad thought…well he thought a lot of things. He thought a lot of things about you and…and I just him that you had a girlfriend so…so he wouldn't think things that you didn't want him to think. Ok? I did it for you….and I know that it was wrong of me to tell your secrets and I know that it was wrong of me to…to not tell you that I had told one of your secrets…but I did it for you. You know how your dad is, ok? You know how he is and I know how he is…and I did it all for you." Said Fukuda. He had no idea if he had said the right thing or the wrong thing or just…if he should have said anything at all. All he knew was that Sho….Sho was hurt and…and he needed….he needed…he needed a lot of things….he needed to hear a lot of things and…he needed Fukuda to tell him the things he needed to hear….

But Fukuda didn't know if he was telling him the things that he needed to hear.

"I….I only like Emmy and….and I'm going to go…and…stuff….before I say or do something mean to you…and that's…what I'm going to do…" said Sho. He got up off the bed and left right after he said that…and Fukuda…he made no move to stop him. There was no way to make this better. There was no way to make anything better or…or worse or…or anything. He didn't know. He just knew that Sho was in a positon that no ten year old was supposed to be in….he had so much to deal with….

More than a kid his age ever should have had to deal with.

He loved Sho, he would always love Sho, and he was doing his best. He was in an impossible place, he had to keep Sho safe but also keep himself safe and…and go along with this insanity and…it was just…..this was not easy. He would have taken Sho away from all of this if he'd had the chance. He would have hand delivered him to Masami. Then…then he could have been happy and been himself and…and he wouldn't have had to deal with all of this shit….but this was his life…and their lives…

And Fukuda was so fucking tired. He never got to sleep in.


	326. With a Little Help From My Friend

Shimazaki Ryou was not a fan of sad people.

They were boring, really, and he did not do boring. He'd lived so many years of his life bored already he was not going to waste another moment on boredom. He had read, well Toshi had read to him, that sharks had to keep moving or else they would die. They even swam while they slept because if they stopped for a moment, for just one moment, they would die right there on the spot. Shimazaki figured that it was the same for people. You always had to be moving, to be doing things, to have something going on or you would just die right there on the spot and then your spirit would linger on and on and on and on….

So, really, he did not do sad people.

Sad people moped and he did not do moping. Even when he'd been a kid he'd never moped. He'd just made the best of his life no matter what it had been. For the first few years of his life his world had been four walls, a HI-FI, a box of toys, and a piss bucket. Then his life had been endless, truly endless, lessons in braille…truly boring…and math and history and the endless recitation of his bloodline, which would end with him of course, and just…endlessness. Endlessly chasing the expectations of a man who had thought his life would be endless….heh. Life had gotten better after that. He'd still had cause to be sad, of course, since mom had been dead for some time and dad…well he'd had some seriously complicated feelings about dad at that time…and his own stupid brain would bring up the stupidest shit at the weirdest times…but then he learned how to have fun and keep moving and fuck with his brain chemistry so now all was well.

He never had to deal with sad people, himself or others, again.

Well he sort of did. He was bored, which was almost as bad as being sad, and when he was bored he looked for ways to keep himself going…and that was what brought him next door to his favorite ten year old in the world. Sho was always fun. Well usually he was fun. Usually had was always moving, always up to something, always ready to have some kind of fun…but not now. No. Shimazaki teleported right up next to him, literally right next to him, and now he could hear his aura and it was practically sobbing….

Which was not good at all.

"Hey." Said Sho. Shimazaki could hear it in his voice. The kid was sad. This could not be allowed to be. It didn't feel natural or sound natural. It was just so…not natural!

"You're sad." Said Shimazaki. He listened to the kid's aura and…yup. Still sad. Not even a little bit of that aural giggle he usually did when Shimazaki was near…not that he was a fan of that aural giggle, of course, because that meant that the little guy still wasn't over him, but it would have been preferable to this…whatever it was. Poor Sho. He didn't need whatever shit was weighing him down…and Shimazaki didn't need to have to be near a sad person…but this was the kid so it was ok.

"Am not." Said Sho with none of the usual bite he had to him when they had their 'am not' and 'are too' matches…and that didn't seem like him at all. It was unnatural. Like someone was putting on Sho's voice and mimicking his aura.

"Are too." Said Shimazaki. He said it with the same amount of bite, playful bite like when you played tug-of-war with a puppy and you put your hand too close to it's mouth, that he usually would have but Sho…nothing. Still that same sobbing from his aura. Not wracking sobs but like when you got up in the middle of the night and you walked around and someone had a bad dream and they were sobbing quietly so they didn't wake anyone up. Those sorts of sobs…and he never liked hearing those sorts of sobs from people. Not out loud and not through auras, either.

"I just said that I wasn't sad….whatever." said Sho. Shimazaki didn't like the sound of that at all. He sounded….defeated. Not defeated like how Shimazaki always won when they tried to see who could eat the most pudding cups or who could stand on their head the longest or who could drink the most coke or who could collect the most smooth rocks for throwing at people. This was defeated like….like defeated-defeated. Like he'd seen enough of everything and he just wanted to rest. Like the old timers in the family had sounded…and Sho was not an old timer! He was a kid, a fun kid, and he could not sound like that!

"Ok, you're not sad. How about, since you're not sad, we do something fun? Huh? How about go and collect more shells? Or maybe we can swap out people's mail again? Or see what's inside of people's packages?" asked Shimazaki. He elbowed Sho in the side…and nothing. Nothing at all. Just him being all…mopey. His aura didn't do the things it did and his heart rate didn't speed up and….and he just sat there. He sat there and….Shimazaki could feel him moving. He was…he saw his arm moving…and he saw he held something in his hand…oh. He was digging in the dirt with a stick….no…he was drawing something with a stick.

Ok, so that was good.

Well not good because he was still a mopey mess. It was good that he was doing something, though, instead of just sitting there on the ground like a lump while the sun beat down on both of them. Shimazaki wished that he could see what Sho had been drawing. He could feel the sun above them, Sho beside him, and even the ants walking along the ground…but he had no idea what the kid was drawing. That was such a shame. Supposedly he was really good, too, at drawing. Maybe that was it. He got kind of down on himself, sometimes, when his drawings didn't turn out…so maybe that was it…

Or maybe not. Shimazaki didn't have a fucking clue.

"I don't know…." Said Sho. Shimazaki sighed and then flopped down backwards onto the ground. He could feel the grass under his back, the dirt under his legs, and Sho beside him. He had stopped drawing in the dirt and now he was facing Shimazaki. He could hear Sho's aura…still very sad. He could feel Sho beside him. God, he would have taken lovesick Sho over sad Sho. He didn't know what to do about this. Toshi would have known, they were smart, but then again they would probably just tell him to yank Sho's heart out or something…and he didn't feel like doing that.

So the kid had a crush on him, so what?

He wasn't going to rip the kid's heart out. He knew that if he did that then it would be saying goodbye to all the fun times they had together. Besides, it didn't bother him any. So Sho had a crush on him, big deal? Shimazaki wasn't about to fuck him so it didn't change the outcome one bit. Telling the kid that, no, there was no hope at all and he needed to stop feeling like this…that was most definitely change the outcome and not at all for the better. It was hard enough to deal with the kid when he was sad. Heartbroken….nope. No way. Not setting that fire.

Neither of them, him or Sho, needed to go through all of that.

"Why are you laying down?" asked Sho. Shimazaki could feel himself being looked at. He shrugged as best as he could from the grass. Why was he on the ground? Well to be on the ground. Why was he here? Why were any of them here? Was this even here? Was reality just a construct? The fabric of reality was different based on how you perceived it. The kid could see things that he couldn't, like whatever the hell colors were, but he could perceive the world on a level the kid never could. Like the ants living under their feet or the bird sitting on the roof of the house watching them. Maybe existence was just-

Maybe he was just high as fuck.

"I'm thinking." Said Shimazaki. He had been going since….well he didn't know since when. Since he'd gotten up and felt all weird. He didn't always remember his dreams but he remembered how they felt…and he hadn't much like the residual feeling from that but, hey, he was a grown man now and he could make himself feel better through the use of various chemicals and also caramel waffles…which he was not ashamed of himself for making even though Shibata seemed to think that he should have been. He felt better…and he wondered if the kid would have ended up feeling better….

He felt his coat pockets.

"What about?" asked Sho. Shimazaki felt the inner pockets of his coat….yup. Lighter, joint, pen, and flask with…he had no idea what was in there. It could have been vodka, it could have been rum, or it could have been Shibata's crappy homemade Pepsi. Pocket dives were always an adventure. Good. He had supplies….but maybe not the flask. No, the kid did not do well at all with the hard stuff.

"You." Said Shimazaki. Ok, he could smoke the kid up but maybe not get him drunk. Not on the hard stuff anyway. He had a case of beer in his room he had been planning on sharing with Toshi…but the kid was sad and he couldn't deal with a sad kid.

"What about me?" asked Sho. He sounded closed off there, which wasn't good. Well he'd be feeling better soon. Shimazaki had been accused, in the past, of running from his problems. That he couldn't stand the feeling of his feelings so he ran from them. So he smoked them out and drowned them and did whatever else he could get his hands on. What was so bad about that? Being sad, being scared, being that weird feeling he got when his brain tried to remember shit for no reason what so ever, was the worst and he would rather feel literally anything else.

"I'm thinking that you're really sad right now and I have no idea why but I know how I can fix it." Said Shimazaki. He wondered if Mob wanted in on this…maybe not. She was having fun with Toshi…and also Toshi would maybe have a problem with him smoking another kid up. They could be overprotective like that.

"I'm not sad so there's nothing for you to fix." Said Sho. Shimazaki shook his head. He knew that people rolled their eyes and he would have been doing that now if he could. How long was the kid going to try and convince him that everything was hunky dory? It obviously wasn't. But that didn't matter. He would fix this. He could fix this and he would fix this and he was not…he was fine the way he was.

"Then what would you call this?" asked Shimazaki. There was some silence and he wondered, thought, hoped that Sho was getting ready to tell him what was wrong. If this was more shit with his dad beating the shit out of him, he didn't seem injured by Shimazaki couldn't see bruises unless they were really deep and he really focused, then smoking him up was the best option. If it was woman troubles, or whatever troubles, then getting drunk and raucous was always a good time, and if he was all twisted up inside because of how he felt about Shimazaki….um…acid? That was always good or sorting your brain out…but maybe not since Toshi had just forgiven him for the shit with Mob…

He would figure it out.

He had to figure it out. Sho needed someone to help him figure this shit out and Shimazaki had his shit figured out so, yeah, he could help Sho figure his shit out. He wasn't the best at getting his shit figured out, he had done some MAJOR FUCKUPS in his lifetime, but he knew somewhat what he was doing. The kid….he needed someone and….and sad people sucked to be around…but the kid wasn't permanently set to sad mode so, yeah, he could fix this.

Maybe he was fixing it, actually, without even doing anything.

The kid laid himself down on the ground beside him. There was some space between them, he could feel it, and he didn't know if that was good or bad. He didn't know if the fact that the kid's heart rate and breathing had picked up were good or bad either. He didn't want the kid to go back to being a lovesick mess or anything like that but he didn't want him to be sad either.

He felt his pocket and pulled out his lighter and his cigarette box.

"I just…I feel like….Shimazaki? Can you tell me a story?" asked Sho suddenly. Shimazaki felt around his cigarette box. Cigarette, cigarette, cigarette stolen from Toshi…yes, there it was. One Mob-rolled joint. Perfect. He slid the joint out of his box and held it between his teeth. He sat up, it was just easier that way, and Sho did the same. He seemed….less sad…but more cagey. Closed off. Not himself at all.

"Well that's certainly changing the subject but yeah. What story do you want to hear?" asked Shimazaki as he lit the end of his joint. Storytimes could be fun times. He was such a kid sometimes. Well that was ok, he had a million stories to tell, and some of them were about things that had actually happened to him. He got it, why the kid liked stories, he used to like stories too back when he'd been little. God, mom had been such a good story teller. Dad…not so much…but mom had been the master. Stories were nice. He remembered being so small and feeling so safe…

And if he could make someone else feel good like that then of course he would.

"….the story of the time you stabbed your dad in the stomach and twisted the knife. Can you tell me that one? I want….I want to hear that one." Said Sho. Shimazaki inhaled and then nodded. That was a pretty great story. One of the best moments of his life.

"Sure. Here, have some of this." said Shimazaki. He held the joint out to Sho, he could feel Sho right there, but he made no move to take it. He was staring down at it. Shimazaki didn't get it. It was a joint, you smoked it, it wasn't hard to understand. He would have thought that Mob would have smoked her little brother up by now considering how much of a little stoner she was. Oh well, her loss.

"Um…..I don't know if I should smoke….I mean…" said Sho. Shimazaki shrugged and pulled back. Fair enough.

"Alright, if you don't want to then you don't want to. It'll make you feel better, though. I can tell how crappy you feel." Said Shimazaki. He could feel Sho watching him. He could feel Sho reaching out, pulling his hand back, and then finally making up his mind and taking the joint from his hand. Well good for him finally making up his mind. Now they could be smoking buddies…and he could always use another smoking buddy since Toshi was always telling Mob about moderation and why she shouldn't have been getting stoned all the time. At least he had one kid to smoke with.

Not that he was good at it.

"Hold it in your lungs. It won't work if you don't hold it in your lungs. Just keep it in until you can't keep it in anymore." Said Shimazaki as the kid started coughing up a storm. The kid may not have been able to see it but Shimazaki could, the way he strained against his ribs like that when he coughed, the way he could have broken one. Shimazaki sure as hell hoped that the kid didn't end up breaking a rib. He didn't want to have to explain to Suzuki just how that had happened.

"This sucks!" said Sho as he passed the joint back. Shimazaki shrugged and tried to get the end back to how it should have been. Right. Sho still didn't know not to get spit on the end…but he was still learning. The first time you did anything sucked. The first time you smoked or drank or fucked or dropped acid or killed a man, it always sucked, but that was what Shimazaki was there for. Nobody had taught him any of the important shit in life, well besides how to kill a man, but that was what he was there for. He may not have been anyone's father, well that he knew of he hadn't exactly been careful over the years before meeting Toshi, but if he had been someone's father then he would have made sure that his kid learned all of the important things in life.

Like how to smoke a joint.

"Here, watch me. Don't get spit on the end, it just ends up getting stuck shut. Hold it like this and inhale smooth, not as fast as you were doing. See? Just like this." said Shimazaki. Sho was watching him, he could feel it, and he went slow for his benefit. Mob really should have been teaching her little brother this stuff. Honestly. What had she been up to for all these years? Well that was ok. Sho had him and he was a damn good teacher. Well he considered himself to be a damn good teacher….and a damn good friend, too.

"Give me that." Said Sho. There was the kid he knew. The bite was back to his voice, his aura was back to normal…complete with lovesick aural giggles that Shimazaki was not planning on addressing anytime soon, and he was…well he was better. Not all the way normal but better. Yeah. He knew what he was doing. He was a good friend. Just like the song went. You get by with a little help from your friends and you get high with a little help from your friends.

And that kid was getting high.

Fast, too, faster than Mob…well she had been doing this for longer. Sho was new to this…and Shimazaki wanted to hang his head in shame on Mob's behalf. Honestly. She had dropped the ball on this. Didn't she know that it was her job to teach her little brother the important things in life? Poor Sho. Well whatever, he was learning the important things now….and he was a fast learner. Good for him. Well bad for both of them if Suzuki were to suddenly come back but he was off doing Suzuki stuff and he would be gone for most of the day and he couldn't teleport so he didn't have to worry about Suzuki being all 'you're going in a traitor hole for corrupting my kids' or whatever.

Which was always good.

"You want to hear the story the while you finish that off?" asked Shimazaki while the kid did his best to hack up a lung. He could have the rest of that, he needed it more than Shimazaki, and Shimazaki was not a stingy guy. What was the point of having stuff if you weren't going to share with the people you cared about most in the world?

"Y-yeah…that'd be….good." said Sho. Shimazaki wanted to reach over and see what he looked like. He'd have bet money, good money, that the kid was squinting right now. He sounded like he was stoned enough to squint. Well good for him. If anyone needed it, anyone in the whole world, it was Suzuki Sho. The kid led such a sucky life. Well he wasn't being locked in his room all day and nobody was spraying him with a hose and then whipping him with a belt but that didn't mean that his life didn't suck. It just sucked in a different way than Shimazaki's had sucked.

He didn't want the kid's life to suck at all.

He had never cared, not really, about other people's lives. They lived their lives, he lived his life, sometimes their lives sucked, sometimes his life sucked, and that was just how life went. People had lives. He had a life. Nobody cared about his life and he didn't care about anyone's life but his own. Then he got older and shit and now here he was. Thirty, thirty one in October, and he had already gotten all old and senile…or whatever. Maybe he was just becoming more aware of his mortality or whatever and he realized that he had to be good to the kid because he was a good kid and he filled the void in his own life left by the whole lack of a kid. Heh. Maybe he was going to try and settle down with Toshi, too, while he was at it.

That could have been pretty great, actually.

Him and Toshi being all domestic or whatever. Being together all the time, having their own kids, and hanging out with the kids that they were already friends with. Getting drunk, getting stoned, listening to records, occasionally dropping people out of the sky and watching them go splat for whatever reason the boss told him to drop people from the sky and watch them go splat for….yeah. it could have been pretty awesome…

But also that was just a fantasy, this was reality, and in reality he had a stoned kid right in front of him and that kid had asked to hear a story.

"Ok, here you go. So I was just a kid and my dad, as he tended to do, drove me out into the woods to die. He'd been doing that about once a year since my mom died, once again don't ask me about that because I don't like to tell that story, and he just decided that it was time for me to die. He wasn't going to do it himself because he couldn't bring himself to since my mom had loved me and shit. I don't know. Maybe he loved me a little bit since he kept me around after mom had died and made sure I knew our bloodline and shit. Anyway it doesn't matter, he's dead. Anyway he was taking me out to the woods to die because he caught me doing something that I shouldn't have been doing, once again you are way too young to know what I was doing and this is coming from me so….yeah. So here I am in the car but, like, I know where's I'm going. Not just because we'd been down that road before but I could see, well see the way I do, at that point in my life. So here I am driving down the road and there's this song playing, yuuwaku if you've ever heard it, and like….they were playing that shit nonstop. So I was like, hey dad since this is the last music I'll ever hear can I at least put a tape in, and he was all fine so I put in revolver….well that had been my mom's favorite…so I'm listening to this and thinking about how…well how I'll be fine. I didn't care, I mean so what if mom had been the one who had always made him come back….I was going to be fine." Said Shimazaki. He was rambling, he knew that he was rambling, and just could not stop rambling….and that was just because he was fucked up…chemically. Not by what happened.

He had made his peace with what had happened years ago.

"Ok, so we get there and he kicks me out…and I'm all….God I the Glay….anyway so I'm there and it's not that hot out and I'm all…ok. Cool. Time to find food and…and don't eat the green berries even though I had no idea what green was so I went off into the woods to find food and make a shelter until…until either he came back or I went home…and shit….so…" said Shimazaki as he got his pen out of his pocket. Maybe he shouldn't have given the kid the whole joint. His hand found his flask instead…and he decided to see what was in there and….peppermint schnapps? For the love of…how long had this flask been in his pocket for?

He still drank it down.

Yup. That was Christmas time. The warm, body heat warmed, flavor of Christmas time. He could feel the kid looking at him. He passed him the flask. He knew that the kid couldn't have hard liquor but everyone had to start sometimes. You had to learn how to drink when you were young. That way you could hold your liquor when you got older. God, he could not wait until Sho got older. They were going to have so much fun when he grew up. Bars, parties, clubs, the stick fights down at lumber yards, the literal rat races the triads put on, the thing where you took shots off of a naked woman, drunken lawn darts….God. There was so much fun to be had with this kid when he grew up.

It was better to look to the future than the past.

The past made him feel all…not good. Which made no sense. Like the girl from Mob's movie sang about. The past was in the past and all of that shit. Well his past was in the past and he could talk about it…and shit. Maybe he was just off because the kid had been sad and it reminded him when he had been sad…and shit. About when he had been a kid…and he didn't like being reminded about what he had been like when he was a kid….but it was whatever. He was happy. He was happy now and he was with the kid and he was making a kid happy…and that was that.

That was that and this was this.

"This tastes like shit." Said Sho as he spat all over the grass. Shimazaki smelled peppermint. Not the worst thing he could have smelled. Better than if the kid had been throwing up. God, the smell of vomit was the worst smell…but he was fine. He hadn't thrown up, he was not worked up enough to throw up, and he hadn't eaten the green berries…and the kid was not going to throw up because he hadn't drank anything….so they were both fine.

He was fine.

"Well, yeah, it's peppermint schnapps I've had in there since Christmas. Now do you want to hear the story or not?" asked Shimazaki

"Can you get to the part where you stabbed your dad? I like that part…where you stabbed him and twisted the knife….almost stabbed my dad today….should have stabbed my dad today…but he says that I'm not worth it. He said that to me, right to my face, and then Fukuda said to me, right to my face again, that he told dad my secrets because he was looking out for me….he just….he betrayed me! He betrayed me like a betrayer would have betrayed me! He's a mother fucking cocksucker betraying….person! And he…I trusted him!" Well now Sho was screaming. Shimazaki put his flask and his pen back into his internal pocket. Yeah. Maybe Toshi had a point about teaching kids moderation…and also…just…

What?

"Kid, don't stab your dad. I got away with stabbing my dad because he wasn't an esper but your dad isn't just an esper, he's the world's most powerful esper, so maybe hold off on the dad stabbing until he's old and incapacitated and shit." Said Shimazaki. Sho was going to kill his dad one day. It wasn't a question of if but a question of when. He hadn't heard or felt anything like Suzuki had been beating him up again, which was always good, but he hadn't exactly been paying close attention either.

"….I want to stab him now…but I don't….and I just…don't know." Said Sho. Shimazaki shrugged. That made sense. Most people who met Suzuki wanted to at least stab him. Hell, Shimazaki would have stabbed the mother fucker if he could have. He had stabbed his own father…oh. That was what he had wanted to hear that story for. Well that made sense. Shimazaki was glad that he hadn't done it. Sho was too young to even have a chance…and also emotionally he probably could not have handled it.

"That's normal. I had complicated feelings about my dad when I was ten too." Said Shimazaki. He had and had not wanted to kill his dad when he had been ten…well he had grown out of those weird feelings and become more decisive as he got older…but in the end he hadn't even ended up killing the bastard. Someone else had done the work of it, the thing that Shimazaki should have done, and Sho…well he had no qualms with looking the other way while someone killed his dad.

"But I don't want to have complicated feelings about my dad! I don't want to have complicated feelings about him or you or Fukuda or anyone! I don't want any of my feelings to be complicated!" said Sho

"Fukuda? What's so complicated about that dick hole?" asked Shimazaki. God. That guy. Apparently he was Suzuki's friend from childhood, and Shimazaki could see that. That fucking bastard had messed with Toshi…and now he was messing with Sho…and he had done enough messing with people for a lifetime.

"Hey! He's not….ok he….he kind of is a dick hole…and an asshole…and a bitch….a boy bitch….a bastard. He's a bastard and a traitor." Said Sho

"What'd he do to you?" asked Shimazaki. Those were some harsh words from the kid, even by his standards, but that piece of shit Fukuda had….had betrayed the kid. This was the latest in a long string of bad shit that he had done….and now…well now he was going to pay. He was going to get dropped in the ocean. He was going to get dropped off of a plane. He was going to get dosed with whatever was left of that vile of acid. He was going…..he was going to get what was coming to him…as soon as Shimazaki figured out what it was that Fukuda had coming to him.

"I said what already…he told dad about my girlfriend…and dad…he just said….he told me that it wasn't worth it to beat me up because it would make big sis upset." Said Sho. Well now they were getting back to Suzuki's weirdness. He would have been glad, actually, if his dad had decided not to beat him up…but maybe not…since pretending that someone was invisible was the worst….and Suzuki was lucky that he was the most powerful man on Earth because Shimazaki would have been coming for him if he had been anyone else.

"And….not getting your ass beat for having a girlfriend is a bad thing?" asked Shimazaki slowly. What was with the kid? Why did he need to….what? He didn't get it. Stoned stories were hard to follow at the best of times and stoned kid stories were the very hardest….but he was trying his best.

"He wasn't mad about that! He was mad because I said that he didn't give a damn about me…and he agreed! He said that…that making big sis upset was worth more than me and…and Fukuda was the one who told him! He told him about Emmy and…and I keep all of his secrets but he won't keep mine!" shouted Sho. He was being too loud and his voice was really high…and Shimazaki…well he had every right to be loud and upset since Fukuda, bottle of expired eye socket cleaner that he was, had betrayed him….and this was after he had gone running his mouth about Toshi's tits….and also he had called Toshi his girlfriend when it was obvious that Toshi hated shit like that…and not he was fucking with Sho…and Shimazaki wished that he was there, he'd leave there limping, but also….also his ears were killing him.

"Kid-" said Shimazaki. Nope. Too loud. He was sorry that he'd had something bad happen to him…but his voice was way too loud and too high and Shimazaki….well he didn't want to be a dick…but he also didn't want to go deaf.

"I told him not to tell dad! And he said that he wouldn't! He said that…he promised me…and I keep all of his secrets! Like…like I never told dad about how he was…..I am not a secret teller!" said Sho. His voice got higher than any human being's voice had any right to be at the end of that…but Shimazaki knew that he had heard a secret mentioned…and secrets were worth more than gold in the game of vengeance…and there would be vengeance. He had fucked with the kid and he had fucked with Toshi…and that was way too much fuckery going on.

"You can tell me, I'm all ears." Said Shimazaki. Secrets. He liked secrets, well he liked storing secrets and using them later, and he especially liked knowing the secrets of people he didn't like…and he did not like this guy. First Toshi and now the kid….what the fuck was wrong with this guy?

"….I can't because that would make me a betrayer." Said Sho. Shimazaki wanted to take him and shake him. If someone betrayed you first then you were free to betray them right back. Honestly. This kid, stoned as he was, was still trying to cover for this guy? After he had betrayed him….God….why did Sho even care about this living tonsil stone for?

"Well he betrayed you first, and in a bad way too. You know people get stolen all the time, right? Your dad could have decided to steal this girl for you and that would have sucked for her…and also I'm a very nosy person so you had might as well tell me all of Fukuda's secrets." Said Shimazaki. The guy had secrets and secrets could be exploited and Shimazaki did not have scruples. He remembered what he had said about Toshi's perfect tits and he knew that he had barely made him pay. He would pay for making fun of Toshi's tits and making them feel bad about their body and whatever else he had done in his life that Shimazaki might have found objectionable. Also he had pissed Sho off and that was crossing the line…again. He wasn't just crossing the line, no, he was pissing all over it! Nope. Nobody fucked with the people Shimazaki cared about!

"But….but I can't betray him right back….because if dad knew that he was emailing mom then…then dad would kill him…and I don't want him to die. I just…want him to not have betrayed me! I trusted him and-" said Sho. The shouting was not good. His hearing was sensitive, very sensitive, and the shouting was making him hard to understand…and also….he must have heard wrong. Maybe he was losing his hearing. Maybe he was going to go deaf too, since that was the only explanation for what he had just said, because just…..emailing Suzuki's wife?

What the ever loving, dick sucking, piss choking, dry fucking…..what?

"Whoa, what? Your mom? This guy is chatting up your mom, YOUR MOTHER? Suzuki's wife?" asked Shimazaki. He must have heard that wrong. He decided to hit the pen in case he was having his first ever acid flashback. That was….what the fuck even was that? Suzuki…well he didn't seem like the sort of guy who wanted people chatting up his wife….and the whole thing smelled fishier than the time Shibata went to the fish market, over filled the fridge so it didn't close all the way, and left them all to wake up to a fridge with a burnt out motor.

"Yeah, my mom. She's….she ran away and Fukuda sends her emails that he doesn't think she'll ever read…and stuff." Said Sho. Shimazaki blinked. He didn't need to blink. He actually should not have been blinking. He felt something getting into his eyes, but it may have been his imagination, since it seemed like his imagination was running away with him. Had he dropped acid? Smoked DMT? Had he mad mushroom tea at some point? Emails to nowhere?

Well then.

It seemed like Fukuda was just full of surprises….and not the good kind. Sho liked the guy, Shimazaki had no idea why, but he liked the guy and…and Shimazaki was a man. He knew what it meant when you had someone on your mind enough to be sending them emails to nowhere…and he got the idea that Suzuki wasn't aware of this. If he had been aware of the possible, probable, possibly cuckery going on he would have definitely killed Fukuda friend from childhood or whatever or not…

Well then.

"...well then." Said Shimazaki. He was not stupid. He had several women's email addresses, some of which he'd had…several Toshi like feelings for….but he knew that he only sent one emails to nowhere to one and that was because he had loved her enough to get a picture of her tattooed on his arm…and well….this was good dirt on Fukuda. He had, possibly, cucked Suzuki of all people. Just….this was….he had no idea what he was going to do with this information but he knew that it had to be good.

"…that was supposed to be a secret…and now…now dad's going to kill him..." said Sho. Shimazaki needed to do something about this, the way his voice wavered, the crack of his aura, and the closed off body language, so he did. He hugged the kid. He knew that maybe as the object of this kid's affections he shouldn't have been hugging him so close and all but…yeah. The kid needed this. So what if this might have ended up in his bank later. He felt like shit and he needed someone to comfort him and Shimazaki was the closest someone there.

"No he won't because I won't say a word to your dad. I don't like talking to that guy so, yeah, this isn't exactly going to come up in conversation." Said Shimazaki as he held Sho. God…this kid needed a bath. He smelled like weed, cinnamon, and not washing….he let him go…but Sho still clung to him.

"You're always so nice to me." Said Sho into his chest. Shimazaki patted him on the back. This was…maybe not the best thing for either of them. Sho…he needed a bath…and also to get over him.

"Well yeah, I'm your friend. Just your friend, ok?" asked Shimazaki. He tried to pry the kid off, he REALLY needed a bath, but he just held on tighter. Or. So he was touchy when he got stoned…good to know.

"You're all soft and stuff….and stuff…and just…don't tell dad about what I said…or that I hugged you." Said Sho. Shimazaki patted him on the back some more. Yeah, this kid was gone. He had been going, going, and gone for a while now…and now he had reached the peak of it. Also he had the same softness obsession as his sister did. Good to know. He vaguely wondered what Suzuki was like stoned…probably boring as fuck considering that he was Suzuki.

How that man managed to make such great kids while he himself sucked pickled eggs was beyond his understanding….but maybe they weren't even his…heh.

"I just said I never talk to him, you don't have to worry about that shit, ok?" asked Shimazaki. He tried, again, to pry Sho off…and he just held on tighter. Ok then. So this was his life now. Whatever. He could deal with this…and also Sho was a lot stronger than Shimazaki would have thought that a kid his age would have been. Not strong enough to take on Suzuki, though, but still pretty strong.

"Ok….ok. You're my best friend….you're the best friend that I've ever had….and…and you won't ever betray me, right? You won't ever tell anyone my secrets, right?" asked Sho

"You know I won't." said Shimazaki. He was putting any secrets that the kid told him in the vault next to Toshi's secrets. The kid did not need anyone else betraying him. He'd had enough shit go wrong in his life. He didn't need someone betraying him who he considered to be his friend.

"I thought that Fukuda wouldn't either…but he said that it was for my own good because my dad thought stuff about me…stuff that isn't true!" shouted Sho. This time Shimazaki pulled back hard. That was too high and too loud. God. He loved Sho, he really did, but he needed him to either stop yelling or make his voice drop already.

"Kid, I'm here for you and I agree, Fukuda did a fucked up thing to you, but if you're going to be this close to me then you need to stop yelling, ok?" said Shimazaki. Sho buried his face in his shirt and nodded. Well now he had gone the other way. Shimazaki wasn't the best at charades so, maybe, pantomime wasn't the best way to communicate with him.

"Come on, talk to me with words. What did your dad think about you that made Fukuda feel like he had to go talking about your business to whoever would listen?" asked Shimazaki. Sho was breathing in and out deeply…and his aura was doing all of those little giggles and hiccups it did…and maybe those were worse than the crying….he didn't know.

"Fukuda told my dad about Emmy because he thinks that I don't like girls…but I do! I do….sorry I shouted…and I do and….and dad was thinking stuff that wasn't true and…and Fukuda should have told him that he was being crazy and he needed to go to the crazy house…and…and Fukuda promised me that he would never tell…and he told…and he didn't even have to say anything." Said Sho. Shimazaki…well he was not going to address the fact that the kid was better off just admitting who he was to himself and diving into a big pile of guys…because that would have gotten him denying like crazy again. God. His teen years were going to either really suck or be really great depending on if he was still going to insist on shit that even Shimazaki could see wasn't true or if he admitted the truth to himself, already, and found himself in need of a wingman. He just held Sho close and patted him on the back. This would pass. Everything would pass.

"Fukuda sucks." Said Shimazaki. He wondered what would be a good way to make him pay. Maybe a dip in the ocean…yeah…that would have been good. He had earned it. Sho was so sad again…and he just needed to figure out how to make the kid happy…but he was stoned and stoned people should never have been unhappy….but there he was. God…this was so fucking hard….

"He does…he shouldn't have told dad….stuff that wasn't true…but…but it…it is and…and…and can you keep a secret?" asked Sho. Shimazaki's first impulse was to tell him that he would have kept a secret if there had been a secret to keep. The kid was at least bi if not gay and, yeah, that was fine by him and everyone who wasn't named President Suzuki. There wasn't any big secret….but he wasn't named Fukuda and he was not going to go telling Sho's business to everyone who would listen.

"You know I can. Well for you, anyway, you're one of two people I can keep a secret for…so feel honored." Said Shimazaki

"I do…I really do…and stuff. I trust you and…and I know that I can trust you…and stuff. I can trust you with this…and stuff." Said Sho

"You can trust me with anything." Said Shimazaki

"Ok…um…I like…I like yo-someone. Someone who's a boy and I like him a lot and I think about him all the time and I wish that I didn't, that I could just be normal, or if I could just be more like you. You like boys and girls and you don't think that you're weird and you do whatever you want to do and…and I wish that I could be more like you and be less like….me. I was born wrong. Everyone else was born right and I was born…wrong." said Sho. Shimazaki shook his head. He managed to pry Sho off of his and held him so they were eye to eye, well so they would have been eye to eye. People liked it, eye contact, even when you couldn't make eye contact. The kid had to listen and he had to listen good because Shimazaki wasn't going to repeat this.

"You're fine the way you are. There is nothing wrong with you. You're a good person, you're smart and funny and you're always up for anything and I love that about you. You do not want to be like me. You can only be like yourself and there is nothing wrong with you. You were not born wrong, you were not a mistake, and anyone who makes you feel like you're a mistake…they can go and die. They can all just go and drop dead because you were not a mistake and I, for one, am happy that you were born and I like you just the way you are." Said Shimazaki. He was talking to Sho, not himself, and he was telling Sho all the things that he needed to know. Sho was a good kid, a best kid, and he was just a kid. He didn't need to be sitting up awake at what felt like night with the same record going over and over and over again wondering what he had ever even been born for.

Sho did not deserve to feel like that.

Sho was a great kid. If Shimazaki had been someone's dad he would have wanted his kid to have been just like Sho. Minus the crush on him, of course, because that would have been weird and he was not into that. Still, he loved Sho like he was his own flesh and blood and if anyone…anyone that he could have killed had made Sho feel like that…then he would have killed them. They would have picked them up and let gravity do the work. If the person who made Sho feel like this had been anyone other than Suzuki then they would have been long dead…but it was Suzuki…

And he felt so powerless that he hated himself just a little bit.

"Ryou….I think I love you." Said Sho. Shimazaki knew what he meant by that, and he knew that if he hadn't been fucked up he never would have said that, and he knew that if he brought this up outside of the context of this moment of this day Sho would die of embarrassment….but he wasn't going to let this change the outcome.

"I love you too, as a friend, because you're one of the best friends that I have ever had and if I had a kid I would want him to be just like you….ok?" said Shimazaki. He had tact. He had tact and he could tell the kid he loved him back, not a lie, and he could make sure that the kid knew that the outcome would not be the one he wanted. Shimazaki knew what the outcome would be, they'd be best friends until one of them died, and he knew that nothing at all could change that outcome. It didn't matter how the kid felt, or how much he shouted in his ears, and also how badly he needed a bath they were still friends and always would be.

"Ryou….I think that I'm starving to death." Said Sho as he went back to hugging him tightly. Shimazaki couldn't help it, he laughed, because that was just the perfect follow up to all of that heavy shit. He sounded so little and freaked out there…and he wished that Toshi had bene there to hear that…or not actually…

"You're not starving, you're just stoned. Now come on, let's go to your house and listen to that Zoo-whatever movie you like and we'll eat some junk and it'll be a good day. How's that sound?" asked Shimazaki. Not the most fun day but being chill could be nice too. He hoped that the kid came down before Suzuki came back…but he could just teleport away the moment he heard Suzuki coming. The kid…he had a lot of shit going on…but at least Shimazaki could help.

"Ryou…that sounds like the best day ever…and do you have any coke? Because I think that I'm going to die of dehydration." Said Sho. Shimazaki knew what he meant…and maybe not the time to be coking a ten year old up. Toshi had barely forgiven him since the last time…and besides, the kid didn't need it. The fun kind anyway. Sho was sounding better and feeling better…and that was all he had set out to do. He hadn't set out for things to get as heavy as they did but…but at least he had managed to make Sho feel better.

Which was good since he was not at all a fan of sad people.


	327. What Goes Up Must Come Down

"What goes up must come down."

That was the last thing that Fukuda remembered before the pain, all of the pain, possibly all of the pain in the world. It had bene a long day, a long and boring day, and he had wanted nothing more than to come home, kick off his shoes and relax. Maybe see if Sho wanted to have dinner with him. If not then he could sit up, watch TV, and wait for tomorrow to happen. That had been the plan. Maybe he would have drawn himself a nice bath. Maybe he would have had a couple beers before bed. Hell, maybe he would have even spoken to Suzuki about the way he had spoken to Sho that morning…depending on his mood….

He hadn't made any definitive plans but being hurdled through the air in the middle of the night….this had not factored into his plans at all.

This was revenge. He knew that this was revenge. Either that or Shimazaki had cracked. Either that or his skull had cracked. He could feel it, pain, pain and softness and blood running down into his eyes. Blood and…he spat. A tooth. A tooth and…and he could feel it growing back. There was pain and blood and….and the ground was coming closer again. He closed his eyes.

And he was caught.

It was like a cat and a mouse…only the cat was playing with the mouse, not eating it, or maybe that was just like how cats and mice were when they were together. He didn't now. His brain felt addled. He felt like he'd been drinking, really drinking, and his thoughts…they came and they went so fast and so slippery that he just could not begin to understand. There was pain, there was blood, and he could feel himself healing. He had always been able to heal, that was his only power, and at that moment he would not have traded it for anything in the world.

Well maybe the ability to put up a barrier.

Because now he hit the water. The water had been hard. He had hit the water, this inky black expanse, and it had hurt…but this whole night had been hurt. One hurt after another since he walked through his door. He'd kicked off his shoes, felt a hand on his back, and now this. Vengeance. Maybe. Or maybe Shimazaki had just cracked. Maybe he had cracked. He knew that he had felt both collar bones crack when he hit the water. He knew that there was salt in his mouth and his eyes and he pulled himself to the surface….and was pulled to the surface…..

"You maybe don't want to try and swim away from me. I don't see so well in the water, so, yeah." Said Shimazaki as he grabbed a handful of Fukuda's shirt and teleported them over to the sand. Well now he felt a hundred, no, a thousand times better. That had been good, cathartic even, making Fukuda pay for what he had done. Last time he had dropped Fukuda, all those months ago in Russia, had been fun but letting him hit the ground had been cathartic. He had earned it. Fuck what Suzuki would say or do. Fuck it all. This guy had fucked with Toshi and the kid. The kid was...was going to be pissed off when he found out about this….

But he would understand when he was older.

He would understand that sometimes people sucked and they needed to be dropped from the sky. Sometimes people needed to learn shit the hard way…and not telling secrets was a good lesson to learn. That guy had been trusted with Sho's secrets and he just…went and ran his mouth! And he knew how dangerous running his mouth could be! Sho had a girlfriend, that was his business and his alone, and Shimazaki had no idea what Suzuki was going to do now that he knew about the little girl Sho had decided to date for reasons that involved figuring himself out, it seemed, but he knew that Suzuki had no problem with stealing people…and he had been trying to figure out how to make espers out of normal people for years now….

So, yeah, maybe shut the fuck up about Sho's little girlfriend.

"Get the fuck away from me!" shouted Fukuda. He picked up a handful of sand, threw it in Shimazaki's face, and then tried to make his way down the…..beach? He figure it was a beach. He had no idea where he was. He had no idea where he was heading. He had no idea what he even hoped to achieve by that. He had no shoes on, the sand was full of rocks and shells, and he had no shoes on. It was pitch black out. He had no clue what anything even was…and he was grabbed….

But not teleported away.

Shimazaki was spitting sand. In what little light the moon provided he could see that Shimazaki's eyes were screwed shut. He was spitting….in Fukuda face….and he wondered if that had been intentional. It had probably been. Shimazaki was just that immature. He was the most immature human being that Fukuda had ever met in his life. This was not what grown men did, these were not the actions of an adult, kidnapping someone and trying to kill them…for Fukuda didn't even know. Who knew wit this guy?

He was unpredictable.

Like now. He was strong, stronger than Fukuda was, and while Fukuda could heal there must have been limits to what he could live through. He had regrown eyes for the Awakened before, they were accident prone overgrown children after all, and it was always exhausting….and he could probably regrow his own eyes…but the rest of his organs…he didn't know. He had no clue what he could live through but he knew that Shimazaki was strong enough to reach into his chest and pull out his beating heart like Sho had done to him time and time again back in his game….

Sho.

He would not take this well. Hopefully this would be the thing that made Sho quite him. Maybe this would be the wake up call he need to realize that Shimazaki was a terrible person. Sho….he had enough going on in his life. He did not need this. if he had been at home he would have played some of Sho's games, even the violent ones, or watched his gory movies and they could have had deconstructed pizza for dinner or just a box of poptarts…and it could have been a very good time. If he had been home. He was not home. He wasn't going to die, probably, because if Shimazaki had been planning on killing him then he would have done it already…..right?

"Yeah…no. As fun as it would be to let you die of exposure I do have to take you back at some point. Once you've learned your lesson, of course." Said Shimazaki as he spat sand in Fukuda's face. That bastard….well now he was going to go splat a couple more times for that. Sand sucked. It was coarse and it was grainy and it got everywhere…including his eyes…and now he would have to clean his eyes out again….God. This guy. He just fucked up everything, didn't he?

"And what lesson would that be?" asked Fukuda as he pulled himself free from Shimazaki's grasp. He tried to take a step back, a single step, but the only thing he earned himself was pain shooting through his foot as a shell went into his heel….great. There was nowhere to go so he just…didn't go anywhere. He stood on one foot and pulled the shell out. He make sure to get blood on Shimazaki. It was all he could do….since he was powerless here….mostly powerless….

He felt his foot heal.

"Always wear shoes to the beach." said Shimazaki with a shrug. He could see it, the cut on Fukuda's foot, and he could see the cut closing. He had to focus hard, of course, but it was worth it. That guy could heal fast….he wondered what the upper limits of his power were….and he wondered if they would be able to find those upper limits tonight. He deserved it. If anyone deserved it, the pain, it was Fukuda.

"What?" asked Fukuda with a blink. That was…he hadn't even sounded angry anymore. He just…that was…was he calm now? Was that it? Was he done with whatever it was that he had been up to? Was that it, all of it, and now they could get on with their miserable lives?

"You really should wear shoes to the beach. You know they make water shoes now? Yeah. I couldn't believe it either but then Toshi said-" said Shimazaki with a shrug. Water shoes were cool. Sho had stepped on a sharp rock once and he had, of course, taken the kid to Toshi…but the kid hadn't wanted Toshi to fix him up even though they were good at it…and then Toshi had been all 'invest in a pair of water shoes' and shit…and their aura had been so…Toshi. God. What was Toshi doing right now? Probably waiting out their ketchup packet times and shit. God, he hoped that they weren't going to be mad at him…and he hadn't done anything wrong….not really. There were worse things that he could have done. He could have actually killed the bastard. He could have killed the bastard and then gone home and then Suzuki could have killed him…and then Toshi would have been so sad…and mad…and not glad…and they would be so…well then he would not be killing Fukuda. Not that he'd had any intention of killing Fukuda….

Even though he deserved it.

"I'd ask if you were on drugs but, yeah, when aren't you on drugs?" asked Fukuda rolling his eyes. Well ok then. It looked like this was the end of whatever that was. He was a dangerous man, Shimazaki, but he was also really nuts….really, REALLY nuts…and now it looked like he was back to whatever it was that passed for normal with him.

"Yeah, I'm high as fuck right now but that's not what this is about." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. He felt his coat and shirt weighing heavily on him…and he really needed to get out of these wet clothes…and he hoped that he hadn't ruined whatever was in his pockets….and he had no clue what was even in his pockets…and that was something to worry about. He had a lot to worry about. The kid….this was going to maybe piss the kid off….but Fukuda had deserved this. That poor kid had needed to get stoned out of his mind because of what Fukuda had done…..poor kid. Poor little stoned kid…..

"If you're planning on killing me then get on with it. If you're just playing with me then get it out of your system and then take me home. I have things to do tonight." Said Fukuda. He felt his bones knitting themselves back together…and his cuts all sealed….and his vision had been fuzzy and he hadn't even realized it….it was over. It was over and now they could get on with their lives. Shimazaki…he wasn't planning on killing him….so they had might as well just get back to what passed for their miserable excuses for lives.

"Like what? Running your mouth about other people's business?" asked Shimazaki as he wrung some water out of his shirt. This guy….this fucking guy. Dropping him was boring. Throwing him was boring. He had no clue what he was going to do next but…but he knew that it had to be something that he deserved. This guy…this miserable fucking guy….going around telling people's business. Shimazaki was no stranger to going around telling people's business, he was shameless in that, but he knew that when someone gave you complete and total trust then you kept your mouth shut. That was why he was never going to tell the kid's secrets or Toshi's. Ever. Toshi…they had trusted him and the kid had trusted him and…and when someone put their trust in you then…then you had to be careful with it. Like one of those fancy glass eggs they had at museums and stuff.

This mother fucker had broken Sho's trust.

Sho had his secrets, most secrets than a kid his age should have had, and Shimazaki was going to keep them. Especially that confession…and it had been a confession….but that was fine. Stoned as he'd been he probably wouldn't even remember what he had said…and even if he did remember Shimazaki wouldn't bring it up. There was no point to it, the kid's feelings wouldn't change their outcome, so there was no reason for him to go running his mouth about it. If Shimazaki would be able to keep shit to himself then why couldn't Fukuda?

Because he sucked dick in a public bathroom for ten yen coins and had no customers even during golden week.

"For the love of God! I said that I was sorry and I wrote out the stupid multi-page…whatever! I'm sorry about what I said about your partner's breasts, ok? They're nice, they're nice and I will tell them to their face that they have the most amazing breasts in the world! Is that what's going to get you away from me!?" asked Fukuda. Was this going to haunt him for the rest of his life? Fine, he should not have said what he said about Minegishi! He should have kept that to himself or at least realized that Sho was a little mockingbird! He was sorry, so sorry, and he would get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness if it meant that this….this INSANITY would just END already!

"This isn't about Toshi's tits…and they aren't my partner! I mean I would like to be but they have their issues with that…and I guess that I have my issues that I need to work through…but they know I love them. I mean really love them. They don't say it back but, you know, maybe they don't have to. I mean they're always doing nice shit for me. They move my clothes to the dryer and they labeled the whole kitchen for me and they always get me new cologne and shampoo and shit when I'm running low…so maybe it's an actions speak louder than words thing. I mean not everything needs to be said out loud. Toshi hates doing extra work so for them to do it for me then…yeah. It's pretty…it's nice….and shit…." Said Shimazaki. He didn't have a clue what he and Toshi were but he knew that he liked it. When this was done…well they never wanted to when they were a ketchup packet….but they could still cuddle and listen to a book or music or something…after he took a shower since Toshi hated the smell of the ocean….so yeah, after this they be together….and it would….it would be pretty great….

"…why are you telling me this?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki. He missed Suzuki. At least his non sequiturs made sense…some sense. More sense than this. Suzuki…would not like this….or maybe he just…would tell Fukuda to settle this with Shimazaki on his own…and he just…thirty years must have meant something. They had known each other for long enough that Suzuki….he must have cared at least a little…if something happened to him…right?

"Yeah! What am I doing, here, telling you about my shit!? My shit is my shit and you're just going to go running your mouth about my shit just like you went running your mouth about Sho's shit! Seriously! You need to learn to keep your mouth shut! If you had been in the family you would have lost at least a finger by now if not two!" said Shimazaki. Nope. He was not going to talk about Toshi with this guy. He had a big mouth and he loved to run it and he wished, God he wished, that they had been back in the family. You did not run your mouth about people in the family…or their kids…and if he had been in the family then he would have gotten his…but for some strange reason Suzuki wasn't about that finger chopping life even though it was pretty effective. You wore your shame for the rest of your life.

"Well we aren't in the yakuza, now are we? We're in Claw and you, you fucked up, when Suzuki finds out about this-" said Fukuda. A threat…may not have been the best way to go…and he missed Suzuki. He understood Suzuki and his flavor of crazy. This was a flavor of crazy that he had no experience with, like Sho's blue poptarts, and he just…he had to figure this out…to figure this guy out….but every time it seemed like he had him figured out….this happened!

"Does it look like I give a fuck about Suzuki finding out about this? I'll take whatever punishment he gives me just like you're going to take whatever I give you…and there's a lot more punishment coming to you." Said Shimazaki lowly. He was going to do…something. Something…something that would teach him…teach him good….about running his mouth….teach him really good…..like with books…like filling a pillowcase with books and beating him with it….or something….or maybe filling a pillowcase with snakes…but then he would have to find snakes….

It would come to him!

"Then get on with it. Come on, do your worst." Said Fukuda. That had maybe been the wrong thing to say to Shimazaki. They felt his hand, two of his fingers pointed like a gun, over his heart. He could feel Shimazaki's aura, he could feel his power, and he wondered if he would be able to live through Shimazaki making his heart explode or stop or whatever he was going to do.

Fukuda knew what he did to people.

Fukuda had seen the aftermath of his missions, of what he did in his personal life to people who upset him, and he knew that he may not have been able to live through it…and he…he didn't want to die. He knew in that moment, instinctively, that he could die. He had come close to death before, Suzuki had exploded so many times before, and he knew that Shimazaki could have killed him at any time…and he knew that…that….that at this moment death could come for him…

And he was not ready.

Shimazaki kept his hand right up to his heart and…got closer. He got closer and closer and closer until they were nose to nose. Shimazaki could have kissed him, the thought is absurd, but it would have been preferable to dying. He could have either kissed him or torn his heart out. He knew that no matter what happened it would not be good for him…and he had zero clue what he was even supposed to do in this situation!

"My worst is killing you. You know what my worst is…and you don't deserve to die. You don't deserve death because death has an immediate end. You fucked up. You betrayed Sho. You made him sad and sad people….I don't like dealing with sad people but I did…and he was only sad because you run your mouth…." Said Shimazaki. He would do…something. He didn't know. He needed to think. He needed some time and some space to think…and Sho should probably have a say in this. Yeah, he'd ask Sho when he saw him next….so maybe he had done enough…or something. He didn't know.

"…don't talk about Sho. Don't talk about him like you care about him." said Fukuda. Shimazaki…he didn't give a fuck about Sho. He just liked having a fun, someone who applauded every stupid, insane, and inane thing he did….and also….well he knew why Shimazaki had been kicked out of the yakuza…and Sho didn't need that in his life. He didn't need to worry about…about whatever it was that Shimazaki got up to with Shigeko.

"Of course I care about Sho. I care about him like he was my own kid." Said Shimazaki. If he'd had a son then he wished that his son could have been just like Sho. He was such a great kid and he didn't need a piece of shit like this in his life.

"Don't….don't…." said Fukuda. No. He did not need to sit there and LISTEN TO THAT SHIT! Shimazaki…he did not need to…to hear him say that…to hear him lie like that…to hear him just….just run his mouth and…and lie and…and say…and say that….

"Don't what? Kill you? I already said that I wasn't going to so I won't." Said Shimazaki

"Don't talk about Sho like you care about him! I know what you care about! You're just…I don't even want to say!" said Fukuda. There was no way in hell that he stood even a ghost of a chance against Shimazaki. He couldn't even put up a barrier after all…but he just…he felt himself starting to lose control. He needed….he needed to keep calm…but he couldn't. Shimazaki was a dangerous man, a very dangerous and unpredictable man, but Fukuda had spent the last thirty something years following around a very powerful, very dangerous, and even more unpredictable man….and he could at least say something to this man, the one in front of him…

"Well now you have to say. Go on, run your mouth, that's just about the only thing you're good for." Said Shimazaki

"Fine. I know what you got kicked out of your family for. I know what you're planning on doing with Shigeko…if you aren't getting up to that with her already…and I know what you want with Sho and-" said Fukuda. He would have said no but a kick to the diaphragm shut him up as a kick to the diaphragm tended to do. The kick was hard, hard enough to knock the wind out of him and break some ribs, and the next thing he knew he was face down in the sand….and there was a shoe on his back…and now he was being kicked again…

And again….

And again…

And now he could feel it, the upper limits of his powers. He had been through Suzuki's explosions, and one of Shigeko's, and he knew that he could live through a lot…but he also knew that he only had so much power within himself….and he got tired like everyone else…and he felt pain like everyone else…and this was pain. This was pain and…and he wanted…..he tried to get away. He tried to crawl away and that just earned him a kick to the chest. He was kicked down into the sand and then turned onto his back. A shoe dug into his chest….hard….

And then he was pulled to his feet.

"You're alive because Sho cares about you….and Suzuki might care about you too. You're only alive right now because of other people. There is nothing more that I want to do to you than take you over to the ocean and hold you under the water and just keep you there. I wonder if you can even drown….but whatever. There are other ways to shut you up…ways that I have to think up later on. You said something so fucked up that you disgust even more. Mob is eleven, Sho is ten, and the fact that you think that I would fuck either of them says a lot more about what happens inside of your skull than mine…you fucked up piece of shit. I am not fucking Mob, she's eleven, and if I was…then maybe you should do something about that? Don't you think that me fucking one of the kids….that might be the thing for you to run your mouth about? Whatever. I don't go that young. You…I am honestly disgusted by you right now and….and you can find your own way home….after you eat….eat sand. Go on, get on with it. Eat a shit ton of sand and then find your way home. I'm out of here." Said Shimazaki. He dropped Fukuda down onto the sand face first and kept his foot there, on the back of his head, until he sense him eating sand. Good. That was….well he deserved worse than that…but his brain was all….mixed up…and he was all pissed off and shit…and Toshi…Toshi would know what to do…

He loved Toshi so much.

"I hate you so much." Said Fukuda after Shimazaki teleportd away. He spat out the sand in his mouth as he got up. For the love of…he hated that guy so much…and now he was stuck out here….and at his phone had gotten wet. Wonderful. He had no idea where he was and he had no idea how he would get home…and he had no shoes on…..and this was not how he wanted this night to go…and he just…he wanted to go to bed. He wanted to go home and go to bed and then…and then he would deal with whatever that was….

He had been defending Sho…

But that made no sense. Yes. Ok, he had told one of Sho's secrets but even Shimazaki should have been able to see how bad, how much worse, Sho's life was going to get once Suzuki realized how he…was. Fukuda had done his best with what he'd had and…and his best had been…he had done what he had done and that was just…what he had done. He would apologize to Sho later…and talk to him more about why he did what he did…but he couldn't think about that now. He had to figure out where he was and…and get home….

One thing at a time.


	328. I Just Wanted to Have Dinner

Mob considered herself to be a good big sister.

She always took very good care of Sho. She put him to bed every night at nine, ran his baths every night at eight, and sometimes got him to do his homeschool work. She made sure that there was food in the kitchen that he liked, clean clothes in his drawers, and every single night she made sure that all of his stuff was on the charger. Sure sometimes she went and hung out with her friends but she always came home and got her little brother ready for the night.

That was normal.

She had spent the day with Minegishi watching TV and just being together, which had been normal, and also she had come home to make dinner for her family, also normal. Dad had come home and gone straight to his room, normal, and Sho had been in his own room doing Sho stuff, also normal. Mob went righto the kitchen and made dinner, which was also breakfast because dad liked breakfast foods, and for their family that was normal. She got breakfast on the table and sat down with dad to eat. That was also normal.

Sho decided to stay in his room. That was, unfortunately, also normal.

"If your brother wants to starve then that's his business." Said dad as he sat down at the table. Mob hated it when he said that. He made it sound like he didn't care about Sho at all…and that made no sense because Sho was his Son…and dad was supposed to care about his own Son. Even if he didn't like Sho, and Mob knew that he didn't, he still had to love him. Sort of like her and mom. Sometimes when she thought about mom she thought that she didn't like her, because she had ran away from home and stuff, but she would always love her mom no matter what.

So dad had to love Sho no matter what. They were a family and that was how families worked.

Well in a good world that was how families worked. She knew that Minegishi's parents hadn't loved them, that was why they had been such jerks to them and also why they had to live in a group home, and she knew that Shimazaki's parents hadn't loved him either. Well he said that his mom loved him but she also let his dad lock him in his room and hit him and tell him that he never should have been born…and Mob knew how hard it was when someone you loved treated someone else you loved badly….but Mob at least talked to dad about hitting Sho and made him do it less often…and she was only eleven so she could only do so much….so Shimazaki's mom had no excuse in her book….but it was wrong to think badly of the dead….but still. In good families the parents loved the kids…

But sometimes she got the feeling that this was not a very good family.

"But….you don't want Sho to starve to death….right dad?" asked Mob. She knew that her family was not the best family, mom had run away and dad could be a real jerk sometimes, but they still loved each other…well Mob loved everyone, anyway, and she did her best to be the best Mob she could be…and it just…sometimes it felt like it wasn't enough.

Like now.

Dad put down his fork and make the face he made when he thought about stuff…and this was not something that he should have been thinking about in the first place. He should not have had to think about whether or not he wanted his own Son to starve to death. Even though Mob was the favorite she knew that dad must have still wanted Sho to have been alive…Sho had been mom's favorite and she had still fed Mob…and Mob knew that when she had babies with whoever wanted to have babies with her that she would feed them all no matter how she felt about them, not that she could feel anything other than love for her future babies, and if her future husband said something like that then…then he could go and find some other family to eat dinner with.

That was a very mean thought to have but that was just how she felt.

She wished…she knew that it was wrong but she wished…she wished that she could tell dad that he needed to start being a lot nicer or he could fix his own dinners and do his own laundry and….and stuff…because that was just not a nice thing to say about a stranger on the street let alone your own family…but Mob…she had bent her fork on accident with her powers…she needed to calm down. Getting mad at dad…there wasn't much in this world more pointless than being mad at dad. Dad was dad…

Dad was dad.

And dad was still thinking…and Mob still had no clue what there even was to think about. He had said something so mean about his own Son that Mob…she could not begin to understand. For as long as she could remember she had just….she had just sat there while dad said that…and it hadn't been so bad when she'd had mom to cancel out when he was a jerk…but she didn't have a mom anymore. She was the mom now and she had to cancel out when he was a jerk….and it was just…so….a lot. The whole things was a lot.

And dad was still thinking.

"Dad….you don't want Sho to starve to death….because he's your Son and you love him….right?" asked Mob slowly. She didn't know what she would say to dad if he said 'yes'. She didn't know what she could say to dad if he said 'yes'. She may have been the mom now but she still wasn't mom. She didn't have power over dad, nobody in the world had power over dad…and she couldn't just send him to his room to think about what he'd done…but she wanted to. She wondered if dad's parents had ever punished him for the terrible things he said…

Probably not if he was still saying and doing terrible things at his age.

"I….would not want him to starve to death. No. I would not want that at all." said Dad. Mob felt…a lot lighter. She felt lighter and she could have lifted off into the air…but she didn't. She just sat there and watched dad while he watched her. She could see it in his eyes and his aura. He was still thinking…though she had no idea what he was still thinking about.

"Why did it take you so long to say that?" asked Mob. She needed to know. Dad said that he wouldn't want Sho to die….but you were never supposed to wish death on people. That was bad karma…and also just a bad way to be. Especially about your own kid. Mob knew that she would never wish death on one of her kids even if her kid grew up to kill people, eat their bodies, and wear their faces like in that movie Sho liked. Well she would have been very disappointed in her kid if he grew up to do that…and in herself for raising a person like that…but she would never wish death on him. You couldn't wish death on anyone but especially not someone who you were responsible for bringing into the world.

"I had to think. I know that I would never want Son to starve to death, there is no scenario in which I want that, but I also do not want him to join us at the table for this meal…and most others. He takes his food apart, he'd loud, and this morning he was very tiresome and unpleasant. I would much rather share all of my meals with you and I look forward to the times when every meal with be just the two of us." Said dad. Mob….bent her fork again on accident. She….loved her dad very much. He was the best and only dad that she had ever had. He was a good person deep, deep, VERY DEEP down inside of himself. Past the meanness and the jerkiness and the weirdness and the ketchup he could be a good person….

But it was hard to see the good person that he was on the inside when he was being such a jerk on the outside.

"Dad…that was a mean thing to say…and it makes me feel sad when you say things like that about Sho." said Mob. She knew that she should not have said something like that to dad, it was mean to tell people that they were being mean, but he had been very mean first….and she didn't like it when he was like that. She loved him and she knew that there was good inside of him…and he just needed to start acting like it.

"I…I hurt you? But….you asked for the truth." Said dad. She knew when his aura and eyes got like this. Now it was his turn to bend his fork. He got like this when he did things that bothered her, like when he fell asleep laying on her hair or when he gave her middle of the night stomach rubs and woke her up. She knew that she had hurt him…and she wanted to take it back…but she also wanted him to take back the mean thing that he had said about Sho.

"I did but…but that was still a mean thing to say. When you say things like that it makes it sound like you don't love Sho…and you love him….right? You don't…you don't hate Sho…right?" asked Mob. Dad must have loved Sho just a little. Dad…he was dad…and sometimes he could be a real jerk and he didn't like Sho but…but that didn't mean that dad didn't love him…right?

"I…care for him. There are numerous things about your brother that I dislike. I dislike the way he makes every meal take forever. I dislike the way he eats with his hands. I dislike the way he spoke to me this morning. I dislike the way he leaves a mess wherever he goes. I dislike how loud he is. I dislike how quarrelsome he can be with you. I dislike how defiant and contrary that he can be. I dislike a great many things about your brother but I do not hate him." said dad. That was…a lot of things that he didn't like about Sho. That was….too much negativity. You had to accentuate the positive, like in the song, and maybe…maybe dad was just a very negative person….or something like that.

"Well what do you like about Sho, dad? You must like something about him." said Mob. She didn't care if it was something as stupid as he liked how Sho had finally stopped using too much toothpaste. She just needed dad to say one word, one good word, about Sho. That was all. So long as he said one nice word then…then she could be happy…or at least less sad.

"I….like it when he draws. He's a very good artist." Said dad. He looked over at the drawings Sho had stuck to the fridge while he said that. Sho was a very good artist, that was true, and that was the easiest nice thing to say about him…but Mob was going to take it. That was better than dad had been saying before. That was the thing about dad. He was a good person…but it was hard to get him to be a good person….but maybe she had just not been working hard enough at getting to the good person that was inside of dad. Yes, that was what she had to do. She had to work harder at making dad a good person and…and mending the bond between Sho and dad. Sort of like in Brave only they were father and Son, and Japanese, and also nobody was turned into a bear. The point was still the same. She just had to figure out how she was going to fix things between dad and Sho…

Starting now.

"Ok. That was a nice thing…and it made me happy when you said that….and maybe you should say that to Sho. I'm going to go and ask him if he wants to come out for dinner. Ok? And when he gets here it would make me very happy if you said nice things to Sho…only nice things." Said Mob. Dad was looking at her. She looked back at him. She didn't get him sometimes. For Mob saying mean things was a million times harder than saying nice things but for dad that was the opposite…maybe she took after mom like that or something….which would have made sense since dad was always telling her how much like mom she was….

"But-" said dad. No. She knew that an argument was coming…and there was nothing to argue about. She needed to fix her family and this was how she was going to do it. She knew that she had to be the one to fix them because….because nobody else would. They just needed help. They didn't know how to get along so they needed help…she felt the gauze on her leg underneath her sock….sometimes you just needed help from someone who knew that they were doing and there was nothing wrong with that.

"Please daddy? Please be nice to Sho?" asked Mob. She hated to do that. She knew that it was mean, making dad do things, but sometimes you had to do stuff like that to get your dad to do what you wanted. Minori had taught her that and she knew a lot of things about a lot of things. It was mean but it was also effective.

"I….I will make an effort to be…kinder….to your brother in the way I speak. If it would make you happy." Said Dad. He should have been nice on his own but this was progress. This was progress and progress didn't always progress very fast but a little progress was better than no progress at all.

"Thanks dad, that would make me happy. I'm going to go and see if Sho wants some dinner now." Said Mob as she got up from the table. She would have to talk to Sho about being nicer to dad, too, when he was at the table. No more picking his food apart with his hands or fighting about eating all of the food groups…well Mob hadn't even served all of the food groups tonight…but he would still try and take his food apart like he usually did…so she would have to talk to him about that…

She would have to talk to him about a lot of things.

She would have to talk to him about not making dad angry. That had always been the problem between him and dad since as far back as she could remember. Dad and Sho just didn't get along. Dad liked quiet people who liked the things that he liked and let him boss them around. Sho was a loud person who liked what he liked and hated being bossed around. They were like cats and dogs, sometimes, but…but if Mob worked hard enough then she could fix things between dad and Sho and then everything could be good and they could be a happy family like she had always wanted.

She just had to work harder.

And that was what she was going to do. She opened the door to their room and-what? She smelled…she knew what she smelled…and Sho….Sho should NOT have smelled like that. Mob didn't think. She just went over to her mattress and lifted it with her powers…and all of her stuff was accounted for…so when they did this whole room smell like someone had been smoking? She looked around. She felt Sho but she didn't see him….well now she did. He was under the blanket and she could see something glowing, his ipad probably, and…and this room was a mess.

Sho had spoiled his dinner.

There were….so many empty boxes and bags…and Mob would have to order more food later tonight because they were out of…everything. Chips and cookies and cakesters and poptarts and candy bars and marshmallow squares and….and ranch dressing…had Sho been DRINKING the ranch dressing?! No! That was not a drink! That was for putting on things…but there was an empty bottle of ranch on the floor….and so many bags and boxes and wrappers…and the floor was not a garbage can!

Also Sho should not have been smoking!

He didn't need to! He could control his powers all on his own and…and she was having some trouble controlling hers. She was not mad…she was mad…but she could not be mad. Not at him. She smoked all the time…but she was older and also she needed to control her powers…and once you started it was hard to stop. The regular kind and the fun kind…and Sho…he hadn't needed to start in the first place…but he had….and…and she didn't know how to feel…well annoyed at the mess and the fact that now she had no snacks but also….

Also like she had failed.

She should have taken better care of him. She knew that smoking wasn't for kids and she knew that dad would not have been forgiving of Sho AT ALL if he caught him smoking. He let her do whatever she wanted because she was his favorite but Sho…Sho was not his favorite and dad had so many rules for Sho….and they were all so mean….and she had no idea what she was supposed to even do. She was just…well now they could smoke together and smoking made you feel good…and she knew that if he had been an adult then she wouldn't have had a problem with this….but he wasn't an adult at all…he was just a kid…

And she was the older sister.

She wasn't angry. She had been but now…now she was just…she didn't know how she felt. She knew that it was wrong to be angry at Sho for doing the things that she did, and had been doing for a while, but she just wished that he hadn't. He had no reason to so really it was like taking medicine when you didn't need it…or something. She didn't know. She just knew that she needed to either smoke a little or drink a little to get her powers to listen to her and Sho didn't need that since his control was already near perfect and…and what if he had ruined his control doing that? She didn't know…she just wanted…she just wanted…

She just wanted to talk to him about this.

"Sho? Can I talk to you?" asked Mob. She knew that he must have sensed her…unless he had smoked too much to even be able to sense her…and where had he learned about this, anyway? She hadn't taught him this. She had made an effort not to even let him know that she got up to stuff like this.

"Sho?" asked Mob a little bit louder. Nothing. Still nothing. She wondered if she was being ignored…but his aura was acting like she wasn't even there…so he at least wasn't ignoring her….she knew that sometimes she smoked too much and she got really out of it…and she didn't want him to have smoked that much….and she wanted him to be ok….and she needed to know that he was ok…

She pulled the blanket off of him.

"Hey big sis." Said Sho as he took off his headphones. Mob looked over at his screen. He was watching….she had no idea what he was watching. A movie. Some kind of movie and…and he seemed….not normal. His eyes were really red and he was squinting…which was not good at all…and she wished…well she had no idea what she wished for in that moment but she knew that wishing was a waste of time. She had to do…something….

But she had no idea what.

"Sho….did you smoke today?" asked Mob. That seemed like a good place to start even though she already knew the answer to that. She just…needed to get to the bottom of this and then…and then she would teach him about moderation…but later since dad was expecting her back at the table and she didn't want him to find out about this. She had only just now gotten him to say something nice about Sho and she wasn't going to ruin it.

"Yeah…and it was so fucking awesome….why didn't you tell me you did this? We could have….have been doing this together….and shit. I don't know. It's warm under here." Said Sho. He reached over and tried to pull his blanket back over his head with his powers. Mob stopped him with hers.

"Sho…I know you want to be safe and warm and cozy right now and I know that your blanket is very soft but I just need to know why you did this…and who let you smoke. Ok? Then I'll leave you alone and you can get back to…whatever that is." Said Mob. She saw some guys and a yellow submarine…and she wondered if that was THE yellow submarine from the land of submarines where there were skies of blue and fields of green…and each one of them would have all they needed….and she knew that only one person would have told Sho about the land of submarines…but he wouldn't have….would he?

Of course he would have. He was Shimazaki.

"Yellow Submarine. Shimazaki was right….this is a great movie…and now I understand music…and shit." Said Sho. Mob…did not want him cursing and also…also she just….she knew that he had said Shimazaki but…but she didn't want to believe her ears….but she had to believe them because they were her own two ears and she was not going crazy….or was she?

Maybe that would be been preferable to this.

"Sho….did Shimazaki….let you smoke?" asked Mob. She….had no idea how she felt about that. One part of her wanted to go and find Shimazaki and say mean, and very loud, things to him and the other part of her wondered if it was even ok for her to do so because she would then have been getting mad about Sho doing something that she did…and it wasn't a bad thing….but Sho was little and he already had better control over his powers than she did….so she just…didn't really know what to do…about this….

"Yeah….because I was feeling like crap….because Fukuda went and told dad about Emmy and shit…and then I felt like crap but then Shimazaki made me feel better…and he says that you guys do this all the time….and stop hanging out with him! You have Hatori and you like him so stop trying to take Shimazaki from me!" said Sho. Well not she had even more to think about. She didn't want to have had more to think about, she already had a lot to think about, but now she had to wonder about why Fukuda would tell on Sho…and about dad knowing about Sho's girlfriend…and also about him smoking…and about how he was always pushing her together with Hatori…and now he seemed jealous that she and Shimazaki were friends….

She had a lot to think about, worry about, and deal with now…and she hadn't even had her dinner yet.

"Sho…I'm not in love with Hatori….and I would never try and take Shimazaki away from you….so just….stay in here for tonight. If you get thirsty just drink from the bathroom sink and….and I'm not mad at you…and I love you…and later on we're going to talk about moderation….so…I'll just let you get back to…that. Oh! And stay away from dad, too, while you're like this." said Mob

"What do I want to talk to that dick licker for?" asked Sho…though Mob got the feeling that she wasn't meant to answer that question…and also she got the feeling that she would have to talk to Sho about his language later because that was a terrible, and terribly gross, thing to be calling anyone let alone their dad, and also she mostly just got the feeling that now she was going to have to go next door and talk to Shimazaki about this.

She also got the feeling that she wouldn't be having dinner tonight.

She left their room and did her best to get her aura back to normal. She did not need dad to ask her what was wrong. As far as he could know there was nothing wrong, everything was normal, and there was nothing happening in their family that he needed to know about. Sort of like how when she and Sho had fought when they had been little and mom'd had to act like everything was normal when dad came back…and she had to be like mom now.

Even though she wasn't.

She was and was not mom…and that was ok. Someone had to be the mom and she was the only girl so it fell to her. She had to…she had to just…deal with this. Shimazaki must have had a good reason and she would hear what his reason was…because Sho must have been wrong about Fukuda telling his secrets…and then she would talk to him and then she would tell him not to let Sho smoke. She would smoke with Sho if he wanted to so that way he could learn moderation…and now she appreciated Minegishi a little more actually…and she just…she was doing her best.

And her best had to be good enough.

"Dad, I have to go next door for…important reasons…and Sho doesn't want dinner so…so I'm going to leave now." Said Mob as she passed the kitchen. Dad hadn't eaten a thing. He had been waiting for her. He had told her, before, that the best times of his life had been spent with her…and she felt so guilty now…but she really did have important things to do.

"Will you be back to have dinner with me?" asked dad after a moment. Mob shook her head.

"No…but it's ok…because we can spend time together on Sunday and on Sunday you won't have to be alone…ok?" asked Mob. She knew that she was hurting dad's feelings…but she could make it up to him on Sunday. Yes. Then things would be better and…and then she could eat her dinner…and stuff.

"Alright…that's…that's acceptable." Said dad. Mob…she knew dad and she knew that he was hurt but…but right now she had to get all of this settled with Sho. Once this got settled then she could come back and…and she could eat dinner…and then she would spend time with dad even though it wasn't Sunday because he was sad…and then that would be that. Then everything would be all better and she could go back to her normal life with her normal meals that she was allowed to eat…

She was hungry.

But that didn't' matter. She had stuff to do. She wasn't going to starve to death from missing one meal. She had to get this settled…and she had no idea how she would ever get this settled. She loved Shimazaki, as a friend of course, and she knew that he had just been trying to make Sho feel better and all….but Sho…he didn't need to smoke to feel better….well maybe he did because dad teared him badly…but he didn't need to smoke to control his powers and…and once you started you had a lot of trouble stopping…and if dad found out about this then he would be very mad…and she didn't want her dad to be mad at Sho because he was mean when he was mad…

But most of all she just didn't want her brother to have to depend on this like she did.

Power was nothing without control. Dad had been telling her that for as long as she could remember. She knew how dad felt about control…and she had always been so proud of Sho because of how good his control was…and she loved him so much…and this might have ended up messing with his control and…and she just didn't know. She didn't why she felt the way she felt or if it was ok to feel this way…and she just…she needed to talk to Shimazaki all of this. She needed to figure out what she was even going to say to Shimazaki.

She had plenty of time to think about what she was going to say to him.

He was in the shower when she made her way to his house. He was in the shower and she…well she knew that she should have gone home…but instead she chose to wait for him in his room. She would have waited with Minegishi but they were asleep and she knew never to wake then when they were sleeping because sleep did not come very easy for them. She sort of wanted to hang out with Hatori…but he would just distract her. Right now she just had to think about what she was going to say to Shimazaki…

She had no idea what she was going to say to Shimazaki.

Well the same things that Minegishi had said to him when it came to her and smoking. Minegishi had told him not to smoke with her, not to give her things to smoke on her own, and not to let her overdo it…and he never listened to them…so maybe he wouldn't listen to her either. She didn't know. All she knew was that she was sitting up in his bed waiting for him to get out of the shower so she could talk to him…and stuff.

It was a long wait.

She sat on his bed while she waited. His bed was soft…but not as soft as it was when she smoked with him. She knew that she could have while she waited, she was allowed to take from his desk, and she wanted to. She wanted to so badly…and that might have made her a bad person because she was upset with Sho…no…she was upset with Shimazaki. She was upset with him for giving Sho the option to smoke…when she always had the option to smoke. Well Sho would have worse consequences for smoking, he got worse consequences for everything, and that was why she felt like this…and she just did not feel like feeling like this…

She didn't know.

She didn't know and…and she didn't like feeling like she didn't know. She didn't like any of the feelings that she was feeling now. She had to figure out of it was ok for her little brother to smoke and she had to teach him about moderation and she had to make him and dad get along and she had to teach dad how to be a good person and she had to make dad feel better because he had left her and she had to clean up from dinner and she had laundry to wash and dry and iron and fold and put away and she had to make breakfast tomorrow because dad missed her at breakfast and she had to sleep with dad tonight because he felt bad and he would probably hold onto her all night and lay on her hair…and her cut still hurt but she couldn't get it fixed because Fukuda didn't like anymore….and she wasn't sure how she felt about him since he had told dad about Sho's girlfriend instead of keeping it a secret…and also she had to get Sho into the bath tomorrow because he was starting to smell bad and not just from smoking…and he smelled like smoking and…and dad would notice…but not since Sho and dad were fighting…and she had to fix that….

She needed to smoke.

She needed to smoke so she did smoke. She smoked even though she knew that this was just the sort of thing that she should not have been doing. Minegishi had told her about moderation. Minegishi had told her never to smoke without them. Minegishi had told her so many things that she hadn't listened to….and Sho would do the same thing most likely….and she had no idea how she felt about all of that….

So she smoked.

She sat on his bed and smoked and waited for him to get done showering. She smoked until she heard the water turn off…and then she kept on smoking. She had thought that he would have come to back to his room after showering but, no, he just staying in the bathroom some more. So she kept on smoking. She smoked until the joint was done with. When it was down to a nub it was called a roach, he had taught her that, and roaches when in the roach bag he kept in his desk drawer. So that was what she did with it. She wondered if he had taught Sho that too…she wondered if she should teach Sho that, too…

She wondered if this was ok.

She had started doing this so she could control her powers better. She knew that this helped with her powers….but this also helped with her feelings. Conceal, don't feel. Dad had never used those exact words but he had told her, before, that powers were ruled by emotions so therefore if she wanted to get her powers under control then she had to get her emotions under control…and this was a good way to control her emotions. The bad ones. The ones where she felt sad or scared or stressed or like she was drowning under all that she had to do…so maybe it was ok for Sho to do this since he was sad and mad a lot of the time. Sho….his life was harder than hers in a lot of ways…so maybe this was ok….

So then why did she feel weird about her little brother smoking when she herself smoked?

She didn't know. She just knew that she felt weird about him smoking…and then she felt a whole different kind of weird when Shimazaki teleported back into his room. He had finished his shower a while ago and his hair was still wet…and she forgot how long it was when it wasn't all spiked up…and also she smelled that gross smell, sort of like cleanser, that his eye cleaner smelled like…so that was what he had been doing…and she focused on all of that and not the fact that he was only in a bathroom…Minegishi's purple bathrobe….and if he was wearing that then it meant that he wasn't wearing anything else…and she did not want to think about that at all. She felt…weird. A mixture of embarrassed and…and that other weird feeling she sort of got sometimes….but usually about Hatori…and that made no sense…and nothing made sense…

And she wanted to smoke some more.

"Mob, I love you, I really do but since I love Toshi more, well in a different way, and I don't want them to hate me for the rest of my life I'm going to have to ask you to close your eyes while I get dressed." Said Shimazaki. Mob closed her eyes, covered her eyes with her hands, used her powers to pull her shirt up over her head, and then used her powers to pull his blanket up over her head for good measure. She heard him moving around and…and she tried not to think of the fact that she was in the same room as him while he was getting dressed…

The only boy she had ever been in the room with while he was naked, before, was her little brother…

This was….that stupid feeling that she didn't know the name of but wanted gone was back…as well as embarrassment…and it seemed that these feelings came in twos….and she didn't want them to come in twos or ones or at all! She was….she was not there to have weird feelings and she was not there to listen to Shimazaki get dressed, either. She was there to…to tell him that…that Sho could smoke for fun when he got older but right now he needed to learn moderation and only smoke when he had trouble controlling his powers or when he had a lot of bad feelings inside of him.

There. That was what she was going to say.

But she had trouble remembering what she had been about to say, it had run from her head like a startled cat, the minute she felt the bed next to her dip. She felt the bed dip and then the blanket was pulled down from her head…she could feel the air moving around her ears….and then she felt his hand through her shirt right above her heart and he tugged the shirt down from over her head….and it felt like lightning hit her in the stomach and then traveled through her whole…self…a feeling which she ignored. She ignored that feeling when it came back, too, when he pulled her hands from over her eyes…..and then she just sat there with her eyes screwed shut….and she didn't want to open them…and she didn't know why she didn't want to open them…

She didn't know a lot of things.

She didn't know what to say. She knew that she was going to say something but she had forgotten…and she didn't know why she had forgotten…all she knew was that she felt weird and her breathing was coming out funny and her socks…she had on the socks he had gotten her…and aside from the blood on one of them these were the best socks in the world…and she loved these socks and…and maybe she should have said that…or something….or maybe he should have said something….or something.

"What do you see when you close your eyes?" asked Shimazaki suddenly. Mob opened her eyes. Right, they had been closed….and what had she been seeing? That was…a question. She was glad that he had said something but now she had to think….what did she see?

"Huh?" asked Mob. That had not been what she had been expected…well she hadn't known what she had been expecting. Maybe something. Maybe nothing. She didn't know. Her thoughts were all…messy. She felt all messy inside…and in a weird way. Like her heart was doing it's own thing and her lungs were doing their own thing and her organs were all squirmy and her brain was trying it's best to keep order but the little people who controlled her emotions like in Inside Out were all arguing over the control panel…or something. Something she was not a fan of. She was not a fan of this at all…but she didn't need to be a fan of it, she just needed to figure out how to make it stop, and she needed to figure out how to just….focus. Focus on being here and…and now on how soft her socks were or how he was….himself…and stuff.

"Your eyes are closed and I've heard that people see things when their eyes are closed…so what do you see?" asked Shimazaki. Right. Her eyes had been closed. He could tell. He could tell without seeing …and had that been a mean thing to do? Keep her eyes closed like that? She didn't know. She didn't know but…but she wasn't going to ask. Asking might have been rude too. She decided, instead, to just answer the question.

"Colors and lights and patterns. I saw in a documentary that people see stuff like that when they close their eyes because it's their light and dark receptors freaking out….or something. I don't know. I don't know how to describe it to you…maybe like when you walked under those fairy lights and you said that it felt like a million suns…or maybe not because it doesn't feel like that…and stuff. I don't know. That's a hard question. Ask me something else please." Said Mob. She wanted…right. She had come here to talk about Sho….where had her mind gone? Well wherever it had gone to it was back in her head where it belonged…mostly. His hair was still all long and wet and…and she didn't know why she cared about his hair or the fact that he was in sleep clothes…she didn't understand herself sometimes…and she had to understand herself…she had to figure all of this out…she had to get her brain back together….and stuff…

"Ok, what brings you here at this hour of the night…whatever hour of the night it is. I have no idea. They all just sort of run together and I don't feel like asking my phone." Said Shimazaki. He scooted back and crossed his legs. Mob scooted back to give him some room even though he had plenty of room. She had come here to…right. Now she remembered.

"Um….ok. Sho told me that you smoked with him and at first I was mad but then I thought about it some more and I decided that it was wrong of me to be mad at Sho for doing something that I do all the time and it was wrong of me to be mad at you so I'm not but please don't teach Sho to smoke all the time because I smoke all the time and it's ok for him to smoke some of the time because he has a lot of bad feelings because our dad can be a real jerk and stuff….but I have to teach Sho about moderation…and that's all I have to say about that…so I'll just be going now." Said Mob as she slid off the bed. She felt…her skirt had gotten caught on the bed as she slid off…but he was couldn't tell anyways…and if he could he couldn't see her…but now she was extra embarrassed and…and she had said what she had come here to say and now she could go off and eat her dinner already.

There. Perfect.

"Yeah…I got about every other word…sorry." said Shimazaki. Mob sighed. Well now she had to say everything all over again…and at least now that she was frustrated with him it had chased the weird feeling away. Now the weird feeling, where her insides were tingly and squirmy, was gone. She could look at him and just….sigh. He could be so frustrating sometimes…

"Ok. Just….I have to teach Sho moderation so don't smoke with him until….until I teach him moderation. He can smoke because he's sad and mad a lot of the time but I don't want him to smoke all the time like I do, ok? That's all I have to say…and now I'm going to go home now…ok?" asked Mob. She hoped that he had been listening that time….but it didn't seem like it. He had his head turned to the side and he was shaking it back and forth and up and down.

"Fucking water….fucking ocean…fucking sand…fucking Fukuda…" muttered Shimazaki. Mob sighed again. He hadn't been listening and now she would have to tell him the whole speech again and…wait. Fukuda?

"What did Fukuda do to you?" asked Mob. Shimazaki stopped shaking his head and faced her. He did that to be polite, he had said, and Mob…she was grateful that he would think of her like that…since sometimes it felt like she was always thinking of others….and stuff….even though she knew that other people thought of her….well it felt like she was always thinking of other people, anyway, she didn't know.

"He threw sand in my face." Said Shimazaki like that answered her question….well it did…but it also raised about a million more.

"Why did he do that? What did you do to him?" asked Mob. She knew Fukuda. He didn't just throw sand at people….and also she had no idea when he would ever have gotten the chance? Shimazaki's room…it smelled like the ocean. The smell was coming from his dirty clothes hamper…and also his coat wasn't draped over his chair like normal….had he been in the ocean again? But then why would Fukuda have been with him? They didn't get along….well Fukuda didn't get along with anymore but Sho and dad….so this was just…weird. So weird. The weirdest.

"Nothing….well a lot of things. Now don't freak out, and I cannot stress that enough, don't-" said Shimazaki. Mob shook her head. She shook her head hard enough for her hair to hit her in the face, hard enough for him to see it, because….because she did not like the sound of what he had just said.

"When someone tells you not to freak out that means that they did something bad and you absolutely should be freaking out." Said Mob. She knew him, she knew that he acted like a crazy person most of the time, and she knew that he had kind of a mean streak inside of him…and she knew that Fukuda rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He and dad were alike in that way….but nobody would ever mess with dad….and Shimazaki…well he went for people who were sort of easy…and Fukuda had no way to fight back….

Mob knew for a fact that she would not be eating dinner tonight.

"Well….ok. Just…he can heal! Remember, he can heal." Said Shimazaki. Mob…did not like the sound of that. So he was hurt…and he could heal…but he still felt pain! And also Shimazaki should not have been going around hurting people anyway…and especially not Fukuda. Sure he could be sort of grumpy sometimes, and she knew that he didn't like her anymore, but he took good care of Sho and he didn't deserve whatever Shimazaki had done to him.

"What did you do?" asked Mob. She was…not going to get mad. Thank God that she had smoked before she had to deal with all of this. She was going to stay calm and then….and then she was going to deal with this…and that was that. This was that and this was something else she had to deal with.

"I….well he fucked with Sho first and remember, Sho is your little brother, and he…he broke Sho's trust. Like. For real. No lying. He made Sho cry and you know how I feel about sad people…and he said a lot of shit about me too and….and you know that I'm not going to try and fuck either of you, right?" asked Shimazaki. Mob felt her aura flare. She blinked. She poked herself in both ears to make sure that she was still hearing correctly. That…that….WHAT!?

"Um….that thought had never….been in my head….before…." said Mob slowly. She knew what that word meant, it was a gross way of saying have sex with, and she had never thought of that with him…or with anyone…and the thought of it was gross…and now the thought was in her head like a mosquito…and just…yuck. So much yuck. All the yuck. He had just given her the whole world's supply of yuck in one instant…and she didn't want any of it…because….yuck.

"Well get it out of your head because I would never fuck either of you. Well not Sho, ever, anyway because I think of him as my own kid. You, well not now obviously, but if you ever felt like it when you got older-" said Shimazaki. No. Now she had all the world's supply of yuck. She didn't even want to kiss him, that was gross enough, but the thought of him seeing her naked…and he saw things by touching them…and the thought of them…she wasn't entirely sure what happened when two people did that but…but….YUCK!

And now she would have to see if they made soap for brains.

"What did you do to Fukuda?" asked Mob. Nope. She did not want to talk about this anymore or ever again. This was not….not something anyone needed to talk about ever. Just…no. No way. Not now and not ever…and thank God Minegishi was asleep because they would NOT have taken any of that well….and she didn't want him to ruin his chances of becoming boyfriend and theyfriend with them…and also she would never have done that to her best friend even if Shimazaki wasn't their boyfriend yet.

Just….yuck.

"Right. That jackass. I may have….dropped him a few times in the ocean and onto the ground…and then I might have abandoned him on a secluded stretch of rocky beach with no shoes…maybe." Said Shimazaki. Mob was at least…happy that this was better than getting the whole world's supply of yuck….even if it meant that she had something new to do…and her dinner was on the table getting cold…and Sho was lonely…and dad was lonely….and she didn't want to go to the beach to look for Fukuda…but she had to…and stuff….

"Shimazaki…..take me to him. Right now." Said Mob. She didn't say please because, well, he had done a bad thing. Not only had he hurt someone who didn't deserve it, Fukuda could be sort of mean sometimes but he didn't deserve that, he had also left Fukuda stranded…and with no shoes on….and you had to wear shoes outside of the house…and now she had to go and put her shoes back on and look for Fukuda at the beach….and she hadn't been wearing her beach shoes which meant that she would be shaking sand out of her gym shoes until the end of time….

She understood why Minegishi hated extra work.

Because it was extra work. She was the one in charge of her house and her friends and…and herself…and she was just….she was hungry. She was tired and she was hungry and she just wished that there could be one day of her life where she didn't have to be in charge…but wishing was pointless. She had things to do and if she didn't do them then they wouldn't get done. She had to find Fukuda and….and teach Sho about moderation…and make Sho and dad get along…and wait for her cut to heal…and also go to bed when she got him since she had gotten up before five that morning. She was so tired and hungry and…

And she shouldn't have been complaining.

She should have been happy that dad trusted her with so much responsibility. She should have been happy that dad thought that she was capable enough to replace mom in the family and also that she was capable enough to outrank everyone in Claw but him. That was why she had to do this, well she would have done this anyway because she was a good friend like that, but she still had a responsibility to everyone in Claw. Claw served their needs, dad had said, but they also served Claw. Claw was nothing without them and they were nothing without Claw. Without Claw they would never be able to take over the world and make it a better place. A place where espers and normal people could live together in harmony. A place where everyone could get along. A place where there would be no more war or crime and everyone could live in happiness and prosperity so long as they did what dad said, which seemed like a good tradeoff to her since dad only had their best interests at heart. Claw was them and they were Claw and she had to take care of Claw and everyone in it.

And even if she hadn't outranked everyone she still would have helped Fukuda because she loved him.

She loved him…not like how she had when she had been little…but she still loved him. He took good care of Sho. She didn't know what she had ever done to him, to make him not like her, but she still loved him. She still remembered all the times when he had come over with extra food he had bought on accident and then they all cooked dinner together. She remembered how he would play with her and Sho for hours and hours when mom had been sick. She remembered all the bedtime stories he had read her and Sho even though their little kid books must have been so boring to him. She remembered how he would come and visit all the time and he and mom would have sleepovers because she was sick and probably lonely, too, since dad had been gone all the time.

Even if he didn't like her, and hadn't liked her for a while, she still loved him.

Which was why she was happy that they had found him so quickly. He hadn't gotten very far, he'd had no shoes on, and he was the only person around for kilometers so finding him had been easy for her. Shimazaki, too, but she didn't fully trust him to find Fukuda. She would have to talk about this, about why it was ok to feel bad that someone you cared about had gotten hurt but not ok to take that pain you felt out on others, with him later. Much later.

Right now she just wanted to get Fukuda and go home.

"Fukuda! I'm so glad we found you!" said Mob. She meant it, she was glad to see him, Shimazaki not so much but she hadn't been speaking for him. She had been speaking for herself and she had meant every word of it. She had been so happy to see him, first his aura and then him, that she had hugged him right after she said that.

But that maybe had been the wrong thing to do.

Because he didn't hug her back. His aura…he didn't have much of an aura but what little aura he did have ran away from her…and she didn't get why. Sure he may not have liked her anymore but he must have at least have been happy that she had saved him. He might have been unhappy that Shimazaki had been there but…but he knew that she wouldn't have let Shimazaki do anything to him, right? Because she was around to stop him now? Right?

She didn't know.

"Miss Suzuki. You're hurt. I'm guessing that's what bring you here." Said Fukuda. Mob was confused for a moment before she remembered her cut. That didn't matter. He was there and he was ok. That was all that mattered. He was ok and…and his aura felt tired. She would have liked that cut to have been healed but she knew that his powers had limits.

"No, that's not why I'm here at all. I'm here because Shimazaki did a very bad thing to you-" said Mob

"Which I stand behind!" said Shimazaki

"Which I'm going to talk to him about later. Right now I just want you to come back with me. It's cold out here and you don't have shoes on. Shimazaki can teleport us back-" said Mob

"Do I have to?" asked Shimazaki

"Yes, you have to. This is not optional. You brought him here and now you have to bring him back…and say sorry, too, even if you don't mean it." Said Mob

"Fine…I'll take him back but he has to say sorry for what he did." Said Shimazaki

"Fine, you want an apology? That's what all of this has been about? Fine, I am SO sorry that I saved Sho from whatever his father was going to do to him once he figured out that he's…the way he is. I'm so sorry that I made a pragmatic choice in the best interest of a ten year old boy. I'm SO sorry that I didn't tell him that it was ok to try and KILL his own father-" said Fukuda

"Hey! I never killed my father, I just didn't save him, and that…that's not even what I'm talking about you piece of-" said Shimazaki. In an instant he had teleported in front of Fukuda…and in an instant Mob took him by the wrist. She took him by the wrist and held him back. She used her powers. She could not let him move. She could not let them fight. He had done enough. This had been enough. It was late. It was chilly. None of them had coats on. Fukuda had no shoes. Mob still hadn't had her dinner.

Honestly, she'd had enough.

"No. No more fighting. Friends shouldn't fight…and even if you aren't friends you still shouldn't fight. Fukuda, stop making Shimazaki mad. Shimazaki, don't hurt Fukuda. Telling Sho's secrets….that was wrong…but what's done is done. Now we all just have to go home and…and then well figure out how to make up in the morning, ok?" asked Mob

"Fine…fine. I'll take us back…as soon as he takes it back. As soon as he takes back what he said." Said Shimazaki

"Shimazaki, dad knows about Emmy and there's no taking that back-" said Mob

"No. Not about that. He knows what he said. He knows what he said and he had better take it back now." Said Shimazaki. He was trying to break free…and she wouldn't let him. She knew that he was strong, strong enough to lift her up, but she was strong too. She didn't like using her powers against people like this but…but this was just something that she had to do. The greater good. It was better to use her powers against someone to stop a fight than to just let them stand there and hurt each other some more…or rather let Shimazaki hurt Fukuda some more…

She didn't want anybody to get hurt.

"No. I am not afraid of you and I am not going to take it back. Any of it. You're terrible for Sho. You're been terrible for Sho just like you've been terrible for Shigeko. You're going to try and ruin him just like you ruined Shigeko and you're going to try and start up the same shit with him that you probably have going on with-" said Fukuda. Mob put her strongest barrier between them and she held on to Shimazaki with all her might. She felt him trying to teleport away…and she didn't let him. She had no idea that she had the ability to stop him from teleporting but she did…and she had used it…and he had gasped…

And so had Fukuda.

"Don't be afraid of me, then, be afraid of her. You should be, you know, because she's holding me back right now. This isn't for show. I literally cannot move right now…and she's only eleven. She just an eleven year old girl…and since you've got some massive balls all of a sudden why don't you say to her what you said to me? Go on, say it to her. See what she does." Said Shimazaki. His voice was low and kind of scary…and she had never heard him talk like that before…and she…she knew him and she knew that he was not scary…even though she…she had never heard him talk like that before…and even though Fukuda….he seemed….his aura seemed….sort of afraid.

"…no. I can't say that to her. I can't say something like that to-" said Fukuda. He was scared….and she didn't want him to be scared. Not of Shimazaki and…and not of her, either, and it seemed like he was afraid of her…and stuff…and she just….never wanted him to be afraid of her…and stuff….

"Mob, have I ever even tried to fuck you?" asked Shimazaki. Mob let him go. She had to let him go because….he just kept on giving her the whole world's supply of yuck!

"What? No…why….no! Just….gross!" said Mob. She couldn't help but let him go and taking a step back because…she just…gross. The whole thing was just….gross. So gross. So gross and so yuck and if you looked 'yuck' up in the dictionary then this day…night….would be right there!

"See? There you go. I have never even tried to fuck her, she's eleven so that says a lot more about you than it does about me, and I would never even think of fucking Sho…and now she knows what you think…and you have deal with that now. You're managed to alienate our future boss. Congratulations." Said Shimazaki

"You piece of-" said Fukuda. He took a step towards Shimazaki and Shimazaki took a step towards him and…and….and…and Mob….she'd had ENOUGH!

"No! No more! I…I am both of your boss right now and….and as the vice president and second in command of Claw I am ordering the two of you to NEVER talk about things like that ever again….and also we are going back home now…and….and everyone is going to their own bed in their own house….and that's….those are my orders." Said Mob. She hated it, giving orders, but she had to. After that…she just wanted to go home. She just wanted to go home and never, ever, have to deal with any of this again. This had been….

Bad words.

This whole night had been bad words…the day had started off so good but the night had turned into all the bad words that Mob knew…and thanks to Sho she knew a lot of them now. She knew all the curse words and the minute she had been teleported back into her house, back into the genkan, she had wanted to do nothing more than to start screaming out every single bad word that she had ever heard in her entire life….

But she hadn't.

Sho…his aura felt like he was sleeping…and dad was home…and no matter how f-word and h-word this night had been she would never just start screaming out curse words like that. She wasn't supposed to. She had to be a good sister, a good Daughter, and a good Mob…so she could not start cursing. She just…she could only…take off her shoes and go back to the table and eat her dinner…so that was what she did. She took off her shoes, careful not to aggravate her cut, and then she made her way to the kitchen where her dinner was….

Ice cold.

But that was fine. She could just microwave it. She could just…she picked up her plate and carried it to the microwave….and she saw out the corner of her eye…..dirty dishes. A sink full of dirty dishes…but that was fine because….because she could do those after dinner and….and she would just microwave her food and….she smelled burning when she opened the microwave…because there was….someone had tried to make s'mores in the microwave, Sho most likely, and left them in for too long….so now there was burnt marshmallow in the microwave….but that was ok. She could scrape it out and….and she could do that later. She could just have something else for dinner then.

She opened the cabinets and they were empty.

And there was no use crying over empty cabinets…even though she was hungry….she could order more food tomorrow. She closed the cabinet door and put her plate down…and she did not cry. She didn't cry or…or anything. She just put her plate down, pulled her shirt up over her head, and did some breathing….because the house was so big and…and she had to do so much…and Sho had eaten all of her food…because Shimazaki had decided to teach him how to smoke….because Fukuda had been a jerk to him…and also he had thought that she and Shimazaki were…

She felt gross.

She had never felt so gross in her life. For a moment she thinks that's because she's breathing into her shirt and the air from her lunch is being recirculated…but that's not it. She feels gross because….she can see her breasts. Well more like points but…she can see them and she feels gross. She takes her head out of her shirt….and she still feels gross. Fukuda…he makes her feel gross…and she just…she wished that she could go back in time to before she had turned eleven. Back to when she had been little and…and she hadn't started getting THESE. She just…he had never thought about her like that with anyone before these…and also he had made fun of Minegishi's and he had probably made fun of hers and…and she just felt gross and….

And she needed a bath. And a cigarette.

So that was what she was going to do. She was going to smoke a cigarette in the bath. She felt gross, so she needed a bath, and she needed to stop feeling hungry, so she would smoke a cigarette….for the first time in months. She knew that she was not supposed to smoke, that it was very hard to quite, and that smoking was bad for her…but she still had some leftover cigarettes from when she used to smoke and….and she needed a cigarette…and everything in moderation….

So that was what she did.

She made her way to her room carefully so she didn't wake Sho, it was past his bedtime, and she lifted her mattress with her powers, got out her cigarettes and her lighter, and then put her bed back the way it belonged. Then she grabbed a nightgown, a long thick one even though it wasn't wintertime anymore, and she left as quietly as she had come in. She crept down the hallway to the bathroom like a burglar, even though this was her house, and she snuck into the bathroom…and shut the door. She shut the door and almost jumped at the sound it made…because it had been so loud…or maybe she had just been too quiet. She didn't know. All she knew was that she needed a smoke and a bath.

So she turned on the taps and lit herself a cigarette.

The cigarette made her feel better the moment she inhaled. She felt….less hungry…and less…gross. Well she still felt pretty gross…and grosser still because she was looking at the tub now…and now she remembered that if she were to get in there then he would have to get undressed….and she didn't want to. She was…she didn't want to look at herself naked. Back when she had been little nobody had ever thought of her like that….and now she was older and…and people thought of her like….Fukuda thought about her like….she didn't want to think about how Fukuda thought about her…

She didn't want to get undressed.

So she smoked. She smoked and…and she needed….she needed to calm down and…and stop being a baby. It was just a bath and she needed one. She needed one because she had to wash the gross feeling off. The feeling that…that he thought about….thought about her like that. That she would do stuff like that. That she would do stuff like that with Shimazaki…or with anyone….and…and Minegishi had been right. They had said that they didn't hate their breasts, they just hated how having breasts made everyone think that they had the right to comment on their body….and Mob got it.

She got it and she hated it.

She hated it and she just wanted to be alone. She wanted to be alone with her stupid gross body and the stupid gross hair that grew everywhere and her breasts that she had thought that she had wanted but…but now she wished that she didn't have them….and that they would just go back to where they came from. They were barely anything, Minori had said that no boy would like her unless she stuffed her bra with a whole box of tissue on each side, but she just wished….wished that they would just go away and she could get back to normal…..whatever normal had been….whenever it had been…she just wanted to go back there….

And she just wanted to be alone.

But she didn't get to be alone, no, she never got to be alone. She could feel dad's aura getting closer and closer and closer….and he could hear the water running. If he had to pee or whatever then he could go and visit Fukuda since they were friends…since they had been friends years ago…or he could visit Hatori since they were friends now…or he could get his own house and then he would be able to use his own bathroom and keep his own dishes clean and make his own meals and do his own laundry and….and…and just….

She took another drag off of her cigarette.

She could feel dad and…and he knew that she smoked so she wouldn't get in trouble…and if she did then better her than Sho. She never wanted Sho to get in trouble, she loved him, and she never wanted dad to be mad at him. She just wanted…she wanted…she just wanted everything to be ok with everyone. She just wanted tomorrow to be better than today. She wanted a family who loved each other and…and she had to be the one to do that and…and just wanted…she wanted….

She wanted to be alone to smoke and take a bath all on her own.

"Daughter?" asked Dad. Mob….she loved her dad very much…she loved him and she just…she wanted…..she wanted him to be happy and she knew that if he wanted to hang out with her then he should have been able to….because she was his Daughter….and she loved him so much….but she also just…wanted….to be….

She wanted to be alone.

"Yes, dad? Do you need the bathroom? I'm not in the tub yet." Said Mob. She almost put her cigarette out on the bathroom counter…but that would have ruined the counter…and also dad had told her that she could smoke….so this was ok.

"No, I was just wondering if….if you were smoking in there or the bathroom was on fire." Said dad. Mob wondered how dad came up with this stuff sometimes. Dad always came to the worst conclusions when it came to stuff. He worried too much, way too much, and she just…..wished that he would worry less and…and use that energy to be nice to Sho…and stuff. The energy that he used to think up crazy stuff like the bathroom, a room full of water, catching fire somehow.

"How could the bathroom catch fire, dad? This room is full of water." Said Mob with a sigh. She exhaled smoke as she sighed….and then she inhaled again. She had half a pack and…and she knew that dad said moderation…but she could decide moderation for herself.

"There could have been an electrical fire." Said dad after a moment.

"Electrical fires smell like cigarettes?" asked Mob. That didn't sound right…but what did she know? She had never been in a fire before.

"I have no idea, I've never been in one before." Said dad

"Neither have I…and I don't want to. The bathroom isn't on fire….I'm smoking…and you said that it was ok for me to smoke if I used moderation." Said Mob

"…I did." Said dad. He took a minute to say that too…almost like he had been thinking….but Mob had no idea what there even was to think about. He had already said that it was ok…unless he was thinking of changing his mind about this…

"Yes, you did. Don't worry, I'll be out when I'm done with my bath. Then we can hang out if you want to." Said Mob. She would be out in a minute…or an hour…or however long her bath was going to take. She didn't know. She just…wanted…to be alone. That was all….but dad never left her alone….well he did but he never wanted to leave her alone…and that was just…how he….how he was and…and she loved him and….and shouldn't have wanted to be alone because that was mean and…she had to be a good big sister and Daughter and person and…and good people were good to their dads even when their dads were…like dad.

"…Daughter, it's not Sunday…but if you wanted to spend time with me…I would have no problem with that….alright. Yes…that's….that's fine." Said Dad

"Ok….see you later." Said Mob. She heard dad's footsteps getting farther and farther away from her…and she watched his aura…and she watched it until he got back to his room. She wondered what he was doing in there. Maybe he was playing Minecraft or Terraria or watching one of his shows or….something. She didn't know. She'd know when she went back to him, to spend time with him, since she had to. She had to spend time with him because….because she was a very good Daughter….and she could do all the things she had to do….

Even if she hadn't ended up eating her dinner.


	329. A Morning Spent in a Giant Blue Sweater

Mob loved this sweater.

It was blue, Elsa blue, and she knew that she and Minori had agreed to wear pinks and purples because those were the colors they looked best in she still wore blue sometimes because she liked it. She also still liked Frozen even if it was for little kids. She was a little kid…well she wanted to be a little kid. She wanted to go back to wearing a little kid…and she sort of felt like a little kid in this sweater.

It went down to her knees.

She sleeves went down over her hands and the bottom of the sweater went down over her knees and the neck was so wide that she and Sho could have both fit in it at once. She felt like she was little again, like when she was little and she would go into mom's closet and try on her clothes, and she liked this feeling. She liked this sweater. Not just because it was Elsa blue and not just because there was a white snowflake on the front but also because she could drown in it. She could put this on and not see any part of herself…..and that was nice.

She felt less gross this way.

She had been feeling gross since last night. Taking a bath hadn't helped. Taking a bath had involved her being naked and being naked had meant that she'd had to look at herself…and she didn't like it. Seeing herself. Seeing how she was now. She wished that she could have just gone back in time to before…all of this had happened. Before she started to look…like this. Before…before she had gotten old enough that people could look at her and think that she would do….stuff. Stuff that adults did together. Stuff that they did together when they were alone and in love, or sometimes just for fun, and she didn't even fully understand. She didn't want that….or at least she thought that she didn't. She wanted to be kissed and held and stuff…and the thought of a boy, a boy she liked, touching her like Minori said boys were always trying to do…it was scary and embarrassing but also…it made her feel all weird….

And that weird feeling was gross.

The weird feeling that she got when she thought about boys was gross and…and she didn't like it. She just wanted it to go away. She wanted it to just go back to where it had come from. She just wanted…she wanted to be little again. When she had been little…well she had liked boys then too….but she hadn't been so weird about it…and also everything else had been simpler, too, when she had been little. She'd had less to do, less to worry about, less to think about, and she just…she could just be Mob….but now she was Mob and she was big sis and she was Daughter and she was also second in command of Claw….and that was a lot of people that she had to be.

But somebody had to be those people and that somebody was her.

Right now she had to be the breakfast maker. Sho was awake already and he was drawing at the kitchen table. Dad was up too, she could feel it, and he would be wanting his breakfast soon….and she hadn't made him breakfast yesterday….so she had better go and make him breakfast right now…and that was what she did. She gave her sweater one last tug, just to make sure that it was still long enough for her to drown in, and then she left her bedroom and went to the kitchen. She walked slowly, she didn't want to aggravate the cut on her leg, and also…also she knew that it was selfish but she didn't want to make breakfast. She wanted…she wanted to go next door and have breakfast made for her. She wanted to have someone else cook for her and Sho and then she wanted to spend time with people who didn't really ask anything of her and…and she wanted to spend time with Minegishi because they never made her feel gross…not that her family made her feel gross….

The sense of grossness just clung to her.

She tugged her sweater down with her powers as she walked. She didn't know why she still felt like this. She was with her family and her family didn't look at her like that. They didn't think about her like that. They didn't think that she was having….stuff that adults had. She wasn't old enough and she didn't want to…and certainly not with Shimazaki. Just….no. He looked…she liked to look at him…and sometimes she felt weird when he was near…but then she remembered who he was and how he was and how he was always acting like a crazy person and also how he just….did stuff without even thinking his actions through…and just….just….

No.

She wasn't in love with him and you were only supposed to do that sort of thing with people who you were in love with….or just sort of felt like it with…if adults were to be believed. Adults were weird….very weird…and maybe she was the weird one. She was the one wearing a big, thick, heavy sweater in the summertime. She was the one who was still grossed out by something that had been said to her last night by a person who wasn't even around right now. She was the one who was being all weird and stuff…and stuff. She didn't know.

All she knew was that she had to make breakfast.

Make breakfast, order more food, do a load of dad's laundry, do a load of Sho's laundry, do a load of her laundry, clean the hair out of her brush, clean the hair out of Sho's brush, make the birthday list for next month, wash her hair, do her homeschool work, try and get Sho to do his homeschool work, play with Sho because she hadn't done that in a while, figure out how to make the cut on her leg heal faster without asking Fukuda for help, teaching Sho about moderation at some point, make lunch, make dinner, do the dishes from last night and from this morning and from lunch and from dinner, and also the million and one little things that popped up throughout her entire day.

No wonder mom had been so sick and tired all the time.

There was a lot to do. Mom had been a normal person, Mob could at least use her powers as extra hands when she needed to do stuff, but mom…she'd had to do all of this on her own. Mob wished that she had been able to tell how hard mom worked back when she had been around. She would have done more to help if she had noticed. But she hadn't helped, not at all, and maybe…..maybe that was why mom had run away from home like she had. Well Mob wasn't going to do that. She wasn't going to run away from home. No matter how hard things got, no matter how much she had to do, no matter how many things piled up, and no matter how tired she got she was never running away from home.

Dad and Sho needed her.

"Good morning, Sho." said Mob as she walked into the kitchen. She used her powers to get things ready as she walked in. She put the pan on the stove and then put the butter in, she got the eggs out of the fridge and started to crack them into a bowl, and she got the toast going too in case Sho was hungry right now. Not that she had any idea how he ever could have been hungry again considering how he had eaten all of the snacks in the house, his and hers, and…and she did not want to think about this now. Not about how he had been smoking…and about how she had so many weird feeling about him smoking. She smoked because she had to….and he had to smoke too….but because of his feelings, not his powers. Once you started it was hard to stop and….and she wanted him to feel better…but she also wished that he hadn't been feeling so bad that he thought that smoking was his only option to feel better….

Well considering how much of a jerk dad could be…it sort of was.

But dad wasn't there yet. He was still in his room, she could feel him, and she almost wanted him to just….go back to sleep. She had slept next to him last night. He had been on her hair, which had hurt, and he had woken her up in the middle of the night to ask her if she was still mad at him….which she hadn't been at first….and she still wasn't. She had just been annoyed that he had woken her up before the sun to ask her if she was still upset with him…but she hadn't told him how she really felt. She had just told him that she loved him, waited for him to fall asleep again, and then gone to sleep in her own bed. She knew that he had probably woken up lonely and she knew that she had been a jerk but…but she had been tired…

She was still so tired.

"…hey. Good morning…big sis." Said Sho. He had stopped drawing. Mob leaned over to see if he had finished. It looked half finished, or even less since she couldn't tell what it was. He was drawing and that was good. That meant that he was back to normal…and even though she wanted more than anything else for him to stay like normal she knew that once you started it was hard to stop….and he had no reason to stop. Once you found a way to make things better, if even for a little bit, then you stuck to that way….

And he had every reason to try and make things better.

She took care of him. She knew how hard his life was. Sure she was the one who did everything for him, she made his meals and washed his clothes and kept him on his schedule, but dad didn't like him and…and if she could make a deal with God or whoever and switch their places she would. She'd had to beg dad to be nicer to him…and that…that wasn't good. She wished that dad could take the love he gave to her and then transfer it over to Sho…but that was not how it worked. Dad was a jerk to him, had always been a jerk to him, and that….that was enough to make anyone want to smoke and stuff….

Sho didn't deserve to be treated like that.

"How do you feel?" asked Mob. She watched his aura…and she thought that he was ok….ok-ish. He was fine-ish. He was sitting and he was normal and he was…he was….he was ok-ish. She didn't know. She was bad at reading people…even her own little brother sometimes. She could see his aura and…and maybe his feelings were just confused. It would have made sense if they were. Hers were still sort of mixed up…but breakfast still needed to get made.

"Fine. Thirsty." Said Sho. Mob used her powers to pour him a glass of water. She knew that he wasn't in the best mood when he gave her one word answers….and she had no idea how to put him in a better mood. She just…could not let him be upset. The glass of eater bumped into the bowl of eggs…but that was ok. She could multitask. Nothing broke, that was what mattered. She hadn't broken anything with her powers in a while. She was glad that nothing broke. That would have just been more for her to do. More to clean up….

She was making more dirty dishes.

The ones from last night were still in the sink. She still had to wash those and then the dishes from this morning and then from lunch and dinner…and she would do it and not complain because they had to get done…and stuff. Stuff had to get done…so she was going to do it. She was going to…to do what she had to do…

Make breakfast and make sure that Sho was ok.

"Coke is better." Said Sho. Mob frowned. She knew that he liked soda…but it was breakfast time. Also the last baby tooth he had lost had this big black spot on it…and that could not have been good. She knew that Fukuda was there to heal then when they got hurt…but she just…well he loved Sho and Sho loved him so….so it was ok for Sho to see him and hang out with him….

Mob pulled her sweater tighter around herself.

"You can have a coke with lunch." Said Mob. She would make…she didn't know what she was would make for lunch. She didn't even know what they had. Breakfast food. Plenty of breakfast food. She didn't want breakfast for lunch. She already made breakfast for dinner and breakfast for breakfast and…and breakfast was getting sort of boring. She wanted to make…she would figure out what she was going to make later.

Right now she was just going to focus on breakfast.

"There aren't any left. You drank them all." said Mob. She could have to order more…and hope that the Awakened came back with Coke this time. Pepsi was not Coke. Store brand cola was not Coke. Dr. Pepper was not Coke. Sho could only have Coke, real Coke, unless he wanted something other than Coke. But he wanted Coke and Coke was what he would get…but only one a day and only at lunch because she didn't want him to end up being unhealthy and stuff.

"….Shimazaki drank a lot of them. He likes Coke." Said Sho. He looked down at what he was drawing when he said that. Mob looked down too…and she still couldn't tell what it was.

"He does. Don't worry. I'll get you more…and more poptarts, too, and all the other stuff that you like. Eating all the food….that's normal when you smoke. You get really hungry when you get…when you smoke a lot…and that's normal." Said Mob. She knew how weird it could be, when you first smoked, how weird being so hungry and thirsty and not knowing why…how it felt. How the world got sort of hazy at the front and sharp at the edges. How your skin felt everything. The softness…that was the best part. She knew how weird it could be…

And now Sho knew how weird it could be.

"Yeah….I thought that I was starving to death or something…but Shimazaki said that it was normal. He said…he said a lot of stuff to me…and I said…a lot of stuff to him. At least I think I did. I think that I said…some stuff. I don't know. Get more Coke. Get more Coke and…and some double chocolate pudding too…and some chocolate pudding. He likes that too….he likes…he likes chocolate." Said Sho. Mob nodded and put that all on her mental list. She wished she had her phone with her…but it was still on the charger and walking out of the room…well she had trouble multitasking without being in the room. She had to see what she was doing. One day she would be as strong as dad and then she wouldn't have to be in the room anymore.

She was already pretty strong.

She was stronger than Shimazaki…when she went by her powers, of course. He was stronger than her if they went by real strength. He could lift her up…and he had lifted her…and she decided not to think about that. The thought about…about the grocery list. Lots of chocolate…but maybe the sugar free kind because that may have been better for his teeth. She didn't know. She knew how important it was to keep him healthy but…but they had someone to keep them healthy and…and she just…

She pulled her sweater tight around herself.

"I'll get us more chocolate things." Said Mob. Sho nodded but didn't look at her. He drew another line, and another, and another. He drew lines and…and she had no idea what those little lines were coming together to make.

"Yeah…that would be good. He likes chocolate…and he told me why. His mom used to give him a lot of chocolate. When he was little his dad made his mom lock him in his room but she would see him whenever she could and…and she knew that he liked chocolate and stuff…and she would bring him stuff to keep in his room to eat when she couldn't bring him food. He told me that….he talked a lot…and I talked a lot…too." said Sho. Mob knew….some of that story. It was a very sad story, Shimazaki's life, and she didn't want to think about it. She was setting the table, now, well she was about to. She almost lost her telekinetic grip on the plates. She didn't like it when things were sad like that….she hated when sad things happened to her…and to the people who loved her…and the people she loved.

"That's normal. When you smoke you talk a lot." said Mob. She wondered what else she should warn him about. She wondered what it had been like for him. She wondered a lot of things…all kinds of things. She didn't know. She didn't know what to say or what to do…so she just…got breakfast going.

"Do you smoke a lot?" asked Sho as Mob used her powers to mix up some more eggs. She almost dropped the whole egg into the bowl instead of cracking it. Sho had asked…she could not lie to him. She was his big sister and she could not lie…even though she wanted to. She wanted to tell him that she almost never smoked and she could control her powers and her feelings all on her own….but that would have been a lie and lies….telling lies was much worse than smoking.

"I do. More than I should." Said Mob. She added some milk to the eggs, now, because that was how you got them light. Cream worked better, mom had said, but Mob didn't have any cream. She only had regular milk. She had to work with what she had.

"Shimazaki said that you guys smoke together a lot." said Sho. Mob nodded. She was not going to lie and she was not going to make a liar out of her friend.

"We do. Me and him…or me and Minegishi…but Minegishi is always trying to teach me about moderation and-" said Mob

"He says that you guys do other stuff together too." Said Sho. Mob…she almost knocked the bowl off of the table. She knew what Sho meant…and she knew that he was too young for that. Drinking would make him sick and she didn't want him to get sick…and she also didn't want to have to clean up his throw up either. That was never fun. Coke, fun coke, had been fun and she hadn't lost control of her powers…but Minegishi said that she could have messed up her brain and her heart and stuff like that and sugar cubes with acid….Sho did not need to go inside of his own head like that. She…her brain had invented a little brother because she had missed him so much, that had been the biggest hurt that she had felt, but she knew that the hurts that he felt were much worse than hers…and she had no idea what his brain would end up coming up with…and she did not want him to try any of that…not while he was this little, and his life was this hard, and not without her, either.

"We do…but it's stuff that you're too little for. You're….you can smoke…because you started…but I don't want you to do that stuff…any of that other stuff…until you're older." Said Mob

"He wouldn't want to do any of that stuff with me anyway." Said Sho

"That's not true. He's your best friend and you're his best friend…and also he's Shimazaki." Said Mob. She knew that he would try and do all of that stuff with Sho…and she did not want to think about it. She had so much to worry about already.

"Yeah…he said so. He said…a lot of stuff to me…and I said a lot of stuff to him." said Sho. Well Mob was glad that they had gotten to talking at least. It was good to talk to your friends about stuff….even though Sho thought, for some reason, that he had said something stupid. He obviously hadn't. He was Sho, he could never be stupid, and even if he had said something dumb Shimazaki wouldn't have cared. He didn't care if people were dumb or weird or stuff like that. Well he did, but not in a bad way, he just liked interesting stuff.

"Sometimes people talk a lot when they smoke." Said Mob. Well talking about smoking…it was getting easier. She felt a little better, even, talking to her brother about this. Like it was one less secret she had to keep. They didn't keep secrets from each other, brothers and sisters couldn't keep secrets from each other, and this was just…better. Not having to keep this a secret from him…and he didn't have to keep this a secret from anyone, either. Not that she smoked. That he smoked, yes, that was a big secret…but he didn't have to keep any of hers. That would have been too much to put on him. He would have been a good secret keeper and al but it was too much to put on him.

If Fukuda, who was dad's age, couldn't keep a secret then it was unfair of her to ask the same of Sho.

She pulled her sweater even closer around herself as she thought of Fukuda. She just…did not want to think about him…and what he thought of her. What he thought that she was capable of. What he saw her like. If he thought that she was doing stuff that adults did then…then that meant he was looking at her like she was an adult…and normally she liked it when people thought that she was an adult but…not…not like this. She was…she was a and was not a kid…and she felt so…so gross thinking that Fukuda, someone she had known since she had been a baby, looked at her and thought about her…like that. She was a kid but…but she was also not a kid.

Because kids were not in charge of making breakfast…and she was…so she was going to make her family breakfast.

She used her powers to dump the eggs in the pan and keep them moving. She was tired of making omelets and rice with ketchup. That was all dad ever asked her to make….and she was getting tired of making the same thing every single day a thousand times a day. She was making eggs and toast…and that was what she was going to make and if dad didn't like it then….

Then she would probably end up making something else for him.

Because he was dad and what he said went. He was her dad and he loved her and she loved him and they loved each other…and when you loved someone you took care of them. That was why Mob took such good care of the people around her. She loved all of them. She loved her family and her friends and…and she would always take care of them. Even if taking care of them made her tired…and she was tired. She wanted to go back to sleep but she couldn't…and that was ok. She could just go to bed early tonight. She could lay down next to Sho and read to him until he fell asleep and then she could fall asleep and it would be just like it had been when they had been little.

That would have been very nice.

"Do you ever say stupid stuff? I mean when you…never mind." Said Sho. Mob knew what he meant. She said stupid stuff all the time. Mostly about her socks and how soft they were…soft was the best feeling. Soft and warm and safe….and she was glad that Sho had felt soft and warm and safe, before, even though she still wasn't sure about how she felt about what he had done to feel like that.

"I do…sometimes. Stuff that makes no sense, like how everything is soft and stuff, but that's normal…and I'm sure that whatever you said wasn't stupid." Said Mob. She leaned over to see what Sho was drawing…and then she pulled back. His aura got really close…and she didn't know why. Had she surprised him or something?

"You weren't there, you don't know what I said, and I…I don't even remember, all the way, what I said. But I know that I must have said something….dumb. I don't know. I'm trying to draw. Let me draw." Said Sho. His aura was all closed off and…and she didn't want him to be like this. She needed to make him feel better, to make him happy again, or at all. She kept on making breakfast, she did the hand motion to keep the eggs moving…and she looked around the room like she expected it to be written on the walls or the ceiling or the floor.

What she could say or do to cheer her little brother up.

Her eyes landed on his drawing. He was drawing….lines…a bunch of them. She wondered how he knew what those lines could become. The whole thing had always seemed so complicated to her. Drawing for real pictures, nice pictures, pictures that looked like when they were supposed to be. Mob didn't know how to draw, not really, not like Sho could. He was a great artist, she would have called him the best in the family but she couldn't say that because she had no idea if he had gotten it from mom or not, but he was the best artist that she had ever met.

Drawing always cheered him up.

"What are you drawing?" asked Mob. She leaned in closer. She could see the outline of it. Something with a lot of wavy lines….a snake? Or a lizard? She didn't know. It had always amazed her how Sho could take a collection of lines and make it into something new. It was amazing, more amazing than what she was doing anyway, since she had always been able to do this. She had always been able to move things without touching them. She had always been able to pick up an egg, crack it into a bowl, and then scramble it with a fork. She had always been able to take a piece of bread, toasting it, and then spreading butter onto it without breaking it apart. She hadn't even had to work at this. She had just been able to…to do it.

She wondered what it was like to have to practice at something.

"A picture." Said Sho as he filled in with some more lines. He always started with light lines. When Mob drew she always started with just…what she was drawing. She just sat down and drew. Not like how Sho drew. He sat down and started with a bunch of light lines and then he slowly filled them in with more and more lines until the drawing was done…and he was such a good artist like that. When they had been little, much littler, he had just sat down and drew like she did…but now he was better.

He'd had a lot of practice.

She had never had to practice with her powers, not like how Sho did anyway, she used her powers but using them was like walking or talking or breathing. That was just…they were just…there. They were just there and she has always been about to…to use them. Sho was more talented than she was at this…and she just wished…

She just wished that dad could see what she saw in Sho…..but she could help him see Sho the way she saw him….and then things would be better.

"A dragon." Said Sho. Mob nodded. She could see it now. It looked like the one that was on Shimazaki's back. That was one he had gotten back when he had still been with his family. It meant wealth and prosperity, or at least it was supposed to mean that, Shimazaki just said that he thought that dragons were neat. Maybe because his name had the character for dragon in it….if he even knew that his name had the character for dragon in it. Was it the same in braille? She didn't know. She would have to ask him later…once she stopped being upset about him teaching Sho how to smoke or about how he had left Fukuda all alone outside with no shoes on…

She pulled her sweater in closer.

It was hot during the day but chilly at night. Fukuda could heal but only so much…and she had no idea what Shimazaki had done to him before that….the specifics of it…and she didn't want to ask him…but she knew that she had to have him use specifics in the apology that he was going to have to make to Fukuda. Even if Fukuda wasn't his friend, even if he could be kind of mean, and even if the thought of him made Mob feel like she hadn't had a bath in years he still didn't deserve what Shimazaki had done to him.

Even if he could be a jerk sometimes.

"That's cool. You're good at drawing dragons." Said Mob. She wondered if dad would try and steal this one. Sometimes he stole Sho's drawings because he liked them…and she would have to talk to him about that, too, if he ever felt like coming out of his room. He had been in there for a while. He must have known that breakfast was almost ready and that everyone was awake now….right? She'd go and get him later when she was done talking to Sho and stuff.

"Yeah…I started one yesterday but I fucked it up." Said Sho. Mob wanted to put her hand over his mouth like when they had been little…but that wouldn't stop him from cursing. The only thing she would end up with was a very gross hand. Still. There had to be some way to get him to stop cursing all the time. She didn't know why he had to. She had never got the point of cursing. Talking like that would just end up getting you in trouble, dad hated cursing, and there was nothing worse in this world than getting in trouble with dad.

"Sho…please don't say that where dad can hear. You don't want him to hear that. Trust me." Said Mob. She looked around even though she knew that dad was still in his room. She didn't want to know what dad would do to Sho if he knew how Sho had been talking. He hated cursing, he hated it more than any other kind of talking, and that included people who talked way too much. She loved her dad, she really did, but she also….she wished that he was less…easily upset by things. Especially the things that Sho did. Sho didn't mean to upset him, he had never meant to upset dad, but dad….

He and Sho didn't get along at all.

But Mob…she could fix this. She had already made dad promise to be nicer to him and that was a start. She knew that it would be hard, she knew that mom had spent years trying to get Sho and dad to get along, but maybe Mob could do it. She could maybe do what mom never could. She wasn't sick like mom had been, after all, she had plenty of energy to do things…and even when she didn't she still knew that there were things that had to be done. She didn't have anyone like Fukuda helping her, she wasn't going to ask any of her friends to help since they had their own stuff going on, and she would never have asked Fukuda for help like mom had either because that would have involved talking to him…and she didn't need to or want to…she could do this on her own.

She could do everything on her own.

"Why not? He knows I curse. I cursed at him yesterday on accident and he was all…all that he wasn't going to punish me because….because it would upset you and…and he said that I wasn't worth it." Said Sho. Mob….well she had been plating up their breakfasts at the time…and she had almost dropped everything on the floor. That would have been bad since she had just used up the last of the eggs. Sho had talked about that so casually….and there was nothing casual about how close he had come to getting beaten up. He should have been happy that dad hadn't hurt him. He should have been happy that…that things hadn't gone as bad as they could have gone without her there to protect him…

Not that she was planning on saying anything like that to him, of course, she may have been clueless but she wasn't THAT clueless.

"Sho….you are worth it…and I don't want you to be punished and….and I love you. Remember, I love you." Said Mob. That was the important thing, reminding him that he was loved, that at least one person in their family still loved him…well mom loved them both…or at least she had before she left. Mob didn't know, her information on mom and her feelings was four years out of date.

"….yeah. I know. You love me…and I'm sorry if I said weird shit to you last night…or whatever. I was just…I couldn't saying weird shit…and being weird. I was just being weird and…and it sucked." Said Sho. Mob took Sho's hand in hers. She knew that they needed to get to breakfast, and she also knew not to touch his hands while he was drawing, but she also knew that sometimes he needed comfort and she knew that she was just the person to give it. She was his big sister after all and this was her job and she was happy to do it.

"Sho, you're fine. There is nothing weird about you." Said Mob

"You weren't there yesterday. You didn't hear what I said." Said Sho. Mob shook her head. She had already told him that everyone said weird stuff when they smoked. That was normal and he was normal and…and he shouldn't have been so worried about not being normal. He was Sho. He was fine the way he was. She would love him no matter how many weird things he said. Why did he even think that she cared? He was trying to get her to marry Hatori and stuff and Hatori wanted to eat people. If that wasn't weird then she didn't know what was.

"You didn't say anything weird, Sho, and even if you did that's ok. People say weird stuff when they smoke…and Sho…um…please don't smoke very often." Said Mob. She knew that it might have been wrong to ask that of him and all…and she knew that she smoked all the time…but she wanted him not to smoke that often because she smoked all the time…if that even made any sense at all. She didn't know if it did or it didn't….and she had no idea if he would even listen to her. She hadn't listened to Minegishi…and now she sort of wished that she had. She knew how they felt, now, and it…was not the best feeling.

"But….I like to. I like to and you smoke all the time, Shimazaki said so, so why can't I smoke if you smoke all the time?" Said Sho. Mob sighed. She let go of his hand and sat down at her side of the table. She needed to think. She needed to think of how she was going to talk to him about this without sounding like a jerk. She loved her brother, she loved him the most out of anyone else in the world, and she just…didn't want him to depend on this like she depended on this. That was all. She knew that she couldn't make one rule for herself and one for him…she knew that doing things like that wasn't fair…but she just…didn't want him to depend on this like she depended on this.

"I know you do but….it's hard to stop once you start…and your tolerance goes up so you need to smoke more and more…and also it's just...I love you….and stuff." Said Mob. She didn't know why she was being so weird about this. She knew that it was wrong to tell him not to do something that she did all the time…maybe she was just a weird person. That would have made sense.

"I like to…and I want to again…but…I was so stupid…" said Sho. Mob shook her head. He wasn't being stupid. Nothing that Sho could have done, nothing that he was capable of doing, could ever be considered stupid.

"Sho, no, don't ever call yourself stupid. You're smart. You were weird from smoking. I get weird too….and stuff. Smoking makes you sort of weird and sometimes you say weird stuff but that's ok. There's nothing stupid about how you acted…or what you did. You were sad, you were so sad, and I understand why you were sad. Fukuda told one of your secrets, something you trusted him with, and that's enough to make anyone sad enough to start smoking. I…don't mind what you did…anymore…but I want you to only do that with me, ok?" said Mob

"Big sis…why didn't you tell me you did stuff like this? Why were you keeping secrets?" asked Sho. Mob…what a question. She didn't even fully know the answer to that question. Because she hadn't wanted to get in trouble with dad, because she hadn't wanted to get her friends in trouble, and because…because she didn't want him to do as she had done…if that last part was even a good reason.

"Because….I thought that you were too little….but I guess you aren't. I also just…didn't want to get myself or anyone in trouble…and I won't get you in trouble. I can keep this secret from you. I'm not Fukuda, I know how to keep a secret, and I won't tell dad that you were smoking…and it's ok for you to smoke and stuff. It-it is…ok? But only with me, ok? Shimazaki…is a nice person…but he doesn't know about moderation…or it might just be that he doesn't believe in it….but we can smoke together, ok? And I'll teach you about moderation…and stuff." Said Mob

"That's…that sounds good….big sis." Said Sho. Mob smiled and took his hand. He let her hold his hand and then he squeezed hers…and she squeezed his right back. She loved him so much. She loved Sho and Sho loved her and they were loved together and…and he had done some stuff, some stuff that she still felt weird about, and she would never stop loving him no matter what he did. Even if he did smoke…and he would probably take up drinking next…and stuff….but she still loved him and she would always love him.

She would always be there for him.

Even when he pulled away from her…like now. He took his hand from hers and then went back to drawing. She knew why. She had heard dad's door open and now she could hear his footsteps. He was coming. He was coming and…and he might have still been mad at her for leaving him in the middle of the night…and for leaving him at dinner…and also he might have still been mad at Sho for cursing at him….and she just….

She would deal with whatever he did.

But he didn't do anything. He just came to the kitchen and looked at them. Sho didn't look at him, not once, even though Mob knew that he knew that dad was there. He must have been able to sense him. He must have known that dad was there…and looking at him. Looking at both of them. He might have wondered why breakfast was different. They usually ate the same thing…and they were out of eggs so he got what he got. If he wanted a grapefruit or something she could make him one but she had power over plants, not eggs, and the closest thing that she could make him to an egg was an eggplant, and she had no idea how to cook with eggplant.

If she had been mom then she would have said something like 'you get what you get and you don't get upset' or something like that…but she was not mom so all she did was pull his chair out for him with her powers.

"Do you want to have breakfast, dad? It's scrambled eggs and toast." Said Mob. She knew that he could see it, well she was pretty sure that he could see it he squinted a lot so he might have needed glasses, and she knew that he liked eggs and she had no idea what he was staring at….oh! Right, she had forgot the ketchup.

"That…would be nice. Thank you, Daughter." Said dad. He sat down and she used her powers to put the ketchup in front of her. He was still looking at her. Sho was still looking down at his drawing. He was looking down in the way that he did when he was trying his best not to look up. She didn't blame him for being afraid of dad, he was a scary person sometimes…a lot of the times…

And he had better not have started being mean to Sho.

Because they had JUST talked about that yesterday. He needed to be nicer to Sho….and he had promised. He had promised that he would try to be nicer….to at least say nicer things…and dad may have been a jerk but he was not a liar or anything like that. She trusted him….and if you couldn't trust your own dad then who could you even trust? She trusted him that he would be nicer to Sho…but he wasn't being nicer to Sho at all. He wasn't being anything to Sho? He was just being…there…and stuff. He was just there and he was just staring at her…

Oh, right. The ketchup.

"Sorry. I forgot your ketchup glass. Here." Said Mob. She used her powers to grab a glass from the cabinet and she filled it with ketchup for him. That was he could dip his bread. She didn't know why he always had to dip his bread in ketchup but she wasn't going to make fun of him or anything for it. That would have been mean and she could not be mean to her own dad….even if he was mean to pretty much everyone he came into contact with including his own Son…

"Thank you…this was very nice of you…so thank you." Said Dad. She could see his aura there. He was sitting still but his aura was fidgeting…and she had no idea why. Why was he being like that? If he needed something then he should have just told her instead of waiting for her to figure it out.

"You're welcome. Do you need anything else?" asked Mob. She wanted to eat her own breakfast now, she hadn't eaten since yesterday at lunch, but she had to see if dad needed something. She had to do a lot for him…but that was ok. She loved him and when you loved someone you took care of them.

"No…just…are you still angry with me?" asked dad

"About what?" asked Mob

"I have no idea. I just woke up and you were gone so I was wondering if you were angry with me….and please don't tell me that you're fine when you aren't because I have no way of knowing that you aren't telling the truth when you say that you're fine." Said dad. Mob….well she was fine. She was and was not fine. Just thinking about all the stuff she had to do today made her tired…and also she was still all mixed up inside about how she felt about Sho smoking…and also she still felt gross about what Fukuda had said to her….she pulled her sweater closer. She was a lot of things but mad was not on that list.

"I'm not mad at you. I just went to my own bed because you were on my hair…and I didn't mean to leave you all alone at the table last night. I just realized that I had to do something when I went to get Sho…that was all." said Mob. She knew that dad felt sad about being left all alone…even though it hadn't been a Sunday…because he was a very clingy person…and she should have been nicer to him…but she'd had a lot of other people who needed her last night and she had done her best. She was only one person after all. She could only do so much.

"Oh. Alright." Said dad. He said that but he didn't do anything else. He just kept on looking at her….and she had no idea why. Did she look weird? Had she done something? Was he staring at the spots on her face up by her hairline and eyebrows? She didn't know. She looked across the table at Sho. He looked up at her and then went back to his drawing.

"Um…dad? Sho's here too." Said Mob. Maybe he should have looked at Sho…and said something nice to Sho too. He had promised to be nicer to Sho but right now he was ignoring him and that was not nice at all. Sho was a person too, a person with feelings, and he did not need how own dad hurting his feelings so bad that he thought that the only way to feel better was to smoke.

"I know. I can see him. He's drawing at the table when he knows that he should be eating. You didn't go through the trouble of making breakfast for your brother not to eat it." Said dad. That…had been mean….and he had made her a promise…but she just had to…to stay calm. He just had to stay calm and….and work with this. With them. Dad might not have known how to be nice. Dad might have just needed niceness lessons or something…well she could teach him. When someone didn't know how to do something you had to help them out. Like how she'd taught Hatori how to do his laundry and make his bed and stuff. There was nothing at all wrong with helping out someone you cared about…even if your breakfast was getting cold and you were getting hungry.

"I don't mind him drawing at the table, dad, actually I like it. I like Sho's drawing. Don't you like Sho's drawing, dad?" asked Mob. She smiled at dad, he liked her smiles he had said so, and she motioned over to Sho. Maybe now he would get that he had to say something nice already. Sho was just drawing because he was upset that dad was near….and with how dad had been for their entire lives mob didn't blame him…but things could get better now. She could make sure that they got better.

"Yes. It's a dragon, and a very detailed one at that, and the shading is very intricate. It's amazing that your brother can do all of that by hand with just one pencil. It's impressive." Said dad. He'd had to stare at Sho's drawing for a little but before he said that but Mob didn't care. He had said something nice and that was progress…and progress was good. That was more than mom had been able to get dad to say…not to be mean to mom. She just hadn't known dad as well, back before she ran away, as Mob knew him now. She hardly spent time with him because he was away all the time and she was sick. She hardly talked to him. Mob had no idea why they had even gotten married, to be honest, since they never spent time together.

She wondered if mom even knew anything about dad at all.

She wondered if mom knew the names of dad's favorite episodes of Galaxy Express, his favorite show even though he pretended that he only watched it to show it to her, and she wondered if she knew that dad liked the second movie better than the first. She wondered if mom knew that dad was always clingy in his sleep but then when he woke up he said that you were the clingy one. She wondered if mom knew that dad actually really like videogames even though he pretended not to. She wondered if mom knew that dad was afraid of mice, rats, hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, and borrowers. Pretty much anything small enough to live in the walls. She wondered if mom knew that dad liked to have his socks ironed and then tied off at the ends, not rolled together, because he hated it when the elastic wore off.

She also wondered if mom knew just how hard it was to get dad and Sho to get along.

She had been married to dad since before Mob and Sho had been born. Mom had told her that story. She and dad had met and fell in love so fast that they couldn't wait to make her. That was why mom looked so fat in their wedding pictures, because she had been growing inside of mom's stomach then, and that was why she and dad had gotten married. Because they had fallen in love and made a whole new person. She wondered how well mom had known dad before all of that happened. Love could hit you hard and sudden, like with her and Hatori, and she was glad that Hatori hadn't asked her to marry him back when she had been in love with him. She liked him a lot, and she wanted to kiss him, but the thought of doing everything that she did for her dad and her brother for her husband too…and then for all the kids that they would have had…well she was glad that she hadn't rushed into anything.

It was important not to rush into things.

That was why Minegishi and Shimazaki weren't boyfriend and theyfriend. Minegishi said that they weren't going to rush into anything before they knew exactly how they felt and what they wanted. Mob got the feeling, based on the story, that mom and dad had fallen in love too fast and rushed into making her. Mom hadn't understood dad at all, from what she remembered, because mom had always complained to Fukuda about how dad never did the things she wanted and how he couldn't understand her. Mob knew that she had not been meant to hear that, she had been eavesdropping and that was a rude thing to do, but if she could have gone back in time and told mom that she needed to tell dad exactly what she wanted him to do and when she wanted him to do it and how often then she would have.

She would have told dad a few things too.

She would have told dad that he needed to take the clinginess that he gave to her and he needed to give it to mom. She would have told dad that he needed to take all of them with him when he moved. Moving all the time was hard but at least they would have been together. She would have told dad that he needed to learn to be less clueless, even though she herself was clueless, because mom always complained about him being clueless and she had been complaining because she had been unhappy. She would have said…a lot of things…if she could have gone back in time…and stuff…

But she was in the present, not the past, and she had to say things to her dad and brother not her mom and dad.

"Sho, did you hear? Dad liked your drawing." Said Mob. She smiled at him, too, because he needed someone to smile at him. Maybe now he would smile back and then he would be happy. He should have been happy. Dad had said something nice to him like he had always wanted….and that was a good thing…but he wasn't acting like it was a good thing. He was looking down at his drawing and pressing so hard with his pencil that she was sure he was going to end up ripping through the paper, the sketchbook, and then the whole table they were sitting at. That wouldn't have been good. She would have had nowhere to serve them their meals and stuff.

"I heard him, I have ears." Said Sho after a while. He was still drawing like he was mad…even though he had no reason to be mad. Dad had been nice to him and…and if he wasn't nice right back then dad would never be nice to him again and they would just end up back to where they started. It would be like when she and Sho player Sorry and he landed on one of her pieces only nobody would be saying sorry or having fun or anything at all.

"Don't you have something that you want to say to dad?" asked Mob. She knew that if she just came out and told him that he had to tell dad 'thanks' he might not take it well…and then he would get upset and then dad would tell him that he was being tiresome and then they would just end up back where they started…and Mob did not want them to end up back where they started. This was not Sorry, this was life, and in life getting back to where you started was not fun at all.

"Nope." Said Sho. A one word answer…which meant that he was bothered…but she had to get him to thank dad. She knew that he would get upset….but he needed to thank dad. Dad was looking at her and she was looking at Sho and their breakfast was getting cold…and all she needed from him was a simple 'thank you' and in Japanese, too. He spoke Japanese, they all spoke Japanese, and they were speaking it right now. He just had to say 'thank you' and…and maybe she should just tell him to say it. Just to save time. Just so she could finally eat something. She could always smoke so she didn't have to eat…but then she would have been back to smoking….and smoking once did not mean that she had un-quit….because then she would have to re-quit and quitting had been so hard the first time…and she really needed a cigarette…

And she really needed her breakfast, too.

"Come on. Don't you want to say 'thank you' because dad said something nice to you? Because it's polite to say that when someone is nice to you?" asked Mob. She knew that she was pushing it, that he was either going to get mad or…or get very mad, there was a small chance that he would do what she asked of him and…and she would take that chance. She was hungry, she was very hungry, and she just…wanted to finally eat something already.

"Fine. Thank you, dad, for saying that my drawing is nice. Can we have breakfast now? I have important stuff to draw today. Very important stuff." Said Sho. He rolled his eyes when he said that…but Mob would take it. He had said something nice, and she didn't think that dad even knew what eye rolling meant, so now dad would be happy and they would eat already. He would just say 'you're welcome' to Sho and then it would all be over and done with.

Any minute now.

She knew that dad knew the rule about thank yous and how to receive them. She knew that dad knew some of the rules. She knew that…that he was bad at stuff like this…but he was not that bad. She knew that he knew what to do…and she knew that he was being mean to Sho again….and she knew that she was not going to just sit there and let him be mean to Sho like that. Sho…he didn't deserve to have someone being mean to him. When dad had been mean to Sho at the table…mom had said something. She sometimes said something to dad but most of the time she had said something to Sho…because usually Sho was the person who made dad mad…

But this was not one of those times.

"Ok…but as soon as dad says 'you're welcome'. You really should say that, daddy, it's polite…and it would make me happy." Said Mob. She wished that she hadn't had to tell dad to be nice to Sho, and that she hadn't had to call him 'daddy' to get him to listen to her. Minori had taught her that, that by calling your dad 'daddy' like you were little you could get him to do just about anything, and that was because dads never wanted their kids to grow up….and she…she had no idea if she wanted to grow up or not. Being grown up, being an adult, meant that you had to do a lot of things. You had to take care of yourself and the people around you no matter how tired you were. You had to make sure that the people around you were ok before you made sure that you were ok…

And that was ok.

She could do that. She could do that part of being an adult. She could take care of everyone, make them happy, and she could….she could do all of that. Being an adult also meant that you got power…and she had power. She'd had to use her power last night to boss Fukuda and Shimazaki around to make them stop fighting, and at some point she would have to make it up to both of them because she had been very mean, and she didn't much want this power…but she could at least use it for good….but being an adult also meant that you felt gross inside of your own body…and she hated feeling gross inside of her own body…

But if she were little again then things would have been as bad as they had been before.

Dad wanted her little….but he also wanted her to grow up…and sometimes it felt like he wanted her to do both at the same time…and she didn't get him sometimes. Like now. Like how she'd had to tell him what to say even though she was the kid and he was the dad. He should have known…and he had known…he just hadn't wanted to be nice to Sho…but she could fix that. It was her job to fix that…

Everything was her job.

"You're welcome." Said dad finally. Mob let out a breath that she hadn't known that she had been holding. Maybe this was why mom had never forced dad to be nice to Sho. Maybe she had known how hard it would have been….but mom was just mom. She was Mob. She wasn't sick and tired all of the time. She could take care of her family. She would take care of her family. She would do all the stuff that she had to do. The cooking and the cleaning and ordering the food and washing the clothes and ironing them and putting them away and then getting Sho in the tub and getting him fed and getting him to bed and then spending time with dad because he was lonely and then getting her own stuff done with and taking care of her friends. She could do all of that, she would do all of that, and she would do it all with a giant sweater on even though it was hot during the day because she couldn't stand the feel or the sight of herself and sometimes she just wanted to-

She would never run away.

"Good, now we can eat." Said Mob. She was fine. She meant it. Not like how dad had accused her of saying that she was fine when she wasn't. She really was fine, the most fine, and everything was fine. Breakfast had been made and now dad was going to go off to do dad stuff and Sho was going to go off to do Sho stuff and then she would do Mob stuff and…and it was fine. This was fine. She was fine. This whole thing was fine. She could do it all, all of her Mob stuff, and she would do it all in this giant sweater, too, even though she was still getting sort of hot despite the fact that the air conditioner was as high and as cold as it could get.

She wasn't going to take off this sweater though, she loved this sweater, and she would spend the rest of her life in this sweater. She just couldn't be without this sweater.


	330. Being So Normal

Sho liked to draw outside.

The light was good, there were always animals doing animal stuff and that was fun to draw, and he could be…alone. That wasn't usually a big thing for him, being alone while he drew, he had drawn in the middle of Times Square on New Year's Eve once. He didn't need to be alone in the peace and the quiet…he just wanted to. He just needed to be alone for a little bit. Big sis was inside putting the food away. She'd had to order a bunch at once because he and Shimazaki had eaten everything in the house…and they had eaten everything in the house because they had been smoking….

And Sho was never going to do that again.

He wanted to. He had really…it had been nice. The way that he felt really light…the way that everything had sort of a…sharpness too it? The way that the world had felt more…clear? Looked more clear? Clear and sharp. The blues were blues and the greens were green and the reds were red and his clothes had been soft and the food had been sweet and the water had been cool and Zooptopia had never been as amazing as it had….and music….music had never sounded so good.

Shimazaki had good taste in music.

Sho finally understood Shimazaki's music, why he liked the Beatles so much. They were just always so…happy. Even when they were singing about sad things, like about the blackbird or about the lonely lady, they were always so happy. Like…like they were saying that no matter how bad things got they were still going to be ok. Shimazaki had explained it to him before but he finally got it. What he had meant. He finally understood and Shimazaki….Shimazaki had been proud of him when he had said now much he understood…and Sho….he had felt a lot of things….and he had said a lot of things….

A lot of stupid things.

He was pretty sure that he had told Shimazaki that he loved him. He was pretty sure that the stupidest string of words ever, that he could ever have said, had come out of his mouth. I think I love you. That was it. He had said….he had said what he only should have thought! First of all confessing to someone else was cheating even when your girlfriend was all the way in England and second of all confessing to your best friend was just….wrong. Shimazaki had said it back, but he had said as a friend, and Sho…he hoped…

He hoped that Shimazaki had thought that he had meant, when he said it, that he meant it as a friend.

Like when he and big sis told each other they loved….well they were brother and sister….or like when Hatori told Shibata that he loved him whenever he helped him with stuff that he should have known how to do himself….like that. Like, I love you man. Like that….Shimazaki….he wasn't deaf. He wasn't deaf and he wasn't clueless. He knew what things meant, what people meant, and he could hear just fine. He knew that Sho had meant….

Had meant it like…

Like Sho didn't even want to think about. Like he wanted to hold Shimazaki's hand. Like in the song. He wanted to hold Shimazaki's hand…and kiss him…and just…be with him. Nobody had ever….ever made him feel like this before. Like the goldfish in his stomach had also moved up to his heart, like his body was just one big fish aquarium, and he just…..he wanted this feeling to go on forever and he wanted it to be over and done with this instant…and he just….

He was an idiot.

So he sat down in the dirt and drew a picture of the birds that were sitting on top of Shimazaki's house. They were blackbirds. They were blackbirds but they were not singing in the dead of night and their wings were not broken so they didn't fly. He didn't want them to fly. There were two of them and they were sitting up on the roof looking down at Minegishi's garden. Good. Sho hoped that they flew down and pecked every single one of Minegishi's plants to death. That would serve them right for everything that they had done to him.

For liking Shimazaki.

For calling him Ryou all the time. For letting him kiss them and hold them and….and he was always touching them when they were together. Sometimes he would hold their hand or lay down on them or put his hand on their back or just….Sho didn't even want to think about it! He just wanted those bird to swoop down and kill their whole garden and then they would be all pissed off and then Shimazaki would be all 'fuck this pissed off people ae boring' and then he would forget about Minegishi, since the only thing that they had going for them was boobs anyway, and then he and Sho could be together forever and they could-

They could not be together forever.

They couldn't even be together right now. Sho had ruined their whole friendship and now…now he would never be able to hang out with Shimazaki again…and now his drawing is wet. The graphite from his pencil is smudge. Now it's wetter. Sho wonders if he could convince big sis, if she were to take a break from putting the food away, that there had been a little rain storm and it had only fallen on his notebook….no. She would never believe anything like that. She was clueless, not stupid, and she would see that he was crying and she would want to know what was wrong and…and he had no idea what he would tell her.

That he was in love with his best friend, that he was so in love that it hurt, and that he wished that you could get wishes for folding a thousand paper cranes….even though he has no idea what he would wish for.

He could wish to not be in love with Shimazaki…but this feeling…when he's near Shimazaki it's a good one. When they're together it's like….like his insides are full of goldfish but…but in a good way. It's like the goldfish inside of him are swimming through warm pudding, the stovetop stuff that Shibata made sometimes, when Shimazaki was near…and it was a good feeling….and he sort of understood why girls were so obsessed with love and kissing and boyfriends and stuff. He wanted….he wanted Shimazaki to love him and kiss him and be his boyfriend….and stuff….

And he could have wished for that.

He could have folded a thousand paper cranes and wished for that. He could have wished for Shimazaki to love him…just as much as Sho loved him…which he suspected was a lot but he didn't know since he had never been in love before….and he could have wished for Shimazaki to love him and then they could have been together like he wanted…but that wouldn't have worked out either. Aside from the cheating, which was terrible, his dad would have killed Shimazaki if he ever felt the same way about Sho…and he might have even killed Sho, too. He might have even killed Sho, told big sis that it had been an accident, and then met some new lady and had a new Sho with her, or maybe a Shoyo since he was called Sho already, and then that would have been it. The only people who would miss him would have been big sis, she might have even died of sadness like people did sometimes, and Fukuda…even though he was a dick licking, cock sucking, bitch bastard of a traitor. He had told dad about Emmy and…and he had promised and…and if Sho had been Shimazaki's boyfriend, the thought of the word makes his stomach come alive with two headed goldfish, Fukuda would never have been able to keep it to himself and then dad would kill him and Shimazaki and-

And things would have been so easier if he had been big sis.

Or any sis. If he had been Shoko instead of Sho….well he would have had to wear makeup and dresses and he really hated makeup and dresses….and also he didn't really want to magic himself into a girl…but if it meant being Shimazaki's girlfriend then he would…do his best to get used to it….even if it meant that dad would have no use for him…and that he would have to be a girl…he would still want to do that just so he could be with Shimazaki….

It's pointless to think about this.

Wishes don't come true and if he woke up and then all of a sudden he had been a girl he would have spent the rest of his life freaking out. He didn't want to be a girl…he just wanted….he just wanted to be allowed to like boys. To like both, because he did like both, but he couldn't just not like girls all together because then…then he didn't know what he would do. He was Sho and he liked both and Shimazaki happened to be one of the both and…he just wanted it to be ok….

But it wasn't ok and he had ruined their whole friendship!

His aura flared and he threw his sketchbook in the dirt. He just wished that it could have been ok and-and he pulled his shirt up over his head. He pulled his shirt up over his head and he started to count. He needed a cool, dark place to count….and this shirt wasn't cool or dark because he was sitting in the summer sun…and he could have gone back inside but then big sis would have wanted to know what was wrong with him and…and he did not want to explain any of this to her. He just…wanted to be in his shirt for a while…so that was where he would be.

Or he would have been.

He felt the energy around him shift and then…and then there was light. Real light. Not the filtered blue light that had come in through his shirt but, instead, real sunlight. He closed his eyes. He knew that Shimazaki was there, he could feel his aura and hear him breathing and smell him, he smelled really good today like he had just taken a shower, and he could even see him with his aura and….and why was he even there?

Had he forgotten what Sho had said?

Had Sho just imagined it? Had he said something else, something totally different, or nothing at all to Shimazaki? Had he just imagined the whole thing? Had he gotten sun sick from playing outside and the whole day had just been his imagination running wild? Maybe….or maybe Shimazaki had gone deaf, too, and that was what he was there to tell him so Sho could tell him whatever he wanted to tell him. He could tell Shimazaki how much he loved him, how much he thought about him, how much he loved the way his voice sounded and his cologne smelled and he thought that it was gross how he had to clean out his eyes but in a good way and how he laid in bed sometimes, at night, and thought about what it would have been like to sleep next to him…and how his tattoos were just the coolest things in the world and how when he grew up he wanted to cover all of his scars with tattoos that were just like Shimazaki's…only not the one of Minegishi because they sucked dick in a public bathroom for ten yen coins and never had a single customer not even during golden week, and he could tell Shimazaki that boobs weren't everything and that Minegishi's weren't anything, like Fukuda had said, and then…

Well he could have said a lot of things.

But he couldn't because he knew that Shimazaki could still hear him. He didn't trust himself to say anything. He just looked down at his shoes. He looked down at the ground. He looked down at his shadow. He had tried to explain, before, what shadows were but Shimazaki hadn't gotten it…and maybe he could try and explain it again since his shadow was so cool…he decided. He decided that his shadow was the coolest thing in the world and he would have liked it if his shadow got unstuck and he would have to chase it…it would at least take his mind off of everything if his shadow got up and ran away…

But it hadn't.

It had gone away but not because it had gotten unstuck from him. No, that only happened in movies. In life his shadow had just gone away because Shimazaki had made a bigger shadow. He was holding up Sho's pencil and sketchbook. He wasn't facing Sho while he did this….and Sho didn't know if he was just not facing Sho because he didn't have to face him to see him or if it was because he was still weirded out about yesterday.

Sho didn't trust himself to ask.

"So did you throw this away because you were pissed off at it or did you throw it away because you don't want it anymore? Because if so then can I have it?" asked Shimazaki. Sho…had no idea what he was even talking about. That was a sketchbook. He had held Sho's sketchbooks before. He couldn't write or draw…so why did he want it?

"What do you even want it for? You can't draw." Said Sho as he took his sketchbook back. There was dirt. A lot of it…and he shouldn't have thrown it…but he had been doing a lot of stuff, lately, that he should not have been doing.

"Who says I can't?" asked Shimazaki. He reached over with the pencil and tried to draw over Sho's drawing….and he pulled it away. He didn't want anything more covering his drawing…even if it would have been Shimazaki's drawing…but he knew that if he drew over Sho's drawing it would just make it so Sho could never make another mark on that page.

"You did, before, remember? You said that you couldn't see things that were written on paper." Said Sho. He tried to take the pencil back but Shimazaki snatched it away. Sho leaned forward as far as he could…and maybe that was too far because he was pressed against Shimazaki as he leaned forward…and he pulled back, fast, so fast that he almost tipped over backwards.

"Yeah, I can't see it. That doesn't mean that I can't draw." Said Shimazaki. He mimed drawing in the air….and now Sho wished that he had let him draw….but also no…but also yes….and stuff…and yeah….

"Same thing." Said Sho as he batted the pencil away. Shimazaki didn't stop. He drew a line down Sho's forehead. It didn't show but he could feel it…and it felt…it felt like….like he didn't even know…well he did know….and he didn't know.

"Is not." Said Shimazaki drawing another line on Sho's head. This time he managed to catch the pencil and he tried to pull it away…and then Shimazaki pulled it back and hit him on the top of the head….and Sho could have put up a barrier but…but he didn't want to….

Because this was nice.

This was so nice. This was…what they always did together. This was just them being friends like normal…and maybe they could be normal….and maybe Shimazaki had forgiven him for what he had said…or forgotten what he had said…or maybe he was just ignoring what Sho had said or…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that he liked this and….and he wanted to keep this….keep this being so…keep being so….with him…

Keep being so normal.

"Is too." Said Sho. He smiled, he smiled and he meant it, and he just…kept on smiling. Even though his head probably had a graphite mark on it. Even though he just…didn't know how he felt about…any of this…but he just….felt so good…and so weird…and so bad…and so…he just wanted….he just wanted….to win this fight. That was all he wanted. To win this fight.

"Is fucking not." Said Shimazaki. Sho stuck out his tongue. That was what he was going to start with? Weak as fuck.

"Is fucking too." Said Sho. Fine. If Shimazaki was going to start out weak then Sho could go easy on him. That was the nice thing to do after all. You always had to be nice to your friends even if that meant going easy on them sometimes.

"Is fucking not you little asshole." Said Shimazaki. Sho stuck out his tongue. Fine then. He had thought that they were going easy on each other….but going easy on each other was boring and Shimazaki did not do boring.

"Is fucking too you fucking bitch bastard." Said Sho. There. Shimazaki wouldn't be able to think up a better combination than that. He had done in barely any rounds. The student had surpassed the master. Now Shimazaki would be so impressed with him and….and he would be impressed with him and nothing more. Sho didn't want anything more than for Shimazaki to be impressed with him. Not for him to reach across the dirt path and tale his hand…or anything like that. That would have been weird…the sort of weird that could only be excused when he had been smoking….and they weren't smoking…and he couldn't smoke again…because if he did he would have said or done something else stupid…and stuff.

"What the hell is a bitch bastard?" laughed Shimazaki. Sho…he felt…he felt…nice. When he heard Shimazaki laughing. When he heard him and…he had a really nice laugh…and Sho had heard a lot of people laughing before but….but Shimazaki's laugh was the nicest.

"A person who's a bitch and a bastard at the same time." Said Sho as he got the goldfish in his stomach to sort of slow down…just a bit…just a little bit. He just…he just had to….calm down and stuff. He felt sort of like he had been….he didn't know. Like he had been swimming in the ocean and he had swallowed the ocean and now there was a whole ocean inside of him…or a tsunami…and all because Shimazaki had laughed….

Feelings really sucked sometimes.

"Uh-huh, so I'm a female dog who's parents were married. Well, you think you know yourself." Said Shimazaki. He laughed again…and this time Sho was better prepared for it. He took a deep breath and kept calm…as calm as he could be…and he waited to speak until he could trust himself to speak…and not say something stupid like 'I like it when you laugh' because that would have just been….stupid.

"What?" asked Sho after maybe too long. He knew that maybe that had been too long but also…also he knew…that he needed to talk when he could trust himself to talk and not sound all weird and stuff…like he had yesterday….if Shimazaki remembered…or maybe he was just pretending not to remember…or something. Sho didn't know.

"A bastard is someone who's parents aren't married and a bitch is a female dog. So therefore I'm a female dog who's parents aren't married." Said Shimazaki

"That makes no sense. Dogs can't get married." Said Sho shaking his head. He would had gone to a dog wedding by now if dogs could get married. That sounded like so much fun. Dogs and puppies and you could play with them…with all the time that he and Shimazaki spent at the dog park he would have noticed, by now, if there had been dog weddings.

"Hey, it's your insult….and for your information dogs can get married. Remember Lady and the Tramp?" asked Shimazaki

"Yeah…we watched that movie the other day…" said Sho. They had watched a lot of movies yesterday, most of them involving dogs. Shimazaki liked dogs. When he had been little, and his mom convinced his dad to let him out of his room, his mom had gotten him a dog to help him get around. The dog had been called Sgt. Pepper and he had died of diabetes because Shimazaki had fed him too much junk food. That had been a sad story. Shimazaki had told him that story while they had been watching 101 Dalmatians. He liked dogs a lot…and if they had been together…like big sis and Hatori were planning on being together….then they could have had one hundred and one of any kind of dog he had wanted…and Sho…

Sho is going to stop thinking about this right now.

"See? And in that movie Lady and Tramp got married so therefore dogs can get married." Said Shimazaki…like he had said something that made sense. They made sense in his head…but not in life…because if that he made sense in real life then…then that just would not have made any sense!

"Wait…that happens in life?" asked Sho. He had never heard of a dog wedding before…and now he just…he wanted dogs to be happy. He wanted all the dogs in the whole world to be happy…but he wanted to be happy too…and dogs were some of the best animals in the world but…but why did they get to be happy and….and he didn't?

"I don't know. I don't see why not. Let everyone be happy." Said Shimazaki with shrug. Like it was simple, just that simple, that dogs could love who they wanted but people…but he….but he couldn't…

"That's dumb." Said Sho. Why did dogs get to marry other dogs but he didn't get to marry…not that he had ever thought of him and Shimazaki…like that. He hadn't ever let himself think past what it would have been like to kiss him…and that was already a lot…and a lot of a lot….and a lot of stuff that he knew that he should not have been thinking about….but he thought about it all the time…

"What do you mean? Are you telling me that dogs don't deserve happiness? Because if that's the case, Suzuki Sho, then I suppose that I'm just going to have to go to the park, collect earthworms, and leave them in Hatori's bed all on my own." said Shimazaki. That sounded like the best time ever…and he still wanted….he still wanted to be friends after all of that. The goldfish in his stomach and the goldfish in his heart were having a contest, it seemed, to see who could swim the hardest….and it was a tie. Shimazaki…he was the coolest guy ever…

Because even after all of that he still wanted to be friends.

He didn't think that Sho was weird or gross or boring. He thought…he thought that Sho was someone cool enough to hang out with…and that was….he folded his hands under his sketchbook. He had to do that. Shimazaki's hands were so close to his and if he wanted to, if he had been feeling stupid and hazy, he could have reached over and done…something really stupid. But now was not the time to be acting stupid and hazy. Now he had to be normal…and stuff. So that was what he was going to do.

He was going to be normal.

"I just meant that it sucks that dogs are allowed to get married but boys aren't allowed to like each other…that's all. It was stupid." Said Sho. He didn't know how to say what he meant without bringing it up, what he had said and how he had felt, and…and Shimazaki hadn't even mentioned it. He was treating Sho like normal….so since he was treating Sho like normal then Sho…he should have made more of an effort to BE normal.

"No, you're right. It would be stupid if we had legally recognized dog marriages in whatever country we end up settling down in, probably Japan since we're Japanese and all, but two guys couldn't get married. I never got that myself but I guess it gets down to the whole bloodline thing." Said Shimazaki

"I hate my fucking bloodline." Said Sho. He looked down at his veins when he said that. Stupid blood. He had too much stupid blood and….if it wasn't for his stupid blood then he could have been happy…or at least…he could have been someone other than himself…

"Hey, you be damn grateful that you didn't have to memorize yours." Said Shimazaki shaking his head. Sho was grateful. Shimazaki had told him about that, about how he had to sit and listen and repeat for hours and hours and hours…and at least his dad never put him through that. He felt bad, feeling bad about how dad was, when Shimazaki's dad had been much worse…and that was just in the stuff that Sho knew about. He knew that there was some stuff that had happened, some stuff that dad had done to him, that even big sis didn't know…and he knew that Shimazaki must have had stories like too…and he knew never to ask about those stories. Shimazaki never asked his so he never asked Shimazaki's.

"I didn't have to memorize mine, and I don't see why anyone would ever have to do something as dumb as that, but it's just….I feel like my whole life…it's like…it's like I just exist because my dad wants to keep the stupid bloodline going and…and I just…it's not fair! I never asked to be a Suzuki and I don't see why it's so important that I am a Suzuki and I don't see why it's so important that I have to make more Suzuki's! I just…wish that I could be…" said Sho. He didn't know how to finish that. He knew what he wanted to say, he wished that he could have been with Shimazaki, but they weren't smoking anything right now….so he had no excuse to go and say something so dumb to his best friend. His best friend who, amazingly enough, was still talking to him after he confessed….though he probably had no idea that Sho had even made a confession.

"Just fuck who you want and fuck who you like." Said Shimazaki. Sho…he felt all of the blood from his body going to his face. He felt dizzy. He felt like running away. He knew what fuck meant…as a verb. He had never used it as a verb before…and neither had Shimazaki. It had always been a noun, like giving a fuck, or an adjective, like how something could be pretty fucking good or pretty fucking bad. Fuck as a verb…he knew what that meant…

And he didn't want to think about that.

Because it was gross. He knew how people fit together, he wasn't a baby, and the whole thing just seemed gross. Fitting together with a girl and then doing….stuff that Sho wasn't sure about….and then she had a baby growing in her stomach….no. Just…gross. Adults were so gross sometimes. He understood kissing and hand holding, those things felt really good, but he didn't understand wanting to take off all of your clothes…and then someone else's clothes and just…

Doing THAT to them.

"Gross." Said Sho. There. He had found a word, the best word, for how he felt in that moment. Gross. Because that was gross. The thought of him doing that with a girl makes him want to throw up….and so does the thought of Shimazaki doing that with a girl…only now he wants to throw up for a different reason….and he knows…that he does that kind of stuff…and he just…wished that he didn't….

"Hey, that is good life advice and I would have been pissing myself in joy if I had heard that advice, best advice you will ever get by the way, when I had been your age. I hadn't figured that out until around the time my dad died. Fuck who you want and fuck who you like. It doesn't matter who you want to fuck, just fuck them, well if they want to fuck you first. Yeah, that's the important part. Remember kid, the worst people in the world are the ones who fuck people who don't want it first. Always ask. Got it?" asked Shimazaki

"I got it…but I am never going to ask anybody in my life…because I don't want to. It's gross." Said Sho. Shimazaki laughed, Sho had no idea what he had been expecting but it hadn't been laughter, and he patted him on the head, which was something else that he hadn't expected…and stuff. He hadn't expected him to pat him on the head and…and he just…his heart was beating fast and that was just because he was surprised. That was all. Surprised and…in love with Shimazaki.

"Yeah, talk to me in a couple years….and take my advice too. Fuck who you want and fuck who you like. Your dad isn't going to live forever and at the end of the day I doubt the Suzuki name is going to die with you…so fuck who you want and fuck who you like. It doesn't matter. As long as you're happy then fuck what your dad or anyone else thinks, ok?" said Shimazaki. Sho…he wished that it were that easy. He wished that he could have been more like Shimazaki. He did whatever he wanted and he did it whenever he wanted…and he had even been able to stand up to his dad and Sho….he could never be like that.

"Yeah…I guess. I don't know. Dad is…dad and…and stuff. I don't know. Do you want to go find worms to put in Hatori's bed now? I bet that if we went to the park we could dig up a bunch….if you want to go with me…I mean….I get it if you don't." said Sho. He knew that he had been weird and…he knew that Shimazaki had been treating him like normal but….but what if he was just…Sho didn't even know. Being nice to him for the sake of being nice to him? Trying to be normal but really he was weirded out? Sho…he didn't know.

He just didn't know.

"Of course I want you to come along, you have tiny hands and worms aren't afraid of you, so come on. Whenever you're done with whatever you were drawing we can dig up some worm and freak Hatori out then we can pet some dogs, smoke again, whatever you want." Said Shimazaki. Sho….he knew what big sis had said. She had said that she had been planning on teaching him about moderation and stuff…but also….also he could learn moderation on his own….

He had to.

Because he liked the hazy feeling and he liked being with Shimazaki and…and he never wanted to say anything that weird to him again…and he would if he smoked too much again and got too hazy…but he could just…not smoke as much…..or stop himself from feeling hazy….because Sho wanted nothing more than to be there, with Shimazaki, doing whatever it was that he wanted to do…even if it was something that big sis had told him not to do.

"Shimazaki…ok. I'm done with my drawing now. Come on, let's go." said Sho. He put his sketchbook down. The blackbirds had flown away a long time ago. He could draw them from memory later….after he made more memories from Shimazaki. He couldn't believe that he had ever thought that Shimazaki would have wanted to stop being friends. Shimazaki wasn't like that. He was…he wasn't like that. He was nice. He was the nicest, coolest, most fun person that Sho had ever met…and he was so happy to be his friend…

Even if he could never feel the same way…and even if he couldn't draw….Sho was just so happy that they could be friends like normal.


	331. Earthworms and Avocados

Earth worms belonged in the dirt.

Ryou didn't seem to understand that. This was the….they didn't even know….time that he and Mob's little brother had decided that the best place for earthworms was not in the dirt where they could help the soil and, you know, not die a slow and painful death. No, according to those two the best place for earth worms was in Hatori's bed where they could die a quick and painful death when Hatori went to lay down and crushed them.

Those two.

The child brought out the worst in Ryou and Ryou brought out the worst in that child. Ryou seemed to lose any ability to think when he was with Mob's little brother. Maybe he was trying to vicariously live out the childhood that he'd never had, with the beatings and neglect and all, or maybe he was just trying to make Sho's childhood better than his has been, since Sho also had to deal with his fair share of beatings and neglect. Minegishi didn't know. All they knew was that they were kneeling there, in their garden, underneath the unrelenting summer sun. Fucking summer…why couldn't they have done this in the fall?

At least then the sun wouldn't have been beating down on them like this.

"Go on now. Get out of my sight before I change my mind." Said Minegishi as they dumped the bucket of earthworms down into their garden. They just sort of laid there, wiggling a little, and making no effort to save themselves. They were going to just die out there in the sun because they were too stupid or too shocked or just too dry to find their way back into the ground.

"I have to do every single fucking thing around here, don't I?" muttered Minegishi. They reached out and took some dirt in their hands. They covered the worms completely. There. Now they wouldn't die and the garden would live another week….unless those birds got to it. There were birds perched up on top of the house. Minegishi glared at them. They didn't fly away…well of course they wouldn't. Minegishi hadn't done anything. They were tired, they were way too hot, and they just wanted to go back inside and wait for whatever else Ryou and smaller, angrier, red haired version of Ryou had planned. Those two….God….those two….

Minegishi picked a dandelion.

Weeds. Their garden had weeds….and they had no clue how a weed had stated growing out of the ground….and they would deal with that later. They reached out and collected all of the dandelions, blew them out, and sent the seeds flying out to the birds. As the seeds flew Minegishi made them grow up and out…and there. No more birds. They had been smart enough to fly away before Shibata ended up with the ingredients for pigeon pie….or rather blackbird pie. Good. Those birds had better not come back. They had better not have had to hear those blackbirds singing in the dead of night or they'd have to take those broken wings and learn to fly.

Fucking Ryou.

He was in their head. He had been in their head for a while. He had taken up residence rent free in their mind. God. Even now they could just….see him. They could see him, there, beside them. He would sit down and say something like 'how does your garden grow' and then they would laugh, they always laughed, even though he wasn't even that funny. They would laugh and smile and he would know that they were smiling and then he would do something stupid like reach over and touch their face and say something ridiculous like 'I can't believe I forgot how pretty you are, Toshi' and then they would just sit there and let him see them and let him called them 'Toshi' even though they hated it…or they hated it from anyone else….or whatever. They didn't know.

They just knew that they were hot.

They were hot and sweaty and alone and they needed to get out of the sun and get back to the house and the cold and the air conditioning. Ryou was…somewhere in the world. They didn't care where he was. He was probably out collecting more earthworm to put in Hatori's bed or on a plate or something. They didn't know and they didn't care. If Ryou wanted to act like a ten year old then he could act like a ten year old. They didn't care one bit what he did. They didn't care if they saw him or they didn't see him or they just….they didn't know. They didn't care. They cared about…

They cared about that.

There. Across the way. That was what they cared about. They cared about the fact that they could smell smoke, smoking, they could smell someone smoking. The smoke was carried over on the summer breeze…and it was coming from next door…and there was only one person next door who could have been smoking…and that person should have quit a long time ago!

"Damn it, Mob." Said Minegishi. They got up, dusted themselves off, and went over to the next yard. They made themselves a step ladder of grass to get over the fence. It was at that moment that Mob decided to stop smoking. She hid her cigarette behind her back…too little too late. Way too little and way too late. She should not have been smoking. She knew how difficult it was to quit once you started…she knew that firsthand!

They had to stay calm.

For Mob's sake. They were not about to just go over there and star reading her the riot act….even though she knew full well that she should not have been smoking. They weren't her parent, for one thing, and also she just didn't need that in her life. She had her dad to deal with. She did not need Minegishi going over there and snatching the cigarette out of her hand and telling her to vape if she needed to smoke something. The sort that they had gotten her, of course, not the sort that Ryou kept on getting her even though she was eleven and did not need….

Well she did and she didn't.

She did and she didn't need to do the things that she did…and Minegishi slowed down as they walked. She looked like shit. Her aura…her face…all of it. She just seemed….tired. Very tired. Maybe even sick since despite the heat she was all wrapped in that oversized sweater Shibata made her. She was red and sweaty, which contributed to the whole 'looking like shit thing' and Minegishi wondered why she didn't just take off that damn sweater and wear something appropriate for the weather. Unless she was sick or something….but if she was sick then she could have called that healer….but then that would have involved speaking to that damned healer…

And who the hell wanted to voluntarily speak to that room temperature ice cream cone?

Minegishi didn't blame her for waiting out whatever she was sick with…if she was even sick. They honestly couldn't tell. They loved Mob, they really did, but she was just so hard to read sometimes. Even her aura. Like now. She was…sick and tired, it seemed like, or maybe even…there were a lot of boxes out in the yard. They knew what those boxes meant, grocery delivery, and they knew that Mob was the only person in her house who had brains enough to order food…and also the only one who knew that food had to be put away. The boxes…someone had drawn windows…someone had made a fort. Good line work. Steady. Done with a proper artist's pencil…the little brother. So while Mob had been putting food away…and also some scribbles…they knew who scribbled. Ryou always scribbled….he liked the sound of it…

So while Mob had been doing all the housework, as usual, her brother had been dicking around out here with Ryou….wonderful.

"Hi Minegishi….how are you?" asked Mob. They could see smoke coming from behind her back…and they hoped that Mob wasn't about to tell them that her back was on fire or something. Minegishi had been full of righteous indignation…but now they were full of an emotion that they had been told was called empathy. Something that they had read about but almost never had cause to feel…

Poor Mob.

"Fine. Yourself?" asked Minegishi as they came up next to her. She still had her cigarette behind her back…and a pack sticking out of that Frozen bag she was always wearing. No makeup today either, not even eye makeup, which meant that something was definitely wrong. She had been caking that shit on since she'd met that Minori girl…but now she was barefaced and…and way too red…and not just the spots along her eyebrows and hairline.

"I'm ok…um….did you want to hang out today? I can hang out if you want me to. I just finished putting everything away and I made lunch…it's just sandwiches and chips…and I have to iron dad's shirts when they're done in the dryer….but we can hang out if you want us to." Said Mob. She seemed….more monotone than usual. She did have some inflection but you really had to know her to hear it…and Minegishi really knew her. They knew her and they knew that she was…not well.

"Did your brother or Ryou help you at all?" asked Minegishi. That had been a lot for one person, especially a child, to do on her own…and Ryou had better start helping her out if he was going to be hanging out here. He wasn't helpless, he could help out, and also he obviously needed something productive to full his time if he was digging up earthworms and playing in boxes with a ten year old.

"No, Sho's too little and Shimazaki…well I don't know what he was doing but he was teleporting back and forth a lot. I didn't ask." Said Mob

"Well next time at least have Ryou help you if he's going to be hanging around here and making more work for you." Said Minegishi

"He doesn't make more work for me. He makes Sho happy…and stuff…and I want Sho to be happy." Said Mob. There it was. Her worst trait. The constant self-sacrifice. Minegishi had never been able to understand it. She was Suzuki Shigeko. She was the Daughter of the most powerful man on Earth and a powerful esper in her own right. Logically she shouldn't have been the sort to let herself get pushed around, to put so much of her time and energy into taking care of others…but there they were. They would have to figure out how to fix that about Mob…if it was even something that needed fixing. Minegishi didn't know. Their life had taught them that kindness was weakness. Her life had taught her something else. They weren't the same.

"You still deserve help…and if you need help with anything then I'll help you." Said Minegishi. They didn't exactly want to spend their day ironing and folding the President's laundry, actually even the amount of standing that they were doing now was too much, but if Mob needed help then they would help her. Somebody had to.

"I don't really need help…but I would like us to hang out. We could watch that show you like or we could have coffee and read or we could do skin care stuff…because my face feels gross….well my whole body feels gross…." Said Mob. She pulled her sweater tightly around herself when she said that…and Minegishi didn't understand why. Maybe she was following some kind of fashion or maybe she had the chills…or maybe she just wanted to wear the sweater and she didn't care about the heat. Minegishi didn't have a clue as to what went on in that head of hers sometimes…and they wished that they did. This friendship would have been a lot simpler if they had just been able to know what was going on in Mob's head…but then they would have been a telepath and that was the one power set they did not envy.

"Well, yeah, you're wearing a sweater in the middle of June. Of course you feel gross, you're practically melting, why not just take that thing off?" asked Minegishi. Mob shook her head.

"I want to keep my sweater on. I have to keep my sweater on." Said Mob. Well that sounded cryptic as all else. Minegishi wondered if they had another crisis on their hands…and they hoped that they didn't. They were not in the mood for this, not today. Maybe in a couple days they would be in the right headspace for this…no. They had to be in the headspace for it now since Mob needed them and they loved her and other suck emotional reasons.

"Any particular reason why?" asked Minegishi

"Yes." said Mob. There was a moment of silence. Minegishi watched the smoke pouring out from behind Mob's back. They wondered who would break the silence first…and then decided that they did not have time for all of that.

"Do you want to tell me that reason?" asked Minegishi with a sigh.

"Um….I don't know. I just…want to wear this sweater because…because I do. I don't mind it. It doesn't stop me from doing…everything that I have to do. Like the breakfast dishes and the lunch dishes and yesterday's dinner dishes, my sleeves only got a little wet, and the laundry went fine…well my sleeves got caught in the door…and also I caught the sleeves when I was putting Sho's toys away…but I'm fine in my sweater and…um…do you want to do face masks? I think that my skin is getting worse…and I just bought more oatmeal…and also I kind of need your help growing avocados…if you want to help me.

"I'd like that…but first tell me what's wrong." Said Minegishi. Well that was….a lot for a kid. That was more than Minegishi did in their own life and they were a grown adult. It was amazing that the great President Suzuki of Claw, the most powerful cult on Earth, couldn't hire someone to feed his kids and do his laundry. No, he had to have his eleven year old deal with all of that.

His very tired eleven year old.

Mob wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. She was overheating and tired and…and it was amazing that she was even still standing. Minegishi wondered why she was wearing a heavy sweater in the middle of summer. She knew that Shibata was just happy that she had accepted the gift…right? They didn't know. They'd have to get to the bottom of the whole sweater thing once they got to the bottom of Mob's feelings…

This was shaping up to not be one of their lay down on the couch and bleed out like a slasher movie victim days.

"Nothing." Said Mob. Minegishi sighed. They knew that when Mob said nothing she wasn't deflecting, she really saw it as nothing, and her seeing it was nothing made it something. She was resigned, that was the best word for it, to what her life was now…and she shouldn't have been. She was Suzuki Shigeko. She was the second most powerful esper in the world. Minegishi hadn't even been half as powerful as she was now when they had been her age…

But they were a completely different person than she was.

Mob didn't have a mean bone in her body. Minegishi had done…a lot…by the age of eleven. Things that had never even crossed Mob's mind even though she had every reason to…Mob was not them. Mob was her own person and she dealt with things in her own way. She wasn't about to goof and try and kill her father…even though if anyone deserved to die it was Suzuki. She wasn't a vengeful person. She was…she was the type to escape from her problems, not confront them….

And they had only themselves to blame.

"Mob, come on. You're smoking again. You only smoke when something's wrong, and you're wearing a sweater in June, so tell me what's wrong." Said Minegishi

"I'm just…tired. I had a lot to do last night and this morning…and it's always a lot to do…and stuff." Said Mob

"So I take it that your dad has no plans to stop treating you like his live in maid?" asked Minegishi. Daughter-wife would have been the more accurate term but they didn't want to bring up all of that. Suzuki was weird when it came to Mob…and Minegishi knew that if ever got TOO weird Mob would say something…and then her father would die and it would not be painless death….but there was no reason to get Mob all worried about that shit now. She had enough on her plate as it was.

"No. Maids have to wear uniforms and also they get paid. He treats me more like mom." Said Mob. Well she had just hit the nail on the head…and Minegishi had a few words to say to that…but those would have been harsh words and Mob did not need harsh words right now. She needed to stop smoking, get back into the air conditioning, and she needed to smother her face in mashed up avocado with oatmeal and honey.

"I suppose that he does…treat you like your mother." Said Minegishi. They knew that Mob had heard them the first time when they had told her that her dad was weird as all else when it came to her…and they knew not to press the issue either…even though they really wanted to press it. Press it like they wanted to press those spots on Mob's head until they went away…but of course they knew not to go with their first impulse. Never pop a pimple, that just led to acne scars, and never get someone upset about their situation when there was nothing that they could do about it in the first place. Mob was…she was eleven and Minegishi had been ten when they had been taken away…for various reasons…but Mob's life was completely different from theirs. There was no comparing the two…so why did their mind keep on trying to?

"I'm doing better than mom, I think, because I'm not going to run away. I take good care of my family and I'm never going to run away from them or spend all day sick in bed. I'm doing a good job and dad even says so. That's why I'm in charge of the house and also taking care of Sho….and I think that I'm doing a good job taking care of Sho….I'm not really sure." Said Mob. Minegishi…they weren't in the habit of psychoanalyzing people but that did not sound healthy. It sounded like Suzuki had never managed to get over his wife's passing and now he used his Daughter as wife version 2.0 because he just couldn't cope…and they knew that Mob had said that she ran away from home but, well, that sounded just like what parents told their kids when their pets died.

"Well he shouldn't…and put that thing out. What if he comes home and finds out? You know how he is. You don't want to get caught, do you?" asked Minegishi. Suzuki hated smoking. He hated smoking, drinking, cursing, and about a million and one other things. He loved his Daughter but he also didn't have the best track record when it came to parenting so, yeah, maybe it would be best that he didn't come home unexpectedly and find his eleven year old Daughter chain smoking in the backyard.

"He knows I smoke. I was smoking in the bathroom last night and he said that it was ok." Said Mob

"What in the….what?" asked Minegishi. Well Suzuki Touichirou certainly wasn't even in the running for father of the year. Honestly. Sure, his little girl could drink and smoke and raise her brother and run the household…but god forbid she start to develop an independent sense of self. Oh no, what could be worse than that. If Minegishi had been a stronger esper, and Suzuki had been a weaker on, then they would have killed him long ago. Mob would have been better off as an orphan, or at least an emancipated minor, than she was as Suzuki's daughter-wife. At least she wouldn't have all of this shit to deal…shit enough to make her smoke...

Chain smoke if the crushed filters by her feet were anything to go off of.

"I was smoking in the bathroom because I was tired and hungry and then dad noticed, well first he thought that the house had caught fire, but then I told him that I was smoking and he said that it was ok but only in moderation." Said Mob

"…yeah. Your dad is a real piece of work." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. He was old but not so old that he didn't know that smoking was addictive and eventually would kill you. Suzuki…if he had been a less powerful esper Minegishi would have had more words…well they did have more words…but these were not words that they were going to share with an eleven year old. She didn't want to hear them say things like that about her father even if they needed saying. Minegishi was not going to put that on her.

"He's a lot of work but I love him…but he is a lot of work sometimes. Everyone is a lot of work sometimes…but it's ok. I love my dad and my brother and my friends and everyone…so it's ok…even if it is a lot of work…and stuff." Said Mob

"Mob….stop smoking." Said Minegishi. That was all they could say to that. They were too hot and too tired to go into why Mob needed to stop setting herself on fire to keep others warm. Maybe when they were feeling better…if there was even enough time in the world to teach Mob about the value of valuing herself.

"But I want to." Said Mob

"Yeah, I know you want to. You're supposed to want to, smoking is addictive, that's how the cigarette companies replace their customers after they die. Newer and younger ones like you. Now stop smoking and get inside of the house so we can crush some avocados, mix them up with some oatmeal and honey, and then just relax and let something else do the work for once. How does that sound?" asked Minegishi. Inside and out of the sun. The felt like an earthworm out of the earth. They needed coolness and darkness and artificially cooled air and they needed it now.

"Minegishi….I would love that…as soon as I finish this cigarette." Said Mob. Minegishi did not consider themselves to be a calm, patient, and understanding human being…but for Mob they would do their best. She was going through a lot and…well she had already started the damn thing and it was burnt down almost to the filter anyway…so why the hell not?

They were probably going to go to hell for this later on, whichever circle was reserved for people who let little girls smoke cigarettes, and they were prepared to deal with that when the end finally came…probably a lot sooner than scheduled since they both felt like telling off Suzuki and also having a smoke.

"Mob….you're killing me." Said Minegishi with a sigh. They let Mob smoke what was left of her cigarette. No sense in having her waste it…and no sense in pissing her off…if she even could get pissed off. She felt more…defeated…than pissed off. Defeated and tired and…and Minegishi wished that there had been more that they could do for her than mash up some avocados with honey and oatmeal and cover her face with them….but that was all they could do. They had a lot of responsibility to her. They had never asked for this, not that they wanted to return it, because…because they just didn't. There was no going back. They were Nob's best friend and they were going to do the best they could…

Even if their best was just…having a spa day.

"Thank you for helping me. I really needed this, my skin has been really bad lately. Minori said-" said Mob. Minegishi shook their head and made some room on the overcrowded bathroom counter for their instruments. They did not want to hear about what Mob's only other kid friend had to see. Her skin wasn't even that bad. After Hatori….and their own adolescence…nothing looked bad anymore.

"You're welcome. You're fine, your skin is fine. Stop listening to that kid." Said Minegishi. Kids. Mob needed another kid friend…but maybe a kid friend who was more like her…not that there were many kids in the world like her. Hell, there weren't a lot of grown people in the world like her.

She didn't deserve this.

The life she led. She should have been happy…but this was not the place for people who'd had happy lives. She deserved a better life than this. Sure she had whatever she wanted but her dad…this bathroom was cleaner than theirs. Mob, an eleven year old child, was responsible for cleaning this bathroom until it shined like God's bathroom must have shined. She didn't need. She didn't need any of the responsibilities that had been placed on her. Minegishi could hear the dryer going. When it was done Mob would have ironing to do…and she didn't need that. She didn't need any of this…

Minegishi would help her out as best as they could.

"But she's my friend." Said Mob

"I'm your friend. I'm your friend and believe me when I tell you that you don't need someone to make you feel worse about yourself." Said Minegishi. They knew that at some point they were going to have to teach her about how mean girls could be to one another. How the aggression was sneaky. Boys, they just kicked the shit out of each other, girls tormented each other until you just wanted to….Minegishi was not a child anymore, that time was over, Mob was the child….and there was only so much that they could do for her. Her life was different, very different, but also very similar…

But Mob was not the sort of person who could tell people to shut their mouths and leave her be.

"You're my friend too, you're my best friend, and Minori…is also my friend. She just…she can be sort of mean but that's just how she is. Sometimes you can be mean to people too. Never to me but you can be mean to other people." Said Mob. She had a point. They knew that they could be something of an asshole…and they could also be something of a hypocrite.

"Mob….fine. Just….take off your sweater unless you want it to get dirty." Said Minegishi as they spread the avocado mixture onto Mob's face. They focused on her problem areas, those spots, but not in a way that would make her self conscious of them. She was getting to that poor body image age and Minegishi would not have a part in making her feel any worse than herself than she already did. She must have considering the sheer amount of makeup that covered her bathroom counter. God, to be eleven again….Minegishi was never going back. They were twenty eight now and they never had to go back.

Eleven was hell.

Well that whole part of life was hell. Even if Mob's dad hadn't been using her as a daughter-wife these years still would have sucked. Minegishi wished that they could have done more…and they were amazed with themselves that they even cared. They had gotten soft in their old age, or maybe because the power of friendship had thawed their frozen heart, or other such clichés. They didn't know. All they knew was that this was the eleven year old that they cared about most in the world and they were going to do their best to make her life just a little bit better.

As best as they could.

"Um….I don't want to. You can get it dirty." Said Mob. She pulled her sweater around herself with her powers while she said that…and it wasn't that cold in here. She didn't….always make sense. Something was…usually she was happy to be able to shed her layer once it got warm out….and she wasn't cold. She was back in normal length socks…but she was in that sweater…so something was wrong.

"Mob, what's up with that sweater…and don't tell me nothing. I've known you since you were eight years old, I know when something's wrong, and when something's wrong with you it eats at me so, please, just tell me what's up." Said Minegishi. They weren't lying. Mob…she had grown on them. They knew that if something was wrong they wouldn't be able to rest. That was just….how they were now. That was just what life was. Life was…this. Caring about someone. Huh. They wondered what a three years younger version of themselves would have said if they could have met the current version of themselves…probably nothing because that would destroy the time space continuum. Or maybe it wouldn't and it would be a lot of 'what the fuck' or whatever. They didn't know.

They kept up with what they were doing.

They sort of wished that they'd had a camera. Mob looked cute, there, with her face all covered in green oatmeal. What she needed was some witch hazel but they didn't want to go back to their room and get it. This was fine. Her skin wasn't that bad. She hadn't been wearing heavy makeup for that long, the damage would be easy to reverse, and they wished that everything else in her life could be fixed so easily….

Because they got the feeling that there wasn't enough oatmeal, honey, and avocado in the world to fix what was bothering Mob.

She was playing with the hem of her sweater now….and that wasn't good. But they had to talk about whatever it was that was bothering her. She had just started with this sweater thing…and it was best to deal with this sooner rather than later. Maybe it was a body image thing….Minegishi pulled at their own shirt…maybe they weren't the best person to help with this. They were as comfortable in their own skin as they ever would be…and they got the feeling that maybe they weren't comfortable enough….or maybe everyone in the world was just as uncomfortable as they were. They didn't know. They didn't care about themselves or the world, just Mob.

Just Mob.

"I just….feel gross." Said Mob

"Well, yeah, you've been sweating into that sweater…and yes, I know that's why they call it a sweater." Said Minegishi. If Ryou had been there he would have said that…and they had no idea why they kept on expected Ryou to be there. He wasn't. God. Rent free. He was living rent free in their mind.

"Oh. I hadn't thought of that….but no. That's not it I just…feel gross. I feel gross because of…stuff. I don't know. Can I put avocado on you now?" asked Mob

"Yeah, come on…and Mob. I get it. You're trying to hide in that sweater. I get it." Said Minegishi. They felt their own baggy t-shirt…and they couldn't fault her for feeling the way she felt. Not when they still felt that exact same way at their age.

"You do?" asked Mob

"Yeah, I do. I…I've been there before." Said Minegishi

"You felt gross sometimes too?" asked Mob. Minegishi….gross was not the word but…but they were here to make Mob feel better, not argue semantics.

"Yeah. Back when I was…where you are now in life. It was like I had…zero control over anything anymore. Just…the way I was, what I was becoming, who I was becoming, the way people were looking at me-" said Minegishi

"That's the worst part…being looked at. I think so, anyway." Said Mob

"Mob…who the hell has been looking at you?" asked Minegishi. They were glad that Mob didn't keep plants in her bathroom. They would have so easily, and so quickly, become murder weapons. Someone was going to die. Mob was eleven years old. Someone had to die…or get blinded….or maimed in some other way. There was no other way. Mob did not need that sort of shit in her life.

"Fukuda." Said Mob. Well then. He was going to die…if he could be killed. He healed fast…but Minegishi could work fast. It would just be a contest to see who could be faster.

"Where is he right now?" asked Minegishi

"Why? What are you going to do to him…your aura looks mad…" said Mob

"It is, I mean I am, but not at you. You are a child and he should not have been looking at you. He can look at me all he wants, I'm a grown adult, but looking at you….no. That is not ok." Said Minegishi

"Please don't hurt him. Shimazaki already hurt him enough….and I don't want him to get hurt again…even if he can be sort of a jerk I don't want him to get hurt. He's…he's nice to Sho and not a lot of people are nice to Sho…and he needs all the niceness that he can get." Said Mob

"So Ryou handled it? And let him live? That doesn't sound like Ryou…" said Minegishi

"He…left Fukuda outside kilometers from home with no shoes on…so maybe he left him out there to die…and stuff. I don't know. I just…don't want Fukuda to get hurt or for you to hurt him or anyone else because of me. Not because of me or because of anyone. I mean he can be a jerk, and he broke Sho's trust, and that made Shimazaki smoke him up but-" said Mob

"Wait…what was that?" asked Minegishi

"He can be a jerk sometimes." Said Mob

"No, after that." Said Minegishi

"He broke Sho's trust. He told dad about Emmy and-" said Mob

"No, at the end. What….what did Ryou do?" asked Minegishi. They must have heard wrong or maybe they were going crazy or…or something. Ryou….he was an idiot but he was not that big of an idiot…yes he was. Minegishi had known him for years, they knew just how stupid he could be, even stupid enough to smoke up the boss's only son. Suzuki may not have given a fuck about his son as a human being but as property….well that was a different matter entirely.

"He taught Sho how to smoke….but don't worry. I'm going to teach Sho about moderation and stuff. That way he won't ever get as stoned, and I think he was stoned and not high since he and Shimazaki ate all of the food in the house, as he ws yesterday. He knows that he can't tell dad, either, because dad wouldn't be ok with him smoking…and it's going to be ok. It seemed like a lot at first to me but…but it's ok. Because I'm going to teach him about moderation just like you taught me about moderation." Said Mob

"Mob….my lessons on moderation have gone in one ear and out the other…so why do you think that your brother is going to listen to you?" asked Minegishi

"Because….because I really want him to…and stuff." Said Mob

"That's not how it works…and you…this shouldn't even be something that you should have to worry about! Just…sorry. Sorry. Ryou is an idiot…and more of a child than you are…and he and I are going to talk-" said Minegishi

"Please don't be mad at him! This was my fault for not teaching Sho how to smoke sooner. I mean I taught Minori before I taught Sho and he's my little brother while she's just my friend…and not a very good one…and-" said Mob

"Mob….what? Her too?" asked Minegishi. Well they had well and truly lost complete control over the situation. They were now personally responsible for an epidemic of soft drug use amongst kids. Mom and dad had always said that the world was a worse place because they had been born…and maybe that hadn't just been verbal abuse. God. This was….they didn't even know what this was…beyond not good…not good at all.

"Yes, but only when we're together to that's moderation. I should have taught Sho about moderation a long time ago but I didn't so, um, that's what I'm going to do now. I should have taught him about moderation a long time ago since…since I was smoking and I had thought that he wouldn't smoke ever but…but he did and I was sort of upset with him, and Shimazaki, and myself but…but now I'm ok….ok-ish…because it's wrong for me to get mad at Sho for doing something that I do all the time." Said Mob. Minegishi…was going to drop this for now. They didn't have a leg to stand on and they were too tired to find one. Mob had a point. She was not going to let herself become a hypocrite just like Minegishi was not going to let themselves become a hypocrite…and the kid….he led a hard life. The beatings, mostly, but Ryou had relayed the terrible things that Suzuki said to his son…and they wondered why he even bothered having kids if he was just going to treat them like garbage.

They had never been able to understand parents.

Even now at the age of twenty eight they could not understand parents. Mob wasn't even their child but they still couldn't understand bringing a person into the world just to treat them like…that. Just to treat them….just to do something other than….other than people. Mob was a person. Mob was a person and they….they cared about Mob and….and this was a lot. This was a lot and they were not going to sit there and tell her that she should not have been smoking with other kids, that Ryou had been a moron to involve her brother in this, and that if anyone needed to get stoned once in a while….or once a day…it was the Suzuki kids. The kids were…they were leading very difficult lives…

And Minegishi had no clue what they were supposed to do in that situation.

"Mob…how does Fukuda factor into all of this?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. One thing at a time. They just had to…to deal with one thing at a time. This was the time to deal with that scented tampon and the fact that he couldn't keep his eyes to himself.

"I made Shimazaki take me to go and save Fukuda and then he said…well they both got into a big fight and Fukuda said…he said that he thought that me and Shimazaki were…were doing stuff…the stuff that you and him do…and it just made me…makes me…still makes me feel…gross." Said Mob

"That….no. You have no reason to feel gross. He should be the one to feel gross. I mean…for the love of God…he accuses Ryou of…which is understandable….but to…to say that to you….I just…I cannot begin to…" said Minegishi. The window grew darker. They were overgrowing the privacy hedge. They were reaching out as best as they could to whatever plant life was around…and that was the closest that they could find. The privacy hedge. Fitting. Perfect. They didn't know.

Well they did know that they could kill a man with that.

And they would kill a man with that…if they even could call Fukuda a man. No man would just…say something like that. Say that…think that…insinuate that…that an eleven year old was….involved with….a thirty, nearly thirty one, year old man…and that was…that was just….who just SAT on that information!? Who just took that sort of information and just sat on it or….or even worse….ATTACKED a not even teenage girl with that….that accusation! Just…Ryou was who he was. He was who he was and, yes, his sense of morality was skewed…very skewed….but it was not THAT skewed. He was not the sort of person who would….and they knew him but Fukuda did not…and Mob….the thought of any of that…SHOULD NOT have been put into her mind!

She had enough to deal with in her life.

She had to deal with her dad's shit and her brother's shit and Claw shit and…and she did not need to sit there hiding in her sweater feeling like shit because some….some sand paper vibrator….THAT ONLY TOOK C BATTERIES….thought that she would just…what? Sleep around…at ELEVEN?! Well Minegishi had been twelve…but that was beside the point! That idiot had still thought that…that she was…she was a CHILD and…and if he thought that a grown man was sleeping with her….then why would he just…sit on this information and not gone to Suzuki with this!?

They were going to have a stroke if they didn't calm down.

"Minegishi…please don't be mad at me…" said Mob. They felt her hand on their wrist….and they held her hand. They had nothing else that they could do, that they could trust themselves to do, and so they just…held Mob's hand.

"I'm not mad at you. You know that I'm not mad at you. Mob, you did nothing wrong. Fukuda is the one who did something wrong. That he would ever think-" said Minegishi

"Don't kill him. Don't hurt him. Please?" asked Mob. They held her hand, and she held theirs right back, and they just…the wanted to kill him. They wanted to find Fukuda and end his life…but they didn't. They didn't because Mob…she didn't need another thing to worry about. Minegishi would end his life later, they didn't know how or when, but knew that he was a dead man…

But Mob didn't need to know that.

"Fine. He lives another day…now come on. My turn." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't need to know what they were planning on doing. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day….one day Fukuda would get his. He had signed his own death warrant when he had said that about Mob…and they were not exaggerating. They would do this for Mob…later. Not now.

But later. When enough time had passed that he got complacent in his life. Then they would come for him. They would do what they had to do to help…and if they had to end the life of that human earthworm then so be it.


	332. Coloring in the Lines and Weird Art

Mob had been able to color inside the lines since she had been little.

She remembered being little, very little, and mom told her to color inside the lines. It had been her Hello Kitty coloring book, the one where she had winter adventures, and she had been coloring in the Christmas tree. She had been scribbling colors onto the page because she had been little, three, and mom had taken the green crayon from her hand and told her to color more like Sho. It had been the part of the year when they had been the same age, both three, and he had been able to color inside the lines already, and Mob had tried her best…and mom had said that she had done a good job…but maybe that part had come later. Mob wasn't sure, her memories from back then were hazy, but she had remembered that she had eventually learned how to color inside of the lines.

Mostly.

Mob could color inside the lines with a pencil or a crayon or a marker just fine. That was because the paper was flat and also sat still. Nails were not flat and also the feet attached to them were ticklish. Mob was doing her best, though, it wasn't her fault that Minori had ticklish feet. Mob was doing her best not to make a mess even though Minori kept on moving. She usually used her powers when she did toes, Minegishi had ticklish feet too, but she didn't want to use her powers around Minori. She didn't have any powers and she might have been sad or jealous about that. So Mob used her hands…even though it was sort of hard with Minori moving all the time…

And also her sheets were white.

Her sheets were white and Mob was using bright pink nail polish. She knew that the nail polish would show and then there would be a mess…and she was doing her best to be careful…she just wasn't used to doing this without her powers. She wasn't going to use them, though, and she could figure out how to do this by hand. She would do this for her friend, and they were friends, even if Minori could sort of be mean sometimes.

That was ok, though, because she was going through a lot.

"Suzuki, if you get nail polish on my sheets then you're going to be the one to wash them." Said Minori. She kicked Mob a little, too, when she said that. But that was ok. She was going through a lot. Her dad wasn't going to take her back to Japan because her friends had all turned on her and that was why she had to be mean to them. Too many people complained and her school told her to leave so now she was going to go to school in America. That must have been terrible, being kicked out of school for something that wasn't even your fault, and Mob could forgive Minori for being just a little bit mean.

She had a lot going on.

More than Mob did, anyway. At least Mob hadn't been kicked out of anywhere. She had a lot to do, well she'd had a lot to do before, and that was just…not as bad as being kicked out. Being told that you weren't wanted. Sure she had to get Sho into the bath tonight, he hadn't actually GONE into the tub in a while, and also she had to scrape burnt caramel off of a plate when she got home but at least she hadn't been kicked out of anywhere. She just…had stuff to do…but not that much. She was all caught up on the laundry and Sho knew to have Shibata feed him if he got home before her, and dad hadn't said or done anything mean to Sho in a few days so…so she was alright. Sho hadn't said anything else about smoking, too, so that was good. Things were…they were good. Things were good at home and she needed to stop thinking about, worrying about, things at home because they were fine and she was hanging out with her friend and she was having fun so she just had to…stop worrying.

She had to think about her friend, now, and not things she had to deal with at home.

"I'm sorry….it's just that you keep on moving…that's all." said Mob. She knew that she had said the wrong thing the minute Minori pulled her foot back. She knew how Minori didn't like being criticized, and she hadn't meant to be mean, she had just wanted Minori to make this a little easier…but Mob just hadn't been trying hard enough.

"So everything's my fault?" asked Minori. Mob shook her head. She wasn't lying, not everything in the world was her fault, and also Mob just…needed to practice doing things by hand. She was too used to using her powers. She wasn't always going to be around espers. The world was made up of normal people, not espers, and she had already made one normal person friend…and maybe she could make more…though she knows not to think about that sort of thing. Things that aren't going to happen, probably, because she doesn't meet a lot of people….

But having more friends her own age….

Sometimes she liked the idea of it and sometimes she didn't. Being Minori's friend was already complicated enough. Being friends with someone else….that could be fun…or she could mess it up. Being friends with other people, with normal people, and with people her own age…seemed hard. So many things could go wrong….like what had happened to Minori. Mob was glad, sometimes, that she only had to worry about her family and friends and Claw. At least people were nice to her and she didn't have to worry about anyone betraying her or anything like that. She knew her friends and she knew that they would never betray her or be mean to her…

Well everyone but Fukuda…but they weren't friends so he didn't count…so she could at least trust all of her friends.

"No, not at all. I just meant that I'm not used to painting other people's nails like this. That's all. I'll work harder from now on." Said Mob. That was the thing to say when you messed up. It worked on other people, not just dad, and she was glad. She didn't know what she would have done if Minori got mad at her. She wasn't nice to people who made her mad because they weren't real and true friends. Mob wasn't going to make her mad, though, because they were real and true friends. Mob considered herself to be a very good friend.

"I thought you and your non binary friend did this all the time." Said Minori

"Not toes, only fingers." Said Mob. She didn't mention that she used her powers to do toes because feet were ticklish. That would have been bragging. You weren't supposed to tell people when you were more fortunate than them, mom had said so, and she had been talking about not telling people how much money they had but Mob figured that the lesson applied to her powers too.

"God, I have to teach you everything, don't I?" asked Minori. She rolled her eyes when she said that…and Mob got the feeling that she had made Minori mad. She hated that, making people mad, especially her friends…and also she didn't want to make Minori think that she was a b-word. Mob had never been called a b-word before but she knew that she did not like to be called names…and also she didn't want to not be friends with Minori. They may not have been best friends like she and Minegishi were but that didn't mean that she wanted to lose Minori's friendship or anything like that. Once you were someone's friend then you were their friend for life. That was just how it worked….for Mob at a least.

"You're a very good teacher." Said Mob. Maybe a compliment would help. Minori liked to be complimented…even if she followed up the compliments by saying stuff like 'I know' Mob could tell that she still liked that.

"Well then if I' such a good teacher then why don't you listen?" asked Minori

"I listen to everything you tell me." Said Mob

"Yeah, uh-huh, sure. Then why are you still in blue?" asked Minori. She waved her hand at Mob. She looked down. She knew that she wasn't supposed to wear blue but…maybe an exception could be made? This sweater had been a present after all, a birthday present, and birthday presents were very important.

"Because…I like blue…and this is my biggest sweater." Said Mob

"Why are you even wearing a giant sweater in the middle of June? I know it's not as hot as Japan here but it's pretty damn hot." Said Minori

"…because I want to." Said Mob. She knew that she and Minori were friends and friends could talk about things…but she didn't want to talk about what had happened. About how she had gross feelings whenever she took off the sweater and saw herself, mostly her breasts, not that they were anything other than bumps…and also she wanted them to grow at the same time that she wanted them to go away…and she didn't want to talk about this with Minori since she would just get made fun of for making no sense at all.

"Why? You look stupid." Said Minori. Mob looked down. She hated it when Minori was mean…but she was just trying to help. Mob knew she looked stupid in this. It was too big and also Minori was right, it was hot out, and it was stupid to wear a sweater when it was hot out. It got all sweaty…and that was why it was called a sweater….but maybe not because she was the only person in a sweater.

"I know. I just want to wear it. I like blue and…and I like my sweater. My friend made me this, he knitted it for me for my birthday, and….and I'm sorry if you're mad at me for wearing blue. I can go home if you want me to. I don't want to make you mad." Said Mob

"What? You'd go? We didn't even smoke yet." Said Minori. Mob didn't get why she wanted to smoke so badly. She hadn't even had a bad day or anything like that. Also Mob hadn't even been planning on smoking today….any more than she had. Moderation was important and stuff and she was making more of an effort to use moderation since she had to set a good example for Sho…and stuff.

"If my sweater bothers you then I can go. I know you said not to wear blue anymore but I like blue and…and I don't want you to be mad at me or to think that I'm being a b-word so…so I can go if you want me to." Said Mob. She didn't much want to go but she also didn't want to make Minori mad….and she also didn't like the rule about them only being able to wear pinks and purples, either, because she liked blue. She liked blue and she liked Frozen and…and she didn't like how Minori made her feel bad for liking the things she liked…even though Minori was just trying to help her be less of a little kid all the time.

"No. Fine. Stay. You can wear blue, I was wrong, it's a good color on you. Yeah, sort of like you're going for a moe look but like….like you're sick or something." Said Minori. Mob looked over at herself in the wall mirror. She looked….sweaty….and maybe that was why it looked like she was sick. She didn't know. All she knew was that she was not going to take off that sweater.

"Oh. I'm…sorry?" asked Mob. She didn't know what moe was or what it had to do with being sick but she got the feeling that she should just say sorry. Even when you didn't know what you were apologizing for sometimes it was best just to say sorry and get onto the next thing.

"Don't be sorry. It's good that you realize that you'll never be hot like me. That's fine. I'll be the hot one and you can be moe one. Some guys like moe, I'm not into those kinds of guys, so you can have them." Said Minori

"Um….you can have all the boys. I don't think that boys like me very much." Said Mob. Sometimes boys talked to her when she was out and stuff but they didn't like her. They were just being nice. Boys didn't like her like she liked them…and she wasn't even sure if she wanted a boy to like her like that. She liked…she had been kissed once and she had liked that a lot…and she wanted to be kissed again…and also touched…and maybe even that felt up thing that Minori had told her about…but when she thought about all of that she just felt so gross…gross like how Fukuda had thought that she and Shimazaki had been doing…the stuff that adults did…and she knew that thinking about stuff like….like being kissed or a boy touching her through her clothes, in her mind she had always been wearing a sweater and a shirt and a undershirt…when she had let her mind wander there, was very close to adult stuff…and that adult stuff made her feel gross…so maybe she just never wanted a boy to like her then because she would just end up feeling gross then.

"Well some boy is going to have to like you. You can't be my friend if I get a boyfriend and you don't have one." said Minori

"I-I can't?" asked Mob. She didn't know that there was a rule that said that only single girls could be friends with other single girls. She was so glad to be Minori's friend, she knew all the rules, and Mob was grateful because she knew almost none of the rules.

"No way. It would look so bad. I mean, you're my friend and I can't be friends with someone with no boyfriend. We'd be at totally different life stages and whatever. So when I get a boyfriend then you have to get one." said Minori

"But…the only boy my age that I know is my brother….and he's my brother." Said Mob

"What about that other guy that you're into? The yakuza guy with all the tattoos?" asked Minori

"What? Shimazaki? Gross. No, not him. He's trying to be boyfriend and theyfriend with my friend Minegishi…and even if he wasn't best friends don't try and go out with boys that their best friends are kissing and…other stuff." Said Mob. She must have said the right thing because Minori smiled and got really close…and that was good. Right? She was smiling and it was always good when your friend smiled…and that was good…even though she knew that Minori wanted to talk about Shimazaki….because she thought that he was attractive. He was...he could be…but Mob did not think about him like that.

"Wait, so they're friends with benefits? Like, for real?" asked Minori. Mob…she didn't get it. All friends could reap the benefits of friendship. She got the feeling that she was missing something….because Minori was making the face that she made when Mob didn't get something.

"Um….every friend benefits from friendship…because you get to have someone to hang out with and be together with and you learn things from each other and….stuff…" said Mob. Yup. She was definitely missing something. She knew that face….and now she looked away. She pulled her sweater in closer. She messed up again.

"Suzuki…you are such a virgin." Said Minori. Mob wanted to ask her what else she would be since she was eleven and she didn't even know any boys her own age. She knew what that word meant, someone who had never done anything, and Mob…she had never even had the chance to do anything but kiss….and she had never wanted to do anything but kiss…

"You can call me Mob, or Shigeko if you want to…and I don't know any boys our age….so of course I haven't done anything." Said Mob. She didn't know why Minori kept on calling her Suzuki. They were given name friends…or maybe that only went one way. She didn't know. She didn't know a lot of things…like why it was bad to be a virgin.

"Ok then. Shige, you are such a virgin." Said Minori

"Shige is ok….and I'm sorry I don't always know what you mean…and stuff. I just never had anyone to learn this stuff from…and stuff." Said Mob

"No, it's fine. This is why you have me. Anyway friends with benefits are friends who kiss and feel each other up and mess around and have….sex…together." said Minori. She looked around before she whispered the last part. Mob was grateful. She didn't know any of Minori's guards or the staff but she didn't want people to know that they were talking about sex…and also she didn't really want to talk about sex. Sex was…weird and gross and embarrassing and only for adults. Besides, it wasn't like anyone would ever want to do that with her anyway…and it wasn't like she wanted to do that anyway. The thought of some boy kissing her and touching her all over…and her not wearing clothes and him not wearing clothes…

She felt gross.

She pulled her knees up under her sweater. She felt gross just thinking about that. She knew that it was supposed to feel good and stuff but…but she also just felt gross for even thinking about it. The whole thing was just gross and embarrassing. Being naked around a boy who was also naked and then he kissed you and then….well Mob wasn't sure, entirely, what happened next but she did know that it was not for her. Nope. Not her cup of tea at all.

Despite what Fukuda thought about her and Shimazaki.

"Oh….yeah. They do that. Anyway, um, did you ever end up getting that Alien pallet? Because if you did-" said Mob. She had seen that pallet and she didn't think that it was anything special but Minori had been excited and maybe if she had gotten it she would want to try it out and then they could forget about this whole conversation.

"It's still on it's way. Anyway so tell me what's going on with them? They do stuff? All of the stuff?" said Minori. Mob….didn't know how to answer that question. She assumed that they did everything but she had never asked….and why would she ever have asked. She knew that she was not the best at talking but she knew not to ask about THAT.

"Um…I think so. I never asked….because it seems sort of like it's none of my business…" said Mob. She had never even thought about asking Minegishi the specifics of what they did with Shimazaki. She knew that they kissed and that they cuddled and one time she had walked in on them naked in bed together and she knew, well at least she had some idea of, what went on when two adults were in bed together…and she did not want to think about this at all.

"Please. Everything is your business. God, you know the most interesting people. I've never been friends with anyone who's done all the stuff before. Not even my middle school friends have and they're first years. I mean, come on, who's still a virgin in middle school?" asked Minori

"Um…people who don't do….stuff?" asked Mob

"Exactly. Like, you're finally old enough to do more than kiss, not that I want to do more than kiss or anything like that, and you're just going to…not do more than kiss? That's so dumb. Like, what's even the point of having a guys around then?" asked Minori

"Um…..to fall in love with?" asked Mob. Love….she liked love. She liked thinking about love. She liked to lay awake in bed at night and think about love. About being kissed and held. About having a boy, usually Hatori, who wanted to kiss her and hold her…and that was all. Anything more would be too much…and also she shared a room with her little brother and she did not want to think about that sort of thing when she was in the room with her little brother…or at all.

"Oh, right, yeah. You need to fall in love with someone and then he'll be your boyfriend and shit. You're right. We need boyfriends, not friends with benefits, because then people won't talk about us…or is it cooler to have friends with benefits since that's what adults do?" asked Minori. Mob had no idea why Minori was asking her about this. She was the expert on this stuff. Mob had never even heard the term friends with benefits before today.

"Um….do adults care about what's cool?" asked Mob. She got the feeling that adults just did whatever they wanted to do. That was how her friends were, anyway, everyone just did whatever they liked and acted however they wanted to act…and stuff.

"You're right. We don't want to look like try-hards. We should get friends with benefits before boyfriends, I think, for practice….but only guys who can keep their mouths shut. There. That's a good plan. Thank you, Shige." Said Minori

"Um…you're welcome?" said Mob. She hadn't come up with any plan, Minori had been the one with the ideas, and also she couldn't remember the last time anyone had called her Shige….or if she had ever even been called Shige before. She had always been either Mob or Shigeko or Suzuki…or Daughter but dad was the only one who called her that.

"I know I'm welcome. Anyway, so, like what's the story with them? Your yakuza friend and your non binary friend? Like how do non binary people even….do it?" asked Minori. Mob shook her head. She had no idea if this was even an ok question to ask. The whole thing was private and also…well people fi together like puzzle pieces…that was why there were boys and girls. Mom had said so. They just…fit together….and puzzle pieces only fit together one way…or that would have been a very confusing puzzle…and stuff…

"I have no idea. I've never asked….and I don't think that I should….because that seems like kind of a…private thing and…I mean they do stuff…I mean…the normal way, I guess? I mean I didn't even know that there were different ways to do stuff…or that….or how that stuff works. I mean I know that people fit together like puzzle pieces…and I guess they do that….but Minegishi would NOT like me asking about that." Said Mob. There was no universe in which Minegishi would have wanted to be asked about all of that. Nope. Mob had been friends with them for years before they had told her that they had been born a girl…and she had never asked because that would have been asking about someone else's privates…which were private…and asking someone what they did with their privates…..that was even more private….and stuff…

"Wait….you don't know about…the stuff people do? Seriously? What, does your dad check your phone or something?" asked Minori

"No, he doesn't, and….and what does that have to do with…things…and stuff?" asked Mob. Well now she was lost…and she had been lost for a while…so now she was extra lost…and this was great. Just great.

"Because that's the only reason I can think of for you not looking it up. I mean, you know that this stuff is on the internet, right?" asked Minori

"I know that there are naked people on the internet. My mom warned me and my brother about that and why we should never mess with the parental controls." Said Mob

"….so you've never turned off safe search?" asked Minori

"No, why would I? I don't want to look at naked people. That's weird." Said Mob

"You've never once wondered what a naked guy looked like? Seriously? Not even once in your life?" asked Minori

"I have a brother and we used to take baths together. I know that differences between boys and girls." Said Mob. She at least knew that much. She wasn't a total little kid…and stuff. That was enough for her to know, she decided, since she really didn't want to see anyone naked at all. She didn't even know why she would. She could understand wanting to see a specific person naked…not that she had ever wanted to see Hatori naked or anything. That would have been weird and gross and she felt gross for even thinking about it.

"I'm not talking about that. Brothers aren't guys, they don't count. I mean GUYS, you know what I mean?" asked Minori

"I…really don't. I don't get why anyone would want to see just….a stranger being all naked and stuff. I mean I understand wanting to see a specific person naked….but not that I want to see a specific person naked or anything." Said Mob. She got the feeling that she had said something right…and wrong at the same time…because now Minori was leaning in really close and she had that look on her face that she got when she was going to ask a question about something that Mob didn't much want to talk about…like naked people stuff….and she didn't want to talk about naked people stuff….

"Who are you trying to see naked? That yakuza guy you always hang out with and stuff?" asked Minori. Mob shook her head really fast. No way! Not Shimazaki….just…no. That would have been…wrong…and gross…and just….she would never do that to Minegishi. Ever.

"No, not him. I already said that I would never do anything like that to my best friend." Said Mob

"Why not? You totally could, probably, since guys are…well…guys. I mean you said it yourself, he's not going out with your non binary friend. He just caught feelings and catching feelings is not the same as going out with someone. Oh! And when we get friends with benefits we have to make a pact not to catch feelings for them. Those are just practice guys. Ok?" asked Minori

"Um….ok? But….what did I agree to? I mean I don't even know what catching feelings even means. I mean you can't catch feelings like you catch a cold…" said Mob. She wished that there was a book or an app or something that could translate all of this for her. Minori to Mob, like Japanese to English, on Google or something. It would have made her life a lot easier that was for sure…

"Shige, you need to look stuff up. Seriously. Catching feelings is what happens, sometimes, when people are friends with benefits. They fall in love with the person they're doing stuff with and it always makes the biggest mess. That's why we have to make a vow not to catch feelings when we're with the guys we're going to practice with. We have to be good about being on each other about that. Ok?" asked Minori. That made zero sense….but Mob would at least agree to help…even though she had no idea why Minori wouldn't want to fall in love….but Mob could agree to that. It wasn't like any boys liked her anyway.

"Ok Minori, I can do that….but…I don't get any of this. Just…falling in love is a good thing and…and how did you even hear about all of this?" asked Mob. She had been to school before and they had never talked about this stuff before…but that was because she had been in the first grade. She wasn't in the first grade anymore, even if Minori said that she still dressed like it, and she just….where did Minori even LEARN about these things?

"I read about them and I see them on TV and stuff. Seriously. How have you never Googled any of this before. I mean, what, did you think that people just fell in love at first sight and then got married and then they laid down naked next to each other in bed, then the guy stuck it in, and then the girl had a baby?" asked Minori

"….yes." said Mob. That was how it happened….right? That was how mom said that it happened. She had seen dad at the train station and then they had fallen in love and they had been in such a hurry to become a family that they had made her before they had gotten married and then they had made Sho right after…and that was how it went…right? She didn't know. She got the feeling that there were a lot of things that she didn't know about.

"Shige….you are so lucky to have me. I mean, really, you're eleven and you've never even turned the safe search off. Well today is your lucky day." Said Minori. She rolled over and took her phone off of the charger…and Mob got the feeling that she was about to see something that she didn't want to see, like naked people, and she didn't even want to see any naked people. She could have lived her whole life without seeing any naked people. She didn't even like looking at HERSELF naked let alone internet strangers!

Friendship was hard sometimes.

Minori rolled back over and sat up. In the time that it took Minori to roll back over and sit up Mob had thought up at least ten other things that they could have been doing right now. They could have gone back to painting each other's nails. They could have watched more kpop music videos and Minori could have told her which boys were attractive. They could have played dolls, Mob had brought some over, and sometimes they played dolls together for ten minute stretches. They could have gone for a walk to burn off the calories from any food that they had eaten that day. They could have braided each other's hair. They could have tried on clothes. They could have played with makeup. They could have taken more pictures. They could have looked out the window and watched the clouds move by. They could have practiced their English since Minori's wasn't so good. They could have-

"See? This is how you turn the safe search off…and this is how you delete your history. You know, in case anyone goes through your phone." Said Minori as she sat way too close to Mob. She pulled her sweater tight around herself. She did NOT want to look at naked people. Ever. Who would? What was the point of seeing a stranger naked? What if you saw them in life and then you knew what they looked like naked? That could have been so embarrassing! Also it was pointless because….love was important. Mob got the feeling that love, or at least knowing the person, was important…and it wasn't like she would ever see Ha-

She felt gross.

"Um….I don't really want to look at naked people….um…can we do…something else?" asked Mob. She wondered if maybe she should just ask Minori which of her friends were b-words again. All of her friends were, and it was painful for Minori to talk about, and also she tended to go on and on…but Mob would gladly listen to Minori talk about every single b-wordy girl she had ever been friends with if it meant that she didn't have to see anyone naked. Ever.

"Um…I guess….wait. You like Frozen, right?" asked Minori. Mob nodded. Ok, now she felt better. She knew Frozen, she liked Frozen, and there were no naked people in Frozen. She also knew that Minori didn't like Frozen…but maybe she had come around. Maybe they could watch Frozen, and Frozen Fever, and also listen to the Let It Go remixes, and also watch the Elsa hair and makeup tutorials….and it could be a good time.

"I do. I love Frozen." Said Mob. She pulled her knees out from in her sweater and leaned in close to Minori's phone. She had a TV but if she didn't want to go through the trouble of logging in on her TV then that was ok, too. She hoped that Minori had come around to liking Frozen. Then they could play Frozen together and watch Frozen and listen to the soundtrack and do makeup tutorials…and it would be really fun.

"Do you know what rule thirty four is?" asked Minori. Mob shook her head. Now rules had numbers? Well numbers at least made it easier to remember them…unless there were thousands of rules…then that could be a little tricky to remember…unless there was a book that she could carry around or something.

"Do you like fan art?" asked Minori. Mob nodded. She loved fan art. She wished that she could draw like that. It was like seeing a whole different side to the characters. Like the ones where Elsa and Anna had borrowed each other's clothes. That one was cool. Or the one where all the princesses and queens and girl characters who weren't royalty but were lumped in, like Mulan and Alice, were all having a sleepover and hanging out. She hadn't known that Minori had liked fan art too. It was nice to see that this friendship had gone both ways. That was the mark of a good friendship, she thought, when each friend learned from the other.

"I love fan art. I saw this one picture, you might have seen it too since you also like fan art, where Elsa and Anna switched clothes and-" said Mob. She held her hair down with her hands. She had to. She was so excited! Now they could watch Frozen and play dolls, since she had Frozen dolls with her, and also Minori might have liked the other princesses too. Like she might have liked Ariel because she was always trying to do the opposite of what her dad said even though her dad loved her and knew best, since people ate fish all the time, and also Ariel had red hair and Minori had pink which was sort of like red. This was so great. They could be fans together and stuff.

"Well this is better. Here." Said Minori. She handed Mob her phone…and Mob…well she was sorry to have dropped it….but…WHAT ELSE WAS SHE SUPPOSED TO DO?!

"What the f-word, Minori!? What the f-word...what…why….WHO DREW THAT!?" Mob was shouting, maybe, and also….well she was glad that she had smoked earlier that day or she definitely would have lost control. No. That was not right. Someone had taken the time to draw Anna and Elsa…and they were sisters…and sisters did not do that…and she had never imagined that people could do that….AND THAT WAS NOT WHAT FROZEN WAS ABOUT!

Frozen was about sisters and sister love!

And friendship and how an act of true love could thaw a frozen heart and that was not….that was not an act of true love! That was not….Mob would be seeing that inside of her brain for the rest of her life. She would be seeing that every time she closed her eyes…and she could never watch Frozen again. It was ruined. She could never watch her favorite movie…or listen to her favorite song again…because it was….that was….WHO DREW THAT?!

Someone had picked up a pencil and drawn that and…and WHY?! No. That was not ok and…and why would someone….Mob didn't know. She needed a drink. She needed a drink and a smoke and a cigarette and…and whatever else Shimazaki had in his desk drawer! He had said, before, that if you took too many pills and acid and stuff that you could end up with holed in your brain…and she wanted holes in her brain! She wanted all of the forgetting holes that she could manage!

Maybe if she hit her head hard enough she could forget what she had seen.

"What are you freaking out about? That's nothing. If you really dig-" said Minori

"Minori….I told you that I didn't want to see that and…and then you went and did that and….and that was…why would you show me that?" asked Mob. She had yelled at her friend and that was not nice and….and she felt bad about that…but mostly she felt bad about poor Elsa and Anna. She felt bad that people had drawn them naked…and she knew that they weren't real, but she still wanted nothing more than to go into her backpack and apologize to her dolls….and then to go home and apologize to the ones she had in her room…and then to go home and just…turn her phone off for a while and…and to go home and….

Mob was going home.

"Hey you said you liked fan art and-what are you doing?" asked Minori. She had started off laughing like she was happy, Mob had no idea what was so funny, but now she looked like she was scared…or maybe mad. Mob didn't know. She was going home. She had a car waiting for her, they always waited, and she was going to go home and….and take the rest of the day off from this friendship. She would feel better once she calmed down and then she and Minori could be friends again….somehow…and then she would smoke anything or drink anything or take anything to make her forget all of the….she didn't even want to call it art…the…stuff….that she had seen.

"Minori…I'm your friend and…and I still like you but…I need to go home now. I need…to take some time off…from this friendship….ok? I don't normally get mad at people and…and I'm not mad at you…I'm just…not happy. I said that I didn't want to see any naked people and you showed me-" said Mob

"Drawings don't count because they aren't people. Honestly, Shige, if you didn't want to see any naked DRAWINGS then you should have said so. I mean, come on. You needed to be more specific. This is on you." Said Minori. Mob…well she knew that Minori was making sense…but she also just…wanted to go home.

"Ok. That makes sense." Said Mob

"Good. Now come on, you can finish painting my-" said Minori

"But I still want to go home." Said Mob

"What?! Why!? Oh my God, we already decided that it was your fault! You can't just leave me and-" said Minori

"Minori…I feel really…not good…right now and I think that we need to….that I need to…take the rest of the day off from this friendship because….because I almost got mad at you…and I don't like to get mad at people…especially not my friends…and I really want to be your friend…and that's why I'm going home now." Said Mob

"You're such a bitch! You're a lying bitch! You don't want to be my friend, that's why you're being such a bitch! Well then fuck you! Fine! Go! See if I care!" shouted Minori

"Minori….we're still friends and….and yelling at me makes me want to go more and…and so does calling me names and…and I know that sometimes people say mean things when they're upset…and I'm sorry that I upset you but….but you upset me and…and I'm going home now." Said Mob. She took two steps away when she heard Minori sniffling. She turned around. She didn't need to read Minori's aura to know that she was upset and…and she wanted to make her feel better….but she also wanted to go home. She had her backpack on and…and she could have just kept on walking….

But that would not have been something that a good friend would do.

And she was a good friend. Even though Minori had been a bad friend before…but to be fair Mob hadn't been specific enough…and also sometimes people just…didn't understand each other. That was what that had been, a misunderstanding, because Mob…was just so weird and so bad at talking…and stuff. That was all. So Minori had just…well people did not go around showing each other naked pictures of Elsa and Anna and Mob knew that she would have noticed if they had…but…they had both made mistakes and…and maybe taking time off of their friendship had been too…mean.

Mob was many things but mean was not one of them.

She slid her backpack off of her shoulders and put it down on the floor. Minori's face was red, she could tell even through her makeup, and her eyes were watery….and now she had raccoon eyes from her eye stuff…and Mob…she had made someone cry….and she should not have done that. She sat own next to Minori on the bed and reached over to dry her tears with her sweater sleeve.

Her sleeve got dirty but she didn't care.

"What the fuck do you want? What, did you forget something? I thought that you were going to go back home. Go on, leave, just leave me alone…" Said Minori. Mob dried her tears some more. It was easier, it made it easier to forget, if she pretended that Minori was Sho after something upset him. That made it easier to forget what she had seen…and she would do anything to forget what she had seen.

"I'm sorry that I made you cry. I didn't mean to…and I just wanted to go because I felt….uncomfortable…and I still do….but you're my friend and friends don't let friends cry….and they don't make friends cry either. So I'm sorry that I made you cry and I'm sorry about…about how we had a misunderstanding…and stuff. Ok? I'll leave you alone if you want me to but….but if you still want me to stay then I'll stay…but no more naked people. That was….I like Frozen but…not like that." Said Mob. She had been a bad friend there…but now she could be better. She was a good friend and good friends dried their friend's tears with the sleeves of their favorite sweaters even though their friends had showed them naked people and…and Mob would forget that eventually. Like seeing a scary movie. The pain from being hurt by someone….that was harder to forget….and she couldn't believe that she had caused her friend that sort of pain.

"No…you can stay….and yeah, you were a bitch to try and leave…but I was a bitch to forget how much of a first grader you are. You've got to walk before you run or whatever. Anyway, come on. You wanted to be moe, right? I can help you style your sweater…thing…or whatever." Said Minori. Mob…she would take that. She didn't like being called a b-word or a first grader…and also she hated it when Minori called herself a b-word….but you had to accept an apology when it was offered to you. That was being a good friend, too.

"Ok. That sounds good, Minori. You can dress me up…or whatever…but no more naked people…or naked drawings." Said Mob. There, she had been specific and now they could get back to being friends. Even though she still wanted to go home and apologize to all of her dolls, even the ones that weren't from Frozen, and she still felt gross and…and stuff….but she knew that she would have felt even worse if she had left her friend when she was so sad.

And Mob was a very good friend like that.

So she let Minori dress her up. She let Minori pull her sweater so one of her shoulders was cold and she let Minori tie her hair up in a sparkly scrunchy, even though she liked ribbons, and she let Minori put makeup on her and paint her nails and turn her into 'moe 80's' which Mob figured was a good thing…even though it involved wearing leggings and she hated leggings….because they were friends and this was what they did. They got dressed up, put on makeup, took pictures, and painted nails.

And even if Minori wasn't that good at coloring inside the lines either Mob would gladly have let Minori paint her from head to toe in nail polish if that meant that she NEVER had to look at naked drawings again for as long as they both lived.


	333. Moderation and Smoking

Moderation was important.

You had to use moderation or else you would overdo it…and nothing good came of overdoing it. Not with eating junk food, or drinking, or smoking, or anything really. Especially smoking, though, since when you overdid it you lost time and also you ate so much that you had a terrible stomach ache the next day. Like Sho'd had because he'd eaten all the food in the house. Well Shimazaki had helped but that had still been a lot of food. Mob didn't want that to happen again so she was teaching Sho moderation.

Or at least she was doing her best to teach him moderation.

"Sho, you can only have one more inhale and then you're done." Said Mob as she handed Sho her pen. Sho stuck his tongue out and took the pen from her hand. They were sitting together on the couch, he was leaning onto her and she had her arm around him, and she was trying to teach him about moderation. Also they were both trying to learn about music. Well Sho was trying to learn about music, he was the only one of them who cared about this. Not that Mob didn't like the Beatles, she did, she just didn't like them as much as Shimazaki did.

Also she'd had no idea that Sho liked the Beatles.

But there were a lot of things she didn't know about her own little brother, it seemed, like how he liked to smoke. She had never even offered…and she still wasn't all the way ok with this, but there was no going back to she had might as well teach him moderation. Shimazaki certainly wasn't going to teach him about moderation, he didn't even seem to know the meaning of the word, so it fell to Mob to teach Sho about moderation and not overdoing it.

Shimazaki could teach Sho about music. She could teach him about everything else.

"Two more. How about that?" asked Sho as he took big sis's pen from her. Sho didn't get why she was being like this. He knew what he was doing, Shimazaki taught him, he said that too much was never enough and the point was to get to the point where the world felt good and you felt good and everything felt good.

Sho was getting to that point now.

Big sis was warm and soft and the couch was comfortable and this was the best song in the whole world. This was the best band in the whole world. The best music in the world was here, in this album, or maybe it was the other album that was the best…Sho didn't know. All he knew was that he had to listen to all of these songs and remember them so then he and Shimazaki would have something new to talk about and they could listen to music together and it would nice since they were friends and that was what friends.

They were best friends and that was all…but that was ok.

"Ok, two more, but that's it. Ok? I don't want you to overdo it. You can do this so long as you use moderation." Said Mob. Moderation made it ok….and this was ok. Sho had been sad today because Shimazaki was busy and usually they had fun together and stuff. Well what they considered to be fun…leaving worms in bowls for people to find and telling them that they were noodles was mean….and so was leaving worms in Hatori's bed….but that was ok because Shimazaki was nice to Sho and he needed all the niceness that he could get to counteract dad's meanness…not that dad had been mean lately…but he had been very mean in the past…so this was ok. It was ok to smoke with Sho because now he felt better…and that was good. She wanted him to feel better and…and this was ok.

It really is.

"Too much is never enough." Said Sho before he inhaled. Shimazaki said that sometimes people worried about overdoing it but they were just worried about nothing. There was stuff that you could die from. Stuff that he said that Sho was too little for, but this wasn't something that you could die from so it was ok to smoke a whole lot. If Shimazaki said that it was ok then it was ok. He trusted Shimazaki. Shimazaki would never do anything to betray him.

Not like some people.

Sho was glad that Shimazaki had left Fukuda outside with no shoes on. Served him right, making him walk home like that, for going around telling Sho's secrets. He should have walked a thousand kilometers home with no shoes in the snow…but that wasn't what had happened. There was now snow on the ground because it was summer and also big sis had made Shimazaki go back for Fukuda because she was nice like that….

But that was ok because at least she hadn't betrayed him…like some people.

"That doesn't make sense. Too much is more than enough. That's what 'too much' means." Said Mob. She shook her head. He was getting to the point where he talked nonsense and when someone started talking nonsense it meant that it was time to cut them off. Minegishi had taught her that.

"No, too much is never enough. Shimazaki said so. He said that the point of this was to feel better so there's no such thing as too much…or….hang on." Said Sho. He just needed a minute. His thoughts kept on cutting in the line to become words and he just had to get them in order again. He could do that. He would do that….in a minute. He just needed to smoke more. That was all.

"Two more, ok? You're starting to not make sense." Said Mob as Sho inhaled from her pen again. There. Two more and then he would be done and then they could….well they could do this or something else. The important thing was to get him to stop smoking. The important thing was to teach him how to get high without getting stoned. How to smoke just enough that you felt better but not so much that you stopped making sense and you spent an hour feeling your socks on your feet…and her socks did feel very good on her feet. These were another pair of new socks…and they were so soft…and now she was going to have to stop too. She didn't want Sho to see her like that and think that it was ok to get like that all the time.

"Two more…and then more later." Said Sho. He could have told her that he was ten years old now and that he could decide things for himself and stuff….but that would have been fighting with her and he did not feel like fighting with her right now. He felt like smoking and feeling good and being happy so that was what he was going to do. He was going to smoke and feel good and be happy…

And also listen to this song. This was the best song in the world.

He could see why Shimazaki liked these guys. They always sounded so happy. It was like in their world, they came from the land of submarines but not really because that was just a song, everything always worked out ok. Even though in real life they broke up because everyone turned on the best one, John, just because he brought his girlfriend to practices and also because he did something called heroin which Shimazaki said was no big deal but also that Sho was never to think about touching or his life would be ruined forever…and stuff. Sho didn't know what heroin was but if Shimazaki said not to touch it then he wouldn't. Sho didn't know much about these guys, just that they were nice people and made the best music in the whole world and also John was the best one, but if Shimazaki told him to like them then he would.

He would do whatever Shimazaki asked of him.

"Ok….but later. After…ten songs." Said Mob. That seemed like later enough to get back to it. Dad would be back in…well not for a long time. She had no idea what he was even doing here, he said that she didn't need to know, but she knew that when everyone was gone somewhere at once it meant that something big was happening and that meant that he would be gone for a while. So she and Sho could smoke for a while…

But not get stoned because that would have been too much.

Even though she wanted to smoke until she got stoned. She wanted to smoke so much…the most….but also she had to be a good example. She was the big sister and being the big sister, being the one in charge, meant that she had to put her own happiness aside. Dad had said so, too, before. He hadn't been talking about smoking, no he had been talking about all the work he did for Claw, and he had said that they moved all the time now and he gave most of himself to Claw now so that Claw would flourish. He couldn't afford to be selfish because that would have been throwing all of his work and most of his life away….so Mob couldn't set a bad example for Sho. Dad had to give up years of his life for Claw…so Mob could give up on being stoned for Sho.

Also she needed to practice moderation too. She couldn't expect one thing from Sho and not from herself.

"Nine songs." Said Sho. He didn't want to wait for ten whole songs…but he also knew that she wouldn't let him keep going. Sometimes it was best to make her think that she'd won when she hadn't. Shimazaki had taught him that. Shimazaki had said that sometimes you had to let the other person think that they'd won so then they'd just stop fighting with you. You couldn't lie, though, because people didn't like liars but you had to take what you could…and stuff. Sho didn't know. It would come to him later.

"Ok, nine songs." Said Mob. Sometimes it was best to just let Sho think that he won. She knew that he wanted to keep on smoking, and probably to never stop smoking, but she had to put down rules for him. Nine was a good amount of songs. A good compromise. Practically ten. If he had said something like five songs or six songs then they would have had to talk but nine was a good number…a lucky number…like the Galaxy Express three nines….and that was a good show…and stuff. She didn't know. Her brain was sort of fuzzy.

"Can we smoke the real stuff? It's better than the pen. This tastes like citrus. It makes my mouth itchy." Said Sho as he handed big back her pen. He used his powers to reach down and get his Coke bottle. Shimazaki said that Coke was the greatest thing ever and they should have Coke every day all day…but then he told Sho never to have that much Coke or he would die. Sho liked Coke and Shimazaki liked Coke so he decided that all he would drink was Coke…but also one glass of water a day so he wouldn't die like Shimazaki's Seeing Eye dog did when he had been little. That poor dog…he wondered if Shimazaki was still sad about that. He'd ask later. Maybe he'd like a new dog…they could get a dog when they were adults and stuff and they all lived together.

Well they all lived together now.

But he figured that Minegishi would end up living with big sis since they were best friends and then Hatori would move in with them too since he was going to end up marrying big sis and married people were supposed to live together. Dad would live with them too since big sis was his favorite kid and Hatori was his friend so he'd end up living with them and then it would be Sho and Shimazaki all alone together…also Shiibata really wanted to be married and have a family so Sho could find some lady who liked him and then he would have his own house and then he and Shimazaki could be all alone…and stuff…

Or maybe not.

Maybe it would be better if they all lived together, minus dad, and also minus Fukuda. That way then…it would be less…like the stuff that Sho thought about. The cheating thoughts that he was having right now. The thoughts about him and Shimazaki having bunk beds together, with a slide because slides were awesome, and then they'd share a room and…and stuff. Or not stuff. No stuff. Maybe stuff. Stuff was stuff. He didn't know. All he knew was that…that he really wished that he was a grown up because then dad would be off ruling the world and he could be with his friends all the time and…and stuff. And he could do this every single day.

Every single moment of every single day for the rest of his life.

"Um…not in the house or dad's going to be able to smell it. Ok? Let me see if I have one without citrus….Shimazaki got me a bunch of new ones." Said Mob. She untangled herself from Sho and then brought her bag over with her powers. Inside she had a case with all the different ones labeled. She wondered who had labeled these. She knew that he couldn't write. She wondered where he even got these from….and she hoped that he wasn't stealing or anything like that….because that would have been wrong….

More wrong than smoking with her little brother, anyway.

This felt…well not wrong but….but she knew that he didn't need….well he did sort of need….kids were not supposed smoke…so that was why she felt bad about this. That was all. She was teaching Sho moderation so this was ok…even though he didn't seem to want to learn about moderation. She could feel his aura, and see it, and it seemed sort of…mad. She didn't know why. She was trying to find one without citrus in it since it hurt him….that was all.

She didn't understand him sometimes.

"Sho? Is something wrong? I have one with cookies in the name…there shouldn't be any citrus in this." said Mob

"Nothing's wrong." Said Sho with his arms crossed. He didn't want to talk about this…and also his arm skin was so….weird. He rubbed his arms together. He felt…he could feel his scars. They were rubbing up against each other. Scar against scar against scar….over and over again. He could feel….he closed his eyes. They felt…the same…but different. He felt his arms and…and he had scars…but he would tattoo over them when he got older. He'd get…he'd get cats and dogs and birds and fish and mice and rats and hamsters and dragons, a lot of dragons, and a picture of big sis on one arm and…and a giant dragon over his tree. Just like the one Shimazaki had. That way they'd match but he would be the only one to know that they matched…and it would be like his secret…thing….even though he already had so many secrets…well he had one less because of Fukuda…and he was such a jerk…and Sho hoped that he was ok….since he was all alone with nobody to talk to…and stuff….

He stopped feeling his arms.

Now he felt his shirt. He went up and down, up and down, just like the music went up and down and up and down. All the lonely people….where did they all come from? Fukuda was a lonely person. He was the loneliest person that Sho knew. His mom and dad were dead, his best friend was dad, he had no kids, he had no real friends, and he had no girlfriend. He was all alone and that was…so sad…it was sad and Sho should have been there and….and he wasn't going to go and visit Fukuda because he wasn't even home but….but still. Sho shouldn't have left him all alone because he was so lonely…and Sho's stomach was so…he had scars there, too. He would get…he would get something there. Maybe another dragon….since those were good tattoos…and stuff…or maybe something else…he didn't know….Fukuda would have known…but he was a traitor and a jerk…

And also he was a very lonely person….Sho knew where the lonely people came from.

"Are you ok? Is that good skin touching or bad skin touching?" asked Mob. She knew that he didn't like his scars. He used to think that they were cool but now he wore long sleeves and long pants without even being told…and she hoped that he wasn't sad or mad or anything…and she hoped that she hadn't made him mad or anything.

He reached out.

She had been in the middle of scooting away from him before she stopped herself. She knew that he would never hit her again. He had said, before, that he was done with all of that. Also he was ten now and ten year olds did not hit. Things were different and…and she leaned back in close. He reached over and felt her stomach, the sweater over her stomach. She figured that these were good touches. She looked at his eyes. He was squinting again…

Oh. Right. His tolerance wasn't as good as hers.

"I don't know. Stuff is soft. You're soft. Why are you always wearing this sweater? It's hot out…is it because it's soft? Soft things are…they're soft….and stuff." asked Sho as he felt big sis's sweater. It was soft. He wondered if that was why she wore it so much, because it was soft, he could feel it. He closed his eyes, he could feel it, and he knew that it was a sweater. Even with his eyes closed he knew that it was a sweater. That was because he had seen it before. Shimazaki, if he had been feeling it, might have thought that it had been something else…like a shirt or a blanket…because he had trouble with clothes…and he could have…if Sho had been wearing that sweater then he would have been close and….and Sho was not the one in the sweater. Big sis was. Shimazaki had liked her and he might have….Sho didn't know. He pulled away and crossed his arms.

"You can keep on feeling my sweater, that's fine. See, this is why I have to teach you about moderation and stuff. It hit you hard, didn't it? Well that's ok. That's normal. Here. You can feel my sweater some more." Said Mob. She pulled her sweater away from herself and pressed it against Sho's hand…but he just shook his head and kept his arms crossed.

"….don't want to feel your sweater anymore…" said Sho. He didn't know why he kept on thinking about Shimazaki and big sis. Well he thought about Shimazaki all the time, and he was with big sis, and that might have been it…and also he used to like her…and stuff…and he just….Sho didn't even know. He had been feeling good before…and he wanted to keep on feeling good…but now he felt…not so good.

"Ok. Well when the nine songs are over we can smoke some more…and then you'll feel better probably…but also you might feel better if you talk to me and tell me what's wrong." Said Mob. She could see him and she could see his aura. Something was wrong and she was the only person who could fix it…and if this was about smoking again then she could make it eight songs. There. That would be good.

"I don't want to talk about it. You wouldn't get it." Said Sho. He couldn't talk to her or to anyone about this. Nobody would get it. She wouldn't get it. She liked Hatori. She liked him and she could be with him, well she could have been with him if he had been less of a baby, and she just…she could like who she liked and she could love who she loved and…and he just…

Did not want to talk about it.

He wanted to get back to smoking. He didn't want to talk about this…because there was nothing to talk about. So what if he liked Shimazaki? He was cool. He was nice. When Sho told him things he listened. When Sho told him to keep a secret he kept it. He always wanted to be around Sho. He always wanted to hang out with Sho. He never bossed Sho around, not once, and when he told him to do stuff it made sense…like about not eating random woods berries and about how he shouldn't be mean to Minegishi or they'd come after him…not that he was afraid of them but still. Shimazaki thought about him, but not like he was a baby, and he just….Shimazaki looked at him. Shimazaki looked at him and saw…Sho. Not someone who was a kid who had to be taken care of, not someone who messed everything up all the time, and not someone who was just…the gum on the bottom of his shoe. No, Shimazaki looked at him and saw….him.

And he did not want to talk to big sis about that.

"You can try me. Maybe I will. I want to be there for you and stuff….and also here. Feel my sweater. It's soft." Said Mob. When you smoked you felt everything a lot more…for her it was physical but for him….maybe he just had a lot of feelings right now. She didn't know. She just knew that he was her little brother and she loved him and she would be there for him in whatever way he needed her to be.

"Big sis….I don't know. I just…don't know. Just….why does Shimazaki keep on giving you stuff?" asked Sho with his arms crossed. He didn't know what Shimazaki saw in big sis and…and he knew that big sis didn't like him and…and he should have been happy that Shimazaki, his best friend, was friends with his sister but…he wasn't. He didn't know. Maybe because she had liked him before…or he had liked her before…or because dad had beaten him up for liking big sis…he didn't know. All he knew was that his feelings…they weren't good feelings…when he thought about big sis and Shimazaki and…and how much time they spent together.

"Because he's my friend. Well he's both of our friend, you best friend, but he's my friend too…and also I don't think that you should have your own until you can learn about moderation. I don't want you to overdo it all the time. It's not good for you. You lose time and your tolerance goes up and stuff." Said Mob

"I know he's your friend but…just….I don't know. I'm just being…I don't know. You still like Hatori, right?" asked Sho

"Sho, why are you asking me that?" asked Mob. She didn't know why he cared so much. Boys didn't normally care about this kind of thing and he especially had never cared about this kind of thing before. People falling in love and stuff. He hated love. He used to make like he was about to throw up whenever there was a kissing scene in a movie. Maybe things were different now that he had a girlfriend and he loved her and stuff…but she still didn't want to talk about this to him. She didn't know why he was trying to push her together with Hatori, anyway, since that whole thing was just….it didn't affect him…unless he just wanted her to be happy. She could understand that.

"Because I just…want to know. For reasons. I mean you liked him a lot before, I could tell, but now it's like…you don't like him but you should and you could and you could be with him but you just…aren't." said Sho. The words in his head were getting all jumbled again…but at least he hadn't told her the truth. No. Even she couldn't know about that. She would always love him but….but he didn't want her or anyone else to ever know.

"Um…that's…kind of complicated." Said Mob. She hadn't smoked nearly enough to want to talk about Hatori and how she felt about him to her little brother. She had stopped being in love with him at the party when he had confessed to Minegishi and also after he had done all of that gross stuff…but now that was done with. He was better at taking care of himself and he stopped drinking because he figured out that he was bad at it and also he had stopped being in love with Minegishi…so now she had no reason not to like him…but she didn't know if she still liked him or…or she just wanted to kiss him. You could kiss someone without being their girlfriend, Minori said that was called being friends with benefits, but Mob…she wasn't going to kiss him anywhere outside of her own head…and even then she shouldn't have been thinking about that…because thinking about that made her feel gross…and also…

Also a lot of other things that her little brother did not need to know about.

He did not need to know about how she wanted to kiss Hatori for real, like she had seen Shimazaki and Minegishi kiss, and how she wanted to know what it was like to hold his hand…and to be held by him…and also the even worse things she thought about sometimes. Things that she did not want to think about. Things like how she wanted….how sometimes she would lay down in her bed and think about what it would have been like if he had been in the room with her and…and stuff like that. Gross stuff. Stuff that she did not want to even think about.

Stuff that made her feel gross all over.

Gross like how she felt when Fukuda had said that he had thought about her doing that sort of stuff with Shimazaki. Just…she wasn't going to do that with him or with anyone and…and she didn't even want…that. She wanted…she wanted so badly to be kissed and held and loved…and stuff…but not that stuff. Not all of the stuff…and maybe that was weird. She didn't even know about all of the stuff and she had been eleven for a while now….and Minori knew about all of the stuff and she was Mob's age….so maybe Mob should have…looked it up or something…but she had already seen too much…that had not been a good day….and she just…didn't want to see all of that…but she did want to be kissed….

And even wanting that, wanting to be kissed, made her feel gross….

But that was a lot of stuff that Sho did not need to know about. He was little. He didn't even think about stuff like that…and when he did she would take care not to make him feel gross. She would tell him that it was ok to want to be kissed and touched...even though she did not want to think about him kissing or touching anyone….because she didn't want him to feel gross. She wanted him to be happy and…and she wanted him to have someone to love and who loved him back…and he did…and she wanted that and…

And, really, that was a lot to put on her own little brother, so she wouldn't

"What's complicated? Either you're in love with him and you want to marry him and have ten or twenty babies with him or you don't." said Sho. It wasn't complicated for her, it was easy, because she could like who she liked. That was just another way that she had been born right and he had been born wrong. He liked…someone who he was not supposed to like…and he had cheating thoughts almost every day….and he sucked like that. He really fucking sucked. She didn't. She was lucky like that. Like dad had said. She was born lucky and he was lucky to have been born…and not just because they hadn't had to cut her out of mom like they'd had to do for him. She had been born with her powers and she liked who she was supposed to like and dad loved her the most and…and…

And he really wanted to smoke whatever was in that pen that she was holding.

"Um…that's a lot of babies…" said Mob. She did not want to think about that. She thought about that enough as it was. Dad was always taking about how great things would be once she had her kids and they lived together in the house he would build for them….and stuff. She thought, sometimes, that instead of being super eager to be a grandpa to her kids he could have been more of a dad to Sho, but she never said that. She didn't much want to think about how she would have to grow up and be someone's mom and take care of her kids and dad…and she certainly did not want to throw Hatori into the mix.

She wasn't even sure if she wanted to marry him.

She knew that people did not have to be married to kiss and do all of the other stuff…but she did know that she wanted to do all of that with someone who she loved and who loved her…and she didn't know if she loved Hatori. Did thinking about him like this mean that she loved him? Or was he just the only boy she knew who was even close to being her age? Or did she just really like how he looked and how nice he was to her? But wait, wasn't that the same thing as being in love with him? She didn't know. All she knew was that she didn't want to talk about this with her own little brother.

She had forgotten how many songs had passed but she really wanted to smoke whatever was in this pen.

"I know but I figured that's how many you would have since you like babies…and I like them too and when you and Hatori get married and have babies then I'm going to play with them and teach them things and be a good big brother." Said Sho. Just like with baby sis. He would be there and he would play with them and teach them how to walk and talk and why they were the best babies in the world and even though they would be….well he had no idea what they would be like…and there would be no 'even though' because he loved them so much….and they hadn't even been born yet…but maybe that didn't matter. They would be babies and he would love them no matter what.

"Sho…you would be their uncle…and-" said Mob. That was…a lot. She didn't…she had no idea how she felt about that. Dad…he had already planned her future out…and now Sho had a plan for her future and…and she just….she wanted to smoke and she didn't care what song they were on…but she didn't because she had to…to teach Sho about moderation.

And obviously he needed to learn about moderation if he thought that she was going to have ten or twenty kids when she grew up.

"Ok, then I'll be the best uncle in the world…and stuff. Even if your kids are just like Hatori since they'll be his kids and he'll be their dad and you'll be their mom." Said Sho. There. That was what the future would be and he didn't have to worry, at all, about how she would have been able to be with Shimazaki and he was always with her and…and stuff. She was just….she was with someone and he had to…he didn't know. He felt a loose thread on his shirt.

He pulled on it.

It came off. It came off and now it was in his hand. He held it up. Big sis was looking at her. He held up the thread…but it blew away. The air conditioner was going full blast because it was summer outside…and big sis was wearing her sweater inside…and she must have been way too warm…but she didn't seem to care. She just watched the string as it blew away and got stuck to the coach.

He left it there.

"Sho….I don't know about all of that. Hatori…is a nice person and…and I like him as a friend and…and really I don't want to talk about this right now…and I don't….like how you keep on pushing me to be with him. Why do you keep on doing that? Do you want me to be happy or do you just want me to have a baby so you can play with the baby…which I won't be doing because I'm eleven and people my age don't have babies….and stuff." Said Mob. She wished that he would just stop it already…but that wasn't something that she would want to get into with her little brother. She would ask him why and then…and then they would not fight…because she had been sort of mean and pushy and stuff lately. She had been mean to dad to get him to be nice to Sho and she had been mean to Fukuda and Shimazaki to get them to stop fighting and she had been mean to Minori because of…stuff that she would rather not remember…and she just…did not want to be mean. She hated being mean.

She just wanted to be nice.

She wanted to be nice and she wanted everyone else to be nice and she just…she wanted everything to be nice. She wanted to feel nice again. She had a pen in her hand. Maybe this had been enough moderation. Maybe she could just…have a little bit. Enough to make her less….this feeling. Frustrated. Enough to make her feel less frustrated. When she was frustrated…she got mean…and she didn't want to be mean…

She wanted to be nice, to be normal, and to be herself.

"I just want…you to be with him. Because then you'll be happy and you'll have someone and…and stuff…and you won't want to be with…someone else. Hatori is nice to you and he makes you happy and…and you guys are a lot alike." Said Sho. He didn't want to tell her that if she liked Hatori she wouldn't like Shimazaki. He didn't want to tell her about…about anything. About how he wanted…about everything that he wanted. About how he just…he just…he didn't know. He didn't know and he didn't…he didn't know.

He knew that it had been about nine songs.

That meant that now, he could, smoke whatever was in her hand. He could smoke and eh could feel better….and that was the point of this, right? To feel better. That was what Shimazaki had said, anyway, he said that when you thought bad thoughts then you could push them away. He said that your brain didn't like to let go of things, that sometimes it would remind you of the worst moments of your life for no reason, and sometimes it would make you act weird, too. He had been talking about how sometimes he felt everything, how sometimes he felt nothing, and how sometimes he even said that unless people were looking at him he felt like he was all alone in the world. He hadn't been talking about how…how sometimes thoughts about people….about being with them…and about how they were just…the coolest and best person ever…would just pop into your mind. About how you could just be sitting there on the couch next to your sister and then you could think about someone else and then you could remember how that someone had been beaten up so bad for liking your sister and then you thought about how you liked that person and about how they could still like your sister and…

And sometimes your thoughts just raced around in a circle like that and you needed to make them stop.

That was what smoking was for. Smoking and drinking and all the things that Shimazaki had told him about. Things that he said that they would do together when he was older. That meant that they would still be friends, still be together, when he was older…and he wanted that. Not just for the way he felt but…but he wanted everyone to be together when he got older. He reached over and took the thread, the one he had pulled from his shirt, and tried to put it back on….but it wouldn't stick. Of course it wouldn't stick…it was gone, separate, and it was lonely. He knew where the lonely thread came from but he had no idea where it belonged since it wouldn't reattach.

All the lonely people….

He wondered if…if he had been…he didn't know. He could feel more thoughts. Thoughts about how he had been a jerk to Fukuda…even though he had been a traitor first…and about how he had nobody. Thoughts about how Shimazaki wasn't around and how…how even next to his big sis he could feel lonely….like he was one of the lonely people….and stuff. He just…he felt…he felt a lot and he felt…he felt his scars. He could feel the on his arms and under his fingers and…and he just wanted…he wanted things to be ok. He wanted the future to be ok, like the one in his head, and then everything could be…things were so good in his head…but also not so good…

But smoking could make things better. Shimazaki said so.

"Sho….I'm happy that you want me to be happy but….but things are more complicated than that and…and I think that we went through the whole album since they're singing about Eleanor Rigby again…and….and how about we just….let's try this one. It has cookies in the names so maybe there's no citrus." Said Mob. She knew that she should have been teaching Sho about moderation, and she knew that based on how he was touching everything that he didn't need to smoke anymore, but…but also…she wanted to make him happy and…and she wanted to stop talking about all of this and…and she wanted them to be ok…and she wanted…she wanted…a lot of things. She wanted him to be happy, she wanted him to stop planning her future, but most of all she wanted to stop being frustrated with him. She had been so frustrated lately and she was not a nice person when she was frustrated…and she just…wanted to be a good person and…and she just wanted…..she wanted…..

She wanted to teach him about moderation…but she also wanted them both to have a nice time, so maybe she could teach him about all of that later.


	334. Smoking in the Backyard

Mob didn't have a bedtime.

She usually went to bed around midnight and woke up around six. Sometimes she went to bed earlier but she always got up around six so she could make dad his breakfast. He didn't know how to cook…well not really. She remembered that, once, when she had been little he had made porridge but it must not have been very good if she couldn't remember it clearly. Dad didn't cook but that was ok because cooking for the family was her job…even though Sho just wanted to eat poptarts with the frosting licked of first…and she would have to order more poptarts because in a week he had managed to eat four family sized boxes of them….and she had just ordered food….but she could order more. It wasn't like she had to worry about money or anything.

No, dad worried about the money.

They were a team, her and dad, because he was the dad and she was the Daughter. Because he was the boy and she was the girl. She was the one who cooked and cleaned and made sure that everyone had clean clothes and stuff. Dad was the one who made the money and kept a roof over their heads. He took care of her and she took care of Sho…and that was how their family worked. She was the mom now, sort of, and she had to do all the things that a mom had to do…and she could do them just fine. It just seemed, as time went on, that she had more and more to do….but that was just because she was getting older and the older you got the more you had to do….because you could handle more…and it was like…with every birthday came a promotion.

Which she could handle.

She could handle this and she was handling this. She just had to….well she hadn't homeschooled Sho in a very long time, only people who went to school got summer break and since they were homeschooled they did not, and then she had to figure out how to get Sho to actually get in the bathtub without having to get in there with him, and then she had to figure out how to get him to eat a piece of fruit since the fruit inside of poptarts didn't count, and then she had to figure out how to get Shimazaki to stop, or at least slow down on, smoking with Sho since Sho had managed to eat all of those poptarts...but he had stopped kicking in his sleep and he hadn't wet the bed in a while….but still. She had to figure out her own complicated feelings about Sho smoking and she had to wash her own hair at some point, that always took a while, and then she had to order dad another shirt because she had accidentally burnt one of his ironing and also she had to figure out some fruits that dad could eat besides grapefruits because Sho was so allergic to citrus that he turned red just from the grapefruit juice that had been on the table…and he refused to go and see Fukuda since he had been a betrayer so she had to figure out how to fix his allergic reactions on her own…and she had to figure out her complicate relationship with Fukuda because he….he made her feel gross and he had betrayed Sho but also he took good care of Sho, especially on away missions, and that was important…and she had to figure out what she was going to wear besides this sweater since it was so hot out and….

She took another drag off of her pen.

It was better in this country, she decided, because it as legal here and stuff.

That was important. Shimazaki said that everything in Tokyo sucked because of how illegal it was. Very hard to come by and when you did it costed a lot of money…or you had to steal from some very dangerous people and Mob didn't want him stealing from any people at all dangerous or not. She had no idea where this came from….and she was not going to ask. Shimazaki was Shimazaki and sometimes it was better to just not ask. She had enough to worry about as it was…but smoking was helpful for that.

She felt better.

Less…like everything was getting put on top of her. Like she had a backpack on and in the backpack all of the things that she had to do were stuffed inside and when one backpack got full another one was put on her back….and another one…and another one. She felt…lighter. Her head at least felt lighter. Maybe this was why she didn't want Sho to do this. She didn't want him to have enough in his backpack that he had to do this. She wanted him to not have a backpack at all…but he did have a backpack…and it was full of dad's meanness…..and also he had a real backpack and it was full of rocks and she had no idea what he was going to do with those rocks…and she hoped that he wasn't planning on throwing them at people….because that wasn't ok and…and he was just….he was a good person but sometimes he did bad things and….and stuff.

But that was ok because she could just….figure out something else that he could do with the rocks.

She inhaled again. This tasted like….hash oil. It was supposed to taste like cookies but this was just hash oil. She liked the kinds that tasted like citrus, tangy was very good, and not just because citrus was the forbidden fruit in her house. Citrus covered the taste of the hash oil very well. It covered the smell of it too. That was why she was smoking outside. She knew that she was allowed to smoke but when she smoked in the house, well when she had been smoking cigarettes in the house, dad had noticed and…and she loved dad but….

But she needed a little bit of time to herself.

Which was mean. Dad needed her. Dad was lonely, she got the feeling anyway, and he needed to be with her. That was why he was clingy and he smothered her….and she didn't want to be smothered…but she didn't want him to be lonely, either. She loved her dad a lot and…and she just wanted him to be happy and…and he had Hatori to hang out with but he had told her before that she was his favorite person, his most perfect person, so he liked hanging out with her best…so was it wrong, then, for her to want to be away from him?

She didn't know.

She inhaled again. She knew that dad was still awake, she could feel him moving around, and she wondered if Hatori was going to come over again. He and dad were friends…and she liked that he was friends with dad…and she liked that dad had someone new to hang out with…but him being in the house where she slept and lived and tried to sleep and live…it was….it made her feel….weird. So weird. That weird, and sort of gross, feeling that she got sometimes. It hadn't been gross before, just weird and confusing, but now it was gross. Even now she felt gross just thinking about it, about him, about what it would have been like have been near him. About how she would have offered him her pen…and he would have taken it….

And she needs to stop thinking about this.

She needs to stop thinking about how much taller than her Hatori is. She needs to stop thinking about how he always smells so good…even if he did stop using so much body spray…and she needs to stop thinking about how she wants to be close enough to him to be able to tell which kind of body spray he had used today…and she has to stop thinking about how pretty his eyes were behind his glasses…and she has to stop thinking about how his sweaters always look so soft…and she has to stop thinking about how he always wears t-shirts under his sweaters with funny stuff on them or characters from games or logos or….she needs to stop thinking about how she has no idea what shirt he had been wearing today…and she needs to stop thinking about how close her room was to the kitchen and how he could have gotten up and just walked to her room…and how she should have been in her room…and how she could have been in her house and how she should have been in her house and-

And she feels gross.

She feels gross for having thought about any of that. She also feels gross because the nights are hot, now, and she's wearing her sweater. She feels gross because she just…had been thinking gross thoughts. She feels embarrassed, too, because she had been thinking about doing embarrassing things. Gross and embarrassing things and if Hatori had known what sort of things had been running through her head then he would have hidden in the bathroom and never come out….and she just…she wished that she could stop thinking about things like this…

She inhaled again.

She coughed as she exhaled. That had been too much at once. Now her throat was all red and raw…and she had barely even held it in her lungs. What a waste. She could see the cloud of smoke trailing off into the summer breeze…like the song, summer breeze makes me feel fine….that was a nice song. Shimazaki had been singing it. Not a Beatles song, honestly she was getting sick of them with how often Sho was playing their music, and it had been both a pretty song and a nice change of pace…and stuff. He was good at music, knowing about it, and stuff. He always had cool music to show her…and maybe if she felt like…like crossing the yard he could have had some more music to show her…

The thoughts about Shimazaki were the worst.

She stopped thinking about him the moment she realized that she even HAD been thinking about him. At least it made sense with Hatori, she had been ready to be his girlfriend if he had even asked….before the party that is, but Shimazaki….yuck. All the yuck. She didn't want to kiss him or be his girlfriend and also he was in love with Minegishi…so why did she feel weird around him sometimes? Even before Fukuda had said what he had said. Well now she felt gross when she thought about…stuff….but even before that sometimes she just…felt weird around him….like…she didn't even now. All warm inside and also that weird tingly feeling like being on pins and needles…but in a good way. of course those feeling went away once he started talking and she remembered who he was. That he was Shimazaki, he acted like a crazy person all of the time, and he was in love with Minegishi. So this wasn't love, it wasn't anything close to love…

But it was something.

Something that she just…wished that someone could explain to her. She knew that she got this feeling when she was near boys…and when she even thought about boys….and not even specific boys. Sometimes she just laid up in bed and thought about what it would have been like if a boy loved her and wanted to hold her and kiss her and also…sometimes…sometimes she thought about that stuff Minori told her about. About how boys could feel up your shirt…and of course she stopped thinking about that stuff the minute she realized that she was thinking about that. She didn't want to do that….she couldn't want to do that…and she just…she didn't want to think about all of that when she was at home with her family…and also she shared a room with her little brother…so, yeah, not the time or the place. Not that anywhere was the time or the place for thoughts like that. That was just….all of that.

All of that weird and confusing stuff.

She didn't know what this was, where it had come from, and how to make it go away. She knew that she wanted to kiss someone…but she had been wanting that for a while. She wished that she'd had a mom. Well she did have a mom but she wished that her mom had been around. She could have asked mom about this….about all of this. She loved Minegishi, she did, but they weren't her mom. They were her friend and…and they had been good at teaching her how to shave her legs…but this….different. This was about a whole other thing…and a whole other place…and a whole other place that she did not want to talk to her best friend about. Mom…mom was her mom and she had given her baths and stuff….and she just….she would have known and she could have helped with so much and…and Mob….

She inhaled again.

Harder, this time, much harder. She coughed. The coughing was good. The coughing took her mind off of mom and…and how she had been just a little bit mad at her about…about everything. About how she had gone without telling Mob…anything. Not the little things like how to shave her legs or what she was supposed to do about all the rest of it….and stuff. The big things, too, like why she thought about kissing boys that she wasn't in love with and what she was supposed to do about all of this. Even stuff about taking care of the house, too, like how she was supposed to get Sho to do his homeschool work and how she was supposed to get him to get into the actual tub to take an actual bath without getting in there with him and-

And she could handle this.

She inhaled again. She would be done after this…she had to be. She could feel dad's aura, she could feel him getting closer, and he probably wanted to talk to her again. He had been talking to her outside of Sundays a lot…and that was nice….but also maybe he was getting ready to get back to smothering her…and she didn't really want to be smothered. She wanted them to be…well not friends since he was her dad….but as close to friends as a dad and a Daughter could be…but dad didn't know how to do that. He only knew how to give you some of his love or none of his love and that…that was just how it went in their family. She just…she got all of his love…even though she had no idea what to do with all of it. Even though she wished that he knew how to share his love so he could just…be nicer to Sho. Even though she wished for…for so many things…and she just….

She put her pen back into her skirt pocket.

She heard the back door open. She watched dad step out. He held his shoes in his hands and slipped them on as soon as he walked outside. He was just in his undershirt and pants, he was done being the President for the day, and now he was just dad. He was dad and she was Daughter and she knew that she loved him but….but she really hoped that he hadn't come out there to tell her that she needed to make him middle of the night breakfast again or anything like that….but if he asked her to then she would…because when you loved someone you had to take care of them…and stuff.

And she loved her dad very much.

"Hi dad." Said Mob. She put her hand over the pen in her pocket even though she knew that she was allowed to smoke. Maybe it was just an old habit. Maybe dad saw a difference between smoking a cigarette and smoking hash oil. Maybe he just wouldn't care because he loved her and he let her do anything she wanted…mostly. She didn't know. He was hard to figure out sometimes.

"Hello Daughter." Said Suzuki. He wasn't sure what else he could say to her. He had felt her outside for some time now and he had grown concerned…but here she was safe and sound…and now he could go inside…but he didn't want to go inside. He wanted to be near her. Sometimes it felt like Sunday would never come…and he didn't want to harm her…but he also just….didn't want to be apart from her.

"Hi dad." Said Mob for lack of anything else meaningful to say. He was just standing there, she didn't have a lot to work with, and that had been a mean thought for her to have. She felt dad's aura…all closed in…and she had no idea what was bothering him…or if his aura was just being weird. He loved her, she loved him, and she…she wanted to be near him….but she also just…she felt like being alone and…and she knew that wanting to be alone was mean but…but she had been very mean lately so what was a little more meanness and…and that had been mean to even think.

"You already said that." Said Suzuki. He regretted it the moment those words had left his mouth. He loved her and he loved hearing her speak to him. He had just been…he didn't know. That was not the way to speak to his Daughter.

"I know. I said it again." said Mob. She knew that she should have come up with something else to say but…but she just….didn't feel like talking…and that was mean. If her dad wanted to talk to her, and it looked like he did, then she should have talked to him and…and it wasn't even Sunday and…and she still should have talked to her dad whenever he wanted to talk to her. She had to be nice to him, he was her dad, and it was summer. He got…weird…during the summers. Weirder than normal…but that was also not a very nice thing to think about him.

"Why?" asked Suzuki. He shouldn't have been annoyed by her repeating herself. He shouldn't have drawn attention to…to what she had said. He should have just been happy to…to speak to her…and he should have just been…happy to be near her. Better to be near to her, now, than to be sitting alone in his room with it's too big bed and…and everything really. Maybe he should just give the children the bigger bedroom next time they moved. They needed the space. He and Daughter could have the big bedroom, later, when she was an adult and she stopped sharing with her brother. She'd be too old to share with him, by that time, to share a room with her younger brother.

"Because I wanted to. I couldn't think of anything else to say." Said Mob. She still didn't want to talk…she didn't want to talk but she just…she had to talk to dad because he wanted to talk to her and…and stuff.

"Oh." Said Suzuki. That made sense…and he was happy to have heard anything from her at all. He was happy to have been able to stand there and speak to her, his Daughter, the most perfect person in his life…that was physically in his life…and that was there for him…in all ways. She was there and…and he just…needed to be near her.

"Are you ok?" asked Mob. His aura was being all pulled in and…and he might not have been ok. He might have needed her to do something or to be there for him. It was summer. It was summer and he always got weird during the summers.

"Yes." said Suzuki. He was fine. He was…he wanted to pick her up and hold her close, despite the fact that she smelled just godawful, and he wanted to kiss her…and he wanted nothing more than to keep her by his side forever…but he was ok.

"Do you need something, dad? Do you want me to make you dinner? Or do you need me to set out your clothes for tomorrow? Are you having trouble finding your shirts? Because I put them in a drawer this time so they wouldn't get wrinkled." asked Mob

"No. I don't need anything." said Suzuki. He needed to hold her. He needed to pick her up and hold her close. He needed to hold her and kiss her and never let go. He loved her so much…and she wanted…she wanted to be near him…right? She loved him and she wanted to be near him and…and she was not going to just…he would not turn around and she would be gone. He would not wake up in the morning to…to her things there and her gone…and Son hungry…and just…she wanted to be near him and he…he would always be near her and….and this was alright. Him needing her like this…this was…this was alright.

"Then why are you out here?" asked Mob. That came out mean…and she wished that she could have just taken it back the moment she said it…and she didn't want to be mean to her dad. She loved him so much and…and he was just trying to be near her…and he loved her…so she should have been nice to him.

"I can be outside if I want to." Said Suzuki. He could be wherever he wanted to and…and he wanted…he wanted to be outside and…and he didn't need to explain himself to her…but she deserved an explanation and…and he loved her. He loved her and if she told him 'Touichirou. Explain.'…or rather…'Father. Explain.' Yes, because he was her father and she would never call him by his given name…but he would explain if she asked him to…even though he owed her no…if she decided that he owed her an explanation then…then he owed her an explanation.

"I know. I just wanted to know why you're outside. You never hang out outside." Said Mob. Dad should have been in bed unwinding for the night with a cup of tea and a documentary or Minecraft or Terraria or that Space invaders game he loved…or also he and Hatori had started something new but she couldn't remember what…but he should have either been with Hatori or in his room…and she loved him but…but she had to unwind before bed. She had to finish smoking until she felt better and she couldn't think as much about stuff and then she could have gone to bed and then started her day all over again from the beginning.

"I just…wanted to be near you. You aren't usually out here at night either." Said Suzuki. He had felt her earlier and he had told himself over and over again to wait until Sunday before he spoke to her, because that was their day after all, but he just…had to be near her. He just needed to see her, he had told himself, he had just needed to see her and be near her and just to….to hear her voice….and he had thought that once he saw her and had been near her and had heard her voice then he would have been able to get on with his night…but now…now that he was beside her…he just…could not leave her side.

"I was just vaping, that's all, and you said I could…well you said that I could smoke but smoking and vaping are the same thing." Said Mob. They weren't, not really, because they made you feel two totally different things…but also they both went down your throat and into your lungs and…and that sort of the same…so she wasn't lying. She couldn't lie to her dad. He was her dad.

"What's that?" asked Suzuki. He had heard that word before, his second friend was twenty years old so he was hearing a lot of new words every day, but he had no idea what it meant. From context he could guess that it was a kind of smoking…which meant that she was doing two kinds of smoking…when he wanted her to be doing no kinds of smoking. Not that he would stop her or anything like that. Some people smoked and she was just…one of those people…and it wasn't for him to understand why. This was just…a thing that she did sometimes…and that she apparently had no intentions of stopping since she had taken up a second kind of smoking in addition to the first kind she had been doing.

"It's like smoking but not with cigarettes….but it's still smoking and you said that I could smoke." Said Mob quickly. She didn't want to get in trouble…if she even could still get in trouble…and she didn't want dad to tell her that she couldn't. She would have hated going behind his back and stuff.

"I did…you're right…but do you have to?" asked Suzuki. He so wished she would stop. It was a terrible habit and one he had never understood. It smelled terrible, and now he knew what the smell that clung to her was, and it tasted terrible and…and he just did not understand it. Masami had not…she had not indulged in this…either. Both of them had found the habit disdainful…but Daughter was not Masami. She was in some ways better but…but she was also herself…..and he loved her. He loved her smoking and all.

"Yes." said Mob. She had to, she really did, and even if he decided that she wasn't allowed to she would. She had to feel better, she had to make herself feel better, and she had to feel better so she could make the rest of her family feel better.

"Alright then….are you finished? It's…hot…out here and you could get heat stroke." Said Suzuki. Especially since she was in that sweater. He had no idea if she was following some sort of fashion or had trouble regulating her body temperature…and he wasn't going to ask. Criticizing a woman's appearance was VERY dangerous ground and he didn't want to upset Daughter. She was beautiful in anything anyway.

"No, not yet. You can go back inside if you want to." Said Mob. She wanted dad to go back inside…and she loved him…and she wanted him to be there with her but…but she also wanted to be alone. She always wanted to be…she wanted to be alone and she wanted to be with him…and she wanted to be with her friends…and her brother…and she wanted her mom. She really wanted her mom but mom was not there and…and she wanted…to be…alone.

"No…I think….that I'll stay out here with you…in case you…need me." Said Suzuki. Need me. Please need me. He needed….he needed her to need him. If she needed him then…then she would never leave him…and she needed him now. She needed him now. She needed him now and she would need him until…until she didn't. Until he woke up one morning and she was gone and he was all alone and…and he would never see her again. He would wake up and she would be gone and he wouldn't even be able to see….to see her face or to hear her voice and…and he would look back at this time and think…think that these times were the…the best times of his life…the times that he had with her.

"I'm just going to be vaping, dad, I won't need help with that." Said Mob. She wanted to be alone and…and she didn't know what…what she wanted. Well she didn't know what she wanted. She wanted to vape and she wanted to be alone and she wanted to be with dad and she wanted to be…she didn't know what she wanted to be…besides stoned…which she knew that she should not have been….but she wanted to be…and she knew that she did not want to be in front of her dad…so she didn't know…what she wanted to be.

"Yes but….you are very small and…and so much could happen to you." Said Suzuki. He had no idea how to say it. That the world was so big, they both knew how big the world could be, and that she was so small. She could have gotten lost in it, swallowed up in it, he could have turned his head and she…she would have been gone from his life forever.

"Um…ok. Sure…dad. You can stay….I guess…but I'm going to be vaping." Said Mob. She had no idea what she thought was going to happen to her standing out in her back yard vaping. She could take care of herself. She took care of everyone else already and…and she just…she had been thinking mean thoughts again.

"I'm aware. I have no idea why you want to but I'm aware of what you'll be doing." Said Suzuki. He watched her. She was there and…and she was taller. When had she gotten taller? Or had she always been that height and he had just never noticed. He didn't know. He just knew….knew that she was older…she was older and she was going to keep on getting older…and he wanted…he wanted her to grow up quicker and also…also he wanted her to stay small and…and he didn't know. When she was older then they could be together, truly together, but now they could be together too and…and he had no idea what he wanted.

Well he wanted her to stop smoking.

She took a curious looking device from her pocket. He watched as she slowly put the device to her mouth, held down a button, and inhaled. She held it in her mouth and then exhaled slowly. Her exhale was punctuated by a cough…and he did not understand. He did not understand why she would do that to herself. She coughed and…and that smelled just godawful…and he just…did not understand.

"Dad? You don't have to be here while I do this." said Mob. Dad had been staring at her for a while…and she felt so…not gross but…weird. Just so weird being stared at while she did this. She knew that she was allowed but…but also she felt like she was doing something wrong….and that made no sense.

"I want to be. I want to be near you and…and I want to understand, too, why you do that. I've never been able to understand smoking of any kind." Said Suzuki. He had been young, older than her but still young, when he and Fukuda had found a pack of cigarettes and tried smoking. Their conclusion had been that it smelled and tasted terrible, and had been a waste of time. They had tried again in high school and then university….well that had been a different kind of smoking…and the rest of that night was something that he wished that he could remember…and he was also so glad that he had forgotten.

"You've never smoked once in your life? But you're forty four." Said Mob. Well she hadn't ever imagined dad smoking and she knew that he hated it but she had thought that this was just something that adults did at least once.

"I know what age I am. I have smoked…I've just never enjoyed it. I've never understood the point of it." Said Suzuki. He wondered what she did all of that for, what vaping was like too, and why she enjoyed it. Was it different from smoking? And why did her generation have to make the whole thing so…complicated? It seemed as though her generation had taken everything that his generation had enjoyed and made it more complicated than it needed to be. Phone calls, television, videogames, smoking, even sex…though she didn't even know what that was…thank God…and she didn't need to know…and he did not want to think about that terrible little eventuality. He had enough to deal with now that she was smoking…and if she smoked every second of every day and decided that sex would get in the way of her smoking time then he would be a happy man…well he wanted grandchildren but…science would remove the need for sex…well it had…but a man was still involved…so maybe invest in cloning? So he could have another version of Shigeko to have….or something. He didn't know. He would put a pin in it.

"The point is to feel good….I guess. I don't know. I like it. I can stop." Said Mob. Dad was looking at her, now, and she wanted to tuck her pen away…also she was really just…not sure what to do.

"You don't have to. I don't mind…much. I'm getting used to this. You….doing this. Growing up. I love you and…and I am…alright with this. With you smoking. I don't understand…I don't understand smoking…and I've never vaped in my life…and your generation made even smoking complicated…" said Suzuki

"It's not, you just hold down the button and inhale. It's not much different than normal smoking….only nothing's on fire." Said Mob

"I supposed that's safer…so how does that work? Is it just a heating element and then you inhale that…what even is that?" asked Suzuki

"Hash oil…if that's ok." Said Mob. She knew that kids were not supposed to do this….but she wasn't going to lie to her dad…and he was interested in what she was doing and…and he wanted to…to know about her and Mob and…and who she was as Mob and not who she was as Daughter. He was talking to her like…like she was Mob…or whatever.

"Do you have to smoke it?" asked Suzuki. He had no idea what hash oil was but he knew that she should not have been smoking…but people smoked all the time and…and that was just a thing that people did which he did not understand. That was fine. There were more things he didn't understand about other people than things that he did.

"Yes." said Mob. She had to. She needed this. She needed to do this and…and she knew that she should not have…but she just…she needed to do this. Dad would understand….and even if he didn't he wouldn't stop her.

"Then it's alright. I don't understand it, I don't understand it one bit, but I'm not going to stop you." Said Suzuki. He would make her happy. He would do whatever she wanted to make her happy. She was his. She was his and he was hers. They were…whatever they were…together. Parent and child. Partners in this, too, this household. He took care of her and she took care of him and they….they took care of each other…and she was not a child anymore. She was not…she was and was not a child anymore. He didn't know…but he did know that she was his and he was hers and she wanted him to be happy…and it was such a gift to have someone who wanted to make him happy…and he wanted to make her happy right back…and if that was what she needed to be happy then so be it.

"Oh…did you want to try?" asked Mob. She knew that he wanted to understand things when he didn't understand them…and she wanted him to understand her…and she wanted….she didn't know what she wanted. Her thoughts were slippery. Her thoughts were slippery and she just…wanted dad to understand her for…for who she was and not for….not for…not as Daughter but as Mob and…and things like that. She didn't know.

"Me?" asked Suzuki. He did not want to try. He didn't want to but…but she was showing him her life, there, a piece of it…and he just…there had been so many pieces to Masami that he had never seen. So much of her that he hadn't been able to understand…so many things that she hadn't even tried to…to show him to….to…so…so that he could understand her and…and he understood…he understood that there was so much that he didn't understand…but that he wanted to.

"Yeah…I mean not if that's weird. I just…thought that you would want to." Said Mob. Maybe it was weird. It seemed weird the more that she thought about it…because she had not been thinking about it…not too deeply….but now the more deeply she thought about it…the weirder it seemed…and maybe she was thinking too much and…and she didn't know. She just wanted….she didn't know what she wanted.

"I…yes. Alright." Said Suzuki. He didn't want to, he really didn't want to, but if she was willing to share her life with him then…then he was going to let her share her life with him. There had been so much in her life that he had missed…it felt like…like she was a house and there were doors to her that he had never even opened. There with things about her that he didn't know…and things about her that he didn't know that he didn't know….and he just…he was not going to wake up one morning and find that she had gone from his life forever with so many of her doors unopened.

"Ok. Here, just hold down the button and inhale…but not too deep or too fast. Smooth, always smooth…and not too much…and don't be mad at me if you don't like it." Said Mob. This wasn't weird because dad wanted to…he wanted to do this…and this wasn't weird at all. OK, it was weird…and it was weird in a way that made her…she smiled…she smiled because this was so weird and…and weird stuff was funny and…and she liked funny stuff…but she didn't laugh. Well she tried not to laugh.

"What's funny?" asked Suzuki. He could see it in her aura. She was happy. She was happy and he…he was happy too….to be able to share in her happiness with her. Her aura…the way it sort of…bent and…it was here and there…and she was smiling, too, and he loved her little smiles…he loved everything about her.

"Nothing just….you're smoking with me…and I never thought that you would smoke with me." Said Mob. She smiled and laughed a little, at that, and dad…he was smiling. Well he never smiled like normal but he smiled with his aura, gave her the feeling that she was happy, and she liked him best when he was happy. She leaned in and hugged him. He was still smiling even though he had gone all rigid…but he just did that when she touched him. She shouldn't have hugged him so suddenly. She shouldn't have…she tried to pull away…

But he held her there.

He held her there and kissed the top of her head. He held her close, so close, and she held him right back. Dad was so soft and warm…and his t-shirt was very soft…and she loved him so much…and she didn't know why she had wanted to be alone when she had someone there who loved her…and she loved him…and she just….she just…let him hug her and she hugged him.

"I love you more than anything." Said Suzuki as he held his Daughter. She smelled terrible, so terrible, but he loved her so much…so very much. So he would hold her even though she smelled….just godawful.

"I love you, dad, and thanks…for doing this with me…and for not being mad at me. I thought that you would be mad at me for smoking and stuff…and I'm so happy that you aren't." said Mob. She let go of dad. He kissed her on the top of the head as she pulled away.

"I could never be angry with you for any reason…least of all this." Said Suzuki before he did as she said, before, and the process was simple enough…though the result was just as terrible as every other attempt at smoking he had ever made at any point in his forty four years of life…and that had been…worse…if that was even possible. He had no idea why her generation had not only made the act of smoking more complicated but also, somehow, even worse….so much worse. There was a taste of…he had no idea…but it was familiar…but maybe that was because this smell clung to her and he recognized it…and…or maybe he knew it from something else…he didn't even know what else…but he knew…well he didn't know what he knew…aside from the fact that he knew for a fact that he did not like this at all.

He gave Daughter back her…whatever it was.

"Dad….are you ok?" asked Mob. He was making the same face that he made when he tried something sweet. She took her pen back. That had been so…that had been sort of funny…but she should not have been….but it was funny…and stuff. But she had to stop laughing. With her aura. She had to be calm and…and dad had made such a funny face.

"That was terrible and I have no idea why you would do that to yourself." Said Suzuki. He may have spoken too harshly. He may have spoken too harshly because her aura…it had stopped laughing…and he wanted nothing more than to see her laugh and hear her laugh and feel her laugh and…and he loved her so much….he loved her more than words could express.

"Ok…I'm sorry. Are you mad at me?" asked Mob. Dad reached over and took her hand in his.

"No. I could never be upset with you in any way, shape, or form. You are my Daughter and I love you and…and I never want to do that again…but I love you." said Suzuki as he took her hand in his. Her hand was so small in his…and she was bigger now…but her hand was so small in his. Would it always be this small it his? Even when she grew up? Would she always be so small? She was so…so small…and so perfect…and so….so her.

"Ok…you don't have to do this again, though, smoking. Um…and if you want me to sleep with you then we can and…and um….we can watch something that you want to watch…if you want us to." Said Mob. She wanted dad to be happy. She wanted dad to be happy and she wanted to be with him and…and she also wanted to finish up here…and she just…she wanted to be with dad but…but she also wanted to be alone for a little bit…too.

"I…would love that more than you will ever know…and also I am very…I'm going inside." Said Suzuki. He let go of her hand. He let go of her hand and took a step back. She was small and perfect and his and…and he felt his aura…her aura…he needed a moment. He needed a moment and a drink and…and why wasn't he calm? His control was slipping….and also he was suddenly very thirsty…and he just needed…to lay down….with her…for a moment…or many moments. All the moments. All the moments in the world.

"Ok dad….I'll be there in a minute." Said Mob. Dad kissed her on the top of the head and…and his aura was weird…and she didn't know. She was confused a little bit because she had never seen so much yellow in his aura before….and she wanted to know why and…and stuff. She didn't know. She just knew that she needed to finish and then she could go to sleep and….stuff.

She could go to sleep.

After she and dad cuddled for a little bit. They could cuddle and watch TV and…and she wanted to be near him. She wanted to be near him and…and she maybe wanted to be alone too and…and there were a lot of things that she wanted and…and a lot of things that she couldn't understand…so many things that she wanted to understand…so many things that she just…had trouble understanding….and things that…that were very hard to understand…

But she could understand everything later, after bedtime.


	335. Please Let This Plane Ride Go Well

This plane ride was not going to end in a fight.

"OK, so the rules re no fighting with each other, no saying mean things to one another, no going out onto the wing of the plane, no giving Hatori anything to drink, and also everyone has to sit where I tell them to sit because I figured out a way for everyone to sit where there won't be any fighting. Ok? If you guys fight again then I'm going to turn the plane around and then nobody gets to go back to Japan. Any questions?" asked Mob. She reached behind her and held her hair back. Everyone was looking at her. It felt, sort of, like when she had stood up and addressed all of Claw. The way she had to boss everyone around, the way everyone looked at her, the way she was in charge….

She didn't really want to be in charge.

She loved her friends and she loved her dad but she didn't much want to be in charge…but she was in charge. Dad had put her in charge because she was good at this, he had said, and also because he trusted her. Well she was not going to break her dad's trust or anything like that. She just wished that there could have been someone else in charge, someone else who could make everyone stop fighting, or something….but there was no one else. There was only her and she was the one who had to make this plane ride go smoothly…so that was what she was going to do.

She had to.

"Are you really going to turn the plane around?" asked Sho. He didn't really want to go back to Japan that badly. Japan was where baby sis was and he knew that he wouldn't get the chance to see her if everyone was there. When he went with Fukuda everyone was countries and oceans away but now…well if they went to see baby sis then people would ask questions and…and he didn't want that.

Not that he particularly wanted to go anywhere with Fukuda.

Fukuda had betrayed him. That was why they weren't sitting together. Fukuda had told dad about Emmy and…and that was not ok. He didn't want to sit near a traitor let alone go and see baby sis with him…but he would have to forgive Fukuda eventually if he wanted to see baby sis…and he did want to see baby sis…but he also just…wanted to…to not be near him. That was why big sis had changed the seating chart so that he got to be near Shimazaki. He was way more fun than Fukuda. They got this whole part of the plane to themselves because Shimazaki messed with people and big sis didn't like that even though it was funny…not that Sho was complaining. It was nice that it was just him and Shimazaki….sometimes it was nice to be away from the others….

Especially Minegishi.

"Apparently." Said Minegishi. They closed their eyes and leaned back into their seat. Hopefully Mob would stick with it this time….and hopefully she wouldn't. They did not want to be trapped in a tin can like sardines with everyone kilometers away from any and all plant life….but they also knew that people needed to have consequences for their actions…even if those consequences were given to them by an eleven year old girl.

"I wasn't asking you." Said Sho

"Sho, come on." Said Fukuda. He tried to make himself heard over the engine. It had been easier when he and Sho had sat next to one another…but now his sister had come up with a seating chart to reduce fighting…and now he was an island. He could have just gotten up and sat next to Sho, or asked Sho to sit next to him, but he didn't. He didn't want this plane to get turned around and…and he knew that Sho was still angry with him…or maybe not. He didn't know. His information on Sho was kind of dated seeing as how he hadn't spoken to him since their fight.

Which had not been either of their fault.

Sho was a child and he didn't understand that sometimes you had to make pragmatic choices. He didn't understand that sometimes you had to let a lesser secret slip to cover up a much bigger secret that had much bigger repercussions. Sho was too young to even acknowledge how he felt, to be honest with himself, and he did not need his father getting on him for the parts of himself that he didn't even want to acknowledge.

The parts of himself that made him sit next to Shimazaki.

Thank God Suzuki only saw what he wanted to see. Thank God that Suzuki was too engrossed in whatever he was doing over there in his corner than to see the way his Son was looking at the person, who Fukuda suspected, Suzuki hated the most out of anyone on this plane. Sho was looking up at Shimazaki like he was the answer to all of his hopes and dreams…and Fukuda….there were millions of other people on this planet and Sho had to pick Shimazaki…the worst possible person…and it just….

Better Suzuki know about Sho's girlfriend than his crush…even if now there was this…space….between him and Sho.

"I wasn't asking you, either." Said Sho. He glared at Fukuda with his eyes and with his aura. He was siting far away in his own space. Good. He had a while island of seats all by himself…and Sho knew that he was lonely over there…but he should have thought about that before he went and told dad his secrets! If he didn't want to be lonely then he needed to stop making himself lonely.

"Sho, I just said no fighting." Said Mob. She didn't want anyone to fight but especially not Sho. Not with anyone. Fukuda…he had been mean…and he had told dad about Sho's girlfriend…and even being near him made Mob feel all gross and stuff….but she didn't want Sho fighting with him or with anyone else.

"Nobody's fighting….everyone else started it….it's their fault." Said Sho. Shimazaki flicked him over the head. He batted his hand away. He was not being ridiculous. Sho was being…he was being normal. Everyone else was being ridiculous and trying to fight with him and stuff.

"It's nobody's fault. Now why don't we all just do what she said and be quiet and not fight for any reason, ok?" asked Shibata. He hated it when they fought just as much as Mob did. He didn't understand what it was about airplanes that brought out the worst in all of them.

"Yeah….what he said." Said Hatori. His eyes darted over to the bathroom. He could just stay in there for the whole time. It was small and safe and…and there…but if he went in there then everyone would just come looking for him…and then that might count as fighting and then Mob would turn the plane around and then they would have to start their trip all over again…and he did not want to be in this small enclosed space with everyone else for any longer than was necessary.

"See? Majority rules. So come on kid, time to be a man and do whatever your big sister tells you." Said Shimazaki. He went to flick Sho over the head again but Sho beat him, well tried to, beat him to it. He let Sho have this one. He was just a kid after all. Let him think that he had gotten one over on him, let him get over confident, then his time would come.

"Um….ok. No fighting….and if you guys are fighting then please stop…and…um….I'm going to sit down now." Said Mob. Shimazaki and Sho were flicking each other over the head…and it looked like they were playing….and that was ok. Playing was ok. Fighting was not ok. Fighting made people feel bad and plane rides tense…and she didn't want any plane rides to be tense. She wanted everything and everyone to be ok and…and she just wanted…she wanted….

She wanted a drink.

She sat down beside Minegishi and used her powers to call the drink cart over. Dad said that it was ok for her to drink so long as she used moderation…and that was why this was ok. That was why it was ok for her to take…well they had bottles but nothing she liked…but she still took a tiny bottle of wine and opened it up. It was the kind with the cap, that was good, because then she wouldn't have to finish it fast…even though she wanted to finish this fast.

She wanted to finish all of this fast.

It wouldn't take that long to get to Japan. That was good. But it would still take hours and hours. At least they weren't taking a boat. That would have taken days and days. They would be in here for hours and hours…together…and the longer they were in this plane together for the greater the chance of them fighting would be…and they had already almost fought….

And they hadn't even been in the air for fifteen minutes!

"Mob, slow the hell down." Said Minegishi opening their eyes. Well it hadn't taken long for her to find the drink cart….not that they blamed her. Not even half an hour and everyone was already getting to each other's throats. Maybe they needed knockout gas or something. Or maybe just a bunch of bricks in a pillow case. Something to get everyone to just….stop it already. God. Plane rides were the absolute worst.

"I am slowed down. See? I only drank half of it." Said Mob. She showed Minegishi the bottle in case they didn't believe her. They had taught her about moderation…and she had to listen. For Sho's sake. That way he wouldn't end up overdoing it. He didn't want to overdo it….well she didn't know what he wanted because she wasn't a mind reader….but she did know that he would not have liked overdoing and therefore he wouldn't have wanted to overdo it…and she didn't want to be the one to teach him to overdo it.

"Save the other half for later. Your dad's watching." Said Minegishi. Well watching was an overstatement. He was in the corner at his laptop, as usual, but he could have looked up at any time and noticed that his eleven year old daughter was drinking a tiny bottle of the world's cheapest wine. Not that he would care, or maybe he would, they had no idea if it was time for his half assed under parenting or his half assed over parenting.

"He doesn't care. He said that I could drink and smoke so long as I used moderation." Said Mob

"So use moderation and finish the rest of that later." Said Minegishi. Well it looked like it was half assed under parenting time. Not that they wanted Mob to get into trouble, they could never want that, they just wanted…well they wanted to have never gotten Mob into any of this in the first place. Drinking, smoking, all of it. They knew that the way they felt made them a hypocrite but…but they just…well it was normal not to want an eleven year old kid to develop a drinking problem.

"But-" said Mob. These were already tiny so there was already moderation…right? She didn't know. All she knew was that Shimazaki and Sho were punching each other now, and that seemed very close to fighting, and she didn't want to think about fighting…or anything at all. She didn't know what the problem was. It wasn't like dad was even watching her…with his eyes, anyway. He was probably playing Terraria with Hatori again. He was on his laptop too and dad was always wanting to play with him so they must have been playing together.

"Come on." Said Minegishi

"Alright." Said Mob. She put the tiny cap back on. She tried to put the bottle in her skirt pocket without lifting her sweater. It wasn't easy. She didn't want to lifter her sweater though, even if keeping it down meant finding her pocket was harder, because Fukuda was there and he was watching her…and she didn't want to be watched. She wanted…she wanted him to find something to do besides watch her. This plane was full of windows. Why couldn't he just watch the clouds go by or something?

"Here." Said Minegishi. They left her sweater….and then she pulled it right back down with her powers. Minegishi sighed. They were too tired for this…and they had just gotten up in the air. They needed to land, and soon, because no matter how peaceful this flight was it was still a flight.

"No, it's ok. I'll figure it out." Said Mob quietly. She looked down at the snowflake on her sweater. It was more like a blob with points, really, but it was still something to look down at. Better than looking up. Better than looking up and seeing Fukuda looking down at her. What was he thinking? She didn't know, she wasn't a mind reader, but she figured it must have been something bad about her…like what he had been thinking before. That she did gross stuff…or maybe it was something mean about her….like he had thought about Minegishi…not that Mob wanted him to think nice things about her…like that…either. She just…didn't want him to think anything about her at all.

She pulled her arms into her seater and brought her knees up into it, too. It wasn't that cold, not cold at all, but she didn't mind. She felt safe and warm and that…that was good.

"Mob, come on. What's with this?" asked Minegishi. They weren't going to be getting any sleep this plane ride, were they? They were going to have to stay awake and help Mob through whatever was making her this anxious. Well that was fine, this was Mob, and they cared about Mob…even more than they cared about getting what little sleep they could.

"I'm fine. Can you hold onto this for me? I can't find my pocket." Said Mob. She looked up at Fukuda and then back down at her snowflake. She reached out from under her sweater and then passed her tiny wine bottle to Minegishi. She looked back up at Fukuda, she could feel his aura on her, and she wanted to tell him to look out the window or go hang out with dad or something…but that would have been mean…and she had already been mean enough to him as it was.

"What are you looking at?" asked Minegishi after following the path Mob's aura and eyes took. Fukuda. That…they didn't even know what. That eggnog you find at the back of the fridge in July. Useful only to make things unpleasant. Just lurking there waiting to ruin your day when you reached back too far and found it. He was there, right there, an island onto himself….and he needed to stay an island.

"Nothing, just the fact that you're encouraging an eleven year old to drink." Said Fukuda. He hated it, seeing Shigeko drink, seeing evidence of what she got up to. Masami would never have let this happen…and he should not have let this happen. He was supposed to be watching over her and her brother…and he had made such a mess of it. He had made such a mess of Shigeko and he had made such a mess of Sho, too.

Both of them.

Masami would have hated him if she had been there. She would have told him that she should have stayed, that she should have raised the kids, that at least if she had been there then those two would have had a chance. Shigeko…she would have been in the sixth grade…and Sho would have been in the fifth…and they would have had friends their own age. They never would have had the chance to…to become who they were now. Sho would have met a nice boy his own age and Shigeko….well she wouldn't have even had the chance to drink or smoke or do drugs or run around with grown men….she had gotten so fast at some point….if Masami had been around…

But Masami was not around and she would never be around again.

"No, I'm discouraging her. God, try and keep up." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes. This guy was even bad at being nosy. If he was going to spend his time staring at an eleven year old girl he could have at least thought up a better excuse for it. Not that he should have been staring at her anyway. Minegishi…did not entirely trust him. Not after the fact that he had, apparently, been sitting on the theory that Mob and Ryou were….God they didn't even want to think…and he had said nothing. It didn't matter though, his time would come one day, and Minegishi would let him know exactly what he had done to earn what was coming to him.

"Minegishi, don't, no fighting." Said Mob shaking her head. She hated it when people fought…so much so that she had even made a rule about fighting….and now people were breaking the rules…and she didn't want to turn the plane around. That would just put them off schedule, she had no idea what the schedule was but she knew that they were on one, and also they would just have to spend even more time in the air and that would just mean that they had even more chances to fight and then they would never stop fighting and then it would just go on and on and on….and on and on and on….

And she didn't want that at all.

"Who's fighting?" asked Minegishi. This wasn't a fight, a fight would imply that they were both equals, and he was nowhere near their level. Sure he could heal but that must have had it's limits…and one of these days they would find those limits. When Mob was older, when she was better able to handle it, or just too busy running the world to notice that Fukuda had died. Yes, his time would come.

For everything.

Minegishi had a soft spot for Mob, or maybe their whole head was a soft spot, they didn't know. All they knew was that Fukuda had been an asshole to Mob for years…and he didn't even have any reason to hate her. If anything he should have had a problem with Suzuki's shrieking demon child back there, not his good one, but Minegishi didn't pretend to know what went on in that head of his. What they did know was that he was unkind to Mob for no good reason. The man oozed resentment…and thank God Mob didn't pick up on it. She didn't need to be resented. The world was hard enough on people like her, people who believed that everything could be solved with love and caring, and she didn't need anything else making her life worse. Especially that bastard.

Things were hard enough for her as it was.

"You and Fukuda…please stop. Ok?" said Mob. She didn't want to have to turn the plane around. She looked up at Fukuda…and then back down at her sweater. She pulled it around her knees. There. Now he couldn't see her. Well he could but also he couldn't…and she didn't want him to see her. She wished that she could turn invisible. She wished that she could have just disappeared. That would have been the best thing ever…but no. If she were to disappear then her friends and her brother and her dad would be worried about her…so she didn't disappear…

And this sweater wasn't even big enough, anyway, for her to disappear into.

"Mob…why don't you go over and see how your brother is doing." Said Minegishi. They had words, a lot of words, for this…they didn't even know what. Mob was hiding in that damn sweater. She felt self-conscious…because of this asshole. Minegishi didn't blame her. He had made even them feel self-conscious and…ad even vulnerable…and they were twenty eight years old. Mob was eleven and even less equipped to handle this than them. She didn't need to feel that way about herself, like she was being looked at Minegishi was guessing, not now or ever. She was just a kid.

And Minegishi was the adult so they would handle it.

"I can see from here that-" said Mob. Sho and Shimazaki had stopped hitting each other and now they were drawing….well Sho was drawing and Shimazaki was scribbling. He was looking down at what he was doing and scribbling and Mob was curious as to what he was scribbling but also….also she didn't want to get up. Getting up would have involved getting out of her sweater and getting out of her sweater…well she just did not want to do that right now.

"Go and get a closer look." Said Minegishi. They nudged Mob to get going. She didn't need to hear this, to hear what they were about to say to Fukuda, because that would just stress her out. She was just a kid, and a sensitive one at that, and also Minegishi did not feel like being the one held responsible for turning this plane around.

"I-ok." Said Mob. Minegishi wanted her to get up and check so that was what she did. Even though she didn't want to. She got up quickly and made sure that her sweater didn't ride up. She'd maybe ask Shibata to make her another one once this one stopped being giant. Wearing a sweater everywhere wasn't so bad. Sure it was warm and itchy but at least it kept her safe. At least it kept Fukuda from looking at her like…like she was….

Like she was how he thought that she was.

She knew, well she thought that she knew, what he thought about her. About how she could have….done stuff….adult stuff. About how he thought that she was an adult. How he thought that she was old enough to…and she didn't even like Shimazaki like that. She never would, he was just her friend, and he liked Minegishi anyway. He liked them and eh wanted to be their boyfriend and she wouldn't have messed with that even if he had been anyone other than himself….like Hatori.

He was nice.

He was all hunched over his laptop and….and he was playing Terraria with dad. She had been right. When dad got bored maybe then Hatori would be able to play animal crossing with her…or maybe not. Maybe if Fukuda saw her playing with Hatori then he would think that same stuff that he thought about her and Shimazaki…and she didn't want that. She thought about Hatori sometimes….and nobody ever needed to know that ever. She thought about….about stuff…and thinking about stuff made her feel gross….and she just….she pulled her sweater close around herself and went over to see what Sho and Shimazaki were up to.

She hoped that Fukuda didn't make anything of this….but he probably would.

He was probably thinking that she was thinking about…about stuff…and she wasn't. Not with Shimazaki. He acted like a crazy person most of the time, and also he could be very mean too…not to her but to other people. To Hatori, mostly, like now. He tore out the page that he had been scribbling on and he threw it at Hatori. Mob caught it with her powers and put it down on his notebook….Sho's notebook that he had borrowed.

She un-crumbled it. It was nice.

"Hey, I would have made that shot." Said Shimazaki as he heard the paper ball smoothing out. He still didn't get the appeal of drawing, well the appeal was probably being able to see what you were doing, but throwing paper balls was fun in and of its self. Well it had been fun, and not at all fighting, but Mob might have taken it that way. How someone like her was related to someone like Sho was beyond him. Those two were like night and day, it seemed, but they each had their strong points.

Mainly that one of them wasn't in love with him.

Mob was more fun to drink and smoke with, she held her…everything…better, but Sho was more fun in general. He was always up for anything. Throwing things at people, scaring them, or just finding things to do from nothing at all. He was a great kid and if Shimazaki'd had a kid, well maybe he had a few running around he hadn't been careful until Toshi, he have wanted his kid to be just like Sho. Just not in love with him, that would have been too weird, not that Sho was weird he was just….

Sometimes he could be kind of….like a ten year old in love.

"Yeah, he would have made that shot. Come on, throwing stuff doesn't count as fighting." Said Sho. He loved big sis, he really did, but right now he just wanted her to go back to being with her own friend and to leave him and Shimazaki the fuck alone. They were here and together and…and being next to him was just….it was nice. It was nice for reasons that he didn't want to think about. Reasons that made the goldfish in his stomach swim around and around and around in circles. Reasons that he did not want his big sis to even begin to know about.

"I…maybe don't do that…because it bothers Hatori…and stuff…and it's not nice to bother Hatori you know. Um….are you guys ok? Besides the paper throwing?" asked Mob. She thought that they looked ok, Sho seemed very happy or at least his aura seemed happy, and Shimazaki didn't seem like he was going to do anything that was super wrong….like go out onto the wing of the plane or anything like that….so that was good…..

Even though he was crumpling up the paper again.

"Sure thing….after this." said Shimazaki as he threw the paper ball again. He threw it again, and she caught it again, which sucked because he knew that he would have made it. He could sense Hatori, he could sense him sitting there all turtled up like a turtle, and he was just such an easy target….and he would have made it too if she hadn't stopped him….

This was one of those instances where he would take the lovesick Suzuki over the one who was able to actually be cognizant while she smoked.

"Big sis, why don't you go and hang out with Minegishi some more, ok?" asked Sho. He was not going to be mean. He was not going to say or do anything mean. He was just going to calmly and nicely as his big sister to go and hang out with her best friend so he could go back to hanging out with his best friend. That was all that he was going to say. He wasn't going to tell her that she was getting in the way, that he wanted to get back to teaching Shimazaki how to draw, and that here was nothing wrong with throwing paper at Hatori because it was just paper and it couldn't hurt him. He wasn't going to say or do anything mean to her….

He was going to try his best.

Because….because he sort of felt like being mean. He sort of felt like telling her to go back to Minegishi so he could hang out and…and he sort of felt like telling her that if she wanted to keep her boyfriend safe then she could go and sit next to him and keep him safe and…and that she should have sat next to him because she liked him and…and that she must have liked him and…and he shouldn't have cared who she liked but…

But she had come all the way over here to talk to Shimazaki…and that was making him feel…not good at all.

"Um…..ok. That's….that's ok." said Mob. They weren't fighting and Hatori had gotten up and now he was next to dad….and nobody would mess with him while he was next to dad….so that was ok. Everything was ok…and stuff. It was all going to be ok and…and stuff. That was good. So she…she could go back to sitting by Minegishi. She wanted to sit by Minegishi, they were her best friend and they needed her there because they didn't fly well, but being by Minegishi would have meant being by Fukuda too….and she didn't want to be by Fukuda. She wanted….well she didn't know what she wanted…but she knew that she didn't want to feel so…so….

Gross.

The gross feeling came back as she went back over to her spot. She wondered, briefly, if she should have taken the spot next to Shibata that Hatori had left. She had assigned them seats and stuff but….but she didn't feel like enforcing them….so Shibata must have been really lonely….but he didn't seem it. He seemed….well not lonely…and she didn't want him to be lonely but she also didn't want to explain to him why she was going to sit in Hatori's spot when she had her won spot and she had gone through the trouble of assigning spots and…and she just….

She didn't know.

But what she did know was that she had walked into something that she shouldn't have. She shouldn't have but she did. This was a fight. That was what they had been doing. She could tell by their auras. Their auras were all….not happy. Even Fukuda's and he hardly even had an aura. He and Minegishi were staring at each other…and then Minegishi put an arm around Mob and sat her down. Mob let herself be sat down. She didn't want to be there in the fighting but she also didn't want to make the fighting any worse than it had to be…not that she even understood why there even had to be any fighting at all.

Somehow there was always fighting when they flew.

"If you can't tell the difference between a child and her father then-" said Minegishi. They shut up as soon as Mob came into hearing distance. Thank God that private planes were so damn loud. Now Mob was back and she was next to them where she belonged and now they could rest.

"Minegishi….what are you guys fighting about?" asked Mob as she was sat down. Minegishi shook their head.

"It's not worth wasting your time over and it doesn't matter anyway. He was just leaving." Said Minegishi. There no reason to get Mob involved in any of this. This guy…this guy was going to give Minegishi a stroke. This asshole….no. They were not going to get upset over this. They were going to lean back and go to sleep and then when they woke up they would be in Japan and that would be that. They would be in Japan again and there would be space between them and this asshole and then they could go back to plotting his death from afar.

It would be wonderful.

"But….ok." said Mob. She didn't care where he went or what he did. She just…she knew that it was a mean way to think about someone but she just…wanted him to be somewhere else. It was hard being near someone who didn't like you, even harder when that person thought…stuff about you, and the hardest part of it all was when that person was also mean to your best friend. Just…she knew that Fukuda took care of Sho and she knew that he had liked her when she had been little and she knew that she had to be nice to everyone but…but sometimes it was hard to be nice to everyone when…when the person she had to be nice to….

Just wasn't very nice.

"Alright then. I'll just leave you to this. Miss Suzuki. Minegishi." Said Fukuda as he got up. He was not going to argue. He was not going to be responsible for Shigeko turning the plane around. She had that sort of power after all. Her father had given her that power, all the power, and she was going to use it. That was fine. She had made her own choices in life…and he knew that he was responsible for not stopping her from making those choices…

But what was done was done.

He had done the best he could with what, with who, he had. He could only do so much in the face of Suzuki's influence and…and it was what it was. She was who she was. She was…herself. This person. This unrecognizable person. Gone was the little girl who begged him to read her just one more Hello Kitty book. Now she had been replaced with this…this person. The person who she had become. That was…fine. She was who she was.

And he was who he was.

And right now he was a person without a seat. He had been kicked out of his seat and…and he knew that he could have just gone back but…but he did not go where he was not wanted. Shigeko did not want him and Sho…Sho didn't want him either. She didn't want him and he didn't want him and…and he was unwanted. He was unwanted by both kids…and bothering Sho would only prolong this mess that they were in…so he just….he had to sit…there was an open seat by Shibata….

And he was not nearly slim enough or short enough to fit anywhere on that side of the plane.

But there was room next to Suzuki. Well not NEXT to, that spot was taken by Hatori…and that was just….bizarre. They were talking, talking together, and Suzuki….he seemed…happy? As happy as he could be. They were talking and playing…something. He didn't know what. He didn't even know what he was seeing let alone what they were playing and…and he knew that he had to sit somewhere….unless he felt like hiding in the bathroom for the rest of the plane ride…

And he did not feel like pulling a Hatori.

But he could sit across from him.

"….no way. Atari crashed and burned for a reason. Nintendo, they knew what they were doing." Said Hatori. He looked up as Fukuda sat right across from him…even though there was plenty of space….but whatever. He was friends with Suzuki, best friends based on how often Suzuki talked about him, and…and maybe he was intruding on…whatever they had…or something. He didn't know. He just knew that he maybe should keep talking not to make this weird….or maybe it was weird to talk to Suzuki…or maybe-

"I will never understand you, not for as long as I live. You or Fukuda." Said Suzuki with a shake of his head. Hatori he could understand, he was young and young people made no sense, but Fukuda had been saying the same thing since at least 1988 if not earlier. So maybe he was the one who was wrong….no. Hatori and Fukuda were the ones who were wrong.

"What about me?" asked Fukuda. He could have sworn that they were having the Atari vs Nintendo debate…the one that they had been having since at least 1988….but that would have been crazy. Hatori was….Hatori. Why would he have had two words to say to Suzuki on why he was wrong about Atari being the best that there has ever been…and where had he gotten the BALLS to say something like that to Suzuki?

"Hatori shares your opinion on our Nintendo and Atari debate. The one we started in our third year. Do you remember? When mother finally got me a 7800? You said that it was terrible." Said Suzuki. That had been what had kicked off that debate…and they had never formally ended it. They had just….grown out of it. They had gotten older, both of them, and…yes. They had stopped this debate when they had been around Hatori's age…or younger. It was always hard to remember that Hatori was twenty years old for as young as he acted. No wonder Daughter was so taken with him. Well aside from his age he was intelligent about some things, good conversation, and his skin condition was clearing up nicely. Yes, it made sense that Daughter was so taken with him…and it was very good that he was a homosexual otherwise Suzuki would have had to keep him at arm's length…but he was so they were fine.

"Yeah….I remember…and it was terrible…but that was back in the 80s." said Fukuda. Suzuki had never been one to reminisce about their wayward youth…maybe he was just getting old…old enough to be able to talk to someone and just…not seem like he was going to kill him at any moment.

"The greatest decade to have ever been alive in." said Suzuki. It was such a pity that Hatori was as young as he was. He would have had much better taste if he had been born in the 80s….no, he would have been too young. If he had been born in the early 70s. Then he could have been…they could have been peers. He wondered what Claw would have been like with Hatori as a founding member along with him and Fukuda. That would have worked out well. He and Fukuda were a lot alike…well he was a lot like a younger Fukuda.

"You guys are stuck in the 80s." said Hatori. He felt Fukuda's aura on him…and maybe that hadn't been the best thing that he could have said….but sometimes he said too much when he was hanging out with Suzuki. Sometimes it was hard to remember that he was President Suzuki, the guy who ran Claw, and it was easy to think of him as just…a guy. Mob's dad. Just a guy who liked videogames and hanging out with his Daughter and ate ketchup on bread.

"As we should be." Said Suzuki

"Come on, you were alive in the 90s. You must have liked something about 90s gaming." Said Hatori

"No, I was too old by then. I was in my third year of high school by 1991. Much too old for games." Said Suzuki

"Right." Said Hatori. If eighteen was too old then what did he call forty four?

"If anything you missed out. You put too much faith in graphics, really, three dimensional graphics are maddening. You missed out, Fukuda and I didn't." Said Suzuki

"You guys missed out on so much. Seriously, the Superfamicom alone. The library on that-" said Hatori. God, he could have gone on and on and on about the Superfamicom. God, he was so glad that he was old enough that he could emulate any game. These guys were way too attached to their era but that made sense since they actually had to go out and buy cartridges and stuff. The 80s. What a time to have been alive….a sucky time.

"What's….happening here?" asked Fukuda

"Well Nintendo should have stuck to making playing cards. I said that in 1988 and I say that now." Said Suzuki with a shake of his head. He felt Hatori's aura. Now he was going to disagree. Well he could disagree until the sun swallowed the Earth but that wouldn't make him right. He almost wished that Daughter had been there…but she didn't know about these things…and also he knew that Hatori would never return her feelings…but he did not like watching her have those feelings for him or any man.

"Well then Atari should have stopped at the 2600 hundred." Said Hatori

"Finally we agree on something." Said Suzuki. There. He had finally found someone who agreed with him. There, he was right and he knew that he was right. Fukuda…he had been debating this with Fukuda for years…and he had been strangely quiet during this whole conversation. Huh. Usually he would have been all over this. Well he would have when they had been younger…but they were older now…but he felt younger. Well that was what came from being friends with a younger man.

"Hey…what's….happening….here?" asked Fukuda. That had been…he wondered if he had slipped into the Twilight Zone. He wondered if he would look out the window and see something on the wing of the plane besides Shimazaki being an idiot. But no, no monster and no Shimazaki, just clouds. Clouds and he endless blue sky…which was a welcome distraction from the….whatever this was…in front of him.

"Hatori is agreeing with me for once. The 2600 was brilliant. If only he had been there when we had stated this debate. It would have gone on for at least thirty fewer years." Said Suzuki

"It hasn't been….just….what? What has been going on….were you guys…talking?" asked Fukuda. Maybe he was losing his mind. Maybe he was getting airsick. Maybe he had hit his head and now he was bleeding out and this was just what his brain needed to do while he either healed or died.

"Yes. Try and keep up." Said Suzuki

"I just….this is hard for me to wrap my head around. Are you…friends…now?" asked Fukuda. He had no idea what he was seeing or hearing or…or he just…he could not begin to understand. He just…Suzuki did not make friends. He had known Suzuki since they had been thirteen years old and in that time he hadn't made a single friend but now…now what? He had replaced him? What? How did that even work?

"Yes. I suppose so." Said Suzuki. He could feel Hatori's aura…and he didn't need to be quite so emotional. They fulfilled the parameters for friendship, he imagined, they enjoyed being near each other and had things in common. That was what friendship was. Fukuda had explained it to him when they had been children.

"Wow…thanks…boss." Said Hatori. He had figured that they were cool….but…friends? This was….nice. The President could be an asshole sometimes…all of the times…but he just…he could also be sort of cool…so….wow. This was….wow.

"How does Shigeko feel about this? I mean it might be awkward for her, you being friends with her ex and all." said Fukuda. That was a low blow…and he hadn't been thinking….but now that he was he wished that there had been some way for him to take it back. He had signed this kid's death warrant. Suzuki was going to….and maybe kill everyone else too if he exploded…and he should have thought this through….and….

"I…don't follow." Said Suzuki. For a moment he wants to murder Hatori…but then he remembers that he cannot possibly be interested in Daughter. Fukuda must have just noticed how taken Daughter was with Hatori, that was all. Well that was understandable….mostly. Of course Daughter would never have…well she would have…but as good of a person as Hatori was Daughter would still never…so maybe the was the 'ex' part….he didn't know. Talking to people could be very difficult.

"What? Is that what people….no! She's a kid! She's an eleven year old girl! What the fuck!?" screamed Hatori. He jumped to his feet…and now everyone was staring at him…and his laptop…well Suzuki had been nice enough to catch it with his powers…and also not kill him with them…and that was….pretty great…but still! She was a kid and just because he was nice to her did not make him a lolicon!

"Sit down. You're being annoying." Said Suzuki. He sort of understood that. People could be very defensive when their sexuality was questioned. It had nothing to do with Daughter. Hatori had not been insulting her or making it seem like no one would ever have feelings for her…not that he wanted them to…but still. She was perfect and anyone would have been happy to have her and…and he thanked God that Hatori was a homosexual.

"I-I-I am NOT into your kid…either of your kids! I am not into-" said Hatori. He was going to die. This was going to be the end of his life. People were thinking that shit about him and talking about him and…and that was just…no! What the fuck?! He wasn't like that!

"I know. We established this before. Fukuda probably just thinks that you were involved with my Daughter because she's taken with you….and also he doesn't know that you're a homosexual. Well now he does because I said it out loud." Said Suzuki

"Um….what?" asked Fukuda. Hatori was not gay. He did not look or act gay…and also…he had it on good authority that Shigeko was seeing Hatori….well Sho had said so…and he was only a child…and he just…he didn't want the kid dead just…back in his own corner or hiding in the bathroom where he belonged.

"Daughter is taken with Hatori, not the other way around. That's not how homosexuality works." Said Suzuki simply. There was no other way to say it beside simply…well there was not saying it at all. The fact that Daughter was interested in this man. The fact that Daughter, for some reason, wanted to be with someone when she already had someone to take care of her and love her and make her happy.

"Wait….I still don't….what?" asked Fukuda. Hatori was shaking in his seat. His eyes kept on darting towards the bathroom. He was either going to wet himself or he was going to hide in there for the rest of the trip….which was fine by him. He didn't know what was going on but the sooner things got back to normal the better. Suzuki…Fukuda felt….he didn't know. Strange. Because this was strange. Suzuki did not make friends. They were friends….well they had been. He had no idea what they were now…but they had been friends…once.

"No, you what? Seriously? Why would you even think that I would….is that what people are saying about me?! Because it's not true!" shouted Hatori. He shouted and tried to pull his sweater up over his head but then he felt it being tugged down.

"You're being annoying again." said Suzuki. Why people reacted so strongly to having their sexuality questioned he would never know. It was such a simple thing to correct. Besides, he had been under the impression that Hatori was comfortable with being a homosexual. He had been very opened about it…or was this meant to be something only select people knew? It was a very personal thing…but still. He didn't need to over react quite so badly.

"Sho had told me that you and Shigeko broke up." Said Fukuda. Well this was…Suzuki never told people that they were being annoying. He told them to go away but he never just…told someone that they were being annoying and then…tugged their heads out of their sweaters like…like he was putting up with all of this…and this…this was…not normal at all….

"Oh. Well then Son was mistaken….and perhaps you shouldn't take the word of a child on these things. Daughter is taken with him, not the other way around." Said Suzuki. People, talking to them, was so tiresome sometimes. He was beginning to rethink wishing that Hatori had been born twenty years earlier. This would have been their dynamic, then, the three of them…and it would have been exhausting. Fukuda on his own had been exhausting but two of them...well not that Hatori was that much like Tadashi. Hatori frightened easily, very easily, and also he was just….a different person entirely.

"Wait….Mob is…I mean Shigeko is…what?" asked Hatori. No way. Suzuki was just….well he was really bad at this kind of stuff…and Mob didn't LIKE him. No way. She was eleven. She should have had a crush on a guy her own age or an actor or musician or anime character. Him? No, she was just a kid.

"Taken with you….have Daughter explain it to you. Here she comes." Said Suzuki. He really didn't know what was so hard to understand about this. Daughter had feelings for Hatori which he did not return. Fukuda should have been able to understand that. He had been the one, after all, to tell Suzuki that just because he had feelings for a girl it didn't mean that she would necessarily return his feelings. Ever. That had been…a difficult thing to come to terms with…since he had been prone to…a lot of very strong emotions…at that age. The age that Daughter was approaching. She would feel that way about some boy….and some boy would feel that way about her…and he had been a boy once, he knew how they thought, and the thought of some boy having those thoughts and feelings for Daughter….

He was so grateful that Hatori was a homosexual.

Hatori had no idea the way Daughter's eyes and her aura rested on him before anyone else. He knew what it looked like when someone was interested in you. He knew because that had been very important information to have during that time in his life, that time when he'd had more hormones than sense, and that time when the only thing he had wanted just as badly as he wanted to take over the world was someone at his side…who he would be allowed to kiss and…other things…and Daughter was getting to that age and…and there were boys EVERYWHERE…..

He wondered if he could find her an island of nothing but women and homosexuals…he'd talk that over with her later…maybe if he built a Starbucks there she would agree to living there….maybe….

"Hi….um….are you guys fighting? Because I said no fighting." Said Mob. Did Fukuda have to fight with EVERYONE? Sho had said, before, that Fukuda was getting old and grumpy…but he was even worse about fighting people than dad. She really did not want to have to turn this plane around because of him…and also she did not want to have to be near to him either. She pulled her sweater close around herself. Hatori was there and dad was there and Fukuda was there and Fukuda was thinking that she would do…stuff….with Shimazaki so he thought the same thing about Hatori, probably, and she did think about kissing and other stuff with Hatori…and she was thinking that and…and DAD was there and FUKUDA was there and….

And she wanted to go back to sitting near Minegishi.

"Nobody is fighting, there is no need to turn the plane around, we were just talking. Daughter, can you please explain that you have feelings for Hatori but he does not have feelings in return for you." Said Suzuki. He didn't know what her aura was flaring like that for. It was a simple thing to explain. Hatori did not return her feelings…feelings which she should not have had….but he did not want to think about this. Hatori did not return her feelings and he could deal with that….he could deal with that a lot better than he could deal with her developing feelings for some boy…who would return her feelings.

"Um…..what?" asked Mob. She must have been going crazy…or something. Dad had just…dad…he KNEW and now Hatori KNEW and she just…she just…she just….

"She doesn't. She's just a kid." Said Hatori. She looked like she wanted to die….and he didn't blame her. Nobody wanted their dad to talk about who they had a crush on. That was just…not good. She was just a kid. She was just a lonely kid who wanted to spend time with him because they only other guy around her age was her own brother. That was all. That didn't mean that she liked him. He had always hated that when he had been a kid. Anytime he made friends with a girl, his own age of course, everyone be all 'ooh you like Hatori' and then they would never want to talk to him again. Hopefully she wasn't too embarrassed.

"I-I-I….have to go to the bathroom." Said Mob. She could not lie to her dad but…but also she had no idea what it was that she even felt for Hatori and…and she just…did not want to discuss this with her dad and Fukuda and Hatori! She just…wanted to go to the bathroom….and be in there for…for a long time because….because she just did not know…what she was even supposed to say or do or feel or….

She hid in the bathroom.

She closed the door, locked it, and then pulled her sweater over her head. She could hear more talking…not shouting…and she could hear the roar of the engines and…and she just…she didn't know. She didn't know what to say or do so she would just say and do nothing. She would just…stay in the bathroom…until they got back to Japan and then…and then she would…avoid Hatori for the rest of her life….and also find a place for Fukuda, like on another plane, where he couldn't go around telling people things…and that idea must have come from him because he was the one who thought about her like that…and he just…he thought about her. He thought about her like that and…

And she pulled her arms into her sweater.

He thought about her and he talked about her and….he just…he needed to learn to keep things inside of his head. First he goes around telling Sho's secret and then he starts talking about her and…and he needed…he needed his own part of the plane with…curtains…or something. She didn't know. She would figure it out later. Much later. Right now she would just…stay in the bathroom and…and think up what to do and…and try to stay calm….because they were in a plane and if the plane went down then they would have to figure out who they were going to eat and she didn't want to reopen that conversation….

This plane ride was not going to end in a crash…or a fight…but it would end with her hiding in the bathroom.


	336. Gross and Weird Feelings in the Night

Sometimes it was best to get things over with.

"Hatori….I like you a lot. Not as….I don't know if I want to be your girlfriend but….but I want to kiss you…and I want you to kiss me…and also you can feel me up if you want…because my friend Minori said that boys loved doing that. So you can do that to me…and stuff. Ok?" said Mob. She played with her hair while she said that. She had to do something. She just had to move or do something because she had just confessed, sort of, and now he KNEW and now he would…she didn't know what he was going to do…

He took her hand.

"I like you too. I think that you're really pretty, Mob, especially in blue. I don't think that it makes you look like a sick ghost at all. Also I think that you look really pretty in your Elsa dress and I'm glad that you found one that fits." Said Hatori

"You noticed." Said Mob. She laughed and looked down. He was HOLDING her HAND and…and it was just…wow. He was holding her hand and he noticed that she found an Elsa dress that fit and he thought that she was pretty…he was so great…so maybe she could be his girlfriend….

"I notice all kinds of things about you. I notice how you're always thinking about your brother and your dad and your friends and how you do so much. I notice how you're always so nice to me even though a lot of other people aren't. It means a lot to me when you defend me from Shimazaki. I love how you're always there for me." Said Hatori. He brought her hand up to his mouth…and he kissed it…and she felt so….good.

Not gross.

The gross feeling was gone and now she just felt good. She felt…she didn't need to hide in her sweater because she didn't need to wear her sweater. She was getting…the good feeling again…and that was ok because it was just her and Hatori in…this room. She wasn't sure if this was his room or her room. They were just…in a room. All the rooms looked alike. It didn't matter. She just…she was just happy to be there…wherever 'there' was…because she was with Hatori and he was holding her hand and kissing it like…like on TV…..or in a movie….

This whole thing felt like a movie. It was that perfect.

"I-I…I…um…" said Mob. He was sitting so close to her and she was so close to him…and it didn't feel gross. It felt good. It felt…warm. She felt warm and she felt….so warm and….and tingly…and good tingly. Very good tingly. Good tingly like…like…something that was so….she didn't know what this feeling was but…but it wasn't gross. It was nice and not…not gross and she wanted….she wanted….she didn't know what she wanted….just that she wanted it….

She wanted something but she didn't know what it was.

"Mob….I really want to kiss you…and I don't think of you like a little sister at all anymore so it's ok for me to kiss you….so please. Mob. Shigeko. Can I kiss you?" said Hatori. Mob was breathing harder than she had ever breathed in her whole life. There just was not enough air in the world. The world was…the world was small. The world was that room. The room which was neither of their room. She was just…so warm and…and nice. So nice. She felt…whatever it was that she was feeling….she feeling so good….so warm and good and…and not gross. This feeling was ok…in this room this feeling was ok…and that was ok…and she wanted…she was the one who had asked him and….and she was just so…she felt so…she wanted….

She reached up and took off Hatori's glasses.

He looked so pretty without his glasses….and he looked so pretty with his glasses…boy pretty. Whatever the boy version of pretty was. He was so….so….everything. He was so everything and everything good and…and she wanted to be near him. She put his glasses down on the floor…and they were on the floor now…and he was so close…and she could just kiss him…and she had wanted to kiss him…and now he was leaning in so close and…and she just….she just felt like….

Like she wanted nothing more than to be kissed.

"Mob. Shigeko. Let me kiss you." Said Hatori. Mob nodded. She nodded and nodded and nodded some more. She was just so…so…do felt so warm and tingly and…and she just…..she wanted to feel this and she wanted…she wanted….she wanted to just kiss him and…and she wanted something else…and she didn't know what it was…but she wanted it and….

And….

And….

"Kiss me, Hatori." Said Mob. He kissed her. He kissed her and it felt like…it felt better. It felt better than the time she had been kissed….that one time she had been kissed….because she was older now and better at it now…and she had no idea how she had gotten so good at it…but she was good at it…and he was good at it…and it felt…it felt warm and…and she wanted…she wanted…she wanted….

She wanted…..

"Hey! Wake up!"

She wanted to wake up.

"Wha-!" said Mob as she sat up. She almost bumped heads with Sho…and why was Sho there?! Why was he there when she was with…she wasn't with anyone but him…because she had been asleep in their room and….and now she was awake and…and she still felt like…she felt like…

She felt like she did NOT want her little brother anywhere near her.

"You were having a bad dream, a really bad one, you were moving and making noise in your sleep and you messed up the whole room." Said Sho. Mob held her hair down with her hands and looked around. She wanted to tell Sho to go away…but that would have been mean…but she still felt like…like she was still in that dream and…and that dream was a dream and…

And that dream had not been a nightmare.

Even though it looked like it had been. The room…there were clothes and toys everywhere….and she just…had no idea….how she would clean this up later. Well she would have to clean it up and…and that was something that she could think about….something else…something besides how she felt…something besides this feeling that had followed her from her dream…and that she did NOT want her little brother to know about!

"Sorry….I'll clean it up later. I have…to go to the bathroom. Excuse me." Said Mob as she got out of bed and ran, well ran two steps before tripping over a pile of clothes, to the bathroom. Sho went over to help her up but she got up before he could get to her. She just…didn't want to be near her little brother. She loved him, she really did, but this feeling was just so weird….so weird and she just…didn't want to…she didn't want him to know and…

And she didn't want to feel this feeling anywhere near her little brother.

She loved Sho, she did, and she knew that she must have scared him by the way that she had been acting but…but she was not going to just feel this…near him…and she was tired and…and awake at the same time…and she had to go to the bathroom. She had to go to the bathroom for real….at least it felt like she did…maybe. There was a feeling and…and maybe she just felt like going to the bathroom…because what else could this be? She didn't know…she really didn't know…but she did know that she did not want to feel whatever this was with her little brother in the room!

Thank God the bathroom had a lock.

She locked the bathroom door and sat down on the floor….and then she got up and sat down on the side of the tub. She couldn't sit on the floor. She and Hatori had been sitting on the floor in her dream…and now she could never sit down on the floor again…and that was ok. They had chairs and stuff. So that was ok. That was ok and this was ok and she was ok and everything was ok and she just wanted to….to….stop feeling whatever this feeling was! This…warm…tingly…wanting….wanting to….wanting something to….

She felt gross.

This was reality, real reality, and not dream reality. In dream reality the gross feeling did not exist…but this was reality and…and she felt…this was the gross feeling times a million! She felt like…like she was being watched….she knew that she was all alone in her bathroom….she pulled the shower curtain back with her powers to make sure…she was alone and….and she just…she had no reason to feel watched because she was all alone….

But she still felt watched.

"I wasn't going to do anything…." Whispered Mob to no one. She wanted to make the world know….that she did not want to think about that. To do things like that. To have someone to kiss and be kissed by…and to touch her on her….she crossed her arms over her chest. It hurt. She had been sleeping on her stomach and her chest her and she hugged her arms close around herself and…and that felt….that felt so weird and…and good and….

And she uncrossed her arms.

That had felt good and…and also gross and…and weird and…she felt like she was….like she wanted…she wanted something but she didn't know what it was. She wanted…she wanted to kiss Hatori…but that would have been the WORST thing that she could have possibly done. She could not just leave the bathroom, go to Hatori's house, wake him up, and then kiss him…and stuff…because then he would know that she liked him…and also she would have kissed him and that would have ruined everything forever because they were just friends and he…he was not a kid and she was a kid…and stuff…and she was not supposed to think about stuff like this…

Because it was gross.

If she thought about stuff like this then…then she would be like….like how Fukuda said that he thought that she and Shimazaki had been doing….stuff. All the stuff. Kissing and hand holding and…and all of that stuff that adults did together…and she was not an adult! Not for real….not for real at all! She was just…she was just eleven and she did not want to do…to do stuff like that and…and she just…did she want that stuff? Was that why she felt so…weird? Sort of like she had to pee but also…not? Sort of like….

Gross.

Not gross like the gross feeling. This was actually gross. This was….she shifted in place. She felt like…she felt like…like she had wet the bed but also…not. This wasn't pee…it didn't feel like pee….well if she had wet the bed then her whole bed would have been soaked and…and she was just…not even her night shirt was wet….but she felt…so…sort of….kind of…whatever this was. She didn't know. She just….she just…

She sat very still.

She sat very still and just….she didn't know what else to do. She felt…she felt like she wanted something and she didn't know what it was…but it had to do with kissing and…and being near…being near Hatori…and being near him and being touched by him and…and being kissed by him and…and this was just…just….too….too weird! Weird and…she was weird and she felt like…like…she just wanted to feel less….less….less like what she was feeling now! And she had no idea what she was even feeling!

Did this mean that she was in love with him?

She wanted him to kiss her and hold her…and like her…and she felt like…this was new and…and she maybe wanted him to…touch…no. She didn't want him to touch her and she didn't want to touch…she closed her legs. She crossed her legs tight and…and then she uncrossed them as fast as she could. That had been….she didn't want to think about what that had been. Good. Sort of like…like she didn't even want to…to think about it. Good and gross and gross because it was good and she should not have…have done that…she felt like…like she had done something…wrong. She was not good. She was…good and not good and….she just…

She didn't know!

She wished that mom had been there…she would have known. She would have known and it would have been ok to ask her. She was her mom. She had said, before, that she would love Mob forever and that she would always be there for her…and she had said that before she ran away from home. She didn't know, now, if she could have asked mom about this. If she could have just….if mom would have knocked on the door and Mob would have let her in…and then mom would have sat down next to her and…and Mob could have asked….asked…stuff. Like if this was…ok. Like if this meant that she was in love with Hatori. Like if it was ok to feel like this about…about someone who wasn't her boyfriend. Like if it was ok to feel like this at all. Like if this was how adults felt about….about each other…

Mom would have known.

Mom would have known and she would have…she would have sat with Mob and told her…about stuff. About…if this was ok. About how she could…could…could make it just….go away. If this was how adults felt about each other then…then she didn't want it. She as only eleven and being eleven was….was not the same as being an adult. She needed…she needed a smoke and also she needed…she needed…she needed her mom. She needed mom to sit next to her and say something like….

"You're going to be ok, Shigeko, don't worry. I love you, I will always love you, no matter how weird you feel."

Or something like that. She didn't know. Mom was…she was gone…and she had no idea if mom would have said that or if this was just…something that she wanted to hear. If she just wanted mom to tell her that she loved her and that this was ok…and normal. She really wanted to know if this was normal…but if it was normal then she would have…felt like this before….or…someone would have warned her…but there were a bunch of things that she didn't know about. A bunch of normal stuff that people had never told her about…and she could not ask. Minori would have known because she knew about boys and love and kissing and…and also she had been felt up before….and stuff. So she would have known and she would have said….

"Oh my God, Shige, you are such a first grader….and also what did I say about wearing blue?"

Yeah….no. She was not going to ask Minori about this. Minori knew about this stuff but also…also she could be sort of mean. She could be sort of very mean sometimes, even to her friend, and she would have been mean to Mob….actually extra mean because Mob got to go back to Japan and she hadn't….so she was not going to call Minori and ask her if this was normal. If she had ever woken up in the middle of the night all warm and tingly and good…and gross physically and emotionally….and also if she ever woke up all wet but not with pee….no. She could not ask Minori about this…and stuff….because then she would have gotten made fun of…and she did not want to get made fun of….

Minegishi never made fun of her…not that she would ask Minegishi….

"Mob, do you have any idea what time it is?"

Minegishi wouldn't be mean to her or make fun of her…but she was not going to wake them up. Even though they knew more about this stuff than Minori because they had done…all the stuff…before. Mob didn't want to ask them about all the stuff but…but they were the only other person she knew who was a girl…well had been born a girl…and was built the same as she was…so they would know about this and they had never once made fun of her. They would….they would tell her what this was but also…also it was in the middle of the night and they didn't get to sleep easily….and also she didn't want to talk about her private…feelings…and private…privates….with anyone. Not even her best friend….

So she just had to figure this out on her own….and without Google because Hatori liked to look at what people Googled and…and she didn't even know what she was even going to Google without getting pictures of…stuff that she did not want to see pictures of.

She didn't have anyone…any girl one….she could ask. She had a dad but it was in the middle of the night, first of all, and second of all he was a boy. He was a dad and dads were boys and she could NOT talk about this with a boy. He probably had no idea what she was even feeling or why and….and also he would KNOW and he already knew that she liked Hatori…..because Fukuda could be kind of a gossip sometimes….and dad could not know that she was feeling….THIS about Hatori. He would have…she had no idea what he would have said. If she just shook him awake and said something like…like…'hey dad, I woke up all warm and tingly and also I wet the bed without wetting the bed and I feel like I have to go to the bathroom but in a good way and also I don't have to go to the bathroom so what is this and what do I do about it?' or something like that. He would say….words of some kind….

"Daughter….I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this information….now go make me middle of the night breakfast."

Yeah, no. Dad could not know about this. Nobody could. She would just have to…spend the rest of her night in the bathroom. She would just…live in the bathroom for the rest of the night…and then in the morning if she still felt like this then…then she would spend the morning in the bathroom…and then she would live in the bathroom for the rest of her life if this feeling never went away. This would be her home. The tub could be her bed, and she could drink from the faucet, and her meals could be slid in under the door…and maybe Hatori could give her pointers….

She needed to never think about Hatori, or talk to him, or look at him ever again.

She just needed…she needed….she needed something. She needed to think about something else. She wished that she could just…hide in her sweater. She wanted to hide in her sweater and never come up and…and then she would spend the rest of her life in her sweater and…and her life would be…not that great but…but at least then everyone would leave her alone…and she didn't want to be alone…but she didn't want anyone to be there while she felt like this and-

A knock at the door.

An aura.

Sho's.

"Sho? This…this isn't a good time right now…but if you have to use the bathroom I can come out in a minute." Said Mob. She pulled a towel from the rack and pulled it around herself even though she knew that Sho couldn't see through the door. She needed…she wondered if she could fit out the window. She didn't know where she would go after she went out the window…and also she had no idea what she would do to explain why she had gone out the window…but she just…she did not need her little brother to know that she felt like this.

Whatever THIS was.

"I don't need the bathroom…I just wanted to tell you that I put your bedding in the wash and I put your other bedding, the Tangled bedding, on your bed…in case you wet the bed. I didn't check, I just used my powers, and if you did then…then that's ok. I won't tell anyone…and if you didn't then I saved you a load of laundry." Said Sho. Mob felt….not THAT anymore. Now she was just…that was nice. That was really nice of him. He thought that she had wet the bed, she never wet the bed but she didn't want to tell him the truth, and he had washed her bedding and put new bedding on her bed…and that was just so….

Nice of him.

He was such a nice little brother…and she needed to come out of the bathroom now. Sure she was weird and grossed out by herself….but she wasn't just herself. She was a big sister and she had to be a good big sister and…and good big sisters did not spend their whole lives in their bathrooms…and also eventually dad would have to take his morning shower and also shave….and he would ask her why she was living in the bathroom when he got up…so she needed to get out of the bathroom…

And also Sho was worried about her.

"I…I didn't know that you know how to do laundry." Said Mob. She thought, for a minute, that she had said something mean. She loved Sho, she loved him so much, and she hadn't meant to imply that he couldn't figure out the washer and dryer…but that had always been her job. Her job and mom's job…but he was getting bigger…but he was still so little…but he was so smart…and he had figured it out…and she was so….so proud of him…and so happy that he had thought about her.

"It's not complicated. I figured it out by watching you…and if you don't want to come out of the bathroom right now then I get it." Said Sho. She knew that he went through this a lot. Sometimes he wet the bed…and usually she got up and did his bedding for him…but he had been doing his own bedding…which meant that he had been wetting the bed without her knowing and being able to help him…and stuff…but that was ok. He was growing up and he needed her less…and that was ok. He was growing up and she was growing up…and he loved her….and she loved him. He was…he was the best little brother in the whole, wide, world.

"Um….I don't know when I'm going to come out. I'm sorry." said Mob. She knew that there was only one bathroom, they always had only one bathroom, and she could not tie it up forever….but she couldn't just…just come out and…and be out there…well she could but she just…

"You don't have to be. I get it. You can stay in there for a while if you need to…and if you need to take a shower if you use the cold water the pipes won't be as loud….not that dad wakes up that often…but if he does then I won't tell him that you wet the bed, ok?" asked Sho. Mob nodded even though she knew that he couldn't see her. He was being so nice to her, not that he wasn't always nice, but he was being so…so nice. He hadn't always been this nice to her. He had been so mean to her, before, back when they had been little…but they were not little anymore. They were older and…and he was so nice to her now…and she…she needed to stop being…like this. She needed to be nice and…and she needed to get out of the bathroom.

"Thank you….I'm going to come out in a minute, ok? I love you…I love you so much." Said Mob. She….she had the best little brother in the whole world. He had taken the time out of his night to wash her bedding, she hadn't wet the bed but she had to do her bedding tomorrow…and he had done it for him…and she hadn't even known that he knew how the washing machine worked….not that it was complicated…and he was so smart and…and he was the best and smartest little brother in the whole wide world…

She loved him more than anything.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love you too, big sis, just come back to bed already. It's late…or early. I can't tell." Said Sho. She felt his aura walking away. She heard his footsteps walking away. She felt….better. She put the towel back on the rack. She felt…the weird feeling was gone…and now she could go back to bed…and then she would feel better in the morning. She would dream about…about something else…she didn't know but it would be better…and then she would just…put all of this behind her…

And stuff.

She got up and left the bathroom. She felt dad's aura…and he was still asleep. Sho was awake and he was…moving around. Maybe he wanted to play. She would play with him if he wanted to. She knew that she needed to get back to sleep, she knew that she needed her sleep so she could get up and make breakfast, but if Sho wanted to play…and also she had to put the laundry in the dryer or else it would get that mildew smell….and stuff.

If Sho wanted to play then she would play with him.

But he wasn't playing. He was cleaning up their room…and he never cleaned up their room. Not even his side of the room…but he was cleaning up….and he was cleaning up HER things. He was putting all of her dolls in their plastic box…and they had a specific way they needed to be put to bed but Sho was a boy and he didn't know that…and also she was just so happy that he had helped her…even though he didn't have to…because he was so little….

But he wasn't little.

She could see his legs even though he was wearing long pants. He was too tall for those pajamas…he had grown out of them. He was growing up. By this time last year…well they'd had a baby last year…the year before that. When he had been eight. Eight year old Sho would never have helped her clean up or do her laundry…he would have hit her for waking him up actually….but now he was ten, not eight, and he was helping her…

And she would help him.

He was cleaning up her dolls and she was cleaning up his pencils. She had no idea what his system for his pencils was but he had no idea what his system for his dolls was. These were real pencils, artist pencils, and she had to be careful…so she was. He was being careful with her stuff so she would be careful with his stuff….because they loved each other and they cared about each other. They loved each other and they cared about each other and they did things for each other…without complaining. Sho wasn't complaining and she…she still felt weird from her dream…but the weird and gross feeling was gone. She wanted to hide in her bedding and wait for tomorrow to happen….but she wasn't going to just let Sho clean up her mess…and also she was not going to make him stay up long enough for the wash cycle to end. She just could not stand there and not help her little brother. She wasn't going to put her feelings ahead of him….especially since he was putting her feelings first….

And that was what it was to be grown up, to help each other, and to be able to just…forget about your own feelings and help out another person.


	337. Situationships and Relationships

Minegishi was honestly at the end of their rope.

They could feel an aura hanging out outside their door. Not Mob's aura, she never lurked like that, and she would have done well to teach her little brother not to lurk either. He was out there, lurking, and he had been since Minegishi woke up…and they had been awake for a while. They had been awake for a while and normally they would have enjoyed the feeling of lingering in bed…but now they couldn't. Not with Mob's little brother standing right outside of their door. They could feel his aura and see the shadow he cast under their doorframe…and they could not relax with someone just…standing there like that even if the door was closed.

Ryou, on the other hand, could sleep through anything.

He was fast asleep. He had one arm thrown over them and both legs tangled up in theirs…and they wished that they could appreciate it. They wished that they could just close their eyes and press their head against his chest and just…listen to him and enjoy being there with him…enjoy the rise and fall of his chest…and the feel of his arms around them…and just enjoy him before he woke up and said something stupid like 'Morning Toshi, I love you' or something like that. They wished that they could have just enjoyed him before he opened his stupid mouth about stupid things that he never should have picked up the stupid habit of saying like a stupid, crazy, idiot….

They would have been able to enjoy this if there hadn't been a possessive ten year old lurking outside of their door.

They were trying, really trying, to be understanding. The kid was going through a lot. He was ten, on the cusp of that godawful time in life, and he was dealing with not only being in love but all the confusion and doubt and just…everything that came with being in love with another guy. They got it, they really did, and they had made an effort to be understanding…or at least not openly antagonistic….but it was really getting to be a lot with this kid. He couldn't help it. He was being raised by his eleven year old sister and his father was Suzuki, and Minegishi wasn't in the habit of psychoanalyzing people but the man clearly had some kind of personality disorder or something, so really they didn't expect him to be the best at dealing with his feelings…

But enough was enough.

They were going to do…something. What they wanted to do was throw the kid out of the house because they did NOT like people lurking like that…but he was only ten and he didn't know any better. They'd probably just tell him, once they fully had enough, that Ryou was his own person and that he could do whatever he wanted and that there was no point in being jealous since he was only ten years old anyway. It was best, well Minegishi thought that it was best, to get these hard conversations over with like ripping off a band aid. That's what they would have done if they had been in Ryou's position….and they thanked God that they weren't.

They would have lost their mind if Mob's little brother had been in love, or whatever the ten year old equivalent was, with them.

Hell. They were close to losing their mind now. They needed to do something about this since Ryou was content to sleep the day away and now deal with the kid that they knew he could feel, even in his sleep he could feel when other people were close to him, they would have to….talk to him? No. That would just end in him getting upset and then Mob would get upset and she had more than enough on her plate as it was…and they weren't going to tell Mob about this. She hadn't noticed yet that her brother had the crush to end all crushes on Ryou and Minegishi was not about to tell the kid's business. They could just tell him to get the fuck out…but then they'd have a pissed off ten year old to deal with…and they were not in the mood to deal with a pissed off ten year old….

So they were stuck.

Metaphorically and physically. Ryou was pulling them in close now like they were a stuff animal or something. Something to make him feel secure. He would never acknowledge it, not even to himself, but he did need something to hold on to. Someone to hold on to. Hence the constant declarations of love. They had no idea if those were even real. If Ryou was in love with them, romantic love, or if he just needed them. If he needed them to be there for him, they had stuck by his side no matter how much 'what' there had been over the years, or if he just needed something to hold while he slept…or someone to sleep with. They didn't know. They just knew that he had said it and he was never going to stop saying it and he said that he didn't expect them to say it back….but they knew that he did…that he wanted it even if he didn't know that he wanted it…

They knew him.

They knew him just as well as he knew himself…even better in some ways. They knew him well enough to be able to acknowledge the things that he did not want to acknowledge about himself. The fact that he was not as blasé about his life and he liked to seem. The things that kept him up. The reason he was constantly moving. The fact that Tokyo wasn't the best place for them to be. The fact that he was reliving his childhood vicariously through the kid. The fact that he only wanted a child, and he did want a child, so he could have a redo of his own life. They knew him inside and out….and they knew that he would never do anything about that damn kid…

That damn kid who was now pacing.

They could hear the floorboards creaking and they could see his shadow passing back and forth….and honestly they'd had enough of this. They were not going to lay in bed all day while the kid paced like a caged animal. Not happening. They were going to…they really did not want to get up. This was warm and comfortable and Ryou….Ryou was warm and comfortable….but they would rather deal with getting up now than dealing with the hole that kid was pacing into the floor.

"Ryou, wake up." Said Minegishi as they tried to untangle themselves from Ryou. He clung tighter, for a moment, and in that moment they both wanted him to let them go and also to spend the rest of their life in that space with him…but then he had to ruin it.

"Risa…" said Ryou as he ran a hand across their back. They didn't care. They knew that he'd had a life before them. They knew that there had been people in his life before them. They'd had people in their life before him. They didn't care. They didn't give a damn that he had called them by someone else's name. He could think about whoever he wanted to while he held them. They didn't care. They didn't. There was nothing to care about.

"Guess again." said Minegishi. His hand was still trailing up and down their back. They knew what he was looking for. They knew him. They knew who he was looking for. They didn't care. He could do whatever he wanted and he could miss whoever he wanted and he could drag his hand up and down their back all day looking for a scar that wasn't there all day. They didn't care one bit.

"Toshi?" asked Ryou. Minegishi rolled their eyes. His hand had found a collection of moles on their back. Why he needed to feel for them they didn't know. They were right there. Their aura was right there. They didn't know what he was feeling for…but they didn't have the energy to stop him. His fingertips trailed from their back up to their neck and then into their hair. He had this fixation with their hair. He said that it felt nice. It was dye damaged to hell. They had no idea what he was even talking about.

But they didn't stop him.

"We have a winner." Said Minegishi as his hand wandered through their hair and then down to their face. He knew what they looked like. He just liked to do this…to them. He never did this with anyone else….or at least anyone he didn't care about. He didn't give a damn how people looked. He did this just because…well because he felt like it…and they didn't feel like stopping him.

"I am a winner." Said Ryou as he let his fingers trace the space where they would have had eyebrows if they hadn't been infected by their parent's genetics. He had been so fascinated with that space the first time that they'd met…the first time they had let him do this. He had just trailed his fingers across and across and across over and over and over again….

Like now.

"What makes you say that?" asked Minegishi as he moved his fingers from their eyebrows down to the bridge of their nose. They could feel his barrier, the one he kept skin close to himself, and they wished…they wished that he would drop it. They wanted to feel him, actually feel him, just feel him near them…like when he was asleep….and they would have been able to properly feel him if that damn kid hadn't been lurking around outside, pacing, and generally being a little nuisance.

"Because I get to wake up next to you." Said Ryou. God, he could be so sappy sometimes. All of the times. Even more than normal since he had confessed to them. He watched a lot of movies, listened to a lot of music, and read a lot of books. He had a lot of lines stored up…and that might have been one of them. They didn't know. Maybe it would have just been easier to think that he had been using a line and not just…saying what he felt…whatever he felt….

They knew exactly how he felt.

"Do you have to be this sappy so early in the morning?" asked Minegishi as he went from the bridge of their nose to their cheek. They knew what was coming, they didn't have to be able to read their opponents movements to know what was coming, because they knew him. They knew him better than he knew himself.

The let him pull them in.

"You know that I do. It's a compulsion, and so is this." said Ryou as he kissed them. The whole thing was simple, really, but they still felt their toes curl. That was his other power. He could strip their senses on the spot so the world around them ceased to exist. It was just Ryou and them, there, in that bed…and it was….nice. It was more than nice. It was just….really nice. Him, there, with them. The world was the two of them and…and it was nice. They wanted….they wanted to pull him close and….and several other things. Things which they were not going to do with a jealous ten year old lurking right outside their door.

That god damned kid.

"Would it have killed you to brush your teeth, first?" asked Minegishi as they pulled away.

"Maybe, you never know." Said Ryou with as much of a shrug as he could do while laying down beside them in the latest of their beds. Tokyo again. The beds here weren't as narrow as the ones before. It was warmed there, and stickier, and maybe they should hold off on sharing a bed until the summer heat and stickiness passed….or maybe not.

"You're ridiculous." Said Minegishi. They rolled their eyes hard enough for Ryou to sense. If he sensed it, they still weren't entirely clear as to how much he actually noticed, he made no indication that he did.

"I know it." Said Ryou. He leaned in and kissed them again…and they wanted to stay, un-brushed teeth and all, but they had to get up. That damn kid was out there, they knew that Ryou could feel him, and they needed him gone. He was driving them up the wall, had been driving them up the wall, and would be driving them up the wall unless they got up, got dressed, and let Ryou to deal with him…not that he would…but they could hope. A person could always hope.

"Well then you can stay and be ridiculous on your own because I'm getting up." Said Minegishi. They didn't need the ability to read people's movements to know what would be coming next. The same thing that always came next.

"Toshi….I love you. Stay." Muttered Ryou as he clung tighter to them. They had to extricate themselves now. They had no other choice. Always with the declarations of love. The constant, never ending declarations of love. They had heard him the first time, the second time, and the five thousandth time. He loved them. There. He had been saying it in plain Japanese for months now…and they…they had no clue how they felt about hearing it….

So they sat up.

The feel of skin peeling away from skin was the most unpleasant part of the whole thing. They were sticky and he was sticky, summer in Tokyo was always such a joy, and also there was everything else that had transpired between them. Him teleporting himself beside them, making them lose their place in their book, and then Ryou's….Ryou-ness. The way that he could just strip them of their sense, their senses, and a few other things before they could even think….God. That was how it always had been with them…

Though they could do the same.

He was not an easy man to surprise but they could surprise him. Those times when they would come to him. When he would be there in bed listening to music or whatever, he Ryou things he did when he didn't have an audience to either entertain or annoy, and they would come to him and kiss him and he would be well and truly surprised…and the trick to that was to kiss him when he didn't realize it...when he didn't expect it…

Like now.

The leaned down and kissed him. They could feel his shock. They hadn't been planning on doing that, they had just done it, and now they were kissing the shock right off his face. Yes, they knew that neither of them had brushed their teeth yet, and yes they were well aware of the eavesdropping little spy right outside their door, but they did not live their life according to the whims of a ten year old boy. No, it was the eleven year old girl they lived for…

And they would not be telling her to talk to her little brother.

Because she was not his mother. It would have been easier to tell Mob to do something about her brother but she had enough to deal with as it was. She was eleven, eleven going on eleven and a half, not eleven going on twenty like every seemed to think. Sure she could have told her brother to knock it off already but Minegishi was not going to ask that of her. She wasn't the adult in this situation. She didn't have to deal with this.

The person who was responsible for this situation having gotten as bad as it was should have been the one to deal with it.

"I know. Now go and deal with the kid. He's been out there since God knows when." Said Minegishi as they pulled their shirt back on. The reached down and passed Ryou his pants before stepping into their own. Ryou didn't get up to get dressed, he just slid into his pants, and then he crawled over and pulled them close from behind. They reached over and grabbed a vine to steady themselves with.

"Toshi, come back to bed. It's early." Said Ryou. Minegishi sighed.

"It's not that early and I am not going to fuck you with a kid right outside the door." Said Minegishi

"I never said anything about sleeping with you. I just want you near me for a little longer." Said Ryou. God. He knew what his words could mean. They chose to believe that he was saying nothing more than the words he had spoken. That he wanted to be near them for no other reason than their company. That no more declarations of love were forthcoming. That he wouldn't hand them anything that they wouldn't know how to handle. That he wasn't about to tell them that he loved them and then looked up at them waiting for them to say it back.

They had no idea if they would ever say it back.

They had no idea if they ever could say it back. They just…did not make those sorts of declarations anymore. They didn't say that and they didn't…they knew what it would come with it…if they were to say it…and neither of them were good at the relationship thing. Neither of them had any business trying that relationship thing again. Besides, it was pointless. Minegishi had no desire to claim ownership over him…and he had better not have wanted ownership over them….

And aside from the ownership thing there really wouldn't have been any difference between their…situationship…and any possible relationship.

"You were with me all night now go and deal with the kid….and I mean actually deal with him." said Minegishi

"I am dealing with him. Today he's going to teach me how to draw, he said, and then we'll throw paper balls at Hatori and then maybe we'll find a park and play with some dogs and-" said Ryou. Minegishi smacked him over the head, lightly, with a vine. Playing with the kid was not the same as dealing with him. Ryou wasn't deaf and he wasn't stupid. He knew what they meant. He knew full well that the kid was deep so deep into that crush that he was drowning in it…and he knew that he needed to deal with this before the kid got hurt.

"I mean deal with his feelings, Ryou, the way he feels about you." Said Minegishi. They didn't care if the kid heard them or not. He was obvious about his feelings, way too obvious, and if he didn't want people to know about this crush of his then he shouldn't have worn his heart right on his sleeve.

"I am dealing with them." Said Ryou

"How?" asked Minegishi. They knew that they would either get a nonsense answer or none at all…and they were prepared for that. Ryou…he didn't do serious or heavy. He avoided everything that was serious or heavy. So he was probably going to avoid this until it exploded in his face…and they got caught up in it too. Well that was just lovely.

"He told me he loved me and I told him that I loved him as a friend." Said Ryou. Minegishi smacked him over the head a second time, a third time, and then a fourth one for good measure. They knew that he couldn't even feel it, he had his barrier up, but this was more so they could relieve some pent up stress and frustration. This man….of course that would go in one ear and out the other. Mob's little brother had come from Suzuki and both of them only heard what they wanted to hear. That kid had probably just latched onto the 'I love you part' and completely ignored the friend part…and they were so glad that they didn't have these sorts of problems with Mob…

Because they would not have been able to deal with it.

"Ryou….this thing is going in the wrong direction." Said Minegishi shaking their head.

"I'm figuring it out. I mean I do love him, but like my own kid, and he knows that I love him like my own kid and I would never fuck my own kid so…I'm dealing with it." Said Ryou

"Right. Well then why don't you go out there and tell the kid that he's never getting out of the son zone?" asked Minegishi. Ryou and kids…Ryou and wanting kids. They knew that he wanted kids even if he didn't say it in that many words. He never came out and said 'I want to have a baby' but he had joked enough times about what it would have been like if they'd accidentally gotten pregnant, kept the baby, and decided to raise it….and that was never going to happen. They'd made sure that was never going to happen and if they did they wouldn't have kept it, they had no business raising a child, but that hadn't stopped Ryou from 'joking' around…and those times when they would wake up to his hand splayed out over their stomach….

They cared about their hypothetical future child enough not to bring it into the world with them and Ryou as parents.

"Yeah, I guess I should…after he teaches me how to draw." Said Ryou

"You know how to draw. I've seen you draw." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. He wasn't good, he drew like a toddler, but he could draw. Basic shapes, and he had to press very hard to feel what he was doing, but he could draw….and he drew well…in their book…and they might have still had that drawing in a book somewhere…as a bookmark. They'd find it later. They weren't going to go through every single book they had just to find something that he had drawn for them years and years ago.

"Yeah I can do shapes and shit but he can draw…well I'm told that he can draw things so they look just like they do in life, and if he wants to share that with me then, cool, that's what we're going to spend our day doing. Maybe go to HQ and throw shit at Hatori or steal some cookies…or maybe just find some dogs to play with…when we're done with all of that then I'll ten him that he's permanently son zoned. How's that sound, Toshi?" asked Ryou

"It sounds like you and him are going to dick around all day and no progress is going to be made on any front." Said Minegishi

"Yeah pretty much. Well anyway he feels restless so duty calls. Love you." Said Ryou. He didn't give them a chance to respond. He just leaned in, kissed them, and then teleported away. They could hear him and the kid...and they paid the two of them no mind. They just let themselves fall backwards onto their bed. Their foot hit a pile of books…and they would deal with that mess later. Eventually. Once they dealt with this mess that they were in.

So many messes.

At some point in their life, they couldn't pinpoint it exactly, they had turned into a housekeeper. They had to deal with all the little messes that kept on popping up in their life….and the lives of others. Maybe when they had met Mob and joined the Suzuki family's entourage…or maybe even further back when they had first met Ryou when they had been young and bored and he had been fascinating…or maybe even further back when they had been fifteen and found themselves alone in the world…alone and free…and free to clean up all of their own messes. Free to make mess after mess and free to clean it up….

They weren't the only one making messes.

In fact they had been trying for years now not to make a mess out of this thing. They were the one who had set down the rules. No spending the night, no cuddling, no 'just because' kisses, no 'I love yous', nothing. They had set down, well proposed, those rules and Ryou had agreed to them…and then they had both let those rules just fall by the wayside…and now they were in this mess. They were in this mess and they had no idea how to clean it up….

They rolled over.

They rolled over until they were on his side of the bed. Not very far to roll since they were in a twin bed. They could feel the warmth where he had been, or that might have just been their imagination, and they could smell him, too, his cologne…the crap he put in his hair to get it to stand up…the faint smell that could only be described as 'Ryou'….though that might have all been in their head, too. Maybe this bed just felt like shitty fabric softener and overly perfumed detergent. They didn't know. They didn't know anything. How they had gotten themselves into this mess, how to clean it up, if they even wanted to clean it up…

Why they were laying in their bed with a pillow pressed up against their face.

This was all that idiot's fault. He was the one who had to go and say something stupid like 'I love you' and just…make another mess for them to clean up. He had moved into their mind rent free. He was there, on the periphery of their thoughts, Ryou. Ryou's fuck ups. Ryou's cologne. Ryou's body against theirs. Ryou's stupid smiles when he was near to them. Ryou's compulsive need to be center of attention. Ryou and the stupid shit he did during his day. Ryou and the cookies from the Claw cafeteria that he would leave there on their dresser even though he knew that sugar was poison. Ryou who would crawl into bed with them when he could sense that they were about to fall asleep. Ryou who would pull them close and say something stupid like 'I love you'….and Minegishi who would say something stupid right back….

They wouldn't.

They would just…not say something stupid right back. They didn't know. He was…Ryou. He was himself. He was unapologetically himself…even when he was a dumbass. Like when he decided to get Mob's little brother stoned…or the thing with the acid…or the time he borrowed a baby…or all of the other crazy, stupid, ridiculous shit he did…all of it. He was himself and….and he was a dumbass…but he was an honest dumbass. He never tried to be anything other than his stupid, crazy, ridiculous self…

And they loved him for that.

They loved him for that and….and they were at the end of their rope, too…and they had nobody to blame but themselves.


	338. You're Not Weird Now Let's Play Dolls

Mob was not too old for dolls.

Minori said that she was but…but what Minori didn't know couldn't hurt her. Besides, the no dolls rule was just because she didn't want people to see her playing dolls or to find out about it, since eleven year olds were not supposed to play with dolls, but since she was across the ocean in America and Mob was in Japan then it was ok. It was ok for her to play with her dolls and wear her hair in braids and wear her Elsa t-shirt and the blue tutu skirt and her long Elsa socks with the snowflakes and her giant sweater and just…do kid stuff. Because she was a kid. She was a kid and she was going to do kid stuff and this couldn't have been so bad, what she had been doing, because Minegishi was playing with her and they were twenty eight years old which was a lot more than eleven.

Mob knew math.

She knew that Minegishi was seventeen years older than her so if they could play dolls with her then it was ok. Minori was older than her, she was born in January and Mob had been born in May, but a difference of years was worth more than a difference of months…or something. Mob didn't know. She just knew that she wanted to play dolls with her best friend so she would play dolls with her best friend and then that would be that. She was going to play dolls like a kid because she was a kid and kids did not think about the stuff that she had been thinking about all the time lately, her stupid brain was putting weird thoughts in her head all the time, and that would be that.

She was still a kid.

"Ok, now they can vote on if they want Belle to move in." said Mob. She picked up her pen from on the ground and inhaled without thinking. She could feel Minegishi's aura on her. She was still using moderation so it was ok. She had to smoke just a little bit. Her brain had been all…weird…since coming to Japan.

All really weird.

That was why they were at her house, and not just because she had this giant dollhouse with working lights and everything, because her house had nothing at all that would remind her of Hatori or any other boys who weren't related to her. Even all of her dolls were girls. Well she had some dolls of guys but they weren't important to the games. They were just for when she played at them falling in love and stuff…and she did not want to play at that around Minegishi…or at all…because playing at love made her feel that weird and gross feeling…

So instead they would be playing at the game of princess roommates.

"Why does everyone get a vote?" asked Minegishi as she spun Elsa around by her braid…which was not the way to play with Elsa…but Minegishi would never have intentionally hurt one of her dolls so that was ok. At least they were playing for real. Sho always tried to make them have fist fights and wrestling matches, Dad just sort of held them and stared at them, and Minori complained more than she played. She was glad that she had someone who actually played with her…even though they were an adult…

And she was much too old to be playing with dolls, too.

"What do you mean?" asked Mob. Everyone got a vote because Elsa was nice like that. She was the queen and she invited all of her friends to live with her in her giant house after they ran away from their homes and stuff. She was nice and she was going to ask people if they wanted to live with someone new. Especially since Belle would be moving into the library and that was a shared space. You had to always share the shared spaces.

"Well if this is Elsa's house then shouldn't she be the one to decide who stays and who goes? Isn't she the only queen?" asked Minegishi. Mob shook her head. Minegishi fundamentally misunderstood Elsa as a person…but that was ok. A lot of people did. A lot of people thought that she was selfish for hiding away from Anna but it made sense because she was afraid that she would hurt her sister. Mob could count the times when she had lost control and accidentally hurt Sho on one hand but she still felt terrible about what she had done. Elsa was a lot like her like that. She felt so bad about what happened to Anna that she stopped hanging out with or talking to her sister for years. So she was a nice person like that, just had to understand, and that was ok.

Sometimes people were hard to understand like that.

She was just glad that Minegishi was playing with her. She was too old for this, she knew that she was too old, but…but having someone even older around made this ok. This was ok and…and she was ok. She was ok enough that maybe she could take off her sweater…later. She just felt better with it on even though it was so hot that she had to wipe the sweat off of her forehead with her sweater.

She was fine, though, even if it was really hot and sticky even with the air conditioner on.

"Elsa…I'm not sure if she's the only queen…but she is a nice person even if she does outrank everyone else in the house. I think that Ariel might have become a queen since in the second movie she has a daughter and also we never see Eric's parents around…and also maybe Belle is a queen since we never see a king or a queen…but there's still voting because Elsa is nice like that." Said Mob. Even when you were the most important person, the highest ranking person, you still had to be nice. Mob was the highest ranking person in her friend group but she never said anything…unless she had to…and she hated it when she had to.

"Alright, if you say so. I think that the red haired one votes that they execute her and Mulan seconds the motion." Said Minegishi. They had put Elsa down, now, and now they were playing with Merida's bow….and Merida didn't use her bow on people…and also Mob didn't know why Minegishi always went right to executions. They always made at least one of the dolls die when they played together. That was just how they were…even when it didn't fit…but that was ok. They could play however they wanted to play but Mob…well she would have liked to know why.

"Why do you think so?" asked Mob. Minegishi was her best friend, that was why they had these matching bracelets, but she didn't always understand them. She couldn't understand why such a nice person like Minegishi, and a person who could be sort of mean sometimes could still be nice, would make such sad things happen in their game…but Mob was bad at understanding herself let alone another person.

"Because they're the most bloodthirsty." Said Minegishi with a shrug. Mob shook her head. Just because Merida had a bow and Mulan had a sword didn't make them blood thirsty. It just meant that they were the only dolls that Sho would willingly play with.

"But…they aren't. They have weapons but that doesn't mean that they're bloodthirsty." said Mob

"Merida is, definitely, ready to start shooting people with that bow and Mulan, well, she did kill pretty much the whole Hun army. Once you start killing people it's hard to stop." Said Minegishi. They shrugged again. The seemed like they knew what they were talking about, sort of, since they talked like they did….but they wouldn't actually killing people…they just knew about things and stuff…from books. They were a nice person. They didn't go around killing people. They were Minegishi.

"Really?" asked Mob. Maybe that was why people killed other people. If it was hard to stop them, well, maybe that was why there were so many people out there who killed other people. If Sho's movies were to be believed the world was full of people killing other people…and in very creative ways…too. Ways that Mob, if she were in charge of the world, would make sure that they never put in the movies again. She didn't get scary movies sometimes…or scary things that happened in life.

"Really." Said Minegishi with a shrug. They didn't look at Mob when they said that…and Mob didn't know if that meant something or not. She got the feeling that it did but she knew not to trust her feelings when it came to things like this. Talking things.

"How do you know?" asked Mob. They wouldn't have….they wouldn't have actually killed anyone…would they? No, of course not. They were Minegishi. They were too nice to do things like that.

"I just know, Mob, so don't take up killing people, it's a bad habit." Said Minegishi. They didn't look at her when they said that. They looked down at the doll in their hands and then at the dollhouse…and Mob felt like maybe they were trying not to look at her…and she didn't know why. She also didn't know why they called murder a bad habit. A bad habit was how Sho left his stuff all over the house or like how dad never put his ketchup glasses in the sink or like how she spent so much time thinking about kissing Hatori…those were bad habits. Murder was murder.

"I think it counts as more than a bad habit." Said Mob before she inhaled again from her pen. She knew that she was supposed to use moderation…and she had been using moderation….moderation didn't mean stopping completely. It just meant not doing this too much. That was all…and she had a good reason. Her own bad habit. She just couldn't stop thinking about Hatori….and Shimazaki when he wasn't saying anything or doing anything….and also that boy who she kissed once…and one time she had seen this really cute boy in Starbucks…

Not a good habit at all.

Not as bad as killing people….if you thought about killing people as a bad habit….but it was still a bad habit. When she thought about boys she felt gross and when she felt gross…well she didn't like to think about that. She wasn't ready to feel gross. She didn't want to feel gross and she didn't want to….to think about stuff….stuff that she was not supposed to think about. Thinking about stuff could have made….well it made people think that she would do stuff…and she didn't do stuff. She was just eleven and…and she had only kissed one boy in her entire eleven years of life…and she just…even that was gross. She shouldn't have thought about that and…and she just…she just wished…

She wished that she could have been ten again.

When she had been ten she didn't have to worry about thinking about stuff or feeling gross. She just….she had been able to worry about other stuff. Like running Claw and taking care of baby Mukai and dad being gone off on a very long away mission without even telling her where he would be going or when he would be back….normal stuff like that. She would have gone through all of that again, even saying goodbye to baby Mukai, if it meant that she could go back to normal.

But she couldn't go back, she could only go forward, so this was what life was….but at least she got to smoke more often.

"And speaking of bad habits…" said Minegishi as they took her pen from her hand. Mob let them even though she was using plenty of moderation. She wasn't getting stoned, that was when she went too hard, she was just…making the thoughts in her head shut up or slow down. Minegishi didn't understand, probably, since they didn't worry about stuff like this. When they wanted to kiss a boy they just kissed Shimazaki and they never felt gross about it. When Mob wanted to kiss a boy she couldn't just find a boy and kiss him, no, she could just sit and think about it…and then the weird and gross feeling would come back…and sometimes she would even just….she didn't even want to think about what happened next…

And she was not going to explain it to Minegishi.

No. They were, well they had been born a girl, so maybe they knew what all of…that…was. That stuff that…that Mob needed to stop thinking about. She just…she wanted to know but also…also she was not going to talk to anyone about that. Especially not her best friend. This was private, so private, and…and she knew that Minegishi would never make fun of her…so she just…just…would not be asking them about…any of this…anytime soon.

Besides, smoking helped…when she was allowed to.

"I'm using moderation." Said Mob. She sounded like Sho there…at least she thought that she did…and she wished that she hadn't. Sho was little and he could sound like that but she was not little…but she wanted to be…but she was….she was and she wasn't and it was complicated and…and she had been using moderation so there was no reason to get all twisted up over this.

"Really? Because that's the third time I've seen you do that in an hour. Slow down." Said Minegishi. Mob reached for her pen but Minegishi wouldn't give it back. They wouldn't keep it forever, they never did, they would just keep it until they had decided that enough time had passed…and then by the time that came around she would just…have to start all over again.

"I am being slowed down." Said Mob. She felt like Sho….but Sho was little and he could act like…like he did. He could cross his arms and stomp his feet and tell her that she was being mean…and she wouldn't act like that…and stuff. She would just…she just needed one more and then…and then she could be done.

"Yeah, because I'm slowing you down. Now come on, let's get back to dolls." Said Minegishi. She picked up her Elsa doll…and she did feel like playing…but she also felt like…like she didn't know. She wiped the sweat from her head. She was…gross feeling….and she just…one more. That was all she needed. Just one more and then she would be done.

"Ok…but one more? I just…have a lot on my mind." Said Mob. Minegishi sighed and passed her back the pen.

"What's on your mind, Mob? Is your dad being weird again?" asked Minegishi as Mob inhaled. She shook her head and exhaled slowly. Dad was always weird but he hadn't been any more weird than normal lately. Well clingy and weird but he always got weirder and weirder as the summer went on. Maybe because he was sad about Mob. That was why she and Sho were sad during the summers. Mob could remember that last summer they'd had together. They had spent a lot of time with mom and taken a lot of long walks…and it had been nice…until they woke up and mom was gone…just…totally gone….but she didn't want to think about that.

"Dad is always weird, that's how he is, but that's not what's on my mind just…I can't tell you." Said Mob

"Mob…well you say cryptic things like that, that you can't tell me, then I worry about you. You know that you can tell me anything, right?" said Minegishi

"I know…but this is just…it's not a bad thing just….a thing that I don't want to talk about." Said Mob

"Mob, you sure it's not a bad thing? Because you're talking like it is." Said Minegishi. Mob shook her head, she hadn't meant to make it sound bad.

"Um…it is…and it isn't just. I don't know. I feel gross because of….stuff…and I don't want to feel gross but….but I do. So that's what's on my mind." Said Mob

"Gross…because of what? Mob, if something's wrong you can tell me." Said Minegishi. They were playing with their t-shirt now and they did that when they were worried sometimes. Their aura was stretching out looking for plants, too, and Mob didn't know what they were so worried about. Nothing was wrong…nothing serious…at least nothing that they could fix. Nothing that they would be able to fix so…so maybe she shouldn't have wanted to tell them…but she did want to tell them and…and they were always such a good listener…and they would never make fun of her.

"Just...I feel gross because of…of what Fukuda said…about me…and stuff." Said Mob. She pulled her sweater close around herself. How could Fukuda have thought that about her, that she did stuff, and that she would do it with Shimazaki of all people? He was…Shimazaki. Also he was in love with her best friend and also he was best friends with Sho and that was not something that she was going to mess with…and also she didn't even want to kiss him let alone do naked bed adult stuff with him!

"Is he running his mouth again? Because if he is he's said the last thing that he will ever say. That fucking-" said Minegishi. No, no, no! She did not need her friends to fight! Even if Fukuda wasn't her friend anymore…she just….she did not need anyone fighting with anyone else. She hated it. Friends should never fight….well Fukuda wasn't anyone's friend but dad's…not even Sho's anymore…but he was still coworkers with everyone…and coworkers shouldn't fight either. Nobody should ever fight with everyone.

"No, no, he hasn't said anything else and he hasn't been an f-wording….whatever you were going to say after that. I'm just still….I still feel gross about what he said before and….and sometimes I think about…about stuff that's gross to think about and….and I try not to think about that kind of stuff because it's gross and it makes me feel gross but my brain keeps on making me think about that stuff and…and I don't want to but…it just…I've just been feeling very gross lately." Said Mob. She wondered if she had said the wrong thing. Minegishi was drumming their fingers against the ground and taking deep breaths. Mob watched them sitting and breathing…and she knew that they had said that they would never be mad at her…but there was a first time for everything….and she didn't want them to be mad but…but if they were then she would have understood.

But they weren't mad.

They just reached over, took her pen from her hand, and inhaled. She let them. Friends didn't always have to ask….though they had just been telling her about moderation….but that was ok. They were twenty eight and she was eleven so the rules were different between them two of them…and Mob wanted to be an adult…but also she wanted to stay a kid…and stuff. She wished that she could have been a younger kid. Then she wouldn't have had to feel so gross all the time…most of the time…

Growing up…it wasn't always good.

"Ok…Mob, fuck Fukuda. Fuck him. Fuck everything he says and does and just fuck that man." Said Minegishi as they exhaled. Mob shook her head. She would never…f-word…anyone. Even someone who was mean to her, well not nice, and also who had to fight with everyone.

"Minegishi…that's mean." Said Mob. That was a lot of times to say the f-word…and she didn't want…well she didn't want to f-word anyone and she just wanted…she wanted everyone to just get along. Fukuda may have had trouble making friends, he didn't have a friend in the world besides dad and dad wasn't a good friend most of the time, but he didn't deserve to have such mean things said about him. He just….he was a person who had been nice before and…and she didn't want…she didn't think that he deserved that. No matter how mean he was he didn't deserve that.

"I don't give a fuck. Fuck him. He shouldn't have shot his mouth off like that and now you have all of this shit in your head…and get that out of your head. Just….I wasted years of my life with that shit in my head and I am not going to let you do the same." Said Minegishi. They shook their head and closed their eyes…and Mob watched them. They had said….that they had felt the same? Minegishi? That Minegishi? The Minegishi who she had known since she had been eight? Minegishi who kept their hair super short, died it lavender, and wore boy's clothes everywhere? Minegishi who wasn't scared of anything, who called themselves 'they' even though people thought it was weird and still called them 'she' sometimes…lots of jerks in the world….and who told the jerks of the world to f-word off? Minegishi who was just….Minegishi? Minegishi had felt gross?

How…did that…even work?

"You…felt gross….too?" asked Mob. They could not imagine Minegishi being her. Mob could not imagine Minegishi being eleven and waking up in the middle of the night from weird dreams…worrying about being…weird and stuff. Mob could not imagine Minegishi as a kid at all. To imagine them as a kid meant imagining them as a girl, since they hadn't been a 'they' since they had been older, and Mob just…could not imagine Minegishi as a girl. This whole thing was just…beyond something that she could…she could not begin to understand.

"Well, yeah, it's hard not to feel gross when you're a kid and everyone is telling you that you're disgusting for even thinking about…you are not me. You're thinking…I'm guessing that you've been thinking about guys a lot." Said Minegishi. Mob….could not picture Minegishi being her age….but they must have been her age before…and they…knew? They knew…well she had no idea how much they knew…but she knew that they knew about the thoughts about boys…and stuff? They just…they knew? Well they liked boys…boys and girls….so they must have thought about them then….and kissing stuff too since they kissed Shimazaki all the time…and that was….that was….

That made her feel better.

"Um….yes….but don't tell anyone." Said Mob. This could not get out. Then people would think that she…she would do the things that she thought about…and worse things. Not that she thought about the worse things, the naked things, she never thought naked thoughts. Just…just kissing thoughts…but everyone would think that she thought naked thoughts if they knew about the kissing thoughts…and Fukuda already thought that she not only had naked thoughts but did naked THINGS and she did not need people, more people, thinking that she did stuff like that….because she didn't! And especially with Shimazaki of all people! She would never do anything like that to her best friend….and also Shimazaki was…himself.

"Is my name Fukuda? No, I am not going to go around telling everyone your business." Said Minegishi. Mob let out a breath that she hadn't know that she had been holding. Of course they wouldn't go around telling people. They were her best friend and best friends did not talk about stuff like that to people.

"Thank you." Said Mob. She leaned over and hugged Minegishi. They reached over and hugged her right back. They were the kind of friends who hugged. They had said, before when they had first met, that they would not be the kind of friends who hugged. But now they were…so maybe…maybe time passing, getting older, and all of that wasn't so bad. At least she got Minegishi hugs.

"Yeah, you're welcome. Anyway you're thinking about guys a lot and it's not gross, ok? It's normal. Think about all the guys you want to and…yeah. That's normal." Said Minegishi with a shrug. Mob wished that she could have recorded that forever. Minegishi telling her that she was normal. That was…she felt…normal. Minegishi said that she was normal. She didn't feel normal but…but she at least felt…a little less gross.

"Even if…it's just…something that makes me feel all…weird…but also…good weird?" asked Mob quietly. She couldn't look at Minegishi with her eyes and her aura while she said that. She didn't want them to know but….but she needed to know what all of this was about and…and she knew that it was weird but…but Minegishi had said that it was normal and they had never lied to her before. They were her best friend and their best friend was not a liar.

"Yeah, that's a normal feeling. You're normal, you're perfectly normal, and fuck anyone who tells you that you aren't. Ok?" asked Minegishi. Mob nodded. She nodded so hard that her braids hit her in the face. She just…she was normal? But if this was normal then why hadn't it happened before? Why…no. If Minegishi said that this was normal then….well they didn't know the whole story of it…but she was not going to go into that now or ever.

"Ok…thanks. Thank you. Um…we can have them execute Belle if you want…so that's what we're going to do…if you want to." Said Mob. She wanted to get back to what they had been doing. That had been too much…too much talk about…about stuff. She was normal. Minegishi had said that she was normal and that was…that was a good feeling and all but….but she would rather not think about this….about all of her weirdness and her weird feelings….about all of it…

So she played dolls with her best friend like a kid…because she was a kid….and she was still young enough to play dolls even though it didn't always feel like it.


	339. A Thoughtful Gift From a Mortal Enemy

It wasn't Sho's birthday.

Sho was born on December first. That was in the winter. It was July now and July was nowhere near December. So he hadn't been expecting any gifts…but he did have a gift. He was getting a gift right now for….some reason. Sometimes he just got presents for no reason, usually from big sis, but this was not from big sis. No, it was from her best friend…and Sho's mortal enemy. Minegishi, best friend stealing no eyebrow having, Toshiki. They were giving him a gift and…and he didn't trust it. It was square, and wrapped in newspaper, and for all he knew it was a bomb or something…or maybe when he unwrapped the paper he would get some terrible disease…or maybe there would be knockout gas and then when he woke up he would be in some room in Korea where he only had a TV to watch and they'd feed him dumplings all day….or something.

Maybe nothing like that, since he hadn't done anything that bad to them, but he did not trust this gift one bit. Not one little itsy bitsy teeny tiny bit.

"The polite thing to do when you're given a gift is to accept it." Said Minegishi. They were holding this square thing in front of them…and Sho watched them. What was their angle? What did they want? Were they trying to get him out of the way so they could be Shimazaki's best friend? Or their girlfriend who was not a girl? He didn't know.

But he knew what he would do if he had been in their place.

He would have gotten rid of Minegishi. He would have bribed them or threatened them so that they would stay away from Shimazaki for the rest of their life. That was just good strategy. They were trying to be best friends with Shimazaki, and were trying to trick him into falling in love with them, and if Sho was trying to do that he would get rid of his only rival. Then he would have Shimazaki all to himself and then he could be the one that Shimazaki hung out with all day and slept next to and kissed….not kissed because that was a weird thing to want from his best friend…but Shimazaki liked girls and boys too….and he was….

Sho decided to focus on the problem at hand.

"You open it first." Said Sho. Minegishi sighed. They had no reason to sigh. They were the one who had come into Sho's house, well to play with big sis but still, and they were the one who was bothering him while he was drawing ideas for new tattoos for Shimazaki. He said that since they were in Toyko, and this was where his tattoo guy lived, he was going to get something new done on his leg and he asked Sho to come up with ideas. That was what he was going to do, what he should have been doing, and what he had been about to lock himself in his room to do if Minegishi hadn't stopped him with a present that he hadn't even asked for.

"Why do you have to be so difficult?" asked Minegishi

"I'm not being difficult. How do I know that you're not trying to kill me? That could be booby trapped or something." Said Sho

"Why in the hell would I go and do a thing like that for?" asked Minegishi

"Because you're trying to be best friends with Shi-with Ryou. You're trying to beat me. I won't let you." Said Sho

"Oh for the love of….yes. There's a plant in here and the minute you open it vines are going to pop out and strangle you to death. Then Ryou and I can spend our days throwing things at people, messing with aquariums, and listening to the same damn album over and over again on a loop. Oh whatever shall I do?" asked Minegishi

"Ha! You confessed!" shouted Sho. He pointed and yelled as loud as he could, so loud that he felt his throat get all red…and that would hurt a lot later….and it hurt a lot now…but it was worth it. Minegishi had confessed and now the whole world would know the truth and then Shimazaki would make him his best friend in the whole world and he would beat Minegishi, who only had boobs going for them really and who cared about boobs, and then he and Shimazaki could hang out all day and…and it would be the best thing ever.

Better than diving into a big pile of cats and rats and mice and hamsters.

And better than going to the bookstore, too, which was Minegishi's idea of fun. Shimazaki didn't even like reading, he liked books on tape because he could do other things while he listened, and there was no way he would like to be dragged into a bookstore and forced to sit there all day reading books and drinking coffee and whatever else Minegishi and big sis had been doing together all day. No amount of boob touches, tongue kisses, and whatever else they did together would make a trip to a bookstore worth it.

So Sho was, clearly, the winner…well he would be…once Shimazaki figured out the Minegishi was fighting dirty.

"Sho, be nice. Don't yell at people, ok?" asked big sis. He could hear her voice carrying from their room. She was putting her books away. Well her manga. She liked to read, too, and Shimazaki wouldn't have wanted to be with her either. So he didn't have to worry about her…and she was in love with Hatori anyway. They were more alike and stuff…so he didn't have to worry about her…

And he wasn't going to start.

Even though his brain was telling him to worry about her. About how she and Shimazaki hung out and smoked together. About how they listened to music and hung out in his room and…and it would have been ok for her to kiss him and let him touch her boobs, and Shimazaki liked boobs for some reason, and Sho didn't because…because he didn't think that they were interesting…and not because he didn't like girls. He just…like girls for their minds…and stuff. Yeah. And he had a girlfriend anyway and he wasn't about to be a weirdo and ask to touch her boobs…or anything like that….

And he was normal, ok!?

"He's fine! You just keep putting your stuff away." said Minegishi. Sho glared at them.

"You didn't have to help me. I could have told her that I was fine." Said Sho. He didn't need help with big sis or with anything. He certainly didn't need help from Minegishi, or gifts, so they could just go back to their own house and be boring there. That would have been best for everyone. Then he could have had some peace to draw Shimazaki's new tattoo and then when he woke up, he was tired from having fun all day which was something that Minegishi wouldn't know if it walked up and peed on their leg, and when he woke up then they could have more fun and Sho would tell him his tattoo ideas and then…and then that would be that….and stuff. It would be good and…and they would be together and…and they would just….be together and stuff. Sho didn't know. His stupid was full of stupid goldfish and he hadn't even DONE anything but think about Shimazaki….and he wondered if Minegishi got a goldfish in their stomach when they thought about Shimazaki….

The thought make his insides fill with ice water.

And now the goldfish in his stomach was swimming in ice water. Minegishi thought about him. Minegishi held his hand. Minegishi kissed him. Minegishi touched him…if they wanted to they could just touch the dragon on his back or his chest….if they just felt like it…and they could do all of that stuff, that adult stuff, with him too…and that was….

Sho wanted to hit them…but he didn't because big sis might not have been in the room but she was home and she would not have liked it if he beat up her best friend…even if they deserved it.

"Yeah, well, I'm just a kind and helpful individual, now aren't I?" asked Minegishi

"I know that you're not serious. What don't you just get lost or something?" Said Sho. He hoped that Minegishi didn't see themselves that way. If they did then they needed to have their head examined. They were the biggest jerk in the whole world! And they were boring! And they had no eyebrows and it was creepy! And they didn't know the first thing about having fun, especially not having fun with Shimazaki. Like…like how they watched TV without the narration on….and also they hated throwing things at people…and they had no idea how to pet a dog so it rolled over on it's belly and wagged it's tale. Really the only thing that Shimazaki liked about them was their boobs and he really should have told them that so that they could just move on already.

Really.

Because Shimazaki did not do the boyfriend and girlfriend thing and also if he did do the boyfriend and girlfriend thing then he would have done that with someone who was fun. Someone who knew how to play and someone who didn't call him stupid when he did fun stuff like make caramel waffles or play 'will it blend' or climb trees to go and play with the baby birds…and stuff. Shimazaki should have just sat down and told them that there was no help and that they needed to find a boyfriend who was more their speed, like a librarian or an old person or one of those people who spent all their time watching the grass grow, and then he and Shimazaki could be…well not…he didn't want Shimazaki to be his boyfriend! Dad would have killed Shimazaki and maybe Sho too!

And also it would have been weird if he wanted his best friend to also be his boyfriend!

So he didn't want Shimazaki to kiss him and hold him and tell him that he was the coolest person in the world! He didn't because they were best friends and….and…and kissing wasn't that great! And he didn't laying bed at night thinking about the best kiss he'd ever had and what it would have been like if it had bene him and Shimazaki all alone in that coatroom and…and he had never thought about that! Not even once in his whole life!

Really!

"Well somebody's getting himself all worked up." Said Minegishi

"….am not." Said Sho. He started to count in his head. His aura had been flaring and…and he had been mad…and he had been mad for no reason. Shimazaki didn't like them that way and…and maybe this present was a surrender gift. Yeah. Maybe they were realizing, now, that there was no hope at all and that they just needed to quit. Yeah, that could work out just fine. This was a truce and now they were going to move on….

He hoped that it would be that easy.

"Ok, fine, you're just a calm little monk. Anyway, my little monk, would you accept this gift if I unwrapped it for you? Or have you given up all worldly possessions." Said Minegishi. They were talking to him like they were making fun of him…and they talked to everyone like that…and that was such a dick move! They were such a fucking dick hole! They were the biggest fucking dick hole in the whole world! They thought that they were so cool and stuff but really they were just a weird looking jerk! And also they had no eyebrows!

None at all!

"Give me that fucking box." Said Sho. He was careful to be quiet enough that big sis couldn't hear. She would get all on his back if she heard him cursing. She had a real problem with that for some reason. He didn't get it. People cursed all the time…but she was his big sis and he wasn't going to cause her any more stress than she had now. She was stressed enough that she had even wet the bed the other night…

So he just took the gift.

Well he would have if Minegishi hadn't pulled it away. He glared at them with his eyes and with his aura. Why did they always have to be such a dick hole? That was worse than being an asshole. He didn't know exactly why but he got the feeling that being a dick hole was worse than being an asshole…but they were just as much of an asshole as they were of a dick hole. They were all the gross holes that a person could be!

And also they had no eyebrows so there!

"Say it nicely. How about something more like this? Yes, Minegishi, I would like my gift now. Thank you for taking the time out of your life to not only get me a gift but wrap it too. Boy am I grateful." Said Minegishi. There was no way in hell Sho was going to say that. There was no way in hell he was going to be nice to them. They didn't deserve it. They were too much of a no eyebrow having dick hole to deserve him being nice.

"Just give me my gift. Or you keep it. I don't give a fucking fuck." Said Sho. He held eye contact with Minegishi. His aura was bright, and it flared, and it pushed right up against their's…and they should have been afraid. They should have been scared. They should have been all 'oh Sho, I'm so sorry that I was such a massive dick hole please forgive me' or something like that. They didn't seem the least bit afraid, though, in fact it didn't even seem like they noticed that he even had an aura…

But someone else noticed.

"Sho? Are you being mean? Do I have to stop alphabetizing my manga?" asked big sis. He didn't know why she did that, alphabetizing it like they lived in a library or something, but he didn't want her to stop. Then she would come out here and then she would be upset and if she had been upset enough to have a bad dream the other night then she didn't need him to be a jerk and make her life any worse.

"We're fine, Mob, so you can just…keep that up. Actually let me help you." Said Minegishi. They rolled their eyes and shoved the present into Sho's arms. Sho stuck his tongue out at them, at their back, and they didn't notice. They didn't notice or care or…or anything! They were just walking over to the bedroom…to HIS bedroom…and he wanted to drag them out and tell them to go back to their own house….

But he didn't.

Big sis would have been upset with him and he didn't want to make her any more upset. Instead he just walked over to the couch and sat down with his gift in his lap. He looked at it. This was a book…or a lot of books. This was either a really thick book or a lot of normal sized books. Neither was something that he wanted. He didn't want to do any reading. It was hard and boring and there was no point in reading since if there was anything worth reading then it was worth putting on tape….and he maybe should have just thrown the gift away….

But he needed to know what was in this present.

He opened the present. He pulled the paper away at the tape. Usually he just ripped off the paper until it was confetti but now…now he was a little more careful in case it had been booby trapped, how it could have been booby trapped he didn't know but Minegishi was always reading books and stuff and they were such a jerk that they probably did stuff like that just to be a jerk…and stuff. They were the biggest jerk in the world…

They were such a jerk that they had left the receipt in the bag….and written a note on it.

"Dear Sho…..that's Suzuki to you…I know that you're going through a lot and I know that you can't help but be a little asshole right now….takes one to know one you dick hole's asshole….and I hope that these books can help. I wish that they had books like this when I was your age….well I'm not you….so you had better read them….you are not the boss of me….and memorize them. Sincerely Minegishi Toshiki." Muttered Sho as he read. Well that was….a note. He put it off to the side…and…oh. There was an arrow pointing to the other side.

"You're either the B, the Q, or the G and there's nothing wrong with that. Don't let anyone try and tell you that there is." Muttered Sho. He didn't know what they meant by B, the Q,, or G so he just put the note down and picked up the first book…manga book. He liked manga but he didn't get this….

There was a long string of letters but he had no idea what it meant.

"Wonderfully LGBTQ….Warmly LGBTQ…..Wishfully LGBTQ….and Wonderfully again? Wat, this one is four….what?" muttered Sho. Well not he was talking to himself like a crazy person…but he had no idea what that word even was. He tried to pronounce it, he spoke pretty good English, but there were no vowels…and also…well maybe if he opened the book it would make more sense…not that he cared about what Minegishi had gotten him…

He opened one at random…and then closed it fast.

Dad would kill him. If dad saw him with books like this then he would kill him. if dad knew…and did Minegishi want…he didn't know. He couldn't think. He just put all four books under his shirt and ran to the bathroom. He closed the door, locked it, and put the hamper in front of it. Then he climbed into the tub, pulled the curtain around him, and then sat down in the tub. He turned the faucet on with his powers just to be safe. Nobody could know about this….about how he had these books…and about how he was…he wasn't anything! So what if he liked girls and boys? He had a girlfriend! She just lived in England and he hardly ever talked to her…and stuff…but she was real and she was alive and she was his girlfriend and she loved him….and he would love her…..eventually….

And he was normal!

He picked up a book and was about to throw it but…but he changed his mind. He didn't want to…to make a loud noise. That would get big sis in here and then she would want to know what was wrong. He didn't want to tell her that her friend was a jerk who was trying to get him in trouble….even though they said that these books were to help him…and they said that they wished that there had been books like this when they had been his age….and stuff…so maybe they weren't trying to get him in trouble….

And maybe it wouldn't have been such a bad thing to read this….since he already had them….

He opened one up and….oh. This one was about…people who were like Minegishi…not boys or girls he flipped some more. Boys who were girls on the inside and girls who were boys on the inside…and he had always wondered about Minegishi….he would read this later. He was a boy on the inside and the outside. The only reason he wanted to be Shoko would have been to have been able to be Shimazaki's girlfriend…because that would have been normal….and he would have been normal…because he wasn't normal now and….he just…he was in love with Shimazaki and….

And he flipped through the books some more.

He flipped through them until he found a story about a boy who liked another boy…sort of like how he was….the same way. He liked….he liked the coolest guy in the world and…and he felt weird about it…like the kid in the story…and his dad would have been mad at him if he knew…like the kid in the story…and this was just…he felt….it was just….nice…to see…

He had never seen anything like this before.

He had seen people who liked….people who were the same before. Sometimes when he had been places where there had been families there had been families with two moms and two dads…and stuff. Sho…he knew that there were other people like him, Shimazaki was like him, but he had never seen it in a book…like it was just…normal. A normal way to be….and stuff. Being in love with…with someone who was like you….being in love with another boy….and stuff…

He had never seen a book like this before.

Part of him wanted to thank Minegishi. He wanted to come out of the bathroom and thank them for this…even though they were trying to take Shimazaki from him…and stuff….but this had still been a nice gift….and stuff. But they were still trying to get Shimazaki to like them…and they were still a dick hole's asshole…but they were also…just….not so bad. Not great, not really, but not so bad.

They had given him a gift, a nice gift, when it wasn't even his birthday….so they were ok. Just ok.


	340. Time For a New Tattoo

Sho knew that Shimazaki had a life….he had just never thought about it before.

But now he had no choice but to think about it. Shimazaki's life and his other friends. People he knew that Sho didn't. Stuff that he did that Sho was not a part of. He had no choice now but to notice, to think about it, since he was in his friend's house right now flipping through his drawings while Shimazaki laid down on the floor arguing with him about…well….it seemed like everything.

But mostly about Sho.

Sho didn't get what this guy's deal was. Sho was ten, not two, and it wasn't like he was going to mess with any of his stuff…even though he wanted to know how it worked. How you drew on human skin. Well he was about to find out how it worked, the needles and stuff, because as soon as he picked out he drawing that he thought was the best then Shimazaki was going to have his friend draw it into his skin with all of those sharp needles…and Sho could take it. Seeing it. He had seen a million times worse in the movies. He knew that he would be able to stomach seeing his best friend getting poked over and over again…or maybe by a bunch at once like acupuncture….or maybe just with that giant one over there…

Sho could take it, whatever was coming, he could take it all and then some. He wasn't a baby.

"Shimazaki, stop bringing kids here! I do not need kids here!" said Shimazaki's friend. His adult friend. His friend who was an actual adult. Shimazaki folded his hands behind his head….Sho went back to flipping through his drawings….and then crossed his legs. He laid there with his arms crossed behind his head and his leg crossed over the other one and Sho…he had to keep looking down at his drawings.

"Relax he's fine. This is the girl's brother, actually, and he's one hell of an artist I hear." Said Shimazaki. Sho didn't look up….he couldn't look up. He could feel his face heating up…and he did not need Shimazaki sensing that or his friend seeing….his friend who Sho did not know the name of and did not care to know the name of. His friend who had had known for years, for longer than Sho had been alive, and who had done most of his tattoos…and who would be doing his newest tattoo….because that was what he did…that was the sort of friend that he was to Shimazaki….the sort of friend who…did stuff like that…

And that was ok.

Shimazaki had friends and stuff. He was supposed to have friends and stuff. Sho was happy…well he knew that he had to be happy….for Shimazaki. A lot of people didn't like him because they had trouble seeing how awesome he was. So he should have been happy that Shimazaki had a friend…and not just a friend but a friend…a friend who drew really well. Sho didn't have to look up to see how well his friend drew. He had seen Shimazaki's tattoos, all of them, and he could have drawn them blindfolded…on paper. Not skin. And with a pen or a pencil or a marker or a crayon. Not with a needle.

And doing pictures on skin was a hell of a lot cooler than drawing on paper.

"So, what, you're honestly going to have me tattoo a kid's drawing on you? What the fuck are you on right now?" asked Shimazaki's friend. Sho glared down at his drawing. He knew that if he were to look up then he would have done much worse than glare. That guy had the nerve to talk to Shimazaki like that….the nerve! Well fuck him then! Shimazaki was his best friend, and the coolest guy ever, and if Shimazaki wanted one of his drawings on his body for the rest of time then that was what he was going to get! Sho wished that he knew how tattooing worked. Then he could have done it himself. He could have taken one of his drawings, or all of his drawings, and then covered Shimazaki from head to toe in them and then…and then he could have covered up that stupid skin picture of Minegishi, too, while he was at it…

God, he hated that stupid thing….

"Sober as a judge, actually." Said Shimazaki. There was a pause and then he and his friend started to laugh…and Sho didn't get it. He got the feeling that this wasn't for him to get, like when he and big sis said 'do you wanna build a snowman' when it snowed and dad didn't get it. Well Sho wished…he wished that he could have gotten it. He and Shimazaki….they had their own stuff…and they could have done their own stuff…and they should have done their own stuff. They could have been doing literally anything else…but instead he was here figuring out what Shimazaki's next tattoo was going to be…and that was…that was a lot….

But so was meeting one of his other friends.

"Yeah….that's not very sober. Seriously, I am not doing this to you when you're fucked up. Remember last time? I remember last time." Said Shimazaki's friend. Sho wished that he remembered last time…that he had been there last time…that he had been there all the times. He wished…well they had known each other for longer than Sho had been alive. They were from the same yakuza family and he was the guy who did all of their tattoos. Sho wished that he could have been born into a yakuza family, then he could have known Shimazaki for his whole life, but instead he had to be born into the Suzuki family and he had only known Shimazaki for three years…which felt like a long time to him but wasn't, in fact, very long at all.

"I don't remember the last time so it's fine." Said Shimazaki. Sho felt the goldfish in his stomach swim up into his heart. That was good. That meant that maybe they weren't very good friends after all. Shimazaki couldn't remember…and that was good…and it was ok to feel this way. He had read in the books that….Minegishi…had gotten him that it was normal to want to always be around someone and to be their only friend and that was called love but also it was ok to let them have other friends and it was ok to feel this way about a person who was a boy, or a girl, or neither….so Sho was ok.

The way he felt was ok.

Well not according to dad but dad was dad. He didn't think that anything was ok. He had a plan for Sho's life and it didn't involve being Shimazaki's boyfriend…..anything more than his best friend. He can't even think the word boyfriend without wanting to run and hide….but he doesn't. He doesn't because it's not his house, thank God because it was filthy even by his standards, and also because….because then he would have to explain why he had been hiding…and Shimazaki could never know how he felt. Ever. That was why Sho didn't smoke with him that often. He had said it before but Shimazaki had thought that he meant friend love…and there was no way he was going to tell him the truth…the truth about how he felt about him….

The way he felt was ok….but that didn't mean that Shimazaki needed to know.

"Shimazaki, come on. You know that I can't do this when you're fucked up. You teleport away, which fucks the whole piece up, or you bleed out because you forgot to tell me that you were drunk or something….so if you're fucked up then you need to take this kid and get the fuck out of here…and make sure nobody sees you leaving. I need all of my fingers for my craft and, honestly, you aren't worth losing a finger over." Said Shimazaki's friend. Sho wanted to tell him to bite his fingers off and choke on them. Shimazaki was too worth losing a finger over! Hell, he was worth losing two fingers and a thumb! And as far as his so called craft went his lines were shaky, his shading was shitty, and he was probably color blind!

So there!

"Well I'm not very fucked up…and I haven't been drinking today so I'm good. Anyway what do you care about Sho? He's a kid but he's cool." Said Shimazaki. Sho did his best to keep his aura from showing how he felt. Shimazaki wasn't so good at facial expressions but he could hear auras…and Sho knew that his aura must have been screaming 'I'm in love with you Shimazaki Ryou and I want you to love me back' over and over again like the time they taught those parrots at the pet store to curse.

"I don't want to go to prison or end up losing a finger….or worse. Shimazaki, that's what I care, I like being able to work and, you know, be alive. I don't know where that kid came from, and if someone's telling you that's your son then I'd suggest you get a blood test done." Said Shimazaki's friend.

"He's not my kid but I love him like a son. Like the son I never had….well I might have some sons out there…but this is the kid who I think of as my kid." Said Shimazaki. Sho…he was happy that Shimazaki liked him…but he hated it when Shimazaki said things like that. He had a dad, he was called Suzuki Touichirou and he was a jerk, and he didn't want Shimazaki to be anything like a dad. He wanted Shimazaki to be a best friend…or a boy….boyfriend…..but that last part was only in his brain and only when he was all alone!

"Well just make sure that nobody thinks that's your kid…for his sake. Seriously. Things haven't cooled down in the least bit…actually they might have even picked up a little…" said Shimazaki's friend.

"Who cares? Things are the way they are and I stand behind what I did and if I get shot at or whatever then it is what it is. The kid, well I can keep him safe. That's pretty much my whole job these days, his body guard." Said Shimazaki. Sho wished that he hadn't said that…that this was his job. Being Sho's friend and taking care of him and stuff. They….they had only met because dad needed a bodyguard…and they had only started hanging out because dad had gotten sick of him…and also because he'd tried to go out with big sis….and he just…he wanted to think of them as friends…but friends without all of that…and stuff…

All the stuff….

None of the stuff. He knew that stuff was….normal. Wanting to kiss someone and be around them all the time was a normal part of growing up….and he….he was normal. He was the most normal….and stuff. He didn't know. He did know. He did and did not know and…and stuff…and now he was looking up….and he didn't want to look up because Shimazaki was laying on the ground with his shirt off and Sho could see all of his tattoos…and Sho….he liked his tattoos…and he went back to what he had been looking at.

He needed to pick out a tattoo and he needed to do that now.

"Yeah, well, I'd prefer not to get shot at…or worse. You know how many times they've tried to get your whereabouts out of me? Too many times, man, way too many times….and I don't feel like going through that again! Seriously. I've known you since forever, and you've been a good canvas, and shit…but I do not need to get shot at…and I don't need to end up in prison, either, and there is enough on me to get me put away for life!" said Shimazaki's friend

"You've been shot at before and as far as prison goes you know that I'd break you out. Come on. Who do you think you're talking to?" asked Shimazaki. Yeah, Shimazaki could break out of anywhere! He could go anywhere and do anything and he was the coolest guy ever and anyone who doubted him could go choke on dicks in a public bathroom for ten yen coins…and not even have any customers even during Golden Week!

"The absolute LAST person who I should be talking to….and nobody saw you come in, right? If the family knows that you're here then I'm in for it." Said Shimazaki's friend. He actually looked around while he said that. Shimazaki wasn't scared at all…he was never scared of anything. Even yakuza guys…and they weren't that scary. He had seen enough yakuza movies to know that those guys weren't that scary….and even if they were Shimazaki was crazy powerful.

"The family can suck my dick." Said Shimazaki. Sho laughed. He couldn't help it. It was just so funny! Suck my dick….that was hilarious. He could almost hear Fukuda in his head telling him that his language was terrible…well fuck Fukuda. He could go suck a whole box of dicks! Ones that had been cut off of gross people!

"Yeah, well, we don't both have super powers now do we?" said Shimazaki's friend.

"The kid does." Said Shimazaki. He nudged Sho with his foot….and Sho felt like he was going to die right there….and stuff…and he just…he didn't die but….he just…he picked up a drawing and clutched it to his chest. That would make the goldfish in his stomach stop….but it didn't….but maybe at least it would muffle the sound of his heartbeat so Shimazaki couldn't here.

"Great. There's more of you. Well one of you had better save me when there's a knock at the door….and one of these days there will be a knock…since you keep coming back to Tokyo like a moron…" said Shimazaki's friend

"Well when that knock comes I'll deal with it, ok? So stop freaking out and just cover in whatever the kid decides is his best drawing. If someone knocks, if by some miracle the family figures out that I'm here, then I'll deal with it like I always have, ok?" asked Shimazaki

"Fine….fine…but if someone asks I am not lying. You don't…you don't want to lie to the new father….he's…worse than the old one….and he has it out for you since what you did to his daughter-" said Shimazaki's friend. Shimazaki shook his head. Sho wondered what he had done to the guy's daughter. Maybe he had broken her doll or something when they had been kids….or something. Sho didn't know. You weren't supposed to be mean to girls unless you had a good reason like them being mean to you first…or something. He didn't know. He and Shimazaki never really messed with girls.

"What I did WITH his Daughter. God, you make it sound like I did something terrible." Said Shimazaki

"….yeah, no, not getting into this in front of a six year old." Said Shimazaki's friend. Sho wanted to ball up his drawing and throw it…and he almost did….but he stopped himself. Sho needed to be calm and not act like a little kid because he was not a little kid. He was not six. He was ten, ten and a half, and he could handle things. He could handle hearing whatever Shimazaki had done to that girl. Like if he had pushed her down or cut off one of her braids or something. Sho could handle anything. He was Suzuki Sho.

And he was not a six year old.

"Hey, for your information I'm ten and half." Said Sho. He looked Shimazaki's friend in the eye while he said that. In Sho's opinion that guy needed to learn to keep his mouth shut. Sho wasn't six, he was ten and a half, and he had been very close to fucking that guy up…but he wouldn't because then Shimazaki would have been pissed at him.

"Yeah, he's ten. Get into whatever you want to get into, he can handle it and I'm not ashamed of what I did. Life's too short for shame." Said Shimazaki

"…still not talking about that in front of a kid. Anyway, what the hell am I supposed to tattoo onto you? And WHERE, exactly, am I supposed to put this thing on you?" asked Shimazaki's friend. He motioned to Shimazaki's chest…and…and Sho wanted….well he wanted him to stop looking…and stuff.

"Good question. Sho, you pick something out yet?" asked Shimazaki. It took Sho a second before he realized that he had been talked to. He had been busy staring at…staring at stuff that he wasn't supposed to be staring at…and he shouldn't have been staring at all because staring was really rude…and stuff….and other stuff…and he just had to stop thinking and…and other stuff….

So he handed Shimazaki the paper he had been holding.

"I love it, it's beautiful! Now get to work! WE don't have all day." Said Shimazaki. He was holding it upside down and backwards…and maybe Sho shouldn't have handed it to him…since he had no idea why he had thought that Shimazaki had been the one to hand it to….

"Um…." Said Sho. He wanted to say sorry. He wanted to say that he hadn't been thinking. He wanted to say that he hadn't meant to not have had been thinking…and he wanted to say…well he wanted to say a lot of things…and stuff….but he just couldn't get any worse out because that stupid goldfish had moved up from his heart to his throat! Stupid fucking thing!

"It's upside down, isn't it?" asked Shimazaki

"Give me that….yeah. This isn't going to fit anywhere on your chest, stomach, or back." Said Shimazaki's friend

"What even is it?" asked Shimazaki. Sho felt so dumb. He should have asked first. Shimazaki was probably going to hate it…and he knew that he had to be the one to explain it…since he was the one who drew it and the one who got it…and maybe he should have drawn a better drawing…one that you wouldn't have to work hard to understand….or something.

"….a dragon eating a cup of pudding….the kind that you like that comes with the sprinkles and the flavored spoon…thing. I mean because you have a lot of dragons already….and you like them…and also that's your favorite kind of pudding…so I thought that you would like it….and I used a lot of colors because you like it when people look at you….and stuff…" said Sho quietly. That had been a stupid drawing. He should have picked the one of that traitor after he went splat, or the one of the time Shimazaki had found that momma possum and thought that she was a giant rat…and then the momma possum but them a bunch of times….or the one of dogs playing cards….but maybe not that one since Sho had copied that from an art book….

His drawing must have sucked….and then Shimazaki would tell him that his drawing sucked…and then he would think that his friend was a better artist…and stuff….stuff like that.

"Sho…you're awesome. Ok, cover me in that." Said Shimazaki. He sat up and hugged Sho really quick, just a one armed hug, but it had been enough to make him want to swallowed a cup of salt to kill the goldfish in his throat…well it had moved down to his heart again….but still!

"Where? And how? This is a lot of color, a hell of a lot of color, and there is no way in hell that I'm going to be able to finish this in one sitting." Said Shimazaki's friend.

"So I'll come back….and before you say anything I'll bring actual money if you need it and I'll make sure I'm not seen." Said Shimazaki

"How much money?" asked Shimazaki's friend. Sho wanted to kick him. Art wasn't about money, it was about art, and that was why artists were starving. Because you had to spend all of your time on your art and you couldn't cheapen it with money…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that this guy was being a total dick hole.

"However much can fit in my pants pocket….here you go you greedy son of a bitch. This much." Said Shimazaki as fished a lot of money out of his pocket. Sho….he would have done it for free. He would have done it for free and he would have taken as long as he'd needed to take to get it done with…but that was him. He was a good friend like that. Obviously a better friend to Shimazaki than this guy was. Sho would have done this for the love of art…

And the love of Shimazaki….but if anyone had asked he would have said for the love of art.

"Ok, this covers the subject of payment….but where am I supposed to put this? I know you can't see but I know that you can feel and I know that you remember getting your whole upper body tattooed already." Said Shimazaki's friend.

"Well then tattoo my lower body." Said Shimazaki

"No way. I am not tattooing your dick again. That was too weird." Said Shimazaki's friend. Sho…he was glad that Shimazaki'd couldn't see where his eyes went. He had a tattoo….on his….WHAT?! What the fuck!? Tattoos used needles..and he had let that guy jam NEEDLES into his DICK?! Sho crossed his legs. No way. Not even for art. Not even for the best drawing he had ever done! And what…what did he even GET tattooed there? Like…like a space shuttle? Or a gun? Or a magic marker? Or like….something else that he was not going to think about….because he was thinking about Shimazaki's….yeah….and that was just…not what he should have been thinking about….

That was weird.

He didn't want to think weird thoughts like that…and also…also that meant that his friend had seen his dick….and that was just….now Sho felt like kicking him and biting him…and stuff…because Shimazaki was HIS friend and if anyone was going to….that was weird. That was really weird. You were not supposed to think about other guy's….even if you were in love with them….that was just…stop thinking about that! About how much that must have hurt…and also…don't think about what it could be! He'd never show it off anyway…and Sho couldn't ask to see….because he would most definitely take it the wrong way…and then that would just be the end of their friendship….and also it was none of Sho's business….and stuff….but he really did want to see….

What the tattoo could have been.

Maybe give him a million cans of coke and then pretend that they had to go to the bathroom at the same time….and that would completely end their friendship….and also get him beaten up, probably, since that was just…not ok….at all….and he would not have wanted anyone to see his….well he and big sis used to take baths together…but that wasn't the same….and also….also this whole thing was weird and he didn't want to be weird so he was going to stop looking and stop thinking and just….maybe find a long stick to poke his brain with so he never had any thoughts ever again.

There weren't any sticks around. Damn.

"Hey, I didn't say anything about my dick…and I never want to go through that again, God that hurt like a mother fucker…just do my leg or something." Said Shimazaki. Sho…was grateful that they weren't talking about dicks anymore….and he hoped that the subject never came up again unless they were telling people all the different ways they could suck dick in a public bathroom during golden week.

"You sure? If I do that then you can never wear shorts again." said Shimazaki's friend

"I never wear shorts anyway. Now get to it." Said Shimazaki. He undid the top button on his pants and Sho looked away. He looked down at his pile of drawings…and decided to add to it. He pulled his sketchbook out of his backpack and grabbed one of his pencils…and pressed it to the paper….and just…waited for something to come to mind. Sometimes it took a minute for ideas to come, but they always did, and he really needed an idea to come to mind right this fucking minute. He needed an idea to come to mind to take his mind off of the fact that Shimazaki was there and he had kicked off his pants and Sho had been him in sleep shorts before but this was different….and stuff….

Weird stuff.

Weird stuff and….and stuff. He didn't know. He decided to scribble. He could call it abstraction or something….or maybe he could just pretend that he had copied Shimazaki. He didn't know. He just knew that he had to draw something because Shimazaki was there and he could hear…he could hear him talking…and he didn't want to hear…well he did. He always wanted to hear what Shimazaki had to say but now in listening he was thinking….thinking about….stuff that he would rather not think about….about the fact that Shimazaki was there and…and Sho was there and….and he was about to get one of Sho's drawings tattooed on his body and….and he should have thought that this was the coolest thing in the world but right now all he wanted to do was pull a Hatori and hide somewhere…

But he didn't hide.

He kept on scribbling. He scribbled just like Shimazaki scribbled. He knew how to draw, sort of, he could do shapes and stuff. Circles and squares for people. Squares and triangles for houses. Squares and rectangles for dogs. Even some characters, too, but his handwriting was the worst. He mostly just liked to scribble, he said that it was relaxing, the sound of it…and Sho….could see what he meant. The feel of the paper and the pencil, the sound of the scribbling as he went round and round in a circle like he was a Spirograph….it was relaxing….relaxing enough that he could shut out the outside world….shut out everything….everything that was happening in that room….the people who were in that room with him…though maybe…

Maybe he should have been paying attention.

"December first, right? Sho?" asked Shimazaki. Sho made a jagged line on his page as he looked up…and now he knew that Shimazaki wore black boxers….and now he could never un-know…and he looked back down just as fast as he looked up. He was laying on his stomach and his friend was drawing on his leg like he was making a base sketch….and Sho wanted to do it since his friend sucked…but then that would involve not only looking up again but getting up and going over there….

And he decided that he wouldn't be doing that.

"Um….what?" asked Sho as he stopped scribbling. His pencil had gone through the paper…but that was ok. That wasn't an important drawing anyway. This was…this was real life, not drawing, and now he was supposed to…to be paying attention…and talking…and stuff.

"Your birthday? That's December first, right? Eleven years ago?" asked Shimazaki. Sho nodded…and then he remembered that he needed to talk. Shimazaki was about to get stuck with a million needles…and he wouldn't be focused on Sho…and that was….ok. It didn't make him sad or upset or weird feeling or anything like that.

"Uh…ten. Yen, I mean TEN, years ago…that's when I was born." Said Sho. Shimazaki had gotten the day right…and that was what mattered….and he didn't need Shimazaki to sit up and face him…or let his aura rest on him…or anything like that.

"Well you turn eleven this year, right?" asked Shimazaki. Sho nodded, again, before remembering, again, that he had to talk.

"Y-yeah…I turn eleven…this year." Said Sho. How could he have forgotten that the year had changed? God, he was so stupid…and Shimazaki probably thought that he was stupid…or something. He didn't know.

"Ok, good. Before you start on that tattoo the kid's birthday over with the other dates." Said Shimazaki

"His birthday? Shimazaki…I know you care about him…but you know that's not your blood kid, right? I mean he…doesn't look a thing like you. He'd got red hair and blue eyes…and I know that color means nothing to you but you don't look like him and he doesn't look like you." Said Shimazaki's friend

"Yeah. I'm not a moron. I care about him and he's got a thing about people forgetting his birthday…and there's no worst feeling then being forgotten….so I'm going to do something that I've been meaning to do for a while…now get to it." Said Shimazaki

"Wow….um….thanks." said Sho. That was all that he could think to say. That was all he could allow himself to say. Shimazaki….was going to remember his birthday for the rest of his life…and that….Sho…he wanted….he wanted…..

He wanted to kiss him.

He wanted to kiss him and tell Shimazaki that he loved him. He wanted to tell Shimazaki all the feelings that he had. He wanted to tell Shimazaki that he was the nicest person that he had ever met. He wanted to tell Shimazaki that he was the coolest person that he had ever me. He wanted to tell Shimazaki that he was the best person ever, that there wasn't a better friend in the whole world, and that Sho wanted nothing more than to kiss him like in his thoughts….like he had been kissed in the coatroom at the Christmas party….and that was why he kept his mouth shut. He kept his mouth shut and he kept on drawing and…and that was all he could do…all he could let himself do….so he didn't end up thinking of something stupid to say and then saying it….

There were a lot of things that Sho didn't want to think about…so he was going to sit and draw and not think.


	341. Can I Please Just Take a Bath?

Mob didn't mind baths.

Not like Sho did. This bath had been meant for him but he really was not in the mood to take a bath tonight. That was normal for him, though, he spent most nights arguing with her about why he didn't need a bath….and she knew that he didn't like water but she also knew that they were living in the world with other people and that meant that those people could smell them so maybe it was best not to smell bad. She had told Sho this but then he had had said that didn't care if other people thought that he smelled bad and Mob…she hadn't had the energy for all of that.

So she decided to get in the bath instead.

This was a very nice bath and Sho didn't know what he was missing. The water was warm and smelled good, she had put in a bath bomb but the kind that smelled nice and filled the water with flowers not the kind that Sho liked that turned the water green so he could pretend that he was bathing in slime, and she liked bathing in the warm flower water. It meant that she would smell good, which was good because she'd noticed that she had been very sweaty this summer…though it might have had to do with the sweater she wore all the time….not that she needed the sweater. It wasn't cold, and Minegishi said that she was normal and that she shouldn't feel gross….

But she did feel sort of gross.

Not as bad as before, because Minegishi would never lie to her, but still she just felt….a little bit gross. Taking a bath didn't help. If there had been some way to take a bath with her clothes on then she would have. That would have been a terrible idea, though, because then her clothes would have gotten all wet and she would have had to wash and dry them and that would have been a lot of work, a whole lot of work, and she just….she'd had enough work to do today…and she hadn't even gone to work….

And the work never stopped.

She could feel Sho's aura getting closer. She could hear his footsteps. She knew that he wasn't coming to talk to her because he changed his mind and now, all of a sudden, he loved to take baths. No. She figured that he needed something…and she was happy to help her little brother with whatever he needed…but also she needed to take a bath. She could rush this. She could rush through the shampoo and conditioner, and she knew that washing her hair in the tub was gross but that was just how she had always done it since she had been little, and she could have gotten out of this perfect feeling and perfect smelling bath and helped Sho with whatever he needed….

And she should have wanted to, too, because that was what big sisters did…they took care of their little brothers….so that was what she was going to do.

"Hi Sho. What's wrong?" asked Mob through the door. She could see Sho's feet under the crack in the door…and she knew that he couldn't see her….but she still felt vaguely embarrassed for being all naked and stuff…even though she was in the tub and in the tub you were supposed to be naked.

"Nothing's wrong. Why do you always ask if something's wrong? I didn't do anything. What's wrong with you? How do you like it?" asked Sho. Mob was bad at talking but she knew that he wasn't happy…and she had no idea why. He had gone with Shimazaki to see the guy who did his tattoos and even got to pick one out. He had been so happy when he left that morning and then he had just come home in the worst mood….and Mob didn't think that it had much of anything to do with bath time…but then again it might have. She didn't know. Sho could be a very complicated person to understand sometimes.

"I didn't mean that anything was wrong with you. You just don't usually come and talk to me while I'm in the bath unless something is wrong or you need something." Said Mob

"Big sis, nothing's wrong, so stop it. I do need something, though. Ok, don't be mad but I'm drinking a soda." Said Sho through the door. Mob sat up and crossed her arms over her chest and crossed her legs, too. She knew that Sho wouldn't come in and bother her, at some point they had come to an unspoken agreement that they took all of their baths alone, but she still didn't want to be seen. She didn't want her little brother to see her like this, he was the last person she wanted to see her like this, and she didn't want to answer any questions that he might have asked either…because she didn't know any answers. She knew that there were a couple of things that he was bound to notice and she knew that he would ask her and she just…had no answers beyond this had happened to her. This was a thing that had happened to her and now she looked like this and now this was what her life was now…and stuff.

"What time is it?" asked Mob. He knew the rules and he knew how to tell time…and she didn't have her phone with her but she got the feeling that it was too later for soda.

"It's not eight yet." Said Sho. He said that sometimes when it was close to eight and he still wanted a soda. She didn't know why he liked soda so much. It was alright but they had a whole fridge full of strawberry milk, or the regular kind too since he liked that better, but it didn't matter either way since he knew that he wasn't supposed to have liquids after eight…or when it got close to eight.

"But what time is it exactly?" asked Mob. She knew that it was late. She also knew that he knew that he would probably wet the bed if he drank soda this late…and also he would be up all night from the caffeine…and he knew the rules and he knew what the reasons for these rules were…but he still tried to bend and break them…and she had no clue why.

"Seven forty three….and that's not eight yet!" said Sho. Mob knew that there was a seventeen minute difference between seven forty three and eight…and she also knew that seventeen minutes was not enough of a difference to keep him from wetting the bed.

"Sho….no. It's too close to eight o'clock." Said Mob. He knew that there was a seventeen minute difference between seven forty three and eight and she knew that he knew that seventeen minutes was not enough. Sho…she loved him so much…but sometimes he could make her head hurt a little bit. Sometimes she wished that he would just listen to her. Sometimes she wished that mom was still around, that way someone else could have made sure Sho followed the rules….and stuff…but mom was gone and Mob…she was the closest thing that Sho had to a mom now.

Well they still had dad.

But she did NOT want dad to be involved with this. Dad…he was a nice person…but also a very mean one. She knew that he had put her in charge because she knew how to be nice. She knew how to get Sho to do stuff without hitting him or yelling at him or making him feel terrible about himself…and she knew that if dad were to be involved with this then he would have said something mean to Sho or done something mean to him…and she could not let that happen. Like the other night when he told her that she should just hold Sho under the water if he didn't want to take a bath…even though he was afraid of getting water anywhere above his chest and that was why he didn't like baths…and because dad was the reason Sho didn't like water anymore….and stuff….

And Mob would not be involving dad in any part of taking care of Sho. Ever.

"But you said no liquids after eight and it's not after eight. If I can't have liquids before eight and I can't have liquids after eight then when can I have liquids? Am I just supposed to die of dehydration? Am I just supposed to shrivel up like a raisin? Is that what you want to happen to me? Me, Sho, your only brother? I thought you love me! I thought you wanted-" said Sho. Mob shook her head. She loved Shi, she loved him so much, and she just….she knew that this was a bad idea…but he was making her head hurt. Sometimes the people you loved made your head hurt…but that was ok. Because you still loved them even though they gave you headaches….and stuff.

"Sho, ok. You can have ONE soda…and you have to finish it before eight….and it has to be the caffeine free kind…and you have to go to the bathroom before bedtime….and I'm going to wake you up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom….ok?" asked Mob. There. Maybe that would help. She didn't know. All she knew was that she was getting sort of a headache and that she wanted to just taker her bath already…and those were maybe mean sorts of thoughts to have. She loved Sho so much….but she also just…she wished that he would just listen to her when she told him to do stuff…and she wished that he would just listen to the rules that she had put down….

But he was her little brother and she loved him so that was ok….letting him have a soda….and him asking her for one…well telling her that he was going to drink one…even though he knew the rules….

"Hell yeah!" shouted Sho. Mob could hear him running away and she could see his aura getting farther away…and she got the feeling that he hadn't been listening at all. Well that was…ok. Sho had a lot on his mind…and stuff….and also she got the feeling that she would have to do some middle of the night laundry at some point…but that was ok. Some people wet the bed and Sho was one of those people. That was why you were never supposed to drink and take Xanax, well also because you would die, but Shimazaki said that you had greater odds of wetting the bed and Mob didn't want to wet the bed…or die….so she was never going to do that…not that Sho wet the bed for that reason….

She didn't know why Sho wet the bed.

She knew that he had bad dreams but he had never…well when they had been little…but it had gotten a lot worse after he had been in the Awakening machine. Sho never talked about what happened in there, and Mob doesn't remember what she saw exactly, but she knew that it had left him with scars all over his body and nightmares in his head…so maybe it was ok for him to skip his bath sometimes…but not all the times…and she wished that she knew what had happened so then that way she could have fixed it…

Because Sho really needed a bath.

And so did she. She needed one and she wanted one and so she would take one. She would take her bath and…and that was what she would do. Even though her head sort of hurt now…and also even though she felt a little weird now, too. She knew that feeling weird made no sense. She knew that Sho hadn't been able to see her, and she knew that they had taken hundreds or maybe even thousands of baths together since they had been little…but she still felt weird. Maybe because she was…like this…now. She didn't know. She knew that he would never make fun of her but…but she also got the feeling that maybe she was too old to take baths with her little brother…and stuff. She was eleven now after all….

And being eleven sort of sucked.

She had only been eleven for a few months and so far it had sucked…and she could think that it sucked because it was her life and also Sho had no idea what she thought that word so he couldn't be able to pick it up and use it. She could use it, anyway, because being eleven really sucked. It really f-wording sucked. None of her costume dresses fit anymore, and they didn't make any in her size, and she had to cut her legs up every day because they were all werewolfy…..and she couldn't go swimming anymore because she didn't want to risk cutting up her underarms and…other places…and also she didn't want people to see her that naked anyway.

She wished that she could have been ten again…or maybe that she could have skipped right over to being twelve.

Being twelve was a good age, Minori had said, because then you officially weren't a kid anymore. Mob…she wanted to be a kid…but she also wanted to be an adult…but mostly she was just done with being eleven. When you were twelve middle school boys liked you….and Minori said that middle school boys liking you was a good thing….and Mob…she just wanted any boy to like her. Well she did and she didn't. She didn't know any boys her own age, the only boy close to her age was Hatori, and her feelings had gotten really weird towards him since being eleven. He was a nice person and she liked him….but she didn't know how she liked him…

And she was going to stop thinking about him.

The way she felt about him, the way she felt when she thought about him, also sucked. She was used to the doki doki feeling, and it sometimes came back, but there was a whole new feeling and it felt gross….well Minegishi said that it was normal to feel the way she felt about him…but also she felt sort of…gross still. Physically and emotionally…and physically it was gross…what happened when she thought about him for too long. When she thought about what it would be like to kiss him and stuff. To have him tell her that he loved her and stuff. It was gross and…and she had no idea if that part was normal or not….

And she would not be asking Minegishi about that…ever.

She would just…stop thinking about him. She would stop thinking about how soft his hair looked and how his glasses were all square and nice and how he always had the nicest sweaters on and how he was so nice to her all the time and how he smelled really good now and how his skin looked a lot better these days and how he hadn't done anything weird or gross or embarrassing in a while…and she knew that she had to stop thinking about him…but she wanted to think about him. As weird as these feelings were, and as gross as they were, she wanted to think about Hatori because….because the whole thing…her feelings and…and other stuff….felt good when she thought about him….

Was she in love with him again?

Or did she just think that he was attractive. Minegishi said that she just thought that he was attractive…and maybe that was it. Maybe she just thought that he was….was attractive…but also…also she thought about kissing him a lot. She wasn't one of those girls who played catch and kiss, that game always seemed mean to her, so she wasn't just going to kiss him for the sake of kissing him. She wanted…she wanted to be his girlfriend….but maybe so she could kiss him…and other stuff. That stuff that Minori had told her about.

She uncrossed her arms.

Boys REALLY liked breasts…and she didn't understand it. She knew what they were for, feeding babies, and boys were not babies…but they still liked them. They stared at them, she had seen boys staring at girls and men staring at women, and the whole thing seemed sort of….rude. Staring at people like that. Rude and also…she didn't understand it one bit. Wanting to touch them. They were there and they were round…well cone shaped….and they were what they were. She didn't understand boys but she knew that they liked breasts…and she sort of had some….not really but sort of….and maybe it would have been ok if…well maybe if….

She didn't know if it was ok to think about.

Minori talked about stuff like that. She had been felt up before…and she said that you did that because boys liked it…and stuff. She hadn't explained WHY boys liked it, though. Boys weren't babies, it would have made sense for babies to like them because babies drank milk, but boys liked beasts even more than babies….and maybe….maybe Hatori would like….Mob didn't want to think about that. She wasn't Minori. She wasn't as brave as Minori. She couldn't just think about what…what it would be like…if Hatori touched her on her….

She needed to stop thinking about this.

She needed to think about…about washing her hair. She had a lot of hair and it needed washing. She needed to pre shampoo and then shampoo and then rinse and then pre condition and then condition and then re condition and the leave in condition…and that was what she needed to think about. About what Minori taught her about taking care of her hair and not about….about what else Minori had taught her. About when it was ok for a boy to touch you on your….what it felt like….and stuff. She had think about her hair and…and not what it would be like if Hatori were to….not that he ever would….

Because he didn't like her like that.

He didn't even like girls, first of all, and second of all he liked people closer to his own age. Not hers. Also dad would be mad at him. Also the whole thing would be so embarrassing. She didn't want…she did and she didn't…and the whole thing was just…she knew that it was for boys to like and…and then it would be pointless and stuff….or something. She didn't know. All she knew was that this was not the thing to think about. She had….she had to wash her hair….and stuff…and she had to…

To stop thinking about what that would be like.

It probably wouldn't be like…like anything. She didn't know. She just…she had no idea….what it would be like. She had never even touched her own…well she had before because she had to take baths and stuff…and she was in the bath…and stuff. There was soap. There was soap and she was taking a bath and…and it wouldn't have been weird because….because that was her own….self. The whole thing would have been weird if she had been another person…and stuff….but it wasn't like another person would ever touch her there…because that would have been embarrassing. A boy just touching her on her…well Minori said that he had to kiss you first. You had to have been going out with him for a long time….a very long time…before it was ok for him to touch you….and a very long time meant a lot of kisses….and kisses were….she liked kisses and…and she maybe she would have liked….liked…well she did like kissing and….and kissing….was something that a boy did to you…and this was something else that a boy did to you….

And maybe it would be….nice?

She didn't know. She just….well this was a bath…and this was herself….and then maybe it would be….ok. She didn't know. She locked the bathroom door again. She locked the bathroom door again and out the hamper in front of the door…and she wondered if it would be ok to move the towel cabinet over too…but that was nailed to the wall and floor….and she was strong enough to be able to move it but…but then people would hear and notice…and it wasn't like she was doing anything wrong….

She was just taking a bath.

That was all. She was just taking a bath like normal. She had taken a million baths, maybe, in her whole lifetime. This was just another bath. She was the only one who…who was there. She was the only one who could do this…and it wasn't weird…because it was her own self….and also soap was a normal part of taking a bath…so this was ok and…and it was…not weird. This wasn't weird so why did she feel weird about this?

And why did it feel so…weird?

Good and weird at the same time…and also sort of gross. The gross feeling was there again. That stupid gross feeling that clung to her all the time…when she thought about stuff like this…and she was thinking about…not about Hatori but….well not him specifically…but if a boy….if a boy were to ever like her….to ever like her enough to…well not to get right to it because that took a lot of time but to…well to kiss her a lot…and also spend a lot of time with her and like her and love her and…and all of that other stuff. The stuff that she had never had with any boy before in her life. She had kissed one boy in her whole eleven years old life and she knew that there was no chance that she would ever see him again…and that would probably be the only kiss of her whole life…

But she could still imagine.

Not that she was imagining anything. Not that she was thinking of what it would have been like to have a boyfriend. To have someone who loved her for who she was. To have someone who cared about her, who always wanted to be with her, who could hold her hand whenever she wanted….who could kiss her whenever she wanted….who could do more than kiss her…if she had ever asked him…not that she would ask something like that of anyone….because it would just be….

Weird.

It would be weird to ask and…and to have someone actually…and just doing this right now was super weird…so she should just…stop it. Stop being weird. Stop acting weird and stop thinking weird thoughts…even though Minegishi had said that they weren't weird thoughts and that they were normal…but Mob didn't feel normal. She felt kind of weird…a good kind of weird that she did not want to think about…and thinking about it made it feel bad….but just…not thinking about it, how weird this was, but instead of…what it would be like to have someone like her enough to want to kiss her and hold her and stuff….that wasn't weird at all. That was the opposite of weird. That was…nice. This was…nice. Nice but also….also weird…

But also nice.

Until the bathroom flooded.

"Daughter?" She hadn't been paying attention to the world around her. She should have been paying attention to the world around her. If she had been paying attention to the world around her then she would have noticed dad's aura getting closer, dad's footsteps getting closer, dad getting closer to her while she was….in the bathtub doing bathtub stuff. Stuff that she knew that nobody had been able to see or know about….

But she still should have been paying attention to the world.

Because not the bathroom was wet. There was water everywhere. There was water on the floor and the bathmat was soaked and the walls were soaked….and she would have to dry that off…but she couldn't dry the walls off because she had pulled the towel off of the rack and covered herself with it…while she was still in the tub…which still had water in it…and now she had something else to worry about. Which was good. Now that she had something else to worry about and that was good because….because then she wouldn't have enough space in her head to think about…about what she had been thinking of…and doing…not that she had been doing anything….but she had still be thinking weird thoughts…

And she had to stop thinking about stuff.

"Yes dad?" asked Mob. She was fine, she wasn't thinking about anything, she didn't know what dad thought that she could have been thinking about because she hadn't been thinking about anything at all. She was fine and she wasn't…she hadn't been….she was fine! Dad had nothing to be suspicious of! Because she was not suspicious!

"Are you….alright? The hallway carpet is wet." Said dad. Mob wanted to know what he cared. He wasn't the one who cleaned things up. He wasn't going to clean up and that wasn't his responsibly and if he needed the bathroom then…then he should have just….just….just waited his turn!

"Dad, I'm fine. You just surprised me, that's all. Do you need the bathroom? Because I can come out if you want." Said Mob. She didn't want to come out. She wanted to live in the bathroom. She wanted this to be her new home. She needed to live here because if she came out then…then maybe dad would be able to tell…and then if he could tell she would…she would just….she would die right there.

"No. I don't need you for anything and you can have the bathroom." Said dad

"Ok….so what do you want then?" asked Mob. She knew that she had said that sort of meanly but…but she just….she just wanted some privacy, was that too much to ask? To have some privacy in the bathroom?

"I just wanted to tell you that your brother is sitting on the kitchen table drinking soda after soda, I think he's up to five now, and I thought that it would be best to tell you." Said dad. Mob sighed. She sat up, kept her towel on as she sat up, and ran a hand through her wet hair. Sho knew better. Sho knew not to drink soda after soda after soda…and also he knew not to do that after eight and since she didn't have a phone near her she didn't know the exact time but she knew that it had to be after eight…and Sho knew better…and now she had to go out there and stop him…and also clean up the water…and also do his laundry for him because he would end up wetting the bed tonight…but she wouldn't complain…because this was her job…

This was normal for her and she needed to get back to being normal.

"Dad….I'll stop him. Thanks. I'll be out in a minute." Said Mob. She felt dad walking away. She felt his aura and he heard his footsteps…and she just…she was very still until she could feel him being back in his room. She waited just a little longer before she got up out of the tub. It was half empty now, or half full now, depending on how she looked at it. But she didn't want to look at it. She didn't want to look at it and herself, too, and that was why she kept the soaking wet towel close to herself…

She didn't want to look at herself.

She knew that she should have gotten rid of that wet towel. She should have, actually, gotten back to the tub and washed her hair….and the rest of her. Really only her chest was clean…and she was not getting back into that tub. She was going to get out and dry off and…and just…take another bath tomorrow…or the next day. She didn't know. She just knew that she had a lot to do. She had a lot to clean up and she had to get Sho to stop drinking soda…or anything….and she just…she had so much to do that maybe she wouldn't even have the time to take a bath tomorrow…or the next day.

Mob didn't mind baths, not really, but she just…didn't have the time to finish tonight.


	342. Self Drawn Tattoos

When Sho grew up he was going to cover himself in tattoos…but for now he would just settle for drawing on himself.

Which seemed like a good way to pass the time. Just him and Shimazaki outside under the sun hanging out and drawing. Well he was drawing, on himself, Shimazaki was laying down on his back looking up at the sun. He was lucky, he didn't get sunburns, not like Sho did…but he didn't mind them. Not that much. Sunburns were better than sunscreen and Fukuda could fix them…well they would get better on their own eventually. He was ten now, ten and a half, and he could heal from his own sunburns. He didn't need Fukuda to fix them for him. He didn't need Fukuda for anything anymore.

He didn't need that traitor.

And that was what he was, a traitor. He had told dad about Emmy when he had promised, made an actual honest to whatever God was listening promise, and then he had just gone off and told dad the truth the first chance he got. He just…how could he DO something like that? Sho…he didn't want to think about this. Thinking about this made him mess up. He was going by feel. He couldn't see his own back so he was going by feel while he drew over his tree. He was drawing a tree over his tree.

Well he was trying to, anyway.

He was trying his best to cover up his tree with a drawing of a tree. He was using his good markers now, the permanent ones, so that way it would last a while. Tattoos were better than scars, Shimazaki had said so, because tattoos made people look at you like you were cool while scars made people look at you like they were sad for you. Well Sho didn't need people to be sad for him. So he had been through an Awakening experiment, that didn't matter, because it made him stronger and faster and better and cooler and more powerful. So it hadn't been a bad thing just…it had left him with a lot of scars…scars which he was not supposed to show to people.

So he covered them up with drawings.

He had copied the dragon on Shimazaki's chest already. That had been easier because he could sort of see what he was doing. Same for the picture of big sis he drew on his arm. On the other one he did a list of important dates. His birthday, big sis's birthday, mom's birthday, Shimazaki's birthday, Christmas because it was awesome, and there was space for more dates when more important stuff happened. Shimazaki had a list of important dates on his arm…and Sho only knew his birthday…and Shimazaki had said that he was too young to know a lot of those stories….and Sho didn't feel like he was too young to know…but he didn't want to piss Shimazaki off or anything like that.

That was the very last thing he wanted to do.

He wanted to be friends with Shimazaki. He wanted to be friends with him forever. He wanted to spend every day like this. The two of them together. Even if they weren't really doing anything, like now. Shimazaki was just feeling the sun and Sho was just drawing on himself and trying not to get a sunburn. They weren't doing anything cool like messing with people or climbing trees or setting the fish in aquariums free or anything else but…but he just….Sho wouldn't have traded this for anything else in the whole world…

Just him and Shimazaki all alone together.

Big sis and Minegishi were doing whatever it was that they did together and everyone else was at work. It was just him and Shimazaki and…and it was just…it was great. Just him sitting there in the grass and Shimazaki laying down on his back with his jacket like a pillow…and Sho had no idea why he even had a jacket since it was summer….but he wasn't going to argue. He just…looked so…Sho didn't know. He looked like…like it would have been…like he wanted to draw him….

He focused on what he was doing.

Well he tried to, at least. He tried to focus on taking that marker and drawing over the lines of the tree on his back. A line of brown over a line of red. He tried to feel the path it took. Across his back and up to his shoulder. He had felt this tree a thousand times since he got it. He had reached behind himself time and time and time again and felt for it, the way it went, the raised skin…and now he was doing it again…but with his marker and his powers….and he almost had it…but then Shimazaki had to move and his stupid shirt went up over his stupid stomach and the light hit him and he was just so…Sho just wanted to draw him…and he could have drawn him…but no since he had just….

He couldn't even draw a straight fucking line!

"Damn it!" said Sho. That had been a permanent marker. Now he would have to take rubbing alcohol to his back. Now he would have to fix this…and soon…and then he would have to start again…and he just…he would have to go inside then to fix it and…and then he would have to…

Damn it!

"What are you even doing over there?" asked Shimazaki running a hand through his hair. He could feel it starting to droop. God, it was so hot out but laying down and staring up at the sun was worth it. It was so…sunny? Warm. Nice. He didn't know. He'd been going pretty hard all day. He had to so he could drown out the sound of that kid's aura. Toshi was right. This thing wasn't going in the right direction. That was probably because he was at that special time in life or whatever. Well that was fine. He could feel whatever he wanted to. It wasn't going to change the outcome.

Though it would have been nice if the kid found someone else to be into.

Claw had a good male to female ratio in the sense that there weren't any women. Well there were very few, very few non guy espers in general, so the kid should have found someone else and just moved on by now. Shimazaki hadn't done a thing to encourage this. If anything he had been letting it die, like when you forgot to water your plants for a while, but the kid was some kind of stubborn desert plant or something. He just would not move on. Why? Well Shimazaki knew he had it going on but, eventually, he would have imagined that the kid would have gotten bored and fallen for someone else.

But that, obviously, was not going to be happening anytime soon.

"Drawing." Said Sho. He was glad that Shimazaki couldn't see the mess that he'd made of himself. This looked so bad and now he would have to fix it….but he could do that later. Much later. Because that would have involved going…and he just wanted to stay put…so that was what he was going to do. Stay put.

"On yourself?" asked Shimazaki as he sat up. He had sensed that the kid had been moving…and he could smell ink…sort of. It was hard to smell anything over that kid. When was the last time he'd had a bath? Someone needed to tell him that he was getting to be old enough that he had to start taking at least a shower if not a bath every single day….and that body spray was not a substitute for bathing. No, nobody needed to have to deal with another Hatori. One was more than enough.

"Yeah. It's my skin and I'll do what I want with it." Said Sho. He crossed his arms…and he hoped that the ink didn't end up getting smeared. He knew that these were supposed to be permanent but he was really sweaty…but he didn't want to go inside. He wanted to be outside. While they were outside they could think up fun outside stuff to do…and also if they went inside then Shimazaki would put his coat back on…and Sho…well he didn't care what Shimazaki did…he just…preferred that he didn't wear a coat for….reasons.

Normal people reasons.

Not love reasons…and stuff. Just for reasons which were perfectly reasonable and which Sho did not have to explain to anyone! Not that he knew who it was that he was explaining himself to…and not that he knew what he was even getting all worked up and mad about. His aura had flared. That meant that it had been loud, well to Shimazaki Sho hadn't heard a thing, and that meant that Shimazaki would hear his aura and ask what was wrong and….and nothing was wrong! Nothing that Sho wanted to explain….because there was nothing to explain! His aura was just flaring, that was all….and he could just….he had nothing to explain!

Damn it! He did it again!

"Hey, hey, I never said that you couldn't. I just wanted to know what in the hell was happening over there." said Shimazaki. Well someone was certainly getting worked up over something. That kid. That damn kid. The damn kid with the screaming aura…and it was screaming. Worse than it had before. But that made sense since he was getting older or whatever. Maybe this would get better once he got older. Shimazaki got the feeling that Sho would end up finding someone else easily when he stopped being ten. Yeah. He'd find someone who made him feel like he was the number one game in town and then he would forget about this damn crush he had…and that he'd had for years maybe even…and then this whole thing could be like a distant memory….

Yeah. And maybe Shibata would willingly hand over the waffle maker.

"You can't see me?" asked Sho. He waved his hand in front of Shimazaki's face. Why couldn't he see him? Was Shimazaki ignoring him? Did Shimazaki think that he was boring? Was he going to teleport away? Was he going to teleport away and make some other friends? Or see some of the other friends that he'd already made? Was this it? Did he want nothing more to do with Sho? Would they never be friends again? Never hang out again? Never-

"I can't see anything." Said Shimazaki with a laugh. He was the only one laughing. The kid wasn't laughing in the least bit. No, his aura was still freaking out…and Shimazaki had no clue why. God. Sad people were boring but freaked out people were exhausting. Unless they were the fun sort of freaked out…which the kid was not. God. Well not he had to fix this…this…whatever this was. Alright then. It wasn't like he had anything else to do this afternoon.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're blind. You know what I meant." Said Sho shaking his head. That hadn't been funny. Here Sho was worried sick that Shimazaki was done with their friendship but Shimazaki was just…being there and stuff. Just being there and telling jokes and acting like there was nothing at all to worry about…and maybe there wasn't. Sho turned red. Right. He had been the only one worried…so that meant that there was nothing to worry about….

And he was so glad that Shimazaki couldn't see his face.

"Well now isn't that just a kick to the balls?" asked Shimazaki with a shake of his head. The kid used to laugh more easily. He had better not have been turning into a moody teenager. He wasn't even eleven yet. Shimazaki wasn't ready to deal with a moody teenager….and the kid wasn't even a teenager yet! He was eleven, well ten and a half, so a….tween? He was a moody tween…and Shimazaki didn't want to have to deal with a moody teen or tween or kid…..because moody people were so fucking boring! And the kid did not need to be boring. There were enough boring people in the world as it was!

"What's a kick to the balls?" asked Sho. He crossed his legs. He knew what that was but he hadn't even tried to do that. You weren't supposed to kick guys there because that was fighting dirty. There was nothing wrong with fighting dirty if you owned up to it, Shimazaki had said, but Sho didn't want to give anyone any ideas in fights…because he had never been kicked there but he knew that it would hurt.

"This." said Shimazaki. He kicked Sho, well he reached over to kick him, but Sho rolled out of the way. He could feel him moving, hear the grass, and he decided to let the kid win. He was pretty committed to the whole rolling thing. He made three good rolls and a half roll before he came to a stop. He came to a stop after a half circle's worth of rolling…right beside Shimazaki. He sat up and put some distance between the two of them. He liked the kid, he really did, but he didn't see any reason to make his feelings any worse than they were.

"Too slow." said Sho. He sat up and brushed the grass from himself. Shimazaki rolled out of the way…and Sho was not going to roll after him…because that would have been weird and Sho was weird to feel like this and think like this…well the books said that this was normal…but lots of stuff was normal. That didn't mean that his best friend needed to know what he was thinking and feeling.

"Whatever. I wasn't actually going to kick you in the balls, never do that by the way, that's a low move." Said Shimazaki. He picked up some grass, Toshi would kill him later for this, and put it in the kid's hair. Hey, there was grass and he was only human.

"If I want to kick people in the balls I will." Said Sho as he shook the grass from his hair. He knew not to kick people in the balls…but he could do anything he wanted to do. He could kick anyone…well he wouldn't….but he totally could!

"Metaphorically kid, not physically." Said Shimazaki worried that he had created a monster. Yeah, he was responsible for a lot of bad shit in the world, it was his fault that you only got one sample from the ice cream place with all the flavors, but he did not need to be responsible for the kid going around and kicking people in the balls. That was just…not good. For anyone…well anyone with balls…but it still hurt if you didn't have any, right? He imagined it would. He'd ask Toshi later…well if they were in a good mood. It depended on how their day went. Hopefully it went well. Then they could spend the evening together and they could listen to a book together….and it would be great. God, he missed Toshi so much…

"What's metaphorically?" asked Sho. He could kick people however he felt like it…maybe. He didn't know. Big sis would be pissed at him if he kicked someone…and she had been pretty pissed off lately. She had flooded the whole bathroom the other night just because he drank a few sodas after eight…and she didn't even have to get upset since he hadn't even wet the bed. He'd had to stay up all night, like the times when he'd had to stay with Fukuda on their away missions, but it had been worth it to prove her wrong.

"The fact that you used to think that I was funny is a metaphorical kick to the balls, kid." Said Shimazaki shaking his head. Sun rise, sun set, and all of that. What happened to the little kid that he had met? When had he turned into…whatever this stage of life was called.

"I still think that you're funny. I think that you're the funniest person in the whole world." Said Sho. He scooted a little closer when he said that…and Shimazaki scooted away…and he had only done that so Shimazaki could hear him because it was…loud…out there. The air conditioners were loud and the birds were loud and also there were cicadas…and they were loud….and that was why he had scooted closer and no other reason than that…

And he did not feel hurt when Shimazaki scooted away.

"Thanks." Said Shimazaki. So the kid thought that he was the number one game in town…he could deal with this. He could deal with how the kid felt and Toshi was wrong. This thing was not moving in the wrong direction. There was no wrong direction. There was only…well there was a wrong direction…but the kid wasn't going in any direction…and….and Shimazaki was handling it!

"Really, I think so. I think that you're cool…and funny….and stuff." Said Sho. He just…wanted to sit near him…that was all. There wasn't anything wrong with that. He had read that you just couldn't touch anyone or kiss them without asking…and maybe all those girls who had kissed him when he had been little should have read that….but this was ok. Just wanting to be next to him and…and they were friends and friends could be near each other. Big sis and Minegishi were always sitting next to each other and painting each other's nails and sitting close to play dolls and stuff…and so this was ok…or maybe it was different for girls…girls and Minegishi….or something….

Sho didn't know. The only thing he knew was that he wanted to be near Shimazaki.

"Kid…I think you're awesome….but you stink to high hell." Said Shimazaki. There. That was a valid reason to tell the kid to put a few centimeters between the two of them. He really did stink. He stank like he hadn't even heard of a bath…and he got it. The kid had been through the awakening thing and those guys were weird about water….and also a lot of them stank to high hell…and he was pretty close to dumping a bucket of soapy water onto the kid.

"I….I do?" asked Sho. He didn't think that he smelled that bad. Sure sometimes he smelled himself and he knew that he didn't smell good….but he didn't think that he smelled bad. He smelled…like himself. He didn't need a bath. He could go another couple of days or weeks…or until big sis came into the bathroom and made him take a bath since he suspected that she was getting wise to him….and he would bathe when she made him.

"Yeah. You really do. You're almost eleven, you're just about old enough that you need to take a bath or a shower every single day. An actual bath or shower. Don't pull a Hatori and just layer on the body spray. We don't need two of him." said Shimazaki with a shudder. At some point he was going to have to take the kid cologne shopping. Cologne was better smelling than body spray in every single way. God, the kid was so lucky that he had someone to teach him the important things in life.

"I…don't like to take baths…for reasons." Said Sho. He didn't want Shimazaki to know the he was such a baby….such a whiny baby when it came to…to stuff. Stuff that had happened to him when he had been little. He had been a kid when that had happened and now…now he was an older kid…and stuff. He shouldn't have been afraid of water, or anything, but he just….was…for some reason.

"Because they drowned you?" asked Shimazaki. Well that earned him another aural scream from the kid. What? He knew that Shimazaki knew…right? That he had been drowned and electrocuted and frozen and burned and whatever else they had decided to do to try and awaken whatever powers people had dormant…even though the kid had come from Suzuki so he shouldn't have even been in one of those places in the first place…but what did he know?

"How…how did you know?" asked Sho. Sho didn't have a shirt on…but Shimazaki couldn't see scars and stuff. Sho had spent a whole afternoon telling him what kinds of scars that the different Scar guys had. Shimazaki couldn't see them…could he? Sho didn't know. He just sort of really wanted to put his shirt back on now….

"Kid, I've been in Claw for years. I know what they do to the awakened. I've been to the labs and I've seen the scars those places leave." Said Shimazaki. No kid should have had to go through that. It was torture, literal torture, and he would have thought that Suzuki would have valued his only Son more…but he would get his. Eventually. He was the most powerful esper in the world now but he would get old and he would get slow and then he would get his.

"You know I have scars?" asked Sho. Shimazaki…well he had picked him up a million times before…but he just…they were cool scars. They were cool and…and Shimazaki must have thought that they were cool…or maybe he didn't. Maybe he didn't like scars because he had covered his up with tattoos.

"Yeah, I've felt them before when I've picked you up. I'm guessing that you have all the scars the awakened have." Said Shimazaki. Maybe that had been the wrong thing to say…because his aura was screaming again…and really. Come on kid. He knew that love didn't mean ownership…right? Or maybe he was too young to know…or something. Shimazaki didn't know. Kids were complicated.

"They all have trees?" asked Sho. He tried not to think about Shimazaki being close enough to someone else to touch them like that…and he tried not to think about Shimazaki just…how easy it would have been for him to just reach over and…and just….he stopped thinking about that. Nothing good would come of thinking about that.

"Trees?" asked Shimazaki. He had felt those before and they didn't feel like trees. They felt more like…vines? Or like an octopus…or something. He didn't know. He hadn't spent a lot of time feeling their scars. He didn't much like being with them in any way and he hadn't even done much of that. Not after he had realized that all of them were crazy as fuck.

"Yeah…on my back there's this thing that feels like a tree." said Sho quietly. He wanted Shimazaki to touch his back. He wanted Shimazaki to reach over and touch his back and…and he just…could not stop thinking about this. About how he could have just…reached over and touched him…and stuff.

"Huh. Show me…get it? Show me? Because you're Sho." said Shimazaki. He thought that, maybe, he could make his aura stop screaming….but that had just made it worse. Great. This kid…he loved this kid…but he could be a real headache sometimes…but he was a kid and that was just how kids were.

"Um….yeah. It's funny…and stuff. Um…here. You feel it." Said Sho. He took a deep breath and turned his back to Shimazaki. There a moment, a very long moment, when he thinks that Shimazaki is all weirded out. Where he thinks that Shimazaki is going to teleport away and hang out with someone more normal. Someone who isn't in love with him. Someone who just…isn't Sho…

But he doesn't teleport away.

Sho feels the tips of his fingers tracing his tree…and he just…he can't breathe. He feel like…like…he feels his toes curling in the grass. He feels all…he feels….he feels like running away. He feels like running away and he feels like staying forever. He doesn't know what he feels…beside good. This is…this is good…and the weird sort of good that he felt when he was near Shimazaki…but also just…sort of just…

Good…but in a weird way.

"Oh, yeah, I've felt those before. I think that they're called Lichtenberg Figures." Said Shimazaki. He felt it and then he pulled away before he had to explain something to the kid that he wasn't prepared to explain to him. He wasn't squeamish, he would just rather not get into anything that heavy right now, and also he had no idea what about…anything…was alright to explain to a ten year old.

"Yeah….I think so. I don't know. I call it my tree." Said Sho. He wanted….he wanted Shimazaki to go back to touching his back…and he wanted to put his shirt back on and hide in it until one of them died of old age.

"Ok, come on. What's with this? Why are you being like this?" asked Shimazaki. He was going to have to have a long conversation with the kid about this. You could feel however you felt about whoever you wanted to have feelings for…but jealousy was something else entirely. Love didn't mean possession….at least Shimazaki didn't think that they needed to go hand in hand. Toshi could be with whoever they wanted to. They could fuck who the wanted to and fuck who they liked…but the thought of them liking…loving someone else….well that was not a good feeling at all…so maybe he had no right to lecture the kid about being jealousy and possessive.

"….I don't know why I'm so weird about this. It happened a while ago and…and I should just…be normal." Said Sho. He wished that he knew how to forget…because he needed to forget about what happened….because he wasn't normal. He wasn't normal at all and also….also he was just…he needed a bath and if he didn't take a bath then Shimazaki…well he might have decided that he wanted to be friends with someone else. He had a whole bunch of his own friends after all. Sho…he was just one of many friends that Shimazaki had…and that was…the was ok….and it also made him feel all empty and achy inside.

"Eh, normal is overrated. Be who you are, kid, always be who you are….but please for the love of God try and take a bath." Said Shimazaki. Well that wasn't what he had been talking about…but this was also a conversation that he needed to have. He loved the kid, he really did, but he did not love the smell of however many days it had been since the kid's last bath. He got it, not liking stuff, but they were also living in a society….and Shimazaki wanted to be able to spend time with the kid but he couldn't spend time with the kid if he was hell bent on stinking to high hell.

"….I'll try…if you want me to." Said Sho. He'd do anything Shimazaki asked of him. Even something that he hated. Shimazaki would have….he would have found someone who didn't stink…and wasn't weird…if Sho didn't change…and stuff. He didn't know. He just knew that if Shimazaki wanted him to take a bath then he would take the world's longest bath in the world's biggest bathtub with a whole waterfall hitting him right over the head….if it meant that Shimazaki liked him…kept on liking him…might have even liked him…back….

Sho stops himself from even starting to think about….stuff like that.

"Thank you so fucking much. Anyway….I'm bored. Come on, put your shirt back on and we'll catch some cicadas and leave them in Hatori's bed….or something. I don't know. Any better ideas?" asked Shimazaki. Maybe a change of scenery would be better…and what was the point of being able to teleport if you couldn't just teleport away when shit got hard…and it was getting hard. Dealing with how the kid felt. Dealing with all of this growing up stuff…he had no idea how Toshi dealt with this with Mob. Now there was a horny kid…and he didn't want to have to deal with Sho when he hit that age…or life stage…or whatever….

He really needed Sho to get over him….yesterday.

Because, ok, he had it going on. He knew that he was attractive, he always had been, and most of the time he didn't have a problem with it….from adults. Kids…kids had never been into him. Kid kids, not teenager, he didn't have a problem with teenagers liking him…how the kid liked him…and he knew exactly how the kid felt. He knew how the kid felt, and he didn't want this to change the outcome, but he knew that the way the kid felt would only get more intense…and he just….he could deal with it…

But, really, Sho needed to get over him.

"N-No…that sounds…like a good idea. Let's go catch come cicadas." Said Sho. That was a good idea and…and Sho would do that. He put on his shirt and then…and then he did his best to make his aura stop flaring. He knew that when his aura flared it sounded like screaming….and he knew that eventually Shimazaki would figure out why his aura was always screaming when they were together…and he didn't want Shimazaki to ever know why….

Because it wouldn't end well.

He knew that the way he felt was normal…for other people…but he was Sho and stuff was expected of him and his dad left people in holes to die…so….yeah. This was…how he felt and…he was going to deal with it. He wasn't going to let his feelings keep him from doing fun stuff. He and Shimazaki were friends and they were going to do friend stuff today and tomorrow and over and over and over again for as long as they lived. Even when Sho grew up. When Sho grew up they'd still spend every single day together and…and they'd still mess with Hatori…and also Shimazaki and him could…do adult stuff like….like maybe Shimazaki could draw him a tattoo to cover up his scars with…and that would….

That would have been the best thing ever…but that was in the future. Right now Sho would just settle for drawing on himself. That worked too.


	343. I Took a Bath! Are You Happy?

Sho needed a bath.

Shimazaki had told him so. He stank. Shimazaki said that he stank…and also big sis told him that he smelled bad…and dad had told big sis that either she made him take a bath or he would do it…and Sho was fully prepared to admit to himself that he needed a bath. He couldn't remember the last time he had taken a bath, a real one, and that meant that he was overdue…and also his clothes stank and his bed stank and…yeah. He needed a bath.

So he was going to take one.

The tub was filling up with water…and he could and would get in that tub. He could put one foot in and then the other and then lower himself in and then do the soap and the shampoo and the conditioner because big sis was always on him about conditioner even though he didn't see why he needed it….and then he would be done. That was all he had to do. He just…had to take off his clothes…and get in the tub. That was all. He just had to take off his shirt and his pants and then everything else….and he could do this…and he would do this….

Eventually.

Maybe when the tub was done filling up. Maybe when the tub was full he could take off all of his clothes and then…well he could take off his clothes….the water was the bad part. He wished that there was some way for him to clean himself off without water. Like if he was self-cleaning like an oven….or if he could like himself like a cat. They had it right. They just licked themselves and then they were clean…and they didn't like water either. Well not the water cat, that was a kind of cat that lived in Sri Lanka and liked to swim, but most cats avoided water. They were smart like that. Water was the worst.

You could drown in water.

First it started at your feet and that was fine. It was cold, the sort of cold that made your skin go to pins and needles, but that was fine. Then it went up to your knees and you couldn't feel your legs…but that was still fine. Once it got to your chest…then it stopped being fine. It stopped being fine because you remembered…..you remembered that…that it wasn't going to stop. While it was at your feet you could just think….think that maybe it was going to stop this time…or maybe it was going to go up but not past your legs…because they did that sometimes. They made you sit in water that was way too cold and then way too hot and then way too cold….but you knew once it got to your chest that it wouldn't stop. It would go up past your neck…and then your nose…and you would try to….to float up…because people could float easily…but you're strapped down….you're strapped down and…and you can only see out of this little window….and then you can't see out of the window because….because the water is over your eyes….and then they turn off the lights…and you can't…you just can't…you can't….

You just can't….

"Sho? Are you in the tub yet?" asked big sis. Sho….Oh. He wasn't in the tub at all. He was in the linen cabinet. There were towels everywhere. He had made room for himself….at some point…and now he was sitting in the linen cabinet…and he would have to clean up the linens…and also his clothes were wet…and he was sweaty…and….and big sis was outside….

And he was not a baby.

"Yeah, I'm in the tub." Said Sho. He felt like the world's biggest jerk lying to his sister like that….but it wasn't like she was coming in to check. At some point they had started leaving each other alone in the tub. That was fine. He wasn't baby sis. He could be trusted not to…to drown…because that was a bathtub…and nobody who wasn't a baby or a really old person drowned in the bathtub…and he was ten and a half almost eleven….and he wasn't going to drown….and he hadn't drowned before, even, because the water always drained away….

He would be fine.

"But I don't hear the water moving." Said big sis. What was this? An interrogation? So what if she couldn't hear the water moving? That didn't mean anything…and if she cared so much then she could have come in and taken a bath with him…not that he needed his sister with him…he just…knew that she would never let anything bad happen to him…well she had…but she didn't know what they had been doing to him in the Eighth Division….and anyway it didn't matter since he had been the one to volunteer for the whole awakening….thing….anyway.

It was his fault…because he had been born wrong.

"Are you going to come in here and take a bath with me? If not then leave me alone." Said Sho. He had been mean there….and he hadn't been able to help it. He was in a mean mood. He wanted…he wanted to just…to have a minute to himself! This was a bathtub and he didn't…he didn't want to get in it…even though he knew that he could get out at any time. There weren't any scientist guys to strap him in…and nothing to strap him in with, either, because this was a regular old bathtub. He was….he was being a baby….he would be fine….

This was just a normal bath.

"Um…I'll leave you alone…but please take a bath on your own. Sho…you heard what dad said. Either I get you to take a bath or he'll give you a bath…and I don't think that you'll want that. You're almost ten and also…dad is…well he's dad." Said big sis. Sho sighed. She had a point. Dad was…dad. Sho smelled bad, he knew that he smelled bad, and he knew that he needed to take a bath…and he also knew that dad would drown him. Dad had drowned him before and he would do it again…only this time he would do it with his powers…or just his bare hands….

He had already drowned Sho once…

Shut up. Sho had volunteered. He had been the one who had been born wrong and he had…he had been the one who had to be awakened because….because he had been born wrong. He had been born wrong and big sis had been born right…and he gets so many bad feelings when he thinks about it. When he thinks about how she had been born with her powers. How she'd been able to pick him up when he had been three and she had been four…and sooner, too, but he just couldn't remember it. She had been born right and he…he had been almost at the same level as a normal person since he had been born…and that….that had been his fault and…

And nobody had made him do anything that he hadn't wanted to do.

"Yeah, I know how old I am and, obviously, I don't want dad to give me a bath. Ok? Can you just…leave me alone…or something? I'm trying to take a bath here." Said Sho. He wasn't lying, not all the way, because at some point he was going to take a bath…just…he needed time…that was all. He just needed…needed to take his time…and stuff. Because he just…brain was trying to trick him into thinking that….that he was back at the lab and…and he knew that he wasn't at the lab. He knew that he was in Tokyo, in the bathroom, in the linen cabinet, with big sis on the other side of the door riding him about getting into that fucking tub…

And he would get into that fucking tub…eventually.

"But….I don't hear…it doesn't sound like you're in the tub….I mean I can hear the faucet but the water isn't moving like you're in there and-" said big sis

"Shigeko, can I please have some privacy in the bathroom?" asked Sho. He had sounded mean there….and he had no idea how to stop sounding mean…but he really did need some privacy. If he couldn't get privacy in the bathroom then where could he get privacy? Some places were just sacred, and stuff, and even Shimazaki didn't teleport in and bother people in the bathroom….well not unless Hatori was taking a shower…but that was just because messing with him was always fun.

"Oh! I'm sorry little brother, I didn't mean to invade your privacy….I'll go now. Um…don't stay in too long….but make sure that you get in and stay in for at least long enough to get clean…and don't forget about the shampoo and-" said big sis

"Shampoo and conditioner, yeah. I know. I'm just going to go back to taking a bath and I need privacy so…bye, ok?" asked Sho

"Ok….bye. I'll see you later for tuck in time." Said big sis

"….do you have to call it that?" asked Sho. He was asking nobody, though, because she was gone now. She was gone and he was there in the linen cabinet…and his neck hurt from pretzelling himself into this weird…pretzel….thing…and now he wanted a big pretzel…and it was easier to think of being mad at big sis for being born right and calling their bedtime, his bedtime, tuck in time like he was a little kid…and also it was easier to think of giant pretzels with salt and butter and spicy cheese…than it was to think of that white tub just sitting there against the wall….

Filling with water.

He didn't want to think about that tub. He didn't want to think about how he would have to get into that tub. He didn't want to think about how the water would be over his chest. He didn't want to think about how the water would be in his hair…how it would roll down his face…how he could just…drown…but no because it's a bathtub…and he just…he needed….he needed to…he just needed to….

He needed to turn the faucet off before he flooded the bathroom.

The bathmat still smelled weird from when big sis had flooded the bathroom. He couldn't let the water overflow…and that was why he was climbing out of the linen cabinet…and why he was just…going over to the tub…walking across the floor…reaching over to the water…touching the faucet….pulling his hand back…because he had powers. He had powers so why the hell was he doing this by hand for? Wasn't that the point of going through all of that shit? To get powers? To make up for having been born wrong? To finally match big sis…well he couldn't match big sis. Big sis would have…she would never have been this scared even if…even if she had been through the same thing that he had been through. She would never have frozen just because she reached over a tub of water…she would have just…

She would never have been in the awakening lab to begin with…

And he doesn't want to think about the lab. He doesn't want to think about how the ice water made his whole body numb…how after a while he couldn't even feel his body anymore….and how his lungs just…he knew that he shouldn't have been trying to breathe but…but he tries and…and then his lungs hurt…and he wants his powers to do….to do something….anything….because he knows that he's going to die. He knows that he's going to die and then…and then he doesn't….but then it hurts more than it's ever hurt in his life and his body is all….scrunched together and….and he just…he almost wishes for the water and…

And now he's behind the hamper.

He's being a baby. He just has to get in the tub…and that's what he's going to…he sees the scrub down place…and he knows that he's supposed to scrub down before he gets in the tub. Back when he had been little, and still in school, the other kids had called him gross for just getting into the tub without scrubbing down first. That was what you were supposed to do but mom….she said that she hadn't grown up doing that….and she hadn't made him and big sis do that….and maybe he should do that…because he smelled really bad and…and it was the normal thing to do…

So that was what he did.

He pulled off his clothes really fast and then sat down and got to scrubbing. A little bit of water, just a little, and none of it near his face…and some soap…the kind that smelled like soap and not fruit or flowers because he was a boy…and he just…scrubbed himself down. He scrubbed across the spots on his arms where the needles had gone in. He scrubbed across the jagged thing on his chest from when he had ripped his skin off trying to get out of the restraint chair…thing. He scrubbed down his legs, down the red lines….the jagged ones and the rips…and the needle marks…and then he used his powers to scrub over the tree….over the place where he had been filled with lightening until his whole body was all scrunched and twitchy…..and he ended at his feet where the skin was so thick on the bottom because…because the floor had been so cold…and then so hot…and then so cold again….and then…and then…

And then he was done scrubbing himself down.

And now it was time to…to get in the tub. He just…walked over. He walked over because he was not a baby. Even Mukai could walk herself to her bath…and she liked baths. She had her ducks and her boats and her fish and she…she liked to play in the tub and….and she liked to throw things out of the tub and then he could catch them and give them back to her…and she would splash him…the whole front of his shirt and pants would be soaked but it would be ok because she was baby Mukai and she was happy and…and all he ever wanted was for her to be happy…and she was always so happy when she had to take a bath and….and if anyone tried to put her in an awakening machine Sho would murder them and then not even try to hide the body because everyone needed to see what happened, what would happen, if they dared to hurt baby sis….

He needed to get into this tub before he did something that he would regret.

Not kill someone, no, the only person he thought of killing was dad and even then he could never go through with it. He just knew that if he didn't get in that tub then dad…then dad would try and give him a bath…and dad already did that once. Sho…he must have been really little…but all he remembers is being scared and there being a lot of snot in his mouth and mom yelling at dad….and he doesn't want to know what that was all about. Dad had already drowned him once, he wasn't going to let him drown again, so Sho just…had to…had to get into the tub. This was…just…a thing that he had to do. He had already done the soap and…and he still had to soak…and even the soap had been a lot but…but he still had to soak and…and he had to wash his hair…and that would be a lot…and he just…all he had to do was just….

Put one foot in the tub.

The water was…not that warm….but not cold either. That was good. He got one foot in…and then the other…and now he was standing in the tub and…and it wasn't so bad. This was ok…ish. He expected…the water wasn't hot or cold…and he expected to stop….stop being able to feel his body…and he just…he was starting to get that feeling like…like he was himself but he was also away from himself and…and he just…he had to take a fucking back already!

He sat down.

Which was too much too soon. He had sat down so fast that the water went up to his collar bones…and now the far away feeling…he felt like the water had been an ice bath. He felt…he touched his leg and…and it didn't feel like his leg. It felt like he was touching someone else…or something….but he needed…he needed to take a bath and he just…he needed….as soon as he started he could stop but…but starting had been hard enough. Starting, getting to this point, had been hard enough. Now he had to…to keep on going….why? Because other people wanted him to? Because other people decided that they thought that he smelled gross? Because other people thought that there was something wrong with him? Because other people thought-

Because Shimazaki thought that he smelled gross.

Sho…could feel…himself. Again. He felt like he was back inside of himself…not that he had ever left…and he just…he had to do this. He had to do this because Shimazaki said that h smelled gross and he wanted Shimazaki to be his friend…to like him…to maybe even more than like him….not that Shimazaki will ever more than like him. There isn't any way in hell that Shimazaki will ever think of him as anything other than his friend and his kid….and that's ok because dad could and would kill him if he ever figured how Sho felt….but still….

Sho needed a bath.

But it didn't have to be a long one. No. Big sis had even told him not to stay in for too long…so he wasn't going to stay in for too long. He was going to just…to just…he grabbed some shampoo. He didn't know who's it was, he didn't care, he just poured some into his hair…and then some conditioner….and maybe it would have worked better if he had gotten his hair wet, first, and also not….put both of those things on together…but this was what it was and he…he was…he just had to….he tried rubbing it in…but his hair needed to be wet so…so he picked up the rinse cup…which used to be a measuring cup but now was for rinsing….and he put some water in his hair…and then…and then he was ok and he just…rubbed all the shampoo and conditioner in…and then he was just…he just had to…he just…

There was water on his forehead.

It went down his forehead and…and it kept on going down….and he knew that there was plenty of air…but also it felt like there was no air and…and he just…he needed….he tried to wipe the water off of his face but that just made more water…and he just…he just needed….he could feel his hair and…and he needed to finish washing it and…and he needed to stop being suck a fucking baby….baby sis wasn't even as much of a baby as he was and…and he just…

He needed to get the hell out of that tub.

He leaned back into the water and got his hair rinsed…and that…that was all. He could get out and then…and then he was out. He had gotten out of the tub and…and now he was standing in the bathroom…and he didn't even remember getting out of the rub or walking to the middle of the bathroom…but he had….and for some reason big sis's tooth brush was in his hand…and he put that down. He shouldn't have been so weird. He just…he was clean. He didn't stink anymore and…and he wouldn't have to do that again for a long time. Long enough that…that he could maybe get over this…or something. Long enough until people complained about the way he smelled, anyway, and that would be a long time….

Hopefully a very long time.

He hoped that it was a very long time before he had to get into a bathtub again. When he ruled the world he wouldn't ever have to bathe again. Nobody would tell him that he smelled bad, that he had to take a bath, or anything. When he ruled the world baths would be optional for everyone. No more soap and water and…and people could smell however they wanted to! They could stink so bad that you could smell them from a kilometer away if they felt like it!

Thought he hadn't smelled that bad.

Actually he smelled a lot better now. He could smell himself as he got into his pajamas…and he didn't smell bad at all. He smelled like his soap and big sis's hair stuff…and he must have borrowed hers…but she wouldn't mind. She would just be happy that he had taken a bath. That was all. She would be so happy that…that maybe he would get two stories tonight….not that he gave a fuck about stories. He was ten and a half, much too old for bedtime stories. And also she didn't even read him bedtime stories. She just read aloud before bed to help her sleep and he just happened to be in the room when she did that. Simple. He didn't care about stories or being near her…or the feeling he got sometimes like he wasn't in his body anymore….and stuff. He didn't care about that at all.

He just cared about being done with this bath already.

He tossed his dirty clothes in the hamper, big sis would get pissed if he just left them on the floor….well her version of pissed anyway, and he didn't want to piss her off. Not when she would be all happy and shit that he had taken a bath…happy enough that maybe he had earned himself a soda….not that he was going to ask. He was ten and half, if he wanted to go to the kitchen and get himself a soda then he would. This was a free country, dad didn't rule the world yet, and if he wanted a soda he could drink a soda…or two….or three. Yeah. It wasn't like he was going to be able to get any sleep tonight.

He never slept well after a bath.

So that was why it was ok to go to the kitchen and get a soda and not tell big sis…and also keep away from dad, too, because he could be such a tattletale sometimes. He would tell big sis and then she would be up all night bothering him about going to the bathroom so he didn't end up wetting the bed…and he didn't need her bothering him all night like that. He'd had her on his back enough about that bath thing. No, he would just go to the kitchen and pound as many sodas as he could, that was what it was called when you drank a lot at once Shimazaki had said, and then he would go to bed and then wake up in the morning and hang out with Shimazaki…and Shimazaki would be so happy that Sho had taken a bath…because he had a really good sense of smell…and he would want to hang out with Sho again and they'd have so much fun together….

Tomorrow was going to be a really great day.

And tonight was getting to be a really good night. There, on the kitchen table, was a soda for him. A soda next to a double marshmallow s'mores poptart on a plate for him. There was a note, too, on Frozen paper….he read it. Big sis…she was happy that he had taken a bath and…and she had left this for him and…and now he could have one soda after eight but only if he didn't wet the bed….because he was getting bigger now….and stuff…

And he had the best big sister ever.

Even though she had been born right and he had been born wrong, even though she'd been born the second most powerful esper in the whole world and he'd had to sit in an awakening machine for days while…stuff…happened to him…she was still this nice to him. She didn't have to be. She could have been mean to him as payback for all the years that he had spent being mean to her…but she wasn't like that. She was a nice person, a good person, the best big sister that a guy like him could ask for…and not just because she let him have poptarts and soda.

Sho had needed a bath and he had taken one. Not because he smelled bad, no, but because it made big sis happy…and she was the best big sis in the world and not just because of soda and poptarts….though they helped….

The soda and poptarts really helped.


	344. Unwanted Assistant

Fukuda did not need an assistant.

He could manage just fine on his own and had managed just fine on his own since Claw had become something other than a game he and Suzuki played in the woods as kids. He could do all of that administrative work that Suzuki hated just fine on his own. He could manage. His days were long but he could manage just fine. He didn't need an assistant, any assistant at all, but he mostly did not need Hatori Nozomu as his assistant.

But he had Hatori as his assistant.

Hatori fucking Nozomu was his assistant. Hatori fucking Nozomu was in his office. Hatori Nozomu….Hatori with more spots on his skin than actual skin Nozomu…there he was. In his office. There, against the far wall, was a second desk…and why they had to share an office Fukuda would never know. They were sharing this office at the rapidly growing Tokyo branch of Claw, this was shaping up to be a long assignment, with Hatori Nozomu of all people. Shigeko's ex-boyfriend….or ex-crush…or current crush. He didn't know. Sho said that the two of them had been going out but, like Suzuki said, Sho was a child. He maybe didn't have all the information…and what information he had gotten from Sho was very dated these days considering the fact that Sho hadn't so much as had dinner with him in weeks and weeks….

And weeks.

Fukuda….he knew that Sho was a child. He knew that Sho was way too young to see the big picture. He just saw Fukuda telling Suzuki about his little girlfriend as an act of betrayal, not protecting, and he had no idea how he was going to get Sho to see the truth. His dad…he didn't care for normal people so he would leave that little girl alone….but he did care if his son was anything other than what he had been imagining him as since he first decided that he wanted to have a Son. Sho could not disappoint Suzuki….bad things happened to people who disappointed Suzuki….and also…well Suzuki was not Sho's biggest fan. This…whatever he had for Shimazaki…might be the thing that finally pushed Suzuki over the edge…

And nobody wanted that.

So Fukuda had made the pragmatic choice…one of many that he'd had to make over the years. Stay Suzuki's friend or let the rest of the world deal with his craziness. Help Masami escape or let Suzuki turn her into a ghost. Help run Claw or let Suzuki do…all of the terrible things he planned on doing. Be there for Sho or be there for Shigeko. Cut his losses and move on from Shigeko or try to honor his promise to Masami. Leave Masami alone wherever she had ended up in this world or go out and actively look for her because he loved her so much….

There were a lot of pragmatic choices to be made.

Like now. Either he could let Sho cool down on his own and come back or he could force the issue and risk alienating Sho further. He was going to let Sho cool down on his own. Sho…he was a good boy…and he could come back on his own. They were just going through something like a rough patch, that was all, and pretty soon everything would be right as rain between them again. He could go back to spending time with Sho and they would have fun just like the old times…and things would be great…they'd play Minecraft and watch Zooptopia and draw pictures…and maybe even watch those scary movies Sho liked and play those violent games…and things…they could be great. They would be back to normal and they would be great.

They had to be.

They had to be great and they had to be better than…than whatever this was. This new chapter in his life when Suzuki sent him an assistant that he hadn't asked for or gave any indication that he needed. An assistant that wasn't even doing anything to assist. So far he was just sitting up at his desk with his feet braced against it…for some reason….and cursing under his breath at whatever it was that he was doing. Fukuda knew that he could have just told the kid to get lost, he had that kind of power, but Suzuki…he had done this for a reason….

He had sent Hatori there for a reason.

To watch him, maybe….or not. Suzuki trusted him completely. If he even suspected that Fukuda had done even a tenth of what he had been responsible for then he would have been dead a long time ago. There were would have been no watching him for whatever reason. He would have just woken up one day in a traitor hole and that would be that. Suzuki wouldn't have cared about their friendship or whatever. He would not even let Fukuda get a word in for his own defense if he knew about Masami…or anything.

Friendship be damned Suzuki would end his life in a heartbeat if he knew the traitor that Fukuda was.

If they were even friends at this point. Fukuda couldn't remember the last time they'd spent time together outside of work. Not that he cared. He just….had no clue where they stood. He had assumed, over the years, that Suzuki has just grown out of what they'd had before. Grown out of playing games together, having sleepovers, talking about nothing of importance for hours on end, all of it. He had just assumed that Suzuki was…this person…now….and that was the way that things were. But then just because Fukuda left for a few weeks suddenly he needed a friend and this…this twenty year old CHILD had replaced him….

Hatori fucking Nozomu.

"Um…you need me to do something….or….something?" asked Hatori. He could feel Fukuda's aura on him…and he could see Fukuda glaring at him…and he had no clue what any of this was about. Maybe Fukuda didn't want him there…and Hatori would have left if he could have…but Suzuki had promoted him to Fukuda's assistant so that was what he was here to do…assist…and also get back to Warcraft since he hadn't logged on in so fucking long…and the rest of the tech support team had moved on….but they would move back once they realized what they'd lost…

Maybe Suzuki would like Warcraft.

He needed to socialize more, that was a given, and he liked games. He could be really cold and standoffish a lot of the time unless they were talking about games…or his daughter…or he was asking really intrusive questions. He was so weird…but that was because he just didn't know how to socialize. Not that Hatori was the master of socializing either. He was pretty weird….but not as weird as Suzuki…but that was ok. Suzuki was…well not a super nice guy…but he was, at the end of the day, a guy…and a lonely one, too. He only had his kids, just one of his kids actually, Hatori, and then Fukuda…who didn't seem like the best friend Suzuki had made him out to be. He was kind of….standoffish…and a prick…and a weirdo…a real weirdo. That shit with Mob…thinking that he and Mob had been going out….and doing NOTHING about it…like…what the hell even was that!? If he thought that some guy, some ADULT guy, was messing around with his best friend's ELEVEN year old daughter then he should have done SOMETHING about that instead of just making comments….and….yeah….

Fukuda kind of….sucked as a human being…sort of.

But that didn't change the fact that Fukuda was his boss, his direct superior, and also Suzuki's best friend from childhood. Hatori had to be nice, and he was always nice, but he couldn't just tell this guy to fuck off…not that he had it in him to tell anyone to fuck off. He was, at the end of the day, fairly weak as far as espers went. He couldn't have hurt anyone let alone the guy with super healing powers…and this was Claw. Everything that could be settled with violence was settled with violence and everything that could not be settled with violence…well you weren't trying hard enough if you couldn't settle it with violence…well…then you weren't trying hard enough. If Hatori had been born with some useful powers, beyond the power to get into Netflix without a password and go through anyone's search history…and Fukuda was REALLY into domestic husband wife stuff…to a weird degree and this was coming from Hatori…..aside from Netflix and knowing everyone's preferred genres of adult entertainment really he was useless.

So he would not be fighting his new boss….even though he deserved it.

"Do you know how to do anything?" asked Fukuda. This was a child…well a man but…but really he was nothing more than a child. Why had Suzuki decided that this kid….this overgrown kid….was someone who…who he needed…or whatever. Fukuda didn't care. Suzuki could spend time with whoever he wanted. Suzuki could even…was he planning on replacing him? After all of this time? Did he know? Did he…no. He didn't know. There was no way that he knew. If he knew then Fukuda would have been long dead….but still….

Why this kid?

This kid…he was young enough to be Suzuki's son…and he already had a son! He had a son who's life he seemed devoted to making a living hell. Really. He had Sho and he could have been spending time with Sho…positive time….but instead he just…what? He would rather spend it with Hatori, someone who probably just agreed with everything he said and that was why he kept him around, and Shigeko, someone who was more his child than his own son…than both of his children put together. Suzuki…Fukuda just…he could not begin to understand Suzuki…and he had never been able to understand him…not even when they had been kids…

Things had been so much simpler back then.

"Yeah, I can do stuff. What do you need done?" asked Hatori trying to sound as pleasant as possible. He wanted to go up and smack Fukuda across the face and hide under his desk at the same time. Being pissed off…this was Claw. There was no point in being pissed off at your superior unless you were prepared to kick his ass…and Hatori…well he was younger but Fukuda was an ageless healer….so no. That wasn't a good idea…but what was a good idea was keeping his head down and just…trying not to piss anyone off. Especially not Suzuki's best friend and right hand man. That would have been suicide…maybe. Suzuki seemed to like him, he had even said that if Hatori had been a woman and if he hadn't been married then he would have considered pursing a relationship with him….something that Hatori was going to unpack later, so he wouldn't kill him…but it was amazing what a person could live through.

"Can you work out a budget? Or did you not get that far in school?" asked Fukuda. He could feel Hatori glaring at him. He didn't have much of an aura to speak of, and he could feel him in the circuits of the walls and his computer, but the affect was there. He was pissing off a powerful esper. Why couldn't he have been born a hundred years ago? At least then he could have been useless…but no. Now he was there and he was alive and he could bring the modern world to it's knees…

Was that why Suzuki kept him so close?

Because he was that powerful? Or was that Shigeko's reason…well he knew Shigeko's reason for keeping him around. Even if they hadn't been seeing each other she was still very young, going through puberty it looked like, and she had her vices…and men twice her age seemed like one of her vices. The word was father issues….or something. He didn't like to speculate on this part of her life…or admit that she even had that part of her life…and that was hard because that part of Shigeko's life was sharing an office with him…

And Fukuda had no idea why.

Seriously. Suzuki had given him Hatori….or maybe he had given Hatori a…promotion? But…why? Why would he have just…promoted Hatori? For what reason? And why were they spending so much time together. They stayed up all night playing videogames together…and Suzuki had declared on the first day of their first year of university that they were grown men now and much too old for games…but now he was playing games all night with this overgrown kid….this overgrown kid who could get into any computer system and…

And Fukuda was going to delete any email that he and Masami had ever exchanged….well he was going to print them out and then delete them.

"The budget for what?" asked Hatori. He was going to stay calm. He was not going to hide under his desk…and he was not going to say anything that he was going to regret. He was….he really wished that he were back at the house…or with Suzuki. Suzuki was at least mostly pleasant to be around. The guy was good for conversation, and always up to play just about anything, and even though he loved asking personal questions he could be a pretty ok friend….and honestly Hatori would have sat through hours of Suzuki's weird questions rather than sat there with Fukuda dealing with this dislike…

That he didn't even understand.

What had he ever done to Fukuda? He couldn't think of anything…well there had been the Christmas party…had he done something to Fukuda TOO? For the love of…he was going to be paying for that party for the rest of his life. What did he have to do? Steal a skywriting plane? Write a message in the sky for everyone to see? 'To everyone who I wronged on the Claw Christmas party 2015 I am truly sorry' or something like that? Seriously? This had better not have been about the party….but what else could it be? What else had he done to Fukuda? All he did was hang around on his own or with the kids or Shibata or Suzuki or…

Oh. Was he….jealous?

Wow. Hatori had never had anyone jealous of him before….it was…weird. So weird. He had no idea that anyone would ever be jealous of him for any reason…so maybe Fukuda wasn't….but it would have made sense. Suzuki and Fukuda had been friends for a while, longer than Hatori had even been alive, so it would have made sense that Fukuda would have been jealous….huh. Hatori…he felt sort of like…the other woman or something in this…and it was….

Huh.

"The food budget. Our second in command has decided that everyone gets unlimited desserts now…and you can see how well that's been working out….and now he food budget is a complete and total mess. There's also the funds for the Ninth Division, the salvage from the Eighth Division, checking over payroll, so take your pick." Said Fukuda with a shrug. Fine. He wanted to help then he could help. He could slough through all of this administrative shit. He wanted to be his assistant, he wanted Suzuki to think that he was capable, then fine. He could dive right the hell in.

"Well which would you like me to work on…boss?" asked Hatori. Well Fukuda was pissed…and he had no way of asking why. It was either about the Christmas party…..hopefully not…or he was just jealous that his best friend had a new friend…and that was just…not how friendship worked. Not that Hatori had ever had that many friends but still. They could all be friends together. Fukuda needed to stop acting like he had caught Hatori in bed with his wife or whatever.

"Here. Help me make sense of the mess Shigeko made." Said Fukuda. God. He did not need this. He did not need an assistant and he did not need a reminder of…of how he had failed Shigeko. She had her vices and one of those vices was men twice or even thrice her age…and Masami would have…she would have left him again if she could have seen what he had let happen to that little girl who loved Hello Kitty, strawberry milk, and being pushed on the swings. God. Fukuda did not want to think about this. He wanted to think about…about something else. About work. He wanted to work until he couldn't even see anymore and then he wanted to go home, go through his evening ritual, and then start it out again until either he died or Suzuki died or they both took the cyanide pills like they had planned if the Soviet Union ever invaded and they found themselves powerless….that had been a weird time in their lives…

They'd had a hell of a lot of weird times in their lives.

Suzuki remembered. He knew that Suzuki remembered. The things they'd get up to. The sweltering summers they'd spent in their fort in the woods. The long day trips they snuck off to take so they could look for espers. Trying to exhume Mogami Keiji. Trying to fly to the moon. Their massive heist plan to get to the adult section of the manga store. Those long days they'd spend in the arcade from sunup to sundown. The endless sleepovers. The time they got lost in Tokyo on that ill-fated day trip. The time Suzuki got his heart ripped out and tried to sequester himself in his room with his stupid 7800 that he'd woken Fukuda's whole house up at eleven at night calling over and over and over again to tell him about….and maybe he should have just let Suzuki lock himself in his room playing Space Invaders nonstop and living on the omelets and ketchup bread his mother had left outside of his door….it certainly would have saved a hell of a lot of people a hell of a lot of headache…but no. Fukuda had been there. Fukuda had been there to give him the pep talk to end all pep talks. Fukuda had been there to put on a dress and a hat and go through every conceivable date scenario…..including things they had vowed never to speak of again….so his best friend could get his confidence back…and he had. Suzuki had come back and Fukuda had been the one to set up that double date with those second years….and he had been the one to hide all the weird stuff in their stupid fort including Suzuki's SIZEABLE collection of doujinshi that he, supposedly, read for the plot…and he had been the one to go over literally EVERY sign that a girl could give you that she was into you….and he had been the one that Suzuki called over and over again all night, enough times that mom and dad unplugged the phone, and he had been the one who's window Suzuki climbed in through at one in the morning and he had been the one to hear about, in GRAPHIC detail, the details of Suzuki's first time…and he had been there to pick up the pieces after Suzuki fucked up his first real relationship because he was his own worst enemy…and Fukuda had been there for everything…

And some kid thought that he could waltz right in, play Minecraft or whatever for a couple hours, and just replace Fukuda? No.

"Hey, Little Sister-sama is doing her best. She's only eleven after all." said Hatori brushing off an old nickname. She was his little sister, well not literally because that would have been weird as all else, but she was that person to him. Not whatever Fukuda seemed to think that she was capable of…that he was capable of….and Hatori…he was not going to be able to get over this anytime soon. How did someone just 'get over' being accused of the unthinkable? They didn't. They really didn't. They just swallowed all of their bad feelings until they developed high blood pressure. There. That was Hatori's life. High blood pressure, stress, ulcers, and then an early death.

"Don't let her age fool you." Said Fukuda. He knew Shigeko's age. He had been to most of her birthday presents back when she had been a child. He knew Shigeko…he had known Shigeko….since she was two years old. She was two and….and she was so small…and now she wasn't small. She was eleven going on twenty. She was who she was and there…there was nothing that he could do…so he just…made the pragmatic choice.

"Right….yeah. You know what? I'm going to go to lunch now. You can just email me whatever you want me to do or you can just leave it on my desk or whatever." Said Hatori. He couldn't stay in that room for another moment. That was…she was a kid. She was a kid who had a drinking problem and a smoking problem and she wore too much makeup but she was still just a kid…and it was worrying that Fukuda didn't think of her as a kid. He talked about her like she was…like she was his enemy or something…and that was weird…and also he talked about her like she was an adult…and Fukuda had been weirdly ok with the idea that Hatori had been DATING her…even though she was just a kid and…

And Hatori did not want to be in the room anymore.

He was going to go away now. Maybe to have lunch, maybe to hide in the bathroom, or maybe to see if Suzuki needed help with something….or also if he wanted to play Adventure for the 2600. He'd had a 2600 when he'd been a kid and he seemed like he would have liked Adventure…and also he at least didn't talk about his kid like she was…well he did talk about her like she was a grown adult but also sort of…endearing? Less creepy. Well he could be creepy but in an overprotective dad sort of way. Sort of a 'no boy will ever be good enough for my precious angel and I will keep her by my side to protect her from the horny boys of the world' instead of Fukuda's 'I don't like this kid and I think that her sleeping with grown men is normal and ok' and honestly he would rather deal with Suzuki's creepiness with his daughter and his creepy questions about how gay people worked, Hatori would have to teach him Google again, than whatever the hell was wrong with Fukuda.

Minegishi'd had a point when they'd called him a human weak stringed, off brand, scented, hotel tampon….and Hatori had never even had a period, or was entirely sure what one entailed besides hemorrhaging for a week every month, before but he fully agreed with them on all counts.

"Fine." Said Fukuda. There. At least he could be alone for a little bit. However long it took the kid to have lunch…and now he wanted lunch….but he didn't want to go and have lunch while the kid was having lunch. That would have been too much. This whole thing was too much. The kid, Hatori fucking Nozomu, there in his office with him…and he would be there every single day…day in and day out…for…whatever reason that Suzuki had sent him….

Whatever reason.

Fukuda…he didn't know what the reason was…and it was driving him insane. He had no idea what the kid was in his office for…and he had no idea what this kid was in Suzuki's life for…and he needed to find out. He needed to find out because he had gotten nothing done all day and he knew that he would just end up sitting at this desk chewing on this all day and letting his work pile up…and if he just….if he let it pile up then he would never be able to reach the end of it…not that there was an end to it and if he ended up swamped then he wouldn't be there for Sho when he needed him…and Sho was the most important thing in his life…and he had to be there for Sho….

And that meant making pragmatic choices.

The pragmatic choice there was talking to Suzuki. Prying information out of him. Why he had sent him Hatori, why he had Hatori in his life, and what he was planning on doing with the kid. That was all. He would have to sit there and pry this information from him…and he would pry the information from him…and tea would help. Tea and coffee, one of each, and then they'd just sit and talk…and he couldn't even remember the last time they had really talked….and then he'd figure out everything. He would figure out what was happening and what he would do from here…

Or that had been the plan, anyway.

The plan that went out the window as soon as he went through the door to Suzuki's office. He had gotten one foot through the door…and had been greeted with a sight that he had never thought that he would have ever had to see. Suzuki was sitting at his desk eating lunch, that was normal, but what was abnormal was the fact that he had company….he had company that was sitting on the SAME side of the desk as him…leaning in close….and eating….Suzuki hated sugar but Hatori was sitting there eating a big pile of cookies, chips, and one of those neon colored drinks he was slowly killing himself with…and at some point Fukuda would do something about his struggling pancreas. As soon as he figured out what the fuck was going on….

Because something was going on.

"Fukuda. Hello. Do you need something?" asked Suzuki. Well now this was a surprise. Once again he was struck with the thought that Hatori should have been born a generation earlier. Fukuda would have loved this. Hatori had found Adventure of all the things on the internet. He and Fukuda had almost destroyed his Atari trying to puzzle that game out. Hatori seemed to have an instinctive understanding for this game and Suzuki…well this was work. Keeping mentally sharp by taking breaks was work…and socializing was work, too. It was important to practice….

Not that he was accusing Fukuda of questioning him.

He had no idea what Fukuda was doing there but he did hope that he stayed. Usually he didn't care about the presence of others aside from Daughter…but it would have been nice with Fukuda with them. Hatori could show him that they had fixed that error in Pacman where it could only make two hundred and fifty six levels. That had been Fukuda's game when they had been younger. Hatori could show him that new version of Space Invaders as well. He had always been a fan of three dimensional graphics even back when they had been in the days of vectors and isometric views.

Hatori and Fukuda would get on like a house fire, he just knew it…and Suzuki was glad. It was good for Claw that everyone got on well.

"Um….just wanted to see if you wanted a tea…or a coffee….but I can see that you already have one." said Fukuda. There were cups of tea on the desk already…two of them…and Hatori's lunch was barely touched…had he been here the whole time? Some assistant he was.

"Give me the tea, too. I have to wash something out of my mouth." Said Suzuki. He shuddered, physically, at the memory of trying…whatever that blue drink was. Hatori had warned him that it would be sweet but….but he had no idea what something so neon colored could taste like….and now he knew. It tasted like sugar. It tasted like what sugar ate if sugar had been given the ability to eat. It was a taste that stuck to his teeth and tongue…and he did not understand Hatori one bit.

Fukuda might, though, he had always like sweet foods.

"Hey, I warned you that it would be sweet." Said Hatori. Suzuki was so weird sometimes. He knew that he hated sugar but he had to go and try his energy drink. He was such a weirdo…but he was preferable to the weirdo who was lurking over in the doorway.

"That was a level of sweetness that I wasn't away that food science had reached." Said Suzuki as Fukuda put the tea on his desk. He lingered, there, craning his neck over to see the screen. Suzuki dragged a chair over with the flick of his finger….and Hatori's aura pulled in close…and he jumped. Suzuki suspected that he had some sort of anxiety disorder. No normal man was that fearful over nothing all the time. Maybe Fukuda could fix it. He had fixed that irrational fear that Suzuki used to have of tiny little people coming to kill him in his sleep…mostly. He had forgotten about that, actually….

"You…want me to…stay?" asked Fukuda. Well that was…he always just ordered people, him, to sit. He never just pulled up a chair. Huh. That was downright….polite of him.

"Yes. Hatori found adventure and we found and kept the first key. He avoided the bird." Said Suzuki as Fukuda sat down slowly. He felt…crushed….between the two of them…and he wondered if Hatori knew how to do the thing with two monitors. That would be better. But later. They had more keys to find.

"That damn bird." Said Fukuda. He remembered that bird. That bird had made Suzuki blow the power to the whole neighborhood…during high summer.

"Yes. But Hatori avoided it. Also he found a version of Pacman that can generate more than two hundred and fifty six levels. I remember that you were very angry when the game crashed. You had the same reaction when Galaga crashed. I think that Hatori could find that for you too. He can find anything." Said Suzuki. Hatori really was useful…and also very good company. He and Fukuda would get along well…but then why was he in the middle? He wished that Daughter had been there. She would have been able to explain this to him. Why they didn't seem to be getting along. They weren't talking or looking at each other…and that was not good. Hatori was a fascinating conversationalist.

"So….are you going to keep him here for the rest of the day, then? While you do…this?" asked Fukuda. Well now this meant more work for him….and now he knew why there had been so much work piled up for him. They were expanding this HQ into a full division, maybe, and they were building another division in the Australian desert….and the budget…and Sho had his issues…and Suzuki was back to all of this….and Hatori was encouraging him. Why? Did he know…no. He didn't know. He had no idea how bad Suzuki's tunnel vision could get. He had no idea why Suzuki had stopped playing games in university. He knew that he would not be able to both play games and finish university….and Hatori didn't know about that….

He didn't know Suzuki one bit.

"You can stay as well. You two seem like you would get on pretty well." Said Suzuki. Fukuda could use some companionship. He had been the one to teach Suzuki that people needed to speak with other people at least once a week or they started to lose their minds. Fukuda had been…different…lately….in the times when he had noticed him. Maybe he needed to socialize more. Well that was what Hatori was for. He was good company. Daughter had good taste it seemed. Hatori was good company and if he had been a woman, or if he and Suzuki had been compatible, and also if Suzuki had not been married then, yes, he would have pursued a relationship with Hatori…if the age gap wasn't too much. He'd ask later.

"If you want me to, boss, I'll get along with him." said Hatori. As nice of a guy as Suzuki could be…he could still be Suzuki. He was Suzuki and he just…did terrible stuff sometimes…and he did not like to be deliberately disobeyed…so Hatori would be friends with whoever Suzuki told him to be friends with. Even a guy who accused him of trying to get with an eleven year old girl.

"He's alright I suppose." Said Fukuda. He….was not understanding any of this. Suzuki letting someone he barely knew getting into his personal space. Suzuki playing a game that he had vowed never to touch again when they had been thirteen years old. Suzuki just…speaking nicely about someone…and to someone. The whole thing was….strange…and Fukuda…he didn't know what he was supposed to do.

For thirty years he had been Suzuki's only friend.

But now there was this kid. There was this kid here and…and this was happening and…and he was…he was fine. He was just trying to understand. He was just trying to understand and that was why he felt so very off kilter with this. Because there was some kid sitting there trying to be friends with Suzuki. Why? Did he just…what? Did he think that he could handle being friends with Suzuki Touichirou? Well Fukuda would like to see him put up with just one year of it. Dealing with him. His mood swings, his social problems, keeping him from fully going over the edge into madness….

Yeah. Fine. Let Hatori try. He wouldn't last a year.

"Good. You're friends now." Said Suzuki. That had been painless. Good. Now his friends…and that was always such an odd word to say even in his mind…were friends with each other. This was perfect. Now he had two people who were good company and good for conversation. Perfect.

"That's…good." Said Fukuda. Well now…now he had no idea what he was going to do. The original plan had been to sit down and listen to Suzuki talk about whatever he felt like talking about, probably Shigeko, and then he would let it 'slip' that he was having trouble working with an 'assistant' underfoot and then add that Hatori would have been happier back in tech support where his powers would be useful…or at Shigeko's side since he was supposedly gay and Suzuki could trust him with Shigeko…even though did not seem gay at all…but then again neither did Sho and he was….whatever he was….and then once this problem had been solved he could have gotten back to the normal malaise of life….

But now he had no clue what he was even supposed to do.

Suzuki was…he had another friend…and he had never had another friend. Not even when they had been kids…and Fukuda had no idea what he was going to do…what Suzuki was going to do…what there even was to be done. He just…he didn't have a clue…but he had to try and get a clue. He had to try and figure this whole thing out because…..because….because this should not have been. Suzuki did not make friends. Suzuki did not voluntarily spend time with people….and he did not let his work fall by the wayside…but he had and Fukuda…he had no idea what he was supposed to do about….any of this.

If there was even anything that he could do.

He felt powerless….weirdly powerless…as he sat beside Suzuki and watched Hatori play Adventure…and as he listened to Hatori and Suzuki debate what flavor blue was supposed to be. Hatori said that it was electric blue raspberry and Suzuki was poking hole in that. Electric was not a flavor and raspberries were not blue…and Fukuda….they'd had this discussion about what flavor neon green was supposed to be…sour green apple vs pure diabetes in a bottle….and that had been their debate and…and he felt….he had no idea what he felt…so he just…said nothing. He said nothing and he just let whatever was happening happen.

He hadn't need an assistant….not at all. He needed an assistant like Suzuki needed another friend….which was not at all.


	345. Understanding Things is Hard Sometimes

Mob loved her friends very much.

"….so I told that bitch that she needed to get the hell out of my face and she told me…"

Mob loved her friends, all of them, even Minori….who could be kind of mean sometimes. She could be mean to Mob and she could be mean to her other friends…and that was why her dad wouldn't let her come back to Japan because she had been mean to all of her other friends, not that Mob would say anything to her because that would have been, and Mob…she was still going to be Minori's friend even though she could be sort of mean sometimes. That was what you did when you were friends with someone, you stuck by them no matter what, even if that 'what' was sitting there on the phone for almost an hour listening to a fight that had happened with Minori and someone she had met….and that was fine….because Mob was her friend…

Even though it had been almost an hour.

Still, it wasn't like she had anything important to do that day. She had already done the laundry and everyone had clean clothes, the dishes were done, and Sho was out doing something with Shimazaki and they would find something to eat so she didn't have to make lunch. No, today she was just going to be spending time with Minegishi. They had been reading together in the living room but then Minori had called…but it was ok. She would get tired or bored eventually and find something else to do. Besides, it hadn't been that long….

Almost an hour.

"…..and then my dad was all Minori, this is why we had to move which is like…don't blame me because people are way too sensitive…."

Mob mostly just said 'uh huh' a lot when Minori went on like this. Mob was listening, sort of, and if Minori asked her a direct question, not likely, then she would answer but mostly she was just saying 'uh huh' a lot. That was still listening. Sometimes people didn't talk to have conversations, she noticed, they just talked to have someone else listen to them. Well Mob could do that. She had always considered herself to be a very good friend and good friends listened when their friends needed them to listen.

Even if they needed you to listen to them complain for a whole hour.

"….everyone is so sensitive and whiny I can't even….seriously Shige, I cannot take it anymore….even here! God, you need to get back here or I need to go to you because I cannot even right now…."

Mob said 'uh huh' again. That was what you were supposed to do. She didn't much want to move again, it was never easy switching countries and timezones, and also she just didn't want to leave Japan. She liked being in a place where she could read all the signs easily and she could easily understand what people were saying and she knew more of the rules and she looked like everyone else. It was just nice to be back…and if Minori could come back then that would be good…good-ish. In the same prefecture as good. Minori was a friend. Not as good of a friend as Minegishi…or anyone else…but she was still a friend and friends…they wanted to spend time together…

Even if they liked to complain more than was strictly necessary.

"…seriously. I mean, ok, you're like a socially challenged first grader in a lot of ways, and don't get pissed off you know it's true, but you're still at least a good friend. You don't whine and you almost never act like a bitch which is really rare when it comes to people. Like, seriously, is there something in the water or something that turns everyone into a whiny bitch? I just can't…."

Mob said 'uh huh' again. She nodded, too, but that was just a reflex. She knew that Minori had been through a lot and she knew that she had to listen and be understanding….so that was what she did. She listened and tried to be as understanding as she could be. Even though this was…kind of a lot. Mob liked that Minori didn't think that she was a b-word but she also didn't like how she called other people a b-word. That was just…not a good thing to call people. Minegishi never even called people that and they called people names a lot of the time. They seemed like they were about to start calling someone, probably Minori, names. They had that feel to their aura and they rolled their eyes and shook their head every so often. Mob understood the feeling, sort of. She didn't want to call Minori names, that wasn't nice at all, but she also didn't want to have to sit here for another hour….

But that was what friends did. They sat and listened to their friends complaining for hours and hours…even when they would rather have been hanging out with their other friends….or doing pretty much anything else.

"…so then I told my dad that if we didn't move back to Japan I would hate him until the day I die and now he says that we have to see a family therapist like I'm crazy or something! I don't need a therapist! I'm just not going to say anything when he takes me just like I did with the last three. I'm not crazy and I don't need a therapist and-"

"Your friend needs a therapist." Said Minegishi. Mon had been in the middle of nodding and saying 'uh huh' when Minegishi had said that….and she needed to turn the volume down on her phone. It had been too loud and also…also that hadn't been very nice. Well Minegishi said things like that sometimes and Mob knew that they didn't mean to be mean, that was just how they were, but Minori could have taken it the wrong way…and she could be very sensitive sometimes…even though she hated it when other people were sensitive….and Mob didn't know how that worked…

She didn't have to know how it worked. She just had to make sure nothing bad happened.

"What was that?" asked Minori. Mob closed her eyes. She could see….she could almost see the way her eyes would get all narrow and her hand turned into a fist…and she knew that Minori was getting mad…and that was just…not good for anyone.

"That was just my friend talking, that was all. What happened with you and your dad? Are you still mad at him?" asked Mob. It was best, sometimes, to distract Minori before she could get even more angry…because it wasn't good when she got mad…and stuff.

"Shige…am I on speaker right now?" asked Minori. Mob was bad with tones and talking but she knew Minori well enough to know that she was going to get very upset very soon….and she didn't want her friend to get upset at all…because she could be mean when she got upset. That was a selfish way to think. She didn't want Minori to feel bad because then her feelings would be hurt. Not because she would be mean to Mob.

You should never be selfish towards your friends.

"No….my phone is just loud. That's all. I'm just here with my other friend and they didn't mean that the way it came out-" said Mob

"Yes I did." Said Minegishi. They didn't even look up from their book. They just reached over and took another bitter pill from their mint tin that Mob was never to touch or she could die. That was why Minegishi was being so….Minegishi right now. They had been taking those for a while and Mob remembered that they made your brain not work so well. It was like the little people in your head who ran your emotions console all took a break at once.

"Shige….your phone being on extra loud is the same as being on speaker…." Said Minori. Mob could see her expression, well in her head, and she knew that Minori was getting all mad like she did sometimes and she could be so mean when she was mad…and she didn't want Minori to be mad and…and not just because she was being selfish and didn't want Minori to call her a b-word again…and stuff.

"I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean-" said Mob. Great. Now Minori was getting madder and madder and now she was just…just going to start yelling and saying mean things…and Mob maybe should have just remembered to lower her volume…and stuff. She should have thought about that before this whole conversation even started.

"God, nobody even means it! You are such a-you know what? It's whatever. I have to go anyway. I have other friends too, you know, lots of them and they're better for conversation than you, Shige. So bye!" said Minori because she hung up….and it was good that she hadn't called Mob a b-word…and Mob should have been grateful that Minori had been nice….for her…but she just…she wanted to call back. She wanted to call back and tell Minori that she was sorry. She wanted to call her back and tell her that she was so sorry and that she would be batter friend to her in the future and that she shouldn't be upset and-

And her phone was taken from her hand.

"Mob don't call her back." Said Minegishi as they took her phone from her hand and put it on the table. Their grip was weak and they were having trouble keeping their eyes opened. They were tired. They were tired and that was why they had said…what they had said. They were just really sleepy and stuff.

"How did you know that I was going to call her back?" asked Mob. She wondered if they could read her mind. Sometimes it seemed like they could read minds. Like how they always knew when Shimazaki was up to something…and Mob hoped that they couldn't be read minds. Nobody needed to see what happened in her mind…and not just the mean thoughts that she had about Minori sometimes.

"Because I know you. You're going to call her back and fall over yourself apologizing to her for this. Don't. Don't ever apologize for me. Besides, I stand by what I said. That girl needs professional help." Said Minegishi. Mob…that was a mean thing to say about someone. Minori wasn't crazy. She was just…not very nice. That was all.

"Minegishi…that isn't nice. She isn't crazy. She's just sort of mean. That's just because everyone she meets is a b-word." Said Mob. She wished that Minori had met nice people in her life. Mob wished that everyone had been as luck as she had been in her life. That everyone, but especially her friend, had been lucky enough to meet nice people and to make good friends…but not everyone could be so lucky…and that just wasn't fair at all to anyone.

"Mob…if everyone she meets is a bitch then maybe she's the bitch." Said Minegishi. Mob gasped and shook her head so hard that her hair hit her in the face. That was…not a nice thing to say…and Minegishi said things that just weren't very nice sometimes….and that was normal for them…but still. This was just…she didn't know how to feel. Part of her…the mean part….agreed that Minori could at least be kind of a jerk…but the rest of her….the nice part of her…didn't want to say anything mean about her friend…even though, yes, she could be kind of a jerk to just about everyone in the whole world…including Mob….her friend…

"Minegishi, no. Minori isn't a b-word. She's sort of mean a lot of the time but she's not a b-word…or crazy. You're just saying all of this because you're sleepy." Said Mob. Minori was a friend and…well she wasn't friends with Minegishi…and that was…huh. She had a friend who was separate from her other friends. That was…new. She had never had a friend in her life that wasn't friends with her other friends…mainly because she had all of her friends living right here in this house…well not Minori…huh. Alright then.

"I never said that she was crazy. She's not insane but she clearly has issues…and from what I've heard in the last hour she can be a real bitch to just about everyone in her life. Including you." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. Their hair it hit them in the face, too, sort of. They had bangs long enough to hit their eyebrows now. Maybe they would have another haircut day soon. Mob's were getting long…and she would have liked to have had a haircut day right then and there…but Minegishi was tired…and also Mob had to defend Minori. They may not have been best friends, not like her and Minegishi, but they were friends and friends defended their other friends from their other friends…and stuff.

"Minegishi….that's not nice. She can be sort of mean…to everyone…but that doesn't mean that she has issues. She's actually sort of nice when you get to know her. Like how she took the time out of her life to teach me about all of the important things that I missed out on because I don't go to school and the only person I know who's may age is my little brother. She didn't have to but she did and that was very nice of her." said Mob

"Uh-huh, and what did she teach you that was so important? How to put on eyeshadow?" asked Minegishi rolling their eyes. Mob got the feeling that they were unhappy about something…but she didn't know what. Well maybe because Minori had been sort of mean to her. Yes, that must have been it, since her eyeshadow was very good today. She had blended and everything.

"Yes, but a lot of other things too. She taught me about different kinds of clothes and about kpop, which she says is the best thing ever, and about different relationships that you can have with people and about all the different ways that a person can be a virgin-" said Mob. Minori may have been sort of a jerk sometimes but she took the time out of her life to teach her that stuff that a kid her age was supposed to know. Mob had missed out on a lot only being friends with adults. She knew the things that an adult knew, things that Minori didn't know about like smoking and drinking, but before she had met Minori she hadn't even known how much there was that she had missed out on learning about. Things that she had to know…well she had thought that she had to know.

"What in the….why do EITHER of you need that information?" asked Minegishi. They said that like she had said something wrong….like there was something wrong with knowing. She could tell because their aura had flared out from themselves, not the plants around them, which meant that they'd had to let go of the plants they were so shocked…and Mob didn't know why. Maybe she had said the wrong thing. Maybe she just needed to explain better.

"Because it's important. It's like…I used to think that there was just kissing and then you feel in love and did…adult stuff….but there are things in between. Being a virgin means that you haven't done anything yet. Like there are kissing virgins and being felt up virgins, that's when you let a boy touch you on your chest, and then there's messing around virgins and Minori hasn't told me what messing around is but I know it's more than being felt up and then there are virgin-virgins who have never done…adult stuff. It's important to know the different levels of stuff and also when it's ok to let a boy do something to you. Like how it's ok to kiss your boyfriend after you've been going out for a long time or not very long if he's older because older boys go fast…and that's when it's ok to kiss a boy. You can also kiss a boy that you're playing a kissing game with but it's not ok to just let boy's kiss you and-" said Mob

"Oh my God, stop. Just…just stop it." Said Minegishi shaking their head.

"Oh…sorry. I shouldn't have been talking about any of that." Said Mob. Maybe she had been talking about something that she should not have been talking about. Maybe she had gotten the whole thing wrong again. She was always getting these sorts of things wrong. She was always so clueless like that. She hated being clueless and she wanted…she wanted to know more but in knowing more she just ended up more clueless than when she had started out…and that didn't seem very fair at all.

"No, it's not that. You can talk about that but…stop listening to Minori, ok? None of that…don't talk like that." Said Minegishi. It took them a minute to say that. They were very tired. Maybe them being very tired was why they didn't make any sense. What was so bad about listening to Minori? She knew what she was talking about even though she could be very mean sometimes. Also hadn't Mob said the wrong thing by talking about all of that stuff? This whole thing was very confusing.

"I…don't get it." Said Mob shaking her head. She wished that she just had a big book or a website or something with all the answers to every single question that she had ever asked. She just…needed to know. She needed to know what you were and were not supposed to do when you liked someone or…or even how anything worked at all. She didn't get it. She didn't get it at all.

"Mob…it's not something done TO you, ok? It's something that you do WITH someone. It's something that both of you have to want…and there aren't any rules…well always make sure the other person wants what you want…but aside from that just…kiss whoever you want. If you see a guy and you like him and he likes you then go for it. Don't let anyone else dictate your relationships. If you want to kiss, and he wants to kiss, then just kiss. There's nothing wrong with wanting what you want and there's nothing wrong with acting on the feelings you have. Don't just wait around for a guy to do something to you…it's something that's done WITH you, ok? Not TO you." Said Minegishi. Well now she was even more confused than when they had started talking. She knew that you did that stuff with someone but…but also it was done to you…since you couldn't kiss yourself…like she wanted to be kissed…and also you could only kiss your boyfriend…well unless you were like Minegishi and Shimazaki…and was that what they were talking about? Their relationship?

"But…do you mean like how you and Shimazaki are friends with benefits?" asked Mob. Maybe she had said the wrong thing again because Minegishi's aura flared again…and also a plant had grown so big an so fast that it came out of it's pot….and she would clean that up later. Minegishi may have done it but they had done it on accident and they had only done that on accident because Mob had said the wrong thing…even though that was the name of their relationship with Shimazaki. Friends with benefits. All friendships had benefits but their relationship had the benefit of kissing…which was a very good benefit.

"Mob….where did you hear….what? What are you saying?" asked Minegishi. Now their eyes were opened and they were sitting all the way up…and maybe they would feel better when Mob explained. Maybe she had used the word wrong. She would explain again. That would help.

"Friends with benefits is when you kiss a boy and stuff just for fun. Minori says that we need friends with benefits before we have boyfriends…and I don't know how we're supposed to have friends with benefits before boyfriends because that would be breaking a rule, and also I don't even know any boys I could be friends with benefits with and-" said Mob. Maybe in explaining she had just said even more of the wrong thing, she figure that she had, based on how another plant had gotten over grown. This one didn't explode out of it's pot though, no, but it did tip over and get dirt all over the place…and Mob hadn't meant to be responsible for that. She wished that she could have just…said the right thing….or at least known what, specifically, about what she had been saying was wrong. She just didn't know.

"Mob, you're eleven. Stop saying friends with benefits." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't know what was wrong with saying friends with benefits. That was just another kind of relationship that a person could have. Just like being friends or boyfriend and girlfriend or married. That was just somewhere between being friends and being more than friends and she didn't see what was so wrong with saying the name of the relationship…the right word for it.

"But….that's the word for it. That kind of relationship that you and Shimazaki have. Well you did but then he caught feelings, which Minori says that you have to be careful about, and I don't know why catching feelings is a bad thing. I don't think that could do stuff like that with someone without having feelings for him. Feelings are important." Said Mob. She had said the right thing. She had not been wrong. She knew things…she knew some things. She didn't know all of the things but she knew some of them…more than she had known before. Minori may have been sort of mean to her…and everyone else in the world it seemed sometimes…but she also taught Mob a lot of things. Things that she remembered. She was eleven now, not ten, and she knew the things that an eleven year old should have known.

"Mob…you're eleven. If you want to kiss a boy then kiss him…but you are way too young for what me and Ryou have…and please don't ever go into….whatever Ryou is on…again." said Minegishi. It took them a minute to say that, too, and they were having trouble keeping their eyes opened…and maybe Mob should have just let them sleep since they were tired…but also…also she just…she didn't get it. She didn't get it at all.

"Ok…but I don't understand." Said Mob. She needed to get it. All of this. She needed to know how things worked and also…also all the things that she needed to know about. She just didn't get it. She wanted to get it. Minegishi got it. They were older then Minori, they were twenty eight years old which was a lot older than eleven, and they knew things…things that Mob didn't know. Things that she wanted to know. Things that she wanted to understand.

"Mob….what is there to understand?" asked Minegishi with a sigh….and Mob…there was a lot that she wanted to understand. She wanted to ask them every single question that she had ever had in her head…but they weren't going to be able to stay awake forever…so she just asked one of her bigger questions. She knew how they got when they were like this, they talked a lot, and she wanted…she wanted to know something that was very important.

"You like him too. I think so, anyway. You're always do nice things for him even though you say that you hate extra work. You labeled the whole kitchen for him again and you help him pick out clothes so he doesn't end up in clashing colors and you read to him and you let him use you as a pillow and you let him tell you that he loves you and stuff….and that makes me think that you like him…and I don't know why you aren't boyfriend and theyfriend with him yet." Said Mob. If she could understand their relationship with Shimazaki then she could understand everything about relationships. They were hard to understand. They liked Shimazkai, he liked them, and from what Mob understood they should have been together. But they weren't. Shimazaki told Minegishi that he loved them but they never said it back…and that made no sense. When someone liked you then you liked them back. Minegishi said that they weren't a relationship person and stuff…but what could be better than being in a relationship? What could be better than having someone who loved you? Who looked at you and saw…you. Saw who you were. Saw who you were, all of who you were, and just…wanted to be with you? That was the best thing ever, Mob figured, having someone who loved every single part of you….and also the kissing. The kissing was also good….not that she knew a lot about kissing…but if she'd had a boyfriend then she would have kissed him every single day…

She wondered how often Minegishi and Shimazaki kissed.

Not that she should have been thinking about stuff like that. That was none of her business. She had no business wondering or asking…even though she wanted to know. They were the only couple she had ever known besides her parents…and mom and dad never kissed. Not where she could see, anyway, Sho had seen them kiss once and he had been really grossed out. She didn't want to see mom and dad kiss, they were her parents and that would have been a weird thing to want to see, but she did want to know what was…normal. How often did people kiss? When did you know when it was ok to kiss someone? What did it feel like to kiss someone who you loved and who loved you? She had been kissed once and she hadn't been expecting it…and she hadn't been in love with him when he had kissed her…and they hadn't even been in a relationship and…

And she just wanted to know how all of this worked.

"Theyfriend? Is that another one you got from Minori?" asked Minegishi. That didn't answer any of her questions….and she wanted her questions answered…and also she knew that theyfriend wasn't a real word. She just had to say something, come up with something, that fit their relationship with Shimazaki…well the one that he seemed to want to have with them.

"No, I came up with that one on my own because it's boyfriend and girlfriend but you're a 'they' and not a 'she' so that's how I came up with theyfriend." Said Mob. There. Now that they knew how she had come up with that word they were free to answer her questions.

"Clever." Said Minegishi. That….was a nice thing to say…but that didn't help her understand anything…but it had been a nice thing to say…and stuff.

"So…can you tell me why you and Shimazaki aren't boyfriend and theyfriend? Because I don't understand why not. He likes you and you like him…and you already do all of the stuff together…so why not be together?" asked Mob. There. She had asked again. She had asked and now Minegishi would know that she wanted her questions answered and they could answer her question and then once she understood their relationship she could understand everything. She didn't know what she would do with this information, what she could do once she understood everything, but she just….needed to understand. Even if she didn't understand everything she would still understand something…and understanding something was better than understanding nothing.

"Mob…adult relationships are complicated. Very complicated. All relationships are complicate but they get even more complicated when you get older. Ok? This is…you can't just distill a relationship down to a set of arbitrary rules. You need to do what works for you." Said Minegishi. That was….something that made sense…but also didn't. She knew that adult relationships were complicated. She knew that adults in general were complicated…but she also wanted to just…to understand. She wanted to understand better and she just…she wanted to know. She didn't know. She didn't even know what Minegishi had meant. She didn't know what Minegishi had meant by what she wanted, what worked for her, because there were two people in a relationship. Her and whatever boy would end up wanting to be her boyfriend. What he wanted mattered and…and what she wanted mattered too….and she had no idea how two people were supposed to just…want the same thing. Like with Shimazaki and Minegishi. It seemed like he wanted one thing but they wanted something else….and Mob didn't even know what would make them not want to be with Shimazaki the way that he wanted to be with them….and Mob…she just wanted to understand. That was all. She just…really wanted to understand something…because she felt like she understood nothing.

"But…there are two people in a relationship. You said so. You said that you do things with someone and not to someone….and I don't know how you understand how to even do…anything…or how people decided if they wanted the same thing…and stuff." Said Mob. She hoped that she had explained herself. She hoped that she had made herself understood…because she was having trouble even understanding herself right now.

"Good. You are listening." Said Minegishi. She wished that they would start listening too. She just…she wanted to understand and they could help her understand…but also they were just…not getting that she wanted to understand…and stuff.

"I am….and I don't understand how it all…works. Like how you said that…that you like your relationship with Shimazaki the way it is…but he's in love with you and stuff. He probably wants you to be his theyfriend and then his they…married…person…and then he wants to have babies with you, probably, and then you'd be their they…parent…and stuff. And then you could have a bunch of babies and-" said Mob. That was her understanding of all of it, anyway, which probably wasn't any sort of an understanding at all based on Minegishi…and maybe she should just stop now…since they were tired and it didn't seem like she was going to be getting any answers anytime soon…even though she really wanted to understand…she didn't even know what she wanted to understand.

"You'll get it when you're older, ok? And get off this me having kids thing. Not going to happen. I know you love babies and if you want a baby to play with tell your dad to start dating again, find a woman for Shibata, or wait until you're as old as Hatori is now and then confess your undying love for him, ok? Just…I'm fading in and out here and this is very heavy and complicated and we can talk about this later. Ok?" said Minegishi. Mob didn't even know if she loved Hatori or not…and she wasn't going to ask them how to know if you were in love with someone or not. She knew what they would say, that she just thought that he was attractive, but it felt like much more than thinking that he was attractive. She had been thinking about him like…like she didn't even want to think about. Not around her best friend…or anyone…and she wanted to know what all of that was about, too. She knew from what Minegishi had said, before, that this was normal….but she still just….she didn't understand…

But that was ok.

She understood that Minegishi was tired. She understood that she had been asking a lot of questions. She understood that her friend needed sleep and she understood that good friends let their friends sleep…and at least she understood how to be a good friend. At least she understood something….though that was not the something that she wanted to understand. She wanted to understand…a lot of things. Maybe she could ask Minori later. She understood a lot of things…well Minegishi had also said that she had gotten a lot of things wrong…but Mob…she had no idea what was right and what was wrong because she couldn't understand…she couldn't even understand what it was that she wanted to ask. What the questions that she had were…and she had so many questions that she wanted to ask…but Minegishi was tired…

So she wasn't getting any of her questions answered today, it seemed.

"Ok…" said Mob even though she had even more questions now. She just…she didn't know how all of this worked. She had thought that there would have been rules, rules that only adults knew but still rules, but instead of finding more rules and more answers she had just found out that there were no rules at all…and that just made the whole relationship thing all the more confusing.

"Good. Now I'm going to pass out for a while. Put this book back in my room and my pill tin too…and don't eat any of them." Said Minegishi as they scooted so that they were fully laying down and closed their eyes. Mob didn't want them to go to sleep. She had more questions for them. Questions that needed answers…but she also knew not to disturb their sleep. They needed all of the sleep that they could get. They had said so.

"Ok, I'll do that." Said Mob. Minegishi didn't hear her. They were sleeping. She could tell by their aura and the way that they were breathing. She wanted to wake them up and ask them just…how it all worked. How people came together. Why. What the rules were. Which rules Minori had been right about. Which ones she had been wrong about. How Minori could have been wrong about any of the rules since she knew so much about this. Other stuff like that. She wanted to ask but…but she didn't want to wake Minegishi up because that would not have been what a good friend would have done at all…

And she tried her best to be a very good friend.

So she did as she was asked. She picked up Minegishi's book, she folded the page over so they wouldn't lose their place, and she picked up their tin of pills. She knew not to take one. They were very strong and they put you into such a deep sleep that you could never wake up again if you didn't know what you were doing, and Mob did not know what she was doing. She had accidentally eaten one of the bitter pills when she had been eight and that had been bad…so bad that she could have never woken up again especially since she did the death combination which was pills and alcohol, and she was never doing that again. Even Shimazaki told her that taking pills was way too dangerous for her and if he thought that something was dangerous then, yes, it was dangerous.

The rules for drinking and stuff were a lot simpler than the rules for relationships.

She wished that the rules for relationships could have been that simple…but they weren't. But that was ok. She could ask later…or something. She didn't know. She just knew that she had to put this stuff in Minegishi's room. So that was what she did. She opened their door, carefully as not to disturb their books or plants, and put their pill tin back on their dresser. That was easy, she knew where that went, the book was a whole other story. There were piles and piles of books on the floor and the dresser and the windowsill…and she really didn't know where this book went…so she just left it on the bed. She moved carefully as not to disturb the plants, Minegishi was trying to sleep and she could feel their aura in their plants, and she succeed…in not disturbing the plants.

But the books…well she hadn't been careful enough about the books.

In walking away from the bed she knocked over a stack of books…and before she could think she got down on her hands and knees and started to stack the books back up. She knew that it would have gone faster if she had used her powers…but she hadn't been thinking. She had to get this back together, that was what she had been thinking, and she tried her best. She figured that the order they had fallen in was the order they should have gone back in…and that worked for the ones at the bottom…but the ones from the top had gone under the bed…

Where there were other books.

The ones from the top of the stack had mixed in with the books under the bed…and she had no idea what went where. She just reached under and took out book after book. Some in English, some in Japanese, some with pretty covers, some which were plain, some which had dust jackets, some without, and some were manga….

Hey! Manga!

Mob almost never saw Minegishi reading manga. They had said, before, that adults read books without pictures. Back when Mob had been little. Mob could count the number of times she had seen them reading manga on one hand and she would have had fingers to spare…which should have meant that them reading manga was a rare thing…but that didn't seem to be the case. They had A LOT of manga under their bed. A lot of it…and with book covers, too. Brown ones like her school text books had been covered in back when she went to school. That was to keep the book safe….but what was so good about manga that the book had to be kept safe?

Mob decided to see….and then slammed the book shut.

Oh. That was….those were….not the sort of books, and manga counted as books, that she shouldn't have been reading. These were…she put them back where she had found them. She used her powers to shove them all back under the bed. She should not have been looking at those. She should not have even known that those were there. She had known that those kinds of books existed, books that showed what happened after people kissed, but she never would have imagined that Minegishi read those sorts of book. They didn't have to. They knew what came after people kissed.

They had Shimazaki after all.

They had him if they wanted to do the stuff that came after kissing, and they had done that stuff with him before, and they could have been doing that stuff with him right now if they had wanted to. That was why you had these books, right? So you could see what happened after kissing…or maybe so you could think about what happened after kissing. That was why Mob watched kissing compilations on YouTube…well not so she could think about it because her brain did that on it's own….but just because…because it felt good to watch people kiss. It felt good because she felt good during that first and only time that she had kissed a boy…well now it was…different…when she thought about it….

Was that why Minegishi had all of these? So they could think about it?

But…but that made no sense. Minegishi had Shimazaki if they wanted to more than kiss with someone. They didn't have to read about it…and stuff…but just….maybe they just liked to think about it? Mob…she liked to think about…well not about IT because that would be…too much…but her thoughts had gone to…to what it would have felt like if a boy had liked her enough to touch her on her…not that she even had anything, well she did but she didn't, and no boy would ever want to touch her…and she didn't even know why a boy would want to since she didn't even have…and she didn't know what boy would ever want to…she didn't even know. She just knew that part of her, the brave part, wanted to know what it would be like….and liked to think about what it would be like…even though she felt…weird…when she thought about it for too long….and also something happened…something gross….something that she would never tell anyone about…and stuff…and just…

She didn't understand.

She didn't understand what the point of all of those books was….or why she had one in her hand. She had pushed the ones from the floor back under the bed….and she should have just…put this one back too…but she had never seen anything like this before. This book…she should have put it back. This was private, this had naked people in it, and she should not have been looking at this….and she should have put it back…and she would put it back…because it had naked people in it…

Did every single page have naked people on it.

She just had to know. Did these books just have naked people kissing on every single page…or did these books have…everything…in them? Was it just pictures of people…being together? Being naked together? But there were so many books like that under the bed…were they all just pictures of people with no clothes on doing…no clothes on stuff? But why? Why would so many people draw so many of those pictures and why would so many people buy so many of these books…and why by the books in the first place? Mob know, thanks to Minori, that the internet was full of pictures of naked people…and those pictures were free…so why did they just…have books about this? What was so special about people being naked and kissing and…and fitting together?

Did this book have people fitting together?

She didn't know, not really, how people fit together. She assumed that it was sort of like how hotdogs worked…or something like that. She really didn't know….and there were apparently books full of pictures of people fitting together….books with paper on the outside like textbooks….and that meant that they were educational….and it was ok to read educational books…and that meant that opening this book was ok…so that was what she did. She opened to the first page….which was the title…oh. This was a book of love stories….and that made sense. People who were in love did this…and this was ok to read…because it was about love…and she read love stories all the time…so it was ok to read this and…and see the pictures inside…

It took thirteen pages for the boy and girl to kiss…and then another thirty pages for them to kiss without clothes on…and the rest probably came on the next pages but Mob didn't want to keep on looking…she couldn't.

She felt weird. She felt way too weird. She felt weird because she was sitting in her best friend's room reading their private books. That was it. It had nothing to do with the fact that now she was thinking about being in love with someone and kissing them and touching them and all of that other stuff. No. It had nothing to do with the fact that she had that feeling again, the weird one, that it was back. That she felt like she wanted something and she didn't know what it was….but also she did know what it was…but also she didn't understand…and also she just…wanted to understand. But this didn't seem like the kind of thing that she could understand, that could be understandable, because then she would have to think about…about stuff…and she just…didn't want to think about…well she did and she did not want to think about…she did and did not want to understand…so she just….she did what she had to do. She closed the book and put it back with the others where it belonged. Then she left the room. Then she closed the door. Then she went back to the living room.

She sat down.

She sat down and just looked at the TV. She didn't want to read anymore….and she wasn't watching TV either…because it was off. She didn't want to turn it on. If she turned it on then Minegishi would wake up and then when they woke up they would want to talk to her and if they talked to her then they would know that she had been in their private books and if they knew then…well Mob didn't want to know what would happen then. So she just sat down on the living room couch and just…sat….she could have picked up her phone but then that would just make her want to call Minori and say sorry…but then that would have involved talking to Minori…and Mob just…did not want to talk to anyone.

She wanted to just…wait for this feeling to pass.

She pulled her sweater close around herself. She wanted…she wanted this feeling to go away. This weird feeling that she just could not begin to understand. This feeling that…that she wanted…she didn't know what she wanted. Aside from wanting to be alone….but also she didn't want to be alone…she just…she wanted this feeling to just….to pass already. So that was what she did. She just…sat on the ground and…and waited for this feeling to pass. This feeling that was new and weird and good and bad and just…something that she didn't understand….something that she didn't want to understand…because understanding would have involved asking….and she didn't want to ask, to have anyone know, she just…she wanted….she wanted this feeling…this collection of feelings….to just pass already.

She didn't love this collection of feelings, she didn't even like it, but she also…she didn't know. She just wanted it to go away already.


	346. Moderation and Happiness

Moderation was important.

Sho needed to learn moderation and Mob was the one who was going to teach him. Nobody else could. Sho was her brother and it was her job to teach him about moderation. That didn't mean that she had to be mean about it, she could never be mean about it, she could be nice and she was nice. She was always nice. She was always nice but she was especially nice when she got like this, when she felt like this, and she would pass that niceness off to Sho.

Also she would pass him the joint, too.

"Two more and then you're done." Said Mob as she passed Sho the joint. This one was one that she had rolled. She would teach him later how to do this right so it didn't break and burnt evenly. Sho needed to know that, it was important knowledge to have, and it was her job to pass all of the important knowledge that she had down to him. Maybe he was too young to know but also…but also she wanted to be the one to teach him this stuff.

Not Shimazaki.

Not that she didn't like Shimazaki, because she did, but he had…different ideas about moderation than she did. She knew that Sho would have drawer privileges just like she did and she knew that Sho wasn't as good at moderation as she was…so many he would try and roll his own….but she could at least teach him to roll them thin and tight. Thin. That was the most important part…and not just because it was hard to keep them from falling apart and stuff when they were too thick. She didn't want Sho to pick this up as a habit.

He didn't need to.

He could control his powers all on his own…but he was sad a lot of the time. She knew how dad could be. She had finally taught dad, finally gotten it through his head, that he needed to stop hitting Sho. When dad hit him all he did was give Sho more stuff to have nightmares and stuff. Sho was the best little brother in the world, she didn't want any other little bother in the whole world, and she was going to make sure that he was ok. Dad hadn't hit him in a while, at least Sho hadn't said anything to her about any of that, but that didn't mean that Sho was ok. He still remembered what it was like for dad to hit him. He still remembered how he felt….and it woke him up in the night…and he didn't need…well he did need. He didn't need anything else to make him upset and he did need…he needed to do this. Because he had a lot of feelings…and this was good for making you feel better.

It made your feelings a lot quieter and easy to deal with….and they both needed that.

"Five." Said Sho as he took the joint from big sis's hand. He was fine. He was happy. He was great. He wanted a poptart. He wanted all of the poptarts….but he only got one as a reward…but he could get more after she fell asleep…or sooner. He didn't know. He might have been starving to death. Shimazaki laughed whenever Sho told him that he was starving to death…but that was what it felt like. He was so hungry that he could have eaten the grass that they were laying on. He could have eaten the grass and the bugs in the grass and the leaves from the trees and also he could have flown up into the sky and taken a bite out of the moon. People did say that it was made of cheese….and that could have been great. Just a big ball of cheese….hopefully something good like white cheddar…that was good cheese…he could really have used a slice of cheese…and a poptart…and a cheese poptart…wait, no, those were gross….were they? He didn't know. He was just hungry. He needed food. He needed to get up and get some food…

But later.

Not now. Later. If he went into the house then big sis would try and put him to bed. It was after nine, maybe, he didn't know. There was no sun and he didn't have his phone. It could have been midnight for all he knew. He didn't know how to tell moon time. Cheese time. Was the moon really made of cheese? Why would they lie about that? Why would someone tell such a lie? That was just a crazy lie like how people said that died soda tasted the same as normal soda…or that sugar free was the same as with sugar…or that cheap pencils were just as good as real artist's pencils…and stuff. He didn't know. The world was full of lies and stuff…but that was ok because he had big sis and she didn't lie to him…and she had food….and he wanted food…

But later.

"Three." Said Mob. She knew Sho. She knew that he had trouble, a lot of trouble, with moderation. Like tonight. He had managed to get another reward poptart from her. She knew that giving him sugar this late at night wasn't good for him but he needed his rewards or he wouldn't get in the tub and just…bathe. He smelled good now. He smelled good and he wasn't always scratching himself all the time so this was good. Even if he did get a reward soda and poptart after every bath no matter how long or how short…but this was still good. Him bathing, them getting along, even now things were….so good. Just him and her under the sky and on top of the grass….and the grass was so soft…and the sky was so big…and the air smelled so good…

It was so nice out.

She could feel the grass under her feet, her socks, and it was soft. This had to have been the softest grass in the whole, wide, world. She made a grass angel as Sho inhaled. Well that was one and he could have two more…though she wanted him to have one more…but not five. He didn't get to have five more. That would be too much. He would end up stoned, not high, and that would be just too much. He needed to take the edge off, not get stoned, because once you started to get stoned then…then you did it a lot more than you needed to. That was the thing, about this, once you stated you never wanted to stop but you had to take breaks because you had to live your life. You had a home to take care of and a little brother and a dad…and you couldn't just….be stoned all the time….

But being high some of the time was ok.

"Four." Said Sho. He didn't want to stop at two. He wanted to feel that thing where he couldn't think and the world was like….fast and slow…and shiny, too, like someone had shined everything up with polish or something…and stuff. The thing where is brain got all weird. The thing that had made him say something so stupid to Shimazaki…and he did not get like this with Shimazaki. He knew about moderation but only when he was with Shimazaki. There was too much that could go wrong. There were too many things that he could have said. There were too many things that he could have said to Shimazaki…again….

And he didn't know if Shimazaki would even…

He didn't want to think about that. About any of it. About how he felt, about what he wanted, and about how it was like every single day it got worse and worse. He wanted…he wanted what he had. He had a great life! Well he was hungry enough that he could have eaten grass….and he was getting pretty thirsty too….but he still had a great life. He got to spend every single day of his life with his best friend. They played all day. They played at throwing things at people, the played at exploring people, sometimes they played with dogs, sometimes they played fort, and sometimes…well they didn't always play. Sometimes Sho sat on the floor and drew pictures while Shimazaki got his tattoo done and colored…and his friend couldn't have been that good if Shimazaki had to keep on going back to get it worked on….

Sho didn't want to think about that.

Sho didn't want to think about Ono Kai, that was Shimazaki's friend's name not that Sho was ever going to use it, and about how Shimazaki had other friends….that was fine. Sho had other friends too. He was with one of his other friends right now….and sisters might have counted as friends….and anyway Sho didn't…well he did. He liked him and…and he didn't want to talk about this or think about this and thinking was like talking in your head…but what if when you thought in your head you spoke out loud…but psychically?

What if there was a telepath near?

Think about being hungry. Inhale again and think about being hungry. Think about poptarts with gooey marshmallow and chocolate. Think about cheese, the melty kind, on top of a poptart…yuck. On second thought don't think about that. Think about something else. Think about your sister reaching for the joint. Think about how…um…how she keeps on rubbing her feet against the grass like she's mad at it. Like she's trying to wake the worms up or something….

He started laughing.

"What's funny?" asked Mob. She smiled…and now she was going to laugh too…and she had no idea what she was laughing at. That wasn't good. You should always know what you're laughing at. That was because she could have laughed at something mean, like maybe Sho was remembering something he had done to Hatori, and that was not something that she wanted to laugh at…nope. She would smile, though, because smiling was ok so long as your little brother was happy. What else could she ever have wanted besides her little brother's happiness?

Maybe something to drink…

And also maybe to find some way to take the grass, pick it up like a carpet, and bring it inside. Then she could sleep on top of it. She could sleep on this soft grass every single night…and it would be so great…but then there might be bugs in it…and she would have to learn to live in peace with the bugs but there could have been a lot of them and no way was she making breakfast lunch and dinner for a few hundred bugs….and now she was smiling even more…even bigger…and now she was…she was…

She started laughing.

"What are you laughing at?" asked Sho. There was no way that she was laughing at the same thing that he was. There was no way that she was a telepath. She would have said something. She would have told him not to have so many mean thoughts about people or so many cheating thoughts…and he had a lot of cheating thoughts…there was no way that she would have just let him go on thinking the thoughts that he had been thinking if she could hear his thoughts…so she must have been laughing about something else. Something other than her waking up a whole city of worms…and they had little worm houses and little worm beds and they smoked little worm things and….

And he kept on laughing.

"I asked you first." Said Mob. She hoped that he wasn't laughing about something mean that he had done to someone…though she doubted that he was laughing at making tiny dinners for bugs….because he never made dinner. He mostly ate poptarts…he loved them. He loved them and he was so happy when he had some poptarts to eat…and maybe she would let him have another one before bed just to make him happy. Yes. He would like that…and he would be brushing his teeth soon so…so maybe that would help? She didn't know. She just wanted to make him happy.

"You did. Ok, I was just thinking that…you know how you keep on kicking the ground." Asked Sho before he inhaled again. That was three…but he could get another one maybe if she was distracted…or two. It depended on how distracted she was…and she seemed really distracted by kicking her feet against the ground…and stuff.

"I'm feeling it. Wouldn't it be great if we could bring this inside? I was just thinking that it would be great if we could roll this grass up like a carpet and then bring it into the house and then we could sleep on it and it would be really soft…and stuff. I don't know. I like soft things." Said Mob through her laughs. She would have to make so many tiny bug meals if that had been possible…and she had enough big people meals to make as it was. Did they have milk? She would have milk tomorrow for breakfast…and she would have milk when she went inside…some strawberry milk before bed…and Sho could have another soda, too, because he had been really good about not wetting the bed lately…and also he would want a soda if he saw her drinking milk…and also she wanted him to be happy. Like now. He was so happy and she wanted him to be this happy for as long as he would live.

But she still had to teach him about moderation…and stuff.

And she would, she really would, tomorrow night. Not tonight. Tonight they were going to be having fun. They hadn't set out to have fun tonight, he had just been looking between her mattress and box spring, and now they were here. They hadn't had bad days or good days, they'd just had days. Sho'd spent the day with Shimazaki and she had spent the day with Minegishi…and aside from looking where she shouldn't have been it had been a good day, and now they were just…here….

And she still had to teach him about moderation…and she would…and she was…sort of.

"But then that would bother the worms….that's what I'm laughing about. The worms. They have little worm cities and houses and they smoke and…and stuff. They do people things down there under the ground." Said Sho. He laughed and inhaled again. Big sis reached over for the joint. She just reached for it…and he didn't want to give it up….but she was happy. She was happy and…and he was happy when she was happy. She deserved to be happy. She was his big sis…

He loved her.

He was a big brother, he knew how hard it was to be big, and she needed to be happy. He loved her and…and he loved little sis…but he doesn't want to think about little sis now. He doesn't want to think about how she's so close and so far…how there's a bullet train that went right to Seasoning City…how he could have gotten up and…and walked to the train…and seen her. He could have done that…and that would have been easy….but then…then big sis would be all alone…and also…also people didn't know that he knew where she was….and also…also he couldn't just leave his big sis all alone…

He passed it back to her.

"But they don't have mouths? How can they smoke if they don't have mouths?" asked Mob before she inhaled. She coughed as she exhaled. It was hard to do this laying on her back…but she liked laying down on her back. Even though there were ashes on her sweater now…and also even though her eyes hurt a little from the smoke. There was so much of it…and it just flew away….right off into the sky…into the darkness…just…up there. It just…went up there…and that was just….what was happening….right now…

It could fly away.

She could fly away, too, she could have. It would have been easy. She could have picked herself up with her powers and just…flown away. She could have gone…anywhere. She could have just gone anywhere and done anything and…and there was no way that she was going to leave Sho. Ever. Sho needed her. She needed to give him his after bath reward poptarts and she needed to put him to bed and she needed to make his breakfast and give him homeschool stuff to do and she needed to….she needed to be there for him. He needed her and she needed him. She needed him and he needed her and they needed each other and…and she could and would never leave him.

She could not fly away…ever.

"They do, we just can't see them. They eat the dirt and spit it out." Said Sho. Big sis laughed and couched…and he reached over but she didn't pass him it back. She just rolled back and forth in the grass and lap. The worms were definitely awake now…and dad was awake…but dad…he didn't care. Not about Sho. Dad didn't care about him and that was…fine. That was who he was. He had big sis and he had Shimazaki and he had…well he'd had Fukuda but he was a traitor…and Sho…he didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to think about how Fukuda had betrayed him. He didn't want to think about how he had just…betrayed him to dad….and stuff. He just…he had just…Sho shook his head. He didn't even want to think about thinking about it…so he reached over…

And she didn't pass it back.

"That's gross…but at least now I know how they're good for the dirt…but that's gross. Even I'm not hungry enough to eat dirt." Said Mob. She wanted…she was hungry. She was hungry and thirsty. She wanted…she wanted one of Sho's poptarts…and milk. She wanted one of Sho's poptarts and some milk and…and that would have been good…and she wanted…she wanted to keep on smoking…but she stopped.

She had to use moderation.

She took the joint from her mouth and held it at her side. Sho was reaching for the joint which mean that he wanted some…and that meant that she couldn't give him any. He'd had a lot already and now he needed….he needed…they both needed moderation. Him and her. So she kept the joint at her side and…and maybe she shouldn't have let him have another soda and poptart….but he needed to eat to live and she wasn't going to just deny him food. That was cruel and she was never, ever, ever going to be cruel towards him. Mean towards him. She may have been dad's daughter, she may have been Suzuki Shigeko, but she was also Mob and Mob was never, ever, ever going to be mean to Sho. Sho…he was a good person….a good little brother…and she could never be mean to him….

And she had to teach him moderation.

"Well I'm hungry enough to eat dirt. Seriously, I'm starving here." Said Sho as he reached for it again…and she pulled it away. She sat up and put it in the hand farthest from him. He sat up too and reached…but she still kept it away from him. She'd said three more…and she'd let him have three more…but maybe he could get three more out of her….or even three times three more.

"Let's go inside. We can have poptarts and you can have another soda, too, if you want." Said Mob. With the way Sho was smiling she would have thought that it was his birthday. Good. He needed to smile more. She loved it when he smiled…when he was happy…and she was so…so happy for him…even if he did keep on reaching for her joint she still loved him and she was still so happy to be near him while he was this happy…and stuff…and that she could have made him this happy.

"Hell yeah! Let me have another turn with that and then we can go inside." Said Sho. He reached for it again and she just pulled away again. He needed to maybe just take what he got, extra soda and poptarts was pretty awesome and stuff, but he also wanted to smoke more…and she had been saying yes a lot…and stuff.

"No, I said three more and you had three more…so there you go. Now come on, let's go inside." Said Mob. She wanted Sho to be happy but also…also she just wanted him to know about moderation. She didn't want him to end up smoking all the time. She didn't want him to smoke all the time…and stuff…but sometimes…sometimes things were ok. This was ok because they had been using moderation…and now they were going to use more moderation….and they were going to inside…even though the ground was so soft and Sho was so happy….

And if Sho was happy then she was happy too.

"Come on, big sis? Three more? Please? If you let me have three more I'll take a bath tomorrow without you reminding me." Said Sho. He knew when his bath time was but he always pretended that he forgot and then she had to remind him…and stuff. Well if she let him have more then…then he could go in on his own…and stuff. Yeah. He could do that because he wasn't a baby…anymore…and also he could take a bath and…and now he was thinking about stuff…and when he thought about stuff he wanted to smoke….and she had the thing right there….and he was right there too…and three wasn't that much.

"Two and a quarter of one." said Mob. There. That was moderation, the quarter, and she was still teaching him moderation…even though he was taking the joint from her hand right now. She let him. She loved him and she wanted him to know about moderation…but also she wanted nothing more than to make him happy.

"Deal." Said Sho. He took it from her and went one, twice, and then three times even though she had only said two and a quarter. Well a quarter was hard to measure so he just…smoked again. A whole one…and that was…good…and he just…he passed it back. Ok, now he was ready for poptarts and soda. All of the poptarts and soda….in the house…the house and the world.

"Alright, now come on. You're squinting and when you squint then you're stoned and if you've stoned then you've had too much…now come on. Let's have snacks before we get to bed…but be quiet so you don't wake up dad. He said that I could smoke if I used moderation but he didn't say anything about you…and also we didn't use moderation. Now come on, little brother." Said Mob. She loved Sho, she really did, and she wanted to make him happy but also…also she had to teach him moderation. She had to teach him because she was older than him and she had to take care of him. She had to make sure that he was fed and happy and….and she could do that. She wanted that. She wanted him to be taken care of…

And she wanted him to be happy.

And he was happiest when they weren't practicing moderation. He was happiest when they smoked too much. He was happiest when she let him have all the soda and snacks that he wanted. He was happiest when she let him play all day. He was happiest when she let him go days and days and days without bathing. She wanted him to be happy but also….also she wanted him to be…to know how to…to do what needed to be done. He needed to learn how to be happy, how to have fun, but also…also one day she wouldn't be there. One day he would be an adult and he would need to know how to bathe every single day, how to eat healthy, and how to smoke with moderation.

Because moderation was important….and so was his happiness.


	347. I'm Proud of You, I Suppose

Daughter was a very good parent.

She wasn't a parent yet, not really, but she was very good at caring for Son. Suzuki was the only child of two only children, he'd never had a sibling or a cousin, but he knew that if he'd had to care for a sibling or cousin at Daughter's age he would….not have done well. He would not have had the patience for it, the same patience that Daughter seemed to have a bottomless well of, and he would not have done a good job. He didn't even do a good job….well he did and did not do a good job….as a father. He provided for his family and he raised the children as best as he could. Daughter didn't need much raising, sometimes it seemed as though she had come into the world a fully formed person, but Son….Son needed a lot of raising…and a very firm hand…

Or at least he had always thought.

It wasn't that he enjoyed punishing Son, there were many people that he enjoyed inflicting violence on and Son was not one of them, it was just something that he'd had to do. It was the only way to get through to him. He had always been defiant, tiresome, and quarrelsome. Even as a baby. He would be small and he would just carry on and on and on all night….and day…and there was half a year when the crying just….wouldn't stop. He had even cried in his sleep…and Masami…she had cried too…and Son just wouldn't stop…..he just would not stop….even after all that he had put Masami through being born he just…would not stop…

And he still did not stop.

He fought with his sister. He cursed constantly, and Suzuki did know what went on in this house despite his lack of presence, and he just…was a very tiresome little boy. He never stopped. He was always up to something or getting into something or just making his sister's life worse just like he had made Masami's life worse. The crying could have been forgiven because he had been a baby and hadn't even had the ability to speak but…but the way he carried on as he got older. The screaming, the fighting, the breaking things, the throwing things, everything that he put Masami through…that could not be forgiven. He did the same to Daughter. He put her through so much, he was always fighting with her about something, and Daughter…

She was handling him.

She had told him to his face that she did not need his help with Son. Masami had never told him that she didn't need help. On the contrary, she told him to intervene, but when he intervened she became upset with him…and he didn't understand why. He got Son to stop. What had she been so upset about? It wasn't as though he would do permanent damage to his own child. Son was his firstborn and his only heir. There was nothing good that could have come from permanently damaging him and Suzuki had always been careful not matter how badly Son had been carrying on…but that hadn't been enough for Masami…and he was grateful that Daughter never asked him to intervene.

She was a good parent like that.

She would do very well when she finally had her own children….he knows that day is coming and he doesn't want it to come but he knows that it is coming…..and he is…happy that his grandchildren will be very well behaved. They will be clean and courteous and quiet and intelligent and just smaller versions of her. That would be wonderful. They would be her…well half of her and half of whatever man she picked as her most perfect person…but it was the half of her that he cared about. They would be smaller versions of her and they would be perfect and she would take good care of her children just as she took good care of Son…

She took very good care of Son.

He didn't understand it, what she did, but he knew that it was working…somewhat. She had gotten him to bathe again and he would spend the rest of his life grateful to her for that. She had managed to do it without holding him under the water until he was clean, which was good, because he knew that she would have been distressed if it had come to that. He never wanted her to be distressed and he would have intervened if she had asked but she had not asked. She could take care of her little brother on her own. She could do a lot of things on her own.

Like make breakfast.

Breakfast was one of her many household duties. She didn't make him breakfast every single day, sometimes he got up too early and he couldn't bring himself to wake her, but she made breakfasts on most days. This should have been one of those days. This should have been one of those days when he got up, got dressed, and then went to the kitchen to find breakfast either on the table in front of him or on the stove being cooked….but this was not one of those mornings. The kitchen was devoid of Daughter. She was….he focused….still in bed. She was sleeping and he wanted breakfast…but he also wanted to let her sleep…and he didn't know what to do.

Wait for her?

This wasn't one of those days where he would be pulled in ten different directions every ten seconds. This was an administrative day. A lot of meetings and decisions. He could wait to go to work…but then he would have to wait…well he could wait in his room…but he wanted Daughter to get right to it when she woke up…so he would have to wait for her in the kitchen…but the kitchen was not empty. Had the kitchen been empty he would have answered some emails or read something interesting or tried to understand those internet joke pictures Hatori kept on trying to show him. Had the kitchen been empty he wouldn't have been wearing of sitting it waiting for Daughter to wake up…

But the kitchen was not empty.

"What do you want, dad?" asked Son. He was sitting at the kitchen table. That was normal for him. He did his best work at the kitchen table. Maybe the lighting or something. He didn't know about art. He didn't know about anything that Son was doing. If he had been drawing then Suzuki at least would have been able to understand, but he was not drawing, he was covering various objects with packing wrap. Suzuki had always hated packing wrap. It had always been so loud and annoying…

And the children had loved it.

They used to wake him up jumping on it and making it explode and laughing…mostly Son. He could recall Daughter doing that too, back when she had been a child, but that had always been Son' way of playing. He hoped that Son wasn't about to start making a racket…but it didn't seem that he was. No. Son had stopped what he was doing and now he was staring at Suzuki…and Suzuki found himself with nothing else to do but stare back. It had always amazed Suzuki how much of himself was in that child. His eyes, his hair, his freckles…and he'd had more when he'd been a child. His aura, too, red just like Son's. There was some Masami there, too, in the shape of his face and the length of his fingers. The shape of his eyes, too, those were Masami's.

Though she had never looked at him like that.

"Breakfast." Said Suzuki. He got the feeling that Son didn't want him there. Based on the look on his face, in his eyes, and his aura. His aura was the most reliable way of reading him…and he had no idea what his Son thought that he was doing. What he thought gave him the right to not want Suzuki there. This was his house, they were all his houses, and he could go where he wanted to go. Besides, it wasn't like Suzuki even wanted to be there in the kitchen without Daughter. No, he didn't want to spend any more time with Son than was necessary. Maybe he would become more tolerable than he was now when he grew up. Suzuki didn't know.

He just knew, now, that Son….was generally an annoying person.

"Big sis is still asleep and I don't know how to make breakfast. Sorry." said Son. Well obviously he didn't know how to make breakfast, he was a child, and obviously his sister was still asleep. If she had been awake then she would have been in the kitchen making breakfast. But she was not making breakfast…and he should have gone….but also he wanted to be there when she woke up….so he just…

He sat down at the table.

Son's eyes and aura stayed on him as he crossed the kitchen and sat down. He sat down on the other end of the table as far away from Son and…whatever he was doing…as possible. There were packing tape and packing materials all over the table…and also there were books and candies and…he didn't even know what…all over the table. He could not even begin to understand what Son was even playing at there….but then again he had never been able to understand Son at the best of times. The things he did, the games he played, the way he carried on…

The way he was carrying on now.

"Don't watch me. Get back to playing…whatever it is that you're playing." Said Suzuki. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The children's generation had come up with the greatest invention known to man. When he had been young and he'd wanted to avoid interacting with others he would pull out a book…until mother snatched it away and told him that he was being rude. A phone…well he didn't care if he was being rude since this was his own Son…but a phone was easier to pull out than a book and had much more information in them….

Huh. There was an island of cats….Daughter would like that.

He and Daughter could go to the island of cats on their next day together. She would love that. Suzuki…he hated animals and they hated him…but Daughter liked animals. She was a lot like Masami in that way. Yes. Daughter would be so happy. She would smile and pet the cats and….and she would just be so happy…and that was a good thought. A warming though. Daughter being happy. Her little face lighting up. Her aura. Her smiling at him and taking his hand…she was so wonderful…and he so badly wanted to see her…

Her. Not her brother.

"I'm not playing." Said Son even though he was clearly. Playing. What he was playing at Suzuki did not know but he could clearly see that his Son was playing.

"Get back to whatever you're doing, then, until your sister wakes up." Said Suzuki. He did not want to deal with the Boy right now. He never wanted to deal with the Boy…and Daughter usually dealt with him….but Daughter was not there. She was asleep and she had left him alone with her brother…and he wanted to wake her up….but she was very small and needed her sleep.

"I don't know when she's going to get up. You might end up waiting all day…but if you're hungry then I bed Shibata would make you something….or Fukuda. He knows how to make food too. Or maybe someone else." Said Son. Suzuki wanted to reach over and slap him on the back of the head…but then Daughter would have been very angry with him…and he didn't want that. Daughter hated it when he struck Son….but he needed it. Suzuki did not like to be questioned let alone by his own Son…and also he had been indirectly insulting his sister, too. She was obviously much better in the kitchen than Fukuda or Shibata or anyone else on the planet.

Honestly.

"I'm aware that other people can cook. Your sister cooks the best out of anyone. Don't insult her like that. She does a lot for you, you know, more than you deserve." Said Suzuki. Son was holding his wrist with his other hand…and his aura spoke more than words and gestures ever could. Honestly. Suzuki knew that if Son ever tried to strike him that he would not hold back. He could not hold back. If Son wanted to be a Scar then, fine, he could become a Scar.

"Dad….fu-forget about it. Just let me work." Said Son. Well then. That was….refreshing. Daughter had taught him some self-control. That was just…she had done the impossible. Masami hadn't even been able to control him like that. She had begged and pleaded and bribed to no avail but Daughter….she had managed to get her brother to listen. She was a born mother, he decided, she had already tamed the untamable. She would do so well with their children when she grew up…with her children. Her children which they would be raising together when she grew up….not that they would need his help. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

Daughter really was perfect.

She was wonderful. She was perfect. She was his child. She had managed to fix…or at least improve, his child. She knew what she was doing. He would have to listen to her…he had been listening to her. If he had struck Son when he had felt like then they would have been in the middle of a fight right now. He didn't want to fight with Son…and he wasn't…and she was so intelligent, his Daughter, she was so very intelligent and….and he loved her so much….and he would listen to her in all things. She knew about these things, he didn't, and he would do what she said.

All the things that she had said.

"What are you working on?" asked Suzuki. Daughter had told him, on more than one occasion, that he needed to have more positive, or at least neutral, interactions with Son. He didn't much want to interact with Son more than was strictly necessary, he was a Boy he didn't need all the attention that his sister needed, and also he was an annoying little Boy…but also….also he was doing something that Suzuki was curious about. He had said, before, that he hadn't been playing. He claimed to be working on something. More art? Did he build things, too, now? He hoped that Son had taken up building things. Suzuki had enjoyed building things in his youth…and he still did. His, well his and Hatori's and occasionally Daughter's, was full of buildings that he had designed…for Claw purposes, of course, always for Claw purposes…and he wondered…what sort of buildings Son could come up with. He was more creative than Suzuki had ever been. He was an artist. Suzuki had managed to make an artist…and he had no idea how. He had always hated art class. He had never been able to draw along the Z axis…and he still couldn't…but Son…he was good at that.

There were some things that Son was good at. He could admit as much.

"Do you even care?" asked Son. Suzuki had to think for a moment. Whatever Son was doing had no bearing on his life…unless he had been the one who had been sending all of those bombs…but no, Son didn't have the patience to plant a bomb or the ability to betray Claw. Claw was everything and even the Boy knew that. Son…he was doing something…and that something had no bearing on Suzuki's life….but he was curious. He knew how his mind worked when he was curious. It just would not stop…and he didn't want to have anything on his mind today. Well aside from Daughter…so, yes, he did care.

"I care. I'm curious. Is that an art piece that you're working on?" asked Suzuki. Son shook his head. His aura was still hostile…but he had always been a hostile little person. Even when he had been a baby. Suzuki had no idea what he had done to Son, he had only shouted at him once and dropped him twice…and caught him before he hit the ground…and also it had been Son's fault for trying to get free when he knew that he was two meters off the ground, almost….and also he hadn't had any reason to be hostile then and he didn't have any reason to be hostile now. Suzuki wasn't being hostile, Son hadn't given him any reason to be hostile, so he wouldn't be hostile towards him in the future…unless he did something to deserve that.

"No….it's presents for my girlfriend." Said Son. Suzuki blinked. There was something to the way that he had said the word 'girlfriend' but that may have just been the fact that Suzuki could not even imagine Son ever having had said the word 'girlfriend' before…well he hadn't had one before. He had one now. A girlfriend. A female human being who was his most perfect person….and who considered Son to be her most perfect person…and he was curious as to who would even consider Son to be a most perfect person. He knew that Son would have met someone eventually, after the world had been conquered and Son was the second most powerful man living in it, but he was not the second most powerful man on Earth. He wasn't even a man. He was a little boy.

A little boy who was more romantically successful now than Suzuki had been when he had been ten years old.

When Suzuki had been ten he had thought that he had met his most perfect person. Her name had been Mari and he had known that he had loved her when she had given him her bread after he had dropped him. School lunch was terrible back then, they might have still been, and the bread had been the best part. Well the bread and the rice…and when they had gotten both in the same day when there had been ketchup….but there had just been bread and milk and soup and plums that day…and the bread had been the best part…and he had dropped his. He had dropped his without noticing and the feeling of looking over from his book, and that was the day he learned why mother had told him never to eat and read at the same time, the feeling had been almost enough to….but then the girl who had beside him had given him her bread…and that had been enough, back then, to make her his most perfect person…and it hadn't worked out, obviously, since he had married Masami…but Son had met his most perfect person and it had all worked out for him….

And that was…it made Suzuki feel…good. Good that his Son had done something right.

"Oh. What have you gotten her?" asked Suzuki. He wondered what this little girl could have been like if she and Son had chosen each other….and at the age of ten, too. She was…he knew nothing aside from the fact that she was Son's age and she was British…and why he couldn't meet a Japanese girl Suzuki didn't know….but he was grateful that Son had chosen a girl. He had been worried, very worried, that Son was a homosexual. That would have certainly put a wrench in his plans for the Suzuki family dynasty. But he wasn't. He was normal and Suzuki knew that he should have been happy with normal….but he also wanted to know just…anything about this girl.

About his future Daughter in law.

"Nothing, just some candy and stuff. She likes candy." Said Son. He held up a gallon bag full of various treats made of sugar, disgusting sugar, before putting it in the box. That was a good gift for a girl. They liked gifts of food because that showed them that you were a good provider. You had to be a good provider because otherwise they would want nothing to do with you. His father had told him that and he had told Son that and then Son would tell his Son that….

And the thought of Son having children is just…odd.

He thought about Daughter and their children….her children….often. How wonderful they would be, like smaller versions of her, and how much he would enjoy helping her raise them. Son's children….they had always been more….abstract. He knew that Son would have them, he knew that they would share his blood, and he knew that Son's first born Son would be his heir…and aside from that, how they would be useful for him and Claw and the world, he just…he no other idea of who they would ever….be….

One day Son would grow up and have children….and that was that.

"What else does she enjoy? I'm curious." Said Suzuki. What was this girl like? If he knew what she was like then he would know what Son's children would be like…and also….well he has always known that Son would take a wife, that was the way of the world, but he had never thought about Son's wife and as…as his future Daughter…but she would be. She would be a female human being who would be called Suzuki and who Son would bring into their family and who would bear Son's children, Suzuki's grandchildren, and it had always been something in the far future….but the future was coming…

"Why?" asked Son. He watched him with something that may have been…suspicion? Why? What did he have to worry about? It wasn't as though Suzuki was going to do something terrible like…what could Son even worry about when it came to this little girl? That he wouldn't approve because she wasn't an esper. He was a pragmatist. He knew that there were very few female espers in the world. He was more perturbed over the fact that she wasn't Japanese than anything else…and he so would have loved to have seen him with someone Japanese….but this was what it was. It was his fault for not keeping the Boy in Japan…but to be fair he hadn't even been aware that his Son had been interested in the opposite sex…but he was at that age. He was at the age for…a lot of things….things that maybe he should have warned Son about. The fact that he would have to bathe at least once a day now. The fact that he would start growing very quickly and it could be painful. The fact that he would start….Suzuki had been about eleven or twelve when he had started, to have constant intrusive sexual thoughts about any female human that came with in a hundred meters of him….

But he didn't want to get into all of that.

Because that was just…not something that he wanted to talk about. Besides, Son lived in the information age. He would just ask Google when he couldn't understand something. That was all. He didn't need to tell Son about all of that because then, eventually, he would have to warn Son about what he would spend at least thirty seven percent of his day, well Suzuki had calculated it at thirty seven percent, what he would do about the constant and intrusive sexual thoughts…and he didn't feel like talking about that with Son. With either of his children….but Daughter wasn't like that. She didn't have sexual thoughts. She didn't even know what sex was. He wasn't stupid, he knew that women thought about sex, but that must have been just a once in a long while sort of thing…and Daughter didn't have the time or the inclination to think about sex….because she was Daughter….

He didn't have to worry about her….and Son could figure it out on his own.

"Because I'm curious about this girl who you've chosen. I have no idea who she is or what she's like or what she enjoys or why she chose you. I'm very curious." Said Suzuki. Son was still staring at him…and then he reached into the box and pulled out a folder….and then he opened it to a self-portrait. Well a portrait of himself and a little red haired girl sitting on the gun of a tank.

"That's Emmy." Said Son. Suzuki took the drawing with his powers and stared. Oh. Son had found another redhead…and that was…interesting. Had Son chosen a redhead on purpose? Was that it? And also why were they on a tank? And why did she have a Soviet army helmet on? Was she Russian and British? Or did she have bizarre political beliefs? Now he had even more questions than ever.

"Why…does she have that helmet on? Is she Russian?" asked Suzuki. Son took the drawing back and put it with the others in the folder and then he put the folder back in the box…and Suzuki…he so would have liked to have been able to see all that Son had drawn. He was quite the talented artist. Was that what this little girl had seen in Son? That he was a talented artist? Well that would have made sense. Son was very talented and women liked talent….well not his. Being able to multiply elven digit numbers in his head and remember the exact words of every single word that she had ever spoken in his presence had not made him appealing at all to girls when he had been Son's age…but Son was doing so much better than him….and he was….huh. For once in his life he was proud of the human being that he had made.

"No, I just got it for her when we were in Russia. She likes army stuff and…well stuff when people can get blown up or hurt and stuff. She likes gross stuff like that. I didn't know that girls could like gross stuff but she likes gross stuff." Said Son

"Oh. Is that what drew you to her?" asked Suzuki. He wondered if that was funny, how he said 'drew' after Son had shown him a drawing, but it probably wasn't because Son wasn't laughing…and he could laugh. Suzuki couldn't laugh. Well he could make the same sound as other people did when they found something comical but it had never been natural coming from him. He had never understood humor. Most people's humor, anyway, 3,987^12+4,365^12= 4,472^12 was hilarious.

"Um…yeah. Sort of. She's just….really cool and I like her a lot….and stuff. She likes a lot of the same stuff I like…like…I got her this Mortal Kombat poster…and I got her this horror manga…she likes horror movies too…and I got her this book about the birds that live in Tokyo…because she likes birds…" said Son. He took out the books as he mentioned them…and they were all in Japanese….but the girl didn't look Japanese….but then again he didn't look Japanese either. The girl's name was Emi after all…and he wanted to learn her family name…not that it mattered. She would be a Suzuki soon enough…whenever Son decided to marry….and he would have to marry her…or someone…because he could not just have children indiscriminately. No. That would create a crisis of inheritance and that was the last thing that the world would need. He wondered how many children Son was planning on having with this girl. He wondered if he was planning on moving her to Japan….that was a stupid thing to wonder. Of course he was moving his wife and his children to Japan. He was Japanese. So she would need to learn Japanese, then, if she didn't know it now.

"Oh. Does she read Japanese?" asked Suzuki. He wondered how much she had picked up from Son. She had to learn Japanese since she was going to be living in Japan…but then again she would be Son's wife. She would be able to make someone translate for her….he had never thought about that before. The fact that the girl who Son would marry would end up becoming the queen of the world. The title that Masami should have held…the title that Daughter would hold until Suzuki stepped down and left the world to Son.

"No….but I got her this dictionary. She's been watching a lot of movies and anime and stuff to try and learn Japanese. She wants to understand me better….and I guess I should learn English for her then…too." Said Son. Suzuki shook his head. Aside from the usual problems with 'L' and 'R'….and Suzuki had never had that problem….but mother had been a native English speaker…and he so wished that he and Masami had made more of an effort to speak English with the children….but Son's English was just fine. He could make himself understood and that was what mattered.

"Your English is fine." Said Suzuki. He wondered why Son would try and change himself for her like that…but he supposed that love made you want to do anything for the other person…even change for them. He hadn't changed for Masami…but maybe he should have. There had been something about himself that she had just…not been able to stand…and she had left…and he wished that she had just told him what it was about himself that bothered her. Then he could have changed it. Daughter wasn't like Masami. When she had a problem with something then she let him know. He hoped that Son's wife was like that.

He hoped that she never got the idea in her head to leave Son.

Because there was no leaving Son. There was no leaving either of his children. Son's wife…he would have her followed for the rest of her life. Shimazaki could be good for that since he seemed to enjoy following Son around….but also he, apparently, had a lot of trouble keeping his pants on….well someone else would follow her. A lot of someone's. Then she could never leave Son. As annoying, as tiresome, and as quarrelsome as Son was he did not deserve to feel the pain of the woman he loved most out of anyone else in the entire world leaving him. Nobody needed to feel that pain. Not Son and especially not Daughter.

If another did anything to hurt Daughter then they would suffer.

They would not die, no, because death was finite. Pain and suffering…pain and suffering were infinite. If the man who Daughter chose out of all the other men in the world, hopefully not Shimazaki, tried to leave her or to do anything at all to hurt her then he would suffer. He would feel pain like no pain that he had ever felt before. He would be boiled in oil. He would have his skin flayed from his body. He would have curry powder and salt rubbed into the wounds. He would have mice poured on him. Rats. Borrowers. He would suffer every single torture that could be thought up. He would be force fed gelatin until he went insane. He would be brought back from insanity only to be driven insane again. Also whatever else Suzuki could think up.

Nobody hurt his children….but anyone who hurt his Daughter would spend every moment of his life wishing that he were dead.

"She says that I say some words weird." Said Son. Suzuki shook his head. Son was fine the way he was…well he wasn't. He was a lot of things…but his English was fine…and if anything she should have learned Japanese for him since she was the wife and he was the husband.

"Well in Japanese she probably has an accent too…so you're even. She'll probably have a terrible one since she's learning so late in life…you'll have to make sure to defend her in case people mock her. Women need to be protected and it's our job to protect them." Said Suzuki

"I know dad, you told me, and of course I would keep her safe. She's my girlfriend. I'm not going to let anyone hurt her. Anyone." Said Son. He made an odd amount of eye contact there…and Suzuki had no idea why. He hadn't meant to imply that Son would have been incompetent when it came to protecting this girl. He was a violent little boy. He doubted that anyone who so much as jeered at his wife would end up deep in the ground. He was a good Boy like that.

"Good. I'm very happy for you…and proud." Said Suzuki. The word feels odd in his mouth. Proud. He can recall very few times in which he had been proud of his Son. He had been proud when Son took his first unassisted steps. He had been proud when Son had spoken his first words. He had been proud when Son had first displayed his powers. He had been proud when Son woken up after the explosion at the eighth division….and he had been so proud of Son for having lived through that….

And now he was proud of Son again.

Maybe he was finally going to live up to at least one of the expectations that Suzuki had put down for him. Maybe now he would become at least half the man Suzuki had always planned on him growing up to be. Daughter had done a very good job with him. Daughter…he felt as though he were in her debt…but that was insane. How could he be in debt to his own Daughter? He provided for her and she hadn't done anything other than what was asked of her. She had been tasked with taking care of the house and the family and she had only been doing what she had been told…

And she had done a good job….and a reward was definitely in order.

"….what?" asked Son. He blinked and rubbed his eyes…and that could have meant disbelief or it could have meant that he had dry eyes. Suzuki would have believed either option. Son had, after all, done very little in his life that his father could have been proud of.

"I'm proud of you for having found a person at your age who you consider to be your most perfect person and who considers you to be her most perfect person in return. You're more romantically successful than I ever was at your age. I'm proud of you. You've impressed me." Said Suzuki. There. it felt odd to say, very odd, to have those words just hanging out there between them…but they were they and they could not be unsaid…and also he was supposed to say this sort of thing to Son. Daughter had said so and she knew a lot about these things. She knew a lot more about these things than he did. She was Daughter, after all, and she had learned from Masami….and she had also managed to surpass Masami as well.

"….you're just saying that because Emmy's a girl." Said Son. Suzuki nodded. Of course he was proud of his Son for finding a girlfriend. What would even be the other option? That she had been a boy? No, that would have meant that his entire plan for the future would have to be reworked…he would have to have a whole other Son…and that meant that he would have to get divorced and then remarried…and he would have to date again…and he did not want to date again…and also women his age…could they even still have children? Well he didn't even know of any woman his age who would even want to have a child with him…and he didn't know any women at all…and he didn't want to know any because the last time he had ever gotten to know a woman he had ended up….

He was thinking about nothing and worried about nothing and he was going to stop thinking and worrying right this instant.

"Well….yes. Whatever else would she be?" asked Suzuki. Son was not a…..he was not going to ruin everything. He was not going to be selfish enough to throw a wrench in Suzuki's plans. He had a girlfriend and he would only have a girlfriend…well eventually a wife…and that was that. Son was fine. He was fine and Suzuki had nothing to worry about…so why was he still worried? He didn't understand himself sometimes….

Low blood sugar?

Maybe. Not being able to think was a sign of it. Not being able to think and also…well he was hungry. He needed food to live. Maybe he was just getting delirious with hunger. Yes, he'd believe that. He was just getting delirious with hunger and now he was thinking crazy thoughts. Son was fine. There was nothing wrong with Son. He was proud of his Son.

"If she were a boy you would have killed me." Said Son. He said this quietly, so quietly that Suzuki had some trouble hearing, or at least he figured. What in the world…that was crazy. He wouldn't have murdered his Son for being a homosexual. That would have been counterproductive. There was nothing advantageous in alienating Daughter like that…and also he would be out a Son. Well he would have had to disinherit Son and then have another child, not something he wanted to do, but he wouldn't kill the Boy. He still had his uses. He would be able to be re-inherited if he had a blood child…though a blood test would be necessary since he wasn't sure if Son's genes would win the race to the egg.

"No. I would have explained to you that by choosing a boy you would have derailed the entire bloodline…and if you didn't agree to stop what you were doing I would have punished me…but there is not point at all in discussing hypotheticals. You have a girlfriend and you care for her and she cares for you and that's the end of that." Said Suzuki. There was no point in sitting there and imagining what he would have to do, the trouble he would have to go through, if Son had been a homosexual. He wasn't. He had a girlfriend and that was the end of it. Son had a girlfriend and Suzuki had told him that he was proud of him, Daughter would be so happy about that since he had listened to her, and that was the end of that.

"Yeah….ok. I'm going to go…and see if big sis is awake yet." Said Son. There. Son thought that it was the end of it too. He was hungry, too, it seemed. He was pale. He was pale and shaky, a sign of hunger and low blood sugar, and Daughter….well she made a very good breakfast…and she was asleep. Suzuki thought so, felt so, at least…but he could have been wrong…so maybe there wasn't that much harm in letting Son check on her…for the sake of checking that is. Not to wake her up. She needed her sleep. She was small.

"If she's still asleep then don't wake her up. She needs her rest." Said Suzuki. Son would listen to him. He cared for Daughter as well. She was good to him, better than he deserved, and he was finally old enough to understand all that she did for him. She was always so good to him and he was old enough and mature enough to understand…and also….for a lot of other things. Things that he was getting up to now. Suzuki…he got up and looked through the box on the table. Candy. Disgusting. An English to Japanese and back again dictionary. Some manga…nothing he recognized. A crystal….a few crystals….a necklace that said 'I heart Toyko' where the heart was meant to be love…he wondered if he should have told Son what gifts that women liked…

Or maybe Son had this.

Son seemed to know what he was doing…though if Suzuki had been the one putting this box together he would have put more food in it and more expensive things, too, since women liked expensive things. That showed them that you were a good provider. That was something that they looked for…and he wondered if he should talk to Son again about what women looked for. At his age, or maybe a little older, his father had sat him down and explained women. They liked to feel safe and provided for and men were the ones who were meant to make them feel safe and the ones who were meant to provide for them. Men kept women alive and women kept men alive, father had said, and also he had said to always be good to them.

He had been good to Masami.

Never raise your voice to your wife, father had said, and he had never done that. Never raise a hand to your wife, father had said, and he had always done that. Always provide for her and your children no matter how hard you had to work, father had said, and Suzuki…well he was conquering the world for his family. It hadn't been enough. The world…the world had not been enough for Masami. He had done everything that his father had said but Masami had still left…and his father knew what he was talking about. He and mother had been married until the very end…and mother…she had been a very good person…and so had father….and he wondered if he even had anything to say to Son. Son was doing so much better than Suzuki ever had in his life…and he had nothing to do with that…he had nothing to do with few Son's successes….

It was all Daughter's doing. She was such a good parent. He had been right to leave her in charge of the house…..and also breakfast, if she ever got up to make it.


	348. I Was Just Sleeping in, That's All

Mob didn't sleep in that often.

She couldn't sleep in. if she slept in then breakfast wouldn't get made. If breakfast didn't get made then Sho would help himself to a whole box of poptarts .He would eat poptart after poptart after poptart and that could not have been good for him. Mob needed to get up before him so she could make him breakfast, usually eggs and toast and some kind of fruit or salad or something. Something with more food groups than just sugar. Sugar was poison, Minegishi said so, and Mob was not going to let Sho and up poisoning himself. You could get really sick from sugar and lose all of your teeth. She didn't want that to happen to him, well Fukuda could always fix him but that wouldn't change the fact that all of that had happened to Sho…so she really should have gotten up.

Because she really could not sleep in.

She had to make breakfast for dad, too. She could tell that he was still in the house. Sometimes he got up and left before her and sometimes she had to make him breakfast. This was one of those days. He couldn't make his own breakfast, he didn't know how, and Mob…she couldn't even remember if she had ever seen him cook. He didn't know how because he was a boy and most boys didn't know about cooking, it seemed, unless they were Shibata. He made good breakfast. If she had been feeling mean she could have told dad to have Shibata make him his breakfast for once because Mob….well she felt…she felt like she didn't want to get out of bed that morning.

But in a good way.

She never slept in. She never had the time to sleep in. She knew that she had to get out of bed and feed her family, she was the only girl after all, and she knew that dad would starve without her and Sho would only eat from the dessert food group, and poptarts were just breakfast desserts and she would not be convinced otherwise, but she just…didn't want to get out of bed. She just…she felt….good. This bed felt good and she felt good and she had woken up feeling….just….very good.

It had been a good dream.

She couldn't remember too many details but that was normal. She sometimes remembered everything that happened from start to finish in her dreams but this was not one of those times. This may not even have been one of those dreams that had a start or a finish. Sometimes she just dreamt in feelings. Sometimes she just dreamt in scary feelings or sad feelings or lonely feelings…but not this time. This time she had just dreamt in…good feelings. Very good feelings. She tried to remember what had caused those feelings. She had dreamt about…about being loved. Well she was loved in life, she had a family and friends who loved her very much and who she loved in return, but this was….a different kind of love. She dreamt about this kind of love sometimes…

The kissing sort of love.

She was glad that she slept in. Sometimes when she dreamt about this sort of thing, having someone in her life who loved her enough to kiss her, she made things in the room float or the walls shake and Sho…well he thought that she had nightmares…and she wasn't going to correct him. He was her little brother. He didn't need to know about this. He didn't need to know about what went on in her head. About how she thought about people…people who they both knew….one person who they both knew. She knew who she had been dreaming about…she usually either only dreamt about one specific person or the idea of a person…but the more she thought about it the more she got the feeling that she had dreamt about him again….and she didn't know why….

Was she in love with Hatori?

She really didn't know. She liked how nice he was to her. She liked how he always wore such nice sweater. She liked how his glasses were square. She liked how he always knew the best games and how he was always up for playing with her…not that they had played anything together in a while. Dad had told Hatori that she liked him…and now she could never speak to him again. Minegishi said that Hatori thought that dad was just being weird, which made sense since dad was a really weird guy, but Mob…she didn't want Hatori to know how she thought about him…what she felt when she thought about him…

What she was feeling right now.

She had that feeling…that weird feeling. The feeling that was good and bad at the same time. She had woken up with that feeling. It had followed her from her dream into the real world…and it was still hanging out. It was just hanging out there, with her, while she laid down on her bed and looked up at the ceiling. There was nothing interesting up there, just paint and a ceiling light, but she had to keep on looking up there. At least until this feeling passed. She didn't want to get out of bed, not until this feeling passed, and also….

Also she sort of wanted it to…stay.

Minegishi said that it wasn't a bad thing, the way she felt when she thought about boys, and…and it didn't feel bad. Gross, yes, but not bad. Just…she felt sort of like she was doing something wrong….but Minegishi had said that this wasn't wrong and they had never lied to her, not once in their whole friendship, and Mob believed them…and stuff. But still. This was…this feeling came from having embarrassing thoughts about boys, adult thoughts about boys, and she wasn't supposed to think like that. If she thought like that then….then people might have actually thought that she would do that…and she just…she didn't want to do that…well wanted….she didn't want…

She had no idea what she did and did not want.

She wanted to be kissed. She wanted to have…she didn't know if she could admit this to herself….she wanted…she pulled her blanket up over her face. There. Now, in the dark, she could admit this to herself. She could admit to herself that she wanted…she wanted to be there with…with Hatori…or a boy who liked her…but she didn't know any other boys who could like her….and if Hatori liked her then…then that wouldn't have been so bad. That way, at least, she could have kissed him. She could have just….well he would have been next to her…and the blanket tries to fly away at that thought. The thought of Hatori being in her bed next to her. So close that she could just roll over and kiss him…and it would feel good…and she could…she could just…

She rolled over.

She closed her eyes and rolled over. She knew that he would not have been there, he didn't even like girls like that, but this was her daydream….which she could have…..she could have her daydream because it was hers and hers alone. There was no one else who could hear what it was that she was thinking. That she was thinking of how Hatori would say something like….like how much he liked her. How pretty he thought that she was. How she always took such good care of everyone. How cool it was that she knew all about him and what he was like and how…how maybe it was love because she liked him as a person…and how maybe he loved her too because he liked her right back…in her head. In her head…in her head she could imagine anything at all….and it would be….

It would be ok.

So it was ok that she had rolled over. It was ok that she had put her hand on her side and imagined that it was Hatori. It was ok that she imagined him saying something like 'I love you' and then…and then kissing her…and it was ok. She had seen Minegishi and Shimazaki cuddling and kissing like that before. That was how you held someone when you loved them. You held them like this and…and it was…she knew that this was in her head but it made the good feeling feel even better…and she hear something hit the ground…and she knew that she was making a mess…and she knew that she should have stopped….

But she didn't want to stop.

She wanted…she wanted…she didn't know what she wanted. To be kissed in real life. She could imagine Hatori kissing her but she just…she couldn't kiss herself…and she wanted…she just wanted to feel it. She wanted it to be real. She wanted it to be something that she could just reach out and feel. She wanted the real Hatori to have been there with her. She wanted…she wanted him to have been there and…and he would have pulled her close and kissed her….and she would have kissed him right back…and she just…really wanted to be kissed…

And maybe some of that other stuff.

She wasn't sure what all of that other stuff was. She knew that people touched. She knew that when they kissed they cuddled…and sometimes they cuddled without clothes on…and she wouldn't go so far, not even in her own head, to have either of them been naked…because that would have been too much. The only naked boy she had ever seen was her own brother…and she did not want to think about her own brother when she was thinking about stuff like this….and she maybe…well she wanted…shed didn't know what she wanted. She wanted to be with Hatori and…and she wanted to kiss him…and she wanted…she didn't know if she wanted to do all the things that came next but she did know that she wanted to at least know what those things were….

Hatori would have known.

He was older than her. He was almost twice her age….and he was still the only person she knew who was even close to his age…and she…she cared about him a lot…and she…she would maybe have done….some of the stuff…with him. Maybe. She didn't know. She didn't even know what those things were. She just knew…well she had heard…and she had seen….well she hadn't seen in life but she had seen in the books under Minegishi's bed….that people…well they touched…each other….and stuff….and she had never done anything like that before. She never would have even had the chance. She didn't know any boys her own age. She didn't go to school and that was the place to meet boys…that was where Minori met boys…and she had done stuff. Well she had only been felt up, which was when a boy put his hands up your shirt….and she had never had a boy touch her there before….and there wasn't even anything that could have been touched. She didn't have….well she did and she didn't….and she knew that…that if she had actually been with Hatori…and if he had wanted to…then she would have let him…she would have let him and he would not have made fun of her. He would have….he would have reached over and put his hand over her…

Like that.

Just like that. He would have kept his hand on her…well she didn't even have…but he wouldn't have said that. He would have said something like 'wow Mob, you don't look like a first grader at all' or something. Minori said that she looked like a first grader…and she didn't like it when Minori said things like that…and she knew that Minori couldn't help it, being mean to her, and she just…she didn't want to think about Minori now. She wanted to think about…about Hatori…and how nice he would have been to her. He would have touched her just like this, just like she was touching herself now, and he wouldn't have complained or made fun of her.

He would have thought that her breasts were very nice.

He wouldn't have thought that they weren't anything to write home about…and she doesn't want to think about that either. She doesn't want to think about how…how Fukuda had said…all the things that he had said. She didn't want to think about that because…because this was…she didn't want to feel gross. This was good and she did not want to feel gross. She wanted…she knew that this felt good, that this was meant to feel good, and that other people didn't feel gross. They felt good, that was why they did this with other people, and Mob…she wanted…she wanted and didn't want to do this with another person. She wanted…she wanted…

This was nice.

Her hand on her…and these were hers. She should not have felt embarrassed. They were her breasts and she could touch them if she wanted to. They were a part of her and…and they weren't….gross. They weren't gross at all. They were for…for feeding babies. They were important. They were so that she could feed her babies when she had them…so they were ok to touch. They weren't gross. Not like…not like other….other stuff. Other places. How other places got when she thought about this. How…how she got….and it was gross. It was very gross. It was all…sort of like she had wet herself….but not really.

She didn't know what this was.

It came when she thought about boys and loving them and being loved and being kissed and kissing and all of that. It came sometimes when she was asleep or in the tub or just in the middle of her day when she wasn't even thinking, or trying to think about anyway, love or boys or anything. Sometimes she would be watching TV and then there would be a kissing scene…or sometimes she would be out and she saw a boy who was really tall….and she didn't know why she wanted to be with a boy who was tall but she did….she wanted to be with someone who was taller than her and stronger than her…and then he would hold her and…and if he wanted to touch her chest then he could…

She rolled over again.

In her head she had rolled over into Hatori. She had rolled over into his arms and he was holding her…and he was so strong and so tall and he could keep her so safe and warm…and she loved being with him so much…and she just….she knew that this was in her head. She knew that this could never happen. She knew that she had just rolled over into the stuffed animals she kept on that side of her bed. She knew that she was all alone in her bedroom making a mess with her powers on accident. She knew that she needed to get up and go and make breakfast and that she was just….she was just sitting in bed wasting the day…and she knew that she had stuff to do…and that she would never be with any boy let alone Hatori…and she knew that she needed to get up…so that was what she did…

What she tried to do.

She tried to get up. She put her weight on her knees and her hands and she tried to push herself up….but she just…she had been laying in her pile of stuffed animals…and they poked her…and stuff. She felt….she felt…she didn't know what she felt. Well she felt the blanket try to fly away. She felt the blinds open and shut. She felt some of her hair get trapped under her. She also felt…she felt….she felt like…like….she didn't even know what she felt. She just knew that it felt…it felt…good. Good and…and gross because that was her…and she knew that it was gross and…and she felt gross and….and also good. Good and…and maybe it wasn't supposed to be gross…because that was hers. She was…she was herself. This was her body and it was hers and she could…she could do whatever she wanted with it….to it…with it…

So she did that again.

She put her weight down on….whatever that was. Whatever it was that was under her. She went down and then up again and…and that was…that was something which felt nice. She pulled her blanket back up over herself. If she was under her blanket then this was ok. This was ok so long as she couldn't see anything…and she just…she couldn't be seen doing this. She couldn't be seen. She had to…she was doing something...something which was not ok. But why wasn't it ok? This was her body and she felt good…but also…also this didn't feel like it was…ok. She knew that if someone found out that she was doing this…she didn't know what she was doing even….but if people knew that she was feeling this…this good feeling…then they would say…they would say all kinds of things about her. They would accuse her of doing….doing the stuff that adults did…and she didn't want….she didn't want to be accused of that….not again…

But that was what the blanket was for.

With the blanket over her then she could just…she could just pretend that she was the only person in the whole world. Even though she knew that she wasn't. She knew that there were other people in the world. She could feel them. She could feel…she could feel other auras….but she didn't want to. She didn't want to feel any other auras right now, just hers, and she pulled hers in as close as she could. She just had to….she just had to be alone right now…alone with her thoughts….

All alone with her thoughts.

Her thoughts about being kissed and held and loved and having someone who loved her….and someone who would have thought that this was…that this was ok. That she was ok. That every single thing about her was ok. That was…that was all that she wanted. She wanted to be loved and cared for and accepted…but also…also touched. Touched was on the list. Kissed and…and also this was…she didn't know what this was…and she just….she just…

She had to stop.

She could feel an aura getting closer…and she had to stop. She rolled back over onto her back and she pulled the blanket tight over herself. That had been….she didn't even know what that had been….but she knew that she did not want anyone to know about that. She wanted…she wanted….she wanted it to seem like…like she had been…like she had just been sleeping in. She hated lying to people, tricking them, but nobody could know what she had been doing or why she had been doing that…nobody in the whole world…

Especially her little brother.

Mob could feel his aura. She laid very still and let Sho open the door. She wanted to reach out with her powers and hold the door shut. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to be alone and she wanted…she just wanted….she wanted to be alone and nothing more. That was all. She just needed…she needed to get herself sorted out….to get her feelings sorted out…because there was just…so much. So much to her. To what she had been….doing…and just…she wanted…

She wanted to be alone…but she could not kick her own little brother out of the room.

"Big sis?" asked Sho. Mob didn't come up out of her blanket even though she knew that she was being rude. She knew that she was supposed to come up out of her blanket and look at her brother when he spoke to her…but she didn't want to. She was not going to come up until….well until she had to….or something.

"Hi Sho….good morning." Said Mob. She could have pretended to be asleep but that would have been lying...and also if he was coming to her then he needed her and she could not be so selfish when her little brother needed her. He might have been hungry or lonely or…or she had left him alone with dad…she had left him alone in the house with dad and…and she…she…she could not believe how selfish she had been.

"Morning…um…are you going to make breakfast? Because dad…he wants breakfast." Said Sho. Mob, if she had been a meaner person, would have told him to go and tell dad to put ketchup on his own piece of toast….but that was mean and she didn't even know where that thought had come from. She loved her dad. She loved him even though he could be a jerk…and even though he had sent Sho to find her…and Sho…she was just happy that dad hadn't hit him. Dad had a real problem when it came to hitting people….Sho especially….

She had to get out of bed.

"I am…in a minute. I'm going to get up and get dressed first. If you don't want to have breakfast with dad then you can ask Shibata to make you something. He likes to cook…and his pancakes aren't even burnt on the bottom anymore." Said Mob. She knew that having dad and Sho together in the same room was a bad idea…and she wished that it hadn't been. She wished that dad could have just gotten along with Sho…but he couldn't. Dad wasn't that kind of person and Mob…as much as she wanted to…to sleep in…she couldn't…

Somebody had to make breakfast.

"I'm going next door. Dad's being all…dad. I'm going to next door and have Shibata make me a pancake cake." Said Sho. Mob shook her head even though she knew that he couldn't see her. He needed real food. Pancakes were mostly sugar, they had the word 'cake' in the name after all, and he needed food that was on the rest of the food pyramid. One of his teeth had a black thing on it, it might have been one of his permanent teeth, and normally Fukuda would have fixed it since that was his job and all…but he and Sho weren't speaking…and Mob didn't blame him one bit. Fukuda had told dad on Sho about his girlfriend…and also he just…he was always saying things and fighting with people and Mob didn't know why. She was glad that Sho was going to have breakfast with Shibata and the others instead of Fukuda…but she also wanted him to eat something that could count as actual food.

"Make sure that you have a fruit or a vegetable to go with it." Said Mob. She knew that he would fight her on this. He always fought her on this…and she was not in the mood to fight with him. She felt gross now. She felt all sticky and slimy….and that was just physically. She did not want to be in the same room as her little brother after…well…all of that. Nope. She needed him to just…not fight her on this today. Was that so very much to ask?

"Maple syrup is a fruit. It comes from trees and fruit comes from trees and therefore maple syrup is a fruit and therefore maple syrup is good for me." Said Sho. Mob…that was not how that worked. That was not how anything worked. She wanted to get up out of bed and get out their book about where food came from…it was somewhere in their book pile…but then that would have involved fighting with him and also getting out of the bed…and she wanted to do neither of those things.

"Sho….please just eat a piece of fruit." Said Mob. She wished that he would just listen to her for once. She was not in the mood to fight and neither was he, probably, because it was so early in the morning and he had just been dealing with dad it seemed like…and she wished as hard as she could for him to just listen to her for once in the then and a half years that they had been brother and sister.

"….fine. I will if it'll make you happy, big sis…or whatever." Said Sho. Mob was amazed. Wow. Wishes really could come true…and she hadn't even had to make any paper cranes. She wondered what other wishes could come true. Maybe if she wished hard enough this feeling would go away. This weird, sticky, slimy, and gross feeling….but maybe she should save her wishes for another time.

"Thank you so much. I love you." Said Mob. It felt like he needed that. He had been all alone with dad all day…and she should have been there for him. She should have been there because dad…even when he wasn't trying to be mean he could be…well not to her…but she just had to protect him. She had to just…she had to get out of bed already….once he was gone.

"I love you too….now just get dressed already. I think that dad's lonely or whatever. I don't know. He keeps on talking to me. Just hurry up." Said Sho. Mob heard the door close. She didn't come up out from under her blanket until she felt his aura leaving the house. She got up slowly, very slowly, because while the good feeling had been gone for a while the gross and slimy feeling was still there…and she felt like she needed a bath….but she didn't have time to take a bath. She just had time to change her clothes…and that was what she did. She changed her clothes quickly, brushed her hair, and then went to make breakfast. All the while she did her best to try and forget…that morning. The stuff she thought about, the way she felt during, the way she felt now, the way she may have wanted to feel like that again…

Next time she got the chance to sleep in.


	349. Yellow Smarties are Better than Beer

Sho didn't like beer.

He didn't like beer because it was way too bitter. It came in a can, like soda, and it was fizzy, like soda, and it was dark colored, like soda, but it was bitter like…like nothing that Sho had ever tasted before. It was bitter and it made his stomach hurt and his head hurt and he just…did not like beer. He did not like this one bit even though the can was cool. It was tall and silver and got skinnier in the middle…the can was cool but what was inside was just….the worst.

Also it was warm.

"You know, Kai, for a guy so fucking paranoid about committing crimes that he won't even let the kid near the windows I'm surprised at you." Said Shimazaki as he took another sip of warm beer. Honestly, he was with the kid. This shit was nasty. Kai had a fridge, he had room in his fridge once he took all the food out, so why not keep his beer in his fridge like a normal human being? Honestly. You leave town for a few years and everyone forgets basic decency. You just didn't serve people warm beer, especially not guests, but especially not kids.

Way to ruin beer for the kid.

Really. Well Shimazaki was partial to the hard stuff, it messed you up faster, the kid was way too young for all of that. He got way too sick way too fast. It was amazing to think that he and Mob were related. Sho was so…Sho. He was always up for something, anything, but he also couldn't handle it. Stuff. Drinking made him sick and he went from zero to stoned in an instant. His tolerance was way too low. Shimazaki would have to fix that for him. The last thing he needed to be was an adult with no tolerance. How were they supposed to have fun like that?

Really, he had to think in the best interest of the child.

"What? You said he could have one. If something happens to him then it's on you, man, ok? I don't need any more to worry as it is." Said Kai. He needed Shimazaki to get the fuck out…but he also wanted him to stay…but he also wanted him to take the kid and get the fuck out before he wound up in prison or dead or dead in prison or alive and wishing that he were dead in prison. Shimazaki Ryou was a dead man, he knew that he was a dead man, and anyone found associating with him would wind up a dead man…and he deserved it after everything that he did. Betraying the family…nobody betrayed the family….but he had betrayed the family…

And also he hung out with kids now and there must have been a story there but Kai figured that if he knew then he would have to cut out his tongue so he could never be tortured into repeating it.

"Yeah, but they're warm. Who the hell drinks warm beer? Now that's a crime. That's more of a crime than all of your crimes put together." Said Shimazaki as he took a long sip, more like a gulp, like he was taking medicine. It may have been warm but, hey, free beer. He could feel the kid doing the same. He was sick, Shimazaki could tell, and next time he'd teach the kid about good beer. Not this Sapporo shit, actually good beer, and maybe good sake too. If he was a good kid and didn't get sick off of his beer then he could have some sake. There. That was responsible adulting.

"Yeah. This sucks dick in a public bathroom on golden week for ten yen coins….but it got talked down to five." Said Sho. He still wasn't sure why that was funny, well it was funny because it was gross, but Shimazaki thought that it was really funny. He laughed really loud and Sho had never really given much thought to other people's laughs before but he decided that he really liked it when Shimazaki laughed. He would say that again and again just to keep on making Shimazaki laugh.

And to keep on making his friend make that face.

He looked like he was sucking on a lemon and he was scared that he would get caught. He kept on looking at the windows even though the blinds were down and the curtains were closed. Sho had no idea what he was so afraid of. Shimazaki said that a lot of people were after him, that a lot of people wanted him dead, but it wasn't like anyone or anything could hurt him. He was Shimazaki. Sho had seen him get shot before, his barrier stopped bullets, it stopped bullets so well that Shimazaki hadn't even been scared.

Shimazaki was the bravest person that Sho had ever met in his entire ten and a half years of life.

"You know, that might be your kid after all. I mean he doesn't look a thing like you but he sure sounds like you." Said Kai

"Thanks. I'm flattered." Said Shimazaki. He was being serious. He had no clue what the kid looked like in relation to him, apparently his hair was red which was the same color as blood and ketchup while Shimazaki's was black which was the same color as having no color at all, and the kid had blue eyes which were supposedly the same color as the sky and the ocean, and Shimazaki…well he figured that any kid he had would have come out like him. Was this dominant? Or recessive? How did shit even get inherited? He didn't know.

All he knew was that he would have been happy as hell if Sho had been his kid.

He would have been happy to have had any kid, and he very well could have had a kid, but he didn't. Well at least he figured that he didn't have any kids. No one had tracked him down demanding that he take responsibility for a human being or anything like that. Still, if he had a kid, if he and Toshi ever wound up having a kid, then he hoped that his kid turned out to be just like Sho…minus the whole 'being in love with him and stuff' because it would have been pretty fucking weird if his own kid had been in love with him.

Hell, it was pretty fucking weird that Sho was in love with him.

"…this still tastes really fucking gross." Said Sho. He hated it when people thought that his was Shimazaki's kid. He hated it when Shimazaki wanted people to think that he was his kid. He wanted…well he wanted a lot of things that he shouldn't have wanted. He wanted to stop thinking about him like this. He had a girlfriend. He had just finished sending her a giant box of presents…maybe too many presents…but he had to give her a lot of presents.

He had to make up for all the cheating thoughts that he kept on having.

In the books that his mortal enemy had given him, and Minegishi was his mortal enemy, they had said that it was normal to think thoughts like that about boys and girls and both and neither…so that was ok…but still. He should not have been thinking about that when he had a girlfriend, especially one who loved him, and one who he was supposed to love right back. He needed to be a better person than he was…and since he didn't know if he could fix his stupid cheating thoughts he could at least send her big boxes of presents. Just like how dad had sent to mom back when they had all lived in the castle so that mom would remember that she had a husband and so she would think that dad loved her even though the only person who dad knew how to love was himself…well himself and big sis…and Sho…he was…

He was not turning into his dad!

"Then give me the fucking can, kid. Nobody's make you choke it down. I'll tell you what. When we get home I'll teach you about good beer. Not this Sapporo shit." Said Shimazaki. The kid passed him the can and Shimazaki took a drink…and he ignored that aural giggle the kid did. It hadn't been voluntary, and it had only been audible to Shimazaki, so there was no need to get into it with him here or, well, anywhere.

"I'm sorry that I don't keep all of your favorites on hand in case you feel like popping by. Why don't you and that kid just head out, then, since my hospitality apparently suck." Said Kai

"It sucks dick." Said Sho

"It doesn't but we'll go. You need all of your fingers to work after all and it would a shame if something terrible happened to you before you could finish this thing." Said Shimazaki as he pointed down at the bandage on his leg. He could not wait for this thing to be done. Then he could let the forest retake the leg land again. God, how could Toshi survive like this? Hell, stubble was hell plain and simple. Stubble was hell and he was in hell and he could not wait to get back home and back into long pants and then he could teach the kid about good beer and also, maybe, the kid would come to his senses at some point and then shit could go back to normal between the two of them.

Not that he was going to confront the kid or anything.

No, that would have been stupid. He would have made the kid sad and sadness did not suit the kid. He had enough on his plate as it was. He was a good kid, he was a fun kid, and he was like what Shimazaki could have been like as a kid if he had been more comfortable with who he was. If he hadn't had all of that shit going on…not that the kid didn't have a lot going on in his life…but at least nobody was telling him that he was supposed to have been killed after he had been born…or whatever. Shimazaki was fine with his life and the kid…well the kid was fine just the way he was. No matter how he felt it wouldn't change the outcome.

The outcome being, of course, that he was going to be friends with this kid until one of them died either of old age or doing something ridiculously stupid.

"…it's almost done anyway…" said Sho. He wished that he had drawn something more simple. He wished that he could have drawn something in black and white and with a lot of blocky lines, like a square or a circle or something, and then it would have been done by now. Sho had never imagined that getting a tattoo done could have taken so much time. He had thought that it all got done at once but it didn't. The line work took a lot of time and the colors took a lot of time and really the whole thing was just a lot of time…

And Sho was glad to be home.

Well he was glad to be gone, anyway. He wasn't home, not in his home, even though he knew that he could never go home again. He wasn't at the Claw house they were staying at, though, no. He was at the Claw house that Shimazaki and the others were staying at. Everyone was somewhere else. He could feel big sis and Minegishi…they were next door…and everyone else was out of his range. Good. He and Shimazaki were all alone and…

And then he was nervous.

That weird sort of nervous that he got sometimes. The nervous that came with all of the cheating thoughts. He hated the cheating thoughts. He wished that they would just go away and he could just think about Shimazaki like normal…but maybe he had always thought about Shimazaki like this. He remembered, before, that he had thought about Shimazaki as the coolest person in the world and from the moment they'd met he'd REALLY wanted to be friends with Shimazaki…and maybe that feeling of really wanting to be friends with someone was the same as the feeling of liking them. He'd had feelings about other guys like that since he had been little…and he thought that he had just really wanted to be friends with those guys…but he knew what that meant now and…

And he'd always felt like that about Shimazaki…so he wasn't sure what he even wanted to go back to.

"Alright then. Let's think until our blood gets thin and we bleed out. How's that sound." Said Shimazaki as he put the kid down in the desk chair. The kid was all pulled in and his aura was all 'leave me alone' and that, well, that was not a god time at all. He got like this sometimes. Shimazaki wished that he could have heard what it was that went on in that head of his. What was he thinking about now? Probably the same thoughts that Shimazaki used to have about people when he'd been ten, almost eleven.

That he still had about people.

Yup. The kid was there on that long and terrible life path that started in happy little boy land, went through angsty and angry teenager town, and ended in perfectly normal grown man land. Well as normal as the kid was capable of being. Hopefully not too normal. Hopefully he could be fun, as fun as Mob was going to be when she grew up, but not fun in the same way, of course. The kid was always going to be his kid, in his mind at least, and he didn't see the kid ever getting out of the kid box even when he was two meters tall and thirty and Shimazaki was sixty or whatever. Nope. The kid would always be the kid no matter how old he got.

And right now he was going to get that kid drink so maybe, just maybe, he would come off of this stupid 'love' thing that he was on because, yeah, this was getting to be a little…much to deal with.

"Sounds good." Said Sho even though he knew that Shimazaki couldn't hear him. He'd teleported away to the kitchen it felt like and now Sho was all alone. He was all alone in his room, Shimazaki's room was the same as his and big sis's room pretty much, and he just…he didn't know. He wanted to be near Shimazaki and he wanted to be alone. He wanted to be able to just tell Shimazaki how he felt but he also wished that he could take these stupid feelings that he had inside of himself and just exorcise them already. He wished that he didn't have these feelings. He wished that he had been born normal, like everyone else, or that there was some way to just…get rid of all of this…

Because it was just…it wasn't good.

It was good, though, the way he felt when he was with Shimazaki…and that was bad. Those were cheating feelings and also he had cheating thoughts and also he wasn't supposed to have those thoughts because he was not a cheater. Cheaters were the worse people in the world. Having a family was important, the most important thing, and when you cheated you betrayed your whole family. Not that Sho was married to anyone yet but he could not even begin to imagine putting his wife and kids through that. He may not have liked Emmy like she liked him but he wasn't going to just walk out on his family and stuff. He wasn't just going to walk out the door and disappear and make his wife and his kids spend every single day of their lives wondering where he had gone. He would never put anyone through that and he would never betray anyone, either.

He was not a traitor.

Traitors were the worst people. He agreed with dad about that and he never agreed with dad about anything. Traitors were bad people and they deserved to rot in the traitor holes. They deserved to starve to death down there for betraying everyone. Not that Sho cared too much about Claw, it was dad's thing and he would care more when it was his thing but right now he wanted nothing to do with dad, but he did know that you were not supposed to just go around and betray people like that. When people put their trust in you, when they decided to trust you with their secrets, then you were not just supposed to run around telling other people all of your secrets! That was not ok! That was the most not ok!

Fucking Fukuda!

Fuck him! Sho had trusted him and…and Sho was glad that he hadn't trusted Fukuda with ALL of his secrets. With this secret. With how he felt about Shimazaki and…and stuff. Because now he knew that Fukuda would not be able to keep anything to himself. Ever. He had told dad when he had promised, he had PROMISED, that he wouldn't…and then he did…and Sho…he had trusted him. Out of all the people in his life he had trusted Fukuda the most. Sure he could be a jerk sometimes but he was still…he was still Fukuda. He had always been there for him. When he had been little and gotten hurt Fukuda had been there for him. When he had been older and mom had gone and dad had been…worse…Fukuda had been there for him. When he had been alone and angry all the time Fukuda had been there for him. Fukuda had always been there and Sho had trusted him…

And Sho could betray him right back.

But he wouldn't! He couldn't! He knew that Fukuda belonged in a traitor hole! He knew that traitors had to go in the traitor holes and he knew that Fukuda wouldn't have died in one, since he could heal, but he knew that…that even though he had been a traitor…Sho could never become a traitor right back. Sho could never walk up to dad and tell him that Fukuda had been friends with mom because she had been lonely…and he couldn't tell dad that Fukuda used to come by every single day it felt like…and he could not tell dad that Fukuda even used to sleep over…and he could not tell dad that Fukuda still emailed mom even though she never even read them….he just…he could not betray Fukuda like that!

He was not a betrayer!

But he was a desk kicker. He didn't know who he had been trying to kick, there, maybe dad or Fukuda or even…even himself…but he had kicked Shimazaki's desk. For a moment he stayed still, very still, and he just waited for Shimazaki to come in and ask him what the hell he thought that he was doing. He was allowed to go into Shimazaki's desk just so long as he didn't take any of the pills and he put everything back where he got it from. He couldn't make a mess because then, if he made a mess, Shimazaki would not be able to find anything ever again. He could only see so much with his powers…and Sho…he had made a mess out of his desk. The stuff on top was everywhere…and the computer had slammed shut…and one of the drawers had come opened. The stuff inside of the drawer was a mess and Sho tried his best to put it back the way it was…even though he had no idea how it had gone, before. He just…well ok he knew that the comb had slid into the drawer and he knew that…wow, that was a lot of sugar cubes but those had been in there from before, and also….well he knew that those bags of pills had been in a specific order but…well they had braille labels on the outside so they were ok. Sho just put them so the labels were facing the right way.

That was a lot of medicine.

He had no idea what it was for. Shimazaki had said, before, that he wasn't sick…but this was a lot of medicine for a healthy person. There were little white rectangles like Minegishi had to take to sleep, there were little white circles, and there were bigger white circles too that looked like Mentos, and there were green rectangles and….oh. It looked like Sho had broken a bunch of them when he had kicked the desk…and he hadn't thought that he had kicked the desk so hard but the pills had turned into powder…and he put that plastic bag at the very bottom. Maybe if he put it on the bottom underneath everything then Shimazaki wouldn't notice and he wouldn't get mad and-

Hey, candy!

There. Shimazaki had candy this whole time! He had been holding out. Sho took out the little plastic sandwich bag with the yellow emoji candies. They looked sort of like hard candies…maybe. Sweet Tarts…or Smarties. Something like that. They were like little Smarties with different smiley faces on them. Some of them were happy and some were angry and some were crying and some were meh and…and Sho wondered if Shimazaki would have noticed if he took just one…

Especially since big sis was on this 'sugar is poison' thing.

Just because he had a black spot on his tooth, and sometimes it hurt to eat on that side of his mouth, did not mean that sugar was poison. He liked eating whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to eat it and she was so bossy sometimes…but that was because she was the boss of him and she had no choice…but still! Sho could eat all the candy he wanted to. He reached into the bag and took out a bunch of those little candies…but Shimazaki…well he hadn't said if Sho could ever have any of those candies let alone all of them…

Sho put back all but one.

He wouldn't notice one. One wasn't that much. Besides, he didn't even know if he would like these. They were yellow. Yellow could have meant lemon flavored, which was the sickest and most disgusting of all flavors, or it could have meant banana which wasn't so bad…or it could have meant birthday cake flavor which was awesome….but Sho didn't know. So he only took one. He took one and sucked on it like a Smarty…and…and this was not a Smarty. It wasn't a Smarty or a Sweet Tart or…or anything. It wasn't tart at all. it was…bitter. So bitter. So bitter that Sho wanted to spit it out…but then if he spat it out then Shimazaki would know…and he couldn't know that Sho had taken something from his desk without asking…

So he chewed and swallowed.

Bitter. This was…he had no idea what this was…but he knew that it was not candy. Sho had eaten a lot of candy in his lifetime and he had never eaten any candy so bitter in his entire life. This was…he chewed and swallowed and then licked his arm to get the taste off…and now he just tasted saltiness and bitterness…and he wanted to taste…anything else. The world was full of tastes and he wanted to have literally any other taste in his mouth than the taste that he had now. This bitterness…how could anyone have ever eating anything so bitter?!

He needed a drink.

"Alright, drink this….whatever it is. Toshi just wrote 'beer' on it and, as grateful as I am to them, that tells me nothing. The top of the can already says beer so….yeah. Drink up." Said Shimazaki. He had turned his shirt into a basket to hold the collective beer supply from the fridge. The others would be pissed at him but, hey, what else was new. Besides, this was an important part of the kid's education. You needed to learn what good beer was or you could never become a proper adult. Really it was important to always think in the best interests of the child.

The child who, apparently, was dying of thirst.

The kid popped the top and started to pound that beer back like, well, a younger version of Shimazaki. Him at ten…or maybe older. Him at twelve. Him at twelve or maybe eleven. Back when life sucked dicks and he didn't think that he would make it to thirteen. He had, though, and then to fourteen and beyond. Now he was thirty one, almost, and passing down important knowledge to one of the best kids that he had ever met. This was a good day. He sat down on the bed careful not to disturb his leg. He knew not to drink so soon after a session but, hey, life was to live and all of that.

Also the kid was lapping him.

"That sucked!" said Sho as he finished the can of…he read the label. Wheat beer. Well that hadn't tasted like wheat at all. That had tasted like…like bitterness…but not as bitter as the candy he had eaten. Maybe that was just what adults liked. Maybe liking bitter things was just a part of being an adult. Maybe one day Sho would wake up a grumpy old man who ate bitter candies and betrayed everyone's secrets and stuff…

Or whatever.

If Shimazaki liked this then he would make an effort to like this. After all he had gone through the trouble of making his shirt into a basket and stealing everyone's beer, including the stuff in the green bottle that Minegishi liked to drink, and if Sho could get one over on his mortal enemy then he was happy to do so…even though this stuff was so bitter that he could barely stand it.

"Well, yeah, you pounded it. Relax. We have all day. Actually taste what you're drinking. There are notes of…well whatever the hell that was supposed to have notes of." Said Shimazaki as he opened up a bottle of…he took a sip. Hell yeah, this was the good shit. It tasted like beer with chocolate and caramel, the two best flavors for beer if he did say so himself, and he did not think that this was disgusting. The rest of the house had but the rest of the house did not have his sense of taste.

"It's just bitter all the way down." Said Sho. Shimazaki handed him the bottle that he had taken a drink out of…and that was normal for him. He ate and drank right after people all the time. He had drank out of Sho's cup plenty of times and eaten off of his plate…even leaned in and bit the food off of his fork…and this was ok…even though it made his heart beat really fast. His heart was beating so fast and he knew why and he wished that it could stop but it wasn't stopping. If anything it was speeding up…and he reached over with his powers…and they were all shaky….and he was so nervous…and he didn't know why he was so nervous. This was just Shimazaki and they hung out together all the time and they were friends and…and he felt nervous but also…also a little bit sick…and he just…he wanted to…he wanted to have….

He took a drink.

"See? That should be better. Actually taste it, though, since that one tastes like caramel and chocolate. Well it has notes of caramel and chocolate. Just sip it." Said Shimazaki. They kid was freaking out again…and he assumed that it was for puberty reasons. He assumed that the kid was nervous about him or about this or just…nervous. He was a kid and he couldn't control how he felt and Shimazaki was not going to draw attention to it. Maybe it was like the time there had been a bat in the attic. They ignored it and eventually it went away…

Well it had died…but still. The basic principal still stood.

"Nope, this tastes bitter too." Said Sho. This wasn't good…but he kept on drinking it. If Shimazaki wanted him to drink this then he would…even though it kind of made his stomach hurt. That didn't matter, though, because…because his stomach hurting was better than…than this weird feeling he got…the weird goldfish feeling he always got….the weird…the weirdness of it all. He just…

He took another sip.

He wondered how adults could stand to drink this. Why did they like bitter things? And why did they hate sweet things. He used to think that it was only his dad who hated sweet things but now he knew that all adults liked bitter things…and he didn't know why. Did they all think that sugar was poison? Like big sis was always telling him. Wait…oh no…did she think that….that sugar and sweets were gross now? Was she crossing over to the adult side? Was that what happened when you turned eleven?

He didn't know. He was only ten and a half.

But he would be eleven one day and he would change…and he didn't want to change. He had already changed enough as it was. Being ten was hard enough. It felt like the minute he turned ten the goldfish in his stomach had gotten even worse. Maybe it was because he'd had his first good kiss after his tenth birthday, like right after, and that had been the thing to make him just…think about stuff…and now it felt like this was all that he could think of. His own stupid feelings.

Which were very stupid.

He was being very stupid. His heart was still beating like crazy and the goldfish in his stomach was swimming like it was trying to get out…and he had no idea why. Shimazaki was over on his bed. He was sitting all leaned back on his bed and his coat was off and his head was tilted back and…and he just…he looked so…Sho wanted…well he had no idea what he wanted. To be near him. To be sitting on that bed next to him and…and to just…he wanted to rest his head on Shimazaki's chest like he was tired…even though he wasn't tired. He wasn't tired at all. He was wide awake.

He was wide awake and he was being stupid.

"Yeah, ok, I can't listen to this anymore. Kid, pick an album." Said Shimazaki as he finished his beer, this was a Toshi beer and they were going to kill him for drinking but, hey, as is life. He finished his beer and put the bottle down on the ground before getting up out of bed. He just could not listen to that kid's aura anymore. The kid sounded like someone lined up a bunch of tea kettles and put the tea on at all different times and now they were just whistling like crazy…and he could not take it. He needed peace. He needed to listen to something else. The way that the kid felt about him would not change the outcome, he loved the kid as his own and other such sappy feelings, but right now the kid was giving him the mother of all headaches.

"What?" asked Sho. Shimazaki was getting up and coming over…and Sho got out of his chair. Sho got up so he could sit down…and he was close enough that Sho could smell him…and he smelled like he always did, like cologne, and Sho had no idea why he even cared but he did…probably because he liked Shimazaki so, of course, he would like everything about him…and stuff. But still. That was a weird thing for him to get weird about…

But then again he was a very weird guy.

"Pick an album, any album in the world….and I thought I left this opened…." Said Shimazaki. He reached for his keyboard but felt….well he had closed it at some point then…and he maybe had been going a little too hard today. He had been kidding about thinning their blood until they bled out but…yeah. He had been going since that morning and he was relying more on his other senses than his powers…and that was never a good sign. Maybe he should slow down…or speed up.

He reached over to his drawers and…and he didn't remembered leaving that drawer opened.

He also didn't remember his MDMA being on top like that…and the labels were all facing weird…and well he did have periods of time where he just did stuff and didn't remember but those time should have been few and far between not….he had been going hard today but not that hard. Not even hard by anyone's…well by some people's standards. He didn't know. Not hard enough to black out…and if he had blacked out then he wouldn't have been so coherent now…but then why were his drawers opened….

He listened to the kid's aura.

"I like Magical Mystery Tour….or Yellow Submarine…or One…the one with the number one on it…and…." Said Sho. Shimazaki noticed. He noticed and now Sho was in for it. He just….he had no idea what to do. Run and hide? Dive under the bed? Explain? Blame it on someone else? Punch Shimazaki in the back of the head and then have a play fight with him, or even a real fight, so that he forgot that Sho had gone into his desk? He didn't know….

He had no idea.

"Kid…were you in my desk?" asked Shimazaki. He had been listening to the kid's aura…and he was nervous….but not that lovesick sort of nervousness that always clung to him. This was a different sort of nervousness. This was a nervousness that Shimazaki…he wasn't even sure if he wanted to deal with this sort of nervousness. This was a guilty sort of nervousness…and the kid might as well have confessed right then and there…

The diving onto the bed and hiding under the blankets just cinched it.

"I'm sorry…don't be mad." Said Sho. He felt like Hatori. He felt like he just wanted to hide and never come out. He knew that he should have denied and denied…but then Shimazaki would have been even more pissed off at him…and he was pissed off now…and Sho should have just ran all the way home…but even as mad as Shimazaki was at him he just….he still wanted to be near him. Even though he must have been mad Sho still felt good and safe and warm under his blankets on his bed…and he knew that it made no sense….and that was just…how he felt.

"Fuck…kid. I know I said that you could go in here but all of my pills are messed up…and…you didn't take any of these…right?" asked Shimazaki. He wasn't a religious man, he had never been a religious man, but right now he was praying to whatever God who was up there and listening that the kid hadn't taken anything and that he wasn't on his way to overdosing…because then Toshi would never have forgiven him…and also he would never have forgiven himself. He loved the kid. He wanted the kid to live. He loved this kid like he did his own…

And maybe this was why Toshi was always saying that the two of them had no business having kids.

"I just ate one…and I thought that it was candy." Said Sho. He was just going to confess. Maybe if he confessed then Shimazaki would be less mad at him. Maybe if he confessed then Shimazaki would still want to be his friend. Maybe if he confessed then Shimazaki would be…would still want to be…would still want to be his friend.

Big sis loved him no matter what, he knew that, but he also knew that not everyone in the world was big sis.

"How?! How in the hell did you mistake any of this for candy!?" said Shimazaki. He maybe shouldn't have raised his voice but…but the kid had really fucked up! Seriously! He gave the kid one rule, don't touch the pills, and then the minute he had been left alone he went right for the pills…and not even just for the total normal reason of taking a handful of normal pills to see what would happen. How could he have thought that they were candy? This kid….he was such a kid…and this was not Shimazaki's fault! So if the kid died then it was his own fault…and nobody would ever believe that….Shimazaki didn't even believe that….and he was the one telling himself that!

God….this kid….

"Because they were yellow! If they weren't yellow then I wouldn't have eaten any but they were yellow so I had to eat them!" said Sho. Shimazaki was mad at him. He was hiding under the blanket and he couldn't see him…but he could see his aura…and he was just…He had never been mad at Sho before but now he was mad at him…and he didn't like this at all…but this was just…something that happened…something that was happening….

And he had no idea how to make this stop happening.

He didn't like being yelled at…and he wanted…he wanted to be there and he didn't. He wanted to be next to Shimazaki, right next to him, and he also wanted to hide somewhere. He wanted to go outside and dig a hole and hide in the hole until…until Shimazaki forgot what he had done…but he couldn't' go outside and live in a hole in the ground. Big sis would come looking for him. She would wonder where he was and he couldn't just run away from her like that. She would have been sad…and he didn't want her to be sad….

But he didn't want to be sad either.

"Kid…is all candy yellow? This is a legitimate question, by the way, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm trying really hard to understand what was going through your head. I gave you one rule about my desk, just one, don't touch the pills…and you touched the pills…and I just can't begin to understand why you would do something like that." Said Shimazaki. He had hated it, when he had been a kid, and his dad would yell at him. Shimazaki wasn't about to go on one of dad's 'you were a mistake and your mother should have let me drown you at birth' lectures….the bastard was choking on cocks in hell….but he was just…he was upset and…

And he was not going to tell at Sho.

Even though he had fucked up, majorly, and now he was in for either heaven or hell and he didn't even know it. That kid…that stupid fucking kid…but Shimazaki had been a stupid fucking kid once. He had been just as much of a stupid fucking kid as Sho was when he had been ten years old…and he wasn't going to yell at Sho. He wasn't going to make the kid feel like his dad had made him feel….

He was going to get another beer.

The kid wasn't answering. Shimazaki decided to give him a minute. He put on Magical Mystery Tour, the kid liked that one, and then he went over to the bed. He was too freaked out, and he hated being freaked out, and he especially hated being so freaked out that he couldn't see. He wound up walking right into the beer hoard, thankfully nothing broke, and he fixed it as best as he could. He put everything upright and then he grabbed a beer and sat down on the bed next to the kid.

He leaned over onto the warm blanket lump that used to be Suzuki Sho.

"I'm not mad at you….anymore. Well I am but….God I suck at introspection….I guess that I was more freaked out than anything. You just….you did something really dangerous back there…you know? When I say that something is dangerous then I expect you to listen to me. OK? I'm sorry that I yelled at you. I never…I mean you deserved it but…God. I sounded like my dad back there…well I mean I didn't tell you that I should have killed you when you were born…because I wasn't there when you were born…and also I'm really fucking happy that you're alive…and shit. Just….talk to me, ok? Talk to me because I'm no good at this shit." Said Shimazaki. The kid was still silent. He was awake, of course he was awake, but he was just….quiet. Being quiet did not suit the little guy one bit….and also it was sort of….unnerving….

Shimazaki focused on his breathing.

He focused on the fact that the kid was still breathing and his heart was still beating and…and he was ok….he was ok. He was still alive and…and if he overdosed then…then Shimazaki had no clue what to do. The hospital was out of the question and…and he couldn't just see what would happen if the kid did start to overdose…well there was always that healer…who would go running to Suzuki with this information…and Shimazaki knew that Suzuki didn't much like the kid but this was also his only son and guys got so weird about their sons and their bloodlines…

And there was probably a beating coming in his future.

But he could take it. He could take it for the kid. He just…he did not want to be responsible for the kid dying. He had been responsible for a lot of people dying, he had personally saw to it that those people died, but never kids. He had never killed a kid in his life even when he had been a kid. He just…this kid was too young to die. There was so much that he hadn't done. So much that they hadn't done together. They hadn't ever done coke together, they hadn't ever tripped together. They hadn't ever set animals free from the zoo together, the kid talked about it all the time, and they had never set the fish at the aquarium free together, something else the kid talked about all the time, and they had never….they had never done a lot of things together. Things that Shimazaki hadn't even thought of until today.

There was so much he could do with the kid when he grew up.

He had a thought that…that he could introduce the kid to his kid…if he and Toshi ever had a kid…and by the time Toshi came around and agreed to have a kid with him then Sho would be old enough to have kids on his own, Suzuki seemed like the 'where are my grandchildren' type, and then his kid and Sho's kid could be friends…and shit like that. The kid wouldn't be a kid forever and…and hopefully he was fine. Hopefully he had just taken…well everything in that drawer could kill you if you took enough…but hopefully he had just taken a Xanax or something and now he was just on his way to dreamland….

It didn't feel like the kid was about to go to sleep anytime soon.

"Not…not all candy is yellow…but I thought that those were Smarties or something to I ate one…because my sister says that sugar is poison…and I wanted a piece of candy." Said Sho. He knew that he had to say something. He knew that Shimazaki had asked him to say something and the polite thing to do, when someone asked you to talk to them, was to actually talk to them…and he just…Shimazaki had yelled at him…and he had never yelled at him before…

But he had said that he was sorry.

The only person who had ever said sorry for yelling at him was big sis…and she said sorry to everything. She was his big sis, she had to, but Shimazaki didn't have to say sorry to him. Shimazaki could have told him to get the hell out and never talk to him again. Sho had broken the rule, the big rule, and Shimazaki could have easily told him to get lost…but he didn't. He just sat down next to him on the bed, and used him as a table or something, but still. He was being all nice….and Sho….

He was really hot.

"So you go and get a piece of candy. Sho…come on. You know…wait, you don't know better….right. I gave you a rule and I didn't tell you why…well I told you that pills would fuck you up….but I didn't tell you how pills could fuck you up….and I guess that you need to know why….God. This is hard." Said Shimazaki. Well this was good practice for what to do if his and Toshi's kid ever got into this situation. He would just….maybe get a drawer with a lock on it, or something, or just go through everything he had and explain to the kid why taking it was a bad idea. Or something like that. He didn't know. All he knew was that the kid's heartbeat was picking up…and he was just…not doing too well it seemed….

Shimazaki pulled the blanket off of him.

"Hey!" said Sho. He had been hiding under there. He sat up quickly. He was hot, too hot, and it felt like….like he was way too hot. Too hot and too thirsty. He needed something to drink. He reached over and took Shimazaki's beer from his hand.

"Hey yourself." Said Shimazaki. He surrendered his beer over to the kid. That was shitty beer anyway. He had no idea who's that was but whoever that beer belonged to had severely disappointed him. Honestly. They were in Japan, beer was plentiful and delicious, but someone was wasting their time and money on this shit? God. If the kid wasn't starting to get high on….whatever he had taken…then Shimazaki would have taken him to a liquor store so he could see what was good…and also because it just went easier when he went with someone who could, you know, see.

Well he was in better spirits now at least.

"I'm thirsty. I'm really thirsty." Said Sho. He hated this, it was bitter and gross, but he was really thirsty. He needed to drink something, anything, before he died of thirst. If he died of thirst then big sis would have been mad at him and he loved her so much. She would have been mad and sad and he didn't want her to be mad or sad. He loved her. He loved her so much and he wanted to hug her. He needed to hug her…

But she was not there.

But he needed a hug. He needed to hug and to be hugged….but mostly he just needed to drink. He needed to drunk because it was so hot in this room. Really. Why did it have to be so hot in this room? Who's idea was it to make this room so hot? Maybe Shimazaki was still mad at him even though he said that he wasn't…and maybe that was why he had taken the blanket off of Sho…or maybe he had just done that because it was hot as hell in this room!

"Uh huh, I can tell. How else do you feel?" asked Shimazaki. Well the kid was talking and moving and his aura sounded like the time he had put a metal cup in the microwave just to see what would happen, fire happened, and so it was some kind of upper he was on….which was and was not good. The kid wasn't going to close his eyes and never wake up again, which was good, but he could also…well he could start tripping and that was always bad when you weren't expecting it…or he could just…had he eaten any of the mushrooms? No, those weren't a thing like pills….God. He had so much shit in there….some of which he hadn't even tried yet…and a lot of it was research chemicals and those….well a kid Sho's age should not have been fucking with those…

Hopefully he was going to be fine, perfectly fine, so fine that nobody had to know about this. Ever.

"Hot….really hot. It's hot in this room and it's getting hotter…and how do you not feel that?" asked Sho. He was…he had been fine a minute ago….or a lot of minutes ago. He had heard this album before and he knew that it was almost done…so it had been a lot of minutes….and he just…he knew that Shimazaki had told him that he shouldn't take the stuff from his drawer but…but he had always imagined that this would have been like smoking. Smoking always made him feel slow and hungry…but he wasn't slow and hungry. He was going….he felt sort of like he was going fast…or maybe that was just his heart…and he was thirsty and he wanted….

He wanted a hug.

"Because I'm not on….MDMA I'm guessing. Do you want a hug too? And do you feel like the whole world is your best friend? And that you can do no wrong?" asked Shimazaki. Well someone had moved his MDMA to the top….and that was a relief. Out of everything in that drawer the kid had pulled out the thing least likely to kill him or ruin his life…unless he pulled a Hatori…so maybe it was time to stop drinking. The kid didn't need his inhibitions lowered any further…and also he didn't need any more declarations of love from the kid….and he had a big enough chance of getting them. The kid's aura was yelling at his, now, and the kid was sitting so close…and also he did not smell good. Not at all. He was sweating and….yeah. At some point he would have to give the kid a crashcoarse in deodorant and cologne but not right now. For right now he would just deal with things as they came. Come what may and all of that.

"Yes…yes to all of that! I want a fucking hug right fucking now! Now I'm going to hug you!" said Sho. He didn't wait for an answer. He got up on his knees and threw himself at Shimazaki…and he didn't care if his beer hit the ground because it was mostly empty, anyway. Shimazaki was there and he was so warm and he was just so…..Sho loved him! Sho loved him and he was loved by him and he felt loved by the whole world, like Shimazaki had said, and it felt like the whole world was his best friend and he wanted to be best friends with the whole world and this felt so good and nice and right and he just…he was so happy!

"What's it been….half an hour or a little more….or way more…yeah. You're in the thick of it. Ok, time to be responsible." Said Shimazaki as the kid hugged him…and he could deal with this. The kid was high off his mind and…and that was ok…because he was a good kid and…and also he was a strong kid…and he was really telekinetically strong….actually….and Shimazaki…..he wasn't sure if he could teleport away without the kid…

Not that he wanted to teleport away.

Nope. Not going to happen. He was going to be this kid's Sherpa. Not that he'd ever been this kind of Sherpa before, most people who took this shit knew what to expect, but for the kid he would do anything…including let the kid pin him down and mutter into his stomach about the whole world loving him and him loving the whole world….

Aw….he wished he'd been recording that.

"Don't be responsible. Hug me back. You're my best friend and I'm your best friend so let's hug." Said Sho. Shimazaki wasn't mad at him, Shimazaki loved him, and he loved Shimazaki right back. They were best friends…and only best friends…and that was ok. They were still there for each other and they still cared about each other like all the people of the world would come together and care about each other. The world was big and fun and they were fun and they could be there in the world with all of it's love…and that was what it felt like. The world…the world just felt like….like love….

Everything felt like love….and also Shimazaki…and he felt like love too.

"Kid, as much as I would love to be my usual irresponsible self I can't. Not right now. Not when you're like this. I have to walk you through this." said Shimazaki as he was hugged by the kid. He reached over and put an arm around him. Sure, ok, this was nice…but it would have been nicer if they had been on the same level…but he couldn't get on the kid's level because then…well Toshi was right next door and they had been pissed as all else when he tripped with Mob…so getting on the kid's level was out of the question…..

God, being responsible sucked.

"No, don't walk, hug. Please don't….don't go. Keep on hugging me. I want to hug you." Said Sho. He didn't want to think about it, Shimazaki walking out that door and away from him…and he just…he wanted to be near Shimazaki all the time…and especially now. Especially when he felt like…like this. All….it was like someone had taken all of the bad feelings from inside of him and scooped them out. Then they had filled him with ice cream….but warm ice cream….but not like it was melted just that it wasn't cold…and that was what this felt like…like he felt….good. Like he felt good and the whole world was good…and he was good….

He felt like he was good….very good…

"Ok, keep hugging me, but listen. You know that you're safe, right?" asked Shimazaki

"I know that I'm safe." Said Sho

"Good. You know that you're loved right? That I love you. That I love you as my best friend." Said Shimazaki

"I love you too…" said Sho. He meant it. He had never meant something as much as he meant those four words. He loved Shimazaki and….and he wanted him to know it. It was like he had so much love inside of himself that he needed to share it…and who better to share it with than the person he loved…and he knew that wouldn't…that they never could…but now it felt almost like…like they could. Like they could and it would be ok…because love was good and the world was made of love so the world was good and since the world was good and made of love then maybe it was ok to love Shimazaki…and stuff.

"Yeah, as a friend….anyway you're going to be feeling really good for about three or four hours and then you'll start to come down. That can take between six and eight hours…I sound like a fucking Wikipedia page…God. Ok what else….there must have been something else. Think, Ryou, think. Um…God….right! Also you need to drink a lot of water and…..God….what else….yeah. I'll turn the air up too, alright? Sounds good?" asked Shimazaki

"Just keep on hugging me." Said Sho. He never wanted to be apart from Shimazaki ever again. He wanted to be there with him for the rest of eternity. Just the two of them there in love…all the love…because Shimazaki loved him too…and that was the best part of all of this. Shimazaki loved him…and he loved Shimazaki….and this was so….so good…

"Yeah, I will in a minute. I have to find you something to drink that isn't beer….ok? Just….here. Hug my jacket until I get back." Said Shimazaki as he picked his coat up off the floor. Not the best place to store it, especially since he could smell beer on it, but it was what it was and right now it was a security object for Sho. It seemed that he was one of those people who got clingy….which was all people….but at least he wasn't one of those people who got weirdly horny…

Thank God he was only ten.

If he had been older then, yeah, he would have had a very awkward problem on his hands. Shimazaki…well he was one of those people who got very touchy and very horny, though to be fair sex on MDMA was the best sex that a person would ever have in their lifetime, and if the kid had been older and asking him for more than a hug an assurance that he was loved well….well then he would have had to teleport to somewhere either than the kitchen.

Because he wasn't going to be doing any of that.

Not with the kid now, he was ten and that was wrong, and not when he grew up either, because he thought of him as his kid and that was wrong. His sister, well when she grew up, but that was Mob. She was less a kid to him and more of a very short friend. The kid on the other hand was a kid to him….so he was glad that he was only ten. This could have been so much worse….and he was bracing himself for any forthcoming declarations of love, but at least that was all that he had to worry about. Well that and how he was going to explain to everyone why the fridge was bereft of all drinks….

He was Shimazaki Ryou. He didn't have to explain himself to anyone.

Though it would be hard, he thought as he teleported back to his room, how he was going to explain the state that this kid was in. Toshi was still next door and the sun, from what he could feel from his window, was still high enough that Suzuki wouldn't be home for a while. Toshi never stayed when Suzuki was home, and he didn't blame them, but the kid would have to go home when Suzuki came home because that was dinner time…not that the kid would be hungry anytime soon….but he would have to go home….unless he stayed and made Shibata cook for him…

But then all the others would know…..

And then Toshi would know and then they would be pissed at him and then all the progress he had made with them, they loved him they just didn't want to admit it for Toshi reasons, would go down the drain…and he couldn't fuck this up with Toshi. Not when he was so close to….well he had no idea what he was close to but he knew that he was close to something so….so he couldn't fuck this up…but he needed this kid back to normal…now!

Maybe smoke him down.

He sat down on the bed and left the drinks over on the floor. He reached into his coat pocket, well he wrestled it away from the kid first, and then he clicked it on and handed it to Sho. Stoned Sho was better than clingy Sho. He could explain stoned Sho to Toshi and he would get into a lot less trouble than if Toshi knew that truth…even though Sho was the one who had done the direct opposite of what he had been told…but then again Shimazaki was no hypocrite. He did the direct opposite of what he had been told to do on a daily basis.

Or maybe not….he didn't know. Responsibility sucked.

"Hey…I was hugging that. I was hugging that and I was pretending that it was you. I like hugging you. I like you." Said Sho. That felt good to say…and it was alright to say that. It just came out…and that was alright….because the world was made of love and he was made of love to it was ok to say that…even though….no. It wasn't like he was going to kiss him or anything so then…so then it was ok to tell him how he felt….and stuff.

"Well now the real me is back….and smoke this. I know that this is really early but this shit is hitting you hard and fast, probably because you're only ten, so I need you to smoke yourself down." Said Shimazaki as he pressed the pen to the kid's mouth. He took it in his hand but didn't smoke it. Great. Just great.

"But…I like this. It's like….a lot of the time I feel really bad. Sort of like….like I don't like myself. Because of how much of a jerk I used to be to my sister and….and about how I was born wrong….and about how I'm always thinking about cheating on my girlfriend with you…well with you and also sometimes other guys like this one guy I know named Hideki who I kissed in the coatroom at the stupid party…..and I hate myself for thinking like that…but I just….now I don't. Now I feel like I'm just all full of love and stuff and I want this to be my life from now on." Said Sho. He hoped that Shimazaki could hear him. He buried his face in Shimazaki's stomach while he said that. He smelled good and his shirt was sort….Sho rubbed his head and arms against him…and he was so soft…and there was this music playing in the background and it was so good…and he felt so good….and Shimazaki felt so good…and he smelled so good…and this was just…

This was the best thing ever.

"Kid….listen. I'm flattered, really I am, and you have every right to think whatever you want-" said Shimazaki

"I think about you a lot." Said Sho. He thought about this a lot, being this close to Shimazaki, close enough that he could hear his heartbeat and rest his head right on his stomach…and this was ok. Hugs were ok. Hugs were more than ok. Hugs were the best thing ever!

"Yeah…I know. Listen, you think that I've got it going on and that's cool but you're a kid and I'm not. Ok? You're way too young for me and even if you were three or four years older that would still be a 'no' since I don't think about you like that. I love you but as a friend and, ok, think about me or whoever else you want to but, yeah, don't wait for me to come around or anything like that because…this is as around as I'm going to come. Ok? But remember, I still think that you're the coolest kid in the world." Said Shimazaki. This was not the place to reject him but….yeah. Better now than later on when he was even further in the thick of it. This shit…this shit made you stupid. It made you say and so stupid things…and he didn't need the kid getting any stupid ideas. He didn't want to hurt the kid, he didn't want to ruin MDMA for the kid, but he also didn't want the kid to end up thinking anything that wasn't true and…

And this being responsible thing was really fucking hard.

"Say it again." said Sho. That was the nicest thing that anyone had ever said to him…and Shimazaki had been the one to say it. Shimazaki thought that he was cool. Shimazaki, the coolest guy in the whole world, thought that he was cool…..and that was just….that was the best thing ever!

"What? That you're cool?" asked Shimazaki with a groan. Great. That was what the kid took from his heartfelt little speech? This kid…he just heard what he felt like hearing, didn't he? He just ignored all of the sappy rejection stuff and went right to the part he wanted to hear. Well wasn't that just wonderful?

"Yeah….I like it when you say stuff like that to me. It makes me feel all happy inside. Like I could do anything." Said Sho. When he was with Shimazaki he felt good about himself and Shimazaki needed to know that. He needed to know that he was Sho's very best friend. He needed to know that if Sho had been Shoko then he would have married him and kissed him and whatever else he felt like doing…and that if Sho hadn't had a girlfriend he would have kissed him right then…and he wanted….he really wanted to kiss someone….

"That's all you got out of that, huh?" asked Shimazaki with a shake of his head. This kid…this kid. He loved this kid, he really did, but he could be kind of ridiculous sometimes. Well no more ridiculous than Shimazaki had been as a kid, anyway. Love…love made you stupid and drugs made you stupid and he could put up with the kid's stupid for now. At least he was happy. That was a good, thing, right? To be able to make the kid happy? You had to think of what was in the best interests of the child after all…God. He sounded like he should have been in family court or something.

"Yeah, now say it again." said Sho. He wanted Shimazaki to tell him all the time that he was cool…because he thought that Shimazaki was cool…and now they thought that they were each cool…and that was just the best thing ever. If they both thought that the other was cool then Sho…he could imagine Shimazaki thinking about him….the same way he thought about Shimazaki…even though he knew that Shimazaki could never feel the same way back….but he felt too good to feel like that right now.

"Fine. Sho, you're so cool. You're the coolest kid that I have ever met and I am happy to have you for a FRIEND." Said Shimazaki as he patted Sho on the head. They were just friends and he needed the kid to get it through his little head…but obviously that wasn't going to happen today…so he had might as well ride this out for what it was now.

"You're my best friend too….and I like hugging you. Your shirt is soft and it smells good." Said Sho. He felt Shimazaki hand on his back. He wondered if he could live the rest of his life in a hug like this. He loved hugs and he loved hugging Shimazaki and he was so happy and….and he wanted to be this happy for the rest of his life. He wanted…he wanted…he wanted to feel like this for the rest of his life…

Shimazaki really felt good.

Sho hugged him close and tight. His shirt was so soft and…and so was his skin. He had skin on his arms and he was holding Sho and…and he had skin on his stomach too…and his shirt had gone up and Sho had found his stomach and he knew that maybe this was too close but the skin on his stomach was soft and Sho…he felt…weird. Just….just weird but good weird and he wanted to-

It didn't matter what he wanted because now he was being sat up.

"Hey, ok. How about I tell you a story or something? And then you drink…whatever's in this bottle. How's that sound?" asked Shimazaki. He pried the kid off of him and reached down for a two liter he liberated from the fridge. The kid was getting more than a little handsy there and…yeah. Shimazaki knew that he was getting to that age and he did not want to deal with that right now. All the new and confusing feelings he would have to explain to the little guy. Nope. Not dealing with that. He would gladly tell all the gory and violent stories the kid wanted to hear but he was not, absolutely not, going to let the kid get up to…all of that.

Too weird. Way too weird.

"This is….value brand cola with natural coloring and flavors." Said Sho as he read the bottle that had been put in his hands. He wanted to go back to feeling Shimazaki's skin…but he was thirsty and he liked soda…and big sis never let him have a whole two liter to himself anymore….and he still loved her even though she could be sort of bossy about that soda…but he still loved her…and he still loved Shimazaki too even though Shimazaki had pulled him off…and he loved everyone in the whole world….except for dad…and Minegishi…well Minegishi was ok since they had given him books so he could love them….but not dad. Pretty much everyone but dad.

But especially Shimazaki.

"Good drink that and I'll tell you that story you like about how I stabbed my dad. You like that one, right?" asked Shimazaki. He needed to take this kid's mind off of…all of that. He was not ready for the kid to start feeling like that about him. He didn't know if he would ever be ready to deal with the kid feeling like that about him…so he would deal with it later. Much later. Not now. This was…he did not want to deal with this now….he would gladly bring up every single violent, gory, or both thing that had ever happened to him in his entire life if he meant never having to address the fact that the kid was having feelings like….that…about him…

Toshi maybe had a point about this thing going in the wrong direction.

"I do…I really do…but can you tell me about that and then something else. Can I have two stories? And can I get back to hugging you?" asked Sho. As he held his soda. He wanted to get back to hugging, to get back to the softness of skin and clothes and…and this bottle was soft too. He rubbed it against his arms. It was soft but in a cool and plastic sort of way…and that didn't mean that it wasn't nice…because it was nice. It was so nice. Everything was so nice. The feel of his own skin, this bottle, the sun coming through the windows, the bottles by his feet, the bottomless well of love that existed inside of him, Shimazaki, and all the other people in the world….this was just…this was so nice…and he wanted to feel this nice all the time….and he wondered if he could. What else was in Shimazaki's desk drawers?

And why had he wanted to keep Sho out of there.

There were so many good things and good feelings inside of those drawers and…and he wanted to eat everything. If eating just one of those yellow Smarties made him feel this good then what would it have been like to have had two or three? Or the whole bag like he had been about to eat? And what about the other stuff? And what about the pen that Shimazaki had given to him? What would it have felt like to smoke from that while he felt like this? Or like how all of the other stuff would have made him feel?

He didn't know…but he wanted to know….but also he was very thirsty and he really wanted to drink this soda so that would come first.

"Kid, you can have all the stories you want just so long as you keep it all above my clothes, ok?" asked Shimazaki as the kid went to town on that soda. He was not ready for all of that…but he was ready to tell stories. Yeah, stories would work. One day the kid would be too big for stories…but that day was still a long while off. Right now he liked soda and stories and hugging him platonically.

"Deal. Ok, you can start now." Said Sho as he drank his soda. This was the best day ever and he was the happiest he had ever been….and he wanted to stay this happy for the rest of his life…and maybe he could…he didn't know….

But he did know that he liked yellow Smarties more than beer.


	350. Are Either of Us Happy Here?

Hatori wasn't any happier with this situation than Fukuda was.

Well he was happy that he didn't have to live and work with the Awakened anymore, at least, and he at least got his own dedicated workspace too. No more tech room. Just him and his desk and…well Fukuda was there too. Hatori had managed, mostly, to drown him out. He had spent the whole day typing and sighing to himself and just being….well Fukuda…so Hatori had done the only sensible thing. He did his work while destroying his hearing blasting the same song over and over again…because it helped him concentrate…and also he really liked this song.

Hey Japan, Japan I love you. Hey Japan, Koichiwa.

Shimazaki actually did have good taste in music. He had been singing this nonstop on a loop the other day, because it fit since they were finally back in Japan, and Hatori…well he liked it. He would never tell Shimazaki that he liked it, of course, because that guy was such an asshole….but even Shimazaki had his good points. He was nice to the kids, he had good taste in music, and…well that was about it. He also acted like more of a ten year old than the actual ten year old…and the thing with the worms was getting old…but at least he was honest about how he felt. He didn't just sit there and sigh and stew in his own negativity. At least he wasn't Fukuda.

As unhappy as he was with his living situation living with Shimazaki was still infinitely better than working with Fukuda.

Because, really, who would be happy working with Fukuda? Fukuda was Fukuda. His entire…self…was just…negativity. Auras said more than words ever could…not that Fukuda spoke more than five words to him that whole day…but his aura said more than enough. He was sitting there at his desk working like normal but his aura just oozed negativity and resentment….and it was just….Hatori would rather have been hanging out with Suzuki.

And he was probably the only person in the world to ever have had that thought.

Suzuki could be scary, and he could be kind of an asshole sometimes, but at least he was a pretty positive guy all things considered. Well he didn't look it, obviously, but in general he was pretty upbeat. He was always talking about, well when you got him to talking about, how great it would be when Claw ruled the world and what it would be like and also how awesome his daughter was….he didn't really seem to like Sho all that much which was weird…but at least he never really said bad things about the kid. He always just said things like he was annoying and tiresome and quarrelsome, which honestly Sho was and Shimazaki hanging out with him all the time just made him worse, but he never said anything really negative about him.

Fukuda and Mob on the other hand….

For some strange reason Fukuda thought that she was just, like, a really short adult or something. Like she was a little person posing as a child…which she wasn't by the way. She was an eleven year old kid who liked to put on makeup and watch Disney movies and drink strawberry milk. Also she did not have a crush on him and they never went out and Hatori would take a lie detector test if it meant Fukuda coming off of all of that. Seriously. If Fukuda hadn't been his direct superior, and also if Hatori had been a braver man, he would have told Fukuda to go and fuck himself with all of that. So what if Sho thought that they were going out? Sho was ten. Fukuda had taken the word of a ten year old…and he had done NOTHING about what should have been some very troubling information. That was his best friend's daughter and he just…sat on that information. It wasn't true, obviously, and also of course Mob didn't have a crush on him….but STILL. You said something when you thought….stuff like that. Especially when it was your best friend's kid.

How a guy like Suzuki had a friend like Fukuda Hatori would never know.

Not that Suzuki was all that great. Really it was amazing that a guy like Suzuki had made a kid like Mob. Suzuki was kind of an asshole. The whole leaving traitors to rot in holes and also….well he did tell Hatori to shut up a lot…and told him that he was annoying….but that may have just been him being blunt. After all he was his boss and he could talk however he wanted. That might have even just been the way that he talked to everyone in his life….not that Hatori knew of anyone else in his life besides his kids who he talked to regularly. He didn't really seem to have any other friends besides him and Fukuda and he didn't seem to have much of a life outside of Claw and his daughter….

Maybe he'd like to go to the summer comics market?

There was one coming up soon and Hatori was going if they were still in Tokyo for it. He had been planning on going alone, or maybe taking Shibata with him since he was a good friend and he could carry a lot, but Suzuki might have liked to come. They probably had some of that retro stuff he liked. There were games, too, which he'd like…and also weird doujinshi….but Hatori wouldn't be buying any of that. Even if he hadn't been planning on going to this thing with his boss he still wasn't buying that kind of stuff. Not when he could get anything on the internet. Uncensored stuff. Why they censored the best parts he would never know….

Not that he would be brining that up to Suzuki. No way, that was not going to be one of their debates.

Still, though, he would have had a good time. Well maybe. He didn't really know. He had never seen Suzuki just…out and about with people…and it was hard to imagine. He must have been out in the world with people, before, since he hadn't been born the President of Claw. He'd been friends with Fukuda when they had been kids. Suzuki told him stories about that time in his life, mostly the game marathons he and Fukuda had, and Hatori still could not imagine Fukuda and Suzuki as kids. Still, they must have been kids and Suzuki must have hung out with other people….right? He only ever talked about Fukuda but…well he'd been married before and that must have meant that he had at least talked to another human being…and also gotten her to marry him….

Which was better than Hatori had done.

He accepted the fact that this was his life. Suzuki thought that he was gay and he would have to live this lie…but it was whatever. Girls had never liked him when he had been a kid and women didn't like him now that he was an adult. Whatever. This was his life now and he accepted it. Even the fact that Suzuki was more successful than him when it came to all of that…and how that worked Hatori would never understand. But it was what it was….even though Suzuki being as weird as he was….but it was what it was. He didn't think that some girl would just fall out of the sky and drag him off to her world….and other such day dreams. Nope. This was his life and he was living this life and he didn't even want a girlfriend anyway because of….time…..or whatever. He was fine.

Really.

What did he need a girlfriend for anyway? So Suzuki would know that he'd lied to him? Yeah, no, not going to happen. He could be alone for the rest of his life if it meant not knowing what Suzuki did to people who lied to him. It must have been worse than what he did to people who talked during meetings or tried to defect. Yeah, no, not breaking Suzuki's trust….and he did have Suzuki's trust. Huh. That was…wow. Suzuki trusted him and was his friend and…and that was….that had finally dawned on him. He and Suzuki were friends….as weird as Suzuki was they were still friends….even though he could be really weird sometimes. He had said, four times now, that if he hadn't been married and if Hatori had been born a girl, that he would have asked him out….which was not something that he liked to think about…

Suzuki was kind of a weird guy.

But maybe that was because he only had the one friend…and his one friend was kind of a weirdo. Not like in the same socially stunted and kind of assholish way Suzuki was….well Fukuda was an asshole in his own way…but more of a 'thinks that it's ok for a guy in his twenties to go out with an eleven year old girl'…and Hatori was not letting that go. No way. Not going to happen. No wonder Suzuki was so weird if he had spent most of his life hanging out with that guy….huh. Hatori was protective of Suzuki…because they were friends…that was….interesting. Well whatever then. Suzuki was his friend, his boss, a weird guy….and also the guy he was going to go to the comics market with…

And maybe he'd bring his kids, too.

Mob would have fun. She liked games and manga…and also she loved cosplay. Cosplay and they probably had some Frozen doujinshi and she'd get a kick out of that…and her brother would like it, too. He had his stuff that he liked, Hatori wasn't sure exactly what the kid was into but there was doujinshi for everything, and also he might get into manga creation. He was a pretty good artist, even Suzuki said so, so maybe he'd have a good time. Yeah, it would be fun. Just him and the whole Suzuki family….

It was amazing how fast a person's life could change.

Last year he never would have thought that he ever would have seen President Suzuki let alone planned on asking him to come with, and bring his kids, to the summer comics market with him. Last year he never would have imagined that he would have made it to the upper echelons of Claw just because he had made friend with a lonely kid he had met by absolute chance. Last year he never would have imagined that he would have had a spot in the upper echelon alongside, well, the most powerful espers in all of Claw. Last year he never would have imagined that he would be high enough up in Claw to have been…well…here….

Not that he particularly wanted to be here in particular.

"Hey!" Hatori could hear….well he might have been hearing Fukuda and he might not have been. He didn't know. He had no way of knowing. Well he could always take off his headphones…but then his headphones would be off. His headphones would be off and then Fukuda, well if he was trying to get his attention, would have his attention and he just….did not want to have Fukuda's attention….

That is if Fukuda was even trying to talk to him…and it wasn't like he had any way of knowing.

"Hey? Hey! Hatori!?" Hatori took out his headphones. Ok, Fukuda was yelling at him now. What? He was working. He could work and listen to music and drink Monster and eat Doritos. He could multitask! If Fukuda was about to get on him about how he worked then…well he didn't know what he could do. He wasn't a brave man, far from it, and Fukuda may have been an asshole but he was still the best friend of the President…and also Hatori's direct superior. Work sucked sometimes…..

Maybe if his life had worked out differently he would have ended up a salaryman or something….then his life could have sucked in a whole different way.

Not that his life sucked that much. Well, ok, one of his roommates/coworkers was an asshole, one he would be awkward around until the end of time, and the other one…well Shibata was the nicest guy alive, actually. His boss, well the guy he shared and office with and took orders from, was kind of an asshole….but everyone's boss was an asshole. Hatori was sort of lucky, actually, since he mostly just spent his days dicking around playing games and hanging out with people….so really his life wasn't so bad…

Even if he had to deal with whatever it was that Fukuda wanted.

"What's up?" asked Hatori. He tried to sound a little less like he wanted to tell Fukuda to go fuck himself…not that he ever would. He wasn't Shimazaki, he wasn't brave enough or stupid enough to say something like that, so his only alternative was to try and be nice…even though he would rather have been sitting and listening to Suzuki's latest very long monologue about how his daughter was the greatest little girl who ever lived.

"Can you turn that down? I can hear it from this side of the room." Said Fukuda. Hatori covered his ears…yup. Ringing. Well maybe that had been too loud.

"Yeah, I can do that." Said Hatori. He turned the volume down with his powers and then clasped his hands over his ears. The ringing after using headphones was normal. That was just what happened when you wore headphones….or at least what happened to him. He was fine. This was not going to be the time that he got tinnitus. This was not going to be a permanent ringing that would keep him up for the rest of his life. He had enough things keeping him up all night. Games he had to play, nightmares about that day….the one he'd rather not think about, Suzuki wanting to hang out until dawn, Shimazaki and Minegishi having inconsiderately loud sex, the way that sometimes his ears would start ringing after he laid down and then he thought, on those nights, that he had finally given himself tinnitus and-

The ringing stopped.

Hatori took his hands from his ears. He could hear…well he could hear his laptop fan going…and he had never heard it like this before….but the ringing was done with. What had….oh. Right. Fukuda was a healer. Did this mean that he was in his debt now? He didn't want to be in that guy's debt. He had fixed him, that was nice of him, but he was also a jerk to Mob and she was just a lonely little kid. Doing one nice thing didn't make up for being an asshole. Hatori knew that first hand…and if he was never going to live that party down then…then Fukuda didn't get to live that last plane ride down…or the one when he made fun of Minegishi…and it was amazing that they had allowed Fukuda to live after that…

One right didn't make everything right…but maybe he had fucked his hearing up, before, if he hadn't been able to hear his laptop fan.

"Uh….thanks." said Hatori. He still had to say thank you. Something nice had been done for him and he still had to be polite…even though he didn't want to. He wasn't brave enough to tell Fukuda off for anything….and he wasn't brave enough to be impolite. He wasn't brave at all. If anything, Hatori suspected, he was something of a coward. That would have made sense. He didn't know when he had become a coward, he didn't know how to stop being a coward, and he didn't even know how he felt about being a coward. Just that he was a coward and he would never tell Fukuda off for….for anything.

"You're welcome. Maybe next time don't turn the volume up so high…and maybe drink fewer of those, too. Your pancreas and liver aren't doing so well. I fixed those too, well to the best of my ability, but you might want to take better care of yourself. President Suzuki wouldn't be happy with me at all if I let anything happen to you." Said Fukuda. He had a tone there when he mentioned the President…a sort of tone like he had caught Hatori going to town on his wife right there on his desk. What was he so jealous of? Suzuki had been his friend for longer and would probably be his friend until they were old people feeding the fish at the park and complaining about young people or whatever it was that old people did.

He really had nothing to be jealous of.

Seriously. Being Suzuki's friend was….ok. Being friends with the President of Claw wasn't all that you would think that it would be. Hatori didn't have any extra power or privileges, at least he hadn't been informed of any, and people were more afraid of him than respectful….and also Suzuki could be kind of an asshole. God help you if you ever beat him at anything…and God help you if you ever even implied that playing retro games and retro looking games was for anything other than serious work reasons…and also the questions. Suzuki…he either didn't know that he was asking personal questions or he just didn't care…and the whole thing might have just gone back to the fact that he had not really ben socialized…and Hatori would have to help him with that….

Being friends with Suzuki Touichirou was not all that it was cracked up to be…and he had no idea what Fukuda was so pissed off about.

"Yeah, he'd be pissed but he's pissed a lot of the time so….yeah. Anyway wow, it's getting late. Think I'll have lunch now." Said Hatori as yawned, stretched, and pretended to look at his watch. He wasn't wearing a watch since he was twenty but hopefully Fukuda wasn't looking too closely at him.

"It's eleven thirty in the morning." Said Fukuda. Hatori, if he had been a braver man, would have told him to shut his mouth and mind his own business….but his name was Hatori, not Shimazaki or Minegishi, and he knew that he didn't even have it in him to try and say something like that to anyone.

"Brunch then." Said Hatori. He pretended to check his nonexistent watch and then got up. He just…needed a minute. He'd go down and get some snacks, maybe stop by the tech room to see what everyone was up to, and then maybe stop off and see what Suzuki was up to. Maybe he was feeling lonely and chatty. Maybe Mob had done something amazing and Suzuki needed to tell him in great detail. Maybe someone else had tried to kill him and now Suzuki needed someone to vent to. He didn't know. Anywhere was better than here. Even going back home and dealing with whatever mean, childish, or bizarre thing Shimazaki felt like doing to him today was better than sitting here in this office with Fukuda.

"You aren't even wearing a watch." Said Fukuda. Hatori wanted to tell him to get a clue already. If he had been anyone else he could have told him off. Even Shibata would have said something and he was the nicest guy in Claw. Well he was taking the lead informal upper echelon poll. It was a tie between him and Mob….and at they'd know who the winner was at the end of the year party….that he would not be attending for obvious reasons…..but he would rather have gone to a million work parties and gotten so drunk that he pissed in the chocolate fountain, and Mob was probably going to have another one just because kids loved chocolate, and he was shunned from society instead of standing there dealing with Fukuda.

God, why was Suzuki even friends with this guy?

"I don't need a watch to tell me that I'm hungry." Said Hatori. He didn't know what Fukuda was trying to get him to stay for. It wasn't like Fukuda even wanted him there. Fukuda was, well, someone who did best alone it seemed. He didn't like Hatori and Hatori didn't like him so why not just let him go away….FAR away?

"Fine, whatever. Give my best to Touichirou." Said Fukuda after a moment. There was a way he said Touichirou…and why did he say…oh. Right. Suzuki's given name…and that was just…weird. He had never once even presumed to use Suzuki's given name. Nobody used his given name. Hatori imagined that his parents had called him Suzuki growing up. He imagined that his wife had called him Suzuki, too, and that she hadn't even known his given name.

Hatori knew that he and Suzuki were not on a given name basis….and that was fine.

He liked that guy, he really did, but he didn't care if they were on a given name basis. He was happy being Hatori. He knew that Suzuki was happy being Suzuki. He had never wanted to take their relationship to that level….he had no idea what that level would entail but he knew that he didn't want to do any relationship upgrades….especially since Suzuki did say…a lot….that he would have gone out with Hatori if he hadn't been married and Hatori had been a girl….so maybe it was best not to upgrade their relationship…

Especially not to whatever his and Fukuda's relationship was…whatever there was that made Fukuda so weirdly jealous.

"I'll tell President Suzuki that you said 'hi'." Said Hatori as he got up. He didn't want to get into a fight over the President. He was Suzuki's friend and that was ok for him…and it should have been ok with Fukuda, too. Suzuki's friendship wasn't limited to just one person…and Hatori wasn't even trying to steal him! They were just a couple of guys who hung out sometimes, that was all, and it wasn't like he was trying to make Suzuki not be friends with Fukuda. Fukuda was just kind of an asshole. That was not Hatori's fault. He was not the one who whispered into Fukuda's ear every night 'be an asshole' that came from within!

Seriously.

He never thought that he would ever end up fighting for someone, anyone's, let alone the President's friendship…but here he was. He was fighting with Fukuda, and he hadn't even wanted to, for Suzuki's friendship….did Suzuki even know? Maybe he could talk to Fukuda, they were friends after all, and tell him that they would always be best friends or whatever. That way Fukuda could stop acting like he had caught Hatori in bed with his wife!

Because there was nothing to be jealous of.

Being friends with Suzuki was ok. He could be a real asshole sometimes but at the end of the day he was just…a guy. A guy who liked old games and wouldn't admit it. A guy who was super lonely and wouldn't admit it. A guy who was weirdly close with his daughter, he played favorites too which didn't seem like it was ok, and he was just…a guy. A dad. He was a guy and a dad and…..stuff. He was also the most powerful esper in the whole world and the President of Claw….but he was still just a guy.

And he was a guy who liked coffee.

Black coffee. No cream, no sugar, just coffee. That was how he took his. Hatori took his with mostly cream and sugar and enough coffee to turn the water brown. Suzuki had told him, before, that he had no idea what made a good cup of coffee….but then Hatori had told him, in a rare moment of bravery, that maybe he was the one who didn't know what made a good cup of coffee…and then they had spent the next hour and a half talking about coffee….

And it had been ok.

Suzuki was ok. He was…well he could be an asshole but he was ok…and you never knew who you were going to get….and Hatori hoped that he got the normal, slightly short tempered, slightly weird guy. He was going to spend as much time as he could at Suzuki's side…because Fukuda's weirdness was weirder than anything Suzuki had thrown at him so far…and he came bearing coffee so Suzuki might have been in a good mood…well it depended on who had tried to kill him that day…and if he was busy…well he was always busy….so it really depended on how busy Suzuki was….

He wasn't very busy…it seemed.

"Hatori. Hello. Do you need something?" asked Suzuki from behind his desk. He wasn't as tense as normal. That meant that he wasn't that busy. He wasn't that hard to read once you got used to him. When his aura was more…out…like this he was sort of chill. When he sat and let his shoulder slump down and let his aura spread out then he was really chill….

He was ok now.

"Nothing, just wanted to see if you wanted some coffee." Said Hatori as he crossed the office. He had, at this point, open door privileges…or at least he figured he did since Suzuki had gotten pissed at him, before, for lurking in his doorway.

"It's not even noon yet." Said Suzuki as a coffee was put down on his desk next to the empty tea cups. Hatori, if he had been a braver man, would have rolled his eyes. He would have said something like 'I didn't know that you had made a no coffee before noon law' or something like that. But he wasn't that brave, and he had no idea if they were even such good friends, so he would not be saying anything like that.

"Well if you don't want it then I can just have both." Said Hatori. He played like he was going to take the cup from his desk. Suzuki pulled the cup away with his powers. He could play around like this, they were good enough friends to mess around like this, and Hatori was ok with the level of friendship that they were at. Fukuda could be on a given name basis or whatever. Hatori was happy with this.

"No, I want it. Come here to the side and bring a chair." Said Suzuki. Hatori didn't have to be told twice. If it was a choice between hanging out with Suzuki and getting back to work with Fukuda then he, of course, was going to pick Suzuki…and he never thought that he would ever have found himself wanting to be near the President…and wanting to be his friend….and he was struck with the feeling that his twenties were going to be…weird. Ok. He could deal with that. He pulled a chair over and sat down beside Suzuki.

And his aura immediately latched onto him.

That could have meant anything. Maybe he was mad or bothered or maybe his aura was just being weird. Hatori….Suzuki had never told him as much but he got the feeling that he didn't have full control over his powers. Sometimes when he was really tired things started to float…or break…and he knew that Mob had that problem. She must have gotten it from him. That was why she drank and smoked all the time even though she was only eleven years old. Suzuki didn't do anything like that, as far as Hatori knew, but maybe he should have…

Since controlling powers that big must have been hard…and something that hard would have made anyone into an asshole.

"Something wrong, boss?" asked Hatori as he sat down. Maybe Suzuki would tell him and maybe he wouldn't. He didn't know. It was hard to tell with him…but if he was pissed off about something or something had been bothering him then Hatori would have liked he heads up. That way he would have known to treat him with kid gloves….well with an extra pair of kid gloves.

"No, I just find your company enjoyable." Said Suzuki. Hatori relaxed. Ok, he was just happy to see him. Cool. Hatori leaned back in his chair and took a long sip of coffee. Not the best drink but, hey, he was twenty and he was an adult and adults drank coffee. Suzuki took a sip of his, too, and then put it down with his powers. He was using his powers a lot…something wrong? Or just feeling lazy? Or was it more effort to use telekinesis to lift things? He didn't know, he wasn't telekinetic, and he wasn't sure if it was ok to ask Suzuki about that right now.

"So….President Suzuki, how's your day going?" asked Hatori. He hadn't heard anything about any attempts on his life…but then again those happened all the time. Maybe it was just not news anymore, people trying to kill him, that would have made sense…in a sad sort of way. Ok, yeah, he was trying to take over the world but he had two kids and they were all alone in the world aside from him. There was nothing worse than waking up one day with parents and then coming home one day and turning into an orphan….

There was nothing worse than winding up an orphan….at least nothing worse that Hatori had experienced.

"It's fine. There haven't been any attempts on my life yet. Yours?" asked Suzuki. Hatori….well that was good. He felt good. He knew that Suzuki was a powerful man and he couldn't be killed….well he wasn't immortal but he had Shibata to protect him…when Suzuki could stand to have him around….and also if anything were ever to happen then he had probable made arrangements for his kids. They wouldn't end up in a group home…those places were hell on Earth…and if he hadn't made arrangements than Hatori would have took them in if he had to. Well he got the feeling that Minegishi and Shimazaki would probably end up taking those kids in, he was ninety nine percent sure that they were a couple now and he had heard Shimazaki talking about them having kids so obviously they were going to adopt since as far as the Claw records had said Minegishi still had a copper thing to keep from having kids and theirs would be good for the next five years, so Mob and Sho would be in good…ok….competent hands. They would be loved and that was more than a group home could give them.

Hopefully Suzuki would live a good long time, though, even if he wasn't exactly super dad he was still a dad and Hatori…well he would have given anything to have seen his mom and dad again.

"Decent. Got some work done, excited for the summer comic market." Said Hatori. He shrugged and tried to look as calm and chill as he could. He didn't like to think about it, his life, the parts of his life that hurt…so he was going to talk about something that he was looking forward too. Something that…that he knew that Suzuki would have gotten a kick out of. That the two of them could have had gotten a kick out of…and the kids…they would have had fun too…yeah. He was fine.

He took another drink of coffee. He was fine.

"Comiket?" asked Suzuki. Hatori almost spat out his coffee. How in the hell had Suzuki even HEARD of Comiket? He didn't think that Suzuki would have wanted to go on his own…or maybe he had just heard about it in his life or something.

"You know it?" asked Hatori. He tried not to sound shocked, not that he would even be able to tell if he was shocked, but on the off chance that he had figured out tones he would rather Suzuki not think that he was insulting him. He was forty four. He'd had a life and in his life he'd done things….apparently things like go out in the world and do….fun stuff. Huh. Well you thought that you knew a person. Well then.

"Yes. I went once with Fukuda when we were children." Said Suzuki. That was…ok then. When had they started…well obviously back when Suzuki and Fukuda had been kids. They had been kids and gone to Comiket…and he could not imagine….either of them in the summer comic market. Suzuki didn't seem like he would have wanted to go on his own and Fukuda…well he just could not begin to imagine Fukuda out there in the world doing things that were fun…or even knowing about how fun things even worked. Huh.

Well you thought that you knew a person.

This could be great! Suzuki had gone before, well in the eighties, but that meant that he would maybe want to go again….and he could bring the kids…and they would have the best time. They deserved to have a good time. They were both sort of lonely, it seemed like, well at least Mob was. Her brother…well he had his own issues it seemed like he was working on…trying to work on. Would work on later when he got old enough.

Poor kids. They deserved to have fun.

"So…did you have fun?" asked Hatori. He couldn't imagine Suzuki being a kid and stuff but…well…yeah. He must have been a kid and he just…he just…this was incomprehensible. Suzuki as a kid at the summer comics market. Him being there buying comics…or weird doujinshi…and he didn't want to think about the weird doujinshi….and now he was about to start laughing…because that was hilarious. The thought of the President…and now he was going to think about…literally anything else.

"I…found a lot of Galaxy Express doujinshi…which was enjoyable….but the crowds were not." Said Suzuki. Hatori didn't think too far into the doujinshi and focused on the fact that he didn't like crowds. Damn. They could have had a good time together but if he didn't like crowds…wait, Hatori had seen him address crowds tons of times before…but that was addressing people and not, you know, existing with them...huh. Well that was just…that made no sense. What did he have to be afraid of? He was the most powerful esper alive…not that he would ask. No, he didn't think that Suzuki would have been itching to get into his deep emotional shit right now….or ever. He could be a really cagey guy sometimes….most of the times.

"Oh. Well I was going to ask if you wanted to go with me." said Hatori. Well he could always go with Shibata. He liked crowds and he could carry a lot…and fuck travelling light he had people to pack his stuff up these days…not that he was going to go full packrat…or maybe he would. He didn't know. He didn't even know if Shibata would want to go. He sort of wished that Suzuki had wanted to go…because it could have been nice hearing about what it had been like before…and Suzuki really did have a lot of interesting stuff to say…when he wasn't being a weirdo or an asshole….

"Why?" asked Suzuki. Hatori…well he didn't fully know. He hadn't thought too deeply into it. He just wanted to go with his friend because he was an interesting guy and they had fun together…and also Suzuki maybe needed to learn how to socialize and stuff with other people….and also it would have been cool to see him out in the world with other people…and stuff. Was that enough of a reason? Suzuki….he asked 'why' a lot…and stuff. He just…wanted to go with him. No deep reason.

"Because we're friends and I figured you might like it and you could bring your kids with. They'd like it." Said Hatori with a shrug. He hoped that Suzuki wouldn't start up asking 'why' because…well there wasn't a 'why' beyond that.

"I….do not like crowds…but the children you like to accompany you…or just Daughter. Son…I have no idea if Son would like to go but I've seen Daughter reading manga before." Said Suzuki. Sho would probably have liked to come too, there were plenty of games and Sho played games, and going with the kids….that would have been fun. Yeah, he never hung out with Sho and he hadn't been hanging out with Mob that often lately either. Yeah, this could be fun.

"Can do, boss." Said Hatori. He'd ask the kids if they wanted to come later. They probably would have…and maybe Shibata would want to come too. He always wanted to hang out with the kids…and hopefully Shimazaki wouldn't want to come…but he did go wherever Sho went….and Minegishi did go wherever Mob went….and things were going to be awkward for the end of time…because he had been an idiot….but this would be…

This would be ok.

"If you do bring Son then watch him carefully. He tends to disappear…at least he did this morning…and I just cannot understand that child sometimes." Said Suzuki. Hatori, if he had been a braver man, would have told him that Sho didn't like him because he could be…sort of strict…and kind of an asshole…but Hatori was not a brave man so he said nothing.

"Sure thing, Su-President Suzuki." Said Hatori. He had been about to call him just Suzuki…and they were not that close. They weren't on a given name basis or a plain family name basis…well he and Hatori were but it only went one way…and that was ok. He wasn't Fukuda. He wasn't going to get into some contest for Suzuki's friendship. If Fukuda wanted to be Suzuki's best friend forever then he could have the title. Hell, Hatori would go out and get them matching friendship bracelets, he wondered where Minegishi and Mob had gotten theirs, if it meant that Fukuda came off of…whatever bullshit he was on about. Hatori just…was sick of this jealousy….

"Also be sure to tell me if Daughter enjoys herself. I do enjoy it when she's happy." Said Suzuki. Hatori nodded. Right. Suzuki would want a full report…on one of his kids. He wondered what it was with him and Sho. He could be a lot, all kids could be a lot but Sho could be A LOT, but he was still a good…an ok kid. When nobody was going along with his ideas…or giving him ideas….and Hatori was sick of finding worms everywhere….but he wasn't going to get mad at a kid.

He would get mad at the adult who let him dig up worms and leave them in Hatori's bed.

He would get mad but…but he wouldn't get into it with Shimazaki. He was terrifying. He was terrifying even when he didn't try to be. He could have easily killed him at any time and…and that was terrifying. It would do no good to fight with Shimazaki even if he did teach Sho some terrible stuff….nope. He wasn't that kind of person, the confrontational kind, and maybe that made him a coward but he wasn't powerful enough not to be. He was who he was and he couldn't hurt anyone, in a fight he was little better than one of the awakened. He couldn't even stand up to Fukuda let alone Shimazaki…and he was who he was and this was what it was. He just…he was who he was.

And who he was, right now, was Suzuki's friend...and also the guy who listened to him talk about the amazing breakfast his Daughter had made…and he was happy to be this person to him.

He was just as happy with this situation as Suzuki was.


	351. Dinnertime, Good Feelings, and Bad Ones

Mob didn't really know how to cook.

She knew how to make breakfast, mostly, and that wasn't really cooking. Just making omelets and putting ketchup on them and scooping rice and nato and cutting up vegetables and tiny pickles…and pouring milk into cereal when she and Sho were just having breakfast on their own. This was not cooking…but dad didn't seem to mind. Even if he had just eaten the same exact thing, omelets and ketchup and nato and rice and pickled vegetables, for breakfast.

As long as dad didn't mind then it was ok.

"Are you almost done?" asked Dad. Mob nodded with her back turned to him…and she knew that she was being rude…but she had to watch the food or it would burn and then they wouldn't have anything to eat and dad would be mad…and she didn't want dad to be mad. He had been really nice that morning, he had managed to talk to Sho without hitting him, and she didn't want to upset him. Not that Sho was home right now, and not that she ever got punished, but still. She didn't want to make him upset. They had to have a nice dinner.

"Just a second, dad." Said Mob. It was more polite to talk. She wanted them to have a nice dinner and to have a nice dinner she needed to be polite…so that was what she was going to do. She was going to be good and polite and she was going to get dinner on the table and then she and dad would eat and then she would be able to go to her room and be alone…and she needed to be alone for…reasons…

All kinds of reasons.

But first she needed to get dinner on the table. She usually plated Sho's food for him, he always took either all of one thing or nothing from anything, but dad was an adult and he could pick out his own portions. So she just used her powers to put everything on the table. She didn't drop anything. She was careful, well she had to be careful, because she had a lot on her mind…not that dad needed to know what she had been thinking about…

Nobody could know, ever, what she had been thinking about for this whole day. Not even her own dad.

"Careful." Said Dad

"Dad, I have this." said Mob

"Still, Daughter, be careful, I wouldn't want anything to happen to you." Said dad. She felt him reaching over with his powers…and she could do this herself. She wasn't a baby and she could do this on her own…and also if she all of a sudden needed help then dad might have asked why she needed help…because he could be surprisingly nosy sometimes. Not that she would ever call her dad nosy to his face…and not that she should even have been thinking of him as nosy…but he really could be sort of nosy sometimes…

And this was not one of those times when she wanted him to be nosy.

Not that she ever wanted him to be nosy. That was why Sho had gotten upset, maybe, because dad had been getting all nosy and into his life and stuff. He had asked about the present that Sho had made for Emmy and then he had gotten upset…and Mob didn't know why…but she did know that Sho didn't want dad to know about all of that. It was a sort of a…thing…for him because Fukuda had betrayed him…but Mob didn't want to think about Fukuda or how he had betrayed Sho…or all of the other things that he had done…

She just wanted to think about getting dinner on the table for her and her dad. That was all.

"Here you go, dad, I hope you like it." Said Mob as she finished putting everything down on the table. She put his omelet with rice in front of him and his ketchup glass. He liked to pick up food with his fork and then dip it in a glass of ketchup…and Mob got the feeling that it wasn't good manners to do that but she didn't want to tell dad what to do. He didn't like it and also if she told dad not to do that then she would have to fight with Sho about his cup of ranch dressing and she didn't want to fight with Sho. Not that he was there, he and Shimazaki were having a sleepover, but even with him not being there she wasn't about to fight with dad at the dinner table…or ever.

"Thank you. Delicious as usual, Daughter." Said dad even though he hadn't even taken a single bite. She didn't know how he could say that without even tasting it. For all he knew she could have messed up. Her mind had been elsewhere when she had been cooking…not that she was going to tell him that her mind had been elsewhere…because then he would ask what had been on her mind and she didn't want to lie to him…but she also was not going to tell him the truth…

Because she absolutely did not want to talk about this with her dad.

She hadn't even been able to talk about this with Minegishi and they had been born a girl. This was…Mob wasn't sure what it was…well what it had been. She wasn't sure what it had been aside from the fact that it had felt good and that she sort of wanted to do it again…even though it felt gross too…like she was doing something gross….because it was gross…but also good…but also….

Also something that she was not going to think about while she was eating dinner with her dad.

Instead she picked up her fork and ate her food. She didn't much care that she had made the same thing for breakfast. She was just happy to have been able to share this meal with dad…hopefully not for too long…she checked her phone. She loved her dad, she loved a lot, but she also wanted to be alone for…reasons. Personal reasons that dad didn't need to know about. She had her room to herself tonight and…and that was nice for….reasons.

Reasons which she was going to do her best not to think about.

She started to eat. The sooner she ate the sooner she would be done the sooner she would be able to go to her room and….figure something out. Something that had been on her mind all day. Something which was something and…and she was just…going to figure it out and then…and then that was that. She had taken her bath already, and she was going to let Sho skip his bath tonight because he was at a sleepover and she didn't want to fight with him, so she could just…be alone tonight….that is unless dad wanted to hang out….

He was looking at her like he wanted to hang out.

His eyes were on her and his aura was on her and she knew that when he got like that he wanted to hang out. She knew that he loved her the most out of anyone else and she knew that she had to be a good daughter…but she also knew that this was not a Sunday. Their day together was Sunday and yes, sometimes, on days other than Sunday they hung out…but this was not going to be one of those days. This was going to be one of those days when they ate dinner and did their own thing and waited for Sunday to happen…

Even if it did make dad kind of sad….and she did hate it when her dad was sad….

"Dad….are you ok?" asked Mob. If dad wanted to hang out with her…and he was sad…then she would hang out with him…even if she wanted to be alone for…many reasons. She loved her dad and she wanted him to be happy and when you loved someone then you put their feelings ahead of your own…and stuff.

"I'm fine, why do you ask?" asked Dad. Mob….well she couldn't lie to him…but she also couldn't tell him the whole truth. She couldn't tell him that she wanted to be alone and that she was hoping that he didn't want them to hang out…even though he always wanted them to hang out…but she would only hang out if he asked…because she did want to be alone since Sho almost never slept away from home…not since Fukuda had betrayed him…

But dad didn't need to know about all of that.

"Because you were looking at me like you weren't fine." Said Mob. There. That was also the truth. Dad had been looking at her like…like he had been lonely…like he had wanted them to hang out…and she did want to make him happy…but she also wanted to be happy…and sometimes it was hard juggling her own happiness and someone else's….but maybe you weren't meant to juggle happiness. Maybe you were meant to just….do everything you could to make the people you love happy.

"I wasn't trying to look at you in any particular way, I just enjoy looking at you, we've spent our entire day apart." Said Suzuki. Mob….didn't know what he meant there. Well she knew what he said, the words and their meanings, but she had to translate this into dad. He hated admitting weakness, and he had a weird definition of weakness, so he might have just been saying what those words meant or….or he was just trying to tell her that he was lonely and he wanted to hang out. Dad could be very hard to understand sometimes.

"We had breakfast together. Remember?" asked Mob

"Yes, I remember….but we still spent the rest of the day apart." Said Dad

"We did….were you lonely?" asked Mob. She didn't want to spend the whole night trying to translate all of this from dad to Mob. She just…she wanted him to tell her if he wanted to hang out or not, if he was lonely or not, and then she would hang out with him…even though she had some stuff to figure out. A lot of stuff….stuff that she wished that mom had been around to help her figure out…

Because mom was a girl.

Mom was a girl and she was a girl and also she was her mom…and she had been in love before…and she had done more than kiss before…not that she wanted to think about her mom and dad doing that. Mom just…she knew about those things because she had done those things twice to get her and Sho…so she knew about this, about the stuff that Mob…didn't know about. Not that she wanted to do all of that! No! At least she thought that she didn't….but what she had done that morning had to do with all of that…so did that mean that she wanted to do all of that but just hadn't realized it? And why did she always think about Hatori? Was she in love with him again? Or did she just want to know what it was like to kiss hi…and stuff?

Mom could have helped her with that if she had been around.

But mom was not around. Mom was…she was somewhere…and Mob was all alone with dad. Not that she would ever even begin to talk to dad about that. If she hadn't asked dad why her breasts hurt all the time, even when she didn't touch them, and if she hadn't asked dad why she had woken up one day all covered in hair like a werewolf, and if she hadn't asked dad how you could tell if you were in love then she certainly wasn't going to ask dad about…about what she had figured out that morning…

What she had figured out about the good feelings…yeah, dad did not need to know about that.

"I…no. Well for you, of course, but Hatori kept me company. I feel like he may be the lonely one. I had thought that he would make friends with Fukuda but they don't seem to get on. It might be the age difference…because they are very compatible. If Hatori had been a woman I would have suggested that they marry. They would have gotten on so well…and their children…well I am curious about what sort of children they would make." Said dad. Mob…she did not want to talk about Hatori. At even the mention of Hatori her insides started to squirm and she had to hold her hair down or it would start to float away. She didn't want to think about Hatori or be near him or…well she did. She wanted to think about him every day and she wanted to be near him and she wanted…

A lot of stuff that she did not want to think about with her dad sitting right across from her…so it was best that she changed the subject.

"Fukuda doesn't get along with anyone. He fights with everyone all the time…but especially on planes." Said Mob. She knew that she was being sort of mean there but…but he did fight with everyone! Sho said that he was turning into a grumpy old man…but he was the same age as dad and dad wasn't getting old…well he was sort of grumpy a lot of the time…but he had been that way when she had been little. He didn't act like Fukuda, either, and Mob…she at least wanted to know what was up with Fukuda because then…then it might have been something that she could fix…

Even though she really did not want to have to spend any more time with him than was necessary.

She pulled her sweater tighter around herself. She wondered what Fukuda would have to say about her now. She was…she was starting to think about all the stuff that Fukuda thought that she was doing, not with Shimazaki though because that was just….not something that she would ever do to Minegishi, but she was thinking about…stuff….and that had led to the good feelings…and when she got good feelings she got sort of….well….gross. Sort of like she had wet herself but also not…and she just…she had no idea if that was normal or if something was wrong with her and she was sick or dying….

But she would not be asking Fukuda about that. No way.

"Really? He's disliked? Fukuda?" asked dad. He said that like it was news to him. He had been on the same plane, all of the times, as she had been. He hadn't noticed…well he had been busy with Minecraft and Terraria and work stuff…so he might not have noticed at all how everyone was on the plane…when Fukuda got them all fighting with each other.

"You didn't realize? But we fight on every single plane ride." asked Mob

"Well I knew that planes rides usually ended in quarrels but I just figured that your friends were a quarrelsome bunch." Said dad. Dad…wasn't wrong. They fought a lot, well Shimazaki upset people so they fought, but Shimazaki…well he didn't do it to be mean…well he sometimes did…but he was a different kind of mean than Fukuda. Shimazaki was mean because he liked to bother people. Fukuda was mean because he was bothered by people….and Mob had no idea what she or anyone else, besides Shimazaki, had ever done to him…

But if there was a way to make it better then she would.

"They can be…but Fukuda…he says stuff that…sometimes people can take as mean…and they don't really like him." said Mob. She didn't know how to put this in words that dad could understand. He spoke Japanese, he knew what she was saying, but sometimes he just didn't get it. He was even more clueless than she was a lot of the time….but that was maybe because he was all dad. She was only half of him and half of mom.

"Oh. He was always very sociable when we were young. We spent more time socializing than working on our school work, back then, and even in university too. I could get away with it, of course, but Fukuda…well he needed my help with his coursework on more than one occasion." Said dad. He seemed….well sort of happy there. Dad happy. He didn't talk about it that often, when he was a kid, and she just…she was having trouble picturing him as a kid. She knew that everyone started off as a kid but dad…it felt like he had started off as…as dad. It was so hard to imagine him and Fukuda as best friends…and Sho said that he and Fukuda had been best friends when they were kids and Sho didn't tell lies. Well at least she hoped that he didn't.

"Dad….were you and him best friends? Because Sho says that you were but…you never act like best friends." Said Mob. She and Minegishi were best friends, and Sho and Shimazaki were best friends, and also she suspected that Shibata and Hatori were best friends…and she knew how best friends acted. Dad never acted like best friends with Fukuda…but that may have been one of those things that he just didn't know how to do. She could teach him if he didn't know how. She was already teaching him how to be a better dad to Sho so she could teach him how to be a good friend to Fukuda…and maybe if she taught dad how to be a good friend to Fukuda then Fukuda would like her again.

"We are…well I suppose that he never declared us to be enemies….and I'm not even sure what you mean by 'acting like best friends' because….well…we aren't enemies. Try to speak more precisely. I have…difficulties…with the layers of meaning." Said dad. Mob would have hugged dad if they had been standing up. That was good. Dad had admitted that he had a problem with something…and that was very hard for him. He had told her so. He told her that he and mom used to fight because he didn't know how to understand her or how to make himself understood….and Mob really wished that he had told mom this so that they could have stayed together…but she was always very happy to help out her dad.

"It's ok, I have trouble with it too. I think that I get it from you. Anyway I just meant that you guys never come over to each other's houses and you never play games together or talk about stuff…sort of like how you and Hatori are. You and Hatori act more like best friends than you and dad." Said Mob. She wasn't going to make a big deal out of dad admitting that he was bad at something to her. She was just going to be happy about this in her head…and also maybe show dad that he had a better best friend in Hatori…because then he would be around all the time and…and now she was being selfish. She needed to help dad be better friends with Fukuda. She needed to help him and Fukuda because they had known each other since before she had been born….but Hatori really was the better friend than Fukuda. He was nicer and also he didn't say mean things to people. He didn't even know how to say mean things.

He was always so nice.

He always smile when he saw her…and when they played animal crossing he always visited her house and told her how nice it was…and also he had taught her about animal crossing…and also when they played Minecraft he showed her how to make cool ice palaces…and also…also he modded it for her and….and he was always thinking about her…and he always smelled so nice. She liked sitting close to him, because they had to share a screen, and just…the way he smelled was nice…and he always had the nicest sweaters on…and he almost never had spots on his face these days…and she had never minded his spots and…and he was just…

He was really great…and she needed to stop thinking about him before…she started feeling….good feelings again.

"Well he and I have gotten older. We did that a lot when we were young, a little bit older than you are now, but we were children then. Things changed, life changed, and now we're here. I suppose that I spend more time with Hatori because he's younger and…and that's just how it is with people his age. I don't care for him any more than I care for Fukuda. I suppose that Fukuda is still my best friend, because he is my oldest friend, but Hatori is very good company as well." Said dad

"That makes sense…but I hope that me and Minegishi stay as good of friends as we are now for the rest of our lives. They're my best friend." Said Mob. She and Minegishi hug out every say and talked about stuff and read stuff and watched TV and gardened and…and she didn't want the two of them to end up like dad and Fukuda….but she would work harder at friendship than dad ever had. There. Then she and Minegishi would be friends even when they were forty four…well Mob would be forty four and Minegishi would be…they were seventeen years older than her….and that was a lot of math to do in her head. They would be at least fifty. It was hard to add that much in her head, with all of those digits, she usually just used her calculator. It didn't matter. Even if they lived to be a hundred and a hundred seventeen, that was easier math because of all the zeros, then they would still be best friends.

Even when they were spirits they would still be best friends.

"Yes….Minegishi. May I ask you something about them?" asked dad

"Asking me if you can ask me is already asking me but, yes, you can ask me." Said Mob. Dad stared at her for a minute before shaking his head. She smiled. Dad looked so…well he looked like something. He was usually the master of 'conceal, don't feel' but there he was shaking his head like he had water in his ears. If Sho had been there then he would have laughed…and then dad would have gotten mad…even though he didn't need to get mad at Sho as often as he did….but Mob was making progress with dad about getting mad at Sho for every little thing all the time.

"I…do not follow." Said dad

"Nothing. Just…what did you want to ask me?" asked Mob

"Minegishi…they're female, right? Because they have very short hair and wear men's clothes but they have a very feminine face and build…and I've always been curious. Their file…well I suspect that they've been changing it, says that it's none of the reader's business….even though I'm the head of Claw and everything in Claw is my business and I have been tempted to ask them but-" said dad. What?! No! What HAPPENED in his brain that he even THOUGHT of asking them, of asking Minegishi, about their…about…about…about….just…DAD?! WHY?!

"Dad! You can't just ask people if they're a boy or a girl!" said Mob. Minegishi would not have liked that question…because they had said before that unless someone was trying to date them then it was none of anyone's business…and also dad would have been asking about their privates and…and they only answered people who wanted to date them….and the thought of dad dating them….

That was just plain wrong.

Sure Mob loved Minegishi, and if she had to have another parent she would have wanted the other parent to be just like Minegishi, but she didn't want that parent to BE Minegishi…because that would have meant that dad and Minegishi would have gotten married….and Minegishi would have been so unhappy with dad. Also they would have had to kiss dad and…and do other stuff with him….and that was just…wrong. Totally and completely wrong. There was nothing right about that…and also how would Shimazaki have felt? He was so in love with Minegishi that he would have been completely devastated if Minegishi left him for dad…and she just…

She did not want Minegishi for her parent, just for her friend, and she didn't want another parent unless her name was Suzuki Masami.

Her mom Suzuki Masami, not some other woman with the same name, since there were a lot of Suzuki's in the world and a lot of people named Masami and she didn't want some other woman posing as her mother! She wanted her mother! She wanted her mother back! She wanted….to calm down. She didn't even know what she was so upset about. Mom was gone and she was never coming back…and also…also dad wasn't going to find another mom for her.

He still had his wedding ring on.

That meant that he was still married to mom. Wedding rings were sacred, almost as sacred as best friend bracelets, and dad still wore his so he was still married to mom and he was still in love with her and he would never leave her…and stuff. Well she had left him but…but it wasn't like he…he LIKED anyone. He couldn't. He was married…and besides….girls didn't like him. There weren't even any girls in Claw for him to like and to like him…well there had been that one lady when she had been eight….Minegishi said that the lady in Korea had wanted to be boyfriend and girlfriend with dad…and she had always been talking to him and smiling at him…like she liked him….

She had nothing to be mad about since dad hadn't liked her back, he couldn't like her or any girl back, and she was just worried about nothing.

"I know that it's an offensive question. I would be offended if someone mistook me for a woman…no offense. I have nothing against your gender. Actually I hold your gender in high regard. You naturally have skills that I will never have. I simply would not want to be mistaken for anything other than a man." Said dad. Mob shook her head. He didn't get it…but that was ok. He didn't get a lot of things…and also she had been crazy to think of him ever liking Minegishi like that. He would never…and Minegishi never would have liked him back. Not even for…whatever they had with Shimazaki…and Mob was going to stop thinking about this now.

"Dad…it's not about that. It's about you asking about someone's privates. You shouldn't do that." Said Mob. She didn't know if she had said that wrong, she might have, because dad was pulling his aura in close….and he was looking away from her…and maybe that was because she had said privates at the dinner table…but he had been the one asking about Minegishi and also privates was the polite way of saying it. She knew a bunch of curse words for them, Sho knew A LOT of curse words, and she was sure that there must have been non curse words for them, like long science words, but she didn't know any long science words and she didn't want to Google, she had no idea what she would have found, so she was just going to say privates…

And also Dad was the one asking about Minegishi…what they were…even though he had known them for years and he should have known that they were a 'they' by now…and Mob was happy that they would have made a truly terrible couple…and she should not have been happy about that but she was.

"I…had not looked at it that way…and now that I am I can see why your aura is…that way. Thank you, Daughter." Said dad

"It's ok…and also Minegishi is a 'they'. They were born one thing but now they're just a 'they'." Said Mob. She didn't know if it was ok to tell dad that they had been born a girl. Probably not, she decided, since if they had wanted people to know that they had been born a girl then they would have told people that…well everyone knew because Fukuda had said all of that mean stuff about their breasts…but thankfully dad had been too busy doing dad stuff to notice.

"I…don't understand." Said dad. Mob was happy that he was admitting that he didn't understand something but also…also she didn't know what there was to not understand. They wanted to be called they, not she, and that was easy in Japanese. You just had to use the gender neutral conjugation.

"Me neither but we don't have to understand, we just have to call them what they want to be called, otherwise we're being jerks." Said Mob. She knew that she was being sort of mean but…but calling someone something that they didn't want to be called was mean.

"Daughter….your generation has made everything even more complicated than it has ever needed to be." Said dad. Mob didn't know if it was complicated or not. Just call someone what they wanted to be called. It seemed simple enough to her…but then again she was clueless. Maybe it was complicated and she was missing something. She didn't know.

"I don't think that it's that complicated." Said Mob. Maybe dad was the one who was being clueless here. That would have made more sense. He was even more clueless than she was a lot of the time…and she knew that she was being mean to think thoughts like that but she was only thinking the truth.

"It is. When I was a child you were what you were and you didn't get to choose…but your generation seems to really enjoy choice…choice and over complicated. When I was a child everything was what it was and everyone was what it was….and I have never felt this old in my life…and I thought that Hatori was difficult to understand." Said dad

"You're not old, dad, you're forty four." Said Mob. To her that seemed old but she knew that people lived to be a hundred sometimes…and she really wanted dad to live that long…but she also didn't want him to get old. He already squinted when he read and had trouble getting up sometimes because his back hurt…and she wanted him to stay the way he was now for the rest of her life.

"That's old….that's middle aged. You'll understand in thirty three years. Or sooner. You're very bright, you know, you're very good at these social sort of things." Said dad. He smiled at her, with his aura, while he said that. She smiled back with her face and her aura. Maybe if she smiled at dad enough he would learn how to smile both ways.

"Thanks." Said Mob. She didn't think that she was good at talking and stuff but compared to dad she supposed to that she was practically an expert.

"You're welcome. You've always been so social….you'll enjoy Comiket. It's a very social place…well it was in 1987….yes. You'll have fun…but stay away from the doujinshi which is sold in paper bags. I won't tell you why, you're too young to know about that, but you need to stay away from any doujinshi which are sold in brown paper bags." Said Dad. Mob…she knew what was in those books….and she didn't want to think about her dad knowing what was in those books…but she also just…had no clue what he was talking about.

"Dad…what's Comkiet?" asked Mob. She wondered if that was a place that they would go for their Sunday together….it was nice of him to warn her…since he never warned her…not that the name told her anything aside from the fact that they sold comics there….and she did like comics….

"Oh. Hatori hasn't asked you to go with him yet?" asked dad. Mob wondered if she had hit her head or if there was a gas leak in the house or if she had gotten really stoned and forgotten about it, that happened sometimes, because dad had just said that Hatori wanted…to go somewhere…with her. He wanted to ask her to go to a place with him…just the two of them…to a place….with just them…like…like he was planning…like he was going to….

Was he going to ask her out on a DATE!?

She had NEVER been on a date before! Ever! She didn't even know what people did on dates! They…they went places…and ate food…and held hands…and kissed….what!? Hatori…he didn't like girls...or maybe he did because he had liked Minegishi…or maybe he had thought that they were a boy…or maybe…she didn't know! Maybe he just…she had no clue…but he just…maybe he just wanted to eat her? She wouldn't let him, she wanted to live, and people were not food…but he didn't eat his friends. He would have done it already if he had been planning on eating them…but then just…what!? He was going to…to ask her….

Did he think that she liked him?

Dad…dad had told him…that she liked him…which was why she had been avoiding him…even though Minegishi had told her that she was being ridiculous….but still. Did he think that she liked him? Did she like him? Or did she just want to kiss him and also hold his hand and let him feel her up…maybe….well if he wanted to then he could….and she needed to stop her brain up. She was eating, now, so that dad thought that she was just…not thinking about Hatori picking her up and laying her down on her bed and kissing her and holding her hand and then….and she needed to just shut her brain up….and she just…she just….

She needed to stop eating like a crazy person and he needed to act normal before dad got suspicious.

"Hatori…wants me to go with him somewhere?" asked Mob after she chewed, swallowed, and took a big drink of strawberry milk. Ok then. Hatori wanted to go on a date with her…and he had asked dad for his….permission? Well that had been…she supposed that it made sense…but dad had said yes? That was…unexpected…but nice. She…she was…

She was allowed to have a boyfriend…..

Did Hatori want to be her boyfriend? Did this mean that he liked her back and he wanted to be boyfriend and girlfriend with her? But…but she had never had a boyfriend before. The closest she had ever come to being in a relationship was back in the first grade…and she hadn't even done anything…and she had kissed a boy when she had been nine…but she was eleven now and that was a lot of time spent not kissing…and she didn't know how to kiss…or how to do the other stuff…and she wasn't even sure if she was ready for the other stuff…and also Minori had said that they needed to have friends with benefits before they had boyfriends…and she wanted a boyfriend and….

And she drank some more strawberry milk.

"Yes. To Comiket. It's a market where doujinshi, games, tapes, laser disks….well maybe not the tapes and laser disks anymore…but it's a place to shop and meet other people who are fans of things. He asked me this afternoon to go with him, well he asked our whole family, but he's just going to ask you now. You should go. I think that you would enjoy yourself immensely." Said dad. Mob…so he was giving her permission to go out with Hatori…and this was…she felt…a little dizzy. She wasn't even sure if she was in love with Hatori or she just thought that he was attractive like Minegishi said but…but this might have been her only chance at ever having a boyfriend since dad….well he always talked about them spending their lives together and he had never talked about their being room for her husband or boyfriend or whatever…

This was great and she had no reason to feel dizzy.

"That sounds fun…and I would love to go with Hatori…if you think that it's ok…um….yeah. That sounds really good and um…I'm going…to my room to…lay down now…because my food is done and…and I'll do the dishes tomorrow. Goodnight!" said Mob as she used her powers to put her plate in the sink. She rushed off from the table, dad may have said goodnight right back but she hadn't heard him. She couldn't hear anything above the sound of her pulse in her ears and her heart trying to get out of her chest and…

And this was…

She didn't know what this was. Exciting. New. Kind of scary. But most of all…most of all just…the good feeling was back. Well all of the good feelings were back but THE feeling was back….and it was back because…because he liked her. He liked her and…and he would want to kiss her and…and stuff and…and she just…

She laid down on her bed.

She laid down under the covers so that she could not be seen. She didn't want to be seen even though she knew that she wasn't doing anything wrong…and also there was no one else in the room. Not even spirits. Sho was sleeping over next door, dad was eating breakfast, and mom was off to part unknown. She was alone and she was happy and she had never been this happy before….but also she was scared…because she had never thought that he would like her back…and he was a lot older than her…and he probably wanted to kiss her and more than kiss and….and she had never more than kissed anyone before and…and this whole thing was just…she was just….she didn't know what she was….she just knew that she felt…

Good and bad at the same time.

And she…she knew this feeling…and she had felt this feeling before…but never so much and….and she sort of…she sort of liked it. She wanted…she was alone and she could have…there was that thing that she had figured out and...and she was happy but nervous and scared and…and also he liked her back and…and since he liked her back did that make this ok? Or did it make it not ok…or was it just…not something that was not ok but…but also she felt so gross…

Really gross.

She pulled her sweater close. She should not have been feeling this way. Fukuda had said that she did stuff with people and she knew that feeling this way had to do with stuff…and she wasn't sure if she even knew what stuff was let alone if she was ready for it but…but she also…she didn't want to feel gross and…and she just….Minegishi said that this was normal. She let go of her sweater. If they said that this was normal then…then they would never have lied to her…so this was normal. This was normal and she was normal and…and everything that came next was normal….

She rolled onto her side.

Was this normal? This feeling…the slimy sort of feeling…and also what she had done before and….and what she sort of wanted to do again? She couldn't ask anyone, not even Google, but she could just…it wasn't like anyone was there in the room with her and…and she was happy. She was happy and she was not going to let gross feelings ruin her happiness…because this was what she had always wanted. A boy who liked her. A boyfriend. A boy to kiss and hold hands with…and whatever…this was. This thing where she sort of rocked against…whatever stuffed animal she was laying on….

Hopefully not anyone with a name.

Hopefully not Olaf, she had a lot of him, or Elsa or Anna. She didn't know. Her eyes were closed. Her eyes were closed and she was in her head and in her head she was…whatever this was…with Hatori and he said that he liked her and he kissed her and…and she kissed him and…and it was ok to think about kissing him because he liked her in real life and…and this was ok and not gross because they liked each other and…and ok it was gross but also nice…so nice…the nicest thing ever and-

And the lights went out.

Then they came back on again…and that had been her…her powers messed with the electricity sometimes…and also she picked stuff up and threw it around…and judging by the sound of stuff falling she had done that too…..and she just…she was tired. She had never been this tired in her life….that she could remember…but she was tired now and she just wanted to stay under her blanket and close her eyes and go to sleep…even though was still in her day clothes…and she felt all wet and slimy and gross…but she was so tired and…

And she heard her door start to open.

She didn't think. She just slammed it shut. She slammed it shut as hard as she could….which had been mean but…

But she did not want anyone anywhere NEAR her! Nope. Not happening. She sat up and pulled her blanket close to her chest. She was fully dressed but felt completely naked…and she just…she just did not want to talk to anyone. Even if that had been Sho coming home to sleep in his own bed…even if that had been dad coming to tell her that he was lonely and he needed her company…and even if that had been mom back from parts unknown ready to explain where she had gone to and why….

She didn't want ANYONE near her!

"Daughter? You slammed the door in my face." Said Dad. Well it hadn't been mom but…but she especially did not want to talk to her DAD ABOUT THIS! What did he think that he was doing? Just coming into people's bedrooms like that? What if she had been naked? What if she had been completely naked and he had opened that door!? Then what!?

"Yes….I know that I was mean but….but I could have been naked in here! You have to knock!" said Mob

"This…this is my house…" said dad slowly. So? This was her room and she could have been naked and…and she never just let herself into his room and just…..she just needed five minuet to privacy!

"I could have been naked!" shouted Mob. The lights flickered again…and that had not been nice at all…and she should have been nice…but she could be nice tomorrow! Right now she just…she needed….she needed to calm down and…and she just….she needed to be alone!

"Oh….well I bathed you when you were small…" said dad. Did he think that she was still a baby?! She just…she couldn't…she just…she just didn't….she just wanted to be alone!

"Dad! I am not a baby anymore! Just….I'm fine and I'm very sorry that I'm yelling at you and please just…I need to be alone. Ok?" asked Mob. She had her legs crossed as close as she could and she had her blanket up to her chest and she was wearing clothes but she felt like she wasn't and…and she did not want to be taking to her dad while she felt like this!

"Oh…alright. I was concerned and…and I'll just leave you be….goodnight again." said dad. Mob heard him walking away and…and she did not come out of bed. Not until she heard his bedroom door closing. Once his door closed she could sit up and uncross her legs and…and she could just….well she would have to change and…and not think about…..

She did not want to think about anything else for the rest of the night.

She thought about….about how her clothes went in the dirty hamper and about how…how she would have to clean her room…and Sho's side of the room…and she would have to do some laundry because….because her underwear and the front of her skirt were gross and…and she had to do laundry tomorrow and she had to…to make breakfast and…and dinner and maybe she would cook something new…..and that was a good thing to think about…..because cooking was old and safe and…

And she didn't really know how to cook but…but she could learn and…and that would be a good thing to think about because….because she just….did not want to think about…about good feelings or bad feelings or love or…or anything.

She just wanted to be alone.


	352. No Jealousy Here

Fukuda Tadashi was not a jealous man.

He wasn't jealous. He had nothing to be jealous about. He had nobody to be jealous of. His life was…well his life had been circling the drain since the mid-80s….but it was still better than a lot of other people's lives. He could have been living in a box in the park, or he could have been born without powers, or he could have been one of Claw's devout cultists. Yes, his life could have been a lot worse and he had a lot of better things to complain about, anyway, than the fact that his assistant had stopped….assisting.

Which should have been a good thing.

Hatori was not in his nest. His empty energy drinks, chip bags, and tiny orange fingerprints were the only indication that Hatori Nozomu had ever existed there at that desk in the corner…and Fukuda should have been over the moon. No more muttering under his breath, no more dirty looks, no more tinny songs coming from overly loud headphones, and especially no more random outbursts of anger and profanity. Seriously. The lack of the last thing alone should have sent him dancing down the hallway. Hatori was off to where it was that he had gone off to and Fukuda could work in peace.

He should have been happy.

But he wasn't. He knew exactly where Hatori had gone off to. He had gone off running to Suzuki. He always ended his day sitting there with Suzuki distracting him from his life's goal, a good thing, but also telling him God only knew what. Suzuki was a powerful man and Hatori had his ear…and Suzuki let him. Suzuki actually liked him…..for some reason.

Maybe he saw himself in Hatori.

He had been a geek, a nerd, a dork, and whatever other words the kids had thought up for pale gangly kids with no social skills, good grades, and extremely niche interests that they were happy to tell you about AT LENGTH. Seriously. On that first day, their first meeting, Suzuki had spent more time explaining why Space Invaders for the 2600 was the best port of the game followed only by the port for the 5200 which made sense because even though the 5200 was newer the 2600 was perfection….that conversation had gone on longer than their whole 'oh my fucking God there are other espers in the world' conversation. Yeah. He had been…something. He was still something…and that something was pretty much….in a lot of ways who he had been when he had been a kid…

Which was not a good thing.

Because he hadn't let go of their STUPID GAME! Only now it wasn't a game, this was life, and they were really trying to take over the world. The two of them were really….well the two of them and others….they were going to take over the world. This wasn't the two of them in the woods filling endless notebooks with their plans for the new world order. This was life. This was their real, adult life and….and maybe they should have stuck to the arcade. Maybe instead of playing along they should have stayed in the arcade for their entire childhood. Or maybe it was better that he was back with Hatori. They did have a lot in common….

Maybe Hatori could get him back in the arcade.

So maybe it was a good thing that Suzuki had taken a liking to him. Hatori was a lot like a younger version of him. Same interests, same poor social skills, same overreactions to just about everything…and Suzuki did overreact. He didn't yell and scream or hide and cower like Hatori but he did overreact in his own way. Be it taking over the world because of some existential crisis about having the powers of God, Suzuki thought so anyway, or hiding in his room for the rest of time because he confessed to his kendo sempai and she had rejected him and, of course, since the most perfect girl in the world had shot him down there was nothing else that he could do but sit in his room plotting world domination, playing videogames, and drinking ketchup….and yes, he did drink ketchup…

Fukuda bet that Hatori didn't know that about him.

He also bet that Hatori didn't know that he cut the tags out of all of his clothes because otherwise he would tear the whole back off without realizing it. He bet that Hatori also didn't know that he was terrified of mice to the point of actually climbing up on a chair, once, when their fort had gotten infested on summer because the farmers were burning their fields…and there had been more farmland then. He also bet that Hatori didn't know about the time Suzuki had gotten lost in the woods and resigned himself to eating baby soy beans from a farmer's field instead of literally anything else. He also bet that Hatori hadn't heard the rest of Suzuki's ridiculous stories from childhood. Like the time they had snuck off to Tokyo for that comics thing and Suzuki had spent all of his money on Galaxy Express doujinshi….and he bet that Hatori would never know, either, about the time Suzuki had publically proposed marriage to that girl…what had her name been? The one who slept with him out of pity. God that had been…so much second hand embarrassment…..

God….those were the days…

Wait…no. What in the hell was the matter with him? He was….well maybe those were the days. Before all of this. Back when they had been friends and things had been simple and…and he was getting older. He didn't look it, he barely looked thirty, but he was getting older and…..yeah. People got nostalgic in their old age. He and Suzuki….back when they had been kids…things had been good. Then he killed his parents, got weird, and it turned out that Claw wasn't a game….and then university had happened…and then he'd had Sho….and then Fukuda….well once Sho had been born he had been trapped…or maybe he had been trapped before….

Not that he was thinking…the unthinkable.

Sho needed him. Sho needed him and…and if anything he should have been nostalgic for when Sho had been little. For when he had just been learning to talk….and everything had been 'no' even when he'd meant 'yes'…and how he had been 'dada' just because that was the only word he knew for a grown man. Back when Masami had been there…and she had smiled so much in those days. Not that her smiles had been…well what they had become to him. Not that she had been anything more than Suzuki's wife. He remembered….God. Suzuki had been obsessed with her. He met her and for a time she was all he could think about. Her name was Masami, she worked at an animal prison, her hair was brown, she wore a lot of yellow, when she smiled her canine teeth showed, she wanted to live in either a manor house or a proper Japanese castle, she loved cats even though they were terrible animals, she smelled of berries and cinnamon, she called him Touichi sometimes, and she was the most perfect person that Suzuki had ever met…

Fukuda too.

Of course he hadn't realized it then. No, that had taken some time…and this was not the time or the place or…or the place for nostalgia. Not the walk down memory lane that he should have been taking. The times when he would come over to check on the family. Making dinner with them. How Sho had been so small but so eager to help….so he had put Sho on washing the vegetables…and he had only turned his back for ten seconds but in that time Sho had managed to use half a bottle of dish soap and drawn the vegetables a nice bubble bath…and the salad had tasted of lemons but nobody had cared…and Masami had smiled…

God, he missed her smile.

He missed her smiles and her laughs and the way she always had something nice to say even in the depths of her depression. The way she had always been so beautiful even if she had been in her pajamas for days on end. The way her skin had been so soft. The way that she had been there for him as much as he had been there for her. A relationship went two ways…and he had never had anything with anyone that went two ways. Suzuki…friendship with him had been a lot of work…and he'd never had a girlfriend for long with all the work that he put into his friendship…or whatever he had…with Suzuki….but Masami…she had been there for him. She had fulfilled a need that he hadn't even known that he'd had.

For a few hours he could pretend that he had a family.

He could pretend that everything that Suzuki took for granted, and he always took everything for granted, had been his. He had taken his wife and son for granted. Masami and Sho…anyone would have been happy to have had people like them for a family. Suzuki had spent his entire life taking everything for granted. He'd never wanted for anything, not money or food or games or love…not that Fukuda had been lacking those things either…but still. Suzuki had, when he'd had it, the perfect life. A mom and dad who loved him even though he was….who he was. Plenty of money to spend on adolescent nonsense. Effortless good grades. All of it. He'd had it all and then he'd lost it all…and Fukuda still didn't know what had happened…but he knew that he was done beating himself up for what had happened. Like his parents had said when they had been alive, it hadn't been his fault. So what if he'd wanted to take some time to himself that day even though he and Suzuki were supposed to go to Cuticle City to investigate the Rising Sun Spiritual Association for the millionth time? That hadn't been his fault. Suzuki…his life was his own…

Heh. He bet Hatori hadn't heard that story.

Sometimes he disliked himself. The thoughts that came into his mind. He didn't know where they came from, sometimes. This life…it had not been good to him. Maybe it had driven him insane. That would have made sense. Here he was sitting at his desk nostalgic for a time when he had been friends with a man part of him hated. Here he was equally nostalgic for a time when he had stepped in and borrowed that same man's family. Hell, here he was nostalgic for a time when he'd slept with his best friend's wife on his bed with his son sleeping down the hall…it sounded worse in his head. Masami had needed him just as much as he had needed her…and he didn't even know who he was even justifying himself to. He was the only one in the office. There was no one, no assistant, no Sho, no nobody. He could have just gotten up on his desk and started shouting, confessing, everything….and he wanted to…just to get it out.

He could have screamed it at the top of his lungs 'I slept with Suzuki Touichirou's wife and she liked it!' over and over again….but he wouldn't because that would have been suicide.

He was tired, maybe, that would explain it. Tired because Sho, or rather his aura, had kept him up all night. That had been some lightshow…and he had no idea what it had been. A fight? An explosion? Or maybe he had just managed to find where his sister hid the soda. Fukuda didn't know. All he knew was that he had been up most of the night waiting for Sho to show up at his door…but he hadn't. Sho had spent the night in his own home in his own bed dealing with….whatever that had been….all on his own…and Fukuda should have been there for him…

He had fucked up.

He had fucked up so badly and he had no idea what he was supposed to do. The only thing he could think up was going back in time…but Suzuki had proven it with very complicated math back in high school that time travel wasn't possible. Sho…he was a child and he couldn't understand that Fukuda…he'd had no choice but to make the pragmatic choice. He'd had no choice but to confess to a smaller crime, keeping Sho's girlfriend from him, instead of spilling the beans on Sho's greatest secret. Sho was ten, almost eleven, and he was just too young to understand. Maybe when he got older….

But Fukuda didn't have that long.

Sho…he was a good boy and Fukuda wanted to keep him that way. He knew that Sho had been spending time with Shimazaki….that wasn't good for anyone…and he needed to keep Sho safe…but Sho was still angry with him and he could hold a grudge like no one else….and he was in love, too, and even if Fukuda threw himself on Sho's mercy and got him an economy size box of poptarts…Sho would always chose to spend time with the person he was in love, as much love as a ten year old could be, with instead of the guy who did his best to keep him safe….

God….Fukuda needed to get out of here.

He needed to get Sho out of here…and they were in Japan…..and Fukuda knew that Suzuki hardly watched Sho. In the past he had warned Fukuda over and over again not to overstep…but now…well now that he'd latched onto Shigeko, to an admittedly unhealthy degree, he hardly even seemed to remember that he even had a son. That was…a pragmatic choice. It was better that he focused on Shigeko. Shigeko was….well it was a choice between Shigeko and Sho and he had made his choice. This was…Masami would have hated him if she could see what he had let happen…but she was gone and he was doing his best…and Sho…well Fukuda knew that he had earned himself some personal time…and Seasoning City was only a train ride away…and they could be there and back in a day if they left soon enough….

There. A plan.

Sho would forgive him. Everything would be alright between the two of them again. Also Fukuda could get away…this office was not big enough for two. He needed to get away just as much as Sho did and…and this was a good plan. It was a sudden plan, one thought up by a mind that was overstressed and over tired, but it was a good one. It was one that he had to act on before he changed his mind. So much could go wrong. Someone could bring how often he had been visiting the Seventh Division to Suzuki's attention…Sho could refuse to go with him and figure out that he could get on a train on his own….the train could get derailed and Fukuda could get so injured that he used up all of his energy saving himself and had nothing left for Sho…the world could explode….the dead could rise…he could get caught in a hiccup in time…

He was too tired.

Coffee. Coffee from the cafeteria, and then talking. He needed to wake up and he needed to be coherent…and he couldn't fix his own exhaustion. This was not an injury. This was his own inability to just go up to Sho and lay it all out there for him in a way that he could understand. Well no matter. He could make this right. He had to make this right.

But first he had to have his coffee.

He got one for Suzuki, too, since he must have been exhausted. He was even more sensitive to auras than Fukuda was…well more than any other living esper…and Sho must have kept him up all night. If this had been a year ago he would have had to worry about broken bones, bloody noses, and deep bruises that Sho might have been hiding from him. Well not anymore. Shigeko had managed to convince Suzuki not to hit Sho anymore. She was capable of being selfless, it seemed, unless she was just trying to get on her brother's good side so that when the time came, when he inherited the world, he would remember how his sister had saved him from their dad. That was what Fukuda would have done if he had been her. She was smart, probably as smart as Suzuki, but she actually understood how the human mind worked….

She was downright terrifying.

It wasn't just her powers that were terrifying, though they weren't anything to sneeze at, it was the fact that she didn't use them for everything. Suzuki…he was an easy man to understand. He used his powers, his strength, to make people fear and respect him. He was capable of grand plans but he only knew how to make those plans come to fruition by displaying the fact that he was head and shoulders above all other espers. Shigeko…she almost never showed her strength and when she did…it was very sparingly….but also…also just enough. She had managed to stop Shimazaki from teleporting…and that had been more terrifying than her explosion at the Eighth Division…and he hadn't even killed anyone. She had just stopped him and started giving orders…and he had followed them…

Because she was terrifying.

She was like Suzuki but…not socially impaired. She had her own little cult within a cult. The Awakened loved her, she had her own entourage of powerful espers, and she had her father wrapped around her finger. She knew how people's minds worked….and that was more terrifying than being able to pick up an airplane without moving a finger….and Fukuda…..he had no idea what he was supposed to do….so he did what he did best.

He did what he could to protect Sho.

He would have done anything for Sho…even played nice with Suzuki and Hatori. He had grabbed a can of that disgusting neon drink that Hatori liked. He could play nice with Hatori…even though that was his assistant and he should have been assisting him instead of spending his days with Suzuki talking about….whatever it was that they talked about. For Sho he would play nice with Hatori. Sho was worth it. He was. Even when he acted like this, like he had been lately, and even though he had chosen to keep company with the worst person possible…he was worth it. He would always be worth it.

He was Sho. There was no one in this world more worth it.

Fukuda felt himself entering Suzuki's passive aural range. He steadied his face and his aura, took a deep breath, and walked through the office doors. He didn't skip a step. He didn't give anything away. He just entered the office like normal. He paid no mind to the reams of paper on Suzuki's desk with…some kind of sketches on them…and he paid no mind to the much better sketches that Suzuki had tacked onto his wall…Sho had been doing a series on dragons it seemed…and he paid no mind to the way Hatori squeaked and tried to make himself small as he passed.

What did he have to be so afraid of?

"Fukuda. Maybe you can help us with something." Said Suzuki. Well that was new. Usually he was all 'what do you want?' and this…well this was nice…though he hoped that it had nothing to do with whatever it was that they had unbalanced the paper budget for.

"If it's whatever you two are drawing I'm at loss." Said Fukuda. There were numbers, upon closer inspection, beneath the drawings…and Fukuda didn't know anything beyond the square root symbol…and he wished, for the millionth time in his life, that he had gotten any degree of hypercogniton.

"No, not with this. I was showing Hatori how three dimensional objects mathematically. He hadn't even heard of an octant, before this morning can you believe that?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda put his coffee down in front of him and kept his eyes from going wide. There was….a lot more math in front of Suzuki…and it was easy to forget that Suzuki was a genius…but he was….and maybe…well maybe he couldn't pull one over on him…

No, he was getting Suzuki confused with Shigeko. She would have seen right through him…but this was Suzuki. He had always been easy to fool.

"I still don't know what an octant is….and I don't think that I ever will…" said Hatori. His eyes were wide behind his glasses. Fukuda didn't blame him. This was another side of Suzuki that he had never seen before, apparently. Well good. Let him see all of Suzuki, then, if he wanted to be friends so badly.

"In two dimensions the coordinate axes partition into four quadrants which we can then divide once again into eight regions from the origin. Try and keep up." Said Suzuki

"Sorry. You I stopped going to school in my third year of middle school, right? I can barely do algebra." Said Hatori. Fukuda kept his aura and his face still. Hatori had spoken to Suzuki like that…but he apparently hadn't been able to hear the disrespect in his tone. Good for Hatori, he lived another day.

"Right, well then I'll have to explain algebra to you. I'll have to clear my schedule through lunch." Said Suzuki

"Boss? You really don't have to." Said Hatori

"Well I want to. I enjoy math and I enjoy speaking with you." Said Suzuki. Fukuda decided to step in. Hatori needed saving, which he didn't care about one bit, it was…he didn't know. He wasn't a jealous man but he had felt his aura flare there…and his stomach squirm….and he wanted nothing more than to take his coffee and dump it all over Hatori's head…and he was much too tired. That was it.

"Well that, at least, I can help with…though I might be a little bit rusty." Said Fukuda. His mind raced with how he could cover up that aural flare. Fear of math? Being tired? He had brain worms? Or something? He didn't know. All he knew was that he had to be careful how he played this. Suzuki….he seemed ok not but he could be more than unpredictable…..and he just…he took a sip of his coffee. There. That would buy him some time.

"No, I don't need your help with that. What I need is help trying to figure out why Daughter slammed her bedroom door in my face last night." Said Suzuki. Fukuda almost spat his coffee out right in Suzuki's face. That was….Shigeko had done….what? Shigeko? Disturbingly enmeshed with her father to the point of sleeping in the same bed with him at her age Shigeko? She had slammed her door in her father's face like, well, a kid? What the hell…..?

Maybe he had fallen through a snag in time and space and he was in some crazy alternate dimension where Shigeko was a normal little girl, Japan had won the Pacific War, and they had invented a diet soda without the funny aftertaste.

"He isn't telling you that he tried to go into her room without knocking." Said Hatori. He wasn't being helpful. Suzuki never knocked. He didn't think that he had to. That was just who he was and Hatori would had known that if he actually knew Suzuki.

"It's my house." Said Suzuki

"Yeah but she still wants privacy. Like she said, she could have been naked in there." said Hatori

"But she wasn't…and either way I was in the room when her mother bathed her." said Suzuki. Yeah, he had been there while Masami had done all of the work and…and Fukuda calms down and tallies up his evil thoughts. Not the time or the place to be losing control like that.

"Yeah but she was a baby then. She's not a baby anymore. It would be like…if your mom walked in on your while you were in your room." Said Hatori

"My mother never knocked. She didn't have to. It was her house…and there were things which I needed privacy for…but Daughter is better than that." Said Suzuki. Fukuda didn't correct him. Shigeko was a human as anyone else and she was about at that age…well Fukuda been about at her age when he had figured things out….and Shigeko kept company with grown men so who knew what she had and had not figured out.

"Yeah but you know how girls are. Nobody wants their dad walking in on them." Said Hatori. Fukuda wanted to laugh. Suzuki had no idea how anyone was. He was Suzuki. He barely knew how he was let alone another human being.

"He's right, she's getting older and it would be better to knock on her door and wait for permission. She's not a kid anymore." Said Fukuda. It hurt him, it physically hurt him, to agree with Hatori…but he had a point. Shigeko wasn't a little girl anymore and of course she wouldn't want Suzuki walking in on her while she was doing….whatever it was that she had been doing. Well based on where she was physically he'd give three guesses as to what she had figured out…but he did NOT want to think about that new and terrible chapter in her life.

"I….well if you say so. You know about these things more than I do and I respect your judgement." Said Suzuki. Well that felt…good. Someone was in a good mood that morning…which was only good for the rest of the world…but especially Fukuda. It was so rare that he was in a good mood…and despite Shigeko's….whatever she had been thinking treating her father like that. Huh. Maybe he had fallen through a snag in time and space. Any minute now he'd make the leap home…heh. God he was tired.

"Thank you. Anyway I was just coming to tell you that I need a little bit of time off for personal reasons. I'm sure that Hatori can fill in for me." Said Fukuda. Hatori squeaked in fear again. Good.

"How much time?" asked Suzuki. Well that was certainly fast. Huh. Someone was in a VERY generous mood today.

"Not too long, a few days." Said Fukuda

"You-you're leaving me alone?" squeaked Hatori. Fukuda stifled a laugh. He would have thought that at twenty years old Hatori's voice would have been done changing. He was still such a child. Maybe that was what Shigeko had seen in him…or maybe she just hadn't pursued him at all, apparently, because he was just too young for her.

"You'll live." Said Fukuda dismissively. Only Hatori would hear that tone…and only Hatori did. His eyes went as wide as saucers. At least he didn't squeak again.

"That's fine. Hatori, you're Fukuda while Fukuda is gone. I trust that you will do well." Said Suzuki. Hatori looked like he was ready to piss himself. Good. He wanted to be friends with Suzuki? Well part of being friends with Suzuki was becoming a very important administrative cog in the machine that was Claw.

"I…I don't know…." Said Hatori. Fukuda put his energy drink down in front of him. Hatori looked up in fear. Fukuda shrugged. As was life. He wanted to be friends with Suzuki then fine, he got it, and everything that came with it.

"Well I do know. I know that you'll do very well. You're more intelligent than you give yourself credit for. You may not be able to do basic math but there is still an intelligence to you. You simply lack confidence in your own abilities…" Said Suzuki. Fukuda tuned out the rest of that pep talk. Hatori was squeaking and looking like he wanted to run away and Suzuki…well he was trying to build up another human being for once.

That was fine.

Fukuda was not a jealous man. Suzuki could say whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted. He didn't care. He had gotten what he needed from him and now he was going to…do what he had to do. Hatori could have him. They were so much alike he would have thought that they had been related if he hadn't known better. Let the two of them feed into each other. Let Hatori figure out that being friends with Suzuki wasn't all that great. Let Suzuki realize that he needed someone to keep him in check or else he would end up distracted and everything he had worked for would fall apart.

Let those two have each other. Fukuda was jealous. What did he even have to be jealous of?


	353. Coming Down From the Universe's Embrace

The universe had a loving embrace that everyone needed to feel at least once in their life.

Really. Shimazaki had been man of many problems, well he was still a man of many problems, but before he'd first felt the loving embrace of the universe he'd been a man of even more problems than he had now. He'd been weirdly pissed off all the time…and sort of lonely even when he'd been surrounded by people, and other such bad feelings that he never felt anymore. He'd been younger then, a lot younger, and he'd been filled with this sort of sense that he just…was not supposed to be there. That his existence was a mistake…of course that had just been his dad's voice ringing in his brain….and he had managed to drown that out…

With the loving embrace of the universe.

That was what MDMA was for…well it had been Molly back then and he wasn't entirely sure what the difference was…but it was essentially the same thing. It was a thing that was good for taking you out of your own head and showing you how warm and loving and perfect the universe was. Well it did that by ruining your ability to regulate your body temperature and also by taking your brain's whole cache of feel good chemicals and dumping them all at once….but it was still good. While you were high on it, and high was the closest thing that he had for it, you felt good. The world felt good. All the people in it felt good. You were as close to heaven as you could get. It was like the universe was giving you a hug and you were hugging it back and it was just…the most perfect thing ever…

But all good things came to an end.

Coming down from that high…it was the worst. You felt, well Shimazaki always felt, like he was just…nothing. That he was nothing and nobody and he shouldn't have even been there and….and other such thoughts that he liked to leave behind. Well there was a cure for that…more drugs! You could always cure one thing with another thing. You could cure insomnia with coffee and you could cure a jellyfish sting with piss and you could cure the deep existential depression that you got after your brain dumped all of it's feel good chemicals with drugs!

Specifically weed and Xanax.

"Ok kid, time to sit up. Let me fix you up real good and then we can do something fun today. We can dig up some more worms and leave them in Hatori's bed or we can go to the dog park or we can go to the department store and put on hats and then pretend that we're mannequins or we can see what will and will not blend or-" said Shimazaki as he sat the kid up. He had been awake for some time now. He had passed out, briefly, once it all got out of his system. Shimazaki maybe should have given him a Xanax then to help him sleep but the kid…well the kid had been drifting off and Shimazaki hadn't felt like telling any more stories…

Because he'd run out.

The kid had heard every single interesting story that he'd had to tell. Everything. Towards the end he had just been making shit up. Every single time he was done the kid said 'Ryou, tell me a story' given name and all…and Shibata wasn't the only one who couldn't say no to kids…and honestly Shimazaki would have gladly spent the rest of his life telling stories if it meant that the kid stopped with the declarations of love…the constant and never ending declarations of love…

Honestly, nobody needed that.

"Leave me alone, Shimazaki, leave me alone to die." Said Sho. He didn't want to go anywhere or do anything. He just wanted to lay there and wait for tomorrow to happen. He had said….so much stuff. He couldn't remember, all the way, what had happened but he could remember that he had told Shimazaki how he felt, again, and now all he wanted to do was just lay there until he went to sleep again and then…well he didn't know what would happen next.

He would wake up.

He would wake up and then he would do it all again. Everything. Every single day of his life was just like the one before it. He would get up, big sis would make him breakfast, he would spend the day having fun with Shimazaki, and then he would go home and have dinner and take a bath and go to sleep and then he would do it all again and again and again. Just like he had done the day before that and the day before that and the day before that. Each day was just like the day before. He would sit there and just be…this person. This person who he was.

Everything about him was wrong.

Big sis had been born right and he had been born wrong. She had been born with her powers, he had gotten his later. She was in love with someone who it was ok for her to love, he was a fraidy cat but he was also a boy and an esper. Sho was in love with a boy who was an esper too and she was in love with who she was supposed to be in love with. Sho was in love with…he was in love with Shimazaki. He was…he was not the person who Sho was supposed to be in love with. Not only was he failing pretty much the only thing that he was alive in the world to do, marry and girl and make more Suzukis, but also he was a trust breaker. There was a girl who was in love with him and he was breaking her trust every single day because he just couldn't stop having cheating thoughts…and there was nothing worse than a trust breaker….Fukuda had been a trust breaker and now he was gone…well he hadn't left but….but Sho wasn't talking to him anymore and….and he probably wouldn't have wanted to talk to Sho either….

Since he sucked. He sucked as a person. He sucked the worst out of anyone else in the whole world.

"Nope. No dying today, kid, you can die after I die. How's that sound?" asked Shimazaki. That kid….that kid had better have been just being dramatic because…yeah. He didn't know what he was supposed to do if the kid legitimately wanted to die. Hide the sharp objects? Tether the two of them together so Shimazaki could stop him from doing anything stupid? Hide all of his pills and shit….

Well maybe he should hide that shit anyway since, well, that was how he had gotten into this mess in the first place.

"I don't know…don't die. I just….I don't know. I feel really…." Said Sho

"You feel like you'll never be happy again? That someone reached into your brain and stole all of your happy thoughts? That you want to go to sleep for the next hundred years? That maybe if you sleep for long enough then you might feel better…or even worse…but at least you'll feel something?" asked Shimazaki

"Yeah….kind of…but how did you know?" asked Sho

"Because I've been there before, kid. This is just how you feel after you come down and if you had asked me if you could have some of my MDMA I could have warned you about this. Seriously. Ask me next time. If you want to do something then just ask me and we'll do it together because, yeah, it brings me no joy to see you in this hole…and also it's easier to get out of that hole if you have someone in it with you and, since you took that shit without even warning me, I had to be there to babysit you. I'm your friend and if you ever need a sitter, a molly sitter or a trip sitter or even a pet sitter then, yeah, I'll help you…but you have to warn a guy first….and ask. Always ask." Said Shimazaki

"I know…I know that you told me not to go into your desk drawers…" said Sho

"And now do you know why?" asked Shimazaki

"Because you'll get mad at me." Said Sho. He knew that Shimazaki had been mad at him last night…and he never wanted to have to go through that again. Shimazaki was his best friend and…and he just…the thought of Shimazaki being mad at him made him feel like…like he would never be happy again…sort of like how he had been feeling before…and now he just had more bad feelings inside of himself. It was like it was just bad feelings on top of bad feelings…bad feelings all the way down….and he just wanted…he just wanted to feel better already….

"No, because the shit I have in there is really fucking dangerous. Listen, I love you like I'd love my own kid and the thought of you dying because of me…shit's hard. Ok? You could have gotten really hurt and, yeah, I guess that it's kind of on me for not explaining shit…but I can make sure this never happens again. Yeah…that's the responsible thing to do….so get your ass up so I can be a responsible adult for once in my life." Said Shimazaki. He didn't wait for Sho to answer. He just picked him up and sat him down in the desk chair. He didn't hear that little aural giggle he did whenever Shimazaki picked him up….and that was not a good sign. It might have just been normal post MDMA depression or it might have been…well he knew that people could break their brains on this shit….and the kid was little. The kid was so little and he was still growing and Shimazaki knew that you weren't supposed to give kids coffee because it would stunt their growth but….well that one might have been a myth….

But there was a reason that Shimazaki had told the kid to stay the hell out of his desk drawers.

This shit was dangerous. Shimazaki knew, mostly, what he was doing and if he messed up then the only one he was hurting was himself. The kid on the other hand was just, well, a kid. He was a powerful esper but he was still just a kid and he could have ended up really messing himself up like that…and Shimazaki…well weed was harmless and drinking was mostly harmless but a lot of the other stuff that he got up to was anything but harmless and…

And he may have been up this whole time listening to the kid breathing to make sure that he was still, well, breathing.

He wasn't going to let this happen again. He should have known that putting a blanket ban on his desk was just…not the best move when it came to Sho. He didn't do well with rules and he was a little magpie at the best of times, really he got into everything, and he had the excuse of being a kid…maybe he should put child locks on his drawers….well this was never happening again. He was going to go over literally everything in his drawers and then if Sho wanted to try something then Shimazaki could dose it for him and then he would be there to babysit him and then they could make sure that nothing like this ever happened to them again. Ever.

This was the responsible thig to do.

"Are you still mad at me?" asked Sho as Shimazaki sat him down in the chair. He just…he felt….he didn't know how he felt besides bad. Bad and a whole lot of….cold? Sort of like he was full of cold water…sort of like when he had laid down in the snow in his pajamas that one time…he was just…it was like his insides were trying to fall asleep. It was like the goldfish in his stomach, the one that was always swimming when Shimazaki was near, was in a frozen lake….like his stomach was frozen….but that should have been a good thing. The goldfish in his stomach should not have been swimming when he had been near Shimazaki. It should have been swimming when he was near Emmy….or any other girl….and he knew from the books that the way he felt was ok…but he also knew that he was Suzuki Sho and the only reason that dad had ever made him was because he had needed a son so that his grandkids could be called Suzuki too….

And Sho…well he was bad at liking girls and bad a being Sho and just bad at…at everything…and he would not have blamed Shimazaki for still being mad at him….considering how bad of a friend he had been…

"No, not at all. You know this whole thing is kind of my fault….take that Toshi I am too capable of introspection…..and I figure that if I tell you about all of the shit I have then you'll know not to touch it…and also none of it is candy. Well I have sugar cubes in here but those are for dosing acid." Said Shimazaki

"Acid?" asked Sho. He could have ended up eating acid and then burning himself and then he would have had to go and see Fukuda…and that would have been better than staying up all night hugging Shimazaki and telling him over and over again how much he loved him….anything would have been better than that.

"Yup….this…well I'll show it to you if I can ever find it…never move stuff around in here, by the way, there's a limit to what I can sense….got it. Here. This little vial is full of acid. It's powerful. It can't kill you but it can break your brain. It makes you see shit and hear shit and walk down memory lane…and also it fucks with your ability to regulate your body temperature so drink plenty of water." Said Shimazaki

"…why do you do that, then, if it makes you see things and hear things…and remember things? What's the point? I don't get it…I don't get anything." Said Sho. He didn't get it. He didn't get it but….but he was happy that Shimazaki was talking to him. He was happy that Shimazaki still wanted to talk to him…and he should not have been happy about that. He should have been thinking about Emmy…he was the worst. He was like dad. Dad said that he loved mom but he never talked about her or thought about her and he didn't even care about her anymore. Sho…why did he have to be…the person who he was? He just…he felt like…he felt like….

He felt like he was just a collection of mistakes in the shape of a person…and it made him feel…cold…on the inside.

"Because sometimes those things that I hear and feel, not see but I do get the feeling like something is in my range but it isn't, are pretty damn good. As long as I stay off of memory lane, the bad parts of it, then I feel like I'm…well I feel like you did the other day. I feel like I'm being held by the entire universe and the world is nothing but love and understand and I feel just….good. At peace with everything. Yeah…acid is like MDMA but with hallucinations and…and also never take this without me. Ok? If you want to trip than only do that with me." Said Shimazaki. He omitted what he and Mob had gotten up to. Toshi was wrong, he did have tact, and he had enough of it at least not to make the kid feel like crap. His eyes must have been green since he was so jealous all the time.

"…I don't know…." Said Sho. He wanted to feel good again. Not even good like he had felt last night, he had been so happy last night he didn't think that he could ever feel that happy again, but he just…wanted to feel…warm…again. He brought his knees up to his chest. The chair tried to roll away. Shimazaki caught him. He was a good friend like that, always there for Sho and stuff, and Sho wished that he could have been a better friend to him. Friends did not have kissing thoughts about friends. Friends didn't fall in love with friends. Friends…he wished that he knew how to be a better friend…..

"Not now, obviously, you're coming down from the Molly…and never mix Molly and acid. It won't be a good time, trust me, I know. You can drink and do Molly, Molly is another word for MDMA but I think that there are some slight differences but I'm not a chemist, anyway Molly and drinking are good and Molly and weed are good but Molly and acid are bad. Ok?" asked Shimazaki

"….ok." said Sho. He was never eating anything that he found in Shimazaki's desk ever again. Not if it all left him feeling like this…and he didn't want to risk it. He felt like….he didn't even know. Cold. So cold. He wanted….he didn't even know what he wanted.

"Good. Man, this is going better than I thought it would…anyway here. These are the ones you took…and only take one of these at a time and always with me. These are good for parties and clubs and let me tell you fucking on this shit is…well no, I actually don't think that I should tell you that last part….because you're ten….anyway take one at a time and never without me and a close source of water because you will get dehydrated." Said Shimazaki. He was…well he was doing his best. The kid was learning some very important life lessons. Yeah, he knew how to be responsible. He knew what he was doing.

"Ok." Said Sho

"Also, as you know, it leaves you feeling like crap…but that's ok. See the thing is we can fix this with more drugs. See? This is why you do this shit with me. Always have a Sherpa. Well I'm not an actual Sherpa, obviously, since those are the guys who help people not die on Everest, but I am going to be the guy who's going to guide you through this so you don't accidentally kill yourself…and yeah, you could die if you take too much Molly or…well….hang on." Said Shimazaki as he dug around his desk drawers. He was a dam good Sherpa. When he had been a kid there hadn't been anyone to tell him to slow down, that he was courting death everything he mixed up a handful of…whatever, and Sho should have been happy that he had someone to guide him through all of this.

Well he would be happy later once he was capable of being happy again.

"What's all of that?" asked Sho. He wondered if that was that stuff that Shimazaki had been talking about, the stuff that would make him feel better, because he wanted to feel better…even though him feeling better wouldn't have changed anything at all. The outcome would have still been the same. He would still be Suzuki Sho, he would still have been bad at being Suzuki Sho, and he would still have been a mistake….he felt like a mistake….

The only reason that he was even alive was because dad had needed someone to…to be everything that Sho was not….everything that Sho would never be.

"These ones here are all research chemicals that Kai, the tattoo guy, thinks I'd like. He's got everything, by the way, so if you're ever in Tokyo and you're looking to buy…well when you get older. When I can trust you to dose yourself without, you know, accidentally killing yourself you should look him up. Anyway don't ever fucking touch these for any fucking reason, you understand that you little mother fucker?" asked Shimazaki. Come on kid, smile, at least a little. You love to curse and fuck, and it's many conjugations, are your favorite. Come on, don't be like this for the rest of your life. You know how boring sad people are and you know how I hate to be bored….and you know how much I care about you and shit….

Come on already.

"I know….I won't touch anything in your desk ever again." said Sho. He knew that he should have cursed back. He knew that curing back…that would have been normal for him…that was how they had fun and stuff….but he just…he didn't have the energy. He just…he wanted to lay back down…or take the stuff that would make him feel better…or something. Anything…even though him feeling better would not do anything at all to change the outcome.

"Come on, don't be like that. Ask me about anything other than the research chemical, seriously never touch those if you value your life, and we can have fun together, ok? Like….here. This is fun. This is coke and it's fun…and it might be enough to bring you out of….but then you'll be all coked up….actually we'll do coke later, ok?" asked Shimazaki. As much fun as it would have been, doing lines of coke…well he got lines. The kid got bumps because he was still little…well maybe he could hand a line…no. He could have lines when he proved that he could be responsible with bumps. There. That was good almost parenting. He'd get a line and the kid would get a bump, a key bump, and….well….but as much fun as it would have been to do coke and then run around Tokyo like a couple of coked up morons….now was maybe not the time. The kid was too down and his headspace was probably bad too….

Damn. The kid could have really liked coke…next time. Once he felt better.

"….I want I coke…" said Sho. He wanted a soda. He had never gotten his reward soda last night…because he hadn't taken a bath last night…and all they had at the house was value brand cola and Pepsi…and neither of those was coke….and he really wanted a coke…because he liked coke.

"Ask and you shall receive." Said Shimazaki before he teleported away. He didn't bother with shoes, he wouldn't be going far, just to this distribution center he took things from sometimes. He grabbed the first rectangle he felt, this was where they kept the soda so he had a good chance of finding coke, and teleported back with it.

The kid had better like this…and he had better start to feel better…because he was making him feel like absolute crap.

"This is carbonated lemonade." Said Sho as Shimazaki came back from some place with a twelve pack of something that wasn't coke…but Sho wasn't mad. Shimazaki was blind and they didn't put braille on the outside of boxes. That wasn't fair. When Sho ruled the world he was going to make a rule that everything had to have braille on it. Maybe doing something nice like that could make up for the fact that he was in love with Shimazaki and wanted to hold his hand and kiss him…and for Shimazaki to tell him that he was cool again…that had been so good…

The memory of it, the way Shimazaki told him that he was cool, didn't wake up the goldfish in his stomach…or anything. He still just wanted to…to put his head down for a little bit….or longer…

"Damn it…hang on. I'll be back." Said Shimazaki. He went back, grabbed another rectangle, and stacked it on top of the first one….and then he repeated that action four more times. It would have gone faster if he had brought the kid with but that would have involved moving the kid and, well, Shimazaki knew first hand that the kid would not be wanting to move any time soon. Well that was ok. He would be feeling like this for a while, this was normal, and Shimazaki could deal with this. He could deal with whatever the kid threw at him…and honestly if it was a choice between this and the unrequited love he would take this any day of the week.

Though it was getting to be kind of a lot….the kid being sad….but that was fine. He could fix this. He knew what he was doing.

"The one on top is vanilla coke…but I'll take it." Said Sho. Shimazaki handed him a can of coke…and he hated vanilla coke….but he hated being thirsty more. Was this all that he was going to be able to feel from now on? Bad feelings? Maybe he deserved it for all the times he had hit his sister and for all the times that he'd had cheating thoughts about his best friend…and all the times he had wanted to cheat on his girlfriend with his best friend…and also just…he was a bad person, maybe, and just….he sucked. He sucked so much…and he had no idea how to stop sucking….

So he just drank his coke.

"Good, good, bring up your blood sugar. We skipped dinner last night…and Shibata made mackerel and potato stew and rice and salad…and you never know how much you miss the taste of home until you've been away from it for months…anyway whatever. Drink your coke and we'll eat in a minute." Said Shimazaki. He helped himself to one of the cans because, hey, he had been the one to steal them so that entitled him to at least one…and he regretted that sip. Disgusting. Room temperature vanilla coke was a crime.

And if the kid wasn't complaining about it then….yeah. Of course something was wrong.

He wouldn't just bounce back because he was a kid. He needed someone to help him through all of this. Something to help him through all of this…and Toshi was going to kill him when they found out. That was a definite 'when' and not an 'if'. Toshi always found out. The kid would tell his sister and then she would tell Toshi and then Toshi would be pissed at him…even though he was being responsible….but he would worry about all of that later…or never. He hated worrying, it was boring, and he didn't do boring.

All bad feelings, all negative emotions, were boring and he didn't want to have to deal with being bored. He had dealt with enough of that in his lifetime.

"….I'm not hungry." Said Sho. He didn't want to eat anything, he just wanted to go to sleep, that was all. He just wanted to go back to his bed and go to sleep. Not the one in the house he was staying at now, no, he wanted…he wanted to go back to his room. His actual room in his actual house. He wanted to go back to the Castle…but he could never go back and….and he didn't want to go back to the bed that he had now. Even if the Zootopia bedding was the same he didn't want to go and sleep in that bed…he wanted….he wanted to go back to Shimazaki's bed…

It was warm and soft and far away from his family…from his dad…..because he knew that if he were to go and see dad right now he would just…be very upset…and he didn't want to get in trouble for being upset.

"You will be in a second. Just….ok. You see these rectangles? These…well they're for fun and they're medicine. Toshi takes them to sleep and for anxiety…but don't tell Toshi that I told you about that. Anyway they're good for when you just need to reset your head…and I can tell that you're in a pretty bad headspace right now. Well I can help. Eat one of these…I think one is enough….well I take four at a time but I'm me…oh! Never take more than four a week or you'll start to have seizures. Anyway here, take this and…hang on I thought that I had….hang on." Said Shimazaki. He put a Xanax down in front of the kid, one should have been enough, and then he started digging through his drawers. He knew that he had, somewhere in this mess, he had some gummies. He'd picked them up back on their last stop of their never ending world tour, it was hard to get good shit like that in Japan so he'd stocked up, but the kid had moved everything around and…

And now he remembered where he'd hidden those.

He'd had actual foresight, and yes he was capable of foresight, to hide these in his coat pockets. These he knew the kid would mistake for candy, since they were candy, and he'd eat them. Well maybe someone should have told him that MDMA looked like candy too….they felt just like pills…but whatever. What was done was done. Now he just had to give the kid both of…well not both because that might have been too much….yeah. Both would have been too much.

He wanted to help the kid…not make his life any harder than it had to be.

"Stay out of my coat pockets, too, ok? These may look like candy but they aren't. These are pretty much the same stuff we smoke but in gummy form. Now eat this and take that Xanax and then you'll feel better…eventually. Maybe I should give you some beer too…no. Death combination….but beer is barely…nope. Not doing that to you. Just….take those and….and then lay down and…yeah…." Said Shimazaki. That was how he came back from this…well all of that and Toshi cuddles….but the kid would not have liked Toshi cuddle since he considered Toshi to be his mortal enemy…but he could hold the kid. Yeah. To make him feel better…

Because sad people were the most boring people in the world and the kid being sad was starting to infect him with sadness…and he did not want to waste any more of his life being a boring sad person.

"Ok…if it'll make me feel better….can I lay down now, too? Or do you have more stuff to show me?" asked Sho. He was tired….he had just gotten up and he was tired…and he just wanted to lay down and just…wait for tomorrow to happen…even though tomorrow would be just like today and today was just the same as yesterday and everything was always the same and it always sucked….

Or maybe he was the one who always sucked.

He didn't know. He just ate the stuff on the desk, the pill was bitter, and washed it down with the coke. He didn't see how a gummy bear and another bitter pill was supposed to make him feel better, bitter pills were what had made him feel bad in the first place, but he trusted Shimazaki. He trusted that Shimazaki cared about him and wanted him to be happy….

Even though Sho had told him over and over again that he was in love with him….and that was not what friends did…..not what they did at all…

"Lay down and….hang on. You're going to be hungry soon….hungrier than you've ever been in your life. I mean you always get hungry when you're stoned, I've never seen anyone eat that many poptarts in one sitting before….but then again I've never SEEN anything…you used to think I was funny. Anyway edibles make you hungry…well all weed does…and so does Xanax so you just sit tight and I'll find us some food." Said Shimazaki. There. He knew what he was doing. The kid needed food, comfort, something to ride out the complete depletion of all of his brain's feel good chemicals, and someone near him who cared about him. Shimazaki could do all of that. He was good at this. He knew how to take care of a kid. He could totally take care of a kid…and Toshi was wrong…about him not being able to take care of a kid. He took good care of the kid.

He took very good care of Sho.

Even if he could have died yesterday….well Shimazaki would have obviously taken him to the healer if his heartbeat had started to waver even in the slightest. He knew that Suzuki would have beaten the shit out of him but, yeah, he didn't want the kid dead….and he had kept him alive and he was still keeping him alive. He had brought him soda and now he was teleporting over to this pizza place he knew with broken security cameras and inattentive staff.

Hopefully the kid liked one of the three pizzas he managed to take off of the counter while nobody was around.

It seemed like he did…well he tore into the top pizza with both hands….and Shimazaki got the feeling that he would have to wash his bedding again soon…but that was ok. The kid was on his way to feeling better and that was the only thing that mattered. He had felt the loving embrace of the universe, had been pulled from it, and that was a lot….but he was on the mend. He was and…and if he wasn't well…well it was a big drawer and something would have to work. He had to have some combination of chemicals that would make the kid all better….

Or maybe all he needed was a hug.

The kid had worked his way over to where Shimazaki was sitting and was leaning against him. He had a slice of pizza hanging from his mouth like a dog, and he actually growled when Shimazaki tried to take it away, so maybe that was progress. He didn't know. All he knew was that his room smelled like cheese and marinara, the kid was getting grease all over his good pants, and he needed sleep more than the kid did considering the fact that he had NOT spent the night in the universe's loving embrace. He had spent the night with the kid in his embrace…

And it seemed like he would end up spending the day like that too.

He put an arm around the kid as he ate like a little savage. He could be there for the kid. That was something that he could do and something that he would do. He would have done this for his own son, if he and Toshi had one, and he would do this for the kid. The kid was like a son to him and…and he had no idea what he would have done if he had lost him….and he needs to stop thinking about this. Worry is such a boring emotion. Regret is such a boing emotion. He doesn't have time for these things. He doesn't have time to sit there and think about how close he had come to losing Sho…because he hadn't lost Sho and worrying about losing him….well that would do him no good at all. Sho was there and he was ok and he was eating pizza and…

And Shimazaki held him closer.

He was eating like some kind of feral ghoul, he had slices of pizza in both hands and he wasn't even bothering to take them apart like normal, but that was good. At least, unlike an actual ghoul, he was alive. He was alive and…and Shimazaki had no reason to worry. So he wouldn't. Next time things would be better. Next time he would only give the kid half a dose…and there's be plenty of water around…and he'd walk the kid through everything that he was feeling…and then when they came down and felt like crap they'd at least feel like crap together….once they came down from the universe's loving embrace…

Yeah, it was always better to come down with someone else. The universe's loving embrace was one thing but having another person there…well that was a whole other thing entirely.


	354. Crush Crises

Mob was the master of the non sequitur.

"Minegishi, have you ever been on a date before?"

That had come out of nowhere. They had been in the middle of the latest installment of Divorced Doll Manor when Mob had decided to drop that into Minegishi's lap. Minegishi….well they knew that these questions had been coming. Questions about their personal love life. Mob was older, she was getting curious about things, and they…well they could answer her question. They would answer her question. It wasn't like she had asked anything outlandish.

Of course they had gone on a date before.

"Yes." said Minegishi. There. They had answer her question. They picked up a tiny doll brush and began to brush out Rapunzel's hair. Why did this doll even have so much hair? In the movie she got her magic hair cut off, a metaphor that they hoped Mob didn't ask her about anytime soon, so really this doll should have had a pixie cut. There was nothing wrong with a pixie cut. More dolls needed pixie cuts. Maybe they could give some dolls some tiny haircuts.

Maybe it was time to cut their own hair.

Maybe it was time to cut Mob's hair, too. Her bangs were in her eyes again. She had terrible split ends, too, from never even doing so much as trimming her hair. Maybe they should go from dolls to haircuts. That would be...something. Something to do. They could go home and…and Ryou was there…and so was Mob's little brother but that didn't matter. So what if he had most likely done something idiotic again? Minegishi didn't have to be a true detective to figure out where all the beer in the house had gone to. Fine. Whatever. If he wanted to do stupid things than that was fine.

He could do all the stupid things that he felt like. They didn't care.

They had more important things to do. There were dolls that needed their hair brushed and their outfits changed and they had to go over who hadn't been taking out the tiny doll garbage and who hadn't been doing the tiny doll dishes and this was a whole rich world that needed expanding on and Minegishi…well this was what they did. This was what they did with Mob day in and day out and they didn't have the space in their mind to deal with Ryou's…stupidity.

And he had done something stupid. They knew that he had.

"Um…did he ask you or did you ask him? Or she…if it was a she…who you went on the date with." Said Mob. Minegishi groaned. They did not want to talk about their many romantic failures. They wanted to get lost in the tiny world of Disney dolls and this unnecessarily ornate dollhouse that Suzuki had commissioned for his daughter. They didn't want to dwell on their romantic failures….especially not the romantic failure that was next door sleeping out hopefully just a hangover from drinking everyone's beer…and hopefully he wasn't doing anything stupid in there with Mob's little brother…and they didn't care. It wasn't like they cared if he ended up getting himself maimed or killed because he did something stupid with Suzuki's only son…like giving the kid acid or whatever else he had on him….

Stupid Ryou. Stupid romantic failures. Stupid questions that they just did not feel like answering.

"Mob, I don't like to talk about this…and if you're talking about my first proper date it was with a woman, ok? I was fifteen, she was eighteen, and we drank beers in the park and sat on the grass. It was nice. The ending of that relationship is not very nice. Now can we please get back to the dolls? Elsa was angry with Anna because she kept on leaving her dirty dishes in the sink I believe? Well you know that Rapunzel is going to back her up." Said Minegishi. They didn't feel like taking any walks down memory lane. They were happy just being in this tiny world of their own, well their and Mob's and the Disney company's own, creation. They didn't need to think about their many romantic failures.

They didn't need to think about the subject of romance in any capacity.

They had woken up alone that morning…and that was fine. They'd had breakfast alone, that was also fine. They'd taken a bath alone, nobody popped in to bother them, and that was fine. They'd gotten dressed alone, nobody bothering them again, and that was fine. They had gone through their whole day up until coming over to see if Mob wanted to hang out all alone and they had no problem with that. Sometimes they wanted to be alone…and sometimes they just were alone…and they didn't need Shimazaki Ryou popping in every ten seconds bothering them because he hated being lonely and telling them things that either never happened, had better not have happened, or were so heavily embellished that they might as well not have happened. They also didn't need him popping in every five seconds telling them that he loved them….

They didn't need to hear him say it.

They hadn't gotten used to him saying it. They hadn't gotten used to waking up with his arms pressing them into his chest and his fair buried in their hair. They didn't need him saying 'I love you' to be the first thing that they heard when they got up in the morning. They could get up in the morning without him. They could…they didn't need….they didn't need him. They didn't need anyone. They didn't need…

They needed to brush out this doll's hair.

"Oh…I'm sorry that your relationship didn't end well…and I'm sorry that your heart got broken….not that you said so….I just get that feeling." Said Mob

"Mob. Dolls." Said Minegishi. Mob nodded and then picked up her Elsa doll. She held it in her hands but made no move to make it walk or talk or anything. Minegishi sighed. They were being unfair to Mob…but they didn't want to talk about this…but they really should not have been mean to Mob like that….

But they did not want to talk about that…about all of that.

But it didn't matter what they wanted. Mob was curious and she was asking and who else could she ask? Her dead mother? Her living but insane father? Her eleven year old friend who seemed to think that she knew everything….and really needed someone looking in on her? Mob only had Minegishi for these things…and they were not going to push her away just because they were feeling…out of sorts.

They were fine. They had no reason to feel out of sorts.

"Right….I guess. Um….I just….what are dates like? I mean what do people do on them? I mean….what do boys do on dates? I mean…" said Mob

"Fun. Dates are fun…when they're with the right person. I haven't gone on a lot of dates and what I have done you are too young to know about. Just know that dates, when you're with the right person, can be very fun. There's movies and dinner….or you can just hang out together…you can do a lot of things. What you do doesn't make it a date, who you're with makes it a date. Ok?" asked Minegishi. They were short…but not as short as they could have been…and they had answered Mob's question. She was getting to that age, if she wasn't at that age already, and she would have questions and ideas and she would want some answers…

And it was better that she got those answers from Minegishi than her little friend Minori.

Seriously, if Minegishi had to hear 'Minori says' one more time they were going to scream. That whole friendship was just a….a waste of Mob's time. That girl was unpleasant and Mob didn't need that. She was trying to be older than she was…and Minegishi couldn't fault her for that…but Mob didn't need to get herself in a great big hurry to grow up. It wasn't worth it. Being an adult…dealing with love and sex and all of that…it just was not worth it. Love…or whatever they had with Ryou…it was more of a headache than anything else…

Such the headache.

Mob didn't need this sort of headache. She didn't need to have some guy catching feelings for her….well Mob was more likely to catch feelings…and Minegishi was projecting. They were projecting their own shit onto her and they had to stop it. Mob was too young for what Minegishi and Ryou had…even if she did know that exact word for their situationship…and even if she did think that she wanted…whatever she wanted…

She was only eleven. She didn't need to have this kind of shit in her life.

"Oh…so do you have to know for sure that you're in love with the other person before you go on the date? Or do you figure out if you're in love with the person after the date? Because I've been watching a lot of movies today…well before you came here since Sho is still at his sleepover….and I've been trying to figure this whole thing out." Said Mob. She put the doll down and now she was playing with her own hair and she was looking down…and Minegishi got the feeling that Mob had a story for them. They got the feeling that this was some sort of Mob crush related crisis. Well Minegishi could deal with this. Better Mob's crush related crisis than their own crush related crush.

Their own more than crush related crisis.

Ryou had just had to go and ruin it all by saying something stupid like 'I love you' and they just…they had go and ruin it all by not telling him to shut his mouth. They should have told him to shut up with all of that, that they didn't need to hear all of that, that they knew. They knew and they didn't need confirmation….and they didn't need to think about how they had…about how they wanted…they just hadn't needed Ryou to make them think about all of this and now…well now they were in their own crush crisis….

But they would rather help Mob deal with hers.

"It depends. Sometimes you already have feelings for the person and sometimes…well sometimes those feelings come later. Don't stress too much over dates, they're supposed to be fun. Always have fun. If you're not having fun with the other person then it's not worth it. No matter how attractive they are, no matter how they're trying to sweep you off your feet, if you aren't having fun then…it's pointless." Said Minegishi. There was a hell of a lot more to it than having fun but Mob…well she was eleven. She didn't need to know about the big questions that you had to ask yourself. Figuring out who you were and what you wanted in another person. She was just a kid and at her age dates were….what? Holding hands in the park? Taking walks? Minegishi had no idea. They hadn't been dating anyone at her age. They had been…well they had been twelve when they had first…but that was not a story that Mob needed to hear…and that was not something that Mob needed to get up to, either.

Not at her age.

Minegishi had been a year older then her when they had gone looking for love in the only way that they had known how. They had gone looking for love and they had found…well they had found a lot of things that they had been too young for. They had…not had the best judgement at the age of twelve…and also they had no idea who they ever had been at twelve. They hadn't figured it out until later. Now they were exactly who they were and who they wanted to be…and they never had to go back to that age…back to that…

But they felt like that again.

But Mob did not need to know how they felt like the rug had been pulled out from under them. That they felt like they had gone to bed assured of everything and woken up in another world….in another world like theirs only now they had…something that they had decided to never have again…and something that they had wanted…that they had never wanted to want…and they just…they had a lot of their own baggage and…

And Mob did not need to deal with their baggage.

"Oh…ok. So I don't have to be in love with someone to go on a date with them….ok." said Mob. She was playing with the hem of her dress now and her hair was starting to float. Something was on her mind.

"No….but what's with all the questions? You have a secret boyfriend that I don't know about?" asked Minegishi with a laugh. A laugh that they weren't fully committed to. A secret boyfriend would have been great…if that boy were Mob's age. She needed to find some guy that she liked because she was starting to skew older and older these days…and that would not be good for her. Minegishi knew full well how badly that could end for her…and she deserved so much better. She deserved to be happy.

At least one person in this friendship should have been happy.

"No…not a secret boyfriend….but um…my dad said that Hatori is planning on asking me to go to Comiket with him and…and I would really like that and…and I don't know how I feel about him but he must like me if he's planning on asking me out…and if he asked my dad's permission….and dad likes him so-" said Mob. Minegishi was not going to listen to another word of this. Mob….why did she have to look too deep into everything? She was always doing this…and always when it came to Hatori?

What did she see in him?

He was…well he was less of a mess than when he had joined the group but he was still something of a mess. Also he was nine years older than her…and she should….she could have done better. But maybe they both just had terrible taste in men. They didn't know. What they did know was that they had to get Mob to come off of this. She had to come off of this before she ended up with a broken heart. She knew that Hatori…well she should have known by now that Hatori wasn't into her…

But she seemed to only see the things that he wanted to see.

"Mob, no. He's just asking you to go with him because…well he wants you to come with him because he likes you as a friend. That's all. Ok? I don't want to hurt you but I know that you look deeply into things and I need you to just….think for a minute. He's twenty and you're eleven. You should be with a guy who's your own age." Said Minegishi. They were trying to be nice. They were trying their best to get Mob to think about what she was thinking…but she was getting to that age. She was getting to that age where she would start to…well she had a brain and she had a sex drive and one of those was going to take up all of her mental energy.

God have mercy on them all.

Hatori Nozomu….thank God that he wasn't the type to take advantage of her. Thank God that he was a normal human being. She was a child. She was a child and she was thinking like a child did. She thought that he was what she wanted….and maybe he was…but she didn't know what she…well she knew what she wanted but she wasn't thinking about what she wanted….well she was…she was and she wasn't and she just….

Maybe Minegishi was projecting again.

Mob knew what she wanted and if she only wanted to date men that were twice her age…then she could date all the older men she wanted…when she stopped being a kid. She could be into whatever she wanted to be into and maybe she knew what she was and who she was…but also she was eleven and she would not be making the best choices at eleven….

So maybe Minegishi wasn't only projecting….they didn't know. This was complicated. Crush crisis were complicated.

"But….I mean I know that he's twenty and…and I just…I don't know. I like him. I mean I think that I do I mean….I don't know. I just think about him all the time and I want him to like me…I want someone to like me and…and I do want to go with him and…and you're right. I mean…I like him but he probably doesn't like me. I don't know why he would ever like me. I don't know why anyone would ever like me." Said Mob. Well now she was just sad…and Minegishi would have to fix this. They scooted over and put their hand on her back.

"Mob…there's a lot to like about you. You're just about the kindest, sweetest, most caring person that I have ever met. I mean you put up with a lot of bullshit from all of us. You put up with a lot and you're always thinking about people…and someone is going to like you. Just give it time. You're eleven, you know, you have a lot of time yet. I didn't meet the first person I ever…loved…until I was fifteen….and I didn't again until I was….in my late twenties. You've got time so stop worrying about this….and come on. We're got to have these princesses figure out who's responsible for these dishes." Said Minegishi. They loved Mob, they really did, and they were doing their best. They could barely handle their own crush crisis let alone hers but…but they were doing their best. Hopefully their best was good enough.

"Ok….so Anna is says that she'll do them later but I don't think that Merida would like that because she needs the sink to wash her hair…and she can't wash her hair in the bathroom because Ariel lives there because she's a mermaid again because I can't find my Ariel with legs doll so…" said Mob. There. Crush crisis averted. Minegishi felt….well they wished that they felt good. They were happy to have helped Mob but now…well now they had to focus on their own crisis…

They would deal with their crisis later…unless Mob had more non sequiturs for them.


	355. Helping Out my Best Friend Shige

Sometimes Minori felt like the whole world was against her.

"You hate me! You want me to be upset! You want me to suffer!" shouted Minori. With each word she slammed her bedroom door. Dad hated her. Dad wanted her to be unhappy. He was always going on and on and on about how he only wanted the best for her but really he just wanted the best for himself. He was only here, he had only dragged her to this country, for his stupid business stuff. Now he was going to have her rot here because he wanted to make more money or whatever even though they already had a ton of it!

Dad could be so selfish sometimes.

"You're so selfish! You don't care about me! You don't care if I live or die!" shouted Minori. She slammed her door a few more times just so dad got the message and then she locked it. God. Dad was such a pain in the ass sometimes. She had asked him, nicely, if they would be moving back home anytime soon. Back to Japan where she actually knew what other people were talking about and she had some actual friends. Well not actual friends, all of her friends had shown themselves to be backstabbing bitches, but she at least had people to hang out with. There was literally NO ONE here. Not a single person she could even so much as say 'hi' to!

Even Shige had moved back to Japan!

Which was the worst of it! Shige was he friend and she just up and left one day because of her dad's work. God. Dads were the worst. They said that they cared about you but really they just did whatever they wanted. They said that they only wanted to make you happy but then they just went and dragged you across the ocean like it was nothing! God…she wished that mom was still around. Mom would have talked some sense into dad…but then mom had to go and die…God. Both of her parents were selfish…and all of her friends were selfish….and now she was all alone…

She hated being alone!

Dad was trying to talk to her through the door. She didn't listen. He was saying some crap about how they had to move because of her behavior or whatever. There was nothing wrong with how she acted. She had done her best but when people backstabbed you then they had to pay. Dad didn't get it. Everyone was always kissing his ass because of who he was. Well she didn't have that luxury. She only knew kids and kids were different than adults. They weren't all 'Oh Asgiri-san you're the best person ever to live please give me some of your money' or whatever it was that people said to dad when she wasn't around. No, nobody gave her even the most basic form of respect….

And what was even worse was that they had all turned their backs on her!

Even Shige! Well…ok, maybe not Shige. Yeah…her dad just dragged her off without even telling her. So maybe she got it. Minori didn't know. All she knew was that she didn't want to talk to her dad. She had tried reasoning with him, she had tried begging him, and now she had tried being extra reasonable but still nothing. He didn't listen. Nobody listened. Shige was the only one who listened…well that was just because she didn't know how to do much else.

Socially impaired Shige….her best friend…and that was so, incredibly, sad.

"Dad! Go away!" shouted Minori. She hit the door so hard one of her press on nails popped off….great.

"Minori, stop this. You're worrying me." Said Dad. Minori rolled her eyes. Oh no, she was worrying him. Whatever would she do? Her dad was so worried about her….sure he was. He was just SO worried…he just wanted her to knock it off. Well then that was fine. She would knock it off when he brought her back home to Japan where she belonged.

"Why can't you just leave me alone, dad!?" shouted Minori. Dad was still there….and it was so sad that he thought that she was just going to let him in just like that. No. She would rot in this room since that was what dad wanted. He wanted to talk to….that was fine. He could talk to her once he took her back home to Japan where she belonged!

"Minori, please, let me in." said Dad. He knocked at the door. She wasn't going to let him in. Who did he think he was? What, he thought that just because he was her dad and this was his house that he could just let himself in whenever he wanted to? Uh….no!

"Shut up Dad!" shouted Minori. She wished that Shige had been there just so she could have seen the look on her face. She had said, before, that she never talked to her dad like that. Her dad loved her, she said, and her dad never stopped her from doing anything. She could drink and smoke and hang out with adults and hot guys and wear whatever makeup she wanted and dress however she wanted…even though she dressed like a blind first grader had picked out her clothes….and it just wasn't fair! Why did she get to be so lucky!

And why did Minori have to be so unlucky!

It just wasn't fair! Shige of all people was cool and she got to do whatever she wanted and it just…wasn't fair! Shige got to be back in Japan and she was probably drinking or smoking with her adult friends while Minori was being held prisoner here in her house…and not even her house! He had four houses and they were all in Japan! Where she lived! Not here!

But dad had moved her here….and he wouldn't even let her be happy…well fuck him then!

"Minori….please. Open the door and we can talk about-" said dad. Minori kicked the door as hard as she could…and now her foot hurt. Great. Stupid dad making her hurt herself. Stupid dad making her move. Stupid dad making her mad. Stupid dad acting all selfish….stupid friends being a bunch of stupid bitches. God. Minori needed a drink…or a smoke…and stupid Shige not leaving her anything to drink or smoke…and stupid dad for making her upset…and stupid press on nail for popping off…now she would have to fix that…and dad was never going to leave her alone….and even Shige was gone and….and…

And it just wasn't…..

"It's just not fair!" shouted Minori. She didn't want to talk to dad anymore. She didn't want to have to stand there and listen to him talk about how worried he was and how this was the way that it had to be and how she was acting like a child….and she was not a child! She was acting like anyone would have acted if they had been in her place! They were only supposed to be living her for the rest of the school year and then for summer break! Dad had said that he would work it out with her school so she could come back next year! Dad had told her so much stuff and now he just…he thought that he could just…just move her here and…and lie to her….

Well he couldn't.

"Minori….I'll talk to you later when you calm down. Once that happens you'll see that this is really for the best." Said Dad. She could hear him walking away. She took a pillow from her bed and threw it at the door…and another…and another…and then her stupid study books from the door. She threw her books and a pair of shoe's she had on the floor and then her lamp…and the stupid thing was made of metal and didn't shatter…and then her ipad but the case saved it…and then she had been about to throw her phone when she realized what she had been doing.

Dad was making her clean her own room now.

Even though they had PEOPLE for that! To rub salt in her wounds, wounds which he had made, he was making her clean up her own room like she was Cinderella or something! Well she wasn't! She was Asagiri Minori and she did not clean. Mom had said that. Mom had said that she would never have to clean anything ever in her life….and then she died and dad got all weird. Fucking dad. Dads were the worst…well at least her dad wasn't as bad as Shige's dad. Yeah….

Well she felt a little better.

Yeah. As bad as her life was…well Shige's life was worse. Sure she got to drink and smoke but her dad was always making her babysit her little brother and making her cook and clean and also he made her sleep in the same bed with her like she was a kid…so her life sucked. Her life sucked even more than Minori's did…and that was good. Yeah. Someone else had it even worse than she did. She wondered what Shige was up to. Maybe she was chasing her brother around trying to get him to take a bath or something….Minori had really dodged a bullet there he was cute but immature…or maybe she was making a four course dinner for her family with only an hour's notice and a dying campfire…or something.

Yeah, Shige was probably dealing with something even worse than what Minori was going through…and she needed her best friend to support her…or something.

They were best friends. She had made Shige after all. She had been walking around in braids and Frozen cosplay before Minori had met her. Really she should have been grateful that Minori had helped her and taken her under her wing or whatever. It had been a while since they'd last talked….because her friend had decided to be a complete and total bitch out of nowhere….and Shige probably missed her a lot. She was probably all like 'what happened to my best friend what am I going to do now' or whatever and Minori….well it had been long enough. She could forgive Shige for letting her friend be all bitchy and stuff.

Yeah, Shige wanted to talk to her. She was all lonely or whatever.

Minori wasn't lonely. No, Shige was the lonely one. Shige was the lonely one stuck in her house with her bitchy friend or her bratty brother or her clingy dad and she was probably really lonely for someone her own age. Well Minori was a good friend and she could call Shige and make her feel better…and Shige could listen to her talk about all of this, how much of a jerk dad was being, because really that was what friends were for. They listened to each other's problems and were there for each other and stuff.

And Shige owed her so she would always be there….she had to be.

"Come on…pick up already…" muttered Minori as the phone rang. She had no idea what time it was in Japan, she didn't feel like doing any math, but she did know that Shige should have still been up….she knew for a fact that Shige was awake…and it wasn't like she was busy or anything. She was never busy, not in any serious way, and either way friends made time for one another. That was why they were friends. How many hours of her life had she wasted playing dolls with Shige over the many months of their friendship? How many times had she shown Shige how to do her makeup so she looked less pale and sick? How many times had she sat through the Frozen soundtrack because she'd had to be a good host?

Shige had better not have been ignoring her.

"Pick up the….oh. Hey Shige. What's up? What took you so long?" Said Minori. There. Right before it went to voicemail….what? Did Shige not think that their friendship meant enough to her to pick up on the first couple of rings? Seriously? What, was Minori just an afterthought to her or something?

"Hi Minori. Sorry, I was doing laundry. My brother left a bunch of half eaten poptarts in his pockets and then I hadn't realized when I put his pants in the wash and now the washer is full of-" said Shige. Minori rolled over to that she was on her back and kicked the wall while Shige went on and on about her problems. That was all she had to worry about? Well…well that was still worse than anything that Minori had to worry about. At least she didn't have any brothers or sisters to deal with and at least dad didn't make her do her own laundry…so at least some stuff was working out for her….

Not very much, though.

"….and I don't know when he's coming home but I'm going to make dinner for him anyway so then that way he doesn't feel-" said Shige

"Yeah, I get it, your brother is being a brat again. Anyway you will not believe what happened to me today. Ok, so get this. I asked my dad to take me back home. He'd always going on and on and on about how he only wants to make me happy but then I told him how to make me happy and he was all like 'Minori, you know that's out of the question' even though it's, like, really not. We didn't get kicked out of the country or anything, dad just made us leave, and now we're here and he told me that it was just for the rest of the school year and then summer break and it's August! Summer break has BEEN over but he's being such an asshole. I don't know what I'm going to do." Said Minori. There was some silence from Shige. She had better now have been zoning out or anything like that. She had better have been listening. Minori always listened to her problems and this was a friendship and that meant that listening went BOTH ways!

"Um…that sounds very sad. Maybe you could tell your dad again but without yelling at him-" said Shige

"Oh my God I was not yelling at him! Well not at first, anyway, but then he wasn't listening so I had to make him listen. God. Why do you assume that I would just start out yelling?" asked Minori. What, did Shige think that she was a bitch, too? Did she secretly think that Minori was just some bitch who went around being a bitch and acted al bitchy and-no, this was Shige. She was too nice. She was just being socially impaired as usual.

"I just….well you yell a lot. That's all. You just yell a lot and I thought that you had yelled at your dad and that was why he said that he wouldn't take you back to Japan…because dad's don't like being yelled at. I yelled at my dad on accident the other day and I think that he's avoiding me…well maybe. I don't know. I wish that I hadn't yelled at him." said Shige. She yelled at her dad? What in the hell kind of crazy, upside down, world was this? She was the one who was always going on about love and friendship and all of that other crap.

"What were you yelling at your dad for?" asked Minori. Well that was a side of Shige that she had never thought she would have seen…that she had never imagined would have existed….but it did exist. Huh. Well you thought that you knew a person….

"He…he tried to come into my room without knocking." Said Shige. Oh. Well that was whatever.

"That's fine, he was asking for it. You could have been naked in there for all he knew. My dad used to do that to me. He used to do this thing where he knocked while he was opening the door and I used to have to yell at him until my voice hurt. He got the message eventually." Said Minori. She wasn't going to tell Shige how dad had gotten that message. Shige didn't need to know how dad had figured out that opening the door like that was a bad idea…and also Minori hadn't been doing anything because stuff like that was gross and that was what guys were for anyway. So there.

"I…don't want to yell at my dad though. I love him a lot and also he's taking me to this island of cats on Sunday…and also he said that I could go to the summer comics market with my friend on a…well I thought that it was a date but then my friend Minegishi said that I was overthinking it because he's twenty and I'm eleven but I really wanted it to be a date and-" said Shige. Minori had stopped listening after the word date. Shige…she had just said that her dad said that she could go on a date…and that was just…it wasn't fair! Minori wasn't allowed to date until high school…and even then he had to bring all of her guards with her….and now Shige….

Shige must have been just…well she was socially

"Wait….Shige….did you just say that you were going on a date? With a guy?" asked Minori. Shige couldn't. Shige wouldn't. She knew…they had made a pact. They would get friends with benefits before they got boyfriends and Minori got a friend with benefits and a boyfriend first because she was older and all of this had been her idea and guys didn't like Shige anyway since she was pretty much an ironing board.

This just….well if it was true and not like….something that she was just….being socially impaired about….then….then it just wasn't fair!

"Um…well I thought that it was a date. I mean Hatori asked….well he asked my dad if I could go with him to this comics market thing…well they sell other stuff…and I thought that it was a date but then my friend Minegishi said that I was just overthinking things…so I guess he wants to go as just friends." Said Shige

"Minegishi…that's your non binary friend…right? The one that said that I was nuts?" asked Minori. Shige's other best friend…and a total bitch. They were a bitch and…and no way wee they going to tell Shige if she was and was not going on a date. Minori was her best friend and she would be the one to tell Shige if she was and was not going on a date. Yeah. What did they know? They let their fuck buddy catch feelings which was, from what Minori had read, the last thing that you wanted to happen. So really Minori knew best and she should have been the one to tell Shige about this stuff.

"Yes…but they were just in a bad mood. I'm sure that they don't really think that you need professional help." Said Shige. Minori rolled her eyes. She was the sort of friend who made excuses for everyone. She should have just owned up to how bitchy her friend had been, said sorry, and then asked what she could have done to make up for it…but all of that could come later. Shige had a guy who was trying to ask her out…an older guy. A WAY older guy…and how did she get all the luck!? Even if…well if he was taking her to some nerd thing then he was probably her nerdy friend with the glasses and the bad skin…fine. Shige could have him. He was a good practice guy.

And Minori already had a practice guy…well she'd had a practice guy back in Japan….but it was whatever.

"It's whatever. They don't know what they're talking about…anyway are you going to go? Out on the date with your friend I mean?" asked Minori

"Um…he hasn't asked me yet but when he does I'm going to say yes…but also it's not a date. He's just taking me there because we're friends, that's all." said Shige

"Uh-huh, and which of your other friends are going?" asked Minori

"Just me and him." said Shige

"God, Shige, what would you do without me? He's totally going to ask you out. I mean, think about it. It's going to be just you and him and he even asked for your dad's permission like a gentleman or whatever. He's totally into you and you should go out with him." said Minori. God, Shige would have been so lost without her. She was going to be all alone all day with an older guy…and even if he was a nerd a guy was a guy. Some guys were for boyfriends, some guys were for practice, and it was about time that Shige found a practice guy. Good. Now she could actually understand what Minori was talking about some of the time.

This was good…so long as this guy didn't end up being her boyfriend.

Because that would not have been fair at all. Minori wasn't even allowed to have a boyfriend but Shige got to have one…and not only that but a guy who was twenty already. That was old enough to drink and smoke and….and that was way better than a guy in middle school! Or even high school! No, Minori…well she'd be pretty pissed at Shige if she ended up being this guy's girlfriend…

But Shige wouldn't get a boyfriend first. She was a good friend and she never would have done anything like that.

"But…Minegishi said-" said Shige like that was just something to….say.

"Shige, who are you going to believe. Me or them?" asked Minori. There was another one of Shige's super long pauses…and what did she have to think about. Of course she was going to trust her actual best friend!

"Um….well they're a lot older than we are…and they've been in relationships before…and also they're really smart…" said Shige. Minori was not going to shout…even though she wanted to. Shige was not being a bitch on purpose, she was just supernaturally bad at just about everything. That was all.

"Yeah, and they let their friend with benefits catch feelings. I would never let something like that happen. Also they're single, too, which is like….it's ok for people our age to be single but for someone their age to not even have a boyfriend…or girlfriend I guess….well that just sucks." Said Minori

"But…they said that they didn't want a relationship." Said Shige. Minori rolled her eyes. One of her eyelashes ended up getting stuck. She blinked it away. How could Shige be so naïve? People who claimed to not want boyfriends or girlfriends or whatever were just people who either didn't know how to be in relationships or didn't have anyone who wanted to be with them…and since the had rejected the guy that they were sleeping with then they must have just been bad at relationships…or they were stupid or needed professional help…like that had said that Minori needed. They were an idiot to turn down a guy like that….or they were the one who needed professional help…not her. She was fine.

"Well then that's all the more reason to listen to me. Shige, look, you suck at this. You suck at anything that involves other people but that's ok because you have me. " said Minori

"Yeah…I guess I do." Said Shige. What? Did she doubt her? Did she think that her other friend knew better? Well then he needed to think something else. Minori knew what she was talking about and Shige should have been happy that she was taking time out of her life to help her. She could have been convincing dad to take her back to Japan right now…or at least to let her leave the house without a full security detail….or even to let her go to a school here that had guys…he had been looking into all girls schools…or something! She could have been dealing with dad but instead she was helping Shige…and Shige 'guessed so'? Really?

"No, you know you do. Anyway this guy is probably into you and you should go out with him. I mean he's not much to look at, your other friend is a lot hotter, but he's good for practice…and you need all the practice that you can get." Said Minori. Really, she did. She didn't know what anything was…not that Minori had ever done…anything…but at least she would know what that stuff was now since this guy was a lot older and stuff.

"But….I don't know. Minegishi has a point when they say that he's a lot older than me…and also I don't know if people…if stuff like that….can be practiced…like that." Said Shige. God, she was such a kid sometimes. Of course you could practice. How did she think that people figured all of this out?

"God, you sound like a kid. So what if he's older? If it doesn't bother you then what does it matter? Guys our age suck. They still act like a bunch of kids. They, like, build forts and have sticky fingers and pick their noses and shit. Older guys are way better." Said Minori. She was talking about middle school guys. They were so cool. They knew how to treat you and their fingers were never sticky and they didn't freak out and run away when you tried to kiss them. Adult guys should have been even better about that even if they did more than kiss you and try to feel you up….and it was so unfair that Shige was going to do all of that first…but Minori…well she hadn't met the right person for all of that yet, that was all, she wasn't afraid or anything. Shige could get that all out of the way first and then she could tell her what happened so then she'd know what to expect when all of that happened.

There. That was a good plan.

"Um…if you think so…" said Shige. Minori rolled her eyes so hard she thought that they'd end up popping out. Of course she thought so. What? Did she think that she didn't know what she was talking about? Well if Shige thought that then she was wrong, so wrong, the most wrong.

"I know so. Anyway you should go out with this guy and then tell me about it. I mean that sounds like a pretty boring date but who knows, maybe you'll get kissed or something. Then you and me can have something to talk about." Said Minori. She didn't much want Shige to get kissed, because then she might get kissed a million more times and then she'd end up beating Minori, but sometimes you had to wish people the best even when you didn't really mean it. Sometimes you had to be a good friend to people like that.

"Um…ok. I-I'll do that….um….I have to go now and…and make dinner…and I need to focus on that so…um….I'll talk to you later." Said Shige. Minori almost asked her what in the hell she thought she was doing hanging up when they were in the middle of a very important call…but this was Shige and she had to play Cinderella and take care of her family. Yeah, that was the princess she should have been dressing as all the time since she pretty much WAS Cinderella.

"Fine, later…but you had better call me after your date and tell me EXACTLY what happened. Don't skip on any details. I want to be the first to know everything." Said Minori. Well this…that had gone well. She felt better and she had helped Shige out, too. Now she would know what it was like to kiss a guy and maybe she would be less squeamish and babyish about everything. Yeah…this was a good thing. Even if she might end up with a boyfriend and…

And what did Minori was a boyfriend for?

The guys here sucked. Well she hadn't met many of them, dad had her under guard, but she didn't like what she saw. There were guys back in Japan that she had liked….not that she would ever be going back…but she didn't want to think about that now. She wanted to think about….about how much she had helped Shige. Yeah, Shige's life sucked way worse than hers did and she had helped her friend and that was a good thing. She had been a very good friend.

Good friends listened to their friend's problems and offered solutions. That was why she was a good friend, Shige's good friend, Shige's very best friend. Her and no one else.


	356. Can You Please Just Answer the Question?

Mob always smoked outside.

If she smoked inside then dad would have noticed and he would have said something. He never told her to stop, no, he always just asked her if she had to smoke. She didn't HAVE to. It wasn't like she would die if she stopped smoking. She just liked to smoke. It made her feel better. It cleared her head and made her powers listen. Well not listen, not do whatever she said whenever she said it, she just got them to stop acting stop. They stopped picking things up and moving them without her input. They stopped breaking things, shattering glass and flipping plates over, and also she stopped making the electricity get all weird….

Like it had at dinner.

She couldn't help it. She had a lot on her mind. First of all Sho was gone. She knew where he was, next door, but he was sleeping over at Shimazaki's house again. They were having another sleepover it seemed. She had gone over that day to see if he was planning on coming home and he had been asleep. Shimazaki said that they had messed up their sleep schedules….which wasn't a good thing. This was something else that she would have to fix. She would have to keep him up all day and then make sure that he slept through the night….and she knew that she should have been doing that tonight…

But she didn't want to.

She wanted him to be happy…and also she had a lot of stuff on her mind. She worried about him but she knew that she should not have had so much on her mind when she had to take care of him. Her mind should only have been on her little brother. She knew that she had to only think about him. How to get him to take a bath, because this was his second night skipping a bath and she knew that it would only get harder to get him in the tub, and also she knew that he hadn't had anything but junk food to eat in a while….and getting him to eat vegetables would only get harder and harder as time went by. She knew, also, that he had to change clothes and she knew that once he got comfortable wearing something it would be hard to get him to change…especially since he had been wearing the green Zootopia shirt….

Sho deserved better than what she could be right now.

She was worried about her own stuff and in worrying about her own stuff she was being a downright terrible big sister to her own little brother. She needed to do so much for him but every single time her mind got close to the long to do list that was her little brother it ran right back to well…other thoughts. Thoughts about how…how she had never gone on a date before…and how Minori might have known better about this than Minegishi…and about how she had no idea which friend to listen to…and about how she had no idea what she even wanted.

She really didn't.

So she smoked. Her mind got clearer the more her lungs got all full of smoke. Her mind got clearer and her powers listened…and they had not been listening around dinner time. She had tried to use her powers like she always did while she cooked and she ended up shattering a bowl and dropping a plate and also she set the microwave to three minutes instead of thirty seconds and burnt dad's cheese bread, she ended up eating that one, and also…also she had accidentally given him ketchup instead of cocktail sauce…and he should have said something! He should have said something instead of being all 'is there a reason that you've given me cocktail sauce?' like he was mad at her….or not….or just…he should have said something instead of eating half a glass of cocktail sauce and then telling her that this was really weird and that she should stick to what she knew…really! Just…she loved her dad, she really did, but sometimes he could be so…so….

Well she should have been more careful. She had reached for the ketchup, gotten the cocktail sauce, and then poured it in a glass without noticing.

At some point she should have realized that she had made a mistake. She had almost ruined his dinner. Dad worked really hard and he had said, a million and one times before, that coming home to sharing a meal with her was the highlight of his day. She had almost taken that highlighter and gone over it in Sharpie….and that had not been good. She should have done this earlier…but she couldn't. Minegishi said that she was smoking too much and that it wasn't moderation is she was doing a little smoking but on and off throughout the whole day. Also they were worried because she couldn't add two columns of two digit numbers in her head. She wasn't worried about that. She had a calculator for that and she had never been good at math in the first place.

She hadn't gotten that from dad.

While she was outside in the backyard smoking he was inside teaching Hatori how to do math…at least dad had said that it was math. It had numbers and letters in it together and also shapes…a lot of shapes….and there were times in there too and division and she wasn't that good at that. She knew, from her homeschool book, how to do her times tables to six and Sho could do until five but dad and Hatori had been timesing letters and numbers together…and that was why she was outside smoking. Because she didn't want to bother them and also because….well….because….

Hatori was in her house.

Today he had on his blue sweater with the birds on it. Underneath she could see a dark red shirt. That was either his Atari shirt or his red Mario shirt…or maybe it was that other red shirt that he wore sometimes with the old energy drink logo. The one that was faded and too big on him that he slept in sometimes. The one with the holes in the collar because sometimes he chewed on his clothes. Maybe because he was surrounded by people all the time and he wanted to eat them…not that Mob minded. He was surrounded by people and he thought about eating them. She was surrounded by people, well boys, and she wanted to kiss them…so they were even as far as weird thoughts went. She couldn't fault him for probably wanting to eat her and she hoped that he didn't fault her for wanting him to kiss her…

Not that he knew about that.

Not that he knew that she wanted nothing more for him to lay down next to her on the grass, cup her cheek like in that movie she liked and Minegishi didn't, and then kiss her. He would kiss her and then tell her that he loved her and then they would be boyfriend and girlfriend and they would be happy together for the rest of their lives…and she needed to stop thinking about this before the weird feelings came back. No, nothing good would come of having weird feelings right now. Not when dad was home…and Hatori was in her house. Dad was allergic to knocking on doors and Hatori…well if Hatori ever found out how she thought about him…and what those thoughts made her do…then she would have had no choice but to dig a hole and then live in it for the rest of her life. Hatori could never know that she liked….that she might have liked him.

She had no idea if she liked him.

She liked the way he looked, she liked the way he was nice to her, she liked the way he got along with dad and Sho, and she liked the way he never said or did mean things to people. Well, ok, he could get weird when he drank but…but then he could just never drink. She didn't want to have to babysit him whenever they had a party, and there was going to be another once because dad decided that the first one had been a success so now she had to plan a second one, and she knew that people liked to drink…she liked to drink….and she also knew that some people, mostly Hatori, could not drink. She didn't want to have to keep him from doing weird or gross stuff for the rest of his life just because he didn't get along with drinking….

She already had Sho to worry about…and dad….and she didn't need to worry about him too.

She wanted…well if anyone ever wanted to marry her she wanted to be married to someone who could help her out at least a little bit. She knew that she was a girl and that as a girl her job was to take care of her family. First her dad and brother and then her husband and whatever kids she had. Dad had told her that and she had to do what dad wanted…..even though she hoped that when she got a husband he at least knew how to pour his own glass of ketchup…or fry his own eggs….or iron his own shirts….or remember his own Netflix password…and at least she knew Hatori would always know their Netflix password…but she didn't know what else he would be able to do for himself. She didn't know if he would be able to wash his own clothes, he sometimes forgot to add the detergent and fabric softener….and also sometimes he let his clothes sit in the machine for hours and hours, or if he would be able to wash his own dishes, he mostly just rinsed his stuff off until the food was gone instead of rising and then putting his stuff in the dishwasher, and she also knew for a fact that he couldn't fry an egg without filling the house with smoke…because he always forgot the butter. Nonstick did not mean never use butter…and also nonstick did not mean walk away from your eggs while you were frying them…

And also she wasn't sure if she could handle being married to Hatori.

And he would probably want to get married after they went on a few dates. Three to six, maybe, from what she had seen and heard. Mom and dad had only gone out a couple of times before they had decided to get married. She knew that Minori said that she should have just practiced with Hatori but that seemed….mean. Minegishi said that the kind of relationship that they had with Shimazaki, the kind that was mostly kissing and bed stuff, wasn't for everyone and that unless you knew that you could handle that sort of thing one hundred percent you should not have even thought about starting it. That wasn't something that Mob thought that she could handle…and also Hatori had never had a girlfriend before…and she suspected that he liked both girls and boys but dad just thought that he only liked girls because dad had a lot of trouble understanding that people could be different like that. He had been born back when boys were boys, girls were girls, and also boys married girls and that was what happened. Also she suspected that girls didn't wear pants, either, when he had been born because she knew that back in the olden days girls weren't allowed to wear pants….not that she saw a reason why anyone would want to wear pants….but having the option was nice in case she ever felt like it….and she had the option because she had been born eleven years ago. Dad had been born in a whole different world and he was always trying to understand things that he didn't need to understand. He just needed to let people be who they wanted to be and not try and make them into something that needed to be understood. Like how Mob didn't really get the whole liking other girls thing but some people liked other girls and some people liked both boys and girls. She knew that Shimazaki did, that was called being bi, and Minegishi did too but they were pan which was different from bi….and Sho definitely liked both boys and girls even if he didn't admit it…and Hatori probably liked both too. His wallpapers were always girls in cute clothes and he never talked about liking any boys…even though he could have easily gotten a boyfriend since he was so….Hatori….so he must have liked both…

And also he was going to ask her out.

She was going to say 'yes'. She was going to say that she would go and she had decided this a while ago but she also…she had no idea what she was being so weird for. Why she was so….mixed up inside. She knew that she sometimes thought about things too hard…at least Minegishi had told her that a bunch of times, but maybe…maybe this was the sort of thing that she had to think about. Hatori might have…liked her. No boy had ever liked her before…well that one boy she had kissed when she had been nine but he hadn't known her and she hadn't known him very well….and also that time in the first grade when she got those White Day chocolates and she got kissed on the cheek…but that had been all the way when she had been seven. She was eleven now. She was eleven and someone…a lot older…might have liked her….and…..and that was….

Older people did older people things.

Things that she sometimes thought about. Not all of the things, just some of the things, and the things that she thought about and would want to do only in her head….well he would want to do in life. She knew what adults did and she also knew that she was not an adult yet and…and she knew that he would want to maybe do more than kiss…and she had never done more than kiss and also….also she didn't really want to do more than kiss…because kissing was enough…and even thinking about it made her feel all good and gross at the same time…and she didn't want to feel this gross feeling…and she knew that she shouldn't have….because Minegishi said that the way she felt was normal….

Sometimes normal things could be gross.

Like Sho eating his boogers, or dad drinking ketchup when he thought that she wasn't looking, or like how sometimes she accidentally used Sho's toothbrush when she was really tired. Sometimes things could be normal and gross at the same time….and she still felt gross. Well not as much but she still wore her sweater a lot…even though it was very hot out even at night…and even though because she was smoking and laying down she was getting ashes all over it…and also it would take on the smoke smell…she didn't want to take it off.

It was very soft. It was soft. It was soft and so were her socks and the grass underneath her body and…and she didn't just wear this because it was soft. She still looked like a kid, she knew that she did, but she looked like more of a kid when she wore this sweater. She knew that she didn't have anything, not really, but she just felt better with this sweater on. She knew that she looked like a blue blob, Minori had told her that a few times before, but at least with the sweater on she looked like a blue blob that didn't have any breasts for anyone to stare at. Not that she was anything to write home about…..and that was worse somehow. That someone could notice and then make fun of her….someone who she had known for as long as she could remember…..how someone who she had known since she had been a baby could have said that about her….well she didn't know if Fukuda was saying things like that about her but she knew that he was thinking things like that about her. He thought that she did stuff….bed stuff…adult stuff….the stuff that you did to make a baby….with Shimazaki of all people….and also he thought mean things about Minegishi's breasts and Mob had really little ones too….and she wished that he had just kept his mean thoughts in his head where they belonged! Because maybe if he had then she wouldn't have had to wear a sweater outside in AUGUST!

She smoked some more.

It was almost down to a roach. She had some more between her mattress and her box spring…and getting more would have meant going inside….and if she went inside then she would have had to hear dad and Hatori doing math…but if she stayed out here then she would be way too hot and also her brain would get back to normal and then she would go back to being nervous…though being nervous and messing up with her powers was better than thinking about Fukuda and what he had said and what he was probably thinking and also-

Also now she swore that she could feel him.

She closed her eyes. It was dark out but now it was black. Well black aside from the colors and lights and patterns that she saw when she closed her eyes. She didn't know how to describe it. Shimazaki had asked her, once, to tell him what she saw when she closed her eyes. She hadn't been able to in any meaningful way. She had never thought about it before…and also it was colors and lights and she had no idea how she was supposed to describe colors and lights to someone who didn't know what colors and lights were…and she wondered if Shimazaki would teleport over because she thought of him. She wondered, maybe, if he could sense when people were talking about him and thinking about him…because that would have made a lot of sense….and she wanted him to teleport over….and not just because he was always up to share with her….and also he might have brought Sho back if she asked hard enough….no. She wanted him to teleport over because she would rather have summoned him than Fukuda.

She could feel Fukuda.

Her passive aural range was big, so was dad's that was who she got it from, and Fukuda was always at the edges of her range. He lived farther away from them than the others. This was a Claw neighborhood so there were espers on all sides but she was keyed into Fukuda, it felt like, because she had known him for so long…and she wished that she hadn't been. She wished that he had just been another aura in the glob of auras that surrounded her…and also she wished that he would have just…not been walking towards her house. She had no idea what he would have been doing…unless someone got hurt….but dad's aura got mad when he hurt someone and Hatori's aura got scared when he got hurt…and she was fine…and Sho felt like he was asleep….so she had no idea what he was doing coming to her house….

Maybe he was coming to the math party.

Maybe he was on his way to join the math party. Maybe he would help dad and Hatori with…whatever they were working on in there. Maybe that was it. Dad had said, before, that he and Fukuda had been friends when they had been kids…and were still friends now…even if they didn't act like it. They acted more like people who worked together than people who grew up together…but then again he treated her more like someone he worked with than someone who he had held as a baby….and maybe that was just who he was as a person. Maybe he was just the sort of person, kind of like dad, who just could not be nice to people and…and even dad could be nice to people. He had been nice to mom, he was nice to her, and he was even nice to Hatori too. Dad could be nice and stuff but why…why couldn't Fukuda? It took more effort to be mean than to be nice….

And it took more effort to come into the house through the back than the front.

She kept her eyes closed and put the roach out on the grass. Maybe if she kept her eyes closed and kept on laying on the ground then he would think that she was sleeping, ignore her, and then go inside and join dad and Hatori in their math party. Then they all could have stayed up all night having a math party and she could have gone on to sleep outside because she did not want to sleep under the same roof as Fukuda. She knew that there were mosquitos and other bugs as well as the bad people Shimazaki had warned her about, the ones that kidnapped little girls and sold them for bad things, and also she knew that even in the summertime she could catch a cold sleeping outside….but she just…

She didn't want to sleep under the same roof as Fukuda.

"Sho! What do you think you're-oh." Said Fukuda. She felt him. He got very close and then he came to a stop…and he stayed there. He stayed there and she knew that he was looking at her. Even though she had her eyes closed she knew that she was being looked at. She wanted….she could feel her dress. It had gone up above her knees…and she was wearing normal socks, not high socks, and also…also she knew that her sweater….well she was laying down so her sweater was being pulled down by gravity…and if her sweater was being pulled down by gravity then that meant that he could tell that she sort of had breasts….and he was probably thinking the same sort of mean stuff about her that he thought about Minegishi since they had sort of small breasts too….and stuff….

And she sat up.

She stood up. He was still staring at her. She stared at him for a moment. She thought, maybe, that she should have bowed or something. You were supposed to bow….right? That was what you were supposed to do when greeting someone politely….and that was overly polite…but he was always overly polite with her….and she had no idea why. He always called her Miss Suzuki even though he had known her for her whole life….not that he was calling her Miss Suzuki now….not that he was calling her much of anything now. Now he was just….looking at her…and she wondered if maybe he was the one who should have bowed…since she did outrank him and he seemed to like to pretend that they were at work….but he didn't bow…he just looked at her…

And she wished that she had worn a bigger sweater…or two sweaters….or maybe a rain poncho…or better yet a trash bag….

"Hi Fukuda." Said Mob. She could feel his eyes on her…and she didn't like it. She wanted to cross her arms over her breasts…and also go inside and put on higher socks since her legs were getting kind of fuzzy again…and also she just wished that she knew how to turn invisible…or something…because he just would not stop looking at her.

"Hello…" said Fukuda. Mob waited for him so say more. There were a lot of other words that he could have said. He could have asked her how her night was going, he could have told her that it was nice to see her, he could have told her how his day had gone, he could have asked her why she wasn't at that math party, and also he could have explained what he was doing in her yard in the middle of the night looking for Sho when he knew very well, she had written him a whole instruction manual for taking care of Sho, that his bedtime was nine o'clock at night every single night…and also he should have been able to sense that Sho wasn't there…but she was getting….she had no idea why she was so mad…or maybe she did…

He was still looking at her.

"Hi Fukuda…why are you in my yard?" asked Mob. She tried to make that come out as nicely as possible, and she thought that she had done a good job, even if he was still looking at her….and she wondered if she had something on her face…she wished that she had something on her face. She didn't know. He made her nervous. He made her so nervous that she dropped the roach…and that wasn't good at all because Shimazaki said to always save those…and she wondered if she would ever find it in the dark…and wondering that was better than wondering why Fukuda was just staring at her like that.

"Miss Suzuki….I'm sorry. I thought that I sensed your brother out here." Said Fukuda. He was still staring at her…and if she had been dad she could have said something like 'if you can't stop looking at me hen I'll blind you' but she wouldn't because that was just a mean thing that dad said…and also it was an empty threat...not that she would ever threaten him with that or anything….but she did want him to just….look somewhere else or something!

"He's sleeping over with Shimazaki right now…and it's past his bedtime anyway. So he's not here." Said Mob. She wondered what he wanted with Sho at this hour…and also what he thought Sho would have wanted with him….because he must have known that Sho was mad at him…right? It wasn't like Sho had made an effort to hide his feelings….

"He's….next door?" asked Fukuda. Mob nodded. Maybe he was just getting old and losing his hearing, she had heard that happened the older you got. Maybe he should have gone home and given himself a hearing test or something...something that didn't involve looking at her.

"Yes. Sleeping. Don't wake him…and he's still mad at you anyway…so maybe wait until he feels better….but at your own house. Unless you want to go inside and join the math party dad and Hatori are having." Said Mob. That had been mean, she knew that she had said something very mean, but she just….she wanted him to go back to his own house and leave her alone already. He was still looking at her…and she had no idea why. If her breasts weren't anything to write home about, if she wasn't anything to write home about, then why was he STILL LOOKING AT HER?

"Do you know when he'll be back? I have something that I would like to discuss with him." said Fukuda. Mob…well she wanted to tell him not to talk to him anymore because….because he had upset Sho. He had upset Sho and Sho was the best little brother in the world. He did not need people upsetting him…and especially not Fukuda. Fukuda…he still liked Sho. He had always acted like he liked him but then he went and told Sho's secrets…and Mob…well Fukuda treated her badly too but messing with Sho…well that was something that she just….that she had no idea if she could forgive.

Nobody messed with her little brother.

Fukuda could talk about her until his face turned blue, she didn't care, but talking about Sho crossed a line. Trust was something important. Trust was something that you did not break….and it was something that Fukuda had broken. Fukuda had taken Sho's trust and broken it and he hadn't been ok since then…and now he was so not ok that he had spent last night and now this one with Shimazaki….and Shimazaki didn't believe in moderation so Sho was probably smoking and drinking and maybe doing other things over there….and that was just something else that she had to worry about…and she already had enough to worry about…

But this was not about her, it was about Sho, and it was about how Fukuda…if he was going to go around telling secrets then maybe he should have gotten those secrets from someone besides her little brother.

"No, I don't know when he'll be back. I'll tell him that you want to talk to him, though, but he might not want to talk to you….he's still mad that you told his secrets to dad. He's still very mad." Said Mob. She wanted him to know that he had hurt Sho. He had hurt her little brother and he'd had no reason to. Sho had done nothing to him just like she had done nothing to him….and maybe he just couldn't keep things to himself. Maybe he just had to tell everyone about everything all the time for…some brain reason or something. She didn't know. She never knew when it came to Fukuda…why he said the things he said…

And why he wouldn't stop looking at her.

"He….alright. Thank you for passing the message along. I'll just leave you to your smoking then." Said Fukuda. Mob…well she was done smoking….but she could smoke some more…and maybe if he wanted to then she would with him. If dad had smoked with her, even if it was only once, then maybe he would want to smoke with her, too. Maybe if smoked with her then he could tell her, since he liked talking about things, about what had made him stop liking her….and stuff…

Not that she wanted to spend time with him or anything, she really didn't, but she did just want to get to the bottom of this and see how she could fix it.

"You can smoke with me too, if you want….I mean…if you want to…so then we can talk and…and maybe it would be easier for you to talk to me if you smoked with me….because people like to talk when they smoke….and you like to talk all the time…and stuff." Said Mob. She knew that she hadn't made much sense but that had been hard to say. She didn't want to smoke with her. She would rather have been smoking with anyone else, even Sho and he spent the whole time asking for poptarts and soda, but if it made things better between her and Fukuda…or just made her understand him better….then it would be worth it.

"I…am going to have to respectfully decline your offer, Miss Suzuki…but if you want to talk to me about something then I can talk to you now or at a later time." Said Fukuda. He was talking to her like one of the Division Heads or the Scars or something would have talked to dad….and she knew that she outranked him….but she was not…she did not want to be called Miss Suzuki. She was Mob…or Shigeko….or Shige…and she even used to be Little Lady to him…but now she wasn't so little anymore…and she just…part of her wanted to be…

He had never looked at her or said mean things to her when she had been little.

"Mob. Please call me Mob or Shigeko or…or Shige even…and you don't have to be polite. It's me….you know me…and…and I do want to talk to you but like normal…like how you used to talk to me. Before you stopped liking me." Said Mob. She just wanted things to be better…no. She just wanted to understand. She didn't even care about things being better anymore. She just wanted to understand what it was that had made him stop liking her…it must have been something. People didn't just wake up in the morning and decide out of nowhere that they were just going to start to dislike other people…and if they were then….then if that was a thing that happened then….then maybe Fukuda should have said something to her by now.

"I don't dislike you." Said Fukuda. Mob…did not like lies. She didn't like lies and she didn't like being lied to but…but maybe he didn't know that he was lying. Yeah. Like when Sho told her that he already washed his hands and then when she asked when he said the day before yesterday so….so he wasn't lying in that instance but maybe Fukuda was just….stretching the truth….

He was stretching the truth pretty far it seemed.

"Yes you do. You talk to me like we're at work, you say stuff about me, and you look at me too….and please stop looking at me." Said Mob. She crossed her arms even tighter around her chest. This was a conversation that they should have been having while smoking. That way maybe she would have felt better and maybe he would have found something else to look at….and also he would have felt like telling the truth…since he seemed to like to tell everyone what he thought about everything…the truth of it…then maybe he could have told her that truth about why he had stopped liking her.

"Where should I look then?" asked Fukuda. Mob…well she was the one in charge but…but what was she supposed to say? Not at my breasts like I feel like you are…or my legs…or my eyes because I don't like to look at your for too long either? No…that would have been mean and weird and stuff…and she did not want to be mean and weird and stuff….she just wanted…she just wanted things to be ok…and normal. She especially wanted things to be normal again.

"I-I don't know but…but not at me. It makes me feel gross when you look at me and…and I don't like it." Said Mob. There. That was a less mean version of what she had wanted to say. Now maybe they could talk and he could….he was still looking at her…well now her feet…or the ground in front of her…and she wished that she had been wearing a longer sweater and a longer dress, too. Just…maybe pants, too. Even though she hated pants. Snow pants…even though it was August. Just…more clothes. She wished that she had been wearing more clothes.

"That wasn't my intention." Said Fukuda. He had a tone there….and she didn't know what it meant…but she did know that he needed to say what he meant and he needed to mean what he said…and so did she. She always said what she meant and meant what she said…so maybe she should just…say things…and worry less about being mean…after all, Fukuda was the one who had been mean to her first. He had been the one to have said all of that stuff about her, he was the one to have started to dislike her, and he was the one who was talking to her like they were at work or something…and she did not want to be talked to like that. She wanted him to talk to her like normal. She wanted things between them to be like normal. She wanted…she wanted to be little again. She wanted to be so little that she didn't even know what Fukuda thought of her…but she could never go back to being that little again. She wasn't little anymore, she was big, and maybe…maybe she needed to stop worrying so much about being mean and start…having big people conversations…about stuff….stuff like this. Stuff that bothered her….and stuff.

"Well….well I still feel gross and…and I wish that I didn't and….and also why did you say all of that stuff about me? And why do you think that stuff about me?" asked Mob. There. She had gotten to the point and now they could talk about this and then everything would be out in the open and even if she didn't get him to like her again at least she would be able to know what it was that made him dislike her so much.

"I don't know to what you're referring to." Said Fukuda. He talked to her like…like she was dad. Like she was sitting in dad's desk and they were at work and…and no. If she had been dad then he would have just answered her question…and maybe….maybe he was being mean or just…he might not have even understood the question. That was an option too. He just might not have had any idea what it was that she was even saying…because that was what he had said…and she just…wanted him to just….be telling her the truth. Was the truth really so much to ask for?

"You said that you thought that I was doing….adult stuff…with Shimazaki. I'm not. I'm eleven, Minegishi is my best friend, and I don't even like him like that. I don't do stuff like that and I don't want you to think about me like that…and I don't want you to look at me like that either." Said Mob. She felt gross just saying it. She wanted to pull her head and arms into her sweater like a turtle. She knew that he was either looking at the grass or at her feet and…and she just…she knew that it made no sense but he was still looking at her, it felt like, at all of those parts of her that she never wanted him to ever look at…ever. For as long as she was alive. She knew that he wasn't but…but she just….

She wanted to go inside.

She wanted to go inside and she wanted to stop talking about this. Maybe he did, too, since he had tucked his aura in like that. Maybe if he wanted to go inside, of his own house hopefully, so badly then maybe he should have just…not been talking in circles and just answered her question. She didn't think that she was asking difficult questions, it wasn't like she was asking him to do the letters and numbers math that dad and Hatori were doing inside, and he should have just…just answered her question…or something. She didn't know.

"I…am looking at the ground right now…and I spoke out of turn before, please forgive me. I won't…talk about what you do in your personal life ever again." said Fukuda. His aura was all pulled in. He was trying to make it calm, make it seem like he was being normal, but she could tell. She could tell by his aura that he was…bothered. Bothered by all of this…and WHY was he the one who was bothered!? He was the one who had not only been thinking about her doing….stuff…he had also talked about it. He had talked about her doing stuff with Shimazaki which meant that he thought about her doing that kind of stuff…which meant he thought about her naked because people had to be naked to do that kind of stuff…and she never wanted to think of him thinking about her like that…and if anything she should have been the one who had been bothered! Not him! He was just…he was just so…so…she was getting mad…and maybe…maybe it was ok for her to get mad! Or maybe she was just really high and her brain had stopped working…or maybe not. Maybe…because he had been the one to think about her naked and…and that was not ok! That was not at all in any way ok and…and she was not doing stuff! She had never done anything with anyone and…and it was none of his business if she had been! And she wasn't even doing stuff like that!

"I'm not doing stuff like that! Sorry, sorry, I shouldn't have raised my voice. Just…I'm not doing stuff with anyone and I don't know why you would think that I am and…and stop thinking about me like that. It's gross that you think about me like that, it makes me feel gross that you would think about me like that, and….and I don't like that you look at me like that, either. Like I do stuff like that…." Said Mob. She didn't want to talk about this anymore. She wanted…she wanted to pretend that she had never….never heard him say all of that stuff about her….because now it seemed like he would never explain it to her, why he felt the way he did, and maybe…maybe she didn't even want to know at this point…because maybe the reason didn't matter….and maybe there was no way at all to fix this….maybe this was just…the way that things were now…and she should just…accept that this was the way that things were now…and stuff…she didn't know.

"I…I have never looked at you in that way and…and I am truly sorry if I gave you that impression….Miss Suzuki." Said Fukuda. It was the 'Miss Suzuki' that got to Mob. They were getting nowhere. They were getting nowhere and…maybe nowhere was where she wanted to go. Maybe there was no fixing this and talking about it…maybe talking about it would just make her feel grosser and grosser. It had already ruined all the good feelings that she got from smoking…and it might have ruined her night and…and she didn't want to talk about this, or anything else, anymore.

"Ok. I'm going to go inside now, you're dismissed. You can go…well I don't care where you go. You can go wherever you want but you can't stay in my yard." Said Mob. That had been…mean. Dad mean. If he wanted to talk to her like dad then, fine, she would talk to him like she was dad right back. She would tell him that he was dismissed like how dad always told people that they were dismissed and then she would let him go and then she would go inside and…

And she didn't know.

Maybe smoke in her room? She would think about it later. Right now she was focused on just getting away from Fukuda. She didn't wait for him to leave even though that would have been the more polite thing to do. No. She just walked back into her house. She was going in through the back so she didn't have to pass by the math party…but she could still hear it and feel it and…and she went right to her room. She went to her room, went to where she hid her secret stuff, and got out her pen. Maybe smoking inside would be ok just this once since dad was so busy hanging out with Hatori.

Maybe, she didn't know, she just knew that she didn't want to smoke outside anymore.


	357. Late Night Math Party

The only thing Hatori learned today was that he was bad at math.

Not only was he not retaining a single thing that he had been taught but, also, he thought that he had maybe lost some math that he had already known. His times tables weren't coming to him anymore…and neither was adding…or subtracting…or counting. Maybe learning this many new things had pushed all of the old things out. Maybe he would end up having to sit at this table with Suzuki for the rest of his life relearning how to count and add and subtract and also what that check mark symbol meant….or something….

Or maybe he was just bunt out because they had been doing math for twelve hours.

"…so if you take a tetrahedron, consisting of four triangles, six edges and four vertices, you can turn it into a sphere because a sphere also has four triangles, six edges and four vertices and therefore we can…give me a piece of paper. Let me draw it for you." Said Suzuki. He held out his hand. It took Hatori a moment to find him a piece of paper. These were Son's. He wouldn't mind and if he did then Daughter could fix it. This was paper and paper was meant to be written on and he had to write this down for Hatori because he was having a lot of trouble visualizing this, it seemed.

Really, how hard was it to picture a tetrahedron and then round the sides out until it became a sphere?

Well, apparently, very hard. Hatori hadn't gone to school past his third year of middle school after all and Suzuki had gone as far into math as he could in university. It had been easy, and fun, going through all the math courses that university'd had to offer. It was still easy and fun. He so wished that his children had taken after him…or at least Son since Son was his only bod child…but he had heard Son carrying on about practicing his multiplication tables. He knew that Son would never have sat though this and Daughter…well she needed a calculator to add four columns….and he got the feeling that she would not have enjoyed this and he so hated it when she wasn't enjoying herself.

Besides, this was what he had Hatori for.

"So…that's a tetrahedron?" asked Hatori. He had never seen that shape before…or maybe he had and now he just couldn't remember shapes anymore. Shapes…those had been something that he had enjoyed learning about when he had been little….mom and dad had been so happy when he had been little and he had known what a hexagon was…but then geometry had happened and he had hated shapes with a passion….

And now, apparently, there was something with shapes that went even beyond geometry.

"Yes. This is a tetrahedron and then, if we express it as this, V – E + F = 2, we can turn this into a sphere. See? Well….believe that I've drawn a sphere. I hate the z axis. I wish my Son were here, he knows how to draw on the z axis. He's a very good artist." Said Suzuki. If Son had been home he would have asked Daughter to wake him up. He was a very good artist and…yes. There was some artistry to this. Actually making a visual representation of what these numbers meant. Well he could tell, just by looking, what this was supposed to be…and it was not what he had drawn. If only Son knew how to do this. Then maybe Hatori would have understood what it was that they were working on.

"Why don't you? I mean teach your son how to do this….I mean aside from the fact that he's ten and probably wouldn't get it." Said Hatori. Wow. Suzuki had never once said anything nice about Sho in the whole time they had been friends. Maybe he was getting better…or something. Or maybe this was just…how he was. He had been weirdly….open…today. Even more then when they played games together. He was still as flat as ever but his aura gave him away. He was happy. He felt happy. Maybe this was just how he was when nobody was around…or something. Hatori didn't know.

He just knew that this was weird…but his life was weird so this was just par for the course…or whatever.

"Son is tiresome at the best of times. No matter how old he was, even if he were your age, I know that he would not enjoy this…and Son is always insufferable when he has to do something that he does not enjoy. You enjoy this, though, so that's enough for me…though I do wish that one of us knew how to draw." Said Suzuki. Where did Son get his artistic talent from? He knew that he was incapable to drawing anything beyond simple geometric shapes….on the x and y axis. The z axis eluded him. Even cubes were difficult. Well that didn't matter. He knew what he was going for.

And soon so would Hatori.

It was amazing that he had sat through all of this. He used to do this with Fukuda when they had been younger. He hadn't enjoyed it. Not even in university when it really got interesting. Hatori was interested. He had no idea what was going, it seemed, but he was at least still interested. He so wished that Daughter would have shown some interest but she was like Masami in that way. Masami had watched him do this, he used to do this for fun back before Son had been born, and all she had been able to do was tell him to have fun with that and then she watched television. Daughter…well she didn't like math either…

For some strange reason nobody, well almost nobody, he had ever met had liked math.

You did fine, boss, I can tell that's supposed to be a circle." Said Hatori. It was a pretty crappy sphere…but he wasn't going to tell Suzuki that to his face. He worked hard on that….and all of this…and he was in a good mood, too. Even if he hadn't had the power to send Hatori to his death at any time he wouldn't have wanted to ruin Suzuki's good mood. He was a lot…well better…when he was like this. Hatori wondered why he hadn't become a math teacher or something….but then again if you could rule the world then why not? Well there was also the question of why anyone would have wanted to rule the world in the first place.

It seemed like a lot of work, honestly.

Suzuki was never this happy when he was working towards his whole 'world domination' goal. He always seemed either vaguely pissed off or vaguely bored…of course Hatori only had his aura to go off of. He wasn't an expressive man, that must have been where Mob got it from, but his aura…well it told a story…and right now he was happy. He maybe should have taught math or something else….because really it was better for the whole world if President Suzuki was in a good mood.

Really. The world did not need to deal with this man when he was pissed off.

"Sphere. It exists on the x, y, and z axis." Said Suzuki. Well now they would have to go over basic geometric shapes…and that would be wonderful. He wondered if they had any of that coffee Daughter liked left…but maybe he should ask her before he made any of her coffee. It was good…well her normal coffee. She also had birthday cake coffee but that was just disgusting. It tasted like it had been designed by children…and maybe it had been. Still, when she came back inside he would ask her if he could have some of her coffee since he was out of his…and also he would ask her to order more food, too, since for some reason they were almost out of pretty much everything even though she had just ordered more food for them…

He would ask her when she came inside, of course, because he knew not to disturb her when it wasn't Sunday. He hadn't been good about that, lately, and as much as he wanted to spend time with her he didn't want to end up hurting her down the line. He wanted her to grow up properly. He wanted her to grow up to be an adult….and adult who could be independent…but he also wanted her to never leave him and…and he wanted two things that were exclusive. A binary choice. Something easy to understand and express.

A more complex probability model was much more fun to express.

But he didn't want any complex probability when it came to Daughter. He wanted a binary choice. 1 / (1 + e^-z). That was what he wanted….and that was what he had. Either he did everything right and she grew up normally or he ruined her and then…well and then she would never develop independence skills and she would be stifled for the rest of her life. He wanted…he wanted to take care of her for the rest of her life and he could take care of her…for the rest of his life. He was forty four, she was only eleven, and one day he wouldn't be there for her….

So, no, he was not going to pick her up and bring her here and tie a rope around her waist so she could not get away from him…but she would have enough slack to make coffee since she made a very good cup of coffee.

"Right, that's what I meant. A 3D circle. So we can use that math to turn that shape into a sphere?" asked Hatori. He forgot the name of the shape that Suzuki had drawn before. It looked like a normal pyramid but it wasn't and Suzuki was going to tell him, again, what the difference between that and a normal pyramid was….and he didn't know if there was enough time left in the night to hear that explanation.

"Yes. We can do the same with a pyramid." Said Suzuki. He picked up a pencil, one of Son's, and got to drawing. He would have been much better. The z axis…that goddamned z axis. This wasn't true three dimensional drawing. This was just an optical illusion. Paper only had to two dimensions and expressing a three dimensional space onto a two dimensional space….this was just….he would do his best to express this in a way that Hatori would be able to comprehend. He was watching in fascination…and he couldn't remember the last time that someone had watched him do this in fascination.

Well Masami, that first time.

When they had moved into the house and he had been trying to figure out the most efficient way to set up their bedroom. He hadn't been doing this, specifically, but he had gotten out a paper and pencil and he had done his best to maximize their space. He had asked her how much walking space she thought that she would need and then she had asked why…and then he showed her what he had been doing…and she had called him amazing…

That was the last time she had ever shown fascination in what he did…what he enjoyed….well when it came to math.

"Wait….how do we do that with a pyramid? It's a totally different shape. You said so." Said Hatori. Suzuki liked talking about this so he would keep him talking. Suzuki seemed lonely in a lot of ways, to him, that was why he was so obsessed with his daughter. Also, really, he was nicer in general when he was…like this. He would be nicer tomorrow because they were hanging out today and that would be good for everyone, especially his kids.

"The same way we just did it with the tetrahedron. See? All we have to do is…." Said Suzuki. His pencil stayed still. He felt another aura enter his passive range. Well he had always been in his passive range but now he was even closer…and he had no idea what Fukuda was doing there…but he was a welcome addition. Suzuki had never considered himself to be a nostalgic man, he had always been more concerned with securing the future than waxing poetic about the past, but…well it had been enjoyable, a bit, when he and Fukuda had been younger. They must have been…thirteen or fourteen…when Fukuda had watched him in fascination. He remembered…

He remembers rain.

The smell of it. It had been raining and they had been in the First Division….well their version of the First Division…and they had been doing their homework together. Well Suzuki had been doing his homework, homework had to be completed before dinner mother had been very clear on that, and Fukuda had been complaining even though they hadn't been given anything difficult that night. Just more of what they had done in class. He hadn't been able to take Fukuda constant complaining, even if he got the answers wrong he still could have been done in the time he had spent complaining, and Fukuda had been amazed at how quickly he had gone through their entire night's homework….

He wondered if Fukuda still hated math.

He wondered what that day would have been like if Hatori had been there. if he had been there as a person the same age as he and Fukuda were, of course, not as a baby…a fetus…a zygote…well no, he hadn't even been a zygote then….he hadn't been anything…but if he had been something back then it would have been a thirteen year old. He wondered if Hatori would have complained incessantly, Fukuda had been something of a complainer when they had been younger, or maybe he wouldn't have even tried…or been in the same school, even, because theirs had been a school you had to test into and Hatori was not much of a scholar…but maybe if he'd had help….

It was pointless to think about what their lives would have been like together if they had all been the same age.

He wasn't above fantasy, he imagined things sometimes, but he always imagined the future, not the past. He had always dreamt of the future even when he had been small. When he had been very small his mother and father took him on weekly trips to the planetarium. There he had dreamt of a time when he would have been able to go to the places he had only read about…though that did not look like it would be happening in his lifetime….but he did still imagine that….among other things. He imagined ruling the world, a future in which he fulfilled his destiny, more than he imagined seeing the stars…but even imagining actually being able to see the stars, the planets, and to explore deep space….well that was more productive than imagining a past in which Hatori could have been his companion as well as Fukuda.

Though it would have been nice, having Hatori as his companion, since he complained a lot less than Fukuda had when he had been young.

"You ok, boss?" asked Hatori. He knew that they were friends and that it was weird to call his friend boss…but also he knew that Suzuki liked to be called boss because he was, literally, Hatori's boss. He had stopped and his aura had passed over Hatori like a wave…and he had no idea if that had been good or bad. Sometimes it felt like every morning Suzuki woke up, flipped a coin, and the all the rest of them could do was cross their fingers and pray. He liked nice…nice-ish….Suzuki. Suzuki the guy, the dad, the sort of weirdo. Not Suzuki the guy who ran Claw, left people to die in holes, and beat people up for every little thing….

Yeah, he liked Suzuki the friend better than Suzuki the boss…and he hoped that he was going to be spending the night with Suzuki the friend…he really did.

"Yes. I'm fine. Fukuda is near…and I don't know why." Said Suzuki. He was near but…but he wasn't coming close. That didn't make sense. For a moment he thought that Fukuda might have been speaking to Son, Son and Daughter sometimes played in the yard together in the middle of the night for reasons Suzuki could not understand, but no….Son was asleep…and next door. He could pick out auras more clearly when he focused and…and Fukuda was near Daughter….

Which was odd.

Fukuda had overstepped in the past with both of the children….but now only with Son. He mostly left Daughter alone…and Suzuki liked that….and he had no idea why he liked that. Maybe because he didn't want any men at all talking to Daughter…despite that fact that all but one of her companions was a grown man….but Fukuda was himself. He could trust…well it wasn't a question of trusting or not trusting. It was…instinct…maybe? His instincts as a man told him to keep men away from the women in his household…or something. That was why, despite having more than enough space, he hadn't wanted Fukuda to live with his family…with his wife. Well that made sense. He knew Fukuda and he knew that he could trust him but he wanted to make sure that his children were his children…not that he hadn't trusted Masami. No, he knew that he would always be able to trust her…even if she had left…

He was the one who had strayed, not her, and he hoped that if she ever came back she could find it within herself to forgive him.

That was why, maybe, he hadn't wanted Fukuda around Masami. Maybe he had taken a flaw within himself, a flaw that he had not even been consciously aware of, and applied it to every man. Maybe he was still doing that, applying his own flaws to Fukuda, and that was why he didn't want her around Daughter. Daughter was the best, kindest, sweetest, most intelligent, and most beautiful woman…girl. Person. In the world. What man would have been able to say no to her? She was perfect. No man….well no heterosexual man…could say no to her…because she was so perfect….

And he was being ridiculous. Fukuda was not interested in her. He had said so.

"Maybe he wants to hang out. I mean you said that you guys were friends so I figured that maybe he wanted to hang out." Said Hatori. He knew that Fukuda was jealous…and he had no idea why. There was nothing stopping him from hanging out with Suzuki and, honestly, this guy needed all the friends that he could get. So what if he didn't like Hatori? The feeling was mutual but he was good at sitting there with people he didn't like. He had managed to live with Shimazaki for all of these months after all and that guy….Fukuda was a saint compared to that guy. At least Fukuda never shook up his drinks or jumped out and scared him when he was taking a bath….or purposely took bites out of his food when he stopped looking…and he didn't but it for one bit that Shimazaki had done that on accident. He was blind but he could still see…somehow…and he knew, he must have known, that is plate was the one right in front of him….not that he had said anything…

He knew, now, how to keep his mouth shut when he had to.

"This is not for pleasure, we're working, but…he wouldn't come here for work or for pleasure….well if this was something that needed my attention….if he had something that needed my attention right now in the middle of the night…then he would not have been outside with Daughter…" said Suzuki. Maybe he had something that he needed to bring to Daughter's attention. She was his direct superior after all. usually Fukuda came to him with things that he needed to know about but…but delegating to Daughter would have made sense…..though he wished that Fukuda hadn't disturbed her in doing…whatever it was that she was doing out there.

"Do you want me to tell her to come inside? I can if you want me to." Said Hatori. He didn't trust that guy around Little Sister-sama. No way. He had been weirdly ok with the idea of him and Mob….together…and he threw up a little in his mouth thinking about it. He swallowed before Suzuki noticed. That guy…he sucked. He was weirdly ok with an eleven year old girl dating a twenty year old guy…and that was not ok. There were a lot of guys like that, too many guys like that, and Mob…well she was a powerful esper and a mature kid but she was still a kid….

Maybe she'd like to learn some math, too, or something.

Something in this house where he could sit on one side of her, and her dad could sit on the other side, and then the two of them could keep her safe….not that he was about to go and tell Suzuki exactly what he thought of Fukuda…because there was no way to say what he thought and keep it clean…but he could make sure that Mob was safe. Her little brother, too, because he spent a lot of time with Fukuda…and how many away missions could there really be? Hatori knew when something big, big enough to send someone as high ranking as Fukuda was to, and none of those things ever happened in the Seventh Division of all places. He….wasn't about to go around making baseless accusations against Suzuki's best friend...since he had no proof….

But Mob and her brother really did not need to be alone with that guy.

"No, I don't want to interfere with her independence. Fukuda is probably telling her something important. She does outrank him after all." said Suzuki

"….this late at night?" asked Hatori. Suzuki…..well he sometimes wanted to see the best in people….some people….or maybe he was really just that oblivious. He didn't know. All he knew was that he had to protect Mob…but also he had to make sure that Suzuki didn't decide that he wanted to be friends with someone who didn't accuse his friends of….well being ok with things that…were not ok. Not that he said that Fukuda was DOING anything but…well he was weirdly ok with….yeah.

"Yes, even at this hour. He handles a lot of things, tedious things, that I would prefer not to do…but you know that. You're going to be him while he is away." said Suzuki

"Yeah…ok. Um…so. You were going to draw a pyramid?" asked Hatori. He was going to drop this before he pushed Suzuki from friend to boss…and pissed off boss at that. He drummed his fingers on his leg. His eyes went to the window. He wanted…well he wanted to drag Mob back into this house…but he also wanted to….well the bathroom was just down the hall. It was small and safe and he could live in…no he couldn't. He needed…he just needed to get somewhere small…and he didn't know why. It wasn't like Suzuki knew what he had been thinking about his best friend. No, he didn't know how to read minds because if he could well…

Claw hadn't had a purge in a while.

So Hatori would be fine and he just…he had to let Suzuki do his thing. He had to let Suzuki just…well he wasn't going to take Suzuki away from something he loved and start stressing him out of accusing…well he had been there on the plane when Fukuda had accused him of dating…and everything that came with it…Mob. Suzuki had heard his best friend say that and maybe….well maybe he hadn't gotten it. Maybe he just…he wasn't really the best at picking things up and…and maybe he had just….not gotten it. Yeah, he had a history of not getting things…

He had thought, even, that Mob had a CRUSH on him of all people….so, yeah, Hatori knew that Suzuki wasn't the best at…well anything that involved socializing with another human being in any capacity…but he was good at math….so maybe they should stick to math for now….

"Yes, right. Now watch. See? This can easily become a sphere as well." Said Suzuki. He worked as best as he could. He worked because….well also because this was fun…and work could be fun. Always enjoy what you did, father had said that, because if you enjoyed what you did then you would never work a day in his life. Father had loved his job. He had loved being an executive. He loved driving policy. He loved his long business trips. He loved planning for the next fiscal year….and Suzuki had always loved helping him.

Those had been good times.

Before father had gotten his computer, back when Suzuki had been small, he would sit in his father's office and help him go over everything by hand. A pencil, a paper, and a slide rule. Well Suzuki used the slide rule. Father had a calculator. A heavy machine that plugged into the wall…and there had been that slider for the decimal point…and that had always been enjoyable. Making the decimal point move. Father letting him, on those rare occasions when he would not only be allowed in father's office but at his desk, pound away on that calculator. He had been small then, three, when he had first figured out number…how they worked. Father had given him that slide rule to play with but he had done more than play…and then he had gotten older and father had shown him what to do…

Fiscal reports were more fun when he had been at his father's side.

They weren't fun now…well they could be…but he was pulled in so many different directions and…and he had forgotten how much fun this could be. Math. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing. It was fun, a truly enjoyable time, and he so wished that his own children had inherited…well Son was the only one who could inherit anything from him, but neither child….neither child would have enjoyed sitting there with him and pouring over the first half of the year's fiscal reports…or the projections…..but not the budget because that was a headache and a half…and Daughter needed to stop giving people things…but he was not going to criticize his Daughter….

For anything. Ever.

"…right. That's cool and….um…I have to go to the bathroom." Said Hatori. He hadn't been listening…well he had and hadn't been listening. Following what Suzuki said was hard and it was only made harder with Fukuda's aura hanging out there at the edges of his perception. Fukuda had his phone in his pocket…and if Hatori had been sitting there with his own phone in his hand then he could have listened in on what, exactly, he had to talk to Mob about.

But he didn't.

He had his phone in his pocket because he was being polite and…and now he was excusing himself because he was being polite. He wasn't going to get up from the table like he wanted to, pick Mob up, and then hide with her in the bathroom until Fukuda left. That would have been weird and also it would have invited too many questions….and he didn't want to deal with any questions because there was no way to explain himself without pissing Suzuki off…but he could just…

Get up and check on Mob….and then if she needed him for anything….well he would be there for her.

"Don't become anxious and lock yourself in. I have no idea why you're always so anxious but I won't let anyone harm you so if you're afraid of someone harming you then you can stop being afraid of that." Said Suzuki. Hatori's aura was doing that thing again. He could see it, what little aura he had, and he was at a loss. What was this man always so afraid of? It wasn't as thought anyone would harm him Suzuki wouldn't allow it. He, of course, would protect Hatori from whatever it was that he feared. He wouldn't let harm come to him, he was his.

He never let harm come to what was his.

"I-I won't. I'll be right back." Said Hatori. He wasn't going to lock himself in the bathroom…even though he sort of wanted to. He wanted to lock Mob in there with him because…well he knew that she wasn't his actual little sister or anything like that but she was a person in his life who he cared about like he would have a little sister. He didn't need some guy being creepy…or worse…to her. She didn't need that in her life.

She had enough going on as it was.

She had a lot of responsibility for someone her age. When Hatori had been eleven years old his life had been Pokémon, RC copters, school, trying and failing to get girls to like him, and also trying to earn enough for a new DS after his exploded. It had not been helping to run the world's most powerful cult, doing so much babysitting that it may have counted as raising a little brother, and also dealing with a dad as overbearing, and as much as he loved Mob he was overbearing, as Suzuki. Mob had a lot of shit going on and she did not need all of that on her plate.

Poor kid.

Poor, lonely, kid. She really was lonely. That was why she had befriended him in the first place. She had wanted to have a friend her own age and he was the only person in all of Claw that was even close to her age. She had a friend her age now, some little girl, but she was still a lonely kid…and Hatori would do his best to make her feel better. Be it from loneliness or….well whatever she felt from whatever that had been he would be there for her. That was what friends were for and they were friends…just friends. He could be friends with a kid her age and it didn't have to be weird. Anyone who looked at the two of them hanging out and saw something weird…well they had something weird going on in their head.

Yeah, he was fine.

And he did not end up hiding in the bathroom. He'd had to use the bathroom, legitimately, and he'd prioritized that before seeing Mob. She was in her room and…and he hadn't known if it was ok to just knock on her door…she didn't feel like she was asleep but he didn't want to bother her…but he did want to see if she was ok…if she was feeling ok….

She seemed to have been feeling ok.

He could smell, from her room, those pens she was always smoking…and he didn't think that she should have been smoking that…or anything. She was eleven and eleven year olds were not meant to do that and…and she wasn't his actual little sister and he couldn't stop her but…well he could make sure that she was ok. Also she needed to be careful with that. He didn't think that Suzuki would have been ok with his kid getting high all the time, he was a nice guy sometimes but he wasn't THAT nice, so he really should have warned her.

So that was what he set out to do when he knocked on her door.

Her door swung opened as he knocked. She was standing on the other side of it with her pen in her hand and that giant sweater Shibata had made for her on….even though it was hot in there even with the air conditioner going. He didn't get it, the sweater, but Suzuki was the giver of good advice and he had said that nothing good ever came of criticizing a woman's clothes.

Mob wasn't a woman, she was just a kid, but he wasn't about to go and tell her to take that thing off before she gave herself heatstroke. He wasn't there to criticize her, he just wanted to talk to her, to make sure that she was alright. That was all.

"Hi Hatori…if you want to invite me to the math party…I don't feel like going. Thank you though." said Mob. She hadn't been expecting to have felt Hatori just outside of her door…but there he had been. He had been outside of her door and she had thought, for a moment, that she had been in one of her dreams. The kind where he came to visit her at night and then he kissed her and she kissed him and then he told her how much he loved her and then they kissed some more and….and then the weird feelings started…

But this was reality.

This was reality and she…she had maybe smoked too much. The world had…well edges…like she could see the edges of things. Like things were sort of like…like she could see the corners and feel them…and also the rug…and each little bit of the rug had edges…and she didn't know if she liked the edges…but she did know that she liked…well she might have liked him and…and him being there was just…just it made her feel like….she didn't know. She didn't know and she just…did he think about her? Like Fukuda did? She wanted…to wanted to know if he thought about her like that…or at all…and she didn't want him to think of her like Fukuda did but…

Fukuda was a jerk.

But she didn't care what Fukuda thought….because it was his mind and he could think of whatever he wanted…and she just…she was herself….and she just wanted to feel like herself again. That was all…and the only way she could feel like herself again was to smoke and…and she knew that she was not using moderation but…but maybe this was not the night for moderation.

"No I-" said Hatori. He knew not to invite her to that…even though she would have been a hell of a lot safer with him and her dad…but she was in her room and she may have been smoking but also she was safe. He just wanted to make sure that she was ok. He wasn't the bets at reading auras but she….well maybe she just felt weird because she had been smoking…and he maybe should have told her to stop…but he wasn't her actual big brother and also….also he wasn't about to make her feel bad about what she had to do to control her powers. That was why she did it, she had said, so that was ok, he figured.

He just wanted her to be ok, that was all.

"And if you want to invite me to come with you to the comic thing then, yes, I want to go with you. I would like that a lot. I decided." Said Mob. She spoke quickly, very quickly, because it felt like she was running out of time. She knew that she wasn't on a timer. She knew that she wasn't…and also she knew that she had interrupted him…but she had to say this. She had to say this because if she didn't say it right now, right this second, that she would never be able to say it again.

She had made her choice and her choice was…him. Him and…and whatever he wanted…from her.

"Oh…well yeah, I was going to ask you and your brother to go but…you know. During the day." Said Hatori. That wasn't what he had come here to talk about and…and he could talk about this now. She seemed excited to go with him. Suzuki must have told her. Well she seemed pretty pumped and…and that was good. A good sign. If she was still ok enough to get excited about spending the day shopping and doing fan stuff, and she seemed like she would have been really into fan stuff, then Fukuda…well he must not have been too bothered by…whatever Fukuda had ran over here in the middle of the night to talk to her about.

"Oh…you want Sho to come too?" asked Mob. Well that was…she loved Sho. She loved him and if he wanted to come too the he could come too. She had wanted….well he wasn't sure what she had wanted. She had wanted whatever Hatori had wanted…and that was easier. It was easier to want what he wanted than to figure out what it was that she wanted.

Besides a kiss.

She wanted him to…well she had seen this in an anime.

"Yeah, I figured that he'd get a kick out of it, too." Said Hatori. He didn't know what he would do with both kids. Mob was a really mature kid but her brother….well maybe he was better without Shimazaki egging him on. Maybe he was an ok kid…and either way he would bring her brother if he wanted to come, too. It wasn't a choice, Mob or Sho, he could be friends with both kids…even though one of them as more hurricane than kid.

"Um…I can ask him but…if he comes he might want to bring Shimazaki…and I know that you and Shimazaki don't get along…" said Mob. She wanted Sho to come with but…but she also wanted everyone to get along. Yes, that was it. She just wanted everyone to get along and Shimazaki had a lot of trouble getting along with Hatori. Even though he didn't like Minegishi like that anymore, and also he may have wanted to eat them but he didn't eat people in life only in his mind, but even with all of that Shimazaki still didn't like him. Shimazaki went wherever Sho went and…and she knew that they would fight…and she didn't want them to fight…

And it had nothing to do with her wanting to be all alone with Hatori…

Because that was not what he wanted. She wanted whatever he wanted and she knew that if she started to think about what she wanted then…then she would have been all confused about what she wanted. She would have…well she wanted things. Sometimes the things that she wanted were the opposite of other things that she could want. That she did want. That she just…the whole thing was very confusing so…so she would just go with what he wanted….

And if he wanted Sho to come with then that was ok….it really was.

"Yeah, well, I deal with him for a few hours if it means I get to hang out with you guys." Said Hatori. These were the loneliest kids that he had ever met, really, and they could always use more friends. Mob seemed to be happy that her brother was coming, he could see it in her aura, and if it made her happy then he could put up with whatever tornado that the kid could come up with.

"Ok…um…ok." Said Mob. That felt…she knew that he had meant hanging out with her and Sho as friends but…but she wanted…she wanted to…to feel like he was….saying that he wanted to hang out with her. She wanted him to lean down and kiss her…she had seen it in an anime and she wanted…she wanted him to just…just lean down and kiss her even though she had seen that in anime and not in real life…and also he didn't like her like that but…but she wanted him to just…to just….

She decided to smoke her pen some more.

The window in her room was opened and dad knew, anyway, that she smoked. She just…she needed to stop thinking about Hatori in the way that she had been thinking about him. The thoughts and feelings came and….and she just….she felt gross. She still felt gross about Fukuda and….and what he thought about her and…and she didn't care what he thought anymore but….but she did care what Hatori thought and…

And he could never know what she thought about him.

"Cool. So for the comics market wear your most comfortable shoes and if you want to wear one of your cosplay things you can, some people dress up, and pass the message along to your brother, too. Ok?" asked Hatori. This was going to be so much fun! There were a million other things he had to tell her but…well it would come to him later. She was ok, ok enough to make plans with him and that…well that was ok. That was more than ok. She was happy and that…that was more than ok.

"Um…sure. I can do that….yes." said Mob. She needed shoes…and she needed….she needed to find an Elsa dress in her size. That was…that was her favorite and…and Hatori liked it when she was all dressed up…so she would get all dressed up for him and…and then he would think that she was pretty and…and she really wanted him to think that she was pretty.

"And Mob…listen, don't take this the wrong way but Fukuda….um….he didn't say anything to you…did he? Anything weird or….weird?" asked Hatori. Her voice wavered there…and maybe she had been….maybe she had been bothered and he had just been reading her wrong. Maybe he had just been reading her wrong and, yes, she was excited to go with him because she was a kid and kids got excited….but also she could have been bothered and…and this was hard. Being there for a kid was hard…but he had to be there for her. He was her friend after all.

"No, he didn't. He didn't say anything to me at all…not really…and I got tired of that so I was kind of mean and…and I kicked him out of the yard…because he was just…being….I don't know. Too polite but…but weirdly polite…like I was dad…or…something." Said Mob. She didn't know how to say it, how to tell Hatori that Fukuda kept on just…lying to her. Telling her that he still liked her, telling her that he never thought about her like…like he had said that he thought about her. She just…did not want to get into all of that with Hatori. She didn't want him to start thinking about her like that too because…

It would have been….

Not like how it was when Fukuda thought about her like that, gross, but also not….not something that she wanted. She wanted…if he thought about her like….like he wanted to kiss her then…then that was ok. That was ok but anything about…about her without clothes on or something…well that would have been too much…and she didn't want that….but she did want him to like her…maybe. She wasn't even sure about that.

This whole thing was so confusing.

"Hey, don't feel bad. You weren't mean, Mob, not at all. If there's a guy and he's being weird with you then you have every right to tell him to get away from you…or you can tell your dad, too, or me. Anyone really. We're all here for you." Said Hatori. He just needed to make sure that she knew that she was not alone. It was a terrible feeling, being all alone in the world, and nobody needed to know how that felt. Especially not someone as young as her. If he hadn't been able to handle that at fifteen then she would not in any way have been able to handle that at eleven. She had people. She had him and she had the others and…and she had herself…but even though she was powerful she still needed the rest of them. People needed other people….especially people as little as her.

"Ok…ok. Um…I will….um….and….do you want some of my pen? I mean…if you want some you can have some….I mean…" said Mob. She wanted….she wanted to change the subject…because those thoughts just kept on coming…and she was feeling like he liked her again and…and she knew that she should not have been feeling this way and…and she just….

She liked to smoke and he might have liked to smoke, too, so maybe they should just…do that and think about that.

"Um…sure. Thanks." Said Hatori. He had a choice to make…and as soon as he inhaled he realized that he had made the wrong choice. He had made the wrong choice but he didn't stop inhaling, not until his lungs hurt, because she had offered this to him and…and he hadn't wanted to make her feel bad. She did this because she had to and…and he wasn't going to make her feel bad…or be rude….because she didn't need that…

But this was just….not very good at all.

"It's kind of harsh….I should have warned you…sorry." said Mob. Shimazaki said that because they were in Japan he could only get the terrible ones…and they weren't terrible…but they were harsh…and maybe giving some to Hatori had been a bad idea. She had just wanted to change the subject and she had but…but now she would only think about the fact that he had been using HER pen and…and then she could use her pen after him and…and she knew what an indirect kiss was….and she also knew that both Minegishi and Minori had said that indirect kisses were ridiculous…but if she used that pen after him then it would have been an indirect kiss…

And she just….didn't know how to feel about that.

"No, no, it's ok. I'm…I'm ok. I'll just let you get back to….your night. Talk to you later." Said Hatori. That was….how did she do this all the time? He didn't know but he did know that….that Suzuki would be missing him and….and also he would not have been happy to know that Hatori had been getting high with his kid and…and now he was just….going to head back to the math party…that was what she had called it and….and that was what they had been having and….and that had been just….just….

Just really adorable…God. She was such an adorable kid…and he had no idea how Fukuda could have been so…just the way he was…with her.

"Yeah….um….I'll see you later." Said Mob. She took her pen back and she wiped it off with her sleeve. Ridiculous or not she did not want to think about what an indirect kiss with Hatori would have meant…if it had meant anything. She didn't know. She just knew that….that he had to go to bed and…and that he had said that he would see her later and…and that she wanted to see him later…if that was what he wanted….because she knew that it was what she wanted…and also other stuff…but mostly that….and also….

Also she wanted to go to sleep…..yes….that would have been….very good….

"Oh, and remember, comfortable shoes." Said Hatori as he walked back to the table. He felt…well he felt like maybe he should not have shared that pen with her…but he also felt good…and not just because of the pen but also….also because she was ok and….and that was all he wanted, for her to be ok. He wanted her to be ok and also…

Also he wanted to be able to keep it together for the rest of the math party….because maybe he should not have shared that pen with her.


	358. A Morning Big Enough For Two

This bed was not big enough for two.

Not platonically, anyway, and not that Shimazaki would ever have been anything other than platonic with the kid. No, despite popular opinion he was not a creep. He was a lot of things; an asshole, a dick, a contrarian, unnecessarily belligerent, impulsive, a former bed wetter, a former yakuza member, a current cult member, annoying, generally unpleasant, the worst kind of Beatles fan, general fan of overplayed rock music, disliker of boybands, and also he could be a little bit immature sometimes…

But he did not mess around with kids!

And if people wanted to make something of this then…well then they fuck them. Someone else could fuck them. Not Shimazaki. They didn't deserve him and also he was not in the mood. He had never been less in the mood as he had for these past couple of days. This had been…well not that bad but….well not that great either. For the kid and for him….

Mostly for the kid….but also mostly for him.

"You up yet, kid?" asked Shimazaki from where he was folded up into the corner of the bed. The kid…he kicked a lot. He kicked a lot and also he tossed and turned, too, and Shimazaki….he needed to be still to sleep. He did not like to be touched while he slept, not by anyone other than Toshi, and also he did not like to be kicked while he slept either. Or rolled over into. He needed his sleep and….and as much as he hated to admit it…

He sort of wanted the kid to sleep in his own damn bed.

"Yeah….kind of." Said Sho from his spot where he was curled up into Shimazaki. He didn't want to get up. When he slept he could be warm and comfortable and just…he was happier asleep than awake. He was happier when he could close his eyes and just pretend….well he could pretend the he was someone else and he was somewhere else and…

And he had just…

He had been weirdly sad for a while.

Ever since he had eaten that thing that looked like candy but wasn't he had just been…well at first he had been very sad but now…now he was just a little sad. Like he had gotten out of the sadness ocean but he still had sadness salt on him…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that he sucked. He sucked for being in love with his best, he sucked for always thinking about cheating on his girlfriend, and also he sucked for….well for being away from home for two whole days. Big sis must have been so worried about him. She had come over bunch of times asking if he was going to come home and he had always told her 'not yet' and…and he didn't know when 'yet' would be….

He didn't want to go home.

"Can you get your elbow out of my stomach then?" asked Shimazaki. He loved the kid, he really did, and he wanted more than anything else to have a kid just like him…and not just because having kids would have been awesome. If he had a kid just like this kid then the kids could have been friends and Sho could have been in love or like or whatever with his son and not him and then, well, he could have his bed back. He was thirty, thirty one in a few months, and he was too young to have his back aching like this. His back ached and it wasn't going to get any better because the kid…he was not going to be going home anytime soon it seemed like…and he just…yeah. He loved the kid more than he loved any other kid but…yeah. He needed his bed back.

And soon….but that was ok….because he was making an effort to be a nice person for once in his life…and he was not going to tell he kid that he needed to go to his own house and sleep in his own bed…sideways….because he slept sideways…and also he kicked…a lot….

"Sorry." said Sho. He sat up and stretched. He…he liked this. He liked sleeping next to Shimazaki and…and that was not ok. Well the books said that it was but also…also he had a girlfriend and he should have been sleeping next to her…well no because she had her own family and also he was not bringing her here to deal with dad and his….everything that was wrong with him….but he still should have been thinking about sleeping next to her. He should have been thinking about when he would next see her and kiss her and how good it would be when they grew up and stuff….and….

And how proud dad would be of him…

That was the worst thing ever. He could have….he could have been fine….if dad had kept his mouth shut. If dad hadn't gone on and on and on about how he was so proud of Sho just because he had a girlfriend. That was the only thing that dad liked about him…and also that he could draw….but dad only liked the fact that he could draw because he liked to steal his drawings…and dad only liked that he had a girlfriend because that meant that he would have grandkids to be a jerk too…and Sho…he didn't know why he even cared what dad thought of him…

How dad was proud of him.

Dad was only proud of him for all the things that he could do for him or the things that he would do for him in the future. He didn't care who Sho was as a person. He didn't care that Sho…he didn't care that Sho liked to climb trees and look at baby birds and also feed them crushed up worms so they wouldn't starve to death before their mom came back….and he didn't care that Sho could name from memory all seventy one breeds of cat and all five breeds of pet hamsters and also he knew how to walk on his hands and make a sandwich out of poptarts and frosting and that he could spit across the room in one try and that he could….he could…

He could do a lot of things.

He could do a lot of things but dad…he just didn't care. He didn't care what Sho could do. He only cared about the things that…that benefitted him…and stuff. Also dad he just…he was proud of Sho and…and Sho didn't want dad to be proud of him! He didn't want dad to think about him and be all proud and also…and he didn't care how dad felt….and he didn't care if dad was proud of him or anything and….

And he just…he couldn't go home…because dad was there…being all proud of him…and stuff….

"It's ok, I'll live." Said Shimazaki. He scooted to the end of the bed and sat next to the kid. He stretched again. His aura and perceptions stretched out as he stretched. He could feel the kid next to him, God he was small, he could feel Toshi sitting up in their bed with something square…a book…in their hands. He could feel Hatori flopped over onto his stomach with one leg dangling off the bed, he had probably been up all night with Suzuki doing whatever it is they did together, and he could feel Shibata passed out on the couch clutching something round…..the waffle maker. It was early. He expanded out further. Suzuki was starting his day, he had moved the jerking off from late at night to early in the morning, and Mob was still passed out….it was early. If everyone was still sleeping then it was early. The blinds were closed, the kid needed darkness to sleep, and Shimazaki had no idea what time it was. Early. Early enough for Toshi to be the only one awake….early enough that he would have gone back to bed…next to them…but he couldn't go back to bed…because the kid needed him…

He heard the kid's stomach rumbling.

Right. Kids needed food. Well he could make food. He could make…well he could make oatmeal and porridge, there was a difference, and he knew how to fry eggs and bacon….and he did know how to make waffles from the mix he just didn't like to…and he didn't feel like cooking…but the kid was hungry. This was part of taking care of a kid, one of the parts of taking care of a kid, that wasn't so fun. They weren't all building forts, climbing trees, doing drugs, and putting worms in people's beds. No, they also needed food and water and…and baths. This kid needed a bath….and also to change his clothes…

And also to go back to his own goddamned house for a little bit….but Shimazaki could handle this…and he was handling this….

"I really am sorry." said Sho. He didn't know what he was saying sorry for. Sleeping with his elbow jammed into Shimazaki's stomach, sleeping next to Shimazaki, not going home, telling him that he loved him, being in love with him, eating random stuff from his drawer, kicking him in sleep….he didn't know. He just knew that he was sorry…and stuff…and he knew that he should have been sorry….and he knew that he should have been sorry in his own house….but he just did not want to go home so he was going to stay here and that was just the way that it was going to be…or something. He didn't know.

He needed to change his clothes.

He could smell….well he didn't need to smell himself to know that he needed a bath. He used to be able to go days and days without bathing but now he smelled bad if he skipped his bath…and he didn't want to take a bath here or at home…but maybe changing his clothes would have helped…but all of his clothes were at home and…and if he went home then he might run into dad again…he could feel dad's aura and he did not feel happy….or he would run into big sis and she would ask him why he had been gone for so long…and he couldn't tell her what happened because then she would worry…and stuff…and he didn't want her to worry because if she worried then she would ask way too many questions….questions which he did not want to have to answer….

So he was just going to sit there for the rest of the day.

"It's fine, anyway you want some breakfast?" asked Shimazaki. He could make something…or he could wake Shibata. He wouldn't cook for Shimazaki, for some reason it seemed like Shibata disliked him, but he would cook for the kid. He loved kids. One of these days he would have a million of them and they would all be three meters tall and weirdly nice. Like a subspecies of gentle giants or whatever. Shibata would feed the kid in true gentle giant feature and then….

Well Shimazaki would find some way to make him feel better.

Because he felt like crap. His aura was all lethargic…and not from all the edibles he'd been feeding him to try and fix his brain…and also he was pulling his shirt up over his face like he was crying again…no. He wasn't crying he was smelling himself….and yeah, he stank. The kid stank to high hell. It was the special kind of 'your body just figured out how to stink, stink' that was, honestly, the worst kind of stink that a person could….well there was the three days into a bender stench...yeah. That was worse. They were in that two day into a bender stench…if the kid eating molly and then him trying to fix the kid's brain chemistry with copious amounts of edibles and smokables could count as a bender…

He was doing his best here.

"Yeah….ok…are there poptarts? Um…uh….and can I borrow something to wear? I think that my clothes might need to be washed." Said Sho as he put his shirt back where it belonged. He smelled terrible. If dad had been there he would have told Sho that he either had to get in the bath willingly or he would hold him under the water until he was clean…probably right after he told him how proud he was that he had found a girlfriend finally…or whatever. He didn't want to go home and…and Shimazaki had clothes…and his clothes might have fit Sho…maybe…

Or maybe he just wanted to wear Shimazaki's clothes.

He didn't know and he didn't want to know. He was tired of feelings, having them, and thinking about them. Every time he thought about his feelings he just felt worse. The way he felt about Shimazaki and…and how it just…it wasn't getting any better. He knew that, in the movies and on TV, people fell in and out of love all the time. That was just what happened and it happened so easily…but real life wasn't like a movie. He was in love with Shimazaki and he had no idea how to fall out of love with Shimazaki….

And also…being in love with Shimazaki…it felt…kind of good….bad because he wasn't supposed to feel this but also….also kind of good and….and he didn't want to think about it anymore.

"I have no idea if we have poptarts or not but, yeah, you can borrow some of my clothes. The box closest to the desk has clean sleep clothes in it. Grab one of my t-shirts and sleep shorts, probably the ones with the drawstring unless you want to hold them up all day, and then toss your old stuff in the dirty basket and I'll do a load…and don't mess anything up. I have a system and, let me tell you, it's a bitch organizing clothes when you can't see." Said Shimazaki. The kid had better not have been about to mess up Toshi's handiwork. Shimazaki picked out clothes for how they felt….and before Toshi had decided to take over buying his clothes apparently he had been dressing like he was colorblind….heh….

He was funny in his head sometimes.

But the things happening outside of his head were not funny. The kid…well he was a kid. His brain chemistry should have bounced back by now. MDMA worked by pumping your brain full of all of it's feel good chemicals and that left you depressed when they were depleted….but getting good and stoned, and taking a Xanax for that deep Xan sleep….well all of that should have reset his brain…but it hadn't. He had no idea how kid's brains worked, he wasn't a brain doctor, but he did know that the kid should not have been this down….

When you think bad thoughts then push them away.

That was what he had taught the kid, well what he had been trying to teach the kid, to do. He had been trying to show him that you didn't have to be sad. That being sad was boring and being boring was a fate worse than death. Life was to live. If you just kept moving then the bad thoughts couldn't catch up with you. Just keep on moving and keep on doing what you had to do to keep them away. Otherwise you got all sad and boring and dwelt on the past all day every day and you started asking yourself the stupidest questions like 'why was I even born?' and 'what's the point of my existence?' and 'does anyone even want me here?' and other such things that you shouldn't have ever asked yourself. You should have just….just kept on going. Drink and smoke and take whatever you could and just…just so you could FEEL something. Something other than that heavy, cold feeling that sometimes liked to set in on you. That stupid feeling that clung to you like a desperate ex…that stupid feeling that liked to pop up when you least wanted it…

Those were the feelings…the boring feelings…..that a person didn't need to feel.

So he focused on something else, anything else, as he left the room and left the kid to get changed. He didn't care if the kid changed in front of him, to him naked people looked pretty much the same as clothes people, but he didn't want to make everything that the kid felt any worse than it had to be. The kid…he was going through a lot and Shimazaki….he had no idea what he was supposed to do about that and…

And he decided to just figure out what he was going to do this morning…then he could figure out the rest of the kid's life.

He walked over to the bathroom first before anything. He needed to brush his teeth and his hair was driving him crazy. He hated it when it got all droopy in the mornings like this. He knew that he could always cut it, they were in a free country for the time being, but then he wouldn't be able to spike it up and he liked it all spiked up. It felt nice and people seemed to like it…well Toshi, he knew for a fact, liked it. They liked it so much that they ran their hand through it sometimes without even realizing it…like when they cuddled and he listened to them reading….and he hadn't been able to do that in a while…but that was ok. He could feel….Toshi was getting up….and he knew that Toshi was going to come over and run a hand through his hair before they called him a moron…

Maybe he was clairvoyant.

"You have toothpaste on the corner of your mouth, you moron." Said Minegishi as they ran a hand through his hair. They would never admit it but they liked his hair like this. After he combed it, once it was all spiked up, it was hard to tell just how long it was. Longer than theirs. Softer, too, probably because he hadn't been dying it for years and years. They missed this, being near him, though they would never admit it. They had missed being able to be near him….

Idiot that he was.

"Somehow I knew that you were going to call me that." Said Shimazaki as he rinsed his toothbrush off and licked the toothpaste out of the corner of his mouth. Minty fresh for that artificially clean feeling.

"Maybe you can see the future." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes. Ryou…that moron Ryou. They didn't know whether to kiss him or to strangle him. They had set out to ask him, exactly, what he thought that he was doing borrowing Suzuki's kid like that. If Mob's little brother was going to be moving in with them now. If they should go and get some bunk beds for him and Sho. If Shimazaki had even come close to beginning to think any of this through….

But then they had seen him.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder and other such clichés. He hadn't been absent just…they hadn't had their time together in a couple of days. They hadn't had their time to cuddle and listen to books or smoke and listen to music…or other things. Times when they would just…be together….and he would be there and they would be there and it would all just be so….so nice and…and they had it bad. It had been so long since they had been together, alone together, and just…seeing him there…and he was an attractive man. He was attractive and he said that he knew it…but they got the feeling that he had no idea the true effect he had on them and…

And they needed to stop reading trashy romance novels so early in the morning.

"Maybe….and maybe you can too. Guess what I'm about to do?" asked Shimazaki as he turned around and put a hand on their waist. On the dip in their waist. He loved that space, there, right above their hip. They were thin, boney even, but he liked it. Their hip was sharp, sort of, but it reminded him that they were there. He could get a better look at them this way, well his aura could, and they were so….

God, he loved Toshi so fucking much.

"I don't need to be a fortune teller to see my future. You're going to kiss me, I'll kiss you back, and then you'll say something stupid like 'I love you' and then I'll tell you to shut up about that and then you'll tell me that you can't help the way you feel and then Mob's little brother, who by the way is wearing your favorite shirt, is going to overhear and then his little heart will snap in two and then he'll finally go home to his own and he'll finally get over this crush he has on you." Said Minegishi. They picked up his hand and took it off of their waist. They…maybe have had feelings…feelings which went beyond friendship…for him but they weren't going to just….sit there and get lost in….in him….

He needed to deal with this.

Not the feelings that they had for him, one of which Mob would have called 'doki doki' and grilled them about for hours if she had been there watching all of this, but the feelings that the kid had for him. Feelings which also could have been called 'doki doki'…or maybe even something more. Sho…he was not leading a good life. Ryou was one of the few positive people in his life, and he was damn good looking too, and of course Sho had developed a crush on him…and Ryou finally had someone to live vicariously through since he had spent so much of his childhood suffering…..not that he would ever call it that….and all of this was just a recipe for disaster….

A disaster that Ryou needed to have dealt with before it had gotten to this point.

"Damn Toshi….that was pretty good. Are you sure that you aren't clairvoyant?" asked Shimazaki. He faced them as he reached over to the counter and picked up his comb from the sink. He felt Toshi shaking their head. They reached past him…and they needed a bath…but in a good way. They smelled like they had just gotten up…and he missed getting up with them….but those times would come back. Maybe if he teleported Sho back to his bed…yeah. That might have been the thing to do…but then he would be sad…he would figure this out later.

"No, I just know you…and I know you well enough to know that you aren't going to do anything about Sho, are you?" asked Minegishi as they handed him his hair oil. He needed a shower….but not in a bad way. He smelled like old cologne and hair oil and….well…himself. They leaned away, out of it, because they just…could not think while he was that close.

"I am doing something." Said Shimazaki. He knew that he was doing something. Toshi's aura was giggling. He could hear it. He could feel their heartbeat. They were close enough…and then they weren't. They leaned out of his space and then against the doorframe. He shrugged and combed the knots out of his hair. He loved them but also he could tell that they wanted their space…and he wanted to be in their space too…

"What? You're going to stand here combing your hair until he gets bored and leaves?" asked Minegishi motioning out towards the hallway. They could hear him, now, and apparently he had decided that he was going to be helpful and do some laundry…and they half expected to see a toothbrush with Sho written on it hanging out in the toothbrush cup with all the others. That kid had better not have been planning on moving in. There were four of them already. One more and then…well Minegishi would bring it back down to four soon enough.

"No….because I know that he won't get bored. I'm just going to comb my hair and then I'm going to look for the poptarts because the kid is hungry and then I'll smoke him up again and-" said Shimazaki. Maybe the kid just needed to get more stoned. Just…maybe if he was stoned twenty four seven then whatever depression he was in would end and then he would be back to normal…or something. He didn't know. This might have been a job for a healer, this seemed like a brain chemistry thing, but he knew not to give that Fukuda bastard anything else over him…and if Mob hadn't been Mob…and if she hadn't been strong enough to stop him than that bastard would have been a smear on the ground….but she had stopped him and…

And he needed to stop thinking about this because he was starting to pull his hair out….and he had been told before that it was one of his best features. By Toshi, anyway, and their opinion of him was the only one that mattered.

"Yeah, can you maybe stop that? Mob at least has an excuse, I'm pretty sure that she's the one who destroyed the Eighth Division because she lost control of her powers, but her little brother has near perfect control. He doesn't need any of that, Ryou, and honestly I think that you're ruining his life with that." Said Minegishi. Honestly had always been a thing between them. Honesty and also telling each one telling the other when they were fucking up….and he was fucking up. The things that they did to cope…they had enough sense to know that there were other ways to cope…and they wished that they had other coping skills…and for the rest of their life they would regret setting Mob down the same path that they had been walking down for years…but at least Mob…she had a valid reason. That was a lot of uncontrollable power packed into one little girl. She was…someone who had a lot going on and….and so did her brother…but he had near perfect control and…

And the world did not need another Ryou on it's hands.

"I'm not ruining his life. I'm trying to help him. You know how it is, Toshi, when you just….have all of those boring feelings like sadness…and whatever….it's best to just get rid of those. The kid has been so down lately and I'm just trying to help. I love him, not in the way that he loves me you know me and you know that I'm not like that, and if he were my own kid I would do the same for him as I'm doing now." Said Shimazaki

"This, Ryou, is why we are never having children." Said Minegishi shaking their head. They knew that they would not have been able to help their hypothetical child deal with, well anything. They knew that their child would have all the normal problems that a kid had and also all the problems that came with being an esper, they got the feeling that them and Ryou, being as powerful as they were, would make a powerful esper kid, and then the kid would have to deal with having powers and also…everything that came with having the two of them for parents…

They were never having a kid. Ever.

"I never asked-" said Shimazaki. He wondered, for a moment, if Toshi knew how to read minds. If they knew what he had been thinking and if they knew that he wanted that more than…well more than a lot of things. He didn't know. Maybe he was just getting old…or something…or maybe he had just realized how awesome kids could be…

Or maybe he had just realized how awesome Toshi could be…and he wanted…well he wanted to make a person with them because…because then it would be as awesome as they were and also…also he maybe didn't want them to ever just…go from him….or whatever.

"You don't have to ask, Ryou, you're transparent. I know you and I know that you want us to have kids and I know that our child would not deserve us for parents…and also I have no interest in getting pregnant, either. You and I would be terrible parents and Suzuki's kids are a case in point." Said Minegishi. They reached over and took the comb from him. They reached up and straightened his hair out for him. There. Now he would listen.

"Well maybe they just get all of their problems from their dad. I'm not saying that we would ever have to have a kid but-" said Shimazaki

"Because you know better than that." Said Minegishi. There was no way that they were going through pregnancy and childbirth and then raising a human being that they had brought into this fucked up world. If he wanted to have a kid so badly then he could have one with someone else or he could swing by an orphanage or something.

"….yeah. I know better than that. I think that, if we were to have a kid, that you'd be a great parent." Said Shimazaki. He said that and he meant it…he meant it more than anything else in the whole world. Toshi would have been….they would have been the best parent ever. Better than his had been, anyway.

"Yeah, because I've done such a wonderful job with Mob, haven't I?" asked Minegishi with so much sarcasm that even Mob would have been able to notice.

"You're great with Mob. You love her and she loves you. Seriously. You guys are so sweet together I can feel my teeth rotting out." Said Shimazaki. Toshi would have been a good parent. He would have done his best but Toshi had this in the bag. They were more of a parent to Mob than her own parent was…though that wasn't saying much considering how much of a bastard Suzuki was.

"Then might I suggest that you stop eating garbage?" asked Minegishi rolling their eyes. They knew what he was getting at…and they had made some big mistakes with Mob. Mob….they might have ruined her life…or set her down the path to ruin…and she wasn't even their child. If that was what they did to someone else's child then God only knew how they would ruin their own kid.

"Nope. I can't. It's a part of my lifestyle." Said Shimazaki with a laugh that he didn't feel. He knew that Toshi didn't want kids and…and that wasn't a deal breaker….but they didn't even have a deal to break in the first place. He loved them and….and what they had was great but….he didn't even know what else he wanted with them. They lived together, they had sex constantly, they kissed and cuddled, and they just…were….together. Why did it matter, then, if they said it back? He didn't know. He felt like Sho with all of this hopeless pining….poor kid. Poor little guy….God, empathy sure sucked, didn't it?

"Well then can you at least stop giving drugs to kids who don't need them? Mob at least needs them but Sho…you're just teaching him some terrible coping mechanisms. That's a big reason why I don't think that we should have kids. I mean I have no interest in having a kid with you, or anyone so don't freak out and I know you will, but I know that we have no business being parents. That kid…he has a lot of issues and…yeah. I think that you're making this whole thing a lot worse than it has to be." Said Minegishi. Ryou could be something of a coward, sometimes. He liked things the way that they were and he was afraid to lose Sho, he would never admit it but he did have abandonment issues probably relating to his horrifically abusive childhood, and he would never risk losing Sho…and if Minegishi had been in the habit of psychoanalyzing people they would have said that Ryou and Sho were becoming way too codependent.

"Toshi….I'm not. He needs-" said Shimazaki. He was not ruining Sho's life. He needed a friend, Shimazaki was that friend, and he needed to be able to just take a break from his terrible life…and Shimazaki could give him that escape. When he had been a ten year old he would have killed for some way to just…get rid of all of those stupid feelings that…yeah. He wished, back when he had been a ten year old, that he'd had someone like him in his life.

"He needs you to tell him that you're not interested in him and you never will be." Said Minegishi. They reached up and held his head between their hands. He needed to listen. They needed to get through to him before he let this go any further. They knew Mob and if her brother was anything like her then, yeah, this was not going to end anytime soon. This needed to end soon, very soon, because as bad as this was when he was ten they didn't want to know what this would be like when he was eleven or twelve or thirteen….yeah. They had no idea what they would do if Sho was still a teenager and still madly in love, or whatever, with Ryou….

They were going to go and live in the woods, yes, that was what they would do.

"I'm not going to rip his heart out like that. I don't need him being all….mopey and boring. He's going to get over me eventually. I just have to wait for that…and I just have to wait this out." Said Shimazaki. He hated waiting. He had spent so much of his life waiting…back when his life had been four walls and a door that he couldn't open…back when he had been so small and back before he had been able to just…go where he wanted to go and…and he had been so small and…and he was not small again and…and he was not small. He could wait. He could sit and wait for however long it took for Sho's feelings to end or whatever.

How long could that possibly take?

"I've never known you to be capable of just sitting and waiting." Said Minegishi. They reached over and pulled down three pieces of his hair. One looked stupid, so did two, but three…well that was the magic number. They didn't know why. They just knew that he looked best like this…and they knew that he didn't need their help…but also they just…they just kept on doing things for him. Helping him…and they didn't know why…

They knew exactly why.

They knew why they did this for him, why they did anything for him, and why they would never stop doing things for him. They lo-the cared about him. They cared about him and…and they didn't want to see him get hurt…and they didn't want him to accidentally hurt someone else. They knew him, they knew that he meant well, and they knew fully well that the road to hell was paved with good intentions. Ryou….he was…he needed them and…and they needed to be there for him…

Even though they did not need any extra work.

"I'm capable of a lot of things, Toshi, a lot of things that you wouldn't think that I would be. I'm handling this. I'm going to finish combing my hair and then I'm going to get this kid some poptarts-" said Shimazaki. Toshi flicked him over the head. They weren't mad at him. They never did that when they were mad at him. They were annoyed with him, they had every right to be annoyed with him, but they weren't mad and that was what mattered.

"Pretty sure that Hatori finished off the last of them when he stumbled in last night." Said Minegishi

"Well then I'll wake up Shibata and have him make some poptarts. How hard can that be? He loves to cook." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. They shook their head. He focused on them. He focused on them so intently that he could feel their bangs brushing against their forehead. God…he wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed with them…and they were so warm and…and he just…he had someone to think about besides himself and…..and he could feel the kid moving around and…and he needed food…

The not so fun parts of having a kid. They needed food and stuff.

"Right. Well once you're both done with this little picture of domesticity maybe you just, you know, treat him like the child he is. You talk about how you love him like your own son but you treat him like he's a friend your own age. He's a kid. Treat him like one….and tell him to stay the hell away from the washer and dryer, too." Said Minegishi before they went back to their room. Ryou could handle this, at least he said so, and Minegishi…well they knew that everything had an ending and this one….well it might end in a mess that they had to clean up….but it was what it was.

"I can do that! You'd better believe that I can do that! I can do the hell out of that!" shouted Shimazaki…maybe a little too loudly. He felt the house shake as Hatori fell out of bed. He heard the couch groan as Shibata shot out of bed and shouted something about staying away from his waffle iron…and that sucked because Shimazaki might have felt like messing with that again…and he knew that the kid would have liked to have messed with the waffle iron too. They could melt caramels or marshmallows or chocolate….if they had anymore gram crackers they could make s'mores…and Sho would have loved that…

Because he was a kid.

He was a kid and…and maybe making waffle s'more would be the thing to bring him out of…whatever this was. Or maybe something else. Something that…that kids did. Because he was a kid and….and Shimazaki had never thought of him as an adult but…but he had been approaching this thing like he would have if Sho had been another adult. As an adult he knew that, as a kid, he would have loved to have had someone to smoke him up….but he also knew that as a kid he hadn't had any idea that smoking and drinking and…and anything was even an option…and he'd had his own way of dealing with the deep, sad, and boring feelings that he'd had back when…when he had been Sho's age. He'd had toys and music and books and he still had them…somewhere….he'd have to remember where….but he did still have all of that stuff all stored away….

And maybe he could share all of that with Sho. After breakfast, of course, because Sho was hungry and poptarts were delicious…and hopefully he could get Shibata to make enough for two.


	359. A Dusty, Crowded, Treasure Room

This was another treasure room.

It was sort of like the one that he and big sis had found back at the Castle. Back when they had been little. Back when things had been….well back when things had been easier. But he wasn't little anymore and things weren't easy. He was ten and a half and things were hard, very hard, and sometimes it felt like….like they would only get harder. He felt…sort of like he wanted to go back to bed even though it was still the morning. He felt like he wanted to just lay down in bed and wait for tomorrow to happen…and then he had no idea what he would do when tomorrow happened but he did know that…that it would happen.

Tomorrow would be another day.

And he had no idea what he would do with it. Go home? He just…he didn't want to. Home had dad in it. Home had big sis too but…but it also had dad. If home had just been him and big sis then…then things could have been easier. He wouldn't have had to ever see dad or talk to him or…or anything like that. He could have just been….

Better than he was now.

He didn't even know how he was now. Sad, maybe, or maybe just tired. Tired like he could have slept for days and days and days. Sort of like mom and how she had been really tired all the time. Maybe she had gotten sick, too. He didn't know. Mom never did the things that he did. She had just gotten sick one day and not even Fukuda, traitor that he was, could fix her. Maybe he was sick too. Maybe he would just get sicker and sicker and sicker until he couldn't get out of bed and then he'd spend the whole day in his pajamas….

His own, not Shimazaki's.

He pulled up his pants as he looked around. The room was nothing but boxes and…and some furniture under sheets like they'd had at the Castle. Maybe one of those boxes had pants that could fit him. Shimazaki's shorts were too big even with the drawstring pulled as tight as he could get it. His shirt was too big, too. It went down over one shoulder. He could see the scar, there, and the one on his chest. He needed to wear his own clothes and be back at his own house but…but even without dad being home his house still…it was still dad's house and he could come back at any time and Sho…he just…did not want to be around his dad.

He would rather have spent the rest of his life in one of these boxes all sealed up and smelling like dust than be with dad for even one whole second.

"Well, what do you think?" asked Shimazaki. He wasn't sure what reaction he had been expected but he knew that this was not it. This was a non-reaction and he needed some kind of a reaction…or something. The kid should have been all of over this. He loved exploring! That was one of their things! They teleported places and they explored and the kid did not mope around like a mopey lump and…and he needed to figure out how to fix this sooner rather than later.

"Smells like dust." Said Sho as he wrinkled his nose. The treasure room at the old house had smelled like dust, too. Maybe that was just what memories smelled like, like dust. That was what a treasure room was, it felt like, a graveyard for memories. Dad had kept his stuff from when he had been a kid in the treasure room, the memory of when he had been little, and maybe this was where Shimazaki kept his memories of being little, too. It was a nice thought, a warm sort of thought, that Shimazaki used to be a kid like he used to be a kid…but he also didn't want to start thinking those thoughts. Thoughts like that would have just led him to thinking thoughts like…like if he and Shimazaki would have been friends if they had been kids together…and if they could have been…well things that he knew not to think about. He didn't want to think like that. He just…he wanted….he wanted to go to bed again. Maybe if he slept enough all of these thoughts would get bored and then go off into someone else's head….or something. He didn't know.

Maybe he could make a treasure room in his head and hide all of the thoughts that he didn't like to have in there….only he would never show them to anyone.

"Well someone's not impressed." Said Shimazaki. He flicked Sho over the head. He swatted his hand away. Good. Well at least the kid wasn't a complete mopey lump. He would have thought that Sho could have gotten a kick out this. It was a storage until filled with toys! Well toys, clothes, family pictures, records, the old Hi-Fi, and other assorted junk…but still. Sho should have loved this. He loved to explore and he loved to get into things, that was how they had gotten into this mess in the first place, and he would have thought that Sho would have been diving head first into those boxes the second he saw them…but he wasn't. He was just standing there being all boring and mopey and shit…and that did not suit him at all.

Nope. Not at all.

"I'm impressed…..I mean I will be once you tell me what's supposed to be so impressive. It's just a treasure room. We had one in the house I lived in when I was little." Said Sho. He didn't much want to look around through stuff. Looking through stuff was how he had ended up like this in the first place. He would gladly help Shimazaki find whatever it was that he needed to find, it was easier a lot of the time to have Sho find stuff for him, but he wasn't going to just go and look in all the boxes.

Looking through stuff hadn't ended so well the last time he had tried it.

"Oh, it's just a treasure room, he says. We have one when I lived in my old house, he says. Ryou, why did you bring me here, he says." Said Shimazaki

"I never asked you why you brought me here…but yeah, why did you bring me here?" asked Sho

"Because you've been a real sad sack lately and I won't have it. I tried everything, well I thought that I had tried everything, but then I thought…and this is a completely original thought that came from my own brilliant mind, that I should treat you more like a kid. I figured that you liked toys, and you liked exploring, and also boxes are pretty damn awesome, and we're in Tokyo so…you know….why not bring you to where I store my old childhood stuff. Well the stuff that I had put in storage before my house burnt down…which was an unfortunate accident and not a purposeful act of arson." Said Shimazaki

"You put metal in the microwave on purpose. You told me that story before." Said Sho

"Yeah, to see what would happen….and anyway the arson investigator ruled it an accident so that's one crime that I didn't commit." Said Shimazaki

"If you say so." Said Sho

"Yeah I do…come on. Just start looking through boxes until you find something that you want to play with or whatever. You can play with anything you find, some of it you can keep, and some of it I think you'll really like. I have no idea." Said Shimazaki

"You know that I have toys at home, right? More toys than I know what to do with?" asked Sho

"I do but I thought you'd like some of mine. I don't know. I've been saving these for my kid and you're kind of like my kid so, you know, have at them." Said Shimazaki. He still wasn't sure if he wanted his own actual kid. He loved Toshi but they didn't want one and…and also they raised some very good points. The kid, Sho, he had a lot of problems due to having been fathered by Suzuki and not literally any other man in the world, but Shimazaki had no clue how to deal with these problems. If he ever had a son, or a daughter, or gender neutral kid since he figured at least one of his kids would take after their moth-parent who carried and birthed them, he knew that his kid would have problems…and he knew that as the dad he would be the one who had to help fix these problems…and he only knew how to fix his problems one way…

Mostly by pushing away all the bad thoughts and feelings….

And that might not have been the best for his kids. Some of them, yes, but not all. After all Mob and Sho were siblings from the same parents but the difference between the two of them was like night and dad. Mob…she could handle her shit. She had been handling her shit since she had been eight. She had even managed to have a good trip that time they took acid together…and she had pulled him out of hat spiral thank God…but Sho…he was another person entirely. Shimazaki got mopey after coming down from MDMA, everyone did, but the kid seemed to get especially mopey…and no amount of sleep or food or smoking or drinking seemed to be able to fix it…

And Shimazaki was running out of ideas.

"Oh…ok." Said Sho. He went over to the closest box and opened it up. He didn't want to think about that. The weird….just the fact that he was being weird. The fact that he didn't want Shimazaki to think of him as his kid but also…also it was kind of nice. Dad had never even told him about the treasure room at the old house. He and big sis had found it on their own and dad…well he just told them that they could have all of his old toys because he didn't need them anymore. That was it. He never just…told Sho that there even WAS a treasure room and he just….he had been saving them for Sho….or maybe not…

Maybe he was just a packrat.

Maybe that was why he had built the Castle for his family. Maybe he just needed a place to store all of his old stuff. Maybe he just couldn't throw anything away so he just…kept it all. It would have made sense. Maybe that was why he kept on stealing so many of Sho's drawings, too. Maybe he just had to hold on to everything….and stuff. Maybe that was it. Sho…he didn't care that dad had never told him that he had saved all of that stuff for his son…or anything. Maybe he had been, the son that he had wanted, and Sho…he knew that he was not that person…

And he didn't care about being that person.

He didn't care about anything but…but what was in that box and…and it was…dusty. There was a layer of dust on top. This whole room was dusty. Dusty and…and stale. He knew this smell. A lot of the rooms in the Castle had this stale smell. The ones that he and big sis used to play hide and seek in. The ones that had furniture with white sheets thrown over them…those were good for hide and seek…or the room with their old baby stuff in it….old rooms like that. Rooms that had been empty for years. Rooms that had dust so thick on the floors that he and big sis had been able to make footprints. They had been able to make footprints and then…and then they had come back later to see how much their feet had grown…

He wondered what their footprints would look like now.

Not that he would ever be able to go back to the Castle. Those times were over now. The whole house probably had that same stale smell that the old rooms had gotten. That this room had. This wasn't a room like the ones in the Castle, no, the ones in the Castle had wooden floors and walls painted white or blue…and a couple had been yellow…but this room was all concrete. Concrete floors and concrete blocks and just….a lot of concrete. He didn't know why. This was built more like a fortress, like a castle, than the actual Castle that he had lived in before. This was nothing like the Castle….

Aside from the dust.

It got up his nose and made him sneeze as he opened the big, heavy looking box. On the inside he found…books. Sho had nothing against books, they could be downright useful sometimes, but he was not a reader. Apparently Shimazaki was…and he had seen Shimazaki reading before…but he mostly listened to books but these were…these were books in braille…and Sho had no idea what these books were. He wanted to know. He had…back when he had been little…and still now…had no idea what any of the stuff in the treasure room had been. He had been so little that he had just been happy to have found toys….and it had been weird knowing that those had been dad's toys….but now that he was older he knew that there must have been stories behind those toys….

There were stories behind his toys.

Most of them. Like his dart guns. He had gotten those when he had been seven and…and he actually didn't want to think about those. No. He didn't want to think about how he had used big sis as target practice…he had been such an asshole back then…but he was better now. He would probably get rid of those since they had a bad story behind them….and he wouldn't give them to the kids that he had no choice in having….he didn't want to think about that either. He didn't want to think about the life ha d would have to have…the one that would make dad proud of him…and he didn't want to think about how one day his kids would find a treasure room with his old junk and…and hopefully they didn't hurt each other even on accident like the time that he had smacked big sis in the face with the kendo sword and…and he hoped that….

He hoped that his kids would be happier than he had been….and would be….because if they had to exist he at least wanted them to be happy…and stuff.

He was happy….sometimes. This was not one of those times. This was…he had been happy before and…and he would be happy now. Happy that Shimazaki was sharing all of this with him. This was more than anyone else had done for him….well aside from big sis, she showed him things that were important to her all the time and also…..also Fukuda had done the same thing. Fukuda had shown him stuff that…that he had told Sho was important to know about…and stuff. Stuff that Sho had never asked to know about….and stuff that he hadn't really wanted to know about and…and he felt sort of like Fukuda had done that more for himself than he had for Sho….not like what Shimazaki was doing now. He had said that he was trying to make Sho feel better…and he had been trying to make Sho feel better for days now…but Sho just…he didn't know how to feel better. He didn't know how to just snap out of this…this….whatever this was. This sadness…..

So he just kept on looking through the box.

He ran his hands across the spines of the books…and there were a lot of them. Some of them were super thick like school books and some of them were thin like kid's books…and some of them were kid's books that he recognized. He picked up a thin book. This one had dots printed over the regular words. This was…he knew this book. Mom had read this to him and big sis when they had been little. They had called it Kiki the Witch but it was really called-

"Hey, Kiki's Delivery Service. Man, I haven't read this since I was a kid." Said Shimazaki. He hadn't meant to sneak up behind Sho, that was why he had been walking instead of teleporting, but apparently he had. The kid's whole aura yelped….and also the room shook just a little. Just enough to send some dust falling….and they were ok. Nobody was around to open up this storage room and ask him what the hell he thought that he was doing showing his face around here again. Nope. He would be fine and the kid would be fine…and if things did get bad the he could just teleport them away or whatever.

They'd be fine.

"I read it too…well my mom read it to me." Said Sho. He looked around as he said 'mom'. Like if he said the word 'mom' loud enough it would summon dad and then dad would teach him, again, what happened when you talked about mom…when you talked about a traitor. He had said, before, that mom was a traitor because she had left. She had defected from the family and…and Sho knew that she had defected from the family but…but it was hard to think of the person who loved him most in the world…the person who had read him this book….not this book specifically but…but the person who had held him in her lap and read him this book….as a traitor. It was hard.

Almost as hard as thinking of Fukuda as a traitor.

He was a traitor. He had betrayed Sho, told his secrets, and gone back on his word. He was more of a traitor than mom was. For all he knew mom was just wandering around lost in the world somewhere or something. Fukuda had made a choice to betray him. He had….he was the same person who had played with him and read to him and carried him on his shoulders and then…and then he had just betrayed him. Well Sho…he didn't need him anymore.

He could read to himself now.

"Yours too?" asked Shimazaki. Well, obviously, his mother had read to him. That was what they did. They sat up on your bed with you and let you put one hand in their hair and the other hand on the page and they read and you read and the world, your world, which had been so small and claustrophobic, it had been claustrophobic before you even knew the word for your world, got even smaller but it was ok because she was there and she loved you….she loved you in the best way that she could…and in getting older you thought to yourself that…that maybe it had been enough…but also maybe it had been more than you had ever deserved.

"Yeah…she read me a lot of books. This one was alright. My sister liked it better than I did." Said Sho. He would be in mom's lap and big sis would be sitting in her bed and she would always ask to see the pictures and Sho wanted her to see them because he had already seen these pictures and he wanted to read his animal book but mom liked this and big sis liked this and that was what they had read and…and the world had been so…it had been before he knew how big the world could be….but the world had been nice and small. Him, his mom, his sister, his room, and a book.

"I used to love this book. My mom would read it to me, too. She used to read it to me and put my fingers on the words so I could follow along….yeah. If not for Kiki's Delivery Service I might have grown up to be a complete illiterate." Said Shimazaki. He reached over Sho's shoulder and ran his hands over the words. Damn. It had been a long time. Maybe Sho wanted to be read to. Toshi had said to treat him like a kid…and also Shimazaki was out of stories at this point. He had told the kid everything of note that had ever happened in his life. He was making shit up at this point…so yeah. Reading a book or something might have been good.

"My mom called it Kiki the Witch…when she read it to me and my sister…but she never made us read along. That was for reading practice time." Said Sho. He let Shimazaki lean over him. He could feel the leather of his coat against his shoulder. He wanted to put his own clothes back on but they were in the dryer. He wanted….well he wanted a lot of things. His own clothes. To lean back into Shimazaki. To be there with him. To be somewhere on his own. He wanted and wanted and wanted but also…also he had no idea what he wanted.

Besides to be ok again…but that was something that he had been wanting for a while now.

"God, reading practice time….don't remind me. I used to love it when she would come and see me, when dad would let her come and see me, but I hated reading practice time. It was so…tedious and boring. I mean I loved her…still love her…" said Shimazaki. Something he and Sho had in common. Conflicting feelings about their dead mothers…and Sho's mother was most likely dead. An away from home…that was the kind of shit they told you when your dog died. Nope. One day the kid would figure out the truth…and then he would be even sadder than he was now. Hopefully that day never came. It was always a bad feeling when you realized that you'd never see your mom again….because she had loved you…and even though she had let bad things happen to you she still loved you and you were still her kid…even if some really bad things had happened to you….

Not the thing to be thinking about right now.

He was here to cheer the kid up. He needed the kid to get up onto his level, he didn't need to get down onto the kid's level, because then they both would have just fed into each other…and not in the good way. They would have just spiraled down into the depths of heavy, depressed feelings…and Shimazaki didn't want that. He could never want that.

Not for Sho and especially not for himself….he had wasted enough of his life feeling sorry for himself.

"Me too….I mean I love mom and…and I didn't really like reading practice. Reading and writing practice…she used to make us do a lot of that…when she was around." Said Sho. He expected, had been expecting, and still expected to get it. To look over and not even have time to see it before he got hit on the side of the head or something. He could see…he could only see the black of the jacket that Shimazaki always wore no matter how hot it was outside. Not the blue of the same suit that dad had been wearing day in and day out for as long as Sho could remember. Dad wasn't there, dad had no idea where he was, and he didn't care either way. Sho was fine. He was safe and he was fine and…and he could talk about mom….and talking about mom…..talking about her and how she had been and how it had been when she had been around….

He couldn't remember the last time he had done this.

"My mom was the same way. I guess she knew that I wouldn't be spending the rest of my life in that room…yeah." Said Shimazaki. He reached over and patted the kid on the head. He didn't want to read that book all of a sudden. He didn't want to read any of those books. There were some primers in there, he didn't have to look to know, and also there was a book of fairytales, a set of encyclopedias, a dictionary, and also several books about dragons….because they were neat…and mom had named him…well his name supposedly had the character for dragon in it. Mom had picked it out for it's meaning or whatever. Mom had wanted the best for him…but she had still let dad lock him away…and she had still let dad leave him out in the woods to die….and she had still let dad just sit there and pretend that he didn't even exist…and he had stilt let dad shoot…

He gave Sho some space. Sho needed the space, not him.

"Moms are like that….I think. They always want to do stuff that's good for you. I mean my mom was like that." Said Sho. He wanted to talk about mom. He wanted to tell Shimazaki everything that he remembered about mom. About how she liked yellow. About how she liked cats. About how she would pick him up and hold him. About how sometimes she let him take out more than the five allowed books from the library. About how she been able to kiss anything better. About how she had always smelled like cinnamon. About how….how she was the best mom that anyone ever could have had…even if she had went away and even if…even if she was never coming back….

"Yeah…where we would be without our moms?" asked Shimazaki. He knew where he would have been. He would have been dead. He would have been dead before he had even realized that he had been alive…but that was his own shit that he was not going to take out on or bring up with Sho. He had his own problems in his life and he did not need Shimazaki's. He was capable of thinking of other people, contrary to popular belief, he just didn't like to. It was hard and it made him stop and think and those were the two things he hated most in the world….

Stopping was the worst and the thoughts that he had while he stopped…he just did not know what in the hell he was even supposed to do with them.

"Here. We'd be here….like we are now." Said Sho. He didn't have a mom anymore. That was why he was here. Dad never would have brought him with if he'd still had a mom. He would have been home with mom and big sis…and he would have gone to school and had other friends…and he never would have met Shimazaki. Part of him wished that he had never met Shimazaki, part of him wished that he could have gone his whole life without having any clue at all what love was or what it felt like, but the rest of him was happy that he had met Shimazaki. Happy that he had made such a good friend…even if he had more than friendly feelings for him…and part of him just….was so happy to be there…

Part of him was starting to feel better…and also wished that Shimazaki hadn't put space between them.

"Yeah, here…in this storage unit….cool. Anyway come here. I found something I think you'll like." Said Shimazaki as he walked through the narrow walkway to one of his many toy boxes. Mom had saved everything, it seemed, everything from when he had been born up until the time she died. She had taken it all out of the old house and had it brought here. This room wasn't all his stuff, there was a lot of junk from the old house, and maybe mom had been able to see the future or something. Maybe she had seen that he would accidentally burn the old house to the ground…

And it had been an accident.

If it had been on purpose he would have waited until dad had come home. It was before he'd had it in him to truly kill the bastard. It had been back when he had been in this terrible limbo space where he did and did not want dad to love him. He wondered what mom had wanted for him…besides not living that life. She had said, before, that she was grateful that he had been born the way he had been born. At least that meant that he would never live dad's life, never die young, never have to cross every single line imaginable…and to this day he wondered why his parents had ever even gotten married if she hated the yakuza life so much. Maybe because dad had loved her…or whatever.

He didn't know and it wasn't like he was about to dig his parents up and ask them so….yeah.

He would much rather have been digging through these dusty old boxes anyway. He didn't have any one thing in particular to show Sho, no, he just wanted him out of his book box. Those….those would stay here. Those would stay here until the book moths got to them or whatever. He didn't know. He had read those books cover to cover and…and if Sho wanted to hear those stories then he'd find the audio book version. Yeah. That was just….audio books were a hell of a lot simpler to read…not that he needed help reading. Not that he need someone's hands over his guiding him page by page….here are the sounds Ryou…mi….mo….mu….ta…chi…tsu….

He knew the sounds. He knew the dots. He knew how to read. He didn't need help anymore.

He felt Sho coming up beside him. The spring was coming back to his step. Toshi had been right. Toshi was always, well almost always, right. Toshi…would have made a hell of a parent. They didn't even like Sho but they had been right about him…about what he needed. About how he had just needed someone to treat him like a kid…like an actual kid. Not like how Ryou had wanted to have been treated when he had been a kid. He didn't know if he had ever been a kid, not really, but he did know that he liked…he liked this. The way Sho was….

How happy he was…and what kid wouldn't have been happy being elbow deep in a box of the greatest toys known to mankind?

"Pretty great, huh Sho?" asked Shimazaki. Sho could have those. Let him have as much as Shimazaki had. That was better than just letting them gather dust in here until the end of time.

"It's…a lot of instruments…mostly." Said Sho as he picked up a tambourine. Shimazaki reached over and gave it a hard whack. It almost went flying from Sho's hands. He felt Shimazaki's aura looking around. Sho had no idea what he was even looking for. Of course they were allowed to be here. This was Shimazaki's treasure room. Why wouldn't he have been allowed in his own treasure room?

"Yeah, I made a lot of noise as a kid. It drove my dad insane but, hey, that's what I do. I drive people insane." Said Shimazaki as he put the tambourine back in the box. Oh yeah dad had hated that thing. He reached down past Sho. He could feel….there was his triangle without the stick…and his slide whistle….and his piccolo…and his flute…and his xylophone without the stick…and his drum also without he sticks…and maybe it was better without the sticks. Maybe it was better that they didn't put up a racket. He was here to cheer Sho up, not freak him out when they got shot at for being here, well when Shimazaki got shot at for being here. He was deep within the family's territory now. This was near both the old house and the new…and he was not allowed anywhere near here….and he didn't give a damn if he got shot at or whatever but he did not need the kid to have to deal with all of that.

"You don't drive me insane." Said Sho. It was true. Sho drove himself insane. Even now. It was like…like he just couldn't shut off his brain. Shimazaki was there and he was being so nice to him…he was always so nice to him…and he didn't need Sho treating him like this…well not treating him like anything but thinking about him like…like this…and stuff…

"Well then I guess that I haven't been trying hard enough." Said Shimazaki. He reached over Sho and felt around…and he knew that he had felt it before…and he found it. He pulled out one of his sticks with the long things at the end and tapped Sho over the head with it. One, two, three. One, and two, and then three.

It was more fun with all three.

He used to….well when he had been small…he used to play devil sticks with these. It had always amazed mom how he could do that without being able to see. She had thought that he had just been keeping up with the beat of it. The sticks going up and down. One, two, three she had counted as she tapped her fingers against her leg…and she hadn't believed him when he said that he could see her moving. When he said that he could see the sticks moving. One in each hand and the one he had been sending flying into the air. Movement…that had been the first thing that he had been able to see…and it had been slow coming….he was a natural esper but he was still human…and his name wasn't Suzuki. He had been born with his powers but they had come slowly. He hadn't been anywhere near the level of prodigy that Suzuki's kids were…

And maybe if he had been, if he had been able to start out seeing more than the long things at the end of this stick flying, that maybe his life would have been different somehow…not better….not worse….but at least….different.

"I'm not insane yet….and also that's a girl's toy." Said Sho. He didn't laugh. Big sis had those when they had been little. She had pink devil sticks with tassels on the end and he had blue ones without. Pink was a girl's color…and Shimazaki's had been pink. With sparkly things and tassels…and this was enough to make him smile and…and he hadn't smiled in a while…but he was smiling again and…and it was a good feeling.

He had really missed this feeling.

"It's not." Said Shimazaki. He knew what girls' toys were. Dolls and play kitchens and tiny irons and ovens and all of that other boring sounding stuff….well not the oven. He had wanted an easy bake oven since he had first heard the ad…and not just because mom sometimes didn't get a chance to feed him. He just liked the smell of baking…and also chocolate cake whenever he wanted it would have been pretty sweet….heh. Because sweets….he was funny in his head.

"Yes it is. My sister had devil sticks just like these. They're pink and have tassels so that means that they're for girls." Said Sho. He was not going to laugh at the fact that someone had tricked Shimazaki into playing with a girl's toy. Nope. That was mean, tricking a blind guy like that, but also it was a little funny…funny enough to make him laugh a little bit…inside of his head….or wherever. Not outside of his head…

Even though he really wanted to.

"Ok first of all pink means nothing to me. Second of all the tassels helped me see the stupid stick. Third of all it's the twenty first century. There are no boy's toys or girl's toys so stop cracking up over there." said Shimazaki. Well at least the kid was happy again…and how many of his toys had been for girls? He had no idea….and it didn't matter…but it was just….seriously mom? Girl's toys?

"I'm not cracking up…you just have a lot of girl's toys in here." Said Sho as he picked up a yellow horse with butterflies on it's butt and really long hair. This was like something that big sis would have played with when they had been little. This was so girly that even Shimazaki must have been able to see….or feel. He reached over and felt the hair and then dragged his finger down to the butterflies.

"This is Butterscotch and she is not a girl's toy. She's a general. She rallies the other horses to war." Said Shimazaki. He hadn't played with this in years…not since he had been younger than Sho was now. The long war of dragons and ponies…and it had still been going on when he had come back to his room to have found his stuff all gone but…but it had been for the best. Better mom hide his stuff than dad destroy it.

"Shimazaki, I know that you're blind but this is so obviously a girl's toy. It's a horse with long hair and stickers on it's butt. There is no way a guy would ever play with something like this." said Sho. There were others in the box. He picked them up with telekinesis and lined them up on a low table with a white sheet over it. Shimazaki out the yellow horse down and ran his hands over the others.

"Butterscotch….Applejack….Blossom…Minty….Blue Bell…Snuzzles…..there should be more in there. God, I used to love these things…and how are these for girls? They're horses. I didn't know that having a dick made it impossible to like horses." Said Shimazaki as he ran his hands over some old friends. Poor Snuzzles…cut down so soon in the war of dragons and ponies…which of course meant that he had accidentally dropped this one in the piss bucket…but mom had cleaned her off with lemon and ammonia so she was good as new…smelled terrible though…and that was why she had stayed in the pony graveyard.

"I have horses. These are girly horses. I mean they have girl eyes and they're in girl colors and-" said Sho. He would have kept going if Shimazaki hadn't turned to face him with both of his eyes opened.

"Kid, color means nothing to me. Get that through your head already." Said Shimazaki

"Sorry. I just forget, sometimes, that you don't know what color is…that's all." said Sho

"No, it's ok…and fine. They're girly horses…but I will have you know that they are also fierce warriors. They fought valiantly in the war against the dragons for control of the left side of the room." Said Shimazaki

"Why only the left side?" asked Sho

"Because the right side had my Hi-Fi and record collection. Well mostly records, I have some cassettes and eight tracks. No CDs, though, since those were crazy expensive back then. Besides, you get a better sound from vinyl anyway. I wouldn't have risked that side of the room for the dragon and horse war. They fought on the side with the piss bucket." Said Shimazaki. He wondered if that bucket was still in here…and he hoped that it wasn't. God he hated that bucket…but it was ok. He would never have to piss where he slept ever again. Not unless he was REALLY fucked up.

"How could dragons and horses even have wars? Dragons have fire breath and also they can fly. What can horses do?" asked Sho. He didn't ask about the bucket. Shimazaki did not like to talk about the bucket so he would not be asking him about the bucket.

"Because horses have a complex society, guns, and also magic…and some of them can fly, too. There should be some horses with wings in there…and a shit ton of dragons…or maybe in another box." Said Shimazaki before he went over and helped Sho look. The rest of his horses and the dragons weren't in the first box they had looked through, or the second, box, not. They were in the third. Shimazaki found the ones he could and then he lined them up on his own night stand after he took the sheet off. He let his fingers linger on the top before he got everyone into battle formation.

The crack was still there.

He had hit his head on that and…and the top had cracked. It was a superficial crack, this whole thing was light and cheap, and the crack was mostly in the paint…but it had still hurt like hell. He had been…well not as old as Sho…around eight or nine when that had happened. When he had been jumping on the bed and the next thing he knew he had been standing on the ceiling…and then he had fallen down and hit his head…and then he threw up….and the rest of that day was a blur…he was pretty sure looking back that he had been concussed….

But that was in the past. Now it was time for war.

"So can you explain to me how a bunch of pretty horses with super long hair are going to fight fire breathing dragons?" asked Sho as Shimazaki lined the dragons up just right. His fingers went over all of them. They were all different. The colors and sparkles meant nothing to him but the spikes and scales…and some of them had different pieces of cloth tied around them…those meant something to him. He was as careful with them as Sho was with his artist's pencils…and it was nice…

He felt like he was seeing something that…that not a lot of people got to see.

"Well first of all don't knock their hair, it's fun to brush, and second of all just watch." Said Shimazaki. God, he felt like a kid again…but in a good way. Not the way that made him swear that he could smell piss or whatever. No, this was one of his good memories of being small…of being smaller than Sho…and of having almost infinite playtime...

Sort of like he did now.

He had near infinite time to just dick around all day every day. He could play with Sho all day and then hang out with Toshi and then play with him all day and…and life was good. Life was so good now that he didn't have to dwell on how not good life had been before. He didn't have to dwell on how these had been his only friends…how one day he had come back from a rare trip to the yard and found all of his friends gone…and about how mom had told him that it was for the best. About how dad didn't want him in there talking to himself and jumping around and making a racket….and about how once mom had been called away, when she had been in for it for letting him rest his head on her lap and for letting him cry, he had turned the radio on the Hi-Fi up as high as it would go…because it was so big that it took up part of his room and there was no way anyone was getting it out of there…and he could even remember the song order. It had been….it had gone….a bunch of top of the charts shit. That Yah Yah Yah thing…some Madonna since she had still been big…that Kiss Me thing that they never stopped playing….Bye For Now…..all of that…and he could almost hear it…

But he couldn't hear it and he wasn't going to hear it and he was going to show Sho the best toys in the history of mankind…that was what he was going to do.

"I'm watching." Said Sho. There was nothing fun about watching other people play. When he had been a kid mom would put him in time out on his bed or in the corner of his room and he would watch big sis play and it had been the worse…but this didn't feel like that. Mainly because he wasn't being punished for anything and also….also he wanted to be here. With Shimazaki. Watching him have fun….even if his aura kept cycling from happy to sad and then to mad and then back to happy…it was still nice to just…watch him…and stuff…..

"You have encroached on our territory for the last time elder pointy back! We of the pony nation shall not stand by and take this disrespect. I warn you now, Buttersctoch, that the dragon nation shall bring war to you! First! Because you guys suck!" said Shimazaki before he made them fight…which was a lot of throwing and sound effects and…and it may not have been the best game but it had really helped him learn how to see things.

Like Sho.

Sho was beside him now. He was kneeling there beside on the concrete and he was taking the side of the horses and…and he was pretty good at this game…as good as someone could be at this game. He was better, maybe, even than Shimazaki had been since he had an incredible amount of fine control over his telekinesis….which made for some great flying scenes…

And for some great throwing as well.

"See? What did I tell you? Aren't these the best toys in the whole fucking world?" asked Shimazaki as Sho collected the thrown toys and deposited them back into the box. That had been fun. He had no idea how long they had been playing for, and he had no idea how loud they had been, but he did know that they had just had more fun than they'd had in days. Sho was even smiling again. He didn't even have to focus very hard to be able to tell. Sho was happy and if Sho was happy then he was happy….and maybe he hadn't been happy in a while, either.

He could too take care of a kid.

He loved Sho like his own kid and…and Toshi had been right. Treating Sho like an actual kid, like he had never been treated, had worked. Because Sho was a kid…and while he had his problems he was not Shimazaki. He had his own shit going on in life and all but…but his shit was not Shimazaki's shit and…and he felt good about this. About how he had helped Sho. He was not useless, he was not worthless, he was not a mistake, and he was not invisible. He was Shimazaki Ryou, he was awesome, and he knew a thing or two about raising kids…

Now all he had to do was get Toshi on team have an open but committed relationship, have a kid or seven, and then live with him in domestic bliss.

"I guess….whatever even is some of this stuff?" asked Sho as he put the dragons and girls ponies back in their box. There was so much…so much to look through. Shimazaki had a lot of toys…and some of his toys didn't even look like toys. He picked up a cube with different fabrics on each side. There were little squares all over the cube. He could see felt and silk and leather and yarn and…also cardboard and cling wrap and tin foil…..and he didn't get it at all.

"Pass it over, let me see." Said Shimazaki. Sho had been holding a cube…and a lot of his toys had been cubes. Mom had made him most of his toys, either from scratch or she had bought toys and made them fun for him and…and the minute Sho put the cube in his hands he knew that this wasn't one of his building blocks or his shaking cubes. This was….oh God he remembered this….

"It's for feeling?" asked Sho as he watched Shimazaki drag his fingers across all of the squares…and now he felt like an idiot. He felt like the biggest idiot in the whole, wide, world. Of course it was for feeling. These were Shimazaki's toys. What else could he do with them? God, Sho had ruined everything. They had been having so much fun but then he'd had to go and ruin it all….he sucked. He sucked as a friend and as a person and-

"Hey, hey, calm down. Don't get so worked up over a Rubik's cube. It's alright if you can't solve it. My mom made me this back when I was like four or five and I still haven't been able to solve this to this day….and that's why it lives in here." Said Shimazaki. Nope. Not that thing again. This had been the source of so many tears when he had been little….solving this thing was impossible. Every time you turned it the whole thing just got more and more and more mixed up….he felt each square…

It was more fun to feel the damn thing than to try and solve it.

"I've seen those before….but they have different colors. Sorry. I know, color means nothing to you." Said Sho softly as Shimazaki ran his fingers over the different squares. He looked over at Sho, he could feel his aura on him, and then he reached out and took Sho's hand in his. Sho had to remember how breathing worked, he had to remind himself that he had to breathe, and he had to tell the goldfish in his stomach that this was no time to wake up, finally, and he had to stop thinking about how close Shimazaki was and how warm he was and…and other stuff….

"Here, this is actually kind of fun sometimes. My mom covered it in cloth and leather and plastic and other stuff for me. You just have to turn the sides until they all line up…and this must be solvable since they've been making these since before I was born." Said Shimazaki. One the one hand the kid was getting back to normal and on the other hand…the kid was getting back to normal. Normal meaning his usual aural giggles and lovesick nervousness….and he couldn't help that. He was getting to that age when he only had enough blood in his body for either his brain or his dick, not both, and everyone knew which would win in that battle over resources….

But he would gladly take lovesick Sho over mopey and depressed Sho any day of the week.

"Um….this is fun….I guess." Said Sho as he moved the squares around…and Shimazaki had been right. This was hard. This was complicated and the more he moved the squares around the more he messed them up. He managed to get a whole top row of leather squares but the next row had ne leather and two silk…and he focused on the cube and not on how near Shimazaki was…and how he should not have cared if Shimazaki was near or far or…or anything like that…

He kept on turning the cube.

He managed to get two silks in a row when he turned the topside too hard and he felt some of the leather come off under his fingers. He gasped. Shimazaki looked up from the box that he had been in. He had a paddle ball in his hands and started to paddle as he looked over at Sho. He tried to make words as Shimazaki focused on him. He had broken…he had broken something that Shimazaki had played with…something that he had been holding onto since he had been a kid….something that his mom had made him….

Things from moms were special.

Mom…his mom hadn't really made him things aside from dinner…but if he could have saved something that she had made then he would have. He would have saved it forever just to have proof that he'd had a mom. That she had been there. That she had been there and she had been his mom and…and so that he could have had something from her….because sometimes it felt like she was dead. Sometimes it felt like she had died even though she had only run away….and Shimazaki's mom had actually died. She had died and…and it had been bad. It had been so bad that Shimazaki hadn't even told him what happened…it had been that bad….

And he had gone and ruined something that Shimazaki's dead mom had made for him….he was a terrible friend…

"What are you freaking out about over there?" asked Shimazaki. The kid had better not have been about to get sad again. He did not want to have to deal with him being sad again….and he didn't have any more storage rooms full of toys for the kid to mess around in.

"I-I'm sorry. One of the pieces is all….coming off now…and I didn't mean to!" said Sho. He wanted to kowtow. He wanted to beg Shimazaki's forgiveness. He wanted to run away from here even though he had no clue where 'here' even was. He had messed up and now Shimazaki would never want to hang out with him again and they would stop being friends and….and stuff….and he just….

A hand was in his hair.

Shimazaki hadn't been far away. He had bene close enough that he had been able to reach over and run his hand through Sho's hair…and now he had so many feelings that he didn't even know how to name them all. He felt bad for ruining one of Shimazaki's toys but also…also he had this weird feeling running all up and down his spine, light lightening, before settling in his stomach as Shimazaki touched his hair and…and he hated himself for feeling like this…but also he liked feeling like this because….because it was a good feeling…even though he shouldn't have been feeling a good feeling…..and it was just….

Shimazaki's hand in his hair.

"Give it here." Said Shimazaki as he took his hand from Sho's hair. The kid needed to wash his hair, and had needed to for some time, but he was back to normal…and that was good. It was good but also a little annoying, because he didn't much care for this crush at all, but still. The kid wasn't all mopey…well he was getting there again…and he had no reason to be.

"Oh. Yeah, these come off all the time. This glue is at least twenty years old, don't kick yourself even if it is one of the leather patches." Said Shimazaki. The kid was practically shaking…and he hoped that it was from worry and not lovesickness….because he was not looking forward to the return of the lovesickness. He knew that he should have just told the kid to his face that he was aware of his feelings, that there was nothing wrong with how he felt, but that he needed to stop feeling that way right now and move on because nothing could ever come of it. He was a good kid, he was a nice kid, and in Shimazaki's mind he would always be a kid…and not only a kid but his kid….

For all intents and purposes Sho was his kid…and he needed to do a good job of this.

"But…the leather pieces…..you like leather the best…and I'm sorry." said Sho. Shimazaki shook his head and tossed the cube back in the box. Sho wanted to say sorry again. Not just for the cube but also for….for everything. The way he had been these past couple of days. The way he felt about Shimazaki. The way he knew that he might never stop feeling about Shimazaki. That he didn't know if he really wanted to stop feeling about Shimazaki….because they weren't bad feelings….they were just feelings that he should not have had about his best friend…or any guy….because even if something was ok for other people that didn't mean that it was ok for him…because dad would have hated him for the rest of his life…more than he hated him now….

No. Dad was proud of him now.

"Don't freak yourself out over a twenty five year old toy. My mom made me a million leather things…hang on. I just remembered something that I think that you'll really get a kick out of." Said Shimazaki. He knew that he had saved it. He had asked mom, specifically, to hide it in a place that dad would never find. A place where he would never find it and ruin it like he found and ruined everything else in Shimazaki's life…and he knew that mom would have put it with everything else…but he wished that he had asked her where it was specifically.

But he wasn't a medium and he wasn't about to dig her up and ask her corpse so, yeah, he was going to look himself.

He expanded his aura out and felt everything. Walls, boxes, all of it meant nothing to him. He was looking for silk and leather, ribbons and beads, velvet and velveteen, and also….also he was looking for himself. He was looking for his own aura, the ghost of it, the feeling that he got from an object that he had poured his heart and soul into loving before he had even been aware of what it was to put his heart and soul into something. Back before he realized that the sound he heard, the one that followed him everywhere, had been his own aura. The sound that he got, the feeling that he got, when he pressed his ear to his blanket when he hurt…when he had been so hurt…when he had been alone…when he had been hungry…when the world had been something loud and quiet and big and small and mom had been gone and….and where had been mom and…and mom had been gone and…and he had been so hungry and so tired and so alone and….and….

And there, in that box, with some other clothes.

This time he did teleport. He teleported because, well, he had to. He had to remind himself that he could. That the boundaries of walls, floors, buildings, all of it…distance meant nothing. Walls meant nothing. Locked doors meant absolutely nothing. He could go where he wanted to go and do what he wanted to do and he could be who he wanted to be and right now he wanted to be the guy who could do whatever he wanted to do and go where he wanted to go and…and he needed to dig through this box and he needed to find….he needed to show…he needed to show this to Sho because…because someone had to see this. This room…this dust filled room…this dust filled room was just….he didn't know. He just….

Had to dig through this box.

"And….here. Sho, come here and close your eyes." Said Shimazaki. He could feel Sho doing what he said….though not in the order that he had asked Sho to do that in. He was attempting to navigate this space with it's tight corners and narrow walkways with his eyes closed…and Shimazaki helped him. Every so often he gave Sho a telekinetic nudge until he had made it close enough for Shimazaki to take him by the hand…and ignore that aural giggle….and bring it over to the best thing that mom had ever made for him.

"It's a….blanket? I mean a patch blanket…a quilt?" asked Sho. He felt around. There was leather and silk and velvet and cotton and….and he'd had a quilt before….and he could feel…Shimazaki took his hand. He took his hand and left it on the leather part and…and it wasn't a patch. No, it was a shape. It was a….a rectangle and…and a circle and…and hills? No, not hills. There was a part at the end and…and he could feel silk and…and that was hair ribbon, like the ones that big sis wore and…and he followed the path of the ribbon until he felt….he felt….velvet? Yeah. That was velvet but….but also….what WAS IT?

He opened his eyes.

Oh. It was a blanket. He pulled his hand back. A blanket would have been nice because…because he felt sort of cold. Chilled. Touching that had been….sort of like touching Shimazaki…but also…also something else. Something that made the hairs on his arms stand up….and not in a good way. No…that was…it felt sort of like….like he didn't know. He focused on the way it looked, not how it felt. He focused on the piece of leather on the front that looked like a dragon…the sky was blue…towel? It looked like it had been made of towel. The ground was green velvet. There was fire made of silk hair ribbons. The dragon had breads on the spikes and….and he didn't even know the other fabrics. There were fake flowers on the ground and cottons balls sewn into the sky and….

And Sho had been allowed to touch it.

"My mom made me this a while ago…back when I was a baby. She made me this after I was born…because my name has the character for dragon in it or something….so it's kind of something that….that's been with me my whole life and I thought that you would get a kick out of it….or whatever….and please don't tell me that this is girly, too, because if you do then you're walking home…and it's a long walk home." Said Shimazaki. The kid had pulled back…and he knew why. He could feel it, the ghost of his own emotion and energy, and it must have been even worse for the kid because his energy was not a part of him…and he wondered how his own kid would have reacted…if he had a kid. If he had a kid that he had made himself…well with Toshi…but also Sho was his kid…in a lot of ways…all the ways but blood…

But what was the point of blood, anyway? It was sticky, it smelled like iron, and it pissed Toshi off five to seven days a month. Blood didn't matter.

"It's…it's not girly. It's cool. It's really cool. I like it." Said Sho. He liked it but he didn't want to touch it. He didn't want to ruin it. He didn't want to knock off one of the beads or the clouds or the flowers…and it was fraying, too, at the edges. It was old special and he didn't want to ruin it…and that was why he didn't want to touch it. That was all. It had nothing to do with how…how if he closed his eyes it felt…it felt like a part of Shimazaki….

A sad part that he had never seen or felt before…a sad part…a scared part….a mad part….a part that he had never wanted to know that his best friend had to him.

"I figured you would." Said Shimazaki. The kid was shaking…he put his blanket away. He had wanted to show the kid and that was all. He…well part of him wanted to give this to the kid. This kid might as well have been his kid and…and he really should have done something with this blanket besides letting it rot in a box…and the kid was cold. He was like an ice cube, almost, over there. Like he had been standing out in the cold or the ice or something and…and a blanket would have really fixed that right up but…

But he just…

He put it back. It folded it up, put the tissue paper back around it, and put it back in the box. Even if Sho had been his own son…even if he had slept with his mom ten years ago and Sho was his secret son or something, he would not have given this to him. He knew that it was pointless, keeping a perfectly good blanket away from a cold kid, but this was….this was his and…and he was being more of a kid than the actual kid. He put the blanket back and…and his hand brushed something. He felt…a seam. A seam and then another on a leather sleeve….

This he would give away.

"What the hell?" asked Sho as something landed on his head. For a moment, just a moment, the whole world had gone black. Just him there….and his aura…and Shimazaki's aura…and then he pulled this thing off of his head and it was a…jacket?

"See if that fits." Said Shimzaki. He felt Sho hesitate for a moment before he pulled on that ancient jacket. Shimazaki had practically lived in that jacket between the ages of twelve and fourteen. The leather sleeves….it had bene one of the rare times when mom took him out in the world and…and he had picked that jacket out himself because of those leather sleeves….and he had worn the hell out of that jacket until he turned fifteen and got himself an all leather one…

The kid could have that one. He had outgrown that thing half a lifetime ago.

"It's kind of big." Said Sho as he rolled up the sleeves. He liked this coat. It had been Shimazaki's. It smelled like….well he had been expecting it to smell like him but it mostly just smelled like dust….but it was still nice. It was hard to imagine Shimazaki wearing this at any point in his life. He mostly wore black and dark colored but this was green with red sleeves and a lightning bolt on the side…and Sho got the feeling that it was from something but he didn't know what…but he did know better than to ask Shimazaki about the color. Color meant nothing to him…it meant a lot to Sho, he thought that the white and the green went together, but he knew that Shimazaki didn't even know what colors were and Sho didn't think that he could explain it.

"You'll grow. Well at least I hope you will. It would really suck if you stayed that size for the rest of your life….or maybe not. You'll be able to order off the kid's menu for the rest of your life." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. He could see that it didn't fit…but it hadn't fit him when he had first gotten it either. He had been constantly snagging the sleeves and rolling them up….but he had grown. He had grown and the kid would grow too. He would grow up and he would grow out of it and then Shimazaki would give him this coat if it survived long enough. Or maybe he could go and take the kid to pick out his own coat when he got old enough. Yeah, he could teach him how to pick out a coat and stuff. That was what you were supposed to do with kids, teach them all of the important things in life…and Sho was practically his kid anyway….

"Wait…you're giving me this?" asked Sho as he finished rolling up the sleeves. The second he rolled them up they just went down over his hands again…this coat was way too big. It was way too big and also it was summer outside and also…also this was Shimazaki's. He needed….well he already had a coat. One that was all leather and one that fit him. This was too big for Sho but also too small for Shimazaki…

He had worn this when he'd been a kid.

He had been a kid, before, back before Sho had even been born…and Sho wondered….what kind of kid had he been? Well he knew that his parents had been jerks to him, even bigger jerks than dad was now, and he knew that Shimazaki had done a lot of bad stuff after his mom had died…and also a lot of cool stuff…but he also played with toys and read books and listened to music and…and other stuff and Sho…he would have liked to have met Shimazaki when he had been a kid…

And maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't have fallen in love with him if he had known him back then…or something.

"Yeah. You're shivering like crazy over there so, hey, I'm not cruel. If I let you freeze to death then what kind of a friend would I be?" asked Shimazaki. He reached over and folded the sleeves up. The kid had been pushing them up. They wouldn't stay up that way. Folding wasn't good for the sleeves, they were real leather, but also the kid needed use of his hands and use of his hands was more important than the wellbeing of the sleeves of a twenty something year old jacket.

"A really fucking shitty one." said Sho sticking out his tongue. He didn't need any help. He took his arms away and folded up his own sleeves. He wasn't a little kid. He could fold up his own sleeves and take care of himself. He was Shimazaki's friend, not his kid, and he knew how to take care of himself.

"Damn straight…and watch your fucking mouth." Said Shimazaki. He flicked the kid on the top of the head. There he was. That was the kid he knew and loved. God, Toshi was so smart. They really had a way with kids even if they liked to pretend that they didn't.

"No, you watch your fucking mouth you mother fucker." Said Sho. He reached up and tried to flick him over the head. Shimazaki grabbed his hand and shook his head.

"Shut your filthy mouth you goddamned mother fucking bastard." Said Shimazaki as Sho took his hand back. Well then. Look who was all grown up.

"As soon as you shut yours you fucking bitch." Said Sho putting his hands on is hips. He could feel the sleeves of the jacket, of his new jacket, coming down over his hands. He used his powers to roll them up again. He was not little. He was not a little kid and Shimazaki needed to stop treating him like he was a kid, like he was his kid, because they were friends. They were just friends and….and that was fine being just friends was better than being nothing at all and…and he was happy with what he had…..

And he was happy to be able to be happy again.

"For the last time, stop calling me a bitch. I'm a guy, I'm a bastard!" said Shimazaki with a laugh and a shake of his head. This kid…he had been teaching the kid how to curse for a year now but he just couldn't get it into his head that, no, you did not call a guy a bitch. Also Shimazaki was not a bitch anyway. He was a bastard, an asshole, and pretty fucking annoying but he was not a bitch.

"Ok then, you're a bastard." Said Sho sticking out his tongue. Shimazaki tried to flick him over the head again but he dodged, the jacket tried to come down over his shoulder. It was too big. All of Shimazaki's clothes were too big on him. He's borrowed these gym shorts, this t-shirt, and this jacket….no. The jacket was not borrowed. This was his now. This was his, it was too big, but it was his and….and stuff.

"Why you little….fine. This round goes to you. Anyway want to see if your clothes are dry yet? And then maybe go to the park and pet some dogs?" asked Shimazaki. The kid was back to normal, they were friends once again, and the world could keep on turning as it had since the beginning of time. Now that things were back to normal they could get back to normal, back out in the world, and back out of this ancient dust trap.

"Ok…but only if we can go to the store later and change the channel on all the TVs." Said Sho. They were back to normal again. He felt…better. He felt better and…and not all the way back to normal but…but he felt better. He felt better and he wanted….he wanted things to get back to normal. He just…wanted to get back to all the things that they always did.

"Fine, but only if we can go to the pet store and let all the birds free." Said Shimazaki. They hadn't done that yet. They had been talking about that for months now but they had never done that…but maybe this was the time for all of that. Maybe they should finally do all of those crazy ideas that they had just been spitting into the wind for a while now. Maybe it was time to make new memories. Memories that wouldn't end up rotting in a box somewhere.

"Ok…but only if we can switch the labels for cat food and tuna at the grocery store." Said Sho. He had thought that one up a while ago…and they could do that. They could do anything that they wanted to do. They were friends and part of being friends was having someone there to go along with all of your crazy, stupid, and maybe a little mean but totally hilarious ideas. They were friends. They were friends and they were just friends and that…that was fine. That was better than fine. That was better than sitting around being sad and trying as hard as you could not to be sad but failing because, yeah, it was hard to make yourself not be sad….

But it was easier when you had help.

"Hmm….well I guess we could do that….but after we get some worms, cover them with noodles, and then let someone think that we made them spaghetti." Said Shimazaki. He and Sho had done that to Hatori a few times. Sho's idea…a good one. Even if it was immature…but who cared if he was immature sometimes. Well Toshi cared. Toshi had this idea that he and Sho were a negative feedback machine when they were together…and he knew that they were a feedback machine but he got the feeling that they were a positive one. Because they had fun and…and Toshi was the smartest person that he had ever met but…but he liked what he and Sho got up to when they were together…

And he wanted them to get back to normal…and now they were.

"Shimazaki….you're awesome." Said Sho. He felt….well the goldfish was there and…and he had missed it just a little bit. He had been weirdly sad, so sad that he wanted to just go to bed and sleep all day and all night and…and now he felt better. Not all the way better but…but not as bad. He was happy to have Shimazaki as his friend and…and he was happy to have had someone in his life besides his sister who cared about him and wanted him to be happy and stuff….

And also he was happy to have had someone in his life who went along with all of his great ideas.

"I know it. Now come on, the day awaits!" said Shimazaki. He picked Sho up and teleported him back home. He would pat himself on the back later for his A+ best friending/practice parenting. Toshi thought that their kid would be screwed over with him and them as parents but this was one of the rare times when they were wrong. Shimazaki may have made some mistakes with Sho, more than a few mistakes in their time together, but he always fixed them and that was more than his own parents had done…and that must have counted for something…

He didn't know what but it counted for something.

He would figure it out later. The kid was in a better mood and he had to keep this momentum going. That was what mattered. The kid. He wasn't all sad and boring anymore…and he himself wasn't all sad and boring anymore….and now they were ok. He was ok, the kid was ok, and this day was going to be ok. It was fixed. And all it had taken to fix it was a very dusty trip down memory lane in a very crowded storage room…no, wait, what had the kid called it? A treasure room. All it had taken to fix all of this was a trip to a very dusty and crowded treasure room.

Why couldn't ever thing in life be that simple?


	360. That Stupid White Cane And Other Things

Minegishi knew for a fact that Shimazaki Ryou could get around just fine.

He didn't need the white cane thing to make his way through the world. He could sense objects and people around him just fine. He also didn't need them to take him by the arm. He didn't need to be led. Actually it annoyed him when people tried to lead him around. That was why he got rid of the stupid cane as soon as he figured out how to see with his powers. He didn't need the cane, he didn't need to be taken by the arm, and also he didn't need the sunglasses….

Though Minegishi had no problem with the sunglasses.

He, to borrow a phrase that he used constantly, really had it going on. The sunglasses just added to it even if they were of the gigantic UV blocking variety. The sunglasses, the leather jacket in the middle of summer, the leather pants, the dark red t-shirt….yeah. He had it going on. He really had the whole 'tall, dark and handsome' thing down...and he knew it. He must have realized that he was turning heads, that he was getting looks, and that must have been the reason he was feeling his way around with the white cane, too.

Or maybe he just liked occasionally whacking people with it as he went by.

"What the hell!?" shouted Ryou's latest victim. A red faced middle aged man trying to cajole his hoard of children into something resembling order. God, it was so crowded today. Crowded and hot. Crowded and hot and full of people. The Yumenoshima Tropical Greenhouse was, objectively, a beautiful place. An oasis of plant life in the middle of a hot, crowded, city full of people….who all decided that today was the day to descend upon this oasis.

Great.

Ryou had decided, that day, that he was going to show them something cool. His exact words. Cool. Well it was thirty degrees outside and they were in a greenhouse. There was nothing cool about this. They could feel their hair plastering itself to their head. They could feel their shirt sticking to their back. How Ryou could stand to wear the damn coat in all seasons…well he was the only one out of the two of them who could put up a barrier so maybe that barrier could keep the heat out….

And also any and all sense of maturity.

"He's blind." Said Minegishi as Mr. Red Sweaty and Too Busy to Learn Family Planning turned around ready to, no doubt, tell off whoever distracted him from his brood of ill-tempered little monsters. Wasn't the population supposed to be in dangerous decline? Then why were all of these kids here? They didn't…dislike….kids. They liked Mob, loved her, but she was Mob. Also she was eleven. There were a lot of small children here, children much smaller than eleven. The kind that cried and screamed and pulled the leaves and flowers off of the plants even though there were numerous signs telling people to do the direct opposite of that. Minegishi sighed so many stressed out plants….

Which were preferable to stressed out people.

"Oh shit! Sorry, so sorry sir. I'll just….get out of your way. Kids! Move! Let the blind man and his girlfriend through!" shouted the man. Minegishi bit the inside of their cheek. God. They hated that word. Girlfriend. They weren't in the mood to correct anyone, especially not strangers in the middle of a crowded greenhouse in the middle of summer, but they would think up a variety of colorful insults in their mind. God. Girlfriend. Did they look…well it had been a while since their last haircut…well not that long but their hair might have been getting long again….and they were wearing a more formfitting shirt than normal…baggy clothes and wet heat did not mix…

And they were on Ryou's arm.

Technically he was on their arm but they knew that it looked like they were the one clinging to him. He was bigger than them, of course, and really they should have just shaken him off. They should have shaken him off, knocked that stupid cane out of his hand, and asked him what he thought that he was doing. He had practically followed them around all day saying that he had something cool to show them, which knowing Ryou could have meant literally anything, and then once they agreed he put on those stupid sunglasses and picked up that stupid cane and now they were out and about and….

And maybe this had all just been an excuse to whack people on the leg.

"Sorry Mr. Blind Man. You can walk through now, there's space!" said one of the kids. She looked vaguely like Mob when she had been little…..thought Mob looked like everyone. Everyone but her father and brother. That was why this kid looked like her. Pigtails, though, instead of braids….though that same Elsa costume dress that Mob used to wear instead of actual clothes. She even had that same Frozen bag that Mob had. It was like looking at a younger, more well adjusted Mob….

They kept on walking.

They led Ryou away fast. He had a soft spot for kids. Well his whole head was a soft spot but he did really like kids. Minegishi…did not mind them terribly…but they did not want them…and they knew that Ryou did and they knew that any and all interactions with a child would get him thinking thoughts that he really should not have been thinking. Thoughts about them being parents. Thoughts about them being together. Thoughts about a relationship upgrade that they did not need.

Minegishi was not anybody's girlfriend or partner…and they had thought that Ryou had understood that from day one….

But it was now day whatever and he was saying 'I love you' every day a thousand times a day and he had said so many times before that he did not expected them to say it back….but who was he kidding. He wanted to hear it. He wanted them to love him back and then he wanted to go on and live out all of those domestic fantasies it seemed like your brain got flooded with when you turned thirty. Minegishi had made it clear that they did not do the relationship thing, not anymore, and Ryou had said the same thing for his own reasons…

Reasons that used to be tattooed on his arm.

The same arm that they were holding. He was the one leading them, not the other way around, and they could have let go. They should have let go. The smart thing to do would have been to let go…but then again when had Minegishi ever done the smart thing in life? They hadn't. They were not smart. He said, before, that they were the smartest person that he had ever met but that was just because he grew up around the absolute worst of humanity. They were an idiot….when it came to anything in their life they were an idiot. They were an idiot to have joined this cult in the first place, an idiot to have started this thing with him, an idiot of not have broken it off the minute he caught feelings for them, and an idiot….an idiot not to have broken it off the minute they had caught feelings for him.

And they were an idiot for not knocking that stupid cane out of his hands.

"Toshi, what'd you have to do that for? Come on, you think it's just as funny as I do when people realize that-" said Shimazaki as he led Toshi through the crowd. There were a lot of kids back there and Toshi only liked kids in small doses. There were some nice smelling flowers coming up over here. Toshi liked nice smelling flowers. Toshi was a nice smelling flower. Well they were a person but they smelled like flowers a lot of the time. Not floral like the shampoo but flowers like they had been working in their garden. They loved gardening.

And that was why he had taken them to the biggest garden that he knew.

He had gone here a couple of times before, when he had been younger and heavy into psychedelics, and it was just…weird being here in his right state of mind. Easier to navigate. He wondered if he and Toshi should have….no. They hated tripping in any way when there were strangers around. It set off their anxiety and he didn't want them anxious today. This had to be a good day. He was going to make a good day for them.

They deserved a good day.

"It's funny the first two or three times. After that it just becomes repetitive." Said Minegishi with a sigh. The truth was it was funny. It was less funny but it was still funny. The best comedy subverted people's expectations. Ryou walking about in the world hitting people with that cane, people getting angry with him, and then they way that they would practically kowtow in forgiveness…it was, objectively, funny.

They just didn't much feel like laughing right now.

"Repetition can be fun. Come on, you love seeing the look on people's faces when they're ready to square up with me but then they realize that, hey, there's no way to fight a blind man. Either you end up losing to a blind man or you end up beating up a blind man and neither of those is a good look." Said Shimazaki. Sho always got a kick out of this. Well not with the cane, they hadn't gone cane whacking yet, but he always did get a kick out of people wanting to kick his ass but not being able to. He'd do this with Sho later, he was feeling well enough that he could laugh again, but right now he was with Toshi and Toshi….

Well he hadn't spent any significant amount of time with Toshi in…he couldn't even remember when.

"Is that what all of this is about? Messing with people?" asked Minegishi. They still had no idea what he had dragged them out of the house for. There were a million things that they could have been doing today. Sleeping, gardening, reading, watching trashy TV, playing with Mob, making sure that Mob was ok, getting the kitchen organized for Ryou again since someone in the house was mislabeling things….

But instead they were here, arm in arm with Shimazaki Ryou on what felt like the hottest day of the year, and they had no idea why.

"No…well I do like to mess with people but that's not what this is about." Said Shimazaki. He didn't even fully know what this was about. He knew that he wanted to make Toshi happy but he knew that, like a cake, there were layers to this. The fact that he wanted to make them happy…that was just the frosting. He wanted to be near them, that was the first tier, and he wanted them to want to be near him, that was the second tier. He loved them. That was the third tier. He wanted them to love him back, that was the fourth tier. The fifth tier…layer…whatever…he didn't know. Maybe this cake was tall enough as it was. Maybe this cake would come falling down and then nobody would have any cake to eat. Maybe…maybe all they needed was frosting. Maybe frosting should have been enough but…but maybe…maybe he wanted more than frosting.

He didn't know. Feelings were complicated.

"Then what is all of this about, Ryou?" asked Minegishi. Ryou was…Ryou. He was impulsive. He didn't think things through…but this felt thought through. This felt like he had put some effort into it. If he had just wanted to walk through a crowded place and hit people then he could have taken Mob's little brother with him. No. This was…this was something….something like a…they didn't even want to think the word…

This felt like something that they had agreed that they would never do.

They went places together all times, missions and the benders that followed them, and that had been enough at first. They worked well together, in the sense that nobody else would work with them, so they found their paths crossing fairly often. They were never stationed at the same base or HQ or whatever but they did get missions together…and then after those missions they would find fun….and eventually they would find themselves in bed together….and that had been enough for the both of them…

And if he wanted to wind up in bed with them then he didn't need to take them to a greenhouse. He could have just asked.

"Being here with you. I thought that you would have gotten a kick out of this place…and I'm sorry that people keep calling you my girlfriend. I know how you feel about that." Said Shimazaki. He could hear Toshi's aura. He could feel it. He knew that something was bothering them. He had no idea what he could do to fix it…but he would be there for them. Sometimes that was all that Toshi needed was to have someone there for them. Like those times when they would wake up in the middle of the night all sweated through their clothes and ready to kill people that Ryou knew for a fact were already dead….he was there for them then and he would always be there for them. That was a part of love, maybe, he thought. Being there for someone. Love used to feel like….sort of like wanting to possess someone. To make them yours….and he didn't want to possess Toshi because Toshi was their own person…but he did want to be there for them…and he wanted them to be there for him and…

And feelings were pretty damn confusing.

"I don't care. If anything you're the one who should care. It'd be even more irritating, I think, to have people defy you by something even more out of your control." Said Minegishi. They were upset on his behalf…and they were never upset on anyone else's behalf. It was too much work, too much mental effort, more than they were usually willing to put in…but he was different. He hadn't started off different, honestly he had just been this annoying but attractive idiot who they occasionally crossed paths with before….all of this, but now…now there was a strange sort of…possessiveness…that came up sometimes…and they hated possessiveness in all of it's forms.

"Eh, I'm used to it. Besides, it's not all bad. I can at least do this." said Shimazaki. The walkways here were very narrow. He stuck his cane out and gave the person in front of him a nice, hard whack. Not hard enough to do damage, of course, just hard enough to piss them off for a split second. Then they'd turn around and fall over themselves apologizing like they were the ones who had done something wrong.

"Oh my goodness! I'm so sorry! Here, let me get out of your way." said the woman who had the bad luck to get within two meters of him. She scurried away like he had the plague or something. He had never been bothered by that, people making space for him, but then again he had always had the option of just walking around and blending in…well not always…but once he had gotten old enough he could leave the cane at home and just walk around in the sunglasses and blend in.

Amazingly enough they still fit after all of this time.

He hadn't worn these since he had been….thirteen? Fourteen? Maybe fifteen? He didn't know exactly when he had stopped wearing them. He used to open his eyes more, it was an instinct that had taken him half a lifetime to break, and opening his eyes didn't just meant that he got all kinds of shit in there. No, opening his eyes meant UV damage to a place where he didn't really want UV damage. That wasn't why he was wearing these today, though, since he was almost thirty one now and knew to keep his fucking eyes closed. No, he was wearing these for the same reason, the real reason, he had dusted off the old cane.

When people knew that you were blind they got the hell out of your way like they thought that they could catch it or something.

"I can't believe you haven't gotten bored of that yet." Said Minegishi as Ryou led them over to some…admittedly very nice…flowers. They were a bit stressed though. They could fix that. A wave of their hand and….yes. There we go. Now they were blooming and a hell of a lot healthier feeling. This was why they didn't go to places like this, greenhouses, they couldn't help but…well…help. It wasn't that it was their mission in life to rescue all of the poor plants or whatever. They just couldn't stand how stressed out and oftentimes pretty damaged these plants could be.

They could fix them, though, so it didn't matter.

"I could never be bored…well I mean I could…but not while you're near." Said Shimazaki. He felt Toshi doing something….oh. Well that was nice. It smelled so good over here and they had the whole place to themselves. This really was a nice place during the day…and also while he was sober…and he was sober. Well mostly. He wanted…he had been fucking up a lot lately and Toshi was always going on about moderation so…yeah. He had been going pretty hard lately. Toshi had a point…they were so smart…and if they wanted him to not be quite so fucked up all the time then, ok, this was how he would be. For Toshi.

He would do anything for Toshi.

"Well someone's feeling sappy aren't they?" asked Minegishi. He was in one of those moods again. They knew what was coming. The 'I love you' that came at least twice a day. God. Ryou was so…..Ryou.

"A little. Happy, mostly." Said Shimazaki

"Because there are plenty of people here to annoy." Said Minegishi. They knew fully well why he was so happy. He was happy and when he got happy he got sappy and when he got sappy he said something stupid like 'I love you' and they did not want to hear that….especially not in public…and not just because people didn't say those kinds of things in public. There were a lot of people around. There were people around and crowds…a place this crowded….they did not do well in places this crowded.

"No…well yes…but because you're here. I love-" said Shimazaki. He didn't care if Toshi said it back. He liked to say it. He liked being able to just….to just say it. To know what he felt and to be able to say it. There was a freedom to it and nothing felt better than freedom.

"If you love me so much then maybe you can get rid of the cane. I don't know why you have that thing anyway." Said Minegishi. Nope. They were not going to let him say that. Not here. Not while they were surrounded, well orbited, by people. People seemed to want to keep their distance from him…Minegishi just could not begin to imagine why….but they could still…they still felt weirdly exposed. The lack of auras didn't help…and they had been spending way too much time around other espers if they were finding themselves missing other auras….

They tried not to cling to his aura.

He would take that as an 'I love you too' and they just weren't sure if they were ready for….if they ever would be ready for….they didn't know. All they knew was that they would rather argue with him about that stupid white cane than listen to him tell them again, again and again and again, how much he loved them. They knew that he wanted to hear it back even if he didn't say as much…and they knew that they might never have been ready to say it back…

And he deserved someone who could say it back.

"Well you see, I was born with a condition called anophthalmia which means-" said Shimazaki. He felt Toshi getting ready to hit him. He didn't move away. He even dropped his barrier. Toshi was the only person who he would let hit him…and they didn't mean it…and they weren't that strong anyway. If they truly wanted to hurt him then they could have done so with the million and one plants that surrounded them. He would have let them. They would never have hurt him in any serious way.

"Ryou. You know what I mean. You don't need that to get around. I've seen you avoid stepping on Legos of all things. You can get around just fine even in a crowd. If you just wanted to walk around hitting people then you could have just brought Mob's little brother here." Said Minegishi

"Sho would have hated this place. They don't let you climb on any of the trees or play in the plants. I brought you here because I figured that you might like enjoying some plants that you didn't have to grow yourself…and you know….you like to commune with nature or whatever." Said Shimazaki

"It's…it's nice, Ryou, but you know that I hate crowds." Said Minegishi. He had thought of them. He had been thinking of them and…and now their insides were jelly. He had this way of just turning their insides into melted jelly and sending their heart into this uncessary panic. If Mob had been around she would have called it doki doki and also…well this would have made her year. Minegishi falling all to pieces like this…over nothing. Almost nothing. So he had taken them to a greenhouse? It wasn't like he had taken them on a trip to the moon….and of course they would like a greenhouse…they could control plants, that was their thing….there. Jelly feeling gone.

"That's what the cane is for." Said Shimazaki tapping the ground with it. This thing was in a lot of ways more of a superpower than is actual powers. He could part any crowd like the Red Sea with this thing. That was good for Toshi. They hated crowds and he just…needed them to be happy. He wanted this…whatever it was…to go well. This could have been a…well a date…but they did not go on dates and neither did he. So he had no idea what this was…but he did know that he wanted nothing more than for Toshi to have a good time.

"What? So you can hit people to get them out of the way?" asked Minegishi rolling their eyes that they were sure he must have sensed it. He could be so immature sometimes. Of course he had only brought that thing so he could hit people…and he only hit people because he was so immature sometimes…and maybe they had no room to throw stones considering the fact that with the way they felt about him they couldn't have been much better.

"Partially but also because people part like the red sea when they see me coming with this. I swear, it's like they think they thing being blind is contagious or something." Said Shimazaki. He could feel Toshi's aura…and he could hear it…and that was the aural giggle he liked to hear. From them, not the kid, because they were Toshi. He let go of their elbow and gave their hand a squeeze…and that got him another high pitched, impossibly high pitched, aural giggle. God Toshi was so….Toshi. He could have stood there listening to their aura all day.

"It can be. I don't doubt that you could blind someone if you wanted to." Said Minegishi shrugging their hand away from his. That had been….he had been thoughtful and…and he was always so thoughtful when it came to them and…and they just…they needed to calm down. That had been…all of this had been for them and…and they needed to calm the hell down before they made a fool out of themselves.

"I could and so could you." Said Shimazaki. Toshi was smiling, he could tell, and he smiled too. Toshi was happy and Toshi being happy….well that was enough to make him happy…and that was another part of love. He had never understood it, well never tried to, but it was more than what he thought that it was. It was more than wanting to possess someone or to be possessed by someone. It was wanting to make someone else happy and being happy when they were happy. It was thinking that they had it going on and…and it was more than that. It was thinking that they were the number one game in town…and feeling the same way because they felt that way about you…and it was just…thinking about the other person and wanting to be the other person…

And also just being able to stand and talk and just be funny assholes with the other person.

"So come on, what are we waiting for? They can all become like you are." Said Minegishi with a shrug and a levity that they did not feel. They felt…conscious…..of themselves. Of him being near them. He was looking at them. Their aura, his aura, both of their auras were together. Him and them and…and it was….nice. He was there and he was so…they were still jelly on the inside. They were still jelly on the inside because of him and his thoughtfulness and the way he smiled and his hand had felt in theirs and how stupid he looked in those stupid sunglasses and his stupid white cane that he didn't even need but carried around to part the crowd for them and….

And they almost wished that he would say something stupid….to go with how stupid he was.

"Oh Toshi, as much as I would love to inflict mindless violence on the masses I can't make everyone like me." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. God, he missed this. They hadn't done this, just stood and talked and been stupid assholes with each other. He loved the kid, he loved spending time with him, but Toshi…Toshi was Toshi and he loved Toshi so fucking much…and he was happy to show it. He was so happy and….and he couldn't remember the last time that he had been this happy…and also while he was this sober too.

"Why? You wouldn't wish this on your worst enemy?" asked Minegishi with a smile. They stepped a little closer to him…if that was even possible. They had to. Some people were scurrying past them. They took one look at him and then scurried right past….and it was nice to take a step to the side to make room…since the pathways were so incredibly narrow here. That was all. They should have taken a step back to where they had been, it was hot in here and…and that was why they were so hot…and they should have taken a step away….

He took their arm again.

"No, I did blind my worst enemy. You know that story. I just don't want to go around blinding people because then I won't feel special anymore. If I'm not special then why am I ever here?" asked Shimazaki with a sigh that he knew would make Toshi laugh. It did. They had been about to laugh. They had been about to laugh and…and he wished that they had let themselves laugh because there was nothing he wanted to hear more than them laughing.

"You'd fade away into nothing." Said Minegishi. They had been about to laugh…and they hadn't. They just didn't want to. They didn't know why they didn't want to. Maybe they didn't want the attention. Maybe they didn't want to start giggling like a middle schooler on a date. They didn't know and they didn't want to think too deeply about…all of that.

"Most likely. Then who will you label the kitchen for? It would be tragic, you'll have learned braille for nothing." Said Shimazaki. Toshi was so close that he could smell them…and they smelled so good. They smelled like this place, flowers and dirt, but also like themselves and he wanted…he pressed his head down onto theirs. Just for a moment, just long enough to be near them, just long enough to smell them for real. What they really smelled like. Toshi. That was what they smelled like. Toshi. Toshiki. Minegishi Toshiki. The person he loved most in the whole world.

"No, not for nothing. I'll be able to tell which signs have been misprinted. Seriously. Have you felt some of these signs? It's like they couldn't take ten seconds to pick up a dictionary. Seriously. So many of these plants are mislabeled." Said Minegishi. That time they did giggle. It was a harsh, ragged, sound…and they couldn't help it. He had been close. He had pressed his head down onto theirs and…and he had been so close. They could smell him. Cologne, a lot of it, and dust for some reason….and also a smell that could only be described as 'Ryou' and…and they wanted…they wanted to close their eyes and open them again. When they opened their eyes they wanted to be in bed, in their room, with their head on his chest. His heartbeat in their ears. The smell of his cologne, of him, all around them.

They closed and opened their eyes. They were just where they had been three seconds ago.

"So this isn't an agave?" asked Shimazaki as he felt the sign in front of him. Toshi sighed and took his hand. They had such tiny hands, compared to his, and for some reason he liked that. The feel of this hands in his…how much smaller they were. This made him want to protect them even though he knew that they needed nobody's protection. That was just the ancient, instinctual, part of his brain. The part that told him that he loved Toshi and he needed to protect them from wolves or something because otherwise they'd die…or whatever. He didn't know. All he knew was that he liked having Toshi's hand in his and…and they let go of his hand much too soon.

"No, that's a jade plant. This is agave." Said Minegishi as they let go of Ryou's hand. He had such soft hands, really, probably because he had his barrier up all the time. His hands were bigger than theirs…much bigger…and that was the stupid part of their brain telling him that he would be good at protecting them or whatever. Well they didn't need protection and if anything they protected him. They had protected him from his own stupidity time and time again…and they hadn't minded…even though there was no one to protect them from their own stupidity….

"I thought that agave was the name of a sweetener." Said Shimazaki as he felt the rough, thick leaves of this plant. It was…it felt sort of like a cactus but without the spikes. It didn't smell sweet. It didn't feel sweet…not that he was sure what sweetness felt like. Maybe Toshi should have taken his hand in theirs and shown him, exactly, what it was that he should have been feeling for.

"It comes from a plant." Said Minegishi. They watched his hand travel up and down the agave leaves. His aura was focused on that plant but, if you didn't know him, you would have thought that he had been staring straight forward at the wall. This was a walled garden after all…but of course nobody would have mistaken him for staring at the wall like a weirdo. Not with that stupid cane…the stupid cane that he had brought with to cut through the crowds…for them….even though it attracted attention. It attracted attention even if it drove people away.

Like now.

They were being glared at. There was a man in a guard's uniform that looked like he was arguing with himself. He would have been fully within his rights to tell them to stop manhandling the plants. It wasn't good for them at all. He probably wasn't going to walk through the crowds and the narrow walkways to kick them out. No, then he would have looked like a complete and total jackass. That stupid cane was pretty good at keeping people away after all.

"You are so fucking smart, Toshi, you know that?" said Shimazaki. It was amazing how they knew the names of all of these plants. They were smart, the smartest person that he had ever met in his life, and that made them interesting. There was never a dull moment with Toshi around. Even when they were quiet, even when they were just…being together…Toshi would just pipe up with something smart and then…and then he would learn something new from them and then…

And then he would be reminded of why he fell in love with them in the first place.

"No, I'm a moron." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. They were an idiot. They were the biggest idiot in the whole world, most likely, because what kind of an idiot broke their own rules? Them. They were that kind of idiot.

"Why would you say something that is so clearly not true?" asked Shimazaki. He felt like Mob, then, telling Toshi not to be so self-depreciating. He couldn't help it. Toshi was not a moron. Toshi was Toshi. They were smart. The smartest person that he had ever met…and he was not lying. He would never lie to them or about them. He would never lie to someone he loved…and he loved them so fucking much…

"Because we're standing here touching plants and a security guard is glaring at us. He keeps taking a step forward and then a step back. It's hilarious." Said Minegishi. They were covering for themselves. They were such an idiot and…and he didn't need to know how much of an idiot they were. What they thought about….what they wanted….what they wanted from him. What they weren't even sure if they wanted from him. They didn't know…they just wanted…this. To be near him and nothing more. They couldn't want…what they might not have even wanted. They didn't know. They did know. Maybe. Who knows?

"Oh, is that what that is? I thought someone was just trying to get their steps in for today." Said Shimazaki

"Maybe. He looks like he needs them. It's like he's having this externally internal debate with himself. 'Do I go over there and stop the blind guy from enjoying the plants in one of the few ways he can or do I justify my existence and stop people from damaging the poor, defenseless plant life?' or something." Said Minegishi

"Oh won't somebody please think of the plants?" said Shimazaki in a falsetto that hurt his throat just a bit. It didn't matter, though, because he got a laugh out of Toshi and nothing was better than getting a laugh out of Toshi.

"Ryou, you're ridiculous. Now stop touching that agave before you get us thrown out." Said Minegishi

"Alright, if you want me to. I can think of something else I'd like to touch, though, later on. When you're ready to get out of here." Said Shimazaki as he let go of the plant and wrapped an arm around Toshi's waist right at that place where their waist flared out to their hip. God, he loved holding them here…and he hoped that they would let him hold them, touch them, other places too. If they were up for it. If not that was fine. It was a big city….but no. The more he thought about that it was more about…about being near Toshi…than getting off with someone else….

Huh. Well what do you know?

"I'm ready." Said Minegishi softly. It was hot and crowded here. They wanted…they needed…they needed to be alone. They needed to be alone with him. They needed to be alone with him and they needed to kiss him and…and they needed to hear him say something…something stupid. The stupidest thing that he had ever said to them. They needed to hear it again. They didn't know what they would say back but they needed to hear it from him.

"You sure? We can see more plants if you want to. I know that you like to commune with nature and-" said Shimazaki. He would have said more. He wanted to tell them that there were still a million and one plants that they could have seen and smelled and felt. He wanted to tell them that they didn't have to worry about the crowds, that they would part for him, and that nobody would bother them. He wanted to tell them that they could stay out all day if they wanted to.

He wanted to but he didn't.

He couldn't. Their hand was in his again. They were close, so close, and then stood up on their toes. He could feel it, sense it, they were standing up on their toes and he could feel the warmth of their breath against his neck, his ear, and one of their hands had found the back of his head. They were pulling him down to their level. He let them. He could feel each of their fingers against the back of his head….and he could hear them breathing…and the sound of it and the feel of it…was just….

He didn't have words for this.

"I'm ready to go, Ryou." Said Minegishi softly. He could hear them. He could hear like a safe cracker. He could probably hear the water dripping down from the ceiling, the way their shoes struggled to grip the wet ground, and the sound of their heartbeat. They should have spoken up, made their voice heard above all the distractions, but they didn't. They just pulled him in closer and spoke as softly as they could…and he could hear them. They knew that he could hear them.

"Where do you want to go?" asked Shimazaki. He knew that Toshi could hear him. That was why he spoke just as softly as they had. God…they were so close…and he wanted…God he wanted to be even closer. As close as two people could possibly be without one wearing the other as a human suit like in that movie that Sho had told him about and probably should not have been watching. He wanted to be near to Toshi and…and he knew that there was a big chance that when he went home there would be a kid waiting for him in his room…and he loved Sho, he really did, but he was going to have to tell the kid that sometimes adults needed time to do things with each other that he, as a ten year old, could not comprehend and if he knew about those things he would be scarred for the rest of his life. He would bring Toshi home if they wanted to come home and then…well then he would do what Toshi wanted to do…and if Toshi wanted to do what he wanted to do then…well that was alright with him.

"Take me somewhere with a bed." Said Minegishi. They knew that if they went home they would end up roped into something with Mob. A game of dolls or a makeover or something like that. They loved Mob, they really did, but sometimes they needed time to themselves for reasons that she would not be informed of. It had been a while since they had been with Ryou, which had been his own damn fault for pissing them off so many consecutive times, but they felt better now and they were ready to get back to…whatever he felt like getting back to.

Wherever he felt like getting back to.

It had taken a moment to wait for everyone's attention to be diverted elsewhere. A pane of glass shattered. They knew that it had been his doing. He had a degree of telekinesis to him. No fine movements, nothing close to what the Suzuki family was capable of, but he could push and pull and shatter glass. That was enough of a diversion for him to take them to….well where they had asked to go.

A place with a bed.

"If you don't like it here we can go somewhere else. I just brought you here because, well, home has kids in it." Said Shimazaki. He had spent more than a few fun nights…and days…and also just general periods of time here. Toshi would like it. The beds were soft, which they liked, and also the walls had this nice velvet wallpaper which they would probably like. They clutched at the walls, sometimes, depending on how they wound up tangled up in each other.

And they would end up tangled up in each other.

Toshi was breathing heavy. They were breathing heavy and they were letting their aura rest on him. He wasn't close enough to feel it but he knew that if he had been close he would have been able to feel how flushed they were. He focused on them…he could see where their blood was pooling…and it wasn't all pooling in their face. God…how long had it been? Days and day and days.

Way too long.

"Do I even want to know how you know about this place?" asked Minegishi. They had no idea where they were, specifically, but they knew that they were in a love hotel. A regular hotel wouldn't have had quite such an assortment of condoms….and also no windows. They sat down on the bed. Soft. Well used. They reached behind them. Purple velvet wallpaper. They could have been in the Purple Palace, the Plum Palace, or the Periwinkle Palace….there wasn't a lot of creativity when it came to the names…but they didn't care. They didn't come to these places for the creative naming.

They hardly ever came to these places end of discussion.

They had their own room after all…but Ryou had a point. Home was full of kids. Home had kids and kids…well they loved Mob and had nothing against her brother but this was not something that they needed kids around for. Kids to knock on doors and eavesdrop, and someone would need to talk to Mob's little brother about that…and also they didn't need someone using this as fuel for their shippening….

Privacy was nice…and this was a nice place…and it had been nice of Ryou to think about them like this.

"I've been here before. It's nice. They clean it pretty often, the beds are soft, and the walls feel good. Also they give decent free condoms at this one." said Shimazaki. He kicked off his shoes, he didn't feel bad about wearing his shoes inside since it wasn't like anyone lived there, and dug his toes into the carpet. God…so many good times here. This specific room had always been his favorite. He was pretty sure that it was this specific room that had been the first for his first….he honestly couldn't remember that night too clearly. It had been great, though, even if he had woken up sore in ways that he hadn't been able to imagine.

He hoped that Toshi liked it here.

"Condoms and a love hotel? Oh Ryou, you really know how to make me feel special." Said Minegishi as they kicked off their shoes and sat back on the bed. Their back was too the wall now. They reached over and picked up the three cheap condoms they gave you here. Strawberry flavored…they did not feel like getting a yeast infection. Hot and cold….who the hell would even want that? Extra thin…for extra babies. Lovely.

Honestly.

They put them back down into their dish. Let the next people suffer through them. It wasn't like they used those with Ryou anyway. There was a trust there, an unspoken 'you are not going to get me sick or I will murder you' between the two of them. There was an intimacy to it, too, being so close…and honestly so reckless too. It was reckless to trust Ryou like that. He was Ryou. He acted without thinking….and with enough people that he had a regular room in a love hotel….not that they cared. He could have gone to bed with all of Tokyo if he felt like it.

He had just better not have been reckless with anyone else.

"You are special, Toshi, you know that." Said Shimazaki as he took his coat off and draped it over a chair. He didn't know what Toshi was on about. They knew how he felt about them and…and they weren't jealous…were they? He…doesn't know what he would do if they were jealous. He got around and so did they and since the beginning they had both made it clear that they would do this with other people…and he knew that he had been jealous before.

But that hadn't been about sex.

Toshi could have fucked Hatori all day and all night until they passed out from exhaustion for all that he cared. Toshi was Toshi, they had it going on, and he couldn't imagine anyone NOT wanting them. Man or woman. They were….they were the smartest, prettiest, most thoughtful and just….most perfect….person that he had ever met in his life. He could admit that to himself now. How he felt. The fact that he was feeling like this about someone again. It was ok for him to feel this way about Toshi. It felt…it felt good to feel this way about Toshi. It felt right to feel this way about Toshi. He couldn't think of another person…another LIVING person…who he could have felt this way about. He reached over and felt his arm. He couldn't see what that was, what was drawn, but he knew that it was Toshi…and he knew who he had replaced….and he knew who he never thought that he could replace….but he had. On his skin and in his life…

And in this room….and that was ok.

"Am I?" asked Minegishi. Maybe they were being an asshole…or maybe they just wanted to hear him say something stupid. Something besides how special they were. They had heard that before a thousand times, always from men, and always back when they had been young enough to believe it. Back when they had been too young for all of this. Back when they had been young enough that they had still been looking for love in all the wrong ways…the only ways that they knew how…not that they were still looking for love…

Because they had already found it.

"Toshi you know that you're special to me. I can't think of anyone more special to me than you…and there will never be anyone in my life more special to me than you are right now. I love you." Said Shimazaki. He didn't know how to make Toshi believe it. Maybe if he got it tattooed across his….wherever he still had free skin. Toshi just….he wished that Toshi believed him. He wished that Toshi could just….believe him when he said how he felt…

Because they knew that he had never once lied to them.

That was one of their rules…one of the few rules that he still followed. They spent the night together, they cuddled, they kissed outside of sex, and he had told them that he loved them…but he would never lie to them. Ever. He knew how they felt about that and he had never once told them a lie. He would never ruin what he had with them…even though he wasn't even sure what he had with them…but he knew that whatever this was it was the greatest thing that he had ever had in his entire life…and he knew that he would never do anything to ruin this….this…

This sort of relationship.

"Ryou…shut up and get over here." Said Minegishi. He didn't have to be told twice. In an instant he was beside them. They didn't care that they hadn't paid for this room, that anyone could come in at any time, and that they essentially had no privacy. They just wanted to be with him. He was the best at sensing normal people and, well, it wasn't like they hadn't had to make a less than fully dressed getaway before. Back when they had been younger. Back when they had been, for lack of a better word, wilder. Back when this would have been fueled by coke or MDMA or even acid or mushrooms…or one of those stupid research chemicals he got from God knows where. Back when they had been younger and they hadn't had any kids in their lives. Back before there had been so…much…to them. Back when they had just been two people who occasionally worked together.

Now they had no idea what the two of them even were.

Well, naked, or about to be. That was what they were. They lifted their arms and their shirt went sailing over their head. They did the same to him. They were a tangle of half-dressed bodies, tangled limbs, two people joined at the mouth. He tasted like smoking, they knew that they tasted like gin, and they also knew that he didn't care. They didn't care. They didn't care about anything other than him, them, and getting rid of every single layer of clothing, centimeter of space, miniscule amount of distance, which separated them from him.

They got their wish.

Their pants and boxers ended up joining everything else in the pile on the floor. Now a decision had to be made. He was trying to roll onto his side. He liked that best, his side facing them, but they had other ideas. They tried to roll onto him, him under them was the best, and the struggle for power went on. Kisses were exchanged. Touches were exchanged. A lot was exchanged between them until a compromise was made. Him with his back to the wall and them on his lap facing him. Their knees on either side of him, his hands on their waist, their face buried in the crook of his neck, his breath heavy in their ear.

It was perfect.

This was perfect and he was perfect. He was there and he just…this was perfect. Minegishi was struck by it, the perfection of their situation, when his hands went from their waist to their back. They just…lingered there. They lingered there over the raised red lines…well they seemed raised to them but they knew that their sense of touch tended to exaggerate, and they knew that…that he was the only one who would ever be able to touch them there. Anyone else's hands would have been slapped away…and anyone else would have asked….but he had never asked…

Not even the first time.

His hands had found their scars but he hadn't asked…and it had been for the same reason, they imagined, that they knew not to ask about the ones that he had covered up with that Godawful dragon tattoo. He knew how they had gotten them and he knew not to ask. The scar talk had come later, much later, in a moment of pure…pureness. Intimacy. Satiation. That time when they had both been boneless and open with one another. There had been a talk, no an exclamation of surprise and them saying something about having had a hard life or not wanting to talk about it and…and he had understood…and he still understood….

He had understood and he had been thoughtful.

He was always so thoughtful with them, so careful with them, even now. This was a shared pursuit, mutual, not him trying to get his ending from them and vise-versa. He was listening to them, moving with them, and he wanted….he gave as good as he got. Even better, actually, if they were being honest…and they were always honest. They were honest to a fault and….and they honestly…could be honest…about a fault…or maybe not…

It felt like a fault.

Their stupidity. The fact that they wanted to say something stupid, the stupidest thing that they had ever said to another human being, to him. They could see him mouthing the words. They knew he knew how they felt about him saying it during….because it threw them off. Because it made them think. Because it took from their shared pursuit. Because it put them too deep into their own headspace. To say it back…to not say it back….

To say it first.

They kissed the words from his mouth…or at least they tried their best to. He kissed them back and, well, it should have been messaged received. I love you too, you moron. I love you too, Shimazaki. I love you too, Ryou. It should have been message received….but it wasn't. It hadn't been. They knew that it hadn't been because….because it never was. They loved him. He knew that if they hadn't loved him they wouldn't have gone out of their way for him. They wouldn't have labeled the whole kitchen for him. They wouldn't have moved his laundry to the dryer when he forgot about it. They wouldn't have picked up more shampoo and soap and conditioner and whatever else for him because it was just easier since they could just walk into a place and get him what he needed and he had his limitations and they shouldn't have been going out of their way for him and if he was anyone else-

He wasn't anyone else. He was Shimazaki Ryou.

He was Shimazaki Ryou and they loved him. They loved him and they wanted…they wanted to stop being an idiot. They wanted to do the smart thing. They wanted to just leave it as it was. They wanted to just leave him to…this. To leave themselves to this. Their shared pursuit. Their situation. Their relationship. Their situationship. They should have just left the whole thing alone and just….gotten out of their own head and enjoyed this and…

And they should have been less of an idiot.

They should have been smarter than this. They should have been smarter than to wrap their arms around him. They should have been smarter than to lean in close to him, they threw off the rhythm, and they should have been smart enough to just leave it as it was. He was the impulsive one, not them, and they could not be impulsive. The two of them could not be impulsive because then they would both do stupid things and if this was going to work then one of them needed to think…but they had been thinking. If anything they were overthinking….and they were tired of overthinking. They were tired of overthinking and they wanted….

They wanted to stop overthinking….so in order to do that then…they would have to stop thinking all together.

"I love you too, Shimazaki Ryou." Said Minegishi. They knew, while they had been saying it, and even before that they had been an idiot. They were an idiot. He was an idiot. They were idiots together….if they would even be together after this. They were as together as two human being could ever be…but his aura had flared. His barrier went up so thick that they had lost all sense of his body…and then it dropped down to nothing. They were skin to skin….they were together…nested together…fit together. They were as together as two people could be and….and Minegishi knew that…that they had ruined it and…

And he was looking at them.

His eyes were wide opened but….but that was not how he was looking at them. His hands were trailing up and down their body like he didn't believe that they were there. Like he needed to make sure that they were the real Minegishi Toshiki. They wondered if he would give them a couple of hits with that stupid cane of his just to make extra sure that they were there and he wasn't losing his mind or was in the middle of a waking dream or an acid flashback. They wished that he would have just said something, anything, even if it was something like…something stupid like….

The stupid thing that he was always saying.

"Toshi….I love you too…God….Toshi…" said Shimazaki. His brain had stopped working for a little bit…and now it was working overtime. He needed….he needed to be with Toshi because….because they had just said and….and he had never been this happy in his life and…and he just…he had never felt like this before. This was like…like coke and MDMA and petting every single dog in the whole world at once and also sex and maybe the sex should have been it's own thing because they were having sex…not that he knew how much longer they would be having sex for since he had never felt this good before in his life and-

And now they weren't anymore.

"Well that's certainly flattering." Said Minegishi. Well that had been…Ryou usually had the opposite problem….not that it had been a problem. No, not at all. Not unless he was planning on leaving them high and not exactly dry. Not if he wanted them to keep on loving him….well they would have loved him even without the sex….

They had said it.

They had said it and now…now they had no idea what they were going to do. He was on his back, now, and they had been pulled down so they were resting on his chest. He was smiling bigger than they had ever seen him smile before….and his barrier was down to nothing at all…and he was just…his hand was tracing up and down their back. He was looking at them, staring at them, and he….he wanted this and so did they and…

And they couldn't believe that they had just gone and said it.

"Toshi….you're flattering….no. That's not it just…I love you too…just…thank you….thank you so much…" said Shimazaki. He needed to catch his breath. That had been….that had been the best damn thing that he had ever felt in his life and…and Toshi was there. Toshi was there and….and they loved him…and he loved them and they were there and….and they took his hand in theirs and….and they did that because they loved him and…and this was just so perfect and….

And he hadn't had someone, someone he loved, tell him that they loved him…not in a very long time….

"Thank me like this." said Minegishi as they showed him exactly how they wanted to be thanked. They…did not regret what they had said. They did not regret it but…but maybe they would later on. Maybe they would regret telling him how they felt…and acknowledging how it was that they felt….and maybe once they left this room they would regret everything that had happened…..

They didn't know.

They didn't want to think about it. They didn't want to think about how once they left this room things would be…they had no idea what things would be like once the two of them left this room and went back to their lives. They had no idea if they had just ruined everything or made it better than ever. They didn't know….but they did know that…that they had gone and said something stupid like…I love you….and they knew that they were not going to leave that I love you in this room…and they knew that Ryou didn't want to leave their 'I love you' in this room either…and they knew that Ryou….

They knew that the only thing that they wanted Ryou to leave behind in this room was that stupid white cane.


	361. Birdies and Shuttlecocks

Mob and Sho were down to one birdie….and they could not afford to lose this one.

"Sho, be careful." Said Mob as the birdie sailed over her head and hit the side of the house. Sho had already sent all of their other birdies sailing to parts unknown. Really. She had no idea where they had gone to. They just went sailing into the sky and then they were gone. Maybe they had slipped into another dimension or something. She didn't know.

All she knew was that she couldn't afford to lose this birdie.

She used her powers to bring it over from where it had hit the house. She was glad that these were soft, foam and plastic, because otherwise Sho could have broken a window or something. She didn't much care about the house, it was a Claw house like any other, but she did care about the hassle of getting the window fixed and also dad telling her that she needed to watch Sho better. She knew that she needed to watch Sho better…but she also knew what dad's idea of 'better' was and she wasn't going to be mean to Sho like that.

Especially about something as dumb as hurting the house or losing the birdie.

"I am being careful. You should be more careful about using your powers. That's minus ten points…but I'm feeling gracious today." Said Sho. He hadn't hit it that hard. He was just used to doing this with someone taller…and also someone who took this game more seriously. Big sis was ok, though, even though he suspected that she was letting him win. She always let him win. She loved him like that…even though he was a baby and could win on his own.

He was pretty sure that he was winning, anyway.

"But we aren't playing for points, Sho, we're just playing for fun." Said Mob. She sometimes caught the birdie with her powers on accident…and she couldn't help it. She knew that it couldn't hurt her, not like when she and Sho had played this with rocks when they had been little, but her powers just kicked in and caught the birdie when it got too close. That was better than losing the birdie, of course, but she still didn't want to upset him…

And also they weren't even playing for points.

She would have let him win if they had been. They were playing for fun. She knew how competitive Sho could get at this and she always let him win…even though he didn't like. That was what big sisters were supposed to do, let their little brothers win games, even if it upset their little brothers. Besides, it upset him more to lose. If he wanted to lose, and also yell and curse, then he could play with Shimazaki when he and Minegishi got back from wherever they had gone to.

Minegishi said that they weren't on a date but Mob got the feeling that they were…maybe because she was maybe going on a date in the future….maybe.

She didn't know. She hoped that Minegishi and Shimazaki were on a date. Then they could be boyfriend and theyfriend and they could get married and have babies and then Mob could help take care of the babies just like she had taken care of baby Mukai when she had lived with them….she didn't want to think about baby Mukai and how she would have loved this day…and how she would have loved to play with the birdies…and how she would have loved….well she would have loved a lot of things. Mob tried not to think about her. She had her own family now, ones that had a mom and dad and not just a brother and a sister…though for all Mob knew she had new brothers and sisters, and she was in a better place and…and maybe when Minegishi and Shimazaki had a baby then Mob would miss baby Mukai less because she would have a new baby to play with…or something….

She was playing with Sho now and that was what mattered.

"Well I want to play for points…and I want you to play me for real. Don't let me win. I can beat you on my own." said Sho. Big sis always let him win…and he almost wished that she had been Shimazaki. He never let him win, ever, and even though losing sucked it was better than someone else letting him win like he was a baby or something. He was not a baby and…and he needed to win on his own. He wished that Shimazaki was there but he had to go somewhere with Minegishi…for work….well Shimazaki had never said in his exact words that they were going off to do a work thing Sho figured that some more traitors needed to die…or something….

Because why else would he be spending time with Minegishi when Sho was right there?

Well for kissing, boob feeling, and whatever else came afterwards reasons….that Sho did not want to think about. So what if that was why Shimazaki liked Minegishi? He and Sho had something way better than that. Any girl would let you kiss her and stuff. Minegishi could have been anyone. There was only one Sho and Sho was his only best friend and…and stuff. When Shimazaki came back then they could play for real and he could win for real or lose for real and then…

Well he didn't know what would happen next.

He didn't need to know what would happen next when it came to hanging out with Shimazaki. He just needed to know that they would be hanging out again. That they would be able to scare people or go to the mattress warehouse and jump on the beds or play with dogs at the park or steal stop signs or go to the store and shake up all the sodas or…or any of the other stuff that they did together. Even if it was boring stuff like watching Shimazaki's friend finish his new tattoo or watching him clean out his eyes or narrating what was happening on the TV for him…it didn't matter. Sho was just happy to have been able to be near him.

But playing with big sis was ok too…and they were playing together….and they were having fun and that was what mattered.

"So, come on. It's better if we play for fun." Said Mob. She didn't really want him to start yelling and cursing and hitting the ground with his racket or throwing the birdie over the house. She just wanted a nice, friendly, worry free game of hit the birdie over the net. Was that too much to ask?

"It's more fun if we play for points. Don't you want me to have fun and be happy?" asked Sho. He knew that she did. This was just the fastest way to get her to listen to him. Sort of like when she called dad 'daddy' to get him to stop acting like a jerk for ten seconds. That was his record, ten seconds, he almost made eleven once but that would have been too hard for him.

"You know that I do." Said Mob. What else could she possibly want? Well maybe for him to take a bath on his own, he smelled kind of bad...well he had started out smelling bad and now he smelled worse, and also she sort of wished that he would eat something green once in a while, and also she wished that he would take off that coat because he was all hot and sweaty….

And she also wished that he had told her why he was wearing that coat in the middle of August in the first place.

She knew why she wore her sweater, well why she had it tied around her waist, because she didn't want people to look at her and think about her naked. If Fukuda could think about her naked then anyone could…and she didn't want that…and also she was worried that Sho might have had someone thinking about him naked, too, even though she had no idea who would ever want to think about her little brother naked. He was just a little kid…well he had a girlfriend…but girls were not allowed to think about him like that! Well not that she would find his girlfriend and tell her that she was not allowed to think about Sho like that….because that would have been really weird….and also she wasn't about to ask Sho either. If she asked him then he could end up with the idea in his head that people were thinking about him, then he would feel gross all the time if he didn't already, and also…also he might need her to explain why someone would think about him like that…and then she would have to explain all the thoughts that girls had about boys…and then that could lead into her own thoughts about boys…

And since he didn't need to know about all of that she figured, maybe, that she should just leave well enough alone.

"Then let's just play for points. Please, big sis? Come on." Said Sho. He could keep this up for hours. He didn't want to just hit the birdie back and forth, that would have been pointless, he wanted to play to win…even if playing with her wouldn't be anywhere near as fun as playing with Shimazaki. He was taller and stronger and he could teleport and stuff…and also he let Sho curse at him and stuff…and he knew not to play rough or curse at his sister…even though it was less fun that way.

"Ok, we can play for points…but if you win don't think that I let you. You're better at this than I am." Said Mob. Not a total lie. He was better at hitting the birdie over the net than she was. Also he never got penalties for using his powers. Not like she did. She couldn't help it. He could, though, his control was much better than hers. He was lucky like that.

She was so proud of him.

She knew that Sho didn't like people being proud of him, he had gotten mad at dad for being proud of him, so she would never tell him…but she was very proud that he had such good control over his powers. Like she would never have. She took after dad, dad had trouble controlling his powers too, but she needed help. Dad didn't need help, he hardly ever lost control, and Sho had always had almost perfect control. Not like her.

But that was ok. She was proud of her little brother even if she knew for a fact that he did not want to hear it.

"You're right…but you had better not be thinking about letting me win. If you do then I'll let you win at something and you hate beating me." Said Sho

"Ok, ok, I'll play fair. Get ready." Said Mob as she tossed the birdie in the air and hit it with her racket. It went over the net that time, which was good, and Sho managed to get it over net without sending it over her head….and she had managed to hit it back to him. This was going well….and it was fun. She couldn't remember the last time they had played hit the birdie together…or anything together. They used to play together more when they had been little but now they were older and they had their own friends…well they shared friends but she did NOT like to do the kinds of things with Shimazaki that Sho did and Sho thought that Minegishi was boring…and also Hatori had become more of dad's friend…

But at least they could both share Shibata.

He was both of their friend and he made good food. Well mostly good. Sometimes he forgot ingredients and sometimes he forgot food in the oven or on the stove but he was still a good friend. They were all good friends, really, and she and Sho…maybe they should have hung out with everyone together more often…even though the only person who wasn't annoyed in any serious way by Shimazaki was Sho…and also Sho didn't get along with Minegishi…and also Hatori wanted to eat Minegishi…well everyone but he couldn't help the way he was born…and also Shimazaki was always mean to Hatori and…

And she'd figure out a way for them all to hang out together after she was done playing with Sho.

It felt like it was going to be a short game. They always played first to a hundred points wins and Sho was really good at this. Mob either missed the birdie or used her powers on accident…and if she smoked or drank she could have made her powers stop acting up…but then Sho would have wanted to smoke or drink and he wasn't good at moderation so she wouldn't give him any ideas. He hadn't asked her about any of that since he came back from his sleepover with Shimazaki and she wasn't going to put ideas in his head.

She just wanted to play hit the birdie over the net.

Even if she wasn't that good at hitting the birdie….but that was ok. Sho was good at hitting the birdie. He was so good at hitting the birdie that it always went over the net…and sometimes over her head. Like now. It went sailing over her head again and it hit the back window of the house. She was happy that she hadn't caught that one with her powers…even though Sho didn't seem to happy….or at least his aura didn't. She didn't know what he was so unhappy about. He had gotten a point because she missed. Now the score was twenty seven to three. That was very good. She knew that he knew greater than and less than and she knew that she had been playing this game fair and square and she knew that he should have been happy to have been winning.

But she also knew that he didn't seem very happy at all.

"Seriously? You promised that you wouldn't let me win!" said Sho. He didn't curse and he didn't throw his racket…but he did yell just a little bit….but she was the one who had made him yell. She had promised him that she wouldn't let him win. She had promised him that she would play him fairly. She had promised. She was treating him like a little kid. He didn't want to be treated like a little kid! He was tired of being treated like a little kid! If Shimazaki had been there-

-if Shimazaki had been there then he would have been treating Sho like HIS kid.

That was what he would have done. Shimazaki was always treating him like his kid and telling him that he loved him like his own kid and…and he liked having someone who cared about him but…but that was not how he wanted….well he had no idea what he wanted but he was tired of being treated like a kid and….and he knew that he was only ten and a half and…

And he knew that he needed to calm down.

"I'm not. You know that I'm not. I'm just not good at this…especially when you hit it above my head." Said Mob. Now she remembered why they stopped playing this game. Sho always got way too into it. Sort of like dad would have been if Minecraft had been competitive. She wondered if, after did, Sho would have wanted to play some Animal Crossing with her. That was nice. There were no winners and losers and everyone was friends and also there weren't any birdies that went over her head for Sho to get mad at.

"You're supposed to jump." Said Sho. There. He was done yelling. He was going to be calm and he was going to be nice and he was not going to throw his racket through the window and he was not going to curse, not at her but in general, and he was going to play with her and they were going to have fun and…

And now he remembered why they had stopped playing this game together.

"I don't know how to jump as high as you can. If you want me to hit it back then stop hitting it so high." Said Mob. She wasn't going to be mean…and she got the feeling that she had said something mean…but it had been the truth. If he hadn't hit it above her head so many times then she could have had more points and the score could have been closer.

"Just send the birdie back." Said Sho. He knew that she was just letting him win again. She always let him win. That was just who she was. She was nice like that but right now…right now he didn't want someone to be nice to him. Right now he wanted someone to…to challenge him. To play him for real. To be less…like big sis…and more like….

He was playing with big sis. That was what mattered.

"Ok….but when you hit it back please don't send it flying so high." Said Mob as she hit the birdie back over to Sho. She would jump as high as she could this time. She would jump and then probably miss but that was ok because at least Sho would see that she had tried and then he would stop thinking that she was letting him win. She wasn't. She was just really bad at this.

"I'll show you 'so high'…" said Sho as the birdie went towards him. She hadn't seen anything yet. He would send it over her head. He would show her how high he could send it when he was trying. Then maybe she would start trying and she would stop treating him like he was a little kid. He may have been a kid but he was not little and he could….

He could hit really hard when he wanted to.

At least she jumped that time…not that it had done her any good. He may have accidentally put his powers into that one. It went over her head…and also the house…and now they had no birdies left. They had no birdies and unless they went back to using rocks like they had when they had been little it was game over…and Sho hadn't wanted it to be game over! He had just wanted her to play him for real. Nobody would ever play him for real. She treated him like he was a little kid…and Shimazaki treated him like he was his kid and…

And he just wanted to be treated like….like he was Sho….

"Sho, no. Come on, little brother, don't be upset. It's ok, come on. I bet that if we went to the front yard we could find the birdie and then we can keep on playing and I'll be sure to jump extra high. Come on. You're better at finding things than me." Said Mob. She knew that he was getting upset and she knew that it had been an accident, he hadn't meant to lose their last birdie…but maybe they could still find it. Everything had to be somewhere and…and they hadn't even found the ones they had lost in the backyard….but maybe they would have more luck in the front. Maybe this birdie hadn't gone to the secret dimension of lost birdies…

Though Mob would have taken the secret dimension of lost birdies any day instead of….well…this.

She had felt his aura once she stopped focusing on their game. He had been in her range but that was normal. Well not at this time of day. This was the middle of the day, not even lunchtime yet, and the person who belonged to that aura should have been near dad. He should have been in the HQ where dad was and not…here. Not standing there in the front yard holding their birdie like…like that was a normal way for him to be…

Because this was not normal at all.

"Hey, I found your shuttlecock." Said Fukuda. He had been waiting all day for Sho to come home from whatever he had been getting up to with Shimazaki, hopefully those two weren't the ones who had been switching those street signs around, and once he had gotten home his aura had been practically tied to Shigeko's….

And he needed to talk to Sho alone.

Well he needed an excuse to talk to Sho. He had been about to invite Sho over for lunch, Shigeko would have probably been happy to have been able to skip cooking duty for the day, when a shuttlecock had hit him right on the head. Sho's doing. Even without using his powers he was an unusually strong little boy. Well now he at least had an excuse to talk to Sho…though he would invite him over for lunch since he had no use for four cans of cola and a bowl of plain noodles with a little bit of butter. That is if Sho even agreed to come over….

He still seemed pretty pissed off…and Fukuda didn't blame him.

"What the hell is a shuttlecock?" asked Sho as Fukuda stood there holding the birdie like…like some kind of birdie…holding…guy! What? Had he been the one hiding all of their birdies? Was he responsible for hiding the world's supply of birdies? Was he holding them ransom so that Sho and big sis let him play or something!

Well then he could make himself a house out of those birdies because he was not welcome at their game!

"Sho, don't say the H-word. It isn't nice." Said Mob. She crossed her arms over her chest. She didn't much want to talk to Fukuda. She thought that she had made herself perfectly clear when she had told him to get out of her yard and go back to his own house the other night…but maybe he had thought that she had only meant for that night. Maybe he had found their birdie because he wanted to play too, like he had played with them when they had been little, and if he did then…then Mob was throwing the game and….and if Sho got mad then she would deal with him.

Because Fukuda was the last person she EVER wanted to play with.

"I'll say whatever I feel like." Said Sho. He had much worse words for Fukuda. He was a mother fucking cock sucking bitch! No, a bastard! No, a bitch, because that was worse than a bastard! A bastard was just someone who had parents who hadn't been married when he had been born. A bitch was a female dog and…wait, no, that would be an insult to dogs and dogs hadn't done anything bad to him ever. Well one time a dog had bit him…but that was ok because he bit the dog back and then said sorry….and he wanted to bite Fukuda but not say sorry afterwards…

But then big sis would have been mad at him…so he didn't do that…even though Fukuda deserved to be bitten so hard that his skin never grew back.

"But…it's not nice…and Fukuda was nice enough to find our birdie…and now he can give it back to us…and stuff." Said Mob. Her arms weren't enough. She used her powers to pull her sweater down over her head and then she put her arms thought the hole. There. Now she was better…well she was very hot…but also she was better. Well a little better. She wondered if Sho would have let her borrow his summertime jacket…which she hoped that he wasn't wearing for the same reason that she was wearing this sweater….

Fukuda had better not have been talking about Sho like he talked about her or she would do…something. She didn't know what but…but she would do….something.

"Right, well, here's your shuttlecock back. Anyway Sho I was wondering-" said Fukuda. Shigeko was wearing that sweater again and…well now he knew what she was wearing it for…and he had no idea how he was supposed to clear the atmosphere with her. He DID NOT think about her like that. She had, somehow, gotten the idea in her head that he thought about her in…that state of affairs. Of course he didn't. She may have acted like an adult but he knew that she was still only eleven….and even if she hadn't been just….no. That was just…no.

Unless he changed his name to Shimazaki Ryou the thought of him and Shigeko at any point in her life would have been just….no.

"Birdie. It's called a birdie." Said Sho as he used his powers to take the birdie from Fukuda. Big sis's aura was all pulled in and she was hiding in her sweater….probably because he knew that Fukuda didn't like her for some reason. Well he didn't like anyone, sort of like dad, but worse. Dad at least liked big sis…and also Hatori for some weird reason…

"Oh, right, a birdie. When I was your age we called it a shuttlecock-" said Fukuda. Well that was certainly a lot of hostility….and it did not suit Sho. No. He had always been such a nice kid….well a nice kid with a mean streak as wide as the sky…but this level of hostility had never been directed at Fukuda before…and he didn't like it. He understood where all of this was coming from, he knew how Sho felt, and he knew that Sho was too young to understand why Fukuda had done what he had done….but he still…Fukuda could make this right. He had to make things right between him and Sho.

Because he could not let them go wrong.

Things had gone wrong between him and Shigeko. He had let Suzuki influence her too much…and he'd had so many chances to bring her back before she went over the edge and…and he hadn't. He had dropped the ball with Shigeko but he could still be there for Sho. That had to still count for something. Shigkeo…he would always be sorry for what had gone wrong there but at least he could still help Sho…

At least he could still make things right with Sho.

"Well we call it a birdie now. Thanks for giving it back. You can go home now…or something. Whatever you do during the day when you're not hanging out with dad." Said Sho. He was being an asshole, he knew that he was being an asshole, and he knew that big sis would have been mad at him for even thinking the word asshole let alone being one…but right now he didn't care. Fukuda was a liar, a traitor, and also he didn't like big sis. Sho didn't always get along with her, she could treat him like a baby sometimes, but he at least never said mean things about her…anymore. Also she had never once told one of his secrets.

Not like Fukuda.

"Sho…you know I was making plain noodles with a little bit of butter and I accidentally made too much. I accidentally bought too much cola and ranch dressing too. So if you wanted to come over and have lunch with me-" said Fukuda

"How do you know it's too much food if you haven't even started eating yet?" asked Mob. Someone needed to teach Fukuda about cooking. He had been messing up his grocery shopping since she had been little. He would always accidentally buy too much food and then he and mom would make dinner together, and he would let her and Sho help, and…and those had been good times…and stuff. She missed…well part of her missed those times but right now…right now most of her just wished that he knew how to plan meals better. It wasn't hard. She had learned from YouTube…but maybe he didn't know about YouTube since he was as old as dad was…well then maybe he should figure it out on his own in that case or find a wife or have a daughter so he had someone to do his shopping and cooking for him.

"Big sis is making lunch. I don't know what she's making but I'm going to eat lunch with her." said Sho. There weren't enough bowls of plain noodles with a little bit of butter, enough cans of name brand coke, and enough bottles of ranch dressing to make him sit there and have lunch with a traitor.

"You can eat with Fukuda if you want to…I don't mind." Said Mob. She didn't really want Sho to have dinner with Fukuda. She just wanted Fukuda to go away right now. She knew that she was being selfish but she really, really, really wanted him to go back to work or his own house or…or anywhere else in the world. Tokyo was the biggest city in Japan. There must have been somewhere else, anywhere else, he could have gone.

"I just thought, Sho, that you would like to have lunch with me…you know, since your dad gave me some free time. We could catch up, hang out, maybe head over somewhere…" said Fukuda. Suzuki had something wrong with him where he couldn't understand subtlety and double meaning. Shigeko had the same problem even though there wasn't a drop of blood shared between them. Sho had no such problem. He understood social cues, double meanings, and subtlety. He took after Masami in that way.

"….fine. I'll have lunch with you….because you seem like you're really lonely and you'd be sad…or…whatever." Said Sho. He knew where Fukuda wanted to go. They were in Japan and baby sis was in Japan and if Sho went somewhere for a long time, somewhere far away, like where baby sis was…then he had to go with Fukuda….and as much as Fukuda was a traitor…Sho had no choice but to go with him.

"OK…I'll be here….if you want to finish the game." Said Mob. Sho tossed her back the birdie and then went with Fukuda…and that was ok. Fukuda…if Sho wanted to be with him then she wouldn't stop him. She…she just wanted him to be happy…and she couldn't imagine how being with Fukuda could have made anyone happy….and she would have made Sho plain noodles with a little bit of butter…and with all the soda he wanted….and also she would have let him have a whole glass of ranch….but this was ok. If he wanted to be with Fukuda, if Fukuda was the person he wanted to be with…even though he was a traitor, then that was fine. He wasn't all bad…he had been nice when they had been kids…and he may have been mean and he may have spent too much time, any time was too much time, thinking about her naked and doing….stuff…but maybe he wanted to say sorry or something. Or maybe he just….wasn't all bad….somehow…

He had returned their birdie….shuttlecock…or whatever. That had to count for something….right?


	362. Packing Up, Secrets, and Reading Things

Fukuda had said that this wasn't going to be a very long trip.

The last trip had been very long. They had gone to Seoul and then Seasoning City and then London. This time they were just going to Seasoning City. They weren't even taking a plane, they were taking a train, and it would be a long train ride but that didn't mean that it would be a long trip. Dad hadn't given Fukuda a lot of free time and Sho…well he had no idea when dad would even notice that he was gone…if he noticed…

Or cared.

Dad didn't care about him. Dad only cared about what he could do for the family and for Claw and for all of esper kind or whatever. Not like big sis. He cared about her. He cared about who she was and he cared about making her happy….and he wasn't going to think about this now. When he thought about this then he got upset and he was not going to get upset now. It would have been stupid to get upset now. Even though he had to spend days and days with the biggest traitor that Sho had ever met in his entire life. Even if he would have to leave big sis again…and he had left her before but it was never easy…and even though he was probably going to come back to a room with only one bed or whatever…he was not going to get upset.

Big sis was upset enough for the both of them.

"I'm going to Seasoning City, not the moon. You don't have to freak out so much." Said Sho as he collected his artist pencils in his pencil case. He would take one of every color and thickness just to be safe. For himself, of course, he already had a box of ninety six crayons not even opened. Those were going to be for baby sis…she loved to color….and Sho wished that he had bought more stuff for her. The crayons were supposed to be for him…and also she already had crayons…but if she was anything like him then those crayons that she had should have been worn down to stubs by now…

If she was anything like him.

He had to remind himself, sometimes, that she was not his actual baby sister. Even though she looked just like him, and responded to baby sis, she was not his actual sister since she had not come out of mom's stomach. Only people who came out of mom's stomach were his brothers and sisters and if mom had come back then it wouldn't have been to drop off a kid…and also if she'd had kid then she'd have had to have done that…stuff….all of that stuff with dad and that was just disgusting. Baby sis was not his sister, she was just a person who looked like him, and in fact she looked more like him than his own sister…

And Sho had no idea how that even worked but this was not the time to ask about all of that.

"I'm not freaking out. I just have to-to make sure that you have everything that you could possibly need. I don't want you to be far away from me and not have anything to wear…or anything like that. I want you to be…to be ok. Even though I won't be there to take care of you." Said Mob. She was sniffling just a bit…and her hair was trying to float away…and she had to stop this. She could not get upset and lose control in front of Sho…and also she could not get upset end of discussion. She loved him so much and…and it would be hard to see him go but…

But she didn't want to smother him.

She knew what it felt like to be smothered…and it was not a good feeling. That was how dad loved people. He loved you so much and he smothered you with his love until you just couldn't breathe and…and she would never do that to Sho. So she would just…be there for him when he got back…and also right now.

Somebody had to pack him up, after all, and it seemed like that somebody would have to be her.

"You know that they have stores in Seasoning City, right?" asked Sho. He didn't tell her that he would be deep in the woods far from the actual city. He didn't tell her that he would be staying at the Seventh Division. He didn't tell her….a lot of things. Things that she maybe should have known about….things that needed to stay a secret…things that he didn't want to keep secret anymore….

He was getting tired of secrets.

But he had to keep them. If he couldn't keep his own secrets then he didn't deserve to have them…and besides, this was not just his secret. Baby sis may have been just a baby but this was her secret too. Dad…dad could not know that he was still seeing baby sis. He might reassign her and her mom to somewhere far from everyone and everything else, even farther out than the woods outside of Seasoning City, and then…and then not only would Sho never be able to see them again but also they would never be able to see anyone else again….

And Sho did not want to be responsible for that.

"I know…but I still don't want yo-you to not have something….ok? So please Sho…just let me pack you up." Said Mob. This whole thing was just so….so sudden. Usually she got more notice about when Sho had an away mission. Usually she had more time to prepare, mentally, for the fact that her little brother would have been far away from her…and she knew that she was being weird. He had been so much farther from her so many times before….and she was just….being….

She was worrying too much about things that she did not need to worry over.

She knew that he would be back and she knew that he would be fine and she knew that he would be fine just so long as she packed him up the right way…so that was what she was going to do. She used her powers to fold his shirts, all long sleeved, and his pants. She packed him most of his clothes, his favorites, because maybe if he had his favorite clothes then he would feel better….not that she knew if he was even feeling bad or not. She really didn't. He seemed fine but she had no idea what was going on in his head. She knew, however, that if she were in his place then she would have been upset too….

After all Sho would be travelling with Fukuda of all people.

"Fine. Pack away Pac-sister." Said Sho as he made sure all of his markers were capped tight. Sometimes he didn't cap them tight enough and they dried out and that was always so annoying. He didn't want anything to go wrong for this trip, even something as little as dried up marker. This had to go well. Everything had to be perfect. After all, he hardly ever got to go to Seasoning City and see baby sis…

He wondered if she even still remembered him.

She was little after all, very little, and she….babies forgot things. She wasn't even two yet and Sho….well he couldn't remember anything that happened to him before he was three. He remembered waking up in the middle of the night and going to mom's bed…but dad was there….and he remembered not knowing that dad was dad…even though he did know that dad was dad…and then he got all scared all over again and he ran back to his room and dove into the bed with big sis…and then he woke her up but she was all 'it's ok, little brother, don't cry' and…and it had been nice…

He really hoped that baby sis remembered him.

Sho had been her first word after all…and maybe she knew other words. Maybe she could actually talk and…and she could tell him about things. About things that she liked. About things that happened to her in her life. About….about all of that baby stuff that she got up to. She was one and a half, now, and he had no idea how good one and a half year olds could talk but….but the fact that she was not only talking but also that he had been her first word….that should have been enough for him….and it was….

He just hoped that, in learning other words, she hadn't forgotten about him.

"That's funny…you're funny….you're always so funny little brother…" said Mob. He was going to be leaving and…and sometimes people never came back…but he would come back. He was her little brother and he had to come back. She had written the book on taking care of him after all. She knew what he liked for dinner and how he liked his laundry folded and…and how to play with him so he won but didn't realize that she had let him win…and also she knew…she knew him. She knew him and he knew her and…and he would come back and…

And she was being ridiculous and she needed to finish packing him up already.

"Yeah, I know it." Said Sho. He had been imitating Shimazaki, there, and he had done a good job. If Shimazaki had been around he would have told Sho that he had done a good job…but he wasn't around. He was still out with Minegishi…and they had been out all day…and Sho would be leaving tomorrow and…and he would have liked to have told Shimazaki that he was going. Well he knew that he easily could have called or texted but…but he wanted to tell him in person….

He just wanted to see Shimazaki again.

He rolled the sleeves of his jacket up. This was way too big. He would grow, Shimazaki had said, and then it would fit…and Sho…he wanted this jacket to fit…but he also didn't want to grow. Growing meant outgrowing and he didn't want to outgrow this. Shimazaki had worn this when he had been a little older than Sho, he had said, and that meant…that this was special and…and he knew that Shimazaki had only given him this because he thought of Sho as a son or whatever but….but that was ok. Shimazaki thinking of him as a son was…well it was better than Shimazaki not thinking about him at all…and Sho knew that he would never think about him in the same way that Sho thought about him and…and that really sucked but…

But it was better than nothing.

Shimazaki was his best friend and being best friends…well it was better than nothing. He was the only one that Shimazaki hung out with. He was the only one that Shimazaki had taken to the treasure room, judging by how dusty it had been, and he was the only one who knew where Shimazaki kept all of the things that were important enough to save…and he was the only one who got to wear this jacket and that…they were best friends and that had to be enough for him. It was enough for him…even though he felt….well more than best friend feelings…it had to be enough for him because….because when he thought about all of this he started to get sad and…and he should have been happy. He got to see baby sis again! He hadn't thought that he would be able to see her again before she turned two at least and now he was seeing her again and….

And he was happy…even though he really wanted to see Shimazaki again before he left…he was really happy…he really was!

"OK, so I pa-packed all of your favorite shirts….and also I washed your socks with the happy hamsters on them…and I updated the instruction book so Fukuda knows that you're allowed to have one can of soda after eight…and also about how you get a reward after you take your bath….and I can't think of anything else you need…." Said Mob as she wiped her eyes. She didn't know what she was so sad about…well she did…but she also knew that Sho had told her, specifically, that this was going to be a short trip. He had told her that this would be a short trip and she believed him…but he was still going and…and that was always sad…

It was always a very sad thing when her little brother left her.

He wouldn't be leaving forever, though, not at all. Just for a few days. He was going to Seasoning City with Fukuda for reasons. Sho hadn't told her what those reasons were but she knew that they must have been important because Sho told her not to tell dad where he was going. She wouldn't say a word. Her name was Suzuki Shigeko, not Fukuda Tadashi, and she could keep things to herself…and she knew that she had just thought something very mean but Fukuda…well he had trouble keeping things to himself. He had told dad about Emmy after all and Sho….Sho had sworn him to secrecy but he still told…and she had no idea why Sho was going somewhere with him….but it wasn't her secret to know…

She didn't have to know where he was going to know that she had to do his packing for him…or else he would forget the important things…like clean clothes or a toothbrush….

"You did enough, ok? And I don't need a babysitting manual. I know how to take care of myself." Said Sho. Fukuda would not be babysitting him because he did not need a babysitter. He knew not to drink too much before bed, he knew that he needed to at least since off every few days, and he knew that if he went to bed later than midnight he would be in a terrible mood the entire day. He was not a baby, he could take care of himself, and if she wanted to take care of a baby then…

Then she would have to have one herself because there was no way that she could come with.

Dad would definitely notice if she left. Dad was always talking about how much he loved her and how much he cared about her and how she was the best thing since family sized bottles of ketchup and sliced bread. Dad would never have let her go and even if she had managed to sneak away someone would have told dad where she had gone to. People didn't even know, sometimes, that he was dad's Son but she…well she had led Claw last year when dad had been on his away mission….so everyone knew her…and also even if she managed to wear a disguise or something dad would still have wound up finding out….

Since she didn't know how to keep secrets from him.

That was why he wasn't going to trust her with his secrets. He was going to…to pack the rest of his stuff up and tell her that he had gone to Seasoning City to see…the art museum in the cultural tower…or something. He didn't know. He didn't like lying to her. He wished that there had been some way that he could have done this without telling her lies….but there wasn't. It sucked worse than anything else in his life had ever sucked but…but this was just the way that it had to be. Him and her….he loved her but….well…

He loved his big sis a whole lot…but he loved his little sis a whole lot too….and he saw his big sis a hell of a lot more than he saw his little sis…so sometimes lies had to be told no matter how much he didn't want to….to lie to her…and stuff.

He didn't know. He shoved his markers into his backpack…and now there wasn't enough room for the pencil case. He picked his backpack up and shook it out onto his bed. Everything fell out. His crayons and markers and pens and pencils and sketchbooks and even a bunch of stuff that he hadn't known that he'd had. It was a big backpack, this was his travelling backpack, and he hadn't emptied it before he started filling it up. Old dart gun darts came tumbling out….an empty soda bottle….some crumpled up candy wrappers….a couple of rocks…all of it fell into the pile on his bed.

The candy wrappers started to float away.

"Here, at least let me help you with this. I know that you can take care of yourself more now than you could before but…but let me help. I love you and I want to help you." Said Mob as she floated the trash from his backpack over to their tiny garbage can. He really needed to stop putting old wrappers and bottles and stuff in there. He was lucky that no bugs or rats had made their home in his bag. He was lucky that he hadn't left any food in there, just empty wrappers, though something did smell…not good. Not like rot but just…not good.

"You always want to help me." Said Sho

"Yes, I do, because you're my little brother and I love you." Said Mob

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love you too, big sis." Said Sho as he picked up his sketchbooks. These were the same ones that he and baby sis had drawn in on their last visit and….oh. Wait. There was a spiral bound notebook and those were for school work…and doodling….but mostly for the stupid homeschool work that big sis made him do. This was….it smelled like…

Oh. He knew what this was.

"What's that notebook, Sho? It smells weird." Said Mob as she leaned over his shoulder. He had a bunch of sketchbooks in a pile and a spiral bound notebook in his hands…that smelled terrible. Also it was…she knew that train. This was a Galaxy Express notebook…and she didn't remember Sho having a Galaxy Express notebook. No, his were all either Zootopia characters or real animals. Also that notebook was more…square? Yes, it was more square than any notebook that she had ever seen….but it was his. It had to be. It had the Claw symbol on the front…well not a very good drawing of it but sometimes Sho got sloppy or tired, and also it said Suzuki on the front….

Though she had never known Sho's handwriting to be that…good.

"It's…from the old house. It used to be dad's before I took it. It smells weird because it's old." Said Sho quickly. He had to lie. He couldn't tell her about the fort in the woods. He couldn't tell her about how he had taken this from a box in a hole in the ground. He couldn't tell her how dad and Fukuda had built a fort in the woods and Fukuda had shown it to him last year and how it was probably still there and stuff. He just…he had to lie.

Lies on top of lies on top of lies.

"Oh….I don't remember finding this in the treasure room." Said Mob. She held out her hands and he hesitated before passing it over to her. This felt….like a notebook. She had no idea what she had been expecting but it felt just like any other notebook. It smelled weird, though, but now that she thought about it she knew that it smelled just like the used bookstores that she and Minegishi went to sometimes. Old. That would have made sense, the pages were yellow, and it had been something that dad had owned back when he had been little.

That was how he wrote Suzuki. Very neatly.

"Well maybe you forgot your memory when I hit you in the face with that kendo sword." Said Sho quickly. He didn't want to lie to her any more than he had to…but she was asking too many questions. What was so hard to understand? It was a notebook and he had found it and it used to belong to dad. Ok, time to move on now.

"Shinai." Said Mob as she felt the front cover of the notebook. She knew kendo…and so had dad. She flipped open the front cover and it looked like he had drawn a shinai. Well it looked like he had tried to. There, on the inside front cover, were a bunch of little drawings of shiai swords and also trains and planets and spaceships….not very good ones….but then again she was used to Sho's drawings…

And she hadn't known that dad had liked to draw.

"Fine, shinai, whatever. Maybe you lost your memory when I hit you with it…or something." Said Sho as big sis flipped the notebook opened. He had no idea what it was that she even expected to find. He had gone through that and it was nothing but really bad drawings, math problems, ideas for stuff in Claw, and sometimes there were girls' names and notes on what they did…and the thought of dad liking any girl...even mom….ws just plain gross and wrong. That was why he had stopped looking through it. He didn't want to know those things about dad.

He didn't want to know anything about dad.

"I don't think that I did…I just think that I forgot about this because we were so little back then." Said Mob as she flipped to the next page. Dad had written here that this notebook was for his eyes only…but then, in different handwriting, someone had written 'for my eyes too' and…and she didn't know that handwriting. She touch it. This was scratchier than dad's handwriting…and it was written in bright green ink when dad had been writing in pencil…she reached down and touched it even though she had no idea what she expected to feel.

"Fukuda wrote that. This is from when he and dad were friends. He wrote some other stuff too…here, I'll show you." Said Sho as he flipped over to what looked like it was supposed to be a drawing of the First Division. Dad had drawn it in pencil and Fukuda had circled the big windows and the spires and the spiky fence and written 'impractical' and 'seriously Suzuki?' and some other stuff. He couldn't imagine Fukuda talking to dad like that now…

And he didn't want to.

He didn't want to think about dad and Fukuda now or as kids or…or at all. Dad was a jerk and Fukuda was nothing more than a traitor and a betrayer and…and he didn't even know why he still had this thing. He would put it back in the ground where he had found it. That was where it belonged, anyway. Big sis…if she wanted to know about when dad was a kid then she was free to ask him. He liked her the best after all….so she got to hear these stories first hand…and she was the only one who wanted to hear them, too.

Sho didn't care…not at all…and even it had been dad and not Fukuda who had wanted to tell him about Claw and about being a kid…he still would not have cared….really.

Really.

"Wow….dad can't draw….at all." said Mob as she flipped through the pages. Dad had drawn more divisions…and Fukuda had written notes telling him how terrible his drawings were…and she wondered why Fukuda had stopped talking to dad like that. He was always so polite with dad…and with her…and it was nice to know that it wasn't personal. Maybe that was just who Fukuda had become…or something. She didn't know. She didn't want to think about Fukuda. She wanted….she wanted….

She wanted to read more.

"Yeah….and there are a lot of drawings. Some math problems, too, and then some weird stuff. I stopped reading at about the middle because dad got sort of weird…and maybe don't look at that page!" said Sho. He tried to take it from her but she held it closer. It was one of the umbrella pages. Dad was even bad at drawing love umbrellas…and Sho had never drawn a love umbrella before but he knew that it was hard to mess up love umbrellas….but dad had. He had no sense of proportion or how to draw a straight line…and also his umbrella top was lopsided….and he was going to stop criticism dad's love umbrella drawing skills…

Because that was just…this was just…gross.

"Tuesday the 23rd of September 1986. Wada-san spoke to me today. She said hello when we both entered the classroom at the same time. She also asked me if I wanted her bread at lunch. Then during free time she asked what me and Fukuda…he struck that out….what Fukuda and I were listening to during break. We were listening to Fukuda's stupid Bangles tape which I now love….he struck that out…will learn to love because Wada-san likes it. She had her purple hairclip in today, the big one, and she dropped it. I caught it and handed it to her. Then she smiled at me. She smiled at me for four seconds exactly. She has a gap in her front teeth and I love it and I love her…and now someone struck that out in green….Suzuki this is why girl's don't like you stop coming on so strong or you'll die a virgin….and then I guess dad wrote back….Fukuda you are not the President. I am the President and if you keep writing in my private notes then you will be excommunicated from Claw…and then I guess Fukuda wrote…kick me out and you'll be the President of yourself….and then dad wrote back….stop reading my private notes…and then Fukuda wrote back….stop being weird with girls…and then dad wrote back…..you're the one who would sleep with his own mother if you found yourself in a back to the future scenario so stop calling me weird and….and then it looks like Fukuda drew a rocket ship…car…thing. I don't know. This is weird." Said Mob. This was weird but she didn't close the notebook….no.

She turned the page.

"If it's so weird then stop reading." Said Sho. He didn't want to hear any more of it. Dad had been a person before Sho had been a person. Whatever. That was….that was a thing that he had known about all his life. Dad had been a kid once and…and this was just…what Claw had been before it became what it was now….

And that was all so….ok. Everything was ok…so ok that Sho….he didn't even care…

"Dad and Fukuda had a lot of…I guess…conversations? Like here. Friday the 26th of September 1986. Mother sent me to the store for eggs for tempura. This is normal. I have planned it so that I always finish off the eggs Friday morning for breakfast. That was when I arrive home mother will send me to the store again. I have taken to watching television with her when I get home as to better time my trips to the store so that I may cross paths with Wada-san…and Fukuda drew an arrow and wrote….what Suzuki is not telling you is that he also watches her house through his telescope so that he can leave the house right when she does….on Friday afternoons her mother also sends her to the store. Her mother does not make tempura on Fridays. Her mother makes oyakodon. We go to the same store and we walk for approximately ten to thirteen minutes each way. She speaks to me….Fukuda wrote another note here….maybe you could talk back once in a while….and I make sure to commit it to memory. Today she spoke to me about how her VCR destroyed her tape of Akira. I suggested…..another note from Fukuda…let it be known that I, Fukuda Tadashi, came up with the brilliant idea of inviting Wada-san and her friend with the massive….not going to read that word…to watch Suzuki's copy of Akira on laserdisc which he…owns is written in bold…and then dad says….I thought of it first even if you said it first…and then Fukuda says…how the…f-word…do you know that and-" said Mob

"Wait, Fukuda said fuck? He's always on me about my language and he said-" sad Sho

"Sho! Don't say that word…and yes, Fukuda said…wrote….the f-word…at dad…anyway back to this. Fukuda insists that we do this on Sunday when mother and father will be out on one of their long drives….and Fukuda drew a picture of….Sho don't look…and then dad wrote….let it be known that mother and father do not have…s-word…and also let it be known that Fukuda is the creator of terrible ideas because I am expressly forbidden not only from having company in the house when mother and father are out but also I am forbidden from having company of the opposite…s-word….in my bedroom…and I have no idea why we would be in my bedroom…and then Fukuda….wrote….well somebody in your house ought to be having….s-word…and I mean with something other than their right hand and….well I have no idea what that means….and then dad wrote….well there's red on the page and dad wrote….Fukuda Tadashi will no longer be adding notes to this notebook as his writing hand is quite broken….dad. Well now that was just mean…even if Fukuda was being gross…at least I think he was." Said Mob. She knew that she should have closed this notebook. She knew that she was reading something personal but…but she had never seen this side of dad before…and aside from talking about the s-word and being in love with a girl who wasn't mom….

Wada was a family name.

What had mom's family name been before she married dad and became a Suzuki? Mob…had no idea. Maybe this was about mom. Maybe this was about how mom and dad had met and fell in love and…and his was not that. She knew that this was not their love story because mom had told her what had happened. Dad had met her at the train station and then they had fallen in love and gotten married almost immediately…and it was a good love story….and also nobody had used the s-word….and Mob didn't want to think about either of her parents even talking about the s-word…and also she didn't want to think about either of her parents being in love with someone else but…

But she did kind of want to know more…even if she did know how this love story ended….well dad had married mom but…but she still wanted to read more just so long as nobody mentioned the s-word ever again.

"If it's so gross then stop reading already." Said Sho. He started putting stuff back in his backpack. He didn't need to hear this. He didn't want to know about this. He had stopped reading before this point. If she wanted to read, fine, but that didn't mean that he had to listen or care.

"Maybe it'll stop being gross…because I can't imagine dad ever being this gross…well Fukuda yes but not dad and…here. Sunday the twenty eighth of September 1986. Wada-san was in my bedroom. I was more nervous than I thought that I would have been. I blew the fuse box twice…and then Fukuda wrote….three times…and then dad said…I now like Akira and no longer have fears of losing control and leaving this plane of existence….and then Fukuda wrote…that's a lie he was up all night with nightmares and made me stay up with him and tell him he wasn't losing control…oh. Poor dad. Anyway dad wrote….I now enjoy…he crossed that out…no longer want to return my copy of Akira. I also now know what her skin feels like. It's soft. The skin on the tops of her hands is softer than the skin on the palms of her hands. The skin on her stomach is softer then the skin on her shoulders…and Fukuda wrote….that's Suzuki speak for I felt a girl up and I liked it…and that's gross…and then dad wrote back….I did not feel her up because I stayed away from her breasts and did not reach under her bra….dad that is so gross…and that is why Fukuda Tadashi got slapped so hard he got a bloody nose….and then Fukuda wrote back….first of all she didn't slap me she punched me and second of all her….not going to read that word…weren't anything to write home about and then….so Fukuda was always like this….dad says Fukuda Tadashi is the reason that Wada-san and her friend went home before then end of the movie and he has lost his sleepover movie and snack picking privileges and then Fukuda said…let it be known to all future Claw members that I Fukuda Tadashi am responsible for the fact that our dear President has more hickeys than skin….don't know what that means…and also he says-" said Mob. She could help it. This was like reading about a train wreck. She knew that she should have stopped but…but this was just….she couldn't look away.

Also. Dad. Gross.

She had never even thought about this part of her dad's life and…and a lot of it was gross but…but also….dad had been in love. Dad had been in love with someone besides mom…and he had done kissing stuff and other stuff with someone other than mom and…and dad had been…her age. Well this was from 1986 so dad had been….thirteen….which was older than her but…but aside from the time she and Sho had found the Treasure Room when she had been little…she had never even thought about dad being….a kid….or about this….

She had never thought about dad and…this….before but…wow. Just…wow. Bad wow but still…wow.

"See? What did I say? It's not going to stop being weird and gross and stuff. That was why I stopped reading when dad started writing about that girl. I don't need to know about that….and I don't care about that, either, and I don't know why you do." Said Sho. Who wanted to read about dad and Fukuda? They were weird now and they had been even weirder back then. Sho would rather have been reading about something boring like…math…or the history of grass growing…or….whatever. Sho didn't know. Anything other than the stupid notes dad and Fukuda had written to each other.

"I just…never thought about dad like this before. I mean not the gross parts but….he and Fukuda used to be friends. This kind of friends. He and Fukuda used to be the kind of friends who had sleepovers and wrote notes with each other…and I never…thought about this before…" said Mob. Dad had never told her about all of that before and….and she tried to picture it and she just…couldn't. She didn't need to picture it. She had words, not pictures, and…and some of them had been gross but…but even the gross ones were better than nothing…or maybe nothing was better than gross stuff…she didn't know…she just figured that it depended on how gross this got…well it was already pretty gross….but still….or something….

"If you want to know about this stuff then ask Fukuda. He'll tell you everything that you ever wanted to know and then some….or maybe dad since, you know, he likes you the best." Said Sho

"No….no. I just…don't want to ask Fukuda about this….or….anything….or dad, too. I just…want to know how this ends." Said Mob

"You know how it ends. Dad grows up, marries mom, and then we're born. We both know how the story ends." Said Sho

"I know but…aside from the gross parts….I want to know how we got to the ending….and stuff." Said Mob

"Fine. It's a free country. Keep reading until you lose your voice or whatever. I don't care." Said Sho

"Ok…but I'll stop….I mean I want to know what happens but…" said Mob. She knew what happened but….but she didn't KNOW what happened. What dad had been like….aside from the gross stuff that came with love…and she had no idea what…well Fukuda had always been gross apparently…but there was stuff in there about grandma and grandpa….well little things but…but she hadn't had any idea that grandma had made tempura every Friday or that on Sundays grandma and grandpa went for long drives….and she knew that she had barely learned anything but….but barely anything was better than the absolutely nothing that she had known before.

"Big sis….keep reading. It's….it's funny…the parts where Fukuda curses. You can keep reading….or whatever." Said Sho. She wanted to know and…and that notebook had been weighing his backpack down for a year now. He had taken it out every so often to read and then he had put it back just as fast. It had been a secret that he had, eventually, forgotten that he had been keeping…that he had forgotten that he had been keeping in his backpack weighing him down…

And his backpack was overstuffed as it was.

"Ok…but one more…and then you can have it back. Um….ok. Wednesday the first of October 1986. I spoke to Wada-san in school today. She asked me to help her with the math homework during free time. Also she called me Touichi. Mother is the only person who calls me that. Now Wada-san calls me that. I like it. I accidentally blew the power to the building…and then Fukuda wrote….thank you very much for getting us out of school early President Suzuki I am forever in your debt….oh. So that's why he still hangs out with dad. Anyway dad wrote….Wada-san asked me to accompany her to the record store on the condition that Fukuda not join us. I have no idea why she does not like him but I agreed. Have discovered synthesized music…and then Fukuda wrote….welcome to the 80s….and then dad wrote….I enjoy this very much. Have bought a record and have marked all the parts without talking in crayon. Wada-san asked to come home with me since my record player is nicer than hers. I did not think so but it's a weekday so I can have company…and then Fukuda said something that I don't think that I should read…and then dad wrote….mother asked me to keep my door opened and I don't know why. Wada-san kissed me again despite the door being opened. She….that's a lot of details….dad why are you so gross…and then Fukuda….why are boys so gross all the time….yuck. Then dad says….I told Wada-san that I love her….then Fukuda said….President Suzuki is an idiot and this is why his bloodline will come to an end you tell a girl that after you sleep with her not the first time she actually lets you….more gross stuff….and then dad says….this is not an exchange diary and Fukuda Tadashi will get out of my personal notes…and then Fukuda says….at this point it is an exchange diary and I, as the acting vice president of Claw, will annotate this exchange diary so that future members of Claw will be able to know what a weirdo you are and then dad wrote….Fukuda Tadashi has stated numerous times in a back to the future scenario that if his mother looked like Marty McFly's mother then he would not rebuff her advances…whatever any of that means…and then Fukuda said…I wasn't being serious Touichirou now if she were your mom…and then dad wrote that any and all future messages will be written in Fukuda's blood…and then….I hope that's red ink and not blood…Suzuki Touichirou is a violent weirdo who stabbed me with a….how do you stab someone with a compass? I don't even….but dad stabbed him with one…and then he found one of the girl's hairclips and now he's going to save it for the rest of eternity because plastic never degrades…and also he…well more gross stuff….dad why did you have to be so gross?" Said Mob. She closed the notebook after that and handed it to Sho. That was…well she didn't know what she had been expecting but it hadn't been that. She just….had never….that had been….

Dad and Fukuda had been really gross as kids….

But also dad had been in love. Dad had been in love and also…also he'd had parents. He'd had parents and they had given him rules…and he had followed their rules and…and Mob found herself wanting to know more. Not about gross stuff…so maybe she would just avoid the layers of notes and comments that dad and Fukuda had exchanged….but she did want to know more about…about grandma and grandpa and…and dad's life. What he had been…like…before he had been dad….but not the gross stuff….

She could have lived a very long and happy life if she hadn't known about any of that gross stuff.

"You….you keep it. I don't want it. You're the one who wants to know about dad…so you keep it…and stuff." Said Sho. He didn't want it. He knew enough about dad and Fukuda and when they had been kids. She could have it. She was the one who wanted to know and it wasn't like Fukuda would ever tell her…since he didn't like her for some reason…..but if she wanted to know about all of that then she could have it.

He didn't care.

He had enough stuff he knew about. Secret stuff like their fort in the woods….or the house….or grandma and grandpa's grave and…and she didn't know about any of that…and she never could…because those were secrets. Those were some of the many secrets that he had to keep from her. Secrets on top of secrets on top of secrets….

And it felt good to be able to just…have one fewer secret to keep…or whatever.

"But…you found it first." Said Mob. Sho needed this more than she did. She talked to dad all the time…never about gross stuff like this but…well also never about how he and Fukuda had been friends, before, and about how…how he used to have parents before they died and he became an orphan…and she had never thought about that before….about how dad was an orphan and….she could have asked about this but….but Sho couldn't….

She tried to pass it back again…but Sho pushed it back into her chest.

"You read it…but to yourself. You can have it, I don't want it, now leave me alone. I have a lot of packing to do." Said Sho. He wasn't lying. He did have a lot of packing to do…well she had done most of it…but he didn't care about dad or what he had been like as a kid or even about something funny like him and Fukuda cursing at each other….he didn't care. She did. She did and…and if she was reading that then she wouldn't get all freaked out because he was leaving…even though it wouldn't be a long trip at all…and anyway he would come back with a present for her or something…and more secrets for himself, too….

Well Fukuda had said that it wouldn't be a long trip, anyway, but Sho knew that it would take forever…since he had all of these secrets weighing him down and all.


	363. Train Rides and Pragmatic Choices

The train ride to Seasoning City was a long one….but at least it wasn't a bumpy one.

No, the train ride went very smoothly. That was good. A smooth train ride meant for easy drawing. Sho had his sketchbook balanced on his lap as he drew….well he had no idea what he was drawing. Right now it was just a collection of lines. Usually he saw in his head what his drawing was going to be but…but not this time. He hadn't had time to think up a drawing. This time he' just sat down in his seat, pulled out his sketchbook, and gotten right down to it.

He'd had to.

Fukuda was looking at him. He was watching him with his eyes and with his aura and Sho…he had no clue what he even wanted. Fukuda wanted to take him to Seasoning City to see baby sis. They were on a train to Seasoning City to see baby sis. There. What did they even have to talk about? They were doing the thing that they had been planning on doing. There. End of discussion. Thank you very much. Sho was there, on the train, sitting with his feet up on the seat next to Fukuda drawing and just….Fukuda should have been able to tell that he didn't want to talk…

But Fukuda was still staring at him.

Sho made the mistake of looking up at him. He should have stayed staring at his sketchbook. He should have stayed working. Maybe if he had stayed working then Fukuda wouldn't have made eye contact with him and smiled. Sho didn't smile back. He didn't feel like smiling back. He felt like scribbling in this sketchbook until they got to Seasoning City and then he felt like scribbling in it some more until they got to the Seventh Division and then he felt like scribbling it in again when he saw baby sis again….he loved her little baby scribbles…and then once he had to leave again he felt like doing even more scribbling on the way back so that he wouldn't talk to Fukuda…and he wished that Fukuda would have just gotten a clue already…

But, apparently, he had no idea where to get a clue even if one walked up and bit him.

"So…what are you drawing over there?" asked Fukuda. He could get a clue. He could read the atmosphere and this atmosphere said 'leave me alone' but he wasn't going to. He needed to clear the air with Sho. He couldn't let the two of them go on like this. Sho…he had been angry with him before…he was a very angry little boy….but this was different. It had never lasted this long before. It had never been so…palpable before….and he just…

He needed to fix this.

God, he wished the Higashio had been there. That guy could fix anything. Or even Ootski, he was actually very good with kids. But, of course, he so rarely got to see the two other people he could sort of call friends in this life…but that was ok. He was there for Sho and that was what mattered. He could and would fix what broke on his own…what he had broken. He'd had to make a pragmatic choice and…and he knew that he had made the right one but Sho…he was just a child and could not even begin to understand these things..

But that was alright because Fukuda…well he had days and days to make things right between them again.

He didn't know how he would do it but he would. He would…he would talk to Sho and….and just…find some way of making him understand. He had to understand that Fukuda…the things he did…all the things he did…have always been for his own good. Even the things that didn't quite work out had all been for Sho's own good…and Sho…he would be old enough one day to understand….everything…

But Fukuda didn't need him to understand everything, not today, he just needed Sho to understand…the latest in a series of pragmatic choices that he'd made on his behalf.

"A picture." Said Sho. He looked back down at his drawing. It was a collection of lines…maybe this counted as abstraction…but he didn't like abstraction. He liked to draw things the way they actually looked. It was harder to do that. Abstraction was just lines and dots ad splotches and stuff. He had seen a whole bunch of it last time he had gone to an art museum. Drawing things as they looked in life took more effort and the results were much more impressive.

To people other than dad.

He didn't know why he cared whether or not dad was impressed by him. Dad liked his drawings…so what? For as long as he could remember everyone had always been impressed by his drawings. His teachers back in preschool…the other kids when it would be art day at the library….people who worked at the animal shelter mom used to take him and big sis too…back when they had been little and Sho had drawn birthday cards for the animals…lots of people had been impressed with his drawing skills before. This was no different, dad being impressed, and he shouldn't have cared about what dad thought any more than he cared what some stranger on the street thought…or whatever.

He shouldn't have….but part of him….the stupid part….did.

"Of what?" asked Fukuda. He learned forward. It looked like Sho was just making lines…but then again what in the hell did he know about art? Sho could have been working in a new style or something. He was a prodigy when it came to art. Masami had always said that Sho had a gift…and she'd had no idea where it came from. He got it from his grandmother, obviously, though she had never been the artist that Sho was now. She had been alright, she had worked mostly in ink wash, and Fukuda…he wondered if any of her work survived. If it had then he could have shown Sho and…and maybe another piece of the past, of his past, could have mended he bond between the two of them…and also Sho had a right to know…

He had a right to know a lot of things….and Fukuda….well he had might as well tell Sho about the things which he both had the right to know and could handle at his age.

"I don't know yet. Maybe I would know if you weren't distracting me." Said Sho. He glared at Fukuda. He glared so hard that even Shimazaki would have been able to see it. Fukuda needed to get a clue already. Sho didn't feel like talking. What, did he have to get out his markers and right it all over his face? Or all over Fukuda's? Or maybe just all over the train. Yeah. That would have been something. He just starts drawing all over the train until he gets kicked off and then he doesn't get to see baby sis….or maybe he could get Fukuda kicked off the train…yeah. Then maybe he could have a peaceful rest of the train ride…even though he was too little, for some reason, to go on his own….he was ten and ten was not too little and he could take trains on his own if he wanted to!

"I'm sorry." said Fukuda. Maybe that was the place to start. He was sorry. He was sorry for breaking Sho's trust. He was sorry for not doing more to make his life better. He was sorry for not being able to get him to his mother. He was sorry for helping Masami leave and not thinking up a better plan than…then him getting Sho to her later. He was sorry for…well he had a lot of things to be sorry for and Sho…he was too young to know about many of those things…

But he wasn't too young to know that Fukuda was sorry.

"No you aren't. If you were sorry then you wouldn't have done it in the first place." Said Sho sticking out his tongue…and maybe that had been the one step too far. Fukuda's aura got all pulled in and his eyes got all sad and…and he needed to stop being so sensitive! Sho had only stuck out his tongue! It wasn't like he got up, walked over, and started kicking him in the balls or anything! And he deserved that….even though Shimazaki had been very clear that men did not kid each other in the balls….well Sho wasn't a man! He was a only ten and a half years old and nobody ever treated him like a man anyway so…..so maybe he should have just gotten up and kicked Fukuda in the balls!

But he didn't because that was a crime outside of Claw and if he did that then he would end up getting kicked off this train and this was the only train to Seasoning City so he had to be good.

"Sho….that's not true. Sometimes we do things that…that we have to do….because we have no other choice but…but that doesn't mean that we aren't sorry about what we did…because we are." Said Fukuda softly. He was glad that they were the only people in their section. Nobody to overhear them. Nobody to overhear Sho when he inevitably started cursing like he was training for a career as a sailor. Nobody to question what a forty four year old man had to apologize to a ten year old boy about.

"No, you don't have to bother me. You can look out the window or read stuff on your phone or take a nap or just sit around watching your nails grow or whatever. You don't have to distract me…and what's with all of this 'we' shit? I am not the one who's bothering you. You're the one who's bothering me." Said Sho

"Language." Said Fukuda automatically. He hated it, Sho's cursing, and it was the one thing that he and Suzuki could agree about. Sho should not have been cursing. It was a filthy way of speaking and he should have had a better way to express himself….not that Fukuda knew what that way was. There was so much anger to him, anger that Fukuda had never even though possible for a ten year old boy, and he had no idea what he was even supposed to do to help Sho with that anger. That is if he even could do anything at all besides clear the air between them and hope….hope that things got better.

"Seriously? You cursed all the time when you were my age. You even cursed at dad. How are you going to talk to be about cursing when you did the same thing?" asked Sho. He could say whatever he wanted to say and do whatever he wanted to do. This was still a free country until dad took over the world and until that day came he could say and do whatever it was the he felt like…and also Fukuda had cursed too! So he was being all two faced when he told Sho not to curse! And you weren't supposed to be two faced!

"No, I never cursed at ten…and also I never knew your father when I was ten…and I never cursed at him at any point in time." Said Fukuda. He couldn't remember a time when he would have even been at ease enough to curse Suzuki out…and there had been plenty of times when he'd wanted to. There had been so many times over the past thirty something years that he had wanted to take Suzuki and shake him and curse him out…but he didn't. That would have been suicide. Well…he was mostly sure that Suzuki never would have even been able to kill him….but it was always very surprising what a person was capable of living through.

"Liar. You're such a liar that it's not even funny. I know you cursed at dad. I read it in a notebook. Dad wrote about his life and then you wrote in it too and you cursed at him. Don't lie to me. I don't like liars." Said Sho. No. Fukuda was not going to sit there and lie to him again. He felt like yelling and screaming and kicking him in the balls even though men did not do that to each other…but Sho wasn't a man. He was ten. He knew that he was too old to throw a fit, he'd get kicked off this train if he did, but he was not too old to kick Fukuda in the balls….and he deserved it!

"Wait…what? What notebook?" asked Fukuda. He vaguely remembered…..Suzuki kept a diary…well he kept about a million of them…but he always buried those. They had both been pretty bad about burying things that they didn't want anyone to know about but…but where had Sho even….what?

"I found a notebook buried in the woods the first time you took me to see baby sis. You and dad wrote a lot of really gross stuff in it to each other. Like about how dad was in love with some girl and about kissing stuff and other gross stuff that I never even wanted to know about my dad….or you. You did curse at him and you lied to me when you said that you didn't and…and it really pisses me the fuck off when you lie to me." Said Sho. He looked Fukuda right in the eyes. He dared him to say it again. He dared Fukuda to be all 'language' like….like he could just say stuff like that after he had done the exact same thing….

"Sho….you're right. I did curse at your dad when I was younger….and I should not have done that. I should not have been talking like that to anyone let alone my best….let alone your father. That had been wrong of me." Said Fukuda. There was no denying it…and also Sho…he should not have read that. There was a feeling of….something close to….violation…at the idea of Sho having read…well it depended on which one Sho had read. There were ones that were just ideas for the future…and there were ones that had a lot of personal stuff in them that a ten year old boy should not have been reading…especially about his father….and especially about what his father had gotten up to as a teenage boy…and what Fukuda had gotten up to…

Because, really, they had been absolutely terrible as teenagers.

Especially as middle schoolers. Middle school boys…they were on their own level when it came to everything….everything that kids Sho's age should not have known about. He and Suzuki had been at their worst when it came to…well a lot of things. Suzuki had been pretty fond of stabbing him with a compass….and whoever had invented something so sharp for something as stupid as geometry needed to be hanged or thrown in a hole or something…..and also he had been fond of generally inflicting pain and injury onto Fukuda when he got pissed off….and Fukuda had been pretty fond of pissing him off…at least in the beginning. At least when they had first met and Suzuki was just this weird kid in his class who'd become his first esper friend…and real friend, too. They had been better friends back then. Good enough friends that Fukuda had been privy to all of Suzuki's….weirdness…

Weirdness that Sho DID NOT NEED to know about.

Sho did not need to know just how weird and obsessive his dad had been when it came to girls. Also he did not need to know how just….well Fukuda had been fairly unpleasant when it came to the opposite sex too. He had just been more open about what he wanted. He and Suzuki had both been at their absolute worst between thirteen and fifteen but Suzuki had been more about how he wanted some girl to love him and be there for him…and then all of the fun stuff. Fukuda had been a lot more opened about how he wanted to get to the fun stuff…..

And Sho did not need to know about that stuff…not at his age…or any age….

There was also the matter of that thing that he and Suzuki were never speaking of again. That thing that they had tried…well several things that they had tried….on the one occasion…on too many occasions….well even once was too many! And Sho did not need to know about that. Not the first time or the next or…or thank fucking God that he and Suzuki had left Seasoning City and that fort in the woods behind for university because….yeah. Sho would need a team of professionals if he ever found out about…well anything related to his and Suzuki's university years…..

Hopefully Sho had just found the notebook where Fukuda had seen how creative he could get before Suzuki stabbed him with that damn compass again.

"So that means that you can't get on me about cursing. Not if you cursed too." Said Sho. He was not going to sit there and be told not to do something that Fukuda had done…and especially not if Fukuda was just…just going to sit there and be a traitor! Because that was what he was….a traitor!

"Sho…I get on you about cursing because I used to curse." Said Fukuda with a sigh. He…had had cursed up a storm when he had been young…well older than Sho…but still young…and Sho was right. He had been a hypocrite and…and he had to own up to that and….and a lot of other shit, too, while he was at it.

"That makes no sense at all." said Sho. You couldn't make one rule for someone else and then a different rule for yourself…unless your name was dad…or Suzuki Touichirou….but Fukuda wasn't dad! He wasn't anything like dad at all!

"It does. Sho…you're the child and I'm the adult. It's my job to try and make…make things better for you than they were for me. Make you into a better person than…than I am….and in some ways I suppose that you are but…but you're still only ten years old and you have a long way to go." Said Fukuda

"No I don't. I'm already a better person than you are. I don't go around telling people's secrets. I have never betrayed anyone in my life, not even once, and not even you….and you deserve it. You traitor." Said Sho. That was worse than cursing at someone. Traitor. He couldn't think of anything worse than being called a traitor…and Fukuda deserved it…even if now his eyes looked sad and…and he needed to stop looking at Sho like that! He needed to stop trying to make Sho feel bad!

"Sho…I deserve that." Said Fukuda. He was going to own up to it, what he had done, the pragmatic choice that he'd had to make.

"What?" asked Sho. That was…not what he had been expecting to hear. Why wasn't he defending himself? Why was he just….admitting to it? To all of it? Was this…what even….was….this?

"I deserve what you said to me. You said something very hurtful to me and I deserved all of it." Said Fukuda. He did deserve it, all of it, even this part. He should have….well there was nothing else that he could have done. He'd had a choice to make and…and he hated making pragmatic choices. They were never about what was going to give him the best outcome….just what was going to give him the least terrible one…and this was the least terrible one…but it was still pretty fuckin terrible.

"You….you're tricking me. This is a trick." Said Sho. No. He was going to be all 'but I did what I had to do and I'm sorry that you got upset'….or something. Fukuda…if he had known fully well that he had been betraying Sho then why had he done any betraying at all? Why couldn't he have just kept his mouth shut or figured out something else to say or….or whatever!?

"No, it isn't. You're right. I did betray you. You put your trust in me, I promised that I would keep your secrets, and I betrayed you. I deserve everything that you have to say and more." Said Fukuda

"You…if you know that you deserve me cursing you out and telling you that you suck and kicking you in the balls then…then why did you do it?" asked Sho

"Sho….I hurt you. I hurt you but…don't ever kick another man in that….area. Ever." Said Fukuda

"I know. Shimazaki told me already…but I want to kick you in the balls! I want to kick you in the balls so hard that you turn into a girl!" said Sho. He didn't get up even though he wanted to really bad but he did kick at Fukuda…who crossed his legs like a coward! If he had really been sorry about betraying him then he would have let Sho kick him in the balls as hard as he possibly could! Until he turned into a girl…because they were inside out guys….or however it worked!

"Sho….stop shouting. Ok, I admit it, I deserve the amateur sex change but….but how about this? You can punch me in the face or the gut or hit me over the head with a rock or something when we get off this train. How about that?" asked Fukuda. He could heal but he could also feel and…and he didn't much want to go through that…and also since he was the only one putting forth any real effort into actually raising Sho, the only adult anyway, he had a duty to keep Sho from growing up to be the sort of man who kicked other men below the belt. That was something that even Suzuki had stopped doing.

"No…because I'm done hitting people….mostly. I don't want to hit you or anyone else because that would make big sis upset and…and stuff. Even if you did deserve it, you do deserve it, for being a traitor." Said Sho

"Sho….I'm glad that you're trying to be a better person but…but that has to come from within. You don't have to change just because your sister told you to." Said Fukuda

"Sho didn't tell me to. I decided this on my own. I decided this because…because one day I wanted to hit her hard enough that she coughed up blood….and that was what dad did to people…and I never want to be anything like my dad. Ever. So I decided to become a better person than him…and that means that I won't hit you even if you did betray me for no reason." said Sho

"Sho….no. I didn't tell your father about your girlfriend for no reason. I told him about your girlfriend because….I told you already. Sho, I know that you have a crush on Shimazaki-" said Fukuda

"I do not! You don't know anything!" shouted Sho. He stood up on his chair and pointed at Fukuda and…and maybe that hadn't been the best thing to do because now people, the train wasn't totally empty, were looking at him…

"Sho. Sit down and stop this. You're acting up and you can't do that here. You can act up all you want when we're back…with our people…but not out here." Said Fukuda. He reached over and took Sho by the hand and pulled him back down. That had been…not good. Sho…well he was the Son of the President and in Claw he could act however he wanted to act but out here in the normal world….he looked like a…well like something of a….he had been making a spectacle of himself and that was socially unacceptable.

"Fine…but I don't have a crush on-" said Sho

"Sho. I know that you do and I did what I had to do to protect you. You saw how your dad reacted to your sister having feelings for Shimazaki and she's at least the right…well not the right sex but…but your dad has very clear ideas about what his daughter should be and what his son should be. You having a girlfriend is something that he wanted for you and…and you know for a fact that he would have done more than beat Shimazaki up if he ever even got the idea in his head that you had feelings for him. You're only ten but…but you're old enough to begin to understand…that in life we have to make…pragmatic choices." Said Fukuda

"I have no idea what that means." Said Sho. He had heard that word before but…but he didn't feel getting a vocabulary lesson right now! He wanted…he wanted to pick up his sketchbook and draw and…and he had no idea what he even wanted to draw but…but he wanted to just…he didn't even know what it was that he wanted anymore…it felt like…and that sucked like hell. It sucked like an out of work businessman in a public bathroom during golden week…and he would much rather have asked Shimazaki was what meant than ask Fukuda what in the hell 'pragmatic choice' meant.

"Pragmatic choices are….are choices that you don't always win from. It's not about which choice will lead to the best outcome but…but which choice will lead to the least terrible one. I told you dad…I betrayed you to your father…because I had a pragmatic choice to make. I could either keep it a secret and let your father think that you liked boys in the same way that you like girls….and then he would probably end up hurting you and whatever boy you wound up with….or I could just tell one of your secrets but throw your father off of your trail. I knew that I was damaging my relationship with you when I did that…and it's been tearing me apart ever since. I love you, Sho, you mean the most to me out of everyone else in the world and…and I truly am sorry for doing what I did…but I had to do what I had to do to protect you." Said Fukuda. He slumped down in his seat. This was….harder than he had imagined but…but he had to…to fix this. Honesty. He would have to be honest in…the first time in a very long time…well mostly honest. He didn't know. All he knew was that he had to fix this before it got any more broken than it already was.

"Stop getting all sad…and stuff. You didn't have to protect me. Dad…I can handle whatever dad throws at me. I've been handling him my whole life…and I could have handled….whatever he was planning on doing to me." Said Sho

"Sho….no. Your dad….you've never seen the upper limits of what he can do to people. I have. You're his son and he values you for that but you…having the same feelings for boys as you do for girls….that messes with his vision for the future and terrible things happen to people who mess with your father's vision for the future. Things that I don't even want to tell you about. I would hate to see those things happen to you…or the boy you have feelings for…even if it is Shimazaki." Said Fukuda. Honestly he wished that Suzuki would just do away with…no that was too far…but at least kick the living shit out of Shimazaki Ryou…and Fukuda knew enough that he could have made that happen…but then Sho would have been upset with him and he would have made an enemy out of Shigeko…and he already felt like he was on the road to making an enemy out of her….and he had no idea how he was supposed to even come close to fixing…whatever had gone wrong between the two of them.

"Yeah….I guess that….that it would suck if dad hurt Shimazaki but….but you shouldn't have told him about Emmy! Because now he's all proud of me and…and he's proud of me because he knows about her and…and what if he had decided that I wasn't allowed to be with her because she's not an esper or…because she's not Japanese or….or for whatever reasons that dad can come up with…and he doesn't even need a reason! He's dad!" said Sho

"Sho…keep your voice down…and I know your dad. I know that your dad….he's good at math. He's crazy good at math and he especially loves statistics. One in every ten Awakened is female. When we're talking about natural espers like you and me that number goes up to one in every thirty. When we're talking about natural espers that are even close to being on you and your family's level then that number…it's even harder to calculate. Your sister is a miracle…and that's why I'm sure that your dad is probably obsessing right now over what esper she should marry. You….you're rare, very rare, but your dad is not a moron. He knows that you're most likely going to end up falling in love with a normal girl and he's most likely made his peace with that….but I doubt that he will ever make his peace with his own son having those same feelings for another boy." Said Fukuda

"But….I don't….have those same feelings….for Emmy. I don't…love her like I love…someone else." Said Sho. He was not going to say his name. If he said his name then…then he didn't know. Shimazaki had a sixth…or seventh…or fifth….or whatever sense for when people were saying his name. For when they were talking about him. Sho…he was in love with Shimazaki and…and he had to stop being in love with Shimazaki but also….also he had to figure out how to be in love with Emmy….but he had no idea if he even could be in love with Emmy….

"Sho…that's….another pragmatic choice you're going to have to make." Said Fukuda. He wasn't ten, he was forty four, and he knew what he would have done as a grown forty four year old man if he had been in Sho's shoes. He would have just carried on with this girl like normal because…well Suzuki was Suzuki and he would never allowed Sho to be himself…and Sho got on with this girl. She was very sweet, if a bit odd, but then again so was Sho. It wasn't as though he'd have to see her for long periods of time, even now they moved constantly and it would only get worse as time went on and Suzuki…well maybe he would still give the world to Sho….and Sho wouldn't have to see his wife, when she became his wife, very often. Suzuki hadn't….and Sho wouldn't have to either…and as far as having children went science had advanced in leaps and bounds since he had been a born….

There were pragmatic choices to be made.

Even if they wouldn't be entirely fair to the girl. Even if she would be taken care of and…well in whatever new world Suzuki was thinking up that might have been the best that could happen to her. She would have ended up trapped in a house with children and a husband that never saw her and…and Sho maybe should make sure to get blood tests done for all of his kids…but that life was better for the both of them then whatever life Suzuki would have let Sho have if he knew what his Son really was.

Life was a series of pragmatic choices.

"I don't get it." Said Sho. He didn't get why he had to be…why he had to make those kinds of choices in the first place. What he had done, besides be born a Suzuki, that meant that he couldn't just be….that he couldn't make the choice that made him the happiest. Why did he have to pick the choice that was the least terrible and not the very best? Why did any of…of this…have to happen to him?

"Sho…this girl loves you and you can make her happy. You must like her at least a little so…so why not just carry on the way you've been carrying on?" asked Fukuda. This was….he knew what this was, he had a feeling that it wouldn't end well, but then again history didn't always have to repeat its self…right? He would have had Sho trapped in a loveless marriage rather than…the worst that Suzuki could do to a person.

"Because…I'm not going to break up with her but…but I just….I'm not in love with her and…and when I kiss her it doesn't even feel like anything and….and I know that's it's supposed to feel good but…but when I kiss her it's like…..like nothing. Nothing like what it's supposed to be like…and I don't know if I can ever even feel that way about her or about…about any girl at all." Said Sho. He never thought about girls, not in the way that he thought about boys, and that…was worse than liking both boys and girls. He didn't know what was with him, why he had been born this way, and why….why he couldn't just like a girl. Any girl. He knew from the books and also from Shimazaki that people could like whoever they wanted to…but then why couldn't Sho like who he wanted to like? Why did he have to be like…like this? He knew that there were people in the world like this but…but why did he have to be one of them? What? Was his life not hard enough as it was or….or whatever? He didn't know but he did…he did know that….that….he knew enough to know that he didn't know anything at all.

"Oh. Well that's…that's not everything. It's not about kissing and other…physical things. It's about…you making her happy. You make her happy and she's happy with you so why not just keep on making her happy? If you don't think that you can feel this way about any girl then why mess with a good thing? Your father knows about her, she likes you, and you like her at least a little bit. You don't have to see her every day, even when you get married, and….as long as you keep her happy then…then that's what matters." Said Fukuda. He did not want to think about Sho in that state of affairs with anyone but…but there was more to it than that. So much more and….and maybe that was a talk for another day. This talk…this talk was already taking it out of him.

"I know. Dad already told me how it goes. You meet your most perfect person and then you marry her and build a great big house for her to live in and then you buy her stuff and give her lots of money because a man's job is to provide for a woman and then when she sees how you can provide for her then she has your babies and then you're a family. I know…and I know that I'm going to be busy running the world but…but if I'm going to have to grow up and get married then…then I want…I don't want to leave her all alone. I think that…that mom might have missed dad a lot…like me and big sis missed him when we were little and….and I don't want my wife or my kids to miss me but…but I don't want to lie to them either." Said Sho

"Well that's going to end up being another pragmatic choice. Life….life is full of them. You're going to get older and the older you…you're going to have to make more and more of them. There are…there are going to be bridges that you're going to have to cross…and bridges that you won't even know that you've crossed until they're crossed and…and that's life. That's life and…and I know that…that you're going to make a lot of choices and…and no matter what those choices are…no matter where life takes you…remember that I love you and that I always, always, always am going to understand…and forgive you…like I hope that you'll forgive me." Said Fukuda

"Yeah, yeah, yeah….I forgive you….now let me draw." Said Sho. He pulled his sketchbook back onto his lap. He knew that Fukuda was happy, he knew that Fukuda was smiling, and he just…he forgave him. He knew that…he knew that Fukuda had still betrayed him but…but this was one of those pragmatic choices that Fukuda had been talking about. Sho could either stay mad at Fukuda for the rest of his life and…and lose someone who cared about him as…as Sho. Not as Suzuki Sho, son of Suzuki Touichirou, but as Sho…Sho the person. Sure Fukuda might have been a grumpy dick hole but….but he cared about Sho and…and Sho had a choice. Either he could lose Fukuda or he could…could forgive him….

He decided to forgive him.

Even if he was a traitor and a dick hole….Sho knew what he did what he did. He had been trying to keep him and Shimazaki safe and Sho…he should not have felt that way about Shimazaki to begin with and…and now he would have to figure out how to fall out of love with him and…and that was another pragmatic choice and…and he would have to marry Emmy and…and that was an easier choice because, well, he could be nice to her and take care of her and she was a good friend and kissing her wasn't that bad…and it was like Fukuda said…life was a series of pragmatic choices….and that was ok because….well….it was ok.

It was kind of a bumpy ride, though rough and long but…well it could have been worse, Sho supposed. There was always something worse.


	364. Friday Night Tempura

There were three chairs at the table. Only two were filled.

Mob sat at one side of the table and dad sat at the other. There were plates between them. There was tempura fish and rice and salad and pickled vegetables between them. That was good. She wanted something between them…not because she was mad at him or anything. No….she just….couldn't even look at dad let alone be near him right now. Not while she knew what she knew….a lot of what she knew…

She knew that on Fridays his mom had made him tempura.

She was going to focus on what she knew…that was about grandma and grandpa…and not about what she knew about…well stuff that she had never wanted to know about her own father. Stuff about how he used to be a kid. Stuff about how he used to be…about how he used to be a kid and he used to be in love and he used to kiss girls and wanted to find a girlfriend who wasn't mom…because he hadn't met her yet…and Mob had read a lot about more about that part of dad's life then about her own grandparents….and the only reason she had ever even read as much as she had was because she had wanted to know more about her own grandparents…and dad…to a lesser extent…

And now she knew plenty…about dad…at least.

She didn't even know her own grandparents' given names. She didn't know what they looked like. She didn't know what they did for jobs. She didn't know what their house had looked like. She didn't know what kind of shoes they had worn. She didn't know what shows they watched on TV. She didn't even know what their favorite colors were. Dad hadn't taken the time to write any of that down. Instead he mostly wrote about a girl he liked and also things he wanted for Claw. About how there would be ten divisions and how once he ruled the world there would be more….and what all the buildings would look like…and how he and Fukuda went around looking for espers all the time and didn't find any….and about a million other things that she didn't want to know about.

Somethings that she never wanted to know about.

She looked up at dad. He looked back at her. She looked down. She passed him the ketchup with her powers. He loved ketchup. He used to draw stuff and eat at the same time. Fukuda had circled red spot and written that it was ketchup and not blood. There was some blood in the notebook. Dad had stabbed Fukuda a few times with something called a compass…and she didn't know why. Well she knew that dad liked to hit people and stuff but she had never known him to like to stab people….but then again there was probably a lot of dad that she didn't know.

There was a lot about her that dad didn't know.

He didn't know all of her. He didn't know she felt about him, how she loved him but also she sometimes didn't like the things he did, and how she wished that he would change. She wished that he would just…love Sho. That was mostly it. She wished that he would love her like normal but she mostly just wished that he would just love Sho like he was supposed to love his son. She also wished that he would be nicer to people and not be so mean to them all the time. She also….well she had things about herself that had nothing to do with him…and there was no need for him to know about those things…so that meant that there was a lot to him that she had no reason to know about….

But still. Sometimes it felt like there was a whole person there inside of him that she didn't even know…

There was a whole bunch of stuff that she didn't know…there was stuff about dad that she didn't know and there was stuff about mom, too, that she didn't know. At least she had her dad right there and she had found, well Sho had found, a notebook that at least had some information about him that wasn't gross. She had no idea what to do with the information that she had that wasn't gross, like how his mom used to make him eggs and ketchup and rice with a slice of cheese for lunch on Sundays, or how his parents would have him use his powers to fix the satellite dish when the weather got bad, or how he used to look out into the sky and try and draw what he saw…and stuff. She had no idea what she was supposed to do with that information but at least she had it…at least she knew something about one of her parents.

She knew more about dad…she even knew more about Fukuda…than she knew about her own mom.

Mom was a mystery. Her name was Masami. Mob didn't know what her family name was before it was Suzuki, she didn't know what her parent's names were, she didn't know if mom's parents were even still alive, she didn't know where mom was from, she didn't know if mom had any brothers or sisters, she didn't know if mom had any friends when she was a kid, she didn't know if mom had ever been in love with anyone who wasn't dad, and she just….didn't know very much about mom at all. She wished that she had thought to ask. She wished that she had thought to ask mom all the stuff that she should have asked before she left…

But at least she had dad…if she ever wanted to ask him something….if he would ever let her ask him anything….or something.

She looked up at him again. He looked back at her. She looked down at her food…and he looked back at her again. He never stopped looking at her. His eyes and his aura were focused on her….and she didn't know why. She wasn't doing anything. She was just eating. She looked over, briefly, at where Sho should have been sitting. She knew better than to think that dad was looking at her because he realized that he was sad with only one of his kids around and he wanted Sho back and then he would love Sho and take care of him and all of that.

She may not have known a lot about dad but she knew him better than to believe a crazy daydream like that.

"What is it, dad? Are you ok?" asked Mob. She knew that she had to say something. Dad would never say anything. He had written down that he didn't like to start conversations with other people…well he had written that when he had been a kid but he was still that same person in a lot of ways.

"I'm fine. You were just looking at me. I was curious as to why." Said Suzuki. Daughter had been staring at him for the duration of this entire meal. Maybe she had been missing Son…though he didn't know why. This was such a pleasant meal. Nobody was deconstructing their meal, nobody was being tiresome, nobody was shouting or starting a fight….it was a very good meal. Not just because Daughter had made tempura….and he'd had no idea that she knew how to make tempura. She had fried shrimp and vegetables and she had done such a good job…he was so proud of her…

Well he was proud of her for more than her cooking.

He was just…proud of her for…existing. If that made any sense. He was just….he enjoyed the person who she was becoming. She was also so calm and she always took good care of him and the house and her brother, she had never once had to raise so much as her voice let alone a hand to Son, and he was so proud of her…and Masami would have been proud too. If she had been there….which she was not…but that was ok. Daughter was there and…and she wasn't Masami but…in some ways she was better. She was there after all. Just him and Daughter…

Even though it was only Friday it felt just like a Sunday.

"I was just thinking, that's all. Do you need anything? Is dinner ok?" asked Mob. She didn't want….well she did and did not want to talk to dad about….about everything. About how she knew what she knew and about…about all the questions that she had but also…well if she could avoid the gross parts then she would want to know…she didn't even know. Her grandparent's names, maybe? If he'd…if he'd been a good kid…like he expected her and Sho to be good kids. If he'd ever wanted any brothers and sisters. If he'd ever had any friends who weren't Fukuda. If he had even liked Fukuda back then since he stabbed him with a compass. How anyone could ever stab anyone else with a compass….all of that. She wanted to know but also…

Also maybe dad didn't want her to know…or something. She didn't know.

"It's perfect like everything you do. I had no idea you even knew how to make tempura." Said Suzuki. She really was very accomplished, his Daughter. Masami's Daughter. She was her mother's Daughter…well not by blood, obviously, but Masami had taught her well and…and he was proud of her. He cared for her so much and…and he had no idea how he had wound up with one child who was so perfect and another child who was so….Son.

Son was Son.

He didn't hate Son, hate carried with it the idea that he would wish harm or misfortune on Son, but he just…didn't care for him. Not really. If someone tried to kill him then, yes, Suzuki would save him and no matter how terribly the child behaved Suzuki would never cast him aside…but this really was a much more pleasant meal without him there. This would be a pleasant…however long Fukuda planned on keeping him away for. Days or weeks or months…maybe not months, he knew that he would not be so lucky, but he did know that he had to savor this time that he had with Daughter. The time when it was just him and her.

He had no idea how long this time would last.

"It wasn't hard, I saw on YouTube." Said Mob with a shrug. She had no idea if she had done this right. She had always been sort of afraid to do this. Having a pot full of hot oil around was dangerous, especially with Sho around, and she knew that they had a healer and all but she didn't want to get hurt. She was glad that she had made this, though, since dad seemed to be in a good mood. She hoped that she had made this the way his mom had…even though she might have used the mix. Mob didn't know. She had done it from scratch.

Shibata had always said that from scratch was best and there wasn't anyone in all of Claw, in all of her friends, who knew more about cooking than he did.

"Well it's very good, thank you." Said Suzuki. He hadn't had this in…he didn't know when. Homemade, anyway. He hadn't had this homemade since mother…well since that last Friday…no. it had been a…a Saturday. The last Saturday of school….and mother had let him pick because…because it had been the end of the school year…no. That wasn't right. It must have been after that since he had killed mother before he graduated…so he must have been remembering a different time…and he….he wished that he could have remembered that last time….

But it must not have been anything special.

Just a normal Friday night. Mother…well she had moved the tempura from Saturday nights to Friday nights because she had her ink painting group on Saturdays…and on a Friday night Suzuki would have…he would have eaten dinner with a book in his lap…or mother and father would have brought him into the conversation…or they would have allowed him to bring the big television into the kitchen and they would have watched something….well what they would have watched would have depended on the year and….and somehow it had all melded together in his mind and….

He had this irrational feeling that…that he should have done more to remember it…those times…even though it didn't even matter anymore.

Mother and father had been dead for some time now. They had been dead since he had been eighteen years old. That had been twenty six years ago. They were gone, it had been his fault, but now…now he had his own family. He had his own wife…she was gone…but he had his own children. He had Daughter and he would make sure to commit every single moment they spent together to memory. He hoped that one day, when he was dead and buried hopefully not by her hand, she would look back at her time with him while she had dinner with her own children and….and husband…who she would have to replace him with…eventually…

He would enjoy the time he had with her now…since he had no way of knowing how long these times would last.

"You're welcome. I'm happy that I came out right. I didn't know if I was making it right, while I was making it…I mean the way that your mom did it." Said Mob. She wondered if she had said the wrong thing. There was a feel to dad's aura now, and a look in his eyes, well a non-look. His pupils were tiny and the blue parts were big…and he was holding onto the table like he was afraid that he was going to float away…and she had to reach out with her powers to keep the stuff on the table from floating away and…

And maybe she had said the wrong thing.

"What now?" asked Suzuki. He almost choked. His aura…it took everything that he had to keep calm. Daughter…had said…something. Words were spoken. Words that she should not have spoken. She had been talking about….about things that she should not have known about. She should have just…he didn't know. He didn't even know why he felt…anything. When he had been a child mother had…she had made tempura every Friday.

There.

Daughter knew but…but there were several people she could have heard that from. Well only two. He couldn't recall telling her that…he never spoke of mother and father….but she could have heard it from Masami. He had told her…he had occasionally spoken about mother and father to her…back in the days when she would ask. He had no idea why she sought that information out. She had him. She didn't need to know about mother and father and…and maybe she had passed that information along to Daughter and…and he had no idea what Daughter would have needed that information for…or what she would have done with it…

Besides makes dinner.

She had made dinner and….and suddenly he wasn't hungry. When he found out who told her….well if he found out that it had been Masami and then he had found her then…well of course he would not have been angry with her but…but if it had been Fukuda…well he had no reason to be angry with Fukuda but…but he was Suzuki Touichirou and he didn't need to justify anything about himself to anyone…but he also needed to stop being irrational and…and he was being very irrational and…

And he needed to calm down before…before he lost control…and Daughter…she did not need to see that.

"Your mom used to make you tempura every Friday. You looked forward to it when you were a kid…and stuff." Said Mob softly. She didn't know if she had said the right thing. She wondered if it was even ok to talk about that, to talk about how he used to have a mom, about how she used to have a grandma. Dad had never told her about that…about any of that…and it felt sort of like a secret but she had no idea why any of that would have been kept a secret. She knew that when she had kids she would tell them all about dad and what it had been like to be a kid and….and not the gross stuff, of course, because no kid wanted to know that about their own parent but she would tell them the things that were ok for a kid to know….or something. She didn't know. She just knew that…that maybe she had said the wrong thing and maybe dad was mad at her now…or something…

Her stomach hurt.

"You….are correct. When I was small my mother did often make….she made tempura every Saturday to mark the end of the school week, it was longer when I was a child, but then she moved it to Fridays because she had an ink painting group….and yes….you have…done well. My mother…this tastes very similar to my mother's cooking." Said Suzuki. He was calm because he had no reason not to be. He needed his Daughter to remember him as a calm, rational, and above all else in control man. She did not need to remember him for…for the very worst times in his life. He needed…he needed her to remember him…as he wanted to be remembered…

And not as he was.

"Grandma knew how to paint? She was an artist? Like Sho?" asked Mob. She spoke quickly. The glass of milk beside her shook. Grandma…Sho had gotten his art skills from grandma and…and now it felt like….it felt like the time she and Sho had done that big hundred piece puzzle without the box and…and now…now it felt like the puzzle was missing pieces and…and she wanted to find them but…but without the picture she had no idea what she was even looking for.

"I…suppose some comparison could be made….though my mother was a trained artist and your brother…is a mystery." Said Suzuki. Mother had met father when she had Japan to study ink painting. She had spent some time in Japan following the pacific war. Her father had been a soldier of some kind and had lived on a military base. She had moved a lot….and he had never told the children this but…but this did not seem to be…any information that they would have needed. His parents had been dead for some time now and…and he had no idea what they would have even done with this information…and he had no idea what he was supposed to do with this information….information that he'd had within his mind for some time now….

He hadn't thought about mother and father in any great capacity in years….

"Was that grandma's job? She was an artist?" asked Mob. That was another piece of the puzzle. What had they done, her grandparents? What had they been like? She didn't….she had no idea what her family….what dad's part of her family…or even mom's….she didn't know anything. She knew more about her friends' families than she knew about her own. It felt sort of like…like something was missing but…but she hadn't even noticed…or something.

"My mother never worked…she was a trained artist but she never worked. She took care of me and our home. My father provided for us as was his role in our family." Said Suzuki. Mother and father…they had discussed….well he could remember them being very small and mother wanting to work so that….somehow she had thought that her going to work and earning money would have meant that father could have spent more time with them…but then both of his parents would have been gone…mother had been odd like that. Father had told him, when he had been small, that mother was a foreigner and that things were done differently in her country. Here things made more sense. A man provided for his family, father had said, and a woman made sure that the house and children were in order. Men provided for women and women took care of men. That was the order to things, father had said, and from what he could remember father had been a very intelligent man….

He could barely remember his own mother and father…just little snippets of their familial lives…eighteen years and all he had were snippets…moments…of their lives together….

"Oh…ok. What did grandpa do? Did he try and rule the world too?" asked Mob. She had always wondered why dad had wanted to rule the world. He had said, before, that his destiny was to rule the world because he was the most powerful esper ever….and she knew that his parents had been normal people….but normal people could want to rule the world too. It happened all the time in anime.

"In a way, yes. He was an executive at a company which no longer exists." Said Suzuki. Father….it was amazing that father could have given his entire life to a thing and then the thing that he gave his life to could be swallowed up by some international conglomerate. Well that would not happen to Claw. Claw swallowed up other esper groups. It did not get swallowed up. He had spent his entire life building up Claw and he would not lose it. Ever.

"Oh….what happened to the company? Why did grandpa lose his job?" asked Mob. She had never imagined…well she had never imagined anything when it came to her grandparents. She had just imagined…well two red haired people with dad's eyebrows….but both of them could not have had red hair…because one of them was Japan and people who were all the way Japanese did not have red hair.

"My father did not lose his job. The company was swallowed up long after his death. They were simply acquired by a larger computer company….that was what he did. What his company did. They made and sold computers…well computers and calculators and other consumer electronic goods…and he provided well for us. There was a boom in consumer electronics at the time…and the economy as well. They were very good times. I wanted for nothing…just as you want for nothing…and you never will want for anything because I will always provide for you." Said Suzuki. He would make sure that she was provided for after he died just as his parents had made sure that he had been provided for after they had died. The money that they had left him, along with the sale of what had been left of the house, had put him through university and provided the seed money for Claw. That money had allowed him to travel the world and build up not only the cult portion of Claw but the business and less than legal business portions of Claw as well. He had done well with what he had inherited…and it had only been money. He was going to leave his children an entire world…

He wondered what the children would do with the world that he would leave them…

"Oh…ok. But I could have a job too…I mean I already help out in Claw a lot…and I can take care of myself." Said Mob. She knew that when dad had been little girls hadn't had jobs but Minegishi said that things like that were old fashioned and stupid. Dad almost never asked her to help him work anymore, he said that her place was here, but….well she might have liked to have been able to work in Claw…or at another job…like at an animal shelter like mom had used to back before she had gotten married and had her and Sho….or something….

"No. You will always be provided for. While I am alive and after I die. I will be leaving you and your brother the world…well your brother will have the world…but he cares for you and he will take care of you. Even after I die you will never find yourself alone in the world. Ever. I will leave you….you and your brother…everything just as my parents left me everything after their…passing." Said Suzuki. He wished that he had made her. He wished that, eleven years ago, before he had met Masami had had been more romantically or at least sexually successful and then there could have been a chance that Daughter could have been his child by blood. Then she could have ruled the world. But she was not his child by blood, only by law, and the world would be left in Son's hands….may God have mercy on them all…

"Ok….but I don't want to think about you dying. It makes me sad." Said Mob

"Don't be. All who've walked this Earth have died." Said Suzuki

"I know but…but I love you and I don't want you to be dead. I mean…I know that one day I'll be an adult and stuff and…and you'll be old but…but I want you to be my dad forever. Even if you can be mean to Sho sometimes-" said Mob

"I've been making an effort to be kinder to him just as you asked me to." Said Suzuki

"….you have, thank you for that. I still just….I don't want you to die. I mean there's so much about you that I don't know about and…and I was thinking that if you died or…or something then I would never know those things about you…and stuff." Said Mob. She knew that dad would never leave her, he had told her before that they would spend their lives together, but also…also she knew that if something were to happen to him…or something then…then there would be a lot about him that she just…didn't know about. That she wanted to know. That she wanted to be able to tell her kids when they were born.

"I am not going to die anytime soon and…and if you want to ask me something then…then you may." Said Suzuki. He had no idea what she would ask him, what she needed that information for, and what she even…she wasn't there for him to understand. She was there for him to care for and love and…and he would do anything for her. Even talk about….whatever it was that she wanted to talk about….

"Really? You won't get…mad at me?" asked Mob. She could ask dad….anything. She didn't…she had no idea what she even…she had always known dad to keep a lot of secrets but…but now he was being an open book to her and…and she had no clue why. Well he loved her and he was always really nice to her and all but….but he had also always gotten sort of mad when she had been little and she had asked him things….

She had been asking, well she had been trying to ask, about mom then.

She had been trying to ask about mom and dad….he hadn't liked that at all. He had said mean things to her, picked her up by her braids, and then threw her…but that was before. She had been little then, only seven or eight, but she was eleven now and dad loved her. He loved her and he had said before that he would never hurt her…and she wished that she knew how to get him to love Sho as much as her…if that was even possible…

She could ask him.

"No. I could never be angry with you. I love you." Said Suzuki. He knows that he had been able to get angry with her before but….but that had been before he had learned what a gift it was to have her. To have someone who cared for him. To have someone who could never leave him. To have another human being who he could share his life with. To have a human being in his life who would never leave him. He knew that he was a full and complete person on his own but…but he could be an even more full and complete person with Daughter. Like an omelet and ketchup. An omelet was a meal all on its own but when paired with ketchup it became something truly perfect and even more complete. That was what she was, ketchup. She was his ketchup and he was her omelet….or tempura since that was what she had made for tonight's dinner.

"Ok…um….why do you hate Sho?" asked Mob quickly. She closed her eyes and tried her best not to put up a barrier. She knew that maybe she had gone too far or maybe this wasn't any of her business and maybe dad had only meant that he would try not to get mad at her or-

"I don't hate him. He's my Son. Hate implies that I would wish harm upon him. I don't enjoy his company, I find him tiresome as a human being, but I do not hate him." said Suzuki. That was half of Masami. That was half of him. Hating Son would have been like hating himself and Masami at the same time…and also it took effort to hate someone and he did not want to put forth that sort of effort towards anyone let alone someone who had done nothing to deserve it. Well aside from being a very annoying and tiresome little boy…but that wasn't enough for him to hate a person, just dislike them immensely.

"You…you don't hate him at all?" asked Mob. She was glad but also…very confused. She had been dad's Daughter and Sho's big sister for her entire life. She had been watching the way that dad treated him and…and dad really acted like he hated Sho….the way he hit him all the time and told him mean things. Things like he was stupid and bad at everything and that…well a lot of other things that she'd had to listen to him say until she got old enough to be able to tell him to stop. Those were not the words or actions of someone who…who loved their Son…but dad had never said that he loved Sho. Just that he didn't hate him.

"No, not at all. I could never hate something that I made." Said Suzuki. He could never hate his own Son. Even if he'd had another Son to compare him to, he so wished that Masami would have wanted more children, he wouldn't have hated him. That was half of him and half of Masami. He would never harm him out malice. Frustration and anger, yes, but never out of malice.

"Ok….I was just worried about that because…because you can be really mean to Sho sometimes." Said Mob. She wanted to tell dad that he needed to love Sho, not just….not hate him…and that should not have been too much to ask, but she had no idea how to ask that of him. For dad it seemed like maybe it was.

"I know. He deserves it." Said Suzuki. Son had always been…Son. He carried on and…and Suzuki had never felt anything close to Son as he had with Daughter. Even the day he brought her home he had felt closer to her than he had ever felt to Son…maybe because he'd had to acquire Daughter…and Son…well he had made Son…and also…well Son had almost killed Masami when they'd had to filet her like a fish and….and he knew that it had not been an act of malice on Son's part but also…also he'd maybe never forgiven Son...

"Were…were your parents like that? Mean to you I mean?" asked Mob. That would have made sense. If dad's parents had been just as mean to him as he was to Sho then everything would have made sense. It wouldn't have been ok but it at least would have made sense.

"Mother and father were always very kind to me. They provided for me, raised me, and I wanted for nothing. I never carried on in the same way that Son carried on. I never would have dreamt of it. From a young age mother and father made it very clear what my role in the family was. I was to be obedient, never bothersome, and I was to do well in school and then in life so I could provide them with grandchildren and then the bloodline would continue." Said Suzuki

"Grandma and grandpa told you that?" asked Mob. That seemed….like something mean to tell someone…or not mean but just…not nice…and that would have explained dad pretty well…but maybe she needed to stop trying to explain him. Maybe she should just…accept him or just….she didn't know. She just wanted dad to be ok and her family to be ok and she just wanted…she wanted to be ok and she wanted to know and….and she wanted to know more and…and stuff.

"Mostly my father but yes." said Suzuki. Father had made himself perfectly clear and…and he had….never…stopped listening…..

"Ok…are you like him? Grandpa?" asked Mob. She tried to picture…she couldn't picture anything. She tried to picture her grandpa but she just pictured dad with white hair and…and she maybe she should have looked for pictures…back when she'd had the choice.

"I…am in some ways. We both enjoyed math…we would just sit and go through my math books or his reports from work for hours…and we both loved breakfast…and we both loved kendo…he was the one who taught me, actually. As a child he had been a kendo prodigy and he would have gone on but he had to…well he had to provide for himself and his family…and I suppose that I am also a good provider…" said Suzuki. He was getting…he didn't know. He felt like he wanted a drink even though it was best for him….and the rest of the world, if he went his entire life without ever touching a drop of alcohol. He did not want to think about mother or father or…he was done mourning. It had made no sense to mourn, then, when he had been young and it made no sense to mourn now. They had died years ago…and because of him…because he had lost control….

Like he was about to now.

He was going to lose control if he didn't…if he didn't keep his emotions in check. Daughter…he could not lose her. Not by his hand, not to time, and not to some other man who would sweep her off her feet and take her away from him. No. She would not…she would not leave him in any way and he would not…he would not allow her to…to leave her. Even in death. She would outlive him.

If only by one day she would outlive him.

"Do you…do you miss them? I mean I would miss you and I miss…if you died then I would miss you." Said Mob. Even with how mean he could be, how smothering he could be, and how weird he could be she knew that he would be missed…by her. Sho would probably throw a party for dad instead of a funeral but she would miss him…somebody had to. She would miss him like she missed mom…and she did miss mom and….and she knew better than to ask him if he missed mom too.

"I…I do…I did….I mean…I'm done eating. I'm going to…to go to my room now….don't disturb me." Said Suzuki. He didn't wait for a reply. He got up. He pushed his chair back, got up, and left. He had to. He did not want to…to sit there and…and he only wanted to make her happy and he loved her so much more than anything or anyone and…and he was loathe to leave her but…

But if he lost control then she would be the one leaving him.

"But…your tempura….ok. Goodnight…dad." Said Mob. She had been given permission and she hadn't asked him anything about mom….or anything at all. She knew more things now, things that she had never known that she even wanted to know, and she…she could have known more and…and maybe she wanted to know more but mostly….mostly she just…

She just wanted the other two chairs to be filled.

Dad was gone. He was gone to his room and Sho was gone off with Fukuda and she was all alone and…and she had all of this tempura that she had made…and dad had said that he liked it but he had left. Sho would have liked it…with the batter on it's own plate separate from the shrimp and vegetables. He liked tempura but separate…and she wondered where he had gotten it from. He might have gotten that from grandma like he got his art skills…or maybe from grandpa….or maybe from mom's parents…she didn't know…and she wouldn't ask because dad was gone to his own room and…and she was all alone…

She was all alone with two empty chairs…but at least she had more answers, now, and also a lot of tempura to herself….and maybe….maybe Minegishi and the others were hungry…..and maybe there was a chair for her there, too.


	365. It's Good to See You Again, Baby Sis

Baby sis needed a lot of naps.

Sho…he could wait. He would wait for her to get up. He could wait for her to wake up and then they would be able to play and draw just like old times. He had gotten her even more crayons…even though she had a bucket of them already. They were in her drawing corner. The living room had changed since he had last been there. She had a tiny table, now, with crayons and paper and a tiny easel with her tiny baby scribbles on it. She had a bunch of dolls, too, and she had drawn on them with markers. She liked to draw.

Maybe they could draw together after her nap.

They would draw…well they would scribble…and it would be fun. He could maybe even teach her how to draw something other than scribbles. He could teach her how to make shapes and stuff. If Shimazaki could draw then baby sis could too. Or maybe not because she was so much smaller than he was….and also he hadn't thought about how little her hands were. She had a whole clear bucket full of baby crayons, the big kind he had used back when he had been in preschool, and the ones that he got were the normal ones. They were normal sized crayons and she had normal, for a baby sized, hands and she would probably end up hating him for bringing her crayons that were too small…or having had been away from him for so long….or maybe she had just forgotten about him all together and….

And he didn't know.

All he knew was that he was sitting there in her living room waiting for her mom to wake her up and get her. She had to be in a schedule because she was just a baby and needed a lot of sleep and stuff. Sho didn't take naps, even if he was tired, but she was a whole different person. She needed a nap and…and she was probably going to be hungry and cranky when she woke up...unless she had changed. She had always been hungry and cranky when she woke up back when he and big sis had been in charge of taking care of her…and he loved her so much…and if she had changed that was ok too. People changed. She might…

She might have been totally different.

She could talk now. Well she had said his name before he left and…and maybe she had learned some other words too. He didn't know. All he knew was that….was that he could finally see her again. He hadn't seen her in so long…and now she was one and a half…and she might have been able to have actual conversations with him…and she might have been ready to tell him off…and he deserved to be told off. He had left her all alone…well not alone she had her mom…but he had left her here and he had gone and…and he was no kind of big brother to her…

He'd made a pragmatic choice.

But she was too young to understand about those. Even Sho, at almost eleven years old, could not understand those. Not all the way. They were choices where you weren't picking out the best outcome, just the least terrible one, and the least terrible outcome for baby sis was him leaving her here. She had a mom who loved her and she didn't have to be a part of his family. He and big sis would have loved her like she was their own straight from mom's stomach baby sister. He and big sis would have taken the best care of her, the best care that anyone could have ever taken of a baby, if she had been able to stay. But she couldn't stay. If she had stayed with them, if dad had adopted her, then she would have had to have dealt with dad for her whole life…and he didn't want that. Dad…he sucked. He was a dick hole that sucked other dick holes and baby sis did not need him in her life.

So Sho…he'd had a pragmatic choice to make.

He could have kicked Fukuda's ass and told him to tell dad to go fuck himself. He could have taken baby sis and told Fukuda that she was his sister and that if anyone wanted to take her away then they would have had to go through him. He could have…he could have done a lot of things and she would have stayed with them but also…but also she would have had to deal with dad and he would never have made her go through something like that.

Pragmatic choices sucked.

He wished that he could have just…not ever had any choices to make in his whole life. He had felt like that, before, when he had been little and dad had told him that one day he would inherit the whole world. He had felt like his whole life had been laid out in front of him and that there had been nowhere to go or nothing to do but…but follow dad. But he had been wrong. There were a lot of choices to make. He had to choose…what was best….what was the least terrible. That meant letting baby sis go. That meant keeping secrets from big sis. That meant marrying Emmy one day even though he didn't even think that he wanted to be her boyfriend…and if some guy did this to either of his sisters then Sho would kick his ass with one foot, wait until that foot got tired, and then use the other foot until either he ran out of foot or the other guy ran out of ass….

He really hated pragmatic choices.

Whenever he visited big sis he also visited Emmy…and he didn't want to. She'd say something like 'you're a booger and I missed you' and then she would tell him that she was only fooling and that he was brilliant and then…well it was fun to hang out with her….but also she was in love with him and…he didn't like lying to her. He didn't like secrets and lies and also he felt like sort of a jerk because he was only pretending to love her…and if someone treated either of his sisters like that then he would kick that guy's ass…so maybe he should have just kicked his own ass….but he wasn't that flexible and also he had promised big sis that he would never hurt himself again….

So he wouldn't.

He wouldn't kick his own ass even though he felt like he deserved it. Maybe baby sis would kick his ass. She hit a lot. She had little baby sister fists and she knew how to use them. She hit him when she was happy or sad or mad or just sometimes she seemed to just….feel like hitting…and he would have to teach her not to hit. He would have to teach her not to hit and how to play nice with people and be nice to them and…and he would have to teach her all the things that big brother was supposed to teach his sister….but he just didn't have the time…but he…he would….he would do his best. He had to do his best. He knew that he didn't have a lot of time, he honestly had no clue how much time he even had with her this time, but he would…he would make the most of this time that they had together.

He heard her door open.

He sat up straighter. He heard her door opening and he felt her aura and…and she was…he could hear her running. He heard her little baby feet hitting the floor and…and then he heard her fall down. He wanted to get up there and help her…he wanted to glue cushions to her so she couldn't hurt herself…but it felt like someone had already glued him to this couch cushion. He couldn't get up. He couldn't even move. He just….he didn't know what to do. He was showing up out of the blue like this…and she would be so mad at him and…and…

And….

"Sho!" shouted baby sis as she rattled on her baby gate. The whole living room was still behind bars so that she couldn't escape into the house and hurt herself. She liked to explore but the house was dangerous. She could stick her finger into the sockets…or she could drown in the bathtub…or she could find her mom's phone and order poison…or something. He didn't know all the ways that she could hurt herself but he did know that she was just a baby and as unfair as this baby cage was it was necessary because if she got hurt or died then…

Then he wouldn't have a baby anymore…and he would never be able to hear her call him Sho again….and he didn't know what he would do if he never heard his baby sister calling him Sho ever again….

"Yup, there's Sho on the couch waiting for you. Hang on, Mukai, let me do it before you hurt yourself." Said Mukai's mom before she undid the latch. Baby sis barely waited until the tiny gate was opened. She just ran in…she could run fast these days…and wrapped her arms around his legs. She was bigger now…a lot bigger. She had longer hair now…and she had a headband with a bow…and she was taller…and she was pulling on him now…and….and she was there and….

And he couldn't breathe.

"Sho! Sho here!" said baby sis. She could make words now…she had another word…and she…she could say his name and…and she remembered him and….and he could see her aura. Her aura was touching his and she was hugging him…no she was pulling on him….she was pulling on him and he didn't know what to do…he loved her. He loved her and…and there were so many things that he wanted to say to her. He wanted to tell her that he was so sorry for having been away for so long. He wanted to tell her that he was so sorry that he had missed out on most of summer. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry about the one time when she had lived with him and he had almost dropped her while he had been carrying her and she had gotten really scared….

There were a lot of things that he wanted to say to her…but he just…he didn't have time and…and it just felt like…like there just…wasn't enough time…in the world…and stuff…

"Yeah…I'm here…and I'm sorry that…that I haven't been here to visit you in a while…but I'm here now and…and I got up a bunch of crayons….and we can draw…." Said Sho. She was still pulling on his legs and…and he needed to figure out how he was going to get up off this couch. He had to get up and he had to…to be with her….but he just….his arms were weak and his legs were weak and…and she had grown so much and…and she remembered him and…

"Sho! Here! Sho here!" said baby sis as she tugged on him. She was happy to see him. She was happy that he was here. He was…he was happy that she was happy. He hadn't imagined that she would be this happy but…but she was. She was happy and he was happy and…and he would try his best to get up…

"She wants you to go to where she is. That's what 'here' means. Doesn't it, Mukai? Doesn't it?" asked Mukai's mom. Sho nodded. Right. That made sense. Baby sis knew words but….but she didn't know sentences yet…because she was just a baby. She was just a baby and…and the next time that he saw her she might have grown into a little kid….like he had been a little kid…and he just…he wanted…he wished that he had spent more time with her as a baby…but he could spend time with her now as a baby and….and that was what mattered. They could spend time together now.

"Look out….I'm coming down now." Said Sho. He lowered himself down slowly. She may have gotten bigger but she was still just a baby. She hit him as he came down, they were her happy hits, and he loved her happy hits. He even loved her angry hits. He loved her. He loved her the most out of all the other babies that he knew…well that he would have known….if he hung out regularly with babies. He loved her so much and…and he wished that they could have been babies together so they could have been friends….

But they were friends now…that was what mattered.

"Sho! Sho here! Sho!" said baby sis. She was slapping him on both cheeks now….and he let her. She was so happy. When she stood up, and he sat down, they were the same height. She was so much taller now…she still drooled, though. There was drool all over the front of her shirt. This one said 'The One and Only' and it…was a good shirt. Because she was the one and only. She was his one and only baby sis.

"Mukai, no hitting." Said her mom. She reached over and handed Mukai a sippy cup full of what looked like apple juice…and she had sippy cups now and not bottles…and she had lots of teeth, too. She had teeth and…and she could talk and…and she was so much older and…..and he just…

He had missed out on so much in her short little life….

"Sho! Sho juice!" said baby sis. She was trying to put her sippy cup in his mouth now…and he took it from her. He was happy that she was sharing with him, sharing was caring after all like he had learned in preschool, but they weren't really brother and sister. They couldn't just share germs like that. Only brothers and sisters could share germs…or people who kissed…but that would have been a weird way to think about baby sis. He was not going to share germs with her.

"No. Here. Mukai, you can have the juice. See? I can hold it for you and-" said Sho as he held the little pink sippy cup up to her mouth. She slapped it out of his hands and now…well now her aura felt mad. He had no idea what he had done to make her mad. He had held her bottle for her so many times before…and he had fed her the baby mush she liked…and he was her big brother….

Pretend big brother.

A real big brother would not have left her for months and months. A real big brother would have been there for her when she needed it. A real big brother would have been there for not just her first word but her second and third and fourth and fifth and however many new words she knew. A good big brother would have been there to teach her how to talk and how not to hit and….and a good big brother….would not have let someone take her away from him…

No wonder she was pissed off. He would have been pissed off too if he'd had a big brother like him.

"I do! I do!" shouted baby sis. Her mom laughed and took the sippy cup from his hands. She put it down in front of Mukai. She took the sippy cup, turned her back to him, and started drinking. Every so often she would turn around and look at him. One time he made the mistake of getting closer to her but she just scooted away. Sho…he hadn't meant to hurt her feelings…but he had. He didn't know what to do besides sit and watch her drink her juice…so that was what he did. He watched her drink her juice until it was all gone. Then she took her sippy cup, carried it over to her baby gate, and threw it back into the kitchen. Sho caught it with his powers and put brought it back to baby sis. She grabbed it in her hands and threw it again.

Her mom did the mom sigh.

Sho almost dropped baby sis's sippy cup when he heard it. For a minute he thought that he had been there in his own old house with his own mom. She used to sigh like that, sometimes, when Sho would run around and throw things or climb on the furniture or that one time he and big sis brought dirt from the garden inside because it was raining and they had found all of those worms…and stuff. He knew that sigh. That was the tired and annoyed mom sigh and…and he hadn't heard it in a while…

He let baby sis throw the sippy cup.

That time her mom caught it. She caught it and put it in the sink. Baby sis started to point…and her aura was getting all pointy now. All pointy and it was flaring and she wanted to play some more…but he didn't want to make her mom upset. If he made her mom upset then he would end up kicked out or something…and he didn't want that. He could never want that. He crawled over to her and picked up one of her dolls. She took it from his hands and then threw it. Sho caught it before it hit the floor.

"Sho do! Sho do!" said big sis. She laughed and clapped and….and her little baby laughs and her little baby claps were the best sounds that he had ever heard in his entire life. He love her so much and he just wanted her to be happy and…and she as he best and…and also her mom didn't really seem to like them throwing things…

So he decided that maybe they should do something else.

"Hey baby sis….I know that it's been a while but…but do you want to draw something? I have crayons. You want to go to the table? Do you?" asked Sho. Baby sis laughed and then slapped him again. Her mom told her not to slap but he didn't mind. She was his sister and if she wanted to slap him then she got to slap him. He just wanted to be there with her and…and he loved her so much and….

And the longer he was there the more he just…expected to have to leave.

He had barely been there, in her apartment, in her living room, in this city…this Division. Fukuda had said that this would be a very short visit, it had to be, and Sho…he kept on expecting Fukuda to be there at the door ready to tell him that he had to leave now. Ready to tell him that they had to go home and…and that they had to leave before people got suspicious. He wasn't supposed to be here…and it wasn't fair…

But that was just the way that things had to be.

He was here now and he tried to tell himself that he needed to be present in the moment with her, with his baby sis, because he had no idea when these moments would come again. He decided that he was going to treasure every moment of this, even when she slapped him with her little baby hands, and he was going to enjoy every moment of this, too. She was such a good baby, and so smart too, she went right to her little baby table and sat down in her little baby chair just because he asked her too…and he crawled over to her. Walking seemed wrong right now. He was a giant compared to her when he stood. She would have felt small if he stood up…

So he crawled.

He crawled on the ground like he was the baby, not her. He had to crawl even though she could walk now. He couldn't be taller than her. He crawled over to his backpack and took out his sketchbook, the one with her last round of little baby scribbles in it, and his brand new box of ninety six colored crayons. He crawled as best as he could with everything in his hands. He crawled until he was sitting right there in front of her little baby table.

It was colored pink and had scribbles all over it.

This side of the room was all scribbles. The table, the walls, the easel, even her little baby chair. She was like a graffiti artist…and maybe when she got older they could be graffiti artists together. They could draw on all the walls…and they could draw whatever she wanted…and they could use spray paint too. He had never used spray paint…or done that kind of art…but he could learn. If that was the kind of art she wound up being into.

But right now it seemed like she was mostly into abstracting.

"Sho draw! Sho draw! Sho draw now!" shouted baby sis as she scribbled on the piece of paper in front of her. She had this sort of wheel…thing…that she could tug more paper off of when she needed it. Sort of like a paper towel roll…and he should have gotten her more paper towel rolls. She loved those. She had…she had some that she had colored on…they were on the ground. She was a good colorer…a good artist….the best artist that he had ever seen!

And if anyone thought different then he would just have to kick their ass. Simple.

"Wow you can do three words…and you can draw, too. I like your drawings, your scribbles, they're very good. You're a good artist…the best artist ever…and don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise, ok? Don't ever let anyone ever make you feel bad about yourself for any reason at all…you got it?" asked Sho. He had to tell her that, maybe she would remember and maybe she wouldn't, but he had to tell her. He had to…to tell her so much and…and he had no idea how he could…..or if she was even listening….

She was poking him in the eye.

She was trying to poke his eye out with her fat little baby crayon….and she was laughing….and maybe they should have watched fewer scary movies when she had been living with him. He didn't much want her to poke his eyes out but he did want her to be happy. So if poking his eyes out would make her happy then…then Shimazaki could teach him braille.

"Sho! Sho! Sho!" shouted baby sis. Now she was trying to draw on his face…and he let her. He would rather have had her draw on his face than poke his eyes out. He needed his eyes for things and braille looked complicated as fuck…as f-word. Right. Baby sis didn't need to learn how to curse yet and she might have been able to read minds. She was an esper, she had a little baby aura, but he had never seen her powers. He had no idea what it was that she could do…so on the off chance that she could read minds he didn't want to accidentally add the f-word to her vocabulary. Her mom would never have let him come back if he taught her that word…

And he wanted to come back.

He took out a neon pink crayon, she seemed to like pink, and he drew a circle on her paper with his powers. She stopped drawing on him and started chasing his neon pink one with her dark blue one. She laughed, her aura felt happy, and if she was happy then he was happy. He had no reason to be unhappy.

Baby sis had woken up from her nap and they were together. He knew he would have to leave soon but…but hopefully not before her next nap.


	366. The Summer Comics Market

Mob had never been around this many people at once before.

It made her stomach hurt a little…or maybe it was because she had been eating nothing but tempura since dinner last night. She had eaten it dinner and then breakfast and also she had tempura vegetables in her backpack as a snack. So she wasn't nervous since this had been happening on and off for a while….and she had no reason to be. So this was a lot of people….that was fine….she had been around big groups of people before….her dad was the boss of Claw after all…and stuff….

But this was still a lot of people.

There had to have been more people in this one building than there were in all of Tokyo HQ….no. A bigger one. A Division. This place had more people in it than even the first Division of Claw…and that was a very big Division! There were people pressed in on all sides of her. Normal people. Occasionally she felt the hint of an aura, sort of like how the lowest level of Awakened felt, but she knew that ther were not Awakened. The Awakened all had red auras. So far she had seen auras in purple, green, blue, yellow, and also white…and she had never seen a white aura before…and she had tried to go towards it but Hatori had pulled her back.

He didn't want them to get separated.

It would have been easy to get separated in the crowd if they had both been normal people. His aura…well it was dim…but he could easily have seen her aura from any point in this place. Her aura was brighter than his, brighter than every other aura here, and she would have stood out. Hatori still kept her close though. He was holding her by her sleeve, sometimes her wrist when people bumped into them, and that was….nice. Him being there, touching her, caring about her. The whole thing was so nice and he….he was really nice….

This was really nice.

"Watch it!" said Hatori as he pulled Mob in close. She was way too short to be here, he decided, either that or everyone else needed to start paying attention to where they were walking. She was short…and he had forgotten how short she was…and maybe he should have told her to wear stilts…no. That was ridiculous. She was eleven and she was supposed to be short and it wasn't her fault if people bumped into her but it was his fault if something bad happened to her…Suzuki could be a decent guy, sometimes a fun guy, but he could also be a violent asshole of a guy…and Hatori did not want to know what he did to people who let harm befall his favorite child.

He was going to take good care of Mob…he had to.

He wanted to. She had been pumped for this since he had told her about it. Suzuki had said so. He had said that she had been researching and planning and, well, Hatori was happy to share this with her. Get her out of the house and around people who weren't crazy….or at least unbalanced….and also it was just nice to hang out with her. She was a great kid. Best pseudo little sister that he had ever had. She was having a good time and he was happy to show her a good time…and also if he didn't show her a good time her father said that there would be hell to pay…and Suzuki had said hell…and he had done the crazy eyes again….so, yeah, it was in his best interests to show Mob a good time…

And to keep assholes from stepping on her.

"I'm ok." Said Mob as Hatori grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her close to him. It was too hot in here. She wished that she had worn something else. None of her old costume dresses fit and they didn't make those in her size at the Disney Store anymore. There wasn't a lot there that was her size but her long sleeved dress with the puffy tutu skirt and Elsa on the front still fit….because she had bought it in the wintertime. This was the summertime…and she got the feeling that either the air conditioner was broken or it was just that hot outside that it didn't make a different….and also she wished that she had worn long sleeves because then Hatori would have been touching her actual skin….but this was ok. Hatori had said that she should wear a costume since lots of people wore costumes and if he wanted her to dress like this then she would…

Because she liked him….maybe.

She liked this. She liked how he pulled her by the wrist so she was standing so close that she could smell him. He smelled like soap and body spray, but a different kind than before, and also fabric softener, and also sort of like sweat but in a good way. Not like how Sho smelled terrible if he played outside in the sun for too long. Hatori smelled….well not good like flowers or detergent or perfume but…well she liked it. He smelled better than a lot of the other people here…but that was a mean thought to have. Of course people smelled bad, it was at least thirty five degrees in here, and she shouldn't have faulted them for that….even though they must have also had parents that they could borrow deodorant from when they needed it….nope. She was happy and she was going to stay happy…even though she just got hit in the face with someone's backpack…

She was fine.

"Oh fuck! Shit! Sorry….don't tell your dad I cursed around you." Said Hatori. He cursed some more in his head. Right. He had to take care of her and taking care of her did not involve teaching her to curse. He got down to her level as best as he could and looked her over. She seemed fine…but maybe something terrible had happened like she had a concussion and…and her pupils would have been messed up…right? He put his hand under her chin and tipped her head upwards to the light. Her pupils seemed normal…so she must not have been concussed….

But he was not a healer.

They had a healer, he was a creep and an asshole but he was their only healer, and he had gone off with Mob's little brother. The kid was accident prone, if anyone needed a healer on call twenty four seven it was him, but if anyone had asked Hatori he would have sent someone else with them…or kept the kid home…or just sent someone to make sure that Sho didn't hurt himself in the first place. That guy…if Hatori had gotten any say he would have said…well a lot of things about that guy…but he didn't get a say. He may have been friends with Suzuki but he didn't get to tell him how to parent his kids…

Or that his best friend was kind of a massive creep.

Or that he had, essentially, called Hatori a massive creep. He wasn't. He just cared about Mob, that was all, he didn't want to date her! And who the hell thought that it was even remotely acceptable to-calm down. Calm the fuck down. She felt warm but…he pressed his hand to her forehead. Did she have a fever? No, it was just an oven in here….but she was red…heat stroke? Shit! What if she got heat stroke and died? Then…

Well then Hatori would be joining her.

"No, it's ok. Sho says a lot worse." Said Mob. She'd had to swallow a few times just to get the words out. He was close. He was kneeling down so they were eye to eye…and he had such nice eyes behind his glasses….and his glasses were so nice….and he was touching her…well he was trying to see if she was hurt or not…but still. This was really nice and she…she knew that he was just trying to make sure that she was ok. Minegishi had told her not to look into things too much so she wouldn't….but then again Minori had also told her that boys didn't ask girls to go places with them unless they liked them but….

But she didn't know.

Well she did know that Hatori was a lot older than her, well it didn't seem like a lot since she knew people who were even older than him, but he was an adult and she was a kid…well she felt like a short adult but she was really just a kid. She was only eleven and he was twenty, was the point, and if he wanted a girlfriend then he could have found one who was also twenty…and also dad said that he just liked boys….but so far all he'd bought was stuff with cute girls on it…so maybe he liked both….

It would have been rude to ask so she wouldn't…and also she would stop thinking about this…and stuff.

"Well….I still shouldn't talk like that around you. Your brother is ten, he doesn't know any better, so what's my excuse?" laughed Hatori as he straightened up. He bumped into someone…or they bumped into him. Maybe he should have brought Mob on the third day, or even the second, but not the first….but no, that would have been stupid. The first day was when they had the best stuff. Everything would be gone by the third day and then she would have had a terrible time…and he really needed her to have a good time…and not just because Suzuki would have him at least maimed or seriously injured if she did not have a good time.

She deserved to have a good time.

Her life, in a lot of ways, really sucked. She was a ten year old with a drinking problem….and a smoking problem…and also he knew for a fact that she had fallen off the wagon when it came to cigarettes…and also she had some creep her dad's age treating her like crap…and she was pretty much raising her little brother…so she deserved this. She deserved at least one fun day and he could give it to her.

What were pseudo big bothers for? Besides not teaching pseudo little sisters how to curse and keeping them from getting trampled to death that is.

"You like to say bad words? I mean I think that you do. You say bad words when you play games and watch TV…and sometimes you say them really loud for no reason…and stuff. My dad says that you can't help it because if you could help it then you would have…helped it….or something….I don't know…" said Mob. He had let go of her…and now she sort of wished that she had been hurt just so he could have been that close to him and….and did she like him again? Minegishi said that she just thought that he was attractive, and he really was, but also she wanted to be near him all the time. Did that mean that she wanted to be his girlfriend or….or what? He was a nice person but…well she already had two people to take care of already….and Hatori knew even less about taking care of himself than dad did…

But he did have really pretty eyes…and soft hands…and he smelled really good…

"Well….I should still watch my mouth around you. Anyway, are you ok? Does anything feel broken….fuck I am so screwed we don't have a healer….you're ok, right? Please tell me that you're ok…." Said Hatori. She had this weird feeling to her aura…well she got that sometimes…but she could have had a million and one things wrong with her and he had no way of fixing her and…and he needed her to be ok. He liked Suzuki….and Suzuki liked him….and apparently he had wound up in the middle of a weird friendship triangle with him and Fukuda….but if he let something bad happen to Mob then he would never have to worry about weird friendship triangles…or…or any other shapes ever again!

"I'm fine. It doesn't hurt at all." said Mob. She sidestepped as someone pushed past her. They had said, well a bunch of people in the front had said, that there wasn't supposed to be any pushing or shoving…but plenty of people were pushing and shoving but….but she didn't mind that much.

She got to be closer to Hatori.

"Thank God…ok. Cool. That's….that's good….damn it. I should have just borrowed Shimazaki's blind guy stick…." Said Hatori as he held her by her wrist and pulled her closer. God. He had forgotten how much crowds sucked. No wondered Suzuki didn't want to come to this thing. Shimazaki had offered him use of his blind guy stick and he should have taken it. People ran away from you when you had one of those and those that didn't could just get hit so they got out of the way. So convenient.

"No, that would have been a bad idea. If you had borrowed it then people would have looked at you and thought that you were blind. That's dishonest and also I don't think that would be nice to do…because there are people who are actually blind…and stuff…" said Mob. She played with the strap of her Elsa bag. She had safety pinned it shut like Hatori said to so that she didn't get pickpocketed. Hatori had given her a lot of good advice, like to bring lots of water and to wear comfortable shoes, but also he had some very bad ideas too. Borrowing Shimazaki's cane would have been a bad idea. She felt like it was at least not allowed, if not illegal, to pretend to be blind when you weren't…and also it wasn't a very nice thing to do. She didn't know if she could be the girlfriend of someone who had such bad ideas…but then again he would never know if his ideas were bad if he didn't have someone to tell him that his ideas were bad….

Someone like a friend…or a friend who was a girl…or a girlfriend…or something.

"That's the point. Have you been out in public with Shimazaki when he has that thing? People jump over each other to get out of the way….but yeah, I shouldn't impersonate the blind….that's the kind of shit you burn in hell for." Said Hatori. Yeah…he had to set a good example and impersonating a blind person was not setting a good example at all…and he had to work harder at this big brother thing. He wasn't Shimazaki. He wasn't going to encourage her to act like an asshole…and someone else needed to take care of Sho because that kid….well it was cute when he was ten but it wouldn't be cute anymore when he was twenty. Mob wasn't like him, though, but just to be safe he was going to not borrow Shimazaki's cane…even though it would have made getting through this crowd easier.

"Oh…I don't want that to happen to you…but it won't….because you didn't do that…and we're here…and everyone knows that you can see…and stuff." Said Mob. She felt sort of dumb. She knew words, she knew how they worked, and it felt like every word she was using was the wrong one even though she spoke perfect Japanese. She didn't know why she got like this when she was near him. Maybe this meant that she liked him? She never felt like this around any of her other friends but…but also she didn't think any of her other friends were….like Hatori. Attractive was the word that Minegishi had used and…and Shimazaki looked nice but…but then he said something or did something to remind her what he was like and then…and then the weird feelings she got sometimes when she was around him went away…and even if she had fallen in love with him she would have done everything in her power to fall out of love with him. He was in love with Minegishi after all and best friends did not hurt each other like that.

"Yeah…and if anything these idiots are the ones who need blind guy sticks." Said Hatori as some cosplayer almost took Mob's eye out…and who needed ACTUAL metal spikes? It was a costume! That guy wasn't actually going into battle! Mother fucking-no, no. Kid here. Gotta stay calm. Mob is a kid and she's impressionable. She really was. She was staring at him with those brown eyes like she was committing everything about him to memory…and he had to set a good example. She was learning how to be an adult and he was an adult so as the adult he was not going to curse anyone out in front of her…and also as an adult he probably should not have been pissing off random strangers in front of Mob, either.

"I think that they're called canes…and I think that they would have had them already if they had needed them." Said Mob. She put a barrier up, a close one, as someone with spikes all over them got too close. That would have hurt…and Fukuda was gone…not that she would have gone to him anyway if she had gotten hurt. She would have one to Minegishi, they knew first aid, or maybe if she got really hurt then Hatori could have picked her up and carried her….and she needed to stop thinking about him like that because….because she just had to.

"Well, I think that someone could make a fortune selling canes here since, apparently, no one can see you but me." Said Hatori as she put a barrier up around herself. He could see it but no one else could. Well maybe. He did feel the occasional aura but that was normal. Some people were just on the cusp of being espers. That was where the Awakened, the ones that lived through the process, came from. Just to be safe Hatori would be avoiding any and all auras. He wasn't a fighter and Mob…well she was a target. She was Suzuki Touichirou's daughter after all and that man…well he had more enemies than anyone else Hatori had ever met.

"Oh…like I'm a ghost? Or you're crazy? Or like if I never existed and I was just a figment of your imagination and then you were a figment of someone else's imagination and then the whole world was just imaginations all the way down?" asked Mob quickly. It just came to her. She had seen that movie…and also there was a cosplayer dressed like the main character from that movie…and then it all sort of came up like vomit. Like word vomit. She had said the wrong thing, she knew that she had said the wrong thing, and she just wished that she could take it back….but like real vomit once it was out there it was out there and all you could do was deal with it.

"….huh?" asked Hatori with a blink. Well that was some existential horror if he had ever heard it….and THAT was what she had kicking around in her head? Damn…poor kid. No matter. He could fill her head with…there had to be some Disney doujinshi here somewhere….something happy. Like princesses and other Disney stuff. Stuff she liked. Stuff that didn't fill him with existential dread.

"I…saw it in a movie once…sorry." said Mob. She looked down at her feet….and maybe she should have been looking up. Someone had almost hit her with their bag. Hatori had taken her by the wrist again and pulled her away. He was always looking out for her. She liked that about him….that was a good thing…the sort of thing that a boyfriend would have done for you…or a friend who was just a friend but also a boy.

"No, that actually sounds pretty neat…in a horrifying sort of way. Just…we're both real…and here, stay close to me. I'm short too but at least people can see me." Said Hatori. He let go of her and raised his arm up. It took her a minute for her to realize that he wanted her close. She came closer to him and he lowered his arm around her. It felt sort of awkward, walking with her like this, but it kept her from getting stepped on, bumped into, or crushed so that was fine. As long as he kept her alive and returned her to her father in as good or better condition than when he got her then he would be fine. He would live to see another day at least.

"Um….ok. You're not short, though, you're really tall and um…let's keep walking…and stuff…" said Mob. She had that feeling in her stomach again and her hair was trying to fly away. She tucked her head back behind her backpack. Hatori had told her to bring a backpack, a bag with lots of small bill, and also a lot of water. She had done with he had said but now she wished that she had brought more water because she was warm and sweaty….because she was close to him…

Very close.

He had an arm around her. He was pressing her into his side. She felt….so….she didn't know what this feeling was. It was like she was happy and scared at the same time. Well not scared but…nervous. She felt nervous. She knew that she had no reason to feel nervous. Hatori was her friend and only her friend and Minegishi had said, and they were very smart, that Hatori didn't like her like that….but then again Minori was also very smart about these things….and also Hatori had been really nice to her…

But then again he was always really nice to her.

He cared about her a lot. He used to call her his little sister all the time…and maybe he had stopped because he had stopped thinking about her as a little sister…or maybe he had just stopped thinking about her as little…or something. She didn't know. She just knew that…well maybe she wanted to be his girlfriend…or maybe she just wanted to be someone's girlfriend…and maybe she needed to stop thinking about this and just…buy stuff and have fun and…and not think about how close he was or how warm it was in here or….or anything….maybe she should just think about all the stuff she could buy.

There was a lot of stuff that she could buy.

Everything here was drawn by fans. There was a lot of stuff that she didn't recognize, a lot of original stuff, and also a lot of stuff that she did recognize but had no interest in….but that didn't mean that other people she knew wouldn't have had an interest in it. Like the whole table full of Sailor Moon stuff. There were books and buttons and t-shirts and stuff. She liked Sailor Moon enough but Minegishi REALLY liked it. Even though they were always saying that adults only read books that were really books she knew that Minegishi liked manga a lot. They had a lot of it…and she was not going to think about the manga that they had under their bed….but the point was that they liked manga and stuff and she would get something for them.

She would get everything for them.

"Thanks very much." Said Mob. She bowed because that as polite before she took her bags and draped them over her arms. This was good. Shopping was fun and also…also there were so many more places to visit! They would have been able to spend years and years and years of their lives here…just her and Hatori…walking around together forever. It was just a thought, of course, she knew that she had to go home eventually…but not before she stopped at every single table and bought every single thing that she saw that she or someone she knew would have liked. She had a lot of money, she didn't know how much, and if she ran out of money then….well then she could just watch Hatori buy stuff…and stuff. She didn't really care what she did just so long as she got to be with him.

Did that mean that she liked him?

Well she was always happy when her friends were happy and watching her friends have fun was almost as good as she herself having fun….but none of her other friends made him feel the way he made her feel. She didn't know why she felt this way. She had felt this way since she had first seen him. Well she had stopped for a little bit because of what happened at the party…but that was last year….and he wasn't in love with Minegishi anymore….and also he still wanted to eat them but he couldn't help wanting to eat people…just like she couldn't help the things about herself that she couldn't help….so maybe she did like him again and….well she had no idea if he liked her….

He was nice….friend nice…but also boyfriend nice….

Not that she had any idea what boyfriends actually did. She knew what she had seen and what she had read. Boyfriend kept you close to them, they thought a lot about your wellbeing, and also they helped you with things. He had been keeping her very close…but it was very crowded around here….and also he had thought a lot about her wellbeing. He had thought to tell her to wear comfortable shoes, which she had, and he had told her to bring a lot of small bills, which was good because she got the feeling that nobody here would take ten thousand yen notes, and he had told her to bring lots of water, which was good because she was very thirsty…

And now he was trying to help her carry her stuff.

"Hey Mob, do you want me to maybe help you carry some of that?" asked Hatori. Mob had practically dragged him to one of the many Sailor Moon booths…and now he at least knew what to get her for her birthday….and asked for one of everything…and she had meant everything. He had no idea how much money she had on her, every time she opened her little bag he swore that she must have robbed a bank, and he wasn't going to tell her how to spend her money but….

Well they did say that girls liked to shop.

"No, it's ok. I've got it. I hope Minegishi likes all of this. They love t-shirts and buttons, they like to put buttons on their bag, and also they like Sailor Moon the manga….well mostly. There are some arcs that they don't like but I know that they like manga and also if they don't like it then I'll keep it and….um…let's keep walking. I still have to find things for other people…so let's…do that." Said Mob. She…well she could carry this herself. She could use her powers to help her carry things, not make them float next to her, but just make them lighter….and she wanted to carry all of this herself. Carrying something for her could be a friend thing…or it could be a boyfriend thing…and she still wasn't sure what she even wanted him to be…

Or what he even wanted to be.

Minori had said that boys were both really stupid and really complicated at the same time. Well they were complicated for her, anyway, Minori had said because she was socially impaired. Boys liked girls who let them kiss them and stuff….and she wasn't even sure if she even wanted to kiss Hatori in real life…but also they were complicated in that a lot of the time they couldn't just come out and say that they liked you. Never to your face. That was why they confessed in notes and stuff…but she wasn't in school so she wouldn't get any notes and also Hatori was older and older boys were different. She had no idea how she was even supposed to tell….anything….

So she decided to just….keep on enjoying the comics market.

"Hey, check that out! Come on, Mob!" said Hatori. He had felt…well right now he felt like he was leading just a little bit too much but also….also he felt motherboards! And he knew at this point what motherboards felt like…and there were boxes of them….this way. That was just….a weird thing to sell at the comics market but, well, no weirder than those body pillows over there…

He pulled Mob along a little quicker.

They didn't sell anything….well 18+….well that he knew about….but still. Maybe half naked girl body pillows were not the thing for her to be seeing. She was little…well she was eleven…but that was still little. She didn't need to know just how weird some people could get. Nope. They were going to stick to everything that was good and suitable for children. Everything else could come tomorrow and the day after. But not this. Motherboards were calling to him! He had no idea why there were motherboards at Comiket, or what he would even do with them once he found them, but he had money and he had part of a room in shared house and also other people packed his stuff up for him when he had to move so the time for packing lightly had passed!

Now it was the time to buy stuff he didn't need!

"Mob, check this out! It's a motherboard with an anime character on it!" said Hatori. He should not have been this excited. He was a grown man. He should not have been this excited over a motherboard with a cute anime girl on it. Mostly because Suzuki needed to think that he was gay for the foreseeable future because he could be very….over protective….towards his Daughter. Which…well Hatori got it. Guys could be really….well not right…when it came to girls. Especially ones her age…and he pulled her a little closer. There were a lot of sick people in the world, he had been on the internet long enough to know, and Mob was adorable. So maybe Suzuki had a point being paranoid that every guy in the world was after his Daughter…

Though the clinginess was a little…weird.

He could be sort of weird when it came to Mob. He called her Daughter but he treated her…well like his…wife. Maybe. Hatori didn't know how dads were supposed to be with their daughters. It wasn't like he was anyone's father…and it wasn't like he would ever be at this rate…so he couldn't really tell Suzuki how to raise Mob…and also that would be just been a stupid move….but he could be sort of weird when it came to Mob. He sort of…deferred…to her when it came to stuff like how to raise his own Son…and he talked about her like…well Suzuki was a weird guy in general and he did have a point when it came to wanting to keep Mob away from guys…

After all look at who his best friend was.

"That's nice….I guess." Said Mob. He had pulled her close…and he was really excited about….whatever a motherboard was. Well she knew that it was part of a computer but she didn't know what was so exciting about that…and also why it needed to have an anime girl on it. Mob didn't know what character but then again she didn't know a lot of the characters here. She was happy, though, because Hatori was happy. He was happy enough that he had pulled her close and…and she wanted to be close to him…but also…

Also she didn't know what she wanted.

She liked him a lot. She liked being with him, she liked walking with him, and she liked when he showed her things…but also she liked other stuff about him too…stuff that she knew that he could never know that she liked about him. Like how he smelled or…or how nice his clothes were. He had on a really nice Evangelion t-shirt and…and she wished that she had seen more than the first movie….because then they would have had more to talk about. He was always showing her interesting things….because he was interesting and…and she could be interested in his interests….because they were friends and…and if they were more than friends…

That was not going to happen.

She took a step away from him. She had been more than friends close to him…and she had wanted to be more than friends close to him….and that was why she had to be the friends level of close to him. That was why she took a step back and….and then someone bumped into her so she had to take another step back…and then someone else bumped into her…and then she just sort of…had to walk. She tried to walk back the way she had came but there were too many people.

It was sort of like getting caught in a rip current.

Back when she had been little, back before Sho had gotten his scars, but also after mom had left them with dad, Mob had spent a lot of time in the ocean. It had just been her and Sho back then, that was all, and maybe if someone else had been there with them then she wouldn't have gotten caught in that current. It had been scary…but also it was her fault for swimming out so far. She and Sho had been trying to see how far out they could swim….and she had won. She had won and she had gotten pulled out far…so far…and it had been so scary….until she realized that she had powers and that she could use her powers to bring herself back to the shore. She did…but she had drifted almost a kilometer away…and Sho had been really scared because she had left him….

This was kind of like that.

This was kind of like that time only she couldn't use her powers to get out everyone out of her way. She couldn't, well she could, but she wouldn't use her powers to push everyone out of the way so she could get back to Hatori. She just…let herself be swept away. She let herself be swept away until she had no idea where she even was. She was….well she had a map….but that was in her backpack. She couldn't even get her backpack off of her back the crowd was so thick….but at least everyone had stopped pushing. She could feel….she spread her aura out. She spread her aura out far and felt…

Oh. There were other espers here.

She had felt them, before, little nudges and taps on her aura. They were little better than the awakened, really, if she was thinking in terms of power. They were naturals, though, some of them…and some of them would have been naturals if they had gotten that little extra nudge. Dad had whole labs where they gave people that nudge….though if Sho was anything to go off of it was way more than a nudge….and she just…well she would just pretend that she had never felt any other espers. If they had wanted to join Claw then they would have and also….well she knew that one of her jobs, one of the jobs of every single member of Claw, was to find new espers….but she wasn't working right now….so she wouldn't be doing any of that…

She felt fear.

Someone was…she knew that feeling. There was an aura and…and it was very scared. She looked around. She didn't see anyone she knew….and that aura didn't feel very familiar to her….but she felt it. She saw…someone was trying to get through the crowd too fast. They were pushing and shoving even though the sign clearly said no pushing and shoving….and also there were people at the doors who said no pushing and shoving…and also people were telling him not to push and shove….

Because, really, pushing and shoving was just rude.

"Can't you feel it!? Move! Get out of my way!" the guy shouted as he tried to push. Mob…she didn't feel anything. The only thing she felt out of the ordinary was how scared that guy was…and she felt bad for him…but also he was shoving a lot. His shoving was making other people shove and now…now she felt herself getting shoved along again. She was even farther from Hatori and….and she knew that she had to get back to him…but finding his aura…it was hard. He was like a needle in…well not a haystack because you could feel how pointy it was….maybe a needle in a needle stack? No, a needle in a needle stack would have mean that he was surrounded only by other espers….though that was hard, too. His aura was so little and so weird…sort of like Minegishi. Their aura lived in plants and his lived in electronics…and there were a lot of them around…but people kept on pushing and shoving her….

And she was tired of getting pushed and shoved.

She grabbed onto the side of a table and let a big group of people pass. Her hair got caught on someone's costume. She yanked it back. This was….she wished that Hatori had been there. He had kept her close and…and nothing had tugged on her hair but…well she would find him again. She just had to figure out where she was….she had no idea where she was. There had been a map, she had studied it, but only the places that looked like she would like them. Sailor Moon, Frozen, there was a braille manga table she had wanted to visit, there had been a table of knitted things that she knew Shibata would have loved, there had been a whole section of homemade plushy tables that Sho would have loved….even if he tried to say that he was too old for stuffed toys, there had even been a Galaxy Express table…and dad loved Galaxy Express even if he pretended that he only watched it to show it to her. They had seen the entire series seven times already from start to finish plus the movies. Dad loved Galaxy Express….

Oh! A sign!

Ok, now she knew what section she was in. She was….the Galaxy Express table was near here. The old school section. Well it wasn't called that officially but Hatori had said that all of those doujinshi and merch tables clustered together counted as an old school section. She could always go there and….well she was close…and it would be faster to go there than to find Hatori and then go there…and also he could see her aura. Her aura was bright. Anyone within a thousand meters could see, feel, or in Shimazaki's case hear her. She wasn't keeping it all tucked in. There weren't a lot of other espers around so there was no point. Yes, Hatori would be able to find her and…and he had his own stuff to look at and…and being near him…well…

She thought about him a lot when he was near her.

She thought about him a lot when she was apart from him, too. Dad had said that love was when you met someone and they were your most perfect person. He had said the one day she would meet a man and she would be his most perfect person and he would be hers. He would be all she desired and her will to succeed. The sun would rise and set for him…and other stuff. She didn't know if she felt like that about Hatori….she just knew that she liked him a lot. She liked the way he was always thinking about her and being nice to her and also…well she liked his shirts and his sweaters and his glasses and his skin, it was a lot better now, and his eyes and his voice and the way he smelled and….and she liked him a lot and…and well there was some stuff about him that she didn't like. He wanted to eat people…but then again everyone thought about doing stuff that they never would in real life…but also he used to like Minegishi…but that was over with now….and also there was what he did at the party…but Shimazaki had gotten him drunk and given him stuff to take….so she still….liked him but also….

Also her feelings were very confusing and she just wanted to buy stuff.

She found the Galaxy Express table, well it was more like a Maetel and Harlock table…but there was doujinshi. The kind in paper bags and the kind without. She knew not to even look at any book that had a paper bag for a cover. That was the kind of stuff that Minegishi kept under there bed…or maybe there were other types of manga that that were covered in paper bags…but she was not about to roll the dice on that.

Also the guy at the table told her that she would like the stack of stuff without the paper bags on them.

"You'll want to stick to that pile, sweetheart, it's more your speed." Said the table guy. Mob nodded and flipped through. It was…alright. She doubted that Maetel would ever talk like that, though. She knew Maetel and also….also she was not a human…well she was…but her body was back on Pluto!

"Something wrong, honey?" asked the table guy.

"Here. This is wrong. Maetel isn't human. She's got a machine body. Her real body is back on Pluto." Said Mob. She pointed to the panel that was wrong. Who had drawn this? Well this guy…but if she had made such a big error then she would have wanted to have been told.

"Well look here, a little fan. How old are you, sweetie?" asked the table guy.

"I'm eleven." Said Mob

"Eleven. Wow. Haven't had anyone as young as you at this table since…I don't even know. Most kids your age haven't ever even heard of the Galaxy Express." Said the table

"I have and this isn't right. See? Here. She isn't a human. She has a machine body. So this part where she cuts herself and she bleeds is wrong…and also she doesn't talk like this. She talks more like an adult. She sounds like she's my age here…and also she doesn't like Harlock like that. She doesn't like people who are too full of themselves." Said Mob

"Really? And you know this how?" asked the table guy

"Because my dad and I have watched the whole series seven times including the movies and I read all the officially licensed manga." Said Mob

"Wow…you sure do have a lot of time on your hands…" said the table guy

"I do. Anyway I just wanted to tell you that this whole manga was wrong…but you can draw really well…but also Maetel doesn't like Harlock like that and also she would never fight with Emeraldas either. They're sisters. Sisters don't fight. Anyway I have to go now. Goodbye." Said Mob

"Wait a second, here. Take this." said the table guy as he handed her a Maetel pin. It was one of the big kind.

"How much?" asked Mob

"Free because you know your stuff, little lady. May our paths cross again someday." Said the table guy

"I hope so too…but please pay more attention to characters being like…how they are." Said Mob as she walked away. Maybe the next table would be better. That was…well it would have been very nice if Maetel and Harlock got together they were just two very different people. Harlock was too arrogant for her, dad had said, and that arrogance was unearned. Maetel was intelligent and compassionate and too refined for him. Dad had said so and she agreed. Dad would like this pin, too, since this was his favorite character in the whole show. Yes, he would like this a lot…and also other stuff, too, because this whole section was like dad paradise.

Really, he would have liked it here.

But only if it was only him and her and maybe Hatori. He hated crowds. He hated them a lot. He liked to talk to crowds of people but also…well also he hated being in them. She didn't blame him. This place was noisy and hot and crowded and it smelled weird because there were so many different people in it, so maybe if it was just him and her it would have been ok. Maybe. She didn't know. Dad could be weird about what he liked and what he didn't like. It was like he was afraid to like things, sometimes, like he thought that there was something bad about liking things that weren't about work.

She didn't get it.

But dad was a hard person to understand in a lot of ways. But that was ok. You didn't have to understand someone to love them. You just had to love them…and she loved dad. She loved him and she knew that he would love everything that he got her even if he would pretend that he didn't. He would love…well maybe she had gotten too much…but some of this could be for her. There wasn't such a thing as too much when you were shopping. Minori had said so.

Though moving around was getting kind of hard.

It was easier to just go with the crowd. She knew that she should have been focusing on getting back to Hatori….but there was so much stuff to look at. Not just manga but also toys and buttons…and you could never have too many toys and buttons…and ok, she was running out of room on her bag and her backpack and herself for buttons…and also she was running out of room in her arms….but then she saw a place selling bags and then she had more room for buttons and more room in her arms for more things. She wanted to get back to Hatori but…

Hey! That table with the braille manga!

She would get back to him in a minute. Right now she had to see what all of this was about. Shimazaki really liked music…and also dragons….and also stories with lots of violence and a rich plot….so she couldn't get him something just because it's in braille…and also she couldn't read braille. F-word. She maybe should have taken the time to learn what all of the little bumps and dots meant before going to the braille manga table….

Oh h-word.

No matter. She could just…of course there weren't any pictures inside. There didn't have to be. H-word again. She dragged her fingers over the dots and….oh. Some of these dots made pictures…and some of them were words….and this whole thing was very complicated. Next time she came here she was doing more research….but this was kind of cool. Even though she wasn't sure if this still counted as manga. Wasn't manga without pictures, just words, a light novel? She didn't know…but hey! She knew that word! That spelled tea!

Great. She knew one single solitary word.

"That whole side is seven hundred yen or under, if you're interested." Said the woman working behind the table. She had the same sort of cane and set of big sunglasses that Shimazaki had been wearing lately even though Minegishi said that he didn't need them. She understood the cane but not the sunglasses….but it might have been rude to ask so she kept her questions to herself. About that at least.

"Um….I don't know if I'm interested. I can't read braille. I'm not blind but my friend is and he can rea braille…well I know the word for tea…but that's about it." Said Mob. She closed the book and held it in her arms. Maybe Shimazaki would like it…whatever it was.

"Well these are all transcriptions of popular shonen titles so if he likes shonen then he'll like those. The other side is shoujo." Said the woman. Mob nodded…and then remembered that not everyone was Shimazaki.

"Thank you very much." Said Mob. She went more to the shoujo side. Shimazaki liked anything with a love story…or people getting hurt….and also he liked to read to people….and also she liked to be read to…and also she liked love stories….but he was a boy so he probably would have liked everything….so it looked like the only thing to do would be to buy one of everything.

Mob needed more arms.

She needed to grow some extra arms or something. She could make things lighter with her powers but she couldn't just start floating stuff next to her…even though that would have made things much easier. She may have been an esper but the rest of the world was normal people and normal people weren't ready to know about them just yet. Dad had said so. He said that when he took over the world then things would be better for espers everywhere and then nobody would have to hide and everyone would live together and things would be better.

So dad had better hurry up with that because Mob had a lot of stuff to buy and very short arms to carry the stuff with.

Another backpack helped. Mob ended up finding the knitting table. They had knitted backpacks with anime characters…and she recognized some of them. Like Hello Kitty. She knew Hello Kitty…she used to love Hello Kitty…back when she had been little. She'd had a Hello Kitty bed set and lots of the books and the toys and all the episodes of the show….and she didn't like….well she wasn't into to it anymore but…well…..Hello Kitty was still nice…and she did need another backpack….

Since she had a lot of stuff to carry.

She had two backpacks now. One on her back and one on her front. She had four big tote bags on her arms and her money bag over her shoulder…and she was almost done. She could still feel Hatori's aura. He must have been off doing his own thing…and that was ok. She had been getting all…weird…being so near to him. That happened a lot when she was near him. She liked him. She knew that she liked him again, and not just because he was the most attractive boy that she had ever met in her life. Even if he did want to eat people, and even if he had been in love with her best friend, and even if he did still have some spots on him…he was very attractive and she was attracted to him…like Minegishi had said…but he was also a lot older than her…like Minegishi had said…

He probably didn't want her to be his girlfriend.

He was just a friend like all of her other friends were just friends. He was nice to her because they were friends. That was all. He was nice to her just like she was nice to him and all of her other friends too. Like how she had gotten Shimazaki a bunch of braille manga and that didn't mean that she was in love with him…yuck….or like how she had gotten Shibata a giant pair of knitted oven mitts so he could stop using towels…she wasn't in love with him either…ick. Friends did nice things for friends. That was all. So she…she liked him but he probably didn't like her and…and that was ok and…and she needed to stop thinking about this and…and she needed to get something for Sho…or a lot of somethings….

Like that whole table of fancy sketchbooks.

Buying everything was easier than picking something out. That way the other person had options and you had less of a chance of getting it wrong. Sho…well when he had been little he had gotten mad when she had gotten him dumb presents. He never got mad at her anymore but she wanted to give him the best present ever…which was why she got him one of every sketchbook….which she had enough space on her arms to carry…she really did. She just….had to….figure it out. She had to figure out how she was going to move from this table…without making things float because that would have been weird because she was pretty much the only actual esper here and…

And she would figure this out.

She just had to…bag Tetris…she wasn't that good at Tetris dad was much better….and what would dad have done if he had been there? Well he would have carried everything for her and told her that he loved her…and then he would have hurt his back because he never used his powers in public….because he was never in public…so of course he wouldn't have been there to help her….but if he had been there to help her then….

Her head hurt.

Her arms hurt a little, too, because this was a lot of stuff and…and maybe she should just have found a way to make this stuff float without anyone noticing but also in a way that could spare her arms…because she liked having arms….and she had to keep going. She had to keep going because there were whole sections that she hadn't been to yet. She still didn't have any more arm room left but….but maybe if she stacked things….no, that was dumb. She was out of ideas. She needed help…or someone with ideas…

Hey, Hatori's aura!

He had wanted to help carry but…but maybe that was a boyfriend thing…no it was a friend thing…but she might end up wishing that it was a boyfriend thing and….and did she even want him to be her boyfriend? Outside of her mind, that is. She knew that in life…in life and in her mind were two different things. In her mind he would have walked up to her, picked her up, and told her that he loved her and he would carry anything that he needed her to carry and also she was the prettiest girl he had ever met and that they could hold hands if she wanted to and maybe kiss…but not while people could see…like they could kiss in a room with no one else…but then they would be alone and…and stuff…she didn't really want any of that alone stuff…and she wasn't sure what all of that stuff…so he really…in life….maybe she should not have been thinking about him like that…especially while she was around a million other people…

Also what happened in her own head was nothing like what happened in reality.

"Mob! Where the FU-where have you been?" asked Hatori. He had been trying to find her for…he didn't even know how long! Like over an hour! How was she…well she was a kid. She was a kid. She was a kid and he had been a kid and back when he had been a kid he had wandered away plenty of times and…and he could not be mad at her…

But seriously! What the ever loving fuck!?

"Um….I was shopping?" said Mob. She held up her bags as best as she could to show him…even though he could see them just fine. His aura felt…well sort of mad but….but she didn't know why he would have been mad at her. She had been fine. She had been here, he must have been able to feel her aura, and he knew that she wouldn't have just run away from him or anything like that. She would never have run away from him. She wanted….well she wanted to be near him….and stuff….

But he didn't know about that.

He could never know about that. She would rather he had been mad, madder than he had ever been with her before, rather than him knowing how she felt about him. How even though he was mad at her, and she didn't really know why, she still wanted….well she wanted to be near him and also….well she would never do the stuff she did in her head in real life…and stuff but….well…this whole thing was very confusing and also her arms hurt…and her stomach, too, but that had been happening on and off for a while. She wasn't nervous or….well she was but…

She felt a lot of things right now….but none of those things were her arms.

"Yeah….I can see that. You…Mob, don't go off without me ever again. I've been worried sick about you! You could have been stolen or gotten lost or…well a lot of shit, sorry, stuff could have happened to you…and then your dad would have killed me." said Hatori. He was not going to freak out at her. When he had been a kid he had hated it when adults freaked out at him….of course he knew, now, that the shit he had been pulling to make people freak out at him had not been ok at all…but he could not freak out anyway. This was Mob. She was just a kid and she was sensitive and…and she honestly didn't seem to know what she had done wrong and…and he needed to calm down. Suzuki was not going to kill him, the sun would rise again, and his life would go on…until Mob decided to wander off and give him another mini heart attack.

"Dad wouldn't ever do anything like that to you. He likes you a lot. He says that you're good company, and that you're smart, and that if you had been born the same year that he had then you guys could have been good friends." Said Mob. Hatori had been worried about dad killing him….but why? He was one of dad's very best friends. Dad had said so…and he had also told Hatori that she liked him…but she could forgive him for that. He liked Hatori a lot so if Hatori was to ever be her boyfriend, she suspected that he liked both boys and girls so that was a possibility, dad would have liked him already….but that was probably never going to happen and she needed to stop getting her hopes up like this…and stuff.

"Well that's nice of-" said Hatori. Wow. Suzuki actually liked him…well he had known that Suzuki had liked him but…wow. He talked about him…and stuff…and Fukuda was going to hate him for the rest of his life…but that was ok. He didn't like the asshole either…and not because of this weird friendship triangle thing he had found himself all caught up in.

"He also said, once, that if you had been born a girl you would have been very pretty and smart and stuff and you wouldn't have had any trouble meeting a man and getting married." Said Mob. Hatori needed to know that dad cared about him, as much as dad could care about a person who wasn't her, and that he shouldn't have been scared of him. Dad always had the nicest things ever to say about Hatori. He never even said such nice things about Fukuda and they had been very good friends years ago…well she knew why he never had good things to say about Fukuda…because he was Fukuda.

"Ok…that's kind of-" said Hatori. President Suzuki was kind of a weirdo but…well that was nice of him. He just…didn't know how to give compliments and…and he really hoped that Suzuki wasn't going to try and do something rash like pick out a guy for him and then tell him to get married and then find a surrogate so the world could be peopled with espers…and he wouldn't do that…right? Right?

"He said that you would probably have been married to Fukuda since you guys like a lot of the same stuff and you couldn't be married to my dad because he would have already been married." Said Mob. Dad was very worried about people getting married and having babies. He said that there weren't enough espers in the world to sustain his dream of Claw ruling the world. Powerful ones, he meant, and he was very worried about people not making enough babies. Mob didn't think that it was any of her business but she did like babies….though she wasn't sure why dad wanted Hatori to marry another boy since two boys couldn't have a baby together….right? She didn't know how it worked but she did know that mom had said that boys and girls were meant to fit together like puzzle pieces…and stuff. So that meant that you needed a boy and a girl…but then how did families with two moms or two dads work? Adoption? Were there that many orphans in the world? Maybe Hatori could adopt a baby! She would have liked that…and then they could…well no, they couldn't, because babies were for married people and they weren't even going out yet…and they might never end up going out…and he might have picked a boy to go out with….

Hopefully a better boy than Fukuda.

"Who in the hell would want to be married to FUKUDA?!" said Hatori. People were looking now and…and maybe he should have been quieter but…but Fukuda?! No. He just…no. President Suzuki shipped him with….Fukuda…of all people. Ship him with literally anyone else. Shibata or…hell. Even Shimazaki would have been better than Fukuda…and he really hoped that the President didn't plan on pushing them together anyway….because Fukuda…well he was weirdly jealous of him and Suzuki…and when he was with Suzuki….well there was kind of a weird atmosphere there and….

And maybe living in a traitor hole wouldn't be so bad.

"….nobody, I guess, since in the whole time I've known him he's never even had a girlfriend or even a friend with benefits." Said Mob. Yeah…she wanted Fukuda to be happy….or at least not suffering….and being alone was hard…but Hatori deserved to be happy. Even if he didn't end up liking her well…they were surrounded by thousands of people. One of them should have been his most perfect person.

"Mob….what do you think that means? Friend with….just what do you think that means?" asked Hatori. Well this was getting….what? How did she know that word!? Who was teaching her this stuff!? She was eleven and she needed to think about…whatever it was that eleven year old girls thought about! Makeup and dolls and boybands and…glitter…or whatever….he didn't know…but he did know that she did not need to know about….things like that!

"My friend Minori says that friends with benefits is a level below being boyfriend and girlfriend. You know, like what Shimazaki and Minegishi are. I don't think that anyone would ever want to be that with Fukuda…unless all the other boys died or something and we needed him to make more people….those poor girls…." Said Mob. She had seen that in a movie, too. There had been a bad future where a plague killed off all of the men and it was only women but then an astronaut came from space and all the women killed each other over the man….but she got the feeling that if it had just been Fukuda then the human race would have died out….if movies were real…and she hoped that movies weren't real….because all of her best friends were boys….but not Minegishi…but movies were not life….and stuff.

"Ok…how did we get here, exactly?" asked Hatori scratching his head. That was….a weirdly specific scenario. What happened in her head…well kids were weird. He knew that he had been weird when he had been a kid.

"We took a car." Said Mob. Maybe he had head stroke or something…and that was why he couldn't remember. It was hot in there….and she just wished that she had worn a short sleeved shirt. She was all sweaty and….well he was close…and also her stomach hurt…but that probably had nothing to do with the heat…or something. She didn't know.

"No I meant…I was mad at you, Mob, that's how we got here. I was mad at you but…well now I'm just…I don't know what I am. Come on. Let me help you carry that and then we can….I guess go take some pictures with the cosplayers or…something. Come on." Said Hatori. Right. Well eh had been mad and now he wasn't and he knew that he should have been. Her dad…..well Suzuki would have killed him if he knew that he had lost his little girl…but he hadn't…but now he had something new to worry about. He had to worry about Suzuki putting him together with Fukuda…since he shipped them…and Hatori had never been shipped before…and he didn't much want to be shipped. Now he knew what Minegishi meant by shippening….though it wasn't Mob who was shipping him…

Suzuki's were a weird bunch.

That was the only explanation for it. Suzuki's were weird people. Mob was…well she had an excuse because she was ten…and her brother was on a whole other level when it came to Shimazaki….and both of the kids had come from the same guy. So the weirdness was genetic….though it was weird that Suzuki shipped him with Fukuda of all people….

And he was going to stop thinking about this now because this was a really fucking weird thing to think about.

"Ok…I would like that a lot….and thank you for not getting mad at me. Um….did you ever end up finding the motherboard you wanted? I mean did you pick one out?" asked Mob. He was taking the things from her to help carry and…and he had brushed his hand against her arm as he did that and…and he was there and….and her stomach hurt again….and…now it passed. That was good. She just…she didn't know what that was. He didn't make her that nervous or anything but….but he did make her nervous but….in a good way.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Come on, I'll show you." Said Hatori as he led her through a thin patch in the crowd. Well this was good. He wasn't mad anymore, and he would do better to hold onto her, and they could compare merch and stuff….and what had she bought? Rocks? This was heavy….he rubbed his shoulder…and then she helped him with his powers.

She was a great kid. Helpful…but she did run away…but he wasn't going to hold it against her. What kind of big brother would he be if he held something like that against her?

"Um….ok." said Mob as Hatori led her through the crowd. It was…well her stomach wasn't hurting anymore….but she was warm and….and she was happy. He wasn't mad at her…and he hadn't been for very long and….and that was good. This was good. This was….it had been a good day. She had liked the shopping and the stuff and the crowds…well the crowd was ok but….but being with Hatori…that was more than ok. This was…it had been a very good day…and it would continue to be a very good day….

It was hot, and crowded, and she had maybe bought too much but….but she was with Hatori and that more than made up for all of that…being with someone she liked….

More than made up for….all of that.


	367. You're Very Frustrating But I Love You

Dad could be a very frustrating person sometimes.

But that was ok because Mob loved her dad very much. She loved him and so what if he veer liked anything? He was still her dad…and also he did like things. So, really, it was more like he was just afraid to admit that he liked things. Like the pin she got him at the comics market…or any of the stuff that she had gotten at the comics market. He didn't seem to like anything….but he must have. She knew him. She knew that someone who didn't like the Galaxy Express wouldn't have watched the whole series seven times…and probably more than that, too, since he was so much older than her. She just did not get him sometimes…and it was frustrating….and it made her stomach hurt.

Just a little though, not a lot, so that was ok.

That little could maybe turn into a lot, though, because he just….wouldn't admit to liking…anything. He always just said that whatever she had was nice and…and she liked that he thought that it was nice but…but also she just…wanted him to admit that he liked things. She knew him…well as much as she could know him…and she knew that he liked things. That was how he and Hatori had gotten to be such good friends. They both liked games…even though dad tried to say that he only liked games for work reasons like he was keeping himself sharp….and stuff….but she knew that he liked games and she knew that…that he could like things and….

And he was afraid, or something, of admitting that he liked things. Even something as simple as a pin.

"Dad, come on. You like it. It's Maetel. She's your favorite." Said Mob as she held out the pin she had gotten for free. She and dad were at the dinner table, their dishes were in the sink, and the room smelled like pizza. She had just gotten them pizza, she had been too tired to cook, and she had even gotten all the toppings and cheese. Sometimes he liked toppings and sometimes he didn't….but he always liked ketchup and he had dipped his pizza in it even though pizza already had tomato sauce on it and that was better than ketchup….

And he hadn't even wanted to admit that he liked ketchup…when she had even seen him drinking it once!

"I never said that she was my favorite." Said Suzuki. Truth be told Maetel was not only his favorite character but also his first love…and he didn't even like admitting that to himself let alone his own Daughter. He hadn't known any actual girls back when he had developed feelings for her, too many hormones and too few interactions with the opposite sex, but now he was a grown man and he didn't really have a favorite character and…and he only watched that show for Daughter's sake…and obviously she really enjoyed it…so maybe they could do another viewing.

After all, when Son was gone every day felt like a Sunday.

She'd had a good time at comiket, he was glad, and she had taken the time after dinner to show him all of her purchases. She had spent a small fortune…but so had he when he had gone. He had been older than her but not by much…and it had been very hot and crowded…and he had not enjoyed himself all that much but she had. She had bought everything, it seemed, and he knew how women liked to shop. It was an extension of the nesting instinct. Well he was happy to provide her the means to purchase whatever she wanted….but he did not need to share in her bounty.

He was a grown man after all and much too old for all of this.

"You said that she was the best character on the show." Said Mob. She had been paying attention when dad first explained the characters to her. She knew that Maetel was his favorite. It was her and then Emeraldas. Also he liked Tetsuro and Cunt Mecha too but not as much. He only thought that Harlock was ok even though, in Mob's opinion, he and Tetsuro were the best…but that was ok. They could like different things…just so long as dad admitted, for once, that he actually liked something. That was all she wanted and…and she didn't know why this was making her so angry…but it was.

Well more frustrated than angry.

Dad…it wasn't hard to admit that he liked something. Not for a normal person but…but dad was weird. Even for espers he was weird and…and maybe he could have been happier if he just admitted that he liked things and then…she didn't know. Maybe part of her wished that she could go again tomorrow with him…or something. She didn't know. Maybe another part of her, the part that he been up late looking at his old notebook, wanted….wanted to know the boy in the notebook. Not the gross parts where he and Fukuda talked about which girls were cute and which ones they wanted to kiss, because nobody in the history of kids ever wanted to know things like that about their dad, but the parts where he had just been…a kid…who liked stuff…

Or maybe she was just being ridiculous…or something.

"Well she is. She's intelligent, compassionate, and just…well she's the best on the show and she puts up with a lot without ever once losing her temper." Said Suzuki. He had always admired that about Maetel. She never once lost her temper. That was a very difficult thing to manage. Also she had very nice eyes and long hair and…and other things that were best buried somewhere in the woods. Daughter did not need to know these things about him...and also he only still enjoyed…things like this…for her benefit.

So they could bond.

He had enjoyed the Galaxy Express when he had been a child. He was a grown man now and had more important things to do than watch the same laserdisc over and over and over again. Also they didn't even make those anymore…but the point still stood. He only liked these things so that he could better bond with her. That was the same reason he watched the ice queen with her…and he only watched the song when she built the castle because Daughter enjoyed it…and he only watched it once or twice in a row because it was her favorite. The same thing went for the movie with the long haired princess. He watched because she liked it and he played games with her because she liked them, and also Minecraft was good for….design reasons….and such. That was all.

He was a grown man and he had to act as a man did….and that meant putting away childish things.

"So…she's your favorite?" asked Mob. Honestly. Would it have killed dad to just…now she was being mean. She was being mean in her own mind but, still, she should not have been mean to him. She should have been nice to him. She loved her dad and when you loved someone then you were nice to them all the time….and stuff. Even when they were being very frustrating.

"Perhaps." Said Suzuki. If he could still have a favorite than Maetel would have been that character…if he could still have a favorite. She was still a child and she didn't have to put away her childish things yet. She never would, hopefully, because she would always be…well she would grow up but…but he hoped that she could somehow simultaneously be forever this young but also a grown woman. A grown woman with whom he could share his life with but also…also someone who still got excited over anime and manga and cheap trinkets. Someone who rushed through the door completely over encumbered with books and trinkets and other such things just jumping at the chance to show him what was important to her. Sort of like Masami but…more.

Masami had been very interested, at first, in showing him what she was interested in.

They must have watched at least a year's worth of her historical and manor house dramas. He must have visited the animal prison where she worked a thousand times. They had watched all of her favorite movies and listened to all of her favorite books in the beginning, back when Son was just a rapidly dividing cluster of cells, but then…at some point they had just…stopped that. Masami had accused him of being bored, but that wasn't new people had been accusing him of being bored since he had been a small boy, and also she had complained that their exchange only went one way. She had said, before, that it was like he had no interests….

He had interests. They were only very childish…but they did exist.

"Then at least take the pin. Come on, dad, pins are fun. See? I have a lot of them." Said Mob as she shook the front of her shirt. She had bought every single pin she saw. Well almost, anyway, there had been a booth full of pins of girls blushing and making funny faces but Hatori had told her that she was too young for those pins….and then he had bought her a Hello Kitty one and pinned it to her Elsa bag…and that had been nice. Because she liked pins….and him…and pins. Pins were fun and…and everyone liked pins….everyone.

Even dad.

She wished that he would have just taken it and pinned it to his suit coat and then…and then admitted to liking things. She knew that he liked things, he knew that he liked things, but he just…pretended that he didn't…and he didn't even have to pretend like that. That was the frustrating part…and she should not have been getting worked up because it made her stomach hurt…and stuff…and also…also she just…wished that dad would just admit to liking things. Then he could admit that he was sharing the things he loved with her and….

And when you loved someone you shared with them all the things that you loved.

"Yes they are, Daughter, for someone your age. You are eleven, I am forty four, but I appreciate the gesture. Now, would you like to watch the entirety of the Galaxy Express again? With your brother gone for the foreseeable future we can have some peaceful time together. Doesn't that sound wonderful?" asked Suzuki. He took her hand as he asked her. She had such tiny, soft hands. She had painted her fingernails again. This time they were pink. He liked them better blue. He liked them best yellow…but he knew better than to comment on a woman's appearance in any way that wasn't positive. She was beautiful no matter what she wore, anyway, even if she did look best in yellow.

Though she did look adorable completely adorned in pins.

Happy. She had been so happy to show each and every single one of those pins off to him. She was happy and…and he was happy that she was happy. She had a childlike joy to her that she had wanted to share with him…but he was much too old. He had been too old to enjoy what he enjoyed even when he had been a child. The other children had told him, often, that he was too old for…well the things he liked…or that the things he liked were socially unacceptable….like math…or collecting data on people to find averages…which was a kind of math…or that phase he had gone through when he had been obsessed with explaining existence through numbers….which was more math. No, his interests had never lined up socially with what he was supposed to like…even Fukuda had told him so back when they had been young….

But that didn't matter, now, he was forty four and had left such childish things behind long ago.

"OK….I guess…" said Mob. She looked down as dad held her hand. She just…why was she so frustrated with him tonight? She didn't know. She needed to smoke something, maybe, to feel better…and why did her stomach feel like this, too? Like she had eaten too much….no…this was different. Maybe she had just overdid it today…or something. She didn't know.

"What is it?" asked Suzuki. He let go of her hand and brushed a lock of her hair out of her face. She had worn it down again…and she had such beautiful hair…but he did miss her braids. She seemed younger with them….but he wanted her to grow up….but he also wanted her to stay the same. As she was now…well better than how she was now. Now she was just…her aura felt…not normal. She seemed…upset…but something….but he just could not begin to understand what it was that could have been upsetting her. She'd had a great time. She had even told him so and she did not tell him lies.

"Nothing." Said Mob as dad played with her hair. He liked her hair a lot. He played with it all the time when nobody else was around. He even played with it in his sleep. Sometimes she would wake up to him playing with her hair…or petting her head like she was a cat….and she didn't mind because it meant that dad loved her…but now…now she sort of wanted to bat his hand away and tell him to knock it off before he made knots…and she had no idea why she would ever have wanted to be so mean to her own father. She loved him….she loved him the most out of everyone….and stuff.

"No, I think that there is something wrong. People often say that there is nothing wrong when there is something wrong and I never understood that." Said Suzuki. Masami had done that to him. He hadn't liked it then and he didn't like it now. She used to tell him that nothing was wrong and, in the beginning, he had made the mistake of believing her…and then she had gotten mad at him later for not understanding that something, indeed, had been wrong….and he was not going down the road again. No way. Daughter was going to say what was on her mind even if they had to sit here in the kitchen listening to the hum of the refrigerator and looking at her pile of books and trinkets all night long.

"I just….wish that you would just admit it when you like something." Said Mob. She knew that dad needed people to say what they meant and they needed to mean what they said. He was bad at talking, worse at it than she was, so she had to make herself understood…even if she knew that dad would still be…dad…even if she wrote what she meant on the ceiling above his bed in permanent marker.

"I like you." Said Suzuki. She…thought that he didn't like her? But…that couldn't have been farther from the truth. He was her father, he loved her, and he had been saying it more and more just as she had asked him to. He had done everything that she had asked of him. He had been kinder to Son, he had given her more space, and he allowed her to smoke and drink even though he wished that he had the ability to tell her to stop…well he did…but he wanted her to be happy. He cared about her and her happiness…and he would have done anything for her and….and he loved her. But…but she had told him what the problem was…and not he could fix it. He hadn't been showing her enough love, obviously, but now…well now he would….but also he would be careful not to harm her development….but this was just…parenting was very hard sometimes. Relationships were hard. This was why he had never enjoyed forming them with people but…but he was going to make this work because…because he loved her more than anything.

And she had to know that.

"I know you do, dad, I know…and I like you too." Said Mob. She loved him and…and she didn't always like him. Like when he was mean to Sho…or when he acted like he didn't like things…like it was this big thing that he liked things…and also…well she loved him but she didn't like everything about him…and she had to like everything about him because he was her dad and…and you were supposed to love everything about your dad and….

And she really needed to smoke a joint…or her vape pen, actually, because it didn't smell as bad.

"There. As you can see I am perfectly capable of admitting to liking something. Now, please, come to bed." Said Suzuki. He just…he was tired and he wanted to relax before bed with her. They would watch television and he would hold her and then….well and then she would never question his feelings for her again. Ever. Because he loved her, he would never stop loving her, and if he could have built her some kind of non-cruel…well cage would have been the wrong word…some sort of dome where all of her needs would be tended to but she could never leave…if he could build such a thing, and it wouldn't have affected her negatively in any way, then he would have…but he had no idea how he would go about doing that so it would go in the half formed ideas folder.

"But you won't admit that you like Galaxy Express." Said Mob. Why was it easier for him to say that he loved her, a human being, but not a show that he had seen more times than she even knew? He was so frustrating and tiresome…but he was her dad and she loved him…but he could also be very frustrating and tiresome sometimes….

"I…found it enjoyable when I was young…but I am not young anymore…" said Suzuki. He was not a child anymore and even as a child the other children had been…well he was President Suzuki now and he didn't have to worry about what others thought but….but he also did and…and he just…he loved her and that was what mattered. As long as she knew that he loved her then…then everything would have been…it all would have been alright.

"So? That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how old you are, dad, you can still like things…and I wish that you would admit that." Said Mob. She was just….she knew what dad meant when he said that everyone and everything was tiresome and…and she didn't know where this bad mood had come from. She just…maybe if she smoked…and also changed. She was so sweaty from today…she was sweaty in places that she had never even known that she could sweat from…and she wished that the comics market had some kind of air-conditioning since Tokyo in August was so, incredibly, unbelievably hot…and she was so sweaty and tired…..

"But…why?" asked Suzuki. He didn't know why this was so important to her…or why it had been so important to Masami and maybe he just didn't understand women. Yes. That would have made sense. They were very complicated people, women, the most complicated people that he had ever met…and Daughter wasn't even a woman yet. Well she was a very talented homemaker, she was very responsible, and she was good company…but she was only eleven and he had no idea when she would officially become a woman but he felt like eleven might have been a little young…and he so wished that Masami had taken the time to explain when he would be able to tell that Daughter had finished growing up….well that and about a thousand other things.

"I don't know I just feel like…sometimes I get frustrated by you…and stuff…." Said Mob. She knew that it was mean…but she had been about to tell him that he was tiresome and that was even meaner…and he should have known. He told Sho that he was tiresome all the time even though she had told him time and time again that he had to be nice to Sho….and he was just so…frustrating and tiresome and…and she knew what he had been like since she had been old enough to know that her dad could be very mean a lot of the time but also….also she just…

She did not feel good right now.

"I…frustrate you?" asked Suzuki. No…he hadn't set out to do that and…and she was unhappy with him. She was unhappy with him and…and he had to fix this. He had to make this right. She could not be…she could not be unhappy with him because….because he loved her and….and if she was unhappy with him then she would want to leave him and he had no idea what he would do if his Daughter ever wanted to leave him….because he loved her and….and if she left then…she loved him and….and if she left then he would be all alone…

He would wake up and she would be gone.

But he could not allow that to happen. Not again. He was not going to find himself alone in the world again…it shouldn't have mattered if he found himself alone in the world because he was a full and complete person on his own but….but he still….he wanted her near him at all times because….because she was the most perfect person that he had ever met in his life…so therefore it was not a sign of weakness to….to want his most perfect person to be near him.

"A little bit." Said Mob softly. Dad let go of her hair. He looked at her. She looked back at him. His eyes were very blue. She wondered if hers did that. Sho's did the thing where his pupils shrank down to nothing…and he had blue eyes so it was easy to tell…but Mob's were brown, almost black, and she had no idea…she didn't think that they were like that…and she decided to stick to looking at auras. Dad's was….bothered…and she knew that hers was annoyed…and she needed to smoke. They both did. Maybe dad would have been a lot nicer if he smoked a lot more. Or even a little more.

"That…was not my intention. I would never want to cause you any sort of distress. I love you, Daughter, I love you more than I can ever express." Said Suzuki. There. Now she would understand. He had searched his vocabulary, in every language he knew, but he could not find words that even came close to expressing the depths of his feelings for her. She was so…perfect. His Daughter was so perfect. She may not have been his by blood but she was still so….so very perfect.

"Thanks…but I just wish that you would admit to liking other things besides me. Sometimes I worry that you think that…that someone will think badly about you…or make fun of you…and that's why you pretend that you only like things for…for reasons other than you liking them. Like…for work…and stuff. Like how you play Minecraft all the time and you say that it's for work. I just…wish that you would just say when you liked something. That's all, dad." Said Mob. There. She had said what she had meant and she had meant what she had said and then dad….dad would be able to understand her…and everything would be ok between them and she could stop feeling so…well how she felt now…now.

"I…like you. I like you and I would never want to frustrate you and….and if you are upset that was not my intention….and I would very much like it if you came to bed and then we watched television…and it doesn't have to be the Galaxy Express. We can watch the ice queen movie or the one about the princess with the long hair or the French with the living furniture or…or even the one about the princess with the…rodents…who sew. It's your choice but please….join me." Said Suzuki. There. He had said what he had meant and he had meant what he had said. She would not have had any way to misunderstand him. Now they could get on with their very pleasant, Son free, night. He knew that he was supposed to restrict their time together only to Sundays, as Fukuda had said, but…well Fukuda was away. Now it was just him and his Daughter…and it was so perfect…and it could be even more perfect…if that was even possible.

"We can watch Galaxy Express….and can I vape in bed?" asked Mob. She needed to smoke, and she would have wanted to smoke a joint, but dad hated smoking in the house and she knew that joints smelled even stronger than cigarettes and she just…did not want to get into a fight with him…and stuff. Not that they ever fought or anything but….well she just did not want to get into it with him in any way. He was still her dad and as much as he loved her he still had the power to tell her that she wasn't allowed to smoke ever again anymore ever for any reason…and she didn't think that she could deal with that.

"Do you…have to?" asked Suzuki. He hated it when she smoked…and vaped….well he didn't much understand what vaping was exactly but he knew that he hated it. He hated the smell and he hated…well he had tried it once and he had hated the way that it had made him feel and…and he wasn't going to alienate her but…but he didn't want her to vape in their bedroom either.

"Yes." said Mob. She had to. She was in a bad mood, she was hot and tired, and she needed to vape. A fun vape. She needed hash oil, not the boring stuff, but what she really needed was a joint. Well a joint and a drink but Minegishi had told her before that it was one or the other and she didn't want to make them mad. She didn't want to make dad mad, either, but she just…he had asked her if this was something that she had to do and she had told the truth. What was she supposed to do? Lie to her own dad? Well she did not tell lies and especially not to her own dad who she loved and cared for very much.

"Alright but….nothing. Do as you wish. I supposed that…that I can put up with that." said Suzuki. He loved her and when you loved someone then you put up with all the things that they did….including vaping something that smelled absolutely terrible. Like the time he and Fukuda had found that skunk mixed with the time that they had been trying to make their own orange juice since the juice at the store was much too sweet. Citrus and skunk. Not a good combination. He would have taken her smoking an entire carton of cigarettes in their bed than her vaping…but he loved her and when you loved someone you put up with everything that they did…

Even vaping.

"I'll be in your room in a minute. I just have to change." Said Mob. Well at least she would be able to vape…and get out of these clothes. She left the kitchen and carried all of her things behind her with her powers. As she walked she attached the button to the front of her dress, the one that she had gotten for dad, since he didn't want it….and she supposed that it would have looked out of place on him…but still. She just wished…well she was done wishing. Now all she wanted to do was change and vape and watch TV with her dad. That was all. She would take a bath tomorrow, and also some laundry, and she would take off all of the pins tomorrow since they probably wouldn't have survived the washing machine…and also she would find a better home for all of her new stuff than a pile on the floor in front of Sho's bed…and also she would just…well she didn't know what else she would do tomorrow….see how everyone was enjoying their stuff that she had had gotten them maybe…but right now she had to change…

Because she was very sweaty.

She had been wearing a heavy winter dress and she had sweated through it. She had sweated through her dress and her undershirt and her socks and her underwear too….and that was new….well not new for her lately. She didn't know why that had been happening, it wasn't like she spent a lot of time outside in the sun, but she did know that she had just been all…sticky…there lately and it must have been sweat since it wasn't…alone time…stuff…and it was gross but…well bodies could be gross sometimes. Mob didn't know why her body had gotten so….like this….and she couldn't ask anyone even Minegishi…since this weird stickiness had started after alone time stuff and if she wanted to ask about this then she would have to talk about the alone time stuff….and nobody could know about that ever for any reason….so she would just…bear with the stickiness. It was probably just sweat. Even sweating had been gross lately. She had started smelling terrible for no reason. Thankfully dad never noticed when she used his deodorant. Yeah. This was probably just sweat and….and she needed a bath…

She really needed a bath….

A bath would have been the best…but just a regular one and not an alone time one…even though…well she had been spending the whole day with Hatori…but she was not going to think about this. Not when dad was waiting in his room for her to hang out with him and watch TV and have their time together. Even though it wasn't Sunday…but dad loved her…and as frustrating as he was she loved him….and she had already said that they would hang out together…and she wasn't going to lie to him….

Even though she really needed to take a bath.

But dad wanted to hang out with her and he had given her permission to vape in the room…and that was a lot. Dad hated it when she vaped, he had said that he hated the way it smelled, so him letting her do this in the room was a big thing. He loved her. He frustrated her but he loved her.

Dad could be frustrating sometimes….but that didn't mean that she didn't love him too.


	368. Babysitting Baby Sis

Sho was a good babysitter.

Well he was trying to be, anyway. He was trying his best to be the best babysitter that there had ever been. Baby sis had been trusted to him. Baby sis had been fed, changed, and her sippy cup was full of juice. Sho just had to watch her for an hour…and he could do that. He could do that and he was going to do that and he was doing that right now! He could do this! Not that there was anything to do, not really. Just….well he was making sure that she didn't hurt herself. Babies were always hurting themselves. They were always touching things that they weren't supposed to, climbing on things that they weren't supposed to, and also baby sis sometimes tried to eat her crayons and that was bad because she could choke. The crayons also said that they were nontoxic but…well eating crayons couldn't have been good for her.

And Sho was supposed to be taking care of her.

"I do! I do!" shouted baby sis with a purple crayon in her mouth. That was one of her giant baby crayons. She had to use the giant baby crayons, his were too thin and she dropped them all the time, even though she had trouble with…well everything. Those crayons were bad for shading and…well pretty much everything but drawing shapes and scribbles….

And all she could draw were scribbles.

But not with a crayon in her mouth. He reached over and tried to take the crayon from her mouth. It was covered in her baby drool…and it had bite marks in it….but he still took it. He reached over with his hand and took it out of her mouth….but maybe he should have just used his powers…and also maybe for the rest of their time together he should have made sure to keep his hands away from her mouth…

Because she had sharp teeth.

"Baby sis, no. No biting. It's not nice." Said Sho as he pulled his hand away from her mouth. She hadn't bit him so hard that he bled but he did have little imprints of her little baby teeth in the skin of his finger now. He knew that he was going to be ok. She was strong but not strong enough to actually hurt him…and if she did then Fukuda could have just fixed him right up. He could just use his powers and make Sho good as new…if he had been hurt. This was just…well it looked like she had been trying to do a watch…

That was what mom had called it when he bit her.

He remembered that he had been little, very little, like three….yeah, he had been three. He remembered because he had still slept in the bed with the rails on the side. Mom had been leaning over to tuck him in and then he had bit her and…and then big sis had told him not to…and then mom had said….she had said…..she had said…..'if I had wanted a watch I would have gotten one from my jewelry box' and then…and then she had kissed him on the head and told him not to bite but….well he had bitten her again…and he felt bad, now, that he had had bitten his mom. He hadn't known it then but he had only gotten six years with her…and he had already wasted three of those years by being too little to remember her…and he'd only had three years left and he had chosen to spend his time biting her…

He had no idea how much time baby sis and him had left.

He had no idea when he would have to go again. He could have had to go tomorrow, or a week from now, or a month….well not a month. This was a short trip. Fukuda had told him that this would have to be a short trip but also…also he had said that maybe more trips could happen. They were in Japan, now, and Fukuda said that dad always dug his feet in while they were in Japan because he liked to be home. Even though he wasn't home. Their home was the Castle, but that was not where they were now, and also dad's original home was Seasoning City. This was where he was from so, if anything, Sho was more home than dad was. He wondered why dad never came here if he liked being in Japan so much. This was where he was from. This was his home….

And also his home was very close to baby sis's home.

He had no clue how long they would have together. He knew that…that he loved her but also…also he knew that he was not allowed to be with her. He was not allowed to be here and he was not allowed to know her….but he did know her. He knew her, she knew him, and they both knew each other…and they cared about each other…and they were pretend brother and sister…and now maybe he could pretend that they were real brother and sister. It was easier when it was just the two of them like this, sitting and drawing, and playing with her toys…and stuff. Even if she was biting him. He didn't know if he would disappear from her life…or when…but he did know that he wanted to make every second that they had together count. He'd only gotten six years with his mom…and he had no idea how much time he had with his baby sis….

But if she wanted to bite him then….then that was ok, too, because…well because he loved her.

"I do! I do!" said baby sis. She was reaching for him and kicking her little baby feet. Sho held her in her chair with his powers. She sometimes fell out of her chair. She sometimes tipped over and she had this soft foam thing on the floor but she always cried when she fell and he didn't ever want her to cry…or anything like that. He loved her so much….so much more than he could say…because she would not have been able to understand him. She knew a lot of words but…but not all of the words…and that was ok.

"Yes. You did. You bit me. Can you say that? Can you say 'I bit'?" said Sho. He wanted her to know more words. Maybe if she knew more words then she could have understood him better…or she could have been understood better. It was like she had her own language, sort of, and only her mom knew. Like how she could tell which kind of juice baby sis wanted just by how she said juice. When she said juice and banged her cup on the floor she wanted grape juice. When she said juice and shook her cup above her head she wanted carrot juice. When she said juice and banged her cup against the sides of the baby cage she wanted apple juice. She liked juice. Her mom made her juice at home. She had left some in the fridge for Sho. He could have some, he could refill her sippy cup, but he couldn't make any more juice for her….even though she really liked juice and he really liked her…and he wanted her to be happy…

And maybe if he made her happy when she would learn even more words.

He wanted her to learn more words. He wanted…he wanted her to learn more words because he knew that he wouldn't be able to stick around long enough to learn her little baby language. She had her own way of asking for a lot of things, not just juice, and he didn't understand all of it…but he had to try and…and if she knew words like he knew words then…then maybe he would have been able to understand her better. What kind of a big brother couldn't understand his own baby sister? Not that she was his own baby sister….well she looked like him and he loved her but…but she hadn't come from mom. She hadn't come from mom and dad and that meant that they weren't together. Mom….mom would not have come back long enough to just give dad her baby and then leave. She would have stayed with them. She would have stayed with them and…and she would have said sorry for leaving and…well she didn't have to say sorry because….because maybe that was what was keeping her away. Saying that you were sorry could be very hard sometimes and maybe that was what was keeping her away from them…or something….and if she came back to say sorry then…then she wouldn't have had to say it and…and if she had come back it wouldn't have been to leave baby sis with them….

Even though she had already left him and big sis and dad….well it wasn't like leaving dad was such a crazy thought he had been wanting to leave for a while…but she had left him and…and she would not have left baby sis because baby sis was the best baby sister ever….

"You don't have to say it but….if you did it would make me happy. If you did then….well that would be good. I don't know. I just want to understand you better….I guess." Said Sho. He had no idea what she even understood there. She was looking at him now. Her eyes were so blue…and her pupils were so small…and her aura was red. Well her aura was always red but now it was really red. She was super baby focused and her super baby focused face looked like he super big kid focused face…and she was focused on him and…and she was so smart and…and she was such a good baby sister…

And he loved her so much.

"Sho do. Sho do now." Said baby sis. She reached into her crayon bucket and pulled out a green crayon. She poked him in the front of the coat with it. It was green like his coat. She was so smart. She was the smartest baby sister that a guy could have asked for…and she was the only baby sister that he could have asked got. She was his baby sister and…and in the way that mattered…maybe. Because of love. Maybe they could be sort of like a family…well she hadn't come from his mom…and she had her own mom now…

And maybe in being her big brother…he would have been taking her away from her new mom…

She was here because she was better off here. It was like Fukuda had said. She was much better off in a family with a mom that loved her and no dad then a family with no mom and a dad who was his dad. She was better off here and…and he was happy to be with her…while he could. He only got so much time with her and he was going to make the best of it. He was going to watch her, he was going to make her happy, and he was going to…to draw with her.

"Yeah. That's green like my jacket is green. Can you say green?" asked Sho. He spoke slowly and poked the green of his jacket. It was a little too big, and too hot, and also the pockets had weird stuff in them….Shimazaki had a lot of sea glass and tiny rocks…and also little pieces of chewed up candles…but he loved this coat. He loved this coat and he loved….well he had to stop being in love with….and if baby sis was ever in love with another girl or a boy he didn't like or whatever then he would let her love who she loved. Trying to fall out of love was the worst thing ever…

He wasn't going to think about this, now, he had…baby stuff to think about.

"Sho do." Said baby sis. She slapped the paper in front of her. Right. She wanted to draw again and…and he wanted her to talk but…but being with her….being with her meant doing what she wanted to do. He wanted her to talk better, talk so that he could understand her, but that would have been making her into the person that he wanted her to be. He knew what it was like when someone tried to turn you into the person that they wanted you to be…and it wasn't good. It wasn't good at all. When people tried to change you, to make you better, to make you what they thought was better then…then it was hard. It was very hard and…and he was not going to turn her into the person that he wanted her to be...he only wanted her to be who…who she was already.

His baby sis.

"OK, ok, see? I can do this too. You'll be able to draw too, one day, but you already kind of can now. You can do abstract art. Can you say….wait, no, you don't have to say it. You're fine the way you are and I love you the way you are." Said Sho. He…well not a lot of people had said that to him. Mom, when she had been around, but then she had left. Big sis said it all the time but…but she said that to everyone. He had been an asshole to her for years and it would have made more sense for her to tell him to go suck dicks for ten yen coins in a public bathroom during golden week. He sort of wished that she would have. Then they would have been even….not that they could ever be even…but they would have been more even than they would have been with her always telling him that she loved him just the way he was…because in a lot of ways the way he was sucked. He had been an asshole…and he was still an asshole. He didn't hit her anymore….

And he never would again…

But he still did asshole stuff to her…like this. Visiting baby sis without telling her. This was one of those pragmatic choices that Fukuda had told him about. Sometimes you had to make choices that didn't lead to the best outcome but the least awful one…and that was what he was doing. He was making the choice that led to the least awful outcome. The bets outcome would have been big sis, baby sis, and him being a family together…without dad like if he died or something….but the outcome that he could get, the least awful one, was hanging out with baby sis like this.

Just him, and her, coloring at her little baby art table.

This was…she was scribbling again. Green scribbles. He wanted to ask her if she could say scribbles but…but he wasn't going to make her into someone she wasn't. If she only wanted to use her little baby words, if all she ever wanted to use for the rest of her life were little baby words, then that was fine by him. He loved her for who she was and…and he meant it. He meant it like big sis had meant it and mom and Fukuda and also…well he was not going to think about Shimazaki now because he had to make the pragmatic choice to fall out of love with him…even though it was hard….and even though he liked Sho for who he was….and he never tried to make Sho into someone else…and he was really cool….like the coolest guy that Sho had ever met in his entire life and…

And he really hoped that baby sis never had these problems.

He hoped that she stuck to having little baby problems for the rest of her life. Like now. She had been pushing down too hard with her crayon and it had broken in half. That was a little baby problem. She was kicking her little baby feet and waving her little baby arms and her little baby face was red…and she was so mad and…and he could fix this. He may not have been able to fix his own big kid problems but he sure as hell could fix her little baby problems for her…and maybe her big kid problems when she got older and had some. When she started to get her powers and she wondered why she wasn't as good as the people around her…when she got mad and hurt the people she loved and wouldn't know why….when she fell in love with the coolest person who had ever lived and needed, not wanted but needed, to stop loving them even though….even though love felt…in a lot of ways it felt good…and he couldn't solve his own problems but he could solve hers…

And right now he had a little baby crayon to fix.

"Here. See? I can fix it. See? You just have to use your powers, well I can use mine because I'm older, to melt the wax together…and then you make the wax get harder. See? Just like that. When you get older you'll be able to do it too…maybe. I don't know. If you don't end up psycho-kinetic then you can just save all of your crayons for me to fix when I visit you….not that I know when that'll be but….yeah." said Sho as he handed her back her crayon. It had an ugly lump in the middle, and also the wrapper was burnt, and also it wasn't straight anymore but…but she was happy with it. She was back to scribbling away at her little baby art desk.

"Sho do! Sho do!" said baby sis. He wasn't sure if she wanted him to do something or if she was happy that he had done something for her…she had her own language…but that was ok. He loved her and…and that was ok. That she didn't know a lot of words…and that she might never have had powers like his…and that she might have wound up in love with someone who she wasn't supposed to be in love with…and all of that stuff. He didn't care. He just…he loved her. Even if she didn't know a lot of words he still loved her.

Baby sis knew a lot of words, though, for a baby.

He knew his name, he had been her first word, and she knew how to ask for food and juice and how to say 'here' and 'now' and also she could say 'I do'. That was his favorite of her words. That was a sentence. She was so smart. She could put words together and she could walk and she could talk and she could draw….she could draw too. He had been teaching her how to draw a circle. She could draw a scribble…and that was good too. It was like she was doing abstract art and abstract art was good too. Sure she couldn't draw like he could but…everyone had to start somewhere…and if she wanted to be an abstract artist or something then it was good too.

And also if she wanted to be a graffiti artist that would be good too.

"I do! I do!" said baby sis. Sho…he knew what her mom had said. Her mom had told her a million times not to draw on the walls and…and Sho was supposed to be watching her. Her mom had division stuff to do and Sho was supposed to be the babysitter and he was going to be the best babysitter who ever lived!

And it counted as babysitting because he wasn't her actual big brother.

She looked like him but…well Emmy looked like him too and he wasn't brother and sister with her. She had red hair, he had red hair, and baby sis had red hair, and dad had red hair. Maybe all red haired people just looked alike. Maybe red hair and blue eyes came together. Sort of like how black hair and brown eyes went together. Like how big sis had black hair and brown eyes and so did a lot of other people in Japan…and the world, too. Sometimes people just looked like other people. That was all. That didn't meant that baby sis was his real sister….

Even though he really wanted her to be.

"Yeah, you're doing it too. See? You're doing it too." Said Sho. He really wanted her to be his actual baby sister and…and that may have counted as wanting her to be something that she wasn't but….but also maybe it was something that she was. They may not have had the same mom and dad, they may not have lived in the same place, and he may have been called Suzuki while she was called Sagami, she was still…still his sister…

Because he loved her.

He loved her and….and maybe love was it. Maybe love was the thing that made people a family….and stuff. After all, she had been adopted, but her mom still loved her like she was her own baby home grown in her own stomach. Baby sis's mom had met her and probably been all like 'Mukai, I love you most out of all the other babies in the world and now I want to adopt you' and then baby sis was all 'I love you too new mom' but only in her head because back when Fukuda had taken her away…back when her mom had picked her out…she had been too little to talk. Now she was big enough to talk and…and if she could have said something then she would have said…well he would have wanted her to have said…

But he wasn't going to make her say anything that she didn't feel like saying.

"Hey baby sis? I love you, ok? I want you to know that. You don't have to say it back to me but…but I love you and I want you to know that. I told you before, a million times before, but I don't know what you do and do not remember. Like how you keep on putting your sippy cup behind the couch and then you forget where it is and then you get mad. Sort of like that. Anyway…anyway I love you and I know that you would say it back if you could but you don't know all the words for things yet so that's ok." Said Sho. Baby sis looked at him, now, and she had her eyes all in super baby focus mode. Her pupils were tiny, the blue part was big, and she was staring at him.

"I…I…" said baby sis. Sho leaned forward. Was she going to tell him that she loved him? Was she going to tell him that she remembered the times when she had been really little and he had taken care of her? Or was she going to tell him to go and suck a bunch of dicks for leaving her alone all the time…and for letting Fukuda take her away….or whatever. Whatever she said he would listen.

He would always listen to his baby sis.

"I….juice! I juice now! Sho juice now!" said baby sis. She reached over and slapped her sippy cup against the table….and then she hit him with it…and he had no idea what juice that meant she wanted but…but that was ok. She would learn more words later but right now…right now she needed her juice.

"Ok, ok, what do you want? Apple? I can get you apple juice but I am not touching that orange juice. If I touch it then I could die. I'm allergic to citrus, you know, and I bet that you wouldn't want your big brother to die. Then who would get you juice?" said Sho

"Juice now! Sho now!" said baby sis. She pointed at her sippy cup just in case he couldn't understand her….but he did. For such a little person…she knew a lot of words…and he was happy that she knew so many words and…and he was happy to have been able to be there with her. He was happy to have been able to draw pictures with her and hang out with her and even get hit in the face with her sippy cup. He loved her so much and…and it would suck when he had to leave her….but he wasn't going to think about that. He was going to go and get her the damn apple juice.

Because Sho was a pretty fucking damn good babysitter….and big brother, too.


	369. Breakfast with the Roommates

Hatori did not want to get up that morning.

He never wanted to get up any morning. It was too damn early…but he had to get up and get to school. He had a test today, a math test, and…well he didn't want to take it but he had to. Thank God he got to use a calculator. Thank God that his teacher had no idea what you could program a graphing calculator…and thank God that nobody knew what he could do….because then he would have been fucked. Nope. He was going to get through third year the same way he had gotten through first year and second year.

A hell of a lot of cheating.

"Hatori! Breakfast time!"

That was weird. Mom never called him Hatori. Whatever. He was going to get up…eventually. Right now he just wanted to be warm and comfy for a little bit. He reached out and felt….well it felt like he should have been feeling….well it felt weird. Like….like there were other people or…or something. He didn't know. He just knew that he didn't want to get out of bed. He had a test today and he hated tests and he knew that mom would look through his bag and take his calculator away, she knew all of his tricks, and then dad would back him up and then they'd take his laptop away and his phone and his TV because without that stupid calculator he was going to fail and…

And something bad was going to happen.

Something bad was going to happen and…and he didn't want to go to school today. He didn't want to go to school today because…mom and dad were going to kill him for failing and he didn't much feel like getting killed so…he didn't feel like dying. He didn't feel like anyone dying. So he wasn't going to get out of bed. He was fifteen years old and he could decide for himself when he was and was not going to get out of bed. He was fifteen years old and he could decide for himself if he was and was not going to go to school and mom and dad….he loved them so much…and he wanted to see them…and he wanted to get out of bed and….

"Hatori! Time for breakfast!"

Hatori never got to sleep in these days.

"I'm up! I'm up!" said Hatori as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. The world was blurry. The room was bright…he had forgotten to close the blinds again…and the light was not his friend right now. He reached up to grab the cord for the blinds but missed, no glasses no depth perception, and hit the stack of manga he had left on his windowsill.

It was poetic, actually, that it was Evangelion manga since it all came tumbling down.

He was funny in his own head. He'd had to save that one for Suzuki. He'd think that it was funny…well maybe not. He had said before that he was incapable of laughing…but everyone could laugh. If babies could laugh, and they had no idea what comedy even was, then Suzuki was capable of laughing. He just might not have found it funny since Mob had said that they hadn't watched past the first movie…which in retrospect was a good thing since…well the once scene which he had forgotten about but had things in it that a little girl should not have seen….god. Being a responsible adult was exhausting. He stacked his manga back up on the windowsill. Responsible adults probably put their books on shelves…or whatever. Also they didn't spend the whole day sitting in bed even though they really wanted to. Responsible adults had work to do and having work to do meant getting up bright and early every single morning whether they wanted to or not.

Which meant that responsible adults never got to sleep in.

Which sucked, really, because he was dead before noon. Down by four, up by noon, and then he could greet the day. That was his preferred lifestyle but now, well, now he had actual work to do in his life that clashed with said lifestyle. He'd gone so long without having much of anything to do, well besides be Mob's friend and remember Suzuki's Netflix password for him, but now he had…well a lot to do. A hell of a lot to do. More than he had ever wanted to do in his life…

But he needed to get his ass out of bed and just…go to work like a responsible adult.

He was twenty now and he had to work. He was not fifteen….he hated those dreams…and he was not going to school. He was going to work at his job where he worked and earned money because he was a grown man now and that was what grown men did. They worked. He had always known, since he had been a kid, that he would have had to work somewhere when he grew up. He had never given much thought to what, it was exactly, that he was going to do with his life. He just knew, from a young age, that he would have had to do something.

He was doing something.

He had never seen himself as a cult member but…well he had never thought this far ahead before. That stupid kid that he had been, that stupid kid who's biggest problem was a stupid math test that he had been too stupid to study for…not that he even remembered what he had even gotten, hadn't given much of any thought to what he would do. He had always just had this vague idea that he would have a job…a vague concept…wait, now, not true. He had wanted to work at the used game store, actually, before all of this…but being Suzuki's friend and assistant was good too…well it was ok….sort of. It was a job that he had. It was a job that gave him a place to live and money to piss away on stuff he wanted but did not need…and also he got to spend the day hanging out with his…his best friend…

Suzuki Touichirou was his best friend.

Shibata was a good friend, and they used to hang out, but Suzuki…was Suzuki. Suzuki was kind of clingy and he was always up for hanging out…and that made them best friends. Besties. Heh. Like Mob and Minegishi only without the bracelets. Heh. At some point he had become best friends with Suzuki Touichirou of all people. The most powerful esper on Earth and the world's biggest weirdo, too. They were friends….best friends…well he wasn't entirely sure about that…

Since he couldn't even pinpoint the time when he had gone from the Minecraft guy to the Minecraft and conversation guy to the guy who Suzuki declared his friendship for on one of their plane rides to hell.

That was when Suzuki had come out and said it. He and Hatori were friends…and that had been a relationship upgrade…and he had no idea if they had gone from friends to best friends yet. Well it was up to Suzuki, he supposed, since Suzuki had been the one to declare them to be friends in the first place. Suzuki apparently thought that they were friends….and he had declared it…so therefore it would be on him to declare them to be best friends too…..and he didn't mind. Suzuki was ok, he was a decent friend, but also kind of a weird. Kind of a real weirdo…which would have gotten him killed if he had ever said it out loud….

So he wasn't going to tell Suzuki to his face that he thought that he was a weirdo.

Even though he, objectively, was. He was just….he drank ketchup. Suzuki had drank ketchup in front of him once, Hatori got the feeling that he should have been flattered that Suzuki had been comfortable enough around him that he would forget that he was there…but that had been just plain weird. Not the weirdest thing, though, that Suzuki had done. No, there was his relationship with Mob…and his lack of relationship with Sho…and, yeah, he was a weird guy and all…but there was more weirdness. There was always more weirdness when it came to Suzuki.

The shipping. That was the weirdest part.

He wondered if he had hit weirdness bedrock yet….but there would always be more. Though it was hard to think of anything weirder than…the shipping. Suzuki shipped him with Fukuda….and he could deal with that. He had to deal with that. Suzuki…well he had never come out and told Hatori that they were best friends now but…well the guy could be sort of clingy…and apparently he wished that they were the same age so they could have been friends from childhood. That was weirdly…well it was flattering but also kind of scary a little bit because this was Suzuki. He had shades of being a nice guy but he was still Suzuki. Also he speculated about what life would have been like if Hatori had been a girl….and he shipped the girl version of him with Fukuda….which was…well he felt sorry for the girl version of him but….

It was better than shipping him with Mob.

Seriously. What the fuck…now that was weird. That was…he would gladly have taken Suzuki's weirdness, the shipping and all, above Fukuda's weirdness any day of the week. Suzuki stared at you, he would ask you weird questions, and he would speculate about what life would have been like if you had been born a girl but at least he didn't ship you with his eleven year old daughter. In fact what he did was the direct opposite. He had told Hatori specifically not to get involved with Mob…because for some reason she thought that Mob had a crush on him….but still. Telling a guy, especially a grown man, to get the hell away from your daughter was normal. Taking him out to the desert to possibly kill him if he got involved with your daughter was normal.

Sitting on the information for God knew how long was not normal.

He was getting himself all worked up. He sat up and put his glasses on. Fukuda was gone, he was Fukuda, and yes Fukuda had accused him of messing around with an eleven year old girl but…well he needed to not get all worked up about this. It wasn't like he could do anything about this. He was not a fighter. He wanted to kick Fukuda's ass but…yeah. He was not a fighter and Fukuda could heal so….so really there was nothing that he could do.

Besides get out of bed.

He pulled his shirt down from where it had rolled up and swung his feet over the side of the bed. He stepped on….well a book. That was weird. Normally he step on crumbs…and he would totally vacuum one of these days. He needed to find space for everything that he had bought. He had gone kind of…overboard…but not as overboard as Mob. At least not on the first day….and he maybe shouldn't have bought so much…but he had other people to pack him up for moves now so it didn't matter. Though maybe he should have given more thought to space in this room…since he did technically share with Shibata…though he spent most nights on the couch. Still maybe he should have planned a little better….for space and stuff….

But then again they moved all the time so there was no point, really, in putting everything away because for all he knew he would be moving tomorrow.

"Hatori! Your breakfast is getting cold!" shouted Shibata. Hatori kicked a pile of books out of the way as he stood up. Shibata made breakfast. This was either going to be really good or really burnt. Hopefully it was one of those days when he made square pancakes. Those were pretty fucking great….and so were the waffles…but hopefully Shibata wasn't trying out a new recipe. It took a few tries for him to get something right…

But then again what was he complaining about? It wasn't like he could cook.

Breakfast by Shibata was better than breakfast from the Claw cafeteria. So, really, he had no right to complain. It wasn't like he knew anything at all about cooking. Mob could cook better than he could and she was only eleven. Even Shimazaki could cook. He liked to pretend that he couldn't be he did, actually, know how to make waffles and other shit for himself too. Hatori was the only one in the house who couldn't cook….but he was also the youngest….

But he wasn't a kid.

"And eaten!" said Shimazaki. Hatori groaned and looked around for a pair of pants. He needed pants and a sweater. After this he'd go to work with Shibata….and if Shimazaki ate all of his food then he would just eat something there. He had the whole office to himself, Fukuda was off doing Fukuda things, so Hatori could eat whatever the hell he wanted in the office…but he also really wanted to get to the kitchen table already. Shibata might have made pancakes…or waffles….or maybe poptarts again. Those were….well he'd get better. Sho had liked them and that was what mattered. The kid was so picky it was amazing that he and Mob were related. Mob was so much older than him, it felt like sometimes, even though it had only been a year. Poor kid. She'd had to grow up way too fast, in Hatori's opinion, not that he ever could voice that opinion.

Suzuki most likely would not have taken it well if Hatori were to suddenly start questioning his parenting.

"Shimazaki! You have pancakes right in front of you! Leave Hatori's food alone! He's very fragile!" said Shibata. Hatori groaned as he zipped his pants. He wasn't fragile. He may have been the youngest, and he didn't deal well with panic, but he wasn't fragile. He could take Shimazaki eating his breakfast. He wouldn't have liked it, he would have been pretty damn pissed off, but it wasn't like he was going to try and fight him or even tell him off. Shimazaki was….he was Shimazaki and Hatori knew that he didn't have a chance against him…or anyone….so the only thing that he could do was put up with him…

It got easier.

Without Sho around Shimazaki had mostly just left him alone. He had been sort of mopey, lately, as mopey as he was capable of being anyway. He had been all…well he had stopped bothering Hatori, mostly, so he wasn't going to look too deeply into how he had been. They weren't friends, not really, they were more like coworkers and roommates and former romantic rivals….well barely. Minegishi didn't like him, he was pretty sure that they were into Shimazaki, and he could respect that. He would respect that. He would respect that so much that he was never going to say a word about how he used to be into them. They had it going on. They had this sort of…he didn't even know what…to them and…and that was all over and done with and he wasn't even going to glance in their direction ever again. Ever.

Though that was kind of hard with the kitchen table only having four chairs.

"Morning everyone." Said Hatori as he entered the kitchen. Shibata handed him his plate with one hand and used the other one to slap Shimazaki away with a spatula. Shimazaki was just playing, if he wanted his food he would have had it, and he wished that Shimazaki would just play with someone else…but Sho was off doing Sho stuff so they wouldn't be able to just steal off of each other's plates like normal. He made a point to sit away from Shimazaki. He sat down on the counter and held his plate in his hands. Shibata shook his head but said nothing and passed him the syrup. He managed to get just enough out before it was snatched out of his hand.

And he said nothing.

He wasn't about to start shit with Shimazaki. He was bored, he was mopey, and if Sho didn't get back here soon Shimazaki would start to become completely insufferable. He wasn't going to say anything then or now. There was no point since Shimazaki, if anything, fed on attention. He fed on attention and also Hatori wasn't a fighter so…yeah…there was no point in fighting with him about anything let alone something as simple as syrup.

He had bigger things to worry about.

"Sugar is poison." Said Minegishi batting the syrup away and not looking up. They did that thing where they folded their pancakes into tacos and filled them with fruit. That looked good…but they had the fruit dish in front of them….and he knew not to get too close to them. They had mostly forgiven him, it seemed, for…well everything but they still didn't like him to get too close. Well him or anyone who wasn't Shimazaki. He was sitting beside them and waving a bottle of syrup in their face. If he had been anyone else he would have been dead, they had killed people for less after all, but instead of using any of the plants that crowded to kitchen to end the most annoying guy in the house they just rolled their eyes and sighed,

"But you love syrup, Toshi, I've seen you eat it." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi batted the syrup away, that was all. They didn't do any of the million and one other things that they were capable of doing to him…probably because they were…whatever they were. Friends with benefits, like Mob had said, though she really should not have known what that meant. She was just a kid. For her love should have still been true love's kiss and riding off into the sunset with Prince Charming or something. Not…all of that. She was just a kid…though Hatori knew what he had been like at that age….the internet was a mistake….but she was a girl and girls weren't like that…right?

Suddenly he wanted to delete everything from the internet that wasn't rated for general audiences….at least until the kids grew up.

Because he knew what he had been Googling when he had been eleven years old. Girls had become something other than those annoying people who wouldn't let them in their clubhouses and ran away when he got too close. He had been on the cusp of…well he didn't like to look back on his middle school self…and the internet…well maybe someone should have paid attention to what he had been getting up to on that internet….

Mob and Sho were good kids. They didn't even know about…stuff like that. They would be ok.

"Rarely." Said Minegishi with a roll of their eyes. He wondered if they ever got sore with all the rolling that they did…not that he spent a lot of time looking at their eyes. They did have pretty eyes but….but he wasn't going to sit around noticing people's eyes. Noticing their eyes…which were pretty. Not that he was into them or anything. They were just…them. He just didn't know a lot of…well people who had been born female…and that was it. That was all. He just didn't spend a lot of time with people who weren't men…not that he ever would since he had a lie to live now. Well that wouldn't be so bad…it wasn't like he had ever been out with a girl anyway….and after that disastrous party it wasn't like he would ever try again….which was for the best, it seemed. For himself and everyone else.

"I've seen you drink it." Said Shimazaki. He was smiling at Minegishi…and that was the second reason that he was going to drop the thing with Minegishi. Shimazaki was in love with them. Well he said that he loved them and he seemed serious about his feelings…and Hatori was not going to compete with him. Not after what he had done….well Hatori had been the one to do the drinking and take the…whatever it was…but Shimazaki….well he was terrifying….

Even with a bottle of syrup on his head.

"Never." Said Minegishi. They had left the bottle of syrup on his head…and he was trying to balance it up there…and it was just…well he was just…it was hard to reconcile the person he knew he was with…well the guy sitting there in nothing but gym shorts with a bottle of syrup on his head…and he just couldn't help it….

He laughed.

He hadn't meant to laugh. Shimazaki…well he was a coin flip. Every day it was like he flipped a coin and asked if he would be an asshole or a murderous asshole and the rest of the world held it's breath. Shimazaki didn't like him, he knew that Shimazaki didn't like him, and he knew that Shimazaki also probably didn't much care for being laughed at by someone he didn't like….

He had to tread carefully….or just…he wondered if he could make it to the bathroom…or the closet…or under his bed…

"What are you laughing at?" asked Minegishi. Hatori….he felt cold. He felt cold and tense. His eyes darted to the doorway…and also to under the table…and being under the table would have been stupid…and he could not be stupid right now. He had to be smart and he had to think up…he had to think of something….

"Nothing. Just…something I saw the President do once." Said Hatori with a shrug. He still had that cold, tense, feeling but he wasn't going to run. He forced himself to take a bite of pancake. He ate it with his hands Sho style. The kid liked to saturate his pancakes with syrup until they were falling apart and then he would fold them over and eat them like tacos…he wondered if Sho had been imitating Minegishi then…and it made sense to eat them this way. Especially since he was shaking a little. He had a tendency to run and hide…and he had to stop it. He was being….he was acting like a fragile child and…and he needed to be something other than what everyone else saw him as.

He was twenty years old. He was not a child.

"Yeah, how is President Suzuki doing? He still need that nightly blowjob to keep the nightmares away?" laughed Shimazaki. Minegishi didn't look up. They just flicked him on the arm. He let them. He actually smiled when he did that. Weird but…well not as weird as what went through his head! Suzuki was…well he wasn't like that. He wasn't into guys. Well Hatori…he didn't know what was up with Suzuki and Fukuda…but he knew that Suzuki didn't do that kind of thing with his underlings. He could have had someone for every day of the week but that was the only part of his life when he was a good guy…and Hatori was so grateful…

And now he was looking a little bit too deeply into how close Suzuki got to him sometimes.

"I'm trying to eat here." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. Hatori looked down on his plate. He didn't want to get into this. Shimazaki had his ideas and Hatori had told him time and time again that Suzuki wasn't like that. He was a weirdly good guy when it came to not taking advantage of people, and it would have been since he was the guy with all the power, and also…well even if Suzuki was…not that there was anything wrong with that…then he could have done better than Hatori. He had Fukuda after all and that guy….well he took the term bro-mance to a whole new level.

"Yup. And so does Hatori. Every day-" said Shimazaki. This time he got a spatula to the head…well he would have if he hadn't had his barrier up. It bounced off his barrier and skittered across the table. Minegishi raised their plate as it went by.

"Ok, that's enough! Leave Hatori alone. The President isn't making him do any of that so just shut up. Don't upset him, he's very fragile." Said Shibata. He patted Hatori on the back and…and he knew that Shibata was just trying to help but…but he wasn't a child. He wasn't a kid. He was a grown man and…and he was not fragile.

"I'm not-" said Hatori. He loved Shibata, he really did, but he just…he wasn't even that much younger than Shibata. He was twenty, not two, and he just….he didn't mind being defended but…but also he just…didn't like to be called fragile.

"Ryou, shut up before he locks himself in the bathroom again. We only have one bathroom and I'd prefer to have access to it." Said Minegishi. Hatori…well he had been thinking about it before but…but it wasn't like he did that all that often. Just when it got to be too much, that was all. Sometimes he just had to get to where he knew that he was safe. Safe and alone….but it wasn't like he did that for every little thing!

"I'm not going to-" said Hatori. He was a grown man, not a scared child, and he didn't….well he didn't like it but also he had no idea how to convince everyone else that he…he shouldn't have had to convince everyone that he was a grown man! He was twenty years old! There'd been a birthday party with cake! Everyone had been there!

"We can just have Shibata drag him out like last time." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. Shibata…was a good guy. He hadn't dragged him out so much as made him feel safe enough to come out. He was a good friend like that. Not like Shimazaki….if they were even friends. Mob wanted them all to be friends but…well it was hard to be friends with a guy like Shimazaki. He acted like a ten year old a lot of the time, especially when he was with Sho the actual ten year old, but he couldn't help it. Between the drugs and his terrible life, Hatori had read his file it had been pretty terrible what had happened to him,

"He doesn't have to-" said Hatori. He didn't need to be dragged out of anywhere because he would not be hiding. He was…he was fine. He was fine and…and he was not a child. He was a grown man but everyone treated him like more of a child than the two actual children!

"Guys, come on. Shimazaki leave him alone. Me and him actually have to work today and he needs to be in on time to do…well I don't know what the President has him doing but I know that he isn't making him-" said Shibata. He was always trying to be the peacekeeper….and he didn't have to be. He didn't have to be because…well now Hatori felt like shit. Shibata hadn't even had anything to eat yet and…well they didn't even have a lot of time since Suzuki liked to start the day early regardless of how late he ended up going to bed….and Shibata shouldn't have had to deal with this. Hatori should have been able to handle himself…but he couldn't…and he sucked for that.

"You can tell us what's really going on, we're adults here. We can handle this in an adult manner." Said Shimazaki. Hatori…if he had been more powerful then he would have at least hit Shimazaki. Blind or not he would have hit him. He was an asshole. He'd had a terrible life and doing as many drugs as he had done couldn't have been good for his brain….but he was still an asshole. He could sense everything around him. He knew that nothing was happening between him and Suzuki. He just liked stirring shit for the sake of it…and Hatori…he should have done something to just…shut him up already.

"Nothing is-" said Hatori. He couldn't do anything but talk…so that was what he did. What he tried to do at least.

"Nothing is happening between him and the President now let him eat his breakfast. He gets upset when he misses breakfast." Said Shibata. He patted him on the back again and…and he just….he was trying to be nice. He was trying to be a good friend and…and Hatori should not have been pissed off…and he had to stop it…

He tried.

"Hey! I am not….not doing anything like that with Suzuki! I mean-" said Hatori. He needed to stay calm. He needed to just…just let this all run off like water. Mom had told him that back when the other kids had made fun of him. He had to just let it all run off like rainwater….but it was hard. It had been hard when he had been fifteen and it was hard now at twenty….but he had to…to at least defend himself. He was not fragile.

"Just Suzuki?" asked Shimazaki. He raised an eyebrow and stuffed a forkful of pancake in his mouth. Crap. Right. He was President Suzuki. He was President Suzuki to him, not Suzuki, because they weren't that close…well they weren't supposed to be. They weren't even supposed to be friends and…well they were but…but they were not that close. Not close enough for him to be Suzuki…or Touichirou like Fukuda was, apparently, allowed to call him…and Hatori didn't want to call him that…and he didn't want to be close enough to call him Suzuki either…maybe. He didn't know.

"President Suzuki. He doesn't…he's not like that! So just stop-" said Hatori. He choked on his words. He wasn't that close to Suzuki and if Shimazaki thought that he was then he was never going to shut up. He wasn't going to shut up about this and then for the rest of their lives they just…they were going to be working together for the foreseeable future…and that meant that if Shimazaki didn't come off of this then he would be listening to this for the foreseeable future…and he was only twenty. That was going to be a long future indeed….wonderful….just wonderful….

"Ryou, leave him alone. I'm getting a headache from all of this." said Minegishi rubbing their temples. Immediately Shimazaki's face softened. He swallowed the bite of pancake in his mouth and leaned in close. He kissed them on the head. They wiped their forehead and smiled even though they still had plenty of syrup on their head.

"Sorry Toshi. Forgive me?" asked Shimazaki. He kissed them on the forehead again. Minegishi pushed him away…but they didn't mean it. If they had meant it then Shimazaki would have been tossed across the room. Instead he just sat down in his seat like a normal person and not…himself.

"Fine. If you shut up." Said Minegishi shaking their head. He smiled again and took their hand. They looked kind of cute, there, like a couple. Not that Hatori would have known about that. He had never…and he never would be in a relationship…but that was ok. He had made his peace with this. Girls had never liked him…and it wasn't like he was ever going to meet any…and that was ok.

"Can do. Love you Toshi." Said Shimazaki. He took their hand in his and kissed it. They…Hatori had never seen their aura like that before…and he had never seen them smile like that before…or at all. It was a little smile and…and that was more than any other smile that he had ever seen them give Shimazaki…or anyone. They were kind of pretty when they smiled…not that he cared. Well he did but it didn't matter. That ship had sunk.

"I love you too, Ryou." Said Minegishi. They were making it a point not to look at anyone. They were back to eating their pancakes. They put more fruit in the middle and ate it like a taco. They didn't look at Shimazaki who looked like Christmas had just come early or at him and Shibata who were exchanging looks. Hatori knew that he was confused, since Minegishi had never once even looked like they had even wanted to say it back, but Shibata…well he looked like he had found a baby in a basket on their doorstep.

"You two are-" said Shibata. He clapped his hands together and…and Hatori had never heard anyone's voice get that high…and if this had been an anime then his eyes would have been hearts.

"None of your business. Either of yours. Now eat your breakfast and then go and do whatever it is that you do during the day….and Ryou you had better shut up about Hatori and the President. You know for a fact that nothing besides a whole lot of nerding out is happening between them." Said Minegishi. Well they certainly could change the subject with tact and grace….and he got why they did it but he didn't want to get back to what it was that had led them to this in the first place.

"Fine, I'll shut up about Hatori and his new best friend." Said Shimazaki. With a shrug before he picked up the bottle of syrup and poured it down his throat Sho style. Hatori expected Shibata to come over and snatch the bottle away like he always did…but instead he turned away from the stove and faced Hatori. He could see his aura. He was….hurt? Why? Hatori hadn't done anything to him…he hadn't even said anything about how these pancakes were kind of chunky for some reason. Was he mad about how Hatori had told him not to defend him? Well he hadn't been an asshole about it? Had he? Great. Now he had something else to be worried about.

"The President…is your best friend?" asked Shibata. What? Was he bothered by…well that would have made sense. Him being upset…but it wasn't like he was about to replace Shibata with Suzuki. Shibata was a nice guy all the time, not some of the time, and…yeah. There was no replacing Shibata.

"No…I think that Fukuda is still his best friend. We're friends, though, he said….and he likes me enough to drink ketchup in front of me…but I'm not sleeping with him! So shut up! Shimazaki And I'm not fragile! And I am not a child! And-" said Hatori. Well he had gone off the rails towards the end…but at least he had gotten all of that out of his system…and that was good…right? It was good to get things out in the open and…well now he was being stared at.

"So Mob wasn't exaggerating. He really does drink ketchup." Said Minegishi before grabbing more fruit. They finished it off and…well he would have wanted some…but he would consider that to be payment for changing the subject again.

"…that's not right." Said Shibata sticking out his tongue. Hatori…well he was with him…but it wasn't like Suzuki did it that often. He had just forgotten that Hatori had been there. Besides, everyone did gross stuff when they thought that no one was looking. Hatori had seen Shibata licking the beaters from time to time, Minegishi bit their nails and chewed on them, and Shimazaki….well the less said about him the better. Suzuki wasn't that weird. This was Claw, being weird was a requirement.

"Yeah…well he only did it in front of me once…and I think that he forgot that I was there. It was like three in the morning." Said Hatori. He was defending Suzuki…well he would have defended any of his friends. So he did something embarrassing…he couldn't help it. He just…was a weird guy but…well people who lived in glass houses shouldn't go around throwing stones. They were all weird here.

"Our leader everyone." Said Minegishi sarcastically.

"Should…we be doing that? I mean he's a powerful esper….so maybe we should…but that's disgusting…" said Shibata with a shake of his head. Well, ok, it was gross but also it was probably just a thing with his personality and not the source of his power or anything like that.

"So…ketchup drinking party?" asked Shimazaki. He teleported over to the fridge and pulled out the ketchup. Minegishi leaned back and shoved the fridge shut.

"You idiots have fun with that." Said Minegishi

"Syrup drinking party?" asked Shimazaki after teleporting back to the table and picking up the syrup. He looked way too enthusiastic. He also seemed way too serious about this….and maybe he was…but it was hard to tell with him.

"Well that's a hell of a lot less weird than drinking ketchup…and I can't believe he does that…and now I can't un-know this about the President." Said Shibata. Hatori didn't get what everyone was so weirded out about. Suzuki was a weird guy. That wasn't news. Besides, they had weirder guys to deal with. Hell, everyone in that room was just as weird if not weirder! And not to mention Fukuda….

"I don't know what you're so shocked. He's a weird guy, we all know it." Said Minegishi. He wondered if they could read minds. If they could then…well he needed to find a better hiding spot than the bathroom. Or maybe they were just really in synch mentally…not that they were or anything like that. They had found happiness and love and whatever and he was happy for them.

"He's really not that weird. I mean…he's kind of an asshole and he lives on eggs and ketchup….and he's kind of a bad father…and sort of obsessive…but he's not that weird of a guy. I think he's got a personality disorder or something, really." Said Hatori. Suzuki…well they were friends and friends defended each other. Suzuki had defended him from Fukuda when he had accused him of messing around with Mob so he owed him one. Well he had been all 'he's gay and my daughter is the one with the crush on him' but that was still more defending than Hatori had ever expected to get from him. He hadn't had to defend him, he could have just sat there and ignored everything like normal, or even worse he could have sided with his best friend…but he hadn't. He had defended Hatori….and that was…well he was a pretty good friend. Huh. Well what do you know?

"That doesn't excuse the way he treats his kids…or everyone else, really." Said Minegishi. They had a point, there, Suzuki could be a good guy…but, yeah, he was an asshole. He was an asshole to his kids and everyone else and…and yeah. As good of a friend as he could be he was an asshole plain and simple.

"But if there's something wrong with him…I mean that's why we let Shimazaki get away with what he does. There's something wrong with him and he can't help it." Said Shibata with a shrug. Hatori just went back to eating. He had no idea where he stood on this so he decided to stay out of it. Suzuki had something up with him. It might have had something to do with being so powerful…since Mob had it too but to a much lesser extent….or maybe it was something genetic…since Mob also had it….sort of. The flat way of talking, mostly, but Mob was a hell of a lot nicer than her dad…and it might have been a powers thing since Sho was…well he had his problems but he was a pretty normal kid…but he didn't know.

"There's nothing wrong with-" said Shimazaki. Minegishi shook their head and put their hand on Shimazaki's arm.

"All of you let Ryou get away with too much. He's got his own internal problems….that nobody in this room should ever ask him about for any reason…but he should still be held accountable for the shit he pulls just like Suzuki should have been held accountable for the shit he started pulling when he was a kid. Then, maybe, the world wouldn't have to deal with him as he is now." Said Minegishi

"Yeah, and I thought MY parents made some big mistakes." Said Shimazaki

"He's not that bad. I mean…he kind of is but…but at least he's not Fukuda. Imagine if that guy was the President." Said Hatori. He knew that Suzuki was an asshole but…well they were still friends and…and well he had no idea what Suzuki's parents had been like so…so if they were going to make fun of him then they should make fun of him for things they knew…or whatever. He didn't know. What he did know was that there was someone a thousand times worse than Suzuki so…yeah. Maybe they should have just laid off of him.

"Don't even mention that glass dildo. Really. I am this close to killing him. This close." Said Minegishi. They held their fingers so close together that there was less than a centimeter of space between them…and Hatori didn't doubt for one second that they were anything other than completely serious.

"I don't blame you." Said Hatori. He would have done the same…if he could. But he didn't have it in him.

"Why would anyone ever want a glass…yeah? Wouldn't it shatter? Why would anyway want that?" asked Shibata scratching his head.

"I think that's that point. Nobody would want a glass one." said Hatori. He was not going to think of….any of that. Anything dildo related because he was in the kitchen sitting on the counter with his coworkers eating breakfast and…and he did not want to think of one particular coworker/roommate in that….state of affairs.

"Oh…ok. Now I get it." Said Shibata. He put his hand in front of his mouth and laughed. Hatori doubted that his mind had gone to any of the places that his mind was going.

"Don't call him a dildo, that's an insult to dildos, and dildos are fun even the ones made of glass. He's more like…lube. But expired lube. Expired flavored lube. Like….he's useful in that he keeps us from dying but….also he's irritating and useless and I hate him." said Shimazaki. He shifted in his seat as he spoke and….and Hatori did not want to ask where that weirdly specific example had come from.

"Clever. Did it take you a while to come up with that, Ryou?" Said Minegishi. They kicked him, lightly, under the table…and now he really didn't want to think about…anything. Shimazaki could read people's bodies and movements and he knew that he would not have taken it well if he knew what Hatori was thinking about…who he was thinking about.

"No, I just found a bottle of expired flavored lube in my coat pocket." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. Hatori wanted them to stop talking about sex, mostly because he had to work with these people, he had nothing against sex just…he did not want to contemplate his coworkers/roommates in that…way. For different reasons.

"How do you know it's expired?" asked Shibata. Hatori shook his head. Don't ask him…you don't want details. Nobody wants details.

"Do you really want to go digging around in Ryou's sex life? Because if you do I guarantee that you're going to find a lot of things that you never wanted to know about." Said Minegishi. They got it. He wondered if they could read minds…but if they could then he would have been a dead man because now his mind was on them and…and yeah. He was…not into them but…well they had it going on. Even in an oversized Sailor Moon t-shirt and purple pajama pants they had it going on….and he as a healthy person…so he could think about them…but not now because Shimazaki would kill him! The two of them had, apparently, upgraded their relationship…but that was ok. There hadn't been any hope for him and Minegishi anyway. Not after the idiot he had made out of himself.

"I….am afraid to at this point." Said Shibata. Good. That was a good way to feel.

"There's nothing wrong with my sex life. Ask me whatever you want." Said Shimazaki. Hatori prayed to whatever God was listening that nobody asked Shimazaki anything and that they all went back to eating or talking about whatever it was that they had been talking about before they had gotten to the subject of Shimazaki's sex life.

"Uh-huh…so why can't you go back to your family?" asked Minegishi. Hatori shook his head. He knew the story behind that. He had access to all of Claw's files. He knew that story and…yeah. There was a lot in there that nobody needed to know about….or admit that they knew about. This was Claw, almost everyone had a past, and almost everyone knew never to ask about anyone's past.

"A lot of reasons. Let some people die, did a lot of drugs, set some stuff on fire on accident, stuck my dick a few places where it was wanted, very much wanted, and-" said Shimazaki

"So, yeah, nobody dig into that area." Said Minegishi

"Hey, I have zero shame. Shame is boring and I don't have time for that shit." Said Shimazaki

"A little shame can be good for you." Said Shibata with a shake of his head. He was wasting his time. Trying to get Shimazaki to feel shame was like trying to get Suzuki to eat sugar. Not going to happen.

"Nope. I've done some fucked up shit but, hey, I own up to it at least. The shit that I should own up to. I am who I am. I'm Shimazaki Ryou, I do fucked up shit, any questions?" asked Shimazaki

"We all do fucked up shit and, unlike some glass dildos, we admit to it…fucking Fukuda….sorry. He just gets me so…God! Just…I have no idea why Suzuki keeps him around! The way he treats Mob…I'm glad she told him off." Said Minegishi. They were…Hatori wasn't good at reading auras but he could feel their aura in the plants around him. The kitchen was full of them and…and Fukuda should have been glad that he wasn't there. Minegishi cared a lot about Mob, like she was their own kid maybe, and Hatori was amazed that Fukuda hadn't been maimed or impaled by vines yet.

"She told him off? Mob? The Mob who lives next door?" asked Shibata. He pointed out the window at the Suzuki house just in case anyone knew any other people named Mob.

"Yeah, I was there. She….well she can be scary when she wants to be. She actually stopped me from teleporting. She just…stopped me. She was pissed at me for fucking with Fukuda and she was pissed at Fukuda for telling their dad about Sho's girlfriend and…yeah. She can be pretty fucking terrifying when she wants to be." Said Shimazaki

"Not that it helped. That piece of shit…you know why she's wearing that sweater in the middle of summer, right?" asked Minegishi. They looked like they were about to pick up their fork and start stabbing tables or walls or….well people. They were surrounded by plants but he did not like the way that they were grasping that butter knife.

"Because I made it with love." Said Shibata simply.

"No…well yes….but she's wearing it because that bottle of salted hand sanitizer apparently has nothing better to do than make her feel self-conscious about her body. Apparently he had this idea in his mind that she was seeing Ryou-" said Minegishi

"She's too young for me! Just putting it out there that Mob is way too young for me. Maybe in two or three years but not now." Said Shimazaki. Hatori wanted to tell him that saying that was kind of suspicious, that he had to clarify that she was too young for him, because that should have gone without saying. Then he had to come out with the two or three years thing and…..and Hatori was not going to go digging into that. He was just going to pretend that Shimazaki had been kidding or stirring the shit like he loved to do.

"But…then she'll be thirteen or fourteen…." Said Shibata. He looked like he was about to kill someone…and Shimazaki was going to be that someone….and it was way too early for a fight. Well there was no good time for a fight but, yeah, mornings were the worst…and he could feel...well it felt like his body was getting ready to run before his brain had even thought of it.

"Like I said before, don't go digging around in that area of Ryou's life." Said Minegishi. They glared at Shibata…and Hatori…well he wasn't going to get involved in that. If Minegishi told you that you didn't want to know then, yeah, you probably didn't want to know. They had their own stuff in their past so, yeah, maybe listen to them.

"But….you slept with…someone that young? I mean…when you were thirteen or fourteen….right?" asked Shibata. Hatori shook his head. If you had to ask then you didn't want to know the answer.

"The age of consent is-" said Shimazaki. Hatori shook his head. Nope. They were not getting into that. That was not a conversation that would end well for any of them. That would start a fight…one that he might have participated in…and it wasn't even seven in the morning. They were just….it was not the time for this. It was never the time for this. They had to get along. They had to live and work together so, yeah, maybe they should talk about literally anything else.

"Don't ask questions to which you don't want to know the answers. It's not a difficult concept to grasp." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes again. Hatori wondered, well he wanted to ask, how they could love someone like Shimazaki. Someone who had done the things that he had done. He had killed a lot of people, among other things, but Minegishi…well they had done a lot of shit too so…maybe that was what had brought them together? He didn't know, he just knew that it wasn't any of his business.

"I have never in my life fucked a kid, though, and I never will and Fukuda…well he's lucky that he's not a red smear on the pavement right now." Said Shimazaki. He sounded legitimately angry and…and Hatori scooted back on the counter until his back was against the wall. He was somehow even more terrifying when he was serious. When he was being unpredictable he was scary but angry…angry was somehow even more…terrifying.

"He accused you too? I mean….you remember what happened on that last plane ride. You guys were there. How he just….accused me of going out with Mob….like he was trying to get me in trouble…I mean he should have, Mob's only eleven, but just…if he thought that I was going out with Mob then he should have kicked my ass and told Suzuki right when he suspect not…sat on it until the perfect time when he could hurt me. I don't know, I really hate that guy." Said Hatori

"Don't worry. He's gone now….well I mean he's probably coming back but he's mostly gone." Said Shibata. He didn't sound too happy…and Hatori didn't blame him. Fukuda would be back and then the kids would have to deal with him and…and there was only so much that they could do for those kids.

"He took Sho with him though….and I mean Sho's really accident prone but…I don't know. I don't feel good about leaving either of those kids alone with him. He's just….I really hate him." said Hatori. He didn't know how else to say it…and he didn't even know if it was ok to be saying it. He hated Fukuda. He hated that guy for making the kids feel like shit and being weird to them…but he was still Suzuki's best friend and as nice as he could be he still stuck people in holes for the slightest reasons…but still. He could hate who he wanted to hate and….and he had never hated anyone before but…well he hated Fukuda.

"We all do. The only person who likes him his Suzuki…I mean as much as that guy can like anyone. I don't know why he puts up with him. I mean I hang around Suzuki more than you do and Fukuda is weirdly….clingy, I guess. Like whenever you're hanging out with him I set a timer for ten minutes and always before it goes off he's always there. It's weird." Said Shibata

"Maybe they're secret lovers." Said Minegishi sarcastically.

"No, they've just been together for a long time and Fukuda…well I guess it would make sense for him to be jealous but….I don't know why he has to be so weird about it. He's just a weird guy….like….I don't know. It worries me that Sho's alone with him. I mean he's accused two people now of messing around with the kids…and he just…well he was weirdly ok with the idea that Mob and I had not only gone out but broken up and…..yeah." said Hatori

"Well now I feel gross….and we don't have time to shower because the President usually leaves home around now. Come on, Hatori, before he gets upset at us for being late." Said Shibata. He patted Hatori on the back. He hopped off of the counter and dropped his plate in the sink. Right. Work time. They could revisit this conversation again later…hopefully not anytime soon…but right now he had to get to work and just….get through this day. It wouldn't be so bad, he wouldn't have to deal with Fukuda, but….well he'd come back and then…well there was only so much he could do for those kids…

But they had other people looking out for them, too, so maybe they would be ok and if not…well then Hatori would have one more reason not to want to get up in the morning.


	370. A Movie Night of Titanic Proportions

Mob loved movie night.

Well she did now, anyway. They had never had an official movie night before, her and all of her friends minus Sho, and this was the first one. One was enough to decide if she loved it, right? It was nice. She was sitting on the couch next to Minegishi and Shimazaki, and Shimazaki had an arm around Minegishi and he was holding them like they were his theyfriend which was very nice, and also there was kettle corn. That was how this whole thing had started. Mob had wanted kettle corn, she had been wanting something sweet all day really but she really wanted kettle corn, but specifically she had wanted the kettle corn that they had at Disney World. She hadn't gone in a while, eventually she and Sho had gotten bored of going since they had been to every single one at least four times now, but she sort of wanted to go today just for the kettle corn.

Minegishi hadn't wanted to go with.

They didn't like the heat, they didn't like crowds, and Disney World in the summer was all heat and crowds. Also they didn't like kettle corn because sugar was poison…even though Mob had seen them finish off a two liter of orange soda and a whole box of chocolates in under ten minutes….and they hadn't even wanted to go after Mob told them about all of the other types of popcorn they had. They had with extra butter and also spicy wasabi and plain, even though plain was really boring, but Minegishi said that they weren't going to go to Disney World just for popcorn. Shimazaki would have gone with but he had to get his tattoo finished and also he was banned from Disney World anyway. Mob didn't know why, Minegishi hadn't let him tell her, all they had said was that there had been some unpleasantness and he could never go back.

Also Minegishi had said that going all the way to Disney World for popcorn was a dumb idea.

They had popcorn at home, they had said, and also they just didn't much like going outside when it was hot. So she stayed inside with them and they read books and watched TV and also they let her paint their fingernails, toenails, and also they let her do their makeup even though they said that makeup was bad for the skin. It had been a fun day but Mob had been wanting to eat something sweet, specifically kettle corn, all day. Then Shibata had come home, though, and he knew how to make kettle corn and then Shimazaki said that it was weird eating popcorn without watching and movie and then the next thing Mob knew they were writing down the names of movies, Minegishi helped Shimazaki, and putting them in a hat.

Shibata won.

Now they were watching a movie about a giant boat called the Titanic. This was a nice movie. The main girl was called Rose and she was in love with a boy named Jack, and Jack was really cute but not nearly as cute as Hatori, but they couldn't be together because he was poor and she was rich and also she was supposed to marry someone else but she didn't love him, and also he yelled at her and was mean which was not good at all, but Mob got the feeling that Rose and Jack would get together at the end. That was how it always went in these movies. The boy and the girl fell in love and got together and lived happily ever after. Life didn't work out that way, though, but that was why they were watching a movie and not a documentary. If life worked out that way then she would have still had a mom, Sho wouldn't have been a whole world away from his girlfriend, she would have had a boyfriend…possibly Hatori she still wasn't sure of….a lot of things about that, and Shimazaki and Minegishi would have been married with a bunch of little babies right now. Life and movies were different but that was ok. Movies were fun and watching them made you feel all good inside.

Kind of warm, mostly, also a little bit squirmy.

Also her stomach still hurt a little. Maybe that was because, like Minegishi said, her diet was terrible. For breakfast she'd had eggs and ketchup with dad and then for lunch she'd had a box of Frozen cereal and an apple to make it healthy, and then for dinner she'd gone home and had more eggs and ketchup with dad, and then she came back here and now she was eating kettle corn and drinking strawberry milk, with a little bit of vodka because Shimazaki was nice like that, and maybe that was why her stomach hurt. She didn't know. It had been like this for a couple of days now.

It would probably get better on it's own.

The bad feeling and the good feeling. The good feeling was back because….well two things. The first thing being that this was a beautiful love story and she just knew that Rose and Jack were going to get together, Rose invited Jack to her room after all and you were only supposed to do that with boys would were in love with Minori had said, and the second thing being that Hatori was near. He was sitting on the floor by her feet and if she had wanted to she could have kicked him. Well not in a mean way but…well he was close. His sweater was blue and her sock was blue and she wanted to see what kind of blue that they would make if they were together…and she sort of wanted to be together with him…down on the floor and stuff…but not like…like Rose and Jack together because….well she didn't know it was just a lot…but she could have leaned forward just a little bit and kicked him…and he would have thought that it was an accident and….

And he was close and….

"Mob, close your eyes." Said Minegishi. Mob sat up straight and looked at the TV…which was the opposite of what she had been told to do. She couldn't help it. It had been a reflex. It was better to be caught looking at the screen than to be caught looking at the back of Hatori's sweater….but maybe she should have closed her eyes because….

Wow.

That was…she knew that they made these kinds of movies. She knew that there were movies where people took off all of their clothes but…wow. She was naked. Rose was naked and she had asked Jack to draw her like one of his French girls, he drew them naked but that was ok because naked people were more artistic than people with clothes on, and Rose was laying down on her couch and she only had her pretty necklace on and…well Mob couldn't see anything….but, well, she was a girl too so she knew what Rose looked like naked, but Jack was a boy and he hadn't known what she looked like naked…but she was naked and…

And Mob couldn't see anything.

"Mob, what did I just say?" asked Minegishi as they covered her eyes. Mob didn't know what the big deal was. She was a girl, she knew what girls looked like naked, and also it wasn't like they were showing anything. She was just…well it was more…better that she wasn't all the way naked…well she was but the camera was angled so they didn't show anything but…it was so…well kind of romantic and….well Mob had never seen anything so romantic in a movie before and….and she had liked it but also…also she was surrounded by all of her friends and….and maybe being surrounded by all of her friends during movie night was not the time or the place to be feeling like…she was starting to feel right now…

Especially since Hatori was right there….and now she was thinking about him a little bit…and also she should have been thinking of a way to answer Minegishi.

"You said not to look but…um…she's a girl and I'm a girl….so I don't know why it's not ok to see Rose naked." Said Mob

"It's not that it's not ok, Mob, I just don't feel like answering any questions right now…like why we picked this movie in the first place." Said Minegishi

"It was the will of the hat, Toshi, the will of the hat…but to be fair I wanted to watch Yellow Submarine." Said Shimazaki

"And I wanted to watch Akira…so yeah….we could have been watching Akira right now." Said Hatori

"I'm sorry everyone. I kind of forgot about that scene. Here, let me fast forward." Said Shibata. Mob wanted to tell him not to, that she wanted to see what happened, because it felt like Rose and Jack were finally going to kiss…but then everyone would have thought that she wanted to look at naked people and….well she didn't want to see anyone naked, not even Hatori and he was Hatori, she just wanted to watch people be in love and stuff….

But she didn't say anything.

She just let Shibata fast forward the movie until Rose had her clothes back on. That was…well she always wore such pretty dresses…but she was sad to see that Rose and Jack hadn't kissed yet. They were in love and it didn't matter that Rose was rich and Jack was poor, or that she was getting married to someone else since he was a jerk and they weren't in love, Rose and Jack were in love and they should have kissed…but not more than kissed because Mob did not feel like watching a more than kissing movie with her friends. That would have been really gross and really awkward. More awkward than watching someone get drawn naked….and it had been awkward and…and that was why she couldn't stop thinking about it.

Because it was awkward.

It must have been very awkward to film that. The actress who played Rose had to be naked in front of the actor who played Jack…and also the whole crew….and that must have been the worst. It was amazing what some people would do for their work. You always had to take your work very seriously, dad had said, everything that you had and everything that you were you had to give….and Mob was very happy that in Claw nobody ever had to be naked for any reason. She didn't think that she would have stayed in Claw if she'd ever had to have been naked in front of a whole bunch of people….or even one person. Nope. Not for work and not if she was in love…well maybe when she was in love…but she would have to have been REALLY in love…and older…and stuff….since the thought of any boy seeing her naked was just…

Awkward.

The only boy who had ever seen her naked was her brother and even then they had stopped taking baths together and changing clothes in the same room a while ago. Also family didn't count because family was family. The thought of a boy seeing her naked like….like he loved her and he wanted to do more than kissing stuff with her….that was just…awkward. She knew that she was supposed to want to, that was part of having a boyfriend and she really wanted to have a boyfriend, but the thought of any boy….but especially Hatori since she liked him, seeing her naked was just….

Awkward.

She pulled her sweater close around her while she balanced her popcorn bowl on her knees. This was not the time or the place to be thinking thoughts like that. She was with her friends and she was watching a movie and…and also she should have been paying closer attention because the guy who was supposed to marry Rose hit her in the face….and that was wrong you weren't supposed to hit people…and he had framed Jack and….oh no. This was so sad. Now they would never be together and….and the whole thing was just really sad…but that was a lot like life. In life love didn't always work out. Sometimes the person you love got framed and then you had to marry someone who you didn't like.

Or something like that.

Maybe not that specific thing but in life, a lot of the time, love didn't work out. Like how mom was gone. Dad missed her a lot even though he said that she was a traitor and stuff. He sometimes dreamt about her. Mob could tell. Dad sometimes held her close and called her mom and kissed the back of her head and stuff. She stopped waking him up, not unless he started to crush her, because every time she woke him up from a mom dream he sent her to make him night time breakfast. He probably just wanted to be alone. She dreamt about mom too sometimes. She dreamt that she was in the old house and mom was there and….and Mob could never remember what mom said or did in these dreams but she always woke up expecting to see her but….but of course she wasn't there…

So sometimes love didn't always work out.

Mob hoped that it worked out when she found someone who loved her. Someone who was nice to her all the time and thought about her. Someone who wanted to make her happy but also someone who she wanted to make happy. Someone who wanted to kiss her and stuff. Dad had told her that she would meet her most perfect person someday and then she would marry him and have kids but then dad would be there and they would live together and take care of her kids and he would even be there when they came out of her stomach…..and she wasn't sure where her most perfect person was in all of this, dad just sort of forgot about him when he talked about how good the future would be, and she was looking forward to meeting this person….but also…

Also it might not have worked out.

Real life was different from the movies. In the movies, in this movie specifically, Rose went looking for Jack and now they were running and hiding….even though maybe she should have waited until the boat made it to America because there were only so many places to run and hide on a boat…and it was nice but Mob knew that in real life Rose could have just left Jack all alone…and the other way around….because that was how love worked. Sometimes the person you loved most in the whole world, your most perfect person, left you. Sometimes they left you and then…and then that was it. People got dumped, sometimes Mob got the feeling that mom had dumped dad but had just forgotten that you were supposed to actually tell the person that you were dumping that you were dumping them, and then your heart got broken and you were sad for the rest of your life. You got so sad, even, that you never got into another relationship again even if you met someone who loved you more than anything else in the whole world.

Like with what had happened with Minegishi.

They had Shimazaki and he loved them. He loved them and he wanted to be their boyfriend but they had been dumped and their heart had stayed broken after their girlfriend dumped them, and that lady had better hope that she never ran into Mob because boy would she do….something, and now Minegishi was so hurt that they didn't want to get into a relationship with Shimazaki even though he was perfect…very good….he was a nice person when he wasn't acting crazy. Like now. He was holding Minegishi and letting them rest their head on his chest and he was rubbing their back and…and they both looked so happy and in love and….and Mob wished that she had someone to hold her like that and to love her like that….

And also she wished that Minegishi would just stop telling her what she could and could not see already.

"Mob, don't look." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't get why she wasn't supposed to look. They were just hanging out in a car. Jack was pretending to drive and they were all happy because they had escaped. Mob didn't get what she wasn't supposed to see.

"What's going on? What can't I see?" asked Mob. Shibata made a choking noise and tried to pick up the remote but it fell and slide under the coffee table. Now he and Hatori were looking for it like it was some big emergency. Mob didn't get it. She also didn't get why Minegishi was trying to cover her eyes…or why Shimazaki was laughing. He didn't even know what was going on, the narration was off because Minegishi had said that it was annoying. Mob just…did not get her friends sometimes. This was just…well obviously they were kissing in the backseat of the car. Minori said that kissing in cars was fun and also good if you needed privacy….and of course you were going to kiss in a private place…

And also bang your hang against the window?

"Mob, when I tell you not to look at something then you listen to me and you don't look." Said Minegishi with a sigh, the kind of sigh that they did when they were very tired. Mob didn't know what they were so tired about. It wasn't like Rose and Jack had been naked. They had just been kissing in the car….and Mob didn't know what had happened next because Shibata had hit fast forward….and now he was hitting rewind because he had gone too far ahead….and this was more annoying, and hard to watch, then Rose banging her hand against the window of the old fashioned car.

"But what couldn't I see? They were just kissing." Said Mob

"Wait, they were kissing in that scene? I always thought that they were f-" said Shimazaki before Minegishi shoved a handful of kettle corn into his mouth. That was sort of dangerous. If he choked then he would die since they had no healer…and also even if Fukuda had been here and Shimazaki started to choke then they would have had to invite him to the movie night after he saved Shimazaki…and then maybe he would have wanted to stay…and then movie night would have been ruined.

"They were kissing! They were kissing and…and nothing more!" said Shibata as he started pushing buttons on the remote like he was dad at the end of a game of Space Invaders. Mob didn't get it. She was lost, clueless, and….and she thought that this was maybe something that she was supposed to get but….well she didn't get it.

"Ok….but why was she banging her hand against the glass? Did she not want to kiss him? Because it seemed like she did….I don't get it…also you went too far back. Now it's at the part where she's naked again." said Mob. Now she was laying down on the couch with nothing but the necklace on…and that was way worse than her and Jack kissing in a car. At least they'd had all their clothes on for that part.

"God damn it!" said Shibata. Mob covered her mouth. Wow. She had never heard him curse before…and she hadn't thought that he even knew how. Well there was a first time for everything she supposed…though she didn't get what all of the excitement was about…and also why nobody would answer her question.

"I still don't get it, though. What was that all about?" asked Mob. She turned to Minegishi and Shimazaki. They were usually really good at answering her questions. Mostly Minegishi, though, but Shimazaki knew about things too. They were both really smart and if they'd had a baby then it would have been the smartest baby in the whole world.

"Well she and Jack were-" said Shimazaki before Minegishi stuffed another handful of kettle corn into his mouth even though they must have known that it was a dangerous thing to do.

"She was having a good time, ok? That's all you need to know." Said Minegishi

"Ok….so when people kiss they bang on windows?" asked Mob scratching her head. She had never seen that before…but then again in her movies nobody had ever done any kissing in cars before. Not even in the movie Cars….even though baby cars had to come from somewhere…it had been a confusing movie. All movies were confusing, it seemed, though they would have been less confusing if people would have just explained things to her already.

"Mob…ask me these things later. Just watch the movie….and Shibata just get to the part with the iceberg already." said Minegishi. Mob frowned. She knew that this was one of those things they would talk about later, when she got older, but they had been telling her that they would tell her things when she was older since she had been eight. It had been three years, how much older did she have to get?

"Wait…maybe we should just watch something else. I mean she's just a kid and this movie…well…she might be a little too young for this movie." Said Hatori. Mob….she was not a kid and….and Hatori thought that she was a kid. If he thought that she was a kid then maybe he didn't like her and…and she may not have wanted to do more than kissing stuff with him, and he probably did since he was older, she still wanted….well she wanted to be his girlfriend and….and he wouldn't have wanted to be her boyfriend if he thought that she was a kid….and she didn't even know if he liked her…and Minegishi had said that he didn't and….and this whole thing was very confusing and it made her stomach hurt.

"No! I mean, I'm not too young. I'm eleven, and I'll be twelve next year, and…and I'm not too young. I'll stop asking questions now." Said Mob. She was asking too many questions. Obviously these were things that adults knew about and that kids didn't….and she was a kid but…but also she was an adult. Sort of. She took care of her family and stuff but she was still eleven and…and she didn't even know all the things that an eleven year old was supposed to know. Every time she talked to Minori it seemed like there was something new that she had to hear about because…well she didn't know everything that she was supposed to know…and how was she supposed to know everything if her friends didn't tell her? It felt like they were keeping something from her and they didn't have to. She wasn't a baby. She knew that people did more than kiss, they took off all their clothes and fit together like puzzle pieces, and she knew that babies got into moms' stomachs that way. She knew things and they didn't have to keep them from her.

She was eleven, she was young, but she was not a baby.

She didn't like being treated like a baby but…but also she knew when to stop asking questions. Minegishi would tell her when she was older, which probably meant that they would tell her when she was their age, but she had another friend who she could talk about this with. She would ask Minori about this the next time they talked….and anything else that came up that she didn't get…not that it looked like anything else like that would come up…because the boat hit an iceberg.

Then the movie got scary.

The boat hit an iceberg and then…and then it started to sink. Well of course it started to sink….that was what happened when boats hit icebergs. Even giant ones made of metal. It was amazing how something made of ice could poke a hole into something made of metal…and also how they filmed something like this. Did they really sink the giant boat? But then….no. That would have been dangerous. This was just a movie. Nobody actually got hurt in the movies. This was just a movie and…and she had seen a lot of movies. She knew how movies ended. Sometimes bad things happened but in the end everything worked out.

Except for the times when it didn't.

All of those poor people…..all of those poor people on that boat…and also how…how they only let the rich people on the lifeboats like….like their lives were worth more just because they had more money. Money was just a means to an end. Dad had told her so. Dad had told her that money was just an object that people used to fulfil their goals, that was all, and had no value in and of its self. Because money had no intrinsic value that meant that rich people were no better than poor people. The only thing that mattered, dad had said, was power. Power and those who were strong enough to control it. That was why he was going to rule the world, he had said, because he was the most powerful esper in the world. Dad….dad knew everything and…and…and….

And Mob wanted her dad.

Mob had seen plenty of scary movies before, scary movies with blood and guts were Sho's favorites after all, and there had been moments when she had wanted her dad…but not like this. This was….this was worse than watching people getting their organs ripped out and stuff. This was…all of those poor people….the water must have been so cold….and Rose should have STAYED ON THE BOAT! SHE HAD BEEN ON A BOAT AND- and this was just a movie. Mob reminded herself that this was just a movie. She was not scared or sad. She was…this was just a movie.

She finished her milk.

This was just a movie.

She finished her kettle corn.

This was just a movie….and she was proud of herself for remembering that this was just a movie. She didn't cry or run away or….or anything. Because she was not a baby. She was an adult…a kid….a kidult….and this was just a movie. She knew what was real from what was fake and…and this had been just a movie and…and Jack had died and then old lady Rose just…threw the necklace into the ocean and…and then she went to sleep and…and she and Jack were together in heaven and….and it was just a movie and….

And nobody else was upset.

"Toshi? Hey, come on. Movie's over." Said Shimazaki as he ran his hand up and down Minegishi's back like he was petting a cat. That was nice, them loving each other, or at least him loving them and….and she tried to focus on how nice the scene in front of her was and not on how sad that scene with the frozen baby was…or the part where they went back and all of the people were frozen….or the part where Rose had to let Jack go because he was frozen….and maybe they should have just watched Frozen.

"….Titanic the director's cut….too damn long…." Muttered Minegishi. They turned their head more into Shimazaki's chest. He kissed the top of their head and teleported away, probably to go to bed, and Mob…she should have been happy…because they were acting like they loved each other and she loved….she loved a good love story. She loved a love story where everyone got together in the end and were happy and….and nobody froze to death or drowned…..and she just…she knew that it was just a movie. Nobody had actually drowned. Nobody had actually died and babies didn't freeze to death in the water and the poor later and her baby would have lived if they had just let all the people onto the lifeboats and….and they hadn't and all of the people died and…and she knew that it was just a movie but….

But she still wanted her dad.

She knew that she was being a baby, being all scared of a movie and stuff, but she really wanted her dad. Well she wanted Minegishi but they were asleep and they needed all the sleep that they could get…and also she wanted her mom but mom was off somewhere where she could never be found….so she wanted her dad. Dad was….dad could make her feel better. She felt…scared and sad and…and she knew that she was being a baby but…but she just wanted to be safe. Dad always made her feel safe…well not when he was hurting Sho but he hadn't done that in a while….and he was always saying how it was his job to protect her and….

And she wanted her dad.

So she went to him. She said goodnight to Shibata, she would have said goodnight to Hatori but he had fallen asleep at the coffee table, and then she went back to her own house. It was late but dad might still have been up. Sometimes he stayed up late to do very important work, Minecraft, and…and she wanted this to be one of the nights where he stayed up late. She wanted this to be one of those nights where he stayed up late at the kitchen table and…and she expected him to be there. She crossed the yard and opened the door and expected dad to be there and to hold her close and tell her that everything would be ok….

But he wasn't there.

She could feel his aura. He was in his room. He was in his room and…and he was sleeping so…so she shouldn't bother him. She went to her room. She knew not to bother him while he was asleep and…and it was kind of late…so she went to her room. She went to her room and reminded herself that it had just been a movie. It had all been pretend and…and she felt like a little kid again. She felt like the time she and Sho had figured out how to get past the parent locks on the TV and then they saw that show about the people who ate people and….

And now she was thinking about that.

She didn't want to think about any of that. It was all pretend, liked mom had said, back when she and Sho had been little mom had said so. She had sat them down on their beds and told them that it was all pretend and that they needed to remember that things like that would never happen to them because they had a mom and dad who loved them very much…and also they had each other….and then she had gone to her own bed because dad had been home and he hadn't liked her and Sho sleeping in the same bed as him and mom back then…so she had gone and slept in Sho's bed…or maybe Sho had come and slept in her bed….

She couldn't remember.

But that didn't matter. Sho was gone. He was far away and she was alone in their room. She changed into her pajamas and tried to lay down in her own bed. Her stomach hurt and her eyes hurt from trying not to cry…but it was hard. Rose and Jack had loved each other but then Jack died and then….and then all of those other people had died too. They had all died in the cold water and…and the little baby had died too…and babies weren't supposed to die. Babies were supposed to live because they had just been born and….and there was so much more to life than crying and sucking on a pacifier…and spitting up….and pulling hair…and wearing little baby socks….

She reached inside of her pillow case.

She didn't take the little baby sock out. She just held onto it. Mukai…baby Mukai was ok…wherever she was. She hadn't frozen to death in the ocean. She was with her new mom and dad and…and her new brother and sister too probably…and she was fine. She was happy and…and she was alive and…and her story had a good ending. She hadn't frozen to death and…and that poor little baby had been in the water and…and at least it hadn't been alone. It had a mom like baby Mukai had a mom….and Mob didn't. She didn't have a mom anymore. She didn't have a mom to hold her close and tell her that it had all been for pretend…..

But she did have a dad.

She had a dad and…and dad loved her. He loved her now more than he had ever loved her before. Before, when she had been little, he would have just told her that she was being tiresome and that she needed to learn the difference between fantasy and reality but now…now he loved her and…and he wouldn't mind if she went to go to sleep next to him. He would have been so happy and…and she wanted to be with him and feel better and….and she was getting herself so worked up that her stomach was hurting worse than eve and….

And she wanted her dad.

So she went to him. He was her dad and he loved her….and he wasn't that far away. Not like Sho. Dad was just down the hall but Sho…well she had no idea where he was…and mom was even farther away and….and she at least had a dad. So she went the short distance down the hall to his room…and then she opened his door. She knew that she should have knocked first but if she knocked then she might have woken him up…and she just needed to be near him….

And that was ok.

She opened his door slowly and then tiptoed to her side of the bed. Dad was asleep on his back, now, with his hands folded. That was how he slept when he was all alone. She didn't know why. He looked sort of like he was dead when he slept like that…and she didn't want to think about that. Him being dead. Anyone being dead. She wanted….she wanted everyone in the whole world to be alive. Dad had told her that all who've walked this Earth have died but…but she wanted them all to be alive again right now. Everyone who had ever died but…not like zombies….just not dead anymore….

And that made no sense.

She wasn't making sense. None of this made sense. Maybe she had drank too much. Shimazaki had done one third vodka and the rest milk, because she seemed like she needed it he had said, and maybe that had been too much. That would have made sense…why she wasn't making sense. She just….she knew that she wasn't making sense but right now she didn't want to make sense. She just wanted to be near her dad….so that was what she did. She laid down as carefully as she could next to him. She tucked herself in as carefully as she could. She did her best not to wake him.

Her best hadn't been good enough.

"Masami?" asked Dad asked dad and he rolled over and put an arm around her. He was still half asleep, she could tell by his aura, and also by the fact that he had used mom's name. He talked to mom a lot in his sleep….but she didn't want him to talk to mom now. She didn't even want to think about her mom. She just wanted to go to sleep….with her dad….and she wanted dad to know that she was her and…and she just really wanted her dad.

Well mom too, and little brother, and baby sister, but also her dad.

"No, it's me. It's Mo-Shigeko. It's Shigeko." Said Mob. Dad had been trying to pull her close but then he stopped. His eyes opened really fast and the lights flickered on for a second. He sat up really fast. She sat up too. He seemed….not mad. No, she knew when he was mad. He just seemed….well he wasn't mad and that was what mattered.

"Daughter. What are you….why are you here? What is it?" asked dad as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He wasn't mad but his aura was….well it had been…she didn't know. He wasn't mad at her and that was what mattered.

"I just wanted to be with you." Said Mob softly. She didn't know how to tell him that…that she didn't want to die….and that she didn't want anyone to die…and that she didn't want baby Mukai to die…and that she had gotten all worked up over a movie of all things. He loved her but…but he also would have thought that she was being ridiculous.

"No. Something is wrong. Your aura. I can see your aura. What's wrong?" asked dad. He had her wrist in one hand and her face in the other. He was tilting her head up so she was looking him in the eyes. There wasn't a lot of light in there, most of it was coming from the streetlights and moon outside, but she could see his eyes and how small his pupils were…and she could feel his aura on hers….and she knew that he was….worried and….and she didn't want him to worry. She just wanted…she just wanted him to tell her that she was going to be ok. That was all.

"I just….the boat sank That's all. The boat sank and it was very sad." Said Mob. She didn't want him to go back to how he had been before. She didn't want him to tell her that she was being ridiculous and push her out of bed like he had, before, when she had been little and scared. She wanted…she wanted dad the way he was now…smothering and all.

"Boat? What boat?" asked dad as he let go of her. For a moment she thought that he was going to push her out of bed. She thought that he was going to tell her that she had to be big, now, and that she had to stop being ridiculous and then she would have been pushed to the floor…but he didn't do any of that. He just stared at her.

"The big boat, the Titanic, it sank." Said Mob. He didn't understand…and of course he didn't. He hadn't been invited to the movie night. She and Hatori had been outvoted.

"….yes. I'm aware of the Titanic. It sank some time ago. Why does this bother you?" asked dad. Mob…well she knew that it was an old movie…so he must have seen it…and that meant that it wasn't as fresh in his mind but…but it was still a sad movie and she knew that he could feel sadness. He didn't like to feel sadness but he was capable of it.

"You saw that movie too?" asked Mob

"Yes, I've seen it….but why does it bother you? That film was made years before you were born and the actual boat sank over a century ago." Said dad. Mob wanted to turn the lights on….and she almost did. They flickered alive for a second, long enough for dad to hiss and close his eyes, before they went off again. What did he just…it….it…IT REALLY HAPPENED?!

"Wait…the Titanic was real? All of those people actually died?" asked Mob. She tried to speak as slowly and as clearly as she could so that he would understand. Dad….maybe he was wrong or he had misheard her or….or something because….because that could not have happened. All of those people could not have died at once…because that would have just been too sad…much too sad….

"Yes. Many people died. Why do you care?" asked dad. He said that in the same way that he said everything else and…and she had no idea how he could just be so calm and….and normal…about that. People died….all kinds of people….people in love…people with families…people who weren't very nice…moms and dad….babies….poor little babies that hadn't even had a chance to do anything….they just….died….

"But…even the little babies? They died too?" asked Mob. Babies were not allowed to die. Babies were good people. Babies hadn't had the chance to be anything other good people. Babies did not die. They could not die. Mukai could not die. She was a baby and babies didn't die, they grew up, old people died. Dying was for old people and…and really sick people too…but not babies! Not babies and not moms and not dads and not brothers and not sisters and not people in love! Just….only old people and people who were very sick and…and not babies!

"Yes. Many babies died when the Titanic sank. Why do you care?" asked dad. How could he ask something like that? Babies were dying and…he didn't know why she would…what? What HAPPENED inside of his brain that he WOULDN'T care?!

"Why do I care? Dad….babies died! Babies died and kids died and people who were in love died and…and all the people died!" said Mob. She wiped her eyes. Dad didn't get it. How could he not get it? What…why did he have to be like this? She just…she was crying now. Her eyes were all wet and she was getting the sleeve of her nightshirt all wet and….and dad…he was just staring at her like he had never seen a person crying before. She knew that he had. Mom had cried a lot.

"Daughter…people die all the time. For every second that passes two people die." Said dad. He said is slowly like he was talking to someone who didn't speak Japanese…but she spoke Japanese. She was Japanese. She knew what he was saying, the words, but somehow…it made no sense….

"….what?" asked Mob. She must have misunderstood. How did….how did he know that? How could anyone have figured that out…and how could it have been so many people? If two people died every second then…then Mukai could have been one of those two people….or Sho since she hadn't seen him in a while…or mom and she was gone…and maybe dad could be one of those people since he was old and he lived mostly on eggs and bread and ketchup….and she didn't want anyone to die!

"For every second that passes approximately two people die. On average almost two hundred thousand people die every day. Every one hundred and two seconds someone dies in the war, every sixty one seconds someone is murdered, every thirty nine seconds someone commits suicide, every twenty seconds someone dies in a car accident, every three seconds someone starves to death, and every three seconds a child under the age of five dies. That includes babies. Death is a part of life that we all must grow to accept. So stop crying." Said dad. He said all of that like he was reading from his Minecraft inventory…no. He at least got excited, dad excited, about his Minecraft inventory. This was…like he was reading from a shopping list or something….and how could he just…..just say all of that like…like it was nothing? Like he was just….he was talking about people dying and…and he was just saying it like…like he was just saying normal words….

"That's terrible! Why?! Why do people have to die? Even little babies have to die….why!?" cried Mob. Now she was sobbing. She was sobbing into the sleeve of her nightshirt…and she wished that she had brought her sweater. She wished that she had brought her sweater so that she could have crawled into it and disappeared forever. She just…how could dad have just…how did he even KNOW that!? And how could he have just said that and…

And she wanted to be held.

But dad did not hold her. No. Instead he put his hands on either of her shoulders and looked at her. She looked back at him. It was hard to see him through her tears and in the dark so she focused on his aura. It was calm, all red and yellow and calm, while her aura was being all….her hair was floating and the bed was trying to float…and she was trying to float away…but dad was stopping her. He was stopping her from floating away bed and all….

But he wasn't holding her…and she got the feeling that he wasn't going to tell her that it would all be ok.

"Daughter….you are having an existential crisis right now. This is normal. I had one when I was a little older than you….I did not cry about it but I'm incapable of crying…..and listen to me. You will die. I will die. Everyone on this planet will die. They will all be replaced by new people. That is existence. Eventually the sun will explode and then collapse in on it's self. You and I will be nothing. This planet will be nothing. That is fine. Our lives may be meaningless on a cosmic scale but that's fine. It's what we do with our lives that matters. You and I are the most powerful amongst everyone else in the world. Therefore we will rule the world. Therefore we can die peacefully. Does that make you feel better at all?" asked dad. He was still holding onto her…and he was still looking at her…and he was still talking to her like he was reading from a shopping list and….and how could he have just….in what way did any of that help?!

"No! Of course not!" said Mob. She didn't want to think about dying. She didn't want to think about dying or people she knew dying or people she didn't know dying or the sun going out or…or ruling the world or….or anything like that! She just wanted….she just wanted him to tell her that she was going to be ok…even if it wasn't true she just wanted him to tell her that it was going to be ok…that everything was going to be ok….

"Oh. Well then I have no idea what I can possibly say to you to make this…crying…stop." Said dad as he let her go. He let her go but he just kept on staring at her like she was a bug under a magnifying glass or something…and she had no idea what he could see in the dark…but she wasn't going to try and figure it out. She just…she just wanted…why couldn't he just tell her that she was going to be ok?!

"Just….I want my dad! I want you! I want you to be here and….and tell me that I'm going to be ok and…and that everything is going to be ok and….and that little babies don't die and….just make me feel better! Why don't you know how to make me feel better!?" cried Mob. He said that he loved her but…but then he went and acted like he didn't know what love even was! If he had been mom then he would have made her feel better…but he wasn't mom, he was dad, and dads...this was not their job. This was a mom thing. This was a Mob thing. If she had been dad and Sho had been her then she would have known how to make him feel better….because she was filling in for mom…but dad was still dad and…and she shouldn't have expected dad to know how to make her feel better…because this was not his job. Mom had made her feel better but now mom was gone…and her friends made her feel better but they had all gone to bed…so it was just her and dad and…

And maybe she had been asking too much of him….even though he was her dad…but he wasn't mom and it wasn't fair of her to ask him to be….

"I…your mother…said the same thing to me and…and I have no idea how to make you feel better…because I am not you. I told you something that…that made me feel better…when I realized that I would die someday. You are not me…you are your own person…and I have never been able to understand others but…but I will try….my best. You are…disturbed at the idea of a baby dying and…and that is something which I find disturbing as well. The loss of life…of potential….it is very saddening and…and you don't need to worry about that. The world has billions of people on it and they will die but…but you don't need to worry about your own untimely death. I will always be here to protect you. Do you understand me, Daughter? Shigeko? Do you understand that…if I had been there on the Titanic…or any sinking ship….I would not have allowed that to happen. You know that, right? That I would never have allowed any of the errors that had led that boat to sink? And neither would you have, right? Therefore there is no point to speculating but…but know that I will do anything to keep you safe and alive. You are my Daughter and….and you are the most precious thing in this world to me….and I love you more than I know how to express through words and actions." Said dad. He got quiet towards the end…and he stopped looking at her. He took his eyes and his aura off of her and…and there was something in his voice towards the end and…and he….he at least admitted that he didn't know what he was doing and…and he had tried….and he loved her….and that was what mattered.

"I love you too dad….can I sleep here tonight? With you? Please?" asked Mob as she put her hand on dad's. He was sad and…and now she wanted to cry again. She had made her dad sad. He was her dad, he loved her, and she had made him sad…and she was sad…and she just wanted to go to sleep. Maybe she would feel better in the morning. Maybe. She didn't know. She didn't know if she would feel better about what she had seen, or learned, or if she would stop crying, or even if her stomach would stop hurting. She just…she wanted to go to bed.

"Yes. I would enjoy that immensely." Said dad. He laid down. She laid down beside him. He may not have been mom, or even good at mom stuff, but he was there for her. He was her dad, he loved her, and he was there for her as best as he could be. Sure he could be weird…and also he could say horrible things without even realizing that they were horrible, but he at least tried. He may not have held her like mom would have and told her that everything would be ok but…but at least he was there.

Sleeping there beside her.

Dad fell back asleep first. It took her longer to fall asleep. She had a lot in her head…death and dying and unsinkable ships sinking and killing babies and people who were in love who should have gotten married and had babies. Stuff like that. Also it was hard to fall asleep like this. She was using one of dad's arms as a pillow, the other was wrapped around her, and after he had fallen asleep he had catch one of her legs in his. He could be very clingy when he slept. He hadn't always been like that, when he had first starting letting her sleep in his bed he had slept on his back with his hands folded, but then he had started to love her and now he slept like this…which made it very hard for her to fall asleep.

And to stay asleep, too.

She had no clue how long she had been asleep for, or when she had fallen asleep, but she knew that the sun was starting to come up when she felt dad trying to turn over and accidentally tug on her hair. If she had been having a bad dream she would have welcomed the wakeup even if it had hurt. But she hadn't been having a bad dream or a good dream or any kind of dream. She had just been asleep like a light. Off then on again. Dad had rolled over and taken some of her hair with him, she wished that she could cut it, but she couldn't because she was a girl and she was supposed to have long hair. All she could do was slowly free her hair from dad's arm. It took a little bit but she managed to do that without waking him up….but she had woken up in the process.

She was wide awake.

She was wide awake and she had to pee. The sky was starting to turn blue, it was pretty early, so maybe she could go back to sleep. Maybe. Dad had turned over and how big back was to her. If she got back into bed quietly she could maybe get some more sleep without him turning around and trying to hold her again. She loved him, and she was happy that he had tried to be there for her in her own way, but she also needed sleep. She needed to sleep so she could get up and make breakfast and do the laundry and then her homeschool stuff and then hang out with Minegishi and all of the other things that she had to do with her day. None of which would involve boats or icebergs or watching that super long and super sad movie ever again.

Ever.

She got out of bed slowly. Maybe too slowly, maybe she had moved wrong in moving too slowly, because as she got out of bed she felt a sharp pain in her stomach worse than ever before. She hissed and put her hand in her mouth to keep from making noise. It would have done her no good to wake dad up. He was asleep, deep asleep, so deep asleep that only his caterpillars came together when her aura hit his. Good. She didn't want to have to explain to him that her stomach hurt. He would have probably just told her how many people died a second from stomach aches…

And she still wasn't sure how that was supposed to help her.

She knew that people died. She knew that the world was a big place and it had million and billions and maybe even trillions, some day, of people in it. She knew that those people must have died and…and she guessed that she had always known that babies could die. Death wasn't just for people who were very old and very sick. Young people, kids, babies, along with moms and dad…and people who were in love and should have become moms and dad….they all could die and…and knowing that didn't make her feel any better. In fact knowing that just made her feel like she was going to cry again….

And she tried her best not to.

Dad didn't like crying. He didn't know what to do about it and there was nothing that dad hated more than not knowing something. Also she didn't want to wake him up. So she kept her tears inside as she walked down the hallway and to the bathroom. She really had to pee…she had drank way too much strawberry milk and vodka…and maybe that was why her stomach hurt. Maye her kidneys were going to explode or something….no. That had just been in the movies. Kidneys didn't explode…

But if they did there would have been blood.

Blood?

Blood.

Blood was red.

That was blood.

That was blood and…and blood should not have been there. No. She had seen her own blood before, she had gotten plenty of cuts and scratches and scrapes before, but never on her…never THERE…and how had she even….how had she even managed to hurt herself…THERE? That was…it was blood. It was dark red, like blood that had been sitting around for a while, but it was there and…and there was….MORE of it? She looked down and…and she had blood…that was blood. Her underwear was blue, not red, and the blood…that was her blood and…and how had she gotten….Google. She needed to Google but…but her phone was charging and….and how had this EVEN HAPPENED?! She….she tried to get rid of it but the cut….it must have been a cut because if her kidneys had exploded then she would have probably been laying on the floor rolling around in agony like that time when she had tried to make homemade cheese…but maybe…she didn't know! All she knew was that there was blood and…and she had never cut herself there before but what could have….

Paper cut?

Yes. That must have been it. She must have just gotten a…a really bad paper cut….from the toilet paper….because this wasn't the fancy soft kind. This was the not soft kind that they had in the HQ bathrooms and…and she had never cut herself before but…but they did say that there was a first time for everything. Yes. They did say that. She had just….but herself…with toilet paper…because she was tired and careless and this was not the fancy kind with aloe and…and now she was going to have to get the fancy kind with aloe and….and that was ok, too, because now…she knew what the problem was and….

And it was just a cut. She would be fine.

This was probably like the time Sho had fallen out of the tree and hit his head on the way down. He'd had this big cut on his forehead and she had thought that he was dying but mom had cleaned him up and said that head cuts always looked worse than they were. Then Fukuda said the same thing and then they all made dinner and then played Wii and…and she would not be telling Fukuda about this. He was away but…but he could not know about this. Nobody could know but especially not him. This was a cut on her…well she would not be talking to anyone about that part of her body but especially not him….he already thought about her naked and doing…..stuff…with people anyway. No. He could not know….

And neither could dad.

There had been enough blood, the cut had been bad enough, that some blood had splattered onto her underwear…and she knew from doing Sho's laundry that nothing got blood out…so these were ruined and…and also…well the bleeding would stop eventually but…well she didn't know when. She didn't know when and she didn't want to ruin all of her underwear so she took a bunch of toilet paper and balled it up…sort of like a bandage only not around the cut….because she had no idea how to dress that cut…and she wouldn't ask Minegishi because…well she didn't want anyone, even her best friend, to know about this. It was just…

Private.

Of course it was private, that was why they were called privates, because they were private. Besides, it was just a cut and….and it would stop bleeding on it's own. Even that really bad cut she had done on her leg when she had first tried shaving had stopped bleeding on it's own eventually. She was going to be fine. This was not a big deal. In fact this was such a little deal that she was just….going to go back to bed….and also….also maybe borrow a pair of shorts from Sho's drawer because this toilet paper did not feel at all secure….and it would have been embarrassing if anyone…but especially her DAD were to know about…about any of this….

So that was what she did.

She borrowed a pair of Sho's black gym shorts, black seemed like it would be good for hiding blood, and then she went back to bed. She had to go back to bed next to dad…and she had never noticed just how white his sheets had been before….but it wasn't like she could just go back to her own bed. What if he woke up, went looking for her, and then asked what had happened? She couldn't lie to her own dad….and she couldn't tell him either…so she would just keep it to herself. Yeah, it was just a cut and it would stop bleeding soon….

Hopefully very soon…..very, very, very soon…because she did not like this at all. Not one bit.


	371. Storybooks and Baby Bedtimes

Sho didn't really like to read.

Reading was boring. He could read, he knew how, and in four different languages too. He just didn't much like to read. Not unless he was reading something interesting like the stories about cool accidents and crazy medical stuff that Emmy was always sending him. Those were interesting but that wasn't what he was reading right now. No, he was reading from baby sis's big book of stories. She had this big giant book with all the stories that you were supposed to tell babies. Stories like princess Kaguyahime and the one inch samurai and Momotarou. Stories that mom had told him when he had been little. He'd had one of these big books, too, but his had been different.

The cover, anyway.

The cover and the pictures were different but the stories were the same. Mom had read to him from the big book, or other books, before bed. Big sis, too, because they had shared a room…and they still shared a room….well they would share a room when he got back to her. They had spent almost their whole lives together and…and they had heard the same stories every night. Big sis still read to him…well she read out loud in the same room while he fell asleep. Mom used to do that and…and now big sis did that too…and then him, too, because he was a big brother now.

A pretend big brother.

Baby sis and him were not really brother and sister. They couldn't be. The only way they could be was if mom came back, had a baby with dad, and then ran away again all in secret. That was the kind of stuff that they put in books because that was the only time that stuff like that happened. In books. Not this book, of course, this book was about good things. People who lived in peaches, tiny samurai's, and other stuff like that. Not bad stuff like moms running away from home and leaving their kids all alone. No. Baby sis didn't need to know about that kind of stuff. She needed to know good things, like people in peaches, and not….not bad stuff.

Not the stuff from real life.

"By and by, the four of them came to the giant's castle. The giants were all inside, tucking into a feast of roast cow and bull and some of them were spitting bones out of the window. The noise they made was deafening…." Read Sho. He stopped for a second. Whenever he stopped baby sis said something like 'Sho now' or 'Sho do now' or something like that. She could not only make words but also sentences and…and he loved it when she talked to him. She was smart. She was the smartest baby in the whole world. She could walk and talk and draw and…and he was so lucky to have her as his little sister. His pretend little sister.

Because if she was really his little sister then that would have been really sad.

If she was his real little sister then that meant that she would have had the same mom and dad he did. That would have meant that mom had left her too…and also that dad was her dad. Nobody, but especially not her, deserve to have a mom who left and a dad who was dad. No. Baby sis was just…she was Sagami Mukai. She was Sagami and he was Suzuki and…and they were only pretend siblings but that was ok. He loved her for real and that was what mattered.

Also he loved it when she talked.

But she wasn't talking now. He looked up from the book and saw that she was laying down on her back. Her eyes were closed and she was kicking like she was trying to get out of her little baby pajamas. Her pajamas were the kind with the feet on them and maybe she was trying to get out of them…or maybe she just liked to kick in her sleep. He did. He had been kicking in his sleep since he had been a baby, mom had showed him the recording, and he had no idea why. She probably didn't either. That didn't matter, he would love her no matter what, even if she had fallen asleep in the middle of the story.

Well it was her bedtime after all.

She went to bed between six thirty and seven. Her mom gave her dinner and then her bath and then put her to bed even though the sun was still up. Not that she could see the sun or anything. These apartments didn't really have windows…but that was ok. Maybe when she got older she could move to a Division or an HQ or a cell that had a building with windows…or maybe she and Sho would just be able to play outside together. That would have been pretty great. He wasn't allowed to bring her outside because she was too little and her mom was afraid of something happening to her in the woods…even though Sho would never have let anything happen to his own little sister….to his own pretend little sister….

Pretend or not he loved her the most out of all the other little babies in the whole world.

He loved her enough to read to her until she fell asleep and he loved her enough to know that he needed to let her keep on getting her sleep. He wanted to stay with her. He wanted to stay with her all night, which would be a long night since she spent most of her life asleep, but he knew that he had to go. Fukuda had made dinner for him. He made him dinner every single night, and after baby sis fell asleep he had to go and have dinner and then work on one of his homeschool workbooks and then take a bath and go to bed. Then he could see her again….he could see baby sis again but…but he had no idea if…if he would.

Because every time he saw her could have been his last.

He knew that he had to go soon. He had to go back to big sis and dad and all of the others because this trip wasn't going to be like that last one where he had been gone for months and months. Dad was in Tokyo and Tokyo meant building up the HQ, which was safe, but also dealing with the yakuza, which was not safe. Plus there was the other esper group that was trying to kill him…well a lot of other esper groups were trying to kill him…and that was why he needed Fukuda around. So Fukuda couldn't be gone for long and because Sho was only ten, ten and a half was still ten, he had to go where Fukuda went…

And it wasn't fair.

They were in Japan! They were in Japan and they would be for the rest of summer, probably, because dad liked spending summers in Japan for some reason….and baby sis lived in Japan and since they were in the same country then…then he should have been allowed to visit her! He was Suzuki Sho and…and he was dad's Son and…and he should have been allowed to go wherever he wanted to go and do whatever he wanted to do! But no, instead he had to go sneaking around behind dad's back just to see one little baby! One little baby who was the best baby that he had ever known! The best little baby that had ever been born! The smartest, nicest, best baby who-

Who was going to wake up if he didn't calm down right now.

She kicked again and rubbed her face. Her eyes didn't open, which was good, but he also…he wanted her to open her eyes. He wanted her to open her eyes and he wanted her to yell at him and throw one of her stuffed animals at him and tell him that he had to read to her or something…something like that. Really he wanted to tell her anything. The last thing that she had said was 'Sho now' and…and he wanted to hear her say that again…or anything, really. He just wanted to hear her little baby voice and…and if she wanted him to stay up all night reading her little baby books to her then he would have.

But he didn't.

Because she didn't ask him to. She stayed asleep in her crib. She would be getting a baby bed, soon, her mom had said because she kept on climbing out of her crib. Every morning she climbed out and banged on her mom's door….and Sho had done that too, when he had been a baby. Mom had told him that when he had been one he had gotten up every single morning at six and banged on her door until he got up. Fukuda had said that dad had gotten so sick of it that he had started locking Sho in his room. Big sis…well he had no idea what she had been doing during that time. Nobody had mentioned her and also she had been a baby too so she didn't remember. People didn't remember things from when they were babies.

He hoped that baby sis remembered him.

He had been her first word…so she would remember him for the rest of her life he felt like…but he also felt like she could forget him. She forgot things, like how if she threw her stuff out of her baby gate then she couldn't get it back, or if she hid her sippy cup behind the couch she couldn't reach back there and get it even if her arms were tiny. She forgot things and…and he didn't want to leave her room because…because maybe if he left and she woke up tomorrow she would think that she had dreamt him up or something. She could dream, he had seen her legs kicking and her mouth moving and sometimes she swatted at the air around her, and he had no idea what it was that she dreamt of but he did know what it was to wake up from a dream, think that it had been real, and then realize that it hadn't been…

And since he left her so suddenly all the time…she might have thought that he was just a dream.

He couldn't stay with her even though he really wanted to. He had to go. He had to go back and…and have dinner and do Sho stuff. He couldn't stay with her all night in her room watching her sleep and probably passing out in her rocking chair or on her rug…and he also couldn't stay at this Division. He couldn't live here…well he didn't want to live here since this was far from his friends and his sister…..but he couldn't have lived here if he had wanted to.

He had to go.

"Hey baby sis? I'm going to go now…if you're going to be asleep and…and have a good sleep and maybe I'll be here when you wake up in the morning." Said Sho as he got up from her rocking chair. He got up quietly so he didn't wake her…and he didn't she as asleep and…and that was good. She was little and she needed her sleep and…and he was happy to be able to sit in her rocking chair, well it was technically called a glider, and to read to her until she fell asleep…and he hoped that he could do the same tomorrow night. Tomorrow night and the next and the next and the next. He was her big brother and being a big brother meant doing things that were sort of boring…but also that he liked…

Because he loved her…even if he had to read storybooks.

He put her book back on the shelf and folded the page so he could remember where they had left off. Then he turned on her little baby nightlight, it was a pink lamp with people on bikes cut out of the shade that spun, and he turned off his main light with his powers. Now it looked like nighttime even though he knew that the sun was still up outside. When she got older and she went to be later then they could play outside and…and inside and just….they could just be together more but…but now she was little and he was little, not as little as her but he was still just a kid, so he just….walked as quietly as he could out of her room. He closed the door as softly as he could…

And as much as he wanted to be couldn't open her door again.

He heard the sound of someone hitting a punching bag. That was baby sis's mom. She was a fighter, that had been her job before she had joined Claw, and she was going to teach Mukai when she got older. Sho hoped that when Mukai grew up she hated hitting people and fighting and stuff. He loved her and he knew how easy it was to start hitting people and being a jerk and…and he never wanted that for her…but she would be ok. She was living with her mom after all and her mom was a really nice person and not a jerk at all.

She was nice like a mom was supposed to be.

Sho crossed the hall to tell Mukai's mom that he was going for the day. He had to tell her when he was coming and going so that he didn't surprise her and stuff. Also because he was dad's Son and she had said that if he went missing she knew who everyone was going to blame. Sho didn't think that it would have been her, he figured that it would have been Fukuda, but she just said that while she was under his roof that meant that he was her responsibility…even though this was his roof, technically, because he was dad's Son and dad ran Claw and someday he would run Claw so that meant that everything here in this Division was his…or something….

But when he had said that baby sis's mom had just patted him on the head and poured him more soda…terrible grape soda….but he said nothing because he was supposed to be polite all the time…and stuff…

"I'm going back now." Said Sho. He stood in the doorway to baby sis's mom's bedroom. He knew that it was rude to lurk in doorways but he also knew that it was much ruder to just let himself into people's bedrooms without being given express permission and he could not be rude right now. If he was a rude guest then baby sis's mom would kick him out and then he would never be allowed to come over and visit again…and that would have been the absolute worst thing ever.

"That's fine, same time tomorrow?" asked Tsuchiya as she turned and faced the kid. It was always a shock, looking at the kid, but she didn't let it show. That was definitely the President's Son…and so was Mukai, well his Daughter, but she knew enough to keep her mouth shut about that. She figured that the kid didn't know, was too young and naïve to figure the truth out for himself, that that there was no point in telling him the obvious truth. The truth would only upset him and she didn't feel like upsetting him. He was just a kid and he didn't need that. He had enough to deal with being the President's son and all.

"I…maybe. I don't know. We might be going soon. Fukuda doesn't really give me a lot of warning." Said Sho. He wished that he knew the answer to that question…and he wished that he could have said for certain that the answer would have been yes. He wanted to come back at the same time tomorrow and then again the next day, and the next, and then the next. He wanted…he didn't know what he wanted. He wanted to go home and be with big sis and everyone else, minus dad, but he also wanted to be with baby sis….and also he wanted baby sis to come back with him but he also wanted her to be safe and happy with her new mom…and he also wanted his own mom to come back but also he knew that she would be thrown into a traitor hole if she ever did…and also he wanted his mom to secretly be baby sis's mom because then he and baby sis would have been real siblings but also…also he didn't want her to ever have a dad like dad. She had no dad now and having no dad at all was much better than having a dad like his….and also he didn't want to take her away from her mom who loved her and had picked her out from all the other babies in the whole world. So he wanted…he wanted a lot of things….and a lot of the things that he wanted made no sense or didn't go with the other things that he wanted so…so maybe he just needed to stop thinking about what he wanted.

Maybe that would have been for the best since what he wanted didn't matter.

He had a baby sister, a pretend one, to think about. He had to think about what she wanted, what was best for her, and what was best for her was not being a part of his family. She had to be here. This was a pragmatic choice. She had to stay here and he had to only visit her in secret and…and that was just the way that it was going to have to be. It was the least terrible option. It didn't matter if this made him sad….she was going to have a happy life and that was what mattered.

Her happiness was what mattered the very most out of everything.

"Well then if we don't see you again for a while I'll give Mukai your best." Said Tsuchiya. She could feel the kid's aura…and she didn't have to feel his aura to know what he was feeling. The poor kid…this was hard for him. She knew that it was hard for him and…well she was doing the best she could. She didn't have any siblings but she could still imagine that it must have been hard on him. Bonding with Mukai, well who couldn't bond with her, and then having to say goodbye to her over and over again. The President was not a man who liked to be questioned…but she did wonder why he did this to his only Son. Seemed like a pretty good way to end up in a crooked nursing home, really, putting the kid through this.

"OK….yeah. Tell her…tell her that I love her…and that she's the best and smartest baby ever….and that if she still likes abstract art and graffiti art then we can do that together when she gets older…when I see her again…and she might be old enough for all of that next time I see her…and stuff." Said Sho. He wished that he had something better to leave her with. He just….he hoped that he wouldn't get woken up in the morning with Fukuda telling him that they had to go back…and he wished that he could stay….but he also wished that he could see big sis and the others again and…and he didn't even know what he wanted. Maybe to feel better. Maybe to not be lurking in that doorway….because it was rude…but lurking in this doorway was better than being away from big sis because…well at least he was still near her…and stuff.

"Sure. I'll tell her that…and let me tell you something. Don't worry, something good." Said Tsuchiya. The kid looked like he was about to cry…and she really hoped that he was getting some kind of help for his obvious emotional problems…and also that whatever he had going on wasn't genetic. He needed to hear something good, something nice, something to break him out of the sadness he was in.

"If it's about how I let baby sis draw on the walls I'll clean it up tomorrow if I'm still here." Said Sho as he wiped his eyes. He had turned his back for ten seconds and in those ten seconds Mukai had found his markers, his nice ones, and drew on the walls with them…and he was ok with that because they were just walls and they could be painted again….but also moms didn't like it when you drew on the walls. He had drawn on the walls a lot when he had been really little. Mom had cared. She had taken his markers away until he could be trusted with them. Dad hadn't cared.

He had just told mom to tape paper up over the walls.

Sho could remember that day. He had been three and….and he remembered that it had been before big sis's birthday so it had been that part of the year when they were the same age….and he remembered because he had tried writing happy birthday on the walls but…but he hadn't been the best at writing back then and…and then dad had taped a bunch of paper up on the walls and showed him how to write happy birthday. He had written 'happy birthday big sis' and…no. He had written 'happy birthday Shigeko' and…and he had known their names back then….and it had been nice and dad hadn't gotten mad at him even though he had drawn on the walls and they'd had to have people come in and paint again….for some reason dad hadn't gotten mad….but mom had…

Moms cared about that kind of stuff.

"No, it's not about that…but stop giving her your markers. She has her own washable markers…but that's my fault for not watching you guys closely enough….but anyway I just wanted to tell you that you're a great big brother and that she's really lucky to have someone like you in her life." Said Tsuchiya. She went over and patted the kid on the head while she said that. She didn't imagine that the President showed the kid a lot of affection. Poor kid….if she could have taken him in then she would have. She couldn't, though, because this was the President's only Son and she imagined that he only kept the kid around because he only had the one son. So many men were like that…but she couldn't do anything about that. She really couldn't do anything for this kid but be there for him while he was there for Mukai.

"Th-thanks….baby sis's mom….um….goodnight. I'll see you guys tomorrow…maybe." Said Sho. He wanted….he sort of wanted to hug her. He sort of wanted to hug her because…because she was a mom. She was the only mom he knew and…and she was not his mom. His mom gave him hugs, well she had when she had been around, but this was not his mom. This was baby sis's mom and he could not hug her. That would have been weird. He wanted her to hug him, though, because she was touching his hair like mom had…

Moms were like that.

Moms were like that and he was just remembering what it was like to have a mom, that was all. He only wanted to hug her because he hadn't hugged his own mom in years…but that was ok. If he wanted a hug then big sis could hug him…when he saw her again. She loved to hug him. She loved to give warm hugs and…and he would hug her later. When he saw her again…which might have been soon. He didn't know. Fukuda hadn't gone and told him an exact date and time when they would be leaving…

And he wasn't going to ask.

When he got back to Fukuda he wasn't going to ask when they were going back. He didn't want to give him any ideas…or to know the exact date and time. He would rather have woken up tomorrow to Fukuda telling him that it was time to pack up and go than to have to go to bed knowing that tomorrow he would be leaving his baby sis forever. Well not forever...but it felt like it and…and he knew that this was for the best. She was happier being here with her mom instead of being a part of his family and…and he knew that he had to make pragmatic choices but….well pragmatic choices sucked and…and he wanted to find a way to always be with baby sis….even if it meant reading all of her boring baby books to her one after the other after the other all night…

He didn't much like to read but he did love his baby sis and if it meant that he could stay with her then he would have read to her nonstop all night.


	372. A Somewhat Jarring Morning

There were few things in this life more jarring than waking up to an empty bed.

Well few things that happened to him regularly. There was that time when he had been young and the fort he and Fukuda had built, where the Seventh Division now stood, become infested with rodents and one had ran across his shoe….it was amazing that he hadn't killed Fukuda that day….and also there was the time when he had been holding Son back when he had been a baby, before he even knew of Daughter's existence, and Son decided that while he was being held facing his father was the best time to vomit….that had been jarring and unpleasant….and of course there was waking up the first morning to finding Masami gone from the house…

No, that hadn't been jarring.

Because he had expected her to have been somewhere in the house. He had expected her to be playing with the children or watching television or in the kitchen but…but she had been gone. She had been gone and he had….well he had assumed that she had gone out into the world for some reason and that she would return in time but…but then it got dark…and then light…and then dark again and…and on the first night…waking up to the other side of the bed being empty…

It had been jarring.

But he should have been fine now. He'd had no reason to get up and find the other side of the bed cold…well he'd had because obviously Daughter had woken up before him….but he'd had no reason to become startled and almost lose control. Now his clothes were everywhere and his mirror was nothing but cracks….and he could fix that later. He'd just have Daughter get him a new mirror and pick up his clothes for him…when she came back…or when she was done making breakfast. Yes. He checked the time. This was about when she usually started making breakfast. So it was fine for her to be out of bed. She was fine. She was Daughter.

She would never leave him.

He rolled over to her side of the bed. Cold. She had been gone for some time. She knew that he hated getting up and finding her gone….but she also knew that he hated the breakfasts at the HQ and loved her cooking…so that was what she was doing. She was making him breakfast and…and it would have made no logical sense at all for him to go to the kitchen, pick her up, bring her back to bed, and just hold her for another hour or so. Until he got tired of holding her. Well not that he could ever get tired of holding her but he did have work to do….a lot of work…but then again it was always a lot of work. He could have spent the whole day in bed with her if he wanted to, he was the President after all, but if he did then he would have twice as much to do tomorrow…and so much of what he did was time sensitive….and he didn't want to ruin anything….

But he so wanted to stay in bed with her.

He hadn't realized what a gift it was to be able to hold someone you loved. To be able to hold them in your arms and feel them breathing. To be able to feel how soft they were. To be able to feel how warm they were. He had never realized, before, that it had been a gift to have been able to hold her, to have been able to hold Masami, and now…now it was too late. He had just…he wished that he had held her more. She had asked him so many times to stay in bed with her, just to stay that way for the rest of the day, especially when she had been carrying Son. He remembered….she had been so big and…and she had been laying on him and she had asked him to stay with her…but he couldn't. He'd had to…well he couldn't remember where he'd had to be but…well he had acquired…he had acquired someone. He had acquired someone and sent them somewhere and then he had come back to her and he had held her then….and he had left her again later on…but only because he'd had to provide for her. Provide for her and their Son, the human being who they had made together and…and that was what he'd had to do and….

And even now….well he didn't have any choice in it.

There was no way for him to stay with Daughter….they couldn't just spend the day lying in bed sleeping and talking…and he did so love talking to her…and he also hoped that she was doing better. He knew what it was to have an existential crisis. He knew what it felt like to realize that you would die, that everyone would die, and that there was no way to avoid death. No matter how powerful you were death was something that stalked you like it stalked everyone else. The only thing that you could do was make the most of your life….and he was making the most of his life. He was forty four years old and he hoped that by fifty he would rule the world. Fifty seemed like a good projection…though he hoped that he would reach his goal sooner….because fifty just seemed….old. He knew that fifty was middle aged, not old, and he knew that he was already middle aged so it didn't matter but….

He would have outlived both of his parents by then.

Well he had already outlived his mother….well both of his parents were long dead….but…his mother had been forty two when she had died and father had been forty five and…and next year he would be as old as his father was when he died and….and he had so many irrational feelings towards all of this. Towards life and death. His parents had been long dead by this point. Mother and father….they were gone and….and of course they would have died one day….and he would die one day…and now he just….if he hadn't loved Daughter as much as he did he would have blamed her for this irrational way that he felt. The way he just…he hadn't thought about his parents in years and…and they had been gone for a while….and she was the one who had brought them up, before, and she was the one who'd had the existential crisis last night and….

And he loved her.

He loved her and he would not blame her for this. He would not and could not allow himself to feel anything other than love for her. That was what it was to love someone, to share your life with someone, you did not get upset at them even once. He had never once gotten upset with Masami. Not once. Not even when she had been so confusing, so completely incomprehensible, that he had been ready to bang his head against the wall in frustration had he ever gotten upset with her. So he would not get upset with Daughter. Besides, it wasn't like she had done anything wrong. She wasn't Son. She never did anything wrong.

He loved her for that.

He loved her and…and he would help her through whatever this was. He could feel her aura. It was flaring. She must have still been upset….and he could not be. He could not be upset not only because he couldn't risk losing control but also because he was older than her. He was thirty three years older than her and he could not just….just sit there and let himself have all of these irrational feelings surrounding his long dead parents and the mortality he had long ago made his peace with. He was older and he had to be the one who was there for her. He was the one who was there for her, and she was there for him, but in different ways. She fed him and kept his home and raised his child….and he provided for her and kept her safe. He kept her safe from real dangers and also the dangers which she had imagined…well mortality was not imagined…but it was not something that she had to worry about. She was only eleven. He would go long before she did.

He didn't want to think about that.

He didn't want to think about anything else. He just wanted…he had to get out of bed. He had to get out of bed and get dressed and brush his teeth…and is hair since he was overdue for a haircut….and also he had to shave…reached upwards…yes. Time for a shave….and maybe a shower, too, but not a bath because he didn't have that kind of time…and he may not have even had time to bother with a shower…because he had no idea if breakfast was ready so…so he had to get out of bed…

He got up.

All of his clothes were on the ground. Wonderful. It at least didn't take him long enough to find a clean shirt…and his pants were still good for another day….new undershirt time, though, and those were…well he had made quite the mess now hadn't he? Daughter would clean it up. She was good at those things. She would refold his clothes…that was the one thing he could not do….because he could not for the life of him figure out how she folded his clothes. Masami…..well she'd had her own way of folding things but Daughter….well she was very good at folding things. He would leave all of that to her. He got dressed and made a mental note to berate himself later for losing control like that. He thanked God that she had not been there, that she had not seen that, that she had not seen that part of him. She had never seen that side of him, and she never would, and she never could. If she saw that side of him then her image of him would be shattered…and also she would think that it was alright to lose control…and then she would think that it was alright for her husband to lose control…and he had no idea what he would do if her most perfect person turned out to be someone who lost control…

But he did not want to think about that.

Instead, as he buttoned up his shirt, he thought about the meal that they would share. She wasn't like Masami. Masami had always been on him to eat something other than eggs and ketchup. She had actually been bothered by the amount of ketchup that he used. Not everything needed ketchup, she had said, and he knew that ketchup was not a NEED but it did make everything better….though he was fully aware that it was odd when he drank it…but he was loathe to waste food…and Daughter understood him. She understood that he needed ketchup for everything and she could excuse him if he forgot himself…and she knew that he liked to have the same thing every day a thousand times a day…if possible. He didn't know why Masami had always been on him to eat a more varied diet. He ate salad and salad had vegetables and also he had fruit on occasion…so he wasn't endangering his health….

Masami had been very difficult to understand…but Daughter was easy.

Well mostly. He opened his door and expected to smell cooking…but he did not smell cooking. He didn't smell eggs or toast or bacon, she made bacon sometimes, he instead smelled…well the normal hallway smell. Sort of like…paint? Maybe? He didn't know. The way this house smelled. It didn't smell like cooking, that was what mattered, and also…and also it didn't sound like cooking either. He didn't hear anything frying…or the ding of the microwave…or the toaster popping up….or anything coming from the kitchen. He could hear, however, water running in the bathroom…the sink…and Daughter….her aura was flaring…and it was so strange of her to not have even started breakfast….and also she seemed…..to not be doing so well.

He could tell by her aura.

She needed him. Well he could be there for her. He had no idea what it was that she wanted to hear, his words had not been of much comfort to her last night, but he would try again. He would tell her what she wanted to hear. Maybe that was it. Maybe she just…needed to hear that she would be alright and that she had nothing to worry about. Well she did, death came for all of them, but also…he supposed that it wasn't a worry in the sense that worrying could do anything. Death came for everyone…and Daughter…she was younger than he had been when he understood that basic truth about the world….

He could be there for her.

He walked down the hallway towards the bathroom. The sun was coming in through the window at the end of the hall, above the staircase, and he marveled for a moment how the hallway could have been so clean. Usually the floor was littered with all sort of nonsense despite Daughter's best efforts at cleaning…well Son was gone…so it made sense that the hallway was clean. Daughter never made messes. He loved her for that. He loved her in general. He loved her so much and…and he would be there for her….as best as he could….as best as he could try….even though he didn't even know what to try…

Knocking on the door seemed like a good place to start.

"Daughter?" asked Suzuki as he knocked on the door. He felt…he staggered back. He must have surprised her. She had…grown stronger over the years. He was proud of her for that and…and he was happy about that and….and he did not find it jarring at all that she could send him staggering on accident. He had let his guard down…and she had lost control even though she knew fully well that power was nothing without control but he loved her anyway. There was nothing that she could do that would ever make him stop loving her.

Even forgetting to make his breakfast.

"…hi, dad…." Said Daughter. He could barely hear her over the running water of the sink. He wondered if she was alright…the water had been running for a while…and it seemed sort of early for her to have started cleaning the bathroom….and also he wondered if she should have been cleaning anything in that state. Her aura was flaring and he could feel the hair on his arms standing up….the air around them was charged with her energy…..and he had no idea what he could possibly do to fix it.

"Good morning, Daughter." Said Suzuki. That was the appropriate thing to say when greeting someone in the morning, even his own Daughter, and now that he had greeted her he could tell her that she would be ok…or maybe he should ask her what was wrong first…or maybe she would be like Masami and tell him that he should have known what was wrong…but maybe he was wrong about what was wrong and he would just end up making it worse…this was confusing. Women were confusing. Hatori had the right idea about all of this.

"Good morning dad…um….do you know when….I mean…." Said Daughter. She was speaking too quietly for him to understand…and it was her and not him. He would have been able to hear her just fine if she had turned the water off. He could hear just fine. He could hear just fine and he could see just fine and his back did not hurt if he moved wrong and his joints did not hurt if he went too long without moving. He was middle aged, not old, and he was not getting old yet. He was only forty four. He could get old when he was fifty four…or whenever. Not now. He could get old and die later and…and he needed to stop thinking about death….because he knew that it was coming and he'd had a lifetime to prepare for it.

Daughter was the one who was worried about death, not him.

"Speak up. I can hear you." Said Suzuki. He wanted to tell her that she needed to turn the water off, too, but he had no idea if she was in the middle of something or not. She spent a lot of time cleaning…and also grooming too…and he hoped that she didn't plan on trying up the bathroom all morning doing her makeup or something…and she did do that sometimes…and he had no idea why. Women were so confusing sometimes but women found men to be equally confusing so there.

"Um…dad? Can I ask you something? And you promise not to…to freak out?" asked Daughter. Well she could ask him anything…and also he did not freak out. He could not. Bad things happened when he did and…and he could not let Daughter see those things…see him losing control like that. He could not shatter her image of him and he could not break her trust.

"Of course…and I'm always calm." Said Suzuki. Well not always but…well to her he was always calm and he would have to stay that way. He was not going to shatter her image of him. That would have done neither of them any good at all.

"Dad….can a person bleed without….without getting a cut?" asked Daughter. Well that was an odd question. You had to have a cut, well an abrasion, to bleed….unless you had some sort of medical condition….and he had no idea why she needed this information but he was her father and he would do his best to answer her questions.

"As far as I know you need an abrasion to bleed but you would be better off asking the internet. I don't know much about those sorts of things. Why do you ask?" asked Suzuki. Was she hurt? No, no, she was fine. If she had been hurt then she would have said something and….and now he was…well he would make Fukuda come back. He was aware, now, of just how much danger she was in. She could have hurt herself and….well if she were hurt she would have said something but…but she was so small and fragile…she really was…..

"I just…nothing. No reason. Did you need the bathroom?" asked Daughter quickly. Her aura slammed into his as she spoke…and he had no clue why she was being like this but….but whatever she needed he would give her. They were a team and he loved her and….and when you loved something then everything you were you had to give.

"Yes, but I can wait until you're done with whatever you're doing…also are you planning on making breakfast this morning?" asked Suzuki

"Dad…can you please put ketchup on your own piece of toast this morning?" asked Daughter. There was something to her voice and she….he had no idea. Maybe she was still bothered by her existential crisis….or maybe she was just still tired. He didn't know. He was bad with tones…but he did know words and…and it sounded like she had just asked him to make his own breakfast and…and he could but….

But she always made breakfast.

"I can….but I want an omelet too like I have every single morning." Said Suzuki. They were a team. He took care of her and she took care of him and….and if she stopped making breakfast then…then what else was she planning on…on not doing anymore? Was she planning on…on doing less and less until she didn't even leave her bed and then…and then one day she would be gone? She would be gone from him and he would be alone? He just…..

He had no idea if he could go through that again.

"But….fine. Ok. I'll make you breakfast just…ok. I'll do that now just…wait for…for me to…just here. You take the bathroom now." Said Daughter. Suzuki didn't have to be told twice. He could get on with his day while she got on with hers. Yes. There would be breakfast. He had been worried there for a second but of course Daughter would not have let him go hungry. She was not that sort of person. She loved him and she took care of him. She took care of him and he took care of her. They were a team like that.

They made a good team.

Daughter was always there for him and he would always be there for his Daughter. Even when she was in the middle of an existential crisis…and he was glad that she hadn't brought up death. No. She just opened the bathroom door and existed with her back pressed up against the wall. She watched him as he entered the bathroom and he could feel her lurking outside the door after he closed it. He had been about to ask her if she needed the bathroom again, women took a very long time to get ready in the morning even though he wasn't entirely sure what it was that they did in there for so long, but then as soon as he had been about to say something he felt her aura moving away and heard her running down the hall-

To his bedroom.

Well that was good. He hadn't even had to ask her to clean up and…well judging by the way her aura flared he maybe should have warned her about how bad it was…though he didn't think that the mess in his room warranted quite so much panic. She shook the house…and continued to shake it…and he maybe should have said something…but then he heard her running again. He had no idea what she was doing but he trusted her judgement. He turned the hot water on and got out his toothbrush and…and then the water pressure suddenly dipped and…

Oh. The washing machine.

Wasn't it a bit early for laundry? He thought so…but then again he had no idea what time or order these household chores had to be done in. He trusted her judgement. He didn't need a lot of water pressure to brush his teeth or shave….though the shower was off the table now. There was only so much hot water and….well he would take a bath tonight. He had just wanted to shower for the enjoyment of showering, that was all, and he could take a bath later tonight for the enjoyment of taking a bath. Yes. There was an enjoyment to it, wasn't there?

Women had the right idea about all of this.

Masami had loved her baths and the things she added to them. Bubbles and salts and balls of he didn't even know what that fizzed and smelled good….women were so lucky like that. It had always seemed enjoyable…and now he wished that he had taken Masami up on that offer to share a bath with her…but he had declined because he'd had work to do…but maybe he could borrow some of those bath things from Daughter. He was a man but he was also the President of Claw and he could do whatever he wanted…and he maybe wanted to see if it was really as nice as it seemed. Women did spend a lot of time bathing and grooming.

And putting on makeup.

Which he would not be trying. Daughter…she had taken up the entire bathroom counter with her cosmetics which she did not need, she was beautiful as she was, and also….also they looked more like son's art supplies than products which were meant to be applied to the skin…but he had always felt that way. There was a process to it, a complicated process, which he had seen Masami go through many times. She would sit down at her vanity table and paint her face even though she didn't need it, she had been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life up to that point, and Daughter….well she was getting older…and he made a mental note to get her one of those vanity tables.

Because he really wanted the bathroom counter back.

There was hardly enough room for his shaving cream and aftershave. He was loathe to move any of her things, he had moved Masami's makeup things once and she had been very upset, but…well other people lived her too and they, mostly him since Son still had a few years before he had to shave, and he needed the counter space back. He needed it and…and this was not his razor. He looked down. Blue. His razors were blue but…not this blue. This was….Son was still ten, right? Right. Also this was a woman's razor and….oh. Daughter was that old already? He…had no idea what to do with that information…but he put her razor back down on the counter and…and there was his. He went back to shaving and tried not to think about the information that he had come into.

Daughter was old enough to shave.

Apparently girls started earlier than boys. He hadn't had to shave, well not every day, until his second year of high school but…well he was a man. He'd had body hair before he had even come close to having facial hair…and women only had body hair. He didn't quite know why they hated it so much, body hair was a normal marker of sexual maturity….and Daughter….well the less he thought about that the better. He wanted her to grow up. He wanted her to get older and…and then they could spend their lives together and….and it was nature's way. He had been about her age when he had started…well he had been twelve but…well maybe closer to thirteen but….well he was a man and boys matured more slowly than girls and…..

And he didn't want to think about this anymore.

So he didn't. Instead he focused on all that he had to do today. Meeting, meeting, teleconference, meeting, another meeting, disposing of a traitor, making some time to have lunch with Hatori, and the million and one small things that he had to do. Yes. He would rather go over his very busy day and not…the fact that Daughter apparently ha body hair which she was dealing with….like an adult….and how she was getting older and….and he had to deal with this. He had to deal with this and not…not think about this. That she was getting older and…was it alright to share a bed with her? Yes. She was still his child and as his child she would always be his child and…well she would grow up and…

A knock at the door.

"Yes?" asked Suzuki as he accidentally cut him under his chin. He didn't curse, not out loud, he just reached for some paper to dab at the blood and….and there was none left. Daughter was usually good about replacing the roll…no matter. He used pulled a towel over with his powers and dabbed the blood away and…and he would have to ask Fukuda to come back soon. He had the powers of a God. He could not bleed.

"Um….did you notice anything weird about the bed when you got up this morning?" asked Daughter

"No, why? Should I have?" asked Suzuki. The bed had been too big, too cold, and the emptiness on her side had been jarring. Was that what she had been referring to? Did she ever feel like that when she got up? Did she ever feel so alone…so profoundly alone…when she woke up? Did she ever….no. Well maybe. Her brother was gone and since the age of two he had been her one companion and…and maybe she felt the same way he did. Maybe she woke up expecting to see her brother and then when he was gone she felt….well she felt the same way he felt…or something. He didn't know. He didn't know how she felt…

Or how he felt.

He should have been a whole person on his own. A full and complete person. He didn't need anyone else. He had come to that realization when he had been young. When he had found himself unexpectadley alone in the world. One day he had just….been alone. It had been jarring, that first morning, when it had gone from light to dark and then light again. When he had woken up on a futon on Fukuda's floor and…and the room had been different. It had been jarring. He had woken up hundreds of times on Fukuda's floor but….but it had been jarring. The sound of his parents…the smell of his house…the fact that he would not be going home. The fact that it wasn't a sleepover, that it was his life now, that he would never wake up in his room again. That he would never go home again. That he would never set eyes on his mother and father, never speak to them, ever again.

That he was truly alone in the world….it had been jarring…but she would never find herself alone in the world…..

"No! I mean…no. Just….I put your bedding in the washer and…and now I'm going to make breakfast. I love you!" said Daughter before she ran away. Well someone certainly had some energy that morning…but it may have been born of nerves…or fear. He would talk to her again if she asked him to. He would be there for her as best as he could if she asked him to. He didn't know, though, what it was that she wanted him to do but….well he would do whatever she asked of him. That was how their relationship worked, they were a team, she took care of him and he took care of her.

Even if he did have to wake up to an empty bed sometimes.


	373. So You're Having an Existential Crisis

Weeds thought that they could just grow wherever they pleased…well they couldn't.

That wasn't how this worked. That wasn't how anything worked. Weeds could grow on the lawn, they didn't give a fuck about the lawn, what they cared about was their garden. These plants were theirs, and extension of them, and they didn't like waking up feeling like something was crowding them out and stealing precious water and nutrients from them like some sort of plant…vampire….plant-pire thing…no. Just no.

This could not be allowed to pass.

"I just want you to know that you've brought this on yourselves. All of you." Said Minegishi as they raised a hand. The weeds in their garden began to writhe. They could kill plants, yes, but they could change them too. It was difficult, changing one thing into another, but it was less of a waste than straight up murder. Murder was for people. Change was for plants. Plants could be repurposed. People were what they were.

Plants were so much easier to deal with.

"There. Now for the rest of your existence you will grow tomatoes. Enjoy being useful." Said Minegishi. They had done it, it hadn't been easy but they had done it, and now they could enjoy the fruits…vegetables…the plant which was classified as both a fruit and a vegetable at the same time. They picked it from the vines and took a bite…

And then immediately spat that bite out.

Dandelion seeds. The entire thing had been full of dandelion seeds. They caught the air as Minegishi spat them out. Wonderful. They were too tired, they had woken up tired, and now they would spend the rest of their day tired. Their quality of sleep was getting worse….well because they had fallen asleep on their own. They didn't usually do that. No medicine or drinking or weed or anything that they had to do to get their brain to the deepest part of sleep. No. They had let Ryou just put them to bed…and they had slept on and off….

More off than on.

And now, really, they needed more sleep. They needed to sleep and then get back to the drawing board when it came to their latest mistake. They really wanted a tomato. A nice tomato salad…or just a sack of them…or a glass of tomato juice….or maybe they could follow in the footsteps of their fearless leader and just pour themselves a nice glass of ketchup. Wonderfully disgusting…but not the weirdest thing that Suzuki got up to. Probably. They didn't know. They doubted, though, that he had ever accidentally ended up with a mouthful of dandelion seeds.

Minegishi probably should have done something about those.

They could see them caught in the air. The wind had picked up. The summer breeze, warm and not unpleasant, was carrying God only knew what over into Mob's yard. They could see them being carried away and maybe they should have done something. Those seeds would not stop in Mob's yard. They would follow the wind for kilometers and kilometers until they set down and grew God only knew what. Maybe Minegishi had a responsibility to do something about that. Maybe they needed to grow the hell up and take responsibility for their actions. They didn't know. They were too tired to deal with this right now. They were too tired to deal with a lot right now.

Like the little girl sitting on her lawn and watching the grass grow.

Minegishi had been able to feel Mob but they'd had no idea how close she had been. Ryou had described her aura as having someone screaming in your face no matter where you turned your head. Mob, to them, was bright. She was bright like staring into a lightbulb….but all the time. It was hard to judge just how far away she was since, once you got close enough, it was like staring into a lamp until your got black spots in your vision.

Or something.

They didn't know. All they knew was that Mob felt like she needed them. She was sitting down on the grass just staring and…and staring. Staring and staring and…and now she was wiping her eyes. Yeah, Minegishi needed to get over there. They didn't have a choice…well they did. They could have just left her there to cry in her back yard, nobody was putting a gun to their head to make them help, but they weren't heartless. They were an asshole, a misanthrope, and generally an unpleasant person to be around but they were not heartless.

Not when it came to Mob.

She was the only person…well next to Ryou…that they cared about. That they put ahead of themselves, who's needs they cared about, and who they would leave their garden and the mutants that they created within it to see what was making them cry. They crossed the lawn and grew the grass into a set of steps so they could get over the fence. They could have just climbed over but they didn't feel like it. Besides, who was going to say anything? Most of this Tokyo suburb, the neighborhood at least, was reserved for high ranking members of Claw and it's affiliates. It was all espers here, nobody would say anything, and if they did then what would be the point?

This was Claw. There would be no point.

Just like there was no point in Mob sitting around staring at the grass. She had her phone on the ground in front of her, and normally Minegishi would have been happy to have seen her with her nose out of it, but this was…not good. She was….not just sad but…it was hard to get a read on her aura. It was like staring into a lightbulb and being asked what brand it was. They didn't know. They had no idea what, exactly, she was feeling but they knew that her aura looked awful and her eyes were bloodshot and….

And she was wearing jeans?

"Hey, Mob." Said Minegishi as they came up next to her. Their eyes must have been deceiving them but…nope. She was wearing a pair of dark colored jeans. There was a hole in the knee, and someone had taken a sharpie to the left thigh, but she was wearing actual jeans. They were a bit too short on her, though, Minegishi could see the entirety of her pink socks…those weren't her pants. Those were her brother's pants….and that would have made sense since as far as they knew Mob didn't even own a pair of pants…because she hated pants….

So why was she wearing them now?

"Hi. What's up?" asked Mob as she wiped her eyes again. She was wearing pants under a dress and then her sweater, the gigantic one Shibata had made her, and she was….hiding. She was hiding her body in her clothes again…which meant that she was feeling self-conscious again…..

"Just doing some gardening. You?" asked Minegishi. They felt…their range wasn't that good…but they felt along as best as they could. They couldn't feel Mob's little brother…which meant that Fukuda, the wet ham sandwich of a human being that he was, was still gone….and he hadn't said anything else to Mob…but he didn't have to say anything else. He had done enough. He had talked about Mob in a way that he should have never let cross his mind and it had stuck with her and now she was sitting in the sun dressed like she was practicing for winter…and Minegishi was going to have to pick up the pieces of all of that…wonderful.

Fucking Fukuda.

"I'm just….I don't know. Thinking." Said Mob. She was thinking. That was….well they had told Mob a million times before that she needed to start thinking but….well she didn't need to be thinking about this. She didn't need to be thinking about her body and what creeps thought about it. She would end up wasting her life caring what creeps thought. Even if Minegishi beat Fukuda into an all-purpose pink paste another creep would take his place. That was just life when you had two x chromosomes…and it sucked…

And Mob was too young to know that it sucked.

"About?" asked Minegishi. They would let her tell them. She was in a bad place right now. Minegishi would let her lead. This was a very precarious place that they were in with her.

"I just…I'm just thinking about…about yesterday. About how much fun we had at movie night…until all the people started to die and…and stuff." Said Mob. Minegishi…well that was something unexpected. She was thinking about last night and…oh. Right. Those scenes. The two scenes that they should have been more fastidious about covering her eyes for. It had affected her, seeing that, and Minegishi…they would deal with it. They would deal with whatever Mob was feeling or thinking or anything.

Responsibilities of the bracelet.

Mob was still wearing hers. The pendant was tucked into her sleeve but Minegishi could tell that she was still wearing it…and also judging by the tan line where the band had ridden up she never took it off…and that bracelet came with responsibilities…on Minegishi's end. They may have been friends but Minegishi was the adult here and they were the one who had to pull Mob out of…this. Minegishi got into these sort of bad emotion pits and Mob…well she pulled them out of them without even trying…and Minegishi could do the same.

They had a responsibility to Mob…even if they weren't her parent they still had a responsibility to her.

"Yeah, that part was pretty fucked up. A couple parts were pretty fucked up. Listen, I feel bad for not covering your eyes for you during the….love scenes. I'm sorry if you feel uncomfortable and you can talk to me about anything that's bothering you or any questions that you might have." Said Minegishi. Next movie night they were vetting the options in the hat. Nothing rated above general audiences. They would gladly had sat through their millionth showing of Frozen if it meant that Mob didn't have to feel…however she was feeling right now.

"I'm…I liked the love scenes….how in love they were. I feel bad that Jack had to die…because he loved Rose and…and Rose loved him. She had found someone that she loved but then he died and…and a lot of people died…like the little baby." Said Mob. She wiped her eyes again. Minegishi took her hands away from her eyes and wiped her eyes themselves. They pulled them hem of their shirt up and wiped her eyes as best as they could.

They had really fucked up.

They hadn't even thought about the ending. The sheer amount of death…and of course Mob wouldn't have been able to handle that. This was Mob. She got upset when they had to kill garden slugs and beetles. She was a believer in love and friendship and…and she had probably never had any actual experience with death. Her mother was most likely dead, if defectors couldn't get far from Claw then a normal woman had no chance of getting away from the President, and from how Mob talked about her it seemed like everyone had just told her that her mom had run away. Like what you told your kid happened to a dog when it got hit by a car or something. Poor Mob. That had been way too intense with an eleven year old…and Minegishi should have thought of that….

Parenting was hard. That was why they had no plans of becoming one.

"Mob…people die all the time and…and it sucks-" said Minegishi. This was…if they had been more of an asshole then they would have walked away. This was beyond their paygrade. They could be a babysitter, fine, but this was something that her parents should have been dealing with. The only problem with that was that she didn't really seem to have any of those. Sure she had a sperm donor and an incubator but her incubator was most likely dead, and couldn't have been much of a mother if she had chosen to reproduce with Suzuki Touichirou of all people, and her sperm donor…well the less said about him the better. This was not Minegishi's responsibility…but it was. They weren't Mob's parent, they were her best friend, and that was as close to a parent as Mob was going to get.

"I know that people die all the time…my dad said so. He said that every single second two people die…and then he said a bunch of other numbers. He likes numbers. He told me how many people die and…and he says that everyone who's alive now will die." Said Mob. Minegishi….sincerely wondered if Suzuki Touichirou was on drugs….because it would have made sense. Either he was on drugs or he….legitimately had something wrong with his brain. His Daughter comes to him in the middle of an existential crisis and he just tells her how many people die a day? What even….well drugs were a hell of a drug but…well this gave credence to the personality disorder theory…or something more…but they did not have the mental space to sufficiently analyze Suzuki Touichirou. They had to focus on this Suzuki, Suzuki Shigeko.

"That's true. It's harsh but true….and it sucks. It sucks and it's ok to feel the way that you do." Said Minegishi. They knew that they couldn't undo what her dad said, what he did, but they could at least tell Mob that the way she felt was ok. That was what she needed, validation, and they knew that she wasn't getting it from her dad. That was all people wanted, really, or at least all that they had ever wanted back when they had been her age. Validation. Someone to say 'hey, Minegishi, you're ok' or something like that.

"I feel….I don't want to die." Said Mob. She sniffled again. Minegishi wiped more of her tears. She was shook…that movie had been way too much for her. She was having her fist existential crisis and she probably didn't even have the words for it. That must have been hell, being trapped in something terrifying and having no idea what was even happening to you. The words for it. Well Minegishi could at least give her the words for what she was feeling. For what was happening to her in her mind right now.

"Mob….you're having your first existential crisis. This is ok. Everyone has an existential crisis at some point in their lives, some of us more than once, but that's ok. You can feel however you're feeling right now. It's all ok." Said Minegishi slowly. They sounded….well they sounded like they would have wanted someone to sound when they had helped them through this…not that anyone had helped them through this. They had been alone in this just like they had been alone in the world for as long as they could remember. Even though they'd had parents, a sperm donor and an incubator, they'd had a profound sense of being alone in the world for as long as they could remember…and Mob did not need to feel like that. Nobody, but especially not Mob, needed to feel like that.

"Yeah. That's what my dad called it. Minegishi…I'm going to die. I'm…I mean my…I mean…I'm going to become one of those two people that die every second…and I don't want to be." Said Mob. She was crying now, sobbing, and this….Minegishi was doing their best. They had told her that she was going to be ok, that they were there for her, and…and they had no idea what else to tell her. They weren't a parent and this required parenting skills that they….just did not have. They'd never been a parent, they'd never had a parent, and they had no idea how to be a parent…but they knew how to be a friend. They'd been a friend for three years now, Mob's friend, and they knew her. She was freaking herself out because….because she had way too much on her shoulders as it was and…and now she was just starting to buckle under the weight of it all…but that was ok. Minegishi was there and they could help build her back up.

"Mob…listen. You're going to die but not for a while. You're eleven, you're healthy, and you're not reckless with your life. You're going to be around for a while. It's ok, though, to feel like you do. I felt the same way when I was your age. Death….it's a part of life. You'll die and so will I but not any time soon, ok? So how about we go inside where there's air conditioning and watch Frozen or Tangled or something else without mass suffering and unrealistic love stories?" asked Minegishi. They weren't going to lie to her. They weren't going to tell her that she would live forever if she just wished hard enough. People died. Everyone died. Minegishi had sent a few people, quite a few people, to their untimely ends…and Mob did not need to know about that. Mob was having a hard enough time dealing with her own death…but that was at least something that she could understand…not what Minegishi did for a living. Mob would die and she had to be ok with it…

But also she was eleven.

She was eleven and she was dealing with a lot. Her father was using her as a pseudo wife, she was raising her brother, she was growing up in a world domination cult, she had to work with a creep who sexualized her, and now she had to confront her own mortality. Minegishi…they were not going to lie to her. She was going to die someday but that didn't mean that she couldn't enjoy her life. That didn't mean that she couldn't get out of the sun, since this was one of her self-conscious days, and watch her favorite movies. Life was to live, not lie in wait for death, and now they were going to do something with their lives….and watching Frozen counted as doing something with their lives.

"Minegishi….I love you so much…and I would love to watch Frozen with you….I would love nothing more than to watch Frozen with you…while I still can." Said Mob. She wiped her eyes and then launched herself into a hug. Minegishi did not like to be unexpectadley touched but….well this was Mob. They forced themselves to stop tensing up, usually she gave more warning before she went into a hug, and they hugged her back. That was what she needed, a hug, and that was something that Minegishi could give. They could give her a hug and they could try their best to build her up…and they could only help that their best was good enough.

Since they had no clue, sometimes, what they were even doing.

They were her friend and…and maybe she needed something more than a friend. She was getting older and starting to have big feelings that Minegishi did not know how to deal with, now to help with, because…nobody had helped them. Nobody had ever been there for them when they had been her age and…and they had been truly alone in the world for so long. Mob didn't have to be alone in the world. She had Minegishi and Minegishi would always be there for her…as best as they could be. Mob…she had a friend but she needed a parent…and she didn't have any of those. She had a dead mother, a sperm donor, and Minegishi.

Minegishi was not anyone's parent and they had no intention of ever being.

They didn't know how to be parent. Hell, the barely even knew how to be a competent adult. Dear old mom and dad hadn't taken the time out of their regularly scheduled cruelty to teach them how to do…well anything. They had come into the world without knowing how to open a bank account, find a job, make a dentist's appointment, pay their taxes, or even how to do their own laundry properly. The group home hadn't helped either. At the age of fifteen they had been declared by the courts to be able to survive on their own….

They had done their best.

They had been fifteen years old, the year had been 2003, and internet cafes had been plentiful. They figured out how to get money, they hadn't needed Google to tell them that robbing drunks was easy, and they had figured out how to rent a room, one window facing a brick wall and occasional hot water, and how to find a job, they had one skill and they used it as best as they could. They had even managed to get the equivalent of a high school diploma without even having to work for it, all of those long hours spent hiding in libraries and bookstores really paid off. They had managed to figure out as much of how to function in the world as an adult as they could before joining Claw, they'd had nothing else to do and Claw had made them an offer that they would have been stupid to refuse. They had learned everything but parenting.

Which was why they were not a parent.

Not to their own child and not to their boss's kids either. Mob was not their kid and they were not her parent so…so certain fuck ups could be excused. Like teaching her that she could find all of the solutions to her problems at the bottom of a bottle or at the end of a joint. That…they hadn't known any better. They had been short sighted. They had seen an eight year old girl who had…a lot going on….and they had done what they had thought was best at the time. Now they saw, when they looked at her, an eleven year old girl with substance abuse issues that she should not have had and…and that she could have avoided. That had been their mistake but…well they hadn't known any better. They hadn't known what Mob would become to them and they hadn't…thought this far ahead. Well now here they were…and at least that was the worst of it…but not the last of it.

There was no last of it.

There was just the latest of it. The latest in a series of Minegishi Toshiki's generous supply of fuck ups. This one was…not as bad…but not good either. They had let her watch Titanic. They had assumed that she had seen it, or at least knew of it, since the stupid thing had been the biggest movie in the world for…well she hadn't been born yet. Minegishi had been nine when that movie had come out. They had been nine and they had been able to handle it. They had seen it five times, theatres were easy to sneak into back then, and they hadn't been disturbed by it. On the contrary. They had loved the scenes when the boat went down. They almost made up for the boring love story…though the drawing scene….that had been something….

And they had assumed that the drawing scene was the only thing they would have to cover Mob's eyes for.

Well that and the car scene…that damn car scene. They knew that eventually they would have to answer her questions about the car scene. She was eleven and…and Minegishi had been about her age when they had figured things…and themselves….out. Mob was just a kid but….well she was growing up whether Minegishi wanted her to or not…but she had not been grown up for the veritable orgy of death and heartache that was the end of Titanic…and now Minegishi had to pick up the pieces of that…

But that was ok. They had fucked up and they would fix it. That was what it was to be an adult.


	374. Cake Makes Everything Better

Kids loved cake.

Therefore tonight's dinner was going to be cake. It was the least that Shibata could do. Mob…poor kid. Titanic was a great movie but, yeah, not for kids. He had been ten when he'd seen that movie for the first time but Mob was even more sensitive than he had been….well he had cried plenty…well after that he'd been given something to cry about….but he was not going to be treating Mob like that! He was never going to treat anyone like that!

That was no way to treat a person.

"Hey Mob, you want to lick the bowl? Come on, cake mix?" asked Shibata as he held up cake mix bowl. He hadn't scraped the sides well enough. If mom had been there she would have been so ashamed…but this was for Mob. Kids loved cake mix. When he'd been a kid, on those rare times where he'd been allowed to cook with mom in peace, mom had always said never to waste food. Ever. Leaving this much batter in the bowl…well she would have thought that it had been a waste….but this wasn't a waste of batter.

Kids loved cake batter.

"No thank you." Said Mob. Shibata frowned. He had seen her eating cake batter before….and Sho loved it. Sho, if you didn't watch him carefully, would steal the bowl of cake batter and eat it under the table. Sort of like Shibata had done when he had been little…back when he had been able to still fit under the table. God he must have been five….no, four. Yeah. He had ben four the last time he had been able to comfortably fit under the table. The last time he had been able to be easily picked up….

And kids loved to be picked up.

Well he knew that he had…and he knew that he loved to pick kids up. They were so small and….and he could easily lift a grown man but kids, well kids were….kids. They were small and cute and….and also they liked being picked up. It made them happy. Their parents…not so much….but President Suzuki knew that he would never hurt his kids. He was always careful when he picked Sho up. He may have been an esper but Shibata still treated him like he had glass bones and paper skin. That was how you were supposed to treat kids.

Otherwise you got fired and had to leave town and never come back.

He would treat Mob like she was made of rice paper and fine crystal. She was Sho's sister after all, and a more powerful esper, and also she looked like she needed to be picked up and thrown in the air a few times. She was sitting there at the table all hidden in the sweater he had made her, he'd have to make her another one that was just…closer to the right size, and also she was in long pants and a long sleeved long dress….Minegishi had said that she was hiding in her clothes probably because of what Fukuda had said….

God…he hated that guy.

He didn't like to hate people. Mom had always said that hating people was a waste of time. If you disliked someone enough to hate them then the best thing was just to not let the person stay on your mind. If Fukuda had just been another coworker then…well he could have just ignored him but….he messed with the kids. Not…well not like how everyone else thought. He had been on the receiving end of those accusations before in his life just because he was a man who liked kids and just happened to be almost three meters tall. He hoped beyond hope that Fukuda was just a guy who liked kids but had never had any of his own….but he was just….

He was just so creepy when it came to the kids.

Shibata hated that word, creepy, and the accusations that came with it…but he had thought in his mind that Mob was dating a grown man and he had kept it to himself. Mob was eleven. She did not need to be taken away from dolls and princess movies to do….that…or even to think about that and if Shibata had ever had those sorts of suspicions he would tell Suzuki…well after he taught whatever guy who thought that Mob was old enough for….all of that….a lesson….

He didn't much like teaching people lessons but…well he did what he had to do.

He didn't want to think about this, though, because Mob was there and she was sad and mopey and he had to be there for her. He couldn't be there for her if he was thinking about teaching Fukuda a lesson. He had to be there for her and…and he had to teach her how to make a cake. They were making a normal yellow cake with frosting, something nice and simple that everyone could enjoy, and Mob….she was very sad for someone who was making a cake.

But that was ok. He was there for her.

"Are you sure? Your brother loves to eat the batter." Said Shibata as he held the bowl out to her. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She was holding her stomach….she must have been hungry….but she just…didn't want to eat the batter. That didn't make sense. She had eaten cake batter before…and her brother loved cake batter…and he didn't know if she could hold out until the cake was done. She was hungry now! She was hungry and she was a kid and she needed to eat or she would never grow up and then she would be little forever….but not in a good way!

"I know that Sho eats cake batter….he likes to do stuff like that….and I wish that I had let him eat more cake batter…when I could…" said Mob. Oh. She must have been sad about how her brother was gone. That…also made sense….though he would still take responsibility for his part in this. He was the one who had written Titanic and put it in the hat and let it get drawn from the hat without ever once thinking of the child in the room. It was easy, sometimes, that Mob was as young as she was. She didn't act like a kid all the time….but she was a kid. She was just weirdly mature for someone her age, and she got up to a lot of adult stuff that she shouldn't have, but she was still a kid and he should have remembered that.

"Don't worry, he'll come back eventually and then I'll make you guys a whole bowl of cake batter to share." Said Shibata. That would have been the best day ever! But….but she didn't seem to see it that way. She was still sitting there at the table and she was still holding her stomach and…and she must have been hungry. Hungry and also….also next movie night they were watching something else. Like Pompoco…that was a great movie…but also maybe not for her…he'd let her pick. He'd let her and her brother pick and then they would have a good time and just…happy kids were the best kids.

"Sho can eat it all on his own. He's the one who likes cake batter and…and I'm not Sho…Sho's not here….and he might never come back…." Said Mob. Oh no! She was getting even sadder and…and he needed to fix this! Pick her up? She might like that….but also she might now. She was sitting very still and maybe she didn't want to be picked up…but if she had been Sho then he would have just picked her up…but like she had said, she was her own person. She may have been related to Sho but she was not Sho. She was her own person….and he would do his best to make her feel better! He would find something to say or to do or-

Or he would deal with this.

"What?! Sho's never coming back!" said Shimazaki as he teleported into the kitchen. Shibata…he reminded himself that Shimazaki had something wrong with him and he couldn't help who he was. He couldn't help being the way he was. He'd had a hard life, from what he had shared, and Shibata…well he hadn't had as hard a life as Shimazaki'd had…or a very hard life at all….and maybe that meant that he didn't have the right to complain about Shimazaki because he was like a kid in a lot of ways and he didn't know better….like Sho did….

Shimazaki dipped a finger into the actual cake pans.

Sho was ten. Sho didn't know better because he was ten. Sho could eat the batter from the pans because he was only ten years old and he didn't know better. Shimazaki had been told time and time and time again not to mess with the cake pans…and everything else in the kitchen. Well he had told Sho time and time again to be more careful in the kitchen and not eat things until they were done…but he was a little guy so it was understandable. Shimazaki was thirty, almost thirty one, and the oldest person living in that house.

So, really, he should have known better.

"He's coming back….just not now. Now get out of here." Said Shibata. He knew that he maybe shouldn't have been so harsh in front of Mob, she was very sensitive especially now after seeing the end of Titanic, but Shimazaki didn't do subtlety. You needed to be very firm and very direct with him…and even then he didn't always listen.

"Hey, I have every right to be in this kitchen." Said Shimazaki. He tried to dip another finger into the batter. Shibata was about to take it away from him but Mob put a barrier around it. Shimazaki either didn't want to break through her barrier or he couldn't. Mob was, apparently, strong enough to stop him from teleporting. She was so strong for a kid…but she was still a kid and no matter how strong she was he was going to remember that. It was always hard when people couldn't see you for the person you were, just for what you could do, and Mob didn't need to go through that.

"You can have some cake when we're done…ok? Then everyone….everyone can share…" said Mob softly. She was still hungry and sad…and Shimazaki knew better than to mess with her when she was lie that. He leaned in close and then pulled back.

"Fine…but give me that. I have feelings that I need to eat." Said Shimazaki. Shibata….well Mob didn't want this cake batter…and he knew h should have just scraped the sides of the bowl into the pan…but then Shimazaki would have gone back to eating directly from the pan and Shibata….well that was gross. He knew that germs died during the cooking process but he still didn't want Shimazaki sticking his fingers into the cake pan and eating all of the batter. It was just plain unpleasant.

"Fine. Here." Said Shibata. You had to pick your battles sometimes…and sometimes you just had to give people what they wanted. Well kids, obviously, because giving them what they wanted made them happy. They had their whole adults lives to be miserable, to see the world for how big and dark and cruel that it was, but as children they were shielded from that…mostly. Mob…she knew a lot about the adult world, more than she should have known, but that was alright….well not for her but…but she was still a good kid. She was just a good kid that drank and smoked….and he would much rather have had her eat her feelings. She usually drank and smoked when she was upset and…well he would not be helping her do that…

But he could help her eat her feelings.

"Well he's not coming back but, hey, we have a cake coming to us as soon as that oven is done preheating." Said Shibata. He couldn't believe that he had forgotten to preheat the oven. That was his fault. He was always skipping steps. Mom had always said that he was too scatterbrained to be in the kitchen with her. He hadn't been able to help it then and he couldn't help it now. He just got so excited at the prospect of the cake being done and about how happy Mob would be when she had something to eat that he had forgotten to preheat the oven. Well that was alright. They would just have to wait a minute. Then Mob would feel better, eating your feelings wasn't good but neither was any of the other stuff she got up to so there, and then everything would be ok again.

"I…I…." said Mob. She was shaking her head and…and she was shaking. Poor Mob…well she had been like that all day according to Minegishi….but still. Poor Mob.

"It's ok, if you changed your mind about the batter I can make more." Said Shibata. Maybe she had changed her mind and she was hungry for cake batter after all. Well that was fine, he could do that for her, and he would do that for her. She was a kid and kids needed food and….well he knew that cake batter wasn't good for her….but if she wanted it then he would make her some. He couldn't say no to kids. Who could?

"I…no. I don't know. I want….I want….Sho would have liked and….and I just…I miss my brother…I guess." said Mob. She wiped her eyes and…and that was so sad! But he had to stay calm. He was the adult here and he had to be there for Mob and she….well this was just the saddest thing ever. They were really close, her and her brother, since they were so close in age. They were only half a year apart, if his math was right, and that was pretty damn close. Poor Sho. He must have been really premature. That might have been the reason why the President was so distant with him. Some people thought like that. Some people thought that it was best to put distance between yourself and someone you almost lost. That might have been why Mob was so protective over him and also why Fukuda went with him everywhere…it was better than the other theory that was floating around. He knew that being even a couple weeks premature could be bad for you but months and months….poor Sho...and poor Mob for having to be apart from the brother she had almost lost when she had been just a baby.

"Hey, hey, that's ok. He's coming back and then when he does we can bake another cake…or set off some fireworks….or have another movie night….and you two can pick….but please don't be sad!" said Shibata. He didn't know what to do with sad kids besides pick them up and make them feel better…and he just….well he wanted to but he knew better than to just randomly pick kids up like that. Still. This was just so sad….seeing her like this….and being so powerless to help her when she clearly needed it.

"I'm sorry…I just….I just can't help it. I just….I love you guys so much! I love how you're always so nice to everyone, even Shimazaki, and….and you take good care of people and…and please take care of Sho….ok? When I'm…when I'm gone please take care of my little brother. I love him so much….and I love all of you…" said Mob. He pulled his sleeve down and wiped her face. Well he made a mess out of her makeup….but he didn't say anything about that in case that got her even more upset. She loved her makeup and looking cute…and she was always so adorable…especially when she was happy….and he just wanted her to be happy again!

"Don't worry. Whenever you're not around I'll be right here and I'll take care of Sho. You don't have to worry about anything." Said Shibata. She worried so much about her little brother….but he could take care of him too. She must have wanted a break…and that should have been so confused. It was hard when you loved someone and you wanted a break from them….and she was only eleven. She was starting to realize how exhausting a labor of love could be. It was exhausting in a good way…but not always….and that was ok. She was eleven and she could feel however she wanted to.

"Ok….but make sure he eats a fruit and a vegetable at least once a week….and also make sure he takes a bath every day….and he'll get in the water if you give him a poptart and a can of soda as a reward….and also he likes to be read to before he goes to sleep….and I wrote a whole instruction book and when Fukuda comes back from wherever he took Sho…then tell him that I told you that you could have it….ok? Please take good care of my little brother." Said Mob. Shibata nodded. He could watch Sho every once in a while…or all the time. He was such a great kid. Well he could be a little bit…like Shimazaki sometimes. Sho, if he hadn't looked almost exactly like the President, could have been Shimazaki's son…but that was ok. Sho was a good kid even when he was acting like a smaller version of Shimazaki.

"I'll guard him with my life, don't worry. Ok? While you're gone I'll take care of him like my own." said Shibata. He would love to watch Sho…and hopefully now she felt better. She carried a lot with her. She did a lot for her little brother, she was such a good sister and kid, but it was good that she was getting better at letting other people help out. She wasn't like her father in that way. The President only let Fukuda, and now Hatori, help him with everything that came with running Claw. He couldn't be much of a father to his kids with all he had to do…and it was good that Mob wasn't taking after her dad in that way. She was a lot like him in a lot of ways but in a lot of ways she was nicer….well she let people see that she was nice. Apparently the President could be very nice, according to Hatori, but he never let it show for some reason. Mob was the opposite. Maybe she took after her mom.

"I-I'm not going….I mean I am….I mean….I don't know. Let's put the cake in the oven…and then let's make frosting and then…and then we can all have cake for dinner and…and we can all be happy….and we should be happy together." Said Mob. Yes. Ok, she seemed better now…..and that was great! She was on board with this cake thing and now…well now they were left with one more thing to deal with.

"That sounds like a great plan, Mob, the best plan ever. Ok, now….what kind of frosting do you want? Buttercream or whipped cream?" asked Shibata

"Whipped cream but….but leave it on the side….because that way people can put their own frosting on and…and also….also we should make something that isn't sweet for Minegishi….because they think that sugar is poison….and stuff." Said Mob. Shibata shook his head. Minegishi and sugar…well it didn't matter. He knew how to make other kinds of cakes.

"Mob, that's a great idea! Ok, so we can make them a spice cake or a carrot cake…which are sweet but not that sweet…and they do like sugar, you know, they just like to act like they don't…but it's fine. Now come on, let's make frosting!" said Shibata. She was better now…better-ish…and she would be be all the way better by the time that the cake and frosting were done. Who could resist homemade frosting? No one, that was who. She was better-ish and soon she would be all the way better…and hopefully cake and frosting made…well hopefully he had fixed what he had messed up. He shouldn't have let her watch Titanic and…and she was going to be bothered for a while, he knew that he had been, and…well cake could help.

Was there anything, really, that cake couldn't fix?


	375. Baby Godzilla

Baby sis didn't have any powers.

She had an aura, a red one like his, but she didn't have any powers to go with it. That was fine. She was a baby and babies didn't have powers. Well big sis had been born with her powers…but she was the Prodigy. She had been born with her powers and she was the strongest in all of Claw aside from dad. Sho…he was the Awakened Child. He had been born with an aura, dad had said so, but no powers. As he got older he could sometimes move stuff without touching it and other stuff like that….but not that often and not as well as big sis. That was why he was the Awakened Child. He'd gone into an Awakening machine when he had been little and then he had come out with powers….and scars….

Scars that baby sis would never have.

"Sho do! Sho do!" shouted baby sis as she tugged on his jacket. She wanted him to do…something. He didn't know. She didn't know a lot of words. She was just tugging on his jacket and….well it was too big. He tugged it back up. She had seen his scars before but she might not have been able to remember them. She might not have been able to remember them and…and that was the one thing about him that he hoped that she forgot about. She lived in the Seventh Division and her mom was a Scar, so she knew what they were, but she could never know what his were.

Where he had gotten them from.

"Sho! Sho do!" shouted baby sis. Her aura was showing now, her little baby aura, her red little baby aura. His aura had been there since as long as he could remember. Hers had been with her, probably, since the day that she was born. He was an esper, a powerful one, like the upper echelon. She might have wound up being a powerful esper too. He didn't know. He didn't know if she would be a powerful esper or even an esper at all….

Having an aura didn't mean, really, that she had any powers.

He had been born with an aura like she was born with anything more than her aura. There was no guarantee that she would have any kinds of powers at all. Sho had taken too long to get his powers, and maybe he never would have gotten his powers, so he'd had to have gone into the Awakening Machine and….and baby sis could not know about that. This place had an Awakening Lab but that was in the basement. Baby sis lived near the top floor. She didn't know that there even was a basement. She wasn't allowed to leave this room on her own, she was too little, and…and her mom loved her and she would never put Mukai into one of those machines…..

Sho wouldn't let her.

"What do you want me to do?" asked Sho as baby sis tugged on him. She was so perfect, the most perfect, and she didn't need to be put into one of those machines. She may not have had her powers and…and her mom wasn't going to make her feel bad about having powers. Moms weren't like that. Moms loved you for who you were, like big sisters, but not like dads. Dads didn't love you for who you were, they loved you for who you were going to be, who they decided that you had to become…

Sho wasn't going to be like that.

When Sho become someone's dad he was going to love his kids no matter what. He was going to love them if they had all the powers or none of the powers or if they were….like him….or if….well there was nothing that could ever make him treat his kids the way dad treated him. He wasn't going to put them in an Awakening Machine and….and also when they grew up he wasn't going to tell them all the time that they had to go and make more people named Suzuki just because the world needed more people named Suzuki….even though was Japan and there were a bunch of people called Suzuki….but it wasn't enough for there to be more people called Suzuki…

They had to be related to dad.

"Do! Sho now! Sho do now!" said baby sis. Sho wished that he had a translator. She wanted him to do something but he didn't know what….but it must have been very important. Her eyes were all blue and stuff. Well they were always blue but they were doing that thing that his eyes did when the pupils got small and stuff. Dad's eyes did that too. Maybe that was just the way that blue eyed people looked when they were focused. It was harder to tell with brown eyed people. Big sis's eyes were so brown that they were almost black so he had no idea what her eyes really looked like when she focused.

Maybe like mom's had been.

Mom had brown eyes. Her eyes had been brighter than big sis's, a different and brighter shade of brown, and…he couldn't remember what her eyes had looked like when she had been focusing. He had trouble even remembering what shade of brown her eyes had been…but he had pictures of her in his old tablet so he would just check there later and he would stop thinking about mom and he would…he would let baby sis talk to him and drag him away from her tiny table…and whatever else that she wanted to do.

He loved her so much and when you loved someone then you played with them and did whatever they wanted.

"What do you want me to do? You want me to draw?" asked Sho as he picked up a crayon. Baby sis slapped it out of his hand and pointed behind him. Sho turned and saw the pile of her toys. Her dolls and cars and animals and planes and blocks. They had been playing city….well he had been playing city she had been playing Godzilla or something.

"Sho do! Sho do!" said Baby sis. She was tugging on him. He crawled in the direction she was tugging him in. She was little, she couldn't hurt his coat, but she could pull it off. If she pulled it off then he didn't know what he would do. Well put it back on….but then she would have seen his scars…and then she would ask about them or poke them or something….and he didn't know what he would do if that happened.

He would never lie to her.

But he couldn't tell her the truth, either, because she was too little for the truth. She was too little to know what happened here at this Division. How the Awakened became awakened. Sho knew…he knew a lot of things that she could never know. Like how many Awakened died….and how they died…before they became the Awakened. How many of them were useless. How being in those machines didn't even guarantee that you got powers. How she didn't need to be in one of those machines because she just…didn't need to be in there. Even if she didn't have any powers yet….and even if she never did…and even if she ended up with hardly any powers at all…

Baby sis could not know that being in an Awakening Machine was even an option.

"You want to play city again? You want to build with the blocks?" asked Sho as he made one of her blocks float. These were the giant kind that looked like bricks. He and big sis used to build forts and stuff with these when they had been really little, too little for real blocks, and they were fun. Real blocks were more fun…but also harder to stack. They were harder to stack and she…well she was little and…and maybe the next time he saw her she would be big enough for real blocks…

He hoped that he saw her before that.

"Sho! Sho! Sho do!" big sis was laughing and clapping now. She was so happy and her aura was happy…and she was smiling. She was smiling and she was showing her little baby teeth. She looked like she had all of them if you didn't look too closely. He could see that she had most of her front teeth but her back teeth were still coming in. Maybe she would have all of her teeth, not just a few teeth with gaps, by the next time he saw her….

He hoped that he saw her before that time came.

Especially because she could bite hard enough with the few teeth that she already had. She had some teeth, not a lot of them, and they were sharp. She had always been a biter, well she had been a gummer when he had met her, and that was just who she was. When she got older she would stop biting, maybe, he didn't know. He loved her for who she was but also….also he couldn't let her grow up to be the sort of person who bit other people…or was mean. Not that he would ever think of her as mean…

She was a baby, she couldn't help it.

She was a baby and she couldn't help her little baby slap and hits and bites and kicks. She was only a baby and babies weren't old enough to know what they were doing. Just like when he had been a little kid he hadn't known what he had been doing when he had hit big sis….no. That wasn't fair. He knew that he had been trying to hurt her but….but he hadn't known any better than to be a jerk….because he had thought that his feelings were the only feelings that mattered….but he was older now and he knew better. He knew better and baby sis didn't know better.

She didn't know better than to stop tugging on his coat.

She was laughing and tugging on his coat as he built their city back up with his powers. She was pointing with one hand and tugging on the collar of his shirt with the other hand. She reached up and took her hand off of his coat…but that was sort of a stupid thing to do because now she was tugging on his hair…and she was strong. She was strong and also her little baby nails were still as sharp as they had been when he had met her. Her nails were digging into his head and her fingers were pulling at his hair and…

And she was just a baby and she didn't know any better.

"Hey, come on. Be Godzilla in our city, not my hair." Said Sho as he tried to get her hand out of his hair. She had sharp nails and strong fingers but he managed to go, finger by finger, until her had was free. Their city was built and she could have gone over there and went all Godzilla all on their city and not his hair…but she didn't seem to want to. She was banging her hand on her little baby art table and stomping her foot…and he had no idea what it was that she even wanted.

"I do! I do!" said baby sis as she banged her hand and stomped her foot. She was…her aura was showing…and he had no idea how to figure out what she wanted. Her mom had stepped out for work stuff, she said that she would be back in an hour and that Sho had to call her if something went wrong, but this did not count as something going wrong. She was just…she wanted something and he had no idea what it was but…but he could figure it out. He was a good big brother and he could figure out what it was that his baby sister wanted.

"Yeah, you can go be Godzilla now baby sis." Said Sho. He picked up her stuffed dinosaur, it was pink but she didn't have a green one so it was ok, and put it on her head. There. Now she even looked like Godzilla…and maybe she wanted to watch Godzilla. The ones in color, not the ones in black and white that had come out when dad had been a kid, baby sis would have liked those. Maybe. He didn't know. She was mostly allowed to only watch educational baby stuff….even though those shows were boring…and if he had been in charge of her then he would have let her watch whatever she wanted…

But he wasn't even her real big brother so, no, he wasn't the one in charge.

"I do! I do now!" said baby sis. Her aura was bright and now she was waving her hands around. Her dinosaur toy fell off of her head. He put it back on and she shook it off. She was waving her hands and stomping her little baby foot….and now her sock was coming off. He reached down and grabbed her foot. She couldn't lose her sock. There was nothing more annoying than losing a sock. Losing a plain black or white sock was annoying because once you lost one then you wound up having an uneven number of socks. Losing a cool sock or a silly sock, her socks were also slippers which made them cool and also they made her feel look like she had pink robot feet which were silly, was the worst because then you couldn't ever wear the other sock ever again.

He got kicked in the face for his trouble.

But he didn't care if she kicked him in the face or not. She was a baby and her little feet didn't hurt at all and even if they did then he wouldn't have gotten mad at her. She was his baby sis after all…his pretend baby sis…and he had been left in charge of her….well in charge of keeping her from hurting herself. She was always trying to do something dangerous. Not now, though, now she was trying to play Godzilla…or something. He didn't really know. The city of blocks was right there, she had her dinosaur toy, so why wasn't she trying to be the baby Godzilla?

He didn't understand her sometimes…but that was ok because he didn't have to understand her to love her.

"Yeah, you can go and be Godzilla now. Go on! Have fun!" said Sho. He pointed over towards the city of blocks and dolls and animals and cars. The city of baby toys. The city of baby toys was right there and she had nothing stopping her from being the baby Godzilla. She wanted to be. She was pointing towards the city just like she was. She was pointing and her aura was flaring. She had kind of a bright aura now. That was good….no. He was thinking about this the way that dad would have thought about it. Her aura was her aura. She had an aura and the fact that she even had an aura was go-it was a thing. Her aura was her aura and it was a part of her. She had red hair, blue eyes, and a red aura. Her aura was just another part of her and it wasn't good or bad. Her aura just was.

"I do now! Now!" said baby sis. She was pointing and she was making her aura flare and…and he made his aura flare. She did the same. He pulled his aura in close. She did the same. She was copying him…like they were playing Simon Says…a game of Simon Says that he hadn't even known that they had been playing….that he hadn't even known that she had been wanting to play…a game that he hadn't even known that she could play…

She was getting bigger….and so were her powers….and that was ok…

She was an esper. She was an esper and she was….well she was a person with an aura and…and he loved her. He loved her if she had powers, if she didn't have powers, if she had baby powers, if she was more powerful than him, if she….if there were ifs that he had never even thought about. He didn't know. All he knew was that he had found himself in a game of Simon Says…and he was Simon…and she was trying her best to win….

She didn't have to try to win…or even to play the game.

"Mukai…are you trying to…use your powers?" asked Sho. She was…he knew that she was but…but maybe she was trying to do something else. Maybe she was just….being a baby. Maybe she was just being a baby and just…not knowing what it was that she was even doing. Yeah. Sort of like how she hit him and kicked and also did other things like eat her boogers or throw her baby mush all over the kitchen or hide her sippy cup behind the couch where she couldn't reach….

She was just a baby and she didn't always know what she was doing.

"I do! I do!" said baby sis. Her aura was flaring and…and she was trying…but maybe she just didn't know what she was doing or…or something. She didn't need to worry about having powers….she was perfect the way she was. She was the most perfect baby who ever had been a baby and….and she was not him. She was nothing like him. She had been born right.

She needed to know that she had been born right.

"Are you trying to use your powers? Because…because you shouldn't. You don't need powers. You don't need powers because you….you're perfect just the way that you are, baby sis. Do you know that? That you're a good baby sis? And that you don't need to use your powers or even have them?" asked Sho. He wished that he had some kind of Sho to Mukai translator app or something. She was still trying and…and she didn't have to. She didn't have to sit there day after day thinking that she had been born wrong and…well she didn't have a big sister but…but she was going to grow up here at this Division completely surrounded by espers…and she didn't need to think that she had been born wrong and that everyone else had been born right. She didn't need that kind of thing inside of her head.

"I do! I do Sho!" said baby sis. No…no. She did not need to have powers like him and…and she did not need to be like him. He hoped that she never, ever, ever thought like that again. That she needed to be like him. She just…he felt cold. She felt…her aura felt…he felt cold. She was….he used to be little and…and when he had been little big sis…he remembered that he had been so little and dad and big sis…they had been playing with…well they had been tossing something back and forth in the yard with dad….with powers…and he had wanted to play too and then….

And then dad had called him tiresome.

Dad had called him tiresome and then…and then the next thing that he remembered was his head hurting a lot…and his head hurt now. Not like a headache but…but like he had…been hit by something and….and the only thing that had hit him was little baby sis's little baby fist and…and he was…he was big now. He was big and he had powers and…and he was cold. He was wearing a coat but also…also the coat did nothing and he was cold…but also sweaty…..like his brain didn't get the message that he was too hot…too hot and too cold and…

And his head hurt…his whole body hurt…

"Baby sis….Mukai…you don't have to do that…" said Sho. He took deep breaths and tried to count in his head. He tried…he did his best. He did his best to count and…and to remember how to breathe and…and that he needed to decide if he was hot or cold and…and now his aura was trying to turn into a barrier. He was trying to make a barrier and…and he was trying to stop himself and….and baby sis…she was copying him. She was making her aura bright and…and she didn't have to do that…because she was baby sis and….and she was good and….and she had been born right. She had been born right and everyone else in the whole world had been born right and baby sis….she could tell that he had been born wrong….and she should not have been trying to be like him. She was…she was baby sis and she had been born right and he had been born wrong…

And she should not have been trying to be like him.

'I do! I do Sho!" shouted baby sis. She was trying to be like him and…and she wouldn't stop. She was going to…to be like him and….and his head hurt and…and his hair was….it was sticking to his head and…and his head hurt and….and his whole body hurt. He felt…up and down his arms he felt needles and…and his back…his whole body felt like….like fire and then…and then he was trying to twitch and…and he had twitched for so long and….and he hadn't even tried to and…and she didn't…Mukai didn't…

She didn't need to be like him.

"No! Stop it!" said Sho. He hadn't meant to yell at her…but he had and…and she cried and…and now she was running away. He watched her run away. He watched her run over to the couch and he watched…she was trying to hide…she was trying to hide from him and…and he had done that to her. He had messed up. He had messed up and now…now she was looking at him like….

She was looking at him like he was dad.

He made a fist and before he knew what he had been even starting to do he was hitting himself. He had done it twice before he stopped himself. He…he had promised big sis that he would never hit himself again but also…also he just…he had promised baby sis that he would be a good big brother to her and…and he needed to be better. He needed to be better and he needed…he needed to…to make this right with her…

If that was even possible.

He tried not to cry. She was still trying to be behind the couch and…and he…he didn't know what to do. He knew that he shouldn't go near her. When he was scared, when he had been little, he had always hated it when mom had tried getting him out of his hiding place. After dad had yelled at him or punished him mom would…she would find him and tell him to come out and….she would tell him that she was sorry that dad had gotten mad at him and that…that he should have been more careful not to make dad mad because…because he knew how dad was. How dad had been…for as long as he could remember. How he had decided years ago that he never wanted to be. He never wanted his kids to be like him. To be scared of him. To look at him the same way that he looked at dad and…

And baby sis was looking at him like that.

"I-I'm sorry…..please come out….I'm sorry…..so sorry…" said Sho. He wiped his tears. She poked her head up. She was looking at him now. He smiled at her as best as he could...but he didn't want to smile. He had been trusted with her and…and he had made promises to her…and then he had yelled at her. She was just a baby and she didn't even know, probably, how upset he was and…and that him being upset had nothing to do with her.

So he had to tell her.

Dad….mom had said that dad punished him because that was how his parents had treated him and…and that he didn't have a lot of patience. He had a lot to do and a lot on his mind and….and that he was just the way that he was and…and that Sho needed to just stop being the way he was, stop bothering dad and doing bad things, so that he wouldn't get punished…and he wouldn't…he would never treat his own baby sister that way…or his own kids…or his own pretend baby sister…or anyone.

He was not dad.

"Mukai….I got upset but…but not with you. I could never be upset with you. I just…when you were trying to use your powers it made me sad." Said Sho. Mukai covered her eyes and then took her hands away. He tried to smile but it didn't reach his eyes and…and she tried again. She took a couple steps forward and tried again. She was playing peekaboo, no, not Simon Says….and he would play whatever she wanted to play. He did the same thing, she was Simon and she said play peekaboo, and as he did it then she did it too….

She took another step forward.

"I love you a lot and I'm sorry about how I treated you. I shouldn't have yelled at you…especially not because I got scared." Said Sho. She was in front of him now and she was covering her eyes. She was trying to walk with her eyes covered. He reached over with his hand, not his powers, and steadied her. He expected her to be afraid, he regretted reaching for her as soon as he did, but she wasn't scared. She threw herself into his arms.

And she smiled.

He tried to smile back down at her. She was there and…and she didn't seem too scared but….but he had been the same way when he had been little. He had gone back to dad afterwards….and he had been like dad. He had yelled at her and…and he hadn't hit her. He would exorcise himself like a spirit if he ever hit her. She was his baby sis and…and he would never do anything to hurt her. Ever.

He would die first.

"I should never have yelled at you and…and I know that it's not an excuse but….but I get sad sometimes. Sometimes I get so sad and so mad and just…and sometimes I get hut without there being anything wrong with me…and it's not an excuse but just…you don't have to forgive me. If you don't forgive me then that's…that's ok. My dad…he yells at me too and….and I never want you to feel the way my dad makes me feel. Ok? I never want to make you mad or…or sad." Said Sho. Baby sis took her hands off of her eyes and then put them over his. He could see through the spaces in her fingers. She was focusing on him. Her eyes were focused and her aura was focused and she was staring at him…and he stared right back.

"Sho sad." Said baby sis. She said that and then she took her hands off of his eyes. She put her arms around him as best as she could, she had short little baby arms, and…..and she was right. He was sad. He was sad all the time, it felt like, he was sad and….and sometimes he felt happy but…but sometimes he felt like one of those fancy Valentine's Day chocolates that they sold in the fancy boxes. He had feelings, which were the outside, but on the inside he had a core of sadness and….

And baby Mukai needed to have a happiness core inside of her…she needed to not be like him….she needed to be better than he could ever be.

"Yeah…but you make me happy and…and I love you. Ok? I was a real fucking asshole back there and-fuck! Just….don't ever say that. Don't say fuck, ok? It's a bad word and you're too little to say that. Ok? Do you promise that you won't ever say fuck?" asked Sho. Nope. She was not allowed to curse. If her mom heard her cursing then…then he could just….well he could kiss all of his baby sis visits goodbye so….so he just…he prayed to whatever God that was out there that she never learned how to say fuck.

"Truck." Said baby sis. Sho smiled. That was…it was close but not so bad. Good. He would still be allowed to see her…and she would still want to see him. She was smiling and she had her finger in her nose…and that was fine. Just so long as she wasn't scared of him. Just so long as she wasn't going to ever look at him like that, like he was dad, because…because he never wanted anyone to look at him like that.

"Ok…that's good. Just don't say fuck….that's all I ask." Said Sho. He took both of her hands in his. She took her hands away and slapped him on both cheeks.

"Duck." Said baby sis. He didn't know if she was telling him to duck or if she had figured out how rhymes worked….or if she was trying to get as close to fuck as she could without actually saying it…but he wasn't going to let her get to fuck because…well they could have cursing matches when she was his age and he was older.

"Yeah…um…let's play city! Yeah…let's just….let's both be Godzilla, ok? I can be big brother Godzilla and you can be baby sis Godzilla…how's that sound?" asked Sho. There. They weren't upset, well he wasn't, and she had probably forgotten about what had happened. She was just a baby after all and her memory wasn't the best. He got up onto his knees so they were still about the same height and he started to walk her over to their city.

"Sho do. I do." Said baby sis as she held his hand. He was happy and he was happy and…and now they were both happy and…and that was all that he had ever wanted from her…or from another person. He just wanted her to be happy and…and he wanted to be happy, too….and he was happy. He felt happy.

He had a happy coating on the outside…but he had a core of sadness on the inside…but that was ok as long as he never showed baby sis what he was like on the outside.

"Yeah. You do….and I do too." Said Sho. He knocked down a building. Baby sis knocked down another one. That was what they did. They were big brother and little sister and they were playing together and…and they were both Godzillas together and…and he was happy. She was happy too. She was happy and he was going to keep her that way. She didn't have her powers yet, or at all, and that was fine. She just…she had been trying to copy him and….and he wasn't going to show her his powers anymore. Not if it made her want to have powers too.

Sho didn't care if she had powers, just that she was happy.


	376. Maybe the Last Night

Back in the year 1910 a bunch of stuff happened that Mob couldn't focus on right now.

How could she? She was dying. She had been bleeding since early that morning. There was blood coming from her privates and it wasn't stopping, if anything it was getting worse, and she knew that if this kept going on she would be dead soon. She had used up a whole roll of toilet paper and ruined two pairs of Sho's shorts….and she would have to buy him new ones before she died….and she just…she had to do so much before she died! She had to….to tell him that he was the best little brother ever…and she had to say goodbye but…but she couldn't say goodbye. Not to him and not to anyone because….well they would start asking questions and she didn't want to answer any questions.

There was blood coming from her privates, which were private, which meant that other people did not need to know about them.

She certainly wasn't going to go talking about her privates to her brother, her dad, or her friends. Not even her best friend. She wasn't going to tell anyone about this because….then they would know. She was dying. She was losing all of the blood in her body and….and she didn't know why. Well she did. She had asked Google and Google had said that she could be hemorrhaging or her kidneys could have had stones or she could have had cancer…and also….also she knew that it was none of those things. She knew how this had happened.

She had done this to herself.

She had touched it too many times and she had broken it and now she was bleeding to death. If she told people about this, about how she had….about how she had blood coming out of her privates, then they would not only know about her privates but they would know what she had been doing. She had never touched them before, not outside of taking a bath, and…and she had done it because it had felt good but…but now…well she had done it wrong or too many times…or maybe she should not have been doing that at all….

Because she had broken it.

She had broken it and she was dying and…and she was all alone! Even though she had spent the day with her friends she was alone. Even though she had spent the day watching Frozen with Minegishi and then having a cake party with everyone else…..she was still alone. She was dying alone. She was dying alone even though she was sitting next to dad watching a documentary about Japan at the turn of the last century. This was such a dad movie. This was about learning and factories and war and…and dad was enjoying himself. He was holding her and…and he loved her and…and even with her dad right next to her she felt alone. She was alone.

She was dying alone.

"Do you want to watch something else?" asked dad. His arm was around her. She was resting her head on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat. She could feel him breathing. She could feel them and he just had to remember….to remember him as he was. Remember him being the best dad in the world…even though he wasn't much of a dad. Even though he smothered her all the time…like now. She wasn't breathing….well she was….but he held her so hard….but she should have been happy that….that he wanted to be with her….

Before she died.

"No. I'm fine." Said Mob. She wasn't fine. She was bleeding. She had touched herself too many times and now she was bleeding. She was bleeding into a bunch of folded up toilet paper, her underwear, her bathing suit, a pair of Sho's jeans, her long nightgown, and her sweater. It was hot. It was hot but she had to have all of these layers on. She was hot sitting there under the blanket in dad's arms. She was hot and…and she was not fine. She was hot and…and her stomach hurt and…and she could not cry. She could not just start crying.

She had to stop crying.

She had been crying on and off all day. Sometimes they were sad tears and sometimes there were angry tears. Anyone would have been crying sad or angry tears if they had been in her place. Anyone would have been ready to just lay down and cry…but she couldn't. If she started crying then dad would have been worried. He would have worried and…and he would have started asking questions and…and if he asked questions about this, about what was wrong, then he would know…and she would have died rather than have her dad know about…about what she had done. About the amazing thing that she had figured out this amazing thing that her body could do…and that she had either done wrong or done too many times or…or maybe she just should not have been doing that in the first place. She should not have been touching herself in the first place and now….

Now she was bleeding to death.

"Alright then…but tell me if you want to change the channel. I can tell that you're distracted." Said dad. Why did he have to say that? What made him just…well of course she was distracted! Of course she was distracted from dad's boring documentary! He….he had no idea that she was bleeding and she could not tell him but….why did he have to say that?! She….what did he even care if she was distracted for? What made him care about anything other than…than her bring with him?! Just…this was Netflix! If he thought that she was so distracted then…then he could have just…just paused and then rewound the show! Because it was Netflix! And also there were no channels! They didn't watch TV with channels because dad hated ads and so did she! And…and she just…he didn't….she stayed calm.

She had to stay calm.

"This is Netflix. There are no channels." Said Mob slowly. She was not going to make the few moments or hours or days she had left with her dad being all upset and stuff. She had to be ok. She had to make them ok. She just…she wanted to scream and cry at the same time…and he would have felt the same way too if he had been in her shoes…socks…bloody clothes…or whatever. She didn't know. She just…had no idea….she just…

She wanted mom.

She wanted mom back. Mom…mom was her mom and…and at least she would have known what to do…or something. She didn't know. She just wanted to know…blood eventually stopped. All blood eventually clotted. That was normal. She didn't have hemophilia. That was something that European royals had. She was not European or a royal. She was a normal….well normal-ish….Japanese person. She didn't have hemophilia just…she had a cut so bad that her blood was never going to clot and…and there must have been some way to have the bleeding stop. Mom would have known…or at least she could have talked to mom. She was a girl and mom was a girl. They were the same and…and maybe this had happened to her. She…..well Mob had no idea if mom had ever done the same stuff that Mob did when she was all alone….but she just…she knew that her mom had done the thing with dad, that was how they had gotten two kids, so she knew about privates and stuff since she had made people with hers and…and mom had also changed her diapers and given her baths when she had been a baby…so it would have been ok to talk to mom about this…

But she didn't have a mom anymore.

She just had a dad and dad…..he was a boy and he…he could never know about this. He was a boy and…and she was not talking to a BOY about her privates! Not even her own dad! She just….she was never talking about this to a boy. Not to dad or to…well Fukuda was a healer and he could heal anything. She had seen him use his powers to regrow entire eyes when the Awakened's game of chair jousting went VERY wrong. She knew that he would have been able to heal her and…and he was gone and also…also even if he had been there then she never would have told him about this. If she told him that she had broken her privates by touching them then he would have thought about her privates and how she had touched them…or he would think that she had been doing things like that with boys….and she hadn't ever done anything with a boy! She had kissed a boy, once, when she had been nine and…and she hadn't ever done anything and….and it wasn't fair! The way he thought about her….it just wasn't fair!

Everything about life was so unfair.

"I'm sorry." said dad. He was sorry…he finally says sorry and it's about…about NETFLIX?! He was sorry about Netflix and not about being a jerk to Sho…and about how…how he had been a jerk to her when she had been little…and how…how he had let mom leave. He had just let her walk out the door and he hadn't found her even though he had teams of people who went out looking for espers and future Awakened…but he just…he had all of these people and all of this money but he just…couldn't find mom….not only that but he had just…let her go….

And he was sorry about Netflix?!

"Don't be sorry just don't say that." Said Mob. She was not going to let herself get mad at him. So Netflix was the thing that he was sorry about…this was dad. This was dad and she knew him, she knew that he was weird, and she knew that there was no way for him to stop being weird. She didn't want to think about this. She wanted…she just wanted to sit there with her dad until he fell asleep…but she would stay awake because….because she was losing a lot of blood and….and her blood wasn't infinite. She couldn't just find a potion or a heart or a mushroom and then just get more health….she only had so much blood and in her sleep….the blood still came in her sleep….and she could have died in her sleep from lack of blood….

Also she could bleed on the sheets again and maybe dad would notice….and nothing good would come of dad noticing.

"I…apologize." Said dad. He said it again…and all she had asked was that he not say that again and…and she was just…she was going to stay calm. She was not going to spend her possible last night on Earth with her dad being upset. She had spent her maybe last day on Earth with her friends and it had gone well so….so her last night on Earth with her dad was going to go well too. Sho may have been gone…and she missed him so much….but at least she had dad. At least she had one member of her family. Sho was off with Fukuda and mom…well mom was off to parts unknown….but at least she had her dad. At least half of the Suzuki family was together and….and soon it would only be dad and Sho and…and Sho would be alone with dad…

But Shibata said that he would raise him…so at least she had gotten that in order.

She had thought about leaving Sho with Shimazaki but Shimazaki would not have been a good parent. He was more of a friend. Shibata at least sort of tried to get Sho to be good. To make him eat his vegetables and take his baths and do his homeschool work. Shibata was the best person to raise Sho and…and she had gotten everything in order….well she had gotten Sho in order….and Sho was the most important thing, no, person in her life…and…and someone would take care of him….and she had made arrangements…

Which was more than mom had done when she had left.

"Dad." Said Mob. She said it sort of meanly but…but he was being annoying. He could be so annoying sometimes…but she would sit with him until the very end. She would stay with him until the very end and…and the end was coming and…and at least she was with someone who loved her….and at least…at least she was making plans. She had found someone to take care of Sho and she had done all the laundry and she had written down how to make all the stuff that mom had taught her to make…and also the stuff that she had learned from YouTube….and she had at least planned….

Which was better than just being gone one day.

But…well to Sho…she would just have been gone one day but…well her body would be there and dad would have told him that she had died, and not that she had run away or something, and then…and then Sho would be sad and alone and…and at least he would have their friends and….and mom…had this happened to…no. She had Fukuda for a friend and he would have fixed her up even if it was embarrassing and…and she had no idea why she was even thinking about mom….

Mom had left her years ago. Dad may have been a jerk but at least he had stayed with her.

"I apologize again….and I apologize for apologizing." Said dad. Mob wanted to take her pillow and put it over dad's face until he stopped saying things…but that had been beyond mean. That had been the worst thought that she had ever had about her own dad and…and she loved her dad. If she had to spend her last night with someone then…well Sho was gone…and Minegishi would have been upset if she disrupted their sleep by bleeding all over their bed and also possibly dying…so that left dad. That was…she loved her dad so much and…and he was the best dad that she had ever had in her life…because he was her only dad…but she loved him and that was what mattered.

"No…I'm sorry. You're my dad…the best dad that I've had…and I love you." Said Mob. She spoke slowly and calmed down and…and now dad's aura was flaring. She could see it and feel it. She lifted her head up from his chest and looked at his eyes. His pupils were small. Something was wrong…and she had to deal with whatever was wrong and…and she had to help him. While she was alive her job was to take care of her family. Her job was to take care of dad. She did a good job. She did a better job than mom ever did….because at least she was going to stay with him until the very end.

"Ever had? What makes you say that?" asked dad. Mob took a deep breath. She wanted to drink or smoke but Minegishi had told her time and time again about moderation…and if she was going to go then she would go without making Minegishi upset. They'd had a very good day today and…and she had to go sometime like everyone else did…and at least she had died having fun with her best friend earlier in the day and…and that was…not something that she was going to ruin by not using moderation like they asked her to.

"Just that I love you and that you're the best dad that I've ever had." Said Mob. She took his hand in hers. He was still looking at her with his pupils all small and….and he loved her and she loved him and….and she had no idea what he was so worried about.

"….do you have any….memory of having another father?" asked dad. Mob…had no idea what he was so worried about and…and she just did not have the energy to deal with this right now. Like Minegishi had said a million times before. She was just too tired…and that might have been the blood loss…or because it was almost midnight….but she was too tired to deal with dad being weird and also if he felt like being all…like himself.

"No dad just…no. Sorry just….no. You're my only dad and…it's just a saying." Said Mob. He didn't know every single saying. He knew a few but not all of them and…and she didn't feel like siting up all night teaching him every single saying…even though she should have. She was his Daughter but she was also his partner in their family, too. He had said that they were partners, teammates, and her job was to take care of him and their family. That was her job as the only girl in the family. Mom was gone and now she was mom and…and she had to take care of him but…

But she was just too tired.

"Oh. You know that I'm not good at those." Said dad. He had said that he was bad at something and…and that was good. They were making progress and…and she maybe should have just…made more progress with him. Maybe she should have just stayed up until the very end teaching him how to be a normal person. Then he could have been a better dad to Sho and a better friend to Hatori and…and a better President of Claw and….and a better king of the world when he became the king of the world and…and her whole life she had thought that she would live to see all of dad's dreams come true…

But now she wouldn't.

She had spent her whole life hearing dad's stories about how great things would be when dad ruled the world. How great her life would be when she was a princess of the world, not that she wanted to be, but that had been…she had always imagined growing up. Finding a boyfriend. Getting married. Having babies. Being able to just…be happy all the time. Being able to spend her whole life with her friends and her boyfriend….and their kids…and she had never even asked Hatori out or kissed him and…and she wished that she had listened to Minori and just asked him to kiss her and…and be her boyfriend because…because now that she was dying….she knew what she was losing and…

And she loved him….she knew that now.

She loved him and she wished that she had told him and…and it was too late for all of that now. No. Now she just…she just needed to sit with dad and….and dad loved her and she loved him and, ok, she would never have a boyfriend or know what it was like to have someone love her and also she would never grow up and have a son called Shigeo and a daughter called Shoko, because Sho was the best little brother ever, and also if she had another boy she would call him Souichirou because she loved dad and….and she wanted…she just wanted to grow up! She just wanted to grow up and have a family and live the life that she had been promised! The life that dad had been promising her for as long as she could remember!

But she wouldn't have that life….and that was….it was what it was.

"I know….and I'm sorry that I got upset. I love you…I love everything about you…and I just….I'm going to miss you when I'm gone." Said Mob. She laid her head back down on his chest and she would have kept it there if dad hadn't lifted her head. He still had that look in his eyes and she had no idea what he was even thinking about. He was dad and…and she loved him the very most out of everyone else in the world but…

But she just wanted to enjoy what little time she had left with him.

"Daughter…you will never leave me." Said dad. Mob…she wanted to tell him that when he woke up tomorrow she would most likely have lost all of the blood in her body and her spirit would have passed on. She wanted to warn him that this was probably his last night with her. She wanted to tell him that it had been good, and also bad, being his daughter. She wanted to tell him a lot of things…

But she didn't want to tell him that there was blood coming from her privates so she decided to tell him nothing.

"I…will never leave you. I love you." Said Mob. She had told him a lie….the first lie that she had ever told him and…and she felt bad. She felt gross. She felt like….well like she felt like now. She felt like her whole body was covered in blood and…and she shouldn't have lied to him but…but lying was better than telling him the truth. She would not have told anyone the truth….even her own little brother.

"That's right. You will never leave me." Said dad. He was rubbing her hair now. He had let go of her face and he was rubbing her hair and…and she just…she loved him and she wished that she had never lied to him and…and her eyes were wet and prickly and….and she hadn't drank anything or smoked anything and…and her powers were making the lights flicker and the TV go to bars and the curtains open and close….and now dad's aura was on her….and now he was going to kick her out and tell her that power was nothing without control…and stuff…

"I…I'll always be here for you…" said Mob. She didn't want to get lectured and kicked out. She didn't want to be alone. She wanted to be with…she wanted her whole family but….but mom had left years ago and Sho was off with Fukuda and…and she just…..she just….

She felt dad's hand on her back.

"Daughter. You're upset. Explain." Said dad. Mob wanted nothing more than to tell him that she was dying. She was eleven years old and she was going to die. She had only kissed one boy in her whole life and she was going to die. She hadn't even gotten her little brother something for his birthday but she was going to die. She hadn't even gotten Shimazaki a birthday present and she was going to die. She hadn't even tried green milk and she was going to die. She was….she wanted to tell dad she was dying…but she couldn't tell dad that she was going to die…because then he was going to ask why and…and he could never know about this since he was a boy, her dad, and….and if he had been mom then she could have said something….but he wasn't mom. He was dad and….and dad could not know. Nobody could know. She just…she wanted….she wanted her family back before she died but….but mom was gone and dad….dad was there but…but Sho was gone and…and she wished that she had said more to him before he left. How she loved him. How she could never have imagined a better little brother than him. How even though he felt like he was someone who was born wrong, he had said that so many times, he had been born more than right. He had been born her little brother….

She wished that she could have…have said more to him or…or told him to stay because….because she missed him more than anything!

"I….I love you and…and I want Sho to come back…but he's not here and…and I want him back." said Mob. Dad rubbed her head. She closed her eyes and let him rub her head. She felt him use his powers. She didn't know or care what he was doing. She just closed her eyes and…and focused on his breathing and his heartbeat and…and that he was there. That he was her dad and that he was alive and…and that she was alive right there with him…

For now.

"There." said dad before he kissed her head. He kissed her head nine times, because it was lucky, and also because she had told him that she didn't like long head kisses. She had no idea what 'there' had meant…and also she knew that she should have been annoyed by all of the head kisses…and she knew that dad….that dad loved her more than anyone else and…and she knew that she had been all alone…in her heart…but dad was right there. With dad being right there then…then she was not alone.

She was warm and safe with him right there.

She was so safe and warm that…that at some point she had closed her eyes, well they had been closed, but she had forgotten to open them. She had forgotten to open them and…and he had closed his eyes and had forgotten to open his and…and then with both of their eyes closed they had forgotten to put the next episode of dad's documentary show on…so the TV had gone off. The TV had gone off and that had been their main source of light…so that meant that when Mob next opened her eyes she had opened them in the dark.

She was alive.

She had let her aura flare….and that had made dad stir…and dad stirring meant that he was there with her…which meant that she had still been alive. She had been alive and…and wet. The wet feeling was there, well if had been there all day…but now it was worse. She got up slowly. She would have to change again. She would have to get out of bed and change again and put in new toilet paper….or maybe paper towels would have worked better….but then she wouldn't have been able to flush them…and she had no idea how she would explain a bunch of bloody paper towels in the trash to dad if…if she woke up again tomorrow morning….

So she would have to get out of bed.

She had no choice at all but to get out of bed and….and leave dad behind. He was on his side, now, but as soon as she untangled herself from him he went back to laying down on his back. He….he looked like he was dead when he slept like that….but he was alive. She could tell. She just…she wanted to come back to bed and…and just sleep next to him but….but his sheets were white. His sheets were white and that morning she had washed them because she had gotten blood on them…and he might notice tomorrow if there was more blood and also….also losing mom must have been so hard for him. He had promised mom forever and she had promised the same and…and he never talked about her but to say that she was a traitor and that they were never to talk about her…but it still must have been very hard to wake up and find her gone…

It had been hard for her and Sho.

So she just….she would go back to her own bed. She would go back to her own bed…and she would put on tights, too, because she had already ruined enough pairs of Sho's pants, and she would just…lay down in her own bed and wait for tomorrow to happen. Maybe she would wake up and maybe she wouldn't. She didn't know. She felt like Rose when she was floating on the door. She could only wait. She would wait to live, wait to die, or just wait for an absolution that would never come. She didn't know. She knew that….everyone who had ever lived would die…and a person died every two seconds…so she would die one day too. Lots of people died. The people in the show that she had been watching with dad were all dead. 1910 had been over a hundred years ago so they had all died by now and…and they had at least seen a lot happen….more than Mob had seen happen….

At lot was probably going to happen in 2017….too bad Mob was going to miss it all.


	377. Greeting the Moon Before the Sun

You had to greet the sun before the moon.

That had been in a book that mom had read, before, when Sho and big sis were really little. Back when they had been little enough that she had read to them. You had to greet the sun before the moon, which meant that….well he wasn't sure what it meant. Don't sleep the day away, probably, or something like that. Mom had said that when she'd had to wake him and big sis up for school….back when they had still gone to school. They didn't go to school now, they did homeschool though so they weren't morons or anything, but they still had to get up early in the morning…or at least Sho had to….

He really did not want to be up right now.

But he had to be. Dad had told Fukuda in the middle of the night that they had to come back from wherever they were as soon as possible and that he expected them back in the morning. He had just said that right out of nowhere….and now Sho was in a car in Tokyo after having gotten on the earliest train out of Seasoning City…..and he just…he could feel dad's aura and big sis's aura and….and he should have….he should have been happy. Well not about being back with dad, obviously, since dad sucked but he should have been happy to have been back with big sis. He hadn't seen her in days and…and he loved her…and he should have been happy to see her….

But he wasn't happy.

He had left baby sis. He hadn't even had the chance to say goodbye this time. He had just…well he had left her a note with pictures because she couldn't read yet….and that wasn't good enough! He should have told her goodbye right to her face and….and he already missed her! There was never enough time! There just…there was never enough time….he never spent enough time with her…every time he saw her…no matter how much time he spent with her…it just….it was never enough. He never spent enough time just….being with her….teaching her things….just….

There was never enough time!

"We're almost there, ok? Then you can go back to sleep." said Fukuda. Sho was pissed off, it was obvious even without being able to see auras, and…and there was nothing that Fukuda could do about this. He had gotten a message at midnight from Suzuki saying that Shigeko wanted Sho back….so of course he had to come running. What was he supposed to do? Tell Suzuki no? Yeah, sure, that would have gone really well. The man had never heard the word 'no' in his life. Even when they had been kids his parents had been too afraid of him to say 'no' to even the most ridiculous requests. Ten thousand yen for spending money? Sure. A sixty centimeter color TV in his room? Alright. A new Atari every month because he kept on getting pissed off and breaking his? Why the hell not. There was no saying 'no' to Suzuki Touichirou….

Even though Fukuda really wished that he could.

For Sho's sake. He had been so happy before visiting his little sister. He was always so happy when he got to see the baby….or was she a toddler now? She could toddle….but he didn't know much about babies. He just knew what Sho told him. She could walk and string three words together and she could bite…Suzuki had always been violent even when they had been kids so maybe someone should have watched that….and she was apparently the smartest and best baby sister in the whole world. Pretend sister, as Sho often corrected himself, and as Fukuda didn't have the heart to correct him about. Sagami Mukai was his little sister by blood and…and that was not something that Sho needed to know about. Not at his age. He didn't need to know that his father had found some woman, probably with extreme emotional problems, to bend over his desk. No. Sho…he did not need to know that his father had cheated on his mother and made a whole other human being…that would not have gone over well. Fukuda would tell him when he was old enough to know about all of that…but not now. Not at ten. There was no way in hell that he would be able to handle it. He was already all torn up about leaving his pretend sister to go back to his real one….

And Fukuda was not going to tell him that he had it all backwards.

"Whatever." Said Sho. He pressed his head against the cool glass of the window. He could see the city, the big part of it, from here. If he really focused he could see and feel Tokyo HQ. He wanted….he didn't know what he wanted. To have taken baby sis with him, she would have liked Tokyo, or to have stayed in Seasoning City with her for the rest of his life….or whatever. He didn't know. All he knew was that he would rather have gone to Tokyo HQ than the Claw neighborhood out in the suburbs…he would have gone anywhere that didn't have dad.

"You know your dad only said that I had to bring you back to Tokyo. If you want we could have a sleepover, well a nap over, and then maybe we could go to an arcade or to a part or we could find an animal shelter-" said Fukuda. Sho was down in the dumps and pissed and he had to fix this. He had to fix this because it hurt him to see Sho like this. All groggy and….well he was groggy because it wasn't even seven in the morning yet….but him being all groggy like that…well Masami had been…that was how she had gotten before she just…stopped getting out of bed and….well Sho was her son…

"I want to sleep in my own bed and then I want to wake up and then I want to hang out with big sis. She's the one who wants me back, right?" asked Sho. He was not going to be a jerk, he was making an effort not to be, but it was hard. Fukuda was the one who dad had texted. Fukuda was the one who knew what dad had said. Dad had said that big sis wanted him to come back…so obviously he was going to hang out with his sister. His older sister, not his younger sister, and that was….it was what it was.

"Yes but that doesn't mean-" said Fukuda. He didn't have to go running to Shigeko just because she had asked for him. Someone needed to tell her that she didn't always get what she wanted….though maybe it was a little late to start enforcing boundaries with people. She had never heard the word 'no' before either. Masami had always been so good to those kids….and then Suzuki, well, he took the easy way out and just gave Shigeko whatever she wanted. He was even letting her drink and smoke even though Fukuda knew for a fact that Suzuki couldn't stand drinking and smoking. Shigeko…the world was not hers, not yet, and she couldn't just…just make people come running when she called.

"My dad made you bring me back because she misses me so I'm going to hang out with her. You can hang out with us too if you promise to be nice to her but if you can't be nice to her then you can just hang out with dad or by yourself or do work or sleep all day or whatever." Said Sho. He wished that Fukuda could have just…stopped being such a grumpy old man for five seconds and just be nice to big sis. Then they could have done all of that fun stuff together…and he did want to have fun. Maybe if he had a bunch of fun, all the fun in the world, he could stop feeling bad about abandoning little sis again.

"I…well you know where to find me." Said Fukuda. He would have rather spent the day with Suzuki than Shigeko. Suzuki….well at least he understood Suzuki. Suzuki liked him…well as much as he could like someone….and he always knew where he stood with Suzuki. Shigeko….was a mystery. Her mind was an enigma. The things she came up with….like how she had gotten the idea that he LOOKED at her. She was ELEVEN! What was there even to look at?! Also he was not like that and the fact that she could come up with something like that….well he would leave her be. If she needed him, legitimately needed him, then she knew how to find him. Sho did too….and he so wished that he could have spent more time with Sho…but…well he was getting older and he was making more of his own choices in life and…and that was ok…

Even if Fukuda didn't always agree with those choices he would still always love, care for, and be there for Sho.

"I do." Said Sho. He didn't get Fukuda sometimes but…well whatever. He didn't get a lot of things….like why he had to leave baby sis. He knew that she needed to have a mom who loved her and also a mom who was nothing like dad but…but he and big sis had been taking good care of her and…and maybe they could have kept her away from dad…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that he missed baby sis and he wanted her back and…and he needed to stop thinking about this. He watched the city go by. It was starting to wake up. People were in their cars and trains were going by. The city was waking up but when he got home he was going to sleep. He was tired.

He just wanted to go to sleep.

He'd go to sleep and then big sis would wake him up, he took out one of his markers and wrote on his arm to wake him up for lunch and not breakfast, and the he'd have some poptarts and a can of coke…and also an apple or something so that she didn't get upset at him for not eating fruit, and then they could play hit the birdie over the net or something. Maybe kick the ball back and forth or share a jump rope or some outside thing. He hadn't been outside in a while. He hadn't even seen it, the Seventh Division didn't have a lot of windows, and being outside with big sis…that would have been nice. Yeah. He would hang out with her and…

And not with Shimazaki.

He wanted to hang out with Shimazaki. He wanted to have fun with him. He wanted to steal street signs and jump on beds at the mattress store and try on hats and pretend to be mannequins and visit the baby birds at the park and dig for worms to do worm stuff with and….and he wanted so much and…and he needed to just…he needed to maybe stop hanging out with Shimazaki so much. That was another one of those pragmatic choices that Fukuda had told him about before. He wanted to be best friends with Shimazaki but also he wanted to be his boyfriend…and that could never happen…so he had to fall out of love and…and in order to fall out of love he would have to avoid Shimazaki until he could think about him without waking up the goldfish in his stomach…

Pragmatic choices sucked.

They really did. It had been easier not to think of Shimazaki when he had been far away in Seasoning City. Now he was back home…well Tokyo home. The car stopped, he got out of it, and he made it a point to ignore Shimazaki's aura. He ignored it as he stepped out of the car. He ignored it as he said goodbye to Fukuda. He ignored it as he walked up the steps to his house. He ignored it as he took off his shoes in the genkan. He ignored it as dad's aura passed over his. He ignored it as he walked up the stairs to his room. He ignored it as he opened the door to his room.

He was getting good at this.

There. This wasn't so hard. At this rate he would be totally out of love with Shimazaki in a day or two. Then they could go back to just having fun like a couple of regular friends who were just friends and only could be just friends. Yeah. He was going to be done with this whole love thing soon….he was doing really well. He was doing so well that maybe he would be all the way done with being in love by the time he woke up. He walked over to his bed as quietly as he could. He didn't bother changing clothes. He was too tired. He just pulled his covers back and laid down….

And maybe he had laid down too hard.

The springs in his bed squeaked, that was normal, but in the quiet and stillness of the morning they sounded like a gunshot. They might as well have been a gunshot, really, because big sis woke up so fast he would have thought that he had shot off a gun into the air. First her aura slammed into his…and then she sat straight up…and then she jumped out of bed…and then before he knew it she had slammed into him. She was hugging him so tightly that he was barely able to sit up. She was hugging him and….and also his shoulder was getting wet. She was crying. She had missed him so much that she was crying and….and he had been off having fun with baby sis…and he hadn't even thought about how all of that would affect her and….

And he was the biggest asshole in the world.

"Hey big sis….sorry about…" said Sho. He didn't know how to finish that. He was sorry about being gone for so long. He was sorry about making her cry. He was sorry about lying to her about where he had been going. He was sorry about keeping so many secrets from her. He was sorry that she couldn't see baby sis. He was sorry that she couldn't keep a secret from dad to save her life. He was sorry to have been such a shitty little brother to her not only because of the secrets but because of how many years he had spent hitting her and-

And he was just….sorry.

"Sho! Oh Sho….I thought that I'd never see you again! You….you mean so much to me….and I love you and…and I am so glad that I got a chance to see you again." said Mob as she held Sho as tightly as she could. She was so happy to see him! She was so happy that she was crying….she had never been this happy before in her entire life….and she didn't think that she could ever have been this happy again in her life….what little life she had left. She had woken up and…and for a minute she had thought that she was a spirit…but she was alive. She had lived long enough to see her little brother again and now…and now she could die happy.

"You're crushing my bones and organs." Said Sho. Big sis let him go immediately. He felt bad but…well he needed his bones and organs for stuff! Also….also he just….he didn't deserve a hug right now. Not after how much of an asshole he had been. He didn't deserve her hugs or her love but…but she had tears still in her eyes and…and he was being selfish. He had to make another pragmatic choice. Her hugging him was making him sad but him not wanting to be hugged by her….well then that was making her sad. He made his choice. He decided to be a good little brother for once in his life. He got up from his bed and hugged her.

She hugged him back like she was trying to crush his bones and organs into jelly.

"I'm sorry….I just….I thought that I would never see you again and…and you have no idea how good it is to see you again….little brother…." Said Mob as she hugged Sho as tightly as she could….well almost as tightly as she could. Not so tightly that she hurt him, of course, but tightly enough that she could feel him.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm glad that I got to see you again too…but come on. It's not like I was moving out or anything, I just said that I would be gone for a few days, you don't have to…freak….out…." said Sho. He could see them hugging in the closed door of the wardrobe….the one with the mirror on it…and….and he just….his first thought that that he had hugged her back too tightly or something. That he had hugged her so tightly that her organs had turned to jelly and then shot out of her….or something….because….

She had blood on her.

"Sho? Are you ok? Did I hug you too hard?" asked Mob. His arms went slack so she let him go. She hadn't been hugging him that hard but…but maybe she had since…since his aura had pulled in close and…and she tried to take a step back but she couldn't. He had put up a barrier around them and…and he was staring at her…no….he was staring behind her….for some reason.

"No….I hugged you too hard….fuck! Stay there and try to keep your organs inside of you! I'm getting Fukuda!" said Sho. He turned to run but hit his head on his own barrier….and he had to put it down and…and there was more blood in big sis's bed! What the hell!? Well he hadn't done that but….but that was a LOT of blood! Why was there so much blood!? Why was she bleeding!? How….he didn't know how this had happened but….he got up off the floor and….and now she was holding his hand and….and he needed to get Fukuda! Before she died from blood loss!

"Sho!? What are you doing!? Where are you going!?" shouted Mob. She knew that she should not have been shouting but…but Sho should not have been trying to leave her! He should not have been trying to run away and….and she didn't want Fukuda and….and what did he even….what?!

"I have to get Fukuda! Let me go! Let me go before you bleed to death!" screamed Sho. He could feel dad waking up. He didn't care. Big sis was bleeding! She was hurt! People didn't just bleed for no reason! She was hurt and…and Fukuda could fix it! She just had to let him go already!

"I'm not bleeding! Don't get Fukuda!" said Mob. No. No….no! Sho….she should have checked before she got up and…and now he knew and….and dad was up and he knew….and now he wanted to tell Fukuda and…and she would have rather died than have all of these people know that she was bleeding! Nobody could know! She didn't even like knowing!

"You are! Now let me go!" screamed Sho. She was holding onto him with her hand and her powers and…and…and she was too strong! He tried to break away from her…but he only broke the mirror….and then his stuffed animal hammock and….and there went his Hot Wheels track….a piece with a guide pin in it hit him in the face….and now he felt blood in his eye…and then most of a doll hit the other side of his head…and he wasn't the only one doing this and…..and none of this would have been happening in she would just have let him GO!

"No! No! No! Stay here! Don't leave me!" said Mob. He was trying to leave and…and she couldn't let him and….and she didn't know what was happening. All she knew was that she had to hold on to him. She had to keep him near her. She was….she could feel herself crying and…and she was never going to let him go! Ever! She didn't need to be alone! She needed him! She didn't want to be alone…..and she wanted him to just….stay with her!

"Let me go! Will you let me go already?! You're bleeding! What the hell is the matter with you?!" said Sho. He tried to get away. He tried to pull away from her but…but she was way too strong and…and it wasn't fair! Why did she have to be like this?! He was trying to help! He was trying to help her so she didn't die and….and she was being like…like this?!

"Sho! Stay! I'm not-" said Mob. She was not bleeding. She was but….but Sho couldn't know about this. nobody could know about this. Nobody in the whole world could know…and Sho…he wanted to leave her. He wanted to leave her and he wanted to go outside and he wanted to TELL people! And not just anyone….Fukuda! No! She would hold onto him with all of her strength if it meant that Fukuda….or anyone…never found out about this! She didn't care that these were her last moments of life, probably, she was NOT GOING to let ANYONE know about this!

"You are! Your whole butt is covered in blood! You need a healer! Let me go already!" shouted Sho as he tried pull away from her. What was WRONG with her?! When you were bleeding then you got Fukuda to fix it! What was she being so…so….why was she being such a weirdo!? When you bled that meant that you were hurt and when you got hurt then that meant that you needed someone to fix it! It wasn't rocket surgery!

"I said no!" screamed Mob. She screamed so hard that she felt her throat rip, it felt like, and…and she just….she was never going to let him go! If he left then…then he would have been gone and she would have been all alone and…and she just….she was not going to let him go! Not for any reason! Not if their whole room got destroyed! Not if he yelled and kicked and bit her hand and screamed! Not even if-

The door opened.

"What is going on in-" said Suzuki as he opened the door. He had woken up to the children screaming. That wasn't alright. Son had obviously done something to Daughter and he was going to teach him a lesson….Daughter's wishes be damned! Or he would have, at least, if Daughter hadn't slammed the door shut in his face.

"Go away! Go away dad!" screamed Mob. She let Sho go and covered her face. Now dad was up and he was there and he would know and….and he was a boy and…and Sho was a boy and…AND BOYS COULD NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS! Nobody could know about this! Minegishi couldn't even know about this and they had been born a girl! Nobody in the whole world could know about this!

"Don't worry! I'll get Fukuda!" shouted Sho as he scrambled away. Big sis must have been going crazy from the blood loss or something…that must have been it! He ran past her and yanked the door opened as hard as he could. He would get Fukuda! He would go and get Fukuda and then he would fix big sis and then everything would be better! It had to be! He just had to get out the door and-

He was yanked back.

He had tried to run past dad but he had grabbed him by the back of his jacket and pulled him close. Sho turned and tried to get out of his jacket but then dad grabbed him by the front of his shirt. His aura was all red and bright….and even his eyes were red…as red as his aura….and he was so strong and…and Sho could not be afraid! Big sis needed him! He had to save her!

"Let me go!" screamed Sho as he tried to get out of his shirt. That just made dad slam him into the wall. He slammed him into the wall so hard that Sho saw spots in his vision….but that didn't matter! Big sis was in there bleeding to death! They didn't have time for this shit!

"What. Did. You. Do." Said Suzuki slowly. Son had done something…..he had hurt Daughter…and he knew what Daughter had said. Daughter had told him in no uncertain terms that he was never to discipline Son again, that she would handle it, and that this was not his place. Well it was. Son had done something to hurt her, he hadn't even been in the house for ten minutes and he had hurt her, and now…well now he would pay. There. Simple. He would pay and then Fukuda would put him back together….if he had any energy left from fixing whatever it was that Son had done to Daughter that is.

"I didn't do shit! Now let me go!" said Sho as he tried to kick dad away. That just got him slammed into the wall again. He didn't care. He didn't care if dad put him through this wall, the one behind it, and the one behind that. He didn't care if dad spent the next hundred years building walls to put him through. He didn't care about anything other than getting his big sister the help that she needed! He didn't have time for this!

"Don't speak to me like….and you must have done something. Your sister is hurt. I can see her aura. You must have done something and you are going to tell me what it is. Then you are going to pay for what you've done. Then you are going to get down on your hands and knees and beg your sister for forgiveness. You do not get to treat her like this. She does everything for you, more than you will ever deserve, and you do not get to harm her. Is that in any way unclear to you?" asked Suzuki as he held his Son down. This….he didn't even have words for this. Out of the hundreds of millions of potential people that he could have made….this was what he got. This person right here. He had no idea what he had done to deserve a Son like this….but he knew that Daughter had done nothing in this life to deserve to be treated how her brother treated her. Nothing at all.

"I told you already! I didn't do anything! Big sis hugged me and then I saw that her whole butt was covered in blood! And her bed too! Now let me go!" screamed Sho. Dad stared at him. His aura, which had been bright red, went dark like a birthday candle. He was staring, still staring, but his powers let go of him and his whole arm went slack.

"Sho….are you telling the truth right now?" asked Suzuki. This was…people did not just bleed…well they did. When they were having massive internal hemorrhaging...and how could….why would….he just….Daughter!

He had to stay calm.

He had to stay calm and he had to control himself because if he didn't, if he slipped even a little, then he would kill Son. He knew that he would kill Son. Regardless of whether or not Son was the one responsible for this he would kill him. He would lose control and his Son would be dead….and then his Daughter would be dead…and then he would have no children at all….and he needed Son and…and he had no idea what he would do without his Daughter.

So he remained very calm.

"Y-yeah….I didn't do anything….she's just bleeding…." Said Sho. Dad was….he didn't know what dad was. His aura was calm but….but not normal and…and his eyes were….not normal and he was just…not normal and….and he didn't have time for this! Big sis was bleeding out all of her blood and he needed to get Fukuda!

"Then why don't you do something useless for once in your life and fetch Fukuda?" said Suzuki slowly. He needed to be there for Daughter. She was….he did not like blood…..not his own anyway and not…well she wasn't his blood but….but people did not bleed! People bled when they died and….and he smelled blood…and he tasted blood…and he had to remain calm. He had to remain very calm and not….not lose control because then Son would die and Daughter loved him…and Suzuki needed him….and also if he lost control he would lose his Daughter and….and….

He had already found himself alone in the world once before. He won't let that happen again.

"Yeah! That's what I was going to do!" shouted Sho. He shouted and stomped his foot and…and he was being just like baby sis and….and he should have been here! Baby sis had a mom to take care of her but Sho….Sho was supposed to be there for big sis! She didn't have anyone! Dad was useless! Dad had the nerve to call him useless when he had legs and he could have run and brought Fukuda!

"Then go you moron!" said Suzuki. This time he did lose control…just a bit. He may have picked Son up and thrown him through the house and down the stairs….but he was fine. He was going to see Fukuda anyway and it wasn't like he had completely lost control. Son was fine. Daughter….he knocked on the door…softly….and then loudly…..and then….well Son was saying something but it didn't matter what. Daughter needed him. She needed him and he would be there for her. He was her father and he loved her.

He loved her more than anything.

"Fuck you! I hate you more than anything else in the world!" screamed Sho as he held his arm close. It felt…it hurt to move it. He had landed on his arm. Dad….fuck dad. Fuck dad and….and just fuck him. He wasn't even listening. If he had been listening then…then Sho would have been able to stand up and flip him off with his good hand…and he should have done more than flip dad off. He should have ran back up there and kicked his ass so hard he never even thought out-

What was he DOING?!

Big sis was bleeding to death and here he was getting pissed off at dad?! What in the ever loving….what?! No. No way. He was not going to be that kind of person. That kind of selfish person. Dad was dad and he knew what his own dad was. Selfish. The most selfish person in the world. He was selfish and he hurt people and….and Sho was not him. Sho may have come from him but…but he had come from mom too and mom was not selfish. Mom was….mom would have gotten Fukuda. She would have gotten Fukuda or…or taken the blood from her veins and put it in big sis like in that movie he saw about the guys who were stranded and…and this was not a movie! This was real life and…and mom would have gotten Fukuda and….and Sho didn't need mom to tell him to get Fukuda!

And his arm didn't hurt!

He ran through the house. He didn't even pause to put his shoes on. He just put them on as he ran down the street. He didn't trip once….and he didn't care if his bare feet had touched the sidewalk…or that he had stepped in something sharp…or that he was probably waking people up. Big sis needed him! Big sis needed him and he….he needed her. He needed her to tell him when he smelled bad and to make him take baths. He needed her to tell him that he had at least had to eat the green leaves from his salads and also that he could only have one glass ranch. He needed her to fold his shirts up just right so the words and pictures on the front showed. He needed her to brush his hair when it got all knotty. He needed her to….to read to him as he fell asleep at night. He needed her to…to tell him that he was the best little brother in the world even if it wasn't at all true. He needed her to….to be there when he went to sleep and…and to wake him up in the morning and….and to order the poptarts he liked and…and to put his drawings up on the walls and….and to make sure that there was no citrus at all in the food that they ate and….

And he could not lose his big sister. He could not lose Shigeko.

He wasn't going to lose her. He was at Fukuda house and…and there was no time to use the front door! He kicked it opened. Doorknobs took too long. So did closing the door behind him. So did taking off his shoes. Sho did not have a lot of time. He may not have been a doctor, or ever even met one, but he did watch a lot of movies. People only had so much blood in them and they could only lose so much of their blood before they died. That was called not having enough blood so you died. He had no idea how much blood people had inside of their bodies exactly but big sis's whole butt had been covered in blood and so had her bed….and there had been so much of it…and he didn't know if one of the springs in her bed had popped out and stabbed her in her sleep or what…but he did know that she needed help…

And there was only one man in all of law who could help him.

"Fukuda! Fukuda! Fukuda!" screamed Sho as he ran through Fukuda's house, not tripping once even on the stairs, and went to kick in Fukuda's bedroom door. He would have made it, too, if he hadn't been opening his door at the exact same time…and he would feel bad about kicking Fukuda in the stomach later! Right now big sis needed him and he…he had to save her!

"Sho! What's happening?!" said Fukuda as he doubled over in pain. He could feel himself healing and….and…and it had been twenty minutes! Not even! What in the hell had happened in less than twenty minutes?! He just….needed to calm down and…and Sho was hurt. He could see it and he could sense it. There was the cut above his eye and…and he was cradling his arm and….and he should have just insisted that Sho come home with him. That way he could have kept him safe. God. Masami….she would have hated him right now….

"You've got to come quick! It's an emergency! Baby sis…I mean big sis….big sis! She's…she got blood all over her! There's blood everywhere!" said Sho. He grabbed Fukuda with his good arm and tried to drag him….but Fukuda wouldn't move! What was WRONG with him?! Did he dislike big sis that much that he would just….not help her when he heard that she was covered in blood!? Who…who DID that?!

And why the hell was he covering his mouth for!?

"Sho…listen. I am going to uncover your mouth when I am finished healing you…and then when I do you are going to tell me EXACTLY what happened between the time when I dropped you off at home and right now. You are going to do it calmly because right now I have nothing to go off of." Said Fukuda as he knitted the bones in Sho's arm back together and fixed the cut above his eye…and his teeth, too, for good measure it felt like he had another one of his to the root cavities….and also….well he was a boy of many ailments…and not all of those were his fault. Well none of them were his fault, actually, because he was ten and didn't know any better than to have double fudge poptarts and cola for every meal. He was…well he was always going to be Fukuda's top priority…even though he could see from here…he could see Shigeko's aura and….and Suzuki's was….he was controlling himself…in that way where he was about to explode and kill everyone and….

What in the hell had happened in less than twenty minutes?!

"Why the fuck do I need to tell you when I just told you?! Why do you need to hear it again?! Big sis is covered in blood!" screamed Sho. He felt….well his back tooth didn't hurt anymore and neither did his arm and…and he should not have been wasting his energy on Sho! He could live without that arm, it was his off hand anyway, and he could live without that tooth! What he could not live without, who he could not live without, was his big sister!

"Sho….calm down and tell me….tell me what happened. How did your sister get blood on her? Is it her blood? Did you two have a fight? Did your dad lose control? He's the one who hurt your arm, right?" asked Fukuda trying to stay as calm as he could while Sho tried to rip his arm off. He needed to know what he was walking into. He needed to know if he should get closer or take Sho far away. Suzuki….he had lived through his explosions before….and Sho….well he had barely lived through Shigeko's explosion all those years ago….and even then just barely…

"Fukuda! What the hell!? Yeah, it's her blood…and I didn't do that to her! I didn't make her bleed and….and you know that I don't hit her! I have no idea why she's bleeding! I was just hugging her, and she was the one hugging me way too hard not the other way around, and then I saw that her whole butt was covered in blood and then there was a lot on her bed and we need to move! Now! I don't know how much blood she has left in her body! Come on! If you won't move then I'll use my powers to carry you!" screamed Sho as he tugged on Fukuda…and then he just held onto the doorway like baby sis did when she didn't want to take her bath! What the fuck was the matter with him?! Big sis was DYING!

"Sho, listen to me-" said Fukuda. Well then…this was….well then. He…well he knew about this….vaguely. He'd had girlfriends before and….and he knew that this was a thing that happened to women but…well wasn't Shigeko a little young? And also…also didn't she know what to do? Masami….hadn't she taught her about this? Fukuda….well he had no idea what he was supposed to do. He knew that they made things for this, there was a whole aisle devoted to feminine hygiene products at every single convenience store he had ever been to…and Shigeko….she went to stores. She existed in the wider world, not like Suzuki, and she must have seen that aisle and….

And he wished that they hadn't separated the boys and the girls for health class back when he had been a kid.

"No! Tadashi, you listen! My sister is bleeding out all of her blood and you're standing there holding onto the doorway like….like you're the kid! You're being a kid and I…I'm the one being the adult here! I don't know what you have against my sister but you need to get over it right now because she needs you! She's covered in mystery blood and she needs you to fix it or….or I'll….if you don't fix my sister then there's going to be two people covered in blood!" screamed Sho. He bit Fukuda's arm when he was done screaming. Hard enough to leave him with a watch. He was going to get worse if he didn't get his ass over to big sis and help put the blood back in her veins where it belonged!

And he needed to get his hand off of Sho's mouth, too, before he started biting off fingers.

"Sho, listen to me. Your sister is…this is a…a private girl thing that you don't need to know about. Ok? Sometimes girls bleed and…and usually they know what to do but I guess your sister didn't get the memo…or whatever. Just…I will go and deal with that and you….you need to stay away from her and…and I guess your dad is pretty freaked out. How about you….you can…you need breakfast. Just…Shibata. Out of the four of them he's the only decent one. Just…tell him that you need breakfast. Tell him that he needs to make you breakfast right now." Said Fukuda. He ignored the use of his given name and he ignored how Sho was licking his hand. He just…Masami…she must have taught Shigeko….how to deal with this…right? Suzuki….he had been in the same health class as Suzuki had been, and had sat right next to him too, and they hadn't said a peep about girls besides don't get them pregnant. He had no idea what he was even supposed to…to do. She needed….to absorb the blood…until it was done….he did not want to deal with this.

He really didn't.

This wasn't a healer situation. This was a mother situation. Fukuda…he'd had three girlfriends in his life and only one had hung around him enough for him to have to deal with…all of that and…and he couldn't remember what she had done…because that had been back in 1993….fourteen years ago….and he just…he had no idea what he had to do but…but he had to do something….Sho needed him to do something and….and he had made a promise to Masami and….and how did Shigeko not have any idea of what to do? She knew how to drink and smoke, and apparently roll a good joint if Shimazaki was to be believed, but she had no idea what to do about this basic biological function…and this just….

Well obviously he didn't know what to do besides….he didn't know!

"My sister is bleeding to death and you're biggest concern is who's going to make me breakfast…..? Are you…are you getting so old that your brain doesn't work anymore? Because that's what it seems like. You….go and fix my sister…..or I swear to God, Tadashi, I'll put you in a traitor hole myself…the kind in the county where it's all ice and snow….do you understand me?" asked Sho. He made himself look like dad and sound like dad…..and he didn't want to be dad but…but dad got results. Dad got even the stupidest of the Awakened to listen to him and…and Sho….well he would have to do…what dad did…because apparently Fukuda was a moron. Tadashi was a moron. Adults got called by their family names but he wasn't being an adult, he was being a kid, so now he got to be called Tadashi. When he did the smart thing, when he acted like an adult, then he could be called Fukuda again.

"Sho just….paper towels….gotta soak up the blood….band aids? Did I buy….I might have….just….Sho. Sho…your sister is not dying. This is normal and….and I need you to just…get out of the way, ok? You….you don't need to know about this. This is a girl thing and…well it's not something that you need to know about. Now you go and see Shibata and have him make you some breakfast while I…deal with this." said Fukuda. He walked past Sho. He needed to get paper towels and….and band aids might help since…since they were good for keeping blood contained and….and he might have had some. Sho used to like to wear Zootopia band aids just because and….and why did they have to live so far out of the city center? Well cheaper land but….well he wouldn't even know what to get if he went to a store and….and he wished that Masami had been there. She would have known what to do and…and she must have told Shigeko…something. That was what mothers did….right? His dad had taught him all the stuff that he needed to know to be a man….the stuff that he would have to teach Sho since Suzuki was useless…and Shigeko….she must have known something. Fukuda…he knew Masami. He knew that she loved those kids more than anything. He knew that she would not have just left Shigeko high and dry. She was a good mother. She was….she was Masami and….and he just….

He had no clue what to do.

"You suck. Have fun playing with paper towels. I'm going to get real help." Said Sho. He said it calmly because he did not feel like getting his mouth covered again. He said it calmly and then he ran from the house, down the road, and to Shibata's house….but he wasn't going to get Shibata. No. He was good at breakfast and knitting and throwing you in the air. He wasn't good in a crisis….and this was a crisis. This was…well Fukuda had said that it was no big deal…but also that it was a private girl thing…and the only person that Sho knew who was even close to a girl was Minegishi. He knew that they had boobs, he had seen them, so then they must have had girl privates too…and if this was a private girl thing then they would know what to do!

And Sho didn't care if they were trying to take Shimazaki from him….this was an emergency!

"Minegishi! Minegishi! Minegishi Toshiki!" screamed Sho as he kicked the front door in. He tried to run and this time he tripped. He tripped over the genkan step and wound up stumbling into the living room….and it hurt….but that didn't matter now! He needed to save big sis and…and if this was some private girl thing then….then Minegishi would know what to do!

"Get away from the waffle-oh! Sho! Hang on, little guy. I'll help you up and-" said Shibata as he sprang up from the couch clutching the waffle maker with both hands. Sho had joined them for breakfast and….well he seemed freaked out…but that was normal for him. It was so nice to have him around….even if he had forgotten to take off his shoes.

"There's no time! My sister needs help! Minegishi!" screamed Sho as he got back up and ran through the house. He ran up the stairs and shoved Hatori out of his way as he made his way to Minegishi's room. He could feel Shimazaki in there and…and he didn't care what he saw! Big sis needed him and he needed to kick down this door and get Minegishi! He would drag them out by their leg if he had to!

Big sis needed them!

Sho kicked down the door in one try, his powers helped, and he knew that they would be pissed but….well he didn't care. He didn't care if he walked in on them naked doing adult bed stuff with Shimazaki….or even if he saw Shimazaki naked….shut up goldfish! Nobody wants you! He didn't care about anything other than helping big sis. So he kicked down the door and ran into the room and-

And then the plants got him.

"Put me down!" screamed Sho as he tried to get free. Minegishi was sitting up clutching a pillow to their chest, probably to hide how naked they were, and Shimazaki was picking up a pair of Minegishi pajamas pants up and he was putting them on under the blanket and….and this was not the time to be putting on pants or playing with plants! This was the biggest emergency in the entire history of the world! Worse than when Hatori drank too much and did all of that gross stuff! Worse than when the house caught fire because he and Shimazaki were playing with the waffle iron! Even worse than the time Hatori had a nightmare and broke the TV! This was….there wasn't TIME for this nonsense!

"Ryou. Get your pseudo son OUT of my room. Now." Said Minegishi. Hell no. This was beyond the pale. The little monster woke them up, kicked down their door, wore SHOES in their room, and…and now he was in some jealous rage and….and Ryou had promised that he'd HANDLED it! This was not handling it! This was….they didn't even know what this was!

"What's happening?" asked Hatori as he stuck his head into Minegishi's room….which may have been a mistake because the next thing he knew he was launched down the hallway and into Shibata's arms.

"I think Sho finally cracked….poor little guy." Said Shibata. Well it was bound to happen. Sho'd had a crush on Shimazaki for….well a very long time…and of course Shimazaki didn't return his feelings….otherwise Shibata would have killed him….but he had been too open about his relationship with Minegishi. The polite thing to do would have been to spare Sho's feelings and either hide the relationship or not start one until Sho was either over him or all grown up and out of the group…because then he would have his own job and…God, now Shibata was tearing up. He would grow up some day…he needed a tissue.

"I heard that! And I did not crack! Big sis is-" said Sho. He would have said more but the next thing he knew he was in the hallway. He had cuts on his arms and legs from where the vines had dug into him…and that sucked but…but the blood he was losing now was nothing compared to the amount of blood big sis was losing! They were wasting time! They didn't even have time for Minegishi to put on clothes! So they had boobs and girl privates, big deal, lots of people did! They weren't anything to write home about like Fukuda'd said! Some friend they were leaving big sis to die from the private girl thing which was also…also deadly!

"Kid, you need to calm the fuck down and you need to get down into the kowtow of your life because Toshi….well I think Toshi might want to kill. Just a hunch." Said Shimazaki. Well this was…he had thought that he'd handled it but…well apparently he hadn't handled it well enough. Another heart to heart? But they'd had so many of those already…but something obviously needed to be done about him….and he had no idea what! God…parenting was hard….and this wasn't even his kid!

"No, I do, but I won't. Now if all of you value your lives you'll get away from my room…and if you value his you'll get him as far away from me as humanly possible." Said Minegishi as they pulled their blanket around themselves. Well that had been…violating…and enraging….and they had hurt him but….well he had earned it! He had earned a few cuts and scrapes for what he did! That little monster had kicked down their door, woken them up, worn SHOES in their room, and he had exposed their naked self to the ENTIRE house! He was lucky he was only ten years old or he would have been plant food by now!

"Come on Sho, let's get some breakfast in you and then we can have a talk about privacy….and wearing shoes indoors…but I guess if you want to wear shoes indoors then I can just carry you everywhere." Said Shibata as he picked Sho up. This was….well he knew better but…well he wasn't about to tell Sho off. He was a little guy and, yes, he knew better…but he was so little that it was impossible to stay mad at him or get mad at him in the first place.

"I don't want to wear shoes inside! I just didn't take them off because big sis is bleeding and she needs help and Fukuda said that…that it was a private girl thing that I can't know about…and Minegishi knows about it and they can help because they had girl privates too! Not just boobs!" shouted Sho. He felt Shibata almost drop him…and he was red….and Hatori was hiding his head in his sweater…and it was weird that he slept in a sweater and no pants…and Shimazaki….he was just shaking his head….and that was…what was he shaking his head for!? This was an emergency.

"Kid. No. I love you like a son and, like a son, I will bestow the wisdom of my old age onto you. First of all you never talk about a girl's ketchup packet times, ever, for any reason whatsoever….and second of all you don't talk about a girl's pu-parts. Ever. Because that's a surefire way to make sure that you never get near a girl's…well I have no idea if you're into that but, yeah, don't talk about people's privates. They're called private parts for a reason, kid, because they're private." Said Shimazaki. God. This kid. Sho would have driven him to drink a long time ago…if he'd ever needed any help with that….God. Just…parenting was hard….or maybe Suzuki was the one who messed him up. Just…this was a lot of work for this early in the morning but….well he loved Sho and when you loved someone you dealt with….all of their nonsense….

And he knew that he had been responsible for more than his fair share of nonsense so he was going to stop pissing and moaning about Sho's nonsense now.

"It's not ketchup, it's blood, and her whole butt was covered in it! Do you really think that I can't tell the difference between blood and ketchup?! You're the blind one, not me!" shouted Sho. He kicked and squirmed. He needed Shibata to put him down. Since Minegishi wasn't going to come out of their room, they had made a door of vines and leaves even, he was going to have to go in there and drag them out. He didn't care if he saw both of their boobs and whatever else they had. He needed to save his sister!

"Hey, only I get to make blind jokes." Said Shimazaki. Did this kid…well of course he didn't know about the ketchup packet times. He was only ten and his girlfriend, who he never saw, was ten too. This was Mob's first ketchup packet time, he hadn't smelled blood on her before yesterday, and judging by the screaming contest her and Suzuki's aura were in the middle of she was just as freaked out as her brother. Maybe he should have warned her…or Toshi…or maybe her actual parent. Yeah, wasn't this Suzuki's job? Shimazaki…he didn't know. Well he did know that he and Sho were going to have to have a long talk, though, about privacy and sex and…..was he wearing SHOES!?

"So….about breakfast. I was thinking…frittatas? Yeah, those….I haven't made frittatas in a while…or crepes? You guys…you like crepes….right?" asked Shibata. He had almost dropped Sho…that hadn't been good….also Mob had gotten her…special times. That was….well he didn't know much about that but he did know that she would need….well that was why her aura was freaking out. Well he would help out in any way he could. He remembered that mom had kept things for that under the bathroom sink….and he had no idea what Mob would need exactly but…ads! He'd seen ads! He'd just…get her what the ads said so get or…or he could ask a woman! Well he didn't know any women…and also they were afraid of him….but he could just send someone nonthreatening like…well not Sho he was freaked out enough….Hatori? No…he was being a sweater turtle right now. Google! He would Google what he needed to get her and then…well she probably didn't want the talk from him…Minegishi! They were…a person who this happened to! Well they were also pissed off but…but they would teach Mob about the birds and the bees….they grew up so fast….ok. They would teach her about the birds and the bees and then he would…..a party! Sometimes people threw those for girls when they had their….special times. Yeah, Mob LOVED parties! She loved cake and presents and balloons and streamers and…and he could do this! He'd throw her a red special times party and then she would be all better….and Sho could help! Yeah! The poor little guy must have felt so helpless….and Shibata didn't blame him…but a party would take his mind off of all of this…

Yeah. He had this. Hiroshi for the win.

"Shibata….do you have brain worms or something?! How can you think about breakfast at a time like this?! My sister is in our room bleeding out all of her blood and you're worried about breakfast!?" shouted Sho. Had everyone lost their minds?! Breakfast! Ketchup! Putting on pants! The world had gone insane! He was the last sane person! Brain worms! That was the only explanation!

"I….I think that she's going to be fine. Um…girls…there's a thing that happens to them and…have your dad explain it to you! I have to…to go to the bathroom! And I'm fine with anything for breakfast!" said Hatori before he ran to the bathroom. He ran with his eyes closed, he didn't want to catch so much as a glimpse of Minegishi even though they had made a new door out of vines, because he wanted to live to see tomorrow. This was…above his paygrade. He…he knew that he had nothing to contribute to this. He had snickered through the same health class every other middle schooler in Japan had sat and snickered through, he knew what a period was, and he also knew that he had nothing to contribute to this…well not crisis but…situation. This was not his area of expertise…or even experience. He'd never had a girlfriend, mom hadn't talked with him about this, and he'd been born a guy. He had no idea what a period was beyond the brief explanation given in health class and some period stuff ads he'd seen on TV over the years. This was not his area of expertise. The next time Mob's computer crashed or she got stuck in a game or she forgot one of her passwords he would be ALL OVER that but now…now he would just get in the way…

So the best thing to do was to be out of the way…in the bathroom…where it was small…and safe….

"Well he's not coming back. Anyway, give me the kid. He and I have a lot to discuss." Said Shimazaki. Ok, he knew what he would have to do. He'd have to tell the kid that his sister was not dying. He'd just tell Sho the truth of what was happening. Girls, and people who had ketchup packet times, had too much blood inside of them. That blood was supposed to turn into a baby if a guy came in them. When no swimmers made it to the place with all the blood the blood built up too much and then it all came out over the course of five to seven days. After that new blood started to accumulate. That was his understanding of it anyway from what he'd been able to piece together over the years. It seemed legit, nobody had ever corrected him before so he must have been mostly on target. Yeah, he would tell the kid all of that…and also the difference between boys and girls if he didn't already know that…and also…condoms? Yeah, he'd explain those too…and he'd do better than dad did. All dad had done was toss him a box and tell him that he had no business reproducing. He'd tell Sho…well he was ten…but better he know what to do at ten then end up getting sick with God knows what….or a father…in two or three years. Yeah….condoms were…well they were terrible and they made sex terrible…but that might not have been the thing to tell a kid on the cusp of becoming a man…

He had this. He knew exactly what he was doing.

"Discuss? We don't have time for discussions! Big sis is covered in blood, not ketchup, and we need to do something before she bleeds to death! Now put me down! I am going to into that room and drag Minegishi out and I don't care what I see!" screamed Sho. He tried to get free, he even used his powers, but nothing helped. Why did Shibata have to be so STRONG?! He had to save big sis! He had to go into that room and get Minegishi because they were the only person who could help now! He didn't like them, they didn't like him, but the enemy of his enemy was his friend and he and Minegishi were both enemies of death and they were going to fight death with both hands and save big sis before she died! All he had to do was kick down those leaves and-

Or Minegishi could come out on their own. That worked too.

"Will someone please tell him what a period is? Because right now I have enough shit to deal with. God…I have to do everything around here…..too much to ask Suzuki to get off his ass and parent…kids waking me up….breaking down my door….seeing me naked…making me mutter to myself…not even seven in the morning yet…." Muttered Minegishi as they walked through the crowd. They clutched their messenger bag to their chest and walked as quickly as they could. Everyone had seen….they did not get to feel vulnerable and violated right now. Mob needed them. Mob needed them and they were going to help her. They were the only person amongst them qualified and….and the bracelet came with certain responsibilities….

Even though they had been shirking those responsibilities.

They knew that Mob had started puberty and they knew that they should have given her this talk…but they hadn't. There was no excuse for what they had done. There was no rationalizing this. They had dropped the ball when it came to Mob. She was not their Daughter, she was their friend, and being friends with her carried a level of responsibility because of her age and….and because he father was useless. Her father….Suzuki had been married. Presumably to a woman. Presumably to a woman with a complete set of female reproductive organs. Presumably he had gotten very familiar with those reproductive organs since he had FATHERED TWO CHILDREN with his wife. Presumably he had noticed that those female reproductive organs he had so enjoyed bled every so often. Presumably….well Minegishi knew that presuming was pointless. For all they knew Mob and Sho had been created via turkey baster or in a petri dish in a lab somewhere. They didn't know about Suzuki's sex life, they didn't want to think about Suzuki's sex life, and they knew it was none of their business what he and his late wife had gotten up to in their marriage in the first place….

They knew that they didn't know a damn thing.

But they also knew, had known for years, that Suzuki was the world's worst father…and that a lot of raising Mob fell onto their shoulders…so that was what they would do. Apologize and…and help Mob out as best as they could….since her father was useless and her mother was dead the responsibility fell to them…and they wouldn't let Mob down.

Not again. Never again.

"Good! Go and save my sister and…and if you don't I'll fuck you up really bad! Yeah! You won't know what hit you! You'll be asleep in your bed and then I'll be there and…and then you'll pay! So…hurry up! Walk faster!" shouted Sho as Minegishi walked past him. Good, someone without brain worms. He didn't like them at all but…but they weren't going to let big sis die. Right now they had a common enemy, death, and once they had beaten death then they could go back to being mortal enemies. Right now…right now they had to save big sis and Sho….he needed Shibata to PUT HIM DOWN ALREADY!

"Shibata, give him here and then get started on breakfast. He and I have to have a talk." Said Shimazaki as he held his arms out. He could sense Sho kicked and squirming….and he didn't blame him. This was a lot for a kid to deal with. He thought that his sister was dying. Shimazaki had thought the same thing the first time he had smelled blood on his mom. Someone needed to tell Sho was what going on and that someone was him. He was the only one qualified. Toshi was off helping Mob, Hatori was a virgin, and Shibata liked to pretend that the kids were still babies. He was liable to tell Sho some nonsense about storks leaving babies under cabbage leaves or something. Nope. Shimazaki was the only man for qualified for this job.

"Here….but keep it age appropriate. Remember, he's only ten." Said Shibata. He had no idea what, exactly, a ten year old even needed to know. He hadn't had his first health class until his first year of middle school. Sho…well he needed to know that his sister wasn't going to die, obviously, and also that he maybe shouldn't have gone around telling people about her special times….and Shibata knew that he was not the man for this job….well he could fill in if Shimazaki messed this up…which he very well might have….since he was Shimazaki and….

And he mostly knew about breakfast so he was going to make that and then…well and then he would fix whatever mess Shimazaki made…and then he and Sho could plan Mob's special times party! Yeah! She'd love that!

"Put me down! I don't need to discuss anything! I need to be there for my sister!" shouted Sho. He didn't know what was so hard to understand about that…but he didn't know what was even going on here. Everyone was being all….weird. Crazy. Completely wrong in the head! This was a crisis, an emergency even! But Shibata…was making breakfast and Hatori was having a bathroom freak out….and this was the only time where it had ever been ok for him to have one of those so he got a pass….but Shimazaki was just holding him under his armpits like he was baby sis and…and he wanted to discuss stuff? This was just….backwards. Crazy. All upside down and….wrong.

Maybe this was what happened when you greeted the moon before the sun.


	378. Too Early For This, Or Maybe Too Late

It was too early for this shit.

It was almost seven in the morning. That was too early for anything, anything at all, let alone this. Let alone crossing the thin strip of grass that separated their house from Mob's in order to give her a LONG OVERDUE talk. They….it was too early to give her this talk…no. They knew that they were being ridiculous. She had leg hair, she sort of had the beginnings of breasts, and she was obsessed with boys and kissing and love and also presumably other things which she wasn't about to share with her best friend. This was…it felt too early. She was only eleven…but Minegishi hadn't been much older than her when they had started….and that had been a shit show. They hadn't thought that they were dying, they had read enough to know that their period was coming, but they hadn't exactly been thrilled to wake up to sticky wet sheets and a stern talking to from matron about ruining their bed….like they'd had any control over…anything…..

Fuck group homes.

That had been…well the other girls had teased them….well not to their face. Not after they got solitary for fighting again. But still…the little bit of teasing that they had gotten….teasing which had made no SENSE! Everyone had to go through that. Everyone. Even twelve year old orphans and future orphans. Everyone had to go through this and…and fuck anyone who would tease Mob…not that anyone would if they had any sense…and fuck….fuck Minegishi for not warning her. They had just….dropped the ball on that one. They should have sat down with Mob and told her that she would start bleeding out of her vagina once a month until her late forties or early fifties. They should have…they weren't going to think in would haves and could haves and should haves. They were going to think about what their next course of action would be.

Mob had gotten her first period.

They could deal with this. Step one would be cleaning her up and giving her something to stem the red tide. Minegishi reached into their messenger bag and felt around as they got to Mob's doorstep. They only had overnight pads and super plus tampons….and they were going shopping. That would be step two. They were going to take Mob shopping and they were going to get her all the supplies she needed, since they knew that if they hadn't been planning for this little eventuality then obviously Suzuki hadn't either, and then step three…well step three would probably involve teaching her about sex because, yeah, she could get pregnant now and she was pretty damn boy crazy…and then step four…well that would involve teaching her little brother a lesson about privacy, basic manners, and respect. Then step five….

They were getting drunk. And stoned. Or stoned and then drunk. They still hadn't figured out the order yet.

There. They had a plan, they had supplies, and now all they had to do was open the door. That was all. They took a deep breath. They would have to add a step six, kowtowing, because they owed Mob a very big apology. Yes. They were the ones who had…well her mom could have said something before she died or ran away to live on a farm or whatever excuse Suzuki had given his children for his wife's absence. Mob had been seven, she had said, and seven….well Minegishi had no idea how young was too young. At what point Mob could have dealt with the whole 'blood will come out of your vagina' thing without freaking out….maybe there was no such thing as too young. Minegishi had read that are you there, God thing when they had been eight and…well the thought of bleeding from their vagina had disturbed them…they had no idea when it would have been age appropriate to teach Mob about this little biological eventuality. They were not a parent. This was the responsibility of her parent…her one remaining parent…her one remaining and useless parent….

And also the equally useless healer her parent kept around probably for reasons like this.

Minegishi saw Fukuda long before they sensed him. World was Suzuki was going on full force. There was Mob's aura, her dad's aura, and the weird color their auras made as they clashed together. They wondered what this sounded like, to Ryou, because he could hear aura. They could only see and sense them…and right now they saw and sensed fear and chaos…and Fukuda panicking at the top of the stairs.

Oh joy of joys.

Well then it looked like, as usual, Minegishi was the only person in the room with two brain cells to rub together. God. Those idiots…they got a better view as they got closer to the stairs. The walk was slow going. The house…well if Suzuki thought that Mob was cleaning this up then he had another thing coming. There was broken glass and plaster everywhere…bits of paper…half of a television was sticking out of the ceiling….yeah. This was….yeah.

They had really dropped the ball with this one.

But not as bad as Suzuki. He was her father. He was the one who was supposed to talk to his kids about this. What, did he think that his kids would just learn about these things on their own? Did he think that an eleven year old and a ten year old would figure it all out on their own? Minegishi hadn't even known everything that they should have known by the time they hit puberty…and they had been a ward of the government by that point so at least there had been an excuse there. What in the hell was Suzuki on and where could Minegishi get some? Drugs were the only explanation…unless he literally had no idea what a period was….yeah. They could believe that he could have been that stupid.

Especially since he was, apparently, trying to get Mob's door opened.

"Daughter! You are being ridiculous! Just open the door so Fukuda can heal you!" said Suzuki as he managed to get Daughter's door opened….and then slammed shut in his face. He felt…well his ears were ringing…and he knew that he had lost control and broken something…and now…well now he smelled blood and…and there was blood in his eyes and…and he could taste it and….

And….

And he was just….he was fine! He could feel Fukuda's aura and…and he was fine! This was….Daughter needed him! Daughter needed him but for some reason she was being….insane! Difficult! Insanely difficult! Didn't she know that she needed help! She was his smart child! She wasn't useless like Son! She knew that she was hurt and…and she was being like this!

"Suzuki, hold still. That looks bad." Said Fukuda as he got as close to Suzuki as he could. This was….he had to do something…and this was something that he could do. This was something that he could heal. Shigeko…that was not his…he had no experience with that but…but he could at least heal Suzuki.

"Leave me! Help my Daughter!" said Suzuki as he rubbed the blood out of his eyes. That had been…well he had managed to get her door opened….but then she had just slammed it into his face! Specifically his forehead! She had managed to overpower him…well he was scattered. He was so scattered and…and the house was in shambles…but who gave a fuck about the house! Daughter was covered in blood! People did not just bleed for no reason! She could have been hemorrhaging! She could have had her organs shutting down one by one! She could have spontaneously developed hemophilia! She could have…he didn't know….but he did know that she was in there covered in blood and she just would not open the god damned mother fucking door!

"Suzuki…she's going to be ok…you on the other hand-" said Fukuda as he tried his best to heal the massive gash on Suzuki's head. This was bad. This gash was…well Shigeko had slammed the door in his face. She had slammed the door in her father's face even though she knew what he was like, how tenuous his control was, and how poorly he coped with stress. Suzuki had gotten all stressed out over….well this was stressful….but it was normal! He'd been married, he'd had more long term girlfriends than Fukuda'd ever had…somehow….so he knew what happened to women every so often! He had no reason to be this freaked out! This was….

This was bad.

This was so bad. The house was wrecked, Sho wouldn't be happy about having to move again, and also Shigeko and Suzuki were both falling apart…and he had no idea what to do. He had paper towels and band aids….and he was loathe to use Sho's Zootopia band aids but he didn't have any others around…but that was what he had and…and if Shigeko would have just calmed down for a second then he could have passed her those and told her to do what she had to do to deal with…all of that and then….he didn't know….he really didn't. Masami…he wished that Masami would have given him something to tell Shigeko or to pass on to her because….he didn't know what to do and…and he had Suzuki to deal with. He had Suzuki freaking out…and Sho had been freaked out….and he had enough to deal with as it was! How could she not know what to do? She was always trying to be the little woman but now that she had actually become a woman she was just….acting like it was the end of the world or something! She must have known…something….right? She kept company with adults and….

And she was a girl. She must have known more than he did.

Because otherwise they were fucked. Royally, up the wall, and sideways with a sharpened stick. This was…Suzuki was not good right now and Fukuda…well he had no idea what to do. Give her something for the blood and then…what? Give her a ride to a drug store? What else could he do? He didn't know what to do and…and he wished that Masami was around or…or any woman really…

But not THAT woman.

He sensed her before he saw her…and she had been able to get VERY close and she looked VERY pissed off…and if he had been anyone else then he would have been dead. God. She….they…whatever. Minegishi was terrifying. He instinctively got closer to Suzuki even though it was painful being near him when his aura was like this. That was….Minegishi was glaring at him….and he didn't know why. For as much as she…they…called themselves 'they' they were still a woman and…and they should have waned Mob about this or taught her something or….or something! They had gone through this before. Fukuda….he'd never gone through this and any girl that he'd seen had dealt with it on her own and…and…and he was at least trying his best and….

And he got the feeling, based on how Minegishi was looking at him, that his best had not been good enough by their standards.

"So." Said Minegishi as they took in the scene before them. Suzuki was practically hyperventilating while his head wound dripped blood all over his white undershirt….also he had a metric shit ton of freckles on his arms…and Fukuda was squirming in place clutching a box of band aids and a roll of paper towels…not even a fresh roll….and WHAT exactly had he been planning on DOING with this?

"Minegishi. Good day." Said Fukuda. It took him a moment to find his voice. Their eyes were darting around like they were looking for something to kill him with. Good thing Suzuki had never been a fan of houseplants…though judging by the way that they were clutching their bag they might have had a plant or two in there…and if they had come to kill him then they had better have been planning on making it quick because he healed fast and Suzuki was right there and…and if he had been in his right state of mind he would have protected Fukuda…but he wasn't in his right state of mind. He was…well not well…right now.

"Yeah, good day or whatever." Said Minegishi. They took a step back as Suzuki focused on them and….yup. That was definitely Sho's dad. He certainly had the crazy eyes there….and that was…Minegishi wasn't afraid of Suzuki. They could be afraid of him tomorrow or whatever. Right now Mob needed them…or literally anyone other than these two morons.

"You….you're Daughter's best friend…talk some sense into her! She…she won't open the door and….and she could be dying…hemorrhaging….she's bleeding! Get her out of there this instant!" said Suzuki. He slammed his aura into their's…it had mostly been an accident…but the point should have been made! They were Daughter's best friend and that was what best friends did! They saved you from yourself! How many times had Fukuda dragged him out of his room when he'd had a setback? How many times had Fukuda pulled him from his work when he'd lost track of the time and made him eat and sleep and bathe? Minegishi…he didn't understand them at all…but Daughter had decided that this person of apparently no gender…however that worked…was her best friend and…and they had to do something but Suzuki was not going to lose his Daughter!

"Hemorrhaging? Really?" asked Minegishi raising a space where their eyebrow should have been. Well then. They had told the idiot brigade to teach Sho what a period was….and hopefully they could restart their lecture from the beginning since their exalted leader, the man who would conquer the world someday, had no idea what a period was….

This man had CHILDREN?

"Wait….is that what you honestly think is happening right now?" asked Fukuda. He had just thought that Suzuki was stressed because, yeah, seeing a family member covered in blood must have brought up some bad memories but….hemorrhaging? Had he forgotten….well he hadn't spent much time with Masami…so he very well might have forgotten about what happened to women…and he was not giving Suzuki the talk. That was just…oh who was he kidding? Of course he was.

"What he thinks is happening…what do you think is happening? You…what in the hell do you think is happening right now? I mean…you have paper towels and band aids. What in the hell are you planning on doing with paper towels and band aids?" asked Minegishi. What, was he going to tell her to make a napkin out of paper towels and then…what? Band aid her vagina shut? At least he had brought children's band aids….and those were Sho's….and if he was going to go and pick up children's band aids for Mob he could have at least picked up some Frozen ones….not that they would do anything…just…he'd seen a vagina, right? He knew what was happening down there…right? Well, no, probably not since he had just….showed up with….paper towels and band aids!?

Minegishi needed something stronger than grain alcohol and marijuana to deal with this.

"Ju-ju-just…..do you have anything better?! Because this was all I had on hand! I have no clue what do about this and….and I am doing my best! Where we you?! Huh?! Where in the hell have you been!?" asked Fukuda. No. They did not get to talk to him like that. At least he was helping. He had come all the way over here to help even though he should have been heading as far out of the coming blast radius as he could have gotten! Where did she get off telling Fukuda off?! She was the one who should have been there helping Mob with this! Fukuda was a man! Obviously he didn't have the proper….supplies…on hand! When would he have ever needed them!? They did not just get to come in here and talk down to him and make him look bad and just…..God!

"How about this?" asked Minegishi as they reached into their bag and pulled out a sanitary pad. Honesty. They would have thought that they had pulled out a handful of toxic waste by the way Fukuda recoiled. Honestly. No wonder the only people who could stand his company were ten year old boys…and Minegishi was not one to throw around wild accusations but maybe someone should have looked into that…or something. They didn't know. All they was that Mob needed them and she also needed to get away from these idiots.

Because really. Paper towels and band aids?

"What is that?" asked Suzuki. He knew…he had seen something like that before…but he couldn't remember where and…and he didn't care what it was just so long as someone could help his Daughter!

"A sanitary napkin to soak up the blood from period that your daughter is having right now." Said Minegishi. They spoke slowly and clearly and used lots of small words so that Suzuki could understand them. Well if he had no idea what a pad was then….well this lent credence to their turkey baster theory. Really. He was forty something years old and he had never….well this was Suzuki Touichirou after all.

"Oh….oh! My…oh my….that's….that is…oh…." Said Suzuki. He slumped backwards against the wall. Well that was certainly a load off of his mind. Daughter…she would be fine. She had just had her period, that was all, and that….well that made more sense than her having some kind of massive internal hemorrhaging…or having had spontaneously developed hemophilia and…and that…she was female and…and he knew that Masami….well that had been a thing which happened to her and…and Daughter…

She was only eleven.

She was eleven and…was that old enough to start menstruating? Well, obviously, it was…but he had always thought that only grown women menstruated…so that meant that she was a woman now….but she was so YOUNG. He was…he was NOT ready. He was not ready to let her go. She was…she was too young to be a woman! They…they had been planning on going to that shop that made unnecessarily detailed doll furniture on Sunday…and then she had said that she was going to teach him what frozen yogurt was….apparently it was like less sweet ice cream…and then they had been planning on having another viewing of the ice queen and…and she was going to show him the latest improvements to her Minecraft world…and then….then he was going to play Terraria with her and…and she was still so little! She was only eleven and-

And he needed to calm the hell down right now. Him getting upset was not good for her while she was in her delicate state.

"Yeah. It's 'oh'." Said Minegishi. Well this was….if they hadn't been so pissed off then this would have been hilarious. Two middle aged men freaking out because an eleven year old girl got her period…and Fukuda was still looking at them like they had been waving a piece of kryptonite around. Honestly. It was a fully wrapped sanitary napkin. What? Did he think that if he stood in close proximity to it his dick would shrivel up and fall off?

"…for the record I never thought that she was hemorrhaging. I knew that she'd gotten her period." Said Fukuda as he got to work fixing the gash on Suzuki's head. Well he was calmer, now, at least. That panful, stinging, feeling that had been hanging in the air was gone now. Now he was just…he looked like he was either going to laugh or to cry…or maybe both…and that was weird since he usually wasn't so expressive.

"Then what in the hell were you planning on doing with paper towels and band aids?" asked Minegishi. What? Did he think that he could save her from hemorrhaging with paper towels and band aids? God…two halves of a whole idiot. He and Suzuki were two halves of a whole idiot…and thank God that medical science hadn't advanced far enough for those two to reproduce.

"I…was going to do my best! I'm not a woman, I don't just…have these things lying around!" said Fukuda. What did she think? He was not Shigeko's father! He wasn't her mother! He wasn't her anything! This was not…this was not his job. He didn't know…he had no idea….but she did! She did and she did NOT have to rub it in his face like that!

"Right. Well you're relieved of…whatever you think that your duty was. I'll take it from here." Said Minegishi shaking their head. It wouldn't have been very much effort to take a car to any of the thousands of convenience stores in this city and picking up some actual supplies. It wasn't like they stuck their hands down your pants at checkout! But…he did have a point. This had been their job by default. Not because they had been born with a vagina but because they had been born with a functioning brain.

"You can't just dismiss-" said Fukuda. They did not get to just…order him around like that! He just…he would listen to Suzuki…he would listen to Shigeko…but he would not listen to Minegishi! She didn't even outrank him and…and…and-!

"You. You know what to do about this? How to fix it?" asked Suzuki. He pointed at Minegishi. They were a woman…and it was easy to forget that…but they knew what to do about this. He just….he wanted this to be over already.

"It's….a period. There is no 'fixing' it. This is just something that's going to happen to her once a month for the next forty or so years. I can help calm her down, I can clean her up, and I can help her get supplies but…yeah. This is going to keep happening to her every month until the day you die and then probably for some time after wards." Said Minegishi. They omitted the fact that they were planning on killing him someday, him and that wheel-less shopping cart of a human being over there, for putting Mob through all of that. Honestly. What was WRONG with those two….they just…they could not with those idiots right now.

"Good. Do all of that. You have all of Claw's resources at your disposal just….help my Daughter." Said Suzuki. He decided, in that moment, that he liked Minegishi. They were going to help Daughter. They were confusing, and somewhat annoying on long plane rides when they fought with the others, but he liked them. When he conquered the world they would be favored in the new regime.

"…can I have a plane?" asked Minegishi after a moment. They didn't really want to fly but they did want to see exactly how much they could got way with here. Suzuki was being….well usually he did his best to be commanding and terrifying but now…well now he was just….he looked like he was about to kiss them or something….which was going to be a hard 'no' if he tried it. Just…no. He was Mob's father and…and also a very weird and unpleasant human being by anyone's standards. Just...no.

"If you need one." said Suzuki. He had no idea what they would need a plane for, and also he didn't really want Daughter flying without him, but….well he wanted Daughter to get better or just…to not be the way she was now…and he had no idea what to do about this…so he would defer to Minegishi. She was, they were, the expert after all.

"Suzuki, you can't be serious." Said Fukuda. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Minegishi…what were they doing? Trying to get ahead or take advantage or just….what? This was just…no. There was no way that Suzuki didn't see through this transparent attempt at manipulation. Really this was the perfect opportunity to get ahead and Fukuda, well he would have done the same thing if he had been in Minegishi's place, but he wouldn't have been so bold as to do this while the only person who could see through the bullshit was standing right there.

"I am serious. Minegishi…well I had forgotten that you were a woman...but you…but she…they. Daughter said to use the gender neutral conjugation with her…them. Minegishi knows best. They've done this before and I put all of my faith in them. Whatever they need will be at their disposal. Whatever I can do to help I will." Said Suzuki. It was the same as if he had been talking to Masami. She was a woman, like Masami was a woman, and she knew what to do about this. Suzuki…he was at a loss. He knew that Masami had dealt with this but…well he hadn't really been around her for long enough to figure out what it was that she had done. He knew to make her tea when she asked for it and to leave her alone when she told him to get away from him but…well beyond that he was at a loss. He was a man. This was not something that he knew about and…and that was alright. Sometimes you needed to consult an expert and Minegishi, for as masculine as she…as they….presented themselves they were still a woman and they still knew best.

"Right. Well first of all you had better not have been thinking of having Mob clean this mess up…or any mess. Don't make her cook anything or clean anything….and just don't bother her to do anything at all. Also if she needs something then just get it for her no questions asked….and if you see her drinking or smoking don't stop her because, trust me, she's going to need it." Said Minegishi. Yeah. Fuck moderation. Mob was going through a lot…and the first was always the worst…so yeah. If she wanted to get drunk and stoned then she could have at it.

"She's eleven. What could an eleven year possibly need to-" said Fukuda. Nope. There was no way that Suzuki was going to agree to that. He hated smoking and drinking and he wanted Shigeko to stay a child for as long as possible. There was no way that he was going to let her smoke and drink, and let's be real, get high right there under his roof.

"Cramps. Sore breasts. Tender stomach. Digestive upset. Mood swings. Depression. Anxiety. Really anything that you would be feeling if blood and chunks of bloody tissue, some as big as a ping pong ball, were pouring out of your penis right now." Said Minegishi. They wished that they had been recording that. Both Suzuki and Fukuda looked upon them with horror, and they had never seen Suzuki emote like that too so that was weird, and they both clenched their legs together. Honestly. They didn't have to be quite so dramatic about all of this….but maybe with that mental image they could have some empathy for the scared and bloody eleven year old on the other side of that door.

"Ok, we get the message." Said Fukuda. He crossed his legs in disgust. Had she really had to be so….graphic? That was just…graphic. Too graphic.

"Ping….pong…..ball?" asked Suzuki. That had been…ping pong ball? Like….regulation sized…ping pong balls…of bloody tissue? He had never heard…well Masami hadn't given him any details….and neither had any of the other women he had ever been involved with romantically or sexually….but just…ping pong balls? That was….happening to Daughter? Right now? That was just…that sounded…he crossed his legs. All female staff were getting extra personal time because…just…ping pong balls?

"If you're lucky. If you're unlucky they can get up to softball sized." Said Minegishi. They weren't exaggerating…but they were oversharing…but maybe now these two morons could develop some basic empathy skills.

"That…sounds truly awful…." Said Suzuki. He…he had never been happier to have been born male at any point in his life than he was now. This was just…Masami had gone through THAT? She had gone through that and she hadn't told him? Well he had no idea what he would have done with that information if she had told him…or what he was supposed to do with that information now but…soft ball sized? That was…bigger than a baseball….right? He didn't know, the only sport he followed was kendo, but he did know that….poor Daughter. He just…he would help her in any way that he could. If she had to smoke like a chimney and drink like a fish then so be it. Ping pong ball sized….soft ball sized….no wonder Masami had always been so cross with him. He would have been cross too if he'd had to pass giant balls of tissue through his…he crossed his legs again. Nope. Stop thinking about that, Touichirou, just stop it.

"Yeah, it really is, so maybe the best thing to do while Mob is going through this is to wait on her hand and foot…but don't smother her either. It stresses her the hell out and she does not need to be stressed out right now. Got it?" asked Minegishi. Wow. They were giving orders to the great Suzuki Toucihirou. Heh. Now they knew what true power felt like…or whatever.

"Y-Yes…I can do that. I can…get the house fixed and…and wait on Daughter and…and she….is going to be fine." Said Suzuki. He said it more to himself than anyone else. She was in there passing ping pong ball….or soft ball sized pieces of tissue from her body and…and he just…he did not want to think about this…so he wouldn't. He had work to do…and he would skip breakfast this morning…and he would just…do as Minegishi had told him. She was…they were….the expert there after all.

"Yup. Fine and dandy like sour candy." Said Minegishi sarcastically. Fine? How could he possibly think that Mob was fine? This was the most traumatic way that she could have had her first period…and this was not all Minegishi's fault. Two fully grown men couldn't put their heads together and figure out that the little girl, who was clearly going through puberty as Fukuda apparently could not keep his mouth shut about, was obviously having her first period. No. Suzuki, apparently, loved to catastrophize. Hemorrhaging? Really? And Fukuda….paper towels and band aids? What? Had he been planning on telling her to band aid her vagina shut and fold a pad out of paper towels? That was just….useless. Everyone was useless…but especially Minegishi because they had been the ones to let it get this far.

"Right….Daughter! Good news! You aren't going to die! You're just menstruating!" said Suzuki. She should have been overjoyed at this news, he knew that he was, but instead of being happy that she wasn't going to die, women didn't die of this Masami had been quite clear the first time he had ever woken up to her side of the bed being bloody like someone had been stabbed several times, so Daughter should have been happy or at least not….well her aura felt…terrible. Well that would be the ping pong sized…or soft ball sized….bits of bloody tissue and…and poor Daughter….thank God he would never have to deal with Son going through this….he would have been insufferable but Daughter…she did not deserve to suffer like this.

"Yeah…and don't draw attention to this either….actually you'd better just leave me and her alone for now and focus on making this house livable and then I guess…Claw stuff? Just go. I can take it from here." Said Minegishi. Mob, apparently, did not think that this was good news based on the way that the entire house shook. A piece of plaster hit Minegishi on the head. Wonderful.

"Right…I can do that…I can…make the house livable and…and she isn't going to die...she isn't going to go…." Said Suzuki. He didn't much like being given order but…but he had no idea what to do for his Daughter. This was….he had never had to deal with this before. Not since that first time when he and Masami had been married…and Son had been born some time ago…and he had woken up to find her gone and her side of the bed bloody…and he had been ready to call Fukuda because he had been sure that she'd been having post birth complications even though son had been born months ago…but then she had just said…

You're being ridiculous Touichirou, it's just my period, now leave me alone and see what Sho needs.

That was what she had said and…and he was being ridiculous now…and he had maybe….been a little ridiculous before….and now he would leave his Daughter alone. Yes. Minegishi said that they needed to be alone with Daughter…and he had nothing to contribute to this besides financially….so he would just…see to getting the house made fit for human habitation again…because…well a lot of this had been him….

And he was so grateful that Daughter was alive…but he was equally as grateful that he got to walk away from this whole….situation.

"You can go too. Nobody needs you." Said Minegishi. They debated throwing a napkin or a tampon at him to get him to walk away…but that would have been an insult to perfectly good supplies…but then again maybe this weak stringed, light days, scented, off brand, cardboard applicator tampon of a human being might have deserved it…and it might have done him well to see what a functional tampon looked like,

"You know, right, that he's going to remember that you spoke to him like that and-" said Fukuda. How could Suzuki have just let her talk to him like that? He had sent people to the traitor holes for much less. Why did she get to get away with that? Because she was Shigeko's friend? Because she had the things that Shigeko needed on hand? Well if he hadn't been panicking then he could have just headed down to a store and bought…well whatever the salesgirl or whoever said was good for….all of this. Not that he wanted to be involved. Quite the contrary. He wanted to go back to bed but…well he had a lot to deal with now and….and Suzuki had better not have been in his room getting dressed for work…because he had no idea how he was supposed to have a normal workday after this. God. He just wanted…he just wanted to go the fuck to sleep already….or something. He didn't know. Maybe he would join Sho for poptarts and cola or something.

"Did I fucking stutter? Go. Away. I don't need you, nobody needs you, and right now you are working my last nerve. Just get the hell out of here and take your paper towels and band aids with you….God. Get out of here. You're embarrassing yourself." Said Minegishi. They held eye contact with him. They held aural contact with him. Aural contact…could be a lot of things. It could be pain, as was the case with Suzuki, it could be pleasure, not that Fukuda would ever come close to that, or it could be something as simple as a dominance display. They were smaller than him, he could heal, and they didn't have any close plant life…but they could still kick his ass down the stairs with one foot and up the stairs with the other if he felt like going at it with them. He was useless here. He didn't need to be here. If he wanted to be here so badly then he could follow Suzuki to his bedroom, get down on his hands and knees, and get fucked in probably the most unpleasant way imaginable.

He had earned it after all.

But he didn't stay and fight, and he didn't follow Suzuki to his room to be the living flesh light that he was, he walked down the stairs and out the door. Good. Minegishi waited until they felt him FAR from the house. Suzuki was still home but…well better he was inside where he could be kept away from people than outside where he could find his son and figure out some way to pin this on him….God. That guy…that fucking….

Calm down, Toshiki, this isn't about that.

This was about Mob. They had come here for Mob and they were going to be here for Mob….and that was just about the only thing that they could do, be there for her. If there was some way to make it so that she didn't have to go through this, well there was but they were not going to be putting an eleven year old on birth control, they would have done it. Like if they were some kind of puberty fairy or something and they could, like, make this all better…or something….without putting Mob on a massive dose of hormones at the age of eleven. They just…they were alone, there, outside of her door and…and they were not the one who got to feel powerless here. They weren't powerless. They knew what to do. They were the adult, the only functional adult, and they were not going to leave Mob high and dry like this.

Responsibilities of the bracelet.

"Hey Mob? Can I come in? Those two are gone now, it's just me and you. This is a dick free zone. Well I can be a dick sometimes but…you know what I mean." Said Minegishi. Maybe she didn't. They didn't know. They just knew that they would have killed for her to have told them that she didn't get it…or something like that. Anything. Anything more than this silence.

"Mob? Come on, I know that you're in there. I know that you're in there and I know that you're pretty freaked out too. There's blood coming from your vagina and you don't know why it's happening to you….and I know because the same thing happens to me every month…and just about everyone else on the planet with a working set of female reproductive organs. You're freaked out and it's ok to be freaked out. I was freaked out too when I was your age…actually a little bit older…but I was still freaked out and I knew that it was coming. Mob….I can't imagine what you're going through in there but…but if you just let me in then I can help. Please let me help. I love you." Said Minegishi. There was another moment of silence before Mob's door opened up just a crack. Minegishi opened it up slowly the rest of the way. The room was….well it might have been a bedroom at some point…but now it was just a mess of toys and clothes and…feather? Oh. A pillow or two had broken open…but that was fine. There was nothing in that room that couldn't be replaced.

Nothing aside from Mob.

Mob who was curled up in a corner hiding under her Frozen blanket. That snowman was entirely too happy for this situation. Mob…her aura was nothing but fear and pain and embarrassment…but she was going to be ok. Minegishi was here now and….and there was nothing for her to be afraid of. Minegishi would have laid their life down and protected her from anything…and this wasn't anything that she even needed protection from. It was just her period. She was going to be ok….

She just had to be made aware of that fact.

Minegishi knelt down beside Mob and put a hand on the lump of blankets. That could have been her back or her head or her shoulder…they didn't know. All they knew was that underneath that blanket was a terrified child…a terrified child who was most likely under the impression that she was bleeding to death….well Minegishi would be there for her. This was…this was a hell of a lot of work for this early in the morning but they would be there for Mob.

Even if it meant kneeling on Legos.

"Minegishi…." Said Mob softy. She didn't want to talk to them…and she did. She just…she wanted to die alone…but also she didn't want to die….and then dad had said that she wasn't dying….but she just….people knew! Dad knew about the blood and so did Fukuda and Sho…Sho had been the one to find out…and now if Minegishi was here then he had gone and told EVERYONE and now…now everyone knew about the blood and…

And she just wanted to die alone, in peace, under her Frozen blanket!

Was that really too much to ask?! She just….everyone knew about the blood and…and Sho had SEEN IT and Dad…well he had seen it when he managed to get her door opened and….and then Fukuda had been there and now he was probably thinking all kinds of thought about her and…and how she was bleeding from her…from a place that she did not want him to think about and…and how she was just…she just wanted to be alone! She wanted…she wanted to be alone and…

And she wanted Minegishi to keep on rubbing her back.

"Hey Mob…come on. It's going to be ok. I'm here for you." Said Minegishi softly. They made soothing noises as they rubbed the warm lump of blankets under their hand. She sounded so small and lost and…and she was just a kid. It was easy to forget that, sometimes, but even with the powers of a living God she was just a little eleven year old girl….and she was dealing with so much…and she had been dealing with so much already….and if Minegishi ever saw her mother's spirit then they were going to exorcise it themselves even if they had no idea how to.

Because. Really.

Minegishi was no stranger to bad mothers, theirs could have given bad mothering seminars and toured Japan, so they knew one when they saw one…or the aftermath of one. Mob…if this woman had truly run away to live on the happy farm with all the other mothers who ran away from home then, in addition to saying high to Ryou's childhood dogs, she maybe could have taken the time to drop Mob a line and tell her about this. What to expect. Or she could have done that before she ran away….or she could have told Mob something before she died. Because, really, Minegishi was not Mob's parent…and there had been no way of telling if Mob would ever have had Minegishi or someone like them in her life. Mob was being raised by her father, a man who's first thought had been that his Daughter was hemorrhaging, and in Claw, and organization that was OVERWHELMINGLY male especially when you got to the upper echelons, so for all the mysterious Missus Suzuki had known Mob would have been going through puberty all on her own. Puberty was hell but female puberty….well that was a special kind of hell. God. All boys had to worry about was stinking to high hell, random erections, and waking up in sticky shorts…and they were NOT giving Mob's little brother the talk…let the idiot brigade explain male puberty to him. Minegishi had their hands full already here….

They did not get to complain. Not when Mob needed them.

"Minegishi….I'm bleeding…" said Mob. They knew that already. She knew that they knew that already. They had already said that they knew about the blood….about where it was coming from….and that it was normal…but if it was normal then why was it only happening now? Why hadn't she just…had to deal with this blood…at any other time in her life? She was just….she knew that this was her fault. She was the one who had been doing…all kinds of embarrassing stuff…and she had broken…she had broken it and…and they had said that she wasn't going to die but….

Everyone knew!

They knew and…and how was she supposed to speak to her friends….or her brother….or her dad….or anyone ever again?! It felt like the entire world knew. It felt like the entire world was looking at her and…and talking about her…and how she was bleeding from an embarrassing place and how she had been doing embarrassing things and thinking about embarrassing things and…and about how she had only herself to blame for…this whole situation…..

She just wanted this all to be over….somehow…..

"I know….and you're going to be alright." Said Minegishi as they rubbed the lump of blankets known formerly as Suzuki Shigeko. They needed to calm her down and then they needed to get her cleaned up…and then they needed to get her some supplies and then…and then in ten years or so this would all just be a distant memory….or something. They didn't know. They remembered their first period with crystal clarity….so maybe this would be a deep source of shame and trauma for Mob for the rest of her life. They didn't know. If it did turn out to be like that then…well then they would be there for her.

That's what friends were for.

"I did this. This is my fault." Said Mob. She moved so her head was on Minegishi's lap. They were the best friend that she had ever had in her life…and if anyone had to be there with her she was glad that it was them. If she was dying…or not…she was so glad that it was them who was sitting with her while…all of this…happened.

"Hang on let me….ok, that's better…fucking Legos….ok. Mob, this is not your fault. This is a natural thing that…that I should have warned you about. I guess that I figured that you were too young…or I was too caught up in my own bullshit around this…or I just had too much faith in your father to, you know, act like a father. I'm sorry that I put your through this, I truly am, and if you weren't using me as a pillow…and if the floor wasn't covered in Legos…then I would be kowtowing right now." Said Minegishi. The pulled the blanket off of Mob slowly, just enough that they could see her hair, and they began to rub her head like they were petting a cat. Mob….poor Mob….she just…she did not need to deal with this…but she was dealing with it…and Minegishi was there to help her deal with it. All of it.

"Why would you have to kowtow? This was my fault. I did this to myself." Said Mob softly. She didn't want to talk about it…the embarrassing things that she had done to herself. The stuff that she did when she was all alone in bed or in the tub…and the stuff that she thought about. About being loved and being kissed…and stuff. She didn't want to talk about it but…but everyone already knew about the blood…so they must have known how it got there….so then she had might as well tell her best friend that, no, they didn't need to kowtow because Mob had nobody to blame but herself.

"Mob….what do you mean by that exactly?" asked Minegishi. Well then. They had been thinking first period but…well Mob was pretty boy crazy…and it wasn't like there was anything wrong with a little self-love…and it wasn't like Minegishi was going to be hypocrite about this. They had gotten up to the same things when they had been her age…and if Mob had…accidentally hurt herself in the course of figuring herself out….well then this was going to be a totally different talk than the one that they'd planned…and they might have even needed that flat can of diet soda known as Fukuda after all…great. Just great.

"I…did stuff….stuff that felt good but…but I shouldn't have been doing….and now I'm bleeding and…and I think that I broke it." Said Mob. She didn't want to talk about it but…but Minegishi was her best friend and she knew that they would never make fun of her…and they already knew about the blood so they had might as well know what had caused it in the first place.

"Broke your…vagina?" asked Minegishi slowly. She could have….well they hadn't been prepared to explain all of that….and there was no need to be squeamish. Sex was normal and self-love was normal…and stop being a hypocrite, Toshiki, it's not a good look on you.

"Yes…but please don't call it that." Said Mob. She hated that word. She knew that her privates were called that but…she just hated that word. You were supposed to say privates, that was more polite, mom had said so.

"That's the word for it…well technically it's a vulva on the outside and…you know what? I am not here to split hairs. Ok. Privates, is that a better word?" asked Minegishi. They were not going to call it something cute like a tutu or a cookie or a special place. It was a vagina…well a vulva and a vagina….and privates were as far as they were willing to go. Too much shame in the world about that part of the body already. Minegishi was not going to add to it.

"Yes. Privates is fine." Said Mob. That was the polite way to say it. You weren't ever supposed to talk about those places, mom had said, but when you did then you had to say privates. It was more polite than saying the real words…and also less embarrassing. For everyone. The talker and the listener…not that Minegishi seemed even the least bit embarrassed by any of this.

"Ok. So, Mob, how did you…why do you think that you broke it? Did you…if you stuck something in there then tell me now because if that's the case then this is going to be an ENTIRELY different conversation." Said Minegishi. They mentally prepared themselves just in case their suspicions were true…but also she was getting the period talk even if she had just broken her hymen and not started her period because at eleven, she was due for that talk….a lot of talks actually. Better they give Mob the talk now then have to listen to a bunch of Minori-isms later. Yeah…that would go over well. Minori said that drinking mountain dew after sex was a form of birth control. Minori said that you can't get pregnant the first time. Minori said that if you jump up and down after sex you won't get pregnant…or whatever other nonsense the kids believed these days.

"What?! No! That's so gross! Pee comes from in there! Just….why would I do something like THAT?!" asked Mob as she came up from under her blanket. She had no idea how they even came up with this stuff….maybe from their manga. Yes. That was it. They had read too many under their bed mangas and now their mind was poisoned. That was just…not right. Something inside? Of where she peed from? Just….no. That was just….very wrong.

"Well hey there. So it was you under there this whole time." Said Minegishi with a smile that they were only beginning to feel. Well at least Mob was out from under that blanket now and they could get a good look at her…and she didn't seem that freaked out…well less mortal terror and more disgust to the core of her soul…but, hey, they would take what they could get.

"You knew I was under there….you called me Mob…and no, I didn't put anything in there! I just…touched it a bunch and…and now it's broken! It's broken and everyone knows that I broke it and…and my DAD knows and my BROTHER knows and….and if you're here then he told EVERYONE and…and FUKUDA was here and now he knows and….and now he's probably thinking that I go around doing….naked stuff…with boys and I don't want him to think like that and-" said Mob

"Mob, no. First of all if Fukuda EVER thinks about you in a sexual way I will personally see to it that he suffers. Second of all….ok. Everyone knows…you brother was VERY vocal about what was, is, happening to you….and that's ok. You know what the good thing about being friends with adults is? We're all capable of acting like adults. Nobody is going to tease you. Actually everyone is worried sick about you…and your brother actually kicked down my door he was so worried…so don't be worried about everyone knowing. I'm pretty sure that everyone knows when I have mine so, yeah, we're all adults here. Hell…even your ten year old brother is more of an adult than some of the adults you know….paper towels and band aids? Fucking idiot…" muttered Minegishi. That used discount store glass dildo….God. He was going to suffer….this was…well not all his fault but…Mob had been bleeding, for a while if the blood stains on her ass and her bed were to be trusted, and she had been too nervous around the only healer in all of Claw because he had to be all….disgusting! What if she had been actually hurt? She would probably have just resigned herself to die….God. That man…..

"Huh?" asked Mob. She had no idea what they had meant at the end…and also…also the beginning. She didn't want them to hurt anyone, and they knew that, but…she knew that she was being mean but…part of her wouldn't have minded if they hurt Fukuda…not enough for him to suffer but…enough that he would stop thinking about her naked and stuff.

"Nothing. Just….you didn't do this to yourself. No amount of masturbation has ever induced a period….ok? You may bleed the first time you put something in there…or if you try something too big…or something when you're not ready….but that's a whole different conversation than the one we're having now." Said Minegishi

"I…I don't get it. Why would I put something in my…in there…in the first place? And what does that have to do with…with this? And if I didn't break it then where is all of this blood coming from? Because I checked and…and I'm one hundred percent sure that I know where this is coming from." Said Mob. She didn't want to talk about it, the blood, where it was coming from, and how she had made sure that it was coming from where she thought that it was coming from. She didn't want to talk about it at all…but Minegishi…had said that they knew about this and…and if they knew then….then it was ok to talk about it….even if they had gone quiet.

"Mob….what do you think that sex is?" asked Minegishi after a moment. Well it looked like they were going to have to have the big talk…but they had no idea how to have the big talk with her. She…well she had said that she knew what sex was but…she was eleven. Who knew what she thought that sex was? She got all of her information from another eleven year old after all.

"….I don't see what that has to do with…this." said Mob. Sex was….too embarrassing! She knew what happened, people fit together. Like puzzle pieces…or maybe more like hotdogs and buns. Minegishi knew what sex was….so why were they asking!? Wasn't the blood embarrassing enough!?

"Humor me." Said Minegishi with a shrug. They were prepared to hear any and all outlandish theories that their eleven year old best friend had come up with.

"Ok. Um….what's black and white and red all over?" asked Mob. She didn't know why Minegishi wanted to be humored…and also she was bad a humor…but she would gladly remember every single joke that she had ever heard in her life if it meant that he never had to talk about sex again. Ever. For any reason.

"What?" asked Minegishi. Well Mob was certainly the master of the non sequitur….but changing the subject…not so much.

"A penguin with a rash. Get it? Because….a penguin is black and white…and rashes are red….well Sho and I think that it's funny…and you told me to humor you….and I'm not really in the mood to tell jokes." Said Mob. She didn't want to tell jokes but she also didn't want to talk about sex….or the blood…or anything….but if Minegishi wanted to be humored then she would humor them all day and all night too.

"That was pretty funny…but I meant that I wanted you to just answer the question. What do you think that sex is?" asked Minegishi. Mob was Mob and….that had been pretty funny….and it was to see that she was done freaking out…but they were not out of the woods yet when it came to all of this. No. They weren't anywhere near the woods even.

"I know more jokes…if you want to hear more jokes. Like…why do owls always get invited to bird parties? Because they're a hoot. Do you get it?" asked Mob. She had read that one on a popsicle stick…well Sho had read it to her…and she knew a lot more jokes even though they weren't originals! She just…she would even think up originals, too, if it meant that Minegishi never asked her to talk about sex ever again!

"Mob…I would love to sit here all day and listen to your popsicle stick jokes but right now….right now I just need to know what you think you know about sex. Ok? It's important because based off of what you know…that's how I'll know what to tell you when I explain the blood to you…ok?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. Maybe this was why their parents had never taken the time to teach them anything. Well that and the loathing and blaming them for every single thing that had gone wrong with the world since the year 1988….and this was hard. Minegishi was nothing like their parents but…but they still…they were doing their best. They just had to do better to explain this in a way, to figure out how to explain this in a way, that Mob could understand.

"Ok…um…I know that people fit together like puzzle pieces…and then a baby grows in the mom's stomach. That's all I know…um….I know that you have to be naked to have sex…and you have to be in a bed…and there's kissing and…and the boy feels the girl up…which means that she lets him touch her on her….breasts…and then….and then when you have sex you're supposed to say bad words and yell the other person's name really loudly….and stuff. That's all I know about sex." Said Mob. She wanted to go back under her blanket…but that would have been rude. She couldn't just run and hide in the middle of a conversation but also….also she just…didn't want to talk about sex!

"Uh-huh. Well that's a lot to address….ok. Let's start at the beginning. People fit together….how do you think that works?" asked Minegishi. They knew how people fit together….but Mob might not have. Hell, for the longest time they had thought that just lying in bed with a boy was enough to get you pregnant. Mob…who knew what she had thought up…or heard from the little friend of hers…

"Um…like…do you know how hotdogs work? Like…like the boy is the hotdog and…and the girl is the bun….and stuff…this is so embarrassing!" said Mob. She shook her head and closed her eyes. Minegishi…why did they have to ask? They knew how this worked. This was something that they knew about already and….and why did Mob have to explain something to them that they already knew about?! And had done before!

"Hey, it's not. Sex is a normal thing that people do. There's nothing embarrassing about this…and there's nothing embarrassing about not knowing everything. You…have a basic idea but…you're off the mark. It's less like hotdogs and more like…like….more like a hand in a glove." Said Minegishi. They knew, as soon, as they had said it, that Mob didn't get it….and how could she…well she was eleven…but her mother could at least have been bothered to explain the basic fact that sex involved penetration! That was just….well the turkey baster theory was looking more and more viable. Maybe Suzuki and his wife had just never had sex….and that made sense. What kind of woman would willingly sleep with Suzuki Touichirou?

"….I don't get it." Said Mob. Hands went inside of gloves….like actually inside…but people did not go inside of people. People were not nesting dolls.

"Well…bear with me here this is the first time I've ever given anyone the talk….ok. So you know that the blood is coming from your vagina? Well…you said that you thought you peed from there. You don't. There's a separate opening for pissing and a separate one for…well blood, dicks, and babies." Said Minegishi. They had said the word vagina…but it was the right word! It was the right word and this was no place for misunderstandings! Not when Mob had no idea that sex involved actual penetration and…and thank God that they were having this talk now and not nine months from now when Mob met some boy her own age or something. God….kids were hard…thank God they weren't planning on having any. They could not do this again. There was no way that they would survive.

"Oh…wait….so….when my mom said puzzle pieces she meant that…that boys actually went…inside…of girls? Like….like sticking your finger inside of a…a belly button…or something?" asked Mob. No. Mom would have told her the truth and…and how did babies get in the stomach, then, if they went inside….where blood and pee came from? They couldn't make it to the stomach that way…but then again they couldn't make it to the stomach the…hotdog…way either and…..and this whole thing was too confusing!

"No….well….no. Your belly button isn't an opening to your stomach, first of all, and neither is your vagina. Just…once again bear with me here I've never had to explain it to anyone let alone an eleven year old. Ok. Yes. The place where the blood is coming out is also the place where dicks go in….and it feels a hell of a lot better than shoving your finger in your belly button. That's why I thought that you had shoved something up there…..it's normal to want to. Just like it's normal for it to bleed sometimes." Said Minegishi. They were just confusing Mob more and more with each and every word. They could tell. They just…they had never explained this to anyone else before today…and they had never had it explained to them. They had just managed to cobble together knowledge from books, the internet, and some very unhelpful lectures they had received back in the group home.

"But….if it's so normal then why did it only start happening now?" asked Mob. This had never happened before and…and they had said that she wasn't dying…and she could believe that…but they were saying, now, that this was normal…and she couldn't believe that. This had never happened to her before…so how could it possibly be normal?

"Because right now you're going through something called puberty. It's hard but also…not that hard to understand. Your body is getting ready for you to become an adult and adults' bodies can make babies. That's what the blood is for. Your body…ok. You know how with boys everything just sort of hangs out for the world to see?" asked Minegishi. This would have been easier with visual aids or a book….and they added a trip to the bookstore to the agenda. Yeah…books might have been better at explain this than they would ever be.

"Yes. That's why they aren't allowed to wear dresses." Said Mob simply. Poor boys…they would never know what it was to wear dresses…but they didn't have to bleed…or at least she figured that they didn't…so it was a fair trade off. Maybe. They might have had it worse because they just….couldn't wear dresses…and she knew that it was mean to wish this on boys but also…also she just….kind of wanted something like this to happen to boys. But not Sho, though, because she loved him….and not Shibata or Hatori or Shimazaki because they were her friends…

But maybe Fukuda….because he was a jerk and dad….for not warning her about this….

But he probably hadn't known. Dad was a boy and what did he know about this? Boys knew other things, boy things, things that Mob didn't know about. That was why dad had told her, through the door, that she had to let him in or she would die. That she had to let Fukuda heal her or she would die. Or that she would just….die. He had thought, told her, so many times that she would die and also…also she just…she might have heard him crying. He might have been crying or…or choking….through the door….but she didn't really have any clue since she had been busy with her own things…like thinking she was dying.

"Well they can….not what we are here to address right now. Ok. Yeah, for them it's all on the outside but for you…for us….it's all on the inside. The place the blood is coming out of is your vagina but the blood starts up higher in your uterus. That's an organ inside of you where the baby would grow if you were pregnant….and the blood that's coming out of you would have nourished the baby if you were pregnant. What's happening to you is called a period. Every month or so your body…well the blood is sort of a use it or lose it sort of deal….and right now your body is getting rid of the old blood to make room for the new blood. That's all. This is going to go on for the next five to seven days, then you'll be back to normal, but then it'll come back again. Any questions?" asked Minegishi. There. That was it. That was what was happening to her body…and now there would be questions…but at least they had finally gotten the meat and potatoes of it out of the way. There. Now there was time for the questions….which Mob's eyes were brimming with….

Bring it on.

"….I get to have babies now?" asked Mob after a little bit. She put a hand to her stomach. She liked babies….and that was her job. To make more esper babies…dad had said so…and now she could. She missed Mukai so much…and now she could have her own baby. Not to replace Mukai or anything but…but to have a baby to take care of and be her friend again. That would…that would have been great and…and she wondered if Hatori liked babies. He must have. He was a nice person and she was sure that he must have wanted to have a bunch of babies. At least two or three to start with. Maybe four to make an even number. That would have been pretty good….

She got to have babies now.

Which meant that she was….was she an adult now? She didn't feel any different…well happy that she wasn't going to die…and embarrassed that everyone knew about the blood…but she didn't feel like…like she was an adult…or that she could have babies…but Minegishi said that she could. She had a whole part of her body devoted to making babies…which made more sense than the baby coming out of her stomach because, well, wouldn't your stomach acid hurt the baby? But then how did mom get that scar on her stomach from where they cut Sho out of her? But still….this just…she didn't have to know how to make babies, just that she could…

She wondered if Hatori had any names picked out.

"Slow down, Mob, slow the fuck down. You. Are. Eleven. I know that you like babies…and that your dad hasn't given you any other option in life besides being the happy homemaker….but you need to get off of that. You're eleven and…well I have no right to tell you what to do with your body…but for the love of God don't start having sex yet, I was your age…well I was twelve but same difference…no. Not the conversation to be having now. Right now I have to teach you what to do about the blood and then…and then I can explain safe sex to you when we go to the drug store." Said Minegishi. That was…they had NOT LIKED the look in Mob's eyes at all. She had been WAY too excited about that and…and it was nice to see her happy but….she was eleven! She was too young for…for all of that!

"The drug store? Minegishi….I don't want to go everywhere. I'm…all covered in blood. See?" asked Mob. She had been excited but now…going to the cake dinner yesterday had been hard enough….and now the blood was worse and…and she knew that she wasn't going to die but also…also she knew that she did not want to walk around all day with blood all over herself.

"Whoa. Well…you need a bath. You need a bath and then we're going to the drug store because you need supplies for this and I need to teach you about supplies…and also about safe sex since the family planning aisle is right next to the feminine hygiene aisle." Said Minegishi. They were not looking forward to stumbling their way through a safe sex talk…because how did you even explain safe sex to an eleven year old? Well they would have to figure it out….and books could help. Yeah….like…they must have sold health class textbooks in the stores…and Mob…well she deserved to have it explained better than Minegishi ever could.

Reading was power!

"But…Minegishi…even if I take a bath….I'm still going to get blood on everything. I tried….before I tried toilet paper but then that wasn't enough and then…and then I tried wearing a lot of layers…but that's not enough anymore either and…and you can see what happened. I can't go outside like this…" said Mob. She stood up and turned so Minegishi could see the mess…and she didn't want anyone to see…but she knew that she could trust them. She could trust her best friend not to make fun of her. That was what best friends were for after all.

"Yes you can, that's what the supplies are. Just….here. Let me just….ok. Mob, find me a pair of your underwear that you don't really like." Said Minegishi. Yeah…no free bleeding. That was….that was a lot of blood and…and they weren't sure if there was any salvaging that nightie…and this would be the easiest thing to teach Mob about. They had their supplies on the ground in front of them. Everything that they had on hand…not everything that she would need…and also she probably wouldn't need to spend her whole period in overnight pads…lucky kid…but this was the best that Minegishi had on hand.

"Um…why?" asked Mob. She liked all of her underwear….and also she didn't know where her underwear drawer even was. She had kind of…broken the dresser when she had been freaking out…and also dad had helped because he had been freaking out too….and she had so much to clean up….and stuff…and also she had no idea what it was that Minegishi had taken out of their bag but…well it seemed very important…even though she really didn't get it.

"Just do it." Said Minegishi with a sigh. They could see a ton of clothes everywhere….and they could have just found a pair themselves….but that would have been an invasion of Mob's privacy….and also they didn't want to pick through this mess. Mob, thankfully, had stopped questioning them. She reached over to a pile of broken wood…Suzuki had better not have been expecting her to clean this mess up, and came back with pair of purple underwear with one of her princesses on it…

They added a trip to the store to their day's itinerary.

Mob…she was only eleven but…black. She needed black underwear. The cotton kind…and they would need to teach her the important of cotton underwear…and what to do when she had a yeast infection…and how to avoid them…and just…a million and one other things that every vagina owner needed to know. Well they would…they would explain everything that they knew…since nobody else was qualified for the job…

And not just because nobody had a vagina.

"Here. I don't really like these because they have Aurora on them…and her movie is kind of boring." Said Mob as she handed Minegishi her least favorite pair of underwear…well that she could find. Her favorite least favorite pair was the Cinderella ones where the waistband dug into her too much….but she didn't feel like going through the mess right now and finding those…or anything. She just…she had a lot to do and…and she would deal with it later…

Because she was not going to die and now she had all kinds of time on her hands that she hadn't been planning on filling…because he had been planning on being dead…and stuff…

"Mob…do you own any underwear at all without patterns or characters on them? Just a plain white pair or something?" asked Minegishi. The Disney corporation had taken over every aspect of this child's life…also she had enough to deal with without ruining any more of her clothes….not that she would be free bleeding anymore….but she was eleven and that meant pads and pads were the worst.

"No, I don't like the plain kind. They're boring." Said Mob. She didn't see why she had to have the plain if she could have nice ones…not the pretty silk ones with bows and lace that girls with boyfriends wore. Just….ones that were nice and cute. She didn't intend for anyone else to see them…and she still didn't….even though she was old enough to have babies now. To do that she would have had to have let a boy see her naked…and other stuff that she didn't want to do…not even with Hatori…it was just too embarrassing.

"Ok…well then we're going to have to stop by a store, too, to get you some plain pairs you can ruin…black ones, not white ones, black doesn't show blood. Anyway just sit down and watch." Said Minegishi. She was staring at them. What? Had she never…right. She had never seen any of this before. She hadn't grown up with a mother…and she wasn't being forced to live in a group home surrounded by a million other girls….she was here to learn and that was what she was doing, leaning, and that was all that they asked of her.

"Watch what?" asked Mob. She sat down next to Minegishi and watched them unwrap…a white….thing. It was long and white and….and Mob had no idea what she was supposed to do with that. She was even more confused when Minegishi picked up her pair of Aurora underwear and stuck it…so the bottom was sticky….right into it.

"This is a pad otherwise known as a sanitary napkin or towel depending on what country you're in and how old you are. Ok, now watch. You're going to want to always get the kind with these bits on the side, they're called wings, because then it won't shift to the side and you won't have an embarrassing accident. This is super thick because it's an overnight pad. There are different sizes and levels of thickness that I'll explain at the store. Right now just watch me put it in. See? Always over the guest, that's the cotton part in the middle of your underwear, and then fasten it at the bottom and then there." said Minegishi as they went through the whole thing slowly for Mob's benefit. Once they were done they handed the whole thing to Mob. She picked it up and just….stared at it.

"…it looks like a diaper." Said Mob. She was not a baby and she did not have to wear a diaper and…and also she just….she didn't want to have to wear diapers but…but also she didn't want blood on her clothes and also…also why…why hadn't anyone told her about….well she knew about this thing now and…and that was what mattered. Nobody had told her before because she hadn't needed to know before…even though it would have been nice to know about all of this before the blood had happened.

"Yeah, I know, and it feels like one too. I only use those on days when I have to double up…which brings us to part two of health class. This is a tampon. See? You just…well hang on I have to figure out how to demonstrate this so you understand…and also so I don't scar you for life…there is no way to do a practical demonstration with this…." said Minegishi as they opened up one of their few remaining tampons…they would need to pick up their own supplies while they were out….and held it up for Mob to see. She stared at it like Minegishi had pulled an alien egg out of their bag and told her to let it assimilate her….or something….but at least she wasn't recoiling from it like a certain forty something year old waste of existence that they knew….

"What…is that?" asked Mob. She had thought that it was…well she had no idea what she had thought that it was….and she had no idea what it could even have been. It was just…a purple plastic tube….with a string on the end and…and she had no idea how that was supposed to stick to her underwear. Was she supposed to use the string to tie it in wit but…but that string didn't look long enough to tie around her underwear and also…also how was that little tube supposed to soak up all of her blood?

"Here, watch. Pretend that my finger and thumb are the opening where the blood is coming out. You just put it up there and push on the bottom….and then the tampon slides out…and you just throw away the applicator." Said Minegishi. This wasn't a perfect demonstration but it was better than scarring her for life…or leaving her all alone in the bathroom on a group home trip to the pool desperately trying to figure out how any of it…worked.

"Minegishi….are you telling me that….that thing goes INSIDE OF ME….like…like a boy's….?" asked Mob. No. Nope. Not happening. That was…she had never even….before two seconds ago she had never imagined that a boy's…thing….could ever even go inside of…her…thing. Now Minegishi was telling her to put…that thing…and…and they DID that? Well they did do…stuff…with Shimazaki….so….Mob didn't know and she never wanted to see that thig again….

And she didn't want Minegishi to dump that into her hands.

It was…it felt huge. How could something so huge fit inside of her? She just….she didn't want this thing. She handed it back to Minegishi. She just…didn't want to ever even look at one of those things again. That…no. She was sticking to the diapers. She would gladly have worn the tiny diapers….pads….whatever for the rest of her life…which would be a long one since she wasn't going to die at eleven after all.

"Well yes to the inside of you part but this is nothing like a guy…unless we're living in a land called every man's wort nightmare." Said Minegishi with a dry laugh. Mob…poor Mob. This was a little too advanced for her…and it was nice to know that he wasn't all grown up…even though she had looked like she had been ready to rob a sperm bank ten seconds ago. Mob was….still such a kid. Good. She was a kid and…and she was happy again…and it was so nice to see her happy again.

"Huh?" asked Mob. Why would boys be afraid of this? Well blood was scary….Sho had gone running…and…and she didn't want to think about how he knew now and…and she just…she didn't want to think about the blood or Sho knowing…or anything like that…but especially not the cotton tube that Minegishi had handed them.

"Nothing. Just….come on. Here. Let's get you in the shower and we'll pick out some clothes you don't mind ruining, and we're going to have to introduce more black to your wardrobe, and then we'll head out…ok?" said Minegishi. There. A plan. A plan and…and that was good. Mob…she was still staring at that tampon like it had crawled out of the black lagoon….but at least she wasn't freaking out again. Good. This was….Minegishi had this.

"Ok…and Minegishi….am I really….I'm not dying? I mean just to be clear. I just…I thought for so long that I was dying and….and I just want to make sure that this period thing…isn't going to use up all of my blood…or something. So am I…will this…make me run out of blood?" asked Mob. She held the underwear with the diaper thing in it. She was going to lose more blood, Minegishi had said so, and….and she knew that she was supposed to lose blood but…but she also knew that she only had so much blood and…and stuff.

"Mob, if periods could kill then I would have been dead a hundred times over. You're going to be fine, ok? Now let's get you out of those bloody clothes…and we'll have to pick up some peroxide while we're out…" said Minegishi. That was a hell of a lot of blood on her nightie…and blanket…and bed…and that was something else that she could have to learn to deal with and…and no. Something else that they would have to teach her…and that was ok. She had a lot of learn and Minegishi…they had a lot to teach. That was what friends were for.

Best friends.

The kind of friends who hugged. They were the kinds of friends who hugged…and they were hugging now. Mob…God. She was better…better-ish….now…and that was good…but she never should have been hurt in the first place. She should have been…she should have been ok for the whole time. She should have been warned….and there was no point in these should haves. There wasn't any point in speculating because there were here, now, and no they weren't done with everything yet but….well they were on step one of however many steps this day was going to have….

And Minegishi was ready for all of them.

"Minegishi…thank you so much…..I love you." Said Mob as she hugged Minegishi. They had come for her and…and she knew that she wasn't in any danger of dying…but it still felt like Minegishi had saved her from the brink of death and…and stuff. Like it had been a movie and she had been dangling from a cliff and Minegishi had pulled her up and…and she was just…she knew that she wasn't going to die but also…also she felt like she had been saved….

But mostly she just felt like getting hugged.

"I love you too…now come on. You need a shower and I….need something too." Said Minegishi. They needed a drink. They needed to smoke. They needed a cigarette. They needed a Xanax. They needed some of Ryou's mysterious research chemicals that he hadn't even tried yet. They needed….most of all they needed to…to….they needed to get Mob sorted out. There was still so much that she needed to know…so much that they needed to teach her and….and they could. They could and they would. About periods and sex and all of that puberty stuff that she didn't have a mom or a dad to teach her. Mob…she needed someone. She needed someone and Minegishi could and would be that someone…even though it was just…a lot…a lot to do but….

But at least it was still early in the day. At least they had time to teach her…all that she needed to know.


	379. Just Tell Me What's Going On Already!

The whole world had gone crazy.

It was the only explanation. Big sis was bleeding, and not just a little bit but a lot, but everyone else was all worried about breakfast and hiding in bathrooms and-and-and picking out clothes! It was crazy! Everyone loved big sis, they had better have loved his sister, but…but Shibata was downstairs making crepes and Hatori was hiding in the bathroom, he was the only one who was actually acting like this was a big deal, and Shimazaki…his best friend in the world….was making him SORT CLOTHES!

Though, to be fair, Sho was the one who had kicked his clothes boxes over.

He'd had to. Shimazaki had dragged him into his room and said that they had things to discuss….and there wasn't time for discussion! Big sis was bleeding and he wanted to start having discussions? About what?! Well…ok. He had broken down Minegishi's door…and he had seen them naked….but he hadn't actually seen ANYTHING! They'd been holding a pillow in front of themselves and stuff and….and fine. Ok. He had kicked down their door like a jerk and seen them naked…and also Shimazaki had been there with them and Sho didn't want to think about that….so maybe there was something to discuss there….but still! They could have discussed everything AFTER Minegishi's saved big sis from bleeding to death.

The whole thing was just crazy.

Which was why Sho had gone crazy and kicked Shimazaki's clothes boxes over. Shimazaki was the one who was acting like it wasn't a big deal that big sis was bleeding to death…and he was the one who used boxes for his clothes in the first place! What was wrong with using a dresser?! If those boxes hadn't been right down there at kicking height then Sho wouldn't have had to kick them and then they wouldn't have been kicked and….and…..and this was not his fault!

It wasn't!

"Come on! We don't have time for this! Big sis is going to die and-" said Sho as he threw a pair of socks into the socks box. He had boxes for everything. Socks, underwear, t-shirts, button shirts, pants, sleep pants, sleep shorts….it was too many boxes! It was little boxes inside of big boxes and then those littler boxes had even smaller boxes in them because Shimazaki didn't like to wear clashing colors and Minegishi went and…and made getting dressed super complicated! Just wear jeans and t-shirts everywhere! There! They didn't have time for arranging clothes. Big sis could have needed him…and he had to be there for her. He had been such a bad little brother lately…not telling her about baby sis and leaving her all alone….but he could be a god little brother now! He just…he had no idea what he was supposed to do…but he knew that he had to do something…

And that 'something' was not sorting Shimazaki's clothes for him!

"She isn't, now get back to finding and pairing those socks and stop complaining. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time." Said Shimazaki as he folded one of his shirts…it felt like one from the pack of black ones Toshi got him…so that went in the 'goes with everything' section. God…this kid. Well Shimazaki totally understood why he was freaked out, he thought that his sister was bleeding to death, but he hadn't had to take it out on Toshi's handiwork…or on Toshi themselves. Poor Toshi…they did not like people seeing them naked….well not when they hadn't let themselves be seen naked…and that kid….well he was just a kid and he had been panicked but….yeah. Toshi wasn't going to be all the way ok again for a while…which really sucked….but this was what it was and this was…well something which Toshi would be pissed off about...and he hated it when Toshi was pissed off…

Pissed off for real.

He could hear their aura. They were pissed off about something…and also he could hear Fukuda…and Suzuki might as well have had a megaphone for how loud his aura was yelling…and the same went for Mob. Poor kid….he'd never been a girl but he knew how hard shit like that could be. Really this whole thing was shaping up to be quite the shit show…and Toshi had to be in the middle of it. They had been planning on having a 'sleep in for as long as possible and then dick around all day' sort of day…and all of that went out the window…and they probably wouldn't have another one of those days in a while…

But he wasn't pissed off about that…or about the fact that his clothes were everywhere….he wasn't pissed off at all.

"You know where they are. I know that you can sense where all of your stuff is and-" said Sho as he threw another pair of socks into the socks box. All of his socks were black. He knew that all of his socks were black. They all matched. He could have done this himself. Sho needed to be with big sis. He could see dad's aura and he was mad…actually it felt like everyone next door was mad…and he didn't want to be around dad when he was mad but…well he loved big sis more than he was afraid of dad so…so he should have been there! He didn't care if dad threw him down the stairs and broke both of his arms and legs! He needed to be there for big sis and not sorting clothes like some kind of…clothes…sorting…guy!

"Yeah but I don't know what anything is. Toshi had all of this arranged for me…and we have to talk about what you did to Toshi, by the way, because that was not ok at all, so just help me and then I'll explain all of this to you, ok?" asked Shimazaki. He got up from the floor and went to his desk. Yeah, he was too sober for this. Too present. Too…he was getting to the point where he was about to ruminate on something that the kid did…and he hated ruminating. It was boring. He hated ruminating and he hated being upset with the kid. Sure he had told the kid before not to just let himself into Toshi's room, and sure Toshi had just now starting to say 'I love you' back to him, and sure this might cause problems in…whatever the word for what he and Toshi had together was….but he couldn't get pissed off at the kid. He'd been a kid once and he'd had people pissed off at him…people who he had looked up to…people who had been in charge of him…not that he was in charge of Sho but…well the kid did not need to feel small…like that…and Shimazaki was not going to be responsible for Sho feeling…small and helpless and worthless and useless….

So he went to his desk and lit himself a joint.

"….fine…but if my sister dies then it's your fault….and I don't know if I could forgive you for that…" said Sho as he put the last of the socks in the box. Shimazaki was smoking now. He was back to sitting crossed legged on the ground and he was smoking…and Sho wanted him to share…but big sis was going through enough as it was. She was always on him about moderation, which meant that she thought that he smoked too much and also drank too much soda and ate too many poptarts and enjoyed life way too much, so he wasn't going to…well to ask to smoke. It would have pissed her off to have gotten better and then to have found him smoking…so he wasn't going to ask for a turn…even though that was the polite thing to do…

"Kid, first of all she is not going to die and second of all this is not my fault. Trust me, if I was the one responsible for ketchup packet times….well you'd be talking to a ghost right now." Said Shimazaki as he exhaled. That was better. It hadn't even hit him yet and he already felt better. Maybe this whole thing was just psychosomatic…or something. He didn't know. He just knew that he had a lot of shit to explain to the kid today and he needed to be calm to explain it…and also no matter what happened he was never going to make Sho feel as shitty as he had felt when he had been his age. Shimazaki was responsible for a lot of terrible shit, more than his fair share of it, but hurting a kid was not going to be on his list of crimes.

"It's not ketchup. I can tell the different between ketchup and blood…and that was not ketchup." Said Sho as he scooted closer to Shimazaki. He felt….well he shut the goldfish in his stomach up as best as he could. So what if he wasn't wearing a shirt…he was in Minegishi's pajama pants and he looked really dumb. They were purple and had flowers and…and he looked super dumb…and also this was not the time to be in love. He had to fall out of love, first of all, and also big sis needed him. He could think about Shimazaki later….or never since he was trying to fall out of love….this was not the time to think about love!

"Kid…here. Come on and take a smoking break with me. We have a lot to talk about and…yeah. You're going to need this because I am about to tell you something that…yeah. You're going to need to smoke to be able to comprehend." Said Shimazaki. It wasn't just ketchup packets he would have to explain. He was going to have to tell the kid where babies came from, how people were made, and that was just…well it had blown his mind and sent him into a full blown existential crisis when he had been told that he had the raw materials for making a new person inside of himself and everyone just lived to make more people and then to die and it just went over and over and over again like a wheel….round and round and round….

He inhaled again and passed the joint to Sho.

"Big says that I'm not supposed to smoke without her there but…well if you insist." Said Sho. He needed this. Big sis said that she did this to control her powers…well she meant her feelings. She had said powers but he knew that she meant feelings because powers worked off of feeling. That was how dad had explained it. Powers were tied to feelings and that was why it was important to always control how you felt…and stuff. Well Sho…he didn't have the same problem controlling his powers…but sometimes it was like his feelings took over his mind…

Like earlier today…

And he just…wanted to tell his feelings to go away. Everyone was acting like this wasn't a big deal…even though it was. He had never seen anyone lose that much blood in life and…and he just…wanted big sis to be ok. She was with Minegishi and Fukuda…so she would be fine…and unlike him dad actually cared if she lived or died…..so he knew that she would be fine but…but he just…he should have been there. Even if there was nothing at all that he could do then he should have still been there…

She would have done the same for him.

"Go on you little stoner. You need it more than I do…but pass that thing when you're done because I need it too. This isn't going to be easy for either of us." Said Shimazaki. He felt around the ground until he found…yup. That was a shirt. He pulled it up over his head. There. He knew when he was being looked at…and eventually he would have to tell the kid to knock that off….but he wasn't going to say anything today. They had enough to talk about as it was.

"What's not going to be easy? You keep on saying that you have something to tell me so….just tell me already. Big sis needs me. I know that there's nothing that I can do…because I'm not a healer or a girl...but I should still be there. She would have done the same for me." Said Sho as he passed it back to Shimazaki. He had put a shirt on…and Sho wasn't going to tell him the dark red did not go with bright purple…and now he felt like a jerk for messing up Shimazaki's clothes. He didn't know what colors were and…and this was a lot of work…but he had been mad and….and that was not an excuse. His book had even said that being angry wasn't an excuse to treat other people badly and that empathy was important…and stuff. Well he was….he was going through a lot…but so was everyone else. Big sis was everyone's friend, not just his sister, and they had to deal with this too….but everyone was acting like…like this wasn't the emergency that it was….

Crazy. Everyone as acting crazy.

"You're right. There's nothing that you can do. She's just…ok. You know that girls don't have dicks, right? Because if you don't then this is going to be a very long conversation." Said Shimazaki. That would have been a better place to start with…maybe. He didn't know. He'd never given anyone the talk before…and all dad had said was never finish inside of a girl without wrapping it up first since the world did not need another mistake like him in it….bastard.

"What the fuck….yeah. I know that. I'm not stupid." Said Sho. He wondered if Shimazaki had been smoking before this…he probably had. He was Shimazaki. He was always smoking or drinking or something. Still, this was not the time for that…and also he was hogging it….and also Sho had big sis to worry about…but the aura battle next door was calm…so that was good…

But also just…what did that have to do with anything!

"Ok. Good. That saves me a lot of time." Said Shimazaki as he took the joint from Sho. That was enough for that little stoner…at least for now. He needed this more than the kid did. He had to order his thoughts. He couldn't just come out and tell the kid that girls bled because there was no baby inside of them to live off of all the extra blood. He'd have to backtrack to the beginning if he said that…and he didn't want to confuse the kid…so the beginning was the place to start!

"Time for what?" asked Sho. He didn't know what they were on a time limit for…or whatever. He just…he needed to know what was going on already!

"Time for…well breakfast is going to be ready soon…hope there's chocolate crepes…anyway this is just going to take a lot of time to explain to you. To explain ketchup packet times, and yes I know it's not ketchup I'm not stupid either, I have to explain where babies come from." Said Shimazaki

"I know where babies come from. My mom told me already. When a man and a woman love each other very much they fit together like puzzle pieces and then a baby grows in the mom's stomach. I'm ten, not two, I know where babies come from. Now what does my sister being covered in blood have to do with having babies?" asked Sho

"Well they don't have to love each other….anyway! Yeah, if you stick your dick inside of a girl she'll get pregnant…don't try that by the way you're way too young and not anywhere near ready to handle that….I mean you do you and, yeah, if you want to stick your dick somewhere then it's not like I'm going to bat it away or anything….I mean don't, though, because you're really young…what was I on about again?" asked Shimazaki. Ok, now it hit him….good Toshi was so good at growing this shit…God he missed Toshi…but they'd be…they'd be back and, yeah, they'd be distant but…but they'd be back and maybe they'd forgive the kid and…and he had to explain all of this to the kid…and he was going to explain the hell out of this! Yeah…then Toshi would be less pissed off….God he missed Toshi so much…

"You were asking me to explain where babies came from….and of course I'm not going to do that with a girl! That's gross!" said Sho. Where did he come up with this stuff?! That sounded so gross…and he knew that was how it went but…well leave the grossness to the adults! That was just…he had no idea what this had to do with anything….and maybe neither did Shimazaki…or maybe he had just smoked too much.

"Or a guy. You do you." Said Shimazaki. Right. The kid…well he was what he was. He knew that the kid wasn't the default….so did he have to teach him about all of that, too? Because that was way more complicated than just explaining how the materials got delivered to the baby factory….but it was better that the kid know what to do then not know what to do. It was like karate, better to know but not use than to use and not know…or something. He didn't know. This was complicated. Kids were complicated….but he was going to figure it out. Yeah! People had been doing this for millions of years! Kids were easy…other stuff was hard…like….Rubik's cubes…and getting the last bit of pudding out of the cup…and stuff…

Yeah! He had this!

"Shut up! What does any of this have to do with my sister bleeding for no reason?!" said Sho. He was trying not to lose his patience….but he didn't have a lot of patience left! This was…what did that have to do with….well obviously something but….who he did and did not like was not what they were talking about!

"A lot. Go into my 'fun times' drawer and get me another joint and then I'll tell you." Said Shimazaki. He felt a headache coming on. Between all the aural yelling, the real yelling, and then how upset Toshi would be later…this was a lot. This was a hell of a lot…but he was going to deal with this…and he was dealing with it…and also he could deal with it better so…time to deal with it!

And he was dealing with it! He was dealing the hell out of it like…cards….or something….it would come to him in a second!

"You're closer to it…fine." Said Sho as he got up. He was the only one out of them who could see so…so this was his job or whatever. Fine. He was happy to help…or whatever. He just…the sooner Shimazaki told him whatever it was that he had to know the better…or whatever.

"Thanks, Sho, you will be rewarded in this life and the next." Said Shimazaki as he felt a joint and a lighter getting passed into his hand. He was too focused on what was happening next door. Toshi and Mob were close together….so that was good. Mob wasn't freaked out anymore. God. That must have been terrifying for her…well she had Toshi so she'd be fine just like Sho had him and Sho would be fine. He could do this. He was doing this. Then when he was done doing this they could have breakfast….he smelled chocolate and eggs so…yay! Two things! After breakfast he and Sho could go and pet some dogs or build a fort or mess with the TVs at the electronics store or switch some street signs around or other such fun things…and they could bring Mob with, too, if she felt better.

Yeah. This was going to be hell of a day.

"How about you just reward me in this life and tell me what all of this is even about." Said Sho

"Huh? Oh. Right. OK, so where was I….yeah! Don't stick your dick inside of a girl or you'll get her pregnant. You see you're a guy so you're full of the raw materials to make a new person and a girl has the factory inside of her. Fucking…having sex…that's delivering the materials to the factory. Ok, so the materials need blood to turn into a baby and girls, well they have way too much blood in them, and when they don't have anything in them to make a baby the blood gets too stale and has to be replaced. Then they bleed a whole lot for a week and get really irritable and those are ketchup packet times. So your sister is going to be really irritable and sad, and her stomach is going to hurt like a bitch, for the next week. There. Now you understand everything." Said Shimazaki

"….no I don't. None of that…makes sense….at all." said Sho. He just….he didn't know where to even start with all of that. Just…how did any of that…people didn't just bleed for no reason but….but well that had been a reason and….and Fukuda had said that it was a secret girl thing that guys weren't supposed to know about but somehow Shimazaki knew…well because he was an adult and…also he did stuff with Minegishi and they were sort of like a girl…so that made sense…and stuff….but wait….if he did stuff with Minegishi then did that mean that…that they were going to have a baby….

And why did that bother him? He LOVED babies and….and also big sis….was going through all of that and….and he wasn't supposed to be selfish!

Nothing made sense.

"Ok, I'll start from the beginning. Girls, well girls and people with girl organs, have way too much blood in their bodies and-" said Shimazaki. This was his understanding of it, anyway, and yeah nobody had sat down and told him but it must have been right if nobody had ever sat down and corrected him too. He would explain this to Sho and then everything else that he would ever need to know about sex, best to get the whole thing over with at once, and then when he was done telling Sho everything he knew then they could go and have fun again. There. That was one hell of a plan.

"But wait-" said Sho. He wanted to know…well everything. So…well mom had said that people had the materials to make new people inside of them…but WHAT did 'materials' mean? And also….well he had always just assumed that babies grew but…they needed to be…assembled? In blood? Well that part, the part about blood made sense…because dad was always going on about the bloodline…but wait. It would have made more sense for guys to be the ones with the extra blood, then, because they were the ones who continued the blood lines….also what did shoving your dick inside of a girl like a hotdog have to do with any of that? He wanted to ask, and he could have asked, but he hadn't had any time to ask.

"Sho! Shimazaki! Hatori! Breakfast!" shouted Shibata up the stairs.

"Fuck yeah! Crepes!" said Shimazaki be he gabbed Sho and teleported down into the kitchen. He sat Sho down in a chair and then sat down at his own spot. God, parenting was hungry work. Well he'd earned this…he smelled eggs…he smelled green peppers…he smelled sausage…and bacon….and CHOCLATE! Hell yeah! He'd earned the hell out of this breakfast.

"Here you go, Sho, creepy crepe! See? Because I made them look like a spider and the middle is made out of ice cream." Said Shibata. He knew that he had maybe gone a little overboard on the sugar…but Sho was having a hell of a morning. He was having a tough time and if Shibata could help, even if it was just by feeding him, then he was happy to help.

"Hey! I want ice cream spider crepes." Said Shimazaki. He reached over the kid's plate but pulled his hand back when he felt Shibata getting ready to smack him.

"Then plate it up yourself. You know where the ice cream is." Said Shibata as he went back to the stove. He could hear Hatori coming. He plated him up some frittata. He maybe should have used fewer vegetables so Sho could have some….but then again there was no need to stress the little guy out. This morning was stressful enough. The lightshow next door was finally over…and he had no idea what Suzuki and Fukuda had been freaking out about. It shouldn't have been anything either of them hadn't already known about. Mob, on the other hand, had every right to freak out and if she had been there he would have made her blue crepes with coconut for snow and he would have used chocolate syrup to draw Elsa for her….if that could ever make up for everything she had gone through. Poor Mob…

"Hey, frittatas. Awesome." Said Hatori as he walked into the kitchen. A plate was passed to him as he made his way to the counter. Hopping up on the counter and sitting there was the safest way to eat breakfast when Shimazaki was around. Doubly so when Sho was around and….aww. He got ice cream? Well he had earned it. He may not have known what was going on but he had tried to save his sister…even if in saving her he had told everyone she knew about her….girl stuff…but that was ok. Sho had tried. Hatori would have thought that he would have been happier, he got chocolate and ice cream, but he was just sort of poking it with his fork. Poor kid.

"And spiders!" said Shimazaki as he rooted around in the freezer and found the ice ceam. He heard Hatori start to spit his food out. God. He was too easy sometimes. Really he brought it on himself. Not that Shimazaki was picking on him or anything, no, that had just been to make Sho smile….which he wasn't….well then he'd just have to get some actual spiders then and…lunch time maybe? Yeah. Then. This felt like one of those days when Suzuki felt like locking himself up all alone in his office.

"Stop messing with him! Hatori, there aren't any spiders in this. Shimazaki…grow up already! And use a spoon!" said Shibata. He threw a spoon at Shimazaki…mostly to pass him one but also to maybe hit him over the head with it…but he just caught it…and Shibata had to admit that was pretty cool. The way he caught it without turning his head…because he didn't have to….and he would have thought that Sho would have thought that it was cool…but he was just poking at his crepes….

Maybe Shibata had made them too creepy.

"Never." Said Shimazaki as he dug into the ice cream with a spoon like a human being even though hands were much better for this. Easier to get a good grip…but he was getting it….and that was weird. He was sitting back down next to Sho, with a half full carton of chocolate ice cream, but Sho wasn't even reaching for it…and he wasn't even eating his own breakfast….even though it was technically a dessert and Sho loved desserts…

"Come on…even Sho's acting more mature than you are and he's three times younger than you." Said Hatori as he checked his food for spiders just in case. He hated spiders….he hated bugs…and he hated being messed with. Not that he could do anything about how Shimazaki was always messing with him…he wasn't a fighter…and also Shimazaki fed on attention anyway so saying anything to him was pointless.

"He's not being mature, he's being all…quiet and subdued. What's up with that?" said Shimazaki. He nudged Sho with his foot. He had been resting his head on his hands and looking down at his food. That was just…was he still worried about Mob? She was fine. Probably a little shook up…but fine…and maybe once Sho realized that she was fine he would eat already so they could go to stores and shake up all the sodas.

"Huh? Oh…I'm just…thinking about what you said. It just doesn't…make sense." Said Sho. His ice cream was melting and the chocolate from inside of his chocolate crepes was running out and the whole thing looked like some kind of bloody, chocolatey, mess…and he didn't want to think about blood or…or bloodlines…or how this was something that he had to worry about….or how scared he had been…and he hadn't had to be scared…

If everyone knew then it wasn't a secret.

Fukuda told him that it was some girl thing that you weren't supposed to know about…but everyone knew. That was why he had been the only person freaking out. He was the only one who hadn't known and…and he wasn't a girl but….neither was anyone else! He hated secrets…even though he kept a million of them….and he just…well it was just…someone could have let him in one the secret and also….also big sis had been freaked out too…he could tell from here…and…and if he had known about all of this then maybe he could have saved her from getting freaked out…or something. He didn't know.

He didn't know anything….even with Shimazaki explaining stuff to him…well now he felt like he knew even less than he had known when he had started.

"What part doesn't make sense?" asked Shimazaki through a mouthful of ice cream. Screw fancy adult frittata breakfast….chocolate ice cream was where it was at. Did they have sprinkles? He needed to get sprinkles. Maybe he and Sho could fill a kiddie pool with sprinkles like they had been talking about doing. That would have been fun…or they could have just eaten big bowls of them…with a spoon…or by hand since that went faster….or did they want to savor them….decisions, decisions…..

"Why are girls the ones with too much blood? Wouldn't it make more sense for the guys to have too much blood? Because they're the ones who continue the bloodline?" asked Sho. He looked up from his food….and now everyone was staring at him. Well not Shimazaki. He was finishing eating…and he needed to slow down before he gave himself a brain freeze…and also he needed to stop eating from the carton. Big sis hated that and she had enough problems as it was.

"Girls have too much blood because they're the ones who turn into ketchup packets. It all makes perfect sense. They have too much blood and they've for to get rid of it when it gets too old so they can make new blood which will then turn into a baby when given the raw material for making one. it's not hard to understand." Said Shimazaki as he hit himself over the head a couple of times. Brain freeze. He put the ice cream down and decided to have some fancy adult breakfast. At least it was warm.

"Wait…what?" asked Hatori. Shimazaki…was messing around again…right? That….didn't sound right…but then again Hatori was only twenty and he'd never even had a girlfriend before….but he'd been to health class before….and none of that sounded like…well it sort of sounded right but…Shimazaki had to have been messing around again. Right?

"Shimazaki, don't tell him crazy lies like that. He's too young to know that you're kidding." Said Shibata. Well then it looked like he was the one who was going to have to tell Sho…how it all worked….but he didn't need to know about all of that….well he needed to know something but….he was just a little boy!

"I'm not telling him lies. If I wanted to lie I'd tell him that babies came from cabbage patches or something." Said Shimazaki. That was what mom had told him. She had told him that cabbage patches were where babies came from and that was why they were called cabbage patch kids. It had made sense at the time but then he got older and he figured things out on his own…not that he faulted mom for lying to him. She'd had her reasons. She'd always had her reasons.

"Well either you're lying or you have no idea how…all of that…works." Said Shibata with a shake of his head. Shimazaki….he carried on all night with Minegishi sometimes…so he had to know…right? Otherwise…well he had never planned a baby showed before….but then again Minegishi was probably smarter than Shimazaki by a wide margin…damn. He liked babies.

"I am not lying and for your information of course I know how all of that works. I'm almost thirty one. You think that I haven't pieced together human reproduction yet?" Said Shimazaki. Ok, so nobody had sat him down and told him…and also he could sense auras. He could hear them. He knew that he was getting looks…but he couldn't have been that far off the mark…right? If he had been that far off the mark then Toshi would have corrected him. They had never been afraid to tell him when he was being a moron about something.

"Pieced….together?" asked Hatori. That…didn't seem like the kind of thing that you just…pieced together. No wonder Sho had been sitting there looking so confused. Maybe he was the one who had to…well he didn't want to be the one to teach him but…well wasn't this his dad's job? Well Suzuki….judging by the freak out next door he wasn't the man for the job…and also judging by his parenting track record…

"Yeah. I've managed to figure it out and, unlike my pathetic excuse for a father, I sat Sho down and told him everything. All about ketchup packet times and also where babies come from because they're all related…and I think that's earned me some chocolate crepes…and maybe some homemade pudding?" said Shimazaki. He was still hungry…and hungry for chocolate….and why wouldn't he have been? Chocolate was heaven….and also Shibata knew a thing or two about making pudding…especially the part with the skin…God. Pudding skin was the best.

"Plate your own food and get a cup of pudding from the cabinet." Said Shibata. God….this was looking like another meal when he wouldn't even get to sit down. Shimazaki…why had he trusted Shimazaki with this? He had known Shimazaki for years…he should have known better.

"Fine…God. This is the thanks I get for rising to the occasion." Said Shimazaki as he dug into his fancy adult meal with food groups, as Mob would call healthy things. This was the thanks he got for doing the job that nobody wanted. He didn't know why people freaked out so much over giving kids the talk. It wasn't like it was hard. Well figuring out where to start from, that was hard, but the rest of it was easy.

"You didn't rise to…what, exactly, did you tell him?" asked Shibata with a sigh. Well then. Sho wasn't screaming and kicking down doors anymore…but now he just looked confused….which was better than screaming and kicking down doors…but still. Just…if you wanted something done right you had to do it yourself….even though you didn't want to. Sho was still just a little boy, little more than a baby really, and he didn't need to know about…all of that.

"The truth. If you have sex with a girl she'll get pregnant and if not then she she'll bleed a whole lot because there's not a baby to feed off of her extra blood…or the blood becomes the baby…one of the two." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. He must have been right. Toshi would have told him if he had been wrong. Toshi loved telling people when they were wrong about things. It was one of their few joys in life, they had said, correcting people and reading….and also a lot of other stuff…God. Toshi….he needed Toshi…but Toshi's aura was out of his range and…and he needed to smoke more or drink more or have fun with Sho or…or something to take his mind off of Toshi…

"You….are you serious?" asked Hatori. How did he not…well he was Shimazaki and he was completely out of his mind so….but still how could he not…know? Just…he must have been messing with everyone. That was the only explanation.

"Yeah, of course I am." Said Shimazaki

"That's what's got me confused. I get that babies need blood to live because they're people but wouldn't it make more sense for guys to have all that extra blood? Because guys are the ones who continue the bloodline?" asked Sho. This whole thing was just….well big sis was fine and that was what mattered but…he had thought that he'd understood all of this, mom had explained it to him, but now…well now it felt like he knew even less than did when he had started this conversation.

"Nobody has extra blood…well all have the right amount of blood that we need." Said Hatori. He was the one who was going to have to tell Sho….Suzuki was a nice guy sometimes but he was a bad dad when it came to his son….and Hatori…well he would do his best…from under the table…or in the cabinet under the sink…yeah. He…he could fit under there if he tried hard enough…maybe.

"Then how do you account for anemia?" asked Shimazaki

"Wait….you know what anemia is but you don't know where babies come from? How does that even work?" asked Hatori

"I know better where they come from than you." Said Shimazaki

"I…don't think so. I've been to health class and….haven't you? I mean someone must have told you…something…right?" asked Hatori

"Yeah, my dad threw a box a condoms at my head and told me to wrap it up because the world doesn't need more people like me in it. Aside from that I figured it out on my own. My dad was kind of like Suzuki, not the parental type, and I've never been to school a day in my life…I mean I have a high school equivalency but aside from that nothing." Said Shimazaki with a shrug.

"That sucks….I'm sorry." said Hatori. He didn't like Shimazaki but he knew that he'd had a hard life. Well pretty everyone in Claw had lived a hard life, this was Claw after all, but Shimazaki…well the less said about that the better. He actually felt bad for him…of course he knew that he would come to his senses later when he did something mean or bizarre to him.

"Eh, don't be. That's life." Said Shimazaki with a shrug.

"Wait…so you DON'T know why big sis was all covered in blood this morning then?" asked Sho. Seriously? He had just stopped worrying and now he had to worry all over again…and also now his ice cream was all melted and stuff! Could this day get any worse? He half expected Fukuda to come through the front door while he thought that…but he didn't. He was….outside of Sho's range. Good. Sho did not feel like talking to him…not for a while, anyway.

"He does…and he doesn't." said Shibata as he grabbed a pot from the cabinet. He needed something to do. He didn't want to tell Sho about all of this…he was still just a little kid…and also he just…needed something to do with his hands. Something to take his mind off of the fact that now all of this fell to him…and he did a lot around here already….but these were his friends, mostly his friends, so it was a labor of love….and so was making pudding from scratch.

"That doesn't make any sense." Said Sho. What was the big…whatever…about all of this? Maybe it really was some closely guarded girl secret….like Fukuda had said…and Sho could totally have been let in on the secret! Everyone was acting like this was something not to worry about but…but all the secrecy…now it felt like it was something to worry about!

"You see…um….people start out little and then they get big and when they get big enough they have more little people and that's called the circle of life and….and your sister is big enough to make more people so…so that's what all of that was about. She's going to be fine, it's normal, and it's so normal that you don't have to worry about her…and also do you want pudding? Does anyone besides Shimazaki want pudding? Because…I'm making pudding." Said Shibata. That had been….hard. Not easy. Sho had been looking up at him with those big blue eyes and he was so little and…and it was hard talking to little people about all of this. Mom and dad had just left him a book and told him that if he had any questions he should just look them up. Maybe he was just old…or something. When he'd been a kid people didn't tell their kids about this…or maybe his just didn't. He didn't know. He just…he knew how to make pudding so he was going to do that.

"That….also doesn't make any sense….and why are you making pudding? You just made breakfast." Said Sho. Adults were strange sometimes. Now he wanted to know what the secret was. He wasn't worried about big sis, Minegishi may have been his mortal enemy but they would take good care of her, but still…what was going on with his sister! Shimazaki's explanation was starting to make more and more sense…because he at least had explained something.

"It's just…not something that you need to worry about…none of this is. You're just a kid. You should worry about kid stuff…and not all of that. Now if you don't want pudding I can made fudge…or custard…or-" said Shibata

"Don't talk to him like he's a baby. He's ten and he has a girlfriend. Talk to him like he's a short little man with a high pitched voice." Said Shimazaki. He may have been off the mark…and he made a mental note to just Google it like he should have years ago….but at least he had tried. Better to teach Sho the truth about everything now than have to deal with a tinier version of him a few years down the line.

"He doesn't need details. He's just a little kid." Said Shibata

"I'm not little! Will you just tell me what all the secrets are about?!" asked Sho

"It's not a secret just…well you're little and-" said Shibata

"Here. Watch this." said Hatori. As he passed Sho his phone. Really. These guys. Honestly. There was a middle ground between treating him like a baby and…whatever the hell Shimazaki had planned. It took ten seconds to pull up YouTube and find a video for kids explaining the whole thing for him. God Hatori loved living in today's crazy future times. It paid to be the youngest in the house sometimes. He was the only one who remembered that YouTube was a thing.

This was a hell of a lot easier than telling Sho the truth…and also Shimazaki…

"Huh. Maybe I should have just asked the internet….man was I off." Said Shimazaki

"You were….and that's the big girl secret that Fukuda said I'm not supposed to know about? Seriously?" asked Sho. Would it have been so hard to just tell him all of this? Really? Fukuda could have taken ten seconds to tell him the truth….because, really, it wasn't complicated…and he wouldn't have had to kick down so many doors…and he wouldn't have been so worried about…about stuff that he didn't even have to worry about! He hadn't had to have been so worried and scared and….and…and….just….seriously! He had been going crazy with worry and…and….just….

Seriously!?

"It's not really a secret, it's just not something that you're supposed to talk about in public….or kick down people's doors and yell about either." Said Hatori. He was doing some hardcore big brothering today so he had might as well keep it up. It wasn't like those other two were going to be much help. Shibata was treating him like a preschooler and Shimazaki…well he didn't even fully know what was going on. Hatori…he was good at this. That felt good…being good at this.

"Yeah, like I said, don't talk about ketchup packet times. Girls…well people with those times…really hate people who go around telling everyone so…yeah. Keep it to yourself next time." Said Shimazaki. He couldn't stay mad at him about the door thing….Toshi would be mad enough at him for at least ten people anyway. Desperate times and desperate measures…though maybe next time the kid would maybe take a break from panicking and knock.

"Why? The internet said that it was nothing to be ashamed of…and I would never make big sis feel bad anyway!" said Sho. No way was he teasing his big sister just because of something like that. It was like…like wetting the bed only…only not pee and she had never once made him feel bad about wetting the bed! Also she had never made him feel bad about….about anything in his life and she had never freaked out….and maybe he had freaked out too much and…and yeah. Well he wouldn't have freaked out so bad if somebody had warned him that one day his sister would end up all covered in blood!

"Nobody's making her feel bad! We're just…saying that next time you should do more to respect her privacy but you didn't know…because nobody told you….but you know now…and it's nothing for your sister to be ashamed of. You're right…well she's probably more scared than ashamed-" said Shibata. He would never make Mob feel bad! And she didn't have to feel bad…but she probably did. Her dad hadn't warned her…well President Suzuki was too busy trying to rule the world to parent….and she must have felt so bad…but they were her friends and they could make her feel better. Well Minegishi was doing that but…well there had to be something that they could do. Maybe….more pudding? Or…well there had been the party idea…and she did love parties.

"Her aura sounded beyond scared." Said Shimazaki. Yeah….she needed some kind of pick me up. Maybe…coke again? She liked coke…but he had promised Toshi…but these were extenuating circumstances…hmm. Decisions, decisions….

"So I was thinking that we could throw her a party. I've heard of people throwing those before, parties about all of this, and it'll make her feel better since she was so upset earlier." Said Shibata. Well the party would be more about making her feel better than all of that. Unless she wanted a party about all this then, ok, that was what the party could be about. It was her party and she could have whatever she wanted. Even gelatin and cookies from the Claw cafeteria….though he would have preferred to cook something.

"Um…I don't think that's a thing in this country-" said Hatori. Nope. Mob…would not like that….he wouldn't have liked it if he had been her. Maybe she would have just liked it if they all left her alone and then pretended that they didn't know about this…but was that just making her feel ashamed? Not talking about it? But…well it was private and….and Hatori had no idea. He just got the feeling that all of this was…not the best idea.

"That's a great idea!" said Sho. Big sis needed something to make her feel better! A party! The biggest party ever! With…..stuff! Like another birthday party! He had no idea what Hatori was going on about. People threw parties all the time!

"Seconded. I don't care what we're partying about. Let's just party!" said Shimazaki. Who the hell needed an excuse to party? They'd turn this whole thing into something fun…and maybe all of that could get Toshi in a better mood. They were upset. Even if they were with Mob helping her out, and they loved Mob so much, they were still shook and upset…so maybe an excuse to take copious amounts of whatever they felt like. That wouldn't make everything better, only time would, but if he could do something to help then…..

"That might not be the best-" said Hatori. They had parties like this…in other countries. This wasn't….this wasn't a good idea. This was a bad idea. Mob…she loved a party…but maybe not a party for something so personal.

"Yeah! We'll get her cake and presents and…and it'll be like a birthday…like a birthday part two!" said Sho. This was the best idea ever. He knew that, if he'd been as freaked out as big sis had been, and he had been pretty freaked out so big sis had probably felt worse based on her aura and the fact that it was actually happening to her, and he knew that he would have loved to have had a second birthday if he had been in her shoes…and also…well he maybe should have taken his shoes off…

"Yeah, like all of her favorite stuff. Like her favorite cake and drinks and everything can be themed to Frozen….not that I like Frozen or anything." Said Shimazaki. Yes! This was a great idea! Well, obviously, they weren't going to tell her that it was about her ketchup packet times…maybe they could call it an un-birthday or something. He didn't care what they called it…they just had to have this so they could get back to happy kids and not boring, mopey, upset kids!

"Guys, think about this for a minute. Is this really a good idea!?" asked Hatori. He had never been an eleven year old girl but he knew that if he had he wouldn't have wanted everyone to throw him a period party. They had just gotten done telling Sho off for informing the world about this development in Mob's life.

"Hatori has a point…maybe everything could be red and pink instead of Frozen themed. Her birthday was already Frozen themed…and also I have a bunch of red food coloring from Valentine's Day." Said Shibata

"Perfect! OK, we'll make a list of stuff and then…well we have to move fast! I don't know when big sis is coming back but we have to be ready when she does!" said Sho. This was going to be the best surprise second birthday party ever! They were going to have fun and then just…forget how terrible this morning had been! Yeah! This was the best idea ever!

The world had started off crazy but now…well not everything made perfect sense!


	380. Aisle 8A

Mob had never been down aisle 8A before.

She had been to Family Mart before but she had never gone past the candy aisle. This was the period stuff aisle. Well the sign said feminine hygiene but Minegishi said that it was just a fancy way of saying period stuff. Mob wished that the sign hadn't said anything at all. Maybe if they just hadn't had any signs in the first place then this whole thing would have been easier. Why did they have to have a sing, anyway? And in such big characters? If they'd had to have a sign then maybe a small one would have been better. Yes. A tiny little sign…in a language that nobody would have been able to read…yes. That would have been the best thing ever.

Because then there would have been no chance of anyone knowing what Mob was doing in that aisle.

She knew, thanks to Minegishi, that she was not going to die. She was not slowly bleeding to death because she had broken…it…on accident. She was going to be fine. This was just something that was going to happen to her one week out of the month until she got old…and she could deal with that. She could deal with this…because she had no choice. This happened to everyone with girl parts, Minegishi had said so, and that this was nothing to be ashamed of.

But that didn't mean that Mob wanted the whole world to know.

It was bad enough that this was happening to her but now…now she would have to go to a store once a month and get more stuff…because she could not order this stuff. If someone from Claw found out…well aside from her friends…then everyone would know. People liked her a lot at Claw and they were always interested in her life and stuff…and she didn't want anyone she had to work with to know…or anyone at all! This was….it was bad enough that her friends knew….and her family…anyone else would have just been too much. Way too much. The most too much.

Really the most too much.

"Minegishi…can you just get me what I need and then I wait in the candy aisle?" asked Mob. This was…a little bit too much. A lot bit too much. She loved Minegishi, and she loved not being in the middle of bleeding to death, but…there were other people around. Strangers but still people….and they could see her. She felt like everyone was looking at her…and if they were all looking at her then they all knew…and she didn't want anyone to know! Even if this was normal and natural and…and it meant that she was growing up and she could have babies…people did not need to know about this!

"Nope. You've got to learn about all of this, Mob, because one day I won't be here with you." Said Minegishi

"But…where will you be? You said that we would be friends forever and….and we're always together….so where will you be?" asked Mob

"Mob, I'm seventeen years older than you. At some point I'm going to die and then what? You're going to hold a séance every time you need a new box of tampons?" asked Minegishi

"Minegishi! Not so loud…people can hear you!" said Mob. She looked around. There were people and…and they were all doing their own things. There was a lady reading boxes and another lady on her phone and also a kid her age with her hood up and sunglasses…and she had the right idea. Mob should have worn a disguise. Then maybe if someone saw her they wouldn't be able to recognize her later.

"Mob, don't be like that. Everyone standing here in this aisle is here for the same reason. Everyone gets their period eventually. There's no point in being embarrassed and if someone does try and make you feel bad about this then you are fully within your rights to tell them to go fuck themselves sideways with a rusty butter knife." Said Minegishi. They knew that they were getting looks now…and couldn't people just kind their own business? This was a free country, until all of Suzuki's dreams came true, and they could curse if they felt like it.

"Minegishi! Don't….I don't want people to know about this…" said Mob. She held her hair down with her hands. Control. She was out in the world with normal people and that meant controlling her powers…and usually she was good at that…but this was just….people KNEW. They could tell. They could tell just by looking at her. Why did it all have to be in one aisle? And with such a great big sign? When dad took over the world she was taking the sign off the period stuff aisle….and then also the rest of the aisles. If she just took the sign off of the period stuff aisle then everyone would know that period stuff was in the aisle with no sign. Therefore she just had to take all of the signs of all of the aisles….wait…no…that might end up just being confusing….

She'd figure this out eventually.

She'd figure all of this out eventually. She didn't want to be here. She didn't want to be standing here with a basket on her arm just waiting to be filled with…things. Things she didn't want to have. Well she sort of did, bleeding on everything was gross and uncomfortable, but also she just…wished that she hadn't needed any of this stuff in the first place. She wanted to just…fall through a wormhole so she could be ten again. Ten or nine or eight or….any age but eleven. Eleven was the worst. Eleven was when…this stuff…happened to you. She used to think that growing up wasn't so bad. You got to do whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it…but she could do all of that as a kid. As a ten year old. She could do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted when she had been ten….

And also she hadn't had to deal with…any of this.

"Mob, nobody cares. Everyone here is in the same boat you are. Hell. In a little bit I'm going to be in the same boat you are and, let me tell you, I am not looking forward to that. This is just an unpleasant fact of life that we all have to deal with eventually." Said Minegishi, They knew that they sounded all dour or whatever but…well they were not one of those crunchy granola types. It was blood and tissue. It came out of you once a month. It sucked. There.

"Ok…but…how do you stop…feeling like everyone knows? I mean…like everyone is watching you and they know…and stuff." Said Mob. Minegishi might have just…not cared what anyone else thought. They were like that. People were looking at them, probably because they looked like a boy who had wandered into this aisle by mistake, but they just didn't seem to care. Minegishi had said that one day Mob would stop giving an F-word about what people thought….and Mob could not wait for that day to come.

"I stopped giving a damn a long time ago. The girls in the group home were both merciless and stupid beyond belief. At first I cared that they were teasing me, back when I first started and I hadn't gotten the hang of those cheap group home pads, but then when I was about thirteen I just stopped giving a fuck. That was my second to last growth spurt, too, so…yeah. At that point people knew better than to tease me…and nobody's going to tease you, ok? If they do then they'll have me to deal with." Said Minegishi

"You'd hurt people who teased me?" said Mob. She…didn't want that. Nobody teased her, well not like school stuff Fukuda was mean but he was Fukuda, and Mob…did not want her best friend to hurt anyone on her behalf…or at all. That would have been terrible.

"You know that I would." Said Minegishi simply. Mob…at some point she would have to learn what they were, what they did for a living, but now….now was not the time. Now was not the time at all. She'd already had one shock to her system. She did not need two. One day but not today.

"Um…maybe don't hurt anyone and…and um…I guess what you're saying makes sense…but I still feel like we should have worn disguises." Said Mob

"Ok, fine, next time we'll wear trench coats and sunglasses too on the off chance that somebody we know recognizes us. Deal?" asked Minegishi

"Deal." Said Mob. Those sounded like good disguises…but maybe they should have worn wigs, too, since Minegishi had very distinctive hair.

"Ok, now come on. I'm not exactly over the moon to be here myself, you know." Said Minegishi. They were tired, they were hungry, they had a vague sense that they were being watched…but not in a stalker way….more in a 'Mob's ten year old brother saw them naked' sort of way. They wanted to go home…but also not…and also they just…they wanted to be here for Mob so this was where they would be. Here for Mob.

"But…if you don't want to be here and I don't want to be here then…why are we both here?" asked Mob. Didn't they have this stuff on Amazon? They should try Amazon. Amazon had everything and they could even deliver with tiny helicopters now. Amazon was good. Nobody else was there and also…um…they might have had more stuff…and also the stuff was in boxes so that nobody knew what you were getting.

"Because free bleeding is best left to the crunchy granola types now pay attention." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. They could not even imagine what that had been like for Mob. She had been sitting in her own blood for days, her own filth, because she had been too embarrassed….and Minegishi should have known that something was up when Mob had started wearing pants. She hated pants. It was the beginning of September and she had been wearing layers upon layers upon layers…in the Tokyo heat and humidity…..God. Poor Mob.

"What am I paying attention to? They all look…why don't we just buy them all? I have this much money." Said Mob. She opened up her Elsa bad and showed Minegishi all the cash that she had managed to stuff into it. Minegishi reached over and zipped her bag for her.

"Mob, for someone trying to keep a low profile you sure do like advertising the fact that you're carrying millions of yen on you." Said Minegishi as they closed her bag for them. This wasn't a bad area but, yeah, it was never a good idea to advertise that you were fabulously wealthy.

"Dad says that cash is best because it's untraceable….and I don't want people knowing that I'm buying this stuff anyway. I mean I know that this happens to everyone, even you, but…I don't want people to know that I…need this stuff…and that's why I think that we should just buy everything and leave." Said Mob. That would have been best. The longer that they were there for the more likely it was that people would notice…and a bunch of people had already noticed….which meant that they knew already. She just….she wished that she had known about all of this, the blood, before…before she had thought that she was dying…and also everyone found out….

"You don't want people to know that you're on your period so your solution….is to buy out the whole aisle? Mob, this is why I'm in charge…now pay attention. This is Japan and here, thankfully, they put the length on the front. Since this is your first time we're just going to, like you said, get one of everything…but not light days because those are crap." Said Minegishi

"OK….but I think that we're going to need a bigger basket….because there are so many different kinds." Said Mob as she took in the whole aisle. It seemed to stretch for an eternity…and there were so many boxes….and she had no idea where there were so many kinds…couldn't they just invent one that you wore for the whole week? That would have been much more convenient….and much simpler, too.

"There are a million brands, you're right, but you're going to want to stick to the good ones…and don't just get the kind with the cool packaging. Look for length and absorbency…and wings! Always wings. Always check the front before you buy." Said Minegishi. Mob had a point about there being too many fucking brands. Just make one good brand in one perfect length and absorbency…for them. Everyone else, everyone who wasn't Mob, well they could go out and collect sea sponges or something. They had felt, back when they had first been on their own, as lost as Mob. Back in the group home there had been one brand, in one absorbency, and one length. That had been it. One kind of napkin and tampons…forget about it. They knew how dizzying it could be and they did not blame Mob for staring wide eyed at everything.

"…is that box of Hello Kitty ones any good?" asked Mob as she pointed down to the display at the end. She had liked Hello Kitty a lot when she had been little….and it was weird seeing her on something that was most certainly not for little people…but seeing here there felt…well nice. Like…sort of like seeing an old friend…not that Mob had any old friends…but seeing her there was just…it was nice.

"I have no clue but grab some anyway. What works for me might not work for you so…I guess go crazy like you said." Said Minegishi. Truth be told those looked like the crappiest pads they had ever seen. Overpriced, for one thing, and cheap looking….but money flowed free as the air for Mob and….well she was eleven. She should have been allowed to take whatever joy she could get out of this.

Minegishi would make sure that she got some boring but functional ones, too.

"These don't have the wing things at the sides but they're long and regular….is that good? Oh, and they're thin, too, if that means anything." Said Mob as she came back to Minegishi with her basket full. That…hadn't been so bad….not really. She had gone there and come back and….and she was fine. She didn't know what she had been expecting to happen but she was fine now.

"You did good, Mob, thin is good. You don't want thick, believe me, you want to go as thin as possible." Said Minegishi. They shuddered at the memory of the mattresses they had been forced to wear when they had been her age…thank God technology had come so far….and thank God that Mob had more money than she knew what to do it because this was not the place to be cheaping out.

"Will the thin ones feel less like wearing a diaper? Because it feels like I'm wearing a diaper." Said Mob. She shifted in place. The pants that she had borrowed from Sho didn't help matters. She hated pants but she only had white tights and Minegishi said that this was not the time to be wearing just a dress or a skirt…and also everything that she owned was in bright colors so clothes shopping would be coming next…and she wished that clothes shopping had come first because she hated all pants but Sho's pants were too short, and also these were black jeans, and it was September outside. This was not the season to be wearing black jeans.

"It's a little better but, honestly, unless you go the tampon route it's going to feel like a diaper no matter what." Said Minegishi. She was only eleven but….well napkins were the worst. They were messy and hot and itchy and it felt like you were wearing a diaper, like Mob had said. Tampons weren't a big deal, not really, but Mob was a kid and this was her body. Her body her choice.

"….I don't want those." Said Mob shaking her head. Nope. She was just now ok with the blood…she did not need to try…one of those…things. Nope. Minegishi could have them all. The whole world's supply.

"You sure? They make smaller ones…also they make cups and sponges too." Said Minegishi. They didn't want to see Mob miserable…and she would be miserable. They weren't going to make her do anything she didn't want to do but she at least needed to be aware of her options. Cups were great, aside from the boiling, but that was better than a sea sponge that collected germs all day and you could never get truly clean.

"…does all of that go…inside?" asked Mob. She wasn't Minegishi's age, she was her age, and she was not ready for…all of that. She had just now heard that there even WAS an inside and…and that seemed more like stuff for adults…and she was not one. Minegishi had told her that she would be hearing some stuff about how she's a woman now but that wasn't true. She was eleven still. She was the same person that she had been last week….she just had a lot of blood. That was all.

"Yes….but it's not that bad. Cups are pretty much these silicon cups, like the name says, and they last a while. Sponges are pretty comfortable but you have to disinfect them constantly and nobody has time for that." Said Minegishi

"….I'm happy with the diapers." Said Mob. Nope. She didn't want that, she didn't need that, and she would gladly spend the rest of her life in actual diapers if it meant that she didn't have to wear any of that inside type stuff.

"Don't say diapers…and don't try adult diapers either….or band aids….or paper towels." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. Mob had been using toilet paper as ersatz pads already and…and that was what this shopping trip was for. This was the twenty first century. They had actual hygiene technology…not…paper towels and band aids…and they still had no clue what Fukuda had been thinking….if he had even been thinking at all.

"I…didn't know that they made adult diapers…and also…why would I try band aids? And also…well I tried toilet paper but I didn't try paper towels because you can't flush those and I didn't want to have to explain why there were bloody paper towels in the trash." Said Mob. Minegishi looked at her for a while before pulling her into a one armed hugged. It would have been a two armed hug if they hadn't both been carrying baskets. Mob didn't know why she had been getting so many hugs lately, she knew that she wasn't dying and Minegishi had said that this whole thing was perfectly normal, but she wasn't going to complain.

"I'm sorry that I let this happen to you." Said Minegishi as they pulled Mob into a hug. She had been scared…for days…she had been scared out of her mind. She had been bleeding and she hadn't known why. She had been sitting there thinking that she was dying….and Minegishi hadn't been there. Mob wasn't their kid but…well they were still responsible for her…and they never should have let that happen to her.

"You didn't let this happen to me. You said that this was going to happen to me no matter what." Said Mob. They had said that a bunch of times already, that they were sorry that they had let this happen, but they had also told her that this was an unavoidable fact of life…so these were some very mixed messages.

"I should have warned you about this and….well I'm sorry. Anyway come on, you've plenty of daytime, that's the sun, but not a lot of nighttime, that's the moon….but I guess that you could have figured that out on your own. Anyway, here. This is a good brand. No bleach, scent free, and never get the scented kind. Trust me, you do not want to deal with what happens when you get the scented kind." Said Minegishi. They patted Mob on the head and then went back to teaching her what they should have taught her years ago. Well not years but…well they hadn't seen this coming…well they had and they hadn't. She really wasn't much younger than they had been and…and they were never going to stop kicking themselves for dropping the ball on this one. They were going to ruminate on this for the rest of their life.

Which was better than ruminating on…other things.

Like the fact that her little brother had KICKED IN THEIR DOOR while they were NAKED. That little monster should have been grateful that they had only been cuddling/sleeping with Ryou and not in the middle of anything…or there would have been two Suzuki's that needed un-traumatizing. That little demon child…well he had been afraid for his sister's life…and technically he had done the only thing he could do and gotten the only functional adult that he knew…because his father was useless…and their healer was useless and just…this was just a shit show on every side but Mob's and there was no point on ruminating on what happened….or worrying about how they were going to go back to that house when Mob's little brother had kicked in their door and exposed their naked….self….to the entire house….no. They weren't going to think about all of that.

They were going to focus on Mob.

"Ok. I can find ones without scents or bleach…and ones with the moon….but then we can go." Said Mob. This wasn't so hard. She still felt like she was being watched but…at least it was only girls here. It was only girls and everyone was in the same boat, like Minegishi had said, so this was…ok. Maybe when she grew up and helped dad rule the world she would leave the signs up on the aisles….but no boys allowed, though, not only in the aisles but in the whole store. That would be a good compromise. Boys…they were so lucky that nothing happened to them, well Minegishi had said that something happened to them but nothing as bad as this, and therefore they could not know about this…and also she had no idea how she was supposed to go home….

Dad and Sho both knew…

Well Sho…she would have to tell Sho that she wasn't hurt or dying…and also she would have to explain to dad that she wasn't hurt or dying….well he knew. He was the one who had shouted through the door and…and maybe he should have known about the blood and warned her but….well he was a boy and nothing happened to them. He hadn't seen Mom in years so he probably forgot all about it…and mom had been good at hiding it, Mob had never noticed any of this stuff in any of the bathrooms and mom had never had blood on her clothes, so of course dad wouldn't have known…and Fukuda didn't know anything, either, because he had never had a girlfriend. No, he thought like dad did, that organs had exploded or something, and that was…she wouldn't be telling him anything. She didn't want to talk to him and….and even just the thought of talking to him made her mad…

She had been mad a lot lately.

But she was controlling it. Minegishi said that she was be very mad, or very sad, or both for a while. They had said that it was normal and that she was allowed to yell at people now. She would control being mad, and also she would smoke and drink so she wouldn't get mad, because she just…hated being mad. It wasn't a good feeling. It was…the worst…and she may have been bleeding and achy and sleepy and hungry but…being angry would have been the worst feeling ever even worse than that…

Also the person that she was mad at wasn't there anyway.

She got mad at mom sometimes. She got mad at mom for running away. She got mad at mom for leaving without even a note or…or something that said that she was still alive. She hated getting mad at mom but…well now she was just…mad. Mom…Minegishi had said that the blood meant that she could have a baby….and mom'd had her and Sho so this had happened to her…but she hadn't thought to warn her about this. She hadn't thought to…to take her to a store and just…explain all the stuff to her. To tell her that, no, she hadn't been dying but instead it was just her body telling her that she would be able to have babies and that she would get taller and her voice would get deeper and her breasts would get bigger and that was called puberty….and mom…she hadn't thought to tell her anything and…and Mob was….

Mad.

Mom hadn't thought about her. She had just…well Mob was not a mind reader. She had no idea what was going through her mom's head when she left but…but she could have at least taken one day to teach Mob about the blood and what it meant and….and what she could do about it. She could have done something other than…than nothing. She could have just…maybe even left a letter….or a text…or just a sticky note stuck to the fridge…or something. Just…just to tell her that…that this would happen to her and…and now she was getting mad…but she should have been.

She didn't need mom.

She had people in her life who loved her…and she'd had a mom…and she would always have a mom…but also mom was gone. She was gone and….and Mob had Minegishi to teach her stuff. They weren't like a mom. They let her drink and smoke and didn't have power over her, but Mob didn't want another mom, but she did want a friend…and Minegishi was the best friend that she had ever had. They had always been there for her when she needed it. Even when she did dumb stuff like the time she ate one of their Xanax on accident or the time she tried to walk home in the middle of the night after the Christmas party…and now. They were tired, she could see dark circles under their eyes, and they were shaking a little too. Their hands shook a little when something happened to make them all shook…and something had happened to them but…but here they were. With her. They were here and they would always be there and…and they were even better than mom….

Mom would never have done this, taken her down aisle 8A to show her what she needed to know, but that was fine. She had Minegishi and having a best friend was better than having a mom.


	381. Office Talks and Memory Lane

Daughter's favorite color was blue.

Seventy nine percent of her wardrobe consisted of clothing which was blue. Light blue, dark blue, and all shades of blue in between. She loved blue. She looked so much better in yellow but she loved blue. So therefore he would give her blue. Well things which were blue, of course, he wasn't going to take the color blue from the world and bottle it for her…though he would have if he could. If he had the power to remove a color from the world, any and all shades of blue, and give them to her then he would have. That…that would have been easier….than dealing with….

All of this.

This…thing….that was happening to her. That she was going through. She was…she was going through something that was incomprehensible to him. She was…well Minegishi had been VERY graphic in what Daughter was going through….but still. He could only imagine….and he didn't want to imagine. He didn't want to think about this. He just…he wanted his Daughter to just be alright. He wanted her to be…to be back to normal….but that would not happen. This was…this was something that was happening to her…and that was…the whole of it…

And maybe he had overreacted just a bit.

He was an idiot. He was the biggest idiot. He…he knew what happened to women. He knew that Masami had gone through this. He had been there when Masami had laid on the couch with a hot water bottle pressed to her stomach….he made a mental note to get one for Daughter in case she didn't have one….and he…he just…he didn't want Daughter to go through that. Masami…he had known what had happened to Masami in the most academic sense of it. The biological fact of it. Not the….graphics….of it….and Minegishi….well they were very blunt. He liked that about them, he decided, because as disturbed as he was…it was good that he knew what was happening to Daughter now. He knew what was happening and now…now he knew what to do.

He was painting the house blue.

The inside of the house, the walls and carpeting and furniture and appliances, would be blue. That was…something which would make her happy. Minegishi had told him to make her happy. They had told him to wait on her hand and foot, let her drink and smoke to her heart's content, and not hold her to any of her household chores…and he could do all of that. He didn't like receiving orders….but he also didn't like not knowing what to do. A subordinate had told him what to do…but that subordinate was also an expert in the field of….all of this. So he would listen. He wanted to make this easy for Daughter.

She was….she was his everything.

She was his everything and she…for a few moments he had been sure that she had been dying. He had opened the door and seen the blood on her…and Masami hadn't told him that there was so much blood…and he had been shocked and terrified because…because she was his everything. She was his everything and she….she could go. Die. She was mortal and…and he knew that he had been overreacting. He had been so focused on the thought of losing her that….well he had forgotten the simplest explanation for all of it…

And he had been a moron.

He was still being a moron. He was sitting at his desk with the door to his office closed and locked. He needed to be alone. He left Shibata to care for Son, Daughter was going through so much and she didn't need to deal with him right now, and he had left Hatori too because…well he was not in the mood to spend time with anyone. Even someone as pleasant as Hatori. He just….he was getting nothing done, like a moron, but he just…he had to be here…

Because this was a work day and this was where he should have been….at work.

He was sitting at his desk in his office and…and he had so much work piled up…but he could not focus. His mind was elsewhere and it had taken his powers with him. His desk was rising up off the ground, the lights had been turned off for his own safety, and every time he tried to get up from his chair the building shook. He didn't know what was wrong with him. She was fine, she was normal, this was normal. This was normal for women…female human beings…and she was a female human being and…and he was not ready for her to grow up…not ready for her to….to become a woman…

He just…was not ready.

She was eleven years old. Nine years ago he had brought her home from the orphan prison. Nine years ago she had clung to his leg and begged him to stay with her. Nine years ago she had come to him carrying the book about the white cat and her friends and said 'daddy, read' and he had…well he had been working so he had told Masami to read to her…and…and he should have read her the damn book. He should have just read her the damn book because…because now he would never have the chance to read to her again. She was…she was…older…she was eleven but….was she a woman now? He had no idea…he had heard that…that being reproductively mature was the marker of adulthood….but she was only eleven. She was eleven and…and she could have a child and….and she was still eleven! She…she played with dolls and…and watched animated movies…and sang the ice queens mountain song at the top of her lungs when she took baths…and she…well she used to wear costumes as clothes…but now she didn't…

She was…all grown up….

But…she was so small. She was so small and…and he was not ready for her to go. She was reproductively mature but…but she was tiny. She was small enough that he could have lifted her. She was a year, less than actually, older than Son and Son was such a child….and Daughter….she was a child. She was his child. She was his child and…and she was…she was his everything. She was the very breath that he breathed. She was….she was his will to succeed. He was making a better world for her, for the two of them, and…and hadn't built her that world yet. He hadn't even built her a house yet, the house she deserved, let alone the world that she deserved….and she was…she was….

He was not ready for this.

Any of this. He was not ready for his Daughter to grow up….and he was not ready for the knock at his door, either. He took a deep breath and forced everything back down to the ground. He felt….oh. If it had been anyone else he would have sent them away. He had been sending people away all day, some of those people had come bearing important news, and he had no intention of seeing anyone….aside from him. Fukuda…well he had seen Suzuki at his worst time and time and time again. Fukuda had picked him up from the deepest holes he had ever been in…and he could pull him out of this. He was a healer, that was what he did, he made Suzuki better. That had been his job for the past thirty years.

Thirty one years, actually, and soon to be thirty two.

They had known each other for over thirty years. In that time he had seen Suzuki lose control of his powers and emotions in ways worse than…than what had happened back there at the house. He had also seen Suzuki being much more of an idiot over the years, too, than he had been back there. Fukuda…was the only person he would see right now. Fukuda always made him feel better. Even if he tended to overstep sometimes he was…he was good at fixing things. Healing things. Healing him. He had been there for so much….

And he would be there, here, for him right now.

He waved his hand and the door opened. Fukuda took a moment to step through the doorway. His aura recoiled…and Suzuki did not blame him. He was everywhere today…and he needed to stop. He needed to stop this and just…regain control. Everyone must have noticed by now…everyone here anyway this was a very popular posting…and he just…he was setting a terrible example and…and he just needed to calm down…so he did his best. His desk hit the ground, the lights went back on, and his aura came back as close as he could pull it in. All of this was done before Fukuda even made it to his desk.

"Fukuda. Do you need something?" asked Suzuki. He straightened his tie and sat up…a little too quickly…and he'd pay for that one later. Not that he had any right to complain. Daughter was going through pain that he couldn't even comprehend right now. She…she had so much happening to her and…and he was not ready…and if he was not ready then she certainly was not ready and….and he needed to stop thinking about this….

Not that it mattered if he lost control in front of Fukuda. It was nothing that he hadn't seen before.

"Just checking in, Suzuki. This morning was….a scare." Said Fukuda. He hadn't gotten anything done. A large portion of the day had been spent focusing on Suzuki's aura…and he had not been alright. The Awakened were steering clear of this place. Apparently Suzuki was in a 'traitor hole' mood. Fukuda hadn't bothered to correct them.

Nobody needed to know the truth.

Suzuki was well and truly shook. He had seen him like this before. After his parents died…well no, it had been worse then. This was more like…like after Masami had left. His aura was all painful barbs and…and it wavered, too, along with his control. He was shook and…and Fukuda didn't blame him. He loved Shigeko and seeing her covered in blood like that…well even he had been shook. She had seemed so young then…well she was young…but she had seemed her age. Eleven and scared. Normally she looked like a short, oddly dressed, adult. That morning she had been well and truly…a child…

He was loathe to even think this but…poor Shigeko…and poor Suzuki too…

But especially poor Sho. He didn't need to know about all of this….and Fukuda still wasn't sure what he knew. How aware he was of the situation. He had gone back for Sho after he had gotten dressed and calmed down…and the house had been empty. He was off doing God knows what with Shimazaki and the others….and Fukuda was not looking forward to when he came back. He was going to have to have a talk with Sho that he knew Suzuki wouldn't be able to. Unless he was caring for Shigeko…well nothing else mattered. Not even his own Son. Not even his actual blood child and heir. Sho…this had been a lot for him and…and he hadn't needed any of this…

But he had seen Shigeko, he had gotten freaked out, and as soon as Fukuda saw him again he was going to set him straight….which would be after he figured how close Suzuki was to an explosion.

"I'm fine. Yourself?" asked Suzuki. He tried to sound normal. He tried to keep any and all emotion out of his voice…and there had been a waver there. He wanted…he found himself craving human contact…which was odd. Normally….well holding Daughter was a preview of heaven….but normally he confined these feelings to her. It was alright to hold her, to be with her, because she was his. She was his and if he wanted to hold her close then that was alright. Being with her didn't make him any less of a full and complete person.

Being with Fukuda on the other hand did.

"Fine. A little embarrassed. I can't believe I panicked like that." Said Fukuda as he pulled a chair close and sat down. Suzuki…he knew that look. Suzuki actually was capable of emoting, somewhat, and Fukuda was one of the few people who got to see it. Masami hadn't even gotten the so called privilege of seeing this face, any of his faces really, but especially his scared face. His vulnerable face. He hadn't looked like this since Masami…no. Since the baby. Since the baby and the woman that he had cheated on Masami with. He had been just as shaken and vulnerable then as he was now…and Fukuda….well he would do his best to deal with this. To manage it.

Because, really, what else could he do?

"Don't be upset with yourself. We both panicked." Said Suzuki after swallowing the myriad of other words that had threatened to rise up from his throat. Words like 'Tadashi. Explain' and it's variations. He wasn't even sure what he wanted Tadashi, what he wanted Fukuda, to explain to him. If Daughter was still a child? If she was still his? If being with her…if having her and holding her and loving her…if it was all still…alright. He had always imagined their lives being forever intertwined, especially as she entered her adult years, but now…now he had no idea what he even imagined….besides being alone. Besides her being gone. Besides her just…leaving….

People left all the time.

"Yeah, well, I panicked more." Said Fukuda with a shrug. He was lying. Suzuki had been five seconds from taking out the whole block. Still, though, best not to just come out and tell Suzuki that he had completely overreacted. He didn't take criticism well. He never had and he never would…even though it was completely warranted in this situation. He had been the one to take a bad situation and make it worse…and then there was the matter of what he had done to Sho….

Stay. Calm. Tadashi.

"You did….but I should have stayed calm." Said Suzuki. He didn't like to admit when he was wrong…but he was also capable of it…and he had made the whole situation worse. Daughter…she had been frightened…and he had been frightened….and then…well thank God for Minegishi being a woman and knowing what to do because Suzuki was a man so his mind went straight to massive internal hemorrhaging…which in some ways could have been preferable to…well massive internal hemorrhaging could be easily fixed. This…Minegishi had said that there was no fixing this…because this was not something to fix. This was just….a biological inevitability that…that he should not have been upset about because Daughter was the one dealing with it. She was the one this was happening to and he…well he was a man about to maybe lose his Daughter….losing her to time…to growing up….but she was still so small and….

Calm. Down. Touichirou.

"Yeah, you really did a number on the house…and Sho." said Fukuda. Sho…he had no idea how Sho was doing. He wasn't answering his phone…but that was normal for him. He could have been in the middle of freaking out or he could have been chasing ducks at the park. Fukuda had no way of knowing and…and he had no way of knowing how Sho was coping with this. He had thought that his sister was dying….and now he had to learn the horrible truth…and he knew Sho. He would not let this go. He would ask and ask…and hopefully he hadn't asked those four anything….because God only knew what kind of nonsense they would be filling his head with….and God only knew what misconceptions Fukuda would have to fix and….and this really was a job for his father….

But Sho didn't have one of those now did he?

"I don't care about that. I care that I frightened Daughter. She was already terrified and I made it worse." Said Suzuki. He sighed as he said that. Mostly just to get the tension out of his body and his aura. Masami had told him time and time again that he overreacted, that he was ridiculous, and he would have given anything for Masami to appear and just…tell him again. Tell him that he had been ridiculous and then…well then she could help Daughter through this. This was something that he could not guide her through. This was so far beyond his area of experience that….well she had someone to help her. Minegishi may not have looked like a woman, not really, but they were…even if for some reason they did not want to be seen as such…and they would help Daughter. They were her best friend. That was what best friends did, they helped you through things. Minegishi was like Daughter's Fukuda. Good. Everyone needed a Fukuda in their lives. A person who could pull you back when you were on the brink of losing it, a person who could help you through all the parts of life that you just could not navigate on your own, and a person who was fiercely loyal no matter what….and there had been, when it came to him and Fukuda, a lot of 'what' over the years.

He was happy for Daughter, having someone like that in her life, truly he was…and grateful too because even the actual Fukuda had been at a complete and total loss.

"You also hurt Sho." said Fukuda. He knew that he had a tone there and he knew that Suzuki wouldn't notice. He never noticed. As long as he kept his aura still and calm Suzuki would not notice. He was too wrapped up in himself, himself and his Daughter, to notice the contempt there….and to notice or care about what he had put his son through. God…how many broken bones had Fukuda knitted back together for that child over the years? Thousands, probably, because he had been doing this since Sho had been a toddler….

That had not been a good day.

Suzuki liked to think of himself as a patient man. He wasn't. He was, possibly, the most irritable and least patient man in all of Japan. He had no patience for anyone, especially his own son, and it had always been that way. Ever since Sho had gotten big enough to walk. If he could walk then he could climb and if he could climb then all the baby gates in the world meant nothing. Baby gates couldn't contain him and Suzuki, well originally the plan had been to put Sho on a leash and then tie him to things but, thankfully, Masami had managed to knock some sense into him. Sho was a human being, not a dog, and it was normal for a baby to be curious about the world around him. It was also normal for a baby to be curious, climb onto his father's desk, and ruin some very important work that he'd been doing. What had not bene normal, however, was that fact that Suzuki had thrown a one year old out of his office. Literally. He had picked Sho up and thrown him…

And Fukuda had fixed him.

Not only that but Fukuda had covered for Suzuki. He knew that Masami…well she would not have stayed if she knew…and at the time she had been good for Suzuki. He had been very….vindictive….back then. After he had met Masami and had Sho he had calmed down considerably. No new traitor holes had been built since his marriage after all. She had been….well he hadn't known her then…but he knew that she had been good for him so he told her that Sho was fine and that he had fallen. He had told her over and over again, when he had come to heal Sho, that he was fine…and now he regretted it. It would have been easier for her, far easier, to escape with a baby than a child. To escape with one child instead of two…

But that was then and this was now.

"He's fine." Said Suzuki. Son hadn't even been bleeding…and he had brought it on himself, anyway. Son always brought it on himself. Sometimes people brought things on themselves and when you brought something on yourself like that then the best thing to do was just to admit your fault. Like Suzuki was willing to admit, now, that he had panicked and ben ridiculous and…and that he was an idiot when it came to this part of Daughter's life. That he had made this whole thing worse for her. That…that he would throw himself to her feet and beg her forgiveness if she asked that of him. That he would do anything to make this better….to make THEM better…

Maybe painting the house blue would help.

"You broke his arm. He came to me with a broken arm and I fixed it." Said Fukuda. He kept his aura calm. He tried to keep calm. How could Suzuki just…not care? He needed to be calm. He knew for a fact that Suzuki did not care about Sho and…and that was the way that it had always been. Since he had been a baby. Since the day he had been born. He had been terrified that day because he had almost lost Masami…even though he hadn't. He had always been so over dramatic. Women had C-sections all the time, Fukuda had been there in case anything went wrong, and nobody had told Suzuki to look over the god damned curtain in the first place. In fact everyone had told him NOT to look over the curtain. But he had and then he had seen Sho being born and then, once Sho had been cleaned up and safe to hold, all he could say was…God…what had he said? Masami had told him…something along the lines of 'I am your father. This is your mother. Your name is Sho. You almost killed your mother' or something like that. He had acted like it had been Sho's fault, that he'd purposely wrapped the umbilical cord around his neck,

"Oh. Well he was being a moron. Arms break, it's what they do, and if he hadn't been useless then I wouldn't have broken it…and that hadn't been my intention anyway." Said Suzuki. Honestly. Son was fine. Fukuda treated him like he was made of glass. Arms broke, bones broke, but they could be easily healed. Fukuda knew. That was his job. He had always babied Son like that. Maybe it was because his own parents had been so over indulgent. Mother and Father had never struck him because he'd never done anything worth being struck over. Never like Son had. He had spoken when spoken too, did well in school, never answered back or sassed, always kept his room clean, been fastidious about his appearance, and always treated his parents with the utmost respect. Mother and father, mostly father, had been very clear about their expectations for him and if he misbehaved, if he broke his side of their bargain as a family, then they would break theirs. All that they gave him would be taken away. No more pocket money, no more games, no more books, no more television, even his very existence would be ignored….though things almost never got that bad. Only when he lost control of his powers…but that was fine…

He had just learned never to lose control.

Unlike Son Suzuki could learn from his actions. Son….no matter how many times Suzuki corrected him he just…carried on the same way he always had. He was so tiresome. He had always been tiresome even back when he had bene small. Daughter had never been so tiresome. She had been so much like him that, if he hadn't known any better, he would have thought that he had fathered her himself. That wasn't possible as he was married to Masami at the time of her conception and also he very rarely if ever set foot in Seasoning City. Daughter…she had been so much like him though. She had been clean and quiet and intelligent and…and he loved her so. He loved and cared for her and….and she just made it so easy. Not like Son. Since the day he had been born it had felt like he had done everything in his power to drive his mother and father insane. Now he was….well easier to deal with because Daughter had taken over raising him….but now Daughter would be out of commission until all of…this….passed…so Suzuki would be in charge again….

Great. Just great.

"Well I don't know if that'll come as any comfort to Sho." said Fukuda. It didn't matter that Suzuki hadn't intended to break Sho's arm….it had still been broken. He had always said that, ever since they had been kids, that whatever terrible thing he had done hadn't been his intention. It hadn't been his intention to stab Fukuda down to the bone with a compass, just to break the skin. It hadn't been his intention to get them banned from the arcade for staying there at the same machine for five to seven hours a day without putting a single yen in. it wasn't his intention to give Fukuda a concussion with that damn shinai…he had just been practicing….

Even now nothing was ever his intention.

It hadn't been his intention to drive Masami away. Fukuda knew that, if the subject of why Masami had left ever came up, Suzuki would spin some story about how he had never intended to make her leave. How he had never intended to say cruel things to her. How he had never intended to trap her in a house all on her own with two small children. How he had never intended to drive her away by bringing home a child who was so powerful that only he could control her. If they had ever sat down and talked about what had happened, unlikely unless Fukuda felt like getting killed, Suzuki would have said that he had never intended any of that….

Like intentions even mattered.

"You don't think so? My father said those exact words to me when he broke my arm. You remember, you were there….and I believe that recording might still exist if the tape hasn't degraded yet." Said Suzuki. He didn't understand how telling Son that this was his own fault wasn't a comfort to him. Mother and father, well mostly father, had never shied away from telling him when he had been a complete and utter disappointment of a human being. Those times hadn't come often, though, only when Suzuki lost control of himself. His powers or his emotions. Father had always told him that he was wrong to act the way he acted and wrong to feel the way he felt and he had believed him because, well, a son was supposed to believe his father. Father had only wanted the best for him just like he only wanted the best for Son.

So if it had come to it, yes, he would have hit Son with a shinai with his full strength.

If it ever came to that, though, but it wouldn't. First of all there was no point in teaching Son kendo because he would have been terrible at it. He did not have even the barest sense of discipline to him. No. He wouldn't have landed one legal hit and would, instead, have embarrassed him in ways that Suzuki couldn't even imagine. Even Suzuki had fallen to emotion a few times on the mat….and father had only had to hit him once, at full strength, before he learned to keep a level head and to be fully aware of his opponent.

He had no idea how many times he would have had to hit Son and, really, he did not have the time to deal with the Boy's nonsense.

"….that was an accident. You and your dad…that was a kendo accident." Said Fukuda. There was no way that Suzuki was going to equate what had happened between him and his dad with what he did to Sho regularly. Suzuki's parents were nothing like him. They were the nicest people that Fukuda had ever met. His mom was always so open and loving, not like is mom, and his dad gave him whatever he wanted. Hell, Fukuda had never seen his dad give him less than ten thousand yen spending money…and this was ten thousand yen in the eighties. His parents had been good people, nice people, and Fukuda…could not believe that he would ever compare himself to his parents. That was just…this was just….the first time he speaks about them in years and he's dragging their names through the mud.

Even Suzuki must have realized that what had happened that day had been an accident.

They had been kids then. God…thirteen about…maybe fourteen. It didn't matter. Suzuki and his dad had been really into kendo and sometimes they practiced together. That was just something they did on Sundays, Sundays were his days with his parents a lot of the time since that was the only day they got off school. Well Fukuda had been over and he'd carried that stupid camera that they had been messing around with for a while all the way from his house for the purposes of….well he had no idea what they'd set out to record. Probably just the minutes from their two person meetings or something. Anyway Suzuki had been in the backyard practicing with his dad because he had let someone get a point on him last kendo meet…that girl he'd been into…and they had been practicing without armor, which was dangerous, and his dad had gotten him in the arm so hard that it had broken. The whole thing was a terrible accident and he was not going to let Suzuki paint that as…as something that his dad had done on purpose….and he did not get to excuse his own behavior just because of a terrible accident that had happened thirty years ago.

He didn't get to make excuses for himself like that.

"It was on his part. I was being an idiot and left myself opened so, of course, he landed a hit on me. He was right to tell me that it was my own fault for being useless and an idiot." Said Suzuki. Fukuda had always been strange about things like that. Probably because his parents had let him do whatever he wanted. They had let him talk any way he wanted and act any way he wanted and even let him bring home terrible grades, too. If Suzuki had been at anything less than the top of his class and mother and father would have been so upset with him…upset enough not to speak to him for at least a week. It had mattered, then, when they had stopped speaking to him because he hadn't yet known how to be a full and complete person on his own. They had just been trying to teach him that lesson. That was the job of parents, to both provide for you and to teach you how to become a proper adult. Fukuda's parents…well they hadn't even had him bow and greet them when they came home….they had always been an odd family….

So, of course, his family would have seemed odd to Fukuda.

"…right. Well I just think that maybe there's a difference between a kendo accident and purposely hitting your son." Said Fukuda. He forced his aura to stay calm. What he had done to Sho, what he had been doing to Sho for years, had been no accident and Fukuda….years and years of this could take a toll on anyone.

"I didn't hit him. I threw him down the stairs. Somebody had to get you and he runs quickly so I sent him to get you." Said Suzuki. He hadn't set out to hurt Son, not seriously, but if he had just…been better…then none of that would have happened. Besides, he had lived. It wasn't as though Suzuki had been trying to hurt him seriously or anything like that. Son was fine now. What did it matter if his arm had been broken or not?

"Right. Well his arm is good as new so you don't have to worry." Said Fukuda. He knew that sarcasm was lost on Suzuki. Whatever was wrong with him, and he knew that something was wrong with him, had left him immune to sarcasm….either that or he was just so self-absorbed that he couldn't hear it. Fukuda would have believed either option.

"I was never worried about him." said Suzuki. If Son had been hurt enough to bleed then, yes, he would have been worried…but he wasn't. He seldom worried about Son. He would be fine no matter what. He wasn't fragile like Daughter was. He was made of stronger material. That was his biological child, his Son, after all. Aside from a few worries he'd had here and there, which had been remedied, he had confidence in Son's ability to live to adulthood, inherit the world, and then in turn have his own Son and continue their bloodline.

"You never do." Said Fukuda. Sho could have been lying dead in the streets and Suzuki wouldn't have given a damn about him. Since the day he had brought Shigeko home from the orphanage it had been all about her. The prodigy that he had found. Sho…he had been excited when Masami had been pregnant with him. He had gone on….and on…and on about what is Son would be like. All the things he would teach him. How he would be the ruler of the world someday. Well he had spent so much time planning out who he thought Sho was going to be that he hadn't managed his expectations and learned to accept Sho for the person that he was….and now the only person who would pay for that was Sho…and he had been paying for this for the past ten, almost eleven now, years.

"You're right, I don't. I don't have to. He's a very resilient person. I have complete faith in him." said Suzuki. He had faith in Son because Son was….his Son. He was half of him and half of Masami. In some ways he was the best of the both of them. He was just as driven as Suzuki was…though he was driven to the stupidest things…and he was just as kind as Masami was…though that kindness, particularly towards animals, was more of a weakness when it came down to it….son was like an omelet served over plain unsweetened cheesecake. Both were good but together….well together they were terrible. Son…he had the best of him and Masami…and maybe a bit of his own mother in there too now that he thought about it…and as tiresome and annoying as he could be Suzuki had complete faith in him…that was his only Son after all….

So unless he either had another Son or left the world to his Daughter, not that he would be leaving the world to someone with no blood relation to himself, Son was the only candidate so Suzuki had no choice but to have complete and total faith in the Boy.

"You just called him a useless moron." Said Fukuda. Suzuki knew what words meant. He had been the one to help Fukuda with their vocab homework, not the other way around, and he even knew so many words that he'd gotten an award for it. He knew what the words 'useless' and 'moron' meant…and he knew that they were unkind. For all of his social difficulties he knew that those were unkind words to say to someone…and he knew that they weren't true.

Sho was neither useless or a moron.

Sho was a bright, helpful, wonderful kid. He knew more about art than anyone Fukuda had ever met in his life. He had managed to learn four languages, one of them being English which was beyond hard to learn. He knew how to play these incredibly complicated videogames, even at this point Fukuda still needed to be walked through Minecraft, and he just…he was a bright kid. A helpful one, too. He was always…well he used to help out Fukuda more when he'd been little…but now he spent all of his days with the guy he had the mother of all crushes on…

And Fukuda would have to do something about that at some point.

"That's true but then again most people are." Said Suzuki simply.

"But not Shigeko." said Fukuda. No, never his precious Shigeko. Sho…Sho was his Son and he treated him like…like nothing. Like less than nothing. Like an annoyance. Like…he wasn't even a person half the time. Like he was just an annoyance that he had to deal with. If Sho had been Fukuda's son…but there was no point in thinking about what he would have done if Sho had been his Son. Sho…he had the cards that he was dealt, the family he had been born into, the father he had been born to….and Fukuda…well he would do what he could to make this whole thing better for him.

"Of course not. My Daughter is the most intelligent person ever to live….and she is not useless just because she's going to be out of commission for a little while so she can get through….this." said Suzuki. He had no idea what he would do without her. The Awakened were useless, Masami was gone, and he…well he knew how to care for himself in the most basic sense, he had lost mother when he had been eighteen after all, but he just…he didn't know how to do all the things that she did. He didn't know how to fold his clothes the way Daughter folded them, he didn't know how to make the perfect omelet with just the right amount of butter, he had no idea in what quantity to order the family's food for the week…or even fully what to order….and then dealing with Son…well he had no idea how to even begin to deal with his Son…

But he had to do his best…he had to ease the stress that Daughter was under.

He could not contribute to this. Minegishi had been very clear about the pain and stress Daughter was under….and also now he would never be able to look at a ping pong ball again….and he could not make this any worse on her than it was now. She was in pain…and she was frightened maybe still…and he would take care of himself…and her. He would care for her in whatever way that she needed caring…for now and whenever else she would need it, too. She was his Daughter and it was his job to care for her.

And also he loved her.

"I can't believe she didn't know this was coming." Said Fukuda shaking his head. Masami must have told her something. She must have because….well that was the sort of thing that mothers were supposed to teach their Daughters. Masami….well even if she hadn't taught Shigeko anything she could have figured it out on her own…or something. Or her only female friend could have told her something, what to expect, how to deal with this…and he didn't give a damn what Minegishi thought about him…and it was unfair, anyway, to think that he would have been able to help Shigeko in any meaningful way. He was a man, he wasn't married, and he didn't have any children. Of course he would have had no idea what to do!

"Me neither…but then again she doesn't have…well Masami has been gone for some time….and she is mother to Son but…well I suppose that she needs someone to be mother to her." said Suzuki. He sighed again…it was a good release of tension. He just….he hated feeling this powerless. Daughter was a child and…and she was good at raising Son….but she still needed help with things…and eleven was still a child. She could have a child now….and he didn't even want to get into that yet…..but she was still eleven and…and still small enough for him to pick up and…and she still needed his guidance sometimes and…and also he just…he didn't know everything. He wasn't a woman. There were probably more woman things that she would need to know about….

But at least she had a woman in her life to help her with these things.

Minegishi…well he didn't understand Minegishi. Why they were a 'they'….and he would have to remind himself that they were a 'they' because, well, they had a short temper and they, also, had done him a great service today. She…they…were there for Daughter. They were Daughter's closest friend and they had knowledge that he had never even been privy to, he hadn't had to be because he had never been anything other than male, and he would be forever grateful to them for caring for Daughter in her time of need…in any and all future times of need…

Because she didn't have anyone else to help her through this time of need…any of her futures times of…female…need…..

"…right." Said Fukuda. She had a mother, her name was Masami, and it was Suzuki's fault that she and her brother didn't have a mother…and honestly Minegishi was no kind of mother to her. They were the ones, them and the others, who had taught Shigeko how to drink and smoke. She…they…were the reason Shigeko was…who she was now. If Masami had been there, if she hadn't been driven away, then Shigeko….never would have gotten involved in any of that. She would have been better off. Both of those kids would have been.

Especially Sho.

Sho…he would have at least had one parent in his corner. Shigeko was not mother to him. She was eleven years old. She was a year…not even! Those kids had been born half a year apart. Shigeko should never have had to have been put in the role of Sho's mother. It didn't matter how much she liked it, being an adult at not even twelve, she still wasn't his mother. She was his sister. Sho….he needed an actual mother but thanks to his father the best that he had was his older sister…..and thanks to Suzuki the best that Shigeko had was Minegishi….

And Suzuki would never be able to see his part in all of this.

He was just…incapable of it. Seeing that so much of this was his fault. Not just freaking Shigeko out, no, putting Shigeko into that position in the first place. Masami had been able to teach Shigeko all the things that she should have known because Suzuki had made it impossible for her to be there to teach her Daughter what she needed to know. Sho acted up because he didn't have his mother there to raise him...and he had gotten hurt because he hadn't had his mother there to protect him. Masami was gone and….and it was Suzuki's fault and…and he would never realize his part in this…

Hell, he barely realized that his own phone was chiming.

He jumped, almost, when he heard his phone chime…and that could have been good or bad. The only people who actually spoke to him were…well his daughter and Fukuda….and Fukuda was right there…and he assumed that Shigeko would have still been upset at her father for upsetting her…and it wasn't a mass Claw message because then Fukuda would have gotten it too. Suzuki…well maybe it was one of his super secret President of Claw things that Fukuda would have to deal with later…

Or not…judging by the way his eyebrows were coming together.

"What's up?" asked Fukuda

"I've been invited to a party." Said Suzuki simply. That was….well nobody ever messaged him directly aside from Fukuda and Daughter….well and Hatori…and that was who it had been. Apparently Daughter's friends were throwing her a party to cheer her up…which was a good idea since she adored parties…but he would not be in attendance. He loathed parties. Crowds, even small ones, where he would be expected to socialize….no thank you.

"Want me to go in your place?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki got invited to things all the time. The backers, investors, and cultists thought that they could gain his favor that way….even though he either outright declined or sent Fukuda in his place. Honestly. People never learned now did they?

"I'll ask right now….and no. You're specifically not invited." Said Suzuki. How Hatori could type so fast he would never know…well there was the matter of his powers. Yes, that was it. He told Hatori, these automatic words on his phone were a godsend, to give Daughter his best. This was….good. If Daughter was feeling well enough to attend a party, if her friends thought that a surprise was something that she was up to attending, then….then she was doing better…and that was just wonderful.

"I'm specifically NOT invited? Who the hell is throwing this party? Cultists? Because if it's them they should be grateful to get anyone at all. Those parties are just…weird and unpleasant." Said Fukuda. He didn't really want to go to a cultist's party but, well, he also didn't not want to go. Just…it would have been nice to have had the invitation extended to him.

"Their parties are more than unpleasant and weird…but no. This party is being thrown by Daughter's friends. They're throwing her a surprise party to cheer her up and Hatori has extended me an invitation…and also he's sent a picture of Son all wrapped up in pink streamers….I think he may be trapped. See?" asked Suzuki. He turned his phone so Fukuda could see it. This was…well Son was silly like that…and Fukuda had always been amused by Son's antics. His phone chimed again. He didn't take it back, though, not until Fukuda said that he was done. This reminded him a bit of those times when they had been young and they had shared manga. Fukuda had always said that he turned the pages too fast and he never took in the picture…not that he was sure what there was to take in….it was just Son being silly. That was normal for him.

"What the hell is he on about….'I make her uncomfortable'…what a load of….I have no idea what she's on and I have no idea what he's on either." Said Fukuda. Hatori had the nerve to sit there and tell Suzuki that he had been looking at Shigeko….and he HADN'T BEEN! She was a child! There was nothing there to even look at! The only reason Shigeko even had that idea in her head was because of the company that she kept. If Masami had been there then…then she would have only kept company with people her own age….and then the idea that a grown man could have looked at her would never have even crossed her mind! God!

"What are you on about?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda sounded so young there. Suzuki was not good with tones but he knew that one. That was the tone that Fukuda had taken back when they had been children and Suzuki had informed him of what others said about him. He had been widely disliked when they had been in school…but, paradoxically, he had also been more social and included in more things…well there seemed to be an expiration date of about two months on any new friendships which he had made….and Suzuki had never understood that….but it wasn't his life so he didn't have to care or understand. Fukuda, throughout everything, had remained loyal to him and that was what mattered.

"Hatori. Check your messages. He just said not to even tell me about this party because I make Shigeko uncomfortable….and also he's making some wild accusations there which aren't true in the slightest by the way." said Fukuda. How could that…that…that upstart little KID…that CHILD…how could he just…think that he could sit there and just whisper poison into Suzuki's ear about him? Shigeko…he and Shigeko had their problems…but there was no reason to go and tell Suzuki things that just…we not TRUE!

"Oh. He says that Daughter says that you look at her…well of course that's not true. If it were then I would have to gouge your eyes out." Said Suzuki. Daughter was getting older….this morning had made that ABUNDANTLY clear to him…and in getting older, in becoming a woman, she would become interested in men…and she already was. She had been very taken with Hatori…which he could understand. Hatori was intelligent and good for conversation and pleasant to be around and his eyes were a very nice shade of brown, too, when they could be seen. Actually he would have looked so much better if he hadn't had such large glasses…though the square lenses were fascinating….yes. Daughter had done well to choose Hatori despite his complexion and possible panic disorder…but Hatori was a homosexual so he didn't have to worry about that. He was better, a lot better, than the last man that Daughter had been interested in….

Any man would have been better than he womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own joy that was Shimazaki Ryou.

Even Fukuda….though the thought disturbs him. Well the thought of any man trying to take his Daughter from his is disturbing. She would choose someone, that only vaguely bothered him, but to have a man chasing after her…trying to take her away…well then that man would have to die. Daughter did the choosing, that was less not ok, but any man who dared steal his Daughter from him….and any man who dared look at her…because she was still so young….well he knew that he didn't have to worry about that when it came to Fukuda. He could trust Fukuda.

And if not, well, his eyes would grow back so that would be a good warning to him and anyone else who dared to look at his Daughter.

"I'm pretty sure they'd grow back." Said Fukuda with levity he did not feel. Suzuki was serious…as he should have been…but why towards him? Why not towards the man who had actually….well Shimazaki was already blind so….yeah. There was that…but still! Of course he would never look at Shigeko like that! Even if she grew up to be a supermodel or something! That was Shigeko! For the love of God, he had known her since she had been two years old!

"Yes, but you still feel pain and the pain of having your eyes gouged out would be enough to teach you not to look at Daughter…unless she wanted you to….but I don't think that she does. She has said, before, that you are greatly disliked amongst her friends…and also it seems that she dislikes you too…and I have no idea why you are so widely disliked." Said Suzuki. Fukuda had always been both widely disliked and more socially acceptable than him…and normal people were so hard to understand. Espers too. Pretty much he whole world, when it came to socializing, was incomprehensible to him. Fukuda was a pleasant person to be around. He was loyal, thoughtful, and not a moron. What more could you ask for in a friend?

"Yeah, well, I don't need to be liked by…all of them. Any of them. I don't give a damn if they like me or not." Said Fukuda. He really didn't. What did he care if a group of murders, assholes, drug users, and misanthropes disliked him? He didn't. He didn't give a damn about them, their opinion of him, and he never would.

"You always say that." Said Suzuki. He nodded to himself. Yes. Fukuda had said that time after time after time. It was a strength of his, not caring that much what others thought of him, but it also made no sense. Why people didn't accept him made no sense. He was Fukuda. He was a good person to have around. He was useful as a healer and also he was good company. People were just…odd…sometimes.

"What do you mean?" asked Fukuda. He had never vocalized how he felt about…all of them…before. He didn't need that getting back to Shigeko. She didn't need anything else to twist into reasons to dislike him.

"You always say that you don't want to be disliked by the people who dislike you. You've been saying that since we were children. I remember. You said those exact words back when we were in middle school." Said Suzuki. Yes. He remembered. Fukuda had been very popular at the beginning of the year but by the end of it he came to Suzuki saying those exact words. Every single year. Middle school, high school, even university.

"Well…yeah. There were a lot of assholes back in middle school. It was middle school. We were all terrible." Said Fukuda. He could admit that he had been something of an asshole in middle school…but so was everyone at that age. Whoever thought that putting a bunch of hormonal thirteen through fifteen year olds in one room for seven hours a day six days a week was good idea was a sadist.

"You said the same thing in high school, too." Said Suzuki. High school…had been better than middle school. They had spent less time together but, well, there had been girls. Less time to plan world domination but more time for the opposite sex…well while they stuck around. Fukuda had always taken that same sort of attitude when whatever girl he had been seeing tired of him. Suzuki had never understood why girls hadn't seemed taken with Fukuda. He was a nice person, he was thoughtful, he was pleasant to be around, and by high school he had become a much better kisser. People were very difficult to understand sometimes.

"Well high school was full of assholes too." Said Fukuda with a wave of his hand. That was part of being a kid, being surrounded by assholes all day, and that was the good thing about being grown men. They didn't have to deal with…well they did…but at least something good would come from conquering the world. Fewer assholes to deal with.

"And university as well." Said Suzuki. He decided to ignore the cursing because Fukuda's assessment of their peers was correct. He was so glad that as an adult he could decide who he had to interact with for the most part…and it would only get better when he ruled the world.

"You spend all of university working on three majors, one of which came with a concurrent graduate degree, and also you were building up Claw for those years." Said Fukuda. Suzuki had been a ghost for their university years. He had been the perfect roommate, really, since he hardly saw him. He had either been in class, the library, or with that woman he had been seeing. What did he remember about their university years?

"What's your point?" asked Suzuki. He had been busy but, really, it wasn't as though he and Fukuda had stopped being friends in that time. On the contrary. They'd gotten an apartment together and spent more time than ever before together…which was why they were never living together ever again. He needed peace to work…and also for some reason any woman that had come home with him had greatly disliked Fukuda for some reason. Either that or they just stopped talking to him all together after he brought them home…well after they had met him….and Suzuki….well people were confusing.

"What's yours, Suzuki?" asked Fukuda. Ok, so he hadn't had the best….any of his school years….but there was only so much he could do with Suzuki 'the biggest weirdo in Japan' Touichirou glued to his side. He had been even weirder when they had been kids than he was now. He had always worn the exact same thing every single day even when they weren't in uniform, he'd either done none of the talking or he'd gone on the longest of monologues, emotionally he could go from zero to a hundred and back down to zero in a minute, and the less said about him and girls the better. Maybe Fukuda would have been able to associate with other people, non asshole people, if he'd been able to socialize outside of school. No matter where he looked there'd been Suzuki. School, after school, even cram school….and Suzuki was a genius! He hadn't even needed to go to cram school! He got into Tokyo University and that was after staying up all night playing Space Invaders before the test! Suzuki…it had been a fulltime job being his friend….back then…

And then, well, it had turned into his actual fulltime job.

"I don't have one. I was just making an observation. You've been saying those exact words for the entire time which I have known you." Said Suzuki. He didn't think that he had a point, anyway, but maybe he did. He didn't know. He was a bit distracted. Hatori had asked him if he wanted to have any cake saved for him. He replied to the effect of 'you know I hate sweet foods' and then Hatori had sent him the little yellow happy face person shrugging and then one of his picture jokes that he would have to explain later.

"Well…so what? We've never been popular. It's been us against the world since the beginning, right?" asked Fukuda. Who's fault was that? Them against the world. They were the only two espers in each other's world for so long…and Suzuki had been the one to keep it that way. He'd fought everyone, and beaten them, and then those espers wanted nothing to do with them. If it hadn't been for Fukuda teaching him what to say and how to say it then this insanity never would have gotten off the ground…so why did it even matter if their school years sucked? What, was Suzuki feeling nostalgic all of a sudden for those times? Back when it had been them against the world? Back when it had felt like they had been each other's world? Because nobody else wanted to be? Because nobody else wanted to share a planet with someone as weird, off putting, cold, and violent as Suzuki Touichirou?

"Yes….well yes and no. You were always more socially successful than me in the sense that you always had more friends…and you understand people better….so it's odd to me that you've always been so greatly disliked. I don't know. It just seems odd to see history repeating itself like this." said Suzuki. Fukuda's aura was flaring then….and he had no idea why. Fukuda was even more confusing to him, now, then why this caption was funny when paired with this picture…and this would drive him crazy for the rest of the day…but better a picture to ruminate on than Daughter's…condition. No, he would just…try not to think about that for the rest of the day. There was nothing he could do for her besides create a stress free environment and wait on her hand and foot so, yes, when the time came he would do that. But right now he needed to be distracted…and Fukuda was a very good distraction. He was still very good conversation even after all of these years.

"What do you mean?" asked Fukuda. History was not repeating its self. He was still liked. He had friends, people he spoke to from time to time, which was more than Suzuki had…so maybe in that case history was repeating itself. He didn't know. Maybe he needed Suzuki to repeat himself, again, without being buried in his phone. God. And he had the nerve to complain when the kids were buried in their phones?

"Nothing. I was just thinking that this is similar to something that happened back in middle school, that's all." said Suzuki. He had been….fourteen. Yes, it had been the end of the year party and he had been invited by….how had he forgotten her name? The sun had risen and set with her, well his sun anyway, and he couldn't recall her name. Just that she had been a big Pink Lady fan….and that she had worn glasses with pink frames….God, what had her name been? Well that wasn't important. The important part had been that he had been invited to the end of the year party but not Fukuda. He had been told not to even tell him that there was a party.

But of course he had declined.

He had liked her, loved her even, but he had hated parties. Also he could never have been so disloyal to Fukuda as to not have informed him that there had been a party. He also hadn't informed him not to have been disloyal but also not to have had to go. Fukuda would have wanted to have gone invitation or not and Suzuki….well he would rather have spent the last day of school, the night after the last day of school, doing anything other than going to a party. Even if it meant not being near the girl who he had been so taken with that he had…well he'd done a lot…but that didn't matter now. It had been thirty years since that day.

"What? The trip to Okinawa? If none of the other guys wanted to bunk with us then that was fine. Your parents paid for us to have our own room anyway…and who the hell wants to sit in a hot spring with their entire class anyway?" asked Fukuda. That had kind of sucked….being voted out of the room…every room…even though they weren't supposed to have been voting anyway! It had been a random system…but Suzuki's parents had saved them. He hadn't even wanted to go but Fukuda had insisted. He'd needed to get out of his comfort zone…and also Fukuda had wanted to have someone he could stand for the duration of their trip. Besides, if he had to sit naked in outside in a hot spring then he had might as well sit around outside naked with his best friend.

"That's true, the trip was more enjoyable just the two of us…though you do tend to sit too close in hot springs I feel like…but that's not the event I was referring to." Said Suzuki. He hadn't even wanted to go. If he wanted to go to a hot spring then he would have gone with mother and father. Fukuda had insisted that he come with, that it would have been good for him, and it had been an enjoyable trip. Things in general were more enjoyable with good company.

"Well then what were you referring to?" asked Fukuda. He did not like to talk about that time in his life. That had not been a good time. Middle school was a bad time for everyone. Being a kid, being a teenager, it sucked. He was a grown man now and life…well life was….his life now was exactly what he had pictured it when he had been a middle schooler. He and Suzuki were taking over the world…and they spent every single day together….yup. Little Tadashi would have been over the freaking moon.

"The end of the year party when we were fourteen. I was invited, you were not, and I was specifically told not to inform you that there ever was a party." Said Suzuki. It had been thirty years. It was alright to inform Fukuda of what he had missed out on. It was better, actually, that they had spent that time together. They had stayed up all night planning after all and those plans had turned into the second division. The look of it, what it did, all of that. They had planned it on being the first division but revisions to the divisions had been made. He had been happy to have gotten so much work done, a little upset at having missed his shot with the girl he loved, especially since everyone had been talking about playing that hiding in a closet game….but he had gotten over it. Fukuda had helped. At the end of the day kiss was a kiss.

"….there was a party?" asked Fukuda. So that was why everyone had been avoiding him. God. Middle school…that was the one good thing about the way Suzuki made those kids live. They would never have to live through the hell that was middle school.

"Yes. I would not lie to you…well I don't lie…but never to you. There was and I just didn't tell you. I had been told not to tell you because you would have come. The invitation was extended to me by…well I forget her name which is odd because at the time I wanted to spend my life with her…but I was told not to tell you. I felt that it would have been disloyal to exclude you….and also I knew that if I had told you then you would have insisted on going….so I said nothing until this day." Said Suzuki

"Wait…what? You….well you hate parties but….I remember her, you loved her, and you had a chance with her…but you gave that whole thing up to…have a sleepover with me? Seriously?" asked Fukuda. That was…something. Well he had known Suzuki for years, knew how much he valued loyalty, and of course he could have wanted to cling to his only friend….but still. That was…he had loved that girl. Well back then he'd loved every girl but he had especially loved her. She liked the planetarium, he'd liked the planetarium, and they had run into each other there…and also she had hung out with him in their fort, too, and….well he'd actually had a shot with that girl. If he hadn't been so terminally weird and awkward. Still that had just…he knew what happened at middle school parties and…wow. Suzuki had given all of that up, and with a girl who might have liked him back, just to have a sleepover with him. Just to stay up all night eating garbage, playing videogames, trying to take over the world, and…well other things that had stopped being a feature of their friendship…

Things which, now, made a hell of a lot more sense now.

They had used to…well about once or twice a year. Never with any preamble. Just Suzuki looking at him and saying 'Fukuda, I'm going to kiss you now' and then he did what he said that he was going to do…and thank God they weren't those kinds of friends anymore….and hopefully Suzuki didn't feel like bringing that up. Hopefully that was not going to be a stop on their little stroll down memory lane. He didn't need to…well think about all of that…he had enough on his mind….

Like…this weird feeling…he had right now.

"Yes." said Suzuki simply. Obviously he had. Obviously he had chosen his best friend, one companion, and the only other esper he had known at the time. Fukuda seemed to not believe him…and he didn't understand why…just like he did not understand why any of what Hatori had sent him was supposed to be funny. He clicked his phone off. He was being rude, he decided, so he would stop now. He would only look down at his phone if something important came up.

"….why?" asked Fukuda. He knew that Suzuki valued loyalty but….well they had been fourteen and he'd had a chance with a girl. Fukuda…well that had been the only time that he had ever dropped Suzuki…when he'd had a chance with a girl….but that was just how these things went. Suzuki had actually…..well then that was just….sometimes it felt like Suzuki didn't care but…well he just…Suzuki never gave a damn about him and….it didn't make any sense.

"Because you're my best friend. Why else?" asked Suzuki with a shrug. That was how Fukuda had defined their relationship and neither of them had initiated a breakup…if friends could even break up…and if they even were friends at this point. They had spent more time together….like he and Hatori spent together….when they had been younger. They were in their forties now and they had all of Claw to run…but maybe they were still best friends. Neither of them had wanted to break up so….they were still together.

"OK…but then…ok. Cool." Said Fukuda. He felt vaguely…guilty. It was pointless to feel like this. He was…it didn't matter if he felt…guilty. Like he had done something wrong and….and he had, to the outside observer, but the outside observer…he was not there. It was just him and Suzuki in the cloistered world that was this office. He had done….he had been by Suzuki's side for thirty years and that was…the hell of it. He knew that, from the outside perspective, he had slept with his best friend's wife….but there was no outside perspective. There was just…what had happened. Objectively. Suzuki had been cruel to Masami, he hadn't realized what he'd had when he'd had her, and she had fallen out of love with Suzuki and in love with him…and they had been in love and…and then she had left….and now here he was. Now here Suzuki was. Now here they were together….

And a tiny bit of loyalty thirty years ago did not make up for what had happened in the three decades that succeeded it.

"I don't know why there's so much pink, here, in what they're doing. Daughter's favorite color is blue." Said Suzuki as he checked his phone again. Hatori was trying to get him to reconsider. He would not be reconsidering. He loved Daughter but hated parties. He loved her so much and he would be there for her, at home, which should have been completely blue by now.

"Maybe it's in honor of…today." Said Fukuda with a dry laugh. HE was the one who made her uncomfortable? Here they were, her friends, throwing what looked like the world's worst party for her and HE was the one who made her uncomfortable? Born or adopted Suzuki's were a weird bunch.

"What's today?" asked Suzuki. If he forgot another holiday….well it was Daughter's job to tell him when holidays came up…but she was currently indisposed. He'd have to have someone else tell him when holidays came around….along with doing the weekly shop and the cooking and cleaning and laundry and minding Son…she did a lot. He'd have to do something nice for her when all of this was over…but he didn't know what yet….maybe after he was done waiting on her hand and foot.

"Nothing. Anyway I was just checking in. If you don't need me here then I'll just get going." said Fukuda. He got up. He just…he suddenly felt…not so good. He was just…he was…he had a lot to do. The less Suzuki the worked the more he had to and also…also he had to figure out what to tell Sho…maybe get him a book of some kind and just…Suzuki didn't need him so he would just go.

"I don't, you may go….but…just…thank you. For earlier. For keeping me calm when Daughter…when I was being ridiculous…and thank you for trying to help even though you were no wiser than I was. Thank you. That's all. You're dismissed." Said Suzuki. He really was grateful to Fukuda for what he had done. If Fukuda hadn't been there to keep him calm, and heal the gash on his head, then everything could have been a lot worse. He had…he had made an idiot out of himself and…well thank God for Minegishi. She…no, they, would be rewarded….as would Fukuda….he didn't know how but he would do something…he had to do something. People needed to be rewarded when they did good, that was good management, and they'd be rewarded….

After he was done painting the house blue for Daughter.


	382. Maybe A Party Wasn't A Very Good Idea

There was no better way to cheer someone up than a party….and big sis needed all the cheering up that she could get.

Sho figured as much, anyway, since she was the one all of this was happening to. He was so glad that he had been born a boy. Sure he had to keep the bloodline going, and dad hated him, but at least he would never have to go through what big sis was going through right now. The whole thing was so gross…and not in a good way…and also the internet said that her stomach would hurt a lot and she'd be all mad and sad…and also she had been pretty freaked out, too. He could tell by her aura. He knew that he had been pretty freaked out and he wasn't even the one that all of this was happening to. If he had been a little bit freaked out then she must have been at least a hundred times more freaked out if not more.

But that was ok because they were going to throw her a party and then she'd feel better and then everything would be ok.

It had to be. He had to make everything ok. He had…well he had freaked out about stuff…and he hadn't been able to be there for big sis…but now he could be! He was going to make this the best party ever and then it would make up for how he had freaked out and also how he hadn't been there for her because he had been too busy with baby sis….and how he had to keep baby sis from her…and a bunch of other stuff. So much stuff…and so many secrets….but that was ok. If he threw her an awesome enough party then…then that would make up for everything and she would be better and then….and then everything would be better.

It had to be. There was nothing that a party couldn't fix.

"Watch it! Now I have to fix those!" said Sho as Shimazaki walked through the streamers that he had hung from the ceiling and the walls. He had been in the middle of hanging up the last of them, the twisty way of course since that was the best way, when Shimazaki just walked through them like-like-like it didn't matter! This did matter! This was big sis's 'sorry you got your period please feel better' party and everything had to be perfect!

Perfectly perfect in every way!

"Don't hang those so low, kid, I keep on walking into them." Said Shimazaki as he felt a streamer get caught in his hair. Paper was kind of hard to see when it was so thin.

"You watch where you're going! Don't mess up my big sister's streamers! She likes streamers and this is her party and then everything has to be perfect!" said Sho

"You know I can't." said Shimazaki with a laugh. He could feel the kid glaring at him. His aura certainly sounded like he was. God, Sho was overthinking this whole thing. Sure, ok, parties were important but he didn't need to raise his blood pressure over some bits of paper.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're blind. Everyone knows. Just stop messing up my sister's streamers! We need enough to cover the whole ceiling and the walls!" said Sho

"Are you sure that we have enough? I can feel slivers of sunlight coming in through the windows." Said Shimazaki with a laugh.

"Shimazaki, you're right! There aren't enough streamers. You can't have a party without streamers!" said Sho as he put up the last of the pink streamers. This wasn't good enough, he could still see the ceiling. He needed to cover the whole room in balloons and streamers…and then maybe they could do indoor fireworks…if those were real…and also….a smoke machine? Maybe. That might have made it hard to breathe….but they needed more streamers! That was a fact! Once the rest of the steamers were up then…then he could worry about balloons and smoke machines and indoor fireworks!

"On it." Said Shimazaki as he teleported away. God, this was going to be the best party that they had thrown since….well not Mob's birthday party because that had been pretty great…and Toshi's birthday…well that had just been the two of them so it didn't count….but this was still going to be a good party! This was just what he doctor ordered. Poor Mob…not only did she have to go through ketchup packet times but she had to deal with all of this with Suzuki freaking out at her and her little brother broadcasting her business to their entire social circle. Yeah, a little bit of partying was just what she needed…and he didn't just think so because he liked to party.

"Bring back milk!" shouted Shibata from the kitchen. They were going to need a lot more milk…and not just because Mob drank gallons of the stuff. Sho said that she liked ice cream, well everyone liked ice cream, and well….they could just get ice cream from the store…but that wasn't special enough. Mob was going through a lot and she deserved homemade ice cream. She deserved all the ice cream that he could make…and that meant that he needed more milk. Also for the pudding….well maybe Shimazaki was the only one who liked pudding…

But that was ok.

Mob liked pudding too, he'd seen her eat it, so he was going to make all the pudding that he could. She needed to have a good time and if Shimazaki was happy then it was a good time for everyone. Also, well, he was the one bringing them all the supplies for this party…and Shibata was going to ignore the stealing and chose to believe that he was paying for everything with the money that they made from working for Claw…

Because nothing could put a damper on this party.

"I…think that there are enough streamers. I think that maybe we should even take a few down…maybe." Said Hatori from his spot on the couch. This was…a very bad idea. He had never been a girl, and hadn't spent much time with them, but he knew that if he had been in Mob's place than a party celebrating…what was currently happening….would not have been something that he would have wanted at any point in his life.

"Nobody asked you what you think, now get back to making big sis's playlist." Said Sho. He knew that he was being a bossy jerk but sometimes you had to be a bossy jerk to make stuff happen. He wasn't going to be like dad and hit people, these were his friends and even if they weren't he wouldn't have anyway, but he was going to whip everyone into shape…not with whips but….well people had to listen! Especially Hatori! Big sis liked him….well she said that she wasn't sure if she liked him….but she had liked him so she still did and…and Hatori needed to work harder at making big sis happy! Even if he did like boys, according to everyone, that didn't matter. He had to make big sis happy. Big sis deserved to be happy.

"Alright…alright…but maybe you're the guy for this job. I mean you know her better than I do." Said Hatori. So far this was anime openings, let it go remixes, and general Disney stuff. Mob…well not liking the playlist would be the least of her worries. The whole room was done up in pink streamers and there were buckets of pink confetti….and also there was a pink cake in the oven….and maybe he could convince her that they were celebrating Valentine's Day early or something. Something less embarrassing than the 'everyone knows you got your period so here's a party so you feel better' theme they had going on.

"You know her, you took her to the big comics thing and stuff. Come on, she'll really happy if you make her a playlist." Said Sho. That was a thing that you were supposed to do for girls. Well Fukuda had said that before, when he had been a kid, the thing to do was to record songs off the radio into mixtapes for girls but now they had technology so you could just make a playlist without going through the trouble of waiting for stuff to come on the radio. Big sis deserved to be happy and she liked Hatori and he made her happy…even though he was really bad at the boyfriend thing. Maybe because he didn't like girls.'

But that was ok.

Like Fukuda said, it didn't matter what you liked or wanted, it only mattered if you made the girl in your life happy. It was lying, sort of, but the kind that made someone feel better. Like when he and Fukuda played videogames together and Sho told him that he was having fun even though he wasn't because Fukuda really sucked at pretty much all games. Well being someone's boyfriend was a lot more serious than videogames but it was sort of the same thing. He felt bad for lying to Emmy, and also never seeing her, but he was still making her happy by being her boyfriend. Lying to her used to make her feel bad, and it still kind of did, but then he felt better knowing that Hatori was in the same boat that he was. He had to be big sis's boyfriend, if he didn't do it on his own then Sho would make him, and it didn't matter if he liked her back because being with her would make her happy and that was what mattered, making her happy.

Even if you weren't all the way happy.

"Fine, fine, but if she hates this then don't blame me." Said Hatori. Sometimes it was best to just do what the ten year old told you to do. He was the one managing this whole project after all. This was a bad idea, a really bad one, but Hatori…well everyone else was helping so he had to help too…even if he didn't particularly want to.

"I will, don't worry." Said Sho. He patted Hatori on the head and then made his way over to the kitchen. He hoped that the food was going better than the decorations and the playlist. It smelled good in there, that was good. There was a cake on the table and a bowl of pudding, not the chocolate pudding from breakfast but new pink white chocolate pudding, and Sho…well he had to taste he. He was about to stick a finger in the pudding before he stopped himself. Right. That would contaminate the whole thing. This belonged to big sis and she would have been upset if he just went and stuck his fingers in the pudding. He walked around Shibata, he was standing over the stove looking worried and took a spoon from the drawer. He had to use spoons and forks today…and also he would eat stuff that he wouldn't normally eat….because this was big sis's day and it had to be an awesome one.

One as awesome as this pudding.

"You did good, Shibata, now make it again and this time put sprinkles on top." Said Sho as he put his spoon in the sink with his powers. No double dipping. That was gross, big sis had said before, like sticking his head in the bowl and eating like a dog….and maybe when she had said that he shouldn't have eaten from the sundae that they had been sharing like a dog…but he had been little then. He wasn't little, he was ten, and as a ten year old he knew not to double dip into the pudding bowl. Big sis was going to love this….but she also loved sprinkles so she needed a bowl with sprinkles and one without. Sort of like funfetti. Everyone loved funfetti.

"But….can't I just put sprinkles on top of what I made already?" asked Shibata. He was always happy to cook for the kids, they were little people who needed a lot of food to grow up big and strong, but right now he had all the burners going and the oven….and also he was out of milk….and there was no telling what Shimazaki would come home with.

"No. She might not want sprinkles. She likes sprinkles sometimes, when we feel like funfetti, but she might now feel like funfetti now and I can't ask her or she'll know about her surprise party….now get back to work! When I come back I want to see all the food done!" said Sho. They were going to make everything that big sis liked to eat. Giant Disneyland churros, giant mochi's, plain rice, fried rice, milk shakes, ice cream, fairy bread, and probably something healthy, too, since she liked to eat healthy stuff….and also stuff that other people liked, too, because she liked it when other people were happy…

And she had to like this party.

Telling people what to do was hard. Dad liked it. Fukuda said that even when they were kids dad had bossed him around like he was the President of the world or something. Sho…this wasn't easy for him. He wanted to be nice but, also, being nice….sometimes you had to be hard on people. Fukuda said that. He was allowed to boss people around and stuff. He said that he didn't like it but sometimes you had to be hard on people. Sho…well he didn't like being hard on his friends…

But this party had to get done! And soon!

He had no idea where big sis and Minegishi had gone to, or when they would be back, so they had to move fast. Very fast. Big sis….she needed to feel better….and he could make her feel better. She had spent their whole lives, it felt like, being the person who made him feel better. Well he could return the favor. He could be a good little brother….in this way, at least. Good little brothers did not keep secrets from their big sisters. Good little brothers did not see their little sisters in secret when the big sister could never see her…and good little brothers didn't just disappear on their big sisters either…and also good little brothers just….didn't spend years hitting their big sisters because they were nothing but jerks and-

And good little brothers made sure that their big sisters had fun parties.

He made his way back to the living room. Some balloons got in his way but he kicked them. Not hard enough to make them pop, though, because she hated the sound of popping balloons. It scared her and he wasn't going to be scaring his big sister. She had enough scary stuff happening to her right now and she did not need him adding to it. He could pop the balloons later, though, when she wasn't around. Just him, though, not him and Shimazaki since he hated loud sounds like that. Popping balloons reminded him of gunshots, he had, because they were loud and sudden and his hearing was super sensitive. He could hear it if you shook a pudding cup from another room. He was so cool like that. He could even hear ants walking around on leaves and stuff….he was the coolest guy ever….

Even if he had no idea what colors were.

"I said pink and red! This is purple and blue and black! And what the hell is that?!" said Sho. Ok, maybe he had been a little too loud there…but still! Shimazaki has the nerve to teleport right back in front of him with stuff in totally the wrong colors and…and he had gotten skim milk, too. Big sis hated skim milk! She hated it so much she didn't even like to look at it at the store! Was he the only one taking this fucking party seriously?! Was he the only one who cared about big sis?! If she even lived or died!?

"Milk…and what the hell are you on about? You said streamers. I got streamers." Said Shimazaki. Ok. Someone needed a joint or a drink or just….something! His heartbeat was way too high for a kid his age and his aura was shrieking….sort of like Suzuki when he was in one of his micromanaging moods. Heh. This really was his kid...but still! What did this kid want from him?

….well besides the obvious, obviously.

"I said pink and red and….and I know that you can't see colors…but still! You could have…I don't know….asked for help….or something." Said Sho

"Right. Yeah. 'Excuse me, I'm just a poor helpless blind man here to steal from you. Which of these streamers are pink and red?'….yeah. That'd go over real well." Said Shimazaki with a shake of his head. He could hear Hatori laughing from over there on the couch. He….was not going to do something awful to Hatori…even though he sort of wanted to…and he had no idea why. Maybe because he might have seen Toshi naked…but Toshi could be naked with whoever they felt like it….but they hadn't wanted the world to see them naked…even though they had it going on…yeah. That was it. Nothing more.

"…well you could have at least gotten something other than skim milk! My sister hates skim milk! She hates it so much that if she sees it at the store she walks away real fast! She hates it so much and-" shouted Sho

"Skim milk? Why did you get skim milk? What am I supposed to do with skim milk?" asked Shibata as he stuck his head out of the kitchen. He wracked his brain…and found literally no use for skim milk. None. It was the worst of all milks, as Mob had said, and she had been right. He trusted her. Mob knew a thing or two about milk.

"Gross. Skim milk. Mob hates that shit and so do I." said Hatori as he stuck out his tongue. He felt Sho looking at him…and he looked back down at his phone and went back to crafting the perfect Mob-centric playlist. Sho…well he could be a little…intense sometimes. Sort of like President Suzuki. Like…co-op game President Suzuki. All bossy and intense and just…God help you if you fucked up in even the least bit…and he was so glad that he wasn't Shimazaki right now.

"See? Even Hatori hates it! Now come on, I'll go back with you and then we can get big sis the kind of milk she likes. She really likes whole milk but she'll drink two percent if there's no other milk around." Said Sho

"And bring back some heavy cream, too, while you're out! And another sack of sugar! And some saffron if you see it!" said Shibata

"Hey everyone? You know something….maybe I'm not the best man for this job. Just a hunch." Said Shimazaki as he put the jog of, apparently, inferior milk down onto Hatori's head. Hatori picked it up and tossed it to Shibata. He may not have been able to tell Shibata's expression from his face but he could tell from his aura that he was pissed off….and it was his own fault, really, for sending Shimazaki by himself. They were lucky he didn't come back with a jug of orange juice or human blood…or whatever…not that he even knew what had happened to the blood guy….he needed a drink.

"Where are you going?! Big sis needs milk! Now come on! I have no idea when she's coming back and we are nowhere near done! This has to be the best party ever and…and nobody but me is taking this seriously! Don't you guys love my sister!? Don't you want her to be happy?! Don't you care if she lives or dies?!" shouted Sho. He ran out of air by the end of that and started to cough. He put one arm on the couch to steady himself. That had been…well he had been very serious there! Big sis…this had to be the best day ever! Like…like better than any day that anyone had ever had in the history of….of ever!

Ever!

And he was the only one taking this seriously! He…he needed to calm down. His aura was being all bright and…and he just needed to calm down. What was he even ding? Yelling at his friends? No. That was not ok. He was not supposed to yell at his friends…and he was not about to ruin his friendship with everyone….but especially not with Shimazaki. He was…he was doing his best and…and Sho should not have talked to him like that…and now he was probably pissed off and he probably wanted to teleport away never to be seen again and-

And also he wanted to blindfold Sho.

"Kid, lighten up. You are taking this whole thing way too seriously. It's a party, not a life or death thing, so relax and be the streamer mummy. Come on, you know you want to." Said Shimazaki as he wrapped Sho up in, apparently, the wrong color streamer. He hated seeing the kid like this. He wasn't supposed to get this worked up…and especially over something like a party. He knew that he had promised Toshi that he wouldn't get Mob's little brother fucked up but, hey, that ship had sailed earlier that day. The kid was way too worked up and, honestly, he was a little too much like his dad for Shimazaki's comfort. Maybe the whole world would have been better off if the whole of the Suzuki family was just high twenty four seven.

"…fine….but just for a minute….then we have to get back to work!" said Sho. Maybe he did need to calm down, he didn't know, all he knew was that he used to like this game…well when he had been a little kid. Eight. He was ten now, almost eleven, and he was too old for this. Not that getting all wrapped up in streamers wasn't fun but…well he had serious work to do!

Very serious work!

"Aww…and me without a camera." Said Shibata. He smelled something burning…or at least over cooking…but this was just too adorable to turn away from!

"Hang on, I have a camera…well I have all the cameras in the world but my phone's a camera." Said Hatori as he pulled up his camera and took a picture of Sho. He really was an adorable kid, really, when he wasn't freaking out. He'd save this to show Suzuki later. He was Sho's dad after all and he must have wanted to see this…well he must have liked the kid at least a little….because that was why dads did. They liked, loved, their kids. He knew that Suzuki loved Mob, at least, even if he never called her by her name. God. He must have been so freaked out today, his aura had felt freaked out, and he was always so overprotective of Mob and….wait a second.

Nobody had invited Suzuki, had they?

Well he at least deserved an invitation. Mob was his kid, probably his favorite kid, and also…well he wasn't that bad of a guy once you got to know him. The only problem was that nobody ever wanted to get to know him…because he would be a terrifying asshole a lot of the time. But he could be a decent guy too, pretty interesting actually, if not extremely socially stunted…and the only way to be less socially stunted was to be more social…

And Hatori….well he was a good friend.

He sent Suzuki the picture and he asked if he wanted to come…and got an instant answer. Huh. That was weird. Usually he either took forever to reply or did just did his replying in person. He never just replied like it was urgent…and it wasn't…but still. That was nice. Also that was a good sign. If he was on his phone then he wasn't in one of his Suzuki spirals and that was a good thing for everyone….

Even if he didn't want to come.

"Aw, damn it. Suzuki says that he doesn't want to come…and that he hates parties." Said Hatori. He might have said the wrong thing…either that or Sho chose that exact moment to hulk out of those streamers.

"What the fuck?! Why did you invite my dad?! What the fuck is wrong with you!? You're a mother fucking, cock sucking, bitch of a bastard of a-" shouted Sho as he took all the streamers off of himself. He heard something crash and break in the kitchen…and he didn't care!? What was WRONG WITH HATORI!? DID HE HAVE BRAIN WORMS!? Dad was the biggest piece of shit in the whole world! He was an asshole and a jerk and…and he would have ruined everything!

"I think you just killed Shibata." Laughed Shimazaki. This whole thing was just so funny. Shibata freaking out in the kitchen, Sho about to kill Hatori, Hatori thinking that anyone would want to voluntarily spend time with Suzuki besides him….God. Toshi would have loved this if they had been here.

"I'm ok…..I'll live….but we really need more milk now." Said Shibata as he braced himself against the kitchen counter. Sho….he should NOT have been saying things like that! He was just a little boy! He was an adorable little boy who played games and…and was small and…and he should not have been cursing!

"Hatori, go and get milk with Shimazaki. He can't go on his own because he can't tell what the milk is…and then while you're out you can pick yourself up some medicine for the brain worms that you probably have." Said Sho

"What is this brain worms thing you're on?" asked Shimazaki. He felt his head. No brain worms there. Plenty of old head trauma though.

"My girlfriend sent me a picture of some worms that they took out of this guy's brain. Sometimes people get tape worms in their brains. It's cool and kind of scary." Said Sho. He…sort of wished that he hadn't said anything….because now he was thinking about Emmy…which made him think about how dad was proud at him because he had a girlfriend….and now he was thinking about Fukuda and how he said that the best thing to do was to keep being Emmy's boyfriend even though he didn't like her that much…and now….

He didn't have time to think about this! He had a party to put on! Without dad!

"That's disgusting." Said Hatori. He felt his head…even though he knew that he wouldn't be able to feel them and…and he would have known, right, if he'd had brain worms? He just….great. Now he had something else to worry about.

"It is….but you don't have time to worry about that! Now to go the store with Shimazaki! Big sis needs milk to be happy!" said Sho

"Ok, ok, but hang on. Fukuda wants to know if he can come….I guess that they're hanging out right now." Said Hatori. He didn't want Fukuda there. Fukuda….well he knew that Mob would not have wanted him there…but he also knew that Sho liked him and….and he wasn't about to tell Sho to stay away from him…because he didn't want to get into the whys or throw around any wild accusations….

"Hatori…if you bring that man into this house then I have no idea what I'll do to you but I do know that it'll be worse than anything that I have ever done to another human being in my life….or at least this year." Said Shimazaki. He teleported so he got close, very close, very incredibly close. Close enough the he could feel Hatori's breathing….and taste his fear…if he had been a lizard….or something.

"Shimazaki, leave him alone. Fukuda can come….if the kids want him here." Said Shibata as he cleaned up the shards from the pudding bowl. He did not want Fukuda in his house. He did not want Fukuda near the kids. He did not want Fukuda in the same house….the same street…the same city…the same prefecture….the same COUNTRY as him.

"I….he doesn't have to come. I don't want him to come because…well be doesn't like big sis. Big sis…she should only have people here that she likes….and also just….don't ask dad to come either! Big sis loves him but I…he broke my arm today! I don't want him here!" shouted Sho as he kicked the couch. He felt his arm. It was all better. His arm was all better now because Fukuda had fixed it…and Fukuda cared about him and…and not big sis and…and he didn't want either of them there!

"He….seriously. What the….hang on." Said Hatori. He knew that Suzuki was kind of an asshole to Sho and he knew that he hit him sometimes, but to break his arm….what the fuck? That was just….well his dad had hit him when he had been a kid, slapping him on the hand sometimes and stuff, and so had mom but…never enough to hurt him. Suzuki…that was…not good.

"Yeah. He did. He picked me up and threw me down the stairs…and stuff." Said Sho. He pulled his arm up into his sleeve. He hadn't cared, really, at the time. Dad had thrown him down the stairs before and…and that was just…stuff that happened sometimes. It wasn't that bad.

"Well….he says that it wasn't his intention and stuff…and also I told him that you guys didn't want Fukuda there….he's not coming…and I'm sorry about your arm, Sho, I really am." Said Hatori. Well if Suzuki hadn't meant it…and he had said that he lost control sometimes….but still. He could be a nice guy sometimes…and really he should have been nicer to Sho. He was a good kid. He could be very intense and he could be kind of high strung…but he was a good kid. He was a good kid and he didn't deserve to be treated like that.

Poor kid.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, just get the milk already." Said Sho. He didn't care about what happened to him. He didn't care about how dad had been a jerk to him. He didn't care about how dad had thrown him down the stairs and he had broken his arm. He just…he just cared about big sis. He cared about big sis and he cared about making this party good for her…and it would be good for her. Hatori went with Shimazaki to get what they needed, Hatori may have had thick glasses but he could still read what things were, and that was good. Now all Sho had to do was finish the house and then just…wait for big sis to come home.

He hadn't had to wait long.

He felt her aura getting closer and closer after Hatori and Shimazaki came back….and he had no idea what Shimazaki had done to him but he had gone right to the bathroom to hide…but really he needed to stop freaking out so much. Honesty. He had to take care of big sis when they got married. That was the guy's job. The guy kept the girl and the kids safe. Hatori…he needed to take care of big sis and he needed to make big sis happy…even if he didn't like her. Not like she liked him…but that didn't matter. Just making her happy, that was what mattered, and Hatori had better have been able to make her happy….

Later, though, when big sis grew up. Right now it was party time.

Sho decided, early on, that this was going to be a surprise party. That was why he made everyone hide and also why he had Shimazaki drag Hatori out of the bathroom. That was too much hiding, him being in the bathroom, and big sis liked him. She would have wanted him to be right there when she opened the door and then they all yelled 'surprise'. Just that, though, not 'happy birthday' because it wasn't anywhere near her birthday.

But not 'happy period' because Shimazaki had said it would be a bad idea and Sho trusted him the most out of everyone else.

"Surprise!" shouted Sho…and maybe he had been early….no. Everyone else had been late. They should have rehearsed this. They should have rehearsed this for hours and hours because he was early…on time…and everyone else was late…and Hatori was so late that he didn't come out of hiding…and Sho had no idea how he ever expected big sis to be his girlfriend when he had that attitude. Big sis deserved the best surprise in the world. The kind that would make her go 'wow!' and 'great!' and 'now that you threw me this party I'll never be upset again in my life' and stuff.

Not….whatever she was now.

"What's….happening….?" asked Mob as she blinked. She…well she had been planning on going home and taking a nap since she was tired….but then she had come here to nap because her house smelled like paint and was full of people fixing it up after….what had happened….and maybe she had gone to sleep and now the paint smell was making her crazy because it looked like…like everyone had thrown her a party….

A pink party.

Everything, well most everything, was pink and red…and the house smelled good…and normally this would have been great but….but Minegishi had promised that nobody would even hear her come in! They had promised that…that everyone would probably have either been out or busy. Shibata had to keep dad safe and Hatori had to keep dad company and Shimazaki usually spent the day playing with Sho and…and nobody was supposed to notice her! Now everyone was noticing her and looking at her and…and there was this party….and she had no idea why they were even throwing her one…and she knew that she was being ungrateful but….

But she wanted everyone to leave her the h-word alone right now.

"Stupidity. Stupidity is happening right now, Mob." Said Minegishi as they took in all of….this. This was just…they did not have words for the stupidity that they were looking at. This looked like a red and pink themed party. Like a blood themed party. Like a period party….and Minegishi….they felt the plant life around them. They wanted to start knocking some sense into people. There were four people in that room, three of them adults, and nobody had stopped for five seconds and thought to themselves that maybe throwing a period party might have been a BAD IDEA?!

Or hell, maybe they had just decided to celebrate Valentine's Day a little early.

Well whatever they were celebrating they would have to do it without them and Mob. They had been running around all day to drug stores and clothes stores and book stores and they needed rest. They needed their sleep and Mob needed their sleep…and also they did not need everyone staring at them. They pulled their messenger bag close. The only one who had seen anything, really, was Mob's monster of a little brother…and he had been panicked out of his mind and….

And Minegishi did not hurt children.

Not in the serious way they hurt people. That kid…that kid had a lot of problems and…and he could get a pass, one pass, because he had honestly thought that Mob had been dying. This wasn't his fault. He hadn't asked for someone as useless as Suzuki Touichirou for a father, that was just the hand that he had been dealt, and if he'd had a father who took the time to teach him and his sister anything well then…none of that would have happened. Minegishi would have been waking up around this time…and they would have had the privacy that a bedroom door could provide….but there was no point in thinking about what could have been.

They had to focus on the shit show that they had just walked in on.

"Hey! We worked hard on this party for big sis!" said Sho. They were always such a jerk. Well if they thought that this party was stupid then they could just sit alone in their room while everyone else had fun!

"Hey, don't yell at Toshi. They're tired." Said Shimazaki as he listened to Toshi's aura and sensed how they were standing. They were hiding behind their bag and they had one arm over Mob. They were feeling vulnerable and they hated feeling vulnerable….and that was ok. He could make them feel better. As much as he loved a good party he loved Toshi more and if Toshi needed him then he would be there for them.

"I am beyond tired, Ryou." Said Minegishi. They needed to collapse into bed…and that had been the plan…but now they had to put out a gigantic pink and red fire.

"Should I put some coffee on for them you think?" whispered Shibata to Hatori. He just shrugged. Shibata…he felt the same way. Mob…did not look thrilled…and he had no idea why. Well because she was going through her…special times….and also she'd had a big morning and also…and also she liked parties but maybe this wasn't the best time…now that he thought about it…because it had been a big morning for her. Maybe Hatori had been right….and maybe he had gotten too swept up in the fun of planning a party.

"I-I'm tired too….and….and I don't really….I mean….my house smells like paint but it's not that bad so I'll just…be going….now." said Mob. She didn't want to be…well she loved her friends and she loved parties…but also all of her friends knew what was happening to her right now…and also all of her friends were boys…and boys COULD NOT KNOW about this!

"I knew from the start that this was a bad idea…" said Hatori. Mob looked like she wanted to run away….and he didn't blame her. Maybe he should have made everyone listen…because nobody ever listened to him….and if nobody ever listened then maybe he should have just talked louder. Mob…she was not ok…and he kind of wanted to run over and give her a hug because he was sure that she needed it….but he stayed behind the couch. Mob didn't look like she wanted anyone but Minegishi near her…and he didn't blame her one bit.

"Then maybe you should have done something about this….I can't even right now. I'm tired, Mob's tired, and we're going to go to her house and huff the paint fumes until we pass out." Said Minegishi as they pulled Mob close. Everyone they knew was an idiot and they were not in the mood for putting out any idiot fires. Let the idiots burn in the first they started.

"Oh…well if you want to come upstairs you can stay in my room…since I know that you're not really into huffing paint." Said Shimazaki. He hadn't been thinking. Toshi was tired. Toshi was super tired and…and they needed more sleep. Well they could nap in his room, and Mob too, and then they could both pass out in his room. They could always party later. Party time could come at any time, that was the beauty of party time.

"Thanks but no thanks. Come on, Mob, we're both way too tired for….this." said Minegishi

"What…wait! Big sis….threw a party for you and…and I thought that you…would want this. I worked hard…." Said Sho as big sis turned around. Her aura had been all close and she had been all wide eyed and….and freaked out…and he didn't get why. What was so bad about a party? She loved parties but also….also she was going through a lot if the internet was to be believed. So maybe….maybe he had been too…too quick to throw her a party to make her feel better….

And to make himself feel better too.

He had been the one who had told everyone about her private…stuff. He had also been the one to wake her up super early that morning…..and also he had only woken her up that morning, that early in the morning, because he had been sneaking around seeing baby sis behind big sis's back….and he had felt bad and….and maybe he was the one who had needed the party….and not her.

"Um….ok…I can stay if you want me to…and stuff…but why did you even throw this party? It's not my birthday or girl's day or…or Valentine's Day. Just….I don't know what's happening right now." Said Mob. She knew that Sho had worked hard, all of them had, and she just…could not be selfish. She just….she wanted to be alone. She wanted to be alone and she wanted to just….deal with this on her own…and also to nap…because she was tired.

She was so tired.

"We missed International Friendship Day. That's what this is about. Isn't it everyone?" asked Minegishi in a tone that they knew Mob could not read but they also knew that everyone else could read loud and clear. Mob…well they had barely gotten her to show her face in public because she thought that everyone knew what was happening to her…and now she was in a room full of people who knew what was happening to her….and this was going to be quite the setback now wasn't it?

"It sure as hell is." Said Shimazaki. He elbowed Sho in the side. He was the only one in the room not agreeing…and this hadn't been a party specifically for her ketchup times….but it had been her ketchup times that had gotten her all upset in the first place…but maybe they should have gone with a Halloween theme or something.

"Um….ok…that's…good….I think….I mean it was on July 30th….so…this is ok…" said Mob. She wanted to melt into the floor. She wanted to run home and sufforcate on the paint fumes. She wanted….well she wanted to pull her head into her sweater and then just…never come out again…but she wasn't going to. She was….going to stay and…and stuff….because everyone had worked so hard….

"Hey big sis? Um….we can have the party tomorrow. Do you want to go and take a nap? I mean…you look tired." Said Sho. She needed sleep and he…well he loved her. He loved her and, yeah, he had been working all day on this but she had been working all day on….stuff that was happening to her. She looked tired and she felt tired and….and he was partially why she was so tired…

He could be sort of a jerk sometimes.

"That….would be great." Said Mob. She took a step towards Sho…and she felt bad to waste a party…but also she was just…so tired. She was tired and achy and…and she just…she wanted to be alone but also…also she wanted to be with her little brother…even if he did know….but she knew a lot of stuff about him and…and they loved each other. When you loved someone then you never made fun of them or made them feel bad…and stuff.

"Awesome. Everyone, leave the decorations and the food. We'll have the friendship party later!" said Sho. He gave everyone a look. Not one of dad's looks but…close. Maybe too close. He just…he knew that they had worked hard for this party, for him, but it was supposed to be for her…and if it was supposed to be for her then they could have the party whenever she was ready. That time would come later, not now, and that was ok. Right now…she was tired and stuff…and so was he...but this was about her.

There was no better way to cheer someone up than with a party…but it was impossible to get cheered up when you were super tired…and this was about big sis, her feelings, and not his.


	383. Instant Porridge

Suzuki Touichirou did not cook.

So that meant that breakfast would have to come from somewhere else. He wasn't going to wake Daughter up, no, she needed her sleep. She was suffering in ways which were unimaginable to him. She needed all the sleep that she could get so that she could get through this. She was so small…and she shouldn't have had to suffer so terribly…but she was suffering and there was nothing at all that he could do.

Well besides finding his own breakfast.

The kitchen should have been full of the smell of cooking, of Daughter's cooking, but it wasn't. It was, instead, full of the smell of instant porridge. God, he felt like he was in university again. He knew how to cook some things, mostly instant porridge and cup noodle, and that was what he was going to have to live on for the week. If he ate breakfast at the HQ then either Fukuda or Hatori would want to eat with him…and he didn't feel like eating with anyone….and he wasn't even sure if he was going to go to work today. He didn't much want to leave his Daughter all alone. She was suffering and she needed him…and he had to be there for her….someone had to be there for her. Someone who could take care of her and make her happy and just….be there to help her through this time in her life…

It should have been Masami.

He takes a deep breath. No. He is not going to get upset at…this. This situation that Daughter was in. This situation that he was on. Masami was her mother and she should have been the one to sit at her side and…and take care of her…but she was gone. He had no idea where she had gone to, he had no idea why she had gone away in the first place, but he knew that she wasn't coming back. He was the one who had to take care of Daughter. He was her father…and he had to try and be her mother at the same time…because she had no mother. She was mother to Son but she still needed someone to be mother to her…because she was so young….

She was capable but she was young.

A bit like he had been at her age. When he had been eleven he had known that he was more than old enough to make his own choices and live his own life. He had his middle and high schools all picked out, he had adjusted his bedtime to what would work best for him, and also he had given up on making friends with the other children. Mother had always worried about him. She had always sent him off places to make friends but he hadn't wanted them. What did he need people around him for? People to tell him that he was weird or creepy or that he looked bored all the time. Mother….well mother's generally knew best but he had always been an unusually capable child. So was Daughter. She could take care of her household and raise her brother but….

Well she needed someone to take care of her, too.

And that someone should have been Masami but Masami was gone. She was long gone. She was just…he had no idea where she was but…but he had this sort of…unhappiness with her. He had thought that Daughter was dying, Son had thought that Daughter was dying, and Daughter herself has assumed that he was dying. Masami could have so easily cleared the whole thing up. She was a woman, she knew about these woman things, and really if she had been planning on leaving then she should have told him or Daughter or…left a note…or something…because there were somethings that as a man he just could not handle…and had no idea that he even had to handle…because there were so many things that he just didn't know….

But he knew how to make instant porridge so he stuck to that.

He made three bowls of it. Son needed food to live so he had might as well be the one to feed him so he didn't go off and bother his sister. Daughter liked to make him actual food at least twice a week. Normally he just lived on toaster parties and soda….and he didn't that toaster pastries and soda were the best diet for a growing human being but what did he know? Daughter knew more about these things than he did…and he was looking forward to her getting better. He hadn't even seen Son yet and he was already exhausted.

Making breakfast could be so tiresome…and he had only made instant porridge.

Well instant porridge with ketchup for him, mother had never let him do this and neither had Masami but he was a grown man and he could eat whatever he wanted, and instant porridge with plenty of butter and brown sugar for Daughter since she liked sweet things, and just plain for Son because he could serve himself. He was capable of putting whatever he wanted in his porridge. Suzuki had no idea what he would have wanted and he wasn't about to ask.

He didn't much feel like talking to Son.

If he spoke to Son then he would get upset with him. He had already been upset with him, before, upset enough to accidentally break his arm….well he had deserved it…but apparently he had taken it very personally. Daughter would be upset with him if he accidentally hurt Son so, really, the best thing to do was not to say a word to him. So he didn't. He didn't greet Son when he entered the kitchen. Instead he stayed focused on his own breakfast. He hadn't had instant porridge in a while…tasted like university….only with ketchup. Even Fukuda had told him that it was disgusting how he put ketchup on everything….even though it went with everything. That was the beauty of ketchup. You could put it on literally everything and that made it better.

Well any food, anyway, he doubted that it would be any easier to be around Son even if he did cover the Boy from head to toe in ketchup.

"What's this?" asked Sho as he sat down at his spot at the table. Dad hadn't said good morning to him but he didn't care. It was never a good morning when dad was around. It was going to be a better morning when he left. After dad was gone Sho was going to do the laundry and then whatever else big sis had to do today. Yeah. This was going to be a day of rest and relaxation for her. All she would have to do was watch TV and lay down and…and stuff. Big sis stuff. Fun big sis stuff.

Fun big sis stuff that would happen without dad around….because he sucked!

"Breakfast. Eat it or starve, I don't care." Said Suzuki as he mixed Daughter's porridge up with his powers. How could he have forgotten to mix it? God…he was such an idiot. He was the biggest idiot. He couldn't remember that he had to mix up her porridge and he couldn't remember that she would menstruate and he just couldn't….he couldn't believe how stupid he had been lately. The stupidest man who had ever lived.

"Plain porridge?" asked Sho as he dipped his spoon into the bowl. He stuck out his tongue. Yuck. If big sis had made this then he would have eaten it without complaining, now was not the time to be complain to her about stuff, but dad had made this. Dad sucked at cooking, he really did, at least Sho thought that he did. He could only remember dad cooking once when he had been really little, like kindergarten little, and he remembered that his cooking had sucked and….

And then he couldn't remember anything else.

"Add to it what you like. I don't care." Said Suzuki. He checked the time on his phone. Daughter should have been up by now….but she needed her rest. She was losing a lot of blood and she was in a lot of pain, too, most likely. Minegishi had been very clear, and very detailed, about what happened during this…time. He was grateful to them for telling him about this and for helping Daughter…and he wondered if she, they always they, had taught Daughter what to do about the enormous amount of pain and suffering she was going through….probably. They were a very intelligent woman…person of indeterminate gender. He'd have to get used to that. He hadn't ever thought about them enough to have to get used to that but he would.

It was the least that he could do after they had done so much for Daughter.

"Of course you don't, you never gave a damn about me not once." Said Sho as he pushed his bowl of porridge away from himself. He didn't want it. He would rather have gone into the fridge and eaten all the vegetables in the vegetable drawer…without any ranch. Just….the way that they came out of the ground…but not even with dirt to make them taste any better.

"That's not true…and don't speak to me like that. You're lucky that your sister is…indisposed otherwise I would have dealt with you for that." Said Suzuki. He would never have spoken to his father like that….and his father hadn't ever had to punish him, not like he had to punish him. He had never given father any reason to punish him, or mother for that matter, he had known what to do without having had to have ever…well not ever….but he had never had to have been explicitly told not to speak to his parents like that…or anyone for that matter.

"What? You're not going to break my fucking arm again just because big sis has her period?" Said Sho. Dad actually cringed when he said that. The whole table shook and he cringed…and Sho didn't get why. That was just a normal thing that happened to girls. Sure it was gross but so was a lot of stuff.

"Don't say that word…or that other word either, it's impolite and you'll embarrass your sister…and be quiet about your arm. It hadn't been my intention to break your arm and, anyway, it's better now. Fukuda fixed it so you have no reason at all to complain." Said Suzuki. When was Son going to come off of this broken arm thing? If he hadn't been so…himself….in the first place then Suzuki wouldn't have had to have thrown him down the stairs like that. He was fine now, anyway, and honestly it just seemed like he was looking for things to complain about. Arms broke, it happened, but he was better now so he had no reason to carry on about something that had been resolved already.

"So you thought that I would just be ok after you threw me down the fucking stairs?" asked Sho. He knew that he wasn't supposed to be cursing. He knew that dad hated it when he cursed. He knew that dad was going to be pissed off. He knew that he was the reason that dad's aura was flaring like that. He knew that he was the reason that the kitchen table was rattling. He didn't care. He just wanted dad to get it over with. Whatever terrible thing he was planning on doing to him.

"Son. Enough. Stop cursing. You're my Son. You're better than that." Said Suzuki. How this person could have been half of him and half of Masami he would never know…not that he was questioning whether or not this was his Son. That was his Son and…he looked like him…and he knew that Masami would have never been unfaithful towards him. Son was, somehow, his child even though he had never cursed this badly at any point in his life. Even when he had been about his age…well older. He had cursed a bit when he had gotten to middle school but he had just picked that up from Fukuda. Maybe Son had been spending too much time around Fukuda…but that was good. The more time he spent around Fukuda the less time he would spend around Daughter.

"Yeah….whatever. I'm having leftover cake for breakfast." Said Sho as he got up from the table and got out the left over cake from the fridge. He held eye contact with dad as he went to the fridge. Dad watched him like he was bored. His eyes looked bored but his aura looked pissed off…but what else was new?

"Do whatever you want just so long as you don't bother your sister." Said Suzuki. He forced his aura to stay calm. Son could eat as many cakes as he wanted, Suzuki didn't care, and he just….he didn't care what he did so long as he came off of it. Just so long as he didn't bother Daughter. He could sense her aura, he could feel her stirring, and he just…she needed her sleep. He wanted nothing more than to be near her but also…also he knew that she needed her sleep more than anything else right now.

Sleep that Son seemed bent on denying her.

"I'm not going to bother her! I'm going to take care of her….which is more than you've ever done for me!" said Sho. He slammed the cake down on the table. Crumbs got everywhere, and the plate probably cracked, but he didn't care. Dad…dad could go and suck a bag of dicks. Sho was going to take care of big sis, the best care that he could give her, and dad could go off and try and rule the world…or whatever.

"I've been taking care of you for your entire life. I've been keeping a roof over your head and clothes on your back and food in your stomach. I do what I have to do for you." Said Suzuki. He kept his aura calm. He forced his aura to stay calm because otherwise he would have done something terrible to Son. He would have lost control and hurt him…and Daughter would have been bothered by that. Daughter always hated it when he punished Son and Son….well he had been going on and on and on about that broken arm. Son didn't need something else to go on and on and on about.

And he didn't need anything else to curse about.

"Bullshit!" said Sho. He slammed his hands down on the table and stood up as tall as he could…and dad didn't do anything. He still looked just as bored as he always did. That was just how dad was. He was an asshole and….and Sho had known that….but now he was a liar too! Dad never did a damn thing for him! Dad….he fed him and kept him clothed and let him live in the house…..and that was what he was supposed to do! Dads were parents and parents were supposed to take care of you!

"I told you to stop that." Said Suzuki calmly. The cursing…the constant cursing…he had no idea how Daughter put up with it…but he would have to figure out what her secret was because he could not lose control right now. She would never have forgiven him not only for deliberately disobeying him but also for stressing her out at this very delicate time.

"Why? It is bullshit! You never took care of me. You never tucked me in at night or…or played with me or…or read to me and…and you hate me! I know that you hate me and-" said Sho. He was not going to cry….and also he was going to stop looking over at the knives on the counter. He looked over at them when he had breakfast with dad…and lunch…and dinner. It would have been easy to do it. Sometimes you stabbed people. Sometimes people stabbed people…sometimes sons stabbed their dads…and that was ok. Shimazaki had stabbed his dad in the stomach and twisted the knife, too, but his dad had been a normal person. Dad was…well he was the most powerful esper ever so…so that was the only reason he hadn't stabbed his dad yet. If he stabbed dad then dad would literally kill him.

"I've told you a thousand times not to curse and I've told you a thousand times that I do not hate you. If I hated you then I would have abandoned you the day you had been born or some time afterwards. I can't hate you. You're my Son. I don't hate you but I don't like you very much either. You're loud, you're tiresome, and you just won't stop cursing. Not liking someone isn't the same as hating them…and you telling me that I don't take care of you is the sort of thing that makes me dislike you. I am your father, not your mother, and I take care of you in the way that a father is supposed to care for his Son." Said Suzuki. What more did that child want from him? He cared for him in the way that a father was required to. Anything else would have been extra. His own father hadn't been as affectionate as his mother…but they had spent time together….well they'd had things in common…and also father wanted nothing to do with him when he made himself into a disappointment. Son…well he was more of a disappointment than Suzuki had ever been at any point in his life.

"….you don't even know my name and you expect me to think that you care about me…" said Sho. He wiped his eyes. Dad….dad had said a lot of stuff to him over the almost eleven years of his life and…and he had said some terrible stuff but…but that was…how did you not hate someone but also not like them either? Dad had…well he had never come out and said something like 'I love you' or even 'I care for you' but…he had never gone and said something as mean as 'I don't like you' and…and Sho had known for so long that dad hadn't liked him but…but he just….had never come out and said it before.

"I do. It's Sho. I'm the one who named you. Sho with the character for leader." Said Suzuki. The things that child came up with. Of course he knew how own Son's name. Of course he knew it, he had chosen it, and Son should have been grateful. If it had been up to Masami he would have been called Yuzu. Sho was a much better name than that…and the character for leader fit the person that he would have to become. Though he had no idea how his Son was supposed to become a leader when he carried on like this.

"Well if you named me then why don't you ever use my name!?" said Sho. Now he lost his temper and…and now he was crying. He felt tears, a few, come from his eyes and hit him on his shirt. He could feel the wetness seeping in through his shirt and onto his chest…

"Keep your tears in your eyes where they belong." Said Suzuki. He had no idea what Son was crying about but, really, he didn't care. If something was truly wrong then Son should have said something and told him what he needed to fix it. Son was always so tiresome.

"I'm not crying! And…and why wouldn't I cry if….if my own dad doesn't even know my name!? Just…why don't you ever call me by my name? I have name." said Sho. Dad knew…dad was such a jerk and…and how could he not know that he was the biggest jerk in the whole world!?

"Your name is Sho, I know that you're Sho, I chose your name. I just never call you by your name because you're my son. Now stop shouting. Your sister is awake now and she doesn't need any stress." Said Suzuki. He had no idea what Son was so upset about. He was his Son and that was why he was called Son. He was so tiresome and so difficult to understand….and this was why he liked Daughter the best. She was always so easy to understand. She easy to understand and just…he loved her so much. She was awake now and Son…he had woken his sister up…but he wouldn't do anything about that. Daughter would not have liked that.

"You're the one who's going to stress her out." Said Sho. He knew that big sis was awake. He heard the door to their room open and he could hear her walking down the hallway and he could feel her aura….and he was not going to stress her out. He had to stay calm. Dad was the one who was going to stress her out. He was the stressful one. Sho….Sho knew that he was a good big brother. He was a good big brother and….and he was going to help big sis no matter how upset dad had made him.

"Don't ever-"said Suzuki. He would never have done anything, purposely, to upset Daughter. He loved her. He loved her and he would have done anything to for her…and he would not sit there and let Son talk to him like he…like he didn't even care about her….he cared about her. He cared more about her than he cared about any other human being in the world who he had ever come into contact with.

And that was why he had to stay calm.

He stayed sitting in his seat and he did not allow his aura so much as the ability to flare. He could feel Daughter. He could feel her getting closer and he had to stay calm. She did not need any stress right now. She was going through so much and he understood it. He understood, well as best as he could, that she was suffering in ways that were unimaginable to him…

And he had to do his best for her.

"What's going on in here? What's everyone fighting about?" asked Mob as she made her way into the kitchen. She couldn't believe that she had overslept so badly. She should have had breakfast on the table…the blue table….the blue of the house was still a lot to take in…but that wasn't what she was staring at. Sure the kitchen was blue and the rest of the house was blue….but that wasn't what was interesting.

There was breakfast on the table already.

There was breakfast on the table and Sho….well she could see his aura and he looked like he was close to hurting dad…and dad was doing that thing where he forced himself to stay calm. Maybe…well what would have made the most sense was that dad had made breakfast and now Sho wasn't eating it…he had half a cake in front of him after all…but she knew that dad both didn't cook and also didn't care if Sho starved to death or not…so really she didn't much get it at all….

But she knew that they were fighting again.

She knew that they were fighting again and she knew that she would have to break it up and make them feel better…or at least less likely to fight…and she knew that at least she had come at the right time. Dad hadn't hurt Sho yet, that was good, and now she was there to make sure that there wasn't any kind of a 'yet'…even though she didn't want to. Her stomach hurt, she felt gross, and she mostly just wanted to eat breakfast and then take a bath so she could feel less gross. Also she was wearing leggings under her nightshirt and she hated leggings…and she hated it when her dad and brother fought too….

Why did they have to fight all the time?

"Nobody's fighting!" said Sho. He knew how big sis felt about fighting and…and that hadn't even been a fight in the first place. That had just been dad sitting there and acting like the biggest jerk in the world….but Sho wasn't going to say anything about that. He wasn't going to tell big sis because then that would have stressed her out…and he didn't even feel that bad anyway. He didn't feel that bad and even if he had his feelings didn't matter. She was the one who's feelings mattered. She was the one going through all of this and…and it was his job to make her happy.

"Your brother is being tiresome and quarrelsome as usual…now sit down. You shouldn't stand for long periods of time." Said Suzuki. Daughter seemed normal, she looked the same as she always did, but he knew better. She was suffering. She was suffering in ways that he could not even begin to comprehend. She looked normal, now, in that moment….but he remembered how she had looked before. How she'd been covered from head to toe in blood…and she had been so scared…and how he had been so certain that he was going to lose her…

But he knew better, she wasn't dying, but she wasn't alright either.

"Yeah, go sit on the couch and watch TV. I'll bring you breakfast. We have leftover cake and also dad made porridge." Said Sho. Big sis needed to lay down. She needed to lay down in the living room and she needed to get as far away from the kitchen as possible. She didn't need to know what he and dad had been talking about, how dad was being a jerk again, she just needed to focus on resting and getting through this.

"I can eat at the table." Said Mob. She took a step towards the table but stopped. She felt dad's powers keeping her back…and she didn't get what he and Sho were going on about. They ate at the table and, ok, she didn't like porridge that much and she didn't think that Sho should have been having half a cake for breakfast either, but she did think that she could sit at the table and eat with her family. She was just having her period, she wasn't dying, and even when she had thought that she had been dying she had still sat and at her meals at the table.

"No, that's too much strain for you right now." Said Suzuki as he held Daughter back. She needed to lay down with a hot water bottle pressed up against her stomach. That was all he knew about dealing with this. That was what Masami had done, she had spent the entirety of that time laying down watching television with a hot water bottle pressed up to her stomach, and now Daughter would do the same. She would do the same and he would…he would be there for her…

He never should have left Masami alone.

She had been suffering and he had just left her alone. Well if he had known that she had been suffering then he would have stayed by her side for the entirety of that time. He would have stayed right by her side in case she needed anything and also he wouldn't have left her alone with Son, either, because he was tiresome even now at the age of then. Back when he had been a baby, and a toddler, and a small child….he didn't even want to think about those times. So he wasn't. Those times…the past was in the past just like the ice queen said….he and Daughter would have to watch that together again it was her favorite….the past was in the past and now all he could do was focus on the present.

Masami was in the past, Daughter was in the present, and now all he had to do was focus on her.

"Yeah, go sit on the couch and I'll feed you." Said Sho. He picked up her porridge bowl and…and hers had stuff in it. Brown sugar and…and he smelled butter, too. Dad…dad had remembered what she like but he couldn't be bothered to give Sho anything other than plain porridge? Sho liked brown sugar and butter too….an also sprinkles and crushed up poptarts…and dad….well it didn't matter if dad knew or not or if he cared or not…or that he had told Sho to his face that he didn't like him…

Big sis was hungry and she needed to be fed and that was what mattered.

"But I can feed myself just fi-" said Mob. Just because she was having her period didn't mean that she needed to be fed like a baby. Sho was taking her bowl and…oh, brown sugar, dad remembered….and even if that did look god she still didn't want to be fed. She wasn't a baby and she wasn't dying. She could sit at a table and pick up a spoon. Even Mukai was probably old enough to feed herself…maybe….Mob didn't know….

Well now she knew that she was sad.

Sometimes she just got really….sad. Minegishi said that this was normal and that if anyone said anything about her being sad and also crying sometimes she was supposed to tell them that they would cry too if it was happening to them…not that Mob wanted to say anything like that…and not that she was going to cry. She was just sad. Mukai was gone and…and she was one now…and in ten years she would be eleven and this would happen to her….and maybe there was nobody to tell her what was happening. Maybe she would wake up one day covered in blood…and then she would think that she was dying….and then Mob wouldn't be there to…to teach her what to do…

But Mukai had a mom now.

Unlike Mob Mukai had a mom and she would be fine…hopefully. Mob didn't know. She didn't know anything about that, about what had happened to Mukai, and she hoped that she was ok…and she wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to cry and…and she wasn't going to be sad. Mukai had a mom and a dad and maybe new brothers and sisters too and her whole family loved her and…and she was going to be ok. She had people who loved her…and knew how to take care of her…and she was fine…

And so was Mob. She had a dad and a brother who loved her….and who were going to do their best to take care of her.

"I'll feed her. You just go and do…whatever it is you do during the day." Said Suzuki. He could see the subtle changes in Daughter's aura. She was bothered, she was unhappy, and also she must have been very hungry. He would sit her down on the couch and he would spoon feed her and he would sit through as many showings of the ice queen as she wanted and he would keep her brother away from her so she wasn't stressed at all and he would take care of her in whatever other ways she needed. She was his Daughter and he would be there for her…because he knew that he had to be. Now he knew what she was going through and he knew that he had to be there for her.

"Fu-fine. I'll just go do the laundry and then I'll…do other big sis chores." Said Sho. He wasn't going to sit there and argue with dad. Dad wasn't worth it…well he sort of was…but also big sis mattered more. She mattered the most and he needed to make this easier for her. So what if she wanted dad to feed her….or whatever. Or maybe she didn't. Maybe she didn't even want porridge. Maybe she wanted…ice cream…or churros…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that if he told dad to fuck off like he had wanted to he would have just made dad mad and that would have made big sis stressed and he didn't want to stress her out. He loved her and he knew that she was going through a lot.

"Good. Daughter just….wait. Let me carry you." Said Suzuki. He got up and tried to pick her up by hand….which he knew, within two seconds, to have been a bad idea. She was not small. He knew that she was not small. She was eleven and…and also other reasons…and she was not small enough to pick up with his own two hands. He had to hold her with his powers. He had to hold her and pick her up with his powers…and he felt sort of like…like maybe he had lost something in that moment.

Something that he hadn't even known that he'd had.

He hadn't picked her up in years, and he had known for some time now that she was too big for him to lift, but now…now he wanted to pick her up. He wanted to pick her up and hold her and…and he couldn't she was too big. She was too old. She looked the same as she always had, in fact she had changed so gradually over the years that he had hardly noticed, but now he knew that she was older. She was eleven but she was not small, not the child she had been, but he…he loved her so much…and he wanted nothing more than to pick her up through his own strength….

But he had to use his powers.

"But dad…I can walk just fine." Said Mob. She didn't need dad to lift her. He had tried to lift her like he had when she had been little but he hadn't even gotten her off the ground even a centimeter when she heard his back crack. His aura flared and his caterpillars came together and….and she could walk on her own! She could walk just fine. She was bleeding, that was all, and Minegishi had said that this was a normal thing that happened to most every girl and that she was just the same person…the same person she had always been….

And that person could walk on her own just fine!

"No you can't, don't argue with me. You need to be carried and that's what I'll do. Then I'll feed you and I'll spend the whole day with you. How does that sound?" asked Suzuki. Please say it sounds good. Please tell me that you want me to be there, with you, by your side. He needed to be with her. He should have…he should have been there with Masami when she had been going through this…because she had needed him. She had been suffering and she had needed him and…and he may not have been able to do anything about it but…but if she had told him to do something to help then he would have…even if he hated being given orders….

But not…not really….not if he was getting orders from someone who knew better than him…or someone who he loved.

"But….don't you have work today?" asked Mob as she was carried to the couch. She had been dad, briefly, last year. She knew how much he had to do…and also it wasn't Sunday. She knew that…that he loved her…and he liked to smother her…but they had agreed on Sundays. They had agreed on Sundays and…and ok she had broken the Sundays rule…but she didn't need to have him here with her all day…and she didn't need to be carried, either, because she was fine. She wasn't dying…and even when she had thought she was dying she had still been able to get up off the couch and feed herself…and stuff.

"I do but you're more important. I'll stay by your side for as long as you need me and then for even longer. I love you and I will never leave your side. Ever. For any reason." said Suzuki. He would have stayed with her until the day he died if she had asked that of her. He should have been nearer to Masami…not just now but…in general…because she had asked him to stay…explicitly. He remembered that…that he had left her after she'd had Son….and she'd asked him to stay but…but he couldn't….and he had no idea why she had wanted him to stay but….but maybe it was not for him to understand.

"Um…sure dad….that sounds great." Said Mob as dad put her down on the couch. She could tell by his aura, and also by his caterpillars, that he was bothered by something and…and she just…she just…she had to make him happy. She had no idea what was bothering him, what was making him like this, but she knew that it had to do with her so, ok, she would make him happy…if she had to. She would spend the day sitting on the couch letting him feed her if she had to. She loved him after all and if you loved someone then you made them happy.

"That sounds better than great." Said Suzuki. This was going to be a good day, he could tell. Sure he had work to do…a lot of work….but he could get caught up later. Daughter mattered just as much as work did. He was working hard to take over the world to make it better for her…but if he didn't have her anymore then there would be no point in taking over the world. He knew that he had to be there for her, that he had to care for her, and that he could lose her…and he would do anything to keep from losing her…

Even cooking her breakfast.


	384. Don't Make Me Kick You Out

Mob wasn't going to kick her dad out.

That would have been mean and she was not a mean person. She was a nice person, well she tried to be a nice person, and as a nice person she was not going to sit up and tell her own dad, who she loved very much, to go to work already. She was not going to tell him that he needed to get back to running Claw before the Awakened noticed that he was gone and they started chair jousting and stuff again. She was not going to tell dad that she was fine, totally fine, and that he didn't need to be there on the couch with her. She was not going to tell him that he needed to go so Sho could come home already, he hadn't been able to take being around dad all day, and she was not going to tell him that maybe if he didn't have to be mean all the time then Sho wouldn't have left in the first place.

No, she was not going to say any of that.

She was just going to sit there with dad until he got bored or annoyed or felt like getting up. It wouldn't be much longer, she figured, because they had been watching makeup tutorials all day. She knew that dad had no interest in this, he was a boy after all, and she knew that he hated being bored. When he got bored he just went and did more work. That was normal for him. Even when they were together on Sundays she made sure not to be too boring because then he would want to work and stuff. She normally wouldn't have wanted him to go but now…..well now he was being kind of smothery again….

And she loved her dad, she really did, but she did not want him to smother her.

"I'm going to put on another one, ok dad?" asked Mob. She picked up the remote and went down to another Elsa makeup tutorial. Elsa had such a good look. Mob wished that she could have done her makeup like Elsa's but Minori said that she shouldn't because it would make her look pale and sick….and she knew that Minori wasn't there but she did have a point about things sometimes…even if they were the same age. Minegishi said not to listen to Minori because it was like the blind leading the blind…which meant that because they were the same age they should not have been teaching each other stuff….even though Mob was the one learning from her…

But that was alright.

Sure Minori could be mean and weird sometimes but also she was Mob's friend and a girl. She didn't know a lot of girls, just Minori and then Minegishi who was born a girl but now was not a girl, but she just….wanted to hang around a girl. Or at least someone who wasn't a boy. Dad was a boy and she loved him…but also she wanted him to leave her alone and find something else to do. Anything else. She did not need to be tucked in, dad had brought her pillow and her blanket to the couch, and she did not need to be spoon fed, dad had insisted on spoon feeding her porridge for breakfast, and she did not need to be helped to her feet every time she had to get up…

But it wasn't like she was going to kick dad out so it didn't matter.

"Whatever you want." Said Suzuki. He….had no interest in makeup and hair and clothes…but apparently Daughter did. This was what she liked now. He had thought that they would have spent the day watching her animated princess movies, the ones she loved, and he had actually been looking forward just a bit to some of them. The ice queen had a very good song where she built her castle and he generally like the princess with the very long hair, and also the red haired one with the bow had an interesting story though he so wished that she would have just used her bow on a person at some point, but this was alright, too. Just so long as it made her happy. That was what mattered, making his Daughter happy.

So that was what he would do.

"Ok…but if you don't want to be here you can go. I mean if you want to watch something else….because I think I'm going to be watching makeup all day." Said Mob. What she really wanted to do was put makeup on Sho…because it was fun…but only if she said yes. She couldn't do that if dad was here because dad thought that her putting makeup on Sho was bad for him for some reason. She didn't know why he would think something like that. Sho let her, it wasn't like she forced him to play that game with her, so she had no idea what dad was so worried about…but then again it was hard to understand him sometimes. Even if he was her dad it was hard to understand him sometimes….and sometimes he didn't understand her, either, like when she and Sho played the game where she dressed him up like a girl and pretended that she had a little sister…that was fun….

And so was smoking.

Well vaping, technically, because she knew not to smoke in the house. Maybe the bathroom but not the whole house. Dad had just gotten it nice for her. It was blue now. The walls were blue and the carpet was blue and the couch was blue and…well anything that could be blue was blue….and it was nice of him. He could be nice sometimes and she wasn't going to just kick him out of the house that he'd had painted for her just so that she could put makeup on her little brother…or just so that she could smoke with her best friend….

Because that would not have been nice of her at all.

"For the entire day?" asked Suzuki. He…could sit through a day of this. If that was what his daughter wanted of him then he could sit there, for a whole day, watching women put on makeup. It was…not terribly boring. Well there was a certain intimacy to it, watching someone else put on makeup, that he was not going to think too deeply into with his Daughter right beside him, but also there was something interesting in the artistry of it. There were a lot if steps, complicated ones, and he did like to learn new things….though why Daughter cared about makeup at all was something that was outside of his understanding. She was beautiful as she was now.

"Maybe…and I might vape, too, and I know that you don't like that…so if you wanted to go to work or to go and hang out with Fukuda and Hatori then that would be ok." Said Mob. She wanted to vape and…and she knew that dad would never stop her….but maybe if she started vaping then dad wouldn't want to be near her. He had so much he had to do and she didn't even know why he had to be there. Well he did love her, of course, but…well she could manage on her own. She wasn't dying or sick or anything. She could still take care of herself.

"Daughter I…no. This is alright. We can sit here and watch whatever you want. This is…there is an element of…art to it…which I find fascinating. I had no idea that putting on makeup was quite so…complicated." Said Suzuki. There. He could find some positives in this situation. This was interesting and some of these women, all of them, were very….well he was not going to let his mind go there while he was sitting next to his Daughter. That would not have been right…and also he was acting like a teenager. It was just because, aside from Daughter, he never spent any time around members of the opposite sex. There just weren't any in the upper echelons of Claw…and also he was married so he had no need to talk to women….and even if he'd had need to talk to women he had people to talk to people for him…and other such things….and the whole thing was a moot point, anyway, because aside from Daughter the only woman around was Minegishi…

And he had no idea how to even explain…them.

She was a them, which was sort of hard to remember as he had never thought of them this much, and they were a woman who did not define themselves as a woman for reasons that Suzuki did not understand. They were…well he knew nothing about them. He knew that there were files but he didn't want to read them. He had no reason to. They were a woman who he knew and….and they had helped out Daughter…and that was why she was, they were, on his mind. They had done very well for Daughter and…and he wanted to reward them….and he had no idea what they eve liked…but he did want to do something nice for her, them, and he didn't know what….

But he did know that sitting there on the couch next to his Daughter while she was going through unimaginable suffering was not the time or the place to be thinking about women, any women, and also he was married on top of all of that!

"Yeah…there's a lot of steps…and I think that I'll get my vape now…ok?" asked Mob. Nope. Dad….well she liked it when dad liked the things that she liked but also…also she didn't want him to get into makeup. Then that would have been too weird. She knew that boys could like makeup too but…but not her dad. That would have just been too much and…and wow she was being mean. OK. Minegishi had said that she would yell and yell, or cry and cry, and sometimes even do both at the same time….so that much have been it. Even though now all she wanted to do was laugh and laugh until she cried and cried because the idea of dad wearing makeup….

She covered her mouth with her hand so dad couldn't see her smiling.

"Wait, let me carry you." Said Suzuki. She didn't look well at all. She looked like she was going to be sick…and her aura was behaving oddly too. He didn't know firsthand what was happening to her but he did know what Minegishi had said…and if she was really going through….all of that…then she could vape as much as she wanted to…and also he would carry her to wherever she kept these things because she did not look well enough to walk at all.

"No, it's ok." Said Mob as she tried to get up. She felt dad's powers around her…and she loved him, she really did, but she could get up on her own just fine. She wasn't…she wasn't sick or hurt or dying or a baby. Just because she had gotten her period it did not mean that she couldn't get up on her own.

"Then…let me help you up at least." Said Suzuki as he got her to her feet with his powers. She was suffering and she didn't have to put up a brave face for him. He knew that she was suffering and he knew that he had to do whatever was in his power to help her…and not helping….well he had powers, the ultimate power, but even that meant nothing when he couldn't make his own Daughter's life any less miserable than it was now.

"Thanks….um…I'll be back." Said Mob. She walked over to her room as fast as she could. She could feel dad's aura on her, watching her, even though he had no reason to. What, did he think that she was going to get lost or something? Well she wasn't. Even if the whole house was blue now she still knew her way around. She knew how to get to her room and she knew where she had kept all of the stuff that she hid from Sho, thankfully nobody had moved it when they cleaned her room up for her, and she knew how to get back downstairs to dad. She kept all of this stuff in a makeup bag now, mostly to keep Sho from borrowing from her, so she just took the whole thing back downstairs with her. It didn't matter if dad saw or not. He said that this was ok.

She was allowed to smoke and vape but he kept on trying to pick her up like she was a baby or something.

She didn't understand him sometimes. She didn't understand what made him the way he was…and she probably never would. Why he only loved her and not Sho. Why he always had to fight with Sho even though they had been fighting, it felt like, for as long as she could remember. Why he just was…the way he was. She didn't know. All she knew was that she really wanted to vape and Shimazaki had gotten her a bunch of new cartridges for International Friendship Day….and she wished that the others had told her that they would be giving gifts…because now she had to give them all gifts and the next gift giving holiday wasn't until Christmas….and Shimazaki's birthday….

Maybe if she figured out how to get cartridges on her own then she could get some for everyone and then that would make up for her not getting anyone any presents.

"What…is that exactly?" asked Suzuki as Daughter went into the silvery bluebag she carried with her and pulled out a small gold colored….he didn't know what. It was round and full of a golden liquid…that looked sort of like syrup.

"Hash oil. This one is supposed to be blackberry but I haven't tried it yet." Said Mob as she swapped out the carts from her pen. The last one had been tangy, which she liked, but maybe she would like blackberry too. This one was new. Shimazaki had said that these were supposed to be very good, the best kind you could get in Japan, so she had high hopes. He was Shimazaki. He would never lie to her.

"Oh. So is it supposed to taste of blackberries or just smell of them?" asked Suzuki. He did not understanding vaping. It was even more incomprehensible than smoking. Both of his parents had smoked when they thought that he wasn't around. It had always been this thing that adults did for some reason. He had tried smoking for the first time at about thirteen or fourteen….and he hadn't cared for it…and again in university…and he still hadn't much cared for it…but maybe that was just something that was wrong with him. Daughter loved to smoke…and to vape…which was just smoking without the tobacco…which he didn't get the point of. For taste and smell….maybe? He didn't know.

"Both. Here, you can try it first, dad, if you want." Said Mob. She wanted to sit on the couch, vape, and see which Elsa makeup look had been the best of 2014 and she couldn't do any of that if dad was going to sit there and ask her questions nonstop all day….and now she was being mean again. Dad loved her and he was just trying to understand…so she would share with him so he understood…and if he wanted to leave then that was ok too…because it would have been his idea and not her kicking him out.

"I don't….alright. If you want me to." Said Suzuki. He did not want a repeat of what had happened before, the burning and that terrible taste and smell…but if this was something that Daughter wanted to share with him then he would share in it with her. This was something that she enjoyed, like dolls and hair and makeup and Disney movies, and….and he enjoyed being with her…and if this was what she wanted to do then this was what they would do. He had always left Masami to her own devices when she did something that he did not enjoy…because he hadn't realized what a gift it was to be near her…and he was not going to make that mistake again. No, never again. He took the pen…thing…from Daughter and held it in his hand. This was blue, it was her favorite color, and he wondered why she didn't have blueberry…whatever this was…but maybe she just liked blue but not blueberries. He didn't know.

"You're actually…um…ok. Just like before. Just hold down the button and breathe in. That's all." said Mob. Well this was….she liked that dad was trying to share stuff with her…but smoking with dad…it was weirder than smoking with Sho…and she really hoped that Sho didn't pick now to come back from hanging out with Shimazaki. She didn't know how she would explain this to him…or to Shimazaki…and then he would tell everyone…and then they'd all probably make fun of dad….and he didn't need that. He didn't seem like it but he could actually be very sensitive sometimes.

Physically and emotionally.

Dad was sitting there worried about her but she should have been the one worried about him. He had done as she said and now he was coughing like he was trying to hack up both of his lungs. He'd taken in way too much, it had been a long inhale, and now he was red and coughing…and maybe she should have warned him about inhaling so much at once…though she would have thought that he would have known. Didn't all adult know how to smoke? Well it didn't matter, he was coughing now and that was what mattered, and she had to help him because he was her dad and she loved him.

She patted him on the back and took the vape pen from her.

"This…does not taste of blackberries." Said Suzuki as he finished his coughing fit. His throat was raw, his eyes burned, and it was a struggle to keep his aura from flaring. That….he had no clue why she or anyone else would want to do that to their bodies. There was no purpose to it. It didn't taste good or smell good and it just irritated your respiratory system.

"Wait…it doesn't? Shimazaki said that he got me a bunch of the blackberry ones…let me try." Said Mob. She wiped off dad's spit, she hadn't meant to be rude but sharing spit with your dad was just weird, and hit the pen…and it did taste like blackberries. Not like she was eating actual blackberries, obviously, but enough that she could tell that this was supposed to be a blackberry cart. Dad was just weird about tastes. He did put ketchup on everything after all.

"So you get these from Shimazaki?" asked Suzuki wiping his eyes. He…had no idea how to feel about that. On the one hand yes, everyone should have been at Daughter's beck and call, but on the other hand this was Shimazaki. He was….Daughter had been interested in him before….even if she claimed that she hadn't been….and he was a powerful esper and a very attractive man. Well Suzuki thought, anyway, that he must have been attractive. He was very fit and tall and dressed well and wore too much cologne. Women loved that…and Daughter was a woman….and if she wanted Shimazaki as her...whatever…then he just…he had two options. Either say yes and allow Shimazaki to marry his Daughter or kill him and then risk alienating Daughter is she ever found out and…and he was not going to think about this anymore.

"Yeah, he knows how to get all the best stuff. Well he says that it's not very good in Tokyo but he makes due. He says that it's just not very good in Japan in general. I think that it's ok." Said Mob as she hit her pen again. Dad just didn't know what the good stuff was like. Nothing would ever be better than California, they had the best stuff there since it was legal and he didn't have to be shady about it, he had said anyway, but this was god too. He said that if you wanted good carts, or god anything, then you had to go to Tokyo. This was the center of Japan, he said, even though it wasn't. The center of Japan was…probably more in the middle of the country…but she wasn't going to argue with the person giving her nice gifts.

"Not very good in….he has no idea what he's talking about. Everything is better in Japan." Said Suzuki with a wave of his hand. Nothing in any country could possibly be better than in Japan. Shimazaki was an idiot and not worthy of Daughter…and hopefully she didn't have feelings of any kind for him. He so wished that Hatori and Daughter were compatible. He didn't like the idea of Daughter being in a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone but if she had to be with someone it should have been with Hatori. He was intelligent, good conversation, his skin was clearing up, and he had almost no will of his own most of the time so that would be good for Daughter. He would do whatever she wanted and he wouldn't ever even think about being with any other women…but no, he just HAD to have been a homosexual hadn't he….and he could have forced Hatori to be with Daughter but then that wouldn't have worked out…even though he would never have desired her sexually so it would have been the perfect relationship…but he was her father, not her matchmaker, and he couldn't just make matches for her…

But he could and would quietly disappear anyone who even thought about treating his Daughter as anything less than the most perfect human being ever to live.

"Not the vapes. Back when we were in California they had a lot more flavors and they were a lot stronger." Said Mob. This was pretty weak, actually, or maybe her tolerance was just too high again. That might have been it. She didn't think that she was even feeling anything…well her socks were pretty soft…and dad's eyebrows were so funny…how they were meeting in the middle now…ok. Maybe she was feeling it just a little bit….which was good because maybe now she wouldn't feel the way her stomach was hurting all the time or how gross it felt to be wearing not only what was pretty much a diaper but also leggings…she hated leggings so much…

But a least her socks felt nice.

"Everything is better in Japan." Said Suzuki. She must have known that. They had traveled the world together so she must have realized, now, that everything was better in Japan….like….he didn't know. This shirt was….he knew that there was no tag but he felt one…and that wasn't better but…well this couch felt good…and…he reached up. His hair felt good….not soft but just…good…and he had to sit still now. What was….he didn't know. Everything just sort of felt…oddly good…now…and he needed to stop being so….ridiculous.

"You just said that you didn't like this and this came from Japan." Said Mob as she inhaled again. Dad was being all squirmy…and it was so funny! She made sure not to laugh…but she did…and when she did it came out like a cough…and she couldn't help it! He was being all squirmy and….and his eyebrows were being all like squirmy caterpillars…..and it was just so….funny! This whole thing was just so…so….she tried not to laugh. She tried really hard not to laugh. She was good at trying not to laugh.

"Maybe I was mistaken. Give that back." Said Suzuki as he reached for the vaping pen…thing…that Daughter had been smoking from. This was good. This was…if it was Japanese then it was good. He liked it in that case because….well because it was Japanese and also…also he could vaguely taste blackberries…and he had always liked blackberries….not when they were ripe, of course, because they were much too sweet when they were done. No, he liked them before they had ripened all the way…right off the bush…like the one that he'd had in his yard as a child. He had eaten all the berries one day when he had been very small and mother….well she had taken a picture of him even though he had been a mess…and then father had told him that he had been selfish and that those were mother's….but mother hadn't minded…and they had been so good….

And he really could have gone for some unsweetened blackberries right now.

Unripe and unsweet blackberries…and then some very tart blueberries….and then also some white strawberries, they were best when they were still a little while….and them some sugarless cheesecake….that was good. He so wished that he could have asked Daughter to cook him a sugarless cheesecake with some unsweetened berries…but she was suffering and could not cook…and he didn't want her to suffer…and he just wanted her to be ok…and he just loved her so much…and she looked so warm and small and soft, there, wrapped up in her little blanket….

He rested is head on her stomach.

"Dad? Are you ok?" asked Mob. Well this was…new. Dad cuddled with her all the time but he never just went and used her like a pillow before…but now he was…and this was…it was nice. She reached up and touched his hair. It wasn't soft, no, it was very stiff just like Sho's. She tried to smush it down but it just sprang right up….and that was kind of funny.

"I'm fine. Keep doing that. It feels good." Said Suzuki. He had never liked his hair, not once, but now…well that was nice. How long had it been since anyone touched his hair…or touched him? He held Daughter often but she never initiated physical contact…well not never but…not like this. Her hand in his hair, her head on her stomach, the whole thing just….the whole thing just felt very nice. He hadn't been this warm and….and happy in….he didn't even know. He felt like he could have just….floated away…he felt that good.

"Ok….but that's enough pen for you." Said Mob as she used her powers to take the pen away from dad. So….this was what it was like when dad was high….or maybe even stoned. He was making them float. She knew that it was an accident so she didn't say anything but…well this was still sort of annoying. She was trying to bring them, and everything else in the house….back to the ground…but dad was still making things float….and she loved him a lot but…but still. She wanted to vape and relax and she couldn't do either of those things if dad was being all…like this….

She loved him a lot but…come on dad.

"If you say so…and you were right. It does taste of blackberries." Said Suzuki as he inhaled again. If you didn't inhale so deeply then it wasn't as terrible. Sort of like those rare times when he had tried smoking on his own. He felt….he was so light and…and he could see why Daughter did this to herself. This was…very nice.

"I told you it did, dad, I told you it did." Said Mob. Why hadn't he believed her? What, did he have to be high to think that she knew what she was talking about? Did he think that just because she had gotten her period she had no idea how to smoke or walk or sit up or feed herself? Why was he treating her like she was dumb? She was the same Mob that she had always been. She was just Mob but with a period now that would come back every month until she was his age and it wasn't fair and none of this was fair and she just-needed to keep calm. That was that yell and yell thing that Minegishi had told her about. That was….not the way she should have been thinking about her dad at all. She loved him and when you loved someone you were nice to them…even in your own head where they couldn't even hear any of your thoughts.

"I should have believed you, Daughter, you are the expert in this situation. Always….always believe the expert…in all situations." Said Suzuki. That was…it was important that she know that. When you didn't know about something then it was best to ask someone who did. Like the time when he had been in university and he had been having trouble with….what had it been? Calculus? No, he knew calclus….it would come to him. His mind was just a bit…muddled….somehow. He didn't know why but…thoughts were a bit…difficult right now.

"I will, dad." Said Mob as dad rubbed his head against her stomach. He rubbed his hair…and he really needed conditioner. He needed to use some conditioner because, well, his hair was stiffer than Sho's. She wondered if it would stand up like Sho's did if it got long enough….that would have been funny…and she was not going to laugh. She was not going to laugh at the idea of dad with Sho's hair….or Sho with dad's eyebrows….because Sho was his son and…and then she had a terrible thought….

What if SHE ended up with his eyebrows? She felt…no. She was fine. She was fine.

"Like your friend Minegishi…they are a very intelligent woman….I should reward them….but I have no idea what they want…and I hate not knowing things." Said Suzuki as Daughter's hand left his hair. He reached up with his powers and put it back. He had forgotten how much he liked having his hair touched…or maybe he had just never realized how nice it felt in the first place. Masami had done this to him, before, when they would be in bed together just laying down and enjoying being near each other…and he half expected to feel Son kicking….but he wasn't. Daughter was not pregnant and…and he was not going to think about that, the idea that Daughter could be pregnant, because…he was not ready for that….and neither was she. Well biologically but…but she was still eleven and…and he wanted grandchildren…but not yet….

He wasn't done enjoying the child he had.

She was so warm and small and soft and perfect and…and he loved her. He oved her so much and he wanted…he wanted to stay this way for the rest of the day. It had been so long since he had been like this with another person. With someone who loved him. He didn't care if Daughter wasn't Masami, if he wasn't going to feel Son, his or hers, kicking under his head. This was…this was the best feeling that he'd felt in…in so long…

Good enough that he could feel control starting to slip through his fingers…

It was slipping but…but he just…he didn't know if he wanted it back. This was…he was just…he was in a good place right now and he did not want to leave it. He could not leave it. He wanted to stay here, to stay this way with his Daughter, for the rest of the day. He loved her so much and he loved this and…and he knew that he could not bear to lose this…and if he tried to get control back then…then he would lose this and also…also he got the feeling that….that he could not easily get control back….

He felt like he had been here before…and it hadn't gone well.

"Oh. Um…ok. Minegishi wants…well a lot of things. They want a giant block of unsweetened dark chocolate and a copy of a book called Tamerlane and Other Poems and diet soda without a funny aftertaste and also a new door for their room that can't be kicked down. Those are things that I know that they want off the top of my head. I'll text you the list…they're going to be so happy." Said Mob as dad made her touch his hair some more. She didn't mind this….and she didn't mind talking about Minegishi. Talking about them was almost as good as being near them. They were probably awake by now and stuff….and maybe they would have wanted to come over…they liked to smoke and dad liked to smoke too…so maybe they would be friends….and dad wanted to do something nice for them so that would speed up their friendship….and that would be the best thing ever! Her and dad and Minegishi being friends! Then dad could be friends with all of her friends, not just Hatori, and then maybe he would even be nicer to Sho…and then maybe things would be better….or something. She didn't know.

"Good….good…they deserve to be after what they've done…and why are they a 'they'? Why the gender neutral conjugation? And why….why do they have such short hair? They would be so much prettier with long hair…not that they aren't pretty now….they are…in a way…" said Suzuki as he closed his eyes and laid more onto Daughter. He could hear her heartbeat. She was so soft and warm and comfortable and intelligent. She would be able to explain Minegishi to him. He didn't understand them…and he wanted to understand them…just a bit. Just enough to…well to understand them….also why didn't they have eyebrows? That was just….they could have drawn some on as he'd seen women do for reasons that he could not understand….but they didn't and they colored their hair….and they wore clothing that was several sizes too big…and he just couldn't understand them…but he wanted to…

He loved puzzles.

"Um…they just are…who they are…and if they want to be called 'they' then we should just call them what they want to be called….like I said before and…um…they're pretty I guess…but let's talk about something else." Said Mob. She didn't want dad to call Minegishi or anyone pretty. He was only allowed to call her and mom pretty. He called her pretty because she was his Daughter and mom was pretty because she was his wife and he liked her…and he could not like Minegishi or anyone else.

"Alright then….you're pretty. Do you know that? You are so pretty and I love you so much and you're so soft and I am so sorry that you're suffering right now." Said Suzuki as he pressed his ear to her heart. Her hand was still in his hair…and now one of her hands was on his shoulder…and she was so soft and being near her felt so good…and he knew that his back should have been killing him but…but he didn't care. He just…well he couldn't feel it at all…all he could feel was her. He and the ghost of the tag that had been at the back of his shirt before Daughter had cut it out for him. She was so good at that, knowing what he wanted before he could tell her, and he loved her so much….the most that he had ever loved anyone before.

"Um…that's ok, dad, I feel better. Smoking makes me feel better." Said Mob. Dad weighed a lot….a lot a lot…and she loved him a lot…but maybe he should have sat down like normal. Just maybe. She was not going to say something mean like 'do I look like a chair' or anything like that because she loved him…but she was going to think, in her head, that he needed to sit up like normal before he crushed her and broke his back into a million little pieces.

"This is…it does….I can't even feel my back anymore….I cracked it earlier….but in a bad way…but now I can't feel it…" said Suzuki. He felt…he could not ever remembering feeling this good….well he sort of could. That one time in university when he and Tadashi had tried smoking marijuana…and he had felt very good…but he couldn't remember what had happened next. He just woke up and their entire apartment was a complete mess and he had been wearing Tadashi's clothes for some reason and Tadashi had written a note on his arm that said he needed a few days off from their friendship for some reason.

"Um…do you need to see Fukuda? He'll probably come if you're hurt." Said Mob. She didn't want to see Fukuda but also she didn't want her dad to get hurt…even though he wouldn't have been hurting his back if he would just sit up like normal.

"No, I know that you don't like Tadashi….and I have no idea why…but I won't summon him anyway. I don't need him right now." Said Suzuki. Tadashi…he had no idea why nobody liked Tadashi. Yes he could overstep at times, and his taste in music was suspect, but he was still Tadashi. He was always there when you needed him and he was good company and he had good ideas….very good ideas….if it weren't for him then there never would have been a Claw….well there would have been but it wouldn't have gotten off the ground as quickly as it had…Tadashi was great….but busy….very busy…like he should have been.

"Who's Tadashi?" asked Mob. She….did not know anyone by that name…but then again she didn't know everyone who dad knew. She just knew….well it was a familiar name…and stuff.

"Oh. I apologize. That's Fukuda's given name, Tadashi. Mine is Touichirou…in case you didn't know…and you are Shigeko. I do know your name….your brother thinks that I don't know your names but I do…he's called Sho and you're called Shigeko." said Suzuki. How in the hell had Son thought that his own father had forgotten his name? Of course he knew Son's name. Of course he knew Daughter's name. He knew names…he just…didn't use them…and he was Suzuki Touichirou. He could say and do whatever he wanted….and right now he wanted…to listen to Shigeko's heartbeat. God. Shigeko was…she was so perfect…she was his most perfect person.

"I…know your name, dad, and I know that you know mine." Said Mob as she patted dad's hair some more. Tadashi was Fukuda's given name…she had known that…..but she had just forgotten. She wasn't sure how she had forgotten…maybe because she didn't like to talk to him anymore. Back when she had been little, very little, she used to love him almost as much as she loved her own mom and dad….but now…well now he was just this person who babysat Sho sometimes and thought about her being naked with people…and stuff…and she didn't want to think about that or about him or about…she just…she played with dad's hair. That was better than thinking about Fukuda

"Good, good….though I would have called you Mukai…I like that name…but I did not name you." Said Suzuki. Her name should have been Mukai…or Aia…or…or maybe mother's given name…but it wasn't. She was Shigeko and…and that was a nice name too. Shigeko. Nurturing child. He liked….he liked her name a lot. He liked her a lot. He loved her name. He loved her name and he loved her and he loved laying there with her listening to her heartbeat.

"Oh…well…I like being Shigeko." said Mob. She…did not want to think about baby Mukai…well her name had been Mi-Cha before dad had changed it….and Mob still didn't know why dad had changed it. Maybe because her name had been Korean and he was Japanese…and maybe he had been planning on sending her to live with a Japanese family…or something….but if he had been planning on sending her to a new family then maybe they should have been the ones to name her…she didn't know. She didn't know how these things worked, adoptions and orphans, so she didn't want to think about it anymore. She just…she loved baby Mukai and…and she didn't want to think about her anymore. It was too sad, thinking about her, even though Mob knew that she was happy…wherever she was…in that big somewhere out there….like where mom had run away too…but at least Mukai hadn't had a choice in leaving her….she'd been a baby and babies needed real moms and dads…and so did she…

She had a dad. He was right here.

"And I like you. I like you so much…I love you and I like you…and I just cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you…it'll be wonderful…we'll have a nice big house and we can spend all of our time together…and with the children, of course, there will be many children." Said Suzuki. He loved her so much and he would not take her for granted…he would be with her for the rest of his life…and she would be with him for the rest of his. They would be together and…and she would never leave him…and then she would have her children and he would help her raise them…and then they would be so happy and…and they would be able to be like this forever….not just like this for the rest of the day but for the rest of his life….and it would be so perfect….

"Oh…are you…I mean…am I going to have more brothers and sisters?" asked Mob. She didn't want dad to have any more kids…brothers and sisters….well she liked babies, and she liked Sho, but…but then she would have had to have had another mom and…and she didn't need another mom. She didn't need dad to meet some woman and divorce mom and fall in love with her….and then they would have babies and…and she just…they didn't need a mom! She was the mom. She was the mom and…and their family did not need a stepmom….and also she had heard that stepmoms were mean and wicked and….and she didn't want to have to deal with that and…and also if he had any more brothers and sisters they might get taken away….well she knew that baby Mukai had just been an orphan but….

But she didn't want any more brothers and sisters for as long as she lived.

"No, no, no, nothing like that. Your mother is gone and I am not an adulterer…never….be careful about that. Shigeko, when you get married you should built some sort of dome or cage for your husband and keep women away from him. Men…men are terrible…remember that…men are terrible….but I will never be unfaithful to you. I will spend my life making you happy and then we'll raise the children, your children, together and…and we'll spend time together….won't that be wonderful?" asked Suzuki. He had been the worst sort of man, before, and if even he could fall to temptation like that then…then what hope was there for Shigeko's husband? If he ever so much as heard rumors that her husband was cheating on her he would end that man's life, plain and simple, and then he would make it look like an accident so Shigeko wouldn't know the terrible truth and…and how could he have been so unfaithful? He buried his face so she could not see him….even though she could see his aura…and he felt the couch sway…and he knew that he was up above the ground and…he knew that he should have put them down but….but he didn't want to…he couldn't. He couldn't focus on lowering them to the ground or on…on anything…anything that didn't have to do with how…how he had fucked up….how unfaithful he had been…how Shigeko could never know…and how he would never be unfaithful towards her. He would never, ever, be unfaithful towards Shigeko. Ever.

"Um…sure….dad. Also…um…are you hungry?" asked Mob. She….well she had never seen dad like this. Well that was because she had never seen him high before…or stoned….he might have been stoned…and maybe this meant that she would have to be the one to teach him about moderation. She didn't know if she could. That would have been weird. Well it would have been weird but not as weird as dad calling her by her actual given name…nobody ever did that…and also he was talking about how they would be together when she grew up and…..and of course she wanted to spend the rest of her life with her dad but…she didn't know. Something just felt sort of…weird…about that but…well dad was high and that was weird in and of its self….and she didn't much want to talk to him about stuff right now…and he must have been hungry.

Please, please, please let dad have been hungry.

"Ravenous. Have someone bring sugarless cheesecake and unripe berries…and also omelets with lots of ketchup….and also flavorless popsicles." Said Suzuki. She knew him better than he knew his own mind. The moment she said that, suggested that he may have been hungry, instantly he felt how ravenous he was…God. Was there anyone in this world more perfect than his Shigeko? She was just…she was the most perfect person…she was his most perfect person…and one day she would be someone else's most perfect person…but until that day came she would be his and he would be hers and this would be their lives…they could stay this way for the rest of the day…for the rest of his life…her life…their lives.

"But….that's just frozen water." Said Mob. She wondered if dad had a sense of taste like she had a sense of taste. He was talking about unripe berries and cheesecake without sugar…that was just warm cream cheese in a gram cracker crust….and now he wanted to suck on plain water and pretend that it was popsicles…when they had a whole box of rainbow pops in the fridge? Dad was….weird. No wonder Sho was so weird about food, he had come from dad after all.

"With food coloring. My mother used to make me those during the summer." Said Suzuki. When he had been small…and part of him wished that he could be that small again, mother would fill these small glasses she had with water and then she would let him put in the food coloring….and he had always been so very careful not to spill any and ruin her kitchen…and he had made green and yellow and red and blue and purple and pink…well pink had just been very little red….but he had helped and then…and then there had been popsicles that he could eat…because that was what all of the other children loved…but he had hated them….because sugar was just so vile….and everyone had always thought that he had been strange…but mother had understood. She had understood him and Shigeko…she understood him now too….and he liked to think that maybe he understood her, too, just a little bit.

"Ok dad…I'll…have people bring us all of that and…and how about I put one something you like? Like…how about….Galaxy Express? Or we could watch Evangelion again…we never made it past the first movie…or we could watch some more Planet Earth…you like that…right? I think…that we should do that…" said Mob. She patted dad on the head and called her phone over with her powers. She didn't think that any of the things that dad wanted to eat sounded any good, and she wasn't in the mood to watch a 'dad show' right now either….but she also wanted to relax and…and she couldn't because did didn't know about moderation even though he was even older than she was….but that was ok. She loved him and…and this was ok. Sure she felt gross, and she couldn't even enjoy smoking because dad had overdone it, and also she was way too hot with dad laying on her like this, and he was really heavy….

But it wasn't like she was going to kick dad out or anything like that, no, that would have been way too mean…and she could never have been mean to her own dad. He loved her…and she loved him.


	385. Another Gift From a Mortal Enemy

Sho had tried, he really had, but there was only so much that he could do.

He loved big sis, he would never stop loving his big sis, and he wanted to be there for her while she was going through stuff. He had planned to have spent the whole day with her getting her things that she needed and listening to her even if she told him to do something that he didn't want to do like his homeschool work or taking a bath or eating a salad without ranch dressing. He would have done whatever she had asked of him, anything at all, if…well if he could have.

If he could have just been in the house.

But he couldn't just be in the house. Dad was in the house. Dad was in the house in the middle of the day and he said that he was the one who was supposed to take care of big sis…and Sho just let him. He had wanted to kick dad's ass for kicking him out of the house and stuff…well not really but…well being there was kicking him out of the house…and that hadn't been the only reason why he wanted to kick dad's ass and just….he was not going to stress big sis out! She had enough to deal with right now! She had all kinds of girl stuff to deal with and he had tried to be there for her but then dad had to just come in and-and-and-

And this sucked!

He couldn't even be in his own house to help out his own sister! He should have been in the house with her spending time with her and…and playing with her and…and stuff but now…now he was with…he wasn't even with anyone! He was next door and he was all alone because Hatori had to go and be Fukuda because Fukuda was being dad and then Shibata had to go there with Hatori because he was a scaredy cat about everything and…and Shimazaki was home but he had Minegishi IN HIS ROOM and they were sleeping and Sho wanted to run in and wake them up and…and he wasn't going to do that because Minegishi was already upset about their door and-

And this sucked.

He was sitting down in the hallway outside of Shimazaki's room just waiting for him to wake up. He had his phone in his hand but he didn't want to look at it. He didn't care about whatever he had been reading about, how to take care of hamsters, he just…how could he care about anything other than his sister right now? She was all hurt and…well not hurt but everyone had said that it would hurt and…and he should have been there for her but then dad had to come in and ruin everything like he always did. He was just….such a jerk….well not to big sis…never to big sis…

He liked big sis.

He liked big sis and….and why not? She was big sis. Sure she could be bossy sometimes, and she wasn't always on him to take baths, but she was still big sis and…and everyone loved her. They all loved her and liked her and….and he was just Sho. He…he was liked. There was a person on the other side of that door who liked him…and also big sis liked him….and everyone but Minegishi liked him…and he just…he had a lot of people who liked him….so why did it matter if dad liked him or not? Dad was an asshole. Dad was a jerk. What dad thought and felt…none of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was…was big sis…and feeling better…and if she wanted to spend the day with dad then that was ok. She was happy with dad and…and she could have been happy with Sho and…

And this was not about him.

It didn't matter how he felt or what he wanted just so long as the girl in his life was happy. Fukuda had said that and he had been talking about Emmy, about how even if he didn't like her or maybe even girls at all he still had to make her happy because she liked him, but the same logic applied to him and big sis. She was his sister and she took care of him and…and he had spent a lot of years being an asshole to her…so he was going to make her happy now. If she wanted to be with dad then she wanted to be with dad and….and he was not going to start a fight. He was not going to make her upset in any way. He just….was not going to make this any worse for her.

She was always trying to make him happy so it would have been a jerk move of him to make her upset.

So he wasn't going to do that. He was going to sit out here in the hallway until Shimazaki woke up…and put on clothes…and he was not going to think thoughts like that. About Shimazaki and…and how he was with Minegishi sometimes….and how he had been wearing their pants….and why he'd been wearing their pants…and stuff. Sho didn't want to think about stuff like that because….because it was gross! And not even in the good way! Stuff like that was just…no way. Adults were so gross…and their version of gross was not the cool version of gross. Like that picture Emmy sent him of those worms that they pulled out of some guy's brain….those were cool gross….or the picture that she sent him of the twin that they cut out of that guy….or that guy with the extra legs growing out of his back….that was cool gross….

Not like whatever Shimazaki and Minegishi were doing in that room.

He didn't want to think about that…about any of that. About Shimazaki being with Minegishi…or about Emmy…or about how he felt like his heart was being pecked out by birds when he thought about Shimazaki being with Minegishi…or like how if he broke up with Emmy then her heart was going to feel like it was being pecked out by birds…so he just….he went back to his phone. He went back to reading about hamsters. He went back to reading about how they'll eat each other sometimes if they don't have enough enrichment….poor hamsters….

Poor little hamsters.

He would have read about them all day if he could have, he had nothing better to do now that dad had kicked him out of the house and Shimazaki was sleeping the whole day away with Minegishi, but he couldn't have. No. His phone decided to tell him that he had an email…which wasn't new he got those sometimes. Usually they were about Claw, big sis still did the birthday list and shout outs and stuff, but this….was not from big sis. This was from…the other girl in his life…who was not his sister…and he was not going to ignore this because…well because he was a good person and….and he wasn't dad! He wasn't a jerk! He was….

He was going to read this…right now.

"Dear Show you daft booger…when are you coming back to London? I miss you loads. How is Japan? How is your family? I got you present I didn't know they had jelly bah-bees…bay-bees…in Japan. I liked them allot…a-lot….they were brill-ee-ant. Your…you-are…brill-ee-ant. My mum says I can have a mo-bi-ull soon on ack-own-nt of me getting into second-eer-ee school. I got in…that's good Emmy I'm happy for you…" muttered Sho as he read. He knew how to read just fine…if he was reading in Japanese. This wasn't Japanese, it was English, and it made sense that this would be in English since his girlfriend was from England. This was one of her two or three times a week emails…and she never ran out of things to say…which was good because that gave Sho plenty to respond to. He was glad that she got into secondary school, which was what English people called middle school, because she had been working really hard to keep her grades up and Sho…well he had only been to preschool and kindergarten…but he knew that school could be hard. He was really happy for her, and he was happy that she was getting a phone too because she had been wanting one for a while.

So that she could call him.

She called him because she missed him. She missed him because she loved him. She loved him because he was her boyfriend. He was her boyfriend because he needed a girlfriend and…and she was nice. She was nice and fun and…and he did want to see her again…and stuff. He wanted to see her and to spend time with her looking at baby birds and chasing adult birds and eating weird candy and jumping off the swings and…and stuff like that. He liked….he liked spending time with her…and he liked her…but he didn't like her like she liked him…

Not that he would ever tell her that, of course.

Liking someone who didn't like you back sucked. It sucked almost as much as liking someone who liked someone else…and that person liked them back. Emmy…she didn't know that he liked Shimazaki, she could never know that he liked Shimazaki, and there was no reason to tell her anyway. Him liking Shimazaki didn't mean that he couldn't be nice to her and stuff. He could like Shimazaki and still be a good boyfriend. He could be happy for her when good stuff happened, he could make her feel better when bad things happened, and he could built her a big house and marry her and give her all the things that she wanted when she grew up. He would even carry her around and feed her when the stuff that happened to big sis happened to her. He was a good person, well he was trying to be, and he could be the person who made her happy…and stuff…

Even if he wasn't very happy with the whole thing.

But that didn't matter. It didn't matter if he was happy or not just like it didn't matter if…if Shimazaki was in his room with Minegishi and…and well now he felt him teleport. Sho almost dropped his phone as he felt Shimazaki teleport past him and into the bathroom. He hadn't even said 'hi'…and he could have said 'hi'…it wouldn't have taken a long time…and it wasn't like he had to pee really bad or anything like that because Sho could hear the shower running….and he could feel his aura…and he could have just said 'hi 'and….and he hadn't and….and he had just…gone right past Sho…

Like he wasn't even there.

Shimazaki had gone right past Sho like he was invisible or something…and he wished that Minegishi had done the same. Not long after Shimazaki had teleported into the bathroom Sho heard Shimazaki's bedroom door open. He looked down at his phone. He went back to replying to Emmy. He muttered as he typed, English was kind of hard and he hardly ever practiced it out loud, and also he would have thought that Minegishi would have gotten a clue and went off to do Minegishi things like going to hang out with big sis…and maybe someone should have gone over there actually because dad's aura was being weird…or maybe…he didn't know! Tokyo was a big city! There were a million places that Minegishi could have gone to that would not have involved bothering him!

But they didn't go to any of those places.

Sho could feel them getting closer….and then he could see them standing over him. He pretended to be so busy with what he was doing that he didn't even notice them. Maybe then they would get so bored that they would just get going back to…wherever it was that they had been planning on going. Sho didn't know or care what they had been planning on doing or where they had been planning on going. He just wanted them to get away from him.

But he didn't say anything, though, because this was big sis's friend and if he was mean to them then big sis would have been upset and she didn't need that right now.

"Japan." Said Minegishi as they leaned over and watched Sho type. Sho pulled his phone in close. What was wrong with them? What, were they raised in the woods by wolves…or plants….or something?! You weren't supposed to just look at what other people were typing….and also he knew that he was in Japan! He was Japanese so of course he would know whether or not he was in Japan!

"I know that I'm in Japan, Minegishi, I'm not stupid." Said Sho through clenched teeth. He didn't want to talk to them, they were his mortal enemy! They were trying to be Shimazaki's theyfriend and…and Sho knew that Shimazaki would never like him back and even if there was some miracle and he did he still would not have been able to be Sho's boyfriend because dad was a jerk…..but still! He was Shimazaki's best friend, which was good enough, and he was trying to fall out of love with him anyway….but Minegishi was still trying to take Shimazaki from him! That wasn't ok!

"No, J-A-P-A-N. You wrote Nihon. We say Nihon but the rest of the world says Japan." Said Minegishi. Sho clicked his phone off. He knew that! He totally did! He would have just been able to write better in English if Minegishi wasn't there distracting him!

"I know that….I meant to do that….and anyway you're distracting me. Shouldn't you be hanging out with big sis or something? Why don't you just go next door and bother her and dad?" asked Sho. He tried not to sound mean because if he sounded mean then big sis would have been upset with him about being mean to her friend…and also Shimazaki didn't like it when he was mean to Minegishi…but just because they let him touch their boobs and other stuff! That was all. If Sho had been a girl then he would have let Shimazaki do all of that stuff to him and then he wouldn't have even noticed that Minegishi even existed! Not that Sho wanted…well he did but…well all of that was gross…and it didn't matter because he was trying to fall out of love with Shimazaki anyway!

"Well someone got up on the wrong wide of the bed this morning." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes. Sho wanted to tell them to shut up about beds and waking up and sides of beds…because they just had to! Yeah, ok, Shimazaki let them sleep in his bed…big deal! Sho had slept in his bed with him too, before, and…well he didn't remember it that well because he had been all sad and stuff….but it wasn't like Shimazaki letting you sleep in the bed with him was anything special!

"Leave me alone." Said Sho. He knew that if he kept on talking to them then he would say something that he would regret. He could feel big sis's aura and dad's aura…and he had no idea what was happening over there but he knew that she was stressed…and if he was mean to her friend then she would be even more stressed…even though she should have just let him stay…well she had never kicked him out…dad had. So…so he shouldn't have been upset with her…and he wasn't! He was upset with Minegishi for bothering him and….and he would have told them to fuck off if he could…but they would tell big sis…and also Shimazaki was right there and he could hear really well…if he could hear you opening a cup of pudding from two rooms away then he could hear it if Sho started cursing out Minegishi…even though they deserved it…

He was going to be nice. He had to be.

"In a minute. I have something for you." Said Minegishi. Sho looked up. He did like presents…but he knew that this would be a book. He had no idea why they kept on giving him books. They were good books, too, not like boring school books or anything like that. They gave really good presents and…and maybe they had been helpful before but…but that made no sense! They were mortal enemies and mortal enemies did not help each other out!

But that was where Minegishi was going.

Sho…he didn't know. He just didn't know. They were in their room now, and Sho maybe felt a little bad about kicking down their door, and he could hear them muttering bad words to themselves…and he did like it when he got presents…but he just…didn't get it. They didn't like him. They called him names like little monster and demon child…and also they had gotten him with their plants the other day…and also they were trying to take Shimazaki from him…but also they were weirdly nice, too, and it just…

It made zero sense at all.

"Memorize it." Said Minegishi after they handed him the book…they said that every single time they gave him a book…which was often. They were always giving him books and stuff even though he had no idea why. It was like they cared about him or something….but that made no sense. They cared about big sis, they were her friend, and also they were his mortal enemy…and stuff…

"Oh. Another book. Thanks." Said Sho as Minegishi dropped a book in his lap. He tried to sound like he didn't care either way. He didn't. Sure Minegishi had helped him out before but…well this book might have been helpful too. Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Growing Up: Boy's Edition. That was…well it sounded helpful because there was stuff that he didn't know about…but still. This was still a gift from his enemy!

"Well don't get too excited or anything." Said Minegishi. Sho stuck out his tongue. He was just as excited as he wanted to be. If they had wanted him to have been more excited then they should have wrapped it up or put it in a gift bag…or something.

"What do you want me to? Jump up and do a black flip. You got me another book. I already said thanks. Now go away. Me and Shimazaki have…plans today." Said Sho. He had no idea if Shimazaki would even want to hang out with him that day…he could have been planning on spending the whole day with Minegishi after all….but…well he didn't want to stand around talking to his mortal enemy, ok!? Was that so hard to understand!?

"Right. Well you and Ryou have fun sawing off stops signs and climbing into airport x-ray machines or whatever else you're planning on doing today….and if you have any questions about anything you read in that book ask anyone except for Ryou. He has…interesting ideas about human reproduction." Said Minegishi. Sho would ask Shimazaki whatever he wanted to ask him and he would saw off all the stop signs he wanted to and play in all the x-ray machines he felt like! Well he had never played in an x-ray machine or sawed off a stop sign….but if that was what Shimazaki wanted to do then he would do it! Yeah! They had fun together, more fun than Shimazaki had ever had with Minegishi. What did they know about fun? They always looked like they were bored and…and so what if they had boobs!? How much fun could those possibly be! Throwing rocks at people and petting dogs and climbing trees and building forts was much more fun than boobs and…and whatever else it was that adults did in bed!

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Now leave me alone. I have a lot of important stuff to do." Said Sho with a wave of his hand. Minegishi didn't stay, they went off to do Minegishi things, and Sho didn't care what those things were just so long as they didn't do them with or near Shimazaki. Shimazaki was Sho's friend, not theirs, and he knew that they could only be just friends…but that was better than nothing. He was a good person and a good friend and he was really fun and…

And he was Sho's best friend.

Not Sho's boyfriend…or would he have been Shimazaki boyfriend? Or would they be each other's boyfriends? He didn't know. He didn't know and he wasn't going to ask because there was no reason for him to know. Shimazaki didn't like him back and even if he did they couldn't be together. Sho had a girlfriend like he was supposed to have a girlfriend…and he had to get back to emailing her back. If she had emailed him this early in the day then it meant that she was staying up super later and if she stayed up too late she would be too tired to do normal kid stuff like go to school and stuff. He had to think about her. It didn't matter if he wasn't in love with her, if kissing her was boring, and if the thought of doing any of that adult bed stuff with her was gross, he could make her happy and that was what mattered.

The only thing that mattered was making the girl in your life happy…and Sho was trying as hard as he could to make the girl in his life happy…both of the girls….he just wasn't very good at it.


	386. Brushing Your Hair

Daughter had such soft hair.

He had never noticed, before, how soft her hair was. How it felt when it slipped through his fingers. Her hair was so long and thick and soft and…and he just could not get enough of this. He couldn't get enough of the feel of her hair, the softness of it, and he wanted nothing more than to sit there running his fingers through his hair for the entire day. For the entire week. For the entire month. For the entire year. He wanted to spend the rest of his life working his fingers through her hair…and being near her…she was just so…so soft and warm and…and just…

She was so perfect.

"You are so perfect. Your hair is so soft…how have I not noticed this before?" said Suzuki as he ran his hands through Daughter's hair. They were still in the living room, he had no idea how long they had been there for, and he didn't care. They had eaten lunch and now they were watching one of her movies, the one about the ice queen but it was a sequel…which was not even close to measuring up to the original, and he was just…so happy to be near her. He was just so happy in general. There was a light feeling…an unfettered sort of feeling…but also a foggy sort of feeling. Like….like deep thoughts were difficult right now…the future was difficult. The future had been this ever present…thing…which had weighed down on him for as long as he could remember….now it was just…lost in this fog…and he was lost in the fog…or maybe on top of the fog…since he felt so light…

So very light.

"I know, dad, you said that already." Said Mob as she forced everything to stay put where it was. Everything in the room, from the couch to the TV to the pencils that Sho left on the floor were trying to listen to dad and defy gravity…well now all that had to listen to her and defy dad. He was still so out of it….and she didn't know why. They had both smoked the same and she felt fine, kind of annoyed really, but he had been talking in circles and playing with her hair for the past two and a half movies. It didn't make any sense. They should have been on the same level but he was acting…well really stoned…and she was normal. He was older than her. She should have been the stoned one and then dad should have been the normal one…

Maybe his tolerance was just really bad.

That would have made the most sense. She loved her dad, she really did, but…well maybe she shouldn't have smoked him up. She hadn't thought that he would actually have taken her up on her offer. He hated smoking and stuff and she had thought that after she offered he would have wanted to go somewhere else…or something. He would have gone to work or to his room and left her alone to smoke and relax and deal with this annoying and gross thing that was happening to her. But no. He had decided to smoke, well she had asked him to, and then he had gotten so high that he was stoned and now not only did she have to deal with what was happening to her she had to deal with him now too.

Dad really needed to learn about moderation.

"Oh…well it's true. Your hair is long and soft and perfect and I love it. I love you. I love everything about you. Did you know that? I remember that you wanted me to tell you that. It's always been difficult for me. I try to speak as precisely as possible and love just does not encompass all that I feel for you. Have I told you that?" asked Suzuki. He can tell her anything. He knows that he can tell her anything. She will listen to anything he tell her. She will always be there and she will always listen. It's alright to tell her these things. She will not judge him. She will not tell him that he's being weak. She will not tell him that he's being ridiculous. She will not be anything other than there and soft and loving towards him…and he loved how loving she was…

He loved her.

He pulled her close and pressed his face against the top of her hair. She smelled…well she smelled vaguely of blackberries but also her shampoo…and also she was so soft and…and she should have smelled of cinnamon and artificial berries…but that was how Masami had smelled. She was not Masami. When he closed his eyes he almost expected to see Masami but when he opened them he expected to see Daughter.

Shigeko.

He could see her and feel her and…and this was so perfect and she was so perfect and…and he reached behind himself. He could feel a tag at the back of his neck even though this was a tagless undershirt. He specifically only wore tagless undershirts. He had gotten out of his button down, it had been driving him insane, and now the phantom tag of his undershirt was driving him insane, and he was insane because there was no tag. He was just…he didn't know. He got back to normal. He took his hand from the back of his neck and used it to pull Daughter close.

She was so warm and soft and small and perfect….and he loved her so much.

"Yes, dad, you told me that already. I remember. You told me ten minutes ago." Said Mob. She wanted to sigh and roll her eyes. She had never wanted to do that before. She had seen Minori do it, though, when her dad asked her to do stuff or not to do stuff…when she had told her dad that he was being annoying. Mob hadn't been able to understand it, then, why Minori would do that….but now she got it.

Dad was very annoying when he was stoned.

Or maybe he was just high, now, because it seemed like he was coming down. He had been very clingy and cuddly and smothery before but now…well now he was clingy and cuddly and smothery but he wasn't using her as a pillow…so that was good. He was just making knots in her hair and telling her how much he loved her and how soft her hair was…and she knew that he loved her and that he was just showing his love as best as he could…but this was still just…kind of annoying.

"Oh…well now I'm telling you again. I love you. I love you so much and I care for you and, really, caring for you is what it is…and you are so small….very small. You were very small when I met you, you know. You were so small that I could lift you…but now I cannot…because you're eleven now. You're eleven and very large…well eleven year old sized…but it's nice to see that you still like the ice queen. This is good." Said Suzuki. She was there and she was small and she was still his…and he had no idea what he had even been worried about. Of course she was stull his. She would always be his. There was a part of him, he supposed, that was completely insane. The part of him that looked at her and didn't see the Daughter that he had raised, the person he would spend his life with, but instead another person who would leave him. Another person who could have been plotting her escape right now. He would have had no way of knowing that she wanted to go, no way of looking into her mind and seeing her plans, and that…that part of him that thought that she even had those sorts of plans in the first place was completely insane.

She would never leave him.

She had said so. Masami….she had never promised that she would never go. That was just something that he had assumed came with the marriage. Marriage was a forever commitment. You met your most perfect person and built a life with them. You gave her a house and children and she took care of your house and your children and then that was it. That was marriage. Happily ever after like in one of Daughter's movies…but life and art were two separate universes. Wives could leave. His wife…she had left….and also he had been unfaithful towards her…but Daughter…she would never leave him and he would never be unfaithful towards her so the part of him that worried, the part of him that looked at her and saw someone else who could go, was insane.

So in order to be sane he had to ignore that part of himself. Simple.

"Thanks Dad, I care about you too…now come. Let's watch Frozen." Said Mob. She knew that he cared about her. He had been telling her over and over and over again that he cared about her…and that was all that she had wanted. All that she had wanted for so many years. She had felt, before, like he didn't love her or Sho. That he was just this mean sort of person who was also her dad and didn't even know how to say 'I love you' and stuff like that…so she should have been happy that he loved her. That he could say it. She should have been happy but also…also she just…sort of…loved her dad very much but also was very annoyed and…

And she just wanted to watch Frozen.

Her stomach hurt. It felt like, every so often, someone was poking her in the stomach with a fork. Like someone's hand was inside of her organs and was poking them with a fork…and then when he got bored of poking her inside the hand turned the fork around like it was whisking eggs…and also she felt gross. She was sitting in something that felt like a diaper full of her own blood and it was hot and gross and…and just annoying…and dad was making the whole thing even more annoying than it ever had to be. She loved him, she really did….

But also she just wanted to relax and watch Frozen and wait for her stupid period to just be over with already!

"When I rule the world I'm going to make a sequel for you." Said Suzuki. He nodded to himself as he twisted his fingers in her hair. He would make a sequel because this needed a sequel. This needed several sequels. How was the economy going to take the short ice age the queen had made? He'd imagined that all the crops and fish would have died….maybe an ice based economy? But that was a terrible idea. The entire economy could not rest on the shoulders of one person? Also how was the younger sister going to take this? Her sister had powers…but then again if one child had powers then usually most siblings also had powers….and also she must have had fire powers….or maybe life powers since she was related to the princess of Corona. The one with the very long hair which looked very soft and beautiful but also it was nothing like Daughter's hair. Her hair was so perfect and long and he could have spent the rest of his life sitting there weaving his fingers through her hair.

"Thanks dad, I would like that a lot….now come on. Let's watch." Said Mob. She didn't want to get into this part. Dad…well he liked Frozen. Stoned dad liked Frozen. Stoned dad also thought way too much. She knew what was coming next. Now she was going to have to listen to all of his ideas about Frozen and…and she loved her dad more than any other dad in the whole world….but also dad was just…he was kind of annoying right now…even though he was sharing in what she loved he still could be very annoying…especially when he was stoned.

"In this sequel the younger sister will have fire powers. That would make the most sense. The older sister has ice powers and usually powers come for both siblings, did you know that? If you have one child then the next one you have will have powers as well. We tend to make only children, that's the problem…but the birth rate here is very low. Did you know that?" asked Suzuki as he ran his fingers up and down through Daughter's hair. He wondered what her children would be like. Well they would take after her, obviously, and they would have powers…and he knew that he would love her children just as much as he loved her. They would be small and warm and soft like her and they would have powers and he would teach them how to control their powers just like he taught her

"Yes dad, you told me before. Japanese people aren't making enough babies." Said Mob. Dad had said…and said…and said that the country was underpopulated and that he couldn't understand why people weren't having big families. He said that he didn't understand why his parents only had one child and he didn't understand why mom had only wanted to have one child. Dad was really stoned if he was even forgetting how many kids he had…and Mob needed to teach him about moderation later, not now, now she just wanted him to…well she knew that she was being mean but she wanted dad to just be quiet for five minutes so she could hear the movie already!

"That's true….but espers especially. Have lots of children, Daughter, lots and lots of children. They'll all have powers. Like the ice queen and her sister. In the future I'll make you a sequel and in the sequel her sister will have fire powers. It just makes sense…or maybe life powers since the princess with the long hair has life powers…did I tell you that I think that they're related? Did I tell you that?" asked Suzuki. He wondered if she had noticed that detail. She probably did. She was so intelligent…and he loved that about her. She was so like Masami in that way…well she was not Masami's blood child but she was so like her…but also she was better because she would never leave him. She was not sitting there plotting her escape, no, she was sitting there happy to be with him because she loved him and he loved her and they loved each other and there was just so much love and trust and caring between them and…and he was a whole and complete person on his own…and he knew that she needed to learn to be independent but…but maybe they could be complete together…and independent together…..that would have been just wonderful…

"Yes dad…you told me that you saw Rapunzel and Flynn on their way to Else's coronation…and then you told me that they were related…and then you started playing with my hair. You told me already." Said Mob. She wanted to be like Sho and tell him to shut up….but that would have been wrong. She was not going to be mean to dad, first of all, because he was her dad and she loved him and she was the one who had gotten him stoned in the first place. She also was not going to tell him to shut up because, second of all, she had told Sho never to do that because it was mean and if she did things that she told Sho not to do then she would have been a bad big sister…and she was not a bad big sister. She was a good big sister and a good Daughter so she was going to be nice…even though she wanted to tell dad to get out of here so she could lay down and wait for this whole…period thing…to be over!

"Oh. Alright. Did I tell you that you have beautiful hair? And that it's incredibly soft?" asked Suzuki. Maybe he was repeating himself…he got the feeling that he was repeating himself…but these were the thoughts that he had managed to pull out of the fog of his mind. She had beautiful hair, he loved her, and there must have been a world of lore out there to explore in the ice queen mythos. He just…thoughts were a bit difficult….but he had trouble even worrying about that. How could he worry about anything when Shigeko was near?

"Yes dad, you've said that already…and you've been making knots in my hair, too, a lot of knots." Said Mob. Ok, now she had been a little bit mean there….but she was not in the mood to go around and around and around with dad like this in circles. She needed to smoke. She needed a drink. That was what she needed but she couldn't even have any of that because dad would want some too and then he would go back to being all clingy and smothery and cuddly…and she didn't want that….and he was coming down so it would have made no sense for him to get more stoned but….but she was tired and her stomach hurt and she felt gross and now there were knots in her hair!

And, really, the knots were the one step too far.

"I apologize. That wasn't my intention. You have such soft hair and-" said Suzuki. He tried to smooth out any knots that were there. He couldn't see any but this was not his hair. This was her hair and she had long hair because she was a woman and they had very long hair and Masami had always complained about knots, which was why he had stopped touching her hair, and it was such a gift to be able to touch Daughter's hair and he had ruined it and now she would want to go and…and he had no idea if he could handle that.

"Dad…do you want to brush my hair and not just play with it?" asked Mob. She could feel dad's aura…well she'd been feeling that aura for a while, and she loved him…and she had been mean to him. She had been mean to he own dad and…and she shouldn't have done that. Now he had to be nice to her dad, not mean to him, and…and if he wanted to play with her hair then he may have liked brushing it. She didn't much want to have her hair brushed right now but…well if he wanted to brush her hair and if it made him happy then she would let him brush her hair.

"Yes, yes, I can do that for you. I can anything for you. I love you so much and-" said Suzuki. He would do that for her. He was sorry and he would fix this and he didn't like getting direct orders from people, let alone his own Daughter, but he did like being told what to do….because then he wouldn't have to think. She wasn't cross with him…well she was….but he could fix it. He knew that she should have been the one who should have been worried about fixing things with him but…well that was the way it would have been if she had been anyone else…but she was not anyone else. She was his Daughter and he loved her and…and he would do whatever she asked of him.

Even brushing the knots out of her hair for her.

"Here. Start from the top and go to the bottom…um…a hundred times on each part…and you should count out loud so you don't lose track." Said Mob as she used her powers to get her hairbrush from the bathroom. She didn't usually brush her hair a hundred times on each side, she didn't really have time for all of that, but…well it would keep dad busy. Counting, too, would keep him busy. Busy and quiet. She loved her dad and she loved talking to him and having him love her but…well she also needed some peace and quiet. She felt sort of like Minegishi must have. She knew, now, why they spent so much time laying down on the couch watching TV and drinking and smoking. She knew what Minegishi went through and…well she also knew what they were so annoyed with everyone when they were like this.

Because, really, dad was being kind of sort of very annoying right now…and she needed a drink.

"Yes…yes….I can do that….one….two….three….four…." said Suzuki as he took her brush and he started running it through her hair. This was….this felt nice. He could sort of imagine how it felt…and it was nice. It was certainly nice to be able to just…brush her hair like this. This felt so nice and…and he had seen Masami doing this before. She used to brush out her hair every single night and every single morning. He had thought, before, that they entire process looked extremely tedious but…well now he realized how…how relaxing it was. How soothing. The repetitive motion of it…the repetitive motion and the counting and…and this was just…he sort of wished that he had hair long enough to brush…but his hair did not do this…

His hair stood up.

Mother used to brush his hair for him, too, when he had been smaller. His hair was like Son's, it wanted to stand straight up, and mother….well she hadn't let him but his hair down very short when he had been young. She had, instead, smoothed his hair down with a brush and some pomade when he had been small. She hadn't run the brush through his hair, no, she had used it to smooth his hair down so it laid down flat aside from the fringe…and he'd worn his hair like that until he had been old enough to have it cut down as short as it was not…and it had been so hard to find someone who even knew how to begin to cut his hair….God…he hated his hair so much….

But he loved his Daughter's hair more than anything else in the world.

"You know you really have beautiful hair and-" said Suzuki as he ran the brush through her hair. It was so long and black and it laid down so flat and it was so perfect and he hoped that she never cut it…because it was as perfect as she was…and there was no one more perfect in this world than her.

"Dad, you stopped counting." Said Mob as she felt the brush stop moving through her hair. Dad wasn't the best at brushing hair, he was taking the sections way too big, but at least he had been brushing and not talking. Now he was talking and not brushing again…and she just…she wanted to rest but…but he just wouldn't let her. Dad never talked this much…but stoned dad was not normal dad…and she should not have been complaining. This was her fault, she was the one who had smoked with him, and she was the one who had let him smoke that much in the first place. Obviously he didn't know anything about moderation.

"I apologize, I apologize….back to the beginning. One….another one makes two….two to the power of one makes two…any number raised to one equals itself…two to the second if four…." Said Suzuki as he worked. He worked and he counted and he counted as he worked. This was…this was good, very good. He liked numbers and he liked her and he liked….he liked this. This was such a simple task, such a repetitive task, and he knew that he should have been bored but…but he found himself enjoying this. He found himself enjoying sitting there brushing her hair and….and he just could not imagine anything better than this. Brushing her hair.

She had such soft hair.


	387. Back Pain, Nighttime Visit, The Truth

Suzuki's back was killing him.

So, really, he had to go and see Fukuda. That made sense. That was thing which he had to do. That was a thing which it would have made sense to do. So that was what he was going to do. He was going to go and see Fukuda and he was going to get his back hurt…and he just…this was what he was doing right now. He had lost a whole day and…and that didn't make sense…so now he was going to just…go and see Fukuda and get his back fixed. He knew that it would have made sense, much more sense, to have Fukuda come to him but…

He wanted to go and see Fukuda.

Daughter didn't like him anymore so…so it made sense for him not to ask Fukuda to come over. Daughter was going through enough and…and she just didn't need any extra stress. She was suffering and she didn't need to be stressed and….and his thoughts were still foggy. Fukuda could fix that. Fukuda could fix that so he was going to see him. That was all. It was…it was nice to be out of the house. He knew that he had spent the whole day inside with Daughter, he had memories of their day together, so he should not have been so startled when he looked out the window and saw that the sun had gone down…and night had come. He knew that he should not have been startled….

But he had been.

He had put his head down onto Daughter's stomach, closed his eyes, and then he woke up hunched over with his back killing him and Daughter sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner with Son. They had pizza. She had gotten him one with all of the toppings, because really what was the point of pizza without toppings, but he just…he had eaten so much already and…and he could remember being ravenously hungry and…and he just…he needed a moment. He needed space. He needed to put some space between them…just a bit of space…just a few houses of space…not because he was angry with her but…God…he had said so much…

And he didn't even fully remember what he had said.

That was the worst part. He remembered feeling very good, he remembered not caring that he had lost control, and he remembered….well he had no idea the specifics of what he had said but he knew that he hadn't censored himself and…and he had spoken in circles and he tended to do when he did not censor himself…and Daughter had heard all of it and…

And he just needed to put some space between the two of them.

Which was what had brought him to Fukuda's house. Well they were all his houses, he was the President after all, but this was the one that Fukuda lived in. He never wanted to live right next door and Fukuda could understand that. They had spent all of university living right on top of each other, it was good to have some space, and right now…well he knew that he needed some space but…but also he knew that he needed to get his back sorted out and his head sorted out too. So he just…well he wanted to just let himself in, and he could have if he wanted to, but that would have been rude. He knocked on the door and waited. He could feel Fukuda, he knew that he was home, and he just…he really needed to see Fukuda…

And he hated needing people.

He didn't have to wait long, he knew objectively that it hadn't been a long time, but it felt like a long time. It felt like time was creeping along as slowly as humanly possible. Just one click and then another and then another. He almost looked down at his watch before he realized that he hadn't worn one in years. He had a phone now, and he had been about to pull it out of his pocket, when the door opened suddenly…and there was Fukuda.

"Fukuda, my back is killing me. Fix it." Said Suzuki. There. It was best to get right to the point, like when they had been children. When they had been younger they had visited each other often and Suzuki had always gotten right to the point of his visits. He would knock on Fukuda's door and his mother would open it and he would say something like 'Is Fukuda-kun home? I want to socialize with him' or something like that. He knew that Fukuda was home, he always knew when Fukuda was home, but manners were very important. They had been then and they were now.

Which was why he took his shoes off when he came in.

He took his shoes off and faced them the right way as he entered. He couldn't believe himself sometimes. His back felt like someone had kicked him right in the middle of his spine, he had fallen asleep slumped over and now he was paying for it, and he just…he needed to get this fixed…but he was not in such a hurry that he forgot basic manners. He let himself be led into the living room, just like his own only not blue, and he was sat down on a couch. Overly soft. That was how Fukuda liked things, overly soft.

Maybe because he didn't have to worry about his back.

He looked about ten or so years older than he actually was. Maybe more. Suzuki didn't know. At some point Fukuda had just stopped aging. Suzuki on the other hand…he would feel time taking it's toll. Time did tend to destroy your body and eventually steal your soul after all. First it stole your ability to sleep slumped over. He had been able to spend entire nights slumped over his desk when he had been a child and later on slumped over in the library when he got to university. Now…well now he had to pay for it…

But at least he had Fukuda around to fix it.

"There you go, Suzuki, that should feel better….but there's only so much I can do. You know that I-" said Fukuda. Suzuki…this was odd. This was odd and he just…well he had to tread carefully. He knew Suzuki and he never knew him to…well to come to him, physically, like this. Suzuki had come to him without even calling…like they were kids. He'd just about had a heart attack when he felt Suzuki coming, just like they were kids, because…well it was…a lot…

All of it.

He was…he smelled like…well like Shigeko. Skunky blackberries…and he just…needed to keep calm. He had spent the day with Shigeko, which made sense she was going through a lot, but to…well even to just be near her when she smoked. He knew how Suzuki felt about regular smoking…and he also knew that Suzuki knew better than to smoke…because they had gone to university together and he remembered what had happened when he and Suzuki had tried smoking….all of what had happened…and so much could have gone wrong….

Fukuda…had no choice but to deal with this…and that was what he was going to do. Deal with this.

"You can't reverse the aging process, I'm well aware of that. Thank you for fixing my back. I'll be leaving you alone now. Goodnight." Said Suzuki. He got up…too quickly. He so wished that there was some way to reverse the aging process….but at least the brain fog was gone. At least he could think again. At least he could…he still couldn't fully remember. He could remember that he had been very happy and warm and at peace and…and also he remembered the state that the house had been in. He had just gotten the house put back in order…and now it was a mess…but at least not destroyed….so that was good. That was….something.

"Wait…do you want to stay for dinner?" asked Fukuda. He needed to keep Suzuki here just a little longer, just long enough to be able to understand what had happened, because right now his mind was going to a terrible place. He was thinking that Suzuki had done the stupidest thing that he could have possibly done. He knew Suzuki and he knew that Suzuki had spent thirty years going on and on and on about how important it was to keep control….

And he knew that he could lose control, easily, when he got up to…what his daughter got up to.

"What are you eating?" asked Suzuki. He…maybe wanted to stay. Maybe he wanted to…to put some space between himself and his children. Son had been extremely unpleasant that morning and Daughter…well he and Daughter had spent the day together…and it had been a very good day…at least he got the feeling that he had. That was all that he had, feelings, not memories…not clear ones. He remembered holding her and talking to her and…and that was what he had enjoyed and…and also he just…he remembered that he had run his mouth…and he had no idea how she felt about that….about what he had said…

So maybe he should just have stayed and had dinner with Fukuda.

"Pork curry." Said Fukuda. He wished that Suzuki had given him some warning that he would just be showing up out of the blue…and that he had been, possibly, smoking with his eleven year old Daughter…absurd. The thought was completely absurd. An eleven year old girl getting her forty four year old father high. It was completely absurd and….and he could have laughed if this hadn't been so real and so serious and…

And this was his life.

This was what his life had become. This wasn't so different than what his life had been, before, when they had kids. Suzuki and him had shared more meals together than they had apart…and especially after crises…and what had happened with Shigeko had been a crisis. The massive freak out from earlier and also, maybe, him smoking with her. He knew what it felt like, curing intoxication, and maybe he had just been too near her when she had been smoking. Youi could get high from that, right? He honestly had no idea. He had never been able to get intoxicated as easily as other people so it had never really been his scene…or Suzuki's…he should have known better…

He was supposed to be the smart one out of the two of them.

"No thank you. The children have pizza…but I'm not even hungry. I was ravenous earlier, even more so than when I had been growing, and now…well now I feel vaguely, and unpleasantly, full." Said Suzuki. He really didn't want to eat….and also he wasn't a fan of curry. He would eat it if he had to but he preferred omelets…anything with eggs….but also he just was not that hungry. He had eaten too much…and also unripe berries…which he should not have been eating. He should have watched what he had eaten. Unsweet cheesecake and unripe berries…what was wrong with him? It was like his mind had completely left his body, he had completely taken leave of his senses, and now…well not he had no idea what he wanted to do…

But he knew that he did not want to eat pork curry.

"That's weird. It's not like you to skip dinner." Said Fukuda. He stood up, too, and…and he just….well he could just come out and ask Suzuki if he had been smoking. It wasn't like he was going to lie, he didn't know how to lie, but he could get very pissed off if Fukuda asked him something that he wouldn't want to answer….and his aura had been hanging over everything earlier…and it was still hanging around…and that could have been residual from smoking or he could have been about to explode…this was uncharted territory…and Fukuda had no idea what to do…

So he would just do his best and hope that nobody wound up dead.

"I know. I've been…very odd today…but thank you for fixing that. Getting rid of the fog. I can think clearly again…so thank you." Said Suzuki. Daughter wanted him to thank people, she liked it when he thanked people, and he…he liked making her happy. Also it was polite and he knew how to be polite. He knew that he had to be polite. He knew…he knew that he had to think about what he did and said…and he knew that he just…the fog was gone and he could think again and…and he was going to stop thinking about….about everything. Tomorrow. He would think about it tomorrow or….or the next day…or now…he didn't know.

"You're welcome…and…listen, you can live your life however you want to-" said Fukuda. He knew that he was on dangerous ground but he had to say something. Suzuki….well he was a pushover when it came to Shigeko. He hated telling her what to do…and really who could tell her what to do? Well her own father but he was more like a partner than a father…and she could do whatever she wanted…but she should not have been dragging her father into it…and she had BETTER not have been dragging Sho into all of that too.

Not that he knew what he could even do about this…but he could at least…talk to Suzuki…if that would even do anything.

"I know that I can." Said Suzuki. He did not like being told how to live his life…and he knew that Fukuda was going to tell him not to sleep slumped over like he had. He was going to tell him, again, that he was getting older and that he needed to take better care of himself. He knew that he shouldn't have been sleeping slumped over and he didn't need anyone telling him that even if it did come from a place of concern. A place of overstepping concern.

"And I know that you can too but just…a word of advice? As someone who's known you for most of your life?" asked Fukuda. He was standing in front of Suzuki…but there was some distance between them. There had been distance between them for some time, if he felt like being philosophical, but this was not the time or the place for philosophy….or misplaced nostalgia. There had been a time, years and years ago, when Suzuki had come back from some date he had been on with some woman who didn't matter anymore and he had dragged Fukuda out of bed, sat him down on the living room couch, and went over in great detail some math thing that Fukuda had not been able to comprehend. He had also made a complete mess out of their apartment, and every other apartment, and the next day everyone had been talking about the curious earthquake that had been localized around their building….and he should not have been nostalgic about that time….

Because, really, it could have been much worse than a small localized earthquake.

"Speak freely." Said Suzuki. He knew that a lecture was coming…and he would allow this. Fukuda was a healer, he made people better, and also he was something of a worrier. Sort of like Hatori was. He wondered how they were getting on these days. Maybe he could go and ask Hatori. He…he could have gone home…but also he could have spent time with Hatori…and if he was going around visiting people….well maybe he could visit Hatori too…

Or maybe he could just go home. He didn't know. He'd figure it out later.

"Maybe getting high with Shigeko isn't the best thing to do." Said Fukuda. There. He had bit the bullet. He but the bullet and just…got it out there. He kept his aura still. He kept his aura very still and tried not to brace himself. He didn't know how to put up a barrier even though most espers could, but sometimes he felt like he was trying to. It might have just been an instinct. Well he could ignore it. He had gotten good, over the years, at ignoring his instincts no matter how right they had been.

"I don't follow." Said Suzuki. He knew what it meant, to get high, but…well he hadn't been. He had done that, before, back in university. Very thin cigarettes which were not cigarettes…and also he remembered what it had been like…and the brain fog had been…well it was like that but…well he just did not follow.

"I mean…we tried a couple of times back when we were kids and…well you know that things like that don't agree with you. You lose control and…and I guess that she doesn't because she's not yours by blood so her body works differently but…just maybe don't get high with her." said Fukuda. Shigeko…how she hadn't lost control and killed everyone yet was simply beyond him. She smoked and drank all the time and she was a very small girl, well not anymore, but still. It was amazing that she hadn't lost control and killed everyone. She could do it. The Eighth Division was a testament to that….and she knew how dangerous it was to lose control of her powers…so why would she just…just try and get her father involved in all of that.

"I…really don't follow." Said Suzuki. He knew Daughter and he knew that…well she knew better than to do something like that. Something that could make her lose control. He had been telling her for her entire life that she had to be careful not to lose control and…and she wouldn't…she would have told him if she was smoking something like that….right?

"Well…you were smoking with your daughter today, right?" said Fukuda. Maybe he had this whole thing wrong. Maybe he had just picked up the smell from her, or something, he didn't know what went on with them in that house during the day. He had been chained to a desk all day doing not only his work but Suzuki's too….so he had no idea what they had been getting up to.

"Vaping, which is different. She said so anyway…but what does that have to do with anything?" asked Suzuki. You couldn't vape marijuana. Fukuda was wrong. Daughter…she would not have done something like that. She knew that she needed to be careful not to…to just….to just play around like that. Mess with her control like that. She had destroyed the entire Eighth Division on accident just because she had been frightened…and he knew what it was to lose control and…and she knew that he could not lose control…the entire house had been painted blue because she had lost control…and so had he….and she knew better than that. He knew her and he knew that she knew better than that. She had to. She was his Daughter.

"You…know what she's vaping…right?" asked Fukuda. Could Suzuki have just not…realized it yet? He was smart…when it came to books…but he knew very little about anything other than…well academics and plotting to take over the world. Fukuda….he would have completely believed that Suzuki had no idea that his Daughter regularly smoked marijuana.

"She said hash oil." Said Suzuki. He…had no idea what that was but…but he would have noticed if she had gotten herself into that state and….and she would have told him if she had been planning on getting him into that state, too. She knew that he could not be in that state…or any state…and it would have made sense…due to how he had been acting…and….and also it didn't make sense because….she would not have…he just…he didn't know. He really didn't know.

"And you know that hash oil is just a very concentrated form of…well….marijuana….right?" asked Fukuda. He could have heard a pin drop. Well for a moment. He heard something drop…and then shatter…and now he had a mess to clean up…but at least Suzuki hadn't exploded so….well at least that was a victory….or something. He didn't know. He really…he had no idea what to do. Suzuki…hadn't known…and now he knew and Shigeko…well she was just like him and he had been very disloyal to her just now…if she expected his loyalty…but he was useful to her. There. He was useful to her so she wouldn't do anything to him…also Sho would never have let her do anything to him and she still loved Sho…so he would be fine….

"Obviously I did not…and…I have no idea why she would…do something like that." Said Suzuki after a moment. He needed to collect his thoughts. She had been smoking….she had been smoking those for YEARS now. He had seen her vaping…and she hadn't lied to him…but he felt vaguely like he had been lied to. Daughter…well she had told him the truth of what she was vaping but…but also she hadn't told him what it was…what it was composed of….

But he loved her and he could not be angry with her.

"She does it to control her powers, I heard, and probably just to get high. I mean I don't think that someone her age has any business getting high but, hey, I'm not a father and if you think that she's old enough to be making these choices then she's old enough to be making these choices." Said Fukuda. There. Now maybe that would be enough to keep Suzuki from…from punishing her…if they even still had that sort of relationship. He didn't know. He just knew that he was walking on a tightrope and any misstep would be the end of him. Shigeko on one side, Suzuki on the other, and him in the middle.

So, really, just another day for him.

"Yes…she….she is. Excuse me. Thank you very much for your help…but excuse me." Said Suzuki. He left. He remembered his shoes and he left. He needed….he didn't know what to do. He didn't know what he needed to do. Part of him wanted to take her and shake her and tell her that she was never to do that again. That she was playing with something that was not…not a plaything. Her mind was not a plaything and…and that brain fog was not good for her. That brain fog…it made it difficult to control her powers and…and he knew that it made it difficult to control his powers…and he had lost control. He had lost control and…and he hadn't even minded….and that….

That could have been dangerous.

He could have hurt her! She knew-no. No, she didn't know. She could not know. If she knew then he should have been angry with her but if she didn't know then there was no way that he could be angry with her. This was his Daughter and he loved her and when he loved someone he could not be angry with them. He was not angry with her. He was…he wasn't anything. Fukuda had made a point. Daughter was an adult now. She was…well reproductively she was an adult….and also she could make her own choices…

She was young but not a child.

She could…she knew her own body. She was not his blood. She was his but she was also not his. She was….she came from different people entirely. She had a physiology which was different from his and…and they may have had different power sets, similar but different, and…and they were both espers but she was an entirely different person. She was a different person and…and he was not angry with her for what she had done…or what she had shared with him….

Because he loved her and he could not be angry with her.

Yes. There. All of his feelings of anger had drifted away as he came into his house. The children had finished dinner now. Son was in the bath, he always took a bath after dinner, and Daughter was in the kitchen rinsing plates. They had a dishwasher now, a blue one which had been very hard to find, and she had to rinse the plates before she put them in. He remembered that…and he…he was happy that she…she could do all of this on her own. He would not have been able to run a household at eleven, he had been too busy with his own things, but she…she took good care of her family and….and he could…he trusted her judgment.

He trusted his Daughter.

"Hi dad. There's leftover pizza in the refrigerator. I can heat it up if you get hungry." Said Mob as she rinsed her and Sho's plates. She hoped that dad wasn't planning on picking her up and carrying her to the couch again. She loved him, she really did, but right now…right now she just wanted to be on her own…or at least with Sho. Just…she'd been with dad all day. It had been…a lot.

"Daughter….I'm not hungry…and….do you smoke marijuana?" asked Suzuki. There. He had asked her. She…her aura didn't flare….and she was calm and…well he had been expecting something else. Denial. Defensiveness. Just…not calmness….but then again what did he know about people?

"Yeah…and if you want to smoke with me again then we can do it tomorrow, ok?" asked Mob. She got the feeling that she had another Sho on her hands…and she didn't want another Sho on her hands. She loved her brother and she loved to take care of him…but he was her brother, not her dad, and she didn't want to teach her own dad moderation.

"I…no thank you just….I had a nice day with you….Shigeko. Goodnight." Said Suzuki. Shigeko was older. She was older and she knew….she knew her own…self….and she could take care of herself. He didn't know. He was going to bed.

His back….was killing him again.


	388. Dark Chocolate and Best Friends

There was a one kilo block of dark chocolate in Minegishi's room.

They had found it on their doorstep that morning. This had been a gift from President Suzuki. He had given them this and….well they were going to eat it. This was a food and food was meant to be eaten so that was what they were going to do. This was…well it was weird as hell but…well it was just a thank you for taking care of Mob in her time of need…and also in general. They had been taking care of Mob for a while now….sort of like a babysitter or something….

Minegishi was not a babysitter….and Mob didn't need one anyone.

Minegishi was Mob's friend. They had started out as her babysitter/chlorokinesis teacher but had wound up as her friend…and they were happy with the way things were now. They had an eleven year old best friend. Someone to waste the days away with….which was good because they had literally nothing else to do with their days. They used to travel to exotic places and kill exotic people. Now they went wherever the Suzuki family went and killed time with their eleven year old best friend.

And they wouldn't have had it any other way.

It went without saying that they would gladly spend their days with Mob, out of all the people they were forced to spend time with Mob was the most mature and had the most sense, so it was just…odd that Suzuki had felt the need to tell Minegishi to look after Mob. To watch over her as if she was their own child. Those were his exact words. As if he were their own. Minegishi….was not going to expend precious energy trying to understand how that man's mind worked. There was no understanding it. He was a weirdo plain and simple.

So, of course, he would do weird things.

"Mob, stop making faces. It's not that bad." Said Minegishi as they broke off another piece off of the massive block of unsweetened dark chocolate. This was good chocolate, no sugar, but that was only Minegishi's opinion, it seemed, based on the faces Mob had been pulling all day.

"It's not bad at all…I mean it's nice…because dad got you this…and he's a nice person…so it's nice." Said Mob as she ate a piece of the giant chocolate block dad had gotten Minegishi. She had told dad what they would have liked, chocolate and a new door and a book and stuff, and now they had all of that stuff…and that was so nice of him. He could be nice when he wanted to be and maybe if he was nice enough times people would like him better….or at all.

"Yeah….why did he do this for me again?" asked Minegishi. If anyone knew the inner workings of Suzuki's mind it was his Daughter. They had woken up to a new door and a massive block of chocolate and zero explanation. Not that their great and powerful leader needed to explain himself to the mere mortals who surrounded him or anything like that, no, that would have been too much.

"Because you helped me when I got my period. He said that he wanted to reward you and I told him about things you wanted." Said Mob as she tried to eat some more of the very bitter chocolate…and it was hard…but she was going to because Minegishi was sharing this with her and she was going to be polite to her friend.

"Well that would explain the chocolates and the solid metal door." Said Minegishi. They glanced over at their new, and unnecessarily strong, door. They doubted that it could keep Mob's little brother out if he really put his mind to it, or he got Ryou to teleport him in, but it was the thought that counted…and Minegishi…well they still didn't fully understand the thought. Suzuki gave out promotions, not chocolates and doors, and this was…very…strange. Strange but…well not worrying…at least they didn't think that they needed to worry. They were probably just looking way too much into this…not that there was even anything to look into.

"It can't be kicked down. Now nobody will ever be able to get into your room again…and I'm sure that if he was here then he would have told you that he was sorry." said Mob. She knew that Sho hadn't meant it, he had just been scared, but she also knew that him being scared didn't change what he did to Minegishi. She was going tell him that he had to say sorry…but later. She had barely gotten him to leave her alone today. Not that she wanted to be apart from him or anything, no not at all, but he had been trying to carry her around and chew her food for her…and that had been too much. She was fine. She wasn't dying, she knew that she wasn't dying, and she had told Sho that she wasn't dying….but he didn't believe her. Boys could be weird about this, Minegishi had said, and Mob….well she would let Sho be weird since this was not the thing to talk to her little brother about.

"Somehow I doubt that." Said Minegishi. They knew that Mob's little brother wasn't sorry…and they didn't care. They were not going to chase down a ten year old for an apology. He had been freaking out and, yeah, he had kicked down their door like a little Minegishi didn't even know what…but he was being raised by a child so he could be excused…for now. While he was a little boy. One day he would grow up and then he would get his…or not. It depended on if Minegishi was still pissed about this in ten years.

"No, he would say sorry…if I made him. I mean asked him. I don't like to be bossy but Sho listens to me…a lot of the time." Said Mob. Sho had been doing a lot of listening lately. He had even listened when she told him to go and hang out with Shimazaki and to stop trying to carry her around on his back, which had been annoying, and also he had tried to chew her porridge for her and that had been way too much. She could still walk and eat and…and he meant well, he loved her, but she could do things for herself…and at least he had eventually figured out how to listen.

"You don't have to make him apologize. Just help me eat this before either the ants get to it…or Ryou does." Said Minegishi. They knew that he was near. They could feel him as he popped into the kitchen. This would not last long with him around. One day he was going to have to address his relationship with food with a trained professional….and all of his other idiosyncrasies…..but today was not that day. No. He wouldn't be addressing any of his deep emotional and personality problems anytime soon.

But he would be teleporting into their room.

"What's Ryou doing?" asked Shimazaki. He'd heard his name. He had to come when he heard his name, otherwise there was no point to having a name in the first place. He was just supposed to come in, get what was left of the homemade bread, and then get back to the park so he and Sho could feed the poor starving birds. He could take a little bit of a detour to see Toshi, though, the kid would understand….well no, actually, he wouldn't…so Sho didn't need to know about this. He didn't need another reason to dislike Toshi.

There. Ryou was handling it.

He was handling this whole thing. He had everything under control. Sho was in love with him, so what? Sho was jealous of Toshi….so what? It wasn't like Sho was planning on murdering Toshi in their sleep or anything like that. So far it was just a lot of staring and pining and also he'd been sitting way too close and stuff lately…but Shimazaki was handling it. Something doing nothing was the best way to handle it. He would just do nothing until Sho got over him. Yes, that was what he would do…absolutely nothing…

And also figure out what in the hell was on Toshi's lap.

"Hopefully not stealing this block of chocolate from me." Said Minegishi as they broke off another piece of chocolate. Ryou got down onto the floor beside them. He was such a scavenger sometimes. They knew that at any moment he would reach out and hold out his hand and then they would break him off some chocolate….if he didn't steal it from them….but he never stole food from them. He knew better.

"Hey Shimazaki….where's Sho?" asked Mob as she scooted over and made room for Shimazaki. She spread her aura out…and she didn't feel him anywhere. That wasn't good. Well she didn't want him to try and pick her up and carry her again…or try and chew her food for her like she was an old person…but she liked having some idea of where he was…and if he was safe.

"Let him somewhere." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. He knew where Sho was, and he knew that he was fine, and she didn't have to worry about Sho. Shimazaki would never have let anything bad happen to him…well that tree was pretty tall….but Sho was like a cat. He usually landed on his feet.

"What…what do you mean?" asked Mob. Sho…he was smart but…but the city was big and he was small and so many things could happen to him…and she didn't want anything bad to happen to her little brother. She loved him and…and she knew that Shimazaki loved him too…but he also wasn't that good at taking care of people….and Sho wasn't that good at taking care of himself.

"He's going to be fine. Come on, have faith in your little brother." Said Shimazaki. Sho wouldn't fall out of the tree….and if he did he could always catch himself with his powers….or land on his feet. He'd be fine. Right now….well he wasn't ditching Sho…he just…wanted to know what Toshi and Mob were up to. He hadn't seen Toshi in a while. Well he'd slept next to them but they had been asleep when he crawled into bed next to them and they had been asleep when he got up, too. They may have slept badly or they may have gotten up in the middle of the night to read….he didn't know. It was just nice to see them….well to be near them….really nice….

God, he loved them so much.

"But-but-but he's little and…and anything can happen to him and-" said Mob. She was…she was not going to lose control of her powers. He loved Sho and he wasn't going to let him get hurt…he loved Sho and Sho loved him…they were best friends and best friends did not let bad things happen to each other…and she just…she was worrying about nothing. She had been doing that a lot lately. Because of everything that was happening and…and she could not wait for all of this to be over.

"Ryou, where the hell is Mob's little brother?" asked Minegishi rubbing their temples. They could feel Mob freaking out…and they did not need to deal with Mob freaking out. They had barely managed to get her ok with everything that she was going through. She did not need to worry about her little brother's wellbeing on top of worrying about herself.

"Relax, he's in a tree. We found a whole family of birds and we're going to feed them chewed up bread." Said Shimazaki. He could feel Toshi and Mob staring at him…and yeah, he knew that it was weird, but it was Sho's idea and sometimes kids had weird ideas. They were fun like that….and also it all made perfect sense. The whole thing made the best sense. Baby birds couldn't chew, because they had no teeth, so why not chew up their bread for them?

"Oh…ok. Please keep Sho safe….and out of the sun….and make sure he drinks plenty of water. He liked to drink soda instead of water but soda doesn't hydrate you like water does." Said Mob. She knew Sho and she knew that he didn't always remember to take care of himself. He was outside in the sun and he had probably been drinking soda instead of water and he had probably not taken off that coat that he had been wearing nonstop for a while…and also he sometimes fell out of trees, too, and now she had to worry about that and….

And she had a lot to worry about.

She had to worry about dad and how weird he'd been since they smoked together and she had to worry about herself and…well she had a lot of stuff about herself to worry about….and now she had to worry about Sho. Well she never stopped worrying about Sho, he was her little brother after all, but now….well now she had extra stuff to worry about. She didn't want anything extra to worry about. She had enough on her mind as it was…

She just wanted to hang out with Minegishi and eat bitter chocolate.

"Water is a liquid and soda is a liquid and rum is a liquid therefore rum coke is water. Now who wants some?" asked Shimazaki pulling a bottle of what was supposed to be half rum and half coke. Supposedly. He hadn't been paying attention to what he had been doing. He had been too focused on Toshi and how they had been asleep and how peaceful they were when they were asleep….love was hard sometimes. He would have thought that, once he admitted it to himself, it would have gotten better. It hadn't gotten better when they had said it back, either, if anything it had gotten worse. This was love. This was love and it just…did not quit. Love was…a lot of things…and it just wouldn't quit.

"Thank you Shima-" said Mob. She reached out for the bottle but Minegishi grabbed her by the wrist and shook their head. Mob…well they had said that she could drink and smoke as much as she wanted…and now they had changed their mind. Mob…was not going to fight with them. She was going to listen because….friends weren't supposed to fight. Even though they drank all the time and especially when this happened to them. She didn't know why they were treating her like a kid. Sometimes it felt like no matter how much older she got Minegishi would never stop treating her like she was a little kid. Well she wasn't. She was older, old enough to go through the same stuff that they went through, and old enough to smoke up her dad too…

But she wasn't going to fight with Minegishi.

"Sugar is poison and alcohol is poison so maybe let's not poison ourselves." Said Minegishi. Nope. Well…well not now. Mob…they had taught her a really bad coping mechanism. She was eleven and….and maybe they shouldn't have encouraged her to take up drinking. Another mistake that they could add to their never ending supply. Maybe they could backtrack….or maybe they couldn't. They knew what Mob was going through but….not hard liquor mixed with sugar water. Sugar would just make it hit her harder and then she would just end up making herself sick. Yes. That made sense.

"Come on, Toshi, let her live a little." Said Shimazaki shaking the bottle of rum coke. As far as he was concerned Mob was old enough to make her own choices when it came to this stuff. Besides, it was better she learn to drink now when she was a kid than she end up making a fool out of herself as an adult. She had been drinking since she had been eight and she was good at holding her liquor…so why not let her drink to her little heart's content?

"She'll live a lot longer if she doesn't poison herself." Said Minegishi. Ryou didn't even know the meaning of the word responsibility. Well neither had they…and if their past self could see them now they would have thought that they had lost their mind. They weren't their past self, though, they were their current self and they had to think about Mob and what was best for her…and really they would rather have had her been a little stoner than a little lush. At least she couldn't end up pickling her liver through smoking.

"I smell chocolate, Toshi, and last I checked chocolate has a shit ton of sugar in it." Said Shimazaki. He leaned forward and smelled…..yup. That was a hell of a lot of chocolate. Not the kind he was into but…well he loved chocolate. It smelled like…like chocolate. That was all. He was not remembering another depressing scene from his terrible childhood. He was fine. He was safe. Toshi was there and he was there and he was safe.

"No this chocolate doesn't have sugar in it…" said Mob. She couldn't help but stick out her tongue. She knew that Minegishi liked food that wasn't very sweet, like dad did, unless they were stoned, also like dad, but Mob liked food that was…well not everything had to be sweet…but she liked it when her chocolate was sweet.

"Let me try that." Said Shimazaki. He reached over and Toshi handed him a piece of chocolate…so that was the big rectangle that they had been holding. His hand brushed theirs. He let his barrier drop for a split second. Just long enough to feel their skin…it was soft but also vaguely sticky…but still so Toshi and if Mob hadn't been in the room…

But she was in the room so he ate the chocolate and did nothing at all to traumatize Mob in any way.

"You aren't going to like it." Said Mob. She knew that he liked sweet chocolate, well all sweet food, just like Sho did and she knew that he wouldn't like this…and he didn't like it. He stuck out his tongue and his aura got all close, closer than normal, and it didn't seem that funny but Minegishi was smiling a lot…and they were smiling at Shimazaki…and maybe they weren't smiling to make fun of him but instead because they were totally and completely in love with him and they wanted to be his theyfriend and marry him even though they didn't like marriage and relationships and then they would be happy for the rest of their lives together and they'd have babies and they'd let Mob watch the babies, probably because she was very good at taking care of babies.

"God, you were right. Bitter…why is this so bitter?" asked Shimazaki as he rubbed his tongue against his teeth. He felt Toshi shrug. God, this was such a Toshi thing…they didn't really like sugar until they did. They had said, before, that they liked bitter things because they matched how they were on the inside. He had no idea what they had been talking about. They were the sweetest person, well non Mob person, that he knew. He could have leaned over and kissed them and he would have tasted something sweet, not something better, because they were so sweet….and now he wanted to kiss them. He wanted to kiss them but Mob was right there and, well he didn't care, but Toshi did. Toshi didn't want to throw wood into the fire that they called 'the shippening' and Shimazaki….well he didn't really get it. Let her ship them, they loved each other, and that…well he would have gone and shouted it from the rooftop again but Shibata had threated to come up there and shut him up if he did that again….and he could move really fast when he wanted to...but he didn't care.

He loved Toshi, Toshi loved him, and that was what mattered the most out of everything else that had ever mattered ever.

"Because Minegishi says that sugar is poison…and they aren't high enough to forget that they don't like sugar." Said Mob. She didn't get it either. At least they weren't eating unripe berries and unsweet cheesecake, though, that had been gross. Mob…she wondered if dad had a sense of taste. A normal one. She remembered that, well for as long as she could remember, dad had always hated sweet food. Mom used to make him pancakes with no sugar at all in them, which was gross, but she had told dad that he couldn't put ketchup on them because that was super gross. Mob never told dad that he was gross…or that not everything needed ketchup…or that he was just weird. She would never have said that to her dad…and she would never have said that to her best friend either…even though Minegishi eating bitter chocolate wasn't anywhere near as weird as dad and just….everything about his eating habits.

"Yeah….that's all you guys. If you guys want me to pick you up a giant bar of normal chocolate give me a call. If not I have a bread delivery to make." Said Shimazaki. He could be alone with Toshi later. He'd hold them and kiss them….if they were up to it. If not they could cuddle and listen to music…or he could lay down with his head on their lap and they could read to him while he chewed on a dinner candle…yeah. That would have been the best. That is if he could get Sho to go home before his bedtime…not that he didn't love Sho….he just loved Toshi too and in a totally different way that Sho could never know about or he would probably lose it and finally kill someone.

"It's ok, you don't have to bring us chocolate. I'm sure if I ask my dad he'll get us another giant bar so you don't have to worry." Said Mob. She knew that sending Shimazaki out on his own to get things was always a bad idea. He didn't always know what he was getting and he felt bad, well she figured that he felt bad, when he came back with the wrong thing. She never wanted to make her friends feel bad….especially after the friendship party that they had thrown her. She had been worried, for a minute, that they had thrown her something weird like a period party but people didn't throw those. There was nothing about this to celebrate and her friends may have all been boys but they at least knew that.

"Aww….see Mob? He does care about you." Said Shimazaki with a shake of his head. If he hadn't known Suzuki as well as he had, and he didn't know him well at all and he didn't have to, he would have thought that it was sweet. Like he was finally doing a dad thing and getting his daughter some chocolate for her ketchup packet times. Well he had but knowing Suzuki he had his own crazy, weird, or both reasons for doing what he did. Still though, that was nice, and maybe he had gotten his weirdness out by getting her bitter chocolate.

"I know he does…he told me a bunch of times…but this isn't for me. This is for Minegishi." Said Mob. She got the feeling that she had said the wrong thing. Shimazaki opened his eyes….and she wanted to look away but she wasn't going to because she was his friend and she didn't want to make him feel bad…and also it might have been her fault. His eyes were opened and his eyebrows were up really high and his aura was all….visible….and Minegishi was shaking their head…and she had no idea what she had even said. She knew that she was clueless when she came to this stuff, well Minori called it being socially challenged, but she couldn't see what she had said wrong. She had just said what had happened, that was all, nothing extra.

"Suzuki…is getting you chocolate?" asked Shimazaki. That was…Suzuki did not give gifts. He gave you a raise, he promoted you, and he took care not to kick you in the face but he did not give people gifts…and not chocolates…and not someone's favorite chocolates either. Toshi…if they wanted chocolates then he would have gotten them all the chocolate in Japan if they had asked him.

"He also put a new door onto my room." Said Minegishi. Ryou….was…they didn't even know what he was. He had better have just been shocked and not jealous. He could be jealous sometimes…and he had no right to be. He knew what they were. They were two people in love who lived together, had sex, and also raised someone else's kids. They were…well they had never defined the relationship….whatever they were now….but if the time came they were not going to promise monogamy or as for it either…..and either way it was a moot point because they weren't even the least bit attracted to Suzuki!

"He's….getting you doors now too?" asked Shimazaki. That was…he was….he needed space. He needed space and he needed air and he needed to get back to Sho and…and he needed to do some deep soul searching to figure out what in the hell was the matter with him. Toshi…could fuck whoever they felt like….even if that person was Suzuki…and….and why they wanted to fuck Suzuki he would never know…not that they were fucking Suzuki….

He leaned in close.

They smelled like chocolate. They smelled like chocolate and rosewater and…and him. God, they really smelled like him…and they did not smell like Suzuki…and he had no idea why he even cared if they smelled like Suzuki or not. They could smell like whoever they wanted to smell like and they could fuck whoever they felt like. He didn't own them and they didn't own him and….and he didn't even know why he cared. He and monogamy did not mix and Toshi was the same way…and if this had been a stranger then…well then he wouldn't have felt like this….whatever THIS was…and he just…he didn't know. He really just did not know.

He didn't even know what there was to know…but he knew that he did not know.

"And dad said that he was going to get them that book they wanted, too, because they're so nice to me and they take good care of me." Said Mob. She…well she had been trying to help…but she got the feeling that she had just made everything worse. She got the feeling that there was something that she was supposed to know…but she didn't know. All she knew was that the atmosphere was really weird right now and she didn't have the first clue as to why.

"Toshi….what is even….?" Asked Shimazaki. He almost teleported away there but he stopped himself. This was…he did not like this feeling. He reached into his coat pocket and finished off his tiny bottle of rum and coke. There. Now he felt…well vaguely sick because the ratio to coke to rum tasted more like 70/30 than 50/50 but…well at least being vaguely sick to his stomach from drinking was better than being vaguely sick to his stomach from the thought of Suzuki….actually trying to….

Ryou. Stop. Thinking.

"Ryou, stop it. You're being a moron. I love you, ok? Now go get Mob's little brother out of that tree before he falls out and Mob ends up an only child." Said Minegishi. God. Ryou could be so ridiculous sometimes…but at least he could take a hint…and a direct order. He teleported away back to the kitchen and then out of the house. Minegishi went back to picking at their chocolate bar…and they made it a point to ignore Mob. They felt Shimazaki's aura until he left, followed it, but they made it a point to ignore Mob….

And the way her aura was lit up like Christmas time.

"Minegishi…" said Mob. She felt….this was the greatest moment of her life. This moment, this one moment in time, was going to be etched into her mind for the rest of her life and probably after she died and turned into a spirit, too. This was….this was the best….this was…..THEY WERE IN LOVE! MINEGISHI AND SHIMAZAKI WERE IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER! THEY WERE GOING TO BE BOYFRIEND AND THEYFRIEND! THEY WERE GOING TO GET MARRIED AND HAVE BABIES AND-

And Mob couldn't breathe.

The plants beside her were growing out of their pots…she was doing that on accident….and also the dirt was flying in the air and….and also the windows were slamming open and shut and….and Minegishi was just EATING CHOCOLATE!? They could eat chocolate whenever they wanted to! Didn't they understand why this was the most amazing thing to ever happen to them!? To the both of them!? Minegishi had a boyfriend! That was almost as good as Mob having a boyfriend! They had someone to love and…and kiss and…and marry and…and-and-and-and-and-

And this was the greatest thing to ever happen to the two of them in the history of ever!

"Mob. Calm the hell down." Said Minegishi. They had just said that to calm Ryou down and shut him up. He had a jealous streak that they would have to deal with later. Later being a time which was not now. Now was chocolate eating time. Now was not the time for them to sit there with Ryou and hash out all of their relationship problems…and they weren't even in a relationship….and they didn't have problems! Their relationship…situationship….their whatever it was…was fine! Everything was fine and….and…and they did not want to think about this!

They just wanted to sit on their bedroom floor and eat chocolate and not even think about their relationship or situationship…or whatever.

"I…am going to try but….YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND!" shouted Mob….and she hadn't set out to shout but….but they had a boyfriend! Minegishi having a boyfriend was almost as good as her having a boyfriend and…and Shimazaki had been in love with them for a while…and he was tall and nice and he smelled good and always shared…and he was just….he was just the best! For them, that is, because he was their boyfriend and also future husband….and she hoped that they let Mob be the flower girl in their wedding! If they even had that kind of wedding….THERE WAS GOING TO BE A WEDDING!

"Mob…really. Calm down." Said Minegishi as their room got trashed…and it was an accident…they knew that it was an accident but….seriously Mob? Why do you have to be this way?

"You….you're in love! You and Shimazaki are in love and….and can I be in your wedding?! What kind of wedding are you going to have? Oh! If you have a regular one can I be the flower girl? Or…or are you going to have a Shinto wedding? Or are you-" said Mob

"Who the hell said that I was getting married? I don't believe in marriage and….and I'm an atheist…and just…Mob, you need to calm down." Said Minegishi as they sighed. Mob…needed a boyfriend. She needed some kid her own age to go on cute little eleven year old dates with and hold hands with and kiss and whatever else she felt like so she could just stop living through people. This wasn't healthy for her, first of all, and second of all Minegishi wasn't even in a relationship….or maybe they were….they didn't know. They didn't want to think about this now. They just…wanted to eat chocolate. Was that really so much to ask?

"But….sorry. I just…this is the greatest moment of my life! You and Shimazaki are finally together and…and this is the best thing ever. I mean…you're in love and people who are in love get married and have babies…and I know that you said that you didn't want to get married or have babies but….well why would you be in love if you didn't want that?" asked Mob. She forced her powers to calm down. She put the dirt into plants that hadn't broken and…and she would fix it all later…but right now she just…she was so happy for them!

"Listen….I love him and he loves me. We love each other and….we haven't had any talks about it yet and…and even if we did I wouldn't marry him. Mob….listen. There are different ways to be in love and different types of relationships…and me getting into whatever this is should not be the greatest moment of your life. You finding your own boyfriend should be the greatest moment of your life." Said Minegishi

"But….I'm never going to find a boyfriend, Minegishi, not ever. I just…I don't know any boys who aren't my friends already…and older…and the boy that I do like…well he doesn't like me back…at least I don't think so." Said Mob

"Hatori again?" groaned Minegishi. Why couldn't she quite him? Ok, fine, his skin had cleared up and his personal hygiene could be described as passable….but still! What did she SEE in him? He was twenty years old, first of all, and second of all he was just….Hatori. He was Hatori and he just….they would never understand Mob's taste in men for as long as they lived. Of course their own taste in partners was just as odd so many people who lived in glass houses shouldn't go throwing stones at eleven year old girls.

"….maybe. I don't know. He's just so…he's nice and…and you're right, I do think that he's attractive and…and also he doesn't like you anymore…but you're right. He's older than me and….and he'd probably want someone who looked…older." Said Mob. She looked down at her chest. She knew, from the books that Minegishi had gotten her, that they would get bigger…she hoped so. Minegishi hardly even had…well she shouldn't have been looking at Minegishi's breasts…and also she should have been happy with what she got…but she knew that Hatori probably wanted someone who looked like…well like an actual woman. Not a little girl…not that Minegishi looked like a little girl…or a woman…they looked like themselves and…and they looked nice. Even dad thought that they looked pretty…and they did in their own way….and Mob…she just wanted to look pretty in any way at all.

"Yeah…he had better want to date someone his own age…but you'll meet someone someday. Maybe when you feel better we can go out where guys are and you can practice talking to them. How about that?" asked Minegishi. They were the one who was going to have to teach Mob everything important…so back to it, they supposed. They were going to be her wingman and teach her how to pick up eleven year old boys…eh, it was better than sitting around reading books and waiting or tomorrow to happen.

"I….I think that I'll just….watch you and Shimazaki for now. I mean…that would be better." Said Mob. Meet….boys? No. No meeting boys. What would she even say to them? What would she do? She just…she couldn't have a boyfriend. She was only supposed to fall in love with other espers, first of all, and second of all she couldn't have a boyfriend because she would have to leave him when she moved. Dad had been talking about going to Osaka for something…and she didn't want to move again. Not for a while. She liked being in Japan, and in Tokyo, and also….also moving all the time was kind of hard. It would have been even harder if she'd had to leave a boyfriend behind. Sho had to leave Emmy behind and it made him sad, so sad that he almost never talked about her, and Mob…she didn't know if she could leave a boy behind.

Even if he was an esper, and someone who dad liked, she couldn't just fall in love with some boy and leave him behind. That would have been too sad.

"Mob…I love you but…don't live through me. You need to live your own life and you need to…just not live through me. Ok? You're going to meet a guy and he's going to be just as crazy about you and you're going to be crazy about him and maybe you'll get married and have a dozen kids just like all of your domestic fantasies, ok? Now come on, help me finish this chocolate before the ants get to it…or Ryou comes back. Ok?" asked Minegishi. Please, for the love of God, let it be ok. They just…they were glad that Mob wasn't a moody, crampy, mess but….but also they just did not want to have to get into this with her. She was eleven. She was in the worst part of puberty. She just…could not help it. She couldn't help it and Minegishi could not get pissed off….but what they could get was exhausted.

"Ok." Said Mob. She just…she wanted that. She wanted that more than anything. She wanted a boyfriend who could love her and…and hold her hand…and let her kiss him…and all of that stuff. She just…she would never have that. At least not until she was old enough that there were espers her age. Kids hardly ever awakened. Most espers were around Hatori's age and…and she just…she didn't know if she was going to be able to wait that long….but she would have to wait…

And she could kill some time by eating chocolate.

"Good, now here. You can-" said Minegishi as they reached out to keep their plants alive….and they would have had those walk over into some new pots and had Mob put some dirt in but she was still looking up at them and her eyes were brimming with hope….way too much hope.

"But…if you guys were to have a wedding…what kind would it be?" asked Mob. She just…wanted to know. That was all. She wasn't going to do anything crazy like buy a ring and hide it in Minegishi's food at dinner time so that when they ate they would find it and think that Shimazaki had asked them to marry him and then once they realized how much they loved him they would marry him and then they could have a baby, mom had said that only married people could have babies, and then they could call the baby Shigeo or Shoko or Souichirou or Elsie or Sekkie or Imoto or Ryoko or Toshiko or….well Mob had a lot of names that she liked that they might have liked too…if they were planning on having babies…which they weren't…even though they would have made the best parents ever.

"Mob….." groaned Minegishi. Nope. Not now. They were not going to get into this. They were just….not getting into this. They just…they had just helped Mob through one crisis and they did not need to start another. Mob was happier now, which was good, since Minegishi had always had their fear in the back of their mind that Mob was going to go all Carrie at the prom on them when she finally got her period and Mob being happy….well that was good. Even if she was happy about something that had nothing to do with her. Minegishi realizing their own stupid feelings should not have been the greatest moment of her life. She needed to make her own greatest moment. Minegishi would help her with that….later.

There was a massive block of dark chocolate in their room…and they were going to eat it…preferably with Mob's help.


	389. I Want To Be More Than Your Best Friend

Tattoos were cool.

Sho thought so, anyway, and when he grew up he was going to get as many tattoos as he could. He wasn't sure, yet, exactly what he would get. Definitely big sis on one arm and little sis on the other, he loved them, but also maybe something cool like a chest buster coming out of his chest or a bunch of hamsters running down his other arm…or like a tree full of cats on his back. Over his tree. He would have to be careful of his scars, not to open them again, because that was a thing that happened. That was a thing that had happened to Shimazaki, he said, when he was getting his first dragon. Scar tissue was weird and it was easier to avoid it than incorporate it….but Sho would definitely work his scars into his tattoos.

That was what Shimazaki had done.

Sho could see all of his tattoos now. He was in his boxers now laying down on the floor getting the last of the color put on his tattoo. He was laying down on his stomach and Sho could see the dragon on his back. The closer Sho looked the more he could see the red marks on Shimazaki's back. That was where his dad had sprayed him with a hose and then hit him with a belt. He had other marks, too, like stabs and gunshots and stuff, but right now all Sho could see was his back. He had been able to see his chest, before, that was where the stabs were…and he sort of wanted to see his chest again….but now he had to be happy being able to just look at his back….

And he shouldn't have been staring at him at all end of discussion.

He could stare at Shimazaki, now, because he was focused on the needles going into his skin. His friend was using a tattoo gun, it looked painful, and that was all that he could focus on. His barrier was down and now he was letting all of this happen to him…and Sho had to be there for him. Shimazaki said that he felt better when Sho was around, because he trusted him and stuff, and Sho was not happy about how that had made him feel. About how he felt now. About the goldfish swimming in his stomach and hadn't stopped once since Shimazaki stripped down to almost nothing and laid down on his stomach and…

And maybe Sho would end up getting a goldfish on his stomach.

Koi fish were for good luck and stuff. That was what Shimazaki friend had said. He had let Sho flip through his books of his old work. That was what Sho was supposed to be doing now. Well his friend had handed him his remote and told him to watch Netflix but Sho hadn't wanted to be away from Shimazaki so now he was sipping a beer, well pretending to, and flipping through Shimazaki's friend's book of pictures of other tattoos that he had done. Also he was staring at Shimazaki…which he should not have been. When Sho grew up he should have tattooed a goldfish, or a bunch, onto his stomach. Yeah. A dragon on his back, too, because dragons meant that you were important. Well they meant being brave and stuff but in Shimazaki's family dragons meant that you were important. Well Sho was going to be important when he grew up so he would get a dragon….but maybe not over his tree….he wasn't sure yet…

He'd have to see what Shimazaki thought.

"Hey, Sho, what do you think?" asked Shimazaki. Sho almost jumped back. Thinking? He hadn't been thinking! He hadn't been thinking anything at all! He hadn't been thinking about how cool Shimazaki looked, how cool his tattoos were, and how he wanted him to roll over onto his back so Sho could see his chest…just because he had cool tattoos there….that was all. That was the only reason he wanted Shimazaki to roll onto his back…and he wasn't thinking about anything at all!

"What?" asked Sho trying his best to make his aura stay calm. Shimazaki was looking at him…and he had to…he felt like he had to say something or do something…and stuff. He just…he hated feeling this way. He should have just calmed down and…and been normal. Not in love. It was…not a good way that he felt…being in love and…and he needed just fall out of love already…..but that would have been a lot easier if Shimazaki had been wearing more clothes.

Not that he wanted…he didn't know what he wanted.

He may have told Shimazaki that the dragon on his chest was fading a little bit…and maybe that he should have gotten it touched up…but it maybe was fading just a little bit. What did Sho know? He didn't know about tattoos. He didn't know about tattoos or what they looked like when they faded on their own and…and maybe his dragon had been on the way to fading. He didn't know. All he knew was that…well he didn't know anything but….

But maybe he should have stayed home and watched Frozen with big sis.

"This thing how does it look?" asked Shimazaki. He pointed towards his leg and…and it looked…kind of gross. There was a lot of blood but…well that was just how it looked when you got a tattoo. Sho had always imagined that getting a tattoo was like drawing a picture only instead of paper you were using skin. What he hadn't thought of was the fact that skin was alive and it bled and also doing tattoos involved using a machine to put the ink in with very sharp needles. The picture…well it had been done in stages and the last stage was the color…and aside from the blood it looked cool….everything about Shimazaki was so cool….

Sho looked away.

. "It looks….cool." said Sho. He reached down and drank his beer. This was terrible beer, Shimazaki had said, and Sho believed him. He wouldn't have drank it, he would have just given it to Shimazaki later even though drinking made your blood thin and stuff, but now…now he had to do something. Something that would take his eyes and his attention off of Shimazaki.

"You paused. It sucks. Kei, you've obviously butchered me. Start again." said Shimazaki. He kicked his friend, there, lightly, and his friend glared at him. Sho wanted to tell him that glaring at Shimazaki was stupid because he couldn't see it…and also that he never should have been glaring at Shimazaki in the first place. Shimazaki was awesome and nice and cool and….and he was the coolest guy ever and his friend should have been happy that he even let him tattoo him. Sho would have done that for Shimazaki if he had asked….even though he knew nothing at all about doing tattoos…but he could learn. Yeah, if Shimazaki wanted him to learn then he would!

"What the fuck do you mean, start again? I've poured at least sixty hours of my life into this thing…and it does not suck!" said Shimazaki's friend who Sho knew the name of but did not want to use the name of for…reasons. All kinds of reasons. Reasons that Sho did not feel like thinking about. Reasons like how close Shimazaki always sat next to his friend. Reasons like how…how they had been friends for a while and…he knew that people had friends. People were supposed to have more than one friend and…and Sho was Shimazaki's best friend….and Shimazaki was the coolest guy in the world so it made sense why everyone would have wanted to be his friend….but it was so weird just…seeing him being friends with other people and…

And Sho needed to work harder at this whole falling out of love thing.

"Well now you know that you should have done seventy." Said Shimazaki. He laughed, there, and his friend rolled his eyes. Sho wanted to tell him that Shimazaki couldn't tell that his friend was rolling his eyes at him….but that would have involved saying stuff and…and he didn't trust himself to do any talking right now.

"It looks fine…it would have looked a lot better if you'd waited long enough to heal but it looks fine…and also bear in mind that this is a drawing that a seven year old did…and bear in mind that you're blind." said Shimazaki's friend. That wasn't very nice. Sho was ten, not seven, and Shimazaki was bind but that didn't mean that he didn't deserve good work…and it was good work…because Sho had drawn it. Sho had been the one to draw it and….and he wasn't going to tell him that his work sucked…and stuff…

"I'm ten and a half." Said Sho. There. He'd had to say something and…and that as what he had said. He was ten and a half, not seven, and he could draw much better now than he had been able to when he was seven.

"Yeah, so if it sucks then-" said Shimazaki. Sho….felt like Shimazaki had kicked him in the stomach. Well he had been kicked in the stomach before…and this was worse. Shimazaki….thought that something that he had drawn sucked and…and he took a deep breath. He took a deep breath and he drank down the last of his beer and…and Shimazaki didn't actually think that it sucked. He didn't know what it looked like, really, and….and he had no idea that it didn't suck.

"It's not bad…it doesn't suck. It looks really good." Said Sho. He hated saying something nice about his friend but…but it had been Sho's drawing and he couldn't have Shimazaki saying that his drawing sucked. Well it was mostly his drawing, his friend had changed a few of the lines and some of the details and stuff, but Sho had still drawn it.

"See? There." said Shimazaki's friend. Sho reached for his beer…and it was empty. Great. Now he had nothing to do with himself and…and he didn't stick out his tongue. He had wanted to but he didn't…and that was good. He had to be nice, or at least not mean, because Shimazaki would ask him why he was being a jerk and…and he didn't want Shimazaki to know how he felt. Why would he? This was something that he would have to take to his grave.

"Fine, fine, fine, you know I was just fucking with you this whole time. I know that you're a master of your craft or whatever and you do good work, well people say that you do good work anyway, and I know that this doesn't suck…and even if it did who cares? I've been with you since your stick and poke days, man, I am not finding a new guy now." Said Shimazaki. Sho could have been his guy…his tattoo guy. He could have been his tattoo guy. He could have learned. Even dad said that he was a good artist. Sho was right there and if Shimazaki had told him to start tattooing something onto him right now then Sho would have. He would have done anything that Shimazaki asked him to.

"Uh huh, sure man, whatever you say." Said Shimazaki's friend. Sho wanted to kick him…but he didn't. instead he held the beer can up to the ceiling and tried to drink whatever was left. Big sis would have been so mad at him if she knew that he was drinking….but big sis had been mad at everything lately…and Sho had been the everything. Ok, so maybe feeling her like he fed baby sis had been too much but…well he had only been trying to take care of her….and stuff. He had been trying his best with big sis and he was trying his best now, too, and….and he really hoped that his best was good enough for someone. For anyone.

"Ok, fine, I haven't been entirely faithful to you but you know me." Said Shimazaki. Sho knew him and…and he thought that he did, anyway, it felt like something had passed between him and his friend…but Sho got that feeling a lot when they were together. The atmosphere got weird sometimes. Adults were just weird like that, he decided, just…really weird.

"Yeah, I know you, now get out. You're finally done and now you can leave…and make sure nobody sees you go." said Shimazaki's friend as he slapped a bandage over Shimazaki's tattoo. Shimazaki did that thing where he tried not to look like he was in pain but, well, he was in pain…and Sho would have done that for him. He would have put that on gently and made sure that it was on right and….and he wondered if he could poison the goldfish in his stomach if he drank enough. Maybe. He didn't know.

"You're just going to kick me out like that? After all we've been through? Who let you jab him over and over again with a sewing needle stuck to a pencil? Who braved infection after infection back when you were still learning your craft? Who was the first person you ever fu-" said Shimazaki

"Kid in the room! Kid in the room right there!" said Shimazaki's friend. Sho was not a kid! He was not a kid and…and he was ten and a half but….but he was not a kid. He held his empty beer can in his hand…and he did not throw it…even though he wanted throw it….but he knew that he couldn't. He knew that if he did then Shimazaki would ask him what was up and then…and then he would have to either lie or explain…and he didn't want to do either of those things…so he just held his beer can in his hands hard enough for the can to pop and crack.

"I know." Said Shimazaki. This time it was harder to keep from throwing the can…but he didn't. He just held it and…and ok, he crumpled it up, but that was still better than throwing it like a jerk. He could not be a jerk.

"Just…come on, man, you know why you can't be here. Thanks for the business and your company…and drinking all my beer…and now you have to leave before you get me shot…or worse." Said Shimazaki's friend

"Fine, fine, away we go. Come on Sho." said Shimazaki. He got up, got back into his clothes, and teleported away. The whole thing took less than a minute…and that was very fast…but time felt like it had gone slow. Time always went slow when Shimazaki teleported with him. He had to hold him and…and he just…Sho didn't know what was wrong with him. Well he was in love, he knew that he was in love, but there was something wrong with him. He should not have been in love with his best friend in the first place. He knew from what he had read that this was normal but….

Well it wasn't ok…not for him anyway.

Dad….well he didn't care what dad thought but….but he didn't! Dad didn't even like him so he didn't care what dad thought. Dad just…he had beaten up Shimazaki before and he could do it again and…and Sho didn't care if he ended up getting beaten up but he did care if something bad happened to Shimazaki. He was his best friend after all and…and stuff. So he just had to figure out how to fall out of love…it couldn't have been that hard….

It was a lot easier now, actually, because Shimazaki was wearing all of his clothes again.

"I'm so fucking glad that's done with. I always forget how long color takes." Said Shimazaki as he flopped down onto his bed. They were in his room now. Sho…he was happy to be in his room…even though he would have been happier being with big sis. His goldfish was all awake and alive and…and maybe the way to put it back to sleep was to go and hang out with big sis or at least be in his own room…but then he would have to be away from Shimazaki and…and he didn't know if he….well he did know…he just…

He sat down in Shimazaki's desk chair.

"Yeah….I'm glad too…" said Sho as he spun around in the desk chair. He spun back and forth, back and forth, he kicked off his shoes, too, and Shimazaki looked over towards the sound. His barrier was still down and he was feeling the bandage on his leg. He always got kind of out of it after he got his tattoo worked on. Sho had to be there, he decided, because he had to guard Shimazaki. He was glad that it was all over, though, because that meant that they wouldn't have to go and see Shimazaki's friend again….and also Shimazaki wouldn't need Sho to watch over him…and he was ok with that. He had to be.

"Next time you draw me something stick to black and white." Said Shimazaki as he laid down on his back under the sunlight from the window. He liked the way the sun felt…and so did Sho….and Sho could have gone over and laid down next to him and felt the sun and…and stuff….but he didn't. He stayed put…he made himself stay put.

"But….what's a color." Said Sho as he spun back and forth. He spun back and forth because he had to…even though he was starting to make himself feel sick. Maybe he was just feeling sick because he had drank a whole beer…or maybe he was just sick because of the stupid love goldfish in his stomach…or because Shimazaki was bleeding into his bandage…and also maybe….maybe he just needed to stop spinning. But he couldn't stop. If he stopped moving then he might have just….just done something stupid and gone to Shimazaki's bed and laid down in the sun next to him.

"Oh. Wait, no, it's not. I've heard people say that something's in black and white and that something's in color." Said Shimazaki. Sho shook his head…and maybe that was the wrong thing to do. Ok, now he had to stop. He stopped the chair and then…well then he had nothing else to do…and now he wanted to get up and…and he reached over and played with Shimazaki's comb. He had to do something and…and that was playing with his comb. He dragged his finger over the teeth….he wondered if it made a sound…he wondered if Shimazaki could hear it. If he was hearing it he wasn't acting like he could.

"Well it's more like black and grey…and that's just for TV…but I can draw you something in all black next time. I could even do the tattoo for you if you wanted me to." Said Sho. He was talking quietly and…and he knew that Shimazaki could hear him and…and he knew that he wanted to be heard. Even though he was talking like an idiot. He didn't know how to do tattoos and Shimazaki already had someone for that. Someone his age. Sho was just a kid and…and kids couldn't do tattoos…and stuff. He was still just a ten and a half year old kid and Shimazaki was almost thirty one….and he was not a kid….and he was twenty years older than Sho. He and Sho would never be the same age. He would always be older and no matter how much older Sho got….they could never be…well they were best friends. Sho was his best friend and he didn't have to be his…his tattoo guy. Best friend was going to have to be good enough.

"When you're older. I'm not handing you a tattoo gun at your age. You'd probably draw a dick on me or something." Said Shimazaki with a laugh. Sho almost threw the comb at him. He put it down on the desk, maybe too hard, but he had to put it down before he threw it. He would not…well drawing a dick on Shimazaki would have been funny…but he was not going to do something like that! He didn't want Shimazaki to dislike him…and he would have gotten pissed off. It was one thing to trick him into wearing a pink shirt or something but drawing a dick on him….that was way too much.

"I would not….I'm your best friend. Best friends don't do stuff like that to each other." said Sho. That would have been funny but…no. He knew that if it had happened to him, if Shimazaki drew a dick on him, then he would have been pissed off…well no, because Shimazaki was his friend, but if one of his other friends did that…not that anyone would….well he knew that he would have been pissed off.

"That's what Kei said, too, and then amazingly enough I wound up with a dick on my chest." Said Shimazaki. Sho….well he knew that Shimazaki got his tattoos messed up when he got healed and stuff…so he believed him…and also…he should not have been happy about this. About how his friend sucked as a friend for doing that to him…and stuff. He should not have been nearly as happy as he was.

"Oh….well then I guess that he must have been a pretty crappy friend if he just tattooed a dick on your chest without asking." Said Sho. He tried to sound like he didn't care, like he didn't feel like jumping up…and stuff. He was trying to be normal. He had to be very normal. He had to be the most normal….because normal people were not happy when the friends of their friends were jerks to them.

"It was my fault too. We were like fourteen or fifteen and I put way too much trust in him…and I was high as fuck….and maybe I should have stopped him when I felt him poking a dick into my chest but, hey, he covered it up….it's covered up…right?" asked Shimazaki. He pulled off his shirt and pointed to his chest where the dragon's head was. Sho…he had to lean in close to see…and it was ok for him to lean in this close. It was ok for him to lean in close enough that he could see….and not laugh….really not laugh…

Even though that was totally a dick.

Shimazaki flicked him over the head. Sho put the normal amount of distance between them. Now that he had seen it he couldn't unsee it. There, in the dragon's nose, was a dick. He could see it and…and it was ok to stare at it. It was ok to stare at Shimazaki's chest because he had, right there, a dick tattooed right on his actual skin and…and that was hilarious!

And also, because it was hilarious, it was ok to be sort of disappointed when Shimazaki put his shirt back on.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on. Get all of your laughter out. It is, objectively, hilarious." Said Shimazaki as he pulled his shirt back down over his head….and Sho…well he only cared because it had been funny…and that was all. He bit his tongue to keep from saying anything stupid like 'you don't have to wear a shirt if you don't want to' because that would have been so weird….the most weird…and he had to be normal….so normal….the most normal. Was falling out of love always this hard? Maybe it would have been easier if Shimazaki betrayed him, like how dad didn't love mom anymore because she had betrayed him, or maybe he would just never fall out of love. Like how Fukuda said that he used to love a girl but then she left and he never saw her again but he still thought about her every day. Sho really hoped and wished that he didn't end up like Fukuda….being in love for a long time and just…not being able to not be in love….

And also the whole being old and grumpy thing….he didn't want that either.

"Yeah it's funny…but I would never do that to you…if you let me tattoo you. I mean I like to draw and sometimes I draw on myself and I could draw on you….and you like the tattoo that I drew for you…" said Sho. He wanted to fall out of love but also…also he wanted to be….to be his tattoo guy. He was already his best friend but….but he could also…he was a good artist. There. That was why he wanted to do this. He wanted to do this because he was a good artist and…and he had been drawing for a long time…and tattooing was like drawing. Yeah! And also it was drawing in a way that Shimazaki would like. That he'd be able to enjoy. He could feel the drawing as it was poked….and stuff…..

"Fine. Once you figure out what you're doing then I can be your canvas…but figure out what you're doing, first. Stick and poke someone else because I am not sitting through another cover up job…and I am not going to Fukuda, either, that guy….God, I hate that guy…" said Shimazaki. Sho…well he knew that nobody really liked Fukuda…so he wasn't going to defend him…and he also wasn't going to lose it, either. Even though he felt like losing it. Shimazaki….he said that he could be his tattoo guy!

He didn't know how to be a tattoo guy.

But he could figure it out. He would just have to master his craft…and that meant practice…and he could do that! He could…well he would have to find someone to practice on, first. That was how he had gotten so good at drawing after all, always practicing, and he must have used a whole forest's worth of trees getting as good as he was now…but paper was easy to get. Human skin was harder to get…and he didn't even know where he would buy human skin…and also he didn't know where to get a tattoo machine either….but he would figure this out. He would figure it out and…and he could practice on himself…there. That was half the problem solved. Good. He could totally be Shimazaki's tattoo guy.

Because tattoos were cool, Shimazaki was cool, and he thought that Sho was cool enough to do his tattoos for him…and Sho was not going to let him down.


	390. I'm the One In Charge Right?

Suzuki was the one in charge…and sometimes that was a difficult thing.

He was the President of Claw. He was the one in charge. He said jump and everyone else asked how high. He said sing and everyone else asked what song. He said walk off a cliff and, like lemmings, they would all walk off the nearest cliff. He didn't know of any nearby cliffs…and also he had no desire to send anyone to their death today…but he could have done so if he'd wanted to. He could have made anyone do anything…or stop doing anything….or just…he gave the orders. He was the man in charge and he gave the orders and all of Claw had to obey him. Everyone in Claw had to obey him….

Everyone but one person.

He was not referring to the person next to him. He knew that Hatori would never disobey him. They were friends, well he had decided that they were friends, but that didn't change the fact that Suzuki was the one in charge. He could have told Hatori to do literally anything and he would have had to do it. Not that he was going to do tell Hatori to do anything. He was hard at work. He wasn't going to disturb him. He didn't have any reason to disturb him. He just…had no reason to disturb him. He was the one who was worried, not him.

No.

First of all he had no idea what Hatori's emotional state was. He seemed fine. He was sitting there sharing Suzuki's desk with him clicking away at his laptop. This was normal. He seemed normal. He wasn't acting like anything was bothering him. His aura wasn't doing anything like trying to hide…and his aura seemed fine….so Suzuki could be reasonably assured of his emotional state. Suzuki knew, reasonably, that he was not worried…..and also Suzuki was not worried. He was not worried about Daughter and the state that she was in…and the state that she regularly got herself in….and the state that she just….had no problem getting herself in….

The state that she had gotten him in.

He couldn't believe that she would have….that she would have gotten him in that state. She had…she hadn't warned him. She hadn't warned him and…and also she had been acting like it was even something to warn him about. She had been doing that for a while, she had been smoking for a while, and he had given her permission…and he could not resind permission after it had been given….well he could because he was the President of Claw…and he was her father….

But he also didn't want to alienate her.

She was old enough to make her own choices and…and he had to respect that. Even if she was making choices that he REALLY did not agree with. He wished that Masami had been there. She would have known what to do…well she would have stopped Shigeko, obviously, but…well he couldn't stop her. She was…she was someone he trusted. Shigeko knew how to take care of herself. She knew how to take care of her brother. Hell, she knew how to take care of him. She knew what she was doing and…and he had to have faith in her…..

He had faith in her.

Even if he wanted to pick her up and shake her and tell her never to smoke anything ever again for as long as she lived. Even if he wanted to tell her that she was going to lose control and…and maybe kill another seventeen people…if that was even what was bothering him. He had no idea. He didn't know what was wrong even…well that he didn't want her to smoke…but he had no idea what to tell her…or even if he could tell her anything and….

And he just did not know….

"Hey Suzuki, you ok?" asked Hatori. Suzuki ignored the fact that Hatori had failed to address him properly. He was a child, first of all, and also they were on somewhat friendly terms. Even Fukuda didn't call him President…and he had never been good about that. Even when they had been the only two members of Claw….and he sort of wished that he could go back to those times…

Because Fukuda would have known what to do in this situation.

Fukuda always knew what to do. He just…always knew what to do. He was good at these things, these interpersonal things, better than Suzuki would ever be anyway. He had no children of his own but he must have known something. He had known Shigeko for most of her life after all and that wasn't even mentioning the care he gave to Son. Anyone who could stand to care for Son for more than ten minutes knew more about parenting that Suzuki did….not that this was a parenting problem…or maybe it was…or maybe he just had a personal preference against smoking…

He didn't know.

"Fine, why? Is something the matter?" asked Suzuki. He looked over at Hatori. He seemed….well his aura seemed fine….but he hardly had any kind of an aura to speak of and what little aura he had was mostly spread throughout the room. In the wiring in the walls, the computes on the desk, the phones in their pockets. He seemed fine but…well Suzuki could barely access his own mental state right now let alone another person's.

"No, your aura was just being all….stabby." said Hatori. Suzuki….oh. That was what he had been doing. Right. He pulled his aura in close and did his best to force himself to calm down. He hadn't even been upset just…absent minded. He had been so absent minded lately even after the brain fog had been long gone. He didn't know if he was being ridiculous or he had some residual effects or…something. He didn't know.

"Oh. I apologize. I have a lot on my mind." Said Suzuki. He was the one in the wrong so he had to apologize. There. Daughter….Shigeko…she liked it when he apologized. She liked it when he apologized and she would have been happy if she had been there…and what she wanted mattered….but what about what he wanted? She told him what to do all the time but…well he knew what was in his power to do and ordering her around was in his power….but he knew that he couldn't. They were partners but they were also parent and child. He could tell her that he hated that she smoked but….well he would have hated it even more if she felt so alienated that she left him…

And he had no idea what he would do if she ever wanted to leave him.

"If it's about the Osaka thing I bet we could make a deal with them and, you know, not move everyone." Said Hatori. Suzuki hadn't even been thinking about that….but that was not a worry. Rival espers groups were easy to deal with. Raising children….raising children was difficult.

"No, it's not about that….and we don't make deals if we don't have. We can acquire their group by any means necessary. I'm not worried about that…and I'm not worried." Said Suzuki. He wasn't even worried, no, he was bothered. He was bothered and…and he had no idea if he could even talk about this.

"Oh. Well if you ever were worried then you could tell me. I mean I don't know if there's anything that I can do to help but you can tell me." Said Hatori. Suzuki…did not like to admit weakness…and he had no idea if this was weakness. He was…not worried but…concerned? Yes, he was concerned for his Daughter. She was young. She was not a child, Son was a child and if Suzuki had caught him smoking he would have slapped him across the face, but she was so young…and also she just…should not have been smoking. She was just…

She was his Daughter and he abhorred smoking.

It just…wasn't a good habit. Smoking cigarettes and…and whatever the hell else she smoked…was not a good habit for an adult let alone a child. It caused cancer…though that was what Fukuda was for…and it was unbecoming for a woman….though women smoked these days….and also she should not have been getting herself into that state. It ruined her control…it ruined his control…and he was not her. She was not him. She was not even a part of him. She was his child but…but she was not a part of him. His blood did not flow through her veins and…

And was that what was bothering him?

That they were so physiologically different? That she was not his child, not really, that he did not father her? That she was not birthed by Masami? That she was, instead, little more than any other esper that he had acquired….but she was so much more than that. He had raised her. He had raised her into the person that she was today. He had known her for nine years now, almost a decade, and he was going spend another nine…well longer since he had no intention of dying in his fifties…..with her. She was his Daughter and his partner and…and he loved her….but she was not his and…

And he would not be telling Hatori any of that, no, because then the truth could get to Daughter…and the truth could never be allowed to get to Daughter…ever…but he had to say…something…or something…or not. He didn't know…..

But Hatori might have known. He was close friends with Daughter and also he was very close to her age. They could have been siblings, really, they were that close in age. They were the same generation. Maybe he would be able to just…explain what even possessed her to do that. When he had been a child, well when he had been Shigeko's age, people just…did not smoke. Well she had been vaping…and that had not been invented yet….but people just did not…do that. But she had and…well things were different for people her age…so many it was…a generation gap? Maybe that was why she seemed to think that it was normal and ok….he didn't know…

But Hatori might have known.

"I…my Daughter smokes…vapes…and I have no idea what to do with this information. Do you have any thoughts?" asked Suzuki. He trusted Hatori's judgement. He always trusted the judgement of someone who knew something that he didn't know. That was how you learned new things. It was sheer arrogance to walk through the world thinking that you knew everything. If Suzuki had thought that he knew better than everyone else then Claw would never have gotten off the ground. So of course he would ask Hatori's advice…and of course he would do whatever Hatori said. He was a child, well little more than a child, but he knew what he was talking about when it came to certain things.

"Mob? Yeah, she's been doing that for a while now. I don't really have any thoughts. I mean she's not my kid." Said Hatori. He shrugged when he said that…and none of that was of any help to Suzuki…but that made sense. Hatori thought that he was asking parenting advice, which he wasn't since Hatori had no children and never would with that attitude, and also Suzuki did not need parenting advice for Daughter….most of the time. She mostly took care of herself.

"But…if she were?" asked Suzuki. Hatori went quiet for a moment. He was thinking. Suzuki could tell by his aura that he was thinking. His aura always looked terrified when he was thinking. Well he always looked at least somewhat terrified…but he seemed especially terrified when he was thinking.

"I'd….well she has a good reason to do what she does. I mean she has a lot of trouble controlling her powers…so it's like medicine or something…I guess. I mean if she were just a normal kid then I would tell her no but she's not a normal kid, she's Mob." Said Hatori

"Shigeko." said Suzuki reflectively. He knew to whom Hatori referred to…but her name was not Mob. Daughter was not Mob. Daughter was Shigeko. He knew her name. He knew Son's name too. Son thought that he didn't know their names but he did. Daughter was named Shigeko and….and she was his Daughter….but she was also Shigeko.

"Right. Shigeko. Well she's not a normal kid so….well it's like medicine for her…and I've heard that people use it as medicine." Said Hatori. Suzuki nodded. That made sense. Daughter…Shigeko was just as powerful as he had been at her age and…and he would have been happy to have had some way to control his powers then. He had been going through growth spurt after growth spurt then and…yes. He would have done anything to control his powers and….and people took medicine for…for things all the time…

So this was ok. He was ok with this.

"Thank you very much for your views on this subject. I feel much better now." Said Suzuki. There. Well not that he understood why Daughter did what she did he could get back to work…his very important work that could be done only by him. There was the move to Osaka…he had just had the house painted but duty called….and also he had to figure out what to do with this latest batch of Awakened…they were all wearing blue for some reason….and also Son had been impossible lately….but Daughter would deal with him when she got over…what was happening to her…yes. Now he could deal with everything.

"You were seriously bothered? She's been smoking since I met her." said Hatori. Suzuki…well he had been in the mood to deal with everything…and he was going to stay in that mood. Even though he didn't like it when things were kept from him…well no, things were not kept from him. For Shigeko's generation what she had been doing was normal…so he could not fault her…and he would not fault her…or anyone else for not telling him.

"I…well I had no idea what she was smoking, vaping, she's vaping…and I really had no idea what vaping even was. Your generation made everything more complicated than it ever needed to be. When I was your age we just…smoked." Said Suzuki. He wasn't afraid to admit that he was wrong…somewhat wrong…and it was the younger people's fault anyway. Why did they have to go and make the world so needlessly complicated? When he took over he was going to make everything simple again…or something. He honestly wasn't sure yet. There were things he liked and things he didn't….and right now he did not like the way Hatori was looking at him.

He wasn't the best at reading facial expressions but he could read auras and he knew that Hatori was shocked right now.

"You smoked? Seriously?" asked Hatori. Suzuki…well not regularly…but he had been young and stupid…and was it so hard to believe that he had been Hatori's age, once? And just as stupid as Hatori probably was now? Well he didn't want to be thought of as stupid but…well sometimes it was best to do what all the people around you were doing. Fukuda had taught him that and Fukuda had never once steered him wrong on purpose.

"I tried. I didn't much enjoy it…any of it. I am not a fan of the brain fog that comes with it." Said Suzuki. There. The truth. He had tried it and he was not a fan…even though he had felt very…at peace…it had been a peace that had come with the loss of control…and the loss of control led to the loss of life…and he hated when that happened.

"Yeah, I hate it too. Also you start to hear things…sometimes. Like the world is way too loud." Said Hatori with a shake of his head. Suzuki….he remembered. There had been one time…and he had told Fukuda that he hated sweet foods…but he had eaten the cookie anyway and…well he could remember the world being very loud…and then not a lot after that but whatever had happened must have been eventful because the next thing he knew he was laying down under the kitchen table wearing Fukuda's clothes covered in flour with Fukuda telling him that he needed a week off from their friendship.

"Yes, I remember that too. Well not the most recent time but when I was young I could barely hear myself think over….well the world. There was this fan going and I kept on telling Fukuda to speak up…but I think that I was just very focused on it…and that had not been a pleasant time at all." said Suzuki. From what he could remember it had not been a pleasant time….and he never wanted Daughter to have experiences like that….but she was not him. She was not even his. She was her own person and she responded to things differently than him…and also she used it as medicine and he could not compare her using this as medicine to him being young and stupid and wanting to see what all the fuss was about.

"Wow just….sorry. I can't get over the fact that you used to do….that. Well I mean you are Mob's dad." Said Hatori. Suzuki….was not Daughter's father…well he was and he wasn't…but nobody needed to know about that. The only person who knew was Fukuda and he was good at keeping quiet. Well about things that he had to keep quiet about. Suzuki could feel his aura getting closer…and he so hoped that this was either good news or a social call…because he could not deal with any bad news today.

"It…does not agree with me. I am frightened to think, actually, of what I would have done if Fukuda had not been there." said Suzuki. He really had no idea what he ever would have done without Fukuda. He had been there and…and he was still there. Daughter was always on him to thank people…and he had thanked Fukuda…and he got the feeling that maybe he should thank him more. He was a founding member of Claw, well the only founding member, and he did a lot more than everyone else. Even now. He could have gone and participated in…whatever insanity was probably happening with that cluster of Awakened he could feel…or he could have just…well taken a break….but he never did. He picked up the slack, even, when Suzuki got into one of his moods…and he was always there when Suzuki needed him…

And even when he didn't.

"What about me?" asked Fukuda. He didn't knock, he didn't need to knock, he knew that he had an open invitation. He knew that he could just come in whenever he wanted, that he was always wanted, even when he wasn't. Even when Suzuki needed someone to knock some sense into him…not that he needed that, now, but still. It was nice to have someone like that around. Someone to keep him grounded when he needed it.

"Nothing. I was just talking to Hatori and you came up. Why are you here?" asked Suzuki. There was something that passed between Hatori and Fukuda…and Suzuki had no idea what that was. Fukuda was widely disliked and had always been…but so had he. That had been one of the things which brought them together. They had no other close companions. Fukuda had other friends but, well, Suzuki had always been his closest friend. Because they were both espers.

"Another threat from that group in Osaka. Their leader said, in not so nice words, to get the hell out of Osaka….and also more of the Awakened are wearing blue." Said Fukuda. Those were…..both articles of bad news. The Awakened…well he had no idea what the thing with the blue was but they all wore different shades of red or black for a reason…well for his own aesthetic color choices but…still. If everyone just wore whatever they wanted whenever they wanted the whole system would collapse.

"Tell the Awakened to get back into their uniforms and make plans to make the leader of the Osaka group an offer that he can't refuse." Said Suzuki. There. He could trust Fukuda to carry out his orders without too much micromanaging. He was smart like that...or maybe because they had just established a good rapport with each other over the years. Fukuda always knew just what he meant.

Join us or die.

The usual join us or die offer. They could act as the base for a new cell in Osaska…well he had one in Osaka but everyone from that cell had moved to Tokyo…and he was still cleaning up the mess that Daughter had made last year…but he had been meaning to establish a new cell or even a proper HQ. Claw was growing again. There were more espers in the world, it felt like, or at least more people open about what they could do…and more people making themselves easy to find. People were always recording themselves using their powers, doing things which to the average person was amazing but to Suzuki was nothing, and Hatori was good at finding who those people were. He was good at a lot of things, Hatori, and he was glad to have him by his side.

Even though he did have kind of a problem with interrupting.

"She." Said Hatori. Fukuda had been about to say something else when Hatori had interrupted him. Fukuda hated being interrupted, he always had, and Suzuki knew that Hatori had just made whatever there was between him and Fukuda worse. Suzuki so wished that they would just work out whatever it was already. Things would have been so much easier if they had just been able to get along. Like now. Hatori, apparently, knew something about this other group. That was good and…wait. What? She?

As in a female 'she'?

As in a female esper 'she'?

"What?" asked Suzuki. He…gender was weird these days. When he had been growing up men were men and women were women but now…now everyone was everything and some people were nothing and he had no idea what to make of anything anymore. He had no idea what to make of this. A female esper…one powerful enough to lead a group…and a natural esper on top of all of that. This was…rare. Very rare. There were so few female espers…and the only ones of skill he knew were Shigeko and Minegishi…though he wasn't entirely sure what was going on with Minegishi…and this was….

This was certainly an exciting development.

"She. That group's leader is a woman. Her name is Sakata Shiori. She's forty, no kids, used to work as an accountant for what I suspect is a yakuza family-" said Hatori. He was reading off of his laptop and…well this was one of the reasons why he was kept around. The internet was truly a 1984 fever dream…but one which worked in his favor…and also he would have to warn the children about standing under security cameras and having any presence on the internet at all.

"That doesn't matter. Want me to make her the same offer that we make everyone?" asked Fukuda with a wave of his hand. That meant that he wanted Hatori to stop talking, he was being dismissive, when he really should not have been. Hatori knew what he was doing and it would have made more sense for Fukuda to admit that instead of being dismissive. This was a massive development and…and maybe join us or die wouldn't be…good…in this scenario. A female esper….he wanted to meet her…for work reasons….and also….well also this was momentous and…and she would be an asset to Claw…but maybe she could be enticed with something other than death threats…

Hatori could figure it out.

"Fukuda, have Hatori help draft a new offer. We don't usually make offers to women…this is the first time actually. Have Hatori help you. No death threats…none towards her at least. Offer her something that she wants." Said Suzuki. When he had been young finding out what women, well girls because he had been little more than a boy back then, had been difficult. It involved a lot of following them around, eavesdropping on their conversations, watching them through telescopes and binoculars…now everything was in the internet. It made figuring out women much easier…though this would only be for work reasons….he felt his wedding ring. This was just for work reasons.

"But I don't….ok. Fine." Said Fukuda. He had been protesting….and Suzuki had no idea why. Hatori was good company, Fukuda was good company. Hatori liked Nintendo, Fukuda liked Nintendo…God only knew why…it didn't matter. Hatori liked soft wool sweaters and Fukuda liked soft wool sweaters. Hatori liked games in three dimensions and Fukuda liked games in three dimensions. Hatori liked the children, Fukuda liked the children. They had a lot of things in common…and they should have been friends…but for some reason they didn't get along…and it would have been so much easier if they just got along.

"Sure…I can help. If you want me to." Said Hatori. Suzuki nodded. Of course he wanted Hatori to assist Fukuda…he was Fukuda's assistant after all. Also this would be good for them. Maybe the conflict was just on Fukuda's side, he had been the only one protesting too, and maybe this could fix it. Yes. He felt good about this…he felt very good about this.

"I do. I think that the two of you will work together nicely. This will go well." Said Suzuki. Yes. He felt….good about this. He felt good that whatever had been happening with Shigeko was resolved, he felt good about whatever was with Fukuda and Hatori was on it's way to being resolved, and he felt very good about this new female esper….

Who he would be working with and nothing more.

He was…this was exciting for the simple fact that female espers were rare. That was all. There was no other reason to be excited about any of this. He was married and…well he had been unfaithful to Masami but he would never have been unfaithful to Shigeko. No, he had meant that, his promise to her, and this time he was going to be more careful. He loved her, even though she did things that he did not approve of, and he would never be unfaithful to her. But she did do things which he did not approve of…but he had to approve of them. To keep his relationship with her, to keep feeling this good, he had to approve of whatever it was that she did. He was the one in charge, true, and he could have ordered her to stop…but that would not have been worth it. He loved her too much to alienate her like that…

He had the power to order her to stop…..but he didn't want to use it.


	391. Things are Looking Better Now Maybe

Mob was better now.

Well maybe better wasn't the best word for it. She wasn't better because nothing had been wrong with her. She had thought, before, that she had been dying but now she knew that she wasn't. She had just been going through something that almost everyone went through, even Minegishi, and she knew that it would happen again. Every month until she got to be about dad's age…and she didn't know if she wanted that….well she didn't…and also there was nothing she could do but wait for the whole thing to happen again…

She was not looking forward to that.

But it wasn't all bad. She had smoked with dad…which had been weird….but they had gotten really close…and also he had stopped being clingy. Now he was doing that thing where he didn't really talk to her…but he wasn't avoiding her either. He talked to her when she talked to him and he didn't leave the room when she came in…so many that had finally found a happy medium. She hoped so. Then maybe something good would have come from all of this between her and dad. Good things had happened between her and Sho, though, so maybe she should have just been happy about that. Sho had been doing a lot of listening lately. He ate his salad without complaining and also he did his homeschool work without complaining and also he had even drawn his own bath.

He had even gotten in on his own, too.

"Sho? Do you want to come out yet?" asked Mob as she knocked on the door. She could hear Sho watching TV in there….but also she could hear the water moving so she knew that he was in the water. She was glad. Sho…he was getting older. He was almost eleven and maybe he had finally grown out of the water thing. That was good. He was scared of the water, like the Awakened, and she had hoped that he wouldn't end up like them….

And now he hadn't. Everything had worked out.

"No! Just…ow….a few more minutes….ow….ok? Ow…" said Sho. Mob frowned. She didn't like the sound of that…or the way his aura looked.

"Sho, if the water is too hot you should get out and then put in some cold water and then get back in." said Mob. She wasn't sure if she should have trusted Sho to draw his own bath. It was very easy to let the water get too hot. She reached down and felt her leg. It was very easy to burn yourself….and she could almost feel it….but she knew that she was being weird. That accident, the one where she had ruined the bathroom, had been years ago. She was fine now. She was fine and…and Sho knew better than to sit in very hot water. He was ten and…and also he was almost eleven so….

So maybe Mob should have gotten them a bath thermometer like when they had been little.

"Thanks….yeah. I'll do that. You can just go away and…and make me my reward poptart now. I might get out soon." Said Sho. She could hear him cursing, too, under his breath…and she was definitely going to order that bath thermometer. Sho may have been getting bigger but he hadn't drawn a lot of baths in his lifetime, not like her. She had drawn all of their baths since mom had left.

"Ok, but I'm just going to get one out of the box for you. I'm not Shibata, I have no idea how to make them from scratch and I don't want to bother him to cook this late. He's winding down now and if he winds back up then he'll be up all night." Said Mob. She wanted Sho to be happy, she really did, but she also didn't want to ruin her friends' night. If Sho wanted homemade poptarts then he should have said something earlier in the day. Mob knew that she was being mean but…well sometimes you had to be a little bit mean….and if Sho was sad that he wasn't getting homemade poptarts then she could let him have double poptarts for his reward…or maybe a can of frosting to go with.

"From the box is fine…but make sure that they're the double fudge kind. Some of them are just regular fudge and that's not enough fudge…but the s'mores kind are best if we have any left." Said Sho

"I don't think that we have any s'mores ones but I'll look…and if we only have the plain fudge kind then I'll just open up a can of chocolate frosting for you. Alright?" asked Mob

"Big sis, you're the best." Said Sho. Mob smiled. She liked it when he said nice things. He had been really happy these past few days, which was very good, because she didn't know what she would have done if he had been upset. She knew that he had been scared by what had happened to her, almost as scared as she had been and she was the one that it had happened to in the first place, but knowing that he was ok now….it was good. He was ok…he was more than ok. He was taking a bath on his own without her having to beg him, or plead with him, or chase him around the house.

And for that he earned a can of frosting whether or not the poptarts were just fudge.

Mob was her way down the stairs and away from the bathroom. She could hear Sho going 'ow' over and over again…and she wanted to go in there and just put the cold water on for him…but then she would have seen him naked. She wasn't sure exactly when it had stopped being ok for her to see her brother naked, maybe around the time she had stopped wanting him to see her naked, but she knew that he didn't want her to see him naked anymore. They didn't even change in the same room together. Maybe it was time for them to get their own rooms….

Maybe when they moved to Osaka.

Minegishi was from there….or maybe somewhere else. She remembered that it had started with an 'o' sound. That was good, though, if that was where they were from. They might have been happy to be back…or maybe not because she had never heard them say anything good about their childhood….Mob didn't know. Maybe she was just trying to find something good about moving again. Dad…he had always left them for weeks and sometimes even months…and now she and Sho had to go with him…but it could be hard. Moving all the time. Looking up at the ceiling and not knowing where you are. Not being able to understand the people around you, not without trying, and having to think for a minute when you saw the street signs…

At least they were moving to another part of Japan.

Even though dad had just painted the house blue. Maybe they would be staying for a while since the new paint smell wasn't even all the way gone, yet. Mob didn't know. All she knew was that she had to get Sho his reward poptart, coke, and frosting….and they were out of s'mores poptarts like she had thought. She used her powers to get his reward ready, complete with a can of chocolate frosting because he was such a good little brother to have taken a bath on his own. Yes…this would be a good reward. She got it all ready on his special Zooptopia plate and set his can of coke down next to his Zooptopia glass, she knew that he didn't like this one as much as his old one, and then reached into her skirt pocket to get out her phone. They needed more poptarts and more soda…and dad was probably running low on eggs again…and she would have to figure out how to get him to eat more foods…maybe more ketchup…she added all of that to the list. She'd order the food later once she looked through the whole kitchen…or maybe now because Sho did love poptarts…

Now was good.

Well not would have been good if her phone hadn't started ringing in her hand. She accidentally made the table jump, she couldn't help it, she almost never got called. She knew that this wasn't anything bad, though, because Minori was calling. Mob tried to do some quick math…and then settled on it being earlier or later in the day where she was staying…not that she would ever ignore Minori, no, she didn't like to be ignored. She said that people who ignored her were b-words…

Well she said that about everyone.

But Mob didn't want Minori to say that about her. She was her friend, her best friend according to Minori, and she was not going to ignore her best friend who was not as good a best friend as Minegishi but still someone she cared about. Mob hit the answer button….and sat down. She knew what was coming. Mob hadn't been good about texting or liking Minori's pictures. She had been giving a lot of one word or even worse, one emoji, texts and she had only been liking Minori's pictures and not writing comments about how great she looked or how awesome she was….

Ok, Mob had been kind of a b-word….but she had been going through a lot….but she had been sort of a b-word….

"Shige!" said Minori. Mob nodded even though she couldn't see her. She knew that it was just a reflex. People liked it when you smiled and nodded when they talked to you, especially people with a lot to say like Minori, and Mob…well she had been doing a lot of smiling and nodding in their friendship.

"Hi Minori. How are you?" asked Mob. That was a good way to start a conversation…and she had to start this conversation off well. She knew that someone must have been a b-word to Minori, that was usually why she called, and Mob…well she didn't want to put Minori into a worse mood than she already was.

"Fine, I'm fine….a little pissed that you've been trying to ghost me though. What's up with that?" asked Minori. Mob…well this was ok. Minori wasn't shouting and she hadn't called Mob a b-word…and it would have been ok if she had. She knew that Minori was probably hurt….and she knew that even if she was going through a lot she'd still had to be a good friend….but she had to make sure that Minori knew that she wasn't trying to ghost her….which she thought meant ignore but she would have to check.

"Ghost?" asked Mob. She knew that meant ignore…but also ghosts were real…and also she had not been ignoring Minori. They were friends and Mob had made sure to reply to her at least a little….but maybe that hadn't been good enough. She didn't know.

"Ignore! Shige, you've been ignoring me for days!" said Minori. Mob wondered if her phone was broken or something. They hadn't been talking as much as usual but it wasn't like Mob had just been ignoring her. That would have been mean and Mob was not a mean person. No, dad was the mean one, but Mob hadn't gotten any meanness at all from him even though she was his kid.

"Oh…no I haven't. I replied to all of your texts and liked all of your pictures." Said Mob. She wanted to check, now, if her phone was broken….but she wasn't going to just get out of the call. They had to catch up…and also if her phone was broken then she would have to go and see Hatori…well in the morning…or maybe now because he liked to stay up late…and she did want to see him…but she knew that once she saw him then he would be all that she could think about. He was just so…Hatori.

"Yes but, like, half assed." Said Minori. Mob….well he knew that she had been…like that…and she was sorry. Even though she had been having…all of that…it was still a lot and she should have been sorry and stuff. So she was.

"But…I'm sorry. I've just been….going through a lot." Said Mob. She hoped that Minori didn't ask her what she had been going through. She didn't even know if Minori even knew what a period was. Mob hadn't….but she didn't have a mom to teach her this stuff…but Minori didn't have a mom either. They were the same like that. Minori only had a dad and dads didn't know about this kind of stuff because it didn't happen to them….and she hoped that once it happened to Minori, if it hadn't already, she had someone in her life to take care of her and teach her what to do. Mob would have been that person but she was miles and miles and miles away.

"Like what? Is your brother hiding poptarts in his pillowcase again?" asked Minori. Mob…well she could at least answer that one.

"Maybe, I haven't checked in a while….but that's not it. Just…something happened to me and I was really freaked out…and then my whole family was freaked out…but I'm fine now and we'll have better texting conversations and I'll write better comments for your pictures from now on." Said Mob. There. Maybe, now, Minori would tell her who had been a b-word to her and then Mob could make her feel better and then that would be it.

"You'd better….and post some stuff, too. You're supposed to be my best friend! You have to try and look just as cool as me! What are people going to think?" asked Minor

"Oh…sorry. I haven't been good about that lately either….sorry. I was just kind of bedridden…well couch ridden…for these past few days." Said Mob. She didn't if couch ridden was even a thing. What did you call it when your dad and brother wouldn't let you get up without being carried and also they tried to spoon feed you like you were a baby?

"Why? Did you get sick?" asked Minori

"Um…no…but I don't even think that I needed to be bedridden…well maybe…but…." Said Mob

"What happened? Come on, you had better have a good excuse." Said Minori

"Um…ok. Do you know what a period is?" asked Mob. She reached over and held down Sho's plate. It was trying to float away. So was his glass. So was she. She….knew that Minori was a girl…and she knew that it happened to most girls….and she knew that they were friends…but she still just…didn't know if it was ok to talk about this….

Not that Minori would ever be mean to her.

On purpose that is. Minori could be kind of mean in general but that was just how she was. Some people were just mean and that was just…the way that they were. There was nothing that anyone could do about it. Some people were just mean and…and Minori was still Mob's friend even though she was one of those people…and she wouldn't make fun of Mob for this. Minegishi had said that it was stupid for one girl to make fun of another for this…and Minori wasn't stupid….

But she had been quiet for a while.

"Of fucking course I do why….WHAT?!" asked Minori. Mob had to pull the phone away from her ear. Too loud. Way too loud. She didn't know what she had done to make Minori mad…and Mob was going to assume that she was screaming because she was mad…but whatever it was she would fix it as best as she could. She had to. She didn't ever want to make any of her friends mad. Ever.

"Um…I thought that you might not know what it was because you don't have a mom and I don't have a mom and….and moms are the ones who explain it to you because dad's don't know about that stuff." Said Mob. Minori must have thought that she was called her dumb or something. She hated it when people called her dumb….not that Mob would ever call her friend something so mean. She just…well Minori could take stuff the wrong way sometimes. That was just how she was.

"I have a mom, she's just dead, and of fucking course I know what a period is, Shige. Why, did you seriously not know?" asked Minori. Well that was good, Minori would wake up all covered in blood and scared, and also…also Mob was not jealous that she would never have to wake up covered in blood and scared…because Mob wanted her friends to be happy and stuff.

"Um….no. My dad didn't know what it was, either, he just….well we both thought that I was dying….but I'm ok now. Anyway are you ok? Is that girl from your English class still being mean to you? And also that girl from your art class? And that girl from your homeroom class?" asked Mob. Minori loved talking about people who were mean to her. Mob didn't much like hearing about people being mean to her friend but she would have gladly sat there all night listening to Minori tell her over and over and over again about every single time someone had been a b-word to her since the day she had been born as long as it meant that they didn't have to talk about periods. Ever.

"…we were supposed to do everything together…." Said Minori. It took her a minute to say that…and Mob had no idea why. She thought that Minori had just been going over, in her head, every single time someone had been mean to her…but no. She had just said….well something that didn't make any sense at all.

"But….how could we do that together? That's kind of…I don't control that…and also…also wouldn't that be sort of…weird? I mean-" said Mob

"Not literally! God, you are so socially challenged. I just meant…whatever. Fine. It's not like…like that's anything special." Said Minori

"You're right. It's just a think that happens to almost every girl. But did something happen to you? How have you been? Is your dad going to let you come back to Japan?" asked Mob trying her best to change the subject. Good, they both agreed that it wasn't anything special. Now they could get back to their normal conversations where Minori complained and Mob listened to her complaining.

"No, he's still being the same old asshole he always is but you know what? I don't even want to come back anymore." Said Minori. Mob…well that was good. Now Minori would be less upset…and maybe that was what she had called to tell Mob about. That was weird, though, because she never called with good news. Mob had always felt sorry for her, actually, that so many bad things happened to her. Her dad wouldn't let her come back to Japan and all of her friends had betrayed her and all of the people where she lived now were b-words to her…and stuff. That was a very sad life she had told Mob about…but good things were happening now so that was good. Good things were happening to both of them.

"Why?" asked Mob. Well then this was going to be a short conversation. She didn't want to talk about anyone who had been mean to her and she didn't want to complain about her dad…but then what else was there for them to talk about together?

"Because while you were off having your period, which I don't care about bleed all you like, I…found a friend with benefits." Said Minori. Mob didn't like bleeding, actually it was downright gross and terrible, but that wasn't the part that made her almost blow the power to the whole house. Minori had found a….a boy to kiss her and stuff….like how Shimazaki and Minegishi were…and that was…it was something alright….something….

Mob was happy for her friend.

"Oh." Said Mob. That was all she could say. She wanted to know if Minori had kissed him yet, if they had held hands yet, but most of all she wanted to know why she had a friend with benefits and not a boyfriend. Mob didn't think that she could do anything like that with a boy who was not her boyfriend….but she also knew that she and Minori were totally different people.

"So, yeah, I guess we aren't doing everything together after all." said Minori. There was a tone there that Mob could not place. Her brain was too busy to try and figure out tones. This was…wow. Minori had a friend with benefits…and now Minegishi had a boyfriend…and Mob had nobody at all….

"No, I guess we can't but….but….why not a boyfriend?" asked Mob. She wanted to ask how this had happened. She wanted to say that it wasn't fair. Mob…she wanted someone to like her…and she wanted someone she liked back and….and she really wanted someone to kiss her and to be in love with her and….and she just…she had no idea how to even find that person….and she just…was very happy with…with this. With what had happened to Minori. Of course she was happy for her friend. That was what friends did. They were happy for each other when good things happen…and this was a good thing…even if she didn't have a boy to be her boyfriend…or even her…boy she did kissing stuff with.

"Because we're keeping it loose for now in case I have to move, duh, think Shige." Said Minori. Mob….was thinking. She was thinking that….she wanted….she was thinking too much about herself and not enough about Minori. This was about her. This was her good news. She almost never had good news so…so Mob was happy that something good had happened to her.

"Sorry for not thinking…um…..how did you meet him? What's he like?" asked Mob. Those seemed like the right questions to ask in this situation. Ones that would give her time to think. Minori…well they were supposed to do everything together….but Mob…she didn't know any boys…well she knew Hatori but…but Minegishi had told her a million times that asking him to be her…anyway…was a bad idea.

"His name is Kevin and he's fourteen, it's ok I told him I was thirteen and he bought it, and he's just…he's really great. He's tall and he's got blue hair, well mostly blue, and he's always got these really cute gym shoes on and…and he's so fucking tall. Anyway, he goes to the same life drawing class I do and….oh my God he's great! He drew my portrait and then he wrote his number on the back and, like, guys give me there numbers all the time I'm hot I can't help it, but I decided to call him because….well he's just…he's so great! Anyway we both ditched class and then we went to this ice cream place and then on our way back to the building he grabbed my hand and he was all 'I would really like to kiss you right now' and he said it in Japanese, like not good Japanese of course but whatever, and then he kissed me right then and there….and then anyway…well I'm still a virgin but…well I might be less of a virgin next time I call you. I'm not sure yet. I like him a lot, and he kissed really well for a middle schooler, but I haven't even let him feel me up yet but…well he might be the one….well not THE ONE but….well it's good to mess around with someone when there's no strings attached. That way you know what you're doing when you get a real boyfriend." Said Minori. Mob…was so happy for her. She sounded happy, she hardly even took a breath, and…and Mob was happy for her. Really…she really was.

"…you're right Minori….and I'm so happy that this happened to you….I really am…" said Mob. She wasn't lying….she really was happy for Minori…and how she had a boyfriend…well a boy to kiss…and that was….that was great. That was just….it was really f-wording great.

"Yeah, I knew you would be. Anyway now you have to get a friend with benefits so we're even. Ask glasses boy, you're into him and it doesn't look like anyone else is, so you've definitely got a shot." Said Minori. Mob shook her head even though she knew that Minori couldn't see her.

"But….I mean I like him….but he's twenty and I'm eleven." Said Mob. That was….Hatori was a boy she liked and….and he was great. He was tall and nice and he smelled good and…and she liked him a lot. She liked him but Minegishi had said that he was too old to be her…anything….and Minegishi knew a lot about this stuff…and also…also Mob…she didn't know. She just…she wanted…she wanted a lot of things that she couldn't have.

"So? Older guys are awesome anyway. You should totally ask him….or someone. Come on, everything we do we do together. One of us has to be taking that seriously and I thought that it would have been you since you're all about love and friendship and whatever." Said Minori. Mob….was her friend and…and maybe it would be ok to…to ask Hatori…because….well she was Minori's friend and they had agreed that…that they would do everything together…and stuff.

"N-No, I am. Just…well….ok. Everything we do…we do together." Said Mob. She…was going to do this. She was never more sure of anything as she was about that. Minori…had said that it would be a good idea…and also she had a boy who was older than her…not by nine years but…but there wasn't a big difference between three years and nine years. Just three times as much…which wasn't a very big difference at all…

Mob didn't know.

She just…wanted a lot of things. She wanted them so badly that she had even stopped listening to Minori. She just nodded and said 'ok' and 'that's good' a lot…and she knew that she was being rude but…but she just couldn't think. She just….she was going to do this. This was…this was ok. Hatori…was nice….and he liked her…as a…something….friend…..something good.

Good things had been happening to her, things had been getting better, and maybe they could get even better still.


	392. Tebori Tattoos

Tebori tattoos were the traditional way of doing tattoos in Japan.

All you needed was sharp bamboo strips and ink. Sho didn't know where to find bamboo, that had been a setback, but l a safety pin taped to a pencil worked just as well. He had made sure to get the special ink, though, that had been easy. He had been meaning to order more art supplies. He had Googled, he knew to use real ink, and he knew that if someone saw that he had ink then they would just think that it was for his art. That was why he didn't go out and actually look for a bamboo stick. If someone found it then they would have been all 'Sho, what the fuck is wrong with you?' and 'Sho, do you have brain worms or something?' or maybe something else. He wasn't stupid, he knew that he couldn't let anyone know that he was doing this.

Big sis would freak out.

He knew her and he knew that she would lose her shit if she found out what he was doing. Even if it was for art. Dad would freak out too….maybe. Sho really didn't know. Dad didn't seem to care what he did so long as he didn't bother big sis. She was the one who dad cared about….and he didn't care what dad cared about. He only cared about not worrying big sis. That was why she and dad couldn't know about this. He would maybe freak out because she would, most likely, be all worried about him if she knew what he was doing. Not that he was doing anything wrong. Tebori was the Japanese way of doing tattoos and he was Japanese so, really, there was nothing wrong with what he was doing.

Nothing wrong at all.

He was doing this the right way. He had made sure that the needle was good and sharp, and he had rinsed it with warm water too, and he was using real ink so it would last, and he had drawn a stencil first. He hadn't had any of the stencil paper so he had just drawn on himself with a Sharpie and now he was stabbing over it with the needle. He knew what he was doing. It wasn't hard at all. He had no idea why Shimazaki thought that his friend was so cool.

There wasn't anything hard about doing tattoos.

"God damn it!" said Sho. Ok, so maybe the hard part was stabbing yourself over and over again. He…well he remembered…well the pins had been in his arms and then they hadn't been, back at the lab, so this…wasn't so bad. This was just one pin and it wasn't in that deep….but sometimes his hands shook really bad and he went in too deep…like now. He cursed and wiped the blood away from his arm with a paper towel. He could have used his powers for this but he had better control with his actual hands.

Mostly.

Sometimes his hands shook and he went in too deep…like now…or too far…like now. He was trying to do a sleeve on his left arm and, so far, only managed to do one big dragon. Dragons were cool. Shimazaki had those and he was cool…and he would think that Sho was cool too. Even if he couldn't see them. Well he would be able to know that they were there, he would have been able to feel them, because they were all raised up and red…but that was normal for tattoo. You had to give them time to settle. Sho had been worried the first time that he had seen Shimazaki getting one done, how it had all been bloody and red and how it hadn't looked like anything at all, but he said that he had been told that they all started off looking bad but then when the ink settled and you healed they looked better.

So Sho's would looked better once he healed.

Sho's didn't look….bad. Ok, drawing was easier, actual drawing, not sticking and poking himself with a safety pin…but that was ok. Everyone had to start somewhere and this was where Sho was starting…with a big dragon that took up his entire arm. He had been working on this for a week now. He had the outline mostly done and now he was trying to do the detail on the head. He made sure that the head of the dragon covered his wrist and that the dragon's spine went along the little pin scars that he had on his arm. That way nobody would be able to see his scars. Well nobody would be able to see this anyway, not until he was an adult and nobody could tell him what to do with his skin, but…well he would rather have had cool tattoos covering up his scars then just a bunch of scars on their own.

And these were cool! They were very cool!

He didn't just have the dragon. He had done a practice tattoo on his leg of a star. Stars were easy. He did a little star on his leg…and he didn't know what the little star would turn into…but it was something! It was proof that he could do this. Sure he could never wear shorts again, or short sleeved shirts, but he had never been able to wear that stuff ever again anyway because of his scars. Well he was allowed to wear that stuff around the house but…well he saw how big sis looked at his scars. He knew that they bothered her…and he didn't want to bother her so he just wore long pants and love sleeves everywhere.

She was going to be so surprised when they grew up and she saw all of his cool tattoos.

But only when they grew up. Not now. If he showed her now then she would be upset. He felt her aura getting closer. He reached out and held the door shut with his powers. He knew that she probably wouldn't let herself in, at some point they had stopped being naked around each other, but he also knew that there was a first time for everything. He also knew that this would not be the first time that she realized that he was covered in tattoos.

Well not covered yet…but he was getting there.

"Sho? Are you ready to come out now?" asked big sis as she knocked at the door. Sho stopped poking himself. He couldn't poke himself and talk to her at the same time, she got worried, and he didn't need her poking around him while he was poking himself. That was way too much poking.

"No, not for a while." Said Sho. He didn't understand her sometimes. She used to beg him every single night to get in the tub and now that he was in the tub, well the bathroom, she asked him every hour if he was ready to come out. He would come out when he came out. He would come out of the bathroom when he was done…or at least when he couldn't take being poked anymore. He had no idea what time that would be but probably not for a while.

"Ok. I washed your favorite pajamas, the green ones with the anime hamsters on them, and I'll just leave them outside the door for you." Said big sis. She was always so nice to him…and he was always…well not always but…well it felt like he was always lying to her. He lied to her about baby sis…and a lot of other stuff….now he was just adding to the pile of lies. Lies on top of lies on top of lies. He wasn't in the tub like she had thought he was…he was lying about that….but he just…he couldn't get in the tub. If he got in the tub he would end up washing the ink away and then he would end up having to start all over…and that was why he didn't want to get into the tub. No other reason. He just…could not get into the tub….

She would understand, later, when she saw how cool he looked.

But not now. Now he would just…keep on working. She had washed his favorite pajamas and…and those had a t-shirt to them…but he could just turn up the air conditioner extra high and wear a long sleeved shirt underneath. There. The house had been a lot cooler lately, anyway, since dad had painted it blue. Maybe it was just a trick of his brain. Maybe he could trick big sis into thinking that he was just wearing an extra shirt for the sake of wearing an extra shirt…though he did hate lying to her….

But sometimes you had to lie to the people you loved.

"Cool. I'll be out in a minute." Said Sho. He was going to be way more than a minute. Tattooing took a while and he would be in there…well he knew that he wasn't going to get anywhere near close to done in even an hour…but he would be a while. He wasn't going to get done tonight, or tomorrow, but he would stay in there for as long as he could. She would be back in an hour or so and then he would get out. Not a minute. He was lying to her again…but sometimes the best thing to do was to tell a lie. Like what Fukuda said about making pragmatic choices. Sometimes you just had to choose the least terrible option and the least terrible option here was lying to his big sis…who did everything for him…and loved him very much.

She loved him more than anything else in the whole world….

"Ok." Said big sis. She said it like she loved him…and she trusted him…and she was right outside the door like…like someone who loved him and trusted him. He could still feel her. She wasn't moving. He wanted her to move. He wanted her to move and to go away and…and well not to go away but…but to give him some privacy. Yeah. What, he couldn't have any privacy in the bathroom? He…was not going to yell that at her. That was something that the old Sho was do. The little kid Sho. He was a big kid now…well big kids did not go around calling themselves big kids…he was almost eleven now and almost eleven year olds did not go around yelling at their sisters. So he was not going to yell at his sister. He was going to be nice and…and nicely ask her why she was still there.

In the nicest way possible.

"You need anything else?" asked Sho. Ok, so that hadn't come out as nicely as he had wanted it to…but it was still nicer than what he had been saying in his head. He didn't know what was wrong with him. He was nice on the outside but on the inside, inside of his head, he was still just a big jerk. He shouldn't have been the way to her. She loved him and she wasn't doing anything to him but standing outside the door with his favorite pajamas fresh from the dryer….and she could have just let him wear the ones he had brought in with him….she was always thinking about him and stuff….

And he was always lying to her.

"No…I'm just….you're in the water right?" asked big sis. Sho rolled his eyes…but then stopped himself. She was always worried about him taking a bath and that was just…a normal thing to be worried about. She just didn't want him to smell bad. Sho, when he had been younger, he had been able to go days and days without bathing…but now if he did that then he would end up smelling bad…and he had no idea why he smelled bad now but…well she was right to be worried about that. She was right to be worried about him…and suspicious too….because he was lying to her.

"Of course I am." Said Sho as he used his powers to splash the water around in the tub. He was lying to her again…and it was lies on top of lies on top of lies…so why not just put another lie on top of that? He just…this was a pragmatic choice. Better to have her think that he was taking a bath than to have her worry about him.

"Ok. I was just wondering….because I couldn't hear the water moving….and you move around a lot in the water because you're scared of it-" said big sis. He was not scared of the water. He was not scared of getting water on his face…and he was not scared of poking himself in the arm, either. He just…he was not scared of anything!

"I'm not scared of the water! I'm not scared of anything!" said Sho. He shut his mouth as soon as he was done talking. He had been such a jerk….again. He said things that he should have only thought….well that should have stayed in his head. He should have kept his jerk thoughts in his jerk head where they belonged. He shouldn't have said that to his sister…his sister who loved him. His sister who loved him enough to wash his favorite pajamas for him even though he had plenty of clean pajamas already….and also even though he had lied to her so many times…but she didn't know that he was lying to her…because that was the point of lies…..

He was getting tired of the lies.

"Ok….just…I'm very happy that you're taking baths on your own now. I'll leave you alone, though, so you can finish. I love you." Said big sis. She said that all the time because she loved him. He had no idea how many times, even, that she had said that to him….and she was going to say it again later…and here he was lying to her like a liar…and he didn't want to be a liar…

But sometimes you had to make pragmatic choices.

"I love you too." Said Sho. That was not a lie. That was the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help him God. He loved her and….and he wanted to tell her that truth. About this. About something that he could tell her about. He could tell her about this and she would be worried, and probably freaked out, but she wouldn't be hurt. If he told her the truth about baby sis…she would have been hurt….and if he told her the truth about other stuff about him…well then she wouldn't be mad but…but he still didn't want to tell her about that.

He wanted to tell her, though, about the tebori that he was doing.

He could have…but he didn't. He could feel her walking away. He could hear her walking away and he could feel her aura getting farther and farther away. He could have told her but he didn't. No, he just…he picked up he pencil again. The one that he had taped the safety pin to. He dipped the end in the blood and went back to poking himself. He shook, a little, just a little. He shook because…well because his brain was forgetting just a little bit that he could move his arms. He could move his arms and he could have gotten up, if he had wanted to, and he could have walked around…or walked away….he could have just gotten up and walked away and…and also it was just a little prick. Nothing bad. It was just a little bit of a pinprick….

Over and over again.

But he was fine. That was not a lie. He lied enough to other people, to his big sister, that he did not need to lie to himself too. He was fine. The pricking didn't bother him and…and the water in the tub didn't bother him either. It was in the tub where it belonged. He was on the bathroom counter. The water was nowhere near his face….and the pin might have been pricking him but…well it didn't hurt. Not that much. Not when he could get away. He wasn't lying to himself, not like he had lied to big sis, and he just…he didn't need to be lying to anyone else…especially himself…

But especially his big sis.

He stopped what he was doing. The dragon on his arm would have to be unfinished for now. He just…he knew that Shimazaki would have thought that he was cool if he knew that Sho had copied, sort of, one of his tattoos. He knew that he wanted Shimazaki to think that he was cool…but he also knew that big sis…well she should have thought that he cool no matter what he did because she was like that…but he just…he wanted to make her happy. He had to do something nice for her. He knew what he could do for her.

He picked up the Sharpie.

When you loved a girl you got her picture tattooed on you. Shimazaki…well he had loved, probably, the naked girl that had been on his arm before….not that Sho would have wanted to have a naked tattoo of his big sister on his arm. That would have been really fucking weird. No, he would get a tattoo of big sis on his arm, above the dragon, and it would be her with her clothes on because he wasn't a weird late night only anime guy. He would do his big sis first…and then his little sis…but later. Not now. Even though he loved her….

He would only do big sis for now.

He flipped through his phone and found a good reference picture. He could draw better than he could poke…but he was getting better at poking. Maybe he would be better than he had been before. He was better at drawing things that he loved and he really loved big sis…well he loved little sis too but it was big sis who could be tattooed onto him first. Well poked onto him. He was getting better and better at poking himself….and he would do a good job of this.

Tebori tattoos were the traditional way of doing tattoos in Japan and he was Japanese so, of course, he would do a tebori tattoo…and of course he would get one of his big sis. He loved his sister, both of them, more than anyone else in the world.

He did.


	393. Never Listen to Bad Advice

This was a good idea.

This was a good idea that Mob had…that Minori had given Mob. Minori had been the one to have this idea…but she knew about these things. Boy things. Relationship things. Grown up things…and it was a grown up thing. Being with someone. Asking someone if they wanted to be with you. Minori had done it before. She had a boy she did kissing stuff with and….and she had done that kind of stuff with boys before…so she knew what she was doing. She knew what she was doing and….and Mob REALLY did not know what she was doing.

She really didn't.

She had never done this before. Well not this, she had sat next to Hatori and hung out with him a million times before, but she had never….well done what she was planning to do. She was going to ask him if he liked her. That was…something that she was going to do. Maybe. Possibly. Maybe. Hopefully. Maybe. No way. Maybe…she didn't know. She just didn't know. She had….she had wanted to be his girlfriend for a long time. Well she had wanted on and off to be his girlfriend…and this was one of those 'on' times. This was….she liked him. He hadn't done anything to make her not like him, he had stopped liking Minegishi and he hadn't dank and done anything…not good…ok, so she liked him now. She liked him and…and he might have liked her.

She didn't know.

She knew that he was nice to her. He had pulled up a chair for her and offered her Doritos and Monster, she didn't take either, and he had promised her a bunch of turns too. She didn't really want a turn, this was one of those games where you killed people, but she did…she did like the fact that he had offered her a turn. That was good. If she had to be with someone she should have been with someone who let her have turns…and shared with her. Also he had let her have the comfy chair and he was sitting at a kitchen chair, so he had thought about her, and that was good. If she was going to have a boyfriend then he should have thought about her. Also….also he thought about her a lot. Like now, he was wearing pants even though it was late at night, close to his bedtime, and he had done that for her…and she was happy about that. She wanted to hold his hand and kiss him, and maybe once they'd been together for a while he could feel her up because older boys liked that according to Minori, but she wasn't ready for…any of that other stuff….

But she did want to kiss him.

Even now she wanted to kiss him. His teeth were orange, he'd been eating a lot of Doritos, but she still wanted to kiss him. He was…he was really…Hatori. Even with his teeth and fingers being orange she just…she liked looking at him. She liked looking at him and if he were to turn around and tell her that he wanted to kiss her then she would have let him. She was wearing really nice lip gloss, it was bubblegum flavored, in case he did want to kiss her. Minori said that older boys were great because they weren't afraid to kiss and that was why flavored lip gloss was important. Minori knew a lot about these things.

She knew a lot more than Mob did.

She had told Mob what to do. She had to be alone with Hatori with none of their other friends around. They were in his room all alone together. It was late and most of the house was asleep. Minegishi was sleeping, which was good because they would have tried to stop her, and so was Shibata. He wouldn't have tried to stop her, he said yes to everything even making middle of the night cakes. Shimazaki wouldn't have stopped her either. He was awake but taking one of his baths which were just an excuse to sing and drink in the tub. Everyone was busy, nobody was going to try and talk her out of this, and she was not going to talk herself out of this either.

Even though Minegishi had said that this was a bad idea.

Well not THIS specifically. They had told her not to listen to Minori but they hadn't told her to get out of Hatori's room and go home. No, they had just told her not to listen to Minori because they thought that she didn't know what she was talking about. Well she did. She had told Mob that they had to do everything together and…and also she had told Mob to wear her shorest skirt and he tightest shirt, and to do her makeup so she didn't look sick, and also…also she had told Mob that she could do this. That was she capable of…of having someone like her. Well like her enough to kiss her. Minegishi always told her that Hatori couldn't like her. That it was a bad idea because he was so old and stuff. Minori had said that older boys were the best kind of boys…and maybe she hadn't been talking about boys as old as Hatori but…

Nine years wasn't that much older than her.

Ten years would have been much too old, Mob decided, because then he would have been old enough to be her dad…well no, that wasn't right…but ten years was much too much of an age gap. Nine was ok because…because it was still in the single digits and…and she just….she really liked him! Sure he could be loud and messy and it had taken him a while to get the hang out doing laundry and also he used to have a crush on Minegishi but…but he was still Hatori. He was Hatori and…and he had asked her to go to the comics thing with him which was probably a date…and also he was hanging out with her right now…..and he was being nice to her…

So, of course, he must have liked her…maybe….possibly….

"You sure that you don't want any Doritos, Mob? Last call." Said Hatori shaking the bag of Doritos in her direction. His eyes never left the screen. He could play with just his powers, which was so cool, and she decided that she liked that about him, too. She liked how he had cool powers and…and also how he thought about her…and even the way his fingers were orange sticky. They were cute…he was cute…and nice…

He was really cute and nice.

"No thank you….but thank you for asking. It means a lot that you…think of me…and stuff." Said Mob. She looked down and played with the bottom of her shirt. This was a pink one, Minori said to wear pink and purple because those were the colors she looked best in, and it didn't fit that well anymore. Neither did her skirt. Minori said to wear stuff that was short and tight so that he would want to kiss her and stuff because that was just how boy's brains worked. She knew a lot about this kind of stuff….and Mob wished that she knew as much as she did….

But it was nice to have someone there to teach her.

Mob was tired of nobody teaching her things. Nobody had told her about her period or about any of the other things about growing up…but at least she had someone to tell her about this. Minegishi didn't tell her anything besides that this was a bad idea…but it might have just seemed like a bad idea to them because they didn't like relationships. They had been dumped before and they were worried about that happening to Mob, probably, and also…well they just did not like relationships. They had said so and that was why it had taken them so long to get into a relationship with Shimazaki even though he had liked them for years and years. Mob…she knew that Minegishi had been through a lot but they were an entirely different person than her and their life was different than her life….

And also Hatori didn't seem like the sort of person who would have dumped her.

"Well I try. Anyway are you sure that you don't want a turn? Or we could play something else if you want. I'm almost done here, I just have a title to defend. We can play Animal Crossing if you want. Sho said that you redid your house." Said Hatori

"I…I did…but um….we can play what you want. I can like the things that you like. That's…important." Said Mob. If this relationship was going to work out, or even become a relationship in the first place, they would have to have things in common. Dad had said that one day she would find her most perfect person and…and she would also be someone's most perfect person…and Hatori seemed like he would be a good candidate for her most perfect person. He was nice and thoughtful and a very good friend…and also she wanted to be his most perfect person so that meant that they would have to have things in common. She didn't really like violent games, she always felt sort of bad for the people in them even though they weren't real, but she could try for him. If it meant that he would like her.

"That's true but we can do things that you want too. You're the kid after all." said Hatori. Kid. She was a kid…but she was…well she was and she wasn't. She knew that if he kept on seeing her as a kid then…then they would never get anywhere….and she wanted to get somewhere. They were…they were friends and she wanted to become something else. Something past friends and…and she would never be able to if they stayed as just friends…as just a friend and a kid.

"You're my friend and you can pick too. I mean I'm younger but I'm not a little kid. We're friends and…and friends take turns picking things. When you're friends with someone then…then things are…equal. When you're more than friends too." Said Mob. She felt herself getting warm…and she knew that it was not the heat. The air conditioning was on and it was actually kind of cold in there, especially since she was dressed the way she was, it was her own….self…that caused it.

"Yeah, friendship goes both ways but I know how you are about violent games. Oh! Hey, do you know what a Vectrex is? Because I found these emulators of-" said Hatori. No, no, no, he was talking about games now. Once he started talking about games it was almost impossible to get him to stop…he was like dad in that way…and she wanted….she wanted him to just….not talk about games right now. She was not dad and…and she didn't…

She didn't want to be dad's most perfect person!

She loved her dad, she really did, but she did not want to be his most perfect person. She knew that he thought that she was perfect, he told her all the time, and she knew that she should have been happy but…but she just…she wanted to be Hatori's most perfect person! She wanted him to like her and…and it was ok if he liked her….because he might have liked girls too…and also it was ok for him to like her because dad liked him…because he and dad were so alike and…and….and….

And she would rather have spent her whole life with Hatori than with dad!

"Do you like me?" asked Mob quickly. She had to say it and she had to say it fast. Minori said that the girl had to be the one to ask the boy because boys were stupid. Well Mob didn't think that Hatori was stupid, she thought that he was really smart actually, and she just….she was tired of…of not knowing. She had liked him since the moment she saw him and…and she had started to like him even more as she got to know him…and Minori had said that he probably liked her…

Boys did not hang out with girls they didn't like, she had said.

Hatori was a boy and he hung out with her. He was older than her but less than ten years…and dad had said that she and Hatori were both kids, practically the same age even, so…so maybe Hatori did like her. Maybe…he had taken her and only her to the comics thing…and he had held her hand there too. Boys did not just take random girls places and hold their hands. Minori had said so. Minegishi had said that Minori didn't know what she was talking about, that eleven year old should not have taken life advice from other elven year olds, but…well Minori was closer to her age than Minegishi's and Minegishi was an adult and thought like an adult…and Mob was a kid…kidult…and she thought like a kidult. So did Hatori. He could be such a kid sometimes. He was fragile, well Sho called him a scaredy cat, and also he liked games and he ate more junk food than normal food…and just…she liked him and she was pretty sure that he liked her too!

Minori had said that he probably did.

"Wha-yeah, of course I like you. You're like a little sister to me." Said Hatori. He rubbed the back of his head as he said that. He was so…Hatori…when he did that. She looked at him. She watched him. His sweater was riding up over his stomach, his aura was stuck in his computer, and he was smiling and closing his eyes and…and he was just…

He didn't get it.

"No, I mean…do you like me?" asked Mob. He hadn't understood what she had meant…but that was ok. He could be just as clueless as she was and that was ok. Sometimes people were just…clueless about stuff. That was fine. That was something that they had in common…which was more evidence that he might have liked her. People liked people who they had things in common with after all.

"I like you. You know I do little sister-sama. If this is about that party that we threw believe me nobody wanted to embarrass you. Shibata just…really likes throwing parties. Well actually your brother, God he is just like your dad sometimes, he's the one who-" said Hatori. No. She did not want to talk about dad and…and about Sho either…or that day. She just…she did not want to be called little sister. She was not his little sister…and he just…he had to stop calling her that. She wasn't little. She was eleven and eleven was not little…and also she wasn't his sister. That would have been really weird.

"No….I mean….you know that I'm not actually your sister, right? Like…you know that my dad isn't your dad, right? And my mom isn't your mom? And my brother isn't your brother?" asked Mob. He was always calling her that, well he had called her that when she was little, but she was not little. He was so much older than her…but not so much. Ten years was a long time but nine…nine wasn't so long. Nine was good and….and Hatori did not….he did not need to think of her as a little kid.

Because she was not a little kid anymore.

She was older now…and maybe Minegishi had been wrong. Maybe she was old enough for him. She didn't like to be…to have…everyone call her a kid. Think of her as a kid. She was not a kid and….and she was eleven…but she was just….she was not a little kid anymore!

She was eleven, not one, and she just…she liked him a lot!

"Oh, I get. Mob, don't worry. I'm not trying to insert myself into your family. I'm just…the guy your dad hangs out with when he's feeling lonely and doesn't want to admit it, that's all. Lonely for adult company, I mean." Said Hatori. Mob shook her head. She did not want to talk about dad. She did not want to think about dad. She did not want to think about how dad was always talking about how he would never leave her and how they would be together all the time and how he would help her take care of her kids and…

And she would rather have had Hatori for that stuff….

But he just…he didn't get it. Mob…this was ok. She didn't get it. She didn't get what she was doing wrong. Maybe she was being direct. Minori had said that when it came to boys you had to be direct…but also not too direct because they didn't like that…and she wished that she had been listening more closely or…or recorded it when Minori explained the sweet spot for telling a boy you liked him….

This was complicated…and she needed to make it simple. For both of their sakes.

"Hatori….just….I like you. I like you a lot and…and I want to be your….your girlfriend!" said Mob. She wanted to run and hide. She had never said that to any boy before in her life and…and she just…this was ok. Hatori hadn't said 'ew' and run away…well of course he wouldn't have he was older than she was and they were not kids anymore, but he just…wasn't making words. He was making sounds but not words.

"Wh-what…..?" asked Hatori. He was red and…and he was breathing hard…and so was she. She felt like she had spent the whole day chasing after Sho….and he ran fast…and just…she knew that she looked dumb but…well he would never think of her as dumb. He was Hatori and…and also he looked like her…like he was just as nervous as she was.

"It's ok if you don't like me back but…but I like you. I like you a lot and I've liked you, well on and off, for a while and I want to be your girlfriend." Said Mob. She looked at him…and he was looking at her. That was good. His eyes were big and brown and so pretty….and she had never noticed how pretty his eyes were…but they were and…and she hoped that he thought that her eyes were pretty too. She had made an effort….and she wanted nothing more than for him to hold her hand and tell her that she was pretty….

But he was just staring at her…and then he laughed….for some reason.

"Mob…who put you up to this? Was it Shimazaki?" asked Hatori. He laughed but his aura did not feel like he was laughing. Mob shook her head. Nobody put her up to this, these were her feelings, but this was ok. Minori had said that boys like Hatori weren't used to girls who liked them like that. That was a good thing, well not really because should have been nice to him, but Minori had said that it was good because then he wouldn't say 'no' to her…and she didn't want him to say no….

Well she didn't want him to agree to anything that he didn't want to do.

But she didn't want him to say no. She had seen Sho say no to girls. There was a lot of yelling and running away. She didn't want Hatori to yell at her…and he was good at running away….but she didn't want him to do that. She knew how boys could be…well that had been back when she and Sho had been little…and also those girls had played catch and kiss….and as much as Mob liked Hatori she didn't have it in her to catch and kiss him…

Also she was eleven and she was much too old for that.

"No, nobody put me up to this…well my friend Minori said that….well ok. So she says that I'm her best friend and because we're best friends we have to do everything together and she has a friend with benefits, that's like what Shimazaki and Minegishi were before they became boyfriend and theyfriend, and then so, anyway, she said that I needed to find someone and…and I like you a lot. I like you a lot and I know that I'm younger than you but you can kiss me and-" said Mob. She just…talked. Minori had said that telling him how she felt would have been hard…and it was…but also…also she just…she was tired of keeping those feelings inside! Just…he was great and she just…she was tired of not knowing! If he said yes then he would…well he would hold her and kiss her…and also…also they could spend their whole lives together. That would be great. It would just be her and Hatori and dad…and Hatori was dad's friend so they would get along…and she wouldn't have to be alone with dad for the rest of her life. Yes. Hatori was…he was great. He was great and…and he was…well he was very red…but that was ok. So was she.

Which meant that it was a good sign…right?

"Oh my God…..oh my God…" said Hatori. He was breathing funny, now, really deep and fast…and his aura was acting like it was trying to run away. She could feel it jumping from his computer to his phone to her phone to her DS to the lights and then back again. His aura was running around, darting around, sort of like hers was…and maybe he was just as nervous as she was. She was nervous and…and if he was nervous too then…then he must have liked her back…because then otherwise why would he had been that nervous? If he hadn't liked her back then…well then he would have told her that he didn't feel the same way….and then she would have had to go outside, dig a hole, and then live in it until either she or Hatori died.

"Um….and stuff….well not all of the stuff because I don't really want to do that right but I do want to be your girlfriend and…well I can't be your girlfriend until Minori gets a boyfriend but I can kiss you and hold your hand and stuff. So….yeah. I like you." Said Mob. She took a chance and…well Minori said that boys liked it when you took their hands…so that was what she did. She put her hand over Hatori's. He was sweaty and shaky and cold…and she didn't know why. She knew that he got like this when he was scared but…but maybe he was just…scared because he liked her and no girl had ever confessed to him before…or something.

"I…am going to die." Said Hatori. He was breathing heavy and…and maybe that was good. She felt like she was going to die, too, like her heart was going to explode. Like the time that she drank a whole pot of coffee on her own. She felt like she was going to die…but in a good way. Like…like this was….the best thing ever…or something….

"Yes, I feel like that too. Minori says that that's normal and-" said Mob. She tried to lace her fingers in his. That was…something that she had wanted for so long….and for a moment their fingers were laced. So what if his hand was cold and sweaty? So what if he was shaking? She was shaking too. Sometimes you just shook…but in a good way…and it was the best….this was everything that she had ever imagined…

But then it wasn't.

"I have to go to the bathroom." Said Hatori. He yanked his hand out of hers and then ran away. She kept her hand, there, where his had been. She just…she could feel his sweat on her hand and….and she was just…she didn't know what was even happening anymore. She got the feeling that…that maybe she had just…

Well dad would have called it miscalculating….

"But Shimazaki is in there and….ok. I'll just….be here….I guess." Said Mob. Hatori had long since run out of the room. She could hear him banging on the bathroom door. She took a deep breath…and his pyramid of energy drink cans fell apart. That had been her powers. She ruined his pyramid and…and also his bed was standing up against the wall…and now his blinds were opening and closing and…and she needed to calm down…she needed to calm down and just…get her powers under control…

But she couldn't.

She heard the door open…and that meant that Shimazaki had let him in the bathroom….and that meant that Hatori either REALLY had to go to the bathroom….or he was hiding. He might have been hiding since she hadn't felt Shimazaki teleport anywhere. That meant that they were just hanging out together…and talking. She could hear them talking and…and maybe…maybe she had done something wrong….

Maybe she had miscalculated.

Maybe Minegishi had been right. She felt…she felt their aura. They were still asleep and…and she wanted to run to their room. She wanted to run to their room and jump under their covers and stick to them like glue. When she was with them they kept her safe….and she felt like she needed to be safe. Even though she knew that she wasn't in danger…well she just…she was a danger to herself. Dad had told Sho, before, that he was a danger to himself. Dad always said that when Sho did something dangerous like climb onto the roof or ride a cardboard box down the stairs…and then there had been the inside game of lawn darts…and Mob hadn't done anything like that…anything dangerous….

But she had been kind of…not very smart…..at all.

"She said what?!" said Shimazaki. Mob covered her ears. She could hear them talking…..and they were talking about her and…and she wanted to run. She wanted to hide. She wanted to just…dig a hole and live in it. She wanted to become an underground person and….and just…never have to see or hear from anyone ever again! She should have listened to Minegishi. They knew everything. They were smart. They may have been older, and they didn't like relationships, but she just….she should have listened to Minegishi!

She really should have.

They were her real best friend or…well not real but…but her bestest best friend…or something. She didn't know. Her smartest best friend. The one who didn't tell her to do stuff….that just…she couldn't believe that she had been stupid enough to try! She just….she had just wanted to be with him…or maybe just any boy and…and she just…he was the only boy that she knew! He was the only boy close to her age that she knew and…and also he was just….he was so nice to her and…and she just….she just….

If she moved she knew that she would explode.

So she didn't move. She stayed still. She stayed so still that she didn't even shake. At least Hatori had let her have the nice chair and…and he was so nice to her…and he would never be nice to her again. She had messed up their entire friendship. She never should have tried to be anything other than his little friend….his little sister….just…she didn't feel like she was too little but…but…but he didn't even like her so…so…so….

So she had messed up.

She felt the energy around her shift. Shimazaki was teleporting past her. She knew where he was going. He was going to tell Minegishi and…and it was a thing that of course he would have done. She knew that they had a real relationship…like she would never have and…and she should have waited until she was an adult like Minegishi had said. Even though…even though by the time she was an adult dad would make her spend her life with him…and maybe that was for the best…because at least if she spent her life with her dad she would never have the chance to embarrass herself like this ever again….

And the embarrassment just kept going.

"Ryou….put your clothes back on. I'm not in the mood." Said Minegishi. They shared a wall with Hatori. It was their room in between Shimazaki's and Hatori's…and Mob wished that Shimazaki had just gone to his own room….because she just…Minegishi could not know about this! They would just tell Mob something like 'I told you so' and then…and then she would just…and then everyone would just…she just…

She wanted time to stop!

But it didn't.

"Mob did what!?" asked Minegishi. Mob…she tried to move…but that just made…it made the whole house shake…and that had not been the thing to do. As the house shook she could feel Shibata falling out of bed…well couch…and she could hear Hatori do that little yelpy scream he did…and then Shimazaki laughed…and he didn't stop and…and she had no idea what to do. She just…there was no way to teleport. She had tried it, before, and she hadn't been able to figure it out…but now she wished that she had put more effort into learning how to teleport…..

Because she really would have rather have been anywhere else, in the whole world, than right there in Hatori's room…with Minegishi getting closer….

"….never you mind what's happening…..Hatori out of the bathroom…..deal with this…." said Minegishi as they got closer. Mob…she watched the door. She stared at the door. She stared at the door and…and Hatori had opened it so hard that it swung shut…mostly. She could feel the house shaking as Shibata walked past….and he was knocking on the door trying to get Hatori out…and she hoped that Hatori spent the rest of his life in the bathroom…and she knew that she was being mean but….

But she just…did not want anyone else to know…how dumb she had been….

She was still being dumb. She should have just…just run away. Just crawled out the window…or something…and run away. She just….she just wanted to just…to just…she just wanted to teleport away or disappear or…or just…turn back time…she didn't know. She didn't know what she could do or what she couldn't do but….but she knew that anything would have been better than what was happening right now.

Anything would have been better than having Minegishi open that door.

"H-hi…." Said Mob. She knew that she had to find words. Especially because Minegishi wasn't saying words. They were just looking at her. They had red eyes, a bed head, and they only had one sock on. They had been asleep and Mob had ruined their sleep…and she really hoped that all Minegishi had to say was that Mob should not have disturbed their sleep. Maybe Minegishi would just…be too tired to even remember what they had come into Hatori's room to tell her….

Mob would not be that lucky.

"Hi….ok then. Mob, tell me, which one of you is high right now?" Said Minegishi. Mob…well she hadn't meant it like that. She wasn't high on anything. Smoking felt sort of…not the same…since she and dad had smoked. The whole thing had been weird and she needed a break and…and stuff. She would not have been high when she made a confession anyway. That would have been a bad idea, Minori had said, because boys needed to know that you meant it.

"Um…what do you mean? I mean….what do you mean?" asked Mob. She wondered if she would get talked to about moderation….and she hoped that it was just the moderation talk again…because she just…maybe if she hoped long enough and hard enough everything would just…rewind like a movie. ..or something.

"One of you is high right now. Is it you or Ryou? Or is it both of you? Because there is no way that sober people could have come up with what Ryou just told me." Said Minegishi. They shook their head and leaned over in the doorway…and they were tired. They were tired down to their aura and…and this was Nob's fault and…and she just…had to answer the question.

"I-I'm not high right now…because I smoked with my dad the other day and now when I smoke I just feel sort of weird….and Shimazaki…well I don't know if he is or he isn't….I don't want him twenty four hours a day." Said Mob softly. Maybe they could talk about Shimazaki and not her…maybe. She didn't know. He was still laughing and…and it wasn't that funny! It wasn't funny at all! It was…this was….this was the worst thing that she had ever done!

"Smoked with….one thing at a time. Mob…did you just ask Hatori out? Because that's what Ryou told me…and we both know that he's not the most reliable-" said Minegishi. Mob…she had to….this was the worst thing that she had ever done and…and she should have listened. She should have listened and Minegishi was going to tell her that she should have listened…and she just…she didn't want them to tell her that she had been wrong and stupid and…and stuff! She just wanted….she just wanted…she just wanted to either move backwards so it never would have happened or she just wanted to move forward so that this could be behind her…

And since she didn't have a time machine the only thing that she could do was move forward.

"I did! I did and I'm sorry!" said Mob. She jumped down from the chair and kowtowed. She made the house shake, and also the heard something breaking in the kitchen, and now she had even more stuff to be sorry about. Hatori did the yelping sound thing and…and she needed to say sorry to him too…and she just…she didn't know how she would ever even be in the same room as him let alone make words and have him listen to those words and-and-and-

And she just wanted this to be over.

"Mob…can you please explain-" said Minegishi. They reached down and grabbed her by the back of her shirt. They pulled her out of the kowtow…and she knew that she could have just dropped down into it…and she should have. She should have kowtowed to them and also to Hatori…and then to the rest of the house for disrupting everyone's night and making a mess and…and she just…she had no idea how she could have messed up so badly!

"I'm sorry! I should have listened to you! I just…I just listened to Minori because she said that it would be a good idea because she had a friend with benefits and he's older than her, he's fourteen, and Minori said that we had to do everything together because she thinks we're best friends….and I'm sorry!" said Mob. There. That was one of her apologies made. She stood in front of Minegishi…who was just staring at her. Their eyes were wide and if they'd had eyebrows their eyebrows would have been up into their hairline. What little aura they had was just...scared...or surprised or...or maybe they were scared by the mess that Mob was making and they were surprised that Mob could have done something so dumb….

And Mob didn't blame them.

"Friend with….someone needs to look in on….not my kid. That is not my kid and….and you're not my kid and-" said Minegishi. Mob…was not their kid…but she was their friend…their best friend. She was their best friend and they were hers and…and she may have been Minori's best friend too, because she didn't have any other friends, but…but Minegishi was the friend that she should have listened to. She could hear everything that she had said inside of her brain. It was like someone had hit the loop button in her brain. She had said…so much stuff…and she should have listened to Minegishi. So what if they hated relationship and so what if it had taken them years to become Shimazaki's theyfriend….they knew what was best! She decided, then, in that moment that she would do whatever Minegishi asked her to…forever!

"I'm sorry! I was dumb and…and I just….I messed up and…and I just…I wasn't thinking! I wasn't thinking and now I just….I messed up the whole friendship and…and now we'll never be friends again!" said Mob. That was the worst part. She had messed with the whole friend group…and she hadn't even been thinking about the friend group! She had been so selfish and…and maybe she should have just…just kept her feelings to herself and…and maybe she should have broken her promise to Minori. That they would do everything together….because there was no way that she would ever do anything like this ever again.

"Mob-" said Minegishi. They put both of their hands on her shoulders. She just…she wanted a hug but….but she had messed up! She had messed up and even if she got a hug she would just end up, after the hug was over, hearing about all the ways that she had messed up. She hadn't been thinking and…and she just wanted to live in a hole. In an underground bunker like the people in the documentary she had seen, the ones who were getting ready for the end of the world, because this felt like the end of the world. It was the end of their friend group and…and that might as well have been the end of the whole world!

"Now I have to go and live in-in-in a hole! I can't ever come out!" said Mob. She knew that the only way that she could live through this was to live like it was the end of the world. Minegishi…they wouldn't get it. They had lots of friends, well they could make lots of friends because they were the best friend a person could have, and Mob….aside from Minori these were her only friends and…and now she had ruined the whole friend group…and she had no idea what she would ever do without them. This was the end of it, their friendship, the whole world….

"What are you-" said Minegishi. They shook her just a little and…and they were right to shake her. They were probably so mad at her and…and she was mad at herself. She had done something that Minegishi had told her something, not to do something, and now….now she had done the opposite and…and what if they wanted to stop being her friend too!? What would she do then!?

"Nobody can ever see me or talk to me again! I ruined everything and I'm sorry and-" said Mob. Minegishi shook Mob, pulled her into a hug, and let her go. It was like they had slapped her in the face like people did in the movies. She…well she wasn't freaking out anymore and….and she had such a mess to clean up. She had to clean up the house and…and also she had to clean up the mess she had made with Hatori….

But at least she wasn't freaking out anymore.

"Mob! Just….stop apologizing. I get it. You realize that you made a mistake, you had more hormones than sense, and me standing here saying 'I told you so' won't help….and I'm too tired to tell you that anyway. What I will tell you is that you need to stop freaking out. You're not the first one, believe me you're nowhere near the first one, to make an idiot out of yourself for a guy. You're young and you have more hormones than sense and…and we can talk about this more in the morning. I'm exhausted and I need to sleep but I can't sleep with everyone carrying on like this….so you and I are going to fix this in the quickest way possible. Mob….we're going to calm down and then you're going to tell Hatori that Ryou put you up to this, that's something he'd do, and then you're going to go home and go to sleep and then we're all going to act like this never happened." Said Minegishi. They pulled her into another hug when they were done talking and….and they knew what to do. They always knew what to do and…and she needed to listen to them…even though they had just…it sounded like they had just told her to…lie.

"But…but he knows that I confessed for real and telling lies is wrong-" said Mob. Mom had told her that lying was wrong, dad had told her that lying was beneath her, but that wasn't why she wasn't going to lie. She wasn't going to lie…well she didn't like to lie…because it was just a bad thing to do. She loved her friends and when you had friends you certainly didn't lie to them. Lying to your friends was like stealing from them, you were stealing the truth, and stealing was always wrong. When you stole the truth from someone then you stole trust and without trust then how could there be friendship?

"Mob. Suzuki Shigeko. Which sounds better? The whole house addressing the fact that you asked Hatori out…or everyone thinking that you were put up to it?" said Minegishi. They…..without trust there could be no friendship…but with what she had done there could be no friendship…and she liked being friends with everyone. She liked her friends and…and she wanted things to go back to how they were before and….and she needed to learn to listen to Minegishi. They knew things. They knew….they knew a lot of things including what to do and….

And she was going to listen to them.

"I…I can do that…and then things can go back to normal." Said Mob. All she wanted was to go back to before she had ever even thought about confessing to Hatori…and this was how she was going to do it. She just…she would make up for this. She didn't know how she would make up for this but she would. She had to.

She'd had a terrible idea, the worst idea that anyone had ever come up with, and now she had to fix it…even if it meant lying to her friends.


	394. Unexpected Company for Breakfast

Suzuki Touichirou did not cook.

He knew how to cook, he wasn't helpless, but he just did not like to. It was tedious, first of all, and second of all there was no reason for him to cook when he could just delegate those tasks to his Daughter. She was a better cook than him and there was nothing wrong with delegating a task to someone who knew better than him. Yes, Daughter was the one in the household who did all the cooking. She was the best at it after all. Especially breakfast. There was no better breakfast maker in all the world than his Daughter, Shigeko.

That is when she was actually making breakfast.

She wasn't. The house wasn't filled with the sounds and smells of cooking. No, it was filled with the smell of paint…and he so hoped that smell dissipated before they had to move again. They would be moving to Osaka soon and…well he would have to paint that house blue for his Daughter too….Shigeko liked blue…well maybe he could have it painted in advance. At least that way even if the house didn't smell like cooking it wouldn't smell like a paint factory. Though right now he had to worry about this house smelling like cooking. It didn't. This was…she always made breakfast….

Something was wrong.

That must have been it. Suzuki stood in the empty kitchen and tried to stay calm. Something was wrong but nothing serious. Maybe she was out of commission again…he hoped not. He didn't know if he could deal with that kind of shock again. Maybe she was smoking again…and he chooses not to think about that. She was his Daughter and he didn't want her smoking anything but…but Shigeko was also, essentially, just a very short woman who lived in his house with him so…so really he had no right…well he did but…it would have been very inadvisable to try and make her stop. He hopes to God, though, that she hasn't been smoking again….

Not that he gets to have an opinion on that.

What he does, however, get to have an opinion on is the lack of breakfast cooking in that kitchen. Something must have been wrong…and he had to find out what. If it was something simple like her sleeping in then he could wake her. If it was something complex like her being….well like all of that happening to her again then….well he'll leave her to Minegishi's capable hands. If it's something else like she's smoking or drinking, and he'd much rather deal with her being indisposed due to menstruating than being intoxicated, then he would just leave her alone to deal with all of that. There. He knew what he would do….and he just had to….well he just had to find her and go to her and talk to her….

You're being ridiculous, Touichirou.

He can hear Masami's voice in his mind. He's being ridiculous and he knows it. There must have been at least a hundred other ways for him to get breakfast. He should have just left her alone….especially if she was indisposed in some way….but he just…there were so many things that could have happened to her. She was so small and helpless and she needed him…and he was going to be there for her. He loved her so much and…and she was just….she was his Daughter and she was Shigeko and he just…had to make sure that she was alright. He ignored Masami's voice in his mind and made his way back up the stairs to the children's bedroom.

And stopped in his tracks.

"Ow…ow….ow! God…mother fucker!"

For a moment he thought that he had been hearing Daughter's voice. She did have a very high pitched voice, Shigeko, and for a moment he thought that something was terribly wrong, because she never spoke like that, but that moment passed quickly. Now it was his own voice in his mind telling him that he was being ridiculous. That vice was clearly Son's and it was clearly coming from the bathroom. Suzuki had no idea what it was that he did in there for so long and he didn't care just so long as he didn't bother his sister.

Though he did sound like he was in pain.

That could have been a real bother to Shigeko…and it was somewhat of a bother to Suzuki himself as well. He didn't care if Son was in pain, if he had hurt himself then that was his own problem, but he did care if Son carried on like that. You were never supposed to carry on if you were in pain. Father had made that very clear to Suzuki when he had been young…but for some reason Son hadn't got the message. He didn't understand that boy sometimes. Father had hardly ever had the need to tell him anything more than once. Twice was almost unheard of. Son…Suzuki did not understand anything about that child sometimes.

How this was his Son…how he had made this person…he would never understand.

"If you're in pain have Fukuda fix whatever it is. Don't carry on like that." Said Suzuki as he knocked on the door. The Boy had been awake for not even half an hour yet and already he was carrying on. Already he'd hurt himself. How he had even managed that was beyond Suzuki's understanding. How he even could be…whatever it was that he was…was beyond Suzuki's understanding. The way he carried on all the time…the way he was always so quarrelsome…Suzuki didn't understand it. He hadn't been anything like that when he had been a child.

He had been a very good child.

He had done what he was told when he was told to do it. He had been quiet, clean, and courteous to the adults around him. He had always fulfilled his role in the family. He'd gotten good grades, kept his living space clean, and never bothered mother and father with any of his childhood problems. The only thing that he had done wrong, really, was lose control of his powers…but he had gotten better about that as he got older. Son at least had complete control over his powers…near complete. His aura had flared but he hadn't done anything at all to affect the environment. That was good.

Son was good at that, controlling his powers.

"I'm not in pain and I'm not carrying on….and I'm not doing anything!" said Son. Suzuki didn't much care for being lied to…but he also didn't much care for carrying on with Son either. He was very good at carrying on and Suzuki…well he didn't want to bother Daughter. She had enough to deal with as it was. He didn't need to give her anything else to deal with. The more she had to deal with the more stress she would feel and the more stress she would feel the more she would drink and smoke…and he couldn't tell her not to drink and smoke…but he also didn't like it at all….

"Whatever you're doing don't bother your sister with it." Said Suzuki. He didn't wait for Son's reply. He didn't wait for Son to probably yell at him if not curse again. He didn't want to deal with that and he did not want Shigeko to deal with that. He could feel her aura. Something was bothering her. Her aura was pulled in close and it shrank away from his. He decided to deal with….whatever that was. If he even could. He remembered how useless he had felt…he had been….but he had no other option but to be useless. There were some parts of her life that he just…could not help her with.

But maybe this wasn't one of those things.

Maybe this was something that he could help with. He didn't know. He would rather have dealt with anything that she could throw at him than deal with Son being…Son. Whatever he was. He was…himself. He was himself and Suzuki did not want to deal with him. He would much rather have dealt with Shigeko. Sure she drank and smoked and went through biological processes that he could never begin to understand but he could at least…sort of deal with her. At least she wasn't a child. Well she was but…not in the way that Son was. Son was childish but Shigeko….well she was like a very short woman.

A very short woman who was bothered by something.

"Shigeko? What's bothering you? You…your aura…feels bothered." Said Suzuki as he knocked on her door. He would have opened it but…well nothing good happened when he just opened her door. He did not feel like getting a door slammed in his face and he also did not feel like seeing her covered in blood again….he would never forget that. That image would haunt him until the day he died and probably for some time afterwards.

He still loved her, though, and he always would.

"Dad….nothing's bothering me. I don't know. Do you want breakfast?" asked Shigeko. He felt like he was being lied to. He could read auras and…well maybe nothing was bothering her and he wasn't as good at reading auras as he thought that he was. He knew her, that she loved him, and that she would never lie to him…so he must have been wrong.

He was, for the first time in his life, glad that he had been wrong.

Well the second time. He had thought, years ago, that Masami had been getting ready to break up with him. Back in the early days of their relationship. Back when she had been pregnant with Son…but before he had realized it. She had been ignoring his calls and she had, when they had spoken finally, been very quiet and distant…and that was how women were before they told him that they couldn't be with him anymore. That he was too…much…or not enough…or other such contradictory things. Women had always been so confusing….even Masami. She could have just told him from the beginning that she had been pregnant without making him worry…she had been so confusing….but Shigeko wasn't. She said what she meant and she meant what she said. She was so easy to understand….most of the time….all of the time….

Even now.

"Yes." said Suzuki. She had asked him if he wanted breakfast. She had asked him if he wanted breakfast and…well she didn't have to ask. Of course he wanted breakfast. Of course he wanted to eat a breakfast that she had made for him, preferably with her there, and preferably without her brother if he was hell bent on being….however he was being that morning.

"Um….can you maybe put ketchup on your own piece of toast this morning?" asked Shigeko softly. She…had said something that he must have misheard. She…well yes, he was perfectly capable of putting ketchup on his own piece of toast. That was all the she had meant by that and if he were to make anything other than what she had said out of that aside from the fact that she wanted to be saved the trouble of spreading ketchup on his piece of toast….and he didn't want to either.

Dunking untoasted bread was easier and better too.

But he didn't just want untoasted bread and ketchup for breakfast. Well he did but also he wanted an actual meal. He could easily eat a loaf of bread on his own doing that. He used to do that, actually, when he had been younger. Mother used to hide the bread from him but that hadn't stopped him from buying his own bread…but then the mice had come…hundreds of them….mice in the walls….mice in the floors….all around him….

He couldn't stop himself from shuddering.

"I can but I want an omelet too." Said Suzuki. He wasn't in the mood to eat just bread and ketchup. That was the point of all of that. He wasn't going to just have loafs of bread stored under his bed anymore….and also he was a grown man and he could have as much bread as he wanted now…and also Shigeko was a good cook and she loved making him breakfast…right?

Of course she did.

"….I don't really….I mean….I don't want to make omelets today. Sorry dad." Said Shigeko. That….what was wrong with…well she was fine. She was fine. She just didn't want to cook him an omelet. She was like Masami in that way. 'I'm not a short order cook, Touichirou, I'm not just going to make you omelets on demand' she had said. She had said that and…and Shigeko was not a short order cook either. Obviously she had gotten sick of making him the same thing over and over again. People, had noticed, did not have much of an appetite for repetition be it food or movies or music. Even Fukuda and he had always considered him to be his closest companion and closest thing another man could come to being his most perfect person. Back when they had been young they had tried a movie marathon….but he, for some reason, wanted to watch different movies. He hadn't been able to watch the first and second Galaxy Express movies back to back for more than six hours…and they had been watching the laserdiscs too….and he'd had the sort of player that flipped the disks over for you…people were strange sometimes. Normal people….or people close to being normal….

Shigeko was normal and…and he was happy about that…and he could work with that too.

"That's alright. Can you make scrambled eggs? You're good at those." Said Suzuki. There, that was different. That was different and he knew that he would be eating breakfast with her too. He would be eating breakfast with her at the table and….well it was a bit odd being near his child after knowing what she did…but she was not a child. Well he was but she didn't think or act like a child….she was more like a short woman. Yes, he thought of her that way, for his own sanity. A short woman who he shared his home and his life with. There.

A short woman who knew how to make the best eggs that he had ever had since…well….the taller but still shorter than him woman he had shared his life with before her.

"Dad…I just…I don't want to make breakfast today. They have scrambled eggs at HQ. Can't you eat those?" asked Shigeko. He…might have been losing his hearing…or his mind. Maybe he had deafened himself like mother had always warned him about. Maybe he had lost his mind, gone insane, as many people had accused him of being so many times in the past. Yes. He must have been losing his hearing or his mind…

But he didn't want to lose his hearing or his mind.

So then….she was asking not to make breakfast but…well he had been looking forward to this since he had realized that he had no reason to be uncomfortable around her. She was his Daughter. She was his…she was Shigeko and if she wanted to smoke then she could, it was like medicine for her and he would never take her medicine away, and now he was ok with that…and he was ready to be close to her again…

And he was ready to have breakfast with her again.

"But…you always make breakfast." Said Suzuki. There. That was what he was going to say. Part of him wanted to pick her up and carry her into the kitchen and tell her to get to cooking right now and the other part of him…well he felt like apologizing for something….but he had no idea what. Maybe he should just apologize. Fukuda had given him that advice, before, that when you felt like you had done something wrong you should just apologize even if you didn't do anything wrong…or even had the faintest idea that you had done anything wrong…

But he didn't tell lies. He was bad at it.

"Dad….I love you. You know that I usually make breakfast but….I don't want to come out of my room today. I can't. Just…if you want homemade food then…Shibata would probably feed you." Said Shigeko. No, no, no. He wanted to spend time with her, he wanted to eat her cooking, and he wanted to be near her. He wanted to be near her and no one else…even if Shibata was, supposedly, a very good cook. He was…he was going to just…could he just tell her to get up and make him breakfast? Could he at least tell her that she needed to open her door since he hated talking to a closed door and an aura? Could he…could he even tell her to do anything anymore?

She wasn't a child anymore after all, she was a short woman essentially, and…and women were several different kinds of confusing.

"But…I like it when you cook for me. Are you….is something wrong? You…you always make breakfast." Said Suzuki. He didn't understand…and he hated not understanding…and he hated not understanding her. That was what she loved about him and what he loved about her. They always told each other exactly what they meant. They were always close to each other like that, and transparent with each other, and he just…didn't like this. Her keeping things from him. Even her feelings. He couldn't understand feelings, not even in an abstract sense, but…but he at least wanted to be informed of her.

"Dad….I'm fine, it's just I did something and…and I don't feel like cooking at all today and…and why don't you go and have Shibata make you breakfast? Hatori is there and you can hang out with him….you like him a lot…and also he was telling me yesterday that he found games from a console that you might have never even heard of…but don't talk about me/ Just…Hatori would probably want to have breakfast with you." Said Shigeko. She was…telling him that…that she didn't feel like cooking. Oh. He could deal with that. That was…sometimes a person just lost motivation for things…and he could…he could spend time with Hatori. He was good company. He was good company and he just…he could be good breakfast company as well as good nighttime and work company. Yes. They were friends and that was what friends were for.

Being good company.

"I….can do that. Alright. Goodbye, Daughter. I'll see you when I come home. Have a good day." Said Suzuki. She was fine. She just didn't feel like cooking. That was…fine. Sometimes he had days when he didn't feel like working either. Those days were called Sundays for him. Everyone had those days and…and that was alright. That was alright and…and he would eat breakfast with her again. Hell, he would eat dinner with her again. He would come home and eat dinner with her and…and she would be there when he got back and…

And of course she would be home when he got back.

He shook his head as he walked away. He had been such an idiot. He had been so ridiculous. She was just…tired…or something. That was it. He would just…he wouldn't make her any more tired than she was. He would do as she suggested. He did enjoy Hatori's company and she knew that he enjoyed Hatori's company…and also he hated the breakfasts that HQ made…and well…he would do as she suggested just to make her life easier.

It was best that he made her life easier.

If her life was easy then she wouldn't have to do…other things…to make it easier. More bearable. Not that he had any idea why she would have thought of her life as being unbearable. He gave her whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, and anything else that would have come up. He just…he didn't understand her sometimes…but he wasn't going to try. She was a woman and women were very complicated people. There. So it was alright to not be able to understand her.

"Oh my God!"

Though Son would always remain a complete and total mystery to him.

But he didn't want to try and figure Son out right now. Right now…well right now he would do as Shigeko had said and…and he would just…go next door and have breakfast with Hatori. If she thought that it was a good idea then…then it was a good idea. He didn't want to sit at that table without her there anyway. It wasn't a good feeling, sort of large and cold and empty, and also…well Son would maybe join him and he and the Boy always fought when they shared a table. He didn't feel like dealing that right now. He didn't feel like dealing with much of anything right now.

He felt like having breakfast with someone who was very good company.

So that was what he was going to do. That was what he had slipped on his shoes and stepped outside of his house to do. He just…he could feel Fukuda's aura…and he was the more familiar aura…and the more familiar person. Suzuki knew him as well as he was capable of knowing another person. He knew him and…and he just…he could have just went and had breakfast with him…even though he really couldn't cook…but Daughter had said…well she had told him what to do and he didn't much like being told what to do…but he also did really like being near Hatori…not that he needed anyone. Not that he was anything other than a full and complete person on his own. Not that he was nervous, either, because he had no reason to be. He was the President of Claw. He could go wherever he wanted to go and he could do whatever he wanted to do.

And what he wanted to do was have breakfast with his friend….well his second friend.

Fukuda was his first friend and Hatori was his second friend and, really, those were the only two people he was used to outside of his family. Sure there were people all around him all the time but he just…he just worked with people….but that was different than….well than being with someone….on friendly terms….but it was only Hatori he had to be on friendly terms with. There. By the time he walked down the road, a very short trip, to the next house he felt fine.

He knew Hatori and he felt fine.

He knew Shibata, too, though not nearly as well. Hatori was his companion. Shibata was his two and a half meter tall shadow. It was odd, actually, not having this man in his shadow. He opened the door the minute Suzuki got close. Well that was nice, he had never been good at knocking at doors, and he hadn't done it in years for anyone who wasn't family. Fukuda had always told him that he was bad at it. Either too quiet or too loud or too many times or too few times….and doorbells weren't much better. God, he hated doorbells.

He liked being met at doors, though, he really liked that.

"President Suzuki! Come in…and please excuse the mess. Mob…Her Little Ladyship only just now told me you were coming….come in!" said Shibata. Suzuki really did not need to be told twice…or to excuse the mess. It wasn't that bad. Son made worse messes just drawing pictures. Sure the shoes in the genkan were faced every which way, and the entire house was crowded with plants, and for some reasons there were streamers and balloons everywhere….oh. Right. Daughter had told him about that. The others had thrown a Friendship Day party….another holiday he had to remember….but she would remember it for him. She was so good at remembering things for him….and taking care of him…

And he missed her terrible.

The kitchen that he was led to was identical to the one in his home. They were all identical, mostly, though this one was white. The one in his home was blue. The plate that he had been served on was white. Most of the plates in his house were blue. The omelet on his plate was different, too. Shaped differently than when Daughter did it…and also there was bacon on the side and not the inside…and yes…someone else had made this…

"Here you go, President Suzuki, and it's happy to see you." Said Shibata as he drew a happy face on his omelet for him in ketchup. Daughter did that sometimes…and also she did it better than Shibata did…but nobody could ever be better at anything than his Daughter was. No, this could in no way, shape, or form was anyway close to even being as good, let alone better than anything that his Daughter was capable of making.

A second plate was put down beside him.

He had been about to ask if Shibata would be joining him when he felt an aura…on him? No, no, attached to his phone. Hatori. Right. He was supposed to be having breakfast with Hatori…and now he felt better. He hadn't even realized that he had been feeling poorly until he felt better. That was…that was odd. He may not have always been able to name what he felt but…well he at least knew when he was feeling something. The closest word he had for what he had been feeling was out of sorts…and he had been feeling out of sorts for a bit but…well now he felt better.

Which was good because, apparently, Hatori felt terrible.

"I didn't do anything! I didn't!" Hatori shouted and fell back…and Suzuki did not get it...and also this lent credence to his theory that Hatori had some kind of disorder. He was always so quick to panic even in situations where it was not warranted.

"Hello Hatori. I know you didn't do anything, it's seven in the morning, I doubt that you had the chance. Now eat breakfast with me." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to pull out a chair. Hatori's eyes darted to him, then to the chair, and then back to him. He was laying on his back on the kitchen floor, that was where he had fallen, and Suzuki wondered why he wasn't making any move to get up. He really should have…and also he maybe should have gotten dressed or at least put on pants.

Pants would have been nice.

"Um….ok…..but….um…I didn't do anything! Um…and she didn't mean it…and also…also I don't even like her like that!" said Hatori. Suzuki had no idea what he was talking about…but that was normal. Hatori always got himself worked up over nothing…or maybe it was something. Suzuki didn't really know.

"I have no idea what you're referring to. Now sit down and eat before your food gets cold and unpleasant." Said Suzuki. He sounded like his mother in that moment. She had said the same thing to him when he had been a child, not a child Hatori's age but an actual child, and he…well he said what he had to say. He said what he had to say and he just…well Hatori's food was getting cold. It was getting cold and…well Suzuki would excuse the lack of pants if it meant that he got someone to eat with him.

"And maybe put on some pants….and tell Shimazaki to put clothes on, too. We have company." Said Shibata. Hatori nodded, got up, and ran away. He slipped a little on his way out….and Suzuki had no clue what he was so worried about. He so wished that Hatori would have just said what it was that bothered him, that frightened him so terribly, so Suzuki could either fix it or tell him that he was being ridiculous.

He was so ridiculous a lot of the time.

But he was good company and his company was missed as soon as he left. Shibata was telling him, now, about something that Son had gotten up to. He didn't listen. As long as Son hadn't hurt anyone then he didn't care. If he had been talking about Shigeko, well, then that would have been a different story. Shigeko was amazing in all of the things that she did…especially cooking. Suzuki knew that the polite thing to do would have been to wait for Hatori to come back but he didn't want to wait for his food to get cold and unpleasant. He liked his food warm and pleasant….and he also like his company to be good…and what he was used to….

How long did it take to put on pants?

Well too long, actually, if one got delayed…which it sounded like Hatori had. He heard the sound of a door opening and he had actually sat up just a bit taller, it could have been Hatori, but it wasn't. He felt two auras moving. One which wasn't much of anything, the plants had more feeling to them than the aura that they were attached to, and the other…well the other he did not care for at all. Shimazaki really was the better body guard…but he was also an annoying person, the most annoying human being Suzuki had ever met, so really he was better off with Son. At least they complimented each other in terms of annoyingness.

"Toshi, come on. Just tell me if this is faded or not!" said Shimazaki. Oh yes, he was grating. He was annoying and grating and he did not know how anyone put up with him Daughter was fond of him…and he didn't know why. So was…it took him a moment to realize who Toshi was. Minegishi Toshiki. Minegishi Toshiki who was a 'they' but also had a male first name….they were complicated. They were a puzzle wrapped in an enigma….

And he so wanted to figure them out.

He focused more on their aura…just to figure them out of course. Another door closed. They had put some distance between themselves and Shimazaki…who's aura had now found his. He pulled back to himself. Shibata was still talking as he plated up more food. Suzuki picked at his but did not eat any of it. He had no idea what he had hoped to figure out by doing that…but he had been hoping to figure out something…he didn't know.

"Ryou, get that out of my face. It looks terrible. Maybe that wasn't the best spot to get tattooed…and maybe that wasn't the best message to tattoo onto yourself…and maybe the whole effect of it wouldn't have been lost if you hadn't let the forest retake the land. I don't know, I'm not your tattoo artist. Now leave me alone." Said Minegishi. There was the sound of a door closing and then…well and then another one opening. He made a mental map of the house. This one was bigger than the one he stayed in and was laid out differently. Three bedrooms. Was that enough for four people? He had never intended to have anyone either than Fukuda follow him around…well technically these were Daughter's friends and they followed her around. He wondered if they had enough space…he would ask Hatori later…or maybe Minegishi if he saw her, them, again.

But not Shimazaki, no, there was no way that he was voluntarily speaking to that man.

Hatori seemed to feel the same way. There was the sound of another door opening and then Hatori's aura jumped. It jumped in the walls. It jumped in the phone in his pocket. Even the microwave jumped to life for a moment. For once Suzuki understood what it was that bothered him. Shimazaki was an annoying man. He was more than annoying. It was nice to see that others felt the same….not that he cared about how others felt, but it was nice to know that others felt the same way that he did about things…

Not that it mattered. He could feel however he wanted about whoever he wanted.

"Hatori! Just the man I wanted to see! Anyway, do this look faded to you? Because I feel like it would have faded at this point and-" said Shimazaki. The walls were thin here, either that or everyone was just loud. He would believe either. He could hear everything in this house clearly. He could hear water running, floorboards creaking, and the sound of Hatori and Shimazaki. Hatori was not having a good time…and that was good. He had good taste in people. He should have, he was Suzuki's friend after all.

"Oh my God! Keep your pants on! And put on a shirt…and long pants too! Suzuki's in our house!" said Hatori. Suzuki ignored the lack of title. Hatori forgot sometimes but they were close enough as people for him to be able to forget. Fukuda forgot sometimes to use the title too and Hatori was pretty much a Suzuki level friend.

"No, he's not. It just feels like he's here because his aura is so bright." Said Shimazaki. Suzuki…he couldn't hear auras…and also that was just…something that he almost wished that he could. He knew that he didn't actually see or hear auras, that was just what his mind translated metaphysical perception as, and he saw and felt….and Shimazaki heard and felt…and he would have asked Shimazaki what it was like…if he hadn't been such a truly annoying man.

"No, he's here in the kitchen and you need to put on pants and stop asking about your dick tattoo!" said Hatori. Suzuki…had heard rumors. Well he had heard people talking and…and Shimazaki had made reference to that while he had been within earshot but…well he trusted Hatori on this and just…why? Why would any man do that to himself? He just…could not begin to understand people…especially Daughter's friends.

"Let me be the judge of….oh. Hello, Mr. President. So nice to not see you today." Said Shimazaki as he teleported into the kitchen. Suzuki….well he kept his powers under control…and he did not drop his fork. He had never seen Shimazaki that undressed before. He had never wanted to see him, or any man, that undressed….and he was very fit, actually, and he looked nice…aside from the tattoos….

All of the tattoos.

"Shimazaki…..you're covered in tattoos." Said Suzuki. He had known, this was a well-known fact about him, and he had seen Shimazaki's forearms on more than one occasion but….he had never seen him that…undressed. That undressed and…and he knew that the yakuza did tattoos and…well…that was vaguely…impressive.

That he had sat through that process.

Needles. Tattoos involved needles. Getting stabbed over and over and over again…and he had sat through what must have been hours and hours of that…and it was impressive art. Suzuki would never have done that to himself, and also he would have grated off any tattoos that Son ever got too, but on another person who was not him or related to him in any way….they were impressive.

Also apparently he had gotten tattooed on his…and it wasn't just a crazy rumor….and Suzuki crossed his legs. It was an instinct.

"Yeah, he is, and he was just about to put some clothes on." Said Shibata. He turned away from the counter and reached over to shoo Shimazaki away. Suzuki…could not stop staring at him. He had…so many colors on him. His stomach was part of a dragon and…oh. That was the same dragon…or two of them? One wrapped around from his back and…was that a gunshot wound? It was…and there was a stab wound too…and also he was very fit. Well Suzuki had known that he was fit but he had never seen him so underdressed…and he was very fit….very, very fit….and he could see what Daughter had seen in him.

"You're blind. Why are you covered in tattoos if you're blind?" asked Suzuki after a moment. He could understand being fit even if you weren't blind, it felt good to be healthy, but the tattoos…the pain of it…and also it took away from…himself. Not that Suzuki had much of an opinion either way.

"So the sighted people of the world have something to look at." Said Shimazaki. That made sense. Art was for the viewer and Suzuki…well he had nothing against art, he liked it, he may not have understood it but he liked it.

"We've all seen them. Now go put something on because our boss is literally right there." said Shibata. He tried to send Shimazaki away…and he was right to do that. Shimazaki really should have been wearing more clothing, not just because he was standing in front of his direct superior but also because there was a woman in the house, and Suzuki could have just ordered him to go away…but he didn't feel like it. He wasn't done looking and those were for sighted people…they were for sighted people and Suzuki was a sighted person so….yes, he would stare.

"Were they painful?" asked Suzuki. He wanted to reach out and feel them, the one on the upper part of his chest near his collar bone, the part that covered up what looked like a gunshot wound. Entrance. He also wanted Shimazaki to turn around so that he could see the exit wound…and he also wanted to touch the exit wound…but he didn't need Fukuda to tell him that asking that, even if he had all the power in that situation, would have just been strange.

"You get used to it." Said Shimazaki. Suzuki understood that. Pain was easy to get used to once you felt enough of it. That certainly looked like it had been painful. He had no idea how tattoos were done exactly but he knew that they used needles. He had seen mother's sewing machine needles and he knew how thin they were…so that was…jab after jab after jab….of the needle into his skin. In color, too, colored in. That must have taken some time. He could understand that, taking the time for the things that you cared about, even if the things that Shimazaki cared about seemed pretty….well he was just not a fan of tattoos…well not on himself or his children….

But Shimazaki….they looked nice on him.

"Shimazaki, you need clothes and-" said Shibata. Suzuki agreed. He needed clothes. He knew that if Shimazaki didn't put something on then he would just be staring at him for the rest of…well until he got tired of staring at him. He had no idea when that would be. There was…he didn't know much about art….but there was a fascination to this form of art and….he knew….

He had seen that drawing before.

"Why do you have one of my Son's drawings on your leg?" asked Suzuki. He had seen Son working on that. It was part of his series on dragons. He had done a series of dragons in non-dragon situations. This one was a dragon eating a cup of pudding. This was…this was Son's work. There wasn't a straight line on that dragon. There were nothing but curves and…the whole thing just did not fit in with the others. The eyes, too, that was how Son did eyes…and for a moment Suzuki wondered if Son had moved on from a paper canvas to a human canvas….but no. Son knew not to do things like that.

"Because I'm told he's one hell of an artist and, well, I'm in Tokyo and my guy is here and Sho's here so I might as well get some good art immortalized onto my skin." Said Shimazaki. That made sense. Suzuki could see it, now, how Son's art style had been changed. The way he used colors was different…and his dragons had much larger scales. Yes. This was not Son's original work. This was a replication. Nobody could ever top Son's work.

"Good, you answered his questions now-" said Shibata. He was still trying to get Shimazaki out of the room. Shimazaki…Son was a good artist but he wondered why he had gotten some of his work on his body. That was a visible place, he could never wear short pants ever again, and he had seen other yakuza tattoos. He had seen them before, back before all of this, when he had been a child at the beach with his mother and father. He had stared then, of course, because he was fascinated with them…but then mother and father had carried him away and told him never to do that to himself. Those weren't meant to be seen, they had said, and it was wrong to show people. That was why they had that strip of clean skin in the middle…but Shimazaki didn't…and also he had gotten that tattoo from Son's drawing well after he had left the yakuza….

Suzuki had trouble understanding people sometimes.

"Aren't you worried about getting shunned from society?" asked Suzuki. He was covered in tattoos. Suzuki…it was hard enough walking through the world with red hair. He really, really, really did not understand people sometimes…he wished that Shigeko were there. She was very good at understanding people. She was good at everything.

"I thought that we were building a new society. Are tattoos outlawed in the brave new world too?" asked Shimazaki. Suzuki nodded. That was right, they were building a new world, so there was no point in caring about the rules of society…well to a degree.

"No." said Suzuki. He knew that, in the new world, he would not restrict self-expression. People did not like that at all. He was going to rule over the world but he was going to be a benevolent ruler. He may have been the most powerful being on Earth but he also didn't much want to end up dead at the hands of his subjects.

"Cool. So anyway what are you doing here-" said Shimazaki. Suzuki didn't much like being questioned but he didn't have time to say anything. The energy around him shifted. He felt another aura getting closer…and he knew that aura. He had never paid that aura any mind before…and he didn't now. No. He just…was reacting to another aura coming deeper into his passive range. That was all.

"Ryou. Put some clothes on. For everyone's sake." Said Minegishi. She, they, smacked Shimazaki on the chest as they walked by. They didn't look at him, they didn't even acknowledge him aurally, and that…he didn't know why he wanted them to acknowledge him. Well because he was Suzuki Touichirou, obviously, and that was a good enough reason to feel the way he did.

"I'm wearing shorts." Said Shimazaki. Minegishi slapped him on the chest again and rolled his eyes. Masami used to roll her eyes like that at him. He half expected Minegishi to tell Shimazaki that he was being ridiculous.

"A shirt then." Said Minegishi. Something passed between them and Shimazaki. It was all aural, which made sense, and Suzuki had no idea what that was but he knew that Minegishi had won. She, they, it was hard to think of her as they since…well he hadn't thought about them in any great capacity…but now he knew her, them, and he knew them better in the context of helping Daughter with a distinctly female….process and….well…

She was really pretty.

He was not staring. He was not staring at all. He knew never to stare at a woman, especially one of who was not wife, and he had no idea what the rules for when it came to people like Minegishi but to be safe he was not going to look. He was going to look down at his food and not at Minegishi where and in pajamas, and they somehow made pajama pants of all things look nice, and they just….he was not going to look at her…them.

So he stared down at his food like it was the most interesting thing that he had ever seen in his life.

It really wasn't. Daughter's work was much more interesting. Also she knew to drown his food in ketchup…..God, he missed Shigeko. He missed her but for some reason she had just…not wanted to make his breakfast and…and now he was here and staring down at his food like it was interesting when it really wasn't and….well at least he hadn't had to stare for long. Hatori sat down beside him, put a laptop down between them, and then the rest of the world faded away. It felt like it was just him and Hatori and…well that was the way that he wanted it to be. The others…well they had left the room at some point…but Hatori was there and that was what mattered. Just him and Hatori and breakfast time…and that was just what he had wanted. He hadn't even known that he had wanted this but…well it was what he wanted.

Suzuki didn't cook, he didn't much care for other people's cooking either, but he did care for the good company that he had.


	395. Itchy and Scratchy

The hardest part of all of this was not scratching.

Really. He could take the pain of it, he could take the fact that he was a lot worse at doing tattoos than he was about drawing, and he could even take everyone bothering him whenever he tried to be alone so he could work on…well everything that he had started. The one thing that he could not take was the itching. Scratching….he wanted to scratch. He wanted to dig his nails into his skin and scratch until he didn't have any skin to scratch anymore. This was the worst. This was the worst but…

Well it was worth it.

Because when he was done these were going to look so cool! He was going to look cool and then Shimazaki was going to think that he was cool, also that he knew what he was doing, and then he was going to be able to do a tattoo for Shimazaki for his birthday…and it would all be so…it would be great! The whole thing would be great and…and it would all end up being totally worth it. The pain, the itching, everything.

He just had to stop scratching.

But it was hard. He had done all that he could to make it better. He had put lotion on and everything just like he'd seen Shimazaki do. This was supposed to be itchy, maybe, because he had been poking ink into his skin. That was normal. That was normal and this was normal. Tattoos were supposed to be red and itchy and raised up. He had seen Shimazaki after he'd been getting worked on for hours. That was just how they looked. Sho was not worried. They'd look great when he was done and then everyone would tell Shimazaki that they looked great….and then everything would be great.

He just had to figure out a way to stop scratching.

Lying in bed was making it worse, he decided, because not only was his shirt subbing up against all of his work but his bed and blanket, too. Maybe he just needed to sit up for the whole night…people could sleep sitting up…right? People knew how to sleep sitting up and…well he could figure it out. Or maybe he could learn to hang from the ceiling fan like a bat. He knew how to get up there with his powers…so maybe all he had to do was learn to use his powers in his sleep…or something. That would be…well it sounded hard but…well not any harder than trying not to scratch his skin off! Seriously! How was he supposed to deal with this?!

He sat up.

"Damn it!" whispered Sho as he scratched his arm. His arm was the worst of it…but his other arm itched too, and his stomach, and he had started working on his leg too. He had been working on a bunch of different projects at once…and maybe when he finally finished something then it would stop being so itchy. Doing tattoos was not like drawing pictures. He had a million pages in his sketchbooks that he had started and stopped over the years and…well those weren't attached to him. He just couldn't help it, though, because doing tattoos was so boring. It was like he stated on one thing and then once he got not even half was through he had a new idea because he got bored and then it was the whole thing over and over and over again.

But he'd finish…eventually.

These were meant to be done in steps anyway. Shimazaki said that he must have spent at least a week of his life all together getting all covered in tattoos and stuff. Also it took a million hours, or something, to become a master. Well then that was what Sho was going to do. He was going to sit for a million hours, which was probably a week or two of his life, and become not only a master but also a living work of art!

As soon as his skin stopped itching so much!

"God!" whispered Sho as he scratched a little too hard. He didn't have to roll up his sleeve to know that he had made a mistake. That was the first one he had ever started on, the dragon, and it was also the reddest. The ink looked bad too…and he didn't want to have to start on it again…but he also didn't want to have to go through life with a messed up tattoo. If he wound up messing up on himself then people would tell Shimazaki not to let Sho tattoo him because he didn't know what he was doing….but he totally knew what he was doing! He had Googled! He knew exactly what he was doing!

He was just a little bit itchy, that was all.

He hadn't messed up his actual work. What he had done to mess up, though, was to scratch. The internet said not to scratch. Scratching ruined the ink and Sho…well he did not like to ruin his art. He knew that he was messing up but he just could not stop scratching. He just…it felt like his skin was trying to crawl off of him and leave! It felt like…like he didn't even know what! He just…he hated his skin and…and he hated how bad, not that he was bad, but he just…he wished that he was better at doing tattoos!

And also he wished that he had been quieter.

"Sho? What's wrong?" asked big sis. She yawned and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. It was late. It was late and she was tired. He had no idea what she had done all day, she had said that she had to stay home because she had messed up something but she wouldn't tell him what, but she still must have been tired. He knew that he was. He had been doing his back all day with his powers…and somehow doing it with his powers was even more tiring than doing it by hand…or maybe he was just tired because he hadn't been sleeping at night.

Not that he could tell her why he hadn't been sleeping at night.

If he told her then she would just get worried. He was ten, he knew that he should not have been doing this, and he knew that people wouldn't understand. That was why nobody could know until he was done and then they saw how awesome he was. It was his body and if he wanted to do a bunch of tattoos then he could do a bunch of tattoos. It was his skin, it wasn't like he was chasing people down and covering their skin in tattoos, so….so there!

Big sis wouldn't understand. She liked to worry.

"Nothing. Go back to sleep." Said Sho. She didn't go back to sleep. She sat up and she was looking at him. It was dark but there was still light coming in from the outside, light enough that she could see him, and he wondered if it would be suspicious if he closed the blinds. He just needed to scratch and he knew that if he started scratching she would notice, because she was his sister and she noticed everything, and then he would have to lie to her again…and he just…he hated lying. He hated laying but also he hated being told what to do. This was his skin and he would do whatever he wanted with it even though he was only ten…and stuff. He just…it was his skin and he should have been able to tattoo it however he wanted….and also he should have been able to scratch it whenever he wanted to…whenever he needed to….

He crossed his arms.

Sho crossed his arms and tried his best to scratch without her noticing. She was watching him like she was studying him or something. Like she was suspicious of him or something. Well she had nothing to be suspicious about. He hadn't done anything to make her…..well he had done a lot of things, actually, but…well she had her own stuff to worry about. She said that she had messed up real bad so maybe she should have been focusing on the way that she messed up and not on the way that he had messed up….and he hadn't messed up!

He knew what he was doing…mostly.

"But….you keep on moving around. If you're too hot I can make it colder…or you could just wear a short sleeved shirt if you want. I know you have scars, I don't mind them." Said big sis. Crap. She knew what he had been doing too. She knew and…and now she was suspicious. She was going to start asking him questions and she wouldn't stop until she got to the truth and-no, wait, that was dad. Dad was the one who never stopped asking questions. She was the one who loved him and took care of him…and stuff. She was the one who cared about him and…and well he was the one who was going to have to lie to her…

But for her own good.

Because she didn't need stress. Dad had told him, before, that big sis didn't need any stress in her life. Sometimes even the biggest jerks in the world could be right about stuff. Big sis had a lot to worry about, girls had it really bad according to what he had read, and he didn't want to make stuff worse on her. He also didn't want to lie to her so…so he had to make one of those pragmatic choices that Fukuda had told him about. He had to lie, again, to his sister.'

For her own good.

"I'm fine the way I am. Go back to sleep. I just…need something to drink." Said Sho. He got out of bed before she could say anything else. Sliding out of bed like that made the thing on his leg itch…and it hadn't been that itchy but now it was…and he just…he needed more lotion. He knew that he shouldn't have been taking her lotion, it was girl lotion and he wasn't a girl, but the internet had said that lotion would help. Well the internet had said that lotion without any smell would help best but she didn't have any lotion like that.

But that was ok.

He just picked the one that smelled the least like anything. She had a bunch of lotions and other stuff too, girls were weird like that, so she wouldn't miss if he used just a little bit of her plain vanilla kind. Just a little because it smelled the least like anything. Vanilla was honestly a terrible smell and flavor, too. Vanilla ice cream hardly tasted like anything, and neither did vanilla candles too…well aside from gross but he would never tell Shimazaki that, and vanilla lotion smelled like nothing…but also tasted terrible….not that he went around eating the stuff. No, he just…wanted to know if it tasted like anything so he just…tried it one day…

Bad. It tasted bad.

But it smelled like nothing and that was why he had gone right to the bathroom. If big sis asked then he could tell her that he had been drinking out of the bathroom sink. He did that sometimes and he had no idea what was supposed to be so gross about it. Water was water. It wasn't like he had been drinking out of the toilet like a dog. Big sis was so weird sometimes….well all people were. He didn't know. Maybe he was.

Maybe the whole world was just made up of weirdos.

Maybe everyone in the world thought that they were the normal ones and everyone else was weird. Like how in Japan he looked weird but when he went to places like England and America he looked normal…but he couldn't enjoy that because people there thought that big sis looked weird and he didn't want anyone to think that way about his sister…but then when they got back to Japan she was the normal looking one. Maybe everyone thought that they were normal all the time, or like normal was just a state of mind, or something. Maybe even dad thought that he was normal. Dad, the guy who was going to take over the world someday like it was just a normal thing that people got up and did, thought in his brain that he was normal and that everyone else was weirdos.

Yeah, that would make sense.

He thought that Sho was a weirdo, anyway. He was always talking about how he would never be able to understand him and stuff. About how he was always doing stuff that didn't matter or that was weird or stupid or tiresome or quarrelsome…or whatever. He didn't care what dad thought. He didn't care if dad, mean and crazy as he was, thought he was the most normal guy in the world. Sho didn't even care if, yes, he actually was the biggest weirdo ever.

He only cared about making the itching stop.

He pulled his shirt up over his head quickly and turned on the light…and it wasn't that bad. It itched like it was something terrible but, really, it could have been a lot worse. So what if a lot of what he had done was turning red and he couldn't see some of the lines that he had done so well anymore? Touch ups were a thing. Shimazaki had told him, before, that he needed other people to tell him when his stuff was fading and he needed a touch up. He said that ink broke down in skin or something, colored ink especially, and that he liked to get fixed up whenever he could. The only thing worse than no tattoo at all was a bad tattoo. Sho…well he wanted people to tell Shimazaki that he looked cool…that way he could be Shimazaki's tattoo guy…and that way he wouldn't have to wait to come to Tokyo to get fixed up.

That was what he wanted to be when he grew up.

Well he knew that, when he grew up, he was going to have to be the ruler of the world or whatever…but people could have two job! He could be the ruler of the world and also Shimazaki's tattoo guy. He could…well if he could do that then he and Shimazaki would be able to be together forever and nobody would think that he was weird. Not dad or big sis, well she never thought that anything he did was weird, but….well other people who would think that wanting to spend his life with another guy was weird. Especially his girlfriend….she might have a problem with that….a really big problem…

He started covering himself in lotion.

There. Now the itching was better, not all the way better, but a little bit better. It would be all the way better once he got all of these done. Then the ink would settle and his skin would heal and…and then he would be better. Yeah. Also the lotion thing was what you were supposed to do for a tattoo. He had seen Shimazaki do that a thousand times. It was good for the skin…and stuff. Yeah! That was the same reason that big sis had so many bottles of this stuff.

It was important to take care of your skin.

So that was what he was doing, taking care of his skin, and he was doing a good job of it too. He hadn't messed up. He knew what he was doing…and he was doing a good job. He picked up big sis's hand mirror with his powers and looked at his back. His tree was coming along nicely. Well what little parts that he had managed to get done. He forgot sometimes, not being able to stare at his own back, just how big the tree was. Just how much of his back it took up. He remembered….it burned…and then his whole body had been all stiff and twitchy at the same time…and then…well and then he had been…well not ok but…it had been over.

He put the hand mirror down.

He remembered using his powers to jab it with the safety pin. That was how he had gotten his new tree. His old tree…out with the old and in with the new. That was a thing that people said. He wanted this tree. He wanted this tree and that was why he had spent hours and hours and hours stabbing himself in the back with a safety pin. He had always wanted this tree. That was why…it had hurt. It had hurt like…like burning and…and he had wanted that, too. He had wanted the tree before and he wanted it now…for a new reason. Out with the old and in with the new.

And on with the lotion.

His powers were useful for this. He spread the lotion onto his back good and thick. He spread it across the pin pricks up and down his arms, they were dragons and portraits and misspelled words, now, and then across his new tree and then onto his legs…it had been hot and then cold and then hot again and he hadn't had any way of getting out and….and now those scars would be…something else. Something entire new. Out with the old and in with the new. Out with his old skin, all scarred up and gross, and in with the new skin, all covered in super badass tattoos! Yeah…he was so cool…and he was going to be so cool…and Shimazaki had already said that he was so cool but…but he wanted him to say so again….and he would…once everyone told him how cool Sho looked….

They'd definitely say that he looked cool, definitely, once he was done…and all of these stopped being itchy!


	396. A One Hour and Fifteen Minute Flight

The flight from Tokyo to Osaka took one hour and fifteen minutes.

That wasn't a very long time at all. That was an hour and a quarter. There was no way that anything could happen in an hour and a quarter. Everyone was in their assigned seats with their assigned moving buddies and….maybe Mob should have written up some conversation notecards. That might have been best. Nobody was saying anything to anyone else but Fukuda was looking in Sho's direction and maybe he was going to tell Sho to sit with him but that would leave Shimazaki without a moving buddy, Fukuda had lost his moving buddy privileges for fighting with everyone, and Sho…well Sho and Shimazaki got up to crazy stuff when they were together but Fukuda upset Sho when they were together so….yeah. Mob would take the crazy stuff over the fighting any day.

Not that she wanted there to be any crazy stuff or any fighting.

"Ok, everyone knows the rules. No fighting, no going out onto the wing of the plane, no giving Hatori anything to drink, no doing crazy stuff, no making the plane crash so we have to eat each other, and no making fun of Hatori for being a cannibal. He can't help the way he was born. Those are the rules…and…um yeah. Sit with your moving buddy and….and please be good." Said Mob. Everyone was looking at her. The pilot had just now turned the seatbelt sign off. That meant that it was ok for her to be standing there in the middle of the aisle…and it was ok for everyone to look at her…

This was ok.

She smiled and looked at everyone. Sho was scratching again, he had been doing that for a while but he wouldn't tell Mob why, Shimazaki was fiddling with a weird looking Rubik's cube he'd found somewhere, Shibata had his headphones on already, and Minegishi already had their eyes closed and a book in their lap. Everyone, well all of her friends, seemed ok. Dad was back in his corner playing games on his laptop, well he said that he was working but Mob knew that he was playing games. Hatori would join him soon, he always did, and Mob…she was glad that Hatori was going to sit by dad.

That way he would be far away from her.

She didn't dislike him and he didn't dislike her. She felt bad for lying to him but he couldn't know the truth. He couldn't know that she had decided to confess to him, and ask to be his eventual girlfriend, all on her own. She had lied, well Minegishi had told her to lie, and she had told him that she had only said that because Shimazaki had put her up to it. That was a lie and lies were bad but….well he couldn't know that she really felt like that about him. That she had felt like that about him. She had been so in love with him…but now she wasn't because she had made a complete idiot out of herself….

She was really glad that this would be a short plane ride.

"You can sit down now, big sis, we'll be good." Said Sho. He tried and failed not to scratch. He just…had to make it through this plain ride…and then the rest of his life. They were getting better. The tattoos he did…well some of them were starting to change color…and that was good. Right? Red was bad so…other colors must have been good. He didn't know…but he did know that…that this was really itchy!

"We're always good." Said Shimazaki as he ran his hands over the Rubik's cube that he had liberated from his old toy box. He'd been trying to figure this thing out since he had been four or five…and he was going to get this done with. This was….this was doable! He was a grown man and he could do this…and he was doing this because he wanted to and not because Toshi had told him to find something to occupy his time on the plane ride because apparently plane rides were portals to hell and he was the one to led them right in.

They could be so dramatic sometimes…but that made him love them even more.

Not that he could say that. No, not with the squirmy, itchy kid sitting next to him. Sho….would not take it well. He would probably lose his little mind…and Shimazaki did not want to deal with that….so he was just going to wait for this to pass before he made Sho the best man at his and Toshi's wedding…or the guy who carried his and Toshi's unconscious bodies home after the celebrated their relationship in a more Toshi way. Yeah, this crush would pass….and so would this constant scratching. He was moving and squirming and….well it was annoying….but he could live with this...even though he really just wanted to tell the kid to go and see that healer already.

Seriously. Had Sho been throwing rocks at hornets' nests without him or something?

"Um….well then in that case be extra good. I'm going to sit down now." Said Mob. She didn't know if Shimazaki was lying or if he actually thought that he was telling the truth but she didn't want to fight with him. She didn't want to fight with anyone. She just wanted this plane ride to go well. Sometimes it felt like when they rode in a plane together everything that could go wrong did go wrong…and she wasn't going to let that happen.

This was a one hours and fifteen minute plane ride. There shouldn't have been any time for anything to go wrong.

"A rousing speech as always, Mob." Said Minegishi as they opened their eyes. Mob sat down next to her and nodded. She was making it a point not to look over in the direction of the idiot brigade. They knew why. Hatori Nozomu. God. Mob….well she was eleven and she hadn't known any better…well Minegishi had told her a thousand times not to try anything with him….but she was coming to that age where she thought that knew better than everyone else, and that little friend of hers who had nothing better to do than give her terrible advice didn't help matters….what was done was done.

And now they all had to just live with this.

Live with this and wait for things to go back to normal. Mob, of course, she was the one who had to wait for things to go back to normal. Hatori was taking this surprisingly well. He was finally acting like the adult that he was always going on and on and on about being. Mob looked up, she risked a glance in his direction, and he looked over and smiled. She gasped and looked down at her feet. Her hair rose to the ceiling. Minegishi smoothed it down for her.

Poor Mob.

"Thanks. For the compliment and for fixing my hair I mean." Said Mob as she looked down at her shoes. These were new. She used to have Frozen light up shoes. She had always just bought a new pair when she outgrew her old ones. Well now she was tool old, her feet were too big, for Frozen shoes. The kind that lit up and the kind that didn't. These were just blue, even though Minori said that she didn't look good in blue, she still liked blue….and she knew better than to listen to Minori…and she should have known better than to listen to Minori in the first place.

Being too big for Frozen light up shoes didn't make her big enough to be Hatori's girlfriend.

"You're welcome, now give me a couple hair ties." Said Minegishi as they started to braid Mob's hair for her. It was a mess right now, it had been trying to fly away all day, and really braids were the way to go. She had been wearing her hair down a lot lately. She was trying to look older than she was. She was trying to act older than she was.

She was only eleven.

"What color?" asked Mob as she opened her bag with her powers. She kept her eyes trained down at her shoes. She knew that if she looked up she would look over at Hatori again. She couldn't help it. There was a lot happening over there. Sho was itching, he had been scratching nonstop for a while now, and Shimazaki was cursing at his Rubik's cube, she didn't know why he even had that thing in the first place, and Shibata and Hatori were giving him suggestions…and she had only sat down for two seconds and they were already close to fighting…..

Which was the only reason why she would look over there.

"Any color." Said Minegishi

"I have blue and pink and rainbow and purple and-" said Mob

"Mob, any color. Come on. I'm tried." Said Minegishi. Two hair ties were passed to them telekinetically. One was blue and the other pink. They didn't match but, hey, this wasn't a fashion show. They tied off the braid that they had made and then started up on the other one. There. This would keep her hair nice…not that her hair should have been of any concern to them. This was her hair but….well it was getting all knotted. Mob usually took such good care of herself…and she took good care of them too.

The drink cart made an appearance.

"Do you want some canned coffee? We have black and vanilla late and caramel macchiato and peppermint Americano and-" said Mob. Now she looked up, but it was ok, because she had to use her eyes to go through the drink cart and find something for Minegishi. They were tired, well they were always tired, but Mob could help with that. They were always taking such good care of her so she really should have worked harder to take care of them. That was what friends were for.

"Give me a can of black coffee and one of those tiny vodkas." Said Minegishi. They had barely been in the air and they needed a drink. Normally they would have knocked out for a plane ride but, well, this was an hour and fifteen minutes. They had Googled it. If they needed to knock out for an hour and fifteen minute plane ride then they were developing a problem and they did not have a problem.

"We don't have any of those…sorry. We have tiny bottles of sake." Said Mob as she looked through the drinks. They had cola and lemon lime soda and electric blue raspberry energy drink and lots of canned coffees but for alcohol they only had sake and tiny bottles of plum wine….warm tiny bottles of sake and plum wine…

Not very good wine at all. She only slipped one into her sleeve.

"Sake and coffee? No thanks. Just give me the coffee then." Said Minegishi. They saw what Mob had done. They knew that she had pocketed a tiny wine bottle…but they said nothing. Mob…well it had been a rough couple of days. Her first rejection, making a complete and total fool out of herself, and also whatever the hell was happening with her father….she had earned herself a drink. A drink. One drink. There. Moderation.

"Ok….and thanks for the braids. They're nice. Can I do your hair next?" asked Mob. She shook her bag. She had hair clips in there…and Minegishi would have looked nice with hairclips. She had blue ones and purples ones and green ones, really all the ones that she had been able to get at the Disney Store. She knew that she was too old for the Disney Store…but she was getting tired of being…well trying to be older. Trying to be eleven…

She wanted to be little again…not very little…but just little enough that all of this grown up stuff didn't have to happen to her.

"Mob, I know that I haven't cut my hair in a while but we both know that there's not nearly enough here to braid." Said Minegishi. They were tempted to grow their hair out…but that was way too much work. The shampooing and conditioning and drying and dressing and combing and brushing….and the attention. They didn't want that kind of attention, the extra work, and also when their hair got long it rustled against their pillow….

But they were still tempted to grow it out just so that Mob could have something to braid.

"I have hairclips and headbands." Said Mob. She opened up her Elsa bag wide so that Minegishi could see it. They didn't always let her do their hair but…well sometimes they did…and she liked doing their hair even if it was short. She liked doing hair in general….though the only other person's hair she did, aside from Sho's when they played the Shoko game, was Minori's….and she would rather have done Minegishi's hair than Minori's.

"Go on then." Said Minegishi. They let Mob's braid go. Her aura glowed like Christmas morning. Good. Happy Mob was back. For how long they had no idea. She was taking it well, though, better than Minegishi would have thought. She hadn't dug herself an underground pit to live in for the rest of her life so that was progress.

"What do you want to do when we get to Osaka?" asked Mob as she clipped some snowflakes into Minegishi's hair. She clipped their bangs back mostly because that was just where they had the most hair. Their roots showed, though, when Mob did that. Maybe when they got to Osaka Minegishi would let her help them color their hair again. That would be nice…but at her house though. She wasn't sure if Hatori was going to be in his room or the rest of the house…and she didn't want to run into him. She was just going to give him enough time that he forgot what had happened between them. There. That shouldn't have taken very long at all. Just ten or twenty years. She could wait that long. Good things happened to those who waited.

"Unpack and get my garden going and then sleep until it's time to move again." said Minegishi. They didn't much like the feel of the metal hairclip digging into their scalp but they liked making Mob happy…and one of them should have been happy. Osaka. Why did it have to be Osaka? What was even IN Osaka?

Besides a lot of bad memories.

"Oh. Well you won't have to sleep for very long then. Dad said that we won't be in Osaka for long. He's having a meeting, well a war meeting but that's just a saying, with the leader of another esper group. She's trying to undermine Claw, dad said, and so he's going to meet with her…and I kind of want to, too. I mean there aren't a lot of girl espers." Said Mob

"Trust me, you don't want anything to do with this." said Minegishi. War meeting. War meeting meant 'join us or die' and sometimes people picked option two….and Mob didn't need to know about that. Mob didn't need to be involved in that. She didn't need to have even the first idea that things like that even happened. She didn't need to have any idea that Minegishi did….the things that they did.

Only one of them needed to have bad memories of Osaka.

"Yeah…dad said that his work is very boring. He does a lot of meetings and I did some, too, when I filled in for him. Still, though, it would be nice to meet another girl esper. The only girl espers I know are baby Mukai and I guess that lady who was trying to become dad's girlfriend. You remember her, right? From when we were in Seoul?" asked Mob. She didn't like that lady, in fact she might have even felt the beginnings of dislike for her, because she had been trying to go out with dad even though he was clearly married to mom…but it would have been nice if she had been nicer…then Mob could have asked her….well she didn't know what she wanted to ask but…well she just didn't meet a lot of girl espers. There were some, very few, girl Awakened but they weren't the same as natural espers. She didn't know why she wanted to meet more girl espers…she just did.

"Yeah, I remember Seoul…but I'm from Osaka, you know, and Osaka and a hell of a lot more fun than Seoul." Said Minegishi. They didn't want to talk about their childhood but they knew that Mob did and, honestly, going over Minegishi's depressing childhood in great detail was better than talking about Seoul, that baby, and President Suzuki's torrid love affair. Until a few weeks ago Mob had thought that babies could only grow in the literal stomachs of married women. Maybe it was best not to dig around into her father's torrid love affairs.

Nobody wanted to know that about their father.

"Are we going to the part of Osaka that you grew up in? Can we go to the parks you used to play in? And the arcades you used to go to? And the library where you stayed all day because….well bad stuff that you told me about…sorry." said Mob. She had been excited, for a little bit, but then she remembered that Minegishi hadn't had a good life before Claw. Mob had been thinking like they were going back to the Castle, where she had grown up, like she was the one in Minegishi's shoes. Like she could show them the house she had grown up in and the playground mom used to take her and Sho to and the library where they went for story time and the pool where she and Sho had learned to swim and the schools they had gone to…and stuff…

But not everyone had as happy a life as she'd had and she had to remember that.

"No, it's ok…and I have no idea where we'll be staying. I'll find us something fun to do, though, just you and me. The idiot brigade can figure their own fun out." Said Minegishi. Mob could come but not her brother, that was what they'd meant. If Sho came then Ryou would have to come too since he was the only one, besides Mob, that the kid sort of listened to…and this was a part of their life that they did not want to share with Mob's brother anyway. This was a part of their life that they hadn't even shared with Ryou, not fully, not fully enough to actually bring him there. The library that had been their salvation. The playground that had been their second home. The arcade where they had first learned how to control vines, how to trick candy machines and UFO catchers….the trees that used to be their parents. Ryou….they loved him but…

This was going to be a Minegishi and Mob thing, not a Ryou and Toshi thing.

"They probably don't need a lot of help. It sounds like they're having plenty of fun already." Said Mob as she held different headbands up to Minegishi's head. She decided to go with a dark purple one, that way it would go with their lavender hair. This was fun, well to her, and she knew that her friends would have thought that this was boring just like she thought that Rubik's cubes were kind of boring. She and Sho used to have one of those when they had been little, well theirs had been with colors not pieces of cloth, but it had still been frustrating and boring at the same time. She and Sho had been trying to solve it together and then Sho'd had enough and thrown it…but then dad had caught it with his powers and solved it in like ten seconds…

But that was not how this was going to go.

Dad was over in his own corner. Sometimes he looked up and over at what was happening. He must have been lonely…and maybe she needed to assign Hatori as his moving buddy. Hatori was moving buddies with Shibata because Shibata was good at making him feel safe….and she always wanted him to feel safe…but dad must have been so lonely back there. She also maybe could have assigned Fukuda as his moving buddy…but she knew that doing that would have been a bad idea. He had to fight with everyone. Even now his aura felt all…mad and he was looking at the others….and if he'd wanted to help solve the Rubik's cube with them then he should have just asked instead of staring at them and being all mad…

Not that Mob even understood why it took so many people to solve a Rubik's cube. They all should have known by now that those were mostly unsolvable.

"I have no idea why I haven't burned this thing yet….it's unsolvable!" said Shimazaki as he ran his hand over the side of the cube that faced him. The entire top row was silk and so was the row under it save for one piece of velvet…and if he tried to fix that piece of velvet then…well it had taken him this long to get one matching row and he was not going to mess it up!

This was an instrument of torture! Not a toy! And not the fun kind of torture toys….and he wasn't even into that anyway!

"No it's not. Here, just spin the center of the cube to the top." Said Sho. This was fun. This was the best thing ever. The more they played with this thing the less he felt like ripping off his own skin…and now he remembered that he was all itchy….stupid skin…..

"Center?" asked Shimazaki. What center? The center was the mechanism that let you turn the cube! For the love of-

"No, the bottom. Rotate the entire bottom two turns." Said Shibata. This was fun. He hadn't had any idea that you could play with a Rubik's cube as a group. He'd never had one, he'd tried one at the store and he'd broken it so it had been added to the long list of toys that he was forbidden from owning, but this was fun too. Trying to solve it as a group. This was better than fighting, anyway, he hated it when they fought…and this was not a fight. This discussion was just getting a little heated, that was all, but nobody was going to fight anyone. At least they had better not….and Fukuda really needed to stop all of that glaring.

"To the left or to the-" said Shimazaki. Why did he have to be the cube guy? Well because it was his cube…and he should have brought different cherished childhood mementos with him. Like his horses and dragons. They could have all had a massive horse and dragon war and….wait. No. He could feel Fukuda glaring at them. No way was that guy even coming near his most cherished childhood mementos.

"Maybe you could just take the two from the top and spin them to the bottom." Said Hatori. He'd played with these before. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made. Like Suzuki had said, though not about Rubik's cubes, sometimes you had to make short term sacrifices in service of long term goals….but that didn't mean shooting through your own shields for some reason. Fine, he was better at Space Invaders, but Hatori was better at group Rubik's cube-ing….though Suzuki really needed to get in on this. He kept on looking over in their direction, which was a welcome change of pace from Fukuda's glaring. Honestly. If he had a problem with them then he should have said something and if he just wanted to join in then…well it was a free country.

"No goddamned way, are you crazy?! That would ruin the whole thing!" said Sho. Shimazaki had worked hard, with his help, to get that line right. It had taken a million years, it felt like, and they were not going to mess that up! This cube was going to look so cool when they were done with it! Maybe he should tattoo on of those on him next….he scratched his arm…maybe when he was done with the million and one other tattoos that he had started.

"To be fair it is kind of a mess. There's green all over the place." Said Shibata

"What the hell is green?" asked Shimazaki

"The squares….sorry." said Shibata. Well he had really put his foot in his mouth there….though to be fair that was an easy thing to forget about Shimazaki.

"It goes by touch! Do you have brain worms!" said Sho as he stood up in his seat. He jabbed his finger at Shibata as hard as he could. He had made Shimazaki feel bad! How could he had done that! Nobody made Shimazaki feel bad and Shibata was lucky he was so big and so nice or Sho would have messed him up really bad for that!

"Sorry. I forgot." Said Shibata as Shimazaki tugged Sho back down to his seat. He really did feel bad and…huh? Sho's shirt had ridden up as he was pulled down and….well it looked like he had been drawing on himself with a permanent marker or something. That was….well it looked just like…no way. He was just thinking crazy thoughts.

"You're lucky Shimazaki's here." Muttered Sho as Shimazaki sat him down. He pulled his shirt down over his stomach, it had ridden up, but thankfully nobody noticed. Nobody could know until the grand reveal when everything was done and stopped making him want to take his skin off with a cheese grater.

"No, I'm lucky you're here. Now what in the hell should I-" said Shimazaki as he pulled Sho down…and he felt…chicken pox? Infected cuts? The kid was not well…Toshi could fix that. They knew what to do about cuts. Somethings were beyond them, though, and if that was the case then he would just drag Fukuda over by his ankle and have him fix the kid up. There were few worse feelings in the world than being covered by infected cuts…and he had a lot of them…and he had to let go now because they kid's aura was getting weird again and, normally, Shimazaki was all in favor of pouring gasoline onto a fire…but not this fire.

"Ok, so you're going to want to take your main finger and-" said Shibata

"Main….finger?" asked Shimazaki

"Take that side and then split it in half and put to the side most on your left." Said Sho. There. That would keep the whole top part nice. The second part, the one on the bottom, could be fixed without making the top all messed up. There. He knew what he was doing.

"No, don't do that. If you spin the center side top wise-" said Hatori. He leaned in a little too close, close enough for Sho to push him away, and….huh? His shirt had ridden down and his collar bone was showing and….damn. That was…an infected cut? It was red and….and there was this…it looked like black lines…he'd help Sho out with that later. He'd get some rubbing alcohol or something and then….well he wasn't the best at first aid, and they had a healer for this, but Hatori didn't blame Sho one bit for not wanting to go and see Fukuda.

"One at a time! One at a time!" said Shimazaki. He did not need to go deaf on top of all of his other numerous physical and psychological problems. Everything was starting to echo and….and why had he thought that he could solve this thing now!? He'd had this since 1989 and if he hadn't been able to solve it in all that time he wasn't going to be able to solve it now! Though it was keeping him from his true passion of filling everyone's lives with song, today's selection would have been Japan I love you, so maybe this was a win for the rest of the plane.

"OK, so Hatori had the right idea. Spin the center side top wise. Top wise." Said Sho. Shimazaki didn't do what he said….he didn't do anything. He just turned to face Sho and he stared at him with his eyes opened and his aura stuck to him…and that was…it was not gross or scary to look deep into Shimazaki's eye sockets. No, he was lucky. Minegishi probably didn't even get to do this! And they had boobs!

"….who wants this Rubik's cube? Sho? Shibata? Hatori? Does anyone want this cube?" asked Shimazaki. He knew when to tap out and this was the time to tape out. He held out the cube to all of them…and thankfully it was snatched out of his hand.

"Ok! Now watch and learn everyone! I'm going to solve the fucking fuck out of this fucking-" said Sho as he took the Rubik's cube out of Shimazaki's hand. Ok, now this was his time to shine. He was going to solve this and then Shimazaki was going to be all 'Sho, you're so smart' and then he was going to tell Sho that he was smarter than Minegishi and that he was better to hang out with too even if they could only be just friends…and then when Sho grew up and ruled the world he and Shimazaki could share a room in the house he was going to live in and then they could have bunk beds but with both beds being high up…and then it would be so great….and he could show Shimazaki his tattoos and they'd be so cool and he'd see, well feel, them and then it would be all great and-

And he started scratching again. There. That was the thing to think about. The constant, never ending, itchiness.

"Sho! Language!" said Fukuda. He had been watching them all trying to work that god damned Rubik's cube together, if they wanted it solved they could have just handed it to Suzuki, and that was….fine. Sho was fine, well it felt like he'd been tormenting fire ants again but he would fix that later when Sho was in a better mood, but he was not going to let Sho just start cursing like that. He had no idea if Suzuki had his earplugs in or not but he did know that the only thing he hated more than cursing was hearing his own son curse….and also Sho should not have been cursing like that anyway. He was only ten years old!

"Fukuda, unless you're going to help me then stay out of this." said Sho. He knew what was coming, Fukuda was going to ask Sho to come and sit with him, and that was not going to happen. He knew that Fukuda was lonely and old and grumpy but so was dad so maybe he and dad could go off and be old and lonely and grumpy together or something. There. That would have been a great plan and he should have said something…but he didn't want to. He was busy.

"Sho, how about you come over here and we can-" said Fukuda. He partially wanted to protect Sho from that lot and also partially…he missed him. They used to sit together on plane rides and Sho would show him things he had drawn or they would play unnecessarily complicated videogames or just sit and talk…and he missed that. Sho…things had been different when he'd been younger and, ok, that was nature's way but…he wasn't done growing up just yet. He wasn't too old for drawings and video games and….Fukuda would have even helped him with that damned Rubik's cube if that was what he had wanted to do. Whatever Sho wanted he'd do.

But not leave him alone.

He knew that was coming next. Sho, of course, would rather have spent time with his crush than the guy who had his best interests at heart. That was normal too. He was a kid and he was in love and he had no idea what was and was not good for him. That was normal and fine and…and Fukuda could deal with that. He could deal with that and he could be very persuasive when he needed to be. Sho…he was better off sitting with him, anyway, and not with that lot who let him get away with anything and had taught him God only knew what.

Sho was much better off with him.

"I don't want to. Go and sit with dad if you want to sit with someone. We're busy doing very important work. This is super important and we can't be disturbed. Life or death, fate of the world, type stuff. You wouldn't understand." Said Sho with a wave of his hand. His jacket sleeve fell down over his hand. He rolled it back up. He was careful, though, not to show what he had drawn on his wrist. It had started out as a hamster but then it had turned red so now it was a strawberry…but it wasn't done yet and nobody could see it until he was all the way done with everything!

"Sho, you know I could help you with-" said Fukuda

"Fukuda, go and sit with dad. I already said no fighting and you're starting a fight with Sho. Please go and sit with dad until the plane lands…and don't fight with him either or….well I don't know. I'll turn the plane around or something." Said Mob as she looked up from what she had been doing. She held one of Minegishi's hands in hers and the other one held a nail polish brush. The bottle of nail polish, supposedly this was purple rain colored even though she had never seen purple rain before and honestly that sounded kind of unsafe, was floating in the air beside her. She didn't want to have to order Fukuda, or anyone else, around but she also didn't want to have to deal with any fighting right now. This was going to be a fight free flight or else there would be no flight at all.

"That's lame. Make the plane do a barrel roll or something. At least then we get punished but we still get to go to Osaka." Said Shimazaki

"How about no?" said Minegishi looking up from their book. They had a book balanced in one hand, a coffee between their knees, and now their temper on a tightrope. Ryou did not need to be giving people those kinds of ideas. Ryou did not need to be having any ideas in the first place. They loved him but he was such a moron sometimes.

"No, how about yes! Barrel roll! Barrel roll!" shouted Sho. He really did want them to do a barrel roll, disagreeing with Minegishi was just a plus.

"No, please….please no…anything but that." Said Hatori. He wondered if he would survive in the bathroom if the plane went down. Was this the kind of plane that could even DO a barrel roll? What could...well the plane could go down that could go wrong…but they could lose the wings or…or they could all end up with broken necks or…or something. He didn't know. He didn't know about planes. Dad was the one who knew about planes. He didn't know.

"Yeah…this isn't a good idea….I feel like. I mean if you want to go flying through the air then I can just throw you around when he get home…how about that? And you can even make airplane noises, doesn't that sound fun?" asked Shibata

"That sounds boring. He's ten, not two! Come on, barrel roll!" said Shimazaki

"Ryou, enough about the god damned barrel roll. We are not going to do a barrel roll. This is a private plane, not a jet!" said Minegishi. They had better not have been about to do a barrel roll. If they did a barrel roll then….then Minegishi didn't know what they would do, for sure, but they did know that someone was going out that airlock.

"Hey! It's my plane, well my dad's plane, and if I want to do a barrel roll then we're going to do a barrel roll. Big sis, make the pilot do a barrel roll…no…a double barrel roll…..no! A double, no, a triple reverse barrel roll! And then we can-" said Sho

"Sho….no…you're out voted…and….just…Fukuda, go sit with dad already please right now." Said Mob. She pointed over at the seat she wanted him to sit in, right next to dad, in case he didn't get it or he couldn't hear her above the roar of the engine and the barrel roll debate…and she really didn't want to do a barrel roll! Or a reverse barrel roll! Or any of the other stuff that her brother wanted her to do!

"You can't-" said Fukuda. She was actually pointing…and she had never done that before. She was sitting there and pointing and…and a eleven year old girl was just….she was just pointing. She was pointing at where she wanted him to go…and he hadn't even done anything!

"Be a man and do everything the little girl tells you to do." Said Minegishi. They did not have the mental space to deal with that soggy turkey on rye sandwich with the gross deli mustard from the place on the corner with the roaches and the sign that never worked…God, they hated Osaka. They hated Osaka, they hated this plane ride, and they really hated that man….

But what they REALLY hated was the plane doing a double, triple, reverse barrel roll with a twist.

"I…should probably see if President Suzuki needs anything. Good day." Said Fukuda. He was not going to sit there and argue…and also Minegishi was glaring at him…and also Suzuki was looking his way. He might have genuinely needed something…even if he had just thrown his back out again or something like that. He didn't know.

All he knew was that for the next…however much longer they had…he was going to sit with Suzuki and just…try and keep his sanity.

"Fukuda. Do you need something?" asked Suzuki as Fukuda sat down beside him. Some kind of debate, instigated by Son, was happening over there. Daughter had pointed his way so she may have wanted him to intervene….but it didn't seem that serious. He could read auras. Everyone felt fine. Well…mostly fine. Daughter seemed…on edge…and so did Minegishi. They would take care of Daughter, though, they were a very nurturing person even though they didn't much look it. They had even braided Shigeko's hair even though she was old enough to do that on her own. She hadn't had anyone braid her hair since she had been small. Since Masami had been around…

But that was neither here nor there.

"Just some sane company. What are you up to?" asked Fukuda as he sat down. Coming to Suzuki for sane company….God. Well there was a first time for everything….well a first time in forever for everything.

"Important work…of an important nature." Said Suzuki as he minimized the window on his laptop. He had most certainly been working, improving his hand eye coordination was work, and…well now he was taking a break. Sometimes you had to work and sometimes you had to take breaks and this was one of those break times.

"Uh-huh. Space Invaders or Minecraft?" asked Fukuda. He knew Suzuki. Very important work meant videogames. Even now, forty four years old and the President of Claw, and he still wouldn't admit to actually playing and enjoying games. Why? It wasn't like they were kids anymore…and even then his parents had let him play for hours and hours. Well his dad had told him that he was wasting his time…but that was just how dads were. Fukuda's dad had been the same but worse. Suzuki's dad only complained, his dad hid his consoles and sometimes lost them.

"….Galaga." said Suzuki quietly. Fukuda…he had better not have been about to laugh. That smile had better not have been preceding a laugh or so help him God!

"You hate Galaga." Said Fukuda. Suzuki had thrown what could only be described as a tantrum the first time they had played Galaga together at the arcade. It wasn't Fukuda's fault that he'd just had more training on that game…and no, he'd had zero intention whatsoever of telling Suzuki the trick with the two ships. How in the hell was he supposed to defend his title if he just gave away his secrets…and that hadn't even been a secret! It was a feature of the game.

"I know. That's why I have to get better at it." Said Suzuki

"Why? You feel like taking me on as champion of the known universe again?" asked Fukuda. God…he still had that pin somewhere. Probably buried in the woods with all the other artifacts of his childhood. Unless Suzuki dug it up and took it…and he'd really wanted that pin…and he really hadn't taken losing well…and also he had really, apparently, been holding onto that since they had been in middle school.

"No, well yes, but first I have to defeat Hatori." Said Suzuki. He would not be beaten again. Hatori just….had the advantage of being younger. That was it. His reaction times were better and…and he saw better too. Because he wore glasses…not because Suzuki needed glasses….and he did NOT need glasses!

"….him? Why?" asked Fukuda. Well that…was his title and…and that was his and Suzuki's grudge match and…and they had stayed up all night several nights in a row because Suzuki just could not stand to lose…and now some upstart kid had just come in and-and-and-calm down, Tadashi. Calm the fuck down.

"Because he beat me….but I'll get him….and then all will be right with the world." Said Suzuki. He looked over at Hatori…and he was all curled up into Shibata. Son was shouting about something and apparently Hatori found it frightening for some reason. Shibata was keeping him safe, though, so that was good. Were they involved romantically? Shibata seemed like he would be a good fit for Hatori, he was a good cook, could keep him safe, and was a natural caretaker. Yes, that was good. You needed a good, nurturing caretaker for your children.

That was the most important thing.

Daughter was in the debate now…and this cheap plane was so loud that he could make out very few words…but she seemed fine. Minegishi was near her. They were keeping her calm. Also they were painting her fingernails for her. Blue. Shigeko loved blue, it was her favorite color, even though she looked so much nicer in yellow. Or purple even…purple was a good color. That seemed to be Minegishi's favorite color. Their hair was purple and the flowers on their shirt were purple…and the pajama pants he had seen her, them, in had been purple…and had also done well to show just how long her, their, legs were….even though they were on the short side….

Not that short, though, not terribly short…even if their hair was.

Why did they keep their hair so short? Maybe it was a practicality thing. He knew how much time Masami had spent on her hair and how much time Shigeko spent on hers, apparently is was a very involved process, so maybe short hair was the way to go. It was so unattractive on a woman, though, but on the other hand they did not define themselves as a woman…though he didn't understand why. She was very pretty.

Even with the short hair she was very pretty.

"Yeah, the rightful order will have been restored." Said Fukuda. That stupid kid…what was his game? End up being Suzuki's friend and then…what? A higher position in Claw? Extra privileges? Marrying Shigeko when she got old enough for all of that? And Hatori was not gay. If he'd been gay then he wouldn't have had all of his wallpapers as half-dressed anime women…some of which were also pregnant for some reason….not his business. That was not his business. Hatori gunning for his position, though, that was his business. What, did he think that he could just waltz right up and be Suzuki's best friend? That it was that easy? Well it wasn't. It was a lot of work and also….also the bridges. There were so many bridges that he was going to cross, have to cross, to become Suzuki's best friend…

Fukuda had no idea what he was so worried about. There was no way in hell that the kid would be able to hack it.

"Uh-huh." Said Suzuki. Minegishi was saying something to Shimazaki now…and their aura did not match their face…and he did know some facial expressions. Mother had made him flashcards when he had been little. They had…well it wasn't a positive one…but their aura seemed to be bonded to his…and that was certainly…well it seemed intimate. He didn't know. He'd never been with another esper before….well once…but he didn't like to think about that. He shouldn't even have been thinking about this…whatever it was that he was thinking about….

"So, what, do I play him next? Because we both know, Suzuki, that the only way to restore the rightful order would be for me to beat him." said Fukuda. Suzuki was…thinking? About….about something important…he had that look in his eyes. That tiny pupiled look….and Fukuda…well he needed more information because that look could have been caused by a number of factors. Insufficient data for sufficient explanation…heh…he wondered if Suzuki still remembered that one….

"That does make sense." Said Suzuki. Minegishi was pointing and…and now he could hear them. They called him Ryou…well he'd already had that information but….why call him that? Were they involved? And why did he care? Well he should have cared, the world needed to be peopled with espers, and he understood why they would have chosen Shimazaki. He was incredibly fit. If Suzuki had been a woman then he definitely would have chosen Shimazaki at least as a sexual partner…well if he hadn't been married to Fukuda. Yes, they'd had this discussion. If one of them had been born female they would have married the other but if one of them had woken up female due to a curse or switching places with their opposite sex duplicate from another world then they would only date the other one if all chances for reversal had proven fruitless. So then if he had been a woman he would have just been married to Fukuda…though Hatori was good company. Maybe they needed to amend this plan…though he had never heard of a curse like that, and wormholes probably did not work like that, and he wasn't talented enough at astral projection to swap places with himself from another world, they'd tried, but…it was still good to have these contingency plans.

"Or maybe I could just beat him at Space Invaders, and you too probably. I mean you were never that great." Said Fukuda. He couldn't believe this! Suzuki wasn't even listening to him! What? So he could go and eavesdrop on those morons trying to convince their leader that the best course of action on a passenger plane flying over land was to do a barrel roll because a ten year old had seconded the motion?

"Yes, do that." Said Suzuki. Well whatever they were talking about was getting heated…and Shigeko seemed out of sorts…but Minegishi was there. They had an arm around her. They genuinely cared for her as their own. He wondered why they hadn't had any children yet. It was a sellers' market when it came to love and sex. Women…he had always envied them. They always just had to sort of be there and be perfect, and they were all perfect in their own way, and then they chose any man that they wanted. Minegishi herself could have had anyone. Sure they had short hair, no eyebrows, and wore men's clothing…but there was a softness to their face…and they were so nurturing…and their hair looked like it would have been very soft….he wondered why they hadn't had any children yet. There was nothing wrong with them. They were perfect in their own way as all women…and people of indeterminate gender….were.

"So anyway, Touichirou, you want to go into space tonight with me after dinner? I hear they're planning a mission to Pluto even though it's not a planet anymore…and you love the outer reaches of space. Unless you're still too scared to go beyond the Kuiper belt." Said Fukuda. That had always been a hot button topic with him. He had always been ahead of the curve when it came to the Pluto is not a planet thing. He'd made several very long and expensive calls to the International Astronomical Union debating the validity of Pluto as a planet…and to this day Fukuda had no idea how he'd even gotten through to a live human being. Suzuki had always been full of surprises…like now…

What was he STARING at?

"Have a nice time." Said Suzuki. Now they were raising their hands, Daughter and her friends, and it seemed like they were….voting? But on what? Claw was not a democracy….also Minegishi had very small hands. He had never properly noticed just how small her, their, hands were. Maybe it was an optical illusion caused by the purple nail coloring…he didn't know. He knew, however, that they weren't going to get close enough to him that he could notice properly…in a more proper manner….tactile manner…because that would have been wrong…and such….

And also Fukuda was talking to him. That might have been important.

"Oh my God….I know that look…." Said Fukuda as his eyes followed the path Suzuki's had been traveling. He had tried to follow Suzuki's aura but his was too bright and everyone was too close together. His eyes, on the other hand, told a much different story. Fukuda…he hadn't seen that look in a while…and he knew that look…

And he knew who Suzuki was looking at.

"Look? I don't have a look. Now what were you saying?" asked Suzuki as he tore his eyes away from Minegishi…even though he didn't want to. When they raised their hand her shirt went tightly over her…ok. Now he was going to stop looking because he had a wife...and also…also he did not have a look and Fukuda had no idea what he was talking about!

"I was saying a lot of nonsense to test if you were listening. You clearly weren't and now I know why." Said Fukuda with a shake of his head. Minegishi? Them? Her? Just…that was not Suzuki's type. Well his type was anyone with the right hookups but…yeah. He liked long hair, a kind and nurturing attitude, and someone who could tell him that he was good in bed when he clearly wasn't. Masami had been very clear that their marriage had been lacking in that area.

"I…was listening. I just hadn't felt the need to respond to nonsense. That's all." said Suzuki. He didn't like to lie…and he wasn't lying. He knew that Fukuda had been talking to him, it just hadn't registered, and that was because he had been speaking nonsense like he had just confessed to. There. Now everything made perfect sense and they could talk about something else.

"Uh-huh. Sure thing, Touichirou, you most certainly weren't staring at Minegishi just now." Said Fukuda with a roll of his eyes. He half reached for the collar of his genkan before he remembered that he was forty four years old now and he and Suzuki weren't playing at world domination anymore. Still. This was a blast from the past. Suzuki staring at a girl…person. Good. Maybe now he would take off that damn wedding ring…though he really needed to stay away from Minegishi. That would not have ended well and it was Fukuda's job as his best friend to tell him when he was being stupid. That was why he was Suzuki's best friend and Hatori was just someone in his orbit.

"I…may have been glancing in their general direction…to see what all the commotion over there was about. Anyway….how have you been? Are you excited for Halloween? You've always enjoyed that Holiday for reasons I have never been able to understand." Said Suzuki. Changing the subject had never been his strong suit but he would do his best. God. He half expected to be sitting in their base in the woods slapping mosquitos off of himself while Fukuda dug into his personal….emotions…revolving around the opposite sex. That was not needed. He was married. He didn't have those thoughts about anyone other than his wife.

"There's plentiful chocolate. Anyway don't stare at Minegishi. They're in some kind of a relationship with Shimazaki already." Said Fukuda. There. He had put a stop to this before Suzuki sent him to slip notes under their door. Do you like Suzuki Touichirou? Yes, no, maybe. God…those were the days…and he was so glad that he never had to be that age again. Getting women was easier when you were an adult…and this was good. Well bad, also, because he'd already had one accidental child…and also he would have been cheating on Masami…but she was gone from their lives and Suzuki needed to move on. She had moved on from him long ago. Long before she had even left.

"Romantic or sexual?" asked Suzuki. Sometimes people had purely sexual relationships…and he was not one of those people. He'd tried, back in university, but he was just not capable of that. He liked being with someone, having a most perfect person that he did not want to share, and if…well there was no if…and he had no idea why he even cared what sort of relationship Minegishi and Shimazaki were in. That was none of his business. He didn't even care. He was the President of Claw, he had bigger things to worry about.

"From what I've been able to overhear they were in a purely sexual relationship but Shimazaki's been telling Minegishi that he loves her so, yeah, maybe stay out of that train wreck." Said Fukuda. Nope. Suzuki did not need to get in the middle of….whatever that was. Even though sinking that couple would have lifted Sho's spirits….though he should not have been encouraging Sho….though it did hurt him to see Sho going through his first love and eventual rejection…..Fukuda would put a pin in this and examine his contradictory feelings towards the subject later.

"Oh. That makes sense. Minegishi is a kind and nurturing partner and would raise their offspring well. Who wouldn't have romantic feelings for them?" asked Suzuki. Well that made sense….and he didn't care either way. He really didn't.

"Right, well-" said Fukuda. Time for a subject change. Any subject change. This was just…not going in the right direction at all. For either of them.

"And Shimazaki is a very fit man and his tattoos are fascinating to look at…and the skin looks like it would be interesting to touch...so of course they want to have a sexual relationship with him. Who wouldn't? Though I am curious how that works with him being blind." Said Suzuki

"A…lot to unpack there. I guess being blind doesn't stop…the rest of him…yeah, let's go with this…from working. Though you'd have to ask him that…and he'd probably answer." Said Fukuda. That was…Suzuki had a lot of issues he should have worked through years ago…and this was not the time to go delving into whatever his sexuality was….and also Fukuda just did not want to know. That was not his business and….yeah. That was all between Suzuki, God, and his internet provider.

"Right. I supposed that you don't really need a sense of sight for that…though it would help a lot." Said Suzuki. There was something to just looking down at your partner right at the moment of…though a sense of touch helped too….and….it had been so long since he and Masami had last…and he was not going to think of Masami or anyone in that state of affairs. Not now. Not sitting here on this plane surrounded by people he worked with and his own children.

"I'd just stay away from that whole scenario. Minegishi is your employee, you're their boss, and people might look at that and…well think that you're giving them special privileges in exchange for sex." Said Fukuda. There. Appeal to the need that Suzuki had to behave in a socially acceptable manner. That had always been the best way to shut down his weirdness. 'You're being weird, Suzuki, people are looking at you funny' had always been the thing to do the trick. Truth be told the rumors that people spread were stupid but…well Suzuki did not need to be having anything at all with Minegishi. For his own good. And theirs, too, now that he thought about it. According to Masami he had always been selfish. Relationship wise and in bed too.

"I-I would never! Claw is a strict meritocracy and-and-and I was not thinking about Minegishi like that! This is…I was just….not thinking about them like that! Just…stop with that, Tadashi." Said Suzuki. He sounded young, there, and he knew it…and he hated himself for sounding so young. He half expected his voice to break…but it didn't. They were grown men now and…and they were not children and….and all of that!

"Alright, I take it I won't be writing them any anonymous notes?" asked Fukuda with a laugh. God, the notes. The never ending notes. Suzuki's handwriting was distinctly microscopic so Fukuda had been his personal scribe and messenger. God….the never ending notes…

"No, we're grown men. We don't do that…and I'm married! Now talk to me about something else right now." Said Suzuki. He didn't give a damn what they talked about so long as Fukuda stopped insinuating that he would ever have been unfaithful towards his wife. He loved Masami and he never would have done anything like that to her. She was his everything…and there had been that one isolate incident…but she was still his everything….even if she had gone…she was still his…his wife….his reason and his life and….and she was gone but…but she was still his…or at least he was still hers…he had to still be hers…

"Ok…how's kendo been looking this year? Anyone good for Japan?" asked Fukuda. Well he knew when to stop and that was it. Suzuki….he was never the most emotionally stable person…and his aura had turned inwards for some reason. Why? Because he had been married? He had never been anything close to married. He'd trapped Masami in that house and ignored her for weeks if not months on end. He hadn't spoken to her, held her, touched her, or spent time with her at all while he was home no matter how much she begged and pleaded with him….but that was not what Fukuda wanted to talk about…not what they were going to talk about.

Suzuki liked kendo. They were going to talk about kendo now.

"This season has been very-" said Suzuki. Now that was something that he could talk about. It had been a very good season and they had some promising new people…and he would have talked about that at length….but then he felt Shigeko getting closer. There. She was…she was coming….but why? His first thought was that something had gone wrong….but he was not going to panic since he was useless in a panic…and also she must have been ok because Minegishi had been with her and they loved her as if she had been their own child.

She must have just needed something.

"Dad? Can I have the pilots make the plane do a barrel roll? It's….important…I guess." Said Mob. Sho really wanted this…and she wanted to make Sho happy. Sho and Shimazaki had managed to get Shibata on their side…and that had made it a tie…and the tie had been turning into a fight so….barrel roll time. A single one, not the crazy stuff that Sho had been talking about, because this was not a stunt plane. This was a normal plane…and Hatori had brought up a very good point. This may not have even been the kind of plane that could do barrel rolls…so it was best to just ask the pilots she figured.

Hopefully they would say no.

"A barrel roll? Don't bother the pilots, I can do that." Said Suzuki. If she wanted a barrel roll, if this was important to her, then she was going to get a barrel roll. He held himself and her down with his powers and made the plane do a barrel roll. It was easy…though maybe he should have held everyone else down with his powers too….though it was not entirely necessary to scream like everyone was.

Really. They were not going to die. They could have given more credit than that.

"There! That's the first and last barrel roll that's ever going to happen! Now please….no more fighting! And someone find Hatori I think he crawled under the seats or something…I don't know….I need a drink." Said Mob as she pulled the tiny wine bottle out of her sleeve and went back to Minegishi….and she had no idea what they were so mad about. She hadn't had any way of knowing that dad would have done the barrel roll himself….

But at least now they could stop fighting.

Hatori was hiding somewhere, Minegishi was still clutching the arm rests and their aura felt all mad, Shimazaki and Sho were talking about how cool that had been, Shibata was breathing really heavy with his head between his knees, and now the pilots were saying that they were going to make an emergency landing….this was….well they hadn't fought. They hadn't gotten into an actual fight and…and that had been good.

Forty five minutes down, forty five to go…or however long after their emergency stop….but still. Barrel rolls were better than fights.


	397. Sometimes You Have to Tell Big Secrets

Sho could be very helpful when he wanted to be.

Which was always. He was always helpful. Really. He was always helpful and now…well now he was being especially helpful. Shimazaki needed help unpacking and usually Minegishi helped him with this…but he didn't need their help. Sho was awesome. Sho knew what he was doing. So what if he couldn't read braille so well…he was learning…and he could tell which box said shirts and which said pants and all of that other stuff. He could help and…and helping had nothing to do with love reasons. Just…the more that he helped then the more time that why would have together to have fun.

And there was a lot of fun to be had in Osaka.

"Ok, so when we're finished with this we can go to the big arcade, right?" asked Sho as he filled up the pants box with pants….and he knew that those dots said pants…and he was not wrong.

"You can go. I stood in front of an arcade cabinet once. It didn't really appeal to me." Said Shimazaki as he went through his desk drawers. He knew that Sho was messing up his clothes and he decided that it was best not to say anything. Let the kid think that he was helping and let him mess up something that wasn't too serious. He could fix all of that later without Toshi's help. The desk, well that was the most important thing.

He did NOT need Sho getting his little hands on any of this stuff. For his own sake.

"They've got pinball and crane games and stuff that doesn't have a screen. Come on, it'll be fun…or we could do something else. Whatever you want." Said Sho. Shimazaki was sitting at his desk, his back was to him, but Sho could feel Shimazaki watching him. He knew that he was listening and watching and he'd done his best to sound normal there, like he didn't care what they did, and he really didn't…he just wanted to be near Shimazaki for…friendship reasons. That was all. Yeah, he was the only person who Sho could hang out with. Big sis was hanging out with Minegishi, Shibata was getting all of his stuff unpacked and he was really serious about getting the kitchen just right, Hatori was friends with dad now so hanging out with him would have been super weird, and Fukuda…well he was still kind of freaked out about the whole barrel roll thing.

Even though it had been super cool.

So, really, by default it was just him and Shimazaki. That was the reason that Sho wanted to hang out with him…nothing more. He was falling out of love with him, he really was, and he was making great progress. He hadn't even thought about Shimazaki in at least a hundred hours. No, every time he thought about Shimazaki and how awesome it would have been to hold his hand or…well other stuff…he just remembered how itchy his skin was and he stopped. Like there were ants living under his skin…and they were mad about something….

Sort of like the time he'd stuck his hand in the fire ant hill because Shimazaki dared him to…yeah…just like that.

"How about we do something about the constant scratching? You're driving me crazy with that." Said Shimazaki. Sho was scratching again…and he had been scratching nonstop since Shimazaki didn't even know when. It felt like he was covered in…well he didn't want to stare too closely because he did not need to pour gasoline into that fire….but it looked like he was covered in…something. What? Had he stuck his arm into a fire ant hill again? Because Shimazaki hadn't been serious that one time he'd dared Sho to do that…Sho just took things way too seriously sometimes. That was…not something he liked to think about. The amount of power he had over Sho. He could have made that kid jump off the roof if he felt like it…but he didn't. No, right now all he felt like doing was getting him to stop that scratching.

Because, really, it was getting kind of annoying.

"I-I'm not scratching." Said Sho. He had been scratching but…well he wasn't scratching now and that was what mattered. Why did Shimazaki have to notice these things?! Why couldn't this be one of those days when he had drank too much or smoked too much and Sho had to be his seeing eye kid? He had a whole desk full of stuff to do so why didn't he just go and do whatever was in that desk until he couldn't even tell if Sho was in the room or not?

"Yes you are, I can tell. You've been doing that for a while and it's starting to drive me crazy." Said Shimazaki. Well not crazy but repetitive motions like that got pretty annoying pretty fast and Sho was many things but he was not annoying. Also there was a part of Shimazaki that was, well, worried he supposed. Sho had been scratching for a while, a long while, and that wasn't normal at all. He was scratching like…well Shimazaki didn't want to think about what Sho was scratching like….and also there was no way that he would have been scratching like that because the worst that he carried with him was coke.

"You're already crazy." Said Sho sticking out his tongue. Maybe Shimazaki would take the bait and they could have a cursing match or something, anything, anything at all so that they could stop talking about all of this. What, he wasn't allowed to scratch? This was a free country until dad took over the world so, yeah, he could scratch as much as he wanted to…and even after dad took over the world he could still scratch. He could scratch until all of his skin fell off. He was the future king of the world after all.

"No, I'm sane and everyone else is crazy, especially you. Now come on. How about I have Toshi take a look at that. They know about skin." Said Shimazaki. They knew what to do about itchy skin, dry skin, infected skin, oily skin…they knew a lot about skin. More than Shimazaki did, anyway. They would know what to do for Sho. They weren't his biggest fan, and Shimazaki didn't blame them one bit, but they wouldn't just let the kid suffer. Toshi had a real soft spot when it came to kids. They didn't want kids of their own….and Shimazaki could accept that….but they did have a soft spot for kids. Even this one.

"No way. I'd rather you scratch my skin off for me with a cheese grater than go and see them about anything." said Sho. He wasn't exaggerating. See his mortal enemy about this? See the person who was trying to take Shimazaki's friendship from him? No way. He would rather have gone into the kitchen, taken the cheese grater, and had Shimazaki scratch off all of his skin. He couldn't do it himself, of course, because he was too scared….like a baby…but he would have had Shimazaki or anyone else do that if it meant that he didn't have to see Minegishi.

"Someone's certainly being dramatic." Said Shimazaki. Where did he even come up with this stuff? A cheese grater. A deli slicer, now that was good for removing skin, or even just getting some chef's knives and fileting someone like a fish. A cheese grater was just unnecessarily slow and cruel. Not that he would be reliving any parts of his formative years with that kid, no, he much preferred the old teleport and drop to all of that…and also he liked the kid and he had no reason to do any of that anyway.

"No I'm not. I just don't want to see them. They don't like me anyway." Said Sho. Minegishi would just be a jerk to him like they were to everyone, anyway, if he asked them for help...and he didn't even need any help! He was fine. This was just how tattoos healed. He'd seen Shimazaki's healing before. They were always red and bloody before they healed. That was just how tattoos worked. Sho's were still red but they had stopped bleeding so that was good progress.

"Toshi would not be a jerk to you...not in any serious way, anyway. Besides, you deserve it. You did kind of kick down their door and completely invade their privacy. So, yeah. Don't put all of this on Toshi." Said Shimazaki. This kid…he did not understand this kid one bit. Ok, so he didn't like Toshi for the obvious reasons but that was no reason to sit there and suffer. Besides, Sho knew that the two of them could never be anything other than just friends…right? Shimazaki had managed to get that through his head, he must have, he had said it enough times. What did he have to do? Tattoo it onto Sho's eyelids so he got the message?

"I just don't want so see them, ok? Is that so hard to understand?" asked Sho. What did he have to do? Start screaming? He didn't like Minegishi, they didn't like him, and he didn't need their help with anything anyway. He was speaking perfect Japanese. What other languages did Shimazaki need to hear it in?

"Well then your only other option is to go and see Fukuda…and I don't think that anyone wants to see Fukuda. Not even Fukuda himself." Said Shimazaki. Well the kid was certainly in a bad mood…and Shimazaki had no idea why. Well he was extremely jealous of Toshi…but he had better not have been turning into a moody teenager or anything like that. He wasn't even eleven yet…and even when he did get to that age he needed to just…stay ten forever somehow. Yeah. This was a good age…even if he could be a little asshole sometimes.

"Yeah he can be kind of a jerk sometimes….and he tells secrets…but I don't need to see him either! My skin is fine and I don't need Fukuda or Minegishi or anyone." Said Sho. He knew that Fukuda would just erase all of his progress if he knew what Sho had done to himself. He always erased tattoos when he healed skin…and he was not going to start again. Even with his powers tattoos took a long time to do and he was not going to sit there and poke himself for another million hours.

"Yeah, sure, whatever you say Sho." Said Shimazaki with a shake of his head. He could sense the kid sticking his tongue out at him. He stuck his out right back. He could also sense the kid scratching at his arm again….and really that was getting to be annoying…and for both of them, too. God, kids were too hard to understand sometimes. Like he was talking to a tiny little alien that had no sense of self preservation. When something was wrong, when you got injured or something, you had someone fix it for you. That wasn't a hard thing to understand. Even when he'd been a kid and worse at getting his barrier up in time he'd never been to…proud or whatever Sho was right now…to get himself stitched up. He always got stitched up and then kept on going…but Sho was not him. He had his own world in his own mind and he operated off of his own logic…and Shimazaki really wished that he'd shared some of that logic with him so he knew how to deal with this.

Maybe this was why Toshi didn't want them to have any kids.

"It really is! It's fine! My skin is normal and I'm normal and-and-and you're the one not being normal…not trusting me and stuff." said Sho. That was the part, well one of the parts, that sucked the most. Shimazaki didn't trust him that he was fine. He had this idea in his head that Sho couldn't tell when he was and was not fine. Like he was a little kid or something. Like he was a baby or something. Like he was baby sis and he couldn't tell when he needed to stop climbing on things or trying to eat crayons and stuff. Well Sho was not a little kid or a baby. He was almost eleven and he could handle himself.

"Alright then. If your skin is really as fine as you say it is then you should be able to go a whole minute without scratching it…and in fact I'll set a timer right now." Said Shimazaki. He grabbed his phone and told it to set a timer for one minute. God, this was a crazy future age they were living in. He decided to marvel at the technological progress his phone had made by going through his messages to himself. He had said a lot…of stuff that he had no memory of saying…and also he needed more toothpaste…but Toshi had taken care of that for him…

God, they were so great.

Once the kid got over this weirdly intense crush he had on him he would see how great Toshi was…and hopefully that happened sooner rather than later. He was sitting there trembling in place. He was reaching for his side and then stopping himself. Then he was reaching for his arm and then stopping himself. Then his leg. What was this kid COVERED IN? They felt like…he focused as best as he could and…yup. There was that gasoline he had been talking about. The kid's heart was pounding and he was getting that fluttery feeling in his stomach again….and Shimazaki wasn't too thrilled about that at all. This kid…God…he needed to meet some guys his own age or something….

And also he needed to get whatever those…cuts? Cuts. Those cuts he was covered in looked at….God…how many were there even? And….what WAS all of that?

"There! It's been a minute!" said Sho as the timer went off. He couldn't help it. It had been the longest minute of his life and he just…he had to scratch. He stuck a hand up his sleeve and scratched his arm. He stuck the other hand under his shirt and scratched his stomach. He knew that he probably looked really stupid but right now he just wanted the itching to end! He didn't care what happened! He just wanted this to be over and-

And now Shimazaki was next to him.

He was next to him and…and he took his wrist in his hand. He was a lot bigger than Sho…and of course Sho knew that Shimazaki was bigger than him, he wasn't stupid, but just…he was close and…and his whole hand could fit around Sho's wrist. He pulled Sho's hand out from his sleeve then reached up and felt his wrist and…and Sho couldn't move. He was stuck. It was like his body wasn't getting the message, his brain was figuring out that he had to move and his body was acting like it was the boss. His brain knew that he had to move but the rest of him….

The rest of him liked this…kind of a lot.

He was close and he smelled really good…really, really good. Sho leaned forward a little and he smelled the stuff Shimazaki put in his hair to get it to stand up like that. Not gel, no, something else. Sho had no idea what it was but it smelled good…and so did his cologne…and also…and he was just really close! He was really close and…and Sho…well not his lungs had stopped moving. Shimazaki was tracing up his arm and…and the only thing moving was the goldfish in his stomach and…and he just….he wanted the goldfish to stop and he wanted Shimazaki to stop but he also wanted Shimazaki to never stop and…and…

And he didn't even know!

"I don't even know what I'm feeling. Are these….cuts? Scrapes? I have no clue…but that is not how skin is supposed to feel. OK, yeah, you're seeing Toshi." Said Shimazaki. He knew fully well that he was the one responsible for lighting this fire, as much of a fire as a ten year old was capable of having, but he didn't care. That felt terrible. Just…raised lines and…and really unpleasant skin. God damn it Sho…and damn you Fukuda, too, for making the kid not want to see you. This was…not good. Shimazaki knew what an infected cut felt like…and this was it. It was hell going through that without medical care. Poor kid…but Toshi would know what to do. They knew about stuff like this.

"No way. I don't want to see Minegishi." Said Sho. First of all nobody was supposed to see his work until he was done and second of all they were his mortal enemy. They were his mortal enemy who sometimes gave him useful books but that didn't make them any less of his mortal enemy.

"Then go and see Fukuda." Said Shimazaki. God, how he hated being the responsible one…but somebody had to be ad he was the only adult between the two of them so this fell to him. Sort of like if he'd had a kid of his own. Yeah. There were these parts to having a kid, too, weren't there? He didn't like to think of these parts. He liked to think of the fun parts of having a kid, the parts where you got to do fun stuff all day and stuff, but yeah…this was also a part of having a kid…and he could do this…not that he knew for sure if he was having a kid or if he even wanted one….and that was something to be figured out on another day. Right now he had to get Sho all fixed up.

"No, I don't want to see him either." Said Sho

"Yeah, I know that he's an asshole but those cuts feel infected and, yeah, I'm not letting you walk around like that. If the scratching is driving me crazy then I can't even imagine what that must be like for you. I mean you're the one who actually has to live with that. Now come on, kid, Toshi or Fukuda. You decide." Said Shimazaki

"Neither. I'm fine. It's nothing." Said Sho. No way was he going to see anyone about this. He was fine. He was totally fine and...and what did Shimazaki know?! His skin was not infected. It was just really itchy and turned red and stuff. That was all. That was not an infection that was just…his skin healing after all the work he'd done. That was all. Work that Shimazaki could not know about yet. Work that nobody could know about yet.

"Sho, it's not nothing. Now come on. You can go and see Toshi on your own, or Fukuda, or I can pick you up and bring you to one of them. Which one is it going to be?" asked Shimazaki. He hated the way he sounded right now. He hated having to be this person, the person who had to be responsible and shit. He wanted to have fun but Sho was making it very hard on him…and he didn't even understand why. When you got hurt like this the thing to do was to get fixed up. There. That wasn't complicated at all.

"I'm not going anywhere." Said Sho crossing his arms. He scratched whatever skin eh could reach while his arms were crossed he was not going anywhere and if Shimazaki wanted him to see someone then he was going to have to take Sho himself.

So that was what he did.

"Ok then, looks like we're doing this the hard way." said Shimazaki. He picked Sho up and brought him over to Toshi's room. He could have gone to Fukuda…but he didn't feel like it. Toshi knew what to do. They had helped him, before, when he'd gotten infected cuts. They were smart like that. They may not have had super healing powers but they did know a thing or two about healing plants and stuff.

Also they were the smartest person that Shimazaki had ever met.

"Ryou, is there any particular reason you decided to drop in like this? Or did you just feel like startling my houseplants?" asked Minegishi as they took a fern from Mob and rested it on their dresser. They did not have the energy for whatever this was. For why ever Ryou had decided to pop into their room holding Mob's struggling little brother.

"Sorry Toshi, and Toshi's plants, and Mob. Sorry to freak you guys out but I kind of have a situation here." Said Shimazaki

"Sho? Are you ok?" asked Mob. Sho was kicked and trying to get away from Shimazaki…and that was weird. Usually he did whatever he could to be near Shimazaki. She didn't knew what was happening but she hoped that it wasn't a fight. She hated fights. She had managed to avoid any fights on the plane…but she really hoped that the fighting hadn't just been postponed until they landed and got to their new home.

"What in the hell kind of situation are you two in this time?" asked Minegishi with a groan. That kid…that KID. They had no idea what he had done but if Ryou thought that it was important enough to bother them about…well then they'd have to do something. Better them than Mob. She had enough on her plate as it was.

"We're not in any kind of a situation!" said Sho as he tried to get away from Shimazaki. He didn't know where he would go or what he would do after he was put down but he didn't want to be there in Minegishi's stupid room where they were unpacking their stupid plants and books and…and big sis was looking at him like she was all worried…and she was always worried about him even though she had no reason to be!

"But….Shimazaki's holding you…and you're both acting like something's wrong. What's wrong, little brother?" asked Mob. Was Sho hurt from where he'd hit his head? Oh, she knew that doing a barrel roll was a bad idea…and she had no idea why dad had thought that it was a good idea…and now Sho was hurt! Maybe very hurt…well things must have gone very wrong if Shimazaki was worried about him. He didn't worry that often but when he did he only worried about the important things.

"I'm fine! Make him put me down!" said Sho as he tried to get out of Shimazaki's arms. He wished that he knew how to teleport. That would have made all of this much easier. Big sis was there. She would see what had happened and she'd freak out…and he didn't want that. He would rather have been locked in a box with his mortal enemy than have to have his big sister see what he'd done to himself…not that he'd done a bad job. He'd done a great job! The best job ever! The only problem with this was that he hadn't healed yet…that was all. Once he healed up then he'd be fine.

"Um Shimazaki? Maybe you should put Sho down…since he asked you to. If he got hurt when we did the barrel roll then I can just take him to Fukuda." Said Mob. She didn't want to go and see Fukuda. She didn't want to go and see him at all but…well this wasn't about what she wanted. This was about what Sho needed and if Sho needed to go and see Fukuda then that was where she was going to take him…and if Fukuda made her feel bad or weird then she would deal with that. She would deal with anything if it meant that she helped her little brother. She didn't know what she would do without him…well be alone with dad…and that would have just been…not good at all.

"No, it wasn't the barrel roll, and that was pretty great by the way good call on having your dad spin the plane around. Anyway, I think that Sho's covered in infected cuts. I don't know. I know that he's got a bunch of them on his arm and he's been scratching like crazy since God knows when." Said Shimazaki. He put Sho down. He could feel him crossing his arms and glaring with his aura. What was with him? What, did he WANT to sit there and scratch for the rest of his life?

"I'm not covered in anything!" said Sho. He pulled his sleeves down over his hands. Now big sis was coming close and she was acting all concerned…and she didn't even have to be! He was fine! He wasn't covered in any cuts, just art, and he knew that she wouldn't see it that way. She would freak out about this like she freaked out about everything…and he did not need her freaking out about anything! She was probably already still all freaked out from when the plane did a barrel roll. She was just going to get all worked up over this, too, and…and he didn't need that right now! Or ever!

"Take him to Fukuda then. What do you want me to do about it?" asked Minegishi. They'd seen Mob/s little brother scratching like he had the chicken pox or something for a while….and really if he was somehow covered in infected cuts then he should have gone and seen Fukuda about that. They had a healer and, really, he needed to be good for at least one thing around here.

"You know about skin and stuff. You're smart like that Toshi, you're the smartest person I know." Said Shimazaki. He omitted the 'I love you' that really should have gone onto the end of that. Not while Sho was in the room. He would not have taken it well and, really, Shimazaki did not need to deal with what would come from ripping the poor kid's heart out. He could barely deal with this.

"…no they aren't." said Sho quietly. Minegishi wasn't that smart just because they read books all the time and had gone to school past kindergarten. Sho was smart too! He was smart and….and Minegishi was dumb! Yeah, they didn't even know what was wrong with him and…and that made them dumb…and there was nothing wrong with him at all anyway!

"Sho, don't be mean…and let me see your arms. You've been scratching for a while and I've been worried about you." Said Mob. She was close enough not that she could roll his sleeves up over his hands. She could smell him, too, and he smelled just like vanilla…and that was where her lotion had been going. Mob really hoped that it was just dry skin and not anything serious…and if it was something serious then she would be there to fix him right up!

"There's nothing wrong with my arms!" said Sho. He tried to pull his sleeves out of her hands but she was strong. That was cheating, her using her powers like that, and she knew that she was cheating. He wanted to…the old him would have pushed her down and run away…but he was ten now and he didn't do stuff like that anymore. He was ten going on eleven and….and he was not going to push his big sis…

Even if she was being kind of pushy.

Everyone was! Really, everyone was being so pushy today! Like, didn't they have anything else to do than stand around and worry about his skin? They had moved to a new place. They were in a whole new city and there was so much to do! There were so many arcades and also there were pancakes with a lot of stuff on them, which he would be taking apart of course, and also…also there was a lot to do in Osaka but instead of having Osaka fun everyone was standing around and talking about him and bothering him and…and he was fine!

Why couldn't people get that through their heads already!?

"Sho, hold still. Come on. If you're hurt then we can help you. We're your friends, Sho, and that's what friends are for." Said Mob as she tried to roll the sleeves of Sho's jacket up. She loved him, everyone loved him, and for some reason he just didn't understand. He even pulled his hands back…for some reason. She just…she just could not understand him sometimes.

"….not all of you are my friends." Said Sho. He looked right at Minegishi when he said that. All they did was shake their head and scoff. What? That was all they would do? They were his mortal enemy and that was all that he was going to get!?

"Kid, no, that wasn't ok." Said Shimazaki. He could feel Sho glaring at Toshi…and now Toshi was going to be pissed at him for not handling this. Well he was handling this. He had been handling this as best as he could. He had told Sho that they would be best friends for the rest of their lives and that they could only be best friends and he had no idea what else he could do without smashing the kid's heart into a million little pieces.

"So? I don't care if-" said Sho. Why was Shimazaki always defending them? What? Did he LIKE them or something? Was he in love with them or something? Was he their boyfriend or something? Well Sho knew that he wasn't. He had said, before, that he didn't do the relationship thing. He was just defending them because he was nice and cool like that…and stuff. Also because they had boobs and stuff.

"Yeah, I'm not dealing with this anymore. Hold still." Said Minegishi. They weren't in the mood to deal with Mob's little demon of a brother. This was going to turn into an all-day thing and they were not in the mood, at all, for an all-day thing. No, they were going to get to the bottom of this. They walked over to Mob's little brother and pulled his jacket right off. They didn't care about the hitting and the cursing. They didn't care about Sho getting mad at them. They just had to get to the end of this, to the bottom of this, and they just had to…

To figure out what they were looking at.

"What the hell….?" Said Minegishi as they took in….whatever it was that they were looking at. That was…those were….if they hadn't known any better they would have thought that they were looking at a bunch of infected tattoos. Those were….those were not drawings. They could see where the skin was raised up and…and what in the hell…..what in the hell was this?!

"Sho….have you been drawing on yourself again? I mean…because that's what it looks like…" asked Mob. Sho was standing still…and he was trying to hide his arms…and she didn't…know what she was looking at. His arms looked like he had been drawing all over himself. He did that sometimes. She wouldn't have minded if he had been drawing all over himself, even if he hadn't managed to finish a single drawing it looked like, if he hadn't been covered in all of those red patches. He had so much red on him…and she knew that those were not pen marks…

"Wait, what does it look like?" asked Shimazaki. Well the kid had stopped breathing…and everyone's auras were freaking out….and he had no idea why. Apparently the kid had been drawing on himself or something? But that was normal. He drew on himself all the time. What was so shocking about that?

"….quit looking at me…" said Sho. His body had forgotten how to move…but now it remembered. It remembered because….because he just….everyone was looking at him! Big sis and Minegishi…and Shimazaki too. His aura was focused on Sho. His aura and…and he was reaching over now….and Sho…he just…

He wasn't done yet!

It would have looked so much better if he'd had the time he need to finish. But he didn't have to time because he had to do this in secret and also because….because it was just a very slow process! The needle was tiny and it took a lot of dots to make even a little drawing and also it was easy to mess up while he was working and…and nobody understood! Nobody got it and…and it was impossible to just something until it was done! Everyone was going to stand there and stare at him like he'd messed up…but he hadn't! He hadn't messed up at all and….and…

And everyone needed to stop looking at him already!

"What are we not supposed to look at?" asked Shimazaki. They knew that he couldn't see, right? That maybe it would have been helpful if someone had explained to him in some kind of detail what they were staring at? Sho was being all closed off, his aura was all quiet and low, and Toshi and Mob were freaking out. All high pitched and loud and stuff…and he really just needed some kind of an explanation because he couldn't think of anything that the kid had drawn on himself that could shock even Toshi. Mob, maybe, because she startled easy but not Toshi.

"Sho…drew on himself…he's covered in drawings." said Mob. It looked like he'd fallen out of a tree or been attacked by animals again…and then he'd tried to draw on himself. He'd tried to draw on himself and also…and also he'd left the ink on for too long. The ink in the half done drawings looked like it had been left on for too long, like he had been drawing with permanent markers, but just….thin ones? And like he'd been doing dot drawing again like he'd done when they had been staying in Australia. Like dot drawings but…without paint….

"Oh. Well how do they look?" asked Shimazaki

"Infected. They look infected. It looks like he's covered in infected, homemade, stick and poke tattoos….and this is beyond any first aid I know. Take him to Fukuda and then talk to him about being a moron….and other things that you should have talked to him about a long time ago." Said Minegishi. Well then. They wondered if Ryou still wanted kids after this. If this had been their own kid with his arms, and probably the rest of him based on how he'd been scratching, Minegishi would have been worried or angry or anything other than vaguely annoyed. This was beyond the scope of their first aid knowledge…and also they were not the one who put this idea in Sho's head.

Ryou wanted to be a pseudo parent? Well then he could start parenting.

"Sho….are those….is Minegishi right?" asked Mob. Minegishi knew a lot of things about a lot of things…but they could not have been right. Sho…he knew better than to get tattoos…right? The only people who had tattoos in Japan were in the yakuza….and also kids did not have tattoos! Those were for adults and…well Mob drank and smoked but…but Sho could not have tattoos!

"Can everyone just leave me alone!? I'm fine! They're just…healing! They aren't infected and they just need to heal and…and they look cool! Tell Shimazaki that they look cool!" said Sho. No…he was fine and…and Shimazaki needed to think that Sho had done a good job! He needed to think that Sho had done a good job so then he would be all 'wow Sho you're so cool you can do all of my tattoos and stuff from now until eternity' and then he and Sho would be together and Sho could do a tattoo for him for his birthday…and it would be….just the best.

"Do they?" asked Shimazaki. That was the real question here. If they looked cool then, hey, the kid had a talent. If they didn't then, well, Sho shouldn't have been such a little idiot as to give himself stick and poke tattoos when he had no clue what he was doing. Shimazaki, well, he couldn't help but feel a little bit responsible. He'd brought Sho with him while he got worked on so, of course, the kid had gotten some ideas. Apparently some bad ones…

Like getting tattoos before he was done growing…and also not making sure that everything was nice and clean and sterile…and probably other such tattooing basics that he should have taught Sho.

"Um…they look…very interesting." Said Mob. They looked terrible. They were broken lines and pokes and red spots and…and the whole thing just looked…well it looked like his stomach and legs were itchy too since he had been scratching them…and just…this was….

She should have been watching him better.

If she had been watching him better then he wouldn't have had the chance to do that to himself. If she had been doing a better job as his big sister then he never would have had the chance to…well she didn't want to smother him…but she also just didn't….she wished that she had been watching him better so that this hadn't even had a chance to happen!

This was….bad.

"No they don't. They're half done. They're infected. And they were done by a ten year old with….I'm guessing a nail jammed into a pencil eraser." Said Minegishi. They were no stranger to the art of stick and poke. They had never done it to themselves, they weren't a big fan of getting stabbed over and over again, but they knew that maybe the art of stick and poke should not have been undertaken by a ten year old child. Just a thought.

"Just…shut up! Shut up and leave me alone! I want everyone in the whole world to just leave me the fuck alone!" shouted Sho as he ran away. He had to run away. He had nothing else to do but run away. He ran away from Minegishi being a jerk, he ran away from big sis worrying about nothing, and he ran away from Shimazaki standing there and…and thinking that he wasn't cool…and that he didn't know how to do tattoos…and how he just…wasn't cool and….

And he had no choice but to run all the way home.

They weren't out in the suburbs now, no, they were in actual city houses so he didn't have to run far. Also these houses had this big walls in front which were good. That way nobody could see him. He didn't have far to run and nobody could see him…and also nobody was home, which was good, because he forgot to take his shoes off. He was running through the house with shoes on and he didn't care. This wasn't his house. This was some house in Osaka that dad had bought and painted blue and…and he hated it here! They had been in this city for not even an hour and he already hated it! There was nothing at all to like about being here! This was…this was a terrible place and he wanted to rewind and go back to Tokyo and…and he just…

He hated it here!

And he knew that blaming the city was stupid but…but he had to blame something! He had to blame something for the way he felt. It felt like his heart was trying to fall out through his belly button. It felt like his skin was going to pull its self from his bones and crawl away. it felt like the whole world was trying to crawl down his throat and there wasn't enough room and that was why there were tears coming from his eyes!

He was not crying.

He had not run all the way home, through himself under his Zootopia covers, and started crying like a little baby. He was just…his eyes were….being all like this. He just…he couldn't think. He had just run away and…and he had forgotten his jacket…but Shimazaki was probably going to take it back anyway. He probably was going to take it back and give it to someone who deserved it. Someone who was cool. Someone who was a better friend. Someone who was good enough to be his friend. Someone who he talked about like he talked about Minegishi! Someone who he could trust to do a tattoo for him, something that stayed on your skin for the rest of your life, someone who could be trusted do something nice and cool and just…..someone who wasn't Sho!

Shimazaki didn't think that he was cool.

Sho took off his shirt. It went somewhere onto his bed. He didn't know where. It was green under there. His bedding was Judy and Nick and a green background. The light that came through the windows made the whole world under there look green…everything about it but his chest. His chest and his arms…and he kicked off his pants too. His legs…his chest…and his arms…and his back too but he couldn't see it. They were all red. They were…well the red was there but also his skin was white…well there were freckles but his skin was all pale and stuff but not as bad as big sis's…but also very red…and he was fine! That was just what tattoos looked like when they healed! He was fine and Minegishi….they were such a bitch bastard sometimes! All the time! He had no idea what big sis even had them as a best friend for!

And he had no idea why Shimazaki liked them so much.

He liked them. The way he talked about them…and how they were always together…he liked them. Not just for boob touching reasons. He liked them and…and it wasn't fair! Sho…he was trying really hard to fall out of love with him….and he needed to try even harder! He needed to totally and completely fall out of love with Shimazaki Ryou because he was in love with Minegishi and…and it wasn't fair! They weren't cool or fun and they certainly would not have covered themselves in tattoos for Shimazaki! They just….they had told Shimazaki that he didn't look cool and…

And fuck them!

And fuck big sis too for….well, no, she hadn't done anything. He couldn't stay mad at her. He had spent so much of his life already being mad at her…and mad in general…and he was just getting kind of tired of being mad at people all the time. Especially his sister. She had been worried about him…he touched the dragon on his arm…and these were…they were itchy and he'd never had anything get infected before…that he remembered….well there had been that splinter when he had been really little. He'd gotten a splinter from trying to climb the tree in the yard at the Castle and…well the last time it had happened mom had dug it out with tweezers and it had hurt…so he just decided to leave it in and let a tree grow inside of him…but a tree hadn't grown inside of him. His had just got all red and it hurt…and then mom had to get the splinter out herself because Fukuda had been off with dad somewhere…and it had hurt so bad…and mom had said that he had gotten an infection from the splinter…

And it had felt a lot like this.

But he just…he had done what the internet had said. He had gotten a clean needle, there hadn't been anything gross on it, and he had run it under hot water too. He had let the water from the tap get as hot as it could be and that was how he had rinsed the needle before he started. He even used real ink from India like the internet had said. Afterwards he had washed it with soap and water and then put plastic wrap over it. He knew how to read, he knew how to take care of tattoos, and he had no idea how all of these could have gotten infected…or how he could have drawn so badly on himself…and how he just…how he…

How he could have made himself look like such a moron in front of Shimazaki.

And how he could have made himself into such a morn now. He was hiding under the covers in his underwear crying like a little baby. He couldn't have made himself look like any more of a loser, a baby, a little kid, if he had tried. No wonder he had messed up so badly. He sucked at everything. He was just…he had been born wrong. For his whole life he had felt like he had been born wrong and now…now he knew it to be true…again. He knew that he had been born wrong when he had been born with barely any powers. He knew that he had been born wrong when mom had left. He knew that he had been born wrong whenever dad punished him. He knew that he had been born wrong whenever he had to lie or keep things from big sis. He knew that he had been born wrong…and that she had been born right…and he knew more than anything else that….

That he sucked.

He sucked. He sucked and he was going to spend the rest of his life in his bed and nobody was going to get him out…not that he knew why anyone would want to. He just…he knew that Shimazaki didn't think that he was cool anymore. He was probably hanging out with Minegishi and big sis now…well just Minegishi. He could feel big sis's aura. He could feel her coming closer. She was probably coming to tell him that he had messed up. That he should have done better, been more careful, and had more sense than to start too many drawings at once on his own skin. She was in the house now and he knew that she wouldn't stop until she got to their room. He knew that she wasn't coming in there to finish unpacking. She was coming in to tell him how badly he had messed up….

And he deserved it.

He stayed under the bed. He didn't come up. Not when he heard the door open, not when he felt her crossing the room, and not even when she sat down on the edge of his bed. He felt her there and he didn't say anything. Neither did she, not for a moment, and he wished that she would have just gotten on with telling him how badly he had fucked up already. How he sucked and how he should have planned this whole better and thought it through. How she was going to take him to Fukuda to get all fixed up and to get all of his work erased. Stuff like that. Stuff that he did not want to hear. He knew that she was planning on saying it and he wished that she would have just gotten on with it already.

Until he wished that she hadn't.

"Sho…you forgot your jacket. Shimazaki said that I should give this to you…so I brought it." Said Mob. She could tell by Sho's aura, and the fact that he was hiding under his blanket like it was a barrier, that he did not want her to talk to him or even be in the same room as him. She could tell and…and she had to say something. He had run away. He had done it because, well, his feelings had been hurt. Minegishi had been a little mean there but…well he should not have been tattooing himself like that. He was too little, he had hurt himself, and also if people saw that he had tattoos they would think that he was a part of the yakuza…not that being in the yakuza was on it's own a bad thing….Shimazaki had been in the yakuza and he was a very nice person…so maybe not wanting people to think that her little brother had been in the yakuza was a bad thing for her to think…

She didn't know…but she did know that he just…he was too little for tattoos!

"Did he really tell you to bring it back or are you just saying that?" asked Sho after a little bit. He wanted it back. Shimazaki had given him that, it had been his first leather jacket ever, and he had passed it onto Sho…and Sho of course wanted it back…but he also wanted his friend back. He…well he knew that Shimazaki said that they would always be friends but…but how could he have still wanted to be friends with Sho…after he had messed up so badly? He just…or maybe Sho was just…

He didn't know, ok?!

"No, he said to. Well he wanted to talk to you, to teach you how to do tattoos right, but then Minegishi told him that he was being dumb and then they told me to come home and talk to you because they had to talk to him…and now I'm here and I have your coat." Said Mob. She wanted to pull the covers off from him and ask him what he had been thinking…but that would have been mean. Instead she just sat down on the edge of his bed and…well she didn't know what to do. She had his coat on her lap…and she'd have to wash this thing soon…and she didn't know if she should give it to him or hang it up or…whatever. It was fall now, it was starting to get chilly and the leaves were starting to change, so maybe he needed his coat now…well he had been wearing it all summer too…she didn't know. She didn't know what to do right now…

But she had to do something. She was in charge of him after all.

"Just leave it on the bed and leave me alone. I want to be alone, ok?" asked Sho. He needed to be alone. If he said any more words to her then…then he might have said something that he wouldn't have been able to take back. He would have said the sort of thing that he would have said to her back when he had been a jerk. He wasn't a jerk. He was…he was trying his best to tell big sis that he needed to be alone….that just…just he….

He wanted to be alone.

"But I-" said Mob. She didn't want to leave him alone. She needed him. She needed to be there for him. She would have just been the worst big sister in the world if she let him be all alone when he was hurting like this. His feelings were hurting and his body was hurting and she had to be there for him. She had to take care of him. She was his big sister and that was her job and hers alone.

"Can't you see? I just want to be alone! I messed up really bad and now I just…have to be alone." Said Sho. He yelled at her and he shouldn't have yelled at her but he had and he just…he had only yelled at her for a little bit. That was good. He had only yelled at her for a second and he could tell by her aura that she wasn't sad or mad or scared. He could only see her aura, not her face, and if he had wanted to see her face then he should have pulled the blanket off of his head…but then she would have been able to see his face…and he didn't want her to see his face. His face which was red from crying, probably, and also he could feel tears on his cheeks….and she could not see that. If she saw that, the way his face was, then she would ask questions….and he didn't know if he could answer those questions.

Those were his secrets.

He had his secrets that she could never know about. He was full of secrets. His head was full of secrets and his skin was covered in secrets…but now those secrets were out. He had no idea why he was even under the blanket. She knew that he had been crying. She knew that he had tattoos. She knew his secrets. She knew some of his secrets. Some, not all, and if she knew all of his secrets then she would never want anything to do with him again….

So he could never tell her.

"Sho…it's ok. We can go to Fukuda and he can fix this." said Mob. She knew why he wouldn't have wanted to go and see Fukuda. He had told Sho's secrets and he could be a big jerk, a very big jerk, sometimes. This was an emergency, though, because he could end up getting very sick. He could get sick from all of those infections that were in his skin and…and he needed to see Fukuda….and she needed to bring him to Fukuda. She needed to be a good big sister and bring him…even though he really didn't want to go.

"….he can't fix this. Nobody can fix this." said Sho. He pulled his knees up to his chest. He had made himself look so stupid and…and Fukuda couldn't fix that. He had made Shimazaki…well he had never liked him…not in the way that Sho liked him…and there was no way that Fukuda could fix that either. Didn't she get it!? Well no, she didn't, because she didn't know…and she could never know. If she knew then she would tell dad. Like Fukuda said, she could never keep a secret from dad, and she just…he knew that even if she knew that he liked boys and not girls then she would still love him but…but also she just…she would tell dad and there was no way that he would be ok with Sho being…who he was…so she could never know. She could never know that there was no fixing this.

"That's not true. He can fix anything. He…well he kind of got mean but he can still fix things." Said Mob. She knew that Sho was still mad about Fukuda telling his secrets and she knew how much of a jerk he could be….but also she knew that Sho needed real help and Fukuda could give him the help that he needed. She just…wished that he could understand. That he could understand that this was not the time to be mad at Fukuda. This was serious.

"No! You don't get it! You just…you don't understand and you will never understand." Said Sho. She was normal. She was born right. Dad loved her. Everything that she did was right in his eyes. She could drink and smoke and…and talk back to him…and he would always love her. Because she had been born right. Even if she had been like him, if she had liked girls instead of boys, then dad would probably have still loved her. She didn't like girls, though, and she wasn't in love with her best friend…and she would never get it! Not unless he told her…but he could never tell her. She would just end up telling dad. Like Fukuda said, she couldn't keep a secret from dad, and this was…it was a big secret. His biggest secret ever.

"Then help me. I don't understand why you did this to yourself but…but I want you to tell me why you did this so I can understand. Why did you try and tattoo yourself?" asked Mob. She had just thought that he had done all of that to copy Shimazaki…and she couldn't think of why else he would have done that. He had plenty of paper to draw on…and if he was bored of drawing on paper then he could have drawn on the walls or something. She just…she didn't understand and she would never understand unless he told her…but for some reason he just wouldn't tell her.

"You wouldn't get it." Said Sho. She really would not have been able to get it. How it felt to be in love with your best friend. How it felt to be close to someone who could never like you back. Because you were too young, because even if you had been the same age you couldn't be together anyway, and even if you had met someone you liked you couldn't be with him…she would never understand. She would never have been able to understand. She had been in love with Hatori and even if he was way older than her she still could have been his girlfriend because he was a guy…and she would never…even if he told her she would never be able to understand…and he didn't know why he wanted to tell her….that secret. Not all of his secrets but….but at least some of them…because there were so many…

And they were so itchy.

"Please help me understand, little brother, I want to understand." Said Mob. She didn't know for sure if she could understand, she didn't know everything and it would have been weird if she thought that she did, but she knew that she could make an effort. Sho was hiding from her, and he was curled up, and he was hurt too. She needed to understand so she could help him. She needed to help him because she loved him and…and he just…he was her little brother and she would always be there for him.

"Big sis…just…can I tell you a secret?" asked Sho. He maybe…could tell her. He just…he had to tell her. His secrets…there were so many of them…and they were so itchy. They were there and they were itchy and….and he just had to…he just had to tell someone. To tell her. She was his sister and…and she didn't understand…and he had no idea if she could understand…but she wanted to understand. She wanted to understand and he could….he could maybe help her understand.

"You can tell me anything." Said Mob. She meant it. It didn't matter what he had said or done. She'd always love her little brother…always and forever.

"And…and after I tell you this do you promise not to…do you promise that you won't think that I'm weird or…or that there's something wrong with me…or that…that I suck for keeping stuff from you?" said Sho

"Sho, you know that there is nothing in the whole world that you could tell me that could make me not love you." Said Mob. Even if he told her that he had killed a bunch of people, chopped them up, and was planning on serving them to her for dinner like in that movie they had seen she would still have loved him just as much as she loved him now…which is as much as humanly possible and for the whole of forever.

"And…and promise me that you won't tell dad. You can't breathe a word of this to dad…you can't betray me to dad." Said Sho. He had already been betrayed once…and he could not be betrayed again. He just…he didn't know if he could handle it, her betraying him, because….because he trusted her. He trusted her more than he trusted anyone, even Fukuda before his betrayal, and a betrayal from her…well that would have been like twenty betrayals and getting kicked in the balls too.

"Sho. I would never betray you. I would never tell dad any of your secrets." Said Mob. She meant that more than she had ever meant anything in her life. She would take any secret that he told her to the grave and then what came afterwards, too. She knew that dad was mean to Sho, that he was always punishing him even though she had told him not to, and she wasn't about to give dad another reason to punish him.

"Ok…just….I'm in love with Shimazaki." Said Sho. He whispered it. He couldn't say it any louder than he'd said it just then. He'd never thought that he would tell her but…but he just…he just…he couldn't keep it to himself for another second! He just…he had so many secrets and…and he just…he had to say it!

"What?" asked Mob. He had been whispering, there, and she'd had to put her ears down close to him…and maybe he got too close. Maybe he'd gotten too close to her or she'd gotten to him because they'd bumped heads….and it had hurt…but she wasn't going to make a big deal out of it. Not when Sho was telling his secrets. She knew so few of them…and she knew not to be nosy…but she just…she wanted to know what was bothering him. That was all.

"I'm in love with Shimazaki! I love him! I love everything about him! I love how he can pick me up! I love how he laughs whenever I do dumb stuff! I love how he thinks that all of my ideas are good idea! I love how he always wants to hang out with me…and…and I love how he just…he just….I love him! I love him even when he doesn't make sense! I love him even when he makes me hold his eye cleaner for him so it's not cold when he has to put it in! I love him and….and you can't tell him or anyone!" said Sho. He didn't take his blanket off of his head. He couldn't. He couldn't let her see his face…and he knew that if he took off the blanket then…then he would just…he would die. He would die and then she would have to exorcise him…

And he wanted her to exorcise him.

He wanted him to exorcise him because…because she wasn't saying anything. She was just sitting there and her aura was close and…and he wanted to see her face. She had sort of the same face dad did, always the same no matter what, but he could tell how she felt. He needed to know how she felt like right now. How she felt about him…and who he was and…how he was and…and just stuff like…like she just…

He had no idea how she felt…if it was good or bad…

"Oh." Said Mob. Well then that was…well that made sense. How Shimazaki was the person that he wanted to talk about the most. How Shimazaki was the person that he wanted to spend time with the most. All the drawings of him, too, a whole lot of drawings. That was…well she had always known that Sho liked boys….but…Shimazaki? Hatori was right there but he liked Shimazaki?

"Oh? Is that all you have to say? I just told you the biggest secret that I have and all you have to say is 'oh' like that's just a normal thing to say?" said Sho. This time he did come up out from under the blanket. She was staring at him…and yeah, he had a lot of tattoos….and also he wasn't dressed…but whatever!

"Um…let me think for a second…but in a good way! I just…I'm happy that you told me about your feelings and…I'm not going to tell your secret to dad but….Shimazaki? Sho…you like him?" asked Mob. She ignored the fact that he wasn't dressed. They were brother and sister and they had seen each other like this before, not for a while, but they had bigger things to worry about. He had a girlfriend…and also….well some people liked both but…why Shimazaki? Why him of all people? He acted like a crazy person, he was nice, but he acted like a crazy person and...ok, now she understood. Well she did and she didn't. Sho had a girlfriend who he kissed and loved and how could he like two people at once? She wanted to know but this did not seem at all like the time or the place.

"Don't. Just…don't be like that. I like him…I love him…and I know that's why we can't be together…because I'm the one who likes him. Because I'm not allowed to like him…and also he's an adult and I'm not…and stuff." Said Sho. He looked down and played with his blanket. Nick was looking up at him. Judy was folded over. He wanted to be folded over too. He had told his big sister his biggest secret….and now she was just….asking him questions…and he just…he had thought that telling her would have made him feel better, and he did, but also he felt even…well in some ways better and in some ways worse…

It was kind of confusing.

"Hey….that's ok. You can't choose who you love….and you love him. You love him and I'm just happy that you found love." Said Mob. She wished that he had found love with someone else. Shimazaki was a very nice person but…but well Minegishi was already in love with Shimazaki. She knew that Minegishi and Shimazaki were in love with each other…and also Sho was ten…and Shimazaki was thirty…and she just…he had love with someone else and…and she still didn't know how Emmy fit into all of this…but she wasn't going to ask. Not now. Now just…was not the time.

"Well I'm not! I just….I love him and…and he can't love me back and…and I think that he likes Minegishi and…and I did this for him! So that he would think that I was cooler than Minegishi and…and I thought that if I did this then he would think that I was cool and…and I just…I don't know. I did something dumb…" said Sho

"You and I….we're the same. Not that we love the same boy…and we should be careful about that in the future….but we both did dumb stuff for boys." Said Mob. Sho liked boys, she knew that he did, and she also knew that he had a girlfriend….and he loved her…and that was confusing….and also this was not the time for her to be confused. She had to be there for him. She had to be there for him and…and maybe if he had told her one of his secrets then she could tell him one of hers. To be even. To make him feel better.

"You gave yourself a bunch of tattoos?" asked Sho with a laugh. She would never have done anything dumb for a guy. She just had to tell a guy that he liked her and then dad could just make the guy like her. There. She didn't know what it was like to want to be with someone who you could never be with….and who you weren't allowed to be with…and stuff.

"No…but I asked Hatori to be my…well my friend who I kissed and stuff…and then eventually my boyfriend…and he said no and it was embarrassing and stupid…and it's ok that you did this. People do dumb stuff when they're in love." Said Mob. She hadn't done anything as bad as give herself tattoos…and also she still didn't know why he had thought that it was a good idea to give himself tattoos….but she didn't have to understand she just had to make her feel better.

"Yeah….I guess…just…I don't know. Can we not talk about this anymore? I just….I don't want to talk about this anymore." Said Sho. He…well he wanted to beat Hatori up for not liking his sister back…and he wanted to tell her that Hatori not liking her wasn't the same as Shimazaki not liking him…and that asking someone to be your boyfriend wasn't the same as giving yourself a bunch of really bad…and they were really bad…tattoos.

"Ok. We can talk later…and I'll leave you alone…but please go and see Fukuda. I won't tell him or anyone else why you did this, I can keep your secrets, but please get all of those fixed. They look infected." Said Mob. She wanted to pick him up and take him to Fukuda…but telling her that had been a lot. She wanted to help him and…and she knew that she had helped him…but she wished that she could have done more. She didn't know what would have counted as more but….well more than she had done…

Because even if his feelings felt better he was still covered in those infected tattoos.

"I know…and I will, big sis, ok? Just…thanks. Thanks and…and I just need to be alone. I love you." Said Sho. He meant it. He meant that he loved her and he meant that he wanted to be alone. She listened, thankfully, and she even closed the door behind her. Now the world was small, their room, the four blue walls that surrounded him…and it wasn't small enough. He went back under his blanket. He didn't know when he would come out, or why he was under there, but he knew that he wasn't ready to come out just yet. He had no idea why he was still under there, why he felt better under there, because being until there in the green of his blanket didn't change the fact that he needed to go and see Fukuda like big sis had said. Being under there didn't change the fact that Shimazaki probably still thought that he was an idiot. Being under there didn't change the fact that he had messed up and now he was covered in tattoos and everyone knew and….and he just…he knew that being underneath his blanket didn't change anything….

But it did help make him feel better and that must have counted for something.


	398. Let Me Fix It

Fukuda could fix…well not anything…but a lot.

The biggest thing that Fukuda had ever done was put himself back together after he had been at the epicenter of Shigeko's explosion at the Eighth Division. That had been in many worse worse than being in the middle of one of Suzuki's explosions because at least when that happened Fukuda's had time to run for cover. Shigeko…that hadn't been expected….and then he'd had to put himself mostly back together…

So he could fix a lot.

He could fix a lot for himself and others. Gunshots. Eyes and teeth getting knocked out. The occasional limb reattachment. Big things like that, things which left him exhausted, things which he didn't much like doing but had to do anyway. He could fix a lot but this…well he could fix it…but there would be scars…he couldn't do much for scar tissue actually since the body recognized it as healthy or something like that…which was terrible because Sho already had so many scars as it was…

For some reason he had seen fit to give himself a few dozen more.

"Well? Can you fix it?" asked Sho. He was standing there looking at Fukuda like…like this was just a normal injury. It wasn't. This was just…he had no idea. He had been staring for a while now. What else could he do? Sho had gotten himself into this state and there really was nothing more Fukuda could do besides stare…well there was more that he could do once the shock wore off….

He had to make it wear off.

He had to say something but this was…Sho must have been out of his mind. Sho was ten years old, he didn't always think things through, and that was alright because he was little. He was a kid and kids did stupid and impulsive things. Fukuda…needed to stop trying to hold Sho responsible for all of this…because really he should have been watching him better. He was left in the care of an eleven year old girl and a thirty year old man child. Sho needed Fukuda to watch him because he was…he was obviously too young to be left to his own devices…

But he should have known better than to do….this.

"Quit looking at me like that. I know that I fucked up, ok? Just fix it so I can try again." said Sho. Again? What did he think was going to happen? That Fukuda was just going to let him get right back to it? And…how had he even done this to himself? Someone must have put the idea in his head or…or he must have lost his mind. There had been multiple steps to getting those done…doing them to himself. He'd had to get the tattoo gun and the ink and…and then figure out what he was going to draw…and Fukuda had no idea what he was even looking at there…and just….at some point Sho must have realized that this was a bad idea…but obviously not….

Because he, for some reason, thought that there was going to be an 'again'.

"Sho…have you lost your mind?" said Fukuda because, well, that was all that Fukuda could say. What else was there to be said in this situation? Sho was standing shirtless in his living room covered in tattoos. Homemade ones. Half-finished ones. Infected ones. That was what Fukuda had been feeling every time Sho had gotten near him. He had assumed that Sho had gotten bitten up by bugs again or something, all the small dots and all, but no. This was worse. This was a thousand times worse. This was….Fukuda didn't even know what this was. Sho had covered himself in tattoos and….and….

He must have been out of his mind.

"Shut up. I'm fine. I just have to try again….or something. I don't know. Stop looking at me and fix this already so I can get home and unpack my stuff and then….I don't know. Play with big sis or something? I don't know…just fix this." said Sho. His aura was pulled close when he said that….and Fukuda had to wonder what his sister had said to him about this. She must have noticed. She must have noticed and…and God help her if she told Suzuki about this. Fukuda knew him, he knew how he could overreact to things, and he knew that he was liable to seriously hurt Sho…and Sho knew that his father was liable to seriously hurt him….

And he had said 'again' and he had meant it seriously.

"Sho…I'm going to fix this…but you have to promise me that there is never going to be an 'again', ok? Because if there's going to be an again then me fixing this is pointless." Said Fukuda. Not only was him fixing this going to be pointless if Sho just ran off and did all of this again Suzuki was liable to take those off with a potato peeler….an exaggeration but not by much. Fukuda had no idea why he treated Sho the way he did. Maybe he saw himself in Sho, the parts of himself that he didn't have, and the parts of other people that he didn't understand…or maybe he had just never forgiven him for being a cesarean baby…or maybe he just disliked Sho for whatever deranged reasons he came up with for disliking people. Fukuda did know, however, that Sho's physical wellbeing had never been one of his top priorities…and also for all of his talk of being a full and complete person all on his own he did pay a lot of respect to the invisible social niceties…and also he, like most people in their country, didn't have the best opinion on tattoos….and Sho must have known this too. That only criminals had tattoos, that his father would not have wanted him to do this to himself, and that he was in for it if his father ever found out….

And yet he, for some reason, thought that there was going to be an 'again'.

"I didn't mean right now! I'm not a moron, I'm not going to run all the way home and start stabbing myself again! I just….I meant later…when I got older and figured it out better." Said Sho. His aura was still pulled in close. That was good. It meant that he had realized that he'd messed up. That was really good. Maybe he could talk some sense into him. Those must have been so itchy…and he'd seen Sho scratching for a while…he had to fix this. He had to fix those infections and he had to make sure that Sho never did that to himself ever again.

"Sho…no. I'm going to fix this for you and then you are never going to do this to yourself again. Ever. It's not a good idea." said Fukuda. Sho…he had been through so much and Fukuda hated being firm with him…but he had to be. This was the biggest screw up that he had ever done and he had to know that this was a serious situation. What if Fukuda hadn't been there? What if something had gone wrong at the upcoming war meeting, they really had to think up another name for those, and he had exhausted himself putting Suzuki and the rest of them back together? What if Sho had waited even longer until he got blood poisoning or something? What if Sho hadn't even thought to tell him and just lived with this until something serious happened? Sho….Fukuda calmed down. Sho was only ten years old. He was the only responsible adult in his life and he was the one who should have been taking care of him….God…

He was so glad that Masami wasn't here to see this.

"I didn't mean right now! I know that…..that I shouldn't do this again right now. I have to learn more…and stuff….I guess." said Sho. Fukuda wanted to take him and shake him…but he didn't. He took a deep breath and calmed himself down. If he had been dealing with Suzuki for the past thirty years then he could deal with Sho for the next…however long this conversation would take. He had to. He'd made a promise and….and Sho needed him. He needed him and Fukuda had to be there for him. Nobody else was.

Well another child.

The closest thing Sho had to an actual caretaker was his sister….who wasn't even a full year older than him. That was Fukuda's fault. He had alienated Sho…and he had no idea how to fix it. He had apologized to Sho for telling his father about his little girlfriend, taken him to see his actual sister, and had been nothing but understanding towards what he had been going through….but there was still something between them. Something that Fukuda didn't like. Something that he never should have let grow in the first place. Sho was too young to understand that he'd had to make a pragmatic choice, and also too young to understand that with his father being who he was Sho maybe should have been a little less obvious about who HE was, and Fukuda could forgive Sho for being young and acting like the ten, not even eleven, year old that he was. Fukuda should have been the one to realize that Suzuki had his worries about Sho and he should have done more to throw him off of Sho's trail. Fukuda also should have at least asked Sho's permission to tell Suzuki and also…also he should have explained what he'd had to do before he had done it. Fukuda was the one who had messed up and now…well now Sho didn't even look to him as a caretaker anymore….

And he had to find some way to fix this.

"That's not the point. I never want you to do this to yourself ever again. Do you hear me?" asked Fukuda. Again he was trying to be firm…but maybe he should have taken a different approach. That was his own anger coming in. That was his own anger and his own frustration at the situation. He should have been there, he should have put a stop to this long ago, and Masami would have hated him if she had known what he had let happen to Sho….and he needs to calm down and just think about Sho. Just think about what he needs and how to convince him never to do this again…and also how to trick him into thinking that it was his idea never to do this again.

People reacted better when they thought that they had come up with things themselves.

"Yeah, Fukuda, I can hear you….but can you hear me? I know I fucked up. I know that I shouldn't have started so many drawings at once on my own skin and I know that I should have taken care of them better and now I know that I look dumb…so just fix these already." Said Sho. He held out his arms. That was where he had done the worst of it. Fukuda didn't even know what he was looking at. There was the beginning of what looked like a person…part of a dragon…and then just a whole lot of other infected lines and dots and….and it was just a mess. His stomach was just a little better. There was a fish over his stomach and a hand reaching up to it…another dragon…a series of lines…some of which extended down to his hips and…yup. Fukuda could sense all of that. It got even worse….somehow it got even worse…

He had to fix this before it got even worse than it was now.

"Sho….I understand that you realize that you made a mistake and I also understand that you're the sort of person who's good at learning from his mistakes so, of course, you're planning on getting back to…this…at some point…but you need to listen to me. You can't ever do this to yourself again. First of all people are not meant to tattoo themselves-" said Fukuda. Appealing to logic usually worked…though he usually did that with Suzuki and to a lesser extend Shigeko…but Sho was a smart boy. There was no way that he was going to argue with-

-yes there was.

"Yes they are I saw it on YouTube." Said Sho. He said that like he had won and…and he was Suzuki's son as well as Masami and Suzuki did not like to be wrong. They had spent an entire afternoon with their ears pressed up to a pair of speakers because he and Suzuki hadn't been able to agree on what, exactly, the lyrics to that blinding light song were…the results were still inconclusive to this day…and Sho was Suzuki's son. He was just as smart and just as stubborn and…and he had to acknowledge that Sho was half of Suzuki. As much as he liked to imagine that Sho was his…and as much as he liked to pretend that Sho had just come from only Masami like that giant lizard at the zoo Sho had shown him that could give birth without a male, but Masami was not a lizard. She was a human being, one of the best human beings that he had ever met, and she'd needed Suzuki to have Sho….and even though Sho was the best of Masami he was also part of Suzuki…

So Fukuda would have to tread carefully.

"You can't believe everything you see on the internet." Said Fukuda diplomatically. That had worked with Suzuki on more than one occasion. Even before they'd had the internet, the proper internet, Suzuki had always been reading things in books and hearing things from other people….and Fukuda had always been the one to burst his bubble…and that could have taken hours if not days…if he even succeeded and didn't end up watching Suzuki sit on a microwave trying to give himself radiation poisoning or spending every last penny he had trying to get to the fabled mixed sex onsens in the mountains….which they had both been wrong about. They did exist, Suzuki had been right, but they obviously weren't going to let two unaccompanied teenaged boys in, Fukuda had been right about that one, though Fukuda didn't think that Suzuki'd been right to hit him so many times….or at all….

Something that Sho had inherited from his father…but Fukuda didn't mind since Sho had a good reason to hit him and also he never did any permanent damage anyway.

"That's not true. You can believe some stuff and I'm not stupid, I can tell what's real and what's not." Said Sho. He didn't seem like he was getting ready to hit him…but Fukuda kept the possibility in the back of his mind. That was something that Sho had gotten from his father, the violence, or maybe it was something that had been taught to him. Either way Fukuda wasn't going to get mad if he lost control. That was just something that he could not control, that was all, not like doing…all of that…to himself.

"Sho…I never meant to call you stupid. I just…ok. Those people were adults, right? The ones on YouTube?" asked Fukuda. He took a step forward, a little one, and got just close enough to Sho that he was in healing range but not so close as to startle him. Just close enough that Sho wouldn't tell him to leave him alone and then decide to spend his life covered in infected homemade tattoos.

"Yeah, of course." Said Sho in a tone that clearly said 'you're an idiot'. That was actually one of the few tones that Suzuki could do. Fukuda had never noticed just how much Sho could sound like his father sometimes…but that didn't matter. He was his own person and Fukuda…he had to see that. He wasn't Suzuki, he was half of him biologically, but most of Masami emotionally. He was less like his father than his adopted sister, somehow, and Fukuda wasn't even going to question that one. No, he wasn't going to question any of this. He was going to go with all of this.

"And how old are you?" asked Fukuda. Sho was listening. Good. He would realize that he was only ten and then he would realize that he shouldn't try this again until he was an adult and then when he became an adult he would have forgotten all about this.

"I'm almost eleven." Said Sho. He crossed his arms when he said that…and Fukuda almost laughed. He was so adorable sometimes, even now standing there in the middle of the living room surrounded by boxes insisting that being almost eleven made him sound older, and Fukuda so wished that Masami could have been there to see it….but also not because then she would see how badly he had screwed up when it came to raising Sho.

"So you're not an adult yet. Sho, listen to me, tattoos are only for adults…and even then they're only for a certain kind of adult." Said Fukuda. He knew what Sho thought about that certain adult, the one that Fukuda was thinking of, and he had no idea how to address that. Mentioning Shimazaki…that was always a gamble. Sho was so taken with him that, well, Fukuda wouldn't have thought that something like that would have been possible from someone his age. But it was. It was and Fukuda…well he could only pray that Sho came to his senses and met a nice boy his own age….

That would have to happen eventually.

Even Suzuki had met someone. Well there had been a few someone's over the years. Shigeko had a few someone's, too, so Sho…well there would be someone for him eventually. Someone other than Shimazaki. When that day came Fukuda would be able to just breathe a long deserves sigh of relief. It would finally be over….this crush or infatuation or whatever would be over…and then Fukuda could just stop worrying about all of this already….but that day wasn't anywhere close. He knew that he had to deal with what was happening now, on this day, at this moment in time…

So that was what he was going to do.

"Yeah, cool people." Said Sho. There was an expression, face palming, and Fukuda wanted nothing more than to do that. Sho was ten so of course he thought that tattoos wee cool…and he was a little artist too so he probably thought that his skin was just another medium…and also his best friend/first love was Shimazaki Ryou and that man had more ink on his skin than actual skin….Fukuda was going to have to tread even more lightly if he was going to get through to Sho about all of this.

"No, not cool people. Sho the only people who have tattoos are hardened criminals. Do you want people to think that you're a hardened criminal." Said Fukuda. That…may have been the wrong thing to say. Suzuki would have blanched at the thought of people thinking that he was anything other than an upstanding member of society…even though at this point describing him as a hardened criminal would have been a compliment. Sho wasn't his father. Sho…well he was in love with someone who even hardened criminals knew to steer clear of. This was hard. He so wished that Sho could have been younger…this had all been so much easier when Sho had been younger.

When both of the kids had been younger, actually.

When they had been younger all he'd had to do was play with them, read to them, pick them up and they would have done whatever he or Masami had said. They hadn't had problems like this. They hadn't been giving themselves tattoos and falling in love with grown adults….and whatever the hell Shigeko got up to these days. They had just been…things had been better back then. But things could never go back to the way that they had been before. Time marched forwards whether he wanted it to or not so all he could do was march along in step with it.

Even if he didn't really want to.

"That's not true, there's all kinds of people out there with tattoos. Like back when we were in America-" said Sho. Fukuda shook his head. That was the bad part, well there were a lot of bad parts, about the way they lived. The constant moving. Sho had forgotten that he had his own rules to follow. He had forgotten that….if he had even realized it. Sho…there were so many things that he didn't know…so many things that Fukuda hadn't taught him…so many things that Fukuda had to teach him. There was just…a lot. It was a lot and…and he had to do this. He had to be the one to teach Sho these things the easy way or his father was going to teach him the hard way…no, not even the hard way. The Suzuki way. That was just the hard way but with more steps.

"Japan. Sho, you're Japanese. You are Japanese and we spend every summer here at least…and you need to think about the rules of the country that you were born in. In Japan the only people who have tattoos are the yakuza. Do you want people to think that you're a member of the yakuza? Because that's what people are going to think and you don't want people to think that. Trust me." Said Fukuda. Sho…oh God he was thinking about it…and maybe that had been the wrong way to go with all of that. Sho's first big crush was Shimazaki after all and that man had no shame. That was where Sho had gotten the idea to do this from, most likely. Well then….Fukuda was going to stay calm. He was going to stay calm and then, next time he got close enough to Shimazaki, he was going to erase some of those tattoos just to teach him a lesson about putting terrible idea in Sho's head like that.

"Yeah I want people to think that I'm a member of the yakuza! Then they'll think I'm a total badass and…and then Shimazaki will think that I'm cool again." said Sho

"Sho…don't tell me you did this for Shimazaki." Said Fukuda

"Shut up." Said Sho

"Sho….no. He can't see. Covering yourself in these is pointless because-" said Fukuda

"I know that he can't see, Fukuda, I'm not stupid. I know that he can't see these but…but if everyone had just let me finish then they would have looked cool and then everyone would have told Shimazaki how cool I was and…and then he would have told everyone that I was cool." Said Sho

"Sho, everyone already thinks that you're cool…and also what do you mean by 'everyone'?" asked Fukuda

"Big sis and Minegishi…and Shimazaki…and probably everyone else, too, because Shimazaki tells everyone everything. Shimazaki found out because I couldn't stop scratching and then Minegishi decided to be a bitch bastard and tell him that my tattoos looked bad and were infected and then I ran home and big sis talked to me…and she told me to come here." Said Sho

"Sho…does your father know about this?" asked Fukuda. He tried to stay calm. He tried to stay perfectly calm and he tried his best not to alarm Sho. Sho needed to know….he needed to know that Fukuda was there for him…and he also needed to tell Fukuda exactly what he had told Shigeko because then he could know exactly what Suzuki knew and then he could plan for that and…and this whole thing was so exhausting….but that didn't matter. Sho was what mattered. Sho, keeping him safe, and all of that…all of that was what mattered.

"Hell no. He doesn't notice stuff about me….he doesn't care about me…" said Sho. Fukuda….he knew how Sho felt. He knew how hard it was on him, seeing his father love his sister but hate him, and he knew that he had to make things easier on Sho….but also he knew that he had to be realistic about these things. Sho was a child and he acted as a child did. Fukuda…well he could understand that…and that was why he had to be the adult there and he had to act as an adult did.

"That's not true. He cares about you…in his own way…and we both know what his own way is like." Said Fukuda. He didn't say anymore, he didn't have to say anymore, he knew that Sho knew. There was the easy way, the hard way, and the Suzuki way which was the most difficult, violent, and downright incomprehensible way imaginable.

"Yeah, I know….and I know that it sucks." Said Sho. Sucks was an understatement…and also he didn't much like Sho talking like that…but he said nothing. He didn't want to get Sho actually cursing. He was being surprisingly good, surprisingly subdued, and Fukuda wanted to keep it that way.

"It does…it really does….and Sho? You need to make sure that he doesn't find out about this. Now I know that those guys, they like you a lot, and they don't like your father…well Hatori does but he's a jellyfish…..but it's your sister that you have to worry about. Just…you know that she can't keep anything from your father so we have to really put our heads together and figure out how to get her to keep her mouth shut about this." said Fukuda. He spoke as diplomatically as he could. He made sure that Sho knew that he wasn't angry with him. He made sure that Sho knew that this was a problem that had to be solved, nothing more, and that Fukuda could never be mad at him…even though he had let the last person in the world who should have known in on this….but that was ok. He could work with this. He had to work with this.

"What do you mean?" asked Sho. Fukuda reminded himself that Sho was a child and that he could only act as a child did. He didn't understand, fully, and Fukuda….well he couldn't have expected Sho to understand. That would not have been fair to him. No, Fukuda…he had this. He had no choice but to have this…so he had this.

"I mean…ok. Do you know if she's doing anything that your father wouldn't approve of? I mean…well I have no idea what he would disprove of at this point…but has she done anything bad that you know of? Anything at all?" asked Fukuda. She had gotten Suzuki high without him realizing it and he had forgiven her. At this point he could have caught her trying to kill him and he still would have forgiven her. There was…there must have been something. She wasn't exactly subtle about what she did….but there really must have been something that she had done that they could use. Suzuki….he had his limits. Even when someone was at the receiving end of his clingy, obsessive brand of love he still had his limits. He was a man of nothing but limits and Shigeko…she must have done something. Something that she wouldn't want her dad to know about….something that Sho might have known about. They were still close despite everything….and there must have been something. Everyone had some kind of skeleton in their closet.

"No…and it sounds like you want me to blackmail my sister." Said Sho. That…was such an ugly word. Blackmail implied that they were doing something wrong. There was nothing wrong with what they were doing. They were shaving Sho and, yes, this was underhanded but it was also for his own good. He had to protect Sho…and he had to teach Sho how to protect himself, too. He was the best of Masami…and that was the best thing about him…but also the thing that made him the most vulnerable. He was so trusting, too trusting, sometimes and it clouded what little judgement he had…and Fukuda was going to have to protect him from himself.

"Sho….blackmail makes it sound so….ugly. We just have to make a pragmatic choice here. It's her or you. You know that she and your father are like that and you know what your father is like. We've just got to keep you safe, ok? You're my number one priority here." Said Fukuda

"But…she can keep a secret. She keeps all of my secrets." Said Sho. He sounded like such a child then…and he was a child. He was Masami's child. He was the best of her, how trusting she had been, and Fukuda…he never wanted Sho to lose that. He never wanted Sho to just…stop being himself…but also he needed Sho to realize that he'd messed up but…but first, before all of that, he needed to get to the bottom of all of this.

"Sho….what secrets have you told her?" asked Fukuda. He tried to stay calm. This was….not good. This was really not good. Sho….he had a lot of secrets for a boy his age and Fukuda couldn't fault him for not keeping all of them…so he wouldn't. He would make an effort not to fault Sho for all of this…even though Suzuki would kill him if he found out about their visits to see the baby…or the fact that he even had Masami's email address to begin with….and Sho….well he knew what could happen to Fukuda. He knew that Fukuda would have been more than in for it…and he had just….

Stay. Calm.

"Just….about these and also…about….Shimazaki and stuff." Said Sho. Fukuda didn't know if he should have let out a sigh of relief or if he should have started hyperventilating. That was…not information that Suzuki ever needed. That completely nullified not only the pragmatic choice that had tanked his and Sho's relationship but also all of the work Sho had put into getting and having a girlfriend. Fukuda knew how much work he'd put into all of that. He knew about the three times a week emails, the gifts, the drawings, all of it. He knew that Sho was putting in a lot of work for someone his age, a lot of very good work since long distance relationships between adults were hard enough to manage but between two year olds, one of which had zero interest in any of this, should have been insurmountably difficult. Sho had gone and thrown all of that work away…but he was ten and he hadn't realized what he had done…and that was ok. He just…had a lot of growing up left to do…and Fukuda was the one who should have been helping him grow up….

But right now he had to make sure that Sho even had a chance to grow up.

"Sho….why did you tell her about that? What if she tells your father? You know how he would react-" said Fukuda. Sho…Sho had shown him a picture that his girlfriend had shown him. Apparently there were worms, tape worms, that could grow in your brain. Sho had taken to asking everyone if they had brain worms…and Fukuda was about to ask him the very same question. Sho KNEW how his father felt about all of that. He KNEW what his father was capable of. He KNEW what could have happened…what might have happened….what was going to happen….Sho…he knew better than this. Fukuda thought that he knew better than this.

"I'm not stupid! I know…I know my own dad! I know him and I know that if he found out about how I felt and stuff then he'd kick my ass…but you're acting like big sis would go and tell him! She's not like that and she's never been like that….not even when we were little….and you had better not start talking to me again like I don't know my own sister!" said Sho. Ok, that was another hot button issue. Shigeko. She took good care of Sho, and she did love him, but she had her own things that she was dealing with. She and Suzuki were way too close, so close that he wasn't even going to try and bother to untangle them, and Sho was too young to see it. That he was too little to see how close the two of them were…and how he put too much faith in her to keep a secret…

But that was a conversation for another day.

Right now he had damage control to do. Right now he had to figure out what he was supposed to do about all of this. If this got back to Suzuki…well he knew that he would have to think up a lie and a good one too….and he knew that Suzuki would always believe Shigeko since he was so close with her these days…and this was a lot. This was a lot and he hadn't even healed Sho yet. This was a lot and he hadn't even unpacked yet. This was just…a lot. A hell of a lot.

But it was nothing that he couldn't fix.

"Ok, ok, you know Shigeko and you know that she can keep a secret. You also know your father and you know how he can pry secrets out of people. Sho…ok. We won't blackmail her but you need to make sure that she never tells him about this…about any of this…and you need to make sure that you're more careful in the future about who you tell. Ok? For your sake and Shimazaki's." said Fukuda. He didn't give a damn about Shimazaki or his wellbeing…but he did give a damn about Sho. He gave more than a damn about Sho and he was going to keep him safe and…and he was going to figure out what to do about this on his own…and that was just the way that it was going to be.

"I know that she won't tell him, she promised, and she always keeps her promises. Even if dad likes her the best she always keeps her promises." Said Sho

"Sho….you're right. She loves you and she has no reason to tell your dad about…any of this." said Fukuda. She did love him and she had no reason to do anything against him…yet. People could change. Time changed people. He…did not want to tell Sho that time changed people. He didn't need to worry about that on top of everything else.

"Yeah, I know that she loves me. I'm the one who's been telling you that. She loves me a lot and…and even though I messed up she was there for me and she made me feel better and stuff…even though I was so dumb…" said Sho

"Sho, no, you weren't dumb. People do…all sort of things…when they're in love. Stupid things. Dangerous things. Things that other people would think are wrong but…well when you're in love everything looks like a good idea even when you know that it's not." Said Fukuda. He knew more than enough about being stupid and in love. He'd been in the middle of enough…been the cause of enough…and he knew that he could never tell Sho about that. He couldn't tell Sho about the stupidity that his father had gotten up to back when he had been a kid, either, since he knew that Sho had no interest I knowing about that. Not right now…even though he had so many funny stories…but now was not the time.

"Yeah…big sis said that too." Said Sho quietly. Fukuda…well this was something. Shigeko had, in fact, done something that she was not proud of. Something when it came to love…she still liked Hatori, right? He had no idea, his information on Shigeko was a little dated these days.

"Well she was right…people do all sorts of stupid things when they're in love…though I wonder what she could have done. I mean she's usually so levelheaded…" said Fukuda. He knew that he couldn't just come out and ask Sho, no, that would get him back on that blackmail thing. He was too young to get it. This was….he didn't know what he would do with this information but any information was good information. Mutually assured destruction in case she ever did anything again Sho.

"She asked Hatori out even though he's way older than her and he said no so now she has to avoid him for the rest of eternity. I could have told her that he would say no. I mean he's…well he's like me…and I'm kind of mad at him for saying no. I mean when a girl likes you then you should just pretend to like her back and make her happy…so I wish that he had said yes…but I also don't want anyone to lie to big sis even if it is to make her happy and stuff…and also if some guy tries anything with my sister it's my job as her little brother to kick his ass." Said Sho. Well that was…Hatori had a good sense of self preservation, he'd give him that, but that was still just…stupid. Shigeko was going to be the one in charge someday and, yeah, maybe alienating her wasn't the best thing to do…but it was what it was. He wasn't worried about her. He was worried about Sho.

"That it is, Sho, that it is…though I wouldn't go around beating up Hatori. I don't think he can take it." Said Fukuda. He smiled, and laughed, and Sho did the same. Good. He felt better…and Sho feeling good was enough to make him feel good too. To make him feel better. Somewhat.

"Yeah, he's a fraidy cat. I bet that if big sis had done…this…then he would have freaked out so bad that they had to build another bathroom because he wouldn't be able to come out." Said Sho with a laugh. Fukuda loved it when he laughed, when he was happy, like when he had been little. He had always been such a happy boy when he had been a kid. Well he was a kid but…well when he had been little. When he hadn't had to deal with problems like this. He just…wished that he could turn back the clock back to a time when Sho didn't have to deal with this…but he did have to deal with this. He was ten and he had to deal with this….well he had Fukuda to help him deal with this…so that was what he would do. He would deal with this.

"They'd have to drag him out kicking and screaming….worse than what happened on the plane after the barrel roll." Said Fukuda

"Yeah, but I think that he might have gotten stuck under the seat. He would probably have had a heart attack and died right there if he'd seen my tattoos then." Said Sho. He scratched his stomach as he said that. Fukuda cringed. Those were…yeah. He would not have blamed Hatori for freaking out if he had seen those on the plane. He wouldn't have blamed Suzuki, either, and he knew that he would have done worse than a barrel roll.

"Well now that would have been a real tragedy for all of us…so how about I fix those for you? And then you can get on with your day?" Said Fukuda. He was close enough, now, to heal him. He could feel each and every cut…scar…and there were scars…and those were not avoidable…but he could deal with this. He would deal with this. For Sho. He would do anything for Sho.

"Sure…ok…but if I try this again later, not today, you have to promise not to freak out." Said Sho. Fukuda was going to make no such promise. Sho…he needed to get off of this…but he wasn't going to come off of this. He was stuck on this and Fukuda…well he had to be the one who got him off of this. He just had to figure out how.

"Sho…you know I can heal from just about anything, right? I think that maybe before you give yourself a tattoo then you should practice on me." Said Fukuda. There, the solution was very clear. Simple and clear. Sho couldn't heal, not like Fukuda could, so really it was Fukuda who should have been in his place…even though he really didn't want to be. He could heal but he also could feel pain…and he had limits to his powers until he got tired…but this was for Sho. He would do anything for Sho.

"Really? You're not fucking me with?" asked Sho. Fukuda cringed. He knew Sho, he knew he was at that age when cursing was new and cool…but he couldn't just let him…one thing at a time, one things at time.

"Language, and no. I am not messing with you in any way. You can practice on me whenever you want to, ok?" asked Fukuda. Sho looked at him like he had just told him that he was getting his birthday party a few months early. Fukuda really did not want to end up in Sho's place…but better him than Sho. At least he could heal. Better to practice on someone who could heal instead of himself. Better someone who wouldn't have to pay if someone found out about it…better that Fukuda be the one than him.

"Ok…right now. Fix me up right now and then I can go home and get my tools! Come on!" said Sho. Fukuda got to work. He didn't much want to get tattooed by a ten year old boy but he loved Sho and when you loved someone then…well sometimes you had to make some pragmatic choices for their own good. So if it was a choice between Sho giving himself homemade tattoos, getting infected, and then being discovered or him tattooing Fukuda then Fukuda would, of course, be the one who was getting tattooed.

He could, after all, fix just about anything.


	399. War Meetings Should Not Be This Boring

Sho used to like coming to war meetings.

Dad used to have them a lot back when they first started going to Tokyo. Some yakuza family, not Shimazaki's but another one, had been trying to kill him on the orders of some esper group but then he'd worked something out with a lot of talking….that part had been boring…but also people had shot at him and stuff. That part had been fun. The parts with shooting and yelling and Shimazaki being all 'is this your gun?' when he would teleport over and take people's guns out of their hands….that part had been so cool!

This was not cool.

This war meeting was all talking. Sho was supposed to be sitting and watching and learning for when he had to do stuff like this. Well he was sitting, and he was watching, and he was learning. He was learning that war meetings, despite their name, could be super boring. Dad was just talking to some lady, that was all, and he had been talking to her for a while. They were talking about…Sho couldn't even remember….he wasn't really listening. Watching their auras was more interesting than hearing them talk about territory and stuff. Dad's aura was acting like it was afraid to get close to hers. Like it would come up to the very edge of hers but when her aura went over to his then his would run back to him. The lady's aura, something Shiori, kept on trying to find dad's when his got close. That was kind of interesting. Usually dad just let his aura slam into someone else's until they freaked out and agreed to whatever he wanted them to agree too.

So at least something around here was interesting.

"…very simple. We've been in Osaka longer, we have more manpower here, and we have no intention of leaving or joining Claw." Said the lady. She was leaned back and holding her tea cup in one hand. Dad was sitting straight up and holding his tea cup with both hands like he thought that it was going to escape. That was weird. Usually he used his powers for that because he liked to make a show of how powerful he was. That was important, he had always said, showing people that they needed to be afraid of you. You could either be loved or be feared, dad had said.

Sho didn't know which one he had picked.

Dad had been…weirdly nice to him. He got to sit down at the table, which was a big thing even Fukuda had to stand and he was dad's best friend, and he got his own cup of tea, too, which he was on strict orders not to spill. He wasn't a baby, he wasn't going to spill his tea, but he wasn't going to drink his tea either. It was mostly to keep you from fidgeting, dad had said, because sometimes you wound up fidgeting without even realizing it. He hadn't said something mean like 'you always embarrass me by fidgeting' or some other dad thing. He just told Sho not to finish his tea and to keep at least one hand on it.

Not everyone got tea.

Pretty much only the important people got tea. That was impolite but that was the point. Only the important people were people enough to get tea or something. Dad thought that he was people. Dad was acting like he was people, a person, and that….that was just plain weird for him. Dad never treated him like this. Even at the war meetings he had gone to before, when he had been little, dad had just told him to shut up and sit still. Well he still had to shut up and sit down and stuff but….well he got to sit at the table right next to dad…well not super close to him but still. Being near dad…he didn't like it. He knew that he shouldn't have liked it. Dad was a jerk. Dad was an asshole. Dad was the worst person in the whole world and he hated his guts….

But also dad had let him sit at the table with him during a war meeting….and he knew that big sis hadn't told him to do this.

"You haven't been active for very long at all." Said dad. He was watching the lady while he said that…but he didn't look bored. Usually when he watched people he looked bored…because he was bored. Dad thought that he was the best person in the whole wide world and everyone else was boring. That was just how he was. But he was watching this lady like she was interesting. She really wasn't. She was dressed in black and white, which was boring, and her aura was orange, which was close to red which was boring, and her hair was black, which was the most boring color, and she hadn't even used her powers once, which was so boring.

Powers fights were always fun.

Dad got into powers fights with people sometimes. That was how scars were made and also how traitors were subdued and how people were conquered. Sho had thought, when he'd heard that this was going to be a war meeting with another esper group, that there would be a massive powers fight. Especially since not only was dad bringing Fukuda but also Shimazaki and Shibata and Hatori too. Minegishi wasn't invited because they were taking care of big sis. Sho kind of wanted them to come just because they were always saying mean thing to people. Maybe if they had been here then something could have happened already!

Not that he wanted them there.

Because they had still been a jerk to him. They had still told Shimazaki that all of the tattoos that he had worked really hard on had been stupid looking. They had still made him look bad in front of Shimazaki and they were still trying to take Shimazaki from him, his friendship nothing else, and they were still the biggest jerk that Sho had ever met in his entire life. They really were! So he was glad that they hadn't been invited…even though they would have livened this place up a little bit. God, it was so boring here. Even his boredom was bored….

Even the boredom of his boredom was bored!

"We have, we've just very recently splintered off from the Rising Sun Spiritual Association." Said the lady. Sho wished that those guys were here. They were less boring than this…and they were pretty boring. Most of their members weren't any stronger than the Awakened and their leader was a million years old but at least that had been a cool fight, when there had been a fight. They had gotten a new Scar from that, this spirit user guy…or maybe girl…person who was like Minegishi…maybe. He was going with guy. He was in the Seventh Division. Sho had seen him, spirit user guy, around the Seventh Division when he took baby sis on her baby stroller walks. He had been the most powerful one in their whole organization and Claw had him….

So Sho had no idea why he was sitting there in a war meeting with this lady.

She probably wasn't even that powerful. If she had been then she would have just joined Claw already. Everyone who had any brains in their heads at all knew to join Claw. It was either join Claw or die…and not a lot of people took the second option. Some people took a third option and tried to attack dad…but that never worked out. Maybe this lady was going to try and attack dad…if her powers even worked that way. She hadn't shown her powers once…and Sho had no idea what an orange aura meant. Green auras meant that you could control thing, like take them over, at least most of the time. Red auras meant that you were either one of the Awakened or super powerful like he and dad were. Two colored auras meant that you were like dad and big sis…and that was all he knew about auras. Auras weren't much to go off of…

But they were all he had to go off of.

What was it with girls and fighting?! Big sis hated fighting and so had mom so they didn't grow out of it. This lady was the right age to be a mom, she might not have been since she hadn't brought her kid, but maybe her kid wasn't an esper so he had to go and live in a hole somewhere where he wouldn't embarrass her. He wished that this lady had brought her kid, and that her kid had been a boy, because then maybe he could have fought her kid or her kid could have fought dad or he could have fought the lady and her kid….or someone could have fought someone! God! Girls were so….he would never understand them for as long as he lived. She was there, dad was there, and neither one of them was going to budge so why not start trying to kill each other already!

When Sho took over Claw he was going to make some big changes to how these war meetings went.

"And how is Jodo doing? Still alive?" asked dad. He asked like….like that was just something to ask. Great. This wasn't a war meeting, this was just watching a bunch of adults sitting around and drinking tea and talking about other adults! When he grew up he wasn't going to be boring like this…and it was boring. It was so boring that even the other adults were bored. He could tell. Hatori kept on reaching for his phone and stopping himself, Shibata was looking out the window even though nothing was happening out there, Fukuda kept looking like he was going to yawn, and Shimazaki was drumming his fingers against his leg and looking around outside with his aura.

Not at Sho.

Not that Sho cared. Shimazaki was bored and when he was bored he looked around at stuff. He looked around at…whatever was out there. Maybe someone was walking their dog or something. Maybe the ground outside was full of rat's nests. Maybe there was a bird family outside and he wanted to take Sho away and teleport him in a tree and just…and Sho was going to stop thinking about him. His aura was trying to go over by Shimazaki. Dad had told him to sit still. Dad's aura was on his now. He went back to sitting still….because he didn't want to get in trouble. Yeah, that was it. He didn't want to get in trouble and that was it. He didn't care where Shimazaki looked or didn't look…or if he looked at him or not. None of that even mattered.

Besides, it wasn't like Shimazaki wanted to look at him anyway.

He'd been avoiding Shimazaki…no. He'd been way too busy with unpacking and getting caught up on his homeschool work and drawing and hanging out with big sis to hang out with Shimazaki, that was all. It wasn't like he was scared of Shimazaki, of if he still thought he was cool or not, because that would have been stupid. He knew that Shimazaki had said that he would always be Sho's friend and something as stupid as not being able to do a tattoo even though they were the easiest thing in the world to do….that wouldn't make them stop being friends or anything like that…and Sho wasn't afraid of that. He just…had been too busy to hang out with Shimazaki. That was all. Also Shimazaki…big sis knew and…and he knew that she wouldn't tell him, she knew how to keep a secret despite what Fukuda thought, he just…he felt like Shimazaki knew and…

And he knew that he was being crazy.

Because Shimazaki did not know. If Shimazaki knew then he would have said something. He didn't know how to keep stuff to himself, that wasn't how his brain worked, so of course if he knew how Sho felt he would have told anyone who would listen. He told everyone everything about everything. He told everyone about Hatori's nightmares and how Shibata cooked and ate when he was stressed and about how Minegishi…well he never talked about them…but because they were boring and had nothing to talk about. Not because he liked them and kept their secrets and stuff like that…and he would have told them, anyway, if he knew that Sho was in love with him…

Not that he had any idea how Sho really felt about him.

Nobody but big sis knew. Nobody but big sis could ever know….and Sho needed to stop thinking about this. About Shimazaki. About how he felt about Shimazaki. About how Shimazaki would never feel back to him. He was a million years older than he was and also he was way too cool too….and stuff. He looked so cool. He was in his jacket and his shirt that was just as black as his jacket, the one with the low neck so Sho could see the top of his dragon, and he was leaning against the wall and he was so cool and…and dad's aura was tapping his again. Not meanly, not like he wanted to hurt him, but hard enough to tell him to turn around and pay attention to dad and that lady talking about someone who was even more boring than they were.

Sho went back to looking at his tea. He knew that dad couldn't read minds but he didn't know what was up with that lady…and he didn't want her or anyone to see where his mind had gone just then.

"He just celebrated his hundred and third birthday. I think he plans on living forever." Said the lady with a laugh. Dad…well his aura was trying to laugh…but he wasn't. That would have been interesting, dad laughing, because he had never heard that before. He could laugh, Fukuda said he could, but he also said that hearing dad laugh was one of the most unpleasant sounds that he had ever heard in his life…and now Sho wanted to hear it. It couldn't have been any worse than sitting here and listening to the adult talk….and it could have taken his mind off of…stuff. His mind shouldn't have even been on any kind of stuff to begin with! This was a war meeting, a very boring war meeting but still a war meeting just the same, and he should have had his head in the game!

And dad should have too!

This should have been short. This should have been one of those join me or Shimazaki drops you off of the roof things. This should have been one of those I will never join you and now I'm going to try and shoot you things. This should not have been one of those dad drinks tea with some lady and talks about stuff that doesn't even matter things! And also he wasn't even….even focused on anything! He wasn't even looking at her now. He was looking at the table….ok now he was looking at her…and then he was looking down at the table again…it was like he was afraid to look her in the eyes. Like he thought that she would see his thoughts or something, well there were some people who could do that, but if he was so afraid of that then why didn't he just give her the normal offer like normal?

Dad was being so weird right now.

"We….we really do tend to be long lived, don't we?" asked dad. His voice did something weird, there, like it was trying to be higher than it was. Dad's voice never did that before, not that Sho could hear anyway, and it was just….weird. The way he was being. What his eyes were doing. He was even fidgeting both with his aura and with his hands. He was drumming his fingers against his teacup now…and if he was going to be drumming then he could have at least drummed with Shimazaki because this was kind of annoying….but Sho had no idea why he was drumming in the first place.

This lady wasn't that powerful.

She really wasn't. If she had been powerful enough to make dad nervous then she would have done something by now. She would have done something or dad would have done something or something would have happened. But nothing was happening. Dad was just being all…weird. Sho didn't get it. What, was he worried that this lady was going to chase him and kiss him or something…which to be fair was always a danger when it came to girls….but girls his age didn't even do that anymore…mostly…so ladies dad's age should have been way past that…and also gross. A lady liking dad. Poor lady. The only person who should have liked dad was mom…but she had run away from him….from all of them….but that didn't matter. Girls were not allowed to like that.

The thought was just…it made him want to throw up. Girls besides mom liking dad….no way.

"You would know better than I, President Suzuki, you have the most data on espers than anyone else in the world, barring the government of course." Said the lady. Sho rolled his eyes. Now they were talking about the government. Well now this was going to add a few hours to the meeting. Dad hated the government. He said that they were all a bunch of idiots and they had no idea what was going on and who they were messing with and they were stupid and had the nerve to send their spies and stuff. Dad could go on and on and on for hours about the government…and Sho did not have hours and hours and hours. He could feel himself getting older, he could feel his life slipping right through his fingers, and he just needed this meeting to be over. Join me or die. How hard was that.

Well it seemed like it was pretty hard.

Dad actually took a sip of his tea….and then another….and he had told Sho a thousand times that the tea was just to have something to do with his hands and also so people who was important at the table. Why was his drinking the tea…and why was his aura being like that? Sho wasn't the only one who thought that his aura was being weird. Fukuda was looking at him now, and the lady, and then him again. What? Did dad think that this was a fight that he couldn't win? Because he could. He was always going on and on and on about how he was the best esper ever and also he had everyone there to fight with him…even Sho. Not that he would be fighting for dad, no, he was an asshole.

He would be fighting for Claw because without Claw, well, he wouldn't have had a place to live.

"You would have access to that data, Claw's data, the whole of it, you know, if you were to join us." Said dad. He said that after he took a very long drink of tea. The second he put his cup down Fukuda refilled it for him. Their auras met when he got close. It was like their auras were talking and Sho had no idea what they were saying even though he was sitting right there. He hoped that they were saying that they were going to wrap this up soon. Sho had a lot of important stuff to do. Stuff that was so important that he wasn't even sure what it was yet. Stuff…that he would figure out later. He had a lot of time on his hands these days since he had started avoiding Shimazaki….well since he had been busy doing other things….

Like tattooing Fukuda!

There. That was something that he could do today. Fukuda had been letting him practice and Sho had bene getting better. His lines were straighter so that was good. He was getting better and maybe if he got really good really fast then Shimazaki would think that he was cool again…for friendship reasons. Not for love reasons. They were just friends and they could only be just friends….and now Sho was thinking about them being more than friends….because his stupid brain had turned into a traitor…and he knew that he had to stop thinking about this. He was in a war meeting. Sure it was boring now but at any second something interesting could happen and he had to keep his guard up…or something….even though it didn't seem like anything interesting was going to happen….

But maybe this was the part where something interesting finally decided to happen!

"We just got out from under Jodo's thumb, you think that we want to be under yours?" asked the lady. She took a sip of her tea and…and that wasn't interesting. Her saying that she didn't want to join Claw was kind of interesting…and dad should have given her the offer or tried to fight her or…or something. Anything! Anything either than sitting there and letting his aura get all weird and drinking his own tea even though he had just drank a whole bunch of tea and even though he didn't even LIKE black tea to begin with!

Sho was going to die of boredom there, at that table in Osaka, at the age of ten.

Because, really, there was very little war at this war meeting. Dad needed to think up some new names for things. Dad needed to take some of the time he spent being a weirdo and trying to take over the world and he needed to think of more accurate names for things. Maybe instead of a war meeting they could call it a boredom meeting…or something. He didn't know. Shimazaki was good at thinking up funny stuff to say…not that Sho would ask him. They were in the middle of a meeting and also…also he had to hang out with Fukuda after this so there wasn't any time to be asking him things….and stuff…

And now he was looking over at Shimazaki again.

"I don't see why you wouldn't. Joining Claw you would have access to manpower, money, protection-" said dad. Good. Now he was getting into the point of this meeting. Now it would either be over right now and she would take the offer or the meeting would end in a massive fight. That would be good too. This was going to be something and, finally, they could be done soon-

-sooner rather than later.

"We do alright." Said the lady as she interrupted dad. Now everyone was staring at her. Even Shimazaki, well with his aura, and Sho…well he had no idea what Shimazaki was looking at. This wasn't so interesting. She had just talked back to dad, interrupted him, and that wasn't interesting enough for Shimazaki to be staring at the lady like that. No. Lots of people talked like that to dad…well they didn't live long…and stuff….

There was nothing happening here that Shimazaki should have been staring at.

"But you could do better." Said dad. THAT was all that he was going to say? Really? After all of that he was just going to let her say something like that to him? Well at least something interesting had happened…and also maybe something more interesting was going to happen….maybe a fight or something. He didn't know for sure…

Be he needed something to happen already!

"I could…but that's no way to live now is it? Always looking for better. We have better and we're in no hurry to join your group or anyone else's. We're our own group. This is my group. I've built this up from nothing and I won't have that taken from me." Said the lady. She said that like she meant it. She said that like she expected dad to care that she meant it. Dad didn't give a fuck if she meant that or not. Dad didn't give a fuck about anyone other than himself. Dad was probably planning on how he was going to kill that lady right now. Sho looked over to Shimazaki with his eyes, not his aura, so that Shimazaki didn't know that he was being looked at. He had no idea if this lady could survive being dropped, Shimazaki said dropping people from up high was the best way to do it, or maybe this was going to turn into a fight…

Maybe.

But it didn't. For a war meeting, even after she had said that, there was no war. Just more talking. Talking, talking, and more talking. Too much talking. Sho sat back in his chair. Dad and that lady were talking again and his aura was still being weird and…and that wasn't even that interesting either. Nothing was interesting, everything was boring, and Sho….well he wished he had stayed home today….because at least at home there was fun stuff to do. Even not so fun stuff to do. Even boring stuff to do. Stuff that didn't involve sitting in boring meetings and listening to adults talk. Maybe Osaka people were just boring. Maybe girl espers were just boring. Maybe Sho was just too old to be sitting there, he had been little and everything had been new, before, but now he was older. He was ten now, not eight, and he had been to a million of these before….back when he'd been eight…..

He used to like war meetings….but only when there was actual war in the meetings.


	400. I'm an Advice Seeker Not a Secret Teller

Mob was not a secret teller.

She never told anyone's secrets, ever. The worst kinds of people were the ones who went around telling other people's business. Her name was Suzuki Shigeko, not Fukuda…whatever his given name was, and she did not go around telling people's secrets…and yes, she knew that she had been very mean there, but she just…it was the truth. Sho had trusted him with a secret, that he had a girlfriend, and then Fukuda went and told dad the first chance that he got for…reasons Mob could not begin to understand. Well Mob wasn't like that. She was not going to tell Sho's secret…

Even though she really needed to talk to someone about this.

Because it was a lot. The whole thing, really, was a lot. Sho…he was IN LOVE WITH SHIMAZAKI! Love. Doki-doki. He wanted to be Shimazaki's BOYFRIEND! Well first of all she had always sort of known that Sho liked boys, she had known him since the day he had been born so she knew these things about him, but she hadn't known that he had been in love with SHIMAZAKI of all people! Shimazaki Ryou. The person who stole a baby for her just because she had been sad because Mukai had been gone. The first person she had ever done coke with…a fun time but not one that he should have been showing Sho. The first person who she had ever…well Shimazaki was a very good friend who she had done a lot of very fun stuff with….the kind of fun that she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted her little brother to have….

But Sho….he should NOT have been in love with Shimazaki!

Sho had a girlfriend, first of all, and her name was Emmy. She lived in London and had red hair and liked to send Sho pictures of gross medical stuff and she talked weird, but that was ok because to her Mob talked weird, and also she had kissed Sho before which was…she did not want to think about her little brother kissing anyone….and just….Sho had KISSED HER and he was her BOYFRIEND and she was in love with him and he was in love with her and….and how could Sho be in love with two people at the same time?

And also why was one of them Shimazaki?

OK, he was tall. He was really tall and really strong and he smelled good and he always shared no matter what he had and he was very thoughtful in his own way and he was sort of fun when he wasn't acting like a total and complete crazy person…..but he was in love with Minegishi! They were in love with him right back! The two of them were boyfriend and theyfriend and they would get married and have babies, they probably would even though Minegishi said that they didn't want to because they had said the same thing about relationships and relationships led to babies, and Sho knew that…right? Shimazaki was always telling Minegishi how much he loved them and they had said it back….and Sho could not have missed that….

Could he?

She didn't know. All she knew was that this was a mess. She wanted her little brother to be happy, she wanted that more than she wanted her own happiness, but Sho's happiness would come at the expense of Minegishi's happiness…and she loved Minegishi…and she loved Sho….and she knew that she was the boss of Shimazaki and she could have just told him that he had to be Sho's boyfriend when he grew up, not now because he wasn't even eleven yet and Shimazaki was almost thirty one, but you couldn't force two people to be in a relationship….and also she didn't want to hurt Minegishi since they were her best friend and they had been hurt in a relationship before…but she really did want Sho to be happy…and she wanted Minegishi to be happy….

But most of all she just wanted to talk to someone about this because she didn't understand anything anymore.

But she couldn't talk to anyone about this. Well everyone, most everyone, was at the war meeting…and she really wished that dad would give it another name…and she couldn't have asked any of them about this anyway. Shimazaki was the person who Sho was in love with so there was no way that he could know. Hatori liked boys….but Mob still wasn't up to talking to him. Shibata…well he thought that you could fix every single problem in life by eating an entire cake and being tossed in the air even though that only made more problems…and she needed to tell Sho to stop doing that because he always threw up. Fukuda...well he loved Sho and took care of him but he was a secret teller and Mob would never have betrayed her little brother like that. Dad would have probably hurt Sho if he knew about how he not only liked boys but also that he liked Shimazaki. He didn't like Shimazaki and he also didn't like people who didn't follow his plans. Mom…well she knew that mom would have loved Sho no matter what but mom was gone and she was mom now…and she had to figure out what to do on her own….

Minegishi was good at figuring things out!

But they were also in love with Shimazaki too….and also Mob would never have spilled Sho's secret to anyone even her very best friend. But she just…she had to talk to someone about this and Minegishi was someone….and they were smart…and maybe if Mob didn't use any names. Like if she said that she had a friend…well Minegishi knew all of her friends…and also that would have been lying….but sometimes it was ok to lie…and also Mob could make friends outside of the group…so that was a good idea. She would just…tell Minegishi that she had this friend….who was having the exact same problem that she was.

There. She could do this.

"Hey Minegishi? Can I ask you something?" asked Mob. Minegishi was laying down on the couch with a hot water bottle pressed against their stomach. Mob had done that now that she knew why they spent so much time all curled up on the couch. Also why they drank and smoked so much sometimes, too. Minegishi had taught her what to do and now she was doing the same for them. They always knew what to do. That was why it was ok to ask them what to do in this situation…even if she was sort of telling a lie….

A half lie.

"Yes, you can finish that bowl but nothing more. I'm not trying to ruin your life." Said Minegishi. They knew Mob and they knew what was coming. Well fine. They were not in the mood to teach her moderation right now. They weren't in the mood to do much of anything. They weren't even in the mood to watch whatever it was that Mob had put on the TV. One of her shows about a club full of kids who were all in love with each other and romantic hijinks ensued. Mob TV. Truly riveting. They weren't in the mood for a marathon of Mob TV even…and not for the reason that Mob had thought.

Though the hot water bottle had been a nice gesture.

So had the joint she had rolled them…and Minegishi did not want to think about how she had gotten so good at rolling those. She had also gotten them a hunk off of that giant bar of dark chocolate Suzuki had gotten them, still weird but they weren't going to pass up chocolate, and Minegishi knew that if they had asked Mob would have rented a boat and rowed to…whatever country this came from….to get Mob.

She was a good friend in that way.

But Minegishi was not being a very good friend back. Fuck Osaka. Fuck this city. Fuck being here. Fuck everything that was in this city, every rock and tree and living creature, and if there had been a tsunami right then and the entire thing sank back down into the ocean Minegishi's only regret would have been that Mob would have been a part of all of that. God….Mob was really the only thing keeping them sane right now. They needed to get the hell out of Osaka…and soon….because they had no idea how much longer they could stand it here…

And they hadn't even been here long enough to finish unpacking. Joy.

"Thank you….but that's not what I wanted to ask you….but thank you." Said Mob. They had been sharing that but now Minegishi said that she could have it…and if that was what Minegishi wanted then that was what was going to happen. That was just how friends were. They thought about you and stuff. They helped you when you needed help and stuff. Like that song about how you get by with a little help from your friends and also you got high with a little help from your friends.

Shimazaki was right about the Beatles, their music spoke to the absolute truth of human goodness, and also he was right about smoking, it made life better in all ways.

"You're welcome…now what do you want to ask me. Come on, out with it." Said Minegishi. If this started with 'Minori said' or some variation of that then Minegishi was going to swim across the ocean and knock some sense into that little….they did not have words…or maybe better yet the people who were supposed to be raising her. God. What was wrong with people these days? Don't have children you aren't planning on raising. There. Simple. God…nope. Not the time to be pissed off. Mob had a problem and they were the only adult in her life qualified to help her.

So they sat up and listened.

But Mob didn't say anything. Well, no, she couldn't. She was mid inhale…and how did she even have that kind of room in her lungs? She was tiny, not as tiny as she had been when they had met her but still pretty damn tiny, and she really should not have been able to inhale that deep…but then again nothing in her life had gone right. Nothing in their life either. They were two of a kind, in some ways, them and her…though she would have an easier go of it…because she had them in her life…

Or at least they liked to think so.

"This…is really good. Did you grow this?" asked Mob. Without having to use moderation she could breathe really deep like Shimazaki had taught her…and Sho too…and she was too sure if she was happy about that. Well she had very complicated feelings about that, Sho learning how to smoke from Shimazaki, and Sho being in love with him just made them even more complicated…so she decided not to think about all of that right now. Instead of thinking about all of that she thought about her feet in her socks, the rug against her feel, the feel of her hair on her forehead, and sound of the TV….sometimes it was better to take a step outside of your own head and out into the world. Shimazaki had said that. He was smart like that…and a very good friend….

And a very good boyfriend, too, to Minegishi.

"Mob? Were you going to come to me with a problem or was this all part of your master plan to finish off that joint?" asked Minegishi as Mob moved in to inhale all over again. God. They were not looking forward to her teen years at all.

"No, I didn't have any plan…I mean I did…but to tell you my problem…but not my problem. My friend is having a problem." Said Mob. She didn't like telling Minegishi lies but she knew that if she told them the truth she would be even more upset with herself. Telling lies was nowhere near as bad as telling your little brother's secrets that he trusted you with out of everyone else in the whole world.

"Oh? And what sort of 'problem' is your friend having?" asked Minegishi. Slick and smooth Mob was not. The old 'I have this friend'….God. She was so sweet sometimes…even when she was having a problem that seemed to be bigger than her usual problems. She was pulling the old 'I have a friend' routine after all…and she already got up to so much. What could have happened that she didn't want to talk openly about it?

Well whatever it was Minegishi would be there for her even if it meant that they had to take a break from all of their moping.

"Um…well she has this little brother named…well he has a name but it's not important. It's just…her little brother is in love with her best friend's boyfriend…and that's ok! She always knew, well part of her always knew, that her little brother liked boys…and she's ok with that. She just doesn't want her little brother to be in love with her best friend's boyfriend. She wants him to be happy because she thinks that he's the best little brother in the whole wide world….but she also doesn't know what to do. She knows that either her little brother is going to get his heart broken or her best friend is going to get their heart broken…and she doesn't want anyone to get their heart broken…and she doesn't know what to do…." Said Mob. She took a deep breath. She had to say calm. If she didn't stay calm then Minegishi would know that she was lying to them…and friends did not lie. Friends were not supposed to ever lie to one another…and she was lying…but sometimes there were extenuating circumstances. Like when she had asked Hatori out. There had been extenuating circumstances there…so this was ok. Even if it really didn't feel ok.

"Is this person y-" said Minegishi. They tried their best not to laugh. They knew EXACTLY what she had been talking about. So the kid finally come out. Good for him. Now maybe he could come out to everyone else in his life and then Ryou would have no choice but to actually deal with that kid and how he felt.

Because, really, all of this was getting to be a little too much.

Their metal door, it had followed them from Tokyo, was testament to that. That kid was…high strung. And jealous. And possessive. And something that Ryou should have dealt with a while ago. So now he decided to develop a sense of fear…or maybe just laziness. There was a lot to deal with when it came to Sho and Ryou…well he could be kind of lazy when something that he didn't want to do came up. Even though he supposedly was ready to settle down with them and have kids and live 'the life of Shimazaki Ryou if he had been raised by decent human beings' now featuring Minegishi Toshiki. God. At least all of this was starting to get out there in the open where it could be dealt with.

Halle-fucking-lujah.

"And it gets even more complicated! Mt friend's little brother also has a girlfriend, who he's kissed and kisses are very important, and he loves this girl…and I don't understand how someone can love one person and be their boyfriend while also being in love with someone else's boyfriend and wanting to be that person's boyfriend." Said Mob. She was breathing kind of heavy, now, and she just…this was a lot. This was a lot and she was lying and if she just…if she just stopped for one moment…if she just stopped for one second she would never be able to stop. She just…this was a lot…and Minegishi could help. They could always help.

They were good at helping.

For every single thing, for every single problem in her life, Minegishi had been there for her. When she had been all alone after dad left…when dad had come back and started smothering her, when she had been all alone in the snow after the party last year, when she'd cut her leg when she had been trying to shave her legs, when she'd gotten her period a few weeks ago….Minegishi had been there. They had bene there no matter how tired and stressed they had been…and she loved them for that. They would always be there for her no matter what…

Unlike some people….which was a mean way to think but that was just how she felt.

"Mob, listen-" said Minegishi. She was getting herself all worked up. She was getting herself all worked up and freaked out…and that would not have been good for anyone. They had just moved into this house and they did not need to deal with it getting trashed. They weren't in the mood to clean up anything today…even Mob's hurt feelings.

But they would if they had to.

Who else was there to clean up Mob's hurt feelings? For real. Not in the way that Ryou just got her high or Shibata overfed her or Hatori patted her on the head and played videogames with her until they both escaped from this terrible reality they lived in. Mob needed someone to actually be there for her, emotionally, no matter how exhausting it could be. This was what it was to be responsible for another human being. It wasn't always fun or relaxing, and sometimes you ended up cleaning up messes…

But it was better to clean up someone else's messes than to even acknowledge your own.

"And then to make everything even more complicated my friend's brother's dad isn't going to let him like boys. My friend's bother's dad really wants grandkids and they only count if they come from the little brother because boys are the ones who carry on the bloodline, and that's a very important thing to carry on for reasons that I'm not totally sure of, so he would never let the little brother fall in love with a boy and marry him….and that's not legal but still….and also the little brother has a girlfriend and the dad is happy about that and the dad is never happy with the little brother and-" said Mob

"Mob. Stop. Take a deep breath. Then take a drag. You need it." Said Minegishi. Mob's aura was bright as hell, if Ryou had been there he would have said that her aura had been screaming, and she needed to calm down. Her control was better when she was high but it wasn't perfect and Minegishi was not in the mood to clean up the entire house. She would clean up the aftermath of whatever Mob was feeling, emotionally, but if she trashed the house then it was staying trashed. They only had enough energy for one clean up job that day.

"Thanks…I needed that. Just…thanks for listening to me…and also what should I do?" Said Mob as she tried her best not to cough. Minegishi was always there for her and they were smart…they would tell her what to do and then she would do it and then this whole mess would have been taken care of and then Sho could have been happy with his girlfriend or he could have met another boy to be in love with who wasn't Shimazaki and then everyone would be ok…well she would keep the whole thing a secret from dad and then everyone would be ok.

"Mob…you don't have to do anything. None of this is your problem…and anyway I thought that this whole thing was about your friend." Said Minegishi. They didn't laugh at Mob's slip up even though that wanted to. Not to be mean, of course, but because…well it was adorable…and Minegishi knew that they needed more adorableness in their life.

"It'-it is! I just…don't know what my friend should do." Said Mob. She had slipped up and she could not do it again. Minegishi could not know that she was talking about Sho. Then not only would Sho know that she was talking about his secrets but Minegishi would know that Sho was after their boyfriend…and they did not like it when people did stuff to hurt them…not that Sho meant to hurt them. He was just in love and people did really stupid stuff when they were in love. She would know better than anyone how stupid a person could be when they were in love.

"Your friend needs to stay out of this. Her little brother coming out is not her business. Who her little brother is in love with is not her business. This is not her business or her problem, alright?" asked Minegishi. Mob took on too much. She was always taking on too much. She was the only one in that family of hers doing any cleaning at all. She had enough of her own messes to clean up, she didn't need to deal with anyone else's.

"But…but that's not how big sisters…are supposed to treat their little brothers. When you have a little brother then you're supposed to care for him and-" said Mob. Maybe Minegishi just didn't get it because they were an only child. Their parents had died before they could give them a little brother or sister. She wished that Minegishi had a little brother or sister, not that their parents were alive or anything like that, but just that they could understand what she was saying. She was supposed to take care of Sho. She was the only one in the whole world who could take care of him…and she had been doing a pretty bad job of it lately.

"Mob, Sho needs to figure himself out on his own and Ryou needs to deal with the way that Sho feels…and he should have dealt with that long time ago. Ok?" said Minegishi. They were going to get to the end of it already. Mob was a good kid and she cared about her brother a whole lot but she did not have to take on his problems in addition to her own. She had way too much happening in her life as it was to be taking on that little monster's problems.

"I….I never said any names!" said Mob. This was bad, this was so bad, this was the most bad! This took the whole universe's supply of badness and put it into one box and she had opened the box and now everything was going to be terrible from here on out! She had told Sho's secrets…he was going to be so hurt! She was a secret teller! She was a secret teller and a liar and now Sho was going to be mad at her…and she was already mad at herself! How could she had done something like this!? What was WRONG with her?! She was like Fukuda…she was even worse than Fukuda…at least Fukuda wasn't Sho's BIG SISTER!

She was going to be sick.

"No, Mob, breathe. You never said any names, you're right, I figured this out on my own…and a while ago. Your brother isn't exactly subtitle." Said Minegishi. They lit another joint, Mob was pretty much holding a roach at this point, and handed it to Mob. This was not the time for moderation. Mob was freaked the fuck out…and Minegishi didn't blame her. There was a lot of honor to Mob, she held herself to a very high standard, and for anyone else it would have been unreachable…and now it had become unreachable for her, too. Well this was not on her. None of this was on her.

"Wait…what? You…you knew this whole time? Why didn't you say anything to me…or to anyone?" asked Mob. Minegishi…well Mob would have liked to have known if her little brother had been madly in love with Shimazaki…well Sho hadn't said madly but Mob knew Sho and he felt things very strongly…..and anyway she would have liked to have been informed. She didn't know what she would have done with that information but it still would have been nice information to have.

"Because it wasn't my business. Mob, your brother is going through a lot but it's on him…well him and Ryou, ok? Your brother isn't subtitle but you're the only person so far that he's come out to and as much as I would like to drag him out of that closet-" said Minegishi. This was a delicate area. One the one hand they wanted to take Mob and shake her and tell her that this had nothing to do with her…but on the other hand they wanted to tell her to go down to that meeting and drag Sho and Ryou back so the two of them could hash this thing out and then things could go back to whatever passed for normal around there…

But they weren't going to do either of those things. They had basic tact.

"Sho's been out of the closet. I don't know what he was doing in there all morning but he came out when dad left for the war meeting. He took Sho with." Said Mob. She suspected that he was either drawing in there or he was hiding poptarts. Either way she wasn't going to just go in and drag him out, that would have been rude, and also she didn't know why Minegishi cared whether or not Sho was hiding in closets.

"Mob….that's not what I meant. I meant that you're the only person who knows that he's gay…or at least not as straight as he wants to be, and as much as I would love to get everything out in the open so that things can get back to normal around here I won't…and neither will you. Ok? Don't get in the middle of this, Mob, don't even think about getting in the middle of this. This is between your brother and himself…and also Ryou." Said Minegishi. They were doing their best here. Thank God that Mob had come to them with this and not anyone else. They had tact. They had tact and they were going to teach Mob tact, too. This was the place for tact…for everyone's sake. Sho…the kid was as much of a powder keg as his father and he had reacted badly when….well whenever there was a stumbling block in the path of his life he exploded…and Minegishi was not in the mood to deal with all of that.

"Wait…does Shimazaki know?" asked Mob. She knew that Minegishi was super smart, so of course they would have figured it out, but…how could Shimazaki have known? He wasn't stupid so he could have figured it out…but he couldn't keep things to himself. He told everyone everything and…and he had trouble keeping things to himself…but then again he wouldn't have betrayed Sho. He was a good friend like that…and of course Sho would be in love with him. Mob…she knew that she was a clueless person…but if Shimazaki and Minegishi had figured it out then…then she sort of felt like she wanted to have figured it out…not that she was upset that Sho had been keeping secrets from her or anything like that. She just….she didn't know how she felt….so she decided to stick to being worried about her little brother.

"Everyone who's not named Suzuki knows. You and your dad are two of a kind sometimes I swear…but yes, everyone is well aware of your brother's interest in Ryou. We all just have enough tact not to say anything about it…and so will you. Ok? Don't talk about this to anyone until your brother is ready for this to be out in the open, alright?" asked Minegishi. They put a hand on her shoulder. They needed her to listen. The needed to make sure that she wasn't going to make something out of this. The last thing that they needed, that anyone needed, was her coming up with some plan to set Sho up with Ryou or find someone knew for him or just to tell everyone who would listen that paper thin story about her friend and her friend's little brother…they had to do some damage control. They had to clean up this mess before it even was a mess to begin with.

"Alright…but I-" said Mob. She knew not to tell Sho's secrets but she also knew that she had to do something for him. He was her little brother, she only got the one little brother, and she had to be there for him…and also she had to understand. This was just…there was so much to understand but she couldn't…and al Minegishi had helped her understand was that this was not something that she could fix or make better…and that wasn't what she wanted.

She wanted to know how to fix this.

She was the big sister and it was her job to fix things for her little brother. She had no idea what it was that she even had to fix but she had to find that out too. Sho…he liked Shimazaki….so maybe she could fix that by finding him a boy who he could be with that was like Shimazaki? But he also had a girlfriend he loved…and could you have two people you were in love with at once? She didn't know. She'd never had a boyfriend and the only boy she had ever kissed…well she was never going to see him again….all she knew about love and relationships she got from books and TV and watching Minegishi and Shimazaki….

So even if she knew what she was supposed to help with, to fix for him, she would have been no help at all.

"So how about you go and get your makeup bag and you paint me up? Come on, I feel like having eyebrows today." Said Minegishi. They knew Mob, they knew what it meant when she got that look, and they were not going to let that look grow into anything more. They knew Mob, they knew that she had told try and solve everyone's problems for them, and they knew that they had to shut that down before they ended up with a massive mess on their hands.

So makeover city here they came.

"But…sure. Ok. You wait here and I'll get my tools…and some Motrin for you too." Said Mob. She knew that she had to do something….and also that she couldn't….but she also knew that she wanted to do something…and doing makeovers was something. Not something that could help the situation but…well something that she could do right now. She wanted to do something for Sho but Minegishi had said that there was nothing that she could do…and she trusted them. She trusted them and she knew, now, that she had to always listen to them because they always knew what was best….

So that was what she would do. What they said. She would give them a makeover….and that was better than being a secret teller.


	401. Understanding the Internet

Suzuki Touichirou did not understand the internet.

Well he did and he didn't. The internet was, essentially, an infinite information network and one that he had gotten lost in many, MANY times before. You could learn literally anything on the internet. Some of it was true, some of it was not, some of it was useful, the vast majority of it was not, but there was always something to learn. He'd been there since….how old had he been? About sixteen or seventeen when father showed him how computers could talk to other computers…and then he'd gotten into that very long argument about the validity of Pluto as a planet with…well he couldn't remember who but it had been very important at the time. That was another use for the internet, connecting people to other people.

That wasn't something he understood.

Arguing with people he understood, well back in his arguing days, and learning things from other people was also something that he understood. Thanks to the magic of the internet you could be connected with experts from all over the world….and yes, Suzuki was willing to admit when he was not an expert in something. He understood experts in their fields all coming together and sharing ideas, that was totally understandable, what he didn't understand, though, and what he never would understand was….the more social side of the internet.

Specifically the side where people informed the world of every single waking moment of their lives.

"Hatori, explain this better." Said Suzuki. He knew that this was a thing that people did, take pictures and then post them on the internet for the world to see, but he didn't get it. He'd seen Shigeko doing this exact same thing. Meals she'd eaten, landmarks, things that she saw out in the world which she found amusing….and he just didn't understand…maybe because he was a man. It wasn't an age thing, no, Sakata Shiori was only four years younger than he was but she did the exact same thing that Shigeko did.

Not that he was complaining.

When he'd been a child, well an adolescent, and a young adult as well if he'd wanted to learn more about a woman he'd had to either follow her around or send Fukuda to follow her around. Fukuda was very good at following people around and taking notes on them. When he felt that he had sufficient knowledge of whoever it was that he had been learning about, things she liked and places she went and other information of that nature, he would get her something that she would like or run into her at locations she frequented, and then either she would be receptive to him or she would tell him to leave her alone….

God, he felt like an adolescent again.

"Explain what, President Suzuki?" asked Hatori as he stopped scrolling down. He had already explained Facebook, and how someone Suzuki's age didn't know about Facebook Hatori would never know, but he would explain it again if he had to. This was a normal part of his job, information gathering on potential new talent, though he'd never done it with President Suzuki looking over his shoulder. Literally. There wasn't a lot of space between them right now…and Hatori needed to get a couple of auxiliary monitors for his laptop one of these days. He sort of missed personal space. He sort of missed being able to work on his own, too, but this was what it was to be friends with President Suzuki. You got your personal space invaded and your work micromanaged…at least he figured that this was a work thing. This woman was an esper, kind of a powerful one, so of course Suzuki would want to know more about her so he could recruit her.

That was option A anyway.

Option B was the he liked her and he was Facebook stalking her. He had been really weird, sort of nervous and out of it, at the war meeting…but that didn't mean anything. Maybe he'd just been having an off day or something. He couldn't be into that woman….right? He was always going on and on and on about how he was married…but then again he was just as human as everyone else. Maybe he had found his other half, finally, and he was going to give up world domination because the power of love, or just a cute girl…err…..attractive woman, was into him…not that anything had happened…not that anything would happen….

Because, really, that would have just been….weird.

"The internet. Explain it to me." Said Suzuki. More specifically he needed this part of the internet explained to him. Shiori…no, Sakata. Sakata because he didn't know her. He didn't know her and he could not just refer to her by her given name, even in his own mind, because that would have been horrifically impolite. Her name was Sakata until she gave him permission to call her Shiori…even though he was the President of Claw but…well he was still a polite human being and…and they wouldn't even be in a situation where she would ask him to call her Shiori!

Even if they did both really enjoy the meals of breakfast and brunch.

"The…whole internet? Because that's going to take a while….but ok. So the internet started in the sixties actually as-" said Hatori. Well they could have one of their long history talks. Better that than Hatori maybe accidentally asking him if he had a thing for this woman. She seemed like his type. Brainy, about his age, went to brunch all the time. Heh. Suzuki with a girlfriend…or even a thing for a girl. That was…well that must have happened before, he had two kids after all, and there was that wedding ring he played with sometimes….but his wife had been gone for years.

Hatori knew. He had been on the team that had been looking for her.

He'd barely been in Claw when there had been the big panic, that was what the Awakened called it, when everyone had to look for this woman. Masami. Suzuki's wife….not that he told anyone that she was his wife. He mostly just yelled at people to find her and also called them names when they couldn't…and also there had been the group that he had ordered to slap each other because he was too disgusted with them to do it. Hatori hadn't been part of that group. He had been a part of the 'useless and incompetent' group. They'd just had to stand in the corner and think about what they'd done…though he might have been yelling at his kids while he was on the phone with them….either way that hadn't been a good time….

So maybe it was good that he was moving on.

They were still looking for that Masami woman, though Hatori strongly suspected that she was dead. She had zero social media presence. Security cameras weren't picking her up either. Masami Suzuki was gone and out of this world….and maybe Suzuki was finally coming to terms with that. Maybe all of his weirdness, unpleasantness, and general assholishness all came from the fact that his wife left him. Maybe now that he found another woman he would devote himself to being a good husband and dad….or something….

Probably not.

"No, no, I mean…this part. I'm well aware of the history of the internet. I've been on it since before you were born." Said Suzuki. He didn't know how to phrase it. Explain this part of the internet? Maybe that was too much. The scope of it. The scope of…well he did need this whole thing explained. The internet was an infinite information….place…and people chose to share every moment of their days instead of…well other things…and he didn't get it…but then again he had never really gotten why other people did the things that they did.

People were so confusing sometimes.

Especially Shiori…Sakata. She was….well she must have done more with her life than eat brunch…though he did enjoy breakfast. Brunch and breakfast. Also she seemed to enjoy…she either had a garden or loved taking pictures of a garden….and this was just the last few days. She also spoke to others and…maybe Shigeko could have explained it better. This was just the sort of thing that Shigeko liked…though maybe this was not the thing to ask Shigeko for help for…

She was his daughter and he didn't want to share this part of his life with her….not that there was anything here…but still.

"What'd you do?" asked Hatori. Suzuki on the internet….what even was it back then? Well he'd seen the retro internet...people talking to each other…but he'd always imagined that Suzuki and Fukuda had spent their wild youth as a couple of recluses in possibly the weirdest friendship that the world had ever seen. Well now he had to know what Suzuki got up to…and also maybe if he asked enough questions he could do his job without Suzuki literally breathing down his neck.

"What?" asked Suzuki

"On the internet before I was born, I mean. You just don't seem like a very…social…guy. Also you hate PC games, well you used to." Said Hatori. He wondered if this would turn into one of their all night Minecraft sessions...that would be pretty fun….but maybe not. Mob was still avoiding him and he didn't blame her. She had confessed to him in the most embarrassing way possible…and he knew a thing or two about that. Yeah, he didn't hold it against Mob…but he really hoped that she hadn't told Suzuki because Hatori, well, he wanted to live to see his twenty first birthday and then his twenty second and if he was really lucky his twenty third too.

"Of course I did, computers are for work, and also arguing with people who are wrong but don't know it yet." Said Suzuki. Those had been…well times in his life. He couldn't help it if people were wrong and didn't know it. He had an obligation to correct people when they were wrong on the internet…well he had when he had been young…and Fukuda agreed. When someone was wrong on the internet then they had to be corrected. Not that Shiori…Sakata…had been wrong about anything so far…

Though she really didn't know how to enjoy a good omelet.

Ketchup. The ketchup made the omelet. Also the fillings actually had to go on the inside of the omelet. She was just eating a folded over collection of cooked eggs with cheese and green peppers on top without any ketchup at all. Who had taught her how to have an omelet? Her parents must have failed her in many ways in her life….not that he had any opinion on how she ate breakfast or anything like that…because that information had nothing to do with anything….

They were supposed to have been gathering relevant information so she, and by extension her group, could be enticed to join Claw….and he doubted that even a full omelet bar could entice her.

"Yeah….that is so you, boss. Anyway this is just something that people do for fun. They just like to tell each other about their lives. Some people care about this stuff." Said Hatori. He had never gotten the point of this either…but also he'd never had that many friends. There were pictures of him up, mom and dad had immortalized his childhood for him, but after the age of fifteen…well that was fine. He wasn't into all of that and, really, what about his life could he share? He lived and worked in a take over the world cult? His best friends ranged in age from just turned eleven to mid-forties? All the crimes that he was responsible for? No, all of that just wasn't for him at all.

"I…really don't understand." Said Suzuki. He didn't really understand being that invested in someone else's life. He understood being invested in someone's life if it benefitted you in some way but just to be invested for the sake of being invested…it made no sense to him whatsoever.

"Well do you want me to get off her Facebook then or-" said Hatori. There were a million other things that they could have been doing besides Facebook stalking a woman who wanted nothing to do with Claw anyway. There were games to play and other such non work related things that they could have been doing…and none of them involved Facebook stalking anyone.

"No, keep going." said Suzuki. He didn't understand it but…well this was good information gathering. Useful. Work related. When he had been young he'd had to actually leave his home to follow someone around so that he could learn about them. Now, well, this was much more convenient….not that he was sure what he was going to do with all of this information. Well attempt to entice her to join, obviously, but…well not everything here was relevant to how that went….

Like her favorite color.

She seemed to really like green. A lot of her clothing was green and her fingernails were green, and also that WAS her garden she had been taking pictures of….and green was a nice color. Well it depended on the shade of green. When he had been a child, a small child, there had been this shade of green that had been on everything that had been truly awful. Avocados were a good food meant for eating, now decorating your home with, and he was so glad that nobody used that color anymore….Shiori would have looked nice in it, though. She looked nice in everything.

Especially that dress.

"Go back up." Said Suzuki. That…was a very becoming dress. There. That was a very respectful way of saying what he…well what he would have been thinking if he had not been married. But he was married. He was very married. He was married to Masami and he could not be unfaithful to her…again….and he never should have been unfaithful to her in the first place….but he had been…and part of him felt like that was why she had left. Like she…well she didn't have the power of precognition or any power really….but maybe she had known him so well that she knew that he would end up falling to temptation…and that would not happen again. This was business. Strictly business. Strictly work. This was all strictly for work related business. That was all. This was…well he would figure out what, exactly, this had to do with business later….

But it did have something to do with business.

"This was New Year's last year I guess. See the year banner?" asked Hatori. Ok, Suzuki was into her. Or at least he thought that she had it going on…which she did. Well not that he was into women that old, she was old enough to be his mom, but she was Suzuki's age and he…yeah. That was the aura of a guy who liked what he saw…and this was weird…and also kind of funny…but also weird. Suzuki and a girl…yup. There was nothing could make that anything less than weird.

"I see it. She seems….festive." said Suzuki. He was not looking at her or at anything…well he was…but this was for…legitimate research purposes. That was all. He just…well he was also human and it was human nature to find other humans attractive. Father had explained that to him back when he was a child and he had not forgotten. We're human beings, he had said, and when one human being sees another human being it's normal to find them attractive. There are going to be women that you wished that you could be with and also there are going to be men that you would have wished that you could have been with if you had been born a woman. That's normal. Don't get anyone pregnant. Never kiss your little friend. He had been listening and he did remember and…and all of this was normal and it made perfect sense….

Also he wasn't going to do anything about how he felt so it didn't really matter.

"Yeah, that's a word for it." Said Hatori. He wondered how her dress managed to stay up like that…not that he was looking. No way was he looking at the same woman that Suzuki was looking at. That would have just been…weird…and also Suzuki seemed like the jealous type. Sho had to have gotten it from somewhere after all. Sho had to have gotten a lot of things from somewhere after all…but he wasn't going to speculate about Suzuki's sexuality. No, Shimazaki had done enough of that the other day…and Suzuki had not been checking him out. He had just been staring at the sheer number of tattoos that Shimazaki had….and Suzuki was not like that because if he was then a few of the things that he had said in the past would have been…..troubling….

Mostly the parts about how if he and Hatori had been compatible of course they would have gone out…which may not just have been a weird Suzuki ego boost thing….and he didn't really want to think about all of that right now.

"Keep going, I want to learn more about her." said Suzuki

"Well what do you want to know?" asked Hatori

"Just…everything that there is to be known about her." said Suzuki

"That's going to take a while but I can find out specific things about her if there's anything, you know, specific that you want to know." Said Hatori. He didn't really want to spend his day Facebook stalking this woman…but this was what friends did. When you had a friend you helped him with stuff like this…even though he had never been…was he a wingman? Right now was he being a wingman? He didn't know. Al he knew was that he had never done this before. He'd never even had a girlfriend so maybe helping Suzuki with…well whatever he really wanted to do…wasn't the best thing for him to be doing…but he would do his best. Not just because Suzuki hated incompetence but also because they were friends…sort of.

This really felt like more of a Fukuda job to be honest.

They were way closer, the two of them, and maybe this was best left to someone who knew Suzuki better. Also Hatori didn't want to be in the middle of another one of those jealousy…things…that he wound up in the middle of sometimes. He had no idea what Fukuda was so jealous about. Suzuki could have other friends. If Hatori hadn't known better he would have thought that there was something going on between those two…..but obviously there wasn't. Just two guys in the weirdest friendship the world had ever seen…

Well three guys, now.

"I….have no idea what I want to know so just tell me everything." Said Suzuki. That was certainly dizzying, like walking down the narrow walkways of a library. Information on either side of you, more than you had ever even thought existed, and you just…you're expected to pick out and open one book when there's a least ten more that you know that you definitely want to read and a hundred more you have no idea the contents of….and such…and the whole thing was just so…dizzying.

"Well we know that her name is Sakata Shiori, she graduated from university in 1998, she's psychokinetic like you, she likes gardening, she likes brunch, she spent a lot of her life in the Rising Sun Spiritual Association, she has a few starfish it looks like, she's recently single, she-" said Hatori

"Wait, what?" asked Suzuki. That had…come out wrong. His voice and his aura and…and he didn't care if she was single or married…well he hoped that she wasn't married…just so that he didn't have to deal with her husband or anything like that. That was all. That was the extent of his opinion on Sakata Shiori's marital status.

"Yeah, she keeps starfish. See? She's got-" said Hatori as he scrolled upwards. He figured that Suzuki was freaked out about that. He…didn't really understand the concept of pets. He had said, before, that animals were for work and eating but not for companionship…he could be a weird guy sometimes. Well most of the time. That was why he was sure that Suzuki didn't care that she was single. He was always going on about how he was married after all…and all of that.

"No, no, after that." Said Suzuki. He had no idea why anyone would keep starfish but he would worry about that later. She…wasn't seeing anyone? But she was…she was so pretty. Attractive. She was just…well her hair was short but it looked so soft…and she had very long legs….not that he noticed that. Not that he noticed anything like that about her or any other women…well he was only human but…well he didn't notice those sorts of things.

"Oh? Yeah, she just got out of…well not enough of a relationship to make if official but she was into that guy. The one from her pictures before." Said Hatori. There had been some guy in a million of her pictures…and that would have sucked for Suzuki if she had been in a relationship. This didn't look like just a work thing…and hey, Suzuki deserved love too. Maybe if he found a girlfriend he could be a little less…weird…with Mob, too. He treated her like she was his…well there wasn't a sexual part to it so not his wife…but also she did all the wife things…and he wasn't going to think about this anymore.

"How can you tell?" asked Suzuki. There had been a man in her other photographs but…well there was a lot when it came to things like that. Things that he didn't know. Hatori knew, though, despite being homosexual. Maybe because he was younger…and also he was closer to being normal than Suzuki had ever been.

"Because he was in all of her pictures and then there was the big block of time where she posted absolutely nothing and then she put up that picture, the one where she's got short hair, and after that the guy's nowhere to be seen." Said Hatori. He didn't know much about relationships but he had watched a lot of TV and spent time, before, around people who had been in relationships….and also he watched TV with Mob sometimes and she was kind of love obsessed….not that he was going to hold anything that he had done against her. Well Hatori knew the signs, that was the point, and apparently he knew more than Suzuki of all people did…which made sense, honestly, because Suzuki was….well he was Suzuki.

"You can infer that much from photographs?" asked Suzuki. Normal people, well people who weren't like him, were fascinating. It was like there was this whole other layer to existence, like there was a cypher over everything, and he just…didn't know how to crack it.

"Yeah. I mean I've never been in a relationship before but I've been around people who have and…yeah." Said Hatori. Maybe he should not have been helping with this….because maybe he didn't know what to do…and maybe he needed a better wingman…if he was even a wingman right now. He didn't know. He was going to do his best…if his best was even good enough.

"You know a lot about women, I've noticed." Said Suzuki after a moment. He may have said the wrong thing…maybe. Hatori's aura was…well it got that way a lot. Suzuki was going to figure him out eventually.

"Me?" asked Hatori. That was…well crazy talk. Suzuki…well him finding out that he'd been lied to would have been bad…but thinking that Hatori knew about women would have been just plain crazy. The only woman who he had spent any significant amount of time around had been his mom…well there was Minegishi…but they were Minegishi.

"Yes, you do…or maybe you just know about people. Better than I do, anyway." Said Suzuki. There was nothing wrong with admitting that someone knew better than you about a subject that they were an expert in. Hatori was more of a people person than he was, that was alright, he also couldn't multiply past eleven so the two of them were even.

"Ok…thanks. Anyway I can do research on my own….I mean I can try to. You can be here if you want to be…you know…since this is your house and all." said Hatori. He kind of wanted his space back. Suzuki was very close…very, very close….but he did that sometimes…but that didn't mean that he still wasn't way too close…

"They're all my houses but, yes, this is the one I'm currently living in." said Suzuki

"Right, sorry." said Hatori. Right. Suzuki…he liked things to make as much sense as possible. At least he had been sort of nice there. Well Suzuki nice. He hadn't sounded upset…and he did sound like stuff sometimes. His voice wasn't totally flat, Hatori had noticed, you just had to spend a lot of time with him to know what he meant and stuff….wow. He'd hung out with Suzuki for long enough to be able to hear the actual tones he used….huh. No wonder Fukuda glared at him like he'd caught him in bed with his girlfriend or something.

"You're fine…and no, I think that I'll stay. For…work reasons. Legitimate work reasons." Said Suzuki

"Alright….but you know, you could always talk to her yourself. I mean if you want to get to know her." said Hatori

"I already spoke with her. She said no. I don't know why she said no but she said no." said Suzuki. It wasn't that she had said no…it was that she had said no way. She just…did not want to join Claw even though it would have been mutually beneficial for both of them. If she had been a man then it would have been easy to make quick work of her and then liquidate her group and assets…but she was a woman and he would not be doing any of that to her. No, he would…try and be diplomatic…even though really Fukuda and Shigeko were the diplomatic ones…but he didn't want Fukuda involved in this and Shigeko…well this was not her job. Taking care of her brother was her job. This…this was his job that he would do by himself.

"Well maybe she'd say yes if you got to know her better…you know. In person. Not by reading through everything she ever posted ever on Facebook." Said Hatori

"That…is not a good idea. You wouldn't know this but women…do not like to be approached…for any reason. They approach men first, actually, and that's the way it should be. It's easier that way…and also it's best to make them feel comfortable with you. That's why it's best to follow them around, learn their schedules, and then be present there in the background of their lives until they approach you." Said Suzuki

"Wait…is that how you met…well the kids' mom?" asked Hatori. That…did not sound like the way to meet women…but what did he know? He'd never had a girlfriend before….but still. That seemed more likely to creep a woman out than to make her want to take you home with her…but then again it must have worked since Suzuki had gotten married and had two kids…though maybe that hadn't been the question to ask. Suzuki had put some distance between them there, physically and aurally…and maybe Hatori shouldn't have brought up his possibly dead wife.

Yeah, maybe he had fucked up there.

Because Suzuki had gone quiet. Quiet Suzuki…was not good. Pulled in close Suzuki…was also not good. Suzuki himself…well he could be very….unpredictable sometimes. He was just as liable to kick Hatori's ass as he was to tell Hatori that he was his second best friend in the whole wide world….and Hatori really hoped that there was a declaration of their undying friendship coming….

He wondered if he could fit under the table…no….Suzuki would have just dragged him out.

"No. She approached me. I hadn't even noticed her." said Suzuki after a moment. He…did not like to talk about Masami…or to think about Masami….or to even remember that there had been a Masami in his life. He didn't like to think about her but that didn't change the fact that his mind was constantly drawn to her. Where she was, what she was doing, why she had gone from him, if she was even still living…all of that. He just…he had met her completely by chance…and then she had left him. He had married her and then she had left him. He had made a human being with her…and then she had left him. She was gone and…and he had been terrible to her. Unfaithful…and he was still being unfaithful. He was being terrible. Thinking of another woman…he was still married to Masami. They were married and….and no matter where she went or what she did they would always be married. There was a ring on his finger and it could not come off, it was physically stuck since he'd gained some weight since he'd first gotten married, but also…well that was marriage. When you were married it was forever…even if your wife left you….

Masami being gone did not give him the right to look at other women.

"Oh, well then…I guess that was pretty lucky of you…I guess." Said Hatori. He wondered what the whole 'mood swings' thing that Suzuki had was about…and wondering about that was better than wondering if he could dig a hole and hide in it faster than Suzuki could find him if he decided to kill him. Ex-wife…possibly dead wife…just…not the thing to ask him about. It made sense, losing people was hard, and Hatori…well he needed to get some better interpersonal skills or something….and he would do that…if he lived through this…or at least made it through with all of his limbs where he'd left them.

"Yes…there was a lot of luck to it…I'm tired of this. Let's do something else. Right now." Said Suzuki. He didn't want to think about Masami…or Shiori…Sakata. He didn't want to think about how terrible of a husband he had been. He didn't want to think about how he had actually been thinking about….all of that…and not just with one woman either. There was also Minegishi…who was very pretty despite their short purple hair and wardrobe that seemingly consisted of nothing but men's clothing….and even before all of this there had been Sujin…Pang-san. There had been her and…and other things and…just…

He wanted to do something else.

"Um….I think that your kids are outside playing badminton…or maybe tennis. if you want to get in on that." Said Hatori. Maybe he wanted to hang out with his kids…or at least Mob. She always made him feel better. If Hatori could at least get him talking about Mob then he would feel better…and that would be better for everyone. Really.

"No, something indoors." Said Suzuki. This was Osaka in the summer. The last gasps of summer but still…this was Osaka. It was hot. It was hotter than Tokyo. It was even hotter than Seasoning City…and he had no desire to go outside. Especially since Son was out there shouting….yes. He did not want to deal with that.

"You want to hang out with Fukuda maybe?" asked Hatori. He didn't really want to hang out with Fukuda but maybe he'd make Suzuki feel better. They had known each other for a while now and, yeah, Fukuda sucked but he knew how to deal with Suzuki's moods swings and stuff…and also maybe they'd been missing each other. Suzuki had been acting kind of lonely lately. He was still weirded out by smoking with Mob, maybe, and that was why they hadn't been hanging out together like that before…so maybe he was just feeling lonely and Hatori had made it worse by bringing up his wife…or something. He didn't know. Fukuda would know. He knew Suzuki better.

"No, Shigeko is home and she doesn't get along with him for reasons I can't understand." Said Suzuki. It would have been enjoyable to spend time with Fukuda. He was always good company…but so was Hatori. It would have been better to have had the two of them together, that way it would be twice as much good company, but for some reason Hatori and Fukuda didn't get along. He didn't understand why so many people seemed to dislike Fukuda. He was good company, very loyal, and…well people had always been very complicated. He would never understand people, not for as long as he lived, but that was ok. He didn't have to understand people, he just had to live amongst them…and he could do that. That was something that he could…well not worry about…but his own social short comings….having them on his mind…all of that was better than having his shortcomings as a husband on his mind.

"Um…you want to hang out and play videogames?" asked Hatori. They could just sit here for the rest of the day….and a big part of the night, too, but he would probably leave when Mob came in to make dinner. No need to embarrass her and no need for Suzuki to know what happened. Well he would have been happy to know that he had been right, Mob had apparently had a pretty big crush on him, but…well Hatori didn't want to know what Suzuki did to people who rejected his daughter. Also he didn't want to make Mob upset. She'd been through enough as it was…poor Mob…and poor him too…but mostly poor Mob.

"Yes. That would be enjoyable. A good idea as usual, Hatori." Said Suzuki. There, that would be something that could take his mind off of…things. Masami things. Pang Sujin tings. Shiori things. Women things. Him and women and…and he was married and there never should have been any 'him and women' because…well he was a married man. He was a married man who had a wife and two children. He had two children and…and a wife and…and he should not have been thinking about other women! So he wouldn't be. He would not think about….well not even about his own wife…

He was going to think about…well whatever game Hatori felt like showing him.

It was a bit like being young, really. Women, well they had been girls then since he had been a boy and not a man, had always been stressful. Stressful and complicated and…and a lot. A lot for him to deal with. Rejection especially…rejection was never…and he hadn't even been…well Masami had left but…well the whole thing was complicated. Videogames were simple. Repetitive button presses….just the repetition was good….the whole world could just fall away. The world could become nothing but him and a screen…or him and Hatori and a screen…or him and Fukuda and a screen…and that had always been….

Well it had helped.

It had helped back when and it would help now. He was, in some ways, the same person that he had always been. He was still Suzuki Touchirou. He had always been Suzuki Touichirou…but he had grown up. Emotionally. Also the human body completely replaced its self every seven years…but that was the physical process of cells dying and being reborn. Emotionally…well there shouldn't have even been an emotionally. He was a grown man and he was not…he knew not to be interested in another woman…even if she was very beautiful and liked green and breakfast even though she had no idea how to eat an omelet….but he was not interested in her and…and any interest that he had in her was purely work related…and even then only because the internet made it easier to learn about someone…

Not that he was interested in learning about her at all….in anything other than a work capacity.


	402. Baby Snakes

Sho loved baby animals of all kinds, even snakes.

Snakes were cool. They felt all cool and scaly and it was fun to watch them swallow stuff…well not other animals because that was sad…but he did like going to zoos and watching snakes swallow other stuff. Like the time he saw a snake swallow an American football…that had been cool. These snakes were still a way off from swallowing anything though, they were still in their eggs. Well one was sticking his head out of this cut in the egg…and maybe that was good. Maybe that meant that he was ready to be born…but then…then that would have been a bad thing. The momma snake had to come back and take care of her babies. That was what moms did, they took care of their babies, and momma snake…she was coming back soon….

She had to. Her babies were being born.

"Mom, come on. You have to come home. Your kids need you." Said Sho. He reached down and poked the baby snake's egg with his finger. Snake eggs felt weird. They were a lot softer than bird eggs, and there was a lot more give, or maybe because this one was hatching there was more give. Sho had seen baby birds hatching before, they made a bunch of holes to get out, but this snake had only made one hole…maybe it was just getting ahead of its self. All of it's brothers and sisters were still in their eggs. Maybe that was why the momma snake had left. Maybe she had gone off to find food and…and she hadn't expected her babies to be ready to hatch yet. Maybe that was it.

Sho hoped she came back to…it was a sad thing to be alone.

Not that he knew anything about being alone, no, he had his sister. She would always be with him, she had said so, and she would love him no matter what. She had said that too. She wasn't just talking when she said things like that, she meant them. She loved him and would never stop loving him…even though she knew the truth. Well she knew one of the things about him that he had been keeping from her…and she hadn't been mad. She hadn't been mad that he had been keeping it a secret from her for years and she hadn't been mad or weirded out that he even liked boys in the first place….and she was great like that. She loved him and stuff and she would never leave him alone.

Not like the baby snake's mom.

"Hey big sis! Come here!" shouted Sho. She was off in the front of the yard looking for the birdie. Well not yard, just a strip of grass really, but still the birdie could have been there. He had hit it hard and it was windy out today….and he really needed to be more careful. They hadn't been playing for points or anything, if they had been then the game would have been much shorter, so he shouldn't have been so competitive and stuff….but it was ok. Even if she hadn't found the birdie he had found some baby snakes buried in the garden.

And who didn't love snakes?

"Big sis, really! It's important!" shouted Sho. Where was she? He could feel her getting closer but she was moving so slowly…and she had to hurry up before the babies were all born and they slithered away or their mom came back or something.

"Sho, did you find the birdie yet?" asked Mob as she came up to where Sho was. He was staring at something in the garden patch. His racket was abandoned next to him and…well he didn't need his racket to find the birdie…but he also had to actually look around to find the birdie….unless he didn't want to play anymore….

Well that was ok. He was in the lead as always so there was no way for her to win.

Not that they had even been playing for points. There was no point in it. She wanted Sho to win, he wanted to win, and she was bad at playing hit the birdie anyways so, really, it was ok for Sho to be declared the winner every single time. She was just happy to be able to play with him…and she wanted to play with him some more…but if he didn't want to then that was ok. She just hoped that she could be included in whatever he wanted to play next.

Even if they were digging for earth worms or some other garden thing that he liked to do.

"No, but I found something better. Come and see! Quick!" said Sho. He tugged on big sis with his powers. She had to see this! This was the coolest thing that he had ever seen in his life! Or at least this week! He wished that he had his phone with him. He needed to take a picture. There was a baby snake sticking his head out of his shell! This was so cool!

He wished that Shimazaki had been there to see this…well to be there for this. He liked animals too…

But Sho was not going to think about Shimazaki now. He had work to do today, everyone did, and that…that was ok. Sho didn't want to hang out with him anyway. Even though he would have thought that all of this with the baby snakes was the coolest thing ever and he would have thought that Sho was so cool for having found them and him thinking that Sho was cool for finding snakes would have cancelled out his uncoolness for the stupid thing he had done with the homemade tattoos and…

And he needed to stop thinking about Shimazaki right now or else….well he didn't know what the or else was but he knew that he needed to stop!

"Is it more worms? Because…well I'll help you dig for worms just so long as we aren't tricking anyone into thinking that they're noodles or putting them in Hatori's bed." Said Mob as she came up beside Sho. He was pointing at…a hole in the ground? Much too big for earth worms…unless he had found a big family of them…but she really didn't want to dig to for worms right now…but she did love her brother…

It wasn't earthworms.

She kneeled down on the ground beside Sho. It looked like he had buried some eggs….lumpy ones. Not the kind that they ate. These were shaped weird and were lumpy…and one of them had a slit in the top. She had never seen anything like this…and Sho had been right. This was cool. She had no idea what she was looking at but not knowing what it was…well that was really cool too.

But it would have been cooler if she knew what she was looking at.

"Big sis, look. Baby snakes." Said Sho. He reached over and touched the egg with the slit in it. This was really soft and kind of floppy…not like a bird's egg at all. This was so cool! They had snakes right in their own backyard! He wished that Shimazaki was here, he loved touching new things, but also he was glad that Shimazaki wasn't there because if he had been there then Sho would have been all worried about looking cool and being in love and he wouldn't have been able to enjoy the babies being born.

This was so cool!

"Snakes!?" said Mob. She loved animals…all of them…but snakes were just…she didn't know. She didn't hate them or anything but….there had been snakes in her backyard! She tried to scoot back but Sho grabbed her hand. He was brining it over to the egg with the slit in it…and not she could see…that was a snake head and….

And maybe it was best if she just left it alone.

"Don't be scared, big sis, they're just babies. Here, feel the egg shell. It's really cool." Said Sho as he tried to bring big sis's hand over to the egg. She would love this. Who didn't love snakes? They were cool! They were so cool and if Shimazaki had been there….well that didn't matter. Big sis was here and that was what mattered. She liked snakes. He had heard her say that she liked snakes ones. She had thought that the snake from the Jungle Book, the cartoon not the real people one, was cool. Yeah. They could name one of the snakes Kaa and then that snake could be hers and the rest could be his. That is if the momma snake didn't come back.

Sometimes moms didn't come back but that was ok because he and big sis were here.

"I-I'll take your word for it. Anyway come on…I bet the mom is going to come back and be mad that we were messing with her eggs. Remember when the baby birds' mom pecked your head last summer?" asked Mob. OK, there were snakes out here in their own backyard. That was fine. This was nature and snakes belonged in nature…and maybe they should just…go inside for the rest of the day…just so that they didn't disturb the snakes or anything like that.

"Wait, no. We have to be here for the snakes to be born. You know, in case the mom doesn't come back." Said Sho. She was acting crazy. So what if the mom came back and bit them? He didn't care. These baby snakes needed them. What if their mom didn't come back? What if their mom had been hit by a car or eaten by a mongoose or something? These baby snakes were too little. They couldn't fend for themselves. They were just little and they were all the same age….they were all the same age so there was no big sister snake to take care of all of them. There was no big sister snake to tuck them into their snake beds and tell them snake stories and run them snake baths and make them snake dinners…or whatever snake families did. They didn't have anyone in the whole world to take care of them….

And they needed someone to take care of them and that someone was Sho.

"I don't think that these are ready to be born yet." Said Mob. She knew that Sho liked animals and she knew that she should have been a good big sister and just stayed there with him but…well she didn't want to watch the snakes being born. The one that was coming out of his eggs right now was looking at her…and it's eyes were black and empty and…and it was looking through her. It was looking right through her and…and it was waiting for her to come near…and…and she didn't hate that snake or any snakes but…but maybe if was best to leave them alone to be born in peace. She knew that if she had been a baby coming out of an egg…well out of mom because people came from their moms, she wouldn't have wanted people staring at her and stuff. Yeah, maybe that was why that baby snake wasn't moving. They had to leave now and just…let the baby snakes be born in peace.

"Yes they are, see? That one keeps on sticking his head out." Said Sho. He pointed at the baby frog….he'd be called Slithers. That one would be Slithers and the one in the egg next to him would be called Slippy and the one in the egg next to Slippy would be called Scaly and then the other egg, the one with the big lump, would called….um…Hissy…and then…well he'd think up another name later…and he'd remember their names, too, because it was important to call people by their names. Not just Son and Daughter. He could call each and every single one of those snakes by their names and he would love them all no matter what.

He could be a good snake brother.

"But if they're ready to be born the where's the baby snakes' mom?" asked Mob. She hoped that the mom came home soon…well no because she would be mad at them…but also she wanted the mom to come back so that Sho could leave those baby snakes alone. She…she knew that wild animals belonged in the wild. That was why mom had never let her and Sho bring the squirrels that she caught with her powers into the house. Wild animals belonged in the wild…and also snakes weren't even cute like squirrels were.

"I don't know but we can't leave them alone. Someone has to keep them safe and I guess that's going to be us." Said Sho. He knew what he'd do. He'd made a dirt nest for them in his angry closet, he could be angry somewhere else, and then he could feed them mice…that was sad but that was also how the food chain worked…or maybe he could just get them meat at the store or something…and then…well dad never noticed him unless he was doing something bad…and he would just avoid dad for the rest of his life and…yeah. This was a good idea.

"But….Sho…wild animals belong in the wild." Said Mob. No. There was no way that they were going to take care of these snakes. She didn't know how to take care of snakes. She had enough to do as it was. She was not going to live the rest of her life in the yard taking care of baby snakes. She really didn't want to wake up in the middle of the night and have to give the baby snakes their bottles…and she had no idea where she would even get snake bottles…or snake milk for that matter. She didn't want to have to go and find snakes and milk them…well they would probably have snake milk at the pet store…wait, no, these were reptiles. They didn't even drink milk…but then what did baby snakes eat?

There. She was not ready to be a snake caretaker.

"I know…but their mom is gone. Who's going to take care of them? They're only babies. They're going to get eaten by a mongoose or something out here." Said Sho. What was with her? Why didn't she see that these babies needed them? Didn't she know that babies needed someone to take care of them? She was being so weird.

"Are there wild mongooses in Osaka?" asked Mob. She wished that Sho had found some baby mongooses, those were cute, and also…well she didn't gate snakes but…she didn't want there to be a nest of snakes right there in her backyard.

"I don't know, maybe….but there are other animals out here, too, and we have to keep these baby snakes safe." Said Sho. He reached down to pick up the egg with slithers in it but big sis grabbed his arm and shook her head. What? What was so hard for her to understand about this situation? The snakes needed them and they didn't have time to waste!

"Sho, what if these are poisonous snakes? Minegishi grew up here and they said that there are Mamushi snakes here. What if you get bit?" asked Mob. She had no idea what a Mamushi snake was but Minegishi had warned her about them…and Mob didn't need to be told to stay away from snakes. Even though she didn't hate them…she just knew enough to leave them alone.

"What's a Mamushi snake look like?" asked Sho. If these were venomous snakes then he would love them just the same. They couldn't help it, being venomous, and he would never hate someone for something out of their control like that.

"I don't know but they might be these snakes. What if these snakes end up being poisonous?" asked Mob. If these snakes were poisonous then…well then they would die of snake poisoning….and she didn't want that. Well Fukuda was there but…well she didn't want to spend more time with Fukuda than she needed to. Just…no. She was going to have to say 'no' to the snakes…well as best as she could. She knew that if she just said 'no' then Sho would be upset with her…and she didn't want that…but she also didn't want snakes in the house.

"Venomous. When something poisons you by venom then they're venomous…and if they are and we get big then Fukuda can fix it…and don't worry, I'll make him be nice to you if you get bit….but just to be safe try not to touch their heads." Said Sho

"Sho…come on. You know that dad isn't going to let you take care of these snakes…and you know that he's going to notice if we start living in the yard." Said Mob. That must have been what Sho meant. The two of them living in the yard and taking care of the baby snakes. Dad would have noticed and then he would have said something and then he would have made them get rid of the baby snakes because he hated animals and then Sho would have been sad…and she didn't want Sho to be sad…so really the best thing to do was just to leave the baby snakes in the garden where they belonged. She wished that Sho could understand that…she did.

"We wouldn't live in the yard, big sis, we'd bring them into the house and-" said Sho. Once she heard his plan she would say yes. She wasn't like dad, she liked animals, and she liked snakes. Who didn't like snakes? They were cool! They could play with the snakes once hey hatched and wear them like scarves and maybe if the snakes got old enough they could have more baby snakes and then they could have a closet full of snakes! Who didn't want a closet a full of snakes?!

"Sho! We can't have snakes in the house! Dad would definitely notice…and also there would be snakes in the house!" said Mob. That was just…no. Dad…he had never even let them have a cat and cats were sweet and cute. Snakes were scaly and they had black eyes that looked through you…and also she just didn't want snakes slithering loose in the house.

"Big sis….come on. If we found a bunch of baby eggs out in the yard then you'd take care of them." Said Sho. He knew that babies did not come from eggs. He just had to make this into something that she understood. It was like how baby sis's mom had left her with them…only this time it was with snakes. He loved these snakes…well not as much as he loved her…but he did love these snakes. They had names and once you gave something a name then you would have to love them forever. That was just how naming things worked.

"Sho…baby humans don't come from eggs…I mean girls have eggs inside of them but not like that…why don't you come inside and I have a book I can show you and then you can understand where babies come from." Said Mob. She knew that dad would never tell Sho where babies came from…and she had thought the Shimazaki and the others told Sho how all of that worked…but she could get out the books that Minegishi had gotten her and she could show Sho how everything worked…well from a girl's perspective….she needed to get some boy books for him. She knew that dad wouldn't explain anything to him…but that was ok. Sometimes your parents didn't tell you things that you had to know. She was there and she would be there for her little brother no matter what.

"Big sis, I know that babies don't come from eggs…ok. What if some lady just left a bunch of her babies right here in our yard? Wouldn't you take care of them?" asked Sho. He had no idea why some lady would come into their yard just to leave them her babies, nobody knew that this was a Claw house and also it was hard to tell when a baby would turn into an esper anyway, but big sis would understand now. She would understand that they had to take care of these snakes because nobody else would.

"Sho…we both know that I would. We both know that if there were a bunch of baby humans here I would take care of all of them…and maybe dad would let us keep them…but these aren't humans. These are snakes and dad hates pets…ok? Now come on, let's go inside and…um…play Wii…or something….and we can just leave the snakes alone." Said Mob. She didn't want to take care of the snakes. She didn't know how to take care of snakes. The snakes had a mom and even if she was gone then maybe they could meet up with some other snakes…if reptiles even worked that way. She didn't know if they lived in families or not, Sho was the one who knew about animals, not her. She did know, however, that if she didn't know how to take care of something then maybe it was best that she just left it alone.

"Big sis….fine. You go and get the Wii set up…with Mario Party 6! That's the best one…or maybe the island one if you want…" said Sho. He knew what he had to do. He didn't like lying to her, and keeping secrets didn't feel good either, but this was one of those pragmatic choices that Fukuda had been telling him about. He could either leave these snakes all alone or he could just bring them out of the dirt and into his closet until they hatched and then he could help them grow up and then when they were adults he could let them back out into the wild…he didn't want to but he had to because when you loved someone you let them go.

"Ok…but please leave the snakes alone." Said Mob. She knew that Sho loved animals, and that he was a loving person, but she also knew that they could not have snakes in the house. Houses were for people and the outside was for animals. She loved Sho, she really did, and she knew that he would be much happier without dad punishing him for filling the house with snakes. It was better this way. She wanted to make him happy, especially since he was so unhappy because he was in love with Shimazaki and also Emmy and it was hard for him…but snakes were not the solution to his problems. Snakes were not the solutions to anyone's problems.

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Said Sho with a wave of his hand. He stayed still until he heard the backdoor open. He loved his big sis, and he hate lying to her, but sometimes you had to make pragmatic choices. Besides, it wasn't like she would ever stop loving him. She was a nice person that way. If she hadn't stopped loving him for being in love with Shimazaki then she wouldn't stop loving him for brining baby snakes into the house.

This was a good idea.

Sho knew that this was a good idea as he turned his shirt into a basket and picked the snakes up with his powers. He kept the snakes close to his stomach and held them up with his powers while he held his jacket closed. He had to move quickly, so she wouldn't notice. He made it halfway across the yard before he remembered that baby snakes needed dirt. He went back to the garden patch and filled his shirt with dirt, too, in addition to the eggs. There. Now the baby snakes would be happy…and all he wanted was for the snakes to be happy. He loved them after all and when you loved something then you wanted to make them happy.

Even baby snakes.


	403. Unwelcome Dreams, Welcome Bed Mate

Suzuki Touichirou hadn't touched a woman in years.

"Touichi….oh God Touichi…"

She sounded just like Masami. Her hand was in his hair just like Masami's had been when he had last done this for her. When he had last gotten down on his knees and worshipped at the altar that was her body. Her thighs on either side of his head. The taste of her…God…he loved this. The way her hand pushed his head down, the way her nails scraped against his scalp, the way she breathlessly said his name…like she couldn't draw enough air to manage the entire thing. It was a very long name, he had noticed, four syllables. She could only manage three.

He knew how to get her down to two.

He loved getting her down to two. He knew how to get her down to two….and it wasn't difficult. A little more pressure here, a little faster there, and then once she was down to two syllable…Toui….Toui…then…well then he would keep going like this for a bit. He knew how to get her down to one syllable…and then just to incoherent babbling….but he'd slow down for a moment. He'd slow down and savor her. She vaguely tasted of onions and he liked onions…or maybe onions tasted of her…or maybe all women just tasted like onions.

Shiori tasted like onions.

Vaguely. Just…that same sort of vague, oniony taste that Masami had…and this was….this wasn't right. He should not have been down on his knees for her. He should not have let her scrape her fingers through his hair. He should not have been trying to get her down to one syllable and keep her there. He should not have been getting her to rock against him and beg him and…and he should not have been doing this but he liked it. He liked it and…and he would keep at it…and this was so good….and he loved doing this…

And he hadn't done this in so long.

"Touichirou, you knew I was going to do this for you today…so why did you have to make it so hard for me?"

He was on his back now…and Masami had said that the first time that she had ever…and was this the same love hotel? The walls were still made of velvet and there was that chandelier….but the bed felt different. He knew this bed. This was the same bed that he had slept in…well no…he didn't know this bed…and he didn't know why he cared about the bed or the room. There was a hand undoing his belt and…nobody had done this for him in a while. He saw the hand, there, and the fingernails were green…not red…but green was a nice color too. Green stood out against his pants…navy blue…or maybe black…and he didn't know why he cared because she had undone his belt…and there was something to having someone else undress you…

There was something to having your wife undress you.

This was not his wife…but she felt like her. This was…he should have been with his wife but…but he didn't have a wife anymore and…and this was….his hand should not have been in her hair. He used to love this, to run his fingers through Masami's hair when she did this. He had done that on their first night together….and she had said…he couldn't remember what she had said…but she had said something…and he couldn't remember what but he had said something and then she had laughed….God…she had laughed around him and he had just about died right there…and he felt like he was going to die….

It had been too long.

God. When was the last time a woman had done this to him? He just…he couldn't remember right now. This was heaven. Her mouth around him, his hands in her hair, and her hair was so soft…softer than Masami's….soft and thick and black and long and this was just….this was amazing…and he was going to die…and what a death it would be! God…he wanted to die in her mouth with then and he didn't care who found his body and….yes….this was so….

It had been way too long.

"No Touichirou, not yet. I know you and the minute you finish you're out like a light, now move over. I want you on top of me."

Now he was going to die. Now he was going to die at forty four and he didn't mind one bit. God…Shiori was so beautiful…she was wearing that yellow thing Masami had worn on their honeymoon…and every single anniversary. The very short and see through yellow nightshirt…thing…with the lace and the impractically small unclothes and….oh he loved it! And Shiori was there and her hair was fanned out all around her and her skin was so soft and her hair was so soft and…well at some point he had lost his own clothes and she was tracing patterns on his freckles and Masami hadn't done that….who had done that? He…not the first time but one of those and….he still like it and…well he liked this too and….now she was kissing him and he was kissing her and he couldn't even remember the last time he'd kissed a woman and he could feel her legs wrapped around him and she was kicking him on the small of his back and she was wearing this impractically high see through socks….Masami hadn't worn those for him…and he couldn't remember who had…and Shiori was the one who was wearing them and he couldn't complain and he hadn't been complaining…

But he was dying.

It felt like he was going to die and he liked it. He was with another woman and he liked it. He was in another woman and he liked it. He was inside of her and he was inside of him and she was wrapped around him and her sin was so soft and she was saying his name….Touichirou….and there was an emphasis on the end that he hadn't heard in years and he was going to die and…

And he didn't die.

But he wished that he had.

"No….God…." said Suzuki because, well, there was nothing else that he could say. He hadn't been in this predicament since…well he hadn't been counting the years or anything….but not since high school at least and now….God! What was wrong with him? What was the matter with him? What had gone wrong in his mind that he would even think about let alone….he was forty four years old!

He was too old for this.

He was too married for this. He made a fist with is ring hand. He was married. He was too married for this. He was too married to have been thinking about a woman who was not his wife. He was too married to have been laying there in his bed imagining what it would have been like with a woman who was not his wife. Not only had he dreamt about her but he had also….he didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to think about what he had just done to himself…allowed to happen to himself. No. This could not be. He could not be here and he could not be in this predicament and he just…

He got out of bed.

The first step was getting out of bed. He had to be logical about this. The first step to dealing with this was to get out of bed. So that was what he did. This felt just as disgusting now as it had when he had been an adolescent…and he was just as upset now as he had been when he had been an adolescent. This was just…unpleasant. Well it would be less unpleasant if he could get to step two, change his clothes. That step was also unpleasant….but necessary. Step three involved getting dressed, pleasant, and then step four involved sanding in the middle of his room mentally berating himself for having the nerve to think about a woman who was not his wife!

Step four would have to be cut short in favor of step five….put his clothes in the wash.

He did know how to do laundry….sort of. He hadn't washed his own clothes since university…no. Since high school. He had sent his clothes to a laundry in university. Well he could remember how it was done. He had to do his own laundry now. Just like when he had been young he had to be the one to do his own laundry…and that was what he was going to do. That was just…what he had to do. This. Something. Anything. Anything at all to keep his mind away from Shiori…and what he had done with her…in his mind…

He still felt filthy.

He took his clothes to the washing room, well alcove, and the whole time he felt completely and utterly filthy. Terrible. Depraved even. What kind of man thought about having sex with a woman who was not his wife? He did. The sort of man who cheated on his wife…and he would never forgive himself for that…and no wonder Masami stayed away. He would have stayed away too if he'd been forced to have a husband like him…if he'd been a woman as perfect as Masami…and if he had been forced to be with a man as terrible as him and….

He dumped his laundry in the washing machine.

Now how did it go…he thought back. Clothes got washed in hot water…half a cup of detergent for a normal load…and then fabric softener once it got to rinse and….alright. Detergent…detergent….he found something that said that it was detergent but looked more like candy…and Daughter had helpfully written 'Sho these are poisonous do not eat them or play with them or get them near your eyes' and she had ended her message with a sticker of a smiling cat…well that was helpful if he had been the sort of person who ate things which looked like candy….but not for washing clothes…

Oh, right, there were directions on the box.

One pod per load….there…and then…well there were a lot more settings than when he had been young enough to wash his own clothes…and he so wished that he had watched Daughter do this. She knew how to do laundry….not that he would wake her up. Not for this. He decided to go with hot water and a normal cycle…and he so wished that washing machines weren't so complicated….but this was good. Complicated was good. Complicated would keep him from thinking about how warm and soft and inviting and….

And now he was thinking about this again.

He needed to stop. He went back to bed. Maybe if he went to sleep then he could dream about something else. Maybe about the time he got lost in the shopping center when he had been three. That was a recurring nightmare. In his dream he never saw his mother again and he ended up being lost forever…and he could do that. He could and would do that. He made his way back to his bed and laid himself down and tried to force sleep to come. He just….he had to sleep. He had to close his eyes and sleep and just….sleep until tomorrow happened and this whole night seemed like a terrible dream. He needed sleep….

But it wouldn't come.

He was on his back and his eyes were closed and he had no way of forcing himself to fall asleep. He had been trying. He was in sleeping positon and his eyes were closed and he was doing his best to slow his breathing so he could fall asleep, he wasn't worried about his clothes he could always throw them in the dryer in the morning, but he just…he could not sleep. He could not sleep and…and he needed to sleep. He had work to do. He had a cell to visit and talent to acquire and negotiations to…well think of and…and he just needed his sleep….

But he could not sleep.

He opened his eyes. The room was black. He closed them again. The room was black. He opened them again. The room was still black. The room was black and he was all alone and…and he just…he didn't know what was the MATTER with him! He had….maybe he was too ashamed of himself to fall asleep. Yes, that was it. He was too ashamed of himself to sleep…because he did not deserve sleep. He had been thinking of a woman who was not his wife and….and he had a wife. She was gone from him but he had a wife and…

And he hadn't seen his wife in four years.

They had been married for seven years when she had left. She had been gone for four. Almost half the time that they had been married she was gone. Three more years and they would have spent an equal time separated as they had spent married. He just…he made a fist with his ring hand. He could feel it, the metal of it, the plain gold band. That was a symbol of his life with Masami. One life, never ending, well they would die but…well he had no idea if they would stay married in their afterlife or not. Maybe he would see her on the other side…he didn't know. All he knew was that he just…there was a pain centered in his chest…it was both dull and sharp at the same time. Sudden and drawn out. Aching. There was an aching inside of him and…and he had no idea…..he ached for her. Not only for the feel of her body but the sound of her voice…

He couldn't remember the sound of her voice.

He sat up suddenly. The house shook. He didn't care. He couldn't remember the sound of her voice and….and he could remember the things that she said to him…and the way she would say them…but he hadn't heard the sound of her voice in so long and…and now the pain was worse…and it had moved up to his eyes and…and he was not going to cry. He had very clear memories of the last time he had cried, when he had killed mother and father, and he had been little more than a child then. Eighteen. He was a grown man now. He was forty four and he could not cry…especially not over something that was his fault…and it must have been his fault…

He must have done something wrong.

He had no idea what! He had been a good partner, well he had tried to, and he had tried his best….he had done everything right! He had given her a house and children and money and he had been there for her when time could permit and…and he had kept her safe and…and it hadn't been enough. There had bene something that he hadn't done, something had been missing, and now because something had been missing she was missing. She was missing and gone and he was alone….he was all alone. He felt the other side of the bed. Cold.

It didn't have to be.

He didn't have to be alone…and he shouldn't have been alone. Especially not with his thoughts. His mind kept on jumping between the pain that he felt….the shame of what he had dreamt of….the rapturous pleasure of it…the softness of…well he had no idea what Shiori even felt like and…and he should not have been thinking about Shiori in the first place! He should not have been thinking about any of that in the first place…and he knew how to stop it. He knew exactly how to stop thinking of all of that. He was thinking like this because he was alone.

So the solution to his problem was simple.

He just wouldn't sleep alone. He got out of bed for the second time that night. There wasn't much ambient light but there was enough to help him make his way down the hallway, and to be safe he swept a clear path for himself with his powers, until he made it to the children's room. He opened the door slowly, waking Son would take his mind off of things but not in the way that he wanted, and he stepped into the room just as slowly. It was a mess, as always, and he made a path for himself as quietly as he could.

Not quietly enough.

He could have sworn he heard movement coming from the closet…he must have knocked something into it. Whatever. That didn't matter. No, the only thing that mattered in that room was Shigeko. There. Shigeko was asleep in her bed and she looked so…she looked so perfect there on her side with her blanket tucked under her head and the moonlight streaming in from the outside…she was so perfect and he almost felt guilty for waking her…so he decided to be careful not to wake her. He lifted her with his powers and carried her out of her bed. He made sure to keep her steady and straight, he couldn't have her waking up and wondering what in God's name possessed him to do this….because he was not going to explain ANY of that to his Daughter, and he kept her sleeping until he got to his room.

She was so perfect when she slept.

He pulled the blanket to the side with his powers and laid her down. He used to do this for Masami when she would fall asleep in front of the television. She never woke up….and neither did Shigeko. She was so…so small and so perfect and…and when she was near he couldn't think of anything besides her…and that was good. That was the way that things were supposed to be. He should only have thought of her, of giving her the life that she deserved, of their future together….so that was what he did.

He laid down beside her.

He laid down beside her and he turned on his side. He had put her down on her side and now she was facing him. He brushed her hair out of her face. There. This was…this was good. He could only think of her and…and there was still that shame and pain and…and he focused on her. He put an arm around her until his hand was rested against her back. He felt the steady rise and fall of her lungs as she inhaled and exhaled peacefully. She would never be tormented by this….by the things that tormented him….and that was all that he asked for. He just wanted her, his child, his Shigeko, to have a good life…a better life than his….the sort of life that she deserved….the best life that he could give her…since she already gave him such a wonderful life and…and he had always been a complete person on his own but…well he needed some help being that person…and she could help with that. Even now, fast asleep, she could help with that. Just by being beside him she could help with that.

He pulled her close and held her.


	404. Morning in Osaka

Osaka was hot.

They hadn't forgotten that Osaka was hot. It was hot in the summer, it was hot in the spring, it was hot in the fall, and it was even hot in the winter. They'd lived in hotter places, they knew that they had, but for them Osaka was like sitting in the pits of hell. Too hot to move, too hot to sleep, too hot to even think. Just the unbearable and oppressive heat pressing down onto them, pinning them there, molding their t-shirt to their skin and-

Wait, no, that part was Ryou.

"Toshi….put the air on." Said Ryou, his face buried in their hair. Minegishi sighed and opened their eyes. Morning. It was morning. Another night without sleep. Mourning their lack of sleep in the mourning. That was what they were mourning, anyway. Ryou was mourning the terrible late September heat, or maybe the cold, since he had grown up on Tokyo…well Tokyo wasn't exactly the frozen north…but really compared to Osaka it might as well have been the North fucking Pole.

God, they hated Osaka.

"It is on." Said Minegishi. They shifted a little to the side. He held them closer, the arm around their waist pulled them in closer to him, and his sweat plastered their t-shirt to their back and stomach. Well double plastered. They felt like they were soaked through with sweat. Oversaturated. Like the leading brand of paper towel.

"Can you turn it up?" asked Ryou. They could feel his breath across the back of their neck. He was pressed in so close…and they should have kicked him out. They should have kicked him out since two human bodies generated more than enough heat to make them uncomfortable. They should have told him to go to sleep in his own bed in his own room….but they didn't.

They kicked their blanket off.

"Better?" asked Minegishi. They couldn't sleep without a blanket. A good blanket was important. They had spent too many nights with only a thin cotton blanket….a ridiculous thing to complain about since they had just been bitching and moaning about the cold…maybe they were heat sick. That would have made sense. It had to be at least thirty degrees in that room. They were just heat sick.

A kiss to the back of their head.

Or maybe they were just love sick. Ryou….fucking Ryou. Ryou kissing the back of their head. Ryou keeping them pinned against him. Ryou holding them close, his chest rising and falling, his sweat oversaturating their favorite t-shirt, the purple all cotton one with Rapunzel that Mob had gotten them at the Disney Store, and his heart beating against the shirt at their back….beating and beating and beating…and their heart beating and beating and beating and….

Love.

"Better. Love you, Toshi…you're always so smart." Said Ryou between kisses. They could have rolled over….but neither of them had brushed their teeth yet so that was a hard 'no' on the early morning kisses. That was a hard no on whatever else Ryou had planned too. His hand, the one that had been resting on their stomach, moved down to the band of their boxers…or maybe they were a pair of his that they had borrowed….they didn't know. They'd figure that out later, once his hand stopped wandering, and it shouldn't have been wandering. It was too hot for his hand to go wandering. It was hot and they were oversaturated with sweat, both his and theirs, and they needed a shower and breakfast and then a whole day of doing nothing, well waiting for sleep to come, and it had to come eventually…even if it was ridiculously hot.

And even if Ryou was ridiculous.

"Yes, Ryou, I'm sure it's my mind you're after." Said Minegishi. They reached down and pulled his hand out of their boxers. He let his hand rest on their stomach again. Good. That was something good about him, he could stop being ridiculous when it was important. His hand could have gone south again, migrated to warmer pastures, but it didn't. It just stayed right there on their stomach just above their belly button.

"Your body and your mind, Toshi, you know you're the whole package after all." said Ryou. He kissed the back of their head again before shifting a bit. Now his head was resting on top of theirs, in the space between their head and their shoulders. They could feel the heat of his breath against the shell of their ear. They shuddered a bit, the good sort of shudder, and they knew that he had noticed that. He noticed everything about them. That was just the way his powers worked.

And that was just the way that he was.

His whole being was focused on them, now, they could feel it. They could feel his body pressed against them, one hand under their head and the other on their stomach, and they could feel his aura surrounded them completely. They reached back. Their hand found his knee right below the leg of his shorts. They were inside of his barrier now, he could keep it close and thin but they knew what it felt like to actually be touching his skin. He was keeping them close and safe…and there was nothing to keep them safe from anymore.

They were not a child anymore.

They were a fully grown adult esper. They had dug the graves that needed digging and planted trees above those graves. They had done what they had needed to do…and now there was no one in the world left that had cause to hurt them…and if anyone did then they could end the life of anyone who would even think…but as far as they knew nobody was plotting their end. Nobody was sitting up at night thinking about how wonderful their life could have been if they hadn't been born. Nobody was thinking about how they could be free of them in just a few years. Nobody was listening to them beg for food, for attention, for affection, for-

They were not a child anymore.

"Don't you have work today? Isn't there some traitor somewhere that needs to be dropped into the ocean or something?" asked Minegishi as they sat up. A blast of cool air hit their back as they untangled themselves from him. Their shirt had tried it's best to stick to his chest but, eventually, it pulled away as they pulled away. They knew that they wanted to stay with him, close to him, under his aura but…but they did not need his protection. They did not need anyone's protecting. They were Minegishi Toshiki. They could take care of themselves.

"Not a traitor, no, just some rival of some rival…and maybe not the ocean. I've been doing a lot of that lately. I need to get creative otherwise I'll stagnate and die." Said Ryou as he sat up too. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to their shoulder. He knew that they didn't like to be kissed on the mouth first thing in the morning. They also knew that he didn't give a fuck about morning breath. He cared enough to put them first….but they could put themselves first…and they would because…well now they were getting into that survival mindset….which had kept them alive and….

It was too hot for this.

"A rival of a rival? So I supposed that the enemy of Suzuki's enemy is his friend?" asked Minegishi with a laugh that they did not feel. They didn't feel like anything but a long shower and a big breakfast. They reached over under their bed. What was left of their giant chocolate bar was still there along with a box of that sugary crap Mob liked to eat….sugar was poison but it kept for a while…and they had more food in the kitchen. They were good on food. They were fine. They were in the house, not THE house but the house, and they were fine.

Really, they were.

"No, the enemy of the woman he wants to bend over is dead. Well going to be. God, he does like to make me work." Said Ryou as he ran a hand through their hair. He was trying to get it to lie down the way they liked it….and they could do that themselves. They had a brush now, and a shower, and all the time that they needed in that shower. No more shower timers. No more bathing in a room with a dozen other people. No more matron telling them to just hurry it up already. No more-

You're an adult now, Toshiki.

"My sympathy goes out to that poor woman." Said Minegishi as they stretched. They needed sleep….and also to get out of bed. Being crammed in bed next to Ryou almost every night, a twin bed, was not good for them. At least they had gotten their own bed…when they'd had a bed…not that any of that mattered now. They were an adult. They were an adult and they had a life and they had their powers and…and they were fine. They were just back in Osaka. That was all. They could handle this. They just needed….

They had no idea what they needed.

To get all stretched out. So that was what they did. They stretched out and…well they did their best. Ryou scooted over so he was close enough to have his arms around their waist again. They leaned backwards until their back was against his chest. God, they were being ridiculous. They had spent the whole night pressed up into him and now they were doing the same thing in the daytime, too. They just…they needed…the loved….they just…

They were fine on their own.

"Mine too….to anyone Suzuki is into." Said Ryou. There was a tone there, a tone that left a few things unsaid, and they knew what he had left unsaid. They knew that Suzuki looked at them sometimes. They knew that he thought that they were pretty thanks to Mob. They knew that, for some reason, they had become at least the object of desire for their boss and the most powerful esper on Earth. Fine, whatever. If they had to lay down on that wire they would but if they didn't then need to then they weren't going to…and really Ryou should not have cared either way….but his caring was a nice distraction from, well, things….and stuff….

Osaka things and stuff.

"You know something, Ryou, you wouldn't know it by looking but you can be a very jealous man sometimes." Said Minegishi. Ryou lifted his head from their shoulder and shook it. They knew what was coming next. He was going to go and tell them that he wasn't jealous and all of that. Well he was. He had a terrible jealous streak that they did not want to deal with. Sure, he didn't give a damn who they went to bed with….just so long as it wasn't someone he knew.

Not that they would go dipping their pen in the company ink.

Any more than they had already, of course. They hadn't ever had a problem finding someone in their pre entourage/Mob sitting days and they knew that if they went out there into the greater pool of Claw members they still wouldn't…but they just didn't feel like it. Ryou was right there, why go through the extra effort? And they would never do anything with anyone else who lived in the house either way. That would have been stupid.

And they did not need any more problems in their life right now.

"I'm not jealous, Toshi, I just-" said Ryou

"I'm not going to sleep with Suzuki unless either I have to or I'm just really hard up. Like, he's we're the last two people in the world and I'm out of triple A batteries and I broke both my arms hard up. Ok? Now don't start with the jealousy because I am in no mood right now." Said Minegishi

"Sorry…sorry. I forgot where we were for a second. I was being a bastard." Said Ryou

"A jealous bastard." Said Minegishi

"Hey, I'll have you know that my parents were married!" said Ryou. There was a pause, there. They could feel his chest against their back. He was trying not to laugh…and they were trying not to laugh…and they didn't know why. Well because that hadn't been that funny…but then if it wasn't that funny then why were they trying not to laugh?

And why were they laughing now?

They didn't laugh that often but when they did…well they knew how that made Rou feel. He was laughing, too, and kissing the back of their head and neck and he was pulling them close and trying to lay them down…and it was so hot so maybe they shouldn't…but he was there and he was Ryou and…and they loved him…

God, they really fucking loved him so much.

"Ryou….I love you." Said Minegishi as they let Ryou lay them down. They were on their back, now, and he was leaned over them. They turned their head to the side. As wonderful as he was, as much as they loved him, and as much of a stupid, ridiculous, jealous bastard he was…he still hadn't brushed his fucking teeth.

"I love you too." Said Ryou. He loved them and…and that was something to focus on. Not how hot it was, not how much they hated Osaka, and not how much they hated…well they had a long list of things that they hated…but Ryou was not on that list. They turned their head to the side. His hand found their forehead. They had really let their skin fall by the wayside….they had let a lot of things fall by the wayside. They turned their head to the side…and that was a lot of laundry that needed doing. There was a lot of laundry that needed to be done…and they had to take a shower at some point…and they needed to get the hell out of bed today. They needed to get the hell out of bed and…and they couldn't just lay around and mope just because they were in Osaka.

They had stuff to do.

"Toshi, come on. I'm here, you're here….you love me….I love you…" said Ryou. His hand was on their stomach now. He was tracing the trail of hair they had their, the one that led down to their boxers, but he stayed above the waistband. He didn't want to, they could tell what he wanted, but he wasn't pushy…and that was going on the list of things they loved about him….God. They loved him…it felt so strange to say it and think it…good and strange. Strange and good.

Mostly good….and also mostly strange.

"Ryou, you haven't even brushed your teeth yet…and we're both covered in sweat." Said Minegishi

"I'll brush my teeth but I don't see any point in taking a-" said Ryou. They knew what he was going to say next. He was going to tell them that there wasn't any point showering the sweat off if they were just going to get sweaty all over again. They were going to tell him that if he wanted anywhere near them then he'd get in that shower. He'd suggest that, in an effort to save time, they should join him…and then the rest spoke for it's self.

But then his phone decided to speak for it's self.

He had his phone charging there on their dresser. He had a change of clothes right there next to it. He had a bottle of his cologne in their room, too, right on the nightstand. The light came in and hit it. It was a nice shade of black, if there even was such a thing. The black was out of place in the green of their room. The black of his phone case, the black of his clothes, the black of his cologne, and the black of his hair…just a lot of black in their room….but that was alright. The black was slowly coming into the green…they didn't mind. They had other things to mind.

Like his truly obnoxious text tone.

"So, who's the annoying part from Day in the Life?" asked Minegishi

"Work. I have no idea what this is but I'm needed. Until later, Toshi, until later." Said Shimazaki. He leaned down to kiss them on the forehead…and they decided to fuck it. It wouldn't kill them to kiss him…and they wanted to kiss him. It wouldn't kill them. They had been through several things in their life that could have, and should have, killed them but Shimazaki Ryou's unbrushed teeth was not one of them.

They turned into the kiss.

They could feel his aura. They closed their ears. They could hear it…sort of. Maybe they were just imagining things, they didn't know, they just knew that he was happy and when he was happy…well they felt better. One of them should have been happy. They…were close to being happy. They were in the general vicinity of happy…and they would be happy again….later. Maybe. They didn't know.

They were mostly just tired.

It had been too damn hot to sleep…and it was too damn hot for this too….and Osaka was just too damn hot. Hopefully they left here soon. Hopefully they went far, far, far away from here. Somewhere cold. Somewhere when it was perpetually cold and dark. Somewhere where nothing could grow. They felt like shit then they were somewhere where nothing could grow…

But they felt less shitty in the dead of winter than they did in the boiling heat any season in Osaka.

"You know where I'll be." Said Minegishi. They kicked the blanket fully off the bed. Maybe they could try and sleep some more. Maybe they'd feel better if they got some actual rest. Maybe if they slept for long enough they could forget that they were in Osaka. That would have been just the best…

"Yeah and…hey, Toshi, you know…about that park you used to like? When you were a kid?" asked Ryou. He had his idea tone. That was how he sounded when he had something on his mind….something good…or bad.

"Where I slept when my parents threw me out of the house." Said Minegishi. They had no desire to relieve in the worst years of their life. That was what they had been hiding in the house baking in this heat trying not to do.

"No, well yeah aside from the childhood stuff that dragon fly slide sounded pretty awesome….but I meant the other one. The good one with the extra long tunnels you used to mess around in." said Ryou. That was the last time they stayed up all night regaling him with tales of their untamed youth.

"I have no desire to relieve my sexual awakening, thank you." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. Those had been….times. Some had been good, some had been bad, but they had no desire to sloppily make out in the centipede tunnel as an adult with their current…partner? Boyfriend? Person who they lived with, had sex with, and were in love with? They didn't know. It was too early for the define the relationship talk.

"No, not that...well parks might be fun for that but when there aren't any kids around…but that's not what I was talking about. You haven't worked in a while-" said Ryou. Yeah, they knew that they hadn't worked in a while either. What else was new? They hadn't worked in…months? Months. Maybe even a year. They weren't sure. They would have worked if they could, liquidations were always busy times, but they couldn't. They loved Mob, they really did, but they hadn't set out to be a babysitter.

"Because Suzuki is a sexist asshole." Said Minegishi. They used to kill people. They used to go on missions and kill people…and some other things but mostly that…and now they were pretty much just a babysitter. Suzuki had finally realized that they didn't have a y chromosome and now they were on permanent babysitting duty with the added bonus of being stared at when he didn't think that they noticed.

"Yeah, and about ten other kinds of asshole. Anyway, I was just thinking that…well you're a plant and plants need sunlight…and the kids like parks…well I know that Sho does…and Mob likes whatever Sho likes most of the time so...maybe take the kids to the park?" asked Ryou. Minegishi blinked. How did his mind even work? There was no point in driving themselves crazy trying to figure his thought process out. Take the kids to the park…Sho. Sho was more than a child. He was like ten kids on an all day candy and espresso binge…which was worse than Mob on one of her weed and grain alcohol binges…and somehow this had become their reality.

"That's…if Mob wants to go…and I guess her brother. God knows he needs to actually be socialized…you know, by someone who doesn't give in to his worst impulses." Said Minegishi. Ryou acted like more of a ten year old than the actual ten year old…and he knew it. Sho…well he needed to be around someone who didn't let him get away with anything and everything. They'd be happy to take Mob to the park, God knew that she needed to get out of that house, and if they had to take her little brother with…well it wasn't like anyone else was doing anything constructive with the little monster.

"Hey, Sho's awesome and I hope that our kids are just like him." said Ryou. Minegishi felt their aura pull in close. The plants around them followed it. They just…he knew that they didn't want kids. Sure Mob was great but he didn't want to have Mob, no, he wanted to have Sho. Probably a lot of Shos. Probably without the obsession crush. Minegishi…obsessive crush or not they did not want to have a gaggle of little Shos on their hands.

"Then we'd have to kill ourselves!" said Minegishi as Ryou teleported away. They shook their head. Of course he'd gotten the last word. Fine, whatever, he could think that he had won and he could think that they were going to have kids together and whatever else he wanted to think. That didn't mean that his dreams of domestic hell would come true. They weren't going to. He was lucky that they even were…whatever they were.

Whatever this relationship could be defined as.

They weren't in the mood to define their relationship. They weren't in the mood to deal with whatever feelings they had or didn't have or whatever Ryou wanted or didn't want. They just wanted to get out of bed, shower, perform other basic grooming functions, and then take Mob to the park and other such babysitting functions….God. Suzuki was lucky that they loved Mob so fucking much…and her little brother to a significantly lesser extent…enough that if someone tried to kill him they'd save him but not enough that if he needed a blood transfusion he'd let them have theirs…if he even had AB negative blood…they didn't know. It was too hot to speculate about people's blood types.

It was too hot for a lot of things.

Like whatever was distressing their plants. They could feel it. Something was in their garden…and they knew that aura. Yup, the boy of the hour. Minegishi sighed and rolled out of bed. The shower and basic grooming…or at least just the shower…would have to be rescheduled. They stepped into their pants and pulled out their last clean shirt. Time to deal with whatever that little demon was doing in their garden…and then maybe take that little monster and his sister to the park….and whatever else they could do today….

Even though it was way too hot for all of this.


	405. Citrus Trees Bug Boxes and Lucky Charms

Snakes were not herbivores and there was no way for Sho to teach them to be.

He'd tried. He'd left a whole salad in the closet for them but they hadn't even touched it. They were all out of their shells and all done being born so they needed to eat…but they just weren't eating. He had thought that if he left them alone for long enough they would eat the salad, that was what mom did with him when he was little, but they hadn't even touched it…probably because they were carnivores. They had fangs now, they had some baby snake teeth, and they were so sharp…carnivore sharp…

So maybe trying to teach them to be vegetarians had been stupid.

Since they couldn't eat salad and big sis would definitely notice if he was leaving raw meat in the snake closet, he had to go out and hunt for them like a mother snake would…well maybe they did. Sho didn't know much about snakes but he did know that moms were supposed to feed their babies and those snakes were like his babies now so he had to go out and hunt them up some food. Snakes at mice, rats, shrews, voles, small birds, and bugs. He was going to hunt them up some bugs. They were easy to catch and also didn't look up at him with fear on their little faces, that was good, and he knew that he could buy snake food at the pet store…but then people would know that he had gone to the pet store and then they would start asking him questions since it was pretty damn suspicious to go to the pet store when you had no pets.

So hunting garden bugs it was.

"Come on snail…you're going to be snake food now. I'm sorry but that's just how the food chain works. If we were in France you would be my dinner but we're not in France, we're in Japan, and in Japan you're snake dinner." Said Sho as he used his powers to pick up the snail and put it in his Tupperware box. He had a big one for the snakes, well technically it was for keeping big salads fresh but it could be used for other things, and now he had this little one for bugs. This was supposed to be used for making jello but…well this could be used for other things too.

But he did like jello….

But he could live without jello! The baby snakes, on the other hand, could not live without food.

He made sure not to touch the snail with his hands. He knew that snails had parasites and stuff, mom had warned him about them when he had been little, and he didn't want snail parasites. If he got snail parasites then he'd have to go to Fukuda and then Fukuda would ask him why he was touching snails in the first place and then Sho would have to explain to him what he had been doing…and he didn't want to do any explaining…or lying…and that was the same reason why he hadn't gotten all the baby snake bites on his arms looked at. They weren't that bad, he had seen worse snake bites on YouTube, and the bleeding had stopped eventually. Also these were not the venomous kind of snakes like big sis had thought because he was still alive. If these had been the dangerous kinds of snakes then he would have been dead by now.

So Sho one, big sis…he had lost count…but he had one and that was what mattered!

"Ok, who's next…how about you, garden beetle? I don't like Minegishi very much, they're my mortal enemy, but I need to get breakfast for my babies so then I can have breakfast." Said Sho as he went over to the berry bushes where he could see a whole group of beetles on the leaves. The whole thing was practically alive with beetles….and that was good…if the baby snakes liked beetles. Snails were a much more filling meal than beetles and the baby snakes needed to grow up big and strong…but also snails weren't bugs technically and the website hadn't said anything at all about snails so maybe beetles were the right things to collect.

Even if they were by the lemon trees.

There, by the berries, were these tiny lemon trees. Minegishi must have planted them to keep him away. They knew that he was allergic to citrus and they probably wanted him away from the house. They were still trying to keep Shimazaki from him. Their auras were together and he knew that if he kicked down Minegishi's door, it may have been made of metal but he was strong too and he could kick it down easily, but he wasn't going to kick that door down because he didn't want to see…

Because he had stuff to do.

He had baby snakes who were dependent on him for food and water and air holes in their snake bowl. He was needed and…and he didn't have time to feel stuff and be in love with Shimazaki and stuff. Sho had stuff to do and…and he was going to do that. He was going to stop looking at the house and he wasn't going to be afraid of being near the tiny lemon trees…with lemons growing on them….and he was going to collect the beetles with his powers and then….well and then he was going to feed the baby snakes and spend the day with them in the snake closet. He was going to read to them and…and make them happy and…and also try and figure out how to pick them up without getting bitten.

Maybe once they trusted him more.

They would trust him because he was going to be nice to them. When you were nice to someone then they would be with you for the rest of your life. They would love you and be your friend and stuff and…and that family of baby snakes would love him for the rest of his life….and he would love him for the rest of theirs…but it would be a very short life if he didn't get those snakes fed!

So that was what he was going to do.

Collecting bugs was easy with his powers. All he had to do was round them up and make them go into his big Tupperware. He could make the others stay in there when he opened it, too, and really he had no idea what people did without powers. All of their bugs would have escaped or something if they had snakes in their closets that needed to be fed and stuff…not that normal people had snakes in their closets and stuff, no, that would have been weird….and he was weird. That was fine, though, because at least he wasn't boring.

Shimazaki didn't like boring people.

But he liked THAT boring person. That person who's aura was coming closer and closer and closer to him. That person who was going to kick him out of their garden. That person who had planted tiny lemon trees in their garden to keep him out. That person who he knew didn't like him. That person who had been trying to take Shimazaki from him, to be not only his friend who he did stuff with sometimes but also his best friend, and Sho…he was Shimazaki's best friend! They were best friends and…and that was all that they could be….and that was ok with Sho and….

And he just didn't like Minegishi…alright?!

"What are you doing in my garden?" asked Minegishi. Sho didn't turn around. He didn't look at them. He knew that if he turned around and looked at them then he would have ended up sating something mean….and he didn't want to end up saying anything mean. He knew that if he was mean to Minegishi then not only would big sis be upset with him but Shimazaki would be too…and also the book that Minegishi had gotten him said that if something made him angry then he should avoid it…and sometimes even your mortal enemy could give you good books of advice so…yeah, he just was going to keep his back to them…and stuff.

"I'm doing you a favor and collecting all of these beetles. They were eating your plants." Said Sho. He wasn't going to tell them that he was collecting bugs to feed the baby snakes with. They would have just ended up telling big sis and then big sis would have been upset with him for bringing snakes and bugs into the house so he was just going to keep his mouth shut about all of this.

"You know you should look at people when they talk to you." Said Minegishi

"And you should say thank you when someone does something nice for you." Said Sho

"Alright then, thank you so much for pulling the leaves off of my blackberry bush. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't pulled the leaves off of my blackberry bush." Said Minegishi

"You're welcome, now let me work. Go inside and do whatever you do." Said Sho with a wave of his hand.

"My, you're so pleasant in the mornings aren't you, Sho?" asked Minegishi. Sho didn't turned around even though they shouldn't have been using his given name like he had given them permission to use it. That was why it was called a given name, because you were given permission to use it.

"More pleasant than you are." Said Sho. He was proud of himself. He hadn't turned around and he hadn't cursed. He knew that if he turned around he was going to say something super mean…and he knew that if he cursed, even though Minegishi deserved it, big sis would have been mad at him and he didn't need to make her mad. He had snakes in their closet. He did not need to be on her radar. She was already suspicious because he had turned the closet into his clubhouse…he didn't need to get back onto her radar and stuff.

"You little-no. You know what? I am not going to get into it with you today. I'm planning on asking your sister if she wants to go to the park later and you're welcome to join us." Said Minegishi. Sho stuck out his tongue even though he knew that they couldn't see it. Go to the park with them? With them and big sis? Well he liked going to the park and he liked big sis…but he did not like Minegishi. Them at a park? They would probably sit there being all boring and mean and stuff.

"With you? No way! You're my mortal enemy. Why would I do anything with you?" asked Sho

"If I were your mortal enemy then would I be warning you right now that those are dwarf lemon trees you're standing beside?" asked Minegishi

"I-I know about the lemon trees…and they don't scare me!" said Sho. He wasn't scared and…and he did not need Minegishi telling Shimazaki that he was scared of stuff. He didn't like people who were afraid of things. He said that fear was a gift that kept you alive but it also made you boring. If you spent your whole life being afraid of death then you could never truly live.

"Well then you're not as smart as you think you are because really you should be. Mob used the word 'deathly' many times so….yeah. Get away from the lemon trees." Said Minegishi. They thought that they were so smart…well they weren't! He could be near lemons! He could be near citrus without getting hurt and…and they didn't know what they were talking about!

"I'm not scared of anything!" said Sho. There were times in his life when he didn't think. Those had been the times that had made him try and walk across the garden wall back when he had lived in the Castle, the times that had made him have Shibata throw him on the roof, and the times that had made dad yell at him because he was 'a mistake who made mistakes' and other such dad things.

These were also the times that made him grab a lemon with his bare hands…way too hard.

Way, way, way too hard. He could feel the lemon juice on his hand and…and that was bad. The minute he felt it…the minute the sticky juice touched his hand….he could feel it getting itchy. It was itchy and he could see it turning red…he dropped the lemon. He dropped the lemon one second too late. His hand was already messed up and….and now his throat was getting itchy and he hadn't even EATEN anything! Maybe this part was in his head. Maybe he was just going over the last time he'd had a citrus fruit….the time with the grapefruit….the time when dad had left him to die…

He was not going to die.

"For the love of…come on. I'm not bothering Ryou or Mob with this." said Minegishi. They didn't wait for him to tell them to fuck off, and he did want to tell them to fuck off, they just grabbed him by the arm and dragged him down the street to Fukuda's house….and he did need to go and see Fukuda….and they had even taken his bug box from him and they were carrying it…and that was kind of nice and stuff…and he just…

Well maybe his mortal enemy could be kind of…not terrible.

"Here. Have this piece of pizza box cheese heal you up and then never go near my garden again. if you want to catch bugs then I know a few good beetle hunting spots, even for September, and I'll take you there…hell, I will draw you a fucking map, if you never go near my garden again….God…too damn early for this…" said Minegishi as they pounded on the door. Sho would have said something but he was itchy all over…and his eyes were burning…and he shouldn't have wiped his eyes with the back of his hand….

He had never been happier to feel Fukuda's aura in his life.

"Sho? Oh my God what did you-" said Fukuda as he opened the door. Sho knew that he would freak out, he always freaked out, and Sho did not need him to freak out right now. First of all Sho was the one who should have been freaking out since he was the one who had touched the lemon…and second of all whenever Fukuda got freaked out Sho had to spend a lot of time with him because he could be kind of emotional sometimes…and also he was really lonely and stuff…even though he was the one who was mean to people all the time…

He and Minegishi would have gotten along really well if he hadn't made the mistake of making fun of their boobs.

"Don't waste a perfectly good heart attack, Fukuda, the only thing I did was bring him to you after he messed with my lemon trees." Said Minegishi. They put Sho's bug box back in his hand. He held onto it…and the plastic felt good against his hand. It was warm, Osaka was weirdly hot even for Japan, but it still felt good against his hand. He was fine, though, he wasn't going to die from something as stupid as a lemon. He wanted to die either of being really old or doing something cool like riding in the outside of an airplane or diving into the ocean from a mountain or getting eaten by hamsters or something.

"Well then maybe you shouldn't grow lemon trees near a child who's allergic to citrus." Said Fukuda. Sho would have said something….but he couldn't. He had touched his face with his hand…and his face hadn't been ok and maybe he had accidentally sprayed himself in the face when he had squeezed the lemon too hard, but he was fine…mostly fine. Fine-ish….getting less fine maybe….but he didn't want to stop the fight. Their auras were getting all…fighty…and he did like a good fight.

"But then how will I symbolize my bitterness and disappointment?" asked Minegishi. Sho scratched at his hand as he looked up at both of them. Minegishi was such a jerk so of course Fukuda was going to be a jerk to them. At least Fukuda had an excuse for being a jerk. He had been dad's friend since he had been a kid, that was longer than Sho had even been alive for, and that was enough to make anyone into a jerk. Plus he was old, too, and old people could be grumpy. Also Sho got the feeling that he was still upset because that girl he had been in love with before, the one who he had told Sho about, couldn't be with him and now he didn't like girls at all anymore. That would have explained why he didn't like big sis…and stuff. Sure Fukuda was a jerk, and a secret teller, and also he didn't get along with anyone…

But at least he was less of a jerk than Minegishi.

"You don't have to symbolize it, it's written all over your face. Now leave me alone, you've done enough." Said Fukuda as he put his hand on Sho's back and led him inside the house. As he was led inside he could feel himself getting better. Hi eyes get less itchy and watery and his throat was less scratching and his skin didn't itch and burn….and as a bonus all of his snake bites got better too. He felt fine and he could have gone back outside and collected more bugs to feed the baby snakes but he didn't.

He let himself get led to the kitchen table.

Fukuda led him to a chair and he sat down. It was still breakfast time…and big sis was making the same thing she did every morning…and she was expecting him…but Fukuda had nobody to eat with and also he had gone through the trouble of helping Sho so the least he could do was sit down at the table and have breakfast with him and stuff.

So that was what he did.

"No bugs on the table, please." Said Fukuda as he went over to the cabinet. There was already a bowl of plain oatmeal, a piece of toast with butter, and a cup of coffee on the table. Nothing that Sho would have wanted. Fukuda was looking through his cabinets and he probably had some Sho food in there and it would have been ride of him to tell Fukuda that he had his own family that he wanted to eat with. Well his own sister. Dad could go come and eat with Fukuda for all Sho cared.

"Fine." Said Sho as he put his bug box down on the floor next to him. He wondered how long those bugs could live in there without air holes. Would the baby snakes eat the dead bugs? He really didn't know. He just knew that snakes were carnivores and bugs were on the list of things that they liked to eat. He had to feed the baby snakes…but he supposed that he could stay for a little bit. He had to feed the baby snakes but if he didn't eat something then he would die and if he died then who was going to feed the baby snakes?

"So, leprechaun cereal or poptarts?" asked Fukuda as he pulled a box of lucky charms and a box of s'mores poptarts from the cabinet. Well now really couldn't leave. Fukuda had gone through the trouble of getting his favorite breakfast foods after all…though Sho would need to pick the non-marshmallow pieces out of the box. Big sis never let him do that but Fukuda…well he complained but he never told him now. He was nice like that. He could be nice sometimes.

"You can call them lucky charms…but I want both…and a can of coke." Said Sho. Fukuda put the cereal and poptarts down in front of him along with a bowl. When he went to the fridge he stopped moving. Sho didn't get what the holdup was about. He needed liquids to live since his body was mostly liquids and if he didn't drink then he would die of dehydration.

"It's not even seven in the morning, Sho." said Fukuda with his head in the fridge. It was more polite to look at someone when you talked to them but he wasn't a jerk like Minegishi.

"I know, I can tell time you know. I'm not a baby anymore. Now get me a can of coke…but if you don't have any coke at all then I'll just drink plain cola." Said Sho. Fukuda knew that he liked coke best and if he had gone through the trouble of getting his favorite breakfast foods then he should have gone through the trouble of getting his favorite breakfast drinks, too. It was only polite.

"Sho…I'm just not sure if you should be having that much caffeine and sugar this early in the morning." Said Fukuda

"Why not? You have coffee in the mornings and you put cream and sugar in that." Said Sho

"Ok, you win…but you get one can of coke and you have to sip it." Said Fukuda as he came out of the fridge. He set a can of coke next to Sho and opened it for him. Before Sho would even have a drink Fukuda went into the drawer behind him and got out a crazy straw…and even though he could be a real jerk sometimes he did know what Sho liked…so there was that.

"Thanks." Said Sho before he took a drink of his coke. Was there anything in the world that didn't taste better through a crazy straw? Maybe beer. He didn't much like beer but Shimazaki liked it so they drank together sometimes…even though it tasted terrible and too much of it made Sho sick…but maybe if he drank it through a crazy straw it would have been better. Not that that he was going to ask Fukuda for a crazy straw to take home. He would just ask Sho why he needed it and it would turn into a thing and he didn't want to have to deal with anything right now. Just breakfast and then baby snakes. There. He could deal with all of that.

"I said to sip it." Said Fukuda shaking his head. What? Sho was sipping it. He was just doing big sips was all.

"I am. The straw is just really long and crazy and that makes my sips long and crazy. It all makes sense once you think about it." Said Sho as he finished his extra long sip. Fukuda just shook his head and laughed a little even though nothing was funny.

"Does it now?" asked Fukuda. Sho still didn't get what was so funny. The straw was crazy but if he laid it out flat it would be really long, not that he was in the mood to ruin his crazy straw, and then because the straw was so long his sips would be extra long too. That was just how things worked. This wasn't complicated at all.

"It does…and let me pour my own cereal. I have to make sure that I don't get any non-marshmallow pieces in the bowl." Said Sho as he picked the cereal bits out piece by piece. Dad said that he was tedious and tiresome and annoying when he did this…but that wasn't there. Big sis wasn't there, either, to tell him that he needed to have all of his food groups and that included non-marshmallow cereal bits. There were some perks to having breakfast with Fukuda.

"Sorry, sorry. I looked but they didn't have the leprechaun cereal you like, the kind that's all marshmallow pieces." Said Fukuda. Sho cringed when he said leprechaun cereal. That was what mom had called it back when he had been really little. He didn't want to think about that. She had only made leprechaun cereal for him and big sis when she had been all sick and tired all day….and then she had gotten too sick and too tired to even do that and then big sis had been the one in charge of feeding him….but she had been little and she had only known how to make cereal….

Sho put a handful of cereal into his bowl. He didn't care what pieces he got.

"You can call it by it's real name, you know. I'm not a baby anymore." Said Sho

"Sorry, that's just what you used to call it when you were little-" said Fukuda

"Well I'm not a little kid anymore. I'm a big kid now and I can call things by their names." Said Sho. Now he was just putting cereal in his bowl…and maybe too much because it was coming out of his bowl now. Way too much. He should have stopped a while ago but he didn't…and that was that. He couldn't put the wet pieces back in the box, that would ruin it, so now he just had to deal with the mistake that he had made and pray that he had enough room left in his stomach for poptarts.

"Ok, ok, you aren't a little kid anymore…you're a big kid now and you can call things by their names…and also you can try to stay away from citrus." Said Fukuda. Sho rolled his eyes. He knew that tone. Fukuda was getting ready to tell him that he had done something wrong. Well he didn't need the lecture. He knew that citrus was something that could kill him, that was how allergies worked, and he knew now that he should have been afraid of those mini lemon trees. He wanted to enjoy his breakfast in peace not go over every single mistake that he had ever made in his life.

"Fukuda, I know. Just let me eat." Said Sho. If he had wanted someone to go on and on and on about how he had messed up he would have had breakfast with his dad. He didn't need this from Fukuda along with dad.

"Alright, alright. Just remember, Minegishi was wrong for planting those trees so near to where you play-" said Fukuda

"Fukuda!" said Sho. Nope. He wasn't in the mood for any of this. He was in the mood to have breakfast, the good kind, not the kind like he'd have had with dad.

"But you…well you're getting older and you should just stay out of their garden all together, alright?" said Fukuda

"Yes, ok, message received. Can I please just sit here and eat my breakfast?" said Sho. Dad would never have let him talk like that…not that Sho hadn't said much worse…but dad always got upset. He had said it, before, that he wished that Fukuda had been his dad…and he still meant it. Even if he had started to be sort of a jerk to big sis, and also if he had told his secrets to dad, he still would have made a better dad than dad.

And he was better breakfast company than dad, too.

"Alright, alright." Said Fukuda. There was some quiet there….and now it was too quiet. But he should have been happy for the quiet. If he had been at home then dad would have been telling him over and over again how annoying he was and big sis would have been telling dad that he needed to be nicer and it would have been the same thing that he had been listening to every single morning for he didn't even know how long.

"Thanks, for saving me…I mean….and don't say anything about me staying away from lemons. I know to stay away from lemons. I'm not a moron." Said Sho. He'd had to say something and now he had…but maybe he should have waited until Fukuda was done with his coffee. Now there was more silence while he swallowed…and he didn't have to look so happy and stuff. Sho had just said thanks, he hadn't told Fukuda that he was the best person ever to live or anything like that.

"You're welcome…and I never meant to call you a moron. You're a smart kid, Sho. You know that I think you're a smart kid." Said Fukuda. Sho…well he knew that Fukuda thought that he was smart…because he was smart! Dad may have thought that he was an moron but big sis said that he was smart…and mom had said that he was smart…and Fukuda thought that he was smart…and he knew that he was smart so fuck dad and fuck what dad thought. Sho knew that he was smart and….and stuff….

And dad wasn't there so why did he even care what he thought?

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it too." Said Sho as he ate. Some cereal bits fell onto his shirt. He looked down and ate them off…and he saw his bug box too. The bug weren't moving and…he tapped it with his foot…ok. They were moving. They weren't dead. That was good. The baby snakes deserved fresh food.

"So, you're collecting bugs now, huh? Well I don't much like bugs but I like it better than your last hobby." Said Fukuda. Sho drank the rest of his cereal and decided to leave the poptart for later. He didn't want to leave the poptart but he also didn't want to talk about the bugs. If he talked about the bugs then he might end up talking about the baby snakes…and he didn't really want to talk about the baby snakes.

"Yeah, I have a lot of hobbies. Anyway I have to go now and do…stuff. Anyway thanks for breakfast. See you la-" said Sho as he started to get up from the table. He stopped midway through. He could feel Fukuda's aura…and he knew that aura.

"Wait, your last hobby…wasn't that bad…and it's been a while since you practiced and you'll never be a good tattoo artist if you don't practice." Said Fukuda. Sho…well he had baby snakes to feed…but Fukuda was a person and he loved him and stuff….and anyway it wouldn't take so long if he used his powers to do a bunch of pokes at once…and also Fukuda had stuff to do probably so Sho wouldn't stay all day….

"Sure, just let me go home and get my tools." Said Sho. He would let the bugs go in the closet when he got home. He would have wanted to stay there with the baby snakes to make sure that they ate….but Fukuda needed him too and he had to be there for Fukuda. Who else would be, dad? No way. Dad didn't care about anyone other than himself. That would have been the real trick.

Forget teaching snakes to be vegetarians, teaching dad how to be a good person…now that would be the real trick.


	406. Enjoy the Park

Minegishi preferred to worry about other people's problems, that way they wouldn't have to confront their own.

This was new. Before, well, they would have found salvation at the bottom of a bottle and the end of a joint. Well there was still plenty of salvation there for them to find, and they had found some there today, but right now they were going to focus on Mob's problems. In focusing on her problems they wouldn't have to think about their own. This was new. Ten years ago, or even five, they wouldn't have given a damn about another human being's problems but…well….Mob wasn't just another person. She was Mob.

And she had a lot of problems.

Her place in Claw, her place in her family, the extremely worrying relationship she had with her father, all of it. She had a lot of problems and Minegishi was happy to help with hers. Maybe if they did nothing but help with her problems then their own problems would wither and die like those grapes they forgot to take off the vine…and now that was a real problem that they had. They needed to focus on Mob's problems because she actually had real ones. Not like whatever the hell was happening with them. They were just…they hated Osaka and they were struck with the truly bizarre feeling that they wanted to go home…and they were home! This was the closest thing to home that they had.

This stupid park.

This had been their home away from home for a time. This park. This playground. The massive tunnel shaped like a centipede that they had slept in when they had been young and in need of a place to sleep. This place…this city…this was the closest thing to home that they had but there was still this part of them that was screaming at them to just go home already….not back to the house but HOME and they had no home…not really…

Well the old house was still standing.

"Mob, are you just going to sit here with me or are you going to go and play?" asked Minegishi as they looked over their book towards Mob. They had been thinking crazy thoughts, the sort of thoughts that made them want to see the old house, see if it was still standing. See if those trees were still there…and of course they were. Those were trees, one that they had grown themselves, and they trusted their own work. Besides, they had great fertilizer.

They were not going to think about that.

Instead they were going to think about Mob. They were going to think about how her eyes kept on darting up from her own book, one of her light novels about a boy and a girl falling in love but being too scared to admit it to one another, to the group of actual boys acting like morons over at the pullup bars. Maybe they should have timed this better…or maybe they had timed this perfectly. They had gone and asked Mob if she wanted to go to the park after their nap but before her incredibly long list of daily chores had been done….and they would have thought that their fearless leader could have put his own shirts on hangers….and now they were here at this park during afterschool times. There were kids around, louder and freer than they had ever been, and louder and freer than Mob knew how to be. They were alike in some ways, them and Mob, but in some ways also very different.

They wouldn't have been content to just start at those boys.

No, they would have done something about…well how they felt. They had been about Mob's age when all of that had started up and they had done something about it. They had been less timid than her, and they were still less timid than her, and frankly Mob needed to learn how to be less timid. She was Suzuki Shigeko. She was the daughter of the most powerful man in the world, she was the second most powerful esper in the world, and she had been ballsy enough to ask out a fucking grown man. She wanted boys, there were boys, and really she would never meet a boy her age unless she got up off of this bench, put down that trashy light novel, and got out there already.

There, see? Weren't her problems so much easier to deal with?

"I'm going to sit here with you." Said Mob. She made eye contact with Minegishi and then looked back down at her book. She had been on the same sentence since….well she wasn't entirely sure how long. She just knew that they had come here to sit in the shade and read and get out of the house. Sho should have come with, he liked parks, but he had been locking himself in the closet all day lately. She had no idea what he did in there but he cursed a lot and also yelled at her when she tried and opened the door. That was his secret club, he had said, even though it wasn't much of a secret if he taped a bunch of signs on the closet door that said 'secret club do not enter' and also….well it wasn't much of a club if it was just him sitting in a dark closet all by himself all day.

Boys were weird.

She would never understand them no matter how old she got. Little brothers and other boys too. Like the ones doing flips on the bars. They kept on falling off and then when one of the boys fell off the other boys laughed at him even though he could have been really hurt….but that was just how boys are. Shimazaki and Sho were the same way…and she really didn't get it at all. Boys were so weird….and also tall. They were tall and…well she liked boys who were taller than her. Not that she liked any of those boys, no, she didn't know them and she couldn't like someone that she didn't know.

But she did like looking at them…because she was trying to understand them….because they were so weird and stuff.

"Mob, come on." Said Minegishi. This was something that they could help with. Mob needed to figure out guys her own age. They did not need another Hatori situation on their hands, first of all, and second of all being away from the opposite sex for the duration of her formative years could not have been good for her. Look at what had happened to Hatori. No, Mob didn't need that. She was clearly going through puberty, and getting into the worst part of it too, and Minegishi would help her though this like they had helped her through pretty much every single problem she'd had since they'd met. It wasn't like she had any parents or anything like that. Her mom was most likely dead and her dad treated her like some kind of sacred virgin/daughter-wife…so, yeah, without some much needed intervention Mob could very easily turn out to be really weird.

Hatori levels of weird…and Minegishi knew that the world did not need another Hatori.

"I want to sit with you. I like sitting with you." Said Mob. This was nice. She didn't want to go and play without Sho. There were a lot of kids there and if she went to play she would have been on her own…or worse. Maybe one of those other kids would try and play with her…and she didn't know how to play with another kid. The only kid that she knew besides Sho was Minori and they didn't really play together. They just sort of hung out…and maybe she was too old to play. Maybe she was too old for this place. She knew that she was eleven and eleven was a kid but she felt…well she had no idea how old she felt but she knew that it was an h-word lot older than eleven.

"Come on, I brought you here to play so go and play." Said Minegishi. They nudged her foot with theirs. Mob…she was a kid and she had no ability to relate to other kids who were not her brother…or her friend who was eleven going on twenty one and nobody saw anything wrong with that…not their monkey, not their circus. Mob was their monkey and this was their circus and they were going to be there for her no matter what capacity they needed her in. Even as her wingman.

"Can you come with me?" asked Mob. Shimazaki played with Sho…but he was Shimazaki. One time he had eaten a crayon, well chewed on it, to see what blue tasted like. He did things all the time that people were not supposed to do…but adults could play on playgrounds with kids. Mom used to do that when she and Sho were little, really little, and Mob couldn't remember those days that clearly…it was before she got sick…but she did remember that she and Sho'd had a lot of fun back then…and they could have fun together on their own now…

And also she could have that same kind of fun with Minegishi.

"I'm twenty eight, Mob, you go and play. I'll be here. I've got a lot of reading to do." Said Minegishi. They leaned back and went back to their book. It might have been very good…though they had no idea what it was about. They couldn't focus. They had no idea what was wrong with them. They couldn't focus at the house, they couldn't focus here, they were thinking about home for the first time in forever…they just did not know. All they knew was that Mob had been staring at those boys all day and she had no reason to be so timid.

And Minegishi knew that they could help her with that.

"Um….but there are other kids there." said Mob. She could see kids in uniforms, kids without uniforms, kids her age, kids older than her, kids younger than her, and just…a lot of kids. She had no idea what to do. Sho had always been very good at making friends with the other kids back when they had been little…and even now he was good at making friends. He had a girlfriend after all…not that Mob was sure what the whole story there was since he had told her all the stuff that he had told her…but he did have a girlfriend and he had always been good at making friends and maybe she should act like him….

That would have been a complete and total disaster.

Maybe she could just be herself…but herself was terrible. Minori had said so. Mob pulled the straps of her Elsa bag close. She looked, acted, and dressed like a first grader even though she should have been going into her last year old elementary school soon. She wasn't a first grader but…but if she acted like it and the other kids made fun of her…if a bunch of boys made fun of her...then she had no idea at all what she would do.

Probably be really embarrassed and run all the way home.

"So go and play with them. Come on, I see the way that you're looking at those guys over there." said Minegishi. Mob reached back and held her hair down. Her bangs were floating a little bit though and Minegishi could feel the grass beneath their feet standing at attention for her. God, she really was adorable. Where was the girl who had looked Hatori in the eye and asked to be fuck buddies, well kissing buddies, fully expecting him to say yes? That was the Mob that they liked to see…well not the asking out grown men part…but the confidence part. So if there was some way to find that confidence again then Minegishi would be the person to help her with that.

It was better than dealing with their own shit, anyway.

"I-I wasn't looking I mean…I mean I could never play with them or…or talk to them…or anything like that." Said Mob softly. She felt Minegishi reaching over past her. They closed her book and put it down on the bench next to them. This really was a good spot, nice and shady, and she had no idea why they wanted her to get up and play. They were happy there together….right?

Right?

"Mob, come on, I know you. Besides, you don't have to talk to them. I bet if you just go and sit on those swings over there those guy's are going to fall over each other for your attention. Trust me, I know guys and I've been your age before. They'd sell their own mother to the circus for five minutes of attention from a pretty girl." Said Minegishi. They weren't exaggerating. That was a terrible age. Plenty of guys were the worst…and plenty of girls, too, and Minegishi did not want Mob to turn into one of those kids that was more hormones than brains…but she already sort of was…and that wasn't good for anyone. The best thing to do was to show her that guys weren't everything, or at least not worth obsessing over, and also that guys her age were in reach and she didn't have to ask out her coworker who was nearly twice her age.

Because, really, that had been too much.

"I'm not pretty." Said Mob. Well dad said that she was pretty but he was her dad and dads were supposed to say that their daughters were pretty. They also weren't supposed to tell their sons that they were stupid and tiresome and stuff…but Mob was working on that…and she knew that she wasn't pretty, anyway. Minori was pretty, Minegishi was pretty, pretty much everyone was pretty. Mob was just…not ugly but really plain looking…and that was ok. She was who she was and…well even with her eyes all eyeshadowed up she still wasn't pretty.

But that was ok because not everyone in the whole world could be pretty…just like not everyone in the whole world could have powers…and all of that was ok.

"Mob, you are. You're a really pretty girl, you know that? You're pretty and I bet that one of these days you're going to make the boys fall like dominos to be near you. Like now. Trust me, you won't even have to say anything. They'll come to you…not that there's anything wrong with approaching someone but that might be a little advanced for you right now." Said Minegishi

"But….I don't think that I can have a boyfriend. I mean Sho has a girlfriend but I don't think that the long distance is good for their relationship. I read that long distance was a relationship killer…and also I don't think that dad wants me to have a boyfriend. He always pulls me away when boys try and talk to me when we're on out Sunday outings…and also he keeps on saying that he wants to spend his life with me…so maybe I shouldn't ever talk to boys." Said Mob. She didn't know if she wanted to spend her whole life with dad, she loved him but he could be a lot sometimes, and also she really wanted a boyfriend. She wanted a boy to kiss and hold hands with and love and be loved by and maybe that stuff that came later when she got older and stuff…but she knew that she couldn't even have the kissing part now. She moved around too much and even if she didn't dad was…well he was dad.

"I never said anything about finding a boyfriend, God, who has time for that stress? Just go and have fun…but remember that you don't owe anyone anything…but also it's ok to want what you want. So, yeah, go get 'em Mob." Said Minegishi. They nudged her again. She definitely needed to learn how to talk to guys. Her dad…Minegishi couldn't predict the future but they could definitely see Mob describing her relationship with her dad to a therapist in about ten or so years. That was just….Minegishi had no idea what to make of their relationship. It wasn't sexual, Mob would have said if it was and then Minegishi would end up rotting in a traitor hole for trying to kill Suzuki, but it was just…abnormal. The running theory, from Hatori since he was best friends with the President now or something, was that Suzuki had lost his mind after his wife died and now out of grief he turned Mob into a miniature version of her because he sucks at processing feelings.

Everyone else thought that he was just a weirdo.

Minegishi…really hoped that his first act as President of the world for life wasn't making it legal for close family members to marry….because it would have been a damn shame for him to have achieved his life's goal only to be murdered by a dandelion seed or something. Also the whole thing would have been bad for Mob….and even without the incest thing they were getting a real gender swapped Norman Bates vibe from Mob's relationship with Suzuki…

So, yeah, time to go and talk to some guys her own age.

"Um…ok. I do like swings….so that's where I'm going to go…to the swings." Said Mob as she got up off the bench. She smoothed her skirt down as she walked. There were kids to the left of her…and to the right…and they were running and playing and…and she really wished that Sho had been with her. Sho knew what to do. She didn't. She was clueless. If she was clueless in what to do when crossing a playground, the most clueless person who had ever lived, then why did Minegishi think that she could just go up to some boys and talk to them….

Well they had said that she wouldn't have to.

Mob sat down on a free swing. It was hot on the back of her legs…well all of Osaka was hot…but the plastic of the swing was very hot. Hot enough that maybe she should have gotten off. Maybe she should have gotten off and gone back to Minegishi and read her manga and just…stayed where it was safe. There was this old book that mom had read to her, you can't forsake the journey for the safety of your room it had said, and Mob…well maybe this was too much journey for her. Maybe she needed to get back to the safety of her room…or just Minegishi. They were reading and…well maybe something was bothering them. They knew Minegishi, how their aura was when they read, how relaxed it was, and this was not that. Their aura was all pulled in, what little aura they had, and Mob should have gone back to them.

But they had told her to come over here and just…be here. Like she was a kid or something…and she was a kid but…she looked out at the other kids. They were acting like Sho. Everyone was acting like Sho, the boys and the girls. They were running and screaming and…well Mob didn't do that. She didn't even like climbing that much either. Well she had always liked the swings best but she had never really liked climbing without Sho….and she never really went to places where there were other kids without Sho…and she didn't know why she missed her brother so much. She knew where he was, at home, and she knew that she would see him again when she got home…..but she really missed him right now. She missed Sho and also Minegishi, which made even less sense since they were sitting right there, and she just felt….

Like she shouldn't have been there.

Like this wasn't the place for her. She was sitting all alone on the swings just like when she had been little. She had felt the same way back when she had been little too. This was what she had always done during recess, well outdoor recess, she had always swung until it was over. Swings were fun because they were something that you could do by yourself. That way nobody got mad at you for being too near them when they were trying to play and also they didn't make fun of you for not having anyone to play with….and when you did try to play with someone they always kicked you out for looking bored.

But Mob wasn't bored, that was just how she looked.

She looked like dad. Dad always looked bored even when he wasn't. Like the time they had stayed up all night together and he explained Claw…all of it…everything from the HQs to the divisions to the cells and squads…and he had bene very excited. His aura had been excited but he just sounded as bored as he always did. He looked and sounded bored and so did she and he had told her, once, that the other kids hadn't liked him much either when he had been a kid. He also told her that it didn't matter if she was liked or not because one day their family would rule the world. Mob…even when their family ruled the world she still wasn't going to force people to like her…and this wasn't even about being liked…

She didn't want to be liked by the other kids. She wanted to be like the other kids…

Maybe. She didn't know. She just…she wondered what it was like to be Sho. He could be really happy sometimes…and he was always finding new ways to have fun, and he never worried about what people thought of him…well at least it seemed like he didn't. He had only told her the truth about who he liked because he didn't want people to think badly of him and stuff…even though that made no sense. Sho could love who he loved and if someone had a problem with her brother liking boys then she would just have to exorcise them….and Sho knew that she wouldn't let anyone not accept him….well she didn't tell dad what to do because he was the dad and she was the kid….but still. She would never have let anyone make Sho feel bad about who he was.

There was nothing worse than feeling bad about who you were.

Because, really, you were who you were. Sure you could be nice or mean but…well there were things that you couldn't help about yourself. Like how Hatori wanted to eat people or like how dad didn't know how people worked or like how sometimes Sho could get really mean…and how she looked bored all the time. She was who she was. She was Mob. She looked bored all the time, the other kids didn't like her, and that was alright because she had a best friend and a bunch of other good friends….and they were all adults…so maybe she would be able to make friends when she became an adult or something. Not that she was there to make friends…well making friends was always a good thing…but she was there to be near other kids and make Minegishi happy and stuff….

And she had been there for a while….so maybe it was time to get up.

The swing wasn't super hot anymore, not burning hot, and….well it was comfortable now…and she could get up. She could get up but…well she hadn't swung in a while. She liked swings and not just because it was something that she could do on her own…so maybe she would swing a little bit and then go back to Minegishi and finish her manga and stuff. She swung a little bit and watched the people as she went up and down. This was easier. Now she at least looked like she belonged. She could see a bunch of girls sitting and talking, sort of like what she and Minori did but without the smoking and stuff, and there were some little kids trying to climb up the slide while some other little kids tried to go down…kids had been doing that back when she had been little too….and there were those boys that she had been looking at…looking in the direction of….and they were looking at her…no, that was crazy. They had been looking in her direction. She looked over at them and then they all looked away and stuff so they had just been looking in her direction. Now they were shoving each other and stuff….and boys were so weird…

But she liked them.

They were like these weird people she wanted to be near and stuff. It was weird. She just…liked them a lot, even ones she didn't know, and it was just…like her brain had thoughts without her telling it what to think. Like she'd be doing laundry or homeschool work or something and then her brain would be all 'hey, if we had a boyfriend we could be kissing him right now' and then she would have to tell her brain to shut up but it wouldn't listen…like now…but she really needed it to listen….so maybe it was time to stop swinging. Yes, this was a great time to stop.

Someone was sitting next to her.

She dragged her feet on the ground to stop herself. There was a boy, one of the ones she had been looking at, sitting on the swing next to her. He was just sort of looking at her…and she had no idea what to do when a boy was looking at her. She just looked back. He looked away, then back to her, and then away again. She wondered what he wanted. She wondered if it was ok to ask. She didn't know. She barely knew how to talk to girls her own age…and boys were a whole other thing entirely. They were just…boys. Like people but also boys…well boys were people too…but boys were different people than girls…

Boys were just…boys….they were people but they were also boys…and she was not a boy.

She was a girl. She had been a girl for her entire life, and it didn't feel like anything, not really…except for when boys were near her. Boys who weren't family or friends. She felt…she felt like her eyeshadow was all smudgy, she felt like her skirt was somehow both too long and too short, and she felt like…well like she wasn't pretty at all…but also that she was being looked at…but in a good way. Not the way the Fukuda made her feel. More like….good but also….well not bad but…well not good and…

And also her brain didn't always work so well when she was near boys she liked…or just boys in general.

"Um….hi?" said Mob. She felt like she had to say something…and you were supposed to greet people nicely because that was good manners…and she had to have good manners because mom and dad had taught her that….and also she didn't want to be rude….and also she had to say something because she was being looked at like maybe he was trying to say something but he was waiting for her to say something…or something….she didn't know….

So she just said 'hi'.

"Hi…uh…hi." Said the boy. He looked behind her. She turned to see what was happening back there. His friends were waving at him and giving him a thumbs up. She didn't get it. She didn't get boys but boys didn't get girls so it was even. She wondered how people ever got married or became boyfriend and girlfriend and stuff if they were so hard to understand, boys for girls and girls for boys, but she would ask Minegishi later. They knew a lot of things about a lot of things.

Things that Mob didn't know.

"Hi…um….do you want this swing?" asked Mob. Maybe that was why she was being stared at. Minori would have known for sure. She always knew why boys were staring. Boys had all sorts of different looks, Minori had said, and she had been looked at by enough boys that she could figure out immediately why she was being looked at and stuff. She wished that Minori had been there…even though she said that parks were for babies.

"No….I mean…um…I'm Yamashida….um…do you want to see me jump? I can just really far…off the swing I mean." Said the boy. Mob nodded.

"Um…sure…and I'm Suzuki…" said Mob. She…didn't get it. She didn't get it but, well, she didn't get boys. At least she got to be near one…and was this that thing that Minegishi had told her about? How they had said that boys would come to her and stuff just if she was near? Well now…she didn't think too much about this. She didn't look into it too much. She had looked into things too much with Hatori and she had been so wrong…so she just sat there and didn't think about why a boy wanted her to watch him jump off of a swing.

He could jump sort of far, though.

"That was cool, you jumped far." Said Mob. She would never understand boys for as long as she lived…why they did the things they did and stuff….but she could be nice. She was nice. She was always nice.

"Th-thanks…I could have jumped farther but there are a lot of people here, you know? I mean…um…do you want me to push you? I mean it's just easier to go higher if someone pushes you so….do you want me to push you?" asked the boy. Mob didn't need to be pushed on the swings. She was eleven and she had been doing this on her own since she had been three years old. She remembered that she had been three because Sho had been two and still little enough to fit in the baby swings. She knew how to swing on her own but….

Well he was tall.

He was tall and…well she just…liked that he was tall. Also he was being nice to her. Also just…well this was just a thing that boys did for you sometimes. This was something that she understood. Back when she had been in school, when she had been little, when boys liked girls they pushed them on the swings and stuff. She just…well she didn't know this boy enough to know if she liked him…but she liked that he was tall and he was looking at her and…well she liked how he was looking at her and…well….

Her legs were kind of tired…maybe…possibly.

"Um….sure." said Mob. She knew that maybe this was a bad idea. His friends, well they had been shoving each other but that was a friendship thing for boys it seemed, were telling him that he had it…and she had no idea what he had but…well it was nice to be pushed and also he was close when he pushed her…and also he was good at pushing. Sho pushed her sometimes, when he thought that she was swinging too slowly, and he always pushed too hard, so hard that she almost fell off the swing, but this boy was pushing her…well not too hard but not too soft…and his hand was on her back and…

And she decided to focus on the world under her.

She focused on how she could see the whole park. She could see those girls from before, they were still talking, and all of those little kids had moved on from the slide to the jungle gym, and also there were a lot of people walking dogs, and there was someone walking a cat…and she wished that she had taken a picture because Sho would have liked that…and so would Minegishi….wait, they noticed. They were still sitting there and they notice the man walking the cat…and they noticed her, too, now. She waved at them and they waved back at her. They said something that she couldn't hear. She would ask them later when she was done here.

Right now she was just going to enjoy being pushed on the swings.

"Swing on, Mob, you've got this." said Minegishi as Mob waved to them. Well that had worked out well for her. Good. That was one problem solved…well not solved. Mob still had a lot of her shell to get out of, and a lot of socializing to catch up on, but Minegishi had a lot of time on their hands and a lot of their own problems that they were running from so, yeah, come on Mob. Bring it on. They could deal with whatever other problems she had or things she needed help with or, well, anything.

That was what best friends were for after all. Helping you with your problems so they could better avoid dealing with theirs.


	407. Annoyances of All Kinds

Sometimes it was best to just ignore the things which upset you.

Be it no cooperative possible allies, your Son cursing in ways that some might even call creative, or your house being infested with garden beetles sometimes it was just best to ignore the thigs which bothered you. Either that or go insane and Suzuki had no intention of ever going insane. He liked his current level of sanity, which was at perfectly sane despite what some people said before they met their perfectly timely and earned ends, and he had no desire to become anything less than perfectly sane. Even if sometimes the world seemed to be bent on making him insane.

But he was going to do his best to ignore the world.

He was going to do his best to ignore the fact that his Son had taken to essentially living in a closet…if he was planning on becoming one of those shut ins that Suzuki had been reading about then Son had another thing coming. He did his best to ignore the fact that Shigeko wasn't home either. She was with Minegishi and that was alright, they took good care of her, and even if they didn't Suzuki had taken care of anyone who would have done his Daughter harm….also he was going to ignore the fact that he had taken care of every other esper group, or group with an esper in it, and yet this woman still said 'no' to him.

It made no sense.

Joining Claw would not only be mutually beneficial for both of them but also esper kind. That was the thing, she just could not see the big picture, but most people couldn't. It was another annoyance that Suzuki tried to ignore. He knew why people joined him. The promise of money, the promise of power, the promise that he was some kind of living God as he'd been called, fear for their own lives, but never….very people saw the world the way that he saw it. It made no sense, no logical sense at all, that the powerful were forced to hide from the powerless. It made no sense that the world couldn't even know of their existence, widely anyway, and it just…it made more sense the way he saw it. The vision of the world he'd had since he was not much older than his children. A world where espers wouldn't have to hide, a world where espers wouldn't have to grow up thinking that they were the only ones of their kind, and a world where he ruled because he was the only man for the job. He was the most powerful esper on Earth after all…so of course it was right that he could rule….

And it was so annoying that nobody could see that…that she couldn't see that….

And it was annoying that he even cared what she felt. Sakata Shiori….he shouldn't have cared what she thought or felt…and he certainly should not have been trying to get her to join him like this, by removing her enemies, it just didn't make sense. She should have been given the same offer as anyone else…but if she took option two he just…he didn't know. Indecisive. He was indecisive and it was so annoying. He hated being…well he hated being anything other than himself and he was a very decisive person. He always had been and always would be a very deceive person.

To be anything else would have been annoying…almost as annoying as the garden beetles that were taking over the house.

He saw one on the wall, there, by the refrigerator. He didn't think, he just hit it flat with his powers. He had no choice. Garden beetles were vermin and he could not have vermin in the house. Houses were for people, not insects, and insects spread disease. They spread disease and disease was one of the few things that could kill him. He hadn't been a sickly child, in fact he had always been remarkably healthy, but there had been times when even he succumbed to illness…and he hadn't known Fukuda then…and the thought of something as small and insignificant as a microbe being able to end his life…it was…

Annoying.

Being weak was always annoying. Admitting his own weakness to anyone other than Shigeko, and even it was hard admitting it to Shigeko sometimes too, was just so…annoying. He didn't want to be weak, and he did not consider himself to be a weak man, but there were just somethings about himself that…were weak…and even having those parts of himself annoyed him. Acknowledging them….well that was just…that was even worse than having them. Even though he had those parts he could just…well he knew that those parts of himself wouldn't just disappear if he ignored them for long enough…but he also knew that nothing good would come of acknowledging them…so he didn't. Because they were just so….annoying.

Not as annoying as having to listen to Hatori carry on like that, though.

"Hatori, stop that. You're being annoying again." said Suzuki. He forced his aura to stay flat and calm. Hatori had made that terrible yelping sound again and now he was looking under the table. He did not need Hatori to become frightened enough to hide. That was always annoying and Suzuki could not deal with any more annoyances today.

"Sorry, Suzuki, I just got startled is all. I mean I wasn't expecting….that." said Hatori. Suzuki nodded. Maybe he meant that if he knew what to expected, later, he wouldn't carry on like that. Yes, that would have made sense. Hatori startled easily. Suzuki suspected that he had some sort of disorder.

"There was an insect and I killed it. Next time you see an insect brace yourself because I'll kill it again. Understood?" asked Suzuki

"Understood….but do you have to hit so hard? You kind of made a dent in the wall." Said Hatori. Oh, so he did. Well that was fine. He didn't much care about these houses or any houses. Houses were just collections of wood and paint and plaster. They could be replicated anywhere. They could be bought anywhere. They could be destroyed and recreated at any time. He didn't care if he brought this house down over both of their heads. He could always just find another one….not that he wanted to. That was an annoyance in and of it's self.

"I don't care, it's just a wall." Said Suzuki

"I guess…overkill for a bug, though, just saying…not that you did anything wrong! I mean…bugs suck." Said Hatori. He was playing with the sleeve of his sweater as he said that. There was a thread at the end of that which had come loose. Suzuki tore it off for him. He could not stand loose threads.

"They do…and that's why they need to die. I have no idea how they keep on getting into this house but when they do they have to die." Said Suzuki. He thought that he saw another one out of the corner of his eye and prepared to strike…but it had been nothing. These beetles…when he came to power the first thing he was doing was exterminating the garden beetle. They were ugly, annoying, and they multiplied too quickly too. The children could have tracked in only two at some point and then within a week the whole house could have been infested…and he did not want to deal with an infested house on top of everything else that he had to deal with on a daily basis.

"Maybe because it's been so humid out. It's really humid in Osaka…worse than Tokyo, anyway." Said Hatori

"That's possible. It is unbearably humid here. I have no idea why people choose to stay." Said Suzuki. He grew up in Seasoning City, which was unbearable in the summer, but Osaka was something else. What didn't help was the fact that someone kept on turning the air conditioning off. He had no idea why they, probably Son since he was shortsighted enough to think that was a good idea, would do that but he did know that it made the house almost unbearable. He was down to his undershirt and still he was hot…and he could not wait until the air conditioning finished cooling the house completely. This heat was so sticky and annoying.

"Me neither…maybe for the arcade. It's pretty great. You and me should go sometime." Said Hatori. Suzuki almost frowned at that. Hatori was always inviting him places and he didn't know why. He had no shortage of people to spend time with, including the children, and Suzuki always said 'no' anyway. He just didn't understand why Hatori kept on inviting him…but he would keep on declining, anyway, even though saying 'yes' maybe have been the thing to get him to come off of all of that once and for all.

"You and I…and also I'm going to have to pass. Take my children with you. Shigeko loves outings and Son…he's been spending a worrying amount of time hiding in the closet." said Suzuki. He had no idea what was so funny, and he could tell that Hatori was suppressing some laughter there, maybe the fact that Son was being ridiculous….yes. There was always humor to Son being ridiculous.

"He'll come out on his own when he's ready." Said Hatori still laughing a bit. Suzuki didn't get it. Son had done much more ridiculous things in the past…like the time he had gotten his tongue stuck to a streetlight in the middle of winter…or the time he and Shigeko dragged a tree into the house from the outside…and there had been one time when he had been a baby and he had gotten himself stuck dangling from the top of the door frame. Suzuki had warned him about climbing but even at the age of twenty three months he had already been completely ridiculous….and he was still so ridiculous. So annoyingly ridiculous.

"He comes out for meals sometimes. I have no idea what he does in there all day but I'm grateful that he's busy in there and not out here making a distraction out of himself." Said Suzuki. The thought of Son out there carrying on…it sends a shudder up his spine. He does not need to deal with that right now. He had intelligence to review, rivals to take down, and a very stubborn woman to convince. He had so much going on that he couldn't even take a break to do something enjoyable with Hatori…and that was the best part of his company. If he just wanted to sit there and work then he would have been sitting beside Fukuda, not Hatori. He was always good at keeping him on track, Fukuda, but he didn't need that now. He had too much to do to even begin to think about going off track.

"Yeah, Sho's got a lot of energy. He's a good kid though, just a good with a lot of energy." Said Hatori. Suzuki shook his head. Good was not the word he would have used to describe Son. Tiresome, quarrelsome, generally annoying…those were all words that better encompassed that child. Suzuki didn't know what was wrong with him. He just kept going and going and going like he was some sort of living perpetual motion machine or something.

"He's more of a perpetual motion machine than a human child. I have no idea where he gets it from. I was never like him when I was his age. I used to be able to sit perfectly still for hours and hours, even, when it was required of me." Said Suzuki. He knew that Son was his, he knew that Masami would never have let another man anywhere near her, but he just did not understand where Son had…come from. Where his worst traits had come from. He certainly hadn't gotten them from Suzuki himself…and he could not even begin to picture Masami ever behaving like Son even as a child…a loss. He was at a loss when it came to his only blood child.

"Why did you sit perfectly still for hours and hours when you were a kid?" asked Hatori. Suzuki didn't understand the question. School was the first thing that came to mind but then he remembered how terribly the other children had behaved. They spoke even though their teacher forbade it and they got up and played when it had been forbidden. The day went by much faster if you just sat perfectly still, let it wash over you, and then so any work that was assigned to you. Most people weren't like him, though, so school might not have been the best answer.

The next answer that came to mind was mother and father.

Mother and father hadn't like it when he ran around so he stopped. They hadn't liked it when he climbed on things so he stopped. They hadn't liked him playing with the other children on the playground, even, so he stopped. He sat still, beside them, for hours and hours when they did things as a family. Long drives through the country, documentary and film marathons, watching mother paint in her studio, watching father work in his office when his presence had been permitted….and now he realized how much of his childhood he had spent sitting still, perfectly still, and doing as he was told….

Why couldn't Son have taken after him in that respect?

"Mother and father asked it of me and I always did what I was told. It was my job as their son. When you have children you'll understand." Said Suzuki. Hatori had only been a Son for fifteen years and he probably couldn't even remember what it was like. Family life was such an easy thing to forget. He hadn't even thought about his, the life he'd had with mother and father, until Daughter had brought it up all those weeks ago…and in a way she was still bringing it up. She would be home soon to make tempura just like she did every Friday night and he would eat it just as he did every Friday night…and he would try not to remember the endless Fridays that had come before this…just as he did every Friday night…Fridays were so annoying.

"I really don't see myself ever having kids. I mean I'd need a partner for that and people aren't exactly lining up to date me so…yeah." Said Hatori. Suzuki wished that he had more confidence in himself. He needed to talk to Fukuda. Suzuki had felt, when he had been younger, the same way Hatori did. That there was something wrong with him, something that made him inherently undesirable to the opposite sex, Hatori was a homosexual but the point still stood, but then Fukuda had told him that he had a lot to offer a girl, well woman now since they were grown men, and that had brought him right out of the pit of despair. Really, everyone needed someone like Fukuda in their life. He was good at fixing things…but for some reason Hatori didn't seem to think so. Logic dictated that they should have been friends but logic rarely had anything to do with the invisible bonds that people formed with one another.

"I don't see why not. You're pleasant to be around despite your constant panicking, your skin is almost completely cleared up, you're competent at your work, and also the shape of your lenses is fascinating. If you had been a woman I would have been happy to have you….well if I weren't married. You need to have more confidence in yourself. It doesn't matter who you are or what you're capable of so long as you have the confidence to reach your goals. That's the secret of success, constant and never ending confidence in yourself." Said Suzuki. There. Good things. He had said good things and now Hatori would stop feeling bad about himself. He meant every word of it. He wished that he understood people better, then maybe he could see why people didn't seem to want to be with Hatori. He knew what mean valued in women and Hatori fit into that. He was small, his hair looked soft, he looked like he would have been a good caretaker, and he was very good company. If Suzuki had been looking for a wife and Hatori had been a woman then of course he would have pursued him romantically and sexually. Who wouldn't? But this was reality and Suzuki was married so he was not going to be pursing Hatori of anyone else.

He still had that ring on his finger.

He was still a married man. It didn't matter who came into is life, it didn't matter who she was or what she was or if she was even someone who he could have seen himself with in some hypothetical alternate universe in which he had never met Masami. He was a married man and he would be a married man until either he died or he received word of Masami's death, the thought makes him want to kill someone, and married men did not have those sorts of thoughts about women…or their male friends if they had been born as women. He was married and he didn't think of anyone in that way. Not Hatori if he had been born a woman and certainly not any actual woman.

Not even the most stubborn one that he had ever met.

"Yeah…if I was a girl…" said Hatori. He had a tone there that Suzuki didn't understand. What was so inconceivable about that? If Hatori had been female he would have had no shortage of partners. A female esper was a rare thing, first of all, and second of all he really wasn't the bad once you got to know him. Sure he could be annoying, most people were, but he was just incredibly pleasant to be around and to speak to. He didn't look like he would take up much room in the bed, too, which was something that Suzuki hadn't thought about before he married. Always marry someone who won't sleep too much on your side of the bed. Always marry someone what was good company. Always marry someone that you found physically attractive, too, and Hatori would have been an attractive woman considering how feminine he was now. He was a very small man, and he just had this softness to him, so if he had been a woman he would have been a very good partner.

Also he couldn't survive on his own.

He had no parents, no siblings, no cousins, no education past middle school, and no idea how to live out in the world on his own. The minutia of it. Suzuki knew how difficult it was figuring out how to live without any guidance, everything from paying bills and setting up a bank account to cremating and interring your death parents, and Suzuki had been three years older and a hundred years wiser than Hatori when he'd found himself alone in the world. Hatori knew nothing about how to survive out there…and that was perfect. The best sort of partner was one that could never leave you. One who couldn't have left even if they had wanted to. Hatori was that sort of person…

And it was a pity that he was a homosexual. He would have been perfect for Shigeko.

"Yes, you would have been a very desirable partner if you had been born a woman…but you're a man but that doesn't mean that you wouldn't be a very desirable partner…at least I imagine it does. I have no idea what men look for in other men." Said Suzuki. He really didn't. When he pictured what he would have looked for in a man, if he had been a homosexual, he just pictured the things that he looked for in a woman. Good company, good at caring for children, intelligent, capable, soft, and unable to leave him. That couldn't have been right. Men were different. Men must have wanted things from other men that he couldn't even imagine. He wondered what he would have looked for in a man if he had been a woman…and he just came up with the same thing. He wasn't good at this…but then again he had never been good at these hypothetical situations.

"Pretty much the same thing men look for in women I guess. You know, good looks and a good job and, you know, the love." Said Hatori. Suzuki nodded. Maybe he had been overthinking it. Maybe everyone was just looking for the same thing in everyone else…but then why have heterosexuals and homosexuals? Wouldn't everyone have just partnered up with everyone else then?

"That makes sense I suppose…but that also raises further questions." Said Suzuki

"You…have questions?" asked Hatori. His aura went in close and his eyes danced between the window and the space underneath the table…and he really needed to get some help for his obvious fear disorder. He was a smart man, one of the smartest Suzuki knew, surely he must have known that nothing was going to harm him so long as Suzuki was around. Maybe he needed professional help or something if his fear was overriding his basic common sense.

"Yes. What you said raises the question of why we even have heterosexual people and homosexual people in the first place if all people are looking for the same things from one another." Said Suzuki

"Because…people are attracted to who they're attracted to. Some people like men, some people like women, and some people like neither. It's just a thing that you're born with…why? Is it a conscious choice for you?" asked Hatori. Suzuki thought for a moment. Was it a choice? It had never been a choice for him. He met women and then he either didn't look twice at them or he loved them more than life its self. That was normal. He loved the women he loved because he found them physically attractive and they could take care of him. He would take care of them in the way a man was meant to take care of a woman and then she would take care of him in the way that a woman was meant to take care of a man. He would never find himself alone in the world again…not that he wasn't a complete person on his own…but men and women were meant to pair up together. Just like mother and father had said. For everyone man and woman there was their most perfect person, their other half, the person who took care of them and the person who they would take care of. For a man it meant providing for her and for a woman it meant taking care of the man's home and his children. That was why homosexuality was so confusing. The whole thing seemed based on….finding another person pleasant to be around…but both men and women could be pleasant to be around…so he just did not understand.

"No, not a conscious choice. When I meet a woman I either think that she'd be a good partner or I won't…not that I think about women because I'm married. When you get married you'll understand…and I wish that understanding you was as simple as you understanding marriage. From what you've said partner selection comes down to finding another person pleasant to be around…and that seems awfully…well it doesn't seem like a logical system to me. Men and women can both be equally pleasant and wanted in your life…and I find the whole thing to be very confusing." Said Suzuki

"…um….yeah, it's a Rubik's cube-" said Hatori

"No, Rubik's cubes are simple. You can tell at a glance how to solve one of those toys and in how many moves too." Said Suzuki. Those toys….God, those toys. He had achieved a brief moment of fame when he had been in elementary school and it got around that he was good at solving them…though he didn't think that he was particularly skilled when it came to Rubik's cubes. Everyone else just seemed particularly terrible.

"Right…uh….oh! You got another email from that Sakata woman…to your public work email, don't worry, your private stuff hasn't been compromised." Said Hatori. Suzuki…wished that he had a whole basket of Rubik's cubes in front of him. He wished that he had a whole basket of Rubik's cubes in front of him as well as his dissertation for his Mathematical Sciences graduate degree….because he understood those things. Things which made sense. He….this…Sakata….she did not make sense. He was not the one who didn't make sense, she did, and that was why she made him feeling things that did not make any sense whatsoever.

Because, really, he was fine.

So what if she had messaged him directly and not her people? So what if, maybe, she had noticed all the things that he had done for her and now she wanted to maybe make some sort of a deal? So what if she might even have wanted to meet again…and he's suddenly very aware of the fact that he doesn't have a proper shirt on….and just…he's fine. He's fine and everything is fine and…and he's perfectly calm and collected.

Of course he is, he's Suzuki Touichirou.

"Well, what does it say?" asked Suzuki. He knew that he would not be able to make sense of any written words right now….because of…reasons. Reasons which had nothing to do with the fact that Shiori…that SAKATA, had messaged him. He was fine. He was…he was the President of Claw. He was much too important and much too busy to read things. That was why he had people like Hatori around. Yes, he was…he was so busy that…that it was just easier to have someone else do his reading for him. Yes, that was it. It all made perfect sense.

"She says…well she says thanks for getting rid of her enemies but her answer still stands…and she's happy to talk to you about how you'll never change her mind and…whoa…." Said Hatori. The room shook a bit. Something fell out of the cabinet. The lights flicked. Whoa? What was 'whoa'? Well he knew what it meant, it was an exclamation which could have been both positive or negative and….and he had no idea which he was more afraid of….

"Hatori. Explain." Said Suzuki. He was still the one in charge here. He was in charge of Hatori, and his own emotions, and also the world someday. He could and would handle whatever it was that had made Hatori say 'whoa' even if…maybe she was planning on waging war on Claw. Yes! That was wonderful! Well, no, actually it wasn't…they hadn't had a war in a while but the last one had really depleted his supply of both funds and manpower…but at least war was something that he could understand.

"She says that she's tired of playing telephone and she…well she gave you her private phone number….and what looks like her personal email address." Said Hatori. That was…something. Hatori might have said something else but Suzuki…he could not think. She had…what? Well he was no stranger to getting women's phone numbers….well he was not because he had been married for some time…but just…why would she….she knew that he could…didn't she know that by giving him her phone number that he could CALL her?

"Hatori...explain." said Suzuki. He must have been overthinking this, yes, that was it. He was so annoying when he overthought things. She just…she just had some sort of perfectly logical reason to give him her phone number…and her email address….and now he was reminded of the time Fukuda had walked through the door of their shared apartment with a list of pager numbers AND telephone numbers written up and down both arms…and in retrospect maybe Suzuki should have gone to that mixer…because at least then he would have had some idea of what he was supposed to do in this situation…if he even could do anything….he played with his wedding ring.

He was still a married man.

"Ok, so telephone is this game where you-" said Hatori. Suzuki shook his head. He knew what telephone was. He had played that game in primary school and had been banned from that game, too, after he hit and bit another child…but to be fair he had been intentionally saying nonsense that had nothing to do with what was told to him and he had been ruining the game…but that had been forty years ago and had nothing to do with what was happening now…since this wasn't a game.

"No, no, no. I know what telephone is. It's a game that was played when even I was a child. I need to know why she would give me her actual phone number and her email address. Doesn't she know that I could call her? Doesn't she…you know people. You know how their minds work. Tell me why she would do this." said Suzuki

"She wants you to talk to her, I guess, probably about…work stuff? I don't know. Women are complicated." Said Hatori. Suzuki nodded. Yes, they were, they really were. She had seen that ring on his finger, she knew that he was married, so…so he was the one being…but then why would she…work stuff. Work things. She just…but she had said no so many times already…but then why would she….

Where was Fukuda when he needed him.

"Yes…you're right. You're a homosexual so it wasn't very smart of me to ask you about women." Said Suzuki. He needed to ask Fukuda about this…but he had no idea where Fukuda had gone to. Well off doing the million and one administrative things he had to do….but he needed Fukuda right now. He knew people. He knew women, he was very good with them despite never having been married, and he was the man who helped Suzuki navigate these things…..and he just…needed to stay calm.

"Yeah….but I do think that she wants you to talk to her. I mean to call her. She gave you her actual phone number so…maybe you could call her…or something." Said Hatori. Suzuki…tried his best to remain calm…but his best was not in any way, shape, or form good enough. The spot on the wall, the one which had a dent in it, now sported a hole. Suzuki hadn't meant to do that. He just…lost control…and that was so annoying…but so was this! So was him just…he didn't know what in the hell he was supposed to….calm down. He was supposed to calm down. He had to calm down.

For Hatori's sake as well as his own.

"I apologize…there could have been an insect there. Anyway let's continue." Said Suzuki as he used his powers to pull Hatori up from under the table. He was loathe to lie but, well, there could have been an insect on that wall. He didn't know. All he knew was that Hatori was terrified again and he was annoying when he was terrified and Suzuki did not need to deal with that right now. He had enough to deal with as it was…more than enough….and he didn't need anything else on his already overfilled plate…so he just…calmed down and got back to work. For his sake and Hatori's….since Hatori was so annoying when he got scared like this….but this was Suzuki's fault…he had ben annoying first…

It was so annoying when he lost control of his powers…especially for no good reason…and Sakata Shiori was not a good reason at all.


	408. Phones at the Table

It was rude to use your phone at the table.

Mom had said so back when they lived in the Castle. Sometimes dad would bring his phone or his laptop to the table when they were having dinner and mom would always say 'no phones at the table' and also she would call him by his given name when she said that. Mob would not be telling her dad to put his phone away and she would not be calling him by his given name, he was her dad and kids didn't call their dads by their given names, and she wouldn't be telling him to put his phone away either….even though she did sort of want to.

Because, really, they were eating right now.

They were sitting down at the table and eating dinner as a family. This was family time and family time meant that they sat and talked and….well maybe she hadn't thought that one through. Dad being on his phone meant that he wasn't looking at or talking to Sho. That was good. It was always a coin flip as to whether or not dinner ended in a fight between the two of them. Mob didn't get why Sho couldn't just leave dad alone and she also didn't get why dad couldn't be nicer to Sho. He was nice to her, he was nice to Hatori, and he was nice to Fukuda…so why couldn't he be nice to Sho? Sho was a good person. Sure he could be a little bit mean sometimes but he was only that way because he had come from dad and dad could be a little bit, or a lot, mean sometimes.

So maybe it was better if neither of them spoke to each other.

Even though she didn't want Sho on his phone for dinnertime. She hardly ever saw him these days. He was either spending time with Fukuda or hiding in his closet fort. She didn't know what he did in there all day but it must have been something important if he was always in there. She wanted to know…well to hear…at least something about his day…or something…or maybe she just wanted to actually look at her little brother and stuff….

Because, really, they were eating dinner right now.

"Do you guys like the curry? I put in some cheddar cheese this time because the internet said that it would be a good idea." Said Mob. She didn't think that it turned out that bad…the whole thing definitely tasted like cheese…well she had maybe used too much….and she would like to have known if she had done a good job or a bad job or just…anything.

It was like talking to a couple of walls.

"Hey Sho? Do you want me to separate out your meat and vegetables for you? Is that why you're not eating?" asked Mob. Maybe Sho was at least ignoring her because she hadn't separated out his food for him, not because he was watching the twenty four seven hamster live stream again or something. She knew that she should have separated out his food for him but she was trying to get him to drop that habit. It would have been unfair to Emmy, really, since she was a normal person and she didn't have powers to help her pick out every single piece of meat and carrot from his curry. That is if he was even planning on marrying Emmy….

She sort of wanted to ask.

Maybe that was why he wasn't talking to her. Maybe he knew that she wanted to ask him about….everything. Why he was in love with Shimazaki, if he was still in love with Shimazaki, if he had ever been in love with any other boy, if he had ever been in love with a girl, if he was in love with Emmy, if he was going to marry her, what he wanted for his wedding gift if he did get married, what he was going to tell his girlfriend if they didn't get married, and stuff like that. She would never ask him that, of course, because Minegishi said that it would be a bad idea….but maybe Sho could tell that she wanted to ask him that.

Maybe that was why he wasn't talking to her.

"Huh? What? Oh yeah, I'm eating. See?" said Sho. He looked up from his phone, took his phone in his hand, and then stuffed his mouth full of curry. He looked like a squirrel like that…and she hated it when he did that….but at least he had said something to her. He hadn't answered her question but he at least spoken to her….and now his head was back down and his face was back in his phone….

Even though it was dinner time.

"Hey dad? What's going on? Why are you on your phone so much? Is it work stuff?" asked Mob. Maybe she would have more luck talking to dad. He usually liked talking to her. He also wasn't usually so into his phone….and she really hoped that Hatori hadn't shown him app store games…because then she would never see or hear from him again. Like the time she and Sho found that doodle jump game and played for so long that it got dark out without them noticing. She wondered if she should make a no phones at the table rule…or a not games at the table rule….but then she would have to make a whole lot of other rules…and then she would have to enforce them…and dinner was hard enough already.

Besides, it might have been a work thing.

Dad had said that it would be a short stay in Osaka…and that short stay was getting kind of long. It was already October, well the beginning of it, but still. It looked like they were going to have Shimazaki's birthday here….which wasn't good because she was going to get him a bunch of those pen cartridges he liked from the guy she had bought them from back last year in Tokyo…and now she would have to think of a new present to give him…and she couldn't give him the same stuff from last year…she'd think of something if they didn't end up going back to Tokyo. Maybe she could ask dad…well she would have…if he would just look up from his phone already.

"Dad? Hey, dad?" asked Mob. She had no idea what was up with him. He was never like this unless it was an important work thing….and even then never at the table. He would lock himself in his room for hours if he had a work thing to do….not just sit there at the table and ignore her….and he was just…she wanted to take the phone out of his hands and tell him that they were eating…but she was not mom.

She was just Mob.

And also she didn't make rules….not for dad. It was better, probably, that he was like this. At least this way he wasn't bothering Sho…so maybe she was just being selfish. She could be very selfish sometimes. Like when she got annoyed with the people she loved and stuff….and she didn't want to be selfish. Maybe it was selfish to want her dad and brother to just…talk to her and stuff. If they talked to her then they could have ended up talking to each other…and that would not have been good for anyone.

So maybe she should just stop before she messed something up.

"Shigeko?" asked dad. He looked up really suddenly. He was looking right at her, which was good, because for a second she hadn't had any idea who he had ever been talking to. She was Shigeko, that was her given name, but nobody ever called her that. Well Fukuda sometimes, and Minegishi when they were mad at her, but never dad. She…really couldn't remember dad ever using her name regularly before. He was using it now, though, and that was kind of…well weird…but good. This was good progress. Maybe he would use Sho's name next.

Not that she wanted him to use Sho's name…or talk to him at all….anytime soon.

"Nothing dad." Said Mob. She decided that maybe it wasn't a good idea to make conversation. She would rather have dealt with Sho and dad sitting there in silence on their phones than Sho and dad having another one of their fights. She hated those fights so much…and they were so pointless. Fighting in general was pointless but when Sho and dad fought it was extra pointless. Like…Sho would do something dad didn't like and then dad would say something mean and then they would just go around and around in a circle….

So maybe phone time was better than conversation time.

"No, it was something. You wouldn't have spoken if it was nothing. Now what was it?" asked Dad. He was looking down at his phone, well trying not to, while he talked to her. She didn't get it. It must have been important. His aura jumped, and so did the table, when his phone vibrated again. She really hoped that the traitors weren't doing bad things again. When traitors did bad things dad had to put them in this jail place, he said, sort of like a timeout. Like what you had to do for little kids when they wouldn't listen. She didn't want him to have to punish anyone even if they weren't actually getting hurt. She didn't want anyone to hurt dad or Claw or anything.

Couldn't they just see that dad was trying to make the world a better place?

Dad could have been mean sometimes, well most of the time, but he meant well. He just wanted to make the world into something better than it had to be. He wanted to make the world into a place where all the espers in the world could come together. A place where they wouldn't have to hide who they were from the normal people. A place where everyone could be happy and accepted and they could all be friends. Sure he was going to be the king of the world but that was just because the world needed one central ruler, he had said, because that way nobody would ever fight and there would be no more war because they would all be the same country and stuff. Dad worked hard each and every day to make the world a better place.

And maybe Mob shouldn't have been distracting him like that from his very important work.

"I just wanted to know…if you liked dinner. That's all." said Mob. He was looking back down at his phone…and he was smiling. Dad smiling, not normal people smiling, because normal people didn't have auras. Dad did and his aura was smiling…well she got the feeling that it did. Extra sensory perception was different for every esper, dad had said. Sometimes people only saw auras, sometimes they felt them, sometimes they heard them, and sometimes it was just something that couldn't be described. The closest word Mob had for how dad felt right now was that he was smiling.

Which was good. Maybe they would be able to leave Osaka and go back to Tokyo soon.

"I…would like to know why it tastes liked cheddar cheese. This is pork curry, yes?" asked dad. Mob nodded. Dad…he didn't like it. She knew that he didn't like it because he had asked about it. He never asked about things she made that he liked. She should have just put eggs in there, and ketchup, because those were the things that liked. She knew that she should have only made things that he liked but she was getting really tired of having either eggs, ketchup, or eggs with ketchup for every single meal.

She had no idea why dad hated trying new things.

He had always been like this. When she had been little mom was always trying to get him to eat new stuff and he did but he always asked her why her cooking was the way it was. When Mob had been little she hadn't known that when dad asked why mom cooked the way she did he was really saying that he didn't like it…even though there was nothing wrong with mom's cooking…and even though there might have been something unhealthy about eating two and a half dozen eggs a week and a bottle and a half of ketchup.

And if dad didn't like what she had made then he could have made his own dinner…was what she would have thought if she had been a meaner person.

"Yes, there's pork in there and it's pork flavored…and I thought that you liked pork." Said Mob

"I do enjoy pork curry but just….why is there cheddar cheese in this?" asked dad. Mob wanted to tell him that there was cheddar cheese in this because it was fun to try new things sometimes. She wanted to tell him that not everything needed to taste like ketchup. She wanted to tell him that there were meals in this world besides breakfast and…and she was not going to be mean to her own dad like that…just because she was in a bad mood…maybe….well she was in a bad mood but she was not going to talk to her dad about that.

"Because the internet said that it would be a good idea…and sometimes try9ing new things is a good idea." Said Mob. She was fine. She was not in a bad mood just because she made dinner for her family and they weren't even eating it or talking to her, just on their phones, and they fought about everything and because they had to fight about everything they couldn't even sit at the same table without fighting and…and she just….was not going to be mean or in a bad mood or anything because…because she just wasn't that kind of person.

She was a nice person and she was going to keep on being a nice person no matter what.

"What's a good idea?" asked Sho looking up from his phone. Mob….she knew that this had been a bad idea. She shouldn't have started talking to dad because now Sho was going to start talking to her too and then he would say something that dad would take the wrong way and then dinner would be ruined and everything would be ruined and then everything would be ruined forever like she had ruined this curry.

"Your sister put cheese in the curry." Said Dad. He said that without adding anything mean to it and…and maybe this would be ok. Maybe everything would be ok and dad and Sho could get along now and everything would be alright….or maybe those were just dreams. Mob dreams.

"Yeah, I noticed. It's really good big sis! Do it again but next time put even more in." said Sho. Mob smiled with her face and her aura. It was important to show what your feelings were on your face, too, even though she was more used to auras. That way it was just….nicer…and stuff. Sho had been so nice to her just now…it was sort of hard to get him to try new things…especially things that were mixed in with other things…but this was good…and she would make this again…but maybe only put cheese in Sho's portion since dad didn't like it…he hadn't said so and he hadn't needed to say so….though it would have helped if he had said so…

Or if he took his face out of his phone for five seconds.

"Ok….but I'll only put cheese in yours since dad doesn't like it." Said Mob. Dad was smiling with his aura and he was typing something….and then erasing she knew what the erasing sound was…and now he was typing again…and if he wanted help then she would have helped him since she was the one who did a lot of his emails already anyway…well Hatori helped but she was the main email person…and stuff….

"Dad doesn't like anything." Said Sho. She wondered if he was sensing the same thing that she was sensing. Dad seemed to like whatever he was talking about…which meant that work was going well…and if work was going well then maybe they could go back to Tokyo soon….or even for just a little bit so Mob could get Shimazaki his birthday present….or maybe they were going to head off to a whole other country soon…she didn't know. She wished that dad would just give some heads up before they moved….and she also wished that he would tell her what he was so happy about, too, while he was telling her stuff.

"You don't speak for me, Son, never speak for me again….now what is it that I don't like?" asked dad looking up from his phone. That had been a mean thing to say…and now more mean things would come…and it was all her fault. She had just wanted some conversation at dinnertime. She hadn't meant to start a fight…and she wished that everyone conversation that Sho and dad had didn't have to end in a fight…but wishes did not come true. Even if you folded a thousand paper cranes wishes would never come true.

"The curry that big sis made…and I can say-" said Sho. No, no, no. She was not going to let this happen. She was not going to let a fight be born right in front of her. The only thing she ever wanted to see born in front of her was Minegishi and Shimazaki's baby being born…even though Minegishi said that they were never going to have a baby and also that giving birth was something that would scar her for life.

"So dad, is something good happening at work?" asked Mob. She knew that interrupting Sho like that had been very rude…and she also knew that not interrupting a newly born fight was the best thing that she could have done for them. She just….she just wished that it could have been….she just wished that dad and Sho could get along…but wishes did not come true. That was not how life worked. Life was…well stressful….like now.

"Work…why did you ask me about work? Why are you so concerned with what's happening at work?" asked Dad. Now his aura was all….flaring and pulling in…like it was going in and out and out and in and…and she had just asked him one question, that was all, just one simple question. Why did he have to be….like this? Like…how he was…and stuff.

But she was used to him by now…well she had to be used to him by now…because he was the only dad that she had.

"Um….you were just happy before when you were texting and-" said Mob. She needed to stop….whatever it was that was making dad feel like this. Dad seemed like he didn't have feelings, a lot of people said that, but he did. He had a lot of feelings, actually, a lot of very big feelings. He worked hard to control them, his feelings, and his powers. She wished…she really wished that she knew what to do to help him…but she didn't. She just knew what to do to keep him from hurting Sho…and that was the best that she could do right now.

"What makes you think that I was texting?" asked Dad. Mob took a deep breath and kept her aura calm. She needed to stay calm because dad was not calm and now Sho was not calm and was it took much to ask to have one meal, just one, where everyone got along? Where there wasn't any fighting or things that could become fights or….or whatever it was that dad was feeling right now.

"Because we just saw you. You can't just go and pretend that you weren't texting someone when me and big sis clearly saw you. You're not the boss of reality and-" Said Sho

"Dad…you were just happy, is all. That's just what I was asking about. I just wanted to know why you were so happy for." Said Mob. She had interrupted Sho again…and she had to interrupt him. He was going to end up making dad mad and neither of them

"No I wasn't happy. I was nowhere near happy. I was…content. I was content and…and that is all. Now eat. Why isn't anyone eating?" said dad. Mob…well she knew that he was lying. He never lied to her, and he had never lied to her, but she got the very clear feeling that she was being lied to. She just….had no idea what was with him. He was just…she didn't know. Maybe he wasn't lying. Maybe he was just…not understanding his own feelings…or something like that. She didn't know. She just…she just knew that she needed to fix this before it got any worse.

"You're right, dad, we should eat before it gets cold…and next time I'll only put cheese in Sho's…and stuff." Said Mob as she dug her spoon into her curry. This wasn't bad, she liked it this way, but she would make dad's without the cheese. There. Maybe that was why he felt the way he felt right now…or something. Maybe he didn't know what to do with his feelings because he didn't know what to do with his dinner….or something. She didn't know. Dad was…someone who was hard to understand. Dad was someone who just….was hard to understand.

And she was not in the mood to understand anything right now.

She was tired, her stomach hurt, and lately it felt like everything in the world was designed to make her mad…and she wasn't going to take it out on her family. She was going to sit there in silence, because she knew that her family couldn't handle anything other than silence, and that was….that was ok. This was ok. This was dinner and dinner was ok and…

And dinner had to be ok.

"Don't listen to dad, big sis, this is great curry and you should make it all the time!" said Sho before he put way too much food in his mouth like he was a squirrel or something…and she was not going to stop him. He was hungry and he was eating and he wasn't complaining or trying to live on poptarts and soda and he was…he was fine. He was eating and, ok, he had no table manners right now…and now he was looking back down at his phone and stuff….

But that was ok.

"Thank you Sho." said Mob. He couldn't hear her…that was ok. She was ok. She was…this was ok. This was dinner. Sho was eating, for once, and he wasn't even eating it with ranch…and dad was eating too. He wasn't even eating with ketchup and that was his favorite thing…and this was good. Even if he was eating with his powers and….

….and he was eating with his powers….

He was actually picking up his spoon with his powers and feeding himself with his powers…and now Sho was eating with his powers…and that was…that was either one of mom's rules or one of dad's rules or one of the rules that they had both come up with…and Mob…there was a picture of her feeding herself and Sho back when she had been two and he had been one….and she used to use her powers like that but…but that was not the way that she was supposed to be eating and….and dad knew better and Sho knew better and…and maybe she should have made a rule about that and…and she just….

She just ate her curry.

She didn't want to make any more rules. She wanted to sit and have her dinner and now fight. So she picked up her spoon and ate her curry and…and that was it. She ate her curry with her hands and looked at her family. Her family ate their curry with their powers and looked down at their phones. She didn't think that she should make a rule, or any rules, because she would have to enforce them and she was not in the mood to fight…or anything. She wanted….she just wanted to eat her cheese and pork curry and…and also she sort of wished that she had put in less cheese…and that would be a rule for herself, less cheese from now on.

But she wouldn't say anything about dad and Sho using their phones at the table.


	409. Three Dots

'…'

Three dots meant that the other person was typing.

Three dots appearing and disappearing meant that the person was starting and stopping their thought. This was not a bad thing. This did not meant that the other person in the conversation did not want to speak to you. This just meant that they were formulating their thoughts. Not that Suzuki cared if the person on the other end of this conversation spoke back, or rather texted back, or not. Really he didn't. He didn't care at all and he was not staring at his phone watching three dots appear and then disappear over and over again.

He was fine.

Really he was. He was fine and he didn't care and…and he had other things that he could have been doing. There was always something that he could be doing. Even at this hour of the evening there were things that he could have been doing. He could have been looking over that day's problems, he could have been chipping away at his substantial to do list, or he could have been in the bath by now because it was getting late….and he could do all of those things but he just…he didn't want to. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he could do whatever he wanted and right now all he wanted to do was lay down on his bed while the television played something in the background and he stared at his phone. This was what he wanted to do. This and nothing else.

Really.

'…' appeared.

What was taking her so long? She had been replying almost immediately….maybe she was tired of talking to him. He did tend to go on, he'd been hearing that for as long as he had been speaking, and he was just…bad at conversation. That was why he had people in his life who were good at conversation. Like Fukuda. This was more like something that he would have been good at. This was reminiscent of note passing. He rarely started passing notes but he did reply and he liked to run his replies through Fukuda first. This was reminiscent of passing notes but it wasn't the same…and also he could keep up a conversation on his own…

Or at least he could try to.

Had he said something wrong? He scrolled up. He had been asking her plenty of questions, he had been told that when you didn't know what to say the best thing to do was to just ask questions, and she had been answering…but now she wasn't. Maybe it was because they had strayed from what could have been considered work talk. They had gone from her asking what had happened to all of her enemies, well most of them apparently there were still people that gave her trouble but they could be dealt with, and now they were on the subject of less serious matters.

Mainly her garden.

Well they had gotten here after he had asked her if the harden beetles in Osaka were always this bad. She assured him that they were and then sent him a picture of the damage that they had done to a fruit tree that she had been growing. A dwarf fruit tree, apples to be specific, and then that had led to a discussion on dwarf trees….not that he knew much about gardening but dwarf fruit tress had always been fascinating to him since his mother had planted some when he had been a child, and now they were talking about her garden still and…

'…'

He knew that he needed to do something else. He knew that he was being terribly unproductive, and had been for some time, and he knew that he needed to just…..find someone else to talk to if he absolutely had to talk to someone. That was new…well new and old. He had found himself craving the company of others again even though he had thought, before, that he had moved past such things. He had moved backwards, it seemed, and he should have been talking to Shigeko or Hatori or Fukuda, if he was around Suzuki had no idea where he went at night, but instead of talking to someone who it was alright to talk to he was just….talking to Shiori….Sakata….well he was trying to talk to her anyway….

'…'

Still just three dots appearing and reappearing. He had no idea what he was supposed to…well he could always message her again…but would that have been too much? He was Suzuki Touichirou, he could do whatever he wanted to, but he didn't much want to do the wrong thing. He wanted…well he wanted to talk to her…but he also wanted to stop talking to her. To not want to talk to her. Talking to her was satiating a need that he didn't like to have, the need to socialize, and since he had been talking to her then that need should have been realized but now…well now it seemed like the more he spoke to her the more he wanted to speak to her…and he should not have wanted to speak to her in the first place. Not just because he should not have wanted to talk to anyone, no, he shouldn't have been talking to HER in the first place…

He still had a wife.

He had a wife and he should only have wanted to talk to her…but she was gone…so that made the whole thing very difficult, talking to her, but he just…he felt his wedding ring. He still had this ring on his finger and…and he hadn't done anything wrong. Well not with this woman and…and he wasn't going to make the same mistake again and…and he just…he didn't like not knowing what he was doing. He didn't like not knowing what he wanted. He liked knowing, he needed to know, and not knowing….

"Damn it!"

Son said it, well shouted it, best. Damn it indeed. Suzuki could feel his Son's aura flaring, and he could hear him running out of his room, and he wondered what all of that was about. Hopefully nothing that he would make Shigeko deal with. His problems were his own and he did not need Shigeko to deal with whatever it was that he was doing. Suzuki wondered why Son was home…well it was late…but he had taken to spending time with Shimazaki and Fukuda, not at the same time though, and it was just…easier…when he was with one of them. Easier on Shigeko and easier on Suzuki too. Son was just so…much. Too much. Like now.

"Fuck!"

Suzuki had no idea where he had picked that up from…well probably from the company he kept…but still. He should have known better. Suzuki had told him time and time again to stop talking like that but did he listen? No. He was totally incapable of doing as he was told. He just cursed and cursed and cursed….and for no reason, too. Suzuki had no idea how Shigeko dealt with that. Suzuki could barely deal with that…and he wanted to deal with that. He was sick of listening to that…but he knew to let Shigeko deal with that. She was the in charge, there. She was the expert. He would just have been in her way. That was why he didn't come out of his room and see what was wrong.

It had nothing to do with what he was doing.

Not that he was doing anything. Sitting in his room and staring at the three dots on his phone wasn't doing anything….and he had so much to do. He could hear the children and he could tell by their, or rather Son's, aura that he maybe should have gone out there….but Shigeko knew what she was doing. He would never imply that she didn't know what she was doing. She did. She knew what she was doing and he thought the world of her…and he was going to leave this to her. He was going to leave her alone. What could he do that she couldn't? Well besides knock some sense into her brother…but she knew what she was doing.

"I don't want to take a bath right now!"

He had complete and total faith in her. She was so much like him in some ways…but also she was so like herself. She was a much calmer person than he was, on the inside, and she knew things that he didn't know. She may have been small but she had proven herself to him and….and maybe that was why he felt so…guilty? Guilt was not something that he liked allowing himself to feel. He just…he had no reason to feel guilty. It wasn't as though he was placing anyone above her…or avoiding her….so he just…he hadn't done anything to Shigeko but still there was this guilt and….

He just did not understand.

He didn't understand himself…but that was normal. Sometimes he got this feeling that he was born into this world but he had been meant to have been born into another. Like there had been some sort of mix up. He had thought of himself as a changeling when he had been small. He had been so…different….and he was so different still. He was just…even within himself he didn't always feel like he belonged. Like he just…was this person with a set of emotions and feelings and wants and they just came without rhyme or reason….or something. He didn't know…and he didn't like not knowing…..and he didn't like himself right now….

He put his phone off to the side.

"Sho, come on! You're been so good lately!"

He maybe should have dealt with that…maybe. He didn't know. He knew that he could have ended that, whatever that was, and he knew that if he did then Shigeko would have had a problem with that. She would have been upset with him and he didn't want that…but he also didn't want to have to listen to this…and he also didn't like waiting for things…and he also didn't like not understanding himself…and he just….there were a lot of things happening right now that he did not like. He didn't know what was wrong with him and…and maybe he had been in Japan for too long. He liked to spend as much time here as possible. It had been difficult, before, to even set foot in Japan…but now it was difficult to leave. This was his home, first of all, well not Osaka but Japan….and this was where he had lived with Masami…well not Osaka but Japan…and maybe he just needed to leave. Maybe he just needed to leave and…and he knew that if she didn't want to join Claw and he had no idea how to make her join without, well, doing the things that he usually did. He didn't want to harm her in any way…not that he cared about her….but he just…well he didn't know. He just knew that maybe the smart thing would have been to move but…well….

He hadn't tried everything.

"Sho, please, you need a bath! You smell bad!"

He didn't know what else he could try but he had to try something…or something. He didn't know. He closed his eyes. He could see Shigeko's aura there, pink and blue, and he could see Son's too, an overwhelming amount of red. He could see past them, to, over to the next house. Fukuda was gone off to wherever he went to at night, hopefully he wasn't wasting his time where he normally wasted his time…because he really did not need to waste his time like that, but he could feel….well the others were home…and it seemed like nothing of note was happening there. Everyone was stationary and calm…well Minegishi was usually stationary and calm.

He liked that about them.

Sometimes he felt like he was surrounded by idiots…and they were not one of them. The fighting…the constant fighting….they were never involved in that. Minegishi…she…well they…they were above that. Women generally were. He liked women who were. Well people in general. He liked people who were together. He liked people who were together in ways that he…well was not. That was just the sort of person that he was. It was human nature, wasn't it? Wanting things in another person that he did not have within himself? Not that he wasn't a complete person on his own…well he had always thought that he had been…but he didn't really want to have another person to complete him…and he….

He had a wife.

He stopped looking over at Minegishi and he stopped looking over at his phone. He was fine the way he was and…and he would continue to be fine just so long as he didn't….forget that he had a wife. Somewhere out there he had a wife and her name was Masami and he had already betrayed her once and he wasn't going to do it again…and he didn't want to. The things he did want…well those were just…things which existed within his mind…and not in reality…and that was that and…

And his phone vibrated.

'sorry. cat got out and I couldn't find him.'

Suzuki…he had no idea why he felt relieved. He had no idea why he liked the fact that she had offered up an explanation and….and that she hadn't tired of him. God. He felt like an adolescent again…and he had no idea why. He did not have feelings for this woman. He did not have any feelings at all for any woman who was not his wife. Also he didn't like cats. So therefore he could not have feelings for this woman because she liked cats and….and that hadn't stopped him from finding Masami and…and maybe she would have stayed if he had let her fill the house from top to bottom with pets and…and he could not think about this right now. He had other things to think about…to worry about….all sorts of important things of an important nature…importantly. Like…like building a network and…and that was what he was doing and…and he had no reason to feel guilty!

'I had complete faith that you would come back.' Said Suzuki. The second he hit send he realized that he had said something wrong….or stupid…or awkward…or something. He didn't know. He did know. He just…he wished that Fukuda had been there….or even Hatori…or someone who knew about these things. He should have thought before he spoke, well wrote, and he needed to…to maybe say something else…right now. He needed to figure out what to say right now!

'What sort of cat is your pet?'

There. Now she would forget about the last thing that he had said. She would be busy figuring out which of the many breeds of cat, and there were many if the documentaries he and Shigeko watched were to be believed, her cat was. She wouldn't have the space or mental energy to even read his original message. Yes. He was a genius…well he had always been told that he was a genius…but he was a genius and he didn't need help and he knew how to hold up a conversation. He did. There. The three dots were back and now she would take a long time to figure out what she sort of cat she had and-

She had sent him one of those emotion face things.

It was smiling and it's eyes were closed…and he had no idea what she meant by that…and now she was typing again and-

'and I had complete faith that you'd stay' Sakata said…and he had no idea how to respond to that. He felt…he didn't know how he felt. The windows rattled and the bed jumped…and that was just…he had no idea what that was about. He just…well of course she should have had faith in him. He was many things but he was not rude. He was not the sort of person who would just drop a conversation in the middle of…well a conversation. Maybe this feeling was…good? Because she knew that he was not that sort of person…or something. He didn't know. He wished that emotions came with an instruction manual or a tutorial or something.

Why did it always have to be this hard?

Not that there was an 'it' but…it had always been this hard. It had been hard, talking to women, even back when he had been young. It was so much easier to just get to know them by following them around, learning their habits as well as their likes and dislikes, and then acting accordingly. Running into them at places they frequented. Getting them gifts of things that they liked. Women liked these things…mostly….sometimes they told him to leave them alone…but that was at least something that he could understand. This was…well he had no idea what this even was…so of course he had no way of understanding….whatever there was to understand.

If there even was anything to understand.

'also her name is Hibiki and she's a Japanese bobtail' said Shiori….said Sakata. Suzuki…well he had no idea if that was a good breed of cat or a good name for a cat….and he didn't like cats….but he liked that she liked that cat…and also that it was a Japanese cat…and also it's tail was short which seemed odd…and he decided to settle on that. That seemed like something to talk about. She liked cats and he liked talking to her…purely for ally gathering reasons and nothing more, so that was what he would do. He would…just…say that.

'Your cat has a very short tail. Explain. Please.' The please came later. Please was a polite word and he was a polite man and he had to be one to her, well he always was, but now he had to be even more polite. He just…did not want to alienate her. He…enjoyed speaking to her…or at least testing to her…and this…this was alright. This was…well he wasn't even in the same room as her and that…well that was fine. This was fine. He and Shiori…he and Sakata…this…this wasn't anything. This was just…talking about…things…and that was fine and…and he had no idea why he felt…or even what he felt…or even…he had no idea.

'he was born it's a genetic defect and the point of the breed. They're also incredibly talkative. God, this cat…' said Sakata. She typed one message, then another, and then another…and now there wasn't even time for the three dots to appear. The words came so fast and…and he could barely read but…but this was good. The more that she sent the less thinking that he had to do…and he didn't want to do a lot of thinking right now. When he thought about her….about this…about whatever this was….well he thought things that he should not have been thinking of. Thoughts about her…about himself….and about Masami…well her absence…and the absence of his thoughts about her…until they came back and….and he just….he wasn't sure what to make of this and…

And there was a knock at his door.

He could feel it, there, her aura. She was standing there on the other side of his door. She both felt like she was standing right in front of him but also…also as though she were kilometers and kilometers away. He wanted…he wanted Shigeko to be there with him…and he wanted her to be far away from him…and he wants…he wants a few things and no things and all the things and none of the things and….and he just…

He had no idea what he wanted or…or anything.

"Hey dad? Sho doesn't want to take a bath tonight. Do you want to use his bathwater? It's still warm and he hasn't used it." Said Shigeko. Suzuki put his phone down, screen down, even though she was on the other side of the door. He was…he wasn't doing anything wrong….and that was…well he didn't…he just…he needed to focus on the events happening here, in the question that he had been asked, and that was just…what he was going to do now.

"Yes. Leave it for me. I'll be there in a moment." Said Suzuki. It took his a moment to find words…but he found them and that was worth the moment. He didn't have time to say anything else…well to think of anything else to say…and also there was nothing else to say. He just…he felt like he should have explained…but he had no idea why he wanted to explain anything. He just…he didn't know why he would explain to her, to Shigeko, and she just…and he just…he just….

He was going to take a bath.

He picked up his phone and….and he could have just left…but that would have been rude. That would have been just like walking away in the middle of a conversation and he was forty four years old, he knew better than to do that now, and he just…he needed to just…pick up his phone and tell her that he would be going and…and it should have been simple but…but it wasn't simple…well it was and…and he just…he needed to take a bath. That was simple…and that was what he was going to do…right now.

'I've enjoyed speaking with you but now I have to go. Thank you for the very enjoyable conversation. It has been enjoyable.' There. Was that good? Should he have said that it had been very enjoyable? Or maybe he should have said…another adjective? Or maybe he had said enjoyable too many times…maybe one very enjoyable was equivalent to three enjoyables…or something…..he didn't know. He didn't have a formula for this. He wished that he had one but….but he didn't and he just….he just had to figure….something….anything….out.

He didn't even know what it was that he was even trying to figure out.

'Talk to you again later?' said Sakata. There was nothing to figure out there but….well if that had been written down on a piece of paper he would have pressed it into his binder for Fukuda to dissect for him later. He had no idea what she could have meant by that besides asking if they could speak again…but he felt like….like she wanted…or maybe she was asking if he wanted or….or maybe he was just overthinking it…he didn't know. He never knew when it came to women, not even Masami, and even then when they had met he'd had Fukuda dissect their messages…well the few that there had been it had been murder typing on a phone back then….but Fukuda still knew what to do and…and Suzuki had no idea where he had gone and…and there was nothing at all to even look into.

Shiori just wanted to continue speaking to him.

He had no idea why she would want to talk to him, what she had in mind, what more they could possibly have spoken about….but he just…he wanted to continue talking to her. He wanted…well he wanted a great many things…and many of those he could never allow to happen…and he just….he just had no idea what to even….he just didn't know what to….what to do or…

He was overthinking this.

'Yes. I would be agreeable to that.' Said Suzuki. There. He had answered in the affirmative. That was what he wanted. He had made what he had wanted known and now he could go and take a bath, he needed it, and this was…this was what it was and what it was…well he had no idea what it was and…and now he could just put his phone down, he was worse about this than his children, and he could just take a bath and….yes. He would be doing that now and-

'…'

She was typing to him right now at this moment in time and…and he didn't know why. What else was there to say? He had told her that he was going and she had asked to speak to him again and he had answered in the affirmative and…had she changed her mind? The room shakes. The room shakes and he shakes. He shakes and he just…he has no idea what to make of this. He had no idea what to make of…of anything. He just…he knew that he should have put his phone down but the three dots were back and-

'Looking forward to it. I'm up until eleven if you want to talk some more.' Then she sent him another one of those emotion face sticker picture…things…and he just….he put his phone down and went to take a bath. That was what he was going to do and he needed to bathe for…for basic hygiene…and basic hygiene was very important. Yes. More important than talking. More important than…whatever it was that he felt…that he had no reason to feel and…and he just…he felt…he felt like he needed a bath. So he put his phone down and kept it down…even though he wanted to say something more…but if he said something more then he would be stuck on his bed, again, waiting for those three dots to return.

He both loved and hated those three dots.


	410. There You Are Needs-A-Name

Maybe if Sho had named that snake then it would have come when he called it.

"Needs-A-Name….where are you? Come on, I have lots of tasty bugs for you to eat…come out, come out, wherever you are." Said Sho as he crawled along the kitchen floor. Snakes liked warm places and the kitchen was the warmest room in the house. Big sis was always cooking in here and, well, this was the only place left to look…well the only place left to look, really, was dad's room but Sho knew better than to go in there.

And so did Needs-A-Name.

He must have been in the kitchen somewhere. The whole room was hot, big sis had something going on the stove, and snakes loved hot places. Also Needs-A-Name hadn't been in his room or the bathroom or any of the closets or anywhere in the living room. So this was the last place to look besides dad's room. He was down on his hands and knees looking for snake holes, snakes lived in holes the internet had said, but so far all he found were crumbs, old cereal pieces, and a button.

The search continued.

He used his powers to move the fridge out of the way. Maybe…no. Nothing under there but more crumbs and a bottle cap. Not even another button. Sho had no idea what this button went to, it was small and white, but maybe if he found more then he could figure it out….he was looking for snakes, not buttons! He was looking for snakes and he had to keep his head in the game! And this wasn't even a game! This was real! There was a little lost snake somewhere in the house and it was cold and hungry and hadn't had a bedtime story in a while….and he had to find this snake!

He or she, Sho didn't want to invade their privacy by checking, had to be somewhere!

So he kept on crawling. He put the fridge back and then made another circuit in the kitchen. Maybe behind the dishwasher...nope, that wasn't coming out. Sho tried to move it with his powers but it was stuck inside of the wall and stuff…probably by pipes. He knew that he was strong enough that he could have ripped it out if he wanted to but he really didn't want to. Big sis would have been upset that he had ruined her kitchen and then dad would have been upset that Sho had made big sis upset. All he cared about was big sis. Big sis and whatever he was doing on his phone all day every day.

Like now.

Sho had felt him coming but he made no move to get up. He wasn't going to just jump to his feet because his dad told him to…and he didn't even say anything. He just walked over Sho, stepped right over him, and sat down at the table. He never looked up from his phone. He was typing and then when he typed his aura was all…sort of like waves at the beach….but then when he stopped typing his aura was more like waves at the beach but when the moon was coming up. All…big…and stuff. Sho didn't know what was up with that and he didn't care to know what was up with that. Dad could live the rest of his life as a phone zombie for all Sho cared. He had a mission to fulfil!

Also dad could go suck a bunch of dicks for ten yen coins in a public bathroom during golden week for as much as Sho cared.

"What are you doing on the floor?" asked dad. What, so now he finally noticed him? Sho wanted to tell him…well a lot of stuff…but he could feel big sis's aura. She was in a bad mood. Her aura was like waves at the beach but during a storm. She didn't need him pissing her off more…even though dad was the one who pissed him off in the first place so, really, it was his fault….but Sho was going to try and stay calm. For big sis's sake.

"Looking for stuff. Why do you care?" asked Sho sticking out his tongue. It didn't matter that he had done that. Dad was still looking down at his phone like it was the most interesting thing in the whole world or something.

"I don't." said dad. Sho had no idea what dad had felt the need to just come out and say something so obvious. Sho knew that dad didn't care if he lived or died…well he sort of did…but only because he needed more Suzuki's for the bloodline and stuff. The stupid bloodline. Since that was the only thing that dad cared about Sho had no idea why dad even bothered talking to him or being around him. Why not just leave him back at the Castle and-

And Sho needed to calm down before big sis felt his aura and asked what was going on.

"Then why did you even ask?" asked Sho

"Because you're being strange and I thought that you might have been down there for a reason. If you're just being ridiculous go and be ridiculous somewhere else. This is your sister's workspace." Said dad

"It's a kitchen." Said Sho. This room wasn't for working. It was for eating and snacking and also snake searching.

"I know that it's a kitchen but your sister works in here. She works hard to cook our meals and we should show our gratitude by not making her role any more difficult than it has to be. You have no idea how difficult it is to cook…what is it that she's got going in that pot?" asked dad

"I don't know." Said Sho. It smelled good and it had been cooking for a while. That was all he knew and that was all that he wanted to know. He had been trying not to unmix his foods when he ate them. It made big sis upset. She didn't need to be upset, not after what she had gone through, and not after what she was going to be going through over and over again until she died…it sucked to be a girl…way more than it sucked to be a boy, anyway, from what he had read. Nothing that bad ever happened to boys…but he sort of wished that it did. Just to dad, though, only him and nobody else.

"Well then you need to check." Said dad. He didn't even look up from his phone when he said that….and he was even smiling! That bastard….that miserable fucking bastard! He just…calm down, Sho, come on. One, two, two and a half, two and two halves, two and a quarter….that was going the wrong way…three and a quarter…that was better….three and two quarters…..

"Big sis says that I'm not allowed to touch the stove." Said Sho. That wasn't a lie. Big sis thought that he was going to burn himself like a little baby if he touched the stove. He wasn't, he knew not to go and stick his hands in fire, but he didn't want to have to get up off the floor and be dad's personal 'checking what was for dinner' slave. Dad had legs and arms and powers. He could have gotten up and checked on his own.

"In that case leave it alone…and come up off the floor. You're a human being. Act like it." Said dad. Sho…well he didn't want to get up but…well he didn't want to fight with dad either. Big sis didn't need this right now. She'd spent the day on the couch with a hot water bottle on her stomach. He knew what that meant, and also he knew that it meant that she wasn't dying, and he knew that she didn't need him fighting with dad….besides, he was almost eleven. He was getting too old to fight with dad…even though he deserved it. He deserved to be fought with better than he deserved to be called 'dad'….

Because he was a really sucky dad.

Sho didn't know why dad had to be this way. Fukuda had said that dad had always been a jerk since day one. Sho didn't know why Fukuda had been friends with dad if he had been a jerk since the first day that they had met but he didn't get a lot of things about Fukuda…but at least he was nicer than dad. If Sho'd had a choice then he would have been eating dinner with Fukuda. He may have told Sho's secrets, and he may have been sort of a jerk to big sis, but he was still better at being a dad than his own dad was. Fukuda…he listened to Sho and he cared how he felt and he was always so nice, even if he did treat Sho liked a baby, and also he let Sho do tattoos on them even though he said that doing tattoos was only for criminals….

Sho wished that he had been eating with Fukuda…but he had to find Needs-A-Name so that meant that he had to stay in the house.

Maybe he could get Shimazaki to help. He'd been sort of avoiding Shimazaki since the whole 'tattoo' thing…not that he thought that Shimazaki hated him or anything, Shimazaki could never hate him, but because…because Shimazaki might not have thought that he was cool…and also Sho needed to fall out of love with him. He had been in love with Shimazaki since before he even knew that he liked guys like that…well part of him had always known but…but he hadn't been able to put it into words…but now he could. His name was Suzuki Sho and he liked boys instead of girls…but he couldn't be with the guy he liked because of a lot of reasons…and he had a girlfriend because of a lot of the same reasons….but at least now he could say it….

Only to big sis, and maybe Fukuda but no since he figured it out on his own, and never to dad….who would hate him if he knew…since he was barely even a dad really.

"…you're a dad. Act like it." Muttered Sho as he stood up and went to the table. This time dad looked up….fine. Whatever. Dad could look at him all he wanted to. That didn't change the fact that he sucked as a dad and he almost wished that Fukuda had been his dad instead of dad…but not really because then he wouldn't have been able to be big sis's little brother…which was the only good thing about being related to dad. He got to be related to big sis too.

"What did you just say to me?" asked dad. Great. He knew that aura too. That was like how the water pulled back from the shore before a tsunami, a tsunami would have been better than this actually because at least then he would have been able to get to higher ground to escape, and there was no escaping dad when he got like this. His aura was all pulled in and his eyes were super blue and he only got like that when he was super pissed off…and Sho didn't care at all that he was super pissed off. He could take whatever dad dished out. He'd been taking it since he had been little.

He felt big sis's aura.

He could take it but she couldn't. He had spent years of his life, too many years, acting like a jerk and making her life harder than it had to be. He wasn't going to be that person anymore. Not to her or…well to anyone…not that he had been a jerk to anyone but her. He just…had to be the bigger man. He was going to be eleven soon and he had to act like it…and stuff….and acting like an eleven year old meant not making his big sis's life worse.

Also if dad hurt him really bad then he would have to go to Fukuda, and he'd probably make Sho have a sleepover with him because that was just what he did whenever dad punished him, and Sho wasn't in the mood for that right now since he had to find Needs-A-Name before someone else did.

"Nothing." Said Sho. He wanted to tell dad that he was a sucky human being and dad and that he sucked at everything he tried.

"No, you said something and I want to know what it was." Said dad. Sho knew that he knew. He just wanted Sho to say it again so that dad would have an excuse to punish him and Sho wasn't stupid enough to give him that excuse.

"Well you can want whatever you want but that doesn't change the fact that I didn't say anything." Said Sho crossing his arms. Dad needed to know when to quit. Sho wasn't some traitor, he wasn't going to talk just because dad was being all mean and stuff. He would sit here for the rest of his life and not say a word if he had to.

"No, you did and-" said dad. He stopped talking and turned around. Sho did too. Big sis was there. She was standing there behind them and she…well she was sort of like a tsunami too….but a little one…if that made sense. She was focused on dad, now, not him…which was good. Her aura was focused on dad so maybe she wouldn't blame Sho for what had happened…and he hadn't even done anything! Dad just felt like being a jerk…and stuff…

"Dad, why are you and Sho fighting?" asked big sis. She looked kind of like mom then. She had her arms crossed and she was looking at dad like he was in trouble. Mom looked at him like that sometimes too.

"He…said something that sounded…like something that he should not have said to me. I am his father and he will speak to me respectfully." Said dad. Big sis nodded.

"Sho should be nice, you're right, and he's going to apologize if he said something mean. Sho, if you said something mean to dad you should say that you're sorry right now." Said big sis. Sho….well he knew that telling lies was wrong…but starting fights was even more wrong. This was one of those pragmatic choice things that Fukuda had told him about.

"I didn't say anything mean." Said Sho. Dad was still looking at him like he wanted to hit him…but what else was new? Dad was always like that. The only person he liked was big sis. Fukuda said that dad was that way because he was afraid of the way he felt and when he got afraid he got scared and when he got scared he hit people…or something like that. Sho didn't care why he did it. Sho didn't care what kind of reasons dad had that didn't excuse the fact that he had been a jerk to Sho for his entire life.

"There. Now both of you stay sitting and I'll get you some dinner. I made Oden…and don't worry, Sho, I'll unmix the ingredients for you." Said big sis. Sho…he liked Oden…well he didn't dislike it…but it was way too hot for Oden. Too hot for any kind of stew, really, but he wasn't going to say anything. He just sat down and stared at dad while big sis set the table. The spoons and chopsticks flew out of the drawers, the napkins flew off of the napkin ring, and the bowls formed a line at the pot while she filled them. There was a bowl there with food for dad, one with food for her, and then a bunch of little bowls for Sho. She took the whole thing apart to give him some of everything without it mixing up…and she had even made him a bowl of broth. The whole thing came together on the table in front of him…and he only had one thing to say to that.

"Thanks for the food!" said Sho. He meant it. He didn't even wait for dad to say it too. He just said it and then started eating. He ate really fast and stuff so that she knew that her cooking was good. She needed to feel happy. She was going through a lot and stuff…and also dad wasn't worth.

"Thank you for the food, Shigeko, though….why did you make this? Oden is a winter food." Said dad. Sho stabbed a fish ball with his chopsticks. Dad called her by her real given name…probably because he liked her best. She used to be Daughter and he used to be Son but now she was Shigeko but he didn't get to be Sho. He was still Son…that was all he was to dad. Son. A son was just…not even a person. Just…someone who came from you and passed on the family name and your genetics and stuff….and she at least got to be Shigeko…

He was Sho to her.

She called him Sho, well sometimes little brother, but usually Sho…and she liked him. She liked him for being Sho and not just for being her little brother…and he had to keep it that way. There weren't any knives on the table but there were plenty in the knife block…and he didn't want to kill dad just…make him feel bad…and he didn't know if…well he did know that it was ok. Shimazaki had stabbed his dad, and twisted the knife too, and then his dad had started to respect him as a man. Sho wasn't a man, he wasn't even eleven, and…and he still wanted dad to respect him…but he got the feeling that if he stabbed dad then the only person who would respect him more was Shimazaki…and that would have been pretty great….Shimazaki thinking that he was cool and stuff….

But then big sis would be mad at him for stabbing dad and he didn't want her to be mad at him….even if dad deserved a good stabbing.

"Because it's easy and I felt like it…and if you guys don't like it then you can eat something else…but I'm not going to cook anything else because my stomach hurts and I'm tired." Said big sis. What kind of a jerk did she think that he was? Of course he wasn't going to go and make her cook him a whole new meal. She wasn't Shibata. He liked to cook….not that Sho was going to be mean and go and have a whole other dinner…but if dad wanted to go somewhere else to eat then it should have. Nobody would have missed him.

"No, this is fine, I was just curious. You've made a very good meal here, Shigeko, so thank you for that." Said dad. Sho had been about to say that! Well not in those words but he had been about to say something like it, his mouth was just full, and it was still full…but he could still talk…and he would still talk!

"You're welcome dad and-" said big sis

"This is really good! Thanks! You're the best cook in the whole world and-" said Sho. He swallowed as much as he could but fish balls pieces and broth still got on the table…but that was fine. He could clean it up later. Dad didn't have to be all upset and stuff…and Sho could tell that he was pissed off. What did he care? He drank glasses of ketchup when he thought that nobody was paying attention! What gave him the right to look at Sho like he was….some kind of gross person…or something!?

"Thank you very much Sho and dad…and um Sho…maybe while your mouth is full you could-" said big sis.

"Chew and swallow before you speak. You're not a baby." Said dad. Sho opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. He hadn't been thinking when he did that, he had just been really pissed off, but now what was done was done and dad was all pissed off or whatever…and now big sis was pissed off too and that was what he really worried about.

"Sho!" said big sis. She picked up a napkin with her powers and wiped his mouth off. She was always so nice to him like that. She wiped his mouth, even though he wasn't baby sis and he could wipe his own mouth, but that was better than what dad probably wanted to do. He looked like he wanted to slap the taste out of Sho's mouth…and he probably would have, too, if big sis hadn't been there.

"Even babies know how to open and close their mouths…now stop that. You're being disgusting." Said dad. Sho would have opened his mouth again just to show dad how disgusting that he could be…but big sis was there and her aura was upset…and Sho didn't want to make it worse…even though dad was there and he was just…sitting and looking like a jerk…and stuff…

"Dad-" said big sis

"Yeah, well, you're being a jerk." Said Sho. He had meant to keep that one in his head but sometimes stuff just came out…like now. He knew that maybe this was like the time that he and Shimazaki had tried to see what would microwave and they accidentally left the tinfoil on some leftovers….and stuff….and he felt bad for big sis but…but dad really had it coming! That and a whole lot of other stuff too!

"Sho-" said big sis

"Why you insolent little-" said dad. He had both hands on the table and it looked like he was going to stand up and hit him….but then he stopped…and his aura moved but hit a…barrier? Not Sho's, no, big sis's barrier. She was stopping dad from hitting him….and she was stopping him from even so much as standing up…

He…had no idea that she could do that…be strong enough to stop dad…and stuff….

"Stop it! No more fighting! I don't mean to be mean but if you two can't stop fighting then…then you guys are going to have to eat in separate rooms….ok? Or at separate times…or something…..I don't know….just stop it! My stomach hurts and…and other stuff…and neither of you need to pick me up or feed me! Alright?" said big sis. The kitchen shook, the paper towels came off of their roll, and dad was glaring at him…but it didn't matter. So long as big sis was there then Sho was safe. She was strong enough to stop dad. She was strong enough to make him sit down and she was strong enough to stop dad from using his powers to hurt Sho…

She was strong enough to keep him safe.

"Understood…and I think that I'll take my dinner in my bedroom since your brother won't stop acting like a child…and he won't stop kicking me either." Said dad. Now that was just a lie! If Sho had been kicking him then….then he would have been rolling around on the ground in pain…or something!

"You're lying. I'm not kicking you. You'd be able to tell if I was kicking you." Said Sho. He wanted to kick dad now…and maybe he could. Big sis was there and she knew how to stop dad from hurting him, she was strong enough to stop him, and she would have been mad at him for fighting with dad but…well he had been asking for it for years and Sho wasn't a little kid anymore. He was almost eleven and it was time that dad started to stop being such a jerk to him. Like Shimazaki had said, if he wanted his dad's respect he would have to either earn it or wait for dad to die. One of the two.

"I swear to God that if you don't…stop…kicking….me…." said dad. He stopped talking and then just….stared at something under the table. He didn't look up. Not when big sis asked him what was wrong and not even when his phone vibrated.

Then the table hit the ceiling.

Big sis put a barrier around them and….and maybe he had pushed dad too far. The table had hit the ceiling and now he'd tossed it into the wall…and there was food everywhere…and the pot from the stove wall all over the wall…and the fridge tipped over…and dad was…he had never heard dad scream before. He had heard dad yell, and shout, and raise his voice…but he had never heard dad scream before…

And if Sho had been less scared he would have laughed since dad screamed like a girl…but he didn't really think that he could laugh now.

"Snake! Snake in the house!" shouted dad. He kicked his leg and...and there was Needs-A-Name! Sho caught him with his powers and held him close. Or her. He didn't want to invade their privacy by looking, he knew that he would have been embarrassed if people just stared at his junk like that, and also he wasn't really sure where to look when it came to snakes….but it didn't matter what Needs-A-Name was. They were his snake and he loved them and they must have been so scared…because Sho knew that he was scared…

He was kind of really scared.

"Dad, go somewhere else right now." Said big sis. She stood up….and he was still sitting down…and she was as tall as he was now…and she looked like…well not like mom, she never talked to dad like that even when he was punishing him, she looked more like…Minegishi if anything. She had her hands on her hips and her aura was all…mean…and she still had a barrier up…even though she was super upset she was still protecting him…and that was just….so nice of her…even if she was being kind of scary now too…

"Shigeko, there is a snake in the-" said dad. He pointed at needs a name and big sis's barrier rippled. It rippled but it didn't break. She was holding it up even though dad was so strong….he was the strongest esper in the world…and Sho knew firsthand how strong he was…but she was still holding up her barrier like it was nothing.

"I know, dad, I can see the snake and I'm going to deal with it like I deal with everything else around here. You're upset and I know how you get when you're upset so I think that it would be better if you had dinner with one of your friends…and maybe had a sleepover too." Said big sis. She was kicking dad out of the house…well she was trying to at least…and Sho knew that dad wouldn't be happy about that…and if he tried to hit her then Sho would do everything he could to stop him. There was no reason for the both of them to end up getting hit…not that he hit her anymore…but this was dad. He solved all of his problems by either hitting people, threatening to hit people, or having other people hit people…and if he thought that Sho was just going to sit there and let dad hit big sis then he had another thing coming.

"But-" said dad. He said that like he was going to argue…argue and not just tell big sis to shut up and never order him around like that ever again…and that just…made no sense at all…but he wasn't going to question it. If he did then he might end up jinxing it and…and this was not the thing to jinx.

"No buts. I have a lot to clean up. When you come home tomorrow the snakes will be gone and the house will be clean but right now I need you to be somewhere else, ok?" said big sis. She and dad looked at each other. Dad stood up and over her….and she didn't even move. She didn't even flinch. She just kept on looking up at him…well she knew that he would never hurt her. He didn't have his 'I'm going to mess you up' aura. No, he just seemed pissed off and….and Sho didn't even know what. Big sis was looking at dad and…and she was using her powers to…oh. Dad's phone.

Wow. These cases really were life proof.

"I…will spend the night with Fukuda…well I will when he returns and…and then tomorrow….please remove all the snakes from the house. Thank you. Goodnight." Said dad. He said that and then he just left and….and big sis had actually kicked dad out of the house and that was just….

"Big sis…you're really fucking awesome right now." Said Sho. He knew that she didn't like it when he cursed but he couldn't help it. She really was really fucking awesome right now. The most awesome big sister that a guy like him could ever have asked for. She just kicked dad out like it was nothing…she was strong enough to do that…and dad respected her as a man…well as a girl….and she hadn't even had to stab him in the stomach or anything.

Sho felt….he decided to feel good about this and not think about how no matter how much bigger and stronger he got he would never be as good as her.

She had been born right and he had been born wrong. That had been the truth of their…well of them…for as long as he could remember. She had always been the good one, the powerful one, the one that had come out of mom the normal way. He had been the one that dad would never forgive for being cut out of mom. He had been the one who had been born wrong from the start. He was the less powerful one. He was the one that dad hated. He was the one that dad would probably have put in the ground a long time ago if he had been born a girl and…and he could have been mad at big sis for being the one that dad liked the best…

Or he could have been grateful to her for keeping him safe…he decided to go with option two.

"Thank you….but I'm not happy. Sho…I told you to leave those snakes alone and now the house is full of wild snakes-" said big sis. Sho shook his head. First of all the snakes, most of them, were still in their home in the closet and second of all these snakes were not wild. They were his friends. Sure that hissed all the time and bit all the time…and they didn't much like being picked up and held and loved…but they weren't wild. Besides, they had been born in the closet and the closet was not the wilds so there.

"Needs-A-Name is the only one who got out…well Slippy sometimes disappears but he…or she…always comes back. Snakes are really loyal like that." Said Sho. He held out his arm and Needs-A-Name wrapped around him…and also tried to bite through his sleeve. He used his powers to keep Needs-A-Name's head away from him. Getting bitten right now would not have made big sis any more likely to let him keep those snakes.

"Sho…I really wish that you hadn't named them…because now it's going to be harder to say goodbye…and you do have to say goodbye. Those snakes are wild animals and I'm sure that you love them-" said big sis

"I do! I love them and I've been taking good care of them! I've been feeding them live bugs every single day and I've been running a heater in our closet so they don't get cold and I brought a bunch of dirt inside and-" said Sho. He needed to tell her that he had done his best and his best was good enough and that he was good enough and that he could take care of the snakes…and maybe if he said it all then she would think that he was good at taking care of the snakes and then…and then she would let him keep them and…and they wouldn't have to go. He didn't know if he could just…let something else….someone else…that he loved just…go…like that. It had been so hard before and…and stuff…

"Sho….I love you a lot and I'm glad that you've been taking care of your snake friends but you know the rule. Dad hates pets and…and I'm not happy that you brought these snakes into the house when I asked you not to, too, and just…please let the snakes go while I clean this kitchen up. Alright?" asked big sis. Sho looked down at Needs-A-Name. He hadn't even gotten the chance to name him…or her…and the others had just shed their first skins only and…and he had no idea if they would be ok out there and…and he knew, from the book mom had read, that you couldn't forsake the journey for the safety of your room….but the journey sucked because it was unsafe and these snakes were only babies. They were like his babies and…and he couldn't just send his babies out into the world like that….

"Big sis….maybe we can just tell dad that we set them free but in reality we got them a real tank with a lock and-" said Sho. This could work. She had kept the secret about him being in love with Shimazaki from dad, and that was his biggest secret, so she could be trusted to keep the snake secret from dad too. She could be trusted not tell him and…and then they could get some real snake tanks and snake food and snake toys and the snakes could be so happy and…and they could take care of the snakes together just like they had taken care of baby sis together….and it would be just like those times and…and she'd come around. She had to. She was big sis.

"Sho….no. Those are wild animals and they belong in the wild. Bringing them into the house is like…like when dad took us out of the Castle…and how we never went back. You remember that…right?" asked big sis. That was a dumb question. Of course he remembered the last time he had ever seen his home. That was…he had thought that they would be coming back…but they never did…and he had no idea if they even still had that house. He didn't know. All he knew was that it had hurt so much….but the snakes had been born in his closet and…and his closet was really little and….

And if they stayed in the house then they would have to stay with dad.

They wouldn't be safe with dad. That was why…why they had to go to a better place. Just like baby sis had to. Baby sis wouldn't have been safe here, with dad, and that was why Fukuda had found her a new mom to take care of her and stuff. Sure big sis could protect them but she couldn't be there every second of every day…and dad was such a jerk and…and big sis loved him but…but sometimes you had to make pragmatic choices….and this was a very pragmatic choice….

But if he could let baby sis go then he could let the baby snakes go.

"Alright…but let me say goodbye first." Said Sho. He had to let them go so that they could be happy. In way they were lucky. They got to go even though they were still just a bunch of little babies…or maybe they were kids now. He didn't know. All he knew was that they would be happier living outside than with his family. They would be happier anywhere than with his family…with his dad. They got to leave…they were so lucky…Sho had to stay. Sho had to stay until he was an adult…but it wasn't all bad.

At least he had his big sis there to keep him safe.


	411. The First Sleepover in Thirty Years

Fukuda and Suzuki hadn't had a sleepover in about thirty years.

But there Suzuki was, in his house, on his bed, with a laptop in his lap and the TV turned to the learning channel. This would have been normal had they been kids. Back then they'd had a bad habit of just showing up at each other's houses just expecting to sleepover…which they always did. They always slept over when the other wanted to have one. Pretty much every weekend was spent at the other's house. They had tried to switch off as often as they could, well Suzuki tried to anyway, in the interest of fairness and also Suzuki's dad wanting peace and quiet all the time. They had been going back and forth for a while but then that stopped when Suzuki's parents were killed and Suzuki and him ended up living together…and then for a time their lives became one endless sleepover.

But then they had stopped.

They had been living together all throughout university in that apartment in Tokyo…that tiny apartment. It wasn't there anymore, the whole building had been turned into better apartments, but he could still picture it clearly in his mind. Their tiny kitchen, that one room that they ate in, slept in, watched TV in, and occasionally brought company home in. Those were…not THE days…but those were days…days which neither of them were eager to relive. Suzuki had said, at the end of university, that he had no desire to ever live with anybody ever again and that he was going to take a walk around the world…and then he did just that and he found him own home and then…well the rest was history.

But now they were reliving history, apparently.

"Hello Fukuda, I still get the left side of the bed, right?" asked Suzuki. He asked this like it was normal. He asked like him sitting cross legged in Fukuda's bed was the most normal thing in the world…and for a while it had been…but they were grown men now and…and this was just…Fukuda had to think. Suzuki was acting strange…well he was always strange…but now he was being very strange. He was sitting there, and in just his pants and undershirt…and Suzuki normally slept fully dressed even when they were kids…and this was just…

Something had gone wrong.

He can't even go away for a night without something going wrong…but that didn't matter. He was going to handle this. He was the only one who could handle this. He had been handling this, and there had been a lot of 'this' over the years, since they had been in school together and he could handle this again. Whatever this was. Suzuki…seemed…his aura felt a little off…and he was…well he wasn't close to an explosion but his aura did feel just…off…

Which could have meant anything from he'd been thinking about entropy and the slow death of the universe again or a whole lot of people had just died.

"What?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki had said…he needed to listen to what he said too, not just the way his aura looked, because he did give things away with his words too.

"The left side, is it still mine? Or do you want it? I only had the left side, before, because that was the side facing the wall and I could get out of bed on my own without having to climb over you. This bed is much bigger and there's access on either side. So which side is mine?" asked Suzuki. He wasn't angry, which was good, but he was just…something was bothering him. The way his aura moved…the way he asked instead of just declaring which side was his…something was definitely off right now…well aside from the obvious….

"You can have the left side. I wish I had known that you'd be coming over. I wouldn't have been out so late…or at all." said Fukuda. Well hadn't he just picked the worst possible time to enjoy the Osaka nightlife? Well that was in the past. Now he just had to figure out what he was going to do now….besides have a spontaneous, middle aged, sleepover.

"It's fine. I had no idea that I would even be coming here at all." said Suzuki. Fukuda nodded and then sat beside him on the bed. Well time for a talk, then, to get to the bottom of all of this. If he hadn't known that he would have ended up here then something big must have happened, Suzuki liked to plan all of his moves in advance, but…well nothing was on fire or blown up so it must not have been so bad…but things were never 'so bad' until they were when it came to Suzuki.

"You're still dressed." Said Suzuki. He motioned to Fukuda's going out clothes. Fukuda hoped that his next question wasn't why he was dressed like that in the first place. Suzuki…did not need to know where he went at night. He had never approved of Fukuda wasting his money at 'those sorts of places' even back when they had been young. He had been fussier than Fukuda's own mother…though Suzuki telling her in the middle of dinner where Fukuda spent his time and money might have contributed to the heart attack that ended up killing her.

Because, really, nobody wanted to know that about their son…or anyone in their life.

"I just got home." Said Fukuda. He didn't offer up any additional information because, well, there were certain conversations that were best left in the past.

"I know but I remember that around this hour you're usually out of your day clothes." Said Suzuki. Right, he didn't like it when things were out of the ordinary…well he was the one who had been out of the ordinary first. He was the one who had shown up there in the middle of the night and now he was going to sit there and try to puzzle out Fukuda…he tried not to smile. That was just…ridiculous. God, he had always been so fucking ridiculous….

And he was still so, incredibly, fucking, ridiculous.

"Well you're pretty undressed right now. I remember that you never got out of your day clothes." Said Fukuda. Suzuki had always liked to sleep fully dressed. It started with sleeping in his school uniform back when they were in middle school in an effort at being more efficient and it ended in Masami having to forcibly undress him, sometimes, because if he had it his way he would have slept in his fully suit. He still did that thing, last Masami had said, where he slept on his back with his hands folded. He did that so he didn't wrinkle his clothes…his mom had always complained about how he was going to ruin his uniform like that…and now here he was in just an undershirt and pants…this was….well Fukuda would make the best of this…whatever 'this' was.

"It's a habit I've gotten into as of late. The buttons of my shirt would always get caught in Shigeko's hair and she didn't like that." Said Suzuki

"Well that makes sense." Said Fukuda. The buttons of his shirt had gotten caught in Masami's hair too…but Fukuda said nothing. Now was not the time to bring up Masami…well there was no time to bring up Masami…and also there was no time, there would never be any time, to tell Suzuki that Masami had told him that she had missed resting her head on a man's chest and not having to get her hair out of the buttons of his shirt…well she had said that and several other things…things that he would never say to Suzuki. Things that it would have been suicidal to say to Suzuki.

"It does. She…well she always makes sense. At least I try to understand her." said Suzuki. He seemed like he would have said more when his phone vibrated. He picked it up and…smiled? Well with his aura. Suzuki never had much expression to him…but his aura was most definitely smiling. He was just…well that must have been Shigeko then. Maybe they had made up…if they had even fought. Fukuda had no idea. He just knew that Suzuki was there and that he had taken to calling his Daughter by her given name.

"So, what's Shigeko got to say?" asked Fukuda. He leaned back and kicked off his socks. He had might as well be comfortable. Suzuki was back buried into his phone….and that had to be Shigeko. Who else would be texting him at this hour? Who else even had his private number? Well Hatori…but Suzuki was with him, not Hatori, and if that child wanted to spend time with Suzuki then…well there was no way in hell that he could handle it. Being friends, proper friends, with Suzuki was a lot of work. Fukuda had done that work, and done it well, for the past thirty years but then out of the blue some kid decides that he's going to-

Calm down, Tadashi.

Hatori was going to get his eventually. He had lied to Suzuki and there were very few things that Suzuki hated more in this world than lying. He always needed to know what was happening and he needed to be able to plan his moves in advance accordingly. Without the right information he would end up planning the wrong moves and then everything would end up going wrong…so, yeah, robbing Suzuki of the truth never went well. Hatori would get his when Suzuki figured out he lied to him…or Suzuki never figured it out and Hatori ended up getting to the weirder side of friendship with Suzuki Touichirou….

A side which they had, hopefully, left behind decades ago.

"About what?" asked Suzuki not taking his eyes off of his phone.

"What she's texting you about, I mean." Said Fukuda

"What? Oh, no, this isn't Shigeko. This is…someone else." Said Suzuki

"Hatori again? You know if you want me to tell him to get lost I can-" said Fukuda

"No, not him either. Just…someone else." Said Suzuki. There was something to his aura when he said that…and he had a tone too…and this was…he knew what this was. This was…something that they both should have left behind years ago…for obvious reasons. The very gold, very obvious ring in Suzuki's finger. How could he just…well he had done it before and….and Fukuda did not want to have to rehome any other babies!

"Is it that Sakata woman?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki was not one of the great stoics of the world. Sure his face was as bored as ever but his aura told the whole story. He…was going to do this again. Cheat on Masami. Create a whole new person and then abandon it. Sleep with a woman who was not his wife….and Fukuda was not being hypocritical. Masami had stepped away from her relationship because Suzuki had been neglectful towards her. Suzuki was stepping out….well she was long gone…but still. He was still going to sleep with this woman when he knew full well that he was married…well Masami had been gone for some time now…but still….

She did not deserve this!

"Yes…and tell me what this means." Said Suzuki. He passed him the phone like he had had been passing him his note binder. God, that end of the day ritual. They'd get to one of their houses, or their fort, record another one of their Claw meetings, and then Suzuki would present him with his binder of notes that had been passed to him in those rare times when a girl would return his feelings. He had them timestamped, literally he stamped the time on them, and asked Fukuda to decipher that they meant.

Some things never changed.

"She said….I'm in bed by eleven but I don't go to sleep until midnight…and this is in reply to you asking if she was tired…" said Fukuda. This was….well he knew what this was. She was flirting with him. A woman was flirting with Suzuki Toucihirou. Fukuda….did not understand women. He had never been able to understand women, what they saw in Suzuki, but he didn't have to understand this. He just had to figure out what he was supposed to tell Suzuki about this.

He couldn't tell Suzuki that this woman was flirting with him.

Because then he would…well they already had one of his illegitimate children in the world and they did not need two. Suzuki…he was married, too, and married men…well Masami had been married but she'd had a good reason to do what she did. She had loved him and he had loved her and Suzuki had been terrible to her anyway so…well that had been different. Masami was off running for her life and hiding, he imagined, and Suzuki was here flirting with women, desperate and probably deeply disturbed women, all night like it was nothing and-

Calm down, Tadashi.

"Because it took her a moment to answer…well thirty seven seconds…and when she takes more than thirsty seconds to answer then she'll most likely take longer than a minute and I just…don't like it when she takes more than a minute because I worry that she's done talking to me but doesn't know how to say so." Said Suzuki. Well now he was just…it was always strange when he was this open….and he was open. He was being very open with his feelings and…that wasn't good. That wasn't good when it was about a woman…and Fukuda did not want to have to rehome any other little esper babies…and he just…part of him was happy that Suzuki was moving on and part of him wanted to take Suzuki and shake him and ask him what he thought that he was doing betraying Masami like this…and just….

This was a very complicated situation…and Fukuda knew that he had to tread lightly here.

"Well that's…why are you talking to her in the first place? I mean if she doesn't want to join then you can just force her to-" said Fukuda. He wanted to just walk up to this woman tell her the same thing that they told everyone. You join or you die. He had no idea what Suzuki even saw in her. She, well he didn't know her personally, but he could still tell that she wasn't anything special. She was just a woman. She had led a very unremarkable life up to this point. She had worked as a shady accountant for shady people and now she was leading her own group of shady people. What did Suzuki see in her? Besides her powers. Maybe it was the powers that attracted him to her. Maybe that was what he saw in her and not Masami. He had never messaged Masami like that. He had left her alone for weeks and sometimes months at a time and she just….she just had to be all alone with the kids. It had been hard for her. Suzuki…well it had been hard for Masami and he hadn't even put any effort in talking to her...or being there for her…or even….Fukuda had no clue how he felt about that….because Masami deserved to be happy but also…also he loved her and if she had been happy then they never would have found each other…

"I don't want to force her to join…I want her to join of her own volition." Said Suzuki. He played with his hands when he said that…and Fukuda hadn't seen him do that in years and…and that was not a good sign at all.

"So that's why you're been texting her…for a while now." Said Fukuda as he scrolled up. Suzuki had been taking to her about…her garden…her cats…meals she had made…this was a lot about her. Maybe he was information gathering again? Fukuda…he knew better. This wasn't just information gathering. This was him being…well he was…Suzuki was interested in this woman…

"Yes. I want her to join Claw…and nothing more." Said Suzuki. He was lying to himself, Fukuda could tell, and that was…well this whole thing was bad. He…was going to deal with this. He was going to deal with this just like he had dealt with anything and everything that Suzuki could throw at him. At least it wasn't going to be a dull night…well it had been a pleasant night…but at least it wouldn't be dull. Yeah…you always had to accentuate the positive…or something. He didn't know. He just had to….to deal with this.

"Right. You know…if she doesn't want to join and you don't want to force her then maybe we should move along. I mean she clearly doesn't want to join and-" said Fukuda

"I know that she doesn't but…maybe I can change her mind…I mean it would be easier if I knew what she meant by…well some of the things that she said. Wrote." Said Suzuki

"She just…well she seems to enjoy talking to you but maybe….can I be honest here?" asked Fukuda

"Aren't you always?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda bit his tongue. He wasn't going to tell Suzuki…well all that there was to tell him….even though it would have just made some things easier but…well he wasn't going to think like this. He was still out of it. He had been out enjoying Osaka…and maybe he should have been attached to Suzuki as usual so this couldn't have been left to happen and…well if Suzuki knew he would throw Fukuda in a hole to rot…but at least then his life would have been his own….

"I am…but I need to speak freely right now." Said Fukuda. He was going to speak freely…but not too freely. He wasn't going to tell Suzuki exactly what he thought. He wasn't going to tell Suzuki that he needed to get his head back in the game and that he needed to stop talking to women in general because, well, the world did not need any more of his children in it. Sho was such a good boy, he was so much of Masami, but his other children might end up inheriting whatever was wrong with him…and also the world had Shigeko in it and that was more than enough of Suzuki and whatever was wrong with him.

"You may." Said Suzuki. Fukuda took a breath and decided what he was going to say. Suzuki wasn't the only one who could plan his moves in advance.

"I think that maybe you're interested in this woman in a way that goes beyond work and, yeah, I know that I'm overstepping but I know you. I know what you can be like. You're talking to this woman and you're over thinking thing with her and-" said Fukuda. There was a flare of his aura but…a surprised one. Not an angry one…and that was….good. He was doing well…well as well as he could do.

"I…am not. I am not interested in Shiori…in Sakata." Said Suzuki. Fukuda rolled his eyes, well he wanted to, so he kept the eye rolling within his own mind. If he closed his eyes he could have seen the two of them back in his room. Suzuki would have been there insisting that he had no interest whatsoever in whatever girl who had caught his heart that week. God. This was…he could have laughed. He could have laughed and if they had been anyone else, if they had been any other two people having themselves a middle aged sleepover complete with agonizing over girls.

"Are you sure? Because I know you and you never take this kind of interest in anyone unless you're interested in them. Her." said Fukuda

"I…have no idea how I feel about her. May I speak freely?" asked Suzuki. That was…this was rare. Suzuki…the last time Suzuki had asked to speak freely he'd taken a rung from his pocket and asked if he had chosen something worthy of Masami. That had been…no. The last time had been when Sho had been born and Suzuki had been hiding in Fukuda's apartment because he had looked over the curtain despite being told by everyone in the room not to. No, wait, the last time had been when he first found Shigeko…and he had been apprehensive about taking her in…he had been planning on giving her to one of the Divisions…but Fukuda had convinced him that raising her in an actual family would have been better….

It was always a big thing when Suzuki Touichirou asked to speak freely….hell, it was always a big thing when he asked permission to do anything at all.

"Could I stop you?" asked Fukuda. He tried to make light of it, to bring Suzuki back down to normal. He was not in the mood to hear something heavy like he was planning on divorcing Masami and marrying this Shiori woman…even though that would have been great for Masami…no. He was not going to entertain thoughts of what could have been and what he wanted there to be. Masami was…she was gone and…and even if Suzuki was well and truly over here it wasn't like they could be together. No, there was no story that he could spin that would keep Suzuki's suspicions away…and also he had other things to deal with right now than his lack of love life…and the lack of the woman he loved in his life.

"No, you couldn't so I will. I…have no idea how I feel about her. She is…someone who fascinates me and I would enjoy…speaking to her…but I know that I…you aren't married. You wouldn't understand." Said Suzuki. Fukuda understood fully well. Suzuki was attracted to this woman and he didn't have the decency to either honor his marriage or release Masami from their marriage…not that they had anywhere to send the divorce papers but…well if she weren't married to him and he was too busy with someone else then she could come back into his life….and Sho's…and he was going to stop before he got into the latest episode of the life of Fukuda Tadashi as it should have been.

"I can try. So, what, you're into her?" said Fukuda. There was some…tenseness…there that he knew that Suzuki wouldn't pick up on. As long as he kept it out of his aura then he was going to be alright. Suzuki knew auras, not tones and body language.

"I just said that I didn't know. I'm married to Masami….she's gone but I'm married to her…and I can't…do that to her." said Suzuki. That was…well at least now he was acting like a husband…and Fukuda had no idea how to feel about that…but this change of heart did not erase baby Mukai or Micha from the world…and he just…he felt so bad for Masami but also good because Suzuki was getting over her and…and he just…this wasn't about how he felt. He had a part to play in all of this. The part of the eternally loyal best friend and right hand man. That was who he was and he just…had to get back into the act. So that was what he did.

"That's good. I mean if you realize that-" said Fukuda

"But I haven't done anything with Shoiri but I'm guilty and also…not guilty…and my house is full of snakes-" said Suzuki. Fukuda felt his aura pull in. That was…he knew that Suzuki did try his hand at being metaphorical sometimes but….Fukuda was going to stay calm. Somebody might have betrayed him again….someone who wasn't him. Someone might have revealed themselves to be a double agent again or…or something. Fukuda…he needed to get to the bottom of this before…well before he found himself rotting in a hole. He knew that if what had happened ever came out he would find himself in a hole, he would be free of Suzuki though, and he would also be on his way to death so…so maybe he could stay with Suzuki for a little while longer.

"Wait…what about snakes? Are you trying to be metaphorical or-" said Fukuda trying his best to keep his aura calm. Maybe Suzuki would blame the sweating on the heat…or something. He didn't care what he blamed it on just so long as he didn't get suspicious…because the last thing that Fukuda needed was Suzuki getting suspicious.

"No, I meant that literally. My house is full of snakes because my son brought them into the house for some reason. That's why I'm here. Shigeko told me that I had to leave so here I am." Said Suzuki. Fukuda blinked. That was…well he would talk to Sho about bringing snakes into the house later but…Shigeko…she had kicked him out of the house. He imagined her as the picture of the angry housewife with a rolling pin in her hand and her foot tapping….and that was just…less ridiculous than what had actually happened. He assumed that there was no rolling pin involved but…she had kicked her own father out of the house….

"Wait…she kicked you out of the house? And you let her? Touichirou…she's eleven." Said Fukuda. He knew that he was reaching with the use of his given name but…but that was nonsense. Ridiculous nonsense. That was…she was eleven years old. She was his child, not his spouse, and she couldn't just kick him out of the house for the night…though this would be good for Sho…but still. This was just…insane…but that was par for the course when dealing with Suzuki Touichirou. You either got used to the insanity or went insane yourself.

"I know what age she is." Said Suzuki

"Then why did you let her kick you out of the house?" asked Fukuda with a sigh that he knew Suzuki wouldn't know what to make of. Shigeko…had way too much power. She had been so small and cute and sweet and now…well now she was a small, cute, sweet little tyrant. She had the power to throw her own father out of the house…power that Suzuki gave her. If Masami had been around then none of this would have happened…but she had done what she'd had to do. She'd had a very difficult choice to make and she'd made it. She had made it with the trust and hope that Fukuda would do right by her kids…and he had royally fucked that whole thing up…and there was no salvaging it…and he was sort of glad that she was gone. At least if she was gone then she wouldn't be able to see what had become of her only daughter.

"Because…because she was going to deal with her brother and…well she stopped me from dealing with him. She stopped me physically and…well I mean metaphysically and…and I am, in some ways, proud of her…and in some ways I am angry with her…but she has every right to be angry with me. I mean I've been carrying on with Sakata…well not on with her but I've been thinking about it and…and I should not be so unfaithful to Shigeko-" said Suzuki

"That's a weird word to use, unfaithful, when talking about your daughter. That's really more of a word that you would use when talking about your wife." Said Fukuda

"Oh…well I used it because it fit. She is, in many ways, fulfilling the same role as her mother. Well without the sexual component, obviously, because she is my Daughter…well not genetically but the thought of being with her in that way makes me want to kill myself-" said Suzuki

"As it should." Said Fukuda before he could stop himself. Suzuki was capable of a lot of terrible things…but not all the terrible things. There were some things, thank God, that were even too terrible for him.

"I know it should and it does. I just….I would never put anyone above her and I shouldn't act like this because I am putting Shiori above her…well not yet but I am in danger of it and…and I cannot treat her that way. I love her." said Suzuki. Fukuda had never wanted to hit him more in that moment than he had at any other moment in their friendship…if it would even be called that. He wanted to hit Suzuki hard enough to knock some sense into him. Where was this when he was with Masami? Where was this caring person, this person who was capable of caring for another person, when Masami had been fading away into a ghost? What, now he decided to be a good husband? To his own daughter? No, not even his own daughter. He had a daughter that he never saw, that he didn't even acknowledge, and he didn't treat his own son much better. Shigeko was the person that he cared for this much and…'

And Fukuda needed to calm down.

Shigeko was…Shigeko. Suzuki couldn't help feeling the way he did about her. She was him, in miniature, a reflection of all that he was. That was what children were, really, tiny mirrors of who their parents were. Shigeko had the same thing wrong with her that Suzuki did…and he did have something wrong with him. Fukuda had known for years, since the day that they'd met, that something was off about Suzuki.

"Yeah….and you're right. It wouldn't be smart at all to bring another woman into her life like this. She shouldn't have kicked you out of the house, you're right about that, but you know how she is. She's very possessive of you I've noticed, she's always been a daddy's girl, and maybe she can subtly pick up on the fact that you may be developing feelings for another woman…a woman who isn't her mother." Said Fukuda. He was lying through his teeth but that was normal for the two of them. He lied to keep Suzuki from doing something stupid and Suzuki was grateful that he was lied to. That was just how it went between them….and how it would always be.

"You…you're right. She has a sense for these things and…you're right. That's…I've been terrible to her lately." Said Suzuki. Good. He was listening. His phone was vibrating beside him and he wasn't picking it up. Good, good, very good. Now maybe they could move past the agonizing over girls part of the sleepover and get to the part where they ate garbage, played videogames, and occasionally did stupid things like try and give themselves radiation poisoning by sitting on the microwave.

"Yeah, well, now you can do better and-" said Fukuda

"I just wish I knew what was wrong…well not wrong but…I used to be so focused. I used to be able to see my goals and I used to be able to achieve them but for the past four years now I've just been….I don't know. I don't like it." Said Suzuki. He'd gone off the deep end after Masami left. Having that baby just cinched it but…well he'd been able to hold it together for a year or so but…yeah. Suzuki had been a mess and clinging to Shigeko had only made it worse…they really brought out the worst in each other…and Fukuda…for once he had no idea how to fix it.

"You're doing fine. It's normal for anyone to have setbacks, even you." Said Fukuda. There. Reassuring. He wanted Suzuki to keep calm…but he also wanted him to fail. He wanted this whole insane…thing…to fail already. It was amazing that they had even made it this far. World domination…every day it looked more and more like Suzuki could actually do it.

"This…doesn't feel like a setback. It feels like I'm losing my way. I mean….I used to know exactly who I was and now…now it feels like things are in flux and…and it feels like I don't even know myself sometimes. I mean I'm finding myself attracted to women who are not my wife and I'm neglecting my duties to Claw…and to my children…and I just…I feel like I'm losing my way…in a way." said Suzuki

"Touichirou….having feelings for a woman isn't losing your way. You're a man, it's normal to look at women, and even married men…well you're barely even married. I mean I know that it's been a while for you since you were even with a woman…and I know that you get kind of weird if it's been a while for you…sorry to speak so freely but-" said Fukuda. He was doing his best but he was getting into uncharted waters here. He had built Suzuki back up after rejection, he had helped him mentally prepare for coming rejection, but he had never told Suzuki…well any of this. But he had to do what he had to do. This was the life that he had made for himself and now all he could do was live it.

"No, you're right…you know me. It has been a long time…long enough that Minegishi is starting to look good to me." Said Suzuki. Fukuda couldn't contain his shock. Minegishi Toshiki? The one that they worked with? Shigeko's bitchy best friend? Them? That person? Suzuki…was losing his mind. That was the only explanation. He had been dancing on the edge of the abyss for a while, now, and he had finally fallen in head first.

"What the hell, Touichirou?! Them of all people? Have you seen them? Or interacted with them in any way?" asked Fukuda. This was just…he knew Suzuki. He knew the sorts of women he liked. Feminine types with hair he could run his fingers through, legs from here until next week, and a chest of some kind. Minegishi looked more like a guy than anything…which was probably why they were dating a blind man. Suzuki wasn't blind though…or deaf….or impaired in any way. To have gone from Masami to that…well now he felt insulted on Masami's behalf since she couldn't have been there to be insulted herself.

"They have a beauty to them. The shape of their face, the dip in their waist when you can see it…and I have no idea why they wear men's clothing. They really do look pretty…despite the short purple hair and lack of eyebrows." Said Suzuki. He noticed the strangest things about women. Minegishi was just…he saw nothing that could be considered attractive about them….damn. It really had been a while for Suzuki hadn't it?

"They're really not much to look at…damn. It has been a while for you. I mean I know you and I know what you like and they do not have it." Said Fukuda

"Well I have no idea if they do since they wear men's clothing for some reason…but they aren't terribly unattractive. They're intelligent and they're good with Shigeko….and I don't understand why they don't want to be a woman so there's a level of fascination there." said Suzuki

"They're also flat as a board and a complete bitch." Said Fukuda. Minegishi…he had no idea what anyone would have seen in them. They had nothing going on. They didn't have good looks or a good personality. They were just this bitchy flat chested short haired person who was hell bent on being the bitchiest person who had ever lived.

"That too…but I can overlook that…I mean I could overlook that. I won't be overlooking anything because I won't be pursuing them or anyone else." Said Suzuki

"Yeah…and also I'm pretty sure that they're Shimazaki's girlfriend." Said Fukuda. He was mostly sure that Suzuki wasn't going to try anything…but he wasn't well if Minegishi was starting to look good to him. They were not his type at all…he had no idea what man would consider them to be his type…and Suzuki…well he was a very predictable man and when he started to act unpredictably…well then was when it was time to run.

"That would make sense. Them being with him I mean. He's a powerful esper and he's very fit, too, I mean more than you would think based on how he dresses….so of course Minegishi would want to be with him…not that I would ever have tried anything with Minegishi. I'm married and also….well it doesn't seem like the most intelligent move, taking employees to bed with me, so I won't ever be doing any of that." Said Suzuki. Fukuda was going to ignore the return of not entirely straight Touichirou. It was best to just not acknowledge him when he entered the conversation. Last time Fukuda had acknowledged him…well he didn't want to relive that night.

"Yeah that'd be smart…but seriously. It's been a while for you and maybe you just need…well maybe you should come out with me one of these days." Said Fukuda. He did not want to bring Suzuki with him on one of these nights…but that was better than him getting all weird because he hadn't been with anyone in a while. If Minegishi of all people was starting to look good to him then, yes, it had been way too long…and if Suzuki was getting over Masami then…then as much as he should not have been cheating on her it was still good that he was getting over her…then she could stop running or hiding or…whatever she was doing.

"Tadashi…you aren't wasting your money at pinsaros again are you? Because you really don't need to. I don't know why a woman would say no to you. You're intelligent, good company, you've probably gotten better at kissing since-" said Suzuki. Nope, nope, not talking about that. They were not talking about that because he knew what it meant when Suzuki starting talking about that. Talking about that would lead to trying that…and Fukuda was not in the mood to try anything….and he had never been in the mood…and some day he would sit Suzuki down and tell him that he wasn't as straight as he thought he was and if anyone was responsible for Sho being the way he was it was Suzuki. These things did have a genetic component after all and Suzuki….well he had told Fukuda on many occasions that if he had by some stroke of fate been born a woman they would have been married years ago…amongst other things…and the things that had happened….things which were difficult to write off as the result of being weird, horny teenagers with poor boundaries and little supervision….yeah. Fukuda was not going down that road again.

"So, how your Minecraft world going? You know I've been having a lot of trouble, actually, in mine and I would love your help." Said Fukuda. He knew that he was blatantly changing the subject…but it needed changing. It needed changing before Suzuki got any weird ideas in his head…or he went off on his rant about pinsaros and the like being total wastes of time and money…and they weren't. They were good if you didn't have the time or mental energy to meet a woman the normal way…and if, in Suzuki's case, you couldn't be trusted to meet a woman on your own and had a lot of pent up frustration that came out in weird ways. No, Fukuda was not in the mood for any of that….

He was sort of in the mood for videogames.

He was sort of in the mood to bring this middle aged sleepover away from the agonizing over girls portion of the night and over to the videogames, junk food, and heading down to the video rental place…if there were even any of those left…God. It had been so long….about thirty years…

It had been about thirty years but…it felt like yesterday….


	412. Ignoring Some Very Good Advice

Suzuki Touichirou didn't always take the advice that he was given.

He knew that Fukuda kenw more about these things than he did and he knew that he should have listened to him…and he was planning on listening to him. Just…later. A little later. Just…he knew that he should have just stopped talking to Shiori all together but…well that seemed sort of…impolite. To just stop talking to someone like that. That was just…not polite and he knew that he could say and do whatever he wanted but he wasn't an impolite person.

At least not to women.

Which was why he was here. The same meeting place. He couldn't just stop talking to Shiori because it was impolite and it…set a bad example for his children. Yes, that was a thing too. He couldn't act in ways that he wouldn't want his children to act…and other such reasons. Which was why he was at the same meeting place, alone, and she had agreed to come alone too. He could defend himself if the need came. He was the most powerful esper in the world after all…he just didn't like to do these things himself. The less people saw of what he could do the better. Yes, he knew that coming alone wasn't an intelligent move, it was essentially gambling with his life…

But it was better than the alternative.

The alternative was Shigeko finding out about any of this. She was…there was no one that he would ever put above her. He loved her and…and she loved him and he knew that she knew that he loved her….but Fukuda had also brought up a good point. She must have realized that he had been in danger of putting someone above her…not that he ever would but…his feelings here were very complicated and not something that his Daughter needed to know about. She was only eleven and she didn't need to know that her own father could be this sort of person. She didn't need to know that her father was the sort of man who would develop feelings for another woman…one who was not his wife…

The less Shigeko knew the better.

Which was why he came alone. His bodyguards were her best friends…and also neither Shimazaki nor Shibata could keep anything to themselves. Shigeko would take this the wrong way…well all of Claw would, but it was her that he was afraid of losing…and he would examine that later. His life's work was Claw but it was her opinion of him that worried him the most…and this was not something that he had to worry about now. He had enough to worry about now.

Like the aura getting closer.

He sat up straighter and did his best to smooth his hair down. It stood up, it always stood up, and that was why he kept it so short….and it was short enough that it didn't look bad…but he still felt like it looked bad. It felt like it looked bad and…and he smoothed his eyebrows down too…and he hated the way he looked. He really hated everything about the way he looked from his eyebrows to his hair texture to his hair color to the freckles that dotted his skin…mostly on his back and shoulders….not that she would see his back and shoulders…not that he wanted her to see his back and shoulders…not that he would ever let himself want her to see his back and shoulders….or any part of himself…and it wasn't like he wanted to see any part of her….

He couldn't want to.

So he decided to stop thinking about this. He took all thoughts that he should not have been having and cast them out. He didn't want to or need to think about that….so he didn't. Instead he focused on the sound of her footsteps and the feel of her aura and…and he focused on himself. Usually he stayed seated when someone approached him, getting up was a show of equality and he wasn't equals with anyone baring Shigeko, but now…he got up. He got up and opened the door for her…and then he bowed, too, because it was polite. His back hated that, it really hated that, but he did it anyway. That was just the polite thing to do…and he was always polite…to women at least.

Because he didn't like being thought of as impolite.

"Well aren't you a gentleman, Suzuki-san." Said Shiori as she walked up to him He straightened out and she bowed back. She held two cups of tea in her hands but as she bowed she let her powers hold them…and he met so few telekinetic people of skill…and that was a display of skill. True skill. Fine movements, being able to hold two cups of hot tea without spilling them, now that was a show of skill.

"And you're very skilled, Sakata-san." Said Suzuki. Women liked to be complimented so he complimented her…and that was only a compliment. He didn't think that she would…well he didn't think that she would feel the same way he did…not that he was feeling anything. He was just feeling…things which he was feeling…

What was he feeling?

He felt…warm. He felt warm and just…happy. He felt warm and happy and…and this was nice. This was nice and he just…he knew that it was wrong to feel this nice. It was wrong to look at her and feel…warm and nice. Her hair was so long and black and it looked so soft…and her face was soft…she had a softness to her that he liked…and her dress looked soft…and it was green. He had never thought about the color green this much, about her favorite color, but he liked it…and maybe he should have brought her something green….because something green would have made her happy…and there is a part of him that wants nothing more than to make her happy….

Fukuda was right. It had been a while for him.

She smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. He wondered if those were real emeralds set into her earrings. He wondered if she liked emeralds. He wondered if she liked them and if she would have wanted...and now he knows that he's thinking of her in terms of courtship. He knows that he's thinking of how he's going to make her happy, happy enough to be his, and he wants…he knows that it's been a while and…and that's it and…

And she smiling.

His heart smacks into his rib cage.

"I got you some black tea. I figured you'd want some, especially after what your kids put you through. I still can't believe your son filled your house with snakes." Said Shiori. She smiled and handed him a cup of tea with her powers. This was a paper cup with tea that came from a place he was not familiar with…but he didn't care. He had said, off hand, that he had no idea why Shigeko liked black coffee when black tea was superior…and Shiori had remembered. Not only that but she had remembered what he had said about Son and the snakes and….and that was just….this was just…

He had said things and she had remembered them.

"He did…well there weren't that many snakes but I consider one snake to be too many." Said Suzuki. He wondered if he had said the right thing. This wasn't tying. He couldn't just change his mind after he'd said something and delete…and he didn't have time to even properly formulate what he was going to say…and he hadn't even said that much but…but he still felt like he had said something completely ridiculous and…

And she smiled.

"Same. Sometimes my cat brings them in from the garden and I'm just like 'why are you doing this to me?' and….yeah. Snakes are the worst." Said Shiori. She smiled again, or maybe she had never stopped smiling, and he never wanted her to stop smiling and…and she was just so…well she was very pretty and he wished that he could stop seeing her as being pretty. He wished that he could stop seeing her for what she was, a beautiful woman, and he wished that he could have seen her the same way he saw everyone else. A potential ally or enemy or…or something….

"They are…do you want to sit down?" asked Suzuki. He pulled all the chairs out from around the table just so that she would have options as to where she wanted to sit…and just so that she would pick somewhere that wasn't beside him but…

But she sat down in the chair closest to her.

That chair was beside the chair closest to him…so manners dictated that he sit down beside her. He was many things but rude was not one of them. So there he was, sitting, in the chair beside hers and…and he was fine. She was there and he was there and….and she was close enough that he could smell her perfume…either that or she had been working in her garden….and he wanted to ask…but he had no idea why he wanted to ask….or if it even was ok to ask….but he had to say something….

Because something had to be said.

"Were you working in your garden today? Because you smell like it. It's a good smell." Said Suzuki. He wished that Fukuda had been there, he was better at talking to people, but of course he hadn't brought Fukuda with him. Fukuda would have said that this was a bad idea…and rightly so. This was a bad idea. This whole thing was just a bad idea and…and he didn't need people to know that he had done this…that he had met with a potential enemy alone…one which he might have had feelings for.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, I was trying to get some work done before it got too hot out. I cannot wait until winter let me tell you. Well winter is good for me but not the plants, especially the new ones. I just put in some roses, actually, and some succulents too." Said Shiori. There was some dirt on her fingernails. In the nailbeds. She had been working…and she had shown him pictures of the progress that she had made. She had taken out some dying dwarf lemon trees and added some living rose plants. She had been working on this for a while. Suzuki had no interest in gardening but he did like to see her happy.

Well feel it.

Because she had an aura. She had an aura and it felt happy…and he had forgotten what it was like to share in another person's aura. Like this, he meant, like…like he should not have been doing. He had shared in Pang-san's aura when they had been together…and that had been the most intimate intimacy that he had ever felt in his life…and he needed to stop thinking about that. Even if auras made everything easier. Auras were easier to read than tones and words and faces and actions. They never lied. They didn't come with a set of instructions that he had never been taught. He instinctively knew how to read them and the people that they were attached to.

And right now he was reading her as being very happy…and he didn't know why but he knew that he wanted her to keep on feeling like this.

"I remember, you told me." Said Suzuki. He wondered what his aura looked like to her. He had been trying to keep it neutral but…but it was hard. It was hard to keep his aura neutral when she was right there. She was right there and she was sitting beside him and…and he could have sworn her hand moved closer to his…and she was…her aura had flared there. Not angrily, no, just…it had flared and now…well now she was taking a drink and…and he got the feeling that this was the real life version of the three dots from their conversations.

But what was there for her to even think about?

"You do?" asked Shiori after what had to have been the world's longest sip of tea. She seemed….well it seemed as though she was trying to keep her aura neutral just as he was…and it seemed as though she was having just as much trouble and he was…and he didn't understand her one bit…or maybe he did and he didn't realize it…if they were in the same boat but….no. He was being ridiculous.

"Yes. I remember the things you tell me. The succulents were fascinating to me. I had thought that they were cacti, they look very similar." Said Suzuki. He was just making words at this point. He had to say something, she had said something to him, and not saying something back would have been rude….but in just saying something he had made himself out to be a moron. He had done research when she had shown him pictures of her succulents. He knew that they, or at least the kind that she had, were a type of cacti….and now of course she wouldn't join him. She must have thought that he was a moron. She must have been planning in her mind right now how she could possibly get out of this room without offending him.

"Well they are a type of cacti. It's hard to get them to grow here, without cholorokinesis anyway. Or maybe I'm just not much of a gardener." Said Shiori. She twisted a strand of her hair when she said that…and he had to say something…something other than asking if he could touch her hair…because it was so soft looking but women didn't generally respond well to men asking to touch their hair…but he had to say something…the seconds were ticking by. Come on, Touichirou, you speak Japanese. Make words already. Preferable ones in Japanese. Preferably ones which make sense and match the current conversation.

"No, no, you're a very good gardener. I like those giant sunflowers you grew and…and I already told you about the succulents…but I also think that it's amazing that you've grown so many food plants…vegetables I mean. I mean that you're very fascinating and amazing and I enjoy it when you tell me about your garden." Said Suzuki. He felt like he might have been edging close to a line. He felt like maybe he had getting close to…something…but he had no idea what. It wasn't as though he had told her that she was one of the most beautiful women that he had ever seen and that she had made her way into his dreams both normal and otherwise. It wasn't as though he had asked her to go to bed with him…and he needed to stop thinking about that….and about everything else…he was acting like a hormone addled adolescent. He was an adult now, he was Suzuki Touichirou, and he had to act like it.

"That's really flattering, actually. I can't imagine that I'm that interesting to you…of all people. I mean, alright, you're Suzuki Touichirou. You've traveled the world and built the biggest esper organization in history, I can't believe that my little old garden is of any interest to you." Said Shiori. She was still smiling…and her eyes met his…and he looked away. She had brown eyes, a common shade of brown, but a beautiful shade of brown nonetheless and…and he needed to just…get a hold of himself.

"It is…I mean you are…I mean that you are a fascinating woman." Said Suzuki. There. He hadn't gone over the line…and there was a line. The line was…touching her. Yes, just so long as he didn't touch her then…then he would be fine. Even though she was close enough to touch. Even though if he had wanted to he could have taken her hand…and the rest of her…and he needed to stop thinking about this. This was not the time or the place to be thinking about these things because there was no time and there was no place…because he was a married man.

Ring on his finger.

"Well you're a fascinating man. I've been watching your career for a while, but I told you that already, and I have a lot of respect for you but my answer is still 'no'. I have spent too many years of my life working for people more powerful than me. I want to be the boss for a little bit. It's nice." Said Shiori. Her hand was on the table…..and it was beside his. His ring hand. His non dominant hand. She was there and…and her hand was so close. There wasn't a ring on her finger, on either of her hands, and she had never been married…but he was married…he was married and part of him wished that he hadn't been…and then part of him wished that h could exorcise the part of himself that wished that he hadn't been married. He loved Masami. He was loyal to her…and he was never going to sleep with anyone else ever again…and he meant it this time.

"I…understand that…but you would have a degree of autonomy-" said Suzuki. It was difficult to order his thoughts now. Her fingernails were green. He so wished that they had been red, the shade of red that he was accustomed to seeing, because if they had been Masami's shade of red then she would have been Masami and the thoughts that he had racing through his mind….they raced and they raced and they raced….would have been alright because Masami was his wife….and Shiori was not his wife…and he just…

He wanted his wife…and he wanted Shiori….and since he couldn't have either of those people he had no clue what he even wanted.

"But not as much as I have now…so my answer is no. Thank you for getting rid of my enemies for me, that was very kind of you, but my answer is still no. So unless you're planning on using your normal diplomatic methods my answer is still going to be no." said Shiori. That no….it hurt…but the idea that he would…well if she had been a man of course he would have…but she was not a man, she was a woman, and he could never treat a woman like that.

"I…will not be doing so." Said Suzuki. There. That was the end of their conversation and now…well not she would be going. Out that door and out of his life forever…and that would be for the best. Even Fukuda had told him that it would be for the best and Fukuda rarely overstepped when it came to life advice these days. Anything he felt for this woman was purely physical and…and he just needed to…well he was just sexually frustrated because Masami was gone, that was all.

"Alright then, I'm glad that we understand each other." Said Shiori. There was another pause, another tea break, and Suzuki decided to mirror her actions. This really was good tea. He'd have to have this again if he was ever in Osaka…not that he knew why he would ever be in Osaka. Once he left this room then he would never have another reason to come here…and it would be better that he never came back anyway. He was thinking some very unhusbandly thoughts right now and…he looked down at the ring on his finger.

And so did Shiori.

"Hey Suzuki-san, can I ask you something?" asked Shiori. Her eyes were in his ring but her aura was on him. He had no idea what she could have possibly been planning on asking him. His mind was alive with the possibilities…but he hadn't taken leave of his senses just yet. He knew that she wasn't going to ask him to take that ring off, pick her up, sit her down on that table, and then….well all of the things that usually happened when one sat women down on tables.

"If you want to." Said Suzuki. He prayed to whatever God as listening that she didn't secretly have telepathy…because if she did then he knew that a well-deserved slap in the face was coming to him. A good, hard slap in the face with all the force that she could possibly muster…because the thoughts that he was thinking about her were in no way the sorts of thoughts that she would have wanted him to be thinking of her….not that she wanted him to be thinking of her at all in any way whatsoever.

"Is that a wedding ring?" asked Shiori. Suzuki looked down…even though he knew that his ring was the same as it had been for the past…almost twelve years now. The same plain gold band that he had been wearing since his wedding day. He didn't know why she would have mistook it for anything other than a wedding ring.

"It is." Said Suzuki. There was an ebb to her aura. She reached a hand down to his. He stayed perfectly still. He didn't know if he could trust himself to move. If he moved then he might have ended up either batting her hand away or taking her hand in his…and neither of those seemed like good options right now.

"Is it real?" asked Shiori. Her hand was still hovering over his. It took him a moment to remember words, how they worked, and how to put them together. Most of his mental space was taken up by just how…how close…she was to him. How her hand…despite the callouses it seemed so soft…and her fingernails were so green…but there was a chip in one…and he wanted to rest the pad of his finger on her nail just to see what it felt like, that chip there, and then he wanted to rest his entire hand onto hers…and stopping himself took most of his mental energy. He hardly had any left to even formulate a response.

"It's eighteen carat gold." Said Suzuki. It was real, he knew that it was real, but it had taken him a moment to formulate a response…but now her aura….there was a quirk to her aura there…a curious one…and he had no idea what she would have been curious about. She was the one holding her hand over his. Hovering her hand over his. If anything he was the one who should have been curious. If anything he was the one who should have been asking the questions…but he wasn't. He couldn't. He just…couldn't. He knew that if he asked, if he misinterpreted what was happening, then he would have ended up ruining the whole thing…and he had no idea what this was, exactly, but he did know that he didn't want it to be ruined. This…moment…or conversation…or series of moments…or series of conversations….or just…whatever this was that he was living through right now would just…cease…and he didn't want it to cease.

He didn't.

"No, I mean…is there a Missus Suzuki?" asked Shiori. Her hand was still hovering over his…and he pulled his hand away. Of course he had a wife, why else would he be wearing a wedding ring? Well back when they had been younger it had been a thing to wear a wedding ring to attract women but the whole thing had always seemed so dishonest…and he was many things but he was not dishonest…but still! Of course there was a Missus Suzuki and….and Masami may have been gone but….but as far as he knew she was still alive somewhere…and she would have been so upset if she knew what he had been thinking…but she didn't know but she couldn't read minds…even though sometimes it had felt like she had expected him to…and she had left some time ago anyway and…and it wasn't as though she was going to go bursting through that door incensed at the state that he was in and…and he didn't want to talk about Masami or think about Masami.

"There is…but she has been…we have been separated for some time now." Said Suzuki. There. That was the whole story of it. He and Masami were married but separated. Now they could talk about literally anything else. Now they could go their separate ways. Now there were literally an infinite number of things that he could do….

"Oh…how long?" asked Shiori. Why did she still want to talk about it? What difference did it make how long? He still had Masami and…and he still loved her…even if she had left him. Even if she had betrayed him. Even if she had left the children. Even if she had betrayed the children. Even if…even if she had been gone for him for the past almost half decade…she was still his…and he was still hers…and he had to always remember that.

"Why do you need to know?" asked Suzuki. He had no idea what she was getting at but he did know that whatever she was getting at he needed her to get to it already. He didn't want to talk about the woman he was married to with the woman he imagined, and had imagined for some time, doing a number of things with that married men did not do with women who were not their wives. He just wished that she would get to the point already.

But sometimes she had trouble getting to the point it seemed.

When they messaged each other she often let the three dots just stay there on the screen. He got the feeling that he was witnessing the live action version of that now. She was drumming her fingers on the table and sipping her tea, lots of short sips, and now she was staring at him…and when he stared back she looked away….and her aura had no idea what it wanted, it seemed. It got close to him, then it pulled away, and then it got close again, and then it pulled away again…and the whole her eyes danced all over the room…

And he was getting a little dizzy from all of this to be honest.

"Because you and I have been talking nonstop for a while now…and I like it. Now you've met with me in person…and I like it…and I just wanted to know where you wanted this to go." Said Shiori. She spoke quickly like she was worried that they were on a time limit. Well she had used the word 'go' and he knew what that word meant…but he had no idea what it meant in the context of this conversation. He knew that she didn't mean to physically go somewhere…she meant their relationship…or whatever this was….but she had said no and that was the end of it….and now he was looking too far into this as he tended to do. She didn't mean what he thought that she meant.

"Go?" asked Suzuki. He needed to get onto the same page as her. She was saying things that he didn't understand and…and he needed to understand what it was that she was saying…because otherwise he was going to make a complete and total idiot of himself.

"Yeah, you know, go. I've spent most of my life surrounded by powerful men and usually they only want one thing from me and they've usually asked me about that by now. You haven't. You…I like you. Talking to you. I like this and I want to know where you're planning on going with this." said Shiori. He knew what she meant…at least he thought that he knew what she meant. He knew that when a woman said that a man was only after one thing that thing was sex…and he wasn't after sex with her…well he had been thinking about it almost nonstop since he had met her but he wasn't actively pursuing it…and now he just…had he given her that impression? And how did he fix it? By being truthful….but what if he was wrong? He had to tread lightly. He was on his own in this situation. Completely and totally on his own…what he wouldn't have given to have had Fukuda there beside him…even if he would have just overstepped and told Suzuki that he was being a complete and total moron right now.

"I…wasn't planning on anything." Said Suzuki slowly. He really hadn't been….and he had no idea what she thought that he had been planning…well he had some idea…but if he told her what he thought then she would have either said, yes, she had thought that he had been planning on going to bed with her….or she would have given him a well-deserved slap across the face for opening his mouth.

"Well…neither was I. Well I didn't come here with a plan or anything. I just wanted to talk to you in person again…and I have…and I also was wondering if you wanted this to go somewhere." Said Shiori. Suzuki…was bad at words….but he got the feeling that he was hearing her loud and clear…but he couldn't have been. She knew that he was married and…and he knew that he was married and…and the subject of marriage had been brought up and settled…

"Go…somewhere?" asked Suzuki. He must have been wrong. This was why he shouldn't have been talking to people without Fukuda there. He had no idea what she meant. Well he had some idea but he knew that his idea must have been wrong….and even if he had been right about what she wanted…well he still would have been wrong….because she was…she wasn't asking him to…and it wasn't like he was going to say yes to….and this was just….he really wished that he had brought Fukuda, or someone, with him.

"Yes…I mean you and your wife are separated and…and you're a really nice guy, nothing like what people say about you, and I had the feeling that you might have been into me….I mean men generally don't text you nonstop at all hours of the day and night if they aren't…so I was just wondering if you wanted to go somewhere with this…and I wouldn't be opposed to…going somewhere with this. It doesn't have to be anywhere serious….but I would like to go somewhere." said Shiori

"I….I…" said Suzuki. Words. You know how to speak, Touichirou, and you need to make words right now. Come on, even a toddler would have had better speech skills than you. Just ask her what she means. Come on, it isn't difficult. You know how to speak so do it already. Do it before she says something else that you have to think up a reply to. Come on, you're supposed to be a genius, aren't you? Well then put that hyper cognition to the test and figure out what it is that you're supposed to say to this woman already!

"Do you want to come over and see my garden maybe? In person, I mean." Said Shiori. Her hand was on his and…and he had no idea…of anything. He loved Masami and…and that wasn't Masami's hand over his…it was Shiori's and…and he got the feeling that she had asked for more than him to come and see her garden in person…but…but that would have been…if she had wanted more than she had said then she would have asked him for more and…and he had no idea what was making him overthink…even though he got the feeling that he wasn't overthinking and….

And he couldn't see his wedding ring anymore.

"I….that would be…acceptable. I would be amenable to that…I mean. Seeing your garden." Said Suzuki. He wasn't going to do anything. Right or wrong he wasn't going to do anything. It wasn't as though he was going to wind up dead. It wasn't as though he was going to be ambushed and killed, it simply wasn't possible, and that…was the only concern to be had about this…really. He was a married man, he knew that he was a married man, and he knew better than to let his senses leave him…again. He was fine. The real danger was in him getting ambushed and murdered…and nothing else….nothing at all like what had happened before….

He knew that he should have listened to Fukuda, he knew more about these things than he did, but Suzuki…well he knew himself and he knew that nothing was going to happen. Nothing at all.


	413. The Return of the Little Boss Lady

Mob was the one in charge of where they went now.

"Ok, so we're in agreement that we're going to Tokyo…and then after that London…and then after that California…and then where are we going after that?" asked Mob as she walked up and down the plane aisle. She had her ipad in her hands and her finger hovered over the keyboard. She was setting the itinerary for the whole rest of the year! And the plane ride was going well! This was the best day ever!

Even if something was bothering dad.

She could feel his aura. He was off in the corner, he had told everyone to leave him alone, and she didn't think that he needed to be alone right now. She knew her dad and she knew that sometimes he could get either really mad or really sad for no reason….and this was one of those times. When a person was sad they needed to be with their friends. Her friends always made her feel better when she was sad and she always made her friends feel better when they were sad and even Sho was with Fukuda now because he was feeling sad about the snakes…not that she knew how Fukuda could help but if Sho felt better then that was what mattered.

Well that and making up their itinerary for the rest of the year.

"So we're skipping the Christmas party?" asked Minegishi from where they were sitting. They were using Shimazaki as a pillow and they looked like they were going to be sick…probably because they were flying and stuff. They hated flying and…well it was a short flight to Tokyo. Then they could go somewhere with a lot of plants…well there were plants in London…well some it was cold there now…after California they could go to the jungle or something. Some place where Minegishi could be happy.

Because they deserved to be happy.

"Mob, no! You can't cancel the Christmas party, I was planning on slipping Hatori some-" said Shimazaki

"Nobody is slipping Hatori anything. I had to hold his…well I had to do a lot of things for him last time and I don't want to ever have to do those things for him again. There have to be limits of some kind in this friendship." Said Shibata. Mob nodded. She would make an official party rule that Hatori wasn't allowed to have anything to drink or smoke or eat, well that wasn't food, and then they wouldn't have a repeat of last year…because nobody wanted to have a repeat of last year…

Especially the guy who cleaned the bathroom sinks.

"Come on…I'm not going to do…any of that again." said Hatori. Mob walked a little faster. The pacing helped her think…and that was all. She wasn't trying to get away from Hatori in this tiny plane. She had no reason to avoid him. He hadn't said a word to her about what had happened when she asked him out, he thought that Shimazaki had put her up to it, and she wasn't going to bring it up either…so now they could go back to normal….but going back to normal was actually kind of hard…

But she would worry about that later. Right now she had to get this travel itinerary done.

"We're still going to have the Christmas party guys…and we're going to make a rule that Hatori can't have anything fun. Not even champagne." Said Mob

"But where are we going to have it? You already scheduled this thing for the Tokyo HQ. If we follow this then it's going to be a lot of travelling all before Christmas...and I don't know if I can deal with that." Said Minegishi. Mob looked down at her ipad. Right. Winer was coming and when it was winter then Minegishi was in a lot of pain and sadness and cold and stuff. They hated the winter and they hated flying…so doing both at once…they would need more than a couple of Xanax and using Shimazaki as a pillow.

"Well maybe I can move it to right now…and turn it into a Halloween party. People like Halloween." Said Mob. She liked Halloween, well she liked candy and costumes…and she had already ordered a bunch of Christmas decorations…but she could just have them dyed orange and purple and black and stuff. She could also just give everyone new invitations and…yes. This was going to work.

"Miss Suzuki? Are you sure that's a wise decision? You could end up alienating a lot of important backers." Said Fukuda. Mob had put him in the far corner specifically so that he couldn't hear her or talk to her…not that she wanted to be mean to him or anything. She hated being mean…she just didn't want to give him the chance to be mean first. Not that he had been mean…well he had called her Miss Suzuki…but he could have said something a lot worse.

"Leave big sis alone, if she wants to have a Halloween party then she can throw a Halloween party…now hold still." Said Sho. Mob knew what he was doing, another one of those pokey tattoos but this time on Fukuda, and she really wanted to tell Fukuda not to let Sho do that to him. That was teaching Sho that it was ok for him to go around giving tattoos and stuff….and they were a cool kind of art and stuff….but if Sho did that to Fukuda then he would have thought that it was ok to go around doing that to other people too…and also Sho…she loved him but she had no idea if he knew what he was doing…

But at least he was practicing on the guy who could heal…so that was good at least.

"Miss Suzuki, I just think that you should reconsider…or at least ask your father-" said Fukuda. Mob…well she knew that Fukuda helped dad with these things…but she could handle them. She was in charge here. She was in charge and she knew what she was going to do. Everyone had been working hard all year and now it was time to have some fun. People liked parties, people like Halloween…well not everyone in Japan knew about it…but people liked parties and candy and costumes and spooky stuff and that was what they were going to do. Have a party and then everyone would have fun…and then they would be happy.

Mob knew how to be in charge.

"Big sis knows what she's doing…stop being a jerk and hold still." Said Sho. Mob could tell that he was upset…and she knew that she was right to send the snakes away, wild animals belonged in the wild like mom had said, but she also knew that she had hurt Sho when she sent the snakes away…when he was all grown up and dad was old and stuff then she would get him snakes. Then, in the future, but not now.

"Yeah, stop being a jerk and let the kid practice his stick and poke on you." Said Shimazaki. Mob quickly turned over to look at dad. He had his earplugs in and he was doing something on his laptop…so he hadn't heard. That was good. Sho needed to be more careful about that…and everyone needed to no talk about it so loudly. Dad didn't like tattoos…or anything that Sho did…and he was in a bad enough mood as it was. She didn't want to make it any worse.

"Not that he's doing that again." said Shibata. Mob didn't know if he honestly couldn't tell what Sho was doing or if he was just lying in case dad was listening…and she would have to make a no lying rule. She didn't like lies and people needed to tell each other the truth…and she wondered if she could make those kinds of rules. Dad had told her that she was in charge now and….well she knew that she didn't have absolute power, she could just make new divisions or anything like that, but she might have had the power to make new big rules….

She would ask about that later when dad was in a better mood.

"No, he is. I can tell." Said Shimazaki. Mob shook her head and motioned over towards dad. His aura was pulled inwards and he was buried in his laptop but he could have heard them at any moment. Then he could have gotten up and tried to punish Sho…and then Mob would have had to stop him again. She hadn't liked it, before, stopping dad from getting up and hurting Sho….but it had to be done. She just didn't want to have to do it again.

It had just seemed sort of….mean.

"Ryou, we were trying not to address it. Stop drinking and pay attention to your surroundings for once." Said Minegishi. They were in a bad mood…and Mob wished that she knew what she could do…this was only a one hour and fifteen minute flight…but there had to have been something that she could do.

"I haven't had that much to drink, Toshi." Said Shimazaki. Mob thought otherwise. There were a bunch of tiny beer cans and wine bottles on the seat across from him, and she would have to make a rule later on about all garbage going in garbage cans, so maybe he'd had enough. She knew that Minegishi had helped make that pile but she also knew that Minegishi knew to use moderation. They were always talking about it, anyway.

"You've had enough, Ryou." Said Minegishi. There was a tone there that she couldn't read…but maybe it wasn't meant for her…and also maybe it wasn't a good tone. Sho's aura flared when they said that…but that was normal for when Minegishi talked to Shimazaki. It must have been so hard for him having to see the boy he was in love with sitting with Minegishi…and Mob felt bad for him, she really did, but she wasn't going to order Shimazaki to break up with Minegishi and then wait until Sho grew up and then marry him…well boys couldn't get married…but still. That wouldn't have been fair to Minegishi, they had been dumped once already and they didn't need to be dumped again…and it wouldn't have been fair to Shimazaki, it was hard for him to be open about his feelings like this, and it wouldn't be fair at all to Sho because the love between him and Shimazaki would have been forced and not based on actual love at all…so she wouldn't be doing that even though she was pretty sure that she had that kind of power over her friends.

"Or maybe you've had too little. Come on, get on my level. You'll feel better." Said Shimazaki

"They said that they didn't want any." Said Sho. Mob shook her head. Nope. This was getting close to a fight. Shimazaki and Minegishi were a couple now and couples did this thing where it seemed like they were fighting but they weren't, Mob had seen Minegishi and Shimazaki do it before and she had seen a lot of movies too, but Sho didn't realize it and he thought that they were really fighting. He loved Shimazaki so of course he wouldn't want people to fight with the boy he loved.

Was in love with.

There was a difference, Mob realized, because Sho wanted to be his boyfriend. Mob loved Shimazaki too but in a friend sort of way, not a kissing sort of way….and it was so weird thinking about her little brother thinking about anyone in a kissing sort of way…but he was a human being the same as she was and he thought about the same sorts of things that she did…and he must have been just as hurt as she was, she realized, because if it had hurt her hearing Hatori confess to Minegishi…then it must have been extra painful for Sho to have to sit and watch Minegishi and Shimazaki cuddle…and when Sho was hurt he started fights…

And rule number one on the plane was 'no fighting'.

"Sho, stay out of this. Here, focus on the rocket ship you've been drawing…maybe make it look more like a rocket ship." Said Fukuda. Mob knew that this was getting worse. Fukuda always made fights worse, he had to fight with everyone, and he encouraged Sho to fight even when he didn't directly tell Sho…and Mob did not need to deal with another plane ride fight. She was tired of plane ride fights.

"He's not drawing a rocket ship. I can feel it from here. That's clearly a-" said Shimazaki. Mob leaned forward to see what it was…and it just looked like a really bad drawing of a rocket ship…but skin was different than paper…and also Fukuda was moving a lot….and also Sho was still learning. She didn't know if she wanted Sho to learn how to do this…but it was better that he learn on Fukuda than himself…and also she wanted nothing more or less than his complete and constant happiness.

"Ryou, shut up about what Mob's little brother is drawing." Said Minegishi. Mob…wouldn't have used those words exactly…but yes, Shimazaki needed to stop talking about what Sho was drawing. Sho was in love with him and every mean thing he said was like Shimazaki was digging his heart out with a spoon and then rubbing salt in the wound.

"Sho's drawing what Sho feels like drawing and none of us are artists so we can't talk about the things that Sho draws. Anyway so we're in agreement about the schedule, right? The Christmas party will now be the Halloween party?" asked Mob. Parties were a good thing to talk about. Everyone loved parties…well the last one hadn't gone the best…and at least if she and Shimazaki had another coke adventure it wouldn't be as cold out so that was good…but this would be a good party. She would make this into a good party.

"You know not a lot of people in Japan celebrate Halloween." Said Shimazaki. Mob nodded. It was much more popular in America…but she didn't want to move the party to America. People had already planned on coming to Japan…and also she just sort of liked being in Japan the best…because she was Japanese and it was her first language and also she just…liked looking like the people around her…even though she knew that was selfish of her.

"Yes…but that's the only holiday theme that I can think of." Said Mob. She could do maybe a non holiday theme like under the sea or the future…but that was kind of a waste of a month. There was a holiday this month so why not use it?

"There's health and sport's day…so we could have a Claw wide sports festival like they have in school." Said Shibata. Mob…well that didn't seem like a party idea but…well that could have been a fun thing to do next summer. She added that to the idea list.

"That's all you, Shibata. I'm more of an indoor guy." Said Hatori. Mob…well she thought that maybe being outside would do him some good, being outside in the sun and getting exercise was good for you…but she wasn't going to say anything. That would have been really mean and she did not want to ever be mean to Hatori. He was her friend…just her friend…and things maybe were pretty awkward right now….but that didn't change the fact that they were still friends.

"Sports Day? That's the best you guys can come up with?" asked Shimazaki. Minegishi lifted their head and gave him a look even though he didn't see expressions that well, he said, not unless he was really focused on the person…and he was always really focused on Minegishi. Mob maybe wanted to tell him to focus a little less on Minegishi since Sho was right there…but Shimazaki had no idea that Sho was in love with him and she wasn't going to go around telling her own little brother's secrets like that.

"What else is there?" asked Mob. The only other thing she could think of was Shimazaki's birthday….but birthday parties weren't work parties. Well the Awakened celebrated dad's birthday but that was different. They had already planned a party for Shimazaki at the house. He would get thirty one pancakes, which was way too many pancakes for one person, and then maybe if he had all thirty one pancakes he would get sick of pancakes and never want to see or eat them ever again and then breakfast would be safe forever.

"Really Mob, you can't think up anything else special happening in October?" asked Shimazaki

"Nothing else besides your birthday…but we're already throwing you a party in the house with birthday pancakes. You get thirty one pancakes because you're thirty one. You've been looking forward to this for a while. You said so." Said Mob

"We should throw Shimazaki a party instead of having a Halloween party! It's a good idea! Do that, big sis!" said Sho. Mob nodded. Well if Sho thought that it was a good idea then she would do that. She would kill two birds with one stone…that was a mean saying. She would get two things done at once. Shimazaki was a good friend and she loved him, and Sho loved him a lot more, so she would just do that. Maybe Sho should have been in charge too. He was good at making decisions….and he was the one who was going to grow up to be in charge of Claw, not her.

Because he was a boy.

She didn't mind it, the fact that she could never inherit the world. She was a girl and girls didn't inherit things. She just hoped that Sho didn't get overwhelmed. It was hard to be in charge and she really hoped that he watched and learned from her. She didn't mind at all that one day she would just live with dad and her kids and that would be her life…she would at least have a boyfriend then, or a husband, and she wouldn't have to move anymore…and she would keep her friends close, of course, not in the house but they would be close…and it would be a good life…

Besides, she could enjoy being in charge now while she could.

"Hey, hey, hey, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here." Said Shimazaki. Mob stared at him. That was a saying but she had no idea what it could possibly mean. Throw the baby out with the bathwater? That was just weird. If someone was so absent minded that they threw a baby out with the bathwater then maybe they shouldn't have been allowed to have a baby in the first place. That was mean but it was just how she felt.

"Ryou, we're not throwing two parties. I don't think that I can survive two parties." Said Minegishi. Mob would make sure that there were plenty of things at this party that they liked…and she would make sure that nobody confessed to them, too, about being in love with them and about wanting to eat them. She would be there at their side the whole time. There. That was a good plan.

"We can throw one party, a combination party." Said Mob. There. That was another good idea. She would get a cake and stuff and…well it would be fun. She had planned on getting very stoned with Shimazaki but they could do that anytime….and also she had been looking forward to pancakes…but she could serve them at the party. That would be good, Shibata could help since he liked to cook, and also they could get drunk off of that vodka that Shimazaki liked…that was going on the idea list too.

She was on fire today…the saying, not in life. If she had been on fire in life then she would have been really freaked out.

"See, great minds think alike! Ok Mob, so what we're going to need is a hundred cases of champagne, a hundred cases of good Russian vodka, a hundred cases of pudding packs, some candles at the table, a really good playlist…let me do the playlist actually…and we're going to need some lawn darts-" said Shimazaki

"Miss Suzuki, before you make any decisions I really think that you should consult your father." Said Fukuda. Mob hated it when he called her Miss Suzuki…and also she hated it when he looked at her and stuff, too. She could feel his eyes on her…and she turned to the side. She hadn't been wearing her sweater, just her shirt, and she sort of wished that she had worn her sweater even though it was hot out…but she wasn't going to make a big thing out of it. She didn't want to make a fight happen. That would be breaking her own rule.

Also she maybe should have asked dad.

He was in a bad mood but also…well he was still the President of Claw. He had put her in charge but he was still there. He wasn't on one of his away missions, he was right there, and she could ask him…so that was what she was going to do. Even though he could say now. She looked down at her ideas list. These were good ideas….and she was in charge…but not fully. She was not fully in charge and she would never fully be in charge.

Because she was a girl and that was just what life was like when you were a girl.

"Hey dad….dad!" called Mob across the plane. She tapped his aura with hers. He looked up, his laptop almost fell but he caught it with his powers. His aura flared against her and...and it didn't feel good at all….but she had to ask him. She wasn't the only person in charge and…well she had to ask him. Even though he could just walk over, take her whole list in his hands, and delete it all…because he was the one in charge…and stuff.

"Shigeko…what is it? I told you not to bother me. I told you that you were in charge." Said dad. Mob nodded. She knew that she was in charge but…well Fukuda was right. She didn't have all the power and she never would…and also she had no clue what dad was so upset about but she didn't want to make it any worse.

"Can I move the Christmas party to Halloween and also make it a-" said Mob

"Yes, yes, that's fine. Whatever you want is fine." Said dad before he put his earplugs back in. She nodded and looked back at everyone else. Fukuda was giving her a look but he did that a lot, that wasn't new and it wasn't important. Figuring out the details of their travel plans and party plans, all of that was important.

"Ok, so since we're staying in Tokyo for longer than I thought we can move the London trip to…" said Mob as she went over the new list she just thought up right now this second. She was making plans as fast as they came into her head…and she liked it. She made plans all the time. She planned on which chores she would do and what meals she would cook and what groceries she would order…but this was different. This was better…more exciting. She had all the power and she could make things so fun for everyone….and that was what she was going to do for as long as she could. She wouldn't have this kind of power forever, she was just a girl after all, but she would hold onto this for as long as she could.

She would be in charge for as long as she could be…because it was pretty great being in charge of stuff…and it was too bad that it couldn't be forever.


	414. Getting a Birthday Present for Shimazaki

Kei had lived in Tokyo for his entire life, thirty years, and in those thirty years he'd seen A LOT of shit….

But this took the cake.

This took the cake, the pie, the thing with the fruit on top, and the entire goddamned bakery too.

"Hi? You're Shimazaki's friend, right? The one that sells him drugs and does his tattoos?" asked a very small little girl. She had to have been about five or six or something…or maybe older. He didn't know how to age kids. He just knew that there was one standing right there on his doorstep….well outside of his apartment. He didn't have a doorstep, obviously, because this was Tokyo and who the hell could afford a house in Tokyo. He had an apartment and he lived here and worked here and, yes, occasionally entertained the company of one Shimazaki Ryou….

That crazy bastard.

That fucking insane…completely insane….Shimazaki!

"Shimazaki here?" asked Kei. He leaned in his doorframe and looked around. Just the stairs behind her. He couldn't see anyone but that didn't mean that she hadn't been followed…and he was a dead, or at least fingerless, man if people knew that he was still talking to that bastard…that bastard who had obviously learned nothing if this kid was anything to go off of. God fucking damn it….how old even was this kid?!

"No, he's not with me. I came on my own." said the kid. She played with the straps of her little blue purse thing…and he remembered her. That was coke girl, well the girl that Shimazaki had coked up back around last Christmas….and she was looking to buy again? This was…how old even was this kid? She was at least…well he had no idea….but she was too young for this and she was too young for Shimazaki….but here she was….

He was a dead man.

He was a dead man if anyone figured out that he still spoke to Shimazaki. He was a dead man if anyone found out he sold to a kid. He was a dead man if anyone found out that this kid was even here! Like her parents. This little girl had come to him last year with more money in her little purse than any kid had a right to carry and, apparently, her father was high up in some organization or something that was all people like Shimazaki…and Kei was going to die if he didn't get this kid out of here right now.

Like, right fucking now.

"Well then, little girl, I'm going to need you to go out the way you came…and make sure that you aren't seen." Said Kei. The kid made no move to leave…of course she didn't. She was Shimazaki's…he didn't even know what….so of course she didn't take orders. He hoped that this was one of Shimazaki's kids, and he did have kids, instead of…well the other reason he hung around kids. Not usually kids her age but…yeah. Hopefully this was another one of those kids that he had no idea was his or something and not the latest reasons he got banished.

And hopefully this wasn't going to be the reason that Kei's life ended.

He knew powerful men, he had been living and working around them for his entire life, and he knew how they were about their daughters. Mainly that they didn't want their daughters anywhere near someone like him…but especially Shimazaki. You don't touch the Father's daughter, the lieutenant's daughter, the enforcer's daughter….you basically did not touch anyone's daughter for any reason. Shimazaki…was an idiot and it looked like he was still an idiot….

Another in a long string of daughters.

"Wait, I have money. See? I have a lot of it and I just want to buy some of the stuff Shimazaki likes. It's almost his birthday." Said the kid. Kei sighed and got out of the doorway. He knew her type, well he knew her type when they grew up. She seemed way too young to be trying to piss off her parents by doing…whatever…with Shimazaki. Hopefully nothing…because he did have his limits…and that was a KID. That wasn't a teenager, which he could look the other way about, that was an actual kid. He knew what he was, he knew who he worked for, and he knew how people saw them.

But, really, they weren't the monsters people made them out to be.

They served a need in the community. The people needed their pick-me-ups. The people needed their gambling. The people needed a cheap and safe place to have consensual adult relations…God, he sounded like an old lady…the people had their needs and the family fulfilled them and made their money, too, because a man had to eat. They weren't the monsters people made them out to be. Case and point, they did not mess with kids. KID kids, like this one. She wasn't in the grey area yet, this little girl, she was…well she wasn't five or six…but she wasn't even middle school aged yet…

Fucking Shimazaki.

Kei stepped out of the doorway and motioned for the little girl to follow. She wasn't going to leave and, obviously, he wasn't going to chase her away. The best thing to do was just to give her what she needed and then send her on her way…and then pray that his door wasn't going to get kicked in and the wasn't going to end up with fewer fingers…and he needed all of his fingers. They knew that he needed all of his fingers to work…and without them he was useless….and this had better not have been the day he died. Shimazaki had better not have just signed his death warrant….

Because if he had then he was coming back to haunt him….and not in the fun way.

"Your house is much cleaner than the last time I was here." Said the kid. He motioned towards his couch and she sat down. She sat down and just looked around…and she seemed bored. Maybe he had her all wrong. Maybe she wasn't the younger version of one of those girls who did whatever they could to piss off mom and dad. Maybe she was just the younger version of one of those girls who were literally unshockable. Those girls who could see you gun a man down in front of them and all they did was tell you off for getting blood on their new fur coat. Those girls….so this was what they started off as.

Kind of creepy.

She just looked around and sat there with her ankles crossed and her little purse in her lap…and she would have been adorable if she hadn't been so damn creepy. She was in this little suit thing, blue blazer and all, and that would have been adorable if she hadn't been so damn bored looking….or not even bored. Just…flat looking. She was staring at him, now, and her eyes were so blank….he looked away. He took a step away, too, because there was that static electricity feel to her, the same one that Shimazaki had, and…well Shimazaki had told him that she was like him…back when they'd shown up in his home unannounced at one in the morning…

He really needed to move.

"So, what are you looking for today Miss-" said Kei

"Suzuki. Suzuki Shigeko but people call me Mob…and I'm looking for some of those cartridge things that Shimazaki likes…and whatever else he likes, too. I figured you would know because you're his friend." Said the kid. She already had a name? You didn't just get a name, you had to do something to earn a name, either that or you gave yourself a name like a try hard bastard and hoped that it stuck…but he got the feeling that she had earned her name. Mob. Nameless and faceless background character. He could see that. She looked…well she looked like everyone else. Very Japanese. Aside from her face, her eyes, the way she took in everything and seemed to find it…lacking.

Or maybe she had just done that before.

She wasn't nervous at all. She talked like she had no idea what she wanted but…well she knew what she was doing. He'd dealt with first timers before. The kids of powerful men that were looking to take a walk on the wild side. Kids years older than her. Kids sitting and squirming, just about pissing their pants out of nerves worried about being found out….worried that they were making a mistake. Indecisive. This little girl…

She was very decisive.

"Yeah, I've got carts. You want anything specific or just whatever?" asked Kei

"Whatever you have…and however much I can get for all of this." said the kid. She opened up her little purse and shook out her money all over his coffee table. That was….a hell of a lot of very big bills…and he was not going to rip her off. First of all Shimazaki would fuck him up if he ripped off…whatever this kid was to him…and second of all this was the daughter of someone obviously very powerful…and he was going to get his ass kicked if it came out that he sold to her…but it would be extra kicked if he ripped her off.

Also it was just bad form to rip off kids.

"How much even is that?" asked Kei

"Um…I don't know. I stopped counting when I got to five million." Said the kid. Kei…did not want to know what these people were doing if they could just give a kid over five million yen. He didn't want to know or need to know….and he needed to get her out of here as fast as possible.

"You know what? You can clean me out when it comes to carts. Flower, too, plenty of flower if you're interested." Said Kei

"You mean from the actual plant?" asked the kid

"Yeah, it's good shit too. I can get you….I have about three ounces of that hybrid he likes left…you can have it all." said Kei. She was looking at him now…and that was a good deal! What?! Did she seriously think that he was cheating her?

"Is that a lot? Because that doesn't sound like a lot." Said the kid. Kei…she was not trying to negotiate. She couldn't have been. She just dumped over five million yen on his table and she was trying to negotiate…someone had taught her…not well but…well someone had made some attempt at teaching her…not Shimazaki. He couldn't negotiate for shit. If he could then maybe he wouldn't have gotten banished from the city.

"That's all I have, well all I have from the hybrid he likes….and it's lucky that you even caught me when I had it. You know how it is in Tokyo, you get what you can get. It's good shit, too, and that's plenty even for Shimazaki.

"Well….alright…if it's good and he likes it." Said the kid. Kei reached over and passed her a pipe. There was still some in there…and yeah, he knew that dipping in to what he had was stupid…but life was stressful and other such excuses. He handed her his pipe and lighter just like she was anyone else…because manners were a thing…and also he wanted to see if she actually knew what she was doing.

She did.

Which was…well he knew that he didn't have a soapbox to stand on. He had been doing the same thing when he had been about her age, late elementary school probably, and he wasn't going to slap the pipe out of her hand…but maybe….this was not the time in his life to start reflecting on the man he'd become. This was not the low point in his life, selling to a kid, because he was sure that there were much lower points coming. There were always lower points coming.

And as far as low points went this wasn't that low, really, in the grand scheme of things. Shimazaki had done much lower.

"You're right, that's good…Shimazaki would like that. Do you have anything else he'd like?" asked the kid. She had taken a VERY long drag off of that….and she seemed fine. Well it wouldn't have hit her immediately….but still. She had bought, well paid, last time he had seen her…and he was curious as to what her tolerance even was. She was too young…and he was not going to start moralizing….this was not the time to moralize and he was not a moralizing man either.

"I've got some coke, some shrooms, some-" said Kei

"Are you talking about food or drugs?" asked the kid. She…well either she didn't get it…no, she had been coked up last he saw her…was she messing with him? He…had no idea.

"What do you think I'm talking about?" Said Kei

"I…think drugs? Drugs that sound like food but aren't? I mean I know what coke is, it's great, but mushrooms sound more like the food." Said the kid. Kei…well if it wasn't bad form he would have laughed. This was still a kid. She didn't…well maybe it was good that she didn't know what everything was just yet. He didn't know. He wasn't paid to be philosophical or whatever.

"The kind that make hallucinate. You interested?" asked Kei

"Oh, like acid…alright. Shimazaki likes that stuff. Can I have as many of those as I can get too? And as much coke as I can get, he likes coke." Said the kid. Kei…was going to treat her like any other customer. He was going to get her what she wanted and then he was going to kick her out…ask her nicely to leave….because he liked being alive. Maybe he was getting old. Was thirty old? Well maybe. He had been about to tell that kid that she needed to slow the fuck down with all of this…and that was such an old man thought to have. She was just another customer and he wasn't supposed to sit there on his soapbox and moralize. This was Shimazaki's…hopefully his secret kid or something…..and he was going to do what she asked because he did not need Shimazaki popping into his life telling him off for not serving…whatever that girl was to him…

Kei did not want to know.

But he also did. He also really did. You couldn't know a guy for most of your life without knowing, well, the worst parts of him. The parts that made him do stupid shit with people's wives and nieces and daughters. The parts of him that made him do A LOT of stupid shit with people's daughters….and now he had to know. He had to know what was up with that kid…the kid who had just bought a backpack full of shit that could get him a life sentence…if not outright executed….

Maybe he needed to reevaluate his life.

"If you get stopped by any cops DO NOT let them see what's in this backpack, alright?" said Kei as he handed her one of his spare backpacks. She turned around and…oh. She expected him to put it on her….yeah, whoever her father was he was high ranking if she expected that. Like…a Father maybe. Shimazaki was such an idiot…maybe even a soon to be dead idiot.

"I know that this is illegal, I'm not a baby." Said the kid as he finished putting the backpack on her.

"Just checking." Said Kei

"Oh…ok. Um…when do you want me to bring this back to you? Because my lunch break is almost over but I can bring this back tomorrow if you need it back." Said the kid. Kei took a step back. She…lunch break? He checked the time…and he got the feeling that she wasn't talking about school. Well no, of course she wasn't talking about school, the powerful types were also the paranoid types and they didn't send their kids to school…so she was talking about work then…but she was a kid…

"You can keep it or just have Shimazaki bring it back to me whenever he feels like popping back into my life. Anyway you just have Shimazaki come here next time you need something, people are less likely to see him coming in and out, and just have a good day at…work?" said Kei. He was fishing for information…and he knew that bad things happened to people who fished for information in this business….but he just…needed to make sense of what had just happened here.

"Work. I'm filling in for my dad since he's not feeling well. Thank you very much for everything." Said the kid. That…just raised further questions…a lot of them. Like who in the hell put a little girl in charge and also…also just what in the hell had just happened…well she had just come in and spent millions of yen getting Shimazaki a birthday present…and that was just…why? He…knew that now he was just looking for information that he didn't need once he got it but…well he was curious. He had no idea what he would do when he figured out what she was to Shimazaki…but he did want to know….for his own morbid curiosity.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" asked Kei as she turned to leave. She took her phone out of her pocket, checked it, and nodded.

"Alright, but I don't have a lot of time right now." Said the kid

"Just…can I ask you…what are you to Shimazaki? Your relationship….I mean. You don't have to answer if you don't want to." Said Kei

"Why wouldn't I want to? I'm his friend and I don't feel bad that we're friends. Even if he does act like a crazy person sometimes we're still friends." Said the kid. Kei knew when he needed to stop prying. So he did stop prying. He stopped prying and he sent her out of his apartment before he got shot. She was Shimazaki's friend and…that was all that he needed to know….not that any of that was even on a need to know basis…

It wasn't.

He didn't need to know anything. He just needed to post up by his window and know that she had made it out safely…she was getting back into a car…and someone opened the door open for her…and she ranked that highly in…whatever she did…and Kei…did not need to know what she did. He sold drugs, he did tattoos, and he was going to stick with that.

He was not going to look into any of the fucked up shit that he'd just seen…and done.


	415. Big Desks, Missing Jello, and New Talent

Dad's desk was still too big.

Not as big as it was before, she only had to make his chair a little taller, but it was still big. His chair was too big and his desk was too big…and Mob wondered if she was just still too small. She was eleven and a half now, almost eleven and a half, and she hadn't sat back here since she was ten. She was taller now, and bigger, but she still wasn't as big as dad…well she would never be as big as dad since she was a girl and all…but she still felt like his desk was maybe too big.

But there wasn't anything she could do about that.

It wasn't like she could make herself grow up quicker. Well she could wish but wishes didn't come true even if you folded a thousand paper cranes. She wished that she could grow up quicker, though, because then maybe she could have her own office….not that she wanted…well she did. She wanted to help dad out better, that was all, it wasn't like she wanted to leave her family or anything. She liked taking care of them. She liked cleaning up the house and doing the laundry and cooking the same thing every single day three times a day…she didn't mind at all…she just…she liked helping out dad.

That was all.

Dad wasn't feeling too good, it seemed, even though he had told her that he was fine. He spent all day locked in his room yesterday and he was probably going to spend all day locked in his room today, too. He wasn't sick…at least not throwing up sick or sneezing sick or that kind of sick where you bled from your eyes…Mob wished that Emmy would stop sending Sho gross hospital pictures….dad was just…tired sick. He was tired sick like mom had been tired sick…but he would get better. He had to get better. He was her dad. He would get better and then everything would get back to normal and Mob wouldn't be in charge anymore….

She didn't mind it, that she wouldn't be in charge anymore, not at all…

She just wanted dad to get better. Sometimes people got tired sick. Mom had been tired sick for years, Mob remembered, for most of the time that she had known her mom…and then she left…but dad wouldn't leave. He had promised her a million times that they would be together forever. Forever meant forever. For all of eternity. Until one of them died and then the other would die and then they would be together…and that was fine. She loved her dad…even if he could be really mean sometimes…and she wanted to be together with him forever…and she hoped that he got better soon….

Even if it meant that she would have to get up from this desk.

She knew that she would have to get up eventually, she had to eat lunch eventually after all, but right now she just wanted to…enjoy this. Being able to help dad…and she was being very helpful. She was making people happy. She already decided that everyone got unlimited jello at the jello bar, there was a jello bar now, and people could chair joust just so long as they wore goggles and helmets. She was doing a good job and she knew that dad would have been proud of her…or maybe upset since he hated fun….but she wanted to keep on doing a good job and that meant sitting at this desk for as long as possible.

Even when she had company.

"Hi Shimazaki." Said Mob as Shimazaki teleported into her, into dad's, office.

"Hey Mob I've got good news, bad news, and horrible news." Said Shimazaki as he teleported into the office. He sat down on the edge of her desk just like he did before to mess with her. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his box of cigarettes. She wasn't a fan of him messing with her but she did like smoking….and Minegishi…well they had said moderation and one was moderation….or something.

"Um…can I have the news from worst to best please?" asked Mob

"OK, so the horrible news is that we're out of jello, the bad news is that the Awakened are fighting over what jello is left, and the good news is that I managed to snag us a couple pudding cups." Said Shimazaki. He shook two cigarettes out of the box and held them between his teeth before he put his cigarette box back into his coat and then, like a magician, he pulled out two pudding cups and two spoons.

"Thank you…and please tell the Awakened that I'll order more jello and that fighting is wrong." Said Mob. She would go down there if she had to…but she didn't want to. When she went and talked to the Awakened they never let her leave. They all wanted to bow to hug her and touch her hair and tell her how much they loved her and show her things that they had drawn and made and…well the whole thing took hours if they did it right. She loved them, she loved everyone, but she had a lot of things to do in the office.

She had to be dad after all.

She had meetings to do and people to meet and people to move around and plan their move to London, Sho hadn't seen his girlfriend in a long time so he'd be really happy about seeing her, and also she had to make sure that everyone was happy all the time…there was a lot to do and as much as she loved the Awakened she didn't want to have to tell them that their macaroni art and crayon drawings were great, and in specific ways because people liked specific praise, at least not when she was this busy, anyway.

And she really was busy.

"Want me to give them lives so they stop fist fighting?" asked Shimazaki. Mob…had no idea where he came up with this stuff. No she didn't want that. She had just told him that fighting was wrong and also if they had knives they would hurt themselves and each other and that would make more work for Fukuda and he was such a complainer sometimes….and she didn't want to have to deal with Fukuda today…or any knife fights…or any real fights for that matter.

"No, I just said that fighting is wrong." Said Mob

"I know what you said but just hear me out. If we give them knives then the fighting will end faster and then we can get back to what's really important." Said Shimazaki as he lit both of the cigarettes. Mob wished that she knew that trick. Shimazaki was talented like that, he could talk and light two cigarettes at once without using his powers at all. He handed her one of the cigarettes and she took it even though she could see the bite marks in the filter.

She just really missed smoking.

"I don't think that they're all going to go back to being friends if we give them knives to stab each other with." Said Mob. What was more important than friendship? Everyone had to be friends, they really did, because otherwise what was the point of even being Claw? Claw was a place where all the espers of the world could come together and nobody would ever have to feel like they were alone. They were all espers here, and they were all on the same time, so she just didn't understand why all of the Awakened had to fight with each other all the time.

Maybe because they were all boys.

Boys had to fight each other all the time, that was just how boys worked, and Mob…well she was glad that she had been born a girl. If she had been born a boy then she would have probably been down there fighting with everyone…and also she and Sho would have fought but maybe not because she loved him…but boys did love to fight…and she hoped that she had all girls. She wanted to have nothing but girls so that they would all get along and be best friends and also she wanted Shimazaki and Minegishi had have all girls, too, so that their daughters could be best friends with her daughters…but that would come later. When Minegishi and Shimazaki felt like having babies, not now, they had only just become a couple after all. Well she could always tell them to get married and have babies since she had that kind of power now…

But she had to use her power for good.

"Well, yeah, obviously but that's not what's important." Said Shimazaki. He ashed on the floor as he said that even though he could see that there was an empty Starbucks cup right there on the desk that would have made the perfect ashtray…and she knew that he knew that it was there. He just did things for attention, sometimes, to be annoying. She didn't know, sometimes, what Sho and Minegishi saw in him….

Well he was really tall…but there was more to loving someone than them being taller than you.

"Then what is?" asked Mob as Shimazaki leaned farther back onto her, dad's, the desk. He leaned more onto it and took a long drag of his cigarette before exhaling a really big cloud. She wondered if they were going to have another contest to see who could smoke the best…there was no way to judge who the winner was since he couldn't see smoke and she hated beating her friends at things…so she stopped looking at him. She looked at her laptop. She had another meeting….and someone named Sakata wanted to talk to her…well dad…and she would get back to them soon.

As soon as Shimazaki stopped ashing on her head.

"If enough of them stab each other then that's more jello for us." Said Shimazaki. Mob put a barrier over herself. She didn't much feel like having ashes in her hair. She didn't much want to have to wash her hair later tonight. She had enough to do. She had to make dinner and do the laundry, and how three people could make so much dirty laundry she would never know, and also she had to make sure that Sho did his homeschool work, he was with Fukuda and Fukuda never made him do it, and then she had her own homeschool work to do…and also she had to return Minori's texts…and also she had to wrap Shimazaki's birthday present…not a lot of time was left for hair washing…and that was why she wanted Shimazaki to be a little less close to her…

She liked him but not like that.

"Shimazaki….did you do something? I feel like you did something." Said Mob. She didn't like him like that and she didn't know why other people liked him like that. Sure he was tall and he smelled good and he could be sort of fun sometimes…but also he was Shimazaki. He acted like a crazy person all the time and he started things just for the sake of starting things. He did things just so that he didn't have to be bored…like steal all the jello…and she knew that it must have been him because she had ordered more than enough jello for everyone. She'd had dad check her math and everything. So unless everyone was all of a sudden super hungry someone had messed with the jello supply.

Shimazaki, why do you do these things?

"I…may have liberated a box or two….or ten….of tiny multi flavored individual jello cups." Said Shimazaki. Mob…well if she had been someone else, like if she had been boy Mob, she would have said something mean like 'Shimazaki, you're a jerk sometimes' and 'sometimes it's kind of hard to do my job when you're messing up lunch' or even 'my head is not an ashtray' but she wasn't boy Mob, she was girl Mob, and girl Mob was nice to her friends….even when they did stuff like this.

"Shimazaki….you know that those are for everyone…right?" asked Mob. She knew that he knew…and she knew that he didn't care…but it was one of those things where maybe she wanted him to say that he didn't know and then she could tell him not to steal food and she would get through to him and…well she also knew that there would never be those times. This was Shimazaki Ryou after all.

"I know." Said Shimazaki

"Then why did you take ten boxes?" asked Mob

"Because I have no idea which boxes have the chocolate jello in them." Said Shimazaki. Mob shook her head.

"I stopped ordering chocolate jello because only you and two other people like it." Said Mob. Chocolate jello wasn't good. It was all slimy and weird…like pudding…but also not like pudding…but just…not good. She didn't think that it was good anyway and even the Awakened wouldn't take it….but maybe she should have gotten more because now Shimazaki was stealing again…well he had never stopped stealing…

She had no idea how he got Minegishi and Sho to like him.

Minegishi…well they had known him for years and they hung out all the time….and also Shimazaki hung out with Sho…but she had no idea why people liked him like that. He was tall and strong and smelled good and could even be funny sometimes…but he was no Hatori…not that she still liked Hatori. She thought that he was cute…and she thought some other stuff too….but she was never making that mistake again. She had learned the hard way….and Sho wouldn't. Sho wasn't going to end up going through what she had went through….even if he was in love with Shimazaki like she had been with Hatori…she wouldn't let that happen to him….she just had to figure out what to do about all of that….

After she figured out what to do about the cases and cases of missing jello.

"Mob…you really are your father's daughter, you know that." Said Shimazaki. Mob nodded and ashed her cigarette into the empty Starbucks cup like she was supposed to.

"I know. My mom and dad were married and then they did terrible things…and now I'm here." Said Mob. She loved her parents, one more than the other, and she was glad that they had been in love but ever since Minegishi had told her the awful truth she just…was sort of glad that mom and dad weren't together anymore…because the thought of them doing the terrible thing that adults did…well that just…was not right.

"Yup. Terrible, unspeakable things." Said Shimazaki. He was saying that it was terrible but he was laughing…and she didn't see what was so funny about that…but Shimazaki was Shimazaki. There was no telling what he would and would not think was funny.

"Yes, things that I don't want to talk about…even if we are just talking about how terrible they are….now please put the jello back where you got it from. If you do that then I'll get a big box of the chocolate jello just for you." Said Mob

"And pudding." Said Shimazaki. Mob nodded. She knew him. He liked pudding…for sad reasons. Minegishi told her, well Shimazaki had told her while they were on acid but Minegishi said it better, that Shimazaki's mom couldn't always feed him but when she did she brought him a lot of chocolate stuff and she had let him keep a bunch of pudding cups under his bed so he wouldn't starve to death when his dad decided to stop feeding him….and she didn't want to think about sad things anymore.

"Alright, and pudding." Said Mob. Now she didn't feel so good….but maybe if she made him happy when she would feel better. She didn't like to think about his life…but that wasn't fair of her. It was much worse for him. He had to actually live through all of that which was much worse than her just thinking about it.

"Hot pudding." Said Shimazaki. Mob…well she wanted her friend to feel better but that was just something that she could not say yes to. The planning of it was just too much…and she had enough planning to do already.

"Shimazaki-" said Mob. She didn't know how she was going to get him a box of hot pudding….well she could make him a box of stovetop pudding….but he liked it from scratch and only Shibata knew how to make it from scratch…and he had enough to do as it was. He had a lot of fights to break up and stuff…the Awakened sure did love to fight with one another….nobody needed any extra work.

"With extra skin." Said Shimazaki. Mob almost choked on her entire cigarette. Extra skin? What was the matter with him? She knew that sometimes he said things just to get attention but…come on! Extra skin!?

"No…the skin is gross…and also I don't know how I'm going to get hot pudding cups and-" said Mob

"Come on, Mob, it's almost my birthday. Birthdays are sacred you know. Without my birthday I would never have been born and then what would the world have become without me in it?" asked Shimazaki. Mob figured that the world would have at least had more jello in it and fewer ashes on the floor…but she didn't say that. It would have been mean if she said that.

"They are…alright. I'll make you some pudding from the packet myself…and before you say anything I only know how to make it from the packet and I don't want to make any extra work for Shibata. Alright?" asked Mob. That was called compromise and diplomacy. Dad had told her, before, that she was really good at stuff like that. Well he said that she was good at everything that she put her mind to but he said that she was particularly good at all of that. Also Shimazaki had a point. Birthdays were very scared occasions.

"Mob, have I ever told you that I loved you?" asked Shimazaki. He kissed his hand and then pressed it to her forehead. She wiped it away. He was just trying to mess with her like he did before. He didn't actually love her…well he did, but platonically, which meant as a friend. She would never have done anything with her best friend's boyfriend, even think about liking him, and also she would never like the same boy that her own little brother liked. That would have been terrible. She could never do that to Sho.

So she wouldn't.

"I know and I love you like a friend…and now you're gone." Said Mob as Shimazaki teleported away. Hopefully he went to put the pudding back where he had gotten it from. She really didn't need another thing to worry about. She leaned back in her chair and woke dad's laptop up. She scrolled through his work email…and it was nothing but meetings being rescheduled and cancelled and moved….people wanted to meet with dad and not her but dad….well dad was tired and stuff….she scrolled down. There must have been something besides this….but no. Just work and stuff. Work and…

Oh.

Possible talent. Talent was a word for a natural esper. So was asset but talent sounded so much nicer than asset. An asset was a thing you used and you weren't supposed to use people. Talent fit better because powers were like talents. Everyone was good at something, everyone had something that made them special, and for espers that thing that made them special was their powers. She would make a new rule, she decided, that all new people would be called talent instead of assets.

Or maybe friends would be better…because that was what Claw was all about. All the espers in the world coming together to be friends….

…and this guy seemed like he could really use a friend. His mom was the one that had messaged. She was sad because her son had been born an esper and he'd never been able to control his powers…that happened a lot with natural espers who didn't have at least one esper parent to teach them….and this poor lady's son was scared to even leave his room…sort of like Sho was sometimes but for…wow. That…must have been a typo or something….because….that was longer than she had even been alive for…

How could someone spend fifteen years locked away in their room?

That was…that was awful. Mob….well she had been a lot worse about controlling her powers when she had been little…before she figured out that drinking and smoking could really help….and maybe growing up had something to do with it too…but she had never been afraid of herself before. Not like…not like that. Maybe because most of her family was espers…well mom was gone so now all of her family was espers….and she was so grateful for that. She was so grateful to be Suzuki Shigeko instead of someone else, someone who had been born to normal people, not that she had anything against normal people but they couldn't have taught her how to control her powers and she could have ended up like this poor lady's son….

Fifteen whole years.

Well Mob would fix that. This was important and she would get right to this. She knew that, maybe, she should have told dad that she was finding new talent…but dad was tired sick right now. He was tired sick and she was the vice president of Claw anyway and…and she could make choices in her life besides what color eyeshadow to wear and what weird thing to put in the curry tonight. She knew what she was doing, what she was supposed to do, and she was going to do it. She was going to find this poor person and help him and be his friend. She was going to go to him and bring him into Claw and he was going to find a Division where he could make friends and learn to control his powers and then maybe he would want to be her friend too.

So she put all of that into the email.

She messaged the mom, Serizawa-san, back from dad's personal account. She told her that, yes, Claw could help and that she would be right there. Mob would clear her schedule and-oh. Wow. Serizawa-san typed fast. She said that she needed time to get her son used to the idea of someone coming into the house. He was scared of people, scared of hurting them, and Mob…she got that. When she had been little…and even sometimes now…she could lose control. It was always a bad feeling, losing control, and she didn't wish that on anyone….

She poured herself a drink.

She used her powers to pour herself a drink from dad's fancy liquor bottles. These were mostly for decoration but the liquor inside was real. Also it was real good. Brandy was good once you got used to it, sort of sweet, and very strong. Good for keeping your powers quiet. She'd have to teach him, when he joined Claw, all about the stuff that he could do to control his powers better. Then once he got better control he could help them take over the world so that no espers had to feel like him. No esper would ever feel alone ever again once Claw took over the world.

It would be a good future.

But it was a far future. She had to add this to her current future, meeting this person, and adding him to Claw. His mom didn't say when he would be ok to visit…but she would put a pin in the London trip until it was ok. She didn't want to have to land in London but then get right back on the plane again. Besides, he lived all the way in…Baked Goods City. That was one of the Industry Cities. Baked Goods City, Seasoning City, Cuticle City, Lower Back Pain City, Heavy Industry City…maybe they could do a tour of the industry cities as a friend trip….dad had done that when he had been a kid in school….and a friend trip might be good to help get this new person used to the group…if he wanted to join her friend group…she'd have to see if he wanted to or if he wanted to be in a Division….or an HQ…or a cell….she'd see. She'd see.

This was going to be so great!

Mob leaned back and put her feet up on dad's desk. She used her powers to bring the jello cup, it was green, to her hand. This was a good day. This was going to be a good week….month…year. There was Shimazaki's party coming up and now this new person and then the London trip so Sho could see his girlfriend and then Christmas and New year's….this was going to be a very good end of the year. She could feel it.

This was going to be big…but in the good way.


	416. Your New Assistant

Sho was a good assistant.

Fukuda had said so. He was sitting at the other desk in Fukuda's office, Hatori's desk, because Fukuda had told him to sit there. Fukuda had told him to sit there and be a better assistant than Hatori had ever been. Sho had no idea if he was a good assistant or not, he had spent the day so far watching the hamster family live stream…hamsters were so cute….and as much as he was enjoying watching cute hamsters do cute things he really had the feeling that he was not doing what an assistant was supposed to be doing.

Because assistants were supposed to, you know, assist.

"For the love…oh course you're approving this…of fucking course." Said Fukuda. It was the 'fucking' that had gotten Sho's attention. Fukuda had been muttering to himself all day. He wasn't happy that dad had put big sis in charge over him….and Sho didn't know why. Big sis was a Suzuki and only Suzukis could run Claw. That was why he was going to have to get married and have a bunch of kids. That way the world would always be ruled by someone from their bloodline…like that was something that was important…or something. Sho didn't know. Dad said that it was important but fuck what dad thought…

Really, fuck dad and fuck what he thought.

He liked that word, fuck, because it fit into anything. things could be really fucking great or they could be really fucking bad or he could be really fucking happy or he could be really fucking sad…it fit into a lot of things, that word. Like how right now Sho was really fucking bored. Like how right now it was really fucking weird that Fukuda had said 'fuck'. Like how right now big sis was really fucking in charge even though she was a girl and the only reason that dad had even had Sho was because he needed a boy to inherit the world and stuff.

Not that he was mad at big sis.

Not that he was going to be like Fukuda and think that it was him, that he was the one who was supposed to be in that chair, because it wasn't. Big sis was older than him and she had done this before….well she had been younger when she had done this before….she had been the age that he was now…but he wasn't going to complain. He wasn't going to tell Fukuda that he needed to stop muttering to himself and cursing to himself because if anyone had a right to be there, in dad's chair, in dad's office it was him. She was up there and…and dad had told him for his entire life that he was the one who was supposed to inherit the world…and if she was the one running Claw then what was the point of him? What was he even here for?

Not to assist Fukuda, that was for sure.

"What the fuck are you cursing about?" asked Sho. He cursed mostly to make Fukuda squirm. That hadn't even sounded good. If Shimazaki had been there he would have flicked Sho over the head. Well Shimazaki was there…he was in the building at least. He was guarding big sis, mostly, he had been teleporting around all day and he'd probably been doing fun stuff and Sho…he would have loved to have gone along but…he had a lot to do around here.

He had to assist Fukuda because Hatori had gone down to the tech room so, of course, Sho was the only person who could assistant him.

And also the hamsters had a run running wheel and they had all been trying to run on it at once but they ran in different directions and then cookie, the black and white one, kept on trying to climb on top and Sho had to see if they ever figured out team work. So he had a lot to do today and it didn't leave him a lot of time to hang out with his best friend. That was all. He wasn't avoiding Shimazaki.

He just wasn't looking for him.

Maybe it was for the best that they didn't hang out for a while. Shimazaki must have still thought that he was uncool…and stuff…and also…also Sho really missed him. He missed him as more than a friend and he liked him as more than a friend and, lately, it had been getting worse. He had always thought about Shimazaki all the time, how great it was to be near him, but now…now it was like…like he still thought that he was great but a different kind of great and…and he just…he needed to fall out of love with him already! Once he was totally and completely out of love with Shimazaki Ryou then they could hang out again.

Not that he was avoiding Shimazaki or anything like that. He just had a lot going on, that was all.

"Language." Said Fukuda. Sho rolled his eyes.

"You cursed first." Said Sho in English. Well he had said 'language' and English was a language.

"You're right. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that." Said Fukuda right back in English. Sho decided that it wasn't as fun when Fukuda went along with it. It would have been more fun if Shimazaki had gone along with it, he could curse in a bunch of different languages…and he needed to stop thinking about Shimazaki and stuff…even though he could feel him teleporting around the building…and he was so close but so far and….

"No, you shouldn't have, no go sit in the corner and think about what you've done." Said Sho. He pointed at the corner. Fukuda shook his head and laughed. Fukuda could be fun too. Sho would have to make it fun being with Fukuda. Not as fun as being with Shimazaki, there wasn't anyone in the world as fun as Shimazaki, but Fukuda could be fun too…maybe.

"Your sister isn't still making you do that, is she?" asked Fukuda

"No, she never made me do that. That was mom." Said Sho. He knew that he wasn't supposed to talk about mom, about how he even had a mom, because she had left and she was a traitor for having had left the family. Dad had said, a million times before, that he wasn't supposed to talk about mom…but he wasn't here. He had been locked in his room and stuff for a while now. Mom had done the same thing. Big sis said that he might have had the same sleepy sickness that mom had before she left…and Sho was happy about that.

Maybe he would leave, then, just like mom had.

"Yeah…I remember that now….and to be fair you had it coming that day." Said Fukuda. Sho had no idea what day he meant. Mom had sent him to the corner or to his room a lot. When he hit big sis, or the other kids, when he threw things, when he got out of bed in the middle of the night and ate the desert that they were supposed to have after dinner that night…and about a million other things that he had done. There had been a lot of days and Fukuda needed to be specific…not that Sho wanted to talk about mom…or maybe he did. He never talked about her to anymore….because she had left….and he just…there were a lot of things he wanted to say…and a lot of things that he didn't and…and maybe it was ok to say things about her and…and he had to…he didn't know.

He didn't know but….well he wanted to talk about her. He never got to talk about her.

"Which day?" asked Sho

"That day when you tried to bring that squirrel into the house. Your mom said no squirrels but you tried to bring it in anyway…and remember? It bit you and your mom asked me to come over?" asked Fukuda. Sho remembered that day. He had found a hurt squirrel and he had been planning on bringing it back inside and doing first aid on it even though mom had said that it was a bad idea…and then when he had picked it up it had gotten mad…and it had bit him and ran away before he could even bring it into the house…

But Fukuda had the order wrong.

He had been over at the house already when that had happened. He and mom had been watching TV in her and dad's room. She had sent him and big sis to play outside and get some fresh air even though it had been kind of cold out that day. That was when mom had first started getting sick but she hadn't been super sick like she had been before. She had still been able to get out of bed…a little bit…and that was why Fukuda had been over so much. He had been trying to make her better but whatever had been wrong with her had been super serious….and now dad had it too….

Sho was glad that dad had caught it too.

"You were already over, remember? You and mom were watching TV in her and dad's room?" said Sho. He wasn't going to tell Fukuda that dad was sick with the same thing that mom was. He might try and make him better. Dad was Fukuda's best friend after all and Fukuda might have worked extra hard to make him better….and the world did not need dad to be all better. The world needed to have big sis in charge of it, at least she was nice, even if she wasn't a boy. Even if she wasn't Sho. Even if she had sort of taken Sho's job and-

And don't think about big sis.

He was talking about mom. He needed to think about mom…even though it hurt. Even though she had just…left. She hadn't even left them a note or anything. She had just left the house and their family and…and now it was just him and big sis. He wondered if she had ever gotten better. He wondered if she was laying down on some couch right now watching her shows about the people living in the past that dressed funny and had funny accents and stuff….he wondered if she was happy. Watching that stuff had made her happy…and he wanted her to be happy.

Even though she had betrayed him and big sis he still wanted mom to be happy.

"Are you sure that's how it went, because I remember it differently and I am older than you. You were only four or five, you know how unclear memories are from that time in your life." Said Fukuda. Sho shook his head. He knew that he was remembering right. He had a very good memory, that was a part of hyper cognition, that thing that dad said that he had that made him a good artist. He didn't like to think that he had gotten it from dad, being able to draw like he did, but he did like the idea of being smart and stuff….and it was sort of like dad had called him smart when he had said that…instead of something mean like an accident that caused accidents or a mistake that made mistakes or all of the other stuff that big sis had asked dad not to call him but he still did anyway.

"I know what I remember. I remember things good, dad says that I have hyper cognition like he does only not as good because I'm bad at math, and anyway I remember things that happen to me. You came over for breakfast and then you and mom went to watch TV in her room and she told me and big sis to go outside and play." Said Sho. He had no idea what Fukuda's aura was acting like that for. He was sitting there and his aura was pulling in…and maybe he didn't want to talk about mom after all. They had been friends and Sho…well losing a mom must have been worse than losing a friend…but maybe mom was like a mom to Fukuda too since his mom had died a while ago.

"Well. You remember things well." Said Fukuda after a second. It had looked like he had been planning on saying something else. Maybe he was just that pissed off that big sis had been promoted above him. Well if he wanted to be the boss of Claw then maybe he should have had one of those operations that turned you into a girl and then he could have married dad and then been a Suzuki and stuff. That would have been….the weirdest thing in the world….having Fukuda for a mom and stuff….but if Fukuda wanted to be in charge so bad that he was sitting at his desk sweating and shaking then, maybe, desperate times called for desperate measures.

"Yeah, I do. Thanks for saying that…and now say that I didn't have it coming. That squirrel needed a home and I had a home and mom shouldn't have punished me for that." Said Sho. Well Fukuda had come around fast at least. Good. He wasn't going to argue with Sho about how he was good at remembering things…and also he wasn't going to argue with Sho that he had done the right thing about the squirrel either.

"Fine, alright, you didn't have it coming. Your mom would have said yes if your dad didn't hate animals, you're right." Said Fukuda. Sho nodded. Mom loved animals, she used to work at an animal shelter before he and big sis had been born, but for some reason dad had always hated them. Probably for some weird dad reason that only he understood. Sho wished that he would just say why it was even if it was weird…then Sho could work around it maybe…and maybe he could find his baby snakes, too, because they were still so little and now they were running around Osaka with nobody to read to them or tuck them in at night…and stuff…

When Sho grew up he'd find those snakes and all the other snakes and animals in the world and bring them to live in his house with him, well him and his family, and they would agree to that because since he liked animals and Emmy liked animals then their kids would like animals too. That was genetics.

"Of course I'm right and when I grow up I'm going to fill my whole house with animals from top to bottom…and they won't live in cages, either, they'll be able to be free and happy. Emmy's probably going to like that. She likes animals and our kids are going to like animals too because they came from us and that's how genetics works." Said Sho

"Well it's nice to see you having high hopes for the future." Said Fukuda. Sho had no idea if he had high hopes for the future. He couldn't really imagine it. He knew that he would have to grow up and run Claw but…well it was hard to think of a world without dad in it. Without dad being there ready to tell him that he was wrong, that everything about him was wrong, and that he had to say this and do that and be this person that someone else had decided that he had to be. Sho…he couldn't think of a world without that…but he knew that it was coming….

And he was sort of looking forward to it.

He would have to marry a girl, Emmy, and he didn't really want to but…well she liked him and he was at least friends with her so it wouldn't be so bad. He would have to have kids, too, and he liked babies so that wouldn't be too bad. He'd be the one in charge, too, so he could decide if he had pets or not…and there would be pets. Everyone in the house would have whatever pets that they wanted. Him and big sis and his family and her family and Shimazaki and Shibata and Hatori…and Minegishi since they were big sis's best friend….yeah. Everyone would have at least one pet and they could have fun all day and…and it would be great.

So maybe he was looking forward to the future, then.

"Yeah…I kind of do, I guess. I mean things are going to be better once I rule the world I think…if dad gives me the world. He keeps on leaving big sis in charge even though I'm the same age that she was when he went on his long trip…and he's not even on a trip right now! Just…nothing. I'm fine." Said Sho

"Sho…your dad…he's a difficult man to understand unless you're used to him. He's leaving your sister in charge because in a lot of ways she's…more adult than you are. You act like a kid, like you should act, but your sister…well she grew up very quickly…and in the same way that your dad did. He has a lot of the same expectations for her that his parents did for him…and you should consider it a blessing that you still get to be a kid for a little while longer." Said Fukuda. That was the stupidest thing that Sho had ever heard. He wasn't a kid, well he was, but if he was a kid then big sis had to have been a kid too. It was getting to that part of the year when they were the same age. She was eleven and in a couple of months he would be eleven too. They would be eleven together. She wasn't that much older but….

But she was kind of like an adult already.

She took care of him and stuff…and she took care of him and dad and…yeah. Fukuda was right. It had been the stupidest thing that Sho had ever heard but he was still right. Sometimes the truth could be sort of stupid, like how Shibata was right that mashes cauliflower tasted just like mashed potatoes, and…well if the truth was stupid then Sho didn't want to deal with it. He was very busy and didn't have time to deal with stupid stuff…like the truth….and stuff.

He was very busy assisting with…stuff…and stuff…

"I'm going to go and get some jello, you want some too?" asked Sho. He was an assistant so he had might as well assist and get some jello before there was another jello riot like there had been the other day. He didn't want to have to fight any of the Awakened, big sis said that they were fragile and stuff.

"Sure, bring me yellow if they have it." Said Fukuda. Sho stuck his tongue out but didn't say anything. Yellow was the worst flavor and not just because it was supposed to taste like lemon. Well yellow wasn't always lemon, sometimes it was banana or butterscotch, but the jello that big sis ordered for the cafeteria was always lemon if it was yellow…and it could kill him…and Fukuda knew that…but Fukuda could always make him feel better, too, if he started to have an allergic reacting….

He hated having allergies.

He was infected by dad's genetics…and maybe mom's too. He didn't know why he had thee allergies, just that one or both of his parents had the genetics for it, and he hoped more than anything else that he didn't end up passing this down to his kids. It was the sort of thing that only made your life worse…and it was also the sort of thing that only got worse. When he had been little only his mouth had itched and now if he so much as touched a lemon his whole body itched and breathing got hard.

So that was why he would be getting green.

Green was just…green. There wasn't any citrus in it. He had no idea if there was any real lemon in the yellow jello but he didn't want to risk it. Green was the best flavor, well blue was, but he had no idea if there was any blue left. The Awakened were really into blue stuff, it seemed, since a lot of them had blue somewhere in their uniforms. Blue socks, blue hats, blue bows, blue necklaces, just…a lot of blue. It didn't go with the kind of red that these ones were supposed to wear…but he didn't say anything. It was best not to bother them when they were being weird…and they were being really weird. They were just….

Hugging.

It started when he saw one bump into another. Normally that would have started a great big fight but all that started now was, well, a hug. It looked more like they were trying to squeeze each other into paste than actually hug but that was still weird. As Sho walked through the Tokyo HQ he saw more and more and more of the Awakened hugging for some reason….and it was weird but these guys were weird by default. He didn't know if they started off as weirdos or being put through all of that made them weird but…well they were weird.

And Sho was not one of them.

He was the Awakened Child, that was what people called him, but that didn't mean that he was one of them. He may have been through the same thing that they had been through, he may have been covered in the same scars that they were, but he was not the same as them. He was his own thing. He was Sho and he was going to be their boss someday. Him, not big sis. She was just…keeping dad's desk warm for him, that was all, and one day he would sit there and he would be the one making the rules and…and he wouldn't be the Awakened Child anymore. He wouldn't be Sho anymore. He would be President Suzuki. He would be President Suzuki and dad would be gone or dead or just so old that he couldn't take care of himself anymore….

And that would be a good day….when that happened.

Dad was already on his way there, anyway, because he was tired all the time just like mom was. He had been in his room since they came back to Tokyo. Sho hoped that he lived in that room for the rest of his life. Sho hoped that he didn't come with on the London trip or the California trip after that and wherever else that they were going after that. He hoped that dad just stayed in his room until the day he died. That would have been pretty good.

Even better than green jello.

"God damn it!" said Sho as he made his way to the jello cooler in the lunchroom. There used to be a jello bar but too many people were sticking their hands in there so now they were back to little cups of it…cups that were all gone. There was nothing left, not even yellow, just an empty cooler that someone had drawn a dick on with condensation from the cold…probably because they were a dick. Whoever had taken all the jello was the biggest dick in the world! No, wait, was a good thing. Sho didn't know why that was a good thing but he knew that it was a good thing….so whoever had taken all the jello was a little dick…the littlest dick in the world…like a girl's dick or something! Wait, no, girls didn't have those….a better insult would come to him! He just needed a minute!

He didn't have a minute.

He had a second. He had a second before he felt the energy shift around him and something flicked him over the head. Sho couldn't move. How could he? He had spent the entire day avoiding…being too busy for…this person and now he was there and…and no progress had been made! The goldfish in his stomach was awake and he wanted to run away…and stay at the same time…and that was what love felt like…and it sucked! Love sucked and he wished that he could just…exorcise it from his heart and his mind and his stomach and….

And also he wanted jello!

"What was that for?" asked Sho finding some words. Shimazaki shrugged and leaned against the jello cooler. Sho tried not to look at him. He instead tried to focus on the group of Awakened over in the corner having a hugging match. He hoped that the big guy won, he seemed like the better hugger. He tried to focus on that and not how close Shimazaki was…and how he wished that Shimazaki would flick him over the head again…because at least then he would have been touching him…and stuff….

Love really sucked.

"Because you're overdue. Seriously, where have you been? It's been so boring around here without you." Said Shimazaki. Sho knew that he didn't mean it like he wanted Shimazaki to mean it. He knew that Shimazaki didn't mean it like he loved Sho and that he spent just as much time thinking about Sho as Sho spent thinking about him…and how things just weren't very much fun when he wasn't around…and he wasn't going to pick Sho up and kiss him or anything like that….and Sho was wrong for thinking about stuff like that anyway!

"I've been helping Fukuda with stuff. He needed an assistant and Hatori went back to working in the tech room…and nobody else likes him so I'm the only person who could do the job." Said Sho

"Uh-huh, and what are you even assisting him with?" asked Shimazaki

"I keep him company and listen to him complain and get jello for us…and stuff." Said Sho. Well when he said it out loud it sounded stupid…and that was because it was. Sho didn't know why he had said all of that. Now Shimazaki was going to think that he didn't like him…but he also had no idea what he was supposed to even say. He couldn't just tell Shimazaki that he was avoiding him so that he could fall out of love faster and then they could be friends again…not that they had ever stopped being friends but Sho…well he hadn't been a very good friend at all. Friends did not spend years and years and years secretly in love with their friends. That wasn't how it worked. Friends were just…friends…and they didn't think of their other friends like that at all. Ever.

"Wow. You've truly become an indispensable part of the organization." Said Shimazaki. Sho knew that he was just messing around, that he hadn't meant to be mean, and he knew that it was stupid that he felt the way he felt now…like someone had kicked him in the stomach with a pointy shoe…and he just…he was fine. Shimazaki just said mean shit sometimes but that didn't mean that he meant anything by it and…and stuff….and….

And he was just pissed off because there wasn't any jello left.

"Come on, don't be like that. You're a valuable part of the organization, the most valuable part actually. You're going to run this whole shit show someday…so stop with the long face already." Said Shimazaki. He flicked Sho over the head again…but that didn't make him feel any better…well of course it didn't, Shimazaki just flicked him over the head…but normally it felt good but now…well not he just…didn't feel good…

Became some dick took all the jello.

"You can't tell what face I'm making." Said Sho. He stuck out his tongue just to prove a point. Shimazaki had no idea how he looked, he had trouble with expressions, and Sho could have been the happiest person in the world for all he knew! Or at least happier than the guy who lost the hugging match…and he knew that the big guy would win. He wondered if Shibata would have won, he was strong but he didn't like to use it, and maybe he wished that Shibata had been there. Shibata and all the others. Maybe if all the others were there then Sho would have felt better…or at least less…like this. Whatever this feeling was.

"Yeah I can, you're sticking out your tongue, and before that you were really sad…and I can't stand sad people so I'm glad for the whole sticking your tongue out thing. Better you act like a bratty little shit than a sad little shit." Said Shimazaki

"I-I'm not bratty or sad! I'm just pissed off because some tiny girl's dick stole all the jello!" said Sho. He knew that people were looking at him now and he didn't care. He could say whatever he wanted and he could curse whenever he wanted…and he hadn't even cursed!

And he hadn't said anything funny either!

But Shimazaki was still laughing at him. He was laughing and…and Sho liked it when he laughed. He liked it when he laughed like that. When he laughed like he thought that something was funny...that he thought that Sho was funny…but he hadn't been funny…well he hadn't tried to be funny….but he had been…and he felt bad that he was being laughed at…but he felt good that Shimazaki was laughing and…

And the whole thing just kind of sucked.

"Girl's dick? I thought we went over this. Girls don't have-" said Shimazaki between laughs.

"I know that girls have dicks but whoever took all the jello drew a dick here because they are a dick-" said Sho

"Yeah, a big dick. Someone got to it before I could….fucking dick." Said Shimazaki

"No, they're a tiny dick. Big dicks are good…for some reason…so they're a tiny dick, then, like a girls dick would be if they had them." Said Sho. There was a pause, like the whole world had paused, and then Shimazaki went back to laughing…and Sho had never heard him laugh so hard in the entire time that they had known each other.

"A girls….God. Toshi is going to get such a kick out of….never change, Sho, never change…just….hang on one second." Said Shimazaki before he teleported away. He probably did that to tell Minegishi what he had said…and it wasn't worth it, teleporting over and telling them…because they had no sense of humor. They wouldn't know funny if it walked up and punched them in the face. Sho…he wished that he had told Shimazaki to stay but…but he knew that he shouldn't have felt like that and…

And now it didn't matter because he was back.

"Here, turn your shirt into a basket." Said Shimazaki. His arms were full of jello cups in all colors….and he got the feeling that Shimazaki was the dick who had took all the jello cups…which would have made sense…aside from the drawing…but he did kind of know how to draw….and stuff….

Sho wasn't complaining. There was jello!

Which was what he had set out to get…and now he had it…now he had it and now he could go back to siting in a room with Fukuda all day watching hamsters do hamster things. He had to go back but…but he wanted to stay. He wanted to stay and have fun with Shimazaki like they used to. He wanted to stay and go sock skating or mess with the Awakened or soap up a stair case or jump around on top of elevators so that people thought that they elevator was collapsing…or something like that.

But he couldn't.

He couldn't because he was in love with Shimazaki. The minute he stopped being in love with Shimazaki then he could do all of that…but right now he had to…to bring this jello back to Fukuda before he starved to death. That was a thing that might have been able to kill him, maybe, Sho didn't know how healing powers worked. He was psych kinetic and that was a whole different power set so for all he knew Fukuda was dying at this very second! And he couldn't let Fukuda die! Who would fix him up when he hurt himself?!

So, really, running right back to Fukuda was the thing to do.

"Thanks Shimazaki, for the jello I mean. I have to get back to Fukuda now but we can hang out later…and stuff." Said Sho. That was the hardest thing that he had ever had to say to Shimazaki…love sucked. He wished that they sold out of love pills or potions or he could just hit himself over the head with a rock or something just to make all the love stop.

"Wow, you really are busy today. Alright, go and have fun with Fukuda. I'll see you around, hopefully before this big party thing that your sister's throwing me." Said Shimazaki. Sho…he knew about that party. They had planned it on the plane. He knew that Shimazaki was having a party, well it was a big Claw party but it was still on his birthday, and he knew that he would have to go…and he wanted to go….and he just…he really hoped that he was out of love sometime before the twenty fifth otherwise he was going to be all weird at the party…

Like he was now.

"Yeah…we can hang out before then…and um….happy birthday!" said Sho before he turned and walked away. He bit his tongue as he walked away, he would have hit himself over the head but big sis would have been able to see that on the security cameras and then she would have been worried and stuff. Also his hands were full because he had turned his shirt into a basket…and he could have used his powers but…well he didn't trust them right now.

If he couldn't trust his mouth then how could he trust his powers?

He had said the stupidest thing. Shimazaki was still thirty. His birthday hadn't come yet. Sho knew that you had to tell a person happy birthday on their actual birthday. He wasn't dad. He knew how birthdays worked. He was such an idiot…no wonder Shimazaki didn't think that he was cool anymore. No wonder….well maybe he did think that he was cool…since he had asked to hang out and stuff…so maybe he liked Sho….

Not like that.

Sho knew that Shimazaki didn't like him like that and that was the last that he would be thinking about that. He made himself think about other things. He made himself think about the jello had in his shirt. He made himself think about how there were green ones in there even though Shimazaki couldn't tell which ones were green…..but he knew that Sho liked them…and he thought about how there were yellow ones in there and Fukuda liked those even though they might have been able to kill Sho….and he thought about how there were red ones in there…and how big sis liked red….

She would have liked this jello cup.

She liked red and he liked her…so he would bring her the red jello. She would like this and…and maybe he just…wanted to see what she was doing. Maybe he wanted to see how she was keeping dad's office warm for him when he finally got old enough to be the one in charge. It had nothing to do with how he knew that if he went back to that office all he would be able to think about was Shimazaki and his stupid birthday and his stupid laugh and the stupid stuff that Sho had said to him. No, he just wanted to visit his big sister….so that was what he would do.

He could visit his sister if he wanted to! It wasn't a crime!

So that was what he did. He made his way to dad's office, well to big sis's office, and he didn't even bother knocking on the door. Why would he have? Dad wasn't around and dad was the only one who cared about people knocking before they entered and stuff. Big sis wasn't like that, she was nice, she didn't care if he came right in and interrupted…whatever it as that he was interrupting.

"Ok, now Tomo you need to say sorry and talk about how you feel to Satoru and then hug and make up." Said big sis. She was standing between two of the Awakened. One had blood on his shirt and the other one had a bite on his arm. She was holding both of her arms up and trying to keep them from killing each other…maybe. One of them was crying…and the other one was looking down at his feet. Both of them had snowflake socks on, sort of like Frozen ones big sis wore, but the shade of blue was wrong.

"Yes Vice President Suzuki. Satoru, I'm sorry that I bit you because you dumped a cup of water on my head at lunch. When you did that I got scared and I forgot where I was. It was wrong of me to take a bite out of you. I would like to hug you now." Said the Awakened. Sho…well he knew that they didn't like water for the same reason that he didn't like water…and it felt like he had to say something but he didn't know what….or why. This wasn't about him, he hadn't even been around when this had happened, so he didn't say anything. He just stood off to the side while these two guys made up.

"Tomo, I accept your apology and I would like to be hugged by you." Said the other Awakened. Sho wondered if they had rehearsed that, it sounded rehearsed anyway. Like how he used to say sorry to the other kids back at school when he didn't mean it…but these guys sounded like they meant it….or something. Sho didn't know. The whole thing was super weird.

The Awakened had always been super weird.

"Ok, now you guys are friends again. Remember, if this ever happens again just talk about how you feel and hug so you can stay friends. Remember, nothing's more important than being friends." Said big sis. Sho took a step off to the side so those guys could get a clue and leave. They were staring at big sis like…well like he didn't know what. He didn't like it. He knew that big sis didn't like it when he was mean to the Awakened but if they didn't leave her alone then he would have no choice but to be mean to them.

"You're dismissed. That's all there is. There isn't anymore." Said big sis. That was what mom used to say to them when she was done reading them stories. He wondered if mom had any idea that big sis would be saying that same thing to a bunch of Awakened. He wondered if she would even have cared. He wondered if she even cared about anything. He didn't know. He just knew that he didn't want to think about mom. He had been thinking about her, talking about her, and he'd had…well he'd had enough of that for now.

He had enough of a lot of things for now.

Like these Awakened. He had only been watching them for a millisecond but that had been long enough for him to be tired of them. No wonder dad was always an asshole to them. They were…well they were tiresome. He hated using that word but that was what they were. Tiresome. He had no idea how big sis didn't just give them bats and let them fight it out until they were all super hurt….well of course she wouldn't do that. She was big sis and she was nice like that.

She was always so nice.

"Sho! Hi! How are you are? Is everything ok? Do you need-" said big sis. Now she was looking him over like she expected him to have a bite taken out of him or something. What, did she not see the jello? And why did he need a reason to come here in the first place? This was his office…well it was dad's office and if it was dad's then it was his and…and he was being a dick.

"I'm fine, I just wanted to know if you wanted some of this jello." Said Sho. He held out his basket shirt so she could take one if she wanted it. He wanted her to take one. She had to take one. If she took one then she would want him to stay…not that he needed a reason to stay because he could go wherever he wanted but….he just wanted to have jello with his sister! Was that too much to ask?!

"I do. Do you want to have some with me? Or are you busy? I heard that Fukuda made you his assistant. If you don't want to be then-" said big sis. Sho shook his head. He had a job and he could do it….he could.

"I'm fine. I'm fine just…let's have jello. What's your day been like?" asked Sho. He didn't want to talk about his new job or how he had gotten this jello or any other part of his day. He wanted to…to sit and here about her day. Even if it was boring and tiresome he wanted to hear about it. It had to have been better than his day, anyway, since she had actual stuff to do. He knew that Fukuda would understand if he was gone for a long time….and there was nothing wrong with hanging out with his big sis anyway. Besides, it wasn't like he actually had anything better to do anyway. He may have been Fukuda's new assistant but…well…

He would have been a better assistant if he'd actually had something to assist with.


	417. Please Just Tell Me What's Wrong

Mob had never seen her dad so tired before.

Really, she hadn't. Not even when they stayed up all night together. She had never once seen her dad be so tired that the spent the entire day in bed. She knew that this wasn't a good sign, mom had been like this, and everyone knew how that ended. Mom had gotten sick and then she ran away…and she knew that dad would never run away, he promised, but he had also promised that he would take over the world and…well it was hard to take over the world while you'd been lying in bed all day doing nothing…well that wasn't fair…dad must have been doing something….

Dad was always doing something.

But not now. Not lately. He mostly just stayed in his room. He didn't even come out for meals. He didn't even come out to bathe…that Mob had noticed. She wasn't home during the day, and neither was Sho, so she couldn't say for sure what it was that he did all day but his soap had been dry for a while and he wasn't out of razors yet. He should have been almost out of razors by now but he wasn't…which meant that he hadn't been shaving much either. This was…not normal for dad….

But it was normal for mom.

But dad was not mom. Mom had gotten sick and Mob had done nothing. Part of her, the mean part, shouted that she had been little and nobody had told her that she was supposed to be doing stuff to make her mom better. Her mom was the grown up and she had been the kid back then and mom was the one who was supposed to take care of her…those were mean thoughts to have. She was young but she was not a child. She was young but she was also the only person who could take care of her family. Mom was gone, Sho was too little, and dad was too busy…well he had been busy…before he went to bed….and never came back and….

And Mob needed to take care of her dad.

"Dad? Hey dad, do you want to come out and bring me your plate so I can wash it?" asked Mob as she knocked on the door. She wanted to do something fun with dad. She wanted to play one of his boring games or make him middle of the night dinner, but she had just made him normal dinner, and she wanted…she would ever have watched Galaxy Express from beginning to end with him again. She just…she wanted her dad back. She wanted dad to come back and…and she would do anything to get him back.

She couldn't let him leave, too.

There were only three Suzukis left. If dad left then it would be her and Sho. One day Sho would marry Emmy and they'd want to have their own house and she'd be the last Suzuki. She'd…well she'd always have her friends and stuff…but maybe they would want to go with Sho and…and she didn't want to be alone. She had no idea what she would do if she was all alone. She just….she knew that dad had promised her, before, that he would never leave her…and he had been in his room and not leaving the house or anything like that but….

She just wanted her dad back.

But she didn't get him back. He just opened the door with his powers and his plate went flying out. She caught it with her powers and held it in her hands. She had the plate…and now she needed another excuse to talk to him. She knew that she could always talk to him, she had heard him loud and clear when he said that she was always welcome to speak to him, but also…also she knew that he didn't like to be bothered. He liked to be left alone when he…well when he wanted to work and stuff…but he hadn't been working. She had been working and….and maybe he was never planning on working again and….and she would be the President of Claw…and stuff.

Well Sho would be the President when he grew up…but he was only ten years old still…and stuff….

Mob knocked again. She…well she could talk to him and…and he was still the President of Claw so maybe she should tell him about Claw stuff…and stuff. She didn't have a plan. She didn't have a plan for what she would do. She just…well she had come for the plate and now she was here because she was worried. She had never seen him this tired before…and he had said he was tired….but he had been in his room for a long time now…

She knocked a little bit louder.

"Shigeko, what is it? I'm very tired." Said dad. Mob had no idea what he was so tired from. She had been the one going into HQ each and every day. She had been the one moving people around and accepting new people and finding new talent and a million other things…not that she was mad at him. Not that she was ever mad at him. Sometimes people got tired. Sometimes people got so tired that they went to sleep for days and days…and then they left their families….but dad had promised that he would never leave….

She had to think something up and she had to think it up quick.

"Do you want to hang out? I know that it's not Sunday but you…you've been in your room for a while. We can watch Galaxy Express again if you want. All the episodes from beginning to end again if you want." Said Mob. She thought that maybe she should have talked louder. It was late now, Sho's bedtime, and she had to be heard without waking her brother up….but it was hard. Especially with how quiet dad was being.

Like he was going for a world record or something.

Was there a world record for being quiet? Was there a world's quietest man? Well a mute person would have won that….so maybe it wasn't a fair record. She didn't know. She would look it up later. She wondered if she and Sho still had their world record books. Maybe dad would like looking through them too. He liked reading about interesting things…well things that were interesting to him…and he had interesting ideas about what was interesting….but if dad wanted to watch the show about Japan even though they were Japanese or if he wanted to watch one of his long documentaries about outer space then she would.

She would have done anything to get her dad back.

"Are you still awake? I can feel your aura and it feels like you're awake." Said Mob. It felt like he was…all pulled in. Like something was making him…sad? But what could have made him sad? She didn't know. She didn't know what could have made dad sad. They had a fight free flight to Tokyo and Mob had been doing a good job. She was doing the best job ever…well that was just something that she had said to herself to make herself feel good with how things had been going but…well she hadn't messed up. She would have noticed if she had messed up…and dad would have been mad if she had messed up. Not at her, no, he said that he could never be mad at her again. He just…well he would have taken it out on Sho…and Mob didn't want that….

But she did just…she wanted to know what was the matter with him.

"Shigeko….I'm awake. I am awake and…and we can spend time together later." Said Dad. He said that like…like normal…but that was just his normal tone that he had. She had the same tone for everything too, she was his kid after all, so she just…she watched his aura. She watched her aura and he was still sad. He was sad and…and she didn't know why her dad was sad…..

And it was weird that he was sad too.

She knew that he had feelings. He had a lot of feelings and he was always trying to keep them inside….and she could tell that he was trying to do that again. She could feel him choking down all of his feelings like Sho choked down his salad at dinner. She could see him and feel him and…and was it really so bad if he was to just tell her that truth? Would it have been so bad if he just came out of his room, told her what was bothering to him, and then she fixed it for him. Then he would be happy and she would be able to figure out why he was so tired, too, and then…and then she could have her dad back.

She couldn't lose him.

"But…I want to spend time with you now." Said Mob. She knew that, if she had been little, dad would have used his powers to push her down. She had done this when she had been little and he had done that…but that was before he had decided that he loved her. He had always loved her but now he really loved her…and since he really loved her he should have just let her in.

"No." said dad. That was all he said, one word, and she knew what that word meant. It meant go away. It meant that he didn't want to talk to her. It meant that he would spend his whole life in his room until he got like mom and…and she couldn't let that happen.

"Do you want to smoke with me again? I have some really good stuff, the real stuff not the hash oil, and you had fun the last time we did….well you brushed my hair a lot….and you can brush my hair again. You can brush my hair and tell me how soft and pretty it is." Said Mob. She needed to smoke something. She needed to smoke and…and smoking with dad…it had been kind of weird…kind of very weird….but if it made him feel better then she would do it. She loved him after all and if you loved someone then you did whatever you could to make them happy.

"No…and I wish that you wouldn't either." Said dad. Mob…well he had said that she could and he couldn't just take it back…but having the power to take things back went with being a dad…but she had his power now and….and she wasn't giving up smoking! Even if he ordered her to. She didn't think that she could. She had to control her powers. If she had smoked earlier that day then she would not have been able to control her powers as well as she was right now.

"I want to….but you don't have to smoke with me. We can just watch TV or play a game or something. You'd like that, right?" asked Mob. Good, he wasn't going to try and make her stop…and she didn't want to get into that with him right now. She had to stay calm right now….and she had to get dad out of his room. She had to do for him what she hadn't been able to do for her mom. What she hadn't even known that she had to do for her mom. What she hadn't even known that she could have done for her mom. Mom…she wasn't like dad. Mom was normal, and not just because she had powers, she was normal about feelings and stuff. She had to help dad with his feelings. She had to help him act like a person and now a jerk. Mom…she knew how to take care of herself in ways that dad couldn't and…and dad….well at least dad had told her to her face that she had to take care of him!

And that was what she was doing.

"Shigeko…Daughter. This is…not a good time. Please leave me. I am…very tired." Said dad. Mob checked the time on her phone. It was nine seventeen at night. This was early for him. He usually went to bed around eleven. This wasn't a bad time. This was a time when he should have been awake and…and he shouldn't have been tired this early and…and she knew that if she left then he would stay in there for the rest of his life.

Mom had said the same thing to her.

Mom had told her 'I'm tired, Shigeko' and then mom had sent her away. Mom….mom and dad were…well they weren't the same person but…but they were still both her parents. They were her parents and…and dad might have caught this from mom. She knew that sometimes things could be caught years after you were exposed to them, she knew from the weird medical stories that Emmy kept on sending Sho…they were a weird couple sometimes, and she just….she didn't know if she could handle it if dad….

She had this. She had to have this.

"It's not even nine thirty at night, dad." Said Mob. She felt his aura move. She heard his bed creak.

"So it is…but this is still a bad time. Please. Leave me." Said dad. Mob…she wanted to bang on the door and tell him that she would never leave him. She wanted to open the door herself and tell dad, right in his face, that no matter how mean he got or how weird he got or how…how much like this he got she would never stop loving him and she would never leave him. She was his daughter, she was Suzuki Shigeko, and she did not leave her family no matter what…even if it was just to go to a different part of the house.

"But…I want to talk to you about….stuff." said Mob. There. She had bought herself some time. She just…had to think of what it was that she wanted to say to dad. She just…she could tell him about the jello wars….he wouldn't care about that. Maybe she could tell him about how she had found a pancake under his desk that morning….she really hoped that Sho and Shimazaki weren't having food fights in there….dad wouldn't have wanted to hear about that. Maybe…about the new talent?

Dad did like it when they found new talent.

Not Awakened, no, actual talent. That was a mean way of saying a natural esper. Naturals were more powerful than artificial espers. That was mean but it was the way things worked. His mother, Mrs. Serizawa, had said that she had been thrown a few times…and if he could lift something as heavy as a person, and on accident too, then he was very powerful. That was good. Dad would be so happy to hear about this.

He had to be…otherwise she had nothing.

"Daughter…Shigeko…what is it? You know that you have full power and I trust your judgement." Said dad. It felt good, being trusted like that, and she loved him for that…but that wasn't enough. He was still in his room. He was in his room and…and if telling him about a new esper that she had found didn't get him out of there then she had no clue what would.

"Um…I found some new talent…and I think that he's really powerful." Said Mob. She heard his bed creak again…and she felt his aura flare….and she knew that she had his attention now. His aura was focused on her. His aura was focused on her and…and that was good. Maybe he would stop being sad and then he could stop being tired too. That was….well that was very good. Even if she had no idea what it was that had made him so upset in the first place.

"Shigeko. Explain." Said dad. That was…progress. He was focused on her and…and that was good. She had his interest which was more than what she'd had since they got back to Tokyo.

"I don't really know much else but his mom emailed, well someone told her to email, and now I have to go and meet him as soon as his mom tells me that it's ok…and if it's ok that I meet him myself. I know that you have people for that and stuff…and maybe you would have wanted to do it yourself." Said Mob. She wanted…well if dad told her that she had to get out of his office and back into the house so she could do Mob stuff and he could do dad stuff, doing both made her kind of tired, and then….well then everything could get back to the way that it was supposed to be.

"No. I trust you…and I think that you would be best for this. You're very good with people. Do you have any idea when you'll have the chance to make contact?" Said dad. Mob….it would have been nice if dad had gone with her. Just the two of them hanging out….they hadn't had those times again.

"I don't know yet. He's scared of people and his mom has to get him ready to meet me." Said Mob. She didn't know how long it would take but she hoped that it happened soon. Then they could become friends faster and then he could make friends with everyone else, if he wanted to be part of their group, and then he could go to the Halloween party with them…if he wasn't afraid of people anymore…she'd see how it went.

This was so exciting! Well to her…dad was normal….well a little sad…but just normal too.

"I have no idea why anyone would be frightened of you." Said dad.

"I don't know either….but if you did want to come with then I would like that." Said Mob. She was telling him what she wanted…and he must have known how much she missed him. He had done this before, disappeared, and she didn't want that…and he knew she didn't…..

"I just said that I trusted your judgement." Said dad. How could he not get it? She wanted to be with him and…well she couldn't get a clue at the best of times and she was his kid so it all made sense. She just…she had to be open and honest with him…not that she wasn't always but…but she would have to be extra open about her feelings…but also in a way that he could understand since he was so bad at feelings all the time…and stuff…

"I know what you said but….I miss you." Said Mob. There was some silence, there, a lot of silence…and she just…she wondered if she had gone too far. She had no idea how she could have gone too far but if she made him sad or scared or…she didn't know. She just wanted him to talk to her. Even if it was to tell her to go away again.

She just wanted her dad back.

"Dad….daddy. I miss you a lot. You've been in your room for a while and…and it scares me. I think that you might never come out and…and that scares me. I don't even know what's making you stay in there. I mean we used to be best friends...well you used to love me….but now you're in there and I just wish that you would tell me why. Daddy…if you tell me why then maybe I can fix it and then…and then things can go back to normal." Said Mob. She knew, from what Minori had taught her, that if you called your dad 'daddy' like you were little it made him do anything for you. Well almost anything. Mob didn't need him to do anything for her, she just needed him to not live in his room, that was all. She didn't care if he came out to tell her to go away. She just wanted her dad back, that was all.

That wasn't that much to ask….at least Mob didn't think so.

She heard the bed creak and she felt his aura move and the next thig she knew the door was opened and she was being held. Dad…needed a bath. He had needed one for a while, it smelled like, and also he hadn't shaved in a while either. He was all scratchy….but at least he was out of his room….so that was good….

She really wished that he would have put her down, though.

"Shigeko…I love you. There is nothing in this world that could ever make me stop loving you…and I can't tell you why I've been…indisposed. If I told you why then it would shatter your image of me and ruin our relationship as parent and child. Just know that I love you and that I will never do anything….anything more to hurt you. Do you understand?" asked Dad. He was still holding her super close like he was trying to squeeze the life out of her. She…well he was out of his room, a step out of his room, and that was good. Even though he had grabbed her and held her so suddenly that his plate would have hit the ground and shattered if she hadn't had her powers…if he was going to talk about stuff shattering…and she still had no idea what it was that had been bothering him….

But at least she had her dad back.

"I love you too, dad, and I know that you love me." Said Mob. He was out of his room and….and he was still being kind of like mom. Mom had gone for days without bathing too. Bathing or brushing her hair or putting on makeup or shaving her legs….and Mob knew that she wasn't done with….whatever this was yet…but she was trying her best. She had do something. She hadn't done anything for mom but…but she could at least try and do something to help her dad.

She had never seen him this tired before, this sad, and this….messy…and she knew that there must have been something that she could do to help. She just didn't know what it was yet.


	418. I Can't Just Let This Crash and Burn

Fukuda didn't know how he felt about Claw crashing and burning.

On the one hand Touichirou was certifiably insane and his plans to take over the world were just as insane as he was. It was best for everyone involved the Claw just crashed and burned until it was nothing more than a footnote in the history of cults and terrorist organizations. On the other hand he'd spent most of his life working on this thing in some way or another and if the whole thing just crashed and burned then the past thirty one years of his life were just….wasted.

Wasted.

Thirty one years. Wasted. Gone. Just…gone. If this thing crashed and burned then….he had wasted his life. From thirteen to forty four he would have wasted his entire life. He just…could not have had that. The rest of the world would have better off if Claw fell apart with Shigeko at the helm but he…well he had no idea what he would do. Career wise….he'd missed the boat twenty years ago. That boat was gone. The only thing he knew how to do was be Suzuki Touichirou's best friend, push paper around, and heal the idiots around him. He could always work for the yakuza…that was where most espers ended up….or he could make it as a healer without the crime…but all of his connections were in the underworld…..he didn't know. He just…he had no idea.

He had no idea about a lot of things.

"No! Don't get on the wheel, Sunflower. Cookie's going to bite you!" said Sho from his desk. He kicked the desk when he said that…and Fukuda didn't have it in him to say anything. He barely had Sho in here. His little assistant. His assistant who he didn't really need assistance from. Sho…he needed to be a kid for as long as possible. He was only ten, not even eleven, and he needed to just…hang out and watch his hamster show and play videogames and eat copious amounts of jello and just…

Be more of a kid than his sister had ever been.

When Shigeko had been ten years old she had taken up drinking very expensive cognac, smoking Peace cigarettes, and doing whatever drugs it was that she had taken up…not to mention whatever it was that she got up to with the men in her life. At some point that child went off the rails…and that was partially Fukuda's fault. He should have watched over her better. He should have been there for her. He should have kept his promise to Masami….but what could he have done? There was no way to stop Shigeko from doing anything. She could have torn him apart with a flick of her wrist. She was more powerful than any eleven year old girl had a right to be….

In terms powers and in terms of rank in Claw.

Fukuda's phone vibrated. He closed his eyes and took a breath. If this was more nonsense he would…well he didn't think that he would do anything…but he would think about it. He thought about it a lot. Taking phone and throwing it against the wall until it broke. Sticking his head out the window and screaming as loudly as he could until he lost his voice totally and completely. Marching up to Shigeko and telling her that she was an eleven year old girl and that it was high time she acted like it. He wanted…he wanted to say and do so many things…but all he did was click his phone open.

"Hey, big sis changed the party theme again. Now it's Halloween, the Beatles, and things that feel like pudding." Said Sho. He read from his own phone…and Fukuda wished that he had waited. It was adorable when Sho said it, he was still young enough that he could be considered adorable, but it was infuriating when he read it. He…had invested pretty much his entire life into this insanity so it was only natural that he wouldn't want to see it crash and burn.

Especially over a party.

Shigeko didn't like being called Miss Suzuki so maybe she would have preferred going by Miss Red Ink. They had finally, FINALLY, gotten back in the black and now she was up to it again. This party was hemorrhaging money. Parties were for investors, high level cult leaders, and powerful criminal types. Parties were not for filling the entire Tokyo HQ with balloons, having a room based on Starbucks of all things, and also…according to this there would be a swimming pool full of various puddings….and he was the one who was going to have to figure out the logistics of a swimming pool full of various types of puddings….and also there would be gourmet pudding skins for dinner….just…..

God damn it Shigeko.

"Hey, check it out! Big sis listened to my idea! We're going to have dogs too!" said Sho. Fukuda took a deep breath and kept scrolling. Shigeko was renting dogs so that everyone would have dogs to play with and/or ride….and how in the hell were they going to ride dogs!? How were a bunch of grown adults supposed to climb onto dogs and….just….what the hell?!

"That's….something." said Fukuda as he forced himself to calm down. Sho had suggested this. He had suggested this because he was only ten and as a ten year old he didn't even have the mental capacity to think through these logistics. Shigeko was older…and not by much…and she was always at least a little bit high or drunk….they needed Suzuki back. Between this party, giving everyone generous raises and Halloween bonuses, and the new unlimited jello bars she was having built wherever there was a proper lunch room they were going to end up finishing out this year in the red…again.

Damn it, Shigeko.

And damn it Suzuki for letting this happen. Every time he got dumped he did this. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. Fukuda told him to stay away from that woman. Fukuda told him to focus on taking over the world. Fukuda all but taped his pants to him. Still he went and did that stupidest thing possible…and Fukuda had to bring him back from this. He should have done it a while ago but he just…did not have the energy right now. Not with Shigeko running the asylum and having to take care of Sho….and also just….the malaise of living…he just did not have the energy to deal with Suzuki after he'd been dumped. That was it.

And maybe a small part of him wanted to watch this thing burn to the ground….a stupid part of him since this was pretty much how he supported himself…he didn't know. He needed a drink even though it didn't really do anything.

"What's wrong, you don't like dogs anymore?" asked Sho. His pupils were tiny there, tiny black dots in a sea of blue, just like Suzuki's got…and he wasn't going to compare Sho to his father. He wasn't anything like Suzuki. Sure he could be short tempered and obsessive about things but he was his own person. He was half of Masami. He was a good kid…and the tiny pupils meant nothing.

"No, I like them. I was just thinking about how we were going to have all of these things in the party. That's all. Just adult stuff. You just keep on watching your hamster show." Said Fukuda. He wasn't going to shatter Sho's excitement about this party. This was going to be one of the few happy memories he'd have in his life…and Fukuda wasn't going to ruin it for him. Let him be ten and be excited for swimming pools of pudding and dogs to pet and ride. Fukuda could worry about the adult stuff.

There had to be at least one adult here in Claw.

"It's a livestream." Said Sho

"Isn't that the same thing?" asked Fukuda

"No, it's different." Said Sho

"Alright then. Well whatever it is you just have fun with that. I have a lot to do over here….a hell of a lot to do." Said Fukuda as he went back to his laptop. He needed to deal with Suzuki. He had been taking time off from whatever it was that they had together…and now look what had happened. Part of him wanted to let Shigeko crash and burn…but then Claw would be finished, or at least hurt, and then Suzuki would go off the deep end again…and nobody needed that. What they did need was Suzuki back and Fukuda would bring him back….later. He'd fix whatever had gone wrong later.

Right now he was just…he needed to build up his stamina.

It wasn't easy but he would have to do it. He'd done it before, this wasn't the first time that Suzuki had been dumped, and Fukuda…well he'd done this before. He would have thought that Suzuki would have taken it better. He had taken Masami leaving rather well, he hadn't exploded and killed anyone, and he had taken the thing with the baby well…well-ish. He'd run away….and Fukuda had brought him back…and at least he hadn't run away again. He was there at least…and Fukuda could at least deal with him at any time….

But first he would have to deal with Sho

"I'm going to go and get us some jello. You still like yellow?" asked Sho. Fukuda knew what he meant by that. Sho was going to leave and come back hours later with no jello. He was going to go and hang out in his sister's office…and he didn't need to be there. With all the nonsense that she had been messaging everyone with he knew that she was up there living it up with her friends…and Sho didn't need to be involved in all of that. Shigeko made her own choices…choices that he should have stopped her from having the chance to make…but what was done was done. He could still protect Sho.

"Stay here and I'll have someone bring us up some jello. That way you can still watch your hamster show." Said Fukuda

"Livestream." Said Sho

"Ok, your livestream. We can have some pudding and jello and some cookies, all of that junk food you like." Said Fukuda

"I can get it myself, I have legs." Said Sho. He could be so stubborn sometimes…but that was a good thing. He knew himself and he knew what he liked…even though knowing what he liked wasn't always equivalent to knowing what was best for himself. Sho was only ten and he didn't know that imitating his sister, getting up to what she got up to, would ultimately end up hurting him. Fukuda couldn't just tell him that he had to leave his sister alone, either, because Sho had this terrible habit of being incredibly contrary. Fukuda would have to try and finesse this situation…and he could do it. After a lifetime of dealing with the insanity that was Suzuki Touichirou Sho was a walk in the park.

"I know you do but last time you left you didn't come back for a while. I missed you." Said Fukuda. Sho was a good kid. He valued loyalty and friendship…and sometimes he could be a pain in the ass too…but he was ultimately a good kid. He wouldn't just leave Fukuda all alone like that. He'd stay. He'd grumble and complain but he'd stay.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I missed you too. I'll come back." Said Sho. Fukuda…well Sho was still a good boy. He was just getting older, that was all, and part of getting older was pulling away from your parents…or parental figures. He wasn't Sho's father, there was no chance of that, but he was the closest thing that he had…and Sho was the closest thing to a Son that he would ever have….and he was not going to be hurt by how quick Sho was to leave him…because this was normal. This was a normal part of being ten, nearly eleven, years old.

"Come on, it's not the same in here without you. Besides, what am I going to do without my assistant? What if I need assistance with something?" Said Fukuda. Sho didn't laugh. He would have laughed if he'd been younger but he was ten, almost eleven, now and he didn't laugh as easily as he had when he had been little. When he had been three, four, five, even six…it was around six that he started laughing less. So much happened that year…and Fukuda had done his best to make it easier on him…and he was still doing his best.

"You could just give Hatori his old job back." Said Sho

"He…didn't work out. Come on, you know that you're a better-" said Fukuda

"Don't let him hear you say that, he's coming right this way and you know how much of a baby he can be." Said Sho. Fukuda expanded past his passive aural range. It wasn't much, his passive range, and his active range wasn't much better. He knew that Hatori was….well if he focused less on Hatori himself and more on the feel of him in the wiring of the walls…there. Yup, here he came…

Why?

He had quit. He had asked Shigeko for permission to quit and now he was back down in the tech room with the gaming addicts, overgrown children, and the rest of the dregs of Claw society. What did he need all the way up here for? Hopefully not to beg for his old job back…because Fukuda wasn't going to give it to him. He would rather have dealt with Sho after an all-day candy, poptart, and pop binge than sit in a room with Hatori Nozomu all day.

Hell. He would rather have dealt with more of Shigeko's nonsense than with Hatori sitting there in the corner doing a whole lot of nothing all day.

"Hatori. Do you need something?" asked Fukuda doing his best to sound pleasant. Hatori was friends with both Suzuki and Shigeko….and he had no idea how that had happened. He had blatantly lied to Suzuki…well he was bad at figuring out when he was being deceived…and also Shigeko had been interested in him….but he was Suzuki's friend and Fukuda had to make an effort at being polite to him.

"Yeah, I was looking for Sho actually. There's a Mortal Kombat tournament going and I was wondering-" said Hatori. Sho perked right up. He had been slumped over his phone watching his live hamster and his aura had been lethargic but now it was like he had woken right up.

"He's busy-" said Fukuda. He knew that Sho would go. He knew Sho and he knew that he loved violent videogames, well all videogames but he did love himself some copious violence, and he knew that he couldn't keep up with Sho when it came to those games…and Hatori knew it too. He had come all the way up here to get Sho….and Fukuda didn't know why.

Shigeko's idea, maybe?

But why? What reasons could she have had to get Sho away from him? What reason could she have had to…he didn't know. Trying to understand her was like trying to understand ten Suzuki's in ten of his moods…the worst moods he had. Obsessive Suzuki, manic Suzuki, just been dumped Suzuki, trying to take over the world Suzuki, trying to make sense of the world Suzuki….all of the Suzuki's. It would have been easier to deal with every single Suzuki mood that he had ever known, at once, than trying to figure out why it was Shigeko did the things that she did.

He had a headache…and as quick as he tried to make it better it just came right back.

"Which one?" asked Sho completely ignoring Fukuda…but that was ok. He was ten and he was his father's son…and Suzuki loved himself some videogames….and Sho wasn't anything like his father. Sho was his own person and that person was just…a normal ten year old boy. A normal ten going on eleven year old boy.

"The original." Said Hatori. He totally ignored Fukuda too and…well he was such a child, too, more of a child than Sho was. He was too much of a child even for Shigeko. He was too much of a child for the actual child…no wonder he got on with Sho so well. What, was he trying to win over the entire family? Well that….would have made sense, actually. Get close to the vice president, the heir, and the president himself…..it all made sense…

And Fukuda didn't need something else to worry about.

"Hey Sho, you know-" said Fukuda. He was going to try again. He was going to try and try and try again. He was going to keep on trying because Sho…he did not need that life. The life that his sister was hell bent on leading. Sho…he was ten and he didn't know what he needed. All he knew was that he liked videogames. It was Fukuda's job to make sure that he grew up ok…that he grew up better than his sister…that he grew up better than what Fukuda had let Shigeko become.

"What does the winner get?" asked Sho completely ignoring Fukuda again. Fukuda…he knew that Sho was ten. He reminded himself that Sho was ten. He was a child, not someone with a fully developed mind, and he didn't know what he was doing.

"The satisfaction of crushing his enemies." Said Hatori

"Sho, if you want to then we can play-" said Fukuda

"I'm there. Fukuda, you can stay here and if you get lonely then…Shibata kind of likes you and I bet he'd hang out with you…and also…maybe you could call my dad or something? He's been on his phone a lot lately…or at least he was before he got sick. Anyway I have to go now. See you later." Said Sho as he walked away. He just…got up from his desk and walked away. Just like that. He just got up and…well Sho was a ten year old boy and what ten year old boy wouldn't be lured away with the promise of videogames. Even Suzuki…well not now but…when they had been young the fastest way to get him off of his bullshit was to get him to the nearest arcade. It would take more than that to get him off of his bullshit now…and Fukuda had to get him off of his bullshit…

He had a lot of bullshit to deal with.

His phone vibrated again. Now Shigeko was…well now that was too much. First of all there was no way to build, in time for this party, a slide from the roof to the lobby. Second of all the momentum build up from going from the roof of a skyscraper to would be enough to kill a man. Third of all…she was acting like a child. Now she chose to act like a child? Now? Not when she had been getting her father high or bossing her brother around or just…all of the other things that she got up to that a little girl was not meant to get up to? Now she was acting like a child.

This was quite enough.

Really. Fukuda…he'd had enough of this. One of his many duties was gently telling Suzuki when he was doing something unfeasible…like all the money he had poured into figuring out time travel. It didn't work. Also they were not building a space elevator…or bases fifty stories underground….or whatever else Suzuki came up with when he got all manic. Fukuda was the one to tell him when he had bad ideas, unfeasible ideas, or when he was about to shoot himself in the foot.

And now he had to do the same for Shigeko.

The walk to her office was a short one. Well it would have been short if he hadn't been stopped for hugs every so often. The Tokyo HQ was just as overpopulated as ever and the Awakened were just as strange and childish as ever. They were just…Fukuda didn't even know what. He would deal with all the Awakened in blue giving out hugs later. Right now he had to deal with Shigeko. The walk to her office took longer than it should have but at least he'd had the time to think up what he was going to say.

He was going to be polite.

Polite, deferential, and he wasn't going to look at her either. She had gotten this idea in her head that he looked at her like she was a woman or something. He had no idea where that had come from. She was eleven and she looked like an eleven year old…and even if she grew up to be a supermodel or something he still wasn't ever going to be interested in her like that. He had known her since she had been two. Maybe if she had been Masami's actual daughter or something, if she'd inherited…not even looks but…but all of the things that made Masami…well, Masami…then when she grew up….but he still would have known her from childhood and that would have been incredibly creepy. She was Shigeko and he would never think about her like that, as if she were a woman, even when she grew up and became a woman. She was just…she was Shigeko and he wished that he could have gotten it through her head that he did not look at her like she was a woman…

Even though she did her best to act like one.

There was a plaque attached to the wall that declared this to be the President's office. Fukuda didn't need that plaque…and not because he had been there when Suzuki bought this building. The smell of smoke, both kinds, permeated that entire floor of the building. The smell of smoke and the sound of…well whatever was going on in that room. Talking, laughing, and the Beatles….well it seemed like Vice President Suzuki had decided to start the party a little earlier than expected.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

"I love you, yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I love Toshi yeah-" he heard Shimazaki singing. There was the shift in energy as he teleported. Fukuda braced himself….not that he was afraid of Shimazaki or anything. He knew that Shimazaki may have been a moron but he wasn't going to just kill Suzuki's best friend and right hand man. Even though he had threatened it plenty of times…well Shigeko wouldn't let him. She may have been eleven, she may have had a serious drinking problem, she might have done more drugs at the age of eleven than Fukuda had managed to do in four years of university, but she wasn't an idiot. She saw his value as a healer…especially with Sho's deathly citrus allergy.

He wasn't afraid.

"Ryou, get off of me and stop hogging that pipe." That was Minegishi. Fukuda…was not afraid of them either. Of her either. It helped if he thought of them as a woman. Women weren't scary. He was bigger and stronger than they were and if he just remembered that…well that would have been of some comfort if they had both been normal people. They weren't. They were two espers and Minegishi was arguably the more powerful of the two of them even with his healing powers. They were there and…he amended his plan to speak to Shigeko to be even more polite. Minegishi…did not like him…well nobody in that room liked him…but Minegishi especially did not like him.

"Guys, stop it. President Suzuki isn't going to be happy when he gets better and comes back to a trashed office." Said Shibata. That was the biggest, strongest, man that Fukuda had ever met…and also out of the little group he was the most normal. He wouldn't let anything truly terrible happen to Fukuda, not while Shigeko was around, since he still saw her as the child she was and not the miniature adult that she tried to be.

"Shibata's right. My dad is going to get better soon, thanks for the soup by the way I'll make sure he eats it, and when he does he's not going to be happy if we ruin his office. We already drank all of his fancy decoration liquors and I'm pretty sure that it smells like smoking in here. Now come on, you guys promised me that you'd help with work stuff." Said Shigeko. Fukuda took a deep breath and kept on walking. She sounded…well she was slurring a little bit…and if they had drank all of the cognac and scotch Suzuki kept in that office then…yeah. Of course she would have been slurring. The marijuana clouds didn't help. Well maybe she would be calmer now, not more rational but calmer, and maybe he could actually have a civil conversation with her.

Since that was what they had come to.

She used to be small. She used to grab him by the hand and insist that he play dolls with her. She used to sit him down on her bed and show him all of her toys. She used to bring him those Hello Kitty books she used to like, back when she had been into Hello Kitty and not the snow princess or whatever that thing was that she was always watching, and she used to beg him to read her just one more story…and now she drank and smoked and did drugs and planned parties with the adults that she considered to be her closest friends…

Fukuda could deal with this.

He knocked on the door even though it was opened. He sensed the change in the atmosphere as soon as he made it to the door way. Shimazaki, who had been laying on Minegishi, sat up and glared with his aura. Shibata put down the tarp that he was knitting and now he was trying his best to look calm and failing miserably. Shigeko sat up straighter in her father's chair and put down the purple glass pipe that she had been holding. She was using her powers to button up her sweater…and she didn't have to…

He was not LOOKING at her!

Was that what everyone in this room thought? Were they all insane? Well, no, they were all high. High and drunk. Even Shimazaki was squinting…and he knew that the squinting thing had to do with being high. They were all doing it but seeing Shimazaki do it….well that was the ridiculousness that they all should have been thinking about. Not the idea that Fukuda would ever look at Shigeko like that. His name wasn't Shimazaki Ryou. He dated, well slept around in, his own age bracket. Fukuda…would say nothing about that. He would calmly tell Little Miss Red Ink over there that she was ruining the cult/terrorist organization/legitimate conglomerate that he and her father had been building up since before she had even been born….and he would do it calmly, too.

There was no fighting with these people.

"This is a closed meeting." Minegishi was the first to speak. They had their hand on Shimazaki's arm. A silent and purely aural conversation was passing between them that Fukuda didn't care about. The only thing he cared about was whether or not he had to bring this over her head to Suzuki.

"Yeah, so get the fuck out!" said Shimazaki. Judging by the way he was gripping that decanter…and he was drinking right from the decanter like a teenager…he wanted to send that thig flying at Fukuda's head. Well fine, then, bring it on. He could heal from that.

"Shimazaki! Mob's in the room. Fukuda, maybe it would be best of you submitted all your inquiries in writing and then set up a meeting with her Little Ladyship." Said Shibata. Fukuda shook his head and trained his eyes, and his aura, on Shigeko. She was sitting at Suzuki's desk and she had that pipe back up to her mouth…and she was inhaling…and if he had been twenty years younger and she hadn't been eleven he would have been impressed. She exhaled, coughed, and used her powers to pass the pipe over to Shimazaki and Minegishi before folding her hands and leaning forward at the desk.

"Ok, now I can talk to you." Said Shigeko. There was a smattering of laugher. Subdued at first before Shimazaki joined in. That man sure did love the sound of his own voice. Probably because sound was all he had, really.

"Miss Suzuki, I was wondering if I could talk to you about the budget. Specifically the budget for the party." Said Fukuda. He approached the desk and stood a respectful distance away. Suzuki, unless they were being unusually opened with each other, enjoyed a respectful distance and amount of deference from him. Shigeko…well she liked to pull people close into her orbit. She liked to make friends…and she had tried to make friends with him before but…he just couldn't do it.

Not with her being the way that she was now.

"Did you have an idea to add to the theme? So far it's Halloween, the Beatles, things that feel like pudding in your mouth, and dogs. Did you want to add something? I had Hatori make a virtual suggestion box and I bet if you talk to him then he'll send you the link…but don't talk to him about me or anything else!" said Shigeko. He took a step back. Well there was probably a story there….that he would not pry into. She was clearly gone. She reached under the desk and pulled out a bucket of movie theatre popcorn….yeah, she was gone. He watched her aura. If she had been Suzuki they would have all been dead by now. Well at least that was one less thing for him to worry about. He had a million things to worry about and dying didn't need to be one of them.

"Jello shots! Add jello shots to the party list…I just remembered that they existed." Said Shimazaki

"But we have jello on the list already. Even that pudding jello that only you like." Said Shigeko. Apparently he was forgotten now. Her full attention was on her friends.

"I can make jello shots, she doesn't need to order jello shots. I mean Fukuda is in here complaining about money." Said Shibata. Always the voice of some sort of reason. What he should have been saying is that, in a party which held important high class people as well as children, jello shots may not have been the best choice.

"But wait, what's a jello shot?" asked Shigeko. She sounded so young then. He knew better than to savor that. She was high as kite and drunk as a skunk. She may have been young but she certainly didn't act like it…even now. He knew that the next thing he would know there would be jello shots in the cafeteria or something.

"It's a shot of vodka in a cup of jello…and something that it's easy to go overboard on so maybe don't add it to the list." Said Minegishi as they took the pipe from Shimazaki. Fukuda made eye contact with them…and regretted it. They hadn't said anything or done anything, they had just looked at him, but what was behind those eyes…was terrifying…not that he was but they were, objectively, terrifying.

"I will…but I can use moderation. Ok, so we have pudding and jello and jello shots and-" said Shigeko

"Coke. We need a room full of coke. Floor to ceiling coke." Said Shimazaki. Fukuda…got the feeling that he was not talking about what Sho drank instead of water. That was…not what Shigeko should have been getting into. Shigeko was only eleven and cocaine was…well not for everyone but…especially not extremely powerful eleven year old girls!

"Shigeko, that's actually why I wanted to talk to you-" said Fukuda. He knew how to reign Suzuki in when he got crazy like this. He'd, somehow, won the tunnel argument every single time it came up. If it hadn't been for Fukuda then every single HQ and division would have had fifty underground tunnels leading to all the others as well as escape tunnels and storage tunnels and nuclear war tunnels in case the Soviets ever attacked….they had been having this tunnel argument for a VERY long time…

The tunnel argument….he would rather have the tunnel argument than whatever this cocaine argument was becoming.

"Ok, that's three votes for coke. Anymore votes for coke?" asked Shigeko

"We're not voting on-" said Minegishi

"I think that maybe we should hold the voting until Hatori comes back…or maybe we should just vote on something else….like…um…smoke machines? Remember, we were voting on smoke machines vs disco balls?" asked Shibata. Smooth he was not…but he did know how to get the ball rolling in the right direction. Maybe once Fukuda either died, defected, or ended up following Suzuki to wherever he planned on retiring too Shibata would be the new Suzuki whisperer. Or maybe Minegishi. Shigeko seemed to listen to them at least somewhat…and really he would rather have wished that on Minegishi than on anyone else in the whole world.

"Smoke machines suck and I can't see light so that's all you guys." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. Fukuda had no idea why she would even go through the trouble of throwing him a birthday party…well then again Shimazaki was, well, Shimazaki and Shigeko was a girl so…yeah. He could kind of see it. Still, though, even she had to see that all of this was getting completely out of hand.

"Miss Suzuki, that's what I wanted to talk to you about." Said Fukuda. She didn't look up at him. She just drank from the cup on her desk…and he knew that the amber colored liquid inside of that cup was not apple juice.

"What about confetti? Everyone loves confetti." Said Shigeko. There was a slight slur to what she said and she swayed back and forth in her father's chair. A vine grew from a plant and took the cup out of her hand. It was brought to Minegishi who finished it in one swallow. Fukuda braced himself for something that never came. Suzuki never drank but to take something out of his hand was suicide, he had always been very protective of his person. All Shigeko did was pout a little bit. It could have been cute, really, if she hadn't been who she was.

"Confetti is the cancer of the party world." Said Minegishi. They closed their eyes and leaned back into Shimazaki for a moment…and Fukuda stopped looking at them. Shimazaki was glaring at him aurally. He was still very protective of his girlfriend…and when was he going to let it go already! Like the song that was playing, apparently not all the music in the world was the Beatles, sometimes you just had to let it go. Fukuda had said something in private that, yes, was a little bit distrustful towards Minegishi. That had been a year ago. It was time to just let it go. He hadn't said anything about them since and he had even written that thing that Shimazaki told him to write. It was over. Fukuda would never mention the fact that they could easily have been mistaken for a guy on account of their lack of assets ever again.

"Listen I-" said Fukuda trying to get her attention while there was a lull in the conversation. She was drinking from a Starbucks cup now, there were at least twenty littered around the room, and he hoped that it was just coffee in there…not that he had any right to ask her. She would do whatever she wanted, she had already proven that, even ignore him while he was trying to have a civil conversation with her.

"I thought that glitter was the cancer of the party world." Said Shigeko. Once again she didn't even glance in his direction. What was she on about? She couldn't have still held a grudge against him…he hadn't even DONE anything to her! In fact he had let her get away with everything short of murder…and even if she was going around killing people he still would have kept his mouth shut. He didn't tell her father about the things she did…or her mother. He hadn't breathed a word of…well he doubted that Masami still checked that email…but still. He hadn't breathed a word of the worst of what Shigeko got up to and this was how she repaid him?

"No, it's the cancer of the craft world." Said Minegishi, their eyes still closed and their head still resting against their boyfriend. Fukuda looked away again. Shimazaki was so jealous….and he had no reason to be. Only a blind man would think that there was anything at all attractive about Minegishi Toshiki.

"Hey…come on, Mob's right, everyone loves glitter." Said Shibata

"Can someone explain glitter to me, please? As far as I know it's that itchy stuff that people dump on you at clubs." Said Shimazaki. He reached for the pipe but it was passed with a vine to Shibata. He held up his hand and shook his head. Good. Someone in the room had some sense…though not nearly enough sense to stop it from being passed back to Shigeko.

"Miss Sh-" said Fukuda. She paid him no mind. She didn't even acknowledge that he had said anything. Suzuki, even when he wasn't in the mood to talk, always at least acknowledged when he was being spoken to. Even if it was to tell a person to shut their mouth he always acknowledged a person when they were speaking to him.

"There are glitter clubs?" asked Shigeko. She actually sounded hopeful there….and she used to love glitter. She used to love to make things with it, pictures and cards and stuff. He might even have had some of her old art somewhere. In one of the folders he kept Sho's old at projects in. He had been saving those for Masami…so maybe he should just leave those be. Let her remember her daughter as she was, not as who she had become.

"No, I mean the kind I took you too. Remember, back after the Christmas party?" asked Shimazaki. So that was where she had vanished off to, clubbing with Shimazaki of all people…and she wondered why…well not that he was looking at her like she was a woman…but maybe she shouldn't have acted like a woman if she didn't want people to look at her like she was one. Not that he did.

"Miss Su-" said Fukuda. She wasn't paying him any mind at all. None of them were. Not with their eyes or their auras. The conversation had moved, now, but he needed to move it back to what he had came there to discuss…even though this was fascinating. He wondered just how many people could claim to have been a fly on the wall to something like this. To a meeting with the most powerful eleven year old in the world…and possibly the most powerful espers in Claw if not the world. All that power in one room and this was what they talked about. Cocaine, confetti, and glitter. Well then.

"Non-denominational holiday party." Said Shibata. He had picked his knitting back up now and he wasn't even looking up at them. So much for being the new Suzuki whisperer.

"Yes, the non-denominational holiday party that you gave Mob coke after?" asked Minegishi. Fukuda looked over at her with wide eyes. Shigeko…could have killed everyone. Suzuki did not do well with…anything…and he knew that she was not his child biologically but she did have the same power set….and the same issues that came with it.

"So are we doing the room full of coke? Because I know someone who sells coke." Said Shigeko. Fukuda…if he was capable of having a heart attack he would have had one. She had…she had bought drugs…on her own….and also now she was doing coke and…and she was eleven. Masami would have killed him. If she had been there then she would have put him in the ground…and he deserved it. He deserved it for letting all of this happen. For letting Shigeko become this.

"Shige-" said Fukuda. Maybe using her given name would grab her attention. She liked it when people used her given name….well the one that she had given herself….and he would not call her Mob. That was not her name, that was not even A NAME, that was just something that the other kids had started calling her back in preschool. He would call her by the name Masami called her by because that was her actual name…and that was what Masami would have wanted.

"Oh yeah, Kai said that you came by…and I think I've got a pretty good idea as to what you got me for my birthday." Said Shimazaki in an annoying singsong voice. Minegishi slapped him lightly on the shoulder. They didn't care that their supposed best friend, if that bracelet they always wore was accurate, was out buying drugs for their boyfriend and doing God only knew what else with him too.

"Your drug dealer?" asked Minegishi with a wrinkle of their nose. Fukuda wanted to do more than wrinkle his nose. So now she was keeping company with drug dealers. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

"He's a tattoo artist too. He did most of mine. I'm thinking of asking him if Sho can apprentice under him when he gets older. I mean if he's going to get into that he had might as well learn from a master." Said Shimazaki. No way. Hell no. Sho was not going up to become a tattoo artist. Tattoos were terrible. The only people who had those were criminals and Sho was not going to grow up to become a criminal…a serious criminal. Not like what happened around here now but actually serious crimes.

"Sho will do no such thing." Said Fukuda. Now he had everyone's attention. He was being stared at and….good. He would not be ignored. They looked at him, and then at Shigeko, and then at him again. She was passed the pipe. There was silence as she inhaled and then put it down. She went for too long without breathing, longer than could have been healthy, before she exhaled.

"We're not here to talk about Sho and what he's going to be when he grows up. We're here to talk about the party so let's do that. Where can we get enough coke to fill a room?" asked Shigeko. Deflecting. She was deflecting. She had been trying to ignore him and now she was deflecting and…and he had no idea what to do about deflecting. Suzuki never deflected. He didn't know how. Shigeko…she was like him in so many ways…but she didn't share one strand of DNA with him. She could think in ways that her father simply could not…and he had no idea what to do now….

Well besides try and talk some sense into her before this whole thing went down like the Titanic.

"Columbia." Said Shimazaki without missing a beat. Shigeko nodded….and he prayed to God that they weren't all making a trip down to Columbia.

"Ryou, no, we're not going to Columbia." Said Minegishi. For once he agreed with them. Columbia….they did not need to mess with the cocaine people over there…they did not need to mess with cocaine people end of discussion!

"I agree. I mean….ok. I like to go places but we're going to be doing a lot of moving after this party and since we're getting the new guy I want us to spend as much time as we can in London, we're going so Sho can see Emmy, and also if we move around a lot then he'll be scared and-" said Shigeko. That…could not have been right. That could not have been…true. They were not getting…she was adding someone to her group? Their group? The entourage? That was just….she was not supposed to….this was just…

She had too much power.

"Shigeko. We need to talk. I wanted to talk to you about the party but this….you're adding another person to the group? Does your father know? Does he know about any of this?" asked Fukuda. Shigeko held out her hand…and the pipe went back to her…and now that was just unnecessary. She'd had enough. Her eyes were red and she was squinting and that was…this was…all of this was enough.

"Normally I'd tell Mob to stop being a little stoner but I don't blame her. Mob, smoke away…but we're talking, later, about the new guy that you were planning on dropping into the house." Said Minegishi. They did not sound happy….and Fukuda didn't blame them. Shigeko was going too far with this…all of it. Suzuki couldn't have given her that level of power. He knew better. He knew better than to let a child…do all of this….he must have.

"Where is he going to sleep? I'm already doubled up with Hatori and-" said Shibata. That was what he was worried about? Not about that fact that not only was she finding her own assets but she was adding them to the previously established group? Didn't he worry at all about being replaced? What was Shigeko…how could she treat her so called friends like that? Suzuki, for all of his numerous faults, was at least loyal to Fukuda…loyalish, anyway. He had the kid now but Hatori…well Hatori didn't stand a chance of replacing Fukuda.

"Toshi and I can share." Said Shimazaki quickly. Well that was…something. There had been an aural conversation there that Fukuda hadn't been able to read…but it had ended with Minegishi lifting their head from his shoulder.

"We can do what now, Ryou?" asked Minegishi. Well someone was upset…and he was curious as to where this would go. Not that this was relevant to him but…well in fighting in that group was interesting…and so was whatever trouble was brewing in that paradise. If Suzuki had been there he would have had him explain…and he had no idea what there was to explain. Minegishi was rejecting their boyfriend…well then. Maybe Shigeko needed to focus more on the friends she had before she brought in someone completely new to the group.

"I mean I spend most nights in your room anyway so…why not? I mean I don't want to live with the new guy and I'm guessing that you don't either so…why not just double up?" asked Shimazaki

"We'll talk about this later." Said Minegishi in a tone that said that they would be avoiding talking about that later. Shigeko…well good. Maybe she would learn that her actions had consequences. Bringing in someone new to an established group, displacing people, making them feel replaced…there were consequences to a person's actions. Maybe once this thing imploded in her face then she could explain to Suzuki the value of loyalty and friendship and the danger of replacing someone.

"I want to talk about it now, Toshi." Said Shimazaki. This was certainly interesting…and he wanted to see this thing explode….but this whole place was…getting to him. The smoke in the room and…and the fact that there was an eleven year old sitting behind a desk that could have ruined his entire life if she wanted to…and the fact that she was on her way to ruining his entire life. She was doing…this nonsense…and Claw was burning and….and she was there smoking and drinking and dealing with her friend drama and…and maybe it would be better if Claw crashed and burned but…well he liked having a place to live.

"Miss Suzuki and I are talking about-" said Fukuda. Sometimes you had to be firm with people…and he did outrank everyone in that room. He outranked them all and he could make everyone just…shut up for a second so he could talk to his….for the love of God….so he could talk to his direct superior.

"Dad says that I have total power and I'm using my total power to throw a party…and I'm going to meet someone new…and I have no idea if he wants to join the group or the HQ or what but…but if you don't believe me then you can ask him…ok? So um….unless you want to smoke and talk about the party with us then…um…maybe you would be happier…doing work in your office….or something." Said Shigeko. Fukuda…could not believe his ears. She was dismissing him. She was passive aggressively dismissing him. Suzuki…well he didn't always want to hear what Fukuda had to say but he did listen…and even when he told him to get out he just….well he listened and…and he never got passive aggressive about it. He didn't know how to be passive aggressive. He knew how to be normal aggressive but…but that was it. He just…this was….

He had to talk to Suzuki.

"I think that I will talk to your father. Thank you for your time, Miss Suzu-Vice President Suzuki." Said Fukuda. He bowed, low and polite, and then made his way out of the office. The chatter picked back up as he left. Now they were all grilling her about the new asset joining them. Good, let her sow all the discord she wanted to. Fukuda…he was going to go above her head. He had to. He had a responsibility to the thing that he had been building since….since he couldn't even remember when and…and he had a responsibility to Suzuki, too. Even if he was the most irritating, most insane, most over dramatic human being that Fukuda had ever had the misfortune of meeting…..Fukuda had a responsibility to him.

He couldn't let Suzuki crash and burn.

He couldn't let Suzuki or Claw crash and burn. As good as it would have been for the world, especially the normal people in it, he just…could not let this thing crash and burn. He'd spent his whole life, it felt like, either in Claw or building Claw or planning for Claw and…and as much as he was against it….taking over the world….well this was what he had been working towards and….

And he couldn't just let it crash and burn.


	419. I Need to Get Myself Sorted Out

Suzuki Touichirou did not have the energy to get out of bed.

He didn't deserve it. He'd done it again. He'd been unfaithful to his wife as a human being could be. He had been with a woman who was not his wife. There was no excuse for it. He hadn't been possessed. He hadn't been intoxicated. He hadn't gone insane. He had been in his right mind the whole time. He had been in his right mind when he got into her car. He had been in his right mind when he'd stepped into her garden. He'd been in his right mind when he'd agreed to stay for a cup of tea. He'd been in his right mind when he'd sat own on her couch. He'd been in his right mind when he let her sit beside him. He'd been in his right mind when he let her put her hand on his thigh. He'd been in his right mind when he'd let her lean in for a kiss.

He'd been in his right mind when he'd kissed her back.

That was where it had all gone wrong. The kiss. He had seen it coming. Her aura had been trying to bond to his and she had been looking up at him through her eyelashes and she'd turned her head to the side and leaned in…all the signs a woman gave you before she kissed you…and he could have pulled away at any time but he didn't. He'd let her kiss him…and he could have pulled away after that. He could have walked away right there and…and it wouldn't have been alright, putting himself in that situation, but at least it would have ended with her pressing a kiss to him…and without him kissing back…but he had kissed her back. He had kissed her back and…and he had been the one to deepen it…and then his hand had found her thigh and then….

Well at least he hadn't slept with her.

He hadn't slept with her. That was how he had justified it to himself. He hadn't actually had penetrative sex with her. They'd had every other kind of sex but that…had been his line. That had been his reasoning. As long as he didn't penetrate her then it was fine and…and he hadn't been insane then…well he wanted to have gone insane but he could remember his thought process clearly. Insane people did not remember their thought processes. That was what it was to be insane. He hadn't been insane, he had been very sane, he had just been…very terrible. Terrible and selfish and…and just the worst. He had done everything but have actual sex with her and somewhere between her satisfaction and his it had dawned on him what had happened…what had been happening.

He had been there, on her couch, with her…he didn't even want to remember….

Well he wanted to. He wanted to remember how soft her skin had been. He wanted to remember how she had tasted like black tea and human saliva…which was an odd thing to enjoy but he hadn't tasted another person in so long…and she had also tasted vaguely like…well he didn't want to think about that part…well he did. He did and he just…he liked…he enjoyed and…and she just…well he had always enjoyed it, a woman's satisfaction, and she had just….he felt his scalp. He still had a scratch there, he felt, though that may have been his imagination.

He liked it when she had pulled his hair.

She had pulled his hair and called him…well not Touichi…she had called him Touichirou which was his given name…and it had been then, there, buried between her thighs that he had come to the realization that this was not Masami, this was not alright, and…and he had felt…he had felt it in his chest and…and he had practically felt his wedding ring burning a hole through his finger. She had been ricking back and forth and practically ripping his hair out at the root and…and then the next thing he had known she had been…and then his hand had been in her hair….and it was black. That was what she had, black hair, not brown…and he had only been able to think about brown hair…and the smells of cinnamon and artificial berries…and he had smelled her garden and…well her garden which was…and just…well at the point of his own satisfaction he had decided that the best thing to do would have been to leave…

So he had left.

He had left Osaka. He could never go back to Osaka. It was over. It was all over. She was in Osaka and he could never go back and…and he could never leave this room anymore. He could never leave, ever, because he just…could not face the world. He would never be able to face his children, his daughter, his Shigeko, ever again. Not after what he had done. He had broken it, his marriage, again…and what could that teach her? If she knew what her father had done then…then she would accept the same sort of behavior from her future husband…and if whatever man she took to the altar or even to her bed decided to step out on their relationship Suzuki would end his life. He would end it and…and she just…she would end up with someone like that. Someone like some.

Some womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own joy.

That was what he was. He couldn't have kept his pants on…well he had, actually, mostly, and in his mind then it had been alright…and Fukuda had told him many times before that he could have taken the gold for Japan in mental gymnastics…and he hadn't been literal because Suzuki knew for a fact that mental gymnastics was not an Olympic event and also he had no idea how that would even be filmed. It was a saying, Fukuda had said, the way that Suzuki could twist a thought until it became unrecognizable to any form of logic…and he considered himself a very logical person…

And he had been very logical then.

He had been logical in his thoughts. It hadn't been cheating because he hadn't penetrated her…at least not really….and fingers did not count. That had been decided decades ago. The only thing that counted as sex was sex…and that had been decided and the rules still stood…so he had thought that if he hadn't penetrated her or even gotten completely undressed then it wouldn't have been sex…but it had been sexual and he had cheated on Masami and….and it would have been better if she had come back and kicked him in the stomach…because then he could have felt better…or if she sent him a letter and said something like she had known in their marriage that he had this…this person inside of him…this womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own joy…and that was why she had left him and…and now he just…

He wanted to be alone.

He wanted to be with Masami and he wanted to be alone. He wanted to be with Shigeko and he wanted to be alone. He wanted to be at work and he wanted to be alone. He even wanted to be with Hatori and he wanted to be alone. Not Fukuda. Fukuda…he knew that this had happened before…and he had given some very good advice…and Fukuda didn't like it if he didn't listen and…and well he was Suzuki Touichirou and he could do whatever he wanted and…and he just…didn't want to have a conflict between the two of them. He just….

He wanted to be alone.

But he couldn't be alone. He had locked himself away in this room since coming to Tokyo, his phone had been tossed in some corner, and he had been away…away from everyone. He had been away from work and…and someone like him did not deserve the world. Someone who could betray his wife like this did not deserve the world or the power he had…or to get out of bed…or to do anything and…and he hated this. He hated himself right now and…and she just….she had been….Shiori…he missed Shiori. She had messaged him so many times…and she probably still had been…and he just….he needed to be alone. He needed to be alone but…

But the universe was not so kind.

There, at the edges of his passive perception, was the last person who he wanted to see. Well not the last person. He didn't want to see Shiori again…well he did. He wanted to see her and hold her and tell her that he was sorry and that he wanted to be with her…and he wanted Masami back…if only just to tell him that he was the worst man who had ever lived and that she was leaving him again because he couldn't stop indulging himself when it came to women…he didn't want to see Masami. He wanted…he wanted her and he did not want her and….and he wanted Shigeko. He wanted to hold her and kiss her and tell her that he was beyond sorry and….and he wanted her to stay as far away from her as humanly possible and…he just….he just…

He didn't want to see Fukuda.

That was who was in his aural range. Fukuda. Suzuki turned around and pulled his blanket up over his head. He hadn't gotten out of bed in so long and he just…he just wished that…he didn't know what he wished. To have a time machine. To have had access to a wormhole so he could find a universe where he wasn't a womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own joy. He just…he didn't know what he wanted that could happen in this universe but he did know that he didn't want to see Fukuda…and he was Suzuki Touichirou so he could see who he did and did not want to see….

He barricaded his door.

There. That should have been it. He stayed there, under his blanket. He knew that this was no way for him to act. He knew that this was no way for Suzuki Touichirou, the man who would one day rule the world, to act. He knew that he needed to get out of bed and get himself under control. His telekinesis had been acting up nonstop. He had given up on keeping any order in his room. There was no point to it. If he couldn't keep his base urges under control then what hope did he have of keeping his powers under control?

He was so ashamed of himself that there were not words…

Well he didn't have any for himself, anyway, but he did have some for Fukuda. He knew this part. This was the part where Fukuda came into his room, pulled the blanket off of him, and reminded him who he was. He got like this sometimes, a holdover from when he had been an adolescent. Rejection…was the most painful thing a human being could feel, he had read, and when he had been rejected by women, well girls then, that had shown physical and emotional interest in him then…well he had gone to his bedroom to lick his wounds…and sometimes he decided that he was never coming out….because he was Suzuki Touichirou and he could do whatever he wanted to do…

Well Fukuda never got that memo.

"Suzuki? Come on, I know you're in there." said Fukuda. Suzuki wondered if maybe this would be the time that Fukuda got bored and went home. He knew that Fukuda wouldn't do that. When they had been younger…and even the last time Suzuki had retreated from the world….Fukuda had come for him. Back at the old house…after the…event…with the little red hair baby which he had not fathered because he could only have children with Masami because she was his wife and being his wife meant that all of his children would come from her….and he just…should not have reacted like that…like this…

But at least Fukuda had brought him out of it…like he was trying to do now.

"Suzuki…come on. I know that you're in there." said Fukuda. He was trying to open the door, now, and he wouldn't be able to. He wasn't strong enough to get through the barricade, the dresser, and he could try all day. He could try until they both died of old age. Suzuki was not going to let him in the door, in the room, because…he was not….he just…he was stuck here….he was just…

Stuck.

"Suzuki Touichirou how many times do we have to do this? I know that you're in there and you know that you're in there so just…let me in." said Fukuda. That wasn't a reason to let him in. That wasn't a reason to do anything. Yes, he knew that they had been through this before but that wasn't a reason to go over it again. They had done this time and time again…and that was more of a reason not to start it up again.

"No." said Suzuki. He knew that he could have just throw Fukuda out of the house…literally…but he healed. He healed and he would just get back up again and just…he wouldn't give up. Like when they had been young. Like when they had been children. Like when….well like all the times when this had happened.

"So you are in there." said Fukuda after a moment. What did that even mean? Of course Suzuki was in this room. Why else would Fukuda have been there knocking on his door asking him to come out?

"You knew that I was in here the whole time. What ae you on about?" Said Suzuki. He rolled over so he faced the door. He could see Fukuda's aura, there, it closely outlined Fukuda himself. His aura was…not calm. He was upset about something….and he was so rarely upset…but here he was, upset. What did he have to be upset about? He hadn't done anything.

"I'm on about you getting into one of these moods. I know that I'm overstepping right now but you cannot run away from this-" said Fukuda. No. He could not say that. Suzuki was not running away. Suzuki Touichirou ran from nothing. He ran from nothing and he just…he had been making a strategic retreat…until all of this passed….that was all. That was all and soon it would pass and then it would all be over and then…and then he would get back to normal…and he didn't need Fukuda to pull him out of this…because there was no need to pull him out of it…because there was nothing to pull him out of.

"I am not running away. This is…a strategic retreat." Said Suzuki. He made these sometimes. He just had to get himself back in order and…and find some way to make up for what he had done. There. That wouldn't be so difficult…or maybe it would be…or maybe…he didn't know. He didn't know and he couldn't think. He just…needed to be alone. He needed to retreat on his own.

"Sure it is. Just like the last time?" asked Fukuda. There. He understood and…and Suzuki could have sworn that Fukuda had a tone there….but that wasn't possible. This was Fukuda. He didn't have a tone and…and so what if he had referenced something that had happened last year? That hadn't been his child and Fukuda….well he knew that and he had settled this whole thing….so they didn't have to talk about this.

"….yes. Now leave me alone. Don't you have work to do? Lots and lots of work?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda had better things to do with his time that he had should have been doing. He didn't have to sit there, stand there, and bring up the past.

"Yeah, I do, and that's what I have to talk to you about. Your daughter is running Claw into the ground." Said Fukuda. Suzuki sat up. How could he have said that? It was one thing to be standing there and….and talking about the past…but it was another to talk about Shigeko that way.

"….don't say that." Said Suzuki. Fukuda…was on dangerous ground. It was one thing to overstep and talk about him, they had been together for thirty years so he got to say that, but he did not get to talk about Shigeko. She was doing a good job. He trusted her, he loved her, and he would always….he would always put his faith in her.

"Why not? It's the truth and sometimes the truth hurts." Said Fukuda. Now that was just…Fukuda was really getting close to….Suzuki tried to keep it together. He could feel his powers again and…and he could feel himself starting to lose control and…and he couldn't lose control on top of everything else that he had done.

"Fukuda…stop talking." Said Suzuki. That was a direct order and Fukuda….they may have been closer, he was closer to Fukuda than any other man in the world, but he knew that he had to follow a direct order…and he knew that nothing good would come from disobeying him.

"Your daughter is eleven years old and she's running Claw like an eleven year old would." Said Fukuda

"Fukuda…be quiet. I have every faith in my Daughter." Said Suzuki. He crossed his arms and pulled his head down to his chest. He could not lose control. Shigeko may not have been home but…but she would see the aftermath of his explosion…and she did not need to see that….she did not need to know what sort of man that her father had become…what sort of man he was….she just…did not need to see any of that.

"No, I won't. Your daughter is eleven years old and she's acting like a child. She's going to build a pudding filled swimming pool, did you know that? A pudding filled swimming pool and also she's going to set dogs lose in the building and-" said Fukuda. Suzuki….did not want to or need to hear anymore. Fukuda needed to just stop it already. He….had given Shigeko power…because he could not be trusted with it right now. Not after what he had done. She had power and she was going to use it and…and she was using it to…

To act like a child.

But he just…he trusted her and he knew that it would all come together in the end and…and he just…he had to trust her. He had to trust in her because if he couldn't trust in his own child then who could he trust? He hated this, feeling this way, feeling all the ways that he was feeling right now…and he needed these feelings to stop…but he had no idea what to do and…

And Fukuda was still talking.

"Suzuki? Are you listening? I don't care what you do to me. I don't care if you come out of that room and break every bone in my body. I still stand by what I said. Things are out of control and you need to get out of your room and you will even if I have to kick down this door and drag you out." Said Fukuda. Suzuki didn't think, he just pushed him. He had to…well he could push whoever he wanted and he wanted to push Fukuda…

Well he wanted to do more than push him.

Breaking every bone in his body seemed like a good idea…but it wouldn't do anything. Fukuda could and would just put himself back together. He could heal and…well pushing him didn't do anything but…it did make Suzuki feel better. A bit. Talking to Fukuda was just…he didn't want to talk to him…or to anyone….and he just…he needed to be alone.

Until whatever this was passed.

"Fukuda. Go. Away." said Suzuki. He knew this, he knew that he wouldn't go away, but he would still try. He needed….he needed to be alone…but he didn't want Fukuda gone either. Well he did. He wanted Fukuda to just shut up and leave him alone…but he also wanted Fukuda to stay and never stop talking just so…so he never had be alone with his thoughts again…

He hated his thoughts.

He hated what happened in his mind. The war that went on within himself. He wanted…he wanted to be alone and he wanted to be with people. He wanted to be with Shiori and he wished that he had never met her. He wanted to see Masami again, even if she came back just to tell him that she never wanted to speak to him again. That he was the worst husband and man who had ever lived. He wanted her back and…and he never wanted to face her again. He had betrayed her and she had betrayed him. She had left him but…but he had slept with someone else. Two people. One person because it didn't count if he didn't….well it did count and…and even though she had left him…even though she had betrayed him by abandoning him and their children….but he had betrayed her in the worse way imaginable. Even if she had left him she had never done anything as terrible as he had done….

He couldn't be alone with himself.

"No. I don't care what you do to me I am not going anywhere until you come out of there. I know you and I know that if I don't say anything you're just going to stay in there until this whole thing comes down on both of our heads…and I am not going to let that happen." Said Fukuda. Suzuki sighed and threw the dresser across the room. He knew how this would go. Fukuda would stay there. He would stay there all day and all night and just…Suzuki did not need that. Better just to get this part over with. Better to be with Fukuda than with himself.

He couldn't be alone with himself.

"Thank you." Said Fukuda as he came in through the door. He didn't look around, didn't take in the mess and destruction and random bursts of telekinesis around him. He walked right over to the bed and stood over Suzuki…and he didn't like that. He didn't like being the one who was small…and he didn't want to get up. He didn't get up. He didn't get up, others got up, but on his terms. He pulled Fukuda down so he was sitting beside him. it wasn't ideal, sharing a bed with him like this, but it was better than having someone stand over him…

Even though he deserved it…for what he'd done.

"I know what you're here for so get on with it. You're going to try and get me out of this bed and I….cannot get out of this room….for the time being. I just cannot…and never speak ill of my Daughter again. Shigeko is doing well to run Claw and-" said Suzuki

"Shigeko is drunk, high, and she and her friends have taken over your office and are planning a party that's going to at best destroy the HQ and at worst bankrupt us. These aren't judgements, these are the facts as they are." Said Fukuda. Suzuki…was going to keep calm. He was going to keep calm and…and he just…he needed to be around someone…and he needed to be alone…but he needed to be around someone more. He just…had no idea. He had no clue what he was going to do…

So he settled on shoving Fukuda off the bed.

He fell off the bed, said nothing, and climbed back up. Suzuki felt like a child. He felt like they were children again…only Fukuda wasn't cursing at him and telling him that he was being crazy. He wasn't being crazy. There was nothing crazy about this. He was just…making a strategic retreat. He was just retreating to the confines of this room until he got back to being the effective leader he had always been…..

And Shigeko was fit to lead in his stead despite what Fukuda thought.

"I told you not to talk about my Daughter like that. Shigeko is doing a good job…just like she did last time." Said Suzuki. She had taken control over Claw when he had made his last strategic retreat. When a child, a baby, had been dumped in his lap. A child by a woman he'd….well a woman he'd betrayed Masami for. A woman who he never should have been with. Masami…she was the mother of his children…and that had not been his child….and he had no idea what he was thinking of that child for. That child had its own mother and he was not her father and…and it wasn't like there was a chance that he had fathered a child with Shiori. He had made sure that him fathering a child with her hadn't even been an option…and he'd had presence of mind enough to draw lines but not to tell her to get off of him…or to keep his hands off of her…and the world did not need a man like him running it. Shigeko knew what she was doing. He trusted her. He trusted her and Fukuda should have trusted her too. There was nobody in the world that he trusted more than Shigeko.

"Last time you left her in charge she completely destabilized us and we spent all of last year playing catch up…and it's going to happen again. She's eleven. She may act like a grown woman but she's a little girl and right now she's-" said Fukuda

"There is nothing wrong with Shigeko." said Suzuki. Shigeko was…he trusted her. She knew what she was doing. She knew what she was doing and he knew that he could trust her. This was his child and he trusted her with his life's work. This was Shigeko and he knew that he could keep her near, that he could let her be in charge, until whatever this was passed. Until he could stop strategically retreating.

"I never said that there was anything wrong with her, I just said that she's eleven and she's acting like an eleven year old. She's going to fill swimming pools with pudding and let dogs loose in the HQ and about a dozen other insane and impractical things for her friend's birthday party/Halloween party-" said Fukuda

"She's good at throwing parties." Said Suzuki. Shigeko knew best about these things…and Fukuda…well he must have been exaggerating. Shigeko…well if she thought that this was a good idea…even though he really didn't think that swimming pools of pudding were a good idea and…well…he just…he wasn't up to it. He wasn't up to going to his office and telling her that her services were no longer needed.

"She's good at throwing parties but she's…she's too young to be good at the kind of long term planning that you're good at." Said Fukuda

"My entire life has been long term planning." Said Suzuki. There wasn't a time in his life that he hadn't had some kind of long term plan. Mother and father had been very clear about the course that his life was supposed to take. He was supposed to go to school, get good grades, go to a good university, get a job like father's, marry a woman sometimes in his late twenties, and then have children and complete the cycle of life. Then his son would do the same and his son after him over and over again. He had decided, later on in life, that he had a different plan for his life….and mother and father hadn't liked that…and the rest of that day was something that he would have wanted to forget…there was so much in his life that he wanted to forget…

He had to make a strategic retreat….but Fukuda…well he always came for him in the end.

"It has…so what are you planning now? What's your plan here, Suzuki, besides sitting here in your room for weeks….or even months." Said Fukuda. Suzuki…well the plan had been to stay in his room until he became less ashamed of himself….and it would not take months. He didn't think that it would take months and….and it had only taken weeks last time…but that was just because Fukuda had come and dragged him away from his strategic retreat.

"….not months." Said Suzuki. The longest that he had ever taken off from the world had been the whole two weeks of summer break and then the first week of school. That was because…well he hadn't cheated on anymore….but he had been left right on the last day of school and he had decided that the only thing he could do was live in his room forever because the world wasn't worth facing let alone ruling if she hadn't been at his side…and he couldn't even remember her name but….she had said that she loved him…

He wished that someone had left him….instead of him having had left someone else.

"Not if I stop you. Come on…you've got to come out of this." said Fukuda. Suzuki knew fully well that he had to come out of this. He knew that he had to come out of this and he knew that he had a world to run but…but how could the world be run by someone like him? Some womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own joy. The world….well it would have been better off under Shigeko…and her brother when he got old enough…and maybe he should just give the children their birthright and then stay in this room and wait to die…not that he would say that or anything. Fukuda would just have accused him of being dramatic if he knew what Suzuki was thinking.

"You don't understand." Said Suzuki. Fukuda had never once understood. He didn't know what it was like to be betrayed…and to betray yourself. Suzuki had lost control. He lost control and…well he didn't lose control of his powers but he lost control of himself…and Fukuda wouldn't understand it. He had never been married, he had never been one to stick to one woman for very long, and also he had never betrayed a partner like this. He had never promised a woman that he would be hers for the rest of their lives and then…and then slept with another one. The thought of that would never have crossed his mind, even.

Fukuda was not that sort of person.

There was a loyalty to him that Suzuki had always…he had always loved that about Fukuda. The fact that he had never once abandoned any of this even when things hadn't been good. When they had been trying to get Claw off the ground. All those times when Suzuki, in moments of weakness, had succumbed to his doubts. Doubts that he could live this life…that he could rule the world…thoughts of doubt and fear and pain and….and he just….

He was grateful that Fukuda had always been there…and that he was here now.

"Yes I do. We've been through this before. Let me guess, you didn't listen to me and you slept with that Sakata woman-" said Fukuda

"I did not sleep with her." said Suzuki. He hadn't had sex with her. Sleeping with someone was another word for having sex with them and Suzuki…he had made sure that they hadn't had actual sex…and that had been the line…and it hadn't been much of a line now that he thought about it….but it had been a line.

"Uh-huh, I'm sure that you didn't. I'm sure that the two of you just sat on opposite sides of the room and talked about the weather." Said Fukuda. He had a tone there, and he shook his head. Fukuda…was going to tell him that he had ruined it…that now they could never go back to Osaka…and that he should have followed Fukuda's advice…and that he had messed up….and he just….he knew that it was coming. The 'I told you so' and he didn't want to have to hear that…but he also didn't want to have to sit in this room alone and hear his thoughts, either.

"….no...we talked about her garden…and some other things…but the weather did not come up and….and I did not sleep with her and I made sure that I didn't…but I did do something that I should not have and I know that you aren't going to go anywhere until you tell me that you told me so and….just get on with it." said Suzuki. If he had been anyone else Fukuda would have been suffering by now….but he wasn't anyone else. He was Fukuda and Suzuki…well he couldn't have made him suffer even if he had tried.

"Ok, I told you so. Now that we've got that out of the way here's the part where I remind you that you're Suzuki Touichirou and that you shouldn't just lock yourself in your room because some woman dumped you." Said Fukuda. He was right to assume that this was just a repeat of the past. A repeat of what he had done when he had been left before…when he had been younger. When he had been ready to give someone else everything and she had wanted nothing to do with him…and he had thought that he had been beyond this when he'd gotten married…and he hadn't even been left. He had been the one that had done the leaving. He had been the one to betray his wife and he had been the one to leave Shiori…and he did…he wanted…to at least talk to her again….

He was terrible….and Fukuda didn't know the half of it.

"She didn't dump me…I'm the one who left her…and I betrayed Masami…and I do not want to talk about this. I want to talk about something else….so talk to me about something else…but not about what I did and not about my Daughter. Just…talk about something else." Said Suzuki

"Wait, so who initiated-" said Fukuda. Suzuki shook his head and forced his barrier not to go up. He did not want to talk about this. He did not want to go into what he had done wrong…all that he had done wrong. He had been the one to…well not to initiate but…but he had gone along with it and…and he should have been better than that. Fukuda…well he had warned him and…and he cared what he thought. Maybe because they had been together for as long as they had been but…Suzuki so rarely truly cared what people thought….but he cared what Fukuda thought…and he really needed to get himself sorted.

Because he could do whatever he wanted.

He was Suzuki Touichirou. He was going to rule the world. He could do whatever he wanted and if he wanted to commit adultery then…well he didn't want to…that was the thing. He didn't want to be that sort of person. Maybe it would have been different if he had been comfortable being that person but…he wasn't. He wasn't being the person that he wanted to be. He had to be the person that he wanted to be, someone more like….like Fukuda. Maybe that was what had brought them together for all of these years. Maybe he had kept Fukuda around not just because he had value as a healer but also because…well he was someone who Suzuki wasn't. He was good with people and…and he was also fiercely loyal…and he never would have done this to his wife….not that he'd ever been married but if he had he never would have cheated on his wife…even if she had left. Marriage was marriage and Fukuda….

Well he understood the value of marriage.

"I just said that I didn't want to talk about this." said Suzuki. The house shook…but Fukuda wasn't fazed. Of course he wasn't. They had known each other for years. Fukuda was used to this. They were used to each other….somehow they had gotten used to each other.

"I'm just curious. You don't usually initiate these things." Said Fukuda. Suzuki…well he hadn't…well he hadn't stopped her but…he did not want to get into the details of what happened. They weren't adolescents anymore. They used to go over, in detail, and occasionally recorded on tape the details of what they had d0ne and hadn't one and wanted to do…back when they were young. Young and everything was new and it was all the most important thing in the world…and now there were more important things in the world.

"What, you want details? I did something terrible, I am unfit to run my own life let alone the lives of everyone in Claw, and now my Daughter is in charge. I…betrayed my wife…and you wouldn't understand. You wouldn't understand that….you've never been married. You have no idea what it is to…to betray someone like that." Said Suzuki. Fukuda's aura pulled in closely….and of course it did. Fukuda may not have been married but he knew that married people did not do this to the people they were married to. Suzuki….had done something so terrible that even Fukuda….he wanted to be alone. He was done being with someone else and now he wanted to be alone.

He opened the door with his powers.

"You may leave now." Said Suzuki as he pointed to the opened door. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to be with people and he wanted to be alone…and he just…he was going to be alone now. He had to be.

"Come on, I'm sorry. Ok? I'm just…worried about you. Not about Claw or about how Shigeko's running it. You. You know that I care about you and I can't stand to see you like this…especially over some woman." Said Fukuda

"Masami is not just some woman." Said Suzuki. He had more words for Fukuda. He had a lot to say to that. Masami…just some woman? She was his wife. She had been, for years, his reason and his life. She had been his everything and then she had gone but…but even though she was gone from him she was just…not some woman.

She was Masami…and she would always be Masami.

"No, I meant Sakata." Said Fukuda. Suzuki…right. Well she was just some woman. She was some woman who made him feel…a lot of things that he hadn't felt in a very long time. He hadn't felt….but he had to stop feeling….and not just because he was only supposed to feel this way about Masami. He just wasn't supposed to feel anything whatsoever. Bad things happened when he felt things. Like now. He had been so overwhelmed by feelings that he shouldn't have had that he had hidden in this room and….and he was not hiding. He had made a strategic retreat and…and he needed to stop retreating already.

"Oh." Said Suzuki. That was all he could say. He didn't want to get any more into this than he already was.

"I can't stand to see you like this over her. I can't stand to see you like this in general. Come on, I thought that you were going to take over the world. How are you going to take over the world from your room?" asked Fukuda

"I…don't know. I just need some time." Said Suzuki. He could admit that to Fukuda…right? He had said as much to him before so…yes. This was alright.

"I know you and I know that when you say some time you're going to end up in here for weeks…and I know how you like logic. So you made a mistake with a woman? Big deal. You never take that ring off and I know that she knows what that ring means. She shouldn't have gone after a married man. If she hadn't gone after you then you never would have done anything with her." said Fukuda

"I…she did know that I am married." Said Suzuki. Well she knew that he was separated. She knew that he was separated…and she had asked him again if he was when they…well separated was still married and…and he hadn't done anything wrong…well he had…but also he hadn't and…and…and it was like Fukuda had just said. She should not have been pursuing a married man. So it was not his fault, then, in that case.

"Yeah, so it's her fault for not backing off. You didn't do anything wrong and you can stop beating yourself up and you can come back to work." Said Fukuda. Suzuki…hadn't looked at it like that. He had wanted to…but she had wanted to…and she had known that he couldn't…and he had known that he couldn't…but she had wanted to…but he had wanted to…and the whole thing. It was just…

This was still a lot.

Even though Fukuda was making sense…there were so much to this…and he wanted to be alone. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts…and he wanted to exorcise his thoughts…and he wanted to go back to work…and he wanted to trust Shigeko…and he just…was a mess. He was a mess of contradictions. He was a terrible mess of contradictions and he just…needed…to get himself sorted out before he could get anything else sorted out…

But at least, now, he knew that he needed to get himself sorted out.

"I will….but not now. I have to get myself….sorted out. Leave me." Said Suzuki. This time he lifted Fukuda up and sent him out the door. This time he meant it. Not that he didn't always mean what he said but this time…well this time he really meant it. He had to get out of this room, he had to get back to work, and he had to forget about what he had done…even though he had betrayed his wife and Daughter…well that didn't mean that he didn't still have an organization to run and a world to take over and he would get right to that…

Later. Once he had the energy to get himself sorted out.


	420. Videogames Make For Good Distractions

Sho didn't dislike Fukuda….he just didn't want to hang out with him.

He had forgiven him for the whole 'telling his secrets thing' a while ago, so he wasn't still mad at him, so he wasn't avoiding Fukuda because he was made at him. He wasn't avoiding Fukuda at all. He just….didn't want to sit in his office watching hamsters and playing single player games. Not when there was a tech room full of people he could play with. Not when there were people who actually knew what they were doing. Fukuda…well he tried and trying…well trying was something. He should have been nicer, Fukuda was nice to even play with him, but…Fukuda kind of sucked at pretty much every single game.

It wasn't mean to speak the truth…right?

Sometimes the truth hurt. Sometimes the truth was something that you didn't want to hear but you had to hear it. Like how Shimazaki would never love him back, dad would never like him, and there wouldn't be any dogs at the Halloween party even though Shimazaki loved dogs because dad hated animals. That was a painful truth. Another painful truth was that Fukuda sucked at games and he should have stuck to the super old stuff that dad liked but would never admit to liking because he hated fun and if he ever saw anything fun he would kill it on sight. The most painful truth, though, was that Sho…well he would rather have played with the guys in the tech room than with Fukuda because he sucked at just about everything…and the tech room guys at least knew all the buttons….and that was sort of mean but…

Well the truth could hurt sometimes.

"Hey, that hurt." Said Hatori as Sho kicked him in the spine so hard that it shattered. In game, of course, not in life. In life that would have been a dick move. In game, however, that was just what you were supposed to do so it was ok. Good thing big sis wasn't there, though, she would have told him that he was being too violent….even though this was Mortal Kombat!

"You should have been faster, then. You're old and slow, Hatori, old and slow." said Sho as he leaned back in his chair and basked in his victory. Beating Hatori was way more fun than beating Fukuda. Fukuda…well he didn't even try sometimes. Hatori at least tried….and he better not have been letting Sho win. He could win on his own….though judging by Hatori's face he had lost because he was old and slow and stuff. He was twenty and that was twice Sho's age, so very old.

"Hey, I'm only twenty." Said Hatori. Sho rolled his eyes. If Fukuda had been there he would have told Sho not to do that or his eyes would get stuck. That was just something that he said because he didn't like Sho doing that. Dad would have just told him to his face that it was annoying when he did that. Big sis would just tell him that he was being rude and that she would have liked it if he stopped. Hatori just rolled his eyes right back.

He was nice like that…or at least not bossy.

"That's twice my age." Said Sho. Hatori had been through more school than he had, he knew doubles. Sho was ten and ten was pretty old. He felt old sometimes, anyway. When he saw baby sis, or little kids, he felt almost like an adult. He looked at babies and kids and it was just….weird…thinking that he had been that little once. He wondered if adults ever looked at him and thought that it was weird that they had ever been as little as he was now. Not that he was little. He was tall…well he used to be as tall as big sis…but then she had gotten taller. He wasn't little, though, he was ten. Almost eleven. One day he'd be twenty like Hatori was…and then he'd be really old…not that he could picture it. Being that old. He could barely picture being eleven and his birthday would be coming in only two months.

"Well you're only ten." Said Hatori. He reached over and petted Sho's hair like he was a dog. Sho didn't get why adults did that sometimes. He understood why people wanted to touch his hair, nobody in Japan had hair like his not even his own dad, but adults had always done that to everyone. Sho…didn't get them sometimes. Maybe when he got older he would. Like when he had kids or something…or when big sis had kids. It was easier to think of her having kids than him having kids. He liked babies….and little kids since baby sis was becoming a little kid now…and he figured that he would be a good uncle since it seemed like being a uncle was like being a big brother…from what he saw on TV anyway. Being a dad seemed harder….and you had to be mean. He would rather have been an uncle or a big brother than a dad.

"That's pretty old, you know, double ten. That's old." Said Sho

"Yeah, I thought so too when I was your age. When I turned ten I was all 'hell yeah!' but then I realized that ten was just like nine but with a later bedtime." Said Hatori. He got a later bedtime? Lucky. Sho had been going to bed at nine for as long as big sis had been in charge of him.

"When was your bedtime? Mine's nine." Said Sho. It was so weird to think of adults being kids like he was a kid. Hatori was kind of like a kid sometimes…not as much like a kid as Shimazaki…but he was kind of like a kid. He liked videogames and stuff…even if he did like the old ones dad liked…and he could be fun…even though he was friends with dad and dad hated fun….he was ok. Hatori was ok. Sho could sort of see what big sis liked about him. He was nice. He was fun. His skin wasn't as messed up as it was before. He smelled better too. No wonder big sis had liked him. He had said no to her, though, but Sho could forgive him. He was an adult even if he did act like a kid and big sis was a kid even though she acted like an adult. It wouldn't have worked out…and if it had then it wouldn't have been fair because…of stuff that Sho was not going to think about. He was playing Mortal Kombat now and that didn't leave him a lot of space in his head to think of Shimazaki…and what he might have been up to…

Shut up brain!

"Damn, your dad makes you go to bed early. I could at least stay up until ten." Said Hatori. Sho shook his head. Dad, make him go to bed? Dad didn't care. Dad didn't care what he did so long as he didn't bother anyone. Sho could have stayed up for a hundred hours straight drinking cola and coffee and dad wouldn't have cared. Dad didn't care if he starved, either, and he had so a million times so Sho knew that it was true. Dad didn't care if he lived or died...well he did…but only because he only had one son. If big sis had been big brother then Sho wouldn't ever have been born….and that was ok. Sho was a boy and big sis was a girl and one day Sho would rule the world so it all worked out. One day he would be sitting there behind dad's desk…

Big sis was behind dad's desk now.

Big sis was the one being in charge of Claw and stuff now….and she was a girl…but it would be Sho's one day. When that day came dad was going to get it…if he was still alive. He'd kick dad out of Claw and make him live all alone…well big sis would probably invite him to live with her family because she liked him and stuff…but he would be far away from Sho and stuff and that was what mattered. Then all of this would be his and he could fill it with all the animals that he wanted…and also there would be chutes and ladders instead of stairs and elevators…just like the board game….and also there would be jello with every meal…and stuff….and daily videogame tournaments! And sock skating! And a whole lot of other stuff!

But that was in the future, not now, now he was just going to play videogames with Hatori until his thumbs bled.

"Dad doesn't care when I go to bed. Big sis makes me go to bed at nine…I mean I can go to bed on my own and whenever I want, too, but I just go to bed at nine because it makes her happy." Said Sho. He could stay up as late as he wanted, big sis didn't check on him or anything like mom had, but he stayed in bed and didn't make any noise so he didn't worry her. He'd been enough of an asshole before, he didn't need to be any more of an asshole than he had been already.

"How is are they doing, by the way? Your family I mean." Said Hatori. He was facing Sho, now, and he seemed serious…as serious as he could be. Sho didn't get why. Why did he care about dad? Dad was a jerk…and at least he was being a jerk in his own room now instead of being a jerk out in the world where he could bother people with his jerkiness. Hatori was friends with dad…and that made no sense….about as much sense as him breaking big sis's heart.

"I don't know what dad's up to. He just stays in his room all day doing…whatever dad does. Big sis…well why don't you just ask her how she's doing? She's right upstairs." Said Sho. He wished that he could have beaten Hatori up until he agreed to go out with big sis….but that would have been an asshole thing to do…and also big sis would have been pissed at him if she knew that he was beating people up again…not that he was but….well it would have been a bad idea to beat Hatori up. Besides, wasn't he supposed to beat people up who wanted to go out with big sis? Wasn't that how it worked?

That was his understanding of it, anyway.

As far as he knew he was the one who was supposed to keep boys from bothering big sis because, well, guys sucked sometimes. He knew how guys could be sometimes, he wasn't one those guys but he had seen them, the ones who hung out under the jungle gym and tried to look up girl's dresses or the ones who only wanted to kiss girls and touch their boobs and stuff. He knew guys could be like that but…well Hatori wasn't one of those guys.

He didn't even like girls.

But that didn't matter. Like how Fukuda had said, it didn't matter what you wanted, just so long as the girl was happy. You did what you had to do, you made pragmatic choices, and Hatori…well he seemed to be bad at that. So what if big sis was a girl and she was a kid? Hatori should have been focused on making her happy and stuff. That was what a good boyfriend did. Sho knew how to be a good boyfriend, he was the best boyfriend ever, and he didn't even like his girlfriend….well he liked her…but he wasn't in love with her…but he made her happy so that was what mattered. Even if it felt like lying sometimes…well it sort of was but…..well that was the ok kind of lying…the pragmatic kind….the kind that he had to do…

The kind that Hatori didn't seem to know how to do.

"Yeah…I'm not sure if that would be a good idea. I'm giving her some space right now." Said Hatori. He was playing with the loose X button on his controller….and his aura was pulled into the computer in front of them. Sho didn't get what he was so upset about. He was the one who had broken big sis's heart. Maybe he felt guilt. Maybe he felt guilty and now he was going to do the right thing and make big sis happy…and that was the most important thing.

"Because you broke her heart?" asked Sho. Hatori at least looked sad about what he did….or at least like he wanted to run and hide…which was good. Maybe he changed his mind and now he would make big sis happy and stuff….and she deserved to be happy. Maybe if she ended up with Hatori she would be too busy to sit behind dad's desk and…well he didn't care who sat behind that desk…and Sho didn't want to…at least not yet…but he just…wanted her to be happy! Yes. That was it. He just…wanted to make her happy.

"I….um….so, do you want to be Kitana this time? Or are you going to stick to-" said Hatori. He was still playing with the loose button and his eyes were going to the door…and no way was he going to run away! No way was Sho just going to let him run away and stuff! He just….big sis needed someone to make her happy and he wanted to make her happy…and it had nothing at all to do with how whenever dad had to run away big sis sat behind his desk…even though it should have been Sho…not that he cared. He was having fun and…and stuff. He was having fun and having fun was better than sitting behind a desk and bossing people around all day…and stuff.

"I don't play girl characters. Big sis does. I play boy characters…but don't change the subject." Said Sho. He may have come from dad, and he may have been related to big sis, but he could tell when someone was trying to change the subject. Sho didn't get Hatori sometimes. What, was he holding out for someone better? Someone he loved for real? Well loving someone for real wasn't an option for either of them. Boys had to be with girls. That was just how it worked and sometimes you had to make pragmatic choices. Hatori was an esper and dad was always going on and on and on about how there weren't enough espers in the world, and also dad said that there weren't enough Japanese people in the world and Hatori was Japanese so he had double the reason to do what he was supposed to do…and if big sis ended up with someone who she loved and could make her happy then…well that was good too.

"I'm not changing the-" said Hatori. Sho shook his head. What, did Hatori think that he was talking to dad? Sho may have come from him but he was nothing like dad. He knew what it looked like when someone was trying to change the subject.

"And don't think about running away, either. I'm not going to kick your ass in real life but I just want to know why you broke my sister's heart." Said Sho. He at least wanted to know why. Maybe if he knew why then he could work from there. Maybe he didn't like how she could be bossy sometimes. Or maybe he didn't like how she tied up the bathroom all day sometimes putting on makeup and then taking pictures and then putting on more makeup…and maybe he was scared of big sis because sometimes she put makeup on you….and, yeah, it was important to make other people happy but…well there were limits…but that was not one of them! And she didn't even play that game that often! And also it wasn't that bad!

"Sho…she's eleven and I'm twenty. It doesn't work that way, adults being with kids." Said Hatori after a minute. That was it? That was his reasoning? Well it was good reasoning, actually, because…well that was how it worked but…well big sis wasn't going to be a kid forever…and she was barely a kid now. She was the one sitting behind dad's desk now. She was the one who was in charge of the house. She was the one who told Sho when his bedtime was. She was the one who was older…and sometimes it felt like she was a lot older….and stuff….and…and Hatori made sense…but he also didn't!

"Yeah but you could have waited until she grew up, too, and stuff…and don't tell me that you couldn't have been with her because you like boys, either, because that doesn't matter. It only matters if you make the girl happy…and stuff." Said Sho. It sucked, having to make that kind of choice, but it was just what you had to do. Life sucked. Sometimes it felt like life just sucked…like it was a constant, never ending, parade of suckiness….but then there were good parts too. Like how you got through the bad to get to the good. Like with him and Emmy. Sure he had to kiss her and stuff, and she emailed him every day too, but also she sent him interesting stuff and she was nice and kind of cool, too, for a girl…and he was sort of looking forward to seeing her again…if they ever went to London. Big sis was going to bring in a new guy and he had to get used to everyone and stuff….and it wasn't like he was happy about this because he didn't want to have to see his girlfriend…that would have been crazy….and weird…and stuff like that….

"Sho…no. Being happy matters and….well don't you think that she would be happier with someone who felt the same way about her?" asked Hatori. Sho…well he knew that she would have been happier if it was some guy who actually loved her…like…like in her movies. Like some guy who would stand outside of her window with a boom box or skydive into the middle of her wedding to tell her that he loved her or burn his name in gasoline on the front lawn for her. Something romantic that Hatori would have been afraid to do…and to be fair Hatori would have been bad at the boyfriend thing…but still…Hatori had been what big sis wanted and big sis always got what she wanted because she was big sis…and stuff. At least one of them should have gotten what they wanted.

"Big sis liked you." Said Sho simply. If she liked some other guy then Sho…well now he knew that he had to…well not beat him up but threaten him maybe….get him to like big sis and stuff. Somehow. So she wouldn't figure it out that it was his fault the guy liked her…or something. He didn't know. Big sis deserved to be happy and if Hatori was what would make her happy then….well she deserved to be happy.

"Yeah but…don't you think that she could do better? I mean I can't even win a round of Mortal Kombat against a ten year old. She could do so much better." Said Hatori. That was true. She deserved someone really good like Shimaz-someone like Shimazaki. Someone cool and fun. Someone who wasn't scared of anything. Someone who was really good at throwing rocks at people and climbing trees and building forts…or maybe someone more like what she liked. Someone who was quiet and treated her right. Like a librarian or…like…a prince of some rich country…or…um…a kpop guy….or something. The sort of guy she liked…but Hatori was the guy she had liked….but Hatori was right. She could have done better.

"Yeah….I guess so. I mean you're not that bad…I mean your skin is better and your fingers aren't orange and you take baths now-" said Sho. Hatori had gotten a lot better…and he had really nice eyes…but Sho wasn't going to say that. That would have been a weird thing to say for so many reasons. He had pretty eyes and he liked videogames and he always shared his chips…but Sho wouldn't say that. That would have been really weird.

"I always took baths." Said Hatori. He seemed put out…and fine, he had taken baths…but maybe he should have taken baths in water and not in lynx…but Sho wasn't going to say that. That would have been a dick thing to say.

"And also you're friends with my dad…and that's weird….but she'd like that…but also you're not that good at Mortal Kombat….but she hates fighting games…but you did pee in a sink last year and I think that big sis would be happier with a guy who doesn't think that it's ok to pee in a sink." Said Sho. He decided that the sink peeing thing was what made him bad for big sis. Sho had drank before and he had never done anything like that…so there wasn't any excuse. Big sis didn't need to spend her life cleaning pee out of sinks. She deserved someone better than that, he decided, he didn't know who but…well she deserved better than that.

"I…am never going to live that down…now am I?" asked Hatori. Sho shook his head. Of course he wouldn't. He'd be remembered for this until he died.

"Nope. It's too funny. I mean you peed in a sink? What's not funny about that?" asked Sho. When Hatori died this would be what he would end up being remembered for. Last year at the Christmas party he had drank too much and acted all crazy and he'd peed in a sink. There. That was what would be on his tombstone. If he didn't want to be remembered for that then he shouldn't have done it in the first place.

"Let's not talk about this anymore. Do you want to be-" said Hatori as he made Sho's cursor jump around on all the guys. Sho knew who he wanted to be…well he had but now he had to think about it…and Hatori was trying to distract him again! Well he wouldn't be distracted. He…well he wanted to be distracted but…well not from this. He was ten, almost eleven, and he couldn't just be distracted with games and stuff like he was a little kid.

"Don't do that again, though, because I thought that it was funny but big sis thought that it was gross…and that would ruin the party and stuff…and big sis is working hard on this party so you'd better not get drunk and do any drunk stuff." Said Sho. There was no way that this party was going to be ruined…and because big sis had thrown it. Not because it was for Shimazaki and he was super excited and…and Sho loved him….liked him…but he was working very hard at falling out of love…and it was working! He hardly ever thought about Shimazaki….or wanted to hang out with him….or wanted to kiss him…or wanted to feel his aura and….and…and Sho was not….well he was….

He was falling out of love with Shimazaki and it was working!

"I promise. Cross my heart, I will not have a drop to drink at this party, alright? Now can we please get back to our game?" asked Hatori. Sho nodded. Well as long as he crossed his heart…and some games would have been good to take his mind off of…stuff. Shimazaki couldn't play games so it was easy not to think about him when he played games and….and it wasn't like he was trying not to think about him…because he wasn't in Sho's head or anything like that! He really wasn't!

"Alright…and I want to be Jason this time and I don't want to unlock him so do that thing with your powers to unlock cool guys…and stuff." Said Sho. Hatori was good at that….and other stuff…and he could see why big sis liked him…not that he liked him…or anyone. He wasn't in love with Shimazaki anymore…well he was falling out of love with him…and he wasn't falling out of love with Shimazaki to fall in love with Hatori or anything like that. No way! He was just hanging out with Hatori because he was fun, more fun than Fukuda anyway….

He didn't dislike Fukuda…he just needed to hang out with someone else….someone who could help take his mind off of things. Hatori was good for that.


	421. Spotty Mornings

First impressions were very important.

People decided in the first five seconds of meeting you if they liked you or not, Mob had read, and that didn't really seem fair. You couldn't get to know a person in only five seconds. It had taken her a long time to like Shimazaki and if she had gone by the five second rule then she never would have made one of her very best friends. Well of her friends were her very best friends, well except for Minegishi who was her VERY best friend….and Sho who was her friend and her brother….but still, you had to get to know a person over a long period of time before you decided if you liked them.

But first impressions were still important.

That was why Mob had been in the bathroom for so long. She had to make a good first impression and that meant looking nice and clean and stuff. People didn't like you if you were sloppy looking, dad had said, and that was why he always wore the same suit day in and day out. Well he had different suits but they all looked the same. Mob mostly dressed the same too. She had the same sort of clothes for work. Same dark blue dress and white tights and blue sweater and ribbon…and she knew that she wasn't supposed to wear blue because it made her look sick, Minori had said, but Mob liked blue and if she liked blue she would wear it, Minegishi said that she should just wear whatever she wanted. Mob thought that she looked nice.

Mostly.

"Go away…go away already." Said Mob as she put more concealer on the red thing on her forehead. It had been hiding under her bangs, that was why she hadn't noticed it, but now it was so big and so red that she could see it through her hair…and that was not how you made a good first impression. Good skincare was important, Minegishi and Minori both agreed on that, and this…was not good skincare. Mob had been so busy working that she hadn't been having skincare days with Minegishi…and now she had this big red thing on her forehead and it just…wouldn't go away!

"Go away already….please?" asked Mob. She knew that it couldn't hear her, that she sounded like a crazy person, but she didn't know what else to do. The concealer wasn't concealing. No matter how much she put on the bump was still there and the red show through….and that was only the worst one. She had some more along her hairline but she could mostly cover those up with her bangs and makeup. This one, however, was stubborn. More stubborn than Sho when it came time to take a bath.

She would gladly have gone through the trials of bath time every morning and night and weekend and week day if it meant that she never had to deal with this ever again.

But that was not how this worked. She did not get to just make deals with whoever was listening, God or the Gods or whoever ran the universe, because if she had then her life would have been a lot easier. She would have given up Frozen to make Sho and dad get along and she would have given up the sweater Shibata made her so that mom could come back, she was worth a sweater Mob decided, and she would have given up milk so that dad could just be nice to people and normal and stuff….and dad was worth milk, she decided. She would have given up strawberry milk too, which was the best of all milks, so that Sho could be happy for every single moment of his life...

But she didn't get to make those kinds of deals with God or the Gods…or whoever people were supposed to pray too.

She could only make deals with herself. She could only tell herself what to do and she would only do things by herself to make her life better. That was why she didn't complain when dad put her in charge and why she wasn't complaining now that dad had decided that he was done being in his room and that he was ready to be in charge again. That was also why she didn't complain that dad was ruining the party, no more dogs or swimming pools of pudding or slides from the top floor of the building to the bottom…and she couldn't even get enough pudding in time for a pudding pool at the end of the slide anyway…but still…

Dad was back. That was what mattered.

Dad was back and, yes, he was going to make the party significantly less fun…and also Mob was going to have to go back to spending all of her days at home and stuff, and also Sho was probably going to be in a worse mood than ever but…at least dad was back. Dad was back and he was going to get back to normal…and then things were going to be normal around here again and…and normal was good. Right? Normal was good and she should have been happy that things were getting back to normal…and now she wouldn't have to worry about running Claw in addition to running the house…and dad was going to be happy again and….and stuff….

So that was a good thing.

She was going to be making a new friend, too, hopefully…so that was a good thing. Yes. Good things were happening. She was making a new friend and it was almost Shimazaki's birthday and also it was going to be Sho's birthday in a couple of months and also maybe if they stayed in Japan long enough they could have a Christmas party too but just them not everyone else in Claw…and also if they didn't stay in Japan they could go to England Sho could see his girlfriend….Mob wasn't sure what their relationship was like if Sho also liked Shimazaki but she knew that Sho would at least be happy to see her so…good things were happening. Even if she had this red thing on her forehead.

And even if her phone was ringing.

Calls weren't usually good. Calls meant that Sho had hurt himself, or Shimazaki was drunk or something, or Minegishi was drunk…but they hardly ever got drunk enough to call her, or maybe Sho was prank calling people again….or it might have just been another commercial. Hopefully nothing big like the HQ was on fire…or blown up…or someone had soaped up the stairs again….

Oh. It was just Minori.

Mob answered it. She knew that if she let it go to voicemail then Minori would have been upset with her…and she knew that nothing good would come of Minori being upset with her. She was Minori's best friend, she had said before, and she had an obligation to her even though for Mob Minegishi was her best friend. That was why they had best friend bracelets. Those were important, like wedding rings, and you didn't just get them for no reason…not that she would tell Minori that. No, Minori needed all the friends that she could get. Especially because everyone she knew was a b-word to her. Mob didn't want to be a b-word to her or to anyone….even if Minori could be kind of…a lot…sometimes….and she gave bad advice…but they were friends and this was what friends did.

They answered the phone when their friends called.

"Shige!" said Minori. Mob didn't know if that was a good 'Shige' or a bad 'Shige'. She'd know in a minute, though, so she didn't have to ask. She put her phone done on the bathroom counter and put it on speaker. She needed both hands for this. The concealer wasn't working….so maybe more foundation? Minori would know. She knew about makeup. She didn't know about boys, Mob was never taking her boy advice ever again, but she did know about makeup.

"Hi Minori….good morning….or night. I forget what time it is where you are." Said Mob. It was morning for her but Minori was all the way on the other side of the ocean. Maybe it was still night there because the sun always rose over Japan first. Dad had said so and he knew a lot of things about a lot of things.

"Yeah, hey, good morning or whatever….anyway when in the hell were you going to tell me that you were going to throw a Halloween party?!" said Minori

"It's also a party for my friend. It's his birthday. He's turning thirty one." said Mob

"Which friend?" asked Minori

"Shimazaki." Said Mob

"Yakuza guy?! The hot yakuza guy?! You're throwing him a party and you didn't even think to invite me?" asked Minori. Mob had to turn the volume down. She didn't know why Minori thought that Shimazaki was so attractive. Ok, so he was tall and his hair was nice and he smelled good and stuff….but he was no Hatori…not that Mob was still in love with Hatori. No, she couldn't even be in the same room with him for long periods of time….and it was her own fault for listening to Minori…not that she blamed Minori or anything like that. No, she would never have been mean to a friend like that.

"Um….well your dad should have been on the invite list already and-" said Mob. She didn't think that she had done anything wrong by not inviting Minori specifically to this…but she must have been wrong. She could be sort of clueless about this sort of stuff sometimes.

"You should have specifically invited me. Then I could have asked my dad myself and he could have said yes…maybe. If I worked him hard enough. He's still pissed at me just because I have a friend with benefits…well dad thinks that he's my boyfriend and I'm going to let him think whatever he wants…anyway you should have told me. If you had told me directly then I could have used this as an excuse to come back to Japan! Also we could have done matching costumes!" said Minori. Mob…well she wanted to be Elsa….but they didn't make Elsa costumes in her size…and also Minori hated Frozen…or at least said that it was for first graders….but matching costumes could have been fun. They could have been other princesses….or something else because Mob was eleven and a half and Minori was almost twelve so…well matching costumes still could have been fun.

"Matching costumes does sound nice but…I guess I just didn't think and I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I was such a b-word. Please forgive me." Said Mob. She didn't think that she had been a b-word, the invitation had still gotten to Minori, but she knew that sometimes she didn't know if she was being a b-word or not. Minori knew more about these things than she did…and also she could be kind of sensitive…but that was ok. When you were friends with someone you accepted everything about them, the good and the bad.

"Fine, I forgive you. Anyway you've got to tell me these things next time. Like, if you have a Christmas party again then you had better invite me specifically…and bring your brother, too." Said Minori. Mob…well she couldn't imagine why someone wouldn't have wanted to be Sho's friend since he was the best little brother in the world but also…well Minori had kissed him…and Mob knew that Sho could kiss whoever he wanted and that she wasn't the boss of that part of his life…but he had a girlfriend and also…well girls liking her little brother was kind of…not something that she ever wanted to talk about.

"Sho would come anyway because we're related but…he has a girlfriend….and you're seeing someone too….if you were planning on kissing him or anything like that I mean." Said Mob

"Oh my God! Shige! I'm not going to….I mean if he wanted to…and I mean his girlfriend is still all the way in London, right?" asked Minori. Mob…did not much like where this conversation was going. Sho had a girlfriend and he was not a cheater…also she wasn't sure if he even liked girls…well he must have since he had a girlfriend but he also wanted to be Shimazaki's boyfriend so….the whole thing was complicated and also none of mob's business so she didn't ask. She didn't ask and also…well also she didn't want Minori to be with Sho and stuff like that…and also maybe they needed to talk about something else before this whole thing got weird.

"She's still in London and…um….hey, do you know what to do about spots? Because I have one, well a bunch of them, but one really bad one and it keeps on showing through the concealer." Said Mob

"Shige, of fucking course I know what to do. If it's showing through the concealer then you should just pop it." Said Minori

"Pop it?" asked Mob with a frown. She felt it with her finger….which may have been a bad idea because some of the concealer came out. She could have popped it like a balloon…but that would have hurt a lot it seemed like.

"Yeah, with your fingers or a safety pin or something. If you pop it then it'll heal." Said Minori. Mob…well she could have gone to Fukuda to have it healed…but then she would have had to talk to him and stuff. She knew that it would get better on it's own, or Minegishi could even help her, but they had work stuff to do today….though Minegishi could have probably fixed it without popping it…but they had work stuff to worry about and besides, Mob needed this gone soon….even if getting it done soon would probably hurt.

"But…doesn't that hurt?" asked Mob. She didn't want to have to pop this and hurt herself…but she did want it gone. First impressions were very important. First impressions and…well she wanted to make a new friend and…and she just….she didn't like having this thing on her head and she wouldn't have liked this thing on her head even if she hadn't had to make a good first impression on someone new.

"Oh course it hurts. It hurts but you have to do what you have to do. I mean maybe you should leave it, though. I mean you're still trying to get with glasses boy, right?" asked Minori

"Um…the thing about that is-" said Mob

"Because, really, and not to be mean or anything but he has got the worst skin that I have ever seen in my life. Seriously? I have no idea why you even want anything to do with him. You could get with way hotter guys like-" said Minori. Mob didn't want to talk about this. She didn't want to talk about how she had messed up….and she didn't want talk about how maybe Minori didn't always give the best advice when it came to stud about boys….and also she just…well she wanted to talk about other things…or maybe nothing at all. Maybe she wouldn't even have the time. She had to hurry up. There were other people who needed the bathroom and she had been in there all day…and maybe she should just hang up before Minori started to talk about more stuff that Mob didn't really want to talk about.

She had never been so glad to feel dad's aura in her entire life.

"Shigeko? How much longer are you going to be in there? Other people need the bathroom." Said dad as he knocked on the door.

"Sorry Minori, I have to go now…but thanks for the advice." Said Mob before she hung up. She opened the door with her powers and pulled her bangs back down. That was….better. She could still sort of see it but she might have just been making something out of nothing because she knew that it was there. kind of like her Tangled T-shirt with the grease stain that she always noticed but nobody else did. Or her Anna T-shirt with the strawberry milk stain. Yeah, she was making something out of nothing.

"Shigeko, what's that on your head?" asked dad as she stepped past him to let him into the bathroom. Mob reached up and covered her forehead quickly. She hadn't been making a big enough deal about this. She had this spot on her head and she was going to have it there for the rest of her life…unless she popped it…but it hurt to touch and…and she didn't want to hurt herself…and maybe Fukuda could fix it but then that would involve talking to him and being near him…and she didn't really want to do that.

"Nothing. Just a…thing that I have to…pop. Don't look at it." Said Mob. She looked down at the bathroom floor. It was white. Even dad noticed it. Dad had noticed and he had said something…and everyone else would have noticed…even the new guy. He was going to notice and…and maybe she shouldn't have gone….but that would have been mean. He was finally ok with seeing her, well having her in his house, and she comes in looking like…this…but he had taken the time to let her into his house and he was super scared of people…and stuff.

"Alright, I won't look…but don't pop it. If you pop those then you'll scar…and also picking at your skin is a bad habit." Said dad. She looked up…and he wasn't looking at her like he said. He was nice like that sometimes. Not nice enough not to say anything about the giant thing on her forehead, though, but that was normal for dad. He could be nice like now….well dad nice.

"I know that it is. Minegishi always says not to pick at my skin but my friend Minori said that if I wanted to get rid of this thing then I needed to pop it." Said Mob

"Listen to Minegishi. Never pop those. You're just going to end up hurting yourself and making it worse in the long run. Believe me, I know." Said dad. Mob…didn't know how he could know. He never got spots on his skin. He hardly even had any freckles on his face….but he said that he knew what he was talking about. He must have been her age, once, even though it was hard to think about that. Dad being a kid. He had to have been her age and…and Mob knew from the book that Minegishi got her that this was a normal part of growing up, her skin was going to get all oily and stuff, and that it happened to everyone…even dad it seemed.

It was so weird to think about dad being her age.

But he must have been. He had been her age once and…and it was so weird to think of him standing in front of a mirror picking at some spot on his head. He must have care when he got these…and he knew how to fix them…and she wished that he had told her what to do before she had gotten one this bad. Minegishi knew complicated stuff about oatmeal and honey and avocado and witch hazel….and Mob….well that was very complicated to remember. When Minegishi mixed this stuff up they weighted and measured things…and Mob didn't have that kind of time right now. She needed this thing fixed….and dad….

Well he must have known what to do.

"But…then what do I do?" asked Mob. She looked up at dad. He was looking down at her now. He brushed her hair away from her forehead and stared at her. He poked the spot with his fingers…and it hurt…but not that bad. He poked at it again and stared. What, did he think that it was going to do something?

"Put some toothpaste on it. My mother taught me that. Here." Said dad. He called the toothpaste, his toothpaste, over with his powers. He uncapped it and put a big gob of it right on her forehead….and that was worse than the spot. At least the spot…well that was supposed to be there…since even Minegishi got these sometimes…but the toothpaste was just…ick. She was going to stick to whatever Minegishi made for this. This was…well dad had thought that this was a good idea.

Well grandma had thought that this was a good idea.

That was….it was weird thinking about grandma…how she'd had one. How dad had been her age and he'd had a mom…and now he didn't. He'd had a mom and then she had left, died, and now he was just…himself. Like an orphan. She hadn't really thought about that, before, dad being an orphan….but he was. He was and now he was her dad and one day he would be gone and she would be an orphan and…and she didn't want to think about that. She wanted to think about….other things.

Like the toothpaste on her head.

"How long do I have to keep this on for?" asked Mob. This was…well she smelled good. She looked dumb but she smelled good. She tried not to laugh at the idea of dad being her age and looking like this….and she succeeded. She would never laugh at her dad but especially not now, not after he had been really upset about….something. Upset enough to stay in his room for a really long time. She wondered what it was that had upset him so badly…but she didn't ask. She knew that dad would have just told her that she didn't have to know.

Still, though, she wondered what could have been bad enough to make him hide in his room like that.

The new guy, well maybe it was too early to call him the new guy, had that same problem. He had spent years in his room because he was afraid of people and stuff. Fifteen years. That was longer than she had been alive for. She wondered why people did that, hide in their rooms, and she wanted to ask…but that wasn't the thing to just ask someone. Not when she first met them, no, she had to make a good first impression and she couldn't do that by asking a million personal questions at once like that.

And also she couldn't make a good first impression with a glob of toothpaste on her forehead.

"Several hours." Said dad. Mob frowned. That was…well she didn't have a specific time that she had to be there…but she wanted to be there bright and early. When his mom said that she could be reasonably assured that he would be awake. He didn't really pay attention to night and day, his mom had said, but he usually went to bed between nine in the morning and noon and Mob didn't want to get there too late and wake him up and stuff. She didn't want to get there too late but she also didn't want to get there on time but also with this big glob of toothpaste on her head.

"Can I wipe this off now? I have to go soon." Said Mob. It was a long way to Baked Goods City. Not long enough to take a plane but long enough that it would be a long car ride. It would have been faster by train but dad didn't want her to take a train. Not on her own but at all. He worried about her, he said, but Mob had no idea what there even was to worry about. It was just a train. Sho took them all the time with Fukuda.

"Where?" asked dad. Mob wondered if he had forgotten. She had told him, before, that she had to go and meet someone new and bring them to Claw, maybe. He might have forgotten like he had lost track of the time, or something, when he had been in his room.

"To meet the new person I was telling you about. Remember?" asked Mob

"Yes, I remember. Very well. I suppose that you're just going to have to live with it…well if you popped it then Fukuda could heal it but it's a very painful process." Said dad

"And Fukuda doesn't like me." Said Mob simply because that was the truth.

"Everyone likes you…or at least they had better." Said dad. Mob….she didn't want him to try and force anyone to like her. People either liked her or they didn't and she knew that friendship wasn't a thing that you could force. You could try and force someone to be your friend but that wasn't real friendship and Mob only wanted real friendship.

"He doesn't and that's ok. Not everyone is going to like me and stuff." Said Mob. She wished, well part of her wished, that Fukuda could have been like he had been before. Back when he had liked her and he had been nice and stuff…but that was in the past. Like Elsa said, the past was in the past, and Mob knew that she had been talking about bad stuff…but good stuff could be in the past too. Good stuff like having someone who cared about you and was nice to you and played with you and read to you. Well Mob…she wasn't a little kid anymore. That was in the past too. Fukuda had liked her when she was a little kid and now she wasn't and…and all of that was in the past and she was ok with that. She really was.

"You are a very likeable person. Don't say those things about yourself." Said dad. He was serious there, well he was always serious, but there were times that he could be especially serious. His eyes got all blue, well they were always blue, but his pupils got really small and stuff. He and Sho had the same serious face though they were serious about different things, usually.

"Well you like me but Fukuda doesn't…and that's ok. I'm ok with him not liking me." Said Mob. She had taken a long time to get used to it but…well she had no choice but to get used to it.

"….I'll have to speak to him in that case." Said dad. Mob shook her head. No way. That was the last thing that she wanted. Fukuda could like her or dislike her or whatever else he wanted. She didn't care anymore. He was being nice to Sho and he had stopped looking at her, he didn't even look in her direction anymore when they spoke, so really she didn't ask for anything else. She was fine with whatever their relationship was now. Not everyone in the world was going to like her and that was fine…she didn't even know if she wanted to be friends with him anymore.

"Please don't. I can handle things myself, ok? And I don't even care if he likes me or not. Honestly right now I'm more worried about the new guy liking me." Said Mob

"I can't imagine why he wouldn't." said dad. Mob…well she didn't know why sometimes people didn't like her either but she just knew that some people were like that. Not everyone in the world would like her just like not everyone in the world liked strawberry milk and Frozen and stuff like that. People were different. There were as many types of people in the world as you could imagine and sometimes they wouldn't always get along…and she really hoped, though, that she and the new person got to be friends. She knew how hard it could be to make friends and she wanted to be friends with him and then he could be friends with her friends and then…well they'd have a whole new person to be friends with and stuff.

"Because I have toothpaste on my head."said Mob. Dad used his powers to wipe her head off with one of the bathroom towels. She knew that her makeup was getting messed up right now…but she didn't have time to fix it. She had to get going soon.

"Thanks dad. I have to go now but I'll see you later, alright? You can have Shibata make you breakfast. I don't have time, it's a long way to Baked Goods City. Alright?" said Mob

"That's fine….but take an umbrella with you. It looks like rain today." Said dad. He pointed out the bathroom window and to the grey sky like she hadn't noticed it yet. She knew that it looked like rain but she didn't need to carry an umbrella around with her. She was going to be riding in a car all day and even when she had to come out she would be able to put up a barrier. Dad worried about the strangest things sometimes.

"Dad, I'm going to be in the car all day." Said Mob. She really didn't want to have to bring something that she would have to remember….and she knew that she'd just end up forgetting it. Like how she had forgotten her clear plastic Frozen umbrella with the snowflakes…and they didn't make those anymore so it was an especially bad loss. She had a new one, Anna this time, and she didn't want to lose it…but she supposed that she could always take one of the plain white ones….even though those were boring.

"Take one anyway." Said Dad. Mob…was not going to argue with him. If he wanted her to take an umbrella then that was fine. She didn't want to have to carry it around all day and try not to forget it somewhere….she always forgot umbrellas when she took them places….she would do this because dad asked her to and he was just looking out for her and stuff.

"Ok….fine. I will. Here, you can have the bathroom now." Said Mob. She did what dad said and took an umbrella as she left. She didn't need it but, well, he cared about her and at least he was showing it without being all….dad…about it…so that was good. This was going to be a good day, she decided, even if she had this spot on her forehead that wasn't going to go away and even if it looked like rain and she had this umbrella that she didn't even needed….it was still going to be a good day.

Because she was going to make a very good first impression and she was going to end up making a very good new friend…hopefully.


	422. You Can't Forsake the Journey

The world was made up of four walls.

There were windows but they were never opened and the curtains were never drawn. There was no point to it. The room was warm in the winter and cool in the summer thanks to the magic of central air. There was plenty of light when it was needed, too, thanks to the magic of energy efficient lightbulbs. Of course the light was rarely turned on. The world looked smaller when the light was turn on. Small and claustrophobic and messy. Garbage piled high in all corners of the world. Bags and boxes, cans and bottles, as well as mountains of dirty clothes.

The world was rarely cleaned.

Once every other month of so he left the world. He took a trip across the hallway, it might as well have been a canyon, to the bathroom while his world was cleaned. Bags of garbage were hauled out. Baskets upon baskets of clothes were carried out to be washed. Even long lost treasures were unearthed such as the good dinner plate and the drinking glass with the built in straw. Those were the worst sorts of days. Those were the days when the world got even smaller…smaller and brighter. There were no curtains in the bathroom and the frosted glass window did nothing to keep the light out. He could see everything in the bathroom, including himself. No matter how long he tried to resist he couldn't help but look at himself in the mirror. It was easier when he didn't have to spend time in there. He only actually left to use the bathroom when mom was at work, safer for her that way, and he only showered once every few weeks and even then only when mom was gone. He was in and out and never even had to glance at himself in the mirror once.

But not when the room was being cleaned.

"Mom! I can't be in here any longer!" said Serizawa as he covered his eyes and brought his knees up to his chest. He was hiding behind the bathroom shelf with all of moms stuff on it. Her fancy soaps and perfumes and shampoos and conditioners and other things that he didn't even know the name of. He hated it in here. He wanted to go back home, home to his room, home to a world where he didn't have to look at himself. There weren't any mirrors in his world. He didn't have to look up and accidentally make eye contact with a complete stranger.

With himself.

"Katsuya, honey, try and hold out. I haven't even gotten your little table cleaned off yet." Said mom. He could hear her through the door. She sounded different through this door. Maybe because it wasn't as thick. This door was new, well relatively new. It had it's scratches and nicks but it was better than the old door. A year or so, maybe longer time was kind of slippery these days, he'd accidentally sent the door flying off of it's hinges and this was the only one that mom could get on short notice. He'd waited until she was asleep to put it up for her, though, because he liked building things…and it was his fault that the bathroom had been ruined in the first place.

It was always his fault.

"Mom….I don't think that I can…please?" asked Serizawa. He couldn't be here any longer. This day was already too much. Mom had found someone else to 'talk' to him. Someone who said that they were like him. That was what they all said. 'I was once like you' like it meant anything. There wasn't anyone in the whole world who was like him. There wasn't anyone else in the world who could do the things that he could do. Sure there were people who said that they could, people who swore up, down, and sideways that they were just like him, but they weren't. They said that they could see the future and read the stars and read minds but, really, they were all liars. The worst sort of liars. Why would anyone pretend to be able to do what he could do?

Why would anyone want this curse?

"Katsuya….alright baby. I'm going to go outside to the garden now so you can go back to your room. I'll be back in the house in fifteen minutes, alright?" said mom. She had to do that. She had to be far away from him when he left his room for her own safety. He had accidentally sent her flying so many times before…back when he'd been little. Back when he'd gone from being able to make his toys float and making the lights flicker to just…picking her up and throwing her across the room….there had been so much blood….she had gotten right up and dusted herself off but…but her arm had extra corners…and after he'd gone to his room she'd gone to the hospital…he knew because she came back with a cast and a lollipop for him….and a sticker because he'd been young enough to collect those…and he still did even though he was….older….and she'd slid it all under his door…

Because that had been the last day that he'd spent out of his room.

"Ok, mom. I'm setting a timer on my phone now." Said Serizawa as he took his phone out of his pocket. Some crumbs were stuck to it…and he needed to change his pants. His shirt, too, and he needed to….well he had needed a shower for some time. He used to be able to get away with not showering for longer but that was before he had become….this person.

The person who was looking at him in the mirror.

The last time he'd looked in the mirror on purpose he'd been tall enough that he needed to stand on a phonebook to make eye contact with himself. Now he was taller. Now he was so taller that, standing at his full height, he could see even above the mirror. He was taller than mom now, maybe, he didn't know. He hadn't stood in the same room as her, with her in the house even, since he'd been little. He was big now, bigger than her most likely, bigger than all the other kids…well they would have gotten bigger at some point too since they'd also grown up…but he was still probably really tall. Maybe dad had been tall….he didn't know. He had never known his dad. Only his mom.

It had always been him and mom…and it always would be.

He listened to her footsteps. He counted them. Ten from his room to the stairs. Eight stairs, sixteen footsteps. Silence as she crossed the living room rug, fifteen seconds of it. Two footsteps as she stopped at the genkan. Six seconds to put on her shoes….it used to be three but she had gotten a new pair. He wondered if his shoes were still down there…his old school shoes…he didn't know. All he knew was that mom had oiled the front door so he really had to strain to listen for it to open. It shut with a soft sound, too, because mom had done something to keep it from slamming…since the slamming had scared him when he'd been little….well not very little but….not recently….right?

He didn't know. He'd disabled the date and time display from his phone long ago.

Not long after he'd gotten it. He'd broken his first phone back when he'd had….back when the accident had happened…and then mom had gotten him this new one and said that he could have it if he came out of his room. He didn't come out. It ended up being a birthday present. He'd had it since he was thirteen so….it had been….long enough for the Evangelion stickers he'd put on it to face away. Long enough for the numbers on the keys to get worn down. Long enough for the screen to get burnt. Long enough….a very long time. It had been a very long time since he'd gotten this phone…and it would be a very long time since he got another one.

What did he need a new phone for, anyway?

He had his computer. He had his games. He had enough things to disable the date and time on already. Who would he even call? Mom? Well if there was an emergency…and there never was an emergency. Nothing ever happened. He went to sleep, he got up, he ate, he played games, he pissed in bottles, he slept, he got up, he played games, he ate again, he pissed in more bottles, and then the same thing over and over and over again. That was his life. Nothing ever happened let alone any emergencies…and this did not count. Crossing the hallway to get back to his bedroom did not count as an emergency…even though the house shook and…well the hallway light exploded again….but that wasn't an emergency. He would just warn mom when she came back in that there was broken glass everywhere. That wasn't an emergency…..

And neither was this.

He had read, well mom had read to him, a poem from a book of them when he had been very small. You can't forsake the journey for the safety of your room. Well he didn't give an f-word about the journey. He would gladly forsake everything for the safety of his room. Not for his own safety, no, but for the safety of everyone else in the world. He had to keep them safe from him. He didn't know what he had done to become….the person he was now….the person who had this curse inside of him….but he knew that it was best for the rest of the world if he just….left it. If he let it turn without him. The world had turned for millions of years without Serizawa Katsuya and it would continue to turn for millions of years after him. Not that he was planning on killing himself.

Not while mom was alive, anyway.

Mom asked him that, sometimes, if he was planning on killing himself. If she should worry. If there was something that she could do. There was nothing that she could do…and he wasn't going to, anyway, because for some reason she still loved him. Even with the burden he was to her. Even with the curse he had inside of himself. Mom loved him and he wouldn't put her through him dying. No, she would go first because she was mom and then if he didn't make himself join her he would just end up starving to death anyway. She was all he had after all. He'd never even met his dad, grandma and grandpa had told mom to leave and never come back when she had gotten pregnant with him, he had told her so many times before that he was sorry for that but for some reason she didn't think that it was his fault, and mom's brothers and sisters didn't talk to her either. It was just him and mom and it would always be him and mom.

Until the day she died. Then it would be him and mom again.

Even though she would have been so much better off without her. He knew how old he was, old enough to be a grown up, and hadn't seen her in years but he knew that her voice had gotten deeper and sort of gravelly and that her brush had grey hair in it. She was getting old. She could have spent what time she had left having fun. She could have made friends and gone on trips, his whole life she had told him about the trips that they'd go on once she made enough money, and she could have been able to get pretty clothes and fancy jewelry like she had always looked at when they went window shopping in the rich people's department store, not the economy one she worked at, and she could have had a talking parrot like she had always talked about….she could have done so much if he had never been born. She could have had grandma and grandpa and the aunts and uncles that he'd never met….she could have had the life that she deserved if he had never been born…

But he had been born…so here he was.

Here he was sitting down at his little table. Mom hadn't cleared it out. She had gotten rid of all of his bottles….and he felt bad. He knew that they were gross but he couldn't leave the room when she was at home. He wished that he could have been better. That he could have helped her. But he couldn't. All he could do was sit at his tiny table and just…wait. Wait for something to happen, which it would. Someone was coming to meet him. Someone named Suzuki, someone important named Suzuki, someone important named Suzuki who claimed to have all the answers. He knew what this Suzuki person would say, something along the lines of 'I know what you're going through' and 'I want to help you' and all the same lines that everyone else used. The counsellors and psychiatrist and psychologists and priests and monks and social workers and volunteers and anyone else who mom could drag into this house. Anyone else who told her that they had the answers, that they could save her poor son, that they could save her from the burden that she had created for herself.

Nobody had any answers.

Because there weren't any. He was a mistake that mom had made. He was cursed. He had ruined her life. He had ruined his own life. He had ruined the lives of the people he'd hurt when…the people he'd hurt on that day. That was what he was. He was a life ruiner, a cursed life ruiner, and he ruined people's lives….so really there was nothing at all that he could do besides sit down at his little table, cross his legs, turn on his TV, and start a game of Bomberman.

And also warn mom about the glass.

"Mom! There's broken glass in the hallway!" shouted Serizawa as he heard her footsteps in the genkan. His voice felt odd, raw, when he shouted…and he so rarely did. Even when he lost at games…well he used to shout, back when he'd been little. Back when he'd been able to lay out completely on his bed. Back when his favorite pair of pajamas had still fit, now they were like doll clothes, back when he'd had to jump to touch the top of the doorframe. He wasn't little anymore. He was big now, not even a big kid but a grown up, and he didn't shout anymore.

What would even have been the point?

"I see it, Katsuya, thank you for warning me. Now you just stay in there and try to be calm. They should be here soon. I'll knock on your door when they're here, alright? And they may want to open it, they may have to, so if they do just try and stay calm. I'll have them stand with their backs pressed to the wall, though, just like last time. Alright?" asked mom. Serizawa nodded, an old habit, before clearing his throat so that he could speak.

"Yes mom. I'll try." Said Serizawa. That was what he had done last time, he'd tried, and he'd managed to last for almost a minute before he sent the councilor flying into the bathroom. The tub had broken his fall….though maybe the wall would have been less painful. Serizawa didn't know. He'd said sorry…so that must have helped…even though it probably didn't. Sorry didn't fix broken bones. Sorry didn't fix cuts. Sorry didn't fix the damage he did to the house. Sorry was just….it was sorry. It was words.

It was words that he would probably have to say to this Suzuki person.

He was either going to have to talk to a man or his daughter. Mom had said that she had found some people who represented an organization for people like him and their leader was a kind, powerful, and generous man, they had said, named Suzuki with an even more generous and powerful and kind daughter. He was hoping that it was the man, not the daughter, because girls made him nervous. They were just…girls. The only girls that he had ever known in life had been the girls in his class and he had always been nervous around them….and now it was even worse since he never saw girls. Not even mom…even though she didn't really count as a girl because she was a mom. Girls always made him nervous and when he was nervous he lost control…and he always felt extra bad for losing control at girls since they were, well, girls. He really hoped that he ended up having to talk to the man instead of the girl.

Well what he really hoped for was to never have to talk to anyone ever again.

He wanted to play Bomberman. He wanted to spend the next…until he got sleepy…playing Bomberman. He understood Bomberman. He held the world record high score in Bomberman...and a few other things too. High scores, speed run records, longest continuous playtimes….he understood games. He understood games and he was good at games and he didn't know why he couldn't just be left alone to play games…well because mom was getting tired of him, probably. She loved him, she had told him so many times she loved him, but he knew that she must have hated him too. Hated the burden that he was. Hated how she had to waste her life taking care of him. Hated how she had to give up all of her dreams for him. Hated how she had given up her entire life, her family and everything, for him. She loved him but…he knew that he love had limits. That was why he went along with this even though he knew that nothing could come of it.

He did it for her.

He would meet with this Suzuki person for her. He would open the door to his world for her. He would let the light in for her. He would put down his controller for her. For her, for her, always for her. He loved her. He loved her and…and he owed her. For all the time she had put into taking care of him. For all the money she spent on him. For all the time she had spent cooking food for him. All of it. She had done it all for him….and he loved her so much and….and he would do it all for her…even though he would rather have sat there until he fell asleep running through mazes and trying not to explode.

That was his whole life, really, trying not to explode.

Games helped. Games had always helped. Back when he'd gotten his first Gameboy. Back when he'd play Tetris for hours and hours when he was out of the house with mom. At the store, the bus stop, the train station….where there were large groups of unfamiliar people that could bump into him…that could look at him…that could do any number of things that would make him nervous. That Gameboy had probably saved hundred of lives back then. His old Famicom, too, and his Super Famicom after that…and his Master System….and all of the other consoles that he had on the shelves beside his TV. That stack of consoles had probably saved the lives of the people of Baked Goods City more times than anyone could ever even count up to. Games helped and…and he knew that as long as there were games in the world, and that his world didn't extend past these four walls, then everyone would be safe.

He knew it but mom, really, did not.

"Katsuya, honey, a car just stopped in front of the house. I think that it's them. I'm going to go downstairs and let them in. Alright? Then I'm going to bring them upstairs and knock on your door. Alright?" asked Mom. She thought that it helped that she told him everything that she was going to do, and maybe it did, but also it didn't. Now all he could think about was how there was going to be some stranger, maybe even a girl, in his house. He held his game controller tightly in his hands. He could feel the curse just under his skin. The lights above him flickered on for a moment. The room was smaller. The room was dirtier. The room was pressing in on him. He focused on what he was doing.

Left.

Two, now four, footsteps in the genkan.

Down.

Something pressing down on….him?

Left.

Silence. Itching on his….not his skin but….himself?

Hit X.

More unfamiliar voices.

Go right.

The feeling is getting stronger.

Hit Y.

The feeling is stronger.

Go left.

Twelve footsteps on the stairs.

Hold down Y.

Voices outside his door.

Go down.

A knock.

"Katsuya? Miss Suzuki is here to talk to you. I'm just going to go out to the garden now and I won't come back until Miss Suzuki leaves, alright?" said mom. Serizawa nodded before remembering that he needed to talk. He felt…like there was someone in the room with him…and he saw…colors. He could see himself now, purple, he could see his curse and….and she had a curse too. She had…pink. Pink and blue. She was…she was like him. She was the first one that he had ever….ever met. Someone else with his curse. Someone who…who might have been able to….to actually understand and…and he just…it was a girl. There was a girl outside of his room and….and it would have been so much easier if she had been a man but….but she might have been able to understand….and nobody had ever been able to understand him before and….

"Ok mom. You can open the door." Said Serizawa. He heard he door open. He closed his eyes. He heard mom's footsteps, he counted them, and he heard the front door. He didn't open his eyes until he heard the door close. He had no idea if mom had made it to the garden or not but…she was out of the house. He was out of the house and now he could open his eyes…and he would have to talk to the girl and….

And that was a girl.

"Hi. I'm Suzuki Shigeko. You can call me Miss Suzuki or Shigeko or Shige or Mob. My friends all call me mob…and you can call me that too since I want us to be friends." Said Miss Suzuki. Miss. Girls were called Miss and people were called by their family names and….and she was a girl named Miss Suzuki….and she was a girl. When he said girl he meant lady…because he was a man now so the people who had been girls when he had been a boy were ladies now because he was a man…and anyway he had been expecting a lady because councilors and the like were adults but….but that was a girl…

Or maybe she was just tiny.

Yes, that was a thing that happened sometimes. There were characters like that, ladies who looked like girls, like Biscuit Krueger from HunterXHunter or Near from Death Note or Taiga Aisaka from Tordora….or a bunch of other characters he couldn't think of right now. She was standing in his doorway, closer than anyone had ever stood before, and he could tell that she was as short as he had been the last time he had ever left the house….and she must have been…his age….right? If she was coming to help him….and also she was wearing makeup….and she…she must not have been…a kid…right?

How could a kid possibly help him? He was being stupid.

"You…you shouldn't get so close…Miss Suzuki. I'm….not normal." Said Serizawa. He had to warn her. If he could see purple then that meant that his curse was getting really bad now. He could feel it, always, just beneath his skin….and he hated it. He wished that, one those rare times when it came out like this, it would just stay out….even though that was a selfish wish. If his curse didn't come back to his body then someone else could get it…and he didn't wish this on anyone else in the whole world.

"Yeah, your room is kind of messy but that's ok. I can be kind of messy too sometimes." Said Miss Suzuki. Was she making fun of him? Or….or what? She just…she was looking at him…and into his room…and he knew that people who weren't cursed couldn't see the purple, well nobody but him could, but if she had the curse too then couldn't she see his? Because he could see hers? He didn't know how this worked. Until a second ago he had thought that he was the only one in the whole world…and obviously he was wrong…

The world had gotten a lot smaller.

"No I mean…I can do things that other people can't do…and you should stay away from me." Said Serizawa. She stayed. Everyone he had warned stayed but…but she didn't have any expression. It was like he had told her about…the weather…or something. He got the feeling that she was curious…but he had no idea where that feeling had come from. He just…felt like she was curious and….and he knew that it was a feeling and….

And this was just…a lot.

"It's ok. I don't mind. I'm not scared of you." Said Miss Suzuki. She said it and….and she meant it. She must have. She was looking at him like…like he was boring. Like he was the most boring thing that she had ever seen. She was just standing there holding this white umbrella and staring at him and…and she had said that she wasn't scared of him…so she must have been either really brave or really stupid.

"You should be. I'm….I'm cursed." Said Serizawa. Did she not realize that her colors meant that she was cursed too? Didn't she know how dangerous he was? He focused on his game. He focused on his game and not the girl who was staring at him….

And who had taken a step into his room.

"You don't have a curse stuck to you. I think that you just died in your game because you weren't paying attention, that's all. What game is that, by the way? It looks old, or it might just be old looking." Said Miss Suzuki. She took another step into his room. He clutched his controller so hard in his hands that the plastic cracked. The lights flickered in his room again. The picture on the screen cut out for a moment. Miss Suzuki….

Didn't even notice.

"You-you should get away from me. It-it's not safe here for you. Ev-even if you aren't cursed too." Said Serizawa. She looked at him…and she still had no expression. He got the feeling that she was studying him and…and he felt her colors wash over him. It felt…his colors stuck to hers. It felt so…good. Safe. Warm. Like….like being under an electric blanket. Their colors…they got stuck together….because they came apart.

She was looking at him still.

"You shouldn't be so scared. You aren't cursed. There's nothing wrong with you." Said Miss Suzuki. She said that and…and she was just…she was lying. She was lying just like all the others had….but it was worse because she was just as cursed as he was. She had colors, too. She had colors and she had just touched her colors to his and…and she was lying and…

And he could see his colors.

"Don't lie to me." Said Serizawa. He heard another crack. He was holding his controller way too tightly. He died again. He wasn't paying attention. He had to pay attention. He had to pay attention or he would die again. He would die again and again and again….and he could…he would…he needed….he needed to stop this but…but the curse was just too….too much and….

"I'm not lying. You aren't cursed. Believe me, I know what curses feel like, and you don't have even the littlest curse stuck to you." Said Miss Suzuki. The littlest….couldn't she see it? If he could see her pink and blue then she should have been able to see all of this purple…she should have been able to see the curse that had been stuck to him for his entire life. She should have been able to see it and…and she should have just….told him the truth! She didn't have to lie to him…and he was so tired of listening to lies from people who said that they could help him! There wasn't anyone in the world who could help him! Not even someone who was cursed like he was!

"You….you shouldn't say that…..you can see the colors…they're the same as yours…the same thing and…and if you're cursed then I'm cursed…and you should get out." Said Serizawa. Even if she was lying to him he didn't want to hurt her. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He just wanted to be alone. He just wanted to be alone in his room so he could play games and wait for mom to die so he could die. Then it could all just….stop….and he would never have to worry about it again. Hurting people. His curse. Wasting mom's life as well as his own. All of it.

"The colors? You mean our auras? That's normal. We're espers, we're supposed to have auras." Said Miss Suzuki. She waved her hand and…and her colors touched his and…and this was not normal! People were not supposed to have colors like this! This was a curse. This was a curse and they were cursed and…and they had to be. If they weren't cursed then….then why…why hadn't he ever met anyone who could do this before today!? And why did this have to be him!? He didn't…he couldn't….he just….purple. There was too much purple.

"Please….don't tell me things like that…or I might….it's not safe here. You should go." Said Serizawa. He needed her to go. He needed her to go before he sent her flying. He needed her to go before it happened again. She was small, smaller than him, as small as a kid. As small as those kids had been when he…on that day. She was small and…and she was like him but…but he could hurt her! Didn't she realize that he could hurt her!?

"What do you mean? It's safe here. Your mom told me that you don't want to hurt people. She told me that you were gentle and sweet and that you would never deliberately hurt anyone. That's why I'm here. She asked me to come and help you with your powers." Said Miss Suzuki. Mom…mom….mom was outside. She was outside and she was safe and…and Miss Suzuki needed to go outside and she needed to be with mom….where she could be safe and….and he needed her to be safe and….and he needed to keep everyone safe from himself….that was what he needed….

"You…you need to leave…." Said Serizawa. He wanted to pick her up and carry her away…and he was big enough and she was small enough that he could have…but he didn't. He stayed in one spot. If he moved then his curse would act up…and if his curse acted up then she would get hurt…and that was the…the worst thing that he could do to another human being…if he even was a human being…..

"It's ok to lose control of your powers sometimes…especially when you've never had a teacher. Power is nothing without control, my dad said, which is sort of like 'conceal don't feel'…but you're a boy and you don't have any sisters so you probably don't know what Frozen is….anyway….um…yeah. My dad's been teaching me my whole life, how to control my powers and, if you want, I can teach you too. Controlling your powers isn't easy but I can try my best to help. There's all kinds of stuff that you can do. I can show you what works for me and maybe it'll work for you, too, or maybe we'll need to try something entirely new. It's ok, though, because I'll be there for you." Said Miss Suzuki. She was…she was lying to him. There was no way to control this curse. There was no way to take this terrible power that he had been born with and just…make it listen. She was…she was just telling him what he wanted to hear. She was just telling him what he had been praying to hear for his entire life….and saying thing like that…she could say whatever she wanted but that didn't mean that it was the truth.

She couldn't have possible been telling the truth…and she needed to go….for her own safety.

"Please…you need to leave...before I….before it happens….again…." Said Serizawa. The curse was getting worse. He could hold it back for a little bit but he couldn't stop it. He could never stop it. She was going to end up flying through the air. She was going to end up broken and bloody and…and it would be all his fault….just like before. He was going to hurt her…just like he had hurt those kids from before and….and he just…there was nothing at all that he could do….and he just…

Needed her to get the f-word out right now.

"I don't want to leave, though, I can tell that you're upset and I could never just leave one of my friends alone when they're upset….not that we're friends yet but I would like to be. From what your mom said you seem very nice and I think that we'll get along very well." Said Miss Suzuki. She was still lying to him. There was no way that they could be friends. He couldn't have friends. He had never had friends. Nobody had ever been able to get close enough to him….because this always happened. She was just saying things and…and they hurt. They hurt him so now his curse….it wanted to hurt her…and he didn't want to hurt her but….but the curse…there was nothing that anyone could do about it. It was a part of him and it would be there until the day he died…and he didn't need someone coming into his world and…and telling him things that could never be true.

"No…..no more….please….you have to stop…." said Serizawa. He didn't want to hear it. He wanted to cover his ears and eyes and just….wake up…or go to sleep…or do something that would make this girl just…disappear. She needed to disappear. She needed to be just…gone. Gone and…and safe. She needed to be somewhere far from him….like everyone else in the world did….

"You don't have to be scared anymore. I can help you and we can be friends and you'll be able to go outside again and make new friends and then-" said Miss Suzuki. She was just…why couldn't she just stop?! He didn't want to hear it! She didn't understand! Nobody would ever be able to understand! She was just…he had no idea what she really wanted but…but he knew what he wanted. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to be alone in his room where it was safe. Not just safe for him but safe for everyone else. He was going to die in this room, he wanted to die in this room, and he wanted to die alone so everyone would be safe from him!

Why could she just see that?

He had been telling her to get out but it was like she was deaf or something. Like she just wanted to hear what she felt like. In one ear and out the other, like mom had said before. She needed to listen and he…he needed to get her to listen. He needed to get her to listen and he needed to get her the f-word out her here before she got hurt! Before he sent her flying and…and there was blood again….

No more blood on his hands….never again…..

"Get out of my room! Just get out! Out!" screamed Serizawa. Screaming was wrong. It hurt him. His throat felt raw and…and he knew that he shouldn't have shouted but…but he had lost control. He hadn't been able to stop the screams from coming out and…and he hadn't been able to stop the curse either. All of the purple. He couldn't hold it back anymore. He had tried and it hadn't been good enough. He had warned her but he hadn't been good enough at that either. He wasn't good at anything. He wasn't anything, anything good. He was terrible. He was dangerous. He was the worst. He had been as bad as he could be. He couldn't stop himself from losing control. He couldn't stop himself from sending everything that he could touch with his colors, including her, flying. He closed his eyes. He knew that he would still be able to hear her. He knew that he would be hearing her screams in his mind for the rest of his life. He knew that he would hear the thud of her body. He knew that he would hear the crunch of bone. He knew that he would smell blood, too, and there might have been a lot again. Enough that he could taste it in the air. Coppery. Blood was coppery. There had been a lot of blood that day. He hated this part. She'd go flying into the wall, or the bathroom, and she'd scream and-

And nothing happened.

Everything that he had picked up was floating in the air. She had a hand up and…and all of the colors…his colors…they went back to her. She was holding up her hand and…and she was just…holding the things up. He could…he could see her doing it. The same as….as he could do…but she wasn't scared. She wasn't anything. She was just holding her umbrella with one hand and…and all the junk in his room up with the other.

"I'm sorry that I upset you….I guess that I got carried away. I just really want you to join Claw and be my friend. You're an esper and I'm an esper and…well friends need to have something in common and that's something….and also we both like videogames and can be kind of messy….so can we be friends? Please?" asked Miss Suzuki. She put everything down. She put the trash back on his table and the floor, she put his clothes back into their piles, and she even out his models and games back on their shelves. She did it all with just her hand raised in the air. She was like him…

But better.

She could control her curse. She could control it well enough that with just a wave of her hand she could do…all of that…and her colors were so calm….and she was so calm. Like this was normal for her. Like all of this was just her normal, everyday, life or something….and it might have been. She was….she was an esper…she had said…and he knew what an esper was but….but he hadn't known that they were real…that there were other people like him….like her. People who could do the same things that he could…but could also just…be out in society. That could exist in the world without being burdens to the people around him. That could have lives outside of four tiny walls. That could even….even have friends…

She wanted to be his friend.

"I can't leave this room. Whenever I do I get dizzy and scared and…and that happens. I can't ever leave this room but…but I would like…to be your friend. To be your friend and to…to meet other people like you….me….us." said Serizawa. She was looking at him now. She was looking at him and…and he got the feeling that he was being studied. She took a step closer and still stared at him, then she looked around, and the she looked down at her umbrella.

And then she opened it.

"Here. You can have this umbrella. It was kind of rainy today and my dad made me take it even though I don't need it. You can have it and whenever you stand under it you can pretend that you're in your room. Then you can come with me and we can be friends. You'll never have to be scared again. I can teach you how to control your powers. How does that sound?" asked Miss Suzuki. She stood over him with an opened umbrella and…and he knew that it was bad luck to open an umbrella inside but…but under it….he could feel….it felt small. It felt safe. It felt…she was close now that he could feel her colors and…

And it felt safe.

You can't forsake the journey for the safety of your room. That was from a poem mom had read to him when he had been little. Littler than Miss Suzuki even. You couldn't forsake the journey for the safety of your room and…and those hadn't just been words on a page. That was the truth. He had been forsaking the journey for his entire life but….no more. Not when there was a world out there outside of these four walls. Not when there were other people like him out there. Not when he could take the safety of his room with him wherever he went just so long as he was under this umbrella…and just so long as he was with Miss Suzuki….

He didn't need this room, these four walls, so long as he had Miss Suzuki near him.


	423. The New Room, The New World

This was a whole new world.

This world had four blue walls, light blue, rather than four grey walls. This new world had a dark blue rug instead of a brown carpet. This new world had a bed under the window, a bed big enough for him to lay out on, and a window without curtains or blinds or….or anything. A window that he'd had to cover. That had been the first thing that he had done when he had entered this new room, this new world. He'd gotten out a bedsheet and hung it over the window.

Though he wished that he hadn't used a white one.

Because the light came through. Before, in his old room, he'd had black out curtains. He didn't like the sun, the light, that passage of time. The reminder that it had passed. The reminder that the world was turning without him. He could, if he spent enough time in the dark, bring the world down to just being one big today. That was what life had been. Just this endless…today. He slept and ate and played games and then did it all again and again and again…and that had been it. That was been his life. That had been the world.

Now it was different.

The world was different. This bed was different. Harder than his bed. His bed had dipped in the middle from where he had slept, he slept curled up like a cat most nights. It smelled different, too, sort of…like…heavy? Heavy and…well…one time he had startled a skunk…and this whole room smelled sort of like that and…and that was…ok. This was his room, this was his home, and he…he wanted to be here. Miss Suzuki had brought him here and he trusted her. She was his friend. She had brought him here and he trusted her. He had never trusted anyone in his life as much as he trusted her.

He had never known anyone like her before.

"Do you want your TV on the desk? Or maybe on your dresser? Or maybe I could figure out how to get it stuck to the wall…but we move around a lot so that might not be practical…but being practical doesn't matter. What do you want, Serizawa?" said Miss Suzuki. It takes him a moment to realize that she's addressing him. Nobody's called him Serizawa in years, not since he had been as small as she was now, not that he knew how small she was but he knew that she was a lot smaller than him. That was who he was now, Serizawa. He was Serizawa and this was his room.

And that was his friend.

He held his umbrella tighter in his hands. The door was closed and the window was covered but…but he just…this wasn't…he didn't know if he was….he just….she was near. He focused on that. Not the beating of his heart, not the dizzy feeling in his head, not the purple that he could see just under his skin. He focused on her. On the pink and blue that swirled around her like a whirlpool. On the way that with a flick of her wrist she could make boxes, the boxes that held his entire life, move from one side of the room and then back again. The way that she was smiling without smiling. The way that he got the feeling that she was smiling, that she was happy, that she was happy to be there with him.

That she was happy to be his friend.

"I…I….I don't know." Said Serizawa finding some words. Nobody had ever spoken to him, aside from mom, as much as she did. She was speaking to him and she was…she wasn't afraid. She as in his room, his space, his world, and she wasn't afraid. Mom always shook, just a little, when she was near him. Miss Suzuki never shook. She just…stood there…now she was moving his TV around the world…and that was an old one. The old CRT kind, good for gaming but very heavy, and she was lifting it with her curse…no…her powers…like it was nothing.

They weren't cursed. Miss Suzuki had said so.

She had told him so many times that he wasn't cursed. That lots of people were born the way that they were. That there were a lot of people with powers. She even named specific people. Her father, a man who could be equal parts nice and mean but she had told him not to take it personally, a little brother who was, according to Miss Suzuki, the best little brother that the world had ever known. Other people, too, people outside of her family. Her friends. A man named Shibata who made the house shake when he walked. Someone taller than anyone Serizawa has ever seen and with more muscles than he had ever thought that human body even had. A man who's powers were being incredibly strong…but who was also the nicest person in the house, according to Miss Suzuki, and the best cook in the house too. A man who had come right up to Serizawa and introduced himself.

And a man who Serizawa hadn't been able to say two words to.

He had introduced himself and…and Serizawa…well if he hadn't been next to Miss Suzuki he didn't know what would have happened. He saw the purple and…and he'd been on edge from just leaving his house…and the car ride had been a lot even if the windows had been tinted…and he'd just…needed to just….to be alone and…and if she hadn't been there and if he hadn't had his umbrella and if she hadn't practically dragged him to this room then he wouldn't have had any idea what was going to happen.

Everyone has powers and everyone loses control sometimes.

She had said that to him. She had walked him into this room and she had sat him down on the bed and she had said that to him. She had told him that….the he had nothing to be afraid of…and that nobody here would be afraid of him. He could feel them, other people, other people like them. Those people that she had told him about. Her friends. His future friends. She had insisted that everyone would just love him and that he'd be surrounded by friends, by people like him, by people who could understand. She had named them all. Shibata, who he'd met and run away from, and the others too. Someone named Hatori who loved videogames and had the power to control technology, she had no idea how it worked just that he could do it, and who would get along with him and be his friend…but also someone who startled easily and could be overdramatic sometimes. Someone who he wasn't supposed to take it personally if he ran away and hid.

There were a lot of things that she had told him not to take personally.

There was a person in the house who, she had insisted, was very nice when you got to know him. Shimazaki. He liked to mess with people, she had said, and she had told him not to take it personally. She had told him that if Shimazaki did anything to him then he was to tell her immediately and she would fix it. He didn't want to get anyone in trouble….and he didn't want to have anyone mess with him either. That was…how it had happened….on that day. He had been…he had told everyone to leave him alone and…and that was….she had said that nothing would happen. She had told him that even if he lost control and exploded he couldn't hurt Shimazaki….and he wanted to believe her.

He wanted to believe his friend.

He wanted to believe every single thing that she said to him. He wanted to believe that, unlike all the others, she was telling the truth. That there was nothing wrong with him. That he was normal. That there were other people in the world like him. That he would make friends with her friends. That he would make friends with her friends who were nice, with her friends who weren't so nice all the time, and even her best friend. Her best friend who could be sort of mean but was nice, and also who he was supposed to use gender neutral conjugation with or else they'd get mad, and he didn't want to make anyone mad. He didn't want….he didn't want to be here…but he didn't want to go back either. This place, this new room, this new world…the new world that she had shown to him, this was what he had always wanted. For his entire life all he had wanted, more than anything else in the world, was to have been able to be in a place where people could understand him…where he could have friends…and she had brought him to a place just like that….

So why did he still feel like this?

"I think that I'll leave it here on the dresser then so you can see it from your bed and I'll leave your computer on your desk, too, because that's where they go…but if you don't like something I can move it. Don't try to move it on your own, though, because you're not ready for that yet. It took me a little bit, when I was really little, to figure out how to pick things up with my telekinesis without breaking things or throwing things. You'll figure it out too. We just have to practice, that's all. Like when I was little my dad and I would play in the backyard and…" she was talking. She was talking and he…had done his best to listen. He wasn't used to people saying this many words to him. The only person he had talked to for the past…he didn't want to know how long…had been mom…and he just…why did he miss her? Why did he want her to knock on the door and tell him that she had made him lunch or washed his clothes or gotten him a new game?

Why did he feel like this?

Mom was so much better off without him. He had left and he was here and now she could do whatever she wanted. She could make friends now. She could travel now. She could get that talking parrot she had always wanted now. She could save a lot of money, too, so she wouldn't have to work so much…or at all. He was being paid for being here, she had shown him a number with a lot of zeroes in it, and that was what he would get a year for…he didn't even know. Being near her or…something. She hadn't told him what he would be doing here, just that he would be here, and he didn't care what he did just so long as he wasn't there to be a burden on mom anymore.

She was probably happy…the happiest she had been in years…and he needed to be happy for her…instead of whatever….this feeling…was.

"….pancakes. If you want something else than Shibata will make it for your but birthday breakfasts are usually pancakes. You one pancake for every year that you've been alive. I don't know why we do that, just that we do that. Shimazaki's birthday is on the twenty fifth but we're throwing him a big party on Halloween. I hope that you're all better by then so you can come with. It's going to be so fun. Well I tried to make it fun but my dad…." Miss Suzuki was unpacking his clothes now, all with her curse….her powers…and folding them up and putting them in drawers. Mom had folded them already but she was refolding them now. She folded things differently. Mom had always folded his things into squares but Miss Suzuki did wedges so that they stood up sort of like books…and he had no idea why she did that. He had no idea why she was doing any of this for him…

Because she was a good person.

Maybe that was it. He had no idea why else she would do something like this for someone like him. She was talking to him like he was a normal person. She was unpacking his clothes for him like she was mom. She was standing right there in his room like…like he couldn't hurt her without even thinking about it…but she had told him that he couldn't. She had shown him that he couldn't. She had reached out and…and stopped him from…from hurting her back in…in his old room. She was…she was there and she was his friend and…and she was safe….

And she would keep him safe.

"…which I think is unfair because everyone loves dogs…but my dad…..and also it's Shimazaki's birthday but that's ok. There's no use arguing with my dad. Dads are just like that I guess. They can be really bossy sometimes, and they can be mean, but they still love you…or at least they do when you're a girl. Dad is kind of really mean to Sho, my little brother, but maybe that's just what all dads are like. I'm not sure, I've only ever had the one dad. What's your dad like?" asked Miss Suzuki. Serizawa…he needs to answer her…but he has no idea who his father even is. He knows that his dad wasn't Japanese, the kids at school never missed an opportunity to remind him that he was half, and he knows that mom isn't even sure who his dad is….and that's all that he knows….but she's expected an answer….and he has to give her one…

He has to answer his friend.

This is his friend. This girl…small woman….person. The person dressed in blue putting his things away for him is his friend. This person who delivered him into this…this place….this place that she said was everything that he had ever wanted…was his friend. He…he had to answer her….he owed her that much…and just…he has to say something….but words…they're hard right now. His back is to the window and his umbrella is in his hands…and this bed is too hard…and too big…and he's too big…or too small….and he just feels….there's a feeling like he swallowed something sharp inside of him…and she's looking at him…and she's smiling without smiling…..and he just….

Come on, Katsuya.

"I…have never met my dad…before." Said Serizawa. There. Words. He'd made words. He'd made words and now words were made and…and he'd done it. He'd spoken to her…and he had no idea why that had been so hard. This was his friend. She was his friend and when you were friends with someone you spoke to them…and he'd never had a friend before. Now he had one…and more. The other people in this house. The other people who were all around him. The ones that she had told him about…..they were all going to be his friends too…

It was dizzying.

Or maybe it was the light that was making him dizzy. Or maybe it was the smell of this room. Or maybe it was the fact that his room was so far away…he was in Tokyo….the farthest he had ever gone out of the city was when he and mom had gone berry picking at that farm when he'd been three…and now he was here…in Tokyo and…and he was with his first friend…and that was enough to make him dizzy….and he was just…he held onto his umbrella. He held onto his umbrella and he let his colors meet hers. He let them out….and the room shook…but the shaking stopped when his colors touched hers. When his curse touched hers. She was…she was…her face was normal but he was struck with the feeling that she was frowning….

He had made his friend frown.

She was…her face was normal and she was coming closer and…and he felt it happening again and…and he couldn't stop it. A box, one full of fragile models, flew through the air…and then another….and another….and another…but as soon as they got close to her they stopped. They just froze in mid air and…and she wasn't even looking. She had crossed the room and then…and then she had done something that…that nobody had ever done to him before.

She hugged him.

She hugged him and…and she needed to GET OFF! She was TOO CLOSE! She was touching him and…and nobody touched him! He couldn't….he couldn't remember the last time that he had ever touched anyone and…and she needed to GET OFF OF HIM! She needed to get the h-word OFF OF HIM! He was going to hurt her….and he was hurting her…he could feel his colors…his curse…his powers and…and he should…she should have been flying but….but instead it was like…like it all just…disappeared inside of her and…and…and….

And she let him go.

"I'm sorry that I made you talk about something sad. I guess that I was just being….me. Sometimes I can be really clueless and…and I'm very sorry." said Miss Suzuki. She said that she was sorry and…and she had done nothing. She had never done anything to him. She had done nothing but be there for him. He felt….he felt like he…he had been terrible. He had almost hurt his friend and all she had done was hug him. That was a thing that people did.

He couldn't remember the last time anyone had ever hugged him.

He must have been small. Very small. Mom said…she said that his curse…his powers…hadn't been that bad when he'd ben young. When he'd been a baby. She said that it had gotten…bad…when he had been two. Two or three. She was…she had held him before. There were old pictures of her holding him….and he couldn't remember what that had been like…what it was like to be held and hugged….but now he just…he could remember because he had just been hugged five seconds ago…and she had been warm….

He had forgotten how warm people were.

"You…hugged me." Said Serizawa. He needed to make words. He had to pick out words and use them and…and it was hard. It had been easier, before when they'd met, because he had been telling her to leave….and he was used to telling people to leave. He was used to telling people to leave him alone, to leave his room, and that….that was easy. Easier than this. This was…he had to talk to her…

He had to figure out how to talk to her.

He'd spent the car ride here with his head in his hands and his mouth shut. He hadn't said anything to her…and he'd had the excuse of being in a car…and she hadn't asked him to talk…and they had to talk now. They were friends and friends talked. He had never had a friend before but he'd played games…and he'd watched a lot of TV…and he knew that he needed to figure this out and….and he just….

He was dizzy.

"Sorry! I thought that we were the kind of friends who hugged….and I should have asked. I'm sorry. I can be kind of clueless sometimes and I don't always say or do the right thing….but I'm trying. I'm just really excited to be your friend. I haven't made a new friend in a while and….this is exciting for me." Said Miss Suzuki. She was excited to meet him. Her. Miss Suzuki. He was…dizzy…to know her. The dizziness might have been excitement. The dizziness might have been fear. The dizziness might have been from the light that came in through the bedsheet he'd tacked up over the window.

He didn't know.

He just knew that he needed to just…stop it. He needed to stop it because….because he had what he'd always wanted. He always wanted friends…people like him. People who understood him. He'd always wanted this and she had given this to him and…and he had no idea why he was this dizzy. He had no idea, too, why he wanted his mom. She was…she happy now. She was happy and he was happy. He had to be less selfish. He had to just….stop it….because this was what he and mom had both always wanted and…and he just….

He was dizzy.

"This is…a lot for me too and….and it's….it's alright. We're friends and….and we can hug. That's normal. It's normal for friends to hug." Said Serizawa. He had never had a friend before. He had never had anyone aside from mom hug him before. He had never been in the same room as someone who could hug him before…but she could. She could and…and so could other people…like him. That was…a lot. There were other people like him and they could be his friends and…and there was just so much and…

And the room was spinning.

No, he was spinning things in the room. He was making them spin and…and she was pulling them out of the air. She was pulling things out of the air and putting them down and…and she wasn't scared. She wasn't shouting. She was treating this like it was normal…because it was normal. He could see the other colors in the house. The other people in this house. He was surrounded by people…and he had never been around this many people before….not since he had been small…small like the person in front of him….and just…

He was dizzy.

"Shhh….shh…..it's ok. You're going to be ok. I know that you're scared. All of this is new to you and you've been in your room for fifteen years-" said Miss Suzuki. Serizawa held his umbrella to his chest and closed his eyes. Fifteen years. The words rang in his head. Fifteen years. The number. There was a number behind his eyes. Fifteen. Ten plus five. Ten plus five made fifteen. Twelve plus fifteen made twenty seven. That was how old he was. Twenty seven. He was twenty seven and he had been gone for fifteen years and that had been days and days and days and….and he didn't know how to figure out how many days had gone by but….but he had to figure it out and he had to make up that time….because he was gone from that room and out in the world now and…and he just…he was with other people like him and they were normal and he had to be normal and….and he didn't know how to be normal or…or how to be a friend or…or how to be anyone or anything and he just….

He held onto his umbrella.

"….here for you. You're my friend and I'm always going to be here for you, ok?" said Miss Suzuki. She was smiling at him, actually smiling, he could tell because he had opened his eyes when he felt her lean in close. She was smiling and her hand was over his. His hands were wrapped around her umbrella. She was so much smaller than him, both of her hands could have fit inside of his, and she was the one comforting him even though she was so small….

And she did a good job of it, too.

He let his colors meet hers again. She was smiling. He smiled back. He smiled back as best as he could. He knew that his teeth were yellow. He knew that he looked terrible. He knew that he needed…well he needed to do a lot of things….but she didn't recoil from him. She wasn't…anything but happy. She was happy and…and he could feel her all around him. Her colors. Her presence. She was there all around him and she could and would keep him safe…from himself. She was strong enough to do that and….

And he was so happy to be her friend.

"…alright." Said Serizawa. There. That wasn't so hard, making words, talking to her. He had said something and she had said something and now…well now he had no idea if there was anything else left to say but…but she was there with him and…and as long as she was there with him then…then he felt like nothing could hurt him….and he couldn't hurt anyone….

Just because he felt something didn't make it real.

He could hurt people. He was dangerous. She….she wasn't in danger from him. She had been there in the middle of…things…and she hadn't been scared. She had said that she would never have been scared of him and…and he trusted her…and he knew her…but he didn't know…there was a knock at his door from a person that he did not know. There was green, there, just a bit of it. Not as bright as his purple or Miss Suzuki's blue or the massive red splotch he could see off to the left. This was…another person…one who he did not know….knocking on the door….knocking on HIS door….

He opened his umbrella.

"Mob! Get out here! We're having a meeting!" that was a voice, a high one, sort of like a ladies' voice. Sort of like mom's voice….but different. Like it had been before when he'd been little. He felt dizzy, though, hearing that voice. Not like mom's voice at all, then. That voice sounded angry…and he just…did not like anger…and people had always been angry with him for no reason…and he knew that he had done something….and he knew that he had done nothing…and he knew that it was bad luck to open his umbrella indoors….but he needed this umbrella. He needed this umbrella and he needed…he needed….

He needed his friend.

"Um….ok, Minegishi, I can come but I don't think that Serizawa is up to it and-" said Miss Suzuki. She was still standing in front of him. She had turned around and now she was facing the door. He wanted…he wanted her to face him. He wanted to pull her close and…and he wanted to push her away and….and he wanted….he didn't know what he wanted. To be safe. To be in the dark. To be home. To be back in his own room, in his own world, in his own world with his mom….he wanted his mom….he wanted his friend…he wanted…he wanted so many things….

He wanted to be safe…he wanted everyone to be safe…from him.

"Just you. Now come on." Said the person….Minegishi. That person was named Minegishi. They were a year older than him. They could control plants. They used gender neutral conjugation. They didn't like sugar. They were Miss Suzuki's best friend. That was all he knew about that person. That was what Miss Suzuki had told him. He listened when she talked. He may not have been the best at talking back but he listened.

He wanted to keep on listening.

He wanted her to stay. He wanted to keep her near him and…and he wanted to keep safe…and he wanted to keep her safe…he wanted so many things and…and it was dizzying. This whole thing was making him dizzy and…and he was sitting down and his umbrella was up and opened and she was there but…but she was going to go and….and she was walking away from him and…and he needed her to stay. He felt his colors reaching forward, reaching around. Covering hers. The room was purple. He was purple. She was purple. There was purple everywhere.

Like a wall.

"I have to go now but I'll come back and I'll help you unpack, too, ok? So can you please put your barrier down?" asked Miss Suzuki. She had her hand against the purple and…and it was there. When he had been little and he told people about the purple they had thought that he was creepy and crazy and…and the purple wasn't real…but now he knew that it was real…but it had never been something that he could reach out and feel…until now. The purple was there like a wall and…and he had…he had done….

He had done that.

"I…don't know what that is…and I don't know how…." Said Serizawa. He had no idea how he was doing that. He had no idea that he was even capable of doing things like that. He knew that he could pick things up. He knew that he could throw things. He knew that he could pick people up. He knew that he could throw people. He knew that he could break things. He knew that he could break people. He knew…he had never known…that he could…create something…create this wall….

A solid wall.

"That's ok that you don't know how. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is like me. Not everyone has a dad like mine. When I was really little my dad taught me about barriers….um….ok. Well he taught me how to make them strong not to get rid of them but….um…ok. What I do is that I just…get rid of my barrier I guess? Sorry. I just sort of….make it go away….oh….I've never had to explain this before." Said Miss Suzuki. She was playing with her hair now…and she was upset and…and he was upsetting her. He was upsetting her and now she was going to leave…and he should have wanted her to leave. He should have been sending her away. He should have been sending her away for her own safety but he just…wasn't. He wanted her to stay near to him and….and he shouldn't have wanted this and…and he had no idea what he even wanted and…and he was dizzy and…

And the wall shattered.

It felt like…he had no words for that that felt like. The wall had shattered and….and now the only thing that was purple in the room was him. He was purple and she was pink and blue and…and there was green outside the door…and red…and…and blue and…and so many colors and…and he just…didn't…he didn't know….he just….

He kept his umbrella opened.

"I'm sorry to have broken down your barrier but I have to go…but I'll come back! Don't worry, Serizawa, I'll come back and then we can finish unpacking and we can work on barriers and all the other stuff that you want to work or we can just hang out and play games or even…maybe even I can introduce you to the others. Alright? I'm coming back….ok?" asked Miss Suzuki. Serizawa nodded. He clung to that. She would be coming back. She would come back and…and this was…this was fine. She was fine. She was fine and she was his friend and she was safe and when she walked outside of that door she would be…she would come back…because they were friends…and that was what friends did.

"I...that would…that would be…ok….Miss Suzuki." Said Serizawa. That was what he had to say. He wanted her to stay. He felt like…like he was starving. Like he had spent so long without eating and…and now there was food…not that she was food. She was a friend. She was a friend and…and he'd never had a friend before and…and it was so good…it felt so good to be her friend but….but also…

Also it was dizzying.

This whole thing was dizzying. This whole thing was just so….he was dizzy. He was dizzy. He wanted…he wanted to lay down. She was leaving the room now. He could see her back. The blue of her sweater. The white of her collar. The footprints her feet left in the carpet. The way her hair was so black and shiny and…and she was there. She was another person and she was his friend and…and another person had been in his room. He had never imagined that he could have had another person in his room and now there was and…and she had been in his room and now she was leaving…

She opened the door.

She let more light in. That was artificial light. Too bright. He didn't know which was worse, the sun or a lightbulb. He didn't know. He wanted the dark. He wanted the darkness and he wanted…he laid down. This bed was too big. He could stretch out. The hallway was wrong. He could see…the wall was red there…and there were plants…and no door. He should have been able to see the bathroom door from his room…the door swung shut. That was better, with the door being closed he could imagine that the bathroom door was there. If he curled up he could imagine that this was his bed.

That it was small.

That he was small. He didn't want to be small. He didn't want to be small and he didn't want to be big. He didn't want…he didn't know what he wanted. He wanted to be here and he wanted to be home and he wanted….he wanted to keep his eyes closed. He curled up. His eyes were closed. His umbrella was opened. Even with his eyes closed he could see her, all of them, their colors…and his colors….and his eyes were closed but….

But he could still see the world…the new…world.


	424. Circle Time and House Meetings

Mob had never been invited to a house meeting before.

That was probably because she didn't live in the house with everyone. Mob, well, she had her own house, next door with her family, so she wasn't entirely sure why she had been invited to this meeting. She didn't know why she was sitting in the kitchen with everyone while Shibata stood at the stove. She didn't know what he was making but she hoped that Serizawa liked it. She didn't know what kinds of foods he liked, actually, or much of anything about him…but that was ok.

Being friends meant getting to know someone.

She would get to know him and then she would become very good friends with him and then he would become very good friends with everyone. He really should have been out there in the house meeting, not her, since he lived her too now. He needed time though, a few days or weeks maybe, to be comfortable coming out of his room. She wished that she could make time go faster, she really wanted him to be friends with everyone, and also she really wanted him to come to the party. New friends were always so exciting!

This was so exciting!

Serizawa being in the house, not this meeting. Not sitting here in the kitchen with everyone. She had to help Serizawa unpack and she had to make something for Sho to eat and she had to come back here and hang out with Serizawa….and maybe Sho would have liked to come too he liked making new friends. Mob wasn't sure. She wasn't sure about anything, really, but that was ok. Good stuff was happening. It was always a good thing if good stuff happened.

Especially to her friends….old and new.

"So…what's the meeting about? And if it's not that important we should wait until Serizawa is ready to come out of his room. He lives here too and if this is a house meeting we should ask him to come." Said Mob. She looked around…and she didn't get what everyone was looking at her like that for. They seemed…well she wasn't sure what they seemed…but their auras seemed sort of mad. Mad and…tired? Well that was Minegishi and they were always tired.

But that was ok.

Minegishi could take a nap in their room….with Shimazaki. Really this was great. Serizawa had needed a room and Minegishi and Shimazaki were a couple now so, of course, they would share a room. That was what couples did. Mob had gotten a big bed for them to sleep in and everything. This had worked out great. She didn't know what she had done if Serizawa had joined the group back before Shimazaki and Minegishi started going out together. He could have shared with Hatori, they both liked games and hiding in places when they got scared, and it could have helped Serizawa make friends…but he was scared of people and Mob didn't want her friend to be scared.

She just wanted everyone to get along.

"Well I don't know about the rest of you but I'm starting a circle. Mob, you get greens because you're the girl of the hour." Said Shimazaki. Mob didn't know why she was the girl of the hour. She had just brought a new friend into the house…maybe that was it. She brought them a new friend. Everyone needed friends. Everyone didn't seem very happy, though, and Mob didn't get it. Serizawa was great! Well he would be, anyway, once he calmed down. This was all new to him. He hadn't been around people in fifteen years. It would take him a while to get used to them and it would have gone a lot faster if they had made more of an effort to get to know him.

And include him in the circle, too.

Circle times were the best times. Usually they had circle times in the living room and watched funny stuff on TV or listened to music. Serizawa would have liked that. He had spent the past fifteen years playing games and watching TV and listening to music. He probably knew a lot of good stuff that they would like. Also smoking might calm him down. His aura was always so upset. Even now it was upset. It was trying to stick to hers. He held onto her when he got upset…and that was ok. Everyone needed someone and she was his first friend so of course it was ok for his aura to stick to hers like that and stuff.

They were friends and that was what friends did.

"Thanks Shimazaki. This is fun, it really is guys, but we really should invite Serizawa. It's not nice to leave people out." Said Mob as Shimazaki picked up his pipe and handed it and his lighter to Mob. Minegishi shook their head. Mob didn't know what they were shaking their head for. She hadn't even started yet. She knew to use moderation. She had to use moderations because she had to teach Sho, and Serizawa now, moderation and she couldn't teach what she didn't know.

That was why she only inhaled once and passed it to Minegishi.

They did the same and passed it over Hatori's head to Shibata. He waved his hand and shook his head no. He was trying to bring his tolerance down. He had way too much tolerance because of how big he was. It took two who economy sized bottles of wine to make him feel even a little bit of anything. Poor Shibata…but also it was good to have someone who could take care of the people who overdid it…not that anyone would overdo it. They had someone new in the house and Serizawa wasn't used to this so no overdoing it until he learned about moderation.

Hopefully it wouldn't take too long.

"It's also not nice to just bring people into the house without asking." Said Minegishi. Mob…didn't get it. She made friends and then those friends came and lived in the house. That was how this worked. She had made friends with Minegishi and they lived in the house and Sho had made friends with Shimazaki and then he moved into the house and then they had both made friends with Shibata and Hatori and then they moved into the house. The house next door was reserved for her and Sho's friends, dad had said so, and this was ok then.

They had a lot of fun together after all.

Like now. They were having circle time. They didn't usually have it in the kitchen but they were still having fun. Well Shimazaki was having fun…and he was taking way too much. It was puff and then another puff and then pass. Mob had only done one because she was using moderation. Minegishi had done the same. Shimazaki was on three now…which was a lot…but he didn't know about moderation. That was just how he was.

He was a lot of things….and she'd have to talk to him, later, about being nice because Serizawa could not handle him being mean. Mob could tell.

"What do you mean?" asked Mob. Minegishi shook their head again and rubbed their eyes. She didn't know why they were like this…maybe because they were tired. Well if they were tired then they could have taken a nap with their boyfriend on their new super big bed. Mob wished that she had a super big bed…or a boyfriend…but now was not the time to think about this. Now was the time to think about her new friend…her new friend who was getting scared even though nothing was happening…

He really needed to join this circle.

"Exactly what I said, Mob. You can't just dump people into this house without consulting us. Especially not complete strangers…and especially not complete strangers with pretty severe mental issues." Said Minegishi. Mob frowned and reached for the pipe. It was her turn now. Shimazaki tried to pass it to her but Minegishi took it…even though now the order was messed up. That was also a mean thing to do. She had no idea why they were being so mean. Maybe they were tired. That…might have been it…because Minegishi was mean sometimes but….

Well calling people crazy and messing up the circle time order was just…a different level of not nice.

"Minegishi…that's not a nice thing to say about people." Said Mob. She reached for the pipe again before pulling her hand back. If Minegishi was in a bad mood then they needed the pipe more than she did. Mob…well she didn't want to change the person who Minegishi was, because they were her best friend, but she did want them to maybe be a little nicer. Serizawa was so sensitive and delicate, even worse than Hatori, so really they all just needed to be on their very best behavior for the time being. They could all do that….right?

That wasn't so much to ask….right?

"Well it's the truth." Said Minegishi as they coughed. Finally they passed it to Mob…and she wanted them to keep it…but she also wanted a turn. It had been a long day. She had spent most of the day in the car or with Serizawa, it was mean to think of him as being tiring because they were friends but he could be kind of tiring, and now she was here and she just….needed a minute. Serizawa was still trying to stick his aura to hers…and she wished that he wasn't scared all the time…but she could deal with this. That was what good friends did, they dealt with things.

And Mob had always considered herself to be a very good friend…and smoking would help her become an even better friend.

"Toshi, come on. We're all a little crazy. This is Claw, isn't it? We wouldn't all be here if we didn't have serious social and emotional problems." Said Shimazaki. Mob…didn't think that everyone in Claw had serious social and emotional problems. Ok, sure. Shimazaki acted like a crazy person and Hatori was kind of dramatic sometimes and Shibata, well he was normal, and Fukuda had turned into a real a-word…and also dad was the President and he was really weird…but…well ok….a lot of people here were weird….but that didn't make them crazy.

"Hey, I don't have problems." Said Hatori. Mob didn't say anything to that. She wasn't going to be mean….and also it was kind of hard to talk to Hatori these days. Even while smoking it was kind of hard to talk to him.

"Yes you do, we all do, but none of us are anywhere near that guy's level….not even Ryou. You can't just go dumping people like that into the house, Mob." Said Minegishi. Mob…well Shimazaki acted like a crazy person sometimes….a lot of the times….but there weren't levels. There were only levels to fun circle time things. There were no levels of craziness because nobody in this house, or in Claw, was crazy. They were all friends and friends did not say things like that about each other. It wasn't nice and when you were friends with someone you had to be nice to them. That was how being friends worked.

"But he's not crazy, he's nice." Said Mob. Minegishi was just tired. When they felt better then they would come around and become friends with Serizawa just like they had become friends with Shibata and Hatori. Then everyone would get along they'd have a new friend and everything would be perfect.

"Mob…I'm sure he is. I'm sure he's very nice but it sounds like what Minegishi is saying is that it would have been nice for you to warn us about this. I mean it's always great meeting new people but…well it can be a lot too." Said Shibata. Mob watched him for a moment. He was making…well she had no idea but it smelled good and….oh! How could she not have thought this through?! She was the worst friend ever….

"Oh, I get it now. Because you don't know how much food to make now. Maybe if you served a lot of bread it would fill people up. Sort of like how in restaurants they give you unlimited bread so you can't tell how tiny the portions are." Said Mob. She should have called ahead so that Shibata would have been able to order enough food for everyone. If he was cooking in the middle of the day, and making something new based on how often he had been looking at his phone, then this was a cooking project day or a recipe perfecting day and….and she should have warned him to get enough ingredients for an extra person.

"Mob…that would work but…well that's not what I meant." Said Shibata. Well if that wasn't what he had meant then what had he meant? This was so confusing…and not just circle time confusing. Sometimes when she smoked too much her brain worked slow…but she hadn't even smoked that much. Her socks felt normal and she hadn't had the pipe in a while. Maybe they should have spent less time talking about this confusing stuff and more time smoking….not that she was going to forget about moderation or anything like that.

"I don't understand….so maybe we should talk about this later. Who's turn is it at the pipe? We should be more careful about the order I think…that way people won't get left out." Said Mob. She wondered if maybe she should bring Serizawa out here….or maybe she could bring the circle to him. That way he would have been able to relax and everyone could have gotten to know him and Minegishi could, maybe, realize that calling someone crazy was mean and wrong.

"Mob, for the love of-" said Minegishi running their hands through their hair. Mob wished that she could just understand what was going wrong. Minegishi was saying mean things, well that was normal for them, but she had to figure out why they were saying these things about Serizawa. They didn't know him at all so they couldn't just say things like that…and also it was mean….but that was ok. Mob would find out what made them say things like that and she would fix whatever went wrong. Friends had to get along and she hated it when her friends fought.

"I think what everyone means is that…well it's kind of a lot to have to move rooms and-" said Hatori. Mob couldn't look him in the eyes. She looked at the bridge of his nose, that was a trick that dad had taught her to get people to think that she was looking people in the eye, and she knew that she was being rude but…well it was hard to look him in the eyes. After what she had said to him….and asked him to do….

He hadn't said anything but she knew that he was still thinking about it…she knew that she was.

"I don't like to be interrupted." Said Minegishi. Hatori made a yelping sound and looked down at the table. Mob was sort of glad that he did that. Not because he got scared but because he wasn't looking at Mob anymore. She knew that things would get back to normal between them but…well that would take time. When they got back to normal then she would be able to look at him again. Right now she played with the hem of her sweater, there was a loose thread, and she let Serizawa's aura stick to hers. It had gotten startled when Hatori's had gotten startled…but that was ok. It was ok to be scared sometimes.

Maybe if Hatori and Serizawa became good friends then Hatori could give him tips on how to be less scared all the time…when he figured out how to be less scared all the time.

"Toshi, come on. This isn't so bad. This is pretty fucking great, actually. We have another Hatori in the house and-" said Shimazaki. Mob knew that she was being mean, interrupting like this, but she had to put a stop to this before it started. She shouldn't have let it go as far as it had, the way Shimazaki treated Hatori, but she had been little when that had started but she was bigger now, eleven and a half almost, and she wasn't going to let her friends be mean to one another.

Also Serizawa was like…five Hatoris put together it felt like….so it was a bad idea to mess with him…especially because he had the same exploding problem that she and dad did.

"No. Shimazaki, don't be mean to Serizawa. He's not crazy like Minegishi thinks but he's…like me and dad. He can't control his powers and also he's already afraid enough of people. He doesn't need to be scared and freaked out…" said Mob. And also there was always the potential for explosions and….and Mob…well she had enough to do as it was making friends with him and helping him get back to being in the world…and stuff. But she didn't say all of that. She knew that if she said all of that then maybe things wouldn't go well…and she needed them to go well. She needed all of her friends to be, well, friends with Serizawa.

"Can't I just-" said Shimazaki. Mob knew that he was going to start negotiating…and she knew from dad that negotiating took away her power…not that she liked having power over her friends….and not that she liked using it either…but she had to. She had to use her power for good.

"No. End of discussion…and I don't like saying that….but Serizawa is super fragile and we all need to be extra nice to him." said Mob. She hated being bossy but she had to be. Serizawa could really hurt someone if he exploded…and she could kind of contain it, being the explosion into her….somehow, but the others couldn't and…and she was just going to have to spend almost all of her time with Serizawa until he got better. That was fine. She could do that.

"Until when?" asked Minegishi. Mob…well she didn't have a calendar in front of her…not that she would ever say something so mean to her friend….but she knew that it wouldn't be that long. Not if everyone helped her. Everyone just had to be on their best behavior and everyone had to make an effort to be nice to Serizawa and then they he would make friends and be happy and he would be ok and then they'd all have a new friend.

"I'm sure that Mob doesn't have a set time-" said Shibata. See? Shibata got it. He always got her. He always got everyone. He would be a really good friend to Serizawa. Hatori too. Shimazaki…she'd have to talk to him more…and Minegishi…well when they were in a good mood then they were just the nicest person in the world. The only problem was that right now they weren't in a good mood…but that was ok. Everyone got into bad moods sometimes. Even Mob…but not now. Now she was happy. Even if they were having a real weird circle time…she was still happy.

"Until. When. Mob….you didn't think this through. This guy…you can't just bring someone new, and with that many problems, into our lives like this….and don't bring up Hatori because I know that you're going to tell us that this is just like with Hatori. We all a least knew Hatori and we figured that you were going to bring him into the house. You just brought this guy here without warning us." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't get it. Minegishi had been listening when Mob told her about what she was going to be doing today, right? She had been very clear…but then again she wasn't the best when it came to these talking things.

"But I told you guys that I was going to Baked Goods City to meet someone new. I mean…I did and…well maybe I just didn't say it right…or something." Said Mob. She was playing with the loose thread in her sweater again. The pipe had been passed over her. Minegishi had it…and they needed it. They were in a bad mood and they needed it more than she did. She was just…she was fine. Well she would be once her best friend stopped being mad…possibly even mad at her…for some reason….

"But you didn't say that he was going to live in the house with us…and where were you intending on putting him? There isn't enough room for another person in any of the Claw houses that we stay at…and I would have liked the warning that I would have been expected to give up my room." Said Minegishi. Oh. Their room…right. They had never shared before. Mob forgot that not everyone shared rooms. She had spent her whole life sharing a room with Sho…and also sometimes she shared with dad…and stuff. Well that sort of made sense then…but then again it didn't. They were in a relationship with Shimazaki, they had said 'I love you' and everything….so why wouldn't they be happy that the got to share a room with their boyfriend? If Mob had a boyfriend she would have kissed him before bed every single night and then fell asleep in is arms while he told her how he much he loved her.

"But you get to live with Shimazaki now in the same room…and you're boyfriend and theyfriend. Isn't this what boyfriends and theyfriends do when they're adults? They live in the same room?" asked Mob. She had no idea why Minegishi didn't want to share a room with their boyfriend. Adults….they were so weird and complicated sometimes. Especially now. This was just…she hoped that she never got this complicated when she was an adult…because this was just…a lot. It was a lot and if she had been a meaner person she would have even said that this was ruining circle time.

"Yeah…Toshi, is that what this is about? Because we were talking and-" said Shimazaki. He didn't get it either…which meant that it might have been a Minegishi only thing. They were so…well Mob didn't understand them when it came to love and stuff like that. She knew that they had been dumped by their girlfriend, and Mob had never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend before and she had never been dumped but she knew that it must have been hard, but like Elsa had said 'the past was in the past' and stuff. She knew that Minegishi and Shimazaki loved each other and she knew that Shimazaki would never have dumped Minegishi…and she wondered why Minegishi couldn't see it too. The way that he talked about them and held them and kissed them…it was like something out of a movie. That was what love must have been like. They loved him but they didn't want to live with him…so weird….and stuff.

"A drawer. Ryou, you know full well I was talking about a drawer and a free outlet for your charger. I didn't think that I was going to have to wake up and just…have all of your stuff being moved into my room." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't get it. Now they had a whole second dresser in their room and they didn't even need to clear out one of their drawers. That was a good thing, right? Now they wouldn't need to worry about any extra work and stuff. They hated doing extra work more than anything else.

"But this is what you want…right? I mean like Mob said this is-" said Shimazaki. Good. He was agreeing with her too. That meant that she was making sense. That meant that she wasn't being clueless and stuff. Then maybe Minegishi could see it too and then they could realize how weird they were being about this whole thing.

"Mob is a child." Said Minegishi. They said it simply and….yeah. It was the truth and…and they had just come out and said it like that and…and she knew that she was only eleven and a half. She knew that she was still short and she barely could see the top shelves in the kitchen and…and she knew that she was young but….but she didn't think that she was that young. She didn't think that…Minegishi was just in a bad mood, that was all, and they just…were maybe upset about how small their room was with two people and two dressers and a big bed and…and that made sense. People liked big rooms. There. Now Mob knew what the problem was and she could fix it.

"Minegishi, if you want I could switch it around so that you and Shimazaki are in his room…because it's bigger. I just put Serizawa in that room because it's closest to the bathroom. That way he won't have to walk very far….oh! I forgot to say. He can't leave his room if there are people in the house so when he has to go to the bathroom and stuff everyone has to go outside for at least fifteen minutes. His mom told me that." Said Mob. She didn't know what she had said that was so wrong but now everyone was staring at her. What was so bad about what she had said? Fifteen minutes wasn't that long…and it wasn't like it would be forever. Just until Serizawa felt better…and stuff. That wouldn't be that long at all….right?

"Wait…so are we talking at, like, three in the morning or something or-" said Hatori

"We'll do whatever we need to do to make the new guy feel welcome…even if that means getting out of bed in the middle of the night so he can go to the bathroom without freaking out." Said Shibata

"Yeah but….seriously?" asked Hatori

"….you know what? I don't have the energy for this. I'm going to lay down for a while. The rest of you just…deal with this." said Minegishi. Mob had no idea what there was to deal with. This wasn't that bad. Serizawa just needed a few days or weeks to adjust and then they'd all be having circle time together and listening to Shimazaki explain why Paul was the best Beatle or watching something funny on TV or something like that, maybe something that Serizawa would show them. He'd be in the group and their friend and they'd include him in everything…and it would all be really great….and stuff. But it couldn't happen if they didn't start including him and being nice to him and stuff…but that was ok. Everyone else just needed time to adjust too. That must have been what this meeting was for, everyone trying to figure out how to adjust and stuff.

Well that was ok, really, because it was important to have these circle time friendship meetings in that case.


	425. Good at Some Things and Bad at Others

Sho was getting good at this.

The tattoo was actually looking like it was supposed to. He had figured out how deep you were supposed to push, finally, and how close together that you had to make the pokes. Too far apart and too close together and it just made a mess. Also you were supposed to clean your needle before and after you used it, too, otherwise you would get an infection and then the whole thing would look terrible. That was where Sho had gone wrong before when he had practiced on himself…well he had gone wrong in a lot more ways than that but….well he was doing better now. He was doing a hell of a lot better.

That dog actually looked like a dog.

Drawing dicks was fun but Shimazaki wouldn't have wanted Sho to draw a dick on him. He had said so. Not that Sho was doing this for him. Not that Sho had been working hard on perfecting his skills so that Shimazaki would let him tattoo something on him. Something like his favorite kind of dog. He liked the yellow ones, not that he knew what yellow was, but the yellow ones were the friendliest and he liked those best. Also he liked dogs with curly tails because curly tails were funny. That was why Sho had done a dog with a curly tail…because it was a good thing to draw. Not because Shimazaki would have liked it….well he would have…and Sho had gotten better….

Much better.

Maybe well enough that he could…well Shimazaki liked tattoos and his birthday was coming up…and Sho was maybe partially fallen out of love with him by now. He'd been hanging out with Fukuda and stuff and just mostly avoiding Shimazaki…even though stuff was so boring without him. Stuff had been so boring without him and…and it was for the best. Sho needed to fall out of love with him. Once he fell out of love with Shimazaki then everything would be better. He just…he needed to finish up already. Falling out of love. Figuring out how to go at least one day without thinking about him. Figuring out how to just….not want to be near him all the time….and stuff….

Sho couldn't wait until this 'love' thing was over and done with.

"Ok, you're done." Said Sho as he wiped off the last of the extra ink. It ran sometimes. You were supposed to wipe off the extra ink and blood. After that you were supposed to put plastic wrap over it. Sho wouldn't be doing that part, though, because Fukuda would just use his powers to erase what Sho had done. He always did that.

He didn't like tattoos.

He didn't like tattoos or climbing trees or petting dogs or throwing things at people and then running away or even messing with Hatori. He just…well he was Fukuda. He liked playing games, and losing them, and he liked watching TV and getting on Sho to eat more than poptarts and drink more than cola and not eat with his hands and take his food apart and stuff….but he was ok. He may not have liked a lot of stuff but he still agreed to stuff, like letting Sho practice on him, so it wasn't all bad.

Even if he was closing his eyes and acting like Sho had cut his arm off instead of just drawn a dog on it.

"I'm afraid to even look." Said Fukuda with his eyes closed. He loved Sho, he really did, and he was mostly playing….but if Sho had drawn another…well he was getting to that age…but there were so many other things to draw in this world. He used to draw animals, all sorts of animals, and his drawings had always been so cute…but he was eleven now and he was getting to be too old for cute things…but that was ok. Kids grew up, it was what they did, and there was nothing that you could do but let them grow up. He would always mourn the child that Sho had been but he was growing into a whole new person now and Fukuda…well he could get used to this new person too. He had to.

Even if this person was getting to…that age.

"What? Are you saying that I didn't do a good job?" asked Sho. He narrowed his eyes. He had done a good job. Everything looked like what it was supposed to look like. He had gone slow and deep enough and made sure that he had used real tattoo ink…and if Fukuda thought that he was going to sit there and insult his skills then he was going to wake up to a dick drawn on his forehead.

"No, I know that you did a good job, I just know what you probably did a good job on." Said Fukuda with a laugh. He could feel Sho glaring it at him. It was a little like when Suzuki would glare at him…only less…terrifying. Suzuki always looked like he was one step away from killing someone. Sho could look that way, too, to he was just…adorable in his angry glares.

"It's not another dick if that's what you're worried about." Said Sho. He knew how to draw things besides dicks….dicks were just funny. Really funny. The funniest thing ever. Shimazaki thought so too so Sho knew that he was right and…and now he had thought about Shimazaki again. That had been a whole hour…a new record….if sleeping didn't count.

"Alright…I trust you. I am looking down….now…and that's a really cute dog. You've gotten a lot better at this." said Fukuda. Well that was a relief. That was a really cute dog. There was a lot of skill there. Sho…well he could have made a career out of it, maybe, it was better than what he was going to end up doing with his life. Being a tattoo artist was better than being the future master of the world…still not a good job, though, Sho could have done a lot better. He could have been a real artist…in another life…but Fukuda wasn't going to sit there and think about some other life that they could have been living. He was living this life and so was Sho…and this was the best that they could do.

"Thanks. That's the best kind of dog, you know, the yellow friendly ones." Said Sho. He missed finding yellow friendly dogs to pet. Hey jumped up and they were all happy…and stuff. He missed…he missed the dogs and…the times when he and Shimazaki would go and see them and…and he wasn't good at this falling out of love thing.

"Yeah labs are pretty great…but I'm pretty sure that they don't have curly tails." Said Fukuda. He felt the dog Sho had drawn on him. He overrode his body's natural healing response, he could do that for a little bit. Not forever, no, it got exhausting after a while…but just for long enough to look at what Sho had done. Fukuda was not a fan of tattoos, they were for criminals and Fukuda…hadn't personally committed any crimes, but any art from Sho was good art.

"Well that dog does. All the best dogs have curly tails. Shima-someone said that." Said Sho. He looked down and started to pack his things up. He needed something to do. He needed to do something so he could finally stop thinking about Shimazaki and how awesome he was and how much Sho missed him and how much fun they used to have and…and stuff. He needed to stop thinking about this now so he could be friends with Shimazaki again later…not that they had ever stopped being friends…but he just…had taken some space to fall out of love and…

And he needed to go figure out something else to talk about and think about and…and stuff.

"You're right, all the best dogs have curly tails….anyway, what do you want to do now? We can play one of your fighting games or we can watch Zootopia again or we could-" said Fukuda. Sho was packing up to go…and it was getting close to his bedtime. He had skipped bath time, Fukuda was not getting into that battle with him, and he could miss his bedtime if he wanted to. Sho's bedtime had been set by his sister and…well he needed to learn that he didn't have to listen to her. She had power over him in Claw but…well she wasn't that much older than him. Sho didn't have to come running just because his sister told him so.

He didn't have to go.

He didn't have to go and just….leave like that. Fukuda…he would miss him. Fukuda always missed him and, well, they'd been spending a lot of time together. It was just like it had been before. Before certain pragmatic choices had to be made. Back like when Sho had been young…well younger. There was no going back to the child that he had been, Fukuda had made his peace with that, but Sho…well he was growing up and Fukuda could get to know the person that he was becoming now. He could spend time with the person that he was now.

He wanted to spend time with the person that he was now.

"It's almost nine, I have to go home. Sorry. We can hang out more tomorrow." Said Sho. He had to go to bed at nine. Big sis was going to put him to bed…well she would tuck him in because he was too tired to do it himself and she had to read to herself before bed and he just happened to be in the same room that he was in…and that kind of helped him go to bed too. He had to go home and…and big sis wanted him to come home. She still loved him.

He didn't think that she didn't love him.

She was just…busy. She was busy with the new guy. Shimazaki said that he was like Hatori but worse. He was that big purple blotch over in the corner of his eye. Big sis's new friend. Big sis had a friend and he needed her, she spent most of her time with him these days, and that was ok. Sho had stuff going on too. They both had stuff going on and…and that was ok…

She was still his sister and he was still her brother and being brother and sister ranked way higher than being new friends.

"You don't have to go home just because your sister told you too. You aren't that much younger than her, you know." Said Fukuda. Sho used to never let himself be told what to do. Sho…well he didn't have to listen to Shigeko. Suzuki gave her too much power…power that Sho should have had. He didn't want Sho to have that kind of power, he didn't want Sho to be involved in any of this insanity, but he did want Sho to have some kind of future. Whatever was happening with Shigeko and Suzuki…well it wasn't going to be good for Sho…and Fukuda had no idea what to do about that…but he could at least get Sho to realize that he didn't have to give his sister power over him.

"Yeah, I know. I can do math…dad doesn't think so but I can….it's just that I don't want to make big sis sad. She's got a lot going on…and stuff." Said Sho. She loved him. That was what mattered. She loved him and he didn't care if she cared about the new guy. About how he was scared of everything. About how he couldn't control his powers. About how he got freaked out all the time over everything. She still loved him and…and he wasn't going to wake up and she would be gone. That wasn't how…how things worked…with brothers and sisters.

"Right. Her new 'friend'." Said Fukuda with a shake of his head. That guy. That big purple…whatever…off in the corner of his perceptions. Shigeko had found him herself, she was finding her own assets these days it seemed, and the man…well he was….well Fukuda didn't need to know him to know that in terms of strength he was right up there with…near to….Shigeko. She had found herself a powerhouse, apparently, and he had no idea why she had done that…well her go to explanation about the power of friendship…but there was more to it. He knew that there was more to it…he just couldn't see it…

It was so hard to tell with Shigeko sometimes.

Suzuki…well he was transparent. He had always been very transparent about his goals. Shigeko…he had no idea what her goals even were. She wanted Claw to prosper, obviously, and she played the part of the dutiful daughter and the sweet little girl…but she was planning something. She was Suzuki's daughter after all and he was always planning something. Even when he was teetering on the edge he was planning something….

Fukuda thanked God that Sho had turned out as normal as he was.

"Yeah. There's him, too. Big sis said that he's one of those shut in guys and he's afraid of everyone and won't come out of his room and he can't control his powers and stuff. She's got to hang out with him all the time and stuff. She doesn't need to worry about me." Said Sho. Big sis…she had a lot going on. She had offered, too, to bring Sho over…but that was where Shimazaki lived and…and he just…wasn't out of love yet. Plus, well, if he wanted to hang out with a Hatori then he would just hang out with cool Hatori…and somehow Hatori had become 'cool Hatori' and stuff….and he was sure that the new guy was nice and all….

But he was big sis's friend and…and Sho always wanted new friends but…well he had a lot going on right now.

"Well you could just leave her to…whatever she's got going on over there. Come on, we can have popcorn with a full sized cereal bowl of that salted butter you like and-" said Fukuda

"We can do that tomorrow, ok? I have to go home now. I know that you're lonely and stuff but…well you like my dad. You can hang out with him or something…ok? I have to go now and if you get lonely just hang out with dad, ok?" asked Sho. Sometimes Fukuda could be so clingy and stuff. That was just because his only friend was dad. Being friends with dad would mess anyone up. Sho…well he knew hat he was pretty much Fukuda's second friend and stuff but…well…he had to go home now.

So that was what he did.

He said his goodbyes and he put on his shoes and put his stuff in his backpack and then he went back home. He had to go home and sterilize his needles and he had to get into his pajamas let big sis read to him…read NEAR him. Near, not to, because he was eleven. Well he would be eleven soon and as an eleven year old he was way too old to have someone reading him bedtime stories. In fact maybe he should even tell her to leave him alone at night. Maybe he should tell her to read in another room and….

And maybe he was getting ahead of himself.

Why mess with their nightly routine? Those were important…and stuff. Also he wasn't going to just kick her out of their room. She could read wherever she wanted to read and he could deal with that. Yeah, there was no need to be making any more big changes. They had a new friend and that was a big enough change to making right now. Maybe when he was almost twelve instead of almost eleven, then maybe he could have her read in the other room. Yeah. That was a good idea, he could do that.

He would do that.

He added that to his to do list. Ok, so he was going to fall out of love with Shimazaki, sterilize his tattoo needles, change into pajamas, and get big sis to stop reading with him in the room when he was almost twelve. Yeah. He could do that. He would do that. He would do the hell out of that. Things were easier to do when he put them into steps like that…and with the most important step being first then he could get it out of the way….and it would be easy. Yeah, step one was always the easiest. He just had to fall out of love with Shimazaki and it would be easy and-

It would have been easier if Shimazaki hadn't teleported right in front of him.

He had barely even made it to his house when he felt the energy around him shift and Shimazaki was, all of a sudden, right there. He was right there and he was in sleeping clothes…which wasn't that many clothes at all…not that Sho cared or anything like that…because that would have been a weird thing to care about. This whole thing was a weird thing to care about…and he needed to stop caring…starting…now.

Right now.

"Sho, just the tiny little man I needed to see." Said Shimazaki. Thank God he caught the kid on his way home. He could not take another minute of that house. Toshi being all weird and the new guy's aura screaming twenty four seven….it was a madhouse and not at all in a good way. That kid could make it a madhouse in the good way, he always did, and frankly the two of them were way overdue to hang out.

"But you can't see me." Said Sho. He wished that he had come up with something better to say. He should have come up with something better but his stupid brain was being stupid and…and he just…this was why he needed to fall out of love. Love made you stupid, really stupid, and also it made you feel weird and stuff…and really he would have been a lot better off without it. Without this stupid goldfish feeling…and he wished that it would just get tired and stop already…but it never did.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Sho, that only I get to make blind jokes? When you go blind then you can make all the blind jokes you want but until that day comes you have to keep your mouth shut…or at least come up with better ones." Said Shimazaki

"Sorry…anyway….what do you need to see me for?" asked Sho

"I'm bored as fuck. Toshi's being all weird and the new guy is just…well you can hear his aura. It's just never ending screaming….and the screaming is better than the crying at least." Said Shimazaki

"Auras can cry?" asked Sho. He wondered if his ever did. He knew that he cried…a lot more than he should have. He knew that he should have just kept his tears in his eyes where they belonged, he was almost eleven after all and a boy too, and he knew that he would have no choice but to die on the spot if Shimazaki had heard him crying. He already thought that Sho was uncool from the whole 'tattooing himself' thing…and

"No, he just cries when he thinks that nobody's around. Between him and Hatori, he's a crier too but at least he does his crying everyone once in a while, I'm starting to lose my mind…and not in a good way." said Shimazaki

"Well what do you want me to do about it?" asked Sho. He would do whatever Shimazaki wanted him to. Even…Shimazaki was not going to tell him to kiss him. Sho was out in front of his house where anyone could have seen and…and even they had been alone then Shimazaki still wouldn't have asked to kiss him…or not even asked. Just picked him up and held him close to his chest and…and now that stupid goldfish was putting weird thoughts in his brain.

"Honestly? No clue. I just wanted to hang out with you. You know I don't think this far ahead." Said Shimazaki. Maybe he had said the wrong thing, that kid's heartrate was through the roof, but he didn't really care. Sho had a crush on him, had confessed to him numerous times, but that didn't change the outcome. Sho was a great kid and his favorite tiny little friend, well he was tied with Mob, but no because he got the title of little bestie…well it wasn't a contest and Mob was busy anyway with the new guy. God. For all of Sho's clinginess and jealousy at least he wasn't as needy as that new guy was. Shimazaki could at least be grateful for that.

"Um…it's my bedtime." Said Sho. He wanted to punch himself in the stomach, right in the goldfish, for assaying that. How could he had been so stupid? That was just….he sounded like such a little kid there. his BEDTIME?! Why not just tell Shimazaki that he needed big sis to put a bib on him and feel him gross baby mush with no ranch? He just…he was his own worst enemy.

"Sorry. Well I'll see you in the morning then." Said Shimazaki. Well that sucked…he'd have to find something else to do. There had to be something going on in this city on a Tuesday night….something as fun as hanging out with Sho….Sho had was getting kind of boring these days. Seriously. Since when did he give a damn about bedtimes?

"Wait! I…fuck bedtimes." Said Sho. Fuck it. He was almost eleven years old practically a man even, and he could do whatever he wanted to. He wasn't a little kid anymore. He could go to bed when he felt like it.

"You're ten, you're too young to be fucking abstract concepts." Said Shimazaki with a laugh. God, he missed this.

"I can fuck whatever I want and I say fuck bedtimes." Said Sho. Just because he was still only ten that did not mean that he couldn't stay up all night and do fun stuff with Shimazaki. He was Suzuki Sho. When he grew up he would rule the world. He could do whatever he wanted and what he wanted to do was stay up all night! Until the sun came up! Yeah! It wasn't like he had school or anything like that!

"Fine, when you get older then we'll go out and pick up abstract concepts. How's that sound?" asked Shimazaki. He could tell that the kid was confused…right. He was ten. A lot of stuff just went right over his little head.

"Huh?" asked Sho. Well now he had no idea what they were talking about…and he wasn't even sure if he knew what an abstract concept was.

"Nothing, I just forgot how little you were-" said Shimazaki. He felt a hit coming. He let it come. Sho hit him right in the stomach. Not hard enough to hurt, he still had his barrier up, but hard enough to let Shimazaki know that he'd meant business there. God, this kid was so high strung…but in the funny way. Not the wake everyone up by creating a localized earthquake way…fucking new guy….

"I am not little! For your information I'm almost ten! You should know, you have my birthday tattooed on your arm and…and I don't need a bedtime anymore or…or anything and…and I am not a little kid anymore!" said Sho as he hit Shimazaki in the stomach. Shimazaki had let him. He could have teleported out of the way or hit Sho but he just let it happen…because he thought that Sho was a little kid…

And that was all that he would ever see him as.

That fact doesn't make him fall out of love any faster. If anything it just makes him imagine himself as an adult and Shimazaki as an adult…but not old, the way he was now, and also…well if they had both been adults then it would have been easy for them to…but they aren't adults…well Sho knows that he isn't and…and he may not have been an adult but he wasn't a little kid anymore either!

He was eleven….almost!

"Right, right, right, you're all grown up now. Grow up enough to take a swing at me, anyway, which I deserved-" said Shimazaki

"You did." Said Sho

"And you don't need a bedtime either-" said Shimazaki

"I don't." said Sho

"And you've ben mastering the art of stick and poke." Said Shimazaki. There. That was something that would take his mind off of what was happening with the new guy and Toshi and everything…and also it had been a while since he'd gotten worked on…and the kid was supposedly one hell of an artist. Well, ok, his first tries had been shit apparently but he'd been practicing so Shimazaki had every faith in him…and if not then he could always get healed.

He just wanted to spend time with Sho, that was all.

"I…well I'm not a master at it but….but I got better. I do good work now. Not like…before." Said Sho. He was red. He was glad that Shimazaki couldn't see how red he was…but he could sense it. His whole self was warm and red. His face was red and the rest of him must have been red from how warm he was. Especially in his stomach. He would have thought that the goldfish would have cooked in the hot tub that was his stomach but now…well not it was worse…and also it had invited some friends it felt like and…and the whole thing was weird but…in a good way…maybe.

"Cool. So, want to show me what you can do?" asked Shimazaki

"Wh-what? You want me to do a tattoo for you? Really? Even after…before?" asked Sho. That was…well now there was a whole goldfish party in his stomach and…and maybe he was having a heart attack and…and this was just…wow. Shimazaki…he thoughts….Ryou thought that he was cool enough…and good enough…to give him a tattoo and…and even after what happened it sounded like…like he was ok with it and…and Sho….he felt like….almost like…like Shimazaki had kissed him. Like that time when he'd been kissed and he liked it and…and he knew that hadn't happened but….it felt just like that…but in his stomach…if that even made any sense.

"Yeah. It's my birthday, almost, and I know that you were practicing to do one for my birthday so come on. If it gets messed up or infected then I can just get it healed. So, what do you say?" asked Shimazaki with a shrug.

"Uh….sure." said Sho. He knew that this was the last thig that he should have been doing. Big sis was in the house and she didn't like it when he did this…and also he might have messed up and then Shimazaki would have thought that he wasn't cool anymore…and also being near Shimazaki was not going to help him fall out of love…but…well….Shimazaki did have a birthday coming up and he had asked Sho to do a tattoo…and he did have all of his tools and….and he had gotten better so why not?

He may have been bad at falling out of love but at least he had gotten better at doing tattoos…and doing tattoos was a hell of a lot more fun anyway.


	426. Six Steps Too Many

The distance from his new room to the bathroom wasn't very far at all.

Six steps. He'd managed it in six steps. That wasn't very far at all. It had taken one step and then another and then another and another. That was how he'd managed to make it before. One foot in front of the other. His umbrella in one hand and Miss Suzuki's hand in the other. But Miss Suzuki wasn't here now. She had a life. She had things she had to do out in the world, like sleep, and he…well he could make it to the bathroom on his own.

He had to try.

He had to walk out of this room and to the bathroom and back again….and he had to do it without kicking everyone out of the house. This was their house, and it was in the middle of the night, and also…also he shouldn't have had to do that in the first place. He had left home to get better. He had left home to live in the world, in a place with other people like him, and just…he had to…to do this. Miss Suzuki would have been so happy with him if she knew what he was trying to do on his own.

He wanted her to be happy.

She was such a good person. She did so much for him. She had taken him from his room and brought him here…to a new room…but he could leave this room. He couldn't hurt anyone here. Miss Suzuki had clearly said that he couldn't hurt anyone here. They were all espers just like him. Espers, not cursed, because this was not a curse. What he could feel just under his skin was not a curse. Miss Suzuki said so. She had said so and he trusted her with his life. She was….she was such a good person….and she did so much for him…

So he was going to do this for her.

Well for her and for himself, too. He was done pissing in bottles, it was gross, and also he wasn't going to wake Miss Suzuki up in the middle of the night to walk him to the bathroom…and it was the middle of the night. He could tell through the sheet he'd put up over his window. It was in the middle of the night and he should have been asleep right now. That was something that Miss Suzuki said that they needed to work on, getting his sleep schedule back on track, and he…well he didn't know why that was important. He didn't know why he had to go and…it felt like marking the days. Sleeping at night and being awake during the day. If he could tell if it was dark outside or light, if he could tell that another day had passed, then it all become…like…a calendar or something. One day and then another and then another.

Instead of today.

Life had been one endless today for the past…he didn't want to think about how long. He didn't want to think about how much time passed. He didn't want to think about how he could touch the top of his doorway without even needing to stand on his toes. He doesn't like to think about the red marks on his stomach, arms, shoulders, and knees that had just…appeared one day. When he grew out of his favorite pajamas. When his old school uniform became doll clothes. When he couldn't lay down all the way on his bed. When he realized that he could see right over the top of mom's head without even looking up…in those rare times he saw her. Life hadn't been one endless today, it had only felt like it, and if it had been one endless today then he would have been Miss Suzuki's size, not this size. Life was like an online game, you couldn't pause it, and he'd tried for years….and he wasn't going to try again. He was going to make the six steps to the bathroom.

He was going to do this on his own.

He was going to take six steps to get his life back. Well it wouldn't fully come back but…but he wasn't going to wake Miss Suzuki up. He wasn't going to turn this room into the hell that the last room had been. He was going to…he put his hand on the doorknob…and he felt it bend in his hand…he was either that strong or it was the curse…no…his powers. They were powers and they were nothing without control, Miss Suzuki said so, so he really needed to just…he took a deep breathe. He couldn't hurt anyone here. Miss Suzuki had said so.

He trusted Miss Suzuki with his life.

He pushed the door open just a crack. He was careful not to break it. He felt like he was going to break it. He felt like he was going to break the doorknob, the door, the wall, the house, and himself. He could have if he wanted to…and he could have if he hadn't wanted to, but like Miss Suzuki had said 'power is nothing without control' and he…he was going to make her proud of him. She wanted him to get better, she wanted him to start doing things for himself, and that was what he was going to do. He was going to leave his room and make those six steps.

He had to.

He took the first step. The hallway was dark. That was good. Everyone was asleep. He didn't know how he knew that everyone was asleep….he just knew. He just knew that on the other side of his wall two people were asleep and that down the hall another person was asleep and…and he could sort of feel that there were other sleeping people…and some awake….and he could…he could just take a step back but….but that wasn't what Miss Suzuki wanted for him. She wanted him to be able to leave that room. She wanted him to make friends with her other friends. She wanted them to be able to go places together and do things, friend things, and he…he wanted that too. He wanted friends. He wanted a life. He wanted a life in a place where he was normal. He wanted a life in a place where everyone was like him.

He could have had that life if he could just go to the f-wording bathroom already!

He took another step. The floor felt wrong here. The carpet wasn't as soft and his feet didn't sink into it. Also he could feel little things under his feet…and mom would never have let that happen. She always vacuumed outside of his room when she knew that he needed to come out for something. She vacuumed the outside of his room so he could be quick. In and out. She knew how to make him happy and…and she was gone but…but she was happy. She was gone…no…he was the one who was gone and…and that was a good thing. Now she could be happy in her life. She would have had time to do things and she wouldn't have had to worry about him all the time…and she could make friends and travel and have pets and maybe even meet someone new and have a new son and he'd be better and….and he just….

He almost takes a step back.

He stops himself. He can feel her, there, Miss Suzuki. She's far away but…but he can feel her. He can see her colors. The pink and the blue and….and he takes another step forward. Three. He's almost there. He's almost there and…and as long as he can feel Miss Suzuki with him then he knows that he's going to be fine. He knows that she would never let anything happen to him and….and he knows that he needs to just…not let anything happen to himself. He wants to be with her. He doesn't want to have to leave her. He doesn't want to be a burden on another person like that. He wants…he wants to do this. He wants to take the last three steps and get to the bathroom on his own. He wants to do this. He can do this. Miss Suzuki said that he could do this.

He takes another step.

Miss Suzuki said that this was something that he could do. She said that pretty soon he'd be able to leave his room all on his own and he'd be able to hang out with her and her friends and they would be his friends and that they were just like him and…and that it would be everything that he had ever wanted. He wanted that. He wanted to have everything that he had ever wanted….and he wanted to have it with Miss Suzuki. She was just….she was the nicest person that he had ever met. Well she was tied with mom…but mom did everything that she had done out of obligation to him. She was his mom and the was her job, to take care of her son, no matter how much of a burden her son was…and he was such a burden and….and he doesn't want to be. He doesn't want to be a burden on Miss Suzuki…

So he takes another step.

The door is right there. He can see it even in the darkness. It's not complete darkness, though, because the door is opened and someone put a nightlight in the bathroom. Sort of like at home except his had been a Gundam one from when he'd been very small. He wasn't small anyone but the nightlight helped. He took another step into the light, but he didn't look at it since it burned, and he…he made that last step. Carpet turned to tile. He was in the bathroom now. He rested his hand against the door and felt…he pulled his hand away.

Oh. A bump label.

Miss Suzuki had explained to him, when he first came to the house, that he shouldn't move any of the labels. Those were for the blind man that lived there…Serizawa had never even met a blind person before let alone lived with one….but he wasn't going to mess with any of the labels. He wasn't going to mess with anything. He didn't want to be disliked by a new friend before they even were friends. He didn't want to be disliked by anyone. He wanted the whole house to like him, the people who were like him, and he wanted….well he really wanted to just…use the bathroom already and then get back to his room….

So that was what he did.

He washed his hands, too, because that was important. He didn't want to get sick and he didn't want to get anyone else sick too. Miss Suzuki didn't deserve that. She had done so much for him and he was not going to repay her by getting her sick. He washed his hands with soap….the soap here was different. At home it had been bar soap, the kind that looked like seashells and smelled like flowers even though it would have made more sense for the soap to look like little flowers, here it was liquid soap. It took him a minute to realize that he had a liquid soap dispenser instead of a tray with little seashells that smelled like flowers. It took him a minute to figure out why the tile felt weird under his feet. It took him another reason to realize why this bathroom smelled like...not like home. This one smelled like….perfume but….not the kind ladies wore. More like…and he knew that he should have known this word, the one for the stuff men wore that was like perfume but not…because he was a man now…but he didn't know that word. He just knew that it smelled like that and….

And also sort of like a hospital.

He knew what hospitals smelled like. He'd…he'd gone when he'd been little. When he'd…well mom had wanted him to take a bath….and he hadn't wanted to and then…and then there had been purple and…and he'd been small enough that the next thing he remembered was mom putting him in his car seat….and then he was in a place that smelled like this and…and he had been purple and….and there had been red. There had been so much red and…and it smelled like….like he didn't know and…and the room smelled like this and….and he just…

Something fell.

A whole lot of somethings fell. There had been so much on the sink. Toothpaste and toothbrushes in a cup…and some bottles that had those bump labels on them…and a tiny little plant that felt like it had been glaring at him…and also there had been a glass bottle there….and now it was on the ground and…and the room really smelled now and…and he had heard something break and…and that had been his fault! The whole thing had been his fault and…and he never should have….he never should have left his room and…and now he'd just…he'd gone and…and he'd just lost control of the curse…of his powers and now….now he'd made a mess and….

And now he had six more steps to make.

Getting back to his room was a lot easier than leaving it. He hadn't needed to count the steps. He'd just needed to make them. He'd made one step and then another and another and another until he was back in the four walls that made up his new world. He could see the colors that made him up, it was dark purple mostly but also some light purple and…and he could see it and…and now something else had fallen and…and he just needed to make it to his bed. He closed the door and went to his bed. He covered his eyes and pulled the blanket over his head and….

And he tried to make it stop.

He used to do this when he'd been small. Back when he'd fit on his bed. Back when his curtains had been open during the day. Back when he'd been able to go to school. Back when he'd lose control at school. Back when people called him all kinds of names…like creepy…and back when they'd get so mad at him when he lost control…they didn't know that it was his powers….they thought that he just broke things on his own…and then they'd scold him and…and then he'd just lose control again. They'd scold him and he'd lose control…and he covered his eyes. He closed his eyes and covered his ears and…and he could hear them….he could hear everything and…and he was small again….

Because this bed fit.

This bed was big enough for him. He could lay down in this bed without having to scrunch. He could uncurl himself…he was all curled up…but he could have uncurled himself and he would have fit and…and he was small now…he was and was not small and…and wanted…he didn't know what he wanted. He wanted to be small again, maybe, small enough that mom could have been there for him. Small enough that she could have been there to tuck him in and tell him that he was going to be ok. Small enough that he…that he had never hurt her. That he had been able to just…to stay calm and just…just…that he could have controlled the curse…his powers. He wanted…he wanted to be that small again…but he just…he wasn't small and…and he wasn't home. He wasn't small and he wasn't home and he was here now and…

And he wanted his mom.

Bu he didn't have his mom. He only had himself. He didn't have mom because mom was home and he was here and this was home now and…and he was…she was…they were both…they were both better off this way. Mom was better off and he was better off because now he couldn't be a burden to her anymore. He was…he closed his eyes. He felt…he felt someone…it felt like someone passed over him. Like someone walked over him but…but not with steps and…and he felt…he heard something else break. He felt…it felt again like someone passed over him and…and he could feel more people and…well he could feel the same people but they felt like…it felt like…he could hear…and it sounded like and…and he wanted….

He wanted to go home.

"…know what Mob said but c'mon Toshi…"

"…alone, Ryou. He can clean it up but don't hurt him…."

He could hear the people that he shared a wall with talking. He could hear them and they were awake and the other people in the house were awake and…and he had woken everyone up and….and he hadn't meant to! He hadn't meant to but it had happened and it was all his fault and…and he just…he was sorry! He wanted to say sorry! He wanted to…to just say that he was sorry and that he hadn't meant it but…but he couldn't. He couldn't even get up off of that bed. He couldn't get up and leave and…and this bed was his world. These four walls were his world. This had to be his world because…because nothing good came of leaving this world and…

And he couldn't breathe.

He couldn't breathe and he could hear people talking and he could feel them and he could just…he could see himself, the purple of his….his curse and…and his powers….they were powers and…and he could feel….he could see and he could feel and he could just…he just…he needed….he didn't know. He couldn't think. He heard something else break and he…he knew that it was him. It was always him. This was him and he was him and….and he felt like he was…he didn't…he couldn't think. He could only feel. The beating of his heart, the way his lungs cried out for air even though he was breathing deeper than he ever had before, the way he was soaked through with sweat, all of it. He couldn't think, he could just feel and he felt like he wanted-

He wanted….he wanted….

"It's ok, Serizawa, I'm here now." That was what he had wanted. Someone to be there for him, to tell him that it was going to be ok, and he had wanted this so badly…and now he had it. Her. He wanted someone to come and be there for him and there she was. He could see her colors, pink and blue, and he could feel the dip in the bed when she sat beside him. She pulled the blanket down and put her hand on his head.

And he felt better.

It was like…he felt like the time he had tried to make warm milk on the stove when he'd been small and it had boiled over. He had been so scared but then mom had come and she took it off the fire and then it had stopped and….and that was what he felt like now. With her hand on his forehead, with her fingers in his hair, he felt like…like the purple…the curse…his powers…he felt like he had been pulled off of the fire. He could feel of it just….going from him and…

And it was…nice.

"Shh…you're going to be ok, Serizawa, you're going to be ok. You just got scared and made a mess, that's all, it happens to everyone. I can clean everything and then we can…um…we can have a sleepover? Doesn't that sound nice? I'll sleep right here next to you and if you have to get up again I'll walk you and if you need someone then I'll be here for you. Alight?" asked Miss Suzuki. This was…she was so nice. He opened his eyes. She was there. She was in her pajamas…one of those sleep dress things mom had worn but hers had a snowman on it…and he had woken her up but she…she wasn't mad. She wasn't anything but nice. She had never been anything but nice to him….

And he didn't deserve it.

He knew deep down that he didn't deserve it…and that just made her all the nicer. She was like him but…but she was nothing like him. She could do the same things that he could, everyone in this house could. There were so many people in the world that could do what he could do but they weren't like him and…and he just…he should have been better. He wished that he had been better. He wished that he had been a better person and…and he wished that he was anyone other than himself. That he could have been better…that he could have been anyone other than himself and…..and he was himself and…and she didn't have to be this nice to him but…but she was….

Miss Suzuki was always so nice to him.

"That…that sounds nice….Miss Suzuki. Thank you." Sais Serizawa. She was always so nice to him…and she didn't have to be. She was such a good person. She had saved him from the hell that had been his life and she…she was still saving him. She saved him from himself and he…he was so happy to have her in his life. She was so wonderful and…she was so nice and….and he had tried to do too much without her. He needed her. He needed her and….and she would always be there for him…in the middle of the night even and…and he should have been better but…but he could only be himself….whatever this person….whatever he was and….

"You don't have to thank me, we're friends, and this is what friends do…but you're welcome." Said Miss Suzuki. She was rubbing his head like mom had. She was telling him everything was going to be ok like mom had…mom had said that even though she'd had no idea that everything would be ok and now way to assure that but Miss Suzuki….she would make everything ok. She was there for him and…and he trusted her and….and she was just so wonderful and…

She was there. She was there and…he was there too…there was very little distance between them.


	427. Thirty One Pancakes

Birthdays were very important days not just for the person who's birthday it was but for their friends, too.

Well friends and family but Shimazaki got kicked out of his family so his friends were kind of like his family. Friends could be like family, Mob decided, because friends were people who were always there for you. No matter what happened your friends would be there to help you and to be there for you. For the good times and the bad, for the happy times and the sad, and all of the times in between too. Friends could even be better than family, in some ways, because you picked your friends. Family was just people who you were born into.

Not that she didn't love her family, because she did, but…well sometimes she wished that they were more like her friends…because no matter her friends would always be there…not like her family…not like her mom….

"Sho, try and have some fruit on your pancakes, ok?" asked Mob. She didn't need to be thinking about mom right now. Instead she would think about Sho. He was sitting at the table and he and Shimazaki were playing some game where they tried to hit each other. She didn't think that it looked fun but…well she wasn't going to stop them. She was glad that they were friends again, she was glad that Sho was hanging out with someone he loved…even though she didn't really understand it, and she was glad that Shimazaki was happy on his birthday.

She was happy too.

She was happy and she didn't need to think about how it would be Sho's birthday soon and he'd be the one getting the giant stack of birthday pancakes soon…and then how she would get her own stack…Sho would get eleven and she would get twelve…and then the year after that Sho would get twelve and she would get thirteen….and how it would keep on going like that for the rest of time. Birthdays would always come with pancakes and…and they would come without mom and…and that didn't matter. She was sad but…but she didn't have to be. Birthdays would always come without mom but they would also always come with her friends…

And friends could be like family.

"Fine….but if I don't like it I'm spitting it out." Said Sho. Mob knew that this was the best that she could do. She was lucky that she even got him to try it and…well mom could have done better…but that didn't matter. She was mom now…well not really because they weren't doing a Freaky Friday….but she took care of Sho like mom had…she took care of everyone like mom had…and she didn't really mind.

"Well that's just charming." Said Minegishi not looking up from their book. They were tired, that was why they were grumpier than normal, and also why they had been a little bit grumpy at Mob lately. They were just tired because they hadn't been able to sleep and they hadn't been able to sleep because Serizawa got upset at night sometimes…and during the day too…but that was ok. He'd get better. He just needed more love or something. More love and more friendship, that was all, and she could do that.

That was what friends were for after all.

"Well nobody asked-" said Sho. Mob shook her head. Sho was going to be mean to Minegishi…and Mob knew why. Minegishi was Shimazaki's theyfriend. They were his theyfriend and he was their boyfriend and they were going to get married and have babies and stuff…and Mob knew that it must have hurt Sho. She had never been in love with someone who already had a boyfriend but she knew that it had hurt when Hatori had confessed to Minegishi…and they hadn't even felt the same way. Sho…he was being really good. He hadn't tried to hit Minegishi not once since they had started their relationship with Shimazaki and that…was good…

But still, poor Sho.

Poor Sho for being in love with someone who could never love him back, she knew that feeling, and poor Sho for getting punched in the arm. Not hard enough to hurt him. Shimazaki was a nice person and she couldn't ever imagine him hurting anyone…even though he always told stories where he hurt people….but he was nice. He was nice enough not to hit Sho for real even though Sho had been about to hurt his theyfriend and he was nice enough that he was still friends with Sho even though Sho was in love with his theyfriend…well if he knew…Minegishi said that he knew…and that everyone knew…and if they did know then….well…

Poor Sho….poor little brother…..

"That was for leaving yourself open…and for being mean to Toshi. I told you before not to do that." Said Shimazaki

"I wasn't being mean." Said Sho crossing his arms

"You were about to be. Don't try and lie, you're bad at it." Said Minegishi as they turned the page of their book. They didn't even look up…and they didn't have to, Sho knew what they had said, and so did Mob. Technically they hadn't said anything mean, they had just been telling the truth, but the truth…well it had come out kind of meanly. They were just tired, in a bad mood, because they hadn't been getting a lot of sleep…but they'd be back to normal eventually…everything would be back to normal eventually. Once Serizawa got settled…and he was getting more and more settled…he wasn't crying as much at night…and that was…progress.

Mob knew what she was doing.

She was being a good friend. She was going to be such a good friend that she was going to make Serizawa all better and then she was going to fix things with her friends so they could sleep and then be in better moods and…and she was going to make this a good birthday too…and that was the easiest thing on her to do list. She just had to give Shimazaki his present and he would be happy…it was always easy to make him happy…

She wished that everything could be that easy.

"Hey, how about we-" said Mob. She had been about to suggest that they all start eating. There was a big pile of pancakes already, one so big that it was in danger of tipping over, and she knew that all of those could not be for Shimazaki. He was thirty one years old today, and tradition said that you got a pancake for every year that you'd been alive for, but thirty one…that was a lot. There was no way that he could eat that many and he would end up sick if he tried to…but if he got sick then Mob could take care of him. That was what friends were for after all.

"Well you-" said Sho. He was ignoring her. That was….well he was ignoring her and she could either try and get his attention, which could end up putting him in a bad mood, or she could change the subject before the fight happened. She knew that a fight was happening soon, she knew her little brother and she knew her best friend, and she knew that the last thing that they needed right now was a fight. Birthdays were happy days and happy days did not end in fights. They were all friends here and friends were not meant to fight.

"Hey Minegishi, what's your book about?" asked Mob. Sometimes you had to change the subject…and this was one of those times. She knew Sho and she knew Minegishi and she knew that Minegishi was a lot less likely to get mad if she changed the subject. Not that they were happy right now, they weren't, but they weren't mad. The space where their eyebrows should have been was coming together and the plants on the windowsill were trying to run away….Minegishi wasn't in a good mood…but maybe they weren't mad at her…at least Mob hoped that they weren't mad at her.

"The tenacity of the human spirit." Said Minegishi not looking up. Mob had no idea what that was but…well she would like to know. It felt like it had been a million years, a billion years, a zillion years since she and Minegishi had talked to each other and stuff. Really talked. They had been…tired…and they were still tired…but maybe they were less tired now because they had just gotten up and Serizawa hadn't been that upset last night…he had been sleeping a lot better since she'd started sleeping in his room with him.

"Oh…is it good?" asked Mob. Minegishi loved to talk about books. It didn't seem like they did, it was hard to tell when they loved things, but she knew that they loved to talk about books. They'd be in a better mood once she got them talking about their book. Sho wasn't being mean to them now, he was back to playing hitting games with Shimazaki, and Shimazaki was there…and they loved him and…and this would be ok. They weren't mad at all, no, they were just tired.

"I'm reading it aren't I?" asked Minegishi. Mob waited for them to say something else…but they didn't. They just went back to reading…well they were pretending to read. She watched their eyes. She could see that their eyes were stuck in one place, not moving along the page, and that meant that they were just staring down at their book…like they didn't want to talk to her…

She didn't know what she would do if Minegishi didn't want to talk to her.

She knew that sometimes people just were not in the mood to talk. She knew that sometimes people just…weren't in good moods…and she knew that Minegishi wasn't in a good mood a lot of the time. Especially when they were tired. Especially when they hadn't been getting enough sleep. Especially when Sho was mean to them. They were in a bad mood and…and even when they were in a bad mood, when they had been before, they had still talked to her…and she didn't know what she would do if Minegishi stopped talking to her. She didn't know what she would do if Minegishi decided to stop being her friend….because friends were like family and…and family could leave…so that meant that friends could leave too….

And Mob couldn't let that happen.

"You are…um…are you…ok? You just seem grumpier than normal and…and if I did something or if there's something that I can do then…then I'll do it…to make you feel better." Said Mob. She didn't know what she had done, or hadn't done, or could have done to make mom stay…not that this was the same thing….but also it was and…and she could at least fix this. That was how she knew that this was different. She had to fix this. She had to fix this because….because she was a good friend. She was a good friend and she would do whatever it took to keep Minegishi as a friend and….and she didn't know what that was but….

But she would do anything.

"Mob…you have enough to do." Said Minegishi. They looked up when they said that…and she didn't know what they had meant. She didn't know what that look was. She didn't know why their aura was being like that. She didn't know…well she did sort of know…they were upset that she had decided that Serizawa was going to live with everyone but….but they had been upset about that all the way back when he had joined the house and…and well they hadn't gotten to know him…but maybe if they got to know him then they would like him…and then everyone would be friends…

That was all she wanted, really, was for everyone to be friends.

"No I don't, I can do a lot of things. I like to help. Are you….are you hungry maybe? I can help Shibata cook if you want me to. I'm good at it. My dad said so." Said Mob. Her eyes had danced around the room until they settled on something that she could help with. Something that she could do. Something that was easy. Helping to make pancakes was a lot easier than helping someone stop being scared of people, and leave his room, and make friends….pancakes. She could do that right now….and she knew that she was being sort of lazy but…

But she wanted to do something….easy.

Which made her a terrible friend, of course. She should have been doing more to bring her friends together. She would have done more…if she knew what she could have done. Serizawa was still scared of people, he could barely even make it to the bathroom without her leading him, but…well she couldn't give up. Friends never gave up on friends just like family never…almost never….gave up on family. But she wasn't his family, she was his friend, and she would never just leave him to wake up one morning and she would be gone. She wasn't that sort of person.

She was a better friend…person…than that….but she could also be sort of tired too…just a little bit.

"No, I don't need help, but thanks. I'm almost done here…but if you want to get Hatori for me then that'd be great." Said Shibata. Mob took a deep breath. Hatori….he was her friend and…and he hadn't said anything about what had happened so…so this would be ok and…and she could do this. Friends did not avoid friends even when they made idiots out of themselves to those friends…and stuff.

"S-sure…and I'll get Serizawa too. He might come out this morning." Said Mob. She didn't know why everyone was looking at each other for…and she didn't know what everyone's aura was being all…like that…for. She didn't get it at all. Maybe they just didn't believe that she was going to be able to get Serizawa to come out…because she had been trying and trying and trying for a while now….but she could try some more. That was what they said, right? If at first you don't succeed then try and try again?

That was a thing that people said.

Because it was the truth. When she had first started learning how to braid her hair she had made all kinds of knots but mom had let her try and try and try again, with her hair too, and then Mob had gotten it. The same went for tying her shoes and brushing Sho's hair and making dinner and doing laundry and all of the things that she took for granted. All of the things that she could do now, that came easy, she'd had to practice at. Friendship…was also something that she had to try at. Her other friends had just…been people that she had met and made friends with. It was more like they sort of dropped right there in front of her and stuff…and friendship had come so fast and….well not everything in life came fast and easy. There were things in life that you had to work at.

And that was alright.

"Hatori! Please come to the kitchen! There are pancakes!" said Mob. She knocked on his door and said what she had to say. Then she kept going. She knew that she had to work harder at not being embarrassed, at not worrying about what she had done, but she had a lot of things to worry about. She had to…well she had a lot of things to do….like getting Serizawa out of his room!

Yes, that was something very important.

Like Minegishi had said, before, he had a lot of problems. Not that he was crazy, like Minegishi had meant it, but just…being scared of people was a big problem. Mob used to be shy…and she kind of was when she was out in the world and stuff…but Serizawa was more than shy. He was actually scared and…well his powers didn't help matters. Actually they made it even worse because he exploded a lot….like she had done when she had been little…and that was something that she had to help him with. She had a lot to help him with.

She had so much to help him with that she didn't have time to fix what she had done…how she had messed up with Hatori.

She had to think about Serizawa. She had to figure out how to get him to become friends with everyone. They were all so nice, really, when you got to know them….and she had to figure out how to get Serizawa to come out of his room and just…get to know everyone. There had to be some way. There had to be some day. Maybe today was that day. Maybe today would be the day that he came out of his room…maybe.

She wouldn't know until she tried.

"Serizawa? I'm outside your door now…are you awake?" asked Mob. She knew that he was awake, she knew because of his aura. It didn't just feel awake, no, it was trying to stick to hers too. He always stuck to her like glue when he was awake. She didn't mind. Serizawa needed a friend and she was the first friend that he'd ever made, he'd said, so it made sense that he stuck to her.

"Miss Suzuki….good…good morning!" said Serizawa after a little bit. That was good. He was responding faster and he was speaking with more confidence too…well she hoped that it had been confidence….she would go with confidence.

"Good morning. Do you want to come out for breakfast? It's Shimazaki's birthday and we're having birthday pancakes….so do you want some?" asked Mob. She waited…and waited…and waited. His aura was bright and it was stuck to hers and…and maybe that hadn't been confidence he had been speaking with. Maybe he had just been scared again…probably….but…but she could help him! She had to!

"Do you…even like pancakes? I mean I can make you something if you don't like pancakes…um…well I mostly just know about making eggs…and I'll make you some if you want to come out today." Said Mob. That was how she got Sho to do things, with food, and also sometimes she got dad to do things by promising him food….but Serizawa her friend, not her family, so it might not work on him….but she had to try. That was what you did for your friends, you tried.

"I….don't think that it would be a good idea but…but thank you for inviting me." Said Serizawa. He was nice, at least, and….that was progress. He wasn't just saying 'no' and freaking out…so that was good. That was progress. Mob was making progress and…and that was good.

"You're welcome…and I'll come back to hang out after pancakes…and I'll save you some pancakes too. Also my little brother is here and you can meet him if you want. He likes games too and-" said Mob

"No! I mean…no thank you. I just…no thank you." Said Serizawa. Mob felt the house shake. She knew that she had to go now, She'd come back later but…but now she had to go. Well the best thing to do would have been to stay but…well her other friends needed her. Her other friends and her little brother. She just…she'd come back. She was a good friend and good friends came back. Good friends never stopped trying and good friends came back.

Good friends also celebrated their friend's birthdays with them.

So that was what she did. She didn't want to leave Serizawa but she also didn't want to leave Shimazaki all alone on his birthday….not that he would be all alone. No, he wouldn't be alone at all. He had his friends and his theyfriend but…well she was his friend too. She would hang out with Serizawa later but now…

Well now she had to give Shimazaki his birthday present.

"…seriously? Come on, it's my birthday." Said Shimazaki. Mob wondered what could have happened in the ten seconds that had passed since she had left. Shimazaki was sitting at the table with a massive stack of pancakes in front of him. It was so big that he had to use the big serving tray for when they had fancy meals. Not that they had a lot of fancy meals…and not that any meal that Shibata made wasn't fancy. That was just a lot of pancakes, that was all.

Mob hadn't counted them or anything, she didn't really want to since they weren't hers, but she assumed that there were thirty one there for Shimazaki.

She had thought that eleven was a lot…but thirty one was even more than eleven. That was…she counted on her fingers as she sat down….twenty more. That was twenty more than eleven and that was a lot. She wondered if he could even eat that many. There were other pancakes on a plate in the middle of the table. Mob put some on a plate with her powers as she sat down. Minegishi already had theirs and they passed her the fruit…which was good. That might have meant that they weren't mad at her anymore…if they had even been mad at her. She didn't know. She just wanted…well she wanted fruit…but she also wanted everyone to get along.

Especially on Shimazaki's birthday.

"Mob, back me up here. Isn't this my birthday?" asked Shimazaki. That was a weird question. Of course it was. What else would they have been celebrating today.

"Yes, it's October Twenty Fifth. It's easy to remember since my birthday is May Twenty Fifth and that's six months before yours." Said Mob. Spring to fall was half a year and half a year was six months so that was how she knew that she was right…even though based on Minegishi's aura she might have been wrong.

"Five months." Said Minegishi not looking up. Mob counted on her fingers and…right. May was five and October was ten….and she should have known that. Math was kind of hard. She hated working in her math book…which was why she hadn't in…she didn't know how long…or even where her math book was. Well she'd look for it later…but when dad wasn't around. She didn't want to sit through another one of his math lessons….because he was REALLY into math.

"Nobody asked you." Said Sho. No. Way too mean…and even a little bit mean was too mean…but he had been WAY too mean there.

"Sho, be nice." Said Mob. Bossy. She was being bossy and she knew it…and she knew that it hurt her little brother when she bossed him around…but she also knew that she couldn't just let him be mean to people. He wasn't a mean person, it was just the love that was making him like this. Love could make a person do the craziest things.

"Nobody asked me but I thought that, you know, maybe it was a good idea to make sure that you two could do some basic math." Said Minegishi. That also came out sort of mean but…well Minegishi was just that sort of person. The sort of person who could make stuff sound mean even when they weren't trying to be. They were just sleepy and stressed, that was all.

"You're right, Minegishi. Sorry….I'm not that good at math." Said Mob. It was hard to keep so many numbers in her head at once. Sometimes it felt like her head was slippery, even, just a little bit. Like if she wasn't thinking about stuff thoughts just sort of…slipped around and got lost and stuff. She wondered if everyone was like that…or if it was just her.

"Forget math, it's not important. Who needs math?" said Shimazaki. She was glad that dad wasn't around to here that. Sometimes, very rarely, he had breakfast here with Hatori. Shimazaki…well she hoped that he knew better than to say stuff like that around dad. He took math very seriously. He took everything very seriously but math especially. He had gone to university for it, which was like school but even harder, and also he loved math…and it was never a good idea to say bad things about the stuff that dad loved.

"People?" asked Mob. Dad had always said that math was the most important thing in the world. He said that once you understood math you could understand all the secrets of the universe. She wished that he would explain some of those secrets to her because there was no way that she could understand math. It was just too hard to keep all of those numbers and rules in her head. She could be kind of forgetful sometimes but dad said that it was her whole generation that was like that so she was ok. His generation was better at remembering things because they didn't have phones and computers had been much more complicated to use back then.

"Nobody!" said Sho. He banged his hands on the table as he said that and stood up in his chair. She stabilized the table so that he didn't make a mess. He wasn't supposed to do that at home and he wasn't supposed to do that here, either.

"Sho, stop it." Said Mob. She knew that she had been bossy but he had almost made a mess and she had to teach him good table manners. That was one of her many jobs and she had to do them right. Who else was going to teach Sho to eat at the table? Shibata let him put his feet up while he ate sometimes, Shimazaki liked to lick syrup off of his hands, Hatori was too scared to ever say anything, and Minegishi had a lot to be stressed about as it was.

"These are wonderful things you're teaching the children, Ryou." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. They seemed upset but…well they were tired and stressed. They weren't upset with Shimazaki because today was his birthday and you couldn't be upset with someone on their birthday.

"What's going on? Why are we mad at math?" asked Mob. She could understand being mad at math. It was really hard without a calculator. She wished that she could have been as good at math as dad was, his math had letters and stuff, but she hadn't gotten that from him. Mom hadn't been good at math either, she had said, so Mob must have gotten it from her.

"We're not mad at math we're mad at all of our friends…and Hatori's hiding under the sink, by the way." said Sho as he pointed to the space under the sink…and that was what all the cleaning products were doing on top of the counter. She'd have to put those away later. Shimazaki couldn't tell what was in bottles and stuff and he wasn't always careful when he was drunk or high, that was how he ended up putting orange juice in his cereal the other day, and she didn't know if he was drunk or high or just being weird today…but she didn't want him to poison himself on accident. She'd have to find a new place for those products, though, because she just…wasn't going to drag Hatori out from his latest hiding place.

"Can I have some pancakes? With warm syrup and butter?" asked Hatori. His voice came out from under the sink…and that was where he had been. She looked away from the sink. Now that she was aware of him she could feel his aura and…well things were just…still very awkward.

"No way! Pancakes are for people who want to celebrate my birthday and that's not you. Seriously. The only people who got me presents are Mob and Sho. These two kids have more-" said Shimazaki. She felt Hatori's aura jump. It jumped in the walls and the phone in her pocket and everywhere else that there was electricity…and she needed to tell Shimazaki to stop it…even though this was his birthday and on his birthday he should have been able to do whatever he wanted….but then again it did scare Hatori and…well they were friends. They were friends who were just a little bit…awkward right now. That was all.

"Ryou, shut up. You know what you're getting for your birthday." Said Minegishi looking down at their pancakes. They spread their fruit around and didn't look up even though Shimazaki's aura was focused on them.

"That thing I like?" asked Shimazaki with a tone that Mob hadn't heard him use before. She didn't know what it was but it made her whole back feel sort of shivery…and she didn't get it so she decided to leave it alone.

"Yes." said Minegishi not looking up from their pancakes.

"All the things I like?" asked Shimazaki. He raised his eyebrows so high that she worried that they would end up getting stuck like that….which was a thing that happened. Dad had said so and mom agreed so it must have been true.

"Don't push it." Said Minegishi. They frowned but Shimazaki smiled. He smiled and then Sho frowned. He frowned at Shimazaki and Minegishi…and she didn't get it. He knew that they were a couple and she knew that it must have hurt him but…well there was nothing that either of them could do about that…not that there was even anything to do.

"What things? I can get things." said Sho. Mob didn't know what he said wrong, and he had said something wrong. She could tell by the looks Shibata and Minegishi gave him and also by their auras…but she had no idea what he could have said wrong. Sho was his best friend, and in love with him, so of course he would get Shimazaki all the things that he liked.

"ANYWAY, Shimazaki, I just made you thirty one pancakes. That's presents enough for you." Said Shibata. Mob…well that was a lot of pancakes but…well she and Sho got presents from everyone but…they were kids. Shimazaki was an adult…well he was an adult that acted like a kid…but everyone loved presents. Even dad and he didn't love anything but her…well her and taking over the world…and breakfast…and videogames even though he would never admit to that last one.

"But I want a sweater with love in the stitches." Said Shimazaki. Mob nodded. She understood that. Shibata's sweaters were the best sweaters in the world. They may have been itchy, and way too big, and also the sleeves were uneven but…well they were still the best sweaters in the entire world.

"You get pancakes." Said Shibata with a tone that she didn't usually hear from him. She got the feeling that he was mad…and she didn't understand why. Shimazaki was being way less annoying than normal. Minegishi hadn't cursed at him once.

"Fine…but what did Hatori get me, then?" asked Shimazaki. Mob looked around the table. Hers was the only gift there….and that was sort of sad…but Shibata had a point. All of those pancakes was presents enough and Sho had done a tattoo for him, and it was a good one too, so…well he was older too….but that was a mean way to think about her friend.

"I didn't-" said Hatori. Mob wanted to tell him to come out of the cabinet under the sink so she could understand him better…but also he would be out of the cabinet and she didn't know if she could sit at a table with him….but also it couldn't be good for him to have folded himself into such a small space. She wanted to tell him…something…but she didn't know what and she didn't have the chance to even figure out what.

"His presence is presence enough." Said Shibata. He had a tone there, and a look, and he was pointing the spatula he had been washing at Shimazaki. She understood the tone and the pointing but she didn't understand why he would give Shimazaki looks. He didn't noticed looks unless he was really focused on you and he wasn't focused on Shibata, how could he be? Minegishi was in the room and they were in love. They were in love and whenever they were in the same room Shimazaki's aura was always stuck to Minegishi's. Mob hoped that when she got a boyfriend he kept his aura stuck to hers and her aura got stuck to his.

"Ryou, shut up and eat your pancakes, you man child." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't know exactly what a man child was but if it was what it sounded like, an adult who acted like a kid, then that was Shimazaki. He was licking syrup off of his fingers now like Sho did…and he acted like a kid most of the time…and she didn't know why Minegishi complained about him acting like a kid. They loved him and when you loved people you accepted every single part of them. Like how she accepted Hatori even if he was a cannibal…well wanted to be one.

"Hey, it's my birthday. If I want to be a man child today then I can be…and I am not being a man child. Notice how I didn't mention the new guy once." Said Shimazaki. Mob was glad for that. Serizawa wasn't ready for birthdays yet. Maybe he would be ready by the time it came to being Sho's birthday…or maybe she could invite him to dad's birthday…well Fukuda had a birthday before dad's but…well Fukuda didn't want her to throw him a birthday party…and she was probably going to be very busy that day as she was most days.

"Lovely. Now eat your pancakes." Said Minegishi. They rolled their eyes, there, and Mob worried. It looked like it had hurt from how hard they were rolling them…and also she didn't get what they had been rolling their eyes for. She didn't really understand eye rolling. Maybe Minori could explain it to her, she did it a lot, but she would of course run anything that Minori had told her by Minegishi…when they were in a better mood.

"Shimazaki can eat when he feels like it." Said Sho. He gave Minegishi a look and they gave him one right back…and Mob had no idea what those looks were about but she assumed that it was something mean. She knew that Sho was in love with Shimazaki, and she knew that Minegishi knew that Sho was in love with Shimazaki, and she knew that jealousy could make people do bad things but…well she should not have been letting him talk to her best friend like that.

"Sho, be nice." Said Mob. She didn't like talking to her little brother like that, he felt like he had been calling her bossy for their entire lives, but she couldn't just let him sit there and be mean to Minegishi. They were stressed and tired and stuff….and also…well also she was supposed to be teaching him how to be a good person and good people were nice to one another.

"No, he's ok…and he's right. I'll eat when I feel like eating…and I feel like eating after I open Mob's gift. Mob, pass it over." Said Shimazaki doing the 'gimme gimme' gesture with his hands. Sho was giving her a look and…well she didn't get it…but then again she didn't get a lot of things about Sho.

"Here…I hope you like it." Said Mob as she used her powers to pass him his gift bag. She moved his plate to the side but was careful not to drag the fancy serving platter against the table because he hated the sound that plates made when they dragged across tables and this was his birthday and on his birthday he shouldn't have had to hear things that he didn't like.

"It's a…bag…a glossy one." said Shimazaki as he dragged his fingers across the bag. Sho was giving her a look and his aura was focused on her…and she hoped that he wasn't mad or thinking thoughts that weren't true…like she liked Shimazaki. She would never like him like that, first of all, and second of all she would never like the same boy, well man, that her little brother liked. That just wasn't a good thing for siblings to do. She would have done the same if Sho had been her sister instead of her brother. You didn't do that to siblings.

"You have to look inside." Said Mob as Shimazaki dragged his hands on the outside of the bag. It was blue and it said 'happy birthday' even though he couldn't read it. He liked the words, though, they were glittery and the bag was glossy….and maybe she should have gotten him something else. He really into touching that bag and…well maybe she should have gotten him something else that he liked…like maybe an economy size box of chocolate pudding…or maybe a bottle of cologne to replace the one that broke…or a blanket made out of the clothes that Minegishi didn't like so much but wore anyway and enough times so that they smelled like them. Something that he liked.

"Shimazaki can do whatever he wants." Said Sho. Mob frowned. She needed to talk to Sho later. About his attitude and about the tattoo that Shimazaki had on the underside of his arm. Sho had done that. It wasn't as nice as his other ones. Also it was a dog and Shimazaki didn't have any dogs on him. She was glad that Shimazaki trusted Sho that much…but also she didn't want Sho to do stuff like that.

"No, no, she's right…and let me see….I feel…well I smell…did you grow this?" asked Shimazaki as he pulled out the gallon bag full of flower. That was what the green stuff was called. It didn't look like flower until you ground it up but she didn't name things. She didn't care what it was called, she just wanted Shimazaki to like it.

"No…but there's more in the bag if you don't like that. Coke and mushrooms and cartridges and stuff…and if you don't like any of that then there's still the big party that I'm throwing you…well dad made me take a lot of stuff out but…well it's still your party." Said Mob. She was being stared at. Sho was staring at her…and his aura was all pointy and mad. Minegishi was staring at her…and their aura was all pulled into the ceiling plants behind them…and their mouth was wide opened too. Shibata was staring at her, the dishes he had been doing were abandoned, and he was opened and closing his eyes a lot. Even Hatori had stuck his head out from under the sink…but Mob wasn't paying attention to what he was doing.

"Big sis…why'd you have to do this?" asked Sho. There was something in his voice…that sounded like hurt…and something in his aura too…that felt like hurt…and she had no idea what all of this hurt was about. She hadn't done that bad a job at getting Shimazaki his birthday presents…right?

"Yeah…how did you even do this?" asked Shibata. He was staring at Shimazaki now. Shimazaki didn't seem to know or care that he was being stared at. He felt the bag with the coke in it, she hoped that this was the right kind it was more beige than white, and then opened it and stuck his finger in it. Hatori made the yelping sound he did when he was scared and slammed the cabinet door shut behind him. Sho had his head down on the table and he was hiding his face…and she'd have to see what he was so upset about later….and Minegishi…well now they were…mad?

Yes. That was what it felt like when they were mad.

They got madder, still, when Shimazaki stuck his finger in his mouth after it had been in the bag of coke. She didn't get it, he had said that this wasn't for eating, but she didn't question him. Either this was a Shimazaki thing that made no sense or this was a coke thing that she didn't know about. She hoped that this was the right kind, and that she had gotten him enough, and also…maybe…that Minegishi would let him share. She'd been on top of the world, it felt like, when he had let her do that after the big party last year. Her powers had listened to her and the world was…well it had ben fast and slow at the same time…and then it had been good until it wasn't…and it was fun…

For her, not Sho.

Nope. Not for Sho. He was too little, he didn't need to control his powers like that, and he didn't need the energy that coke gave you. He didn't even need the energy that coke the soda gave you. Nope. Sho had more than enough control and energy…even now. He had his head down on the table, and he was getting syrup in his hair, and he seemed so sad and tired…and she had no idea why. Sho had a lot of feeling in him, like dad did, only unlike dad Sho didn't try to hide them. Sho felt what he felt and when he felt something very strongly he had to act on it…and she just wished that he would explain himself before he did stuff like this. She knew that she had done something wrong by him but…well she had no idea what…

And she got the feeling that he wouldn't tell her even if she asked.

"Yes Mob, please tell me how you even managed to…Ryou, stop that! You're going to make yourself sick and then I'm going to have to deal with it." Said Minegishi. Mob…had no idea what they were so mad about. They loved coke, Shimazaki had said so, and they loved to do…more than kissing stuff…on coke too. Shimazaki had also told her that…and he could be very talkative sometimes…and that was ok because he was her friend but…she could have lived a long time without knowing that sort of stuff about Minegishi. Still, though, they liked coke and they liked smoking and Mob had no idea what the mushrooms were for but she knew that they liked mushrooms on pizza so, of course, they would like those.

"Toshi, taste this and tell me if it tastes like talc…because it kind of smells like talc…and also give me a credit card or a library card or a playing card or a key or something." Said Shimazaki. He was spreading some of that on the table…and Mob got the feeling that Shibata wanted to kill him. Yes, she was struck by the feeling, as Shibata's muscles started to get all bulgy, that he wanted to kill Shimazaki…and she didn't get why. She knew that Shibata hated it when he made a mess but it wasn't like Shimazaki wasn't going to clean up after himself, it would all be up his nose in a minute, and he would share with everyone…minus Sho…too. He was a good sharer like that.

"Ryou….if you taste talcum powder then why in the hell are you going to snort it?" asked Minegishi with their head in their hands. They laughed a little bit, there, but not a ha-ha laugh. More like a…well Mob had never heard them laugh like that before….but she didn't much like that sound at all.

"Because I like coke." Said Shimazaki. Mob had no idea what talcum powder was but if Shimazaki liked it then…well she had no idea what Minegishi was getting all upset about and stuff…and she also had no idea why Shibata looked like he was trying to stop himself from beating Shimazaki up…or at least strangling him like the yellow people did on that weird TV show.

"No! Not in front of the kids! Go do that…somewhere else! Not in front of the kids!" said Shibata. He didn't beat Shimazaki up or even strangle him. He did, however, throw a frying pan at him. Mob caught it, and the dirty water it flung around too, and put it all back in the sink where it belonged.

"What? It's better they learn about this stuff when they're young…or do you want them to overdo it and end up dead when they grow up?" asked Shimazaki. Mob didn't know if he could tell but what he just said seemed to make Shibata even madder…and maybe, since they had so much flower, they could start a circle so everyone calmed down. She felt her pockets…she had her pipe with her. That was good…well not her good pipe…but a pipe was a pipe and right now that was what they needed…if she could ever get a word in edgewise.

"Hey, why don't we-" said Mob. She was ignored. Sho looked up to give her a look but that was it…and if anyone at that table needed circle time it was him.

"I want you to not snort coke at the table…and what about your breakfast? I just made you thirty one pancakes and you said that you were going to eat thirty one pancakes so get to it…and don't give me some bullshit, sorry kids, about how you'll still be able to eat. You won't be able to." Said Shibata. Mob nodded. That was all the more reason to start a circle. Good. Shibata was on her side. That was two votes for circle…well three because Sho loved circle time even though she was supposed to be teaching him moderation…but Minegishi might have been too mad. They were still so mad…and she had no idea how to make this any better…well besides saying sorry…even though she had no idea what she had done wrong.

"Wow, you know I am learning new shit about you every day." Said Shimazaki leaning back in his chair…which may not have been the best idea because he was closer to Shibata and he still looked like he wanted to kill Shimazaki with his own two hands. Mob tipped Shimazaki's chair back to normal. She didn't want his birthday to end in a fight. Then he would have to see Fukuda and they didn't get along at all.

"I had a life before this, that's all that I'm going to say…and what did I just say about doing that in front of the kids!?" said Shibata. He banged his hand on the counter there. The water in the sink jumped out but Mob caught it and put it back. She wished that she had done something to protect the counter…now there was a big dent in it…and also maybe she should have done something to protect Hatori too. As soon as Shibata did that he ran out really fast…and now she would have to fix that too….or maybe not. One thing at a time…but he was scared…but she had this to deal with. At least Serizawa wasn't any more scared than normal…though she would have to deal with that too.

"Oh come on, stop babying them. I was about twelve or thirteen when I first started-" said Shimazaki. Minegishi gave him a look that Mob was sure that even he could see. Sho…he was so sad that he had nothing to say to that…and she had no idea what he was so sad about in the first place!

"And Mob is eleven. She's eleven and she went to your dealer to get…how much is even….and how much did this even cost and just…why?" asked Minegishi. That question, well all of them, must have been directed at her…and she didn't know why Minegishi was getting like this. It wasn't like she had done any of the coke or anything. She had just done something nice for one of her very best friends. Why was that being treated like such a bad thing?

"It costed all the money in my purse…and I just sort of remembered where Shimazaki took me the last time we bought stuff together when we did coke after the party…and also I did this because it's his birthday. That's all there is, there isn't anymore…and I don't know what everyone is so upset about." Said Mob. She wished that there was some kind of instruction manual or something when it came to this….because she was more lost now than she could ever remember being in her entire life. This was just…everyone needed to explain themselves…and she wished that she was dad. He just asked people, well ordered people, to explain themselves and then they did…but she was not bossy like dad…she was just…Mob…

She was Mob and she felt like she had royally f-worded up.

"Wait…you bought stuff with Shimazaki…and you went somewhere with him?" asked Sho. There was something in his voice like he was choking and…oh! She got it! He thought that she liked Shimazaki…well he had thought that for a while….and she didn't know why he even cared. He had a girlfriend and Shimazaki had a theyfriend and also Sho knew that he was way too young to be with Shimazaki and….this whole thing was just way too much!

"Yes but just as friends so don't get upset…well you can but remember that me and Shimazaki are just friends, ok?" asked Mob. She may have said something wrong there….but she didn't know what…but that was normal for her. She knew that she had said something wrong because Sho's whole face had turned white, like he had turned into a ghost, and his aura was so bright and it flared so hard that Shimazaki covered his ears.

And then he ran away.

"I'm going home!" said Sho as he ran from the table.

"Wait, come back! You're the most fun person here right now!" said Shimazaki before he teleported away. Now it was just her and Shibata and Minegishi in the kitchen. Shibata looked at the table, and then at the sink, and then down at his apron before he took it off. He took it off and tossed it over the chair and sighed.

"Guys…I love you both….but I need a personal day. Mob…tell your dad that I'm using one of my personal days." Said Shibata before he walked out of the kitchen…and she had no idea what that was about. Now it was just her and Minegishi…and even as mad as they were they would still explain all of this to her. They were her best friend, that was what the bracelets were for, and also the years of friendship. They had told her a million times before that they got mad sometimes but not at her, never at her, even though sometimes it felt like they were mad at her.

Like now.

"Minegishi…what did I do? Everyone just got all…mad…all of a sudden." Said Mob. She looked over at them and held her bracelet in her hand. They looked at her, touched their bracelet, and sighed. It was like a big heaviness had come off of them. They got all relaxed and even their aura seemed less mad…and that…that was good. At least something was going right.

"Mob….don't buy drugs. That's what you did. You bought a lot of drugs….don't be a hypocrite Toshiki….you just…alright. I am upset because you put yourself in a lot of danger buying all of those drugs and holding onto them. We do a lot of illegal shit in Claw and, yeah, let's not break too many laws at once. Shibata is upset because Ryou can be kind of an asshole sometimes. Your brother is upset because you not only gave the guy he has a crush on a very extravagant gift but…well you just sort of outed him to the entire house…I mean he's pretty much in a glass closet but…yeah. Just…let everyone calm down, ok? You meant well but…maybe run things by me first, alright?" asked Minegishi. Mob nodded. She…well she didn't see what was wrong with giving extravagant gifts…and that didn't seem so extravagant. Extravagant was like getting someone a basket of puppies or something. Still, in the future she would ask Minegishi about presents….and also she had to say sorry to Sho because now that she thought about it she had been sort of clueless…and also she had to explain to Serizawa, too, what happened because his aura was all upset like usual….

After breakfast.

Because she was hungry. She was hungry and she was tired, even though it was early, and she just…wanted to eat some of these cold pancakes. Then she could deal with everyone and everything. Then she could just…figure out what to do and…well Serizawa would come first because he was closest…and then Sho….and then…well breakfast first. That was a lot to do on an empty stomach….and it would have been a shame to let all thirty of those pancakes, maybe more she wasn't counting, go to waste.

Someone had to eat them and she was there so….

"Ok…um…do you want to have breakfast with me?" asked Mob. She didn't want to eat alone. She wanted to eat with her best friend and she wanted…well she wanted at least one thing to be ok…and this was that thing. She knew that it was dumb to feel like this but she just…felt like maybe if she ate breakfast with Minegishi then at least things would be ok with one of her friends…not that things weren't ok between them already but…well things could always stand to be more ok.

"Sure thing Mob, whatever you want." Said Minegishi. They cut into their pancakes, then, and Mob waited for them to take a bite before she went ahead with hers…and these were very god. Of course they were good, they were birthday pancakes and those were the best pancakes….and it was a shame that Shimazaki had left but…well he'd come back…maybe…because it was his birthday and birthdays were important.

And also he had thirty one pancakes waiting for him.


	428. Rooftop Hotpot Goldfish Feelings

Shimazaki Ryou did not like sad people.

Especially not on his birthday. Sad people were boring and he didn't do boring. Boring made you stop and when you stopped then it was like you could feel time passing. Like every single second that passed was like…an hour…or something. Or a day. Time felt weird, that was the point. Time felt weird and also when someone was sad it was like…you had to fix it…and fixing sad people wasn't easy. It depended on the person. If Toshi were sad then he would have held them and kissed them and brought them something to drink and done whatever else they needed him to do to make them better. Because he knew them and he loved them and stuff.

He loved Sho too.

But Sho was a thousand times harder to deal with. He was a moody kid. He was moodier than Shimazaki had ever known himself or anyone else to be. Well aside from Toshi. Toshi could be very moody sometimes…all the times lately…but he could deal with Toshi's moodiness. Sho's moodiness was…a whole other thing. A whole thing that he had no idea what he was supposed to do with. So he didn't do anything with it. He just let it run its course. Sho would get over him, eventually and then things would go back to normal between them.

That would happen eventually.

Today was not that day, today was not a part of that eventually, and that was fine. Today was his birthday, anyway, and he didn't want to deal with anything today. He just wanted to have fun, which included getting into all of what Mob had gotten him, and he couldn't have fun when Sho was being all moody and shit like he was now. If he had to choose one person to have with him at his birthday…well Toshi…but his second choice would have been Sho. He was just…fun. He was a fun kid but not when he was being like this.

But that was alright. Shimazaki could fix this…as best as he could.

"So…we're hiding on the roof today. I can do that." Said Shimazaki as he teleported up on the roof beside Sho. Sho had managed to make his way up here…well not managed because the kid could fly…but still. This was one hell of a place to end up. He could feel the sun on his skin and the wind in his hair. It was turning cold now. He hoped they moved on before the snow started falling. Toshi hated snow…and the cold…and also him right now, maybe.

He had no idea.

He had no idea how Toshi felt about him right now but he could worry about that later. He had to worry about Sho now. He had to worry about how Sho was sitting up there on the roof of his house with his knees drawn up to his chest and what sounded like little sobs…poor kid. He needed to fix this…or at least make it better…and this was a lot. This was a lot on his birthday of all days but…well he could do that.

Sho was worth it….even if he could be kind of a lot sometimes…but that was ok because Shimazaki knew that he was a lot too.

"I'm not hiding….I just needed…air." Said Sho. He knew that he had said something really stupid. He knew that if he'd had time he could have said something better. He knew that he should have told Shimazaki to get the hell away from him so he would have time to think something up…or something. He didn't know. He just knew that he wanted to be alone.

He hated the way he felt right now.

He hated the way that his stomach felt like there was a goldfish in it. He hated how the goldfish was trying to swing through his stomach walls and out of his bellybutton. He hated the way his heart was beating way too hard, too fast, and he didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. He didn't know if he was going to die or live or…or if he was making too big of a deal out of this. He knew that this way…the way he felt…he should not have felt this way…any of the ways he felt. He had been trying to fall out of love with Shimazaki….

And it hadn't worked. If anything it had gotten worse.

"Well there's plenty of air up here. When you get sick of it then come downstairs. There's pancakes and I know that you love pancakes." Said Shimazaki. There was also a lot of coke…which Sho could not have. For the good of humanity. Kid was wired enough as it was…and maybe nothing in the psychedelic family for him either considered the terrible headspace he was always in…and also maybe don't get him stoned since Toshi was already in a bad enough mood…

He'd figure out something.

Something better than sitting up here on this roof feeling the breeze. The cold breeze. Well colder than normal. Not truly cold, not yet, but colder than in the summertime. He really should have gone inside. Toshi was…well he was always worried about Toshi…but he had this kid to worry about. He had to worry about Sho and how he felt and…well this was a lot of worrying about people. A lot more worrying than he had ever planned on doing in his life.

He'd deal with this, too, eventually.

"I'm fine. You go on ahead." Said Sho with a wave of his hand. He knew that Shimazaki could hear him and sense him. He knew that Shimazaki knew that he wanted to be alone…and he knew that Shimazaki probably could tell, too, that he didn't want to be alone. That he loved it when he was near. That he always wanted to be near him no matter what. That he…well he knew that Shimazaki must have been able to tell a lot. Sho…he didn't know why he had gotten so upset. He knew that big sis didn't like Shimazaki like that…

But she had gotten him a really cool present.

Sho didn't fully know what all of that was but he knew that it was stuff that Shimazaki liked. He knew that it was stuff that he liked and that big sis knew about…and he didn't. He was Shimazaki's best friend. Shimazaki had told him a million times before that they were best friends…but best friends were supposed to know everything about each other. Best friends, also, should have gone on adventures together. He knew that big sis and Shimazaki had gone on an adventure last year and…and he knew that he had been too busy with…stuff…but he just…he didn't know what had happened and now….well now he didn't really know but…but he knew that big sis and Shimazaki went on adventures and…and it just…

Made him want to cry…and break things…and run away…all at the same time.

"What? Come on, kid, I know you. You love pancakes." Said Shimazaki. He knew that this wasn't about pancakes. He knew that this was about feelings that they would both rather the kid not have at all. He knew that the kid was going through a lot. He knew that it would only get worse…but he also knew that it would get better. Maybe if he didn't say anything…or said something…or just…something. He didn't know. Toshi wanted him to reach into the kid's chest and rip his heart out. He didn't want to do that. Then Sho could be all sad and boring.

Like now only a thousand times worse.

Shimazaki knew what heartbreak felt like. He was thirty one and unless you lived like the new guy you were going to know what heartbreak felt like. Sometimes people left you, sometimes they died, and sometimes you never had them in the first place. No matter what happened it hurt. He didn't want to put Sho through that. He'd get all sad and boring…and also Shimazaki would have been the one responsible for making him feel like that…and he didn't want to be responsible for that.

He didn't like responsibility at all.

"I…don't feel like it…alright!" said Sho. He knew that his aura must have been loud there. It had been bright and he knew that if his aura was bright it was loud…and he knew that he had been sort of a jerk there…but he wanted to be alone. That was why he had climbed all the way up here. Well he knew that Shimazaki could have followed him, he could teleport, he was mostly hiding from big sis…not that he didn't love her and stuff like that, he did, he just…couldn't believe that she had said that. She had practically told everyone that he was in love with Shimazaki.

Not that he would ever betray him like that.

He knew her and he knew that she wasn't a betrayer…well he knew Fukuda too and Fukuda had betrayed him…but Fukuda had been trying to keep him safe. Also Fukuda would never have told a secret like this. This was his biggest secret and if Fukuda knew better than to go and tell people, and he was a big secret teller, then of course big sis knew to keep her mouth shut. She hadn't meant anything by it and that was why he had gone away from her. He had gone far away from her and…and this was for the best. That was…it had been…if he had stayed then he could have ended up saying something mean to her and she….she was his sister and he loved her….

And he knew that she hadn't almost betrayed him on purpose.

"Why not?" asked Shimazaki with a sigh. Yup. This was going to be one of those moody Sho days. He wondered if he'd had days like this when he'd been a kid. Well he had been pretty moody…but he'd fixed that as soon as he'd discovered the joys of better living through chemistry. He knew that maybe all of that didn't agree with Sho. Somehow even when he smoked he got even more…well…moody. God, he couldn't wait until Sho got over him. There was a million other guys out there and, yes, Shimazaki knew that he had it going on…but so did a lot of other people and Sho needed to get into one of them…not that Shimazaki was going to pick him up and shake him and tell him to get over all of this already.

Because that would have just been stupid.

He liked Sho. Not in the way that Sho liked him, of course, because that would have been wrong even by his standards, but he did like him. This was his favorite person in the whole world next to Toshi and the second person he wanted to spend his birthday with. Toshi birthday times would come later. Right now it was Sho birthday times and he was going to have a good birthday even if it killed the both of them! Actually that would be kind of convenient for the tombstone writers. Here lies Shimazaki Ryou. Born October twenty-fifth and died October twenty-fifth.

"Because…of…reasons." Said Sho as he played with his shoelace. He could feel Shimazaki looking at him. He could feel Shimazaki and he knew that he was being looked at and he just…he wanted to jump off of that roof. He wanted to jump off of that roof and run away and then defect and then nobody would ever see him again…but he didn't do that because it was stupid. It would have been a stupid thing to do, running away, and trying to defect. Nobody defected from Claw, first of all, and second of all it would have made big sis made if he had ran away…and third of all Shimazaki was his best friend and he wasn't going to ruin his best friend's birthday.

"Such as?" asked Shimazaki raising his eyebrow. He made sure that he was facing Sho. He was being ridiculous. Did Sho really not realize that Shimazaki knew how he felt? Did he really think that it was some big secret? Shimazaki knew. He knew. The whole house knew. It didn't matter. He knew that no matter how Sho felt about him it wouldn't change the outcome.

"Reasons!" said Sho. He reached over and slapped Shimazaki on the chest. Well he tried to, anyway, he just ended up hitting Shimazaki's barrier. Shimazaki laughed, too, and that was worse than hitting his barrier. Hitting his barrier was better than hitting him…even though he had wanted to hit him…bit hitting him was just…it wasn't like hitting other people and…and Sho crossed his arms before he could do it again and then get even weirder than he was now. He didn't know why he had to be so weird all the time…he wished that there was some way to stop it but…but there was no way to make it stop.

He had tried, before, to fall out of love…and it hadn't worked…so maybe he should have tried harder…or maybe not tried so hard.

He was still figuring it out. All of it. He didn't know why he felt like this still. He knew that Shimazaki was the coolest guy in the world, and that he was fun, and that he was nicer to Sho than any other person had ever been in his entire life but…but he didn't know why he had to feel like this about him. He didn't know why he couldn't just make himself stop. Shimazaki was a friend, his best friend, and that was it. He wished that Shimazaki had hated his guts. Maybe then he could have fallen out of love with him….

But he also didn't want Shimazaki to hate his guts…it was so….he just….this whole thing sucked really bad!

"Reasonable reasons?" asked Shimazaki with a laugh. He could feel the kid getting more and more pissed off…but it was a good change of pace from the kid sitting up there on the roof brooding. He didn't know how someone as small and as fun as he was could have brooded just so much. How he could have been so boring sometimes. Moody. God, this was not a good start to his birthday but, hey, there was time…and the kid was getting better at least.

Simmering rage totally counted as getting better!

"Yes! Reasonable reasons!" said Sho as he jumped to his feet. The roof was slanted here. The roof was slanted and he felt himself slipping a little….and then Shimazaki caught him. Shimazaki caught him around his stomach and…and now the goldfish in his stomach felt like it was cooking. Like his stomach had turned into hot pot. Like he had drank an entire hot pot, the good kind with the spicy broth, and now inside of him there was a cooking and boiling goldfish. Shimazaki didn't hang onto him for too long, just long enough to get him sitting down again, but it was still just…the stupid spicy broth in his stomach was still boiling…and what was worse the stupid goldfish in his stomach….

Liked it!

The stupid goldfish had liked it. The stupid goldfish in his stupid stomach wanted to be boiled. The stupid goldfish in his stomach wanted to be boiled alive in hotpot…or maybe Sho just…maybe he just wanted to go to hotpot. Maybe that was it. Maybe the stupid feeling in his stomach was just him wanting to fill his stomach with hotpot…and also goldfish…because he was just that much of a weirdo….

Or something.

"The most reasonable of reasons?" asked Shimazaki letting the kid go. Well that was…a lot of things that he was not going to get into. The kid could feel however he felt like feeling. He could feel whatever he wanted and Shimazaki was not going to get into all of this with him. Right now he had to figure out how to get the kid to knock off this broody and moody act.

"Yes, the most reasonable reasons!" said Sho. He almost got up, he debated getting up. If he got up then Shimazaki would have caught him again but if he didn't get up then the weird hotpot feeling in his stomach would go away. He decided not to get up…well the choice was made for him. Shimazaki reached over, pulled him close, and flicked him over the head.

"And those are?" asked Shimazaki as he knocked some sense into Sho. As lightly as possible of course. He didn't need to go and send Sho to that healer. Shimazaki did not want to deal with that guy on his birthday. He would much rather have felt with Sho at his moodiest and mot lovesick than have to spend any length of time with that asshole.

"I…..I don't know why you need to know! Why are you being so nosy?!" said Sho. Sho didn't have time to think up a whole list of reasonable reasons. He didn't have time to think up reasonable or even non reasonable reasons. The only reasons he could think up were the kind that weren't very reasonable at all. What was he supposed to do? Tell Shimazaki that he felt like he had a hotpot goldfish in his stomach and he didn't know what it was but he knew that it was some weird thing that he should not have been feeling in the first place.

"Because it's my birthday and I can't stand sad people on any day let alone my birthday…and also I'm worried as hell about you." Said Shimazaki. He flicked Sho on the head again for good measure. He was worried about the kid so he said it. It felt weird to say it…or maybe it felt weird feeling this. Caring about someone else. First Toshi and now Sho…in different ways of course…even though Sho wanted it to be in the same way.

"Well don't be. I don't need you or anyone else to be worried about me…so knock it off." Said Sho. He kicked Shimazaki just a little bit. Just enough so that Shimazaki knew that he was pissed off but not so much that Shimazaki got pissed off at him. He didn't know what he would do if Shimazaki was pissed off at him…well be alone…and he had wanted that…but now also he didn't want that and…and this whole thing was way too complicated!

"Nope, I can't do that. You're my favorite person, you know, and I can't just leave you up here to brood just because you got a little jealous." Said Shimazaki. Maybe he should just get to what all of this was about. He was getting tired of the constant cycle of the kid getting upset and then him reassuring him and then things getting back to whatever passed for normal before the cycle started again. Maybe he should just tell the kid that he knew how he felt…and maybe it would be like ripping out stitches…or something.

Painful and unpleasant but something that had to be done.

"I…what…I mean I'm not…I'm not jealous!" said Sho. He closed his eyes and shook his head. Shimazaki….how could he….did he….did he KNOW?! Did…had he figured it out! No…no! There was no way in hell that Shimazaki figured it out! He had always been so careful….well he had told Shimazaki that he loved him….but that was…Shimazaki thought that it was friend love! Not kiss me and hold my hand and be my boyfriend and let me stare at your tattoos all day love! Shimazaki….he couldn't know but….but now he was acting like he knew and…and this was just…

Sho wondered if he would survive jumping off of this roof.

"You are, I know that you are, and that's ok. There's nothing wrong with the way you feel and I've told you a thousand times before that you're my best friend. Ok? Nobody in the world with take your spot as my best friend…so stop worrying and shit. Ok? Your sister got me a great present, and I know that's what set you off, but you know what? Your present is permanently etched into my skin, alright? So how about you and me go downstairs, eat some pancakes, and then find some fun?" asked Shimazaki. There. He had said what needed to be said and now they could go out and find something fun to do. That was all. That was all that had to be said and now he had said it. There. Now it was all done with.

And now he could tell Toshi that he'd handled it.

"What…what kind of fun?" asked Sho. He didn't know what to do. If he jumped off the roof then he would have just ended up hurting himself….and then also he would feel the hotpot goldfish feeling again if Shimazaki caught him…and he would catch him. He was…he didn't know what he felt and…and he didn't know what Shimazaki thought but…but he thought that it had to do with friend jealousy, not love jealousy, so maybe the best thing to do was never to talk about this again.

"Want to walk down the street and take turns hitting people with my blind guy stick? And then we can pet some animals at the pet store until they tell us to stop? Even though they shouldn't because it is a pet store, pet is in the name after all." said Shimazaki. He wanted to do enough coke to break his brain and he wanted to make some mushroom tea, maybe at the same time so they could fight it out, and he wanted to get into bed with Toshi and then they would do the stuff that Toshi did on his birthday…and when they were in the mood for it….and also just for no reason sometimes…but he also wanted to spend time with Sho. Sho was a kid and he was fun and also Toshi wanted some space from him so…yeah.

Time to go and pet some animals and then hit people with his cane when they tried to tell him to knock it off.

"I know, right? Why do they call it a pet store if they don't want us petting the animals?" asked Sho. He laughed when he said that even though he didn't fully feel like laughing. He felt like…like he wanted to be alone but also like he wanted to be with Shimazaki…and also like he was getting kind of hungry. But he didn't want to go back to the table though, no, he didn't want to sit there with big sis and all the others. Big sis would ask him what was wrong and then Shibata would pick him up and rock him like a baby and Minegishi would just be a bitch bastard like usual…and he didn't want to have to deal with all of that. He didn't want to have to deal with those feelings and…and also he was Shimazaki's favorite person and….and he didn't want to think about all of that either so…so he was going to think about petting animals instead.

"I don't fucking know but I do know that it's my birthday so come on. Let's have pancakes and find fun. We can't eat all of the pancakes so maybe we can cover them in syrup and then stick them to people." Said Shimazaki. The idea came to him as he spoke. Sticking pancakes to people and then letting the birds peck them to death. Yeah…that would be fun. The kind of fun that he couldn't have with Toshi since Toshi apparently thought that he was a man child.

Man child.

He knew the meaning of it. It was in the word. A man who acted like a child. He didn't mind acting like a child. He didn't mind acting like he was the ten year old and not Sho. He liked it. His life was like a child's was supposed to be. No worries, not real ones, and no consequences. He could live in this endless today…and he liked the endless today. He loved it. Toshi….Toshi didn't. Toshi wanted him to be…well they didn't want him to be anyone or anything other than he was…and that was the good thing about Toshi…also they said what they meant and meant what they said….and they had called him a man child…

And it wasn't like it bothered him or anything like that.

"Why would we do that?" asked Sho. That seemed like a waste of pancakes. He would rather have eaten them with Shimazaki even if they were ice cold by now…but only with him. Not with the others. Just him and Shimazaki sitting there all alone and just…maybe it was better if they went and stuck them to random people on the street. At least that way there would be other people around and the goldfish in his stomach could knock it off already.

"So the birds can have at them of course. Come on, it'll be fun if I do it on my own but it'll be even more fun with my best friend, my favorite friend." Said Shimazaki. He put an emphasis on the word 'friend' that Sho should not have missed. Unless he was as clueless as his dad and older sister, of course, or unless he felt like willfully blinding himself to it…which he probably would.

"Ok…sure! Yeah! Of course I will! You're my best friend…and my favorite person too." Said Sho. He just…needed Shimazaki to know that he felt the same way. That he felt warm and like his stomach was full of spicy hotpot because they were best friends and…and also because Shimazaki was his favorite person. He knew that Shimazaki said that in the friend way but…but thinking of him in any other way but the friend way….it made his stomach do flips and…and he just…

Shimazaki meant it in the friend way and that was what mattered.

"Right…well come on. First come first serve." Said Shimazaki as he teleported away. He heard Sho shouting that it was unfair as he teleported away. He didn't fully know what the kid meant. There was a hell of a lot about this that was unfair. The way he felt, Shimazaki having to deal with it, all of this was unfair…but at least they could have fun together. At least the two of them could have a day full of messing with people and just….having fun. Fair fun. The good kind of fun. That was all. The kind of fun that wouldn't make the kid's stomach do flips and his heart beat like he'd just done a pile of coke…the giant pile of coke that Shimazaki wished that he was doing right now….it wasn't fair….

But it was his birthday and he could do whatever the hell he wanted to do.


	429. Not So Bad But Not So Good Either

The kitchen wasn't that bad.

It smelled good in here, like cooking, but also pine. Miss Kageyama said that she had cleaned up. She hadn't had to. He didn't care how clean or dirty things were. She had also closed all the curtains so that it was nice and dark. That was what he cared about. The sun was out, he knew that it was out, but he didn't want to be in it. He didn't want to see it moving across the room, the sky, the world. He didn't want to see time passing…and she understood that. She had even taken the clock off the wall for him. He could see the space where it should have been. There was a shadow around it. A shadow in the darkness…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that Miss Kageyama had done a lot to get him into this kitchen.

So here he was.

"See? The kitchen isn't that bad, is it? Maybe you could come out here more often on your own…or with me. It doesn't matter, we don't have to rush…and if it's not nice enough I can do something else. I can have everyone go outside of the house or something if that would make you feel better. Would that…would it make you feel better?" asked Mob as she played with her pancakes. She wondered if putting them in the microwave had been the right move. Well it was faster than the stove…and she didn't even know if these could be reheated on the stove…and there was always the toaster too…and also she didn't even know if Serizawa even liked pancakes.

She really hoped that he liked pancakes.

She hoped that he liked pancakes and he liked this kitchen and he just…she hoped that he was happy. She had already messed up this morning for her other friends so she didn't want to mess it up for him, too. She wanted him to be happy…well she wanted everyone to be happy…and there was no better way to make someone happy than to feed them. Shibata had said that and he knew a lot about making people happy. He'd be happy to know, too, that the pancakes that he had worked so hard on were getting eaten.

He might have been so happy, too, that he forgot all about how Mob had messed up the whole morning.

"No it's…fine. This is fine." Said Serizawa as he moved his food around on his plate. He wasn't that hungry. Well he was and also he wasn't. Mom made pancakes too but hers were never this thick…and also she put powdered sugar on top. There wasn't any powdered sugar on these…or even on the table…but he wasn't going to say anything. Miss Suzuki had gone through enough trouble as it was. She didn't have to do anything else for him. She had done so much already and…and he should have been grateful…

And he shouldn't have been thinking about mom, either, because she was better off on her without him there to be a burden onto her.

"Do you want some more syrup? Or fruit maybe?" asked Mob. She passed him both of those with her powers. Something was wrong. He was just passing his food from one side of his plate to the other. That was a trick, moving your food around like that, so it looked like you had eaten something. She didn't know what was wrong but she would fix it. Shibata was taking one of his extra long showers, he wasn't in a good mood right now she could tell, and Minegishi was in their room. They were in an even worse mood. Shimazaki and Sho were still in her range but she didn't know exactly where they had gone to. Serizawa was all alone, that was the point of it all, it was just the two of them and he had no reason to be upset….but he was….

But that was ok. She would do anything to help him.

"No…this is fine." Said Serizawa. He wanted powdered sugar. He wanted to have been sitting down at his table in his room and he wanted to have the thin kind of pancakes with the super light powdered sugar and lots of butter, too. Mom made such good pancakes…but she was….she was at home. He had no idea what she was doing at home, probably living it up, and he knew that he shouldn't have been missing her this much…

But he was.

The last time they had sat down at the table together had been the morning of…that day. She had gotten up early to make him pancakes even though she had been out until late the last night doing inventory at the store she worked at. She had made him pancakes with butter and powdered sugar…and she had…she had told him to be careful so he didn't get all dirty before school….and she had told him to hurry home that day, too, because she had gotten him a middle school uniform and she had wanted to see if it fit. She had measured him before but he had started growing really fast that year…when he'd been twelve….but he wasn't twelve anymore. He was twenty seven now and he had never tried on that uniform but he knew that it, like all of his clothes from those days, would have fit like doll's clothes on him. He knew that those times were over. He was twenty seven now and he was eating breakfast at this table with his first friend ever and….

And he shouldn't have wanted to go home. He had no reason to want to go home.

"It's just that you aren't eating anything." Said Mob. She knew that sometimes people just weren't hungry…but he hadn't eaten anything since she'd fed him last night! He needed food to live. What kind of a friend would just let one of their friends starve to death? She needed to just…she had a lot to do when it came to him but…she didn't mind. He couldn't do thing for himself and that was ok. He was still scared and lonely and stuff and she would be there for him. That was what friends were for. They were there for each other. If he had been anyone else, any of her other friends, then she would have done the same.

"I…I just need a minute. This is…a lot." Said Serizawa. He looked down at his plate. She had given him a lot of food…and there was even more on the table. There was a plate piled high with pancakes. Thirty one of them. That was what she and her friends did on birthday you got one pancake for every single year that you had been alive. Next year he would be getting twenty eight. That was how old he would be. Twenty eight. He had been twelve and then he had gone into his room and now he was twenty eight and…and that was a lot. That was a lot of time…a lot of years…months…weeks…days. That had been so long and…and he just…

He wondered what that would have looked like in terms of pancakes.

"You're right, this is a lot of pancakes…but I'm sure that Shimazaki won't mind us eating these. He sometimes gets distracted easily so he might have even forgotten about all of these." Said Mob. She had taken from the pile meant for everyone else, not the Shimazaki birthday pile. She'd wrap those up and put those in the fridge for later. Shimazaki didn't mind cold food. When he had been little all of his food had been cold because sometimes it was hard for his mom to get the chance to feed him and stuff.

"Oh…well if he won't mind….um….they're very good." Said Serizawa. He finally took a bite…and this one was burnt on the other side. It was burnt and way sweeter than how he was used to them…and thicker too. This was just…he didn't know. Good, he decided, this was good. This was made by someone he didn't know and served in a place he wasn't used to….but he was eating with someone he knew. He knew Miss Suzuki. He knew her and he knew that she cared for him…and he knew that he cared for her too.

He took another bite even though it was burnt on the bottom.

"Shibata made these. He makes the best pancakes. Well some of them are burnt on the bottom but that doesn't mean that they aren't good. He just gets distracted sometimes too…it was a distracting morning…but it's better now. You're out of your room and that more than makes up for everything." Said Mob. Her voice got kind of high and loud at the end…and she knew that she needed to calm down. She needed to calm down and not make a big thing out of this. She knew from taking care of Sho that people didn't like it when you made a big deal out of things even if the things that you were making a big deal out of were, in fact, a big deal.

Serizawa sitting here at the table was a very big deal.

This was a huge deal. He was out of his room. He was out of his room and he was sitting at the table like everyone else. Well not now, obviously, everyone else was off doing their own things but if they hadn't had things to do and if the morning had been better then they would have been here….but Serizawa wouldn't have. He wasn't ready to be with people yet.

He was barely ready to sit here at the table with her.

"They're….they're very good. I like these a lot and…and I'm so happy to be with you…Miss Suzuki." Said Serizawa. He was happy to be with her. He was happy to be sitting there at that table with her. Nothing else mattered but being there with her. He felt…the dizziness was coming back. The dizziness was always there, at the edge of his mind, and it threatened to come back….but she was there. She was there and she kept the dizziness away.

As long as it was just the two of them then it was ok.

"I'm happy to be with you too and-oh no…" said Mob. She felt the energy around them shift. She barely had enough time to put a barrier up around Serizawa and herself. She reached over and took his arm in her hand just to keep him still. She should have told everyone to stay away instead of just trusting that they would be off doing their own things. She should have thought this through. But she hadn't. She hadn't and now she had to deal with this…which she would because it was all her fault.

She should have waited until Sho and Shimazaki got out of her passive aural range.

If she was really looking then she could feel an esper, one she knew, from across the city. This city. She wasn't really looking for anyone, though, she had just been sitting down at the table minding her own business. Everyone had come to her. Well not everyone, just Shimazaki and Sho, but for how Serizawa was reacting she might as well have invited all of Tokyo HQ over for breakfast…and given them all a plus one while she was at it. Serizawa jumped. His body jumped and his powers jumped and it took everything that she had to keep him in place. She felt sort of like a…burning….or like a shock…as she touched him. The purple of his aura bonded with the pink and blue of hers. She tried to smooth down the flare of his aura but instead all she did was add to hers…and it kind of hurt….

But at least he hadn't wrecked the kitchen.

"Ah! Too damn loud!" said Shimazaki. He covered his ears even though he knew that it wouldn't help. This was an aural thing, not a physical thing, and he knew that the closest thing that his body could translate this to was sound…but it still really hurt god damn it! Fucking new guy….not that he was super pissed at him…him moving in had been the thing to move him into Toshi's room after all….

But still, this was too damn loud.

"Woah…." Said Sho as he teleported into the kitchen with Shimazaki. He had hit the floor as he came in, Shimazaki had caught him as he jumped off the room, and that was why he was on the ground…and not just because the new guy was there. Big sis's new friend. They guy with the purple aura…and it was even brighter in person….and also he was really tall…and that wasn't just because Sho was on the ground. He was really, really, really tall….and he was just sitting….

He might have even been taller than Shimazaki.

"Miss Suzuki! Let-let me go!" said Serizawa. Miss Suzuki was stronger than she looked….a lot stronger. She was small, just as small as the little boy who was staring at him, but she was strong enough to get him to stay in place. She was strong enough to keep him still and to keep the room from flying apart…and he wished that he were stronger too….strong enough to be in that room…

But he wasn't.

"Wait, no, you don't have to be scared. That's just my friend Shimazaki and my little brother Sho." said Mob quickly. She held onto his arm as hard as she could. He was strong but she could be strong too. She knew that he was about to freak out and explode. She knew that his powers were acting up and she knew that he wanted to run away and…and she knew that she had to keep him there, keep him with her, make him feel better…eventually.

Sometimes you had to do what was best for someone….and that wasn't always the same as giving someone what they wanted.

Like with Sho. She knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life wanting to eat nothing but poptarts and to drink nothing but cola…and she also knew that he would have gone until the day he died without ever once taken another bath or shower…but she also knew that even though doing all of those things would make him happy she had to do what was best for him. She had to do what was best for her little brother and also what was best for her new friend.

It was always best to do what was best for the people you cared about…even if they didn't want you to.

"Yeah, we're friendly…." Said Sho. That guy looked like he didn't care at all if he and Shimazaki were the friendliest people in all of Japan. He was so freaked out right now…and he had no idea why. It wasn't like they had done anything to him. He had spent his entire life in his room, big sis had said, but that didn't mean that he had any reason to be this freaked out….or to eat….were those Shimazaki's pancakes?

Oh hell no!

Sho had been about to go over and give the new guy a piece of his mind. He didn't care if the new guy was taller and bigger than anyone he had ever met in his life…aside from Shibata….and he didn't care if the new guy's aura was big and bright and freaked out…and he didn't care if big sis was this guy's only friend or whatever. Nobody ate Shimazaki's pancakes and he had to be stopped and Sho would have been the one to stop him-

-if Shimazaki hadn't been holding him back.

"The friendliest….now shut your aura up already and we'll be even friendlier." Said Shimazaki as he put his hand on the top of Sho's head. He normally had no problem with copious amounts of violence and destruction but right now was not the best time. Toshi was in their room, his room and theirs, and they weren't in the best mood and he had just gotten the kid back to whatever passed for normal with him…and also he didn't feel like getting mortally wounded today either. Nope, this was his birthday and on his birthday he would be the one to decide what happened and what was going to happen was nobody was going to fight with the new guy. Not today. Maybe later on when he got more put together but not today.

"I-I don't know what you-" said Serizawa. He closed his eyes. He would have covered them but Miss Suzuki was still holding onto his arm. She was strong, so strong, or maybe he was just weak. Maybe. He was out of his room now. He was out of his room and he had a friend and he was in a place where he was surrounded by people who were just like him…and he should have been better by now. This was everything that he had ever wanted and instead of freaking out and getting dizzy like he was now he just…he just should have been better but…but he wasn't. Even though he had left his room behind he had still…he hadn't left himself behind. He still had himself and….and that was just…this was just…this was what it was….and he was what he was…

And he was who he was.

"Shimazaki, that wasn't very nice. He doesn't know what you mean and even if he did then it still wouldn't have been nice to tell him to shut up." Said Mob as she held Serizawa back. Shimazaki…she knew him. She knew him and she knew how he could be and…and she wished that he could have been nicer but he was who he was. Once you got to know him he could be the nicest person…well one of the nicest people ever…but it took a while to get to know him and in the meantime he could be kind of mean…like now…but he would come around. She'd just have to talk to him, to that was all, she'd remind him and everyone else that Serizawa was a thousand times more delicate than Hatori had ever been and that they all needed to make an effort to be nicer to him and stuff. That was all.

"Well it's not nice to eat other people's pancakes too but you guys are doing that." Said Sho sticking out his tongue. He knew that he was being a jerk but big sis…well she was just being clueless…but being clueless didn't mean that she couldn't be a jerk sometimes too. She was there eating Shimazaki's pancakes with the new guy. Shimazaki needed these to throw at people and…and even if he hadn't needed them these still….this was his birthday and these were his pancakes!

"We only took from the 'for everyone' pile and not from Shimazaki's pile. There are plenty of pancakes here and the two of you are welcome to join us." Said Mob. She knew that Sho was getting upset…and she knew that as a good big sister it was her job to deal with that…and she would. Later. Not now. Right now she had a lot of stuff that she was dealing with and…and she loved her little brother very much….but right now she had to deal with Serizawa before he freaked out and wrecked the entire kitchen and stuff as he did sometimes.

"M-Miss Suzuki-" said Serizawa softly. He didn't want anyone to join them. It was hard enough being outside of his new room as it was. There were three people around him…and he only knew one of them…and this whole thing was a lot. She was holding him back now, keeping him from running, and also keeping his curse…his powers…under control and…and he didn't want to hurt anyone or anything….so the best place for him was alone in his room where everyone would be safe from him. He could see that but she…she couldn't…for some reason.

Because she saw the best in him.

She had said, before, that she liked to see the best in everyone. Especially her friends. They were friends so she was seeing the best in him…even if that best wasn't a part of him. That best, the best that she claimed to have been able to see, wasn't there or here or anywhere. He couldn't be around people. Even if he had everything that he had ever wanted he still couldn't be around people and…and she just wouldn't let him go…and she was so strong….

And she wasn't going to let him go anywhere.

"No thanks, we were just on our way out. See you Mob, new guy. Come on Sho, and grab the syrup too." Said Shimazaki as he let go of Sho's head. One of these days he would teach the kid how to pick a fight. In terms of raw power the new guy would win. In terms of skill, though, Sho would have been the winner but there was no point in having the skill advantage if the other guy was stronger than you were. Shimazaki would have backed him up, of course, if they had been about to fight with anyone else…but this was the new guy and he was going to be living with them for the foreseeable future and also if it wasn't for him then he never would have ended up sharing a room with Toshi so he would leave him be for now.

"Sure! Um…bye big sis…and big sis's new friend. See you later…and also I don't want cheese in my curry tonight!" said Sho. He'd leave big sis to…whatever was up with her and the new guy. She was trying to keep him from freaking out. He knew what that was like. She did the same thing to him, well she used to when he had been little, and he hadn't known that she was strong enough to stop someone…like the new guy. Someone that big and powerful and stuff…but that didn't matter. He and Shimazaki had stuff to do today. He didn't have time to worry about big sis and the new guy and…and all of that other stuff.

He had pancakes to stick to people!

"Ok….bye everyone." Said Mob. She hadn't been planning on doing any cooking that night but she guessed that Sho wanted curry…with no cheese even though the cheese made it good. Well she could do that for him…and she'd make enough for Serizawa too…and probably eat with him. He would probably need to eat with her tonight. He didn't seem like he would stop being freaked out any time soon.

"Miss Suzuki…..I'd like to go back to my room now." Said Serizawa softly. He was better, not, because they were all aloe again. Well sort of alone. He could feel other people in the house but at least he and Miss Suzuki were alone in the kitchen again. He just….even though she was there and…and the room was so big but….but he was ok so long as he was with her. He had left his umbrella in his room. That had been his mistake. Leaving his room without it….or just plain leaving his room….had been a mistake.

"I….ok. We can go back to your room…and I'm very proud of you. I know how hard that must have been and I'm very proud of you for meeting my little brother and Shimazaki." Said Mob. She wanted him to stay out in the kitchen for longer. She was proud of him, very proud, and she wanted…she wanted him meet the rest of the house. Shibata when he was done with his shower, Minegishi when they were out of their room, and Hatori when he was done being at work with dad. She wanted him to meet everyone and be friends with everyone and all of that other stuff….she wanted that a lot…but she also wasn't going to push him too fast….because that was just…not what a good friend did.

"Um…thank you. It wasn't….that bad." Said Serizawa. This hadn't been that bad but…but it would be better if it had been in his room…if he had been in his room. He needed to be in his room…or to have his umbrella…even though she was there. She was there and….well it hadn't been that bad….being in the kitchen…meeting people….and…..

It would have been much worse if she hadn't been there.


	430. Documentary Time For Father and Daughter

Suzuki's favorite genre was documentary.

Well documentary and then science fiction…but only in some cases…and not lately because he was a grown man. Even when he'd been Shigeko's age he hadn't…well he had but he hadn't been able to admit it. He had been too old for all of that, father had said, and that period of his life had been where his favorite genre had shifted from science fiction to documentary. He wondered when Shigeko would make that switch…not that he would ever force her to make that switch. Not that he would ever come in and change the channel on the television and tell her that she was much too old for that nonsense.

She would never be too old for the nonsense.

She would never be too old for anything, he decided, since it was in his best interests to keep her as a child for as long as possible. He was not his father. He had higher hopes for his children than to see them grow up and take the same undone jobs at the same mundane companies and climb the same mundane corporate ladder as everyone around them. No, he had greater ambitions for his children…and for himself…and he would put them both in positions where they would never have to put away their childish things…or at least Shigeko. Son….well he had a lot of childish things that he would have to put away…but Suzuki did not want to think about that now.

Now was his time with Shigeko.

He didn't want to think about Son right now. He was doing…something. Probably sleeping considering this late hour. He didn't care if Son was awake or asleep. He could regulate himself. Suzuki trusted him to regulate himself…and also Shigeko had put him to bed…but she never checked on him. Not lie how mother had checked on him when he'd been a child. At least twice a night she would open his door and stick her head in so that she could make sure that he wasn't reading under the covers. Of course he had been, at that age anyway, and he had also been perfectly able to regulate his own sleep schedule. Mother had always treated him like such a child.

But he would not make that mistake with his own children.

They were children but they were capable…well at least Shigeko was…oh regulating themselves. He didn't want to get into constant battles with Son over food and bedtimes and all of the things that parents got into battles with their children over. He did not want Shigeko to do the same either. He didn't want her to have to deal with all of that stress. She had enough of it in her life, it seemed, or at least she had told him so.

Hence why she was smoking in the bed.

"Shigeko….are you any less stressed?" asked Suzuki as he turned away from her. She was doing it again. She was smoking there, right there, in his room. In his bed. She was sitting cross legged beside him watching a documentary she had found about shut ins, apparently it was a major social problem these days, and she was smoking…well he didn't want to think about what she was smoking. She could do whatever she wanted, she had already been doing this for some time it seemed, and he wasn't going to stop her…even though he really wished that he could.

"I'm getting there, dad, don't worry." Said Shigeko as she coughed….and he wasn't sure if she should have been coughing so hard…and maybe he could cite the fact that it sounded like she was close to breaking a rib as reason for her to just…stop with that already. He had never…well in university after he had reached the age of majority and his parents had been long dead…but he hadn't even enjoyed it…and even if he had started that at her age he never would have done that in his parents' bedroom while they were there with him.

And not only because he had never been allowed in their bedroom.

He would never have done that because if he had then mother would have gone on strike. She did that sometimes when he did something that upset her. She stopped cooking his meals and washing his clothes and doing the thousand and one other things that a mother did. She would just look at him and tell him that when he was done being a disappointment and get back to his end of the bargain then she would get back to hers and take care of him….and speak to him…and such. Father wasn't like mother. Father always made him work off the debts of his mistakes and disobediences.

Phantom pains were such curious things.

He felt the phantom pains of old injuries sometimes. Ones long wince healed. The pain of getting struck without armor on. A shinai was heavy. A shinai was a weapon. A Shinai wasn't a real sword, of course, because that would have been dangerous…but it was very big and very heavy and getting struck with one without armor on was painful. Father never let him wear armor when they practiced…and he always went all out when Suzuki had done something wrong…to teach him his mistakes. His punishment was always proportional to his crimes. Forgetting to put his dishes in the sink, getting in trouble at school, getting a point against him in a match, all crimes which would be punished…and which he was right to have been punished for. When someone did something wrong they had to be punished.

He wondered how many hits with a shinai he would have gotten for smoking marijuana in his parents' bedroom.

"Well can you get there a little bit faster, maybe?" asked Suzuki. He wasn't going to tell her to stop and he certainly wasn't going to hit her with a shinai…or at all. He had hit her before, both of the children, but that had been before. He had so rarely had to strike her and her brother…well she had made her opinions clear on that so he deferred to her. Even though he still didn't see what was wrong with it. He hadn't gone as far as to hit either of them with a shinai…now that was painful. He had always been careful, too, not to hit them in a way that would leave any permanent damage…but that wasn't enough for Shigeko…but that was alright. It wasn't as though he was going to go against what she had told him. She had been very clear in her orders not to punish her brother anymore and while he hated taking orders with every fiber of his being…he admitted that she knew what she was talking about and that he shouldn't question her judgement.

Even though there were times when he really wanted to.

"I'll get there when I get there, dad." Said Shigeko. He knew what she meant. She would be better when she felt better and she could not give him a timeframe for when that would happen…but he did want it to happen soon. He just…knew better than to question her. He knew better than to question her and he knew better than to alienate her and he just…he knew better but…he also knew that he was her father. He was her father, in practice if not by blood, and he had the power to order her to stop that this instant…but he did not use that power.

"Well can you at least stop ashing in the bed?" asked Suzuki. That was something that he could asked her not to do. He couldn't tell her to stop without alienating her but he could at least ask that she keep the ashes out of their bed. This was their time together and he knew that if he told her to go and smoke outside or something that there would be the danger of her not coming back…and he didn't know what he would do if she didn't come back…so he asked her to at least stop ashing in their bed already.

"It's a pipe, dad, all the ashes stay in the pipe." Said Shigeko. She showed him the blue pipe that she was using. It was glass and there was some craftsmanship to it…but he still didn't like it. He didn't like because of what it was filled with, because of what she had been doing, and because of what he could not stop her from doing. She just….did this. This was a thing that she did and he…well he couldn't stop her. Not without alienating her. Not without making her want to leave. She was eleven years old now, she was old enough to make her own choices, even if he REALLY DID NOT agree with them.

At all.

"I've seen you ash that thing in the bed, Shigeko, don't tell me that you haven't." Said Suzuki. She was looking at him now. She was looking at him and she was squinting…and he knew that she wasn't squinting because she needed eyeglasses. Her pupils were stuck. They weren't dilating and contracting with the light. That was because she had been smoking like a chimney. She was smoking like a chimney because she had a lot of stress in her life. He had no idea what could have been so very stressful in her life, or why she didn't ask him to fix it, and he had no idea what had made her pick up this habit in the first place…

But this was what it was.

"When it's cashed, that means all done Shimazaki taught me that, I throw the ashes over the side of the bed. I don't empty the bowl in the bed. That'd be gross…like…the bed is not an ashtray daddy…you're funny sometimes…bowl…so funny." Said Shigeko. She was laughing now and he loved the way she laughed, he loved her in general but he especially loved her when she laughed…even when she laughed like this. This was sort of…not like her usual laugh. Different. A little farther away, maybe…well that would be the chemicals she currently had rattling around in her system…not that he was going to tell her not to…because she needed this…and he didn't know why she needed this…well he did but…also he didn't…

Maybe because she hadn't come from him.

She hadn't come from him and her body was different than his and her brain chemistry was different from his and she just….had not come from him. She needed something more than sheer force of will to keep her powers under control…and she wasn't him…and while he lost control of his powers and his mind when he did things like that she…well she laughed a lot but…her control was perfect…near perfect…better than his had been at her age….

So maybe it was alright, then, what she was doing.

"You just said that it was a pipe, not a bowl." Said Suzuki. She laughed some more after he said that…and he didn't know what was so funny…but he assumed that it was the smoking. The smoking and…well…he had never been good with humor. He could safely say, though, that it was the chemicals in her system. She was smiling and her eyes had this faraway look and she was smiling at her and her little cheeks were so red…and so were her eyes and she was just…she was so perfect. Even now she looked so perfect.

"The whole thing is a pipe, the bowl is the part you smoke….and stuff…lots of stuff…but the stuff is smoking." Said Shigeko. She nodded to herself, at least he assumed that it was to herself, and he wasn't going to just ask her. She wasn't going to tell him if he asked anyway. It was hard to get a straight answer out of her when she was like this.

"Alright then…well whatever it is can you just be done with it already?" asked Suzuki. He liked it, loved it, when she was happy but also…also he wasn't the biggest fan of this and…and he just wanted her to be done. He wanted to slap that pipe or whatever out of her hand…but he couldn't. Not unless he wanted to alienate her, and he didn't, so he just…would let this run it's course and…well she'd had a lot already so…maybe she was done.

"You don't want me to smoke, dad?" asked Shigeko. Of fucking course he didn't. Of fucking course he wanted her to stop. Of fucking course he wanted it take that pipe and slap it out of her hands and tell her to never smoke again…and of fucking course he had the power to do that...but he wouldn't use that power…because he loved her…

He loved her and he didn't want to lose her.

It was like there was this annoying voice in his head, like the kind that you got after hearing an annoying commercial, and no matter what he did or wanted to do it reminded him that Shigeko could leave. That she could walk right out that door and he would never see her again. That the pain he had felt, before, when his wife had left…it was like there was a scar there….right there in his mind…or something. He didn't know.

Maybe he had just been breathing in too much of that smoke.

"I want…you to smoke as much as you need to and nothing more." Said Suzuki. There. That was the truth. He wanted her to do what she needed to do and then nothing more. She needed this. She needed this to control her powers and…and he so wished that she had the self-control that he had. He so wished that she would just stop and…and just…well he wished for a lot of things but he was a grown man and he didn't make wishes. He made things happen…and he could make things happen that he wanted…but he would not make this happen because this was something that she needed and…

And he needed her.

"Ok…after this I'll be done. Then we can watch what you want…even if it's just Galaxy Express again…I know how you like that…you like that so much….it's nice…that you like things…" said Shigeko. She was smiling and now she was hiding her face in his shoulder. He caught her smoking pipe with his powers and put it on the bedside table. She'd had a lot….and in his opinion she'd had too much….if she was laughing like this. He put her pipe off to the side and let her bury her face in his shoulder.

He patted her on the head.

"I like you." Said Suzuki. It felt odd saying it. Well it would never stop feeling odd but…well it felt less odd. It felt less odd but still….odd. If that made any sense. He wasn't make any sense. He had been breathing in way too much of that smoke. She was…she smelled terrible. He rested his head on hers. She smelled like she had been smoking and…and he still liked her. He loved her…and he could admit that to her. He cared for her as well and that was a much more precise word. Anyone could say 'I love you' and it could mean anything…but 'I care for you'…that made more sense. He cared for her and…and he loved her and…and he loved having her near…

Even if she smelled terrible.

She hugged him. He let her. He had never liked being embraced, being touched in general, unless he really knew the person. He had known her for the past nine years so she was one of the people who could embrace him. Even though nine years wasn't very long at all. By his standards. He was forty four. She was eleven. Nine years was the majority of her life. She was so young. She was so young but she acted like she was much older…and that was alright. It was alright because she was capable. Of course she was capable, she was his child.

She was more capable than other people in the world…including his blood child.

He loved that about her. Even if she made choices that he didn't agree with at all he still loved her. She was so…so perfect. She was so intelligent and she could take care of herself…and him. Not that he needed someone to care for him but…it was nice. Not that he needed someone. He was a full and complete person on his own. The only person one could truly rely on in this world was themselves so that was who he relied on, himself. He needed her but he did not rely on her.

He just liked having her around.

Like now. Her head was on his lap, now, and she was back to watching the television. Her smoking pipe was abandoned on the nightstand, thank God, and she was laying down and digging her feet into the blanket beside them. He rubbed her back as she watched television. She liked this. He had no idea that she was so interested in social problems. Probably because she was such a caring person. That was just how women were, they were good caretakers, and he couldn't fault her for that…even though the simplest solution to the hikikomori problem was just to drag them out of their rooms and force them to rejoin society already.

Society was terrible but you had to join it.

Either join it or change it. There had been times, so many times, when he'd wanted nothing more in life than to be able to drop out of it. To be able to wash his hands of it all and just…be away from everyone. He has walked the earth, literally, and seen so many places which were simply devoid of people. Places where he could simply….be. Places where this ever present weight that was society, the eyes and expectations of other people, was simply…gone. Gone off like he had gone off. There were places like that on Earth and if he had been a weaker man then he would have gone to those places.

But he was not a weak man.

He was Suzuki Touichirou and he did not run away. He made the occasional strategic retreat but that was not the same as running away. He had responsibilities and ambitions and he would fulfil them. He had a world to rule, after all, and he was the only one who was fit to rule it. He had been bestowed with the ultimate power, the power to give and take as he so chose, and that meant that he was the one to rule the world. Once he ruled the world then he would no longer have the irrational desire to hide from it…since it would be his world after all.

And also he wouldn't ever have to make one of his strategic retreats ever again.

She was still digging her feet into his bed. He used his powers to pull the blanket up over her. Maybe she was tired. He didn't know. All he knew was that he was her father, they were partners in this thing, and that he had to be with her. He was never going to leave her again…and he hadn't left last time but…but he also had. He had locked himself away because of the shame of it all…the shame of what he had done. To her mother and to her….and Fukuda had told him that 'unfaithful' was not the word to be using when talking about what he had done to his child but…well it fit. It felt like he had betrayed her…and in a way he had. He had betrayed their family unit…what was left of their family unit…and he was truly sorry….

Not that she would ever know what it was that he was truly sorry about.

"It's your turn now…but I kind of want to watch it again….so if you want to use your turn to hit restart then I wouldn't mind." Said Shigeko. He ran his hand across her head. Her hair was soft, so soft, and he didn't want either of them to move from this moment. This was so perfect and she was so perfect…and if he had to watch that same documentary again to preserve the perfection of this moment then he would…but only if he had to.

"I don't really want to watch it again but we can if you want to. I don't know why you would want to, though." said Suzuki. He didn't get why she would want to watch it again. It hadn't been that interesting…but maybe that was because she had different interests than he did. She was so different...but at least their interests had some overlap. Like documentaries. They both liked them. He and Masami had such different tastes in television that it had been difficult for them to find something that they both enjoyed. He just ended unsettling and watching her dramas because they made her happy. It was different with Shigeko. She at least had some overlap with him….some but not all….but that was alright. She was a different person than he was.

"Because I can't really remember what I watched." Said Shigeko after a moment. He tried to remain neutral, impassive, at that…but it was difficult. He knew how to do research, he knew how Google worked, and he knew that she was potentially doing damage to her memory…and he had noticed it. Well he might have. He knew that she needed a calculator to do even the most basic arithmetic…but he had always assumed that it had just been a part of her generation….but now he worried…and he so hated worrying about things….things and people…even the person he loved most in the world.

"That would be the smoking." Said Suzuki after an even longer moment. He had harsher words that he could have used, and orders that he could have given, but he chose not to. He chose to be…better…to her. To censor himself. He had to. This moment was so perfect…as were all moments with her…and he could not risk alienating her. He could not risk losing her. He could not risk losing his most perfect person all over again.

He didn't know if he could make it through that again…

"You think?" asked Shigeko. She turned over so now she was looking up at him. He brushed a lock of hair out of her face. She was so small and perfect there. He let his hand linger against the side of her face. Her skin was so soft…well soft and marred in places by blemishes but that was part of being her age…and he could have just held her there like that forever. He wished that he could have. He wished that he had gone beyond the point at which he made wishes. He was a grown man, he was too old to sit there and make wishes, and he knew that they wouldn't come true so….why did he still do it?

He had no idea.

"Yes. I know that the chemicals in that affect short term memory." Said Suzuki. He let go of her face. She looked up at him and she smiled…and he loved her smiles…even if she did have this far off look in her eyes. She had this far off and glazed over look and…and he didn't much like seeing that look on her…but he also just liked being able to be there with her…being able to see her smile like that. Was there anything better than seeing her smile?

If there was then he hadn't seen it.

"Oh…well then I guess that I have no choice but to watch it again. That way I can learn." Said Shigeko. She turned over back onto her side. She wasn't facing him anymore…and he wanted her to be. He wanted to turn her over so she was looking up at him and he was looking down at her…because it was such a gift to be able to be near her like, this. This was…he and Masami had laid like this before...and he had been annoyed then. Annoyed at having had to watch what she wanted. Annoyed at being taken from his work. Just….he had been so annoyed and….

And he had no idea what had been wrong with past Suzuki.

If he could have he would have gone back in time and beaten his past self to a bloody pulp for taking Masami for granted. His past self had thought that it had been over after the vows had been exchanged the house set up, and the children born. He had thought that it had been it. He had thought that once they had been married that it would have been forever…but it hadn't been. It hadn't been and now she was gone and all he had was Shigeko…and she was not Masami…

She was better.

"Learn what, Shigeko?" asked Suzuki. If she wanted to learn something then he would gladly have taught her and if it was something that he didn't know then he would gladly have learned with her. She was so intelligent…and she always wanted to learn new things...and he loved that about her. He loved her. He loved her so much and…and now he was getting emotional over nothing. Maybe the next time she smoked he should have opened a window or something. The same chemicals that were rattling around in her system were rattling around in his now and…well not in the same quantities but the effects were still the same. His thoughts were just…not good….muddled and fast and…and also he was enamored completely and totally with the softness of her hair and the back of her nightshirt…very soft cotton and…

And he was definitely opening a window next time she decided to smoke in their bedroom during their time together.

"How to help Serizawa because he has the same problem. He won't come out of his room no matter how hard I try. Well he went to the kitchen and he met Sho and Shimazaki but then he went and hid in his room under his covers for the rest of the day. Serizawa….I don't get it. He knows that I'll keep him safe and he knows that everyone wants to be his friend but he still keeps on hiding…and stuff. So I just want to…to make this whole thing better." said Shigeko. Serizawa….a common family name…Suzuki went through everyone he knew by that name. Mentally he pictured a rolodex like his father used to have on his desk. He went through each and every name and…he didn't come up with anyone Shigeko would have also been acquainted with….and also he missed the fun of turning a rolodex back and forth and…

He opened a window with his powers.

"Who are you referring to?" asked Suzuki. Shigeko turned over so she was facing him again. She looked up at him and frowned…and he knew what that meant. He had displeased her…and he had no idea how he had displeased her. Women…he would never understand them. They were so complicated…but then again women thought that men were just as complicated. It was a wonder that the human race had gone on for as long as it had.

"The new guy. You remember, I went to Baked Goods City and got him?" asked Shigeko. She was still frowning but there was a smile there too, in her aura, and she was just so…perfect…there. She was so perfect and her little face as so perfect and her hair as so soft…even when she was talking about someone else. Not that he minded her talking about someone else. She had friends. She had five of them now and that was four more…well three more now that he had Hatori…than he'd ever had in his life. She was socially successful and he was happy about her and not at all upset that she was laying there on his lap talking about another man.

"Ah yes, him." said Suzuki. Shigeko had made a new friend. That was fine. He could see his aura, there, at the corners of his vision. Purple and permanently anxious…worse than Hatori's. Shigeko was trying to help him….if he had been her then he would have kept Serizawa near him at all times. The man was a powerhouse, he could tell just by looking, and it was in Claw's best interests to have someone like that near. After the man was practically perfect. From what she had said he couldn't survive on his own. If he had been the one to find Serizawa and not Shigeko he would have kept the other man near him at all times to cultivate a dependence that was impossible to get from anyone else, not even his own children. That was what he would have done if he had been in her shoes.

But he wasn't in her shoes.

She was her own person and she had her own ways of doing things. She wanted to help him, to get him out of that room, and he didn't know why…but she was a very confusing person sometimes. She had her reasons and if he had been her…well he knew what he would have done…but she had her own priorities in life. She wasn't as much of a builder as he was, not much of a planner, she cared about enjoying her time on Earth now be it through boding activities with her friends, making new ones, or planning elaborate an expensive parties for her friends…for one friend who did not deserve it….

And at least she wasn't expending this much of her energy on Shimazaki Ryou.

He thanked God that there was a new man in her life. Not that she should have had any man in her life, she had him and that should have been enough, but the more time she spent with this new person the less time she would spend with Shimazaki….and he knew what she had said before. He knew that she had said that she had never been taken with him but he knew that wasn't true. Shimazaki was an annoying man, the kind of person that made you want to put a gun in your mouth if you had to be near him for long periods of time, but he was also very powerful and very fit and he knew that women liked that, well he would have if he had been a woman, and he knew that Shigeko was a woman…and she knew that she could have done so much better than Shimazaki….why Hatori had to be a homosexual he'd never know….and he knew that Shigeko was getting to that age and…and he knew that there was nothing that he could do about it….

He decided to stop thinking about all of this for the sake of his own sanity.

"Now who's the one who can't remember stuff?" asked Shigeko with a smile. She was smiling at him and…she had all of her adult teeth…that he could see…and that was…well she was getting older now. He was aware of how old she was…he would have to do something for her birthday…and he knew that he could not stop her from getting any older….so he decided to just accept it and not think about how at one point she'd had massive gaps in her smile…and now she didn't…and she was so big now…too big to fit fully into his lap…

"Alright, I'll admit that the name of your newest companion did slip my mind…but you've still been smoking all night." Said Suzuki. He wanted to tell her to just stop already but he knew that he couldn't. She was old enough to make her own choices. She was old enough to have lost all of her baby teeth and she was old enough to travel to distant cities on her own and find her own assets…and she was old enough to smoke too even though it was bad for her. She was old enough to make her own choices in life just like he had been back when he'd been her age. As much as he would have liked it if she had stayed a child forever, as much as he wanted to wish for it, he didn't. He knew that she had to grow up…and he knew that there was nothing he could do about it but accept it.

"Yeah….I guess that I'm a baked good…" said Daughter. She laughed a bit there and he didn't really understand why. He didn't always get humor and her humor was the most difficult to get. Or maybe it was only humorous to her. He didn't know. All he knew was that he loved her smiles and her laughs…and no matter how much she grew up he would still love her smiles and laughs. Even when she became a fully grown woman he would still love her smile and laughs and he would look forward to them more than anything else in the world.

"You're a little girl." Said Suzuki. There. That was what she was and…and now she was laughing some more. Part of him wished that he could have felt that level of joy without having to worry about leveling the city. Another part of him wished that her joy had come from something else…something that they could both share in…and another part of him wanted to share in her joy. Just to feel what she felt. Just to be there in that happy place with her…but he didn't. He knew that it would have been a terrible idea for him to indulge in the same thing that she indulged in. She liked him when he did that….but he did not like himself…

So he took those terrible ideas and shoved them back into the dark recesses of his mind.

"Daddy, I'm eleven and a half. I'm not little. In half a year I'm going to be twelve." Said Shigeko. She was still smiling at him. He patted her on the head. He was reminded, then, of when she had been three. It had been Son's birthday, he had turned three as well, and Shigeko had gone around the table stating everyone's ages over and over again. Thirty six, thirty four, three, and three. It had been annoying at the time but now…now he realized what a gift it had been to know her at that age…to have been able to know her at any age.

"So you will be." Said Suzuki. Ten years. It would be ten year in May that he had known her. The time…it had flown…as the old cliché went. She was going to be twelve and…and he had no idea what twelve would bring. He'd had no idea, before, what eleven would bring. Every year she would get older and older….and every year it took him longer and longer to accept that. To accept that one day she would be a grown woman…and he wanted that but also…also he wanted this. He wanted her to be small and loving and perfect.

"Yes, I'll be twelve and then you'll be forty five. Then I'll be thirteen and you'll be forty six. Then I'll be…older…and you'll be older…and then we'll both keep on getting older and stuff…and then the future will happen." Said Shigeko. She was happy about it…and he had no idea why. Didn't she realize what a gift it was to be her age? Youth was wasted on the young…another cliché. He had been her age once and…and he had been happy. He had been too happy to realize all of the things that he should have been unhappy with. He'd been so alone then…when he'd been eleven…and he'd not yet known how to be alone. How to be a complete person all on his own. He hadn't known a lot of things…like how little freedom he had…it had been a fact of life to obey his parents and…and he gave her a much better childhood than he'd ever had. Her and her brother.

"Yes, it will." Said Suzuki. The future would happen…and it seemed like she was looking forward to it. So was he. Every single year that passed brought him closer and closer and closer to his goal…and then when it happened he could rest…well as much as the ruler of the world could possibly rest. He ran his fingers through her bangs. He ignored the spots that she had there. Those were also an unfortunate fact of life. She was at that age after all…and he wasn't going to pick at them. Mother had always picked at his skin and it had driven him insane. He would leave her be. He would just trail his fingers over her forehead…and she had such soft skin…even when she wrinkled it due to being deep in thought about something.

"Do you like living in the future, dad?" asked Shigeko. He had no idea what that meant. Was that what she had been deep in thought about? Well then she should have done some more thinking until she started making sense…is what he would have said if she had been anyone else. She was Shigeko and he never could have been so unkind to her. He loved her.

"What do you mean? This is the present." Said Suzuki. Sometimes it was best to get clarification…though he had no idea how she would clarify that one. They were living in the present…well everyone second that passed them by put them one second into the future but that…was philosophical and he did not do well with philosophy. He did better with the concrete and she knew that…but they were very different people in so many ways…like this one.

"I know that it's the present but for you it's the future because you're older than me. When you were my age the world was different and TV was in black and white and there was a world war and stuff." Said Shigeko. Suzuki blinked. She…knew how long ago forty four years had been…right? The state that the world had been in? He had never even seen war….not any kind of war that affected the homeland…and he had never even owned a black and white television…not even when he'd been small…she knew how old he was…right?

"How old do you think I am?" asked Suzuki. She was better describing the world of his father…father had been born in the late forties….and by then the war had been over…and Suzuki had wondered more than once if father having lived downwind of all of that radiation and mother as well…well she'd lived on an army base some ways away…but he had wondered more than once if that had anything to do with him being…him. That and the heavy industry that had built up Seasoning City….there were a lot of things to wonder but now was not the time. Now was not the time to speculate about dead people…not when there was a living one right there talking to him.

"Forty four, dad, I know what age you are." Said Shigeko. He shook his head. She seemed put out there, or at least her aura did, and he had no idea why. It had been a legitimate question.

"I was just making sure. You described the world my father…no, not even my father. My father was born in 1947 and…." Said Suzuki. He did some quick math. Father's birthday had passed in September. Mother's in June. Mother had been…well he had been well aware of the fact that he'd outlived her…and father…had been forty four and…and now he was forty four. He was as old as father had been when he died and….and that was….

He had no idea what he was supposed to do with that information.

Shigeko was looking at him. His aura had pulled closely around him. It was acting up now. He didn't know why. It wasn't as though he could wear his aura like a cloak. It wasn't as though he could hide from death in it. It wasn't as though he even had to fear death. Like that song Fukuda had played on the morning of his parents' funeral. Don't fear the reaper and all of that…and he didn't. He knew that the person laying in his lap was no threat to him. He knew that he would never put her in the position where she even could have been a threat to him. She would never lose control. In fact she took steps to never lose control.

So therefore she would never lose him.

"Dad, are you ok?" asked Shigeko. Her aura nudged his…and he almost lashed out at her. He turned that energy away from her. The house shook a bit, and he felt Son wake up, but that didn't matter. He hadn't hurt her and that was the point of it. He had protected her from himself and now all he needed were words…words for what he had thought…and felt…and those had been emotions…emotions that he had kept long buried…but there they had been…right there front and center for her to deal with…no. For him to deal with…because they were his emotions…and his problem.

"I…just came to the realization that I've outlived my father. Both of my parents." Said Suzuki. There. Words for it, for what had happened…but they didn't feel like enough. He had lost both of them and…and just saying it…it felt like…not enough. She needed to know…no. She never needed to know. She never needed to know the pain of waking up one day on the floor of your best friend's bedroom, a room that you had spent countless nights in, and knowing at the core of your being that aside from the man sleeping beside you…aside from your best friend and one companion…you were truly alone in the world….in ways that you had never even imagined…and that you had to be full and complete person on your own…but you were all alone and….

And Shigeko would never feel that sort of pain. Ever.

"Oh…I'm sorry." said Shigeko. She didn't have to say that…and he had no idea why she had said that. The whole thing had happened long before she had even been born and…and her apologizing didn't fix it. If him apologizing, if him getting down on his hands and knees and prostrating himself in the rubble that had been his home and the pile of gore and viscera that had been his parents hadn't brought him back then her apologies as she laid her head down in his lap certainly wouldn't do anything.

"No, no, don't be. This is…what it is." Said Suzuki. She needed to know that there was no point in saying sorry. She needed to know that her apologies wouldn't fix anything. She needed to know that if she ever killed him, if he ever did something to make her lose control that badly, that even if she spent the rest of her life apologizing at the pile of meat and blood that had been his body it wouldn't have made any difference. He still would have been dead and gone from this world.

"I'm still sorry. I don't know what I would do if I ever lost you…and thinking about you dying makes me sad…dad." Said Shigeko. She wiped her eyes. He wanted to take her and shake her and tell her to keep her tears in her eyes where they belonged….another phantom pain….this time at the side of his face. He felt….he didn't know why he had been crying that day…but he had learned to keep his tears in his eyes where they belonged….and it had been a good lesson…because he had been a boy then and he had been expected to grow up to be a man and men did not cry…but she was a woman and she could do all the crying that she wanted.

He wiped the tears from her cheeks.

"Don't be. You….you will never lose me. Not in the way that I've lost my own parents." Said Suzuki. He wiped her cheeks, the tears from them, and he continued to let them fall. He would rather wipe them up as they fell than stop them at the source. If she had been a boy then it would have been a different story. If she had been a boy then they wouldn't have even been having this conversation. He would never have allowed himself to be so weak in front of his Son, even his blood Son, especially his blood Son…and he would never have allowed any male child of his to display such weakness ether. Shigeko…well she could be allowed this weakness….she couldn't help being born female after all…and she could cry…

She didn't have to keep her tears in her eyes where hey belonged. She was lucky in that way.

"How did grandma and grandpa die?" asked Shigeko as she wiped her own eyes. He knew that he had told her before and…and he knew that she might have forgotten…and he knew that he did not like to talk about this. This was the last thing that he wanted to talk about. This was…she was…she was asking him something and it wasn't like this was some big secret…and it wasn't like he was going to be so weak as to tell her that he didn't feel like talking about it…because his parents had been dead since 1991…and that had been twenty six years ago and…and enough time had passed that he should have had no problem talking about it.

"…an accident. There had been an accident and….and they tried to stop me from doing something that I had to do…and then there was an accident…" said Suzuki. That was the best that he could come up with…and he was ashamed of himself for having come up with something as pathetic as that. What was so hard to say? He had decided to take over the world his parents told him that he was insane, he didn't like to be called insane and then he had lost control and killed them both. There. The sequence of events was simple enough…but when he thought about it…about what had happened…he smelled and tasted copper…and he didn't know why….

He was so weak sometimes. Father would have been rolling over in his grave if what was left of him hadn't been cremated.

"Oh…dad...that's terrible…I'm sorry that you're an orphan." Said Shigeko. She said that and…and he was not an orphan. She was an orphan…well no her parents were alive and well. Her mother was a realtor now because her father had lost his job in the economic panic and now he was working a much lower paying and ranking position…and they were still in that same house…and her blood brother still showed no signs of psychic ability of any kind…though he was a very bright boy all things considered….he had actually broken some of Suzuki's academic records….not that he cared about that…also her blood brother was apparently a homosexual…well he had been seen kissing three separate boys…and those things were genetic so he had his worries about her…well not worries because she would never leave him…she came from very loyal people neither of her parents had stepped out on their marriage not once…even though her father had been tempted two years ago….not that he cared at all about her blood family…just enough to keep an eye on them…just enough to have them followed….because she was not a true orphan….

And he needed to stop thinking about orphans. He was not an orphan and neither was she. There were no orphans!

"I'm not an orphan, Shigeko. Children are orphans. I am simply a grown man without parents…and that's fine. I lost them but you will never lose me." Said Suzuki. He took her hand in his. Her hand was so small. She was so small. She was so small and…and he would never leave her all alone in the world. Not even death would stop him. Her little brow was furled and her little aura was pulled close and…and he knew that she was worried about that but she would never lose him. Ever.

"…we lost mom, though." said Shigeko after a moment. He let her hand go. For a moment he couldn't move, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't even think. She had said…she had just looked him in the eye and said…Masami was not lost! She was not lost and...and she knew…she fucking KNEW! She knew to NEVER mention Masami! Ever! She knew! He could have…he could have thrown her across the room in that moment…he could have picked her up and put her through a wall.

He didn't do that.

"No. You are never to speak like that again…do you hear me?" asked Suzuki. He picked her up by hand and now he was holding her in a sitting positon. Her powers reached out and tried to pull him from her. He didn't let them. She had to look at him. She had to listen to him. She had to know that what she had just said was completely unacceptable.

"Dad….you're hurting me." Said Shigeko. His fingers were digging into the leash of her shoulders. He was holding her as tightly as he could. He wasn't going to throw her but he wasn't going to put her down, to let her go, he had stopped himself from throwing her across the room but he could not stop her from doing this.

"I apologize….I sincerely apologize…now let's just….talk of other things. Here. Smoke this and we'll talk of other things." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to hand her the smoking pipe. He hated it but…but she needed it. She had opened her mouth and said the one thing that she shouldn't have…and then he had lost control, almost, and he had hurt her…almost. Her sleeves had ridden up and he could see little blue bruises already starting to form….since she was so pale…pale as him and….and they both needed to talk of other things before it happened again.

"What other things?" asked Shigeko as she took the smoking pipe and the lighter in her hands. She as looking at him and…and how did she not know what to talk about? She was Shigeko. She always had something to talk about. She had friends and games and a life and…and there must have been something there that she wanted to share!

Even if it was that pipe.

He would have shared that pipe with her in the instance if she had asked. He needed it. He knew that he would lose control of his powers and his thoughts but he also knew that he would lose hold of all of his negative thoughts. She smoked that to feel better. To have control. She smoked it and she always offered it to him and….

And she wasn't offering it now…she was just staring at him.

"I have no idea just…other things. Tell me about the party. You're excited about that so…so tell me about it." Said Suzuki. There. That was something. That was something that they could talk about. Something that they could spend endless amounts of time talking about. She was still staring at him…and he lit the end of her pipe for her. He lit the end and she finally got the message. He watched her inhale, hold it in her lungs, and then exhale and cough. He liked this better than talking about….what they should not have been talking about.

"Um…ok. So I scaled down the dessert bar so now it's just bowls of candy and cakes and only two kinds of pudding but the cups, not the fountain, like I originally wanted and also costumes are optional and also…." Said Shigeko. She spoke. She smoked and she spoke and he listened to her. He listened to her…he listened to her until her words faded into just noise. He listened to her even though he just…his mind wandered. He had opened a window but it didn't help very much.

His mind still wandered.

It wandered to the past…thoughts that he should have buried years ago. Thoughts about who he had been. Thoughts about what had been. Thoughts about….he held her close. He should have been thinking about her. He should have only been thinking about her. He wanted…he wanted to think about her…so he listened…he listened until she ran out of things to say…and then he put on a documentary….

One of the ones that she liked.

He liked documentaries and so did she. That was something that they had in common. He focused on that…and not on how back when he had been young he had spent many a night watching documentaries together….they rented them every weekend…and that was some of the rare times that they spent together and…and also he tried not to remember Masami…and how she had laid her head in his lap just like this…and how they'd watched documentaries together even though she had said that they were boring….even when they had watched documentaries about things that she liked and….

He focused on her.

He focused on Shigeko. He focused on the present. The present which was the past's future and…and this was the future that they were living in and…and this was what he focused on. He loved her and he focused on her and…and this was…this made it better and…and he just…he opened another window. He couldn't think…he couldn't breathe…he just…there was a lot of smoke in here and…he just had to focus on whatever it was they were watching….a documentary….so he would watch it…now…with Shigeko….right now….

Their favorite genre was documentary after all.


	431. Very Thin Walls

The walls were very thin here.

Serizawa had never had to deal with this before, thin walls. The walls of the old house had been very thick...or maybe mom had just been very quiet, either way he'd never had to deal with this before. The noise. He had been hearing the noises every single day and night since he had moved in here. It wasn't so bad during the day. The only person who was home during the day was Miss Suzuki's best friend Minegishi and they were very quiet. Sometimes Shimazaki was home too with Miss Suzuki's little brother. They were nice people….well from what he had seen when he'd met them. They had been nice enough to him….and he should have been nicer to them…

He should have been nicer to the rest of the house in general.

He should have just come out of his room and introduced himself properly to them like a normal person. He should have been able to do that…to just introduce himself….it should have been easy. Miss Suzuki could do it and the rest of the house could do it…and he should have been able to do it too. He was out of his house and now he was here in a place where everyone was like him and he had the support of his first friend ever…but he just couldn't. He had barely been able to sit in the kitchen with people who weren't Miss Suzuki let alone introduce himself, let alone leave this room and say 'hi' or…something.

Or telling the rest of the house to keep it down.

He had his own volume on low. He knew that these walls were thin and he didn't want to bother anyone…at least that was what he told himself. He told himself that he didn't want to bother anyone, to wake them up, even though they were already awake. It was the middle of the night and everyone was awake and…and he could hear them all and…and hearing everyone didn't bother him. Neither did being heard. He certainly didn't feel like, if he could hear everyone, they were in the room with him and it certainly didn't make him want to put his game controller down and run and hide….

He didn't want to do that at all.

"It's not that I think that you're a child, Ryou, it's that you act like one and it drives me insane sometimes."

"Toshi, I'm sorry, ok? Sometimes I can be an idiot but come on….I'm your idiot."

Serizawa turned the volume on his TV up another tic. From ten to eleven. He didn't want to make his TV too loud. He didn't want to bother anyone. He didn't want to be heard. He didn't want anyone to know that he was in there….which made no sense because of course they knew that he was in there. This was his room and he hardly ever left it. They all knew that he was in there and they all knew him and he didn't know them and…and he just….he focused on what he was doing.

"Yeah, alright, you're my idiot….but try and me less of one. Ryou you can be a lot…but so can I…"

"I don't mind. I love you, Toshi, even if you do hog the bed."

Up. Down. Left. Right. That was what he did. That was what he focused on. The maze. He was in the maze and he had to keep from exploding, he had to avoid everyone else or he would explode. There weren't any enemies in this game, no, just people minding their own business. In this game he was the enemy. He was the one who moved through their maze. He moved through the maze and tried his best to collect treasure without being noticed. Up. Down. Left. Right. Avoid, avoid, avoid, always avoid. It wasn't a difficult game to play, the controls were simple, and he knew what he was doing. He had been doing this for the last fifteen years of his life after all.

"I do not hog the bed, you're the one who can't stop tossing and turning…and the talking. Don't even get me started on the talking."

"I don't talk that much in my sleep."

He did. Avoid. He really did. Avoid. Serizawa had woken up many a time in the middle of the night to another voice calling out into the darkness. A voice calling out for help, a voice calling out for his mother, a voice calling someone a bastard, a voice telling his partner that he loved them, a voice telling someone named John that he was sorry for not saving him. He spoke in his sleep, and loudly, and it had woken Serizawa up….he didn't much like waking up to human voices…and it would have been easier if he could have just stayed on owl time…but Miss Suzuki had told him to fix his sleeping schedule…so that was what he did. He did what she asked of him. She had done so much for him already he owed her that much.

"So I just imagined you telling John Lennon to turn around and begging his forgiveness for not saving him?"

"Fine, alright, I talk in my sleep…but so do you."

They did talk in their sleep. Avoid. They really did. Avoid. They cried. Avoid. They cried and sometimes they asked someone, he didn't know who, why. He didn't know 'why' what. He didn't ask. It wouldn't have been right to ask. He didn't even know them, he had never met them, but he did want to ask them what they were so sad about…and he wanted to make them feel better…even though he knew that there was nothing that he could do. He couldn't even make himself feel better so, of course, he couldn't do anything for another person. Especially another person who he had never even said two words to. Someone who was friends with his only friend but was not his friend…and someone who would never be his friend even though he wanted…he had always wanted friends…..he had always seen people with their friends, in life when he'd been able to leave his room and on TV when he'd locked himself away. He had always wanted someone who just…who could be there for him…and who he could have been there for him return. Someone who he could talk to. Someone who he could be with without fear. Fear of hurting them….fear of them leaving him….someone who he knew could never hurt him or leave him…someone who understood him. Someone like….someone like the person who he had now…his only friend.

"I don't talk."

"You do. You do and I talk back."

He wanted friends so badly. He wanted someone to talk back to him when he woke up all alone in the night…feeling small and scared….even though he wasn't small and he had no reason to be scared. He could feel his umbrella near him, it was starting to feel like him, and he could feel Miss Suzuki near him too. She was in her own house. She was right next door and….and he needed her near him…and he could have picked up his phone and called him….since he had someone to call now…but he didn't. She had been with him before and…and this was her time with her father. He had never had a father before but he knew that it was important to spend time with them….and he wouldn't bring her from her family. Family was important. Family and friends were very important.

"I'm awake when you talk back to me. I just act like I'm asleep so I can hear all the sappy things you say."

"No, I know when you're awake. That's when I bring out the big guns. That's when I know that you need to hear me the most."

He should not have been listening to that. He should not have been listening to the two of them, the couple on the other side of the wall, talking about this. They were talking to each other and saying things that he knew that he was not meant to hear. They must not have realized how thin the walls were. They must not have realized that he could hear everything that they said. He shouldn't have been listening. He should have put his headphones on. This wasn't meant for him. This was couple talk. This was the sort of thing that someone like him should have been just….ignoring….even though it was hard.

"What do I need to hear the most then? If you know me so well, Ryou."

"I tell you that you're safe. I tell you that you're Minegishi Toshiki and that you don't need to be afraid of anyone. I tell you that, if anything, whoever you're talking to should be afraid of you. I tell you that I'm waiting off on the side if you need me to tag in. Stuff like that. Stuff to keep your nightmares away."

Friends were important. Family was important. Love was important. He had no idea what any of that was like. Well….he'd had his mom…and he had Miss Suzuki as a friend….but he'd never been in love before. Not for real. Actresses and characters didn't count. He'd never been in love with a girl for real…and he'd never had a friend for real before a few weeks ago…and his family had always just been him and mom. He had no idea how anything worked…not really.

"It helps…so I guess that you're not a complete idiot….but you are sappy as hell though. When did you get so sappy on me?"

"When I realized that you had my heart in your hand and I was happy to have given it to you to have and hold and squeeze and chew on and do whatever else you wanted with it. Like my heart was made of silly putty or something."

They loved each other….and even if he had been able to speak to them then he wouldn't have gotten up, paused his game, and told them to quiet down. Even though he really did not want to hear this. He wanted…well he wanted….he wanted the people around him to be happy and to leave him alone…not that anyone was doing anything to him at all…but he felt like….he didn't know what he felt like. With every word it felt like they were getting closer and closer to him but also…also he knew from their colors that they were far away. The green aura was all around him since the house was like a plant jungle but the red aura was very close to the person that it was attached to and that person was right on the other side of that wall. He knew that he was alone and he knew that he was happy to be alone…and he knew that he should not have been happy to have been alone. He knew that he should have wanted to be near people…and maybe he wanted that…and maybe he knew better than to want that…or maybe he had no idea what he wanted.

"Ryou…you're a sappy idiot and I think that you just want to chew on some silly putty right now. Either that or something similar in texture."

"Maybe. I'm always up to chew on stuff…or do other things with my mouth that I now you'd find a hell of a lot less objectionable."

He wanted that…well not that specifically. He didn't want to have someone beside him talking loudly and….and he did but also he didn't. All of that…he had no idea how all of that worked….and he was barely even good at being a friend. He wasn't good at relationships, any kind, and he just….he wanted everyone to be quiet. He wanted to go back to being able to pretend that his entire world was made up of these four walls. He wanted to go back to his room….but he was in his room. This was his room now but it was not his world. His world was not this room. His world was….it was that same world that all the other people in this house lived in. This world was for everyone, even people like him, and he needed to learn how to live in it….and how to live with other people….and he had no idea how to learn…but he wanted to…so that he could have all the thing that they, the other people in the world, had. The things that he had never even known that he wanted.

"You know, Ryou, you can add that your list of powers."

"Being able to make you see God just with my-"

"No, being able to make me forget just how truly idiotic you can be."

"Well give me ten minutes and I can make you forget your own name."

Serizawa pulled his sweatshirt over his head and closed his eyes. He knew what was coming next. He needed headphones. Now. This was….he knew that this was a thing that people did. He'd had a computer for most of his life and mom never cared what he did on the internet. He knew what adults did. Just….he knew what they did and he had seen it before, both with people and animated, but he didn't need to hear it right on the other side of his wall. He knew that this was something that NOBODY was meant to hear….and he hoped that if it ever came out that he had been able to hear this that the people on the other side of the wall would be able to forgive him.

And he hoped that he would be able to forgive himself.

He felt like the worst sort of person for having had heard any of that. Just because he would never have that did not mean that he had the right to hear it, to listen in on it, and he just…he reached for his headphones. He reached for his headphones and put them on before things got even louder than they had been before. That was not for him. The walls…they were so thin and…and he hadn't set out to hear that…even though he had no idea who it was that he was even arguing with inside of his mind. He knew that he hadn't set out to hear that….and he didn't want to….and he just…

He wanted to be alone.

He wanted to be all alone in the world. Not just the house but the entire world. He had spent so much time on his own. He had spent years of his life in his room and it had been so easy to pretend that he was the only person in the world, the last man on Earth, someone pulled into a place where time and space had no meaning at all. Well he wasn't in that world anymore. He was in the same world as everyone else and….and he wanted to be all alone again. At least then, when he'd been all alone, he didn't have to sit there and listen to everything that he had missed out on. Not just what was happening on the other side of that wall but…but what was happening all around him. He wouldn't have had to know what it was like to have friends or a family or someone to love….and he didn't know….not really…

Miss Suzuki was his friend.

Miss Suzuki was his friend and she…she took care of him but…but he knew that he wasn't friends with her like she was friends with the others. He knew that things between them were different. She took care of him. She sat with him when he was scared and helped him move through the house and…and he should have been able to do that on his own. He should have been able to be more normal, to be a better friend, and he should have been better at being everything else that he had to be. He should have been a better son to mom, he should have been close to her like Miss Suzuki was with her dad, and he should have been a better son to his father too. Maybe if he had been a better son then his dad would have stayed and not left when he was still inside of mom's stomach. Maybe if he had been a better person then he never would have been cursed….

Miss Suzuki said that his powers were not a curse.

His powers were partially genetics and partially fate. That was how she had explained it. Sometimes people were born with powers. Sometimes the powers came from parents and something they were a complete mystery. They weren't a curse, though, he had been clear about that…but they had been a curse to him. They had been a curse since the first time he had ever thrown a table across the room because he had been small and hadn't liked what mom had made him for dinner. He had been cursed…he had turned his powers into a curse it felt like….and he was a terrible friend for feeling like that. Miss Suzuki had been very clear on how he should feel about his powers but he…was being a terrible friend. Because of his powers he was being a terrible friend. If he hadn't had these powers then….then he could have had everything that he had ever wanted.

He thought that he had everything that he had ever wanted.

He thought that this was what he wanted. He had thought that if he had been in a place where everyone was like him, if he had been in a place where people understood him and what he could do, and if he could get out of the hell that was his room then everything could have been better….but it wasn't. No matter where he went, no matter what he did, he would always follow himself. His mind and his powers would always go with…and he had to live with that…with himself. He was the only one keeping himself from what he wanted. From being able to be a good friend. From being able to be a good son. From being able to find someone who could love him. He, his mind and his powers kept him from all of that…

And he needed to get better.

He needed to get better for his own sake…and because Miss Suzuki wanted him to. She wanted him to get better, to be the kind of friend that she needed, to be a friend to her like her other friends were….and he had to work harder…someone. Sometimes it felt like it took everything out of him just to get out of bed in the morning….like that was all the trying that he could do…but he had to do better. If he did better then….then he could have everything he ever wanted. He could have everything that the people outside of these walls had. The things that he wished more than anything else that he could have had.

Family. Love. Friendship.

All the things that he had never imagined that he could have had. He pulled his sweater down. He picked up his controller. He closed his eyes. He felt…across the way…and he could tell that he was going to the next house…he could feel her. Miss Suzuki. The person who had told him that he could have everything…the person who he wanted more than anything to be with…the person who kept him safe and made him happy. He wanted so badly to be with his only friend…to have heard her voice instead of….all of that. To have heard her telling him, again, how good things would be when he got better. How he would have everything that he ever wanted…how if he got better he could have it. Friends. Family. Love. All of it. All of the things that he had ever wanted. All of the things that he could have had if he had been better….if he had never been cursed….all the things that the people on the other side of that wall had…that they took for granted…that he would never take for granted. The things that were on the other side of these walls.

These very thin walls.


	432. Making a New Friend Through the Wall

Hatori was used to people pounding on the walls to get him to shut up.

It had been that way for his entire life. He had always been kind of loud when he'd played games. Even when he'd been really little and mom and dad had taken him to the arcade they had almost gotten kicked out because he didn't like to lose…and to be fair that had been a cheating crane game….and also to be fair it had gotten better when he realized that he could tell game to let him win. He had no idea how he did it, he had never had any idea how he had done it, but there had been a tie in his life when he'd just been able to tell a game to let him win and then it had let him.

But he wasn't going to do that anymore.

Because it wasn't fun. The point of this was to have fun and, sure, he could have made it so that he won every single time but that would have just been total waste of time and he did not waste his time! Well he did…sometimes…but this was not one of those times! He had been very bus this week, thank you very much, and he deserved a break from the stress of helping to keep Claw together….if it had been a building it would have been held together with paperclips and chewing gum…and this was how he relived stress and that was fine. Better than what Suzuki did…swallowing your feelings like that could not have been good for him….and if he got a little loud sometimes then there wasn't anything wrong with that.

Though maybe he should have been just a little bit quieter.

He had to hold on to his computer with his aura to keep the power going. He may have been too loud there, just a bit too loud. Usually he just got Minegishi pounding on the wall or Shimazaki teleporting in to tilt him back in his chair or something to get him to be quiet. He really knew that he had messed up when Shibata came to the door, knocked, and asked him nicely to be a little bit quieter. Those times were the worst….

Well the second worst now.

The worst times were when he woke the new guy. This guy…he was supposedly a nice guy. Mob had said so. He trusted Mob' judgement…mostly. She was young but she knew what she was dong. If she hadn't known what she was doing then her dad wouldn't have put her in charge like he so often did. It wasn't like he had faith in his other kid after all. No, if Suzuki trusted Mob then so did Hatori and if Mob thought that this guy was nice and good for the group and all then Hatori would believe her.

And also he would apologize because unlike some people in this house, he didn't need to name names, he wasn't a complete and total dick.

"Sorry man, didn't mean to wake you up." Said Hatori as he leaned back in his chair. He had no idea if the new guy had heard that but he wasn't about to start yelling. He could feel that Minegishi had finally fallen asleep and he was not going to be the one to wake them. Nothing good happened to people who woke Minegishi up.

Nothing good happened to people who woe the new guy up either it seemed.

It felt like he was up. Hatori could feel his aura. He could feel it pressing up against him like back when he'd been a kid and some other kids had dared him to touch an electric fence. He hadn't, though, not while the current had been going. He had gotten closer and closer and he had been able to feel it pressing up against him jus like this…but he'd made it stop before he had gotten shocked. He had no idea how to make this stop, he suspected that there was no calming the new guy down when he got like this, but he had to try. He wasn't going to be a dick or anything. That was Shimazaki's thing and Hatori knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of that.

It wasn't good.

"I...I wasn't asleep…" said Serizawa after a moment. Well more than a moment. Several moments. It had taken a while to remember how words worked. How to talk to someone who wasn't Miss Suzuki or his mother…and he had done it. It was easier to talk to someone through the wall. The wall on the other side of him. There was a couple on one side of his room and on the other side there was someone named Hatori. Miss Suzuki said that they would be good friends if they got to know each other.

And that was what he would do.

The first step to doing that was saying something. It was easy…well it got easier…if he just looked at the wall. If he ignored the fact that there was a person on the other side of that wall. If he could ignore the fact that he was talking to someone and that someone was new and that he hadn't talked to someone new in so long…if he ignored all of that and looked at the wall then he…he felt better. It was easier…than talking to someone face to face…but not so…so much easier but….

But Miss Suzuki thought that he could do it then he could….try.

"Well I'm still sorry. I can get really into what I'm doing sometimes." Said Hatori. Huh. So he could talk. He owed Shimazaki a pudding cup. He could talk…or at least he could respond. He didn't say anything after that. Well that was fine. The new guy was a former shut in…well former and current shut in…and that was the most that he had heard him say since he got here so, really, that was great. Mob would be happy about this at least…and it might have even gotten her talking to him again. Things weren't that awkward, it was sort of funny now that some weeks had past, and he just wanted things to get back to normal.

She really was a great kid.

Nice, too. Nice enough that he wondered if she had even come from Suzuki. He liked Suzuki…enough. He could be nice but also he was kind of an asshole….kind of really an asshole….and he hated to say it but Sho could be a real asshole too. Mob was the outlier in her family. He couldn't imagine her dad or her brother being nice enough to teach him how to do laundry…or go through the trouble of bringing someone into the group with as many problems as the new guy…but he wasn't going to sit there and speculate on the fact that Mob didn't look or act anything like her family. No, he was going to sit there and get back to what he was doing.

But quieter this time since he wasn't the only person in this house and he wasn't going to be a dick.

"What…um….what are you doing?" asked Serizawa. He needed to say something else. He needed to talk to the person on the other side of this wall…and he needed to pretend that he hadn't been talking to a person on the other side of the wall. He just….needed to pretend that he was talking to a wall. Like he had gone crazy or something like that. Like he had finally cracked from being alone…and he felt like he was going to. He felt like he was going to lose it…because this was a lot….but it wasn't. it wasn't a lot because he was talking to the wall and he could talk…well he was talking to a person but…but it was a lot easier to talk to the wall so that was what he was going to do.

"Huh?" asked Hatori taking off his headphones.

"Um…I wanted to know what you were…up to. I mean if I'm being…I mean if….um…" said Serizawa. He should have just kept his mouth shut. He didn't know how to talk to people, even when he'd been a kid he hadn't known how to talk to people, and now it was even worse because he just…hadn't talked to anyone new in years. When he'd been a kid nobody had wanted to talk to him. He had been weird and he was even weirder and…and he opened his umbrella. He opened his umbrella and he hid underneath it even though he knew that it was bad luck to open an umbrella indoors. He didn't know what else he could do. Not bother Miss Suzuki. He could tell by the sky, the view of it through the sheet, that it was in the middle of the night and he knew not to wake her up in the middle of the night. She had enough to do during the daytime…she didn't need him bothering her in the middle of the night too.

"Battle Royale." Said Hatori as he put his headphones down on the desk in front of him. He could split his focus…even though this was kind of cheating. He didn't like to use his powers when he did this, it made the while thing boring, but if the new guy wanted to talk then he'd talk to him. Better he be the first one to talk to the new guy than Shimazaki or something.

"The game or…" said Serizawa. He felt like an idiot the minute he had said that. He knew that he was playing a game and he knew that there was a game called Battle Royale but he had just spoken without thinking and he shouldn't have said anything and he should have just shut up and stayed in his room and stuck to playing Bomberman until he felt like going to sleep…or maybe he even should have been asleep….maybe he should have just pretended like he said nothing and tried to fall asleep…or something. He didn't know. His thoughts were going too fast.

He felt like he was going too fast.

Even though he was just sitting there on the floor of his room underneath his umbrella. He felt like he was going much too fast and he was getting dizzy and…and he needed to calm the h-word down. He needed to calm the h-word down and just…he stared at the wall. He picked a spot on the wall and stared at it. He was…he was talking to the wall and not a person and…and that was what he had to tell himself….

Because he couldn't just stop talking. That was no way to make a friend.

"The game. You know it?" asked Hatori. He got it. Well he sort of got it. The way the new guy's voice shook. The way his aura felt. He was freaked out…and Hatori knew that level of freaked out. The level of freaked out where you just wanted to run and hide and never come out. That freaked out where it felt like the whole world was turning way too fast, like you were in one of those thrill rides that went around and around and around…even though you could have sworn that you had gotten on a merry-go-round….and all you wanted to do was get off but you just…couldn't.

Because you couldn't just get off of the ride that was called life…or other such poetic things.

"I…know of it. I don't really play a lot of games like that…with shooting…I mean. I'm not really into…um…very violent games." Said Serizawa. He had never been allowed to play those sorts of games when he'd been small….and he knew that he wasn't small anymore. He was tall enough to have been able to touch the top of the doorframe without even having to stand on his tiptoes. He was tall enough that it hurt his back, actually, when he sat hunched over like this for long periods of time. He was big enough that he could see right over the top of Miss Suzuki's head and be surprised by that fact…because part of him expected to be small like she was…but she was small and he wasn't and…and he could do whatever he wanted now…but he still wasn't a fan of violent games.

He didn't much like hurting people…even people who weren't real.

"Man, you and Mob would get along so well." Said Hatori with a shake of his head. Yeah, that was definitely Mob's friend back there. Maybe they'd get another person in their Minecraft world soon…and maybe she would just come back to it already. Not that he would push her or anything. She was eleven and she'd embarrassed herself.

"We do…I mean me and Miss Suzuki do….I mean…um…." Said Serizawa. He go along with her better than he had ever gotten along with anyone else in his entire life. She was his first friend. She was his only friend. She was the first person in his entire life who had looked at him and seen…something other than someone who could hurt her…something other than someone who had hurt others…someone other than someone who was cursed. She looked at him and saw someone…and nobody had ever looked at him like that….

And if she could look at him and see someone better than what he was…so the least that he could do for her was be the person that she saw him as.

"Hey, you playing something? I mean what are you playing? I mean Mob said that you liked games." Said Hatori

"Bomberman." Said Serizawa. He said it more like a gasp…but he had managed to say it without stuttering. He had also said it without pausing. That was good. That was…Miss Suzuki would have been proud of him if she had heard that. She would have ben proud of him if she had been here for any of this. He wanted that, to make someone proud of him, even though he had never once made anyone proud of him in his entire life.

"The original?" asked Hatori. He didn't draw attention to how freaked out the new guy was. He had always hated that, when he'd been a kid, and he still hated it. When people pointed out how upset he got. When people talked about how fragile he was. He wasn't fragile. Maybe once everyone spent more time with the new guy then they would realize what fragile was and…and that was a dick thought to have. He was not a dick. He knew what it was like to be in a new place and have to deal with someone being a nonstop dick to you.

"Yes…yes, I mean….yes. It's the arcade version." said Serizawa. There, it had gotten better at the end. Once he caught his breath. Once his brain caught up to how fast it was that he felt like he was moving…even though he wasn't moving at all. He felt like…like the one time his mom had taken him to a festival…when he'd been so small that she could have held him still. When they had gotten onto that ride where the floor moved under your feet…he felt like the floor was moving under his feet…but he just…had to move with it. Like his mom had said…he had to move with it or get thrown off…and he wasn't going to get thrown off. Not again. Miss Suzuki….she would not have liked that.

"You and Suzuki would get along really well." Said Hatori. They really would. Suzuki…well when he wasn't being a dick could be really nice…and he was really into arcade games. If the new guy liked them too then, well, they could add someone new to the late night gaming and weird question group. Having another friend might have even gotten Suzuki to drop Fukuda…because that guy wasn't good for him or anyone…not that Hatori was going to go digging around in Suzuki's social life or anything.

"Um…me and Miss Suzuki already get along." Said Serizawa. He had thought that they had been getting along…but what if they hadn't been! He tried to calm down, he tried to stop feeling dizzy, he tried to stop getting thrown off. He just…there were other people called Suzuki…her brother…her dad….her mom who she said that she hadn't seen in years…probably a million other people since this was Japan…he just…

He needed to stay on this thing. He didn't get to fall off. Not again.

"No, I mean her dad. President Suzuki. He likes that old arcade stuff…well he'll never admit to it but he likes arcade games. He's really weird like that…and kind of an asshole too…but he's a great guy. You should come and hang out with us one of these days." Said Hatori

"Oh…um…that would be….I mean…." Said Serizawa. Right. Miss Suzuki had a dad and he was called Suzuki and…and he had no idea if he could become friends, or at least hang out with, her dad. He had never spent time with him before…or any dad…or any man really…well he was a man now but hanging out with yourself didn't count…and also he didn't feel like….

He still felt small.

But he wasn't small. He was an adult now and….and he needed to…to at least try. He could try and…and he was trying right now. He was trying and…and he was doing well. Talking to the wall…to the person on the other side of the wall. So much was behind that wall….another person….one who he was talking to. One who he was talking to….and one who was talking to him…one who was being nice to him and…and one who Miss Suzuki said that he would like to be friends with….

And he could always use more friends…

"Not now, I mean. Later. He's been in a pretty weird mood lately. I think that he's just pissed off because he lost Osaka. He…doesn't take well to loosing. Not at all. He can be kind of….like that sometimes. You know what? Let me get him ready to hang out with you….because he does listen to me at least a little…and I know what it's like to be in a new place and to be all freaked out and shit. It's hard." Said Hatori

"It…yes…it is." Said Serizawa. He had never been so freaked out in his entire life. Well…maybe…he didn't know. He had been freaked out nonstop for so long that he was just getting….tired. Tired and just….he didn't know. Tired enough to try, maybe, or maybe he was trying because Miss Suzuki was trying for him and she deserved to have him trying for her…or something.

"So….Bomberman…do you have another controller?" asked Hatori

"I…I do…" said Serizawa. He had a bunch of spares for when he accidentally broke his. He had taken them with him when he moved. He had taken almost his entire room with him when he had left.

"Want to try two player?" asked Hatori going off on a giant limb. He knew what it was like to play all by yourself for years on end. After mom and dad had died…well that was different….and even when he'd been a kid it had been rare when mom and dad had played with him…and he knew how much it sucked having to play on your own.

"W-with you?" asked Serizawa. He felt like his heart was going to stop. He felt like he was going to fall off…he didn't know. The world? He didn't know. He just…felt…he didn't know what he felt. He held his umbrella closet. Someone wanted to play with him. This was…one of those things that he had wanted. This was what he had wanted and…and he had wanted this for so long. Someone else to play with…and he just…this was….he had something that he always wanted and…and he could do this…he had to try to do this. For Miss Suzuki. This was….what she wanted.

"Yeah, only if you want to though. I know how clunky two player can be on that but, hey, I'm up for anything." said Hatori

"It…it can be. I don't think that it was meant to be two player…originally." Said Serizawa

"It wasn't, actually. The two player was put in at literally the last second." Said Hatori

"Oh….I didn't know that." Said Serizawa

"Most people don't. I can't believe it, that someone would do something like that just for another hundred yen….this is just like…sorry. Sorry. I just really like gaming history and, well, it did come from the greatest era of gaming…." Said Hatori. Suzuki was starting to grow on him. Fine, he could call the arcade era the greatest era of gaming just because it laid the building blocks of so much that the world took for granted or whatever….and Suzuki would never let him live it down if he knew that Hatori was agreeing with him.

"I think so too." Said Serizawa. He wasn't lying. This was the greatest era of gaming. Very thing was so simple and easy to follow and a lot of the times the levels kept ongoing and going and going….well until the whole thing crashed….but still. He had never met anyone, before, who felt the same way that he did…well he hadn't met anyone else before who liked this stuff end of discussion.

"So, do you want to play?" asked Hatori. Hanging out with the new guy was better than sitting in his room and playing alone until he got tired enough to get some sleep. Even if he did freak out…and he did that a lot…well Hatori wasn't a dick. He wasn't going to just sit there and just…be a dick like that. The new guy needed all the friends that he could get and Hatori, well he could be that person. Besides, what was Claw if not a friendship cult?

"I…um….sure…" said Serizawa. He did. He liked this person and he wanted to hang out with them…and he wanted more friends. If anything he needed more friends….not that he wasn't grateful to Miss Suzuki…but she had asked that he make friends with her friends and that was what he was doing. He was doing this for himself, too, because…well he had always wanted a friend who liked the same things that he did…and now he had one…sort of.

"Cool. I'm Hatori by the way, if you didn't already know…you know, since we haven't been formally introduced." said Hatori

"I…I know….I'm Serizawa…but you already knew that…probably." Said Serizawa. He had said something stupid again. Miss Suzuki had probably told him already and…and it was just so hard to think of what to day sometimes and what to do and…and he just…he needed….he wanted to just…he had to calm down. This was what he wanted and he was supposed to be getting better and…and he just…this was what Miss Suzuki wanted for him. He just had to focus on that, on what Miss Suzuki wanted, on how happy she would be that he had made a friend. That was all. He could do that….he had to tell himself that he could do that….and maybe if he told himself enough times that he could do that then maybe it would be true.

"Well Serizawa prepare to get your ass kicked…or to kick my ass. One of the two." Said Hatori as he got up from his chair. As he got closer to the wall he could feel the other aura pressing down on him…but that was ok. The new guy was just a little freaked out but, well, sometimes Hatori got just a little freaked out too. He could deal with the new guy getting freaked out….and hopefully the new guy could deal with him, too.

But he'd try and be quieter than usual just to be safe.


	433. Halloween Eve Movie Night

On Halloween you were supposed to watch a scary movie…but nobody had told Shibata that.

He was the one who had picked this movie. Well he was the one who had put this movie in the hat. This was the will of the hat, Sho knew full well that this was the will of the hat, but the will of the hat could be challenged. It had to be challenged and maybe he was the person to challenge it! Because this movie…this was the most boring movie that he had ever seen in his life.

And he'd seen Frozen one hundred and twelve times.

"Seriously….?" Muttered Sho as he shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth. At least the popcorn was good. Shibata had made regular popcorn and kettle corn too. There was also caramel popcorn but Sho let Shimazaki have that since he was Shimazaki and he deserved it…and stuff. Even if he was letting Minegishi use him as a pillow….and even if he was just sitting there and letting the most boring movie in existence play.

Seriously.

This was the dumbest thing that Sho had ever seen. There was a lady and she was pretty and she met this rich guy and now they were hanging out in a hotel. It didn't look like she was going to kill him or he was going to kill her or anything like that. The hotel wasn't even haunted and there hadn't been a single zombie on screen either. This was just…well now she was trying to go shopping….so boring….

Such a waste of a movie night.

"Sho, don't complain with your mouth full." Said Mob. She didn't want him to complain at all but she knew her little brother and she knew that he didn't like these kinds of movies. That was why, for her hat vote, she put in for the movie about the guy who killed people and wore their faces….even though she hated that movie. She knew that Sho liked it because he liked movies where people died and stuff….and she would never understand why. She loved her little brother, more than anyone else in the world, but she still didn't understand how he could sit there for two hours and watch people get cut up and killed and stuff.

This movie was really much better.

"Don't complain at all. You know better than to argue with the will of the hat." Said Minegishi. Ryou ran his fingers through their hair. A lock of it went down into their eyes…and he brushed it back. They needed either a hair thing or a haircut….or maybe a new spot….no. They wouldn't be moving. They were too damn comfortable. They were comfortable enough to forget that they were watching a truly bizarre romcom about a prostitute finding love with a joyless businessman, to forget that they had been pissed at Ryou because he had been ashing in their bed earlier that day, and to forget that Mob little brother was laying down at the floor glaring at them with all his might.

He was cute, sometimes, if you forgot who he was and why he was glaring in the first place.

"The hat works in mysterious ways." Said Shimazaki through a mouth full of caramel corn. He was so focused on Toshi that he could feel their nose doing that adorable thing it did when they were annoyed. He could have gladly spent the night watching their nose wrinkle in disgust with him…but he couldn't do that. Nope, they were having one of their movie nights again and, once again, Shibata's pick had won. It wasn't a bad movie, it at least had narration even if it was in English, but it was no Magical Mystery Tour….or Yellow Submarine….or Across the Universe….but it was still better than whatever screamfest Sho had probably put in the hat. Shimazaki was not a fan of horror movies, too many quiet and loud parts one after the other, but he was somewhat a fan of romantic comedies. Not as much as Toshi, though, but more than they would ever dare to admit.

"Yeah well….what, exactly, does this have to do with Halloween?" asked Sho from his spot on the floor. He was laying down on the carpet right in front of the TV. He had claimed this spot because he had thought that they would be watching something interesting. Not….this. He couldn't believe that Shimazaki was actually enjoying this…well the movie was called Pretty Woman and he did like girls….but he couldn't even tell that the girl was pretty! Also a girl being pretty wasn't enough to carry a whole movie! Now if she had been pretty and then chopped up and made into a Frankenstein or eaten or if she was pretty because she stole other people's skin and body parts and ate their organs then that would have been a movie!

"Absolutely nothing." Said Minegishi as they laid their head on Ryou's shoulder. No way was this kid going to upset them tonight. They couldn't deal with that. This was a rare moment of peace in the house and they were going to do their best to enjoy it. They had a party to go to tomorrow, a crazy HQ Claw only work party, and they had to take as much peace as they could before they had to go out into that insanity.

"She puts one fancy clothes….which is like putting on a costume….so that's like Halloween...and stuff." Said Mob. She pushed the popcorn bowl closer to Sho. She knew that she should have maybe pushed for Sho's pick but…well that wouldn't have been fair to everyone else.

"I'm going to go with Sho on this one…who picked this out again?" asked Hatori looking up from his phone. This was….a weird pick. Shibata's picks were always like this, romance movies, but this was Halloween. Not that they had to watch something rated R18 or anything like that, there were kids here, but maybe something like….well he didn't know a lot of horror movies but….well anything would have been better than this.

Suzuki agreed with him.

He agreed that Pretty Woman was a weird movie to pick for the night before Halloween….and apparently Suzuki had seen it. His wife had probably liked it. She liked stuff like this…well Hatori hadn't been told that for sure but Suzuki knew a lot about British dramas and romantic movies and, well, who else but his wife would have been into that stuff? Also this was an old movie and Suzuki knew a lot about old stuff. That was why he had texted Suzuki to invite him to this thing. Not that he thought that Suzuki would have come but that was what friends did.

They invited their friends to weird Halloween Eve movie nights.

"Hey…we never said that it had to be a scary movie…and also we have kids here. We can't watch scary movies because the kids might get nightmares." Said Shibata. He focused on the bowl of popcorn in his lap. He picked the burnt parts out for himself, it was the least he could do after his pick one for tonight's movie night. He knew that they should have been watching a horror movie but he just…was not a fan. Also there kids there and kids…well he knew how easily kids could be scared and he didn't want to be responsible for that. If horror movies freaked him out then it would have been even worse for the kids…and he knew what Sho watched sometimes…but maybe that wasn't really all that good for him.

"The kids or you?" asked Minegishi

"There's nothing wrong with nightmares…Suzuki thinks so too." Said Hatori looking down at his phone. He knew that he wasn't being all that polite but…well Suzuki was in a chatty mood and he could be kind of interesting sometimes…and also romance movies were kind of boring. Two people met, they fell in love, they had a fight, they got back together, and then they all lived happily ever after. He would have rather sat next to Suzuki and watched one of his very long and dry documentaries about the history of kendo or something.

"Who cares what my dad thinks?" asked Sho throwing a handful of popcorn at Hatori. He didn't know what big sis was giving him that look for. She caught the popcorn with her powers and put it back in the bowl. Maybe she was in love with him again or something….which would have been great because then she would have stayed away from Shimazaki….not that he cared who she fell in love with…and not that she was in love with Shimazaki or anything like that. No, he didn't have to worry about big sis, she wasn't after Shimazaki, it was Minegishi that he had to worry about…not that he was ever going to be able to go out with Shimazaki or anything like that.

"Apparently Hatori." Said Minegishi

"You stay out of this." said Sho

"Sho, be nice." Said Mob. Nope. They were not going to fight. She was not going to let her little brother fight with her best friend on movie night…or any night….but especially movie night. This was one of their fun nights…and also they had to be in a good mood for the party tomorrow. Dad had scaled it down so that it was just for Claw people…and there would be no dogs running around…or pudding waterfalls and swimming pools…or jumping off of the roof…but it could still be fun. It would be a lot more, fun, though, if they were all in a good mood for tomorrow.

"I am nice. They're the one being all….into other people's business and stuff." Said Sho. He got quiet towards the end until he just stopped talking. He could feel Shimazaki looking at him. He could feel Shimazaki's aura on his and…and he knew that he had messed up. He didn't look back there, back to the couch that Shimazaki and Minegishi took up. They could have sat on the floor, or one of them could have sat down on the little couch with Hatori…or they could have kicked Shibata out of the big chair…and stuff….but they were sitting together. They were sitting together because they loved each other…and stuff….and Sho….

He didn't want to turn around and look at that.

"Sho come on, watch the movie. It's not that bad. I mean it's no Frozen but it's not that bad." Said Mob. She knew that love could make a person say and do that strangest things…even fight with Minegishi. They were in love with Shimazaki, and they were his theyfriend, so of course Sho would have been mad at them….but there was nothing that anyone could do about it. Also Mob didn't want to do anything about it. She wanted Minegishi and Shimazaki to be happy…but she also wanted Sho to be happy….and there was no way to make them all happy….so maybe the best thing to do was just watch the movie before a fight happened.

"Of course you like it, it's a girl's movie." Said Sho. He liked some girls stuff, and he knew that girls could like boys stuff, but for some stuff there was no overlap. He sort of liked parts of Frozen but big sis was right. This was no Frozen. This was one of those kissing and love movies where nothing happened and he just didn't like those. If someone exploded or got cut up with a chainsaw or other Halloween stuff it would have been a different story entirely but none of that was happening so he was bored out of his mind.

"Hey, there are no girl movies or boy movies. There are just movies." Said Shimazaki

"What about princess movies?" asked Sho. There were too boy movies and girl movies…and what did he know? He couldn't even watch movies and…and that had been mean…and he had no idea why he had just been so mean to Shimazaki. He was his best friend. He wasn't supposed to be that mean to his best friend…or mean at all.

"Who doesn't like a good princess movie….Hatori put your hand down." Said Shimazaki

"What? Come on, I'm not really a fan of princess movies…sorry Mob." Said Hatori. Mob squeaked and looked down at the rug.

"Um…it's ok. You're a boy. I understand." Said Mob

"It has nothing to do with being a boy or a girl. I'm not a fan either….and I'm very sorry, Mob, but that's how I feel." Said Minegishi

"But…you like Frozen. We've watched it together a bunch of times. You like it." Said Mob

"That's true, you guys do watch Frozen together." Said Shibata

"Well that's different. Frozen isn't a princess movie. It's about sisterly love and also Elsa is a queen and I would have thought that you of all people would have known that, Mob." Said Minegishi

"Elsa is only a queen after her coronation, before that she's a princes, and also Anna is a princess for the whole movie." Said Mob

"I can feel my brain melting." Said Sho with a groan. Some of big sis's movies could be ok…just ok. Nobody ever got hurt, there was no blood, nothing ever wound up catching fire or exploding, and hardly anyone ever died. Girl movies were so boring….but he knew that girls felt the same way about boy movies so it was even.

"In that case trade popcorn with me." Said Shimazaki. He held out the bowl of caramel corn and the kid picked it up with his powers. Shimazaki grabbed the bowl that Sho had been eating from and…yup. Kettle corn. Not the brain melting kind but still pretty damn good.

"Just because there are princesses in it that doesn't mean that it's a princess movie. That movie is about sisterly love and coming out and self-acceptance. Princess movies are just about surviving trauma and running away with the first man that can save you from your terrible life." Said Minegishi

"That's…not true. They're love stories. Really good ones…even if love at first sight isn't real. Like um….how Belle falls in love with the Beast-" said Mob

"After he imprisons her in his castle…and even then after she's been shunned by society for the crime of reading." Said Minegishi

"It wasn't a crime….people just weren't nice to her." said Mob

"What was even up with that town anyway? Who the hell wants to be a bunch of illiterates? Such a weird ass thing to be proud of….right?" asked Shimazaki

"Apparently seventeenth century French people." Said Minegishi

"Come on, don't ruin Disney for her. Not all princess movies are like that. Well the old ones…I guess…but um….the little mermaid-" said Shibata

"She ran away to the surface after her father destroyed her entire life's collection of human artifacts. It was very traumatic for her. Also the body horror of getting legs after being a mermaid your whole life…not to mention now she has to be complacent in the killing and eating of her former subjects." Said Minegishi

"Um…well there's nothing wrong with cannibalism….because some people are just like that." Said Mob looking back at Hatori. She hoped that Minegishi hadn't hurt his feelings talking like that. She hadn't thought before about how Ariel had to eat fish once she got to the surface….or how it was cannibalism…but that was ok because…well it wasn't real…but there were real cannibals and they were ok just so long as never ate people….and they couldn't help being who they were and there was no need to make someone feel bad about themselves like that.

"That's right….it's good to be open minded." Said Shibata. He was not going to be the one to correct her. She didn't need to know what Hatori had really meant by that. She was just a little girl. She needed to keep her head full of little girl things…like this really bizarre conversation they had all found themselves in.

"I don't think that it would be cannibalism anyway because she wasn't eating other mermaids…and she's clearly got a human half so she must eat fish." said Hatori. He knew why Mob was looking at him like that…and he knew that he was never going to live the whole 'cannibalism' thing down….but that was ok. He would rather spend the rest of his life with Mob thinking he was some sort of closeted cannibal than having Mob know what he had meant when he had said…all that he had said…to Minegishi last year at the Christmas party.

"No, she ate seaweed and sand and stuff. Otherwise why would her dad have been so mad at humans for eating fish for?" asked Sho. Not that he knew a lot about big sis's girl movies…but the little mermaid was ok. The sea witch got stabbed in the guts at the end and she exploded. That was the best ending of any Disney movie that he had ever seen in his life. Well one of her princess ones at least. Zootopia…well that was the greatest movie ever made.

"Yuck….sand eating. I don't think that they ate sand…but maybe they ate seaweed and other sea plants and stuff….and I don't think that she ran away with Eric just because her life was sad…and it wasn't that sad. Her dad could be mean sometimes but that's just how dads are. He still loved her and stuff. Sometimes your dad can be really mean and sometimes it can seem like he doesn't love you…or he loves you a little too much….but that's just how they are." Said Mob

"Mob…when you sing to birds come to you and help you with your chores and stuff?" asked Minegishi with a shake of their head. They wished that Mob still wore those costumes everywhere. Now she lived in tutu skirts and princess t-shirts but she had been so cute when she'd been smaller…and also it would have been the perfect costuming for what she had just said. No wonder Mob had always been so into that stuff. The dead mother, the traumatic childhood, the literal supervillain for a father…Minegishi wondered when the music would start up and the birds and woodland creatures would come.

"Um…I don't really sing but I don't think that I have that power…but it would be nice if someone came and helped me with my chores….but that's ok. I can do them on my own." Said Mob. If anyone had that power it would have been Sho…but she wasn't going to say that. She didn't need Sho figuring out if he could sing and call animals to himself…he had already brought baby snakes into the house before….they did not need to deal with any more animals inside the house ever again.

"Never mind. Just remember that the basis of all Disney princess movies, and all romantic movies in general, in unhealthy wish fulfillment and the desire to get away from a traumatic environment." Said Minegishi. Movies like this…well they had watched movies like this when they had been younger…Mob's age…young enough to be able to swallow all of it, anyway.

"Toshi, are you telling me that this movie about a hooker falling in love with and marrying some rich douchebag, changing him into a decent human being, and riding off into the sunset with him is some kind of wish fulfillment fantasy?" asked Shimazaki

"Yeah, for the guy. If this were real life she wouldn't have even negotiated. She would have just robbed him and blown the money on coke or something." Said Toshi

"Hey, be nice. Not all hookers are like that. Some of the best people I have ever known have been hookers." Said Shimazaki. He could hear Toshi's aura…and it sounded all huffy…which wasn't good because it sounded sort of hiccup when he was this near to them…and he had no idea what they were upset about…unless it was all this hooker talk…yeah, ok, they were sitting there with the kids but the kids weren't like regular kids and also they were watching Pretty Woman of all the things.

"We know. We've all seen your last arm portrait." Said Minegishi. They were not bitter. They were not jealous. They were not anything at all. Ryou had led a very long and colorful life before he had met them. They didn't know the full story behind that portrait, just that it had been of someone he had loved, and they didn't care. They were the one on his arm now…and also they didn't believe that one person could own another…and they were not going to let themselves become possessive. They hated possessive people and they would not allow themselves to become someone like that.

"Wait, that was a hooker?" asked Hatori. He thought that it had been some great love of his life or something…like there was some tragic backstory or something….not just some hooker he knew once…and also Shimazaki didn't even seem like he needed to go to places like that. He knew how hot he was…not that Hatori looked at him like that…he was just stating a fact. Shimazaki was a really hot guy and to paraphrase Suzuki if Hatori had been a girl, or actually gay then he would have been all over that.

"She wasn't a hooker." Said Shimazaki simply. She was…not someone who he was in the mood to talk about. Risa had been…someone in his life who had been special to him….like Toshi was…but that was over now and he had Toshi and…and he had no reason to talk about…all of that.

"No, she was the love of your life." Said Minegishi with a shrug. They did not feel threatened. They had only just started this thing with Ryou….and anyway they did not feel threatened. They did not feel any of those feelings which they were simply not capable of feeling.

"No, Toshi, you're the-" said Shimazaki leaning in close. Did Toshi not know? Well he had never told them…and that was on him. Risa had been…someone…but she was gone now and Toshi…well Toshi was there. They were there and they would always be there and he loved them more than anyone else in the world. They were the love of his life. They should have known that…he should have told them.

"What's a hooker?" asked Mob suddenly and maybe a little too loudly. She had to say something. She knew what Shimazaki was going to say. She knew that he was going to tell Minegishi that they were the love of his life…and she knew that she had to stop him before Sho heard. She loved Shimazaki and Minegishi and she had been wanting them to get together for a long time now…but she didn't want Sho to end up with his heart ripped out. She knew that if her little brother had heard Shimazaki say that then his heart would have been ripped out and the Mortal Kombat guy would have said 'fatality' and it would have been a fatality, it really would have, because nobody could ever live with a heart that broken.

"Uh….what?" asked Hatori. He checked the rating of the movie and…this was somehow a family movie…well in America this was a family movie….how was this a family movie!?

"Yeah….I don't know what you guys are talking about either." Said Sho. He had no idea what any of this had to do with putting things on hooks. He maybe needed to focus on what everyone was saying better…or just the movie…or anything other than Shimazaki and Minegishi getting all cuddly on the couch.

"You know what? Let's watch something else. Sho, what did you want to put on?" asked Shimazaki. Right. This was…about stuff that kids should not have known about…and he'd watched this movie with mom when he'd been little…even smaller than them…but he just…he did not need to explain what prostitution was to them. They were still so little.

"Nothing with screaming or jump scares. They're hell on my hearing." Said Shimazaki. No way was he going to sit through one of Sho's chainsaw screamfests. He needed to be able to hear….and also a lot of those movies didn't have narration and he hated sitting through a movie with no narration.

"Well I wanted to put on this movie where there's this guy and he has this secret underground lair and he lures people in so he can skin them alive and wear their faces and then leave them alive with no skins on so he can put other people's skin on them but not their faces….but we can watch something else like the nightmare before Christmas or some other thing like that…because I know that Shimazaki likes music and hates movies with a lot of screaming and chainsaw noises." Said Sho

"….the hell….?" Muttered Hatori. That was…he wished that he was good enough friends with Suzuki to question his parenting because…well Sho had enough problems as it was.

"Yeah…let's do that…the nightmare before Christmas I mean…not the…skinning….that's not good." Said Shibata. Seeing things like that could not have been good for Sho at all….but he wasn't going to get into it with him now. He'd picked a nice kid's movie that didn't have…any of that…unpleasantness…in it.

"That's a good pick, Sho, you did good." Said Mob. The last thing she wanted was to watch that movie again…and when dad took over the world she was going to have words with the movie makers. Why couldn't they make nice movies where people were friends and sang songs and didn't skin other people and take their faces?

"Yeah, I know I did…now let me eat." Said Sho as he stuffed his mouth full of popcorn so he didn't say anything else. He could feel Shimazaki's aura and it was all tangled up with Minegishi's…and he just…didn't want that to be happening but it was so….so instead of fighting he was just…going to eat popcorn and not fight with anyone.

"I'll go make more popcorn." Said Shibata. Wow, Sho sure was hungry tonight…or he was just eating his feelings…but that was ok, he was a growing boy. Either way he needed food and Shibata was always happy to feed the kids.

"I'll go get Serizawa, he might like this movie." Said Mob as she got up. She wondered if he would come out this time. She knew that he was still nervous around people but he'd met Hatori and liked him and also he'd sort of met Sho and Shimazaki…and also it was movie night and they couldn't have a house movie night without the whole house. Hatori had even invited dad of all people so the least that she could do was invite Serizawa again.

"I'll nail down the furniture." Muttered Minegishi sarcastically. They had clearly been sarcastic there but Ryou wrapped an arm around them just the same. He pulled them close and rested his head down onto theirs. They could feel him breathing against their ear…and they could feel Sho's aura glaring at them. Ryou must have been able to sense it or feel it or hear it or however he was perceiving things at the moment. He must have known that he was pouring gasoline onto a fire…a fire that he needed to deal with before the kid got older and things got REALLY out of hand.

"Toshi…you know that you're the love of my life, right?" asked Shimazaki quietly, too quietly for Sho to hear. He knew that Sho couldn't hear them because he hadn't gotten up and killed Toshi the second he said that. He knew that he should have waited but he needed to tell Toshi now, before he forgot, and before they went and thought that he would ever put anyone above them.

"Ryou….do you want to hear it in English or Japanese? The movie, I mean." Said Minegishi. Nope. They were not getting into it with Sho right there…or at all. They just…they had exchanged I love yous and…and they hadn't known that there was anything bigger than that but Ryou had found it…and they had no idea if they were ready for that…and they were tired of having things that they were not ready for thrust upon them. Like the room they were sharing….the big bed….they just….needed a minute…or two….or two thousand.

"Whichever has the narration." Said Shimazaki. He knew Toshi and he knew that they weren't ready to say it back to him…also he might not even have been the love of their life but…well they were the love of his and that was what mattered.

"I'll find it!" said Sho. So that was what they were talking about over there…and Sho could find one with good narration in…in both! That way they could switch back and forth! He got up and took the remote from Hatori…well he had been using his power but…but Sho could do things! He could help! He could help and then Shimazaki would have been all 'wow Sho!' and 'thanks for helping me out' and 'you're a much better friend than Minegishi so you should sit by me and use me as a pillow and I'll touch your back and your hair and let you touch my chest and stuff'….or something.

Things that he was not going to think about now.

He was going to think about how they were watching an actual Halloween movie…well one about Halloween and Christmas…which was better than a movie about a pretty lady falling in love with some jerk. Yeah. He was going to think about that and the popcorn and the party tomorrow and how he and Shimazaki were going to hang out at the party and how they were going to have fun and….and how big sis had gotten the new guy out of his room and…and stuff like that….fun stuff….

Fun Halloween type stuff….because it was Halloween Eve…their Halloween Eve movie night.


	434. The Things I Do For Love

Sho did a lot of things for love…even dress up like a girl even though he most certainly wasn't.

Sho was a boy. He was a boy who liked boys but he was still a boy. Just because he liked boys, like girls were supposed to, that didn't mean that he was one. That didn't mean that he wanted to wear makeup and dresses and play with dolls and watch movies about kissing and stuff like that. He just liked boys, that was all, and that didn't mean that he had to be anything other than Sho. The book that Minegishi gave him said so.

Maybe he needed to lend that book to big sis.

"Wow, I can't believe that the Anna dress still fits on you. This is so great." Said Mob as she pulled her Anna dress down over Sho's head. Now they could be Elsa and Anna for Halloween…this was so great! Well, alright, her Elsa dress was still way too small but she had a blue shirt and skirt and Minegishi could probably braid her hair like Elsa's, they knew a lot about hair, and also she had some clip on braids that Sho could wear….this was going to be so great!

"Yeah….it's great….can I take this off now?" asked Sho as he pulled up the dress. At least she let him wear pants under this thing. Still, he didn't want to wear this. They were supposed to be getting ready for the party and he already had a costume. Well he had a t-shirt that said 'cheap ass Halloween costume' on it in English and that sort of counted, right? It didn't matter, Shimazaki thought that it was funny, that was what mattered the most.

"What? Take it off? No, we're going to be Elsa and Anna." Said Mob. This was the perfect costumed idea. She knew that Sho didn't always like to play the Shoko game with her but…well it was Halloween. This was a holiday about wearing costumes and eating candy…and some other stuff about druids that Minegishi told her about…but mostly about costumes and candy. She loved costumes and candy and Sho….well he loved candy and also this was a good time to play the Shoko game since it was a costume day. She thought so, anyway, Sho didn't seem to think so though.

"What did you just say?" asked Sho. Maybe Fukuda was right and listening to music really loud with headphones on had destroyed his hearing and stuff. That was the only thing that made sense. Big sis…she didn't actually expected him to wear this dress…out in public…at a party…where Shimazaki could see him….

Wait, no.

First of all Shimazaki couldn't see, that was something Sho had known for years at this point and he had no idea how he could have forgotten, and second of all Shimazaki said that he had trouble seeing clothes…and Sho didn't want to think about that…and Sho was thinking about that now and…and he wasn't going to go to a party for everyone in Tokyo HQ…not only them but everyone in Claw's Japanese branches….and just…..

He was not a girl and he did not wear dresses!

"I'm going to be Elsa and you're going to be Anna. Because we're siblings like they're siblings." Said Mob. There. Now there was no way that Shi could argue with that. It was the best party idea ever. They had to wear costumes, well it wasn't mandatory but it was still Halloween, and it made perfect sense for him to be Anna and her to be Elsa. This was probably going to be the last year that he would be able to fit into the costume. He was so big, now, and so was she….so they should do this while they still could. Before they finished growing up and became adults and stuff.

"…huh?" asked Sho. That made zero sense! So what if Anna and Elsa were sisters…he wasn't girl! He was a guy! If Anna was the little brother than he would wear the costume but she was a girl and he was a guy and…well it wasn't like anyone had ever looked up her dress and checked but…he knew that she was a girl and he was not a girl so just….

Seriously, big sis!?

"You still fit into my old Elsa dress so you can be Elsa, too, if you want. I know how you like to be the one in charge so you can be Elsa and I can be Anna…well I don't fit into the costume but maybe if I just wore her colors-" said Mob

"No, I mean…what the hell are you talking about? Me, be Anna? Why would you ever think that I would want to do that?" asked Sho. He was doing his best not to start yelling. He wasn't going to yell and scream at her…even though he wanted to. He wanted to take her and scream at her and tell her that he hated playing this game and he hated wearing dresses and that he was not a girl…but he wasn't going to yell at her because he wasn't that person anymore. He had to be better than that.

"Because they're sisters." Said Mob simply. Didn't get it? They were sisters and he was her little brother, which was like having a little sister but her being a boy, and this was a good idea….right? Or maybe not….but she really wanted to do this. She wanted to do this and…well this was the last time that they would ever be able to do this…because next year she would be twelve and he would be eleven and they'd be too big for this….maybe.

She hated it when they got too big for things.

Sometimes. Sometimes getting older was nice. She was old enough to be in charge of the house. She made all the rules and she could take care of Sho all on her own…but she was too big for Frozen now. She was too big for her Elsa costume, they didn't make them in her size anymore,

"Because….they're sisters? Anna is the little sister, a girl, because sisters were girls. I'm your little brother, not your little sister." Said Sho. Maybe she was just going crazy or something….that was the only explanation. Why else would she have thought that this was a good idea? Now that he'd said something she could move onto something else…or something.

"I know that you're not my little sister but you still fit in the dress so I thought that we could-" said Mob. She didn't know how to say it. She couldn't even fully describe it to herself. This feeling that…tie was passing. Maybe it was all this talk about birthdays. Shimazaki was thirty one which was a lot older than she was, she was only eleven still, but next year she would be twelve and then thirteen and eventually she would be thirty one too. She would be thirty one and Sho would be thirty and then they would be adults...and it didn't scare her. Not like how she was afraid of things like Sho dying or dad dying or her friends dying….this was more like….something that was happening that she didn't want to happen…but she also did. She wanted to grow up. She wanted to get taller and be a real adult and treated like a real adult, not like a kid who was also sort of like an adult, and it would be nice but…but when you grew up you left so many things behind and…and she knew that it didn't even make sense in her head so she knew not to say anything to Sho. He wouldn't get it and if he did then she didn't want him to. She didn't want him to feel this way. It was bad enough that she felt this way.

"Well stop thinking! I'm not wearing a dress in front of everyone!" said Sho. He shouted. He shouldn't have shouted. He had been trying since he had been nine to stop shouting either. That wasn't the person that he wanted to be…but neither was this, he pulled at the dress that she had put on him. He was Sho, not Shoko, and he wanted to be Sho…and he wanted to be Sho more than he wanted to be a version of himself that didn't shout….

But he still shouldn't have shouted at her.

She took a step back from him. She stepped on the opened sketchbook that he had left on the floor. He didn't care about that sketchbook he cared about her. About how she was looking at him. That was the way that he looked at dad…the way that everyone looked at dad…and he was not dad. He was not dad, he was Sho, and he should have been nicer to her.

"But you're so pretty, Sho." said Mob. Sho had yelled at her…but that as ok. He yelled at her sometimes. That was fine. Sometimes people yelled at each other. She didn't care if he yelled at her just spa long as he was happy…and he wasn't happy right now…but he could be. She just…had to figure out how to make him happy again. That was her job, to make people happy, and maybe he would be happier at the party. Yes, maybe that would be the thing.

"….never say that to me ever again." said Sho. He didn't shout that time, and he didn't want to shout, but he also didn't want to hear her say anything like that ever again. He looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror. He had on this dress and...and he still looked like a boy. He wasn't a girl and he wasn't pretty and…and he was just weird…but he wasn't a girl. Just because he liked…well it didn't matter who he liked because he just…he was Sho, not Shoko!

"But you are. You'd make a really pretty girl and-" said Mob. She knew that he was upset and she didn't get it. They played this game together before and he hadn't ever really liked it.

"I said shut up!" said Sho. He shouted again and…and he shouldn't have done that. He knew that he should not have done that. He knew that he should not have been that sort of person and he knew that he was a jerk….but he at least hadn't hit her. He could at least be glad about that. He hadn't hit her and…well that was what had happened. He made the room shake…and he hardly ever lost control of his powers…but he didn't hit her.

"Oh….ok. I'm sorry. You don't have to wear that if you don't want to." Said Mob. She knew that she had pushed him too far. He hardly ever lost control over his powers like that…and she didn't want him ever to have to deal with that…and se had really messed p there…but that was ok. She would stopped pushing for this and then they would both be ok. There. That was just the way that it was going to be now.

"No…no. Sorry…I shouldn't have yelled like that…." Said Sho. He pulled at the bottom of the dress. He could do this. He could wear this…if it made her happy…if it made her stop looking at him like that. If it made her stop looking at him like he was dad or something. He looked at himself….and he didn't look like dad at least…even though she was looking at him like he did. He looked like himself….like himself if he was a girl….he looked like Shoko….even though he wasn't Shoko. He was Sho. As much as she wanted him to be Shoko he couldn't be but…well he could try….even if he wasn't the little sister that she wanted…

The little sister that they had.

This should have been little sis here in this dress. She should have been there with them…she should have been Shoko…or just Mukai because that was her name and…and she should have been there. But she couldn't be. She was with her own mom and she had her own life and…and she should have stayed. She should have stayed with them and…and stuff.

"I shouldn't have tried to make you wear the Anna dress….you're right. You're a boy….sorry." said Mob

"No, no, I shouldn't have yelled at you like that…and I'll wear the dress…" said Sho. The things he did for love. He had yelled at her and wearing a dress was what he had to do to make it up to her. He shouldn't have yelled. This was all his fault. She was just trying to have a little sister and stuff….and they did have one…well a pretend one…but only he had one. She didn't know. She didn't know about baby sis, about where she was, and about how if she got on a rain right now she could be in Seasoning City before the sun went down all the way. She didn't know and she couldn't know because then dad would know….and Sho knew that dad couldn't know….and big sis…well she wanted to know and she should have known but she didn't so….

So the least that Sho could do was put on a dress and pretend to be her little sister.

So that was what he did. He let her put the headband with the braids on his head. He let her squish his feet into the plastic dress up shoes. He let her do all of that because she didn't have a little sister to do this too. He couldn't wait until she grew up and had a kid to do this to. Having a kid was like having a little brother or sister, maybe, he didn't know because he was too young to have any kids. He did have a little sister though and that seemed sort of like having a kid. Someone who was smaller than you, someone who you had to take care of, and someone who looked up to you and who wanted to be like you….

When they were little at least.

He used to look up to dad…and he still did but only because even though he'd grown since he had been a little kid dad was still way taller. When he had been little though he had wanted nothing more than to be like his dad…but now he knew better. He knew that dad sucked and when Sho grew up and ruled the world he would be nothing like him. He wouldn't hit his kids or yell at them or make them feel like the gum that you found on the bottom of your shoes. He would love them no matter what they were like, or who they liked, or….or anything! He was going to be just as nice to his own kids as he was to little sis….

And as nice as big sis was to him.

"Ok, now you're ready to go. See? You make a great Anna…but you're not Anna. You're a boy. I never meant to say that you were a girl, alright?" said Mob as she finished off brushing down Sho's hair so his braids would hand right. It looked funny, brown braids and red hair, but she didn't say that Even if Sho didn't want to be pretty she sure wasn't going to tell him that he wasn't. He was her little brother and she always wanted him to be happy and to feel good about himself. Even though he wasn't a girl he wasn't going to tell him that he looked bad. She was his big sister and big sisters did not talk like that to their little brothers.

Especially not to the best little brother in the whole world.

He really was. He was such a good little brother that he even put this dress on, this costume, even though he didn't want to. He did this just to make her happy. She liked that, that he cared about her, because that was important. Caring about people. Caring enough about people to do things to make them happy. He as such a good person like that…

He was the greatest little brother in the whole world.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on. Let's go to the party already before they run out of food or the line for the haunted house gets too long or something." Said Sho as he opened the bedroom door with his powers.

"Don't worry, they can't start without us." Said Mob

"Without dad, you mean." Said Sho

"No, without us…well without me since I need to start the party. Dad isn't coming. He says that he only has to go to parties that 'require his attention' and this doesn't." said Mob. She wished that dad would have come with. He wanted to stay home since he didn't like people and parties. He liked to be on his own or with people who really trusted. He didn't say the last part about people who he really trusted but she knew him and she knew that he could only really be himself around her, Fukuda, or Hatori.

She felt bad for him sometimes.

She was shy too, she didn't like big groups of new people, but she was always happy to have new friends. She had six friends now and she was only eleven. Dad only had two friends and he was forty four, and he had only made his second friend just that year. She wished that he could have been more like her, that he could realize how friendship made everything in your life better, but he wasn't like that. He liked work and being the boss and he had been working and he had been the boss for so long that he didn't know how to be anything else…and that was very sad…

And she was so glad that Sho wasn't like that.

"That's good. He's no fun at parties anyway. He didn't even stay for the last one…and the last one was a lot different from this one….I mean how it's going to be….right?" asked Sho. He didn't want this to be like the last party….so maybe it was better than he was dressed like this. If he had to be around other kids then they would probably avoid him if he was dressed like this…and that was for the best. He didn't want to be pulled into any coatrooms ever again.

"Yes, it's going to be different. No backers this time, just people who work for us." Said Mob

"So no kids?" asked Sho

"No…nobody has kids…not really…sorry. But don't worry, we'll move to London after this and you can hang out with Emmy and she probably has friends, she's nice, and you could be friends with her friends." Said Mob. Sho….well he didn't seem very happy…even though that should have been good news for him. She didn't know how it worked, really, him being in love with Shimazkai and also having a girlfriend, but he must have been in love with Emmy too and he should have been really happy to see her…but he didn't seem very happy about that…but maybe he just wanted to get on with the party or something like that.

"….cool. Whatever. Come on, let's go." Said Sho. He tugged on big sis. He didn't want to talk about that. He didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to move. He wanted to stay here and never, ever move again. Not because he particularly liked Tokyo, no, just because he didn't want to have to deal with…stuff.

Complicated stuff.

Lying stuff. Fukuda said that it wasn't lying, well it was, but it wasn't the bad kind of lying. Fukuda had said that he had to make a pragmatic choice…and he did. He needed a girlfriend, he was nice to Emmy, she liked him, so why not be her girlfriend for the rest of his life…or whatever. That wouldn't have been so bad…aside from the lying…but he had to lie. He had to lie to her and everyone else…and it sucked but it was what he had to do.

And you had to do what you had to do.

Like go to a party in a dress because you loved your sister very much and you were kind of the reason that she didn't have a little sister anymore. He had to be the little sister now because big sis thought that little sis was gone forever, off to parts unknown like mom was, and as much as he wanted to rip this dress off and tell her to never do this to him again he didn't. It wasn't fair for her not to have little sis…but little sis had to be a secret from her. She liked dad and dad liked her and she would end up telling dad about little sis and then ad would know….and that wouldn't be good for anyone…especially baby sis…

So sometimes it was better to just go with it.

"Bye dad! We're leaving!" said Mob as she made it to the genkan. She felt dad moving, he had been sitting at the kitchen table doing 'important work' which knowing him could have been Minecraft or it could have been real work. She didn't want to stop in and have him see her off. He might have either gotten into it with Sho, like usual, or he would have just tried to get her to stay with him. He could be so clingy sometimes…well he did love her…but it got to be a lot and, well, he should have come if he wanted to spend time with her.

Maybe he was coming….she could hear and feel him getting up.

She put on her shoes and waited. Dad might have been in one of his moods again, the clingy kind not the yelling at Sho kind, and she didn't want him to be sad and stuff….and also it would have been rude to just leave like that. So she waited. She wasn't going to take her shoes off and go to him, then she would just have to put them back on again, so she waited for him….but it was a small house and she didn't have to wait long. Dad rounded the corner from the kitchen, and he was carrying a big box, so he must have gotten her another present….

She really wished he would stop getting her presents already….or at least not before Christmas.

She knew that it made Sho feel bad to see dad being so nice to her. She felt bad, too, for Sho. Dad was never this nice to him. Dad only got him things for Christmas and his birthday and even then only things that he had put on his list. Dad could be such a jerk sometimes, not that it was nice to think about her dad like that, and she just wished that he would realize it…but he didn't….

And that was why he only had one box in his hands, not two.

"Wait, I have something for….you…." said Suzuki. It had been difficult to get this made so quickly, his present for Shigeko, and he had almost missed his chance to give it to her. He had been excited for this moment, the moment when she opened the box and her whole aura just lit up, when she opened the box and saw what he'd had made for her….and now it felt like…

Well he had nothing to be excited about in this moment.

"Dad, what's wrong? Did you change your mind? Do you want to come too?" asked Mob. No. Not now. She knew what it meant when his aura looked like that…and she did not want to have to fix this right now. The best way to fix that was to spend time with him and stuff but she didn't have time to spend with him. She knew that it was mean, her not having time for her own dad, but it was the truth. She had a party to get started. She had people counting on her for stuff…and also she really wanted to go to this party and not just…deal with…whatever it was that had set dad off this time.

"No…just….your brother is in a dress." Said Suzuki simply. A dress was an article of clothing. That was all. An article of clothing with no partitions for legs. Like a yukata. Yes, a dress was just like a yukata only it wasn't a yukata and was typically worn by women and girls and his son was neither a woman nor a girl and that was why, if Shigeko hadn't been there, he would have pulled that dress over his Son's head and tell him to go and put on boy's clothing before people stared at him and talked about him.

But Shigeko was there so he did no such thing.

"Wow dad, you should be a detective or something." Said Sho rolling his eyes. He knew that look. Dad wanted to kill him. That was his 'I'm going to beat up my only son' look. Sho knew it well. He wanted to step closer to big sis, she would protect him, but he didn't. This was just dad. He knew how to deal with dad. Besides, when he got older dad would pay. Every time ad hit him or yelled at him or told him that he was just more fuel for the fire. One day when dad was old and Sho was all grown up then he would pay…and pay he would…somehow…with interest.

Because the fight would be very interesting.

"Sho." said Mob. She tapped his aura. She needed this to just go well. How hard was it to walk out the door? Well very hard, it seemed, when you were a member of this family…and that was a mean way to think but that was just how she felt.

"Why are you letting him dress like that?" asked Suzuki motioning towards Son. He had on a dress and some fake braids and…and the shoes and…and he knew that clothing was just clothing…but clothing wasn't just clothing and….and now he was worried even though he had no reason to worry….but was and…and he hated worrying about things. He hated worry in general.

"Because now we match. He's Anna and I'm Elsa. It's a group costume. What's in that box? Is it for me?" asked Mob changing the subject. She was getting better at that. Sometimes, when it came to dad, the best thing to do was just to change the subject and hope that he got distracted. He needed to get distracted, and soon, because she was not going to have this talk with him again. Sometimes boys wore dresses, sometimes girls wore pants, and they was alright. If he needed it explained it again then maybe he should just talk to Minegishi. They knew about stuff like this.

"It's a gift for you….I had one of those dresses made from you like you used to wear…just….put your brother in different clothes." Said Suzuki with another wave of his hand. Son had clothes. He had a whole wardrobe of clothes. If none of his clothes fit then Suzuki would personally go out and buy him an entirely brand new wardrobe right this moment. Anything to get him back to…well to normal. As normal as his son was capable of being.

"No. Big sis wants me to wear this and-" said Sho. He wanted to take this off right this second. He wanted to take this off and just…never put it back on again…even though it would hurt big sis…but he also didn't want to follow dad's orders. He thought that just because he was dad, and the boss pf everyone that he just got to be a bossy asshole dick hole bastard bitch jerk. Well he wasn't going to boss Sho around! Not now!

"Sho. No." said Mob. She grabbed his hand and tapped his aura. She knew what was coming and she knew that she was the only one who could make it stop. The only person in the entire world. Mom couldn't even stop dad when he got like this. She hadn't been able to stop dad when he got mad, she hadn't known or been able to distract him, and she hadn't been able to calm Sho down…but Mob could.

"Yes, I agree. No. Put your brother in something else…now." Said Suzuki. Good. She was on the same page as he was, finally. She would put him in some other clothes, and maybe rinse him off a little too because he was starting to smell terrible again, and then everything would be back to normal in the household and he could forget all together that Son had ever been wearing a dress in the first place. There. Everything had worked out on it's own.

"Dad-" said Mob. Why did he have to be so weird about this? Sometimes boys wore dresses. Sometimes they wore pants. Sometimes they wore yukatas, too, and robes and kilts and grass skirts….and all of those things were like dresses. Also boys could wear dresses if they wanted to. Clothes were just clothes, that was all. Minegishi had said so and they knew a lot of things about a lot of things.

"It's fine, I'll wear my Halloween shirt. It won't kill me." Said Sho. He knew that big sis hated fighting. He knew that he didn't want to be the reason that big sis and dad fought…and he also knew that for as much as he wanted to make dad pay he was still way too young, too small, so the best thing to do would just be to change clothes….yes, he was doing this because it was for the best….

And also he really didn't want to have to wear a dress to this party.

"Sho….ok." said Mob. She let go of Sho's hand and lt him go. He hadn't wanted to get all dressed up with her in the first place…and also she didn't want Sho and dad to fight. They were on their way to a party and they were going to get there in a good mood…and being in a good mood was important…and fighting was not so…so no fighting!

So she let Sho go back to their room.

"You shouldn't let him wear things like that…now open your gift." Said Suzuki. He handed her the box, finally, but she didn't open it. She just stared at him. She held it in her arms and she stared up at him.

"Sometimes boys wear dresses, dad, and that's ok. You shouldn't be mean to Sho like that. I don't like it." Said Mob. She had to just get to the point. She knew how dad was. She knew that he liked things to be a certain way…and she knew that sometimes the way that he wanted things to be was wrong. Like with this…or other things that Sho…other things about him that dad didn't know about.

"I wasn't mean to him. I could have picked him up and undressed him myself. I could have told him to take that off before people started to think things about him that aren't true. I even could have forbade him from leaving this house. I didn't. I was perfectly nice to him and he left to change of his own accord. Now, please, open your gift." Said Suzuki

"I'm not opening this until you promise to never talk like that again. I didn't like it." Said Mob. Dad…well he had said, before, that he would never get mad at her again…but was starting to look like he was mad at her….and she almost put up a barrier…but she didn't. She had no reason to. Dad would never hurt her. He had said so.

"Shigeko….Daughter….please just open your gift already." Said Suzuki. He didn't like this, the creeping feeling…the feeling which was creeping up on him. He could feel his control starting to slip. He felt…he didn't like whatever it was that he felt. She just…she did not get to make…declarations…like this….

But she was.

"Are you going to promise me that you'll never talk to Sho like that again?" asked Mob. She was pushing, she knew that she was pushing, but she was pushing for a good reason. Sho was her little brother and there were no better reasons in the entire history of reasons besides little brothers.

"I…can't make that promise. I don't want him to wear things like that and…and he is my son and he is not beyond my command and I don't want him to wear things like that." Said Suzuki

"I don't know why you care so much about what Sho wears." Said Mob

"I don't want people to think things about him that aren't true. Your brother is not…well I don't want to get into it with you. Your brother is normal and I don't want people to think that he's anything other than normal." Said Suzuki

"Sho is normal." Said Mob. She may have been mean sometimes, he also could have sometimes done strange things, but that wasn't what dad was talking about. She knew that he was talking about how she and Sho played dress up sometimes. Well that wasn't weird and dad…..well dad was the weird one for thinking that it was weird.

"Your brother is normal, you're correct, and he's not a homosexual and I don't like having to worry about that. So please just accept your gift already." Said Suzuki

"I'll accept it if you promise that if Sho ever told you that he was like that, that he liked boys, you promise not to freak out or punish him…or do anything other than accept him." said Mob. She didn't tell him that Sho was the sort of boy who loved boys, and also that he was in love with Shimazaki, so Sho's secret was safe from dad but…but one day his secret would come out. Secrets always had a way of coming out and…and when Sho's came out then dad had better not have even thought about making a thing out of it. For his own sake.

"I…can't do that." Said Suzuki. What….what? She knew that….what she was saying made no sense but she didn't seem to know that. She asked him to…well she was obviously speaking in hypotheticals….and there was no point in it and….and he didn't even understand….anything….anymore.

"Then I can't accept this present. Here." Said Mob. She tried to pass him back the box but she hit his barrier. He was acting all worried and stuff…and she had no idea why. So what if Sho liked boys? That wasn't anything to worry about….but Minegishi said that old people were weird and stuff. Dad was really old, forty five in March, and of course he was just…well that was no excuse! He wasn't….he wasn't just anyone, he was her dad, and she just…well she expected better from him…and stuff.

"No…accept it…accept the gift and…and I have no idea what you accepting my gift has to do with your brother being a-" said Suzuki. He needed to make sense of this. He wished that Fukuda had been there. Fukuda was good at explain these things to him. Why was she getting so involved in this hypothetical situation? It wasn't like hypotheticals had any bearing on reality….and she maybe…she was maybe being very strange right now…and also…also he had this pain right there in his chest and…and he didn't care for this at all….

"Because, dad, if you can't accept Sho for who he is then I can't accept anything from you…or you…at all." said Mob. That was….she wished that she could take it back as soon as she said it, it was the meanest thing that she had veer said to another human being I her life….but she meant it.

She loved her dad.

But she loved her little brother more. She loved him more than she loved dad and she knew that, once the truth got out, dad would be terrible to him...and she wasn't going to have Sho go through that. Sho did not need to be hurt like that. Sho did not need that in his life and she was supposed to take care of Sho….and it wouldn't be right to…to keep Sho in a place…where dad treated him like that…where he was hurt…and dad had stopped hurting him and….

And she had to keep it that way.

"What…what are you telling me?" asked Suzuki. He was bad at this. He was bad at these talking things. Terrible. He must have misheard her. She was standing there in front of the door…and it almost….almost sounded like…like she had said that unless he agreed to be kind of Son in this hypothetical situation in which he was a homosexual….she would leave him…and that…that made no sense.

Women were so confusing.

They just…were. There had been a book written, years and years ago, that said women were from Mars and men were from Venus…or maybe it had been the other way around…well that was just a hypothetical….women sure did love hypotheticals…and women were just…he didn't understand them. No matter what relation to him…or what age…women were just…odd. They were just…odd. Odd in every single way and….and he didn't understand….her or…or how he felt and….

And he hated this feeling.

A cage. He needed to build her a cage…or put her on a leash…or something. Something to keep her with him. She could….she could leave him and…and he couldn't let that happen again. He just…he could see her walking out that door. He could see her walking right out that door and just….there was this…cold…emptiness….inside of him. It hurt. It stabbed at his organs…and his soul and…he felt like he could reach down and rip them out and…and he felt like…he wanted….

He put a barrier up around them.

"Accept Sho for who he is or I leave…with Sho." said Mob. This wasn't…anything she had ever wanted to say but….but dad was…he was scared. She could see it in his eyes and his aura…and also his barrier was close around her and…and she could have reached out and touched it. He was scared and she was making him scared and…and she had no idea where she would even go….with Sho…and away from her friends…and she just…she knew that she wouldn't be able to and….and she knew that she would have to try because…..because….

Because she had spent her whole life watching dad hurt Sho….and she couldn't take it anymore.

"Wh….what did you just say to me?" asked Suzuki. No. She had just…there was no way that she just…had just…she did not get to SAY that to him! She loved…she loved…she loved him! she loved him and she was not going to leave and…and he would….he would dig a hole and bury her in it and then…well not a hole because she needed to breathe so some sort of bunker and…and they just….she just….

This was about a god damned hypothetical scenario!

"I'll leave forever if you ever make Sho feel bad about who he is or hurt him about….or hurt him for any reason and….and that's just what I'll do." Said Mob. Dad looked like someone had just died in front of him and…and he just…he felt like….he didn't know what this felt like. He felt all scared and…and also….she could feel his aura and she had no idea what his aura was all about and….and she should have taken it back and…and she wasn't mom.

She wasn't going to….

But if she had to…if he hurt Sho and…and she…was that why Mom had left them? Because dad had been so mean and….no. That made no sense. If she had been worried for Sho then she would have taken Sho with her…and…no. Mob…Mob was the only person who could be there for dad and…and she just…even if mom had asked her to come with then she wouldn't have. Dad…he needed her and she needed him….

But Sho needed her more.

"You…you can't do that!" said Suzuki. He hadn't meant to shout at her…or maybe he did. He wanted to shout at her…he wanted to….he wanted to slap her across the face…and he had…when he'd been younger….and she'd ben younger….but she wasn't…he cared for her too much….and one did not raise their hands to women anyway…and she was…he wasn't going to punish her…and he loved her so much and….

And he couldn't lose her.

"Don't make me!" said Mob. Dad had shouted at her…and he hadn't shouted at her in so long…and that was why she had shouted back. She had been surprised and…and dad's aura had gotten all mad like he was getting ready to hit her…and he hadn't done that in ears and…and she didn't want that to ever happen again…and he had promised that it wouldn't and…and he had to keep his promises…and if he didn't then….better her than Sho.

"This…Shigeko….we are talking about hypotheticals here. Your brother has a girlfriend who he loves…as much as a ten year old can…and this is a pointless conversation…." Said Suzuki. He stopped shouting. He calmed down. He calmed down and he just…he had to be calm because he could not raise his voice to her. He had never once raised his voice to Masami and he would not raise his voice to Shigeko. That was…that was not the way that he should have spoken to her. She just…she was not only his daughter but his everything…she had become his everything….and she just….could not leave and…and he had to keep her here and…

And he loved her more than anything.

"If it's pointless then just promise me that you'll always accept Sho for who he is." Said Mob. She was glad that he yelling was over…and when this whole thing was over then she would do something nice for him. She would play games with him all day or watch his boring shows or let him dress her up like mom and brush her hair…and then he would be happy and she would have made all of this up to him.

"Fine, I promise….now you just…open that present. Now." Said Suzuki. She was right. If this was pointless, hypothetical scenarios were pointless, then it didn't matter what he did and did not agree to. He had no idea what all of that had even been about but…well he was just so happy to have been able to get past all of that…and now she could finally open her gift.

"See dad? That wasn't so hard….and I'll open it now…and thank you for listening. Now I can stay forever." Said Mob as she opened the box. She undid the bow and pulled the top from the bottom….and for a moment she thought that she had opened up a box of tissue paper…but once she pulled it apart she saw a….a blue dress….and she took it out of the box and….

Wow!

"Thanks dad! I love you!" said Mob. She put the box down and held the dress out in front of herself. There was, in her hands, and Elsa dress. A real Elsa dress An Elsa dress that would fit her…it seemed…and she just…she hadn't even thought that they even made dresses that could fit her and…and there was no label so…so this had been made for her…dad had made this for her and….

And she had been so mean to him.

"Daddy….thank you so much for this. I love you so much….and I'm sorry that I was so mean to you before. I won't ever leave you. I love you so much." Said Mob as she hugged her dad. Dad took a second to wrap his arms around her .He was holding her and she held him, with her aura. His aura was big and his barrier….she could still feel it. Like she was one of the flies that Sho sometimes trapped under glass. She wanted…she wanted his aura to be gone and she also…she also wanted to be held by him forever because he was her dad and she never wanted to leave him…

But she also really wanted to go to the party.

She could feel Sho getting closer. She let go of dad….well she tried to. Dad was still holding onto her…and he was really strong…and she tried to step back but she couldn't. She didn't blame him. This was her fault. She was the one who had made him sad….well he was the one who had been mean to Sho…and he was the one who would have been mean to Sho if he knew that he liked boys….so she had been right to be mean…but there was no scenario when it was ok to be mean…but she had still…

Her head hurt. She needed a drink….and some room to breathe…and to get out of this hug already.

"I changed. Can we go now, sometime before next Halloween please?" asked Sho. He could see dad and big sis hugging….and their auras had been all together…and Sho didn't care. He didn't care what big sis and dad got up to. Their auras had been together like they had been fighting but obviously he had been wrong and…and stuff and now…well now he was here and…..and they had to go!

"Dad…we have to go now. I'll see you later, alright? I'll see you later and…um…if you get lonely then I'll ask Fukuda to come and keep you company…alright? But I have to go." Said Mob as she broke away from dad. She knew that she should have stayed with him until he felt better…but she didn't have that kind of time and also….well she knew that it was mean but part of her wanted to tell dad that he was supposed to be the adult and she was supposed to be the kid and he should have been comforting her…but of course she didn't.

"Yeah, happy Halloween or whatever. Later." Said Sho as he grabbed big sis's hand and pulled her out the door. She was going to stay there all night with dad if he let her…and he did a lot of things for her but missing this party wasn't going to be one of them. The party couldn't start without her so they had to go and they had to go right now.

He loved her a lot, and he did a lot of things for love, but missing Shimazaki's birthday party/the Halloween party was not going to be one of them.


	435. Please Let's Never Speak of This Again

"What are we going to do tonight, Suzuki?"

"The same thing we do every night, Fukuda, try to take over the world."

Suzuki and Fukuda were going to conquer the world through the power of math.

Specifically budgeting. More specifically undoing the budgeting hell that Shigeko had wrought upon them. Even more specifically seeing how Claw could possibly come out of this fiscal quarter, and end the year, still in the black. There were a lot of expenditures that year from bases being built to the across the board raises and unlimited dessert bars that Shigeko had approved. Also ever HQ and Division was getting an indoor theatre so the Awakened could have proper movie nights...

Maybe putting an eleven year old in charge of the budget wasn't the best idea.

But Fukuda wasn't going to complain. This gave him an excuse to be near Suzuki. An excuse for the two of them to spend their Halloween together pouring over budget reports, moving money around, and generally enjoying each other's company…as much as they could enjoy each other's company. Fukuda…he could take Suzuki in small doses…doses which seemed to be becoming smaller by the year…but still. This was better than going to whatever party Shigeko had thrown for Shimazaki. Some kind of Halloween, Beatles, dog petting, and massive amounts of semi solid junk food and candy, party. Yes, sitting here with Suzuki was better than going to whatever the hell that party was going to become.

So what if he had been uninvited.

Well she had told him that he might have been happier keeping Suzuki company…so message received he supposed. He didn't want to go anyway…well he did….but mostly just to watch over Sho. Sho needed some to actually watch over him and not let him completely lose his mind…which he would. He'd probably come home with a stomach ache and the mother of all sugar rushes…and nothing more. He didn't get into the things that Shigeko got into, he could trust Sho about that, but still…he did want to be there to watch over him.

But he wasn't the only person named Suzuki who needed watching over.

"I think that we might need to divert from the space elevator fund." Said Fukuda tapping his pen against the notebook he had been crunching numbers in. Suzuki did it by hand so he was going to do it by hand. Also it was just easier to write things down on paper instead of going through the whole program….he was getting old. Sho would have pointed that out if he'd been here…but Sho wasn't here. It was just him and Suzuki sitting on his living room floor surrounded by papers with two open laptops glaring at them. Well at him. Suzuki was in his element….

Or at least he should have been.

The man had gotten a graduate degree in applied mathematics for fun. When he'd been a kid he and his dad would go over the fiscal reports from his company also for fun. Hell, back in middle school he'd always volunteer to go up to the board and solve problems. He should have been over moon right now…but he wasn't. He, well his aura, was oddly…withdrawn. Maybe it had something to do with the lightshow he and Shigeko had put on earlier….and God help them if they started fighting….teenagers fought with their parents all the time….and Shigeko was only….well she was getting older….

Teenage Shigeko was coming…may God have mercy on them all…..

"Again with this…" muttered Suzuki a she erased a column of numbers that he had been trying to add. He just…he needed to focus. Shigeko had said…well it had all been hypotheticals and…and he just…he was fine. She was at her little party and when she was done there she would come home like normal and then their family would be normal and…and she would never threaten ham like that again…no….she hadn't been threatening him…

She had been speaking in hypotheticals.

He had no idea why she had been speaking in hypotheticals like that. Of course he would punish Son…well be angry with Son…if he were a homosexual. Those types of things couldn't be changed. Everyone occasionally thought about the same sex in that way, that was normal, but homosexual people couldn't turn that part of themselves off and that was why they were homosexuals. Just like mother and father had told him when he had been young and they had caught him and Fukuda in one of those times that they had agreed to never speak of again Some people could only feel that way about one sex, the same sex, and there was nothing that they could do about that. Just like he couldn't help having red hair and blue eyes and powers. Some people couldn't help it, like Hatori, and Son….well he was not one of those people.

Sho was his son. If he wasn't a homosexual then his son was not a homosexual and therefore he'd get some grandchildren out of him.

So he had nothing to worry about…but Shigeko…he didn't understand her. He couldn't understand her and he couldn't understand women but he did understand that the entire thing was over now…and he had to work. He had to put it all out of his mind and he had to figure out how they were going to figure out how to end this year in the black. Always end the year in the black, his father said, or you were a pitiful leader and you deserved to walk out into the snow and die….and there was no snow outside but…well he wasn't going to finish out this year in the red. He hadn't finished a single year in anything other than the blackest of the deepest black since he'd been getting Claw off the ground….and he had to keep things that way….

And he had to just…put this all out of his mind.

"Well I mean it's pretty much just a slush fund until you take over the world. I mean people are going to ask questions if you just all of a sudden have the funds and manpower to start building space elevators." Said Fukuda with a shrug. He watched Suzuki. He was sitting crossed legged on the floor…and he had been working on the floor when Fukuda had come in. The TV was off and his aura was guarded…something was wrong. Not the sort of wrong where someone was going to die soon but just…more emotionally wrong…and he had no idea what…but he was going to find out.

For the good of everyone in the world.

"You're right….you're always right." Said Suzuki. Fukuda was always right about these things…and maybe he should have left the whole thing to him. Maybe he should have just gone to bed…but no. He couldn't go to bed. If he went to bed then he would miss Shigeko coming home…and she was coming home. He knew that she was coming home. She had promised him that she would never leave him. She had promised him that she would never betray him….but then she had threatened him…over a hypothetical situation and…and he had no idea what he was even supposed to do now…if she had been anyone else he would have thrown her in a traitor hole or something but she wasn't anyone. She was his Daughter. She was his Shigeko. She was….

She was so much to him….so very much….and he could not afford to lose her.

"Penny for your thoughts?" asked Fukuda. Well that had been a concerned whirlpool of an aural flare….and that never preceded anything good. Maybe he had slept with someone else…no…he didn't want to think about that. Suzuki…he had weird ideas about fidelity…well he had been cheating on Masami but she was free of him now…but still. He didn't want to have to pull Suzuki out of the rut he got himself into when it came to a woman…but it would have made sense…and then Shigeko found out…or maybe she had found out about Shiori….or God forbid Pang Su-jin….

Or maybe it had been something that was a hell of a lot easier for him to deal with.

"My thoughts are worth more than a penny." Said Suzuki with a wave of his hand. His thoughts were so numerous that they were at least worth a whole pound…or dollar….or whatever foreign currency thoughts were going for these days.

"Ok, a yen then." Said Fukuda

"You're going in the wrong direction. A single yen, last I checked, was worth-" said Suzuki

"I was trying to be funny." Said Fukuda

"Stick to what you know." Said Suzuki

"Right…well I know you so I guess that I'll stick to you then." Said Fukuda. He nudged Suzuki and he just got a stare in return. Not a murderous one, no, just a thoughtful one.

"We aren't going to try and superglue ourselves together again. We're grown men, we can't do idiotic things like that anymore…and also changing clothes was very difficult." Said Suzuki. He had no idea who had the idea, when they'd found that bottle of superglue, or how they had even come to the agreement that it was a good idea but that day had ended with them trying and failing to hide that they had glued themselves together and mother figuring it out and dissolving the glue with nail polish remover….and if he had known that glue could be dissolved in that way then he would have done it himself before he tried to change into pajamas while being glued to Fukuda.

"Among other things…" said Fukuda shaking his head. Suzuki was covered in freckles and moles and Fukuda did not want to think about how he knew that.

"What?" asked Suzuki

"Nothing. I was just wondering what was wrong…and before you say anything I know you. I know that something's wrong and I know that when you get like this then it's usually something that I can help with so come on." Said Fukuda

"I'm fine." Said Suzuki even though he was not fine…but maybe if he said that he was fine enough times then he would be fine…or something. He didn't know. It was worth a try. Maybe this time it would work.

"Then what was the lightshow you and Shigeko put on earlier?" asked Fukuda. Sometimes it was best to just cut right to the chase when it came to Suzuki. He didn't want to spend all of Halloween night prying whatever had happened out of him. Maybe Shigeko had unearthed one of the many skeletons in his closet. Maybe he had just decided that he was done treating an eleven year old girl like a twenty one year old woman. Hell, maybe she had just been in a bad, hormonal, sort of mood and had taken it out on her father for some reason. The possibilities were endless when it came to that girl.

"That…is none of your business." Said Suzuki. He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to tell Fukuda how badly he had messed up…if he even had messed up. He had no idea what had even happened. He had just wanted to give Shigeko her gift and then the whole thing just spiraled from there…and he hated it when things spiraled like that…and he hated it when he felt like this…but most of all he hated it when Fukuda pried into his affairs like this. He'd always had a habit of overstepping his bounds even when they had been children.

"If it affects Claw then it is my business and right now whatever happened is affecting your ability to make sound fiscal decisions as our leader and President so, please, just talk to me. Maybe I can fix it." Said Fukuda correcting course quick. If he couldn't come at this as a friend then he would come at this as a concerned member of the non-voting public.

"….fine. I…got into an…I don't even know what….with Shigeko." said Suzuki

"So a fight then?" asked Fukuda. This was the part of the conversation where he mirror back everything Suzuki said. Sometimes that was all that he wanted, a mirror, so he could get himself sorted out. Well Fukuda could be that mirror. He'd been doing it for the past thirty years after all.

"No, no…well I did lose my temper and I raised by voice….but she was the one being ridiculous." Said Suzuki

"Little girls can be ridiculous sometimes." Said Fukuda

"Women are….I don't understand women. I'm married to a woman and I don't understand women." Said Suzuki

"Well neither do I so-" said Fukuda

"You've never been married and you have no Daughters. I am married and I have a Daughter and Shigeko…I don't understand her. I feel like…like maybe I haven't understood her for a while now." Said Suzuki

"Well she is getting older." Said Fukuda

"I know….I know that she is. It's as though…it's as though I brought her home from the orphan prison yesterday. Sometimes I look at her and I think that I could pick her up but I know that I can't." said Suzuki

"She's eleven now." Said Fukuda

"Yes, I know what age she is. It's like one day she just…turned into this person. This person who is completely foreign to the person that she once was. She just…she started wearing makeup and drinking liquor and smoking cigarettes and I don't even want to say what else and…and she just….she's older now. I know that she's older now and it's like the older she gets. The closer to being a woman that she becomes, the less I understand about her." said Suzuki

"Well that's just what happens when they grow up. I bet our parents felt the same way about us." Said Fukuda. That may have been the one step too far, mentioning their late parents, but it had just come out. Suzuki was finally talking like an actual father for once and Fukuda…well he hadn't been able to stop himself.

"…I have no idea how they felt. I've outlived both my mother and my father." Said Suzuki. Had they felt the same way about him? He hadn't drank or smoked or worn makeup, well he was male so the last one didn't even apply, but they had…they had said, before, when they had been alive that he had become a stranger to him…and then they had asked him what his plans were after he graduated high school….what his plans for after Tokyo University were they had meant…and he had told them the truth. He had told them that he was going to rule the world…and then his father had said…and his mother had said…and then neither of them had ever said anything ever again….

"Yeah, me too. Anyway back to Shigeko. So something set you and her off? What was it? You know it might just have been her being hormonal. She's at that age, you know." Said Fukuda getting the hell away from that subject. They did not need to talk about that…about that day. Suzuki was in some ways lucky, his had gone at once, and it hadn't been a drawn out affair…though he had been a lot younger…but he had also been a lot more resilient than Fukuda. He hadn't shed a single tear even when what was left of their bodies had been cremated….though that might have had something to do with the fat that Suzuki had been the one responsible for their deaths in the first place….

And Fukuda did not want to think about this anymore….even though it was Halloween night, the time ghosts and death, the whole subject was just too….macabre….

"No, it wasn't that. Son was just wearing a dress again. He had been planning to wear it to the party. I wanted him not to. Shigeko and I fought. I have no idea why. Son is a boy, not a girl, and he has no reason to wear dresses." Said Suzuki

"Well it is a costume party…and about a million other things…but maybe he was just wearing that dress to be funny. Like a gag costume or something…or maybe Shigeko just made him wear it again." said Fukuda. He knew why Sho wore that dress, for Shigeko, and he knew that Shigeko knew how Suzuki felt about all of that….so why force Sho into a dress? To lower his value in Suzuki's eyes? Well it couldn't possibly get any lower than it was now….so why would she…it was becoming more and more difficult to understand her as the years went by. Suzuki was right.

"No, he wasn't wearing it for comedic affect. He had been wearing it because he had wanted to…so Shigeko hadn't forced it onto him either…and he had fought me initially when I told him to go and change…so he wanted to wear that dress. My son wants to wear dresses." Said Suzuki. He let his aura flare there. He couldn't help it. This was just beyond the scope of anything that he had ever had to worry about. His son wore dresses. His son was a little boy who wore dresses. What would people say? What would his little girlfriend say? Suzuki wanted grandchildren and he knew a girl repellent when he saw one! Women liked androgynous men, if the men in Shigeko's music videos were anything to go off of, they did not want men in dresses! Also just….his son wore dresses!

"So? You've never worn a yukata before? Not once in your life? Because I clearly remember you at the summer festival back when we were-" asked Fukuda. Damage control. Make Suzuki think that he was being ridiculous like normal. Make the whole thing seem like something that he had blown out of proportion…and then talk to Sho about what was and was not appropriate and about how he could say no to his sister whenever she made him do something that he was not comfortable with…like that.

"When I was small, yes, but then when I was fifteen father forbade it after that time mother walked in on us doing that thing we agreed to never speak of again because he was worried that I was a homosexual. I'm not. I just felt like-" said Suzuki. He wasn't a homosexual. To this day he had no idea, fully, why he had done what he had done but he knew that he was not a homosexual. If he were then he would have had sexual thoughts about other men, and he didn't, and when he did he didn't mean it, and also he liked women, so therefore he was nothing other than perfectly heterosexual.

"Winning that staring contest! And you did…and anyway I'm sure that there's nothing wrong with Sho. I mean he's got that little girlfriend of his and I know that he's very excited about our trip to London. He's been getting her all kinds of presents for Christmas and he's been drawing her all kinds of pictures…so, yeah, maybe Sho just…wanted to wear a dress. The rules are a lot more lax these days, you know, about things like that." Said Fukuda. Nope. They were not talking about that. That had been the worst day of his life up to that point. One minute they were listening to one of Suzuki's weird, two song only, mix tapes and the next they were having a staring contest and then Suzuki had decided to win in the most dirty and underhanded way possible because it would have caused him deep psychological torment to admit that Fukuda didn't actually need to blink and that Suzuki was not the king of the long, unbroken stare.

"I know…and now there are no rules and nothing makes sense and my Son wants to wear dresses and my Daughter threatened to leave me….nothing makes sense." Said Suzuki

"Wait…what? Shigeko…she threatened you?" asked Fukuda rubbing his eyes. That was…she threatened…she hadn't. Suzuki…he must have been…misinterpreting things…or something. There was no way that Shigeko would do something like that. She loved Suzuki. She obeyed Suzuki. She was almost as powerful as Suzuki…and she answered only to him….and if she had stopped answering to him then….

Then God have mercy on them all.

"Yes." said Suzuki simply. That was what had happened…and when Fukuda said it…it lost it's resonance…and it had so much resonance. She had threatened him. She had threatened to defect from him. That was not something to be taken lightly. She had threatened to leave and...and nobody ever left and…and he would not deal with her he way he dealt with others and…and this whole thing was…it was too much…

But Fukuda saying it out loud…taking that resonance away….that was something…something that helped….just a bit.

"Suzuki Shigeko? Your pride and joy? She threatened to…to leave you? To defect from Claw?" asked Fukuda. This was…he wondered if he was finally losing his mind. This was…she couldn't defect. If she defected she took the four strongest now five strongest, espers in Claw with her…and a big chunk of the Awakened…and then…and she would have at least a thousand maybe….and that thousand what do whatever she asked them to….

"Yes, are you deaf? She threatened to leave me. She told me that if, in some hypothetical scenario, Son came to me and told me that he was a homosexual that I was not to get upset with him and I was to accept him for who he was…and also I'm forbidden from ever raising a hand to him…and she said that if I didn't agree to those terms for the hypothetical scenario she presented then she said that she would leave me." Said Suzuki. Saying it out loud…when he said it then it gained more resonance…and when Fukuda said it then it lost some resonance…and he wanted…he had no idea what he wanted. He wanted it to never have happened and he also wanted Fukuda to make it better somehow…that was his job after all…to make things better…to put him back together…and he had been doing that job for almost as long as Suzuki could remember…..

"…what in the…sorry. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. Shigeko…she threatened to defect…in some hypothetical scenario where you rejected Sho if he came out to you…not saying that it's even a possibility! It's not…but she said that if she did then….she would defect and leave Sho with you? That doesn't make any sense." Said Fukuda

"No, she said that she would take him from me. She told me that she would take her brother with her when she left…and that I would never see them again…and I would be alone…and I'm a full and complete person all on my own, I know that I am, but I just…I don't…this cannot leave this room but…I don't think that I can handle it again. Having the person I love most in the world leave me….I almost lot my mind…and maybe I did and I never got it back but…well she warned me at least and…" said Suzuki. She had warned him and that was a hell of a lot more than Masami had done. He to this day had no idea what he had done to make her leave but Shigeko…she had told him….and even though it was a hypothetical scenario….

"…it's a hypnotical scenario. It's nothing like what happened with Masa-with your wife. It's…nothing like that at all….." Said Fukuda. No. Shigeko…she was not that good at manipulation. She had gotten Sho on her side and she had actually managed to exploit one of her father's weakness…and she had reduced him to…this…and now she was out partying all night with her friends and…and she was celebrating. She wasn't celebrating Halloween or Shimazaki's birthday or the collected works of the Beatles or pudding based snacks or imported Halloween candy for America or dogs with curly tails…she was celebrating her victory….her victory over her father….

Claw was hers.

She had taken Claw. At the age of eleven Suzuki Shigeko, otherwise known as 'Mob' to her closest allies, had taken Claw right out from under her father. She hadn't done it by force. No fighting, no armies, no bombs, just…manipulation. She had manipulated the whole of Claw right out from under her father. She knew how to control him, how to exploit him, and now everything was hers….Claw was hers….

The world was hers.

"No, it is. She threatened to leave me…well I suppose that it's different because she also threatened to take my Son from me…but it's also….not the same. You're right." Said Suzuki. It was better, in some ways, because…well hypothetical scenarios could become real ones so quickly and…and now he knew what would make her leave…and he just had to do the opposite of what would make her leave, to make her stay, and then she would stay forever. Fukuda was right, she wasn't at all like her mother, she was nothing like Masami.

She was better.

"Yeah…I'm…I'm right." Said Fukuda. He didn't want to be right. He wanted to be wrong. He wanted to be so wrong. Suzuki….he knew Suzuki. He knew that underneath it all Suzuki was pretty much that same kid he had met thirty years ago…but Shigeko…she had changed. She was…she was too smart and…and she had too much…she had actual social skills and….and she was the second coming of Suzuki. Not his actual son and daughter, no, she was…and now…he wished that he was wrong. He wished harder than he had ever wished before that he was just…wrong…about this whole thing….but he wasn't. He knew that he wasn't….and he knew what she was celebrating….and he knew that…

He needed a drink.

"You are. Here is was all…worried….but really this is not such a bad thing. She isn't going to leave me just so long as, in some crazy scenario, son is a homosexual I just have to say that I accept him and not raise a hand to him…or ever again...and I can do that. I knew that she didn't like it when I struck him and…well I didn't know that it would make her leave if it did…and in some ways I'm grateful that she told me that. Now I know what not to do. So you're right, she's nothing like Masami….she just left me one day…"said Suzuki

"Wait…so you're telling me that if Masami just…told you not to hit the kids…or she'd leave you…then you would have stopped?" asked Fukuda. That….that…he almost thought that Suzuki had been lying but…but he didn't lie…he didn't even know how to and…and that meant that…Masami had said that she had tried to talk to him but he wouldn't listen…well of course he wouldn't listen you had to speak in a way that got through to him and…and she didn't know how to…but he did and…and so did Shigeko…and if Masami had just given him an ultimatum then…then all of this could have been avoided. The kids…they could have been kids. They would have been in their beds asleep right now since tomorrow was a school day. They would have had age appropriate friends and done age appropriate things and…and everything would have been better if she had just…sat him down and threatened t leave him and…and he should have seen that it would work and…and he'd dropped the ball…no…he'd been too busy being in love with her and…

And he needed a drink so badly right now…worse than at any other point in his life…

"Yes." said Suzuki. It had lost so much resonance now that Fukuda had repeated it back to him. it had turned into flat fact…and he liked flat facts. He liked them a lot. He understood them a lot. Fukuda…he had a real knack for that, turning things into flat fact, and Suzuki…he would always be grateful to Tadashi for that….he would always be grateful to Tadashi for a lot of things.

"What?" asked Fukuda. He did his best to keep his aura and his voice level. He just…no. That was just…no. Suzuki had just…no. There was no way in…no. Masami said that she had TALKED to him. She had asked him to stay with her more and help her out with the kids and just…be nicer to Sho and….and she said that she had made herself perfectly clear but…well Suzuki…with him everything was always perfectly unclear and…and he had been such a…he could have just…he could have fixed their marriage. He could have sat Suzuki down and told him how Masami felt in words that he could understand and then….and then she still would have been around and….and she wouldn't have been his but she still would have been there for Sho…and Shigeko would have never gone down the path she was on now….and Suzuki's bastard daughter would never have been born…and just…so much could have been stopped and….

And he was getting dizzy….so dizzy….

"I don't like orders or ultimatums but if she had given me one then I would have listened. I like things that I can understand and…and I understand this…so in a way this was a good thing…so thank you, Tadashi, for helping me see it this way. You are truly a valued confidant and…well you're my best friend…so thank you." Said Suzuki. He put his hand on Fukuda's shoulder. He wanted to touch him. He so rarely wanted to touch people but he wanted to touch him. If he'd been a woman, if one of them had been a woman, then he would have kissed Tadashi. He would have held him and kissed him and taken him, or been taken by him if he had been the woman, because Tadashi made him feel….everything. In that moment he felt everything. He felt like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders…he felt like he was going to be alright….he felt like everything was going to be alright…

And it felt so….good…

"….Touichirou….please tell me that there's something to drink in this house that's stronger than strawberry milk." Said Fukuda. He felt like shit. He felt like he was going to throw up. The room was spinning….and he needed to make it spin more. He knew that it was hard for him to get drunk…but he was going to try. Even if he had to drink perfume, or cooking wine, or even knock over a liquor store he was going to get drunk and he was going to do it now.

"You mean alcohol…I don't drink and you know that but I think that my Daughter has some stashed away in her room….please drink it all I don't want her to have it…and please smoke all of her marijuana too while you're at it." Said Suzuki. There he went again. For every problem in his life Fukuda was there to help solve it. He didn't want Shigeko to have these things and now Fukuda was offering to get rid of them for him, leaving him guiltless and Fukuda the thief, he was so…intelligent…that way. He sometimes forgot how intelligent Tadashi was…he sometimes forgot a lot of things about Tadashi….like how soft his skin was…

Or how it felt when he abruptly got up.

"Can do, boss, can do." Said Fukuda as he got up off the floor. Yeah….he needed a fucking drink. He could get drunk if he drank enough…and he knew that Shigeko must have had more than enough squirreled away somewhere…but where? He was stealing from her…going to steal from her…the most powerful being in the world…his future lord and master…and he was going to raid her stash and steal her liquor….

Small victories.

He was going to get drunker than he'd ever been and higher than he'd ever been before in his entire life. He knew that doing this would solve nothing. If anything Shigeko would just be pissed at him for stealing from her…but for now it would be a small victory…because those were all that he had anymore. He had failed the kids, he had failed Masami, he had lost the love of his life, and now his best friend was thanking him for it…and he just…he was going to take his victories where he could find them….

And where he could find them were in Shigeko's room.

She was predictable, really, or just uncreative. Between her mattress. She had everything between her mattress and her box spring. Amateur. When he'd been her age he'd hidden his stash of contraband in a hoe that he'd carved in his wall and put a poster over. She just put it there between her mattress…her little bottles of liquor….and a baggie full of joints and a lighter…and the only security was a handwritten note that said 'please don't steal from me' in Japanese and also, what he presumed, was braille. He ignored the note. He crumpled it up and threw it across the room. He took the liquor and the joints, he left the green stuff since he had no idea how to turn that into something that he could smoke, and also he left her Tales of Passionate Love mangas alone too…since he knew better than to read between the mattress manga….

That wouldn't have been a small victory, that would have been a small trauma.

He didn't need to know about that part of her life. He barely liked knowing about this part of her life. The part where he stole most of her stash and smoked it and drank it all in her living room. He didn't even like this part but…well for the time being Suzuki was still in charge and this was a direct order so he had might as well do what his best friend said and see how fats his brain cells took to regenerate…if he even wanted them to regenerate…

Though maybe, based on the scene in front of him, he might have given himself some kind of brain damage or a mild stroke already.

"What's going on with all of this?" asked Fukuda as he sat down beside Suzuki. He was sitting up on the couch, now, and he had stripped down to just his slacks and white t-shirt. He was sitting there and…and all of their work had been put away…which was not like him at all. He loved the number crunching part of work….and Fukuda hoped to God that he wasn't having another one of his crises….

Because he was at his limit for tonight.

"I thought that since you're going to get intoxicated we should get back to work another time." Said Suzuki. He made some room on the sofa for Fukuda. This was…he wanted to spend time with him…because of his rare good mood. He was in genuinely good spirits, now, and also…well he was feeling sort of nostalgic. This was Halloween after all and on Halloween they had always watched a scary movie. It was one of their long neglected traditions…they'd had so many when they'd been younger…but then they had gotten older…but now…well he was in a good mood now and he wanted to be near Fukuda…and he was the President of Claw, anyway, so he could do whatever he wanted and this was what he wanted to do.

So this was what they were going to do.

"Right…and that's why we're watching Ratatouille?" asked Fukuda as he sat down beside Suzuki. He opened up a sealed bottle of plum wine…one of the tiny ones they had on the planes, and downed it. Suzuki watched him in fascination. He wondered how long he could hold his attention for…so he downed another…and another…and another in quick succession like they were back at university or something…

And Suzuki never stopped staring at him.

"That never ceases to be impressive…and also we're watching Ratatouille because it's the most disturbing thing that has ever been put to film." Said Suzuki

"Seriously? Ratatouille?" asked Fukuda

"Yes. This film is the most disturbing piece of cinema ever conceived." Said Suzuki

"I thought that was that Borrowers movie." Said Fukuda. That had been hilarious. His mom had gotten him the borrowers on laserdisc and Suzuki had watched it while hiding under a blanket and covering his eyes. He was afraid of rodents….God. Somethings never changed, did they?

"This surpasses it…so it's perfect for this day." Said Suzuki. Son loved movies where people were dismembered, eaten, liquefied, etcetera….but this was the most disturbing thing that he had ever seen his son watch. Even worse than that Korean film where the man was tricked into sleeping with his own Daughter.

"Yup….Halloween….a day to get completely wasted with your best friend and watch kids movies…bring it on." Said Fukuda. He settled in to one of Sho's favorite movies. It was so weird watching this without him providing commentary and profanity….even before he had started cursing he'd loved this movie…he'd loved it enough to run those rats through a maze….Fukuda must have still had those pictures somewhere….those pictures form when the kids had still been kids and he had still been trying his best to keep his promise to Masami. A promise that he had made to the love of his life, to the woman who should have been his wife, to the-

He decided to mix alcohol and marijuana to see what would happen.

Maybe he would forget. That was a side effect of this, wasn't it? Memory loss? Well he needed some of that memory loss. He needed all of that memory loss. He had to figure out how to just…forget what had happened. Forget the promise he'd made to Masami…the one that he'd broken. The way it had all played out…and the chance that he had missed. The chance that he would not have taken….he would have. If he'd had the chance to mend whatever there had been between Suzuki and Masami…and then….and then if he'd had the chance then he would have done it. For the kids. To give them the life that they deserved.

He would have.

He would have and…and if he had known then…if he had known that Masami could have…he didn't know. He didn't want to think about this. He didn't want to think about anything….which was why he as doing this….which was why he was drinking and smoking…and now…and now he just…maybe that wasn't how this worked. Shigeko did this all the time and she was ten times the little Machiavelli that her father had always wanted to be. Maybe this wasn't going to work. Maybe he just needed to do…something else….

Not that he sure how he was going to do that.

The moment was…the moment was slippery…and hazy. He could feel…his powers were at war with his will. His body was trying not to be poisoned. He was trying to think, to heal, to figure out what to do about this. To create some sort of equilibrium. To get out of himself and into the moment. But he wouldn't let that happen. He wouldn't let his powers control him…he would control them…and he was going to just…stay in this place…this hazy sort of place….

This place where the couch was much too scratchy, the TV too bright, and Suzuki sitting much too close.

"Rats are terrible creatures, don't you think?" asked Suzuki. He hated this part, when the man let the rat ride on his head. The way the rat could just…control him. Suzuki had no idea who could have pulled something so horrifying from their own imagination…and when he took over the world he was going to find this person and put him in charge of punishing traitors.

"They aren't so bad….if you're not afraid of them." Said Fukuda with a laugh. He ashed on the floor, he knew that he shouldn't have but he didn't care, and if Suzuki cared he would have said something about it. He didn't, he just scooted a little bit closer….

Still way too close.

He was close enough, and resting his head low enough, that Fukuda could have touched his hair. He hadn't done that in years, after he'd sated his curiosity, as to what red hair felt like .Spiky. It stood up on its own like Sho's did…only Suzuki had cut to down short so it was more manageable…anything to differentiate himself from Sho it seemed.

"I'm not." Said Suzuki. He did not fear rats. They were simply disgusting, disease carrying, creatures that should have been eradicated years ago.

"You are. I remember when our fort got infested. You jumped up onto a folding chair and shrieked like a girl." Said Fukuda with a laugh. He almost dropped the joint that he had been smoking. That would have been a real tragedy. Him and Suzuki burning to death….no. He would have lived and he would have saved Suzuki, too, because he was as loyal as he was stupid…which was pretty damn loyal and pretty damn stupid.

"I have no recollection of that incident…and if I did sound like a girl it was only because my voice hadn't broken yet…if that even happened." Said Suzuki. He knew that he had done just that. A mouse had run over his foot so he'd screamed and jumped up onto a chair. He knew that it had happened…and he knew that he and Fukuda had agreed to never speak of that again…but Fukuda was very intoxicated, Suzuki could smell the…everything….on him, so he would let this one pass.

"It did…but I'm not surprised that you have no recollection of it. You never recall the stuff that you want to forget…" said Fukuda. He never remembered the things that made him challenge himself. The parts of himself that he had hated. The parts of himself that he saw in Sho. All of them. God, Suzuki got so close sometimes….and he hadn't been this close in years….and Fukuda did not miss this at all. This was just….no way….not happening again.

"What do you mean? I have an excellent memory." Said Suzuki

"You know…you do and you don't. If it's something like some obscure math fact or how many buttons were in your button jar back when you had one-" said Fukuda

"Six hundred and eighty two." Said Suzuki

"Exactly. You remember things when you want to remember them but when it comes to the things that you'd rather not acknowledge then you bury them. The things that scare you." Said Fukuda

"Nothing scares me." Said Suzuki

"Rodents." Said Fukuda with a laugh. There was a moment in which he thought, hoped, that Suzuki would kick him out…but he didn't.

"They…spread disease and it's normal to be weary of them…or do you want to catch the plague?" said Suzuki

"I'd live, we both know that I would….and I'd probably save you too….no matter I always end up saving you." Said Fukuda. That was just the story of his life, wasn't it? Saving this asshole from himself…and letting him get away with…well then that was his lot in life. It wasn't a lot but it was his life.

"And I am grateful to you for that." Said Suzuki. He leaned his head down lower onto the side of the couch. He didn't much want to watch this part. He wanted to lay his head down and…and not down but…maybe he should have chosen a less disturbing film. Maybe Tadashi was right, maybe he did have some sort of irrational fear of rodents….or maybe they were both right. He shouldn't have been afraid of rodents but he also should have because they carried the plague and he did not want to catch the plague so there.

"Yeah….I know you are….and you know what the most fucked up thing is? It makes me feel good to hear you say that….and that makes no sense. You're….you and I just…yeah. I like it when you say it…that you're grateful…since I do a lot for you…" said Fukuda

"You do." Said Suzuki. He liked that, that Fukuda realized how much he did. He didn't know why he enjoyed hearing that, just that he did, and he also didn't know why he wanted Fukuda to keep talking. He just…felt good right now….and maybe he just felt this good because he had been feeling so terrible before….or something and now he felt better….

"But you're still….you." said Fukuda motioning to Suzuki. No matter what happened Suzuki would always be…Suzuki. No matter what he did Suzuki would always be Suzuki. He had thought that he could change him, when they'd been younger, he'd wasted years trying to change him…and then more trying to manage him…and now look at where he had gotten himself.

"I am myself. Who else would I be?" asked Suzuki. He had no idea what he had said, well he did he spoke perfect Japanese, but he had no idea what had gotten Fukuda laughing like that.

"I don't even fucking know. Someone better, maybe? Or maybe someone worse. I don't even know." Said Fukuda

"Well you are severely intoxicated, that might be it." Said Suzuki. Fukuda…well he didn't usually get like this…but it as for the best. Better him than Shigeko…yes. Better him than Shigeko indeed.

"Yeah….I'm fucked enough to finally say what I want to say…and what I want to say is…I don't know. Stop being such a hypocrite, maybe. Don't get pissed off at Sho, who hasn't even done anything, when you're the one who kissed me over-" said Fukuda

"We agreed never to speak of that again. You're speaking of it, you're breaking our agreement." Said Suzuki

"Yeah, well, it just doesn't make any sense to get pissed off at Shi for wearing a dress when you've kissed me God only knows how many times." Said Fukuda. They had agreed never to speak of that again but….the hypocrisy of it! One time was just to figure things out…and the second time might have been a fluke…and the third time might have been because he had gotten dumped…but the fifth time? And the sixth time? And then all of those other times that he REALLY did not want to talk about? Yeah….no. Sho got it from Suzuki, these things were genetic, and instead of admitting the truth about himself to himself he just made Sho hate himself…and Sho didn't deserve that.

"…that meant nothing. None of that meant anything. You know that. Since neither of us is a homosexual then none of that meant anything. Son…well he isn't…but he worries me and he's still young…that's why I don't want him to do things like that…and anyway he should do as I say and not as I do…and he can't know what I've done…and it meant nothing anyway." Said Suzuki. No. They were not going to talk about that. Everyone was stupid when they were young. They had done some things that he was not proud of…so what? They had also stolen a shopping cart and ridden it down the side of a mountain but that didn't need to be brought up now did it? Or the time that they had almost gassed themselves trying to put a heater/stove in their fort. Or the time when they antagonized those bees. Or the time when they tried to see if they could build a giant slingshot capable of sending them over the house. Or the time when they went to Tokyo looking for loose women….or any women. Or the time when…well there had been a lot of times and…and Fukuda wouldn't have brought this up if he hadn't been doing this favor for him…and better him than Shigeko.

"You know something, you could take the gold for Japan in mental gymnastics." Said Fukuda with a shake of his head…maybe one that was just a bit too strong. He felt his head move in one direction and his brain move in another…and that was just…well….it was just plain unpleasant…but so was everything else about this night.

"Thank you." Said Suzuki. He didn't quite know what Fukuda meant but he did know how to receive a compliment.

"I mean it. You seriously believe all of that…I know you. You really think that none of that had any…just….I can't think right now." Said Fukuda

"That would be the marijuana and alcohol. Thank you again for consuming all of that, by the way, better you than Shigeko." said Suzuki. He, once again, had no idea what he had said…though being that intoxicated one could find humor in even the most banal of places….so there was that.

"You put her up on a pedestal…and you punish Sho for things that he hasn't even done yet…and things that would be out of his control. You know he can't control if he's gay, right? Not saying that he is but he can't control it and maybe you should just accept him for who he is not because Shigeko told you to but because he's your son….and you're not entirely…guiltless…when it comes to all of that…even if you think that it meant nothing because we're both straight-" said Fukuda

"It did. I could kiss you right now and not feel a single thing." Said Suzuki. He was not going to question himself. He hadn't at thirteen and he wasn't going to at forty four. He had done what he had done for the same reason he had done anything at that age. He'd been an idiot. It didn't mean anything. Like mother and father had said. It didn't mean anything because he was a boy and boys kissed girls and he liked girls and therefore he was normal. Everyone had those stray thoughts but only certain people acted on them. That was all that there was to it. He could have kissed Fukuda right then and there and it wouldn't have been anything, not even adultery, because neither of them would have gotten anything at all out of it.

So that was what he would do just to prove to Fukuda that he was wrong.

"I don't believe that. I know you and every time after wards you got all weird and-" said Fukuda. He would have said more but then…then he just…he couldn't speak. He physically couldn't, of course, since Suzuki had taken that moment to kiss him…a lot….and also even if he had pulled away….which he showed no signs of….Fukuda did not have words for this. What could he even have said to this!? This was….

This was….

"There. Absolutely nothing…and you taste like an ashtray." Said Suzuki wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. There. Nothing at all. He didn't care that Fukuda was staring at him, he didn't care that he suddenly felt aware of his body in a way that he hadn't in a while, and he certainly didn't want to do that again. He had just been proving a pint and now that his point had been proven the two of them could move on to another topic of conversation. Any other topic of conversation. Even their old debate as to whether underwater living or moon colonies were the more viable option for humanity once the continents became overpopulated.

"…then maybe don't tongue kiss me…" said Fukuda. There. He had found some words, and used them too, and now….well now they could just…figure out…what it was that they had even been talking about…and also they could maybe find something new to talk about…or something…because he just…he was not going to talk about that or think about that or…or anything about anything….at all…for any reason at all….ever….

He tasted ketchup.

"Alright." Said Suzuki. He leaned in again. Well if Fukuda was going to be like that then he could-

"Don't kiss me again! What the fuck! You had a good streak there! Twenty years without-" said Fukuda pushing Suzuki back. He made actual contact, his barrier was down, and that meant that he had left himself vulnerable….well Fukuda was vulnerable too. He wished that he could have put up a barrier. That was just….they were just…..that had been the worst….just….fuck!

"You just asked me to." Said Suzuki. Now he didn't get it. Fukuda had all but dared him too, and then he had all but asked him to again, and now he was acting like….this. Suzuki could forgive the pushing, Fukuda wasn't in his right state of mind, and maybe neither was he….and the tightness in his chest was only because…so few people made contact with him…so few people managed to get this close to him…made him drop his barrier….that was all. Nothing more.

"I…I wasn't egging you on-" said Fukuda. Was THAT how he was going to justify it this time?! Well he just….Fukuda…he was going to go along with it. Who was he kidding? He always just went along with it no matter what happened. That was just how it went with them.

"It felt like it." Said Suzuki with a shrug. If he hadn't been baiting Suzuki then he should have made himself clearer. Well that was all over now. Now they could get back to their night…and he so wanted to get back to their night…and he hadn't wanted this in so long….of maybe he had and he just had forgotten. Fukuda's company, of course, not the part where he kissed him to prove a point. No, they could have both done well without any of that.

"Fine, fine, fine, it's my fault. It's my fault you kissed me, it's my fault your wife left you, it's my fault your daughter is a drug addict, it's my fault your son hates you, it's my fault that they took shrimp cola off the market, everything is my fault!" said Fukuda

"No it's not. Well, alright, you did ask me to kiss you just now…but I don't see what you had to do with Masami leaving me or my Daughter's….vices….or Son being the way he is…and I really have no idea why you would have been the one responsible for taking shrimp cola off the market. That was a terrible beverage. It made both of us vomit. Stop blaming yourself for things that you aren't responsible for…it's a waste of energy." Said Suzuki

"No…it really is all my fault…well maybe not the shrimp cola thing but…Suzuki…years ago Masami and I-" said Fukuda. He took a deep breath. Maybe it was the alcohol and marijuana rattling around in his system. Maybe it was brain damage from all the beating Suzuki had given him when they'd been young, or maybe he was just tired of it all. He'd lost. Shigeko had Claw, she'd have the world when she grew up,, and if not her then her father and that was just the way that things were going to be. Masami was never coming back and if she did then she would have hated him or the rest of his life…so maybe the time had finally come.

"Someone's at the door. I'll get it." Said Suzuki. He heard a car stop and he felt two auras. Not his children, no, but their friends…and he would have taken literally anyone else on the planet turning up at his doorstep in the middle of the night over whatever Fukuda was going on about. This was…he wanted to be around Fukuda but also….he had forgotten how strange Fukuda could get when he was intoxicated…but it was what it was. At least he was still normal…mostly normal….no. All the way normal. Better than normal. He focused on the fact that now that Shigeko had told him what it would take for her to leave him he just had to never do anything like that and she'd stay forever.

So he focused on that and not on other things which he chose not to focus on right now.

He focused on how, really, his argument with Shigeko….if he could even call it that…was a blessing really and also on the fact that two her friends had decided to darken his doorstep at this late hour. He didn't usually answer his own door, even when he'd been a child he had always hated it, but Fukuda was in no sate to do so right now…and also maybe he wanted to put some space between the two of them. Maybe he wanted to put some space between the two of them…and also he wanted to be near him…in a way that he often didn't want to be….

He answered the door….and maybe he should have stayed near Fukuda after all.

"What's this?" asked Suzuki. Two of Shigeko's friends…or maybe one of her friends and one of his…or was Hatori a mutual friend? He didn't know. All he knew was that Shibata was holding Hatori under his arms like a baby and Hatori…well he seemed…not normal….but happy. His aura was very happy…so that was good….but also…he hated worrying over the welfare of others….so he tried not to.

"President Suzuki, is Fukuda here? He wasn't at home and-" said Shibata as he held Hatori up like a squirming baby. This was…he had warned Shimazaki and now he was going to do…something. Oh yeah, he was going to do something because Hatori did not need this…but he would do whatever it was that he could do later. Not now. Now he had to get Hatori all fixed up from…whatever it was that Shimazaki had given him….

Not even tea was safe anymore.

He had told Hatori not to drink the tea but he had drank the tea and now he was just…all…like this! One minute he'd been fine and then the net minute he'd been talking nonsense and touching everyone's eyebrows and trying to fight his reflection….that had been….Shibata did a lot of things for friendship and, really, it was better than what had happened at the last party. He just…he could handle this. He would get Hatori all the help he needed and then he would put Hatori to bed…

And then he would reevaluate his life.

"Suzuki! I love you so much! I love me! I love everyone! I'm going to die someday but that's ok!" shouted Hatori as he made his way from Shibata's arms. He jumped out, like Sho did, and he just…he loved Suzuki! He was such an asshole sometimes but he loved him! He loved him and he needed to touch his eyebrows! They were like a couple of caterpillar just hanging out there on his face! He was so….he needed to touch his eyebrows! Eyebrows were important!

"Sorry about him. He's just….I think Shimazaki poisoned him….and I was looking for Fukuda-" said Shibata as he pulled Hatori back to him. Not the eyebrows thing again. They were not getting back to that, they had moved past that, and also that was President Suzuki! He had never said it but he probably did not like people mentioning his eyebrows. He knew that, if he had been cursed with those, he would have wanted everyone to just be quiet about them. He knew that Hatori, if he'd been able to think, would have felt the same way…but he couldn't think. He could just act and act like…Shibata didn't even know….

The things he did for friendship.

"Not him! I don't love him! I love you and I love Suzuki but I don't love him and there's just so much love in the world and I love you." Said Hatori as he wriggled free of Shibata. He went over to Suzuki…and hit an invisible wall…no…when he touched it then it shimmered and became visible and…and there was so much red…and he loved red. He touched the red. He touched the red and he had his own colors and the colors mixed and the whole thing was just….he could see it and feel it and…and this was….

This was amazing!

There were so many colors and he could still get stuck in them…..and he wanted to…and they felt good. This whole thing just felt so good. He felt so good. He felt way too hot but he felt way too good to feel too hot but also he really needed to take off his clothes and he needed to get rid of the barrier between himself and the world and the colors and…and he just…there was too much too much between him and the colors and the world and the light and the dark and the lines and all of the lines and there were so many lines and who drew the lines and he was made up of lines and lies and he'd lied to Suzuki and he loved him so much and he needed to touch his eyebrows…..

They were like caterpillars!

"What….is….this….?" asked Suzuki. Hatori was…clearly not in his right state of mind. He was touching his aura…his actual aura…and he was just…he was such a child. He was still only twenty years old, young enough to be his son, and Suzuki knew that he meant nothing by that. He obviously had no idea what he was doing….and maybe they shouldn't have these parties anymore if this was still going to happen…well at least Hatori wasn't embarrassing himself too badly….so that was….

Fukuda could and would fix him.

"Your eyebrows look like caterpillars. Can I touch them?" asked Hatori. He leaned over close and tried to touch them. Shibata pulled him back…and he was really strong…and Hatori knew that he wasn't as strong. He was pretty weak. He was small and he was weak and he didn't really have powers and he would spend the rest of his life depending on people bigger and stronger than him to protect him from the other people who were bigger and stronger than him and this was life and he had to just…he really just had to get free and touch Suzuki's eyebrows!

"No." said Suzuki. Not his eyebrows. He couldn't even begin to count the number of people who had asked to touch his eyebrows…and the number of people who had to touch them….and the number of people who had been successful…though that had happened since he had been a child….or an adolescent….and he would never understand what the fascination was with his eyebrows. They were eyebrows. People had them. Some people had smaller ones than him. That was just the way the world worked. There had to be a certain amount of genetic diversity in the world…like he had told Fukuda all those years ago when he'd asked him why his eyebrow looked like that….and he could move things without touching them but that was what had fascinated him…

He had better not have started up with that again too.

"What's happening out here?" asked Fukuda as he stumbled into the genkan. He knew that he maybe shouldn't have been overriding his body's natural impulse to heal, especially because it looked like this, like so many other things in life, had ended in a crisis….but he'd had one hell of a night and he had earned this…and he was not coming out of this. As long as he was in this then he didn't have to think about…well everything that he had to think about….

"Hatori's been poisoned and he lost his mind." Said Suzuki simply.

"Can you fix him?" asked Shibata. He knew that he should have said 'you better fix him' or something like that but he hated being like hat…and also Fukuda was apparently the President's best friend. He knew how Mob was about friendship…and he didn't need to see if she had gotten it from her dad.

"No, no, I don't need fixing. I think that, maybe, if we weren't all worried about being fixed and broken and…like…good or bad….I think that we would all be happier…like…like how if we didn't have to worry and…and then we could love each other…your eyebrows are cool and I really want to touch them." Said Hatori. He reached out again but Shibata pulled him back. He didn't mind, though, he loved him. He loved him so much…the most….or maybe he loved Suzuki the most...or maybe he needed to learn how to love himself…love yourself like you love no other and be no man's fool and no man's brother and we're al born to die, you know, and that's the hell of it.

"Fix him." said Suzuki. He took a step back and reached over towards Fukuda…who took a step back from him for some reason….well that didn't matter. Fukuda could fix him and he would fix him and then they could both get on with their night.

"I…can't. Way too drunk. Too drunk and too…everything. Sorry. I just…need to go home….and get back to normal…." Said Fukuda. Nope. He was not going to fix….this. To fix this then eh would have to fix himself and to ix himself would mean that maybe they would have to talk about….well never talk it again…but he would think about it…and he didn't want to think about it…and also Hatori had gotten himself into this state. If he didn't want to live with the consequences of his actions then maybe he shouldn't have done such stupid things.

"You're fine. I've seen you worse." Said Suzuki. He had seen Fukuda stumbling around so badly that eh couldn't be able to even stand up straight without help. Why he chose to override his body's natural healing impulse he didn't know. He just knew that Fukuda was…well not fine but…not too terribly intoxicated that he wasn't able to fix whatever Hatori had done to himself.

"No…no….I don't even think that I can…yeah….no….I'm not alright right now…" said Fukuda. He knew that Suzuki wouldn't be able to tell that he was being lied to. He knew that Suzuki wouldn't care, either, if Fukuda really was that fucked up that he couldn't use his powers. He didn't care. He just needed to get back to his own home and his own space and he just needed space to…to process…everything.

"Hey! I have an idea! Shibata can carry you home and then I can be here and then other stuff is going to happen and can I please touch your eyebrows!?" said Hatori. He needed to touch Suzuki's eyebrows…and the rest of him...because the red of him felt very good and if the red of him felt very good then the rest of him must have felt good too and Suzuki was so fucking scared of the invisible lines that divided people and the invisible threads that brought them together and he tried to be all alone and that was just the saddest thing. It was amazing, sometimes, to think that he was Mob's dad.

"Fukuda…." Said Suzuki. He…well he knew that Fukuda had his limits but…well Hatori was obviously worse off than him…but everyone had their limits and there was no way to push a person past their limits so…so this was just….something that he would have to deal with….

He didn't want to deal with this….but he would….because he could. He was capable and he could because he had no choice.

"That's a good idea…that Hatori had…see you….see you later…just…yeah…see you later…" said Fukuda. He collapsed, well made himself collapse, into Shibata. He got the feeling that Shibata had been about to let him hit the floor….but of course that was insane. He as actually one of the better people that Shigeko had collected. Shibata didn't let him fall, no, he picked him up…which was just…it was odd to be picked up as an adult but this was an odd world he was living in and…well he had better accept that.

Honestly being carried like a sack of potatoes was a hell of a lot less odd than anything that had just transpired that night.


	436. Don't Drink the Tea

Sho had never been a big fan of tea.

Sure he'd drink it if there was nothing else available to him, it was better than water at least, but there were other drinks available to him here so he was not going to be drinking any tea. Not that he was sure why Shimazaki even had brought thermos full of tea with him. They had a million drinks at this party already. There was beer and champagne, both the sort of gross thing that he liked, and also chocolate milk and soda, which everyone liked and were very good, and also there was a bunch of other stuff that made you drunk and was full of chocolate….but for some strange reason he had brought a thermos full of tea tucked away in his coat….

Shimazaki could be sort of weird sometimes….but Sho wasn't going to say anything.

"That stuff smells bad, why are you going to drink it?" asked Sho as he licked the frosting off of a cupcake. Chocolate with a spider made of black twizzlers and black jellybeans on top. He had picked those off and put them on Shimazaki's plate, he didn't like the black ones either but he didn't know what color they were so Sho was safe for the time being, and now he was licking the frosting off like an ice cream cone. Big sis hated it when he did this but she was off with Minegishi. It was just him and Shimazaki.

It was perfect.

There weren't any kids his own age here, he'd checked, just a bunch of Awakened and HQ guys and Division guys and stuff. No other kids. No girls to try and kiss him in closets. No boys for him to want to kiss…well there was one boy he wanted to kiss…but that was never going to happen. He and Shimazaki were not going to go and find a coatroom and kiss in it…that would have been awesome but also not because of a lot of reasons….they were going to sit here and eat junk food until they felt like throwing up and then they were going to go to the bouncy house and jump until they did throw up and then after they threw up they were going to fill their stomachs again.

It was going to be awesome.

"Because it's going to be awesome." Said Shimazaki between bites of something sugary and smooth and chocolatey. He had no idea what it was that he was eating, and it didn't matter, he was going to eat at least one of everything until he was full and then he was going to drink the mushroom tea he had made and then he was going to enjoy the rest of the night with one foot in reality and one foot in either heaven or hell…and he might have been running the risk of throwing up since shrooms were disgusting….but that was a risk that he was willing to take.

Him, not Sho.

"But it's tea." Sid Sho

"It's not just tea." Said Shimazaki

"Then what it is?" asked Sho

"Mushroom tea….and you can't have any. You are in no way, shape, or form ready for this. Trust me. You are not at all in the right headspace for it. When you're older, alright? When you're older and less…well the less I say about that the better….and take whatever this liquorish is off my plate. Is that black liquorish? I fucking hate black liquorish...everyone does." Said Shimazaki wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He could feel the kid reaching out towards him holding….that sounded like paper. Oh, a napkin. He took the napkin and wiped his face. He could sense the kid moving….and he could feel the kid putting more on his plate, not taking any away.

He picked up a piece of liquorish and tossed it onto Sho's head.

"Hey! What was that for?" asked Sho as he took a red Twizzler off of his head. Now he had frosting in his hair and big sis would probably make him take a bath when he got home…and also Shimazaki liked the red ones. He'd seen Shimazaki eat the red ones before.

"I said get rid of the liquorish, not give me more." Said Shimazaki

"That was a red one, you like the red ones….and also these are Twizzlers, not liquorish. I told big sis that you liked Twizzlers best and that's what she got." Said Sho

"Ok, ok, I'm sorry. I should have smelled them or something…but to be fair everything smells like chocolate and frosting and I have no idea what color is." Said Shimazaki

"Sorry…I forgot." Said Sho

"No, you remembered that I liked red so thanks." Said Shimazaki. He leaned over and patted Sho on the head. His hair felt really stiff. He pushed it down and it just jumped right back up. He was lucky. His stood up on it's own. Shimazaki reached up and felt his hair. Still looking good. He had been told, before, that he looked good this way and he knew that he hadn't been lied to. Not that he cared how he looked…well alright he did to a degree…but not as much as some people. Not that he was obsessed or anything. Not that he asked Toshi every single morning how he looked or anything like that.

Just some mornings.

Toshi always told him, honestly, how he looked. They always told him if he looked good or if he needed to change or if he had missed a spot shaving or something like that. They were honest like that. They weren't all 'Ryou, you're so hot' or whatever when he was wearing something that was, apparently, all stained and stuff…that had been his favorite shirt….but Toshi had been right to tell him that he looked stupid. He could always trust Toshi.

He loved them.

They were the love of his life…and maybe he should have kept that one to himself. He said it because he felt it and he felt it because, well, Toshi was Toshi. Toshi was Toshi and Toshi was the love of his life….and….yeah. They were the love of his life and he was ready to say it but they weren't…and he didn't need them to say it…but everything was alright. Toshi wasn't ignoring him. Toshi was just making sure that Mob didn't pound them back too fast. He could feel them both over at the bar. Toshi was there by Mob…and he could feel the others, too. There were so many auras here but he could pick out the people he knew…and everyone was here….but he mostly just cared about Toshi….

But that didn't mean that he didn't care about Sho.

He gave him a one arms hug. Quick, very quick, quick enough for Sho to not…well now his aura was doing that thing again…and Shimazaki could not wait until this crush was over. He wished that there had been some guys here Sho's own age. Then Shimazaki could have played wingman, apparently Sho and his little girlfriend were in one of those long distance arrangements or something, and then Sho could have found some kid his own age and hook up in a closet like he had last year…and then things between him and Sho could get back to normal and they could move on from this crush without Sho's little heart getting torn out and shown to him like in that game he talked about a lot.

But wishes didn't always come true….they rarely ever did actualy….so this was something that he was going to have to live with for a while.

"Y-you're welcome…um….yeah. I know that you like red and…um….I don't like mushrooms so I don't want any of that tea anyway." Said Sho. He could see big sis coming over here. Good. That was very good. The best thing that could have happened. He…he knew that Shimazaki didn't like him…and he knew that he should have just…just been like hat but there, in his stomach, was a goldfish and it did it's own thing no matter what his brain wanted.

Stupid goldfish.

He pulled his shirt up and licked some frosting off. His shirt was the same as Shimazaki's…well mostly….both were orange and both said stuff and…well he wanted to match him even though they weren't matching and…and he needed to focus on something else, anything else, besides his stupid feelings. Maybe it would get better once big sis got back…or maybe it would get better once she left again…or maybe it would get better by the time he was eleven. He didn't know.

He didn't even know if he really wanted it to get better.

"Even if you did then you wouldn't want any of this tea." Said Shimazaki. He followed Toshi's aura with his. It was lick he stuck to them like glue or something….like that time he and the kid had found that superglue and tried to glue Hatori to the floor….only not because this was Toshi and not Sho…and he loved Toshi in a totally different way than Sho…and stuff and…

He set his liquorish to the side.

Toshi loved black liquorish. He loved liquorish, only the red kind, and he knew that Toshi loved the black kind…and he also knew that Toshi would never take any of their own because of this thing that they had about sugar…but they loved black liquorish. They loved it for reasons that he could never understand…but he didn't have to understand. Love was weird sometimes. Love was weird and incompressible…incomprehensible…and…

And he needed to get into a better headspace. Right now.

"I didn't know that you wanted tea. If I had known that you wanted tea then I would have ordered you some….but I got you a pudding cocktail….if you want that." Said Mob as she sat down. She put the drinks she had been carrying with her powers down on the table. She left a can of soda in front of Sho and pushed all of the fun stuff away from him. He was too little and he didn't need all of that stuff. She did, though, because it had been a very stressful evening.

But Minegishi was trying to make her use moderation again.

"Cocktail me." Said Shimazaki. He held out his hand and felt Mob passing him something in a glass….and it smelled like chocolate…and there was no better smell than chocolate…well vinyl…but you wouldn't eat a record. You could eat chocolate and nothing smelled better than chocolate…well Toshi. He could smell Toshi…or maybe he was just imaging that he was smelling Toshi since he could feel them getting closer….

"Next year for your birthday we'll get you a new pancreas." Said Minegishi as they sat down beside Mob. They reached over and took the majority of the mixed drinks away from her. She had said before, that it had been a stressful evening and Minegishi believed that…but also they knew how she tended to overdo it and, frankly, they did not need a drunken child on their hands. Not every single party that was thrown needed to end in drunken children stumbling around and such….

Or whatever it was that Ryou had in mind.

"Shimazaki doesn't want that. He wants….something else like…like a bunch of dogs…or a box of candles…or something." Said Sho as he glared at Minegishi. They glared right back. Sho tried not to laugh. He had no idea what their costume was but they looked hilarious. They had painted like a sun or something under one of their eyes and they had on one of Shimazaki's white shirts and an old timey black hat. That was the dumbest costume he had ever seen…and there were a bunch of Awakened walking around wrapped up in toilet paper like mummies.

"Well then we can worry about that next year, can't we?" asked Minegishi. This was not horrorshow at all. This kid was putting them in the mood for a bit of the old ultraviolence and they were not going to do ultraviolence to a kid. No, they were going to sit there and enjoy their korova without any chepooka from anyone they knew….

Ok. They'd stop now.

They took a sip of their milk, Mob had somehow invented the white Russian all on her own, and stopped making references in their mind. It was pointless. Unless there was a telepath around to listen in and tell them how clever they were then forcing in all of those Clockwork Orange references was about as pointless and Mob's little brother's constant glaring. What, did he think that if he glared hard enough they'd get scared and run away so he could have Ryou all to himself or something?

Yeah, probably. Sho wasn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer…though it looked like he was about get up to go and find it. Wonderful.

"I'll worry about what I want to worry about. You got a problem with that?" asked Sho. Minegishi just shrugged and drank their fancy milk thing. Big sis was shaking her head.

"Sho, no, no more fighting. I don't want to have to worry about any more fighting tonight." Said Mob. She reached past Minegishi, got out one of the cholate milk cocktails, which meant a bunch of different kinds of drinks put together and went bottoms up. She could feel Minegishi looking at her. She could feel Shibata and Hatori coming too. She pulled more of the drinks closer to her…so she didn't tempt Hatori…and also so she could reach them. She understand that Minegishi was only looking out for her when they warned her about moderation and stuff but…well she also understood that she was stressed out from her fight with dad and also that she was old enough to know her own limits. She was almost twelve after all, eleven and a half was almost twelve, and she wasn't a little kid anymore. She had started drinking when she had been eight. She knew her limits and she knew how to drink. She wasn't Hatori. He still didn't know how to drink and he was twenty. She knew her limits and she wasn't a little kid anymore…and she wished that Minegishi could look at her without seeing a little kid…and stuff.

"What are we fighting about this time?" asked Shibata with a groan as he sat down. They had just gotten there and already there was fighting. Shimazaki was more of a kid than the actual kids sometimes…though he did have that brain thing where unless people were paying attention to him he forgot that he existed….so maybe he could get a little leeway. Like a centimeter of wiggle room maybe. Half a centimeter. Some obscure until of measurement that scientists needed special equipment to measure with.

"We're fighting? Please don't tell me that we're fighting…we just got here. I don't want to fight…not this early at least." said Hatori. They had just gotten here, he had just sat down with the others, and now they were fighting. He almost wanted to go and hang out with Suzuki. He may have been kind of an asshole but at least he never started fights for the sake of starting fights.

"No, no, no. We're not fighting. We're all just sitting down here to a nice cup of tea." Said Shimazaki. He poured some tea into the cup top of his thermos. He could feel Toshi's aura leaning down onto him…and he could feel their disproval. They used to trip with him all the time…but they had been younger back then. They were older now. They were twenty eight and he was thirty one. Maybe they were too old to do shit like this. Maybe it was time that they got onto those responsible adult lives that they were supposed to have been living….

Nah, that sounded boring as fuck.

"Pass. I know what kind of tea that is and, no, it is not the time for mushroom tea Ryou. Mob passes too." Said Minegishi. They pushed that bright red cup away. That was a kid's thermos. Maybe that was something poetic or something, mushroom tea in an Ultraman thermos…or maybe they were just feeling deep and poetic because of this costume. Either way they were not going to sit there and trip in the middle of a work Halloween party surrounded by people they knew and even more people that they did not know….yeah. That was going to be a recipe for disaster…

For the both of them.

Ryou…they were not going to babysit him. They were busy babysitting Mob, she wouldn't call it that but that was what they were doing, and they didn't need to add to their ever growing list of responsibilities. He was a grown man, hell this party was partially to celebrate the fact that he was thirty one now, and he didn't need a babysitter. They were his partner, not his minder, and if he wanted to spiral down into a bad trip, probably ego death since he was never in the headspace for that shit, then he was free to get on with it.

They had enough to deal with when it came to Mob.

"Mushroom tea? Gross. No offense. I just don't like mushrooms." Said Mob as Minegishi took one of the glasses away from her. She let them. She didn't want to fight with them. She didn't want to fight with anyone. She wanted….well she wanted everyone to get along. Her and her friends. Her friends with each other. Her and her dad. Her dad and Sho. Everyone else in Claw. Everyone else in the entire world. This was a Claw party and the mission of Claw was to bring all the espers in the world together and then to bring all the normal people together with the espers so everyone could get along, and dad could rule the world, but how could the whole world get along if her friends couldn't even get along? If her family couldn't get along?

She didn't know. She needed a drink.

"Neither do I." said Sho sticking out his tongue. He didn't know which was grosser, the mushroom tea or the fact that he agreed with Minegishi about something….or maybe it was good that he agreed with Minegishi about something. Maybe then Shimazaki would like him like he liked them and…he stuffed a whole cupcake in his mouth. He didn't want to think about that…about what it would have been like to be his….he didn't even want to think that word. He knew that if he let the word get to his head then he would end up throwing up all over the table and then the whole party would be ruined…and also Shimazaki would think that he was gross and stuff….

He stuffed another cupcake in his mouth.

"Sho….do you want me to mash those up for you or something?" asked Shibata. He wondered if he still remembered how CPR worked….or would the Heimlich maneuver have been better for this situation? He didn't know. He scanned the crowd for the healer…and he wasn't there…which was a good thing for the kids but a bad thing, also, for the kids in case they hurt themselves…and also the Awakened were having some kind of chair jousting tournament upstairs…and also there were the bouncy house cage matches…..

Maybe they shouldn't serve alcohol at these things anymore.

"….he's not going to die is he?" asked Hatori. Suzuki was going to kill him if he let one of his kids die…even if it was his least favorite kid. Also Sho was a great kid…sometimes…and it would have sucked if he died.

"Oh no, God forbid." Said Minegishi. They knew the Heimlich maneuver and they would use it if they needed to…and they didn't need to. Not yet, anyway. The kid needed to learn how to think his actions through, and take human sized bites, but they weren't going to let him choke to death just to teach him a much needed lesson.

"Sho! Stop that! Chew and swallow. You're not a squirrel, you can't just store food in your mouth like that." Said Mob. She hated it when he did that…but there was nothing at all that she could do to get him to stop besides asking him. Well she could take all of his cupcakes and stuff away…but then they would have a fight and she wasn't in the mood to fight….so she would let him do this…and maybe she shouldn't have told Fukuda to keep dad company. He was a fun killer, and he had stopped liking her for some reason, but he was also the only healer in all of Claw so….yeah. Maybe it was important to have him around.

"Squirrels tend to chew. I'd say that he's eating more like a duck." Said Minegishi as they reached over and took a piece of black liquorish from Ryou's plate. While they were there they wiped some frosting off of his shirt. Orange. His shirt was orange, like the kid's, and his said cheap ass Halloween costume…and they shouldn't have smiled but they did. There wasn't anything funny about it…but they were still smiling…and now they had earned themselves another glare from Sho.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

"No, I'm eating like a human being. You're the one being weird. Who the hell likes black liquorish?" said Sho as he choked down the last of his cupcake. He could feel himself being looked at. He didn't know what everyone was staring at him for. They should have been looking at the decorations and stuff…or something. Big sis had made the lunchroom look cool. There were glow in the dark streamers and pumpkin lanterns and confetti and scary stuff and…and there was a fog machine and it was all dark and spooky and Halloweeny…well it would have been more Halloweeny if there hadn't been Beatles music playing….and also if there hadn't been so many Awakened dressed up like dogs and stuff…but this…this was still a really good party and…and stuff….and it was cool in here and everyone should have been looking around the room and not at him!

"I guess a lot of people since your sister ordered it." Said Minegishi. This kid…this kid was going to turn them into an actual Droog. Really. How, exactly, was Mob related to this kid? God…Ryou had sworn up and down that he was handling this and, of course, he wasn't…and this was not their problem. They'd dealt with worse in their life than a bratty ten year old. They'd deal with worse later on in their life too…

They needed a drink.

"You know it's not that bad, really, I think that I'll just get some for the table…and a lot of other things too…and then we can just eat and talk about how good the food is and…yeah. It'll be a good time. We'll eat and then go to the haunted house or the bouncy house or the candle room and then…and then we can all just…have a good time. That's what we'll do." Said Shibata as he got up and made his way over to the snack table. Maybe everyone was just overly hungry. Maybe everyone just had low blood sugar or something…he didn't know exactly but…well they needed to calm down before they got into another fight. Sho was a good kid, he really was, he was just jealous and in love and full of other big feelings that he was too little to deal with.

So maybe some candy and cupcakes and pudding and other sugary things would help.

"Bring back cupcakes! With red Twizzlers!" shouted Sho. He didn't know what everyone as looking at him like that for. This was a party and it was ok to shout at a party…and even if it wasn't dad wasn't there and he was the only one who really cared about people being all quiet all the time and stuff.

"Sho, come on, it's a party. Please be nice." Said Mob

"I am being nice." Said Sho

"Alright…just…keep on being nice I guess." Said Mob. She reached for another drink but Minegishi put a soda in her hand. She hadn't even had that much…and she was stressed. Sho was starting fights again and she had already had to deal with the fight that she'd had with dad…..and when she ran the world….well when her family did….then she was going to get a bunch of scientists together and make them invent a way for everyone to get along all the time forever. Like something they could put in the water or the air or something and then people would have it in their bodies without knowing and then everyone would get along all the time.

"I will." Said Sho. There, now she got it. Now they could all stop fighting…if big sis's friend decided to stop being a jerk. There was so much to do here and they hated sugar so why not just find something else to do? Why not just take themselves and their stupid costume and just go somewhere else and leave him and Ryou…and big sis…and everyone else all alone?

"Good. Everyone made up. Now is anyone going to drink this tea with me?" asked Shimazaki. There. The problem had solved its self. He knew what Toshi was going to say to him later. They were going to tell him that he needed to rip Sho's heart out with his bare hands and wring the blood out like sweat from a gym sock. Well he wasn't going to do that. Sho was a kid and he deserved to be happy…as happy as he could be…for as long as he could. Besides, it wasn't like he was hurting anyone in any serious way. He was just being an annoying little shit, that was all, and that wasn't hurting anyone.

"That's all you, Ryou." Said Minegishi with a wave of their hand. Ryou was such an idiot sometimes….most of the time…but he was their idiot. They knew that at some point in the night he'd teleport back to the bed, wake them up, and beg them to remind him that he was real….and that was something that they were prepared to do. They loved him and that was what you did when you were stupid enough to love them. Stupid enough to put up with someone's idiocrasy and insanity….

"Yeah, sorry…but mushrooms are gross." Said Mob. She focused on her soda and not the tea…and next time she'd have tea for him. She'd get him tea and then he'd be happy…and he would be even happier at the next party than this one…but this was a good party. Maybe. She had done the best that she could…maybe if she and dad were made up by next year then she'd be able to put in all the fun stuff that he wanted. Like the pudding swimming pool and the dogs that were free for the petting….and stuff.

"They're in the top ten grossest foods right between cucumbers and green peppers." Said Sho sticking out his tongue. He would never understand adults. When you were an adult then you could eat whatever you wanted…so why eat gross stuff? Why put yourself through that kind of stuff? Why not just have fun and eta whatever you wanted to all day? Shimazaki was usually so fun and he made so much sense…but here he was drinking mushroom tea and…and not even this was enough to make the goldfish in his stomach stop swimming. Maybe the sugar was giving it energy or something.

"How about you, Hatori? Want some tea?" asked Shimazaki as he tried to pass Hatori the cup. Hatori on shrooms…that would be even better than last year…unless he felt like confessing to Toshi again….that would suck but…well he wasn't into Toshi and he had never been upset about that because Toshi wasn't HIS…just his partner and the love of his life…and they could be into whoever they wanted to be into and…and this was a show of good faith! Yeah! And also watching Hatori trip balls would have been hilarious!

"Um….you know what? I think that I'll just stick to what I have…. I mean I've never had mushroom tea and I don't feel like-" said Hatori. He knew that Shimazaki would do whatever he could to poison him again. That was just the sort of person who Shimazaki was….and Hatori did not want to repeat last year and…and he didn't want any of that tea! He had no idea what was in it but he knew better than to trust Shimazaki!

…and he also should have known better than to think that anyone could say no to Shimazaki Ryou…

"All the better to start now. Bottoms up." Said Shimazaki before he teleported behind Hatori, dumped the cup down his throat, and then teleported back to his seat. He could hear Toshi's aura, he could feel it glaring at him, and he had no idea what they were so pissed about. Back when they had met, five or six years ago, they would have thought that this was the most hilarious thing in the world…but Toshi had gotten older maybe…he didn't know…but he did know that this wasn't good for his headspace….

He'd fix his headspace after he down a cup of this tea.

"Mob, come on, let's go check out the haunted house or something and leave these idiots to….this." said Minegishi as they got up and took Mob's hand. As hilarious as it was probably going to be, watching Hatori trip, they had to take care of Mob…and also they just did not have the energy to deal with that. Hatori was over them, halle-fucking-lujah, but they didn't want to see whatever kind of moron he'd end up making out of himself. They didn't want to deal with the fallout of whatever he would end up saying in front of Mob this time.

Maybe the haunted house would be less traumatizing.

"What? You're going? Well that suck….ok bye. See you later….or never." Said Sho as he watched Minegishi lead big sis away. Really, he was sad to see her go but, well, he was also happy to have been aloe with Shimazaki…even though he knew that he shouldn't have been…but maybe he was just…excited about that party…or something….

And even if he wasn't a big fan of tea he was a big fan of Shimazaki…and that was...what it was….


	437. Talks in a Haunted Hallway

Something was wrong with Mob.

Well a lot was wrong with Mob. She was an eleven year old with serious substance abuse problems, which Minegishi took responsibility for, but something new was wrong with her. She had been quiet all night. She was surrounded by people who adored her copious amounts of junk food, and was in one of those costumes she used to wear all the time. She should have been over the fucking moon but, instead, right now all she was…she was quiet.

Even in the middle of a haunted house she was quiet.

"I want to suck your blood!" shouted an Awakened as he popped out from behind a conveniently placed curtain. An entire floor had been converted into a haunted house of….some dubious quality. The Awakened needed a lot of direction, even for this, especially for this. Minegishi and Mob were walking through what was the 'everything is a vampire' section…just like the last section. Apparently the Awakened were really into vampires….and judging by the amount of body glitter they had on they were also into a particular tragic vampire romance franchise that Minegishi would not admit to ever having had read or enjoyed.

So much body glitter.

"I got it the first fifty times. Honestly." Said Minegishi as they shook the body glitter off their only white button down shirt. Mob didn't have to shake hers off. She just picked every single piece off with her powers and deposited it in a nice pile on the floor. Fine movements. Minegishi sometimes forgot how much she was capable of. There was more telekinesis than picking things up and throwing them. Being able to pick up something so small and move it with such precision…and in the near darkness too….well it was impressive.

And a good sign too.

Well a good one and a bad one. Mob had been hitting the open bar petty hard….well hard by a normal person's standards…and she wasn't even…God…they remembered when a capful of straight vodka was enough to have her teetering in place and speaking nonsense. That had been years ago. Now she was normal…mostly….aside from being a little quiet…rare for her at a party. She was looking up at them in the darkness and the glow sticks and the flashing lights…..and she was just…..

Quiet.

Minegishi felt a tug at their hair. It was getting long, again, and they'd have to either stop being lazy and cut it or learn to stop being lazy and take care of their long, by their standards, hair. Maybe they should just let it grow out. Mob had been asking them to grow it out so that she could braid it for a while…and maybe it was about time that they let her. Maybe it was about time that they did something nice for her….not that they didn't try their best already but…well Mob had a lot going on.

Things that Minegishi couldn't even have imagined.

"You had a lot in their hair. I don't know why they have so much glitter on….I hope they didn't take all the glitter from the crafting room." Said Mob. She was playing with the sleeve of her dress. Minegishi knew that look. She was vulnerable. She was vulnerable and something had made her feel this way, probably her dad and whatever bizarre thing he had done, and Minegishi…well they could pick up the pieces of this. They could and they would and they'd do it without adding to the terrible coping mechanisms that they'd taught Mob.

They so hated regrets….but they had them and they had to deal with them.

"If they did then they just won't have any crafting glitter to craft with. It's their own problem." Said Minegishi

"I know…but I still have to take care of them. I have to take care of everyone." Said Mob. Mob was going to work herself into an early grave with all of that…and they had no idea how they were supposed to fi that. They had no idea how they were supposed to just…get her to think about herself for once in her life. To realize that the most important person was her….that she had to look out for herself….Mob wasn't like that. She was a lot like them, a younger version of them, but she wasn't them.

She was better than them.

She was, in a lot of ways, like a very young version of themselves. Back before their parents had decided that they were crazy. Back when they had thought that maybe if they could have been better done better, made everyone happy then their home life would have been less hellish. That mom and dad could have just…stopped. Stopped fighting and just…been better to them….but they had grown out of it quickly….

Mob showed no signs of growing out of it anytime soon.

"Is that what's wrong? Your dad decided to dump even more responsibility onto your head?" asked Minegishi

"Like glitter?" asked Mob

"Yeah, like glitter." Said Minegishi. They reached over and shook one of the fake spider webs beside them. Glitter fell down onto them like some kind of terrible snow. Glitter was the cancer of the crafting world. No matter what you did to get rid of it you'd still end up finding it in the strangest places later on without even having expected it. They knew that they were going to end up waking up with a pillow covered in glitter….and Ryou would end up with it in his eye sockets and that was always a joy….

Whatever. It was what it was.

Mob loved this stuff. When she had been small pretty much every single item of clothing she owned had been blue and glittery. She was back in the blue dress, apparently they still made those in her size, and she should have been happy but she just…wasn't. Minegishi…they didn't like caring about Mob but they did. It wild have been simpler if they could have just….not cared. Just been grateful that she was being quiet and…well they weren't that person anymore. If they, a younger version of themselves, could look forward in time and see themselves now then they would have thought that they'd lost their mind….and maybe they had….

But it was whatever.

"No….he didn't make me do anything else….we just had a fight and…let's keep going. Come on, the Awakened worked hard on this and we should at least see everything that they built." Said Mob. She took them by the hand and left the glittery vampire room. They let themselves be led. Mob…was being cagey. She was being cagey and also she'd been drinking like a fish earlier…..fucking Suzuki. If he hadn't been the most powerful esper on Earth then Minegishi….well they would have done something….something violent. A bit of the old ultraviolence…

But they couldn't.

There was no way to beat Suzuki. There was no beating him because if there had been a way to beat him then they would have done it back when they'd first fought him. They had come so close to becoming a Scar….but they hadn't. They didn't have one of those scars on their face…well they had scars from that fight…and they knew that if they tried it again then they would have just ended up with more scars…if not dead.

Mob needed them alive and able to be there for her.

"Which room do you want to try next? You want to try the spirit room? Or the zombie room? Or the zombie dogs room? Or the zombie vampire room? Or the zombie Beatles Room? Or the zombie vampire Beatles vampire room? Or the-" said Mob

"I'm sensing a theme here." Said Minegishi

"They really like zombies and vampires I think…and also Shimazaki likes the Beatles…I hope he comes up here soon…and that he's having fun." Said Mob

"Trust me, Mob, Ryou's having the time of his life." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. They could feel him teleporting around. They knew what he had been drinking, he was making good use of Mob's birthday gift it seemed, and they knew that he'd either continue to have the time of his life or he'd end up in the middle of a bad trip and they'd have to fund him and talk him out of a tree…or something…..

Mob first, then Ryou.

They loved Ryou. They loved him and they would take care of him….because they were an idiot….but they also loved Mob and she needed them more….and they were going to be there for her. Even through this weird malaise that she was in…and she was way too young for this malaise. She was only eleven and a half. She could wait, at least, until she was twelve for the malaise of life to set in….but then again her life being what it was….

Whatever. They were here for her and that was what mattered.

"Do you think? I want him to be happy. I want everyone to be happy." Said Mob

"I know. You want everyone to be happy all the time….but you know that can't happen, right?" asked Minegishi

"Yes it can. If I work hard enough then everyone I love can be happy." Said Mob. Minegishi wanted to hit themselves over the head until they drew blood….or maybe they wanted to hook Mob up to one of those conditioning machines…anything to get some sense into one of them. Mob needed to get off of this. She was going to end up running herself ragged trying to make everyone happy all the fucking time….

Those operant condition machines were cruel….right?

"Mob, listen-" said Minegishi

"Come on, let's see the zombie Beatles." Said Mob. She took them by the hand and walked down the hall. The entire floor had been turned into haunted houses….or rooms….and Mob should have been into this. She loved it when people did things like this…and she loved a good party….and usually she was more open than this but…well this was….

Something that Minegishi could deal with.

"Sure thing. Whatever you want…but at some point I want to talk to you." Said Minegishi as Mob led her down the hallway. They pressed themselves to the wall as a group of Awakened wrapped up in bloody toilet paper, either they were some kind of mummy or there had been some kind of terrible/wonderful accident….or someone had decided to indulge in a bit of the old ultraviolence….and they'd stop now. They were starting to annoy themselves with all of that…maybe they shouldn't have gone with the Droog costume. Maybe they should have gone with the matching Frozen costumes that Mob had wanted….

The things they did for friendship.

"I hope none of them got hurt…maybe I shouldn't have told Fukuda to stay home and keep dad company." Said Mob

"Mob, this is a party, not a funeral." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. Every party had a pooper and that was why Fukuda got invited to parties. This was supposed to be fun and that guy…well he had this aura of hating the world even in the middle of…well whatever this was. Mob didn't need that. Nobody needed that. Mob needed….well she needed a lot of things…things that Minegishi was going to do their best to provide for her.

"I know…there's a lot of zombies and vampires running around and also there's that guy that made a bedsheet ghost costume but forgot the eyeholes….but it's not a funeral." Said Mob

"No, I mean he's probably happier with your dad then ruining whatever this party is." Said Minegishi

"It's a Halloween party and also a party for Shimazaki…and you're right. He's probably a lot happier with dad….I just hope that I didn't mess by making him stay with dad….and stuff. I hate it when I mess up." Said Mob

"What makes you think that you messed up? I swear to God if that asshole is bothering you again…" said Minegishi. They weren't in the habit of psychoanalyzing people but if they were they would have diagnosed Fukuda with some kind of personality disorder. The kind that made him always right, everyone else always wrong, and an eleven year old girl responsible for all of the misery in his life. They weren't in the habit of psychoanalyzing people, though, and even if they'd had the credentials to do so they wouldn't have had to. This was Claw. Everyone here had some sort of serious psychological or social disorder…..

But there was no reason to take it out on Mob.

"No, no, nobody is bothering me….I just…got into a fight with my dad today…and I think that I messed up. I mean I was really mean to him." said Mob

"What did he do to you?" asked Minegishi. They tried to sound pleasant. They tried to sound pleasant as they reached out to the minuscule plant life in this building. This was…something that they could do their best to help Mob with…and they just…if they had the ability to beat Suzuki…if they had the ability to knock some sense into that insane head of his…then they would have….but they couldn't….they could only pick up the pieces of his insanity.

"He got me this dress." Said Mob. She pulled her dress out to the side in case Minegishi hadn't noticed….and nothing good ever came from Suzuki getting dresses for Mob. This, at least, wasn't just a copy of his dead wife's dress….which was good…so it meant that he wasn't trying to turn Mob into his daughter-wife…even more so than he had already….

"Mob…come sit down. I feel like there's a story there." said Minegishi as they slid down the wall and pulled Mob down with them. Suzuki had gotten her an Elsa dress…like she had worn a year or so ago. She had practically lived in those princess dresses for a while….and was Suzuki trying to go back to that time? He hadn't reacted well to her first period….and he seemed to both love and hate the fact that his daughter was growing up…..Minegishi was getting a hell of a headache. Trying to understand him…trying to understand that man….they did not have the headspace for this. Not now. Not sitting there on the floor of the haunted hallway with Awakened ran past them and thee songs plus a spooky sounds tape fought for auditory dominance.

"There is…sort of. He got me this dress because it's ok for me to wear dresses but it's not ok for Sho to wear dresses, dad said, because Sho is a boy…but I wanted us to be Elsa and Anna and I didn't even put any makeup on him….but dad didn't care and he got all mad…and also he doesn't want Sho to like boys even though he does….not that dad knows….but anyway I told dad that if he didn't let Sho be who he was then he was going to take Sho and run away like mom did." Said Mob. Minegishi blinked. If they'd had eyebrows they would have been up in their hairline. They blinked so hard that they could feel their eyeliner smudging….and they blinked some more.

Well that had been quite the info dump.

So Suzuki was back to enforcing gender norms…he apparently had nothing better to do….and Mob had stood up to her dad. She had not only stood up to him but had threatened to walk out on her dad….like she thought that her mom had. People didn't leave Claw. There were no defectors….but nobody could take on Suzuki…not like Mob could….and while Minegishi suspected that her mother was dead Mob…well she could do it…

She had threatened to defect Claw….to walk out on her father….

"Mob…you threatened….to walk out on your father? Your dad? President Suzuki? The red haired guy with the weird eyebrows that made all of this insanity possible?" asked Minegishi. She had threatened to walk out on her own father. Suzuki…he had…Minegishi could have laughed. There was just something completely hilarious about Suzuki's daughter-wife threatening to walk out on him. The whole situation was so bizarre it was hilarious….but they didn't laugh. This was serious. Mob was freaked out and this whole thing was serious….

Ryou would get a kick out of this later.

"Yes….my dad. Suzuki Touichirou. The guy with the weird eyebrows who runs Claw." Said Mob

"So…how did he react to all of this?" asked Minegishi. They hadn't seen any scrapes or bruises on Mob or her brother…but then again they did have a healer…and maybe that was why she had told Fukuda to keep Suzuki company…..or maybe nothing had happened and he had taken his own daughter-wife threatening to walk out on him well…

They really had no idea when it came to that man.

"He said that….well he said a lot of things but it ended in him agreeing to be less of a jerk to Sho and accepting him for who he was and never hitting him again…." said Mob

"So in other words you won." Said Minegishi. Mob…she didn't see this as a victory….even though she was the victor in that situation. She had found a way to control her father…which was another scoop of weirdness onto the Suzuki family sundae of bizarreness…but she had won. She had even used her words like she always tried to. She had won and now she and her little brother had one less thing to worry about….but there was still all of that malaise…and Minegishi…they were no strange to malaise….but they were getting kind of tired of it…

And Mob didn't need to waste her life on the never ending malaise…doing whatever she could to feel something….

"I…don't feel like I did. When my mom left….it really hurt him…well it hurt all of us but dad….he was really scared when she never came back and….and I know, now, that he thinks that she's a traitor and he doesn't love her anymore…and I'm not even sure how I feel about her….I mean she's my mom but she just…left us all alone….and stuff…and I just….I don't want to make dad feel that hurt again but….but I don't want him to ever hurt Sho again either…." Said Mob

"Mob….you won. You won this fight and you won it or your brother, too, and you love him more than he deserves….and before you jump down my throat he can be a real asshole sometimes." Said Minegishi

"Sho…can be a lot sometimes…but I don't think he's a….that word. I love him." said Mob

"You do. You really love him and you did right by him….and also your dad shouldn't have pushed you to that point, alright?" said Minegishi

"But….I don't want to hurt anyone ever again." said Mob

"You didn't hurt him. You warned him. You warned him that unless he started to act like a decent human being you were going to leave. There's a difference." Said Minegishi. Mob had warned him. That was more than Minegishi had ever done with their parents…well….when they had been a kid, before they had been taken away from the last time, they had warned their parents that one day they would come back and then they could have their revenge…..and they had…and they knew that Mob wasn't going to come back to her father after ten years ready to turn him into fertilizer….

"But…I don't feel that there's a difference." Said Mob. Minegishi was not about to tell her the plant story. This was Halloween, true, but Mob didn't need to hear about all of that. She didn't need to know the exact story….when she was old enough to hear it…and when she wouldn't hate them for telling it…then she would know they story of how the become a self-made orphan….but not now. Now was the time for reason and logic and just….not the time for recounting the only murder they had ever enjoying committing.

"Mob….it's like….a haunted house. You're here and you know that you're going to have people jumping out and scaring you…so it's ok. Now if you were just walking down this hallway on any other day, when it's not Halloween, then one of these idiots jumping out and scaring you wouldn't be acceptable at all. You get it?" said Minegishi. That was the best thing that they could do on such short notice. She was looking at them, now, and she was listening….and the wheels in her head were turning…and that could have been something good or something bad. That was just how Suzukis worked, it seemed, it was either something really good or something really bad when it came to that family and thinking really hard about something. There was no in-between with these people….

"I…think so. I mean….I warned dad so…so if I leave then….it's his own fault?" asked Mob. She didn't sound like she got it. In fact she sounded like she was trying not to understand. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself that she was in the wrong. That she was in the wrong there….and Minegishi could not let her believe that.

"Exactly. You warned him. You warned him that you would do whatever you had to do to protect your little brother…and you did nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with trying to protect someone you love." Said Minegishi. Mob understood love. She understood love and caring and she would just…she would accept this. She had to.

Minegishi could see the wheels in her head turning.

They could see the wheels in her head turning. They could see her thinking. One path, then another, and another. How she could think in such a chaotic environment they could never understand…but she as thinking…and hopefully she would come to the right conclusion. Somehow she would come to the right conclusion….

Otherwise it was going to be a long night.

"It's….ok to be mean to my dad….so long as I keep Sho safe….because I love him." said Mob. She got it. She got it and now Minegishi could die a happy person….well not now. Now they had Halloween stuff to do. Stuff that would take Mob's mind far, far, far away from whatever bizarre fight that she and her dad had gotten into.

"There, you've got it. Now come on, let's check out these rooms and then the bouncy house and the stage show I hear that they're putting on….a night of the spooky Beatles…and it'll be a good night, alright? Now come on." Said Minegishi

"Alright….but can we go back to the drinks place too?" asked Mob

"Mob…one. You can have one more….alright?" said Minegishi with a sigh. That was them….well them and Ryou….but mostly them. They would rather Mob have bobbed for one of those fabled razorblade apples than having taken another drink….but this was what it was. One was enough. One more and then she would be done for the night….

And this time they meant it.

"Why only one?" asked Mob. Minegishi…were they like her when they'd been eleven? They hadn't been drinking, not yet anyway, well not in any significant way. They had been smoking homegrown opium back then to dull the pain of living….and Mob…well she had to dull the pain of living too….so….well she would do whatever she wanted to, she was her own autonomous human being, but Minegishi…they would do their best to teach Mob how to do the right thing….or at least the least wrong thing.

"Because I don't want to spend the night chasing after a drunken eleven year old….I have enough to deal with when it comes to Ryou….alright? Now come on." Said Minegishi as they stood up. They pulled Mob to her feet and walked off towards another haunted room. There. It was done with and now Mob was better….as much better as she could be…and now they could enjoy the rest of Halloween.

Something had been wrong with Mob and now it wasn't….and Minegishi had done the best that they could.


	438. On the Edge of the Roof

Sho would always be there for Shimazaki.

They were best friends and that was what best friends did for their other best friends. They were there for their friends no matter what. Even if they were in a Saw room or something and the only way out was to cut off your best friend's leg….well nothing that serious…and also Saw rooms weren't real…and this wasn't like a Saw room anyway. This was just him being there for Shimazaki while he…well Sho didn't know what was with him right now…but he didn't care. So what if Shimazaki told him that he needed Sho to babysit him and make sure he didn't do anything crazy? And now he was talking crazy and stuff?

Sho was his best friend and he would always be there for his best friend.

Which was why he was sitting on the roof of the building even though it was cold and windy and he sort of wanted to get down now. It was way too high and he knew that he could fly if he tried hard enough….but he had never tried from being up this high before…and even if he had then he wouldn't have wanted to try again. He wasn't afraid of anything, even heights, so he wasn't scared….

He just didn't want to end up going splat on the ground.

Not that he thought that Shimazaki would let him go splat on the ground. No, they were friends and friend did not do that to their friends. Shimazaki was his friend and he would always be there for him and Sho knew that if he fell off the side of the roof, he wasn't sure if this building had always been a skyscraper or not, Shimazaki would have caught him. Shimazaki had said, before, that if they fell then he wasn't so messed up that he would forget to teleport them to safety…and also he had said that they weren't going to jump.

He had said that a lot of times already.

"I'm not going to jump. You get it? You and I are not going to jump off of this roof." Said Shimazaki. He was sitting even more on the edge than Sho was…and really the danger was falling off, not jumping off, and Sho…well he didn't want to fall off or jump off. He wanted to go back to the party and go to the bouncy house room or see what big sis was up to…without Minegishi because they sucked…or maybe he even wanted to throw apples at Hatori or something….

Something that wasn't on this roof.

"I know, you said so already. Can we come down now? It's cold as hell up here." Said Sho. He pulled his coat around himself. He sort of wished that he had worn the dress, that dad hadn't gotten all pissed off and made him take it off, because at least that dress was warm and poofy. It got chilly at night, even in Tokyo, and he sort of really wanted to go inside….but for some reason Shimazaki wanted to stay outside. Maybe because he was hot. Well he was always hot…not that Sho looked at him like that….that often…but now he was all sweaty. His sweat had made his hair get stuck to his forehead and he kept on puling at his shirt and….

Knock it off, goldfish, nobody needs you.

"I've never wanted to, you know, not once in my life…..not even when my life was a fucking horror show…and not horroshow….that's a Toshi word…horrorshow…well it is now…I think that they're a droog again…they like that book a lot…and I like them a lot…so of course I don't want to jump. If I jumped then they're be pissed off at me and shit and, trust me, you don't want Toshi to get pissed off at you…so I don't think that I'll jump…because I don't want to." Said Shimazaki. Sho looked down over the edge of the building…they would die if they fell from this height and didn't catch themselves…and he didn't want to jump. If he jumped then he would end up dying and if he died then big sis would miss him…and also he'd be dead…and also Shimazaki would miss him….and if Shimazaki died then he'd be so pissed off at him…but Shimazaki didn't care about that, about Sho being pissed off at him for dying, he just cared if Minegishi cared about him being alive or dying or whatever….and that…

It made him want to push Shimazaki, not to kill him, but just to scare him…but he wouldn't have ever done that to his best friend.

"I know that you don't want to jump off the roof….because it would make Minegishi mad if you died…and you love them and stuff." Said Sho. Shimazaki wiped the sweat from his head and reached his hand over. Sho handed him his can of coke. Shimazaki drank the whole thing down without pausing and then threw the can over the side of the building. Sho waited for someone to scream in pain, he had been warned a million times about throwing things off of tall buildings, but nothing happened…so he stopped looking. Shimazaki might have been disappointed, though, because he kept on looking.

"I don't want to die, you know, I really don't. I want to live. I like to live. I don't want to die. I don't care if I never should have been born in the first place. I don't care if, you know if my mom hadn't loved me as much as she did, my dad would have drowned me in a bucket or thrown me into the ocean when I was born. I want to live. I like being alive. I don't trust the ocean." Said Shimazaki. He pointed out towards Tokyo Bay, they could see it from all the way up here maybe if there had been some light out, and Sho…well he looked out into it. Would his dad have thrown him into the eater if big sis had been born a boy? Sho knew that he was only here because dad needed a boy to make more people named Suzuki…and if big sis had been a boy when she'd been born then there would have been no reason for Sho to even have been there….

He was happy that mom had loved him when he'd been born.

Mom had loved him when he'd been born. She'd wanted him. She had let the doctor's cut her open like a fish to get him out of her. That was something that had happened and that dad had never forgiven him for. Sho didn't know how it was his fault, that he'd come out the wrong way and stuff, but dad still hated him for that. Dad hated him for a lot of things. He had said, before, that he didn't hate him though. No, dad had said that he just disliked him….and that was bad and….and he wanted…he didn't know. Maybe he wanted a dad who loved him. Maybe he wanted a dad who did dad things with him, like Fukuda did with him, who played games with him and hung out and wanted to be around him all the time…and maybe he had always wanted a dad like Fukuda…and maybe he had wanted Fukuda to have been his dad back when he'd been little…and maybe he still wanted Fukuda to be his dad…and maybe…maybe he should have just been grateful to have the dad that he had….

After all it could have been worse….at least dad had never tried to kill him….

"I know that you don't want to die….and I guess that I don't trust the ocean either? I mean people go missing in it all the time…and I guess that people throw babies in there….and I'm glad that your dad didn't throw you into the ocean when you were a baby." said Sho. He didn't want to trust it. Now he felt like he could see the ocean and feel it…feel the water…and the water was all around him…and dad had made…well he'd asked dad. Sho knew that he was the one who had asked to go through the Awakening thing…and he hadn't known what it would have been like…but he'd still asked for it…so if he'd died then it would have been his own fault…so it was ok, then…dad….he hadn't tried to kill him….

Sho wanted to go inside.

"I really don't want to die….I have a lot to live for and I really don't want to….and I've never thought about it before either." Said Shimazaki. He kicked his feet. He had let his feet dangle over the edge. Sho was sitting cross legged. He didn't want to dangle his feet over the side. Maybe the gravity would have taken him. Maybe he would have fallen and then…and then he would have been dead….and then…well big sis would have been sad and…and it didn't matter because Shimazaki would have caught him and Fukuda could have put him back together…and stuff.

"I never said that you did." Said Sho. For someone who wanted to live Shimazaki sure was talking a lot about how he could have died….and Sho…he had never thought about it before…not like…like it was…whenever he'd thought about dying, before, when he'd been littler than he was now he had always thought back to the day when they'd held him under the water…and then drained the water…and then put him back under…over and over again…or the time he got shot full of lightening…or the time with all the needles and then the burning and…and stuff. He thought about dying as something that happened to him. Something that happened when he was trapped and little and he couldn't get away…not like…like he could just….lean forward and….

And they really needed to put up some kind of fence or guardrail or something up here….

"I wouldn't even if I had the chance…and I have had the chance. Like…you have no idea how close to death I've come….like…like I could have sucked his dick if I wanted to….like I could have told death to stick it down my throat and he would have been all….sure thing Ryou….and I would have been all…does this make me immortal….and then death would have been all….shut up and suck my dick…and then I would have done it…because you don't say no to death, you know, especially if he wants his dick sucked. Like you can say no to anyone who comes up to you asking to suck your dick but you can't say no to death…so always suck death's dick…when you get the chance…and maybe you'll be immortal." Said Shimazaki. Sho stuck out his tongue. He must have been really drunk or really high or both to have been talking like that. Where did he even come up with this stuff? God, he was so weird sometimes….but that was ok because he was Sho's friend…and he wanted another Coke….

Maybe when they ran out they could go downstairs and get more.

"I'm not doing that to anyone, not even death. It's gross." Said Sho. He stuck out his tongue and he knew that Shimazaki could sense him doing it…and now was the part where Shimazaki did it right back…only…he didn't. He just turned to face Sho and he opened his eyes and he…well Sho knew that he wasn't being looked at but he got the feeling that he was…and it was….he liked it when Shimazaki looked at him…and Shimazaki was holding him by the shoulders now…and he had turned to face Sho and his empty can of Coke went don wove the side of the building…and that time someone did yell…and that had been really funny…

But Shimazaki was being way too serious…so Sho didn't laugh.

"Don't fuck with death…alright? Unless death wants to fuck with you….but don't fuck with death…because death is…finite. Like….game over…you know? End scene…roll the credits…it's just….I don't know where people go after they die…I mean I've sensed spirits before and I've exorcised them….but you know something? I have no idea where they go after they die….I mean are exorcised…and I don't know where you'd go….and I don't want to lose you…so if death tells you to suck his dick then you do it." Said Shimazaki. Sho still thought that Shimazaki had thought up the grossest thing ever…it really was only funny if someone else was doing it like when someone got hit in the balls….but Shimazaki was serious….but that was seriously gross….

"That's still gross…but fine…if it means a lot to you." Said Sho. Shimazaki was still staring at him…and Sho let him. Shimazaki cared about him and…and he cared if Sho died and…and he just…he knew that the only other person who would have said that to him would have been big sis…or maybe not even her because she didn't like gross stuff like that….but dad would never have said that to him…and Sho…he didn't want to die either….he looked over the wide of the building….

He wondered if Shimazaki was too messed up to catch him if he fell.

"It does…you do…you mean a lot to me and…you know what? If death wants you then I will suck his dick for your life…because I want you to live…and I want me to live…and also I kind of want to suck someone's dick right now…for the closeness of it…you know what I mean? Just to feel close to someone….I like that…feeling close to someone." Said Shimazaki. He was still holding onto Sho…and part of him wanted to tell Shimazaki that they were super close already…but that might have made him want to be less close…or more close…and he didn't want to be THAT close….because that was gross…and stuff…and he…he had only kissed one person who he actually wanted to kiss…and he wanted….Shimazaki was so close and….

And he could have said something stupid.

He could have said something stupid like 'we can be closer if you want' or 'shut up and kiss me' or something else that he had heard from those stupid movies big sis was always watching. He could have said or done something stupid….but he didn't. That would have been the worst thing that he could have done. He was sitting there at the edge of the roof and if he had said something stupid, something like that without thinking, then he could have gone right over the edge and…and he would have let himself go over the edge…

Because, really, what else could he have done in that situation?

"Um…no…I don't really get it…" said Sho. Shimazaki was still holding him by the shoulder and his eyes were still opened….and Sho sort of wanted to tell him to close his eyes…because he could have gotten crap in them or something…not because it was sort of…weird…looking into the eyes of someone who didn't have any…and he didn't…well he didn't want to make Shimazaki feel bad…so he said nothing at all…

Even though he sort of wanted to say a lot of stuff…and stuff….

"You ever just want to feel close to someone? Like…like you're a 'you' but a 'you all alone? And like…nothing is real? And there's nothing….nothing but you….and you'd think that there would have been strawberry fields forever….but there's weren't. There's just…this city…and it feels like it goes on forever…and you just want someone to be near you….like there are a bunch of auras and people but you feel alone…so you just want to sleep with someone because you want to be close to them….but also you don't want to sleep with someone because that would be like…too much? You know what I mean?" asked Shimazaki

"No….because I'm ten…and I don't do stuff like that." Said Sho. He didn't get it…well he got feeling lonely but…but not lonely like Shimazaki had just said because….like….that was just…weird. Wanting to do…stuff like that…with someone. It was just…gross. He knew what happened, what people did, and he didn't think that he was ever going to want to do that with someone. It was all gross and embarrassing and also he didn't think two guys even could…not that he would ever cheat on Emmy…but she didn't want to do that stuff either…but she would when they grew up and got married….

He didn't want to think about that…this…any of this…right now.

"Like…like ok. There's you…the you that exists inside of you…and then there's the you that exists inside of other people….and then the you that is you and the them that is them…and then it's like…you're inside of yourself and they are inside of themselves…and like…there are boundaries between people and…and you can't un-mix the cocoa powder from the milk…and when you put it together it's going to make pudding….so if you're inside of yourself and then inside of someone then…then how do you get out of them? You know what I mean?" asked Shimazaki

"….not really…" said Sho. Shimazaki had been talking really fast, there, first of all…and second of all he was making no sense. People weren't pudding. You couldn't mix people up like pudding unless you killed them and put them through a blender first…and Sho didn't want to do that…and he knew that Shimazaki was talking about gross adult bed stuff and not murder anyway…and this just…made no sense….but Sho didn't care. He would always be there for Shimazaki.

That was what friends were for after all.

"You probably couldn't get out of them…like…like you're someone new now…like there's a part of them in you and there's a part of you in them…..so it's like….you made someone entirely new and….and then they are in your tree….and it's not yours alone and…and you don't want to be alone but…but you don't want to be that close to someone either….so you stick to sucking their dick because…well that's a thing but it's also not a thing…like it's a thing but not a thing that's going to get you all mixed up with them and…and then you're still yourself…and if you stay yourself then you don't have to die…and I don't want to die…" said Shimazaki

"I know that you don't want to…so maybe we should get off the roof." Said Sho. There was no way that he was going to be able to make sense of what Shimazaki was telling him, he suspected that this was some kind of adult thing that he was not supposed to know about yet, so he would stick to the not wanting to die thing….which somehow made more sense and less sense at the same time. If Shimazaki didn't want to die then why were they on the edge of the fucking roof? And why was he just letting his feet dangle like that?

"I really don't want to, you know….I mean if I have to I will but I don't want to. I want to live….I mean…maybe I should but…but not today. I mean I've spent the past thirty one years living on borrowed time…and I'm so fucking useless and…and I am not useless…you need me. You need me and I take good care of you….right? Sho, tell me right now that I take good care of you and that you need me and that I'm not useless. Tell me now, right now, right this fucking second…I just need to hear it from you, alright? That'll be like hearing it from my kid…and then that'll be like hearing it from Toshi because they're going to maybe have my kid if they ever change their mind…so I need to hear it from you, alright? Because I don't want to die…and you have to know that I don't want to die." Said Shimazaki

"Why do you keep on saying that you don't? I know that you don't….ok?" said Sho. He ignored the parts about Minegishi. They were his theyfriend and he loved them and they had the factory that girls had inside of them for making people and babies were awesome so, of course, Shimazaki wanted to have one with the person that he loved…and stuff…and just…now it felt like Shimazaki had reached inside of him and squeezed the blood from his heart like he was wringing it out and…and he needed his heart blood! He needed his heart blood and he needed Shimazaki to just…let go of him and his heart and…

And he needed to get off the edge of this building because he had accidentally looked down…and it was a long way down….

"You get it…good. I'm glad that you get it…it's a good thing that you get it…and I know that you get it and…and you know something? I feel better. Like…like a lot better…like…like you get me and shit and…and I don't know who else would get me but you so….thanks for getting me." Said Shimazaki

"Uh….you're welcome? Can we get off the roof now? If you don't want to die then maybe we should get off the edge of this roof." Said Sho

"But I like it here at the edge…like….like being at the edge…this is where all the power is, you know? This is the place where all the power is and here…well here everything is going to be ok…you know? Like…up here…up here I'm Shimazaki Ryou and you know…I'm the only Shimazaki Ryou up here….nobody is in my tree…it's mine alone…but you can be here too…and we can be here and…like…you know? I mean of course you know…you get it." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah….I get it…" said Sho. He didn't get it. None of this made sense. This made about as much sense as…as bread that didn't come sliced…or poptarts without frosting….or places that had birds but didn't let you feed them…and stuff. He just…he had no idea what was even being talked about but he was a good friend…and he hated lying but…well he didn't even think that Shimazaki knew what he was talking about…and stuff.

"So…so maybe you're right? I mean of course you're right….we don't live at the edge…because it's a balancing act and when you're so focused on balancing the you're not truly living…and I want to live. I spent so much of my life not living….like…in this…this space….my world was four walls and a record player and a bucket and…and I don't want to live in four walls…I want to be outside but…but also inside and…and one thing I can tell you is you've got to be free. You get it?" asked Shimazaki

"Ok…I get it." Said Sho. Shimazaki nodded and let him go. Sho…he felt cold where Shimazaki's hands were…but that was probably because he was sweating buckets…he smelled sort of…good and not good and…and now he was sitting away and his feet were dangling and Sho…he wanted him to be close…or maybe the goldfish in his stomach wanted that…or maybe they both did since the goldfish was a part of him…the part of himself that he didn't like.

"So yeah…we have to come together and…and I want to be in a tree but…but one that I know? Like…like I can't go to a tree that I don't know and…and trees are alive and people are alive but buildings aren't alive…and they aren't even buildings because they've been built already…you're a building…you're being built…you used to be little and now you're less little…and one and one and one is three…and I love that song…and I love trees…and I need a tree…and Toshi is a tree…so let's go and see Toshi…right now." Said Shimazaki. He took Sho by the hand…and he wanted…he wanted to throw himself off the side of the building but not to die…just to get away…because Shimazaki was HOLDING his HAND and…and they had also been talking about Minegishi and…and he wanted…he wanted Shimazaki to…to talk about him like that…and he didn't want Shimazaki to…to see them or…or to leave him…but he also sort of did and…

And this whole thing was just…all of the feeling at once.

"Um….I don't really want to see them right now…but we can…stay here…if you want." Said Sho. Was this cheating? Was he cheating on Emmy right now? He wasn't in love with her but…but Shimazaki wasn't in love with him…and handholding wasn't like kissing. Kissing was kissing and handholding…well sometimes Fukuda held his hand to lead him places and….and that didn't count…well he wasn't in love with Fukuda, the grossest thought that he'd ever had, and Shimazaki wasn't in love with him….

He was in love with Minegishi….that bitch bastard….

"Right…right…right…you don't like Toshi…but you should. You really should. Toshi is actually a really good person when you get to know them…and…and you're right…we can't be here on the edge so…here…here." Said Shimazaki. He grabbed tight Sho and the world around them fell away. Shimazaki had taken him and for a moment Sho thought that they had gone tumbling down off the side of the building…but they hadn't….they had just gone tumbling….

Down into the bouncy house room.

"HI, Shimazaki and Sho." Said big sis as she stopped jumping. Sho got up to his feet. They were in a bouncy house and it was all dark and glow in the dark and…and he was…he was happy and not happy to see big sis…she had been bouncing and he wanted to bounce to but where there was big sis there was Minegishi and-

And big sis was alone…and that was great.

"Hey big sis. We're just here to-" said Sho. Good. He was with big sis and she was alone and….and she didn't like Shimazaki and…and he knew that he should have bene thinking like that but he was and…and better her than Minegishi…God, he hated Minegishi…well not hated, he didn't want them dead or anything, he just wanted them to find a new boyfriend and leave Shimazaki alone and….and maybe fall down the stairs and twist their ankle or skin their knee or something like that.

"Hey Mob. Watch your brother for me…but don't let him go because he's my sitter…I have to find Toshi…I think that they're with someone….just…I don't know why I feel like this….fuck me…." Said Shimazaki before he teleported away.

"I don't need you to watch me." Said Sho as big sis tried to take his hand. She was his sister and she took care of him…but she didn't watch him. He was ten, nearly eleven, and he watched himself….and stuff. Big sis had watched him when she had been his age…and he wasn't a kid and…and Shimazaki didn't have to treat him like a kid and…and he didn't have to just…go and leave him for that boring bitch bastard Minegishi.

"Ok, I won't watch you…but can you bounce with me? Minegishi said that they would meet me here when they were done talking to their new friend and-" said big sis. Sho didn't wait for her to tell him anymore. She was talking about her best friend and…and Sho was so tired of hearing about Minegishi and…and he just….he had to get out of there even though bouncy houses were awesome! He just…he just…he needed to find Shimazaki and…and Shimazaki was his friend! And he could have found Minegishi and touched their boobs and did all of that other stuff with them literally any other time! This was a party and…and they should have been having fun together like friends instead of just…just being apart and….

And Shimazaki shouldn't have left him! That wasn't what best friends did!

"I have to find Shimazaki!" said Sho. He bounced his way out of the bouncy house and towards Shimazaki's aura….and his aura was bouncing all over the place…but he had to find him! He heard big sis calling after him…and he would make it up to her later…but right now….right now his best friend…was gone! His best friend needed him and he needed his best friend and his best friend was not going to but his theyfriend ahead of him because…because that wasn't what best friends did!

Friendship meant something!

Big sis would understand. She was always with her best friend and they always did best friend things together and they were always hanging out and stuff. She would understand that sometimes your best friend had to come first. Your best friend was like…like the other half of you…sometimes. Like how she and Minegishi both had the same halves of that bracelet. When it came together it said 'best friends' and…and Sho wished that he and Shimazaki had something like that….but also it wouldn't have made sense since Shimazaki couldn't read…if they made those in braille then it would have been good and…

And he just wanted to be back with Shimazaki!

Sho chased his aura until it stopped bouncing around…and it was down a floor…by where the living spaces were. He followed Shimazaki's aura down the stairs, the elevators were full of people jumping up and down to try and make it fall…Sho didn't have time for that right now….right now his best friend needed him…or something….or maybe he needed his best friend…or maybe Shimazaki had gotten lost since he was super messed up right now….

Whatever he needed Sho would be there for him!

Sho found him down in the breakroom throwing handfuls of popcorn around the room. The Awakened were there, some of them, and they were trying to catch it in their mouths…and Sho could have wanted to have been invited to the game. That was the good popcorn, the purple and orange and black popcorn, and Shimazaki…well he had no idea that it was way too special to waste on Awakened…and that really he should have been playing that game with Sho….

But it was ok…Sho was here now.

"Hey Shimazaki! Over here!" said Sho. He opened his mouth wide and instead of getting a handful of popcorn in his face he got Shimazaki teleporting over to him and picking him up. Before Sho knew it he was sitting with Shimazaki in the cafeteria freezer. He had no idea why Shimazaki had brought him here, maybe because he was all hot and sweaty, but he at least had brought the popcorn with him…and also he was holding Sho like he was a stuffed animal….or something….

He chose to focus on the popcorn covering the floor.

"I don't know why I care…..I really don't know why I care…or why I feel this way….or why I feel like…like anything. I want to feel I want to feel….I don't even fucking know! You, I guess…you're warm and….and I get you and you get me…and right now one of us needs to get me because I don't even get me." Said Shimazaki as he held Sho close. He held him close and rocked back and forth with him…and Sho…the floor as blue and white tiles and the popcorn on the floor was purple and orange and black and…and those colors didn't match together…but he stared at them anyway…because this was….Shimazaki sounded like he was really scared of something and….and Sho was being a terrible friend right about them. Shimazaki was there rocking back and forth like Sho did when he was sad and all Sho could do was tell the goldfish in his stomach to stop freaking out because Shimazaki didn't like him like that…and also there was no way that his hands were going to go under his jacket let alone under his shirt to trace his scars….and stuff like that.

That was crazy.

"You know? Like….Toshi is Toshi and Toshi….they aren't one of those plants you get at the store…you know what I mean? They aren't one of those plants that comes in a pot and you just have to water it with water and stuff…they're…their own person and I don't own them and…and yeah, I love them and…and I know that they love me and…and maybe love does mean wanting to own someone…but I don't want it to mean that…but love is…it sucks…." Said Shimazaki. Sho looking up him the popcorn on the floor. Shimazaki was still rocking him back and forth like he was baby sis or something…but at least now what he was saying was making sense. What he was doing made zero sense at all, Sho was not a baby and if anyone needed comfort it was Shimazaki, but what he was saying…about love and stuff not about Minegishi because fuck Minegishi…it all made sense…

Love sucked.

It really did. Love made you want to do stuff that you never thought you could have ever wanted to do. Love made him want to…well do stuff with another guy that he knew that he wasn't supposed to want…and not only with another guy but with Shimazaki. Shimazaki was the coolest guy ever…and he smelled so good right now even though he was all sweaty and gross…and he was always so fun even though he was acting weirder than usual now…and he was just….Shimazaki was Shimazaki and even if Sho had been allowed to like other guys Shimazaki never would have liked him like that anyway but that didn't stop Sho's heart from trying to beat out of his chest and the goldfish in his stomach to try and swing out his bellybutton and…and his hands from wanting to reach up from his back and to his hair…or under his jacket and….

And love was the WORST thing that could ever happen to a person. The absolute worst.

"I mean….I don't care what they do. They can hook up with whoever they want to hook up with….I don't own them….and they don't own me….so if I wanted to find some dumb fuck from the Seventh Division then I could and it wouldn't be a problem for either of us….but it's like….you get it, right? Like when you love someone so much that the thought of them being away from you hurts? Like really hurts? Like someone is kicking you in the chest with one foot and in the balls with the other?" asked Shimazaki. Sho…he had that feeling right now. Shimazaki was right about that feeling, that kicked in the balls and the stomach feeling, but not because of whatever gross adult bed thing that he was talking about. No…he had actually stopped listening after Shimazaki had said Seventh Division….

That was baby sis's Division.

That was her Division and….Sho closed his eyes he closed his eyes and spread his aura out. He spread out and he…well first he had to look past Shimazaki…and that was sort of hard since Shimazaki was being all….clingy…and maybe he was being clingy right back and…and he needed to look past him and…and maybe she was there. Maybe she had come there with her mom and…and that would have been…good and bad and…and he didn't know. Big sis was there and baby sis…she had forgotten about big sis and…and the whole thing was supposed to be a secret but…but it had been a secret for so long and Sho….maybe he was ready for the secret to come out. Fukuda had told him to keep it all a secret but…well maybe it was ok for big sis to know if the secret came out on it's own…

Baby sis wasn't there.

Baby sis and her mom weren't there. They were back at the Seventh Division, probably, because she was just a baby and this was way past her bedtime…and also her mom knew not to bring her, probably, because it was a big secret…and maybe it was for the best that this thing stay a secret…and Sho…he was wrong to want to let the secret out….

Even though he was really getting tired of keeping secrets.

"Woah….you were everywhere and your aura was all…hissy sort of…like when we microwaved all of those eggs…remember that? You were all like….hiss….and then your aura was all over and…that was…woah…like…woah…you know?" asked Shimazaki. He let Sho go and now he was doing a lot gestures and….and Sho…well he felt all….woah….but not in a good way. Woah in a….what the hell is the matter with him way? Big sis could not know about baby sis….and he…he had to keep the secret no matter what….because that was what it meant to keep a secret….and stuff…

"Yeah…I was….just…nothing." said Sho. He had been looking for his baby sis…and he couldn't just go and tell Shimazaki that. He loved Shimazaki and he loved baby sis, in a different way, and he also loved big sis and he just….he wanted to let the secret out but….but he couldn't. Letting the desert out would have been the worst thing…because then dad would have known…and nothing good would ever come from dad knowing about baby sis…and he would know. He knew everything that went on around there.

Dad could never know about baby sis…for her own sake.

"Were you looking for Toshi too? Don't look for Toshi since you don't like them…and don't be pissed at them. I love them, you know I do, and I love you too just in a different way…and jealousy….kid, don't be jealous. It's…the worst feeling in the world…being jealous. So don't be. Be….you got to be….not jealous….like I need to stop being jealous….and Toshi…Toshi can fuck who they want and they can fuck who they like and….shit. That's what I'm afraid of….Toshi liking someone else…loving them….and…and did I ever tell you about….well I didn't but….Toshi just….if Toshi wants to fuck some fucker from the fucking Seventh fucking Division then they can fuck some fucker from the fucking Seventh Division….fuck…" said Shimazaki. Sho…he didn't really know people from the Seventh Division…but he knew that they knew him….everyone knew him….he was Suzuki Sho. He was dad's only Son….and if people knew him then they knew that he knew baby sis…and then dad would know that he knew baby sis…and then…well everything would suck.

"There are people from the Seventh Division here? What kind of people?" asked Sho. If it was just the Awakened then….well who listened to the Awakened? If it was one of the Scars…then dad would listen and then…and then everything would be over and…and then baby sis would be in danger and…and baby sis…she deserved so much better than that….

"Yeah…that spirit guy…and the samurai…and that guy who thought he could fuck me up…well fuck him…but not Toshi…but yes Toshi…because I love Toshi and Toshi…is Toshi….." said Shimazaki. Sho covered his ears and shook his head. He could feel Minegishi there and…and they were there and Minegishi was always going to be on Shimazaki's mind and…and he wouldn't shut up about Minegishi and….and he didn't want to be there while Minegishi was there and….and he didn't want to be there if there were guys from the Seventh Division and…..

And he needed to get out of there.

"I…do you want to get out of here? I mean if you're upset then maybe we should go somewhere else…and stuff…" said Sho. He wanted to leave and…and Shimazaki….he was holding him again and Sho….he wanted to stay for the party but not if the party was going to have people in it and…and he liked some of the people there but…but not all of them and Shimazaki….well he was….he was being all like this and….and he and big sis had gone on an adventure and…and Sho wanted an adventure too or….or really anything….other than being there….

He knew that it was wrong to just leave the party without saying anything…but Shimazaki needed him and he didn't want to be there….and best friends were there for each other like that.


	439. Messing Up and Fixing Things

Sometimes Mob made mistakes.

Sometimes she made small mistakes, like when she forgot to put the clothes in the dryer and they got that gross mildew smell, and sometimes she made medium mistakes like when she let Sho have two poptarts after his bath even though the sugar gave him too much energy before bedtime, and sometimes she made big mistakes like the time she got into a fight with dad and threatened to leave him…like had happened a few hours ago….but that wasn't the mistake that she was worried about now.

Though she had made a mistake.

"How….all of them….how did you…all of them?" asked the Scar. She didn't know his name, and she hadn't seen him before she would have remembered that scar on his eye…how he could still see she didn't know…but it didn't matter if she knew him or not. She had messed up and now she was sorry and now…now she had to figure out what she was going to do about this.

"I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. I didn't that they were your spirits." Said Mob. She would have kowtowed if there had been room. She was in another one of the haunted rooms. This one had been full of spirits and Awakened…and a Scar…and now it just had the Awakened and a Scar there. She couldn't tell if this Scar was mad at her or not, he was just staring at her, but she sort of thought that he was.

After all she had exorcised all of his sprits.

She hadn't seen him, though, she had only seen the spirits…and she had never seen so many spirits in one place like that…so she had exorcised them. It had been a reflex, that was all, just something that her powers had done without her realizing it. She had been surrounded by evil spirits, and they had been evil, so she had gotten rid of them….and that had been the point of the room. But she hadn't known that. This room was supposed to be the spirit room…and it was full of Awakened wearing bedsheets like ghosts…and she hadn't thought that there would have been real spirits in the room….

And she was so sorry for what she had done….so very sorry.

"I don't think that spirits can truly belong to anyone." Said Minegishi. They grabbed her by the arm. She had been about to kowtow even though there wasn't any room for it, not really, and also this was a brand new dress….none of those things mattered when she was sorry about something. Minegishi was stopping her from saying sorry…and she didn't know why…and she was too sorry to think about why Minegishi didn't want her to be sorry.

"…you exorcised them all…" said the Scar. He looked around even though he had been there when she had exorcised them all. One had popped out and then the others and then it had just been instant…and she was so sorry. She had no idea that people could collect spirits like Pokémon…well she had read everyone's files but…well she had never thought that she would ever end up meeting this particular Scar. He was from the Seventh Division and dad never took them there because he hated Seasoning City. She hadn't thought that anyone from that Division would come, too, since dad was still mad about

"I…um….I can catch more! Like um…well I don't know how to catch spirits but…well I can try…and Minegishi can help me. Right?" asked Mob. She turned towards Minegishi. They just shrugged.

"That's all you, Mob, I don't mess with spirits." said Minegishi. Mob…well she knew that not everyone could exorcise them…and she knew that not everyone had the powers that she had….and she knew that not everyone was as powerful as her….but they could have still tried to help her…and stuff….because she had messed up…but maybe she had to do it herself.

She was the one who had messed up after all.

She was the one who had exorcised the spirits just like she was the one who had fought with dad and…and she needed to stop thinking about that. Minegishi was right, she hadn't done anything wrong, and she had been defending Sho….so it was ok. What she had done before was ok…but what she had done just now wasn't and…

And she had to fix this.

"I…you didn't even….try….you just…Oreo-chan….Skittle-chan….Raisin-chan…Swedish Fish-chan…." said the Scar. Mob…well she didn't know what he was so upset about…her not trying, she meant. She knew that those spirits must have been like his pets and she knew that's he had gotten rid of them…and she didn't know what he was on about, her not trying, and she just…well she would figure out how to fix this and then she would figure out, later, what he was on about.

"Are these spirits or a shopping list?" asked Minegishi. They looked over at the Scar and smiled at him…and Mob had no idea what everyone was smiling about. She had no idea what, if anything, about this was worth smiling about. She had killed….well not killed…but she had destroyed a bunch of spirits. They had been evil spirits, sure, but they had belonged to someone…and that someone's aura was all…pointy but close…like a shield of spikes…and she deserved to get poked by that shield of spikes since she was the one who had messed up.

She had messed up really bad.

"It was an accident, really. I really am sorry! Please let me make it up to you…um….do you want to be friends? We can be friends and then you can teach me how to catch spirits and then I can catch a bunch for you and…and stuff." Said Mob. There. Friendship was the best thing ever and she could always use more friends and everyone else could always use more friends and she could…well she could see why he wouldn't have wanted to become friends with her…because she did exorcise all of his spirits, but she also just…didn't know why someone wouldn't have wanted to be her friend.

She considered herself to be a very good friend.

She always made sure that her friends were happy and she always spent time with them and she tried her best to make them get along, Shimazaki tried his best right back to be sort of mean to them so it cancelled out, but she still tried. She still tried and trying made her a good friend…right? Well….not that she knew, exactly, whether or not this guy wanted to be her friend or not. He might not have….and the thought of someone not wanting to be her friend…well that was a hard one….

Minegishi flicked her over the head.

"Calm down, Mob, they were just mindless spirits. This guy can always go and catch more, can't you…" said Minegishi

"Matsuo…Matsuo Shinzuka." Said Matsuo. Mob made sure that she remembered his name…or hers since that was a girl's name…or theirs? Minegishi had a boy's name, Toshiki was usually a boy's name, but they had been born a girl and they were a 'they' now and…well she would ask later. Once she made sure that Matsuo knew that she was very sad for what she had done. Unless it wasn't ok to ask, though, in that case she would keep all of her questions to herself.

"Minegishi Toshiki…and this is Suzuki Shigeko, the daughter of our exalted leader." Said Minegishi. They patted her on the back. Mob nodded. She had forgotten how to introduce herself…and that was the worst. She should have remembered how to be polite. She should have remembered a lot of things…like not to go and exorcise other people's spirits.

"I like to be called Mob…and it's nice to meet you." Said Mob. She bowed, not kotowed, but the polite sort of bowing that you were supposed to be when you met someone new. She had no idea how she could have forgotten how to be polite like that…well she had been really freaked out before…and she was still sort of freaked out…but she felt better now that they had met and…

Well maybe she had drank a little too much.

"Mob? Why Mob? That's not even a name…uh….IN CHINA! But here it's good!" said Matsuo quickly. He looked at her when he said that…and his aura was all scared….like he was scared of her…or maybe he was just scared because it was Halloween or something…she didn't know. Sometimes people were scared of her…she didn't know why they were scared of her…just that they were.

"Are you always this smooth or was that a fluke?" asked Minegishi in a tone that Mob couldn't understand. She had no idea why they were talking like that….and she would ask later. Right now they had to focus, well she had to focus, on apologizing.

"Only when I know that my life might is in danger." Said Matsuo. He had a tone there, too, and Mob…she had no idea why he was looking at Minegishi like that…or why they were looking at him like that too…and she got the feeling that maybe she was in the middle of something that she shouldn't have been…even though she had no idea what that could have been.

"Oh yes. The little girl is so terrifying in her little Elsa costume, isn't she? Her little braids really add to the terror factor, don't they?" asked Minegishi. They lifted one of Mob's braids to try and be funny, maybe. Mob didn't know. She reached back and took her braid from their hand. There were some laughs there…but she knew that they weren't directed at her. She wasn't the one they were laughing at, Minegishi said that they would never laugh at her, but she couldn't see anything else that they would be laughing at. Adults were weird sometimes.

"She doesn't have to be a droog to be terrifying." Said Matsuo. He reached over and touched the cuff of Minegishi's shirt. They were in a white boy's button down shirt like dad wore. They had on a hat and also some eye liner on the bottom of one eye too. She had no idea what their costume was but she knew that it was impolite to just reach out and touch people like that….but Minegishi didn't seem to care. They just smiled and touched the end of his shirt in the same way that he had touched their shirt…and it was just….

Kind of weird.

"What? You're afraid of a little but of the old ultraviolence?" asked Minegishi. They took half a step closer….and Mob really had to do something. She didn't know what ultraviolence was exactly but she knew enough English to know that it must have been worse than real violence…and she didn't want her friend to be doing any kind of violence to anyone.

"Minegishi, violence is-" said Mob. She tugged on Minegishi's shirt…but that was ok since they were best friends. Minegishi didn't seem to notice, though, unless they were ignoring her…but they would never have done anything as mean as ignore her. They were her friend and friends did not ignore each other. That was not how friendship worked.

"I have nothing against ultraviolence, but I do know when I don't stand a chance and I don't stand a chance against her…or either of you." Said Matsuo

"You never know until you try." Said Minegishi. There were tones there that she didn't understand and words that she thought might have taken on another meaning than the ones she knew…and she didn't know what she was supposed to make of all of this. It sounded like they were talking about fighting but also…not…and she just…well she couldn't let them fight. That was a risk that she didn't want to take. This was a party, not a fight, and there would be no fighting at her party. It was one of her rules and rules were important.

And also fighting was wrong.

"Um…maybe we shouldn't-" said Mob

"I know better than to try against you. You know they still talk about you in the Seventh Division? I can't believe you beat Ishiguro….and I can't believe that she won't shut up about it. You beat her, what, ten years ago?" asked Matsuo

"Try seven, and it wasn't hard. Actually it was boring…but I feel like you might be a little more fun to spar with." Said Minegishi

"Well if you-" said Matsuo

"So, yeah, I'm Mob. Well I'm Shigeko but you can call me Mob or Shigeko or Suzuki or Suzuki Shigeko or Shige even-" said Mob

"Yeah, she likes to be called Mob." Said Minegishi. There was a laugh there and a tone and…and why did adults have to be so weird all the time? She hoped that when she grew up and became an adult she would stay just the same as she was right now…well taller…and looking more like….well like mom and stuff…but not confusing like all of the adults around her seemed to be.

"Mob…right." said Matsuo

"And she's very sorry that she double killed all of your pets, aren't you Mob?" asked Minegishi

"Yes! I am!" said Mob. She nodded and went to kowtow but Minegishi caught her under the arm. Right. She had to stop that because people were looking and…wall she had messed up…but Minegishi didn't like kowtowing anyway. They thought that it was boring and stuff. Mob didn't think that it was boring. She just wanted to make this better.

She hated it when she messed up.

"I…got that already." Said Matsuo

"So tell her that you forgive her so she can come off this already. If you don't then she'll be apologizing all night, trust me on this." said Minegishi

"Really? But she's President Suzuki's daughter, isn't she?" asked Matsuo. Mob frowned. People asked that all the time, if she was dad's daughter, which of course she was. She was dad's kid. She had come from him and mom…even though she didn't look like him. Even though she had black hair and brown eyes. Even though she didn't look a thing like him or even their mom. It was because she was half Japanese. She was half Japanese from two half Japanese people. Mom and dad had passed their genes down to her. They had given her all of the Japanese and Sho all of the half…and that was a very complicated thing to explain….

And she was getting tired of explaining that to people.

"We're still waiting on the results of the paternity test." Said Minegishi. There was a smile there from them…which was a weird sort of smile to see from them now that she thought about it. She had seen them smile before, they knew how to smile even if they didn't do it that often, but she hadn't seen them smile like that towards anyone before. That smile wasn't for her, it was for Matsuo it seemed, and later on when she was done apologizing she'd have to ask Minegishi what all of that was about.

Well she'd have to ask them a lot of things.

"What's a paternity test?" asked Mob. She asked that now because, well, that seemed like it would be much simpler to explain. Minegishi knew a lot of words because they read a lot of books and sometimes they forgot that Mob hadn't read as many books as she had and therefore she didn't know as many word s as they did. She had no idea what a paternity test was, well she knew what a test was, and she was glad to be rid of them. She hadn't had a single test since the first grade and she would gladly go the rest of her life, too, without taking a single test.

"Nothing you need to know about. Now say one more 'I'm sorry' so we can move on already." Said Minegishi. That was…well Mob really didn't think that one more would cut it.

"Ok…um….I'm sorry. I can help you catch new ones…or maybe I can figure out a way to the other side so I can see were all the spirits went to and bring them back…if you want." Said Mob

"Mob, we are not spending all of Halloween night trying to find a way to the other side." Said Minegishi

"But Halloween is the day when the barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead is at it's thinnest, remember you told me that, and that's why we celebrate spooky stuff on this day….so this would be the perfect day to go to a graveyard and find a spirit and then ask how to get to the other side and then astral project and-" said Mob

"Mob, do you even know how to astral project?" asked Minegishi

"No…but dad probably does. He can do anything. He's probably done being mad at me and I can go home and ask him how astral projection works and then he can teach me and I can teach you and then we can g to the other side and bring the spirits back…and also not die, too, that part is important." Said Mob

"You'd seriously do all of that?" asked Matsuo. Mob nodded. What, did he think that she was a liar? Did she come off like that? Did people think that she was just full of lie? Did they think that she was just sitting there telling lie after lie after lie? She….had no idea what she would do if people thought that she was a liar. She tried to be nice…and she was….most of the time…and sometimes it was ok to be a little mean sometimes….but she never lied. Even if she could be mean to the people she loved the most, her own dad even, she wasn't mean enough to be a liar.

She didn't think that she could have ever been that mean to anyone in her entire life.

"Yeah, I messed up so I have to fix it. That's what you do when you mess something up, you fix it. Otherwise that's called being a jerk and I'm not a jerk." Said Mob

"Is she for real?" asked Matsuo. He was looking over her head and talking to Minegishi now. Mob didn't much like it when people talked about her like she wasn't in the room but she said nothing. She wasn't a jerk after all.

"Yup. She's as real as they come." Said Minegishi

"I'm not lying, I don't tell lies, I really will do all of that to fix what I messed up." Said Mob. Now she had to get to the most important part. She had to get to the part where she figured out what she was going to do to fix this. She had messed up and when you messed up you had to fix what you had done. Dad had told her so a million times before…well he had told Sho….but she had been there when he told….well yelled…that at Sho.

"Miss-Vice President Suzuki….I can't believe that I'm talking to the Vice President….you don't have to do that. Really. I'll be fine. I have others, see? I'm really more amazed that you managed to get rid of all of them without even lifting a finger…..just like your dad…" said Matsuo. There was a tone, there, and also something to his aura…like he was scared…and she didn't know why. She didn't know what everyone was so scared of dad for. Sure he could be mean…and he could hit people…and also sometimes when he looked at you with his eyes all small and…stuff…it was scary but…

But she wasn't like dad.

She wasn't dad. She had come from him but she wasn't him. That was why she didn't look like him. She had come from him but she wasn't just some kind of…doll….of him…or clone of him. She was Mob. She was herself and she didn't….she didn't do scary things like dad did. She didn't so scary things or look like him and….

And she didn't know why, now, he was saying that she was like him when just a second ago that he had no idea how she could have been dad's daughter.

"My dad? I'm not like him. Why do you think that I'm like him?" asked Mob

"When I fought him-"said Matsuo

"Mob, why don't you go down to the bouncy house room and I'll meet you there, alright?" said Minegishi. They spoke quickly, and they interrupted, and it was kind of rude of them…and also Mob couldn't leave. How could she leave when she hadn't found out how to fix her mistake yet?

"But-" said Mob

"Go find us a good spot." Said Minegishi

"But I-" said Mob. Minegishi didn't seem to get it. Maybe because they were just…different. They were a different person than she was. Everyone was different from each other. Minegishi could only look at things through their own eyes and from their own point of view. She knew that they didn't care if they messed up and did stuff that hurt other people, sometimes Mob thought that they were only nice to her and Shimazaki sometimes, and she knew that she was not them and they were not her. So it wouldn't matter to them if they were rude.

But it mattered to her.

She hated being rude. She hated being mean. She hated messing up. She had been doing nothing but mess up tonight, it felt like. First with dad and then now. She just…she didn't know why she felt like this. Well because she had messed up….but still. It felt like there was a cloud following her or something. Like a shady cloud that was following her and shading her with shade…shade that she hadn't wanted or asked for and….

And she just wanted to fix one thing that she had messed up. Just one thing.

"Before Ryou throws up in it." Said Minegishi. There was something in their aura and their tone…and she had no idea why it was there…but she knew that they were serious. They wanted her to go and save them a spot right now…maybe because they were actually worried about Shimazaki throwing up. That was something to worry about since he'd drank mushroom tea….and that just sounded gross…and also he'd been eating a lot of food too….so maybe Mob was just hearing things and seeing things that weren't there because she was clueless and stuff.

"I…ok." Said Mob. She may have been clueless about a lot of things but she knew when she had to go. She knew to do as she was told. Even though she didn't like being told what to do…not really. She knew that she was a kid and she had to listen but she was also the boss and…and kids couldn't be bosses but she was….but friendship wasn't about one person being the boss of the other…and stuff. She didn't know. It was complicated.

But she didn't want to mess up.

She had messed up enough as it was already. She had…she knew that she had done what she had to do back with dad…and she knew that Minegishi was usually right about everything….and she also knew that she didn't like being a mean person. She loved her dad and she loved her brother…and she loved her brother more…and if it came down to it then she would leave her dad to keep her brother safe….

But where would she even go?

She had no idea where she and Sho would ever run way to. She knew how to get a plane and fly away…but she wouldn't have been able to. She wouldn't have been a part of Claw….if she left dad then she wouldn't have been a part of Claw anymore. She didn't know what she would do with herself if she wasn't a part of Claw. Claw was her life and…and also she wanted to be a part of it. This was a good place. Not just because they were having a super fun party but also because they were doing super good work.

They were bringing people together.

Not just at this party. They weren't just bringing people together to chase each other down the hall with silly string. Not just to have parties and play games and make people happy. They were bringing people together so that they never had to feel alone. She knew what it was to feel alone…sort of. She'd always had Sho…well for as long as she could remember she'd had Sho but in the beginning he hadn't been much of an esper. He hadn't been able to do more than show his aura for most of his life…back when she'd been little….and back then there had been this feeling of…being alone. Dad had been gone a lot and there had been this feeling of being alone while also being surrounded by people….

It hadn't been a good feeling.

At least she'd had dad and Sho…and mom even though she hadn't been an esper. Mob had at least had people in her family that had been born espers. She knew how rare it was for espers to come from espers. She knew how rare it was to even have an esper kid. Dad had told her so many times…and that was why it was important that she had lot of kids when she grew up, he had said, and she wanted to. She knew that when she had kids Claw would have taken over the world and then her kids would never have to feel alone. No esper would ever have to feel alone.

That was what Claw was for, keeping espers together.

Claw was for bringing espers together and she….she knew that even now she was surrounded by espers but…but why did she feel like this? She felt…not truly lonely but…like this room was empty. She knew that it wasn't. She could hear the bouncy house room long before she stepped into it. She could see that there were other shoes in the pile, if she had been all alone then there wouldn't have been any shoes, and she could see the bouncy house moving up and down and back and forth….so she knew that there were people in there…

Then why did she feel lonely?

She had no reason to feel lonely. She was Mob. Everyone loved her, at least they had in the last opinion poll that she had taken, and she knew that if she asked the Awakened then they all would have been super happy to play with her. She knew that she was lucky to have had so many people in her life….and she knew that she wasn't alone…and she knew that she had no reason to feel alone….

So she jumped.

She climbed into the bouncy house and jumped up and down. She jumped up and down in one spot. This was a big bouncy house…well there were a lot of them…and she had plenty of space. She had made sure that there was plenty of space for everyone. She had planned this party for all of them and she had tried her best…and there was space and…and there was plenty of space to jump…so maybe that was why she felt so alone….

Even though she had no reason to feel alone.

She had no reason to feel the way that she did. She had fought with her dad and…and she had threatened to leave and take Sho…but there was nowhere for her to go. She wouldn't have left. She was Suzuki Shigeko and her place was with Claw…and she couldn't just run away. She was Suzuki Shigeko, not Suzuki Masami, and she could not just run away from home…and not just because running away from home was wrong. She had nowhere to go and…and she hadn't even been thinking when she had said that and….

And she just….

Jumped.

She jumped up and down. She focused on the sound her feet made when they hit the ground. She focused on the way that the floor caved in around her feet. She focused on watching her white socks disappear into the orange ground. This one was a pumpkin. There was a cat and a bat and a ghost too. Also one that was mostly an obstacle course. This whole floor was mostly bouncy houses. They went out into the mezzanine.

She was glad that people liked them.

That was why she had gotten them, so that other people could be happy, and that was what she wanted more than anything else in the world. What was better than the people around her being happy? If she could make the people around her happy then she could be happy herself. She could be happy and…well that didn't matter. She had to stop thinking about herself. She had to think about other people. They were the ones who mattered. The people in her life, her friends, and her family…they were the ones who mattered most in the world…not her…

So she jumped.

She was happy knowing that there were people around her who were happy….and she was even happier knowing that Sho was near. She felt him before she saw him…and if he was there then he was happy….and she wanted her little brother to be happy. She wanted nothing more than her little brother's happiness. She loved her little brother and…and he was with her…and when he was with her then….then she knew that she would always be happy…that she would always be ok.

Because she had to be ok for him.

She was his big sister and she…she was the one who took care of him. Not the other way around. She was the one who took care of him and…and he felt…she couldn't tell how he felt. She could feel his aura getting closer and then…and then it was gone…and now it was back. Now it was back and he was here with Shimazaki….she had been following the path that they had taken when they had teleported…

Oh. She hadn't known that she could do that.

"Hi Shimazaki and Sho." said Mob as she stopped bouncing. Sho had been on the ground. She tried to help her brother to his feet but he didn't seem to want that. Shimazaki was jumping in place…and Mob knew that if it came to it she could get him out of the bouncy house if he had to throw up…even though she really hoped that he didn't have to throw up any time soon….because that was gross…but then again she was his friend and this was what friends were for.

Helping you up and cleaning up your throw up, too.

"Hey Mob. Watch your brother for me…but don't let him go because he's my sitter…I have to find Toshi…I think that they're with someone….just…I don't know why I feel like this….fuck me…." Said Shimazaki before he teleported away. Mob didn't even have time to say bye before he left…and his aura had been…well it felt sort of like he had been sick. He had been sick and…and not sick-sick but like…party sick…or something. She didn't know.

She was just glad that Sho didn't feel like that.

He knew how to have fun without all of that fun. He knew how to have fun with jump a paper towel roll and a piece of string, she'd seen it, and that was a good thing. She knew that she did stuff that kids weren't supposed to do….because she wasn't a kid. She was somewhere between a kid and an adult. Sho was just a kid, still, and she wanted him to be a kid for as long as she could be. She wanted….she wanted to be a kid too…and she was a kid but…well she didn't know that she could have lived like that again…with everyone bossing her around all the time….but Sho….

Well she wanted him to be a kid for as long as he could.

"I don't need you to watch me." Said Sho. He meant it. She knew that he meant it. She knew that it was the truth. Net month he would be eleven. They would be the very same age. They would be…well they were half a year apart….but he would be eleven and she would be eleven and she knew that he didn't need to be watched…because she didn't need to be watched but….

But she wanted to at least be with him….even though he didn't need her to watch him.

"Ok, I won't watch you…but can you bounce with me? Minegishi said that they would meet me here when they were done talking to their new friend and-" said Mob. She wanted to be with Sho. She wanted to share in this bouncy house with him. She wanted to share in everything with him. She wanted to share in life and happiness and…and loneliness. She wanted to share in loneliness with him because…because there were so many people there but….for some reason she still felt like she was alone and….

And she knew that when she was with her little brother she could never be alone.

"I have to find Shimazaki!" said Sho. He said that, he bounced away, and then….well that was that. Her little brother…had gone to his best friend…but that was how things were now. They had best friends and…and they spent time with their best friends. They spent time with their best friends and this not so best friends but still very good friends….and maybe that was getting older. Maybe that was growing up. Maybe growing up meant….this.

Being lonely in a room full of other people.

Sho had been her first friend. She had been one when he'd been born. She had been a baby before he'd been born, and she couldn't remember that time, but she did remember…she remembered being little and…and he had been wrapped in a blanket and he'd smelled weird and she just…she remembered mom saying….it must have been mom…she said 'look Shigeko, someone wants to meet you' and then he'd been there and…and he'd smelled weird and…and he'd cried and….

And he had been her first friend.

He had been her first friend but now he had another friend….not only a friend but someone he was in love with. She couldn't compete with love. She knew how she had acted when she had been in love with Hatori. She knew that she had left Sho to go and be near Hatori…because at the time she had thought that she could have been his girlfriend or something…and it had been just enough to be able to get near him….and Sho…well he must have been feeling the same about Shimazaki….

Love was important.

She knew that Shimazaki wouldn't be able to love Sho back, he was too young and also Shimazaki and Minegishi were in love, but Sho….well having hope was…it was a good feeling. She wanted him to have someone else he loved, she wished that he could have just been in love with his girlfriend or something, or maybe even someone else….someone he could love back…but he had what he had and he felt what he felt and she just wanted him to be happy. She wanted him to be happy. She wanted him to be happy and…and she also wanted to be happy. She wanted to be with him and she wanted to be happy herself but…but her happiness should have come from the happiness of her little brother.

She was so selfish sometimes.

She was being selfish. She was at a party. She was surrounded by people. Her friends were here. She was here with a party with her friends. She should have been happy because her friends were happy and her brother was happy and…and her best friend had told her that she had no reason to be unhappy. So she should have been happy and she shouldn't have been lonely….and she didn't even know anything about being lonely. She had spent her whole life surrounded by people who loved her and…and there were people in this world that had been born and then just…had been alone. Who hadn't had friends and had been all alone and….

And she shouldn't have been so selfish.

She had a friend who hadn't ever had any friends. She had been bouncing here thinking about how alone she was…when she had her friends and her brother and….and she knew someone who had no one….and she should…she knew what she had to do. Where she had to go. She knew that she had no right to be lonely when there were people in the world who were really lonely and….and she knew that she had to go and be with her friend…her loneliest friend…her friend who had no other friends…and she never should have left him alone in the first place….

She had messed up but she could fix this…and she would. She had to. That was what you did when you messed up, you fixed it.


	440. The Wizard and the Technomancer

President Suzuki had eyebrows.

Eyebrows were weird. They were these things above your eyes that were just…there. They were there and they must have served some purpose but Hatori didn't know it. Well he had known it but now knowing things was kind of like…like when you named a bunch of files stupid stuff that made sense to you at the time but when you to to reading the names you had no idea which one was which so when you went to open up your stupid project for…whatever class that project had been for…and then you opened you folder up and inside was all of that weird shit that you knew you were going to go to hell for looking at and then everyone laughed at you and your parents got called and you got suspended and then your mom said that you couldn't switch schools….

Eyebrows were like that.

Or their meaning was, anyway. There had to have been a meaning to them. Everything had a meaning, he could feel it, and he could feel himself losing the sense of that meaning. He could feel any and all sense of meaning just slipping away from him…and he didn't like it one bit. He wanted…well he wanted a lot of things….like eyebrows. Well he had eyebrows. He had mom's eyebrows. She had said so. She had said so that one time when they had been in her room and she had been messing with hers and he had wanted to know what she was doing and then she had been all 'you have my eyebrows' and then he had worried about them but he wasn't a girl so he didn't have to worry about that stuff and stuff.

Mom was dead now so she didn't have to worry about anything ever again.

"No…no….no…." said Hatori. He closed his eyes. It didn't help. He took off his glasses. That didn't help. He couldn't stop himself from seeing because he had already seen it…he had seen it and now it was in his head…and he wanted it to be out of his head. He wanted it all to be out of his head and he wanted it all to end but it wouldn't end and him closing his eyes made him just see it better so he opened and closed his eyes but all of the blinking didn't help and-

Something hit him over the head.

"Stop that or go away." said Suzuki. Suzuki had hit him over the head. Suzuki had knocked those thoughts out of his head. Suzuki had knocked the picture out of his head. His house….there had been smoke and…and mom had been….and dad had been…but now he couldn't bring that picture back up in his mind. Suzuki had knocked it out of his head like knocking on an old CRT TV to fix the picture…like he was a TV….but he wasn't. That was a TV and on that TV was stuff that was not real but he was real and he was there and his head hurt.

It was good that his head hurt.

His head hurt and his head hurting like that just meant that he was there and he was real. He was real and his head hurt and his nose was running,….he blew his nose into his sleeve…and now he was even more real because now he could feel his sleeve. He was real and he was there and the pictures in his head were gone and now he was with someone and that was good….that was good that he had been with someone…he wanted to be with people….he loved people. He loved them all and he wanted nothing more than to just love them and hold them because you never knew when you were going to come home from school and see that your entire family had burned to death because you had put way too many plugs in one outlet….dad had warned you but then you put too many plugs in and that must have been what did it…and you know….you know that you did it and…and you can't feel anything…and you can't breathe…but you must be because you're screaming and to scream you need to be able to breathe and…and you know that mom and dad hate it when you make a lot of noise like that, how you scream at the screen when you get really into what you're doing, but they aren't here anymore and…and you need them to be here so many you scream louder and-

And there's a hand over his mouth.

"Be quiet. You're acting like my son…and I can barely stand my son." Said Suzuki. He had his hand right there so Hatori couldn't say anything…and he wanted to say something. He wanted to tell Suzuki not to say 'son' because Hatori was someone's son but now he wasn't anyone's son and he loved Suki and all of his friends because he had to. He had to love his friends because without them, without the people who were around him day in and day out, he would be all alone in the world...and he never wanted to be all alone again. He wanted…he wanted to love his friends and he wanted them to know that he loved them and…and he didn't want to lose anyone ever again.

He couldn't lose anyone ever again.

"Can I hug you?" asked Hatori. Suzuki's hand was still over his mouth. Suzuki made a face and then took his hand and wiped it on his shirt. He was wearing a white undershirt. He always wore white undershirts. Suzuki wore the same thing every single day like he was an anime character or something…but this was not an anime and they were not anime characters. If this had been an anime then he would have been the protagonist and he would have gone into the world of a game or something because that was what happened to guys like him. They lost their parents and then were pulled into the world of their games because of whatever reason the show said and then they had to save the world and hey got massively OP superpowers…and well he did have superpowers but he wasn't massively OP. Suzuki was…so maybe he was the protagonist? Maybe Hatori was just a supporting character and Suzuki was the protagonist….or maybe Mob was because she was the cutest…or maybe there was no protagonist and this was one of those experimental shows…or maybe….

Maybe he just needed a hug….just so that he knew that he was there and he was real and…and he just….he needed a hug.

"No. Stay on your side." Said Suzuki. He went back to what he had been doing. Something with numbers that spun and swam if Hatori stared at them for too long. He had no idea how long too long was but he did know that numbers did not want to be looked at, he knew this to be true. He knew because Suzuki had written those numbers and Suzuki didn't like to be looked at.

Even though he was an easy guy to look at.

He was a dad but he was not Hatori's dad. Dads all looked different. Hatori thought so, anyway, but what did he know? He wasn't a dad. He would never be anyone's dad. He didn't want to be anyone's dad. That was a lot, making a human, and then having to take care of that human. He had been a human that someone had made and had been responsible for taking care of. The people who had made him had left him before he could take care of himself. They had left him all alone and now he was alone and…and he wasn't alone. Someone was with him. Someone was there and he was with someone and that someone was Suzuki and he was a dad and Hatori wanted his dad but he didn't have one anymore and he was an orphan and he was all alone and he didn't want to be alone and also he wanted…he wanted…he was on his side and…

And he wanted to not be on his side.

But there were sides. His side was on the left of the Frozen blanket. That was the barrier between him and Suzuki. Even though Suzuki could have put up a real barrier that was the barrier between the two of them…and he didn't want there to be a barrier. He wanted…he wanted to be near Suzuki. He wanted to be near someone. He didn't want to be alone. Suzuki did want to be alone…and he wanted to be away from Hatori….but Hatori didn't want to be away from him…because then he would be alone and….and he didn't want that….

He never wanted that.

"Stop staring at me." Said Suzuki. Had Hatori been staring? He hadn't noticed. He had been looking very closely at Suzuki, at the way he was slumped over a piece of paper covered in numbers, at the way his eyebrows came together like angry caterpillars, at all of the freckles he had covering his arms. Did he have those on his back too? And his legs? And his chest? Was he completely covered in freckles and that was why he didn't want Hatori to look at him? His freckles were like a series of connect the dots. What picture did they make? Did Suzuki not want other people to make that picture? What did Suzuki want? He was his own person so he must have wanted things totally different to what Hatori wanted…since they were two separate people after all….and that was….there was a barrier between them and that barrier had to be there….and he knew that everyone had barriers…and he knew that he needed more of them…because he could see his aura and he knew that it was reaching out and…and he wanted….

He knew that he should have stayed on his own side but he didn't want to.

"You're still staring at me." Said Suzuki

"I am." Said Hatori

"Why?" asked Suzuki

"Because you have freckles. You have so many…and they're moving…and they're like a connect the dots picture but moving and I don't know how I would ever manage to connect those dots but I want to just to see what picture they would make…and I bet it would be a cool one…or not…but you just have a million of them and stuff." Said Hatori. Suzuki was staring at him now, his caterpillars were staring at him too, and Hatori…well he stared right back at the caterpillars. They were like the guardians of the freckles or something. They were guarding his freckles from Hatori and Hatori…well it wasn't like he was going to hurt them…he just wanted to see what they made, that was all.

So did Suzuki, apparently.

He was looking down at his arms, now, and staring. His caterpillars were moving too. They were just like…like two caterpillars that he had imprisoned on himself. Like he had glued them to his face….but glue was for paper and not for skin….and also did not go in your soup. Mom had said that. She had said that after he tried to glue red circles on his face like Pikachu….he missed his Pikachu….his name had been Cookie and they had been friends…when he'd been too little to have friends…and he'd died too…and everyone had died….but Hatori was alive. He was alive and he was there with….with his friend and…and his friend had a lot of freckles and they were moving and…and they were all moving around like they wanted to be free…and maybe they did….even though they had no idea how to get away…and what it was to be all alone…and how they would die if they were all alone…

There was nothing worse than being all alone in the world.

"They aren't. All of my freckles, all twenty seven thousand three hundred and three of them, are not moving…and they never have. Youre being strange. Stop." Said Suzuki. Hatori nodded and stared. He had so many…he had counted them all…and they were there. They were there and they were living on his body and Hatori….he had no idea how he could just share his body like that….

"That's a lot of freckles." Said Hatori. He reached over to touch Suzuki's arm but he felt something grab him….Suzuki had grabbed him. Suzuki had grabbed him and now he was touching Suzuki and he could see…he could see a lot of red…and he liked red…and also he didn't…and it didn't matter if he did or did not like red because he knew that red was just a color that happened and red was just…a thing that was in the world and it existed in the word regardless of whether or not Hatori liked it or not.

"Don't touch them. Don't touch me." Said Suzuki

"But you're touching me? How can you tell me not to touch you when you're touching me? If you're touching me then by default I'm touching you…and also you have a lot of freckles." Said Hatori. He was touching Suzuki if Suzuki was touching him. There was no way for him not to be touching Suzuki. If Suzuki was touching him then he was touching Suzuki and there was no way…well now Suzuki had let go of him…so that was one way.

"There. Now stay on your own side and stop touching me and staring at me." Said Suzuki. Hatori nodded….but he couldn't stop staring at Suzuki. He was there. Even when he closed his eyes he knew that Suzuki was there. He could sense him. He could sense him and he knew that he was there and if he knew that he was there, and he was another person, and he was alive then…then how was he supposed to stop staring at Suzuki? How did that even work? It didn't work. If someone was there, with you, and you stared at them then they would keep on being alive. Like they how when people died they lived on in your heart and whatever….and other such funeral things…and he had no idea why he was thinking about that.

He had to think about something else.

He thought about caterpillars and how they turned into butterflies. He thought about how they started off tiny and then grew and then once they were ready they went to sleep in their cocoons and then came out as butterflies. He wondered if that was what was going to happen to Suzuki. He wondered if Suzuki was going to go to sleep one day and wake up with two butterflies instead of caterpillars above his eyes. He wondered if that would be something that would freak him out….did bugs freak him out? Or was that just mice? Probably just mice. If bugs freaked him out then he wouldn't have had caterpillars for eyebrows.

Really angry looking caterpillars.

"Can I touch your eyebrows? Please?" asked Hatori. He reached out a hand again and Suzuki, again, stopped him. This time he stopped him with his powers. This time they weren't touching…but they were. Sort of like overly big hit boxes. Hatori hated those. Well he hated them when the player character had them. When killing bad guys he, of course, wasn't going to complain in that case. When he was the player character…was he? Or was he the bad guy here? Were they the bad guys? Well they were trying to take over the world….so maybe that made Suzuki the boss….and then he was a miniboss?

Cool!

"No. Now stop it. You're acting like a child." Said Suzuki. Hatori….was not a child. He was not a child and…and maybe thinking that he was a mini-boss was childish…but he was not a child. Everyone treated him like he was more of a kid than the actual kids but he was not a kid. He was a grown man. He had a job…sort of…and he lived away from home…because he didn't have a home anymore…and he…well he'd never had a girlfriend and no girl had ever really been interested in him…unless the one time in middle school counted…or Mob asking him out…like he was her age…but he wasn't he age. He was his own age and he was not a kid anymore.

He was Hatori Nozomu and he was twenty years old.

That was something that had happened to him. He had turned twenty years old. He was twenty, not nineteen or eighteen or any of the teens .He wasn't a teenagers anymore. That was a thing that had happened to him He had stopped being a teenager and he hadn't even noticed. Now he was twenty years old and he was a man.

He wasn't a kid anymore.

Time had passed. Time had passed him right by. Time was passing him right by now. H could feel it passing. He could feel himself aging. Every single second that passed made him older and older and older. Soon he'd be dead. He'd get older and older and older until he died…and then what would happen? He'd become a spirit? He'd pass on? Then what? He'd go to hell? MYAYBE HE WOULD. He had done a lot of stuff….not killing people stuff but…well he'd done a lot of stuff and he'd go to hell for hat and then he didn't know what he'd do and…

And he was alive now and maybe that was what mattered…or something. He didn't know.

"I'm not a kid….I'm an adult. I'm twenty…and I think that I might either be the player character or mini boss. I'm not sure yet." Said Hatori

"What are you talking about?" asked Suzuki after staring at him for a while. His eyes were so blue…and his pupils were so tiny…and Hatori….he could see himself in there….a tiny little version of himself. Who was that version of himself that existed in Suzuki's eyes? Was he an NPC? Or the PC? Or maybe Suzuki was the PC…or maybe not because he was the bad guy…right? He was the one trying to take over the world…and Hatori was not only helping him but they were friends…and shit….

"In life. I think that I might either be a player character because I'm kind of like a protagonist or maybe I'm a mini boss since you're the boss and you're the one trying to take over the world." Said Hatori. Did that make him a bad person? Or was he a good person who did bad things? What sort of character was he? Was this a villain protagonist story? Or maybe it was an RPG with a morality system? He wished that he knew how to check his stats menu. Playing as a wandering maniac was fun at all but if you didn't endear yourself to the townspeople then you'd be screwed in later quests…and did he have some quests to do? He forgot how to check his quests or his progress or…or maybe he just wasn't the player character…but then who was? Was he an NPC? Was the PC going to come in and kill him and loot his corpse? What even would he drop? Dorito crumbs and a phone with a cracked screen? What even…maybe this was…a visual novel? Or maybe he was a friendly PC or…or….or….

He didn't know anymore.

He didn't know and…and he needed to know. He needed to know what sort of character he was and…and he needed Suzuki to tell him but Suzuki was staring at him…and he was being stared at…and he just…he didn't know what he needed to do next. He knew that there was a next step to all of this but he had no idea what it even was and…and he needed to know and….and Suzuki would know. Suzuki was really smart. Suzuki knew everything.

He was the smartest person Hatori knew…maybe he had completed the game already.

"Suzuki….what sort of character am I? And what sort of game is this?" asked Hatori

"I…do not like philosophical conversations…so we won't have one. This is real life…but if you want to be philosophical I suppose that I could give it a try. Obviously you're your own player character since you're the one with free will in your own life and I'm the player character in my life…and taking over the world does not make us villains...and stay on your own side. I don't know how many times I've told you that." Said Suzuki. Hatori looked down. He was sitting on the Frozen blanket now. He was sitting on the brown haired one. He would rather have had her sit on him…but he knows that a girl like that would never go for him…and also she's in a different universe and this is not a crossover…and also he knows that he's supposed to be gay. Suzuki thinks that he's gay so he has to try and be…well he doesn't know how to be…but he does know that he has to scoot back to his own side.

Because he has no idea how many times Suzuki told him to go back to his own side.

"A lot of times. You probably know but don't remember. You know about numbers. You can count really high. You could probably get to the end of the numbers if you counted for long enough." Said Hatori. Suzuki was smart like that. He knew how to count. Hatori knew how to count, too, but Suzuki knew better. He always knew better. He was so smart and stuff…and Hatori knew that if he stayed with his friend, if he stayed with someone who had played the game already, then he would be fine. Suzuki was old, forty four, and he had played this game a million times before…so if Hatori stuck with him then he would be fine.

"There is no end to numbers. They grow until they can only be expressed with logarithmic functions. Believe me, I've tried to count to the end of numbers. It doesn't work." Said Suzuki. Hatori…well he didn't like that. It had to work. Suzuki had a bunch of numbers in front of him and if he didn't know how to get to the end of them then…then they were fucked. Suzuki was the guy in charge and he knew how the numbers worked. He knew how everything worked. That was just…he was the PC and Hatori was the NPC and…and maybe then….maybe he was a PC too…or…or…

He didn't know.

"But what if it did? Like….like what if that was your mission? Like you had to count until the end of numbers and then you did and then you switched player characters to like…me…or something?" said Hatori. He didn't know if he was the PC or not. He didn't even know what sort of game he was in. if Hatori wasn't the PC and Suzuki was then…were they in an arcade game? That was all he played…well this and Minecraft and Terraria…and maybe they could go to Stardew Valley. Nothing bad ever happened there…sort of like Harvest Moon but fun. He didn't want to live in Harvest Moon….well the early games….that last game sucked…but he would rather have lived with Suzuki in Stardew Valley…that would have been good…

Suzuki would never leave him…then he wouldn't have anyone to tell him how to play the game.

"I….think that you've had too much to drink…no, I know that you've had too much to drink. You're too drunk." Said Suzuki. That was….well that wasn't true. First of all there was no getting drunk in Stardew Valley…well they hadn't moved to Stardew Valley yet…but he was pretty sure that there wasn't any getting drunk in this game…well even if there was he hadn't. He had taken on poison damage but he hadn't gotten drunk…but getting drunk was poison damage…well not in Fallout…and he really hoped that they weren't in Fallout…well it depended on which Fallout….

They were speaking Japanese. They were not in Fallout.

"I'm not drunk. The only thing I had to drink was tea…and I didn't even want it. Shimazaki is such an asshole….fuck him…" said Hatori. He remembered what had happened. Shimazaki was way OP, that was what happened. He had maxed stealth. He had maxed stealth and…well his powers were OP. He had managed to use his stealth and teleportation to get behind Hatori and poison him and…yeah…that was what had happened…and if Hatori had found some item or something that would give him some kind of shield…or if he hadn't chosen the technomancer class at birth…or whatever his class was….in whatever game this was….

What even was this?

"Don't talk like that…and yes he is. He poisoned you?" asked Suzuki. Hatori nodded. Suzuki would defend him. Suzuki was in his party and…well Shimazaki was in his party too, actually…or guild….yeah. They were like an esper guild…and he kind of wanted to kick Shimazaki out of the guild and off of the server…because really. Poisoning a member of your party was just bad form…and also he was always an asshole…and he needed to be muted if not outright kicked out.

But Hatori didn't have that kind of power…and Suzuki didn't care.

He was in a party with just him and Fukuda…and Hatori…so they were two parties under the same guild…or something. Hatori wasn't sure. He wasn't even sure what they were in, though, but he was sure that he only had one life and would not respawn. That was an important thing to remember. His brain was telling him that. It was like…like his brain told him things and…and he knew them but…but it wasn't talking directly to him? Or like…..

Pop ups?

"I think I'm suffering from poison damage with ongoing effects. He made me drink this tea and it tasted like shit and then I was fine for a little bit but then it was like…everyone was around me…and it's like…now you're around me and it's like…I understand things but I don't…you know?" asked Hatori. Suzuki would know. He knew everything. He was like…like a guy…like the sort of guy who watched lets plays for fun…and he probably would actually…and Suzuki knew everything and Hatori knew that as long as he was with Suzuki then he would be fine. Suzuki was a dad and he was a kid and dads didn't let bad things happen to their kids….but Hatori wasn't a kid, he was twenty, and also Suzuki was a really bad dad in a lot of ways…mainly beating Sho up and letting Mob drink and smoke and do drugs….but Hatori…he needed to be with Suzuki. He needed to be safe. Suzuki loved him and he loved Suzuki and as long as the two of them were together then everything would be alright.

"No…and I don't care too. Whatever it is that you drank I have no interest in ever indulging in. I didn't when I was your age and I certainly do not now." Said Suzuki. Well duh, of course he didn't want to take on poison damage with lingering affects to skill checks…were they playing DnD now? That was pencil and…well he'd played online before…but Suzuki probably wanted to play on pencil and paper because he was old…and he would have been a wizard….since he was one already…and…and Hatori…this was life and in life Suzuki was a wizard and in life he was a technomancer but this wasn't life…but it was and…and in life he had taken poison damage and….

And in life he didn't even know what had happened to him!

"I don't even know what this is! It's like….something and nothing and…and it's like I go into my head and then I'm outside of my head and…and you're here and I'm here and it's like…like I love me and I love you and I don't want to be alone again and-" said Hatori. He didn't know what had happened and he didn't know what this was and he just wanted to be with someone and Suzuki was someone and Hatori….he could have been with Suzuki and…and he wanted to be with Suzuki. He wanted to be with him because he might have been an asshole but he was also the most powerful wizard in the game and in life he was a dad and he had dad powers and Hatori needed a dad and there was a dad and dad's gave hugs and Hatori needed a hug and-

And he was pushed away.

"I don't love you. Don't love me. I don't love you." Said Suzuki. There was a hand on his chest right above his heart. He could feel his heart. He could feel the way it was trying to beat even though he knew that it had gone down by a quarter. He needed to fund another heart. Maybe there was a chest in the woods he could check. Maybe he would have to check alone. He knew he would have to check alone.

Suzuki did love him…so he would have to do everything alone.

"Wh…what?" asked Hatori. He didn't know what he was supposed to say or do to that. Suzuki….Suzuki was….he was a dad and dads loved their kids and Hatori was just a kid and he had no idea what he was supposed to do without a dad to love him and…and he knew that…that Suzuki wasn't a good dad but…but dad loved him…dad had loved him and now he was gone and…and Suzuki was not his dad but he was a dad and…and a dad was a dad but…

But there was no dad like his dad.

There was no other dad in the world who would sit you down on his lap and show you how to play Zelda when you were too little even to read. There was no dad who would make you middle of the night pancakes and eat them with you in the closet because you had a bad dream. There was no other dad who would help you scour the entire house looking for double A batteries because you used them all up playing your Gameboy all night and…and there was no other dad in the world who would get you a tiny light for your Gameboy so you could play all night without your mom knowing…and who would give you a Mew…a shiny Mew….just because you were sad because….he had no idea what he had been so sad about but….but he had gotten a shiny Mew and…

And there was no dad like his dad….and his dad was gone…so he had no dad at all…and it was just him….just Nozomu.

"Don't be like that, you know that the two us are not compatible in that way. If you had been a woman and I hadn't been married then…well there is the age gap to consider…but most likely I would have made an attempt at…and well you would have had me….but that is neither here nor there. You are a homosexual and I am not. It wouldn't work out and I reject your feelings…but try not to be upset. There would be plenty of men happy to have you." Said Suzuki. Hatori wiped his eyes…and he didn't know what he had been crying…and he'd had to take his glasses off to wipe his eyes….and now that they were wiped he knew what Suzuki had meant and…of course that was what he had meant and…and Hatori could not let him think that!

Well he kind of had to….

He had lied and he was a liar and maybe it was better that his own dad wasn't around to see the sort of liar that his only son had become. He'd lied to save his own ass and now he would have to live with his lie for the rest of his life…and now Suzuki even thought that Hatori wanted to be with him which was just….

No way!

"No…no! Not like that! Just…like…like I love everyone. Like I love the world and the world loves me and…and I want to be with you because you like me and I want to be around people who like me…and I don't want to be all alone! It's just…it's like….I'm twenty. I'm twenty years old and I don't have parents and…and it's like…I mean I know that I don't have parents…and it's like….I've known that I've had no parents for a while and-" said Hatori. His thoughts kept on coming and coming and coming. It was like his mind was folders and they were all opening at once and he couldn't make them stop even if he used his powers…and his powers wouldn't work on himself because he was a technomancer…and Suzuki was a wizard but not that kind of wizard…and now the words came and the thoughts came but the words could not come as fast as the thoughts and-

And there was a hand on his chest.

"This will pass. It passed for me and it will pass for you. You're still very young. It took me almost a decade to stop…to stop expecting to see them there in my home when I woke up. Even though I had been away from my childhood home for some time…and even though I had been aware that my childhood home was not around anymore…I still expected to see them. The feeling of their absence will pass once you reach your thirties. It will come back when your own children are born but it will pass until you hardly think of them…until your children bring them up…" said Suzuki. He was talking about how he had lost his own parents….and he was an orphan too…and he was a dad but he was an orphan and…and what was even the point, then? What was even the point of becoming a dad if you were just going to make orphans? If everyone who had ever lived….if they were all going to die then…then what was even the point of having kids? What was even the point of living? If all you were going to get at the end was a 'game over' then why would you invite someone new to play with you?

"I'm never going to have kids. I don't want them. I won't make people just to leave them all alone and stuff…like…like I don't want to make people just to make orphans and….and it's not like anyone likes me anyway…well Mob did but Mob's a kid…" said Hatori. He was going to die alone. It wasn't like he was ever going to get the chance to invite anyone to play with him. No girl had ever liked him…and he had told that lie anyway….and anyway girls did not like him. He had been kissed once in middle school and that was it. He didn't know any girls…well he did…but Mob was a kid and if he ever found himself attracted to her then he was going to have to trigger a premature game over because that wasn't right and…and also she would grow up but…no way. The only other girl he knew was Minegishi and they were non binary, didn't like him like that, and were dating the biggest asshole that he had ever met in his life…

He was going to game over all alone.

"Also you and my Daughter are incompatible in that way. I know that she was taken with you for a time but that has passed….though I do wish that she had waited until she was older for all of this…and part of me does wish that you were compatible in that way." said Suzuki. He was going to game over on his own, he knew this to be true, and he also knew that if he ever tried to game over with Mob Suzuki would kill him. This was a trick. Suzuki was tricking him and he knew better than to fall for it. Suzuki was lying and he knew better.

Never trust a wizard!

"No, you're tricking me. You told me that if I tried anything with your kid, which I won't because I'm into weird stuff but not that weird…and pregnant cat girls aren't that weird…..and anyway she's way too young for me! And you told me that if I was ever into either of your kids you'd kill me! And I don't want to die! I like being alive thank you very much!" said Hatori. He didn't want to game over yet! He had plenty of open world to explore! He had level to grind and…and he had never even had sex before…or sky dived…or own a cat…or seen a live jellyfish…or a million and one other things that he was just thinking of now! No game over! He had to live!

"I…have changed my mind. I didn't know you as well then as I know you now. I would be happy, now, to have you as my son in law…married to my Daughter. I enjoy your company and I know that you're a good person for her. You'd do whatever she asked of you and you can't survive on your own. You are not compatible, though, so it's neither here nor there." said Suzuki. Hatori knew that he had said words but….but he had only heard…well he had heard everything but…but there was one thing that was still ringing in his brain.

"I can't survive on my own…" said Hatori. Suzuki…this was a co-op game….or maybe he wasn't even a player character. Maybe this was an escort quest and he was the person being escorted…and those were always the worst quests in any game….and he was the worst quest in this game. He was the worst quest in the game and he was going to ruin the game and he had…he had to stay with Suzuki…Suzuki was the player character. He was the wizard. He would keep him safe.

"No, you can't." said Suzuki

"Will….will you keep me safe then?" asked Hatori

"…fine. I will so long as you leave my eyebrows alone and stop trying to touch me, hold me, and stop staring at me as well." Said Suzuki

"But then…what do I do?" asked Hatori. He needed to touch Suzuki's eyebrows. He was the player character and….and also his eyebrows were like a couple of angry little caterpillars. He had to touch them because…because they were there and they were angry and there were two of them and he loved Suzuki and Suzuki loved him…well he sort of did…well he had to. He had to…he had a lot to do….well he didn't have a lot to do because he was an NPC but…but the NPC had to be near the PC in the escort quests….right?

Or maybe he was just a really shitty player character.

"Watch television." Said Suzuki. Maybe Suzuki and him were both player characters in the same game and Hatori was just a really shitty player. Maybe Suzuki was the one who was in charge, maybe it was his game, and maybe Hatori was the one…maybe he was Suzuki now. Maybe Suzuki and him had switched places and now…and now he was the one being shown things….

Ok. That made sense.

"What should I watch?" asked Hatori. Suzuki was smart. Suzuki knew the game. Suzuki was at a higher level than him. He had been playing the game since…well since before Hatori had even been born. He was forty four. Hatori was twenty. He had been playing the game for longer than Hatori had been alive. He was the highest ranking wizard in the world and the oldest. He was like that old wizard from that long rings movie…but not as nice. Not as nice but just as skilled….and Hatori….well he would….he needed Suzuki. He couldn't survive on his own.

He was just a kid.

He was just a kid and Suzuki was a dad. Hatori was little and he was sitting on the couch and something was on TV, something about the stars and the planets, and he was little and he could ask about them and then his dad would pull him onto his lap and explain…but his dad was gone…and Suzuki was a dad but not his dad….but Hatori was little and….and Suzuki wasn't little and….

And Hatori wouldn't be able to survive on his own.

"I don't know…can't you decide for yourself?" asked Suzuki. Hatori….he didn't know. He didn't know how his actions would affect the game. He hadn't had a chance to look up all the decision trees online yet and he had no idea how to make a new save file…he didn't get new save files…his brain said so…he didn't get new save files and….and he had to make sure that he didn't mess this one up….and he just….

He had no idea what to even do.

"I don't think that I can right now. It's like…like my brain is all…like someone opened all the files in my brain and they won't close even if I control alt delete….and it's like…like I understand everything and nothing…" said Hatori. Suzuki was looking at him now. His aura was on him and his eyes were on him and it was like…like he was being sized up….but no…they weren't….they weren't enemies and Suzuki was not sizing him up for a fight. That was…there was no way that he would be able to survive a fight with Suzuki…and he only had the one life…one heart…no health potions…no stimpacks….no continues.

"Do you have the urge to run and hide?" asked Suzuki. Hatori….he wanted to now. If Suzuki thought that there was reason to run…but from what? What could make Suzuki run? Or maybe…maybe he just…he didn't know…all he knew was that he needed to get as close to Suzuki as he could…and he couldn't. Suzuki was pushing him away with his powers….damn wizards….why did he have to pick technomancer?

"Well now I do." Said Hatori, his eyes darting around before he could stop them. No enemies around….yet.

"Is the universe speaking to you?" asked Suzuki. Hatori covered his ears. Now he could hear….he could see….he could….well it was more like…it was more like annoying phone popups. Telling him that he was a kid and he was a man and he was…he just…he opened his eyes. He took off his glasses…and now his brain was telling him to put his glasses on…like it was part of the quest…or something…whatever this quest was….if this was even the sort of game with quests.

"Well now it is." Said Hatori shaking his head. He shook his head and his glasses flew off….but then Suzuki caught them with his powers…and handed them back and….and wizard powers were so cool. They were cool and…why did he have to pick technomancer! This power sucked and he wished that he could have been the cool kind of wizard…or something. He just…he didn't know what….he just….

Suzuki was still looking at him.

"Have you ever taken LSD before?" asked Suzuki. Hatori….he had no idea…he had no idea what he was even talking about. He went through all the words he knew and…and those were English characters and…and his English wasn't good and…and he hadn't gone too far into the English skill tree…most of his skills were in first person shooters…..and also Minecraft….why couldn't they have been in Minecraft!? He understood Minecraft and Suzuki like Minecraft and…and maybe they could have played Minecraft….

"No…what even is that? And also can we play Minecraft?" asked Hatori

"No…maybe….I'm working….and also you're not in any state to play Minecraft. I suspect that Shimazaki gave you LSD…and you don't know what it is…how do you not know? A hallucinogen that people take for fun…something which I cannot understand….but something which I have seen taken before. You're acting just like Tadashi that one time in university…and if you have to run and hide then do so but not in my bed…and if you think that the universe is telling you that Claw is insane and what we are doing is insane and that you wish that you had never met me then…well don't listen to the universe….and don't accuse me of being attracted to you either and….God, what else did Tadashi do….don't look in the mirror or you might get stuck and drink plenty of fluids…and…oh! Yes, stay away from the windows." Said Suzuki. Hatori….he had heard windows…and he knew that Suzuki knew better and…and now he wanted to look at the windows…was it nighttime? Well he knew that it was….but were there….was this Minecraft? Were their zombies out there? Were they out there right now and…no. Now that was insane. If this was Minecraft then they would have been all….blocky…like Minecraft Steve. They weren't blocky at all. They were all fleshy and normal.

"What'll happen if I go near the windows?" asked Hatori

"I have no idea what you'll see but Tadashi started screaming…and the rest of that night is something which I would like to forget just…watch television. What's something that you enjoy and which will keep you quiet?" asked Suzuki. He sighed there…like dad had when Hatori had thought that there had been a UFO outside his window…but that was also crazy. Aliens wouldn't bother them…or maybe they would since Suzuki was a very powerful wizard…and he was a technomancer and…and he didn't feel like mixing genres right now.

"I don't know….I can't think right now." Said Hatori. He didn't even know what gene hey were in. He didn't know anything but…but that he didn't know anything and…and shit like that and…and he just…he wanted…he wanted to be safe and he wanted….he wanted Suzuki to be there and he wanted to be there and…and he didn't want to look out the windows because he had no idea what might have been out there and…

And Suzuki would have kept him safe from what was out there.

"Well…we never did watch the second film of that mech series you were telling me about…so we'll do that…and I suppose that you'll need water…and I suppose that I have to take care of you." Said Suzuki. He sighed again and….and that was….Hatori liked that. He got that. He knew that…that Suzuki would always be there for him.

He had promised.

"You promised." Said Hatori. A promise was a promise and…and he felt like…he felt like he was little enough, now, that a promise still meant something….because as you got older they meant less and less…until they were just words and….and maybe he didn't want to be an adult….maybe he wanted to go back to a before save file…not a now safe file…

But you only got one save file.

"Yes, I suppose that I did…and I suppose that you are a child, you're young enough to be have been my child, and I suppose that I should care for you…so that is what I shall do." Said Suzuki. He was….Suzuki was….Hatori wanted to be with him…and to just…Suzuki…he was going to be there and he was going to hold him and then….and then he knew that he wasn't going to…and he wanted….

"You're a good dad…can I have a hug?" asked Hatori. Suzuki shook his head. He shook his head and scooted away from him. Hatori….he really needed a hug right then…from his dad…from a dad….from a dad that he didn't have anymore…or from a mom…but he didn't know any moms…he just knew dads….he just knew a dad. He just knew that dad…who wasn't a good dad…but was a dad.

"No…and not because you're a homosexual if that's what you're thinking. I generally do not like to be touched and right now I just…feel odd about my own person." Said Suzuki. He was fidgeting and…well it smelled like weed in there…so maybe….he didn't know why Suzuki would….also they couldn't both be taking poison damage affects…because they only got the one save file.

"Because you and Fukuda were getting high in here?" asked Hatori. That couldn't happen. That couldn't happen because….well one them had to know what to do and…and he didn't much care about Fukuda…well their party did need a healer….just a wizard and a technomancer was unbalanced…but if they added Mob…she was good at defense…and then Shibata…he was a knight…and then Sho…he was a barbarian…and then Minegishi…they were a nature mage….and then Shimazaki….well he was…he could find his own party…but if they had to have him then he could be their assassin….but maybe they needed a healer…

But their healer and their highest level wizard could not be getting high together like that!

"No, he was smoking and I was not and…well choices were made on my part which may not have been…well I did have a point to prove and…and Tadashi is the one who made it strange and…and I am not talking to you about this. Sit here and watch television while I get you some water. Understood?" said Suzuki as he got up. Hatori…now that side of the couch was empty aside from the numbers and numbers were not people and….and Suzuki was leaving him but….but he was coming back…and with water…and water healed you…did they have RadAway? No….this was not Fallout…he was glad that it wasn't….this was…this was life and Suzuki was taking care of him and…and he was a good friend like that…a good dad…

And Hatori hadn't had a dad in so long….

"Understood….thanks. I love you." Said Hatori. It came out before he could think. He loved Suzuki. Suzuki…he would die without Suzuki and…and if Suzuki knew that to be true then Hatori knew it to be true and…and it was so nice of Suzuki to…to take care of him instead of just cutting him loose because, well, escort quests were the worst and so were useless party members and…and he loved….

He loved Suzuki so much…even though he could be sort of an asshole sometimes…but not now…now he was being a good friend….

"I do not feel the same way….now sit there and don't look out the windows." Said Suzuki. He pulled the curtains closed…he thought of everything….he was so smart…and he would take care of Hatori and he felt so…so much better now…so warm and safe and….and just….

He loved Suzuki so much right now….the universe was warm and loving…and he loved everyone in it.

"Alright." Said Hatori. That was all the he could say. He pulled the blanket close and closed his eyes. The universe was warm and safe and this game…it was a good game. A safe game. This game was…Stardew Valley…or Harvest Moon…but not animal crossing because that was his and Mob's game….but she was in her own game now…and he was in his own game….

And he liked this game…he liked it a lot.

"And never take hallucinogens again. I had thought that you were better than that….but you are young and to be young is to be a moron…and I wasn't much better at your age I suppose." Said Suzuki. Hatori….he knew that he was a kid and an adult and….and he knew that he was Hatori…but right now he just…wanted to be…here. He wanted to be here in whatever game this was. He wanted this…this world he was in….he wanted to be there….to be Hatori and Suzuki…well Suzuki was Suzuki but…but he wanted to be…whatever they were. They were here, in this, together, this world and this house and this game…whatever it was.

The wizard and the technomancer….the two player characters…

One of which had caterpillars for eyebrows.


	441. I Have No Problem Taking Care of You

Shibata had no problem at all with taking care of his friends….but there was just one problem here.

Fukuda was not one of his friends.

He had never had many friends growing up, people had always been somewhat afraid of him, but he had some now. Hatori, mostly, and Minegishi to a lesser extent. The kids, of course, because they were just the sweetest little kids in the whole world. Even the new guy, maybe, once he started coming out of his room and actually talking to everyone else. Hell, if pressed he might have even described Shimazaki as someone on the edges of maybe becoming something of a friend to him instead of this annoying…person…while he had to live with and work with and put up with. Someone who did crazy things like drug Hatori for the hell of it. Someone who did annoying things like turn the entire house upside down even though everything had been painstakingly labeled for his convenience. Someone who, for reasons unknown, thought that filling a waffle maker with caramels and then melting them down was a good idea. Someone who-

The list of grievances was a long one.

The list of grievances he had towards Shimazaki Ryou was a long one but one that he could deal with. At the end of the day he lived in the house with all of them and therefore they had to be something approaching friends. Besides, aside from drugging Hatori for the hell of it, or maybe out of some residual anger from the thing with Minegishi last year, it wasn't like he did anything truly heinous. Not like some people….people who he really wished that he didn't have to deal with.

People who he had no choice but to deal with.

"Alright, here's your house." Said Shibata as he put Fukuda down. He didn't know what he had the president had been getting up to in there…well he did know. He was almost thirty and he lived with Minegishi and Shimazaki. He knew exactly what those two had been getting up to...and well…President Suzuki was a high strung man so maybe it was better for the rest of them that he got high every so often. Maybe it was better for everyone if Fukuda followed in his example.

Because if anyone needed to smoke it was this guy.

Shibata…well his opinions on it weren't negative. It was fun and some people needed it for legitimate reasons. Like Mob. He knew what it was like not to be able to control your powers. He knew what it was like to be bigger and stronger than everyone around you. It was like living in a dollhouse. Like the people around you were dolls and the world was cheap plastic or something and with just one wrong move you could end up breaking something or someone. He knew what that was like and if there had been some way, any way at all, for him to turn off his strength when he had been Mob's age then he would have in a heartbeat.

Not for himself but for everyone around him.

He had been in kindergarten the first time he had ever hurt anyone on accident. It had been a game of red rover….he hadn't meant it. He had run way too fast and body slammed into another kid. That had been how they had played it. The game had just been an excuse to slam into one another and see who could be the toughest. Well he…he didn't know what he had done...because the last time he had played nothing like that had happened…but he had sent the other kid into the fence hard enough that it broke, he went on to lead a normal life, of course, and back then nobody had suspected that there hd been anything wrong with him beyond the fact that he had been twice as big as the other kids. Everyone had always asked how old he really was…but he had always been big. When he'd been born he'd weighed almost eight kilograms and his little baby footprints had been fifteen centimeters long. He'd always been a big kid so when he'd accidentally hurt another kid playing…well nobody had worried…

But then it had happened again.

And again.

And again.

It had just kept on happening. It had happened time after time after time again and again and again. He had just kept on growing and getting stronger and…and for a time he hadn't been able to be around people. It was just too dangerous. He hadn't been able to hug his own mom or his friends…he hadn't even been able to pick up a drinking glass without shattering it…and until he'd managed to control his strength….it had been dark times…

So maybe he should have been grateful that he could control his strength well enough to help this jackass into his house.

"Come on, take off your shoes." Said Shibata as he opened the door and stepped through into the genkan. This house looked like his house…well that was because they were all Claw houses. They all looked more or less the same. That had always been something that he had liked. The President, his second hand man, and the rest of them in the upper echelons all lived the same. President Suzuki was a powerful man but he never lorded it over all of them. Actually he was weirdly humble…when he wasn't beating people bloody. He was just…well Hatori had said before that he was just a guy…and Shibata could see it.

He was just a guy who sometimes got high with his best friend…his asshole of a best friend.

"Come on, Fukuda, left shoe then the right one." said Shibata as he kicked off his own shoes. This guy needed water. He needed water and….well he didn't know what else he could do. Fukuda was an asshole, one of the biggest that he had ever met, but he was still leaning heavily and breathing deep…and…well he smelled like Shimazaki's jacket. He had overdone it…and Shibata hadn't even known that he could overdo it with his powers….

But Shibata had never really asked how his powers worked.

He had never really wanted to know. It hadn't been his business, ever, or something that had anything to do with his life. He had enough to deal with as it was. Hatori wasn't well…he was with Suzuki but Shibata would be on standby…and he had to be on standby for the others too. Shimazaki and Minegishi were probably going to fight and when they fought Shimazaki acted out…like a kid….and Sho would probably be in a mood when he came home too since he was not dealing with his feelings well…and Mob…well if Minegishi was in a bad mood then she'd get all anxious….and the new guy was a total wildcard….

He had enough to do as it was.

"I know how to take my shoes off." Said Fukuda. He pulled himself free from Shibata. Shibata, of course, let this happen. He could have stopped him. He could have easily stopped him but, well, he wasn't going try. He had better things to do with his time, first of all, and second of all he just…had enough to do as it was. If Fukuda wanted to handle his own business then he would. Shibata…well he could have left but…Fukuda needed water.

So that was what he did.

He kicked off his shoes and stepped past Fukuda. He was fumbling with his laces in the genkan…and as he passed he had the urge to bend down and undo his laces for him. Even though his hands were way too big, he wore slip on shoes for that reason, he still wanted to help. Even though Fukuda was an asshole he still wanted to help. He was an asshole but…but that didn't mean that the people around him had to be.

People liked you better when you were helpful.

If you took care of people then they liked you. If you put them first, if you did what they needed you to do, then they liked you. The needed you…and you needed them. People needed other people. That was just…how it worked. People needed other people. They needed each other whether they wanted to admit it or not. People needed friends and friends helped each other…and that was just how it worked. As long as he was needed…and he was needed…then he could just…be there. Be with other people. Be something other than what people saw him as.

Be someone other than the person the world seemed to think that he had to be.

He was over two meters tall. Two hundred and fifteen centimeters to be exact. He could lift a grown man with one arm and not even break a sweat. He knew how he looked, he knew what people wanted him for, and he knew what he had been recruited to Claw in the first place. He also knew that he could be more than that. He knew that he could do a lot of things…like this. Like rifle through other people's cabinets looking for drinking glasses.

He kept his above the microwave for some reason.

Shibata liked to keep the plates and glasses above the sink. That way once they were dried they could just go right up there. In a lot of ways this was weird, being in another person's kitchen, and it was extra weird when this kitchen was pretty much an exact copy of his. White tile walls, white fridge, blue counters, same table even. Two chairs, though, around it. Not six. Two…well maybe the second one was for Suzuki. Maybe the second one was for Fukuda's only friend…or maybe it was for Sho…he spent a lot of time here…or maybe it was just to give the illusion of friendliness.

Shibata's old apartment, the table in it, had two chairs.

His first apartment, the one he had gotten after…what had happened…there had been a table there already. The whole thing had come furnished…for a man half his height…but he had made due. There had been two chairs. An old table had been in the kitchen. An old Formica thing, bright red, with a metal band around it. There had been two matching red chairs even though he had just needed the one…and even though he had spent more time eating on the floor of the living room than anything. Chairs…why did they always have to be so tiny?

Or maybe he was just too big.

He was careful when he opened the cabinet. He was careful when he took out the glass. The same sort of plain, clear, glass that had come with the house. These houses always came furnished and stocked. He had his own housewares that he liked to bring with him. Things that made the house feel more like a home. This house…this looked…like a place where a human being lived.

A living space.

He almost expected to be in his own kitchen. It was the Zootopia glass in the cupboard that cinched it. It was…well not Sho's. Not like the one that Sho kept at his house. That one just had the fox on it. This one had the fox and the rabbit…and Shibata had to watch that movie again. Sho loved it…not as much as Mob loved Frozen…but he did love it. He was such a good kid…well he could be kind of a…he tended to act out but he was still a good kid…and it was good that he had someone looking out for him….

Even if it was Fukuda.

"What are you doing?" asked Fukuda. Well he had certainly sobered up quickly. He had walked into the kitchen like normal. He had even tucked his shirt back in. He had tucked his shirt in and he was smoothing down his hair even though it was so short that it didn't even need brushing…probably. Shibata didn't know. He didn't ask.

He just filled the glass.

He was careful when he turned on the tap. He had, when he was little, torn so many taps off on accident that mom and dad had just ended up buying him a watercooler with an automatic sensor. It had been an expense but much less of one than having to have the plumbers coming around every single week. He still did than on occasion, when he was too tired to know his own strength, and he was getting there now. He was getting to that point. He just…had a lot to do. There was a lot that needed doing and…and he had to be the one to do it.

He set the water down on the table.

"Here, I thought that you could use a glass of water. You seemed petty out of it." Said Shibata. He pointed to the water in case Fukuda couldn't see it. He seemed to be back to normal. He seemed to have gotten out of whatever it was that he had been in…and that was good. Now he could get home and get a jump on cleaning the kitchen…maybe get some knitting done. Something relaxing. Something to calm him down before the oncoming storm.

"I was but I'm fine now…but thank you." Said Fukuda. Shibata had been about to leave but…well he had no choice but to stop in his tracks. He had said…and there had been something to his voice then. He had sounded almost sincere. Tired and sincere. Usually there was a backhandedness to his thankyous…but now…well there had been something almost sincere in there…

Maybe Shimazaki had dosed him too.

"You...you're welcome." Said Shibata. He had to say 'you're welcome' because, well he had to be polite. He had to be polite and he had…well he was a polite person and he had to stick to that. Even though there had been so much shock…well now the shock was over with. That usual look of distain was back on his face. For some reason that look was almost comforting in a way. Something else normal. Really normal, not like…this kitchen. This copy and pasted kitchen he found himself standing in.

"What's all that about?" asked Fukuda. The look of distain was there…and Shibata knew that he could have wiped that look off of his face…and maybe he wanted to. Maybe part of him wanted to send him sailing across the room. Maybe he had been wanting to do that for a while. He had put Mob through a lot. He didn't know the full details of it but he had put he through enough to make her dislike him…and Mob…well she wasn't the sort of person who disliked others….

She was usually nicer than that.

"What's what about?" asked Shibata. She had no idea what he was on about. Shibata…he had said what he needed to say…and he didn't care if Fukuda liked him. So he could have just left. Mob didn't like Fukuda so neither did he…but he did wish that he would drink that water. Water would help with…whatever there was to help with. If there even was something else to help with. He didn't know. He couldn't just leave someone who needed him.

Even if it was Fukuda.

"You seem amazed that I thanked you." Said Fukuda. He still didn't take a drink…and he needed to take a drink. There was no way that he could go home unless he knew that Fukuda was ok…even if it was Fukuda. He may have been an asshole and Mob may have disliked him…but Sho liked him. Those were his drawings on the fridge and his Zootopia glass in the cabinet and…well Sho liked him for some reason and he would have been upset if something happened to him…so Shibata would be nice…

Well he was always nice.

"You just don't normally do that." Said Shibata. He said that as nicely as he could. He was always nice. He had to be. He had to be nice because…well people didn't expect him to be. He knew how people looked at him and he knew what they expected and he just…he would not be what people expected him to be. He would be better than that. He had to be.

"I'm perfectly capable of saying 'thank you'." Said Fukuda. Well Shibata had to be nice but Fukuda…well he was his own person. He wondered if it had to do with having had been President Suzuki's friend for long…or at all. President Suzuki…well he wasn't a nice man…to anyone aside from Hatori and Mob that is…and maybe Fukuda was the same way. Maybe the only person he was nice to was Sho…and not for reasons that had been speculated upon…because then Shibata would have to become a murderer…and also he would never assume that about someone. That was something that had always been assumed about him for his entire life just because he liked kids…and someone could be an asshole without being 'that' kind of asshole…

Fukuda was just a regular asshole.

"Well then…maybe you should say it more often. I mean, and don't take this the wrong way, but…maybe you should say thank you more often." Said Shibata. Fukuda was such an asshole…but maybe he just didn't know it. Maybe he just…wasn't right. Like President Suzuki wasn't right. He was…a lot of things, that man, so maybe his best friend was the same way. Really, it would have made sense. People didn't just spend a lifetime, they had been together longer than Shibata had even been alive for, together if they had nothing in common.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Fukuda. There was an edge to his voice…and Shibata was glad for it. Really. Better him get ready for a fight than act like he was afraid that Shibata was going to put him through a wall. He could, easily, he had the ability to…but he was not that kind of person. It was nice to see that someone could tell that he was not that kind of person…even if it was Fukuda of all people.

"I didn't mean anything, you know, nothing. Just that people might like you a little more if you…you know. Were nicer." Said Shibata. People liked you better when you were nice to them. The concept wasn't a complicated one. He was nice to people and…and he didn't have the ability to not be nice to them. Not being his size. Not with his powers. He just…he had to be nice and…and maybe that was what was upsetting about all of this. Fukuda either didn't get the concept or just….wanted to act like an asshole….and Shibata didn't know what was worse.

"I don't need people to like me, I just need to do my job." Said Fukuda. That…was truly insane. How could he not care if people liked him? Didn't he know that he would ultimately end up alone with that kind of attitude? Being alone…that was the worst feeling. Coming home and having no one. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to ask how their day had gone. Nobody to ask you how your day had gone. Nobody to share a meal with. Nobody to spend time with. Hell, nobody to make a mess even. Being alone was the worst…but of course Fukuda had never been alone once in his life.

Hatori had said, before, that President Suzuki had known Fukuda since they had been in school…and Shibata couldn't even imagine what a friendship like that must have been like…but it must have been something good at least..

"Well…with all due respect…you kind of have that job because President Suzuki likes you." Said Shibata. He was trying his best to be respectful. He wasn't Shimazaki, he wasn't a shit stirrer, even though sometimes shit needed to be stirred. This was Claw. Minegishi had said, before, that everyone in Claw had some kind of deep social or personal problem…and Fukuda was no exception. He had some kind of a problem with Mob…he had no idea what that could have been…but he had a problem with her.

It was amazing that President Suzuki hadn't noticed.

Mob was his favorite kid. She was his favorite and Shibata…well he wasn't going to tell President Suzuki how to raise his kids…but he needed to stop playing favorites. Also he needed to stop treating Mob like his wife but that was something else entirely. Shibata knew how much President Suzuki favored Mob and he also knew how oblivious he could be. So oblivious obviously that he didn't notice how much his best friend disliked her.

That same best friend that was standing there saying the craziest shit imaginable.

"…I'm aware of that fact. Touichirou…President Suzuki likes me…and Miss Suzuki…that's what this is about. You're going to tell me that I need to get into her good graces…and maybe you're right. Maybe I messed up and she hates me and now I'm going to have to pay for it. Never piss off the boss and all of that." Said Fukuda. He ended that with a laugh and Shibata…he had no idea what was so funny. He thought that Miss Suzuki…that Mob hated him? Mob…well she didn't like him…but she didn't have it in her to hate anyone. She was too sweet.

Were they talking about the same person?

Fukuda didn't like her. For some reason, reasons that nobody had ever told him, Fukuda did not like Mob. Shibata just couldn't see it. For one thing she was a kid and kids, well kids, you couldn't dislike them. Even when they acted like…well Sho. Even when a kid acted out like Sho did you couldn't dislike them…because they were just little kids. You could dislike adults, that was fine, but kids…no.

In the twenty seven years that Shibata Hiroshi had been alive he had never once been able to understand why people disliked kids.

"She doesn't hate you, she can't hate anyone, she just doesn't like you…and I don't know the full story as to why but I know that it has something to do with you…accusing her…of things and just…well she can pick up on the way you are about her. Everyone can pick up on it." Said Shibata. Sometimes people had to hear the hard truths. They didn't always have to listen, and indeed sometimes they couldn't even listen, but you still had to try. He had no idea what h was going to accomplish with this. He wasn't a kid, he knew that it would take more than a few well placed words to fix whatever had gone wrong, but he…well he wanted to use those words.

"That I can see through her, you mean." Said Fukuda. Shibata…yeah. He knew that words wouldn't help this situation. He had no clue what that could even possibly mean. Mob was…what? What did he think that there even was to know about Mob? That there was to see. She was Mob. She liked Frozen and making friends and playing games and other little kid things. What was he even….

"What are you even talking about?" asked Shibata

"You're one of the better ones, you know, of her little group. I always liked you the best." Said Fukuda. Well that was…he liked being liked but…he got the feeling that he didn't like being liked by this guy. He just…well he wasn't going to start anything but…yeah.

"Uh…thank you…?" asked Shibata

"I like you but you honestly can't see through her. She's…she's just a little girl to you…" said Fukuda

"Well…yeah. She's eleven and a half. What else would she be?" asked Shibata

"The person in charge of all of this. That's what she is…she's eleven years old and she has power over all of us…a child has power over all of us…and you can't even see it." Said Fukuda

"Well she does outrank both of us….but that doesn't matter. It's not like she lords it over us or anything. She's just a kid…and I can't believe that's why you don't like her. That's just…I mean she's the President's daughter so of course she outranks us. She's his oldest child so of course she's going to inherit everything." Said Shibata

"No, Sho's the heir. She's just…someone." Said Fukuda. Shibata had no idea what to make of that. Yeah, Mob was someone. She was a kid, she was just a little kid, and Fukuda…he hadn't been badmouthing her but…but he got that feeling…and he didn't want to have that feeling but he had it…and he felt like he was getting close to the edge of…to the edge of his patience. He hated getting to the edge of his patience….and he couldn't…let…himself….get…there.

"Yeah…Suzuki's daughter…and anyway what does it matter? You're in the upper echelon and so am I. What do you have to complain about? So what if Mob has power over both of us? She's a good kid…and I really wish that you could see that. She used to like you, you know. She used to like you and now she doesn't and-" said Shibata

"She used to like Hello Kitty…" said Fukuda. There was such a…well a heaviness to that…to what he had said. Shibata…he knew what he would have said, that he had been getting close to the line…the line that he didn't like to cross…that he hated crossing…but now he was away from it. He had no idea what that heaviness was, where it had come from, but he did know that Fukuda needed him…and he could never turn his back on someone who needed him…even if it was Fukuda.

"Alright, looks like somebody had a little too much to smoke…and drink, too, by the smell of it. Come on, drink this water and then we'll get you to bed and then you'll be back to normal in the morning. How about that?" asked Shibata. He tried to sound pleasant, he tried to sound friendly, he tried to put Fukuda at ease…even though he didn't really want to…he had no idea what he wanted. He didn't know what he wanted but he did know what he had to do…and what he had to do was take care of Fukuda…because that was what he did. He took care of people.

He had no problem taking care of people…even Fukuda.


	442. I Trust You Totally and Completely

Serizawa had always liked it best when he was home alone.

Being home alone was the best thing, really, because then nobody was in any danger. When mom was home he was always so…on edge. He alas kept an ear out for her footsteps near his door. She liked to knock on his door to leave him food and clean clothes and stuff…and something she even just wanted to talk…been though she knew that he had nothing to talk about. He'd never had anything to talk about…anything that she would have understood, anyway. His life had been games and shows and…and things that she just did not like…but she still listened to him and talked to him and…and he loved her but…

But she should have known that it was safer for her if she just left him alone.

The people here knew to leave him alone. His new…friends? Miss Suzuki had called them all his friends. She had said that everyone in this house was friends not only with her but with each other and if he just made more of an effort to come out of his room then he could be friends with them too. She had even invited him to go to a party...and he had never been to a party in his life. Not even when he'd been small. Nobody had ever invited him to any parties….not birthday or Christmas or new years or…or anything. He had never even had a real birthday party with other people besides mom…so going to the party…

It would have been more effort than he even knew how to…how to give.

He was happy in his room anyway. He was all alone in the house, that really tall person had left him dinner on the kitchen table, and now he was just relaxing and playing some Minecraft. Hatori, the person on the other side of his wall, said that there was a massive Minecraft world the he and Miss Suzuki and Miss Suzuki's father had built together, and also he had offered to let Serizawa be a part of that too but…but that was just…too much for him right now. He hadn't even been with these people for a month, hadn't even had friends for a whole month, and he just…he was not up to spending time with anyone.

Which was why it was a good thing that the house was empty.

Well it had been empty. He felt a shift in the energy around him. That was what that feeling was, that nagging feeling at the edges of his perception. That was energy and it meant that someone else with an aura was in his aura. Sort of like how enemies could detect you in a game. Miss Suzuki had said that. She knew all about this stuff because she had been raised around people like her….like them. Her father was just like they were. He wondered what that was like…having a parent who understands you….or even having a father in general. He didn't know about fathers, his dad hadn't had much interest in being a father, but it must have been nice…having one…he thought. He didn't know. Maybe he could ask her.

She was coming his way after all.

It was one of the first things that you learned as an esper, she had said, how to sense other espers. She said that it had come easy to her because she had always lived with her dad and brother. She said that it was ok that he didn't know everything that an esper knew because he had been all alone for so long…and also she had said that he never had to be all alone again. But he wanted to be all alone. He wanted to live in a world all on his own, a world where the only thing that existed was him and these four walls, a world where he would have been alone and…and everyone else would have been safe…because he would have been away from them. He had wanted to live in that sort of world for so long…or maybe he had just told himself that he wanted to live in that sort of world…because that sort of world was a lonely one…and he had been so lonely for so long that maybe…maybe he hadn't even noticed that he had been lonely…like now.

Now he felt lonely.

He didn't know why he felt lonely. He could feel her coming, Miss Suzuki, and she always loved spending time with him. He had no reason to feel lonely. He had no reason to feel anything other than happy to see her…but he just…he didn't even know what he wanted. To have been able to…to have gone with her, maybe? To have been able to have stepped out of this room and gone to the party? He didn't like…he had no idea if he liked parties or not. The closest thing he had ever been to a party was listening to the birthday breakfast thing that they had done for…he forgot his name…the really tall blind guy and…well he maybe shouldn't have referred to him like that because it might have been kind of mean…he'd apologize later…or he'd ask Miss Suzuki if it was alight to apologize. She knew about these sorts of things. She knew about everything

She might have even known how he felt.

Because he didn't even know how he felt. He wanted to be with people and he wanted to be alone. He wanted to go to the party and he wanted to spend the rest of his life in his room. He wanted to be out there in the world and he wanted the world to be these four walls. He wanted things…and he didn't want them…and he just…he wished that he knew. All the other people in the world seemed to know exactly who they were and who they wanted to be…and he just…he had no clue. He wished that he could have been like Miss Suzuki. She was always so…smart. She knew exactly who she was and who she wanted to be…and she was always so put together.

She was always so together.

There was a knock at his door. That was her. He could see her colors. That pink and blue that he could see was her. He still froze, though, for a moment. He froze because for a moment, just a moment, he had felt his curse…his powers….jump. Maybe because he had wanted to jump. Maybe because he had wanted to jump right out of his skin. He didn't know why. He knew that she was there, he knew that she was the only one who ever knocked on his door, and he knew that she had told him a thousand times before that even if he lost control of his powers he was in no danger of hurting her….but he had still jumped…and he should have been better than that…

He should have been more normal.

"C-come in." said Serizawa. There. That was the normal thing to say when someone…when your friend…was knocking at your door. There. He had said what he had to say and he had done what he'd had to do…and he'd done something right…and now he was…he was alright. He was alright and he had done what he was supposed to do and…and he should have felt fine. He had nothing to be afraid of. It was just Miss Suzuki.

Miss Suzuki dressed like that princess she liked from that movie…and also she was drinking something from a can…and she had what looked like a very thin lit cigarette in her hand.

"Serizawa! Happy Halloween!" said Miss Suzuki as she walked in through his door. He paused his game, stood up, and bowed. It had been instinct. He knew that they were friends but…but he was still getting the hang of it all. He just knew that bowing was polite…so that was what he did…

And that was what she did, too.

She bowed and whatever was in her can sloshed out. He expected it to hit his rug….not that he was annoyed she could spill her soda, it didn't smell like soda, wherever she felt like…but she just caught it with her powers and drank it right out of the air like those astronauts he had seen on TV once. That was so cool….he could never do anything like that…but she could. She could even if she was…swaying…and also her face and eyes were red…and he had seen enough TV to know what that meant…

Yeah, parties were not for him.

"Serizawa, you don't have to bow…we're friends! I mean I haven't been much of a friend to you lately but we are friends…and I'm so sorry I left you home all alone." Said Miss Suzuki. She reached out and hugged him…and it took him a moment to hug her back. She was so small and he just…he couldn't shake the feeling of how easily he could have hurt her…and he didn't want to hurt her…but he could see his colors and he could feel his curse…his powers and…and she was too close! Didn't she know what could happen to her if she got this close?

Obviously she did…and she didn't care.

She let him go. She let him go and she was looking up at him and…right! Right, she had said something. Something had been said to him and the polite thing to do, when something was said to him, was to say something back…so that was what he did. He found words. He founds words that would fit…and he did his best to keep his powers and his colors where they belonged…because he just…he knew that he could have sent her flying on accident…and she was so small…so much smaller than him…and he knew that she was stronger than him but she was also so small and….and he didn't want to hurt his only friend.

He didn't want to lose his only friend.

"No, no, don't be. It's alright. I prefer to be alone actually…it's relaxing. There's nobody around who I could accidentally…hurt." Said Serizawa. He didn't want to lose her, he didn't want to hurt her, and mostly…mostly he just…he wanted to be someone else. She had said that it was normal to want to have been born a normal person and that it would pass as he got better with his powers and made friends with all of their friends. That was normal and he was normal and…and he had never been normal in his life and…and she had called him that and she was in his room and she wanted to be with him and…

And it was so nice…having someone like her for a friend.

"Oh. I can go home then, I mean I wanted to spend time with you but if you want to be alone then I can go. Maybe I can spend time with my dad and Hatori…they're probably having another math party…or I could go back to the party I guess…even though all of my friends are busy…or I could just get a jump on tomorrow's laundry-" said Miss Suzuki

"No! I mean…I mean I don't want you to go. You can stay…um…do you want to sit down?" asked Serizawa. He didn't want to keep her prisoner…and he didn't want to lose her either…and he just…he mostly just didn't want to be alone. Somehow she both made him feel lonely and also…also took the loneliness away. He didn't understand it. He didn't understand anything. Maybe it was part of her powers or something, he didn't know, all he knew was that she was there with him and…and he wanted her to stay there with him.

Also she didn't seem well.

"Yes please…the room is moving." Said Miss Suzuki. She took a step forward and leaned onto him. He steadied her as best as he could. He wished that he could have held her with his powers but…well he didn't trust himself to do that yet. So he held her up with his own strength…and she was very light. He had no idea how she could have been so small…and so light. How could a person have possibly been as small as she was?

Maybe she was just…tiny? Or young? He didn't know. All he knew was that she was not well.

"Miss Suzuki? Are you alright?" asked Serizawa as he steadied her. She smiled up at him and nodded. She nodded even though she had almost gone tumbling down onto the rug. How she could always be so…so calm all the time…he would never know.

"I'm fine, the floor just moved is all. I'll be fine." Said Miss Suzuki. Serizawa tapped the floor with his foot. The only thing that he could feel through his sock was the crumbs on the carpet. She said that the floor as moving though…and he had no idea what she meant…but he wanted to believe her…or at least know what she was talking about…

"Um…I don't feel it but-" said Serizawa. Would set get upset with him for contradicting her? She had never been upset with him before but….but weren't friends supposed to agree on everything? He didn't know. He had never been a friend before. He had never had a friend or been a friend and he wanted so badly to be a good one…and he wished that there was some kind of how to guide or something that he could have read…because sometimes this friendship thing was hard.

"No, no, of course you don't. You didn't drink anything…and maybe I should have listened to Minegishi…I don't know. Here, do you want the rest of my beer?" asked Miss Suzuki as she sat down on his bed. She sat down on his bed and passed him the can that she had been drinking out of. She had been drinking out of it and now she was handing it to him…and he knew that sharing germs wasn't good but…well they were friends. They were friends and friends could share germs.

And also beers.

This was a beer can, it said so on the front. There was braille on the top, too, that might have said that this was beer…but he couldn't read that and the one person in the house who could wasn't home…and Serizawa wouldn't have bothered him anyway. No, it would have been pointless. This was beer and…and part of him wanted to hand it back to her. There was a part of him that wanted to tell her that he was too young for that…the part of him that looked in the mirror and still expected to be her size…or maybe even her….age? He had no idea how old she really was but he knew that he was twenty seven….and he knew that he was more than old enough to have a drink….and he also knew that he had never had a drink before in his life.

"Um….I've never had beer before…" said Serizawa. What if he got drunk? He had never been drunk before…and he had no idea what he would do if he to drunk. He had seen drunk people in games and on TV before…and he knew that if he got drunk then he wouldn't have been able to control his powers…and he couldn't even do that now but…but she as offering him a drink and…and he wanted to fit in and…and he trusted her but…

But he didn't fully trust himself.

"You probably won't like it. I just took it because it was in cans. If I took a whole bottle of champagne or something then people would notice…and also that would have been very greedy of me…and also Minegishi says that I should always use moderation and drinking a whole bottle of champagne is not moderation." Said Miss Suzuki. She nodded as she spoke…and she spoke with such…a sense that she knew what she was talking about…and of course she did. This was Miss Suzuki. There was no way that she would ever steer him wrong. They were friends and friends never steered each other wrong…at least that was his understanding of friendship. It was all still pretty new to him…but that was alright. Lots of things were new to him but…well that just meant that he had the chance to try new things…

Even things that he didn't really want to try.

"Um…if you think that it's a good idea…alright." Said Serizawa. He didn't really want to try this…but she said that it was a good idea and he trusted her. She was his friend and she had already done so much for him, she had taken him out of the h-word that had been his life, so the least that he could do was try this beer…and really it looked like soda…and he liked soda…

It looked like soda but it didn't taste like soda.

"Sorry to laugh just…you made a funny face there." said Miss Suzuki. Serizawa hadn't realized that he had been making any kind of face at all. He had just been focusing on not spitting anything out. That had been…he had no idea why she would drink something like this willingly. That had been the most bitter thing that he had ever tasted…and with the world of drinks out there that weren't bitter he had no idea what would make her choose to drink something that tasted so bad.

But then again there were a lot of things about her, about people, that he didn't understand.

"I-I'm sorry. It's just…very bitter. I don't really like it…I'm sorry." said Serizawa. He sat back down where he had been. He was on the floor and he had to look up to see her. She was sitting up on his bed and smoking her very thing cigarette. It was almost out, or done with, but she had another one behind her ear…and he wondered if she would offer him one next. He didn't understand smoking either…but she did…and it wasn't like she would ever steer him wrong. These were just the things that people did, that adults did, and he was an adult so…well he had to start doing all of the things that adults did. He was already so behind as it was.

"That's ok. We'll find something that you like and then you'll be able to control your powers better. Beer is good for that…well all drinking is…but if you don't like that then you probably won't like a lot of other things. That just tastes bitter. Everything else tastes like burning…well not champagne…but I didn't want to take a whole bottle of champagne. Minegishi would have been mad at me…if they even noticed. They made a new friend and stuff…but maybe they would have noticed if they ever decided to come back to me…but it's ok. I took a beer…well a whole bunch of them…and they're ok too. All drinking is good really. I don't know how I could have ever learned how to control my powers all the way if Minegishi hadn't taught me to drink…well and smoke, too, but that was mostly Shimazaki who taught me how to smoke." Said Miss Suzuki

"Really? This helps?" asked Serizawa. He couldn't help it, he made that same face again. He'd had one sip and it had been awful…but maybe it was like medicine. When he'd been little, and when he'd still gotten sick, mom had made him drunk the worst tasting medicine in the world….but it had been good for him…and Miss Suzuki…well she was doing the same thing…she was trying to make him better….

So he took another sip.

Terrible. Just terrible…but she had been drinking it. Maybe that was just a thing that adults got used to. She was used to it and she wasn't even…well he had no idea how old she was, actually. She was small, like a kid, but sometimes adults were really small. She was in a princess costume though but sometimes girls did cosplay. He liked cosplay girls…not her though! Not like that. This was Miss Suzuki. He would never have thought about her like that…and not even because he wasn't entirely sure how old she was. This was Miss Suzuki and she just…was not someone he thought of like that.

She took care of him even though there were so many other things that she could have been doing.

She could have been at the party with her friends but she had chosen to come all the way back home to be with him. He hadn't been lonely…not any lonelier than normal…but she had still come back to him and now she was sitting on his bed and…and also she was smoking but he didn't mind even though it smelled terrible…she was with him and that was the point. The only person who had ever voluntarily wanted to be with him was his mother…and it was best for her that they hadn't been together…because he had hurt her so many times on accident…but he could never hurt Miss Suzuki. Not on purpose or on accident. She was stronger than he was. She was better than he was.

She was better in so many ways…ways that he couldn't even count.

"Yeah, watch this." said Miss Suzuki. She waved her arm and then all of his games…well they stacked to the ceiling. They all stacked on top of one another like Jenga blocks until they touched the ceiling…and then as quick as they stacked they went back to their shelves and stacks. She had done all of that with a wave of one hand...the other hand had her skinny cigarette in it. She had done all of that without even trying…and also while being drunk…well he suspected anyway.

"That was…amazing. I could never do anything like that…sorry." said Serizawa. He wished…well he had no idea when he ever would have wanted to do something like that…but it was a thing that she could do and he couldn't…not that he was jealous of her. No, he could never be jealous of her. He just…he wanted to be here.

"Yes you could. You could but you…well it's ok. You just don't think that you can and it's holding you back I think…but don't worry. I'm here. I know all the stuff…so don't worry. I can help you control your powers and then you won't be so scared all the time and then you can make friends with everybody and then everything is going to be ok. I promise and a promise is a promise." Said Miss Suzuki. She stared him in the eyes when she said that…and she was so serious…and he was going to be serious too. A promise was a promise. He had promised himself that he would never hurt anyone again and…and he had kept that promise.

"It…it is…" said Serizawa. A promise was a promise and he agreed with her…and he also sort of expected there to be flames behind her…since she was so fired up. Well she had been. Then she took another inhale from her cigarette and started coughing. She didn't seem like she was enjoying it based on all the coughing….it didn't seem enjoyable at all…

So why the h-word was she offering him a cigarette in that case?

"Good. Now finish this joint." Said Miss Suzuki. She passed him the little cigarette….and he took it. He took it and he looked at it. It was thin and skinny and it felt terrible and…and she just…she was looking at him like she expected something….well he knew what she was expecting of him. She wanted him to finish off her baby cigarette…

For some reason.

"What?" asked Serizawa as he held it in his hand. This was….part of him, that same part that told him that he was too young to drink, also told him that he was too young to smoke. He was too young to…no, he wasn't, he was twenty seven years old now. He wasn't a kid anymore and he could have smoked if he had wanted to…and he just…he didn't really want to…and that wasn't ok because…because she wanted him to.

"I've known you for almost a month and we've never smoked together. That's weird for me. I've smoked more with my dad than I have with you…and never smoke with my dad. He gets…weird…when he smokes. Really weird." Said Miss Suzuki

"I didn't know that smoking cigarettes could make a person act weird…or even why someone would smoke them in the first place." Said Serizawa

"No, no, this isn't a cigarette, this is a joint. It's like a cigarette but it makes you all relaxed…and is also very illegal so don't go around telling people that I have this or I could be in real trouble." Said Miss Suzuki

"I-I won't!" said Serizawa. He didn't want to get in trouble…and he never would have done anything that would have gotten her in trouble. He cared so much about her and…and he didn't want to get in trouble….but he knew that she would never have done anything that could have gotten him in trouble. He trusted her completely.

"Good. Don't worry, though, this isn't the bad kind of illegal like killing people or robbing banks or cutting off people's faces and wearing them." Said Miss Suzuki

"That's….a thing that happens?" asked Serizawa. He…felt the urge to lock his door…and his windows….and then get his umbrella and pull her close and never let her go. He needed to keep her safe from whoever would hurt her. Nothing in this world would ever take his friend from him. He would die first. He would die before he let anything happen to her.

He meant it.

"Yes, in movies anyway and art imitates life so I guess in life too. Anyway this isn't a bad thing, it's just illegal, and sometimes the law doesn't know what's right and what isn't. Like how smoking and stuff makes you feel good but it's illegal or how you can't do stuff in one country that you can do in another. Or like how in one country you can be a weirdo for doing stuff with someone but in another country it's perfectly fine, or even in another prefecture." Said Miss Suzuki. Serizawa…had no idea what she was talking about. She was talking so fast that he couldn't follow….or maybe he was just listening too slowly.

"I…don't follow." Said Serizawa

"I don't know the last part either. Shimazaki just said that when we were smoking once. Then he said that if I ever wanted to kiss him when I got older I should just ask and he wouldn't care what country we were in…but he says that sometimes and I just ignore it. I would never do anything like that to my best friend." Said Miss Suzuki

"Older?" asked Serizawa. She was….she was young looking….but she was old enough to smoke and drink…right? She was…not his age but…what? He didn't ask her, it was ride to ask a girl her age he knew that, but he just…really needed to know.

"Yeah, he says that I'm too young for him to like me like that and that in two or three years then he can like me like that but I don't want him to ever like me like that. Even if he wasn't my best friend's boyfriend I wouldn't like him like that. He's just…better as a friend, I think, than a boyfriend. I mean he's a nice person but he also acts like a crazy person and I don't like that. Also we're just friends so it doesn't matter. I don't even think that he likes me like that. I think that those might just be smoking thoughts. That's something that happens when you smoke, your brain gets kind of weird, so you should watch out for that…but don't worry. I won't hold anything that you say or do against you." Said Miss Suzuki

"I…don't know if I want to do this…if it's going to make me say and do things that I normally wouldn't. I mean I trust you! I trust you and I trust you when you say that it'll help me control my powers but…I just…I'm not sure." Said Serizawa

"Oh. Well then you don't have to. We can just hang out then…but you don't know what you're missing. Besides, you can't be any weirder than my dad. When he smokes he tells me over and over and over again how much he loves me and he brushes my hair and stuff…and I know that I sound ungrateful when I say that it bothers me….and it doesn't bother me-bother me…but it's just…kind of a lot…and I shouldn't complain to you. You don't even have a dad. I'm being mean." Said Miss Suzuki

"N-No…you aren't. I mean…you don't have a mom so we're even. You could never be mean to me, we're friends, and I trust you. I trust you." Said Serizawa. He trusted her in all things…and if she said that this would be good for him then he would try it…and he did try it…

And he passed it back to her.

"No, no, you can finish it….and try to hold it in your lungs for a little bit longer. That way it'll hit you better." Said Miss Suzuki. She passed it back to him…and that was enough for him. Enough confrontation…even though that wasn't confrontation. He had said that he hadn't wanted to but…well she would never steer him wrong…so he trusted her…even though he didn't want anything to hit him…but it would be ok….right?

"That way what will hit me better?" asked Serizawa

"You'll get stoned faster…and trust me, you want to be stoned. It's the best feeling ever. It's like being high but…better. The world is going slow and fast at the same time and everything is soft and just…nice. It's a good feeling. You should keep going." said Miss Suzuki

"Al….alright. I trust you." Said Serizawa. He meant it. He trusted her and…and he would do this…for her.

"You should, we're friends. Anyway, do you want to watch a movie? Or I can watch you play games…but I don't think that I'm up to playing any two player games right now. Sorry." said Miss Suzuki

"No…that's alright. We can watch a movie. Um….you're wearing that dress…do you want to watch the movie of the princess who wears that dress?" asked Serizawa

"Serizawa…are you asking me if I want to watch Frozen?" asked Miss Suzuki. She was staring at him and…and she was…she had that fired up look again….and he had no idea if it was good or bad or…or what he had done or what he was supposed to do so…so he just…he would make it better. He would make it better even though he had no idea what he had ever done….just now…

"Um…yes. But if you want to watch something else we can-" said Serizawa

"Yes. Of course I want to watch Frozen…it's the best movie ever made." Said Miss Suzuki

"I've never seen it…sorry." said Serizawa. That just made the fired up look come back…and she was even more fired up…and this looked like….he still couldn't tell if he was at fault…or if it was good or bad and…and he just….he wanted his umbrella. He wanted to pull them both under his umbrella and keep her safe…even though he had no idea what he even wanted to keep her safe from.

"Serizawa….listen, I have never been more sad for you than I am at this moment in my life…and now we have to watch Frozen. Trust me, it'll change your life for the better." Said Miss Suzuki. She scooted to the end of the bed. She was still all fired up and…she was also sad about him and…and he had no idea what she had been sad about…he'd been through worse and…and maybe he just….maybe he was happy that she was sad that he had never seen her favorite movie and not…because of the h-word his life had been…not that he wanted her to be sad or anything but…well if she had to be sad about something in his life than she should have been sad about that and not…

The other things.

"Alright, I trust you." Said Serizawa. He did. He trusted her totally and completely. Even though he didn't much like smoking…or drinking…or the light and heady feeling he got from both…but he did like this movie and he did like her and he trusted her completely. She was his friend and that was what friends did, they trusted each other, and he knew that there was nothing in the world that could ever make him stop trusting her.

He used to like it best when he as home alone…but he liked it even better when she was with him.


	443. You're Acting Weird but I Trust You

Sho did not trust the ocean.

The ocean was big and black and cold and had a lot of water in it The water was the part that he didn't trust. The beach was fine. He had shoes on so none of the little rocks and stuff hurt him and he didn't mind, either, that it was dark out. He didn't mind at all. This was…aside from the water it was ok. The water was the dangerous part. The water was the part that could swallow him up. The water was the part that could carry him away and pull him under and no matter how much he kicked and screamed and fought it would still be above his head…and screaming just made it worse. Screaming just made water go in his mouth and down his throat and then in his lungs and it burned and he couldn't breathe or think or see and all he could do was kick and try to get out but there was no out and-

-and Sho hated the ocean.

"Can we go now? I'm cold and wet." Said Sho. He and Shimazaki were laying down on the sand on some beach that Sho did not know the name of. There were boats all around them, and there were more rocks than sand, and also Sho got the feeling that they weren't meant to be there…but he wouldn't be telling Shimazaki that. He wanted to go and he knew that if he told Shimazaki that they weren't meant to be there then they would just end up staying longer because they went where they wanted to go.

That was what Shimazaki had said when they left the party.

Sho had asked where they were going and Shimazaki said that they went where they wanted to go and now they were here. Shimazaki teleported them here and then he laid down on the ground and asked Sho, well told him, to do the same. They had been here for long enough that Sho's legs and back were wet and cold. Shimazaki either didn't noticed, didn't care, or he couldn't even feel it through his barrier…if it was even up. Maybe it was down. That would have been weird but Shimazaki had been weird all night.

Sho never wanted to get as high as Shimazaki had been so far that night. Ever.

"It's good…to be cold and wet. That way you know that you're feeling something. Like, it's so easy to not feel anything at all, you know? Like you go to sleep and you wake up but like…like you're still asleep? And you don't even know if it's dark outside or light…and not just because you have no idea what light is. Like…you go to sleep and you're awake and life is like a waking dream and you just…do whatever you can to feel alive. To feel anything, you know?" asked Shimazaki. Didn't turn to face Sho while he talked. He looked up at the sky. Sho didn't know why. Even if he had been able to see he wouldn't have been able to see any stars. There was too much light in the city to see them. The stars were pretty when they stayed in the middle of nowhere…not that he had ever thought about watching the stars with Shimazaki. There would have been no point to it…and he had never thought about Shimazaki rolling onto his side and telling Sho that he liked him as more than a friend and he didn't care what people thought or if dad would kill him for liking Sho back…Sho had certainly never thought about that before…and he certainly was not thinking of it now.

It was too cold to think about stuff like that.

"Um….I don't. Not really." Said Sho. Shimazaki had been talking like that all night. Like he was having a conversation with himself or something. He talked really fast and he jumped around like he was teleporting after himself trying to tell himself something…or maybe someone else….but he was the only person who Sho knew that could teleport so it would have made sense that he was talking to himself…and stuff…or maybe nothing made sense.

Shimazaki certainly wasn't making a lot of sense.

"Ok…ok. Listen, it's like…like when you get up in the morning and it's like…ok. So what? Today is going to be like yesterday and yesterday is going to be like today's tomorrow and it's just…like you spin round and round like a record. Like once you get to the end you don't even dock the needle, you know? Like you just start right from the beginning again and it's like…all you can do." Said Shimazaki

"I'm ten, I don't know about records and record players and stuff." Said Sho. He tried not to sound like a jerk there, and he had been successful in not cursing him out, but really. If he wanted to talk about records and record players then couldn't they have talked about all of that someplace warm without water…without an ocean that wanted to swallow them up and drown them and stuff? It wouldn't have been hard at all, to go someplace else, Shimazaki could teleport after all….though Sho wasn't sure exactly how much he trusted Shimazaki's teleportation right now.

"Fuck…you're right. I never taught you about music…and about vinyl. I need to teach you about vinyl. Vinyl…ok, so you know how music is all digital now? Well it's soulless. It's soulless and sounds like…like the music that…ghosts or something would listen to…but not skeletons. I think that skeletons would either listen to that spooky scary skeletons song or…I don't know. Maybe the nightmare before Christmas soundtrack. The main guy is a skeleton, right?" asked Shimazaki

"Jack? Yeah, he's a skeleton. That's why he's Jack Skellington. You gotta pay attention when we watch movies." Said Sho

"Hey, I can only go by the narration and what Toshi says…and anyway…ok. So…what was I talking about?" asked Shimazaki

"Us getting up and getting out of here." Said Sho

"Right. We can't because…right! Ok, we need to feel something. It's the worst when you just stop feeling things…like when Rise died…God. I thought that I would never be able to feel anything ever again…and I was doing heroin back then too. Heroin and meth…and maybe I shouldn't have had them fight it out…that might have been my problem…but nothing helped anyway. It's like…ok, first of all stay away from meth. Meth will ruin your fucking life. Stay away from heroin too. First of all stay away from anything that you need a needle to do…and also never snort heroin either…actually just stay away from heroin. Heroin and meth…and what else…" said Shimazaki

"What's heroin? And what's meth?" asked Sho. He got the feeling that Shimazaki was talking about more desk stuff. The stuff that he kept in his desk that Sho was not supposed to touch under any circumstances ever. Sho didn't need to be told twice. The first time he had ever eaten anything from Shimazaki's desk would also be the last time. That…none of that had been fun at all…and this wasn't very fun either.

He never wanted to be as high as Shimazaki was right now.

Usually he was fun when he got high…well he was fun all the time but he was especially fun when he got high. He wanted to run around and climb on things and throw things and mess with people…well he always wanted to do that but when he got high he especially loved that stuff…and Sho…well he loved it too…but now…this was different. He was all full of energy but instead of doing something he was just…sitting still and talking really fast about stuff that Sho didn't even know about…

It wasn't very fun at all.

"Awesome. Ok, so heroin, if you can feel stuff, takes you to this place where you're just like…like leaving a candle to burn and it melts and the warm is warm and it feels good on your skin as it hardens and meth…meth is like…you ever eat fifty peeps at once? That's what it's like….but also if you chase it with a bunch of coke, too, or crack…but never smoke crack. That's another life ruiner…well coke is a life ruiner too but coke is like 'hey, let's party' and crack is like 'fuck, how did I get here' and shit…so don't smoke crack either…and don't do meth…and don't snort heroin. The only thing that goes up your nose is coke…but the good shit. If you want good coke ask your sister. She knows how to get good coke…Kai never got me coke that good…I mean obviously it's never going to be totally pure but this was some good shit that your sister got me…so always get our coke from her….but don't do coke because really, you have enough energy as it is." Said Shimazaki

"Uh…ok…? But what does that have to do with us laying down in the ocean?" asked Sho

"We're not laying IN the ocean, we're just teasing it. The water wants to take us. Can't you feel it? The water wants us to go with it but we can't go with it. I can't let it take you. I can't let it take me. I don't trust it, you know, the ocean. It just…it takes people…and then they're gone and…and why did I throw her ashes in the ocean? What the fuck….what is wrong with you Ryou?! You had her and….and now her ashes are inside of a…a fish…or something and…and you're such and idiot!" said Shimazaki. He was sitting up now and Sho…well he knew that Shimazaki wasn't yelling at him…because he was his friend and friends didn't talk to each other like that. Like how dad talked to him. Like how dad told him that he was an idiot. Like how dad was always…always telling him how he was such an idiot. But Shimazaki wasn't talking to Sho, he was talking to himself, and in some ways that was even worse. Shimazaki shouldn't have been talking about himself or to himself like that. He was the coolest, smartest, most fun person that Sho had ever met…and he shouldn't have been talking like that about himself.

Especially over some girl.

He had never met Rise but he knew that she was some dead girl that Shimazaki used to be in love with…and he was really sorry that she was dead and all but…but he didn't need Shimazaki screaming over her and being all weird over her too. She was dead and now he had Minegishi…and Sho didn't want to think about them either. He was just the worst sometimes. Here Shimazaki was screaming about his poor dead girlfriend and all Sho could do was wish that he would shut up because he didn't want to think about Shimazaki being in love with everyone else.

It wasn't too cold for that stupid goldfish to start swimming after all.

"Hey…you're not an idiot…you're my friend…so knock it the fuck off already! You're sitting there freaking out like a baby! You're freaking out over someone who's been dead for a long time! It doesn't matter what you did with her ashes or if…if you loved her or she loved you or you feel stuff or you don't…because you're alive and you're here and she's not and it's cold and you can feel the cold and I can feel the cold but she can't! Now get up! We're cold and wet and…and hate the water!" said Sho. He didn't want to be there anymore and…and sometimes you had to say what you had to say to snap your best friend out of…whatever he was in. Sometimes you had to tell him to shut his mouth about girls that were dead and stuff that you didn't understand and…and he hated being an asshole. He hated being an asshole to Shimazaki especially but…but he didn't want to sit there listening to all of that either!

But he might have crossed a line.

Because now Shimazaki was facing him. Sho could tell, from the lights around them, that Shimazaki had his eyes opened. It never got truly dark in the city. Even on a beach in the city where they kept boats and stuff it never got truly dark. It was dark enough that he couldn't read Shimazaki's t-shirt but it wasn't so dark that he couldn't tell when Shimazaki had his eyes opened….

And he had no idea if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

"Me too! Get up!" said Shimazaki suddenly. He grabbed Sho under his arm and hoisted him to his feet. Sho forgot, sometimes, how strong Shimazaki was. He didn't use his powers there, Sho would have been able to tell if he had, he had just lifted Sho…with his own strength…and that could have been a good thing or a bad thing. Sho didn't know. He didn't know and…and not knowing…well it was enough to make his goldfish even stop swimming for a little bit…

He had no idea what he was supposed to do now.

"Ok…what are we doing?" asked Sho. He could feel the ground, the rocky sand, underneath his feet. He could feel Shimazaki looking at him. Shimazaki was quiet. Nothing good ever came from Shimazaki being quiet…and Sho…he knew what Shimazaki did to people. He had heard plenty of stories and even seen it…and he knew that if he got dropped in the ocean that he would not have been able to get out of it…and he knew that Shimazaki was his best friend and cared about him and stuff…

But he also knew that he had been an asshole to Shimazaki back then…and he hated it when people were asshole to him….

"Pick up a rock and throw it into the ocean. Here, watch me…fuck you! Fuck you water! Fuck you ocean! Fuck you currents that take you out to sea! Fuck you boats! Fuck you salt that gets in your eye sockets and won't come out! And fuck you sand!" screamed Shimazaki. Ok…more than ok! Yes! That was Shimazaki! That was the Shimazaki that he knew and loved…well he shouldn't have loved him but…but that was the Shimazaki that he knew and loved! He didn't care if he loved him right now…not if he was back to normal and not talking about stuff that Sho didn't understand or worse…girls he liked.

This was great!

"Yeah! Fuck the ocean! Fuck it up it's dick hole! Fuck it's mom! Fuck it's dad! Fuck it's kids! Fuck it so hard that you can't fuck it anymore!" shouted Sho as he picked up a rock and threw it in the ocean. He watched it until he couldn't anymore. He heard it hit the water but he couldn't see it. He knew that Shimazaki could. He knew that Shimazaki could see in all directions right now, that he was at the advantage, but he also knew that Shimazaki couldn't see…well stuff that Sho didn't want him to see.

All kinds of stuff.

The way that Sho knew that he was getting kind of red and not from the cold. The way that Sho stood too close to him…well he could see that…but he couldn't see why. He would never be able to see why. Shimazaki…Sho had been mean, before, when he had yelled at him for talking to him about that girl and…and Shimazaki couldn't see why. He was too high to tell and even when he wasn't, which wasn't that often now that Sho thought about it, he would never have been able to tell how Sho felt about him. Why Sho was even with him on this cold beach in the middle of the night on Halloween when there was a whole party that they could have gone to.

It was a good thing….that Shimazaki couldn't see it…the way that Sho felt…for the both of their sakes…

Shimazaki could tell a lot of things about a person. Like how he could tell if a person was lying just from their heartrate and breathing and stuff. Sho…well he knew how his heart got and how his lungs got when he was near Shimazaki…like now….but Shimazaki didn't notice. Shimazaki trusted him. Shimazaki trusted him and…and in not telling him…in keeping this a secret…it was like he was lying but he had no choice…well he had a choice. He had a pragmatic choice. He made a pragmatic choice to lie and…and it sucked and…and he focused on the feel of wet sand on his back and in his shoes instead of the stupid feelings that he got when Shimazaki was near. If he didn't notice then Shimazaki might not have noticed either.

He didn't notice everything…there were a lot of things, really, that he didn't notice.

"Yeah! Fuck the ocean and-" said Shimazaki

"What are you people doing down there?!" said a guy with a flashlight. He seemed like the sort of person who was supposed to keep people like him and Shimazaki off of that beach. Sho knew that they were in trouble. In Claw he could do whatever he wanted to do and go wherever he wanted to go but he wasn't in Claw anymore, no, he was out in the world. He was out in the world and he could get in real trouble and-

-and Shimazaki would never have let him get into real trouble.

Not in Claw, or in the world, or ever. Because they were best friends. They were best friends and best friends did not let bad things happen to one another. They took care of each other…including teleporting away when you got caught being somewhere that you shouldn't have been. Shimazaki had grabbed his arm and then the world had fallen away…and that was never fun…but then it came back. It came back and Sho found himself…

In a tree?

"Fuck…sorry. Sorry. I should have been on that better just…sorry." said Shimazaki. He reached over and steadied Sho. They were in a tree. They were in a tree and…and this place was really dark. He could see some fairy lights around a path and…and some other trees…and the moon…and even a few stars. But it was mostly dark. It was so dark that he could barely see Shimazaki in front of him. Maybe because, aside from his orange shirt, he was dressed in all black. Sho could sense him, though, there in the tree with him…

But he knew that Shimazaki could sense him better.

He steadied Sho. He knew that Sho had been about to fall out and he had steadied him…even though he knew that Sho had powers too. They could both carry themselves with telekinesis if they needed to…and Sho was pretty good at it…but Shimazaki had still reached out and steadied him. His hand was over Sho's heart and he must have been able to feel it beating like that…and he must have been able to feel Sho breathing the way he was breathing…and he was so close to his stomach that he must have been able to feel the goldfish too…but he didn't say anything. He just kept Sho steady and…and he may not have known how Sho was feeling but he must have known that he didn't have to do that…but it was still nice of him…

He was a good friend like that.

"It's…it's ok. I'm fine. Why the hell did you even bring us here for anyway?" asked Sho. He shook Shimazaki's hand off of his chest even though he wanted to keep it there for the rest of his life until their skin grew together and they turned into conjoined twins like in that movie.

"Because…I don't know. I like this place I guess. I like nature like…like it's there and it's alive…and it reminds me of Toshi…but not because of that. I came here before I even knew Toshi. I guess I like to think…or something. I mean I like the woods and all…and I like this…and this is kind of like the woods but nobody left me to die here. I would never leave you to die, by the way, because you're like…my kid...and stuff. I mean not my kid, pretty sure I never slept with your mom, but like…you're a kid that I take care of and shit." Said Shimazaki. Sho leaned back and tried to line up a kick in the darkness. No way. He stopped listening after the part about mom.

Nobody talked about his mom like that. Not even his best friend…or especially not his best friend.

"Gross. Don't talk about my mom like that." Said Sho. He kicked Shimazaki and managed to make contact with his leg…and he didn't put up a barrier or anything. He just sat there and took it. Shimazaki…he must have been really out of it…or he just realized that you weren't supposed to talk about people's moms like that. Either option was good.

"Sorry." said Shimazaki. That was all he could say…and that was so…weird! Shimazaki…even when he was high he just…well he said sorry to Sho but…but he had been weird enough tonight that even that 'sorry' was just…too much weirdness at once! Way too much!

"And don't say 'sorry' so often. It's weird hearing that from you. You don't day sorry to people. You tell them to go to hell…and stuff." Said Sho

"I never tell the people I care about to go to hell because I don't want the people I care about to go to hell. I've never been to hell…well I've come close…like the last time I did this…but you're here and you won't let that happen to me. I know that you won't…well Toshi said that they wouldn't…but they were in the middle of a really bad trip too…and that's why they don't like shrooms and acid and shit…so maybe I fucked up…maybe Toshi was right…maybe Toshi is always right…maybe I should start thinking about the stuff I do…and maybe I shouldn't be so afraid not to feel anything…and maybe I should handle my shit better and…and maybe I've been living in one long today for the past like ten years or something and…and shit…Toshi's smarter than me of course they're right." Said Shimazaki

"…will you shut up about Minegishi already?" asked Sho. He wanted to kick Shimazaki out of that tree. He knew that Shimazaki liked Minegishi. He knew that Minegishi liked them back. He knew that Shimazaki and Minegishi had what boys and girls, or boys and people who were born girls but weren't anymore, were supposed to have…and he knew that it was just…it wasn't fair! Why did they get to be in love with him and have him in love with them and why did it have to be ok for them and….and it hurt. Hearing him talk about it…he knew it to be true but…but the whole thing was like…like a papercut. Like it hurt when he touched it and thought about it…and also this was something that not even Fukuda could fix…and he wanted Fukuda to fix this….to do something about his stupid heart and the stupid goldfish in his stomach….but there was nothing that he could do…nothing that he or anyone else could do…

Sho would have to just…deal with it himself…even though it was the worst feeling in the world.

"I can't. It's like…they're always in my head and shit and…and yeah. I'm making you feel like crap. Sorry. That's not what I wanted to do. That's not what we're here for." Said Shimazaki

"What are we here for then?" asked Sho quietly. He reached over and bent the tree branch under his hand. There was a thin branch, there, a baby branch…and he bent it…even though Minegishi was always saying that plants had feelings too….he bent it as far back as he could…and then he let it go.

And then it hit him in the face.

"I have no clue. Like…ok. I know that I'm here because my dad needed another Shimazaki to carry on our proud yakuza tradition or whatever but it's like…if that's what I'm here for then why was I born like this? I can't help it. I can't help the way I am and…well it's like it doesn't matter because I have my powers but like…shit. Why even give me powers in the first place? You know? When I was a kid I wanted to be normal and….and it's like…I wanted to be normal because I spent so many years wanting to be what that bastard wanted me to be…to have a purpose I guess…to be less useless than I am…and it's like…fuck. I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why any of us are here." Said Shimazaki

"I meant 'why are we in this tree?' not 'why did our dads make us?' because there's no point in asking why our dads made us. That's just what you're supposed to do when you grow up. You find some girl and then you have kids with her. That's just how growing up works." Said Sho

"Fuck…do you think that's what I'm doing? Like…am I only with Toshi because…like they keep on saying. Am I trying to redo my life but make it better? Like…when I'm with you my main thought is 'how do I make this kid's life better' and shit….because your life is shitty in a lot of the ways that my life was shitty….and I don't want either of us to have shitty lives…so is that what I'm doing? Am I just doing what I think that I'm supposed to be doing?" asked Shimazaki

"I don't know. Maybe? I mean aren't you supposed to do what you have to do…but you…you're Shimazaki. You do whatever you want to do." Said Sho

"Yeah! You're right! I'm in this tree and…and I want to be in this tree! Yeah! This is my tree and I want to be in here and…and that's what I'm going to do!" said Shimazaki

"Ok…cool. Want to hang upside down and pretend that we're possums? You like to do that..." Said Sho

"That would be so fucking awesome. You're so fucking awesome. You're the most awesome person that I have ever met, Sho, you know that? You're so cool for a kid. Wish I'd known someone like you when I had been your age." Said Shimazaki

"Really?" asked Sho. It took him a second to get that word out. It was one word but…but he didn't have any words. He knew that Shimazaki thought that he was cool…he had known for a while since they were best friends and all…but for him to just come out and say it…the whole thing was…it was enough to make him think that maybe he was going to die from his heart beating too fast or his lungs moving too slow…or maybe his soul was just going to climb up out of his body and go to wherever souls went when they passed on…and stuff…

"Really. Like, if I had been your age…but I'm not your age because you're eleven and it's not nineteen ninety six…and remind me that it's not nineteen ninety six every so often…but if I had been your age then we totally would have been friends. I mean your dad would have done business with the family…probably a lot of it since the nineties sucked financially and culturally too but not for cultural reasons…and we would have been friends. Best friends." Said Shimazaki

"Um…do you ever think that…I mean we would have been just friends…right?" asked Sho. There were two Sho's arguing in his head now. One of the Sho's told him that he was a moron and the other Sho told him that he needed to know for important reasons that would come to him later. Both Sho's had equally good points and…and he decided to listen to the second Sho…since it wasn't like he just came out and asked Shimazaki if they would have been….together…like boyfriend and boyfriend…he just asked if they would have been more than friends…which could mean best friends…

And also Shimazaki was super high so he probably wasn't thinking too much about it…and he had just flipped upside down too…so maybe he wasn't going to be doing a lot of thinking for a long while.

"Probably not. If we'd been the same age then, knowing myself back then…what year is it? How old am I?" asked Shimazaki. Sho…he hung upside down too. He hung upside down and maybe…maybe if all the blood rushed to his head then none would be in his heart and then it wouldn't be hurting as much as it was now…since Shimazaki had just said that they wouldn't have been more than friends and…

And the smart Sho in his head wondered what he had been expecting Shimazaki to say.

He knew what he wanted Shimazaki to say. He wanted Shimazaki to say that they totally would have been boyfriends and it would have been just like how things were now but only with kissing and handholding and maybe all of that other stuff that came later…and also no Minegishi because he never would have met them…and also maybe dad would have been nicer because…reasons….but he knew that what he wanted to happen and what would have happened were two very different happenings…and he knew that he shouldn't have expected Shimazaki to say anything else aside from what would have happened…

And he also knew that he was expected to say something too.

"You're thirty one and it's-" said Sho

"Thirty one. Cool. And you're still eleven." Said Shimazaki

"I will be in a month." Said Sho. He was still ten. Next month would be his birthday and then…and then maybe dad would remember it…not that he cared if dad remembered his birthday or not…and not that he even knew why he was thinking about dad and whether or not he was planning on forgetting his birthday again. It didn't matter if dad forgot his birthday. Shimazaki would remember. He would remember because he got it tattooed on his arm. 12-1. There was no way that he would ever forget even if he couldn't see it.

"Well you aren't eleven now and that's what matters….and I won't be answering that question since I know that it'll just hurt you…or give you hope…or whatever. I mean, yeah, I know myself at eleven and I know that if someone gave me the time of day then they could give me whatever else they wanted to…which now that I look back at it was pretty fucked up. Like…you can't use love to get sex and you can't use sex to get love and I was your age…well older…when I learned to separate the two…but yeah…just…what was I on about?" asked Shimazaki

"Not sex! Gross!" said Sho. No way! He was never doing that…not until he grew up and he had to. Adults were so gross sometimes. He didn't know why anyone would want to do something like that with someone else. Well he could sort of get wanting to see someone naked…not that he ever thought about Shimazaki like that! And not that he ever saw other guys and thought about…stuff…because that was gross too! And not in the good way!

"Right. Not sex. Love? No….I don't think that I believed in love back then…how old are you?" asked Shimazaki

"Ten and eleven months." Said Sho. He wasn't eleven, not really, and that month….well he knew that a month wasn't very long…but it felt like it. One month felt like a long time….and so did one year…and so did the twenty years that separated him and Shimazaki…more so than normal, anyway.

"Right. Ok, so I still believed in love back then and it was like…I guess that I just wanted someone to love me…and I guess that I still want that…and I have it…and it should be enough but…love is like heroin, you know? You never have enough…and also when you do have it all you can think about is getting more…or maybe it's more like meth….I told you not to do heroin or meth right?" asked Shimazaki

"Yes." said Sho. He felt dizzy like he had been spinning around for a while…maybe because they had just been talking about this on the beach. Sho knew that he hadn't imagined it because he could feel the sand and water dripping down from him as he hung upside down like a wet and cold possum. It was less cold here, they were far from the water, but he felt like they were right back on that beach…and he didn't want to go in circles. He didn't care where they went just so long as it wasn't in circles…but Shimazaki wanted to go in circles…for some reason.

"Good…don't do those totally awesome things because they'll ruin your life…and you don't want to ruin your life. That's why I'm here, because I ruined my fucking life." Said Shimazaki. Sho, if he hadn't been hanging upside down like a possum, would have kicked him like a kangaroo. Like that time they had tried to ride in that kangaroo's pouch and she kicked them a lot…also they had very sharp claws…and he would have done that to Shimazaki if he could!

Because he was not a life ruiner!

Dad had said…he had said…well he'd been mad when he'd said it…but he'd said that his life would have been better without Sho…well he said that his life would have been better if Sho had been someone else…and then he'd picked him up and thrown him into the wall so hard he hadn't been able to breathe…but what dad had said….it had been worse than the wall and…

And Shimazaki…he loved Shimazaki and…and someone he loved had said…someone he loved more than anyone else in the whole world…had said…that….

"Hey! This is a fun tree and….and you didn't ruin your life! We have fun together and…and you even said it! If we have fun together then…then life is good!" said Sho

"Yeah! You're right! Life is good! I have you and I have Toshi and, yeah, Claw is completely fucking insane but I love it! And I didn't ruin my life! I lived it on my own terms! Like now! This is my tree! This tree is mine and mine alone…but you can come in too…no one I think is in my tree…I mean it must be high or low…" said Shimazaki. Sho…he had never been so happy in his entire life. Shimazaki…well of course he hadn't meant it. He was just high. He didn't know what he was saying when he was high…and also…also Sho…well this tree was high and he had a lot of blood in his head now…and that was why…why he couldn't think of anything to say to that…anything besides 'Ryou, I love you' so…so maybe just…

Say the only other thing that came to mind.

"That is you can't, you know, tune in-" said Sho

"But it's all right." Said Shimazaki

"That is, I think, it's not too bad." Said Sho. Shimazaki was smiling at him. Sho's eyes had adjusted to the light and his aura had finally adjusted to Shimazaki's and…and he could tell hat he had made Shimazaki smile…and knowing that Shimazaki was smiling…well it was enough to make him smile and…and he felt like his heart was going to explode and the goldfish in his stomach was going to swim out through his bellybutton…but it was a good feeling…

Shimazaki…even when he was like this….could make Sho feel like this…feel so…happy…

"Heh…so I did teach you about music." Said Shimazaki. He was happy and Sho…he had to calm down. He swung himself up so that he was sitting and the blood could go down from his head. That must have been it. He had just had too much blood in his head and it had been making him think…thoughts…about things…and stuff. That was all.

"You did, and I listened. I listen to everything that you tell me…even if it doesn't make any sense." Said Sho. Shimazaki was still upside down….and maybe that was why he had been making less sense than normal. Maybe they needed to go some other place. Maybe they needed to go to a place where they could be upside up…and also dry…and warm…and also a place where the goldfish in Sho's stomach could just…knock it the hell off already!

"What doesn't make any sense?" asked Shimazaki

"Why we're in this tree." Said Sho

"Well where would you rather be? Trees are awesome. Toshi says-" said Shimazaki

"I'm not Minegishi." Said Sho

"Right…right. You like…you like trees! We climb them all the time! You like…what else do you like…dogs! You like dogs! Come on, let's find some dogs!" said Shimazaki

"But I don't think that anyone is going to be at the…park." Said Sho. Shimazaki had grabbed him and before he could think he was somewhere else. Somewhere warmer…somewhere just as dark but warm and it smelled like…he knew that smell…

It smelled like animals.

It smelled like dogs in there…and that was because this was an animal shelter. Shimazaki had brought him to an animal shelter and…and he expected…he had been stupid all night and he was still being stupid. The part of him, the stupid part, well he was all stupid parts…so all of him expected to see mom. Part of him expected to be really little and to see mom coming through the door with a kitten or a puppy and…and big sis would have been there too and…and then they would have petted the puppy and made friends with it and…and they would have helped feed and water and groom the animals and…and it would have been fun but…

He was ten years and eleven months old. Those times were over now.

"Fuck…stop it. Stop being upset. You like dogs and I like dogs and…and nobody can be upset when there are dogs around! So come on! Let's play with these dogs!" said Shimazaki. Sho wiped his eyes. He hated it when this happened. Sometimes they just decided to cry without telling him. Sometimes he just…got sad…and he didn't even know it…or want to know it…and now Shimazaki knew that he was sad but…well he knew that Shimazaki would never have made fun of him…but still. Shimazaki had seen him sad.

But then again he had seen Shimazaki…like this…so maybe that made them even.

"Sorry I was just…my mom used to work at an animal shelter and she'd bring me and big sis with her to work sometimes and…and stuff. Like on our birthdays…but then she got sick…and she slept all the time…and then she left and…and don't tell my dad that I was talking about my mom!" said Sho. Shimazaki was his friend and he knew that he would never sell him out to dad but…well Fukuda was more than his best friend, sort of like his dad if his dad hadn't been born an asshole, and he'd betrayed Sho…so that meant that anyone aside from big sis and little sis could betray him…and he didn't know what he would do if Shimazaki betrayed him…

Probably cry again like a little kid.

"You know I won't. I don't have anything to say to that bastard…and anyway I'm sorry. I didn't know about your mom….I am such a fuckup….I'm a useless fuckup and I shouldn't even be here…I shouldn't be thirty one…I should be your age…and I should be dead in the woods…and I should have been drowned and…and I made you upset and I can't do anything right and-" said Shimazaki. Sho….well not he wanted to cry again but for a different reason. Shimazaki saying stuff like this was just as bad as…as him saying stuff like this about Sho…it felt like. Maybe because they were best friends. Maybe because he was in love with him. Maybe because every single time he had ever seen Sho feeling down he had gone out of his way to pick him back up…and now Sho had to be the one to pick him back up again…even though he was a lot bigger and heavier than Sho…

But Sho…well he had to try.

"Shut up! Just….stop talking about yourself like that! I never said anything like that about you and I never will say anything like that about you so…so stop saying stuff like that about yourself! You know….fuck you! Fuck you for saying that kind of shit about yourself! Don't you know…don't you know that…that that's what he wants you to think! He wants you to think that you're stupid and useless and that you never should have been born and that you were born wrong….but you weren't! You're Shimazaki Ryou and you're my best friend and I love-I care about you more than I could ever say! So just…stop talking like that!" said Sho. That had come out meaner than he had wanted it too…but he hadn't been able to help it. The words had just all started coming out and…and he hadn't been able to stop them. He hadn't been able to stop them until they had all come out and said what they had to say. Sort of like the time he had gone on the spinning teacups at Disney after eating all of those big churros and then when he went to tell big sis that he had been feeling sick he had ended up throwing up all over her on accident…

That was what this was. Word throw up.

"…what in the hell…fine. Ok, ok. I'll stop…and you stop too. You're getting the dogs all riled up." Said Shimazaki. He looked like he had just been thrown up on….and Sho hadn't meant to…and he just…they were looking at each other now. Well he was looking at Shimazaki, anyway, Shimazaki was looking all around with his aura…mostly at the dogs….and they were baring now and trying to get out of their cages…and they wanted to play….

And Sho wanted to play with them.

"…want to play with them?" asked Sho. They needed to do something and that was something…unless Shimazaki felt like getting sad again. That would have sucked. He'd had a dog but when he'd been a kid he had fed it too much cake and cookies and stuff, but not chocolate because he had been smarter than that, and then it had gotten dog diabetes and died…and Sho really hoped that he didn't start remembering that too because he didn't know how much more of this he could take.

He was the sad one. There couldn't be two sad ones because that would have just been too many sad ones…and Shimazaki hated sad people anyway.

"Fuck yeah!" said Shimazaki. She let out a breath that he hadn't realized that he'd be holding. Shimazaki was ok…and that meant that he could be ok…not that he was never not ok. He was always ok…he was just…more ok now than he had been before. That was all. He was ok and…and he was still wet and cold but…well now there were dogs that he could play with and that was ok. This was still going to be a good night. They were away from trees and the ocean and they were with dogs and…and it didn't what they were with….

It only mattered, to Sho, who he was with…and he was with Shimazaki…and he trusted him more than anyone else in the whole world who wasn't his sister…

Even if he had been acting kind of crazy all night.


	444. Don't Make Me Turn This Plane Around

If anything happened on this plane ride then Mob was turning them around….and she meant it this time.

Well she would ask the pilots to turn the plane around, of course, because it wouldn't have been safe for her to turn the plane around with her powers. She wasn't even sure if she as strong enough to do that…and she wasn't going try. She wasn't going to try and she prayed to whoever it was that you were supposed to pray to that she never ended up having to ask to turn the plane around either. She didn't know what it was about plane rides that made everyone so…upset….

But she couldn't let that happen this time.

"Ok, so here are the new plane ride rules. They're the old rules but I added some new ones. No fighting, no saying mean things, no letting Hatori drink because he's fragile, no going out onto the wing of the plane, no taking other people out onto the wing of the plane, no being in the bathroom for reasons other than using the bathroom, no singing, everyone has to stay in their assigned seats…um….hang on…let me get my phone." said Mob as she reached into her pocket for her phone. She had made a memo to herself about this…because there were a lot of rules. She hated making rules, and she hated enforcing them, but her friends gave her no choice.

Plane rides just brought out the worst in everyone for some reason.

"Here….I mean you left this." said Serizawa as he held her phone out to her. She had left it on the seat…the one next to him…and he wished that she would come back already. He had never been on a plane before…and he was very close to a lot of other people…and he was trying his best to stay calm….but it was hard. Especially because if he lost control of his powers then everyone would die and it would be all his fault!

Calm. Down.

He handed Miss Suzuki her phone and then took another drink of the milk she had made him. Well she hadn't MADE it for him, it had come from a store, but she had poured a bunch of clear liquid which was not water into it and told him to sip it when he started to feel overwhelmed. He felt…the same…just a little dizzy…but maybe that dizziness came from the fact that he was in a plane thousands of kilometers in the air and everyone was around him…and he just wanted to go and be in his room…but he couldn't be there….but at least he had his umbrella…and Miss Suzuki was there too…

So he felt a little better.

"Thank you. Ok just let me…oh! My friend Minori sent me this picture of a cat in sunglasses and the words at the bottom say-"said Mob

"Mob, I just took three bars. You have at most half an hour before I'm dead to the world so get on with it." Said Minegishi not opening their eyes. The leather of Ryou's jacket was surprisingly soft against their head…not that they should have been this close to him. They were mad at him…well they tried to be. He had done something stupid, again, and he knew that he'd been stupid…but in the grand scheme of his stupidity staying out all night freeing all the cats and dogs in Tokyo was the least he could have done. At least he hadn't gone tripping with Sho…that would have been a disaster for everyone…but they were still mad.

Or at least they would be when this stupid plane landed.

"Is that…safe?" asked Shibata. He reached over and debated poking Minegishi just to make sure that they were…alright. If they tried to kill him it at least meant that they hadn't died. He wasn't their best friend or anything, or even their very good friend, but he did know that Mob would have been devastated if they died.

Also there would be no buffer between Shimazaki and everyone else…and that would have just been….he didn't even want to think about it.

"I've seen Toshi take more than three in one sitting. They'll be fine and if not…well that's what that guy's for." Said Shimazaki pointing to Fukuda's spot over in the corner. At some point he was going to have to talk to Mob about these assigned seats. Sho had been assigned as Fukuda's moving buddy and, well he didn't want to sit near Fukuda, this plane ride was going to be so boring with Sho all the way over there and Toshi asleep…not that he didn't like it when Toshi slept…they just slept better in bed when they let him curl up around them…but this was nice too…

But he also had a pocket full of fishbowl rocks and Hatori was right there….and Sho had good aim….

"Someone needs me?" asked Fukuda as he looked up from his and Sho's game…and died. Why did they have to make a new Nintendo mass fight game? He had just gotten the hang of the old one…but it was fine. He would gladly have died a thousand digital deaths if it meant that this plane ride went smoothly…hell. He would have died and come back in the real world if it meant that he could make this go well.

Because these things never went well.

Not when you had this many…he didn't even know whats…crammed into a tin can flying thousands of kilometers in the air. Thank God Sho was near him and not with Shimazaki. Shimazaki brought out the worst in Sho…especially when he was all cuddled up with Minegishi…and Minegishi was always unnecessarily mean to Sho and Sho always retaliated…and then Hatori would freak out and run to Suzuki…and then Shigeko would probably send him over to sit with Suzuki too….and that was not happening. Not after…that thing that happened between them that he was never going to speak of or think of again….

This plane ride needed to go well.

"Nobody needs you so just…stay over there and keep on playing with Sho. Ok, so the rules are-" said Mob

"I just Googled and it says-" said Hatori as he pulled out his phone. His arm bumped Shibata's but that couldn't be helped. There was no room back here. He'd talk to Mob about this assigned seating thing in a minute. He liked Shibata, and they'd been moving buddies for a while, but there was no room back there…and also Suzuki didn't have a moving buddy since Fukuda had volunteered to be Sho's…and Suzuki…well he hadn't ever said it but Hatori got the feeling that he didn't like to be alone…

And also Hatori had felt Shimazaki's aura on him for this whole plane ride and he had one hand in his pocket…and that was never a good sign.

"I know what I'm doing now shut up and let Mob go over the rules. Mob, keep going." Said Minegishi

"Ok! Um…so there are new rules. Please, please, PLEASE be nice to Serizawa. That's a big rule. He's never been in an airplane before and he's really scared and nervous and it's going to be a long flight so please be nice to him. Please. If you guys are nice to him then…um…there's going to be…um…good things!" said Mob. She stood in the aisle so that nobody could see Serizawa. They were looking at him and he hated it when people looked at him, it made him feel like he was under a microscope and then he got nervous and exploded, and if he exploded then they would all die and she didn't want that at all.

He was so nervous he was holding onto his umbrella with both hands.

She reached her aura out to his and he clung to hers. He held onto her so tight that her colors were totally covered by his. Maybe she should have done a half and half vodka and milk ratio for him. She had started him with a couple of capfuls because that was all that it had taken when she had started drinking. Her tolerance was a lot better than his even though she was sixteen years younger than him…but maybe she should have taken into account how much bigger he was…she felt her pockets…

Good. She'd brought her vape pen with her.

"Like what?" asked Sho looking up from his game…and maybe he shouldn't have done that since Fukuda knocked him off the world…he'd get his later. Right now big sis said that good things were happening…and when she said good things she meant good things. Not like when Fukuda said good things but really he meant desert with fruit it in or multi vitamins that tasted like candy but weren't…and why he cared so much about what Sho did and did not eat he would never know.

"Not dying in a plane crash." Said Minegishi

"Why did you have to say plane crash?!" said Hatori. He held onto both arm rests for dear life. Were they losing altitude? Were they going down?! He could…well he could use his powers to fly the plane like an RC plane…but not if the new guy was going to explode and kill them all!

"Don't worry, Hatori, I won't let anything happen to you. I'll break your fall, alright?" asked Shibata

"B-But then you'd die." Said Hatori

"I think that I'd make it and if not, well, at least I managed to save someone." Said Shibata

"You guys know that I can teleport, right? If the new guy has his daily panic attack I can just get us to safety…well Toshi first but then the rest of you…actually let me see who I'd be comfortable leaving behind." Said Shimazaki

"Well someone's feeling pretty macabre today." Said Minegishi

"Hey! Shimazaki is not…that word! And if he has to let people die and he has to let people die…but maybe we won't die. If we hit land we might live and then the survivors can eat the dead." Said Sho. He leaned back and crossed his arms. He didn't care if his Switch fell and hit the ground and shattered into a million pieces…and it didn't because Fukuda caught it.

"Sho, don't." said Fukuda. He didn't want to deal with this again. Sho was a child and he was too young to…well he was almost eleven and he was getting to the age where he needed to learn to stop picking fights with people…but he would teach him that later. He could feel the new person's aura…and he knew that feeling. That was the same feeling, the same sort of static electricity feeling, that preceded one of Suzuki's explosions…or one of Shigeko…and he had no idea how to diffuse this situation. Shigeko seemed to have it under control…and he didn't even want to think about what could have been happening between those two….he had to focus on Sho and keeping him calm and alive…

And keeping him from fighting with Minegishi…who really should have known better then to fight with an eleven year old.

"But we won't be crashing or eating anyone…not that there's anything wrong with eating people…well there is but…well there's nothing wrong with being a cannibal if you don't eat people and we shouldn't be making our friends feel bad for things that they can't help." Said Mob. She looked at Hatori while she said that so he knew that she was talking about him. He didn't need to feel bad about what he was, he couldn't help it, and he needed to know that she was always on his side. Even though he had rejected her…well she had embarrassed herself there…she was his friend and no matter what happened between them she would always be a friend and a friend was there for you no matter what.

"I am never going to live that down…" muttered Hatori as he held his head in his hands. Shibata patted him on the back. It didn't help.

"No, you aren't." said Minegishi with a shake of their head. They might have felt bad for him if he hadn't brought this on himself. Maybe he would learn something from all of this…or maybe he wouldn't and he would spend the rest of his life as the butt of a joke that would never get played out.

"You are who you are and there's nothing that we can do to change that. We accept you for who you are and you accept me…and I hope that everyone can come to accept Serizawa too. He can't control his powers and he gets scared easily and stuff…but he's still a good friend and a good person and, yes, he could take this plane down with all of us in it but…all of us could. Well maybe not Minegishi or Fukuda…but most of us could…but we won't…and…um….what was I saying?" asked Mob. Her thoughts were a little…slippery…right now. That happened to her sometimes. She maybe should have written that down too.

"Miss Suzuki…can we turn around…please?" asked Serizawa. He didn't look out the window. He didn't look at anyone else. He focused on her. He focused on the sparkly snowflakes all over her shirt. That was something that he could look at. The world was too big but those were small…and she was small…and somehow her being small…it was nice. He was bigger than her and he got the feeling that he needed to keep her safe…from everything…but he also mostly got the feeling that he wanted to go back to Japan and his new room and just…stay there until he was better. He had been getting better, he had started walking around in the house after everyone had gone to sleep, and maybe if he just waited a few more weeks or months or years then…then he would have been well enough to go to…wherever it was that they were going next.

"No, I'm only turning this plane around if someone starts a fight…and I don't want anyone to fight…and we're not going to-" said Mob

"Sho, come on. Fight with me in the game. Don't fight with Minegishi in real life." Said Fukuda. She could and would turn that plane around…and she would throw them all off schedule…and she never thought things through. Turning the plane around would just prolong the time that they spent sealed up in this tin can…and the more time that they spent in this tin can the greater the chance of one of them exploding…in some way. Like when he and Suzuki had gotten bored and made cans explode over an open fire. Sho was getting close to exploding, emotionally anyway, and Minegishi was just adding to the fire…and that was just what he could control. There was always Serizawa. He was clinging to Shigeko for dear life…and she wasn't going to make him stop…and this was….

He hated it when things were out of his control…especially when things got that bad.

"Shimazaki's going to save me first if the plane goes down because big sis' friend freaks out. Then he'll save Minegishi…well he should save big sis first…and if anyone has to die then it should be-" said Sho. If anyone was getting left behind it was dad. Maybe he would die and maybe he wouldn't, Sho didn't know he wasn't the grim reaper, but he was willing to take his chances.

"Nobody's going to die. Sho, don't worry. I won't let anything happen to you. I can heal and you can put up a barrier so you'll be fine." Said Fukuda. He patted Sho on the back and tried to get him to look back down at his screen and not up at the chaos that was growing around them. He was just a little boy and he did not need to be contemplating his own mortality like that. It was just so…to borrow a word from Minegishi…macabre.

"Yes, nobody is going to die and…um…Sho, if you're nice to Shibata I'll let you put extra frosting on your after bath time poptarts." Said Mob. She winced as she said that. Serizawa felt it in her aura and reached out and took her hand. She patted his hand and his aura. He was worried about her…and it was nice that someone was worried about her since she had to worry about everyone else…like Sho. If he had that much sugar before bed then he would never be able to fall asleep…and also his stomach would hurt…but it was better than Sho accidentally being mean to Serizawa and then Serizawa exploding and the plane going down.

"I want four poptarts and a can of chocolate frosting so I can make some sandwiches." Said Sho

"Sho, that's way too much sugar in one sitting. You're going to lose another tooth…an adult tooth." Said Fukuda

"So? You can just fix it." Said Sho

"Sho, that's not the point. One day I won't be here and-" said Fukuda

"That's fine." Said Mob. She winced again. Serizawa patting her hand again. Four was…a lot…but if Sho needed four poptarts to be happy then he was getting his four poptarts of happiness.

"And I want to eat them in the tub." Said Sho. If he ate them in the tub then maybe she would let him have more because eating during his bath meant that they were a during bath snack and not an after bath snack…and he would definitely take more baths if he got to eat more poptarts. It wasn't like they were going to get wet or anything, he could always hold them with his powers, and also they would be a good distraction from the drowning feeling he got whenever he was in water.

"Um…alright….I guess." Said Mob. If he ate his poptarts in the tub then they were going to go from after bath rewards to during bath rewards and then he would start asking her every single night for during and after bath rewards…and then she would have to deal with sugared up Sho…and she loved Sho a lot but she didn't like to deal with sugared up Sho…but sugared up Sho was better than dead in a plane crash Sho.

"And I want-" said Sho

"I want Mob to finish saying her piece so I can drift off into sweet oblivion." Said Minegishi. They needed sleep. Flying was hell and they needed sleep. They needed….well they needed a lot of things but what they really needed was sleep. They could feel Ryou's hand in their hair. It helped.

"Don't go to the light." Said Shibata. He knew that when people did what Minegishi did they sometimes never woke up….well that was something that happened when you mixed those pills with other things…and he had no idea what to do if they stopped breathing…well get Fukuda…but he was such an asshole that he might not have done anything for Minegishi. He had left Hatori to suffer after all and Hatori was one of the nicest guys Shibata had ever met in his life.

"I'll go wherever I feel like." Said Minegishi

"Anyway just…that's the big rule. Please be nice to Serizawa. He's a nice person but he just can't control his powers, that's all, and we've all been there so just…try to be understanding…and be nice." Said Mob. Serizawa was still holding her hand….and now she had two things to worry about….well three. She had to worry about Shibata exploding and how sugared up Sho would be later….and now she had to worry about Minegishi going to the light….and they had just started their trip. London to Tokyo was over a day…and they had to make stops for fuel…was there anything faster than a plane? Like a….rocket ship? Or something? She didn't know.

She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes…and then heard some glass clinking together.

"I'm always nice…and good catch, new guy." Said Shimazaki before he opened one of the tiny bottles he had stolen from the drink cart. He took a drink…and was proud of himself for not spitting it out. Fireball. Who in the hell had gotten Fireball? For the love of…well he had already opened it so down the hatch it went.

"Th-thank you!" said Serizawa. He hadn't meant to do that. He had just seen something coming towards Miss Suzuki and then he'd caught it…with his powers. He stared down at what he had done…and then stopped doing it. He hadn't even known what he had been doing and then he'd started to think and he'd messed up and she must have been so upset with him and….and she seemed…alright. So that was good…at least.

"Shimazaki, it was nice of you to give me this but you…aren't as nice as you think you are. Sometimes we see ourselves in our heads differently than other people see us…but that's ok. I like you and I think that you're one of my best friends but…well sometimes…you're not as nice as you think that you are. You're very mean sometimes, especially to Hatori, and I don't like it…so be nice. Please…and thank you for whatever this is." Said Mob

"Sure thing little boss lady, I can be nice." Said Shimazaki

"What'd you give her?" asked Minegishi fighting their way back to the land of the living. Their thoughts were getting slow and their breathing was getting slow…and they were getting hungry…but they had enough sense not to raid the snack cart or do…other things that they wanted to do. As angry as they were with certain people they knew better than to start something on this plane. Mob didn't need that kind of stress and the new guy didn't need reason to freak out and kill them all.

"Tastes like Fireball but who the hell knows." Said Shimazaki

"Nasty. Mob, don't drink that." Said Minegishi

"Why? What is it?" asked Mob as she read the label. She'd never had this before…and Shimazaki had good taste…and she knew her limits. She didn't even like getting drunk and her dad was sitting right there anyway. He was playing Minecraft…or maybe he was actually working…but she wasn't going to be drunk in front of him. She knew better than that.

"Whiskey, really bad whiskey, which you do not need to be drinking…now give it back to Ryou." Said Minegishi

"Um…well I don't know if I like it or not…" said Mob as she tucked the tiny bottle into her sleeve with her free hand. Minegishi…they worried about her for no reason sometimes. They could be sort of a worrywart, kind of like dad, so maybe it was an adult thing. She knew how moderation worked and she didn't need her best friend to remind her. She knew what she was doing with this just like Minegishi knew what they were doing when they took three of their mint tin pills at once.

"What's that?" asked Sho craning his neck over the seat. Big sis had one of her tiny bottles…and there was mostly nasty stuff in there…not that he wanted to ever agree with Minegishi about anything…but that stuff was usually really gross and he had no idea why big sis liked it.

"Not something for you, Sho, if you want to drink something then go and get a soda…or two…but no more than that." Said Fukuda. He hated Sho drinking soda, the last thing he needed was more sugar in his system, but it was better than him taking up drinking. One budding alcoholic was bad enough.

"….fine…but you never let me have fun." Said Sho

"Hey, you know who could use some fun in his life? Hatori…and since I'm such a nice guy-" said Shimazaki. Toshi was jabbing him in the side. What? He was just going to maybe get him a little drunk, just a little, not enough that he would die or anything. Just a little because these long plain rides were boring as fuck.

"Hey Mob? Can I go sit by your dad? He seems lonely…and also I don't like the way that Shimazaki's been looking at me." Said Hatori

"Dad says that he doesn't get lonely because he's a full and complete person on his own and also Shimazaki can't look at you in any ways because he doesn't have eyes but, yes, you can go and sit with my dad." Said Mob

"Hey, if he gets to go and sit with your dad then-" said Shimazaki. Sho was right there and he seemed more than a little bored…and even though Hatori was going to the safety of Suzuki's aura there were other fun things to be done. He and Sho hadn't declared a winner to their last game of the floor is made of lava airplane edition.

"No, nobody else gets to move…and anyway you have to sit with Minegishi because you love them." Said Mob

"That's true…and if this plane goes down I at least want to save Toshi." Said Shimazaki. Sho…he would try and save the two of them at the same time…and Mob would probably live through it. If the plane went down. The new guy's aura was still loud but not all panicked and shrieking, so that was good, but there was always the chance that they would all end up remaking Alive…or Airplane. Yeah, Airplane was funnier. Alive was really sad for a movie with cannibalism.

"I-I wouldn't-" said Serizawa. He would never have done something like that…on purpose. He felt safe. He felt safe with Miss Suzuki beside him. She was there and her hand was in his and his other hand was around his umbrella and as long as he had those two things then he knew that he would be alright.

"Don't talk like that, you're scaring Serizawa. Serizawa, drink some more milk. You'll feel better." Said Mob as she sat down beside him. He let go of her hand so that she could sit down but then he grabbed it again and held it super tight…he was very strong…but that was ok. She was his friend and when you were friends with someone you let them hold onto your hand with all of their strength….and it didn't matter if he broke it or not because Fukuda was there. Fukuda may have turned into a jerk and stuff but he at least still did his job…and stuff.

"I…I'm already feeling better…because you're here. I know you wouldn't let anything happen to me…and also the milk is making me kind of…dizzy." Said Serizawa

"Oh. Here, we can share my vape pen then. It's a…the strain that makes you sleepy. I forget the name of it. It'll make you tired, too, so that's good. You should sleep at some point. This plane ride is going to be over a day." Said Mob

"Um…I'm alright." Said Serizawa. He didn't think that it would help him, her pen, since it hadn't really helped before. He had been making things float, mostly, when he'd tried it on Halloween…he hadn't broken anything but he didn't want to risk it on a plane…or risk offending her.

"Alright. Um…did you bring you DS? We can play Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing or-" said Mob

"Smash! Get over here and play Smash with us! Fukuda sucks! He sucks di-" said Sho

"Sho!" said Fukuda. He knew what Sho had been about to say. He knew where he had learned that. He knew that it was his job to un-teach Sho that. Somebody had to.

"What, you do. You're really bad at this. Even big sis is better than you and she always picks ice climbers." Said Sho

"What's wrong with ice climbers?" asked Mob

"What's right with ice climbers?" said Sho

"They're brother and sister like we are and they're cute." Said Mob

"You can't pick a main just because it's a cute character! Well unless it's Toon Link but he's awesome." Said Sho

"I-I like Toon Link too…but my main is, um, Lucario right now…but I like ice climbers! They were better in…um…Brawl…but they're good too! They're all good characters…I mean….it's a good game…series…" said Serizawa. Now he was being stared at…and he hated being stared at. He little red haired boy, Miss Suzuki's little brother, was leaning forward and staring at him…and he had really cool eyes…even if his pupils were very small and kind of intense…but in a good way? Or maybe not since the person beside him…he was blanking on the name…was trying to get him to sit back.

"Sho, come on. Let's not bother your sister and her new…friend." Said Fukuda. He didn't know the new guy but he knew that he was…whatever…to Shigeko. He didn't want to get involved in her life like that. He had no idea what he could do about her life and the course it was taking…so for his own sanity he would leave her alone. She didn't even like him anymore anyway.

"Fukuda, shut up. He's my friend too now. Suzuki Sho, but you already know that…so let's play Smash." Said Sho as he held out his hand. The new guy stared at him before reaching out, shaking his hand quickly, and then quickly going back to holding his umbrella like he was scared it was going to start raining on the plane. His other hand was holding big sis's but not in an 'I like you way' or anything…so that was ok…and it was ok if he did like her since he was nice to her and stuff…but Sho would still be obligated to beat him up…well if she didn't like him back…but he didn't seem to like her like that so he was ok.

And also he knew about Smash so that got him about a million points in Sho's book.

"Sho, don't tell people to shut up. It's mean and if you talk like that then people are going to think that you're a mean person." Said Mob. She didn't mind that he had told Fukuda to shut up…and she wished that she minded since she was a nice person…well she tried to be. It didn't matter how she felt about Fukuda because she still had to teach Sho how to be nice. She was the big sister and she had to teach him right from wrong.

"I-I don't think that he's mean and…and I'm Serizawa Katsuya…but you knew that already and um…sure! I would love to play with you." Said Serizawa

"Cool! Ok, four person smash with weapons on and no teams." Said Sho

"Sho-" said Fukuda

"Ok, fine, teams. I'll protect you Fukuda….but you had better not pick someone stupid like Mr. Game and Watch or Isabelle or Pichu! You need to be someone easy like…Mario…or something. Ok, you're Mario and I feel like changing it up so I'm going to be Toon Link…and big sis, you had better not be the Ice Climbers again and Serizawa you can be Lucario and-" said Sho

"Sho, I think that I'll sit this one out. Alright?" asked Fukuda

"What? You want to go and hang out with dad?" asked Sho

"No…I just have some work to do…and I think that I'll do it over here. It's been a while since we spent time together." Said Fukuda. He looked behind himself briefly…and then looked away as Suzuki made eye and aural contact with him. The eye contact stopped but the aural contact remained and…well he just needed more time. He needed time to get over…that thing that he were never speaking of again. Suzuki was sitting with Hatori but he was focused on him…and he had no idea what was going through that head of his…but he wasn't going to pick his brain or anything like that. Not now. Maybe later.

Sitting here with Sho, Shigeko, and the new guy was better than sitting with Suzuki and Hatori and that big unspoken…thing.

"Ok Fukuda, you have to do what you have to do. We'll be fine here on our own. Alright, Sho, give us a minute to join." Said Mob as she used her powers to pull her DS out of her Elsa bag. Plenty of charge. Good. This plane ride was going to go well. It had no reason not to go well. Fukuda had pulled out his laptop so he wasn't going to fight with anyone…and Shibata was listening to something but he never fought with anyone anyway so he was fine….and Minegishi and Shimazaki were napping together…well Minegishi was napping at least it was hard to tell with Shimazaki sometimes…and dad and Hatori were hanging out and playing games and stuff…and Serizawa was a lot calmer and now he was making friends and playing with her and Sho…and this whole thing was going better than she had ever imagined it would be.

She probably wasn't going to end up having to turn this plane around….and that was wonderful.


	445. My Bind Friend with the Devious Looks

Moving hadn't been as bad as Serizawa had thought that it would have been.

He had mostly just played games throughout the entire plane ride, slept through the car ride, and woken up in his new bed at some point after they had gotten to the new house. Miss Suzuki had carried him in with her powers, she had said, and it was hard to believe that someone as small as her could lift him…almost as hard to believe as him having actually moved across the world….

He hadn't been able to leave his room for fifteen years.

And yet here he was in a whole other country! He was all the way across the world in a house in London surrounded by sort of friends, well they were all sleeping but he could feel them around him, and he was out of his room and eating lunch…dinner…breakfast….a meal. A meal in a kitchen that he had made himself…well he had poured his own milk and cereal in the bowl and that was something….this was all something! Him being here…it was something.

More than he had ever thought that…that could ever have been.

He was careful as he ate his...whatever meal this was. He didn't want to wake the others up. The sun was up, and he had been making more of an effort to rise with it, but the others were asleep. Jet lag, Miss Suzuki had called it, because they were going from Tokyo time to London. Wow. Tokyo. He had thought, before, that just going to Tokyo had been something…but now he was in London. He was across the world in London and he was eating chocolate cereal and…and he felt good. Sure, he was farther from home than he had ever been in his life and he was in a house he didn't know in a country where he didn't speak the language and Miss Suzuki was in her own home, on the other side of the wall, and he was here…but he still felt good.

This was going to be a good day.

Well at least he had thought so. He felt a shift in the energy around him. The colors. There were new ones, and they were close, and he saw the colors before he saw the person that they were connected to. One minute he had been alone in the kitchen and then the next he had company…and he handled it very well. He didn't shout, and he only made the kitchen rattle a little, and that was…a good reaction to someone just popping up in front of you like that.

Someone not even half dressed.

"Fuck yeah! Chocolate! This is going to be one hell of a day!" said…Serizawa was blanking on his name….Shimazaki! Yes, that was his name. He was the one who couldn't see…and Serizawa needed to find a better way to describe him since that didn't seem like it was very nice…or maybe it was even less nice to not acknowledge the fact that he couldn't see. Serizawa didn't know. He didn't think that he could ask. That would have been rude…and he didn't want to be rude.

Miss Suzuki wouldn't have liked that.

She liked people to be nice to one another. She liked it when people were friends. So he would make friends with her friends…even though having one friend is already more than enough for him. He wants…he wants to be near her. He knows her. He knows that he'll be safe with her…not that he feels unsafe. No, he worries for the other person. Serizawa doesn't want to accidentally hurt him. It was one thing to accidentally hurt someone, it was another to accidentally hurt a blind person, and especially one of Miss Suzuki's closest friends. Miss Suzuki…she would not have liked that at all…and maybe Serizawa should have gotten up and left…but then he would have been noticed. He isn't moving, he isn't breathing, and he knows that his colors are showing but Shimazaki can't see those…so maybe he should just stay here and perfectly still until…until Shimazaki got what he needed and went back to bed.

Yes. That was a good plan.

Serizawa sat perfectly still as Shimazaki went through the cabinet behind him. He took out boxes, ran his hands over them on all sides, and then opened them. He stuck his hands and head in the box before shaking his head and putting the box down on the counter. He did this over and over again. He was looking for something. Serizawa could tell that he was looking for something….and he could tell that he maybe should have helped. Shimazaki was blind after all and whatever he was looking for…well he might have never found it.

Serizawa wasn't sure.

He didn't know if it was ok to offer to help or not. On the one hand he wouldn't be invisible anymore…but it would have been selfish of him to sit there trying to be invisible whole one of Miss Suzuki's closest friends needed help. Also he was the one at the advantage there. He didn't know how Shimazaki got around, he had never seen him using the stick thing he'd seen blind people use, but he never bumped into things….Miss Suzuki said that it had to do with his powers…well it looked like whatever it was had limits since he was feeling every single box…and opening them…and the whole thing seemed very frustrating for him…and he was one of Miss Suzuki's friends…and that meant that they could be friends too…

And Miss Suzuki had been telling him that she wanted him to be friends with her friends.

"Fuck…where in the hell is it?" muttered Shimazaki as he went through the cabinets. Well that was a cry for help if there ever was one. Friends were supposed to help each other out….and he wasn't friends with Shimazaki yet…and really he was happy just being friends with Miss Suzuki….but she wanted him to be friends with her friends and she liked it when people were good to one another so…

So he would help.

"Um….are you looking for something?" asked Serizawa. He wished that he could have taken that back as soon as he said it. Of course he was looking for something. Serizawa was the one who could see and of course he could see that…and now he wished…he needed to go back to his room. He didn't care if he hadn't finished his…whatever meal it was that he was eating. He needed to go back to his room where he couldn't mess up!

"So you can talk." Said Shimazaki. He didn't turn to face Serizawa….and that made it easier…to say something….but now he had to think up something to say.

"Um….I can?" said Serizawa. He would have kicked himself if he could have. He was so bad at this. Miss Suzuki…it was easier talking to people when she was near. She did enough talking for both of them and that gave him time to think of what it was that he was going to say when he did want to talk…but she wasn't there. She was on the other side of the shared wall with her dad and Sho. He was here…and he would have to do this by himself. He held his umbrella tighter. Holding it…well she had given this to him…she had said that he could be under it and pretend that he was in his room but…well he could hold it and pretend that he was holding her hand, that she was near to him, and that she would keep him safe. From what…well messing up and freaking out…and pretending was almost as good as her actually being there with him.

"You can. You have my permission…not that you needed it but you have it." Said Shimazaki with a wave of his hand. Serizawa nodded.

"Oh…um…alright." Said Serizawa

"Quit shaking like that, I'm not going to hurt you. Mob's orders." Said Shimazaki

"I…I'm not shaking…" said Serizawa. Shimazaki turned around…and Serizawa got the distinct feeling that he was being looked at. Stared at. Sized up. He got that feeling in his colors…aura. He got that feeling in his aura. Maybe Shimazaki could sense auras even though they were light. Serizawa had no idea…and he knew that he couldn't ask…even though he had plenty of questions for him.

Questions that he would have asked if he had been a braver man.

Question like how he got dressed in the mornings and brushed his teeth and showered and shaved if he couldn't see. Questions like how he got around with his powers. Was it like how bats saw? Or like Daredevil? Wait, no, Daredevil saw like a bat…right? He wasn't sure…but he was sure that he wanted to know how it worked…and he was also sure that he couldn't ask questions like that. There were rules when it came to talking to people and Serizawa…well he had never been good at it…but he had never been terrible either….at least not terrible enough to ask intrusive questions and make someone feel different….

That was one of the worst things that you could make a person feel. Different.

"I can tell that you are. What? Am I so terrifying?" asked Shimazaki. Serizawa…well he knew that it was wrong to tell lies…but he also knew that it was wrong to insult people. Especially blind people. Shimazaki might not have known that he was so covered in tattoos…or that they made him look like the bad guy in a yakuza movie…or that the only way to describe his smile was 'devious'….

"No! Not…not at all…um…what are you looking for? Maybe I can help." Said Serizawa. He knew, well he had been warned, by both Hatori and Miss Suzuki that Shimazaki liked to mess with people. He had also been there when Miss Suzuki had told Shimazaki to be nice to him…and he knew that she was technically their boss even though she was so small…so he had no reason to worry about the devious smile that he was getting from Shimazaki. Nothing to worry about at all.

They were all friends here. Miss Suzuki had said so.

"I'm looking for chocolate. Something in here smells like chocolate and I don't know what. Toshi usually labels the kitchen for me but they're exhausted, normal exhausted not Xanned out, so….yeah. Looks like I'm starving to death." Said Shimazaki. Serizawa…well he hadn't broken anything. He was proud of the fact that he hadn't broken anything…though his colors did show a lot…and the light above them burnt out…and Shimazaki did reach up and cover his ears…but nothing broke. He didn't hurt anything or anybody…which was more than he ever could have hoped for before in his life. Miss Suzuki would have been so happy with him…well about the not breaking things or people. She would have been upset if she knew that he had let her friend starve…not that he had any intention at all of doing that. No, that was no way to make friends at all…or keep the one he had.

"N-No! I mean you don't have to. Um…I have chocolate cereal right here. Um….it's in the box in front of me on the table…oh! The table is behind you and to your left…um…do you know what left is?" asked Serizawa. He had no idea how Shimazaki saw the world…so it had been a legitimate question! It had been a real and legitimate question…and also the wrong one, too, if the look that Shimazaki had gotten was anything to go off of.

"I'm blind, not slow, I know what left is." Said Shimazaki. There was a tone to his voice and a feel to him….to his colors…to his aura…and Serizawa knew that he had screwed up. He had done the one thing that he had been trying not to do! Well the second thing. The first thing that he had been trying not to do was explode and hurt people but the second thing that he had been trying not to do was mess up and say the wrong thing…and he had…and he wished that Miss Suzuki had been there!

But she wasn't.

She wasn't there. He was there on his own and he had to own up to what he had done. He had said the wrong thing and now…well now he had to make it right. He had to apologize and then…well maybe apologize a second time. He knew how much it hurt, how bad it felt, to have your differences pointed out like that. Back when he'd been small and people had always asked to touch his hair…and then when he'd been bigger and his powers had showed up…it was the worst, being reminded how different you were…and it must have been even worse for Shimazaki!

Serizawa was a terrible friend…and they weren't even friends yet!

"I-I'm sorry. I just…um…I've never known any blind people before so I didn't know what you…knew. Um the cereal is in the blue box in front of me." Said Serizawa. He wasn't freaking out, that was the important thing, and Shimazaki wasn't freaking out at him…even though it would have been fine if he had. Shimazaki must have felt bad….and it was all Serizawa's fault. Maybe he should have just stayed in his room until Miss Suzuki came and got him. Maybe that would have been better…or something…better for him and better for everyone else.

"I have no clue what 'blue' is." Said Shimazaki shaking his head. He made a sound like he was either laughing or crying…and Serizawa wasn't going to sit there until he figured out which it was! He had to…he had to make this better! He had to make this better before he messed up again!

"Oh no! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" said Serizawa. That may have been too loud…and also now the box of cereal had tipped over and the whole table was covered in it…but maybe that was ok since Shimazaki was laughing now. He was laughing and he walked over and took Serizawa's cereal bowl…well that was ok he could have it if he wanted to…and then he swept some of the cereal off of the table and into the bowl….and that didn't seem very clean. First of all because he was using Serizawa's spoon…and second of all because he had swept that cereal away with his bare arm…and third of all because Serizawa wasn't sure how clean this table was…but he wasn't going to say anything else.

He wondered if he could turn invisible again….but no. Shimazaki knew where he was now.

"You know the polite thing to do, when you apologize, would be to bow." Said Shimazaki through a mouthful of cereal. Serizawa didn't think, he just did it. He got up and bowed and apologized.

"Right! I-I am so sorry for what I said to you and for making you feel bad and-" said Serizawa

"Woah, I didn't think that you would actually do it…heh. Would you kowtow if I asked you to?" asked Shimazaki. Serizawa straightened up and nodded. Of course he would have. He had f-worded up and now he had to apologize. Also this was an important learning experience for him. Now he knew what not to say to a blind person…and also he knew that Shimazaki could tell if he was moving but not colors and stuff. That was good to know for the future.

"Yes, of course. I'm very sorry for what I said to you and for making you feel bad and I would do anything to make it up to you." Said Serizawa. Shimazaki looked up at him with a look…one that he didn't like.

"Anything?" asked Shimazaki with a tone to his voice that made Serizawa regret, just a bit, saying what he had said. He hadn't meant literally anything…or maybe he had. He didn't know. All he knew was that he really wanted to go back to bowing and not to whatever it was that was giving Shimazaki that devious look on his face.

"Yes…anything…um…maybe?" said Serizawa. Shimazaki seemed to be considering something as he chewed on his, well really Serizawa's, cereal. He put the spoon in his mouth and gnawed on it, Serizawa could hear his teeth hitting the metal it was an unpleasant sound, before dropping it back in the bowl and…well he knew that he wasn't being stared at…but he got the feeling that he was.

"You want to help me out with something important?" asked Shimazaki

"Um…yes?" said Serizawa

"Do you promise to help me? And not back out? Even if every fiber of your being is telling you to run away?" asked Shimazaki

"Um…you saying that worries me a little." Said Serizawa. That was…cryptic. That was the sort of line that came before a very long and complicated quest…but this was not a game…and if it had been a game then Serizawa would have waited until he went up a few level before he accepted…whatever it was that he had to accept.

"Relax. I'm not going to fuck you or anything. Well if you wanted to then I would be amenable but-" said Shimazaki. Serizawa gasped and covered his mouth. First of all he had said…well Serizawa had been living with him for long enough to know that it was his favorite word…but still! He had said…the f-word…and he had used it as a verb and not an adjective!

Also he thought that Serizawa wanted to…with him!

Not that he had anything against people who were…like that. He didn't. He just…wasn't like that. Also he didn't want to do that with anyone….well not anyone he knew…and he didn't even know what he would have done if he had wanted to do that with someone he knew. The awkwardness would have killed him. He knew that adults did that, and he knew that he was an adult, but he also knew that the whole thing was just…not for him…not the way he was now…

Not now, not even if someone he liked asked him to, just…now was not the time in his life for all of that.

"I don't! I mean…not with you! I mean…I mean…sorry…this is just…not coming out right." said Serizawa

"Wow. Way to make a guy feel good about himself." Said Shimazaki. Oh no! Serizawa…the last thing he wanted to do was hurt Shimazaki's feelings…or anyone's feelings! Miss Suzuki was going to be so mad at him…and he didn't know what he would do if she was mad at him. She was his only friend. She was his best friend. She took care of him. If she stopped liking him…if hs egotmad enough to not like him anymore…then he had no idea what he would do.

"I…I'm sorry…I didn't mean to make you feel-" said Serizawa

"Well you did and now you owe me a favor and you did say that you would do anything…" said Shimazaki

"I…I did say that…" said Serizawa

"Good. So…you ever clean out someone's eye sockets for them before?" asked Shimazaki

"I….what? Eye…sockets?" asked Serizawa

"Yeah, eye sockets. See?" asked Shimazaki. He opened his eyes and…and Serizawa didn't know where to look. It would have been rude to stare but it would have been even ruder to look away…but he didn't want to stare…and also he couldn't look away.

"I…see…" said Serizawa. He could see…well then…that was…he wondered if it hurt. He knew not to ask but he wondered if it hurt him at all. It seemed like it would hurt.

"So, you want to be a friend and clean them out for me?" asked Shimazaki. Serizawa took a step back into the table…but then did his best to calm down. Make more friends…Miss Suzuki had told him to make more friends…so that was what he was going to do now. He was going to make a new friend…he was going to help Shimazaki out…and he was not going to freak out. Even though this was kind of…really f-wording scary…and also he had no idea how to even…but he could learn…

You were supposed to help out your friends.

"I…yes. I can do that…for you…since we're friends…" said Serizawa. Shimazaki got another devious look on his face, Serizawa wondered if that was just how he looked normally, before he took the bowl of cereal and drank everything down like mom had said, years ago, was very impolite. Not that Serizawa was going to say anything, friends didn't correct each other like that, and also…well he had just seen something even more disturbing than that.

"Great! Now come on, before Toshi wakes up and tells me to stop fucking with you!" said Shimazaki. He got up from his chair, grabbed Serizawa, and then the next thing he knew he was in the bathroom…and he wanted to run away…but he didn't. He just held his umbrella in his hands as Shimazaki explained all of the steps, the very complicated steps, to what he needed Serizawa to do. He wasn't going to run away, even if he wanted to, because he had made his new friend a promise…one which he would keep. Because that was how friends…were. Serizawa had never imagined that friendship would involve cleaning out someone's eye sockets for them…but then again he had never had a friend before. Now he had two. He had two friends and one of them needed his help…which he gave to the best of his ability….

And, really, the whole thing went better than he had thought it would have.


	446. My Brilliant Booger of a Boyfriend

Emmeline McBride was very happy today.

She had made it to school on time, the canteen had those giant biscuits with hundreds and thousands in them, she'd gotten an eighty seven on her maths test, and her history teacher had forgotten that she had given them homework yesterday. Those were good things, yes, but there was something even better. Something that blew everything, even biscuits with hundreds and thousands in them, right out of the bloody water. Something so brilliant that she didn't even have words to say how brilliant it was.

Her boyfriend had come back to England.

Sho Suzuki, or Suzuki Sho since names were backwards in his country, was the daft booger she called her boyfriend. Her actual boyfriend. A boy who actually liked her. A boy who didn't think that she was odd. A boy who liked the same things she liked. A boy who had kissed her more times than she could count. She had never thought that a boy would want to kiss her but he did…and it had been brilliant…and it would be brilliant again…

If she could make time go faster.

School was out. She was waiting for him in the park between her school and her house. Sho had said that he would meet her there and then they would play and go to the sweet shop and whatever else she wanted to do. That was what she had said, whatever she wanted to do, and she just…well she really just wanted to see him. She hadn't seen him since last spring. Now it was almost winter. She hadn't seen him in so long….but they still talked. It was a long distance relationship. A really long distance relationship….but she could do this.

Because Sho was brilliant.

He was a daft booger sometimes but he was brilliant too. He never once told her that she was odd or that he wanted her to leave him alone…and also he was always sending her gifts. Gifts from far away places that she had only read about. She pulled her helmet down over her eyes. This was the first one that she had gotten from him. This one came from Russia. This was a Soviet era helmet and it was brilliant. It had a dent in it so maybe it had come from a dead soldier. Like maybe someone had pulled it off of a man just as he was dying and his skull split apart when it came off like how they split watermelons open with bats in Japan…or something.

This helmet was brilliant and Sho was brilliant.

And she was brilliant too. He made her feel brilliant. He was always making her feel good even if she was far away. She checked her phone. Nothing from him…but he must have been on his way. This felt…she focused on the brilliant feeling. She focused on how good it would feel when she finally saw him. She tried not to think about how cold it was, how she could feel the wind through the tights she had to wear because her school was daft and wouldn't let the girls wear trousers, how she had been waiting for almost ten minutes and he hadn't shown up…but he had promised that he would. He had told her that he would meet her when her school let out and then they would have fun together….and he may have been a daft booger sometimes but he was not a liar.

He was her boyfriend and he would never lie to her.

"Oi! McBride, what are you doing out here ya mick? Waiting for the fairies to come back for you?" Emmy pulled her helmet up and glared. School was over. Didn't people have anything better to do than bother her?

"Step off and feck ya too, ya daft booger. It's a public park and I'm the public." Said Emmy talking in that way that mum had told her never to talk. Not just the cursing, even though she almost eleven and could cure at whoever she wanted to, but that voice she put on sometimes. The way mum talked to people when she was cross with them. Emmy was plenty cross right now and mum was at work anyway. Besides, it wasn't as though she was just going off on some random person.

This was Isabelle and she was a right bitch.

Not that Emmy would ever say that out loud. It was one thing to tell someone to feck off it was another to call them a bitch. Feck off was worth getting her mouth scrubbed out with that ghastly carbolic soap gran liked, but bitch was worth ten rosaries, and she did not have time to say ten raises. She had a boyfriend to spend time with now. She had better things to do than say rosaries or get her mouth washed out or deal with people who had nothing better to do than tease her for no good reason.

Because, really, she hadn't done anything.

"Sure you are. What are you waitin' for? Fairies this time? Or aliens? Or secret agents maybe?" asked Isabelle. Emmy turned around and stuck her tongue out.

"Feck off ya daft mog, I'm waiting for me boyfriend." Said Emmy. Mog was something that she wasn't supposed to say either. It wasn't a bad word but mum hated it when she talked like that. Like dad. Dad didn't mind, he liked it, and really it was daft mum and being…well mum and dad. But she didn't care. She didn't care what mum and dad were like and she didn't care if she was being a right bitch to Isabelle either. She'd been a right bitch and that wasn't brilliant at all.

"Fibber. You've not got a boyfriend. Who'd want to go out with you?" asked Isabelle

"Shut ya gob! It's none of ya business who me boyfriend is ya thick booger. So feck off already." Said Emmy

"I'll tell your mum that you told me to fuck off." Said Isabelle

"I did not!" said Emmy

"You did too! I just heard you!" said Isabelle

"No, I said 'feck off' and that's a different word but you wouldn't know that because you're thick. You're the thickest and daftest person in the world. You're so thick and so daft that you've nothing; better to do than bother me while I'm waitin' for me boyfriend. Least I have somethin' productive to do with me time. Now feck off before I tell your mum that you called me a mick and that you said the f-word." Said Emmy

"Tell me mum, then, she won't care. She says that you're a mick too and that your whole family should go back where you came from." Said Isabelle

"Me family's from here now feck off before I smack ya good and proper…and I don't care if me mum knows or not." Said Emmy

"You wouldn't." said Isabelle

"Wouldn't I?" asked Emmy. She made a fist and raised it high. She wasn't supposed to fight, mum had said that if she got into even a single fight she'd take her phone right back to the bleedin' shop, but mum also said that she had defend herself if she had to…and this was the sort of time when it was alright to give someone a right good smack if they needed it…and nobody needed it more than Isabelle.

Well maybe Lydia.

And Lacey. And Janie. And Rhoda. And Francine. And girl Jordan. And Beatrice. And Danielle. And Naomi. And Willow. And…well pretty much everyone in her class…and grade. Well the girls. The boys didn't talk to her at all. Girls were the worst. Mum said so too. Boys beat each other up and it was the end of it. Girls went out of their way to bother you…

"I'm telling your mum!" said Isabelle as she ran off.

"I've not done anything to you….daft bitch…." Muttered Emmy. She pulled her helmet down over her face again. It was cold, well because it was made of metal, and now the top of her head was cold. She could feel the wind through her hair. She felt it and she knew that she should have put her helmet back on or put her hood up before she caught cold…even though the cold didn't make you ill. The damp did. The damp did but there wasn't any damp outside…and she wasn't crying either. She was fine.

She didn't care what people said or thought…and certainly not about what people with nothing happening in their lives said or thought.

She had someone who liked her and that was what mattered. She was the only girl in her whole grade with a proper boyfriend. She wasn't allowed to have any kind of a boyfriend, proper or otherwise, but she still had one and he liked her a lot. They were in a proper long distance relationship like proper adults. She lived in London and he lived…well he lived wherever he had to because he came from a yakuza family, but they were still together and they would be for…well she didn't know how long but he liked her. He liked her for who she was and she liked him and…and that was enough for her.

That was more than enough for her.

She wiped her eyes and then took off her helmet…and had help. She was about to smack whoever thought that they could touch her helmet…but she was glad that she had held back. She almost didn't believe her eyes. There he was. Taller now, and he had on a new coat, and his hair was a little longer, but that was him. That was Sho Suzuki, Suzuki Sho, standing right in front of her pulling her helmet up from her eyes….

And she sort of wanted to smack him.

"Sho! You daft booger!" said Emmy. She took a step back from him. She was cross…and she was maybe cross with him. He was late. She hadn't seen him since last spring and…and he knew how long it had ben…and he had gone on and on and on about how he missed her just as much as she missed him…and then that daft mog of a booger was late! He had left her to stand outside in the cold and freeze to death…just like…like nothing!

"I'm late, I'm sorry. I had to sneak away from my dad. He was all 'where are you going' and then I told him that I was going out and I didn't know why he gave a fuck, and I still don't know why he gives a fuck, and then he was all 'don't talk to me like that' and then my sister got all freaked out since me and my dad were fighting…and it's been a long day…and I'm sorry." said Sho. Emmy….well she had wanted to smack him, to deck him right in the head, but she didn't anymore. Right. His dad. His dad was mean and hit him, he had said so, and Emmy hadn't been spanked in ages…but his dad did more than that…and she couldn't smack him now…

And also that might have counted as domestic violence too and she didn't want to be the sort of person who did things like that.

"Sorry, no, you're fine….I'm just cross right now. Not at you…I'm just cross….and I won't take it out on you. I'm happy to see you too, Sho, really happy." Said Emmy. She didn't care what people said to her or thought about her. She had a boyfriend who liked her…and he was right there…and she liked him right back. So what if she didn't have any friends? She had a boyfriend and that was better than even having a hundred friends.

"Cross means mad, right?" asked Sho after a moment…and that was Emmy's fault. She'd been daft again. He was Japanese, he wasn't used to English, and the English that he did speak was downright odd sometimes.

"Yes, sorry. I forget sometimes that you don't speak proper English." Said Emmy

"Hey! I speak English!" said Sho. Emmy smiled and tried not to laugh. He said it like Engrish….and she knew, from all of the YouTube that she had watched, that it was a language thing. She also knew, from just being a person who lived in the world with other people, that it was mean to make fun of the way someone talked. It hurt. She knew that she hated it when people made fun of the way she talked. She had come back from dad's that summer holiday talking like him…and even mum had said something…

That was the good thing about having a boyfriend who was a foreigner, a proper foreigner, he had no idea that she talked like she was proper Irish sometimes.

"You speak like you're from the states…and you have an accent sort of…but I don't mind. I've got one too when I try to speak Japanese I bet." Said Emmy

"Yeah, you kind of do…but I don't mind. I like you." Said Sho. Emmy felt all the blood in her body rush to her heart and face. That daft…brilliant…she didn't even know what. Why did he have to just go and say it like it was nothing? That was…that was a lot and…and now she had to say it too…and she liked to say it…but it was a lot and…and she wanted to say it back to him.

"Um….I like you too." Said Emmy. She said it in Japanese, that was easier, because in English…well it was a lot. Maybe it just felt like a lot since she hadn't seen him in a while, she didn't really know, all she did know was that he was a daft booger and she liked him and now she wanted to hold his hand and she couldn't even remember what she had been so cross about a second ago.

"You look pretty today." Said Sho. Well now she couldn't even remember her own name. Emmy was short for something….she couldn't think. All she could think about was how he had said that she was pretty. She wasn't. Her face was all red and her hair was so frizzy that people at school called her Merida like the princess and she was short and even mum said that she was getting kind of chubby and she was in her school uniform and about a million other reasons why she wasn't pretty. She didn't understand him at all sometimes. She knew that he was supposed to say things like that but…well they weren't true!

"No I don't." said Emmy

"Yes you do. You look nice in that…um…dress." Said Sho

"It's a skirt." Said Emmy

"You look pretty in that skirt then, I mean you make it look pretty." Said Sho

"No I don't. This is just me-my uniform." Said Emmy. She pulled her skirt down even though it was already below her knees like the headmaster said that it had to be. She knew how boys were. They were always talking about who was fit and who wasn't and she knew that she wasn't fit….but she also knew that Sho liked her…so maybe he thought that she was fit…but he had been all over the world. He had probably met a million girls before her and a million girls after her. What did he even want with her?

She really didn't understand him sometimes…but that didn't matter.

"You still look really petty." Said Sho. He took her hand when he said that…and she knew that he was telling the truth. He thought that she was pretty. She didn't even know why she thought that he thought that she was fit. Pretty…maybe she could be pretty…but not fit. The fit girls were tall and their hair didn't look like they stuck their finger in an electrical socket and they didn't wear white tights and stuff. Sho thought that she was pretty…and he was her boyfriend so he was supposed to think that about her…and she believed that he was telling the truth.

He liked her and when you liked someone then you never lied to them.

"Th-thanks…um…do you want to…do…something?" asked Emmy. He was still holding her hand…and she was never washing that hand again. She was glad that she lost her other glove. If she had been wearing gloves then he wouldn't have been able to feel him holding her hand…and his hand was warm and kind of rough….but it was nice. A little sticky too but nice. This was nice…he was nice…

He was brilliant.

"Yeah. I brought binoculars if you want to climb trees and look at birds or dogs or people or in their windows or whatever." Said Sho

"That would be brilliant…really brilliant. You're really brilliant I mean." Said Emmy. She wanted to go and do something before she melted into a puddle and she wanted to stand there and hold his hand until they lost their fingers and toes to frost bite and then they had to go to the hospital and get them amputated. That would have been so cool…and their hands would have survived because they were touching…and also because she was really, REALLY warm.

"You are too. Want me to kiss you? I mean we don't have to. It's just been a long time and I know that you like that kind of stuff. Couple stuff." Said Sho. If she had thought that she had been warm before now she felt like a kettle that had been on the fire for too long. If this had been an old timey cartoon there would have been steam coming out of her ears. He wanted….he wanted to kiss her…and they'd kissed before. She'd lost count of the times that they had kissed…and now he was asking to do it again….

It was good having a boyfriend.

"That…would be brilliant too." Said Emmy. She said that and then he kissed her. He kissed her and she kissed him back and it was…well it was always great but this time it was really great. Maybe because they had been apart for so long, or maybe because she had been so cross before, or maybe because it had been a good day before she had gotten cross. She didn't know. The only thing that she knew, besides the fact that they both needed chap stick, was that she had a boyfriend and he was a daft booger…but he was her daft booger.

And he made her happy.


	447. The Frozen Yogurt Date

Mob didn't understand her little brother sometimes.

She didn't understand a lot of things about him, like why he wore that coat all the time even though it was too cold for it…or why played fighting games even though they made him mad…or why he kept on fighting with dad even though he knew that dad would always win….yeah, there was about her little brother that she didn't understand. Maybe because he was younger or because he was a boy…or just because he was Sho.

Sho could be very confusing sometimes.

She loved her brother, she cared about her little brother, and she wanted only the best for him. That was why she didn't ask him about this…even though it was very confusing. Sho had a girlfriend. Her name was Emmy. She was sitting on the other side of the table from Mob. She had on an army helmet and an army jacket and army pants and an army shirt…so maybe she wanted to join the army? Mob didn't know. Emmy's clothes weren't the thing that confused her, and she wouldn't have said anything anyway even though she knew from Minori that you were supposed to tell your friends when they were dressed weird, it was the fact that Emmy was…there….that confused Mob. She was sitting there on the other end of the table from Mob…and she just…didn't get.

Well she was Sho's girlfriend after all.

Emmy was Sho's girlfriend. He was always sending her presents and texting her and emailing her and now that they were back in London he was always hanging out with her and talking to her and stuff. That was normal. That was the way that boys were supposed to be with their girlfriends…not that Mob knew anything about that since she'd never had a boyfriend….but she was happy for Sho. He was such a good boyfriend to Emmy. He had taken her here to this frozen yogurt place even though it was way too cold out for this and he had gotten her two things of frozen yogurt already and he had told her twice already that she was pretty….and he was such a good boyfriend to Emmy…

But Mob didn't understand why he was her boyfriend in the first place.

"Three!" said Sho as he slammed his empty frozen yogurt cup on the table. Some people turned around to look. Probably because he was shouting in Japanese. They were in London so they needed to speak English.

"Sho. Stop it. People are looking." Said Mob. It took her a minute to remember how to say that. She had a weird accent when she spoke English. Dad had told her so…well he hadn't used the word weird but he had told her to watch her pronunciations. She sort of wanted to get back to speaking Japanese but that would have been rude. Emmy was here and she only spoke English.

"San!" said Emmy as she slammed her cup down too. Now more people were looking…and Mob…well dad had told her to make sure that Sho didn't do anything dumb. She had been told to make sure that he didn't do anything that drew attention to them or that they were espers, it had to be a secret until they had taken over the world, and that was the only reason that Mob had gone on this date with her little brother and his girlfriend. She knew that Sho could keep a secret, he'd been keeping their powers a secret for his entire life, but…well she worried just a little bit too. Sho was drawing attention to them…and his aura was showing….and also he was in love and when you loved someone then you didn't keep secrets from them.

And Emmy was a normal person.

A normal person who could eat three cups of frozen yogurt in one sitting was still a normal person. Mob had been focused on her for a while and she didn't seen even the smallest hint of an aura. She was a normal person…and Sho was in love with her…and Mob was maybe with dad on this one. She wished that he'd found an esper girl so then that way they didn't have to keep things a secret. Then they would have had another esper friend who could have known everything…and she might have had an esper friend who was a girl…and stuff…but that was selfish.

Esper or not it was still rude to shout in public like that.

"Guy, people are looking." Said Mob

"Oh, sorry ane." Said Emmy. She was switching between weird English and weird Japanese, not that Mob was one to criticize anyone for anything ever, and it was a little hard to follow her. Just a little…but she was making an effort for Sho. Sho was making an effort for her, too, it seemed. She knew that he was in love with Shimazaki, and that he liked boys, and that was what was so confusing about all of this. She just…didn't know how he could be in love with two people at once like this…not that she was going to just ask him. Not here, not in front of his girlfriend, and maybe not ever.

Minegishi had told her, before, that it was none of her business.

Sho's heart was his own business. What was in his heart was between him and his heart and his head and just…it had nothing to do with her. She knew that she would have been upset if someone had gone poking around in her heart. She knew that, back when she'd been in love with Hatori, she had hated it when dad and Sho had asked her about it. She would never put her brother through that…even though this, whatever was in his heart, was a lot more complicated than what was in her heart. Boys liking boys was very complicated….and boys liking both like Sho maybe did was also complicated….and the books that she had found under Sho's bed hadn't helped much…but she knew not to ask.

Because, really, it was none of her business at all.

"Oneesan. Big sis is oneesan…but ane works too. It's just kind of weird. Ane is kind of like saying…like…a big sis. Big sis is oneesan because…well she's MY big sis…if that makes sense." Said Sho

"Oh…that's brilliant I guess…but she's not my older sister…so is she ane or oneesan?" asked Emmy. She was digging her boot into the floor as she talked. There was a loud squeaking since she was wearing combat boots even though she wasn't going to a war…unless she was just getting ready…but Mob didn't know what she was dressed like that for or what that was about. Like she was scared or nervous. What did she have to be scared or nervous about? Sho loved her. He would protect her from anything…even the war that she seemed to be so worried about.

"Or Shigeko, you can call me Shigeko. Or Mob. I like that too. Or Shige, or Suzuki." Said Mob

"Um…which is more polite?" asked Emmy

"Whatever. I don't care." Said Mob. Anything but Miss Suzuki. The only person who could call her that was Serizawa and that was because he just…well he was Serizawa. She wondered if he liked Frozen yogurt. She'd have to bring him some, maybe, with a lot of different toppings. He seemed like he would have liked toppings…maybe he would have liked to come with her…later. When he was more used to people. He had just now started making friends with everyone else…even Shimazaki for some reason.

"Well I've got to know what's the most polite. I'm not Japanese and you guys are bloody complicated. Kun and san and sama and tan and chan…it's a lot." Said Emmy

"Oneesan is fine." Said Mob. They'd met before but they hadn't talked since then…and they hadn't even really talked then either. She had given Emmy and Sho some space. She knew that if she'd had a boyfriend then she wouldn't have wanted her little brother to be there…even though that was mean of her. She just knew that she would have wanted some space for…well kissing and handholding and stuff…and she didn't want to do that where her little brother could see.

But he didn't seem to feel the same way.

He and Emmy were holding hands under the table. They were holding hands even though their hands must have been really sticky. She knew Sho, he was always eating something sticky, and frozen yogurt was just as sticky as ice cream…and Sho liked to scoop it out with his fingers. Emmy too. Was that something that he loved about her? She didn't know. She knew, however, not to ask him such personal things…even though she really wanted to….

But she didn't want to ruin his date.

"Ok….oneesan. Do you and Sho want to go for four….I mean…go? No, yon. Want to go for yon? I'm not skint yet." Said Emmy

"Put your money away, I told you I have this. I'm the guy and I pay for things. That's how it works." Said Sho

"It's the twenty first century, girls can pay for things too….but if you insist I can't pass up free food." Said Emmy

"Cool. Do you want me to make yours again? I know how you like it. Chocolate and coconut with cheese cake pieces, gummy worms, strawberry goo, and sprinkles….I mean hundreds and thousands." Said Sho

"Yes…loads of everything please." Said Emmy. She was sort of red there. Mob didn't get why…but she didn't get all of these couple things. She had never been in a couple before…and also she wasn't going to ask so she just needed to stop wondering. This was none of her business.

"Got it. Big sis, you want more strawberry and vanilla with gross fruit stuff and hundreds and thousands?" asked Sho as he got up. Mob…well she knew how he put frozen yogurt together. Very little frozen yogurt and a whole lot of toppings. She liked the yogurt part best. It was like soft serve only there were no self-service soft serve places.

"Yes but I can get it myself." Said Mob. She tried to get up but Sho stopped her with his powers. She looked around…was anyone looking!? No, nobody had even looked their way. Emmy didn't even seem to notice. That was good…but she would have to talk to Sho about using their powers where people could see. Dad had been very clear that the normal people couldn't know about them now…even normal people who Sho was crazy in love with.

"No, you stay with Emmy, I can get you too. I'm strong enough." Said Sho

"Ok Sho, but put some fruit in your cup to make it healthy." Said Mob

"I…fine. But just this once." Said Sho

"Thank you, little brother." Said Mob. Sho saluted her as he walked away. She watched him and…well he was putting in the toppings first again. That was something else that he did. She didn't get it…but Emmy did the same thing. She must have liked it that way…or maybe that was just the way that you were supposed to do it. She had been the one to show them this place after all. She was nice like that. She was a nice person and Sho loved her…

And Mob wasn't going to ask why.

She wanted to ask, though, especially since Emmy was looking at her. She was looking at her and maybe she expected Mob to say something…but Mob had nothing to say. She had nothing but questions that she knew not to ask. She knew not to go poking around people's hearts and feelings…and also she wasn't going to do like Minori and tell her that she was dressed weird and that she looked weird and stuff. Mob…well she would never call Minori a b-word…but Mob…well she felt like she would have been sort of a b-word if she told Emmy that she was dressed weird….and also if she just came out and asked why she was in love with Sho, why Sho was in love with her, and if she knew that Sho liked boys and if she knew that he was in love with Shimazaki.

She kept her mouth shut just in case the words found their way out.

"So…do you still like…princesses?" asked Emmy. She was the one who talked first. Good. That was the best thing that could have happened. Now they could talk…and Mob…well last year she would have been happy to talk about the princesses and girl Disney characters….and she still liked them…but she also…well she sort of wanted to ask Emmy if she liked makeup and stuff…but she knew that Emmy didn't so she said nothing. She was more like a boy than a girl, and Mob meant that in the nicest way possible, and maybe…maybe that was what drew Sho to her.

Not that she ever would have asked that. Even Mob wasn't that clueless.

"Yes but not as much as I used to. I pretty much just have this Elsa dress now. Um…do you like…the army? I mean do you want to be a soldier when you grow up?" asked Mob. When you were having a conversation with someone then it was important to ask a lot of questions…and that seemed like it would have been an ok question to ask. It had nothing to do with feelings and she didn't feel like a b-word when she asked it.

"Maybe. I either wanted to be a soldier or to open a museum of medical oddities." Said Emmy

"Medical oddities?" asked Mob. She…had no idea why anyone would have wanted to work with things like that. Sho would have, if he'd had a choice, so maybe that was something else that drew him to Emmy. Oh. Now it was starting to come together. Sho liked boys and girls and he liked girls who were like boys the best. Well that made sense.

"Yeah, you know, conjoined twins and giant tumors with teeth and hair and brain worms and, like, there's this thing where you swallow your twin up while you're in your mum's belly and then when you're born you look like you're up the duff and then your twin grows inside of you until-" said Emmy

"That sounds cool! Um…I hope you achieve your dreams." Said Mob. She didn't want to hear any more. They were eating. Well they had been eating. Sho was covering something, hopefully not her food, in strawberry syrup. She didn't want to think about the sorts of things that Emmy had been talking about, the things in the pictures that she and Sho exchanged, at the table or anywhere at all…and she meant that in the nicest way possible.

"Me too. What do you want to do when you grow up?" asked Emmy

"I guess get married and have babies and stuff." Said Mob. There was no choice in it for her…and that was ok. She liked babies and she liked taking care of her family and dad was really looking forward to when she grew up and had babies and stuff. So she didn't mind not being able to pick…even though she had liked going to the animal shelter with mom when she had been a kid. Well then she could always get pets…if dad ever let her.

"That's boring…not to be mean. I mean…it's brilliant! I like babies." Said Emmy

"Yeah, they're the best aren't they? They're so cute and they love you no matter what." Said Mob

"Yeah, and it's fun to dress them up in their little clothes and push them in their prams. My neighbor has a baby and sometimes I come 'round to play with him. He's called Tommy and he's one now. He can put his foot behind his head like he's doing yoga. It's brilliant." Said Emmy

"Yes babies are brilliant. How many are you and Sho going to have?" asked Mob. This was so great! Emmy liked babies! That meant that she and Sho would have a lot of them and then maybe they could all live together, in a house big enough that they never crossed paths with dad because he was still mean to Sho even though he had stopped hitting him, and their babies could be best friends with her babies. Also Shimazaki and Minegishi would have some babies too…and Shibata would help out and bring his babies to, even though girls were scared of him he'd meet someone, and then maybe Hatori could meet a boy and he could adopt some babies…and then Serizawa…well she had no idea what he would do…probably live in his room…it would be great. Yes. Everything would be great.

She loved Sho and now she loved Emmy too. She would be a good little sister.

"Are you daft? I'm not even in secondary school yet. I can't have a baby." Said Emmy

"No, not now. I mean when you guys grow up and get married." Said Mob

"…what?" asked Emmy

"Sorry, my English isn't that good. I mean that when you and Sho are adults and married…um…did I use the right word there?" asked Mob

"Yeah, I understand you." Said Emmy

"Ok, good, I was worried about that. I know that I have a funny accent. I was just asking how many babies you and Sho were going to have when you get married…also can you send me a list of names that you guys want? That way I won't accidentally take any of them. I mean I'm older so I'll probably end up having a baby first but you guys are in love already and that gives you a head start. I don't even have a boyfriend…or know any boys even." Said Mob

"….what? You want…a list of names I like?" asked Emmy

"Yes. You can have dibs on any names. I mean I like Shoko and Shigeo and Souichirou and Masa and Ami and Nozomi and Hiro and Toshiko and Ryoko and maybe Katsuko…maybe….because I have a new friend named Katsuya, well he's Serizawa to me but his given name is Katsuya, and I like to use the names of my friends and my family because they're important to me just like my babies are going to be important to me. Um…if you want those names you can have them but…I also really like them." Said Mob

"Wait….you're telling me that Sho…wants to marry me and have babies with me? He told you this?" asked Emmy. Mob wondered if this was supposed to be a secret or something. She didn't know why, though, it would have been a secret. That was what people did when they were in love. They got married and had babies. Sure they were young but that just meant that Emmy and Sho would have even more time together to be happy. You never knew how much time you had with someone after all. They could always just…leave one day….suddenly….without warning….

If Emmy ever tried to leave Sho then Mob would do….something mean.

"Well he never said so to my face but he really loves you. You're his girlfriend so of course he's planning on asking you to marry him and then have a bunch of babies. Sho likes babies. I like them too. I like you too. Oh! You and Sho can live with me and my family! We can live in a manor house here if you like so you don't get homesick." Said Mob

"Wait…what? Are you being seri-" said Emmy

"Here. I put strawberry goo on it…and that's a fruit." Said Sho as he sat down. Mob helped, with her powers, to make sure that nothing fell. She used her powers but not in a way that people would notice. It was ok if she did it because she knew what she was doing and also she was the oldest.

"Sho!?" asked Emmy. Mob was glad that she had been holding the cups down because Emmy practically jumped up out of her chair. She'd need to work on being jumpy if she was planning on going off to war…or maybe not. Dad said that once they took over the world then there would be no more wars or crimes.

"What's wrong? Did it get the wrong thing? I can go back and-" said Sho

"No, no, no, this is brilliant. I um….I'm fine. So, anyway, did you unlock Mewtwo yet? Because if you did can I have a go with him?" asked Emmy as she took her cup. She mashed her stuff up and looked down at the table. Mob did the same but she watched Sho and Emmy instead of the table. They were so cute together….the best couple…the cutest couple….

And they'd have the cutest babies too.

"Of course I did, who do you think you're talking to? I'll unlock him for you, too, on your Switch." said Sho

"You'd do that for me?" asked Emmy

"Of course. I'm your boyfriend, I'd do anything for you." Said Sho. Mob didn't understand it, how this worked, what happened in his heart…and she didn't have to. Her little brother was happy. He had met the perfect girl for him. She liked gross stuff and violent stuff and boy's stuff…and that was perfect for Sho since he liked boys. Yes, this was perfect and Mob…well she was so happy for her little brother.

She didn't have to totally understand his feelings to be happy for him….but understanding helped.


	448. Four Seats at the Dinner Table

Family dinners usually consisted of three people…but tonight there were four.

There, sitting at his table, was another man. His name was Serizawa Katsuya, he was twenty seven years old, and he was Shigeko's new friend. Hatori's too, actually, and apparently a good potential friend for Suzuki as well. That was what Hatori had said. Suzuki had no idea if he wanted to be friends with anyone else, he had two friends now which was one more friend than he had ever planned on making in his life, and three…well three might have been too maybe. The group, and there was a group now, would have been an even number and even numbers were his favorites…

But Serizawa Katsuya was…a lot.

Suzuki quickly drained just a bit of energy from him. Just enough the calm the storm that was his aura. Suzuki had been living beside this man for a month now…and it had been like having a low level head ache constantly. Just…there. At the back of his head was this man and the constant never ending state of panic that he seemed to be in. Like now. Right now. Suzuki had no idea what he was so panicked about.

It was just dinner.

"Does everyone like dinner? I made the whole thing by myself…well Shibata taught me how. I helped him make dinner for everyone next door and then I came here and made this…and stuff." Said Shigeko. Suzuki poked at his food with his fork. Truth be told fish and chips was maybe one of those foods best gotten from the outside world. The fish somehow had too much batter on one side and not enough on the other, the fries we far too thick, and the mushy peas were just…too mushy. Also Shigeko maybe hadn't had to serve it to them in a newspaper…

But he loved Shigeko more than anything else in the world so he would not be saying any of those things to her.

"This is wonderful, Shigeko, I can see that you put a lot of effort into it." Said Suzuki. Objectively it was not wonderful but…well it was subjective. Someone must have found it wonderful. Someone, somewhere, in this world must have enjoyed the meal that his Daughter slaved over a hot stove to make. He would never criticize her cooking, or anything about her, because she was his and he loved her so very much…

Even if, in the kitchen at least, she was no Masami.

"Is this enough?" asked Sho as he held up his plate. His barely picked at plate. He had been sitting there making faces and picking at his fish and chip, newspaper covered, plate like this was something inedible in front of him. He had seen the Boy eating pure sugar straight from the bag. He had seen the Boy stick gum under chairs to chew for later. He had seen the boy drink ranch dressing from a glass like it was ketchup or something! How could he just sit there and pick at the meal that his sister had gone through the trouble of cooking with her own two hands in front of a hot stove-

He would not say anything.

He would not tell the Boy that he was being ungrateful. He was not going to get up and smack the Boy across the back of the head and tell him to act like a human being. He would not tell the Boy that he didn't care if he sat there and wasted away to nothing but he would not let him sit there and insult his sister's cooking. He would say nothing and do nothing. Shigeko had made herself perfectly clear, she could handle it, even though it didn't seem like she was handling it at all.

"A few more bites, alright?" said Shigeko. So made a face at her and then got back to moving his food around on his plate. If Suzuki had been in his Son's shoes, well socks since they were indoors now, his father would have told him to stop pushing his food around and to choke it down even if he didn't like. Suzuki would have been imprisoned at that table all day, all night, and then into the next day until he ate. All the while mother would have either been banging pots and pans in the kitchen, shouting to herself in the living room, or crying in her bedroom because her family didn't appreciate her. Father would have been so angry that he-

Well now that was an odd thing to remember.

He hadn't thought about his old family dinners in years. He hadn't thought about how he had been so small and he had been forced to eat…things. Things which he had barely been able to keep down. Mother, for all of her talk about slaving over a hot stove, hadn't been much of a cook. Not like Masami. She had been able to make everything taste good, even foods which were sticky and…just…there were some things which he just could not have in his mouth. Sticky and goopy and sweet and…well he hated meat with gravy…and he hated….well he hated a lot of things….so he understood Son in that way…

But he didn't understand why he didn't just get up and leave the table. Suzuki had given him that freedom.

"Fine…but not the peas. I don't like peas." Said Son. He poked at them with his powers…and he could understand it. There was something about food like that, food textured like that, that was difficult to get down. Still, though, Shigeko had worked very hard on this and he shouldn't have been such an ingrate and if he wasn't going to eat at the table then he could eat in his closet and he wasn't coming out until his plate was clean and-

Well he wasn't going to be doing that.

He had always hated that. When father hadn't been home to tell mother to go calm down. When mother had grabbed him by the arm and locked him in his closet…well not locked, there were no locks on any of the doors in his childhood home, and also he could have easily broken out…but he didn't. He wouldn't have done that to mother, not on purpose, and that time when he had sent her hurling into his wall….well that had been an accident…he hadn't meant to hurt her…but he had and then…well she had never made him eat in his closet again…

His Son should have been grateful that his family was so permissive.

"Just a few bites so that you can be healthy." Said Shigeko. She was so good to him in that way. She was good to everyone. Her brother who acted like a child, her friend who was clinging to her like a child, and her father who was not going to act like a child. Suzuki was a grown man and he could have just pushed his plate away and made himself some ketchup bread like he wanted…but that would have been rude…rude and also he would have set a terrible example for his Son…and he would have been ungrateful towards his Daughter…and he would never have treated her like that.

If he wouldn't have treated Masami like that then he wouldn't have treated Shigeko like that either.

"Fine….one bite?" asked Son. He had done that to his mother, too. Just one bite. Suzuki had just left him be. He didn't understand trying to force someone to eat something that they didn't want to. He didn't understand Shigeko. She should have just left him to eat some more of his breakfast pastries like he liked. He didn't say anything, though, Shigeko knew more about child rearing than he did.

"Three bites." Said Shigeko. She held up three fingers just in case Son had forgotten the meaning of the word 'three'. Her friend seemed to not be able to tell that she was not directing her words at him. He was eating his food and looking over at her. Suzuki wasn't the best with people but it seemed to him that her friend was looking towards her for approval. He knew that look. People gave him those looks all the time. Not his own Son, for some reason, but others. It was good that Shigeko was getting those sorts of looks. She deserved them.

"Two bites?" asked Son. He held up two fingers just in case his older sister had forgotten the meaning of the word 'two'. Shigeko should have, in Suzuki's opinion, started up higher. When you negotiated you started up high and then the other people started down low and then you met in the middle. That was the way to negotiate…well everything. Not that Suzuki still negotiated. He was the President now. His word was law. Shigeko's word should have been law too but she negotiated….maybe because she was a woman.

They tended to be…nicer…like that.

She was certainly nice. Pleasant. She was a nice and pleasant person much like Masami had been. She had never been like his mother. She had always negotiated with Son, too, and Shigeko when she had been smaller and more picky. His own mother would have been rolling over in her grave if there had been enough of her to bury. No, what little had been left of her and father had been cremated….and he had no idea why he was thinking about this. About them. About the life he's had with them. They were dead and he was forty four, forty five in March, and…and there was no point in thinking about the family which he'd had.

He was a grown man, now, and he had his own family...plus one newcomer….who Suzuki was not going to say anything to even though his aura was clinging to Shigeko's…

"Fine….but big kid bites, not baby bites." Said Shigeko. She sighed as she said that and poked at her own food. Her friend's aura poked at hers. She looked over at him and smiled. He smiled back to her. Suzuki…was not going to flip this table over and kill anyone…or beat them terribly…or beat them a little…or kick them. He was just going to eat his food and keep his mouth shut…

Well metaphorically, obviously.

"Alright…and I'm sorry if I messed up dinner, guys. I did what Shibata showed me…and I didn't mean to mess up…" said Shigeko. She was poking at her plate, now, with her fork. She was shredding the newspaper. She was going to get newspaper in her food. She was going to get newspaper in her food and she didn't need to because this was delicious…good…decent…edible. It went down and that was good enough.

"You did a good job with dinner. Feel proud of your accomplishment." Said Suzuki. He didn't know anything about cooking. He had never moved past ketchup bread, instant porridge, and cup noodles. So if he had done this then he would have felt proud because he had made something that approximated a meal. In fact if he had been in her position he would have been incredibly proud of himself. She had made food from country on the other side of the world. She knew how to make Japanese food, she had mastered tempura and omurice and at that point there was nothing left to master, so it made sense that she wouldn't have been good at this…and she was good at this! She was good at everything!

She was Suzuki Shigeko and she was the most perfect person who had ever entered his life…well she was tied with Masami….

"You really think so, dad?" asked Shigeko

"Yes. Those are my feelings towards this meal and I know that everyone sitting here feels the same." Said Suzuki. They had better have felt the same. People would like what he told them to like and people would enjoy what he told them to enjoy and if anyone at that table, in the world, had a different opinion then he would put them in the ground.

"He-he's right! I mean your dad, father, is right…this is very good. I've never had this before and…and I like it a lot. You're a very good cook, Miss Suzuki, you're good at everything." Said Shigeko's friend who Suzuki didn't even want to know the name of. His fork bent in his hand. How dare he…well he had complimented Shigeko…but how dare he compliment Shigeko! Wait, no, that was a good thing and…and he loved his Daughter and he knew that she had friends and he knew that her friends thought the world of her, they had better, and also…also this was just the latest in the string of her friends and…well Hatori liked him…

And he trusted Hatori's judgement.

He trusted Shigeko's new friend and…and he trusted that she wouldn't…well she was only eleven but…well she was at that age. She getting older and she was old enough to have feelings for people and…well most of her friends were male so she would choose from her friends and….and he wanted her to be happy and…and of course she would have done better than the man sitting beside her…though he was tall and maybe if he shaved and combed his hair and…well he was…Suzuki straightened his fork and went back to eating.

He did not have the mental space to deal with all of that…whatever it was…right now.

"Yeah it's pretty good…but next time just go to the place that we always go to." Said Son

"Don't speak that way to your sister." Said Suzuki. He didn't raise his voice, he didn't tip the boy out of his chair and he didn't send him flying into the wall. He showed more restraint than the Boy deserved and hopefully Shigeko would not be upset with him. She had warned him that she would walk out on him…like Masami had…but that was only if he struck the Boy or didn't accept the one in a trillion chance that he was…the way Suzuki had long suspected that he was…so he didn't need to worry about Shigeko leaving him….

So then why was he worried?

"What? The fish and chips place does it for a living so of course it would be-" said Son. Suzuki held his tongue. He had seen Shigeko's aura…and she was displeased…and if she was displeased with him then she would go…she would leave him…and then he would have been without her…and he didn't know what he would do if he had to be without her. If he woke up and she was gone….then he would have been alone…and he knew that it was wrong to fear being alone….he knew that he had to be a full and complete person all on his own…

But he also knew that he loved Shigeko more than anything else in this world.

"Stop it, dad, Sho didn't mean anything by that…so stop it. Sho's right, it is better from the place, and maybe I should have just gone there…and don't say anything else mean. You're scaring Serizawa. You know that he's fragile." Said Shigeko. She patted her friend on the hand…and Suzuki smoothed down the flares of his aura. Suzuki's own aura…well he took in the energy that he could….and he did his best to stay calm. He did his best to take in the energy and….he so hated doing this when he didn't have to…especially for someone this powerful…

He hadn't felt anything this powerful, anyone this powerful, since meeting Shigeko all those years ago…and he had no idea how to feel about all of this.

"I…fine." Said Suzuki. There was too much to feel right then. There was the Boy and his tantrum and Shigeko and her friend…and the affection that she showed him…but that was just her way. That was just how women were. They were affectionate towards the people that they cared about and…and she was only eleven years old and…and she was not at that age yet. Well she was at the age at which she would notice the opposite sex but not old enough to do something about it….right?

Suzuki did not want to think about now.

"See? I know about stuff!" said Sho. The Boy was throwing a tantrum now…and he chose to focus on that. He chose to focus on that and not the way that Shigeko's hand rested on top of her friend's….she was just doing that because he was even more emotionally fragile than Hatori. She was focused on him…and her brother. She was focusing on her brother too and that was…he had never been more grateful for one of the Boy's tantrums than he was now….

What had become of him?

"Sho!" said Shigeko. What was the matter with him? He was HAPPY that the Boy…well not happy but…well glad. He was glad that his Son was pitching a fit…and that made no sense. His Son was being a brat…and he should have been upset but…well it took his sister's attention off of the man beside her…and he knew her. He knew that she didn't have those sorts of feelings for that man and…and he just…

He needed to just eat his dinner already….and put a stop to this too.

He had to just…get back to…maybe a silent dinner? Or maybe just…he didn't know. Son was Son and he knew his Son and he knew that his Son would just keep on running his mouth and sharing his opinions and…and he had his right to them. Suzuki wanted to smack those opinions out of his mouth but…well he had to be…different. Shigeko wanted him to be nicer so maybe…he could just…talk to his Son like…

Well not like he wanted to…not like the Boy deserved.

"Son, be quiet. You…you do know about things…well…if you have such strong opinions on British food then share them with your girlfriend when she decides to cook for you. Otherwise be silent. Your sister is not British and has done her best with their food and her best now, as always, is more than good enough." Said Suzuki. There. He had said his piece and he had made perfectly logical sense and this was his Son and if any human being on this earth would have been able to appreciate it then it would have been the human being that he had made himself.

Well…it would have made sense…but his Son so rarely made sense.

"I…I…don't talk about my girlfriend! I'm going to…to…to have dinner…in my room! And stop talking about my girlfriend!" said Son. He took his plate, got up, and left. The whole time Shigeko's aura seemed…well she seemed…upset? Maybe because her friend was so clinging to her now. His hand was clinging to hers and his aura was clinging to hers…and also he was clutching an umbrella for reasons that Suzuki just…did not understand.

There was a lot happening that he just did not understand.

"Dad…why'd you have to do that? I said to be nice." said Shigeko

"What? I was nice. He can share his opinions with his girlfriend when she becomes his wife since she'll be the one cooking for him." said Suzuki. There was a moment of silence between him and his Daughter there. Her aura was focused on his now and his was focused on hers and…it seemed like she had something to say and…and it seemed like she also didn't and…well the only thing that she could do now was break the silence…because Suzuki didn't know what more he could say.

But neither of them were the ones who broke the silence.

"He's going to marry his girlfriend? Wow….I'm so happy for him!" said Shigeko's friend. He did seem happy, well his aura did, and…well he had every reason to be happy. The Boy had found his most perfect person at the age of ten and now, if he played his cards right, he could have had sixty or seventy years with this little girl…and Suzuki knew that he should have agreed but…well he didn't trust himself to speak. The only words that would have come out of his mouth were something along the lines of 'my Daughter had better not have been your most perfect person' and then a list of the terrible things that he would have done to Serizawa if Shigeko had been his most perfect person…

Yes, it was better if he just sat down and ate and kept his thoughts to himself.

"We all are, Serizawa, we all are. I don't know what Sho's so embarrassed about…but we shouldn't talk about this. How was everyone's day?" asked Shigeko. She took her hand from her friends, and Suzuki had no idea that it was even possible for himself to feel so relieved, and she addressed that question to the table. Suzuki could tell that she had addressed it to the entire table…but her friend took it upon himself to answer her…

Wasn't he supposed to be shy?

Hatori had said that her new friend was so shy that the only way to speak to him was to speak to him through the walls. Hatori…well he had said that weeks ago when they had first met…and of course Shigeko would have helped her friend make progress…but still! He was just…did he have to be so close to her? Did he have to speak to her so much? Did he have to just…be…there…in the same room as Shigeko?!

Calm. Down. Touichirou.

"Mine was good…um mostly I think…um…well I spent it with you…um…how was your day?" asked Shigeko's friend.

"My day was good too. I spent it with you too…so maybe it wasn't the best question." Said Shigeko. She laughed a little when she said that….and she just…she had no reason to laugh. She had no reason to laugh to her friend like that. If she wanted to laugh then they could have laughed together the two of them…well he didn't know how to laugh actually…but for her he would try…well he would have tried and…and he got the distinct feeling that he was losing control…even though his powers were in check…

"No, no, it was a good question, all of your questions are good questions…and….um…you haven't asked your dad yet. I meant your father." Said Shigeko's friend. Suzuki…did not want to be addressed by this man as anything and…well he needed to calm down. He needed to remind himself that Shigeko was not interested in this man and…and Hatori had vouched for him….and maybe Hatori was the one who was interested in him. There. That would have been….well Hatori could have done much better than him. He could have gotten someone like Fukuda even…someone pleasant and intelligent…someone who always knew just what to say…and now he just….

His fork bent in half.

"Do you want to try asking him?" asked Shigeko. She didn't noticed him reach over into the drying rack with his powers and get a new fork. He didn't know if it was good, she hadn't seen him losing control, or bad, since she was so absorbed in another man….and he just…needed a moment to process all of this.

"I…I'm not ready…sorry." said Shigeko's friend.

"That's ok. You came out here and had dinner with me and my family and that's a lot for you. Maybe next time you'll be ready to talk to people who aren't me. It's not hard, here, watch me. Dad, how was your day?" asked Shigeko. Suzuki…got the feeling that he was losing control…without actually losing control…and he just…well he wasn't thinking. It seemed like it would have been a good idea to go and get the Boy just so he could throw another tantrum and just…take Suzuki's mind off of things….but that would have been a bad idea but…well he was running out of good ideas…

He needed space.

"It was…a normal day…..I worked…I…am going to eat my dinner in my room. Good day." Said Suzuki. He got up, took his plate with him, and walked to his room. He walked to his room, put his plate down on his dresser, and then just…sat down at his bed. He sat down at his bed and just…looked up. He looked up at the ceiling and just…collected himself. He just…

He had to collect himself.

He loved Shigeko and he just…he wanted her to be happy and…and maybe he was just being…for the past thirty years of his life Fukuda had been telling him that he was overly dramatic. Maybe he was. Maybe he was just…making something out of nothing. She'd had feelings before, Shigeko, for men. She'd had feelings for Hatori…which made perfect sense since Hatori was a very pleasant person, but Hatori was a homosexual but her new friend…well Suzuki hadn't asked…and he knew better than to ask…but he might have been…and the thought of it was just…it was good. The thought of her new friend being a homosexual and not a potential romantic partner…since she was so young and small and…well Suzuki wasn't young or small but…

He wasn't ready for…four seats at the table…not at all.


	449. Girls Can Be So Weird Sometimes

Sho had this boyfriend thing down.

Really it wasn't hard. You had a girl and you had to make her happy. There. She needed food, he fed her. She was bored, he played with her. She needed to feel good, he kissed her. Also every so often he had to tell her that she was pretty. Girls liked that, when you told them that they were pretty, and he liked to make his girlfriend happy. How he felt about her didn't matter, only what she felt mattered, and he…well this wasn't so bad. Making her feel good. Making her happy. Making her feel how he wanted to feel…how he wished someone could made him feel…

He need to stop thinking like that.

He needed to stop thinking about…well about a lot of things. He was in the park, with his girlfriend, and even if he feel the same way about her he still had to think about her and make her happy and stuff. That was how you were supposed to be when a girl cared about you. Fukuda had said so and Sho…well he believed him. Even though for the whole almost eleven years of his life he had never known a girl to like Fukuda…Sho still believed him.

Because what he said made complete and total sense.

Sho's feelings didn't matter, not when it came to this. This was why he was here. He was supposed to find a girl and then become her boyfriend and then take care of her and have ids and then be a good dad and also rule the world and stuff. It wouldn't be all bad. Emmy was nice and he liked babies, and little kids too like little sis, and…and he had to do what he had to do. He could do this. He would do this. He was doing this. He was doing the hell out of this!

He was the best fucking boyfriend in the fucking universe! Fuck yeah!

"Hey Sho?" asked Emmy as she dragged her feet to stop her swing. Sho had been pushing her even though she could push herself. That was a thing that guys did for their girlfriends. Well he'd seen guys doing that for their girlfriends anyway. There was a guy over on the next swing pushing his girlfriend…or a girl. He was about Sho's age and he had on a really cool hat with a flaming skull on it and his gloves looked like skeleton hands and Sho kind of really wanted to ask him where he had gotten those and also if he liked scary movies and also…well a lot of stuff that he was going to do because he was with his girlfriend now.

Also maybe if he didn't feed the goldfish in his stomach then it would just die or something and then he could be just like everyone else was…just like how he was supposed to be.

"Yeah? What's up? Do you want me to push you higher? Or do you want to go and climb another tree? Or we could throw rocks at cars again maybe?" asked Sho. She knew how to have fun. He had always thought that girls were like big sis…but that was because she had always been there and the only girl he knew and stuff. He had always thought that girls like dresses and makeup and Disney and manga with kissing and stuff. Emmy liked kissing…but she also liked a lot of the stuff that he did. That was so cool. That was just…if he had to have a girlfriend he was happy that his girlfriend was someone like her and not someone like big sis…not that he didn't love her, he did, but she was…a very different person from him….

And, really, he liked to play dolls sometimes…but not every single day for the rest of his life. Throwing rocks at cars was much more fun.

"No…and maybe we shouldn't throw rocks at cars since we could get in loads of trouble." Said Emmy. Well, alright, they couldn't have everything in common. They were different human bins and all of that. Shimazaki was the person he had to most in common with and…he had to stop thinking about Shimazaki and start thinking about Emmy.

She was there.

He liked her. She was a good friend. She was a good friend and stuff and that was enough. Even if she didn't like to throw rocks at cars. They could do other fun stuff. It was a Saturday and on Saturdays she could be out all day. Her mom thought that she was at the library studying and stuff so they had all day…and he didn't mind it…even though Shimazaki was home and he would totally have been up for some rock throwing…

Shut up goldfish. Nobody needs you.

"Ok. We can do other stuff. Uh…when the other swing is free then we can see who can jump off the farthest or we could try and swing over the bar or something." Said Sho. He looked over at the next swing…and he shouldn't have. The girl smiled at him. The guy didn't…and the goldfish in Sho's stomach swam on. It swam and…and Sho wondered if there was some way to just…get rid of it. He hated feeling like this. It was like every time he even looked at another guy the goldfish in his stomach just…went crazy.

It was even worse when Shimazaki was near…but he wasn't near…so he needed to just…stop it already.

"Actually I'm getting kind of cold…sorry. I mean I like spending time with you and all but it's cold enough to see my breath." Said Emmy

"We can go and have lunch somewhere or we can go to a store and put on hats and pretend that we're mannequins or we could go to the game store and play the demos or we can go to the library and hide in the back where nobody ever goes." Said Sho. He wanted….well he kind of wanted to go home and see if Shimazaki was awake yet. If he was awake and he wanted to hang out and throw rocks or climb trees or play in the sewers or find dogs to play with or…well a lot of other stuff that he liked to do…for fun reasons, just for fun, not for reasons like the goldfish in his stomach or the times when he would close his eyes and pretend that he was Shimazaki's boyfriend…and stuff.

"Nah, I'm skint again. I spend all me, my, money at the game shop already." Said Emmy

"That's ok, I can get you stuff." Said Sho

"You don't have to keep getting me things all the time, Sho, you're going to end up skint too." Said Emmy

"I'll never end up broke, skint, so you don't have to worry about that. Don't worry about money. You're the girl, it's not your job to worry about it." Said Sho. Dad had said, before, that the guy was supposed to make money and take care of the girl…and he may have been a jerk but he knew about this stuff. Even if mom had run away from him…well she had run away because he was a jerk…but he knew what he was supposed to do. Guys took care of girls and Sho was the boyfriend and he would take care of Emmy. He may not have been in love with her but he didn't want her to dump him. If she dumped him then he would have to go out and find a new girlfriend and that would have been way too much work. He had never met a girl like Emmy before and he didn't want to have to go around looking for another one.

One who was…mad at him?

"Don't be daft." Said Emmy. She was turned away from him. The swing's chains creaked as she turned. The people next to them had gotten up and left. Sho…well now they could swing together…and maybe that would cheer her up. He didn't know. He had no idea what he did. One minute everything was fine and the next she was calling him crazy…right?

Her English was weird.

"How am I being crazy? Daft means crazy, right?" asked Sho. He was just asking…he had no idea what he had done that time. He had just asked her a question…and now she seemed even madder at him. If she had been an esper then she would have been glowing as bright as a Christmas tree. He had done something…but what?!

"Yes, it does, you booger…and you know what booger means, right?" asked Emmy

"Yeah, I know what a booger is…and I'm not a booger either. Why are you mad at me?" asked Sho. Dad had said, once, that girls were weird. They never told you what was wrong, you had to figure it out, and you never did and they got madder and madder until you got them some kind of present. Sho…well he didn't like to listen to dad…but he had been right about this. Emmy was being all mad all of a sudden for no reason…huh. Even assholes could be right about stuff. Well then.

"I'm not mad! You're the one who's mad." Said Emmy. Now it was getting worse…and Sho had no idea what he had done. Maybe she was on her period. Girls got mad when they were on their periods. Sad too. Big sis did, anyway. She got mad and mad or sad and sad…and he would have been too if he had to go through that. Maybe that was happening to her too…but he wasn't going to ask her. Shimazaki had said that you never talked about a girl's period, well he said ketchup times but Sho knew what he meant, and Sho…well he didn't want to piss Emmy off more than she already was.

He hated it when people were pissed off at him.

"I'm not mad. I don't get mad at girls…not anymore anyway." Said Sho. She could be pissed off at him but he would never be pissed off at her. When he got pissed off at people then he yelled at them and he hit them and…and he would never treat a girl like that. He had been like that towards big sis for years and years and…and he was never going to be that asshole again. Not for as long as he lived.

He wasn't even pissed now.

He was mostly confused. He had no idea what he had done…but it was the same with big sis. She got really mad at him because he tried to feed her but then she got really sad because he went to play all on his own in their room. That was fine. You just had to be understanding and stuff. Even though this was kind of…it was part of being someone's boyfriend. He was a good boyfriend.

He had to be a good boyfriend.

"Oh…you meant cross. Right. Sorry….and I am cross with you." Said Emmy. She seemed less mad now. She was looking down at the ground and kicking a hole in the dirt with her boot. He wondered if he should have sat down next to her…or maybe he should have kept on standing…but maybe she thought that he was standing over her to remind her of how tall he was…even though they were about the same height…but still.

He hated it when dad did that.

"Why?" asked Sho as he sat down on the swing next to her. She turned to face him. The swing creaked again. The wind blew through his hair. She shivered a little. She wasn't in a very thick jacket, just this army jacket, so no wonder she was cold. Sho…well he was going to be a good boyfriend…and good boyfriends took care of their girlfriends.

She was cold so he warmed her up.

He took off his coat and put it over her shoulders. His swing creaked as he moved towards her too. He would much rather have been swinging on the swings with her, that was fun, and this just…wasn't. This was kind of…well he didn't know what to do. He had no idea how to fix this. If she told him that she was cold then he could warm her up, if she told him that she was bored then he would have fun with her, and if she told him that she was hungry then he would feed her. Hell, if she needed that girl stuff that big sis kept under the bathroom sink then he would have gotten that stuff for her…even if it was stealing…but at least he would have stolen for real. Big sis kept accusing him of stealing the stuff from between her mattress and box spring…and he hadn't!

Girls…they were way too complicated.

"Thank you." Said Emmy as she pulled his coat on. That was his coat…and she was wearing it…and he just…he wanted it back. He wanted it back because Shimazaki had given it to him…and now he knew that he was the crazy one, the daft one, because he knew that she would give it back. Besides, he knew that he was making her happy and he should have been happy that she was happy. He remembered how he felt when Shimazaki gave him that coat…and he should have been happy that Emmy was that happy…

But he mostly just felt cold.

"You're welcome…and I'm sorry that I mad you mad…cross. I really am and if you just tell me what's wrong then I can fix it." Said Sho

"I', cross with you because…I don't like it when you say that you're the boy and I'm the girl…you know…like it means something. Like there's rules. I don't like those sorts of rules…and I don't think that I can live like that. I mean it's hard, you know, when everyone tells you how you have to be." Said Emmy

"….I never meant to make you feel like that." Said Sho. He….made her feel like that? He had never wanted to and…and he knew how it felt. He was just like dad. He was being a total asshole and…and he was being like dad and…and if she left him then he would have understand. If she just got up and walked away and he never saw her again then he knew why…and it would have sucked…but then he would have deserved it.

"Well you did. You just…when you say that we have to be one way because of…daft rules…it just…I don't like it. Like I get worried. Like you want me to be someone I'm not." Said Emmy

"What do you mean? I like you for you. You're you and that's why you're my girlfriend." Said Sho

"I….I'm being daft. Sorry. I've just been thinking about…things. Things that your sister said to me I mean." Said Emmy

"Wait…what did big sis say?" asked Sho. He knew big sis and he knew that she never would have said anything mean to anyone…but she could also be really clueless sometimes. He didn't know what she could have said and…and he knew that she loved him and…and he was going to stay calm.

"That you were in love with me and that you wanted us to get married….and I don't know how I feel about that. I mean…you…I like you but…I'm not even in secondary school yet! I can't even decide on a case for me, my, mobile and…I don't know if I can marry someone who thinks like…like I have to be one way because I'm a girl…you know?" asked Emmy

"You're….worried that I'm going to boss you around?" asked Sho. That…made no sense. You weren't supposed to boss your girlfriend or wife around…actually if big sis was anything to go off of the girl was the boss of the house…and this whole just…complicated.

"Yes." said Emmy

"I would never boss you around. I'm not like that. I just…yeah, ok, I want us to get married when we grow up but not because I want to boss you around. I want to get married to you because you're my most perfect person." Said Sho. She looked at him and then she pulled her helmet down over her eyes. She was facing him but not looking at him…and he didn't know if that had been a good thing or a bad thing. She was red and…and maybe he had said the wrong thing…but he had just been telling the truth.

She was his most perfect person because she was a girl, she was nice, and they got along. What more could a person ask for?

"You think that I'm the most perfect person in the world? Nobody's ever said that to me before…" said Emmy. Her voice sounded kind of far away and she was being all quiet and…well the way she said it…it was kind of a lot.

"To me, I mean. My dad…well he's an asshole but he said that everyone has their most perfect person and when you meet that person you just sort of…know…and then you spend your life with them…and I think that you're the most perfect girl for me. I mean you like me and you like the same stuff that I do and my sister likes you too so…yeah. I just…want to make you happy. That's all that matters, making you happy, and I would never boss you around or make you be anyone other than yourself. I just want to do stuff to make you happy…and stuff." Said Sho. Emmy pulled her helmet up and then pulled it down again. Her face had been as red as her hair and…and he had no idea what he would do now. She was all…like this….and he didn't think that it should have been this complicated. Girls. They were just so…complicated….and he just…

Maybe it was better when you actually liked them.

He liked her. She was nice. He just…didn't like her the way that she liked him…and maybe if he had felt the same way then it would have made sense. But it didn't. She just pulled her helmet down, looked at him, and then pulled it back up again. She did that a few times like he was a baby and she was trying to play peekaboo with him. But she wasn't. He had no idea what she had been trying to do but he knew that it wasn't that. She pulled her helmet up and kept it up…and that was better…but now she was staring at him. She was staring at him and she was holding the chains of the swing so tight that her knuckles were white…and she was looking him in the eyes and….and he got the feeling that she was getting ready to hit him. Well if she did then he wouldn't fight back. Shimazaki said that it was ok to hit a girl when she hit you first but he didn't want to hit her or any girl ever again…and if she hit him then…well at least he would have been able to understand that.

She didn't hit him.

She stood up, leaned in, and kissed him. That was…well he didn't run away. Back when he'd been little he'd always ran from girls who tried to kiss him…and he felt like doing that now…but he didn't. No, he just let her do it…and about three seconds in he remembered that he had to kiss her back. Usually she asked or he asked…and asking made it better…well less like…this…but this was ok. The goldfish in his stomach was dead and her lips were all sticky…and also she smelled like coconuts…but at least he liked coconuts…

And at least it had been short.

"So…um…alright…and…um…you're my most perfect person too I guess. I mean you're the only boy who's ever liked me and…and I like you so…um...I feel the same." Said Emmy. She sat back down and stared at him. He stared at her. Was it over? Was she better now? Were they cool? Was that all that she had wanted, a kiss? He could have just done that at the beginning of the fight…the almost fight. Well it was done now and…yeah. It was done now….so why was she still staring at him?

"Cool." Said Sho.

"Brilliant." Said Emmy

"Awesome." Said Sho

"Capitol." Said Emmy

"Bitchin'" said Sho

"Ace." Said Emmy

"So…um…do you want to…go somewhere warm? Still?" asked Sho. That had been…well she was still staring at him…and he wished that he could have read minds or something. Girls. They were complicated. They were from Mars and men were from Venus, he had heard, and he knew that it was just a figure of speech but…yeah. He would have believed it. She was just…still sitting there and still staring and…well now she was smiling at him…and that was good…right?

Right?

"I'm already warm…but if you wanted to go to the dodgy curry shop we could…and share?" asked Emmy. What happened to worrying about money? How did that get fixed? And why was she smiling so much now? And what was….nope. He wasn't going to jinx whatever this was. He was going to go with it. What else could he do….besides go back to the fighting…and he didn't want to go back to the fighting. She was probably just hungry or cold or having her period or something. Whatever, it didn't matter, he could take care of her. That was what mattered the most, him taking care of her.

"Sure, it's a date." Said Sho. She smiled even more at that. Good. He loved it when she smiled. That meant that he was doing this boyfriend thing right. He may not have been in love with her, he may not have gotten that goldfish feeling in his stomach when he was near her, but he could make her happy and that was what mattered. She was his girlfriend, his most perfect person, and he was hers…so what else could have possibly mattered.

Sho had this boyfriend thing down, mostly, and that was what mattered the most.


	450. Advice From Father to Son

Suzuki Touichirou didn't have much to do today.

He didn't have much to do at the end of the year. Any assets for the year had already been gained, allies were made, traitors had been punished, and the budget was…in freefall…but he could manage that from anyplace. He didn't have to go anywhere so he didn't. He planned, on this day, to stay put in the house and just work. Legitimate work and the sort of work that he did with Hatori…if the other man had any plans of waking up. It was still early, late for Hatori, and when he didn't have legitimate work to do he tended to stay awake all night and sleep all day. It was just a pat of being that age.

Suzuki had been the same way when he had been young.

When he had been Hatori's age he must have gotten on average three hours of sleep a night. He had actually averaged it out once but he had forgotten the exact number. University had been one of the best times of his lie. School and more school and even more school and Fukuda, he'd been thee too, and women…well not many of them but ones which had given him the time of day….those had been good times. Well aside from having to share a small home with Fukuda….he had never been good at sharing. Though it was easier to share a home with family…or maybe he had just gotten better at it in his old….more advanced age.

Though it wasn't always easy.

"Hi dad." Said Son as he entered the kitchen. He didn't stop walking, didn't even face his father when he said 'hello'. He just walked over to the cabinets, pulled out a box of those toaster pastries he was always eating, and then used his powers to grab a can of soda from the refrigerator.

Suzuki knew for a fact that his Son was not supposed to have soda with breakfast.

"Good morning….why are you drinking that? You know that your sister doesn't like you to have soda with breakfast….and that meal contains enough sugar as it is." Said Suzuki

"Big sis said that it was ok." Said Son

"Are you telling the truth?" asked Suzuki

"Yes! God! Big sis told me that I have to get my own breakfast today because her stomach hurts and she said that I could have one soda and only one." said Son

"Her stomach hurts? What's wrong with her? And why aren't you getting Fukuda?" asked Suzuki

"She told me not to. She told me that it wasn't something that Fukuda could help with and to just eat breakfast…oh! And also I have to tell you that you have to go and have breakfast with Hatori this morning because she's not making it." Said Son

"That's…unfortunate….but get Fukuda. Get him right now. There is nothing that he can't fix." Said Suzuki

"She told me not to. Besides, I think that she's just got her period again and stuff and Fukuda couldn't help last time anyway." Said Son

"Oh…yes. That makes…sense…don't talk about that. It's impolite." Said Suzuki. He hated that word…he knew that he shouldn't have hated that word but he did. It just was not the word to use…and also he didn't want to think about his Daughter going through that. He wanted to think of her as she had been for most of her life, a child, and she was still a child…she was only eleven years old…but she was going through something very adult and…and this was not the thing to talk about at the table…or ever!

"Don't make big sis feel bad about this. You're not supposed to make girls feel bad about stuff like this. You can be a jerk to me all you like but don't be a jerk to big sis. She loves you and stuff." Said Son

"I am not being anything. I'm simply informing you that talking about these things is impolite. People aren't going to want to talk to you if you talk about that, especially women." Said Suzuki

"No, I think that girls aren't going to want to talk to me if I make them feel bad. I know about girls, dad, I have a girlfriend remember?" asked Sho

"Yes, how could I forgot?" said Suzuki. He was happy for his Son. He was happy that the boy had found someone….someone who Suzuki himself knew nothing about. He knew that he shouldn't have even cared, he got no day in whatever girl his Son chose to spend his life with, but he just…he knew that his opinion meant nothing when it came to this part of his child's life but…well he thought that maybe he at least should have gotten the chance to form an opinion.

"Because you don't give a damn about me." Said Son. Suzuki took a deep breath. He wanted to flip that table over. His Son had gotten the idea in his head at some point that his own father didn't care for him. That wasn't true. If he hadn't cared for his Son then he would have just left him somewhere to fend for himself…or he would have done the same for his Son that his father had done for him. Not that his father hadn't cared for him…but Suzuki…well he wished that he had cared for him a little less.

"First of all stop talking like that and second of all yes I do give a…I do care for you." Said Suzuki

"Right." Said Son

"It's the truth. You're my son, you're half of me, and I care about you." Said Suzuki

"You just care about me because I'm the only boy and you need more so that you can have grandkids called Suzuki." Said Son

"Well yes, that's a part of it." Said Suzuki. He got the feeling that his Son was…upset about that. His aura seemed upset….and it made no sense why. Suzuki had been put on this Earth to have a Son, well a child, and that was why everyone was on this Earth. Every organism existence to reproduce its self and human beings were not exempt from that. Also there was no point in taking over the world if he didn't have people to leave it to.

"See? There, you don't give a damn about me." Said Son

"I…don't follow. I have no idea why you take my expectations for you as a sign of not caring. I care for you, in a way, and part of that is the fact that you're the only hope I have of securing the next generation. If I didn't care for you at all like you think then I would have just left you to rot somewhere and had another Son…or told you that you were free to make your own reproductive choices independent of what is best for our family." Said Suzuki

"What in the hell are reproductive decisions?" asked Son. Right. Son was a child and he didn't know all of the words that Suzuki knew. That came to him when he took a moment to think. He had wanted to slap his Son upside the head for…well for being there and the way he had been speaking and acting…but he didn't. He had to keep calm. Shigeko wanted him to keep calm…and she was right to tell him that. Being calm gave him a moment to think…and he would have to thank her later...she was so intelligent when it came to thinks like this.

"Choices about when to have children…and stop talking like that. I've told you time and time again not to talk to me like that….you're lucky that your sister has forbidden me from punishing you…and you're lucky that I'm not my father." Said Suzuki

"Yeah, right….lucky. Grandpa didn't punish you, you said before that grandma and grandpa were normal people. If they tried to hit you then you could have just put them through a wall like you try to do with me." Said Son

"First of all I have never tried to put you 'through' a wall. I have put you into one before but never through, that would have been a waste of a wall, and second of all of course my parents never struck me…and you should consider yourself lucky that I only strike you. You should consider yourself lucky that I don't ignore your existence for days or weeks on end. That's a true torture. When I correct you it's never a long and drawn out affair. It's over and done with in that instant and I so hoped that you would learn your lesson….but you never do. Your sister can handle you when it comes to all of that. She knows better than I do. It's an instinct which she has that I do not." Said Suzuki

"I'd rather you ignore me than hit me." Said Son

"No. You don't….and it doesn't matter anyway because I can't strike you. Your sister made herself perfectly clear and I should always defer to her when it comes to these things. A lesson for your adult years. Always defer to a woman when it comes to family matters. They know better than we do." Said Suzuki

"I don't need advice, dad, I know about girls already. I know not to fight with Emmy about stuff and I know that when we get married and have kids and stuff then she's going to be the boss of the house just like big sis is the boss of the house." Said Son

"You shouldn't plan so far ahead." Said Suzuki

"What? Now you don't want me to grow up and marry a girl and have a bunch of people named Suzuki? Can't you just make up your fucking mind already?" asked Son

"Don't talk to me like that! I have told you time and time again…calm, I am calm, I have told you time and time again not to talk to me like that. My mind is made up on that subject and on the subject of your future. You took what I said as not wanting you to grow up and find someone to marry. I meant no such thing. I simply meant not to get your hopes up at your age. You aren't even eleven yet and you have a lifetime of romantic rejection ahead of you." Said Suzuki

"No I don't. Emmy likes me and she already said that she wanted to marry me and for your information I already have a ring for her and stuff so there." said Son

"Oh." Said Suzuki. That was…news. News that he had…been expecting. His Son was…well his Son. When Suzuki had been his Son's age he had wanted a girlfriend more than anything else in the world…and later on a wife…and Sho…was his child and…and this was a good thing. This was what he had always wanted for his child…and he should have been elated…but right now he mostly just wanted to rewind time to before his Son shared that information with him.

Because he had no idea what he was even supposed to do with this information.

"Yeah, oh. Now are you going to go and have breakfast with Hatori or what? Because I want to have my poptarts in peace." Said Son

"I…will….in a moment." Said Suzuki. This was….big. This felt big. Too big for this table, this kitchen, this house, this little Boy…the little Boy who he had made almost eleven years ago. Eleven years ago he had held this person in his arms…he had seen this person being pulled from Masami…he had…he had known that this day had been coming…but he also….hadn't expected this day to have come so soon.

"Why in a moment? Big sis isn't going to change her mind. She's laying down with that hot water bottle thing pressed into her stomach. She's not getting up anytime soon." Said Son. That was…he did not want to talk about Daughter and what she was going through. Shigeko…he would tend to her later. Once he figured out what he was supposed to do with the information that he had just been given. He…his Son…had bought a ring for his girlfriend….that was just…something that had happened.

Suzuki had no idea what he was supposed to do with this information.

Son had…well he had…Suzuki hadn't expected his Son to have consulted him or brought him with when he picked out the ring he had chosen for his girlfriend…the girlfriend who Suzuki had never met….but he had just…well he had no idea what he had been expecting. Maybe for this day to come later…or something. Son wasn't even eleven yet and he had bought a ring for his little girlfriend…and Suzuki knew how important those were. Choosing Masami's ring…that had been a multiday ordeal…and how had Son…how long had it taken? To find it? And what had he found in the first place? And just…how had Suzuki not noticed that it had gotten this serious and…

And he needed his Son to explain.

"I just…may I see it? The ring you got for your girlfriend I mean." Said Suzuki. His Son did not owe him an explanation. When Suzuki had been a child his own father had told him, tried to tell him, that he was too young to feel the way he felt about the people he felt that way about…and Suzuki could understand that his child was an autonomous human being who could be trusted to run his own life and…and there was an element of curiosity there, that was all.

There was no hurt.

He had no reason to be hurt. So what if his Son had met his most perfect person…and it had been kept from Suzuki for months…and so what if his Son was planning on marrying that very same girl? It wasn't as though it had been kept from him. Sho…was telling him now and that was more than he'd done back when he'd met this girl…who Suzuki knew nothing about….and who he wasn't going to ask about…he would meet her eventually anyway.

She would be his Son's wife.

"What? Why?" asked Son

"I'm curious." Said Suzuki

"Fine dad, here. If it gets you off my back." Said Son. He reached into the pocket of that jacket he was always wearing and pulled out…a piece of candy. It was one of those candy rings Suzuki had seen the children eating from time to time. They'd had those when he'd been a child too….but the candy gem hadn't been so big…and they had been more trouble than they were worth to eat…not that he had ever enjoyed them. Too sweet…he hated sweets…and also you always ended up with a sticky saliva covered hand as Fukuda could attest to…and also…

Also one did not propose with a candy ring.

Well he had, once, when he had been…how old had he been? Twelve. He'd been twelve and it had been the year before middle school and her name had been…well he couldn't remember what her name had been but they had been in the same summer math class and they had both been taking it for fun….God, what was her name? Well now this would drive him insane all day….but it wasn't important. The important thing was that she had said that she shared his feelings, held his hand, and then he decided in that moment that he would marry her. Then he went to the store, got her a candy ring in her favorite flavor, and then asked her to marry him…and she had taken the ring…and then he next day she had broken up with him….and then…well he had gotten pretty ridiculous then….

And the same thing could not happen to his Son.

Suzuki got the feeling that…perhaps his ten year old Son was getting ahead of himself. He had always imagined this day…and he had always imagined his Son as a grown man when this day had come. He was to a grown man. He was small, that jacket didn't even fit him, he ate toaster pastries as meals, his voice hadn't even broken yet, and…and he wasn't even eleven years old! Also Suzuki wasn't even forty five…and now his Son was off in the world getting married…and his Daughter would be next because she was Shigeko so of course everyone with half a brain would have wanted to be with her…and he just…

He needed more time to prepare for this….but he didn't have more time…he hardly had any time at all…

"Are you sure that this is…wise? Marriage is a big decision…and you're only ten. You don't even turn eleven until the first." Said Suzuki

"You actually remembered my birthday this time?" asked Son

"Yes…and before you say anything I hadn't forgotten. The passage of time had simply slipped my mind. Of course I remember the day your mother was fileted like a fish to get you out of her….and I was not ready for that…and neither are you." Said Suzuki

"I don't even know what you're talking about." Said Son

"Son…Sho….I need you to listen to me for once in your life. You aren't ready to share your life with someone like that…or to have children." Said Suzuki

"What the fuck! Dad, yeah, I know that we can't actually get married right now…and I know that we can't have kids! I'm ten!" said Son

"Oh…good. We're in agreement then…but now I'm confused. Why do you even have the ring for your girlfriend in that case?" asked Suzuki. Son knew that children came from marriage…right? Suzuki…had never sat down and told his Son how it all worked…and also he knew that his Son was a child. He was a child and he was so young…so maybe he didn't know what marriage entailed. Maybe he didn't know what it was that he was even going to be asking his girlfriend to do. He was a child after all and a child…well a child couldn't be trusted to…but this was his Son and if there was anyone who was capable of running his own life then it was his own Son.

"Because she's my most perfect person and I want her to know that I plan to marry her when we're grown up and shit." Said Son

"Oh…well that makes sense but…maybe you should wait." Said Suzuki. He decide to ignore the cursing for now. Not when his Son was telling him…well…something like this. When Suzuki had told his own parents that had found his most perfect person…and they had told him that he was a child and that he had no idea what he had been feeling or saying…and he would not do the same to his Son. This was something important. Choosing someone to spend your life with…was big…maybe too big for such a little Boy…and had he always been this little? Suzuki…really couldn't remember. He had remembered his Son as being older…but now he was…small.

He wasn't even eleven years old yet.

"What the fuck?! You've been telling me my whole life-" said Son. He could not ignore that word…and when he found who taught his Son that word he would do…something. His Son should not have been talking like that and…well he just…this was a lot. This was a lot and maybe…maybe he should have just focused on what he knew that he could deal with. What he had dealt with before.

"Not to curse? Yes, I have been telling you for the entirety of your life not to curse and I still mean it…but what I meant to tell you was that you shouldn't….do this…at your age. You're getting older and I know how you're starting to feel about the opposite sex…and I know how they can make you feel…and I know how rejection can be. I…was on your place…when I was a little older than you are now…and the girl who I had those feelings for rejected me and it was the worst pain that I had ever felt up until that point in my life." Said Suzuki

"Mom…said no when you asked her to marry you?" asked Son. Suzuki did not shout and he did not strike his Son and if Shigeko had been there then she would have been very proud of him. He simply kept his aura close and took a deep breath. He would forgive the Boy now because…well because he was young and stupid and Suzuki had no choice anyway but to forgive him.

"No, I had no idea who your mother even was back then. The girl who rejected me was…someone else….and it was very painful and I don't think that you're old enough to handle that kind of pain….and also that sort of pain…changes you in some ways…and I doubt that you're ready for that sort of…change….to yourself." Said Suzuki

"Emmy already said that we'd be together forever and stuff so I'll be fine…so stop worrying about me already! It's weird." Said Son. Son had a point. Suzuki had always thought that the Boy was capable…to a degree…and this was not the time to treat him like an infant. He was eleven now…only eleven.

"I agree….you can handle yourself. I have complete confidence in you. I have to, you're my Son, and when you have your own Son you'll understand…all the things that you don't understand now." Said Suzuki. When his own Son had a Son…when the Boy was old enough to have a Boy of his own…when Son had a grandson…when he went from Father to Grandfather….someone would be calling him Grandfather….someone in the near future…the children were both interested in the opposite sex…that day would come sooner rather than later. Aside from smelling absolutely terrible most days Son showed no signs at all of having hit that terrible time in life…but he would….and he had a girlfriend now who he was planning on spending his life with….

Suzuki was not ready to be a grandfather.

"Do you know what sex is?" asked Suzuki. Son had been balancing a toaster pastry with his powers and his phone in his hand…and he dropped both on the table and began to spit…as if he were choking…and Suzuki so hoped that his son was not choking. He entirely remember what to do about a choking person….and also losing his Son would have meant having to have another and then…well he doubted his next Son would have been as good of an artist…or as capable of a human being…as this one was too.

Thankfully the Boy had not been choking.

"What the hell, dad?! What the hell kind of a question is that?!" asked Son

"A simple one. You either know or you don't. I have no idea what you know at your age…or what you think that you know." Said Suzuki. He had been VERY misinformed when he'd been his Son's age. The world had not been what it is now. People hadn't yet invented the tiny infinite information machine so anything that he had wanted to learn he either learned at school, from his parents, or at the library…or he pieced together from things he'd heard from the other children and seen on television…which was how he had thought until the age of thirteen that women could get pregnant simply from laying down in a bed and kissing men.

Hopefully his Son was smarter than he had been…and hopefully he had been staying away from the filth that the internet was full of.

"Dad! I'm not a baby. I know what…that….is. You stick your dick inside of a girl and then a baby comes out…inside-inside, not like a hotdog, more like a pita…ok?! Can we never talk about this again?! It's gross and I'm not going out with Emmy to do gross stuff like that to her." said Son

"With. That is done 'with' a woman and not 'to' her. If it's a 'to' situation then she did not consent and then a crime has been committed and that is one of the few crimes which I cannot excuse…so always ask first." Said Suzuki. Well he was glad that he had cleared that up before he ended up having to kill his Son for doing terrible things. Like his own father had told him, always ask unless you want to end up either dead or in prison.

"Yeah, dad, I'm not stupid. I'm not just going to go and do gross stuff like that with a girl without asking her first…now stop talking! This whole thing is gross!" said Son

"Alright….but it's not disgusting….and you only feel that way because of your age. It is one of the most amazing, intimate, pleasant, and emotionally terrifying things that you will ever experience in your life…now don't do that until you're old enough to deal with the responsibility that comes with making a human being…well there are ways around making a human being but if they worked and weren't terrible then you wouldn't be here. Actually I should probably tell you about contraception since neither of us ever want to have this conversation again." said Suzuki

"…how about we just stop talking about this now and then never talk about it again for the rest of our lives?" asked Son

"I'm agreeable to that. Anyway remember, contraception is terrible and if you're prepared to raise an infant then you don't need it. Alright. That's the end of it." Said Suzuki. He wished that someone had told him that when he'd been…well not his Son's age but when he had stared down that particular life's journey. He'd spent so many years having truly terrible…well less than good…serviceable. It had been serviceable. He had spent too many year having serviceable sex instead of earth shatteringly amazing sex even though he had been prepared to, even at the age of sixteen when he'd had actual intercourse for the first time, to support another human being which he had created and a wife too. In fact he'd wanted one. He'd wanted that for almost as long as he could remember…but he'd had to wait.

But his Son wouldn't have to.

Obviously he wouldn't be having any children at the age of not even eleven yet but…well as he got older…his late teens or early twenties…well then that would be fine. It would have been fine, preferable even, if that had been the time which Son had chosen to start his family. He didn't have to wait for university or to establish himself in a career, he was the future ruler of the world after all, so really he had nothing to wait for….and Suzuki…well that would be enough time for him to become comfortable with the idea of someone calling him Grandfather…

There would be another child in the family one day.

One of his Son's children, though, not Shigeko's….he didn't think that he would ever become comfortable with the idea of Shigeko and some man…but he did want her to have children…artificial insemination…or…childbearing robots or…something…he didn't know. He'd come back to this later. He didn't want to think of either of his children having children…doing what it took to make a child…but especially not his Daughter…and he knew that it was normal and natural and that human being were sexual by nature but…not his Daughter. Not his Son but…well his Son would be a man and that was what men did…and women did things like that too…and his Daughter would become a woman someday…and she was lying in bed dealing with the crippling pain of menarche right at that moment….and he REALLY did not want to think about that….

The children were still children and would be for a few more years…and he would focus only on that….

"Thank fucking God! I'm getting the fuck out of here before you decide to talk to me about some other fucking thing. I'm going to…next door…and shit. Good Fucking bye!" said Son

"Don't…alright then…have a good day." Said Suzuki as he heard the front door slam. Well that had been a…morning. He hadn't shouted at his Son or struck him despite the fact that he was cursing like it was going out of style. Really Shigeko should have done something like that….though she was doubled over in bed racked with internal pains from things that he couldn't even comprehend…and maybe he should tend to her…or maybe he should have sent for someone…like Fukuda…

Or Minegishi.

Son had a point, before, that Fukuda was no help in this situation. He had no Daughters and he had never been married. Suzuki…well he knew something of this…he knew that it was a thing that happened…but he wasn't much help to her. He needed a woman…or someone who was a woman but also not a woman…however it worked. Minegishi. She…they….it was difficult to think of her as a 'them' when it came to this very female process….Minegishi knew best. They lived through this and they were the one who helped Shigeko through it originally….and also they had told him what it was like…he would never be able to look at a ping pong ball again…he would send for them and…and he would get dressed and shower and shave first since they could not see him in this state of affairs…and also he'd see about that book that they wanted…only fifty copies in the world…he'd find them once…because the holidays were coming and they were good to Shigeko…

And also they were intelligent and beautiful in their own way and their hair was getting longer and-

And he was not going to think about them. He was not going to think about them and whatever feelings he had towards them, feelings which he would never act upon of course, and he also wouldn't think about the fact that his Son was out there about to propose to the girl who would grow up to be the woman who would bear Suzuki's grandchildren…and he also would not think about the fact that his only Daughter was doubled over in pain because her body decided that, at the age of eleven, it was ready to bear a child even though she was so young and small and fragile and…and he didn't want to think of anything…so he didn't. He just got up and got on with his day.

There was a lot to do after all…enough to do…he would find something to do if he had to. Anything to keep from thinking.


	451. Maybe You Need Some Help With This

Fukuda was, honestly, honored that he was the one Sho had chosen to bring with him on this day…honored and stressed.

This was the third jewelry store that they had gone to today. Sho had woken him up and told him that he needed helping finding something better than a ring pop to propose with…and the whole thing was adorable. That was what Fukuda was going with. Sure he was still only ten, and he had his whole life to worry about all of this, and also he may not have even been in love with the girl in question…but still. Sho picking out a ring for his little girlfriend was, objectively, adorable….Masami should have been there to see this. She should have been there helping her son pick out a ring for her future daughter in law, son in law if this had been a more perfect world, but she wasn't. Fukuda was here and he was happy to be here. Even if this relationship was just two ten year old essentially playing at being adults he was happy to be here…and he was the only one it seemed.

Sho was not having a good time.

Sho shook his head at the ring offered to him…and Fukuda had no idea what was wrong with that one. Sho said that his little girlfriend like big gems and the jeweler said that the ring in his hand had the biggest diamond he had on it. What girl didn't want a diamond ring? They loved diamonds, there was even a song about it, and that was the biggest diamond that Fukuda had ever seen…and it also had the biggest price tag that Fukuda had ever seen too. That was a lot of pounds…and converted to yen…well Fukuda would have fainted if it had been physically possible for him to faint. Sho was about to spend million upon millions of yen on an engagement ring for his little girlfriend.

Or not judging by the way he turned his nose up at it.

"No way." said Sho simply. Emmy wouldn't have liked that….he had no idea what Emmy would have liked but he knew that it was not that. Fukuda was acting like it was a nice ring…and if he liked it so much then he should have gotten it for his girlfriend! No, wait, he didn't have one because girls didn't like him at all. Not even to chase him down and kiss him. He didn't know anything about girls and jewelry and what they liked and…and maybe he should have waited until big sis's period was over and she could walk around again. She was a girl and she knew about this stuff…or maybe he should have brought a guy…one who knew about girls…like…well not Shimazaki obviously…and Hatori liked guys…and Serizawa was afraid of everything and would probably have had a heart attack and died if Sho asked him to come with…and Shibata…well he knew about girly stuff but he had never had a girlfriend for as long as Sho and Emmy had been together…he said so…and dad was an asshole and just…just….just…

Jewelry stores sucked!

Seriously. Who in the hell thought that putting rocks in rings was so…complicated!? Complicated and boring. He knew that somewhere in this store was the combination of rocks and rings that would make Emmy happy….but so far it was just so….complicated and stupid and boring! Just…so boring. Emmy liked rocks. Emmy like gems. Emmy liked cool rocks and gems that came out of the ground. She had a geode and a big rock salt lamp and a crystal her mom got from some lady in their neighborhood that sold them…so she liked big and cool things…and the things here weren't big or cool!

They were so…boring!

"That's too small. What kind of a girl would want something like that?" asked Sho as the guy who worked behind the counter showed him a ring with a big diamond in the middle. He knew that diamonds were a girl's best friend and all but…well they were such boring rocks. Just…who wanted a big clear rock on a plain yellow ring? Emmy would have hated that. He had no idea what kind of jewelry she liked, not really, she didn't wear any…well she had a mood ring she wore sometimes. It was broken and only showed black and she thought that it was cool….so maybe a black diamond? But….then she would have two black rings…

Girls were complicated. This was complicated. Boys were less complicated…but he had a girlfriend so there was no point in thinking about how much easier this would have been if she had been a guy.

"Sho!" said Fukuda

"What? Everything here sucks. She wouldn't like any of this and if I gave her anything from here then she'd be all 'Sho, you don't know me at all' and then she'd leave me and then I'd have to find a new girlfriend and I don't want to have to find a new girlfriend. The one I have is pretty much the best girl I've ever met and I don't want to have to go through millions and millions of girls looking for someone else like her." said Sho

"Sho…if you have be like that can you at least speak Japanese?" asked Fukuda in Japanese. So now Sho decided to try his English…and his accent was not so thick that he couldn't have been understood. At some point he would have to teach Sho manners…later. Not now. Now he had this fire to put out. He got so overwhelmed so easily…he was still so young…

Maybe this wasn't the time for all of this…but there was no changing Sho's mind once he got an idea.

"Why? In England we speak English…also it's more polite to tell someone that their stuff sucks in a language that they can understand. Otherwise they might think that we're saying someone even worse." Said Sho

"Sho, be nice…sorry about him. It's for his first girlfriend. You know how it is." Said Fukuda as he patted Sho on the head. The jeweler muttered something about rich and spoiled Asians and then put the ring back…and Fukuda…well he already had the one fire to put out.

"She's going to be my wife…but not if I get her a ring that she doesn't like!" said Sho. He didn't particularly want her to be his wife, he didn't particularly want anyone to be his wife, but he had to have one and it had might as well be Emmy. She was nice, he liked her enough, and she got along with big sis. That was good. Big sis had to get along with his future wife since he'd been away working all the time and Emmy would need another girl to keep her company….and also big sis would be lonely because whatever guy who felt like marrying her would be at work all day too…but none of that would matter of Emmy didn't like the ring he got her.

"Sho, maybe you should take a breath. Ok? Let's take a breath and think about this for a minute. We don't have to get her a ring right today. It's not even December yet. How about we make this a Christmas present for her…or maybe even a Valentine's Day one?" asked Fukuda. They'd be here until January…even longer if Suzuki was planning on avoiding Japan again…and even if they left he was sure that he could bring Sho back. They could take one of their trips where they went visiting around. Sho hadn't seen his baby sister in a while…and Fukuda hadn't seen his non-Suzuki friends in a while too…so, yes, that would be the perfect excuse to take a break from the insanity that was traveling with the Suzuki family and it's associated allies.

"I don't know if we'll even be here for that long…and I have to do this now because I already told her that she's my most perfect person. You don't just tell a girl that she's your most perfect person and then just not get her a ring and stuff. She might think that I was just saying stuff to her…and maybe even…another guy might take her from me, too. It's hard finding girls who don't chase me around and try to kiss me….and she's really nice and…and we almost had a fight the other day and…and I just…I want to get her a ring, ok?" said Sho

"Sho….how about we go somewhere else? How's that sound?" asked Fukuda with a sigh. Sho was not going to come off this…and he did have some perfectly valid concerns. Women, girls too, did not do well when you left them all alone for months on end. For all Sho knew there could have been some other guy waiting to pick up where he had left off…and Sho did not deserve to go through that. He hadn't done anything to this girl…well he didn't love her but he at least cared about her…he wasn't terrible to her and that was what mattered. Of course his little girlfriend was too young to see that and she might end up sleeping with…the ten year old equivalent to sleeping with…someone else and Sho did not deserve that.

His father, yes, but not him.

"….it doesn't matter where we go. She's not going to like anything that I get her…why did I even listen to dad? I should have just given her the ring pop…what's he even know about girls anyway? Mom left him." said Sho. He never should have listened to dad. A ring pop was a great ring…except for when she finished eating it and then all she had left was the plastic part…and also she probably had a bunch of them at home from when he sent her a Costco sized box of them…and also since she was going to be his forever girlfriend then she would need a forever ring…well unless she left him one day…but then that would be ok because big sis would be there…so maybe he should have been shopping for a ring for big sis?

No, that would have been weird….because they were brother and sister…and also she didn't wear rings.

"Your mom…is a very complicated woman…but let's not talk about her. How about we go to a different store…but one with things that Emmy would like? How about that? It doesn't necessarily have to be something fancy….and you're both only ten anyway. This stuff is for adults. Let's just…find something that she'd like. Something better than a ring pop." Said Fukuda. Nope. They were not getting into that here. They were not getting into that anywhere. They were not going to talk about that…well not until Sho was old enough to understand….if he would ever be old enough to understand….Fukuda didn't want to think about this either. Fukuda just needed Sho to come off of this and just…

He needed to help Sho with this before this little fire turned into a big fire.

"Fine…but if the next store sucks then I'm going to be pissed off at you." Said Sho. He was pissed off in general….and he knew that he was being an asshole right now…but this was hard. He wished that he had asked dad how he knew what kind of ring mom liked. He couldn't even remember what mom's ring had looked like. He knew that there had been a rock on it that had gotten in his hair when she washed it…and he knew that the color had matched dad's…and did that mean that he would need one too? He hated rings. He needed his hands to be free to move and stuff for when he drew…and he wished that he could have just dawn her a ring. That would have been easier…but no. He had to do this right. He had to do the boyfriend thing right. He had to be good at this. This was why he was here. The only reason he existed, the only reason that dad had made him, was so that he could make new people named Suzuki…but not now because that was gross and…

And he just wanted to worry about one thing at a time.

Right now he was worried about finding a good ring for Emmy. She got out of school in a couple of hours and he had promised her that he would meet her and then they would go and get hot chocolate and giant cookies…and also…well maybe not today. Maybe he wouldn't give it to her today but…well maybe sooner rather than later…or maybe after he turned eleven so that…that she didn't think that she had to get him something fancy for his birthday to match him getting her a fancy ring…not that he had even found a fancy ring that she would have liked…and not that they even made fancy rings that she would have liked, probably, since those were for adults and they were not adults and…and…and jewelry sores sucked dick holes!

Which was why it was a good thing that Fukuda had not brought him to a jewelry store.

"Here I figured that this would be more your girlfriend's speed." Said Fukuda. There was a store that sold kitsch stuff, curiosities, and general weird things. Not the sorts of things that Fukuda would have gotten for a girl even at the age of ten but then again he wasn't Sho and he wasn't dating Sho's girlfriend so he didn't get to say anything. He just had to help.

That was why he was here, to help.

"Well you figured right. Good job, Fukuda." Said Sho as he patted Fukuda on the back. He may have been a secret teller, and he may have had this weird fight thing going on with big sis, but he could sometimes be good at things. Like this. This was the perfect store for Emmy! There were….things! All of the things! Like a whole stack of army hats and a whole rack of weapons…not real ones but still…and…and was that an eyeball in a JAR?! Ok, that was going to be her Christmas present…and…and there was a monkey's paw! Wait…no. He knew how that story went….and also he felt bad about the poor one pawed monkey…and also…also…

Was that a wallet made out of human skin?! That was so cool!

"Thank you and…off you go. Alright then…have fun." Said Fukuda as Sho ran off with a look in his eyes that Fukuda…was not the biggest fan of. He knew that look. Suzuki always got the same look right before he had an idea…and it didn't have to be a good idea. Like the time they jumped off of his roof and onto the trampoline…or the time they tried to give themselves radiation poisoning by running the microwave nonstop…or the time they tried to ride a bike down a mountain…or the time they tried to walk home from Tokyo….or….

There had been a lot of times.

But Sho…he was fine. He was just going to end up spending all of his money…more than any kid should have had…on his little girlfriend. Nothing bad. A lot of things that he was maybe not thinking through…no. Fukuda was not going to think like that. He walked through the store…maybe in a effort to escape thoughts that he didn't much want to have. Thoughts like…like how Sho was too young to make this kind of choice…and how miserable his adult life would be. He would be miserable and so would that poor girl…and Fukuda…he couldn't help but feel a little responsible. Sho…he was who he was and Fukuda had known who he was since that time he came home from preschool…or maybe kindergarten….raving about this boy in his class and how cool he was. Sho had gone on and on and on about how cool that other boy was and how he wanted to be his best friend for life and how they were naptime buddies and how it had been the greatest thing ever….Sho was who he was…and Fukuda so wished that he could have just lived his life the way he wanted to…

But Fukuda had not made the world the way it was.

Even if he hadn't been Suzuki Touichirou's son…life would not have been good for him. Not unless he moved to some much more liberal foreign country where he could have lived the way he wanted to live. But he was who he was and he…well it wasn't going to be a good adult life…but Fukuda could help him make the best of it. That was what he did after all, he helped Sho make the best of things, which was all he could do. He had promised Masami that he would keep both of her children safe…and he had failed miserably…and it was his fault what had happened to Shigeko…but he didn't want to think about her now. He was with Sho and he had to help Sho out…and he had to be there for Sho…and really he should have felt honored.

Sho had chosen him out of everyone else that he knew to come with on this momentous occasion.

Fukuda had done this once before, of course, back when Suzuki had been planning on proposing to Masami. He had gone along, well had been dragged along, to what had felt like every single jeweler in the city to help Suzuki find a ring that was worthy of Masami. A single ring, not a handful of them like Suzuki had planned. They hadn't found anything…well Fukuda had found a nice gold ring with a yellow diamond….and that had been the one that Suzuki had ended up getting later on…so in a way he had been the one to choose Masami's ring and-and…and he doesn't want to think about that. About her. About yellow diamonds. About a time before…before this time.

He was here now and this was his life.

His life was helping a ten year old boy pick out a ring for his girlfriend. Fukuda…well he had imagined this day coming much later in his life…and maybe it would. Come again, he meant, when Sho was old enough to actually make these choices. Fukuda had been getting himself all worked up over nothing. Sho and his little girlfriend were essentially just playing marriage. Sho was too young to make these choices, he didn't get the full weight of them, and Fukuda…well he took a look around. He was at a counter of costume jewelry. Plastic and colored glass and insects suspended in amber. Not the sort of thing you got a woman you planned on spending your life with. Kids' stuff.

Sho as still just a kid after all.

"Hey Sho, why don't you come over here and-" said Fukuda. A ring with an insect trapped in amber would have been perfect for Sho's little girlfriend. She was a lover of the disturbing and macabre after all. Why she was like that Fukuda had no idea but she was who she was and Sho…well he did want to make her happy. She would have liked that. There. Now their odyssey was over and they could take a rest.

Or at least it should have been over.

"Fukuda! Check this out! I found something!" said Sho. Well he shouted…but he had every reason to shout. He had found the perfect ring! The most perfect thing ever! Emmy was going to love this! She was going to love this and he was going to be the best boyfriend ever for giving her this!

He had this boyfriend thing DOWN!

"Sho that's…." said Fukuda as he came over to see what had gotten Sho so excited that he was tapping the glass like he was at an aquarium. That was…he was….there was no way in hell….why would anyone….

Who would WANT that?!

"So cool! See? That's a real human tooth! From a real dead guy! Or maybe he's alive, I don't care. Emmy will though. She's going to love this. I'm the greatest boyfriend ever." Said Sho as he tapped like the glass just in case Fukuda couldn't see. That was a real human tooth in there in a real ring and Emmy would really love it and then she would see how happy he could make her and then he wouldn't have to look for a new girlfriend! She'd love it! It was a human tooth on a ring!

Who WOULDN'T WANT THAT?!

"Sho…they have some rings with dead insects in them? Wouldn't she want some kind of dead insect instead of a…human tooth?" asked Fukuda. If he had been a little girl and someone had given him that then he would have headed for the hills. There was no way in hell anyone would want that. It was….macabre! And he hated to use one of Minegishi's words but…yes! It was macabre!

"No way! She loves this kind of stuff! I'm getting her the tooth ring and also the eyeball in the jar too for Christmas." Said Sho

"Sho…are you sure that she wants these things? I know that she's kind of a tomboy but this may be going the one step too far. How about you just-" said Fukuda

"Fukuda, no. I know my own girlfriend and I know what she likes and I'm getting her the tooth ring and the eyeball in the jar. Alright?" asked Sho

"…that's fine. You're right, you know her, but how about we get her an insect ring too…so that she has options? Yeah, it's always good to give a person options." Said Fukuda. He was not going to fight with Sho in the middle of a store. No, he was just going to make sure that Sho…hedged his bets. He obviously cared for this girl, he may not have been in love with her but he cared for her, and it would have been painful for her to leave him. Sho…had dealt with enough of hat in his life as it was. Fukuda couldn't save him from all the pain that life had to offer but he could at least protect Sho from himself.

That was his life, protecting the Suzuki family from themselves.

"Yeah, you're right. That can be her White Day present or something…she is going to be so fucking happy…" said Sho. He was the greatest boyfriend in the entire world. He was going to make her happy and then she would stay with him and then he wouldn't have to find another girlfriend…and he would be able to rub his relationship in dad's face too. Mom had left dad but Emmy…well he was never going to give her a reason to leave. He had no idea why mom had left but…well he would just do the opposite of whatever dad had done and then she would stay with him and then he could rub his happy life and happy wife and kids who loved him in dad's face…

It would be great.

When he grew up, of course, not now. Now he was just going to get the stuff for her and then drop it off at home and then meet her on her way home from school and then they would hang out like normal. He would get her all the hot chocolate and giant cookies that she wanted and then she would be happy and then…well he would give her the ring after his birthday and…and maybe for Christmas…or maybe even later since he did have a long time until he was an adult…but still…someone else could take her…and that would have sucked…but whatever. He'd figure it out later….after he went home and put his stuff down…and stuff. Yeah, later.

At least that had been the plan.

"So, where are we headed now?" asked Fukuda as they stepped into the car. Sho, thankfully, kept his tooth ring and his jarred eyeball to himself. Fukuda was no stranger to gore, he was a healer after all, but that was…not something that he wanted to be near. He swore that it had been looking at him…which was insane…right?

Right.

"Home. I have to put this stuff down and then I have to meet Emmy after her school is done with. We're getting hot chocolate." Said Sho

"That sounds fun. You want me to come along? You know, for moral support." Said Fukuda

"Why would I need moral support to drink hot chocolate?" asked Sho

"I meant for when you propose to her." said Fukuda

"Oh, that. I'm not doing that today? Do you have brain worms or something? I'm going to do that over Christmas or something….I don't know." Said Sho. He had the ring so he should have but…well he was sure…and having the stupid ring should have made him more sure, not less, and he wasn't less sure! He just had to go home and…and do…stuff…and more stuff and then meet Emmy and do stuff and…and he was sure! He was sure about this and there was nothing in the world that could make him unsure!

"Oh….well that's good. No need to rush into that…or anything." Said Fukuda

"I'm not rushing!" said Sho. He knew what he was doing and he was doing what he was supposed to be doing. He had met his most perfect person like he was supposed to and he had a ring for her like you were supposed to get girls and now he was going to give it to her like you were supposed to do and…and that was just…he was doing what he was supposed to do! And he wasn't rushing! What did Fukuda even know?! Sho wouldn't have been surprised if he had never even had a girlfriend before or kissed a girl or…or anything! It wasn't like Sho had ever seen him with a girl so…so there!

"I never said that you were. I just said that there's no need to rush. You're not even eleven years old yet." Said Fukuda

"God…dad said the same thing." Said Sho. What was it with adults and wanting to talk to him about this? He knew how the baby got in, he knew how it got out, and he knew that he didn't want to do that with a girl and he never would…so why did everyone have to sit down and talk to him about this?! They were in a car, they were passing cool stuff like….like that Dalmatian, and maybe they should have talked about that instead of doing gross stuff with girls like…like gross….people!

"Your dad?" asked Fukuda. He used his powers to check Sho over for injuries…and he had none….which meant that either Sho had learned how to heal or Suzuki had heeded his daughter's warnings about hitting Sho….but that was just…if it had been that easy then why hadn't he listened to Masami? She had made herself perfectly clear, her feelings on that subject and all of the others, but Suzuki hadn't listened to her. What, did he just…care about Shigeko more? Or was it because she was an esper? Or because she was the last person he had in his life who listened to him?

The closest thing to…well someone to share his life with.

For their entire lives, the portion that they had spent together, Suzuki had always gone on and on and on about how he had to be a full and complete person on his own…but he had also gone on and on and on about how he wanted to find a girl to spend his life with…and if no girls were available Fukuda…and that had been…Suzuki was a man who made no sense and Fukuda…he didn't want to think about this.

He had enough to think about as it was when it came to Sho…he didn't want to add Suzuki to the mix.

"Yeah. He told me that I was just a kid and that I shouldn't rush into stuff or do gross stuff with Emmy…which is so dumb! Of course I'm not going to stick my dick in her!" said Sho

"Sho! Don't say…things like that." Said Fukuda with a groan. He was, technically, correct…but he had shouted that in English…and he could feel the driver watched them in the rearview mirror…and Sho…well he was too little to know what was and was not polite to say…because he was eleven years old….not even eleven yet….

This was going to be a very painful conversation. Fukuda could tell.

"Why not? It's what happens. You stick your dick in a girl and a baby comes out. I know what sex is and I don't need you asking me if I know…and I know you will. Dad asked me." Said Sho

"Your dad? Suzuki Touichirou…your dad…asked you about…all of that?" asked Fukuda. It was a sign of the end times. Suzuki had, apparently, tried doing some real parenting. Sho seemed a little too young for the talk, he wasn't even eleven yet, but…well Fukuda wasn't technically his father and he didn't get to decide these things…but still. It was bad enough that he knew, at his age, about what happened to Shigeko….but also…well it was better that he knew about these things before he went out and did him…

Because history did not need to repeat its self.

"Yeah, my dad asked me if I knew what sex was and then he told me that it was awesome and it sucked and that I was too little to do it, which I don't even want to because it's gross, and then dad told me that you have to do it with a girl and not to her otherwise it's a bad thing-" said Sho

"He's right, always ask first." Said Fukuda. Well THAT was something…well always good to know but….well it should have gone without saying and…and really an eleven year old didn't even need to know that not asking wasn't even an option and…well it was always good to ask…because that was NOT the place for miscommunication….but still! He was only eleven and if he had been Fukuda's son…well he would have let Sho learn about these things in a room full of giggling middle schoolers like everyone else had to….but that wasn't right either and….

And this parenting thing was hard.

"Yeah. I know. I'm not stupid. I hate it when girls run up and chase me and kiss me and I know that they wouldn't like it if I just shoved my-" said Sho

"ANYWAY what else did he tell you?" asked Fukuda. Knowing Suzuki the whole thing could have been dry and clinical…or it could have been way more information than an eleven year old boy ever needed to know…not that he really needed to know about these things at his age. He was a child and the thing to do would have been to let him be a child for as long as possible….but then on the other hand he wouldn't be a little boy forever…

But then on the third hand he sort of wanted Sho to be a little boy forever.

He wished that there had been some way to freeze him at five or six or seven…back when he'd been small. Back before the cursing, the constant cursing, and possessive crush he had on Shimazaki and all of these very adult choices he was trying to make. Back before he smelled like…this…too…and he'd have to talk to Sho about taking a bath every day…and he just…more would come later as he got older and Fukuda knew that he would be the only one who could have these sorts of conversations with Sho and he just…

He missed when the biggest thing that they had to talk about was Zootopia.

"Not much else. Just not to do stuff with her until I was ready to take care of a baby and not to get married with a candy ring and that contran-inception was terrible and-" said Sho

"Contraception. The word is contraception…and it's not…use it. Just…unless you want to have a baby…or get very sick…then use it." Said Fukuda. Dammit Suzuki…this was why he had do many kids he had never planned for. Condoms were terrible. They ruined sex and Fukuda credited their invention to the dangerously low population of Japan….but still! That was not the thing to tell your eleven year old son!

"Why would I want to do that with a girl unless I wanted to have a baby? What else would be the point?" asked Sho wrinkling his nose. The whole thing just sounded so gross. Doing stuff like that with a girl…and he would have thought so even if he had liked them. It was just…it didn't sound pleasant. He understood wanting to kiss someone and hold their hands but the rest of it…no way. He knew that adults didn't always do that to get babies, if they did then Shimazaki and Minegishi wouldn't have done that since Minegishi was a terrible human being who hated babies and probably wanted to send every single baby in the world to an orphanage or something, but beyond getting babies…what could even be the point of doing that with a girl?

And he felt the same way about doing that with a boy…even though he was pretty sure that two guys couldn't do that anyway since there was no way to fit together.

"Well to feel good…or close to someone….things that you'll understand when you're older. Just…when you get to that age…for the love of God be careful. Don't follow in your dad's footsteps. You don't want to be like him, right? So don't make his mistakes." Said Fukuda. He wished, as soon as he said it, that he could have taken back what he had said. Sho's existence was not a mistake. Sho…Sho could never have been a mistake. Suzuki having unprotected sex with Masami, doing so knowingly, had been a mistake. Pulling out did not work…and at some point he would have to tell Sho…well he would have to tell Sho a lot of things…like how he and his younger sister had gotten here…and any other children Suzuki planned on accidentally having…and Masami…

He and Masami hadn't been careful…it suddenly dawned on him….but he did not want to think about that right now.

"Mistakes? What, like the time he forgot a spoon in the microwave and almost burnt the house down? Or the time he accidentally used big sis's shaving cream and smelled like a girl for the whole day? Or the time-" said Sho. He could have gone on and on and on for hours about all of the mistakes that dad made. He thought that he was perfect but he wasn't. He fucked up all the time. He fucked up in little ways…and in big ways too…like with mom….

And Sho couldn't wait to rub that one in his face when he got older.

"Not like that just…you're too young for this conversation. When you get older…old enough that these sorts of things stop being gross to you and you're ready to make these choices…with whoever you plan on making them with then…then I hope that you come to me and not your dad. He's kind of…not so smart…when it comes to things like this." said Fukuda. Sho did not need to know about this, not now, and Fukuda…well he was going to let him be a child for as long as he could. He deserved that. He had been through so much and…and Fukuda was not going to make something out of nothing. So he wanted to play adults with his little girlfriend, get her a truly macabre ring and all, that was fine. It was cute, even….

It wouldn't be so cute, so adorable, when Sho got older but….well Fukuda would let him have this as it was…human tooth ring and all.


	452. I'm Always Happy to Help Out My Friends

It was easier, being out of his room, when he had something to do.

Right now he was sorting M&Ms by color. Shimazaki had asked, told, him to and he didn't mind. He was sitting in the kitchen, Miss Suzuki liked it when he was out of his room, and he was making friends, Miss Suzuki liked it when he made an effort to make friends. So, really, he had no problem sorting out the M&Ms by color…even though there were a lot of them…

A whole crate of them.

"Are you done yet? I'm starving!" said Shimazaki as he teleported back into the kitchen. Serizawa didn't shout or jump or lose control…terribly. The bowl od M&Ms he had been holding went flying out of his lap but Shimazaki caught it…which was pretty cool considering the fact that he couldn't see…but also didn't stop the mess from being made…because now there was candy everywhere…

But he would clean it up. He was a good friend like that.

"I….I still have most of the crate to go but…but that bowl…the one on the table…um it's in front of me…it's full of red ones if you want them." Said Serizawa

"You're a good man Serizawa, keep it up and I'll let your sort my Skittles." Said Shimazaki. Serizawa…well he wanted to help out…and sorting skittles made more sense than sorting these. Skittles were at least different flavors…and he did like to be helpful towards his friends…now that he had them…and this was a lot better than helping out with the eye cleaning.

He really hoped that today wasn't an eye cleaning day.

If it was then maybe Shimazaki's partner could help him. Serizawa could feel them coming. He could hear them, he knew how they walked, but he focused on the way that they felt. Miss Suzuki said that being able to feel if another esper was near was very basic and that he had a lot to catch up on…and for her he would.

She was his best friend. He would have done anything for her.

What are you making him do? And what happened in here?" asked Minegishi. They walked past him and ran their hand through a bowl of M&Ms. They clicked their tongue and shook their head…and he wondered why they didn't like candy…but he didn't ask them that. He wasn't used to talking to them yet. They were Miss Suzuki's best friend….and he wanted to be friends with them…but talking to them was just…not easy…

But he had to say something.

"G-Good morning….afternoon…Minegishi…um…do you want some candy?" asked Serizawa. There. That was something….something that he had said. Now he just…had to say something else. This shouldn't have been so hard. These were Miss Suzuki's friends and she had said that they would all be his friends too. They were his friends…future friends…and they were all like him too. They were cursed, they were ESPERS, like he was an esper…and he just…he could see his colors now. He could see his colors and he just…he wished that Miss Suzuki had been there. She would have told him what to say…

But she wasn't there…so he had to do this on his own.

"Has it all been on the floor?" asked Minegishi

"N-No, it hasn't…um…it's…good." said Serizawa. That should have been easy. They had asked him a question and he had answered it…and he shouldn't have been afraid of them…even though they looked like they wanted to kill him…but that was normal for them. They always looked like they wanted to kill someone. Miss Suzuki said that underneath all of that they were the nicest person in the whole house next to Shibata.

"Why is there so much candy on the floor in the first place? And what the hell is in that crate?" asked Minegishi

"He's sorting my candy for me since my seeing eye kid is off living his own life…leaving me high and dry…" said Shimazaki. He crossed his arms and sighed. Serizawa was glad that nobody was talking to him anymore. That had been a lot…and he hadn't even done anything…but also he had done more than he had done in the past fifteen years of his life. Miss Suzuki had said, before, that the only thing that mattered was that he tried a little more every single day.

"These are M&Ms…they're all the same flavor. They don't need to be sorted…and did you steal a crate of M&Ms? It looks like you stole a crate of M&Ms." Said Minegishi

"Well to be fair I had no idea what was in the crate….and also you like M&Ms…you like them a lot…come on Toshi…try them…they want to be in your mouth…they want to be in your stomach…don't disappoint them." Said Shimazaki. He held a red M&M in his hand and brought it up to Minegishi's…or did they prefer Toshi…he tried to feed them like they were a baby or a bird or a baby bird…or something.

Something that he got the feeling that he was not supposed to be seeing.

"They're inanimate objects. They feel nothing." Said Minegishi

"Nah, I think they feel something. They feel everything and what they want is sweet oblivion. The sweet oblivion of being in your stomach. Come on, can you deny them the freedom that comes with death? Can you really do that?" asked Shimazaki. He pressed a candy to their mouth…and they smiled. Serizawa had never seen them smile before…and they had a nice smile…not that he was staring at them or anything.

They weren't his partner….and also girls hated being stared at….not that they were a girl but…well nobody liked beings stared at.

"Fine, but just one. You know how I am with candy." Said Minegishi. They smiled and laughed a little…and that was just…Serizawa had to get back to sorting candy…or maybe picking it up…or something. This was a very important job that he was doing…even though they were all the same flavor…he didn't know. Shimazaki had said that this was important and…well that was what friends did. They helped each other out.

And they did not stare at their friend's partners.

"I know…and I like it." Said Shimazaki. He reached over and wrapped another arm around them. Serizawa got back to sorting candy. He had to do something other than watch…this. They were a couple. The walls of the last house had been thin. He knew fully well that they were a couple…and he had never been so close to a couple before. Also Minegishi was…well a girl…and not a girl and…well aside from his mother the only girl he talked to was Miss Suzuki…and she was…well he got the feeling that she was a lot younger than him…even if she seemed like she was his age and…

And well….Minegishi was kind of sort of very pretty…even if they were in pajamas and their hair was everywhere…or maybe that just made them prettier…but they were not his partner and he was not going to stare at them.

"Well I don't so just one…or maybe two…and stop tormenting Serizawa. You heard what Mob said and she does not need any more stress in her life right now." Said Minegishi

"I am not tormenting him. He likes to help, don't you?" asked Shimazaki. Serizawa nodded and tried not to look up at…well them being a couple. He wondered what it was like to be in love…but he knew that he would never know…and that didn't matter. Miss Suzuki was stressed by something…something was bothering her. His best friend…what if she stopped being his friend? What if he had done something? What if she was done with him? What if she…no. She was a good person, the nicest person he had ever known, and he just…he needed to stay calm.

He tended to overreact.

"Y-yes….I do. I like to help…to be helpful. Um…s-something's wrong with Miss Suzuki? I mean….sorry." said Serizawa. He got the feeling that he had to apologize even though he knew that…well it was alright to talk to people. He could talk to people and Miss Suzuki even asked him to talk to people…and he had no idea where this…feeling…was coming from….

Too much candy. There was too much candy on the floor. He needed to focus on the candy on the floor.

"She's a little ketchup packet right now, I can tell, and she needs her space." Said Shimazaki. Serizawa had no idea what he meant…and also why Minegishi had hit him over the head like that. That seemed…not right. Like…well he knew that partners were not supposed to hit each other…and Miss Suzuki had been very clear that violence was never the answer and that as friends they were supposed to get along all the time….

So he didn't ask about that.

"Ketchup packet?" asked Serizawa. He had no idea what that could have meant. He had no idea why Minegishi had hit their partner for saying that…and he wanted to know…so maybe if he knew what he had meant then he would know what that had been about. There. It was like when you had to stumble into a mission, it wasn't just given to you. He liked those sorts of missions, they were good for passing the time.

The never ending time.

Time…well it passed quickly these days. He was awake during the day. The curtains were open and there was sunlight streaming in…and he was awake. There was a clock on the wall too. It was a little past noon. He had no idea what it was back home but here, in this place, it was a little past noon. Maybe because he was still on opposite time, he had been practically nocturnal back in Japan, he had gotten accustomed to the time change the fastest. Time was passing better and…well it passed better when Miss Suzuki was near…

But she wasn't near because something was the matter with her…and he had no idea what.

"Yeah, because ketchup is red…well I've been told it's red, and bl-" said Shimazaki. He got himself hit again…and that didn't seem healthy. They had been so in love a moment ago…maybe Minegishi was just being tsundere. He had never understood it, being in love with someone and then going off and being mean to them, but he didn't know about relationships. He knew games, though, and TV…and art imitated life. Minegishi was definitely the tsundere in that relationship…and Shimazaki was kind of like the bakadere….not that he would say that out loud of course.

"This is Mob's business and hers alone…and you need to shut up because I am not explaining the facts of life to this guy." Said Minegishi. They pointed at him. He had no idea what needed explaining to him…but if it was something that he didn't need to know then it was something that he didn't need to know. He just wanted Miss Suzuki to be alright, that was all.

"Wait, you think he doesn't-" said Shimazaki

"I'm not going to find out, I don't have the energy to deal with this. I'm making coffee. You want some?" asked Minegishi. They went over to the cabinets and started rummaging around. Serizawa cringed. He had spent a lot of time making sure that all of the braille labels faced outwards. It had taken time and…well now that he watched more closely he could tell that they were being careful. There. That was good. He should have known that they would have been careful. He was their partner after all so of course they would have known the rules about the labels.

"What kind?" asked Shimazaki

"That birthday cake shit Mob likes." Said Minegishi

"Fuck yeah. Toshi, I love you." Said Shimazaki

"I love you too, Ryou…now stop tormenting Serizawa. He's not Hatori, he can't handle it." Said Minegishi

"I'm not tormenting him, I really do need my M&Ms and Skittles separated by color…and also the rest of the kitchen organized by color." Said Shimazaki. He said that with a laugh…and Minegishi rolled their eyes…and Serizawa…well he felt kind of…dumb…now. He didn't know why he had felt dumb, he had just been doing what had been asked of him by his friend. That was how friendship worked…right? Someone asked for your help and you gave it?

He had never asked for Miss Suzuki's help…she had just given it to him. He hadn't even known that he needed it.

Maybe it was alright, then, to ask why you were told to do something. Miss Suzuki…well she had said that she had helped him because she wanted to be his friend. She had wanted to bring him to this place full of people like him…people who could have possibly understood him. Now he was here and he was making friends…and friends could ask each other things…so that was what he was going to do.

That was alright…right?

"By color? But….you can't see…so….why?" asked Serizawa. He wished that he'd had enough time to come up with something better than that. Shimazaki couldn't see, he knew that he couldn't see, and Serizawa knew that he couldn't see…so there was no point in pointing out that fact that he couldn't see. Serizawa hadn't meant anything by it, he knew that he hadn't meant anything by it, but Shimazaki…well he might not have known that Serizawa hadn't meant anything by it. He might have even thought that Serizawa had been…making fun of him or something…and that just…he would never have made fun of any of his friends let alone one of his friends who couldn't see!

He was such a terrible friend sometimes….it was a wonder that Miss Suzuki wanted anything to do with him.

"Blind guy reasons." Said Shimazaki with a wave of his hand. This got him another eye roll…and he had no idea why Minegishi was rolling their eyes at their partner when they knew that he couldn't see…and he also didn't know why Shimazaki had sounded so…alright…with that. Like he wasn't upset at all…which was a good thing…even though Serizawa didn't fully understand things right then…or ever when it came to Shimazaki and Minegishi.

"Oh…ok." Said Serizawa

"He's being an asshole. You don't have to do what he says. You want to come over and hang out with Mob after I brew this shit?" asked Minegishi. They were looking at him now…and he looked down. They were being…well not mean but…well they were being nice even though they didn't really have a nice tone there…and he didn't much want to leave the safety of the kitchen…

But he did want to be with Miss Suzuki.

"Um…yes. I would like that…but I don't mind being helpful….friends are helpful…right?" asked Serizawa. He knew that he wanted to leave but…well he also knew that he had a job to do. He had to arrange the kitchen and all of this candy by color for his new friend…and it would have been a lot of wok…but it wasn't like he had a lot to do during the days…or the nights...anyway….

But he really did want to see Miss Suzuki again.

"He doesn't need you to do this. He's just seeing how far he can push you. Just come with me. Seeing you would cheer Mob up…and don't ask why she's…the way she is right now. I don't have the mental energy to explain it to you." Said Minegishi

"Um…alright." Said Serizawa. He still wasn't sure what there was that needed explaining but if he wasn't supposed to ask then he wasn't supposed to ask. If your friend said not to do something then you didn't do it…not that he was sure, really, if he and Minegishi were friends. He liked them…as a friend! He thought that they were pretty but he liked them as a friend…well he didn't really know them but he liked them….and he didn't want to upset them. They were very easily upset…or at least it seemed like that…and he…well he knew that he wasn't the best one at these things but he would do his best.

His best was all that he could do.

He did his best to sort as much of the candy as he could, and get it up off the floor, and he did his best to understand the back and forth between Shimazaki and Minegishi, and he even did his best to occasionally speak to the both of them…and that had been the easy part compared to what came next. Compared to standing in the genkan, well the rug in front of the door that served as the genkan, with his umbrella in one hand and a thermos of coffee for Miss Suzuki in the other, and the door right in front of him. That was a door…and it went outside…and he sometimes went outside. To get some air. With Miss Suzuki. She had been the only person that he had ever gone outside with…and he just…he knew that he had to leave the house. He knew that this was something that he should have been able to do…and he knew that it would have made Miss Suzuki very happy if he did…

But there was a whole world out there…and it was so big and bright…and what if he hurt someone again?

"So, are we just going to stand here admiring the fine craftsmanship on this door or are you actually going to walk through it?" asked Minegishi. They were ready to go. They had put on day clothes and combed their hair, it was longer when it was combed not that Serizawa knew if it was alright to notice these things about them, and they were tapping their nails against their arm and were just…annoyed.

They were annoyed with him.

He was being annoying. He had always been annoying and weird and nobody had ever liked him and…and he was never going to make friends and…and Miss Suzuki was going to be so disappointed in him…and he just…he was disappointed in himself. He should have been making more of an effort to just…be normal. To be able to leave the house and make friends and do all of the things that they could do, that the other people his age could do, but he just…he couldn't. Not without her. Not without Miss Suzuki.

He just wasn't strong enough.

"I…need a minute." Said Serizawa

"Do you want me to set a timer? Or just count in my head? One…two…three…is that good?" asked Minegishi

"N-No…I just…I've never left the house without Miss Suzuki before…and this is a lot for me." Said Serizawa

"This is a row house. Mob is literally across that wall…alright? Either come with me or don't. I'm leaving. I can't deal with this right now. This is more of a Mob thing. She's got more empathy for…all of this…than I do." Said Minegishi

"I-I'm sorry." said Serizawa

"Don't be. That's my own shit right there. We all have our own shit going on. You're a former hikikomori, I'm a bastard most of the time, Hatori is afraid of his own shadow…and I strongly suspect that he's got some daddy issues he's working out with Suzuki, Shibata's a complete enabler, and Ryou…well the less said about what's wrong with Ryou the better. Mob has her own problems too but her problems just so happen to involve helping everyone in the world with their problems….so she's better equipped to handle…whatever this is. I'm not. See you later." Said Minegishi

"W-Wait…can I go with you? I mean I can go with you but just…can you walk…slow?" asked Serizawa

"Fine…but if you try to hold my hand I'm abandoning you in the middle of the street and you can figure it out on your own." said Minegishi

"I-I wouldn't! I mean I won't!" said Serizawa. Him…hold their hand? No way. They were a girl…sort of…and he had never held hands with a girl….and also they had a partner. He was not going to get in the middle of them. He could hold Miss Suzuki's hand…but she was different. She didn't make him feel all…like he was next to a girl when he was with her. Because she was so tiny and he wasn't. He had no idea how old she really was, she couldn't have possibly been as old as she looked, but she was younger than him…and she looked way too young for him…so she was alright. Minegishi was…very pretty…and his age…and just…very pretty.

But also very mean sometimes….and very tsundere to the person that they loved.

But they could be nice, too. They didn't let him hold their hand as they left the house, and he didn't even ask, but they did hold on to his umbrella. He held onto one side of his umbrella and they held on to the other…and they went slow. They walked as slowly s Serizawa needed them too…they didn't rush…they just…walked.

He could see why they were Miss Suzuki's best friend.

"God damn it….Suzuki's home." Muttered Minegishi as they got to the door. Their grip on his umbrella slackened…and he wanted them to hold onto him again. He felt like…the sky was too big. The sky was too big and the air was all…cold…and he was just…he wanted to go inside. He needed to go inside.

"Should we go back?" asked Serizawa. There was a house to one side of him and a house to the other side of him. There. Two houses that he could go into. To the left and the right. He had two places he could be…two place that were not out here.

"No." said Minegishi

"Then….should we go inside?" asked Serizawa

"Probably." Said Minegishi. They said that but they made no move to…well…to move. They just stood there. They stood there and sighed. Serizawa…didn't get it. People were complicated.

"Um…can we go in?" asked Serizawa

"Yeah….but you hang out with Suzuki." Said Minegishi

"What?!" asked Serizawa

"Wow, I've never heard a grow man's voice get so high before." Said Minegishi

"Sor-sorry just…I got scared. I've never met him….I mean I have but President Suzuki is just…he's not someone I know and I don't know what to say or do or-" said Serizawa

"Videogames. Old, 80's, vidoegames. He likes videogames, you like videogames, it's a match made in heaven. Just talk to him about videogames or whatever….and I guess Mob too if you really need something to talk about. Just…I need a buffer between me and him and you want to be a good friend, right?" asked Minegishi

"Y-Yes! I do!" said Serizawa

"Good. Then you hang out with Suzuki and I'll hang out with Mob and then you can let go of this stupid umbrella. How's that sound?" asked Minegishi

I-It's sounds good!" said Serizawa. Even though it didn't. Even though he really wanted to be with Miss Suzuki, to spend time with her, to just…be…with her. She was his best friend. She kept him safe. She was the one who made him better than what he was. He was…well he was who he was but a person could always change and become better. She had said so. She had said that life was like Frozen. Well their lives were like Frozen. They had spent a lot of years afraid of themselves and trying to stop their powers from being…well…there…but the only way to get better was to just let it go and….well there was something else about friendship and trolls and…well it got sort of complicated towards the end…

He wanted to watch Frozen with her again.

She was laying down on her couch when he came in. She had been laying down in her pajamas watching Frozen and he wanted to join her…and they would have matched since he was in pajamas too. He didn't own any day clothes…and maybe he should have…and maybe he should have done a lot of things….and stuff. The main thing that he should have done was be near her and just….well he had made a promise to a friend and as much as he should have been near Miss Suzuki he also…had to be near her father….

Who might have been like her.

Even if he looked nothing like her. Serizawa had never seen a redheaded person before, well Miss Suzuki's little brother, but he was President Suzuki's son. It made sense for father and son to look alike. Father and daughter…well maybe because she was a girl she looked more like her mom. That would have made sense. Not that Serizawa would ever ask about Miss Suzuki's mom. She was gone and Miss Suzuki was sad about it…and also President Suzuki must have been sad too…since he was all alone.

Being alone was the worst.

No…being alone when there were people around was the worst. President Suzuki was all alone in his kitchen while Miss Suzuki and Minegishi sat in the living room and talked. He didn't much want to be anywhere but by Miss Suzuki's side but she had said, before, that he would have made great friends with her father. Hatori had said so too. Hatori had said that he and President Suzuki would make good friends…and also that President Suzuki could be kind of…well curse words…but that was…

Serizawa was in no position to be turning down potential friendships…and also he had already promised Minegishi…and also he had promised Miss Suzuki that he would make new friends….so that was what he would do.

"Yes?" asked President Suzuki as he turned around. Serizawa had been lingering in the doorway since Miss Suzuki asked him to spend time with her father. She had said that he needed company…and Minegishi said that they needed someone to act as a buffer between them and President Suzuki…and Serizawa was happy to help…or at least not going to say no…

But he sort of wanted to.

He had seen President Suzuki before, even had dinner with him, but he had always been near Miss Suzuki. She had been there and he, when he needed to, had the option of holding her hand or holding onto her aura…but now she was in the other room….and he wanted to be in that room and not this one. This kitchen was like the kitchen at the house where he was staying….but blue…and also it had President Suzuki in it…and Serizawa…

He held his umbrella tighter.

"Miss Suzuki said…that I should keep you company…and that…um…she wants us to be friends." Said Serizawa. He held his umbrella tight in his hands. She had given him this…and she had said that being under it would be like being in his room…but really it reminded him more of her than anything. Holding onto it was like holding onto her. She was smaller than him, a lot smaller, but being near her…she made him feel so safe…even though she was so small…and even though he had no reason to feel unsafe.

This was her dad. She had come from him. So obviously he must have been just as nice as she was.

"It's true, dad! I really said that!" said Miss Suzuki from her spot in the living room. President Suzuki's eyes swung to the kitchen door and his colors, his aura, did too. He sighed and then pulled out a chair. Serizawa quickly sat down. He didn't want to be rude. He didn't want to be sitting right next to President Suzuki like this but he also didn't want to be rude.

"So…you're here." Said President Suzuki after a moment. He was looking at Serizawa again…and his eyes were so cool. They were kind of scary but also they were a really pretty shade of blue…and Serizawa had never seen eyes like that before. Mostly because he wasn't used to being this near to other people…and also because most people had brown eyes. He had never seen eyes like this before…well he had on Miss Suzuki's little brother, but that made sense because Sho also came from President Suzuki.

"Y-yes…I am. Um…Miss Suzuki wants us to be friends." Said Serizawa

"I'm aware." Said President Suzuki

"O-Oh….right! Because I just said so….sorry! I'm sorry! it's just that sometimes I don't know what to say and I don't know a lot of people and I don't know you…I mean I know who you are! I've just never hung out with you and-" said Serizawa

"My daughter keeps bringing you over for dinner." Said President

"Y-Yes…she does. I like it! I mean eating with your family…I mean." Said Serizawa

"So therefore we have spent time together socially." Said President Suzuki

"I…um…yes? Yes we have…I mean…yes." said Serizawa

"So therefore I do not understand why my Daughter….never mind. I don't understand her at the best of times…and at least she's alright." Said President Suzuki

"I-I'm glad that Miss Suzuki is alright too….I mean is she sick? She's laying down like she's sick…and…um…I hope she gets well soon." Said Serizawa

"She isn't ill…and what is wrong with her is her own business…and nothing is wrong with her. This is just something which she has to deal with…something which I have to deal with…it doesn't matter. Sit there and be quiet. I have work to do." Said President Suzuki. He ducked his head down back into his laptop. Serizawa sat perfectly still for a moment. He didn't know if it was alright to move. He got the feeling that President Suzuki didn't like him…well Hatori had said that he could be a real a-word sometimes but he was nice….so maybe Serizawa was just being ridiculous….and really it was better that he didn't disturb President Suzuki from his work….

Though he had no idea how Teraria counted as work.

He knew that looking at someone else's screen was wrong and an invasion of privacy…but he had been curious. President Suzuki he said that he had been working but Serizawa…well he knew what it looked like when someone was playing something…and President Suzuki liked games. Hatori had said so. He just pretended that he didn't because he was really old and he thought that people his age couldn't like games…

Which made no sense.

They had minimum ages for fames, not maximum ages, and even if they id then so what? If something made you happy…and could keep you sane…then there was nothing wrong with it. Just so long as you weren't hurting other life, of course, not in games. You could hurt people in games and it didn't mater…not that he liked hurting people in games. He liked arcade games best. They were just...simpler...and it was easier to get lost in them…but Terraria was fun too.

Even if there was some fighting in it.

"It's easier if you use arrows." Said Serizawa after a moment. He knew that he should have kept his mouth shut but President Suzuki was dying…well close to it. He was using a sword when arrows, frostbite arrows specifically, would have worked a lot better. They were the best type of arrow in the game since you go them early and they did a lot of continuous damage…not that he was going to be bossy and tell President Suzuki how to play the game or anything like that. No, that would not have been nice at all.

"What?" asked President Suzuki

"Um…arrows work better…and you won't get as hurt. I just…noticed that you were getting hurt…that's all." said Serizawa

"Ranged weapons are for cowards." Said President Suzuki

"Oh…alright. I was just thinking that…never mind. I don't know. It's your game…work, I mean it's your work." Said Serizawa quickly. There was a pause…and President Suzuki died…but he let himself die. He was looking at Serizawa now in that same way his pupils all tiny and his colors focused on him…and Serizawa…well if he had the option of running away he would have…but he didn't…so he let himself get stared at.

"You've been speaking to Hatori, haven't you? He has expressed the exact same opinion time and time again. I don't understand him sometimes." Said President Suzuki

"Um…I have….because we're friends….I mean….I think that we are." Said Serizawa

"No, you are. Hatori has expressed as much…and he has also expressed that you and I should be friends." Said Suzuki

"Oh…um…if you don't want to be my friend…I mean to be friends with me then…then that's fine. You're the President and you can be friends with whoever you want to be friends with…" said Serizawa

"I know that I am and I know that I can…and I don't know if I want to be friends with you yet. I've spent most of my life with one person whom I would call a friend and now I have two…and I'm not ever sure if I need three. There is enough change going on in my life as it is…but I do trust Hatori's judgement and my daughter's as well…but there is a lot going on." Said President Suzuki

"I…um….Miss Suzuki said something about the end of the year being a lot of work for you." Said Serizawa. He didn't want to say the wrong thing…but he had no idea what the right thing was. President Suzuki was staring at him…but he couldn't tell if this was good staring or bad staring. He was just…staring….

"It's not just that, and it's the middle of the year that presents the most work anyway, it's…many things. A great many things weigh on me at the moment….things which I will not be sharing with you…is Hatori awake yet?" asked President Suzuki suddenly. Serizawa jumped a little. That had been just…well sort of out of nowhere…and he couldn't help but just jump…but the room did not jump with him. He had felt it, the surge of his own powers, and he had seen his colors but then as suddenly as they appeared they also disappeared.

But that happened a lot when he was near Miss Suzuki.

"He…wasn't awake when I left the house so no…but um…if you wanted to play two player or something then you could play with me. I mean….Hatori said that we had a lot in common like…um…we both like Minecraft and Terraria and Space Invaders and-" said Serizawa

"What did you just say?" asked President Suzuki suddenly…very suddenly.

"That we both have the same taste in games. I mean I like arcade games too…but not the really early ones like you like…I think because you're older than me…but I do like some of them. I mean arcade games are fun because they just keep going and going until-" said Serizawa

"The game simply can't generate any new levels." Said President Suzuki

"Y-Yeah…and it's like…you beat the game without having to…beat it. I mean it's like-" said Serizawa

"A greater sense of accomplishment because you have not reached a predetermined path to winning but, instead, simply performed at an unprecedented level." Said President Suzuki

"And its like…you don't feel rushed…you know? And when you play it's like….kind of relaxing like-" said Serizawa

"As though the whole world has ceased around you but not in an apocalyptic way." said President Suzuki

"Yes…I feel that way too….President Suzuki." Said Serizawa. President Suzuki was staring at him again…and he got the feeling that this was the good kind of staring now. He was very close and he was staring and…and well Serizawa needed to get used to people besides Miss Suzuki being in his space…so this was alright….

But he was sort of…too close though.

"How far, long, can you play in Space Invaders?" asked President Suzuki suddenly

"I can play for four hours before I just…can't anymore…but I've never gotten the point where it started to glitch because I'd been playing for too long…even when I did go to arcades." Said Serizawa. The game was an endless loop…and that was what he had loved about it. When he had been a kid, back before everything that had happened, he used to be able to spend hours and hours and hours playing those games until either he ran out of money, his wrists hurt too bad to go on, or he lost…and then lost control..

But that…was not something that he wanted to think about now.

"My record is nine hours before I was kicked out." Said President Suzuki

"That was mean…why did they kick you out? For playing for too long?" asked Serizawa

"For not putting in money." Said President Suzuki

"Oh." Said Serizawa. That seemed like a perfectly good reason to kick someone out of an arcade…but he wasn't going to say that. It was important to agree with your friends all the time…and he had no idea if President Suzuki was his friend or not…but he didn't want to NOT be friends with him…so he agreed with him…even though he didn't really want to….but it didn't matter what he wanted.

When you were friends with someone then the only thing that mattered was what they wanted….

And President Suzuki wanted to play Space Invaders…and that was what they did. It was fun…sort of. He liked President Suzuki, he decided, since they had the same taste in games and also he had made Miss Suzuki so, of course he would like President Suzuki. Even though he sort of wished that Miss Suzuki had been there too…but she was either tired or sick. She and Minegishi wee siting together on the couch watching movies and talking…about what Serizawa didn't know. But it wasn't his place to know .Now his place was to sit with President Suzuki and play games with him until he felt like stopping.

Which was never.

Serizawa had never met someone who could match him in terms of endurance…not that he knew a lot of people….but he had never known that anyone could go for as long as he could without getting tired or bored. He and President Suzuki were switching off whenever one of them died…which meant a lot more turns for President Suzuki than him since according to Hatori President Suzuki had spent most of his childhood playing this game, but that was alright. He was happy just to sit and watch. His friend was happy…well his maybe sort of trial basis friend was happy…and that was what mattered. If the people around him were happy. Just like Miss Suzuki had said.

And he trusted her totally and completely.

He felt safe with her in the house and he trusted her…though he did jump when he felt another person enter his range. Two of them. One he didn't know and one he sort of knew…and the one he sort of knew was the one who got closer…and also he had no reason to jump because he knew exactly who that person was….and also Miss Suzuki would have kept him safe if he had needed it.

Not that she had any reason to keep him safe from her own brother.

"That's just my son. Pay him no mind." Said President Suzuki as he passed Serizawa his laptop. Serizawa….well he wanted to say 'hi' because that was polite…and also he wanted to know what was going on in the other room. Miss Suzuki screamed…and her colors got really bright…but it didn't feel like she was scared or angry…but he did jump…and so did President Suzuki…and so did the entire kitchen….

"I…yes sir." Said Serizawa. President Suzuki had made the room jump…and so had he….but if the President wasn't going to get up and see what was happening then nothing bad must have been happening. It didn't seem like anything bad was happening, anyway, actually it seemed like a lot of good things might have been happening.

Hey, he was getting better at reading auras!

"Oh my God! Oh my f-wording God! Sho! I'm so happy for you!" said Miss Suzuki with more enthusiasm than Serizawa had ever heard from her before. He was happy for her, then, because whatever was happening over there was a good thing…right? It must have been….even though President Suzuki was super tense…like he was scared or something….not that Serizawa was going to be nosy and ask him what was wrong. They didn't know each other that well yet…at least he got the feeling that they didn't know each other that well yet.

"Yeah….oh my f-wording God is right…" said Minegishi with a lot less enthusiasm than Miss Suzuki'd had…but that might have just been the way that they were…and if there had been something wrong then Miss Suzuki would have said something. He had no idea what was being said in the other room, just that there were people talking in low tones…well he heard the word 'macabre' and he had no idea what that meant….but if neither President Suzuki nor Miss Suzuki said that there was a problem or acted like it then there must not have been a problem.

So he tried his best to play…and he died.

"That was pathetic. Don't let…whatever that is…distract you. I'm sure it's nothing….just my son." Said President Suzuki as Serizawa passed him back his laptop. He was all tensed up and his colors were really close…and Serizawa sort of wished that they were good enough friends that he could have told him what was wrong…or even friends at all….because he did seem like he would have been a good friend…or really any kind of a friend.

Serizawa really needed more friends.

And also he wanted to spend time with the friends that he already had…and Miss Suzuki's little brother who may or may not have been a friend. He didn't know. He just knew that he wanted to know what was happening over there in the living room with everyone. He wanted to get up and see but….well that would have meant leaving President Suzuki…and right now he was supposed to be making friends with him…so it wouldn't have been right to leave him there for his other friends…right? The whole thing was complicated….but at least games were simple…so he stuck to watching President Suzuki play…

Until he died.

"Son…yes? What is it?" asked President Suzuki as he died. He died because his son stepped into the kitchen. He walked past the table and went to the refrigerator. He used his powers to get out a bottle of strawberry milk and a cup from the cabinets. It was impressive. Serizawa wished that he had that kind of control…but he never would…or maybe he would. He didn't know. He was going to focus on not accidentally hurting anyone for now.

"Just getting milk for big sis." Said Sho. His back was to his father…which didn't seem polite…but then again what did Serizawa know? He didn't have a father or a son and he probably never would. He didn't think that it was such a bad thing, though, since he'd always had mom…and also the thought of having a child is terrifying. Creating another human being and then being fully responsible for that person…he didn't know how President Suzuki did it. Got up every single day and just…took care of two people in addition to himself…

But then again Serizawa had trouble getting up and brushing his teeth in the morning so what did he know?

"Hi Sho….um…what was all of that about?" asked Serizawa. It was polite to talk to your friends and Sho was his friend…maybe. He liked Sho. He was a nice kid and Miss Suzuki had said that he was the best little brother ever and she didn't tell lies.

"Nothing. I just got a ring for my girlfriend because I want to marry her and big sis and Minegishi got all freaked out. I got her an eyeball in a jar too but that's not a marriage thing. That's just a getting a girl a present thing. You know how it is." Said Sho. Serizawa…well he was…confused…because Sho was ten. He knew that Sho was only ten…and as far as he knew ten year olds didn't get married….

But then again what did he know?

"I'm…so happy for you…but aren't you…ten?" asked Serizawa

"My birthday is on the first." Said Sho

"So you'll be ten…then?" asked Serizawa

"He'll be eleven." Said President Suzuki. It seemed like he had said the wrong thing based on the way that Sho was looking at him…but Serizawa had no idea what. He knew that parents and kids fought, that other people fought with their parents, but he had no idea why they did that. He couldn't have ever even imagined fighting with his mom about anything.

"So now you know my birthday?" asked Sho

"I have always known your birthday and I have no idea why you won't just…stop this. I have never once forgotten your birthday and I never will…and I have no plans on doing so in the future…so just stop it already." Said President Suzuki. Serizawa…felt like there might have been something there. Something that he had missed. Like a story or something…but now did not seem to be the time to ask.

"Fine, it doesn't matter anyway. When I'm all grown up and me and Emmy are married and we have ten or twenty kids I won't ever forget to celebrate a single one of their birthdays." Said Sho

"Ten or twenty?!" said Serizawa. Well at least he was waiting for all of that….but still. That seemed like….a lot of kids.

"I agree. What is she, a fish?" asked President Suzuki

"No, she's a girl…and she's Irish…which is a kind of English I think….and….and she's my most perfect person and when I grow up I'm going to marry her and I'm going to be the best boyfriend and husband and dad ever and I'm going to rub it in your face." Said Sho. He stuck out his tongue at his dad, which Serizawa knew was not the thing for a son to do, but President Suzuki just sort of…stared at him. His colors weren't moving…and then they were….and then they weren't again….but he just kept on staring at his son like he expected him to do something. If he expected his son to do something then maybe he should have said so because Sho didn't do anything but stare right back.

"I wish you the best in your future marital, romantic, and parental endeavors….may I see the ring you purchased for her….for your…for this…Emmy?" said President Suzuki. Sho gave his dad a mean look but dug something out of his pocket. Oh. A ring box. That was so…well it was kind of cute if anything since he was just a kid…and really Serizawa was happy for him. It was good that girls liked him, girls had never liked Serizawa, and also it was good that he'd found love at such a young age….though Serizawa had been mostly sure that Sho had been in love with Shimazaki….or at least gay….but he knew enough to know that saying any of that would have been a BAD idea.

Also sort of mean…and he was not going to be mean to his friend.

"Here. I didn't get her another ring pop…so thanks for warning me about that….I guess." Said Sho as he passed his father…what looked like…a human tooth. A human tooth on a metal band…but that was just…

What the….

What the h-word?

Just….

"Why?" asked President Suzuki as he held the ring in front of himself with his powers. Serizawa nodded even though he had been asking a question and not making a statement. That was just…Serizawa had never asked a girl to marry him and he probably never would since he didn't have any girls he liked, that weren't game characters or anime characters or actresses or anything, and no girl had ever liked him either….but he knew that if by some miracle a girl did like him he would never have given her a human tooth ring.

Girls didn't like stuff like that and neither did he.

"Because it's cool. I got her an eyeball in a jar, too, but that's just because I like to get her presents." Said Sho

"Your…Emmy…would…she would accept a human tooth and…I'm guessing a human eyeball?" asked Suzuki. Serizawa felt a little sick. Where…what kind of store SOLD these things? He knew that he had been away from the world for a long time but…what in the h-word kind of store just…sold BODY PARTS? And who was BUYING these things?

Well, obviously, ten year old boys.

"Yeah, she's cool like that." Said Sho. There was another pause. President Suzuki looked like he was going to be sick. He also looked like he wanted to start breaking things. He was sitting perfectly still and his face wasn't moving but Serizawa could tell by his aura. He hoped that President Suzuki wasn't about to start fighting with his son….because Serizawa didn't want to watch that.

"I…am happy that you've found someone….and am going to have to ask you…to store this ring and the eyeball in your bedroom…but not where your sister can see. Understood?" asked President Suzuki

"Sure, dad, whatever." Said Sho as he took his ring and his glass of strawberry milk and left the kitchen. Serizawa watched the door swing shut behind him. President Suzuki just stared at the spot where Sho had been standing. He stared and…and stared and…well Serizawa had no idea what the staring was about but he got the feeling that this was not the good kind of staring.

Not the good kind of staring at all.

"Sho…are you insane? Intoxicated? Have you been in your sister's things? Have you lost your mind? If you give that girl, any girl, that…whatever that was you will die alone! You will die alone surrounded by regrets the first of which being that you did not listen to your father and the second of which being that you tried to give a girl a HUMAN tooth…what is wrong with you….lost your…alright, I'm fine now. Where were we?" asked President Suzuki. It took Serizawa a second to realize that President Suzuki was talking to him now…instead of himself…or maybe his son if his son had never left the room…

Dads were strange and he was sort of glad that he didn't have one.

"Um…it was your turn…or maybe mine…." Said Serizawa

"Mine…it was mine…and I'm sorry that you had to see that. I don't know what came over me. My daughter won't let me punish my son and my son…he seems bent on ending this bloodline….and I had been so happy that he had found someone…." Said President Suzuki

"That's good! I mean that he has a girlfriend." Said Serizawa

"It is…it is…and I am happy for him…but this girl is just…either he's making a big mistake or this girl is just….not the sort of girl that I would want for a daughter in law….but he's my son and I get no say in his romantic or sexual partners…and he's too young for the latter….not the former but most certainly the latter…" said President Suzuki

"He's eleven years old." Said Serizawa

"Exactly. I thought that I had more time….and I thought that I had wanted this…and I suppose that I do. I have no idea. Children are complex creatures. Parenthood is a very complex time of life. When you have children you'll know." Said President Suzuki. Serizawa almost jumped. Him….kids? That was just…no way. Where would he even get them? From a woman…but then he would have to meet a woman and fall in love with her and ask her to be his girlfriend and then his wife…and he could never do that. A ten year old could do that but he couldn't…but that was just his life. He was Serizawa and he was…this person.

This person who had no business making new people.

"Um…I guess that it's complicated….I mean it seems complicated but um….girls don't really like me. I mean I don't know any girls and if I did they wouldn't like me either but…um…I agree that taking care of kids is hard and complicated. They're little people that you make and have to keep alive…and I can barely keep myself alive." Said Serizawa. He wasn't ashamed to admit it. He knew who he was and he knew what he was and he was just grateful to be where he was and have the friends he had. He didn't have a problem with it…

But maybe President Suzuki did.

President Suzuki was sitting facing him now, not his laptop, and he was making a lot of eye contact. His colors were moving again and he didn't seem mad…but he had…well Serizawa barely knew him but he could tell that maybe the President…well he could go through mood swings it seemed…and Serizawa knew what that was like…and even if he didn't he wouldn't have said anything.

He was a good friend like that.

"You'll get better at it, caring for yourself, believe me. You're friends with Hatori and he'll help…and my daughter as well. Just her friend…because she's not interested in…it doesn't matter. Let's get back to work, yes?" said President Suzuki. Serizawa nodded. He didn't know what all of that had been about but he did understand that when President Suzuki meant work he meant more games…and Serizawa…well he understood games…

And he understood how to be a friend.

Well he understood, sort of, how to be a friend. When you were friends with someone then you did whatever they wanted to do and agreed with whatever they said and made them feel good about themselves. Serizawa could do that. He could do that and he would do that. He wanted to be friends with President Suzuki, it was fun. More fun than sorting M&Ms anyway….not that he was complaining because he was a good friend and friends did not complain when they had to help out their other friends….

And, really, Serizawa was just happy to have had something to do with his time be it sorting candy or playing videogames.


	453. December First, Son's Birthday

Eleven years ago today, on this day, Suzuki Sho had been born.

For some strange reason, reasons that Suzuki had never been able to understand no matter how many times they had been explained to him, his son had this idea in his head that his own father could have forgotten the day that he had been born. Suzuki hadn't forgotten last year. He hadn't forgotten...he'd just had a lot on his mind. It had been a very eventful year. His...sabbatical…the shift in his relationship with Shigeko….his own poor decision making….it had been a very eventful year. This year had been decidedly less eventful. This year had been…well not a good year. No. He didn't think that he would ever have any of those now that Masami was gone…well and truly gone from his life…but this year had been…well a decent year….not very eventful…

Which was why December first would not slip by again.

He knew what day his son had been born on. He had never forgotten. The passing of the date had slipped his notice but he did remember what day it had been. December first. On December first eleven years ago Masami had shaken him awake and told him that she needed to go to the hospital. That she'd thought that her body had been doing this thing called….well he forgot the exact name but they were practice contractions and had been happening for a while….but then she had passed her mucus plug in the night….and then her water had broken at some point in the car…and then the next thing he had known his wife had been walked into a hospital and then wheeled away…

And then he'd had nothing to do but wait.

The waiting….he had been worried. Low level worried. The sort of worried that buzzed in the back of his skull. He had read everything he could get his hands on about childbirth. He had no idea, before his wife had gotten pregnant…before she had even been his wife…before he'd vastly overestimated his ability to time his own orgasm…everything that went into having a baby. How could he have? He had no siblings, no cousins, and his parents had been lost to him when he had been eighteen. There had been nobody there to warn him of what was coming…and the books….had been very dry and intellectual. He had no idea that the bloody show would have been so…bloody….or how much water there was when the water broke….

So. Much. Water.

Water and blood and…and Masami had assured him that she had been fine. Hence why his worry had been so low level. He would have felt better if she'd given birth at home with Fukuda there to heal her if something went wrong. Suzuki had read everything he could get his hands on when it came to childbirth…and to this day he was confident that he could deliver a baby if he needed to….but Masami had wanted to go to a hospital. She had wanted to have their Son in a hospital with doctors and modern interventions and pain drugs…and not him helping the baby along with telekinesis and Fukuda there to put her back together…with his eyes closed of course because Masami was not his wife…not that he didn't trust Fukuda. He knew that Fukuda would never have done anything with Masami even though she was the most beautiful and intelligent woman on Earth….

And also…well there was the fact that there was nothing sexually attractive about childbirth.

Terrifying. Terrifying and gut wrenching and stomach turning….so much blood and water….and also vomit…and other things too…things that he books had warned him about in the most intellectual capacities. Things that he would never forget. There was no way that he could ever forget everything that he had seen and heard and smelled on that particular December first eleven years ago…

He could never forget what he had seen that day.

Masami…laying on her back…asking for him even though fathers weren't usually in the room with the mothers….and then her hand had been in his and she had assured him that she couldn't feel a thing…and then he had been told by no less than four different people plus his wife not to look over the curtain….but he had looked over the curtain…and then her entire body had been opened up...like a fish…like when his mother had asked him to help her filet fish for dinner…and then….he couldn't remember anything else…just the sight of his wife…his reason and his life…laying there on her back with her organs on the outside and a person being pulled out of her…

The reason she had been like that.

'Touichirou, look, there's someone here who wants to meet you.' Was what Masami had told him as she was being put back together. She had laid there on her back…and their son had been placed on her chest…and he had been screaming. He had been red and screaming…and what in the hell had he been screaming about? He hadn't been the one who had almost died. He had been the one who couldn't be bothered to face the correct way when he'd been born….he had been the one who had come out breach….he had been the one who had tangled the umbilical cord around his neck…he had been the one who hadn't even been able to be born correctly…who hadn't even bothered to have faced the right way…so that his mother…who had done the work of carrying him and birthing him could have been spared….all of it….

All of that had happened eleven years ago.

How could his son have expected him to forget that? To forget the day that he'd almost lost his wife? The day where two had almost stayed two, not become three, the day in which….a day which he did not want to think about. It was six in the morning. He did not want to think about this at six in the morning or at any time in the morning. He wanted to get this day over and done with. The children preferred morning birthday parties and he needed to get this over with so he could just…start his own day…and such.

He had to get this over with.

The Boy had better have appreciated this. That Boy…his Son…had better have woken up that morning a year older and a year wiser and a year more mature. His Son….he did this for his Son. Well his Son and Shigeko. She had told him, before, not to forget Son's birthday…even she thought that he was capable of forgetting that day. She didn't know. She just…she didn't know. Nobody really knew…what it had been like…not even Tadashi and he had been there. Suzuki….should have been more insistent with Masami…but he couldn't have been. He was a man. He knew nothing about child birth and he had deferred to her judgement….just as he would defer to Shigeko's judgement when she had her children.

He would not be looking over the curtain.

One day she would be on her back and….and there would be medical people…doctors and nurses…and everyone else…and they would be pulling her child and his grandchild out of her body. There would be blood and vomit and sweat and urine and mucus…so much mucus….and so much blood…and water. There was so much water….he would deal with all of it. He would deal with all of it and he would spend the entire time in the room with her even if it wasn't done. He would hold her hand and he would tell her that she would be safe…and Tadashi would be there too even though she had stopped liking them…he would be blindfolded so that he couldn't see anything….even though he couldn't think of a less sexual process than childbirth…Shigeko still would probably not have wanted anyone looking at her vagina that didn't absolutely have to look at it…and he would be there and he would hold her hand and keep her safe….

He would help her through it.

And he would never forget the day that she brought his grandchild into the world. That day would come and…and he would be there. Son…he would be there for his wife. He had already expressed that he wanted to have ten to twenty children with this girl…he didn't even want to think about how complicated future lines of succession would be….his Son could make his own choices with his wife…and he could help her through the process of childbirth….Suzuki had to be there for Shigeko. She would have had nobody…well whatever man had gotten her pregnant…if Suzuki let him stick around….she didn't need anyone but him.

He could care for his Daughter.

And his Son, too, even though the Boy required considerably less care. He mostly took care of himself as he should have, he was half of Suzuki after all, and he didn't need his father….well not really. He could handle himself so, really, he should have been happy that Suzuki had done all of this for him. He hadn't just remembered the day, and made an alert in his calendar, but also had put together all the trappings of a proper birthday. Cake, presents, all of it. Things that you were supposed to do for your Son on his birthday. Things that Son enjoyed.

He had even followed the picture again.

Suzuki had saved every single drawing that his son had ever created. Some of those drawings were rotting on the walls or in folders back at the house he had shared with Masami, some were tacked up on the walls of his various offices, and some he carried around with him in folders and binders. The best of his Son's work. Pictures which played with color and light and darkness and perspective…and ones that were of no note but were simply…enjoyable to look at.

Like that cake diagram.

That had been…it had been a good day. Masami had taken the children out for Son's birthday and he had procured the cakes and then…well she had been so happy she had been speechless…and the children had been happy too…and it had been a good day. He had enjoyed himself, anyway, seeing his wife so happy. She deserved to be happy on such a day…and he never could understand how she could have been so happy on December first when she had almost died…and gone through so much. His own mother had never been so happy on his birthdays.

The ones he could remember.

Mother had made him cakes, even though he hated cake, and gotten him everything that he had put on his birthday list, and…and also she had never missed her chance to remind him just how long it had taken to give birth to him…how painful it had been…and how he had been so selfish the day that he'd been born that he had refused to feed from her. That he had been punishing her for something that she could not for the life of her figure out. He had no idea why he had seen fit to punish his mother either. He had been a baby, then, it had been the day that he'd been born and of course he had no memory of the day that he'd been born…but he had still apologized just the same. Like father had told him to. When someone was upset with you then there were two options. You could ignore that person until they tired themselves out or you could agree with them just to make it stop…and mother never tired herself out.

Ever.

She had been so angry…when he had told her that he had no idea what she was so upset about and that he had been a baby and had probably just been doing baby things….she had screamed for the entire day. She had screamed at him when he had left for school….and she had screamed at him when he had come in through the door….and she had been screaming when father had come back home…and then father had managed to calm her down…but then father had been angry with him for being so selfish towards mother…and then father had told him that he wished that he hadn't been born…that he'd never had a son…if he knew that his son would have grown into the sort of person who could treat his own mother that way….

He hadn't had a birthday that year.

But that was neither here nor there. He was a grown man now, fort four years old, he was the head of the most successful cult on Earth, more money than his father had made in his lifetime, and two children of his own. What did he care if he'd gone one year without having a birthday? He'd gotten his gifts in the end and he hated cake so it was a win for him….and really father had been right to tell him that he wished that he'd never had a son….and Suzuki had been terrible to his mother then….and it didn't matter….

His Son had better have been pretty fucking grateful for everything that Suzuki had done for him.

Not just throwing this party. Not just getting him all the cakes from his diagram. Not just for letting him live in the house with him and Shigeko. Not just for never having had taught him kendo, even though he would have been good at it, because getting hit by a shinai without armor was incredibly painful. Not just for telling him that there were days when he wished that he hadn't taken his chances on that day with Masami…that he had been more careful even though condoms were terrible and made sex just plain not worth it….Son should have been grateful that Suzuki had been as good to him over the years as he had.

But of course the Boy would be ungrateful.

But, of course, there was nothing that he could do about it. He wanted to…well there were a great many things that he wanted to do. Things that he knew that Shigeko would not approve of. Things that he had no idea why Shigeko disproved of. Suzuki…his own parents…he remembered, now that he made an effort to, that his own parents had turned punishments into long and drawn out affairs. Shigeko should have been grateful that he hadn't done the same to her and her brother….but he would never have said anything like that to her. He loved her and he didn't want to upset her.

Or wake her.

So he didn't. He made his way quietly to his children's room and made damn sure that he didn't wake her up. She needed her sleep. She had been through something difficult and painful…and she may have still been going through it, he knew better than to ask her, and anyway it was not her birthday. It was Son's birthday and Suzuki was going to give him a good one and then that would be the end of it. He as not going to go through another year of his Son whining about how he had forgotten his birthday when such a thing wasn't even possible and-

Calm down, Touichirou.

He stayed calm. For the sake of his Daughter he stayed calm. Shigeko was so sensitive to changes in the aural energy around her…and that was alright. That was just the way she was and…and she seemed so peaceful sleeping there. Suzuki entered the room quietly and made sure not to step on any of the toys on the ground, especially the little plastic blocks, as he made his way to Shigeko's bed. He had to make his way to her first. She had kicked off her blankets in the night, well both children had, but Shigeko was the one who seemed cold. He tugged down her nightgown, it had gotten tangled around her knees as she slept, and he pulled her blanket down too. She smiled as he covered her…and she was so perfect when she smiled….well she was always so perfect. He brushed him hair from her face…and she still smiled. He smiled down at her as best as he could, he had never been good at smiling, and tucked one of her dolls under her. One of the ones that she had gotten for her last birthday. One of the ones that looked like her…

It had been such a good birthday.

All of her birthdays were simply wonderful. He still has no idea what he would do for her this coming year. She would be twelve…maybe she would want twelve new dolls? Like the days of Christmas or whatever the song was? Or maybe she would want another set of costumes made. She would grow some more…or maybe she would just like another doll that looked like her. She had so many already but she got older and her face changed and she got taller and she wore her hair in different ways, she had been braiding it less and less these days, so she would need a doll to reflect that. Yes, that would be good, but there was so much else that he could do….

The possibilities were dizzying.

But that day, her birthday, would come later. First he had to deal with Son. He was there in his bed and he had kicked off his blankets too…and his shirt had ridden up in his sleep. Suzuki could see the truly disturbing scar, the Lichtenberg figure, that made up his back…he looked away. He had no idea what it must have been like to go through life with a scar like that….but Son had known what he had been signing up for. He was the one who volunteered for the procedure. There. The thought comes before that emotion that was close to guilt could take root inside of Suzuki. His Son was fine…he was more than fine. This was his birthday.

And it would be a good one for him.

He picked his Son up with his powers and carried him through the house. He was careful not to knock him into anything, Shigeko would have been upset with him if he did, and he made sure that the ride was steady. He had done this to the children before, picked them up with his powers, back when they'd been small. They'd begged him and bothered him for rides and he'd only given in to shut them up…and because Masami had asked him to…and he never would have seen himself doing the same for his son at the age of eleven. He would have thought that the Boy could have done this for himself by now…and maybe he could….and maybe he should have shaken the boy awake and told him to go to the kitchen and to enjoy his birthday and never open his mouth about his insane theories that his father could have forgotten that day and-

And then Shigeko would have woken up…and that would have been terrible.

So, really, this was the best thing for him to do. He sat the Boy down hard enough to wake him up but not hard enough to hurt on a chair at the kitchen table. There, on the table, were all the gifts from his list and all the cakes that he enjoyed. Even a box of those truly disgusting toaster pastries that his Son so liked to fill his stomach and rot his teeth out with. There. All the things that a birthday needed. Now the Boy could be happy and go an entire year without whining on and on and on about how his father had forgotten his birthday. Now he would be free to find something to whine about which was true.

Though Suzuki would have preferred that his son never whined about anything else ever again.

"Wh…what the fuck?" asked Son as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Suzuki…it was a little past six in the morning, the sun was barely coming up, and he hadn't even brushed his teeth yet. It was too early to deal with the Boy and his filthy mouth.

"Today is December first. It's your birthday. You are eleven years old today. I did not forget. Enjoy your birthday. I'm going back to sleep. Don't disturb your sister." Said Suzuki. He said what he had to say and then he made his way back to his room. His Son was asking questions but he didn't feel like answering them. He just kept walking. There. He had done what he'd had to do. He had done what he'd had to do and that was it. He had to get up, to start the day, and to at the very least brush his teeth and shave….but he couldn't. Not now.

He needed his sleep.

He just…was tired. That was why he was ruminating on that day…the day that his Son had been born. The day that he had almost lost the most perfect human being that he had ever met in his life. His wife. His reason and his life. He had just…it had been….he didn't want to think about this. His mind was getting away from him. Her loss…her life…that day…he just…he was tired and that was why he was remembering that day…and others…his own birthdays….he had to go back to sleep. So that was what he did.

It was December first…he'd done what he'd had to do…and now he could just…go back to his room…and…wait for December second.


	454. The Best Wingman for You

Shimazaki Ryou considered himself to be one hell of a wingman.

"Really, booger, you call that a throw?" laughed Sho's little girlfriend. That was definitely a kid…and definitely a British kid. God. Shimazaki knew that, at some point in the future, he would develop a headache that would never pass no matter how many head rubs Toshi gave him. Why did they have to have that accent? He could think of ten different accent he would have rather had listened to…but he wasn't going to say anything, no, not to the only human being other than himself that Sho had ever shown any interest in at all.

That would have just been counterproductive.

A good wingman did not insult the woman his friend was into to her face…or rather little girl. Little taller than Mob. Crooked teeth. Shorter hair. Three hammer toes. Slight curve of her spine that maybe someone should have looked at…not that he was going to go around rating the appearance of girls Sho's age. No, that would have been wrong. Way too young for him…and even when she got older he'd stay the hell away from all of that. He'd never do Sho like that, first of all, and second of all he doubted that she'd grow up to be his type.

Well his type was all types…but not the types that were dating his eleven year old best friend.

"Well I was going easy on your because you're a girl but if you insist." Said Sho. Shimazaki felt him pick up what felt like an empty wine bottle. He followed the path it took throw the sky until it disappeared from his perceptions with a plop into the water. His little girlfriend put her hands on her hips and stuck her tongue out.

"Stop holding back. I'll never get better if you do." Said Sho's girlfriend. He felt her pick up a beer can and throw it. She was strong for a kid and she pitched it pretty far…though it was lighter than a wine bottle, so maybe it wasn't fair, not that Shimazaki was going to say anything. That would have been bad wingmanning. Gotta let the girl win. Like taking a girl to pachinko or….well not pachinko since that was mostly chance…more like…

Like the time he and Toshi played ski-ball!

Yeah, back then. Back when they'd first met…well not their first meeting but…their first non-work meeting. No mission just the two of them hanging out…and they said that there was no way that he could play ski-ball…how had they even….the bookstore! Right, he'd tagged along with Toshi when they went to a bookstore…that was also the first time they'd read to him about the hobbits….anyway they'd gone to ski-ball and he'd actually let Toshi win but they'd gotten pissed off and then…well then they'd won on their own…well he'd let them win again but he'd made it close….and then…

Six or seven years later here they were.

And here he was. God, the kid had finally found his Toshi…maybe. He didn't know exactly what was going on with Sho. He knew that this was a very serious relationship between two kids, Sho had bought a ring and everything, and he knew that Sho said that he wanted to be with this girl, that she was his most perfect person…so fucking adorable, but he also knew that Sho stared at him. Sho stared at him and his breathing and heartrate went up like he'd just gotten done running a marathon and he blushed and smiled and all of the things that he didn't do when he was near this girl. So Shimazaki….was at a loss…but also he knew that he couldn't jinx this. Sho needed to get over him, and he needed to do it soon, so this really was the best thing to happen to the both of them. Even if he got the feeling that Sho might have been lying to this little girl and himself…but he wouldn't say anything about that.

Because, really, a good wingman did not say such things…and also he didn't want to ruin the cuteness before him.

This really was the cutest shit that he had ever not seen….and maybe he needed to spend less time with Shibata….or something. He didn't normally care about cute things but this…God. This was so fucking cute. Sho and his little girlfriend, the one who smelled like pure sugar and formaldehyde for some reason, were having a tiny adorable date which involved throwing junk into the Thames. It was so cute and sweet and adorable that Shimazaki fully expected to end up with a mouth full of tooth rotting cavities by the time this was all over and done with. Two kids in love…it was so cute...and maybe he was just getting sentimental in his old age or something.

They grew up so fucking fast.

It felt like just yesterday he was tossing bird's nests at this kid and now he was off in the world with his own little girlfriend who he fully planned on marrying…and this was all Shimazaki's fault. God, so this was what true power felt like. Fuck Suzuki and his plans of being President of the world for life or whatever. The only true power that there was, the best kind of it, was being wingman to a couple of elementary schoolers. Thanks to him the Suzuki line would continue for another generation at last. Really he deserved some kind of reward for this…of course he was talking about Suzuki. His reward would be something like not getting his ass kicked as hard net time he did something to piss him off….which would be soon…

Because Sho was just begging to be picked up and thrown.

Not into the water, of course, because the kid had issues with that. Everyone who had been through those insane Awakening experiments did. No, Shimazaki would have picked him up, thrown him over the river, and then caught him at the last second. The kid would call him a bitch bastard or whatever new and exciting combination of curse words he came up with and then they'd have a good laugh and go back to throwing crap into the river. That would have been so much fun…but also bag wingmanship.

And he was, if anything, a very good wingman.

"Here, let me show you both how it's done." Said Shimazaki dusting off what little English skills he had. He picked up an empty beer bottle and threw it. He made sure that it didn't go farther than Sho's had, actually he made sure it went way too short. There. Now that was good wingmanning. Gotta build the kid up so his girlfriend would think he was the number one game in town and then they could get up to whatever it was that eleven year olds got up to these days. Probably not what he was getting up to at eleven…and that was probably for the best given how emotionally unstable Sho could be.

Not that Shimazaki was one to talk, of course.

"That sucked." Said Sho

"No! It went mad far it did. Sho's just being daft." Said Sho's little girlfriend. Shimazaki tiled his head up and shook his head. Eye rolling without the eyes.

"You don't have to spare my feelings, kid, I can take it." Said Shimazaki

"It did too go far. You just can't tell…can you? I mean I know that your other senses get better when you can't see so…do you have super hearing? Is that how you became a blind master?" asked Sho's little girlfriend.

"Yeah, I can hear like a bat." Said Shimazaki with a laugh. That…wasn't too far off. He could click his tongue and get around somewhat, though he hadn't had to do that since he had been VERY young. His powers had fully came in when he was about thirteen or fourteen and then, well, that skill had fallen by the wayside. Not that he would tell Sho's girlfriend that. No, she had no idea about the whole esper thing and Shimazaki was not going to be the one to tell her. Sho knew better than to say anything, too, which really did not bode well for the longevity of this adorable little relationship. Secrets were relationship killers.

That was why he didn't have any.

Toshi knew everything about him and he knew everything about Toshi. Not that he had secrets. He was an open book. Toshi was just the only person who had ever sat down and read his book. They had sat down one day and just….read. They knew everything. He had told them everything. They had heard it all and then, at the end of it, they had just gotten up and poured him a drink…and that had been that. Toshi had let him read their book too and it wasn't nearly as bad as his…but they had still be surprised that he had sat there and read the whole thing. Relationships, real ones, were based on trust…and there couldn't be trust when there were secrets….

But that was a talk for later.

"He can hear pudding. Like, if you open a cup of pudding in another room he'll be able to hear it and then he'll be all 'you gotta pay the pudding tax' and then he'll take it from you and-" Sho was going on and on and on about him. Nope. A good wingman stopped his best friend from…all of that. Sho was a gret kid and he could feel however he wanted to feel and all of that other stuff but, maybe, in the interest of the longevity of his relationship he maybe should not have been singing soeone else's priseslike that.

Especially not another guy's.

Shimazaki knew how the world was. Shos' girlfriend loved him, he could tell, and he wanted her to continue to love him…and she might not have been alright with the whole 'bi and in love with his best friend thing' and really Sho did not need that kind of rejection in his life. Also if he had no girlfriend then he could just fall deeper into…whatever this was….with Shimazaki. Yeah…Sho was eleven now and he was getting taller and he smelled terrible if he went one day without a bath….so that terrible time in life was coming and any feelings that he had for Shimazaki would…well it would be like if he took his feelings to an all you can snort coke buffet….

So maybe having a girlfriend would be best for those years between the age of about twelve to….life.

"How far did that one go?" asked Shimazaki as he purposely threw an empty can at Sho. It hit him on the head, hopefully it knocked some sense into him. His aura shrieked there…and he really hoped that it didn't go into that spectrum where normal people could see it…otherwise Shimazaki had a lot more sense to knock into him than that.

"It went pretty bloody far." Said Sho's girlfriend with a laugh.

"How bloody far?" asked Shimazaki trying his best to imitate her accent. He had to distract her from questioning just why her boyfriend had been waxing poetic about his thirty one year old best friend.

"Across the whole bloody river." Said Sho's girlfriend

"Well in that case then, bloody hell." Said Shimazaki

"You hit me in the fucking head…and you know that you hit me in the fucking head." Said Sho

"You did hit him in the fecking head." Said Sho's little girlfriend.

"Well 'feck' me then." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah, fuck you." Said Sho. He said it in Japanese that time. He was slipping. He was pissed off enough to slip. He wasn't getting into Japanese to spare his girlfriend the horror of his atrocious language.

"What's 'shin-in' mean?" asked Emmy

"It essentially means fuck you….or rather 'feck you' to you limeys." Said Shimazaki

"Hey! I'm not a limey, I'm a mick. If you're going to insult me then at least do it right." Said Sho's girlfriend. She said it with that little giggle that girls her age sometimes did when they were interested. That little 'oh you're so funny' giggle that he was NOT going to do anything with. She was Sho's girlfriend, she was younger even than Mob, and he doubted that when she did grow up she'd end up nearly as hot as he figured Mob would end up being. Nope, not interested at all.

Now if only he could tell Sho that.

"Shimazaki, shut the fuck up." Said Sho. Well someone was full of barely contained jealous rage. That was…well he hoped to God that he was about to be accused of trying to mess around with his girlfriend. He hoped that Sho had seen fit to take some of his never ending jealousy supply and share it with his girlfriend….but of course Shimazaki knew that he wasn't such a lucky man.

"Sho! Be nice…you can't say that to your mate…also he's blind. You've got to say feck. It's more polite." Said Sho's little girlfriend. She whispered that last part. Shimazaki had always wondered about that. People whispered when they talked about him and often spoke really slowly and clearly to him like he couldn't hear or whatever. Sighted people were weird as fuck…and this was coming from him.

"I…I'm sorry. I won't curse if it bothers you. Do you want to throw more stuff in the river now? Or do you want to go and do something else?" asked Sho. Well then. His entire…self…had changed there. Shimazaki had known Sho since he had been eight and he had never known him to just turn off the explosive rage and paranoid jealousy like that. Maybe he was finally growing up. Sun rise…sun set…is this the little boy I carried….

Great. Now he wanted to listen to Fiddler.

"I want to spend more time with you…but I have to go home now. My mum's going to send my sister out looking for me if I'm not back before supper…and I'm not allowed to have a boyfriend or be this close to the river so…see you tomorrow? I mean you'll still be here…right? I mean…you're not moving again…right?" asked Sho's girlfriend. Her voice was brimming with hope…and if he'd ben Shibata he would have been a sobbing mess. So…much…cuteness. God, he couldn't wait until Toshi came around and they had some little people around who could do cute stuff…well 'if' Toshi ever came around…but that was alright. He could just enjoy the little person he had now.

While he was still a little person that is.

"We're moving but not until after the holidays. Dad hates moving around Christmas time because of the end of the last quarter work or something. I'll see you tomorrow and we can throw more stuff in the river and stuff….or whatever you want." Said Sho. He was perfectly calm…and his girlfriend wasn't at all. She was smiling at him and leaning in close….and nothing from Sho. Shimazaki decided to be a good wingman and turn his back to this. Let the little people have a moment of privacy. He pulled out his phone and pretended to mess around on it….and it took him a minute to remember to go screen side up….

A minute which Sho's girlfriend used.

That was adorable as hell. She kissed him and he…well he was acting like he wanted to run away…but maybe that was just because he was still such a little kid…or maybe he didn't have feelings at all for his girlfriend and he was just using her to fulfill someone else's idea of what a little boy should have been and now his entire life would be a lie until he got caught with another guy in an apartment he kept in the bad part of the city for the express purposes of hooking up when he was supposed to be away on business and then his wife left him and blamed his lover and then hatched a plan and-

-and maybe Sho would know better than to make the same mistakes as many a closeted businessman during golden week had made before him….or something.

"We can do whatever you want…and I'll see you tomorrow….um….bye!" said Sho's girlfriend before he ran away. Shimazaki could hear the jingle of her boot buckets as she ran away. He could barely hear her over the shrieking of Sho's aura. There. That was the angry little rage child that Shimazaki knew and parentally loved.

"What the hell was that!?" asked Sho as he pushed Shimazaki with both hands. Shimazaki let himself get pushed back just to make him feel better about himself.

"The fact that you just pushed me?" asked Shimazaki with a laugh. He had no clue what Sho was on about.

"No, before that!" said Sho. Oh, well now he knew…and he wasn't going to get into whatever it was that Sho thought.

"Oh. Well that, my young friend, was called a kiss. That's what happens when a girl likes you. She kisses you and then-" said Shimazaki. That got him another kiss. This time he didn't let himself get shoved. No need to give Sho an inflated sense of self. Nope. The world did not need another Suzuki on it's hands.

"You know what I meant! Why were you talking to Emmy like that?!" asked Sho. Shimazaki shook his head. Well there was that jealousy again…but it was going the wrong way!

"I was just being friendly, alright? I'm not going to mess around with your girlfriend. I would never do that to you. Friends don't do that to each other. Friends. Good friends like we are. Best friends…and also she's your age and contrary to what certain pieces of shit think I don't go that young. Never anyone younger than a teenager." Said Shimazaki. He flicked Sho over the head in an attempt to knock some sense into him. Maybe the time was coming to have the 'rip his heart out and show it to him talk' like Toshi had been saying for all of these years…but then Sho would have been sad and Shimazaki couldn't stand sad people….

So maybe just…keep letting it run it's course…yeah…that was a good plan.

"Yeah…fine….I know you wouldn't do shit like that to me and I know that Emmy isn't like that and…whatever! Let's just…let's go home…and…um…do stuff like…um…do you want me to hold your eye cleaner for you again? I mean you haven't had me do that in a while and you said that if you skipped too many days then you got infections…and Fukuda could fix them but you don't like him anymore…"said Sho. Shimazaki shook his head. He knew exactly why Sho wanted to help him clean out his eyes and it had nothing to do with the bottomless well of concern that was deep in his heart.

"Nah, Serizawa helped me with that earlier. I have never seen, well I've never seen anything, but man was he freaked the fuck out. I wish you'd been there. He-" said Shimazaki

"I would have been there if you'd let me! I mean if I was asleep or something then…then you should have woken me up! You…you just….wake me up next time!" shouted Sho

"You were out with…you know what? How about you help me out again today? How's that sound?" asked Shimazaki. Sho may have been a year older but he was the same old kid that he had always been. The same old jealous little…it didn't matter. He'd grow out of it…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that Sho was starting to get sad and he couldn't stand people who were sad…especially when those people were Sho. It didn't suit him. Shimazaki would have to fix this.

"…sounds good…but you don't need his help…because you have me." Said Sho. Shimazaki sighed. This wasn't getting any better….but it wasn't getting any worse…so there. That was…something.

"Right. I have you…and you got me…so let's get to work." Said Shimazaki. This kid…he loved this kid, he really did, but sometimes he could be a little…much. But that was what it was to have a kid. Sometimes they were a little too much. Sometimes they drove you crazy. Sometimes they made you question the very nature of existence. That was…well…how it went.

He loved this kid.

He loved this kid like his own kid and this was how it went when you had a kid. Not that Sho was his or anything but…well he loved him. He loved him enough to put up with all of this. The jealousy and unrequited love and…ok, not the stuff that he would have to put up with from his own kid…hopefully not. That would have been pretty fucking weird…so maybe he wasn't anything close to a parent to Sho…

But that was ok. He was a pretty damn good wingman.


	455. Gingerbread Friends

The gingerbread friends were not for eating.

Friends were not food….and Mob did not understand why certain people could not understand that. Not Hatori, though, he was very good about not trying to eat his friends and he was an actual cannibal. Well he had never eaten anyone but he did want to eat people even if he never acted on it so…well Mob was never going to make her friends feel bad about something that they could not help. Hatori couldn't help wanting to eat people but he never did it…Shimazaki on the other hand…

Well he should have known not to eat the gingerbread friends.

"Shimazaki, come on. You know that we can't eat these until after Christmas." Said Mob as she reached over with her powers and pulled an undecorated gingerbread friend out of Shimazaki's hands. Minegishi had told her, before, that Shimazaki didn't get enough food when he was little and that was why he was such a scavenger, their words, as an adult. Mob was very sorry that there were some days when his mom wasn't allowed to feed him…but they had a whole kitchen full of food for him now so he didn't have to eat the gingerbread friends that Shibata had spent hours and hours perfecting.

The gingerbread friends were very important.

This was Christmas and at Christmas time you were supposed to do Christmas things. Usually they just decorated a tree and drank egg nog and watched Christmas movies, and also Totoro because Minegishi liked it, but…well it was nice to do new things. Also Mob had seen about this on the internet and it had looked like fun. Also a good opportunity to take pictures and post them, too, which was important. Minori had said so. She knew about this kind of stuff…well that kind of stuff. She didn't really have any friends to make gingerbread friends with…but that was ok. Mob could make a cookie for her, too.

That is if Shimazaki didn't end up eating them all.

"But they'll be stale by then." Said Shimazaki as he crossed his arms. Really. There was food and food was meant to be eaten…and really it was cruel torture him with the smells of fresh backed gingerbread and then expect him to not eat anything.

"So? Ryou, I've seen you petrified fries from your pockets. Fries from God only knows when." Said Minegishi as they spread some black frosting on a cookie for Ryou. Thiers was already done. Not the greatest work of art but, hey, they had dragged themselves out of bed for this so they got an A or whatever the highest grade was in the country for their effort.

"Oh God, I remember that." Said Hatori with a Suzuki style full body shudder. Shimazaki…well Minegishi had been right to call him a scavenger. He would literally eat everything…so maybe him eating all of the gingerbread men was a step up from the pocket fries…but not really since this was really important to Mob.

It was nice to see her happy again.

The thing that had happened had finally passed. She was over him, or at least she didn't run away when they were in the same room together, and she could ever look his way now. That was good. Mob had enough going on in her life without an added helping of never ending embarrassment. Now things could get back to normal around here…well as normal as they could be with all of them living together in one house.

So something in the same hemisphere as normal.

"Hey, there's nothing weird about what I did. There was food, I ate it. You're supposed to eat food when you find it. Serizawa, back me up here." Said Shimazaki

"I…um….I…" said Serizawa. He knew that he should have been a good friend and agreed…but that had been really gross, what Shimazaki had done, and kind of unsafe probably…and he knew that it would have been wrong to say that but…he couldn't just lie either.

"Ryou, stop tormenting him. That's what Hatori's for." Said Minegishi. They tapped his aura with theirs so he knew that they were serious. Serizawa was always about ten seconds away from a massive panic attack and, really, Minegishi did not want to spend Christmas recovering from whatever grievous wounds they ended up getting in the ensuring explosion.

"Shimazaki can torment whoever he wants to torment…and maybe he's just bored of tormenting Hatori….or something." Said Sho. Minegishi was such a jerk sometimes. How could they just…sit there and tell Shimazaki what to do? What made them think that they had the right? Sho would never in a million years have told Shimazaki what to do….or Emmy, his actual girlfriend…and she never told him what to do…so he knew how relationships worked!

"Sho, no. Hatori is a good friend and tormenting him is not boring and…wait…that came out wrong. Give me a second." Said Mob

"Shimazaki can torment whoever he wants to torment…and besides, that's what he's for. Like Minegishi said." Said Sho. He hated agreeing with them and he wished that he could take it back. The words tasted like ashes in his mouth…like that time he ate a clove just to see what it would have been like.

"Exactly. See? Even Mob's little brother agrees with me." Said Minegishi. They didn't actually advocate for the tormenting of Hatori, it was getting old, but what they were advocating for was Hatori finally growing backbone. If he told Ryou off then he'd leave him alone and this headache could finally end.

"Hey!" said Hatori. He knew that they weren't kidding. He knew that, because of what he had said to him, Minegishi would be pissed at him until the day that they died. They had that right…but Shimazaki really should have laid off him! He didn't even like Minegishi like that anymore…well he still thought that they had it going on…but he wasn't going to do anything about it! Shimazaki just couldn't get that through his head but…whatever. He had other people he could talk to and hang out with…

He wondered what Suzuki was up to right now.

Probably sitting at his computer working or something. Something all alone and lonely. He was a lonely guy even though he never admitted it. All of his kids were here and his wife was gone and he was in some weird fight or whatever with his best friend. Hatori pulled out his phone and invited him over. He knew that nobody liked Suzuki but….well nobody had gotten to know him either. Taken the time to sit with him and get past how much of an asshole he could be most of the time. He really could be a nice guy…sometimes….you just had to get to know him….

A quick response. A 'no' followed by a 'no thank you' and then nothing. Well there was always next time.

"…I would never agree with you…you dick hole…" muttered Sho. He got kicked by Shimazaki for his troubles but not that hard. He knew that he had deserved it. He had said something mean to Minegishi…but they had been mean first! It was like they got up every single morning and said to themselves 'today I feel like being an asshole' and then they just…were! Not even Christmas could make them less of an asshole!

What did Shimazaki see in them anyway?

"I am not tormenting him. Serizawa, am I tormenting you?" asked Shimazaki pointedly ignoring the angry muttering that Sho was doing. He knew that he should have handled it but…well it was Christmas. No sense in getting into heavy shit like that over Christmas. The gift gods wouldn't like that at all…the gift god being Mob. Yeah, there was no way he was getting his yearly economy sized box of assorted pudding cups if she heard him pissing off her little brother.

"You don't have to answer-" said Hatori

"You weren't! You really weren't!" said Serizawa. Shimazaki was his friend and friends did not do that to one another…well he could be sort of mean to Hatori…so did that mean that friends could be mean to each other sometimes? That it was alright? Or was it just alright for Shimazaki? This whole thing was so confusing. He looked down at his cookie. Cookies were simple. They were just…thee flat things that they were painting with frosting. His was almost done. It wasn't so hard…well his didn't look as good as Miss Suzuki's….but that made sense. She was Miss Suzuki. She was good at everything she put her mind to. President Suzuki had said so…not that Serizawa needed to be told how amazing his best friend was.

"See? I would never torment him…well I'm not now I mean. It would be easy, really fucking easy, but it would be so easy it would be pointless." Said Shimazaki

"I…oh. Alright." Said Serizawa. He…had no idea how to feel about that. On the one hand he didn't want to be tormented but on the other hand…well he also, for reasons he didn't understand, didn't want to be told that he wasn't worth tormenting either…and stuff. He didn't understand…so he would just…stick to decorating cookies.

"He doesn't mean it, Serizawa, that's just the way he is. Sometimes he's mean for no reason, sometimes he's nice, and sometimes he eats gross things that he finds in his pockets…and also candles….but that's ok. You're ok." Said Mob as she patted Serizawa on the hand. She'd have to talk to Shimazaki again later about being mean to people when he didn't have to be…or at all. She knew that he couldn't help the way he was, to a degree, but she also knew that he had to maybe try a little bit harder. It was bad enough that he treated Hatori the way he did. Hatori was fragile but like those porcelain dolls that dad kept on getting her even though she didn't really like them. Serizawa was fragile like rice paper…or tissue paper…or something else that was fragile and sensitive and got hurt easily.

"Hey! You know for a fact that I don't eat the candles….I just like the way they feel in my mouth." Said Shimazaki

"But….why?" asked Serizawa. He looked past the table over at the candle wreath…thing. Someone had been chewing on them and…well now he knew who…but he had no idea why…but maybe it just wasn't for him to understand. Friends…they could be weird people sometimes.

"Shimazaki can so whatever he wants to!" said Sho. What was everyone ganging up on his best friend for?! Didn't they have other things to do!? Like…like cookie stuff! They had to get these cookies ready by Christmas because….because of Christmas reasons!

"Shimazaki is complicated. He'll tell you later." Said Mob quietly. She would have to talk to Sho again about shouting when Serizawa was near. He hated loud and sudden noises…and about a million other things…but that was alright. He was her friend and she took good care of her friends. She passed him more orange frosting. Not exactly a Christmas color but he needed it to color in the bathrobe on his gingerbread friend cookie.

"Exactly. I'm a very complicated man and I do complicated things that even I don't fully understand sometimes." Said Shimazaki

"Are you the one that's been eating the candles in the advent wreath?" asked Minegishi

"Yeah, Toshi, who the fuck else would it be?" asked Shimazaki with a laugh. He felt Toshi rolling their eyes at him before getting back to making their cookie. He reached over and tried to swipe some of the frosting off…and got his hand slapped for his troubles.

"Don't eat my cookie…and don't you dare make a double entendre out of that." Said Minegishi as Shimazaki went after their frosting. Nope. Not happening. They had worked hard to get this level of detail onto their cookie and he was not going to ruin it just because he had to be a scavenger…and also he was not going to speak without thinking and give them something new that they had to explain to Mob and probably her little brother too.

"Shimazaki can eat whatever he wants…and why are you hogging all the black frosting?! Shimazaki needs that to make his cookie!" said Sho as he used his powers to drag the bowl of black frosting away from Minegishi. He just barely got it to his side before a vine grew out and took it back…jerk!

They were such an asshole! And a jerk! And a dick hole! And a girl's dick! And a-

"Sho! Be nice! Please? It's Christmas." Said Mob. She knew that look that Sho was giving Minegishi…and she knew what it meant when his aura got like that. He was thinking mean thoughts again. She knew that she didn't get to tell people what thoughts they were and were not allowed to have but…well…she didn't like it when he was mean to Minegishi like that.

They were her best friend after all.

"I am being nice….they're the ones being a jerk." Said Sho as he looked away from big sis. He knew that she hated it when he was mean to Minegishi…they were her friend or whatever…but still! They had been a jerk to Shimazaki and nobody got to be a jerk to Shimazaki! Not even Sho himself! Sho didn't know why he put up with Minegishi like that. They were mean and they weren't that pretty, or pretty at all, and they didn't even know how to color in a cookie right! If big sis hadn't been there Sho would have…well he would have done something….

Nothing bad but…something….

"Um…here! You can have my share. I mean I don't need black because my hair is brown so….here you go." Said Serizawa as he passed his share of the black frosting to Sho. He seemed very upset...Serizawa didn't know why he was so upset…but he hated it when his friends were upset. Upset people were just so…upsetting.

"Thanks but maybe you should pass that to Toshi. I feel like I'm not the best at this." said Shimazaki as he held up his cookie. Toshi had told him what colors were in which bowls and he had done his best to…well paint himself onto a cookie. It was mostly from the black frosting since that was the color that most of his clothes were. The middle was red because, apparently, that was the color of his favorite shirt. This was…alright…but eating them would have been better. That would have at least been something that he could do right.

There was so much shit in this world that he couldn't do right.

Not that he still had those deep childhood feelings of being useless and a waste of life and someone who just…did everything wrong and should have been drowned in a bucket at birth. He never had those thoughts anymore. He didn't let himself. He had some limitations but those weren't anything big. He was fine. He was better than fine. He was Shimazaki Ryou!

And he wanted to eat his fucking cookie!

"You're doing fine, Ryou." Said Minegishi. Truth be told he had kind of made a mess….but who cared? It wasn't like they were calling themselves professional cookie decorators or anything like that.

"You're doing great, Shimazaki." Said Mob. Maybe she should have thought this one through better. She had just thought that it would be fun for her and if it was fun for her then it would have been fun for everyone…but that was not how it worked. Maybe she should have thought it through. Maybe she was a terrible friend. Maybe she was the worst friend in the whole world and…and maybe she could make it up to him. She would make it up to him. She didn't know how she would make it up to him but she would. There.

Now she wasn't such a terrible…not very good…friend.

"You don't have to lie to me, I know it looks like crap. It looks so much like crap that I had better just eat it now and-" said Shimazaki

"It doesn't look like crap!" said Sho. He may have shouted that but…well it was worth the yelling!

"Don't eat the cookies!" said Mob. She may have shouted that and…well they weren't supposed to eat the cookies yet and…well she could make it up to everyone later. At least she hadn't lost control of her powers…though the house was shaking. The house was shaking and for a moment she thought that she had lost control and now everything was falling apart and…no. She had just been crazy there for a minute. That had just been Shibata….

With a tray of hot gingerbread friends.

"What's everyone shouting about in here?" asked Shibata as he made some space on the counter for the hot gingerbread men, friends, they were friends because that was more gender nonspecific and also….well they didn't have anything and…and he was really overthinking this whole thing, wasn't he?

"Shimazaki wants to eat the cookies now." Said Mob. She hoped that this was like when Shibata made a special cake specifically for Shimazaki to ruin. That way everyone could be happy and everyone could have a nice time….and stuff.

"And he thinks that his cookie looks like crap even though it doesn't." said Sho. He hated it when Shimazaki got like that. Why couldn't he see that he was the most awesome person at this table? In the whole world? He was the coolest, strongest, bravest, funnest, person that Sho had ever met in his entire eleven years of life. Shimazaki was awesome, the most awesome, and the most perfect person that Sho had ever met.

"What the…here. I made a whole plate of cookies specifically for Shimazaki to ruin so go crazy…and yours doesn't look that bad anyway. I mean it's nothing like Sho's but, well, he's Sho." said Shibata. He picked up Sho's cookie, by the plate of course so he didn't break it, and showed everyone. He was such a good little artist! Shibata wanted nothing more than to pick him up and toss him in the air…but the ceiling was too low here and also Sho...well he was a big kid now…

Shibata needed a tissue.

"Mine's not that good." Said Sho as Shibata put his cookie down. Now everyone was looking at him and, yeah, his cookie was the best at the table…but there was no need to make Shimazaki feel bad.

"It's better than mine." Said Hatori. He held up his cookie. It was pretty much just frosting and very little cookie left…and maybe he had been picking at his a little bit…but it was good gingerbread! He hadn't had homemade gingerbread since mom….but that was a while ago and…he wondered if Suzuki liked gingerbread. It wasn't that sweet. He might have liked to…well it couldn't hurt to ask him again…and now he waited and…refer to previous message.

Alright then.

"Mine too." Said Mob. She held up her cookie. She had gotten her hair totally wrong. Braids were hard to draw….maybe she should have had Sho help her. He was good at this kind of stuff.

"I'm not ashamed to admit it but, yea, you did a better job on your cookie than I did." Said Minegishi. They held up their cookie…which was pretty much just nothing but lavender and a frown…but maybe that was just a deep expression of their inner self.

"I can't see shit but I have all the confidence in the world in your cookie decorating abilities." Said Shimazaki. He patted Sho on the back…and now he could feel his heartbeat and…damn, just when he thought that they had been making some kind of progress on the whole awkward and unrequited crush front.

"Aw you guys….thanks." said Sho. He smiled and looked down at the table. Shimazaki had been TOUCHING him. Right on his back and…well Shimazaki touched him a lot….but now it was like…he felt all warm and happy and…and he just…stupid goldfish. Nothing was going to make it better…even the cookie that big sis sent over to him with her powers. He could maybe eat enough to drown the goldfish…but that wouldn't work.

"Here, you can decorate this one too." Said Mob as she passed him a cookie. He had to make two now because he had a girlfriend…and she'd be his wife…and now she was getting a sister! A new sister and also she was going to be an aunt and she'd have nieces and nephews and that was almost as good as having baby Mukai back! And also…well she didn't have a boyfriend so she'd never have a husband or babies of her own…so she could enjoy the ones Sho had! He was planning on having ten or twenty so he'd need plenty of help!

Also Emmy would be there too but…well ten to twenty babies was kind of a lot so she would need a lot of help.

"No, I'm going to eat that one but thanks." Said Sho. He didn't want to do another one because it would be better than Shimazaki's and…well friends didn't make their friends like crap.

"No, I mean you can make an Emmy cookie since she's your girlfriend…and she's going to be your wife and…it's just so wonderful! I'm so happy for you! You found love and now you're going to get married and I get to be a sister and an aunt and-" said Mob. Ok, now she knew that she was losing control. She knew that she was making the table float and her hair and…well she couldn't help it! This was the best thing that had ever happened to them! Sho had found the love of his life and…well he was going to propose to her with a tooth…and not even one of his….but still! He was in love and that was almost as good as her being in love! This was the best thing that had ever happened and-

And if Emmy ever did anything to hurt Sho Mob would do…something.

"You're already a sister." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes. Well at least someone was happy about the eleven year old boy making major life decisions that he was in no way, shape, or form ready to make.

"And…aren't they…ten?" asked Serizawa. He…was glad that Miss Suzuki's little brother was happy but…well he didn't think that kids could get married…but what did he know? He wasn't a brother or a father and he was in no way ever getting married…girls were kind of scary…so he was in no position to tell people how to live their lives.

"Sho is eleven and Emmy is-" said Mob

"They grow up so fast! Oh God…I've been trying not to cry but…I just can't stop myself!" said Shibata. He pulled his apron up over his eyes and tried his best to keep his tears in his eyes where they belonged. He just….this was so beautiful! There was just so much…he was so happy! Sho had found someone and…and he just…this was so wonderful!

"Stop crying, it's not so sad…and you're going to make the gingerbread soggy." Said Minegishi

"I don't think that they can get married for a few more years anyway. I mean they're just a couple of kids like Serizawa said." Said Hatori

"Guys, can we just stop talking about this?" asked Sho with a groan. People talking about this…why did people have to talk about this?! Why did they just have to talk about…all of it?! He just…he had a girlfriend and he had a ring in his pocket and he was going to marry her and…and wasn't there anything else in the world to talk about?!

And sing about?!

"Is this the little boy I carried? When did he grow to be so tall? Wasn't it yesterday he was small?" sang Shimazaki. This was so adorable…not that he was going to start sobbing like Shibata. He hated crying, it felt weird, and also maybe it had something to do with his terrible childhood…or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that Sho had been eight when they'd met and now he was eleven and he had a girlfriend and he was going to get child married…and also if he got child married then he might get over this never ending crush already.

"That was pretty good, which Beatle sung that? Lennon…wait…no. He didn't like his son." Said Mob as she went through all of her Beatles knowledge…which was a lot now that she thought about it….

"No, Lennon liked his son he was just a shitty husband and father thanks to the heroin…and no, that was from Fiddler." Said Shimazaki filled with a mixture of pride and of shame in Mob. She was…she had tried…and really that was all that he could ask of her.

"Do you want to watch Fiddler?" asked Minegishi

"It's not a Christmas movie…actually it's the opposite of a Christmas movie since they're Jewish but…kind of. Can we? Please Toshi?" asked Shimazaki. Toshi loved musicals. Toshi would never admit it but they liked musicals…and he liked them….

And also he had pretty much the whole Fiddler soundtrack playing in his head right now.

"Wait, I just made more cookies and-" said Shibata

"If Shimazaki wants to watch a Jewish not Christmas movie then we're watching a Jewish not Christmas movie! Alright?!" asked Sho

"Um…maybe we can do that for a minute…and also Sho is cut off from sugar for the rest of the day. No more candy or cookies or soda…and diet soda too. That…kind of upsets him too." Said Mob. Sho had eaten way too much sugar today. It was the only explanation. Well that and the fact that he was in love with Shimazaki….and jealous of Minegishi…and just about everyone else too…but that made no sense…or maybe it did. She didn't know, love was complicated, and it was easier to blame the sugar.

"Big sis….I'm not a baby." Said Sho. She couldn't tell him how much sugar he was allowed to have…well she could…but he hadn't had too much sugar at all today. His mouth wasn't all dry, he could see normally, and his stomach didn't hurt at all. He knew how to take care of himself and he wanted to tell her as much but….well he wasn't going to be a jerk to her. He wasn't that kind of person anymore.

"I know…but you're getting kind of excited so…movie break?" said Mob. She didn't know what was going on with him, well he'd had six cokes today and a sprite so there was that, but also…she didn't get how he could be so in love with a girl that he wanted to marry her but also so in love with Shimazaki that he was ready to fight everyone at the table just because…she didn't even really know why.

So maybe the best thing to do would be to take a movie break.

"It wouldn't hurt to wait for these to get cold. You know, so the frosting doesn't run." Said Hatori. He knew that Shibata had worked hard on these, well he worked hard on everything he did, but he also knew how Sho could get when he got worked up…it wasn't good. For anyone.

"Alright…I guess…oh! I can make popcorn." Said Shibata. Well Hatori did have a point…and it wasn't like they were just going to abandon all of these cookies. Actually the bigger danger was Shimazaki popping back in here and eating all of them.

"Alright! Movie break! Come on Toshi….Toshi? Who are you texting?" asked Shimazaki. He could tell that Toshi was holding their phone and he could hear the reverb…and he could watch their fingers…and they were smiling a little…but that made no sense. Everyone they knew well enough to text was at this table…not that he cared if Toshi was texting someone and smiling at them. He didn't own Toshi or their smiles…and just because Toshi was smiling at someone else that didn't mean that he'd get any less smiles and…

And weren't they going to take a movie break?!

"Huh? Oh, nobody. Some guy I met…nothing. Come on, let's watch Fiddler…and Hatori, you'd better find a version with narration because I am not playing narrator today." Said Minegishi as they put their phone back into their pocket. Ryou…he loved them and they loved him…and they has already defined this damned relationship and…well they could do whatever they wanted and he would just have to deal with his own jealousy on his own like a functional adult….

They were doomed.

"I'll do it! I mean if Hatori can't find a version with narration then I'll do it." Said Sho. He didn't care if it was hard and annoying work. He'd do anything for Shimazaki…which was more than Minegishi could do. Heh. And they called themselves his theyfriend. Sho would have been a better theyfriend, boyfriend, then Minegishi ever could have been…not that it ever could happen….and not that he wanted it to! Well he did but…but he had everything all lined up for his life and….and dad would have messed Shimazaki up anyway and….

And all Sho wanted to do was sit next to Shimazaki and tell him what was happening in the movie! And also maybe rest his head on his chest…but that was it!

"I'm sure that Hatori will be able to find a version with narration, alright? Now come on, we can sit together on the floor and share popcorn when it's done." Said Mob. She loved her brother, she really did, but last movie night when he'd been the narrator he'd practically sat on top of Shimazaki and he wouldn't get off no matter how much Shimazaki tried to scoot away….and also he had tried to kick Minegishi too and…

And it hadn't been a good time for anyone.

She had been so busy telling Sho to come and sit with her, and to be nice, and to stop cursing that she had no idea what the movie had even been about…and now she would never know how why only the balloon had been red…and she didn't want to have to go through that again but…maybe a break would have been the best thing for all of them. Making gingerbread friends was fun and all but so was watching movies and stuff.

It really didn't matter what they did so long as they did it as friends.


	456. Necklaces, Petrified Eyeballs, and Love

Sho should not have been relieved.

Because, really, he was supposed to be a good boyfriend and this was not way that a good boyfriend was supposed to feel. He knew how he should have felt in this situation. He knew that he should have been mad enough to break stuff or sad enough to cry or just…anything other than relieved. This was a sad thing, he was supposed to be sad, or eve mad, but no matter how deeply he dug down into himself, down into the guts of his feels, he couldn't feel anything other than a hell of a lot of relief.

He sucked.

"Did you understand what?" asked Emmy

"Yeah, I did. I speak English you know." Said Sho. That came out meaner than he had meant it to .He hadn't meant for it to come out meanly at all. He was just…mad. Not at her, she was his girlfriend and you couldn't ever be mean to your girlfriend, and not at the situation. No…he was mad at himself. He was mad at himself for how he felt and…well now he had more feelings but not the ones that he was supposed to have right now in this situation.

"Sorry, I just know that you mostly speak Japanese. I just meant….well I really am sorry to go but my mum said that I have to see dad after we see gran and I haven't seen him in a while…and I am sorry. I really am." Said Emmy

"It's ok. You have to do what you have to do. I move around a lot too…I get it." Said Sho. He shouldn't have felt the way that he felt. He shouldn't have been happy that she was going off to see her dad, because she was his girlfriend and also because dads sucked, but he was. He should have said something like he'd move to where she was going or that he'd cry and cry and cry all night every night that she was gone or that he'd kick down a wall or a house or something because he was so mad that she was gone but…

He was just…happy that he wouldn't have to see her for a while.

"I'll be back…and I hope that you're here when I come back." Said Emmy. She was looking up at him and she was smiling and…and he just…she seemed sad. She was smiling even though she was sad….and of course she was sad. She was in love with him! She was in love with him and he wasn't in love with her and…and he knew that the way that he felt didn't matter just so long as she was happy but…well…he was lying to her. He knew that you had to make choices like this sometimes, that sometimes the choices you made meant that you had to lie, and he knew that it was ok to lie to someone if it was a pragmatic choice…

He also knew that pragmatic choices sucked.

"I hope so too but I can't make any promises." Said Sho. He should have been making promises. He should have been promising her that he would be there when she came back even if he had to say behind once everyone else left. He should have said that but he didn't. He didn't want to be alone without Shima-without his friends and his family and stuff. He didn't even want…well there were a lot of things that he didn't even want…and he was such a jerk…even when he wasn't being one he was a jerk.

"I know that you can't….and I'm sorry." said Emmy. She pulled her hat down when she said that. She was wearing a hat and not a helmet because it was cold out. It was cold enough to see their breath and maybe she should have gone inside someplace before she got sick…and now he was being even more of a jerk than he had been before. He just…he had to be better than he was being now. He had to be better for her. He wasn't dad.

He had to be better than that.

"Sorry? What are you sorry about?" asked Sho as he pulled her hat up over her eyes. She looked up at him and she smiled again. She smiled at him a lot…and he knew why she did that. She did that because she liked him and…it was like there was a goldfish or something in his stomach but not a love goldfish. This was one of those 'Sho, you're a dick hole' goldfish…and this one was new. He wished that the love goldfish would come out right now. He knew that he shouldn't have not felt it and he just…

He wished that he could have been born normal.

But he wasn't normal. He wasn't normal and he just…well there were a lot of people in the world like that…like the way that he was. He wasn't the only person in the world like himself and he just…he was different enough as it was! He had red hair and blue eyes and enough freckles to play connect the dots with and his powers had taken too long to come in and…and now he had to be like this!? Why did he have to be so…so…so different!? He just…he had to calm down. He had to calm down and stop thinking about himself. His girlfriend was here and, yeah, he wasn't in love with her or anything like that but he still cared about her as a person and stuff and just…he had to think about her.

He brushed the hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear like he'd seen Shimazaki do for Minegishi sometimes.

"Thanks…and I'm sorry about…because…because of how….of how I feel. I don't know. I'm daft. I'm just…it makes me cross how you always have to leave…that's all. I mean I know that this time I'm the one leaving you and if anyone is going to be cross then it's you-" said Emmy

"You mean mad, right? Cross means mad?" asked Sho

"It's means angry." Said Emmy

"So mad then?" asked Sho

"No, mad means mental." Said Emmy

"I thought that mental meant dumb." Said Sho

"No, mental means daft." Said Emmy

"And daft is what you call people who piss you off." Said Sho

"I've never been pissed, I'm ten…wait. No, you meant cross again." said Emmy

"….my head hurts." Said Sho

"Mine too…" said Emmy. She said that and then she laughed. Sho laughed too even though he wasn't all the way sure what it was that they were even laughing at. This didn't seem like something that was funny. She was upset that she was going…and he was relieved. Happy even. If she was gone then he wouldn't have to do the boyfriend thing for a while…and if he didn't have to do the boyfriend thing for a while then he wouldn't have to give her this ring…and also he could just forget that he even had a girlfriend for a while.

Which meant that he sucked as a human being.

He really did. He was such a dick to her…well he had never acted like a dick to her but…he still got the feeling that he was being a total dick to her. Because he didn't like her the way that she liked him. She liked him and…and he liked her. As a friend. As this girl who was kind of cool and fun to hang out with and just…he didn't know a lot of people and she was one of the people that he knew and he didn't want her to go away but…he just…

He didn't want to be her boyfriend!

But he was her boyfriend. He was her boyfriend whether he liked it or not. He was her boyfriend because he had to be. He needed a girlfriend and she was the coolest girl that he had ever met in his life so…why not? She was happy. He made her happy. He had to keep on making her happy. He only felt like a complete and total dick hole because he just…didn't feel the same way about her but…

Well she liked him, he made her happy, and that was what mattered.

"I'll try and be here when you come back, ok? But I can't make any promises because my dad is the one in charge of where we go and when we go and shit…because he's the bossiest guy in the world and shit…and just…I'll try and be here and…um….I have a Christmas present for you." Said Sho. He felt his backpack straps with one hand and the rung in his pocket in the other. He could have given her the ring…that would have made her happy but…well…he already had a petrified eyeball for her and…well two presents would have been too much or…

Or something.

"Wait! I've got a present for you too! Just….I mean I'll to see you tomorrow like usual but it's school holidays for me right now and my mum wants me around the house more and the sun goes down really early and…well…here! Happy Christmas!" said Emmy. She reached into the pocket of her arm jacket and pulled out….a necklace? With a yellow thing at the end?

Well that was….a present.

"Thanks for the necklace." Said Sho as he took it from her. He held it and…well that was a gift. From a girl. That was more like a gift for a girl but…well it was cool. The big yellow glob thing was…cool.

"Look at it in the light, see?" said Emmy. The sun was going down and the streetlights were coming on, and that meant that she would have to go home soon, and he should have been more excited about seeing what was up with her present and not about her going home….but he just…

He felt the way he felt!

"That's cool…wait…is that a lizard?! A real one?" asked Sho. There, in the yellow stuff, was a tiny lizard. Hopefully not a dead baby one, because that would have been sad, but maybe it died of natural causes or something or just…hadn't been killed by people. He didn't know how he felt about that. On the one hand he was never going to stop eating meat and animals had to die to make meat but on the other hand it was sad to kill animals for clothes and stuff….but maybe this lizard had died of old age or something. Lizards never lived for very long anyway and….well he knew that he should have felt bad for the lizard but he was mostly just happy to have this necklace thing….

Because it was so fucking cool!

"Emmy, this is so fucking cool!" said Sho. He put it around his neck. This was cool and she was cool and she just-

She kissed him.

Ok. That was…he was less happy now but…well she hadn't chased him and kissed him…and she hadn't even kissed him on the mouth. That would have been too much. She kissed him on the cheek and that was ok and…well she could have kissed him on the mouth if she'd wanted to. She was his girlfriend. She could kiss him whenever she felt like it. That was one of the main points of being in a relationship, the kissing and stuff, and he just…he was good at the boyfriend thing and part of being good at the boyfriend thing was letting his girlfriend kiss him….and stuff.

He hadn't minded…that much.

"I'm glad that you liked it. I was out with my mum and…well she thinks that it was for me but…well I saw it and I thought that the color would go nice with your hair and eyes and…and also I thought that you'd like it since you like animals. They had bugs in amber too but…well I thought that you'd like a reptile better." Said Emmy. She was smiling at him now…and his face felt sticky where she'd kissed him. Her lips were all shiny…oh. She was wearing lip stuff like big sis wore sometimes. That was…ok. She was trying to look pretty and stuff for him and…and also she wanted to kiss him…and they'd kissed before.

He had no reason to feel like this.

They'd kissed before. He had no idea why it would be different now. Maybe because she used to always ask him or wait for him to ask her…or maybe because she'd never worn lip stuff before…and also she hadn't wanted to kiss as much, before, as she wanted to now and…he didn't know. All he knew was that she was smiling at him and playing with her gloved and…and he just…

He had to give her the stupid eyeball thing.

"Here, this is for you!" said Sho. He practically ripped it out of his backpack and shoved it into her arms. Maybe he had been kind of mean there. Maybe he had been kind of a jerk…or whatever. He didn't know. He had barely realized what he had been doing until he had actually done it. She didn't seem to be upset with him or anything. No.

She didn't seem to be much of anything.

She was holding the jar now and she was staring and…and maybe everyone had been right. Every single person that he knew had told him that getting her a jarred eyeball wasn't a good idea…they had said that it was creepy and gross and macabre…and he had no idea what macabre even meant but he got the idea that it wasn't a good thing….but he had told everyone that he knew his own girlfriend and he knew what she would have liked and he knew her and…and maybe he had been wrong. Maybe he had been so wrong that she would….would go. Girls did that. They just left you. He…he wasn't in love with her and he didn't really want to kiss her and…and he didn't want her gone either. Not even because he would have to find himself a new girlfriend….he just…she was the coolest girl that he had ever met and he just…she was his friend!

She was the only friend that he had who was his own age…who wasn't his sister.

The only girl that he had ever hung out with was his sister…and he used to think that every single girl in the world was like her. She liked makeup and dolls and hated gross stuff. Emmy didn't like dolls and she never wore…well now she wore makeup…and she liked gross stuff. Unless she'd changed her mind. Unless she decided that she didn't like gross stuff anymore and now she would change and be like his big sis and…well he loved his big sis….but Emmy had never been like big sis before and….well he would still like Emmy….

But he really felt like he'd fucked up there.

"Sho…." said Emmy. Sho closed his eyes and braced himself. She was going to tell him that the present that he had gotten her was stupid and she didn't like it and she just never wanted to see him again and then he would be out a friend and….and it would hurt and he wouldn't have any choice but to live with it and-

And he could deal with this…whatever this was.

"I just…" said Emmy. Sho nodded. He waited for her to say what it was that she wanted to say. Maybe she was going to try and tell him that she didn't like him anymore in Japanese. She spoke…well she tried to speak…Japanese. She sometimes said things in Japanese, and sometimes the things she said made sense, and sometimes he spoke back to her in Japanese too….but he really wanted to hear it from her in English. He knew English but her English was weird and…well he didn't always understand her and if she was going to tell him that he sucked he would have been happy just…not totally understanding her.

Please let her say it in English.

"This is the most brilliant thing anyone has ever gotten me and I think that I'm in love with you." Said Emmy. She said it really quietly like she was worried someone would hear her even though there wasn't anyone around. He didn't get it. That was all that she had to say? All of that build up for that? That was just….of course she loved him. She was his girlfriend. That was how girlfriends were. They were in love with you and you were…you were supposed to be in love with them…but he wasn't in love with her…

But that didn't matter.

"I love you too, Emmy. I'm glad you like your present." Said Sho. He felt….weird…tell her that. He knew what kind of love she had meant and he knew what kind of love he was supposed to mean and…and telling her that had just been…weird. So weird. He had said it before but…he'd meant it. He'd been really messed up then but he'd said it…to Shimazaki…and Shimazaki had thought that he'd meant it as a friend and…and Emmy didn't think that at all and he just…

He had to do what he had to do…and what he had to do was be a good boyfriend to Emmy.

"I….um….I've never been in…I mean…um…I love you too! I mean…now I'm being daft you know that just…um…can I kiss you?" asked Emmy. Oh. Well that was nice. Now she was asking again. Good. He hated it when girls just came out and kissed him. Why did they do that? Ok, they had done that back when he'd been little but…well he had never liked it. Girls just liked him for some reason. They'd always liked him….and he'd never liked them back…but he just…he wished that he could have liked them. He wished that Emmy, his girlfriend, would make the goldfish in his stomach swim half as fast as it did when he just THOUGHT about Shimazaki.

"Sure." Said Sho. He leaned forward and she just…stayed where she was for some reason. She was standing there and digging her boot into the ground and looking down…and he didn't get it. She had just asked if they could kiss and now he was ready to kiss her but she was just….standing there….

Girls were weird sometimes.

"Um….can you….I mean….I like it when you kiss me! I mean I like it when I kiss you but um…can you…um….when you kiss me can you sort of….I guess hold onto me? Like in films? I mean…I don't know…just…I've thought about it before. Just….you tell me that you love me and then you pull me close and you kiss me and…and I know that it's daft but it's just…sometimes I think about that." Said Emmy. Sho got it. He got what she meant. Like when he would lay away at night and think about Shimazaki pulling him close and telling him that he was the coolest person in the world and then kissing him like he kissed Minegishi. Emmy thought about him like that. When she thought about him she felt the same goldfish feeling in her stomach that he did…and she wanted to do goldfish stuff with him….and he had to because he was her boyfriend.

He could do this.

"Sure." Said Sho. His voice came out really high there for some reason. He'd figure out why later. Right now….right now he had stuff to do. He got closer to her, she put her present down, and then…well he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. He wasn't a big fan of movies with kissing in them, actually they were kind of boring, but he…well he'd seen Shimazaki kiss Minegishi…the thought makes him want to run away and break stuff….but he ignores his feelings as best as he can. He tries to look happy, Emmy's watching him right now and if he looked upset then she'd get upset, and he leaned in and…well Shimazaki sometimes held Minegishi by their waist like this…

Emmy was really red now so he must have been doing something right.

He thinks back to all the times he's seen people kissing in his life….and his brain decides to torment him by making him remember the time he caught mom and dad kissing. He had been really little…he couldn't even remember how little….but mom and dad had been on their bed and dad had touched mom's face like this…and he was not going to give dad credit for this even though it was obviously right since Emmy sighed…and now all he had to do was pull in close and…

And her lips were way too sticky.

Her lips were sticky and they tasted like…well kind of like…maybe he was imagining the citrusy taste. The spot, the sticky spot, on his cheek was kind of itchy and…well maybe that was just him being weird….or maybe he was going to die. That would have made sense. Liars got punished and he'd lied to his girlfriend and now he was going to die and…and he was itchy. This was not in his head. He was itchy.

He pulled away from her.

"That was…the best kiss that I've ever had in my life…" said Emmy. Her eyes were closed and she was still leaning forward and…and now he could smell it. Sort of citrusy and…bubblegum? He wasn't imagining the citrus, that was the point. This was not in his head and now he had to leave before he died and…and he should not have been relieved that he had to leave but…

Well it was ok to be relieved that he wasn't going to die…if he got back to Fukuda fast enough.

"Yeah…me too….but….I have to go now. It's not you! Just…remember how I said that I was allergic to citrus? I think that your lip makeup stuff has citrus in it." Said Sho

"Citrus? But this is tropical bubblegum….oh no! I've killed you! Hang on, there's an accident and emergency not far from here and-" said Emmy

"No, no, I'm going to be fine. I just have to go home…but I'm going to be fine so…um…Happy Christmas." Said Sho. He kissed her again, even though it burned, and then he made his way home. The way home hadn't ever taken this long before, not that he could remember, but…well he would rather have been walking home with his eyes burning and his throat closing up and his whole skin getting those hives things than to have had to have been there with his girlfriend for even a minute longer…

He was glad that she hadn't followed him, too….and he shouldn't have been.

He shouldn't have been glad, relieved, to have…well for any of this to have happened. For him to be dying of an allergic reaction. For him to have had the perfect excuse to get away from her. For any of this. He should have been sad or mad to have been away from her, to have had to leave her like that, and because he might never have gotten the chance to see her again….for a while. He should have been a lot of things but….he was mostly relieved…

He wished that he could have been something else, anything else, even as freaked out as Fukuda was right now.

"Sho! Oh my God…you're going to be fine!" said Fukuda. Sho knew that he was going to be fine. So what if breathing was kind of very hard? And his skin felt like the time he fell into a fire ant hill? And his eyes were all watery like he was crying. Fukuda could fix anything…and he did.

In ten second Sho was fine.

"Thanks." Said Sho as soon as he could talk again. That hadn't been so bad, not like the time he'd ate that grapefruit anyway, and now he was back to normal. He didn't know what Fukuda was still so freaked out about. He knew that he could heal. He at least understood why Emmy had been so freaked out. She had never seen that before, probably, and…well maybe he should have told her that he was allergic to kisses…but then that would have been unfair and stuff to her…since she was in love with him at all….

But he didn't want to think about that.

He didn't want to think about how she just…was in love with him. She loved him. She had said and meant it. She had meant it. She had meant that she was in love with him. She had said that…and she had meant it…and he should have been happy or at least ok with it….he should have been ok with it because….he was just…she thought that he was normal and for her he should have at least pretended to be normal and….

And he had this ring for her anyway so…so yeah!

"You're got to be more careful! Do you have any idea how terrified I was for you?! You know that you're allergic to-Sho? Sho….I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you like that. I'm sorry." said Fukuda. He knelt down so he and Sho were at eye level even though they were in the genkan…well the rug that was there for them to take their shoes off on. Sho didn't know what he was so worried about. Sho had barely even noticed that he'd been yelling at him.

He had enough on his mind as it was.

"Sho? Hey, what's wrong?" asked Fukuda. He brushed Sho's hair from his forehead…big sis would make him take a bath since he had been that sweaty. Great. Something else that Sho would have to worry about.

"Nothing." Said Sho. He didn't even know what he was supposed to say there. Being upset was just…it was stupid. It made no sense. He was supposed to be Emmy's boyfriend and with that came with her being in love with him…and it shouldn't have felt weird. Him saying it to her. Her saying it to him. If he didn't have to say it to her then he would just end up having to say it to some other girl at some point so…so it didn't make any sense. Whatever it was that he felt.

"I really am sorry that I yelled at you." Said Fukuda. He was still at Sho's level and he really was sorry and…and he had nothing to be sorry about. Sho was the one who was supposed to be…well not supposed to be…but he was…he just…he was sorry. He was sorry about…stuff….and he had no idea why he even felt sorry. She wanted him to love him back. She wanted him to say it back.

So then why did he feel like crap because he said it back?

"I know…I didn't even notice just…" said Sho. He felt like crap and…well he should have felt…not good but…normal? He had said it before, and he'd meant it, and he'd wanted…he wanted he wanted to be able to say it and mean it to someone else…not just Shimazaki but…well yes to Shimazaki but…just…

Yes to someone he meant it to.

"Sho, come on. You can talk to me about anything." Said Fukuda. Sho wished that it was true. He wished that there had been some way that he could just…say it. Say everything that he was feeling…but he didn't know all the words for it even. The way that he just…he wished that he could…not take it back but…make it real? But it wasn't real and it couldn't be real because…well because if it was going to be real then he would have been able to just…make it real. He was eleven. He was eleven and he just…he wished…

He wished that he could have just…been different or just…known what to…to say…

"I just….here. My girlfriend got me this." said Sho. He reached under his shirt and pulled out the necklace that Emmy had gotten him. She had gotten him this and…and he did like it and…and he just…this was how it had started…or maybe it had started last year…or maybe it had started the first time, back in preschool, when a girl had chased him and kissed him…or something.

"Well that's…that's nice. Are you upset because the lizard had to die? Because-" said Fukuda

"No, I'm not sad about that. This lizard probably died on it's own, they don't live for very long anyway. I just…my girlfriend said that she loved me. That she's in love with me. That she…she's in love me and I know that she's supposed to be in love with me and….and I should have just given her the stupid ring and…and I just…why can't I be normal!?" asked Sho. That had come out wrong…or maybe it had come out right…or maybe just…he had no idea what it was that he even wanted to say. He just…he wished that he could have been born right. For his entire life he had wished that he could have been born like everyone else. He wished, had wished for his entire life, the he had black hair and brown eyes…and then later on that he had powers…and now that he just…could like his girlfriend like he was supposed to. He just…

Why did he have to be…like this?

"Sho, no, you are normal." Said Fukuda. No. Not this again. Fukuda was always telling him that he was normal…and maybe he was. There were people in the world who looked like him…and he had his powers….and there were plenty of guys who liked other guys like he did….but he just…why did he have to be this way?! Why did he have to be like this? Why did he have to be so different? Fukuda didn't get it. He was normal. He had always been normal. Sho…he had never been normal. Ever.

He had never bene normal for even a single day in his life.

"No I'm not! I just…I know about pragmatic choices and…and how it doesn't matter how I feel if she's happy and how I have to do all of this stuff and…and I just…I wish that I was normal! I wish that I was like everyone else!" said Sho. Fukuda would never get it. Nobody would ever get it. Nobody would ever…he knew that…he knew that there would never be anyone in the world who got it. He just…he wasn't ok with who he was. He wished that he could have been more like Shimazaki. He could do whatever he wanted and when people told him that he was weird and wrong and stuff…well then he just told them to fuck themselves….but Sho didn't have that option. Sho was just…he was just…

He was who he was.

"Sho…no. You're…you're normal. You're only ten-eleven. You're only eleven now and I think that…you're maybe getting ahead of yourself when it comes to her. I think that you're going too fast and…and nothing good comes from going too fast." Said Fukuda. Sho had no idea what he meant. Sho…he was going at the right speed! He was doing what he had to do. He was going to do what he had to do and…and what would waiting help? No matter how much he waited he would always be…Sho. He would never, ever, ever stop being himself no matter what happened or how much time passed.

"But….I'm doing what I'm supposed to do! I'm supposed to grow up and get married and-" said Sho Fukuda shook his head. He shook his head and stood up…and Sho didn't get it.

"When you grow up. Exactly. You are eleven years old and…just be eleven for a while. Yes, you have a lot to do when you grow up but just…be a kid for a little bit, alright?" said Fukuda. Sho…was very tired. He couldn't explain it and he was too tired to try…so he'd stop.

"But…ok….I guess." Said Sho. He just…he wanted to lay down and just…sleep. Or whatever. He just…this whole thing was just…tiring. Not that he would tell Fukuda that he was tiring. No. That was dad's word.

"Good. Now come on, how about we hang out for a little bit? We can watch a Christmas movie and eat those cookies you like. The ones that are mostly frosting. How's that sound?" asked Fukuda. That sounded pretty fucking good. Fukuda…he may have been a secret teller but…well that was then and this was now. Sho…he didn't want to go home because big sis would be there and she would make him take a bath and have dinner…and dad would be there and he would say something mean or worse…he'd take an interest in Sho's life. The others…his friends…he was too tired to hang out with his friends. Especially not Shimazaki. He just…couldn't hang out with Shimazaki right now.

Fukuda was good for hanging out with right now.

"Sounds good…but I want a soda too…two sodas…and eggnog!" said Sho. He didn't really like eggnog that much but it did make him feel good. Not sick like liquor and it didn't taste as bad as beer. Sometimes you just needed a little pick me up, Shimazaki had said so, and even big sis said that it was ok just so long as he used moderation.

Fukuda, of course, disagreed with big sis.

He disagreed with her about everything. Sometimes Sho thought that Fukuda just disagreed with her for the sake of disagreeing with her. He had no idea why Fukuda didn't get along with her. Maybe because she was a girl. Maybe he just never grew out of thinking that girls sucked…or maybe because he was a grumpy old man now. Sho didn't know. He wasn't going to ask.

He was way too tired to get into all of that.

"Soda yes, eggnog no. I only have the adult stuff and you are way too young for that." Said Fukuda. Sho wasn't going to fight about this with him. There was plenty of eggnog over at Shimazaki's house…not that he'd be going there anytime soon. Not until he felt…better…or until he just…stopped feeling the way that he felt. He wished that he knew just…how to make it stop…but he couldn't. He had no idea how to make it stop so…

So maybe he could just…live with it?

Maybe he could just learn to live with whatever it was that he felt. He had no idea how to make it stop…and he'd been spending his whole life trying to make it stop…so maybe he could just live with it. It wasn't like he was going to ever do anything about it. Shimazaki didn't like him like that, he would never like him like that, and he just…didn't want to fight anymore. Not with other people and not with himself. He could do what he had to do but…but he couldn't make himself feel any differently than he felt right now.

He just…he was too tired to fight anymore.

"Fine. Three sodas then." Said Sho. He was too tired to fight with Fukuda and he was too tired to fight with himself…and he just…there was some…he felt…relieved for some reason. Just…he would have to do what he had to do. Emmy would come back and he would probably still be here, they moved around less these days than they had before and it was the end of the year anyway, and when she came back he would do the boyfriend thing…and he would be good at it. He didn't have to enjoy something to be good at it…and nobody said that it had to be real and…and there was just something…about that. Something…good.

Nobody said that it had to be real. It just had to be something real to her…and that was ok. That was just…it was a relief. That it was ok.

He shouldn't have felt relieved but….he did.


	457. Wrapping Paper Origami

Suzuki wondered how many trees had to die to wrap his children's Christmas presents.

There was at least a forest's worth of paper in the living room, maybe even more, and he had no idea what the point of it all was. He had never gotten the point of wrapping presents, even when he had been a child, but cultural traditions weren't to be understood. No, they were to be performed. Over and over again every single year until you died. One day he would die and the children would die and the paper that covered the living room would degrade back into the Earth that it came from and then the world would cease and the sun would expand and encompass the planet and then all that would be left to wait for was the slow heat death of the universe.

And other such things.

Other such thoughts. Non-Christmas thoughts. Thoughts which he should not have had. This was, supposedly, the most wonderful time of the year. The children certainly seemed to think so…but maybe because they got gifts and sugary foods. They did receiving gifts and eating sugary foods…so it made sense. He had never liked sugar foods. Even when he'd been small. He had a vague memory, once, of there being a red…thing….on the counter just out of his reach….so he took it down with his powers and ate it….and then became very ill and vomited it all back up…and then mother had been very upset with him and father had been upset with her…but there was no point in dwelling on it now.

That had been over forty years ago.

He had no idea why he had been thinking so much about his childhood as of late. His childhood had been a series of events that had happened. Now it was over. He was a man now and he had his own children. His childhood, therefore, did not matter. Theirs mattered. Then one day they would have their own children and then their childhoods would not matter. This time, what was happening right now, did not matter. The aftermath of them opening their presents did not matter. The mess in the living room did not matter.

So then why on Earth was he cleaning it up?

He knew that Shigeko would get to it. She always did. She would clean it all up when she got the chance. Right now she and Son were in their room playing some game or something. Something which he was not privy to. Something which he probably would have had no interest in. Their generation had no taste when it came to games…not that he enjoyed games or anything. No, he just…valued them for…their ability to help with…hand eye coordination and…problem solving! Yes. That was the only reason why he played games, nothing more, because he was a grown man and grown men did not play games just like grown men did not look upon their living rooms and get a deep sense of…loss…and sadness…for things that they didn't even understand.

He was just upset about the mess.

That was all. There had been wrapping paper everywhere for the past few hours. The children had gotten up at dawn, and Shigeko had made sure to get him up as well, and then the present ritual had begun. It was really Masami's ritual….or maybe just a woman's ritual since his mother had done the same thing. A present was chosen, a picture was taken with the present wrapped, as it was being unwrapped, and then finally what was inside. It took a very long time…but it was one of their many cultural rituals and it had to be followed.

Even though Masami was gone…and mother was gone…and then one day too he would be gone….

This was not the time to contemplate his own mortality. He was going to die one of these days. So what? All who've walked this Earth have died. That was just how it worked. He had lived, he had been born, and then one day he would get old and die. He wasn't that old. He was only forty five….four! He was only forty four….not the time to start rounding up….and he would live another forty or even fifty years so…really he had nothing to worry about or think about. So another Christmas had passed, and then soon it would be the New Year, and then his birthday….Tadashi's birthday first and then his, and then Shigeko's birthday, and then…well his anniversary was going to come around again at some point….and then Masami's birthday….and then the anniversary of the day she left…also Valentine's Day was coming up…which might have been the night Son had been conceived…and then there was another birthday in February….

He cleaned up the paper.

He needed something to do, anything to do, that was his problem. He had nothing to do and that made his mind wander and nothing good had ever come of his mind wandering. He had just been for too long without mental stimulation. The children were keeping each other occupied, Hatori was busy with whatever was happening next door…something involving copious amounts of profanity on Hatori's part, and Tadashi….Fukuda wasn't speaking to him for some reason. He hadn't come out and said that they weren't speaking but….well it had been a while since they'd last spoken.

Not that he cared.

He was a full and complete person all on his own. He didn't need anybody but himself. He was not a little boy anymore. He was not going to sit there and whine to himself about how alone he was. About how there wasn't anyone in the world like him. About how he would be alone for the rest of his life. He wasn't alone. There wasn't anyone in the world as powerful as him but there were plenty of other espers…and he didn't need them anyway. He had himself and he was fine. He didn't care if Fukuda didn't want to speak to him for whatever reason. He'd come back. He always did. He just…got like this…sometimes.

Suzuki didn't care either way.

Really Tadashi was the one being unreasonable. Suzuki didn't care if he ever spoke to him again. He didn't. Tadashi could rot for all he cared. He could drop dead and then…well he'd have to find another healer…and someone else to watch Son for Shigeko….and someone to help him with the thousands of tiny tasks that kept Claw running…and also someone to help him when he didn't understand something socially….and someone to keep all of his secrets for him…and also….

He…didn't need Tadashi…but he had his uses.

So then it was alright to want him to just…drop it. To drop whatever it was that was keeping him away. Suzuki had no idea. He hadn't done anything…well not that he could remember. Nothing that hadn't been done before…and Tadashi had stayed away from him then…or hit him. But they had been children then. Nobody hit him these days and nobody ever would….though part of him…wanted? Wanted. Wanted Fukuda to hit him so that things could reset between them….but he was a smarter than that…and also they were grown men and grown men did not have rolling around on the ground biting and scratching and punching and kicking fights. Sure he had to fight on occasion, and also he had to punish traitors, and also sometimes he just became so full of rage that he just had to hit someone…but he wasn't about to go and fight Tadashi like a child.

Especially over something that was just so…nothing.

He'd proved a point. That was all. If Fukuda couldn't handle that he was right, that it meant nothing when he…took certain actions, then that was his problem. Really it was. It was his problem and he was the one who needed to get over whatever this was and Suzuki didn't even care if he ever spoke to Fukuda Tadashi again…so there. Yes. He…got the distinct feeling that if Masami had been around then she would have said something along the lines of 'you're being ridiculous, Touichirou' or something like that and then he wouldn't have said anything because she was usually right…well he would have told her that she was wrong….but now, being who he was now, he wouldn't have said anything because it was such a gift to hear her voice…

He would have given anything to hear her voice again just once.

Even if it was to tell him that he was being ridiculous for missing Tadashi or kissing him or wanting to kiss him again or cleaning up the wrapping paper even though he knew that Shigeko would do this or folding the paper and stacking it up because he just needed to have something to do with his hands…and he was being ridiculous for folding this by hand because he had psychic powers and the first power that he had mastered had been his telekinesis and the only person who even came close to his skill was Shigeko and he just…kept on folding. He was alone and he was folding and the folding should have distracted him from how alone he was and he shouldn't have cared but he just kept on folding and folding and folding and…

And now he had a crane.

If he folded a thousand of them he would get a wish. Or so the story went, anyway, he had done it before and…well he had wished to rule the world and he was working towards it. That was what he had wished for out loud, anyway, and that was the one that had come true. When he and Tadashi had folded up all of those napkins…and if the restaurant hadn't wanted him to steal them then they should have locked their doors better…or just sold him the several thousand napkins he'd needed. He didn't know. He had been such a child then…well he'd been about thirteen or fourteen the last time he folded a thousand paper cranes. He had been smaller the first time…and he'd wished to find someone else in the world like him…and he had. Then again later when he'd been older and he wished for someone to like him…before he'd realized that he didn't need anyone but himself…and he had found someone who liked him. He had found Tadashi and later on Masami…and also Shigeko but she had to love him because she was his child. He had wished, when he had been older, to rule the world and now he was going to…though he doubted that his other wishes would come true. The unspoken ones. He doubted that he would ever truly understand himself or other people. He also doubted that he would understand why he felt the way he felt or wanted the things he wanted or why other people did the things they did…

He wasn't going to make a wish this time.

"Hi dad…are you trying to make a wish?" asked Shigeko. She had managed to, somehow, sneak up on him. She moved so quietly and her aura was everywhere and so bright…and also he'd been too deep into his own thoughts. He had to be more vigilant. He had to be more…just…he had to be less like what he had been and more like what he should have been…or something He didn't know. He wasn't the best at expressing himself and he never had been. This was the sort of thing that Tadashi was good at.

What was he up to right now?

"No. I'm just…cleaning up. What are you up to?" asked Suzuki. He knew that he should have left this to her but…he needed something to do. Something simple. Something…like this…and he needed to be alone. He wanted to be with her…he wanted to be with someone…but he knew that he should have been alone…

But then again this was Daughter.

She loved him and he loved her. She was the only person in his life who knew that he needed her. That was acceptable because she was his child and she needed him. Even though she was getting older, older enough to wear makeup and other such things he had imagined were reserved for adult women and not eleven year old girls, she needed him and he needed her and that…that was alright.

He needed her.

"Nothing. I was just seeing what you were up to in here. Did you have a good Christmas? Did you play Minecraft Story Mode yet?" asked Shigeko

"I haven't played yet….I haven't been able to focus. Here. Sit with me. I'll teach you to fold a crane." Said Suzuki. He didn't wait for her reply. He just pulled her down onto the floor beside him with his powers. She didn't resist. She just sat down next to him. Her dress made a crinkling sound as she sat. That was one of her new ones. She loved blue dresses that stuck out like that, like Masami's favorite dress had, and that was what he'd had made for her.

"I'll sit with you for a little bit…but you already taught me how to fold a crane. Remember? When I was eight?" said Shigeko

"Oh…yes. I remember. Were you trying to wish for something or did you just want to learn for the sake of learning?" asked Suzuki

"I was trying to make a wish…but don't ask me what I wished for. You don't want to know." Said Shigeko. Well that was certainly…cryptic. He couldn't think of anything at all that she could have wished for that he would have wanted no part in knowing of. He loved her and in loving her he loved every single part of her. Even the parts of her that she didn't like. Not that he thought of anything about her that she could have disliked. She was perfect…so perfect.

She was the most perfect person that he had ever met.

"I'm sure that whatever it is that you wished for I wouldn't mind. I love you and that means that I love everything about you." Said Suzuki. He still didn't much care for that word, love, but it was the one that she wanted him to use. Women were like that. Masami had been the same way…and he had thought that he had been better in telling her that he cared for her…but really he should have just done what she had told him to do.

Maybe if he had done as he had been told then she…wouldn't have felt the need to leave.

"Um….ok. I made two wishes. The first one was that Minegishi and me would be friends forever…and the second one was for…for…." Said Shigeko

"For what? Whatever it is that you wished for I'm sure that I could make it happen for you. I'm your father. That's my job." Said Suzuki

"I…it's not something that you or anyone else in the world can make happen." Said Shigeko

"I'm Suzuki Touichirou. I can do anything." Said Suzuki. He could do….a lot. He felt, often, that he could do anything but…well he could get her things and do things for her, and force people to like her if she had wished for someone's friendship, but if she wished for something like immortality or eternal youth or a rocket ship that she could pilot….well the last one was what he had wanted when he'd been her age….well there were some things in life that he just…could not give her….

But if she wished for something that he could give her then he would knock over the gates of hell to get it.

"….I wished for mom to come back…and I know that if you could make her come back then you would have a while ago…and I know that I'm not supposed to talk about her…and I know that you're mad at me so I'll just go and-" said Shigeko. She made a move to get up. He didn't let her. He grabbed her wrist. She was so small. Her wrist could fit right in the palm of his hand. His fingers could span the circumference of her arm. She was so small still….so small and so….

Not someone he could ever be angry with.

"No. Don't go." Said Suzuki. He had just gotten her. He could not lose her. He could not let her just get up and walk away. He had to keep her there because….what if she just…he had the most insane thought in that moment. Shigeko leaving. Shigeko leaving him. She couldn't leave him. She was only eleven. She was only eleven and…and she couldn't just get up and leave. She…had threatened to but…but he would never let her go.

Even if she tried to escape.

"Dad…please don't be mad at me." Said Shigeko. She said that but she did not sit back down. She was trying to get him to let go with her powers…and she was strong. When had she gotten so strong? She had always been strong but…well now it was effort to hold onto her…because she was trying to get away. Well he could not let her leave. She was his and she was never going to leave him.

Ever.

"I'm not angry with you. Now sit." Said Suzuki. He ordered her to sit but she didn't. She was still trying to pry his hand free with her powers…and now her other hand as well. She was so small. Her hands were still so tiny…so much of her was still so tiny. He wished…he wished that she had been even smaller. That she had still been small enough that he could have just picked her up and carried her away and never let her go…like when he had brought her home….when she'd been two…

But that had been almost a decade ago.

"If you're not mad at me then why are you hurting me?" asked Shigeko. Suzuki immediately let her go. She had red spots on her wrist where he had been holding her…and they may have been on their way to becoming bruises….but that may have been because of how pale her skin was. Snow colored. Just…she just…she was so pale and…and she was paler. She was paler in her arm…because he had been holding her much too tightly…

She was small. She could break.

"I…am so sorry. That was not my intention. Please, forgive me." Said Suzuki. She could leave him by walking out that door and she could leave him by breaking…and he could not hurt her. He would never hurt her. She was his. He was hers. He could never hurt her. He loved her more than anything and anyone else in the world.

She was his.

"It's ok, dad, you just…didn't know your own strength…and I shouldn't have mentioned mom. That was wrong of me." Said Shigeko. She…was right and she was wrong. He had no idea how one person could have been both correct and incorrect in the same sentence but she had. She just….she should not have been mentioning Masami…but she was also Shigeko. She could never be wrong about anything.

"That's….don't mention your mother. I don't know why you would mention her. You are her. I mean you are in her role…so don't mention her. I have no idea why you would mention her or think of her or want…to wish for her. A thousand paper cranes…is a great many paper cranes." said Suzuki. Masami was…and was not…worth a thousand paper cranes. She was his wife, she was…she had been…his most perfect person. He would have gladly folded her a million, a billion, a trillion paper cranes by hand if she had asked him to…but she hadn't asked him to. He had no idea what it was that he could have done to have kept her from leaving…because she hadn't asked anything of him…she had just left…

And he wasn't sure if he would ever be able to forgive her for that.

"I know that a thousand is a lot and…I missed her back then…I missed her a lot." Said Shigeko. Suzuki brushed some hair from her face. She wasn't looking at him and her aura was pulled away from him…and he didn't know why. He didn't know why she was being like that and he didn't know why she just…she had just used the past tense.

"Missed? Past tense?" asked Suzuki

"I…miss her now but…she's been gone for a while. She's been gone for a while and…and now I have to be her and…and she didn't warn me about…stuff. I don't know. She's my mom and I love her but…but it's hard to love someone who's so far away. I'm sorry." said Shigeko

"….you're right." Said Suzuki

"What?" asked Shigeko

"About…loving someone who's far away. It can be very…difficult…to love someone who is…far away." said Suzuki. Masami was gone and he missed her every single day…and he cared for her…and he would have killed a thousand real cranes and folded them for her if it meant that she would have come back to him, but also…she had left him. She had left him and their family and…and she'd had no reason to leave. He had done everything that a husband, that a man, was supposed to do. He had put a roof over her head and food in her mouth and money in her pockets and children, well a child, in her womb but still she left. She left and she didn't even say why. She left and she didn't even say goodbye. She left and she didn't even say….anything at all to him….

At least Shigeko had said, before, why she would leave if she ever had cause to leave him.

Not that he ever thought that she would leave. No, she had stated her terms…which was more than Masami had ever done. She had acted like she had been fine when, in reality, something had gone wrong. He had been doing something wrong and…and when he made mistakes he needed to be told…when he was making them! Shigeko had always done that for him, like just now, she had told him that he had been hurting her and then he had stopped. If a child of not even twelve could tell him when he had done something wrong then why couldn't a woman, a grown woman, the woman who he had agreed to spend his life with-

He needed to calm down. Shigeko was quiet.

She was quiet and her aura was pulled in close. Something was bothering her. He had no idea what it was that was bothering her but he knew that it was something…and he knew that he might have been the something. She frightened so easily….and she had no reason at all to be frightened of him. He was her father. He loved her. He was hers and she was his and he would never have done anything to hurt…those were bruises on her wrist…

He would never have done anything on purpose to hurt her.

"You miss mom?" asked Shigeko. She asked that so quietly that he had barely been able to hear her. He had heard her and…well he was glad that she was not upset with him but….but she had just come out and asked him…something that he didn't know if he could even answer. He couldn't answer her…but he had to. He had to answer her because…..

Because she was his Daughter.

"….every day….but don't tell anyone." Said Suzuki. The words were like ashes in his mouth. How could he have SAID that to her? To his own Daughter? What she must have thought of him. Her own father. Her own father saying something so…weak…to her. Telling her that he thought every single day about a woman who had left him. About a woman who had just…just betrayed him. About a woman who had…who had taken everything from him. Everything and nothing. Something…intangible…which was everything and nothing. She had just….taken something from him…something that he wasn't sure if he could get back…something that….

That he wasn't even sure if he even wanted back.

"But…it's ok to miss her. She's your wife and she's my mom and-" said Shigeko. She was talking and she was making sense…if he had been any other man. But he wasn't any other man, he was Suzuki Touichirou, and he should have been better than that. He…if any other man had been in his shoes….if Tadashi had been in his shoes then….then he would have agreed with Daughter…but Tadashi was never going to be in his shoes. Nobody…he wasn't the first man to have had his wife leave him but…but it felt as though he was the only man in the entire world who had ever felt the way that he felt right now.

"No! Just…no. I'm supposed to be better than that. I am…a complete person on my own and…and I don't need to feel….this way." said Suzuki. She had taken something from him, Masami, and she…she never coming back. She was never coming back and she was never going to give it back and…and he shouldn't have needed it, all of it, back. Her and…and what she had taken.

"But dad…it's ok. People need other people. I need you-" said Shigeko

"You're my Daughter, you're supposed to need me." Said Suzuki. She could need him. She had to need him. As much as she was getting older, as much time that had passed since the day she became his, she was still young and small and she still needed him and she would always need him.

"And it's ok if you need me, too. I wouldn't mind. People need other people and family needs family and friends need friends." Said Shigeko

"You and I are not friends. We're family." Said Suzuki

"I know…and I know that we need each other." Said Shigeko

"….I…suppose that we do." Said Suzuki. Yes…what she said made sense…and he made sense…well he tried to so…so that meant that it all made sense. She was right. They were a family and they needed each other. They needed each other and…and maybe it was alright to be…to be this sort of person to her. To be the person who she needed…and maybe it was alright for him to need her as well. Maybe if…he needed her…then she would never leave….

She was Shigeko and she was incapable of leaving someone in need.

"And if we were the same age and stuff then we would have been friends. I would have made friends with you." Said Shigeko. She said it with so much confidence…and she could say it with confidence. She was right. She made friends so easily. She collected them.

"You make friends with everyone." Said Suzuki. She collected people like he, when he had been her age, collected videogame cartridges. She just collected people and put them up on her shelf and spent time with them when she needed them and put them back when she didn't. She had so many friends, like he'd had so many cartridges that he was able to pick them up and put them down…and he'd bought any he could have gotten his hands on without care…like her and her friends.

If they had been the same age he would have been one of many friends of her.

"I do…but I still would have wanted to have been your friend. If we'd been the same age." Said Shigeko

"I suppose that if we'd been the same age I would have enjoyed being your friend as well." Said Suzuki. Even if he had been one of many, just another friend in her collection, he would have bene happy to have been her friend. She…had a talent for it. Making friends. Making a person, even though they were just games on her shelf, feel like they were the only person in her entire world. Masami….she'd had the same talent…

But Shigeko was better at it.

"Would you have taught me how to do origami?" asked Shigeko. She smiled at him and passed him some more of the wrapping paper. Son had torn this. Shigeko never tore the paper like that. She went along the tape like he'd taught her to. Like his mother and father had taught him to.

"I thought that you already knew how to fold cranes." Said Suzuki. He would teach her again. He would teach her whatever it was that she wanted to know. She wanted…she wanted to learn from him and he would teach her…just like he learned from her. Whatever she felt like teaching him he would learn. That was how it worked in a family.

Family needed each other.

"I do…but just cranes." Said Shigeko

"Would you like to learn how to make a frog?" asked Suzuki. He knew how to fold just about everything…and he should have taught her before this day. He should have been a better father to her…but he could teach her now. Now he could teach her and she would be with him for the rest of the day.

It would be a good day….like Christmas….but better.

"That would be nice." Said Shigeko. She smiled and sat closer to him…and yes, those were bruises on her arm, and he made a point not to look at them. He had done that to her. He had done that to her even though she had done nothing to deserve it. She could never do anything at all to deserve something like that. She was not her brother. She was her own person and she was….she was his most perfect person…

Even though she wasn't that good, really, at folding up wrapping paper origami.

But that was alright. He was fully prepared to teach her. He was fully prepared to teach her anything that she wanted to know. How to fold a frog, how to rule the word, how to project her astral form from her body, how to hold down the Earth's crust to temporarily stop an Earthquake, how to…well how to do whatever it was that he could teach her. She was his Daughter after all, and she was a good student….

Unlike some people.

"Seriously?! Come on, big sis, I thought that you were coming with!" said Son. He managed to sneak up on him too. Son's aura was just…well it was less than Shigeko's but he was still very bright. That had been Suzuki's own fault again. He just…had been too much into what he had been doing….and he needed to stop that.

Especially if his own Son could sneak up on him like that.

"Oh…right! Dad…this is fun but we're having a Christmas party next door….so that's where me and Sho are going to go. I would have invited you but then I remembered that you don't like parties." Said Shigeko. Suzuki…he had no idea how much time had passed…but he did wish that she would stay. It didn't feel like enough time had passed but….well she had her own things to do. Things which did not involve him.

Things that he did not wish to involve him in.

"You're right. I do hate parties." Said Suzuki. The last thing he wanted to do was go to a party. Even if it was just a small one involving her friends. Well his friends…friend….friends since Serizawa was something of a friend too….he didn't want to go next door. But he would let her. He would let her because she just…this was what she was good at. She was good at making friends and he would not stop her.

He couldn't have stopped her if he had wanted to.

"So I'm just…going to finish getting ready to go. Ok? We can do this again later." Said Shigeko. She got up and hugged him…and then she walked away. He had expected her to walk out the door but instead she went to the bathroom….maybe to put on more makeup….or something. He didn't know.

All he knew was that she was gone.

"That's fine…goodbye…Shigeko." said Suzuki. She was still in the house, and she couldn't hear him, but he still said it…for lack of anything else. Now she was gone and he was all alone…well Son was there. Son was there and he was poking at the origami on the floor with his powers. He was there in his jacket like he was ready to go….and Suzuki didn't know why he didn't just go already.

He was just going over next door.

Or rather just a wall over. The British built their homes like that in an effort to conserve space. This was probably the sort of home that Son and his Wife would end up living in when he married her. She was from this city after all. She probably wouldn't have wanted a manor house like Shigeko wanted…though he had no idea what the girl would have wanted considering the fact that he had never met her. He had never met her and…and well he didn't know why he wanted to even meet her. She was Son's and he should have been grateful that his Son had even found a girl willing to hold his sticky fingers….

And Suzuki should have been grateful that he was even getting a Daughter in law…that is if he was still getting one….

"How did it go? With your girlfriend and that…ring…I mean." Said Suzuki. Son had been about to crush one of Shigeko's creations, that was why he had asked, and also…well maybe he cared just a bit about how this went. His Son was either on his way to spending his life with the most perfect person for him or he was on his way to his first heartbreak…and Suzuki…well he wanted to be informed at least. Someone else may have been joining the family after all.

Someone else who wore human teeth.

Someone who wore human teeth and dressed for combat even though this was not a warzone and who seemed to compliment the worst of his Son….but he did not get to pick his Son's wife. This was his most perfect person and Suzuki….for once he had no control…well he had never had any control, really, when he thought about it. When it came to this child. Shigeko had more control over her little brother than him….and if Shigeko thought that her little brother was making a good choice then he was not going to argue with her….

But he at least wanted to know how it went.

"Why do you want to know?" asked Son. Suzuki did not care for that at all. His Son should not have been questioning him….and he wanted to…do things that he knew that Shigeko would not approve of. He heard her watching something in the bathroom, one of her makeup things, and she would not have like being taken away from that to settle…things that she should not have had to settle.

"Because I am your father. Now tell me how it went." Said Suzuki. He was the father and Sho was the Son and he could ask his Son whatever he wanted to ask him.

"I didn't ask her yet. She's…busy…with Christmas stuff. I don't know. I might ask her on our anniversary or something." Said Son. He maybe should have said something….and he had no idea what to say. He wanted to tell his Son that he was happy for him…but also paradoxically he wanted to tell his Son that he was only eleven years old and was too young for that kind of commitment or rejection….

But he had no idea how to go about even beginning to say the things that were bouncing around in his mind.

"You should ask her on Valentine's Day. Women like that sort of thing." Said Suzuki. There. That was good advice….well he was too young for Valentine's Day…he was too young for all of this…but he had a girlfriend and that was more than Suzuki had ever imagined for his Son…so there.

"That's when our anniversary is. Valentine's Day." Said Son. Suzuki felt his eyebrows going up into his hairline…and maybe it was time for a haircut. That was easier to think about than….well Valentine's Day was the day that Son had been conceived…probably….

But his Son did not need to know that.

"Oh….I didn't know that." Said Suzuki. He wondered if that had anything to do with…probably not…or maybe yes? He had no idea how these things worked. He was already more involved in this than he knew how to be. His father had just told him not to get anyone pregnant or kiss Tadashi ever again….and did he…have to warn his Son about that? He…well he smelled terrible but…well he probably wasn't anywhere near that part of puberty yet….

And Suzuki did not need to go digging around into that area of his Son's life.

"Well now you do….anyway….I have to go to the party before Shimazaki eats all of the cookies. Later." Said Son. He didn't even wait for a goodbye, he just left, and Suzuki…he was grateful that his Son had left. He just…he had no idea what he was supposed to say about…anything. He wanted his Son to be happy but he also…he had no idea what he was even supposed to say.

They grew up so fast.

He had heard that old cliché over and over again…and it was true. That was why it was a cliché, because it was said so often, and it was said so often because it was the truth. Shigeko and Sho…they had been babies. He wasn't stupid, he knew that his children had been babies once, and he had even been there when Sho had been a baby. He had been so small and red and…and helpless…and now he was out there going to parties and having a girlfriend and thinking about getting married and just…it was like he had blinked and this had happened. Like he had blinked and his son had gone from baby to toddler….then to little boy….and now to slightly less little boy. A slightly less little boy who was living his own life and...and he didn't know how he felt about it…

Well he felt better about his Son having a little girlfriend than his Daughter doing…the things that she did.

"Bye dad, have fun at home!" said Shigeko as she left. She had…makeup on. She had on makeup and…and she was only eleven, not even twelve, and she just….had color on her eyes and lips and cheeks and…and he had no idea why she did that. He had no idea what made her want to do that. She wasn't old enough…well she was and…she was and she wasn't. She was getting older and this was normal and…and she would grow up whether he liked it or not…

Emphasis on the 'not'.

She had been so small when he'd met her…and now she was less small and…and he just…he focused on what he was doing. He focused on folding things until he didn't have anything else to fold. He folded until he forgot what he had been so upset…well he hadn't forgotten…but he just…was coming to terms with it. Well he'd come to terms with it already, Shigeko wearing makeup, and she had said that she had done it for fun…and it was for fun and not to meet anyone and…and she would meet someone but she wouldn't leave him and…

And he needed something to do.

He needed something to do…but he just didn't have the focus to do anything truly productive…so maybe something mindless. Something mindless and fun and…well not fun. Serious. It was serious work he did. He had serious work to do in a very serious way….seriously. He had no idea who he was justifying himself to…and maybe he shouldn't have justified himself because he was Suzuki Touichirou and he could do whatever he wanted to…but maybe he did because he was a grown man and grown men did not do these things…but….well….

He had been given gifts.

When someone gave you a gift then you used it…and he of course would use the gifts that Shigeko gave him. He liked…her…and she had given him games and therefore he could tell himself that this was alright…and he could silence the voice in his head…it sounded like am amalgam of himself and his parents for some reason…he wasn't doing anything wrong and that….was that! He just…he was….

He was Suzuki Touichirou and it was Christmas and Shigeko had been the one to give him the game so he was fully within his rights to enjoy it!

So that was what he did. He posted himself up in the living room with a glass of ketchup, a loaf of bread, and a very long documentary series about the history of the universe. His laptop was on his lap, his bread and ketchup were beside him, and the house was peaceful. It was…good. This was good. He felt…good. He could feel his children on the other side of the wall…and he felt how happy they were….Shigeko was happy. If she was happy then he was happy.

He really was.

He was happy and he was…he knew that he was nothing other than happy. He didn't reach out beside himself and…and wish that Masami had been there to tell him to change the channel already because she bored out of her skull…or that Tadashi had been beside him to trade facts about the universe….or that Shigeko had been there to look over at him and smile…and just….he was not lonely. He had no reason to be lonely. He just….had no reason to want to be with…other people. Family could need family but…well he had just spent time with Shigeko…and Masami was gone…and Tadashi was just his most trusted friend and…and he should have been happier on his own…and he was happy. He was happy to be alone and…and to have a peaceful house…and to figure out how to not die in this game…and Hatori would have been helpful in this situation….well Serizawa maybe as well…

But it was Hatori who's aura he could feel coming closer.

Now he wasn't so consumed by what he was doing that he didn't notice another aura coming closer. He could feel Hatori getting closer. First he moved on the other side of the wall…and then on the outside…and then there was a knock on the door. Suzuki…didn't feel like getting up. He swung the door opened. Hopefully Hatori would get the message….

He did.

He fell through the door. He fell in a crash and a….crinkle? Oh. He'd been holding a gift bag. Suzuki still didn't feel like getting up. He dragged Hatori over with his powers and sat him down on the couch. He had only done that because he was feeling…tired…and not because he was tired of looking over to the other side of the couch and finding it empty. That was all. He had just brought Hatori over for that reason and also...well Hatori did not seem well.

If Hatori thought that he was going to touch Suzuki's eyebrows again then he had another thing coming….and Suzuki didn't care how intoxicated he was.

"You haven't taken LSD again, have you?" asked Suzuki as Hatori settled into what seemed to be the most comfortable position possible for himself. Suzuki knew that he should have bee offended that he just thought that he could make himself comfortable…but he had no problem with Hatori settling in and getting comfortable so he said nothing. This was….he didn't want to be alone. It pains him to admit it but…well…he just did not want to be alone…

And now he didn't have to be.

"No…just eggnog…and I didn't let Shimazaki fuck with it…he loves fucking with me." Said Hatori. Suzuki cringed internally but said nothing. He so hated it when Hatori spoke like that. He didn't have to. It made him sound downright unintelligent….but Hatori was not his Son and he did not want to get into it with him….and also he couldn't even stop his own Son from talking like that…so maybe the best thing to do was just to let Hatori be.

"Why do you let him do these things to you?" asked Suzuki. Never in his life, this one or the next, would he understand why Hatori put up with so much from that man. Sure he was tall and strong…mostly muscle…and he could handle himself in a fight even without his powers…and he had a bigger body count than Suzuki…and also he could be downright sadistic in a fight from the mission reports he'd read…

"Because he's bigger and stronger than me…and also he can teleport." Said Hatori

"Fair enough. Is that what brought you here, you've had enough of Shimazaki?" asked Suzuki. Yes, Hatori was not a fighter…but that didn't matter. He had Suzuki to protect him now.

"No, he's mostly just hanging off of Minegishi right now…I think that they have another boyfriend or something. Anyway-" said Hatori

"Another boyfriend? Another? They had a boyfriend? And now they're committing adultery?" asked Suzuki. He didn't know what reaction he had expected to get but that one had not been it. Hatori pulled his sweater, some eye burning Christmas thing that lit up, over his head and laughed. He laughed until he was done, pulled his sweater down, looked at Suzuki, and then pulled his sweater back up and laughed some more.

If Suzuki lived to be a hundred years he was sure that he would never have stood a chance of understanding what it was with young people and marijuana.

"Ok…I'm done. Sorry it's just…I can't believe you like them! It's like…wow." Said Hatori. Suzuki…well if his control hadn't been so good then he would have sent Hatori into the wall and through to the other side. Hatori had…first of all there was no speculating on that part of his life. Tadashi was the only one who could speculate on that part of his life….and that was just because they had known each other for as long as they had. Second of all he did not LIKE Minegishi!

He just thought that they were an intelligent and nurturing woman and he was grateful that they were so good with his children and also they occasionally popped up in his sexual fantasies dressed as Maetel from the second Galaxy Express movie…but nobody need to know any of that!

"I do no 'LIKE' her…them! I do not like them….I was just…curious as to how their situation…functioned." Said Suzuki. He did not have feelings for Minegishi. He just valued them as a member of Claw, as a caretaker for Shigeko, and also despite their short lavender hair, lack of eyebrows and breasts, they were a very attractive woman once you stared at them for long enough. That was all. He had never had an idle daydream, while staring at them to get to their subtle beauty, about them being pregnant with a sibling for Shigeko and caring for the children…and he certainly never tossed another Son into the mix either…and certainly not two other Sons! And they did not, most certainly did not, live in his childhood home…and Minegishi was not dressed like Masami in that or any other fantasy that he may or may not have had!

"What? Minegishi has it going on. Everyone thinks so." Said Hatori. Suzuki….well of course other people felt that way. Minegishi was a very attractive woman when you stated at them for long enough…but Hatori…why had he been staring? She, they, were a very masculine woman but once you knew what to look for there was no mistaking them for a man. Especially when they wore that one white with the bouquet of roses being held by the skeleton hand…or the white one with the snowflake…especially the white one with the snowflake.

"They're a woman. Stop being interested in them." Said Suzuki. Hatori needed to only be attracted to people that he had a chance with…and even if Minegishi had been a man Hatori wouldn't have had the chance. No, he really needed someone more his speed…like Shibata. He was a very…domestic…sort of person. There…now he just had to figure out how to get them together….

"Oh right, I'm gay." Said Hatori. He looked towards the ceiling and rubbed the back of his head…and how did he forget that he was a homosexual? These weren't the sorts of things that were easily forgotten. Either he was attracted to women or he wasn't. There. Simple.

"Yes…how did you forget your sexuality?" asked Suzuki

"I don't know…it's a spectrum? And also I'm really drunk…and anyway Minegishi's seeing this other guy, Matsuo, well they didn't say that they were seeing him but they've been texting him all night and smiling and Shimazaki is in full on jealousy mode. Seriously, his eyes are so green-" said Hatori

"He doesn't have eyes…and by new boyfriend I'm assuming you mean Matsuo the spirit controller from the Seventh Division….they could do so much better." Said Suzuki

"See? You do like them. You like Minegishi, you like-" said Hatori

"I'm going to let this slide because you've been drinking and you're obviously too young to hold you liquor…eggnog. Now I'm going to uncover your mouth and when I do I want you to talk about something else. Anything else. Am I clear?" asked Suzuki. Hatori nodded and tried to talk. Suzuki pulled his hand away quickly. He did not want anyone else's saliva on him. The only person, well the only other man, who he would tolerate this from was Tadashi and that was only because they had already shared saliva a few times before.

"As crystal, nice crystal. Anyway I came over here to invite you to the party-" said Hatori

"Pass." Said Suzuki. Him, at a party? No. He could barely stand most of those people…and he hated parties anyway.

"You sure? It's not a big party and nobody's getting crazy…that crazy anyway." Said Hatori

"I said pass." Said Suzuki

"Alright…but here. I got you a Christmas present." Said Hatori. He passed Suzuki the gift bag that he'd been holding. It was glittery and red and green…sort of hard to look at…but that was what he did. He held it and he looked at it…and he was no stranger to getting Christmas presents, the children had gotten him a hand drawn card and other things, but this…was not an obligation gift from family and…and he couldn't remember the last time that he'd gotten a gift from someone who wasn't family….and he had to say something…

"Thank you." Said Suzuki. That came out in English…and he had no idea why. Maybe because he felt younger…and he'd spoken it more when he'd been a child since mother had insisted…but he'd said his thanks and that was what mattered. He'd said what he needed to say and now…well now he had a gift bag in his hands….

"You have to take the paper off. Here-" said Hatori as he reached over and tried to pull off the white paper. Suzuki pulled the gift back. This was his and he could…he could open this…and he would open this…and he was going to open this right now.

"I can do this." said Suzuki. He moved the paper out of the way and felt inside the bag. He had made a game of it when he'd been a small child, shaking the boxes and wondering what was in them, but this was a bag and he just felt around and…something cloth. Soft. Very soft. He felt and felt but then, once he'd gotten bored, and Hatori looked like he was about to have a heart attack, he pulled out….

A shirt.

"Keep going. There's two in there." said Hatori. He did not make false claims despite the fact that he was clearly very drunk. There, inside the bag, was another shirt….and also a pair of pants. He just…well clothing was a good gift. Clothing was practical but it was also….not intimate but…well he always wore the same thing and that was because he had found the perfect combination of shirts, pants, socks, and underclothes years ago and he'd stuck to it….and also these were t-shirts and one did not wear shirts without collars…mother had said so….

But he love this shirt.

"I love this…"said Suzuki so quietly that he was barely able to hear himself. That was…wow. They still made Space Invaders t-shirts…and he'd wanted one when he'd been small….and mother had said 'no' because t-shirts were undershirts….and she had been very firm on that but…well….she was dead….and this was…he was Suzuki Touichirou and he would wear whatever the hell he wanted to…not that he had any idea when he would ever wear this shirt…or the matching pants. Soft and comfortable…like the ones people slept in…

He always slept in his suit pants.

It was just more efficient. He hadn't worn pajama pants since…well since Masami had made him. He had just preferred to save time in the mornings…but…well he liked soft things and he liked this gift…and also when someone gave you a gift you used it…and he would get use out of this shirt and these pants…and the other shirt too…it was red and he loved red…and somehow Hatori had figured out that he loved red…

Though he had never been a fan of shirts with words on the front.

"You like this one too, right?" asked Hatori as he held up the red shirt.

"I don't age, I level up…" read Suzuki. That was English…so it must have come from here…and he wasn't a fan of words on clothing but he did like red…and soft things…and also these shirts did not have tags at all…Hatori had gotten him shirts without tags and…well….if he hadn't been young enough to be Suzuki's Son then he would have kissed him.

"Yeah, because you like videogames and you're so old…not that you're old….you're just old enough to be my dad….well you're older than my dad actually…he would have been I mean…" said Hatori. He was looking down at his hands now and his aura, what little aura he had, was all pulled in…and Suzuki…well he wasn't a fan of words on clothes but he was even less of a fan of Hatori getting….like this.

"Yes. I like red and I like soft things without tags. Thank you. I haven't gotten you anything….well aside from your Christmas bonus…but thank you." Said Suzuki. He reached over and patted Hatori on the back. He looked up and smiled but it did not reach his aura…and Suzuki…he was not at all a fan of Hatori getting like this…

Not a fan at all.

"I'm glad you liked it….I mean I knew that you would…I mean…Merry Christmas." Said Hatori. He was speaking quietly and looking down at his hands…and playing with some of the tinsel on his sweater and…well Hatori was normally good company but now…well now he was acting like a child and….well Suzuki knew how it felt. When it hit you. That you were alone in the world. He knew what it was like and…and he did not want to think about it.

What it was to be alone in the world.

What it was to know that you would never see them, your parents, the people who you had known since the day that you'd been born ever again. That another day, a holiday even, had passed and they had passed too. That you would never have to sit there as your mother took far too many pictures. That your father would never order you to be grateful again, when you didn't show sufficient gratitude, and even though you hated it…you missed it as well and…and you'd outlived both of them…

And you were the reason that they weren't there anymore.

Suzuki didn't want to think about this. He didn't want to think about this…or talk about it and…and he just…he needed something…he felt the tissue paper under his hand. There. Hatori was too drunk to deal with anything complicated…and this wasn't so complicated. Not really. He had been able to do this since he'd been a small child and….well if a three year old could master it, and his own children as well, then Hatori would be able to master it as well.

And if not…well the frustration would pull him out of…the sinkhole of sadness that he had gotten caught in.

"Hatori, watch me. I'm going to teach you how to make a crane." Said Suzuki as he picked up a piece of tissue paper and began to fold it by hand. Hatori was watching him in rapt fascination, fascination that his own Son had never watched him with, and it was…nice. This was nice. Enjoyable. He…could enjoy this. He would enjoy this…for as long as it lasted. The day was almost over. The day was almost over and it would be December twenty sixth and…well the day would pass but he wouldn't be alone….he had someone beside him. Hatori may not have been one of his children but…well he was a child and he as good company…and he wanted to learn how to fold a paper crane…and Suzuki would teach him.

He didn't care how many trees would have to die for his to spend time like this with Hatori…with his friend.


	458. No Going Back to Bed Now

Sho didn't always get up first.

He did most mornings, big sis went to bed later than he did because she was older or whatever, and that meant that she got up after him. He didn't really like sleeping in that much anyway He didn't like to waste daylight. He didn't always know what he would do with the daylight but he didn't much like to waste it. Even if he was just siting on the floor drawing in his sketchbooks he still liked to do…something with the daylight.

Something other than sitting in bed all day.

But this was where he was, in bed, and he just…didn't want to get up. Christmas was over. Christmas was over and Emmy was coming back. She was going to spend New Year with her mom, she had said, because her sister didn't get along with her dad's new girlfriend. That made sense. Sho didn't think that he would have been able to get along with any girl who liked his dad…well besides his mom…but dad was still married to mom so he didn't have to worry about all of that. He felt sort of bad for Emmy. That must have sucked, getting a new mom while your mom was still around, and he did feel bad for her…and also he knew that he needed to be there for her and stuff….

But he also didn't want to get out of bed.

She wasn't back yet but she would be….and then he would have to hang out with her and stuff. He didn't mind hanging out with her and stuff, she was a good friend, and he also didn't really mind kissing her. She really liked that and they'd been doing that a lot lately. It was a thing that he had to do sometimes. He did it and then it ended and he got on with his life. That wasn't a problem. The problem was that he just…he didn't know if he could tell her that he loved her again. She loved him, he made the goldfish in her stomach swim and stuff, and she just…didn't make him feel the same way. He knew that his feelings didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was her being happy, and he knew that he needed a girlfriend so he'd might as well have her, and he knew that he should have been able to make this pragmatic choice…and he had…he just…

Didn't like to lie to her…not about that.

But she wasn't even back to so he didn't have to lie…so why was he still lying in bed? Why didn't he want to get up? Maybe because his head hurt and he had this sort of…heavy…feeling. Sort of heavy and just….maybe he should have listened to big sis and stayed away from the special eggnog….but Shimazaki had said that it was alright and he had been drinking it too and if Shimazaki liked it when Sho had to like it too because he liked Shimazaki and….and he really liked Shimazaki and….great. Now he was thinking about Shimazaki and how awesome he was and all of that other stuff and just….he needed to get out of bed. He needed to get out of bed and just do….something. He had to get out of bed before he wound up like Serizawa. He had stayed in his room for fifteen years, which was even longer than Sho had been alive for, and Sho…well he didn't want to have to be Emmy's boyfriend but he also didn't want to spend the next fifteen years of his life in his room….

Why were those his only two options?

Maybe there was a third option. Maybe he could just…run away. Maybe he could run away like mom did and then…well he'd never see big sis again if he ran away. He rolled over and looked at her. He didn't know what he'd do without her. For his entire life she'd been there and, yeah, she could be really bossy a lot of the time and she was dad's favorite kid and person in the world but…he couldn't leave her. He couldn't hurt her or himself like that. So he would stay. He would stay in this bed for the rest of his life…or at least until it was time to get up.

Which, apparently, had decided to come now.

Big sis's ringtone was still that same song. For someone who sang all the time about letting it go Elsa really could be kind of a baby. Like, Sho got it, her powers were big and scary but maybe she should have worked on controlling them instead of being all 'conceal don't feel oh my God everyone should be scared of me' and shit. Seriously. If she had just practiced with her powers like a normal person, well a normal esper, then she could have been way better at them by the time that she was an adult. That was, maybe, why Sho was better at controlling his powers than big sis. She had to drink stuff and smoke stuff to control her powers but he just…could. He was good at that…and it was nice to be good at some things…even though he knew that maybe being proud of himself was rubbing it in her face. Well maybe it was ok so long as he didn't do it out loud.

After all, she had no idea what was going on in his head.

"H-hello….it's so early…..what is happening in your head…" muttered big sis as she pulled her phone off the charger with her powers. The song was still going. She hadn't hit answer…which was good because that had been kind of mean of her…and she shouldn't have been mean. That just wasn't how big sis…was.

Maybe dad was rubbing off on her.

Sho didn't want to even think about that. Dad rubbing off on big sis. Dad had already rubbed off on him enough and he hardly ever even talked to the guy. Big sis spent way too much time with dad…and if it started to rub off then Sho was going to have to hang out with her more…even if that meant that he had to let her hang out with him when he was with Shimazaki. He knew that she liked him. Who wouldn't like Shimazaki? He was really cool and nice and he smelled good and he was strong and he was funny and he liked dogs and….a lot of other stuff. He knew that she liked him and…well…she could hang out with them if dad was starting to rub off on her….

But she had to not look at Shimazaki or talk to him or be alone with him ever. There. That would work.

"That's not going to work. You have to hit the answer button." Said Sho. Big sis opened her eyes and sat up. Her hair was floating all around her and she had a candy cane stuck in it too. Her eyes had these grey bags under them and they were all red…and that was because she had been at the party way later than he had been. He had gone home after Shimazaki laid down in the bathtub and went to sleep, no point in being there if Shimazaki wasn't awake, but big sis had stayed up all night with Minegishi it looked like. Good.

The more time she spent with Minegishi the less time she, and Minegishi, would spend with Shimazaki….and also he was happy that she was spending time with her best friend and stuff.

"Whuh? Yeah….the green button, right…let me just…hi, Minori." Said big sis. Sho pulled his blanket over his head even though he knew that big sis's friend couldn't see him. WHY in the hell was big sis friends with that girl? She was weird and just…he didn't like her. He really didn't like her and he hoped that he never had to hang out with her. He would hang out with Minegishi they were a bitch bastard but they were harmless, but never with Minori. She was just…well she had practically shoved her tongue down his throat back when he first met her and that was enough of a reason not to ever want to talk to her or see her or be in the same country as her!

So there!

"No, I wasn't ignoring you….I was asleep….England….London….I don't know which part, the one by the big park I guess….haven't been to Top Shop….not close….ok….but I don't want….ok…." said big sis. She was brushing her hair down with her powers now and she had swung her legs over the side of her bed like she wanted to get up. Sho didn't get why she didn't just stop talking to Minori. Big sis didn't like her and from the stories she told it didn't seem like anyone else liked Minori either.

Which made sense because she went around sticking her tongue in people's mouths and that was just plain weird.

Or maybe he was weird for thinking that it was weird. He just thought that the whole thing was gross…and not in the good way. He didn't even want to do that kind of think with Shimazaki and Shimazaki was, well, Shimazaki. Maybe that was just a thing that girls liked to do to you. Shimazaki did that to Minegishi and they were a girl under their clothes. Maybe that was just one of those things that you were expected to do for girls like giving them money and eating whatever they cooked for you and kissing them the normal way and telling them that they were pretty and touching their boobs and all of that other stuff that you had to do for them….that Emmy would expect him to do for her….

It kind of sucked, sometimes, being a boyfriend…but he had to do what he had to do.

"But that's far….I've been before….but….I don't know….Japan is farther….Tokyo mostly….but…we go back in the summers….but….I don't know….I'll ask….Frozen the musical!? What?!" said big sis…well shouted. Now she was awake. Sho…did not like the sound of that. He did NOT want to go to a musical of Frozen. No. Nothing HAPPENED in Frozen! Elsa couldn't control her powers, she accidentally hurt her sister, and then they had a big fight and then everything got better and also there was the part where Anna and Kristoff kissed….but as far as kissing parts that was ok because Kristoff was awesome and stuff….but still. He did not want to sit through a musical about Frozen…

But it sounded like he was going to end up sitting through a musical about Frozen.

"…but you said that Frozen is for first graders….um….I can ask my dad but he's going to say 'no'. I don't know why we go to the places we go but I'm not in charge of that….no, dad won't say yes if I hold my breath and bang my head against the wall…he'll just get scared….no, I don't want to try that….I'll ask him like normal…ok…it's really early in the morning here….fine, I'll ask him….bye." said big sis. She put her phone down next to her and then let herself fall back onto her bed. Sho listened for a little bit incase her friend decided to call her back, she did that sometimes like she couldn't make up her mind or something, but she didn't…and that was a relief.

He had no idea how big sis could stand her.

Even getting a random, early in the morning, phone call was enough to send her back to sleep. Sho was glad that he liked all of his friends. He didn't see what the point was of having a friend that you didn't like at all….maybe that was just another way that girls were weird. Or maybe big sis was just like that. She liked everyone in the whole world…well not Fukuda…but he didn't like her either so it was a draw. Even though big sis didn't like him she didn't do anything about it. She was nice like that, way too nice, and maybe because she was so nice he needed to spend his whole life with her so he could keep her safe from people who were jerks and stuff….yeah. That sounded like a good plan. He would stick with her for the rest of their lives no matter what.

Even if it meant having to see a musical about Frozen.

"Are we really going to see a musical about Frozen?" asked Sho. He was worried, for a second, that big sis had fallen asleep…but she hadn't. She was awake. He could tell by her aura…and how she was trying to sit up. Her hair was all up around her head again…but he didn't laugh. He knew his bedhead was worse.

"I don't know…maybe. It's in New York, that's where Minori is right now. She wants me to come too. After this she's going back to Japan. She just wanted to go to New York City to see the ball thing drop for the New Year." Said big sis

"Why does she want to be in New York for that? It's cold as hell." Said Sho. He liked it when they spent the winters somewhere warm. That way it was like there wasn't any winter at all…and also that way he didn't have to listen to Minegishi complain about how there weren't enough plants around during the winter or whatever.

"Because she had to leave California because her dad found out about how she was friends with benefits-how she was boyfriend and girlfriend with this boy she kind of liked and, I guess, she held her breath and banged her head against the wall enough times that her dad agreed to let her go to New York before they went back to Japan…and also she's mad at me because we left Japan…and she wants us to hang out together and see this Frozen musical…but I don't think that we're supposed to be back in America until at least the spring. I don't know where we're going next but dad said a winter in Europe and America isn't in Europe." Said big sis. Sho knew where America was. It was across a whole ocean. It was kilometers and kilometers and kilometers away.

Good.

"We should totally go! I mean she's your friend and also you love Frozen and stuff. You should totally make dad let us go to New York City." Said Sho. He was being a jerk. He knew that right now he was being the biggest jerk who had ever lived. He had told Emmy that he would be here when she came back…well he had told her that he would try. He didn't make the travel schedule and…well stuff came up all the time. Like this. This was something very important which had come up…and now…well and now he had to deal with it.

Big sis needed a break.

She did everything for everyone. She took care of him and she took care of dad and she took care of Serizawa now, too, and he was like five people all put together in one…she deserved a break. She deserved to go somewhere fun and be with her friend…even if her friend was a tongue stabbing weirdo….and Sho…well he was going to be a good little brother and he was going to be supportive of her…and stuff.

Also he maybe sort of liked Frozen enough to sit through a musical of it…and stuff.

"But we have to keep a schedule and-" said big sis

"Fuck the schedule!" said Sho

"Little brother! Don't say things like that." Said big sis

"What? Fine, f-word the schedule. There. Is that better?" asked Sho

"Yes." said big sis

"Good. Then we're in agreement. F-word the mother f-wording, dick sucking schedule." Said Sho

"Sho…please stop." Said big sis

"Why? I didn't curse." Said Sho

"That was still gross." Said big sis

"Then what do you want me to say?" asked Sho

"I don't know, I'm tired. I want to go back to sleep. I want to…I don't know. I guess that I want to go but we have to keep to the schedule and also it's hard to move everyone on short notice and the HQ in New York City is barely even anything and…I don't know. I'm sleepy. I'm going back to sleep. Wake me up when you want breakfast." Said big sis. She said that and then she laid back down in her bed the right way and went back to sleep like she said that she wanted to…and that was ok. She said that she wanted to go back to sleep so she went back to sleep. She also said that she wanted to go to New York City so that was what they were going to do.

They were going to New York City.

If they wanted to make it there by the New Year, by New Year's Eve, then they would have to leave soon. As soon as possible. If they wanted to make it there in time…and also if he wanted to leave before…well it just made more sense to leave before Emmy got back instead of after. Then he wouldn't have to say goodbye again. Saying goodbye was hard for her and she always got all sad…and he didn't want to make her sad. Well he knew that he was going to make her sad by just up and leaving but….

Well he didn't want to see her sad.

He was a selfish person. He decided in that moment that he was the most selfish person in the world. If you were going to leave a person then you should have left them to their face. You shouldn't have just gotten up one day and left while they were asleep and…and he wasn't leaving Emmy. He just…had things to do. This was just how it was when you were the guy. The guy left and did important work stuff and the girl stayed home and took care of the house and the kids. Sho and Emmy didn't have those yet but…well maybe saying goodbye would get easier when they did. He didn't know. Maybe it would be harder because he would be leaving his kids behind and stuff.

He wasn't dad. He wasn't selfish enough to just leave his kids behind.

It had bothered Sho, when he'd been too little to see how much of an asshole dad was, that dad always just left them all alone in the house with mom. That he just…left. He sent gifts from far away but Sho had been too young and too dumb to realize that having gifts was better than having his dad around. Well Sho…his kids would never feel that way. He didn't want to make them, he didn't want to have to do that super gross thing with Emmy, but he did want them. He wanted there to be little people of his own that he could love and take care of a million times better than dad had ever taken care of him. He would have that kind of life, he would have a better life than he had now, and he would give his family a better life than dad gave them now when he was an adult. Not now though.

Now he was going to run away to New York City like a selfish dick hole.

Well first he was going to ask dad. It didn't take big sis very long to fall back asleep at all and when she did he knew what he had to do. He was going to be the one to ask dad. Big sis was way too worried about the schedule and stuff. She didn't understand that it didn't matter if they were a little off. It was the end of the year, well that weird time between the end of one year and the beginning of the next, so they could be a little off…and if they ended up being way off then it would be someone else's problem. She deserved a vacation so why not take one?

Really, he was doing this for her.

And he knew that dad would do this for her too. Sho ignored the sting in his chest as he got up and out of bed just like he ignored the sting in his foot from where he stepped on a lego. Big sis was dad's favorite and he would have gone anywhere for her. if she asked him to do something crazy like build her a ladder to the moon then he would have. She was his favorite and Sho…he was just himself…but that didn't matter. When Sho grew up then he could have his own kids and he would love them all just the same…and he would love big sis's kids too…and any other kids that happened to come along to any of his friends. Everyone would feel loved and accepted and…and things would be better.

When he ran Claw things would be better.

When he grew up and ran Claw, and the world, then everyone would be happy and things would be better and dad would be old, too old to bother him, and he would be too old to have to deal with dad's shit…so it would all work out. Yes. He would just have to wait until…well he didn't know for how much longer. Dad had said, had been saying, that he wanted to take over the world before he was fifty…and he was forty four now….so maybe in six more years? Who cared, anyway? The day was coming and when it did, when Sho took over after dad, it would be awesome!

But that was in the future and Sho had enough to worry about right now.

Like waking dad up. He was…well Sho almost didn't recognize him. He usually slept in his undershirt and suit pants. Now he was in a regular shirt and pajama pants…wow. Dad knew that pajamas existed. Sho hadn't seen his dad in pajamas since he'd been little…and even then dad had worn the stupid ones with the buttons. Now he had ones with characters from that game he liked….and also he was asleep on the couch with Hatori all curled up on his chest…and they were sleeping like he and big sis slept sometimes, like they had slept sometimes back when they'd been little, but they weren't little anymore…and neither were dad and Hatori….

And this was just…really weird.

He couldn't take this weirdness. He shook dad awake with his powers….and got slammed to the ground for his efforts. Hatori got up, blinked, and then put his head back down. Thankfully on the armrest of the couch and not on dad. Dad wasn't an armrest or a headrest or any kind of rest. Dad was the complete opposite of a rest. Dad was like…a tired…or something. Something that made you tired just by being near it. Dad was like…he was like….someone tiresome!

And also he was a dick hole's dick hole!

"What….what do you want? Why did you wake me?" asked dad. Thankfully he woke up all the way and Sho didn't have to wake him again. He picked himself up off the floor and went to smooth his coat down…before he forgot that he wasn't wearing his coat. It was hanging up and…and he wanted his coat. He wanted to wear it and hide in it because dad was looking at him…and he knew that his coat couldn't actually make him invisible, he wasn't a baby, but he just….wanted to turtle up in it….but he didn't.

He had a mission and that mission was running away from Emmy…making things better for big sis!

"Can we go to New York City?" asked Sho. Dad's eyebrows went up so high that Sho thought that they were trying to run away into his hair. Maybe they would make it. Maybe they would go so far upwards and into his head that they would never be seen again and then dad and Minegishi would have been no-eyebrow buddies….that would have been pretty great….Sho lets the funny thought chase away the bad ones…

Like how dad could have thrown him across the room and big sis wouldn't have been able to stop him because she was asleep right now.

"No. We're going to Holland next I think…or maybe….I don't know exactly where we're going but it's not New York City. Now go back to sleep. You almost woke Hatori." Said dad. Every time Sho thought that dad had gotten as weird as he could possibly get he set a new world's record. What in the hell did he care if HATORI was sleeping!? What did-

He needed to calm the hell down. This was about big sis.

"We have to go to New York City. There's a Frozen musical there and big sis wants to go and see it." Said Sho. Maybe he could predict the future or something. Dad's eyes got all zoomed in and his aura went looking for big sis…and of course they would go. Dad loved big sis more than anyone or anything else in the world. Maybe even himself.

Sho didn't care.

"She said this to you?" asked Dad

"Yeah, she did. Her friend just called her to tell her about it and now she's really excited. She was going to ask you when she woke up but I thought that I should ask you now because it might be hard to move everyone on such short notice." Said Sho. He wasn't lying at all. He was telling the truth. Big sis was totally pumped for this and she would have asked dad as soon as she got up…but she just…needed her sleep. Yeah. He was just being a good little brother and letting her sleep in. That was all.

He was a good little brother sometimes. Not all the time but sometimes.

"So you are capable of rational thought. Very well. Wake the others and tell them to start packing. We leave immediately….as soon as possible. As soon as your sister wakes up." Said Dad. He looked down at what he was wearing before he got up. He was all weirded out that he was in pajamas…and that really was the weirdest part of all of this. Not dad putting big sis first…because he always put big sis first. That was just how their family worked…and that was ok. Sho had let it bother him before and he had turned into such a dick hole, he had been a dick hole's dick hole back when he'd been little, but he could be better now…and he would be better now. He had to be better now.

He had to grow up to be a better man than his dad was.

"Yeah, I'll do that." Said Sho. He wanted to tell dad to go and fuck himself, and if dad didn't get a move on then he would be in even more danger of telling dad to go fuck himself, but dad wasn't moving along. He was just standing there in front of Sho like a guy who was about to be told to go and fuck himself.

Then he knelt down.

Sho heard something pop as dad knelt down, probably his back because he was so old, and he wondered why dad had even bothered. He braced himself for the hit that was probably coming. Why else would dad have gotten this close to him for? Sho knew that dad had promised big sis, before, that he would stop with all the hitting but dad wasn't the kind of guy who just kept his promises. No, he was the kind of guy who hit you for breathing the wrong way or whatever. Dad raised his hand and Sho, as he closed his eyes, wondered what he had done wrong this time. Talked wrong. Acted wrong. Been born wrong. Something else that he had no idea of? He didn't know.

He just didn't know.

He knew even less when dad rested his hand on Sho's shoulder. He just kept it there and now they were eye to eye…and it was like looking in a mirror. Some kind of crazy time mirror. Sho had dad's eyes. He saw his eyes every time he looked in the mirror. He wondered if dad ever saw him in the mirror. Did da dee Sho or did he just see himself? Or did he just see a mirror?

Now did not seem like the time to ask.

"Don't worry. We'll be back in time for your anniversary. I know how important that is to you." Said dad. Sho had no idea what he was supposed to say to that…so he said nothing. He said nothing and dad didn't seem to mind. He just patted him on the shoulder and then used Sho as leverage so he could get up. Dad…was weird. That was the only explanation. Otherwise why would he even have cared about Sho or his anniversary?

Because he wanted grandkids.

That was what it came down to. Dad wanted to keep his bloodline going and he was just excited because when Sho and Emmy grew up they'd go gross stuff together and make a new person…and that seemed like a really weird thing to be excited about….and a weird think to even think about your son doing with a girl…but dad was a weirdo. Yeah. That was the thought to keep in his head. Really it was better to keep that thought in his head than think about other stuff…like how he was being a total dick hole's asshole to Emmy…and how sad that she would be when he left….no…think about how…about how….

How dad was a complete and total weirdo, as always, and Sho really wanted to go back to bed.


	459. Eight Beds For Nine People

Mob wasn't the best at math.

She didn't know why she was so bad at math, just that she was. Maybe because she didn't do the math homeschool books that often because she didn't like them. Or maybe it was because she had a calculator on her phone that did math for her. Or maybe because she had been bad at math since the day she had been born and she just didn't like how frustrating it was so it was easier to just let dad do any math that she needed to do and-

The bottom line was that she was bad at math.

She wasn't good at multiplication or division…and she didn't know about any of the stuff that came after. The stuff that dad knew about. He was good at math. He had gone to university and learned all of the math that his university taught. She wondered if mom had been bad at math. Maybe that was why she was so bad at it. She had no idea how she could have been this bad at math with two parents who were good at math.

She had no idea how she could have been this bad at math even if she had two parents who couldn't add two and two.

"One two three four five-" counted Mob. She knew how to count. She knew how counting worked. She could count without her fingers and her toes. She knew her numbers! The group was her family, her friends, and Fukuda. That was three people plus five people plus one person. That made…she counted on her fingers even though she could do it in her head…nine. That made nine people. There were nine people in their group.

But there were only eight beds.

"Mob, stop, you've been counting all day. It's driving me up the wall." Said Minegishi. They were tired. This was kind of Mob's fault. She was the one who told Sho about New York and he had told dad, and he had only been trying to be nice anyway so she wasn't mad at him, and now they were in New York City. A big apartment in New York City. One big enough….well not really…for everyone. This was one that they had stayed at before.

When they'd been seven people.

"I'm sorry, Minegishi. I didn't mean to be annoying." Said Mob. She stepped to the side as an Awakened carried in one of the boxes of Shibata's kitchen stuff. He came in carrying an even bigger box…and at least she had thought to have them bring in an extra big bed for him…and it was in a room with another bed…and that was meant to be his and Hatori's room. He and Hatori shared a room with bunk beds, extra-long ones because Shibata was almost three meters tall, and there was a room with a double bed for Minegishi and Shimazaki, one which was far away because they could make a lot of noise sometimes, and there was the room with bunk beds for her and Sho…and there was the room with a one person bed for Fukuda…and a two person bed for dad because he just really liked two person beds….

But she hadn't thought about the newest member of the group….and she was such a bad friend sometimes…..

"If my sister wants to count then she can count! Now be quiet, you're distracting us!" said Sho. He was kind of in a bad mood…but that made sense. He had gotten up very early and they had been on a plane for seven hours and now it was early in the morning again and he was tired and stuff….but he couldn't go back to sleep. Nobody could.

Not until they got the bed situation sorted out.

"I-I'm not distracted." Said Serizawa as he shifted on the couch. He fidgeted like that when he wanted to get away. He was tired and planes scared him, people scared him, and he needed to be in a room…but she had no idea which room was his. She had thought ahead to make sure that there was a room all by its self…but that one was supposed to be for Fukuda. It had been Fukuda's room the last time that they had stayed in this apartment…when she had been little.

She had been very little the last time they had been here.

They had come to…well dad hadn't told her what they had been here to do….but they had seen the big Christmas tree. It was still there and they could have gone to see it again…but this was not the time to think of super fun stuff for them to do. Now was the time to figure out what she was supposed to do…

Maybe if she just kept on counting again…but her counting was annoying.

"How about now?" asked Shimazaki as he teleported behind the couch and started to flick Hatori over the head. Mob closed her eyes and shook her head. Not now. Shimazaki was always like this after a long plane ride…and a short plane ride…and pretty much any time that he got bored. She was just…she loved her friends more than anything else in the world but right now…well right now she had to figure out the bed situation.

"Hey, come on. What did I do to you?" asked Hatori. He reached behind himself and knocked Shimazaki's hand out of the way. There. At least that was handled…sort of. She knew that she needed to step in but…well she had this to worry about. This was the day after Christmas…and a lot of people were off for the holidays…most people were because she had made the holiday package more generous…and there weren't enough people to just go out and get another bed…well they could do it themselves but…

But there just wasn't enough SPACE for Serizawa.

"You wake me up at night…or during the day. Whenever I feel like sleeping. Also you never put the soap back in the soap dish and it drives me crazy…and that's not even getting into what you said to Toshi back at the-" said Shimazaki

"Ryou, let it go!" said Minegishi. They were actually mad there…and Mob knew why. They were tired form flying and there wasn't enough plant life around them. They were so tired that they could barely wake up the plants that they were putting around the living room…the very small living room….Shibata wouldn't be able to sleep on these couches. He preferred couches but the ones here were so small that even she would have trouble laying down fully on them…and there just wasn't enough room in here for another couch…or even a big couch all on it's own….

This was complicated.

"Hey! Shimazaki doesn't have to let things go if he doesn't want to!" said Sho. Sho…she loved her brother but he was making this even more complicated for her. She loved him, she would always love him, but right now she did not need him being all love sick and jealous right now. He was tired, he was grumpy, and the boy he loved was in love with someone else. This was a lot for him and Mob, when she was done figuring this out, would give him all the love and affection and caring and understanding that she could. But not now.

Now she had to get all of this over and done with. Settled.

"Ryou, can you handle this? Can you stop tormenting Hatori, learn to let it go, and handle Mob's little brother?" asked Minegishi. Mob wondered if they wanted to smoke. They seemed like they wanted to smoke. She knew that she really wanted to smoke. She didn't care what. She had a box of cigarettes in her Elsa bag and one of those pens from Shimazaki…the rest of her stash had gone missing again…and she suspected that Sho was the culprit but she did not want to get into it with him. She wanted everyone to just…stop it and get settled.

But they couldn't get settled until she got the bedroom situation settled.

"He's fine, he's just a little….upset." said Shimazaki. Mob could feel Minegishi's aura. If she could feel it then Shimazaki could hear it…and Sho's aura was all bright and happy….because the boy he loved had said something nice to him…and she still had no idea how that even worked since Sho had a girlfriend…but she wasn't going to start poking around in his heart now….or ever.

She had enough to deal with.

"Ryou….fine. Just leave Hatori alone then? Come on, it's over. We just passed the one year mark. I don't care and I don't know why you care. Just let it go." Said Minegishi. She did not need them to fight. They were in love. Yes, she knew that Sho was also in love with Shimazaki and she knew that love was a big feeling for her little brother to have…but she also knew that Serizawa was hiding in his bathrobe and his aura was super bright and now Hatori's aura was showing and…and then when Shibata came back he would tell Shimazaki off and then a fight would happen…and then dad would come out of his room…and then he would be all 'Shigeko. Explain.' And then she would have to explain and…

And she had so much to do already….

"Toshi, come on. You know that I can't let it go. What am I? Elsa the ice princess?" asked Shimazaki. That was….she had so much to do. She had to make sure that everyone unpacked and got settled and she had to figure out where she was going to put Serizawa…and he couldn't be in a room with other people…and they only had seven beds and only room for seven beds….and also dad was in his room and he had trouble with Minecraft Story Mode…and Fukuda was in his room and he would come out soon and make the fight worse so she had to fix that too….and her socks were wet….and Sho was in a bad mood…

And now she had to explain Frozen….FROZEN! The movie that they watched at least once a week and had been watching once a week since she had known them all!

"Hey! Elsa is a queen and she is not Elsa the ice princess! She's Queen Elsa of Arendelle first of her name and-" said Mob. She was breathing kind of heavy and her hair was floating and everyone but Serizawa was looking at her, he was hiding in his bathrobe, and….yes…she was upset but….but….

How did he not understand FROZEN?!

"Miss Suzuki? Are you alright?" asked Serizawa from inside of his robe. He was scared and…and he should have been happy…because this was happy. This was a happy trip because they were all going to a Frozen musical and also there was other fun stuff in New York City and…and they were all together in this apartment and it would be like a very long sleepover all the time…but maybe that last part wasn't Serizawa's idea of fun….but still.

This was a happy time….or at least it should have been.

"I'm fine. I'm sorry for freaking out like that just….I have to count. One…two….three…four…" said Mob. She counted on her fingers again. She had to figure this out. Maybe she could…put Serizawa in her room and…well then where would she and Sho sleep? Well she could sleep with dad but then where would Sho sleep? He could share with Shimazaki since he loved him…that was a terrible idea and she didn't know why she even considered that…maybe…did they have futons in this country?

No, they didn't.

She just…had no idea…what she was supposed to do here. She could just…she could share with dad and then Sho could sleep on the couch….no. He needed his own room and…well people couldn't just get kicked out of the living room every night at nine….nine thirty if she pushed it…he could share with….Hatori could sleep in the living room and Sho could share with Shibata…but then Hatori would be out in the living room and Shimazaki wouldn't be able to resist messing with him….and…maybe they could move again? But they had just moved and….

And they had a lot to do as it was…she had a lot to do on her own…just…so much.

"Mob, what did I just say about the counting?" asked Minegishi with a sigh.

"That it was driving you crazy?" asked Mob

"Yeah, so knock it off already." Said Minegishi

"But….I don't know how this happened. I don't know how I forgot that we were eight people now instead of seven…and we can't fit another bed in here and we can't move again…I'm sorry that I forgot about you, Serizawa. Please forgive me." Said Mob. She heard some cloth rusting. Serizawa was coming out of his robe like a turtle. He was worried…and scared…and she should have done more to take care of him. She knew that he needed his own room but she hadn't been thinking…

She was a terrible friend.

"I….I was never angry with you. I can just….I don't need to sleep. I can just stay awake forever and….and be here." Said Serizawa. Mob loved how nice he was being…but that just wasn't practical.

"No, you need to be able to go to your room when stuff gets to be too much. I just…have to figure out how to make more space." Said Mob

"What about Fukuda? We could just make him sleep out in the snow or something. I doubt it could kill him." said Shimazaki

"No, that's mean. Not even Fukuda deserves that." Said Mob

"What don't I deserve?" asked Fukuda. Had he been taking lessons from Shimazaki? Did he have appearing powers now? Could he sense when he'd been mentioned? That…no. This place was just really small. That was all. This was all that could be found on short notice and when they moved again he'd be back to being far away from them all where he belonged. Not that she was mean, he was friends with dad and Sho and…well he was kind of a jerk but…well not everyone in the world would be nice to her. Just so long as he didn't fight with anyone everything would be fine….just no fighting and…and no thinking about her either…

She wished that she'd been wearing her giant sweater instead of her regular one.

"To breathe the same air as the rest of us." Said Minegishi with their back to him…and Mob…well that had been mean but they were in a bad mood. They were cut off from plant life right now, mostly, and also they had just gotten off of a plane so…so Mob would allow this….maybe.

"And yet here I go." Said Fukuda. No. No, not happening. Not allowed. Minegishi could be mean sometimes but it was fighting when someone said something mean back….or something. Fukuda just liked to fight. That was all. He was like Shimazaki but just…not as nice.

"No fighting. Fukuda, we're not talking about you…well we were but we aren't now…and don't worry. I'm not going to make you sleep out in the snow." Said Mob

"That's very generous of you, Miss Suzuki." Said Fukuda. Mob could feel herself making a face before she could stop herself. She hated that…she wasn't a Miss…and the only person who could call her that was Serizawa because that was what he was most comfortable with. Fukuda…well he was comfortable calling her that…but he had called her by name back when she'd been little and…and she didn't have the space in her brain to worry about this right now.

"I-It is…she's very generous!" said Serizawa. He meant it…and he was just being nice…and she liked it when he was nice and when he talked to people but…well she did not need him to be on Fukuda's radar right now. For some reason Fukuda hated all of her friends. Even dad was nicer to people than he was…and dad was…well he was dad.

"He's being serious….and don't start with him. There's no sport in getting the low hanging fruit…and that's not low hanging fruit, that's just grocery store fruit." Said Minegishi. Mob…had no idea why they were being mean….well she got the feeling that they were being mean. She didn't know what they had against grocery store fruit, though, it was very convenient.

"I wasn't starting with anyone, I just wanted to see what was on fire this time." Said Fukuda

"There's no fire, big sis just didn't get enough beds-" said Sho

"Which was not her fault! She did her best and her best is good enough." Said Shibata

"We don't even need beds. I mean we're Japanese, we can all just sleep on the floor." Said Hatori

"So what I'm hearing is you guys are going to sleep on the floor and me and Sho are building a mattress fort." Said Shimazaki

"Seriously? No fucking way! Ok, first we'll get futons and-" said Sho

"No, I thought about that already but it won't work. This is America and Americans only sleep in beds. I messed up, I know I did, but don't worry. I just have to figure out how to…well how to move everyone around so that Serizawa has his own room and Fukuda has his own room and dad has his own room and-" said Mob

"Why don't you just stay with your father, Miss Suzuki? He has a double bed. You can stay with your father and I can stay with Sho and then Serizawa can have my room." Said Fukuda. Oh! That was a good idea…mostly. Sho needed his own room, or one with her, because he didn't like people to know that he wet the bed mostly…and also he needed her to put him to bed and he didn't want anyone to know that he still tucked him in even though he was eleven years old now…

But it was the best idea that there was.

"Fine, if I have to." Said Sho. Good. He agreed too. That was…she had no idea why everyone else was giving each other looks. She felt like everyone, well Minegishi and Shimazaki and Hatori, and Shibata, had figured out telepathy. They were giving each other looks, and Shimazaki was talking with his aura, and she just…had no idea what was wrong with that idea.

If someone had a better idea now was the time to speak up.

"Mob, Sho, you guys are so good with your telekinesis why don't you help the Awakened out. We…have something that we need to discuss." Said Shibata

"What do you need to-" said Sho

"Come on, Sho, let's be helpful." Said Mob. Shibata…well he had asked them to help so they would help. They would help and just…take a step away from how she had messed up. She had messed up and now…well now they had an idea of what had to happen…and she had no idea what they were discussing but…well she was glad that she had left when she did.

Because it sounded like a fight had started.

"Have you people lost your minds!? How can you….Shibata! You of all people should know what it's like to be accused of this!" said Fukuda. Mob grabbed Sho's hand and walked down to the end of the hall where the boxes were. She held his hand tight. He had been pressing his ear to the door. That was just…not something that she wanted to deal with. She knew that she was the one who was supposed to break up all the fights, that was one of her many jobs, and she just…she wished that they could act their ages and not their shoe sizes….

Well not Shibata. His shoe size was even more than his age so he was ok.

"What? I want to hear what the fight is about." Said Sho as she dragged him down the hallway. She knew that he wanted to hear it and she knew what was best for him and what was best for him was not to listen to fighting…and also…well also she was tired but it was less selfish is she put Sho first.

"I know but it's not good for us to hear fighting. Come on, let's carry this stuff in while there's no normal people around." Said Mob. She could do this on her own. When it came to telekinesis she was super strong…and she didn't even need Sho…which worked out because Sho wasn't even making a move to help her.

That was ok.

"You can do it…you do everything on your own anyway." Said Sho. She knew what it meant when her little brother's aura got like that and his tone got like that and he leaned into the wall like that. She put the boxes down and put her hand on his shoulder. He shrugged her hand off…and she didn't let herself feel very hurt. He pulled away when he got upset and that was how he had always been. She was happy that he had stopped hitting her…and compared to that this was a walk in the park…but not during the winter because it was very cold outside.

"What's the matter?" asked Mob quietly.

"Nothing." Said Sho in that way that meant something.

"You can tell me. Are you sad because we left your girlfriend? Because-" said Mob

"No! Just…it's not that. I just…don't want to have to share with Fukuda. He makes me go to bed at nine and-" said Sho

"But that's your bedtime." Said Mob

"I know it is but….just…he takes me phone and DS off of me…not that I'm on them at night-" said Sho

"Which is good because if you don't get enough sleep you get grumpy." Said Mob

"No I don't! I just…I love you and I can share a room with you because you're my sister and…and I'm not a baby and I don't need to share a room with anyone else!" said Sho. Mob…was going to do her best to understand him. Boys were weird about room sharing, maybe, because sharing a room with someone didn't make you a baby. She knew that if she had made Shimazaki share a room with him he would have been jumping for joy…but that was a love thing and also Shimazaki was a good cuddler…but that was it's own thing and she was not going to break Shimazaki and Minegishi up just to make Sho happy…even though his happiness was what mattered the most…

His happiness mattered and that was why she would….think up another idea.

"Alright. I'll…figure something else out. Just help me carry, alright?" asked Mob. She needed to figure something else out before they got back to the apartment…and she had no ideas…nothing good. She could sleep in the snow…or someone else could…and that was no idea at all and it made no sense and she didn't know why she had let that idea get into her brain…

She had too many ideas…and too few.

Someone could sleep in the living room….but then they would have no privacy and also the living room would be cut off…so maybe someone could sleep in one of the bathrooms…but then there could be embarrassing accidents and also they would be down one bathroom…but Serizawa loved small enclosed spaces…but then he might backslide…so then maybe he could share with someone and…someone else could double up…but there just wasn't space and…and…and this was a lot….

And the best idea Mob could come up with, by the time she made her way back to the apartment, was to hang up sheets to divide the room like mom had back when she and Sho had been so little that they had still fought.

"Guys, we have to think up another idea-" said Mob as she came in with some more boxes…and now the living room was even smaller…so dividing it up wouldn't work out either and…maybe moving right now would have to work…but they had just moved…

"Mob, it's been put to a vote and we decided that Fukuda is going to be sleeping with your dad, Serizawa is getting his room, and everyone else is going to stay where they are now. This vote is unanimous. You don't have to worry about anything but getting your dolls unpacked and dealing with that Minori girl, alright?" asked Minegishi. Mob blinked…and then she blinked again….and then once more for good measure. That was…something. She hadn't thought that it would all work out on it's own and…and it had and…

And Fukuda didn't seem like he was alright with this idea…

But she just…well if he had a problem with the idea then he would have to just….deal with it until they moved again. Dad liked him, he liked dad, and she knew that he and dad weren't hanging out like they used to but….well he needed to make up with dad already. They were supposed to be best friends and Fukuda needed to learn not to fight with his best friend…or anyone. He just…if he had such a big problem with this idea when he needed to just…find his own place to live then.

She had her friends to think about.

"Alright. I'll just….let everyone unpack…but not too much because we won't be staying here for so very long. Alright?" asked Mob. Everyone thought that it was alright…well at least nobody told her that it wasn't…and that was ok. She just...was not going to jinx this. Everything had worked out and that was what mattered.

So she couldn't do math and had messed up…so what? Everything had worked out in the end thanks to her friends.


	460. Group Dynamics and an Unwanted Roommate

At some point between Halloween and December twenty sixth a friend group had formed.

For the past thirty something years it had always been him and Suzuki. Sure there was that period between their late twenties and late thirties when Suzuki had been busy with the whole starting and neglecting a family thing but…well even then it had been the two of them. As friends…or as close to friends as Suzuki could be with someone. The two of them against the world. Even when Claw had grown, when it had become more then a fort and a pipe dream, it had always been the two of them. Just the two of them.

It had been maddening.

Really, it had become downright maddening over the years. Just the two of them. Day in and day out. Year in and year out. Day by day….moment by moment…and all of the insanity that came with it. The long days spent dreaming of the day they'd take over the world. Those insane stunts that only boys could come up with…like jumping off of the roof onto a trampoline…or the thing with the shopping cart and the mountain. The weird things they did back before they had girlfriends…and Fukuda was never pretending to be a girl again even if Suzuki threatened him with bodily harm….and he wasn't following any girls around either. The crazy trips they took trying to find other espers…turns out there were other espers and they were asshole…or at least that Mogami guy had been….and other espers were still assholes…and they were assholes too…

So, really, it should have stayed just the two of them.

"Either keep up or find something else to do. It's your choice." Said Suzuki. They were playing…well Fukuda had no clue what they were playing. They had gone from Minecraft to Minecraft with Story Mode…which had just been watching Suzuki play…and then they had gone through some multiplayer iteration of Bomberman that Serizawa liked, apparently he liked things other than spending every waking moment with an eleven year old girl, and now they were playing this overly complicated multiplayer thing that Hatori liked…and it was…something.

Nothing good.

Fukuda felt like more of a kid than the actual kids. He wanted…well he had no idea what he wanted…and that was the childishness of it. He felt like Sho when he got overly tired. He wanted his best friend back and he wanted space from him…and he wanted them to be alone and he never wanted to be alone with him again…but mostly he just wanted to go to bed in his own room where he could have a break from Suzuki and the rest of them…but no, he didn't get a break from Suzuki. They were sharing a room….and a bed….all because a twenty seven year old man was afraid to sleep in the same room as another person…and also the insanity that went through everyone's heads! How could they even begin to think that-

Fukuda was overly tired. What he was feeling showed on his face and aura for a moment. Not Good.

"I'd keep up better if you didn't move so fast." Said Hatori. It came out as more of a whine but Suzuki wouldn't be able to tell. Well he couldn't most of the time. He was kind of selective about what he heard…but Hatori wouldn't have known that. No. Hatori knew nothing and…and Fukuda had no idea what he was even…so he must have been overly tired. That was it. This should have been a good thing, Suzuki finally spending time with other people. He should have been happy that he had been relieved of one of his many duties…he should have been but all he could be, right now, was vaguely pissed off at himself and the people around him and Suzuki and…well just about everyone and everything.

It wasn't a good feeling.

"Or maybe you three are just moving too slowly." Said Suzuki. Fukuda had known him long enough to know when he was pissed off…and he wasn't. He was bored, vaguely annoyed, but not pissed off…which made no sense for him. He just…Fukuda knew how he was with other people and…and this just did not…how much had changed in two months? And how much had he let change?

He should have stayed by Suzuki's side even after…what had happened.

"I know that I am….sorry." said Serizawa. Fukuda had no idea why he was there with them. Apparently he had missed A LOT. Like, a lot of a lot. Especially if Suzuki was letting Serizawa sit with them. His aura was about ten seconds away from a meltdown….and that was normal for him. Fukuda had to put in some effort to see auras so just to have one right there and out…that was hard on him but it must have been torture on Suzuki…and yet Serizawa was allowed to sit there with them like it was nothing. Hatori he could sort of understood, daddy issues on one side and son issues on the other, but Serizawa?

Him of all people?

"Don't apologize, do better." Said Suzuki. That was all he had to say to the man who followed his eleven year old daughter around like a little lost puppy. Suzuki had beaten Shimazaki to within an inch of his life for less…but Shigeko had been younger then…and also she'd had less powers over her father…which was something that Fukuda did not want to think about. Her. Being in such close proximity to her and her friends. Her aura bearing down on him almost as badly as Suzuki's and Serizawa's were…

He would have gone to his room…but he didn't have one of those now did he?

"Sorry….and sorry for saying sorry, President Suzuki…and sorry for saying sorry and-" said Serizawa. He said his sorrys quickly like he was under a time limit or something…and that would only annoy Suzuki. Maybe he should have warned them, the both of them, that Suzuki didn't like groveling unless he was in the mood for it…but then again why would he do that? He had earned his place at Suzuki's side. The other two…well he didn't know. Hatori he could kind of understand, son Suzuki never had and all of that, but Serizawa? Shigeko's newest friend/project/none of Fukuda's business? Now that defied any and all logical explanation.

This whole…whatever this was defied all logical explanation.

Well to the outside observer it would look like a group of friends of wildly varying ages sitting down together and enjoying each other's company. The outside observer, however, was a moron. This was Fukuda sitting in a living room with Suzuki, the same Suzuki who had proclaimed before to have only been able to stand Fukuda's presence and his alone, and Hatori who was Suzuki's…friend? And Serizawa who was way too close for comfort with Suzuki's daughter…and also carried around an umbrella inside. This was just...Fukuda felt like he had spent at least a hundred years wondering what this was, in reality it had only been a few hours, and yet he was no closer to figuring it out then when he had started.

So maybe the outside observer wasn't such an idiot after all…or maybe Fukuda was just an even bigger idiot than he'd ever imagined…or the world had gone crazy….or he had gone crazy…or Suzuki had finally gone full horse shoe and now he was sane….or something….

Or maybe nothing…or everything…or maybe he was dead and this was just what his brain needed to do…or something….

"Stop apologizing and focus on staying alive…and keeping up. You too, Fukuda, what are you even doing back there? Honestly." Said Suzuki. Fukuda practically jumped up out of his seat. Suzuki had addressed him…he wasn't looking at him but he'd addressed him…and Fukuda….he tried to backtrack but he couldn't…

He should have been paying more attention.

"Huh? What? Sorry just…sorry." said Fukuda. What else could he say? He knew that Suzuki hated that word most of the time, sorry, but he just…had nothing else to say. Well he had plenty to say, actually, like he could have said 'what in the hell is going on here' or he could have said 'can we discuss the fact that we have to share a bed' or 'can we discuss the fact that you're alright with that' or 'can we discuss the fact that not only did you kiss me two months ago but you also tried to pin my tongue down with yours' or even 'can we discuss the fact that you're a complete and total hypocrite' and about a million other things too.

But he just stuck to sorry.

He didn't even get a chance to say anything else. Suzuki's attention was pulled from him as quickly as it got there. Fukuda….he should have been relieved that Suzuki wasn't looking at him or talking to him anymore but…well the loss of his aura was like…like getting the blanket pulled off of him. Sort of like how mom would wake him up in the morning when he'd been a kid…but not as bad…or maybe worse…and he didn't even know why he cared. He didn't even like Suzuki. Sure he had his moments but…well look at who he'd become over the years! So what if Suzuki didn't like him anymore or liked him too much or had found other people he liked or…whatever…Fukuda didn't care.

He really didn't.

"Oh no I died again….sorry everyone." Said Serizawa. He tucked his head low into his robe in shame….over dying in a game. Of all the things….

"I just said to stop apologizing…and anyway it wasn't your fault. Fukuda is the one with all the healing spells. If you don't want to be the healer then give the job to someone else." Said Suzuki. Wait…was he taking this just as seriously? There was work that needed to be done, real work, and also…well Suzuki…was throwing him under the bus like….like it wasn't everyone's responsibility to keep up and…whatever.

Whatever.

"No, no, I can be the healer. It's fine." Said Fukuda. He wanted to play and he didn't want to play. It wasn't like he had anything else to do…well he did. Sho's bedtime was coming up so he could have tucked him in and read to him…that would have been a hell of a lot better than hanging out here with these guys…and also there was Claw work that needed to be done…and he had some unpacking to do…but unpacking would take him back to his…his and Suzuki's…room. He couldn't go there. If he went there then he would be acknowledging it as his room….and then Suzuki would just crawl into bed next to him like they were still kids….and it would be…well it was always and would always be weird sharing a bed with him…after what had happened….

He could not risk that happening again.

So he would stay here in the living room until everyone went to bed and then he would just…post up on one of these tiny loveseats and then the living room would be his room until they moved along. They wouldn't be staying here for long, just long enough for Miss Suzuki to visit with the one other child she knew and for her to see that damn musical that Suzuki had dragged them all across the Atlantic for. He could stand to be in the living room for a few days or however long it took for all of this to be over. Even if the couches would have been a tight fit even for Sho…

Anything was better than sharing a bed with Suzuki.

"We can trade if you want. You might be better as a support fighter or on defense…or-" said Serizawa speaking the most words that he had ever spoken to Fukuda. He spoke quickly like he was afraid that a timer would go off or something. He was, honestly, hard to listen to. He wondered how Shigeko put up with it…hell, he wondered how Suzuki could put up with it. He'd never exactly been the master of patience and understanding.

"It's fine. I'm fine where I am…thank you though." said Fukuda because, well, he had to be nice. That was one of Shigeko's rules…and as much as he hated being ruled over by the little girl who he used to carry on his shoulders…well her rules had meaning to them. Serizawa was a very…high strung….person. He had that same tendency that both Shigeko and Suzuki had to explode but with one slight variation…he'd never learned proper control. He didn't levitate random objects like Suzuki and Shigeko did but he did make rooms shake and electricity crackle….and also, presumably, he exploded and accidentally killed people. Not that the intel on his had said anything about a body count, an explosion when he'd ben young yes but no body count, and Fukuda was not going to be the man to start one.

"Y-You're welcome!" said Serizawa

"If you're both done I believe that we have serious work to do." Said Suzuki

"He means the game." Whispered Hatori to Serizawa. He nodded and looked back down at his laptop. Fukuda watched the two of them for a moment before looking back down at his laptop. Right. Serious work. They were up to some serious work together….going through this forest and trying to go up levels so they could kill the boss and get the item drop and the experience so they could get even stronger and fight the next boss and…

And when had Suzuki gotten into role playing games?

He had never had the patience for these. Fukuda had tried and tried and tried to get him to play the first Final Fantasy game back when they'd been kids and all he had gotten was stabbed in the arm with a compass for his trouble. Now he was playing this game…why? Because Hatori had asked him to? What was so…so….Fukuda didn't even know…about Hatori? What was-

What was wrong with him?

Fukuda did not understand himself in that moment, the moments preceding it, and the moments which came after it. All of the moments. He'd just…at some point he'd just stopped understanding himself. Maybe he had stopped understanding himself a while ago. There were times when he looked in the mirror, usually when he got up in the morning, and he couldn't recognize the man standing there in front of him despite the fact that he had barely aged in the past ten or so years. He had just…he had no idea how he had become his person….

And he hated, sometimes, the person who he'd become….the person circumstance had turned him into.

Or maybe he just hated his circumstances. He didn't know. This is not how he saw his life going….but at least he wasn't the other three people that he was sitting with. At least he wasn't Hatori. He may have been an annoying kid but he was an orphan, too, and he had lost his parents in the worst…well second worst way that Fukuda could think of. The worst way was reserved for him and how he'd lost them both. Losing both at different times…that was worse than both at once. At least when they both died at once, and suddenly, it was an over and done with thing….but still….he was glad that he wasn't Hatori, or Suzuki for that matter either, and he especially was glad that he wasn't Serizawa….

So there. He had something going for him in life.

"M-Miss Suzuki! Hello!" said Serizawa. Huh. Shigeko was pretty much in everyone's passive aural range. She was so close that it was hard to tell if she was near or far…but Serizawa was sensitive enough to notice her movements. He announced her long before she entered the living room. Suzuki hadn't even said anything….or maybe he had just been too busy trying not to die.

Either way.

"Hi Serizawa….and everybody. Sho is in bed now so please be quiet. You know how he gets when he doesn't have enough sleep." Said Shigeko. She was already in her pajamas and a sweater too for some reason…one which she pulled tighter as she locked eyes with him. Honestly. Did she still have crazy ideas in her head? Probably since all of her friends did. Whatever. Fukuda wasn't going to argue with them about whatever. He was just going to wait this out for as long as he could. He could deal with the close proximity to everyone, Suzuki being weird, whatever his new friendship to Serizawa was…and he could even deal with Shigeko's indoor smoking.

Since it seemed like her father wasn't going to do anything about that.

"Understood. We'll be quieter….Shigeko." said Suzuki. He was staring at her cigarette like it had personally affronted him. Nobody else seemed to notice or care that there was an eleven year old girl smoking in the middle of the living room. Not even a good cigarette. Peaces. Of all the things…if her friends were going to teach her to smoke then they at least should have taught her about the good stuff. Heh.

He let his aura wash over her.

She didn't have anything seriously wrong with her…yet. The way she lived….the way everyone let her live…the way that he hadn't stopped her from living…it would only be a matter of time. A matter of time before she got hurt…or made herself sick…or got into the hard stuff…and there was nothing at all that he could do about it. Her own father, the most powerful esper in the world, couldn't stop her…so what chance did he have? He was just the guy who used to read her Hello Kitty books and give her baths and carry her on his shoulders….

He had no power over her. It was quite the opposite actually.

"Ok dad. I'm going to go and take a bath now so if someone needs me just wait for a few hours or shout through the door…..and Serizawa, are you going to go to bed soon? I know that you're still on London time but now we have to reset our body clocks." Said Shigeko. Serizawa nodded. He always listened to her…most people did…but he seemed to…want to. That was the feeling that Fukuda got anyway, that he wanted to be bossed around by Shigeko, maybe he liked it because it made for an easy life. Just do whatever the eleven year old girl tells you to.

"I…I'm not tired but…if you want me to then I will." Said Serizawa. Shigeko was allowed to give adults bedtimes now. Fukuda didn't know if he was expected to laugh or to cry at that. She wasn't even twelve years old yet. She wasn't even twelve but she was standing there with a cigarette in one hand and orders for a man fifteen years older than her on her tongue….and everyone just accepted this as normal…

Well this was normal. This was their normal.

"In an hour, I think, but not any longer…and I'll set an alarm on your phone so you don't sleep for too long. Alright?" said Miss Suzuki

"Yes, that's…that's a good idea." Said Serizawa. He just handed her over his phone like it was nothing. She put in his passcode like it was nothing. She ashed right on the rug like it was nothing. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was about time that he reevaluated his ideas on what was and was not normal. Maybe this was just what life was now.

"An ashtray might be a good idea, too, Shigeko. Here, I'll hold onto that for you while you find one. And the box they came in, too." Said Suzuki. Huh. So maybe he did have a problem with it after all. Maybe the world hadn't lost it's mind after all. Maybe there was some hope after all. Maybe this was the first step towards everything getting back to normal.

Or what passed for normal around here.

"And does Minegishi know that you're smoking that thing?" asked Hatori

"No they don't…but they're in their room with Shimazaki and there's music playing and stuff and I don't think that they want to be bothered…so maybe don't bother them." Said Shigeko

"Well just to be safe why don't you leave that with me and the box too. You're getting ashes everywhere." Said Suzuki

"No, it's ok. I can ash on the outside of the tub later…and I can't let you hold the box either. Someone keeps on taking all of my stuff from me…and it's not Sho…but I can't think of anyone else who knows where I keep my stuff. It doesn't matter. I'm going to take a bath now. Goodnight dad and everyone….and Fukuda." Said Shigeko. She gave a little bow and walked off, a trail of cigarette smoke behind her. Fukuda could feel her aura on his…and he didn't understand what was up with her. She couldn't still have thought that he'd been looking at her. The thought makes his stomach turn…but of course she thought that. All of her friends thought that.

That was how he and Suzuki ended up sharing a room in the first place.

He had been ready to kill everyone in that room, each and every one of Shigeko's friends, for even daring to think that he could have been like that with EITHER of the kids…and honestly! How anyone could have been so…he didn't even have words for it…he would never understand. He was the only one actually looking after those kids…well Sho. Shigeko…she didn't want to be looked after. Why would she? She could do whatever she wanted. She did whatever she wanted whenever she wanted and of course she didn't need anyone looking after her.

She looked after others.

That was one way to get people to follow you, look after them. Suzuki wasn't much of a caretaker. That was why people didn't love him. They feared him, they respected him, and they wanted something from him when he rose to power. That was why he got shot at so very often. People wouldn't have missed him. There were plenty of snakes in Claw's grass…and his own daughter…well who knew what made Shigeko do what she did. She was building a powerbase in Claw. She had the most powerful espers in the organization on her side and every day more and more Awakened got written up for wearing blue in their uniforms…and Suzuki did nothing…

And Fukuda…well he didn't want to even think about this.

He didn't want to think about his life or what it had become or what it would become or the fact that an eleven year old girl ran his life or just…he didn't want to think about anything. So he focused on what he was doing. He focused on the screen in front of him. He focused on just…getting through this. He just had to outlast everyone. That was all. He just had to stay up past the point that everyone else went to bed and then this would become his room and he could sleep…until five in the morning when Sho got up or worse, Suzuki, but…well it wouldn't be for long. Soon he'd be able to get to bed.

He just had to outlast everyone.

The first one down was Serizawa. Shigeko had set a bedtime for him and he followed it…even though he had been passed out for the entirety of the plane ride so he wasn't six hours off like the rest of them. Fukuda wondered if he went to bed because he honestly wanted to fix his circadian rhythm and avoid jet lag or if he just liked letting an eleven year old girl run his life. It did make for an easy life. Being told what to do and when to do it. Having something to look forward to even if it wasn't what you wanted. Even if it was insane.

Sometimes it was just good enough to have something to do…than to have to figure it out.

That most definitely would have explained Hatori. Why else did he follow Claw? He'd been taken in from an orphanage but he was…well he was a man now. Legally in Japan Hatori Nozomu was a man. Even if he cursed at the games he played, had fingers dyed a permanent orange, and seemed to think that soda and energy drink were a good substitute for water. Somehow this person was a man and somehow he could be trusted, legally, to run his own life…but why run his own life? With his powers he could have gone anywhere and done anything, the entire world was run by computers after all, but he chose to stay here. He chose to stay in Claw and he chose to attach himself to Suzuki. He chose to follow Shigeko's orders. He was the second one to get to bed. Not because Shigeko asked him to but because he had been awake on their plane ride. He was six hours off. So was Fukuda. He would have gone to bed when Hatori went down, it was getting kind of late even stateside time, but then he would have had to sleep in the room that he and Suzuki were meant to share. Fukuda…he just…

Did not want to share a bed with Suzuki Touichirou.

"Are you ready for bed?" asked Suzuki. He asked suddenly. One minute he had been mining to craft…or maybe crafting to mine…but now he was looking Fukuda right in the eyes…and his pupils were tiny once again…well they had been all night. He had been very focused on what they'd been doing and now…now he was focused on Fukuda…

Well who else could he have been focused on? Everyone else had gone to sleep like normal human beings.

"No, not yet. I think that I'll stay up a little longer." Said Fukuda. Truth be told he was ready to pass out. He was screen sick. How could they have stood to have just…stared…like that? For hours and hours. The younger ones he could understand but Suzuki…maybe that was why his pupils were so small. Heh.

"Well I'm tired now so come to bed with me." Said Suzuki simply. Fukuda…he wished that he could have scooted back. He wished that this living room hadn't been outfitted with nothing but tiny little loveseats. He was close enough to Suzuki that they knocked elbows and knees. He wished that he could have gotten up….well Suzuki would have been offended.

He had been the one to come and sit next to him after all.

After Hatori had gotten up Suzuki had decided to sit next to Fukuda…for his own reasons. Suzuki…Fukuda knew that he was a weirdo. He didn't know, most of the time, what was and was not socially appropriate. Sure he could command an entire organization and give speeches that were, seemingly, hours long, but at some point he hadn't learned that it wasn't alright to sit arm to arm and leg to leg with his male best friend.

Or kiss him.

Suzuki…he liked his space. Growing up he had always liked his space and he hated being touched…unless he was the one doing the touching. Like now. Suzuki was the one who had come to him and Suzuki was the one who wanted to be near him…and Suzuki was the one who could have kissed him if he wanted to. Maybe Fukuda was the one who was looking too far into it. They had done that before, after all, because Suzuki got an idea in his head or had a point to prove or just…other reasons besides wanting to actually kiss Fukuda.

He had been insisting, for the past thirty something years, that he was straight…and Fukuda was going to believe him…even when his actions spoke otherwise. Actions and words.

"I'll go to sleep later. I'm not tired now. I'll just end up keeping you up like…remember when we were kids? And you never went to summer time?" asked Fukuda. Maybe putting some distance between them in the present….by reminding him of the past…was due. At least maybe now they could argue and not…well what passed for an argument between them….but that would be better than addressing…what did not need to be addressed.

"Fukuda. No. I've told you before that there is no such thing as summer time. Staying up all night just because we don't, didn't, have school in the morning was idiotic. In two weeks we would just have to get back to our old sleep schedules anyway." Said Suzuki

"That's the point of summer, Suzuki, to do whatever you want. Besides, being up all night is better than waking up early. Nobody bothers you." Said Fukuda

"I suppose so…though we're grown men now. We make our own time and if we don't want to be bothered we can choose not to be bothered." Said Suzuki

"And this is the time that I choose to make. If I try to go to sleep now I'll just end up being awake all night and then I'll just end up keeping you up…and I know that neither of us has a compass but I know that you can be creative when you want to be." Said Fukuda

"I don't want to go to sleep yet." Said Suzuki

"Then why do you want to leave?" asked Fukuda

"Because I want to go to bed with you." Said Suzuki. He said it so simply like…like he had no idea what he had just said. He wasn't…he didn't mean…he couldn't possibly mean…well at least it wasn't going to be a repeat of Halloween….

"Wh…what?" asked Fukuda. That was…he was looking too much into this. He was looking too much into how close Suzuki was…and how dim the lighting was in here….and how if Suzuki wanted to he could have…well everything that had transpired between them. The things that they didn't talk about…and the things that they REALLY did not talk about.

"I'm not going to go to sleep immediately but I will soon and I know that when you come in for the night then you'll wake me up and I don't like to be woken up in the middle of the night." Said Suzuki. Fukuda let out a breath that he hadn't realized that he'd been holding. He was just overly tired…or whatever. He had just been looking too deeply into it. Suzuki…of course Suzuki didn't have feelings for him…physical or otherwise.

"I could just sleep out here." Said Fukuda. It was a last ditch effort. Suzuki…when he made up his mind then it was made up…usually. He could be persuaded….and it had been getting easier and easier since Masami had left….but Fukuda…he knew that there was no persuading him. Not now. He was just so tired….

But he still tried.

"Don't be ridiculous….now which do you want to sleep on? The right or the left?" asked Suzuki. Yup. There it was. He was decided and Fukuda…well he didn't have the energy to argue with him. He barely had the energy to keep his eyes opened.

"…the left." Said Fukuda. Well then that was that. He was going to share a room with Suzuki Touichirou…alright then. That was…he could do this. He would do this. He had no other choice than to do this.

So that was what he did.

He followed Suzuki to the room…to their room…and sat down on the left side of the bed. He sat down and expected Suzuki to join him, he usually slept fully dressed, but no. Instead he went over to his dresser and….well Fukuda looked away. It wasn't as though they hadn't changed in front of one another before, years of sleepovers and gym classes had taken care of that, but…well it had been a few years…a few years and a few new developments…

That they would not be talking about. Ever.

"You're sleeping in your clothes?" asked Suzuki as he laid down next to Fukuda. He reached out with his powers and turned the TV on. His eyes stayed on Fukuda but the TV went to the Suzuki family Netflix…and Fukuda hoped he left it opened for a while since Sho really needed some parental controls. Really. That was what he would worry about. That and not the fact that Suzuki was, once again, much closer than he had to be.

This was a queen sized bed at least. They didn't have to be shoulder to shoulder.

"I don't feel like changing." Said Fukuda simply. He would have scooted away but then he would have been hanging off of the bed. He wondered if there was somewhere in this city that sold futons. He wondered if he could get away with getting out of bed and going out and looking. He wondered if maybe if he didn't find one he could get away with sleeping in the living room or on the floor or in the tub or outside in the snow or just…

Anywhere other than here.

"Alright then. I have a second a shirt if you want to borrow it. A sleeping shirt I mean." Said Suzuki. He laid on his side and faced Fukuda. Fukuda stayed on his back. One of Suzuki's documentary shows was playing. The one about contemporary Japan that he watched on a loop sometimes. Fukuda had no idea why he watched it, he was Japanese after all, and maybe they could discuss that. It would have been better, something better to discuss, than…well…

Whatever this was between them.

Well there was a comforter between them. A red one. Shigeko had remembered that Suzuki liked red but she hadn't remembered that they had a whole new person in the group…a group that she herself had put together. She was…well she was eleven and maybe he expected too much from her…or she expected too much from herself….

Or maybe at this point Fukuda should have learned not to expect anything in this life but the unexpected.

"I'm fine in my sweater." Said Fukuda. He pulled at his sweater for emphasis. Suzuki nodded, he nodded as best as he could laying on his side, and he must have known that it would have been easier for him to nod if he sat up or laid on his back…and maybe put some space between them….

"Shigeko sleeps in her sweater too. I don't understand it…but I don't understand a great many things about her." said Suzuki

"Like why she smokes?" asked Fukuda. There. A landmine. Good. He would have rather stepped on a thousand landmines, both real and conversational, if it meant that he didn't have to address why Suzuki had somehow gotten even closer to him…or maybe he was just imagining things. He didn't know. He didn't want to look too deeply into this…but he just…

He couldn't help it.

"She smokes…because she is under a great deal of stress, she says, although I have no idea what it is that she's so stressed about. It doesn't matter. I've taken to hiding her alcohol and cigarettes and marijuana when I can find them." Said Suzuki

"Oh…well that's good. I didn't know that you did that." Said Fukuda. Well that was…better late than never…though he had no idea how Shigeko would deal with it once she found out that her father was stealing from her….though she could always just get more from her friends. That was what friends were for after all. Heh.

"Well I started doing this after you stopped speaking to me so of course you would have no knowledge of this new development in our lives." Said Suzuki. Did he sound…bitter…there? Well if he hadn't wanted Fukuda to leave him alone then he shouldn't have kissed him and just…ruined…everything. Shook everything up. Shook Fukuda up. He should have just kept his worst impulses to himself and just…

Things that Fukuda was not going to bring up now.

"I never stopped speaking to you." Said Fukuda. He was telling the truth. They had spoken, briefly, on work matters and that had been it. Anything else would have been too much…like this. This was just too much right now…and he wanted to go the fuck to sleep….but that was pointless. If he went to sleep he would just have wound up waking up again. Same bed, same place, same life.

"You did. I mean…you stopped speaking to me in the way that you had before…and it was just strange to me…that's all. Your presence was missed." Said Suzuki. Fukuda….if he hadn't been laying down then he would have fainted. Suzuki…had…missed him? And he was admitting to it? Who was this person and what had he done with the real Suzuki Touichirou?

Calm down, Tadashi, calm the fuck down.

"You missed me? Why? I'm always here." Said Fukuda with levity that he did not feel. He forced himself to focus on the TV, on whatever they were talking about there, and not on what he and Suzuki were talking about now. This was…Suzuki was not like this. He didn't express his emotions. He exorcised them.

"I…did not feel that way….but it's fine. You're back and now…well now it's fine. I suppose that I did miss you…but everything is fine now." Said Suzuki. Fukuda wondered what, exactly, he had done with his daughter's stash after he stole it from her…because this was a side of Suzuki reserved for when he was either inebriated or grieving….and as far as Fukuda knew there was no one in his life besides Shigeko who he cared enough about to mourn after they died so…so this was…

Fukuda did not have the mental energy to figure out what this was.

"Yeah, everything's great now. Anyway I'm going to turn around and get some sleep now. See you in the morning. Goodnight, Suzuki." Said Fukuda. He turned his back to Suzuki and pulled the covers up over his head…and Suzuki….well he was still a blanket hog. That wasn't new. He had always been a blanket hog but…

Now he was something of a cuddle bug, too.

Or at least a spoon…and this was….not something that Fukuda was going to address. He had always slept in the corpse pose even when they'd been kids but now…well now he was on his side and Fukuda was the little spoon…and there was no way in hell that he was going address this. He was not going to start messing with this Jenga tower of weirdness. No, once he moved that block then the whole thing would come down over his head…

And he did not want to deal with that right now.

"Goodnight, Fukuda…goodnight." Said Suzuki. He said that but he made no move to let go and….and this was just…Fukuda would figure it out later. Maybe he had gone crazy….crazier than he'd already been…or maybe he was having a midlife crisis and was going to be honest with himself about things that he should have been honest with himself about from the beginning…or maybe it was nothing at all…either way it would end with Fukuda being the little spoon, Suzuki being the big spoon, a documentary about traditional Japanese sandals playing on the TV, an apartment full of idiots, and at least a week of…whatever in the hell this was.

Fukuda hated his life…but also he accepted it. It was what it was…and what it was, was, pretty damn weird…but he would just have to get used to it.


	461. Mediocre Coffee but Good Company

There was a Starbucks in every country.

They were a comfort, really, when it came to it. The coffee was mediocre at best but at least it was equally mediocre wherever they went. It was one of their few comforts in this crazy, mixed up world….and other such overly dramatic declarations. They had no idea why they were being so overly dramatic or who they were even making their declarations to. Minegishi doubted, if they opened their mouth to speak, that they could be heard over the canned music, oppressive chatter, and general insanity of the people around them.

"Toshi, what've they got? I can't read." Said Ryou. He leaned down to speak to them. He could tell better than everyone else that it was loud in here. Way too loud. New York City in the winter right before New Year's Ever. The tourists….the never ending waves of tourists…..and the locals…and just…

Maybe next year they could wait out the New Year in one of the Claw bunkers that nobody ever used.

It would have been better than this. A group outing to soothe the soul. That was what this was called, what Ryou had declared it, or maybe Shibata. They didn't know. All they knew was that they needed to leave the tiny space that was the apartment, Mob liked Starbucks, and then Ryou had invited himself along…and then Sho had invited himself along because he was pretty much Ryou's shadow….and then Shibata had wanted to come because he liked hanging out with the kids…and then Hatori had wanted to leave the tiny but somehow exorbitantly expensive space of the apartment because he had some game thing to visit or whatever….and then Serizawa had almost come but Mob had, thoughtfully, decided to leave him with her dad...somehow Suzuki was on babysitting duty…but Minegishi strongly suspected that she had only done that to keep Fukuda near her dad.

Even Mob was picking up on the jealousy vibes that guy was giving off.

"Hey! I can read for you! I know how to read!" said Sho. He jumped up and pulled Ryou by the arm. Really. Minegishi had always assumed that Sho had gotten the jealousy thing from his dad. Suzuki seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn't have wanted whatever poor woman who had been in his life from interacting with the male half of the population in any way. Suzuki still seemed like he would have been the jealous type, not that Minegishi would ever have to know that firsthand thank God, but Sho seemed to have been getting his…well this issue…from someone else. Minegishi didn't know, honestly, whether to laugh or to cry.

Or to bang their head against the wall until they passed out.

It was winter. Winter was that special time of year when the world decided to screw them over. No plant life…well very little of it. There were plants in here. Houseplants. Nearly dead ferns. Limp and lifeless. Or maybe that was them. Maybe they were the one draining the life from them. Or maybe they were the ones doing the life draining. Maybe it was like a circular chain of life draining. One organism feeding off of the one that was feeding off of it. Maybe an endless chain of-

A hand in theirs.

"Are you alright, Minegishi?" asked Mob. Minegishi opened their eyes and nodded. They hadn't even realized that they'd closed them. It hadn't helped. It was still too cold out, too loud, and there was still so little plant life around that they were about to…well either scream or faint or something. They really weren't sure. They just knew that…well as hellish as this was it was still better than hanging out in that tiny apartment with everyone pressing in on them from all directions.

Another hand in theirs.

"Hey Toshi? You need to sit down?" asked Ryou quietly. He was close now. They let themselves lean down onto him just a little. They could stand on their own, it wasn't like they were going to faint or anything, but it was just nice to be near him…this near to him. They forgot, sometimes, how much bigger he was than them…and how much stronger…and how it just felt better to be near to him. Even now when they were trapped in this crowded hell scape…he was there….and he made everything better.

God, they loved Shimazaki Ryou so fucking much.

"I'm fine. It's just…winter shit, you know how it is." Said Minegishi. Mob gave her hand a squeeze and let her aura wrap around theirs. They let her aura…huh. They felt a little better. Like they were under a sun lamp or something. Mob tended to have that effect on people. She was a little ray of sunshine after all.

Her brother on the other hand.

"Shimazaki, come on! They have a lot of chocolate stuff and I know that it's your favorite!" said Sho. He was tugging on Ryou's other arm now…and Minegishi had scruples about hitting kids but…well they weren't going to reach down and pop him one over the head but they sure as hell were going to think about it. Ryou should have handled this…before they got another Fukuda on their hands. Sho spent way too much time with that guy and he was picking up the very worst of him…like this jealousy thing….and unlike with Fukuda and Suzuki there was no way that they could just fuck and get it over with.

No now or later, when Sho got older, thank God. Ryou had been clear about that and they were going to believe him.

"Come on, Sho, you're next." Said Shibata. He reached down and picked Sho up under his armpits like he was a toddler…which he sort of was. He was such a toddler when it came to this…but he was eleven so he had an excuse. He was an eleven year old boy who had no idea how to deal with his feelings. So Minegishi could use what little compassion they had inside of themselves and let Shibata carry him away without telling him Ryou didn't like him that, would never like him like that, and maybe he should have been focused instead on the little girl he was planning on getting child married to and not the grown man who would never see him as anything other than the son he would never have.

Or something. They were too tired to deal with this.

"But-" said Sho as he was carried over everyone's heads. A drop of disgusting city snow, melted into disgusting city water, hit them on the head. Thank God they hadn't washed their hair in a while. It just ran off with the grease that had accumulated…maybe they needed to wash their hair when they got home…and they needed to cut it again too…but even the thought of getting in the shower was too much for them right now…

Maybe they'd feel better when they got some mediocre coffee in them.

"Go on, Sho, you can be first. You love to be first." Said Mob forever being the little peace keeper. Minegishi reached down and patted her on the head. They wondered, for a moment, why her hair felt like yarn before they opened their eyes and realized that they were patting the fake braid that was attached to Mob's hat…and when they got home they'd do the Elsa braid for her. She'd like that. The thought of braiding Mob's hair…well even the thought made them tired…but not nearly as tired as the thought of dealing with their own hair made them feel.

"But-" said Sho as Shibata held him in the air like a ragdoll. People were looking now…but whatever. People could look at whatever they wanted to look at. They didn't mind the attention. They had enough on their mind as it was.

"Get me whatever you're getting, alright? I know you're going to get something great. I trust you." asked Ryou. Sho looked like his father had died. One of these days they were going to have to teach that kid how to be less easy to manipulate….after they taught him not to chase after people who were unattainable and had put him firmly in the son zone.

"I-I won't let you down!" said Sho. Minegishi rolled their eyes. That kid. Another drop of filthy water had hit them on the head. Good maybe they would end up getting some kind of terrible disease and then that would bring them to Fukuda and they could somehow convince him to both sort out his shit and just fuck Suzuki already because, really, it was obvious enough that the kids were noticing it. Maybe that was all he and Suzuki needed. Maybe they were only conquering the world or whatever because they couldn't conquer the feelings that they had for each other. Maybe sharing a bed would be just the thing to get the two of them to admit how they felt and then they could put all of this insanity between them, get married in one of those countries where they could get married, and then raise Mob and Sho to have plenty to talk over with a therapist in twenty years.

Or whatever.

None of their business. That was none of their business what happened between the two biggest headaches in Mob's life…and maybe theirs too. One of those people was their boss and the other was something of a coworker to them even though they worked in totally different departments. He healed people and they injured them grievously. Complete and total opposites. Not their business…and really they had read too many trashy romance mangas anyway. Suzuki and Fukuda were never going figure themselves out like that and they had no reason to even think that they would. They were just…whatever the hell those two were.

Two middle aged men who made Minegishi's life more annoying than it had to be.

Thank God for Mob. Thank God for eleven and a half year old girls, Minegishi figured that Sho had been born premature it would have explained a lot, who were always going to be there for them. Thank God for Shimazaki Ryou, too, who held their other hand. They…well they hadn't been about to faint…and they had felt better a little since being under Mob's aura, but they weren't at one hundred percent…but they at least felt better. Having had gotten out of the apartment.

Being out with people who cared about them….and who they cared about in return.

That was…they cared about Ryou and about Mob and about the rest of them too, even Sho, even though Sho could be some kind of little demon child sometimes they still cared about him. He was…a product of his environment. He was being raised by an eleven year old girl, his insane father, and Fukuda. Ryou had his part in it too but he was more of a friend than anything. Shibata…well he didn't so much help raise the kids as enable every single thing that they did. Not that Minegishi was much better. They could smell the cigarette smoke on Mob…and that would always be one of their greatest regrets. Getting Mob into smoking. Enabling that.

Which was worse than any enabling that anyone else had ever done with these kids…even letting them order whatever the hell Sho was ordering over there.

"Fill it up half with warm milk, a quarter with caramel syrup, a quarter with chocolate syrup, and then stick a brownie in there and then cover the whole thing with whipped cream. I said that right, I know English." Said Sho. Minegishi wondered if Sho planned on living past the age of thirty. It didn't seem like he did.

"Sho…why?" asked Mob. That was all that could be said, really. They couldn't think of anything else that could be said. Why in the hell did anyone think that it would work as….well…anything other than the fast track to slow sugar death? They shook their head and tried not to smile. God….this kid.

"Why the hell not? Make it two." Said Ryou. Of course he would want that. Ryou and his issues with food and chocolate all stemming from a story that they had heard before…and one that they knew had not been embellished in the least bit. They knew what his life had been…and they almost wished that they hadn't. Not because they didn't want to hear it but…well because they wished that it had happened to someone else.

And not just because of the fact that his terrible life had made him the man that he was today.

"Or three? Yeah, three sounds good. I can handle three. I wasn't using my pancreas for anything anyway." Said Ryou. Minegishi couldn't help but smile, maybe even laugh a little, the sort of laugh that got stuck in the back of their throat. They loved him so much, even when he was being ridiculous like this, and even when they knew that later he'd taste like chocolate. He'd taste like chocolate, they liked chocolate, and he knew that they liked chocolate.

Ryou…..

They loved him, they loved everything about him, but they still wished…well they wished that he could have been a little…less. Not less than what he was but a little less…well excitable, maybe. Someone who just…did the things that he did. He was a good person underneath it all but sometimes….well sometimes he could be a lot…which was why he and Sho got on like a house fire. They loved him, they did, and they would never stop loving him…well not unless he did something completely heinous….but sometimes they wished that he could just…calm down for a little bit…

"That's…um…alright. That's good and…um…one for me too….I guess." Said Shibata. There was a war right there going on inside of him, it looked like, and it seemed like the enabling part of him won. Well then he could deal with the repercussions of his actions later when Sho, inevitably, ended up bouncing off the walls from the sheer amount of sugar and caffeine that would be coursing through his body soon. Yeah, Ryou and Shibata could deal with that. Not them…and not Mob either. This would be a Minegishi and Mob day, they decided, something fun and relaxing. Something that would keep them from the insanity that was, well, the world of their friends and coworkers. Yes, just them and Mob all day together.

Their phone vibrated.

They knew who it was. They did some quick math in their head. Yeah, it was about that time in Seasoning City. They would check their phone later. Ryou was right there and he could sense the way they moved and he could her the reverb when they texted and they did not want to answer any of those questions. Not now, not later, and not when it got nicer out either They would never have the energy for that The original define the relationship talk had been enough to send them to bed for what felt like a hundred years.

They'd message back later, after their Mob and Minegishi day, and when Ryou wasn't around to start asking questions.

"I don't know how you plan on drinking that…but I guess that I'll have one too. But normal coffee for Minegishi with no milk, no sugar, and no artificial sweetener." Said Mob. Minegishi patted her on the head again.

"Thanks Mob, you're great." Said Minegishi

"No Minegishi, you're great. Now come on, let's go sit down by those plants over there." said Mob as she grabbed them by the hand and led them over to the corner but the limp and lifeless plants. She sat down first and the plants came back to life. Slowly, of course, because even now Mob didn't have the best control over it. It was either way too fast or way too slow…but that was alright. Just so long as normal people didn't notice. No, they did not need that kind of headache in their lives. They had enough headaches brewing as it was.

But they'd get better, they always did.

"Do you feel better?" asked Mob

"Getting there. Thanks, Mob, for everything." Said Minegishi

"You're welcome. We can go back home after this, I can tell that you're tired. You haven't even checked your phone. I don't know who's trying to talk to you, so maybe you don't want to talk to them, but-" said Mob

"No, it's not that. It's just…shit that we don't need to deal with right now. How about after this you and I find something fun to do. Like a bookstore. How's that sound?" asked Minegishi

"Um….that sounds good but…um…my friend Minori gets up around noon and she wanted us to go shopping today-" said Mob

"The same Minori who told you to ask Hatori out?" asked Minegishi

"Minegishi! Why would you talk about that? Why would…why? That…that happened and…and I don't want to talk about that right now!" said Mob

"Alright, alright, I just meant that I didn't think that we'd have to deal with her until the show." Said Minegishi

"She wants us to get a lot of hanging out in because we never hang out….and she thinks that we're best friends and stuff. I don't know. I think that I might be her best friend because I'm the only person who isn't a b-word to her…but you're my for real best friend. Um…I think that we can be friends with other people and…well you're my only best friend even though Minori thinks that she and I are best friends….and um…maybe you can be friends with Minori too. She's not…so bad…once you get to know her." said Mob

"Mob…sure. I'll come with you. You need the moral support." Said Minegishi. What Mob needed was more friends….but Minegishi wasn't going to tell Mob how to live her life. If she wanted to be friends with this girl then so be it…even though Minegishi would have cut her out a year ago if she'd been in Mob's shoes…but they weren't in Mob's shoes. Her boots wouldn't have fit.

"What's moral support?" asked Mob

"What you need when you hang out with that little bi-girl….and you know what? You probably are her best friend and we're best friends too. You can have other best friends." Said Minegishi

"Oh…so it's a polyamorous friendship?" asked Mob. If Minegishi had gotten their coffee yet they would have spat it all over the table. They would have to settle for making the plant beside them practically grow out of it's pot. This…this was why Mob could not be left alone with that little monster. The things that she taught Mob…not that there was anything wrong with polyamory. Minegishi didn't think that Mob would ever be able to handle it but there was nothing wrong with it…but it was not the thing to apply to friendship…and also not the thing that a couple of eleven year olds needed to know about.

"Mob, polyamory is only for...well this is a big conversation that I don't feel like having right now…but yeah. We can have other friends, alright? You have friends and I have friends…now let's have coffee with our other friends and then we can go…shopping…or whatever with your other friend Minori. Alright?" asked Minegishi

"Alright…but can you try and be friends with Minori too? I think that she could use some more friends." Said Mob. That was the very last thing that Minegishi wanted….the light caught their bracelet. Right. As much as they wanted a day for just them and Mob…well they didn't get to decide these things. Mob was getting older and she needed them in ways that she hadn't before…and Minegishi would always be there for them.

"Mob…I'll try. For you I'll try." Said Minegishi with a sigh. So this was their day, their life, well then that was…it was fine. Sure they were dead tired, and they needed their cup of mediocrity, and they felt a headache coming on…but this was…this was fine. They'd do it for Mob. They'd do anything for Mob…even things that they didn't want to do…and things that they knew that she shouldn't have done.

Even let her drink the cup of…crushed up brownie floating in coffee and syrup…that she had ordered.


	462. I Don't Need to Be Watched

Serizawa didn't need to be watched.

He didn't like to be alone. He couldn't be alone, actually, but not because he didn't like the feeling of it. He did. That was the problem/ He didn't like being alone because in being alone for very long periods of time, or short periods, he wanted to be alone more and more and more. That was why he didn't like to be alone, because he couldn't be alone, and if he was alone well…then he would just want it more and more and more.

But that didn't mean that he needed to be watched.

That was what Miss Suzuki had asked her father to do. She had gone out with the others, and she had offered him a chance to go out to, but he had stayed here. He'd had a hard enough time in Japan. This was America. This was a whole other country. Being outside was hard enough but being outside in a place where he couldn't understand a worked that people were saying…and also this was a city and he had never been in a city this big and…and he just wanted to stay home. Miss Suzuki had let him and she had told he father, to, to watch him.

He didn't need to be watched.

He liked having company. He liked President Suzuki. He didn't know why all the others had such bad things to say about him. Even Hatori had said that President Suzuki could be…not so great…and Hatori was one of his best friends. President Suzuki seemed like a perfectly nice person. Sure he didn't talk that much, and sure he could be kind of bossy, but he was the President and presidents were supposed to be bossy. That was just how it worked. It wasn't like he was mean or anything…so really Serizawa didn't mind sitting near him….

But he didn't need to be watched.

"I cannot stand Ishiguro." Said President Suzuki with a sigh. He was sitting across from him on one of the tiny couches. His friend Fukuda was sitting beside him. They were working now. Serizawa…well he agreed with Hatori, President Suzuki could be kind of bossy in games, but he would have preferred to have played something with President Suzuki to sitting off on his own playing by himself. Miss Suzuki had asked him to make friends with her father and that was what he was supposed to be doing…and also…well also he liked making friends.

He had a lot of time to make up for, too.

"You can't stand anyone." Said Fukuda. He didn't even look up from his own laptop. He and President Suzuki were doing important work together and….well Serizawa didn't mind that nobody was looking at him or talking to him…he really didn't. He had no reason to. He had spent the past fifteen years on his own in his room…he had just gotten too used to having people around him to talk to him…like Miss Suzuki always did….

Not that he needed to be watched or anything like that.

"I can stand people. I can stand you, him, Hatori, and Shigeko." said President Suzuki. Serizawa sat up when President Suzuki pointed towards him. That was all he did. He didn't have anything actually to say to Serizawa…and that made sense. He and his best friend were doing very important work that Serizawa couldn't help with. He had no idea what they were even doing. The whole morning had been a flurry of names and places and words that he didn't know and he knew better than to ask. The adults were working…that was how he felt…

Even though he knew fully well that he was an adult.

"You can't stand any of the Division Heads." Said Fukuda

"No I cannot." Said President Suzuki

"Are you going to replace him?" asked Fukuda

"No, he does good work. I just can't stand these ceaseless complaints…did Hatori say when he was coming back? He's good at sorting out my correspondences." Said Suzuki

"Nope. He just left." Said Fukuda

"This is not a vacation for us…I'll tell him later. He's a child. He's easily distracted." Said President Suzuki. Serizawa looked up. Hatori was younger than him but he wasn't a kid, neither of them were, even though there were times when Serizawa felt like it. He felt like…well he felt like he was the youngest person in the room. Like he had been frozen in time when he went into his room. But he hadn't. The year was almost over. He was twenty seven years old. He wasn't a kid.

Even though he felt like it sometimes.

"He's twenty years old, Suzuki." Said Fukuda

"He's young enough to be my son." Said President Suzuki

"But he's not your son." Said Fukuda. There was a tone there that Serizawa didn't really understand. Maybe he was jealous…he sounded jealous…but he had no reason to be jealous. He was President Suzuki's best and closest friend. They even shared a room like a long sleepover. Serizawa wished that he had a friend like that…but that wouldn't ever happen for him…but if he'd had someone like that in his life then he never would have been jealous. He would have known that being best friends meant something and that even if other people came into your life you would still be best friends. That was how it worked.

Or at least that was what Miss Suzuki had said when she explained her friendship with Minegishi to him.

She had a best friend, too, Minegishi. They were close too. Shimazaki had Sho. Shibata had Hatori. Everyone had someone to be best friends with and…well maybe it would happen for him too. Not with Miss Suzuki, she already had a best friend, but maybe…maybe he could meet someone. The thought was just…it made him dizzy a little…and just…he looked back down at his laptop. Nothing good would come from this…and he shouldn't have been listening either because he wasn't a part of this anyway.

He was all on his own….and that was alright.

"Fair enough. You want me to head over to the Seventh Division later on? I can take Sho with me too. You know, to give you a break from him." said Fukuda

"Yes…but later. Not now. After this we have to get back to London. Son is planning on proposing to his girlfriend then. On Valentine's Day. I don't want to ruin that for him." said President Suzuki. He was such a good father like that. He really cared about his son, even if he could be sort of mean to him, he really did care. Sho was eleven, Serizawa had been at his pancake birthday party, and he already had his whole life figured out…and his dad was alright with that. Well that was just how parents were. They cared about you and they let you do the things that you thought were right for your life…even when you didn't have it all figured out.

Even when you made bad choices.

No. Don't think like that. He'd done what he'd had to do to keep everyone safe. He had thought, for his entire life, that he had been the only person in the world who could do the things that he could do. He'd spent twenty seven years without even the first clue that he hadn't been totally alone in the world. Well he had been wrong and…and he had made the best choice at the time…and mom had done what she had thought was best. She had done her best and he had done his best and now….well now he was here and it didn't matter. He was here and he just…he was a part of something great. Even if all he was doing was sitting on a couch playing a game that he'd played a thousand times before he was still a part of the best thing that he had ever imagined could exist.

Because of this place, because of Claw, nobody would ever have to feel alone…and nobody would ever have to be afraid…ever again.

"I know….I know. He's pretty serious about this." Said Fukuda. He had a tone there, too, like he wasn't happy about this. Why wouldn't he have been excited? He loved President Suzuki's son like his own. That was part of their friendship. That was why he always wanted to spend time with Sho…well the others had their own theories…but the others were the others. They could be kind of…downers…sometimes about things. Maybe because things were just less…good? No, not good. Things were just…less…for them because they hadn't been without...well…everything.

It was important to see the good in things. Miss Suzuki said so.

"He told you as well? Well I suppose that he would have, he's very close with you." Said President Suzuki

"I was with him when he picked out the ring…and before you say anything I tried to stop him but he was pretty adamant about that human tooth…thing…and you know how stubborn he can be." Said Fukuda

"I'm aware, I'm aware…and I have no idea where he gets it from." Said President Suzuki. Fukuda shook his head and laughed. President Suzuki looked up from what he was doing. The whole energy of the room shifted. That was because of how bright his colors were, his aura was. Fukuda's aura pulled back from his…but then he just sort of stuck onto Fukuda's aura. Serizawa wished that Miss Suzuki had been there, she knew more about auras than he did. She knew more about these things…well most things, actually.

"What?" asked President Suzuki

"Nothing." Said Fukuda with a shake of his head.

"No, something." Said President Suzuki. He inched closer to Fukuda…if that was even possible. Fukuda tried to inch away from him but he couldn't. Even Serizawa knew that President Suzuki was sitting too close…but maybe that was just how best friends were….or maybe President Suzuki liked him or something. That was what Hatori thought…and that would have been great! Other people finding happiness...the kind of happiness that he would never have. Not that he wanted that kind of happiness with President Suzuki. He was Miss Suzuki's father. That would have been kind of weird for the both of them.

"Fine. Finish this song for me. Blinded by the light…." Said Fukuda. He sang that last part…and Serizawa was sure that he had heard that song before even though it was in English. President Suzuki shook his head though, so maybe he didn't know it, or maybe he just didn't like music. Serizawa had never heard him playing anything…though it was difficult to hear anything from his room over the music that Shimazaki played and sang all the time.

"….Fukuda…" said President Suzuki

"Come on, you know the words." Said Fukuda

"Fine…revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night. Are you happy?" asked President Suzuki. He spoke a different kind of English than Fukuda did. Better, not that Serizawa was trying to be mean, but he did sound better…should he say that? Or would that have been interrupting? They didn't seem like they wanted to be interrupted….so Serizawa did the smart thing and said nothing at all.

He wasn't a part of this.

Serizawa felt like he shouldn't have been in that room. He shouldn't have been there watching this…because this wasn't for him. It was like President Suzuki and Fukuda were in their own world. He got the feeling that he had just heard a very small part of a very long story…and he wanted to hear the rest of the story…

But it wasn't for him.

"As much as I can be." Said Fukuda with a shrug.

"You were happy to have won….and I only let you win that fight…and only because you…hear…better than I do. That's the only reason that you won. I spoke, and still speak, better English than you do." Said President Suzuki

"Alright, fine, you let me win." Said Fukuda. Serizawa didn't think that it was a question of 'letting' someone win. He got the feeling that either someone was right or wrong in that situation. They had been arguing over song lyrics…and that seemed like it would have been the easiest fight in the world to settle…but they were older than he was. If he wanted to know something he just Googled it. They were older than him, old enough to not have had the internet, and they had been friends…wow. They had been friends for that long. Serizawa had been born in 1989 but a time before the internet and computers….that might as well have been a million years ago….and President Suzuki had been friends with Fukuda for that long.

Wow.

"Wow…." Said Serizawa before he could stop himself. It was just so…wow! Miss Suzuki would have agree with him if she'd been there…but she wasn't. She wasn't there and he was all alone…and now he was being stared at. He was being stared at and…and he wished that Miss Suzuki had been there. His umbrella was near to him, and it had been given to him by her, but it was no substitute for her. For having her near. For having her there to keep him safe….not that he had anything to be kept safe from. It was just her father…and he was nice sometimes…and he wasn't even doing anything. He was just staring at him….

He had really cool looking eyes. Serizawa was going to focus on that.

"Something to add?" asked President Suzuki. He had this way of looking at you like you were the only person in the world…and not in the good way. More like…like he was the only person in the world and someone was staring at him with a telescope from worlds away…but also from right across from him. Close to him. Close enough that he could have….well Serizawa had no idea what he could have done to him but…well he would have done…stuff!

"No! I mean…I don't know what all of that was about but…but it wasn't even about me!" said Serizawa. He wanted to run and hide. He wanted t go to his room and hide and…and he had no idea why. President Suzuki had looked at him before…but not like this…and also…well not when he'd been al alone. He was all alone on his side of the room, on his own tiny couch, while President Suzuki was sitting with Fukuda…and maybe that had something to do with how he felt. He didn't know. The only thing that he knew was that he really wished that Miss Suzuki had been there…but she hadn't been…and she had told him to make friends with her father…and also she had told her father to watch him…

And that was what he was doing.

"It wasn't but I'll tell you what happened anyway. I'm feeling gracious today. One day when Fukuda and I were fourteen-" said President Suzuki. Fukuda, who had been doing some staring of his own, decided to say something. His whole aura had perked up…and now it was focused on Serizawa for some reason.

"Fifteen." Said Fukuda. He was looking at Serizawa and his aura was focused and…well Serizawa would ask Miss Suzuki about that later. He got the feeling that Fukuda…well that he didn't like him…but that was crazy. Sure nobody had anything good to say about Fukuda but he couldn't have been that bad. He was friends with President Suzuki after all.

"Right. Fifteen…not that there's much of a difference…but yes, we were young…and you hadn't even been born yet probably…but anyway my mother had been listening to the radio and that song came on and we spent a week arguing about the lyrics. We bought a record, and a tape, and then a CD before we settled it. We also gave ourselves tinnitus but Fukuda fixed it." Said President Suzuki

"I told you not to turn it up that high." Said Fukuda. He was looking at President Suzuki now. President Suzuki finally, mercifully, took a break from staring at Serizawa and turned to face Fukuda.

"And I told you not to tell me what to do." Said President Suzuki. Something passed in between their auras…and Fukuda…well he just….he seemed kind of mad and so did President Suzuki…but not mad for real. That mad that old friends could be…well that mad that he'd heard that old friends could be…and it was just so…so great that they were friends. He was so happy for them.

Because, really, it was a happy thing to have such a good friend in your life.

"Something funny?" asked President Suzuki. Now he was looking at Serizawa again…and he just…well he had cool eyes. Blue. A very pretty shade of blue…like those earrings that mom used to have…sapphire! Yes, they were cool and…and focusing on how cool his eyes was…it helped…though he did wish that there had been some way for him to run away and disappear….but he couldn't do that anymore.

"No, I wasn't laughing." Said Serizawa. That was the truth. He had been happy and he had been smiling but not laughing. He would never have laughed at President Suzuki…and not just because he was always weirdly serious. He was trying to be friends with him and friends did not laugh at friends.

"Then why do you look like that. Fukuda, he's amused, right?" asked President Suzuki. He turned back towards Fukuda…and now Fukuda was looking back at Serizawa again…and it seemed like something passed between them but he had no idea what. He needed more practice being around people….but with Miss Suzuki. He needed a break and when she was around he could always take them…but she wasn't around…and he would have be on his own and…and he had nothing to worry about anyway. President Suzuki…he was nice…

Or at least not mean.

"Looks like…but let him be. He's just a kid. He can laugh at whatever he wants to laugh at." Said Fukuda. No, he wasn't laughing…and he wasn't a kid….and even if he had been then he wouldn't have been laughing and…and he heard a tone there that didn't seem nice but…well Fukuda had no reason not to be nice to him so…so he was just…

He had to pick one thing at a time.

"I…I wasn't laughing! I just….I think that your friendship is really beautiful! That's all! I mean you've known each other for longer than I've even been alive and you have so many stories and…I just think that's great! And I like hearing your stories and…and I'll stop talking now." Said Serizawa. He really needed a break. If Miss Suzuki had been there then he could have taken her hand and hid underneath her aura…but she wasn't there. She was out in the world with her friend and she was enjoying her time in the city and…and one day he would be able to do the same but…but not today.

Today all he wanted to do was go to bed.

"You honestly enjoy hearing about our childhood?" asked President Suzuki. He was sitting on the edge of his seat and now Serizawa…well he got the feeling that he was being looked through. He felt…well he knew that he wasn't being looked through because nobody could do that…right?

Right?

"Y-Yes…"said Serizawa. That was the truth…and mom had always told him to tell the truth…and even if she hadn't then he still wouldn't have lied….especially not to someone who he wanted to be friends with…and who wanted to be friends with him, too, judging by how he was being stared at.

"In that case are you sitting comfortably?" asked President Suzuki. Fukuda stared at the two of them now, his eyes went between him and President Suzuki and back again, and Serizawa…well he wasn't being spoken to by Fukuda so he said nothing.

"Yes." said Serizawa. He shifted a little…and yes, he was comfortable, but he had no idea what he had been asked that for…not that he would ask. President Suzuki didn't like a lot of questions. Hatori had been very clear about that and Hatori had been his friend first.

"Good. Then I'll begin." Said President Suzuki. He said that with this sort of finality that Miss Suzuki spoke with, too, when she decided that they were going to do something…and Serizawa didn't mind. It was comforting, actually, just a little.

"What are you up to?" asked Fukuda. There was another look, another tone, and another movement of his aura. Serizawa….he got the feeling that he was doing something wrong…which didn't seem fair at all because he hadn't done anything but sit there! No that he was upset…he wasn't…and he wasn't scared. He just…he felt his aura reaching out….but Miss Suzuki….she was too far away.

"He wants to hear about our childhood and I'm bored so why not? I'm supposed to be watching him anyway. Shigeko asked me to. Serizawa, sit comfortably and listen." Said President Suzuki. Serizawa could see why everyone said that he was bossy…but that was alright. He was the President so of course he was bossy….and Serizawa didn't mind. Being told what to do was easy….he didn't have to think about anything or worry about anything or anything. He could just….be…there. He could just sit and listen…so that was what he did.

He wasn't a kid, he didn't need to be watched, but he didn't say anything about that. He didn't say anything at all. He didn't have to. President Suzuki and Fukuda had a lot of stories.


	463. Shopping and Best Friend Chairs

The greatest invention in the history of human consumerism was the boyfriend chair.

Not a chair made form boyfriends, no, though Ryou would not have minded if they decided to use him as a substitute for a chair, this was a chair made for boyfriends. A chair place off towards the wall of a high end department store for the purpose to letting a woman's significant other take a break while they shopped for that oh so perfect outfit….a process which could take days than if performed properly. Minegishi did not have days, and if Mob came up to them with a sleeping bag and a dinner bento they'd have words for her, but they did have hours...and that was how long it felt like they had been spending here in this boyfriend chair.

Or rather the best friend chair.

That was what they were, Mob's best friend, and as her best friend they had a certain responsibility to her. That was why they were here. They couldn't leave Mob alone with this little monster…and they would use the word monster. Not monster in the way that Sho was a monster, no there was no yelling and screaming and kicking and fighting and biting, but there was…well maybe demon was a better word. Yes. That was what she was. This was like an old American cartoon with Minori as the demon on Mob's shoulder whispering poison into her ear.

Not that Minegishi was the angel on this situation.

They were….sort of like a distant relative that gave you good advice and let you play with fireworks at the same time. She had them and they were…well they weren't good for her. They were directly responsible for what seemed like the beginnings of a serious emotional dependency on various substances….and they would never forgive themselves for that…and also they were an adult. Maybe they were too hard on that little demon. After all she wasn't that much older than Mob and she had nobody looking out for her. She didn't have anyone to tell her that maybe this wasn't the time in her life to mess around with older guys, act like a bitch to your supposed best friend, and just…well….

Try and get Mob into that dress.

"Minegishi, this is too short, right? I wouldn't look good in this, right?" asked Mob as she came up to Minegishi holding a dress. Minori said that they both needed to match because they were best friends…and Mob agreed. She had always wanted to be twins with Minegishi and stuff but they didn't wear dresses and she didn't wear pants so she knew that it was never going to happen. Minori knew that Mob didn't like dresses that were that short…but for some reason she wasn't going to let it go….

Heh. Let it go.

"You look good in anything but if you don't want to get that dress then don't bother getting it." Said Minegishi. They took a look at the dress in Mob's hands. Blue and short. No sleeves. Itchy sparkly things on the front. Small enough to fit her….but not the thing that she should have worn. Minegishi…well they weren't her parent and they weren't going to tell her what she could and could not do with her body but…well she was maybe a little too young for the kind of attention that dress could get her. Minegishi had been her age, they had wanted that sort of attention until they had gotten it, and Mob…well she didn't need to go through all of that…

But her life was her own.

"Um…Minori likes it…and she says that we can wear it even though it's blue and blue makes me look sick…but if you don't think that it looks good on me then I won't get it." Said Mob

"Mob, why does my opinion even matter in this situation? You know that I don't know shit about clothes." Said Minegishi. They put their book down and pulled at their t-shirt for emphasis. This was Ryou's shirt, actually, his Beatles shirt. The one without the massive grease stain on it…so maybe his second favorite. Or maybe his third…no….he'd accidentally set that one on fire….

Ryou might have needed some new shirts.

"You know things about clothes…a lot of things! Like…I like how you wear a lot of purple because it matches your hair and I like how you wear a lot of flowers because you like plants and also you wear a lot of shirts that say funny things on the front and it's nice…so…um…can you tell me if this dress is nice?" asked Mob. She didn't know if Minegishi knew about dresses….but Minegishi was really cool, Minori had said so, so if Minegishi said that this dress was uncool then Minori would pick something else for them to be twins in.

"Mob, I have no opinion on dresses beyond the fact that I don't like them…but if you don't want to wear that dress then don't get it. You never wear shit like that anyway." Said Minegishi

"I know, I need more cool stuff like this." said Mob

"Why in the hell….what do you even need new clothes for? Don't you have enough clothes as it is?" asked Minegishi. They weren't one to talk when it came to clothes….they had more t-shirts than they could even get through in a month…but they liked all of their shirts. Mob…she didn't even like that dress! What did she need someone else's approval or disapproval or-

Mob is eleven, Toshiki, calm the hell down.

"So that I can look cool. Minori says that I'm too old to dress like a first grader and also Minori says that-" said Mob

"Mob…who the hell cares what Minori-" said Minegishi. They wondered if Minori was related to Ryou in some way. They'd have to get him to recite his bloodline again. Maybe they shared a common ancestor…or maybe Ryou just hadn't been very careful eleven years ago. It would have made sense.

Minegishi wondered if Minori, the little demon child, had other powers besides appearing when she'd been mentioned.

"Minegishi! She's coming!" said Mob. She could tell by the sound of her footsteps. Even though there were other people here, and the floor was carpeted, she could still tell Minori by her footsteps. Stompy and bossy. Minegishi could be kind of bossy but they were never stompy…but that was alright. Minori was…she was Minori…and she was Mob's friend…and Mob was her best friend….

And best friends….well they were nice to their best friends….and that was all Minori was trying to be…nice. She was just bad at it.

"Shige! Where in the hell did you run off for? The fitting rooms are over there in the girl's clothes!" said Minori. Honestly. Shige could be such an airhead sometimes. She just wandered off in the middle of their very important discussion. They had to dress nice for this thing, it was the world premier fo a famous musical! Sure it was Frozen but…well how else was she supposed to hang out with Shige? All she cared about was Frozen. She was such a kid sometimes. No wonder glasses boy wouldn't go out with her or even be friends with benefits with her.

Really.

She was so lucky that she had someone like Minori in her life. Sure she was a kid but…well Minori could work with that. She was a kid and she was an airhead and she was way too sensitive and she could be kind of bitchy sometimes…but she was still a good friend. She almost never argued with her. She usually did what she was told and that was the way a best friend should be. That was the way that Minori had always wanted her best friend to be.

Well she had always wanted her best friend to be older than seven but she took what she could get.

"I was just asking Minegishi is they liked this, that's all." said Mob. Minegishi nodded and then looked back down at their book. They were sitting in a chair and just…well they usually had more to say. She wanted them to say that it was too short and that…well they had nicer dresses back in the kid's section…or Mob would even have worn boy's clothes. They weren't fully in the boy clothes section, this was girl's coats and then boy's coats, but Mob would have gladly walked over to the boy's clothes and picked out a pair of….

….pants.

"Oh, yeah, Minegishi, what do you think?" asked Minori. She brushed her hair back and tried not to look like she cared what the coolest person that she had ever met thought. Shige may have acted like she had never left the first grade but her friends…..why did she have such cool friends?! Well not glasses boy, he sucked, but Minegishi was cool and they had the hottest boyfriend that Minori had ever seen…and they were just…an adult.

Adults were so cool. Minori couldn't wait until she was one.

"I think….that it's winter." Said Minegishi. What they thought, what they really thought, they could not say to a kid without ending up feeling like a bad person. Kids…they had a soft spot for kids….or maybe their head was just one big soft spot. They would explore this facet of their personality later. Right now they were going to be….nice.

As best as they could.

Minori may have been dressed like a tiny adult, why an eleven year old needed so much makeup Minegishi would never know…..just like they had no idea how she could stand to wear those heels, but she was just a kid. A few months older than Mob. A little girl playing at what she thought it was to be an adult. Minegishi was tempted to poke a hole in whatever idea she had about what adult life was like. It sucked. You got up. You worked. You went to sleep. You dealt with morons. Rinse and repeat. Someone needed to tell Minori…well a lot of things….but Minegishi was not that person.

They had enough to deal with when it came to Mob.

"It is winter." Said Mob. Minegishi to the rescue! This was why they were best friends, they always knew what the other one meant, well aside from the times when they didn't but…well their mental synchronization was great! And it came with one explanation, they were best friends, the very best of friends…and she wished that she could have been best friends with Minori like that but…well she would settle for not upsetting her.

That was a best friend thing too.

"Yeah…uh…winter is coming." Said Minori. That was a thing that people said. Winter is coming…but what was that from…that…that show! The dragon one that nerds liked! Right…she didn't know that show…but was that something that she needed to know? She had thought that it was just for nerds but they were cool now…right? Or were they talking about the books? Oh God….was she going to have to read books?! Wait, no, adults read books and did intellectual stuff like that and…and she needed to read those books….that way she could understand whatever inside joke that was!

She hated inside jokes.

Unless she was the one who invented the joke then she didn't like it…and why did Shige have inside jokes with Minegishi?! Well because they were just…her best friend. They had matching bracelets and everything. Minori was Shige's best friend too! No way were they losing her best friend! She was a better friend than Minegishi and…and she was cool! She was really cool! She was older than Shige and she was really cool and-

And she had to be cool. Right now.

"No, it's here. It's freezing outside so maybe you might want to pick out some dresses with sleeves? And maybe ones that actually cover your legs?" asked Minegishi

"Yeah, I mean if Minegishi thinks that well be cold-" said Mob

"We're going to be inside. It's not a musical in the park, Shige, but….uh….yeah. Maybe we should find something else to wear." Said Minori

"I saw some pink dresses we could be twins in…and they had tulle. You look nice in tulle and in pink too." Said Mob

"I hate tulle, it itches like a bitch…but maybe…well maybe we should bring Minegishi in to this. What are you planning on wearing?" asked Minori. She turned to face Minegishi…and they were looking down at their book again…which seemed kind of rude or…or maybe Minori was just being boring. Maybe she was being too much of a kid…but what did adults even talk about? Clothes and guys and makeup and….politics? Taxes? Tea? What in the…

She'd figure it out. She was Asagiri Minori. She could do anything.

"What?" asked Minegishi. They had been on the same page for so….long…and it looked like they would be there for even longer. These kids….they needed to teach Mob to put her foot down with Minori…and they needed to learn how to tell off kids. God, they had been spending way too much time with Shibata. Any minute now they'd start knitting.

"What are you going to wear?" asked Mob. She hoped that Minegishi wore the shirt they had with the snowflake. That could be like them being twins, or rather triplets, with her and Minori….and also they could wear their belt with the white studs too….and also she could try and braid their hair. It was long enough to be tied back…almost….and maybe she could try and do a couple of braids….or maybe one like Elsa….or something.

There were so many possibilities.

"I don't have a clue. A white dress shirt, maybe? I haven't really thought about it." Said Minegishi. There was no point in thinking about it. Mob would pick something out for them to wear. She loved to dress them up. She'd probably get them a new snowflake t-shirt or something…something that would match her.

"Want us to help? I mean not that you need help but we could totally help you pick out something cute." Said Minori. She tried to sound sweet and not at all like she thought that Minegishi's outfit really sucked. Nonbinary didn't have to mean guy's clothes. Their shirt was way too big and their pants were all ripped up…and not in a cool way too…but they had just met so now was not the time to really tear them apart. They'd probably just say something right back to her and then Shige would have to choose and…well Minori knew who Shige would choose…since she had to make her choice.

"I don't…fine. But there are rules. No dresses, no ruffles, no yellow, sleeves of some kind, and absolutely nothing tight or low cut." Said Minegishi. Letting the two of them play mall madness for a few hours would at least get them out of sight and out of mind…and also it might give Mob a little bit of a break too….and she seemed like she needed one.

"So….guy's clothes?" said Minori. She stuck out her tongue…and then regretted it. She'd probably ruined her lip gloss and now she looked stupid…and also maybe she shouldn't have stuck out her tongue either because that was something that a first grader would have done and she was not a first grader. She was practically in middle school which was practically high school which was practically an adult.

She was way too old to be sticking her tongue out like that.

"Preferably." Said Minegishi

"Minegishi doesn't wear a lot of girl's clothes. They said that girl's clothes have superfluous details, aren't well crafted, and have too many special washing instructions." Said Mob helpfully. Minegishi did wear girl's clothes sometimes, they had so many floral t-shirts and pajama pants that they could have opened up a store, but not most of the time. Today they were wearing Shimazaki's clothes…and it was so romantic! They shared clothes with him because they loved him and they probably wanted to smell like him all day and think about him and…and….and it was the best thing ever! Well Mob figured at least. She didn't want to crush Minori's dreams of them having a double wedding but she was never getting a boyfriend. All the boys she knew were way older than her and even if she did fall in love with someone besides Hatori, not him ever again though, she wouldn't be able to be with him because of the age thing…but that was ok, Minegishi had a boyfriend and since they were best friends that was kind of like her having a boyfriend…

Not that she ever wanted to be boyfriend and girlfriend with Shimazaki….just….no.

"Well non-binary doesn't have to mean 'dress like a guy all the time' you know. Don't worry….Mine….we're going to find something good…and in purple, too, since that's our best color." Said Minori. There, she was being a good friend and including Minegishi. She had even given them a nickname. There. Now they were friends.

"Good hunting." Said Minegishi. They waited until Minori dragged Mob out of sight before they got up and made their way towards he men's clothes. Ryou needed a new dress shirt. He had a terrible habit of ruining his clothes…mostly because he spent most of his time getting up to various shenanigans with an eleven year old. Yes, he needed a new white, no, black dress shirt. He'd just ruin a white one and black went with everything anyway…or maybe red.

He looked good in red.

Well he looked good in everything. Everything and nothing. God had been cruel when he made Shimazaki Ryou. He had no idea how good looking he was…and now they were thinking about him. They were pulling various shirts off of the rack and thinking about pulling them off of him…not again. This was…they wished that they could have gone back to being tired and stressed. Not this sort of…weirdly giddy….and maybe a little…well not horny but…amorous? That feeling they got when they thought about Ryou for too long. Not like they wanted to sleep with him, well they always did he was Shimazaki Ryou, but more like they wanted to…dress and undress him?

Feelings were complicated.

Speaking of complicated feelings there went their phone. Again…they knew what time it was in Seasoning City…and they knew that it far past the time when certain Scars were supposed to be in bed…and hadn't he had some kind of babysitting duty earlier? Yeah, one of the Scars had a kid…or maybe he'd been talking about the Awakened….they'd ask him. They clicked their phone on and…and then they clicked it off. Then on again. He was asking about their travel plans for the New Year….when he'd be able to see them again….

'IDK'

There. That was an answer. That was a truthful answer, too, they didn't know. They didn't even think that Suzuki himself knew. This whole trip had been so spur of the moment….but that was their whole life. Globetrotting trips….relationships…..hookups with interesting people….whatever they hell they had going on with Matsuo now. They liked talking to him, and they liked being with him, and not just to kiss their way across his scars…

They decided to focus on shopping.

They had been about to click their phone off again when they felt someone breathing, literally, down the back of their neck…and Minori was lucky to be alive in that moment. How had…Mob was back there holding a pile of clothes that went above her head and…and how had they worked so fast? Minegishi had severally underestimated the shopping abilities of preteen girls. It looked like they had combed through the entire store for whatever purple clothing they could get their glittery little fingers on…and normally they would have applauded that kind of efficiency but now…

Well now they were trying their best not to smack that little demon over the head.

"Who's Matsuo? And why is he asking to see you? Oh my God, is he your boyfriend too?! I mean I know that you and blind yakuza guy are going out but Shige said that you guys are in a polyamorous relationship and that's so cool. I mean it's nice how you guys started out as friends with benefits and stuff and…oh! Is he another friend with benefits or is he a part of the relationship? When I had a friend with benefits we agreed that-" said Minori. Minegishi decided to be a bitch, then, and click their phone off…why?! This was so cool! She had never known anyone to have two guys at once…and have the guys be ok with it…and two guys at once was awesome! Not that she'd ever…but it sounded awesome…or just two guys together…that would have been awesome too….

"Hey Mob, all of that for me?" asked Minegishi. Yeah, they were not about to talk about ANY of that with an eleven year old they barely knew. They wouldn't even discuss the particulars of their relationship with Mob and she was Mob…and also Minegishi wasn't entirely sure about those particulars but….well they were not the things to discuss with children anyway.

They were just kids. Let them worry about clothes and playing dress up and….other kid stuff that Minegishi had never thought about.

"Mine, why are you being so-" said Minori. She had been about to say bitchy but not in a bitchy way. Really more of a 'you bitch' sort of way than anything.

"These are all for you. I know that you don't like clothes with beads and jewels and lace and sequins but Minori was thinking that clothes are pointless without them since Shimazaki is blind and stuff." Said Mob

"Yeah Mine, this way he can feel you up and it won't even seem like that's what he's doing since blind people see with their hands. See Mine? Aren't you glad you have us? I bet you never in a million years would have thought of that." Said Minori

"No…because I don't like getting felt up in public first of all and second of all Ryou is already well aware of what I look like…but you know what? How about I try some of that on….since you both tried so hard." Said Minegishi. Truth be told the last thing they wanted to do was play dress up all afternoon….well that was the second to last thing that they wanted to do. The absolute last thing that they wanted to do was deal with two kids prying into their private relationships so…dress up time it was.

Even though they would really have rather been in the best friend chair…but it was whatever. As long as Mob was happy, that was what mattered.


	464. Frozen the Musical

Mob hated being the one who made all the rules.

But somebody had to and that somebody was her. She was the one who was in charge of everyone, dad said so, and in being the one who was in charge of everyone she was the only one responsible for them/ She had to make sure that everyone acted right…or at least better than they usually acted when they were all together in a tiny space like this. This was even smaller than a plane and they were packed even more closely together than on the plane…and there was so much that could have gone wrong….even more than what could have gone wrong on a plane. When they were on a plane all she had to worry about was fighting and maybe the plane crashing and them having to figure out who to eat, at a musical there were so many more things to worry about….

Like all the normal people around them.

Well below them. Dad hated being around people, well people he didn't know, and normal people most of all. Mob…well she didn't hate them but she also didn't get them, not really, because they had no auras. They were like espers only they had no power and no auras and when she was around them then she had to hide who she was and what she was…and it sucked. Dad thought that it sucked too, but he didn't say sucked, and she shouldn't have said sucked either….but it did kind of suck. Having to hide who you were and stuff….

But it was just the way that things were going to have to be until they took over the world…but they would never end up taking over the world if they couldn't get along for five minutes…or however long this musical was going to be.

She hoped that it wasn't going to be too long…and she also hoped that it was going to go on all day and all night. A Frozen musical! On live stage! With new songs! And the original voice actors for Elsa and Anna! And original songs! And…and…and this was going to be the best thing ever! She….needed to calm down. She could see her aura and she could tell that she was close to at least making their opera box, that was what this place was called where you were above all the other people, shake. That would have been bad…and she really needed her pen…but someone had stolen it from her. She knew because she had hidden her stuff like normal and even taken a picture but when she got back it had been gone…but she would ask everyone about that later.

Right now she had to get everyone settled in.

She was the first one in, of course, her and Serizawa. She sat him down on the end, he was going to sit by dad and Hatori since he liked them the most next to her, and also he had to be far away from Shimazaki. She liked him a lot, he was one of her oldest and best friends after all, but he had this habit of being kind of a jerk to people sometimes…and this was not the place to be a jerk. Especially to someone as fragile as Serizawa.

She loved him, he was one of her friends, but he was also very fragile.

"Are you alright? Are you hungry or tired or dizzy or scared? Do you want me to have someone take you back home?" asked Mob quietly. She could hear the others getting closer, and she could feel them too, but barely. She mostly just felt Serizawa. His aura was all…not scared like when she'd first met him, but uneasy. She understood why he felt that way, he still wasn't good at leaving the house, and she could have dad take him back maybe since dad didn't seem like he would have really liked this…or maybe Fukuda because he was only here because he followed dad around wherever he went…or maybe Minegishi because they probably wanted to go home and go to sleep….

Well she wanted all of her friends there with her of course but not if it meant that Serizawa would get scared and explode.

"I-I'm fine, Miss Suzuki, I just…need to get used to this. I've never been around so many people before." Said Serizawa. Truth be told he wasn't fine. He was…well he wasn't fine…but he would try to be…for her. She had managed to bring him up here while avoiding the crowds and that had helped. Now he just had to get used to being…here. Also he had to get used to wearing a button down shirt and real pants, too, because President Suzuki had said that he didn't want to be seen with them if they were going to walk around dressed like…well something mean…and he had only said that because he had been stressed out!

He didn't like being in crowds too, he said.

So maybe the way that Serizawa felt was alright. Maybe it was alright to look down at all the people filing in and feel just a little bit nervous….or a lot nervous…but it was ok because Miss Suzuki was near ad she never would have let anything bad happen to him. As long as he was near her then he would be alright….

Well she was going to sit with her friend and brother but…well she had left him in the care of President Suzuki and Serizawa trusted him, too.

"You'll be ok. Just remember that I'm here and my dad is here and all of our friends are here and we won't let anything happen to you…and also if you want to hide under your umbrella you can. That's why I put you in the back. That way if you need your umbrella you won't block anyone's view." Said Mob

"Th-thank you….Miss Suzuki. You thought of everything." Said Serizawa

"I did but you don't have to thank me for that. It's my job." Said Mob. She gave Serizawa's hand a squeeze as he sat down. There. Well that was one person settled. Now all she had to do was get everyone else settled and make sure that they didn't have any reason at all to fight, or not get along, and also she had to make sure that they knew not to…well not scare but…well startle was a better word…or something. They had to pretend to be normal people was what she was getting at. Minori would be sitting with them after all.

Off in the corner with Mob, of course, since she and Mob were friends.

She and Minori would sit off in the opposite corner and then Minegishi would sit by Mob, and then Shimazaki by her, and then Shibata in the way back because he was super tall, and then on the other side in the front would be dad and Fukuda. Hatori would sit in the back with Serizawa but if he and dad wanted to switch spots then that would be ok…and Fukuda was getting sent home if he did anything to bother Serizawa. He had to fight with everyone. Shimazaki was the same way but at least Mob understood him. He did the things he did because he was bored or he wanted attention. Fukuda…well he was just kind of a jerk…

Not that she would ever call him a jerk to his face…because that would have been mean and she was not a mean person.

"Ooh, someone's having dark thoughts. What's all this about?" asked Shimazaki as he teleported in front of Mob. Her aura yelped at that…and Serizawa's practically started shrieking…and if he was planning on spend this entire show doing that then Shimazaki was taking him home. He was here to enjoy the legitimate theatre and maybe throw popcorn on the stage when the annoying snowman came out…and also cuddle Toshi so maybe he would have to hold off on the popcorn throwing….well the bottom line was that he did not agree to come on this forced theatre outing just to hear Serizawa freaking out.

That was only fun if he had set out specifically to do that.

"I'm not having dark thoughts. I never have dark thoughts…and don't teleport! What if normal people had seen?!" asked Mob

"Normal people see whatever they want to see…and nobody's looking up here anyway." Said Shimazaki

"But they could have been." Said Mob

"But they weren't." said Shimazaki

"But if they had been looking up here and they had seen you teleporting then…then they would have known that we were espers and then all of Claw would have fallen apart and also…and also dad worked really hard to make Claw what it is today and…and we shouldn't ruin it for him…and stuff…and also it's not nice to teleport in front of people like that." Said Mob

"Ok, ok, I'm sorry. Anyway, who wants popcorn?" asked Shimazaki as he held out his popcorn bucket. He shook it a couple of times nice and loudly. The sound of shaking popcorn…that was definitely going on his list of favorite sounds. Shaking popcorn, pudding cooking on the stove, Toshi breathing when they were deep asleep, happy dog bark, the ding of the microwave….God, there were so many good sounds in the world. How had he never noticed how many good sounds were in the world?

"Um…thank you." Said Serizawa. It was polite to take things when they were offered to you…even though that had so much butter on it that Serizawa wondered how the bottom of the bucket could take it…but he still tried some anyway to be nice. It was important to always be nice to your friends…even when they shared terrible popcorn with you.

"Where'd you get that?" asked Mob

"Concessions. You know they really should watch that concession stand more carefully. Anyone could just walk up and serve themselves." Said Shimazaki as he sat down next to Serizawa and popped come buttery deliciousness into his mouth. This would have been better with chocolate syrup…or hot fudge…or caramel fudge….or just caramels on top….he needed something sweet. He needed something sweet or he was going to die…well not die but…well it wouldn't be a good time. He needed something sweet and Toshi did, too, because they were so sweet to him…well they were sour to everyone but sweet to him…like a warhead or a sour patch kid….

Did they have candle at this thing?

"Shimazaki, come on, you know that stealing is wrong…and also that's Hatori's seat. Your seat is the one with the sign in braille on it." Said Mob. She had made a no stealing rule and Shimazaki…well he didn't like rules. He didn't like them or follow them and…and she just had to work harder at getting him to listen to her, that was all, and then maybe he would stop stealing. She wondered if he was the one who had been stealing from her, too, but that didn't make sense. He had a whole stash of his own and she…well she was allowed to take from it just so long as she didn't touch his pills or coke…so maybe he was stealing it back? That would explain why he was so high right now. She could smell it on him…and also he was smiling like he did when he was high….so maybe this wasn't the time to talk to him about stealing…

She hoped that he wasn't too high to enjoy the show…and also that he wasn't too high to remember not to mess with people.

"I'm going to assume that you put a braille label on a piece of paper..." said Shimazaki before bursting into laughter. That…God….he loved Mob so much. She was so fucking ridiculous all the time that he couldn't help but love her. Mob had the organization skills of a twelve year old…which was hilarious because she was also eleven!

If Toshi had been there, and if they could have heard his thoughts, then they would have laughed too…well if they had been on his level, too, That was also very important.

"Yes, it's on paper and…oh. Right. Sorry." said Mob. She had messed up. She should have thought about how he couldn't tell what was on paper unless he focused on it or felt it. She was a terrible friend. She was the worst friend in the history of friendship!

"It's o-on the other end…I can show you if you want me to." Said Serizawa. He reached over and patted Miss Suzuki's hand…and maybe that hadn't been the best idea. He maybe should have wiped his hand off first and…well she didn't seem to mind…so maybe it was ok. She just wiped her hand off on her dress and…well she still seemed sort of upset but it was probably at Shimazaki. He was Shimazaki after all.

"I'm fine, Toshi'll show me whenever they get done taking a piss. See you guys later." Said Shimazaki before he teleported off in search of something chocolatey, sweet, and delicious. Something like Toshi but edible.

"I hope he comes back. Otherwise he'll miss the show…and that would suck." Said Mob. She felt her way around the theatre with her aura…and Shimazaki was out of her range….and she really hoped that he didn't plan on doing that thing where he popped back in while they were in the middle of watching something and then asked what was going on. There wasn't any pausing this and getting him up to speed. This was live theatre. This was the first ever showing of this play in the world…and nobody had ever seen anything like this…and she could not afford to miss a single second of it.

And neither could any of her friends.

"Nobody is missing this show…and don't say that word. You speak at least three languages. You know better." Said Suzuki as he caught the end of what his Daughter had been lamenting. There was no missing this show. There was no skipping this. This was important to Shigeko and if anyone even began to think that they could miss this…well then they had another thing coming.

He didn't know what that thing was just yet…but he had ideas. All sorts of ideas.

"Yes dad, sorry dad. I was just worried that Shimazaki would miss it because he teleported away. That's all." said Mob as she made some room for dad. She pointed to his seat in case he didn't notice the big sign that said 'dad' in red letters. The red was because he liked red and the 'dad' was because he was her dad…and also because it felt weird writing Suzuki on his seat because she and Sho were also called Suzuki…and calling him 'Touichirou' would have just been weird since that was his given name and not even his best friends called him that.

"He'll be back if he knows what's good for him." said Suzuki. He sat down but Shigeko made no move to sit next to him…oh. That seat was reserved for Fukuda. Well that made sense, he and Fukuda usually sat together when they had no other choice, but she had been the one to choose their seats. Why had she….was she upset with him in some way? Was it because he had asked her not to say…well she had planned the seating before that….just….

Calm down, Touichirou, you have to be calm now. This is Shigeko's day.

"Wait, why does he get to escape….kidding! I was kidding." Said Hatori as he felt Suzuki's aura on his. Of course Hatori didn't want to escape. What kind of guy didn't want to go to a musical about a Disney princess based on a movie that was made for and marketed towards little girls? It wasn't like he would have rather been anywhere else. He was doing this for Mob, she loved this stuff, and it wasn't like it was going to kill him.

Just kill about three hours of his life, that was all.

"I knew you were. This is not optional. Now pass me some of that popcorn." Said Suzuki. He reached out with his powers and took it from Hatori. The asking was for Shigeko's benefit, Masami had raised her to be mannerly like that, he could have taken this on his own without asking….though he had no idea what he would have wanted to. There was barely any butter on this?

What a waste of popcorn….though he had no plans of giving it back.

"Dad, share that with everyone. If you want your own then I can-" said Mob. She needed dad to be good and nice…and she knew him. He didn't like to share…and technically that was Shimazaki's…and technically he had stolen it. So maybe it was ok for dad to hog it….she didn't know all the rules. She just knew that people were supposed to share popcorn in the theatre…

And also that they were not supposed to shout in the theater either.

"Why can't I have two cokes?! What if I get thirsty in the middle of the show?" said Sho as Fukuda steered him into the play watching room or whatever it was called. He loved Fukuda, he really did, but he could be kind of a dick hole sometimes. Like now. Sho was eleven years old now and if he wanted two cokes then he could have two cokes.

"What if you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the play?" asked Fukuda

"Then I'll go to the fucking bathroom." Said Sho simply. He heard Serizawa gasp. He felt dad's aura on his. He didn't care. He could say whatever the fuck he fucking wanted to and if all the mother fucking cock sucking dick holes around him had such a big fucking problem with that then they could go to the bathroom and suck dick for ten yen coins in the public bathroom like it was golden week.

"Language." Said Fukuda rubbing his temples with his free hand. It could have been worse, he reminded himself, he could have wound up like Shigeko. Shimazaki could have been there, too, to egg him on…so Fukuda decided to be grateful for the small mercies he was given in this world. He had no choice but to be grateful for the small mercies since he got so few of them….like now.

"Shigeko." said Suzuki. His aura swung from Shigeko's to Son's. Suzuki…well he knew how he would have handled it…but he had promised Shigeko that he would not handle things like that anymore. She had been very clear that she didn't like that…and she had been very clear that she could handle her brother.

"Sho, don't say that." Said Mob with a sigh. They has just gotten here and, already, a fight was starting, or at least Sho was starting to curse. She loved her brother, she really did, but she did not love it at all when he cursed. She was sort of glad that Shimazaki was gone off to…Shimazaki things. He would have gotten Sho to say that golden week thing about public bathrooms and how to make them even grosser.

"Yeah…you're too little to say…things like that." Said Serizawa. It always startled him when Sho said the f-word. He was only eleven. He couldn't say things like that! Serizawa was twenty seven and he didn't even say things like that. He could have if he had wanted to…but it just…didn't feel like something that he could do. Also he had no reason to say things like that. Miss Suzuki didn't like cursing and neither did her father.

"Don't say that, he'll take it like a personal challenge." Said Hatori. He wondered if he could slink down and hide under his seat…but he couldn't. Serizawa would have been left all alone and that…well that wouldn't have been good for anyone.

"Hey, I've got this." said Fukuda. He didn't need help when it came to this. He could get Sho to calm down on his own. He couldn't just let Sho talk like that, it wasn't appropriate, and also Masami wouldn't have liked it. He couldn't think of anyone who would have liked this….

"You aren't the boss of me." Said Sho. What was Fukuda looking at him like that for? He wasn't! Sho was eleven and he could decide for himself what to drink and when to drink it and he could decide for himself where he sat, too, and he didn't have to be play watching buddies with Fukuda just because they were already plane ride buddies and also Shimazaki needed him to explain what was happening anyway. Minegishi would have probable fallen asleep or something since they were always tired.

"Here, you can have this water when you're done with your coke. I think that's a good compromise." Said Fukuda. He handed Sho a water bottle. He could feel everyone watching him…well not Suzuki he busy eating butter with some popcorn floating in it….but still. He had this. Nobody else was going to bother. If Sho had two cokes then he would end up bouncing off the walls, and he had enough trouble playing attention to things as it was, and if he wound up bouncing off the walls then he might do something alerted the normal people around them to the fact that espers were, you know, real. Sho didn't have much experience around groups of normal people so really the best thing to do was just to make sure that he stayed as calm as possible.

So filling him with sugar and caffeine was, objectively, a bad idea.

"Big sis…." Said Sho. He looked over towards big sis. She was the only one there who was the boss of him…which wasn't all the way fair but that was just the way that their family worked. She'd let him have two cokes, or even three, since she loved him and she hated to see him upset.

"Shigeko?" asked Suzuki. He'd let her settle this. If it were up to him he would have just given his Son whatever he wanted just to shut him up. If he planned on spending the entire show carrying on like this then Suzuki could not be held responsible for his actions. It was amazing, sometimes, to think that Masami had raised but Shigeko and Son. That Son had actually come from her. It was truly amazing…and not in the good way. It was amazing in the way that made him question the whole nature vs nurture thing.

How Masami could have made a little boy like that he would never know.

"Sho…you can have two cokes…but only get the second one after you finish your first one. Ok?" asked Mob. Everyone was looking to her now…and if she had it her way then Sho couldn't have had anything to drink at all. She loved her little brother, she loved him more than anyone else in the world, but she also knew what soda did to him and she wanted to sit and enjoy the play not chase after him. They were high up, there were things to climb on, and Shimazaki could have been back any minute. Not a good combination at all.

"Fuck yeah…wait….not both at once? So I have to-" said Sho. That wasn't fair at all! He was not a baby, he was the same age as big sis, and he could decide for himself what he drank and how he drank it….and also if he was getting two anyway then why did he even have to space them out?! It wasn't fair. This was so unfair that he just…he wished that Shimazaki had been there. Shimazaki would have been on his side…or they could have teleported away somewhere…or even ran away. Hell, Sho could have ran away on his own…just until the bad feelings passed….but as soon as the thought got into his head actually acting on it became impossible.

These doorways had not been made for someone Shibata's size.

"Aww…what's got Sho so upset? Do you want-" said Shibata as he squeezed his way through the doorway. He could have sworn that he felt the floor give a little bit…but that must have been his imagination…and even if the floor was starting to give it wasn't nearly as urgent as the scene in front of him.

Sho was upset. What could have been more urgent than that?

"I don't want you to pick me up, I'm not a baby." Said Sho. He knew that look in Shibata's eyes. He was going to try and pick Sho up like a baby. Well Sho was not a baby despite what everyone else seemed to have gotten into their heads. He was eleven, he was almost as tall as big sis, he had a girlfriend, he was getting married probably, and also he didn't even need stories to fall asleep anymore! He was not a baby or a little kid and he was sick of being treated like one!

Shimazaki wouldn't have treated him like that if he'd been here.

"Oh…alright. I understand. You're too big to be picked up." Said Shibata. Sho was maybe getting a little too old for him to cheer him up. He was eleven years old now after all. He had met Sho back when he'd been so little…time had slipped right by like his tote bag had almost slipped from his hands. Thank God Mob caught it or there would have been the worst mess to clean up

"But….I've seen you lift the refrigerator with one hand…" said Serizawa quietly

"He meant too old." Whispered Hatori

"Oh, ok, that makes a lot more sense." Said Serizawa

"Shibata….don't be like…fine…but not now. Pick me up later. Right now I just want to sit down and finish my first coke so I can have another one." said Sho. Shibata looked like someone had just cancelled Christmas, his birthday, and the cooking channel all at once. That was Sho's fault. He was such a dick hole sometimes…most of the times….

"Wait! I planned for this! I have drinks and bentos for everyone!" said Shibata. Sho may not have needed him to pick him up and toss him in the air, though that would come later and he was looking forward to that more than anything else in the world….and that was including Mob's birthday party…oh, was that only four months away? It felt like four years….

"So that's what you were up all night doing. I thought that you were just guarding the kitchen from Shimazaki." Said Hatori

"I did two things. I hope everyone likes these…it wasn't easy keeping Shimazaki out of the kitchen." Said Shibata

"Thank you so much! Guys, come on, thank Shibata." Said Mob. She didn't know what she would have done without him. That was something else that she hadn't thought of. Maybe that was why dad had so many people working for him. I was hard to keep track of everything all by yourself.

"Thank you…but you didn't have to." Said Serizawa. To tell the truth he had no clue if he even could eat. He was so nervous. Being out like this….and now this space was getting crowded and the space below him getting crowded…and any minute now Miss Suzuki would walk over to her seat and then he'd be all alone…well he'd be near his other friends but they weren't like Miss Suzuki.

"Well I wanted to." Said Shibata as he passed out everyone's lunches…and it had been worth staying up until four in the morning and then sleeping in the kitchen to guard the fridge from Shimazaki for this.

"What are we doing?" asked Shimazaki as he teleported into a free seat carefully as no to spill his candy hoard. He reached behind himself and felt the paper….no braille…whatever. He'd move if they made him in some serious way.

"Shimazaki! Where'd you go?! What'd you get?! What'd you get!?" asked Sho as he rushed past Fukuda and threw himself down into…well this was supposed to be Shibata's chair but he could stand if he had to…or he could be play watching buddies with Fukuda. Sho didn't care just so long as he got to sit next to his best friend.

"Some kind of candy maybe, I have no clue. Get over here, I need my seeing eye kid." Said Shimazaki. He didn't have to ask twice. Sho practically threw himself down into the seat beside him. That didn't leave any room for Toshi…but he'd move once they came back from wherever…still downstairs talking to…someone small…well he'd sit by them when the time came. He was not spending the whole play sitting next to Sho. Nope, movie nights were hard enough. He did not need to throw any more gasoline on the fire that was whatever Sho had going on in his head and heart when it came to him.

No need to fuel that fire at all.

"Sho, that's not you seat…and you aren't even listening to me anymore, are you?" asked Fukuda. A bento was placed in his hands and he felt a nudge, this time from Shigeko, to go and sit down. He sat beside Suzuki and popped opened his bento and…wow. That was a lot of vegetables…and they were cut to spell out his name. Well that was….intricate.

And also very heavy on the carrots…and…was that avocado? Where had he even managed to get…what the…baby corn too? And sprouts? And red cabbage? Damn…this was going to be one hell of a bento. He'd thank Shibata later for this.

"What did you get?" asked Suzuki as he leaned over. He got rice, an omelet, tiny sausages, and cheese all shaped to look like a space invaders with the Claw insignia, slightly skewed in transit at some point, to look like the Claw insignia. This seemed like the sort of thing that Masami would have done…well women in general would have done. Good. Hatori would appreciate this. Maybe he could even move everyone around so Hatori could sit in the back with Shibata…but then he would be the one who had to watch Serizawa….and also Fukuda would end up sitting elsewhere too.

"My name in vegetables, mostly. You?" asked Fukuda

"It's mostly an omelet…a rolled omelet. I haven't had a rolled omelet in…I don't even remember when. I'll have to ask Shibata to teach Shigeko how to make them." Said Suzuki as he put the popcorn to the side. This was…well Shibata would have to be rewarded for his thoughtfulness and culinary expertise….when was his birthday? Well the next major holiday was Valentine's Day…yes, there, Suzuki would arrange something for him and Hatori on Valentine's Day. Then they would realize how perfect they were for each other and get married…well they could when he took over the world…but before that they could start a family and then there could be more esper children around…

But first he would have to figure out what to do about Hatori's astounding lack of confidence in himself.

"Damn, that look good. All I got is health food…well Minecraft health food but still." Said Hatori as he leaned forward. He felt President Suzuki's aura on his on that way that he did when he wanted to talk to you but didn't know how to start the conversation.

"Shibata is just looking out for you. He cares about you in that way." said Suzuki

"He cares about all of us, dad. See? I got rice Elsa with omelet hair and…oh! Check this out! He cut the blueberries into snowflakes. That's so cool." Said Mob. She wished that she knew how to do bento like this. This was the coolest thing in the world…ok, he was getting a really nice new waffle maker for his birthday…and maybe she could cook for him since he cooked for everyone…but first she would have to do a lot of learning.

She had to get on his level.

"That's really cool…these are all really cool." Said Serizawa. His was Bomberman themed…and he liked it a lot…but also…well he just didn't know if he could eat. He had never been the best at dealing with being nervous and…and he knew that it would have been rude not to eat…but it also would have been rude to throw up, and embarrassing too, from being too nervous. It would have been ride and embarrassing and also a waste of a lot of effort.

It took a lot of effort to make something this cool…and Serizawa….well he just wasn't worth that kind of effort.

"Serizawa thinks that these are cool, we all do. Thank you Shibata!" said Mob. She may have been speaking a little too loudly…but the play hadn't started yet and also Shibata needed to know how grateful everyone was to him for making these. She had no idea what they would have done for food...well there were concessions and also Shimazaki had a big bag of candy…but that was not food. This was real food made with love and caring and friendship…and it was such a shame that she was going to end up having to eat this.

She wanted to save it forever…but she had to eat this because food was for eating.

"Yeah Shibata it's really cool…and I'll eat it…even though it has vegetables…but there's ranch too so thanks." Said Sho as he picked at his with his finger. There were packets of ranch to go with the vegetables….and there weren't even a lot of raw vegetables…but still. He wanted…well he wanted them all to be tempura, not most of them, but…well he'd eat it because it was made with love and stuff.

Even though it was all touching.

"Hey, seeing eye kid, is mine cool too?" asked Shimazaki as he opened up his bento. He smelled…rice. He smelled…ooh, fried chicken….and tempura…and…starfruit? Yeah, that was a big piece of starfruit and…seaweed? Well not all in the same compartment, hopefully, otherwise….well it did all end up in the same place after all…and also he wasn't one to pass up food either.

"It's cool, it's all the Beatles guys and a yellow submarine…and there's a bog made out of a cookie." Said Sho. That was cool….but Shibata didn't have to make Shimazaki's so cool. He didn't have to cut out all of those seaweed shapes and make a yellow submarine out of a starfruit and grapes and berries and…and he didn't have to bake dog shaped cookies…and also…also he just…he didn't have to make this so nice! What was he getting at making Shimazaki something so nice for!?

"Shimazaki, I took textures into account when I made yours so feel free to touch it." Said Shibata

"Seriously? That's the nicest thing you've done for me since you told me which beer was mine." Said Shimazaki

"Well… at least you're listening to me this time." Said Shibata. That hadn't been a fun time at all. Shibata didn't know why he was so annoying, well probably because of the thing he had where he didn't know if he existed if people weren't paying attention to him, but…well he didn't have to necessarily be annoying about everything. But Shibata wasn't going to get into it with him right now…or ever. He was being good now, thankfully, and if he decided not to be well….

Minegishi could hand it.

"Ryou is incapable of listening to anyone for any reason. Personally I think that he's going deaf and keeping it a secret from all of us." Said Minegishi as they nudge Shibata out of the way…well as out of the way as he could be. Did they have to make these opera boxes so small? Really, they should have taken into account entourages of nine people.

Well ten now, actually.

"Minegishi! You made it!" said Mob. She had known the whole time that Minegishi had been coming…well she had mostly been sure…dad had said that this was mandatory and mandatory meant that that everyone had to be here…and that was kind of mean but…well she knew Minegishi and she knew that they would never have left her. The line for the bathroom must have just been really long, that was all.

"Yeah, I made it. I wouldn't miss this for the world." Said Minegishi. A bento box was thrust into their hands….a Totoro bento box…and they had no idea where that had come from in a country like this. Leave it to Shibata to do the impossible.

"Why would the world want you to miss this?" asked Mob

"I don't know. Maybe for the same reason that the world seems to have something against me taking a piss." Said Minegishi. There was the sound of choking. They had shocked…oh. Well they had shocked Suzuki. They had shocked him into choking on something that was no doubt covered in ketchup and loaded with butter. So that was the way to kill him if they ever had to. Good to know.

"Oh my God, Mine, you're so funny!" said Minori as she tried to make her way past everyone. She was FINALLY meeting all of Shige's friends…including…him. There, in the back with his feet on the seat in front of him, was…yakuza guy. Shimazaki. Mine's boyfriend, Shige's friend, and the hottest guy she had ever seen. Even if he was in all black…well that could be cool…and his eyes were closed…well they had to…and that just added to it. Like this mysterious….mystery…energy thing that he had to him. The sort of energy that made the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand up. There was a lot of that here.

Why did Shige have to know a guy that hot!?

It wasn't fair. Not only did she know him but he was totally wasted on her, too. He was sitting right there being all…him…but the only guy that she noticed was glasses boy over there. So gross. He was eating a bento with his fingers and he had Cheeto dust on his sweater…and his sweater had a cat on it for some reason even though they were at a show…and he looked like he washed his face with fried chicken. So gross. What did Shige see in that guy?

Well what had she seen in him.

She had moved on from him, right? She had better have moved on from him. Shige could not be seen with her if she had a boyfriend like that. So she liked nerds…well Minori could work with that…but not with that SPECIFIC nerd. No way. The guy next to her, the one that she was super close to, was a little better. His hair was just….ick…and he was greasy…and he either needed to make up his mind about whether or not he wanted to grow a beard…but at least he was eating his bento wish chopsticks and his shirt was clean…and also he was even older than glasses boy it looked like so he had that going for him….yeah, Minori could work with that.

After all if Shige was into that guy then Minori had a better chance with Shimazaki.

"I heard you the first ten times. Mob, come and sit with your friend." Said Minegishi. This kid…this kid was so hard to deal with…and they'd only had to deal with her for barely any time at all…but barely any time at all was still too much time.

They prayed to God that this was going to be a short play.

"Wait, why didn't the world let you go to the bathroom? Was the line really long?" asked Mob. Minori was looking at her...and she knew that she had to sit with her…but also something might have happened to Minegishi. Also dad was choking but Fukuda was there so he would be fine.

"Shit I have to deal with sometimes. I'm guessing that the seat with my name on it is for me? And the one next to it is for Ryou?" asked Minegishi. They were not going to get into this now. They were going to sit down, enjoy their bento, and watch this stage show based on a Disney movie which in turn was loosely based on a Norwegian fairytale. That was what they had the energy to deal with. Not…all the bullshit that they had to deal with….

Somehow it got worse, actually, when they grew their hair out.

"Oh my God, Shige, you won't believe what happened…also hi all of Shige's friends and her dad and…hey, is that your brother?" asked Minori. No way, how had she NOT noticed Sho. Wow. He got taller. Still really hot though…and maybe less of a baby. It had been a year. Maybe he had done some growing up. He did have a girlfriend now, according to Shige, but…well she wasn't there, now was she?

"I have a girlfriend!" shouted Sho. Now everyone was looking at him…didn't they have something else to look at?! When was this stupid play supposed to start!? This was just…why did she have to be here!? He had known that she would have been there….but he had just…assumed that she would have been off somewhere with big sis! Not just…there…and…and if she tried to kiss him then he was jumping over the side of this sitting…box…thing!

And he didn't care who saw!

"Smooth you are not." Said Shimazaki before he got up and patted Sho on the head. He'd leave him to deal with…whatever the hell was happening between those two kids. Toshi needed him. He knew, well he could figure out, what had happened. God, the world sucked sometimes. Well he could make it a little better on them, he had a bag of chocolate after all, and also when this whole thing was over he could teleport them anywhere in the city and they could piss wherever they wanted to…like off the Empire State Building…or the Statue of Liberty….or that pizza place he and Toshi went to once that didn't do free refills. Or maybe all three.

This was going to be a good day.

"Sho…come and sit by me." Said Fukuda. So that was the girl from the party. Sho had told him that story before. He hadn't been picturing…well he had no idea what he had been picturing…but it hadn't been that…whatever he could call that little girl with way too much makeup on and clothes that did nothing for the winter climate here. God…there were two of them. At least Shigeko wasn't fast in that way. At least she still wore her costumes and played with dolls and insisted on dragging everyone across the ocean to see things like this.

He thanked God for the small mercies.

"But-" said Sho. He had been planning on sitting next to Shimazaki…but he was sitting by Minegishi and they had the end seat…and there was some room by Shimazaki but that meant that he would have to be near Minegishi….but it would have been worth it to have been near Shimazaki…..

"Shigeko." said Suzuki. He had no idea what that little outburst had been about…but obviously if it was something that he should have been worried about then Shigeko would have told him. No, this was something between the children, his and Asagiri's, and he did not concern himself with their affairs like that. Apparently Son thought that this girl had some sort of interest in him, why he would never know, but he had done the right thing and said that he had a girlfriend so, really, there was nothing that Suzuki even had to say to his son. Well nothing beyond telling him not to shout. This was a theatre, not a playground.

"Sho…sit by Fukuda. Minori, come on, let's go and sit down now before it starts." Said Mob. She didn't want Sho to be so close to dad…but him being close to dad was better than him being close to Minori. Right. They'd kissed…and that had been back when Sho had been ten and stuff…but still, she had kissed him, and now…well of course things would be awkward. Especially because of how they kissed….Mob wished that she hadn't ever gotten those kinds of details…but it made sense that he would have felt weird and…

And she really just wanted to watch this play already.

"Fine….alright. Whatever." Said Sho as he got up from his seat. He did NOT want to sit so close to dad…but sitting near dad was better than sitting near Minori. She was the worst girl that he had ever met in his entire life. She hadn't just kissed him, and ruined the first and only good kiss of his life, but she had stuck her tongue in his mouth like...like that was just a thing that people did! Well it was…but…like…adults and teenagers and weirdos….well not weirdos…well maybe, who knew what they did, but it was not the kind of thing that you did in closets with people for a game and even if Hideki or one of those other guys there had wanted to kiss him like that-

He jumped over to his seat. He didn't want to think about this anymore.

"Good landing." Said Fukuda as he picked the vegetables off of Sho…and the chair…and maybe he should have said something about maybe closing his bento before he jumped…but no, not now. Sho was going through enough as it was.

"You have very strange standards sometimes." Said Suzuki as he checked his phone. Good news…bad news….metaphorical fire to put out….real fire which had been put out…Shiori again…he closed his phone. It was almost curtain time and…and it would have been rude of him to have his phone on…and such. Yes. Manners were…manners.

"It's alright Sho, I'll make you another bento when we get home…and hang on, Mob's friend. I made you one too." Said Shibata. He was very proud of himself. He hadn't picked her up or squeezed her or pinched her adorable little cheeks….why were all kids so cute! He wanted to hold her and squeeze her and never let her go…but that was the kind of thing that had led him getting fired from just about every job that he'd ever had…including Wee World…and nobody needed a repeat of that…

Even though that kid ultimately went on to lead a normal life.

"Teddy bears…thanks." Said Minori as she opened up a bento…a homemade one. Sort of like the ones cook made only…well everything was shaped kind of wonky, and there was a lot of tempura which was really bad for you, and also those little fried sausage things she liked…this was…yeah, this was alright. Shige's bodyguard/cook did good work.

"I told Shibata you liked them….now come on, it's going to start. The lights went down and that means that it's going to start soon. I read about theatres before we came here." Said Mob. She had never been to a theatre, one that shows plays, before. She had seen plays, people used to put them on in the library where mom used to take her and Sho. Princess Kaguya. The One Inch Samurai. Momotaro. Stories like that. Little kid stories…because she and Sho had been little kids back then.

They were big kids now and big kids went to real plays.

Even though this was a play of Frozen and Minori said that it was for first graders….but then if it was for first graders then why were there so many people her age there. Well they were with their families…and those families also had little kids in them…so maybe this was for little kids. But she liked it. She liked it and…and she wasn't hurting anyone…so maybe it was ok. Maybe she would never be like the other kids her age…and maybe that was ok.

She could only be like herself after all.

They could all only be like themselves. That was why they were themselves. Everyone was different, everyone was their own person, and that was what made the world interesting. She didn't think that she would have liked friends who were exactly like her. That would have been boring. She wanted her friends to be their own people…even if sometimes they could be a little….fighty. Not that they were fighty now. No, everyone was calm. Even Fukuda….and dad, too. Dad…well the show hadn't started yet but he was leaning forward in his seat…so that was good. The only angry aura there was Sho's…and she didn't want him to get fighty. Especially since he was near Serizawa. He was his usual amount of freaked out…she reached her aura outwards. That was all that she could so.

There was a normal person sitting right next to her.

"Whoa…did you feel that?" asked Minori. She rubbed her arms and pulled her sweater up higher. That was just…static electricity? That was what it had felt like…but that was weird. Her brain must have just been inventing things for her to feel or whatever since this show was so boring. It hadn't even started yet and she was already bored out of her mind.

"Um…look! It's starting!" said Mob. She didn't want to lie but she couldn't explain the whole aura thing…so maybe it was alright to take a page out of Fukuda's book by answering a question with no answer at all. She didn't want to do that, it was mean, but it was better than telling Minori about…everything. She probably didn't know.

But she would know…one of these days.

Not today but one of these days. It would be so great. It would be like when Elsa came down from the mountain and unfroze everything and then everyone was all 'you have powers and I don't but that's cool' and then everyone would get along and…and that was how it would be. When dad took over the world. Not now but…well one day. It was something good to look forward to. Like hearing let it go sung live and….

AND THEY WERE OPENING WITH THAT?!

"Oh my f-wording God…." Said Mob. That was…she knew that the lady who did Elsa's voice was a real Broadway singer but…but there she was and…and she was singing and…and she was dressed as Elsa and…and she was singing and…and…and this was THE GREATEST thing that had ever happened in the history of Mob's life! Well, ok, Sho being born was better…and also the time she had spent with baby Mukai…and her first kiss too….and also when Shimazaki and Minegishi finally because boyfriend and theyfriend….and they day Mob had been born, too, that was a pretty great day because otherwise how would she have gotten here…and also meeting her friends and…

And this was pretty f-wording amazing, alright?!

"Oh my fucking God." Muttered Minori. That song…she had been hearing that song in her head for weeks now, since she had started doing her Frozen research, and…and now she was hearing it live…and Shige was being such a kid right now. She was acting like BTS were down there putting on a show just for them. She was so weird sometimes….but at least she was happy. Sometimes you had to do nice things for your friends…and now Shige would owe her one. Yeah.

This was all worth it.

"Hey, I'm trying to listen over here." Said Shimazaki. He was mostly trying to focus, trying to pick out the stage from the people around him, and it was hard. Too many auras close together like this. There was Suzuki's screaming aura, and Sho's shrieking one, and Mob's…well hers was aggressively sighing somehow…and also Toshi was right there and he always had trouble seeing past them even at the best of time. They were so close and he just…well he didn't want to look past them. He could see everything about them, now, the way their skin shook as their phone vibrated in their pocket and the blood going through their veins and the way their lungs expanded…even the bits of lettuce they had stuck between their teeth. He loved every little thing about them…and he didn't even know why he wanted to look away from them.

They were Toshi and they were perfect.

"It's just Let It Go but with extra verses. Hatori can find you the soundtrack when we get home." Said Minegishi. Well this wasn't so bad. Good atmosphere. The use of light to simulate snow was good. Mob was having a good time, though, and that was the best part. What could have been better than Mob being happy? Well aside from that little demon next to her to have been literally anywhere else. Yeah, that would have been pretty great.

"Have him download a pirated version of this play, too, because I have no idea what's going on." Said Shimazaki

"You can't see the stage from here?" whispered Minegishi. No need for Mob's little demon friend to start asking how a man with no eyes could possibly see anything. Nope, they were not in the mood to let that or any other cats out of any bags. Let her learn the truth when all of Suzuki's dreams came true or whatever.

"I can't see past you….and really I don't want to." Said Shimazaki. He raised his hand and brought it down to Toshi's face. The lifted their head and licked his fingers….and he had enough blood for his heart and his dick but not both…not without his brain suffering anyway….or maybe he was just light headed because he was high as fuck. Either way…wow.

So much wow.

"Well if you're going to look at me like that then at least wash your hands." Said Minegishi after they let his fingers go. He tasted like chocolate, mostly, and starfruit….and where he had managed to get his hands on a starfruit here they would never know. But this was Shimazaki Ryou. He was unknowable.

"Well then if you're going to say things like that then maybe you should get the lettuce out of your teeth." Said Shimazaki before he tipped his head down and kissed Toshi. He didn't care if he missed this thing. This was Frozen. Mob would give him a play by play later. Hell, she'd probably put on a one Mob show for him if he asked her nicely enough.

"Hey, you're missing it! Elsa and Anna are kids!" said Mob. Normally she wouldn't have had a problem with her best friends kissing, even though that was…a lot of kissing, but right now they were watching a never before seen musical of the best movie ever made…and this was the first time that anyone had ever performed it…and also they couldn't just pause and rewind like they could for movies. This was the only time they would ever see this. They could kiss whenever they wanted to! This was important!

Very important!

"Shige! Don't be like that!" said Minori. So he wasn't kissing her, he was kissing Mine, but that was…well if she put her hand up like that then she didn't have to look at Mine…there. Problem solved. He looked like he was a good kisser. All older guys were. They knew what they were doing. They didn't just press their lips to yours and then run away. God, guys her age sucked…mostly. Sho had been pretty good until he ran away…but he had a girlfriend now so maybe he would be better at it. Not as good as yakuza guy over there, though, he was really good…and he was really into it. Guys her age were never into it...and older guys always just rushed to the part where you touched their dicks like…come on! There are two people there!

Not that she would be opposed to…well stuff…if yakuza guy felt like it…or Shige's little brother.

"I'm not being like anything…now watch. See, we almost missed the part where her parents went to see the trolls and…and…are they getting ready for a song? But a song doesn't go here….but there's music…Minegishi, stop kissing Shimazaki and listen! And tell him what's going on!" said Mob. She felt like she was going to die…but in a good way. New song…there was a new song…well she had known that there would be new music, and that version of Let it Go had been almost new…but now…that was…that was….a new Frozen song…..

Yes. This was good. She approved.

"Shige…I think you have a problem." Said Minori. Well she was….pissed off…or getting there at least. That was…alright then. She was freaking herself out and….it was just Frozen. She had a choice between watching people make out and Frozen…and she picked….Frozen? Seriously?

"No I don't, now watch." Said Mob

"Don't waste your breath, there's no talking to her when she's like this. You've just got to ride it out…and speaking of riding it out-" said Shimazaki

"Ryou, stop it! This is a theatre." Said Minegishi. Nope. Not leaving Mob alone with that kid to do…whatever…with Ryou. As tempting as it was….nope. Mob had been looking forward to sharing this with everyone for a while and they had to be there for her.

"Yeah, this is a theatre…so maybe save it for when we get home." Said Shibata. He was happy that they were in love…but they needed to go be in love somewhere else. There were kids here! Also Sho was there and his little heart must have been breaking in half…poor little guy….Shibata was going to make him poptarts when he got home. From scratch. Then he was going to put them in a bento for him…and then maybe that would put his little heart back together…or at least make him feel a little better…

Because that was not the aura of a happy little boy.

"Yeah, shut the fuck up over there! I'm trying to watch…the play…not you guys…" said Sho as he crossed his arms and slumped down into his seat. Why did they have to kiss like that here? Or at all? Why couldn't they just kiss in their room with the blinds closed and the door locked like mom and dad used to? Really. Like Shibata said…this was a theatre….and shit. Not a…kissing people….place….and even if it had been then Sho wouldn't have wanted to watch that!

It made his heart hurt…and his stomach hurt…and his head hurt…and his eyes hurt and just…everything hurt…

"Shigeko…I mean Fukuda. Deal with that." Said Suzuki. Maybe he should have just left his Son at home. Obviously he wouldn't have any idea of how to act. Suzuki had no idea what he was so upset about, this play was very engrossing, but he knew that it must not have been such a big deal because Shigeko hadn't done anything about it and Fukuda hadn't complained about it. No, this was just his son being annoying as usual.

How he and Masami could have made such an annoying child he would never know.

"Sho….here. Why don't you have that second Coke now?" asked Fukuda as he pulled a bottle of soda out of his bag. Sho…did not need more sugar…but he did not need to watch those two make out like a couple of horny kids at the movies either. Suzuki should have said something…but he was for some reason hyper focused on the play of a movie that Shigeko had shown to them a thousand times before.

"This is a Pepsi." Said Sho

"Do you not want it then?" asked Fukuda

"No, I do. Just….watch the play. Now they're singing about the big party thing where Elsa freaks out and shit. Just watch." Said Sho. That was what he was going to do. He had two choices, he could either watch the play or he could watch Shimazaki and Minegishi kiss like they were dying in the desert and trying to steal the liquids from each other's bodies. He chose to watch the play. Sure this was something that he'd seen a million times before, new songs didn't make it any better, but it was better than…well seeing something else that he'd seen a thousand times before.

That he had never wanted to see in the first place.

He wanted to go over there and push Minegishi over the railing…but then he would have gotten in trouble. The fall wouldn't have killed them, just broken all of their bones, and anyway big sis would have caught them…and then normal people would have known about espers….but it still would have been worth it….but he still wasn't going to do that because of all of those reasons…well those reasons and…well if he went around pushing Minegishi over railings then everyone would ask why and then he would have to either come up with a lie or tell the truth…and he couldn't have people knowing this about him. This kind of stuff. He just…couldn't let anyone know…especially Shimazaki…so he just watched the play and drank his room temperature bottle of not Coke.

He could too have two cokes if he wanted to.

He was not a baby. He could have two cokes if he wanted to have two cokes and…and just because he thought about pushing someone off of a railing didn't mean that he automatically would…and just because he wanted to run away and hide didn't mean that he would just get up and hide like Hatori. No he just…had to go to the bathroom…because he'd had two sodas…and not because Shimazaki and Minegishi were all cuddled up…and he was letting them rest their head on his chest…and he was kissing the top of their head too….and Sho's heart had an angry goldfish in it and…and it was swimming in…pee. Because he had to pee. He had to pee so badly that it was in his blood and…and stuff…and….

And he could pee if he wanted to!

"Where are you going?" whispered Fukuda. Sho had been remarkably good for the entire show. No serious outbursts, very little cursing, and he hadn't done anything with his powers either. He'd had such a good streak that he couldn't let him ruin it by…well it was a crazy thought but Fukuda was struck with the idea that Sho was about to shove Minegishi off of this balcony…but that wasn't possible. Sho was capable of a lot of things but killing someone, even Minegishi, wasn't one of them….

His father, yes, but not him.

"To the bathroom." Said Sho as he got up.

"Alright, I think that I saw one to the left-" said Fukuda

"I can go on my own, I'm not going to get lost." Said Sho. Fukuda, for some reason, thought that he was still a little kid…everyone did…but he wasn't. He wasn't and it wasn't fair. That he had to be a little kid forever but big sis got to be an adult…and stuff. She got to be who she was but he…well he would never get to be who he was.

"This is a big place, Sho, let me walk you." Said Fukuda. The danger was not Sho getting lost, the danger was in him running away. This was a big, unfamiliar, city and…well Sho had a good sense of direction…but finding him would be a challenge. He knew Sho and he knew that he didn't always act rationally when he got upset like this…and this whole situation was obviously very upsetting.

"I'm eleven, I can go by myself. Stop treating me like a baby." Said Sho

"I'm not treating you like a-" said Fukuda

"Sho, either go to the bathroom or use that empty soda bottle. Either way move over, I can't see." Said Hatori. He wasn't….that…invested in it. Not like…and weirdly enough her dad….but he did want to see what happened….and also he did not want to have to deal with Sho getting upset. He especially didn't want Mob to have to deal with that. She had been talking about this day nonstop. There was no way in hell that she would be able to handle it being ruined for her.

"Hatori, that's disgusting. Son, go to the bathroom like a normal human being. Fukuda, he's not an infant. Everyone, shut up. This play is hard enough to follow as it is." Said Suzuki. This was not like the movie at all. Character motivations had been changed. Now Elsa had run away not because she was discovered but because she had been discovered and shunned….always a possibility….they had removed the possibility that the sister also had powers…which would have made a lot more sense…and also changed the narrative of the story entirely. Honestly. He'd need Shigeko to explain this to him later.

"You heard my dad." Said Sho. Fukuda let him go, which was good. Sho felt like maybe he was being a jerk but…well he wasn't a baby and he could go places on his own! He got up and walked past Fukuda…and dad shoved him out of the way with his powers….but that was fine. Fuck dad. Fuck him or being a mother fucker.

And other stuff.

Sho took a step in the dark…and something caught his foot. He fell forward and would have caught himself but someone else caught him. Dad. Dad's aura…and he wasn't looking at him but he caught him…and his aura was showing but not to normal people. At least he figured that dad would have had more sense than to show normal people his aura…but then again Minori was staring at him now…

But girls always stared at him. That was just how they were.

"S-Sorry, Sho….are you alright? I didn't mean to-" said Serizawa as he picked his umbrella up off the floor. He hoped that Sho was alright. The President had caught him but…but maybe he wasn't alright and…and he could see his colors and…well he was getting better at least. As soon as his colors, the purple, popped up then they disappeared into a sea of red.

Good. He hadn't freaked out.

"I'm fine! I'm not a baby! I can go to the bathroom on my own and I can walk on my own too!" said Sho. He didn't wait to hear what Serizawa had to say, he just kept walking, and he had to keep walking. If he stayed then he could have said something mean…and he didn't want to say anything mean. Not to Serizawa, he didn't deserve it, and big sis would have just gotten upset with him if he said something mean to Serizawa. She didn't deserve to feel bad today. She had enough to deal with, sitting by that bitch bastard dick hole of a friend of hers, and also she had been looking forward to this for a while…so Sho was not going to ruin this for her.

And he was not going to run away, either.

On his way to the bathroom he thought about it. How he would have been able to make it pretty far before someone came after him. How dad's aura wasn't paying attention to his, how he could have made it maybe halfway across the city by the time this stupid play was over, and how he could have been away for hours before he was found. Shimazaki would have been the one to find him….since he could teleport and stuff…and then they'd hang out and, for a little bit, he could forget about how Minegishi was a person in their lives and in Shimazaki's heart and drawn on his arms and…and he could have just pretended….well he could have pretended anything that he wanted to pretend. That was the good thing about playing pretend….

But he was much too old to be playing pretend.

So he didn't. He took a piss, he washed his hands, and the he…well it took him a minute to leave the bathroom. He had to walk back to big sis and the others. He had to go back and…and big sis would be worried about him. She would worry and…and he had been wrong when he had thought that nobody would notice if he left. Big sis would. She always did. She would get up from the play, the one that she had been looking forward to probably since the day she had been born, and she would look for him…and he couldn't do that to her.

Big sis wasn't the one who had gone looking for him.

"This is the boy's bathroom. The girl's bathroom is over there." said Sho as he walked past Minori. She had been waiting for him. Either that or she couldn't read. He'd have believed either. Well whatever the reason it didn't matter. He wasn't going to do…whatever she wanted to do. Whatever she wanted to do with him. She had kissed him once before and it had been the very worst kiss of his life, and he'd had a lot of them.

"Hey, where are you going? You don't have to go, you know." asked Minori as she reached out and gabbed Shi's hand. He pulled it away and glared at her. Honestly. What was his problem? Was every Suzuki permanently a first grader on the inside or whatever?

"Will you just leave me alone?! I have a girlfriend." Said Sho. That should have been enough for her. Some other girl had taken him and he, like all good people, knew that cheating was wrong. She should have known that too. It wasn't like it was some big, complicated, thing.

"Is she here? I don't see her." said Minori as she leaned in close. That one got guys, even guys her age. When she got a boyfriend then she was never letting him out of her sight, she knew how guys were, but right now…well she didn't have a boyfriend and she wasn't trying to go out with Sho…well maybe she'd see where this went…and it had to go somewhere.

It had never not gone anywhere before.

"Are you deaf or something? I have a girlfriend and even if I didn't I wouldn't kiss you in a million years! Now leave me alone and go be weird to someone else!" said Sho. She was leaning in to kiss him…and he wanted to push her. He wanted to push her so hard that she fell down and then he wanted to push her again just to get all of these feelings out…but he didn't. He couldn't. She was a girl and only the biggest losers in the world smacked around women. Shimazaki had said so and he knew a lot about fighting…and also girls….

He was proud of himself for not hitting Minori…even though he really wanted to.

"I'm not the one being weird here. God, what is the MATTER with you? Why are you so weird?" said Minori

"I'm not the one trying to kiss someone who has a girlfriend…I mean boyfriend…I mean-" said Sho

"You know what, fuck you! Plenty of guys would be happy to have me to just…fuck you!" said Minori. She shoved Sho once, then twice, and then three times…and then once more before he wound up on the ground. God. She knew that everyone had an inner child but Suzuki's took it to a weird place. Well fuck Suzuki Sho then. His girlfriend was probably ugly as fuck too! She was probably flat as a board and…and her teeth were probably bad because she was British and they had really bad teeth…and she probably had an annoying voice and….and whatever! Fuck him and his bad taste!

"I wouldn't if you were the last girl on Earth…bitch." Said Sho as he sat up. She pushed him one more time before she walked away…and he let her get out of sight before he followed her. She really was such a bitch…and a bastard…and a dick hole…and an asshole….and a dick….and a girl's dick…and he knew that girls didn't have those but that was what she was.

Fuck her.

Fuck her and fuck…fuck everything! He was normal! He was doing what he had to do to be normal and he was doing the hell out of that! He had a girlfriend and she loved him and he was going to marry her and…and if cheating on your girlfriend was normal then…then he wanted to be weird! Because cheating was wrong! When you had a girlfriend, when you made the biggest promise that you could ever make to someone, then you did not break it! Not ever. Not even for the best girl…or guy…in the world. He'd made a promise and…and even if Shimazaki teleported right in front of him and did that wall slam thing that guys did in those mangas big sis read…he was so…if Shimazaki did that and told Sho that he wanted to kiss him like he kissed Minegishi, and do all of that other stuff that he did with Minegishi too, then Sho would have told him no….because he was not a cheater.

He was a good person.

He hadn't hit her back and that made him a good person. He didn't run way and that made him a good person. He walked back to the stupid box thing, back to his chair, and didn't yell or scream or curse or anything. Not even when he tripped over Serizawa's stupid umbrella that he carried around all the time with him. He didn't curse at him or hit him or throw him over the railing….even though he wanted…he wanted to but not to Serizawa just…just to…well to Minori…or maybe to himself…

Not to die just…to not be there anymore.

"S-sorry again…I really am!" said Serizawa. Sho didn't say anything to him, he just shoved his aura into his, and that…well Serizawa had deserved that for being in his way. Poor Sho. He was just a little guy and he was just upset…because he almost tripped.

"Whatever….shut up and watch the play!" said Sho. He said that and then he jumped back into his seat. He couldn't believe that he had wanted to…and he should have been better and….and how long was this play?! Wasn't there supposed to be intermission or…or something!? A break for the actors….and him. He needed a break…but no. If there was a break then…then Minori would try and talk to him…and she was looking at him. They made eye contact. She stuck out her tongue.

He didn't want to think about her tongue.

"Sho? What's wrong?" asked Fukuda. He traced the path Sho's eyes made. There, to Shigeko's friend. Shigeko was on the edge of her seat, she hadn't done anything, but her friend…that same fast little girl who…he couldn't let Sho out of his sight. He shouldn't have let Sho out of his sight. He needed to be watched better…and Fukuda….he should have done a better job of watching him.

"Nothing. Leave me alone." Said Sho. He pulled his arms into the sleeves of his coat. This was…he felt…he weirdly felt naked…even though he wasn't naked. Why would he have been? This was a play and…and it felt like Minori had seen him naked…but of course she hadn't! Of course she hadn't and…and she never would…but Emmy would…when they got older…because he had to…because Emmy would want to do that stuff with him…and then he would have to. It wasn't weird to say 'no' to Minori because she was not his girlfriend but Emmy was and….

And he just wanted to watch the play.

"He isn't hurt…is he?" asked Serizawa. He held his umbrella in both hands. He had no idea….well if he hurt him on accident then he never would have been able to forgive himself…and he already had so much in his life that he would never be able to forgive himself over…

Too much.

"Don't freak out, he's fine." Said Hatori. He didn't know what he could do if Serizawa freaked out and exploded…what Mob expected him to do…but he would….he patted him on the back. It hurt, there was a lot of energy clinging to him, but he still patted him on the back. He was a good friend like that…or at least he tried to be.

"Sho, you know that you can tell me-" said Fukuda

"I want to watch the fucking play! Is that so fucking hard to understand?!" asked Sho maybe too loudly…because now everyone was looking at him…and everyone…he didn't want them to look at him! But they were and…and he just…weren't hey going to watch the play?! Wasn't that what they had all come here for!? Why didn't they just watch the play and…and not him and…and everyone was looking…

Even dad.

"Son. Explain." Said Suzuki. He said so considerably more quietly than his Son had…God. That Boy could not be taken anywhere, could he? No, he could not be taken out anywhere in public until he learned how to act…and if he hadn't learned how to act by the age of eleven than maybe he had no chance of learning...Shigeko had done her best. Masami had done her best. He had done his best. Maybe there was simply no hope at all. Maybe he was just…this person. This annoying little person who couldn't even be brought out in public for a few hours-

-exorcism of my emotion.

He was the one who could not be brought out in public. He had been close to...not exploding but…well his aura had not been at it's best there. He had not been at his best. His Son was half of himself and if he couldn't be trusted to control his own emotions then how could he trust the Boy to be able to control himself? He was half…he was half of his mother and half of his father after all. That was just the way that these things worked. Sho had so much of him…not just the hair and eyes and powers…but so much of him…and so little of Masami…and the entire thing was just…more than he wanted to think about now.

He was here to watch a play and that was what he was going to do. Watch a goddamned play….and he would. In a minute.

Or longer. He watched his Son's eyes. His eyes gave away everything. His eyes and his aura, too, though that was mostly just flares. Suzuki would have taken that in if he could but he was busy siphoning from Serizawa. Amazingly enough he was better at being out in public, the man Sho had lived for a decade and a half as a shut in, than Suzuki Touichirou's own blood Son.

"Girls are crazy. They're completely and totally out of their fucking minds." said Sho. He held eye contact and aural contact with dad. He dared dad to do something, anything, at all. If dad threw him over the railing then he at least would have been away from all of this. He just…didn't want to be there. He didn't know where he wanted to be but it wasn't here. Like…if he could get out of here then he would have…like…like if there was a mountain or something….

Yeah. He could figure out ice powers and then climb a mountain and sing a song and be alone and free…heh.

Of course he wasn't going to do that. He was going to just…be here. He was going to be here and he was going to stare dad down. Dad was staring him down. He could hear Hatori telling Serizawa that he was going to be ok. Someone, Shibata based on the size of the arm, reached over and dropped a bottle of what was probably soda onto his lap. Big sis's aura was on his like a blanket. Something hit him on the head…Shimazaki had probably thrown something at him…or maybe Minegishi since they were a bitch bastard…almost as much of a bitch bastard as big sis's girl's dick bitch of a friend.

Her crazy, bitchy, girl's dick of a friend.

"Yes they are. Now stop cursing and watch the play before you upset your sister." Said Suzuki. He had no idea what that had been about…but his Son was right. To men women were out of their fucking minds and to women men were out of their fucking minds and…well he hated cursing but it was the right word for it. Women and men…it was amazing to think that the human race had ever managed to reproduce its self….or something. He didn't know. All he knew was that even at the age of forty four, nearly forty five, women were still a mystery to him….so he couldn't expect more of his eleven year old child…

Though why this came up here and now he would never understand.

"Sho, your dad is right. This is important to your sister so…we can talk about this later, alright?" said Fukuda as he patted Sho on the back. This was not the time or the place to get into any of this. So that little girl had done something to Sho…great. Now he had a lot of work to do when he got home. Honestly. Sho had enough worry about…being the way he was…without all of this….but he had hit the nail on the head. Girls made no sense. Women made no sense. Heh, maybe Sho had the right idea about all of this.

"….don't want to talk about it later….or ever." Said Sho quietly. Why would he have wanted to talk to anyone about this? He just….he wanted to forget…everything. To not think about anything. To just…he didn't know. Watch the play, maybe, like they had all come here to do in the first place.

"What's happening over there?" asked Mob. No, no, no. She just…she had no idea what had happened but….but how did something even manage to happen. She hadn't been paying much attention…at some point Sho had gotten up…and now he was back and stuff….and she just…

She just wanted to watch Frozen. That was all.

"Nothing, Watch the play." Said Suzuki. He was not going to bring her into this. She was happy. He could see it on her aura that she was happy and he was not going to ruin this happiness for her. She loved this. This was her favorite thing in the world and he could not take it from her…and also this was a pretty damn good play, too.

"But Sho is-" said Mob. She wanted to watch this but her little brother was more important. She would gladly have fixed whatever went wrong…even if he just had too much sugar energy. That happened to him a lot when he had too much soda and…and he had another in his lap and…and she loved him but she didn't want…well she wanted him to be happy and…

And she wished that she knew why she was so selfish.

"Nothing. Watch the play. Look, Kristoff. You like him." said Sho. He knew that he shouldn't have said that. Big sis's search history was her own business and her weird fan art was her business too…and also it sucked but only because the people who draw it knew nothing about art, so he should have kept his mouth shut…but maybe he should have kept his mouth shut…but now she would stop taking to him and…and he would make it up to her later.

"What?" asked Suzuki. He heard Daughter and liked and a male given name…and now…well now he had the irrational desire to keep her from everything Frozen related…but then she would have been upset and also this was a work of fiction…and the crowd was mostly female…so this was alright….

Calm down, Touichirou.

"Don't." said Fukuda with a shake of his head. Nope. Not getting into this now. Not getting into this ever.

"Just let it go, Suzuki, just let it go." Said Hatori. He didn't want to agree with Fukuda but…well Mob's crushes were her own business. He didn't care who she had a crush on just so long as it wasn't him again. That had been weird as hell.

"I-I don't like him…because he's not even real….and if I did he belongs with Anna anyway…and also…well I can tell that something is going on and-" said Mob

"Nothing's going on, Shige, now shut up and watch the play. I think that they're going to sing another song or whatever." Said Minori. Nope. She did not want to get into this with Shige right now. What was she supposed to say? I tried to make out with your brother but he's a total first grader like you are so it didn't work out and now he's being all weird. Yes, that was the best thing to talk about with her weird best friend and her best friend's weird dad.

"Um…alright….I guess. If something was wrong then someone would tell me….I guess." Said Mob. She wanted everyone to stop fighting…and she could tell that there had been a fight…and she just…she wished that everyone could just get along and that Sho could talk about his problems…but he was half of dad and getting dad to talk about his feelings and problems was like pulling teeth so…well it didn't matter if Sho could be guarded with his feelings like that. She was his sister and it was her job to make her little brother feel better….

But if there was something wrong then one of the others would have told her….Fukuda notoriously couldn't keep things to himself.

"Guys, come on. Am I the only one paying attention to this thing? Because it would be weird as hell if that were the case." Said Shimazaki. He was paying attention to this thing, really, but also he was tired of listening to people dig into Sho like that. He hadn't been paying attention but that girl had gotten up after him and he knew how it went. He'd talk to Sho later on when this was over and everyone wasn't around.

Him, not the crusted over pudding skin that he was sitting next to.

"You aren't paying attention, though, are you? You're too busy with your gir-" said Fukuda. He was aiming low, he knew that he was aiming low, but he didn't care. He was too pissed off to care that he had just been about to give Shimazaki the verbal equivalent to kick below the belt. Sho was going through enough and Shimazaki was the one who had caused all of this. He knew how Sho felt about him, he had been the one to tell Shimazaki that Sho had feelings for him, and yet Shimazaki kept on just…being with Minegishi right in front of him. He was a grown man and he could do whatever he wanted, for whatever reason he wanted, but he didn't have to do it right in front of Sho like that. Sho…he had enough pain in his life as it was.

"New rule. No talking. Nobody is allowed to talk at all until intermission…and even then….Fukuda, only talk to dad and Sho and maybe Hatori and Serizawa if you can be nice…and Shibata too….but just…everyone be quiet please and watch the play." Said Mob. Nope. He had been about to call Minegishi Shimazaki's girlfriend. He called them a girl when he wanted to hurt their feelings. She had no idea what happened in his mind that made him want to hurt them like that, they were one of the nicest people in the world when you got to know them, but she wasn't going to sit there and have a long talk about why he felt the need to hurt others like that. They could talk to him about this over tea later. Not now.

All she wanted to do now was watch this play in peace without anyone fighting or hurting anyone else.

"Shige…what the hell…?" asked Minori. That was….she knew that Shige could yell, she had seen it, but she had never heard Shige talk like that…and to ADULTS….and the adults LISTENED to her. All of her friends stopped talking and…and how did that even…work? When Minori wanted an adult to listen to her she had to hold her breath and bang her head against the wall…

Why did Shige get to be so lucky?!

"Suzuki, come on, ou're not actually going to let her-" said Fukuda. He appealed to the real authority in the room….the authority who simply pointed over at his eleven year old Daughter like she was the authority in the world…and she was…and there was nothing that he could possibly say or do in this situation.

"Come on, you all heard the eleven year old girl. It's quiet time now. Fukuda, be a man and do whatever the little girl tells you to." Said Minegishi with a yawn. They felt Mob's aura prickle at that…and really. If she was going to flex her authority like that then she needed to stand by it. They were getting second hand exhaustion from her. Every single time they were all together like this, together in a small space, was utterly exhausting for many reasons. One of them being Fukuda whatever the hell his given name was.

"I'm sorry everyone for being so mean but…um…that's a new rule. No talking during the play…ok?" asked Mob. Being bossy had never come easily to her, even though she was the boss. She was in charge of Sho and she was Vice President of Claw. She hated being the one who had to do this. She hated the one who had to make the rules…but she had to. She was the only one who could get everyone to listen and act right…and she was tired….and she mostly just wanted to watch the play…so…ok then. She just…did what she had to do.

Even if she hated to do this…but she loved this play….and she loved her friends…so she did what she had to do.


	465. You Have Pizza So Stop Moping!

It was easy, really, to make Sho feel better once you knew him.

"I'm telling you, kid, this is the best slice of pizza that I've ever had in my life." Said Shimazaki as he took a bite of what was, supposedly, the best pizza in all of New York City. This was ok. He liked pizza that you could fold, like a taco, and he liked it when it was greasy as fuck like this too. Toshi hated this shit, their favorite pizza was actually cheeseless bell pepper of all the things, of course that was when they were sober. Stoned Toshi loved extra cheese, all the vegetables, and pineapple. Drunk Toshi just liked to eat the cheese from pizza. Toshi wasn't here, though, he was with Sho…

…and Sho loved pizza.

Sho loved anything greasy, fattening, and that could slowly kill him if he ate enough of it. He kid had the right idea about food. There was so little of it, and also paradoxically so much, so really the best thing to do was to eat as much of it as you wanted and whatever you wanted. So, really, if the kid wanted to pull a drunk Toshi and eat nothing but the cheese than that was fine. He liked to take apart his food, he liked to eat junk, he liked Shimazaki, and he liked to argue too…and Shimazaki could tell that there was an argument coming.

Good. He welcomed it.

"What the hell are you talking about? This is just…normal! How is this the best pizza you've ever had in your life?" asked Sho. Shimazaki could feel people turning to look at the angry little Japanese boy taking a pizza apart molecule by molecule. Whatever. Any attention was good attention…and the kid needed more attention. That might have been it. Maybe he was just…like this…because Shimazaki was the only guy who paid him any real attention. Suzuki was Suzuki, Mob meant well but she mommed him to hell, and Fukuda…well Shimazaki had a lot of words about that guy.

No, Sho just needed more attention.

He needed the world to remind him that he existed. That was something that people didn't get. How sometimes it could be like you were…nothing. Like a ghost. He could sense spirits, and hear them, and most of them just wanted to be noticed. That was why they did all of that haunting shit. They just wanted the world to treat them like they existed. That was the worst, being around but being a ghost, even a living ghost. When Shimazaki died he wanted to be exorcised. Even if he passed on he wanted to be double exorcised just in case there was any chance at all of him haunting the world as a spirit.

Because, really, it was the worst…not being there…but also being there…and shit.

"Because the cheese to sauce to grease ration is perfect. Also it folds like a taco and all the best foods fold like tacos." Said Shimazaki. For emphasis he grabbed the slice of pizza out of Sho's hand, folded it up like a taco, and then shoved it in his mouth. Sho batted him away and tried to seem pissed off. Tried being the operative word. He wasn't pissed off at all. Shimazaki could hear his aura. There it was, that aural giggle that said 'take me Shimazaki, I'm yours' and wouldn't take Shimazaki's 'you're my best friend and the closest thing that I have to son, it's not happening' for an answer. Shimazaki…wasn't a fan of all of that….but anything was better than mopey Sho.

Mopey and angry Sho was…were? Was the worst kind of Sho.

"Tacos suck." Said Sho sticking out his tongue. He spat back a mouthful of pizza and earned himself some grossed out looks and mutterings from the people around them. Whatever. Fuck 'em.

"I've seen you eat tacos….and don't say a word. I know I walked into that one." Said Shimazaki. Telling Sho not to say anything was pretty much telling him to say something. Actually it was more efficient than telling him to do something directly. This was possibly the most contrary id in the world…and Shimazaki loved him for that. This was what he wanted his and Toshi's son to be like…if they ever had a son…not that he was trying to even going to say anything about it…since Toshi didn't want one…and he didn't want to think about how he would set out getting a hypothetical blood son with Toshi.

He had his nonblood son and that was what mattered.

"You've never seen anything." Said Sho. He said it with a smile that Shimazaki could feel. Good. Happy Sho was coming back. That was the best kind of Sho. Maybe he was done with…whatever it was that he had been feeling. Shimazaki wasn't afraid to admit when he fucked up and…yeah. He had fucked up with Toshi back at the play. He had been too fucked up to think…and Toshi had been there and they had been so…well Toshi. What was he supposed to do? Not kiss Toshi when they were there and close and smelled so good…and their breathing had been perfect…and they had been in kind of a bad mood…

But, yeah, Sho had been there and Shimazaki had kind of played hacky sack with his heart…and that had been kind of a dick move.

"Hey, what did I just say?" Said Shimazaki. He wasn't pissed off and Sho could tell. He smiled again…or maybe it was just his aura. Shimazaki didn't care. Just so long that the kid was out of whatever funk he'd been in. He knew that one day he'd have to talk to Sho about how he felt and about how there wasn't even the smallest hint of a chance that they would ever be anything other than multigenerational friends/whatever their weird pseudo parent/child relationship could be called…but he didn't feel like it. Not now.

Maybe not ever.

"That you walked right into that one. If you don't want me to say stuff like that then don't walk into stuff." Said Sho. He leaned back when he said that and took a triumphant sip of whatever combination of sodas he had poured for himself. That had been fun, mixing everything up, even if the resulting brew tasted like shit. Well fun things didn't always have the best ends. Like…what was it that Toshi had said? From that book they liked? These stupid delights have stupid ends?

Or maybe just another fancy way of saying 'win stupid games and play stupid prizes' or…maybe the other way around? He didn't know…Toshi was smart. He'd ask them later.

"Well aren't you a clever one?" asked Shimazaki. He leaned back too and took a sip of…well it had notes of root beer and…iced tea? Well this was what happened when you let an eleven year old pour your drink. He felt Sho stick his tongue out. He did the same thing right back. He could feel a very pointed dirty look from a normal person at the edges of his perception. Whatever. Fuck 'em. Sho was happy now and even if he hadn't been what did Shimazaki care what random people thought of him.

"Maybe I'm not clever, maybe you're just a moron." Said Sho. He kicked Shimazaki when he said that…with his wet boot. Ok, now that was just unpleasant. That little…oh how he was going to pay. There were few things more unpleasant than a wet pant leg clinging to you. He should have worn his leather pants…but Toshi had gotten him this outfit and while he had no idea what it looked like he knew that they thought that he looked good and…yeah, what Toshi thought mattered…but maybe he needed to make more of an effort not to think of Toshi right now. Not when Sho was around.

Poor kid needed all the attention that he could get.

"Fuck you." Said Shimazaki simply. He knew what he was starting and he was glad to start it. He didn't care if they were getting looks. There were very few things Sho liked in this world than a good, old fashioned, cursing match. So what if they were sitting in some hole in the wall pizza place shouting at each other in Japanese? It wasn't like they were going to get kicked out. It wasn't like anybody could understand them and, if by some miracle someone here spoke Japanese, then they could go fuck themselves.

But not in the good way.

"Double fuck you." Said Sho. Shimazaki shook his head. That was what he was going to start with? Really? This kid was getting slow in his advanced age.

"Triple fuck you." Said Shimazaki

"Quadruple fuck you." Said Sho

"Quintuple fuck you." Said Suzuki

"Sextuple fuck you." Said Shimazaki. Well that was funny…for reasons he couldn't figure out. Well it was good to hear Sho laughing again. Good. No mopey Sho. That show that they had been to earlier had been mopey enough.

"What are you laughing at?" asked Shimazaki as he flicked Sho over the head. Sho put his barrier up one second too soon and just a little bit too slow.

"You said sex." Said Sho as he batted Shimazaki's hand away. Shimazaki tilted his head towards the ceiling and shook it.

"What are you rolling your eyes for? It's funny." Said Sho. Shimazaki did the eye rolling motion again just to piss Sho off.

"You need a vocabulary lesson. You sure you're Suzuki's son?" asked Shimazaki

"I do not need a vocabulary lesson! You said sex and sex is funny…well gross…but funny." Said Sho

"As in multiple of six. God, you are so fucking immature." Said Shimazaki

"Fuck you! I am not fucking immature! You're fucking immature!" said Sho

"And yet I'm winning. What do you fucking know?" asked Shimazaki. That earned him a piece of greasy pizza cheese to the front of his shirt…Toshi was going to be pissed about that since they had just picked this out for him…but it was worth it to heard Sho laugh. Toshi could understand that….right? They were very understanding…to him…sometimes.

"You…you….fuck you! Fuck you in a pubic bathroom like an out of work salaryman in a public bathroom during golden week." Said Sho. Well someone took offense to that. There was the sound of someone choking and spitting…and he could tell someone was about to get up….and he ignored it. He was in the middle of this with Sho and he couldn't just let Sho take the lead. Especially with a line that Shimazaki himself had taught him! The student would not surpass the master!

"Yeah, well fuck you, you little fucking-" said Shimazaki. He felt someone's attention on him. He felt someone standing up. He knew that he had been yelling, well shouting, well talking loudly even by American standards...but whatever. So some guy was going to start shit with him. He could finish it…or do the old 'I don't speak English' or the old 'I'm blind I can do whatever I want' or…well he had a lot of shit that he could do. Sho was tensing up…maybe the old 'I'm a poor blind single father' shtick…oh the possibilities! They were endless!

"That's a wonderful thing you've taught your son!" said a voice in Japanese. Huh. Well then, you didn't meet a lot of Japanese guys over here. He had a nice voice. Well a pissed off voice but there was a nice timbre to it. Shimazaki focused on him, on his physical self, and…yup. Normal person. Not as clear as an esper. A lot of focusing was needed, there, since normal people were so….normal. Also Sho's aura was doing that shrieking thing it did when he interacted with another human being…

And he would do something about that…one of these days….

But not today. Today was about pulling Sho out of…whatever it was that he was in. The funk he had gotten into because, well, Shimazaki hadn't been thinking…well he had been thinking…he had been thinking about Toshi….and he loved Toshi but he loved Sho and he was going to think about Sho but in a totally non-Toshi way. Nope. A Sho way….a Sho needs to smile more way….a Sho loves fucking with people sort of way….

Cool. Time to fuck with someone.

"Who said that? Come closer." asked Shimazaki. He stuck out his arm and felt the empty space around him. He knew fully well where that other guy was but he didn't know it…and also Shimazaki wished that he had brought his cane with him then he could have done some stranger hitting….but was good too. Well it would have been if Sho would just…stop it already.

Really. He loved this shtick.

"You aren't blind, stop faking it….and teach your son some manners! That's a terrible way to let him speak! Even if nobody can understand him!" said Mr. Opinionated. Ok, now that was just offensive, Nobody told him how to raise his not-son!

"Yes I am…and don't tell me how to raise my terrible kid." Said Shimazaki. He waited for Sho to say something, he always had something to add, but now…well now he was just staring down at the table and staying quiet for some reason. Nope. Not letting mopey Sho to come back. The world, mostly Shimazaki, did not need any more mopey Sho!

"For the love of God you're just going to pretend to be…just shut up and open your eyes!" said Mr. Opinionated. Sho looked up now. He always got a kick out this part. Shimazaki did too. This part was the best. The way people always freaked out from embarrassment, mostly, and also just the shock of seeing him. Toshi hated it when he did this. Well not hated it but it annoyed them and…well he loved Toshi but he didn't always understand them but they didn't always understand him. That was alright. He loved them just the same. Also he loved Sho

And he loved it when Sho stopped being all…like this.

"Well if you insist." Said Shimazaki as he did just as he was asked. Yup…there was that Sho smile…and a Sho laugh…and what could be better than a Sho smile and a Sho laugh. God, he couldn't wait until he had a kid…well until there was the chance that he could have a kid. Toshi was…well Toshi wanted what they wanted…and Sho was a great kid…and he was going to be a great big brother too.

Then he'd have two kids laughing at the stupid shit he did.

"I-I….I'm so sorry….but you really shouldn't teach your son things like that!" said the guy before he ran away, actually ran, which was the best part of it all. Shimazaki wished that he'd been wearing a short sleeved shirt under his coat. Then that idiot would have probably ended up pissing himself. God, messing with people would never get old.

Well to him anyway.

Sho seemed….well happy Sho had been back but now he as back to being mopey Sho…and Shimazaki…well he was running out of ideas. He could always….he felt his pockets…he had a pen with him but…yeah. Sho needed to be sober. High Sho was clingy and amorous Sho….and Shimazaki did not want to deal with that Sho. No, those were actually the worst Sho's….though he was eleven Shimazaki could just pretend that he didn't notice…but he didn't want to be put in the position to have to pretend that he didn't notice that Sho wanted more than to hug him and hear graphic stories from his yakuza days. He had a his flask, too, and it might have been filled with either straight vodka or peach schnapps…but drunk Sho wasn't any better than high Sho….

Shimazaki was at a loss.

"Sho…what's wrong. I've been trying to cheer you up all day and it's like…a hell of a lot of nothing." Said Shimazaki. Maybe just talking to him would work…but just talking to him could lead to another one of his confessions….and Shimazaki did not want to have to deal with another one of his confessions. Those were always incredibly awkward and Shimazaki did not do awkward.

"I'm fine just….I'm not your son!" said Sho. Shimazaki….well he'd been kicked in the chest with a steel boot before…and yeah, that was kind of the same feeling. He knew what Sho meant, that he wanted to ride off into the sunset with him or whatever, but still.

"Ok….ouch. That was mean." Said Shimazaki with levity that he had to make himself feel. The kid…well he had his own feelings and this was how they came out. He was an asshole when he had too many feelings inside of him. Sort of like Toshi.

"I…I didn't mean to be I just…I hate it when people think that I'm your kid! I want…a lot of stuff and just…it sucks!" said Sho. God damn it…he was going to have to address it, wasn't he? Well then it looked like it was time for another one of their talks….their awkward dance around the crush talks…there was not enough foldable pizza in the world to get them through that conversation.

"Ok, ok, I know what this is about and I'm sorry about me and Toshi, ok?" said Shimazaki with a sigh. He reached into his coat before he changed his mind. They had to have this conversation in public and if he started smoking then they'd get kicked out….and Sho…well he could be kind of a little dick sometimes but they were in public so he'd rein it in just a little. Enough that nobody ended up confessing to anybody else.

"You….you mean that?" asked Sho. Well he seemed calmer now…good. Maybe he would stay this way for the rest of the day. Shimazaki…he loved this kid, he really did, but he did not love this part of this kid. The part that freaked out and got mopey…and also was in love with him. Yeah, he could have done without all of that….but he had to deal with that, with this, and he had to do it right now. He had to think up something to say that would fix this. Something smart and simple and concise…something that Toshi would have said but nice…

He wished that Toshi had been there…in the sense that they could have helped him with this and not the sense that the kid would probably try and kick their ass.

"Yeah. I shouldn't have been kissing like them that in front of you and I'm sorry. I don't think sometimes….most of the time actually…and yeah. You get it…well you will when you get older and you find someone you love." Said Shimazaki. He was grasping now, to apologize, because he just…was not good at this. First of all he shouldn't have had to apologize because he loved Toshi and if he wanted to kiss them then he would…but also he had a kid to think about. He had to think about Sho and his feelings and life and….yeah. Thinking about other people was hard…but he had to try.

Even if Sho didn't think of himself as Shimazaki's son Shimazaki thought about him like that and, yeah, you had to be nice to your son and make sure he didn't freak out all the time and stuff.

"….I'm never going to want to do that…ever. With anyone. Ever." Said Sho. He said that with so much finality….and Shimazaki had no idea if that was because he was still figuring himself or out because he was elen and all of that was still gross when you were eleven. Well it hadn't been for him but he had never been a kid, not really, and Sho was a kid…and kids were…complicated like this.

"What about your girlfriend? You're getting to that age-" said Shimazaki. Well first of all he had to figure out what Sho was on about and then he could go from there. Wasn't he trying to get married and shit? Well he was barely eleven and, yeah, maybe Shimazaki was taking the whole child marriage thing a little bit too seriously….or not seriously enough?

He really had no idea.

"Shut up about Emmy! Just….she loves me and….and shut up!" said Sho

"Shutting up." Said Shimazaki. He put both hand out in front of him. Well this was pissed off Sho…which was a good Sho. Better than mopey Sho or lovesick Sho or pissed off Sho. Yeah, even if his voice was high and rang in Shimazaki's ears this was better than him being all mopey and shit.

"I mean…just…I don't know. I'm weird." Said Sho. Shimazaki laughed at that. He couldn't help it. Sho thought that he was weird? Where in the hell had he been for the past three years?

"You're weird? Kid, who are you talking to right now? I keep a box of candles under my bed to chew on in the middle of the night. I-" said Shimazaki

"Yeah but….you're ok with being weird. You do whatever you want and nobody can make you do anything that you don't want to…and like…like if a girl wanted to kiss you then it's be ok!" said Sho

"Ah, now the plot thickens. Ok, who's trying to kiss you? Your girlfriend? Because if you don't want to-" said Shimazaki. Well that was…better than having to get into what was going on with him and Toshi. God, Sho was such a little kid sometimes…or maybe a normal eleven year old? Shimazaki really honestly and truly had no idea.

"No, not Emmy…and I said to shut up about her! She's my girlfriend and on Valentine's Day I'm going to ask her marry me and then I'm going to kiss her and have ten or twenty kids and…and stuff. This isn't about her, I don't mind kissing her just….I'm not a cheater! Cheaters are the worst people ever and I would never do that to a girl who was in love with me!" said Sho

"Ok, I did not teach you that." Said Shimazaki. Where did he come up with this crazy shit? There was nothing wrong with…well it all depended on what kind of relationship that you were in. Shimazaki had never had any problem being the other man when people wanted to step out of the domestic bliss and tepid sex of married life…and he had never been in an exclusive relationship and he never would be…and he and Toshi could do whatever they wanted to….but still. Where in the hell had Sho learned this shit from?

"No, I figured it out on my own. What kind of dick hole needs to be taught not to cheat on someone? When you cheat on someone you…you do the worst thing that you could ever do…like…like when you're with someone it's like you make a promise to always be there and…and it's bad when people leave and…and I am not a cheater and even if I was I would never have wanted to cheat with big sis's stupid friend and…and she's a bitch bastard and….and I just…I'm weird!" said Sho

"Well….that was a lot to unpack. Thank God there aren't any other Japanese people are here or I would have had to tell more dumb fucks off." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah….I mean…..Shimazaki? Am I weird? Big sis's friend tried to kiss me again and I didn't want to at all…not like I didn't want to cheat on Emmy but…but it wasn't about that just….I didn't want to kiss her." said Sho. Shimazaki…did not want to have this talk with him here. He had told the kid, before, that he could fuck who he wanted to and fuck who he liked even if he liked a guy…and he didn't much want to tell him again. It went in one ear and out the other with him. He was still trying to please his dad, that was all, and he'd be that way until…well thirteen or fourteen maybe…so taking him and telling him that he needed to be true to himself and other such clichés wouldn't work.

"So? If you don't want to kiss her then don't kiss her. You're not going to want to kiss every single person who wants to kiss you." Said Shimazaki

"….what? But….don't you want to kiss…everyone? Like if they're nice to you or…or they're near you or…or…." Said Sho

"Hell no. Me….well I get around…but even I have some people I don't want to kiss. People who aren't my type, people who I'm not into, people who I can never be into, people who I'm JUST FRIENDS with." Said Shimazaki

"So…so it's ok….that I didn't want to kiss her? People aren't going to think that I'm weird?" asked Sho

"Nope, and it's nobody's business anyway who you are and are not kissing." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. Really, this kid worried too much about shit. What did it matter who he did and did not want to kiss? He was the son of the guy who was going to rule the world someday. He could do whatever the hell he wanted to do. God. Shimazaki couldn't remember if he'd been this dramatic when he'd been eleven…well he'd had a whole different set of problems in his life…

Yeah, he was going to stop complaining about Sho overthinking every single aspect of his romantic life now.

"Ok…thanks…thank Shima-thanks Ryou." Said Sho. Nope. No way. Nothing good every came from when Sho called him Ryou. Nothing at all. Shimazaki…no. He needed to think up something, anything, because….yeah. He did not want to deal with being called Ryou now.

And he did not want to deal with Sho's hand creeping across the table.

Fast movements were the ones that he had trouble with…not that he was going to tell Sho that. Yeah…no. He did not need to know that. He did not need to know…well Shimazaki was not going to bring up anything related to the sticky fingers ever so slowly coming across the table. Maybe if he pretended hard enough then it would just…stop.

Though, to be safe, he pulled his hands off the table.

"You're welcome, kid, now come on. I think we're ten seconds away from getting kicked out…and to continue our previous discussion I'll concede. This is not the best piece of pizza I've ever had in my life. That would be the original Famous Ray's…and I've been here enough times to know which one is the original. Now come on, and bring that crappy soda with you, I'm not going to let you die of dehydration." Said Shimazaki. He kicked Sho lightly on the shin to get him up. Yeah, time for normal fun times. Not finding himself stuff. Just…no.

Pizza yes, deep feelings talk, maybe, but none of that….even if Sho had this idea in his head that it would make him feel better….it wouldn't.


	466. One Hell of a Show

That had been one hell of a play.

Suzuki hadn't ever considered himself to be a big lover of the theatre or a patron of the arts. He enjoyed television, and he enjoyed animation as a medium, and he had nothing at all against art…but he had never given much through to the performing arts. The stage. He had been to the theatre before, and found the experience not unpleasant, but he had never enjoyed a show as much as he had enjoyed the one that he had seen earlier.

Truly Frozen the Musical was the peak of western culture.

"Standing frozen in the life I've chosen…..you won't find me, the past is all behind me…buried in the snow…." Muttered Suzuki as he sat on his bed and flipped through some very important work, this time legitimate work. There were new assets to be found in Europe…well the same ones that he should have been looking into….and also apparently the new Eighth Division had an infestation of….he had no idea what had caused the infestation of deadly spiders….and no, he was not going to authorize the division head to burn it to the ground…they'd either have to clear them out or learn to live with the spiders….the deadly spiders….

"Let it go, let it go…..can't hold it back anymore…." Well if the spiders were so deadly then….what ate spiders? They must have had a natural predator…everything had a natural predator…..right? Even human beings had a natural predator….Son would know. He was out but he'd come home and then Suzuki would ask him. He knew about animals….

"Let it go, let it go….turn my back and slam the door…." Maybe they would die in the winter…but it was summer in Australia….and he did not want to go back to Australia….it was so hot in the summers….and also he hated spiders….but it could have been worse….it could have been rodents of some kind….

"And here I stand, and here I'll stay…let it go, let it go…the cold never bothered me anyway…." Did rodents eat spiders? What did they eat when they weren't living on the fringes of human society with their tiny little cities and societies and clothes and songs and…well now he sounded like a madman…he knew that they didn't actually have little cities but…but what if they did? What if underneath his feet there were cities of mice and rats and they were just biding their time? They lived short lives but they compensated for that by reaching maturity quickly and breeding quickly…and there was no way to outbreed them…so if the revolution did come….

Laughter.

So if they built up a Ninth Division and then temporarily abandoned the Eighth Division…he corrected his thoughts. Fukuda was laughing at him. He was sitting there on the bed beside Suzuki and laughing and….and he was no telepath. He was not a telepath and he never would be and Suzuki had made a point, even, that there would never be a telepath anywhere near him…his aura flares and his heart races…but he's fine.

He's fine.

"What?" asked Suzuki

"Nothing." Said Fukuda with a hand over his mouth like women did when they laughed. They had the right idea. That way at least you could pretend that they weren't laughing at you.

"You're laughing at me. Why?" asked Suzuki

"I'm not laughing at you." Said Fukuda. Suzuki looked up at him and gave him a light shove with his powers. He could have shoved him off the bed, it would have been easy, but he didn't. They had to share a bed after all so it would do neither of them any good to start some kind of conflict…even though it wouldn't have mattered even if he had harmed him. He could heal.

"Yes you were. Fukuda. Explain." Said Suzuki

"Fine….your singing never bothered me anyway." Said Fukuda

"….I was not singing." Said Suzuki. He may have been muttering, or humming, or even speaking out loud to himself like a madman but he had not been singing. He did not sing. Not even the school song when he'd been a child.

"Alright, alright, you weren't singing." Said Fukuda. He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. Good. He was surrendering. Now they could go back to their peaceful evening.

"Good. Now get back to work. We have so much to do…and we are so behind…" said Suzuki as he went back to his laptop. He made sure to keep his mouth shut this time and keep the music in his mind. He had to get this song out of his head…so he would just let it run it's course. That was still the best song…and the new verses made it even better…but there were other good ones. Not the one that the snowman sang, though, he was the worst character in the entire play.

And the film.

Because, really, nobody should have been able to create life. Well people, most people barring some kind of medical condition, could create life but only through the process of intercourse and even then not every time. Being able to just wave your hands and make an army of immortal, annoying, snowmen? Terrifying. They really should have explored that more in the play. That Elsa could create life. What did that say about her kingdom? That she could make an heir on her own? An immortal heir of ice and snow? And how much autonomy did her snow creations have? And if she had magic id that mean that there were others? And why didn't her sister? And why-

Fukuda was looking at him. He quieted his thoughts just in case.

"Yes?" asked Suzuki

"Nothing, just…you're in a good mood." Said Fukuda

"I can be in good moods on occasion. Why wouldn't I have been? We saw what was, perhaps, the greatest play in the history of the western stage….what's not good about that?" asked Suzuki

"Frozen? That's the greatest play in the history of western civilization to you?" asked Fukuda with a shake of his head.

"Of course. It has everything. Music, drama, violence, beautiful women, good set craft…it was a good play. Shigeko did well to bring us here. I'm proud of her." said Suzuki. There was a look, now, to Fukuda's face and aura…and he did not understand it. That was normal, though, he had never bene able to fully read Fukuda…or anyone. Not even his own wife…but he could read his Daughter. When he took the time to really look at her and think he could read her very well…and she the same to him.

His Son, of course, remained a mystery.

"Yeah….this was a fun outing…but maybe we shouldn't make these a habit. We have a schedule to keep." Said Fukuda. Suzuki…well yes, he was correct. They had a schedule to keep and they were behind….but it had been worth it to make Shigeko happy. What could be worth more than making Shigeko happy?

"Shigeko was happy. That's what matters. She had a good time, everyone had a good time. That's what matters." Said Suzuki. Fukuda was staring at him now, and his eyebrows were raised, and his aura…well he was shocked. Suzuki knew what shock looked like….but he also had no idea what had been so shocking about what he had said. They'd had a good outing. Shigeko liked it when they had outings and she liked it when they went well. She had been happy, her brother had been happy, and all of her friends had been happy…some of them had even decided to express it physically for some reason, and even her little pink haired friend had enjoyed herself….

So there, a good time had been had by all and that was all that mattered.

"You're shocked. Explain." Said Suzuki

"Just….you care how everyone feels? That they had a good time? Why?" asked Fukuda

"Because Shigeko would have been very upset if things had gone wrong. She had been looking forward to this since her little pink haired friend mentioned it." Said Suzuki

"Right….yeah. Shigeko and that…girl. Right. Well I'm glad that it went well, as well as could be planned, too. Now we can leave and get back to our lives." Said Fukuda

"I agree…not let's get back to work. I'll work up a new schedule for us and then you can check the logistics of it." Said Suzuki

"Sure thing….and I'm going to make sure that we end up with separate apartments if not houses if you don't mind." Said Fukuda

"I have no problem with that." Said Suzuki. He didn't. He was looking forward to getting his bedroom back. Just him all on his own…or maybe with Shigeko. She was easier to share a bed with. She didn't take up so much space and she kept her clothing in her own room. Yes…he would rather have slept next to his Daughter and not Fukuda…not his best friend and most trusted follower. No, he hated…well he hadn't HATED it. He hadn't hated being with Fukuda these past few days. Sure he took up a lot of the bed…and he spent half the night tossing and turning….

But it hadn't been….bad.

Not good. No, it would have been strange if he had enjoyed sharing a bed with his best friend. Father and mother had said so. He and Fukuda, when they'd been children, shared a bed when they slept over. That had stopped when they'd gotten too old for that. He remembered that day. Father had sat him down on his bed and told him that he was becoming a man and a man shared a bed with a woman and that was just how it went. Then mother had come back with a futon for Fukuda to sleep on when he stayed over…and…and it had all made logical sense. Logical sense and….and there had been this feeling in his chest which not had made any sort of logical sense. That futon lived in his wardrobe….and every time he opened the wardrobe….well there had been this same sort of…pain? Not…no pain but…it was not a good feeling…the thought of being alone…but people were not meant to sleep alone. When his parents, well his father, had been young it had been customary for the whole family to sleep in one room on futons…and he could always sleep next to his Daughter…so that was it. That was…he didn't have to be alone and also…also he just…he didn't need anyone and…and he didn't want to sleep next to Fukuda anyway.

He snored.

He had always snored even when they'd been children. Also he moved around a lot in his sleep. Also he ran very warm….but that was alright because it was winter….which was why they slept the way that they did…to conserve body heat…and they couldn't get another blanket because of….reasons. Reasons like…something to do with the environment….or…laundry or….other important reasons. Reasons which…were reasonable and…and he wouldn't have to think about at all because he and Fukuda wouldn't be sharing a bed anymore.

There.

It would be better. Things would be normal and he would be able to…to rest better. Yes, he needed a good rest. He had trouble resting….well no, he slept very well...but that was just because he was a human being and human beings were made to sleep with others…not that he would be sleeping with Fukuda in the other sense of the world. He knew how that worked and the whole thing seemed very panful and he did not like pain during…or ever, really, and…well if he had ever thought of what it would be like if one of them had been born a woman the that was totally different….and also he was not going to think about that now…he was going to stop thinking about that….even though Fukuda would have made for a very pretty woman…and he wasn't bad looking now so as a woman he would have been stunning….but he was not a woman, he was a man, so there was no point in thinking about any of this…

It made no logical sense.

"What's up?" asked Fukuda. He looked up and made eye contact….and Suzuki broke it. He broke it and looked down at his laptop. His work…he had been working….but all the characters on the screen might as well have been nonsense. He felt warm…he had no idea why but he felt warm…and he just…had to get back to normal and…and keep his powers under control…

The lights flickered.

"Nothing. You…nothing. Carry on as you were." Said Suzuki. He doesn't look back up. It isn't….well this was not…unsafe but…well this was not…he had work to do so that was what he was going to do. He was going to work and work and work until his vision blurred and he passed out….and then he would wake up tangled up in…and now he was thinking and…and he was just over tired, that was all, he was overly tired and he just needed sleep….after more work because he had to be efficient and….

And he had never been more grateful for a knock on the door in his life.

"Shigeko. Enter." Said Suzuki. Well now he felt better. She was there. It was like he had bene in a pressurized room or something and she had opened a window. She stepped in through his doorway, a towel precariously wrapped around her hair like a turban, and some kind of white cream all over her face. He had the urge to take a picture…so he did. He called his phone over and took a picture.

"Dad, don't." said Shigeko as she stood in the doorway. She reached down and played with the sash on her robe. Her aura was trained on his, it was like she was avoiding Fukuda, and one of these days he would get to the root of whatever their conflict was…but not tonight. No, he just did not have the energy to deal with that.

It had been a big day.

"Why not? You're adorable." Said Suzuki. That was a good word for her, adorable. She was always adorable but now she was particularly adorable. He had no idea why Fukuda was looking away from her like that. She was adorable.

"Thanks dad…..but I'm all…like this. Me and Minegishi are having a spa night because they need to decompress from the day." Said Shigeko. Suzuki…well there was…well now this made sense. The way his aura sought out Minegishi's…and got tangled in the plants around the apartment. They were everywhere in their plants…and they were so fascinating…and intelligent….and just…Minegishi. It took some time, seconds really, to get his aura to the person that he sought out…and he was….poked away?

That was what it felt like…like a hard jab to the side.

"Minegishi? Is sh-are they…alright?" asked Suzuki. He tried to get a read off of them…and they just poked him again. That was what it felt like, a hard jab to the side, a very hard…well then. They were just…they seemed normal but…well if something was wrong then Fukuda could do…something. Yes, he would and then Minegishi would be…well he cared because…it made sense for him to care about their wellbeing. They took care of his Daughter after all.

"Yeah, they're just tired and stuff. Also they're so stressed, they said, that their skin is betraying them and now we have to have avocado masks." Said Shigeko

"Do they like avocados?" asked Suzuki. He had a mental list of the foods they liked…and maybe he had to add avocados to it…and then they would be happy. He was a full and complete person on his own…but he was also a man and they were a woman and as a man he of course wanted to make a woman materially happy. It was instinct. Men hunt, women nest, and he…well all he wanted to do was follow his instincts and provide for them.

That was all.

"They like avocados. They especially like them on toast but they like them in masks, too. Theyre good for a lot of things." Said Shigeko

"What other sorts of foods do they like? I know that they like dark chocolates without nuts, black coffee, orange soda, pancakes with strawberries in syrup, square waffles but not Belgian, seaweed chips, red-" said Suzuki

"Miss Suzuki, did you need something or did you just come here to say goodnight?" asked Fukuda. Fukuda had interrupted him…and Suzuki wanted to put him through a wall for that…but also he'd done the right thing. The list was very long, he things that he'd noticed that Minegishi liked, and if he recited the entire thing then Shigeko would have asked why he knew that much….and then he would have to explain….he had no idea how to explain it. Hatori thought that he was attracted to, that he 'liked' Minegishi, and he did…as a human being…but he was not attracted to them…and even if he did then…well then his Daughter could never know. She did not need to know how terrible men could be.

How terrible her father could be.

"I was just wondering if either of you knew where Sho was. He went off with Shimazaki after the show…and that was hours ago…and also I think he either lost or broke his phone again…or it just died. Shimazaki isn't answering his phone either but he might just been drunk or something." Said Shigeko

"I have no idea what Shimazaki did with your brother." Said Fukuda with a shake of his head. That was…well he knew that Shimazaki would never have let any harm come to Son….but he also knew that his Son was a moron….and he courted death every single day in all the most idiotic ways…and he would only get worse as he got older….and….and Suzuki did not want to have another Son…

So he just decided to look for the one he had.

"Let me look for him. He's….alive." said Suzuki as he pulled his aura out and then back again. Fukuda shuddered. Shigeko put up a barrier. He wavered a bit. Pulling his aura out and touching the whole city…lots of potential assets here….that had been a lot…but Son was alive and now Shigeko could rest easy.

"Oh….well I can do that too…but ok. Thanks, dad, goodnight….and you too, Fukuda, I guess." Said Shigeko before she closed his door and walked away. As soon as she left he felt…well it felt like the room was back to being pressurized. Fukuda was staring at him now. He didn't know if he could look up. If he did then his aura might have flared again…and more blood would rush to the topmost layer of his skin….and there was no logical reason for it…for any of this….

There was no logical reason for any of this so therefore it came to him to be the logical factor in this equation…so he went back to work.

Or at least he tried to.

"Do you want me to go out and look for Sho?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki's laptop screen went to blue…and that was him. He hoped that he hadn't lost anything. That had not been his fault. That had been Fukuda's fault for speaking and being…there…and himself.

"No, he can handle himself…and I have no idea what you think that you could do anyway. Now leave me to my work." Said Suzuki

"I can go out and see where your eleven year old Son went. He's been gone all day in one of the biggest cities in the world…and he's with Shimazaki on top of all of that." Said Fukuda

"So? My son can handle himself, I have every faith in him, and I know that for as….himself…as Shimazaki is I know that he would never let any serious harm come to my Son. Now leave me to my work." Said Suzuki. Fukuda, thankfully, decided to do as he was told. That was something that Suzuki had never liked about Fukuda, the times when he wouldn't do as he was told. He knew that Suzuki was the person in charge here, Suzuki had always been the one in charge, but he…for some reason….just didn't listen sometimes.

It was odd.

It had always been odd…but Suzuki did not want to think about Fukuda right now. He wanted to wait for his laptop to boot back up. Hopefully it hadn't been destroyed, he did ruin them on occasion, he had a lot of important work on this. Important work and files and photographs….and he could always ask Hatori to fix it for him or to save all of his work….but then he would have to get out of bed and wake Hatori up and then if he woke Hatori up well then they'd just end up being awake all night…and he could not afford to be awake all night again.

Even though he got the feeling that he was going to end up staying up all night anyway.

"There. My Son is home. See? You were worried about nothing." Said Suzuki. There. Now Fukuda could stop…overstepping. Yes, that had been what he had been doing. He had been overstepping and trying to tell Suzuki how to raise his own Son. He knew his own Son, what he was capable of, and he knew that his Son was strong enough to handle himself. If he ever met someone or something that he could not handle then that was what Shimazaki was kept around for.

Son was perfectly fine.

"Yeah, I feel his aura, and I hear him yelling too." Said Fukuda. Suzuki nodded. Son was carrying on…and he had better not have been planning on doing that for much longer. He was going to wake his sister up and the rest of the house too. Shigeko…well she had been ready to go to bed…and if she wanted to stay up with him then….no, she needed her sleep and she did not need to have hat sleep disrupted by her little brother carrying on like he was….Suzuki listened….

Something about….rats?

"Hey, you were the one who wanted to make friends with rats. Play stupid games and win stupid prizes." Said Shimazaki. His voice was easier to pick out than Son's. Son's voice was still so high, honestly he sounded identical to a little girl sometimes, but Shimazaki…well Suzuki had never noticed his voice before…and he had no idea what to do with this information now that he had it.

"I did not win a stupid prize!" shouted Son. Yes, now he could be heard easily. He was shouting and stomping…towards his door? Oh, right, Fukuda was here and Son had probably injured himself in some way. Rats. He had been playing with rats…the worst of all animals…worse even than the time he kept snakes in the house. That had just been bizarre…and Suzuki hadn't been strange to hold that opinion. No. Shiori had thought so too…

Not that he still thought about her…or any woman…because he was married.

He was married with children. He had a wife and he had children and even if he did embrace being a womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own joy…he could not have. He had children to think about. If he had been a man on his own…possibly. Shiori had been…and was….intelligent and beautiful and…well she knew a lot about starfish which was odd because starfish were such simple creatures….and also her hair had felt like silk and her skin had been like…well it didn't matter. He was a married man, he had two children, and he had to set a good example for them.

Especially his Son….that Boy had enough problems as it was.

"Fukuda! Fix this!" said Son. He had a problem with knocking, apparently, but that could be forgiven since he also had a problem with being covered in blood. There, all over his shirt, face, and hands, was blood. So much of it….blood. He could smell it. He could smell copper and…oregano? Was that…and garlic?

What?

"Fukuda!...and dad, I guess…fix this!" said Son. He ran around the bed and threw himself onto Fukuda's side…and Suzuki…well he knew that his Son was fine but the idea of his blood offspring covered in blood…well he had seen the Boy covered in blood before, in fact he had seen to it, though never this badly…so maybe that was it.

He knew that his Son was capable to taking care of himself.

"Son….you're covered in blood…how did this happen?" asked Suzuki. His Son glared at him. Aurally and facially he was glaring…and Suzuki…well he didn't like it but there was nothing that he could do about it. Nothing that he could do without involving Shigeko and he did not want to involve her right now. She was tired or busy or…well she did not need to deal with this.

He didn't even want to deal with this.

"Like you care." Said Son

"Sho, come on. Be nice….now come on, how did this happen? Why are you covered in blood? I heard something about rats…and I'm actually a little but scared to know." Said Fukuda. Son's entire demeanor changed. He…well his face didn't entirely soften but…well his aura wasn't quite so pointed and hard, and his face had somewhat softened, and he was facing Fukuda now…and that was…well that was fine. That was good, actually, because now Suzuki wouldn't have to deal with anything. He could get back to work now. He couldn't have helped his Son if he had wanted to, anyway, because the Boy was covered in blood and blood…well Fukuda was the healer. He was the one who took care of these sorts of things.

Fukuda was that person to Son, not him.

"It's not blood, well it is on my hand, but the rest of it is pizza sauce. We were trying all the pizza in the city and then we got full so we decided to feed some rats and then there was his big friendly one and it came up to me and I tried to pick it up and then it bit me…and then it bit me again…and then again and after that time Shimazaki pulled it away before I was even done making friends with it! It was just scared because it wasn't used to people, that's all." said Sho. Suzuki was…he had no idea what this feeling even was. Disturbed. Yes…but worse…just…this whole thing was disturbing. So disturbing and….

And he had no idea how he had fathered this child.

He curses himself as soon as the thought enters his mind. The Boy looked exactly like him, for one thing, and for the other well…he knew Masami. He knew that she never would have been with another man. While they were together, of course, she'd had a life before him…not that any of those men would ever be able to even so much as speak to her again….it didn't matter. Masami had been…well he knew that she wouldn't have….he hardly knew her. She had left and he hadn't even known that she had even been thinking about leaving and….and maybe he didn't know anything about her at all…..he was being insane.

Sho was his Son and Masami didn't have an adulterous bone in her body.

"So….where had the best pizza? Come on, after all of this you have to have figured out where had the best." asked Fukuda as he put his hand over Sho's and knitted the cut shut. The process had always been disturbing to witness…and to be on the receiving end of as well. Suzuki couldn't remember the last time he'd been injured at all let alone to the point that he needed Fukuda to heal him…but he did remember the first time. They had been children and they had been doing something stupid…stabbing each other with compasses….and that had been Fukuda's fault.

He had stabbed back.

When a person reached into their bag, warned you that if you didn't shut up you'd stab them with your geometry compass, and then warned you again that they would make good on their plan then maybe the thing to do was to shut up. So he had managed to win one game out of seventeen, he didn't need to gloat about it…and he had been gloating. Suzuki may not have been the best at socializing but…well he knew when someone was gloating towards him…so of course he'd had to stab Fukuda….and he had known that Fukuda was in the same class he was and had the same geometry compass…but he never would have thought that Fukuda had it in him to stab him in the arm…

But he had.

"Dodo pizza in Moscow…and Shimazaki agrees with me so there!" said Son. He kicked his legs and made the bed bounce when he said that. He was so tiresome sometimes….all the times.

"Well if Shimazaki thinks so I guess that it must be true." Said Fukuda with a roll of his eyes which meant, as far as Suzuki knew, Fukuda was being sarcastic. Good. Son did not need to idolize Shimazaki any more than he already did.

"….don't agree with Shimazaki." Said Son. His aura was pointed there, sharp, and just….Suzuki had no idea what any of that was about. Son was…possessive…when it came to Shimazaki he noticed. Probably because he looked up to him. They were similar, in mannerisms and dress and impulse control issues, to the point that when Suzuki looked at Shimazaki he sometimes swore that he was looking into his future with his Son….

The bad version of the future.

"Alright, I won't….and I think that he and I would disagree about the thing with the rats, too. Don't play with city rats." Said Fukuda

"They're disturbing creatures." Said Suzuki before he could think. He was not involved in this conversation and…and he didn't even want to be. He just…well Son's back was to him and his aura was guarded and…well Suzuki could say whatever he wanted to say to whoever he wanted to say it to. He was Suzuki Touichirou, he could say and do whatever he wanted to.

"No, they're cute and fun…what would you know about fun…" muttered Son. Suzuki…well as much as he wanted to smack his Son over the head he didn't. Shigeko would not have liked it…and Son was not worth losing Shigeko over. Even if he was an impudent little…Suzuki didn't even want to say. Not even in his own mind.

"So, about the rat thing, is that why you ran off right after the show? You two wanted to go and play with some rats?" asked Fukuda

"No, that came later. Shimazaki wanted pizza and I wanted to leave because big sis's friend is…" said Son

"She's what?" asked Fukuda. He leaned in closer to Son and put his hand on his shoulder…and Suzuki didn't understand why. When you wanted someone to explain something to you then the thing to do was to order them to explain. Son was not beyond Fukuda's command. Fukuda was, in a lot of ways, something akin to a family member towards Son. Not Shigkeo, no, she was beyond such things. Son was still such a child and he had that kind of relationship with Fukuda…which was good…

Less for Suzuki to do.

"She wanted….she followed me to the bathroom and tried to kiss me and then when I said that I wouldn't, because of Emmy, she told me that I was weird…but she's the weird one. Shimazaki says that if I don't want to kiss someone then it's not weird to not want to kiss them….and also…also cheating is wrong and I'll never do it." Said Sho. He crossed his arms when he said that, a gesture of finality, and that…well it was finality. He had done the right thing. A girl had thrown herself at him…and he had said no…at his age he had not only said no but had never even considered saying yes…

Amazing.

"Not alwa-" said Fukuda

"Sho…" said Suzuki. He…he had no idea what else to say. What he could say. He loved Sho. That was what he wanted to say. The words…he could feel the words coming up and…and he couldn't let them. If he said those words then he would just…well Sho would ask questions and Suzuki could never let Sho see just how terrible his father could be.

He did not need to know why they could never go back to Korea…or Osaka….or about Mukai….

"What? You're going to tell me that I'm supposed to want to kiss girls so I have to kiss every single girl that wants to kiss me?" asked Sho. Suzuki shook his head. No. He never would have taught his Son a lesson so terrible. He loved….he loved the fact that Sho was not making his mistakes. He had made so many mistakes…and one his mistakes was out there alive in the world and…and he had no way of knowing if that was his mistake….but…well…

Sho would never have to worry about that.

"No. I was going to say that you made the right choice and…and that I'm proud of you. Of the man that you're becoming." Said Suzuki. A better man than I. You are going to grow up to be a better man than I will ever be. I have no idea how I fathered you.

"I…whatever, I'm going to go and do…stuff. Later." Said Sho. He got up off the bed and practically ran out of the room. Well then…maybe that was for the best. Suzuki…he had no idea what he was even supposed to say from there. He had said it because he felt it…and he needed to stop listening to Shigeko. She always said what she felt and…well he hadn't hurt Son…but also he had no idea what else to say…even now…

Fukuda was looking at him…and he seemed to want to say something.

"Yes?" asked Suzuki. He didn't want to have to say anything else. His Son…Sho was a better man than he was. Sho at the age of eleven, and on the precipice of the worst time of his life, had managed to say not to a girl who was interested in him. He had no idea if Shigeko's friend was considered to be attractive by Sho's standards…or any standards, really, since the last time he had been attracted to an eleven year old girl was when he had been eleven. Still, he knew himself at that age and if a girl had been interested in him in any way at all he would not have hesitated…he liked to think that if he had been in a relationship he would not have hesitated…but even as a man…Pang Su-jin and Sakata Shiori…..

His Son was a better man than he would ever be.

"You said that you were proud of Sho." said Fukuda. What, did he think that Suzuki was a goldfish or something? He knew what he had jus said. Suzuki was proud of Sho, his child, what was so amazing about that?

"I did. He's my child. I'm proud of him. Move on." Said Suzuki

"But you-" said Fukuda

"I said to move on. He's my Son, I'm proud of him, and he has more self-control when it comes to the opposite sex than I do…so move on." Said Suzuki

"...alright. Anyway just…yeah. Let's get back to work." Said Fukuda

"Good." Said Suzuki. There, now it was all settled. He had said something…that he hadn't thought about…and now…well now that it had been said then there was no way to take it back…and he didn't know if he wanted to take it back. He was proud of Sho. Sho was his Son and…and he was annoying. He was impulsive. He made stupid choices and played with rats and ate garbage and fought with everyone….but Suzuki…well he was proud of him.

He had one hell of a Son.


	467. Popping the Question

Sho kind of wanted to run away.

He wanted to just put his shoes on and not stop running, ever, until he got to the ocean or something…and then he would either stop being afraid of the water like a little baby or just find a oat or see if he could make himself fly over the ocean or…something. It was a dumb thought. He had been having nothing but dumb thoughts for the past few weeks. Ever since he'd bought the stupid ring in his stupid pocket. It was in, there, just…existing. Just existing there and weighing him down…well that was another stupid thought to have because, of course, it wasn't weighing him down at all. He was stronger than that.

He was strong…and he was not a baby…and he was going to do this.

"Big sis, do you have to do this?" asked Sho. He wanted to run away…and not just because of the ring in his pocket. He wanted to run away from his big sis because she seemed set on ripping all the hair out of his head. She was standing behind him trying to brush his hair even though she knew that it wouldn't work. It was hard enough to comb it when it was wet. When it was dry it was impossible.

So maybe it was best that she just give up.

"Sho, you know that I do. This is going to be the biggest day of your life, you have to look good for it….not that you don't always look good! Because you do. It's just that I want you to look especially good….alright? So please hold still. You hair is doing that thing again." said big sis

"What thing?" asked Sho

"This thing. This thing where it won't let me brush it." Said big sis

"It's not doing anything, that's just the way that it grows…and anyway what does it matter if my hair is all messed up? That's not going to make her say no…is it?" asked Sho. Big sis would know, she was a girl and she knew how girls worked. Maybe girls said no when you looked like shit and then they found guys who could comb their hair and…why had he taken a bath today? What was the matter with him? He should have just…not taken a bath!

No. He was being dumb.

"No, not if she loves you and I know that she does. You let her kiss you and I know that you hate it when girls kiss you…and also you're going to marry her and you're the best little brother in the world and I have no idea why she wouldn't say yes to you. You're going to be fine….but it would help if I brushed your hair." Said big sis before she went back to trying to get her brush to work through his hair. It wasn't going to work. Her hair was totally different than his, and not just because of the color her hair was straight and it never tangled. His hair grew straight up and did nothing but tangle.

He wondered if Emmy's hair tangled.

He wondered if she ever had to have her hair brushed like this. Maybe. Hers was longer than his after all. Also she was a girl and this was a thing that girls did. Big sis loved to brush her hair and his…and maybe Emmy would want to brush his hair too. Maybe she would sit him down on his bed, well their bed since they would be married and married people always shared a bed, and then pull a brush through his hair as hard as she could and then she would say something like 'hold still, booger' and then he would have to and-

Wait, no, Emmy hated brushing her hair.

So that wasn't going to happen. So he was going to be fine. But then why didn't he feel like he was going to be fine? Why did he feel like…like he had to run away? Like…well he knew why he felt like ruing away. He hadn't thought this, any of this, through. He hadn't thought about how Emmy would be there with him for the rest of his life and all the things he would have to do and…and all of that married stuff and…

And he wondered how far he could run before people noticed that he was gone.

"Give it up. There's nothing either of us can do." Said Sho as he reached up and took the brush from big sis's hands. She let him take it and sighed. What did she have to sigh about? All she had to worry about was his hair. He was the one who was going to have to ask someone to spend the rest of her life with him.

"Alright….but only because I don't want to hurt you. Anyway I guess we don't have a lot of time left for all of this. Isn't it almost time for her school to let out?" asked big sis. She grabbed her phone with her powers and showed him the time….and yes, her school would be letting out. He had a whole plan for what he'd do. He'd take her somewhere to eat, she was always hungry after school since the food sucked, and then he would tell her that she was pretty and that he loved her, which wasn't a lie since he loved her like…a human being…or a friend…or a poptart, and then he would give her the ring and ask her to marry him…

And then they would be married….

And then that would be that. He would have done what he was supposed to do. Nobody would call him weird or…or tell him that he wasn't right…and dad would stop being such a jerk about…well he was always a jerk but he would be nicer about Sho growing up and doing what he was supposed to do. He had a girlfriend, and then he would have a wife, and then a family and then he would be dad's age and dad would be dead and then Sho would be able to do whatever he wanted to…only not really because he would have a wife and kids and…

And wives ran away…that was a thing that happened….

"Yeah…it is…so I should just…get to it then." Said Sho as he scooted off the bed. Big sis made room for him. He got up and dusted off his shirt. Big sis had pulled out a bunch of his hair….he hoped that his kid's didn't have hair like his. He didn't know what he'd do if they did. He didn't want to have to brush their hair or…well all of that other stuff that big sis made him do. He wanted his kids to be happy all the time and do whatever they wanted….and all of that stuff…

And Emmy probably wanted that too…so that was good.

"Wait, hang on. Dad got you something to wear." Said big sis. She picked up the big, white box that had been on the floor all day. He had thought that it had something for her inside, it looked like the boxes that her dresses came in, but no…for some reason this was something for him. Why? Why was dad getting him clothes for? Big sis was the one who got him new clothes…and he didn't need new clothes anyway. Big sis had already gotten him his winter clothes and, anyway, dad had no idea what he liked so it was probably something stupid…

Sho wondered if he could see the future.

"What the hell is this?" asked Sho as he picked up the clothes from in the box. A suit. Dad had gotten him a suit for some reason. Like his but green. Nope. Sho was not dressing like this…and not just because it looked stupid. He wasn't dressing like dad even if dad's clothes were the last clothes in the world!

"Dad got you something nice to wear…he does that when he loves you….so I guess he loves you now. I mean he's been calling you Sho for all of this year already so that's a good sign….I think." Said big sis

"….I don't care what he calls me. I am not wearing that." Said Sho

"But Sho, he'll be upset if you don't wear it. He's got a lot of feelings and they get hurt really easily…he doesn't always show it but his feelings get hurt very easily." Said big sis. Sho didn't need to be told that dad had a lot of feelings, he knew fully well that he did, and he knew fully well what dad did about them. He took them out on other people, mostly Sho, and he hadn't done that for a while but…well he had done it a bunch before and…well he could do it again, not that Sho cared. Dad could do whatever he wanted. He'd be dead one day and then it would all be over.

Sho just had to keep on looking forward to that, that was all.

"I don't give a fuck if his feelings get hurt. I'm not wearing that so you can sell it or burn it or put it on one of your dolls or stuffed animals or something." Said Sho with a shrug. Dad already told him what to do and how to be…he wasn't going to let dad tell him how to dress, too. He wasn't going to let dad dress him up like he was one of big sis's dolls…or like he was big sis. He was always getting big sis stuff to wear even though their wardrobe and dresser was mostly full of her clothes already. Dad treated her like a doll and she didn't mind…

But Sho did and he sure as well was not going to let dad do that to him.

"I…don't want to fight with you…and I'll do what I can about that…but I'm not going to sell it or burn it or…anything. I'm just going to put this in our wardrobe, ok?" asked big sis

"Fine, but it'll just take up space or whatever….anyway I gotta go. Happy Valentine's Day." Said Sho. He kissed her on the head, because it was Valentine's Day and she was his sister, and then he left their room. He left her to put that stupid suit that dad had gotten in him into their already overflowing wardrobe. He didn't need it. He was never dressing like that, like dad, even when he grew up. No, dad already bossed him around enough as it was.

He wasn't going to be even more of a doll than he was.

Sure he was going to ask Emmy to marry him because dad had told him, had spent his entire life telling him, that he needed to find a girlfriend and have more baby espers for the bloodline and stuff, but dad didn't get to tell him other things…like how to dress. Besides, being married to Emmy would be a good thing. When they got married, married for real when they grew up, then dad wouldn't be able to tell Sho what to do. Dad would be either really old or really dead and then Sho…well Sho would be able to do whatever he wanted…well not whatever he wanted. He wouldn't have been able to marry the person that he wanted to marry anyway…

But Shimazaki said that he didn't even know if he believed in marriage so it was fine.

This wouldn't be so bad. He would put his shoes on, take Emmy out like he had last Valentine's Day, and then he would give her the ring and then they would be married…and then married for real when they grew up, and then….well and then dad would get off of his back. This was….this was a good thing. He didn't want to run away…that badly. No, he knew what he had to do and he was going to do it.

He already had the ring, and everyone knew about it, so he didn't have much of a choice now did he?

"You're leaving the house dressed like that?" asked dad. Sho had thought that he had been sneaky enough that dad hadn't noticed him. He'd been in the living working on some boring work stuff, probably or maybe games that he pretended were boring work stuff. Sho didn't care what dad did just so long as he didn't bother him about it.

But dad was bothering him. He was bothering him right now.

"Yeah, dad, I'm wearing this. I'm not big sis. Don't get me any more clothes." Said Sho as he tied his shoes. He rolled up his sleeves as he worked. This jacket was still too big for him. He didn't care, he still wanted to wear it, and not just because it was cold out. Shimazaki had given him this. Wearing it was like wearing Shimazaki…but not in that cut off someone's skin and make a suit out of them way. That would have been a weird thing to want. Sho just wanted to hold his hand and kiss him and sleep next to him and wear his clothes after Shimazaki was done wearing them. That wasn't nearly as weird as wanting to wear someone's skin.

Sho wasn't weird.

"I won't make a habit of it but I had assumed that you would want to wear something nicer than what you normally have on. I even made sure that it was green since seventy eight percent of your wardrobe has some sort of green in it." Said dad. Sho didn't want dad to notice that or anything else about him. He wanted to tell dad to fuck off…but that would have been mean to big sis. She would have had to deal with all of that and, really, she had enough to deal with as it was.

"Yeah, well, I can pick out my own clothes so whatever. Don't you have work or something to do?" asked Sho

"I do." Said dad

"So then why don't you go and do it and leave me alone?" asked Sho

"I will in a moment. I wanted to see you off. This is a big day for you." Said dad

"Well you saw me so…bye." Said Sho with a wave of his hand. Dad was just as allergic to getting a clue as he ever was, it seemed, since he made no move to get the hell out of the hallway and back to the living room where he could do whatever it was that he did all day.

"It's alright to be frightened. This is one of the few instances in your life when it's alright to be frightened….so take advantage of it." Said dad. Sho was not afraid…and he wanted dad to shut up already. Sho knew what he was doing…and he had nothing to be afraid of. If even someone like dad could get married then it couldn't have been very hard at all. Sho was not afraid…and he did not run away from things that he was afraid of anyway…and that didn't matter because he wasn't in the least bit afraid right now.

"I'm not scared." Said Sho

"Or nervous, you may be nervous as well." Said dad. He said that like he cared….well of course he cared. He wanted to be someone's grandpa. Sho didn't know why he wanted that. He was already a pretty bad dad as it was. Another chance wouldn't change anything about him as the terrible person he was.

"I'm not nervous. I just have to give her this ring. How hard can it be?" asked Sho

"More difficult than you could ever imagine." Said dad. He had a tone there, an actual tone, and he looked down at his ring. Sho wondered why he still wore it. Mom wasn't ever coming back. Even if she wanted to come back it wasn't like she would have been able to find them anyway. She had left her phone when she ran away so she couldn't call them and also…also she obviously did not want to come back. If she had wanted to come back then she would have come back already. So it would have made more sense for dad to take off that stupid ring already.

Sho knew that, when Emmy ran away, he wouldn't be keeping his ring on.

"So not that hard at all then." Said Sho mostly just to piss dad off. Maybe if he pissed dad off badly enough he would leave and then Sho could leave the house and go do what he had to do. What dad wanted him to do more than anything else in the world.

"No, no, it is…and she may say 'no' and you should brace yourself for that possibility. She has no reason to say 'yes' and-" said dad

"Seriously? I thought you wanted me to ask her to marry me. Why are you talking like you hope that she says no? Make up our mind, dad." Said Sho

"I don't want her to reject you, no, that's the worst pain that you will ever feel in your life. I want you to…be prepared for the possibility. Mentally. I want her to say yes but she has no reason to. Your mother…well her marriage to me was an urgent matter…because you needed a father and she was already pregnant with you-" said dad

"You mean big sis." Said Sho

"What about your sister?" asked dad

"Mom had big sis in her stomach before me…wait…you and mom weren't married when you made big sis? I thought that only married people could have kids." Said Sho. People got married and then they had kids. That was his understanding of it, anyway, but what did he know? He was eleven. He didn't even want to touch Emmy's boobs let alone stick his dick inside of her…well he didn't want that with any girl and he never would…but he didn't want that with any guy either. Guys didn't even have boobs or anything, real ones not just the result of being super fat, so really he had no idea what two guys would have even done together besides kiss…kissing was awesome…or standing around looking at each other naked…which sounded like it would have been awesome….

But nothing with touching because that would have been gross if it had even been possible.

"No, a woman's ability to conceive has nothing to do with whether or not she is married…so don't get your…future wife…pregnant. Be careful about that." Said dad. Sho stuck out his tongue. Did dad have to use that word? And talk about that stuff? Dad saying pregnant made him think of mom and how she'd had him and big sis….and how she and dad must have done all of that stuff…and that was just gross. Nobody ever wanted to think about their parents…like that…and now Sho was…and now he really wanted to run away…

Which was ok because this whole thing was just way too gross.

"Gross. That stuff is gross…and not in the good way. No way am I doing that. Not in a million years." Said Sho

"You'll change your mind in a year or so…and when you do then….well be prepared for the fact that she may get pregnant and that you'll be responsible for the creation of another human being." Said dad. Sho was prepared to make a person. He'd do that gross thing as many times as Emmy wanted to have babies and then they'd have some and he'd be a better dad than his own dad had ever been. He'd teach them things and play with them and make sure that his kids knew that no matter what he would always love them.

Sho would love his kids even if they ended up like him.

"Yeah, well, I like babies so there…and if she wants to have a kid then we'll get for real married really fast. I won't wait until my second kid is born." Said Sho. He expected dad to tell him to shut up and get out of his sight, or to call big sis over and tell her that Sho was talking like a jerk, but instead he just….got weird. His aura got all pulled in close…and Sho didn't get it.

What was he so afraid of?

"….I have no idea what you mean." Said dad

"You said that you only married mom because she was going to have me. Big sis was born first so she was alive for a long time before I was born. So you waited." Said Sho

"I…misspoke. Yes, your sister…was the one your mother was carrying. Not you. I simply…misspoke." Said dad

"Yeah, well, whatever. I have to go and meet Emmy after school." Said Sho

"Good, you do that…and I wish you the best in your endeavors." Said dad. He said that and then he left…and his aura was still pulled in like he was scared…which was fine by Sho. Let him be scared of whatever it was that he was scared of. Sho had a mission and that mission was asking Emmy to marry him and…and he was going to accomplish that mission no matter what.

So that was what he left the house to do.

He walked fast. He didn't stop once, not eve to say hi to Shimazaki, and that was for the best. He had to walk fast so he didn't think about what happened last year….that had been a pretty bad year. He knew what Shimazaki and Minegishi were doing and he didn't want to have to hear it gain. They were so gross sometimes…and he'd have to be gross too one of these days…but he wouldn't have been gross like that with Minegishi. Even if they had been a guy just…no way. They were mean and boring and…and a jerk and…and no way! Shimazaki was way too awesome for them!

He was the coolest, most fun, and all around best person that Sho had ever met…and it wasn't fair.

He tried to walk faster, he tried to get away from his thoughts. Thoughts about how it wasn't fair that someone like Minegishi got someone like Shimazaki. Thoughts that it wasn't fair that he hadn't been Shoko, that he had to be Sho, because if he had been Shoko then he and Shimazaki could have been together. Sho would have even done all of that gross stuff with him if he had wanted to. Anything to keep him from leaving…

Sometimes when you loved someone they left.

Even being married didn't mean forever. Sometimes you could be married to a person, and make new people with them, but they would still leave you. They could just leave you without even so much as a note or a text, and just….Sho…he wanted that. Not from Shimazaki. No, he didn't know what he would have done if he had been Shoko and he had been Shimazaki's girlfriend and Shimazaki had been gone and he hadn't even left a note…well of course he wouldn't have left a note since he couldn't write, but not even a text and…and he wanted that from Emmy but not Shimazaki….

Which was dumb.

He knew that sometimes wives left, and he knew that sometimes you could promise a person that you would be there forever but then you could leave, and he knew that he was not the kind of person who could do that…and neither was Emmy. She loved him and…well he'd never heard his parents say that they loved each other so there was that, and also it was stupid to want his girlfriend to leave him anyway. He would just have to find another….and he didn't even want the one he had…but this was not about what he wanted.

What in his life, what one thing, had ever been about what he wanted?

What he wanted didn't matter. He had to do what he had to do. Besides, making someone else happy was what mattered the most. Like what Fukuda said. Fukuda may not have ever had a wife or a girlfriend or any girl that had ever liked him but he knew about this stuff. He knew more than dad did. Dad had let mom leave so he must have known less than nothing. Sho knew...what he had to do…and he knew that he had to do it…even though what he really wanted to do was go home and somehow become Shimazaki's boyfriend and then kick Minegishi out and then he and Shimazaki could have been together forever and they could have held hand and kissed and Sho maybe could have even touched the tattoo on his chest and-

….and no matter how fast he ran his thoughts still followed.

He ran as fast as he could, so fast that when he met Emmy he was totally out of breath, but his thoughts were still in his head and they were still just as loud as before. Thought about….about how if he had been a girl then this could have been simpler. How if Shimazaki had asked him to marry him then he could have said yes….and kissing him wouldn't have felt like a chore…and also they could have been together forever and…and all of that other stuff. He wished that he could have outran his thoughts but that was not how it worked….and he couldn't change how it worked…

So it didn't matter.

"Are you alright? You look like you need to go to A&E or something." Said Emmy. Sho nodded and tried to catch his breath. She was wearing that lip stuff again, but not the one that had almost killed him. She smelled like bubblegum today, and also the stuff she had on her lips was glittery, so he had no excuse not to kiss her…and also she was wearing glittery stuff on her eyes too which made no sense….but what did he know about girls?

He didn't even like them…not like that anyway….but that didn't matter.

"No, I'm fine…um…you look really pretty and stuff." Said Sho as he caught his breath. She liked it when he told her that. It wasn't a lie, she was pretty, so he didn't feel bad saying that to her. Not like when he told her that he loved her.

"Stop it you booger….you're being daft….anyway…here! Happy….happy Valentine's Day." Said Emmy. She had been holding a bag in her hands….a red one with hearts on it…because it was Valentine's Day…and also their anniversary…and it was a big bag. Well it was bigger than the ring that he had gotten her…so maybe he should have gotten her something else…because he ring was small and maybe she wanted big things like…a crown…or one of those cool rocks she liked…or another petrified eyeball so she'd have a matching set or…something….

If she told him to taker to the most expensive store I town and get her the most expensive thing stuffed with the second most expensive thing and sewn with the third most expensive thing then he happily would have gone and done just that for her.

"Well? Aren't you going to open it?" asked Emmy

"I…I will but…well I didn't get you something this big…and I just…well now I feel kind of bad so maybe I should go and get you something bigger and then I can open this." said Sho. There, that made sense. Girls liked big flashy presents. You were supposed to get them jewels and gold and…ponies…and stuff…flashy things! Not rings and…and maybe she would have wanted…maybe she didn't even want this ring and….and….

And maybe she deserved a better boyfriend than him.

"Don't be daft. You being here with me is enough…especially after you left for the States out of nowhere…but whatever. You're here now and you made it back for our anniversary and….and I know that you'll like this so open your bloody gift already." Said Emmy. She had her hands on her hips and she was looking at him like she was getting pissed off…and it was rude of him to not accept her gift…and maybe once he saw what he got her then he could figure out if a ring was…a good trade…or…whatever…

However this worked.

However presents and love and stuff worked. He had told dad that he wasn't afraid…and he wasn't…but he just…she was looking him in the eyes and she was smiling and…and she loved him. She was looking at him like she loved him and he…he had to make sure that he looked at her like he loved her back. He had to make sure to look like he loved the present she got him too…and he would…as soon as he pulled it out. There, in the bag, was…chocolates?

Eyeballs.

Chocolate eyeballs.

"I read that in Japan you were supposed to make chocolates for the boy you fancied….and I more than fancy you…and I know that you like chocolate and you got me an eyeball so…I made these. Well my mum helped but I did loads. I saw in the internet how to do these…and I managed to convince my mum that they were for me….sorry I'm just not allowed to have a boyfriend yet….but…yeah. I hope that you like them…now what did you get me?" asked Emmy. She held out her hands. Sho…he had no idea what to do. She had made him chocolates…and no girl had ever made him anything besides his big sis…and now he had these chocolates that looked kind of like eyes and…and she was looking at him with her arms stretched out and…

And he needed more time.

"Well? Why are you….oh! Don't worry about the citrus. I washed my hands up to the elbow before I made these and I cleaned my kitchen too just to be safe. My mum thought she'd gone mad when she saw me cleaning…mad like mental, I mean, not mad like cross." Said Emmy. She was still holding her hands out and he just…he felt his pocket. There in his jacket was the ring…and it had lived in there since he'd bought it…and he just….he had thought that there would have been more time. He had thought that they would trade gifts after their date…..and this was not after their date.

"Um…I have something for you but it's not as nice as this so…um….it's not candy! I mean I know that you love candy and if you want we can go to the candy store, or a bigger one, or even M&M World if you want and-" said Sho

"Stop being like that. I don't care what you get me so long as it's from you. Besides, I just spent my whole twenty quid at the sweet store the other day….so I'm good on sweets." Said Emmy with a smile. Sho…he took a deep breath. He had to do this now. He had to…he reached into his pocket and…wait. You were supposed to get down on one knee.

So that was what he did.

"What….what are you doing?" asked Emmy. She played with the bottom of her jacket and took a step back. She seemed like she was scared…but what did she have to be afraid of? She wasn't the one who was asking someone else to spend the rest of their life with him. She wasn't the one who had her entire future running in front of her eyes like a movie on fast forward. She wasn't the one who had to…to….

She wasn't the one who had to realize, to accept, that she would never be with the person that she loved most in the world.

"Emmy…do you want to marry me!?" asked Sho. Emmy…she didn't say anything. In the movies the girl always started jumping up and down and saying 'yes' a bunch of times…or they said 'no' and ran away or slapped you in the face or kicked you in the nuts…and he didn't her to say 'no' or do any of that…especially the nut kicking….but…

Anything would have been better than nothing.

"Oh, you're foolin' about. Knock it off you daft booger and give me my real present." Said Emmy. Sho…hadn't expected her to say that. He wondered if she'd understood him. His English wasn't the best…but it wasn't that bad…right?

"This is your present. I got you this human tooth ring at the oddities store and I've been planning on how to ask you to marry me and-" said Sho

"No! You're foolin' right now! We can't get married!" said Emmy. Sho….well he felt like it was time to get up now. His pants were wet, it was wet outside, and he sort of wanted to go home…if not to just change…but he couldn't leave. Not now. No, he had to figure out what he was supposed to do…now.

Nobody had warned him about the girl thinking that you weren't serious when you got down on knee and asked her to spend her entire life with you.

"Why not? You're a boy and I'm a girl….wait…no. I'm a boy and you're a girl and-" said Sho as he played with the ring in his hands. English was complicated, this was complicated, and he wanted to….to run away home….back to big sis…where nothing was ever complicated.

"So there, you are foolin' I knew it. Fine, you didn't get me anything for Valentine's Day which is also our anniversary but that's fine. We can just have fun and-" said Emmy

"If you don't want to marry me then you can say 'no', really, it's not like I'm going to force you to marry me-" said Sho

"I'd kick you in nuts really bloody hard if you tried to force me to do anything." Said Emmy

"Please don't do that….and just…ok, you don't want us to get married and-" said Sho

"I don't know what I want! I'm a kid! I can't drive or get a job or vote or…or join the army or….or sell my blood and…and I can't get married! You're being daft! And mad! And a booger! And a daft mad booger! And…and feck off with that! I don't know…what I want. I love you and…and this is going too bloody fast!" said Emmy. She was right. This was going too fast. Right. Well now they could go back to the beginning and…and they could be just friends again even. Yeah…if she didn't want to get married then she should have been free to find the guy of her dreams.

"Ok…cool. So we can break up and-" said Sho

"What?" asked Emmy. Her voice was high and now her eyes were red…and he had no idea what he'd even said. If she didn't want to be married then they could go back to being just friends and she could meet a guy who she did want to marry.

"If I'm not the guy you want to marry then you should be free to find someone you do want to be married to. It's ok if you want to be with someone else and-" said Sho. Ok, now he really didn't know what he'd said that time. Now she looked like she wanted to kill him….and he just…maybe he just needed to stop talking all together. Maybe she was having her period or something. Big sis always got mad and sad when it happened to her. That would have explained all of this.

"Sho….shut up! Just shut up! I love you! I love you and…and it's happening too fast but…of course I want to marry you! I've thought about it but when we're older! We're kids! We can't move out or have jobs or go to…I'm not even allowed to get on the tube by myself! I just…I love you and you love me and…and I don't know why you even want to be married!" said Emmy

"Because…well when you love someone aren't you supposed to marry them?" asked Sho

"Is this a Japanese or something? Because, really, most of what I know about Japan comes from anime and YouTube and they never did things like this….but just…I don't know." Said Emmy

"It's not a Japanese thing….I mean we get married too but…I just thought that this was what you were supposed to do when a girl loves you." Said Sho

"I...I do love you and…and I get it. I mean I love you and…and I like the ring but I just…you mean a lot to me. Nobody has ever been as nice to me or fancied me, or kissed me, or just…anything…before. I mean you're gone most of the year and it's hard for me but when you're here it's like a dream…this is like a dream…" said Emmy. She took the ring from his hand and slipped it onto her finger. Now he was extra confused….

"So…you do want to marry me?" asked Sho. Well if she wanted to marry him then she should have just said that from the beginning. Why was she being like this? She was so confusing and…and was this just what girls were like? He didn't know…the only girl he knew was his sister…and Emmy was nothing like his sister…because she was his girlfriend. Also she would be his wife…and a wife was nothing like a sister…

He was fine. This was fine.

"I do…but when we grow up. When we're allowed to get married…alright? So just…I'm promising you that when we grow up we can get married…and there's so much to figure out but…but you're right. You love me and I love you and we can figure out things like what country we're going to live in and what university we'll go to and how many kids we'll have later. Right now…I can promise that we can be married…alright?" asked Emmy

"Um…sure. But only if you want to. I don't want to make you do anything-" said Sho

"Sho…I want this…and you do too. I mean we love each other so…yeah. I guess I'm going to be Emmeline Magnolia Suzuki when I grow up…or I guess Suzuki Emmeline Magnolia….or Suzuki Magnolia Emmeline…or just Suzuki Emi since Emi is my name in Japanese." Said Emmy

"Magnolia?" asked Sho. He didn't know that word…he didn't know a lot of words….and he would have to learn more words in English is they were going to be…married.

Married.

He was getting married.

"That's my middle name. I've got one, well my dad says that I do anyway. My mum never uses it. I don't use it either, most people don't, but we have three names here…but I know you only have two in Japan so we'll give our babies only two….and I guess I have to learn Japanese...but I know some words already so I guess it's a good start." Said Emmy. She smiled and leaned in close. He leaned in and kissed her really fast. He heard some clapping and looked over…people had been watching…and someone was recording…and…and…

And didn't these people have their own girlfriends?! And…wives….

"Y-Yeah…or we can move to London…or another place that speaks English….and stuff….it'll be great. Yeah…so…let's go and have Valentine's Day dinner…or lunch…or whatever." Said Sho as he wiped her lip stuff off of his face. At least it was bubblegum this time…though he wished that it was the citrus stuff again….because then he would have been able to go home…but that was selfish of him….

Even dad, the king of selfishness, had said that a man always put his wife first.

"Sho…that would be lovely." Said Emmy. She leaned in and kissed him again…and he kissed her back. That was…he was going to have to do that again…and again and again for the rest of his life…and he was going to have to do more than that…later. When they grew up. When she became his wife. Not now. She wasn't his wife now, no, she was still his girlfriend….his fiancée….and….and he was fine. He was fine and this was fine and…

…and he wanted to run away.


	468. Valentine's Day Mission

Hatori Nozomu did not get sent on missions.

Before Mob pulled him into the entourage/friendship house he'd been mostly a floater. He had mostly been the guy who kept the WIFI going with occasional dips into various forms of industrial sabotage and money laundering. The biggest mission he had ever been on had been completely destroying some company or other. It hadn't bene nearly as exciting as it sounded. Just stealing a shit ton of data messing a shit ton of data up, and then essentially setting fire to the whole thing. It had been short and over quickly, and honestly pretty boring, but it had at least been something that he understood. He had at least known what had been going on….

Right now he didn't have the first clue what he was supposed to be doing.

"So…what are we doing here?" asked Shibata from his spot across from Hatori. This was…a mission. He had woken up to mission parameters and…well he didn't much like missions, it was mostly just hitting people until they either agreed to whatever or stopped moving, but at least he understood those missions. Right now he had no idea what he was even supposed to be doing. His instructions had been to dress nice, some to this hotel, and then await further instructions. Well he had dressed nice, he was at the hotel, and he had been rushed over to a table…where Hatori had been sitting….

And he was really looking forward to those further instructions because right now he had no idea what he was even supposed to be doing.

"I…don't know. The mission just said to dress nice and come here…and then there would be more instructions." Said Hatori as he pulled at the collar of his shirt. A gift from Suzuki. A shirt for a shirt, he had said, and not a Valentine's Day gift. No, he had been very clear on that. He was not interested in Hatori, never would be, but that was alright because Hatori was a good catch and someone would be happy to have him. Suzuki's own words. He also said that weird thing about how if Hatori had been a girl…but he didn't want to think about that right now.

He didn't want to think about anything related to Valentine's Day.

"Same for me. I was just told to come here and then….wait." said Shibata as he shifted in his seat. This chair was actually big enough for him. It was so hard to find chairs that could fit him, even in a country like this where the people were on the bigger side, but this chair was perfect…and also not like anyone else's. They all had regular size chairs and he had…well it felt like someone had thought of him. He just…got that feeling. He had been ushered to this table and sat down…like he'd been expected….

But that was crazy.

"What are we waiting for?" asked Hatori as he played with the place setting in front of him. This was one of those places where there were cloth napkins and real table clothes and the glasses were made of glass and they put bread baskets on the table along with fancy butter. This butter was in the shape of a heart, probably because it was Valentine's Day, and Hatori wasn't entirely sure if he was allowed to eat it. He was hungry, this was usually the time when Shibata had dinner going, but…well he had no idea if he was supposed to eat or meet someone here or….well….anything.

Suzuki had just said to be at this place at this time dressed in the shirt he'd gotten him….this stiff and itchy shirt.

"No idea…and don't pull at your shirt like that, you'll stretch it out. I'll wash it with some fabric softener when we get home and then I'll let it air dry." Said Shibata

"You don't have to do that, I can do my own laundry. You taught me, remember?" asked Hatori

"I remember…and I also remember that you skip the fabric softener a lot of the time." Said Shibata

"Sometimes I forget to set a timer for the rinse cycle, so sue me." Said Hatori

"Over the laundry, no, over the way you hoard dishes in your room? Yes." said Shibata

"Hey, I bring them out eventually." Said Hatori

"Yeah, when the ants get to-

"Sparkling water?" asked a waiter. Hatori almost jumped right out of his seat. He didn't, thankfully, but his foot did hit the table. People turned to look at him…and now he was getting stares. Shibata just reached out and patted him on the shoulder.

"Sorry about him, he's kind of jumpy….and yes please, we'd love some sparkling water." Said Shibata as he held out his glass. He was careful as he picked it up. Glasses, ones made of actual glass, had a tendency to shatter in his hands. He couldn't afford to have that happen now. Hatori was embarrassed enough. He was such a fragile little guy, so much more fragile than most people. Jumpier than most people, too, the only man he'd ever met in his life that was more high stung than Hatori Nozomu was Serizawa.

Not that Shibata could fault Serizawa for being the way he was, though, or Hatori for that matter either. They were both products of their lives like all people were.

"Arigato….thank you." Said Hatori. Right English…he wasn't that good at English. Shibata was somehow better than he was…well that wasn't fair. Shibata was a pretty smart guy when you got to know him. He was pretty much the only one keeping the friendship house afloat. Without him they would have been sitting in their own filth living off of chips and soda. So pretty much the past five years of his life. He wondered what his life would have been like if he'd had someone like Shibata in it sooner…

He would have smelled a hell of a lot better that was for sure.

"God, I haven't had sparkling water in forever." Said Shibata

"Why don't you put it on the list? We get pretty much whatever we want. It's all in the living expenses budget." Said Hatori

"It's best fresh and I would get us a carbonator but I feel like that would be way too much temptation for Shimazaki." Said Shibata

"Yeah, he's like a little kid sometimes. I think he's got something wrong with him. I mean the way he grew up and all." said Hatori

"I feel like he exaggerates what his life was like." Said Shibata

"He doesn't…he really doesn't….and don't ask me how bad it gets because I don't want to talk about it." Said Hatori

"I can only imagine." Said Shibata with a shake of his head. He knew that Shimazaki had an interesting relationship with the truth…but he also knew that Shimazaki had been through a lot in his life. He had a lot of scars, it was hard to tell with the tattoos but he had them, and then there was that condition that Minegishi said that he had where he forgot the he existed if someone wasn't paying attention to him twenty four hours a day. It must have been terrible being Shimazaki Ryou…almost as terrible as it was to live with Shimazaki Ryou.

"Don't. You don't want to even imagine how bad it gets. Today or any other day." Said Hatori. That…was not a box he wanted to open. That was not a box that needed opening. That was a box that needed to stay closed forever like that time when he had been ten and he had decided to see what would happen if he left a tuna sandwich in a box in the back of his closet…but somehow worse.

"What's so special about today…wait, no, it's Valentine's Day. Sorry, don't know where my head was for a second." Said Shibata. Right, Valentine's Day. He'd been planning on making a nice heart shaped red velvet cake for everyone, and he might have still had the time if this mission ended soon, even if it meant going back home and listening to Shimazaki and Minegishi carry on. He was glad that the two of them were in love and all…but couldn't they be in love a little more quietly? Or at least without Shimazaki's running description of what was happening? And Minegishi's constant screaming over every little thing that he did to them? There was no way that anyone could have been that good…or maybe he was just being a little bit bitter since it had been so long for him.

Or maybe he just wanted to bake a cake.

That was the thing to do when you had feelings that you didn't like. Like mom had always said, it was best to forget your troubles with a big slice of chocolate cake. Not that he had bad thoughts that often….well ones that weren't justified. Living with Shimazaki was a challenge. Everyone else, even Serizawa, was easier to live with than him. Still, though, these were his friends and this was his posting for the foreseeable future so he had better get used to it.

It wasn't all bad, though, he got to hang out with Hatori.

"Yeah….it's Valentine's Day…" said Hatori. He looked around at all the men and women around him. Every single table was for two. Man on one side, woman on the other, some had two women, some had two men…like the table that he was sitting at right now…but that was just…a coincidence….Suzuki wouldn't have….

Yes. Yes he would have.

Suzuki was….well not crazy….well actually he was pretty crazy….but not like crazy-crazy. More like…well he did kill people and shit…but also…he had no idea what was and was not ok. Like all the questions he asked, or how rude he could be, or how he didn't know that setting two people up on a blind date was a really bad idea and…

And he was just trying to be a good friend….which meant that he was making progress towards being less crazy…even if he was progressing into more of a weirdo.

"What's up?" asked Shibata. Hatori was scared of something. His aura was being weird and his eyes were doing that thing where he looked for all of the exits. Was he shy in crowds? He wasn't usually but he was still growing…and also he was incredibly fragile too.

"It's Valentine's Day." Said Hatori as soon as he found his voice. There were couples on all side of him. To the left and the right and….and he was dressed like this…and Shibata was dressed up too…and he knew that hoping that they were just meeting a contact or something here was stupid. Suzuki shipped him with Shibata….and….and it could have been worse. Suzuki shipped him with Fukuda too despite having a massive crush on the asshole himself…or maybe because he had a crush on the asshole…or…

This could have been worse. He could have been sitting across from Fukuda.

"I know…I just said so. Did you have plans today? I mean I know we have a mission…not sure what kind of mission would have us both here together…but maybe if we wrap it up quickly then you can get to your date-" said Shibata

"No, you don't get it. This is a date-" said Hatori

"Would you two like to look at the wine list? Tonight we have an excellent-" said the waiter as he leaned over with a tiny book. Shibata reached for it, Hatori could tell, and he knew that if he got them a bottle of wine then this would actually turn into a date…and he didn't want this to turn into a date! He'd never been on one before and…and he had no idea what to do…and also….also he liked girls! No, not girls. That would be wrong. Grown women! He was into grown women around his age! Not girls and not guys….

But Suzuki needed to think that he was into guys so he didn't kill him for thinking that Hatori might have been into his little girl.

"Yes, that's fine. A bottle of that." Said Hatori with a wave of his hand. He needed a drink. He needed two drinks. He needed…he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He needed to check his phone and…and he needed a fucking drink.

"You know…you really shouldn't drink." Said Shibata. Bad things happened when Hatori drank. He made himself sick, he cried, he mistook sinks for urinals…thought that time had bene because Shimazaki had drugged him…but still. He wasn't in the mood to clean vomit out of a white shirt and he wasn't in the mood, either, to walk Hatori to the bathroom and hold it for him again either.

He considered the two of them to be friends but even he had his limits.

"I need a drink. I need a drink now more than at any other time in my life. Suzuki…that fucking…friend of mine just…hang on, I'm texting him." said Hatori as he pulled out his phone. There, a text from Suzuki…he opened it…

'Don't drink. You make bad choices when you drink.' Said Suzuki. Hatori looked around…he was being watched. He was being watched to make sure that he fulfilled this date mission….thing. Any of the people around him could have been the informant…and he didn't know…well he did and he didn't…he could feel a thousand phones all around him. This was a hotel restaurant. There were people everywhere…and there was another hotel across the street…and this was just…too much. Too many people and too much and…

And he was on a date with Shibata. His first date.

"What does he have to say? Does he have any more instructions for us? I mean I know that we shouldn't drink during a missing but I feel like this might be recon so we should blend in…but I don't know. Obviously I've never done a recon mission before. That's more your area." Said Shibata

"No, I'm mostly tech support and industrial sabotage….and Suzuki says not to drink because I make bad choice when I drink…he's one to talk….damn it…" said Hatori

"What's wrong?" asked Shibata

"Suzuki just set us up on a date. He ships us and…well he thinks that I'm gay and-" said Hatori

"Are you? I mean you spend a lot of time with him…and you're pretty much the only person who has good things to say about him…and Shimazaki says-" said Shibata

"Shimazaki is a liar. I'm not…I don't know what I am. Alright?" asked Hatori. He was being watched. Whatever he said could get back to Suzuki. Suzuki…did not like liars. He considered liars to be traitors and terrible things happened to traitors. Things that he did not want to even think about.

"Oh. Well you might be a little bi…I think I might be, sometimes, but it's not like I meet enough people to be able to tell anyway." Said Shibata

"Yes, I noticed that about you….and Shimazaki's said some stuff but he's a liar so I take it with a grain of salt." Said Hatori

"Yeah, about that-" said Shibata rubbing the back of his head. Maybe not the best conversation but well….it wasn't like he was opposed to the idea of…things. With Hatori. He was a nice person and Shibata had never thought about him like that before but…well he was nice. And he cleaned up nice too. There was something cute about him. Something in the glasses, maybe, or that red sweater with the hearts on it…he always worse really festive sweaters around the holidays. Yeah, he was a pretty nice guy….

Most of the time.

"What the fuck?" muttered Hatori. He had been about to toss his phone into his sparkling water. That had been….Suzuki had eyes and ears on him and they were close enough to see and hear…unless he had that guy who could project himself outside of his body or the one who could make ethereal clones…but…Suzuki wouldn't have been that invested in this date….right?

Yes. Of fucking course he would have been.

"What's he saying now?" asked Shibata craning forward to see Hatori's screen. The table groaned under his weight and he stopped quickly. Right. Know your own weight, Hiroshi, it's been about thirty years now.

"He says not to talk about other, more attractive men, on dates. He says that it's a rule for dating women but it might transfer over to men too. Also he says not to eat anything with garlic, anything made from fish, and anything that might make me sick later…and not to drink too much wine because I make bad choices and drinking impairs consent….what in the hell…?" said Hatori. Well now…now he had entered the Twilight Zone or something. That was….boundaries. He needed to talk to Suzuki about boundaries….and talking about your friend's sex life…not that Hatori even had one…and not that he was about to change that now.

Even if Suzuki had, apparently, planned this whole evening in advance.

"Can I see?" asked Shibata

"Here." Said Hatori

"Wow…yeah. He…said all of that. Cool. So…is this our mission then?" asked Shibata. Well President Suzuki was at least a good friend…in his own way. He had taken the time to warn Hatori about drinking too much, about how he could have been taken advantage of, and Shibata…he knew that he came off that way…but it still hurt…but at least President Suzuki was being a good friend to Hatori.

Maybe Suzuki's wife hadn't been cucking him like Shimazaki had been saying….well of course she hadn't. Shimazaki was full of lies.

"Let me ask him…he says yes. He also says that the roast beef here is to die for and they even have ketchup for it….good ketchup apparently." Said Hatori

"What is it with him and ketchup?" asked Shibata

"I think his sense of taste might be off…or something. I don't know. This is too weird. I'm sorry." said Hatori

"Why are you sorry? You didn't make him set this up." Said Shibata

"No but I told him that I was gay and he's got this crazy idea about me getting married and having kids-" said Hatori  
"But…that's not how it works. I mean you could adopt them but they wouldn't be your biological kids." Said Shibata

"I think he wants me to use a surrogate or something….I don't know. I just…I'm sorry that this happened. Let's just eat and go-" said Hatori

"What?" asked Shibata

"He says not to come home, he's got eyes and ears on us by the way, not to come home until tomorrow." Said Hatori. He looked around and…well there were other espers here….but his range wasn't good. Also there was no loosing whoever this was. He was….he was going to have to go through this with. Not everything, no, there were some lines he would cross…but also some lines that he would have to….

That he would have to be drunk enough to cross…and he didn't care what Suzuki said….he was getting drunk tonight.

"Wait…do he wants us to….you know?" asked Shibata. Well that was…going beyond being a good friend. He understood wanting your friend to make the most of his night but to pretty much make someone….well that was going a little too far. President Suzuki was trying to be a good friend, it seemed, but it also seemed like he needed a few more lessons in friendship.

"I'm afraid to ask….but….oh. He says 'wat you do is up to you' and also that we have a really nice room with everything that we would need…he did research apparently….and…yeah. Cool. We're on a date…my first date…" said Hatori

"Wait, this is really your first date?" asked Shibata. Well this was….poor Hatori. He deserved better than this. He deserved someone who wanted to date him, who had asked him out, and who had just….been into him. Shibata thought that he was kind of cute, sure, but that didn't mean that he wanted to be his first date….and all that came with it.

"Yeah. I've been in Claw since I was fifteen, remember? And even before then I wasn't really popular." Said Hatori

"Oh…well if I had known that this was your first date, or that we would even be going on this date, then I would have made it special for you. Flowers and chocolates…homemade chocolates…actually we might have some left over. I helped Mob make this year's obligation chocolates and I think we might have gone a little bit overboard." Said Shibata

"That's…that's ok. Let's just get through tonight…and that bottle of wine if it ever gets here." Said Hatori. Right. This was…his life. He was being forced to go out on a date and…and this was his fault for lying to Suzuki and pretty much everything else bad that he had done in his life. Well alright then. He could have dinner and then sleep….on the floor of the hotel room….and if Suzuki asked why he hadn't done anything he just would have said something about not being ready…or…something. He didn't know, he'd figure it out after dinner….and wine. A lot of wine. All of the wine. The most wine that a person could possibly drink.

That was tonight's mission, get as drunk as humanly possible, but also pretend to have a good time so he didn't wake up in a traitor hole the next day for lying. Cool. Alright then. He could do this…

He really didn't have a choice.


	469. Valentine's Day Love Bubble

Shimazaki Ryou had zero intention of leaving this room today for any reason whatsoever.

He had everything that h needed right here. He had Toshi, he had food, he had water, he had whatever the hell Toshi kept in the bottles in their drawers, but most of all he had Toshi. Had he mentioned that he had Toshi? Because he did. He had Toshi right there in his arms on his, their, bed, and they were so soft and the smelled so good and their voice was so soft….soft and kind of like rubbing two pieces of silk together…or maybe silk and then satin….or maybe velvet? He hadn't heard velvet in a while but he had heard silk and satin and Toshi's voice was just as good as silk and sating. There was no better sound in the whole world than Toshi's voice.

Not even the sweet sounds of the greatest group of amazing individuals to ever grace this planet.

"I want to hold your hand….I want to hold your hand…" said Shimazaki, his voice muffled there in Toshi's hair. They smelled so good today…and that was not just the weed talking. They really did smell completely amazing. Like…like shampoo and conditioner and also…well weed….and fabric softener but also like…well like Toshi. Toshi smelled like Toshi and there was nothing better than the way that Toshi smelled.

Well the way that they sounded.

And the way that they felt.

And the way that they tasted.

But the way that they smelled…well it was all a tie. Everything about this human being, this most perfect person…to borrow a word from the craziest and saddest son of a bitch the Shimazaki had ever known, was just…perfect. Toshi was everything that he had ever wanted in another human being and…and he was high as fuck…but still. This…love cuddle...Valentine's Day love cuddle….or rather love bubble…was perfect. Bubbles were one of the few things that he couldn't sense but he had felt them.

They popped easily.

"Then hold it, I don't need two hands for this." said Minegishi as they offered Ryou their non-dominant hand. They really only needed one for this…even if it was awkward. With them being the little spoon to Ryou's big spoon and all. Well it wasn't like they could be the big spoon. They were a lot smaller than Ryou.

He made them feel small.

Not in a bad way. Well not in the way that others had made them feel small in the past. He made them feel small like…like they were vulnerable…but not in the way that they had been before. More…primal…in a way. Like if there was some kind of sabretooth tiger attack he would be able to keep them safe. That made perfect sense, of course, because he could teleport them out of any danger. There were no more sabretooth tigers, of course, but the primal part of their brain didn't know that. All they knew was that they were in the arms of someone bigger and stronger than them. Someone who could and would lay down his life for them. For his partner…or mate if they were still going off of primal, animal channel, terms.

Or boyfriend to use a term that was a little less nature show-y.

They had a boyfriend, the one boyfriend, the one boyfriend who was currently using them as a body pillow. The one boyfriend who's sweat slickened chest was pressed against their equally frictionless back. The one boyfriend who had filled their room with junk food and declared this to be their love bubble. The one boyfriend who had made them feel, and they still felt, utterly boneless. The one boyfriend who loved them more than anything or anyone else in his life.

The one boyfriend who was not the person on the other end of this phone.

"And I don't need two hands for this." said Shimazaki. One of his hands was slung over Toshi's back, that was the one that made it's way over to theirs. The other hand however, made it's way between their legs and up…where it was promptly trapped.

"Ryou." Said Minegishi as they hit the delete key. Great. Now they had to start all over again…well that word…or maybe the whole message. They had to reply, it was polite, and sometimes they did give a damn about being polite. Mob's friendship lectures had rubbed off on them. Or maybe they just didn't feel like being a total dick to…whoever this person was to them.

Former hook up?

That didn't fit. They never texted socially with a hook up…or in general since everyone they knew lived within shouting distance of them. So maybe…new friend? That sort of fit. They were as close to friends as Minegishi could be with someone else…but they had also been inside of one another and that may have put them out of the friendship category. Friends with benefits? That fit better….but they hadn't had any 'benefits' since Halloween and they hadn't made any plans for any more benefits either. It just wasn't feasible right now. Maybe when they went back to Japan…and if they ever stayed within a day's distance from Seasoning City…but that was for later. For when they summered in Japan as they probably would again this year. Now it was winter, the world outside of this room felt dead, and they had to figure out what to say when your sort of friend/sort of lover sent you a virtual bouquet of flowers with a Happy Valentine's Day message.

Thank you?

That was a phrase which people used but…but then maybe that would be stepping more into…whatever this was. The bouquet, well the picture of one, made no sense in terms of flower language. White, purple, and blue chrysanthemums all meant friendship. Red roses that meant 'I love you' but also yellow roses of jealousy and coral roses of friendship. Then there was also the red carnation which meant an aching heart and…and maybe they were looking too much into it. Maybe it was just an assortment of pretty flowers. Maybe they just should have said 'thank you' and then…made it clear that they weren't looking for anything serious…because they already had something serious.

Something that could be seriously annoying.

"What? Still too sensitive?" asked Shimazaki as he pulled his hand away. There was a stickiness that clung to his fingers. He wiped it on the wall behind him. Toshi was going to kill him when they saw that later but it was better than getting up and washing his hands. Nope, none of that today…well no more of that. Toshi was pretty insistent about that, actually, and he didn't blame them. The whole area was just….way too fucking complicated and he didn't want Toshi to have to go through bread times on his account. They already had ketchup packet times to deal with. Not now, not that he minded, well he did mind when they got upset. Sometimes it felt like they just yelled and yelled at everything…and usually he was the 'everything'…but not now.

Now was about love and cuddles and love cuddles in their love bubble.

"No, I'm just busy." Said Minegishi as they heard Ryou wipe his hand on the wall. Great. That was going to dry into something truly disgusting…but whatever. They'd clean it later. Today they had no intention of doing anything outside of this bed…and they never would, anyway, unless they managed to figure out how to finish this stupid text already.

"Read to me?" asked Shimazaki. He felt Toshi tense up aura and all. What? Were they reading one of their secret Toshi books that he wasn't supposed to know about? He didn't care if they sometimes read trashy books for people closer to the kids' age or their weird manga where people had knots and stuff…or the thing with the thing…he just liked hearing them read to him. That was all.

"Not now." Said Minegishi. Ryou…had a jealous streak as wide as the sky. He loved them and when he loved someone he never let them go. Maybe it had something to do with frequently being abandoned by his parents and the death of the last person he….lots of things that they didn't want to think about. Ryou….they loved him and this was an open relationship anyway….but…well they did not want to start opening up cans of worms. Not before they could get started on their garden again, anyway.

"I don't care what you're reading, I just like to hear your voice." Said Shimazaki as he pressed his face into the back of Toshi's neck. He had read, once, that people spooned because there was a scent gland or something on the back of the neck. He could believe that. Toshi smelled…well sweet here. The top of their head smelled sweet too but not as much as at the back of their neck right at the base of their head. Their hair was longer now, long enough that they had started pulling it back, and he hoped that they never cut it. Even if it got in his mouth when he spooned them. He liked their long Toshi hair…it was so…well not soft but theirs.

God. He loved every single fucking thing about Minegishi Toshiki.

"I'm amazed that you can hear everything over the music. How much of this playlist is Beatles?" asked Minegishi. They decided to reply later. They'd blame the time difference or…something. Something that would sound better than 'my boyfriend who I'm in an open relationship with has no idea that you even exist and it's best that he never does for your own sanity' or something.

They put their phone down on the nightstand.

"The vast majority of it but there's that stuff you like, too. Plenty of Bowie and shit." Said Shimazaki between kisses. He kissed the back of Toshi's neck. He could taste them, sort of, and they were so sweet. God…how did one person….how could one person…how could one person be this…sweet?

And also musky, kind of, but that was a whole other area of their body.

"Not very romantic." Said Minegishi as Ryou peppered the back of their neck with kisses. Maybe he'd learned Morse code at some point. Well then he needed to learn to use his words since they were not a telegraph. They could barely figure out how to say thank you in text...but that didn't matter now. Now they were with you and he was the one who mattered. He was their…boyfriend. He was their boyfriend and they were going to be with him for…well forever.

Which was a very long time.

Longer than they had ever seen themselves staying with one person for. Longer than they had ever eve planned on living for. They hadn't bene planning to kill themselves hey just…never saw themselves asking it to twenty eight, almost twenty nine, years old. They'd be twenty nine this year and then thirty the next year and then…well thirty one and thirty two and all of the many years after…and they would see them out with Shimazaki Ryou…and they had no reason not to…and they wanted to! They wanted to be with him more than anything else in the world but also…

Also they felt trapped…and pinned….and just…they needed space….but they also wanted nothing more than to lay there in his arms….

Trapped and safe.

"Is too. As long as you're happy then it's romantic." Said Shimazaki. He finished kissing the back of their neck and went to the top of their head now. God, their hair. He was stoned as fuck but well even if he hadn't been he still would have been as happy as he was now. This was love and…and he was totally team love! Mob had the right idea about love. Love was the best thing in the world and, really, they just needed to all be in love because all you needed was love and other such wisdom….

God, love was…love.

Love was good…and also not so good. The not so good parts of love were there, too, in the house. Just outside of the door. He should have felt him coming, he should have at least heard the door open, but he had just been lost there in Toshi. In their voice and their breathing and their hair and their skin and their aura and just…every single part of them…especially the feeling of their hand in his. Love was….love was so perfect….and love Toshi was perfect and love…well love was great….

But it also turned a certain eleven year old into…well Shimazaki didn't even know.

"Shimazaki? Can we hang out?" asked Sho as he knocked on the door. He had listened for a good long time and it didn't sound like anyone was being gross in there…but he still had to knock. He didn't want to see Minegishi's boobs again…and also he didn't want to know what they were doing in there anyway. He knew that it had something to do with being gross and adults and…and he just didn't want…he didn't want to deal with any gross adult Valentine's Day stuff!

He'd had enough of Valentine's Day as it was.

"Ryou. Deal with that." Said Minegishi as they got their hang out from his and pointed at the door. He knew that the kid was on the other side and he knew that they were not going to be the one to deal with him. Not. They had their hands full when it came to Mob. Sho was Ryou's responsibility…..well he didn't know the meaning of the word….but still. Minegishi was not going to be the one to deal with this.

"Sho, this really isn't a good time. Come back tomorrow." Said Shimazaki. The love bubble could be popped and he knew that Sho would be the one to pop it. Sho would make it his business to pop it. God….that kid. Sho was eleven and going through changes and having a lot of new feelings and all of that other stuff that you were supposed to talk to kids about, that when a boy becomes a man shit, and Shimazaki…well he would talk to him about all of that stuff but later. Not now.

Not when he was in the Valentine's Day love bubble.

"But….I have chocolate and you can have them." said Sho. He didn't want these, Emmy made him these, and they had love inside of them. They were full of love and he didn't deserve her love because he lied to her and…and maybe it was ok because it was a pragmatic choice and…and maybe he'd feel better if he talked to someone and…

And maybe he wanted to give Valentine's Day chocolates to the person he actually was in love with.

"I do like chocolate…" said Shimazaki. Well maybe he could pop the love bubble for just a minute. There was the waver to Sho's voice, the one that he got when something was wrong, and there was so much in that kid's life that could go wrong. Wasn't this the day, too, that he was going to ask that girl to get child married with him? Yeah…that was big, maybe if he just got up and-

"We have chocolate right here. Ryou, don't you dare go out there and give Sho the wrong idea….any more so than you already have." Said Minegishi. No. This was not going to get any worse than it was now. Sho…had a lot of problems…and his problems were big…too big for one little boy…and he did not need Ryou making it worse on him.

"Toshi…you're right." Said Shimazaki. He hadn't thought about it like that. He mostly just wanted chocolate but…well he also wanted to be there for Sho…but this was Valentine's Day. This was Valentine's Day and Sho was madly in love with him….and maybe this wasn't the time to accept candy from the kid who was madly in love with him.

"I know that I'm right." Said Minegishi

"Hey Sho…now's not a good time. How about you give those to your sister or something and we'll hang out tomorrow, ok?" said Shimazaki

"….because you're with Minegishi…right?" asked Sho. He felt like the goldfish in his stomach was trying to eat his heart. This was….why did this have to happen to him? Why did….why did someone else want to leave him? Why did…why did Minegishi…why did they get him?! What had they done to get him and…and he hated them and….and he didn't want to hate them but he did…and he didn't want to be there but….but he didn't want to leave…

He just wanted the hurt to stop.

"I am….but that doesn't mean that we can't hang out. Sho, you know that I think that you're a great FRIEND and shit but this isn't a….friendship day…ok? Just…tomorrow….alright?" asked Shimazaki. He could feel the pain radiating off of the kid's aura and he hated being the cause of it but…well he had to…maybe just….he loved Toshi and he loved the kid and he had to do what was best for the kid and his relationship with Toshi and…

And he missed being a free agent.

He missed being alone and free to go from place to place doing whatever he wanted with no thought to any other human being but himself. Those were the days. These were not the days. These were…..well they were good, and in some ways better, but also in some ways worse. Like this. This was worse. The kid felt like crap and…and he hated sad people. They were so boring. Boring and…and also they made him sad…and he was so boring when he was sad…

And he did not do boring.

"But…Emmy said that she would marry me…" said Sho. He just…he needed to tell someone. This was…he had thought that it would be just a thing that he would have to do and once he did it then he would be ok…but he had done it…and he still wasn't ok. He wasn't ok at all and…and he just…he wanted to be with someone who made him feel ok no matter what….

But that person was with someone else…and it hurt….

"Congratulations! I knew it'd work out for you." Said Ryou. Truth be told he had no idea what the kid was going to do. He had never sat the kid down and asked him what he was into to…and also it was none of his business. He didn't mind getting into other people's business, it was fun actually, but getting into Sho's business was like getting into Toshi's business. Off limits and not something that he would want to do anyway. He just wanted the two of them to be happy, that was all, and Sho…well he seemed petty fucking miserable….

Toshi's hand around his wrist.

"Yeah…I guess it did…and she says that she loves me and-" said Sho. He didn't know what to say. He felt sort of like he was falling…like he was falling and he wanted to pull himself out but he couldn't because pulling himself out would have been like running away…and he wanted to run away…but he couldn't run away. He had to do what he had to do and what he had to do was marry Emmy. What else could he do?

"Then why aren't you with her?" asked Minegishi loudly. This….child marriage…or whatever was so fucking ridiculous. They would have pegged Mob for the one with the grand marriage plans. Nope, it was her little brother. Her little brother who obviously wasn't ready to be honest with himself…so he was going to lie to someone else. Those were not the words of a little boy who thought he'd met his soulmate…if that was even something that could happen. No, those were the words of a little boy who was lost and scared and needed someone…

He needed someone who he wasn't in love with. He didn't need anything else to deal with right now.

"Shut up, I wasn't talking to you! And I couldn't be with her even if I wanted to because she had to go home…and I do want to be with her…and…and….fuck you!" said Sho. He kicked the door…and then he did it again…and again….and again. He kicked the door until his foot hurt and then he kicked it some more. Minegishi…he hated them! It was their fault that everything hurt! Why did they have to be…there…and…alive…and stuff and….

And it hurt.

So he left. He left because he was hurt. When you were hurt you went to go and get fixed up…so that was what he did. He didn't need to stay there. Shimazaki was with the person he loved, the person he actually loved, and person you loved was worth more than best friend. Last year he had thought that he hadn't been able to compete with boobs. This year he realized that it wasn't just boobs, it was all the stuff that came afterwards, the stuff that you did when you were in love….

And Sho knew that he couldn't compete with love.

"Well that's one way to get rid of him." said Minegishi with a sigh. Well then. Sho…they felt for him. They really did. They felt for him and…and this was kinder to him in the long run. He was in love with Ryou and he didn't need to think that there was hope there. Minegishi knew what it was like when you were in love with someone who could never love you back. It was hard, and it hurt, and it was better to have never loved at all then having loved and lost…and they felt for Sho, they really did, but enough was enough.

And, really, this had been going on for years now. Enough was enough.

"Toshi, come on. Be nice. He's going through a lot and-" said Shimazaki. He knew what it was like to be in love with someone you could never be with. He knew how it was and…and love was just…it was so good and so bad but also it passed. He knew that Toshi would rather it had passed sooner but he knew that it would pass in it's own time. It had already been years so it couldn't have lasted much longer. Right?

"And he's in love with you." Said Minegishi

"I know. I don't care." Said Shimazaki

"Well I do. You're only going to make it more painful for him in the long run." Said Minegishi

"Yes…I guess…but I don't want him to be in pain in the short run either, you know? He's a lot like me…like he could have been my kid or something…" said Shimazaki. He played with some of Toshi's long hair while he spoke. The hair there, in the front, was the longest. Sometimes they wore these metal things in their hair, but not today. Now their hair was long and soft…well Toshi soft…and it was long and…and he loved them so much…

And he would have loved any person that they made, too.

"He looks nothing like you. He's clearly Suzuki's." said Minegishi. He was playing with their hair. He was talking about the two of them having kids. They knew what was on his mind. They knew what he wanted and they knew that it could never happen. Not with who they were as people. Not when they couldn't even take care of themselves. Not with the lives that they'd lived. Not with the lives that they'd lived now.

"I know he's not actually mine….but I like to think of him as mine. I mean like he's practice in case we ever decide to have a-" said Shimazaki. His other hand, which had been in theirs, went down to their stomach. He hadn't meant anything by it, he had just been thinking, but judging by the way that Toshi tensed up they thought that he meant something by it. Maybe he…well they knew what he wanted….but he also knew how they felt and…

And kids…well they probably weren't going to happen…but a guy could dream.

"Abortion?" asked Minegishi as Ryou rested his hand on their stomach. They weren't going to have kids. Ryou wanted kids like he wanted a dog. He wanted the idea of kids, the fun parts of kids, but when it came to the hard parts they knew that he wouldn't be able to handle it all…and neither would they.

"Toshi…you know that you don't have to-" said Shimazaki. He wouldn't have left them. Yes, alright, it was their choice but he…well he wouldn't have just abandoned them. He wouldn't have just left them to take care of their kid…and he knew that they were afraid of that. Well they were afraid of a lot of things but he knew that they were really afraid that he wouldn't be able to handle it all. That he only wanted the fun parts of having a kid. He…well he liked the run parts…but he got the feeling that he would have been able to handle the not so fun parts either…and even if he couldn't then he could learn how to. He'd do that for Toshi. He would have done anything for Toshi.

"Well I would want to. We can't take care of a baby, Ryou, we can barely take care of ourselves. I mean look at the great job we've been doing with Suzuki's kids." Said Minegishi. They pulled his handoff of their stomach. No kids. Mob was kid enough for them. Ryou thought that kids were all fun and games. He wasn't the one who had to carry it for nine months, he wasn't the one who had to feed it, and he wasn't the kind of person who stuck around when things got difficult…and Minegishi wasn't the sort of person who wanted to make their life more difficult than it had to be.

Theirs or anyone else's.

"I'm pretty sure most of their problems come from being his kids." Said Shimazaki. If anyone could fuck up a kid it was Suzuki. He was kind of like Shimazaki's dad but in some ways better…and in some ways worse…but Mob and Sho were going to be ok. He wouldn't let anything serious happen to them…and he had to do something about Sho…and he would. Later. Once Sho calmed down and Toshi…well Toshi needed him right now…and he loved them.

Well he loved them and he loved

"Yeah, they're infected by his genetics just like our kid would be infected by our genetics." Said Minegishi

"I still don't think that we'd be that bad at it-" said Shimazaki

"Ryou, I don't want to talk about this anymore. So let's not." Said Minegishi. There was some silence. The hand that had been on their stomach, and then in theirs, rested on the side of their hip. Right on the bone. If he moved his hand just a few centimeters he would have come to a long, rough, line...and he knew how it had gotten there...and he knew not to ask again. They'd learned each other's scars already…he'd told them about his and they had told him about theirs…

And they didn't want to explain their scars to anyone else.

"Alright….what do you want to talk about?" asked Shimazaki. The last thing he wanted to do was upset Toshi…and they were dangerously close to being upset. No. The love bubble had not been popped, they were still cuddling and if the cuddling as happening then the bubble had not been popped. The bubble was deflating but that was not the same as popping and…did soap bubbles even deflate? Or did they just end up popping? He didn't know. Sho would know, he knew about this stuff, and they could figure this out together later on.

But not now, no, this was Toshi time.

"I don't know." Said Minegishi. What? Why was it all up to them? Why did it have to be up to them all the time? They were the one who planned everything. They were the one who took care of everything. They were the only person, it felt like, who could think more than ten seconds ahead.

"We can talk about whatever you want. I just want to hear your voice." Said Shimazaki before he kissed the back of their head. Toshi…they were upset…and he had no idea how that had even…well the thing with Sho. Toshi was right, he should have done something about that a while ago, but he just…he had no idea what to do…but he at least knew what to do here. Hold Toshi. Be there for Toshi. Love Toshi.

Nothing that he couldn't do.

"Oh? And why?" asked Minegishi as Shimazaki got back to peppering them with kisses. He thought that every single problem in their lives could be pacified with kisses and cuddles…or smoked away…or drank away….and maybe he had the right idea. Minegishi could feel themselves getting better…and he just…God….

Fucking Ryou….they loved him so fucking much.

"Because I love your voice. I love everything about you, you know." Said Shimazaki between kisses. Yeah, that was it. Toshi was getting better…he loved them so fucking much sometimes…all of the time.

"Such as?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. A good one. He just…well that was….that was nice.

"The way you breathe…" said Shimazaki before he kissed the back of their neck.

"Ryou…." Said Minegishi

"The way you smell…." Said Shimazaki before he kissed the side of their neck. They smelled good. He didn't know what they were on about. They smelled like themselves, sweet, but also earthy like their plants, heavy like not washing, musky like sex, and also they had a generous dash of him. His cologne, his sweat, the way he smelled….they were his. He got the feeling of it, that they were his, and they didn't belong to him…and he didn't want that….but there was something so primal to having his partner smell like him….

Primal, not possessive, never possessive…because they were his partner and not his possession.

"Ryou, come on…" said Minegishi as he turned them onto their side.

"The way you taste…" said Shimazaki before he kissed them. They did taste good, well they tasted like him and he, of course, tasted amazing….but so did they. They were amazing and like…like if you mixed pudding with sunlight…if that made sense…he didn't know. Love. Toshi tasted like love…if that even made any sense at all.

"Ryou….I haven't had a bath today…" said Minegishi as he moved from their mouth down their chest. They were sweaty. They must have stank, especially to him, or maybe because of him. Like a mixture of them but also not washing…not that they wanted a bath. A bath would have meant getting up off of their bed and that was the last thing that they needed….and not just because they wouldn't be warm and comfortable.

If they got up then they knew that he would teleport off somewhere. Not out of malice, never malice, but sheer boredom.

"The way you feel…" said Shimazaki as both of his hands traced up and down Toshi's body. They were slick with sweat, both of theirs, and they made from easy reading. Toshi told a story, their back was a chapter in and of it's self, but even with that chapter and a few others he didn't mind. He loved their story, even the sad parts, even the parts that they didn't like….

That didn't matter. He liked, loved, every single part of them.

"Ryou come on, I'm not a book." Said Minegishi softly. They were being read like one….and they didn't know if they wanted this. They knew that he'd read them before, inside and out, and they knew that he had never once minded what was there….but that didn't matter.

They minded what was there.

"But most of all I love you." Said Shimazaki. Toshi was a book, they were his book, and he was theirs. Their hands were on him now, on his chest, and up and down and across. He was more like one of their books, he knew that he was a lot to look at, and he didn't mind if they looked at him. Even the parts of him he had tried to cover up. Toshi knew what was there and they had never once minded. He loved them, they loved him, and there was no need to worry….so he didn't…and Toshi did. Their phone vibrated, they tensed up, and he didn't ask. Asking would have popped the love bubble. He felt Sho's aura…angry and pointed and so loud…and he would deal with that later, not now, because that would have popped the love bubble….and he didn't want to pop the love bubble. Not today.

Today was Valentine's Day, the one day when you were supposed to be in a love bubble, so he would pop it tomorrow.


	470. Playing Dolls on Valentine's Day

On Valentine's Day you got chocolates.

Serizawa had never gotten Valentine's Day chocolates from anyone other than his mom before. Even back when he'd still been able to go to school no girl had ever gotten him chocolates, not even obligation ones, and he had never minded. Not even when he'd seen how happy everyone else was with their chocolates and people who liked them…and could get close to them. No, he had always accepted that things were just the way that they were because of him. In the end not getting chocolates on Valentine's Day had been the least of his problems. Hurting people on accident, never being able to even speak to anyone else, having to stay in his room for the rest of his life…those were the things that he had been worried about….that he had to worry about….but he didn't have to worry about that now. No, now he had to worry about….

Well nothing.

He had nothing at all to worry about ever again…and it was all thanks to her. To the girl next to him. To his best friend. To the person who had gone through the trouble of getting him out of his room and being his friend and even making him chocolates for Valentine's Day with her own two hands. Well Shibata had helped her, she had made obligation chocolates for everyone, but…still. She hadn't had to do that for him. She hadn't had to do anything at all for him. She was just…a good person like that. She was a good friend like that.

And he could be a good friend too.

"Where does this doll go?" asked Serizawa as he held up an Elsa doll with short hair. They were playing doll village. That meant that she had gotten out all of her dolls and doll houses and clothes and cars and horses and all of the other things that dolls needed. This was a good lesson in controlling his powers, she had said, because they had used their powers to get all the furniture out of the way and to set up her world. He had been careful not to break anything, and he had been so careful that he had barely moved anything, but she had said that she was proud of him just the same.

It was enough that he hadn't exploded, she had said.

That was enough for her…but it shouldn't have been enough. He…he knew that they were friends and that she wanted to be with him but…well he felt like he should have been better for her. Like he should have been more like her…and everyone else. He wished that he could have just….been better. But he was doing well, she had said, and she was happy that he had even been able to get out of bed at a normal time and change into a new set of pajamas and leave his room when she knocked on his door…but he should have been able to do more.

Maybe even more than helping her build her doll village.

"That's short haired Elsa. She lives over in the shoebox apartment complex with the other short haired dolls." Said Mob. She used her powers to take the doll from him and put her in her own house. It would take too long to explain that short haired Elsa could only afford a shoebox apartment and not a shoebox condo because she had been betrayed by short haired Anna for trying to steal the Kristoff with the nail polish on him from her. Short haired Elsa and Anna weren't done fighting yet….and she would leave that game thread hanging. That was her and Minegishi's game but they were busy today.

Because it was Valentine's Day.

Today was one of the best days of the year! There were people in love and…and they were together and celebrating it and...and she wished that she had a boy who loved her…she wished for that more than anything else in the world…but that was alright. She could just let her other friends be in love and she could soak up the extra love like a really good makeup sponge. Minegishi and Shimazaki were in love, Hatori and Shibata were on a date…and she didn't mind since she didn't like Hatori like that anymore….and Sho was asking Emmy to marry him today….

This was the best day ever!

"Oh…alright. Do you want me to just let you put them away? You know where they go and I think that it would be faster…I mean we could get to the game faster." Said Serizawa. He didn't think that they were anywhere near done. She had a lot of doll stuff. There were entire boxes, moving boxes, that they hadn't even opened yet. He didn't understand girls. This didn't seem like it was fun…but she seemed to be enjoying herself….but he was anxious to get to the game already.

"No, you can keep on helping me. Putting the village together is a game all by its self." Said Mob. He had never played dolls before so he didn't understand. That was alright, she could teach him how much fun this game could be. She had managed to get Minegishi to like playing with her, they used to complain a lot, and if she could get them to have fun then she could get Serizawa to have fun too.

"It is?" asked Serizawa. That…did not sound good at all. This seemed more like the sloughing sort of unskippable tutorials that too many games had. This did not seem like a game in and of its self…but he wasn't a girl. This was the sort of thing that they liked…and if this was what she liked then he would play this with her. He would have done anything for Miss Suzuki if she had asked.

"Yeah, you just don't know about dolls because you're a boy. Boys don't play with dolls….well my brother does but only when I ask him to. I don't think that he likes it…and you can stop playing with me if you don't like it too." Said Mob. She was maybe being a bossy friend. She had knocked on his door and told him that she felt like playing dolls today and that she wanted him to play too. She mostly just wanted to get him out of the house, Minegishi and Shimazaki were in love and their love could be kind of loud, and this had seemed like a nice long game to play….a nice long and fun game to play…but only fun for her.

Because she was a girl and this was the kind of things that girls liked.

Well she knew that girls could like boy things and boys could like girls things she also knew that it was mostly girls who played dolls. She was the only one in her family who liked this and she was the only girl…and she wished…well she didn't like to think about these sorts of wishes. The wishes that brought her mind to the baby sock she had hidden in her pillow case. Mukai wasn't a baby anymore, it was almost her birthday, and she was going to be two. She was going to be two years old and the internet had said that a two year old was a toddler and not a baby…and a two year old would have been able to play with her….

Mob should not have been thinking about Baby Mukai…so she wasn't going to.

"No…I like it. I like this a lot and I'm having a lot of fun. I mean….I don't know what I'd do on my own…" said Serizawa. He had no right to complain, even in his mind, because the only other alternative was sitting alone in his room and waiting for tomorrow to happen. All of his other friends were busy. Shimazaki and Minegishi were doing….things…that he did not even want to think about. Hatori and Shibata were on a date, he hadn't even known that they'd liked each other like that and he was happy with them, and Sho was off proposing to his girlfriend. Serizawa hadn't even thought that kids that age could get married…but what did he even know about that stuff? If his dad thought that it was ok then it was ok. President Suzuki was nervous about how it would go with his son, Serizawa figured, because he was getting a very big nervous feeling from in the kitchen when President Suzuki was sitting and working. Maybe he was just nervous about work. Serizawa didn't know and he didn't think that he could bother him…that he had it in him…and he wouldn't have wanted to anyway.

He just wanted to play dolls with Miss Suzuki…so that was what he was going to do.

"We can play something…um…more Animal Crossing? Or maybe Harvest Moon? I have the newest one but Hatori says that the old ones are best…but I don't really mind the new ones." Said Mob. Animal Crossing was fun and there was no fighting and she liked it…and Mukai would have liked it too. When she got old enough to have a DS. When she got old enough to understand how games worked. When she got old enough for Mob to teach her…but no matter how much older she got Mob could never be there to play with her or to teach her and…and she had a new family and that was alright. She had a mom and a dad and a sister and a brother probably and they all probably loved her as much or more than Mob loved her…and…and she had someone to take care of here. She had to take care of not only her family but also Serizawa….and there were people who needed her here…and Mukai….

She was in a better place now, one where she had a lot of people who loved and cared for her, and wanting to take her away from that…wanting to bring her back….well that was just too selfish for words.

"He's right, the old ones are the best. The new ones are too...simple? I don't know, they just feel sort of simple. Like kid's games." Said Serizawa. Was she a kid? He….got the feeling. She was a kid but…not a kid-kid. Not like her brother. He knew that she wasn't an adult, unless she was very short and played with dolls, but she just…he had no idea if he could even ask her what age she was…but that didn't matter. She was his friend, the best friend that he had ever had, and that…was more than enough for him no matter what age she was.

"They are kids games, aren't they?" asked Mob. She hoped that she wasn't too old for…well more stuff. She just got older and older and older and the older she got the less ok it was for her to like things. She wished that she had a little sister to share the things she liked with, then it would have been ok for her to still like them, but her little sister had been taken away from her…and hadn't even been her real little sister…and her little brother was a boy and didn't like a lot of things that she liked. Like Frozen and dolls and costume dresses and makeup….but that was ok. She could like new things…and stuff…and it didn't matter anyway. When she grew up and had a bunch of girls, at least two or three, then she could share the things that she liked with them. She didn't have a husband or even a boyfriend now but for her whole life dad had told her that she would grow up and get married and have babies…so she had that to look forward to. Having a bunch of daughters…

Shoko and Toshiko and Mukai.

"I never thought so….but I guess that they might be…since I played them when I was a kid." Said Serizawa. He still played them as an adult too…and was that alright? He knew that he was kind of a kid sometimes…and that he should have been working harder at being an adult…but sometimes it was hard enough just to get out of bed in the mornings.

What else did you play when you were a kid?" asked Mob. She wondered what Mukai played with these days….but she shouldn't have wondered about that. Mukai was fine. She was happy. Mob…thinking about Mukai would only make her sad. She was only thinking about her because it was her birthday soon. Sometimes she could go days and even weeks without even thinking about her…and then there were times like this when it felt like she could think of nothing else…but that was the way that it had always been. When you lost someone you thought about them a lot…even if you hadn't known them for very long.

Even dad thought about mom every single day.

"I played a lot of Zelda and Mario…a lot of Nintendo really. I only had an NES and a Gameboy at first but then my mom got me a Master System…and then I got a Saturn too which wasn't as bad as people thought…and then when I went in my room I got….well a lot more games…and a computer too." Said Serizawa. He had never played like this. Not with anyone who wasn't mom. He…well he wasn't jealous. No. He was happy for her. She had a little brother and a lot of friends and…and it was good that she had all of those people in her life…and he had those people in his life now, too, so he was…he was happy.

He really was.

"No, I meant things that weren't videogames." Said Mob. She wondered what that must have been like, only playing games and not with other people, but she didn't ask. She didn't ask because…well it must have been sad for him growing up…and there was no reason for the both of them to be sad at the same time.

"Oh! I…I mostly just played videogames. I had…well when I was small I had toys but…videogames were more fun. They made the time pass more quickly and…and when I played I felt like I was doing something…and that I was less alone." Said Serizawa. He didn't know how else to say it….how alone he had felt….all the time. He hadn't even known that he'd been alone, that the feeling that had been nagging at his mind had been loneliness, but now…now that he knew what it was to have friends….he knew what it was to be alone….

And he didn't want to tell her that, he wouldn't have even if he'd had the words, because there was no sense in the both of them being sad at once.

"Oh, like with my dad. He thinks played games when he was a kid because he was lonely too…I mean he'll never just come out and say that he was lonely but he was. He was only friends with Fukuda…so of course he was very lonely." Said Mob. She was glad that dad and Serizawa were making friends. Now neither of them had to be lonely together.

"I don't understand. How could he be lonely if he had such a good friend? I wish that I had a friend like that…someone who I could be with for…well for even longer than I've been alive." Said Serizawa. That must have been…well that must have been amazing. Having someone in your life for that long…someone who knew everything about you….someone that would always be there for you. That must have been…he wanted….he wanted that more than anything else in the world…and Miss Suzuki said that he would have that….and he believed her.

He believed everything that she told him.

"I think that he was lonely as a kid because…well when he tells stories about when he was a kid I get that feeling…and also I can't see Fukuda as having been a very good friend. I mean he used to be nice to me but now he's not…and I know that I'm being mean to think of him as not being a good friend but that's just how I feel." Said Mob. She knew that she'd been mean there and…and she knew that she wasn't supposed to be mean. Like mom had said…she had to be sweet but also…also she knew that she had to be a good person for herself and not just because mom had told her to. When you were a good person then you would make friends and people would like you….and what could be better than making friends?

"Oh…well they seem close still….but I don't know them that well. Um…we can play with them too, if you want, or maybe just your dad…if he's done with work, I mean." Said Serizawa

"I'd rather ask Sho, dad….well he can be kind of…smothery…sometimes. Also Sho's really good at drawing backgrounds and he always draws things when I ask him to." Said Mob as she felt her brother's aura getting closer. She checked the time on her phone and….well it was about the time that he normally came home…but she would have thought that he would have wanted to spent more time with his girlfriend today…well his fiancée now….maybe….

Hopefully.

"Hi Sho, do you-" said Mob as she heard the door open. Sho had his head down and he was busy pulling his shoes off…and she didn't want Sho to be overwhelmed like he got sometimes. What she wanted to do was run over and hug him and ask him if she said yes and if they set a date and what kind of dress she was getting and how many babies they were going to have….she wanted to ask Sho about all of that but…well she knew him…and she knew his aura….

And he wasn't….happy. At all.

"I'm going to Fukuda's house!" said Sho. He turned around and ran away…and that could have meant….she must have said no. She must have said….well now Mob wanted…she had never wanted to hurt anyone in her life before but now…now she wanted to…and she just….

She picked up a doll and a brush and got to work because these thoughts could take root in her mind.

"What's happening with your brother?" asked Suzuki as he came into the living room. The door was ajar…he closed it with his powers. Something had been wrong with Sho….but what was right with him? Suzuki…he knew that he would hear about this later…and he wished that he could have heard about it now. Anything to take his mind off of the phone sitting on the kitchen table…with a message he had no idea how to start….

God, he hated Valentine's Day.

"He went to go and see Fukuda." Said Mob as she brushed Rapunzel's hair. This was a short haired Rapunzel, which was a normal length haired one, but when Mob had gotten her she'd had hair twice as long as she was…and Sho had cut her hair…but he had been mad when he'd done that…and also he'd been seven and sometimes when you were little you did things that you weren't supposed to….but not her. No, she had to be better and…and if Emmy had broken Sho's heart then Mob was going to break her…and if she kept on having these thoughts about breaking people then she would turn into a terrible person…and she didn't want to be terrible and…

And she needed a drink….and a smoke….but someone had been stealing from her again…..

"Did he say why?" asked Suzuki. He didn't care….well he did. He wondered if this was something that he could fix. He hoped that this was something that he could fix. This was…he needed something to do. Something other than figuring out what he was supposed to say to someone who had had left…the way he had left. Someone who he would have thought would have never wanted to speak to him again….

Someone who he wasn't even sure if he wanted to speak to ever again.

"No." said Mob. She had some of her stuff in her Elsa bag…and she couldn't smoke if dad was there. If dad was there then he would make it weird like he always did…but maybe she needed her dad or just…someone to take her mind off of the thoughts that were creeping into her head. Thoughts that she just wanted gone!

"Very well then. I'll leave you two to…this." said Suzuki. There was nothing that he could do and…and he did want to spend time with Shigeko….but then he would have had to speak to not only her but Serizawa and…and she didn't want to talk to him when he was like this. Neither did Serizawa. He didn't want to deal with himself when he was like this either.

So back to the kitchen he went.

"P-President Suzuki! Do you…want to…join us?" asked Serizawa. He didn't know what made him ask, the desire to make a friend maybe? Or maybe the desire to show Miss Suzuki that he was capable of making a friend. Showing her that he…he was getting better….that he was getting better and that she was helping him….

Or maybe he just acted without thinking.

"No. I have…things…to do. I'll leave you to this." said Suzuki. He didn't much like playing with dolls…but he did love his Shigeko….but he just…he didn't love himself right now…or like himself….or just….he didn't know. He didn't know and he just…he felt as though he needed….he needed to be alone. That was what he needed.

So he went back to being alone.

"Serizawa-" said Mob. She was sort of…not happy….because she had just said that she hadn't wanted dad to hang out with them….but also…well also she loved her dad and she loved that Serizawa was making friends with dad and…and she had to be happy for her friend. She had to go back to being happy. She had to stop thinking about how angry she was at Emmy…if she had rejected Sho….and how much she missed Baby Mukai…even though she was in a better place now. She just…she needed to be better. She needed to get happy again…she pulled her Elsa bag over with her powers.

She knew how to get happy again.

"I-I shouldn't have asked your dad. I just….I wasn't thinking and-" said Serizawa as Miss Suzuki began to dig through her bag. She had been angry, she had been showing it in her aura, and she had taught him well enough how to read auras that he knew that he had made her upset and…and she was his best friend and his first friend and he just…he had f-worded up and he wanted to kowtow and beg her for her forgiveness.

She…she was his best friend….and he didn't know what he would do without her.

"No, I'm happy for you. That was very brave." Said Mob. She said that and she smiled like she had to. She clicked her pen on. She would be able to smile like normal again in a minute. She wished that she knew who it was that was stealing from her, possibly Sho but he had been totally normal lately, so maybe Shimazaki….even though it made no sense but he didn't make sense a lot of the time….whatever. She had this and she was going to be fine and now they would be able to get back to playing.

"Thank you…..Miss Suzuki. I…thank you! Let's…um…where does his doll go?" asked Serizawa as he picked up another one of her short haired dolls. She took it from him and explained to him, between coughs, where she lived and who her friends were….and it was a lot to remember….but he would do his best. He would always do his best for her. She had been angry with him, but also not, and…and he had to be better for her. She was his friend. She was his friend and he was hers and…and he was so grateful to have her friendship….and for her. To have someone to spend time with, to have someone who wanted to be friends with him, to have a reason to get up in the morning…and also to have someone to be nicer to him than anyone had ever been in his life.

He loved her. Not in the Valentine's Day way but he loved her…and not just because she cared enough to make him Valentine's Day chocolates.


	471. It's Valentine's Day and It Sucks!

Whenever something had gone wrong in Sho's life he went to Fukuda.

Fukuda may have been a secret teller and he may have been friends with dad, and he may have disliked big sis for some stupid reason, but Fukuda had always been there for him and always would be there….and Sho needed him. Not that anything had gone wrong, no, everything had gone right. Emmy had said yes and taken the ruing and now he had a girlfriend and a wife and a fiancée and…and this was what he had always wanted. To be normal. Now he was being normal and doing all the things that normal guys were supposed to do. He was normal and now dad could stop being an asshole….well about this part of Sho's life….and now he didn't have to worry about dad ever finding out what he was like…and who he liked….and just….

He needed Fukuda. He need to feel better.

"Fukuda! I know that you're home!" said Sho as he threw the door opened. It bounced off the wall…and also there was a hole in the wall now…but he didn't care! He needed….well he didn't know what he needed was specifically but he knew that he needed to feel better. Fukuda was the person who made him feel better. Therefore he needed Fukuda.

Right fucking now!

There was a crash from the kitchen and then heavy footsteps shook the house. Sho remembered to take his shoes off. He was supposed to do that because he was Japanese and in Japan people took off their shoes and…and Emmy wasn't Japanese and maybe she wore shoes inside….and that was just weird and gross but she probably thought that he was weird and gross because he took his shoes off….but maybe she liked that because she liked things that were weird and gross, she loved gross stuff, and she loved him and maybe he was weird and gross and…and….

And he just needed to take off his fucking shoes!

"Sho, what wrong!?" asked Fukuda as he dodged a shoe that went flying at his head. He managed to dodge the first one but the second one clipped him on the shoulder. He didn't care about the cold wet patch that was forming on his shirt, or that he could hear the pot on the stove boiling over, Sho needed him…maybe even more than ever if his aura was anything to go off of.

And the fact that he was sitting.

He was sitting cross legged on the floor with his head in his hands. Sho…was an active kid. When he had big feelings about something he had to move to get them out. He'd always been that way even when he'd been a baby. Every single cry had come with it's own interpretive wiggle dance. Suzuki had thought that Sho might have been hyperactive. Masami had just thought that he was her spirited, active boy. He wondered what she would have thought of Sho now. What she would have done…well she would have comforted him of course. She would have gotten down on his level and told him that everything was going to be alright and that she would have been there for him and…well all of the things that Fukuda knew that he needed to say to Sho.

He didn't need to channel his inner Masami. He knew what she would have done. He had been doing it for almost as long as she had.

"Sho…come on, talk to me." Said Fukuda as he knelt down beside Sho. He could hear his pot continuing to boil over, and the timer on his phone was going off now too, but Sho was worth some overcooked and possibly burnt pasta. He was worth kneeling down on a wet floor. He was worth the pain that came when he patted Sho on the back, his aura was flaring like crazy, and he was worth the pain of being ignored too.

Sho was worth everything and more.

"….I feel like crap…." Said Sho. He knew that he should have lifted his head and looked at Fukuda when he talked to him…but if he did that then he would have ended up saying or doing something mean. He had already thrown a shoe at him and not on accident. He had just been md…and he had been getting it out in one of the worst ways possible. He was not going to be that person anymore. He was not going to hurt other people when he got mad anymore. He was mad….that was one of the feelings inside of him…he was so mad and…and he needed to go to a dark place where he could be alone…just like the book said…

The book that Minegishi had gotten him.

Minegishi….he hated them…he really did! They were with Shimazaki and…and it wasn't fair! Why did they get to be with him….why?! Because they were a girl!? They didn't even want to be a girl! And it wouldn't have mattered if they were a girl or not because Shimazaki liked guys too and…and Sho was a guy…but he wasn't allowed to like guys and…and if he'd been a girl then he could have been a irl who didn't want to be a girl but then he still could have been with Shimazaki and…and….and…and it just wasn't fair! It wasn't fair and…and….and he wanted to beat Minegishi up worse than he had ever beaten anyone up before in his life! He wanted to beat them up worse than anyone had ever beaten them up before in their whole life! He wanted…

He didn't want to be that person…and he didn't want to be the person he was now either…so maybe he just didn't want to….be…anymore…..

"What?" asked Fukuda leaning in closer. He hated it when Sho did this, when he got all inwards like this. It wasn't good for him to keep these things inside. The longer he kept things inside then the more likely they were to come out later in other ways. So far his explosions came out to breaking things, yelling, and hitting people…and that wasn't ideal but it was better than what could have been. He never, almost never, lost control of his powers. Not even now. Sure his aura was painful to the touch but…well this house wasn't going to explode anytime soon.

Not that Fukuda couldn't have survived it if Sho ever felt like following in his father's footsteps.

"I said that I feel like crap! I feel like….like…like…like beating Minegishi up hard enough to bleed! Like beating them up and also…also myself and…and I….I hate Valentine's Day! And I hate love! And I hate…I hate everybody! Ok?!" said Sho. His voice hurt at the end of that. Now it matched his stomach. Now it matched his heart. Not it matched every single part of his body. This was…he'd never felt this before and…and he needed Fukuda to fix it…

So why wasn't he fixing it!?

"Fix it! Fix it right now! You make people feel better, don't you?! That's what your powers are so…so use them and just….just fix this!" said Sho. He grabbed Fukuda by the shoulders and shook him. Fukuda just pulled him into a hug…and then…and then the hug was just….not everything could be fixed by hugging! What, had he been hanging out with big sis or something!? Why did he dislike her so much if he was going to think exactly like her and act exactly like her!? If he had wanted a hug then he would have gone back home and told big sis to hug him until he couldn't feel feelings anymore! He didn't want a hug he wanted….

Well he had no idea what he wanted….but it wasn't a hug!

"Will you stop hugging me already?! I said to make me feel better! So do that!" said Sho as he pulled away from Fukuda. He wasn't that strong. When Sho had been little Fukuda had been the strongest person he knew next to dad. He had been able to lift him in one arm and big sis in the other. He had even been able to lift mom too, once, though he may have dreamed that. He could sort of remember getting up to pee in the middle of the night and seeing Fukuda pick mom up and carry her…but that must have been a dream.

He dreamt about mom a lot…even back then.

Mom would have made him feel better. Mom would have been there and her hugs would have made everything better. She knew how to give those kinds of hugs because she was a mom….and Fukuda…well he wasn't a mom. He wasn't a dad either but dads didn't give hugs. They hit you and told you that they hated you but also that they were happy with who you were becoming….well when you did what they wanted. He wondered what mom would have said. He wondered what mom would have said if she had been there….well she would have agreed with dad….or maybe not….he didn't know.

How could he have known? She'd been gone for pretty much his entire life.

"Sho…you're right. Come on, let's get some food in you. I'm making pasta and I haven't added the sauce yet. You'll feel better after you eat and then we can talk about….all of what you just said." Said Fukuda as he let go of Sho. He helped Sho to his feet. They needed to eat something. They needed to eat something and then talk this out and then…well and then he would figure out what he was going to say next.

If it would even help.

"Fine….but I want ranch and butter with mine….I guess." Said Sho. He wasn't hungry, he just took Emmy out to eat, but he didn't want to sit in the doorway all day and feel bad for himself. He didn't want to feel bad at all. He wanted Fukuda to just use his powers to make him feel better…but just…that wasn't how this worked. This wasn't like the time he got bit by snakes or rats or even the time he did a bunch of tattoos all on his own. This wasn't his body, these were his feelings, and they sucked but….

But this wasn't the kind of thing that Fukuda could fix with his powers.

This was just….maybe this was unfixable. This was just…the way he was. He was…he wanted to yell and scream and break things but…well also he wanted to….not. He just…he wanted to stay sitting on the floor all one his own until all the time in the world passed and he just…got up one day and the everything would be over and the Earth was getting swallowed up by the sun…and then…well and then he would be ok and…

And he wouldn't do that. Big sis would be mad if he just stayed in one spot until everyone died and the world got swallowed up by the sun.

So he got up. He got up and he let Fukuda lead him to the kitchen. The pot on the stove was boiling over. Sho moved it to the other burner with his powers. Big sis hated it when that happened. She said that when that happened it messed with the burner and also made a mess that she had to clean up. He hoped that whatever Fukuda had been cooking was ok. He had just said pasta but there were a million ways to make pasta. He knew, Shibata had done them all, and big sis had tried some different kinds too. Like with olive oil and cheese….that was good…but with ranch and butter was the best….but the way big sis made it with the super thing noodles and the thick ranch and the salted butter….and maybe he should have just gone home and had dinner there….

But home had dad in it…so he was going to have to stay here.

"Thanks." Said Fukuda as he got the spaghetti strainer out of the cabinet. It flew from his hands and into the sink. The pot followed it and strained quickly. Fukuda ducked as the pot with the newly drained noodles flew back onto the stove. The fridge opened now, and the butter and ranch dressing flew out and into a bowl which liberated its self from the cabinet. Sho's Zootopia bowl landed on his table and filled with ranch and butter before what looked like a handful of noodles flew in.

He had good control over his powers…and that was good…maybe he was calming down.

"You want some parm too?" asked Fukuda as he sat down beside Sho.

"No, I'm not hungry…sorry." said Sho as he picked at his food with his powers. Fukuda handed him a fork. He picked at his food some more.

"No, that's alright." Said Fukuda. Sho either wasn't hungry or he had finally grown out of…whatever that thing with the food was. Hopefully the latter and not the former….though judging by the way his aura flared out like that, worse than it had been flaring before, Fukuda had been wrong about that like he'd been wrong about so many other things in his life.

"No it's not! I wasted a lot of food and-" said Sho. He had taken al of this food and…and he wasn't hungry. He had just eaten with Emmy and…and she had held his hand and told him that she loved him and that being with him was like being in a movie and…and then she had kissed him and she had tasted like salt because she liked a lot of salt on her fries…which were called chips here and…and he just…he had so much to learn because he was her boyfriend…..

And he was going to be her husband someday….whether he liked it or not.

"Sho, you know what I get paid. You can waste all the food you want." Said Fukuda as he patted Sho on the back despite the pain that came from touching him. He really didn't care if Sho ate, just that he felt better. Maybe some poptarts and a can of frosting…but no. That would have been teaching him to eat his feelings….but better he ate his feelings than took them out on other people…or held them inside until he exploded.

"…it's not right to waste food. Mom said so. There are starving kids in other countries and…stuff." Said Sho. Mom had told him before that he and big sis needed to be grateful for the things that they had and that they needed to clean their plates and…and she would have been so upset if she could have seen him now. She would have been upset at him wasting food and being a jerk and…and also she would have been upset that he had been lying to Emmy even though it was the right thing because she was happy. She had told him that nobody had ever made her as happy as he did and…and that was just…he didn't feel good about…he should have felt good about making another person happy but instead all he could feel was like he was going to throw up all over this table.

"Well then I'll pack it up and ship it off to them." Said Fukuda with a laugh. His voice faltered as he realized that Sho wasn't going to join him.

"You really shouldn't do that. There's a kind of mold that grows on noodles. Emmy sent me a video about a guy who ate old noodles and then he wound up with the mold in him and his organs shut down and they had to take out a bunch of his intestines and stuff. It was gross…but cool. She likes gross stuff like that and…and I like that about her and…and stuff." Said Sho

"Ah, so this is about Emmy….did you…end up asking her?" asked Fukuda. He didn't know if he wanted that girl to have said yes to him…or to have said no. Both were things that Sho did not need to deal with at his age. Fukuda wished that Masami had been there. If she had been there then Sho would have been with her and none of this would have happened and…and he could not think about her like that. He could not think about how…in some ways…she was the cause of all of this. She was the one who had left the kids with Touichirou knowing-

Stop it, Tadashi, don't think about her like that.

"….yeah…and she said yes…and I don't want to talk about it!" shouted Sho as he kicked the table. He wanted to kick Fukuda…and then himself for wanting to kick Fukuda….but instead he kicked the table. If big sis had been there then she would have been proud of him….but she wasn't there, she was with dad…so he had to be….

He was tired of being who he had to be.

"Alright then…but maybe if you talked about it you'd feel better…" said Fukuda. He had no idea if talking would help or not. He had no idea what he could even say to this…but he would try his best…which was, really, all that he could do.

"What?! That do you want me to say?! She said yes and now we have to get married and I wish that I was a girl so that I could…shut up and eat some pasta." Said Sho

"In a minute. I'm not hungry right now…and if you want to be a girl then…well I'll love, you know, no matter what but…well that's a lot of 'what'…you know…" said Fukuda. That was…a lot of…well he had no idea what he was supposed to do with that. Slap a bow on him and call him Shoko? No…Suzuki…he would not be able to deal with that. He wouldn't be able to deal with it if he ever figured out that Sho was gay, despite being….something….himself, but if he ever caught wind of what Sho had just said…well then that might have been the thing to finally push him over the edge.

"Liar. If you weren't hungry then you wouldn't have made this in the first place. So just eat and…and….eat something!" said Sho. He didn't want to think about this! This was…Fukuda couldn't do anything about this so maybe instead of asking Sho about shit he should have just ate his goddamned mother fucking dick sucking pasta!

"I'll eat in a minute. Just…what's this about wanting to be a girl? Is this a way that you've felt for a while now or is this just because-" said Fukuda

"I don't want to be a girl! I just…wish that I had been born a girl and then…and then I could have been like Minegishi. I could have been a girl who didn't want to be a girl or a boy and…and then I could have been Sho…but Sho and also a version of myself with boobs and stuff." Said Sho

"So this is about Shimazaki again, isn't it?" asked Fukuda with a groan that he couldn't stifle. He had no idea what he was even….what could he do about this? He'd tried reasoning with Sho so many times…but for some reason he just could not quit that man! Sho…he needed a boy his own age. He needed a boy his own age to get this all out of his system with….good thing they moved around as often as they did…billions of boys on this planet and one of them must have been more appealing to Sho than Shimazaki fucking Ryou.

"No! Yes! I don't know! I just…I love him! I love him so much but he can never love me back and even if he did then dad….he's a dick sucking a dick! He's a dick hole sucking a dick hole! He's a girl's dick hole sucking a girl's dick hole! Like…like if a girl had a dick then he'd be the dick hole and-" said Sho

"Sho…I get it. I get the concept. So your dad did something to you too?" asked Fukuda. He would address Sho's language…later. Not now. Now he had to deal with…well the way Sho felt and not…the way he misused his creativity.

"Yes….no….not lately just….I don't know! I thought that things would be better if I asked Emmy to marry me, like he'd get off my back, but now he's all happy and…and he's happy and…and I just…why couldn't I have been a girl!? Then Shimazaki-" said Sho

"Sho, no. He's twenty years older than you and even if he had returned your feelings I would never have let you start anything like that with him. That's not right and….and….just….aren't there any boys your own age that you like?" asked Fukuda

"What? No, I don't know any guys my own age…and I just….it wouldn't even matter if I had someone I liked! I would never have been able to be with them! I have to be with Emmy and…and she's alright. She's nice and…and I wish that we could just be friends because…because…I don't want to get married!" said Sho

"Sho…calm down. You are eleven years old. Nobody is going to make you get married." Said Fukuda

"I won't be eleven forever, I'm going to be twelve and then thirteen and then-then a hundred and…and then I'll have to marry her and do stuff with her and…and I don't want to do that stuff with her. I don't know….I just…my heart hurts and my stomach hurts and…and everything hurts and Shimazaki wouldn't hang out with me because he's doing stuff with Minegishi and…and if I were a girl then I would have wanted to do that with him and-" said Sho

"Sho, come on, you know that's not-" said Fukuda

"I think I might want to do that stuff with him and…and we're both guys so we couldn't even and…and I like him so much and-" said Sho

"Sho, come on. You're getting WAY AHEAD of yourself. You…you're eleven and…and you're worrying about things that you shouldn't be worrying about right now. You are eleven years old. You shouldn't be thinking about that kind of stuff with anyone and…alright. You have Emmy and…well marrying her is still a few years off and…and why don't we worry about that later." Said Fukuda. Sho was eleven and….well Fukuda had been at about his age when he realized that girls weren't gross and were actually kind of great…and Sho…he was not ready for this. Sho was not ready for this and Fukuda was not ready for Sho to be ready for this.

"How can I worry about that later? I asked her today and-" said Sho

"We just won't think about it now. You and me…well we're going to think up some way to make things better. We'll…think up how to make these pragmatic choices a little less….pragmatic." said Fukuda

"I'm sick of pragmatic choices. Why aren't there choices where I can be happy? I just…she's happy. She loves me. She told me that she loves me….she said so. She told me that she loves me and that she just…that she's never had anyone who ever….ever kissed her before or loved her and…and I just…I know that I'm making her happy but also I know that I'm lying and…and ling feels bad and…and I thought that the lies would be over when I asked her to marry me but now it's like…now I'm going to have to tell her more lies…and also I have to see her naked and I don't want to!" said Sho

"Sho, you are eleven years old, you shouldn't be thinking about seeing anyone naked. Alright? You're very upset and you're letting things get away from you. Your mind is racing and you can't think and…I'm guessing that you went to Shimazaki's house again when you knew fully well what he would be up to and…and I know that it hurt. Seeing the person that you love most in the world with another ma-woman is hard…painful…" said Fukuda

"…you don't know what it's like. You've never had a wife or a girlfriend for the whole eleven years that I've known you." Said Sho. Nobody knew how he felt. This feeling was his and his alone. The love he felt…and the pain it caused…and he just…he wished that there was someone else in the world who could just…just feel this pain with him. Who had felt it and who could tell him when it would be over…when he would better…if he ever even could get better.

"I…had someone I loved, once. I loved her but she was with someone else….I'm pretty sure that I told you about this before. I loved her and she was in love with someone else and…and seeing her with him was the most painful thing that has ever happened to me…and I've been through a lot of pain in my life. Alright? Just….it isn't fair that you have to feel this way. It isn't fair and I wish that there was something that I could do….besides sit here and be here for you….I'm sorry." said Fukuda. Fukuda…he had no idea how he felt. Fukuda had been in love before, and he had lost the person he loved most in the world, but he was a grown man who had been in love with a grown woman. Sho was an eleven year old boy in love with a grown man and in a committed relationship with an eleven year old girl who was also his fiancée….

Fukuda wondered if anyone in the world had ever had problems like this before….and if they would be willing to give him a call because he was lost as all else here.

"…you don't have to be. I'm me and…and you didn't make me the way I am." Said Sho. He had been born wrong. He had known this for his entire life. There was something wrong with him and he had to work hard at being better….but even in trying he just made it worse….but there was nothing that he could do. He was…this person. He was this person and…and he had no idea why he even had to be….

"Sho…there is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with the way you are…alright? You're a good person and you mean the world to me. You're such a good person to be doing…any of this. To be so worried about making people happy and…and your mom would have been so proud of you." Said Fukuda

"….I don't want to talk about mom." Said Sho. Mom was gone. She was gone and there was no point in talking about her. She was gone and even if she had been there she wouldn't have done anything anyway. She had never done anything when it came to dad. Dad was the one who wanted him to like girls and dad was the one who made all the rules. Mom had never once done anything about the way that dad treated him…even when dad hit him…even when dad hit him so hard and so many times that he had been sure that he was going to die….

Talking about her, thinking about her, all of it was pointless.

"Sorry, sorry, we don't have to. We can talk about whatever you want…or we don't have to talk. How about we have a sleepover? We can have a movie marathon. We can watch Zootopia…or maybe one of those other movies that you like." Saud Fukuda

"Can we watch the green inferno?" asked Sho. He wanted to watch people who felt worse than he did…even if it wasn't real. He didn't want to watch people getting chopped up for real, he wasn't crazy, but he just…wanted to see someone who felt as bad or worse than he did right now…if even for just a little bit.

"….do I want to know what that is?" asked Fukuda. That didn't sound good…but Sho…well he liked that sort of thing now….and Fukuda would have to get used to it…though he missed the days when all Sho wanted to watch was Zootopia over and over and over again.

"It's a movie Emmy told me about. It's like that cannibal movie we saw, the found footage one where the girl was-" said Sho

"That's enough…..I get it. Are you sure you don't want to watch….anything else? Something without cannibals? What about watching Zooptopia in every language? Remember how much fun we had doing that?" asked Fukuda. He wasn't ready for all of this. He missed the days when Sho had ben small enough to pick up. Back when his biggest problems in life were fighting over the TV with Shigeko or…or even when he had feeling he didn't understand for other boys. Like when he'd been in kindergarten and he'd been in love with that other boy and never shut up about him…what had his name been? It didn't matter. Sho was never going to be that age again. His life was never going to be that simple again….

But Fukuda could still do what he could.

"….yeah. That would be….yeah. Let's have a Zootopia sleepover like when I was little." Said Sho. He wasn't little anymore…but he would have liked it. He would have liked to have been able to go back in time and just…not have had feel this. Not have to feel love and guilt and pain and…and all of these other feelings that he hadn't had since he'd turned eleven…or ten…or whenever these feelings had started. He wanted….he wanted to feel better…and to forget and….and he wanted….he wanted this all to end. He wanted to watch Zootopia….and he wanted to feel better…so he would make himself feel better…so he would let Fukuda make him feel better.

That was what he did, after all, what his job was. To make Sho feel better.


	472. A Date at the M&M's Store

Big had said, once, that too much of dad's love wasn't a good thing.

She had said that too much of his love could be kind of smothery…and Sho hadn't been smothered yet…but maybe being smothered would have been better than this. Being smothered would have meant that he would have at least been back with the others. No, dad decided that he loved him now and not only that but that he was going to do something nice for him. Those were his exact words.

'I've decided against my better judgement that I'm going to do something nice for you, Sho.'

That was what he had said. Complete with using his given name, the name that dad had been the one to give him in the first place, and that…well that had been weird. Getting up in the morning to dad not even saying 'good morning' to him. Just…all of that. That he was going to do something nice for him…and then he did do something nice for him. A bunch of people came and packed him and big sis, and all the others up, and then Sho….well it didn't take very long for him to be all alone in the house….

The house was his and his alone now.

Dad was trying to give him more time with Emmy. He wanted Sho to be happy, he had said, but really all he wanted was grandkids. He wanted more people named Suzuki who had powers and he could boss around and who then would grow up to boss around the rest of the world…and all of that stupid shit. Well whatever. When Sho had kids then they could do whatever they wanted and if they didn't want to rule the world then they wouldn't have to. Sho knew that he sure as hell didn't want to rule the world….or maybe he did…or maybe he didn't because that was what dad wanted for him….or maybe he did because he would finally be able to do whatever he wanted to…or…something….

Maybe he just wanted to do whatever he wanted to do.

Well he had the whole house to himself, now, so he could do whatever he wanted in here. The house was so…echoy…without dad and big sis. Mostly without big sis. Dad mostly stayed in his room or in the kitchen but big sis was always everywhere. She played with him and talked to him…and even when she was next door he could still feel her aura…but she was gone. She was gone and the only evidence that she had ever been here was the fact that the walls and stuff were still blue. Whenever they had to stay somewhere long term dad painted the house blue for her. The inside, of course, because a house that was blue on the outside would have drawn too much attention.

But an eleven year old living on his own was just fine.

"Alright Sho, do you still want your room or do you want to move into the bigger bedroom." Asked Fukuda as he moved the last box of his stuff into the living room. Sho wasn't living all on his own. Dad had said that he could, that he was eleven and big enough to stay by himself, but Fukuda had said that it made more sense for them to stay together because he was still so little.

So which was it?

Dad said that he was old enough to get married and live on his own and Fukuda said that he was a little kid and that he needed to be watched. He didn't know which it was sometimes. He didn't want to be here on his own…but he did. If he was on his own then he could go to bed when he wanted to and eat whatever he wanted to and never take a bath and…and all of that other stuff that big sis made him do. But also if he was alone then…then he would be all alone. Big sis….she took up a lot of their room. With her clothes and her dolls and her doll houses and all of her books and…well she took up a lot of room in their bedroom. Now it was his bedroom….and he could finally arrange his stuffed animals the way he wanted to…and also he could put his sketchbooks on the shelves too because her manga was gone with her…because she was gone…and the room was so big now…

All the rooms were big now.

"I don't care. You can stay in dad's room if you want…or you can stay at your own house. Whatever." Said Sho

"I'll take your dad's room. I guess it wouldn't make much sense for you to have to move all of your stuff." Said Fukuda

"Yeah….I guess." Said Sho. He wanted…well he wanted to go to his room…and he wanted to be alone…and…well he didn't know what he wanted. His sister back, maybe, and all of his friends…but not his dad. No, the only good thing about being alone was that dad was an ocean away…or wherever he was now. Probably on a plane. They were probably on a plane now and they were probably fighting and…and he didn't care if they were fighting….because he wasn't on the plane so nobody was fighting with him and….

…and maybe he wanted someone to fight with him….

Shimazaki was good at starting fights. Sho wouldn't have minded fighting with him if it meant that he could talk to him…and be near him…near enough to be in his aura…and to smell his cologne…and also….also he needed to stop thinking about Shimazaki. He loved Minegishi more than him, Valentine's Day had proven that, and…and he shouldn't have liked him anyway. They weren't in love, they were friends, and he just….

He still wanted to be more than friends.

"Come on, don't be like that. How about we do something fun today like…um…we haven't been to the M&M store yet and I know you've been wanting to go-" said Fukuda

"Me and big sis went already. She got a kilo of blue and pink and I got everything but red. She won't let me have red. She says that the red ones make me crazy." Said Sho. That had been a fun day. Even if it had been really loud in there. They let you fill up these big bags with all the M&M's that could fit and that made up for the crowds and the loud music and the chocolate smell that could make you sick if you were in it for long enough. It had been fun…even if Shimazaki hadn't been able to come….and also even if he stolen all of Sho's M&Ms…

Stop thinking about Shimazaki. You're being stupid.

"Well do you want to go again? I'll let you have all the red ones you want." Said Fukuda. Sho didn't much care about red ones o blue ones or green ones or any other ones. He just…well, being outside was better than being here. Plus it was getting kind of late. Emmy's school was going to let out soon and Sho had to be there when it did. They were supposed to hang out. It made her happy when they hung out and she was his girlfriend and it was his job to make her happy.

He may not have been happy about having to do the boyfriend thing but he was good at it and he made her happy…and her feelings were the feelings that mattered.

"Alright, but we have to pick Emmy up too. She likes candy." Said Sho

"If….that's what you want to do. If that's what you think is best." Said Fukuda

"I do." Said Sho. He didn't…not….want to see her. He didn't dislike her. He liked her, she was fun, and…well it was the right thing to bring her with. Even though being near her made him feel like the biggest jerk on the planet. Like the worst liar who had ever told a lie in his life. Like someone who told lies and played with people's feelings and made them feel things that weren't real…

Well he had no idea if these feelings were real or not.

If they counted as real. He knew that she loved him and he knew that he made her happy….but all of that was based on her thinking that he loved her back. So did that mean that the way she felt wasn't real? Or did it just not matter if it was real or not or something because she was happy. Like when he told big sis that her curry was good even though she put weird things in it like shredded cheese. Like how he told Shibata that his pancakes were good even when he forgot them on the stove and one side burnt. Like when he told Serizawa that they were friends even though he was kind of annoying….kind of really annoying. Like when he told Hatori that Shimazaki wasn't going to mess with him but he was….well that one didn't count because it benefitted Shimazaki….and also it was funny. Everything that Shimazaki did was so funny and he was so cool and….

And Sho needed to stop thinking about him.

Emmy liked him and…well he didn't like Emmy like that….but it was ok because he made her happy. Like how the times he spent with Shimazaki, even if they were just sitting in his room listening to music together, were the best times in his life. He liked Shimazaki, Shimazaki didn't like him back, but that didn't mean that he wasn't the happiest he had ever been when he and Shimazaki were together. The happiest that two people could be.

He made Emmy feel the way Shimazaki made him feel….so even if he was lying he was still doing a good thing.

So it was a good thing to take a car to Emmy's school and wait for her to get out. He texted her but she hadn't even seen it. She had to keep her phone off in school. She had to follow a lot of dub rules like that. He was glad that he didn't have to go to school. He was eleven and he should have been in….he didn't know what grade he was supposed to be in. He couldn't remember how grades worked. He'd been in kindergarten when mom left…and so he should have been in…well another grade. One grade lower than big sis. A grade with uniforms…maybe….and a lot of rules and homework and other kids. Stuff that he didn't want to deal with.

Stuff that he had no idea how other kids dealt with.

So, really, in a lot of ways he was lucky. He at least didn't have to go to school. He at least didn't have to deal with being around other kids He remembered how hard it was sometimes. Being in a room with so many other people and just…it had been a lot. He'd had friends back then but nothing that was close to what he had now. He had a lot of friends and…and he just…he was happy not to be one of the kids filing out of Emmy's school in uniforms and with backpacks full of homework on their way home to their families who made them do chores and take baths and…and go to bed and…and not have poptarts for dinner and….and go to the M&M's store just for not reason and…and he was lucky.

So why didn't he feel lucky?

"Here she comes." Said Fukuda. He didn't have to point out the window. Sho knew what his own girlfriend looked like. She was walking out the door talking to some other girls…and one of them tried to knock the helmet off of her head. She shoved the other girl and stuck out her tongue. That was good. Sho didn't think that it would have bene ok for him to go and sort things out for her. You weren't supposed to pick fights with girls, Shimazaki had said so. He said that if girl wanted to fight with you then it was ok but if you went and tried to fight a girl or just started smacking her around then you were the worst of the worst and if you die, or were killed, then you would not have been missed. Shimazaki knew a lot about stuff like that, he knew a lot about everything actually.

Sho was lucky to have him….as a friend.

"She's lucky to have you, you know." Said Fukuda

"What?" asked Sho. His forehead had been pressed up against the glass of the window. When he pulled away he left a warm disappeared and left behind this greasy streak thing. Maybe he needed a bath….but he didn't want to take one. He didn't smell too bad, he thought, he couldn't smell himself yet anyway. Emmy didn't mind…but maybe if she did then she would decide that she didn't love him after all and she would find some other guy that liked her and that wanted to go out with her. Some guy from her school, anyway, one in that dumb school uniform….

Good boyfriends did not think these thoughts.

"I just wanted you to know that she's lucky to have you. You're really good to her, you know. I mean knowing how you feel and-" said Fukuda

"Emmy can't see us, I'm going to get her." said Sho. He didn't wait for Fukuda to answer him, he just got out of the car and went over to her. He buttoned up his coat as he walked. It didn't help much, it was way too big and the air still got in, but it did give him something to do with his hands when Emmy waved to him. She did that big wave thing that girls did to each other. Maybe they did that so that the other girls could know that they were waving to someone. She certainly got a bunch of attention. A bunch of girls were looking at her now.

"See? I told you lot I had a boyfriend." Said Emmy. She stuck out her tongue and walked right over to him. He kept on walking towards her. Sho had seen this in a bunch of big sis's movies before. The girl and the boy ran to each other and then the girl jumped into the boy's arms and then they spun around and kissed and then the music played.

She didn't jump into his arms, they didn't kiss, and music didn't play.

"Sho? What are you doing here, booger? You always meet me at the park." Said Emmy. She was looking around. He didn't know what she was worried about. He knew that she wasn't allowed to have a boyfriend, he didn't get why since boys and girls were supposed to like each other, then why did she just tell a bunch of people that she had a boyfriend? Or maybe he wasn't her boyfriend. He was her fiancée now…maybe….

She didn't have the ring on.

He had gotten her a ring and she wasn't wearing it. You weren't supposed to take those rings off. Not even dad took off his wedding ring and mom had been gone for five years almost. The rings were like a way of telling the whole world that you had someone and that everyone else had to stay away because you were not a cheater.

It would have been so great if Emmy had been a cheater.

That was also not a thought that a good boyfriend was supposed to have. He was a good boyfriend and he did not want his girlfriend to cheat on him. He did not want her to give him the perfect reason to run away. He did not want her to be with someone else even if she just…would have been happier with someone else….but no. She was happiest with him. He doubted that someone else, some other guy, would have taken her randomly to the M&M's store and or would have gotten her an eyeball in a jar or a helmet that some guy died in maybe or boxes of candy from across the world. He was the best boyfriend ever…which was good.

He was finally good at something…something that he should have been good at.

"I'm going to the M&M's store with Fukuda, the guy who takes care of my sometimes, and I was thinking that you might have wanted to come with." Said Sho

"Is your sister here as well?" asked Emmy

"No, she went with my dad and the others. It's just me and Fukuda. So do you want to come to the M&M's store with us or not?" asked Sho

"The one that's really far away? Sho, you know that I'm not allowed to take the tube." Said Emmy

"You don't have to, we brought a car. Do you want to come with or not? I can get you a bunch of whatever color you want…if you don't want to come with." Said Sho

"No, I want to come but…I can't be gone for very long. Mum doesn't like it when I go so far from home." Said Emmy

"It won't take that long. When you have money they just let you go to the front of the line." Said Sho. Money was, in a lot of ways, like a cheat code for life. When you had enough of it people let you go to the front go every line. Big sis hated doing that. He didn't mind…so maybe that was a good thing about her being gone…or maybe he was the one who was gone…or maybe they were both gone. He didn't know. Maybe there weren't any good things…or maybe the bad outweighed the good. He really didn't know.

If big sis had been there then he would have had to talk more so maybe this was a good thing too.

"So, Emmy, how's school going for you?" asked Fukuda. It was weird hearing him speak English like that. It took Sho's brain a minute to remember that it was Fukuda who was talking. Sho didn't mind, though, since if Fukuda was the one doing the talking then he didn't have to. It was good that big sis wasn't there, though, since when she was there Fukuda didn't talk as much and neither did she. They didn't like each other very much…and he had no idea why.

There were a lot of things that he had no idea about.

"Brilliant. Today we cut up giant worms and I got one all to me self, myself. It was the best. I got to decide where to cut and what to cut…well we had directions…but they were too boring so I just did it the way I wanted to." Said Emmy

"Oh….so you want to be a….surgeon when you grow up?" asked Fukuda

"No, that's too much school. I want to work somewhere interesting anyway. I don't like hospitals. They smell and they don't let you touch the machines or watch the operations. Also the vending machines have the worst snacks." Said Emmy

"Well…it takes people a while to figure out what they want to do with their lives." Said Fukuda

"Did you always want to be a nanny?" asked Emmy

"Well…I'm not exactly a nanny…but I have always wanted to have someone to take care of." Said Fukuda. Sho didn't need to be taken care of. He wasn't a baby. He could take care of himself. He could decide stuff for himself and…and he didn't….he didn't even know what he was so upset about. He was just….upset….but at least he didn't have to talk. That was why Fukuda was talking so much, maybe, because he knew that Sho wasn't in the mood. Fukuda was good at stuff like that, knowing what he needed so maybe Sho did need someone to take care of him…and stuff. He didn't know. He didn't know wat he wanted or what he needed…

Well besides the fact that he wanted candy…and lots of it.

"Bloody hell…it even smells like M&M's…" said Emmy. That was the first thing she said when they made it into the M&M's store. She was right, it did smell like M&M's, probably because it was four floors of candy from floor to ceiling. They also had shirts and toys and stuff but you could get that stuff on the internet or whatever…well you could get M&M's at the store too…but that was different. They didn't give you giant bags for them at the store.

This was going to be fun. He decided that this was going to be fun.

"It sure does…" said Fukuda in that way that he said things when he wasn't happy. He didn't like it in here, Sho could tell, probably because he was an adult. None of the adults here looked happy, not even the ones that worked there. He didn't know why. This was an entire store filled with M&M's, all the colors that had ever been invented, and if he worked here then he knew that he would have been happier than he was now…

Maybe the happiest he had ever been in his life.

He had never thought much about what he would be when he grew up. He never had to. He was going to rule the world. Dad had told him so. The other kids had wanted to be firemen and astronauts and acrobats….and he had always just said, when he had been asked, that he wanted to rule the world. Either that or just an artist….that would have been great. If he had worked here then he could have had all the colors he needed to make M&M portraits….actually he could do that now without working here…

Ok, now he felt better.

"Come on, let's get all the colors. I want to make art out of these. I'll make something for you, too." Said Sho as he took Emmy's hand. Some of the other people here were holding hands so this was the place to do this. This was like a date….but a fun kind of date. He liked this kind of date. It was just…fun. He could even forget, maybe, that they were on a date. He could pretend that they were just a couple of friends getting all the M&M's in the world together.

"You'd make something for me? Really?" asked Emmy in that way that she said things sometimes. When her voice got kind of high and she looked up at him through her eyelashes, like she was trying to look over the top of her head or something. He didn't know why girls looked at him, and every single guy they liked like that he figured, like that. She held his hand tighter too…but that was ok. She was doing what she was supposed to do.

They both were.

"Yeah, whatever you want." Said Sho with a shrug.

"Can you make me an alien coming out of a guy's chest while he's still alive?" asked Emmy. She was still looking at him like that and she was still smiling….but at least she was talking about something cool. That was….the greatest idea that he had ever heard in his entire life….well the second greatest. The greatest had been the time that he and Shimazaki had moved all of those street signs and then people got confused and all the cars crashed….everybody survived so it was funny…even though big sis had been mad at him and Shimazaki for that….

He needed to make her something too…and little sis since her birthday had just passed….

"Fuck yeah!" said Sho. This was going to be better than he had ever even thought that it would have been. Now he had a reason for being there besides not having anything better to do…and also now he had a good present idea for baby sis…if he saw her…but he would. He and Fukuda always went to Seasoning City when they were alone together…and also he could get big sis the blue M&M's she liked and he could get her name on them…and she'd be happy….

"Language." Said Fukuda with that same groan he did whenever Sho cursed. Shimazaki would have cursed right back at him…and in English too. But Shimazaki wasn't there and…and he had to work harder at not thinking about him…so he wouldn't. He was with Emmy and he would think only about her.

"Feck yeah." Said Sho. Emmy laughed. She laughed and held his hand tighter. He had no idea how she had managed to hold his hand tighter than she had already been holding it but she had found a way. She was a girl and he knew that girls weren't supposed to be very strong but right now it felt like she was trying as hard as she could to cut off his circulation. But that was ok. She was his girlfriend and that was what girlfriends did.

They held your hand and never let go.

That was what Emmy did. They went to the pick your own M&M's floor hand in hand like boys and girls were supposed to do when they were in love. Emmy was in love with him and…and he could at least make her happy. It wasn't so bad. Dad may have been a piece of shit and an asshole and a dick hole's dick hole but he did know a lot about girls. Just so long as you bought them stuff and told them that they were pretty then they were happy and stuff….and also maybe they left you since mom had left dad but…well Sho was not going to think about that.

A good boyfriend did not think about that.

A good boyfriend thought about making his girlfriend happy and also M&M's. They got a bunch of the biggest bags and filled them with every single color that they had. The people who worked there looked at them like they were crazy. People looked at him like that a lot. Like when he and big sis used to go to Disney together and they'd buy all the souvenirs they could find. Those had been fun times…until they had gotten boring. Disney was fun and all but not if you went all day every day. Eventually you rode all the rides and saw all the shows and ate all the food and then it was just…boring. Hanging out with Shimazaki, with all of their friends, was way more fun than going to Disney….but Emmy had never been and he could take her. He had a lot of fun places to take her. Like the Lego store, she'd like that, and the London Museum of Oddities, and also there was this place in America that had the world's biggest ball of yarn. That had been cool but it was too big for the world's biggest cat to play with….and that cat hadn't been very big at all. It had been dog sized and not, like, lion sized or whatever….but Emmy would still have maybe liked to see it.

He'd take her to all the places once they got married.

But right now they would have to settle for the M&M's store. It was a good place to settle for, the kind of place that you would stay at for hours and hours. The kind of place that you could stay at forever. You kind of had to. Money could get you to the front of a lot of lines but not every line, not the personalize M&M's for you line, and that was the longest line that Sho had ever seen in his life…and he'd waited in line for Space Mountain before….in the summertime!

At least it wasn't hot in there.

Not really. He had his coat off. Fukuda was carrying it. Emmy had hers tied around her waist. Fukuda would have held hers too but she had her money in there, she said, though he had no idea why she would have needed it. She knew that he could get her whatever she wanted. He even knew how her money worked. He didn't really need Fukuda, that was why he was waiting away from all the crowds. Sho sort of wished that he could have waited with him.

But then he would have both left Emmy all alone and lost his place in line…and he needed the personalized M&M's goddammit!

"I'm going mad. We're never going to get out M&M's. Maybe we should just go, Sho, it's getting late and…well my mum is going to be so cross with me…" said Emmy

"We can go now if you want. Or you can have Fukuda have the car take you home and I can wait in line. I know how much you want these and I like getting things for you. I like to make you happy." Said Sho

"I wouldn't ask you to do that. This line looks like it's going to go on for ages. You'll be dead by the time you get to the front." Said Emmy

"No, I'll be fine. I have my DS with me and-" said Sho patting his left pants' pocket. He could have just played in line if she felt like leaving…not that he wanted her to leave….because those were not the thoughts that a good boyfriend had. He was a good boyfriend and as a good boyfriend he loved spending time with his girlfriend.

And he certainly never wished that she would go home before she got in trouble.

"Emmeline Marigold Magnolia McBride! What do you think that you're doing!?" someone was shouting. A lady with red hair and a face just as red. Her coat was red too. She was even standing by the red M&M's. Maybe she was trying to blend in. Well if she was then she was doing a bad job of it, standing in the middle of everything and screaming at the top of her lungs….and at Emmy too for some reason.

"Mum!" said Emmy. Oh. That was her mom. Sho had known that she had one, she talked about her mom a lot, but Sho…well he had never pictured the woman. Well that was…her mom. Right. People had those, didn't they? Real moms, not big sisters who tried to be your mom.

"Don't you 'mum' me young lady! You know that you are not to take the tube on your own and you know that you are not to wander so far from home! And you were supposed to be home ages ago!" said the woman, Emmy's mom. She looked like a mom. Well she looked like Emmy, same hair and eyes, but she also had that…look…and feeling that moms had. Sho…he hadn't been around a mom in a very long time.

"Sorry, I was here with my…friend…and I lost track of the time." Said Emmy. She had let go of his hand now and she was staring at the floor. She was in trouble. He didn't need to be told that she was in trouble. Sho…he had no idea what he was supposed to do. He knew that when your girlfriend was in trouble you were supposed to save her but…well he had no idea how to save her.

He had no idea how to talk to a mom….he hadn't talked to one since he was six.

"What friend? You know that you haven't got any-" said Emmy's mom.

"Hi. I'm Sho. Emmy's friend." Said Sho. There. That was something. He introduced himself with a bow…and maybe that was the wrong thing to do. Right. They didn't bow here…and now people were looking…and her mom didn't seem to be any less mad.

"What? What's your bloody name?" asked Emmy's mom.

"His name is Sho Suzuki, mum, he's my friend….the one that sends me sweets from his travels." Said Emmy quickly. She reached up and held her chest…well the necklace that she had tucked under her uniform shirt. She was still looking down…and he had no idea what he was supposed to do. He knew that when she felt bad she liked to be kissed and told that she was pretty…but her mom was right there and she seemed like she would not have taken it well if Sho just started to kiss Emmy and stuff right there.

"Don't lie. First of all you never said that it was a boy who was sending you sweets and second of all you said that your friend was Asian. That boy does not look even one bit Asian." Said Emmy's mom with a wave of her hand. Sho…tried not to be upset. He didn't look Japanese, he knew that he didn't look Japanese, and he had looked this way his entire life. He had been more used to people drawing attention to it when he had been little since he had been around more people then…and it looked like he was going to have to get used to it again.

"Mum! You can't just say that people don't look Asian! That's racist! He's half Japanese…and now….mum!" said Emmy. She was covering her face and stuff now…and he didn't get why. People had always been like that to him, it wasn't like she had said some of the meaner things that adults had said to him when he'd been a little kid. That Japan is for the Japanese stuff….that made no sense because plenty of foreign people lived in Japan….and he wasn't even a foreigner! He'd been born there and so had his parents and…

And this was a dumb thing to get upset about…so he wouldn't.

"I…sorry. Just…sorry. Should I bow or….just….I'm terribly sorry….shuh-owe? Soo-soo-key?" said Emmy's mom. She…well she seemed less upset…so….yay?

"Um….I forgive you?" asked Sho. He had no idea what was so hard about his name. He was Suzuki, and there were a million of them, and Sho, which there were also a million of….but that was in Japan. This wasn't Japan and people weren't used to his name…and he didn't know why he suddenly felt so different. He had spent his entire life feeling different. Being different. This was a weird time to be bothered by it now.

"Sorry about my mum, Sho, she can be like this sometimes." Said Emmy

"No, you should be apologizing for yourself young lady. Now come along, you're coming home. You're in trouble. Now say goodbye to your little friend…you won't be seeing him or anyone else for a while." Said Emmy's mom

"Bye Sho….I'm sorry. Aishite imasu." Said Emmy as her mom dragged her away. She had said that she loved him but in a really weird way…but that was ok because she didn't know much Japanese. He could teach her…but later. Not now. Now he was all alone and…and she was in trouble so he might not have had to see her again for a while so…so maybe that was…he knew that he was supposed to feel bad but right now he just felt relieved. Like a huge weight had been taken off of him. Now he could just…well he would get them their M&M's but also ones for big sis and little sis too…and Shimazaki because he liked chocolate….and all of the others too so it wouldn't be weird. So they wouldn't be suspicious that he was in love with Shimazaki or anything like that. He was but…but nobody needed to know about that. It was a secret…feelings were secrets and…and his were and it could be a lot but…but sometimes they didn't have to be.

That was what the M&M's were for.

The best way to show love was with candy and a hell of a lot of it. There was no such thing as too much candy or too much love…not when it came from him, anyway.


	473. Amsterdam Coffee Shop

Kids weren't allowed in the coffee shops in Amsterdam.

That was a dumb rule so it was ok for Mob to break it. That rule was there because they let you smoke at the coffee shops here and kids weren't supposed to smoke. That was a dumb rule because there was no reason for Mob not to smoke just because she was a kid. She was eleven, almost twelve, and yes she knew that she was young but that didn't mean that she couldn't make her own choices. She had to smoke to control her powers and also because she liked it…and also she knew hew limits and she knew not to overdo it in public either. So there was nothing wrong with Mob being here right now.

But just to be safe she had to sit in the corner by the wall behind Serizawa.

"Serizawa, you have to pass it." Said Mob. She loved this country. She didn't know why they were here, some dad stuff that he didn't need her help with, and she had no idea when they were leaving…but she was going to make the most of it while they were here. She wasn't used to smoking out in public, well not fully in public because she had to hide in the corner, but it was nice. It was really nice.

"What?" asked Serizawa. This was…not bad. He didn't like being outside in public in a country where he couldn't understand what was being said around him….and also he had strangers all around...but also his friends. He had his friends on every single side of him. Miss Suzuki to the left, Hatori to the right, and then Shibata and Shimazaki and Minegishi were on the other side of him. So if he closed his eyes then he could pretend that he was back at the house or…something…..

He needed to stop closing his eyes.

Because they sort of got stuck that way. Not like an eye infection but more like…he forgot to open them? Or maybe he just didn't want to. It was so nice behind his eyes. Dark. Dark and calm and…well it wasn't calm in here but there was sort of an inner calm to him…and the inner calm was like an outer calm. He could see his aura and he could tell that it looked…well just lie everyone else's. Everything was just so…calm….

He could see why Miss Suzuki did this all the time.

"Mob, just let him have it. For everyone's sake." Said Minegishi. They had come here to read. That had been the plan. Home was…well they were in close proximity to Suzuki again and whenever he was near his aura fixated on them…really, somebody needed to point him towards the red light district….and they just…hadn't been able to take it anymore. So they had come here to read….and then Mob had asked to come with because she liked to come with…and then Serizawa had asked to come with because he was Mob's shadow…and then when they brought up the fact that kids were not allowed at the coffee shops, the kind they went to, here Ryou had helpfully offered to teleport her inside…and then Shibata had been drafted into this because he was big enough that nobody would notice Mob with him at the table…and then Hatori had joined them because apparently Suzuki shipped him and Shibata….

So, yay, group outing.

"Oh no it's ok, I can pass it." Said Serizawa. Right….now where did he have to pass it to. Miss Suzuki reached over and took it from him. She had saved him from making the choice. She had saved him from getting himself all upset like usual. She was such a good friend like that. He would have hugged her if he could have, but he couldn't, because he was supposed to keep other people from noticing her. She was too young to be there…he had no idea how old she really was…and it didn't seem polite to ask…

Nor did it seem polite to ask how she got all of that glitter in her hair…it was so nice…and sparkly….like she had caught an invulnerability star…not that it didn't always seem like she had an invulnerability star, because it did.

It really did.

"W-What's going on?" asked Hatori as he looked up from his phone. He had been…he couldn't remember what he'd been doing. He had way too many apps on his phone. Why did he have so many apps? There were so many things that he could do and it was like….the paradox of choice…and why had he been wanting to do something anyway? He was out with his friends and he should have been present in the moment and….and he needed to work on that. He needed to work on being present in the moment and-

-and a hand reached over and stole his entire cup of coffee.

Now he remembered why he had been buried in his phone. He had to sit on the same side as Shimazaki….and he hated it. Shimazaki…why did he have to be such an asshole all the time?! Well his abusive childhood, the drugs he did, and probably some shit he picked up as an adult….so maybe Hatori was being an asshole for thinking that Shimazaki was an asshole…but people who'd had sad lives could be assholes too! Like Suzuki. From what he'd heard from the man himself his life had sucked and now he was trying to take over the world because of that….and yeah that was an asshole move…so if Suzuki could be an asshole then anyone could be and…hey! Now he remembered what he had been trying to do….and he put his phone away.

Not a good idea at all.

Suzuki never came to group shit when he was invited to it…and this was not at all his thing anyway…but he was lonely since his best friend was an ocean away….poor Suzuki…and poor Shimazaki for his terrible life…and poor him for his terrible life….and….and poor coffee for being drank by Shimazaki…and poor Mob for having to sit in the corner….and poor Shibata for being shipped with him…and poor him for being shipped with Shibata and….and poor…..and poor Sho for being stuck with Fukuda…and poor Fukuda for not being able to admit his feelings for Suzuki….and poor Suzuki for never being able to admit his feelings for Fukuda…and poor each of them for having feelings for each other…and poor…well….

Poor pretty much everyone in Claw.

"They figured out that Mob is a kid and now we're getting kicked out." Said Shimazaki as he put Hatori's coffee cup back down on the saucer….way too hard. Porcelain on porcelain, he hated that sound, and he wished that he could have deleted that sound from life. That and the sound of windbreakers and zippers being undone and also whatever the hell was playing over the speakers here. He had no idea why Toshi had wanted to come here. They hated noise and crowds and group outings….but he loved them and he wasn't going to question them, just accept them, and he could do that.

He could do the hell out of that.

"What?!" asked Hatori. He knocked his empty cup off the table on accident….but it didn't fall. No, Shibata had caught it for him. He was a good friend…just a friend…despite what Suzuki thought.

"Careful." Said Shibata as he put Hatori's coffee cup back down in front of him. He put his own coffee cup down in front of Hatori too. Shimazaki had stolen his coffee again…and he had one in front of him…but he wasn't going to start with him. The last thing that he wanted to do was draw more attention to them than was necessary. Mob wasn't supposed to be here. She wasn't anywhere near being old enough for this place and the last thing she needed was to get kicked out. It would have been so upsetting for her…and there was enough happening to upset her.

Sho being gone, mostly, his absence left a hole in their group but Mob felt it the most being his older sister and all.

"Announce that a little louder why don't you, Ryou?" asked Minegishi not looking up from their book.

"I'm speaking Japanese." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. He didn't think that anyone was listening and even if they were then they were the ones being eavesdroppers and that was wrong. Besides, what was Toshi so worried about? Mob was getting older, she could pass as an adult….right? Well she was short as all else but height didn't mean anything…but Toshi didn't even like to press these things and he didn't like pissing off Toshi.

"Amazingly enough we aren't the only Japanese people who travel…and I think you would have known that well." Said Minegishi

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember what happened." Said Shimazaki

"Something happened?" asked Mob. That was….well that wasn't good. When Shimazaki said that something happened hen that meant that something crazy had happened to him. Crazy by her standards but normal by his…but what had happened? The craziest things happened when Sho was there but he was away now…he was way too far away….so Mob had no idea what kind of trouble Shimazaki could have gotten himself into.

"What happened?" asked Serizawa. He wondered if he was allowed to ask…Shimazaki was his friend and it was alright to talk to your friends….and he just…he was….he wanted to know. He wanted to know and he asked and…and if it wasn't alight then Miss Suzuki would have stopped him. She was smoking, now, and….well she was still paying attention.

"With me and Sho? Well we were just having a normal conversation, he was kind of upset because Mob's friend came onto him-" said Shimazaki

"What happened to Sho?" asked Mob with a cough. Sho? People were talking about Sho? Was he ok? Did he need her? Was Fukuda taking care of him? Mob almost got up but Minegishi reached out with their aura and gave hers a tap. Right. She had to stay hidden…and…and if something had been wrong with Sho then he would have told her….and he was a big kid now and he could be on his own…and this was for his own good, anyway. Dad had said so.

Dad had said that he was doing something nice for Sho….and dad never did nice things for Sho so this was big.

"Back in New York after the play your friend, the bitchy one-" said Shimazaki. God, that night. That fucking night….he missed Sho like hell but…well maybe they needed some space again. He was getting worse, like Toshi had warned.

"Hey, be nice. I'm sure that Mob's friend is just as sweet and nice as she is." Said Shibata. Minegishi snorted. They didn't have to. He knew that little girls weren't always sweet and adorable…but he also knew not to call them names like 'bitchy'. No kid could be bitchy. Adults on the other hand….

"Shibata, whatever you're smoking I think you could use a break." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. Mob had the worst taste in friends. Friends her own age. Maybe this was some kind of Benjamin Button situation and Mob was secretly in her twenties or something…they were just about high enough to believe that. Heh.

"Gimme a break, gimme a break-" laughed Hatori. He knew that song…he had loved that song…and now he really….God, he was hungry. He needed something sugary and…and he needed to eat something or he was going to die….or just….be hungry…or…whatever. Maybe this was why he wasn't supposed to smoke…and drink…well that was for a whole different reason….

Did they sell candy here? Because he really could have gone for a KitKat…dipped in cheese…with a blue Monster…or maybe red…green?

"I'm not anything right now, actually." Said Shibata with a sigh. The curse, well one of the curses, of being his size.

"Oh no! I'm sorry, here!" said Mob. She leaned over past Serizawa to hand the joint to Shibata…and then she was pushed back into her seat.

"Mob, come on, you know better…and give me that joint. If you're high enough to do something like that then you are way too high right now." Said Minegishi as they held their hand out. They saw, out of the corner of their eye, a member of staff pointing right at them.

They hadn't been thrown out of anywhere in a while….wonderful.

"I'm fine…my socks are only a little soft. Serizawa's robe is much softer." Said Mob. She had brushed past it when she'd been leaning over him. How had she not noticed how soft this was? Even the loose threads were soft. It was like wearing a cloud, maybe, or maybe like wearing suede…like those shoes she had ruined when she'd walked through those puddles…like…would this have gotten ruined in the water? But then how did it get washed…actually she hadn't done his laundry for him in a while…

"It is…it really is…" said Serizawa as he felt the fabric of his robe. That was soft…not real silk but still soft…wow. How had he never noticed how soft his robe had been? She was so good at noticing thing…she was so good at everything. He was so happy that he could have been her friend.

"Your hair is soft too….wow. It's soft and fluffy like…head clouds…" said Mob as she sat up higher in her chair and felt his hair. This was alright, right? Dad felt her hair all the time…so feeling people's hair was alright…and Serizawa had really nice hair. It felt nice, like he'd washed it. Nice and soft and fluffy and great! It stood up on it's own but it wasn't spiky like Sho's was….

Sho…she wondered if he'd been washing his hair…and taking baths…and maybe she should have asked him if he'd been taking care of himself….he needed her….

"I've never thought about it like that…actually I've never liked my hair…" said Serizawa. When he'd been a kid people had always made fun of his hair. That it stood up the way he did and…and he just…well now he didn't hate it and…and she made him not hate it. She was so nice like that.

"Sho what happened between Sho and the little pink haired monster?" asked Minegishi as they reached over and pulled Mob back down into her seat. God. Mob's tolerance had been better, before, and…and what had happened in their life that they had gotten to the point where they were upset that Mob's tolerance was too low?

Oh. Right. The past twenty eight, almost twenty nine, years.

"Huh? Oh, right, so she tried to shove her tongue down his throat and he was all freaked out and shit so we got pizza….fuck. Your hair is soft…" said Shimazaki as he reached over and felt Serizawa's hair. He had to see what all the excitement was about…and…wow. How was his hair that soft? Huh. He had to get back into touching people's hair and pretending that it was something that he had to do. Invading people's personal space was always fun…and he needed to get back into that….maybe. He didn't know. Shit wasn't as fun when Sho was around…but maybe Sho needed to not be around for a while…

Maybe he'd come back having met the boy of his dreams and then everything would be back to normal and they could get back to raising hell together.

"Wait…what did Minori do to Sho?" asked Mob. If she had been drinking her coffee she would have spat it all over the table. If she hadn't been smoking as much as she had been then she would have flipped the table. All she did was shake it a little…and some of Minegishi's coffee had sloshed out of their cup and onto their shirt…and that was their shirt that said that they hated everyone….and…and she would fix that later…

She had enough problems right now.

"I'm sure Shimazaki is exaggerating. People your age don't do that." Said Shibata

"Oh you poor soul." Said Shimazaki. He reached over and patted Shibata on the arm. As he did that his other hand made it's way across the table. Shibata was smarter then he looked. He picked Hatori's coffee, really Shibata's coffee but Shimazaki didn't care about sharing germs, and held it up high in the air out of Shimazaki's reach.

"What? People their age don't do that stuff…or at least they didn't when I was that age." Said Hatori as Shimazaki practically leaned over into his lap. He wanted to push him away but that would have just devolved into a shoving contest…and he didn't think that he had even a chance of winning a shoving contest with Shimazaki…and also that would have drawn more attention to them…

And enough people were already looking as it was.

"Minori does that kind of stuff….well at least she did. She used to have a friend with benefits and they kissed all the time and she let him feel her up and she even saw his….yeah…and I guess she wants to be with Sho like that….but….that's so gross! She's my friend and Sho is my little brother and…and she kissed him like that a couple years ago at the Christmas party….and….and….and Sho has a girlfriend! He has a girlfriend and he loves her and he can't do things like that!" said Mob. She was in love with Emmy! Sho was marrying Emmy! Sho….he was back in England with Fukuda so he could be with Emmy! Sho had a girlfriend who he loved and planned to marry and he had to spend time with her. He had to be there for her because he loved her and love….well there was nothing better than love. Mob had never been in love, the thing with Hatori didn't count and the less said about that the better, and she would never be in love anyway since she didn't know any boys who liked her…but she still knew that love was a beautiful and perfect thing. There was nothing better than love. All you needed was love. The Beatles said that and Shimazaki said that all the knowledge and wisdom in the world could be found in the Beatles body of work. So if all you needed was love then that meant that Sho didn't need her anymore….but that was how it worked since he was getting older and this was even the part of the year when they were the same age…and….

And she wiped her eyes. Sho was so far away….and she was all the way over here…..

"Wait….what? How….what?" asked Serizawa. Miss Suzuki was young, he knew that she was the youngest next to her brother, but…she was as young as that other girl? Also kids did….things like that? That didn't seem right…because they were so young. That was adult stuff. He didn't even do that stuff and he was an adult…well he didn't know any girls…but still! They seemed, especially Miss Suzuki's little brother, to be way too young for all of that….but he wasn't going to say anything. What did he know? Maybe all of that was normal and he was just the weird one.

"Yeah….I agree? How old is this girl again?" asked Hatori. Well he was too high…any amount was too much for him…but this was really too much. Seriously? Poor Sho….or lucky Sho? No, poor Sho. Hatori had no idea what he was but it probably wasn't interested in that girl.

"Eleven…well she was eleven then but she's twelve now…and she's mad that I didn't come back to Japan for her birthday….but I'm kind of…unhappy…that she tried to kiss my brother again. Like…what the h-word? He has a girlfriend and he's my brother and…gross!" said Mob. The table jumped again…and she needed to smoke more? Who had it? She needed it. She just…how was she supposed to talk to Minori now? Kissing…well she had kissed Sho before….but now she and Mob were friends, supposedly best friends, but she just went and…and….and…

Why?!

She knew that Sho had a girlfriend, right? And…and why hadn't Sho said a word about it to her? Well maybe he just didn't want to talk about kissing with his big sister. That made sense, it made a lot of sense, since if she had been kissing anyone she wouldn't have wanted to discuss it with her little brother…but still! Just…she would have told Minori to stop. She would have been there for Sho. She loved her little brother and she would have done anything for him…anything at all…

Even told Minori to…well to keep her tongue in her mouth where it belonged.

"Mob, we're all just as disturbed as you are but, please, try not to get us kicked out. We're Japanese and we tend to age slowly but I doubt that anyone's going to mistake you for an adult. Especially in that getup." Said Minegishi motioning to the mess of tulle and glitter that Mob was wearing. Maybe next time they should have lent her some of their clothes…or maybe just a trench coat, top hat, and stilts.

"What's wrong with my dress?" asked Mob. No, not Minegishi too. She got enough of this from Minori…and also…well she trusted Minori about that but Minegishi wore boy's clothes so what did they know? No, no, that was just her being mean because she was sad that Sho was gone and also upset about how Minori had kissed him. That was all. She wasn't going to take it out on Minegishi.

"Nothing!" said Serizawa a little too loudly. Now people were looking….the lights above them flickered. Right…people were there and…and where had that thing that they'd been smoking gone to? He needed….he needed a lot more of it.

"Yeah, you look great. Your clothes are very….green? Red? Orange? Tangerine?" asked Shimazaki

"That last one wasn't a color." Said Hatori before he could stop himself and remember who he was talking to.

"Fruits can be colors." Said Shibata. He knew where Shimazaki was going with this and he was going to stop it before it got there. Hatori didn't need to be stressed out. If he went to hide then the staff might have seen Mob. They were already looking this way and had been for a while…though that might have been because he was two and a half meters tall. He got a lot of stares…but better him than Mob.

"Yeah, just keep on making me feel different." Said Shimazaki. He didn't feel bad but Hatori didn't need to know that.

"Tangerine can be a color. I mean if an orange can be a food and a color than so can a tangerine. Like Shibata said." Said Mob. She didn't know if he actually felt bad or if he was just saying things…but she wasn't going to take her chances.

"Mob's dress is blue and there's nothing wrong with it. There's something wrong with her friend, someone really needs to teach her the meaning of the word 'no', but there's nothing wrong with Mob or the way she's dressed. I was just saying that there is no way in hell that anyone would mistake Mob for an adult." Said Minegishi

"There's nothing wrong with Minori…well she can be kind of a b-word sometimes…but….I just have to talk to her and tell her that Sho has a girlfriend and he loves her." said Mob. There. She would just talk to Minori and then everything would be ok and then when they were old people feeding koi in the park they would look back on this and laugh…or just never talk about it again. That worked too.

"And he's in love with Shimazaki too…if….that would help…I mean you telling her….I'll stop talking now." Said Serizawa. Miss Suzuki was staring at him. Everyone was staring at him. Maybe he just needed to stop talking. Maybe he just, for the good of everyone, needed to stop talking all together forever. He had just…it hadn't seemed like a secret!

"We…don't really talk about that." Said Hatori

"Because don't want to embarrass him. There's nothing wrong with the way he feels about Shimazaki but…well he gets embarrassed really easily." Said Shibata

"Well maybe we should talk about it….and when Sho's here. We need to stage some kind of intervention or…something…because this is only going to get worse the older he gets." Said Minegishi. Good. They were finally going to address the lovesick elephant in the room. Someone needed to talk to Sho…and they got the feeling that it was going to end up being them. Ryou didn't like having hard conversations, Hatori was too skittish, Shibata enabled anything and everything, these sorts of things weren't in Serizawa's wheelhouse, asking Suzuki to get up off his ass and do some parenting was too much, and Fukuda…well Minegishi got the feeling that he was the cause of Sho's…Sho-ness.

Another bit of parenting left up to them. Joy of joys.

"Um….maybe we shouldn't talk about it. I don't know how Sho can be in love with Shimazaki and still have a girlfriend…and also he knows that Shimazaki is in love with Minegishi and they're going to get married and have a bunch of babies….and…well we shouldn't talk about what's happening in his heart. It's private." Said Mob as she played with the tulle of her dress. Sho…would not have liked them to have an intervention like in the intervention having show. No, not at all. Besides, he had a girlfriend and they were in love…so maybe it wouldn't get any worse…not that there even was a worse when it came to love.

Things didn't get worse when you were in love, no, they got better.

"You and I have a lot to talk about." Said Minegishi. They wanted to bang their head against the wall. That was another intervention that they needed to plan. Mob and love…and living vicariously through them. They had told her that marriage and children were not in their future….but of course it went in one ear and out the other with her. Love…this love thing would only get worse…and it had already been pretty bad. That thing with Hatori….yeah. That was not something that anyone wanted to or needed to revisit.

"How about we don't talk about anything. I know how Sho feels about me and, yeah, it's not getting any better but he'll get over me eventually. Maybe he'll get over me by the time he gets back…or maybe he'll meet the guy of his dreams. I don't fucking know. I just know that whatever Sho feels it doesn't change the outcome. He's still my little bestie." Said Shimazaki. Now everyone was looking at him, he could feel it, and they…well they needed to get back to smoking or…or something. Something other than talking about this.

It was heavy…and heavy shit was boring…and he did not do boring.

"That's beautiful." Said Serizawa. Wow. Now that was friendship…they were so lucky, Shimazaki and Sho, to have each other. He knew that if someone had been in love with him then he would have been…scared….if anything. If his best friend…but he didn't have a best friend…well he had Miss Suzuki but she was best friends with Minegishi….but if Miss Suzuki had been in love with him then he would have been terrified.

He didn't know how to deal with someone loving him who he didn't love back….she was a nice person but way too young….and he would end up hurting her if he said no but he would never have been able to live with himself if he lied and said yes….

"It's ok, Serizawa, you'll have a best friend of your own soon." Said Mob as she patted him on the hand. She could tell by his aura that he was sad about something….probably not having a friend who was as close to him as Shimazaki and Sho were. He'd find someone and if he didn't then she could be as close to him as Shimazaki and Sho were. Without the love. He was nice…and tall…and he had been listening to her about skin care it seemed….and he was really good at Animal Crossing and playing dolls….and he was REALLY tall….but she wasn't in love with him.

She was never falling in love with one of her friends again. There was no chance of it ending well.

"And hopefully you won't end up in the same boat as Ryou." Said Minegishi. That was directed more at Mob than anything. They knew her, they knew her type, and they knew that she didn't always think things through. She liked tall nerds that she had to take care of…so pretty much her dad. Well they were not going to go through another Hatori situation. No way. That hadn't been fun for anyone.

"Can we please get off this Sho thing? Ok, so he has a crush on me and he's confessed to me a couple of times and he keeps on trying to watch me sleep and hug me and….yeah….he's a stage ten clinger but I'm handling it. He's going to figure himself out and then he'll get over me and then it'll all be over, ok?! So can we please talk about something else?!" asked Shimazaki

"We should go." Said Hatori as he motioned behind him. He didn't speak Dutch and his English was crap but he knew that nothing good would come from having that many staff members staring at them.

"I didn't say that we should go, I just said that we should talk about something else. Like who keeps on messing up the kitchen. Why are you guys going through the trouble, well why are Toshi and Mob going through the trouble, of labeling everything if you're all going to mess it up?" asked Shimazaki

"No, I mean we should go now. A bunch of people are looking…don't make eye contact!" said Hatori

"Sorry!" said Shibata. Well now he'd messed up. He'd made eye contact and now someone was coming over…and….and Mob could maybe pass for an adult….right? No, she couldn't. She was too small and adorable.

"Great. Well looks like it's time to start running." Said Minegishi. They were the only one who spoke Dutch. They didn't speak good Dutch but they knew what the staff had been talking about. Great. They're barely in here and now it's time to run….

"Come on, Mob, here's the part where we pretend to walk to the bathrooms but really I take you God knows where." Said Shimazaki as he got up. God, he could not wait for Mob to get old enough so they didn't have to go through this every time they felt like going somewhere fun. She was…twelve-ish, right? Well at least she was getting older. He had no idea what she looked like but he knew that she was going to be able to pass for an adult soon.

And then they could have worry free fun!

"Ok….Serizawa, don't freak out. I have to go now but we'll be together in a minute." Said Mob as she got up. She patted Serizawa on the hand and handed him is umbrella before Shimazaki put his hand on her back and led her around the corner. Someone said something to her in Dutch, which she did not speak, and English, which she did…but Shimazaki walked her past so fast that she didn't even have time to say anything. He walked around a corner and then the world fell away.

She was never going to get used to that.

The world fell away and she found herself outside. She…well she got the feeling that it just wasn't fair. She knew that it wasn't but she also…well there was so much that was unfair…she didn't know what she was even calling unfair. She wanted…she wanted to say that it was unfair that she couldn't smoke because of her age even though she knew her limits and had been doing this since she was eight. She wished that her brother had been back even though he was way too young for all of this….and also he had to be in England to be with his girlfriend who he was in love with. She wanted to say that it wasn't fair that her friend had tried to kiss him…and also it wasn't fair that Sho hadn't told her anything so she could fix it for him. She wanted to say that it wasn't fair that he had someone to love and she didn't…and also it wasn't fair that he was in love with someone who didn't like him back….and….and it was just unfair. She wanted to say it, shout it even, but she didn't.

That wouldn't have been very nice at all.

Also it would have done nothing. Her saying that things weren't fair wouldn't have made Sho love Shimazaki any less. Her saying that things weren't fair wouldn't have undone what Minori had done to Sho or made Sho tell her what had happened when it had happened. Her saying that things were unfair wouldn't have made someone love her….someone who was tall and nice and loved her more than anyone else in the world. Saying that things were unfair wouldn't have made her any older, either, she was still not even twelve yet….and saying that things were unfair wouldn't put her back in that coffee shop….

Because kids weren't allowed in the coffee shops in Amsterdam.


	474. Having Someone Over for the First Time

With dad, big sis, and all their friends gone Sho was finally allowed to have someone over.

He had wanted this for a while. He remembered back when he'd been little, in preschool, that he'd had this really good friend…or at least he'd wanted to be friends with him. Probably more than friends, actually, since he'd given him Valentine's Day chocolates…he'd been so stupid when he'd been a kid…and not cute, like mom had thought…so maybe it was good that she hadn't let him have friends over. That he hadn't been allowed to have kids over. He probably would have ended up doing something else stupid.

There wasn't any danger of that now.

"How have you got so many guns? This is brilliant! My mum won't let me have any more because I kept on shooting my sister….but she deserved it for getting in the way of my darts." Said Emmy as she went through his old box of nerf guns. Without big sis being with him there was a lot more room for his stuff. He hadn't played with these in a while, since he'd stopped shooting big sis, and they'd mostly just lived in this box for the past few years. Moving from house to house just collecting dust…

Good thing that one of them thought that they were brilliant.

"I don't really play with them either. I mean I used to use big sis as target practice too…but I stopped doing that." Said Sho. He didn't want to get into why he had decided to stop using big sis as target practice. He didn't want to get into why…well he didn't want to get into a lot of whys. She could be here,, that was fine, but she couldn't know anything. That made sense. Nobody was allowed to know anything until the day came when they took over the world. If normal people knew about them before they took over the world then, well, the whole thing would be ruined then….and he couldn't let that happen.

That was the day his whole life was leading up to.

Well the day that dad's whole life was leading up to. He was the one who had decided, back when he had been a kid, that he had wanted to take over the world. Sho was only there because he needed someone to inherit it. If they'd been normal people then dad would have stopped at big sis. She was the one that he liked anyway. Sho was just this kid that was there in the house with him who had to have so that more people named Suzuki would be in the world and stuff. That was it…why he was there….and…well he was who he was and what he was…and dad may have been a jerk but Sho…well he was here to rule the world one day…and that was his life…

Not everyone got to pick their lives.

Not everyone got to just…wake up in the morning and decide what they were going to do with their lives. Not everyone got to be all, my life is my own, and then just do and be…whatever. The things that they wanted to be. Maybe if Sho hadn't been born a Suzuki, or had been born to other people called Suzuki since it was a very popular family name, then he could have been an artist when he grew up or a tattooer or in the yakuza…and then if he'd been in the yakuza he and Shimazaki could have been friends…and then they could have….

Well a lot of things could have been different but there was no point in thinking about that now.

He had a friend over for the first time in his life and he wasn't going to mess this up. He could play with her for a couple of hours until she had to go home for dinner. She was supposed to be at school now studying in the library for a test, normal kid stuff like that, but she was here and she was risking getting in trouble to be with him…and he was going to be a good host. He had no idea how to be a host, he had offered her snacks and taken her coat and stuff, and now they were playing with his toys….well she was looking through his toys….but she was having fun and that was what mattered.

What mattered the most was how she felt. His feelings didn't matter at all.

"Hey Sho, you're dead." Said Emmy as she shot him in the forehead with his biggest gun…well she almost did. He put up a barrier at the last second and it went off to the left…and she was staring. He…he was fine. He just…ok. So he had lost control but…she didn't notice…right?

Right?

She was looking at the gun now. She was looking down the barrel of it in the way that Shimazaki had always told him never to do. People shot at dad all the time. Mostly in Tokyo but back in Seoul, too, and also sometimes in Hong Kong. Shimazaki collected their guns before they could even shoot sometimes. He'd let Sho hold one once…it had been way too heavy…and Shimazaki had shown him how to turn the safety off and where the bullets went in…and it had been cool…but Sho was going to stick to nerf guns from now on.

Especially with the stories that Shimazaki told him.

He had said, once, about this guy he knew who had shot himself in the face. One time when he'd been a kid, but a teenager-kid not a kid-kid like Sho was, he and his friends had been drinking and messing around shooting guns in the woods and his one friend's gun jammed so he looked down the barrel and then he was dead. The sound was like filling a watermelon with dynamite, not fireworks, and then letting it explode he had said….and Sho figured that it must not have been a very good sound at all….

Maybe if he told that story then it would distract Emmy from what she had just seen.

"Mine pulls to the right too. Did you also use this as a bat? That's how I ruined mine. I didn't have a cricket bat and I thought, hey, this is bat sized so I brought it down to the pitch like a booger and ruined my best gun. After that my mum said no more guns and….oh. Sorry." said Emmy. She put the gun down and now she was looking at her feet. She reached up like she was going to pull her helmet down over her eyes but instead she just ended up grabbing some of her hair. Her helmet was hanging up in the hallway with her coat…and it was weird seeing her without her coat on…well this whole thing was weird…

And it was about to get weirder if he didn't do something about his powers.

"It's ok, you can shoot at me if you want to…just…um….yeah. A lot of my guns are broken like that. That's why I stopped playing with them." Said Sho. Another lie…but what was one more lie in the bucket of lies that was their whole entire relationship?

"No, I meant…well here I am going on and on about my mum for ages when you don't even have one…sorry." said Emmy. Sho…was fine. That was a fact. He didn't have a mom. His mom was gone. She went away. She had gotten up one day, put on her shoes, and then left the house. She never came back. She was off somewhere in the world all on her own without him and big sis…and he could understand leaving dad….but leaving them was….she had been gone for years. She had been gone from his life since he had been six. He was eleven now. He had been without his mom for almost half of his life and….and that was ok. She….he was ok with this and he loved her and she was gone and…

And he was not going to take this out on Emmy.

Even though he wanted to yell at her not to talk about his mom if even to be sorry. Even if he wanted to tell her that she had to leave the room, now, because he had to make another Swiss cheese wall…and he hadn't done that in a very long time….and he just…his aura was being all…like this…and he just…she loved him. She was a girl and she loved him and he was…

He was fine.

"It's fine, I'm fine. She's gone. I love her and she left…and I'm not allowed to talk about her. My dad said so." Said Sho. He felt…well he felt like he had eaten a cigarette. Like the time that Shimazaki had given him all of those gross beers and then tricked him into eating a cigarette….he had said that it was a candy cigarette. Like they used to make when he was a kid. What he had before he had been able to smoke on his own, when he'd been younger than Sho, and Sho had been all 'give me that I'm not a baby' and then he ate it and it had been so gross….

Gross like talking about how dad….had been the one to tell him not to talk about mom.

"That's….what? Why? She was your mum. How can he just tell you that you're not allowed to talk about your own mum like that?" asked Emmy. Sho…did not shout. The first thing that he had wanted to do was shout at her…so he turned away. That had been in that book that Minegishi had gotten him for his birthday a couple years ago. When something made you mad then the first thing that you were supposed to do was not look at it or think about it…so he turned around.

He turned his back to her.

There. He knew that he was being rude but at least…well at least he hadn't yelled at her. The bookshelf…there was nothing on the bookshelf to make him mad. Well there were the books that Minegishi had gotten him, another good thing about dad being gone was that he could put his books on the shelves and not under his bed, and some of his manga and his sketchbooks….and a lot of space, too, because that bookshelf had been big sis's and she had a lot of manga. She collected it. Her stories about people falling in love and kissing and being in school and having school adventures….dumb stuff like that. Her stuff. Her stuff was gone and she was gone….and she was never coming back….and he knew that he could go to her but….but it felt like she was never coming back because that was just what people did sometimes…they left and they never came back….

A hand in his.

"I really am sorry, Sho. Sometimes I don't know when to shut my mouth….and I'm sorry." said Emmy

"That's….that's ok um…do you…want to look at my drawings?" asked Sho as his eyes danced around the bookshelf. There, the bottom half of it, was made up of his old sketchbooks. He could finally put them up instead of stacking them on the floor…and maybe when he rejoined the others he could tell dad to give him and sis a junk room for all of their stuff or they could divide the room up better or something….because he liked looking at his stuff….and looking through his old drawings. Some people had photo albums but taking pictures was just…it was like looking through a window. Like you could see but also there was this layer of…picture…between yourself and what you were seeing. Drawing was like…like being there and seeing stuff all over again…

So maybe Emmy would like to see what he'd seen…and maybe it would make her stop talking finally…

"Do you want to look at my sketchbooks? I mean you said that you liked me drawings, the ones I send you pictures of…so…yeah? Do you want to look at my drawings?" asked Sho

"That's be brilliant….and I really am so-" said Emmy

"Here, come sit down." Said Sho as he took her by the hand, well more like he just didn't let go of her hand, and led her to his bed. She looked at him, and then at it, and then she smiled and sat down. She brushed her skirt down as she sat down like big sis did. She didn't normally do that. Emmy always just sort of sat down. She was looking at her feet, too, and she was all red….and he didn't get it. What? Was she still embarrassed about wearing shoes in the house?

That hadn't been so bad.

She had been the one who had made a big deal out of it. Fukuda hadn't even said anything. He had just told Sho to be polite and take her coat. Sho hadn't made a big deal out of it anyway. She wore shoes in the house, that was what British people did, and she couldn't help doing the things that she did. Also this was her country and really they should have been the ones to have been embarrassed since they were the ones that weren't fitting in….even though wearing shoes in the house was gross….and not in a cool way….

Still not worth getting so embarrassed over, though.

He grabbed the first sketchbook that he saw, the one on top that he had been working on earlier that day. This one was the newest and she hadn't seen any of the stuff in there before, that was good, because then maybe she wouldn't talk so much. He didn't normally mind it when she talked, he wasn't going to demand silence like dad did all the time, but she had been talking about mom and he…well even if dad hadn't told him not to talk about mom he didn't want to talk about her with Emmy. Big sis or Fukuda maybe, people who had known her, or Shimazaki since they could talk to each other about anything, but not her. She wasn't a part of that…part…of his life…and stuff….but she was a part of this part of his life.

So he sat down next to her and opened up his sketchbook.

She scooted away from him, and then towards him, and then away, and then towards…and then she scooted around in place for a while. He didn't know what was up with her. Was she itchy or something? Was his bed that uncomfortable? Was she sitting on a stuffed animal or something? He didn't know. Girls were so weird sometimes.

Or maybe he was the weird one…or something….

"Are you ok? If you're sitting on a stuffed animal then you can just toss it on the floor or whatever. I'm not like my sister, I don't care if they get dirty." Said Sho. Emmy….why was she being like this? She went to look at him and then she looked back down at her feet….but at least she had stopped scooting around like she had ants under her skin or something….which was something that happened. She had been the one who told him about them. They got in your wounds and then moved around under your skin, sort of like the bugs that laid eggs in your wounds, and….why couldn't she have talked about something cool like that instead of talking about his mom like…like that was something that he would have wanted to talk about…and stuff….

"I-I'm not….sitting on one of your stuffies I mean…you have a lot of them but I'm not sitting on any…um….I'm alright." Said Emmy

"Are you sure? Do you need water or soda or something? We have-" said Sho

"I'm fine, really, it's just…I've never been in a boy's house before…or in his room…or on his bed. I mean…nothing. I'm just being weird." Said Emmy

"You're always weird." Said Sho without thinking. She was the weirdest girl he had ever met…and sometimes she could be cool weird. Like when she dig graves for dead birds or showed him pictures of gross bugs that lived in people's skin or spat mouthfuls of sugar on the ground for ants…and also she could not weird-weird like how she was being now. What was so weird about this? He hadn't ever had anyone over either but he wasn't being all….like this….

But he had been a jerk.

Her face had gotten all scrunchy and her eyes were doing that thing that they did when she got sad…and he needed to work on talking to her. He was so clueless, almost as clueless as dad and big sis, and that made sense since they were all in the same family….but…well he didn't want to be like dad. Mom, he remembered back when he'd been little, had been talking to Fukuda. Back when they'd lived in the Castle and she had been sick all the time….and Fukuda had come over all the time to help her out and hang out with her. She had told him that talking to dad was like talking to a clueless wall…and Sho didn't want to be a wall or clueless or a clueless wall….and maybe he wasn't…since he had figured out how he'd messed up and all.

And he had messed up.

"But I like that about you. You're like…cool weird. You're the coolest girl that I've ever met…and you're pretty too. You're really fucking pretty." Said Sho. He did that thing she liked, too, where he brushed her hair behind her ear. He had gotten that from one of big sis's movies. Girls liked stuff like this for some reason….and maybe he would have liked it, too, if he had been a girl…or if his hair didn't grow straight up in spikes. Like if his hair grew downwards…like Shimazaki's. Like how he had to comb it with that pomade and stuff to make it stand up…like…if Shimazaki wanted to comb his hair for him then…that would have been….

That would have been…

He would have….

He would have been….

He maybe would have made the same face that Emmy was making now.

"Th-thank you…um….can I see your drawings now?" asked Emmy. He knew that face. She had told him, before, that she had a goldfish in her stomach like he got when he was with Shimazaki. He was the person who made her goldfish swim and…and he was supposed to be that person to her. He was her boyfriend after all and that was what boyfriends did. They made their girlfriend's goldfish swim…

Even if they didn't really want to.

"Sure. Here…um….oh! This is one that I just finished the other day. That's my sister….but you knew that…um…." Said Sho. He was having some trouble with words right now. He couldn't stop thinking about the fact that she had a goldfish in her stomach and it was swimming for him. She had told him about that before but…they had never been this…alone…together. She was holding his hand now…and she'd wan to kiss him soon….and they'd done that before….they'd kissed like normal…

But what if she wanted to kiss…not like normal?

They were all alone in this room…and if he had been alone with any other girl…like if he'd been alone with big sis's friend then she would have been trying to cram her tongue in his mouth and…and that was so gross. That was just….so not…what he wanted. What he could do. He…could kiss a girl the normal way but that was all…weird….and not in a good way. He knew that Emmy and Minori were different people…even if Emmy had started wearing makeup for some reason….they were different. So what if he made the goldfish in her stomach swim? She wasn't going to just try and shove her tongue down his throat…

She would ask first…she was nice like that….

So he kept on talking. He flipped around in his sketchbook and he talked and talked and talked even though he was repeating himself a lot. He had to. He just…he trusted her…that she would ask but…well if he just kept on talking and talking and talking then she wouldn't even get the chance to ask. Her hand was in his, and he was ok with that, and she was resting her head on his shoulder, and he was ok with that, and she'd want him to kiss her the normal way, and he was ok with that…but he would not be ok with…all the other stuff that girlfriend's expected him to do. Maybe when he was older and he just…had more time to get used to it…all of it. The stuff that he was sure that she wanted him to do….

All that adult stuff that he was mostly sure that he was way too young for….at least that was what he would say if she ever asked.

"Sho?" asked Emmy

"Hai? I-I mean, yes?" asked Sho. She wasn't….she was. She was going to ask him to kiss her like big sis's friend kept on trying to kiss him and then he would have to kiss her like that and then her tongue would be in his mouth and it would be all…there would be spit…and her spit would be in his mouth and his spit would be in her mouth…and she might have wanted to do even more than that….all that stuff that he knew for a fact that he did not want to do with her or anyone else….well not that he could even do that stuff with the person that he liked since they were both…

Whatever Emmy wanted to do he would do. Her feelings were the ones that mattered the most. Not his.

"Hai…that means yes…sorry." said Emmy with a laugh. Not a mean one, no, a nervous one…and he didn't get what she was so nervous about. She knew that he wouldn't ask her do to any of the things that were on her mind.

"Are you ok?" asked Sho. He didn't want her to not be ok…but he did want…well if she wasn't ok then he would have had to help her out…and if he was helping her out then he might have been able to do that from farther away…or in another room…or something.

"Just…" said Emmy

"What's up?" asked Sho. Did she need food? Water? To go home now…he shouldn't have wanted that last one….so he made himself stop wanting it. Her happiness was all that he wanted…all he could want.

"Why haven't you got any drawings of me?" asked Emmy

"What?" asked Sho. Well he hadn't been expecting that…and he sort of wished that she had asked to cram her tongue down his throat now. At least then he wouldn't have been expected to say anything. What could he even tell her? That he wasn't in love with her and he only drew pictures of her to make her happy? That he started his drawings as doodles and they turned into who they turned into? That a lot of the time they turned into the person he loved the most in the world? Or his sister? Or ninja hamsters?

"You haven't got any drawings of me in here. You have your sister and your friends…and mostly your blind master friend….but none of me. I mean sometimes you send me drawings that you did of me…so maybe I'm just being daft but…well there aren't any of me in here…so I guess that they're in the others…sorry. I'm just being daft." Said Emmy. She was calling herself names now…and he shouldn't have made her say mean things to herself. Her feelings mattered. Her feelings mattered the most and…and he was being a terrible boyfriend right now….

And he needed to do better. Right now.

"I can draw you now, if you want. I just…well I know what you look like…I mean…I have pictures of you but….I can draw you right now if you want." Said Sho. She…well she was all red again…and he wished that she would just tell him what to do to make her be all…normal…like when they met…and stuff. Not all….like this…but this was his fault. He was the one who had made her fall in love with him and he was the one who made the goldfish in her stomach swim…

And now he was the one who had to deal with it.

"Sure! I mean brilliant! I mean…um….what do I have to…do?" asked Emmy. Do? What did she mean but 'do'? He never made people do anything when he drew them….did she want him to draw her from life right now? He could do that. He didn't do that very often, it was hard to get people to sit for drawings, but if she wanted that then he was all over that.

People had to sit still and be quiet when they sat for pictures.

"Nothing. You can just sit there and I can draw you. It won't take that long, I draw fast." Said Sho. He let go of her hand and scooted to the end of the bed. He sat cross legged and faced her. She turned to face him and she smiled…she went through a bunch of different smiles actually, like she was big sis talking a picture. Good, that meant that she liked this…right? Girls liked having their pictures taken….right?

He wished that big sis had been there. She would have known what to do….and also it would have been weird to kiss his girlfriend in front of his sister so then whatever Emmy was thinking about would have had zero chance at all of happening.

"Is this right?" asked Emmy as she played with the chain hanging from her neck. She was wearing the ring chain on the outside now, she didn't have to hide it here, and…and she would expect to see it in the drawing…and he would have to draw it. Her ring…the one that he'd gotten…he'd gotten it for her. He wondered about the person who had lost that tooth. He wondered what it was like to have your tooth as a ring?

Maybe easier than having a girlfriend who loved you and wanted to marry you…and stuff.

"You're fine….just don't move or talk or anything." Said Sho. She listened to him…and he was happy that she had listened…and he shouldn't have been happy about that. He should have wanted to talk to her and stuff like that…but talking…well talking led to more than talking and…and he wasn't in the mood for more than talking.

He was in the mood for drawing.

He was always in the mood for drawing. He was always in the mood to put a pen or a pencil or a crayon or marker or…well….anything, to paper. To turn an empty sheet of paper into something else. That was why so many notebooks were filled with his drawings. He had his drawings in this sketchbook and so many others….and this was what he was good at. Drawing pictures. Mom had said that he was gifted, that he could draw just about anything, and she was right. He could draw anything and…and he could even draw pictures of things that he didn't much want to draw pictures of….not that he didn't…

He was a good boyfriend.

Good boyfriends wanted to draw pictures of their boyfriends…girlfriends! He wanted to draw his girlfriend and that was what he was doing. Like in that movie that made Shibata and big sis cry. When the rich girl told the poor guy to draw her like one of his French girls...which meant with no clothes on…and thankfully Emmy hadn't asked him to draw her like she was a French girl…because he wasn't…he didn't want to draw her like that…or anyone…

Any girl, anyway.

If Shimazaki had asked Sho to draw him like a French girl then…well he'd dreamt about that before…the ones that left him feeling all weird when he woke up…and now. He was thinking about that, about drawing Shimazaki like that, and it didn't even make sense! That would never happen, first of all, and second of all he already had a whole secret sketchbook where he had a bunch of pictures of Shimazaki not all the way dressed and-

And he kept on drawing.

He kept on drawing even though…even though his brain kept on trying to make him think about Shimazaki. About how good it felt to draw him. Drawing Emmy right now…it was like taking a picture of her with his phone. Just…one line and then another and then shading and light…and those were the fun parts but even now….now it was like a bunch of just…just things on a list that he had to do. When he drew Shimazaki he felt all warm and happy and…and kind of like he had eaten a battery and it shocked the goldfish in his stomach….and he wished that he could have felt that way when he drew Emmy. He wished that he could have felt, for once in his life, what he was supposed to feel….

But that was not how this worked.

He was a good boyfriend and that was what mattered. He loved…well who cared who he loved? Who cared who he wished that he had been drawing? Who cared why he wanted to do…what he wanted to do. He just wanted….he didn't know what he wanted. To be able to do what he wanted? To be able to want to do what he had to do? Or just to have been able to have fun with what he was going now? He just…he didn't know. He didn't know so he just…stopped asking questions….and kept on drawing.

Her feelings were the ones that mattered, after all, not his…which was why she had even come over in the first place.


	475. Heartwarming Moments and Growing Pains

Even if it wasn't real seeing Sho with Emmy was pretty damn heartwarming.

"Careful, booger! You're going to make the roof cave in!"

Fukuda could hear them playing from the kitchen. They had made some kind of fort in the living room, one which he was forbidden from entering because he was an adult, and one which he wouldn't have been able to enter anyway because it had been built with two eleven year olds in mind. He didn't want to go in there anyway, he didn't want to disturb them. Sho needed this. He needed this kind of normalcy in his life. He needed to have someone his own age to play with. He needed someone his own age to build a fort with.

Someone other than Shimazaki Ryou.

Sho needed friends his own age. Sho needed to spend time with people who were also eleven, who he had things in common with, and who he could just be a normal kid with. Someone who he could just be….himself….with. Well most of himself. There were two things that Emmy could never know about Sho. The first being the obvious, that he was an esper, and the second being that their entire relationship with a sham and Sho could never return her feelings….poor girl. He felt for her a bit but…well she was going to be fine. Sho treated her well and did his best to make her happy.

Which was more than what his father had ever been capable of.

He and Suzuki had been distant for the years that he'd been married to Masami. They'd been distant, actually, since Suzuki took his long walk around the world. He'd taken shorter ones before, during university but the long walk had been…well….long. Long enough for him to get used to not seeing Suzuki Touichirou every time he turned around. Long enough for him to have made something of a life for himself. It was a life spent helping build up Claw but it had still been a life. He had even made some friends…friends he never saw these days….once Masami had left the Touichirou was back to keeping him close. He liked to talk about how he didn't need anyone, how he was a complete person all on his own, but he could be pretty damn clingy. He needed someone to at least be there near him, someone to remind him that he wasn't alone, because it was such an easy thing to feel alone when you were like they were…

Sho would never feel like that.

Sho had this girl now. She loved him, he'd heard her telling Sho that she loved him, and Sho would take good care of her. He had always wanted something to take care of. When he'd been small he'd always begged Masami to let him have a pet. A cat or a dog or a bird or a hamster, he really loved hamsters, but Masami had always said no. Touichirou had never been a fan of animals. Even when they were kids Touichirou had never liked them, especially rodents, actually he was terrified of rodents…which was why the hamster thing was always a hard 'no' and always would be. A 'no' to getting a hamster but a 'yes' to his eleven year old son getting himself a fiancée to take care of for the rest of his life.

Even if they were together another thirty years he would never understand how Touichirou's mind worked.

He had worked a few things out but there were recesses there that Fukuda had never even poked around in. Like Shigeko. Fukuda was against, fully against, acquiring children. Children were not assets and if she hadn't been an orphan, well abandoned anyway, then he would have done his best to keep her away from Claw and Suzuki…and maybe he should have. She was not good for Suzuki. She brought out a side of him that, honestly, Fukuda…well he hadn't ever seen it before and he wanted it gone. He had seen Touichirou possessive before, protective too, but he had never seen him willingly give up his power like that. He had even distanced himself from Masami in an effort not to give up any power he had….and now….

Now there was an eleven year old girl running the show.

This distance would be good for Sho. He had been picking up some bad habits from Suzuki, first of all, and second of all he had completely stopped fighting with Shigeko. He just let her run his life. She was a year older than him…not even…and he prayed to God that neither of them ever sat down and did some basic math…..and yet Sho let her run his life. Fukuda had the babysitting manual she had written on the table, now with eleven year old Sho update. He got two poptarts after his baths now and his bedtime could be moved to ten if he was good but no later than that because he got grumpy….and as loathe as he was to listen to her there was wisdom in that book…and there shouldn't have been…

She never should have been the one in charge.

Suzuki had left her in charge of his household and, not only that, but a large portion of Claw as well. She had consolidated the most powerful espers Claw had into her own personal entourage and she had worked her father into the group too and her brother and….and he had no idea what she was planning on doing with this power now that she had it…and he didn't even want to think about it. She had been like this since the debacle with the baby. Two years. She was almost twelve…and he didn't want to even think about what her teenage years were going to be like…he dreaded them almost as much as he dreaded Sho's….

Teenagers. They were going to be teenagers.

"…love you, booger."

Sho was already….well he was just doing what he thought that he had to do. He was getting a little bit ahead of himself, a lot ahead of himself actually, but he was just doing what he thought that he had to do. Well what he had to do but…not now. He was eleven and he was already planning out his entire future…something that he got from Suzuki. Fukuda could remember it like it was yesterday. They had been sitting in Suzuki's living room seeing what channels the satellite dish was picking up that day and Suzuki had turned to him and said 'Fukuda, I've decided that I'm going to take over the world. Now go make popcorn' and he had said 'make it yourself, Suzuki, it's your house' and then he'd said….well it didn't matter what he'd said. Fukuda had ended up making the popcorn, and getting the bowl thrown at him because he'd made it wrong….which meant not swimming in butter with a bowl of ketchup on the side…and he'd ended up helping to take over the world anyway….

So maybe there was something to be said about planning your life when you were a kid.

Sho…well he was getting ahead of himself…but at least this was wholesome and adorable. Fukuda didn't have to worry about Sho getting up to anything that he was too young to get up to, not like with Shigeko, and he never would have to worry about half the stuff that Shigeko got up to happening to Sho. He was a good boy, Fukuda had seen to it, and he just wished that he could have done more for Shigeko…but there were two kids and only one of him and he had done his best with one of them and he could kick himself about Shigeko later. Right now he had Sho to worry about. Sho was finally playing with someone his own age. He was finally making friends his own age. He had finally done something right, in Touichirou's eyes, and now Sho could rest easy…well easier than normal. He had made his father proud…

And now maybe Touichirou would get off of his back for once.

He left Sho this house without a second thought. Sho was a better man than he was, those were his words, he was proud of the man that Sho was becoming…and he should have been. Despite the shit show that had been Sho's life he was still a better man at the age of eleven than his father was at the age of forty five…well almost…their birthdays hadn't passed yet. Still. Suzuki had been right when he had said that about Sho. Sho was….well he had a lot of the same sort of violent impulses that Suzuki had…but he had been good about those lately. He had the same propensity for obsession the Suzuki did too…if the three and a half sketchbooks fill of pictures of Shimazaki were anything to go off of….but Sho was still a better man at eleven than his father was at forty four.

And not just because he was loyal to his girlfriend.

"We should build an extension, I think, in case we have to torture prisoners."

"In case? Sho, you know we have to torture the prisoners. We've got to set an example."

Those two. God. Fukuda knew that Sho didn't like her like she liked him but still. She was…well she was a strange little girl…but she was good for Sho. Just…hearing him playing like that…she was good for Sho…and he knew it. Unlike his father he knew what he had there. Fukuda…well if he had been in Sho's position then he wouldn't have been nearly as loyal. There would have been no point to it. She loved him but Sho didn't, and couldn't, return her feelings so if Sho wanted to find a boy, a boy his own age, to be with then there would have been nothing wrong with that. What his girlfriend didn't know couldn't hurt her and Sho was entitled to his happiness. He didn't have to be as loyal to her as he was. He was a good kid like that.

Of course he was a good kid, he was Sho.

He could be a little…much…sometimes but he was a good kid. The world, and his own genetics, were doing their best to turn him into another version of his father but he was a good kid. Masami won out there. She had been such a good person…and she was, wherever she had wound up in this world, and if Sho ever found out what had happened and thought that his mother was a bad person…well Fukuda would do his best to set Sho straight on that. Masami had done what she had to do and he…well he hadn't done what he had to do. He had raised Sho as best as he could but Shigeko…well he had been there for Sho as best as he could and one out of two wasn't bad. He hadn't brought her Sho….but he had no idea where she was. It would have been easy now, to bring her Sho, since Suzuki pretty much solely cared about Shigeko now…and he had asked for her whereabouts before….but it didn't matter now. Sho…well he was alright where he was….

Though Fukuda would have given anything to see Masami just one more time.

"Bloody hell! Look at the time! I've got to go!"

Heavy footsteps could be heard followed by some shuffling and then the slamming of the front door. Well a goodbye would have been nice…and also he would have called a ride for her if she had wanted one….and also it would have been nice to know that she wasn't going to be staying for dinner….God, he sounded like his mother. 'Where's your little friend run off to, Tadashi' and 'don't slam doors, Tadashi' and 'your friend needs to learn to tell a person when he's staying for dinner, Tadashi' and whatever else his mother had complained to him about.

He hadn't visited mom and dad in a while…and he wouldn't have minded it if they had somehow found a way to complain to him even now…oh the things that they would say.

Why don't you have any kids, Tadashi, would be a popular one. Also something along the lines of, when are you getting a real job, Tadashi, and the like. There would be a word about how he was still friends with Suzuki after all this time…dad had never liked him and mom had gotten sick of him after a while…and it would have been even worse if they had been alive to see that he was raising Suzuki's son for him….he didn't want to think about this. He didn't want to think about…well…anything right now.

But he had to think about something. He had to think about getting dinner on the table.

"What's for dinner?" asked Sho as he sat down at the table. He put his sketchbook down on the table and began to scribble, no, shade. Then he did that scribbling it was called shading. Fukuda leaned over and looked down at what Sho was drawing…and thank God. Not another picture of Shimazaki. Sho had several sketchbooks full of those. He didn't need a single new picture of that man.

Especially not how Sho had taken to drawing him as of late.

"Curry just the way you like it." Said Fukuda

"Spicy and without any cheese in it?" asked Sho

"Yup, no cheese whatsoever." Said Fukuda

"I don't know why big sis makes it like that. I think she tastes stuff weird like dad does." Said Sho. Fukuda…held his tongue for a moment. She was his daughter. Sho…he wasn't going to start asking any complicated questions anytime soon. He didn't seem like he was, anyway, like why his birthday and Shigeko's were so close together or why she looked nothing like the rest of her family…and why his supposed pretend little sister was the spitting image of Suzuki….

"Possibly. She is his daughter after all." said Fukuda

"If she starts putting ketchup on everything then we're going to have to talk." Said Sho

"Oh God, the ketchup thing. One of these days I'm going to have to tell your dad that other condiments exist." Said Fukuda. He laughed. Sho didn't. Sho just looked up at him and stared.

"You know he wouldn't listen to you. In every single story you've told me about you and dad being kids he never listened to you. Like the time he got mad at you for making popcorn wrong." Said Sho

"I told you about that?" asked Fukuda

"Yeah. You said that you and dad were trying to see if you could get radiation poisoning from sitting on the microwave and you made popcorn and then you gave some to dad and then he got mad because you didn't put ketchup and butter on it. I don't know why he eats stuff like that, it's gross...is dinner ready yet? Otherwise I'm going to make a poptart sandwich." Said Sho

"It's ready, I'm just keeping it warm. Want me to plate you up?" asked Fukuda

"I can do it myself." Said Sho. To prove his point he opened up the cabinet with his powers and got out his Zootopia plate. The drawer beneath the cabinet opened and the matching spoon followed. Both were beaten up and needed replacing….but he wouldn't bring it up. He didn't know what he would do if Sho said that he was too old, now, for a new Zootopia place setting….if he wasn't a baby anymore…

Fukuda knew that he wasn't a baby anymore.

He hadn't bathed in two days. It was abundantly clear that he was not a baby anymore. This was going to have to be a bath night. Sho…he wasn't a baby anymore. He wasn't a small child anymore. He was a child but one who had to start bathing every single day now…and also he'd have to teach Sho about deodorant at some point…and all of that other stuff that came with getting older…God. Time was passing so quickly. It seemed like just yesterday Sho had been tugging on his sleeve begging to play for just a little while longer….

Those were the days.

"Careful." Said Fukuda as he was almost hit in the head by a curry plate. Sho had gotten the ratio wrong again. Too much curry, not enough rice, and the rice and the curry weren't touching. He had no idea where he got that from. Touichirou had the opposite problem. He tended to mix everything together and then douse it in ketchup. Eggs and ketchup…he had grown out of the raw egg thing….so maybe he shouldn't have been complaining about Sho's eating habits. It could have been much worse.

"I am being careful. Maybe you should get out of the way." said Sho

"Fair enough." Said Fukuda as he turned and got a plate of out the cabinet. He didn't want to fight with Sho about manners right now. Something was bothering him. He was being all…like that…and he was drawing at the table too. Furiously shading. He was feeding himself with his powers and furiously shading…and Fukuda…well he wished that…he honestly wished that he had a time machine. Sho had done this, minus the powers, when he had been small. He used to scribble furiously, he had been so young he hadn't understood shading then, when something was really bothering him….

And it had been so easy to cheer him up back then.

All Fukuda had to do, back then, was ask him if he wanted to play…or just ask if he wanted to be picked up….but Sho was more into videogames than toys….and he was way too big to be picked up…so talking would have to be…well what had to be done. Even though talking to Sho about his problems, a lot of the time, was like pulling teeth…but somehow harder. He'd pulled teeth before, back when his baby teeth hadn't been falling out fast enough for his liking and dad had left some pliers within arm's reach, and somehow talking to Sho about what was eating at him was even harder than that.

His problems, much like Fukuda's baby teeth, grew back very quickly.

"So…what're you drawing there?" asked Fukuda. It was best, when it came to Sho, to start off small. To test the waters. Much like talking to Suzuki. Easier, though, because when Suzuki would explode and lose control in some way Sho would shut down. Harder too, because Suzuki was open a lot of the time after he exploded, but Sho stayed shut down and clammed up for a while.

"What Emmy would look like if she went through a teleporter with a hamster like in that movie about the guy who fuses with a fly." Said Sho

"It looks interesting." Said Fukuda. It did. Sho…well he had a gift. Fukuda had no idea where it came from but he had a gift. Well maybe it was a form of hyper-cognition. Suzuki had it when it came to math and other dry academic topics. Maybe the art had come from Touichirou's mom….she had been an artist…not much of one but she had tried…

Or maybe Sho's art talent was just something that happened and there was no rhyme or reason to it.

"I know it does. I'm trying to get it done for her soon." Said Sho

"She asked you to draw that for her?" asked Fukuda

"No, I just like to draw stuff for her. It makes her happy and it's my job to make her happy. I'm her boyfriend, aren't I?" asked Sho. There was a bitterness to the word boyfriend that Fukuda completely understood. Sho…he was getting older. He was getting to the point where he wanted…well a lot of things that he hadn't wanted before. That was the age where Fukuda had started to think of girls in not only a physical way but a romantic one too. He had wanted a girlfriend for all the usual reasons but also to have someone to just…love him.

Sho wanted to be loved. It was normal.

So did the bitterness he felt. Fukuda…he did not make the world the way it was and he did not tell Touichirou to be who he was. Even if Touichirou had been completely accepting of his son the rest of the world would not have been. The world…it was the way it was and either way Sho would had gotten a bad shake of it. He was a good kid and he didn't deserve to feel the way he felt…and to never know…well a lot of things….

This was too much for an eleven year old.

"You're a really good boyfriend, Sho, and I'm proud of you. I know that it might seem hard sometimes-" said Fukuda

"When are we going to see baby sis?" asked Sho. Well then that…Fukuda had been prepared to give one of his long pep talks but…well that was….alright then. Sho wanted to move along, Fukuda didn't blame him, and of course he wanted to see his little sister…

Alright then.

"We can leave soon if you want to." Said Fukuda. He…well he knew that Suzuki wouldn't notice. He was too busy chasing assets….and he hated Seasoning City and everything in it…so….alright then. He'd have to start making arrangements….he could do this.

"Yeah, I want to go soon and give baby sis her M&M's before they get stale…and eaten." Said Sho

"Right. Well let me just start figuring some things out and then we can get going….but we can stay a little longer. You know, in case you want to hang out with Emmy some more. I know that you don't feel the same way about her that she does about you but it's alright to think of her as a friend-" said Fukuda

"A friend who I have to kiss sometimes." Said Sho

"Well…yes. If you want to put it that way." said Fukuda. That was…not something that he wanted to think about. He generally did not like thinking about the more…physical…aspects of Sho's romantic life…whatever that may be in the present and future…and also he didn't want to think about what he knew for a fact went on between those two kids. Sho was too young…well Fukuda hadn't been much older…but Sho was still too young. He…it seemed like just yesterday that he had been able to carry Sho on his shoulders….

And now that time had passed.

"What way? I have to kiss her sometimes. That's more than being friends…well sometimes there are friends with benefits…but I don't think that I could ever do that…and don't tell big sis that I know what that is. She'd probably faint or something." Said Sho

"Sho….I think that I might faint." Said Fukuda. Sho…well this was what happened when you kept company with adults. He was proud of Sho for not wanting something like that, even though there would have been nothing wrong with that since he didn't even love that girl, but he was…well he did feel just a bit horrified that he even knew what that was. Well that was at least one less thing that he would have to explain to Sho as he got older….

He wondered if he was physically capable of fainting.

"If you faint try to do it in the living room. There's carpeting in there. If you faint and hit your head on the hard floor he you might get brain damage and never wake up. Emmy told me about a guy that happened to." Said Sho

"Good tip, I'll try to remember that…so…yeah. We can get a move on if you're ready to go but if you want to stay and play with your frie-girlfriend for a little longer-" said Fukuda

"I'm ready to go so let's go, ok? If we're going now then I have birthday presents to make…and don't tell me not to eat in my room. It's my house now and if I want to eat my curry in my room then I will." Said Sho as he got up and picked up his plate with his powers.

"I wouldn't dream of….it. Alright then." Said Fukuda as he found himself alone at the table. Sho went to his room like he said that he was going to go…and that was alright. He was getting older and part of getting older was moving to his bedroom for the foreseeable future. That was fine. Fukuda…well he had left his own parents to their dinners alone…so this was normal…and Sho…well he was normal. Everything about him was so painfully normal….and there was nothing that Fukuda could do about it. The passage of time. Sho getting older, growing up, and growing apart from him….that was normal…and Fukuda didn't mind…what could he do, anyway, about the growing pains? That was what these were for the both of them. What could he do? Not even mind. Minding would have been pointless…so what could he do?

As long as there were heartwarming moments between the growing pains then….it was fine.


	476. Glow in the Dark Mini Golf

Miniature golf was the best kind of golf.

In Mob's opinion, anyway. She liked this better than normal golf because…well she had never been normal golfing but it looked boring. There was just a whole lot of grass, which was boring, and also there weren't any real obstacles around the holes. Also it didn't glow in the dark. That was an important part of miniature golf, everything glowing in the dark, even though…well it kind of left Shimazaki out. She felt sort of bad that he would never know how cool it was in here. Everything was all big and dark and neon and…and Sho would have loved it too…..he would have had to so much and….and this was still the best kind of golf. Even if her little brother wasn't there and one of her best, oldest, and closest friends couldn't even see how cool it was in there.

Not that not being able to see was stopping Shimazaki from winning.

"Fuck yeah! Hole in one again!" said Shimazaki. He wished that Sho had been there to see that. He would have, well after he swooned of course, hit Shimazaki as hard as he could with his golf club. Then they could have had a sword fight or something…God…that would have been great…but that was alright. This was for the best. Sho was going to come back and maybe in the time he was away he would get over that damn crush and then they could play miniature gold without the blushing, stuttering, and swooning.

Which would be good, Shimazaki could do some guilt free ass kicking in that case.

"Congratulations!" said Serizawa because that was what you were supposed to say when your friend did well. Shimazaki was his friend and he was happy that his friend was happy. Miss Suzuki was happy too….well everyone was happy….well maybe not Minegishi. It was hard to tell with them sometimes. They didn't do well in winter, they said, because of the lack of plant life. Shimazaki had also said to be extra nice to them until the seventeen…and also not to ask why. Not that he would have and not that he needed to be told to be nice to his friend.

He was always nice to his friends.

He would have been even if Miss Suzuki hadn't told him to be. He wanted them to keep on being his friends so, of course, he was nice to them. They were nice to him, too. They included him in this. They had included him in the idea hat, that was a new thing where they wrote outing ideas in a hat…mostly because there had been fighting….and even though they hadn't chosen his sit at home and play games idea this was still nice. Even if it was big in there….but also it was dark. It was so dark and there were walls…and also they were the only people there. Miss Suzuki had rented out the whole place just so that he could feel comfortable.

She was such a good friend like that and he had no idea what he had done to deserve someone like her.

"Please….don't encourage him. For the love of God don't encourage him." said Hatori. Shimazaki, high off his ass, and holding a golf club….no. That was just…no. Who had suggested this!? Who had thought that this would have been a good idea?! He had wanted to go to the neon lights museum! That would have been cool…and safe…and also he knew that this was a complete asshole thought to have but Shimazaki would have stayed behind since he couldn't even sense light…not that he was going to start drama by purposely excluding people….

He just….wasn't Shimazaki's biggest fan…for obvious reasons.

Reasons that made him want to run and hide in the handicapped stall in the men's room until all of this was done. He knew that, at some point, he was getting hit with either that golf club or a golf ball or….or something! Had he had enough soda that he could, feasibly excuse himself to the bathroom and hide…no. That was not an option.

Serizawa needed him and, honestly, that guy had way more reason to run and hide than he did.

"There is such a thing as winning gracefully, Ryou." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes. Next time they were stuffing the outing hat with either 'book store' or 'coffee shop' or just 'sit at home and hang out with Mob' or something like that. They strongly suspected that Ryou had written this suggestion, and he could write he just did so very poorly, just so that he could gloat and also fill the void that Sho had left in his life.

Yeah, this was definitely a Sho and Ryou activity.

Ryou had been taking Sho's absence….not well but…well he'd been taking it. He knew that this was for the best, or at least he better have known that this was for the best, and he better not have been thinking of doing anything crazy like asking the little lovesick monster to come back. No, he needed a break from Ryou and Ryou needed a break from him. They brought out the worst in each other, first of all, and second of all Minegishi…well they'd had quite enough of the steadily growing crush/obsession Sho had with Ryou. Shibata was wrong. It wasn't cute. It was unpleasant for everyone, them included, and if Sho knew what was good for him then he had better have planned on coming back normal.

And if Ryou knew what was good for him then he had better have planned on cutting out all the gloating.

"I'm aware. That was gracefully. I was about to do a flip but, without Sho here to tell me how awesome I am, it would have been pointless." Said Shimazaki

"I can tell you how awesome you are. You're awesome…but…um…maybe when you win you could…try not to make people feel bad." Said Mob. Shimazaki…was not a good winner. Neither was Sho. They were both bad losers too….and she knew that she shouldn't have been thinking this way but…well this was a lot easier without both of them having come with. Also if Sho had been there then she couldn't have drank because then he would have wanted some too and he always overdid it. She didn't want to teach Sho about moderation…and also she didn't want Minegishi to teach her about moderation. That was why she had a bunch of…well she wasn't sure what it was but it made her throat burn and it made her happy…in this metal flask thing that Shimazaki had gotten her. He was really nice like that, when he thought about her and stuff.

But he wasn't very nice when he won….but that was ok. She still loved him.

"I can't help it if you guys suck." Said Shimazaki with a shrug.

"No, you're just using your telekinesis, now move over and let Hatori have a turn." Said Shibata. Why had he suggested this? Well because it had looked fun…and also….well he figured that Shimazaki wouldn't have wanted to come…and he really needed to reevaluate how well he knew the man. Yeah. This was totally a Shimazaki thing. A Sho thing, too, and….and he missed him so much….but that was alright. He'd be back soon and then they could do whatever he wanted and he'd be so happy…and then he'd have all kinds of good memories for when he grew up and…oh! They grew up so fast….well most of them….

Shimazaki was a few years overdue.

"I-I don't have to!" said Hatori. Nope. He was not getting that close to Shimazaki. Not when he had a golf club in his hands, not when he was high off of winning, and not when he was regular high either…and also drunk. Well Hatori suspected that he was based on how many sneaky drinks from a flask he'd been taking. Mob too but she was a lot nicer when she was drunk.

"You'll do fine, Hatori, I believe in you…and also I'll make sure that Shimazaki doesn't use his powers to cheat." Said Mob as she patted Hatori on the arm. That didn't feel weird anymore. Not good weird like she was full of angry butterflies but also not bad weird like she had to run and hide. He knew that she had asked him out for real…but also…well also that was ok now. It had happened a while ago and they were still friends so…so it was ok. They were ok.

Also whatever was in this flask was very ok.

"I couldn't do something that precise even if I wanted to. You all just suck." Said Shimazaki

"No, no, nobody sucks. You're just really good." Said Mob. It was very important to make people feel good about themselves, especially your friends, so that was what she did. She…well it would have been better if they hadn't been playing for points. Why did they have to be so competitive? Next time they would just play for fun.

"Thank you, Mob, it's nice to know that somebody here loves me." Said Shimazaki

"You know I love you, Ryou, even when you act like more of an eleven year old than the eleven year old. Now please, for the love of God, let Hatori take his shot already." Said Minegishi as they put their hand on Ryou's shoulder. An unspoken aural conversation passed between them. It ended in Ryou stepping to the side. They loved him, they really did, but he could be…a lot…sometimes. Sometimes he was good a lot, something so good that they weren't entirely sure if he was even real or just a dream, and then he was the other kind of a lot. The kind of a lot that made them want to start ripping out their hair…and they wanted to do that enough as it was….but….

They still loved him…even if he could be a lot.

"You can do it, Hatori, you just have to get it past the alligator. You can do it!" said Mob. She stumbled back a little, just a little, and it was only because…because her shoes were new. She had gotten some new boots since Minori said that her old ones were terrible. They had Elsa on them…and also they had lights. These were blue and had a heel….not a high one but Minori said that the only thing nice about her was her legs….so that was why she was stumbling. Because these were new shoes and not because she had trouble with moderation.

Because she didn't.

"Miss Suzuki! Are-are you alright?" asked Serizawa. He reached over and steadied her. She…she was fine…right? Right?! What if…what if she was hurt or…or….or…he didn't know what he'd do without her and-

"She's fine, now calm down. I would like to finish this without us getting banned from yet another tourist trap." Said Minegishi. They reached over and pulled Mob closer. She smelled…well then. Someone had been hitting the sauce…and hard. Goddammit Mob…moderation! Also those ridiculous boots didn't help exactly…but they would talk to her later. Not now. When Mob was more sober and Serizawa wasn't about to blow the roof off his place.

"I'm fine….now come on, we're distracting Hatori." Said Mob. She didn't want to talk about this. Maybe later…or maybe Minegishi would just forget. She knew what that look meant, she knew Minegishi's looks, and she knew that there was a long talk coming later…and she liked talking to Minegishi…but not about moderation and stuff like that.

"I-I'm fine….I'm just….thinking." said Hatori. He…was bad at this. He was really bad at this. It was just…had to make the ball go where he needed it to go and…and it was dark in here….and also…also his glasses were smudged and….and…he had a headache and...and….and his phone was vibrating!

"One second!" said Hatori as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. Maybe it was just another notification or maybe…yup. Everyone he knew was there but one person and that one person had decided to finally text him back…and tell him that he didn't want to come. He didn't like min golf, or crowds, or going out….and also mini golf was way too easy…

Easy?!

"What the fuck do you mean, 'easy'?" asked Hatori. He sent a picture of what he was doing…and he left the 'fuck' off because Suzuki didn't like that. He really hated cursing…and a hell of a lot of other things….but cursing was a big thing for him and Hatori didn't want to piss him off. He was already on edge enough with Fukuda being gone and whatever he had going on that he didn't want or need backup, his exact words, for.

"Really? You're texting Suzuki right in front of Shibata? Hatori….for shame." Said Shimazaki with a shake of his head. Not out of any moral outrage, no, just because it was funny. This whole situation was fucking hilarious. Suzuki actually set up a date for Shibata and Hatori…just….this was so perfect…

"Shimazaki, gross! My dad is married!" said Mob. She wanted her friends to be happy and she wanted her dad to be happy….but dad was not a cheater! He was married to mom and he loved her and he missed her every single day, he had told her that himself, and also…also her dad was not a cheater! And neither was Hatori! Hatori was one of the nicest people he ever knew and also…also who could do that to Shibata?! He was one of the nicest people ever!

"Also Hatori and I aren't dating." Said Shibata. At least he thought that they weren't dating. President Suzuki shipped him with Hatori but…he didn't think that he could actually make them fall in love and…things…right? He didn't have that kind of power…right? Hatori…well he was nice but they weren't compatible like that….well Shibata was at least a little bi and Hatori was figuring himself out….but if they started a relationship then he wanted it to be a real one and not one in which Hatori was figuring himself out.

"I-I'm sorry." said Serizawa. That was sad. They had gone on a date and they weren't together…and he knew that people could date without ending up together but…well that seemed very sad. He knew that if he ever went on a date with a girl she would have been someone he loved a lot…because the thought of dating a girl was so terrifying…but maybe that was just him…just him being weird like usual.

"It's ok. There's still time, don't worry Shibata." Said Mob. Maybe their date just hadn't been romantic enough. That was very important, things being romantic. She knew that if she went on a date with a boy she would have wanted to ride in one of those two people boats under the stars which music played and they held hands and the stars spelled out their names under an umbrella…and then he would put his coat around her shoulders and tell her that he loved her…and then she would feel something cold on her finger and it would be a ring, but not a human tooth one like Sho gave Emmy, and then the boy would tell her that he couldn't live without her and if she didn't say yes he would throw himself off the boat because a life without her in it wouldn't be a life worth living…and then when they kissed it would feel like fireworks going off inside of her….and then there would be more music and then they'd get married and have a bunch of kids and stuff. Also Minegishi would be there.

So she just had to make that happen…but without Minegishi because she got the feeling that not everyone wanted to spend their lives with her best friend…for reasons she couldn't fully understand.

"Hatori, stop gossiping with our boss and take your shot already. Sometime before Mob arranges a surprise wedding for you and Shibata." Said Minegishi. Nope. They knew that look. Mob was planning something….knowing her it was something from a movie that required a perfectly timed soundtrack. Nope. No more real person shipping. This group was weird enough as it was.

"Are…are those a thing?" asked Mob. She knew that boys weren't allowed to get married, not until dad took over the world and made it ok for boys to get married, but…she could…she could throw a surprise wedding…..she could throw people surprise weddings! What the f-word!? How the h-word hadn't she heard about this before?! She needed to get back to England! She would throw Sho a wedding and…oh! Minegishi and Shimazaki needed a wedding…well Minegishi said that they didn't want one…but….but once they saw the wedding that Mob threw them….oh!

"Hatori, take the fucking shot." Said Minegishi. Great…now they had this to deal with…and if they woke up in a white dress with Mob throwing rice in their face then they would not be able to be held accountable for her action.

"Hang on, Suzuki says that this is all geometry and…and I have no idea what to do with this." said Hatori. Suzuki had sent him a series of picture of what looked like math scribbles on a napkin…a blood stained napkin? What…Hatori got the feeling that he had vastly overestimated how little backup he needed….also it looked like Fukuda would be coming back…great. Just great.

"Let me see….well that makes perfect sense. You're just a moron." Said Shimazaki as he took Hatori's phone from him and held it in front of his face…where it was promptly ripped from his hands.

"Here you go." Said Shibata as he handed Hatori back his phone. He glared at Shimazaki even though he knew that it was useless. It was cathartic, though, that was a thing that mattered. It was good for the soul.

"Thanks." Said Hatori. He held his phone upside up and then upside down…and it made no sense. That was…a lot of math…and a lot of blood.

"That's…um….I don't know." Said Serizawa as he leaned over. That was a lot of drawings that he didn't understand…and numbers too. He didn't know if that was something that he should have known because he was an adult now or if it was some super smart math thing that President Suzuki could do.

"Some kind of geometry." Said Minegishi as they leaned over and checked on…whatever that was. Yeah, they were not a math person. They liked books, they liked documentaries, they didn't like numbers. Why take up space in their mind with something that they could just use a calculator for?

"What's geometry?" asked Mob. Yuck. More dad math. He liked math a lot. He liked it because it always made sense no matter what, he had said, and that made sense….but also math was very complicated too and not worth it. Not when they made calculators and phones and stuff.

"All of that." Said Minegishi with a wave of their hand.

"Oh….is it dangerous?" asked Mob as she stared at the picture for a little while longer. That was blood. That had written on a napkin and there were spots of blood and…and he was ok…right? He wasn't going to die….right? He wasn't hurt….right? She just…she wanted her dad to be ok…she really did….and also…well she didn't want Fukuda to come back…but she wanted him to be ok….

"For the uninitiated, why?" asked Minegishi

"Because there's blood there….and also on the end of dad's sleeve there…" said Mob

"That's-" said Minegishi. They had to think something up and they had to think it up quick. Right. Suzuki was off scouting talent, which could get violent, and he had specifically said that he didn't want any backup…which was good because Minegishi didn't want to go with him or be alone with him in any capacity. This was bad, though, because it looked like he'd gotten himself hurt…without their only healer there….and where Mob could see….great.

Just fucking great.

"Just ketchup! You know how your dad is about ketchup." Said Shibata. Mob was too young to know…a lot of things. She'd never be old enough to know just how new talent was acquired….but now she was still way too young!

"Yup. Ketchup." Said Hatori. Mob was way too sensitive to know about that stuff….what happened on these talent gathering missions.

"But that's not-" said Mob. She knew very well what blood looked like and she knew that she was looking at blood, her dad's blood, which was not inside of his body where it belonged!

"Or maybe his mission took a turn for the worst and now, with his dying breath, he's taking the time to teach Hatori how to count." Said Shimazaki. What? Mob wasn't stupid and she wasn't a little kid anymore. She deserved to know exactly what happened on these missions.

"What?" asked Mob. That….what? Why…why had she let Fukuda go?! Dad needed him!

"Is…is he going to be ok?" asked Serizawa. He had never lost anyone before let alone a friend…and….and he had no idea what he was supposed to do…to just…keep calm…because he could have lost his friend…he could have been losing his friend right now and…

And something was pressed into his hand.

"Suzuki is fine. You and Mob share this until you're calm. Hatori, take your god dammed shot already." Said Minegishi as they pressed their pen into Serizawa's hands. If they ended up getting kicked out they would rather have gotten kicked out for getting high and not for killing everyone and destroying what was probably the only glow in the dark mini golf course in Amsterdam.

"But we're inside and-" said Mob. There were rules about smoking inside and Serizawa wasn't as good as she was about being sneaky…and also…well also she didn't want to have another thing to worry about. Sometimes she felt like she did nothing but worry. Worry about her friends and her family and if Sho was ok being so far away from her…and also why dad had been all bloody. Well only his sleeve had been bloody…and she had seen him bleed before. Like when he cut himself shaving…but he hadn't done that, cut himself, that morning…and that had been more blood on his sleeve than when he cut himself shaving…

Not enough for him to die, maybe, but….well his blood should have been inside of him where it belonged and not on the outside. He was a boy after all.

"Don't distract Hatori. He's fragile." Said Minegishi shutting all of that down before it even started. Mob did not need to freak herself out. She did not need to freak Serizawa out. Nobody needed to be freaked out. They were tired. The world was dead and cold. Their head hurt. Their organs hurt. Everything hurt and they just wanted to get through this with minimal drama and freak outs….was that really so much to ask?

Evidently it was.

"I'm not fragile…." Muttered Hatori as he put his phone back in his pocket. He took a deep breath and tried to remember everything that Suzuki had ever told him about geometry…and then he did his best to forget it. All he could remember were words that made no sense and shapes that didn't need to be as complicated as they were….and…and maybe he should just take his shot already before Mob started asking more questions about why her dad was, apparently, bleeding profusely all over napkin. Yeah, no, nobody needed to have that conversation with her…especially not him. No, he just had to take a deep breath and take his shot…

And then another…

And then another….

In the end it took seven shots for him to get the ball in the hole. That was….well he didn't care about winning…not as much as Shimazaki did….but he did care. That was just…what the fuck! What the ever loving fuck?! How could someone be so bad at….why….if this had been a game then he would have been able to get it and…and….

Fuck!

"Fuck it! Mother fucking! Suck my fucking-" said Hatori trying his best not to shout. He….had his habits…and he knew that he could be overly dramatic as he'd been told but…but…but seven was way too fucking much! Just…..how…..why….why in the fucking hell did he just-why?!

"Hatori…come on. You're not in your room." Said Shibata as he put a hand on Hatori's shoulder. He got like this when he lost…or just didn't do well. Maybe because he was so young or maybe because he just…put a lot of himself into what he did. Yeah, he had a lot of….passion…about playing games…and passion was always good…

But Mob was right there and they did not need two cursing kids.

"It's ok, you'll do better next time." Said Mob. She wished that he wouldn't curse so much. Shibata didn't like it at all. Shibata acted like he was ok with everything but Mob could tell that he was really bothered. She'd have to work on Hatori's cursing. Even if she did give them a surprise wedding they could still get divorced if Shibata couldn't stand all of the cursing.

"You-you will….next time! Um….what Miss Suzuki said." Said Serizawa. Hatori cursed a lot….and Serizawa….he didn't curse…and he didn't see what was so bad about losing anyway. It was nice just to be out with friends. Well maybe he just felt like that because he hadn't ever had any friends to be out with…or even the ability to go out in the first place.

"No he won't. Don't give him false hope. False hope leads to false self-esteem which leads to him biting off more than he can chew which will lead to him getting driven out into the country and then shot in the back of the head." Said Shimazaki

"…what?" asked Hatori. He reached up and covered the back of his head. That was…he knew what Shimazaki got up to…but he didn't want to think of it. The specifics of it. It was just easier to think of him as a regular asshole, not a murdering asshole…not that Mob would ever have let him….but still.

"I've seen it. Hell, I've been responsible for-" said Shimazaki. She would have liked to hear it. Sho always liked to hear it. Sho begged him for his stories. The others…he didn't get them sometimes. What was wrong with his stories? They were interesting. He made sure to only tell the tame ones but even those were too much for everyone.

Even Toshi…for some reason.

"Ryou, stop it. He's fragile." Said Minegishi borrowing a line from Mob. The last thing that anyone needed was Hatori running and hiding. It would only encourage Serizawa and God knew that Mob didn't need the extra work. She already spent most of her time with that guy clinging to her like death.

"He's just kidding, don't worry." Said Mob as she felt Serizawa grabbing her hand. She knew how fragile he was, even more than Hatori, and she really wished that Shimazaki would stop kidding around like that. It wasn't good for Serizawa or Hatori…and also only Sho thought that it was funny and Sho wasn't there so…yeah. He need to stop already.

"I'm not-" said Hatori. He hated that word. Fragile. When he was going to stop being the fragile one? Serizawa was there and he was ten times more fragile than he had ever been…and he needed to stop thinking like that. This group already had one asshole. They didn't need two.

"Here, let me take my turn." Said Shibata as he stepped in the middle of all of them. Why did everything have to turn into a fight? What did Shimazaki always have to stir shit? What was wrong with…well what was right with him? Yes, that was a better question. He was like this, he wasn't going to change, and…and Shibata….well he had to stay calm…

And he had to control his strength…

Something which was easier said than done. He took his shot…and the ball went flying. Thank God that there weren't any normal people around. He…well he was almost thirty. He was too old to still have that problem. Mob had better control than he did…well she had been drinking like a fish all day…and he wondered if she was up to sharing. This day…it had been…just this weird combination of fun and headache inducing….

They sold liquor here, right?

"You know that this is miniature golf, right?" asked Minegishi as they shook their head.

"That was a good….try. Here, you can have a redo." Said Mob as she pulled the ball back with her powers. It was ok, there weren't any normal people around, and if there were then it would have been a real problem…and maybe…well she would have wanted that problem and not…why ever dad had been covered in blood…why he was bleeding….and why he hadn't told her that he had gotten hurt. She…she was his Daughter and he should have told her but…but maybe it wasn't that bad or….or something. She didn't know. She decided to focus on her friends. She decided to focus on making sure that her friends had a good time….even though dad was out there alone and bleeding and….

And she took another drink from her flask.

She had to worry about her friends now. She had to worry about her friends and how they fought all the time…well Shimazaki started fights because he got bored easily…and she would have to worry about that and…and she would have to worry about making sure that everyone had a good time. Then she would worry about dad…or something. She didn't know. She just had to worry about all of her friends having a good time….even though she didn't know how they couldn't have a good time…

This was miniature golf and miniature golf was the best kind of golf…even if it did make her friends fight.


	477. Happy 2nd Birthday Baby Mukai

Baby sis was two now.

She was two whole years old. She had been born two years ago. When he'd been nine she'd been born. Sho had no idea why that was so….amazing. He knew that babies were born every single day he knew that right there, at that moment, there were probably a million babies born right that second. Those babies were not his baby sis, though. Baby sis…she was so much older now. She was two years old now…

And she knew it.

"Happy birthday! I'm two!" said baby sis as she tugged on his jacket. She had just gotten up from her nap. She still took naps. She wasn't too big for naps yet. She was still little enough that she had to nap….but she was big enough to know that it was her birthday. Well her birthday had passed but she didn't know days of the week yet. She just knew that Sho had a present for her and also that her mom had told her that it was her birthday.

Moms were good at remembering things like that.

"Mukai, be nice. What do you say?" asked baby sis's mom. She pulled Sho's jacket from baby sis's hand. She wasn't strong enough to hurt his jacket, not yet, but she was still very strong. She was stronger now than she had been when she'd been a baby. She was strong enough to stand, now, after all. When he'd met her she had barely been able to hold her own head up and now she was walking and talking and…

And she was two now.

"Happy birthday please!" said baby sis. She knew how to say please now. She knew so many words now. She knew so many things and…and he wondered what new thing she would learn by the time that he next saw her. He wondered if she would be able to talk better, like he could, and if she would be able to draw better, like he could, and he wondered…well he wondered a lot of things….things that he should not have been wondering about.

He was there, she was there, and that was what mattered.

So, really, he should have been wondering about other things…like if she was going to like her present. Yeah. That seemed like something that it would have been better to wonder about. He had gotten her a bunch of M&M's and she could have those so long as she ate them one at a time and he watched her. She had all of her teeth now so she knew how to chew things and not just swallow them…though if she still needed her grapes peeled and cut up then he would do that for her.

He was her big brother….her pretend big brother…and there was nothing at all in the whole world that he would not have done for her.

"Here, Mukai, you have to rip the paper off. See?" asked Sho. He'd had to show her last year how birthday presents worked…but this year she seemed to have it down. She slapped his hand away and took the present from him. She was strong but not as strong as him. She tried to drag it over to her drawing table. Sho tried to help her with his powers.

She didn't like that at all.

"No! Mine! No for Sho!" said baby sis. Her aura flared there….and that was….a thing that she could do now. Well she'd always had a little baby aura, that was why her real mom and dad had left her with Claw in the first place, but now she had a….well a less big baby aura. She was still little and…and she was still too little to go in an awakening machine….

She would always be too little to go in one of those machines…and anyone who tried to put her into one would die.

"Mukai, be nice. Sorry kid, she thinks that you're after her present." Said baby sis's mom with a shrug.

"But….I'm the one who gave it to her." said Sho. Baby sis knew that he had given it to her…did she think that he would take it back? No way. He wasn't like that. When you gave someone a present then it was for forever.

"She's two." Said baby sis's mom. Sho knew that she was two, there was no way for him not to know it. She was his bay sister and two years ago she had been born and then she had been taken away from him because she was better off with a family of her own. Sho had no idea how anyone could have thought that he could have forgotten that.

Well big sis seemed to have forgotten.

He didn't know what was with her. She never talked about baby sis, not ever, not even to say that she missed her. She hadn't forgotten, if she had then she would have been confused about why she had a baby sock in her pillow case, she just…never talked about her. Like with mom. Nobody ever talked about mom either. He knew that everyone still remembered her, how could big sis possibly forget her own mom?! She knew that they'd had a mom and she'd loved them but then not anymore because she ran away from home. Dad remembered her too. He said that she had run away and that she was a traitor and that was the same as remembering someone. Hell, even Fukuda thought about mom more than they did and he talked about her more too and they had only been friends. They hadn't been married and mom hadn't been his mom. Was that just what you were expected to do when someone went away? Forget them?

Sho didn't want to forget.

He didn't want to forget the people who had left him. Forgetting them felt the same as letting them die or run away or something. If nobody remembered mom then it would be like she had never existed. The same went for baby sis. They hadn't known her for very long and…and not talking about her or anything….well that was like losing her all over again…and he never wanted to lose his baby sister all over again. He would never forget her, ever, even if he couldn't visit her as often as he wanted to. He would always love her and he would never forget her and he would always be there for her.

Especially if she needed help with something.

"Here, Mukai, let me help you." Said Sho as he made his way over to her drawing table. He was careful not to step on any of her toys. She had a lot of them and it looked like she was still too little to know to put them away. She'd be better about that when she got older, girls liked stuff to be neat and away and stuff, and also when your stuff was put away then it was easier to find later….and also not to step on. He accidentally stepped on one of her dolls but she didn't notice. She was busy ripping the wrapping paper up into little pieces and throwing it around the room.

Maybe next time he should have just gotten her a bunch of rolls of wrapping paper or something.

"Kid, next time bring a gift bag." Said baby sis's mom before she went over and got out a broom and dustpan. Sho wasn't going to bring baby sis's next gift in something so boring. She liked to rip up paper and he was her big brother, well her pretend big brother, and it was his job to make her happy so he was going to bring her all the wrapping paper in the world if that was what she wanted.

"I'll clean it up in a minute. I'm just going to help baby sis now." Said Sho. He didn't know why her mom made that face when he said that. Sort of like she had bitten into a sandwich and there was half a worm in it…and that wasn't funny when it happened to you but very funny when it happened to Hatori….and Sho…well he knew how to sweep a floor. Well he sort of did. He'd seen big sis do it before. How hard could it be? Well he'd have to clean up baby sis's toys first…and she had a lot of them…but still. He could be helpful sometimes!

Especially when it came to baby Mukai!

"No help! No help!" said baby Mukai as Sho got close. He wondered, for a minute, if she'd forgotten him. Babies were very forgetful. He figured as much since he couldn't remember anything from when he'd been a baby. His first memory was of big sis being there but him being freaked out for some reason…and mom and dad had been there….and he really wished that he knew what all of that had been about. It had been driving him crazy or the past eleven years! He wondered if baby sis had any memories that drove her crazy. Any memories where she couldn't even remember what happened…but she knew that whatever had happened had really happened….

Hopefully not anything bad.

He wondered if she remembered her real mom and dad ever. The ones that made her and then didn't want her anymore so they gave her to Claw. He wondered if she ever thought about them. He knew that he thought about his mom a lot but she had been gone…well she had left him when he was old enough to remember things. Like the Castle. Like school. Like how big sis never did end up washing his special plate before they left. He wondered if baby sis ever thought about her own life. If she thought about Korea and her mom and dad and any real brothers and sisters if she had them. Or maybe she didn't remember at all. He wondered what she did remember….

He was glad that she remembered him.

"Sho! Sho no help! My happy birthday!" said baby Mukai. She remembered him. Of course she remembered her big brother…her pretend big brother. He had been her very first word after all. She didn't remember big sis, though, she never talked about her and when Sho showed her pictures pf big sis she didn't seem tic ae. That sucked. Big sis had really loved her. She had been the one to teach Sho how to do all the stuff that you had to do to take care of a baby….and also…also big sis had loved baby sis and baby sis had loved big sis…and big sis had cried so much when they took baby sis away and….and big sis…well she never talked about baby sis anymore so maybe the forgetting was mutual.

Or at least he hoped that it was.

He knew that….that this wasn't right. Big sis had been just as much Mukai's sister as Sho was her brother. Hell, dad had even given her Mukai as a present when she turned ten. Big sis….the right thing to do would have been to have come clean about this. To have told her everything. To have told her that baby sis was at the Seventh Division and that Sho had been sneaking around and visiting her…that he had spent so much time with bay sis that he had been her very first word….he should have told her so that she would have had a chance at being baby sis's first word...and so that she could have been the one to sit next to her and show her how opening presents worked….

But then she would have told dad about baby sis….so pragmatic choices had to be made…the very worst kind of choices had to be made.

"Here baby sis, see? If you just rip it up like this-" said Sho as he tried to rip off some of her wrapping paper. She reached out and slapped him over the head…and her little baby slaps weren't so little anymore…but that was ok. That was just a part of being the older sibling. He used to hit big sis all the time…and he still felt like an asshole about it….so it was ok, then, for baby sis to hit him…

At least while she still was a baby, anyway.

"Mine!" said baby sis.

"I know that it's yours, I just want you to get the present out. Come on, let me help. You know that I would never steal from you. I love you." Said Sho. She stared at him and then handed him a little piece of wrapping paper. One that was small even in her little hands…and tiny in his. It was all ripped up…and also kind of wet….and he didn't know with what….but he would treasure it forever.

"This. You for this." said baby sis as she pressed the little piece of wrapping paper into his hands. This was wet and pink, she liked pink, and he didn't really want it….but he would still treasure it forever. He took the paper and put it into the secret pocket in his coat. There were a lot of secret pockets in this coat, it used to belong to Shimazaki after all, and as he put the piece of paper in his hand touched something sticky…oh. Right. He had been saving some gummies in there…

He'd deal with that later. Right now he had to help baby sis.

"You for this. Me for this." said Mukai. Now she was ripping little pieces off of her present and tossing them on the ground. Something tapped Sho on the head. Oh. It was a broom handle. Right. He had said that he'd help out…and he would. Later. When baby sis finished her work.

She had small hands.

It took a while. She had such small hands, still small enough to fit in his, and he wondered when she would be too big for her hands to fit in his. His hands didn't fit inside of big sis's…but they were pretty much the same size. Still, one day she would be his size. He wondered if she would remember him when she got to be eleven. She would be taller and….and she would talk better…and would she be able to draw? Would they be able to draw together? Or would she just…would she have her own things that she liked? Maybe makeup and Frozen like big sis liked….he didn't know…

He mostly just hoped that she liked M&M's.

"Happy Halloween! Happy Halloween!" shouted baby sis as she finally got to the actual present part of her gift. Sho…had maybe gone a little bit nuts at the M&M' store…but he hadn't been able to help it! They had so many colors and all the kinds, even the kinds with nuts, and baby sis…well he had wanted her to go nuts when she saw it…and she did. He wondered if that made up for, at all, missing her birthday like he had…and Christmas….and also he'd missed girl's day last year and…and she was happy now and that was what mattered. She was happy and…well her mom wasn't happy….maybe she wanted some too?

"You can probably have some too. I think that baby sis would share with you since you're her mom and all." said Sho. Baby sis's mom was making that face like she bit into a worm on accident again. It made her scar look like a worm, actually, like it was one of the burrowing skin worms that Emmy told him about. He wondered if that hurt her, to have her scar move like that. Some of his hurt him sometimes when it got cold out and stuff.

"Kid….why did you do this to me?" asked big sis's mom with a sigh. She was acting like something terrible had happened…or maybe more like Minegishi acted whenever they had to wake up and do something. Sho didn't get it.

"Do what?" asked Sho. All he had done was give baby sis her present…and it was a good present. It wasn't like Sho had gone out and gotten her something like glitter. Fuck glitter. It got everywhere and never came out…and baby sis might have liked it…and if she liked glitter then he would have gotten her some…even if it sucked and her mom would've been mad.

"You'll see when it happens." Said baby sis's mom as she stepped over towards Mukai. She was trying to get the M&M's out of the plastic now with her little baby nails…or really more like her little baby claws. She'd always had such sharp nails…when she'd been little she'd been able to scratch his skin up bad enough for there to be blood…but for some reason her little nails couldn't get through plastic.

"When what happens?" asked Sho

"Mama! Mama open now! Sho open now!" said baby sis. She wanted the pink ones with her birthday on them. He wished that he had gotten them made in Japan, they hadn't had the characters for her name and he had no idea how to spell it in English…and baby sis couldn't read anyway but that wasn't the point. The point was getting her the best gift ever so she could forgive him for being gone for so long. That was what you were supposed to do with girls, give them presents so that they forgave you. That was what dad did, anyway, when he had to go away…back when they'd lived with mom in the Castle.

"Mukai…alright…but only a few." Said baby sis's mom. She said that and…and Sho…why?! What made her think that baby sis couldn't have as many as she wanted!? They were her present and she was excited and Sho…seeing her this excited made him feel all good inside and…and he loved his sister so much and….and he just….he wanted her to be happy! He wanted her to be happy and…and she could have all the M&M's in the world if she wanted!

"No! Let her have as many as she wants! That's why I got them for her and-" said Sho

"Kid, don't shout at me. If you shout you'll get her shouting and if you get her shouting then you're out of here." Said big sis's mom.

"…fine….but why can't she have as many as she wants? I got them for her…and I want her to be happy." Said Sho quietly. Right. He wasn't at home anymore. At home he could shout but…well this was not his mom. This was not his mom and he couldn't shout at her…and also he didn't want baby sis to start yelling either. Sho didn't want her to be like him.

"Because I don't like her to have a lot of sugar. Here, give them to her one at a time like this….and also next time just stick to getting her dolls." Said baby sis's mom. She leaned over, opened up the bag of M&M's, and then put exactly ten into Sho's hands. She took the rest away but baby sis didn't notice. She was too busy pulling on Sho.

"Now! Sho give me now!" said baby sis as she tugged on him. Sho made sure to give her one at a time…and she ate right from his hand like a bird. It was cute…and slobbery…but cute. Big sis wouldn't have liked it, though since she didn't like gross stuff like that. Or maybe she would have liked this. Maybe she would have liked to feed baby sis like a bird…she had liked feeding big sis when she'd been a baby after all…

Even though she threw up all over them.

When baby sis had been a baby she'd had trouble keeping food down. That was just….it had been gross but she'd grown out of it. Big sis would have been happy to know that baby sis had grown out of throwing up all the time. She would have been happy to know that baby sis was big enough to eat real food now. She would have been happy to know that baby sis was big enough to talk now. She would have been happy…well she would have just been happy to have been there.

And her bring there….big sis being there…well that would have made this a much happier birthday for baby sis.


	478. Bath Bomb

There was nothing like a nice, long, bath at the end a long day.

And it had been a long day. He so hated it when people needed to be persuaded. He made offers, good once, and there was no reason to refuse them. Why say no? He as offering a seat of power when he took over the world. What else could a person ask for? When he took over he was going to be good to the people who helped him get there. He wasn't just going to walk over everyone as he got to the top. That would have been wrong.

He was good to the people who worked under him.

He knew that people, espers, talked. He knew what was said about him, about Claw. He knew how the mere mention of his name, of Claw, could send people to their knees with fear…or anger. He could understand it, sort of, he knew at least that he would not have liked it. To have someone giving him orders…but he also knew that if he had been less powerful he would have accepted it. That he was not the man who gave the orders. He would have accepted that if he had not been as powerful as he was…but he was as powerful as he was. He was the most powerful man on Earth.

He was the one who gave the orders.

And right now a hot bath was in order. Scrubbing down beforehand was not the easiest thing in the world in these bathrooms but he did his best. The children may not have been in that habit, Masami hadn't been in that habit either having been raised the way she had been, but he was in the habit and there was no point in sitting in a bath if he was not clean beforehand. Showers were different, get in and get out and get on with your life, baths were for unwinding and relaxing….

And he had to do plenty of that.

"God….yes…." said Suzuki as he sank down into the water. That was…he'd needed that. The tub here, thankfully, was large enough that he could almost fully extend his entire body. He sank down to his collar bones and bent his legs at the knee….oh yes. That was pure and utter heaven. He had no idea how he had gotten so tense. It wasn't as though he'd lost, that he had ever been in any danger of losing, and it wasn't as though he'd even gotten injured. Oh yes. There had been blood but not his. No, the only thing that he'd lost in that fight had been a very comfortable shirt.

But he'd gained a new asset.

Several new assets since, as it went, when you took out the leader the followers became yours. It was all perfect, really, it had been time consuming but…well it was over now. And now he could just…enjoy this. The warmth of the water…the silence of the bathroom….his aching joints and back….he hadn't even noticed how badly they'd been aching until he got into the bath. Was that a bad sign? He didn't know. He was getting used to it. Middle age. He was forty four….almost forty five…and he would just keep on getting older and his body would keep on breaking down…and that was just the way that it worked. You got older….that was what it meant to be mortal…

He may have had the powers of a God but he was not immortal.

He didn't even know if he wanted to be. Death…he had no idea what was on the other side….but he didn't want to live forever. To watch the world die around him, the Earth swallowed up by the sun, the eventual heat death of the universe. No. Nobody needed to see that. He didn't want to die, he wanted to live on for as long as he could, but he didn't want immortality…especially not the kind that didn't come with eternal youth. He didn't want to live forever with his body developing always more and more aches and pains with every passing year. This was hard enough…and maybe he had overexerted himself physically…though it was becoming more and more common. No, living forever…and like this…that was not something that he wanted.

He had the powers of a God….but he was not completely a God…and he was alright with that.

He was the future ruler of the world and that was enough for him. He was going to rule the world by the age of fifty, if not sooner, by his projections. Unless something else went wrong. Unless he gave Shigeko control over Claw's finances again. She…he loved her but she was not the best when it came to financial responsibility. That was just how women were. Men made the money and women spent it, that was what father had said, and he had been correct. He couldn't fault Shigeko for having thrown Claw's finances into a tailspin. She was a girl and that was just how she was.

He should have been the one in charge.

He….he had a bad habit. A bit like Serizawa's but worse. When things went wrong he tended to make his strategic retreats. Not to run away just to…regroup…and in the times he retreated Shigeko was in charge and…and those could not happen again. Not if he wanted to rule the world by the time he was fifty. Not if he wanted some years to actually rule the world before he passed it on to Sho. Not if he wanted to have some years to have some time with Shigeko and her children….not that he wanted to think of that…well he did.

He did and he didn't.

Shigeko was getting older. The sheer amount of…whatever these bottles were cluttering up the bath….and the bathroom counter as well was a testament to that. Her cosmetics and bottles and lotions and potions. Her razor which laid down on the counter next to his. The things that's he kept under the sink that he did not want to think about…or how badly he had mishandled that...of course she hadn't been dying. God. He could just hear Masami in his mind telling him that he was ridiculous…and he had been. She was fine. She was growing up and that was fine. She was growing up and there was nothing that he could do about it.

That didn't mean, however, that he wanted to think about it.

He didn't want to think about how she was almost twelve. She would be thirteen and then fourteen….and he knew what he had been like at that age…and he prayed that girls weren't anything like boys. He knew that she was supposed to be interested in the opposite sex, and that she already was, and…and he knew that he did want grandchildren from her…but he didn't want to think about…well all the things that her growing up would entail. She was only eleven now, not twelve for some weeks to come, and he didn't want to think about…about her growing up….

But he did want them to have their life together soon.

"Dad?" asked Shigeko. She knocked at the door even though there was no need for it. She knew that he could sense her aura, and she had made her presence known, but she was still so polite like that. He loved her for being polite like that. Sho…well he just kicked at the door until Shigeko had to drag him away.

"Yes Shigeko? Do you need the bathroom?" asked Suzuki. He did not want to get out of this bath. He did not want to get up and out of this warmth. He could feel his back protesting at the mere thought of getting up. He had just gotten in but…well if he got out then his night with her could begin. They had a film to watch, one of hers, and she still hadn't told him about her day….

Yes. Getting out would have been worth it.

"No, I just wanted to ask…how you were. That's all." said Shigeko. Suzuki settled himself back down into the water. Oh. She just wanted to make conversation. He could do that. He…well he knew that she was on the other side of the door, but he closed the curtain around the bathtub anyway. It felt…odd…to speak to his Daughter when he was undressed like this…even though he had no idea why. He was here, she was there, and the way he felt made no logical sense….

He'd have Tadashi explain it to him later.

"I'm fine, my day went well. I acquired some new assets…people…for Claw. How was your day? Did you win at miniature golf?" asked Suzuki

"No, Shimazaki won…and he didn't even cheat. Well he used his powers to see but he didn't use his telekinesis." Said Shigeko

"Talk about something other than Shimazaki Ryou please." Said Suzuki. The water in the tub almost went over the sides. No. He did not want to hear her talk about that man. If he hadn't been friends with Shigeko, and if he hadn't been the only person who could tolerate Sho for more than a few minutes at a time, Shimazaki Ryou would have been FAR away from Shigeko. He knew what she saw in him. He was a powerful esper and very well built…but he was also all wrong for her and he prayed to God that her feelings for him never got rekindled. Hatori would have been much better for her if they had been compatible in that way. He knew that he had told Hatori to stay away from Shigeko in that way….but that was before he had gotten to know him. He was very good for Shigeko and he would treat her well and he had no ability to survive on his own which was perfect.

Shigeko needed someone who could never leave her…even if the idea somehow entered his mind.

"Ok…um…I saw the math thing that you did for Hatori…." Said Shigeko

"Yes. I apologize for my handwriting. I was in the middle of something when he messaged." Said Suzuki

"Um…what were you in the middle of?" asked Shigeko

"Acquiring an asset…a new person." Said Suzuki. She didn't like it when he called assets what they were. Alright, they were human beings, but that was not what Claw needed from them. Not what he needed from them. He needed their powers, not who they were as people. Shigeko was different in that way….which was why she could never be in charge of acquiring new assets.

"OK…um…why was there blood on you?" asked Shigeko. She had noticed…of course she had. She was his child so of course those little details would not have gotten past her.

"Don't concern yourself with that. I'm fine." Said Suzuki. She did not need to know why he'd had blood on his hands. She did not take well to violence, women were like that, and he did not need to upset her. She was his Daughter. The last thing he wanted was to upset her…or to shatter her image of him.

"But-" said Shigeko

"I'm fine. That was not my blood. Aside from some of the usual back and joint pain I'm fine." Said Suzuki

"Oh…ok. Um….if your back hurts you can use one of my bath bombs. The round things under the sink." Said Shigeko. He felt her aura enter the room and the cabinet under the sink opened. That was….well slightly violating since he wasn't wearing anything…but also impressive. Not every espers could use their mind's eye like she could, that sense of space and where things were. Most espers couldn't use their telekinesis without looking at the object they intended to move….and also most had to make gestures. Shigeko was so gifted like that.

If he hadn't known better he would have sworn that she had been his biological child.

"I will….consider that. Thank you." Said Suzuki

"OK. You can drain the bathwater when you're done, I already took a bath this morning." Said Shigeko

"Alright then." Said Suzuki. She sounded like she was planning on going…and he did so enjoy talking to her…though maybe it was for the best. It was slightly…odd…talking to her while he was in this state of affairs.

"You can use some of my lotion, too, it won't fix your back but it's good for your skin. It keeps it from getting dry. Minegishi says that you have dry skin." Said Shigeko

"She….they….talk about me?" asked Suzuki. He…felt nothing about that at all. He didn't care if they spoke about him…he was just curious, that's all. That he was on their mind. Why would he have been on their mind? What did she…did THEY think of him? Did they think of him in the way that he thought about them…with fascination? Yes. Always with fascination….and that was all. They were a fascinating woman. Their hair, their clothing, the books they read, the way that their skin could have that softness to it and yet…well other things which he noticed solely because he was fascinated by them.

Nothing more.

"Kind of." Said Shigeko. Kind of? What did that mean? Was that a yes or a no? Why did women, and Shigeko, have to be so unclear all the time? Did they talk about him or not…not that he cared. He was just curious, that was all, and when he got curious about something then he had to satiate his curiosity. Like the time when he and Fukuda were children and they wanted to see which soda could dissolve a tooth the fastest…dark cola…and also not all of Fukuda's teeth grew back at the same rate….

Somehow pulling teeth was easier than pulling this information from Shigeko.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Suzuki

"They talk about you when other people talk about you. Like how we were making lotion and I said that it was weird how boys didn't like this stuff and they said that boys needed it, especially you since your skin looks like it's super dry. They said that, not me, but I think so too….sorry." said Shigeko. Suzuki ran a hand down his arm. His skin didn't feel dry…well he was in the bath. Masami had said the same thing to him, once, that his skin was dry….so maybe it was dry….women knew about these things. He so wished that he had listened to Masami…well he wished…a great many Masami related wishes….but he knew that none of them would ever come true. Wishes didn't come true no matter how many paper cranes you folded. She was gone. She was gone and…and he would never see her again and…and he did not want to think about this. He wanted to think about something else.

About someone else.

"Do they…ever say anything else about me?" asked Suzuki. What else did Minegishi say about him? It was…normal…or be concerned with what people said about you when you were not in the room. So this was normal. So he was being normal. So he was being completely normal and if anyone thought that he was being abnormal then they were the ones who were abnormal…and also they were out of line for questioning him. Nobody questioned him. He was Suzuki Touichirou.

He didn't even question himself.

"Um…not really. They don't really talk about you, we don't really talk about you….but…um….Hatori talks about you. He wishes that you would come with us and have fun and stuff…and….um….Serizawa talks about you too. He thinks that you're really cool and he thinks that how you and Fukuda have been friends since before he was even born is really cool…um…and Shimazaki has things to say but-" said Shigeko

"I don't care what that man has to say. I'll be out of here in no more than an hour. We will continue talking then." Said Suzuki. No, he was not going to talk about Shimazaki Ryou…and not just because the more you talked about him the more likely he was to pop in. He had a sense for when he was being talked about….and Suzuki…well he didn't want to be anywhere near the man.

Even if his tattoos were truly fascinating….

"Ok, I'll wait for you. Don't forget the bath bomb, you'll like it." Said Shigeko. Suzuki nodded before realizing that she couldn't see him. He reached under the sink with his powers until he felt something round. He didn't much like going under the sink these days. That was where Shigeko kept her things…well everywhere was where Shigeko kept her things but that was where she kept her things that he was not supposed to know about. Also her bath bombs, which…well he had never gotten the purpose of…

Masami had enjoyed these.

There had been an entire shelf in the main bathroom, back at the old house, which held the things she put in the bath. She had always loved her baths…and so had he…but not at her level. She was…he didn't want to think of her. He didn't…but in not thinking about someone he was daring his mind to think of her…and he just…he hated thinking of her. He hated this so much. She was…sometimes it felt like nothing at all. A passing though of her, maybe a slight sting, and then nothing. Other times it felt like pain. Like…like the worst sort of pain that he had ever felt. That sort of pain that started off like a sting and then…and then grew and grew and grew…

He pulled a purple ball from under the sink.

Something new to think about…and he had to think….and he also had to think to take the plastic off. That was probably needed. So that was what he did. He did it with his powers, his hands were soaking wet, and then he threw the plastic away in the garbage can. There. Now he was better. That pain, the pain that Masami had seen fit to leave him with, had faded to a dull pain. There. That was something that he could live with. He thanked, silently, Shigeko for this. She was helpful even when she didn't know that she was being helpful. Something to do…it was always best to have something to do. Something to take his mind off of…off of someone he had lost. He had lost her and he had gained…well he had gained nothing and…

Well that was…something.

He dropped the purple ball into the bath water. He needed something to do, something to see, something to think of. Something other than the last time he had seen Masami. She had gone to sleep beside him…after a bath. She had smelled like berries and…and herself and…and he so wished that he had rolled over and held her. He hadn't wanted to show her that kind of weakness, he had thought that in showing her that kind of weakness she would have…have been….he didn't even know what…but then she had been gone. Then he had woken up in the morning and she had been gone and…and that had been the last time that he had ever seen her…

He smelled lavender.

The lavender was…this wasn't…Masami had been one for berry scents. Light and sweet. This was….heavy. This smelled oppressively like lavender…and it was….it reminded him of Minegishi, honestly. That made sense, they were the one who taught Shigeko about these things. Mother things. The things that mothers taught their daughters. That was how all of that woman knowledge, knowledge that he as a man would never be privy to, was passed down. Masami was gone, she wasn't there to teach Shigeko everything that a woman was supposed to know, but Shigeko was resourceful. She'd fond someone to fill that void in her life.

Even though Minegishi was….Minegishi.

He did not understand Minegishi…and that was what fascinated him. She…they….were like nobody he had ever known. They were a woman but they did not want to be…well they didn't seem to want to be anything. They wore men's clothing, they wore women's clothing, they'd had short hair, now they were growing it out, sometimes their nails were painted, and sometimes they were bitten down to the nailbed…he didn't understand them…but he wanted to. He wanted to know all that there was about them. They were….fascinating. They were a contradiction. A misanthrope who loved his daughter as their own nonetheless. She….they….were somehow both beautiful and…well not….sort of like art…..like the sort that you had to stare at for hours and hours…and he had stared at them for hours and hours…well his eyes had wandered in their general direction….and that was just how plane rides went….

They had met his eyes…and he hadn't been able to focus on theirs.

Suzuki leaned back in the tub and sighed. This was…this was enjoyable. He could see why women did this. He wondered what else they were hiding from him. He focused on the warmth of the water, the smell of the lavender, and the...softness…that the water had taken on. There was something besides lavender…actually he had no idea what had been in that…but whatever ingredients that bath bomb contained one or more of them softened the water and…yes. That felt good. His back…he didn't know if it was the water or what he had put in it but…oh yes. That was good. That was good enough to make him forget about Minegishi's eyes, how they had managed to make such a common shade of brown so hauntingly beautiful…

For the love of God….

Again with this. He sighed and let himself sink further into the water. Not over his head, no, he hated that. Water in his eyes and up his nose. That had always been the worst. He sank down so his neck was covered…and his legs were cold because he was not a short man by any means….but still. This was…this was nice…but not nice enough to make him forget Minegishi's eyes. A common shade of brown, closer to black really, but so…there was a lot behind their eyes. It was a shame that their…whatever Shimazaki Ryou was to them, was blind. Minegishi was wasted on him. Suzuki…if he'd had Minegishi then they would not have been wasted. Even if it made him a weak man he would have told them every single day how incredibly beautiful they were from their ghastly purple hair to their deep brown eyes to the cupid's bow of their lip and their chipped front tooth….he wondered why they had never had it fixed…and their jutting collar bones that could be seen when they wore clothing that actually fit…and that mole they had on their sternum that he had seen, once, when they had been sleeping on the plane and had turned so that their shirt had gotten caught under them….

And he had not been staring at them, that day, for any other reason than…nonsexual reasons.

Nonsexual and nonromantic reasons. He was a married man. A man without a wife was still a married man so long as his wife was alive…and Masami was not dead…if she had been dead then her body would have shown up at a morgue and…and as much as the thought of her being dead hurts it also has a sort of…comfort to it. At least then he would have known what had become of her. At least then he would have been able to move on…if such a thing was possible. He didn't know if he ever could. He had loved her…he had cared for her…and those feelings were for her and her alone. He was a man, he looked at women, but so long as that ring was on his finger then he belonged to Suzuki Masami and he would never-

He had, though, and twice now.

Twice he had done the unthinkable. Once resulting in a child that…may or may not have been his…and the other one involving no penetration but still…still had sent him hiding from the world. He hadn't been able to face himself let alone the world after what he had done…to Masami…who wasn't there but…but for as long as there was a ring on his finger then….then there could be no other women…or people who somehow were and were not women at the same time…and this time he meant it. For as long as that ring was on his finger he belonged to Suzuki Masami, his wife. Not Pang Sujin, not Minegishi Toshiki, and not Shiori…not Sakata Shiori…

For as long as that ring was on his finger then he would belong to Masami Suzuki and no other.

"Dad? You've been getting a bunch of texts." Said Shigeko. She knocked again, this time, even though her aura and voice gave her away. Suzuki sat up quickly. The water in the tub sloshed all around…and his powers hadn't helped that at all. He needed to get a hold of himself. Shigeko could not see through walls or hear his thoughts. She would have left him a long time ago if she could have.

"From who?" asked Suzuki. Someone had better have been dying. Hatori….well he would have been saddened if Hatori died but…well he was the only one who ever messaged him…and he knew Suzuki's schedule. This was bath time and he was not to be disturbed during bath time.

"Someone named Sakata. Do you want me to read what she said?" asked Shigeko. Suzuki stopped himself at the last second from slamming that door opened and snatching that phone right from in between her little blue fingers. He knew, as he was getting out of the bathtub, that unless he wanted to mentally scar his daughter for the rest of her life he needed to stay away from that door.

Also he needed to get that phone out of her hands before she learned just what sort of man her father was.

"No, stay out of my correspondence." Said Suzuki

"But I answer work stuff for you all the time." Said Shigeko

"That is not work related." Said Suzuki. He wanted to hit himself over the head until he died as soon as those words left his mouth. Now she knew that he was speaking to women for non-work related reasons. Now she was probably thinking that her own father was nothing more than a womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own joy. Now she had probably lost faith in all men and would either end up a lesbian or married to some terrible man who would mistreat her and cheat on her and then she would be angry with Suzuki for murdering her husband with his own two hands even though he had been mistreating her and cheating on her!

"I can still answer, I know how you hate getting out of the tub and-" said Shigeko

"Shigeko just…give me my phone. Close your eyes and give me my phone." Said Suzuki. There was no way that he was leaving her alone with his phone. There was so much incriminating evidence there. She could not know what he had done. She could not know….she could not know the sort of man that her father really was…

She could not leave him.

"Ok, here." Said Shigeko. The door opened a crack and she stuck her arm through. He reached over with his powers and took his phone from her. She, thankfully, asked no further questions. He felt her aura move away from his and he heard her little footsteps walking away from the door. Good. She had no idea about anything….

And also neither did he.

He had no idea what Shiori…what Sakata….would have been messaging him about. Unless it was something related to…well how they left things. She had been very angry when he had left her suddenly after their…whatever they were calling it. Tryst? That was a good word for it. Affair was another one. Bought of momentary, adolescent like, insanity was another. Maybe she had her own word for it. Maybe she was messaging, now, to tell him that she hoped that he had died…something that she had said…or that she would never forgive him for just walking out the door like that…something else that she had said…or that he had no idea what he was doing and that her clitoris was nowhere near where he had been focusing…which had just been a bold lie and somehow the most hurtful thing that any woman had ever said to him….he knew what he was doing…and he was damn good at it…

He really hoped that she hadn't been messaging to insult his sexual technique again….he had fathered a child he knew what he was doing….

'Happy birthday'

Oh. Well he hadn't been expecting that. He had been expecting more profanity, insults, and lies….not a birthday message. He checked the date, careful not to lose his telekinetic grip on his phone as he did, and found that there was still some time before his birthday. It was closer to Tadashi's…to Fukuda's birthday than his…should he send him a birthday message? The thought makes him feel…nervous….he'll have Shigeko do it. She loved birthdays.

And, apparently, so did Shiori.

'I remember you telling me that your birthday is in March so happy birthday I guess. I don't even know why I'm telling you this. Probably because I'm a little drunk. You're an asshole and fuck you for ghosting me.'

Well then….alright. That was more like…what he had been expecting. She was still angry with him…why? They had agreed that it didn't have to mean anything. They had both agreed that what had happened was purely an expression of mutual lust and nothing more. He hadn't been with a woman in a while, she had found him attractive, and bad choices had been made by all. So that should have been the end of it…so why…why was she messaging him?

And why was he…happy…about it?

'I don't know if you even care but I was thinking about you and-'

He almost dropped his phone. He hadn't expected it to start ringing. Nobody called him, ever, unless something was literally on fire. He prayed that something had caught fire or exploded or someone had died or staged a coup…or something. Anything to distract from the fact that he had gotten more messages from Shiori than he had gotten from anyone else that week…and it was Saturday. He prayed to God, even, that something had happened to Sho and Fukuda was calling to tell him that he was on the brink of death or something-

It wasn't Fukuda.

"He-hello?" asked Suzuki. His voice hadn't been that high since he'd been a child…and he felt like one…and he didn't know why. Vaguely guilty but also confused and powerless….and also exposed. Possibly, probably, because he was completely naked in the bath and talking to a woman who had told him that she hated him and never wanted to see him again.

"Oh fuck me, you picked up…" Shiori said. There was a slur to her words…oh, right, she had said that she was slightly intoxicated. Well that would have explained…many things. Still. He wondered what he was supposed to do in this situation. Hang up? No, that would have been rude….but he had no idea what to say to her….he wished that Fukuda had been there. He always knew what to say.

"I did…but I can hang up if you want me to…" said Suzuki. Talking to women had never been easy….and talking to women he had a history with…well he had never done this before. Was she an ex? No, they had never been together…but even in the times when he'd just gone to bed with a woman…she had never spoken to him once the physical things were done….

"Yes….no…..I don't know. I don't even know why I called you. Maybe because it's your birthday and it's my birthday…" said Shiori

"Oh. Happy birthday. It's not my birthday but…well I wish you a happy birthday." Said Suzuki. Well at least he knew what to say to that. Her birthday was today…she was forty one. She was forty one and for her birthday she had been hoping that her friends would take her out to…well he forgot the exact name of the location….but apparently the wine selection was to die for. She loved wines, a good glass of it, whites were her favorites but she had a soft spot for blueberry wine…and that was all the alcohol related knowledge he had for her.

"Thanks…I think that's what I wanted to hear from you…I don't know." Said Shiori. That seemed like it would have made sense. She wanted him to wish her a happy birthday so that was what he had done…and now he could hang up…but he was the man and he did not hang up first. He hadn't done this in almost twenty years….but he remembered the rules. She was the woman and being the woman she decided when this conversation was over.

Even though he really, really, really wanted to get back to his bath.

"How…was your birthday? Did you end up going to the wine bar you wanted to visit?" asked Suzuki. The words took a moment for him to find them. He knew that he had to say something and so he did. He said words. He said words that made sense. So there. He had done his part and…and he hoped that he had done it right. He wanted her to hang up and never talk to him again and he also, paradoxically, wanted to spend the rest of the night on the phone with her.

"Obviously it went well…and why do you even care? And why do I even care that you care….God….I have no idea why I even called you….or why I keep on thinking about you…or why I don't want you to hang up…God…it's like I'm sixteen again…" said Shiori

"You're forty one…and….I don't know why you called me either. I had assumed, from how many times you said it, that you hated me." Said Suzuki

"I do….I did….I don't know." Said Shiori

"I don't know either. You're speaking to me after you said that you hated me…after everything that transpired…between us." Said Suzuki

"You mean after you ghosted me?" asked Shiori. He knew what that word meant and it was exactly what he had done….so he was not going to argue that point with her.

"That is what I'm referring to, yes. I…regret how we parted. I should have told you that I was leaving and…and I regret…leaving you the way I left you." Said Suzuki. He didn't want to explain himself. He didn't have to explain himself. He had left and it had been his right to leave. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he could do whatever he wanted to do…though tucking himself back into his pants and then just leaving her there on her couch after she'd just finished having him…in the ways that she'd had him….had been bad form.

"Half naked on my couch?" asked Shiori. Suzuki almost dropped his phone into the tub. Maybe that would have killed him. He had wanted to die in that moment. That had been…exactly what had happened….but she hadn't had to just…say it…like that….

"Yes." said Suzuki

"Well you did…and I'm still pissed about that, by the way. I know that we never agreed to be anything with you but just…what the fuck?! You can't just leave a person like that and-" said Shiori

"I know. I apologize. I never should have treated you like that. Please forgive me." Said Suzuki. He hated it, apologizing, but he had to. Shigeko liked it when he apologized, for one thing, and also…well he had been the one in the wrong. He had left her half-dressed and covered in a mixture of sweat and…well various other….he had been wrong to leave her. That was the point.

"….so the great Suzuki Touichirou knows how to apologize?" said Shiori

"I do. I don't like to but I do. I…let my…emotions…control my actions in that moment and I apologize." Said Suzuki. There was silence on the other end of the line. He wondered if the call had been dropped or she had hung up on him. She…he hoped that she had just lost the signal…and not hung up on him. He did not have feelings for her…he couldn't have feelings for her…but he just…he did not want to be rejected…which was a normal way for a person to feel.

"It…must have been a lot to you…after your wife….and I guess that you had every reason not to speak to me. I…said somethings….that were out of line. I guess that I just…let my emotions control me…too. I mean when you left it was…well I felt rejected and then when it got back to me that you left the country…not the city but the country! I just…lost it. So I guess I have my own apologies to make." Said Shiori. Suzuki…the water had gone cold but there was a warmth that had overtaken him. She…he had never had a woman speak to him like that. She was telling him…she was explaining herself. He had never had a woman explain herself to him like that…but here she was.

Explaining herself.

Masami came to mind. The way that she would speak but…but what she said made no sense. Speaking to her, especially when she was upset, had been like…like having a box of puzzle pieces dropped down into his lap. Like she had taken a ten thousand piece puzzle and upended it into his lap and then throw away the box so he had no idea at all what he was even supposed to be doing. She…he loved her but talking to her had been like…like doing a puzzle with no box. Shiori…she was…she hadn't just given him the box…

She had sat down beside him and helped him put the puzzle together.

"Thank you…for explaining yourself like that." Said Suzuki. His voice felt nonexistent for a moment. He…this….he wanted….he wanted a great many things in that moment. He wanted to run away, to hide, or to drown himself…but also he wanted to stay on the line with her for the rest of his life. He wanted to be near her. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her, and to take her there on the bathroom floor and make her scream his name and dig her nails into his back and just….he wanted her to call him Touichi. He wanted her to run her nails up his back and scream it to the heaven. Touichi. He wanted her to say it breathlessly with her thighs on either side of him, her fingers running through his hair…the barest feeling of her nails…the flex of her thighs on either side of his head….her just…

He nearly dropped his phone.

"You're welcome and…thanks. For talking to me…for explaining yourself. I guess that's what I wanted…anyway….I should get to bed. It's four in the morning here…I have no idea what time it is where you are but-" said Shiori

"I'm in Amsterdam. It's about eight o'clock at night." Said Suzuki. He had interrupted…but he had thought that she had been asking a question….and he had been doing so well! Now she probably hated him and never wanted to speak to him again and-

And she laughed

"God…I love that about you…you're so…you. Yeah, I need to go to sleep. Goodnight Suzuki…goodnight Touichirou…or good morning. Whichever suits you better." Said Shiori

"Goodnight…Shiori." Said Suzuki. That time he did drop his phone. He managed to catch it with his powers…and in his emotional state he sent it flying out of the tub and into the hamper. He needed…he needed to calm down. He needed to calm down and just…not feel…this. All of what he felt. He felt…he wanted…he wanted….he wanted so much…

So many things that he could not want.

"Dad? Are you ok?" asked Shigeko. She knocked again that time. She knocked even though she didn't need to. Her aura and voice announced her presence. His aura flared. He pulled a towel down and covered himself…which he was still in the rapidly cooling water. Great.

"I-I'm fine, Shigeko." said Suzuki. She was out there and he was in here….and he knew this but he couldn't make it all just…stop. This feeling that she was right there beside him staring over his shoulder. Judging him. Scrutinizing him. Weighing him. Weighing him and finding him wanting.

"But your aura-" said Shigeko

"I said that I was fine! I….am fine and…and I would like it if you made us some popcorn and then got a movie started. Something that you like…like the ice queen." Said Suzuki. He needed her gone. He needed her to get away and…and he loved her so much…but he did not deserve her love. Not when he felt like this. Not like when he had been acting like a…he didn't even know how to describe himself right now without devolving into profanity.

"But…ok. I can do that….but…tell me if something's wrong, ok? I love you and if something's wrong then I want to know so I can help you with it. I love you, dad." Said Shigeko

"I love you too, Shigeko…now go and make popcorn. I'll be joining you shortly." Said Suzuki. He waited until he felt her aura moving away from the door, and until he heard her little footsteps moving down the stairs and towards the kitchen, before he got up. He dropped the soaking wet towel on the floor as he got up and he brought over another one from the cabinet. He…was fine. He had gotten himself into a predicament but the cold would help with that…and his own sense of shame…and he should have been ashamed of himself.

He couldn't even stand the sight of himself.

He looked away from the mirror as he got out of the bathtub. He could not stand the sight of himself, of a man who had been….who had done what he had done…and who wanted to do it again. He was a married man. He had a wife and she was perfect…she had left him, she was his wife and she had left…but she was his wife! She was his wife and she had left him but she had never been with another man…and he….he should have done the same. He should have stayed away from women if he couldn't control himself around them. He should have been better than he was. He should not have thought about any other woman let alone spoken to one and felt…something which he had not felt in a while. Not sexual excitement, he felt that from time to time, no…that warmth….that he had felt from Masami…had been there with Shiori. Her voice…her words…they hadn't been enough. He had wanted to see her, to hold her, to be with her…and he knew that it was wrong! He had this ring on his finger and for as long as he wore this ring-

-this ring….

There. The ring finger on his left hand. It was bare. There was a strip of white where it had been but….but it was….it was gone! The lights flickered, the mirror cracked, a bottle of something or other exploded but…but it was gone and…and he needed to calm down. He took a breath and then another and another. He stared down at the tile floor and…there. A glint of gold on the bathmat. The ring…his ring….it had slipped off…

He picked it up.

"Dad? Are you sure that you're ok? The whole house shook and your aura-" said Shigeko. She didn't knock that time. No, she just shouted through the door…and he wished that she had knocked. She should have announced her presence. He was naked as the day he had been born…but it was his ring hand that he covered. He had no reason to cover his hand. He had no reason to cover anything, she had the sense to stay on the other side of the door, but…well it was his hand that he covered….

That was the part of him which felt the most…naked.

"Shigeko, no. I've told you before that I'm fine, now leave me to get dressed." Said Suzuki

"But dad-" said Shigeko. She was persistent. She was his child so of course she would be persistent…but he didn't need her to be persistent. He needed her to leave him alone.

"Shigeko…please. Leave me be. I'll be right out, alright?" said Suzuki. If she had been anyone else he would have told her to get the hell away from him…but she wasn't just anyone. She was his daughter. She was his child. She was his reason and his life. She was everything that he wanted and his will to succeed. He loved her and…and he could not hurt her. He could not be harsh towards her as he had been to so many others…but she could not see that side of him.

There were many sides of him that she could never see.

"Um…ok dad…if you say so." Said Shigeko. He waited, again, until her aura and footsteps left him. Until he found himself, alone and naked, smelling of lavender in the middle of the soaked bathroom. He took a breath, and then another, and then another…and then he did what he had to do. He slipped his ring back on.

It slid down.

He could not let this ring fall off. He…it was the bath that made it slip off…whatever he had put in it. Whatever that bath bomb had been made out of. That was…the only reason his ring had come off…and nothing more. He had to keep it on. He was…he belonged to Suzuki Masami and no matter what he wanted, no wonder who came around, no wonder what feelings he had or didn't have or had to exorcise he would always belong to Masami Suzuki. Nothing could ever change that.

Not even a good, long, bath.


	479. Cake is Complicated

Sho had never known that making cake was this complicated.

"Cake now! Sho cake now!" said baby sis as she banged a pan against the floor. She liked to do that. They used to do that when she'd been little…well littler than she was now. She was still pretty little. She wasn't going to be big for a while. Not as big as he was. He was the one in charge…and he had to be in charge…

Which meant making a cake.

"It's coming, it's coming. Just…let me figure it out." Said Sho as he leaned against the counter. He scrolled through his phone…all of these recipes were so complicated….why hadn't anyone told him that cooking was this hard?! Big sis made it look easy. She just put stuff together and it turned into food. Shibata made it look even easier. Sometimes Sho just found cakes and cookies and stuff that looked good and brought the recipes to Shibata…or not even the recipes just the pictures….and then Shibata made them and…

And why was this so hard?!

He had the stuff that you needed for cake. There was butter and water and sugar and eggs and…well there was baking soda and that must have been close to baking powder…and also there must have been vanilla somewhere…well he could crush some of Fukuda's gross vanilla cookies and melt some of his ice cream…or something. There. He had all the stuff that you needed for cake….so….so he just had to figure out how to make cake!

Why hadn't big sis taught him how to cook?

She had been cooking since even before mom had left. He remembered how, sometimes, before school she would stand on a chair and make them breakfast. He also remembered how he would sit there and play while she cooked. That had always just seemed like a girl job. Dad had said so anyway…and he got the feeling that dad was wrong about that. Shibata liked to cook and he was a guy, and he could pick you up and throw you over the house if you said otherwise, and even Shimazaki could cook too….well he knew how to make grilled cheese and tea and hot chocolate and…and ok he couldn't really cook…but he could do better than Sho could.

Sho wished that Shimazaki had been there.

He could have just teleported and gotten a cake…well Sho would have had to go with. Shimazaki couldn't tell what stuff was a lot of the time because of packaging and how nothing but beer was in braille…and when Sho ruled the world then he would change that. Braille for everything. Then Shimazaki would be able to steal stuff easier….not that he would have to steal…but if he still wanted to then he could have. He could have stolen and Sho would have been able to make it legal for him to steal because Shimazaki was his best friend and his best friend would be able to do anything he wanted when Sho took over the world…

A whole lot of things.

If Shimazaki had been there, and Sho ruled the world, then he could have let Shimazaki pick him up and pull him close and be all like 'Sho, you're going to make the best cake ever and I think that you're cool and I want you to kiss me' and then Sho could have been all 'but I have a girlfriend' and then Shimazaki could have said something like 'she found a better boyfriend than you so now we can be together and if anyone asks your heart is so broken that you'll never love a girl again' because he was smart like that and then it would have made perfect sense for them to be together and then it would have been ok for Shimazaki to pick him up and-

Hit him in the back of the head.

"What the fuck!?" said Sho as he rubbed the back of his head. Baby sis was laughing now. He took a step back and tripped over the pan she'd thrown at him…for some reason. Baby sis reasons. He didn't get mad ta her…well he did his best to not get mad at her…even though she had no reason to throw a pan at the back of his head…well she was only two and she didn't know any better….or maybe she did because she was laughing…

But it didn't matter how he felt. She was happy and that was what mattered.

"What the fuck! What the fuck!" laughed baby sis. She clapped and laughed and…and he was not going to get mad at her. He was not going to let his aura get all bright. He was…he was sorry. He shouldn't have yelled at her and he was sorry…and he shouldn't have taught her to curse…and now she was cursing and her mom was going to be so mad at him. She had told him that he could take baby sis to his apartment if, and only if, he agreed to take good care of her. That meant feeding her and changing her and not giving her more than ten M&M's a day….and probably not yelling at her or teaching her to curse. That hadn't been said but it didn't seem like the kind of thing that her mom would have been ok with.

Moms weren't ok with stuff like that.

He knew that his mom wouldn't have been. If his mom had been there then she would have bene mad at him. She would have picked him up and sat him on his bed for a timeout. It would have been eleven minutes not because he got one minute for every year that he'd been alive. That was a long time….so maybe it was good that she wasn't there to have heard that….but he wished that she had been there even if she had heard that. She would have known, at least, how to make a cake. She would have said something like 'Sho, you're too little to be in the kitchen so go and play' or…well she would have been in bed actually, because she had been sick a lot of the time…

But maybe she would have gotten better just for a little bit. This cake was for Fukuda after all and they had been best friends.

Well he and Fukuda were friends and…and he could…he could make this cake! He could make this cake and he would make this cake and….and now he was going to make this cake! But first he was going to do something about baby sis. She was cursing, still, and she was tugging at his hair too. He was the big brother and he had to makes sure that she grew up to be better than he was. She could curse when she got older but not now.

Now she was only two years old.

"What the fuck! What the fuck!" laughed baby sis as she tugged on his hair. He reached back and held her hand. She didn't like that, based on how her aura flared, but he couldn't let her tug on his hair or curse. If he let her do that then she would grow up and think that it was ok to do things like that…and then he would have been a bad big brother. He wasn't her for real big brother, even though they had the same hair color and eye color and aura color…and even though their hair even did the same thing where it stood up like they were going super saiyan, he was just her pretend brother….but that didn't mean that he didn't have to teach her good from bad and right from wrong and how not to be like he was when he was little.

"Baby sis, no. Don't say that…and don't pull my hair either." Said Sho. Baby sis just laughed some more…and he was not going to yell at her…even though she was reaching for his hair again. Why did she want to pull his hair? They had the same hair! She should have just pulled her own hair if-no, no, no. Don't do that, don't get mad.

He loved her and when you loved someone you didn't get mad at them.

"No. Mukai, no." said Sho

"No, Sho, no!" laughed baby sis. She wasn't cursing anymore…so that was good. She was still trying to pull on his hair then. He thought about pulling her to show her that it hurt…but he hated himself for even thinking thoughts like that. She was his little sister, his pretend little sister, and he was going to be nice to his pretend little sister…he was going to be a good big brother.

And good big brothers did not pull their sister's hair….and good little brothers didn't do that either…he'd have to say sorry again to big sis at some point.

"Mukai….do you want more M&M's? I'll give you more M&M's if you stop pulling on my hair and saying that word." Said Sho. There. When big sis needed him to do something that he didn't want to do she let him have soda and poptarts.

He knew what he had promised her mom but…well this was important.

"More please!" said baby sis. She stood up and held her hands together. He used his powers to get two M&M's out of the bag for her. These were his, they were the good kind with the caramel in them, but he would gladly share with her. She had her own of course but those were back at her house and he didn't want to walk all the way back there. He didn't want to run into any of those Scars. They were a bunch of weirdos…

And not nice weirdos like his friends.

"Here, but you have to promise not to ever say that word again." said Sho

"Word!" said baby sis. She was either trying to be funny or she forgot, he didn't know which. Either way was good. She wasn't cursing anymore and that was what mattered. He didn't want to turn into Fukuda and be all 'language' all the time. He also didn't want to have to punish her for something that he did all the time. Maybe it was ok because he was older…but it still didn't seem fair.

Things needed to be fair between brothers and sisters.

When he had been little mom had made sure to keep things fair between him and big sis. They'd had the same bedtime and bath time and eaten the same food and had the same amount of TV time. That was better, in his opinion, than how things were now. Now she was in charge of him like she was the mom and he was the kid…and that wasn't fair. Just because she was older than he was and just because she was the only girl did not mean that she had to be the one in charge…when he had kids he wasn't going to that.

If Emmy left him then he wasn't going to put his daughter in charge.

He didn't want his kids to have to listen to his other kids. It took too long to get used to and also it didn't seem like it was fair to them. He was the dad, well he was going to be the dad, and he was going to be in charge. He was going to be busy running the world, he knew that it would be a lot of work, but also he was going to be the dad and even if he had to only sleep one hour a night he was going to have enough time to take care of his kids…and he was never going to hit them or make them feel like they were bad people just for how they'd been born. He was going to make them happy and he was going to make sure that everything was fair between them.

Fairness was very important. For your kids or your little….your pretend little sister.

"More!" said baby sis. She was tugging on him again. She wanted more and…and he knew that there were rules…and he knew that he should have followed them but…but she wanted more and he loved her…

"One more, but that's it. I still have to figure out how to make this cake." Said Sho. He used his powers to hand her another M&M and then he went back to his phone. He found a recipe without too many directions…but the ones that were there were so complicated. Cream the butter? Butter was butter and cream was cream…and he knew that you could turn cream into butter but….did that mean that you had to…reverse the butter? He didn't know. Big sis would have known.

She knew a lot about milk.

She was probably drinking it right now. She was probably sitting around with Minegishi drinking strawberry milk and watching one of those boring shows that she and Minegishi liked…and she had better have been keeping Minegishi busy. If they were busy with big sis then they would have been too busy to hang out with Shimazaki and do boyfriend and theyfriend stuff with him…and even if they were hanging out with both big sis and Shimazaki then they probably weren't going to do boyfriend and theyfriend stuff right in front of her…

But everyone had better not have been having fun without him!

"Cake?" asked baby sis. Her mouth had blue all around it. She didn't put M&M's in her mouth and chew them, no, she kept them in her hands and licked all the color off before she chewed them. That was why he didn't feel her like a bird anymore. He loved her a lot but…well her little baby drool could be kind of gross sometimes…and not in the cool way.

"Later, I'm still trying to figure it out. Here, why don't you play pots and pans band while I try and figure out how you turn butter back into cream?" Said Sho. He used his powers to pass her back a pan. Her aura flared and she reached out. She was trying to use her powers…if she even had any….and he knew that when she grew up he would love her no matter what….but she did not need to worry about having powers…

And he needed to stop using his powers in front of her.

"Music! Music! Music!" said baby sis as she banged her pots and pans together. She didn't know any songs, only parts of some, but that was ok. She was happy and that was what mattered…and he could concentrate just fine when she did that!

"Yeah…music….bang those pots and pans." Said Sho. He did not have a headache, he was going to figure this out, and he was going to make a gross vanilla cake with vanilla icing because that was Fukuda's favorite kind….for some reason. He didn't always understand Fukuda but it was his birthday today and on his birthday he could have whatever he wanted….even a super gross vanilla cake.

Well he could if Sho ever figured this out.

"Pans! Cake! Pans cake!" shouted baby sis. Pans cake…pancake…pancakes! He knew how to do that! Well he knew how to add water to mix…and they had mix….and…..and he could do this! There was nothing wrong with pancakes on your birthday! That was how Shibata did birthdays and he knew about parties!

Sho could do this!

"Baby sis! You're a genius! A drooly, sticky, genius!" said Sho. He got down onto her level and kissed her on the head a bunch of times. Even though that made her kiss him…which was more like licking his head a bunch like they were puppies…but love was love and she was a genius so she could lick him if she wanted to…well it was gross but that was a part of being a big brother, putting up with gross stuff.

And also making pancakes.

Making pancakes went faster than making a cake. Mostly because all you had to do was add water to the mix and fry them. Also you had to watch the stove. Shibata didn't always watch the stove and that was why his were black on one side a lot of the time. Well Sho was going to pay attention…most of the time. Sometimes he got distracted with the pots and pans band…and sometimes baby sis needed more M&M's…and sometimes he had to chase her around because baby sis ended up with a sugar rush…but….well…

They wound up with some edible pancakes.

"Cake?" asked baby sis as Sho tried to sit her down at the table. She was too short to see over the top so he got some cushions from the couch…and that helped make her taller but it also made her more unstable on her chair. She was squirming and wiggling and he had to use his powers to keep her from falling over. He was glad that he hadn't put sugar in these….and also he wished that he had listened to her mom about only giving her ten M&M's a day.

"Pancakes, baby sis, we have pancakes….now sit still. I have to call Fukuda and then he's going to come and then we're going to yell happy birthday and then-" said Sho as he tried to keep baby sis from squirming out of her chair.

"Pancakes? Pancakes for me? Pancakes now! Sho!" said baby sis

"Yeah, in a minute. Let me call Fukuda, alright? We can't eat until he gets here. It's his birthday and we can't start before he gets here." Said Sho. This was going to be the best birthday that he had ever thrown…well it was the only birthday that he had ever thrown…but this was still going to be good! Fukuda's birthday was today and Sho….well he hadn't made a vanilla cake but he made pancakes….

And who didn't like pancakes?


	480. Forty Four to Forty Five

Fukuda had gone to bed forty four and woken up forty five.

He was past the age where birthdays meant anything more than having had lived another year. Forty five of them this time. Next year it would be forty six and then forty seven and so on and so forth. There was nothing more to it. He was glad, actually, that his birthday had come here at the Seventh Division and not…wherever the group had found themselves this time. At least here he was alone…well alone-ish. Sho was busy with his little sister. Good. Fukuda….he loved getting his yearly card from Sho, he really did, but he did not love his birthday.

It was just another day, really.

Just another day in the never ending parade of days that had been his life. He got up, got dressed, and then did his part to help Suzuki take over the world. One day and then another and then another and so on and so forth since….well he couldn't exactly remember when this had started. When this had stopped being a game and started being his life. University? High school? Middle school? He didn't know the exact moment when this had stopped just being some stupid game that he and Touichirou played and started being his life….and he didn't want to know. He didn't want to start dredging up the past just to figure out when his life had stopped being his own.

He just wanted to get through today.

"And you're done." Said Fukuda as he got through yet another one of his many duties. He healed people. Whatever deity that gave them their powers had granted him the ability to heal people…so that was what he had done. A simple injury this time. Mukai's adoptive mother. The person…well the person was new but the job was not.

He knew how to do his job.

"Wow, it doesn't even hurt…and there isn't even a scar. Your qi is pretty amazingly strong, you know that?" asked Tsuchiya. Fukuda shrugged. Qi was her word for it, for what they could do. Touichirou had looked into it, if their powers were simply just a way of manifesting the energy within their bodies. The results were inconclusive….and Fukuda didn't really want to revisit them.

He mostly just wanted to go home.

"Yup. No concussions, contusions, or abrasions." Said Fukuda with a shrug.

"God, I wish this was your permanent posting. Mukai would love you. Seriously, she hates the medical room….but she's also obsessed with finding new ways to hurt herself. The other day, a couple days ago, I found her on top of the fridge eating cookies. I have no idea how she got up there and when she saw me she jumped off. Jumped! If I hadn't been ready…kids. You know how it is." Said Tsuchiya. Fukuda nodded. He knew exactly how it was. Sho had been, and still was, something of a daredevil. It had been worse when he'd been small. Between the ages of two and four it seemed like Sho's mission in life had been finding new and creative ways to hurt himself. Climbing over the garden wall, getting on top of the fridge, the time he managed to get his hand caught in a vent….he was better about it now, or at least not hurting himself, so that was good. He had no idea, though, where that had come from….

Yes he did.

He got it from his father. So did Mukai. That was why Shigeko had never gone through a phase like that. She had been such an easy kid. Now she was twelve going on twenty two but when she'd been little she had been the sweetest, easiest child….so maybe she was making up for lost time…and for the lack of Suzuki in her. Suzuki…Touichirou hadn't had much of a sense of self-preservation when they'd met…and what little he'd had…well that went out the window when he realized that Fukuda was damn good at healing him. The shit they got up to when they'd been young and stupid….

All of it.

The time they rode a shopping cart down a mountain path just because. The time they'd spend hours in front of the microwave trying to give themselves radiation poisoning. The time they drank a thermometer just to see if mercury poisoning was fatal….for Touichirou it was but Fukuda drank five thermometers with zero negative effects. The same went for drinking turpentine, drain cleaner, detergent, and whatever had been in that glass of miscellaneous under the sink things. He thanked God that Sho didn't have the…analytical…or maybe scientific….mind that his father had. He was NOT in the mood to test the limits of his healing. Sho…well the worst thing that happened to him was getting bitten up by whatever animals he bothered.

He wondered what Mukai…what she would end up getting up to…not that he liked to think about her that often….

"Yeah, I know how it is. Don't worry, we're going to be sticking around for a while. Sho…he likes to visit." Said Fukuda

"Mukai's going to be happy about that. Every time he leaves she gets so down. She looks for him, well she makes me look for him, and then when she realizes that he's gone again…well she doesn't take it well yet." Said Tsuchiya

"She is only two years old. She'll understand better when she gets older." Said Fukuda with a wave of his hand. He did not like talking about Mukai. He…well he had no real attachment to her…and he had to keep it that way. Sho….he'd been there since the day Sho had been born…and he was Masami's son too. There was more Masami than Touichirou in him. Mukai…he had no clue. He didn't know if she'd end up being the second coming of Touichirou or a smaller version of her adoptive mother or her biological mother or her own person…and he just…he had no idea. She was…well she was a person and she was there and Sho loved her and that was what mattered.

Fukuda…didn't dislike her.

He tried to have no real feelings towards her. He never saw her, which helped, and when he did…well he ignored the feelings of…well there was a sense of betrayal there. Suzuki had cheated on Masami…and Fukuda knew that he was being the biggest hypocrite in the world there….but there was a sense of betrayal there on her behalf. Also there was his own sense of betrayal. What did Suzuki think that he was doing just….just…making people?! Putting new people in the world for no reason?! Just…going out and having unprotected sex and then being completely amazed when there were new people in the world? Just…and then he had the nerve to try and give Fukuda this baby like…like that was just a thing that people did and-

Calm the hell down, Tadashi, calm the hell down.

"Yeah….what, exactly, will she need to understand? I mean what am I supposed to tell her. She's not stupid, she's going to notice that she looks like Sho and he calls her baby sis all the time so….yeah. What am I supposed to tell her?" asked Tsuchiya

"Tell her…well why not just tell her that Sho's pretending and that he just so happens to look…just like her…and he really doesn't. She…her face is sounder and…and their eyes are shaped differently and-" said Fukuda. Why she was asking HIM? That was her daughter. She was the one who had to figure this out. He had assumed, when she agreed to take Mukai in, that she knew that Mukai was to have no idea that she was related at all to Suzuki. So what if she asked questions? Kids asked about fifty questions a day. Just redirect her and move on to something else. It was easy.

"This is Japan, not a lot of redheads here. More blue eyed people than there used to be but not a lot of redheads." Said Tsuchiya with a shake of her head.

"Well she's being raised here, isn't she? So demographics really won't be something that she's going to notice." Said Fukuda

"You think that I plan for her to spend her entire life here? In this Division?" asked Tsuchiya

"Well….yes. You Scars don't really go out…and you have no real need to. When President Suzuki takes over there's going to be no shortage of work and-" said Fukuda

"Obviously I'm not going to raise her in here for the rest of her life. She needs other kids to play with or she's going to end up really weird. It's just easier to keep her here since I don't get out that often myself. She's going to live out in the world when she gets older…and even if she doesn't she's going to notice that she looks just like the kid who calls her baby sis and I need to know what I'm supposed to tell her." said Tsuchiya

"She's your daughter. Tell her whatever you want…but don't tell her where she came from." Said Fukuda

"You know she's going to figure it out one day, right? That she's President Suzuki's kid-" said Tsuchiya

"Nobody needs to figure out anything." Said Fukuda

"Everyone already knows but….fine. I'll think of something to tell her on my own. Happy birthday." Said Tsuchiya

"What?" asked Fukuda

"Well unless you're going to tell me what to tell her, being Suzuki's right hand man after all-" said Tsuchiya

"No, I mean how did you know that it was my birthday?" asked Fukuda

"The birthday shout outs. Vice President Suzuki's birthday list, remember? Actually here, you get a whole video." Said Tsuchiya as she got her phone out of her pocket. She clicked around for a little bit before she handed it to Fukuda. He took it….and wished that there was some way to give it back. He didn't really read Shigeko's internal memos. They were always the same. Birthday lists. Well wishes. Long missives about how everyone needed to be best friends all the time and how fighting was wrong…how good things were going to be when they took over the world…if he wanted to hear from her then he'd talk to her…not that he wanted to talk to her…and not that she wanted to talk to him. She had gotten this idea in her head that…he didn't even want to think about what she thought…but that was fine. She could think whatever she wanted…and she could do whatever she wanted…

Even spam everyone's work inbox with constant memos about nothing.

And videos. It took a second to load, the wifi in this place was terrible, but when it did….there she was. There she was and….had she gotten taller? It looked like she'd gotten taller….but he hadn't been gone for that long. Long enough to notice if she'd grown or not. She was there and she was smiling…she seemed happy there….he hadn't seen her happy in a while. She used to be such a happy kid…back when she'd actually been a kid. She had never been very expressive but she had been happy…in that way that small children were happy. She wasn't a small child anymore…she was barely a child. She was twelve now, right? Getting to it. Almost a teenager…

So why was she still doing things like this?

'Is it on? Ok, good. Hi everyone! I just made this to wish Fukuda a happy birthday and….um….don't be jealous but he gets a whole video because…um….I've known him for a long time and stuff. Anyway today Fukuda turns forty five! That's a lot and we should all wish him a happy birthday….um….please…' said Shigeko. She was…doing this? Why? She didn't like him…and she seemed sort of old for this….but then again she was too young for everything else she did so this was actually kind of refreshing.

Even though he had no idea what she was doing this for.

'Fukuda likes vanilla cake, Mario Party even though he's bad at it...wait…..that was kind of mean wasn't it?' asked Shigeko

'No, you're telling the truth. He does suck at Mario Party...weirdly good at Galaga though.' That was Hatori. Oh, he was the one recording this…and Fukuda wasn't bad at it he just liked to let Sho win.

'That's because he likes it….um….oh! He likes old videogames like my dad does…but not for work reasons like dad does….why are you laughing? Dad does like videogames for work reasons….I don't know what those reasons are but he does.' Said Shigeko. Fukuda rolled his eyes. Suzuki was so ridiculous sometimes even his Daughter could see it. She was sort of adorable there, like she used to be. She was in one of her costume dresses again….sort of. One of her blue outfits. She was a kid…an adorable kid.

A really adorable kid.

'Want to keep going, Mob?' asked Hatori

'I'm almost done, don't worry, you can get back to the math party soon. I don't know what dad is teaching you guys but it looks important.' Said Shigeko. God, the math parties…as Shigeko called them. Thank God he wasn't around for that. Unlike those other two he knew how to count.

'Ok, so um….he likes math too….and my dad said that when he was a kid he played clarinet once and swallowed a reed on accident….but maybe that's not a good birthday story…um….anyway happy birthday, Fukuda, congratulations on being forty five….ok, you can stop recording now. I hope he likes this because I'm not doing this again-' said Shigeko before the video cut out. Well then that was…she had done this for him for…some reason. Why? To get into his good graces? Their dislike was mutual. Maybe because she did things like this for all of her close friends….but he wasn't one of those close friends…he hadn't been for a while…so maybe she was trying to get into his good graces….but why? What did she possibly need from him?

Oh, right, he was watching Sho. Alright then, that made sense.

"So, yeah, happy birthday. You should head back to your place now. Apparently the kid is throwing you a birthday party." Said Tsuchiya as she took her phone back.

"What?" asked Fukuda

"Sho. He and Mukai are making you a cake right now….but you didn't hear it from me…and don't sit too near Mukai when you eat it. She can and will pick off of your plate." Said Tsuchiya

"Wait, you let Sho take the baby out of your apartment? Why? I mean I know that you leave him alone with her in your apartment but-" said Fukuda

"He's a good big brother. I trust him with her." said Tsuchiya

"He's only eleven years old." Said Fukuda. He expected Tsuchiya to do…anything other than what she just did. He expected her to do anything other than laugh in his face.

"And our vice president is….thirteen? Fourteen? She's somewhere in her teens." Said Tsuchiya

"She's eleven." Said Fukuda

"What the hell…" said Tsuchiya

"Yeah, she's eleven years old…excuse me." Said Fukuda. He….had to do something. He got up and left. That was something. He had to leave his office…technically an office that he just occupied….he just….he had to get back to Sho. He was all alone with a baby and….well he had been alone with her before but…but he was too young for that! He was just a kid and…and he was a little younger than Shigeko…but she was different. She could handle these things better. She sought them out, even, responsibility. She thrived under it…well she thought that she did anyway.

Sho did not do well under pressure.

He knew that Tsuchiya used him as a babysitter for short periods of time but…well that had been in her own, presumably baby proofed, home. Sho…he did not do well under pressure. Also he was trying to make a cake…the thought of Sho alone in a kitchen….Sho didn't even know how to heat up a poptart! He could end up burning this entire division to the ground!

Not that it would have been a tragedy.

Fukuda had thought about it, imagined it, time and time again. Burning Claw to the ground. Every HQ, every division, every cell….all of it. Just burning it to the ground and salting the earth so that nothing could ever grow up in it's place. He'd thought about it some and time again but…well that was just a dream he had…and also Sho could end up accidentally doing it and he was not fire proof. The scars on his body were testament to that.

He could get hurt.

Fukuda…he knew fully well that Sho could easily get hurt. He was small and he had already been so hurt…hurt beyond belief. He was so small and there was so much that could happen to him…like getting burnt. The baby…he didn't know that baby and he wasn't attached to her….but he didn't want any harm to come to her. Sho…when he had been very small he had pulled the table cloth down on himself…and there had been hot dishes on it. Shigeko had managed to protect him, she hadn't been much older but her powers even at that age were terrifying…

But she had protected Sho.

Sho…he loved his little sister more than anything else in the world…but he could get distracted. He could get distracted and he could get angry, too. He did not deal well with frustration. That was the Touichirou in him. Touichirou had always gone straight to breaking things when he'd gotten upset…so he had rained himself not to get upset…but Sho hadn't learned how to manage it yet. He got so angry sometimes…so very angry and…and he wasn't always in control when he got angry.

Fukuda walked faster.

He walked, but did not run, because if he ran then people would have asked what he had been running around for and he did not need to draw any more attention to himself. The story was that he had been sent there to help oversee the Seventh Division. He did not need people asking about him. He did not need this getting back to Suzuki. No, and that was why he didn't run. He walked briskly but he did not run. He rounded a corner but he did not run…

But he did…he ran into someone.

"Watch it!" said a Scar who Fukuda could not remember the name of. The evil spirit master, the one who collected them like Sho and Shigeko used to collect Pokémon. He dropped his phone but seemed to be more preoccupied with his belt. Fukuda eyed it wearily. He hated evil spirits. He couldn't exorcise them even if he'd known how to…not that he was afraid or anything.

He was just weary.

"Sorry." said Fukuda. He bent down and handed the Scar his phone back. He took it and kept walking.

"Yeah, no, sorry. Just this guy Suzuki sent over…anyway what did your boyfriend do? He stuck Skittles where?" said the Scar as he walked out…without even bowing. That was…Fukuda wasn't there to teach people basic manners. He had to get to Sho and…his phone vibrated. He almost dropped his phone as he took it from his pocket. That could have been nothing, more work spam, or Sho could have accidentally hurt himself.

It was Sho.

A text…there was a surprise waiting for him and he had to get home right now. Well that could be…it didn't smell like smoke. It didn't smell like anything, maybe floor cleaner, that was how they kept it sparkling white here. No smoke, though, so that was good. A birthday surprise from Sho. Maybe he had figured out the whole 'baking a cake thing'…of course he had. This was Sho. He was a smart kid. Sure he had trouble controlling his temper…and he could get easily distracted…but he could figure out how to make a cake…

Or a stack of pancakes.

That was what Fukuda wound up coming home to. A stack of pancakes almost to the ceiling and Sho trying to keep his baby sister in her chair. Fukuda…maybe should have stuck to running. Sho hadn't burnt anything down, no, instead there was a layer of batter on everything. The sink was full of dishes and there were M&M's everywhere…for some reason…well maybe the reason was the baby with the rainbow colored fingers….

And the struggle.

"Fukuda….happy birthday! Baby sis, say happy birthday!" said Sho as he tried to get his baby sister back into her chair. She was trying to crawl over him onto the table. Sho…well picking her up with his powers would have been easy….but Fukuda was not going to suggest that.

No, he'd help.

"Pancakes! Now Sho! Pancakes for me!" said Mukai as she tried to crawl over Sho. Fukuda reached over the two of them and picked Mukai up. He hadn't thought about it, no, he had just done it. Sho had needed help. He was way too little to do this on his own…just like he'd been when she'd been born. Two years ago. All of that insanity had been only two years ago.

The last time he had held this child had been two years ago.

She was…older now. He held her under her armpits like he used to do with Sho when he'd been in his terrible twos. The baby's….Mukai's…..Mi-cha's….aura flared. There was some pain there but nothing serious. More than a child her age should have had, of course, but still nothing much. He held her away from his chest in case she still had that problem where she threw up all the time. She was…heavier than he had imagined. Stickier too. She was colored like a rainbow. Her mouth, her fingers, even her little dress.

No crying in this dojo indeed.

"Sho, you didn't have to do this." said Fukuda as Sho sat down. He put the baby down in Sho's lap and handed her a pancake. She stopped squirming and now she was eating…well chewing and drooling…on her pancake.

"Mukai helped too….and she can't eat first. The birthday guy eats first. That's the rule of birthday pancakes." Said Sho. Fukuda shook his head. Sho was still such a good kid. He tried so hard...harder than he had to. He hadn't been expecting anything more than his usual hand drawn card from Sho. Not all of these pancakes as well as….an M&M…mosaic?

Was that supposed to be him?

It was…wow. So that was what Sho had done with all of those M&M's he'd gotten back in England. This was…wow. Sho…he knew that Sho could draw but he hadn't known that Sho could do mosaics like this. Wow. If Fukdua'd had a frame he would have framed it. Sho was so talented. He wished that Masami had been there for….some of this.

The part with Sho's art and first effort at cooking….not that part with Suzuki's illegitimate child.

"Oh, let her have some. There's no way in that I can possibly eat all of these on my own." said Fukuda

"I made forty five because you're forty five today. I wanted to make a cake but making cakes is complicated so we made pancakes. You just have toad water for that…and nonstick coating too. Me and baby sis figured that out eventually." Said Sho as he pointed to the burnt pan sitting in the sink. That was…going to take a lot of scrubbing…..but he would deal with that later. Now was not the time. This was the time for….well….

This.

"You didn't have to do all of this for me, Sho, you really didn't." said Fukuda

"Yeah I did, it your birthday." Said Fukuda

"Happy birthday!" shouted Mukai through a mouth full of pancake. She smiled and kicked the table…she was so cute. She was like a young Sho…well she was a girl but she was so much like him…of course she was like him. She was his sister. She was his little sister….and she was adorable….she was half of Touichirou but she was adorable.

"Well, I guess that you two did. Thank you so much. Not just for the pancakes but for the picture too. I didn't know that you knew how to do things like that." Said Fukuda

"It wasn't hard. It's just M&M's and glue…and a hammer too. Don't eat it, you'll get glue poisoning." Said Sho

"I won't, don't worry. I'm going to save this forever…in the other room. It looks like your baby sister isn't exactly heading your warnings about glue poisoning." Said Fukuda as he picked up the mosaic Sho had made. He needed….well he did need to put it away, Mukai really had been trying to eat it when he came in, and also….he needed a minute. Just a minute. Sho…he'd done all of that on his own. He was getting older and he was taking care of his sister and…and he was eleven now and…

And time was passing.

Sho was eleven, Mukai was two and he was fort five. Time was passing and…and it would keep on passing and…and he knew that it was passing. Sho was not a little kid anymore. Those days were gone and…and there was a sense of…loss there. He would never be as young as he had been before, as young as his little sister, but….well in the loss there was a sense of…gain. He was getting older and he was doing more and…and he was a good kid.

Masami would have been proud.

She would have been so proud of Sho if she had been there. She would have been unhappy with Fukuda, of course, for letting so many terrible things happen to Sho but she would have been proud of the person that he'd become. He always thought of others. He went out of his way…he went the hell out of his way….which was more than his father had ever done for anyone. Not his mother, though, Masami had always gone out of her way for others…for him…even at her lowest point she had been there for him and…

And he had to get out there before Sho looked for him.

So that was what he did. He went out there and had slightly burnt pancakes with Sho and his little sister. He said nothing when Sho called her his pretend little sister, nothing when the baby got upset when she couldn't crawl on the table, and nothing when the baby started to cry and Sho got right to getting her back to being happy. He was a good kid. He hadn't had to do any of that but he had and…and he was such a good kid. Fukuda was so proud of him. He loved him. He loved him like his own son, his own flesh and blood child, and he was so happy….

He had gone to bed forty four and woken up forty five…and he was happy. Another year had passed. Another year with Sho.


	481. Birthday Rituals

Suzuki Touichirou had never gotten much enjoyment out of birthday rituals.

He had never seen the point. As a child he had enjoyed unwrapping presents…until he had gotten old enough and he realized that he got whatever he asked for regardless of what day of the year it was. As a child if he asked mother for any particular toy or game it would be within his hands by the end of the week. By the age of about ten or so he saw the wrapping around his gifts as more of an annoyance and cake…well the less said about that the better. It was a part of the birthday ritual, and he always ate a piece to appease mother, cake….

He hoped that it wasn't a part of this birthday ritual.

"Dad, come on. Your pancakes are going to get cold." Said Shigeko as she tugged on his hand. She was the only person who could do this…any of this. Waking him up, getting him out of bed, and demanding his presence next door to participate in her usual birthday ritual.

Which involved pancakes.

He…did not enjoy pancakes. Not often. He liked them when they were not sweet but they were so seldom not sweet. They had the word 'cake' in the name after all. That was why they were a part of this birthday ritual, the children's birthday ritual. They were so eager to get to their birthdays that they didn't even have time to procure a cake.

That was just how children were.

"I still have to get dressed, and so do you." Said Suzuki. He was loathe to let go of her hand, he always was, but he did need to get into actual clothes. Pajama pants and a t-shirt were not the articles of clothing that one wore when leaving their home. That was why he had spent the past few decades of his life sleeping in day clothes, it was just easier to get out of bed in them. He wasn't dressed and he could not leave the house like this.

And also he could not get dressed with Shigeko in the room.

"There's not time for that, dad. Besides, you're supposed to have breakfast in your pajamas. That part of the birthday breakfast." Said Shigeko

"For you, maybe, but not for me. If you want to leave the house in your sleeping clothes then there's nothing that I can do to stop you. I, on the other hand, will be getting dressed." Said Suzuki. He would have been fully within his power to tell her to leave him alone and to get her own clothes on, she could not leave the house in just that pajama dress, but…well he didn't like to give her orders like that. She wouldn't take it well…

So he asked her nicely.

"You are dressed." Said Shigeko

"Yes, I am wearing clothes, but these are not the clothes which I wish to be seen in. I cannot be seen like this by anyone other than my children…and Hatori who may as well be a child. I have to get dressed because I have a certain image of myself which I have to present to the world. I'd imagine that it's much the same as you with your cosmetics." Said Suzuki. He presented his argument logically and he framed it in terms that she would understand. Just as she had taken to not leaving the house, usually, without her eyes framed in black and shadowed in blue he could not leave the house without his suit on. Maybe it came from a lifetime of wearing uniforms….or maybe he got it from his father. He couldn't recall, not even once in his life, seeing his father leave the house in anything less than his full suit.

Of course his memories of his father weren't the best.

He remembered the man. The way he looked, much like him but with black hair and a greater weariness to him, and he remembered the way he spoke. Never more than necessary and also with very harsh words. He remembered how his father would let him sit in his office with a calculator…even when he'd been too young to help….many of his memories of his father came from when he had been young. Once he had even been in Shigeko's place as well….he had sat on his parents' bed and watched his father get ready for his day…he'd been smaller than Shigeko though, small enough that he had still had this fascination with his father…

Of course he had never grabbed his father and tugged on him as Shigeko did….but he did spoil Shigeko in ways that his own parents never had.

"Oh….ok….but don't take too long. If you take too long then Shimazaki is going to eat your pancakes." Said Shigeko

"I don't mind if he does. You know that I don't like sweet food." Said Suzuki

"Pancakes aren't sweet, dad, only the syrup on top is sweet." Said Shigeko. She had a tone, there, that he couldn't read…but he had heard it before. She sounded like Masami, there, when she told him that he was being ridiculous. Maybe he was being ridiculous, he had been called that time and time again, but he did not want to be called that by Shigeko.

He just didn't.

"They are sweet in and of themselves. If something is made with sugar then it is sweet." Said Suzuki

"Your pancakes won't be sweet, though, Shibata knows that you hate sweet food…now come on, dad, before your next birthday." Said Shigeko. Now she was the one being ridiculous. She knew fully well that it would take less than a year for him to get dressed. He, of course, would be done well before his forty sixth birthday.

He was forty five today.

He was forty five and next year he would be forty six…and he did not want to think about that. The passage of time. The fact that he was getting closer and closer to fifty. He had an irrational feeling about that number. He had no reason to be…anxious….about it. Turning fifty. Fifty was not old. Sixty was old…or seventy…but not fifty. He was not getting old.

He was getting older but not old.

He didn't age, he level up. That was what his shirt said…and he knew that he didn't actually level up but…well it was a good way to look at it. He didn't age, he leveled up, and…and leveling up meant that you kept on going. It didn't mean that you were running out of time. It didn't mean that you had to move faster, be better, because you were going to be fifty soon and if you didn't reach your goals by then….then what would be the point? He'd be fifty and Shigeko would be seventeen and Sho would be sixteen and…and then he'd have teenagers and he so wanted to get this done with before he had teenagers to deal with. He did not want teenagers. If there was some way to skip those years then he would have…if there was some way to skip building up Claw for those years then he would have…

Because he was getting tired.

He was getting tired…and not just because Shigeko had woken him up early. He was getting tired of traveling, tired of finding new assets, tired of starting new HQs and divisions and cells. He was just…tired. It had been a labor of love, he liked that expression, for years but…well it was still a labor. It hadn't been this tiring in the past…but then he'd had a home and a wife to get back to. He'd had his wife, he'd had Masami, and she had been….so much to him…

He felt his wedding ring.

He felt it with his powers. There. It hadn't come off. He hadn't lost it again. The bath…it had slipped off again in the bath thanks to what he kept on putting in the tub…but it was on now. It was on and it could not come off…because he was Masami's and…and he just…another year without her had passed. Another year and…and he did not want to think about this. He did not want to think about how he should have, would have, could have, been able to turn around and see her there on his bed. She would have been laying there and she would have said something like 'happy birthday, Touichi' and…well even if sex wouldn't ensue he still would have wanted her there and…

And he pulled his shirt up over his head.

No shower that morning. Shirt and pants off. Undershirt, pants, button down, tie, and suit coat on. One thing and then another and then another. There. Now he was dressed. He performed the entire ritual of getting dressed without once looking at his bed. Without once looking over and thinking about who should have been there. Masami was gone. She was gone and she was never coming back. He was…he was hers and he loved her….

But she was gone.

He picked up his phone and carried it with him to the bathroom. He had to finish his morning ritual now. He had to brush his teeth and brush his hair and a new layer of deodorant would be necessary as well. Even though it said that it would last forty eight hours that did not mean that he was going to go forty eight hours between layers. No, he was not his Son. He was not Sho and he was not going to go through his day smelling terrible. He was not going to go a single day without getting dressed and going through all of the other grooming rituals too. These things were important, he knew that they were important…

And Shigeko agreed.

"I'll be out in a minute, dad, I just have to get this finished." Said Shigeko as she ran a brush through her hair with her powers while she brushed her face with her hands. He had no idea what that powder she was putting on her face was, or why she needed it, and he was not going to ask her about it. He had done so before and her explanation had gone in one ear and out the other. This was a woman's ritual she was performing and he had no place in it. He knew this.

He also knew that he needed a place at the counter.

"You don't need to leave but I would like some counter space." Said Suzuki. She took a step to the side and her products followed her. She still faced herself and she still ran that brush across her skin. He had no idea what that was for. She was beautiful as she was…not that he would say anything to her.

He had learned, long ago, never to criticize a woman's appearance.

Masami had gotten angry with him when he asked her why she did all of that. He told her that she didn't need it, that she was beautiful as she was, and that he didn't care what she looked like. She had taken that the wrong way…or he had said something wrong…he didn't know. All he knew was that she became very cross with him and then stormed off. To this day he had no idea what Masami had been so angry with him about…but women were just complicated like that…or at least some of them. Shigeko…

Well she wasn't a woman yet so it was too early to say.

"Here you go." Said Shigeko as she put down the brush she had been using…and then picked up another. She dipped that brush into a different powder and then brushed it across her forehead. He watched her for a moment. There was some artistry to this, it was fascinating…but also he was very glad that he never had to do things like that.

The worst thing that he had to do was shave.

He faced himself in the mirror. He didn't need to shave yet today. Good. He maybe could have for good measure, to get any growth that was there but too short to see, but….no. Razor burn was not fun and he could not be seen like that…but if he did end up with the beginnings of a beard well…he could not be seen like that either. Even if he couldn't grow a proper beard…or maybe he could by now. He had never really tried…not since he had been eighteen….though he hadn't really been trying then. Shaving just hadn't been on his list of priorities…not after what had happened…

Twenty seven years ago…it had been twenty seven years ago.

"Are you ok dad?" asked Shigeko. She looked up at him now. She was braiding her hair with her powers, the brush in her hand had stopped it's work. Her skin seemed….dusty…if that was the word. So much loose powder…paler, too, if that had even been possible. Of course he said nothing about that…or what had been on his mind. She didn't need to know that he thought that it looked like she had shoved her face into a bag of flour…

And she did not need to know that he was wasting his time ruminating on the deaths of two people who she had never even met.

"Fine, just deciding if I should shave or not." Said Suzuki simply. Shigeko looked up at him and stared for a moment.

"I don't think that you need to." Said Shigeko nodding to herself as if to congratulate herself on her good judgement. She did have good judgement but…well he did not want to get caught out in the world later on with five o'clock, or whatever time it would happen, shadow. No, that would not have been right at all.

"You don't?" asked Suzuki as he felt his face. He thought…well he was at the awkward time between shaves. This was so annoying. How did women deal with this? Well they shaved every day, didn't day? Body hair grew faster, right? He'd assume that, yes, it did. The only woman he knew, sort of woman, was Shigeko and he did not want to ask her about something so personal. He still wasn't completely alright with the idea of her having and removing her body hair. She seemed too young for all of that…but obviously she was not.

She would, very soon, be turning twelve after all….and then thirteen and fourteen and….well he knew how to count.

"No, because you don't have a shadow beard yet. Minegishi says that if you have to shave then you should do it when you can see the hair. If you shave before the hair is long enough to see then that's bad for your skin." Said Shigeko. Razor burn, she meant. She knew about that too….well of course she did. There, on the counter beside his razor, was hers. Both were blue, hers was a lighter shade of it though. Hers was also shaped differently…and she had her shaving cream too…fruity like Masami's had been…but not the same kind exactly. He wondered why she had chosen that, maybe she remembered Masami, or maybe Masami had taught her about…no…Masami had left before Shigeko had even gotten close to this stage of life.

Shigeko had someone else to teach her about these things.

She had someone else in her life to teach her the things that a woman needed to know, all of these little grooming rituals and such. It seemed odd, Minegishi being who they were, but Suzuki was not going to complain. Shigeko needed a mother. She needed someone to fill the role of mother, he meant, not someone to be her actual mother. She had a mother, Masami, and even if she had left she would always be Shigeko's…be both the children's…mother…and his wife. He would never remarry…or even entertain those thoughts…and as for any other thoughts that he entertained…

Those were just going to have to stay just that. Thoughts.

"I suppose that I won't, in that case." Said Suzuki as he stared at himself in the mirror. He kept his thoughts to himself, to his own appearance, and not to anything else. Like his Daughter's newfound obsession with her appearance…or the person who had taught his Daughter how to managed her appearance. How someone like that could know so much. She…they….weren't attractive….but also they were not unattractive. They were…well their skin seemed soft…but they wore men's clothing and no makeup and their hair was so short…

He stopped thinking about them. Not while his Daughter was standing right there.

"Here, you can use my moisturizer, it's good for your skin." Said Shigeko as she reached her hand out and pulled a bottle over with her powers. She didn't even need to turn and face what she needed to reach for. She was talented like that. He knew that he had seen her do that time after time before but it never ceased to impress him. She never ceased to impress him.

"What's wrong with my skin?" asked Suzuki as a bottle was passed into his hands. He read the front. Shae butter…whatever that was.

"It's dry." Said Shigeko simply

"I still don't know what you mean by dry….but I'll do as you suggested." Said Suzuki. She knew what she was talking about. That was why he listened to her. This had nothing to do with the fact that she had told him that Minegishi had said that his skin was dry. He didn't care what they thought….well he should not have cared what she…what THEY thought. He had a woman in his life….no. He did not have a woman in his life. He had a woman who he had made a mistake with and now…well now he was speaking to again and…

And he did not want to think about this…so he didn't.

He did what Shigeko asked of him. Shae butter. He had no idea what it was, it seemed more like it would have been suited to cooking and not skincare, but it had the same smell and consistency of sunscreen so that was what he was going to treat it like…or at least what he had wanted to treat it like. Shigeko took the bottle, and what he had managed to get out of it, away from him…and he had no idea why….

And he got some idea of what she was going to say…and it would contain the world 'ridiculous' most likely.

"What are you doing? That's way too much. Here, watch me." Said Shigeko. Well she didn't use the word 'ridiculous' which was good….but now he was the one tempted to use that word. She did the exact same thing she did. She took some into her hands, rubbed it back and forth and then rubbed it on her arm. He watched her…and could come up with no reason why she would have corrected him.

"How is that different than what I just did?" asked Suzuki

"You almost used too much." Said Shigeko

"How can you possibly use too much? We have money, a lot of it, if you need more then you can just go and buy more." Said Suzuki

"It's not about that. If you use too much then your skin gets lazy and it stops making it's own oils…and also it can make your skin break out and that's not good either." Said Shigeko

"I'll take your word for it." Said Suzuki. Well now he'd learned something new. He was, once again, very glad that he was not a woman. There was too much work that went into it. Even at Shigeko's age there was work that went into it. When he'd been her age the worst that he'd had to deal with was sunscreen. She had…he didn't even know the names of most of those things that she had to do to her skin. He didn't think that she needed them, she was perfect in his eyes, but maybe this was how she maintained that perfection….or something. He didn't know.

He didn't know she could ever be less than perfect.

He watched her work. She really didn't seem like she needed it. She was, in his eyes, perfect. Maybe that was because he was looking at her through a father's eyes. When he had been small he had asked his mother many times what was wrong with him. Why the other children didn't like him, why there wasn't anyone else like him in the world, and why she had taken to shouting at him and telling him that he hated her…he hadn't. He had been exasperated with her at times but he had never hated her. Mother had just looked at him and told him that in her eyes he was the most perfect son that a mother could have asked for…which made no sense because she often told him that he must have hated her with the way he carried on….and such. But that was…well mothers were complicated.

Fathers too, it seemed.

If he could have looked at her with a different set of eyes, his Daughter, he would have. He wished that there was some way that he could see her the way that she saw herself. She seemed to see so many flaws in herself…which made no sense. Paradoxically her brother saw none of the flaws in himself that were so glaringly apparent. So neither of his children had any self-awareness then, it seemed, which made sense. He didn't always have the best sense of it, well he hadn't when he'd been young, so maybe it was something in nature….or nurture…or something…

Or maybe it was just in Shigeko's nature as a woman…well a smaller version of one…to see flaws in herself where there were none and then to correct them.

"Don't worry dad, I'm almost done. Then we can go." Said Shigeko. She made eye contact with him then. Right. He had been staring at her. Well…he tended to do that. He didn't understand why he did it, or why it was wrong. When something or someone took your interest then they took your attention as well. People had always found it off putting for reasons he had never been able to understand. Not Shigeko, though, she was perfect in that way.

"Weren't you just trying to drag me out of the house in my pajamas?" asked Suzuki. Even in her ridiculousness she was perfect. To think that she had been the one trying to rush him out the door and now he was there watching her coat her face in another layer of…he didn't even know what.

"I was but then you said to get dressed and I did and then I thought that I should fix my hair and then I did and then I decided to do makeup and I did…and I'm almost done, ok?" asked Shigeko

"Alright, I'll wait for you. It's not like I'm in any hurry." Said Suzuki

"Why not? It's your birthday and you get breakfast and presents, well me and Hatori got you presents I don't know about anyone else, and…and birthdays are important." Said Shigeko

"At your age, maybe, but not at mine." Said Suzuki

"What's wrong with being your age?" asked Shigeko. Suzuki…he had no idea where to start. The aches and pains of middle age were their own discussion….as well as the mental aches and pains of realizing that even though you'd been working for the majority of your life there was still so much to do…and then there was the existential pain of the fact that you were halfway, over halfway, to death and your children were going to grow and they would die as would their children and their children's children and….

And she did not need to worry about any of that. Not now and not ever.

"A great many things….but things that you don't need to worry about. Don't worry about being my age until you are my age." Said Suzuki in an attempt to reassure her of whatever it was that was bothering her…an attempt that hadn't seemed to work if her aura was anything to go off of.

"Um….ok….I guess….but dad? I don't want to be your age." Said Shigeko. She was playing, now, with the brush in her hand. A nervous gesture. He had done the same thing when he'd been her age. Fidgeting with anything he could get in his physical and metaphysical grasp…and he didn't want to pass that on to her…he didn't want to pass anything on to her. Not his nervous gestures…and not the things that made him nervous, that kept him up at night, that ran through his mind….either.

"Why not?" asked Suzuki. Whatever she said to him, whatever she was planning on saying, he would deal with it. He was her father and as her father it was his job to deal with these things when they came up. To reassure her of things that…well that he wished that he had someone to reassure him of…not that he needed anyone…it was just nice to have people around, that was all….but he did not need them.

He was Suzuki Touichirou, he did not need anyone, but others needed him….like Shigeko. She needed him.

"Because when I'm your age then you'll be dead. That's what happens when you get older, your parents die." Said Shigeko

"That is not something that you have to worry about." Said Suzuki. No. He had no intention of dying anytime soon…well he knew that he would die but not now. Not at forty five. He had outlived both of his parents but…well Shigeko…she would not outlive him. No, wait, he wanted her to outlive him. He had buried, well interred, his parents and….and it had been painful. Even though that was nature's way, children outlived their parents, it had still been difficult for him….he had been younger and weaker then. He knew that, now, as a man he would have been able to inter them without a second thought…because that was the way it worked. Shigeko…if she died he would not have been able to…to go on…because that was not nature's way.

Parents did not outlive their children.

There was something that was just…wrong….about a parent burying their child. That was not the natural order of things. Parents died and then their children….and he knew that one day he would die and he would leave her alone in the world…but not at eleven. Not at eleven and not at eighteen either. He would leave her when…when she was his age…or older. When he was in his eighties or nineties and they'd both lived full lives. That was when he would leave her…but not now….and this was not something that either of them needed to worry about.

Or talk about.

"Why not? That's how it works, isn't it? You become an adult and then your dad dies? I mean…nobody I know has parents. You're an orphan and Fukuda is an orphan and Minegishi is an orphan and Shimazaki…well he made himself an orphan…and also Hatori is an orphan and Shibata…well he and his parents don't talk anymore so that's like being an orphan…and I guess Serizawa still has his mom but he doesn't really talk to her because she's better off without him, he says, and also-" said Shigeko

"Shigeko. No. You will never become an orphan, at least not until I'm in my eighties or nineties. I will never leave you…now let's stop speaking about these matters. I have a birthday to get to, yes? So come on, let's go already." Said Suzuki. He turned and left the bathroom. She followed him. Good. She made no move to talk about death, his or hers, which was also good. She didn't need to think about that. He had no intention of leaving her. Not now and not when she turned eighteen either. He was going to stay with her for the rest of his life.

Which was going to be a very long one.

A long life spent ruling the world with her at his side. When he got too old then she would still be at his side, of course, and he would leave the world to his Son. Then he and Shigeko could live out the rest of their, well his, days together. Just him and her and their children, well her children that he would help her raise, and maybe whatever man she chose for her husband if he couldn't figure out a way to send him away without arousing her suspicions. She wouldn't need a husband but there was something to be said about romantic companionship…not that he would be saying anything to her about that. No, she was too young for either of them to say anything about that. She was only eleven years old.

Almost twelve.

She would be twelve soon, her birthday was next. She would be twelve and…well she would still be too young for any of that. Too young to be thinking about finding someone and settling down….or whatever else she would want a man for. She wasn't Sho, she didn't have that on her mind, women didn't…well they did….but not in the same way that men did. They worried about marriage and houses and children and not the rest of it…well they did….but not in the same capacity as men did. Yes Shigeko was getting older. She was worrying about her appearance and getting taller and all of that but she was still a child. She still worried about dolls and playing games and…well…the things that someone her age should have been worried about.

Like throwing birthday parties.

"You don't have to knock, dad. Never at the front door when you're visiting your friends and especially not at your birthday party." Said Shigeko as she opened the door for him. He followed her inside and slipped off his shoes. He….seldom visited her friends. Well he had friends here too, the word still felt odd after all this time, but he seldom if ever came here….and for good reason.

This was a place of chaos pure and simple.

"Shimazaki! You know that's not for you! Come on!" said Shibata. There was a crash following his words. A crash, some profanity, and two auras that seemed to be fighting it out. That was…his home was never like this. At least when Sho wasn't around….and maybe Sho would have been happier over here. He did cause a lot of chaos in the home…and Shigeko did like peace….

But she also liked having her brother around for some reason so he decided not to voice that thought.

"See? I told you that he'd try to steal your food…but I guess that this is my fault…anyway, come on. Don't be nervous." Said Shigeko as she took his hand.

"I am not nervous." Said Suzuki as Shigeko led him to the kitchen. He wasn't. He knew these people, he had been living in close proximity to them for years, and anyway he was the one with all the power there. It wasn't at all like when he'd been younger…those had been the times when he'd been nervous. He wasn't nervous at all now…and he had no reason to be….he didn't. He was Suzuki Touichirou, President of Claw and most powerful man on Earth, it took more than a birthday party to make him nervous….and more than the company of others, as well….

He was fine.

"Hey Mob, President Suzuki." Said Minegishi as they walked past him and Shigeko. The patted Shigeko on the head as they passed. A gesture of affection. Something that he had seen pass between them…a very nice gesture. Shigeko deserved affection and…and the reason he stopped in his tracks was that…well they did not seem like they were the affectionate type….but they were…and it was….nice.

Shigeko needed someone like that in her life….someone motherly like that….

"Dad. You don't have to be nervous. I'll be right here, ok? And so will Hatori and Serizawa….well he's going to be more nervous than you….but you'll be ok." Said Shigeko

"I told you already, I'm not nervous." Said Suzuki as he resumed walking. He wasn't. He could share a meal with someone. He could share a meal with a lot of…someones. He could do this….and he did do this. He let Shigeko lead him to a spot at the table where an omelet was waiting for him and a stack of pancakes as well…well the stack was leaning precariously….and also they were grey in color…..

If Shigeko wanted him to be here then he would be here.

"Happy birthday, President Suzuki!" said Shibata as he turned from the stove. He nearly sent Minegishi to the ground. Suzuki didn't think, he just caught them…and so did Shigeko. Right, she could catch her friend on her own…so maybe the best thing to do would have been to let them go….

It was difficult but he did it.

"Yeah, happy birthday….and thanks, I guess." Said Minegishi with much less enthusiasm. They took their plate from Shibata and sat in the seat at the other side of the table…farthest from where he was sitting. Not that it bothered him. No, they could sit wherever they wanted to…well he could have asked them to sit beside him…but that would have been odd…

Also that was Shigeko's seat….which she took, so there. It was a moot point.

Two halves of the table were taken up now. Shibata was still at the stove making…something which smelled sweet. Hopefully Shigeko would not be expecting him to eat that. She knew how he felt about sweet foods. He couldn't stand them, nothing overly sweet anyway. Sugarless cheesecake was good. Cream cheese and jelly sandwiches were also tolerable. Grapefruit was good….there were things that he could eat. Masami had said, before, that feeding him was more difficult than feeding the children. That hadn't been entirely fair…there were foods that he could eat and these…well he could eat this…and he would. Even though the pancakes were grey for some reason he would eat this…because it would make Shigeko happy.

But only after everyone else sat down. That was just good manners.

"Look who I found! Come on, Serizawa, say happy birthday to our President and current birthday boy." Said Shimazaki as he followed the shift in the room's energy which signaled his arrival. He teleported into the middle of the kitchen with Serizawa in tow….a very agitated Serizawa in tow…

Suzuki could fix that.

He took in the extra energy that Serizawa was putting out. He always had to do that when they were in close proximity to one another. For his own sanity, mostly, since that much ambient energy was just…a lot. His aura was bright. Like his and Shigeko's. Serizawa really had that potential to be someone powerful…but his control was the worst that Suzuki had ever seen. Even compared to himself as a child Serizawa didn't even come close. He certainly didn't come close to Shigeko's level of control and she actually WAS a child…but that was alright. Suzuki could fix this. Serizawa was Shigeko's friend after all, her companion, and he made her happy…

And Suzuki wanted nothing more in this life than his Daughter's happiness…and also world domination, of course.

"Happy….happy birthday, President Suzuki!" stuttered out Serizawa as he was deposited into the seat beside Shigeko. She reached out and gave his hand and his aura a reassuring pat.

"Shimazaki, come on, you know that I'm the only one who can wake him. Me or Hatori." Said Shigeko. She held Serizawa's hand while she spoke….but she also looked at Shimazaki. He wanted to tell her to stop looking at him, she didn't need to, and it didn't matter if she looked at him or not when she spoke to him. He couldn't tell…or maybe he could, Suzuki had never sat down and asked him how it all worked, but…well there were a thousand other people for Shigeko to look at and Shimazaki Ryou did not have to be one to them. He had no idea what she even saw in him…well he was incredibly tall and fit….but so were other people like….well he didn't want her around any men who were tall and fit…so just…she needed to look somewhere else!

Like at Hatori. It didn't matter if she looked at him since he would never be able to return her feelings….if she had them.

"What about Hatori?" asked Hatori as he stretched and walked into the kitchen. Shigeko looked his way now…which was better than her looking at Shimazaki…but really she had no reason to look at Hatori either. At least until he got dressed…or something more approaching dressed than what he was in now.

"Mob's pissed that I beat you and her to waking Serizawa up." Said Shimazaki

"Yeah…maybe don't do that…." Said Hatori as he sat down on the other side of Suzuki. His aura had pulled in closely there, close enough to avoid Serizawa. A fear response. That made sense. Serizawa could have lost control at any moment…though Suzuki did wish that Hatori put more faith in him…not that Hatori knew just what he could do. No, not even Fukuda knew the full extent of his powers and he was going to keep it that way.

"We like being alive, Ryou." Said Minegishi rolling their eyes even though there was no point to it…or maybe there was. There was a sort of….shimmer…to their aura when they did that. What little aura they had. That was a trait that espers like them had, ones who's powers relied on outside manipulatives. Their aura was small and spread out. There was a bit of them in all of the plants in that room. The spider plants hanging from the ceiling, the indoor herb garden on the windowsill, the flowers on the table….Minegishi felt like they were positively everywhere around him.

It was a good feeling.

"God, I try to be helpful for once in my life and this is how-" said Shimazaki

"Hatori, you forgot to say 'happy birthday' to my dad." Said Shigeko

"Oh, fuck…sorry. Happy Birthday Suzu-President Suzuki. Sorry." said Hatori quickly. Suzuki frowned but said nothing about the cursing. Telling people not to curse was like telling the tide not to come in. Sure he could stop it but, really, it took more effort than it was worth.

"You also forgot to put pants on." Said Minegishi

"Fuck! Sorry! Just-" said Hatori as he got up. He hit the table as he got up but Shigeko managed to catch it and keep it still before the thought of doing so even entered Suzuki's mind. She was younger than him and her reflexes were better…and that was fine. The strangest thought entered his mind, well strange thoughts had always entered his mind since he had been aware of his own thoughts, but this thought was one of the strangest. Shigeko, if she ever got the idea in her head, could have…well she wasn't her brother but if she ever got the idea in her head to fight him then…well her reaction time was very good…but that thought was insane. This was Shigeko.

She didn't think those sorts of thoughts.

She wasn't a violent person. That was why he had never taught her naginata or kendo, since women could do kendo these days, because she would not have enjoyed it…and also he would not have enjoyed teaching her. He didn't think that he could strike her, with or without armor on, and he knew that she would never have been able to strike at him. Sho was different. He would have loved kendo…but he would have been terrible at it. He did not have the discipline for it…and also the last thing that boy needed was a shinai in his hands. No, he would be more likely to terrorize his sister with it than an opponent…and also he had struck her in the face with a shinai once years ago…but Shigeko didn't seem to care. Holding grudges was also not in her nature. Caring for people, being kind to hem, that was in her nature.

He loved her for that. She could do the things that he could not. She complimented him in that way.

"Sit down, I don't care." Said Suzuki. He really didn't….well not terribly. If anything he felt overdressed now…and also Shigeko was there….but she didn't really seem to care. Her biggest problem seemed to be Serizawa. She was patting him on the hand again and handing him his cutlery with her powers. He wondered if he was going to ask her to cut his food for him. How a grown man could be so helpless Suzuki could not know…

But better helpless than…well…like some of the other people at this table.

"Wait, so he doesn't have to wear pants? Why do I have to wear clothes if he doesn't have to wear clothes?" asked Shimazaki. Now there was someone who should have been helpless….not that he would have wanted Shigeko help Shimazaki in the many, MANY, ways that she helped Serizawa. He knew that Shigeko had come to her senses and was no longer interested in Shimazaki, Suzuki was not a religious man but he thanked God every day for that, but…well seeing her with him would have been too much. He had been interested in Shigeko, maybe, probably, and….well Shigeko did not need to be with a man who was interested in her! No, wait, that didn't make sense…because if he was not interested in her then why would he have pursued her….well men were not allowed to pursue her….but she could pursue them…

So he would just find whatever man she was pursuing and make him an offer he couldn't refuse. There. Problem solved…just so long as that problem was never Shimazaki Ryou.

"Because he's not covered in tattoos, Ryou." Said Minegishi as they spooned some fruit onto their plate of grey pancakes. Shimazaki took the spoon from them…and they allowed this…and then he picked up where they left off. He…had no idea why they would let him do this…since they were more than capable of spooning their own food onto their pancakes and….and he had no idea why he wanted to flip the table over…

He didn't, of course, because he was forty five, not five.

"You know he could be. Hatori could be covered in tattoos and we've just never seen them because-" said Shimazaki as he put the spoon back into the bowl and then folded Minegishi's pancake over for them. That was not how you ate a pancake…and also…also they could have done that for themselves…..and also if they had asked he could have done that for them…and with his powers too so they didn't have to deal with someone in their space like Shimazaki was. He really was too far into their space. Suzuki had never even sat so close to Masami during meals and she had been his wife.

"I'm not!" said Hatori. Suzuki held the table down that time. Honestly. Young people were so overly dramatic…not that he wasn't still young…well he wasn't. He was forty five…old enough to be Hatori's father….so maybe it would have been more accurate to say that children were overly dramatic.

"We would still like you if you were….but only as friends. Only ever as friends." Said Shigeko. This time she reached across and patted Hatori on the hand. That was…well he knew that Hatori would never accept her feelings…and she had sworn, before, that she no longer had those feelings for him…but it would have been easier if she did. Then that would have been alright. She would have had someone she wanted to be with and then Suzuki could have told Hatori to be with her, and he would have had no other choice but to obey, and then it would have been good too because he would have had no attraction towards Shigeko…yes….that would have all worked out perfectly…

But things so rarely worked out perfectly…or even easily.

"So…breakfast time?" asked Minegishi as they reached over the table and took Shigeko's hand off of Hatori's. Shigeko pulled her hand back and looked down at her plate. She must have been hungry. Suzuki knew that he was….or at least he would have been if the pancakes hadn't been grey….and he had no idea why they were that color. Food dye? But why grey of all colors….red would have been better...red was the best color after all…

"I'm almost done….there. Fruit in syrup if anyone wants it." Said Shibata as he put another bowl next to the fruit bowl. This bowl had fruit in some kind of sweet smelling syrup. The other bowl just had cut up fruit in it. Minegishi said nothing. They simply used the hanging vine of a spider plant to drag the bowl of fruit, it looked like strawberries, over to themselves…which was odd because he had heard them say before, clearly, that sugar was poison. Sugar was poison and…yet here they were, eating sugary foods…and he had no idea why there were doing that….

They were truly fascinating.

"Wait! We should do presents first! I mean….me and Sho always do presents first." Said Shigeko. Minegishi put their folded over pancake down and sighed before pulling a wrapped square out from under the table. A present…for him. They had gotten him something….a gift. They had gotten him a gift….

What did that mean?

Did that mean…well he knew that it was his birthday so it must have just been a birthday present and those had no real meaning….and also he knew that he paid their salary so really he was getting himself a gift but…but they had gone and gotten him something when they hadn't had to. He also knew, from Shigeko and his own observations, that they were frequently exhausted….so that meant that they had ignored their own exhaustion and gotten him something…

The table jumped again…and he only had himself to blame.

"My presence is presents enough." Said Shimazaki

"But that's-" said Shigeko

"I honestly don't care either way." said Suzuki. He didn't care if he got anything from anyone…well anyone other than Shigeko. She always got him a new shirt or a new tie or something like that. He liked Sho's gifts as well, he always gave him a hand drawn card….but not this year. This year he was….well Sho was away with Fukuda living his own life….and he didn't care. Sho was a good artist, that was what he cared about, and his work was always impressive but Suzuki had folders up folders filled with his work so…so this year's card would be no great loss….

Really he didn't care if he got anything at all for his birthday….from anyone…anyone but Shigeko.

"But…here. I got you this." said Shigeko. She pulled a smaller bag out of her bag. Not the one she always wore over her shoulder, no, her backpack. So that was why she had brought it. Shigeko…she was so thoughtful. He felt the bag. Glossy. The front said 'happy birthday'. He knew this bag, it had be reused form Sho's birthday. He didn't mind. It wasn't the bag that mattered, it was what was in it….mostly likely another shirt…

He was right…and he was wrong as well.

"Aw, Mob. That's a great gift….hang on, let me take a picture." Said Shibata as he fumbled through his pockets presumably for his phone. Suzuki didn't see what was so…photographable….about this. Shigeko had just gotten him a birthday present. She had just gotten him a new t-shirt…and now he had another…and this one was….

He loved this shirt.

"I've got it." Said Hatori. He pulled his phone out quickly and Suzuki could hear a series of shutter noises even though phones had no shutters. That made no sense…not much of this made sense. He remembered this part of the birthday ritual well. Mother had done the same thing. She had taken photographs of him holding up every single gift he got….for some reason. He didn't understand it. Not when he'd been a child and not now as an adult…

But Shigeko was leaning in close and she was smiling and that was what mattered.

"Wow, it's amazing! I've never seen anything like it!" said Shimazaki. Minegishi elbowed him in the side.

"Get a new shtick, Ryou. The blind jokes are getting boring." Said Minegishi

"I can feel you smiling, Toshi, and that's what matters." Said Shimazaki. They were not smiling….well they were…but they should not have been. That hadn't been funny…not at all…and Minegishi did not have to humor him like that.

"Do you like it, dad?" asked Shigeko. Suzuki nodded. He really did. This was a new t-shirt, it was soft, and there was no tag. All perfect. She knew how much he hated tags…and clothes which weren't sot…and she knew that he had started wearing t-shirts for the first time in his life…and just with all of those it would have been perfect but….well even if it had been rough and itchy and with the biggest tag in the world right at that itchy part of his neck….it still would have been perfect…just for what it said.

World's greatest dad….yes, he was the world's greatest dad now wasn't he?

"Yes. It's perfect. Thank you, Shigeko." said Suzuki. Shigeko leaned over and hugged him. He held her back. Even though it felt strange, holding her with other people watching, he still did it. For her. He made her happy, that was his job.

He was the world's best dad after all.

"Well there's no way I'm going to be able to top that. Happy birthday, Suzuki…you don't have to hug me." Said Hatori as he handed him a parcel wrapped in paper that Suzuki strongly suspected had been left over from Christmas. He tore along the tape. That was how you were supposed to open a present. You were supposed to tear along the paper to keep it nice. Like mother had taught him. It took a moment but…well that was how presents were meant to be opened.

This was why he much preferred gift bags.

"Now I'm regretting wrapping mine." Said Minegishi. They reached into their front pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He made eye contact with them. They held it. They held eye contact with him and lit their cigarette. Suzuki got the distinct feeling that he had just been challenged….and he didn't even know why.

"Here, dad, let me help. If you rip the paper it goes faster….especially since Hatori used so much tape." Said Shigeko as she took his present from him. He let her. She was much faster at this than he was….and also if she wanted to open his present then he had no reason to stop her. If he couldn't stop her from drinking and smoking, and he hoped that she wasn't about to start up again with either, then how could he stop her from opening up his birthday present.

Besides, he was happy to see her smile like that.

"Sorry….I'm the one who wrapped it…sorry. I've never done that before and-" said Serizawa

"It's ok, Serizawa, dad's just very particular about how he unwraps his presents. Here, it's done now, see? Dad got another shirt…and now I wish that I had gotten something else." Said Shigeko as she handed him his new shirt. This was another Space Invaders shirt. Defending the Galaxy since 1973….wait…

"This is a misprint. This game wasn't invented until 1978." Said Suzuki

"It's for your birthday. You know, since you were born in 1973?" asked Hatori. Suzuki blinked. He got that. That was actually kind of funny. He didn't laugh, though, he couldn't laugh. Not like how normal people laughed. It was more like rapid and heavy breathing. It was unpleasant to hear. That was why he didn't do that.

His aura gave enough away.

"Oh. That's very clever and funny. Thank you very much Hatori." Said Suzuki

"Picture! Hang on, we need to take a picture." Said Shibata as he finally got his phone from his pocket. Hatori leaned in close but, true to his word, did not hug him. It was a good picture, or at least he would have been if not for the shift in the energy around them. He felt Shimazaki behind him…but as quick as he appeared he disappeared back into his chair. Minegishi rolled their eyes but said nothing. That was…he had no idea what they meant by that…and also he had no idea why he cared how they reacted to Shimazaki…or to anything. He didn't care about them…and he had no reason to stare at them…or care when they shoved a gift in his direction.

He did care. He cared a lot.

He made sure that his aura did not give it away. This feeling that he had that he knew that he should not have had. This feeling that he knew that he should have exorcised long ago. He…well he didn't know how to exorcise it. This feeling usually went away on it's own…in time. He had no idea how much time it would take…and how much he had…and he didn't want to think about this anymore. About her anymore. About THEM anymore. He just…he focused on opening his gift and….

Oh.

"Memorize it." Said Minegishi. Suzuki nodded and stared down at what he had been given. He had no idea what he had been expecting, well another shirt maybe, or maybe….well he had no idea what he had been expecting but he should have known to expect a book. Minegishi loved to read. He had seen them reading, whenever he had seen them, and they hadn't been playing with Shigeko or caring for her in some way. They loved to read so of course they would have wanted to hare that love of reading with others….and he counted as others…but why him? Why him more than anyone else? Why…why had they thought about him in that way?

They thought about him.

The thought makes him feel like….well he knows that it makes no logical sense but the thought makes him feel like he needs to run away. He feels like he needs to run for his life…and hide…but also be there. She had…THEY had….thought of him. They had thought of him and they hadn't had to and…and this was…this was….

"You're supposed to say 'thanks' dad." Said Shigeko. Right. He had been thinking for too long. If he had lost track of the time then it had been too long. Right. This was….he needed to ground himself. Nothing had started to float, nothing had broken, and….yes. He hadn't embarrassed himself…and now all he had to do was say thank you and then get could eat and then begin his day….there….he could do that…..

"Thank…thank you, Minegishi." Said Suzuki. They raised the space where an eyebrow would be and then ashed their cigarette right on the floor…a habit that Shigeko had picked up from them it seemed…but that was…well he hated smoking but they did it and…and he could look past that…not that he had to but…well it seemed like something that he could look past…

Not that he knew why he would have to look past that.

"Just memorize it." Said Minegishi. Suzuki nodded and looked down….'Parenting Made Easy'…well then. That was…he knew how to parent his children. He was doing a great job parenting his children. Shigeko thought so and…well he had already accepted the gift and…well women knew more about these things so…so he would read and memorize this book.

Even though he didn't really want to.

"Minegishi always says that when they give someone a book. They don't mean anything by that so….um….let's eat. Thanks for the food!" said Shigeko before she pulled her plate close and began to eat. Everyone followed suit, Suzuki included. It was easier to follow her lead. She knew about these things, birthdays and such, and he….well he would always follow her lead.

He didn't get much enjoyment out of these birthday rituals….but today…was…somewhat enjoyable. Just somewhat.


	482. Coloring in my Sketchbook

Baby sis liked to color.

She didn't know how to draw yet but she did know how to color….sort of. She didn't really know about coloring in the lines…or which colors went together…or even basic shading but none of those things mattered. She was only two and right now all she wanted to do was color. Sho could help her with that. So far today he had mostly been drawing things for her to color in. Simple things. Cats and dogs and people and houses. Simple shapes, the kind of stuff he did when he was about her age. He could draw better than that now and stuff but he didn't want to make it too complicated for her. She was only a baby after all…or maybe a really little kid…but she wasn't him and that was the point.

She was not him.

Sho felt like, for his whole life, that dad had been trying to make him into a smaller version, like a clone or something, of him…and that wasn't how stuff worked. Sho was Sho and dad was dad and…well dad could go suck a bag of dicks if he was going to be like that. He wanted dad to go and suck a bag of dicks. Like someone hid in a public bathroom and chopped them off specifically for dad to suck. That would have been awesome. He wanted that for dad…and he never wanted baby sis to want that to happen to him….so he didn't push her to draw better and color better and hold her crayon the right way or anything like that.

Even if it was kind of hard not to correct her sometimes.

"I draw too! I draw Sho!" said baby sis as she filled in the outline of a person in red. She did him in red and herself in pink. That….made sense. His aura was red and she wore a lot of pink…but her aura was red too. But he wasn't going to say anything to her about that….or about how she really needed to color in the lines. When he'd been little, her age, he'd been able to color in the lines. Mom had said so. She had said that he had even been able to color in the lines better than big sis….

Not that it was a competition.

If baby sis was too little to color in the lines or didn't want to then he wasn't going to stop her. This was good practice, maybe, for when he and Emmy had kids. He was going to be nice to them all the time even if they did stuff like this. He was going to be the nicest dad ever, and uncle too for when big sis had her kids, and also he was already the nicest big brother ever so…so he was getting there. He just had to keep on being nice.

Even if she was really, really, REALLY going out of the lines.

"That's really nice, baby sis. You're doing great!" said Sho. She put her crayon down and held out her hands. She did that thing where she cupped them together. She wanted an M&M. She got rewards when she did good things. Her mom sometimes gave her pieces of fruit and stuff when she put her toys away and ate all her dinner and stuff. Sho….well he wasn't supposed to give her M&M's like he was because she went sugar crazy but….well he couldn't say no to her.

Big brothers did not say no to their little sisters.

"Sho! Now! Please!" said Mukai as she shoved her little baby hands in his face. Sho reached into the M&M's bag with his powers and pulled out one for her. One and only one. A plain one, too, since she didn't like the peanut ones. She sucked on them until the color was gone and then she spat them out….and that was gross…and not in the good way. Not that he was ever as mean as to call her gross. No, that was not at all what a good big brother said to his little sister.

Being a good big brother was hard sometimes.

"Here, you can have one, ok?" said Sho as he put it into her hand. She ate like a bird when he tried to feed her by hand and her baby spit got everywhere. He needed his hands clean and not sticky for what he was doing. She was coloring in one of his sketchbooks, she could have that one since it wasn't important pictures anyway. Sho was working on something important here and he didn't want to get all sticky.

Well important to him, anyway.

"Thank you please!" said baby sis. She knew that you were supposed to say that to be polite but he got the idea that she didn't fully know what she was saying. She could talk more than the last time he saw her but she couldn't talk like a kid yet. Maybe that meant that she was still a baby. He didn't know. The internet had called her a toddler, because she toddled instead of walking, but three year olds were also called toddlers but they were definitely kids.

He knew, he could remember being three.

He remembered sitting at the work table with big sis while mom taught them how to read. He knew hiranga by then, some of it, and mom had been so happy. She used to give him and big sis candy as rewards too. M&M's and Skittles and stuff. Big sis always got more because she knew more than he did…because she was older. Dad, when he came back, had been really impressed because she had read a book to him…even though she just mostly remembered what had happened….and then when Sho hadn't been able to read dad had said that he was a-

"Sho!" shouted Mukai. She was tugging on the sleeve of his jacket now and shoving a crayon in his face, practically up his nose. Right. He had to take care of her. That was something that he had been trusted with. Her mom had called him the best babysitter in all of the Seventh Division…which wasn't saying much considering the weirdos they had working here…but he still had to live up to his title.

And that meant not ignoring baby sis when she needed something.

"What's up?" asked Sho as he took the crayon out of his nose. It smelled like chocolate…probably because she smelled like chocolate. Maybe he needed to stop giving her chocolate….but if he did that then she would have been upset with him and he had no idea what he would do if she was upset with him. She might have decided that she didn't love him anymore….or something….

Or she might have just started crying.

"Again." said baby sis as she took her crayon from his hand. Again. She might have wanted another drawing or another M&M or another piggy back ride or another stroller ride or something that had happened a week ago that he hadn't been there for. Babies were kind of hard to understand in that way….or maybe he was just clueless. Either one would have made sense.

"Again what?" asked Sho. He made an effort not to sound frustrated at all…even though he knew that the 'again' game could go on for hours and end in tears…but if that happened then he would deal with that. He was the big brother after all and that was what big brothers did, they dealt with things.

"Again! Again!" said baby sis again. She didn't get it now, about explaining herself, but that was ok. It didn't make Sho feel frustrated at all. This was part of being the older sibling. This was nothing compared to what he had put baby sis through. Nothing at all.

"Again what, Mukai?" asked Sho

"Again!" said baby sis. This time she tried to poke his eye out. That would have sucked. He wouldn't have been able to see depth anymore and that would have really fucked with his drawing and stuff…and also he'd only have one eye…was it ok to even feel bad about the thought of losing an eye when Shimazaki didn't have any? He didn't know….and it wasn't like Shimazaki was around and shit for Sho to ask him.

No, he was back with the others….and Minegishi….stupid boring annoying Minegishi…

"You want me to draw you another picture? Again picture?" asked Sho. Baby sis nodded and then brought her crayon down onto his sketchbook. He pulled it away but a second too soon. Now there was a big red mark in the middle of his drawing…and that had been one of his important ones…and one of his complicated ones…

But he was not going to get mad.

"Mukai….I told you not to do that before….ok? Give me your sketchbook and I'll draw something for you…alright?" asked Sho. He forced himself to smile while he said that…even though it hurt his face. It felt like his smile was stapled on…but maybe that was good. Maybe feeling that would remind him to keep on smiling. He had to keep on smiling. He could not get mad at Mukai. Big sis never got mad at him and he could never get mad at Mukai, either, even though she was only his pretend sister.

"Again picture! Draw again!" said baby sis. She leaned over him and tried to draw in his sketchbook again…and she made another line…another line right through the middle. He had been working on that for a while…a long while. She…she was a baby and she didn't know how long he had been working on that for…or who that was a picture of….so…so he was not going to get mad at her.

It was easier said than done.

"See? You did it again. Just…stop it." Said Sho. He moved his sketchbook over her head with his powers…and now she thought that he was playing keep away. Now she was jumping up and down. He kept his sketchbook in the air while he quickly drew her another outline of a person. One circle and then a whole lot of rectangles…not even the right way….but he had to get this done.

"Here. See? I drew you another person. This person can be whoever you want it to be. It can be me or you or big sis, you don't remember her but she'd be blue, or your mom or your dad…well you don't have one but you can make a pretend one and-" said Sho as he showed her the drawing he had done. She didn't care. She was still jumping up and down trying to get at the book above her head.

"Sho drawing! Sho book! Here! Now!" said Mukai as she jumped up and down. She wasn't going to get tired anytime soon, he had given her way too many M&M's for that, and…and he wished that he had maybe mixed some sleeping pills in with those M&M's. Not to hurt her but just to make her stop.

"No, that's mine. Well they're both mine but…here. You can have this one, ok? Just…stop it." Said Sho. He didn't know what to do. When big sis said that he couldn't have something he just…did this exact same thing. He asked her and asked her and asked her until she gave in and said yes. Was this how she felt? Was this how he acted? Like….like a two year old? Did she feel the same way? Like she wanted to pull her hair out?

He didn't know…and he didn't pull his hair out either.

"No! That! Now!" said baby sis. Sho covered his eyes with his hands and took a deep breath. Why did she want his things? She had her own things! She was being so…so….he didn't want to think badly of her but….she was being like…him. He didn't know why. He had done his best to make sure that she ended up being someone better than who he was and…and she was all…like this….and….

And he sucked as a big brother.

"Mukai…come on. Do you want…you want another M&M? Or do you want another ride? Or do you want to draw with markers? We can draw with my special artist markers even though you always push them in too much…or we could-" said Sho. Her mom had told him to distract her when she got like this….and he was trying his best….but she was tugging on his hair now and shouting….and her hands were somehow wet and sticky at the same time….

"Want that! Want drawing! Now! Want it now!" said Mukai

"You….you said 'it' and….and that's a good thing. You've never said that before and I'm happy for you, baby sis." Said Sho. He couldn't look at her. He had to keep his head in his hands. It was dark here. It was dark here and he needed the darkness. He needed to be able to think. He needed to think and breathe and count like the book said. One….two….one and a half….two and a half…one and three quarters….two and three quarters….

He didn't get very far.

"Sho! Now! It now! Want it now!" shouted baby sis as she tugged at another fistful of his hair. She…was just a baby and…and she didn't know any better…and it was his job to teach her how to be better. He was the big brother here, not the little brother, and he had to act like a big brother.

It was hard. He fucked up.

"You can't have it now! It's mine!" shouted Sho. It was like he was watching someone else. He…he knew that words had been said but…but it took his brain a minute to figure out that he had said them…even though it was his stupid brain that had told him to say that shit in the first place! Fuck you brain! Either do your job or…or…or get brain worms!

He wished that he had brain worms.

Then…then what he had done wouldn't have been his fault. It was his fault. He had shouted at her. That had been him. It had felt like someone else had been controlling him but…not. That had been all him. He had been the one to shout…and he had been the one to make his baby sister cry. Pretend or not he should not have made her cry like that. Her little eyes were full of tears and…and she was walking backwards from him…like she was scared….

She was scared of him.

"I-I'm sorry just…here!" said Sho. He tossed the stupid sketchbook at her…and then he ran away. He ran to his room as fast as he could and he threw himself onto the bed. He pulled the covers up over his head and covered his mouth with both of his hands. He tried to keep the shouts in…but he couldn't. He had yelled at her. He had yelled at his own baby sister. He was the worst human being who had ever lived.

Worse than dad.

At least dad never pretended to be anything other than what he was. He was crazy, he was a jerk, and he didn't like Sho at all. Sho…he liked baby sis…he loved her…but he had still been a jerk to her. She was crying, now, in the other room and that was all because of him. He had been a jerk and…and maybe that was just who he was. He had come from a jerk and that meant that he had jerk DNA inside of him and…and maybe there was no escaping that. Just like how big sis had gotten her bossiness from dad he must have gotten his jerkiness from him too….

He was the worst.

He held his hands over his mouth until he ran out of screams. He kept them there until he couldn't scream anymore….and then the crying started. How could he have done that to his own little sister? How could he have made her feel that bad? What was he crying for? He wasn't the one who had someone a million times bigger than him screaming! She…she was so small and sad…and he had hurt her feelings….and now she was crying and she must have felt smaller than she already was….Sho knew what it was like to feel that small….

Nobody ever should have had to feel that small.

He bit himself. He had made her feel small so he had to feel bad. He bit himself as hard as he could…which wasn't hard enough to break his skin because he was a baby like that. He should have bit himself hard enough to break his skin. That was what he deserved. That was what someone like him, someone who had hurt the feelings of someone small and helpless who trusted him, deserved. He deserved that and so much more. He deserved to be boiled in oil. He deserved to have his whole body covered in citrus juice…like lemon juice and stuff…and he deserved to have his organs took out of him while he was alive and then put into jars like in that movie….and he deserved to be trapped in a dimension cube….like in that other movie…and he deserved….

Well he deserved all the bad things in the world but right now he was going to have to settle for biting his drawing hand really hard.

He bit his hand even though he had promised big sis years ago that he would never do anything to hurt himself ever again. He bit his drawing hand even though he needed it to draw with. If he never drew again then that would have been a good punishment. He had yelled at her over a drawing….a drawing?! He had a million of them. It wasn't like he could never draw again…and…and that…that hadn't even been a good drawing! That had just been another drawing of….of someone who….of someone who he had drawn before…someone who he missed….someone who…someone who would never love him back….

So it didn't matter if baby sis scribbled all over it with her little baby crayon….or hit him over the head with it.

"Wake up! Wake up Sho!" said baby sis as she hit him over the head with his sketchbook. He could feel the rings hitting him. He deserved to be hit by her, he had yelled at her, and he deserved her taking her anger out on him…well he would have if she had been angry. She didn't sound mad at all.

He pulled the covers off of his head.

She was smiling. Her whole mouth was covered in chocolate…and her hands too…and she was smiling. She had marker all over her face and arms…and she smelled like soda and…and how long had he been in there for? Sometimes he lost track of the time…he hadn't been asleep like she thought but….but he had lost track of the time…really badly this time…

But that was ok. She wasn't mad at him anymore.

"Good morning!" said baby sis. Sho…it hadn't been all night. These apartments didn't have windows but he knew that it hadn't been all night. If it had been then here mom would have come looking for her…and also Fukuda would have come looking for him…so….it wasn't morning yet…but it had been long enough for her to get up to baby mischief….but also long enough for her to stop crying…

But that didn't mean that he was off the hook.

"Come here, baby sis, I want to talk to you about something." Said Sho. He picked baby sis up with his powers and sat her next to him on the bed. When you fucked up you were supposed to say sorry and when stuff happened that someone smaller than you didn't understand then you were supposed to explain it. Like Fukuda did for him. Like the time he had told dad about Emmy. He had said sorry and he had explained why he did it and…and the betrayal had hurt more than anything else in the whole world but…but it had gotten better and now he and Fukuda were ok again.

So he just had to make things ok again with baby sis.

"Again! Sho do again!" laughed baby sis as he brought her in for a landing. Even though he was putting her down on a bed he was still careful with her. He had to be. She was small and so much bad stuff could happen to her. She needed him to keep her safe…and she couldn't feel safe with him if he yelled at her. He knew what it was like when the person who was meant to keep you safe yelled at you…and it wasn't a good feeling at all.

"In a minute. Let me just…explain to you why I got upset, ok?" asked Sho

"This. You for this. This for you." Said baby sis as she shoved the sketchbook into his chest. She…wasn't listening…or maybe she was and she just wasn't acting like it. Either way he wasn't going to stop now…and he wasn't going to get mad at her either…even though she had scribbled on pretty much all of his good sketches it seemed like….but that was ok. This was not worth getting upset with her over.

Very little was worth getting upset with her over.

"Wow…you sure did a lot of coloring." Said Sho as he flipped through the mess she made. This was…a lot of work he would have to do later….but that was ok since he liked to draw and…and he loved her…and he was not going to get upset again.

"You! Me!" said baby sis as she pointed to the pink and red scribbles all over the page. She…had been trying to draw them…and that was ok. She was…smart like that…to draw the both of them. She was such a smart baby like that and he loved her…and he didn't hold it against her…and he was not mad at her at all.

If anything he was mad at himself.

"That's us? You did a good job…but listen. The reason I yelled at you before is…I didn't want you to draw over my stuff, ok? This is…this is important to me, ok? This is a really important thing to me." Said Sho

"This a book." Said Mukai. She slapped the sketchbook just in case he was the one who forgot words all the time and not her. She was so smart like that.

"It is. This is a sketchbook….um….I sketch someone who's really important to me here. See? That's….I told you about Shimazaki before. That's him and…and I draw him a lot because I miss him and…and I love him and stuff." Said Sho. He had told her before….but that had been when she had been too little to tell other people. That had been back when she'd been a baby-baby, not a toddler baby, but…he could trust her with this…right? He could. He loved her.

"I love you!" said Mukai. She leaned down and kissed his arm. He kissed the top of her head while she did that. She got tired of kissing, well more like licking, him and then bit him. He knew that he should have said something but…well her little baby bites didn't hurt that much and…and he'd just gotten through doing even worse to himself earlier anyway so it didn't matter.

"I love you too…but that's not the kind of love that I'm talking about. I'm talking about…stuff that you're too little to understand I guess. Anyway just…you scribbled over something that was important to me and I got mad at you and I yelled and that was wrong so….I'm sorry. Ok? Are we ok?" asked Sho. Baby sis looked at him for a while…like she was thinking about it. For a moment he thought that she might have been thinking it over for real….and that…well that was scary….

She might have been mad at him….she might have never wanted to see him again….

"Again?" asked Mukai. She had every reason to think that Sho would end up yelling at her again. She had every right to think that and…and he wasn't going to get upset with her over that….or ever again. He was never going to yell at her again even if she burnt every sketchbook he had ever drawn or…whatever.

He would never do that to her ever again.

"Again? Mukai, no, I'm never going to yell at you ever again. I promise." Said Sho. He held her little baby hand in his even though hers was sticky and his had a painful bite mark in it. He made sure that he looked right at her with his eyes and his aura when he said this. This was a promise that he was going to do his best not to break.

Not ever.

"Again!" shouted baby sis. She raised her arms up above her head and…oh. That was what she wanted. That was….ok. He could do that. He could do the hell out of that!

"Again ride? Yeah, I can do that! Hang on!" said Sho as he picked her up with his powers. He flew her out of the bedroom and into the living room…where he saw a mess that Fukuda was definitely going to get mad at him about. There were M&M's everywhere….and the walls were all drawn on….and she had spilled his soda….and there were handprints everywhere….and….and this was a big mess….but he could clean it up.

That was what big brothers did.

Big sis cleaned up after him all the time…so he could do the same for baby sis. That was what it was to be the older sibling. You took care of your younger sibling even when they were being a complete and total dick hole…not that Mukai had ever been a dick hole, no, she was just a baby. She had an excuse. He didn't, though, and when he got back to big sis he was going to act less like Mukai and more like…well someone who didn't act like a two year old.

He at least owed her that much after all that she'd done for him….being there and stuff without ever once yelling at him….he missed her so much…even if they didn't color together anymore….


	483. Alone in Our Room

Mob got the feeling that Sho was not the one who had been stealing from her.

She knew because her stuff had still gone missing despite him being gone. There, between her mattress and her box spring, was nothing. Well not nothing, she had the books she borrowed from Minegishi without asking there as well as her lighter and the pipe that Shimazaki had gotten her. She used to have spare pens there, and flour, and a cigarette case too. Well the cigarette case was still there but there weren't any cigarettes in it anymore.

Which was weird.

Sho was the only one who would have had any reason to steal from her. She hardly ever let him smoke with her, he needed more moderation than she did because he didn't need to control his powers, so that was the perfect reason for him to steal from her….but he hadn't been stealing from her. He was gone. He was still in England. Yes, her stuff had gone missing in England but also in Amsterdam, where they had just been, and Oslo where they were now. Sho had been gone for weeks and weeks now…and so had her stuff.

Which meant that Sho hadn't been the one who had been stealing from her.

The list of suspects was a short one. There was Shimazaki and…well Shimazaki. He liked to steal things. He said that he didn't see why he couldn't just take things that didn't belong to him…even though that was stealing and stealing was wrong. He had done a lot of wrong things in his life, he had said, so stealing didn't even register. She couldn't think of anyone else to add to her list of suspects….so it must have been him….but he had no motivation….

But this was Shimazaki. He didn't even understand why he did the things he did so how could she?

Mob put her mattress back down and sighed. Good thing she had kept some stuff in her Elsa bag. She was getting tired of wearing this thing all the time but she had to. There was no other way to keep her stuff from getting stolen. She'd have to ask Shimazaki later, without accusing him because that would be mean, why he kept on stealing from her. He had better stuff than she did. He still had a bunch of coke, not the soda, left over from his birthday and plenty of sugar cubes and mushrooms and pens and flower. He had no reason to steal from her…

But, again, this was Shimazaki she was talking about.

This was what it was. Sometimes things were what they were and there was no reason to get upset over them. Like how Sho was gone. He was gone and he was having fun with his girlfriend so she couldn't do anything like call him and ask him to come back because this room was too big without him and the house was too quiet….he was with his girlfriend and he loved her and she couldn't make him come back. That was something that she couldn't change. She couldn't change dad either. He was in the bath now, he had been taking long baths lately, and when he came out he would want to hang out with her and…well she loved her dad. She wanted to go next door and have a sleepover with Minegishi but….well dad needed her….and it was what it was.

Everything was what it was.

Like the joint in her hand was what it was. It was from in her Elsa bag. It was bent, and kind of squished, because she kept it in a makeup bag….but it was still good. It hadn't broken apart and that was what mattered. She didn't want to have to make another one. She just wanted to smoke and just…smoke. That was all.

It made her feel better.

She couldn't change what she felt, what she wanted, what could and could not happen…but she could make herself feel better. She found her lighter at the bottom of her Elsa bag. Somehow Shimazaki knew that this was blue. He was the one who had gotten this for her. He got her things sometimes. She didn't know why, probably because they were friends and he liked to steal, and she liked it. It was nice to have someone thinking of her…a friend. He was a really good friend.

Even if he did maybe steal from her.

"Come on…please work…" said Mob as she tried to flick her lighter on. This was a new one. Shimazaki had gotten her a new one. The old one had been white, which was bad luck Minegishi had said, and this one was blue. She liked blue and she had said that she liked blue….and he had remembered that he liked blue. She would have do something later for him, something nice….

Like a surprise wedding!

Those were things that happened and he wanted to be married to Minegishi. She could tell. He said that he wanted to spend his whole life with them and that was what marriage was. It was when two people stayed together for their entire lives. Like her mom and dad…well not her mom and dad…other people who were married. Like Sho and Emmy. They were going to get married and be together forever and then they'd have babies and they'd let Mob play with them…and their babies could be friends with Shimazaki and Minegishi's babies. That was what married people did, they had babies, and if she threw a surprise wedding for Minegishi and Shimazaki then all of her….all of their….dreams would come true!

And then she could plan one for Shimazaki and Hatori…and then she could find a girlfriend for Serizawa….and then she could find a girlfriend for Fukuda….

Fukuda could find his own girlfriend. She didn't know any girls who would like him. She didn't know a lot of people but…well she could find someone for Serizawa much easier than she could for Fukuda. Serizawa was nice. He may have been kind of a scaredy cat…and he didn't have the hang of shaving yet….and also sometimes he forgot to take baths and brush his teeth…and he cried for no reason….and he wore crocs and Minori said that crocs were the worst kind of shoes in the world…even though they were comfortable….even with all of his flaws it would have been a million times easier to find someone for Serizawa than Fukuda.

He was nice.

He was nice, one of the nicest people in the world. He always let her win at games even though he was better than her at pretty much every single videogame ever made. Also he was tall. He was taller than Shimazaki when he stood up straight. He didn't smell good like Shimazaki did though but you got used to him. Also his hair was soft and it fluffed up when you pushed it down…like little clouds and stuff…she'd never seen hair like his before in her entire life. It was cool. He was cool…well not cool-cool but she thought that he was cool. Also he was friends with dad and that was really good. If he could make friends with dad then he could be friends with anyone and being able to make friends with the people in your life was a good thing for a boyfriend to do and stuff….so he would be a very good boyfriend to someone.

She just had to meet a girl and then set him up with her and then he could be happy and all of her friends and family would be with other people.

"Yes!" said Mob as she finally got her lighter to light. It had been sitting in her bag for too long, that must have been it. She lit the end of her joint and inhaled as deep as she could…maybe too deeply. She hadn't been smoking real flower that often. Pens were easier to smoke without people noticing and they didn't make the room smell bad…but her pen was on the charger. She had no other choice….not that she minded this.

It burned going down but it was the kind of burn that she could get used to.

That she was used to…or she had been. She didn't want her tolerance to go too far up but…well she still wanted to be able to smoke. She wasn't going to use moderation tonight, Shimazaki had rolled this and he didn't roll them as thin as she did even though he had to use two papers when she only needed one. She knew that Minegishi was going to be mad at her for not using moderation but….well they were at home in their own bed asleep right now and…well what they didn't know couldn't hurt them…and she wasn't hurting anyone anyway.

Well she was making the house smell weird….but that wasn't so bad.

The room was starting to get smoky…or maybe it was her imagination. She didn't know. Maybe she should have opened a window….but then the rain would have gotten in. The rain and the cold. It was going to be rainy and cold for the whole season. This was the rainy season in Norway…and also the cold season. She couldn't wait until they moved again. Minegishi didn't like it here, it was too cold and not enough plants were awake, and she wanted Minegishi to be happy….and maybe Minegishi would have been happy smoking with her….but then they would have told her to use moderation…and she didn't want to do that.

She just wanted to smoke.

She wanted to smoke but she also….well she wanted to smoke with someone. It was always more fun with someone else. That way she would have had someone to talk to and laugh with and stuff. Like if she had been with Shimazaki then she could have told him that her socks felt good and then he would have told her that she always said that…and that was funny…and then they would have traded socks like they did that one time….and he had stretched her sock out really bad…and Minegishi had said that they were acting ridiculous….and then Sho had been mad at her when he found out…..which made sense since Sho was in love with Shimazaki…however that worked.

She wanted to ask him.

She wanted Sho to have been there sitting on the other side of the room, on his bed even though this room only had the one bed in it for her, and she would have even smoked with him while she asked. That way he might have been more opened to telling her how his heart worked. How he could have been in love with two people at once. She used to be in love with Hatori, before she did that incredibly stupid thing, and while she had been in love with him she hadn't even thought about any other boys. Not even that boy she kissed….she sort of missed him…even though she didn't know him. She had even been in love with him…without even having had known him. She just knew that he was called Hanazawa Teruki and he had blond hair and blue eyes and he was an esper like her and he had gotten accidentally captured and she had betrayed dad by setting him free….and also she knew that Hanazawa Teruki was a really good kisser…well she thought so, anyway, since he had been the only person that she had ever kissed…and ever would kiss since she didn't know any boys at all her own age….but that was ok. The people she loved most in the whole world had people they were in love with and that was god enough for her.

Even her own little brother!

She had no clue whatsoever how his heart worked….well that was normal for her, she had never been able to get a clue, but…well when it came to Sho she really didn't have the first clue. She knew that sometimes boys liked other boys, most of the love stories in the manga underneath Minegishi's bed had boys being in love with other boys, and she knew that it made sense for Sho to be in love with Shimazaki. He was tall and he smelled good and his tattoos were cool and he felt good to hug and he was nice….most of the time…and also he acted like a crazy person and Sho liked that…so it made sense for Sho to be in love with Shimazaki….even though he was also in love with Emmy.

How could he be in love with two people at once?

Some people liked both. Shimazaki liked both and so did Minegishi….but Shimazaki was bi and Minegishi was…something else that she couldn't remember the name of…but it also meant that they liked both…so maybe Sho was one of those things. She had never asked him. She wanted to, though, she really did. She wanted to know how his heart worked even though it was none of her business. Hearts were very private things and….well it didn't matter since he already had someone he was planning on marrying. He loved Emmy and when they grew up they were going to get married and then Sho would move away….far away…and then she'd be all alone…

Like now.

She'd be alone in their room smoking and he would be off ruling the world with his family and…and it would be her and dad. Her and dad and….well he and dad could smoke together….but no. Dad got really weird when he got high….and so did Sho…but Sho was a better kind of weird and….and she didn't even want to get high with him but…but she did want him to be there with her and….and she just….she wished that Sho would just come back from England already! She wished that he would just…just….just come back! He had his whole life to be with Emmy! They only had so much time together before they grew up and he got married and left her all alone and she wished that he would just come back and-

And maybe she wished too hard.

She dropped her joint onto the rug. It didn't catch fire, thankfully, but it did go out….but that was ok. It was pretty much just a roach at this point. Even if it wasn't she wouldn't have cared. Her phone was ringing…and that was Sho's ringtone. Everyone had their own ringtone….nobody ever called her but they all had their own ringtones….and that one was Sho's! He was calling her! She pulled her phone off the charger with her powers…and pulled a little too hard. The charger was still attached but….well that didn't matter. Nothing mattered, not anymore.

Sho was calling!

"Sho! I'm so happy to hear from you! I missed you so much!" said Mob. She…maybe should have hit the green button. That maybe would have been the right thing to do. She took the phone away from her ear and pushed the green button. It had been so long since anyone had called her that she had forgotten how to answer the phone….she had forgotten…

Somehow she had forgotten!

"Big sis? What're you laughing at?" asked Sho. Mob stopped laughing….well she did her best to stop laughing. Right. She had to talk to Sho….she could talk to Sho! She could talk to Sho and he had called her…and he never called her…but she could hear his voice again!

"I forgot how to answer the phone…but that's ok! I figured it out!" said Mob. She covered her mouth to keep from laughing….and that just made her laugh some more.

"What? How did you forget how your phone worked? Even dad knows how his phone works and he can't even do Netflix on his own." said Sho. Mob shook her head and buried her face in her knees. She had to stop laughing…but….but….that was no funny!

"It's true! Dad doesn't know how Netflix works! You're so funny Sho! You've been gone for so long that I forgot how funny you were!" laughed Mob

"I'm not that funny….were you smoking again?" asked Sho

"Um…yes….a lot." Said Mob

"….with Shimazaki?" asked Sho. There was something in his voice…and Mob didn't need to be some kind of clue having person to know that he was upset with her…and he had every reason to be upset with her.

"No! I would never…well I would but not the way you think! I'm not in love with him and I would never-" said Mob. No. Her little brother could not think that she was some kind of boyfriend stealer! Not that Shimazaki was Sho's boyfriend….but he was Minegishi's boyfriend and she would never have stolen Sho's boyfriend or Minegishi's boyfriend or anyone's boyfriend! Cheating was wrong!

"Not so loud! Do you want dad to hear you?!" said Sho

"Of course not…and he's taking a bath anyway. I'm in our room…or I guess that it's my room now…I mean it'll always be our room even if you don't live here anymore…and I wished that you still lived here and I miss you so much!" said Mob

"I miss you too….big sis…even if you were smoking without me…and I'm sorry that I was pissed off at you before. I know that you don't like Shimazaki like that….I mean I don't know why you don't like him like that but I know that you don't like him like that…and I shouldn't have been an asshole like that." Said Sho

"Sho, no, you aren't an a-word. You're my little brother. Sometimes you can be sort of mean but I deserved it there. You thought that I was after the boy you were in love with. I would have been upset if you had been after the boy that I was in love with….I mean I don't have anyone that I'm in love with but if I did then I know that you wouldn't go after him…but just to be safe we should be careful to never fall in love with the same boy." Said Mob

"Can you maybe be quiet about that? Dad might come out of the bath and hear you…and Shimazaki might hear you too if he's awake yet." Said Sho

"He's maybe going to bed now. It's still nighttime here, nowhere near time to get up. Is it daytime yet in England? Is Oslo it's seven thirty seven. What time is it in London?" asked Mob

"It's…um…nighttime too….um….anyway! I called you to say sorry." said Sho

"About what? Is this about how you drank the last of my strawberry milk? Because I forgave you for that a long time ago." Said Mob

"What? No, I don't drink that stuff." Said Sho

"Oh. Is this about the time you accidentally used my toothbrush?" asked Mob

"No." said Sho

"Oh. Is it about how my smoking stuff keeps going missing? Because I thought that it had been you doing it but you've been gone for a while. Now I think that it's been Shimazaki doing it….but if you did take from under my bed then-" said Mob

"No! I never stole from you and…and I can't believe that you would ever think that I would!" said Sho

"I don't think that you are. I think that it's Shimazaki who's been doing it. I know that you love him and all but he does steal all the time." Said Mob

"Big sis…please stop talking about how I…feel…about him." said Sho

"Ok." Said Mob. She didn't think that anyone was listening….but she knew how private love was. Especially being in love with someone who you weren't supposed to be in love with. Dad had weird ideas about love, like who could be in love with who, and that was because he was really old. Minegishi had said so. Old people thought that boys had to be in love with girls and stuff…and also stuff about bloodlines.

Dumb stuff that she didn't care about but dad did…so maybe it was best that she kept her mouth shut.

"Thanks. I just wanted to say that….I'm sorry that I was such an asshole to you before. I mean after I stopped hitting you. I promise that I'll stop being an asshole and I'll stop trying to get extra soda and poptarts out of you…and stuff." Said Sho

"Oh. That doesn't bother me but thanks. You're not an a-word, though, little brother. You're the best little brother in the world and I love you so much." Said Mob. She had no idea why he would have thought that about himself…but her thoughts were still kind of fuzzy. Maybe he felt bad about something….but that made no sense. He had nothing to feel bad about. Even if he had hit her for years and years that was ok. She loved him. She loved him even though he'd hit her…and also that he asked her for extra poptart sometimes.

She was his big sister and she would love him no matter what.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love you too just…I'm sorry! Bye!" said Sho. He said that and then he hung up. She knew how it sounded when a phone was hung up…and that was a weird word because you didn't have to hang up phones anymore because of the future….but….well he had just hung up on her….

"Bye little brother…I love you….but I said that already….bye…" said Mob even though she knew that Sho couldn't hear her anymore. He must have just been in a hurry to talk to Emmy…or hang out with her…or something. Yes. She couldn't feel bad if he was hurrying off to be with his girlfriend. That was a love thing and she could never be upset about love things. She wanted Sho to be in love.

Love was the best feeling in the world.

Sho was getting older and…and they had been together for their entire lives…but now he had someone else to be with. He had a girlfriend and he loved her and…and she was not hurt that he was rushing off to be with her probably. She wanted him to be happy…and she wanted to be happy too. She picked up the joint, well it was a roach now, and lit the end again. She could smoke these if she held them with her powers. Her powers were listening really well, they always did when she smoked, and that was good. With the way she felt now…well her powers wouldn't have been able to listen to her that well…but she was fine. She was fine and she was going to smoke some more…just a little more…

Just so that she could feel better.

She…she wanted her brother back…but she had never really lost him. She still had her brother even though he was back in London. She wanted to call him back and ask him how he'd been, what he'd been up to, if he'd been having fun, if he'd been going to bed at his bedtime, if he'd been eating real food for dinner….but she didn't. She knew what it felt like to be smothered and she was not going to do that to Sho. She knew how dad felt, why he smothered her, how he felt like she was going to leave him and stuff…which was why he always made her promise that she would always be with him…and she would make Sho make no such promise. He loved her and she loved him…and when you loved someone you let them go….no matter how badly you wanted them back….

Even if they hadn't been gone for long.

And she did want Sho back…even though he might have been stealing from her…but that was ok. He was her little brother and she would love him no matter what…and when you loved someone you let them go….

….and you hoped that they came back….you knew that they would come back to you….


	484. Dangerous Stroller Rides

The Seventh Division was the perfect place for stroller rides.

"You want to go faster?" asked Sho as he ran along the endless white hallway with bay sis. This was the perfect place for stroller rides with baby sis. The ground was this super smooth white tile and the hallways went on for forever. Especially when you got close to the top like this. The bottom….well that was where cells were and the Awakening Lab…and they weren't going to go down there. No, they were going to stay at the top where people lived and worked and stuff.

Where the ground was nice and smooth. Good for running.

"Faster! Faster Sho! Faster now!" shouted baby sis. Sho did as she asked and ran even faster. She threw her hands in the air and laughed like she was riding on a rollercoaster. She was so happy she was screaming, but her happy baby screams, which were good.

This was good.

He was being a good big brother. He rounded the corner so fast that she almost tipped over…but he would never have let her tip over. He kept the stroller up with his powers as they ran together. Well he ran and she rode. She was getting too big for her stroller maybe, she could run on her own, but her legs were too short to keep up with him. She didn't mind riding in her stroller, though. she liked it a lot actually.

That was why she was shouting.

"Go faster! Go faster!" shouted baby sis. Sho ran faster. Not much faster, of course, because he had already been running as fast as he could. He had been running so fast that his shoes were sliding on the ground like he'd just been in his socks. Like he'd gone sock skating like he had when he'd been a kid…a littler kid. That had been fun…and this was still fun.

But he couldn't fall down.

Back when he'd gone sock skating he'd fallen down a lot. He'd fallen down but that had been ok. He'd always either had someone to catch him, Shimazaki when he felt like it, and someone to put him back together again, Fukuda when Sho couldn't deal with it on his own. He had Fukuda here and Fukuda would put him back together again if he fell down…but he had baby sis with him too. She was little and if he fell while he was pushing her then she could have gotten hurt.

And she was too little for all of that.

She was only two. She was too little to fall and get hurt. She wouldn't have even understood what had happened if he was to turn a corner too fast, or lose his footing, and all she would have known was that she was hurt. Like when he had been really little. He remembered being hurt and not understanding why. He remembered dad standing over him and him being hurt and…not matter how much he picked at the memory of it he still didn't know why.

Baby sis did not need those kinds of memories in her head.

"I'm going to slow down now, ok? This floor is kind of slippery." Said Sho. This floor was so shiny he wouldn't have been surprised if they had people who waxed this floor after every single step that people took. They certainly had enough Awakened for that. This was the place where they were made after all. This place had entire floors for them…where they lived and…stuff. Lived and worked and got Awakened…and died….people died all the time. People died and the spirits couldn't get up this high…and he wasn't going to look down. He kept on running, he just ran a little slower, but he didn't stop.

If he stopped he might have looked down.

"Faster! Sho! Go faster!" said baby sis. She was kicking her feet now. He had slowed down to a jog. His hair was getting heavy with sweat, it was starting to stick to his head, and his jacket was clinging to him too. It was clinging to him in his arms and his back. A drop of sweat hit him in the eye. It burned a little bit. He knew that he had to go faster, she wanted him to go faster, and he wanted himself to go faster too.

He was starting to look down.

There was a blank spot right under him. A place that stopped his aura. That was a curse room. He had no idea which was worse, the curse rooms or the Awakening Labs, and he didn't want to stand there and find out. The labs were bad places. The labs…that was where they were made. The Awakened. That was where he had been made too…well he had been made in his mom's stomach…but he had been made better there…and there were people under him being made in the same way…but he couldn't feel them.

The curse room was under him.

That was where traitors got put. Traitors and people who needed time outs. Those were room where powers didn't work…because of the curses. There was a guy here who could make curses and for some reason he had made a curse that took away powers. If Sho had been the one in charge he would have told that guy that he had to be head of his own division…in the middle of the ocean or something. Somewhere far from him. Giving powers and taking them away….they did both here….

If he was in charge of baby sis, if he had been the one raising her, then he would have moved.

"Move Sho! Move!" said baby sis. She was kicking her feet and rocking back and forth. He had pretty much stopped at this point. He just needed to catch his breath. He was way too hot...he thought about taking off his jacket…but he had a short sleeved shirt on under this and if he took off his coat then baby sis would have been able to see his scars…and she didn't ever need to see his scars.

He didn't want to scare her like that.

"Give me a second….I just need to catch my breath…and don't look down whatever you do!" said Sho. Telling her not to look down was pretty much the same thing as ordering her to look down. Why did she always have to do the opposite of what he told her?

"Red shoes." Said baby sis before she clicked her heels together like she was trying to go home. At least she had just looked with her eyes and not with her aura. Nothing good would have come from her looking down with her aura. He knew that she lived here and all so she must have had some idea of what happened…but then again she was just a baby. She didn't know what was going on. She thought that the popcorn popper was magic and that she could go down the tub drain if she didn't get out fast enough.

He still didn't want to have to be the one to explain it all to her, though.

"Yeah, you've got red shoes on….they're cool. Just…let me catch my breath." Said Sho as he huffed and puffed. He reached down into the basket under her stroller seat and pulled out his bottle of soda. Baby sis turned around and started to reach out and rock back and forth.

"You want your juice? You still have juice in your sippy cup." Said Sho

"No, grape!" said baby sis

"You have grape juice in your cup." Said Sho

"Want grape!" said baby sis. Sho knew what she wanted. Her mom was kind of weird when it came to food. All she had to drink, as far as soda went, was grape soda. That was the worst…well the second worst kind of soda. The worst kind of soda was that store brand cherry soda that tasted like scratch and sniff markers smelled. The second worst soda was grape soda. It didn't taste like grapes at all…but for some weird reason baby sis liked it.

Probably because her mom like it.

Her mom was weird about food like that. Maybe her mom and his dad could have gotten married. She could have made him ketchup smoothies and she could have made herself and baby sis grape soda floats and then big sis could have had strawberry milk and he could have had soda and they all could have had weird stuff to drink together….gross…and not just because of their drinks. Dad marrying another lady…one who wasn't mom….gross. He didn't think that mom was ever coming back but…still.

Dad didn't need to get married again!

Even though that would have been great…baby sis being his actual little sister. She looked like him and dad so she would have fit in with their family. She fit in with them even better than big sis did. If his dad had to marry another lady then Sho…well it would have been good if he married baby sis's mom….but he didn't want dad to marry someone else….in case he was wrong and mom did come back….if she came back and dad was married again then she could have gotten mad and left again….and well…baby sis had a mom now and she didn't need a dad since she was a girl so….

As much as he loved baby sis….he kind of loved his mom more…or at least he would have if she ever decided to come back.

"I'll let you have some but this isn't grape. It's coke." Said Sho. He held the bottle to her mouth. She wasn't supposed to have soda, not when her mom wasn't around to give it to her, but she wanted it and he was a good big brother. He wanted to make her happy like a big brother was supposed to. Like how big sis always gave him what he wanted even when he wasn't supposed to have it.

He had to thank her again for being so nice to him all the time.

"See? I told you it wasn't grape." Said Sho as baby sis pushed the bottle away with both hands.

"Not grape!" said baby sis as she wiped her mouth with her hands. Sho wiped the bottle off and then took a sip. Yuck….baby spit. Well this was hers now. He'd have to run them back home to get himself something to drink. Baby sis would like that.

She liked it when they ran.

"You want to go back to your house and get a grape soda? You want to do that, baby sis?" asked Sho

"Go back! Go fast!" said baby sis. She kicked her feet again. Sho didn't need to be told twice. He needed something to drink, something that wasn't covered in her baby spit, and she needed soda that she liked….but just a little. Not too much. Not so much that her mom noticed and then she told Sho that he wasn't allowed to watch her anymore.

That would have really sucked.

He didn't know what he would do if he wasn't allowed to watch her anymore. He would probably have had to go back to the group now…back to big sis. She was in Oslo now, which was in Norway, and he…well he'd never been to Norway actually. That was more big sis's thing. That was where the real Arendelle was. She was probably there right now singing let it go and doing Frozen stuff….stuff that he wasn't into. Stuff that she was into…stuff that she was going to have a lot more fun doing without him…so it was ok for him to be here…

And it was ok for him to be here with baby sis.

He knew that he should have told big sis about baby sis. He knew that she would have had fun running around with the both of them. Big sis didn't really like to run around, she never had, but she would have been happy just the same as he was. He knew how sad she had been when Fukuda took baby sis away…and he wished that he could have told her the truth. That baby sis was here, in the Seventh Division, and she could have come with him and Fukuda any of the times that they had come to visit her. He wished that he could have told her but…well this was one of those pragmatic choice things. Big sis told dad everything and she would have told hi about baby sis being here…and then dad would have gotten pissed off…so things were best the way they were…

Even though it kind of hurt.

Or maybe that was just his ankle. He slid a little as he ran, the floor was way too slippery here, but he didn't stop. Baby sis was laughing and shouting. He was at least making one of his sisters happy. A least one of his sisters was happy with him…well he had no idea if big sis was happy or unhappy with him…and he didn't want to call her and ask. He never called her when they were apart. It just made her want him to come home….and it made him want to come back home too….

Home or…wherever it was that they were staying.

"Home! Going home!" shouted big sis. He had no idea how she could tell. Aside from the signed ever so often there was no real way to tell one hallway from another. There was nothing but endless white walls and white floors and just….white. White everywhere. When he ran the world he was going to ban the color white from all the Divisions. There were a million more colors in the world than this plain, bright, blinding white…like green….that was a good color. Yeah, when he got put in charge then he was going to paint everything green….or maybe whatever baby sis's color ended up being.

This Division was her home after all.

"Faster! Faster to home! Faster Sho!" shouted baby sis

"Faster? Alright, just so we can get home!" said Sho. He sprinted around the corner like Sonic when he stepped on those super speed things. Just while he rounded the corner to baby sis's apartment. He had no idea how she knew that this one was hers. They all looked the same….but maybe she just knew because this was her home and stuff. She had never lived anywhere else and…well he couldn't even remember what that was like. Living in the same place….always knowing where you were when you woke up….stuff like that. It must have been a good feeling…even if he hadn't known it then. He had taken it for granted then, having one home that he went to at the end of every day, and he wanted to tell baby sis not to take it for granted…

But he also wanted her to never be in the place he was where…well there was a choice but to take having a home….a forever home…for granted.

"Almost there!" said Sho as he rounded a corner. He went even faster that time, with the help of his powers, because baby sis liked it and they were almost home anyway. Just around one more corner and they'd be back. It should have been easy, and it would have been easy, if not for the person who had decided that the best thing to do was to get in the way of baby sis's stroller ride.

What an asshole!

"What the hell!? Can't you watch where you're going!?" shouted Sho as he tried his best to keep baby sis from tipping over. The other guy was already on the ground and his aura was all pointy…and the atmosphere felt weird…but whatever! Baby sis was crying and she was the one who was important!

"Me! Do you have any idea what you've done!?" shouted the Scar as he felt the canisters around his belt. They looked like empty Mentos tubes…one rolled over to Sho…they were empty Mentos tubes. Baby sis was crying and trying to take it from him. He let her have it. What was the worst that she could do? Take one of the stickers off.

"No! Don't let her have that! Mukai, give that back Uncle Matsuo….come on now…." Said The Scar, Sho guessed his name was Matsuo. He reached over and tried to take his stupid Mentos tube back….even though baby sis was using it! She was chewing on it and she had stopped crying!

"Hey! She's playing with that!" said Sho as he shoved the Scar away. He…may have been a little too rough. He had been expecting a barrier. Most espers could put up some kind of barrier….and Sho guessed that this guy was one of the few who couldn't. That was so stupid! And also it had been his fault that he'd gotten pushed! He should have been able to put up a barrier if he was in the upper echelon!

So, really, it was his own fault that he fell to the floor.

He had been literally trying to take candy from a baby! Or at least an empty candy container…or maybe it wasn't empty. Baby sis had gotten it opened and it looked like she was trying to shake something out of it…but Sho couldn't hear anything but he could feel….the air around him felt like it was…sort of like it was full of electricity. Like how it felt during the summer when a big storm was coming. All the hair on Sho's arms and legs and the back of his neck stood up…and the room got sort of….flickery…

Oh shit.

"Oh shit!" said Matsuo as he got up. If this hadn't gotten so life and death all of a sudden Sho would have been surprised at how hard he had managed to push him…but this had gotten all life and death all of a sudden. Baby sis had thrown the empty candy case….but it was too late. Whatever had been living in there was awake…and it was angry. Sho didn't think. He just threw himself in front of baby sis and put a barrier around the both of them. Baby sis was crying now and…and he could see….a lot of eyes…

At least a million…maybe more.

Eyes and scales and tentacles and…and that was an evil spirit. He hadn't seen many of those in his life. Claw dealt with espers, not spirits, and the ones that Sho did run into were mostly neutral spirits. Ones that couldn't accept that they were dead yet, ones that just wanted to hang out with people a little while longer, and ones that were more blobs of left over energy than anything. These spirits here were….and it was more than one…but they'd been stuck together and….

And they were, it was, an evil spirit….

"Candy floss you get back in here! Come on!" shouted Matsuo as he held open the empty Mentos tube. Sho…well he could tell that the spirit, or collection of spirits, was not going to listen to Matsuo. It was still forming, it's energy took up the room, and whatever Matsuo was doing with his aura was not going to work. Sho had to do something.

So he did something.

He killed hadn't been hard. He had just shoved as much of his energy into that thing as he could until it exploded. It hadn't taken more than ten seconds…and it hadn't left him feeling tired at all. No, the sweat he was covered in…and his breathing…were all because of…well what had happened. That had been…baby sis had come so close to getting hurt…and he didn't know what would have happened if baby sis had gotten hurt…

He couldn't even let himself imagine a world where he had let his baby sis get hurt.

"What the hell was that?! You…do you have any idea how long it took me to catch those spirits?!" shouted Matsuo. Sho covered baby sis's ears, she didn't need to hear any yelling…and that Scar should not have been yelling anyway! Sho hadn't done anything wrong!

"What the hell are you doing carrying evil spirits around with you?! What the fuck are you doing carrying evil spirits around in your pockets!? Do you have brain worms or something?!" said Sho as loudly as he could without shouting. He passed baby sis his phone with his powers. She was getting upset again. He knew that she was going to cover it in drool and probably open all of his apps but…well she needed it. She was upset.

And so was he.

"What did you think that you were doing running around like that?! Does Tsuchiya know that you're doing that? Mukai could have gotten hurt!" said Matsuo

"I-I-I know how to take care of my own little sister! I didn't do anything wrong! My dad owns this building and everything inside of it and…and I can run around with my own baby sister if I want to!" said Sho. He stood his ground was fully prepared to keep on yelling if he needed to, and even fight if it came to it, and…well he would have taken a fight over being stared at like that…like he was a crazy person or something…

He wasn't the crazy one here!

"Wait….so Mukai is your sister? Your honest to God sister?" asked Matsuo

"What does it matter?" asked Sho. She was only his pretend sister…but he didn't want to say that right in front of her. She had just gotten back to being happy, she had found that game where you sliced fruit up, and he didn't want to hurt her feelings by saying right in front of her that they weren't really brother and sister. She was only two, she didn't know the difference between real and pretend yet, and she did not need to get her feelings hurt all over again.

"It just…wow. Sakurai owed me ten thousand yen…Koyama owes me twenty thousand….ha! Toshiki is going to get a kick out of this." said Matsuo. Sho got the feeling that he was talking more to himself than Sho. He had no idea why so many people owed him money…and he didn't really care.

"This is pretty much my division, anyway, since my dad is in charge and I can go wherever I want to go and do whatever I want to do and right now baby sis and I are going to her house to have fun. You just…do whatever the fuck you want to do." Said Sho as he pulled baby sis's stroller along with his powers. She was banging away on his phone and leaving baby fingerprints all over it…but that was ok.

She was happy.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" said baby sis as he pushed her down the hallway. Baby sis…was way too happy. She had heard him and now…well now she was saying….why did she have to learn how to talk?!

"Um…you want candy? Soda? Scribbles?" asked Sho as he opened the door. He had to fix this. Baby sis could not sit there and curse. Not when she was too little to know what she was saying. When she got older then he and Shimazaki could teach her to curse. Right now she had no reason to curse and…well he knew her mom would kick his ass and kick him out if she knew that he had taught Mukai.

"Candy! Soda! Grape! Now!" said baby sis as he pulled her through the door. Sho wiped the sweat off of his head. Right. That…had been a lot…but she was fine. She bounced back quickly. Of course she did…she was his baby sis…well his pretend baby sis…but she did not need to know that just yet…she didn't need to worry….

No, right now all she needed to worry about was having fun with her big brother.


	485. Another Fancy Palace

Mob did not consider herself to be a princess.

She knew that one day dad was going to be king of the whole world, well President, but that did not make her a princess. First of all princesses wore crowns and Mob hadn't worn a crown since she had been four or five. Second of all princesses wore fancy ball gowns and Mob…well she used to wear her costumes everywhere but they didn't fit anymore so she was in regular clothes right now. Third of all princesses were a part of the line of succession and dad said that she would never be a part of the line of succession because she was not a boy…so maybe that last one didn't make her a princess…but still. Mob did not and had never considered herself to be a princess.

Despite what dad thought.

"What do you think Shigeko?" asked Suzuki as he held his Daughter as tightly as he could by the hand. She loved it when they went to palaces like this. One of her favorite things to do was wander through these massive homes and think about what their home would be like, picking and choosing different elements to add to their home when the time came, a bit like him and fortresses when he'd been her age.

Well a little older than she was now.

When he'd been a little older than her, and when he'd been sure that he was capable of ruling the world, he used to pour over different pictures of fortresses both real and fictional. He would stay up until all hours of the night hiding under his covers with a flashlight floating beside him, a notebook on his lap, and a pencil in his hand planning the future. He wondered if she ever did the same.

Well she was doing that now and that was what mattered.

"I think it's nice dad. It's….big." said Mob. She thought that it was way too big. How could one family stand to live in a house that big? There was only so much space that people could need before a house got big and lonely. She knew that people besides the family lived here, their friends and servants and stuff, and maybe that made it a little less lonely…but still.

Even if she filled the house with each and every friend she and Sho had there would still be plenty of room to spare.

"Big is good. It's a show of power and affluence. Honestly I've seen bigger. Our home will be bigger." Said Suzuki as they walked into yet another room. She liked things like this, overly decorated rooms like this, and there would be plenty of them in their home. Rooms all made to her taste…and a few to his but mostly to hers. Women did love to decorate their homes after all.

Masami certainly had.

When he'd bought the house, the original house, she hadn't been happy with it at all. It had been a traditional house in some ways and she hated traditional. He had offered to have a house built for her but she had been in a hurry to live together properly. She had been pregnant with Sho, then, and eager to settle down…and so had he. He had given her free reign to paint the walls however she wanted to and change all the floors and carpets and fixtures and…well everything else that she could change. It had practically been a new house when she had gotten done with it.

It would be simpler, come the day, to just build Shigeko a house from the ground up.

"But it might be too big, you know? I mean…this is a lot of space." Said Mob

"So? Why would you want to live in a shoebox when you can live in a place like this? Not exactly like this, of course, but something in the style that you like. Don't worry, when the time comes you can have whatever kind of house that you like." Said Suzuki

"Even if it's not big?" asked Mob

"Of course it's going to be big. You'll never live in a small home. You'll live in a place that's worthy of you." Said Suzuki

"Um….ok. I guess. Do you want to see more rooms or do you want to go? I mean I know that you're busy." Said Mob

"I'm never too busy for you. It's Sunday, anyway, and we spend Sundays together." Said Suzuki

"Um…yeah, we do…and let's keep…looking at stuff I guess." Said Mob. She kind of wanted to go home and see what Minegishi was up to. They must have been lonely. Shimazaki was off doing something with dad and Minegishi was probably all alone and lonely…and even if they weren't Mob still wanted to hang out with them…

But hanging out with dad was good too.

Even if he was holding her hand way too tight. She could see her fingers turning white. She didn't much want to be holding dad's hand when he got like this. Clingy and smothery. But that was just because he was out with her and there were people around. People made him nervous unless he was bossing them around. Mob…well if she had been a meaner person she would have told dad that he was fine and that he didn't need to break her fingers just because he was nervous in crowds…and also she was bored of looking a big fancy houses….and also that she wasn't a princess….

But she was not a mean person.

"It's not very decorated on the outside. The inside, however, is much nicer. A bit too opened, though, I think. I'm not a fan of opened spaces like this." said Suzuki. He motioned outwards for emphasis. This room was a ballroom of sorts, it seemed, with massive chandeliers…beautiful ones…he made a note of them. Shigeko would have liked those for their future home.

"I like a lot of little rooms, too. That way everyone has their own space." Said Mob. She didn't think that her friends would have been happy having to share a lot of big opened space together. She loved her friends, she did, but they needed their own space or they would fight.

"You…want there to be space between us?" asked Suzuki. He knew that they were going to live in a big house but…well he hadn't thought about her putting space between them. He…did not want that. His entire plan for their future had hinged upon them spending that future together…and they couldn't spend that future together if they were apart….and he was fine on his own….he didn't need anyone…but also he needed her…

It was confusing, sometimes, so he chose not to dwell on it.

But he couldn't help but dwell on it now. She was so small now…but less small than she had been before. He used to be able to fit her entire hand in his. Now…well her hand still fit….the palm of it. Not her fingers, though, they were short but…well she was bigger now. She was taller, too, and…and even taller still with those boots she was wearing. There was a heel to them…and he had no idea why she was wearing them….

Well because she was getting older…and this was a part of getting older….high heeled boots and pulling away from him….from her father….

He held her hand tighter.

"No, dad, you know that I don't want that. I want us to be together all time and when I grow up then you can live in the house with me and my kids and we'll all be happy all the time. Ok?" said Mob. She patted dad's hand with her free one as she said that. She felt like, sometimes, she was the grown up and he was the kid. Like she had to make him feel better when he was scared…and he was scared. She knew her own dad. She knew that he was scared of her leaving him all alone even if he pretended that he didn't need anyone else…and that was…well of course she could be there for her dad.

If he needed her then she would be there for him.

If he needed to hold her hand so tightly that it felt lie her fingers were going to snap off then…well then that was ok. He needed her and she was his daughter and…well when someone needed her then she was there for him. She had to be the adult a lot of the time, it felt like, but she didn't mind. Better to be treated like an adult than a little kid. There were kids here with their families and some of them were holding hands with their parents…and some of them weren't…but even the ones that weren't were treated like kids. They got told what to do and when to do it and they had to go to school and stuff. Mob was at least in charge of herself.

And even dad, sometimes.

But not now. What she wanted to do was tell dad to let go of her hand already. She loved him but…she was almost twelve. It would be her birthday soon in a couple of months and…and she would be twelve. Twelve was too old to be holding your dad's hand it felt like. She knew that Minori never held her dad's hand anymore. She knew that there were a lot of weird things about her…and she didn't like being weird. In a lot of ways she wanted to be normal. Not normal like she didn't have powers but normal like…well…like the kind of normal where people didn't stare at her and stuff.

Especially not boys.

"Come on, let's…walk over here now." Said Mob. A boy was staring at her. Probably because he thought that she was weird. It was weird, really, to be holding your dad's hand and stuff. She didn't even hold Sho's hand anymore when they went to places together. She wished that she could have been mean enough to pull her hand from dad's…but she also didn't want to be a mean person…and she also didn't want to be stared at like she was now….so she kept on walking with dad…

And she was being followed.

That boy was still following her…she made eye contact! She looked away. She turned her head so fast that her braids hit her in the face. She had looked at him and he looked back at her! Dad looked down at her. She smiled up at him. He couldn't know what was wrong. He didn't like her talking to boys, or anyone, first of all and second of all he couldn't know that she wanted to let go of him. Then he would have gotten nervous and scared and she didn't want to make her own dad feel like that. He was her dad and she loved him…

She wished that he would stop making her look like a baby and all but she still loved him.

"Are you alright, Shigeko?" asked Suzuki. He had no idea why she had turned her head that quickly…or why her aura had simmered like that. She seemed happy but…well looks could often be deceiving. He had no clue what was happening in her mind. People were often very confusing like that. He could guess but…well people were never clear about how they felt. Shigeko was better about all of that than most but even she could be very confusing sometimes.

"I'm fine just…looking at stuff. Trying to read the words on the….displays…and stuff." Said Mob. She hated lying to her dad….so she didn't. She turned her head to read the little display on the wall. It was in English and Norwegian…and she read the English…there. She hadn't told a lie.

"Trying? There should be no 'trying' about it. You speak English….not as well as I do but you speak English." Said Suzuki. Her English couldn't have been that bad….right? He so wished that he'd been around more in her formative years…and he so wished that he and Masami had spoken English around the children more often as well.

"I do…but you're right, dad, you're better. Can you read to me?" asked Mob. She didn't need dad to read to her but…well she needed him distracted. She was still being looked at, she could feel it, and she sort of wanted to look behind and see…who was looking at her. it might not have been that boy…or it might have been him…she didn't know for sure. There were a lot of people here.

"You can't read this?" asked Suzuki. Well that was….worrying. He knew that he had left the children's education in their own hands but….maybe he should have looked into what it was, exactly, that they had been teaching themselves.

"I can…but I want you to read it to. Please, daddy?" asked Mob. Please was supposed to be the magic word, she had learned that from mom, but Minori had taught her the read magic word. When you called your dad, 'daddy', he would do almost anything for you. Like read to you like you were a baby even though you could read to yourself….but dad loved treating her like a baby anyway….

"Alright. This says….why is this print so small…hold on…" said Suzuki. He did not need glasses. He could see just fine on his own. He did not need glasses to read. He hadn't even needed them before and he did not need them all. The print that people used for things had just gotten very small over the years, that was all, and that was why he needed to squint. That reason and no other.

"Yeah dad…it is really small…" said Mob. Dad was squinting again. He was never going to say it but he needed glasses….but if he wanted to squint then he could squint all he wanted….but that was mean. She'd think of a nice way to say that she couldn't make him get glasses later. Right now…right now she was still being looked at.

She turned around.

There. That boy was looking at her again. He looked away when she looked at him…and then she looked away when he looked at her again…and then they just went back and forth like that. She didn't know what was wrong with her….she didn't even know him! She didn't even know his name or what he liked or didn't like….all she knew was that he was tall and he had glasses….not square ones but they were still nice…and his hoodie was blue….a really nice shade of blue….and she knew that maybe he liked blue…which was knowing something about him…

So maybe it was ok to look at him.

She looked at him without looking away that time. He had spots on him like she did too….but she wasn't grossed out. Minori said that boys with bad skin were gross but her skin was bad too so they matched. She looked at him some more and…well his skin wasn't any worse than hers was and…and he had pretty eyes. Blue. Not blue like Sho and dad's were…more like green blue….sort of like the ocean…or a dirty fish tank….or something.

He had pretty eyes.

He was looking at her now. Did he think that her eyes were pretty? She had worked hard on them. They were supposed to be the same as Elsa's. She didn't have blue eyes like Elsa's but…well brown eyes could be pretty too, right? She wondered if that boy thought that her eyes were pretty….if she was pretty. She didn't think that she was…not dressed like this….she felt like such a little kid. She had one of her tulle skirts on and her Frozen hoodie…and Frozen was for babies…and she'd had this for a while. It was too small a little bit. She crossed her arms over her chest.

Then she uncrossed them.

Then she crossed them again. Dad was still reading. She had let her hand slip out of his a while ago. She had to make up her mind. She couldn't keep doing this or dad would notice. She either had to cross her arms or uncross them, one of the two, and she just…she didn't know what she wanted to do. She wanted…and did not want…to be looked at. It made her feel all…kind of like her heart was trying to escape…but in both a good and a bad way and….and she did and did not want to feel like this….mostly not since her dad was right there…and she didn't even know that boy's name….

Knowing the boy's name was important, she decided.

Minegishi thought otherwise. They didn't even know the names of all the people that they'd kissed. They just sort of kissed people, they said, people who felt like kissing. That was how it worked with adults….well some adults. Mob didn't think that she could kiss someone without knowing their name….not that she was thinking of kissing that boy! Not that she wanted him to take her by the hand and run away with her to some place where her dad wasn't there to watch her and just…kiss her a bunch of times….and stuff….she didn't want that at all!

She really didn't.

She didn't want to kiss him or hold his hand or…well other stuff that she knew that people did. She had only kissed one person in her whole lifetime….so she must not have been good at it…and of course she wanted to kiss more people….but not in a kissing random people way…..but in a…she didn't know! She didn't want to think about this! Not with her dad right there! He was right there and if he took a break from reading then….then he would have looked over and known what she was thinking about!

Somehow!

The thought of dad knowing what she was thinking about makes her hair want to fly up. She held on to her braids so that they didn't do that thing where they flew above her head….and they felt weird. She looked down. Oh. One of her bows was gone…it must have fallen off. That happened all the time. She just had to look around to see where it had gone to and…

Oh.

Someone had picked it up. The same someone who had been looking at her. That…well he could have it! She wanted to let him have it…and she wanted to get it back…and she wanted…she didn't know what she wanted! He looked at her and held her bow up…and now she had to get it back. She had to get it back because he had seen her looking at it and it would have been weird if she pretended that she hadn't seen him…or that she was blind…but no, that would have been mean to Shimazaki….and it was too late to pretend that she was blind anyway!

She had no choice.

She stepped quietly away from dad. He was going down the line of things to read….and she felt bad tricking him….but she needed her bow back. She needed her bow back and…and she wouldn't be gone for too long. She was just walking over and….and she could do that. Just walk over and….and one foot in front of the other….like she had been doing for almost her whole life…and stuff. She just….she took a step…and stumbled a little…these boots were kind of hard to walk in…but now that she had taken the first step then she had to take the next…

The second one was easier.

It hadn't been as many steps as she had thought that it was….but she wished that it had been more. This room was big and….and she wished that it had been bigger. She could still feel dad back there and….and she knew that he would have been mad if he could have seen her now…and she knew that….that maybe she should have just ran all the way back to him…and she wanted to. She wanted to run all the way back to her dad and take his hand and be a little kid again…

But she also wanted her bow back.

"Hi." Said the boy. Mob…she knew that she should have said something….but she couldn't remember how to talk. She knew that the polite thing to do would have been say 'hi, I'm Shigeko, can I have my bow back' and then that would have been it….and she knew words…but she just

"English?" asked the boy. Mob nodded. She held out her hand and she nodded and…well maybe she should have said something. Probably something in English, too, since this boy had asked her in English if she spoke English.

"I speak English…um….I'm Shigeko. It's nice to meet you." asked Mob. She found her voice…and it had been hard but she had found it…and she just…she had said something and…and she had never known that talking could have been so hard.

"I'm Mathias…it's nice to meet you too." Said the boy. Mob nodded. There was more staring. She stared at the star on his shirt. He stared at…well she didn't know what specifically about her he was staring at but she knew that he was staring. She wanted her bow back…and maybe to tell him not to stare at her…but mostly she just wanted her bow back. She held her braids in her hands and looked up at him. Their eyes met. He looked away first.

"Um…can I have my bow back?" asked Mob. The boy nodded really fast. She hoped that she didn't wind up hurting himself. That would have been bad…and also someone would have hurt themselves because of her…and that would have been really bad. She didn't think that she could have been able to live with that kind of guilt.

"Sorry! Sorry! I'm just…sorry. I was just looking at you….I mean your shirt! Your jacket and….um….here's your bow back….sorry!" said the boy. Mob nodded….and tried not to think about how he was looking at her hoodie. She sort of wished that she had been wearing her big sweater, the hiding sweater, but she also sort of wished that she had worn something nicer…even though there was no point…not with hose she looked.

"Th-that's ok…" said Mob. She let go of her braid and held out her hand. She…well she didn't really have a lot else to say. Thank you? Would that have been good? It was her bow but he'd found it…and he was giving it back to her…so maybe she should have waited to say thanks until it was in her hand and then….and then maybe go back to dad? Or talk to…well she didn't know this boy….but she wanted to know this boy. She really wanted to know this boy.

And she really wanted her bow back.

He reached over and, instead of putting her bow in her hand, reached up higher and took the end of her braid in his hand. She couldn't move…or think….or…anything! A boy was touching her hair….a boy was TOUCHING her HAIR! Like….right now! Right now there was this boy right there in front of her and he was touching her hair and…and…..what?! She had never had a boy touch her hair before…well dad touched her hair all the time but dads weren't boys…and Shimazaki touched her hair sometimes too but he didn't count as a boy either…even though it sort of felt like…this…when he touched her hair…

Like she was all hot and cold all over and she kind of wanted to run away.

But she didn't run away. She stayed right where she was. She stayed where she was while he clipped her bow back on the end of her braid. He didn't do it right. He clipped it up way too high, and not tightly enough either, but she didn't say anything. She didn't know if she would ever say anything ever again. She didn't know if she would ever remember English ever again. That was…he was so close….and she was so close….and she felt all warm and cold and….and like she wanted….like she wanted a lot of things and she wasn't sure what they were…well she knew what some of them were….and she knew that these were not ok feelings to have about someone she just met and…and she just….

She had to say something.

"There. Um…you look really pretty. Sorry to um…well I just wanted to help you and….so I helped you. Um…your hair is really soft and…it looks pretty….with the bows in it. You're pretty I mean." Said the boy. Mob nodded. She…had no idea what he meant by pretty. She was not pretty. She was….well she looked like a first grader, like Minori said, and….and boys….they didn't think that she was pretty! But this boy thought that she was pretty and….and the lights in the pretty chandelier above her flickered and….

And she hadn't done that.

"Domo arigato gozaimasu!" said Mob before she bowed and ran back to dad. That had been dad's aura…he got scared when she wasn't near him…and for once she was glad that he needed her so much. She had messed up. How had she forgotten English!? She was half English…or whatever mom and dad's not Japanese halves were….and she just….she had messed up! That boy had thought that she was pretty and….and she had messed up and….and she just….

She had to calm down. For dad's sake.

"Shigeko. You wandered away from me." Said Suzuki. One minute she'd been there beside him, the next she'd slipped through his fingers, and now she was back. She looked like she'd been running…which was odd because usually Sho was the one who ran around. She practically jogged up beside him and took his hand in hers…he had no idea what she'd been up to…but she was back beside him now and that was what mattered.

"I did but I'm back now. Come on let's go…and look at other things." Said Mob as she squeezed dad's hand in hers as tightly as she could. She had messed up and…and she just….she needed to move. Now! Right now!

"I…alright. Whatever you want." Said Suzuki. Something was wrong….what was it? What did she need? Hungry? Tired? Bored? Lonely? In terrible pain because her boots were completely unsuited to long periods of standing? What? What could have possibly been wrong with her?!

"Thanks dad…daddy. I love you." Said Mob. She smiled and led dad away. She knew him. He was like her, his face didn't say a lot, his aura did most of the talking…and his aura had been really freaked out back there. She didn't like being all…like that….with dad. Tricking him into….well not tricking him but….well it sort of felt like she was tricking him…..and stuff…..but….well as long as she wasn't tricking him then it was ok. She really did want to get going anyway so this was ok.

She was ok.

She just…she felt better now. She didn't look behind her as she and dad walked out of the room. She knew that she was still being looked at…and she would think about it later. How she felt. How she wanted to stay and also run away…like when she met Hatori and…and was this love? But how could you love someone you didn't even know? Well she had fallen in love at first sight, maybe, with Hatori. He had just been so…tall…and his glasses were so square and he always had on the nicest sweaters and he was so nice to her and….and love at first sight….that wasn't real.

Minegishi said that it wasn't real and they were actually in love.

They said that love at first sight was just for the movies that Mob liked. Elsa agreed. Well Elsa wasn't real but she'd had a good point when she told Anna that she couldn't marry someone that she just met…even though they had a whole song together. She had been right, of course, because Hans turned out to be the bad guy….but life was not like movies…so did that mean that love at first sight was real after all? Mom had said, before, that she met dad at a train station and then they fell in love and got married…and dad said that from the moment he saw mom that he had cared for her…which was dad speak for loved her…and Sho said that he thought that Shimazaki was cool from the moment they met…which was Sho for fell in love with so….so maybe it was real? She sort of wished that it was….that someone could fall in love at first sight with her….but she knew better. That was for princesses and stuff.

And Mob was not a princess.


	486. All Meetings Are Super Boring

Baby sis missed her mom sometimes.

She was busy during the day. She trained security people and the Awakened and she trained and stuff. Important stuff. That was why she wasn't always there with baby sis. That didn't mean that she was going to run away, though, because she loved baby sis. Out of all the babies in the whole world she had picked baby sis to be hers and she wasn't going to just up and leave her one day. Sho was sure of it.

But also he just liked to check up on her sometimes.

"Mama! Mama over there!" shouted baby sis. She held a baby crayon in her hand and she was either trying to pass it to her mom or stab her with it, Sho didn't know which. All he knew was that he had to hold baby sis back. They technically weren't supposed to be here, this was a Division meeting, but…well Sho was going to be President Suzuki soon and his dad was already President Suzuki so that meant that Sho could go where he wanted to go and do what he wanted to do.

Even sit in the corner and color with baby sis while important meetings went on.

"Mukai, not now. Play with your brother." Said Tsuchiya. She tried her best not to look pissed off. She had told the kid to babysit….that meant that the baby stayed there and he sat! That did not mean he brought the baby into one of Ishiguro's unnecessarily long meetings!

Center your qi.

He was ten…or eleven…or maybe twelve now? He was just a kid and usually he did a damn good job of watching his sister…and that was his sister….so…well she was not going to get pissed off at him. He didn't need that. He had…well not problems but…well he was an emotional kid. She didn't know why he was like that, if it was nature or the way he was raised, but she did know that she didn't want to set him off.

That wouldn't have been good for anyone.

"AS I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted more of these fliers have been seen and-" said Ishiguro before he was, once again, interrupted by children. He had no idea what it meant, why President Suzuki kept on sending his children here. This was either a great honor, the President was trusting this division above all others with his progeny, or President Suzuki was trying to insult him by turning this Division into a daycare center.

Maybe the latter and not the former.

"Baby sis, no, that crayon isn't going to fit in your nose and you know it." said Sho as he pulled baby sis's hand away from her face. She tried to do that sometimes and he had no idea why. Maybe she just liked wax. Shimazaki sometimes chewed on his crayons when there weren't any candles around…so maybe baby sis just liked the tasted and smell of wax and stuff. Well he wanted her to be happy but also…well he also didn't want her to poke her brain and turn stupid or something.

That would have been some pretty bad big brothering.

"AS I was saying-" said Ishiguro. He wondered how attached President Suzuki was to his son. He didn't seem very attached to his daughter, the younger one anyway, so maybe if his son just happened to meet some unfortunate end then…well maybe that wouldn't have been a great loss to the man. It certainly wouldn't have been a great loss to the organization. He could see, out the corner of his, Sakurai running a hand up and down his sword. He wasn't quite brandishing it, he knew better than to outright threaten the President's son, but he was making his intentions clear.

To everyone but the boy, it seemed.

"It's not going to fit in my nose either!" said Sho. She was trying to put it up his nose now…and he knew that they were being loud but whatever! He had to take care of baby sis and he wanted to make her happy and it wasn't like they were talking about anything important anyway. They were just talking about boring division stuff. Money and talent and assets and doing terrible things to awaken people. Normal Claw stuff. They didn't have to have whole meetings for that stuff.

Just keep doing what you're doing. There. What was so hard about that?

"As I-" said Ishiguro. He wished that this boy had been anyone else's son. Then he could have simply told him to get the hell out of there and back to whatever it was that children did during the day. Why didn't Suzuki ever send his older progeny? The girl was at least useful…and looked like she was going to be the heir…but it was not his place to question the will of President Suzuki.

Unfortunately.

"Sho! Stop Sho! Hold still!" laughed Mukai as she tried to stick her crayon in Sho's eyes.

"As-" said Ishiguro

"Not my eye either, you're going to make me go blind!" said Sho. She was so funny sometimes. She was trying to color his eyes like paper…probably because there was so much white in his eyes…and she knew that paper was white and you were supposed to color on paper. Also the walls because they were white too. She was so smart like that.

He had the smartest baby sis in the whole world!

"AS I WAS SAYING!" said Ishiguro, testing the limits of the voice changer in his mask. REALLY. This was NOT a daycare center! President Suzuki….he would speak to President Suzuki…or his envoy…because this was quite enough!

"Want me to throw him out?" asked Koyama. These meetings were long enough without this kid being here making Ishiguro stop and lose his place. He didn't care if the kid was the President's Son, he was an annoying little brat. For the past two months it had been nothing but that kid running around and screaming and….too many kids! He liked Mukai, she mostly stayed with Tsuchiya in their apartment, but this kid….

President Suzuki needed to stop dumping his kids here!

"I can go and get his nanny. He's still down in the lab, right?" asked Sakurai. That kid….that damn kid….for the past two months he'd had to put up with the spoiled little monster running up and down the halls and being underfoot and just…being! He had no idea why Suzuki kept on dumping his son there, maybe to visit the daughter he orphaned or to groom him to ascend to the throne or something, and he didn't care…he just wanted this kid gone!

He was so sick of this kid…of kids like these….

Kids who had the whole world there on a plate. He'd been dealing with kids like that since he'd been a kid. They walked through the world with the idea that everything was theirs. That everything would always work out for them. They never had to worry about where they would sleep or what they would eat…they didn't know what it was to be alone…they didn't know what it was to be cold and tired and hungry and they never would….

And not only that but they rubbed it in his face, too…constantly….

"I don't have a nanny and I don't need to go anywhere! I go where baby sis goes and baby sis wants to be with her mom so I want to be here too! So you guys just have a good meeting and leave us out of it. We have important coloring to do, don't we baby sis?" asked Sho. He leaned against the wall and made sure to look everyone in the eyes…well eyes and mask. Why did that guy, and Fukuda said that he was a guy who pretended to be a girl, think that he could tell Sho what to do? Just because he was the Division leader?

Well, being the son of the President was a higher rank than being a Division leader.

He had his scars but he wasn't a Scar. Scars were called Scars because they were damaged goods. Shimazaki said so. They were espers who fought dad and lost….badly. Everyone lost against dad but Sho knew that Scars lost badly. They lost so badly that dad made sure that they got scars on their faces. Fukuda said that he did his best with the Scars, to make them less bad….less grotty, if he was talking the way Emmy talked, but there was only so much that he could do. They ranked the lowest in the whole upper echelon and everyone could see it on their faces. Sho ranked above everyone else….and it was written on his body…not that anyone would ever see.

He pulled his coat shut.

"Kid, when I said that you could baby sit I meant that the baby had to stay there and you had to sit." Said Tsuchiya with a groan that she couldn't really hide. This kid…yeah. He was going to be their next leader, wasn't he? If not him then the older girl. She was the capable on, she ranked pretty highly, and really they needed more women in the upper echelons…and also she seemed to be just more…chill was the word….than this kid.

She had never met the President's oldest daughter but she seemed to have it more…together…than the President's son…maybe it was best that Mukai wasn't being raised with her brother and sister.

"She wanted to be here. You can have your meeting with her here. It's not like you guys are talking about anything that even matters anyway." Said Sho with a shrug.

"Why you little-" said Koyama as he got up. Sakurai reached over and pulled him back down. Matsuo rolled his eyes and looked back down at his phone. Well don't just help, sit there!

"Not important? Not important?!" shouted Ishiguro as he came to his feet. He knew that he didn't stand much taller than that boy…but it didn't matter. He was stronger. That was the Awakened Child, not the Prodigy, and if it came to it then Ishiguro knew that he could take him if he had to. He had lost to the President, true, but maybe beating his son in combat would mean something…like a better posting than this daycare center…..and he wasn't just talking about the children.

"Hey, do you guys think that this meeting is important?" muttered Miyagawa as he nudged Matsuo….who just stared down at his phone. God. He gets a girlfriend…boyfriend…whatever the hell Minegishi Toshiki was and he thought that it gave him the right to take up residence in La-La Land.

"What?" asked Matsuo. Toshiki was telling him about President Suzuki…about how he, apparently, was trying to drag them to some greenhouse with his daughter in a poorly disguised date. That was a hell of a lot more interesting than some fliers someone had been plastering the town with. What did they care about the town? The guy was a fraud and the kid was being watched already. They didn't need to have another meeting over this….God…he was going to lose his mind one of these days…

Not that he wanted to switch places with Toshiki anytime soon.

"This meeting which, as all meetings, are of the utmost importance." Said Takeuchi. He inhaled deeply and settled his qi. This room was so loud, qi loud, and vocally as well. That child and Ishiguro would both have benefited from some basic meditative techniques. Maybe he could invite those two along when he taught Mukai. She was going to need it, being related to the President and all. If there was any man in this world who needed to meditate it was President Suzuki.

"It wasn't important last week either…or the week before that…or the week before that…." muttered Terada. So there was some fraud going around pretending to be an esper…big freaking whoop. There must have been thousands and thousands of fake psychics in this city. What did one guy matter? So what if he babysat the kid Suzuki had them stalking? They were stalking a lot of people.

"Here we go again." muttered Muraki. He briefly thought about leaving an ethereal clone of himself in his spot…but this was not the time to risk that. Ishiguro was, once again, upset….and he didn't blame him. That kid could be a lot…but if Mukai wanted to be here then it was fine. She couldn't help but act up sometimes…and she was adorable anyway. How a man like the President could have had such an adorable daughter was beyond him.

"I've been here for hours and hours and hours and I'll I've heard is you and those Scars talking about some guy pretending to be an esper. If he's being such a problem then why not kick his ass and tell him to stop? There, see? I did your job for you. Now me and baby sis can get back to the important stuff in life…like coloring." Said Sho. He looked at Ishiguro like dad looked at people, like he was looking through them, like they weren't even worth looking at. Sho knew that he was being an asshole but that was ok because Ishiguro was being an asshole first.

He knew that Fukuda would have told him to be nice, that two wrongs didn't make a right, but Fukuda was busy putting Awakened back together so Sho could do whatever he wanted.

Not that he wanted to be like dad or anything. Sho…he hated dad and he never wanted to be like him…but dad was good at telling people what to do. Shimazaki said that when you walked into a room you had to act like you didn't give a fuck and then you would have all the power. Sho did a give a fuck though, he gave a lot of fucks, but he also didn't want to look like he didn't have any power there. He wasn't big sis, he didn't have a real title, but he was dad's only son so that should have been title enough.

He didn't get told what to do by anyone other than big sis and maybe Fukuda…so there!

"Shots fired." Said Matsuo. Well this was actually going to end up being an interesting meeting for once. Not as interesting as the day Toshiki was having, at this point he was just listening to them vent about how weird President Suzuki apparently could be, and he'd tell them about this later. Maybe after Ishiguro wound up demoted for killing President Suzuki's son.

"You dead! Matsuo dead!" said Mukai

"Hey? Why am I dead? Kill Ishiguro!" said Matsuo. Mukai laughed pointed to him again.

"Matsuo dead mama! Matsuo dead big brother!" said Mukai

"You heard my sis, you're dead. So be dead." Said Sho. That was a fun game, you're dead, when baby sis said that you were dead then you had to lay down on the ground and wait for her to tell you to wake up. Being dead didn't actually work like that…but she didn't need to know how being dead worked. She was just a baby after all.

"Come on, Mukai, you're getting way too excited." Said Tsuchiya. She held out her arms and her daughter came running. She was going to have to talk to the President's son about the meaning of the word 'babysitting' after she put Mukai down for an early nap. She needed it. She could tell that Mukai was way too overstimulated….yes, this was going to be fun, wasn't it? Wrangling an overstimulated two year old into bed and then putting up with Ishiguro's coming bitch fit. Just great.

"Excited!" shouted Mukai

"Yes, I think that we're all getting a little too excited. How about this, Suzuki-chan, if you think that you can handle this better than we've been then go and handle it." said Ishiguro. He was not going to challenge the President's son to a fight. On second thought he decided that maiming or seriously injuring the President's Son would not do well to get him out of this posting. No, he could let the boy dig his own grave. If he wanted to undo months, almost a year, of work that had been done on this case then so be it. Let him explain to his father why and how he had destroyed weeks upon months of work.

"I can handle it. I can handle the hell out of it…and don't call me Suzuki-chan. It's Suzuki-san…sama. Suzuki-sama." Said Sho. He could handle this and he would handle this. It was simple, figure out if this guy was an esper and if he was then make him join Claw and if he wasn't then tell him to knock it off…and also someone had been going around warning people about Claw which made no sense because, obviously, telling people not to join Claw was like asking to get your ass kicked.

And unless this guy was some kind of moron then he knew that he didn't want to pick a fight with Claw like that.

Other espers were either scared of them or tried to stop them….or kill dad. Sho had no problem with people trying to kill dad but trying to stop Claw was something else entirely. He…didn't know how he felt about it…all of it…but he did know that the only reason he was alive was to take over Claw after dad died…so that was what he was going to do. He was going to find this guy and figure him out, and also kick his ass probably, and then he'd come back and play with baby sis some more….and not just because some tiny little man was challenging him.

It looked like baby sis's mom was going to put her down for a nap and Sho needed to fill the next two hours with something….a mission maybe.


	487. Playground Exorcisms

Kageyama Ritsu had a job to do.

"This one is real." Said Ritsu as he stood in the middle of the playground. He had never been to this one before, he was technically only allowed to go to the rocket ship park by his house and even then only if he took Tsubomi with him, but mom and dad were at work and what they didn't know couldn't kill them. Not like whatever was in this park anyway.

It felt big.

He could feel it, now, if things were little or big. He could tell when there were spirits near him, espers too, and this felt like a spirit. He could tell the difference between espers and spirits now. He had certainly been followed by enough espers to know what they felt like. He took a deep breath. No espers near him now…just a spirit…a big one. A big and angry one. It was hiding in the sandbox. He wasn't supposed to go in the sandbox, mom hated it when he got dirty, and he wasn't supposed to be in this park either. Not just because he was far from home with someone who he had promised mom and dad that he was just doing office work for.

No, this whole park was taped off with police tape.

He saw movement out the corner of his eyes. Reigen was taking a step forward. He took the police tape between his fingers like he was testing if it was even real. He always had to be moving around and touching stuff. He always had to move around and touch stuff like he was testing if he was real. Like he was one of those spirits who didn't know that he was dead yet. There were a lot of those spirits. Ritsu didn't like having to exorcise them…but he did. That was his job. He exorcised spirits before anyone else could.

He had to so that the evil organization didn't come.

He had been watching them, the espers that watched him, and he knew that they all came from that place that the red haired guy had told him about. They were there, always, the Claw espers. They were watching to see if he was an esper. He was careful never to use his powers where they could see….which made his job hard…but he still made it work. He had to get rid of all the evil spirits in the city so that no other espers had to. If other espers came and got rid of the spirits and showed their powers then they might have gotten caught…and nobody needed that.

So Ritsu did what he had to do…and what he had to do was exorcise this spirit.

"I was thinking just the same thing. My powers-" said Reigen with a wave of his hand. He could feel Ritsu glaring. The kid could do that, glare at you without looking. It must have been an esper thing. He didn't know. Until a few weeks ago he hadn't had any idea that espers were even real….or evil spirits…and apparently the world was full of them…

Which boded very well for his business.

His business which had been on it's last legs until his prayers were answered in the form of an elementary schooler with a set of overprotective parents and an overactive imagination. Not about the psychic powers, no, those were very much real. The evil organization that stalked his every move, the one that the boy of his dreams…Reigen wasn't an idiot he knew how Ritsu talked about that kid…all of that must have been fiction. The whole thing was ridiculous from a logistic standpoint. A multination league of espers planning on taking over the world? If someone was smart enough to create an organization then they should have been smart enough to know that world domination wasn't possible. Sure you had psychic powers but the government had guns. And bombs. And they would probably use them. Also treason was a pretty season crime…so, yeah, there probably wasn't any evil organization stalking their every move lying in wait to kidnap them to use for experiments.

And Reigen didn't need three quarters of a law degree to know that.

"You don't have powers. People with powers have auras. I can't see yours so you don't have powers." Said Ritsu as he lifted the police tape and walked under it. Reigen tried to do the same and managed to get tangled up in it. Ritsu rolled his eyes and felt around with his aura…no espers around him. Good.

He used his powers to untangle Reigen.

He always had to be careful that nobody was around. He didn't want the organization, the one that red haired guy had warned him about, to get to him. Even if…well if he got caught then he'd at least have been able to see him again. Sho…he was pretty sure that his name had been Sho. That was a weird name mostly because it was so common. He had known three different people named Sho, two named Shoyo, and four people named Shoko in his life. He couldn't imagine someone like him with such a normal name. He was….a lot of things…

He was the first person to ever talk to Ritsu…to really talk to him.

Sho had bene the only person who had ever sat with him and listened to him and just…not ay anything. Not say anything like 'you're exaggerating' or 'things will get better' or 'you should just be grateful for what you have' or…well mom and dad never said anything at all. Sho had listened to him and…well he had talked back and…well he had said a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff and…well before he broke his head opened it had been really nice. Being near Sho and holding his hand….

As good as that had been Ritsu was smart enough to know that getting himself caught by the evil organization was not worth seeing Sho again….even if he was amazing….

"Thanks, but you didn't have to do that, student, I had it." Said Reigen. Ritsu smiled just a little bit. He didn't know if Ritsu could actually smile, it had taken weeks before he had ever gotten even that smile out of the kid, but this was good enough. He needed to smile more even if he didn't have much reason to. His parents…Reigen had only met them once and…well overbearing was one way to describe them. Reigen couldn't blame them, of course, knowing what he knew…and having seen the shrine. Most homes had one and, when he'd walked Ritsu home for the first time and met his parents like a responsible adult, he had been tempted to look past the shrine…and he would have….

If it hadn't been for the picture.

A baby…or maybe a toddler? Too young for school. There had been a picture of a child too young even for school in the family shrine. That was just…in a moment he had understood. Why Ritsu's parents were the way they were, why Ritsu complained so much, and just…he got it. He didn't have any kids, at least he hoped that he didn't have any kids out there in the world that he didn't know about, but to lose a child…that was the kind of thing that changed you….

So, yeah, he got the Kageyamas….and Ritsu too. Why the kid didn't smile all that much.

"I'm your assistant, not your apprentice." Said Ritsu. Reigen really wanted to be the greatest psychic of the twenty first century. He was like a kid playing a game. Well Ritsu had never had much use for games. Sure he played with Tsubomi, or at least he had when they'd been small. He had played house with her for hours. House and farm and castle and kitchen and dollhouse and all of those other things that she liked and it hadn't ever been fun…not really. He liked games where you either won or you lost and there was no way to win or lose when you played pretend.

Also he was way too old to be playing pretend like this…and Reigen was even older than he was.

"Same difference." Said Reigen as he put his hand on Ritsu's back and walked him through the abandoned playground. This place….did not feel right. He wasn't the greatest psychic of the twenty first century, or even a psychic, but he could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing up. There was something in the atmosphere around here…the same thing that almost killed those kids. There, in the middle of the park, was a twisted hunk of metal that used to be a jungle gym. It had just collapsed one day with a bunch of kids on it. No deaths but it had been bad enough that this whole park was closed to the public until further notice…

Reigen really hoped that Ritsu wasn't planning on telling his parents about this.

"Right. Well come on, I think that it's hiding in the sandbox." Said Ritsu. This would be quick. Getting rid of spirits was easy. You just filled them with energy until they exploded. Simple. He'd be done with this with enough time to spare that he could get ramen….and he was getting all the slices of pork in his ramen since he was the one doing all the work.

He was the only one who could do all the work.

Reigen could chant and throw salt around and make charms but he couldn't do what Ritsu could do. There were plenty of people who could but Reigen was not one of those people. He didn't know why Reigen wanted to be able to do things like this. All this did was paint a target on your back that was never going to come off. Ever. Really, in Ritsu's opinion, Reigen should have stuck to selling watercoolers or stayed in school or something like that.

Not that he would tell Reigen to do that, though, since if Reigen ever decided to get back to his old life then Ritsu would have to go back to playing house with Tsubomi all afternoon.

"Someone's in a hurry. Trying to squeeze some time in with your girlfriend?" asked Reigen. He poked Ritsu in the side lightly. Ritsu batted his hand away.

"I told you already, she's not my girlfriend. I don't like her like she likes me." Said Ritsu. He didn't even think that he liked girls at all, really. He had kissed Tsubomi once just to see what it was like. It was boring. Then he had kissed Okita from his class. That had felt like something. Then he kissed Hawasaki and Hitomura. Same thing. So he probably didn't like girls at all…well he'd known that for a while maybe…but other people didn't know that.

Not a lot of people anyway.

Mom and dad would have freaked out if he told them. He was their only kid, now, and he had to be good enough for two kids…he didn't know why his sister had to go and die like that….he had to pick up the slack for her being dead. He had to have the best grades and the best behavior and go to the best schools and then grow up to have the best job and then have a bunch of kids so mom and dad could have grandkids because that was just how parents were. He knew that if he came home after this and told his mom and dad that he liked guys, not girls, and how he sometimes stared out into space for hours and hours at night thinking about this one red haired boy he met…well they'd freak out.

To say the least.

The only person who knew, really knew, was Tsubomi and that was just because she had caught him doing something that he shouldn't have. She had agreed to keep her mouth shut…she was a good friend like that…and he hadn't meant to make her cry. He just didn't like her like that. He couldn't help who he liked or he didn't like. She got it, eventually, and he got the feeling that if he told Reigen he wouldn't cry…well of course he wouldn't cry…and he wouldn't freak out either. He was nice like that…and sometimes he even acted like he knew….not that they ever sat down and talked about it.

Why would they? This was Ritsu's business and his alone.

"Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you." Said Reigen. He knew that Ritsu was at least bi. He saw where Ritsu looked, who he looked at, when they were out. Of course he wasn't even in middle school yet so who knew what he would end up being. Part of him wanted Ritsu to end up with that girl who followed him around everywhere….they were just so cute together…not that Reigen made it a habit to play matchmaker with elementary school kids.

No, he was too busy playing exorcist.

"You didn't embarrass me, and shut up. I think it might be able to leave the sandbox…I can kind of feel it moving. Not all spirits are tied to one place, I think." Said Ritsu

"You're right, apprentice….sorry, assistant. My powers tell me that-" said Reigen

"You know that you don't have powers and I know that you don't have powers." Said Ritsu

"How many times do we have to go over this? I hide my aura because I don't want the evil organization to find me." Said Reigen

"I don't know if people can hide their auras." Said Ritsu. There was so much he didn't know. He knew that he could move things without touching them. He knew that he could see spirits and auras. He knew that he could bend spoons at dinner without even trying. In the middle of dinner with mom and dad trying to ask him about his day and Tsubomi and…and they didn't even care they just asked to ask…and when he wanted to stand up and tell them to just shut up if they were just going to talk to fill the atmosphere….and he just…

He didn't say anything.

But his spoon bent and he had to pretend that it had broken on it's own. Mom and dad had bought plastic spoons now since the metal ones were 'old' and it had taken so long to convince them that the spoons were just old. They had freaked out the first time that it had happened…and he had no idea why. It wasn't like they thought that espers were real. They were normal people. They didn't like things like that, supernatural things, they hadn't even let him go in the haunted house when they went to check out Salt Middle School's cultural fair.

Mom and dad were weird like that.

But it didn't matter. Even if they had believed in all of that stuff they still wouldn't have been able to help him. They weren't espers. There were espers out there, he didn't even know how many, and they knew…well…everything. They knew what had made him the way he was. They knew how to do…well…everything. He could move things without touching them and see auras but the internet had said that there were so many other things that he could do….possibly…and he had no idea how to be able to do them. Like…well he didn't even know what…there was so much…

There was so much to know and so few people with answers….people that he could talk to, anyway.

"Well you don't know if people can't hide them either." Said Reigen with a shrug. He didn't mind playing along with Ritsu. Well it wasn't playing on Ritsu's part of course, he really was an esper, but he didn't…well he didn't mind making Ritsu feel just a little less alone. Reigen knew how it felt to be different…well, different in the blond hair way not the psychic powers way….but still. He had been the only person he knew, besides his mom, growing up who looked the way he did. He knew what it felt like to be alone.

It sucked.

And if he could make it just a little bit more bearable for Ritsu then that was what he would do. He kept his hand to Ritsu's back, partially out of comfort and partially out of concern. Concern that he would get hurt, since this was pretty damn dangerous, but also maybe concern that he would turn around and head back home. Reigen…well he needed to keep the lights on. Rubbing backs and spreading salt around wasn't cutting it anymore and had never cut it….but he always split the money with Ritsu so it was fair!

And he watched him, too, after school…at least that was what he had told Ritsu's parents…so there was that to take into account as well.

"That's true….but I still don't think that you have psychic powers." Said Ritsu

"I told you already, my powers are spiritual. Not psychic." Said Reigen. He didn't know how much Ritsu knew, exactly, and lying to him was pretty low…but it wasn't like he was hurting him. What was wrong with making a lonely kid feel like he was a little less alone?

"I don't think that you have those either." Said Ritsu. He hadn't ever seen Reigen doing anything like he could do…but then again there was a whole world of stuff, according to the internet, that Ritsu could do…or didn't know how to begin doing. So, yeah, maybe Reigen had powers.

"You're killing me, kid." Said Reigen. He threw his hands up to the sky and groaned. He could feel Ritsu smiling again. Good. He needed to do that more often.

"Don't make any extra work for me." Said Ritsu as he rolled his eyes. He was smiling just a little. He looked down so it didn't show. It would do no good to encourage Reigen. Once he got on that 'spiritual powers' stuff it was hard to get him off of it. Ritsu had done his research and while he had come across plenty of people talking about psychic powers he hadn't seen even one person mention anything at all about spiritual powers. Well there was the Rising Sun Spiritual League thing but they were different, one of those new religions that mom and dad were always laughing at, so they didn't count.

"So it's here, huh?" asked Reigen as they came to a stop in front of a sandbox. He reached into his pocket and felt around for his salt. It did help…sometimes…well when he got blessed salt…and he had no idea if this salt was blessed or not…but still! If this was too much for Ritsu then he could…..well the best thing to do was to pick him up, run all the way home, and make sure he knew not to breathe a word of this to his parents. Reigen had let his mother push him into law school, he knew the law, and he knew that this technically counted as child endangerment….and child labor….and a few other things too…

And also he was fully aware, without having to dig up any seldom used law related knowledge, that the Kageyamas would literally murder him if anything happened to their son….so….yeah….

Ritsu seemed fine though…well serious. The kid was always serious but now he looked extra serious. That could have been good or bad. They had been in some close jams before, like that spirit who died choking on a slice of cucumber at the produce stand, but nothing that was life or death…and he didn't want to start now…even though now he could feel it…the spirit…right there under his feet….or maybe that was just the beginnings of an earthquake….

He didn't know which scared him more.

"Yeah, right there. You should go and hide somewhere. It feels like a big one." said Ritsu. He pushed Reigen back, not hard enough to hurt him, but hard enough to let him know that spreading salt around wasn't going to help in this situation. Ritsu could feel it, there, spreading around under his feet…he took a deep breath and told his powers to listen. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes he had to be hard on them.

Sometimes you hard to be hard on people.

"Really." Said Ritsu. He knew that he shouldn't have been like that to Reigen, kind of a jerk, but sometimes you had to be hard on people. Like now. There was a crack and then it started to rain sand. Reigen tried to pull him back. There was sand in his eyes and mouth and it just kept on coming down…

And then it stopped.

He had closed his eyes, before, because of the sand…and now he opened them again. He saw…a wall? A blue wall…the same color that he could see, sometimes, when he used his powers. That was…new. Ok, cool, he could make walls…he reached up. Domes. Bubbles? He'd name this later…or he'd let Reigen name it. He did like to name things.

This was not the time for salt splashing.

"Come play with me….forever! And ever! And ever!" shouted the spirit.

"I have to be home at six." Said Ritsu as the spirit jumped out of the sand…and the ground. Huh. So he was right, it was a big one. It was like a sand and dirt monster, sort of like something that you would make at the beach or something. Like how he and Tsubomi used to make sand people when they were little.

The sand people always fell apart in the end.

"It…might end up being closer to six thirty tonight." Said Reigen. He took a step back….and hit an invisible wall. Ok, so Ritsu could make invisible walls now. That was…something new. That was something that Ritsu hadn't done before. Well the kid was just full of surprises, wasn't he?

"No, six is going to be fine. Try to keep your eyes closed, I'm going to try and make this wall go away now. You're going to get sand in your eyes." Said Ritsu. He put his hands together and wished the wall away as hard as he could. The wall shimmered and tried to stay. He didn't need it anymore. He could do this. He was going to be fine. He wasn't going to get hurt…he wasn't going to die! Sometimes his powers were like another person….like an overprotective other person…

Like another parent.

Like someone who thought that he was fragile and had limitations and that if anything, anything at all happened to him he was going to die. He was going to die anyway, one day, when he got old. Some people died young, like his sister, and he wasn't going to go with her. He had no idea how she died, he has asked once and mom and dad had told him not to worry about that and then they'd cried….he highly doubted that she had died from a sandbox spirit.

And if she had well…he had powers and she didn't.

"This is going to be easy." Said Ritsu. He said that out loud and in his head. He took a deep breath and asked the wall to go away. He was not going to die. He didn't need someone else keeping him safe. He didn't need to be inside of walls. He was fine. He wasn't his sister. She hadn't had powers…but he did. He had powers and he could make them work.

Right now.

The walls disappeared. The spirit was saying more stuff now, about him playing with it forever and ever. He'd heard it the first time. This thing was big but it wasn't scary. Reigen was acting like this was scary but that was because he was a normal person…well Ritsu was mostly sure that he was a normal person. He said that he had spiritual powers and Ritsu didn't think that those were real but, before he met Sho, he hadn't had any idea that psychic powers were real either.

It was a weird world.

Stuff happened that was hard to explain. Like this. He took his powers, balled them up, and then stuffed them inside of the spirit until they exploded. Like putting soup in a microwave for too long. Really, once he got his powers to listen, it was easy. It was good practice too. That was how he had gotten this good in the first place, a whole lot of practice.

There was always practice, really, when he was with Reigen.

"That was….well I would have done it with a little more care but, you know, you did a good job Ritsu. How about some ramen after we get paid?" asked Reigen. Truth be told he was about to keel over. That was…that had been…it had been a lot of dirt and sand and noise and color…he hadn't even had the words for some of those colors….but he couldn't let that show. Not with Ritsu right there and perfectly fine. He was filthy but there wasn't a scratch on him. He was just standing there with his arms crossed and his serious face back on….or maybe it had never gone. Reigen didn't know.

He'd had his eyes closed.

"Fine…but I want six pork slices…and an egg too. I did all the work." Said Ritsu. He brushed his school clothes off as best as he could….mom and dad were going to be so mad that he got dirty….but not as mad as they would have been if they knew what he had been doing. They were going to ask how he had gotten so dirty doing office work….but he would just tell them that Reigen had taken him to the park or something.

He lied to them a lot these days.

But he had no choice but to lie to them. They couldn't know about…anything. They couldn't know about his job, about what he did after school, and about…well about pretty much everything that there was to know about him. He was a doll, pretty much, as far as mom and dad were concerned. He was person enough for two people and doll enough for mom and dad. In the space that his big sister had left behind mom and dad had decided to fill it with him…but not him…a doll version of him…but that was fine. He didn't really care either way…it wouldn't have mattered if he cared. It wouldn't have mattered if he sat mom and dad down and told them everything….told them what he wanted and didn't want and felt and didn't feel….none of it would have mattered so he didn't even bother trying.

There was no point to it. He had a job to do and he did it…he did it well like he did everything else in his life…

And now there was going to be ramen.


	488. Ramen After Work

"Can I put this up in your window?"

Ritsu never missed a chance to warn people about the evil organization. That was the good thing about working for Reigen, he got to use the printers as much as he needed to. Also there were ramen dinners sometimes but mostly he liked being able to use the printer whenever he needed to…which was always. He liked to carry at least ten fliers with him at all times. Ten of his fliers, not the Spirits and Such fliers, though Reigen always made sure that he carried a few around with him just in case.

Just in case times like these happened.

"Sure kid, whatever." Said the guy working behind the counter. He wasn't really paying attention, that was good, if he had been paying attention then he would have asked to see what it was that Ritsu wanted to put up in his window. Not everyone wanted a big red flier telling them that there were people waiting to kidnap them and use them for experiments and stuff. Also not every wanted a picture of Reigen making his serious face ad promising you twenty percent off your next exorcism either. This was a new ramen place. The one that they went to already had one of his fliers in the window and a Spirits and Such one too. Most of the places near work did. He had to expand outwards.

He had to warn everyone.

They were there. There was an evil organization right under their feet and nobody even knew! There were espers that walked around kidnapping people and using them for experiments and…and nobody had the first clue! Ok, it was kind of hard to believe but…but he had to do what he had to do! And telling people to their faces just made him look crazy so fliers were the next best thing.

If he could warn one person then he was doing the best that he could.

He taped two fliers up in the window. One for Spirits and Such and one warning people about the evil organization of espers right there waiting to kidnap all of them and take over the world. He took a different flier down to make room for his, someone had lost their fish, and he didn't feel bad about it. If someone had lost a fish then either they didn't know how fish worked or they were just bad at having pets. The evil organization was more important than some moron's lost fish. Kidnapped people and world domination were more important than someone's run away fish.

And so was a coupon promising twenty percent off your first exorcism for this month only.

Ritsu took a step back and admired his handiwork. That was good. Straight and right at eyelevel. Well at his eyelevel anyway. He had done his best and his best had to be good enough. Reigen could always fix it on their way out if he didn't like it…but Ritsu knew that he would. He was always happy when Ritsu did stuff like that. Adults loved it when he was helpful.

They were so easy to please.

So long as you did what they wanted, before then even asked sometimes, then they would be happy. That was what they cared about, you listening to them. They never listened to you but you were expected to listen to them. That was because they were older and stuff. Because they had been born first they thought that they knew everything and you knew nothing. That made them easy. As long as you smiled and did what they wanted then…well then you could do whatever you wanted.

Like warn everyone about the evil organization of espers that was lying in wait right in the city…and also eat a full ramen dinner right before your actual dinner.

A full ramen dinner with six slices of pork….and an egg too.

"Thanks." Said Ritsu as he climbed up onto the stool next to Reigen. He didn't need Reigen to hold it steady for him…but if he wanted to help then that was fine. Ritsu could have gotten up there eventually. He wasn't as short as he used to be…these stools were just really tall.

"You're welcome. You earned it. The way you took care of that spirit-" said Reigen

"Not so loud! Do you want THEM to hear you!?" whispered Ritsu. He looked around and felt the room with his aura. There were just normal people…the whole room was normal people…but there was something tugging at the edges of his…aura? Perceptions? It was like lying in bed at night and hearing the bathroom sink drip. Like he could just hear it dripping and it was just annoying enough for him to hear it but not annoying enough for him to do something about it.

Not that he ever did anything when he could feel one of them near.

He always just acted natural until either he lost them or they went away. Normally they just watched him at his house or at school or the park or something. They never did anything but sit there and watch. They wouldn't take him if he didn't give them a reason…and he never did. He never used his powers when he could feel them close. He wasn't stupid. He knew that he couldn't fight any of them if he tried. For as much as he could do exorcising spirits and bending spoons alone in his room he couldn't do anything real with his powers.

Like lifting something as heavy as a person…

"Right, right, sorry. The evil organization lurks behind every corner." Said Reigen

"Not every single corner. They aren't here right now but I can feel one of them near so just be quiet." Said Ritsu

"Ok, ok, this is me shutting up." Said Reigen

"If you were really shutting up then you wouldn't have said that." Said Ritsu

"Ok, I'm shutting up for real now." Said Reigen

"Thank you." Said Ritsu

"You're welcome….ok! Ok! Sorry. Actually shutting up this time!" said Reigen. People were looking at them now, Reigen had been kind of loud like normal, but Ritsu didn't mind. As long as nobody was going to kick them out or kidnap them for evil experiments then he was happy…and if Reigen had to talk then…well that was ok so long as he didn't get either of them kidnapped.

"….I guess that you don't have to shut all the way up but…don't talk about them, not when I say that they're near." Said Ritsu. He didn't feel like having another silent meal. He got enough of that at home…and also silence didn't fit with Reigen. Reigen and silence went as well together as pork feet and…well anything that wasn't pork feet.

"Right, because they'll capture us." Said Reigen

"Me, probably. You don't have any powers so they'll leave you alone…maybe. I don't know. I never stopped to talk to one of them." Said Ritsu. The only one of them that he had ever stopped and talked to had been that red haired guy….Sho…and even that had barely been a talk. It had been more like hitting his head and then being told some crazy stuff that both made no sense and then all the sense in the world…and also feeling some stuff that made no sense but also all the sense in the world. Like…he knew that holding hands was not the thing to think about when it came to that day…but he couldn't stop thinking about it. He had held hands with Sho…who was another guy…and he had liked it…and that had led him to this and….yeah.

Sho had given him a lot to think about.

"Well if they ever do come for you don't worry. I got you." Said Reigen. He patted Ritsu on the back when he said that…which was nice…but it didn't mean anything. Ritsu knew that if anything happened then he would most likely have ended up being the one who had to protect Reigen.

"What could you possibly do?" asked Ritsu

"I was on the kendo team in high school for about a month. I can't let that go to waste." Said Reigen

"I thought you had a green belt in judo. Wouldn't that help you more?" asked Ritsu

"I…almost had a green belt in judo. Almost." Said Reigen with a shrug. A lot of Reigen's stories ended in almosts. He almost got a green belt and he almost finished school and…well there were a lot of almosts. Ritsu didn't know much about almosts. Mom and dad never let him have almosts. He had to finish everything he started and he had to do it perfectly, good enough for two people, too….since he had to be two people.

Himself and…his sister.

"Why don't you ever finish anything?" asked Ritsu

"Look who's talking." Said Reigen as he motioned to the almost full bowl of ramen in front of Ritsu. He wasn't eating slowly. Reigen just ate like he was afraid someone was going to come and steal his food from him.

"No, I didn't mean food. I meant why do you keep on starting so many things and stopping them. You stopped going to kendo and judo and law school and selling water coolers. Why do you keep on starting and stopping things like that?" asked Ritsu

"I…guess that I'm just trying to figure myself out, you know? I'm just trying to figure out what I want out of my life. It's…kind of hard to describe. You'll know the feeling when you get to be an adult." Said Reigen

"I don't think that I'll ever know that feeling." Said Ritsu

"Hey…it's ok. I know how it looks now. You've spent your whole life doing what your parents told you to do and you've been living your life their way and that's how it goes when you're a kid. Your parents are just trying to make the best life for you that they can…but your life is your own. When you get to be an adult it'll hit you that you can do whatever you want, be whoever you want to be, and…well there's going to be a few years before you figure out exactly who you are and who you want to be. That's all. They're going to be some hard years, believe me I know, but it'll all be worth it in the end." Said Reigen

"I guess." Said Ritsu. He didn't think that Reigen's life and his life were anywhere near the same. Sure Reigen could go and say that his life was his own but he didn't have to be two people. Ritsu had to be himself and his sister at the same time. That meant that he had to make mom and dad double proud and live up to all the potential that people kept on telling him that he had, too. He didn't think that mom and dad would let him just pick stuff up and put it down whenever he felt like it. Especially things like school. He already knew where he was going to middle school, Salt because it was close to home, and then he would go to Black Pepper for high school for the same reason. Then he would go to Tokyo University because it was the best school ever and mom and dad would tell him what to study and then what job to get and they'd probably send Tsubomi to live with him and marry him too since they decided, well the whole world had decided, that she was his girlfriend and then he would have to have kids with her and work all the time like mom and dad did all while dodging the evil organization and-

He drank his ramen broth.

He knew that it was backwards, drinking the broth while there was still food in the bowl, but he liked the broth. It was best when there was still food in the bowl. The food kept the broth hot. There was nothing worse than cold ramen broth…well maybe cold ramen brother from that cheap kind of cup noodle that mom kept on buying because it was cheap. The kind that tasted like cardboard and misery.

This was good. It tasted like pork and all good things tasted like pork…aside from pork feet.

"Now, my young apprentice, I have a question for you….are you going to finish that?" asked Reigen as Ritsu put his bowl down. He didn't say anything, he just covered his bowl with his chopsticks. Reigen got the message and left Ritsu to eat his food at a normal pace. He didn't have to be home until six, he didn't have to rush, he could sit and enjoy what he was eating…well he could try to enjoy what he was eating….

It was a little hard to enjoy his meal when he could feel….whatever that was.

It was familiar. It was…and was not…familiar. He could see red out of the corner of his…well not his eye. He came across the word metaphysical a lot in his research…and that was what this was. He could see it metaphysically out the corner of his metaphysical eye. Red. That was…normal. The people who followed him around had red auras. The internet hadn't been helpful at all about what the colors meant. Red could have meant hostility or it could have meant good fortune or determination or maybe just someone who was born under a certain star. He didn't much care what red meant…because he already knew what red meant.

Red meant Claw.

They wore red, a lot of them, the ones that he'd seen. The ones that hadn't made much of an effort at hiding. They wore these red jumpsuits. Some of them wore black and red, and some of them wore blue and red, but mostly he had seen just plain red. Red with this weird symbol on it. Like the character for curse with an eye and…yeah. It was weird. He sometimes saw that symbol in weird places around town. Like carved into the wall of the boy's bathroom at the park or the bottom shelf of the bookcases in the outer space section of the library…he even saw it doodled in the margins of really old books too, sometimes, like when the library threw out really old books and they let you have them….

The conspiracy was older and went deeper than he had ever imagined.

So did the stalking. He knew that they stalked him, and had been for a while, and he knew that he hadn't given them any reason to take him….yet…and he wasn't going to. He was going to go home and just…act natural until they got bored and went to wherever they came from. He wished that he had asked Sho exactly where these people were coming from, like an address or something, but he hadn't even though to do that. His head had been hurting and his heart had been hurting and…and then Sho went and did crazy stuff and told him crazy stuff that was somehow true and then…well it had been a crazy day and he hadn't been thinking…

But he was thinking now.

He knew that Reigen was a normal person and he knew that if it came down to a fight he would be the one keeping Reigen safe, not the other way around, and he didn't want to have to look out for him right now. Ritsu just wanted to make it home and just…sit in his room and wait whoever this was out. This was a new aura, a new kind of red, and it felt….bigger…than any of the others that had followed him around before.

This was bad.

"I can walk home from here." Said Ritsu as he and Reigen got ready to part ways. The aura was getting closer…and it showed no signs of stopping. He didn't want to put Reigen in the middle of this. Even if he did have powers, spiritual ones, they were nothing like psychic powers and he would have just ended up getting hurt. If he got hurt then Ritsu was back to playing house with Tsubomi all afternoon…and also he would have maybe missed Reigen a little bit too.

"Are you sure? What if the evil organization-" said Reigen. He used that tone again, the one that he used when he was kidding around…but there was no kidding around. Not when it came to Claw. This was serious. There was an ancient conspiracy…or at least a really old one….and they kidnapped people for experiments and world domination. This was not the thing to joke about…and not the thing for Reigen to get mixed up in either.

"I'll be fine, I'll see you tomorrow." Said Ritsu. Technically he was supposed to go to cram school tomorrow but…well he didn't need it….and also hanging out with Reigen was way more fun than cram school anyway. He would need all the fun that he could get if he was going to spend another night with some stalked camped outside of his house.

Those nights were never fun.

Neither were the days he spent walking home as fast as he could. He knew that he was strong, a lot of espers couldn't even exorcise spirits from their own powers like that without help….and he could put up invisible walls too….and he hoped that it would be enough…that what he could do would be enough….enough for what he didn't really want to know. To fight? To get away? To not end up another picture up in the family shrine? Mom and dad…they wouldn't have been able to go on if he disappeared. He could never have been able to live with himself if he did something like that to them.

He walked faster.

Towards the red aura. If he walked away from it then…well if he walked away from it then it would look like he was running away. Like he could see and sense auras. Like he had powers. Nobody could know that he had powers. Even if all of this would have ended….no. He couldn't think like that. Sure it was kind of exhausting being stalked all the time and always having to watch his back but it was better than winding up in a bunch of experiments and kidnapped away from his family….they may have been annoying but he loved mom and dad….and even Tsubomi too even if it wasn't in the way that she loved him. If he just didn't come home one day…even if he was getting really tired of being stalked…then…well then that would have been hard on everyone…

And it would have been hard for him, too.

So he kept on walking. All he had to do was walk right past the aura that was coming. That was all. He had to walk right past it like he didn't even notice it. Like he was just passing by any other person on the street. Like he didn't know about espers or Claw or…or any of that. He just had to keep walking and…and….and…and he….

He didn't know if he could keep walking.

There. That was…he knew that aura. He knew that aura and he knew that person. That was…there was red. A red aura and red hair…that was the first thing he noticed. All the red. The next thing he noticed was green…green and white…that coat. He knew that coat. That coat and that hair and those eyes…he knew those eyes…he'd been seeing those in his dreams for the past…almost a year. Those eyes and that hair and that coat and….and he knew that person….

He knew….he knew that voice….

"Hey! It's you again!"


	489. What the Hell, Ritsu?

It was him again.

Ritsu. Ritsu with that yellow Zooptopia hoodie even though he said that he didn't really like Zootopia all that much. Ritsu with that hair that defied gravity but in a cool way, not like Sho's. Ritsu who had a scar across his forehead now just barely hidden by that same gravity defying hair. Ritsu who had the same eyes as big sis…for some reason. That was weird. That was the thing that got the goldfish in his stomach to swim a little less. He knew that most people had brown eyes but those…well those were big sis's eyes! They were the same shape and color and…and he had the same nose that she did too…and that was weird…but right now weird was good. Weird got the goldfish in his stomach to calm the fuck down.

Which was good.

Because Sho had a mission….which he couldn't remember….but he knew that it had been an important one. Seeing Ritsu was like getting hit in the head with a metal pipe….not that Sho had ever been hit in the head with a metal pipe but Shimazaki had told him a story, once, about the time some guy he knew got hit in the head a bunch of times for going against the family and then he forgot his name and where he lived and stuff…and Sho….well he could remember his name and where he lived….and he was thinking about Shimazaki now too….and now that stupid goldfish was awake again….and he just…he focused on Ritsu but now even the weirdness of seeing someone who looked so much like big sis couldn't make the goldfish in his stomach stop….

Maybe, just maybe, Sho was not cut out for missions like this.

He was staring at Ritsu now and Ritsu was staring at him…and that didn't look like good staring…not that he knew what good staring was…because nobody had ever stared at him in the good way. He wasn't even entirely sure what he wanted, what the good staring would have been, but he knew that he wanted Ritsu to look at him like that….he sucked. Sho sucked. He should have been kicking his ass or something for going around town telling people to stay away from Claw and stuff. Sho should have been kicking his ass right now and not just staring at him…and being stared at….and he should have been…well maybe not kicking his ass but he should have been doing something….

Maybe he should have said something.

What did people say to one another? What did they do when they met each other on the street like this after almost a year of not seeing one another? What did they even….do? This was Japan and…and what did they do in Japan? He couldn't remember. He was Japanese! He was Japanese and he couldn't remember what they did in Japan and…and he just….he just…he needed to say something or do something or just….make words! Japanese words!

Yes, some Japanese words would have been the ones to use in this situation.

"Hey! It's you again!" said Sho. There. He had said something…and maybe it was the wrong thing….because now Ritsu was running away. He had turned around and now he was running in the opposite direction…like he expected Sho to do something terrible to him or something….but Sho wasn't going to do anything terrible! Maybe kick his ass a little bit but…no. You weren't supposed to do that to a…..friend? Were he and Ritsu friends? Well obviously not if Ritsu had gone running off in the other direction….and also they barely knew each other….and….and this was just….

Sho stopped thinking and started running.

Because, really, thinking was stupid. Shimazaki always said that thinking led to overthinking and nothing good came from overthinking. When you overthought then you ended up doing nothing and doing nothing was boring so the thing to do was just to act. Just do whatever your body and mind told you to do. Otherwise you would get stuck in one place and die. Shimazaki was smart like that…he was one of the smartest people that Sho had ever met and if he'd been there then he could have just teleported Sho over to where Ritsu was…but he wasn't there….

And Sho needed to stop thinking about!

Maybe if he ran fast enough then he could end up outrunning the thoughts in his head and the goldfish in his stomach. Maybe that was why he was running. Maybe he would even end up running right past Ritsu. Maybe he would run right past Ritsu and then he would be all 'what' and then Sho would be all 'I'll come back for you once I outrun all of the thoughts in my head' and then Ritsu would have been all 'that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard' and then Sho…well he would agree. Wanting to outrun thoughts was stupid. His thoughts were in his head and no matter where he went his brain would follow...and so would the stupid goldfish in his stomach….

He didn't end up outrunning Ritsu.

He ended up catching up to Ritsu but not outrunning him. Ritsu could run fast, really fast actually, and it was…well it was nice. Having someone who could run that fast. Big sis couldn't run that fast. She had always been bad at running….and Shimazaki didn't really run. He teleported places and then he jumped out and tried to scare you…but Ritsu could run fast and that was cool. Like he would be good at…games with running and…and this was not the time to be thinking about him like that! About what it would be like if they were friends!

They weren't even friends….not really….they had just talked and held hands once and also Sho saved Ritsu's life and gave him that scar on his forehead…

Sho stops running so fast at that thought. Maybe he should just let Ritsu get away. Maybe he should just let him get away and just…keep on putting up fliers that warned people about Claw…even though normal people weren't supposed to know about them…and also maybe he should have just let Ritsu keep running around with some guy who claimed that he had psychic powers but obviously didn't or he would have joined Claw by now…and maybe…well Sho could have always just lied and told everyone that he hadn't been able to find anything….he was pretty good at telling lies….and what was one more lie on top of the lifetime of lies that he'd been telling people?

He didn't end up having to lie.

Ritsu grabbed his arm and pulled him into an alley. That was…Sho just let himself get led. That had been unexpected. That had been….when Ritsu grabbed him he had expected to get hit…but he hadn't gotten hit. He had been grabbed and…well it did make more sense to fight where normal people couldn't see. Yeah, that's what made sense. Ritsu dragged him into this alley that smelled way too much like fish…probably because they were behind a seafood restaurant…to kick his ass and also torture him with the smell of rotting fish.

Well Sho had given him a scar so he kind of earned it.

Ritsu stopped running and caught his breath. He leaned forward and just breathed for a while. Sho did the same. He liked fighting….well he liked it when he and Shimazaki play fought…but this would not be a play fight. This would be a real fight. This would be a real fight and…and he'd never been in a real fight before. He'd seen plenty of them, dad got into fights all the time, but he had never been the one to just…be there in dad's place? That seemed sort of like what this was. He had seen dad make Scars before…but Ritsu was already kind of a Scar. He had that thing on his forehead and it was all Sho's fault…so maybe if Ritsu did end up getting captured then it would be ok since he was already a Scar and he didn't need to be put into one of those Awakening machines….or something….

Sho didn't want to take that kind of gamble.

He wasn't going to fight, he decided. He knew that if he fought then he would either lose or he would win and then….well he didn't care what happened after he won. Or after he lost. He didn't want to fight Ritsu, not for real anyway. Not in the way that he could hurt him. He didn't want to hurt his…friend? A guy he wanted to be friends with….a guy he wanted to be friends with really bad….

A guy who maybe did not want to be friends with him.

Sho took a step forwards and ran into Ritsu's barrier. That was….well that cool, actually. He had figured out how to put up a barrier! Sho hadn't been able to do that before he had been….well before everything that happened. He remembered….he remembered wanting to make the hurt stop and then…and then he had tried…he had tried so hard to get that stuff out of his skin…the stuff that they stuck you with and then shocked you….and then when it had been done….it had been done but only so the machine could cool down…and he knew that it would start up again and…and he knew that if he didn't do something then it would have hurt all over again and…

And Ritsu had figured it out without having to be stabbed with needles all over his body and then shot full of electricity.

"Did you figure this out on your own?" asked Sho as he pressed his hand against Ritsu's barrier. It shimmered for a moment, it was clearer than his barrier but just as strong feeling, before it went away. That was good. Sho took another step forward….and walked into his barrier again. He had dropped it and put it right back up again!

The was kind of cool…and Sho didn't have it in him to be pissed off at Ritsu right now.

"Yeah. Today." Said Ritsu. He didn't look at Sho when he said that…and Sho…well he kind of got why…but also he didn't. Ritsu knew that he wasn't going to hurt him….right? They had been…well they hadn't become friends when they met but…well they had been something, right? The sort of something where they held hands and…and Sho needed to stop thinking about the handholding. About how perfect it had felt for the ten seconds that it had gone on for. How nice and soft Ritsu's hand had felt on top of his…how it had felt like so much and…

And he'd ran away so of course Ritsu would be pissed off at him…and also the thing about the scar on his head…and all that stuff he said about Claw, too.

"Just now?" asked Sho. He tried to sound friendly there. He needed Ritsu to know that he wasn't going to hurt him. That he thought….well if Ritsu had figured out not only how to put up a barrier but to drop it and bring it upon command….well that was cool and Ritsu was cool for being able to do that…and even if he had figured it out a while ago Ritsu was still really cool…in Sho's eyes anyway….and probably in everyone else's and…

And Sho knew what it meant when he thought a guy was this cool.

"No. Earlier." Said Ritsu. He didn't look at Sho. He looked at the ground like it had spat in his mom's face or something. He looked at the ground like he wanted to kick it's ass. Sho…he knew that look. That was how he looked when he got scared. He didn't look scared when he got scared, because he wasn't like that, he looked pissed off….because he was pissed off when something or someone scared him…and he didn't want…he didn't want Ritsu to look at him like he was looking at the ground.

"You don't have to be afraid. I won't hurt you." Said Sho. Ritsu's barrier went down again. He didn't try and come any closer. He knew that if he came closer then Ritsu would just get more scared and more pissed off…and he didn't want that. He could never want that. He wanted…well he wanted a lot of things in that moment, a lot of things that he knew were stupid to want, but Ritsu being scared of him was not one of those things.

"Then why did you chase me?" asked Ritsu

"Because you ran away." said Sho. Stupid! That had been the stupidest thing that he possibly could have said! Why did he have to be so stupid all the time!? He had inherited dad's stupid genes…that was it. There was something wrong with him in his genes that made him say stupid shit like that!

"Sometimes you have to run away." said Ritsu

"What?" asked Sho

"Nothing. My…friend…just says that sometimes…" said Ritsu

"Well you didn't have to run away from me. I'm not going to hurt you." Said Sho. He left out the part where he had been sort of thinking about kicking Ritsu's ass to get him to stop acting like a moron. He had told Ritsu, in plain Japanese which they both spoke, not to draw attention to himself or else he would end up getting kidnapped and experimented on! What was so hard to understand about that?! Don't go around using your powers and…well Sho had never come out and told him not to warn the normal people about Claw…well it went without saying that he should not have been warning the normal people about Claw!

"Then why did you chase me? And don't tell me it's because I ran away. I had to. You're with…them…and you warned me about them but you're still with them." Said Ritsu

"Them? Oh, you mean Claw. Yeah I'm with them but I'm not going to drag you off to the Division HQ or anything." Said Sho

"Then what are you going to do?" asked Ritsu

"Um…I don't know. I guess tell you to stop doing….what you're doing. I guess." Said Sho

"What am I doing?" asked Ritsu. He crossed his arms when he said that and…and he glared at Sho too…and now his insides felt like they were made of goldfish. Like he was just a bunch of goldfish in a trench coat or something and they were all swimming at once and…and he knew that he needed to calm down….but how could he?

Ritsu was looking at him…at HIM!

"You're…um….looking at me." Said Sho. He wished that he knew how to turn invisible. It would have been pretty convenient if he could have just disappeared right about then. He had said that stupidest thing imaginable and now Ritsu thought that he was an idiot. He could tell.

Ritsu was looking at him like he thought that he was an idiot.

He had his arms crossed and he had one of his eyebrows going way up like he was saying 'really?' and….yeah. Of fucking course Ritsu thought that he was an idiot…he WAS an idiot! Out of all the stupid things that he could have said that had to have been the stupidest! Seriously?! Why had he SAID that?! He needed to turn invisible or fly away or die….yeah. He could drop dead right there and then that would be the end of it. He could just drop dead and…no….that wouldn't work out because then he would turn into a spirit and Ritsu could see spirits so the looks wouldn't stop at all and….

And he needed to figure something out….and fast.

"Yeah. I'm looking at you because you chased me for miles and miles-" said Ritsu

"It wasn't miles." Said Sho

"Yes it was." Said Ritsu

"There's no way that you could have run for miles." Said Sho

"Well it felt like miles then! You show up out of nowhere to chase me and then you think that you can just tell me it's because-" said Ritsu

"It's because of this!" said Sho as he pulled a red piece of paper out of his pocket. He had seen these all over town. Someone had been putting them up and he, and the rest of the Seventh Division, knew who it was….and that was bad. Ritsu needed to know how bad this was. Sho was still made of goldfish but at least now they were all in agreement to stop with the angry swimming for five minutes so he could tell Ritsu was a moron he was being!

"…so?" asked Ritsu. He took a step forward and took the piece of paper out of Sho's hands. Sho let him. He didn't trust himself to move or to say anything or…or anything! So? What the hell did 'so' mean!? That was like…like he was being all whatever about this but…but this was not the thing to be all whatever about!

"What do you mean, so? Ritsu, you can't do this! People are going to notice-" said Sho

"Good. I want them to notice." Said Ritsu. A moron. That was the only explanation. Ritsu was some kind of a moron.

"Are you a moron or something?" asked Sho

"Are you an asshole or something?" asked Ritsu

"Are you a dick hole or something?" asked Sho

"That's a weird thing to call someone." Said Ritsu. Yup, he was a moron…because calling someone a dick hole was not weird! He called people dick holes all the time! Hell, just that morning he'd called Fukuda a dick hole because he made fruit salad for breakfast….which was a dick hole move…so that was not a weird thing to call someone.

"What? A dick hole? That's not weird. That's just….a thing to call someone." asked Sho

"Yeah, a weird thing to call someone. I've never heard anyone say that before." Said Ritsu

"Well…it's a thing that you can call someone! Especially when they're being a dick hole!" said Sho. Ritsu was kind of a dick hole…or at least he was being one to Sho…and Sho…he knew that he should have wanted to kick Ritsu's ass for saying all of this stuff but….well he didn't. He wanted to call him names…and do a lot of other stuff to him….but he didn't want to kick his ass.

"I am not being a dick hole." Said Ritsu

"Yes you are! You're being a dick hole! Like a really big…no….like a really small dick hole! Like a girl's-" said Sho

"Girls don't have dicks." Said Ritsu. He laughed when he said that. His aura laughed, anyway, he just smiled a little….and Sho…he just…he wasn't trying to be funny!

"Yeah I-I know that!" said Sho. He knew full well that girls did not have dicks and…and he didn't want Ritsu to laugh at him like….like he was an idiot or a moron or something! He just….Ritsu shouldn't have been laughing at him like that!

"Then why were you about to call me a girl's dick hole if you know that girl's don't have dicks?" asked Ritsu. He laughed again…and he put his hand over his mouth that time like he was a girl or something…and that just made it worse!

"Because you're being a really big dick hole but big is good when you talk about dicks so it makes more sense to call someone a small dick hole and then even smaller than that would be a girl's dick hole if they had dicks." Said Sho. There. Now everything made sense and Ritsu could stop laughing at him…and he stopped laughing. He was staring at him now…and his aura was focused on him…and he just…he looked just like big sis only…not…and it was weird and….

"You're weird." Said Ritsu simply. Weird. Ritsu had called him weird and…and he was not weird! He was not the weird one! He was normal and…and everyone else was weird and….and he was normal! He was normal and….and he was!

"N-No I'm not!" said Sho

"Yes you are." Said Ritsu. He said that like this was a fact or something. Like he was all 'the sky is blue and Suzuki Sho is weird' and….and Sho was maybe a little weird…but….but he wasn't nearly as weird as Ritsu was!

"I'm not the weird one here. You're the one going around telling people about Claw and-" said Sho

"You're the one talking about dicks. That makes you the weird one here." Said Ritsu

"I'm not weird! You're….you're weird…and a moron! You're the biggest moron I have ever met in my life….and my best friend makes caramel waffles by melting bags of caramels into a waffle iron! I told you that you needed to run away if you sensed anyone-" said Sho

"Which I did." Said Ritsu

"And….and I told you that Claw was going to come for you if you had powers and you're pretty much going around telling the whole world that you have powers and-" said Sho

"No. I never use my powers when I can sense them near….and I know that they're stalking me. I never use my powers when I can feel them coming. I'm not a moron…and I'm not weird. You're weird. You're the weirdest stalker ever. At least the other guys never did anything but follow me around." Said Ritsu

"I'm not a stalker. I just came to…tell you to knock this shit off! Stop with the fliers and stop with the whole spirit….business…thing too. Just…can't you be normal? Your parents are normal people, you said, and you live out in the world with normal people so can't you just…be normal and not…make Claw pay attention to you….and stuff?" asked Sho

"How can I be normal when I can do things like this?" asked Ritsu. He reached out and pull his hand back fast. A bunch of garbage cans rolled over….and a cat ran out. Poor cat. He wished that he'd known that cat had been there. Then he could have warned it…or picked it up and petted it and brought it back with him and raised it in his closet and then when he had to leave he could have put the cat in his backpack or something….not that he ever wanted to leave….

He wanted to stay there forever.

In that alley that smelled like fish…well not that alley specifically…but just…he didn't want to leave! He didn't want to leave baby sis and…and that wasn't what this was about. He wanted to tell himself that he wanted to stay forever because of baby sis but…but he wanted to stay there because….because Ritsu was there. He was there and…and Sho…Sho didn't know. He did know. He knew that he didn't like how Ritsu had his arms crossed but not like he was pissed but more like…more like he just…like he was trying to hide behind his arms or something. Sho took a step forward….and he felt….he felt the barrier go up but then go back down…

Ritsu wanted Sho to be close to him.

He had to remind himself how breathing worked. Breathing and walking. He walked right up to Ritsu and…and he just…kept on walking. He was right in front of him now and…and he was there. He was there and….and Ritsu was there and…and he couldn't un-notice this…and he had no idea why he had to notice this…and he also looked…why did he care how he looked?! Why was he thinking about himself and how he looked and how he was so close and…and…and this was about Ritsu! Stupid, annoying, weird Ritsu who just….acted so stupid and annoying and weird all the time!

Ritsu who acted like that because he was pissed off and scared….

"I don't know just…don't get kidnapped. Bad stuff happens to the people we kidnap and…and I don't want that to happen to you." Said Sho. He felt weird saying that. Sort of like he was naked…but like naked like he was being looked at but….not naked in the weird feelings sort of way. He was way too close to Ritsu and he was saying way too much…and he needed to stop talking and take a step back….that was what he needed to do…but he had never been good at doing what he needed to do.

"I can handle myself. I'm not a baby." Said Ritsu. That…Sho got it. He got it, how Ritsu felt, and he just…he wanted to yell at him until he stopped acting like a moron! He wanted…he actually didn't know what he wanted…well he knew what he wanted and…and he couldn't want that! He wanted Ritsu to stop crossing his arms and reach out and hold his hand and pull him down and kiss him and….and he knew that he wasn't supposed to want that…and wanted…..

He wanted a lot of things!

"I don't want anything bad to happen to you, ok!?" asked Sho. He kind of felt like pushing Ritsu. Like…like if he pushed Ritsu then he could push all of those thoughts out of his head. The ones that Ritsu made him think. He thought about…well a lot of stuff that he was not supposed to think about! He thought about…about how he wanted….he wanted to kiss him. He wanted to kiss him and tell him something stupid like…like he could come back to the base and Sho would keep him safe and then they could be together and….and be boyfriend and other boyfriend….and that was stupid!

He was such a moron sometimes…

"Why? You don't even know me." Said Ritsu. Sho….he needed to think up something to say to that! Something that had nothing to do with how badly he wanted to hold Ritsu's hand again…because he couldn't want that. He wanted….he didn't want that. He just…he wanted to know Ritsu but not…not for hand holding reasons!

"I want to know you!" said Sho. He left out the part about kissing and hand holding…and….well that hadn't made it any better now had it! If anything he had just made it worse! He was so dumb sometimes…like now. Now he was being such a moron…such a dick hole of a moron…and…and he just…

He hadn't meant it like that!

"What?" asked Ritsu. Right, Ritsu didn't know what he had going on in his head. He had no idea that Sho liked him…as much as he could like someone he didn't know. He liked…he had a lot of feelings right now!

"I….fuck. Sorry. I just….I think that you're cool and you're the only kid esper that I ever met and….and I want to get to know you and….and I can't do that if you get kidnapped and experimented on and…and it's…it's bad! What they do to people is bad and…and I don't want that to happen to you. I want…that not to happen to you." Said Sho. He just…said things. He just said them and he hoped that they made sense. Just saying stuff, even stuff like this, was better than yelling and stuff…even though he knew that he was being weird. He had just met Ritsu, really, and he barely knew him…so why did he care so much? Because he looked like big sis? No…that part was just weirding him out actually….maybe because he just…

Maybe because he made Sho feel like he had an aquarium inside of himself.

"I…I'm not going to stop…and I can take care of myself but….I guess that I'll be more careful….or whatever…" said Ritsu. He stepped closer to Sho this time. Sho tried to swallow. His throat was way too dry…but he kept on try to swallow. It felt like the goldfish in his stomach was trying to jump up his throat…

Maybe he was trying to swallow it down…it wasn't really working.

"Thanks." Said Sho. His voice came out really high then. He was just grateful that he had managed to say anything at all. That was…something that he had do. Make words. It was hard to make words now. Ritsu was close…way too close. Sho was not the weird one. Ritsu was that weird one. Sho at least knew not to get that close to someone. The only person outside of his family who he got that close to was Shimazaki….but it was ok because they were best friends….and also Sho liked him….

A crazy thought tried to take root in Sho's mind.

"Um…." Said Sho. Ritsu was really close…as close as Sho got to Shimazaki when he wanted to be near him. When he got a lot of goldfish feelings inside of his stomach and he just…acted on them. Well not all the way on them. Acting on them would have been standing up on his tiptoes and kissing Shimazaki on the mouth and-

-and he should not have been having those sorts of thoughts right now.

"Hey….uh…." said Ritsu. He had his arms uncrossed now. Sho felt a shiver run down his spine. That was…maybe it was because Ritsu was so close….or maybe it was because Ritsu's barrier had gone up again. The barrier was around them, now, and Sho…he kind of…wanted it there. Sort of like…like if it was there then Ritsu wanted him to be close to him…

Sho…he wanted….he wanted Ritsu to want to be near him….

"Y-Yeah…." Said Sho. Ritsu was close enough that Sho could see that scar on his head clearly now. It was straight, a lot straighter than Sho's were, and a lot smoother too. At least it looked like it was smooth. Sho…he wanted to reach up and brush Ritsu's hair away from his forehead and just…run his fingers over that scar…but he didn't do that….even though Ritsu was close to him and maybe…maybe Ritsu was thinking about….some of the same stuff that Sho was thinking about right now.

But that was crazy…and even if it wasn't…Sho wouldn't let himself think about…what it would be like…if it wasn't or was or…or….

Ritsu was so fucking close right now….

"I…I kind of…" said Ritsu. Sho…he took a step back. His hand touched Ritsu's barrier….which was like touching Ritsu almost. There was a lot of…Ritsu…in this barrier if it made sense….or maybe it didn't and Sho was just losing his mind or something…he didn't know…he didn't know anything other than the fact that Ritsu was so close that Sho could smell ramen broth and…and not the alley and…and Ritsu had the same eyes as big sis and that was super weird….so he didn't look Ritsu in the eyes…

He couldn't look Ritsu in the eyes.

"I kind of want…." Said Ritsu. Sho was looking at his scar, the one that he gave Ritsu, but that didn't help. Ritsu was looking up at him…he was looking him in the eyes…and Sho…he wanted…he didn't know what he wanted….well he did know but he knew that he couldn't…or maybe he could and…and….

And Ritsu was holding his hand now.

"I…kind of want to get to know you better too. Sho." said Ritsu. Sho nodded. He nodded and…and then…and then he felt Ritsu's hand touching his. First the tips of Ritsu's fingers were touching his…and then the rest of his hand was on top of his….

And then Ritsu laced his fingers with his.

"I…would like that a lot." Said Sho. There. He had found words and…and was that ok for him to say? Was it weird or…or even worse…was this…was this wrong? He was cheating…he felt like he was cheating…and there was nothing worse than cheating! There was nothing worse in the whole world than cheating and…and he was being a cheater…

He was letting Ritsu hold his hand.

"I know you would. You just said that you would." Said Ritsu. Ritsu was still holding his hand and his barrier was still up and…and Sho…he let go. He had to let go, he just…he could not cheat on Emmy! Even if he didn't love her he just…he wasn't that kind of person!

He let go of Ritsu's hand.

"I…um…..I….I have to go! Just…don't get kidnapped!" said Sho. Sometimes you had to run away. That was pretty good advice. He decided to take it. He turned around and ran away….right into Ritsu's barrier. It shimmered before it went down. He head Ritsu say something….and Sho…well he knew that he should have stayed and just…or maybe it was right to go…or maybe he should just…he didn't know!

He just didn't know!

He didn't know what to do or what to say or what to think…and he just…he ran! Ran away. He ran away until he couldn't run anymore…and then he kept on running. He just kept on running until he couldn't even think anymore. He had no idea what that had been…and he had every idea of what that had been and he just…he didn't want to think about it and…and he just….he had to keep on running because…he just….he just couldn't believe that he had almost….that…he'd wanted…to just…..seriously….just….

What the hell, Ritsu!?


	490. I Deserve to Rot in a Traitor Hole This

Sho didn't know how to exorcise his feelings.

He wished, he sort of wished, that dad had showed him how to do that. Dad used to tell him, when he was little, to exorcise his feelings. To just stop having them all together because when he had a lot of feelings it made him tiresome to be around. Sho had tried his best, back then, to do what dad said. Back then he had loved dad and wanted dad to love him back. Back then, when he'd been really little, he had wanted nothing more for dad to think that he was even half as awesome as big sis.

Now he didn't know what he wanted.

Dad thought that he was awesome, or at least dad thought that he was doing something right for once in his life, and it felt…he didn't even know how he felt. Good, maybe? Or bad? Or like nothing at all. He didn't know. All he knew was that dad said, once, that he was happy with the man who Sho was becoming. Sho didn't think that he was becoming a man, he was still short and didn't even need to shave yet and no, he did not smell bad, no matter what Fukuda said. Sho was eleven and that was still a kid and he didn't think that he was anywhere near being a man yet…and even when he did wake up and he was as tall as dad and stuff he still didn't think that he would know how he…felt…about being someone dad was proud of….or maybe he was just used to it.

Dad was proud of him now.

Dad was only proud of him because he had a girlfriend and that meant that dad was going to get grandkids. He didn't know why it was so important for the bloodline that he had kids. Big sis liked babies too and she liked guys and any guy who thought he was too good for big sis had another thing coming so, really, he should have had his money on big sis for all of this. Sho knew that he was more important because he was a boy and that because he was a boy that meant that his kids would be called Suzuki…but really if dad was planning on ruling the world then he could have just ordered big sis's husband to change his name to Suzuki and then the problem would be solved….but it didn't work that way….or at least he didn't think that it worked that way.

He knew how it worked

He had a girlfriend and that meant that he was supposed to grow up and marry her and then have kids and then rule the world until he died and then his son would rule the world and then his son and his son's son and then his son's son's son and so on and so forth until the world got swallowed up by the sun when it went supernova. That was how it worked and…and he didn't even want a girlfriend but…well he was doing what he was supposed to do…aside from the cheating. The cheating parts were wrong and…and he shouldn't have ever done that and….

And he sucked as a person!

He sucked. He knew that he sucked. The whole run home had been spent telling himself that he sucked…and it had been a very long run. He had no idea how dad and Fukuda managed to walk out to the woods every single day but Sho had done it…well he had ran…and the run had given him plenty of time to tell himself how much he sucked. He sucked because he betrayed Claw again, he didn't want Ritsu to get kidnapped but he still wasn't supposed to betray everyone, but what was worse…what really made him a traitor, was the cheating.

He had cheated on Emmy.

He had held hands with Ritsu….held hands! That was one of the biggest things that you could do with another person! He had let his hand touch Ritsu's….and for real this time! His fingers had been laced with Ritsu's and everything! And he had let it happen! And not only had he let it happen he had…he had…he had LIKED it like…like….like some kind of….of….

Cheating person!

Betrayer. He had betrayed Emmy like a betrayer! Like the worst kind of betrayer who had ever lived! How could he have….he just….he sucked! He sucked and he would suck for the rest of his life and no matter what he did or tried to do he would always suck and…and he just…he sucked! He had been telling himself over and over again all night that he sucked and…and he just….he knew that he sucked and he didn't need to hear it from anyone else!

Especially Fukuda.

"You really worried me, Sho, disappearing like that. If you want to go in to the city then you have to tell me so that I can go with you, alright? I'm taking care of you and I have to-" said Fukuda. He had been going around in circles since….Sho didn't even know! One day or two days or one week or two weeks or…well a long time! A long time and…and Sho just….

He wanted to be alone!

"I don't need you to take care of me! Now leave me alone!" said Sho. He crossed his arms and looked down at his shoes. He hadn't even taken off his shoes when he got home. Not that this was home, he didn't really have a home, but this was the closest thing he had right now and he knew that as a place he lived in he was supposed to take his shoes off when he came inside….but he just…he hadn't been able to! He hadn't wanted to do anything but come home and sit there in the dark all alone until the darkness ate him and there was nothing left!

Well not for real, of course, because it would have been a really mean thing to do to big sis and baby sis….just letting the darkness eat him without even saying goodbye.

But still! The last thing that he had needed was Fukuda to start telling him how much he sucked! Sho had barely sat down and pulled his sketchbook onto his lap, sometimes it helped to draw his feelings, before Fukuda started up on him about how he shouldn't have left and how he didn't need to do missions and how worried he'd been….and now he was going on about how he was the one who took care of Sho! Sho was eleven years old now! He didn't need someone to take care of him!

He was almost a man….like dad said….and he didn't need this right now!

"Sho, I didn't mean it like that. I meant that I'm….I'm responsible for you and a lot of bad things could have happened to you out there." said Fukuda. He sat down beside Sho now, finally, instead of standing over him to talk. He hated that. Dad did that.

"I don't want to talk about it." Said Sho. Even with Fukuda sitting next to him on the couch Sho still didn't want to talk about what had happened…about Ritsu and the feeling he got when he'd been near him…a lot of the same sorts of feelings that he got when he was with Shimazaki….and he definitely didn't want to talk about the cheating! Sho did enough of that in his head without it happening in the real world…and it was ok when it was in his head because there was no way that anyone who wasn't a telepath could tell that he thought about kissing Shimazaki and holding his hand and being his boyfriend and…and he shouldn't have done what he did with Ritsu! He didn't even know him as well as he knew Shimazaki…or well at all and…and Ritsu had said that he wanted to get to know him better….and….

And shut up goldfish! Nobody wants you!

"Something happened?" asked Fukuda. Sho shook his head. Why did he have to do that? Why couldn't he just find someone else to bother? Sho didn't want to talk about it! He'd said it in plain Japanese.

"Yes…no….I don't know. I don't want to talk about it…so stop trying to talk to me about it." Said Sho. He just wanted to sit here, on the couch, alone. He couldn't go to his room. If he went to his room then he would end up sitting on his bed and looking over to where big sis's bed was supposed to be and then he would end up getting all sad and wanting to call her…

And when he called her, which he probably would, he wouldn't know what to say.

She was his sister and she loved him, and he loved her, and he knew that he could probably kill someone and she would still love him just as much as she had always loved him…but also he knew that if he told her what he had done then she would have been disappointed in him…her own brother…a betrayer. A cheater. The worst kind of person that there was….

The very worst.

Big sis would never have been able to look at him the same ever again if she knew what he had done…and Fukuda…he would have felt the same way as big sis…and mom would have felt the same way if she ever came back. If mom ever came back then she would have taken one look at him, known that her son was a cheater, and then walked right out the door again and never come back to him...and then that would have been one more way that he had hurt someone who loved him….

If she even still loved him anymore…even without knowing about the cheating.

"Sho…you know that you can talk to me about anything, right? If something's wrong then maybe I can help you fix it. Are you upset because you got sent out on a mission? Because if that ever happens again you can say-" said Fukuda

"I don't want to fucking talk about it!" said Sho

"Come on-" said Fukuda

"Fuck you! I fucking said that I didn't want to talk about it so shut your fucking mouth already! You mother fucking, dick sucking, bitch bastard!" said Sho

"Sho, language." Said Fukuda. That was…Sho always got at least a little bit upset when Fukuda told him that he was talking wrong….and this time he was a little upset…but that little bit of being upset grew. Fast. Faster than it had ever grown before. So much faster that he just…he couldn't….

He didn't hit Fukuda. He was proud of himself for that.

"Fuck you! When you were a kid you said even worse than this and….and I can say whatever I want! I can say whatever the fuck I want and I can do whatever the fuck I want and you can go fuck yourself! I don't need you to tell me what to do or how to talk and I don't need you to…to take care of me either! I can take care of my mother fucking self! You get it you mother fucking, dick sucking, dick choking-" said Sho

"Sho! For the love of-" said Fukuda

"If you don't want me to talk like that…if you don't want to listen to me talk…then go and talk to someone else! Go and talk to your own kids…wait…you don't have any! You don't have any kids and you don't even have a girlfriend and you never will and you…you have no idea how I feel or…or anything! So go and talk to your kids you never had or your girlfriend you never had or your best friend…who's my dad! The only friend you could ever make is my fucking dad and he sucks and…and you don't know anything about how I feel so maybe just shut your dick licking mouth!" said Sho

"Sho!" said Fukuda

"I said to leave me alone!" said Sho. He did a bad thing there, he kicked Fukuda, and kind of hard too…but Fukuda could heal so it was fine. Dad used to punch and kick and bite and stab Fukuda all the time and they were best friends or whatever. Sho hadn't really meant to hurt him anyway, just get him to leave him alone, so that was ok too….

But big sis still would not have wanted him to be kicking people like that.

She wouldn't have wanted him to kick Fukuda even though she didn't like him anymore. She probably also wouldn't have wanted him to have been going around holding hands with other guys and betraying his girlfriend. She would have looked at him and been all 'oh Sho….' and then looked at him like she was all disappointed and stuff….which was even worse than her being mad at him…and then the whole thing would have sucked even more. Now it felt like she was there too, telling him much he sucked, even though she had never once told him that he sucked….

But what he had done….it was so bad….that big sis would have even thought that he sucked.

That was why Fukuda didn't say anything. He just sighed and held his head in his hands. Sho leaned in closer. It looked like he was saying something under his breath. His eyes were closed and he was breathing deep…like he was hurt…but he was Fukuda. He never got hurt. He never got hurt enough to be…well….hurt. He could heal. He could heal and not get hurt permanently and…and if Sho had hurt him that badly then….

Then he sucked more than he ever could have imagined.

"Fukuda?" asked Sho. He leaned over and poked him. He didn't know what to do. He had no idea…Fukuda had never done anything like that before. Just sat there like he was mad or…or tired. Like he was going to look up and tell Sho to leave him alone and that he was being tiresome. Sho…he didn't know what he could do if Fukuda called him tiresome….

That would have been worse, even, than if Fukuda told him that he sucked.

"Sho….please don't hit me, ok? Just…youre too old to still be doing that…and it hurts my feelings when you hit me…so don't, ok." Said Fukuda

"Ok…I'm sorry that I made you mad…that I'm being tiresome…that I suck…" said Sho. He wished that he knew how to go back in time and undo what he had done. Like if he was in that movie where the guy went back in time and accidentally killed his great grandpa. Sho didn't want to accidentally kill anyone, or on purpose, but if he could go back in time and make it so that he was never born then…well that would have been pretty great for everyone…

Then, at least, he wouldn't know what it was like when Fukuda got tired of him and left him too.

"Sho…no. You aren't tiresome, you didn't make me mad, and you don't suck…ok? You're a good kid and I love you. I love you as a person but I don't like it when you hit me…and I'm not mad at you, alright? I could never be mad at you. Ever." Said Fukuda. That couldn't have been right. Sho had done something so bad that people were thrown down holes and left to rot and die because of it! Well not cheating specifically but betraying Claw…betraying anyone….and he had betrayed Claw too! That was bad but….

But the cheating was worse.

"But….what if I killed someone on accident?" asked Sho. He didn't want to tell Fukuda that he had cheated on Emmy…so he went with murder. That wasn't as bad a crime as cheating on someone but it was up there in pretty bad crimes. It was bad enough that Fukuda would know instantly how bad what he had done was.

"I still wouldn't get mad at you." Said Fukuda. That was…Sho…felt like smiling and crying at the same time. Fukuda loved him that much but…but what he had done was even worse than killing someone on accident.

"What if I killed someone on purpose?" asked Sho. There. That was even worse than killing someone on accident. Killing someone on purpose, like planning it and building a murder room where people had to get out of traps or they would die, was worse than accidentally killing someone….but not as bad as cheating on someone who loved you and wanted to spend their entire life with you and stuff like that.

"Even if you did that I still wouldn't get mad at you…and I know that you would never do anything like that." Said Fukuda

"You'd be amazed at the bad things that I can do." Said Sho quietly.

"What happened? You know that you can tell me anything. Even if you did kill someone I wouldn't be upset with you. I'd help you drag the body out to the woods and bury it but I wouldn't be mad at you. If anything I would be mad at myself." Said Fukuda

"At yourself? Why?" asked Sho

"I would be mad at myself because I was too busy with my own life to notice that something had gone so wrong in your life that killing someone seemed like your only option." Said Fukuda

"I didn't kill anyone….but I did something worse." Said Sho

"I'm sure that whatever you did wasn't so bad." Said Fukuda

"What would you know?! You never cheated on anyone before!" said Sho. Fukuda….he had no idea what he was talking about! He had never cheated on anyone in his life! He was a good person, even dad thought so. Fukuda was the person that was most worthy of dad's trust, he had said, because in the whole time that they'd known each other Fukuda had never even once thought about betraying him or Claw or anything. Dad had said that….and the only other person that he trusted was big sis! Fukuda was a good person and…well he could be kind of a jerk…but he was such a good person that he probably didn't even know what cheating was!

"Cheating? What….what do you mean by….by that?" asked Fukuda. He was tugging at the collar of his sweater now. Sho reached over with his powers and turned down the heat. That was something to do while he thought of what to say….well he tried to think up what to say, anyway. The more he thought the more words came into his head until they all came up like throw up.

Maybe it would have been better if he had actually thrown up all over himself.

"Nobody's ever loved you and nobody ever will love you and…and even if some girl was in love with you then…then you would never cheat on her!" said Sho. He wished that he had actually thrown up on himself. He wished that he had thrown up on himself and Fukuda and that the whole room was covered in floor to ceiling throw up. At least if that had happened then he would have felt better about himself…and it would have been something that Fukuda could fix. It would have been fixable.

There was nothing fixable about what he had done.

"Sho…I have no idea what you're talking about right now…also that's not really the kind of thing that you should say to the people who love you." Said Fukuda

"Stop loving me! I'm not worth loving! I cheated on my girlfriend! I cheated on her and…and I'm the worst person who ever lived!" said Sho

"Sho…no. You're not the worst person who ever lived…never say that about yourself. Off of the top of my head I can think of at least five people who I know personally who are worse than you will ever be." Said Fukuda

"Did any of them ever cheat on the person who loves them most in the entire world?" asked Sho

"I know for a fact that one of them has…and twice. That I know of." Said Fukuda. He looked away when he said that…of course he did. Of course he didn't want to look at Sho. Sho was a cheater! A betrayer! He deserved to rot in a hole with all the other traitors! Maybe the kind with lots of traitors in it! The ones where people had to eat each other just to survive!

That wouldn't have been enough punishment for him.

"Well I only did it once…and I want….I want to do it again! It felt so good and I want to do it again and again and again!" said Sho. He deserved to be put in a traitor hole…a cannibal traitor hole! Then at least he would have been punished for what he had done even if it wasn't enough punishment! It wasn't nearly enough punishment! Not only had he cheated on Emmy but he…he wanted to do it again.

He had never thought that holding hands could feel so good.

He could still feel Ritsu's fingers all laced up in his. He could still smell him…he smelled like pork ramen…and that was now the best kind of ramen in the world and when he took over the world he would make sure that there was pork ramen at every single meal for everyone in the world. He wanted to be close enough to Ritsu again to smell what he smelled like…he must have eaten other things besides pork ramen…and he wanted to feel what his hand felt like…and he wanted to lean in and kiss him and see if he tasted like ramen too….

Sho sucked. He was the worst kind of person and he sucked.

"Sho…what exactly did you and this…boy? I'm going assume that this is about a boy." Said Fukuda

"He's a guy." Said Sho

"Alright…so what did you and this boy do? Whatever it is I can handle it…and I won't judge you. Even if you did something that you weren't ready for…and if you weren't ready then…then I am so sorry." said Fukuda

"I think I…was ready. I mean he didn't ask me…he just sort of…and I wanted him to and…and I think that I wanted to for a long time….and then it happened and it felt so good…but then I ran away. I had to run away because….it felt good and I wanted it to happen…and I shouldn't have wanted it to happen! Even if Emmy….even if I don't love her she loves me and I cheated on her! I'm a cheater and a betrayer and….and I suck!" said Sho

"Sho…what…exactly…did you do?" asked Fukuda slowly. He looked away again….and Sho didn't blame him. They were talking about something terrible…and also personal…but more terrible than personal. When you did terrible things then you didn't get to have the luxury of stuff being personal!

"I held hands with a guy…a guy I like…" said Sho. That was the worst part of it all. He liked Ritsu. Not in the way that he liked other guys, like how he would see a guy sometimes and then the goldfish in his stomach would swim for a little bit and then go back to sleep. No, he really liked Ritsu…like he liked Shimazaki…like his insides were made of goldfish.

"You did what?" asked Fukuda. He blinked and now he was staring at Sho like he had been speaking some language that they didn't understand or something. Sho had been speaking plain Japanese! What, was he going deaf or something!? Was he so old that he was starting to go deaf and…and other stuff that happened when you got old!?

"I held hands with a guy I like! Are you deaf or do you just have brain worms!? I like a guy and I held his hand and it felt like I was made out of goldfish and then I ran away! What the fuck is so hard to understand about that!?" shouted Sho

"I…I got it." Said Fukuda

"So now you know….that I'm a cheater….and a betrayer….and I should just…never see or talk to anyone ever again….I'm the worst kind of person." Said Sho

"Stop it, Sho, none of that. You are not the worst kind of person. You're not even a bad kind of person. You're eleven years old and you made a mistake." Said Fukuda

"A mistake? A mistake! Fukuda….a mistake is when you forget to clean out your pockets before you throw your pants in the hamper! A mistake is when you forget to put your dirty dishes in the sink! A mistake is when you get up to pee and it's dark in your room so you step on a LEGO and scream and wake your sister up and then she gets freaked out! Holding hands with someone is not a mistake! That's like…that's like…that's the worst thing that you can do to someone!" said Sho. Fukuda just stared at him. Sho thought, for a moment, that this was like dad's stares. The kind he did before he told you that you were stupid or ridiculous or a waste of his time or tiresome…or just the kind he did before he beat you up…and he knew that Fukuda would never beat him up…but that didn't mean that Fukuda would never be as mad at him as dad got at him…

Sho expected yelling…or at least mean words…but what he got was something even worse.

"What the fuck is so funny?" asked Sho

"Just…you're taking this very seriously." Said Fukuda

"Yeah. Holding hands is serious business. Cheating is serious business." Said Sho

"Sho…holding hands is not cheating." Said Fukuda

"Well…yeah. Like if you're holding hands with your sister…but the way I was holding hands with Rit-with the guy I was telling you about wasn't like holding hands with big sis. This was like…like holding hands with Shimazaki…well not like that because I lo-because you know how I feel about him….but it was a lot like that." Said Sho

"Sho...I'm sorry but you're just like…sorry." said Fukuda

"What am I like?" asked Sho

"You're being dramatic right now…like your dad. Sorry! You just…you look just like him right now." Said Fukuda

"Fuck you! I'm nothing like dad…or maybe I am….I don't know…we're both bad people." Said Sho. He wouldn't have been surprised if dad had done something bad like cheat on mom. That would have explained why she left. She knew that dad was cheating on her and she couldn't deal with being married to a cheater so she ran away and….and that was the only reason why she had left!

"Sho, no, you are not a bad person. You just…ok. So you held hands with this guy. That's nothing. If I had a hundred yen for every girl I ever held hands with I'd be as rich as your dad." Said Fukuda

"Dad's rich? Mom said that we were wealthy…that's not the same as being rich." Said Sho. He had never really thought about it before, money and stuff, but…well nobody had ever called him rich before. He didn't think that he was rich. If he was rich then he would have had everything that he needed. He had a lot of money and food and stuff but he didn't have the stuff that he needed…like enough goodness inside of him that he didn't cheat on the girl who loved him.

"You're rich, Sho, richer than a lot of people can ever hope to be…and not just because you have a lot of money to your name. You're rich in…sense. You're a good boy and…and I'm sorry for laughing. You were just so worked up over all of that….and it's good that you were. It shows that you have a good sense of right and wrong…but it's more of a kid's sense of right and wrong." Said Fukuda

"I'm eleven…I am a kid. At least I think I am. I don't know. Dad called me a man. He said that he was proud of the man that I'm becoming….well you know what he said, you were there." said Sho

"You dad….was right. You're becoming a man but…well you're still a kid. You still think like a kid. To you handholding is a big deal…but it's not. Compared to everything that people do together…well that's nothing compared to…all of it. To be clear you just held hands with this boy, right?" asked Fukuda

"Yeah." Said Sho

"And this boy is your age?" asked Fukuda

"Yeah…we're the same age." Said Sho

"So you're alright. You didn't do anything wrong…and I know what you're going to say! You're going to tell me that you did do something wrong, that you're a bad person, and other crazy things like that. Well those things…are not things that you should ever think about yourself. You're a good person, Sho, one of the best people that I've ever met and I'll agree that you made a mistake…but it's a little one. There are worse things that you could have done." Said Fukuda

"Like I could have kissed him." said Sho

"Yeah, that, and other things….that you are way too young to know about." Said Fukuda. Sho knew what it meant when an adult said that he was too young to know about stuff. That meant gross stuff. Gross, sick, terrible stuff that he had never once thought about doing…and that he had never thought of thinking of doing with anyone anyway because he liked guys and there was no way for guys to do that stuff….so he mostly just thought about kissing Shimazaki and touching his chest and…and this was not about what he thought about sometimes when he was all alone!

And Fukuda didn't need to know about that kind of stuff anyway!

"Of-of fucking course I'm not going to do something like that! That's just…gross…and there's no way for two guys to do that anyway so…so stop being gross!" said Sho

"No way for…you and I are going to have to talk about that…but later. Much later. Not now. Now…Sho…you and I…we need to talk about this cheating thing." Said Fukuda

"We already talked about it. We've been talking about it. I don't know what else there is to say about it. I cheated like Emmy, I'm the worst person who ever lived, and I suck." Said Sho

"You don't suck…and you didn't do anything wrong. You just…held hands with someone you like…and you deserve that. I'm not going to pretend that I know what you're going through. I'm…the way I am and you're the way you are. What you're going through is different from anything that I've ever had to go through before…alright? I don't know exactly how you feel but….but I know how you deserve to feel." Said Fukuda

"Like someone cut me opened, filled my inside with honey, and then let ants crawl inside of me?" asked Sho

"What? No. Sho….you deserve to be happy. I know that you're doing what your dad wants you to do…and that's smart. It's best to just go along with him whenever you can even if he's being a complete and total…never mind what your dad is being like. Just…you're doing what your dad told you to do and that's smart…but also you deserve to be happy…and if holding hands or whatever else with this boy makes you happy then you should do it." Said Fukuda

"….what?" asked Sho. He cleaned his ears with his fingers. He must have misheard Fukuda. He knew Fukuda, Fukuda was a good person deep down under all the bossiness and weird stuff he said about big sis. He didn't actually think that cheating was ok….right?

Right?!

"You like him, it sounds like he likes you, and you deserve to be happy. Sho…you've had a hard life. I'm sure that you know that you've had a harder life than most people and…and there's no reason that you can't be happy." Said Fukuda

"I have a girlfriend who loves me. That's why I can't be happy." Said Sho slowly. What in the hell was wrong with Fukuda? Did he have brain worms or something? Betrayal was the worst crime a person could do. That was why traitors rotted in traitor holes. Cheating on someone….that was the worst kind of cheating that you could do!

"You don't love her. You make her happy, so you're holding up your end of the bargain, but…well you deserve to be happy too. She isn't making you happy, she can't make you happy, and that's fine. Sometimes marriages…relationships…are like that. Sometimes you can give your whole life to a person and do what you can to make them happy…but it's not enough. Doing everything that you can to make someone else happy then you, yourself, become unhappy…and it's not the normal kind of unhappiness. It's the kind of unhappiness that…well it eats at you. It eats at you until there's almost nothing left. Like…you waste away from the inside…and I don't want that to happen to you." Said Fukuda

"You…waste away? I don't want to waste away…" said Sho. He…didn't know the feelings could actually make you waste away. He knew that if you felt bad enough then it felt like you were wasting away but not…not for real. That didn't sound like a thing that could happen…but Emmy had shown him stuff like that. Like the guy who thought that he was blind because he stared at the microwave while it was cooking or the lady who ate a bunch of vitamins and got healthy because she believed hard enough….so your feelings could affect you like that…..

Sho didn't want to waste away.

"Then…Sho I know that what I'm saying sounds terrible to you. You're young and for you things are still black and white…and also…also you're not a selfish person…and sometimes you have to be selfish. This girl likes you and you make her happy. You spend time with her, you're always nice to her, and you get her nice things. What more can she ask for? She gets what she gets out of this and you're the only one not getting anything….I sound terrible….just…I want you to be happy and it hurts me to see you beating yourself up over this." said Fukuda

"But…I should beat myself up over this. I cheated on my girlfriend. I'm supposed to make her happy. My feelings don't matter. You even said so. You said that my feelings don't matter so long as I make her happy." Said Sho

"I never said that." Said Fukuda

"Yes you did. I was there. You said it to me." Said Sho

"I never meant it that way. Sho…I agree. Most of the time cheating is wrong but sometimes there are…circumstances. Extenuating circumstances. Like this. You're making her happy and you deserve to be happy too, alright? Now stop beating yourself up. Anyway, what you don't know can't hurt you." Said Fukuda

"Yes it can. Like if you didn't know that someone had poisoned your food you would still be hurt. That's how poison works. If people went around telling people that they were going to poison them then poisoning people would make no sense." Said Sho. This…felt sort of like poison. Like the time that he got food poisoning. Like the time he and Shimazaki stole that big sandwich from the party, the one that was too big to fit in the fridge, so they planned to eat it until it was short enough to fit in the fridge but then they ended up leaving it in the living room for a week and then the mayonnaise went bad but they still ate it…

That was how cheating on Emmy felt. Like eating a giant sandwich with grey lettuce and slimy tomatoes and mayonnaise that tasted as bad as it smelled.

"Well it's a good thing that we aren't planning on poisoning anyone then isn't it? You're a good kid, Sho, to think about your girlfriend like that but sometimes you have to think about yourself and what's best for you. What she doesn't know can't hurt her so unless you're doing something specifically to her then everything is going to be fine. Alright?" said Fukuda

"Alright." Said Sho even though it was not alright at all. It was downright confusing. He was downright confused. He had no idea…he didn't want to waste away and he wanted to be happy but…but he knew what Fukuda had said. Fukuda had said that his feelings didn't matter so long as the girls in his life were happy….but maybe Sho had misunderstood. He could be kind of clueless sometimes…he did have dad's genetics inside of him after all and dad was super clueless all the time…so Sho….well now…

Now he felt clueless about…everything.

"Good. Now how about I make us dinner. How about plain noodles with a little bit of butter, ranch on the side, tempura shrimp with the shrimp one on plate and the coating on the other, and then maybe some poptarts with added frosting for dessert." Said Fukuda. That was a near perfect dinner, as close to perfect a dinner as he could eat without big sis…but this was…suspicious. Why was Fukuda being so nice all of a sudden? Well he was always nice to Sho, he was a dick to everyone else but he was nice to Sho, but….Sho had told him all of that terrible stuff and….

And did he really believe everything that he'd just said?

"You're not going make me eat a vegetable?" asked Sho. That was…he deserved to eat all the vegetables in the world, all steamed and bitter and gross, for what he had done….right? Because cheating was wrong and betrayal was wrong and….and Fukuda…he had said that it wasn't so…so did that mean that cheating….wasn't always wrong?

Sho had a headache.

"You've had a rough day, I don't see why I should make it any worse." Said Fukuda with a shrug. Sho nodded.

"Yeah, don't make it any worse…and to drink…um…I want a can of coke!" said Sho. He needed a coke. Shimazaki had said, before, that no matter how bad your day was at bump of coke would always make you feel better. Sho had no idea if a bump was more or less than a can but he needed whatever he could get his hands on to feel better right now.

He hadn't been the one stealing the stuff from under big sis's bed…but he kind of wished that he had been.

"How about two cans of coke?" asked Fukuda as he reached over and patted Sho on the back.

"Fuck yeah!" said Sho. Two cans was better than one…and two cans might have been enough to make him feel better. He wished that Shimazaki had been there…he always knew what to do. Whenever Sho said that he felt bad Shimazaki always had at least ten different plans for how to make him feel better…and also if Shimazaki had been there then Sho could have focused on being in love with him and not…how he felt about Ritsu.

He didn't know how he felt about Ritsu.

He liked him. He liked him even though he was kind of a moron and also he looked weirdly like big sis. He liked him because he just…he liked him! Because of how his hair stood up but cooler than Sho's. Because his aura was the coolest shade of blue that Sho had ever seen. Because he just…did things. The first time Sho had met him he had run away from home to the park because his parents were being assholes and the second time Sho met him he'd been covering the city in fliers warning them about Claw.

He was kind of a moron like that.

But he did whatever he wanted. He did whatever he wanted and…and Sho wished that he could have been like that. Like Ritsu…or Shimazaki. He wished that he could have just done whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to do it….and he also wished…he wished for a lot of things. He wished for a lot of things, and to be a lot of things, and to be able to be a lot of things. A lot of things that he shouldn't have even wanted. Like…like how he wanted to be near Ritsu again…and not just to hold his hand…

To talk to him.

Maybe that was the thing that had put Ritsu from one category to another. That had taken him from how he felt when he saw a guy to…well how he felt when he liked a guy. Ritsu had talked to him when they met…really talked to him…in the sort of way that Shimazaki talked to him and….and Sho wanted to talk to him like that again…and he also wanted to talk to Shimazaki like that again….and he also wanted to dig himself a traitor hole for cheating on Emmy….but he didn't do any of those things.

He just started drawing.

He sat down and started drawing. He heard Fukuda working in the kitchen. He was busy, that was good. Sho made sure to stay busy too. Maybe if they were both busy then Fukuda wouldn't try to talk to him again. He didn't want to talk to Fukuda…and he didn't want to talk about this either. He didn't want to think about this either. How he sucked, how he was a traitor, and how Fukuda had told him that it was ok…that was the most confusing part. Now his happiness mattered? And if he wasn't happy he would waste away? He just…he had no clue. He was clueless…he was even more clueless than dad…and that made all the feelings worse.

He couldn't exorcise his feelings….so he drew….and maybe that would help.


	491. Greenhouses and Bad Ideas

Suzuki did not always have the best ideas.

He had thought, though, that he had gotten all of his bad idea out of his system already. Digging tunnels under his childhood home….trying to give himself radiation sickness in order to become immune to radiation, flying into space under his own power, pretty much the entirety of his adolescence had been one bad idea after another. He was forty five years old now and he should have been at the point in life where he was capable of thinking things through.

Obviously he was not.

This had been….an idea. He'd had an idea and without being able to run it past everyone, something he had to do on occasion since even he was not infallible, he had decided to just…go with it. This. Whatever this was. Well it was a Sunday. It was a Sunday and he normally spent his Sundays with Shigeko. Those used to be their only days together but…well he enjoyed spending time with Shigeko. They spent time together during the week but Sunday was always their day.

Or at least it had been.

"Minegishi! That plant just ate a bug!" said Shigeko. She reached over and tugged on her friend. She…they. They were a they. They let themselves be tugged over to whatever miracle of nature Shigeko had just seen. Carnivorous plants…what a species. Plants that needed to eat. If they needed to eat then did they also need to sleep? And did they feel pain? And think?

He didn't know.

Minegishi would have known…but he didn't dare ask her. Them. He didn't know how he would even begin to speak to them. They were….well technically they worked for him and he was free to say whatever he wanted to them whenever he wanted to speak to them but…but he didn't know what to say. What if he ended up saying something stupid? What if he ended up embarrassing himself? Or….or damaging Shigeko's relationship with her best friend and mother figure? Yes, that one was much less selfish of him. He didn't want to damage Shigeko's relationship with her mother figure and best friend…and that was why he didn't speak to Minegishi.

There. That was a normal and rational reason.

"That's a Venus flytrap, Mob, you've seen me make those." Said Minegishi. They sounded….well to him they sounded bored…but their aura told another story. He had never seen their aura so…bright. It shone brightly not only from them but from the plants that surrounded them to. That made sense.

They were in a greenhouse after all.

This had been his idea. Bringing Shigeko here, not brining Minegishi. He knew that Shigeko could control them and he knew that she liked them…well she must have liked them. She and Minegishi gardened together all the time, even indoors during the wintertime. Shigeko had shown him photograph after photograph of her and Minegishi's creations…so bring her to a greenhouse had been a good idea at the time.

And letting her bring her friend alone…well that had been a good idea too.

"I've seen you make plants like these but the ones you make are a lot smaller and also these don't move as fast….and also these don't eat people….but the ones that you make can't eat people…can they? I mean that's just something that you say to people to scare them….right?" asked Shigeko. Minegishi could and had, many times before, fed people to their plants. Suzuki had almost been on the receiving end of that years and years ago when he had first met them. They had almost become a Scar…almost.

They were better than that.

Their powers were limited and versatile at the same time. They were a powerful esper in their own right. They were just….that was the first thing that he had noticed about them. That had been the only thing that he had noticed about them. He hadn't cared for them back then…not that he cared for them now! He just…was happy that they spent time with Shigeko and cared for her and…and he did not care for Minegishi in any way.

He was just…grateful to them…and happy that Shigeko was having fun being with her friend.

"I do say that to scare people…but if I wanted to then I could easily feed a person to my plants. But I won't do that to anyone in the house. Alright? Now watch the plants eat." Said Minegishi. They reached over and ran their hand through Shigeko's hair. That was a show of affection. He never would have taken them for being affectionate…but he never would have taken them for anything. Before.

He supposed that they had to be affectionate to work with plants.

Women who gardened were affectionate….or at least the ones that he knew. He knew two women, well three if Shigeko counted as a woman, but no….Shigeko was in her own category. She was nowhere near the same category as Minegishi and Shiori…if the two of them were even in the same category…well they were both people who gardened who were women…in his life…in different parts of his life…not that he had any woman in his life besides Masami…

Not that she was in his life anymore…or that she ever would be….

"It's cool…but kind of gross." Said Shigeko. Suzuki agreed with her but said nothing. There was something disturbing about watching a plant eat. Fascinating but disturbing. He wondered how Shiori felt about carnivorous plants he had never asked her. Right now she was focusing on her indoor herb garden. He wondered if she could make tiny trees like Minegishi could…they could make any tree tiny….they were fascinating like that.

Women in general were very fascinating.

"How is it gross? It eats meat and you eat meat." Said Minegishi. Suzuki nodded even though he was a distance away. Minegishi did have a point. They ate meat and therefore there was nothing wrong with eating meat so therefore there was nothing disturbing about a carnivorous plant. There. That made sense. They were meat and meat was meat so…yes…it made sense…and he wanted to agree with them. He wanted to walk over and join their conversation and….and that would have been a terrible idea.

He didn't need to have Fukuda there beside him to tell him that he'd just had a terrible idea.

"Bugs aren't meat." Said Shigeko. That was another good point. Did bugs even count as meat? Fukuda would have known. He was good at these things, these social sort of things. He wanted Fukuda to be there but only because he needed someone to…help him join the conversation. He didn't have anything other that he wanted to say or do….and even then he just wanted to join the conversation for Shigeko's sake. That was all. He just…the only reason he was eve listening was because…she was his Daughter and if he wanted to listen to her conversation then he would!

And he wanted to listen for…reasons…which he did not need to explain to anyone. Even himself.

"They are….and anyway you've probably eaten bugs before." Said Minegishi. Suzuki recoiled. He couldn't help it, his aura flared, and Minegishi's aura glanced in his direction before focusing on Shigeko. He wondered what they thought of him. They must have thought something…or something. They had looked at him and…and he didn't know why he cared what they thought. He didn't, they could think whatever they wanted about him…and he hadn't been strange anyway. That was a normal reaction to have when he heard someone talking about eating insects.

Disgusting.

"Minegishi!? I-I've never once ate a bug. Sho has but he was dared…he dared himself….but he was really little then." Said Shigeko. Suzuki…he remember that day. Well he remembered Masami telling him about that day. She had been upset that Sho had done that. She had been upset with herself for not watching him, she had said that she felt bad because she couldn't be everywhere at once…so he had suggested that they get a nanny or some other kind of servant to help her…

And then she had rolled over and told him that she was going to bed…and to this day he had no idea why she had gone to bed so early in the day.

"I don't think that he was that little last week." Said Minegishi. There was an intake of their aura, there, it moved towards them and hen away. Sort of like a laugh. There was a smile, a small one, tugging at the corners of their mouth. He could see it in their eyes, in the way they squinted down for just a moment, that they had been about to laugh.

Either that or it was too bright in there for them.

He chose to believe, though, that they had been laughing. They had been laughing and…and he loved it when women laughed. Their entire face softened when they laughed. That was…that had been…he had liked that. They were pretty when they smiled…well they were pretty now, too, with their face and their aura back to normal…

How had he gone so long without noticing how pretty they were?

Well he had noticed a while ago…well not a while, a few months ago…and that was fine. Understanding his own emotions…that had never been a strength of his….but he was confident in the fact that while he found them attractive he was not attracted to them. It was easy for a person to get those two confused, even he had been confused for a time, but he knew that he didn't find them attractive. He couldn't. They were…an employee of his…and young enough that they could have been his child…if he had done something stupid in high school…..and also they were Shigeko's friend and it would have been odd for her.

And also he was married.

He was married to Masami and he loved her and…and he was going to stop looking at Minegishi. He looked down at the leafy plant beside him. There was water collected in the leaves. That was due to the humidity. This room was warm and humid….far too warm and far too humid. He undid the top button on his shirt quickly….it was too hot in there. He looked back down at the water on the leaves.

He needed a drink.

"Not last week…well I don't think that it was last week…but one time when we were little, I think I was four and he was three, the yard was all full of worms because of the rain and then Sho dared himself to eat one." said Shigeko

"Did he?" asked Minegishi. There it was again, that smile from them. He had no idea what was so funny about that. The absurdity of it, maybe, was what was funny. Shigeko didn't seem to think so…so maybe Minegishi just had an odd sense of humor. They were an odd person. Their hair, their lack of eyebrows, their clothing….everything. They were just an odd person…and that was the only reason he was…watching them. Fascinated with them.

They were a fascinating person.

"He did." Said Shigeko

"Honest to God?" asked Minegishi

"Yes…..but he didn't get sick." Said Shigeko

"Yeah, all of that sounds like your brother." Said Minegishi

"He doesn't do that anymore…and also he's the one who eats bugs, not me." Said Shigeko

"You know that there are tiny bugs in just about everything that you eat, right?" asked Minegishi. Suzuki shuddered. His body and his aura. He knew that there were most likely insets I many of the things that he ate…and he never wanted to think about that again. He wanted to put that fact back down, deep down, in the recesses of his mind. How could they have just…said something like that? How could they had just said something like that with that same placid expression on their face and their aura?

They were fascinating.

"That's….you're just trying to scare me." Said Shigeko

"No, I'm you the truth. If you chose to be scared by that then it's your choice. Me? I accept it." Said Minegishi. Shigeko was the one who was making sense out of the two of them…well Minegishi made sense too. They had a point. There was nothing that any of them could do about the insects in the food, at least not yet, so why even bother getting upset? Like his father had told him, before, there was no point in getting upset over the things that you couldn't change.

He had said that after mother had spent the past two days locked in her studio but…well that was applicable to this and any other situations that came up.

"You…accept that…sometimes you end up eating bugs?" asked Shigeko

"I try and accept the things I have no control over." Said Minegishi. They looked at him when they said that. Suzuki looked away and pretending to look at the leafy plants beside him. They had made eye contact! And aural contact! That was…well it was polite to make eye contact. Aural contact was largely involuntary. They hadn't meant to do that….and that was just…he needed to stop looking into this. If Fukuda had been there he would have told him that he was being ridiculous….and he would have told Fukuda that he was not ridiculous….and then…well they would have been younger when this hypothetical conversation would have occurred. Adolescents.

That was what he was acting like now, an adolescent.

"But….bugs?" asked Shigeko

"There are worse things than bugs." Said Minegishi. They made, purposely made, eye contact with him there. They had purposely made eye contact and aural contact and…and he had no idea what it meant. He held it with them. They held it with him. There was…something there. He felt like there was something there. There was something…he had no idea what was there but he knew that it was something….

Or maybe he was just being ridiculous.

They were just looking in his direction. If they had something to say to him then they would have said it. They were a very direct person, he liked that. He had thought, for his entire life, that women were difficult to understand…and they were…but they could make themselves understood. Minegishi was good at that and so was Shiori…

Not that he was thinking of Shiori now…or Minegishi….or anyone other than his daughter…since this was his and Shigeko's day.

"Um….I guess but I don't know….um….I'm going to go and see how my dad….how he's doing." Said Shigeko. She was walking over to him now. Her steps were unsteady as usual, despite the temperature she was still wearing those boots. She walked over to him slowly….and part of him wished that she could hurry it…and another part of him wished that she would slow down. He felt guilty…he had no idea what this guilt was…

He hadn't done anything.

Well he had…but not to her. Fukuda had even said that the guilt that he'd felt after Shiori…it had been misplaced. He had no reason to feel guilty towards her. Masami, yes, but not her…and she had no idea what had happened anyway…and nothing had happened now so this guilt was illogical and he had to exorcise it. He had to exorcise this guilt because it was useless and he had nothing to feel guilty about and…and this mental space was better filled with something else.

Like Shigeko.

"Shigeko." said Suzuki as she finally made her way to him. He looked past her for a moment. Minegishi was there, where they had been, but not they were running their hand across the plants. She ran her hands up and down the leaves and they bloomed to life. Greens…bright greens…and small flowers too. Pink ones. He wondered what those had meant…pink flowers…

Maybe he was just being ridiculous.

"Hi dad." Said Shigeko as she tugged on his sleeve. He looked down…and then away from her. There it was, that illogical guilt. He couldn't look her in the eyes. He knew that she couldn't read minds, she would have left him years ago if she could have, and he knew that she…well even if she did know what went through his mind…since she was young and….and….

And he needed to say something.

"Do you need something?" asked Suzuki. There. That was….well that was the only reason why she would have been there. She…she wanted to be with him but….he needed some space between the two of them. At least until this guilt passed. At least until his thoughts went back to something….well something that made sense…

He was not making sense right now…and he hated it.

"Are you alright, dad?" asked Shigeko. Suzuki nodded. He was fine. He was…he was lying. He was not fine. He was as far from fine as a person could get without being maimed or seriously injured.

"Fine. Yourself?" asked Suzuki with a swallow. He…right. He just needed something to drink. He needed something to drink and…and he was just too warm and…and that was why he was…the way he was.

"I'm ok, kind of hot though….but that's because it's a greenhouse." Said Shigeko

"It is." Said Suzuki. There. She agreed. It was way too warm in there. He could feel his shirt clinging to him. He wanted to take his suit coat off but then…well he knew that he had sweated through his shirt. He would have looked ridiculous. Maybe he cared too much about how he was seen. Minegishi didn't seem to care. They had sweated through their t-shirt. It clung to them and they didn't seem to care at all. Their hair was plastered to their head…her shirt clung to her…and she didn't even pull it way from her skin…

"I hate everyone." Said Shigeko suddenly. Suzuki…did not shatter the greenhouse. The roof cracked, it was a sudden sound, but it did not shatter. He did not let the room shatter. He just…he had to stay calm. For the sake of his daughter, his Shigeko, he did not lose control. He just…had to get to the bottom of this.

Why she would say something so terrible.

"What did you just say?" asked Suzuki slowly. Maybe he had just…misheard her…or something. That would have made sense. She didn't hate everyone. She didn't have it in her to hate anyone. She was like that…she was like Masami in that way.

"Minegishi's shirt. It says 'I hate everybody' in English. They don't really hate everybody though, that's just something that's on their shirt. They're actually a really nice person." Said Shigeko. She….was right. Shigeko…was right. That was what Minegishi had on the front of their shirt…written across their cheat…where he had been staring for long enough that his DAUGHTER had noticed….

He felt…guilty…and vaguely….unpleasant.

"I-I'm sure that they are….Shigeko….so why don't you go and spend time with your friend now?" asked Suzuki. He gave her a slight push with his powers. He just…he needed to get away from Shigeko right now…and Minegishi. He needed…he needed some space. This was…a small greenhouse…well it wasn't but it felt small. He just…he needed space to himself right now. Space enough to get his thoughts back in order.

It was too hot, that was all.

He was way too hot and he needed space and….and that was why he had been staring at Shigeko's best friend. Minegishi was…a person…and they had…some attractive features…which he had noticed and…yes. He had noticed and…and that was normal. It had been a bad idea for him to act on it, if even to stare, but it had been normal. He just…he had normal ideas which were terrible…that was all…he just had terrible ideas….

Like letting Shigeko bring Minegishi out with them on a Sunday. That had truly been a terrible idea.


	492. I'm Bored, Let's Go Outside

The Seventh Division was boring as fuck.

All of the Divisions were boring when Shimazaki wasn't around….Shimazaki and everyone else. Baby sis was there and she was a friend…sort of. He loved her and she could be fun sometimes but she was nine years younger than him. She liked to draw and color and stuff…but in her own way. Her own little two year old way. Sho loved her more than any other two year old in the world but…well…it could be kind of boring here.

Kind of really fucking boring…no offense baby sis.

"Sho do too." Said baby sis as she shoved a crayon into his hand. He looked down. This was one of hers. All big and fat and covered in her little bite marks. That was what babies did, they bit things. Sometimes she bit him…like now. She took his arm in her little hands, brought it up to her mouth, and bit him.

And then she laughed.

"Come on…you know I don't like that." Said Sho as he pulled his arm back. He had deserved it, of course, for not coloring. This was coloring time and during coloring time he was supposed to color with her. She was the one who had told him that it was coloring time and what the rules were. Well she had mostly just thrown crayons at him and told him to color with her…and this was fun.

This was supposed to be fun.

"Sho draw now." Said baby sis. She didn't yell it at him, she just looked him in the eyes and said it. Like she outranked him or something. She didn't. She was a baby, she didn't have a rank, and even when she did get a rank then she still wouldn't end up outranking him. That wasn't how it worked. Only big sis could out rank him.

He wondered what she was up to now.

She was in Norway…no. They had moved to Germany now she had said. They were in Germany, the beer was good, Shimazaki was acting like a crazy person, and dad was coming home with blood on him. Also Shibata had learned to make schnitzel, whatever that was, and Serizawa could get himself up in the mornings now. Also Hatori had tried a new soap and he smelled good. That was the latest update on everyone. He mostly just cared about Shimazaki and what he had been doing. What crazy stuff had he been doing…and without Sho!? They did stuff together and…and that was not how it worked! Shimazaki didn't just get to do things on his own and-

There was a crayon in his eye.

"Sho. Draw now. Draw picture. There." said baby sis. She slapped her hand against the paper just incase he had forgotten how drawing worked. Sho sighed. He loved her, he really did, but he just…he wished that everyone else could have been there. Shimazaki loved kids. He wanted to have a bunch with Minegishi but they were being a bitch and not having kids even though that was what you were supposed to do when you had a boyfriend. If Sho had been Shoko then he would have had kids with Shimazaki…maybe then Shimazaki would stop treating Sho like his kid…but Sho wasn't Shoko, he was himself, and baby sis was the best that he could do and he knew that if Shimazaki had been there then he would have had a lot of fun playing with him and baby sis.

Even if he couldn't really draw….being blind and all…

But Sho would help him! Sho would help him and…well if big sis had been there then she would have tried to help Shimazaki…but only because she was nice like that! She didn't like him like that at all. She and Minegishi were best friends and best friends didn't steal each other's…boyfriends. He hates that word. Boyfriend. He hates how Minegishi, who didn't even want to be a girl, got to have Shimazaki for their boyfriend…and he hates how he's stuck being Emmy's boyfriend for the rest of time…

Well until he grows up.

Then he'll be her husband. He'll end up being her husband and they'll live together and have kids together….and then he'll never have a chance to be with…well he knows that he doesn't have a chance with Shimazaki. When Shimazaki thought about him he thought like 'wow, I wish that Sho was my kid' instead of 'wow, I wish that Sho was my boyfriend' and Sho…he knew that he could never have a boyfriend. He knew that he could never be Shimazaki's boyfriend….or Ritsu's….

And he doesn't even want to be Ritsu's boyfriend!

He was…he was weird! Yeah! Who the hell just went around holding hands with another guy where people could see?! Anyone could have seen and then they could have thought….well Sho knew what people thought when guys liked other guys. They thought that it was gross and weird and then they would be all 'look at those guys being gross and weird' and Sho didn't think that he could go through with something like that again. He was probably overthinking it. Ritsu hadn't meant it like that. He had meant it like…like how girls held hands with each other. That was just a thing that he'd seen girls do even when they weren't in a girlfriend and girlfriend thing….so Ritsu didn't like him like that….

But he liked Ritsu…as more than a friend…and a hell of a lot more than getting poked in the eye with a crayon.

"Mukai, do you have to do that?" asked Sho

"Yes." said baby sis. Sho blinked…and then got a crayon in his eye. That had been his fault for letting his guard down…but he hadn't been able to help it. Baby sis…well he knew that she spoke Japanese. She mostly just repeated the things that he said…or shouted and pointed. She never just…answered questions like that. Without shouting…and looking at him…like she understood him….

She was getting older…and Sho didn't know how to feel about that.

"Do you understand me?" asked Sho. She was two now…well her birthday had been in February so she was two and two months old…almost two and three months old…so of course she would have gotten better at talking…and understanding. He remembered when she'd been tiny enough that he could hold her with one arm…and also back when she'd cried all the time and thrown up on him and peed on him on purpose….

These times were better than those times…even though one day she would be his age and he would be dead.

"Yes." said baby sis. She looked him in the eyes. Looking into her eyes was like looking into his eyes…and dad's eyes too. She had the same eyes as them. He wondered what was up with that. He had heard what people said, that baby sis's mom had done gross, sick, disgusting, inhuman things with dad and that was how Mukai got there….but that made no sense. First of all dad and mom were married and married people were only allowed to do that with the person that they had married and also…also dad hated the Seventh Division because this was the Division that had lost that kid from a few years ago so he never would have done something as gross as stick his dick in baby sis's mom….Sho felt like throwing up all over himself just to feel cleaner after that thought…..so baby sis was not actually his baby sis….

Even though if dad had been cheating on mom then…then her running away would have made sense…

"Can you…stop poking me?" asked Sho. He had to focus on baby sis and this new, amazing, earth shattering discovery. She could understand him…well he knew that she had always been able to understand him…but now she could really understand him! She was so smart! She was the smartest baby sis in the whole world…even if she hadn't come from mom and dad….she was still his baby sis and she was the smartest baby sis in the whole wide world!

And also she could be kind of a jerk sometimes….but no more than he had been.

"No." said Mukai as she tried, again, to stab him in the eye with her little baby crayon. Why did she have to do stuff like this? He…was not going to get mad at her. She could understand him and that meant that he could reason with her…so that was what he would do. He would reason with her….with reasons. Not like how dad had always yelled at him…no…he was going to be nice and reasonable.

"Please? Come on, I don't poke you." Said Sho

"Poke you!" said baby sis before she stabbed him in the arm with a crayon again. Sho sighed. He needed a drink. Even though it tasted either like burning or throw up he needed a drink. Big sis…had he been like this when he'd been little? Well he had been worse, he had hit big sis all the time, so no wonder she drank so much. When he saw her again he was getting her one of those fancy bottles of whatever it was that dad kept in his office for guests. Also a lot of those cartridges she liked to smoke.

Big brothering…and big sistering….was harder than it looked.

"Baby sis…I think that maybe you're bored. I….sometimes I do stuff like this when I'm bored and I bet that you're bored too so…so how about we….go outside? You want to go outside and go for a stroller ride?" asked Sho. He knew that he got overly tired sometimes, Fukuda and big sis's words, and when he got like that he could turn into a total dick hole….and since baby sis was a lot like him then maybe she turned into a total dick hole too when she got tired…

Not that he would have ever called baby sis a dick hole. He wasn't an asshole…at least not to her.

"Yes! Go outside!" shouted baby sis. She threw her crayon on the ground and ran for her baby gate. He didn't know why her mom kept the baby gate up. Baby sis could easily climb over it now. Well sort of easily. Her dress got caught on the top. Sho gave her a hand with his powers and helped her over.

She didn't say thanks.

She knew how to say thanks…but she didn't always say it. But that was ok. She was little. She was little and she was excited. She ran over to the genkan and tried to put her shoes on. Sho put their crayons and papers away with his powers as he got up. Her mom didn't like it when they trashed her house. Moms liked it when things were clean and stuff.

That was just how moms were.

He knew. He used to have….he didn't have time to think about mom. He had to help baby sis get her shoes on…and he had to get her stroller unfolded too. That was kind of hard…it never wanted to fold or unfold…but he had to take it with him. She had little baby legs and she couldn't keep up with him. Also she didn't like to be carried for long distances.

He had a lot to do.

"Hang on, baby sis. Those are the wrong feet…and also you're putting them on backwards too." Said Sho as he knelt down in the genkan and took her foot in his hand. She tried to kick him…but that was just how she played. He knew that he should have told her to stop and that if she didn't stop then he wouldn't take her outside, the sort of thing that his mom would have said, but he wasn't going to do that. He wasn't mom. He was Sho.

And he was always nice to his little sister…even when she kicked him in the face with her little baby foot.

That didn't hurt…not that much…and also it didn't bother him that she wouldn't stop asking to go outside. Even though she knew that it took a while to unfold her stroller. Even though she knew that it took a while to buckle her in when she wiggled around like that. Even though she knew that it took him a long time to tie his shoes when she kicked and screamed.

She was a baby and this was just how babies were.

"Outside! Go outside now!" said baby sis as he pushed her stroller through the opened door. She was doing that thing where she rocked back and forth in her stroller. He…well he wasn't going to get annoyed. She was just having trouble being patient, that was all, and that was just because she was little.

Little people had trouble with…everything.

Big sis had always said that. When he'd been an asshole to her she had just said that he was little and he didn't know what he was doing…or that she had done something to deserve it…and stuff. Big sis…she was nice like that. She was nice and…and Sho had to be nice too. Baby sis might not have been his actual baby sis….he didn't even know if he wanted that….but he still had to be a good big brother. He had to use everything that he had learned from big sis when taking care of her.

He had learned from the best after all.

"We are outside? See? We were in your house and now we're outside your house." Said Sho. She understood some stuff but not all of the stuff…but that was ok. Maybe when she turned three then she would understand all of the stuff….like the talking stuff. He hoped so. He loved her a lot, he really did, and he wanted her to be happy and stuff…but also his head was starting to hurt. Everything was a game of twenty questions with her…and he had never like playing twenty questions.

"No! Outside!" said baby sis. She reached over and now she was tugging on his coat. Her hand had been in his pocket. He pulled it out. She could have ripped it…it was starting to get broken in places…and this was the only coat like it in the world because it had come from Shimazaki and he had trusted Sho with it and-

And he needed to calm down.

He took another deep breath and started to count in his head just like the book said to do. Right. He just…had to calm down and help his baby sis figure out what she wanted. She just…was having trouble with words. Maybe because they were in Japanese, she was Korean after all, and he had never heard her speaking it…so maybe speaking it to her now would have just confused her more.

She already seemed confused enough as it was.

"Look, see? Inside. Outside. Inside. Outside." Said Sho. He opened the door and stepped in and out of the doorway. There. Now she knew what words were and they could go and play….ok. She didn't know what words were and now she was going to turn red and kick her little baby feet so hard the stroller rocked back and forth.

"No come in! Go outside!" said baby sis. Sho pushed her stroller away from the door. Well that had just made things worse. Were all babies this complicated? Maybe this was why girls were supposed to be the ones who took care of babies. Dad had said, before, that a woman's job was to take care of her family and a man's job was to provide for his wife and children. Sho….he knew that dad was crazy and an asshole but even crazy asshole could make sense sometimes.

He hoped that Emmy knew more about babies than he did….well if she didn't know then big sis could teach her.

"No, no, we are outside, see? We're outside now." Said Sho as he pushed the stroller down the hall. She had spent her entire life in this place, well most of it, and she should have known that when the walls and floor where white and shiny she was outside. She…well she knew a lot of things….and he knew more things than she did too so…so he as just going to calm down and keep calm.

Even though she was still shouting and kicking.

"No! Want go outside!" said baby sis. She was making sense…in her head. Not his.

"Mukai…can you please just show me where you want to go already?" asked Sho. She stopped yelling…which was good. She just stuck her hand out and pointed down the hallway.

"There!" said baby sis. She pointed down the hallway. Sho did as his baby sis asked. This was better. She had stopped yelling. Now she was just pointing. She was pointing and kicking her feet when he didn't walk fast enough. He wondered if he was like this. He could walk around on his own but…well he could be kind of bossy…like she was being now. But she was two and he had no excuse…and he…well when he came back to the group then he was going to be less bossy.

And also he was going to be really nice to big sis from now on.

"There now." Said baby sis. They were going down, now, he picked up her stroller with her powers and walked down the stairs. With every step she kept on telling him to keep on going down…maybe she had wanted to explore? Maybe this was just her telling her that she wanted him to help her explore her home and…

And there weren't going to do that much exploring.

"Baby sis, no, we aren't going down there. That's where they make Awakened and it's…bad. Bad things happen there and-" said Sho as they got to the ground floor. She was still telling him to move….but the Awakening Lab was on this floor and he was not going to take her to the Awakening Lab. She didn't need to know about that place or what happened there. Even if she lived here. Even if this was going to be her home for the rest of her life…she did not need to know…anything…about what happened down there.

He would lie to her face if he had to.

"Outside! There!" said baby sis. She was…pointing in the opposite direction. Sho…well that was a relief. He didn't want to have to lie to her face or deal with her getting upset because he wouldn't take her where she needed to go…well maybe he hadn't dodged that one. The only thing that way was the big front door….that led to the woods…

Babysitting means that the baby stays here and you sit.

Her mom had told him that….and he knew that he hadn't asked if he could take baby sis outside…and also they weren't wearing coats but…well she wanted to go outside and he loved her and when you loved someone then you did what they wanted. You did whatever you could to make them happy…and that was what he would do. He was a good big brother.

He had learned from the best.

"Do you want to go outside to the woods? We can do that….but don't tell your mom, ok?" said Sho. She wanted to go outside and…being outside would have been a hell of a lot more fun than being inside all day. He'd been here for weeks and weeks now….and for weeks and weeks they'd be doing the exact same thing every single day. Coloring and playing and watching TV and stuff….they did the same thing almost every single day….

And that got pretty fucking boring after a while.


	493. Walk Me Home?

Tsubomi didn't understand Ritsu sometimes.

He was just so….Ritsu. That was the only way to describe him. The way that he just…was. How he was always so serious even when he was having fun. The way that he treated everything like it was this big secret that even she couldn't know about. The way that he was just so…quiet…all the time. Like he was thinking. She used to know, before, sort of what he was thinking about. Now he never told her what happened in his head. He just sort of got quiet and serious and just…left her. Even when they were together she felt alone…sometimes.

She didn't understand it.

"Hey Ritsu, I waited for you." Said Tsubomi. Ritsu didn't say anything as he walked out of his classroom. He just nodded and looked down at his phone as he walked. She…well she had never known him to be very talkative but…well he had gotten so much quieter lately. Ever since that day…

That awful day.

The one where his mom and dad had been arguing so loud that the whole neighborhood could hear. Tsubomi hadn't been trying to listen, no, she'd just been in her minding her own business practicing her serves. She hadn't been trying to overhear Mr. Kageyama shouting about Shigeko's shrine being closed. She hadn't been trying to listen to Mrs. Kageyama shout back that she hadn't been able to look at it anymore. She hadn't meant to hear Ritsu tell both of his parents that it was just a wooden chest with a picture on it and that they were arguing about nothing.

She really hadn't wanted to overhear any of that.

But she had. Even above the sound of her tennis ball hitting the side of the house, it got pretty loud she was good at serving, she had been able to hear the whole thing. Including Ritsu slamming the front door and then running out of his house. She hadn't want to overhear any of it…but she had. She had overheard everything and…well even if she hadn't overheard, if she hadn't been involved, she still would have followed Ritsu to the park.

He didn't like to admit it but he needed her.

"Where are we going?" asked Tsubomi as she followed Ritsu down the hallway. They fought the current of people steaming out of the school. Some people walked around them. Some people, boys, stopped and stared at them. Some people, girls, bumped into them…her…as they walked. She didn't get upset. It wouldn't last. Ritsu was leading them away from the upper year's doorway and towards the staircase. There wouldn't be any kids from their years there…

Well there would be but none of them would bother her.

She knew why kids, well sixth years, went under the stairs after school. Never this early, though, there were teachers still around. They would come later. Sixth years and fifth years…never anyone younger. This was older kid stuff. Middle school stuff…well it was middle school stuff for some people. Not her, though, at least not with…well….with Ritsu.

He had been perfectly clear about that.

"I have to check something under the staircase. You can wait here." Said Ritsu. He pointed to a spot against the wall. She didn't want to stand over there under the poster for the spring festival. She didn't want to stand under the poster for the Math Club, either, or the one left over from the open house. She didn't want to stand anywhere away from Ritsu.

She didn't like being away from Ritsu.

"We both fit." Said Tsubomi. She walked past Ritsu and hunched down as she made her way under the stairs. She made sure to make a lot of noise really jingle the keychains on her backpack, as she made her way under the stairs. She didn't want to see anything that she wasn't meant to see. It would have been embarrassing. For her and whoever else was under there.

There was no one else under there.

It was just her. It was just her in the dust and the dark. There was very little light that made it this far under the staircase. She wasn't afraid of the dark. People didn't know that, though, that she wasn't afraid of the dark. Most people. Ritsu knew that she wasn't afraid of the dark. Hanging onto him, pulling him close, and telling him that she was scared and he was so brave….all of that stuff that you were supposed to say to a boy when he was under here with you….it would have been useless. Ritsu would have known that she'd been lying. They'd had enough sleepovers that he knew that she wasn't afraid of the dark….

And he wouldn't have played along, either, even if she did feel like trying it.

"You don't have to be under here." Said Ritsu as he crawled over next to her. Her backpack jingled as he bumped into it. She stayed still for a moment. Even though she wasn't doing anything…she knew how it would look if she got caught under here with him. She knew the things that people would say…they would be the same things that they always said…but worse, probably.

Because this time there would be evidence.

She knew what people said about her. Kids and adults. She was fast, adults said, which was another way of saying that she did everything with all the boys who even so much as looked at her, like everyone said. She couldn't help the way she looked, she knew that she was pretty and she knew that she was the only girl in class who wore an actual bra, and she understood why people said that stuff about her….but she also knew that it wasn't fair. She hadn't asked to look like this. She hadn't asked to be…the way she was…and to be looked at the way people looked at her. Boys. The boys in her class…and other ones. The ones on the walk home. Middle schoolers. High schoolers. Even people her dad's age!

Ritsu always walked her home. She hadn't had to ask him. He just did it.

"I want to be." Said Tsubomi. She wished, then, that she had an undo button. She hadn't meant it like that! But she knew…she could see, even in the dark, that Ritsu was giving her. The way he scooted away from her like that.

"Tsubomi…we talked about this." said Ritsu

"N-Not like that!" said Tsubomi. She scooted away from Ritsu, there, until her back was to the wall. She knew that she was getting dirty. Mom would be mad when she saw...but she would rather deal with mom being mad at her than…whatever it was that Ritsu was talking abo-she knew very well that he was talking about. She….was not going to try that again. Ever.

They were too old to be playing house like that, anyway.

"Ok. Move over." Said Ritsu. He sounded like he couldn't have cared any less…but she knew him. She knew what it meant when he got quiet like that. When he got quiet and stared. He had been thinking…and she didn't need a crystal ball to know what he'd been thinking about. She knew….she knew that he must have been remembering the last time…well the first time…that they had been alone like this.

The time she had figured out that her door could be closed.

She wasn't stupid, she knew that doors could be closed, but she had….before that day she had never known what it was to close her door. Closed doors meant privacy. Closed doors meant that mom and dad couldn't see into her room. That nobody could see into her room. Again, she wasn't stupid. She knew that closed doors meant privacy. She knew that if she wanted privacy she could close her door…but it had never meant anything to her.

Not before that day.

"What are you looking for?" asked Tsubomi. She had to say something. She knew that she had to say something because if she didn't say anything then Ritsu…well Ritsu would start thinking again. He was always thinking, he was a genius and that wasn't just her thinking that he was smart, he was thinking right now. He had the flashlight on his phone now and he was looking at something on the wall. He was thinking about that…but at any minute he could stop thinking about that and start thinking about…well things that she didn't want him to think about.

Things that they had agreed were never going to happen again.

"That weird symbol. There's one down here too." Said Ritsu as he brushed something off the wall. Tsubomi wanted to crawl over and see it, another one of those weird symbols that were hidden all over their school…and the library…and the park…and a bunch of other places in town. She knew Ritsu, she knew that he wasn't superstitious….at least he hadn't even been before.

Now….well now he was just…different. These days.

"The one with the eyes?" asked Tsubomi even though she knew exactly what he was talking about.

"Yeah…but this one is different. It still says curse but…this one's different. It's signed differently too." Said Ritsu

"Different how?" asked Tsubomi. She didn't really care. She knew the stories about those symbols. She knew that there was the ghost of some kid that dragged you to hell if you found them all…or to heaven. It depended on who you asked. Some people said that he dragged you to hell, the ghost with the weird eyes, and some people said that he dragged you to heaven…and some people said that the ghost just followed you around and went through your stuff and said it loved you and stuff.

Ghosts weren't real.

She knew that ghosts weren't real….and she knew that Ritsu knew too. That there were no ghosts…or curses…or whatever else he did at work. Fixed at work. He had a job now. Well sort of. He met this guy a while ago, Reigen, and he seemed nice…but also weird…and he made Ritsu weird. Ritsu never used to care about spirits and curses and the mysterious symbols that someone had drawn all over town.

She didn't get him sometimes…but she still liked him.

"This one doesn't say Claw. This just says…I can't even tell what it's supposed to say. Maybe curse…or something." Said Ritsu as he took a picture with his phone.

"A curse? That sounds scary." Said Tsubomi. Maybe it was just best to play along. Maybe this was their new game. House used to be their game. Ritsu was the dad and she was the mom and her dolls were their kids and pets and…well it had been a fun game. Their 'kids' getting older. Moving into a new 'house'. Having another 'baby'….it had been fun. When they played at it, having a family and being adults…and being together.

They were too old to play games like that.

"It's probably not a real curse or someone would have fallen and died or something." Said Ritsu

"I think someone did fall here. I mean I've heard stories and-hey! What are you doing?!" asked Tsubomi. She had been too loud there, or maybe there was just an echo, and she knew that she should have been quieter….but Ritsu was being CRAZY! She heard the clink of his keys and now…now there was a scraping sound….and if he got caught then he'd get in trouble!

And she'd get in trouble for letting him get in trouble!

His parents trusted her with him. They trusted her to take care of him when they weren't around. They had called her his big sister, before, but only once. Then his mom had started crying, before, when she said it…and Tsubomi…well she was ashamed to admit it but she hadn't been sad because she had made Mrs. Kageyama cry. No, she was upset because she had called her Ritsu's big sister. She didn't want to be his big sister…and she wasn't that much older than him.

One year wasn't that much time at all…but it was time enough to make her the one between them with enough sense not to go scraping words into the school walls!

"I'm scarping this off. It might be an actual curse and if it is then I have to get rid of it. I mean it doesn't feel…never mind. Keep watch. Tell me if a teacher or someone comes by." Said Ritsu

"But…Ritsu…just….fine. But hurry up! I don't want us to get caught." Said Tsubomi

"You didn't have to come under here with me." Said Ritsu. Tsubomi crawled out from under the stairs before she could say something stupid like she wanted to. She knew what he would make from that…and he had no reason to make anything out of it. He had made himself clear, before, back when they had been playing house for the last time. They were friends. They were just friends and…yeah. That was all that they would ever be.

Which was enough for her.

Plenty of girls liked him. They left notes in his desk and his shoes and in his backpack. He never read them. He always just threw them out when he found them. She had thought, well tried to stop herself from thinking, that maybe he had done that because he had someone else he liked. She knew that it was weird, the way she felt about him, because she was older than he was. The girl was never supposed to be older than the boy…or even the same age as him. Her aunt married a man who was the same age as her and mom had talked and talked and talked about how gross it was and how she was too old for him. She knew that liking Ritsu was weird….but…well a lot of girls liked him!

And a lot of boys liked her.

Boys bothered her all the time. It wasn't just leaving notes for her, that would have been fine, it was…all the other things they did. And said. The things that they said to her face, the things that they shouted at her as she walked down the street, the things that they said about her when she wasn't around. Guys were…like that. Ritsu was never like that. He had always been so nice to her. He always looked her in the eyes when she talked to him, he never said gross stuff about her, and he never tried to kiss her or touch her…because he didn't like her like that….

That was ok. They were just friends.

They were only friends and they would be nothing other than friends. He probably liked someone else…or something. Or maybe he just didn't like girls yet. Some of the boys in his year were still in the 'girls are icky' phase. Ritsu had never said that but she had heard that boys matured more slowly than girls…even though she couldn't even imagine Ritsu as being anything other than perfectly mature. Well…the old him. The Ritsu he had been before that day….the one where he ran away to the park…and when he came back with that cut on his head…the old Ritsu never would have believed in any of the things he believed in now…

And he never would have scratched up the walls at school….even if he was scratching out someone else's drawing.

"I'm done. Did anyone come by?" asked Ritsu as he crawled out from under the stairs. Tsubomi shook her head.

"No." said Tsubomi. She was glad. She didn't know what she would have done if someone had seen her here waiting for Ritsu…well she would have been embarrassed…but also…well maybe it would have been nice, for a minute, to have felt like she was Ritsu's girlfriend…she had to stop thinking about him. She had been doing nothing but thinking about him…like this…for a while now. Being his girlfriend. Kissing him. Holding his hand. Other things that girls weren't supposed to think about…

Even watching him shake dust out of his hair…this was enough to tighten the knot inside of her.

"Good. Ok, I'm done here. I'll walk you home." Said Ritsu. He held his hand out to her…oh. Right. She had forgotten her backpack under there. The jingle of her keychains was almost enough to cover up the sound of her heartbeat. Just being near him like this…it was enough to tighten the knot in her stomach. When she was near him it felt like someone had tied a knot inside of her and it got pulled tighter and tighter and tighter until the string snapped….but in a good way…

A way that she was not going to think about when Ritsu was right next to her.

"S-Sure." Said Tsubomi. Ritsu nodded and started walking. She followed him. Even though he was shorter it was still sometimes kind of hard to keep up with him. He had always walked fast. Even when he had nothing to do he walked fast. He had something to do, probably, today. He would probably go and hang out with Reigen again…and he was free to do whatever he wanted to do…and they were too old to play house anyway.

She would have liked to have been included in this new game, the psychic game, though.

"Do you want to come over after school?" asked Tsubomi. She tucked her hair behind her ears and looked down. That shouldn't have been so hard…and it hadn't been hard, before. Things got harder now. Asking Ritsu to come and hang out, being near him, even walking down the hallway….as she passed some boy who she didn't even know said…she didn't catch all of it but she knew that laugh, the way they laughed…

Ritsu glared. That shut them up fast.

"I'm busy. I can walk you home though." said Ritsu

"Are you sure? You can come over for dinner. My mom's making boiled pork tonight." Said Tsubomi

"That sounds good." Said Ritsu. There was a smile, there, and his eyes got kind of soft there. She knew that look. He loved boiled pork. That was why mom made it. She liked having Ritsu over. She always said that he was a good boy, a good boy for her…and she didn't know how to tell mom that Ritsu was a good boy but not for her….since he didn't want to be for her….but what mom didn't know couldn't hurt her.

"There's enough for you too…if you want to come over." Said Tsubomi. She looked over at Ritsu, up through her hair like boys liked. She made sure to smile and do that thing with her eyes that made them blush…and nothing. Ritsu didn't blush or stutter or even…well she hated it when boys looked at her chest but Ritsu…she didn't think that she would mind if he did…even though she knew that she wasn't supposed to feel…the way she felt…at the idea of Ritsu looking at her and…and maybe even…

Stop it, Tsubomi.

"I'm alright. Reigen's taking me to Korean barbeque tonight. Mom and dad said that I could stay over later with him since dad's out of town and mom has to work late." Said Ritsu. She knew that his dad was away and she knew that his mom had to work late. She knew all of that and…and she still wanted him to come over. As a friend. Like things used to be before he met…well she liked Reigen…or at least she didn't dislike him…

But he made Ritsu really…weird…no. Different. Reigen made him different.

"You can come over to my house if you want…I mean…um…" said Tsubomi. She knew what he thought. He had stopped walking now, just stopped right there on the school stairs. Her hair was getting in her face now. His was the same as it always was. Spiky and just...his. It was like the wind wasn't even touching him. His eyes met hers through her hair. She knew those eyes.

He was thinking.

"I don't feel like playing house." Said Ritsu. Someone bumped into him. His backpack didn't jingle. Hers did. She stepped forward to catch him…but he didn't fall. She pulled her hand back. He was back to staring at her and…and she knew what.

"We don't have to play house again." said Tsubomi. She felt warm, there, even though the wind was hitting her right in the face. She crossed her arms over her chest. She wanted…and did not want…Ritsu to look at her but…well he wasn't looking at her. Not there, anyway, no. His eyes were on hers now. She was stuck, struck, struck stuck there. He wasn't touching her, he wasn't even backing her against the wall. He was just…looking at her.

That was all it took.

"What do you want to do then?" asked Ritsu. He was still staring at her when he said that. She nodded…she…well she hadn't had anything on her mind. Not really. She had just…wanted to be with him. That was enough, really, just being near him…even now. Even like this.

But that wasn't nearly enough.

"Um…homework?" asked Tsubomi. She shifted in place. Her backpack jingled. That was something that they had done together before. Ritsu always helped her with her homework even though he was a year younger than her. He was smart…and she didn't really need his help…and she didn't need to pretend that she needed it as much as she said that she did….but she needed an excuse to be near Ritsu.

She had never needed an excuse before.

"I finished mine already." Said Ritsu. He, mercifully, started walking. She followed. He wasn't looking at her anymore. She wanted…she wanted…she didn't know what she wanted anymore.

"Go? Did we ever finish the tournament?" asked Tsubomi. They'd been in the middle of a go tournament…she didn't even know how many weeks ago…and…well she didn't really care. Well she hadn't cared before but now…well now she had wished that she had cared. She wished that she hadn't taken it for granted…being his friend. She wished that she hadn't messed up…she wished for a lot of things.

"I always win. It's boring." Said Ritsu with a shrug. Tsubomi…well he did always win but…it didn't matter if he always won. It was just fun to play with him…but he didn't want to play with her. He never wanted to play with her…maybe they were too old to play…even if they were still in elementary school they may have been too old for stuff like that now.

That was how it worked. One day you woke up and all of a sudden you were too old for just about everything.

"We could play…um…I have the Mario Party if you want to play with me." Said Tsubomi. They weren't too old for that…right? She didn't even know. Ritsu had always been older than her…well not really. He didn't even turn eleven until summer. He acted older than her, though, he acted older than everyone around their ages…that was just how he was.

So, really, if he didn't want to play then…well then that was fine.

"Later. I have work to do today." Said Ritsu

"For Reigen." Said Tsubomi. That came out wrong. Mean. She wasn't supposed to talk like that. She was Takane Tsubomi, she had to be nice and sweet and all of that all the time. She didn't get to feel…whatever this was that she felt. She should have been happy that Ritsu had someone else to hang out with. When her friends made friends the thing to do was to be happy for them. She knew how she had to feel…but she didn't know how to make herself feel that way.

"Yeah, who else?" asked Ritsu. He maybe hadn't heard that she'd been mean…good. He was still walking. He even walked closer to her…oh. Middle schoolers. They were the worst. He glared at them as he walked past. They said nothing, they even walked a little faster. Ritsu was good at that, keeping her safe, and that was pretty much the only excuse she had for walking with him every single day….and she hated it.

Needing an excuse…it hurt.

She didn't know why it hurt, just that it did. She knew that they had their own lives. They weren't actually brother and sister like his parents liked to pretend. They lived in their own houses and had their own lives. She had tennis lessons and he had…his afterschool job. They had their own things going on and…and she still had her chances to be with him. She still had her excuses…but she didn't know how much longer they would be good for…and the fact that she even needed and excuse…

It was like she had swallowed something sharp…and it was stuck in her throat. Like a fishbone…or a toothpick…or something.

"Ritsu just…can I come too, at least?" said Tsubomi. Ritsu stopped walking again. At least this time they weren't near their school. They were closer to the park than anything. Close to home…they were almost there…but they were here, that was what mattered…and now he was staring at her again.

"Don't you have other stuff to do? What about your other friends?" asked Ritsu. He was trying to be mean. That meant that he wasn't. She knew him. People said that he was mean and cold and that his eyes were weird, like he was always trying to look through you, but she knew better. He was nice. He was so nice that he couldn't have been mean even if he tried.

Like now.

"You're my best friend, you know that." Said Tsubomi. He sighed. His eyes softened. She knew what that was about, she knew why he didn't want to spend time with her, and she just…she wished that she had the money to hire a skywriter or something. That she could put a message up in the clouds like 'I know we're just friends' or 'I'm sorry I messed everything up' or even 'we don't ever have to talk about it again' even though they hadn't even talked about it when it happened.

"I know that I'm your best friend…only your best friend." Said Ritsu. He held her eyes in his, it felt like, like he wasn't letting her look away…and he didn't have to look at her like that. Not when it came to this, anyway.

"I know. We're just friends." Said Tsubomi. She…had snapped….there…and that had been wrong. She had scared him…no. That wasn't about her. He was looking…past her? No. Behind her.

"What?" asked Tsubomi. She tried to turn around but he grabbed her by the hand. He laced his fingers in hers and…and he…he had just gotten through telling her that they were just friends! What was all of this…no. Stop it. This isn't anything.

"Nothing. Just…go home. I'll…maybe come by later." Said Ritsu. He let go of her hand. She pulled her hand back and put it in her hoodie pocket. Her backpack jingled again as she moved…and for some reason Ritsu's eyes went wide at that. He was still looking behind her.

What washe looking at?

"What are you…wow. I've never seen hair that color before." Said Tsubomi. She turned around, again, and he grabbed her hand. She knew that staring was rude but…wow. There was a guy back there with what looked like his little sister. They had the same red hair freckles and…wow. She had never seen eyes so blue before. They were…wow.

That guy was…wow.

"Don't stare. Just…go." Said Ritsu. He tugged on her hand. She unlaced her fingers with his. That guy was…glaring at her? Why? She didn't even know him…oh. She had been staring. She knew how rude it was to stare…especially at mixed people. Mom and dad had always told her that no matter how different people looked, well they'd said weird but different was a better word, she was never supposed to stare…but she had been staring…

So, really, she deserved that glare.

"I shouldn't have looked, you're right. I hope I didn't offend him. I didn't mean anything by it. I've just never seen red hair in real life before…but that would be really weird, wouldn't it? To tell him that?" asked Tsubomi. She hated it when people were upset with her…even perfect strangers. She knew what he must have been thinking, that she had been staring at him to be mean, and she wished that there had been some way to just…say sorry without being weird. Maybe if she said that she was looking at his baby sister….because she was so cute.

She really was cute.

Her hair looked like she was about to go super saiyan…she really needed it brushed…but she was still so cute. She was picking her nose and kicking her feet and she was just…Tsubomi knew that doing things like that was gross and she should have been telling that baby….or maybe she was considered to be a really little kid at her age….to stop…but that was just so cute! She liked babies and had always wanted a little brother or sister. She had never spent much time with them but she liked them….and boys normally liked her….and that boy had a little sister that he apparently had to watch…..

This could end up being a fun day after all.

"You're right. That would be weird. You should head home, I think that you'll be ok on your own." said Ritsu

"You…you're not going to walk with me?" asked Tsubomi. She didn't know…well she did know why it hurt. This was…they didn't spend a lot of time together and…and now they were going to spend even less…and he wasn't even looking at her anymore. No, he was still looking at that guy…and that guy was looking back at him….

"I…have some stuff that I need to do…but I can skip dinner with Reigen tonight. Ok?" asked Ritsu

"Um….ok. I guess." Said Tsubomi. Ritsu….well he was coming over for dinner…and she should have been happy about this…and she was. She just…wanted him to walk with her too. Maybe she wanted too much for him. Maybe this was just the way that things were going to be like now. They were older now, next year she would be in middle school, and things had changed…and they would keep on changing….

But at least she still had Ritsu…as a friend.

A friend who believed in ghosts and curses and got into staring contests with strangers on the street….but still a friend.


	494. Return to the Rocket Ship Park

Well. This was not how Ritsu saw today going….not at all.

Ritsu had been planning on spending the day, well what was left of it, with Reigen. He had found another symbol, this time under the staircase at school, and he and Reigen were going to add this one to the database. They were trying to see a pattern, some rhyme or reason to what all of these even were, and that would have taken up a good portion of the afternoon. Also there was supposed to be Korean barbeque afterwards….which meant pork which was the best of all meats….but now it looked like instead of figuring out what all of the mysterious symbols were about, hanging out with Reigen, and getting barbeque Ritsu instead was going to spend his evening dealing with…whatever this was.

Whoever this was…

He knew who this was. His name was Suzuki Sho. He had a little sister. That was who the baby in the stroller was…or maybe it was a kid? He didn't know, he was an only child. He did know, however, that this was probably very bad…well of course it was bad since Tsubomi had seen him and she'd probably ask him a million and one questions later….but it could have been bad like Ritsu was about to get kidnapped and used for experiments bad….

Or maybe he was just going to get punched in the face for trying to hold hands with Sho.

That was always an option. Most guys didn't take it well when he tried to…well not that he tried with a lot of guys but…things had gone badly before. Sho…well he'd ran away….but now he was back and…and Ritsu…well maybe he had come on too strong or…or maybe Sho didn't even like him like that….and maybe he didn't like Sho like that…maybe Ritsu just thought that he was…cute…or something….

He shudders at the word 'cute'.

It's a fully body sort of thing. Full aura, too, and that gets Sho's attention. Well his aura's attention. Now his aura was meeting Sho's and…and that felt…good. Good and bad at the same time. Another shudder. This one wasn't because he had thought of Suzuki Sho of all people as cute. He…well he was. Even if he was covered in dirt and leaves…and it looked like he'd gotten into a fight with a bird at some point….he was cute and stuff….but also dangerous.

This was dangerous.

Ritsu was, supposedly, a genius and as a genius he should have been smart enough to run away. Sometimes you had to run away. Reigen said that. He said that a lot…because he had spent most of his life running away. Ritsu…he knew not to engage with the people who stalked him. He knew that when he sensed them and saw them the best thing to do was to keep moving. Now…well now was different. He knew Sho. Sho was on his side…and even if Ritsu had messed it all up Sho…wasn't going to drag him off for experiments…right?

He'd find out in a second.

"Hello!" said the baby…he had no idea what her name was. She was obviously the baby sister that Sho had told him about, the one who he was here visiting, but Ritsu was blanking on her name. Something…with a 'mu' sound? He didn't know. It didn't matter, it didn't seem like she could talk. Not really. She was mostly just saying 'helllo' and waving at him. He waved back.

Sho stood still.

It didn't fit Sho, him sitting still like that. Ritsu…he could count the number of times they'd met on one hand but in each of those times Sho hadn't been standing still. Even when he stood in place he shifted from the right to the left and back again. Now he was still. He was still and he was staring at Ritsu like he'd never seen another human being before or something.

He had really nice eyes.

Their eyes met. Sho didn't look away. Neither did Ritsu. He was aware, sort of, that there were people around him. School had just let out. This was the way that everyone in his neighborhood took home. There were older kids in uniforms, kids in normal clothes, and some moms with strollers too. Sho didn't blend in at all. It wasn't the red hair or the blue eyes or the fact that he was filthy or even that he wasn't wearing a uniform. No, he just…stood out. There was just…something about him…something that was his and his alone…something that made him stand out like no one else could.

Something that Ritsu…wanted for himself…if even for a little bit.

He knew, as he walked over towards Sho, that he didn't stand out. Not here. Not when there wasn't any attention being put on him. Not when he wasn't Ritsu the smartest kid in school or Ritsu the poor boy who lost his sister or even Ritsu the weird kid who thought that there was some kind of city wide conspiracy of evil psychics. No, here he was just a kid in the crowd…a kid walking against the crowd but a kid in the crowd…

A kid about to meet another kid.

"Did you get into a fight with a bird on the way here?" asked Ritsu. That seemed like a good place to start. The feathers. He had feathers in his hair and so did his little sister. She was trying to reach out of her stroller now. He…had no idea what to do. Mom and dad hadn't had any other kids after Shigeko died and his only cousin, Tobio, was older than him and lived in another city anyway. He didn't know what to do about little kids who kept on saying 'hello' to him…

Or guys his age who didn't say anything at all.

"Let me guess, the bird won?" asked Ritsu. Sometimes it was best to keep talking when the other person didn't say anything right away. That had always served him well. Either the other person said that he was an asshole and left or they started talking to fill the atmosphere with something other than silence. Sho looked like he was going to do the second thing…once he finished up with the staring.

Ritsu didn't know if this was good staring or bad staring.

"I-I didn't get into a fight with a bird! It just…well baby sis wanted to see the nest and-" said Sho

"Hello!" said the baby

"-and then I brought her up there and there were these baby birds and she wanted to play with-" said Sho

"Hello!" said the baby, this time with a kick of her feet. Ritsu wondered if she was meant to only be wearing one shoe. He didn't ask, though, since it didn't really affect him how many shoes that baby had on. He wasn't the one who was supposed to be babysitting her.

"-the baby birds but the mom came back and she was all pissed off even though we were being-" said Sho

"Hello!" said the baby, this time….angrily? Could babies…or kids? Could people her age even get angry? He didn't know. It wasn't like he could remember being her age.

"-nice to them and everything!" said Sho

"So…you did get into a fight with a bird…and the bird won?" asked Ritsu. He held eye contact with Sho. Sho was the first to break it. He reached up and took a feather out of his hair. He held it in his hands and played with it. His sister tugged on his coat.

"Hello!" said the baby, this time directed at Sho. Ritsu…had he been like that when he'd been little? He couldn't ever imagine tugging on Shigeko's coat…or even being near her. She hadn't been the much older than him, just a year, so…well he wouldn't have tugged on her like that…when he'd been that little baby's/kid's age…well actually in the pictures that he'd seen, the ones mom and dad hid in their room, he hadn't even been as big as baby whatever her name was right now….

Shigeko had been long dead before he had even been two.

"…it was a draw…" said Sho. He looked up as he said that…and normally it would have hit Ritsu right in the stomach. Right in the stomach like getting struck by lightning…or whatever getting struck by lightning felt like. He didn't know a better way to describe it, the feeling he got when he was near a guy he liked. The feeling he got when he was near Sho…well it was worse when he was near Sho…but now it didn't really feel like anything. Now instead of lightning there was this…sort of heavy feeling…in his stomach. There was a baby tugging on his pants leg and…and that was Sho's sister…he got a sister…

He got two of them.

Ritsu exorcises the feelings as best as he can. His powers don't listen when he has big feelings, bad feelings, ones like this. They don't listen when he has heavy feelings…and when he has big ones like being pissed off his powers act on their own. The midpoint, they worked best at the midpoint, and he had to stay at the midpoint all the time. He had to stay there all the time so he could be ready. He had to be ready for when they came and…stuff.

He was not ready now.

He did the best he could to get this feeling, this heavy feeling, out of his chest. People had sisters. People were older siblings and people were younger siblings. This was something that he'd had almost eleven years to get used to. This was something that he had to get used to now. This was…he needed to calm the hell down...he needed to get back to the midpoint….

Right. Now.

"Hello! Hello now! Sho!" said the baby. Her aura…she actually had one….hit him when she said that. Yeah…she was pissed off. She had the same sort of aura as Sho…not just the color but the feel of it too…maybe because they were brother and sister. Yeah, that would have made sense. He wondered what color Shigeko's aura would have been…what kind of aura she would have had…if she even would have had an aura….

He stops wondering. It's pointless.

"She wants you to say 'hi' back. She's not going to stop until you do. She's had a lot of soda and M&M's today." Said Sho. He reached down and patted his baby sister on the head. Her hair sprang right back up. She looked like she had gotten into a fight with an electrical socket and lost. So did Sho. He decided to focus on Sho…on his spiky red hair…and not the fact that his sister was right there and talking and…

And yeah. He focused on Sho.

"Hello." Said Sho. He waved at the baby. She waved back. Her aura felt…better? Less like she was about to climb out of that stroller and put him in the ground, anyway. She smiled and waved to him. He waved back. Someone stopped and pointed at them.

Ritsu stopped waving back.

"So this is what you do? You stalk people and fight with birds?" asked Ritsu as he looked back up at Sho.

"It wasn't a fight, I told you….and I'm not stalking you either. Me and baby sis were just out for a walk…a long one." said Sho

"Where? Through the woods?" asked Ritsu. Sho's reaction gave it away. The way he flinched. His whole body and his aura too. There was a big flinch there…the woods. The ones outside of town…that was a long way away…but now he knew exactly where they were hiding and…huh.

Mom and dad had been right to tell him to stay out of the woods after all.

"No. I wasn't in the woods. I was just…walking…for a really long time!" said Sho

"Alright, you were just walking for a really long time. So where are you walking to, anyway?" asked Ritsu. Good. Now he knew where they were coming from…and now he just needed to figure out where they went. Were there bases besides the one in the woods? Where were they? And…and what connection did Sho have…well he knew what connection Sho had but…but he needed to know why Sho was there…what he wanted…what they had sent him here for….

If Sho was there for him…or if he was just taking his sister for a walk like he said.

"Nowhere in particular…not to you! I wasn't stalking you! I have better things to do than to watch you hold hands with your girlfriend!" said Sho

"She's not my girlfriend." Said Ritsu. It was a reflex. People always thought that he and Tsubomi were together…even their parents. Dad was always telling him to be care and not do anything that he would have done…which was gross…and her parents were always joking about how they had to start saving now since they knew that Tsubomi was going to want to have a fancy wedding…and then there was the way that both of their parents told them to keep their doors opened...

Well…mom and dad had actually been right about that one too….

"Then why was she holding your hand?" asked Sho. Ritsu…maybe he just wanted to hear jealousy there…not that he knew why. Even if Sho did like him back, doubtful since he ran away before…and also since they were both guys, it wasn't like they were going to be boyfriend and boyfriend. No way. Mom and dad would have freaked out if they knew the truth…and also Sho was a part of the evil organization that was collecting psychics to take over the world with and stuff. There was no way that it could have worked out…so there was no point in having hope….for anything….

But it would have been nice, though, if Sho had been jealous.

"Because she wanted to." Said Ritsu

"But then…why were you holding her hand?" asked Sho

"Why? Are you jealous?" asked Ritsu. That…had been serious….but only a little bit. If he said yes then…well Ritsu would deal with that…and if he said no then…well Ritsu would deal with that too.

"I-I'm….I-" said Sho

"Jelly!" said the baby. Ritsu kept calm, he stayed at the midpoint, even though he kind of wanted to push the stroller off into the alley for a little bit. Not for a long time, and not in the sun or anything, and not so far away that the baby could have gotten kidnapped or anything…he just…

He was not going to get mad at a baby. That was stupid.

"No, jealous. He said jealous and-" said Sho

"Want jelly sandwich! Jelly! Cream cheese!" said the baby. Ritsu wrinkled his nose. That…that was the worst thing that he had ever heard in his life. Jelly and…cream cheese? The stuff that went on bagels? Why would….gross. Ritsu had no idea what country Sho and his sister's family came from but he knew for a fact that he had no plans of visiting it.

"I don't have one with me…but I have candy. You want more candy? More M&M's? More colors?" asked Sho. The baby nodded and held out her hand. Sho reached into his pocket and…wow. Ok, he just…had loose M&M's…in his pockets…

Ritsu wanted to laugh but he settled for a smile.

"That's disgusting." Said Ritsu in an effort to cover up his smile.

"What? You have something against M&M's?" asked Sho as he popped one into his mouth almost like he was challenging Ritsu…or something. Ritsu didn't say anything. He just reached across, into Sho's pocket, and pulled out a handful of half melted M&M's.

And he ate them.

"No. M&M's are fine…but jelly and cream cheese sandwiches sound disgusting." Said Ritsu after he finished chewing. Truth be told they were sticky and dusty and also they tasted like…dirt? Like dirt right off the ground…and he didn't want to think about whatever else Sho had in his pockets…and he'd only taken them because he had wanted to be near Sho…

But there was no way that Sho could ever know that.

Sho could not EVER know that Ritsu had just…wanted to get close to him. Close enough to see if that scar on the side of his neck went all the way down his chest…close enough to see what it said around the lightning bolt patch on his coat…it said Shimazaki Ryou on it in red thread….close enough to count the feathers in his hair…four….close enough to see what kinds of leaves were in his hair…Ritsu didn't know anything about leaves but he now had close visual confirmation that they were green…and close enough to smell him…and he didn't smell good….but he didn't smell that bad either. Sort of like himself…himself and not wearing deodorant…but in a good way….if there even was such a thing….

He was never going to be able to get that close to Sho ever again…unless he felt like stealing more candy from his pockets.

"H-Her mom likes weird stuff like that…like all they have to drink at her house is grape soda…and she likes pimento loaf too…which is this thing with peppers in it and it's all meaty and just…gross….and stuff. Her mom is weird." Said Sho. He played with the feather in his hand again. It was frayed. Ritsu wanted to take it and put it back in his hair…but that would have been way too much. He had no idea if Sho even liked him…or guys even at all…and that was not the way to find out.

The best way to find out would have been to ask but…well that could come later. How later he did not know just…later.

"You're weird." Said Ritsu just to have something to say.

"I'm weird? You're the one who just reached into my pocket and stole-" said Sho

"More! More now!" said the baby. She kicked her feet again. Her other shoe was loose on her foot. Ritsu wondered what would happen if she lost it. She could walk…right? Were babies that little able to walk? He didn't know…maybe she couldn't….because of the stroller…though that might have been because she lived in a secret base in the woods with the rest of the evil organization.

"You've had enough." Said Sho

"More now!" said the baby

"Mukai, no. You have too much energy as it is." Said Sho

"Now! More now please! Sho now please!" said Mukai

"No, you-" said Sho

"If she has so much energy then why not just take her to the park or something?" asked Ritsu. He was getting a headache. Babies…he was glad that mom and dad hadn't had any more kids. He wasn't glad that he was an only child but he was glad that he'd lived the almost elven years of his life so far without having to deal with any of that.

"Ritsu…you're a genius!" said Sho. Well he shouted it more than said it…and Ritsu wished that he hadn't said anything. Now people were looking at them….more people than had been looking at them than before…and a lot of people had been looking at them before…

He looked down at his shoes.

"I know that I am." Said Ritsu quietly. Hearing it from Sho…well that had been good. Lightning bolt good. Having everyone see how good that made him feel…well that hadn't been good at all. In fact that had been bad. That had been so bad that Ritsu had wanted nothing more in that moment than to run all the way home and hide under his bed until people forgot that today had even happened…but that wasn't what he did.

No, he went to the park instead.

Well dragged would have been a better word for it. He had been dragged to the park. Sho said that he needed to be lead there but Ritsu…well he got the feeling that Sho had just wanted to go with him…or maybe that had just been wishful thinking. Thinking that he should not have had. God, he was acting like Tsubomi. She was always looking for evidence that he liked her…even though he had told her clearly that he didn't….and no matter what he said or did she still tried to look for evidence and signs that he secretly liked her and that he wanted to make their games of 'house' and stuff…real….

He didn't.

He didn't want that with Tsubomi and Sho didn't want that with him. He had ran away when Ritsu tried to hold his hand. That was a clear enough sign that Sho didn't like him like that…and he had no reason to like Sho like that. Just because Sho was the first person to ever really listen to him…and just because Sho was the person who helped him figure out what he was…all of what he was. The esper thing and the…other thing…that wasn't reason enough to like him, right? Or maybe it was…and Ritsu just didn't know anything about love…not that he was in love!

He couldn't be.

He just…thought that Sho was…cute. Good looking. Weird but in a funny way. Nice but also…also there was something else to him and…and Ritsu knew that Sho was a part of the group that stalked him. The group that was going to try and kidnap him if he showed any signs of having powers. The group that was going to take over the world. Sho was a part of that and instead of doing the sane thing and running away Ritsu was, instead, sitting right back up in that very same rocket ship slide with him as before.

Maybe everyone was wrong and Ritsu wasn't a genius at all. Maybe he was some kind of moron or something.

"Come on, Sho! Slide!" said Mukai, he knew her name now, as she tugged on Sho's coat. There was a line to go down the slide as usual. This was the tallest slide probably in the whole city if not the whole country. Of course there was always a line of people trying to go down it…and one idiot trying to be brave but instead blocking the whole thing…

"Baby sis hang on, we have to wait." Said Sho as he pulled his sister back. She had been about to push some bigger kids out of the way….not that she was strong enough to do anything…but still. The last thing that Ritsu needed was to have to break up a fight between Sho's little sister and whoever she ended up shoving away…or Sho himself since he seemed like the type to get into fights based on the scars.

They were everywhere.

Well on his arms, anyway, and his back. Sho was crouched down and his jacket had ridden up in the back. Ritsu could see what looked like a scar tree growing on his back. He'd caught sight of Sho's arms, too, when they'd been climbing up this thing. He had those scars on his arms…and he could have sworn that he could see another scar on Sho's leg where his pants had ripped at the knee….he had a hell of a lot of scars.

They were….kind of cool actually.

Ritsu wanted to touch them…not in a weird way but in just a…examining them…way. Like playing doctor…not like how he and Tsubomi had, of course, but like…seeing what they felt like. He had a million of them, it seemed, and from the brief glimpses that Ritsu had gotten they all seemed to have different colors and textures…and he just wanted to see them for the sake of seeing them…and not for the sake of seeing Sho and touching him and stuff….

Lightning in his stomach…again. Great. Just great.

No wait, that wasn't lightning. His phone vibrated. He checked it…Reigen. Ritsu put it back in his pocket. He may have been friends with Reigen, and he may have liked hanging out with him, but sometimes…well sometimes he had his own stuff to do. Kid stuff…normal kid stuff…like going to the park and…and helping his new friend babysit…or whatever. Yeah, that was what he was doing…being helpful…not that he knew a lot about babies…

But he did know that you weren't supposed to give them soda.

"Here, drink this while you wait. You're getting all red." Said Sho as he pulled a bottle of cola from his pockets…how deep did those even go….and pressed it to his baby sister's lips. She drank it fast, way too fast, and Ritsu wondered what the point of even coming here was. They had come here to help he burn off all of her extra energy but here Sho was feeding her more sugar.

Yeah. Sho needed him.

"Aren't we here to help her get rid of her extra energy?" asked Ritsu

"Yeah, it was your idea." Said Sho

"Then why are you giving her soda?" asked Ritsu

"So she doesn't die of dehydration of course….and also because she likes it." Said Sho

"I like it!" said Mukai as she threw the empty bottle back at Sho. He caught it without using his powers. He just…well that was kind of cool…well Sho was kind of cool…

Alright, that time had been actual lightning.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you do. Now come on, it's our turn." Said Sho. He sat Mukai down in front of him at the base of the slide. That made sense. She was way too little to go down on her own. She would have gone over like that little kid who had been trying to climb the slide. She had gone over, Ritsu could see from up here, and there was a crowd gathering around her. She wasn't crying, though, she was saying that she was fine…and she didn't even look hurt….even though she had fallen three meters right onto the woodchips….

Weird…but he'd seen weirder things…

"Well, are you coming or not?" asked Sho. Ritsu blinked. That was…weirder than the kid on the ground that was for sure. Ritsu…had slid before…with Tsubomi when they'd been little and she'd been too scared to go down on her own….but this was…well he was way too old for that now and…

And that was not Tsubomi

"You too! You too now!" shouted Mukai

"You heard my baby sis. Come on already." Said Sho. Ritsu nodded. He was making something out of nothing. People slid together all the time. He just…he had to get back to the midpoint…right now. He just…he could sort of feel another aura…and see one too. This one was…not red…and very faint and…and that meant that he might have just been super out there with his aura and….and that was all the more reason to get to the midpoint…

It was time to stop making something out of nothing.

"Whatever." Said Ritsu. Maybe if he said whatever then he would feel whatever…or something. Something other than this lightning bolt feeling that was running through his body from his stomach. It started when he scooted up behind Sho and only got worse as they went down. About halfway down the slide he entertained thoughts of throwing himself off the side…but then he would end up getting hurt and his mom would be as upset as that little kid's mom was.

"Madoka! Come here!" the little kid's mom yelled. She was kind of loud…but not loud enough to make someone freeze. She wasn't even doing that mom yell that made everyone stop in their tracks…moms had that kind of power. Sho might have just been unusually weak to mom yells, like that was his one weakness or something, because he had gone totally still as they stopped at the end of the slide.

He didn't even stop his baby sister from getting up and running away.

"Sho? Are you ok?" asked Ritsu as he leaned forward. As much as he liked being this close to Sho this was a really awkward position to be in…plus people were yelling at them to go already, too. Sho was being way too still…and it was weird. He was staring at some lady now, the little kid's mom, and he was acting like he'd seen a ghost. An evil spirit, not a regular one.

"Sho? Earth to Sho? Hey you in there?" asked Ritsu. He shook Sho a little...and that seemed to be the thing. He sat up straighter…and his aura practically slammed into Ritsu. Even his hair stood up more. Ritsu…didn't get it. Why he was staring at that lady…not even at her, at her back, especially since he really should have been looking out for his baby sister. She had run over to the pullup bars and now some older kids were helping her hang upside down…and that could not have been safe for her.

"Mom…" whispered Sho. It sounded like he said 'mom'…and he was staring at the lady's back now. Her kid must have been more hurt than Ritsu had realized. The mom picked her up and carried her really fast over to her car, like she was running or something…which made sense. The kid had fallen three meters…and that had to have been dangerous….

He wondered how dangerous a one meter fall could be.

That was how high Sho's little sister was off the ground. Some other kids were trying to get her to hang upside down…and that could not have been safe. Ritsu….he knew that she wasn't his little sister, she was Sho's, but he wasn't going to just let her get hurt. Even if she could be kind of annoying. What kind of…friend? Were he and Sho friends? It didn't matter. They never would be if he let anything happen to Sho's baby sister.

He nudged Sho again. That did the trick.

"Mom….Mom!" said Sho. He got up and started running….and not in the direction of his little sister. Great. Just great. Sho was running off to where the cars were parked…was he chasing after that lady? Why? He had said mom but…that couldn't have been his mom. She didn't look a thing like him, she had black hair first of all, and second of all he had said that he didn't have a mom…

Well everyone had a mom…the baby had to grow somewhere….but his mom wasn't around he had said.

But Ritsu wasn't there to worry about other people's moms. No, he was too busy worrying about other people's little sisters. Specifically Sho's little sister. In the time that it took him to make his way over to the pullup bars Mukai had not only fallen but she'd also thrown up all over herself.

Wonderful.

"She fell on her own! Honest!" said one of the kids Mukai had been playing with. Ritsu didn't say anything, he didn't even look over at that kid. He was too busy worrying about Mukai. She was on the ground and she was crying…and she smelled like throw up…and also her aura was really painful in a way that Ritsu hadn't even known that he could feel pain…

But he had to be there for her. He was the biggest kid there after all and he sort of knew her, too.

"Come on…let's get you to Sho…let's get you to your brother." Said Ritsu as he reached down and helped her up. She was being all limp…he picked her up under her armpits and held her like he was taking out the trash. He had never held a baby before…but like Reigen always said you had to try everything at least once….and he also said that sometimes you had to run away….

But this was not one of those times.

He could not run away from a crying baby. Well not one he knew, anyway. She was little and she probably didn't know what was happening to her besides the fact that she was in pain. Ritsu had a memory like that. The first thing that he could remember was his head hurting. He didn't know why his head had been hurting but he could remember being in a blue room and his head hurting and then mom was there…he hoped that this didn't turn into one of those memories for her. That would have sucked.

Almost as bad as getting abandoned in the park by her big brother.

Ritsu was not going to raise this baby if that was what Sho had in mind. He seemed crazy enough that he might have tried something like that…well if he did then Ritsu would tell him to go to hell with that. That was not the good kind of crazy. So far Sho had been the good kind of crazy, the kind that stalked you and told you to stay away but then stalked you some more and told you to come to the park with him…and stuff. Ritsu…well it would have sucked if Sho turned out to be the bad kind of crazy…even if Sho didn't like him back and they'd never be together and stuff….

Stop thinking about that.

"Baby sis!" said Sho. He either felt Ritsu coming, heard the crying, or both. Ritsu found him in the last place he'd left him, the parking lot, so maybe his fears that he'd ran away and left his sister to be raised in the park by Ritsu had been a little bit overly dramatic…not that he was every overdramatic. Reigen just liked to accuse him of that to make himself feel better. No, Ritsu was not overly dramatic now…he was the right kind of dramatic…which was not dramatic at all.

Sho was dramatic enough for the two of them.

"Mukai! What the fuck! Oh my God…oh my God! Oh my mother fucking God! Oh my mother fucking-" said Sho

"Do you always talk like that?" asked Ritsu. If his mom had heard him talking like that then she would have taken him to the store and made him pick out the bar of soap she was going to wash his mouth out with. You weren't supposed to say those things let alone shout them in a crowded playground….and especially not in front of a little kid.

"Fuck you! This is an emergency!" said Sho

"Fuck you! Fuck you!" said Mukai. Now she had stopped crying and she was laughing…and that was good…right? Even if she was probably going to end up getting her mouth washed out with soap…she had a mom, right? Sho had said that she had a mom….but wait…she and Sho had different moms? When they looked alike? How did that even….work?

"Don't say that….ok, just this once because you got hurt…and I'm sorry that you got hurt. I should have been there." said Sho

"I fall down." Said Mukai. She showed him her arm. There was a red streak running down her sleeve. It stood out against the pink of her jacket. That was a lot of blood. Ritsu…he had no idea how much blood babies had in them…but he knew that she had lost a lot of it…and maybe she needed a hospital or…or something….

Sho had this.

"I'm sorry." said Sho. He rolled down her sleeve and kissed her wrist better and…oh. That was just a scrape. That wasn't so bad….and this was another reason why Ritsu was so glad that he wasn't a big brother. He didn't know how he was supposed to handle these things. The scary things…and the gross things too.

All of the gross things.

"I throw up." Said Mukai. Sho shook his head. Thankfully he didn't kiss that better. It might have even been too gross for him…though he was still holding her close. Even though she was covered, well the front of her anyway, in throw up Sho didn't seem to care.

"I'm so fucking sorry." said Sho. He kissed the top of her head. Her hair sprang right back up as he pulled away. She looked up at him and then poked him in the eye.

"Over there." said Mukai. She pointed back at the pullup bars. Sho…he actually had tears in his eyes. He hugged his sister close…even though she had throw up all down her front….and he kissed her hair…even though it was covered in woodchips and dirt…and hopefully only woodchips and dirt.

"I'm so, so, so sorry Mukai. I should have been there with you. I was just being…stupid…and I left you…and it'll never happen again. Ok? Are you mad at me?" asked Sho. Mukai tugged on his hair.

"No." said Mukai as she tried her best to rip out a fistful of Sho's hair.

"Don't worry, these are happy hair pulls. Thanks for saving her…thanks." Said Sho. He was facing Ritsu now. He shrugged.

"I couldn't just leave her all alone over there…but you could have warned me that you were going to freak out and run away. What even was that back there?" asked Ritsu. Sho looked down at his shoes. His sister was about to lose one. Sho put it back on with his powers. He didn't even look up as he did it.

"I…thought that I heard my mom. I mean…that lady sounded just like my mom….but it wasn't….I mean I didn't see her but her hair was black and…and my mom had brown hair. She had long brown hair and it was kind of wavy but…but soft and she…she wasn't that lady. I was just being stupid." Said Sho

"You weren't being-" said Ritsu. He knew what it was like…thinking that you saw someone you lost…and he didn't mean the time that he thought some other lady at the department store was his mom and followed her all the way to the third floor back when he was three. No, he meant…the times when he would be outside and he'd see a black haired girl in braids….Shigeko had braids in her shrine picture…and he thought that he'd seen her and that mom and dad had been wrong….but he was the one who had been wrong and…and he knew what it felt like….

It didn't feel good.

He reached out. He was….well he was going to do something really stupid. Sho was right there….his hand was right there…and Ritsu could have easily reached out and taken it…but just to make him feel better. It didn't have to mean…what he wanted it to mean. He…well he wasn't the kind of person that would just leave someone to feel bad like that…well not someone he sort of knew…and he didn't care if Sho's hand was covered in baby throw up…he was still going to hold it…

Well he was going to…until he got kicked.

"Mama! Want mama! Now!" shouted Mukai as she kicked Ritsu's hand away…and knocked some sense into him. What had he been doing?! There were people here! They could have seen….what if his parents drove by…or Tsubomi came by to look for him or…or…how could he had been so stupid! He had to…he had to get away….it was one thing to hold his hand when nobody was around but…how could he had been so stupid?!

He had never been more grateful that Reigen didn't know when he was being ignored.

Ritsu felt his phone vibrate again…not a text but a call this time. If his ringer had been on then he would have been saved by the bell…he needed to stop hanging around his dad so much. That wasn't funny even in his head….and now he felt extra stupid even though he knew for a fact that Sho couldn't hear what he was thinking…but still…

He had never been so happy to get a phone call in his life.

"Y-Yeah….we should….we should bring you back home now. Sorry Ritsu…I have to bring her home now." Said Sho

"It's ok, I have to go too. I have…something to do. Um….I'll see you later, I guess?" asked Ritsu. That had come out wrong…like he wanted to see Sho….but like he was excited to see him…or something…well he was but…but he wasn't supposed to show it and…and he needed to go! Right now!

"Um…sure. Maybe. Later. I just…I have to go home…bye!" said Sho. He ran back over to where he had left the stroller. He was always running away…because he didn't like Ritsu in the way that he liked him…or, more hopefully, because his sister was covered in her own throw up and she needed a change of clothes before she got sick or something. Yeah, that made more sense…or less sense….he didn't know. He just knew that he had to get going, he had to get back to Reigen, and he couldn't stay here. Not after…all of that.

That wasn't how he had planned for his day to go…but it could have been worse.


	495. The Woman in the Window

The woman in the window had short black hair.

Her name was Hirai Masami. She had short black hair. She lived at 1919 Chili Powder Street, Seasoning City, in Saitama prefecture. She lived half an hour from Tokyo by car…and somehow four hours away by train. That was why her husband had gotten the car, despite the cost of parking in Tokyo, the train route was so inefficient and convoluted. She was married, the woman in the window, to a man named Hirai Eiji. He was a good man. He came home every day after work. He helped her with the washing up after dinner. He listened to her when she spoke to him. He watched TV with her in the evenings. He was a good man, a good husband, and a good father.

A father to their children.

"Mom, what're you looking at?" asked Madoka. The woman in the window had a five year old daughter. Her name was Madoka. The woman in only had the one daughter. The woman in the window loved her daughter Madoka. The woman in the window did not have a daughter named Shigeko. The woman in the window did not have a son named Sho. The woman in the window had a son named Juro. The woman in the window had another child on the way….and it was too early to tell what that child was…

But she would not name that child Shigeko…or Sho.

There was a tug at her sweater. The woman in the window looked down. There was her daughter, Madoka, looking up at her with her big brown eyes partially obscured by her hair. She had lost her clip at the park, her favorite Elsa clip, and the ensuing tantrum had been…something…but it had been something that had to be endured. They could not go to the park. Not tonight, no, there was dinner in the oven…and not tomorrow either. Or the next day. Or the next. Or the next.

The woman in the window could never bring her child to that park ever again.

"Mom? Hey mom, what are you looking at?" asked Madoka. She pulled the curtain to the side and pressed her face against the glass. There was nothing happening out there, nothing of note. The Taniguchi family was unloading their car, apparently they had tried their best to decimate the Costco, there was an orange cat sleeping next door on the Hirota family's porch, senile old Tsutsumitani-san was arguing with her son on the front lawn. Normal happenings for this little corner of Seasoning City. Nothing of note.

But she couldn't step away.

"Mom? What's happening? What're you looking at? At the cat? It's not doing anything. Mom….hey mom? What're you looking at?" asked Madoka. Masami…she had to say something. She had to think up a li and she had to think it up quick. It wouldn't have been the first time that she had lied to her child and it wouldn't be the last. Madoka thought that she was the oldest. Madoka thought that she was the only daughter that Masami had ever had. Madoka thought that…well she thought a lot of things. She thought the woman in the window was her mother…

And she thought that the woman in the mirror's husband was her father.

By the time Masami had noticed Madoka it had been too late to do anything about her. She had been too big, too old, and just…she couldn't have brought herself to go through with it anyway. Even if she had noticed that she'd been left with a parting gift. Even if she had noticed, before she felt something kicking, that her life was not her own…and that it never would be her own. She…had always wanted another daughter….just not with Touichirou.

Which worked out well since Madoka was, of course, not Touichirou's.

"Nothing, nothing. Just…seeing what's happening in the neighborhood." Said Masami. She had to say something, Madoka was tugging at her sweater again. The green one she had gotten for her birthday. She didn't much care for it, she would have preferred yellow, but at least her husband had gotten her something. He had noticed that her favorite sweater had gotten more or less unwearable and so he took it to the department store and had the salesgirls find him something comparable to it. Her husband Eiji. Her last husband…he wouldn't have noticed if she had been walking around in literal rags. He had never noticed anything about her. She had simply…existed…in his space. A mother to his children, a maid to clean up after him, and someone to occasionally share a bed with when he felt like doing something 'pointless'. That was who Suzuki Masami had been for over half a decade of her life…

She wasn't that person anymore.

The woman in the window was Hirai Masami. She was married to a man who loved her. A man who actually cared for her. A man who actually wanted to be with her. HER. He hadn't just married her to have someone to cook and clean for him and to have his children…in fact the children that they did have were totally unplanned. Sho had been…well Sho had been different. She hadn't known Touichirou when she'd married him…she'd actually gotten to know Eiji…and he had gotten to know her…and they hadn't gotten married because of the children anyway….though Juro had lit a fire under them for that….

The woman in the window led a completely different life from that of Suzuki Masami.

"Nothing ever happens in our neighborhood." Said Madoka as she pressed her face against the window. Masami reached over and pulled her hair away. She had so much of it. Long, brown, and oddly enough curly. Masami…well it had come out eventually that she dyed her hair. She would allow Eiji that one truth of her life…though her hair wasn't curly, it was wavy, and it was a might lighter brown than Madoka's. Easier to maintain, too. To cut and to style….none of her children had her hair…though maybe there was hope for the newest addition to her family…or maybe at least this one would have Eiji's hair. Madoka's hair was unmanageable…though not as badly as Sho's had been….and still was. He looked so much like his father…

All of her children looked so much like their fathers.

"Well something might happen and when it does I want to see it." Said Masami. She patted Madoka on the top of her head. So many knots…bath time was going to be an ordeal tonight…if she ever left this window. She knew that she was being ridiculous, if Touichirou had found her then he would have come for her by now, but the woman in the window could not shake the feeling that she was being…watched. She knew what she had seen earlier that day at the park. She knew that she had seen Sho…heard him….he was here, in Seasoning City…

And maybe…so was everyone else.

Sho was so tall now. He had shot up like a weed. He…he still had Touichirou's hair…though it looked like he hadn't brushed it in a while. He had been downright filthy too…but that was just how boy were. Girls too. Not Shigeko, of course, she had always been very neat and clean…and she wondered…if Shigeko was still neat and clean. She had to have been twelve by now…or going on it…did she still keep her hair in braids? Was she wearing makeup yet? It was too early for all of that…but Fukuda had always indulged the kids….and she wondered about him, too. If he still kept his hair that short. If he still loved vanilla ice cream…and historical dramas….and if he still liked to cook….and….well she wondered a lot of things about a lot of people.

There was no point in wondering anything.

She had left. She had done the right thing and she had left. What else could she have done? Sho had seen her. He had recognized her. He had tried to chase her. She had rushed away, of course, even though she wanted nothing more than to pick him up and hold him and never let him go. Ever. She…there was so much that she had wanted to say to her son. She wanted…she wanted to know how his life had turned out. If Touichirou had ever eased off of him….how Fukuda was caring for him…who that boy that he had been sliding with was. They had seemed pretty cozy….she wondered if Sho had a boyfriend…or if Shigeko had a boyfriend…or if Fukuda had found someone…or if Touichirou had….moved on….

There had been a red haired little girl at the park that day.

Masami hadn't stayed long enough to inspect the child but…well there were only so many redheads in Japan…and she…part of her wanted Touichirou to have moved on already. To have called off his search. To have found some other woman stupid enough to have his children and be his wife…no….not even his wife. His maid. His nanny. His occasional call girl. He didn't want a wife…he didn't want a partner…he hadn't even wanted her. If Sho hadn't come along, if they hadn't been so careless that day, then who knows how their lives would have turned out. Probably better…no. Sho would not have existed. Even if she had ruined her life…she still wanted her son to exist.

Even if they couldn't exist together….be together….like they had been before she still wanted Sho to exist.

"What could happen?" asked Madoka. Masami bit her tongue. A lot of things could have happened. Sho could have gone strolling down the street…or someone else. Maybe Fukuda and Sho…or maybe just Fukuda. That would have been…she would have preferred that Suzuki's men come barreling down the street in an unmarked white van to drag her away than…than any of that. Fukuda or Sho. Sho…he must have hated her…and she didn't blame him. She….she should have done more to get him back…she should have told Fukuda where she was…but then she would have had to talk to Fukuda…explain everything to him….

And there was no explaining any of this.

"Oh, anything really. You never know what you miss until you miss it." Said Masami. She forced herself to smile at her daughter…her only daughter. Madoka rolled her eyes. Not even six yet and she was already rolling her eyes. Shigeko had never done that. She had mostly just stared. The never ending staring…the same sort of never ending staring that Touichirou did. They were so alike, Shigeko and Touichirou, and…and at least she knew that one of her children was happy. Shigeko…well there was so much that Masami would miss out on when it came to her. The things that a mother taught her twelve year old. All the things that came with…well she had no idea if Shigeko had hit puberty yet…but there was still this sense of…of guilt almost. She had no idea what Touichirou would do when Shigeko decided that she wanted to learn how to put on makeup…or shave….or what he would do when she got her first boyfriend…or even her first real crush…and she knew that he'd be completely in the dark when she got her first period….and…and at least she had Fukuda to take care of her. He had always been so good to the children…and she knew that they were happy…

They had to be happier than she was….anyway.

"Alright, but you're going to be there for a while…because nothing ever happens on this street anyway." Said Madoka. Masami shook her head. She was a smart girl, smart like her dad.

"I know, baby, I know." Said Masami

"Hey! I'm not a baby! Juro is the baby…and the new baby is a baby…but I'm not a baby!" said Madoka. She stomped her foot when she said that…sort of like Sho did. There was some of Sho in her. Mainly her daredevil antics really. Sho…he had never had the best sense of self preservation. He had taken his first steps right off the end of the couch after all…and he hadn't stopped walking. The garden wall…the kitchen counter…there had even been times that he'd tried to fly….the swings…those swings had been death traps…or they would have been if not for Fukuda….Madoka didn't have to worry about getting hurt.

She had never been hurt a day in her life.

Even now. She had fallen three meters from that deathtrap of a slide and she had been perfectly fine. She'd never been injured, not even once. She had never gotten so much as a bruise…or a cut…or a scrape. Flu season always passed her by….and even at her school her teacher always remarked that she was a hearty child. She'd never even had so much as a cold….and Masami supposed that this was how these things were passed down.

Her children tended to take after their fathers.

"Hey! I'm not a baby!" said Juro looking up from his game. Her son…her second son. He was…well he took after his father too. The same hair…eyes…all of it. There was some of Sho in his too…she had thought, for a moment, that she had been hearing her first son and not her second…so maybe that was her doing. That part of Sho had been inside of her…the whole time. She had been the one to make her children the way they were and…

And she took a deep breath.

She looked away from the window. She wanted nothing more than to go to her room and lay down and wait for…whatever…to happen. Wait for a knock at the door. Wait to be dragged away. Wait to be dragged back to her old house and her own life. Wait to have to be…to be Suzuki Masami again. She had finished being Suzuki Masami years ago….no…she had just….put that person down. Like an old cellphone. Put that person down in a drawer never to be seen again….never to be….

She closed the curtains.

"Enough, both of you. Now wash up for dinner, it should be ready soon." Said Masami. She ran a hand through her hair. A few strands came loose in her hand. Black. She had black hair now…she took the rubber band from her wrist and tied it back. Right. She had things to do. She had a family to look after. She had things to do in the present. Her past was here, in this city, but that didn't mean that the present got put on pause. She had dinner to serve and clean up after, baths to run, laundry to fold, and homework to check. The woman in the window, Hirai Masami, had so much to do…and so little time to do it in…so really she had to stop this. Whatever happened, happened, and while she was waiting for it to happen she…well she had to do what she had to do.

She had to take care of her family.

She had two children…two and a half children to think of. She had a son and a daughter and a…whatever this was….and she had to get dinner on the table for them. She had to get on with their evening…so that was what she was going to do. She heard the kids playing with the water in the bathroom…something else for her to clean up…but she said nothing. Instead she got dinner out of the oven, miso glazed eggplant, and plated it up. She plated it up while it was still hot. She didn't have time to let it cool.

She had wasted enough time already.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was getting late. Dinner was late…she had been late coming home. In her rush to get herself and Madoka out of the park she had forgotten Juro at his playgroup…and now she had another bill to explain to her husband….one hundred yen a minute was truly ridiculous…but explaining the bill and the late dinner was easier than explaining….everything….

The unexplainable.

She heard a car pulling into the driveway. This house was small enough that she could actually hear what was going on outside. A two bedroom house. A single family home. Not three houses put together and filled with endless rows of dusty rooms full of junk that nobody was ever going to touch. Old wedding china, extra tables and chairs, toys that the children were never going to play with ever again…junk. She knew that Touichirou had abandoned the old house after she left, he had no reason to stay now that he was free to travel like he liked, and she couldn't help but wonder….what had become of the house…of…of…

She burnt her hand.

She hadn't been paying attention and she had accidentally touched the side of the baking pan. Great. She went over to the sink and ran her hand under some water. If she had been back at the old house she could have just called Fukuda. This had been her excuse, the most common one she used, when she wanted to see him. Burnt herself cooking. Something mundane, something plausible, something that Touichirou would never have been able to find fault with. Something that he had never had reason to be suspicious of….

Not that he'd ever been able to look past himself long enough to be suspicious of anything.

"Masami? Oh God…that looks bad." Said Eiji. She hadn't been able to hear him come in over the rush of the water. He moved quietly. Even now. He made it to her side in the blink of an eye and his hand was around hers. It was…nice. Touichirou would have just called Fukuda and left her to suffer. Eiji…she knew that he was tired. It was exhausting teaching English to the slower children of the Japanese aristocracy. She knew that every day he came home tired, drained, but still full of love…for her…

It was nice, having someone who loved her.

"It's not as bad as it looks." Said Masami. She knew that he was worried…he always worried about her. It was so…so good…to have some worry about her…and not just because of the children shouting in the bathroom…or the one growing in her stomach. Eiji had one hand on her stomach and the other around her hand. It hurt…but also it felt better. It was always better when he was there with her.

She would treasure what time she had left with him.

"Let me see…that still looks pretty bad. Let me get the burn cream." Said Eiji. He let go of her hand. She reached over and caught him by the wrist. No. She had gone the whole day without him. She had woken up to his side of the bed empty and come home to an empty house. She had no idea if she would…would be coming home to an empty house…or at all. If Sho was here then Touichirou was here…and if Touichirou was here then maybe he knew where she was…or maybe he was just here because one of his bases was here…

This had seemed like such a good idea, before, relocating here.

Touichirou was from Seasoning City…and he hated it. He had never once spoken to her about it, what his life had been like growing up, and she had to get this out of Fukuda of all people. Why Touichirou had told someone he barely knew about his life and not his own wife was beyond her…but then again most things were beyond her when they came to Touichirou. He was unknowable. He was an enigma wrapped in a puzzle…incomprehensible….

She had given up on trying to comprehend him years ago…even back when they'd been married…well they were still married….

No, the woman in the window was not married to Suzuki Touichirou. She looked out the kitchen window. Hirai Masami was married to Eiji Masami. They had three children, two together and one from a previous relationship. She was…she was happily married. For once in her life she was happily married. She was happy and had been for the past few years. She had thought…she had been naive enough to think, that this would be a lasting happiness. That if she hid in plain sight, in a place that she knew Touichirou hated, that she would be able to live in happiness with her family….

Things seldom if ever worked out the way that she wanted them to.

"You'll have to rent a boat, then, the kids are in there washing up." Said Masami. She made herself smile, then, and looked away from the window. She couldn't let it show that something was wrong. The downside to having a husband who actually had the ability to feel the full range of human emotion. Touichirou…she suspected that something was wrong with him, that he didn't feel things like a normal person could, and she suspected that Shigeko shared in whatever that disorder was. She could have been sobbing in the middle of the kitchen, in the old house, and the only one who would have noticed or cared would have been Sho…and Fukuda if he'd been there…

That time was over. Now she had people who would notice. Three of them. Almost four.

"Rent a boat? On my salary? I'll just build a raft." Said Eiji. He laughed. Good. He didn't know…what was happening. That there was something wrong. That she…that soon she may have had to explain the unexplainable. He knew that Madoka wasn't his, he could do basic math, but he loved her just the same. He thought…well he thought what she had told him. That her husband had been cruel to her and that she'd had no choice but to run away. He understood. He still loved her even with…the version of the past that she had told him. She knew that if he knew the whole truth, that she had left behind two children, and that she had been cheating on her husband with a man who worked for him, and a much younger man at that…though she had no idea just how old Fukuda was he looked younger than even she was….she knew that if the truth got out then all of this…would be over…

And she couldn't let that happen.

"There's the extra wood for the fence under the house. Help yourself." Said Masami. She smiled again. She did her best to look happy….to have that false happiness reach her eyes…but that seemed to be too much to ask of herself. Eiji looked her over…and frowned.

"Seriously, though, that does look bad." Said Eiji. He took his other hand from her stomach and put it to her wrist. She pulled away. she didn't want to get into this…into any of this. She just wanted to have dinner with her family…was that too much to ask? She just….she just wanted to have dinner with her family…for as long as she could.

"I'll live. It barely even hurts anymore. Let's just have dinner. I made your favorite." Said Masami motioning over towards the culinary monstrosity that was miso glazed eggplant. This was…a thing which she had stumbled upon in a magazine and made on a lark….and now it was one of her husband's favorite foods. Well it may have been odd but it was better than Touichirou's 'just fry me an omelet and drown it in ketchup' food philosophy. She hoped that the kids were eating right…Sho had seemed well…in the split second that she had seen him…

She had two going on three kids to feed here…and she needed to get to that.

"Masami, nobody can miso an eggplant like you." Said Eiji. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. She leaned into it. She couldn't remember Touichirou ever…she had to stop thinking about Toucihirou. He was over and done with. Unless he was sending men to knock on her door in the middle of the night then…then she didn't care about him. He was for all intents and purposes her ex-husband…and that was all.

He was just somebody that she used to know.

"Well, yes, because nobody's going to try." Said Masami. She kissed her husband on the cheek right back. She couldn't remember ever being so…like this…with Touichirou…and she wasn't going to try. She was going to stop thinking about him…stop worrying…stop ruminating. That life was over now and…and it didn't matter unless someone was coming to knock on her door. Her family…they were here…and she was never going to see them again even though they were there…and that…was something that she had to deal with….

Accept.

She had to accept that the kids were here. They were here and so was Touichirou and Fukuda and…and it might have almost been over for her…or it might have just been a coincidence. Touichirou had a base or whatever here and…and that was why he was in the city. He might have gotten over her, he had never really cared about her to begin with, and the kids….the kids were probably fine. Fukuda had given his word that he would care for them….and that was what he was doing…even though Sho had been alone when she had seen him…alone and filthy…

Her children were fine. They would have to be.

All of her children, both born and unborn, were fine. There was nothing that she could do for Shigeko and Sho now…so she had to just…stop thinking about them. She had been able to go for days without thinking of them…and she had to get back to that. Back to being…back to being Hirai Masami and not Suzuki Masami…

Back to being the woman in the window…with the short black hair….


	496. Maybe My Best Isn't Good Enough

Fukuda…was doing his best.

He really was! He was doing the best that he could when it came to Sho…he just….sometimes his best wasn't good enough! Like earlier Sho did not like it when he hung around for too long, especially when he was hanging out with his baby sister. Fukuda…well he wasn't exactly jumping at the chance to spend time with Suzuki's secret daughter either. That baby…was a baby. Sho had never acted like that. He had been a lot quieter…or at least less active…or maybe he was remembering Sho older…or something. He didn't know.

He got back to stirring the stir fry.

"Come on, don't make me eat the vegetables. I'll eat the gross stuff in the back of the fridge…or the fries under my bed…or even whatever's stuck to the bottom of my shoes….just not the vegetables!" said Sho. Fukuda sighed. He didn't let it show on his aura but he did sigh. He had been doing that a lot lately. There was just…a lot when it came to Sho…a lot of a lot…but he loved Sho. He loved Sho and he loved taking care of him.

Even if had been going on three months now.

He hadn't had Sho on his own for this long before…but he was doing his best. He was doing the very best that he could. Sho…he was older now. He was old enough that he wanted to play on his own with his sister…he wanted to go on his own adventures…and those adventures were taking him far from home these days. Not that this was home, they were nomads they had no real homes, but…well Sho's adventures had been taking him very far these days.

Far enough into town.

"Once a week Sho, for your health." Said Fukuda. He didn't turn around as he said it. He could hear Sho scraping away in his sketchbook. He seemed fine now. He hadn't been fine when he came back. He had locked himself in his room after depositing his baby sister with her mother. Fukuda…well he had waited as long as he could to start dinner…hence why they were just having chicken stir-fry for dinner. One of Shigeko's recipes…well one she had torn out of a magazine. Supposedly it was something that Sho could eat.

That was all Fukuda could do at this point, make sure that he ate something with some kind of vague nutritional value.

"Hey! I'm super healthy. I walked all the way from here to the city all on my own with baby sis." Said Sho

"I know you did….I know." Said Fukuda as he stabbed a piece of chicken…still pink in the middle. Shigeko's instructions assumed that the reader had some degree of telekinesis…which he did not. He didn't and he hadn't stir fried anything in a while. It was hot enough, hot enough for the oil and sauce to smoke, but not hot enough to cook this chicken all the way through….

This was the best that he could do.

Sho…well Sho somehow needed both less from him than he had ever needed before and also more. He didn't need Fukuda to tie his shoes for him anymore, or carry him on his back, or even play videogames with him. He was eleven now. He didn't need any of those things but he needed…Fukuda looked over at what Sho was doing. He was drawing a picture of a boy…not Shimazaki thank God. Sho needed guidance. Sho needed someone to watch him…but not in the way that he had been watched before. Sho needed…well he needed things that Fukuda wasn't even sure about. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with an eleven year old.

But he was doing his best.

"Then it's settled. I don't need to eat the vegetables." Said Sho. Fukuda shook his head.

"The bok choy, the bean sprouts, and the baby corn. Alright? You don't have to eat the water chestnuts or the carrots. Ok?" asked Fukuda. There. A compromise. He had never been good at telling Sho what to do…and at this point he wasn't going to get any better. He loved Sho too much to tell him that he needed to stop arguing and eat everything or he'd never grow up, Fukuda could only do so much for malnutrition, and while he was on the subject of what was best for Sho…well he should not have been going into the city…especially not with a baby.

The state Sho'd been in…the state Sho and his little sister had been in….

"Fine…but I want ranch with mine." Said Sho

"Sho, it already has sauce on it." Said Fukuda

"I want ranch, too, to cover up how all the flavors are touching." Said Sho

"….alright….but I want you to actually eat it. Don't just push it around on your plate." Said Fukuda. Another compromise. How was he supposed to tell Sho never to do what he had done ever again? How was he supposed to get it through Sho's head that going into the city was dangerous? That he was so obviously his father's son and that there were so many people that would have been happy to kidnap if not kill him…not to mention the baby…

The baby who looked exactly like him.

"I will make no such promise." Said Sho

"But I at least expect you to try." Said Fukuda. That was all that he could do. He could ask Sho really hard to promise him that he'd try. He couldn't just order Sho to do things. No, not even his own father could make him doing anything that he didn't want to do….even if…well Suzuki didn't know best. Suzuki never knew best. How nobody had managed to kill him by no was a mystery in and of it's self. Fukuda knew best in this situation though.

Sho could not be seen outside of this division…and especially not with his sister.

She looked exactly like him. Her face was rounder and she did have that Korean look to her but there were only so many redheads in Japan. Plus Sho and his sister had their father's eyes. His very distinctive blue eyes. Sho…he didn't quite get it…and that was best Fukuda couldn't fully explain it to him. He couldn't just sit Sho down and tell him that nobody could ever know that Mukai was his sister….because Sho had no idea where Mukai had come from in the first place.

It was best that Fukuda keep it that way.

Without being able to tell Sho why he was upset about what he had done, why it had been such a bad idea to take his baby sister all the way into the city like that, he…well he was a loss as to how he was supposed to proceed. Answers did come to him while he finally got the chicken to turn white in the middle…or when he was plating up dinner…or even when he was squeezing out the last of the ranch dressing onto a dipping plate like Sho liked it.

He was at a loss.

"This is decent….but big sis's is better." Said Sho as he picked at his food with his powers. His sketchbook was still opened in front of him. He was working on a sketch of a boy, with his shirt on thank God, with one hand and feeding himself with his powers with the other. That boy…that must have been the boy that Sho had been telling him about before. The one that he had committed the capital offence of holding hands with. That…was a pretty good sketch anyway. Very detailed. It was amazing what Sho could do with just a pencil and a piece of paper.

How much detail he could put in.

That boy's face…that looked like Shigeko's face. Had he used his sister as a base? Was this an actual person or someone who Sho had just…invented? But then why his sister? Why…there were a lot of whys when it came to Sho…and why he did what he did. Fukuda was genuinely curious, though. Sho had managed to find someone he liked…someone his own age. Sure it could never turn into anything, and it shouldn't have turned into anything anyway since Sho was just eleven, but…still. Fukuda was curious as to wat Sho was drawing….

And Sho…well he wasn't one hundred percent about that.

"Stop looking. It's not done yet…and it's not for you, anyway. If you want me to draw you something then I'll draw it later." Said Sho. He pulled his sketchbook close to his chest. The fork he had been holding up with his powers hit the bowl and chipped it.

"You don't have to draw anything for me." Said Fukuda

"Then why are you spying on me?" asked Sho

"I wasn't spying on you. I was just curious." Said Fukuda holding his hands up in surrender. Sho…well he had always been pretty high strung. Not as bad as Suzuki, thank God, but still pretty bad. The last thing Fukuda wanted was to end this meal with a fight.

"Go be curious somewhere else." Said Sho

"Why don't you put the sketchbook down for now, how's that sound? You're in the middle of eating and I would hate for you to end up ruining that sketch. It looks liked you worked really hard on it." Said Fukuda. Maybe Sho would end up forgetting that sketchbook out here when it came time for his bath. That way Fukuda wouldn't have to go through the piles of them Sho had in his room to find what he had been drawing earlier. Fukuda…had no desire to stumble onto any of the Shimazaki sketches….Sho had a gift for detail…and he wasn't afraid to embellish. Not that there was much of a need to embellish when it came to Shimazaki but…yeah. There were certain areas of Sho's life that he had no desire to pry into.

Not unless it was absolutely necessary of course.

"I have to finish it now…before I forget what Ritsu looks like. When he's happy…I mean." Said Sho. He smiled, then, and held his sketchbook close to his chest. That would have been adorable, and objectively it was, but Fukuda…he knew that name. Ritsu was a name that had been thrown around…well it was a very common name…but….no.

No way.

"So…his name is Ritsu…" said Fukuda. He picked at his own food. He tried his best to sound only barely interested. Barely. What he wanted to do was take Sho and ask him…well a lot of questions. Like how he'd even met this boy…met up with him…today. That…that must have been what Sho had been so upset about when he came back. Not how angry his sister's mother had been with him. Had…had something else happened?

There was a lot that could have happened.

He knew that Ritsu was a name to watch. There were several people this division was actively spying on. Seasoning City made A LOT of espers. A lot of child espers. None at the level of the one who got away, he had a whole team of people searching for him and he had been last seen somewhere in Germany anyway, but…if Sho had met a child esper…and one that was being watched…well…

This could be bad….very bad.

"Yeah. He's Ritsu..um….eat your dinner. It's getting cold." said Sho. There was a sigh there, and a blush, and if this hadn't been such dire circumstances Fukuda would have taken a picture. Sho was in love…as much in love as an eleven year old could be, and it was so cute…so very cute. Adorable. Fukuda was happy that Sho had found someone he could care about…even if that sort of caring was the sort of thing that had made him come home practically in tears talking about how he belonged in a traitor hole…

"Alright, but you eat yours too." Said Fukuda

"I am…but with my powers. I just have to finish this before I forget what he looks like when he's happy." Said Sho

"He must be something special, then, I've never seen you get this worked up over someone before." Said Fukuda. That wasn't the truth. He had seen Sho get worked up like this over and over and over again….over Shimazaki. Over that…Fukuda had words about that man that he didn't dare think in Sho's presence. He had seen Sho go to pieces over that man on more than one occasion. This should have been a good thing, Sho turning to mush over a boy his own age for once….but life never went this simply. Life…never worked out well…never came together in a neat little package.

He wished that it did.

If life worked out…not even neatly. If life just…worked out…then he could have stayed here with Sho forever. He could have gotten a house in town, maybe even bought something like the house he'd grown up in, and call it a cell or something. Then he could have just…let Sho be. He could have let Sho enjoy what was left of his childhood. Just…let him be with this boy he liked. Let him be happy…and he so wished that there was some way that life could work out like that…

But that wasn't how life went.

"Yeah…he's pretty great…and stuff…just…eat your dinner already. You're always on me to eat but you're the one sitting there letting your food get all cold and…the sauce is going to get cold and turn into jelly and it'll be really gross so just…start eating!" said Sho. Fukuda took a forkful of food. He tried to look calm, like this was just another dinner, and as far as Sho knew it was. This was just another dinner that they were sharing together…and Fukuda was just being nosy….and not about to pop the happiness bubble that Sho had found himself in.

Fukuda hated having to be the one to do this.

He loved Sho, he did, and it was so nice to see him happy and accepting the way he felt. Especially since his little rant a little while ago about being a traitor just because he cheated on his sham girlfriend. Well sham fiancée. Eventual sham wife. Fukuda didn't think that it was that bad, Sho just holding hands with another boy, especially if it made him happy. Hell, if Sho had been ten years old it would have been alright for him to sleep with this other boy if he wanted to. He deserved to be happy, the girl he was with could never make him happy, so why not just find his own happiness? It was better than living a complete and total lie for the rest of his life.

Better to have at least some happiness in his life.

It looked like Sho had finally come around but…nothing ever worked out for him, did it? Sho…he sure knew how to pick 'em, didn't he? Shimazaki, first him, and now this kid. This kid who was on the watch list, most likely, if he was an esper…and if he wasn't then that was a whole other set of problems that Sho was going to have to deal with…Fukuda wished that there was more that he could do…but he was doing his best.

He wished that he could have done more, though, but he couldn't do more than his best.

"See? I am eating. You should eat too." Said Fukuda

"When I'm done." Said Sho

"If you eat now then I'll let you have a poptart with your bath." Said Fukuda

"…I'll have a poptart tomorrow." Said Sho. Well then…this was serious…but of course these things were always serious when it came to Sho. He was Suzuki's son after all. He had the same sort of…please for the love of God love me back…that Suzuki had. Not as bad, at least Fukuda assumed that Sho was doing anything too Suzuki like…like following someone around to learn their schedule or sending them insanely specific and extravagant gifts. He did have it bad, though, bad enough to turn down poptarts of all things…

Fukuda hated this part of being a parent…something of a parent.

He didn't have any kids. Sho was the closest thing that he would ever have to a son. He ran a hand through his hair, it was starting to get long again. Sho's too. That was something that he could take care of. Something that he could do for Sho. He wished that everything about Sho could be as simple as telling him when he needed a haircut…or not to sketch and eat at the same time….or just…anything. He wished that things could have been simple…like they had been before….but that wasn't how it went with kids. Things never got easier with kids. Things only got harder and harder and harder until they grew up, left the nest, and you just prayed to whatever God was listening that they remembered how to fly.

That you taught them to fly.

"I've never seen your hair so long before." Said Sho as he looked up from his sketch. He dropped his fork on the table that time. He still wasn't so good at splitting his focus. Neither was Fukuda.

"I've never let it get this long before." Said Fukuda. He hadn't been taking care of himself lately. Too much to do when it came to Sho. Getting him up in the morning, putting him to sleep at night, running his baths, doing his laundry, cleaning up after him, and putting the Awakened back together so he could justify why he and Sho had been here for the past three months. It was a lot…

But that was how it went with kids.

"Why not? It looks cool." Said Sho

"It's anything but cool. When it gets too long it just turns into one big tangle." Said Fukuda

"It can't be as bad as mine." Said Sho

"Your hair doesn't really tangle. It grows in spikes, not curls. Trust me, curls are much worse to deal with." Said Fukuda. He remembered when Sho had been small, three or four, and he had gotten the idea to hide all the brushes in the house because he had been sick and tired of getting his hair yanked on every day. Fukuda knew where he was coming from. It would have been easier just to cut his hair short…but neither he nor Masami had wanted that.

Sho had always been his own person like that.

"It tangles. I hate how it tangles. I hate being mixed. People who are all the way Japanese have it easy." Said Sho, his eyes went down to the sketch in his lap. Fukuda…knew where he was coming from. He knew full well where he was coming from. He had said the same thing when he had been Sho's age…and he had been

"I know how it is, being different. There are a lot of things about it that people who are totally Japanese don't understand." Said Fukuda. He was, genuinely, sympathetic…but also he had information to fish for. Suzuki…was easier in a lot of ways when it came to figuring out…well whatever he needed to figure out. Normally whatever he was worried about, or consumed with, but occasionally things about other people. With Suzuki as long as you had a logical reason to ask the question Suzuki would most likely answer…or tell you to fuck off.

Sho was more likely to tell you to fuck off than to answer you…unless you asked in the right way.

"Yeah, they don't get it…even big sis doesn't get it sometimes and she's just as half as I am. She doesn't look like it though. She's lucky like that…she's always lucky." Said Sho

"Your sister…has her own problems in life…but I agree. She doesn't look mixed at all. What about your new friend? Is he mixed too?" asked Fukuda. Shigeko…that was a landmine that he was going to avoid at all costs. He knew that Sho missed his sister. He knew that eventually, Sho was either going to start asking when they would get back with the others or Shigeko would call Sho and tell him to come back. That was…not something that he wanted to deal with right now.

One thing at a time, Tadashi, one thing at a time.

He had to focus on figuring out this kid. The one that Sho was so taken with. If this kid was an esper then….well if Fukuda had been more like Suzuki he would have just…well not collected him for Sho but…no. He would never be that much like Suzuki. He was still chasing after that kid that got away, amongst other people, and kidnapping children was where Fukuda drew the line. This was not the place for children. Even orphans…well they at least didn't have parents. Fukuda was not going to do that….be a part of that…not ever.

Even for Sho.

"No, I think that Ritsu is all the way Japanese. His hair is spiky but not like mine. I think it stands up on it's own though, I think. I mean he didn't smell like hair stuff…not that I did anything with him!" said Sho

"I know, I know. I know you would never do that to your girlfriend…and you're eleven anyway. I never accused you of anything." Said Fukuda

"Good…because I didn't do anything. I mean we just went to the park…that's all. We took baby sis to the park because she had too much energy…and he likes the park too." Said Sho

"What else does he like? Is he an artist too?" asked Fukuda. He'd start with artist and make his way to esper. That was the way to do it. Sho was always kind of cagey over this…well Fukuda didn't blame him. Sho had never been the master of self-denial and self-control…and he was getting older now. Fukuda…well he knew that when it came down to it telling Sho not to do what he wanted to do was like telling the sun not to rise…and he wanted Sho to be happy…but he was still so young. He was young and even holding hands was too much for him to handle…not that Sho would listen to him about that or anything else…so he would stick to one thing at a time.

First he was going to figure if Sho's new friend…or possible boyfriend…was an esper and then he would work from there.

"He likes school…and stuff. I don't really know him that well…but I don't think that he draws. It would be so cool if he did, though! Like we could draw together and stuff. Like we could have races and contests or-or-or I could draw him and he could draw me. I've never been friends with anyone who could draw before. Shimazaki can kind of draw…like shapes and stuff. He can do circles and squares and he can draw a house…but like a little kid or something. Not like I can draw. I bet Ritsu would be able to draw better than Shimazaki because he can see…not to be an asshole or anything like that." Said Sho

"No, no, you aren't being a…that. You're stating a fact. There's nothing wrong with that." Said Fukuda. Sho had just made a direct comparison between this Ritsu kid and Shimazaki…and Shimazaki had not been the winner. It could have been nothing, Shimazaki couldn't draw and nothing was ever going to change that, or Sho could have finally been getting over that at least three year long crush/infatuation he'd had for Shimazaki….

Fukuda really did not want to send Sho back to square one…and if he had a choice then he wouldn't…but he so seldom had a choice when it came to these sorts of things.

"Well I was being kind of an asshole. Shimazaki can't help that he can't see…and if he'd been here he would have kicked my ass for saying that. Not for real because we're friends and stuff. Friends only pretend to kick each other's asses. Ritsu and I don't fight, though, we never had the chance. I mean I don't know if we will since…well I don't know how long we'll be here for…and anyway I shouldn't hang out with him….so that's why I have to finish this drawing. I don't want to forget what he looks like…and don't tell me to take a picture! If I do then big sis could find it when she uses my phone or Hatori could find it…he goes through people's stuff for fun….and just…nobody can know that Ritsu and I are friends, ok?! Enough people are looking for him as it is." Said Sho. He had gotten himself all worked up now. His face was red, he was clutching his sketchbook for dear life, and his aura was flaring like the sun. Fukuda on, the other hand, did his best to look as calm as ever…even though he had no reason to be calm…

So that was the same Ritsu that this Division was watching.

This was…something. Fukuda had only heard about this drama in passing. Apparently this kid was working with some fraud and he either knew about Claw or he was just some kid with an over active imagination. They were watching but not acting. They knew not to act until they actually saw him do something, kidnapping children was hard work and there was no need to do that unless they had confirmation that the kid was an esper, and so far they hadn't seen anything other than a faint aura off of him…which could have been something or nothing. A lot of people here had faint auras, there was something in the air or the water or the earth's magnetic field in Seasoning City that was responsible for all of these espers that kept coming out of this city, and there was no need to kidnap a kid just because of that.

At least not one his age.

Kids…when a kid went missing people noticed. If an adult didn't come home for a few days…or ever….then that was that. Unless you had reason to suspect foul play then what could the police do? Adults were free to travel and leave home if they wanted to. Kids…if a kid didn't come home from school then the whole city was on red alert….and nobody wanted to deal with that unless it was the real deal. Even Suzuki had enough sense not to rush into it with kids, which was why they hadn't found that kid that got away yet, not that Fukuda wanted that to happen. In a perfect world only adult would present as espers and Claw would be made up of all volunteers….

But this was not a perfect world. Not by a longshot.

"People are looking for him? Why? What'd he do, rob a bank?" asked Fukuda. He laughed there, and he thought that it had been a pretty convincing laugh, though it didn't seem like it had been enough for Sho.

"No he….don't tell anyone but….he's an esper and people are stalking him and he knows that they're stalking him and…and you'd better keep this to yourself! Even if you have to make a pragmatic choice like you did the last time you told my secrets just….let dad beat you up or something!" said Sho

"I won't. Alright? I…can keep this to myself. I'm…happy for you. I mean you have a new friend…who you like a lot…and he's an esper too. That's great." Said Fukuda. He put a hand over Sho's…who was having none of that. He pulled his hand away and drew his knees up to his chest. Now his sketchbook was completely protected….but from what Fukuda didn't know.

"This isn't good. I just…I like him! I like him a lot and…and I know that I shouldn't like him and…and I know that I should just…leave him alone but….but I can't! I can't and I just…just let me draw, ok?!" said Sho

"Alright, alright….you can draw…but if you need to talk about this then you can talk to me. I promise you that I won't tell your dad…or anyone else…about this kid. I never agreed with your dad on the subject of…recruiting kids…and I'll keep my mouth shut about this. OK? I'll be here if you want to talk about anything….anything at all. I know how hard this is for you. I mean you came in so upset, earlier, and I asked you about-" said Fukuda

"I wasn't upset about Ritsu…we had a good time. I was upset about…something stupid." Said Sho. He kicked his chair when he said that. He kicked his chair hard again and again. He was upset…not angry…just upset. Bothered by something….bothered by everything.

"Don't be that way. If it's something that you care about then it's not stupid…I would never call it stupid." Said Fukuda

"But I was…I was stupid. I mean I just…I freaked out and left baby sis alone and she fell and threw up just because I thought I saw…" said Sho

"You saw…?" asked Fukuda

"My mom." Said Sho

"Wh-what?" asked Fukuda. That time….that time he couldn't keep his aura calm. Masami….Masami was…here? No. She was in Sapporo. That was the last place she had been and…and she couldn't have been here. She knew that there was a base here, he had told her that there was a base here, and she just…she couldn't have been here. She just…

She couldn't have been close to him.

She couldn't have been right out there in the city. He…he had no idea what he was supposed to do if she was. He had Sho with him…and if she was here then they could have ran…somewhere. Somewhere Suzuki never went. Osaka maybe…or the whole of Korea. He could have taken Sho and Masami and ran and just…started their lives together and…and that was all dependent on her being there in the city and…

And he was getting ahead of himself.

"I saw a lady who looked like my mom at the park…and I tried to talk to her but she left…and I probably freaked her out. She wasn't my mom. I know my mom and…and she wasn't my mom. She couldn't have been my mom…her hair was the wrong color anyway." Said Sho

"Wh-what color was her hair?" asked Fukuda. He was calmer, now, well he had made himself calm down. Sho…he could have just…seen another woman. He had just said, on his own, that he had been wrong. Sho…he might have just been seeing Masami…in other people. Fukuda…after she had left he had seen her in every single woman. Her smile, her eyes, just…her. Sho was younger and…and if Fukuda wasn't over her then, of course, it would have been asinine to expect Sho to be over her too.

This was probably nothing.

"Black, like everyone else's." Said Sho. That information meant nothing. Masami had dyed her hair after she had left…and it would have made sense for her to keep up with it….but maybe he had just…seen another woman. Fukuda…he wanted Sho to be wrong. They did not need this kind of pain in their lives…both of the kids. Shigeko….would not take this well…and Suzuki…well the less said about how he would reach the better. Masami being back…would have caused so many problems…but on the other hand…Masami would have been back.

Sho would have had his mother back…and Fukuda would have had the love of his life back.

"That's…not your mom. I remember your mom had brown hair…light brown hair…" said Fukuda. It was better that Sho doubt himself…and it was better that Fukuda doubt Sho. Masami being back…that would have been…too much. He had no idea how he would even confirm this. What was he supposed to do? Start digging around to see if people were still looking for her? Go door to door asking about her? Rent ad space? There was nothing that he could do….

Not even his best.

"Yeah, that's what I was so pissed off about. I know that she's not my mom." Said Sho. He kicked the table when he said that and…and Sho was there. Sho was there and he was making himself known, like a spirit who was being called out to, and Fukuda…he needed to focus on the person who was there. He had to focus on Sho who was there and he just…he had to do his best by Sho…and that meant focusing on the person who was there….

And not the person who had gone.

"You're right….you're right. That wasn't your mom and…and try not to leave your sister alone like that. She's…she's only two." Said Fukuda. He got off the Masami thing. Nothing good could come of that. Nothing good WOULD come of that. Sho was already upset enough as it was…and Sho was who he was supposed to focus on.

"Yeah, I know that I fucked up….don't remind me…and don't say 'langue' either….that just pisses me off." Said Sho

"I…won't. So…um…what's Shimazaki up to these days?" asked Fukuda. Talking about Shimazaki…he would much rather have stuffed his mouth full of chili powder...but he had to get Sho off of this Masami thing…and what better way than to get back to….well to Shimazaki?

"I don't know…I haven't seen him in months." Said Sho quietly. Fukuda…he could hear the pain in his voice. He didn't want Sho to feel that kind of pain…but there was nothing that he could do. There was a man eating tiger behind every single door…and he had to figure out the door with the least angry tiger behind it…and that was this door. The one with Shimazaki behind it.

Sho…enjoyed talking about Shimazaki…so this…would at least make him feel better. That was what mattered the most, making Sho happy.

"Well maybe you could call him. I mean he is your friend...your best friend, right?" asked Fukuda. He wanted to bite his tongue. This was…what was best for Sho. Better he worry about the man he was in love with than the mother who'd left him…for very good reasons but…but this was just…not good for Sho.

"Yeah he's my best friend…but I've never called him before. What if he thinks that I'm weird…or something?" asked Sho. There was so much vulnerability there…and it was about the wrong person. Sho…he should have been talking that way about…this Ritsu boy he liked…not Shimazaki. Fukuda, in a perfect world, would have been walking Sho through his first crush. His first relationship. His first…well whatever it was that he had coming to him…that was…just….what Fukuda should have been working through with Sho…not….this.

All of this.

"Sho, this is Shimazaki Ryou we're talking about. He won't care. Why don't you go take your dinner to your room and call him and finish that drawing, too? I have to…get the kitchen cleaned up." Said Fukuda. Sho, thankfully, listened. That was….good. Well it wasn't good, actually, because now he was off to talk to the man who…well who he should not have been talking to but this…was better than staying on the subject of Masami…

Or Sho's new little esper friend.

This was….a lot. This was a lot for anyone to deal with, let alone Sho, but….well Fukuda wasn't going to let Sho deal with this. He would deal with this. He would do…something. Even though he had no idea what he was supposed to do. Look into this Masami thing, maybe? No…Sho was wrong and…and he had…he had so much to say to her and….and Sho had a lot of things to say to her and…and he just….one thing at a time. He had one to focus on one thing at a time…as best as he could.

That was all that he could do, really, just….the best that he could do. Even though he got the feeling that his best wasn't good enough.


	497. Unwitting Secrets

Minegishi always got the inside of the bed.

They preferred the outside of the bed but they always got the inside. Ryou got the outside of the bed. It was easier to wake up in the middle of the night squished between the wall and Ryou than it was to deal with the nightmares that Ryou had every time he had to sleep in the inner part of their bed. They had a vague idea as to what he dreamt about…most likely the same things that they dreamt about, but it wasn't like they were going to ask. Ryou…well he was an open book…but that didn't mean that opening that book was always good for him.

Sometimes it was best to leave some things alone.

It wasn't like they hated sleeping on the inside of the bed. They didn't hate it…they didn't love it but they didn't hate it. It could have been worse. They could have had to share a room with one of the others…nope. If it came to that then they were sleeping in their garden no matter what the temperature was. Not that it would ever come to that….unless Mob made another friend….no, she had learned her lesson from the whole Serizawa thing. Mob knew better than to bring another person into this house...so it didn't look like they were going to have be tripling up in these beds anytime soon.

Thank God.

It was just them and Ryou for now….well just them. Ryou was out, some mission thing for Suzuki. God only knew if he'd be coming back tonight. Berlin was a fun town, the kind of fun that Ryou liked to have, and they fully expected to wake up to an empty bed. The thought…there's a tightness in their chest at the thought of it. Waking up without him…love. God, love made them into such an idiot. They'd slept alone before. They'd slept alone on the floor of their room, in gardens, in the woods, playgrounds, the supply closet at the group home…they could sleep alone in this bed. They didn't need to be pressed up between Ryou and the wall to fall asleep.

But…having him there did help.

"Hey Toshi, how's it going?" said Ryou as he teleported into their room. He had a sixth sense, or maybe a seventh, or a fifth…he could sense when they were thinking of him. They knew that he was like Bloody Mary, you just said his name and he appeared, and they would not have been surprised if the same went for when you thought about him too. How else could they have explained him suddenly teleporting into the room like that?

Well…he did live here after all…so where else would he go?

"Could be worse. You?" Said Minegishi. They dog eared the book that they'd been reading and put it down in their lap. They'd get back to it later. It wasn't anything special, anyway, trite is anything. The sort of paint by numbers romance that Mob would have loved. Woman meets man, woman and man fall in love, destiny keeps them apart, and then they fuck at the end. Tale as old as time and all of that. Simple things, substance-less, junk food for the heart.

"Could be better. God, you would not believe the night I had." Said Ryou as he took his coat off and draped it over the desk chair. There was blood on his hands, they could see, and some on the front of his shirt too. The maroon couldn't hide it.

"Try me." Said Minegishi. They put their book on the floor and watched him. He unbuttoned his pants and threw them into the dirty hamper. Good. He remembered which was which. They weren't used to this level of organization…not yet, anyway. Maybe once it had been a year they'd be used to everything having a place in their space….their and Ryou's space…

It was his space too.

They were past the point at being amazed at how easily he made his way around. They had been amazed, well amused, at first. When they'd first met. When they'd taken that walk…he'd jumped from stone to stone then. Limboed under tree branches. He'd even done handstands on the edge of this brick wall…and it had been impressive. Then. Now…well now they were used to it. How he moved through the world….

They still watched him, though, through the corner of their eye.

"Guess." Said Ryou as he dug a pair of sleep shorts out of his drawer. Black, like most of his clothes. For the sake of simplicity. It was easier to shop for him that way. He could always buy, well steal, his own clothes but even if Minegishi looked past the fact that he had no idea what color was they could not ignore the fact that he just…could not dress. Not on his own. Not as well….God. They sounded just like Mob…or maybe Mob's unpleasant little friend….

They really needed to stop hanging out with twelve year olds.

"You've either been on a mission, in a fight, or you've been petting stray dogs again." said Minegishi as Ryou pulled his shirt up over his head. Blood on his neck. A splatter pattern. Not his, though, they could tell that he wasn't nursing any wounds. Good. They didn't want to have to spend the night putting him back together.

"We have a winner." Said Ryou as he tossed his shirt into the dirty clothes pile. He didn't quite make it far enough. Minegishi wasn't sure if he 'saw' it fall. Cloth was one of those things that was difficult for him to see. They decided to be helpful for once in their life. They reached over with a spider plant vine and put it in the hamper. Ryou didn't say anything if he noticed. He was rotting through his drawer, now, looking for something.

That something turned out to be a pipe.

A new one. Theirs was purple. This one was yellow and black, bumblebee pattered, something that he had picked out himself. They rolled their eyes. He had better have not been planning on going on and on about his old dragon pipe. They had gotten it for him and it had lasted a little over a week. It wasn't their fault that he wasn't always the most careful guy in the world…or a careful guy at all.

They still loved him, though, even if he had gotten broken glass in the rug and now they had to be careful where they stepped.

"What'd I win?" asked Minegishi. The energy around them shifted as Ryou disappeared out of existence. It didn't take long, less than a second, for him to reappear. He was on his side of the bed, the edge, and Minegishi scooted over. They were pressed against the wall now…and they didn't much care for being boxed in like this. There was a feeling that came from being boxed in like this, physically they felt it in the backs of their arms and the tops of their shoulder, a feeling like they needed to move…like they needed to get out of there and just…move. There was no place for them to go if…there was no more if. They were almost twenty nine years old, there was no more if, and if someone tried to start something with them then they would end the life of someone who had the NERVE to try…anything. They could protect themselves….

And Ryou was there…and he would never have let anything happen to them…not that he needed to protect them.

"Greens." Said Ryou as he handed them the pipe and the lighter. He scooted more towards the end of the bed. Minegishi took the pipe from him and scooted closer. It helped, somewhat, being near him. Even though they didn't need any protection…and there was nothing that could hurt them here anyway. They were amongst friends…or at least close co-workers. Besides, anything that was coming for them would have had to go through Mob…

And God have mercy on the moron who dared to cross Mob.

"I'm honored. Wow, greens on something that I grew myself…and with my very own lighter too." Said Minegishi

"Hey, that's my lighter." Said Ryou

"No, it's mine. It's purple. I know that means nothing to you but I'm looking at it and this lighter is purple. Lavender, to be exact." Said Minegishi

"What's lavender?" asked Ryou

"My hair." Said Minegishi. Well they preferred it to be lavender. It had faded to something closer to lilac at the ends and the roots…well their roots were starting to show again. They needed a haircut….later. After Mob's birthday. Mob had been saying for years and years that she wanted to braid their hair and it was starting to get long enough for all of Mob's dreams to come true…and her birthday was coming up…later. They'd cut it later, after Mob had enjoyed it…

And Ryou, too.

He reached over and tucked their hair behind their ears. He let a few strands twist between his fingers. He was close enough that they could smell him. Sweat, blood, gunpowder, and….dogs? So he had been petting stray dogs again after all…well of course he had been. He didn't lie to them. He knew how to lie, he did it all the time, but never to them.

One of their rules.

"Well then it's my favorite color." Said Ryou. Minegishi rolled their eyes and took a hit off of the pipe. The whole time Ryou kept on playing with their hair. It was going to break off if he was planning on keeping that up. They needed to at least trim their split ends…later. After Mob had braided it and whatever else she was planning on doing in her game of made stylist.

"You've said that before." Said Minegishi as they exhaled. He held out his hand. They took one more hit before passing it over to them. They weren't Mob, they weren't going to hog it all night, even though they were the one who had grown it…a thought. Mob also had that same sort of extra sense that Ryou had, it felt like sometimes, and they expected her to knock on their door asking to come and share with them. God knew that she needed it. With her little monster of a brother gone and her father being, well, her father…yeah, she needed it…

In moderation.

"I don't remember saying that." Said Ryou as he took the pipe from them. They leaned down and rested their head on his arm. He smelled….not the best…but not bad, either. If Mob decided to show up then they were sending her home with a thin joint at worst. They loved Mob, they really did, but….well these sorts of times couldn't come if Mob was there. She was eleven…twelve…almost twelve and the shippening had only gotten worse over the years…

They had caught her, on more than one occasion, Googling 'how to throw a surprise wedding' and the like.

"Maybe lay off on the smoking, in that case." Said Minegishi

"Eh, I think that I'll live with the memory problems. You can remember things for me." Said Shimazaki

"You're really going to trust me with that kind of power?" asked Minegishi

"Of fucking, Toshi, you know I'd trust you with my life." Said Ryou. He had trusted them with his life, before, back before…all of this. Back when they went on missions together. Back when every so often their paths would cross, mainly because people kept on crossing Suzuki, and they'd work together…but now those times were over with.

That wasn't his blood…and they shouldn't have cared if it was.

They took the pipe back from him and inhaled. They inhaled deep and long, long enough that they saw spots in their vision, before exhaling. They couldn't see the blood, there, on his hands and neck for a moment. Just a moment. The smoke dissipated quickly. They could see…it didn't matter what they could see. That was not his blood.

And even if it was then…well his missions were his own business.

"You know that I plan on abusing that power, right?" asked Minegishi as they passed the pipe back. Their hand brushed against Ryou's as they handed it to him. That should not have sent a shiver down their spine, pleasant or otherwise. They were acting like they were the one who was turning twelve, not Mob.

"Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way….now abuse that power and remind me what my favorite song is." Said Ryou. He reached over to the desk and grabbed his phone with telekinesis…and sent it flying into the bed. He didn't have the best control over that…or maybe they were just too used to Mob. What did they know about telekinesis?

Nothing.

But they did know Ryou. He was hitting the pipe…but not like he was trying to forget. Not like something had gone wrong. Not like he was trying to forget that his pseudo son was on the other side of the world hopefully getting over him. Not like he was trying to…well to smoke for the litany of painful reasons Ryou smoked for. Reasons that they were not going to get into. They took his hand and pressed his fingerprint to the reader on his phone. They navigated it by touch, they could navigate it by voice but they didn't really feel like it. They went over to his music folder and scrolled down. They knew what kind of mood he was in, a good mood, the kind of good mood that they wanted to add to. A calm short of good mood. Not manic like his normal good moods…well the sorts of good moods that he showed other people. This was his calm good mood….and he needed something calming.

This was going to be a calm night.

"Here comes the sun…" sang Ryou as he leaned back. He rested his head on Minegishi's and passed them the pipe. He turned his head to the side and kissed them. Right there, on the crown of their head, right in the worst of the black. The worst of their roots…but he couldn't see them…and even if he could he wouldn't have minded. They didn't seem him being a visual person even if he had been able to see. No, he was too much of the touchy feely type…

And not out of necessity.

He reached out and ran his fingers over their hand, the one that was resting near his. The other hand held the pipe. They'd hit it…later. Right now…either they had outdone themselves or in the pursuit of teaching Mob moderation they had lowered their tolerance. Either that or they were just really into the feel of Ryou's skin. Maybe they had some kind of serial killer like obsession with skin. After all, they didn't mind the blood on his hands. They didn't mind that he had someone else's blood on his hands, in fact they only would have cared if it had been his blood, so maybe they had deeper problems than they had ever imagined.

Whatever. They were what they were.

"It's dark out, right?" asked Ryou, his face still buried in their hair.

"Yeah, it's night out. It's pretty late, actually. Suzuki really had you running around tonight, didn't he?" asked Minegishi

"Like you would not believe. This guy just would not go down. I mean it's join or die…and he picked die…so the least he could do was go down quickly." Said Ryou. Minegishi rolled their eyes. They rolled them so hard that they were sure that he could feel it. Ryou and work. They had never in their entire life met someone so blasé about what he did for a living….what the two of them did for a living. Minegishi had never been all soul search-y about it, what they did, and honestly it had never bothered them. It was a means to an end. There wasn't even any feeling behind it. They were told to kill someone, that person died, and then they got on with their life. The only time they had ever felt something was with their parents…but they had been dreaming about that since they had been old enough to understand the concepts of life and death and what the act of murder entailed.

Ryou was much the same.

He hadn't killed his parents, and would maim and/or seriously injure anyone who dared to say otherwise, but he had much the same outlook on their job as they did. That was one of the first things they had noticed about him…well after the hair, the pants, and the coat…the way that he just…did what he had to do. He did what he had to do and then he went back to living his life. He lived it to the fullest, which was smart since his fullest shortened his life considerably, and that had just been…refreshing was a word for it. New. Interesting.

Ryou. That was a good word for him. Ryou.

"Did he?" asked Minegishi

"No, he lived. They all give up eventually…and now at least we have a new…wherever Suzuki is planning on putting him…which is worse! I mean I do what I do, and I'm not like a serial killer or something, but just…don't waste my time! My time is valuable, Toshi." Said Ryou

"Well you're worth about ten million yen a year so that's like…a lot of money an hour." Said Minegishi

"How much an hour?" asked Ryou

"I don't know. Did I change my name to Suzuki? Am I next door at the nerd party?" asked Minegishi

"No, but you're pretty smart. You're the smartest person I know." Said Ryou. He leaned down and kissed the side of their neck. They leaned into him before pulling back.

"I'm flattered." Said Minegishi. Well why not just compare them to a dog in the park? No…that wasn't far to Mob. She was pretty smart…aside from the fact that they had seen her use her fingers to add…which was so weird. She had spawned from Suzuki and, supposedly, he was some kind of math genius if Hatori was to be believed….but then again he hadn't been to school since the age of fifteen.

Still, though, not much of a compliment…so then why were they so warm all of a sudden?

"Come on, don't be that way. You really are the smartest person I know. I love that about you, you know. How smart you are. Like how no matter what country we're in you always speak the language." Said Ryou. He kissed their neck again. The pipe had been long forgotten by now, and had in fact tipped over in their bed. That…was something that they would deal with later. Not now.

Now they had something else to deal with…but in the best way possible.

"My German isn't that good…don't exaggerate." Said Minegishi. They felt Ryou's hand reaching it's way under their sweatshirt and across their back. He leaned in closer to them. They were close…they were close and he was pressing them against the wall…but they didn't mind. They didn't really mind…because he was there. They were Minegishi Toshiki, they could take care of themselves, but…they knew that he would take care of them too.

Nothing was going to hurt them. Not while Ryou was around.

"Your German is great. Like….what's this mean? Ich liebe dich?" asked Ryou. Minegishi rolled their eyes as they felt Ryou's hand get even higher on their back.

"It means 'I love you' and I know that you know what it meant." Said Minegishi

"Alright, alright, I was trying to be romantic. Shoot me." Said Ryou as he pulled their sweatshirt up. They raised their arms above their head and let him pull it off. Now they were just there in their undershirt…and it was cold. Or maybe they had just gone from being overly warm….it didn't matter…

They wouldn't be cold for long.

"That'd be a waste of a bullet. It's not like it could hurt you." Said Minegishi as Ryou kissed his way across their shoulders. They were not going to sigh. They felt one coming, the airy sort of thing that made them sound like a kid, and they just…could not. Not now. Later. Just…they didn't know. This was Ryou. He would always love them…he would never think less of them. They were together…it was one of those…long term…things….

A shiver went down their spine. They didn't know what kind of shiver.

"You could shoot me. My barrier's pretty much down to nothing." Said Ryou. That was…a lot…and this was…a lot. There was the wall on one side of them and on the other…on the other side was Ryou and…and they wanted to be with Ryou…they wanted nothing more than to be with Ryou…but also…also there was just so much and…he wanted so much and…

And maybe they should have hit that pipe again.

"Suzuki would never forgive me if I killed his best hitman." Said Minegishi. They pulled away from him and felt around the bed for the pipe. They found it and repacked it as best as they could. They could feel Ryou watching them. They could feel his aura on them.

They just needed a smoke. That was all.

"He'll live, I'm almost done here anyway. Just a couple more idiots and then this kid….I think maybe the same kid as before I don't know….and then we can move along. I mean we just got here but…" said Ryou. Minegishi was not Mob. They knew what he was getting at. They exhaled and handed him the pipe.

"We're still here. We can make the most of it." Said Minegishi. There, that was all that they'd needed. They just needed to clear their head by making it a hell of a lot more….cloudy? That was a word. A word for their head, the way that it swam, the way that…they didn't know. They leaned over and kissed Ryou. They kissed him and, acting on a two second delay…not normal for him…he kissed them back. He kissed them back and…and this was good….

This was something that they understood.

"Toshi…I love you fucking much…I-" said Ryou between kisses. They had been prepared to kiss the words, whatever romantic spiel he had been about to spout, right out of his mouth…but the ringing of a phone stopped them. Not theirs. That wasn't their ringtone, Mob had changed theirs to an instrumental version of some song from Frozen, that was Ryou's…the one that came with the phone. Well that made sense…nobody ever called him…who would have called him? Everyone he knew was right-

Oh.

Oh hell no.

"Shimazaki here. Why the fuck-Sho! Hey! You're still alive!" said Ryou. Minegishi took the pipe and scooted away from him. Well now. That was…this was going to go on and on they imagined. This was…ok. Sho was calling him now. Minegishi had hoped and prayed that he would have met the boy of his dreams and forgotten all about Ryou…well these hopes weren't the kind that came true. Very few of their hopes and dreams ever came true.

They weren't lucky like that.

"I'm good, it's good here….I'm lying. It's dead as hell over here without you. Like today I…" said Ryou. Minegishi rolled their eyes. Ryou better not have been planning on starting up about them having kids together. That was NOT happening. He could keep Sho…and he could take Suzuki's other kid too. Not Mob, no, he and Mob weren't like that…and that whole area better not have been about to get as weird as Ryou had promised it would…no, they meant Suzuki's other daughter.

The one that Sho had, apparently, defected from the group to be with.

Mob had been taking this surprisingly well. Sure she had said before that she missed Sho but aside from that she hadn't said a word. Not about Sho being with their sister or having left them for the Seventh Division. It had been weird, honestly, but maybe she was just in birthday mode or something. Or maybe she was swallowing her feelings and that was what all of these group outings had been about. They didn't know.

This was not an area that they wanted to go poking around it.

There was nothing that they could do, anyway. Mob was making the best of it…even though this wasn't fair to her. She had loved that baby and…it had been hard on her when the baby had been taken away. Maybe the whole thing was just too hard for her. Going to the Seventh Division would have meant traveling with Fukuda…and Minegishi wouldn't have wished that on their worst enemy. Yeah, maybe Mob was better off there with them…even if it must have been hard on her in ways that Minegishi couldn't even begin to imagine.

Life sucked sometimes…even for Mob. Especially for Mob.

"…should be in bed. It's…Toshi, what time's it?" asked Ryou. Minegishi looked up from their pipe. They had been watching the smoke and trying to drown out the sound of Ryou making a problem that had been festering for years even worse.

"I don't know. Like…ten, maybe? I don't know, I'm not a clock." Said Minegishi with a shrug.

"Ok, Toshi says that it's ten here so…how far behind us is London?' asked Ryou

"What are you talking about?" asked Minegishi. London….they didn't know when Sho had left but they knew for a fact that Sho had been staying at the Seventh Division for weeks and weeks now. Matsuo occasionally told them what he and the baby, well toddler now, got up to. Apparently people were getting sick of Suzuki dumping his kids at that Division…

Who would have guessed? Well…of the people who knew…which…well this was starting to look more and more like a secret…one which they had been unwittingly keeping.

"I'm trying to figure out what time it is where Sho is. He should be in bed now. I mean I love talking to you Sho, you're a good FRIEND and all, but you should be in bed." Said Ryou

"London? He's in Seasoning City. It's, like, six in the morning there maybe." Said Minegishi. Ryou must have just been high…or something. He must have been…because this was…this could not have been a secret. Mob….she must have known….unless Suzuki was keeping it a secret….but then he would have told Hatori to tell the rest of them that this was a secret…if he even knew. That was always a possibility. He didn't seem to care about any of his kids, after all, unless they were Mob.

Father of the fucking year right there.

"Wait…kid, you're in-" said Ryou. He hadn't known. If he hadn't known then….then it must have been a secret. Especially if Sho had been keeping it from RYOU of all people. That was just…this was just…alright then. Alright then to all of this. This was just….

A lot for Minegishi to deal with.

"I'm not Japan!" shouted Sho. He shouted so loudly that Minegishi could hear him as clearly if he had been sitting right there…and that had been too loud for Ryou. He pulled the phone away quickly. They reached over and took his phone from him. His ears must have been ringing…theirs were on the verge of ringing…

Maybe that was just from stress, though.

"What in the…he hung up on me! What the fuck!? Can you believe it! Do you know how many people have hung up on me?!" said Ryou. Minegishi had no clue how many people had hung up on Ryou in his lifetime…and that was not the issue here. No, they had enough cluttering up their thoughts as it was. Like…this. Whatever 'this' was. This…gigantic…conspiracy? Lie? This…whatever it was. Whatever they had found themselves in the middle of.

"He's in Japan…and I guess that I'm not supposed to know about that…we're not supposed to know about that." Said Minegishi

"Japan? What the hell is he doing in Japan? And how the hell…how the hell did he go to Japan without me?! I thought he was having the time of his life with the girlfriend he may or may not care about." Said Ryou

"I don't know. Matsuo didn't tell me. I mean I assume he's there to play with his sister…his half-sister…that he never told any of us about…that Mob doesn't….oh God." Said Minegishi. This was…a shit show. This was going to be the worst shit show….Mob had to know about this. Mob…she was going to be devastated…and so close to her birthday….God…

Fucking…everything.

This was….fuck! Mob could not deal with this right now. She was already…she had enough shit on her plate as it was! She had enough shit on her plate and Minegishi was about to heap more on. They could keep it a secret but…but then that would be…that would have been the worst thing that they could have done. They were not going to betray her like that.

Mob had been betrayed badly enough as it was.

"That little liar…what the hell is he….I don't follow any of this. I'm too high….or not high enough. Where'd that pipe get to?" asked Ryou. Minegishi handed it back to him. They didn't need it…well they did…but they had to think. They had…a lot to think about right now.

"Here…and keep this to yourself. The thing about Sho. Just…let me break it to Mob. After her birthday." Said Minegishi. There. They would…tell her after her birthday. After her pancakes and her presents and the fun day she was going to have…then Minegishi would shatter her world. Not now. Now Mob…well she'd be happy…as happy as she could be…and then…and then Minegishi would tell her the truth…

Even though the truth would devastate her…but they had to do what they had to do.


	498. Going to the Park with Fukuda and Mukai

Sometimes Sho liked to go to the park.

That was the only reason he had agreed to come here with Fukuda. He was here to play with baby sis and that was all. Parks were fun, a hell of a lot more fun than being back at the Division. There was stuff to do here like…like watching baby sis play with the other babies. She was crawling in and out of the baby tunnels with some other kids. Sho would have played with her if he wasn't too big to fit in there now. He was eleven and this part of the park was for people her age…and it wasn't like he wanted to move to the big part of the park, the part for kids his age, he didn't want to do that at all. That part of the park wasn't safe for baby sis.

And she was the one who mattered there. She was the one who he had to think about.

"Knock, knock." Said Sho as he knocked on the top of the tunnel. There was some laughing. The other babies were in there with her. She had taught them this game. Knock, knock and come in. That was where he knocked on something and then she told him to come in….hey, she was only two. He cut her some slack. She'd have better games when she got older.

If he was even still around by then.

He'd been here for too long. He'd been here for weeks and weeks…and also big sis might have known that he was here. Minegishi did…but maybe nobody would listen to them. They were Minegishi, what did they have to say besides mean stuff and complaints. If he had been big sis then he wouldn't have listened to Minegishi…or been friends with them either…but he wasn't big sis. He was himself. He was himself and…and he might have been in trouble…

Big sis hadn't said anything….and that could have been good or bad.

He knocked on the tunnel again. He was not going to look at his phone. He was not going to take his phone out of his pocket and just…check and see if big sis had called him or texted him or left him a message or…or something. He didn't even know what she was going to say to him. She was probably pissed at him…if she even knew…but he wasn't going to just call her up and ask her if she knew.

No, that would have been stupid.

"Who's there?" asked baby sis

"Your big brother." Said Sho

"Come in!" said baby sis. Sho stuck his head in the tunnel…and then got slapped in the face. Not hard, she wasn't that strong, and she didn't want to hurt him anyway. That was just how the game was played. He knew that he should have told her not to hit, that hitting was wrong and that she had to be nice and stuff, but…well he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to ruin what little time they had left together being all…Fukuda….about stuff.

She was having fun and that was what mattered.

"Go away!" shouted baby sis. She didn't mean that in a mean way either. This was just how she played. Come in and go away were some of her favorite games. She just…could be like that sometimes. Maybe because he had hung around her for so long. Maybe she just picked stuff up from him or something.

He wondered what she would have picked up from big sis.

She probably would have been nicer. Big sis was nice all the time. Even when she didn't have to be nice she still wasn't. Like maybe that was what she was doing now. Maybe she was pissed, super pissed, but she wasn't going to say anything to him. Maybe that was why she hadn't called, not even to say 'hi' because she was so pissed at him that if she so much as heard his voice she would get mad…and she hated getting mad…

But that felt…worse…somehow.

He knocked on the tunnel again. This time baby sis just stuck her foot out and kicked him. She wasn't trying to be mean…and he didn't want her to be mean. He didn't want either of his sisters to be mean to him…but it might have been easier if big sis was mean. If she called him up screaming and telling him to fuck off and that she wished that he had never been born and that she had been an only child…well things would have been easier….they would have made more sense, anyway. She would have been more like him…and dad. She was like….she wasn't even like mom. Mom had run away from home because she was unhappy…probably with him. He had been such an asshole back then. Maybe if he had been nicer…if he hadn't fought so much with big sis…if he hadn't pissed dad off so often…if he hadn't fought with the kids at school….just….maybe if he had been better then mom would have stayed and…

It had happened. It was over. Now he had to focus on baby sis.

He wasn't going to leave her…even though he knew that he had to…and soon. He had to leave before big sis…well she wasn't mom. She wasn't going to leave. First of all dad would never let her leave…but dad hadn't exactly given mom permission to leave…no. This was…he was….he had to go soon because he had his family and his friends and stuff….but he wasn't going to leave. Not like mom did. Not like how mom just…left one day…even though that was how it seemed to baby sis…

He knocked again.

"Who is it?" asked baby sis

"It's your big brother." Said Sho even though he knew that he wasn't her big brother. Not from blood, anyway, but maybe it didn't always have to work like that. Dad was the only one who cared about the bloodline. Baby sis had been adopted so her mom wasn't her blood…so maybe he could be her big brother. Even if they didn't have the same blood….he was going to rule the world some day. When he ruled the world then he would tell everyone that blood didn't mean anything.

But that was a long time away.

"Come in!" said baby sis. Sho stuck his head in the tunnel…and then got poked in the eye. Baby sis laughed, and so did some of the other babies, but Sho didn't mind. It was funny. If baby sis thought that it was funny then it was funny…even if his eye hurt now.

Kind of a lot.

She had sharp little nails. Her mom had asked him to cut her nails a while ago…but he hadn't. She didn't like it and he didn't want to make her unhappy. Besides, when her nails got long enough then she would just bite them off on her own like he did. They were her nails and if she wanted to grow them out until she had little baby claws then that was her choice.

And if she wanted to claw his eyes out then….well that was her choice too.

"Damn it…" muttered Sho as he held his eye. It actually hurt worse with time, not better, and…well she had been playing in the sand earlier. She had been playing in the sand and also she had been picking her nose and touching everything…so maybe this was what it was like to have an eye infection. Maybe he was going to end up going blind in one eye and then the other one would go blind too for symmetry and then Shimazaki would have to teach him to see with his aura and read braille and stuff.

Don't think about Shimazaki.

He forced himself not to think about Shimazaki. He forced himself not to think about how much it would have been if he had been here. He forced himself to focus on the pain in his eyes and…and not about how Shimazaki would have probably said something funny. Something about how now they matched or something. He didn't think about him at all.

He felt an aura getting closer.

That was Fukuda. He'd come too. He had said, before, that it was safer and better if he was there too. In case baby sis hurt herself again. Sho got the feeling that he was just there because baby sis's mom had been upset about what happened. Maybe Fukuda liked her or something. That would have made everyone's life a lot easier. If Fukuda liked baby sis's mom and she liked him back then they could get married and then he could be baby sis's dad and then Sho wouldn't have had to sneak around to see her and stuff…it would have been perfect…

Perfect.

But all of that had to happen before big sis called him…and that was most likely not going to happen. Girls didn't like Fukuda….not that Sho would say that to him. Not while he was fixing his eye and stuff. That would have been a jerk thing to say even though it was a fact. Girls didn't like Fukuda and even if he worked really hard at it, told baby sis's mom that she was pretty and got her a lot of presents, she still wouldn't have liked him. Sho didn't get why.

He was kind of old…and grumpy…and kind of a jerk to people too…but he was good at healing people and stuff too.

"See? Now isn't this better?" said Fukuda as he healed Sho's eye. That had been a bad scratch…but that was what he was here for. He was here to watch the kids and keep them safe…and nothing else. He wasn't here to walk down memory lane, even though aside from a new coat of paint and a new baby area this place hadn't changed in thirty years, and he wasn't here to…well he wasn't here for any other reason.

He wasn't retracing Sho's steps from the other day.

Even though it would have been easy. He used to live around here. He knew this neighborhood like the back of his hand. He knew…well if he'd had his detective hat on then he would have known that Sho's little boyfriend either went to Sesame elementary or Poppy Seed day school…if that school still went through the sixth grade. He also would have been able to see if…well if certain suspicions were true….

Ritsu was a common name.

Ritsu was an incredibly common name and this Ritsu….may not have been the same Ritsu as…well as the Ritsu that he had read about. Shigeko had a brother named Ritsu. He had access to those records. He had access to where she had come from, her parent's names and their address, and all of the updated information on them. Her brother was being watched to see if he had any powers…since they had come from the same source…

Fukuda prayed to God, whatever God was listening, that Shigeko was an outlier…because Claw did not need another one of her.

The world did not need another one of her. He didn't think that the world could survive. It was hard enough with the one Shigeko they had…and the one Touichirou they had. People…were not meant to be that powerful. One was…enough. Two…well he thanked God that she never fought her father outright. Three….the world would not survive three. He hoped that Sho's little boyfriend was just…some other Ritsu…from some other family…

That was all he hoped for.

"Yeah….I guess, I don't know." Said Sho as he rubbed his eye. He felt better and…and he knew that he needed to get back to playing with baby sis. Before it got crowded again. He could tell by the sun that it was getting late. The schools would be getting out soon…and maybe he would stop there again. Ritsu. Maybe him or…or that lady that he had seen before. The lady with the black hair that had looked like mom.

The lady who he knew was not his mom.

"You want me to push you on the swings? Or I could pick you up so you can do the monkey bars if you want." Said Fukuda. Sho was down. It was written all over his face and his aura. Fukuda knew how to cheer him up. He and Sho used to play together in the park, back when he'd been little, back in those days when he and Masami would pick the kids up from school and stop off at the park. Sho had always had fun in those days…and Masami had been happy that he had been so good with Sho…

Not that he was counting on seeing Masami again…or anything.

Masami…was not here. She was in…well he had no idea where she was but he knew that she wasn't here. She was…somewhere in hiding. Sho had just seen another woman. Another one with short black hair…and her face…and her voice. Fukuda was not going to get his hopes up…and he wasn't going to put his detective hat on either. He wasn't going to make connections like…if she had been in this park then she must have lived around here. This was all single family homes, and small ones at that. When he'd lived here this had been an area for people who worked in the city center…it wasn't that far from it…and if you walked another kilometer you would get to the old spice processing center…but that had closed down…and he didn't see her working in a place like that either…

Last he had heard from her she had been teaching English.

This was not the place to teach English…or Japanese. There were a lot of expats here, more than when he'd lived here back when he'd been a kid, but the English schools were closer to the high schools and the cram schools. Over in that area…the one that Suzuki used to live in...she would have been living there is she had been teaching English. Also she wouldn't have had any reason to have come to this park.

This was a family park.

There was the big rocket ship playground. There was this little baby area. There was a shelter for moms with strollers. There was a splash pad…that he couldn't remember being quite so elaborate. This was not the place for a single woman…and she was single. She wouldn't have…he knew her. Leaving her family had devastated her. She wouldn't have…there was a new dog run here. There, over where the old sculpture area had been, was a dog area. All fenced in with little hills and stuff for them to run on. That was why she had been here…she must have gotten a dog or something….and…

And he needed to stop thinking about this right now before Sho asked what was up.

Sho was already looking at him like he was crazy. That was…not good. Sho knew better about these things, about people, than his father. Sho could pick up on these things…things that Fukuda did not need him to pick up on. Sho did NOT need to go digging around in this area. Not yet. Fukuda would tell him the truth of what happened…but later. Not now.

Not while he was eleven.

"Fukuda….I'm eleven." Said Sho slowly. Just because they were in the baby part of the park didn't mean that he was a baby. If he wanted to play with a baby so bad then he could play with baby sis so Sho could…play on his own…and not wait for Ritsu or anything! Or that lady who looked like his mom!

"So? You're still a kid and-" said Fukuda

"I don't need you to help me anymore. I'm eleven, it would be weird if you pushed me on the swings and stuff. If you want to play with a baby then…play with baby sis or something. Just be careful. Her nails are sharp and she likes to hit." Said Sho. Maybe this would work out. Maybe if Fukuda played with baby sis then he would be all 'hey, I want one of these' and then he would be all 'but I'm really old and I don't have time to make one of these with a girl' and then he would realize that baby sis's mom didn't have a husband and then Sho could teach him how to get girls to like him…it was kind of sad that Sho knew more about girls even though he didn't even like them….and then everything would work out…and stuff….

Stuff never worked out like that.

"I…think that I'll just stay here with you two. We can play…whatever this is." Said Fukuda. He had been keeping his distance for a reason. He…well he didn't DISLIKE Suzuki's daughter but he just….wasn't comfortable around her. Her aura was too bright for someone her age…and she looked just like her father. Acted just like him too. He knew that Suzuki had been violent as hell when they'd met…and that hadn't changed…so it would have made sense that he would have been a violent child too.

Or rather toddler.

She reminded him of Sho, in a lot of ways, but she was not Sho and…and he just….had no idea what he was supposed to do with her. She was so little and he didn't know her…and he wasn't supposed to know her…and this was just…they needed to move on. Maybe this would be their last trip to the park. Maybe this would be it and then they could rejoin the others and get back to their lives. It had been months…they were overdue…

And aside from Suzuki's daughter they had no real reason to be here…

"It's knock, knock come in. Here, watch me." Said Sho. He went really slowly so Fukuda could remember how the game went. This was important if he was going to try and marry baby sis's mom and be her dad and stuff. Sho had always thought that he would have made a good dad…he had actually wished that Fukuda had been his dad….but him being baby sis's dad would have been the next best thing.

Then he never would have had to say goodbye ever again.

It would have been perfect. She would have been like his…cousin…or something. Dad and Fukuda were practically brothers, they had known each other for most of their lives and stuff. Yeah, then baby sis would have been like his cousin and then they could have played together all the time….and big sis could have been her friend too. Big sis might have even forgiven him for lying and sneaking around behind her back. Baby sis's mom would have had a good time too. She could have made friends with…um….Shimazaki liked fighting….but Sho didn't want…Shibata! She could have been friends with Shibata! He was nice and stuff…there. That was how it would work out…

If everything went right….which it never did….but there was always hope….

"You got it?" asked Sho. Fukuda nodded. That was good. More people were showing up now. Sho could sort of hear school bells. People were coming and it was about to get really crowded really fast. Sho closed his eyes and let his aura expand and…and he could feel…he felt a couple of aura. There were people he didn't know, faint people, and even some Awakened…which meant that Ritsu would be keeping his aura close and not using his powers….but he would still be coming here…he had to pass by here to get home.

School had just let out.

He had no idea how long it took Ritsu to walk home after school or if he was even coming at all…because he did stuff after school sometimes. Sho just…he could always come back tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after that…if there even would be a day after that. He didn't know. He didn't even know where he would be waking up tomorrow. Any minute now big sis could call him and ask him where he was and….

And then he would have to go…and he had no idea when or even if he would be coming back.

He felt an aura come near…a new one…but that was another faint one. There was another kid with an aura, some people had them even if they weren't espers, and…well that was a little kid. Sho wasn't going to say anything. Fukuda might not have been able to feel it, his aura was so faint all the time and stuff, and Sho…well even if Fukuda was on his side he was not going to tell anyone about that other little kid.

People with auras could be Awakened after all.

That little kid, the little girl coming out of her car with her dad and little brother it looked like, had family. She had a family and if he said anything then she would end up losing that family. Also she was way too little to go through…all of that. Sho pulled his jacket closer. She probably didn't have any scars…not like he did…and he wanted to keep it that way. Nobody needed to go through what he had gone through, even some little kid he didn't know, so he did the right thing and kept his mouth shut about the other kid with the aura.

Fukuda was usually on his side but….well…still.

"Yeah, I get it. Um….knock, knock." Said Fukuda as he knocked on the tunnel. He felt her aura ripple. She was there…and he was not afraid of a two year old girl. An eleven….or rather twelve…year old girl, yes, but not a two year old. Even though her aura was so bright…bright enough that he could feel it against his….

"Who's there?" asked Mukai

"Fukuda….your…Sho's friend." Said Fukuda. He knew that Sho called himself her big brother…and he knew that it was true…but he didn't need to confirm that for anyone.

"Come in!" said Mukai

"Alright…here I go." Said Fukuda. He leaned his head into the tunnel…and got a kick right between his eyes. That wasn't what had hurt. Her aura…that was what had hurt. There was…it felt like…well like a burr would feel if it had buried itself in his skin. He felt…he closed his eyes and stepped away from hers. Her aura was flaring now and that would pass. He just had to take a step back and…

Oh.

There was someone behind him.

Someone he could sense.

"I-I'm so sorry…little girl." Said Fukuda. He had bumped into a little girl…a little esper girl. That was most definitely an esper child. He could see her aura…a faint sort of jade green. She looked up at him through a mop of brown curls. She was…studying him. She was studying him and he…had no idea what he was supposed to do. That was an aura he felt against his…not everyone with an aura could see other people's…but apparently she could. This was…nobody was going to know about this.

He knew what happened to child espers.

Nope. He was not going to be a part of that. That was where he drew his line. Children…did not belong in Claw. Suzuki saw no problem with kidnapping children but he was insane. Fukuda was not. He was not going to rip this girl away from her life and her family….he had to figure out what to do with her…because she didn't seem to show any signs of moving….

Great. Just great.

"Alright little girl…why don't you just move along now? How about that?" asked Fukuda. Someone was pulling on him…oh. That was Mukai. Sho was…off talking to another child. Another little girl was bothering him. He had to get over there and…yeah. He had to walk away. He could not be seen there standing and talking to kids that were not his. It just wasn't a good look. He turned to pick up Mukai…

And then turned back around.

Something picked at his aura. That was…not good. That meant that she had some control over what she could do…which meant that he wasn't the only person who would notice her. He should have done something…but that was not his kid. He already had a kid, well he had Sho, and he just…Sho came first. Sho always came first. He had to worry about his own kid before he worried about someone else's…

Even though someone else's kid was the one who didn't want to leave him alone.

"Little girl, why don't you-" said Fukuda as he tried to pick up Mukai…who really did not want to be picked up. Well that was too bad. Everything about Sho right at that moment said 'save me' and who better to save him but Fukuda. This other kid…he wished her the best.

What else could he do?

"I'm Madoka. Hirai Madoka." Said Madoka. She bowed when she said that, very polite, and even downright adorable. Shigeko had been that way when she'd been small. Not Sho, no, but Shigeko…back when she'd been that young. Back before any of this had happened. She had looked remarkably like that girl…or maybe not. He didn't know. There was just something so…familiar…about her…

Not that he was going to make it a habit to stare at little girls in a park. No, that was not a good look at all.

"Alright, Hirai-chan then. Why don't you just…go back to your family? Yeah, that seems like something you should-" said Fukuda

"You're green too. I've never seen another green person before. Mostly I just see red people." Said Madoka

"You shouldn't-" said Fukuda as he cringed. His eyes darted back and forth. Aside from a little boy pointing at him and jumping up and down…no one. Good. No awakened getting ready to stuff this little girl into a sack and carry her away.

"You're dark green, too, I'm light green. I've never seen anyone who was any kind of green before." Said Madoka

"Well…green is a good color. You have a green sweater and so do I. Excuse me." Said Fukuda. He was only drawing attention to her being right there….and that was why he had to leave. Right now. That and the little baby who was trying to pull on what little hair he had. Thank God he'd just cut it or he would have wound up like that little girl there. Now that was a mess of curls…she got enough attention as it was even with being a possible esper…

He didn't need to make it worse.

"No, I meant your colors. The ones that stick to people. Well some people. Not my mom or my dad or my little brother. Juro can't see them either. Just me." Said Madoka. She kicked woodchips as she said that.

"You…you shouldn't talk about-" said Fukuda He understood, he really did, the lifetime of being alone that came with being an esper. Always being different no matter where you want. Having to hide part of yourself for your own safety…

He wished her the best, he really did, but he didn't need to have this conversation with her right now.

"Dad! Madoka's talking to strangers! Punish her! Punish her!" said Juro

"Sorry about her, you know how it is. Madoka, come on. Leave the man and the baby alone." Said Eiji

"But dad! The colors!" said Madoka

"Some people have red hair, honey, now come on. Let's get all of our energy out before mom comes back from the doctor. She's growing a whole new person inside of herself, she's very tired." Said Eiji

"I…alright dad….nobody ever believes me anyway…" said Madoka

"Nice talking to…what am I saying? Come on, Mukai, let's go…play with Sho. Alright? How's that sound?" asked Fukuda. He held Mukai at eye level. She stopped struggling, now, and kicked her little feet. She kicked them out of happiness, it seemed, but that didn't make her little baby kicks to his chest any less painful.

"Sho! Go to Sho! Go now!" said Mukai

"Alright, alright, just stop hitting me….God…you're just like your father…" said Fukuda. She really was just like Suzuki. He had been such a violent kid….and it wasn't an esper thing. It was a Suzuki thing. That little girl, the one who had spoken to him, seemed very sweet. She was playing on the seesaw with her brother now…how that thing hadn't been removed by now he would never know…and instead of trying to knock her brother off as Suzuki had done to him in the past…well that was a good kid over there…not that he knew her…or spent much time staring at kids…

But he just…

She seemed familiar. There was just something…about her. He had seen her somewhere before…but where? No, he didn't…he had a squirming little human in his arms and an eleven year old he had to save. He had to focus on his own esper kid and nobody else's. He wished that little girl over there, the one with the mess of the curly hair, all the best in the world but he had Sho to worry about.

Sho who never stopped giving him reason to worry.

"Hey Sho, someone wants to play with-" said Fukuda. The little girl who had been talking to Sho ran away as he approached. Sho had a look of horror on his face….he knew that look. That was the look of a little boy who'd spent his whole life dealing with little girls bothering him. Poor Sho. Well at least he was there for him.

No matter what Sho said…or was going to say.

"We have to go home, now. Right now…don't ask me why!" said Sho. No…no way! That….that moron! Who did that moron think he was?! Hell no! There was no way in hell Sho was going to let Ritsu get kidnapped and thrown into an Awakening machine or…or….or….

That moron! That fucking moron!


	499. Captured

Sometimes you just had to let kids be kids…and sometimes you had to be the responsible adult in this situation.

That was how Reigen Arataka had found himself hiking through the woods with his most devoted pupil, well his only pupil, in his dress shoes. Ritsu was only ten, almost eleven but still just ten, and sometimes his imagination got away with him. Like today. Apparently there was some evil organization in these woods, the same one that Ritsu was always talking about, and now that Ritsu had a location he could gather evidence.

He had such an active imagination sometimes.

Reigen was happy to indulge him. It had been shaping up to be a dead afternoon anyway and it was nice to get some exercise and a change of scenery every now and again. There was nothing wrong with a little hike in the middle of the day…even if that hike took you onto private land. Very private land. The sort of private land that had multiple 'no trespassing' signs up. That was fine. If they got caught then they could just say that they got lost. This was just the woods after all. What's the worst that could happen?

Besides getting lost, of course, but Reigen knew for a fact that they were not lost.

"Reigen, stop. Hang on, I found another one." said Ritsu. He didn't know why Reigen had wanted to come with. Ritsu could do this on his own. He just needed proof of some kind, proof that he wasn't making things up, proof that Claw was real and it was out there and it was kidnapping people and doing all kinds of other bad stuff.

Ritsu was not a liar and he was not crazy.

Reigen was the only one who believed him…so it was nice that he came…even though Ritsu could have handled this on his own. He just had to follow the…it was sort of like a pull….and a buzz….towards…well he didn't know what exactly was out there. A whole base maybe? Ritsu had done his research and he knew that Claw had esper bases all over the country…all over the world…and that they were recruiting espers for something big. He didn't think that they were the ones responsible for that tsunami, though, and he was pretty sure that they weren't trying to steal the moon either…or any of that other crazy stuff people talked about.

Now those people were crazy…but not him. No, he knew what he was talking about.

"Good eye, student. I bet it's like a trail leading to-" said Reigen

"No, these rocks go off into the woods. I just found another one. I know where I'm going, I can feel it. The rocks just mean….well I don't know what they mean but I've seen the symbol everywhere….well this one and ones like it." Said Ritsu as he put the rock in his pocket. This was good evidence for later.

"Maybe the evil organization is trying to throw up off their trail." Said Reigen. He had seen those symbols around town, some kind of local graffiti or something, but he wasn't going to burst Ritsu's bubble. He was just a kid, it was best to let him have some magic left in his life…also he was an esper but…well let him believe that he was saving the world from an evil organization of espers or whatever.

"Yeah, that makes sense. They're trying to lead us away….anyway, come on. It's this way. Their base or whatever. We just need to get proof and then we can go and get some ramen or something." Said Ritsu. That was a good excuse. He knew that he'd be out for a while, the buses only came once every hour out this far, and he knew that he'd be home late…and he hated lying to mom and dad. Even though it was for their own good, him lying to them. They couldn't know about this.

They would either think that he was crazy or freak out, one of the two, and he did not want to deal with that.

"Correct as usual, student. My powers were just telling me-" said Reigen

"You don't have any powers." Said Ritsu

"I have spiritual powers." Said Reigen

"Well those aren't going to help us if we get captured so just…try not to get captured." Said Ritsu as they walked through the woods. He…well he had told Tsubomi that if he didn't come home tonight to tell his parents that he had run away from home and he was never going to call them again. That was better than them knowing that he'd been kidnapped and was being used for experiments or brainwashed or…whatever these people did to kids who tried to take down their organization.

The internet had been kind of…unclear…about what exactly happened.

Some people said that they dissected you while you were still alive. Other people said that they dug deep holes and left traitors down there to die. Some people said that they snatched babies from their cribs if they were espers and brainwashed them so they grew up to be a part of the esper army. Some people said that they sold the people they captured to the yakuza. Other people just said that none of that was true and Claw was a noble organization that brought espers all over the world together and that anyone who told mean lies wouldn't be allowed to join…

There were a lot of crazy people on the internet.

"I'll do my best." Said Reigen

"I'm being serious. They do bad things to normal people. I'm at least an esper but you…well you have spiritual powers but I don't think that these people care about spiritual powers." Said Ritsu

"What do they care about, you think?" asked Reigen. He didn't tell Ritsu that the worst thing that was probably going to happen was they were going to get chased off of private land for trespassing…unless this was that place with all the unexploded bombs from the war and…no. That was the sweet potato patch. This was just the woods. Yeah, they were going to be fine.

"Power. I read that they're collecting espers for something big. They control most of the esper groups in Japan and a bunch of yakuza families too. They're trying to take over the world or something. I hear that they worship this one family because they're really powerful, like Gods or something, and they capture people so they have more people to worship with them or whatever. I think that one might be crazy talk though….but I'm not sure." Said Ritsu

"So we're going up against the yakuza too?" asked Reigen. Ritsu turned around and glared at him.

"If you aren't going to take this seriously then you can just go home." Said Ritsu. He didn't need Reigen treating this like some game. This wasn't a game, this was real life, and the stakes were real. He had made sure to tell mom and dad he loved them before he left that morning. That was important…because he was sure that if something went wrong that he would never see them again…and…and….

And this was just something that he had to do. If he didn't do this then nobody else would.

"I am taking this seriously, don't worry. I know how important this is to you." Said Reigen

"This is important for everyone, not just me." Said Ritsu

"Alright, alright, I get it. Fate of the world and all that. So what are going to when we get there? Pick them off one by one like ninjas or take them all on at once?" asked Reigen

"Neither. We're just getting evidence. I don't think that I can fight them all. I'm…not strong enough." Said Ritsu. He knew that if it came down to it then he couldn't take them…and he knew that if it came down to it Reigen wouldn't be any help. So he was just gathering evidence and then if he didn't get captured he was going to go home and tell mom and dad that he loved them. There. Easy.

"You? Not strong enough? You're the strongest esper that I've ever met." Said Reigen

"I'm the only esper you've ever met….and my powers don't always work all the time. You know that." Said Ritsu

"I know…but that doesn't matter. I'm sure that you'll be fine. I'm sure that we'll get enough evidence to put this evil organization down for good and then we'll go home and get some ramen…with extra pork in it just for you." Said Reigen

"…and an egg too." Said Ritsu

"Hmm….well I think that I can swing that for the kid who's going to save the world." Said Reigen

"I'm not going to save the world…just espers….but…ok." said Ritsu. Why did Reigen have to put it that way? When he said that the whole thing just seemed so….big. But that shouldn't have bothered him. He was doing the right thing. He was doing exactly what he was supposed to do. He was going to save…well he was going to take down this organization and then after that he was going to go home and see his family and then after that…well Sho would probably pop up at some point and ask him what in the hell he thought that he'd been doing…and he was looking forward to it.

He really was.

Being able to see Sho without the shadow of the organization coming between them. Where they could just…hang out…and stuff. He wondered what Sho…liked. Well Sho had told him that he liked to draw and…and Ritsu wanted to see some of his drawings. He had never really liked art, art class was pretty boring and the art museum…well he would have had more fun waiting at school for his class to come back than if he had gone with them on their fieldtrip. Art…well he could like art…and whatever else Sho liked…like videogames and stuff….

And…yeah. He and Sho could be friends…or maybe more than friends….

Ritsu walks a little faster. He can feel Reigen looking at him…and he does NOT want to talk about this. Nobody knew…well the guys he'd kissed knew that he liked guys…but nobody else knew and nobody else could know. That was just…no. He knew Reigen and he knew that Reigen liked him and stuff…but he didn't know what he would do if Reigen ever stopped liking him…and even if he didn't Ritsu…he just did not want anyone to know about this. About how he just…was like this. It was private and…and stuff….and anyway even if Sho did like him back it wasn't like he could just ask Sho to be his boyfriend or something….and Sho probably didn't like him back either…or maybe he did….it was hard to read him sometimes, actually…

Ritsu hoped that, when this was all over, he got to know Sho well enough that he could read him better.

"Ritsu, slow down. If we get separated then what am I supposed to tell your parents?" asked Reigen. He was half kidding. Ritsu wasn't that far ahead of him but…well if he did lose Ritsu in these woods then the Kageyamas would kill him. They would literally kill him. They wouldn't wait for the law to do it's job. They would just kill him, chop him up into little pieces, and then spread him in their garden like fertilizer.

"It's not my fault that you can't keep up." Said Ritsu

"Well it's not my fault that nobody told me that we'd be hiking in the woods today. If I'd had a little warning then maybe I could have worn some actual hiking shoes." Said Reigen

"Even if you had the right shoes on you still wouldn't have been able to keep up. You smoke way too much. I've seen you get out of breath getting up from your chair." Said Ritsu

"That was one time and-" said Reigen as Ritsu came to a sudden stop. He put his finger to his lips and then pointed forward through the bushes.

"Quiet. Human voices." Said Ritsu. He heard…he could hear people talking. That was….not good. Or maybe really good. He took his phone out and started recording…he was too far away to hear. He just knew that people were talking. He took a step forward…and then was pulled back by his hood.

"Stay here." Whispered Reigen. This was that worst case scenario he had been thinking of. Getting caught trespassing on private land. He had no idea what this land was used for, just that the Suzuki holding corporation owned it. They owned a lot of land in Japan, actually, and while Reigen had no clue what that company did with all that land he knew that they had deep enough pockets to punish them to the full extent of the law. He didn't have three days to spend in jail or a hundred thousand yen to pay the fine with…and it would be even worse than that since technically he was contributing to the delinquency of a minor…and also he could catch child endangerment charges too…and then there were all those labor laws he broke…

Hey. He had learned something in law school after all.

"No." said Ritsu as he pulled his hood free from Reigen's hands. He had to get closer. He felt Reigen reach out again and he slipped away. He felt his powers trying to make another invisible wall and he stopped them as best as he could. He didn't want these people to notice him. He just…had to hear what they were saying…maybe it would be enough to convince everyone that he had been right about these people….

He got closer.

Reigen was walking behind him, and not stealthily at all, but at least he wasn't trying to stop him. Well his was whispering at him to knock it off but…yeah. He wasn't going to be doing that. He had to figure out what all of this was about. Who those people were and why they were there….and where the base was…and all of that. He just had to get closer…

Not much closer.

He pulled Reigen behind a tree and ducked. There, two people in red and black uniforms. A couple of guys…one of them had a blue ribbon tied around his neck. Ritsu pressed his finger to his lips and looked Reigen in the eye. Reigen, for once in his life, kept his mouth shut. He nodded and then pulled out his own phone too. This was…he had never seen these people up close before…

They looked kind of stupid, actually.

"…can't believe they sent us out here to look for intruders. WE aren't security…"

"Well that's what you get for wearing that stupid thing. You know that we're not supposed to break uniform codes. We'll never awaken at this rate!"

"I don't see what our uniforms have to do with Awakening. Besides, Mob says that what's on the outside doesn't matter nearly as much as what's on the inside. If we believe in ourselves, and our friends, then we'll become the Awakened…or whatever else our dreams are. She didn't say 'awakening' specifically. We just have to believe in the powers of love and friendship!"

"…you know that she's like, eight, right?"

"No, she's twelve. It's almost her birthday. Remember, we get the day off?"

"OK, yeah, I like her now. Anyway what do you say to fucking off to the break room. If one of the Scars asked the intruders ran away…or whatever."

"Mob doesn't like lies. True friendship can only be built on a foundation of trust and without truth there can be no trust. Friendship and love, the only true powers in this world, will be the keys to our salvation and-"

"You need to stop reading her newsletters, man, they're poisoning your mind."

Ritsu had recorded the whole thing. That was…weird. Weird and kind of…really weird. He had been expecting them to talk about their evil plans or whatever not…that. Whatever that had been. He waited until they were out of sight, until he couldn't see them or their auras anymore, before he put his phone back in his pocket. He tried to take a step out of his hiding place but Reigen grabbed the back of his hood again.

When all of this was over Reigen owed him a new hoodie.

"Reigen! Let go! We're close to the truth and-" said Ritsu

"We're close enough. Come on, we're going. I don't know if this is some kind of new religion or something but I do know that if we get caught then we're in trouble…mostly me because I'm the adult in this situation-" said Reigen

"Then we won't get caught!" said Ritsu as he slipped out of his hoodie. This was not the time for Reigen to be all 'sometimes you have to run away' or whatever! They were close, Ritsu was close, and if Reigen didn't want to be a part of this then he could stay there and be scared. Ritsu wasn't scared at all. Ritsu was…well it felt like the time he tried coffee…he was all full of energy and…and…

And he had never felt like this before.

"Ritsu! Wait!" said Reigen as he took off after Ritsu. He made sure to hold onto his hoodie. It was still cold out. That was…ridiculous. Thinking about Ritsu catching a chill when he was about to catch trespassing charges. He hadn't expected anything to be out here. Maybe some kind of…building…or something. He had no idea what anyone would want to set up shop in the woods for. This was so out of the way and all…

Now he knew.

Some kind of new religion. A fancy way of saying a cult. This was some kind of cult and…well not all cults were murder suicide cults…but enough of them were. Enough of them were and even if Ritsu wasn't about to walk into one of them…this was still not the place that they should have been. How could he have been so irresponsible!? Ritsu was just a kid, he didn't always understand that there was a limit to playing, and Reigen was a grown man. He had no excuse.

Time to save Ritsu from himself.

He chased Ritsu through the woods as best as he could. He hadn't been lying, before, about the shoes thing. He wished that Ritsu had gotten the idea to come here earlier…or just told Reigen earlier that they would be trapesing through the woods this afternoon. Running through these woods. Trying to run through these woods. Ritsu had the advantage being younger and more agile….and having gym shoes on…and there was the whole 'he hadn't been smoking a pack a day for the past ten years' thing to take into account too. Reigen did his best to chase Ritsu, to catch him, and to hopefully talk some sense into him.

His best wasn't good enough.

Dress shoes were not the right footwear for chasing your apprentice through the woods. He knew this now. Well he had always known this but now he had confirmation. He stepped wrong, slid on a pile of leaves, and the only thing that saved him from tumbling head first onto the ground was a tree…one with a lot of splinters.

Great.

He was never having kids. He had been on the fence about it before, he liked kids, but now…Ritsu wasn't even his kid and here he was with a rolled ankle and a hand with what must have been a world's record setting number of splinters in it. God only knew what his kid would be like. When he'd been a kid he'd been like Ritsu…but worse. He hadn't gone running through the woods, though, no. He had been sneaking out to go to graveyards trying to do séances like that Mogami guy he used to watch when he had been a kid. Mom had told him, back then, that he was driving her to an early grave. Back then he had thought that she'd been overly dramatic….

He knew better now.

Ritsu had, thankfully, stopped. He had his phone out. The shutter could be heard. He was taking pictures of…something. Reigen groaned. Well now that was illegal surveillance and peeping…this was private land after all….and Reigen would be the one held responsible since he was supposed to be the adult in this situation…

Times like these made Reigen wish he was back selling water coolers.

"Ritsu, you can't just…what? Wh-what in the hell are you…looking….at….?" asked Reigen as he came up beside Ritsu. That was…it was…the only thing that Reigen could compare it to was a supervillain's base. These new religion were so weird…and this must have been a new religion. There were people in uniforms hanging out…uniforms with that symbol on them….the two eyes and the word and…

And maybe this wasn't a new religion after all.

"See? I told you that they were out here. I'm not crazy and I wasn't playing a game. There. See? That's Claw. That's the base." Said Ritsu as he took pictures of the base. This was…he wanted to run away…and he wanted to run into that building. The building where…it all happened. Where all the torture and kidnappings and experiments happened. He made sure to keep his aura close. He didn't want to be discovered…or maybe he did. Maybe he wanted to go in there and take it down from the inside…

Even though he knew that he didn't stand a chance.

"What the hell is that?" asked Reigen. Who in the hell had built this?! And…and why!? He had taken enough real estate law to know that a structure like that within city limits…and the woods were within city limits even if this was private land. This land had been won in a case with Fermented Foods City in…NOW he remembers…he had no idea what he was even thinking. This was just…he regularly fought evil spirits with a ten year old boy and…and this was the strangest thing…that he had ever seen…and he just…

Sometimes you had to run away. This was one of those times.

"Let go! I'm gathering evidence!" whispered Ritsu as Reigen grabbed him by the back of his shirt. He wasn't above slinking out of his shirt of he had to…even if it was cold out here. He was going to get all the evidence he needed and then everyone would know that he had been telling the truth and…and if people knew the truth then they could do something about this!

"No. Ritsu, we're leaving right now." Said Reigen in his best 'I am the adult here' voice.

"You can leave but I'm staying. I have to see…I need more evidence. I need enough evidence to show everyone that I was right and-" said Ritsu. Now people would stop thinking that he was weird. Now everyone would see that he was right and that…that they were in danger and….and he knew that he was in a lot of danger right now but he could handle himself! He could fight his way out and…and even if he couldn't then…well Sho lived here and they were kind of friends…

He'd be fine.

"Ritsu, no! I am the adult here and I say that we're running away before-" said Reigen. He grabbed Ritsu by the arm so he couldn't run away. This was not the area to be poking around in. Reigen knew how crazy these new religion people could be. They weren't all murder cults but he didn't want to wait and see if this was a peace and love cult or a sacrifice people to our God cult. He had a responsibility to Ritsu and he had to get him out of here before…

"I found the intruders! I win! Suck it level threes! Level fours for life!"

….that happened.


	500. Happy 12th Birthday, Mob

Today was Mob's birthday…and Minegishi was going to ruin it.

They had no choice. They were going to have to ruin her birthday. They had been sitting on this information for too long. They had been sitting on this information since even before they had known that they were sitting on information. Secrets. Apparently her little brother thought that he could just fuck off to Japan with Fukuda to hang out with the little vomit machine known as Mukai. Well to be fair Minegishi had no idea if she was still a little vomit machine…because they hadn't seen the little vomit machine in years…

And neither had Mob.

Mob…she didn't know about this…and she should have known! She should have known about her sister, where she was, and that her own little brother who her dad had tasked with raising had been fucking off to see her every so often…if Matsuo was to be believed….and of course they were going to believe Matsuo. He had no reason to lie to them, especially not about this, and Minegishi…they couldn't think of a single reason why anyone would have lied about this. Sho had gone off to see the baby…well kid now…and he had left Mob behind…

Which was pretty damn fucked up if Minegishi did say so themselves.

Which was how they found themselves in their current predicament. Today was Mob's birthday, her twelfth birthday, and she was going to have the best fucking birthday imaginable. That is until Minegishi ruined it. Her own brother had betrayed her, Minegishi didn't have any siblings but they knew how trusting Mob was, and they knew that this was going to mess Mob up really bad…worse than anything else had messed her up before. Worse than losing her little sister, worse than whatever happened with her dead mother, worse than whatever the hell was happening with her dad. This was…not going to be good…

So the least that Minegishi could do was give Mob a good birthday.

"It's not the same…I think, having pancakes without the others." Said Mob as she picked at her stack of twelve birthday pancakes. Dad had taken Shibata and Shimazaki with him because of some person who was doing…something. She didn't know. Dad had just said that an urgent matter had come up and that he was very sorry for missing her birthday and taking her friends away from her. Well she still has Minegishi, they were eating pancakes with her, and technically she still had Serizawa and Hatori too. They were just in their rooms asleep. She'd have to wake Serizawa up soon, at least, because keeping to a sleep schedule was important…

But right now she and Minegishi were having a two person birthday party so waking people up could wait.

"Want me to wake those other two up?" asked Minegishi. Shibata made the party, really, and Ryou was the life of any party. Those other two were…well they were Mob's friends. Minegishi didn't want to brave the dangers of Hatori's room to get him up….and bad thing happened to people who woke Serizawa up who weren't named Mob…but for Mob they'd do this. It was her birthday after all and if she wanted those two idiots to eat cold pancakes with coagulated syrup then they would drag those two morons out here, tie them to their chairs with vines, and force ice cold pancakes down their throats until Mob was satisfied.

That's what friends were for.

"No…no thank you. Hatori is always really out of it when people wake him up and Serizawa…I can get him up later. I'm the only one who knows how to wake him up. I'll make him a new breakfast, too, since he might not like this. Pancakes don't reheat well. He likes cereal, anyway, so I can make him that. That'll be easy. I'll have to make him a bath today, too, but it'll be good because nobody's home and-" said Mob

"Mob, stop it. It's your birthday. You don't have to take care of people on your birthday." Said Minegishi

"People don't stop needing me just because I turned twelve today. Like how at home I still have to get dad's shirts out of the dryer and iron them so there's no wrinkles and-" said Mob. She was Mob, she took care of the people she loved, that was just who she was. What was the point of having people in her life that she loved if she wasn't going to take care of them?

"He'll survive a wrinkled shirt." Said Minegishi with a groan. Suzuki needed to hire himself a maid. Mob was his daughter, not his…whatever the hell Suzuki thought she was. This was her birthday and if he got pissed off at her because she had forgotten to iron his shirts or whatever then they were going to kick his ass…and get some new scars because they had no hope of beating him….but it would have been worth it for Mob.

She didn't need this shit, not on her birthday. She had enough shit coming to her as it was.

"I know it won't kill him, it'll just annoy him, and I don't want him to be annoyed because he's always really mean to people when he gets annoyed. Not to me but to Sho and stuff…and what if Sho comes back from England today and then dad's all annoyed with him? What then?" asked Mob

"Sho…he'll come back when he comes back. Just…Mob…it's your birthday. What do YOU want to do?" asked Minegishi

"What do you want to do?" asked Mob

"I asked you first." Said Minegishi

"I want to do whatever makes you happy." Said Mob

"Mob…come on. I need you to pretend that you're selfish, alright? Pretend that you're me-" said Minegishi

"Minegishi! You are not a selfish person and you shouldn't say those things about yourself." Said Mob

"Mob…I can be pretty damn selfish sometimes." Said Minegishi. That was why they hadn't told her, yet, why they had sat on this information for so long. They hadn't wanted to hurt her. Well that had worked out about as well as Ryou's caramel waffle recipe. They couldn't keep this to themselves anymore. Not with what Matsuo had told them.

"Well…sometimes you can be kind of mean…but not to me. That's just how you are. I don't think that you're selfish and I want you to be happy. Just because it's my birthday that doesn't mean that I'm going to be bossy….well Sho says that I'm always bossy….but I don't want to be. So what do you want to do?" asked Mob. She knew what she wanted to do today. She wanted to watch Frozen with Minegishi. Then she wanted to braid their hair and paint their nails. Then she wanted to do their makeup. Then she wanted to play Mario Party with Minegishi, Serizawa, and Hatori. Then she wanted Shibata and Shimazaki to come back. Then she wanted them all to bake a cake together. Then she wanted Shimazaki and Minegishi to tell each other that they loved each other. Then she wanted them to kiss. Then she wanted them to get married. Then she wanted to go with them to the orphanage and help them pick out a baby. Then she wanted to fly to one of those countries where boys could marry other boys. Then she wanted Shibata and Hatori to get married and she wanted to go with them to an orphanage to help them pick out a baby. Then she wanted to audition girls to be Serizawa's girlfriend. Then she wanted to fly to England and throw a surprise wedding for Sho and Emmy and then help them pick out an orphan to raise too, because Sho was too little to have a baby of his own and also he was her little brother so…gross! After she was done with all of that she wanted to find mom and get her to say sorry for dad and then they could get back together and Mob…well she wouldn't have been happy with mom…but dad loved her and he needed her back.

And then when that was all over she wanted to have a nice cold glass of strawberry milk….but probably none of that was going to happen.

"Mob, come on. It's your birthday. Just tell me what you want to do. Anything. Whatever comes to your mind." Said Minegishi. They were about ten seconds away from ripping out fistfuls of their hair. Why did she have to be like this? Why did she have to be so…nice…all the time? Honestly it was amazing that she had come from Suzuki Touichirou of all people.

"I want….um….I want to watch Frozen. If that's ok with you." Said Mob. She knew how tired Minegishi was of Frozen…sometimes even Mob herself got tired of it…but that didn't change the fact that it was still the best movie ever made in the world's history of movies. She always felt so…good…when she watched it. Happy. Like she was going to be ok. She didn't know what it was that was keeping her from being ok…but she always felt ok when Frozen was on. Not that she didn't feel ok now, she did, it was her birthday after all…

Even though her brother wasn't here…or two of her friends…or her dad….

"We can do that." Said Minegishi

"And I want to braid your hair." Said Mob

"It's….about long enough." Said Minegishi as they ran a hand through their hair. It was getting to that length…and they had been planning on cutting it for a while…but if Mob wanted to play mad stylist with their hair then so be it. It was her birthday and she had been talking about doing that for years anyway so…yeah.

"Then I want to paint your nails." Said Mob

"Sure. Whatever you want." Said Minegishi. That was more doable than the braids thing. They had been needing a new coat of paint for a while. This was fine…even if Mob felt like doing her overly complicated YouTube, Instagram, whatever else she was on nail tutorials.

"Then I want to give you a makeover. With eyebrows." Said Mob. She didn't want Minegishi to feel bad about how they looked. They were really pretty despite not having eyebrows, even dad had said so and dad never had nice things to say about anyone, but they looked even prettier with eyebrows. And eye shadow. And eye liner. And blush. And highlighter. And foundation. And lipstick. And lip gloss. And fake eyelashes. And maybe even some glitter too…

Mob knew that they weren't going to say 'yes' to any of that…but it was worth a try.

"Yeah…whatever you want." Said Minegishi. They could feel their skin breaking out already…but this was one day…and it was for Mob…and they owned her for all the secret keeping.

"Then I want us all to play Mario Party together." Said Mob. Wow. If Minegishi said 'yes' to that then they would say 'yes' to anything…even videogames. Even though they didn't like videogames…and was Mob being selfish? Or was she not being selfish because Minegishi had given her permission to be selfish? Was that how it worked? Getting permission make it all…ok?

She didn't know. She just knew that this was going to be the best birthday ever.

"Well it is your birthday." Said Minegishi. Videogames were always such a headache….but one that they could and would endure for Mob.

"Then I want us all to bake a cake." Said Mob

"We could probably just go to a bakery…you know what, it's your birthday." Said Minegishi. That was going to be a shit show, they could tell right now. That many cooks in the kitchen…and Minegishi didn't know shit about baking, too. They didn't know shit about baking and Shibata…did not like people in the kitchen when he was cooking…but still. This was Mob's birthday and whatever she wanted was going to happen.

"Then I want you and Shimazaki to tell each other that you love each other." Said Mob. She loved it when they told each other how they felt. Love was the best thing in the world and Minegishi being in love…well they were her best friend. What could have been better than her best friend being in love?

"Mob…sure." Said Minegishi. Mob…needed a boyfriend. Or just someone to hook up with…the twelve year old equivalent of hooking up. Not the hooking up Minegishi had been doing when they were her age…or whatever, Mob could do whatever she wanted. Whatever made her happy, that was what today was, whatever made her happy.

Even if they had to be her wingman today.

"Then I want you guys to kiss. A lot." Said Mob. She loved it when they kissed, it was beautiful. When they showed each other that they loved each other. She wished that she had someone like that, someone who wanted to kiss her and stuff, but not Shimazaki specifically. He maybe wanted to kiss her…he had been saying for years that he would when she was thirteen or fourteen…and she was twelve now….no matter what age she was kissing Shimazaki was just…gross. Really gross….but only for her. Minegishi loved him and Mob liked watching her best friend be in love and happy and stuff.

And also watching people kiss was…really nice.

"….alright…" said Minegishi. That was…not something that they wanted to do. Kiss Ryou for Mob's amusement…but it was her birthday…and she was at the age…and…yeah, it was weird but….well Mob had every right to be weird on her birthday.

"Then I want you to get married." Said Mob. Minegishi's aura flared there…and the plant on the table grew some really long vines. The vines didn't do anything, though, not that Minegishi had ever done anything to hurt her. She knew Minegishi and, yes, they sometimes liked to fight but never with her. Maybe since the plant had only grown a little, though, and not out of it's pot or something then they were more open to the idea of marrying the love of their life. Mob knew that if she had a boyfriend, even if he was like Shimazaki, she still would have wanted to marry him. Even if he acted like a crazy person all the time she still would have married him. Then she could kiss him whenever she wanted and stuff…not that she wanted to do all of the stuff yet…and not that she wanted to even do so much as kiss Shimazaki. Even though he looked like…himself…and sometimes she got that weird feeling when she was near him and he didn't have a shirt on or something...but he was not her boyfriend and she didn't even like him like that.

Birthday or not she would never have done anything like that to Minegishi…that just wasn't the thing to do to your best friend.

"Married? Mob, we aren't even….we can't get married here. We aren't German citizens." Said Minegishi. There. That was a good excuse. Now Mob could get back to things that were actually doable. They loved Mob, they really did, and they wanted to make this a good day for her…but marriage was…not a thing that they wanted. Ever.

"That's ok. We can fly back to Japan. That'll be good, too, because then the orphan will be able to understand you." Said Mob

"There are orphans involved now?" asked Minegishi. They were starting to regret…no. They had been regretting, for a while, digging around in this…whatever this was. All of Mob's deeply held hopes and dreams.

"Yes. I want to go with you when you go and pick out an orphan. I remember you said that you didn't want to grow the baby yourself, and that you didn't like babies even, so we can all go and help you pick out an orphan at the orphanage." Said Mob

"Mob…it's not a dog pound." Said Minegishi. They had a lot more than that to say…a hell of a lot more than that…but they were going to stick to pure logistics. Orphanages were not dog pounds…and they didn't even have orphanages anymore. Group homes…hellish places. Places that Mob did not need to get within a thousand meters of.

"Then we can fly to one of those countries where boys can get married so Shibata and Hatori can get married…and then we can fly back to Japan so we can help them pick out an orphan to raise. Then while we're in Japan I can audition girls to be Serizawa's girlfriend, he only likes girls I asked him already, and then I can help Serizawa and his new girlfriend pick out an orphan there too since Serizawa hasn't ever even kissed a girl, I asked him, so he'd be too scared to do…all the stuff. Then after that we can fly to England and throw a wedding for Sho and Emmy and then we can pick out some English orphans for them to raise since Sho is too little to have a baby of his own…and also he's my little brother and he's not allowed to do that gross stuff. After everyone has their babies then we can all look for my mom and then she and my dad can get back together…and I can live with you and Shimazaki and your orphan because I don't…want to see her again…or maybe I do. I don't know. Just…that's what I want to do today." Said Mob

"Mob...something that we can do TODAY, alright? Berlin to Tokyo is a thirteen hour flight and that's if we don't stop to refuel…and we always have to stop to refuel since your dad always gets us those tiny as hell private planes." Said Minegishi. Logic. Appeal to logic. Don't shoot down Mob's crazy dreams…or even tell her that they were crazy. Even though it was obvious that, even though she didn't look it, Suzuki blood flowed through her veins.

"We don't have to go to Tokyo." Said Mob

"It's still on the other side of the world." Said Minegishi

"I guess that you're right…but I just want everyone to be happy. I want everyone to be happy and get married and have babies…and then I can play with the babies…but if you guys adopt kids then I can be their big sister. I miss being a big sister…I mean Sho is still alive and for as long as he's alive I'm going to be his big sister…but…I just…" said Mob

"I get it. I get it and…I feel for you, I really do. But how about we do some stuff that's purely for you, alright? You can braid my hair and paint me up and…you've had that idea about matching dresses for a while…."said Minegishi. They did NOT want to wear a dress. They did NOT want to get painted up. They did NOT want to do anything to their hair besides cut it short and dye their roots….

But this was Mob's birthday and what she wanted…mattered more than how Minegishi felt.

"YOU'LL BE TWINS WITH ME?!"shouted Mob. The table jumped up and all the plates fell on the floor…where they shattered…and that hadn't been the best thing to do…but….but…but….MINEGISHI WANTED TO BE TWINS WITH HER! This had never happened before. Not in the history of ever! Now they were going to be twins with Mob and…and…and….

This was the best day of her life. Not even the best birthday…the best day out of any of the other days that she'd been alive…well except for maybe the day Sho had been born…even if she couldn't remember it…and…and…TWINS?!

"Yeah…sure. Whatever you want." Said Minegishi. The thought of wearing a dress makes their skin crawl. They…did not like dresses. They'd worn them before, back when they'd been young and had no autonomy over their life, and one of the first things that they'd done when the courts emancipated them was burning every single dress they owned…but this was for Mob. They loved Mob, probably more than they loved themselves, and they had wronged her. In keeping this information from Mob they had wronged her…

So the least that they could have done was wear a dress for her.

Wear a dress for her…and get their hair and makeup done. All of that came after cleaning up the kitchen…and they had not been stalling. The kitchen really had been a disaster area. Between Mob's little freak out, Shibata's incessant cooking, and the general state of their home the kitchen had needed a cleaning for a while. They had simply been stating a fact and not trying to stall for time…Mob had gotten the whole place cleaned up in no time anyway.

Telekinesis was useful like that.

They had always known that Mob was capable of a lot of very fine movements but that didn't mean that it wasn't amazing watching her work. The way she could split her focus, juggle so much at once, and do it all without wavering once. She was amazing like that…and would only get more amazing with age. She had come from the most powerful esper alive after all. There was definitely Suzuki blood running through her veins…

And Minegishi was glad that it was balanced out by…whatever her mother had been.

Mob could have easily killed them if she had wanted to. If not killed then maimed or seriously injured them. She had every right to. Minegishi…had waited too long to tell Mob. They had waited and waited until there just…was no more time to wait. Not with what Matsuo had told her. Apparently her little brother had found some esper kid…and apparently some kind of drama was brewing over in Seasoning City. The kind of drama which would make it's way to Suzuki soon. The division leader, the short little bitch who never took her mask off, was trying to handle it all herself in an effort to gain favor with Suzuki…

That whole division was going to end up pissing off the wrong Suzuki.

Mob was not going to like this when she heard about it. Not her brother having had lied to her, not the part that he had played in all of this, and not the fact that another kid had been kidnapped. They knew that Mob had let the first kid go all those years ago…but her brother wasn't nearly clever enough or stealthy enough to do the same…and Mob was not going to like…any of this….

Which was why Minegishi was going to put up with…all of this…and tell Mob once her birthday was over.

They would do anything for Mob…and not just because it was her birthday. Though the fact that this was her birthday really did help. They would have come up with excuses, or just outright said 'no', if under any other circumstance Mob had asked to drag them over to her house, sat them down on the side of her tub, and started using that amazing telekinesis of hers to braid their hair, paint their face, and do whatever else she felt like doing. This was not something that Minegishi enjoyed…or wanted…but it could have been worse.

At least they weren't picking out orphans with Ryou.

"Sorry to pull so tight. Your hair just…really doesn't want to be braided. It's just short…but don't worry, Minegishi, once it gets longer it'll be easier to braid." Said Mob. She had no idea why Minegishi was going along with this. Mob had asked before, and on her birthday too, to braid Minegishi's hair and give them a makeover and be twins with her…but she wasn't going to jinx it. This was the best day ever!

Even if Minegishi's hair was kind of too short for braids.

Well braids the way that she normally did them. Mom had taught her, when she had been really little, how to braid her hair. She knew how to do two long braids…because her hair was really long. Aside from her bangs she never cut it. Minegishi cut their hair all the time, though, so it was harder. Instead of two big braids she was doing a bunch of little braids…and she had to make sure to do them tight, too, so that they would stay. She knew that this must have hurt, and that Minegishi didn't like stuff like this, but they were sitting still through the whole thing anyway…

They were a really good friend like that. The best friend that she'd ever had.

"Yeah….once it gets longer." Said Minegishi. They were cutting it down to a pixie cut at some point. Not today but at some point. They didn't like having long hair, they hated having it braided, but they loved Mob. They also loved her telekinesis. It made this whole process a hell of a lot easier.

Even if it did hurt.

But it didn't hurt that badly. Not like when they'd been her age…and younger. Not like when mom, maybe she burn in hell, had decided that her daughter needed to look presentable. So she chased Minegishi through the house until she caught them by the hair and…and this was not the time to be thinking about that shit. They unclenched the fists that they'd been making. There were little crescent moons in the palms of their hands…..and little spots of blue and purple. It was a shame that Mob hadn't painted them red. Then it would have looked like blood…and maybe they would have been reminded of one of the best times they'd ever had blood on their hands…

Those were macabre thoughts that Mob did not need to know about. Ever.

"But if you want to cut it then that's ok too. I'm just happy that you're letting me do this. This is the best day ever." Said Mob

"Well…I'm glad that this is the best birthday you've ever had…" said Minegishi. This was going to be the worst birthday she ever had, too, but not now. Mob…was happy now…and that was what mattered.

"No, not the best birthday, the best day. This is the best day of my life…well not as good as the day Sho was born…but I don't really remember that since I was a baby when he was born. This is still a really good day though. I didn't know if it would be a good day but it is…so thank you. I love you." Said Mob

"I love you too…Mob. Anyway, what are we wearing today? I know you have some doubles of your costumes. I could probably squeeze into one of those." Said Minegishi. They thanked God that Mob wasn't exactly the smoothest person in the world. She hadn't noticed, thankfully, how quick they had been to change the subject.

"I don't think that I have anything that'll fit you…sorry." said Mob as she did the last of Minegishi's braids. They were pretty much all done now, their hair and makeup, and their nails had smudged…she should have used the quick dry stuff….but she could always fix those. Finding something for the two of them to wear…that wouldn't be easy. Minegishi was taller than them. They were skinny but they were tall. Also they would probably have to wear an undershirt, a girl's undershirt, too if they wanted to wear her stuff since a boy's undershirt would show…and she knew that they didn't really like to wear girl's clothes…

Being twins would have been good and all…but not if Minegishi was going to be uncomfortable.

"Do you still want to be twins?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. They could so easily get out of this. Mob's clothes would have fit them, they would have fit awkwardly but they would have fit, but…well they did have a good excuse…but they were not going to use that excuse. This was Mob's day and…and if past Minegishi got their hands on some kind of time machine and saw current Minegishi they would have killed themselves in order to spare themselves the horror of caring for another human being.

"More than anything else in the whole world." Said Mob

"Then let's go…shopping." Said Minegishi. They regretted the words as soon as they said them. Shopping was a chore but shopping with Mob…that was an experience that didn't have any expression that could fit it. She loved shopping. She loved trying on clothes and getting new ones…she was getting closer and closer to becoming a teenager….and Minegishi had never liked it. Clothes shopping, unless they were getting a new t-shirt, was always just this tedious…chore…that they had to get through….

At least it was easier to let Mob handle it.

Mob didn't speak a word of German, was only twelve years old, and was high as fuck on birthday happiness and probably something else…but it had taken her five minutes to find a department store with things she liked. That was more of the Suzuki blood in her, that can-do attitude that let her father take on the world and her little brother act like the demon he was, and Minegishi…was eternally grateful that Mob used her powers for good. If she'd had something else on her mind, anything besides shopping and Frozen and being twins on her birthday, then the world would not have stood a chance. Thank God Mob was…well….Mob.

The sort of person that she was.

Minegishi may not have known Suzuki personally, certainly not as personally as he wanted to get to know them, but they did know that the man was insane. Completely and totally off his nut. That insanity coupled with the drive and ability to conquer the world…Minegishi thanked God that Mob had as much of her mother inside of her as she did. She wasn't the second coming of Suzuki, not like Fukuda seemed to believe, she was just…herself. A twelve year old girl. A twelve year old girl who loved her family, her friends, animated musicals about princesses, shopping, milk, makeup, and cute boys.

She didn't have a vindictive bone in her body…thank God.

Not that Minegishi was doing all of this for her to curry her favor once the truth came out. No, not at all. They were just…trying to soften the blow once it came. Trying to make this easier on her than it was going to be. That was all. They loved her and they wanted her to be happy…even if that meant walking around Berlin painted up with their hair in about a million tiny braids…this was for Mob. They would have done anything for her.

It was sort of like she was their kid….if they'd ever had one…or something….

"What about this one? We both look good in purple and this one isn't very short. I know how you don't like short things…that's why you never wear shorts." Said Mob as she pulled a long purple dress off of the rack. People were looking at them and talking in German but Mob didn't speak German and even if she did she wouldn't have said anything back. People could say whatever they wanted…and take whatever pictures they wanted. Mob and Minegishi were having fun…that was what mattered…

Even though Mob felt like she might have been the only one having fun.

Minegishi's aura didn't feel like they were having fun…even thought his was the most fun thing ever. Being twins. Minegishi might have just been doing this because they wanted her to have a good time on her birthday. They had told her that she was allowed to be selfish today…even though she didn't want to be selfish. She didn't know if she was being selfish now…but she was going to try and be selfless…that was why she picked out something purple. They both liked purple…

Even though only one of them liked to wear dresses.

"Whatever you want, Mob, whatever you want. Just make sure that they have it in both our of sizes." Said Minegishi. A dress was a dress. Torture was torture…and this wasn't even torture. Not in the, well, torture sense. They knew what torture was, the less Mob knew about what went on in Claw the better, and they knew that in the grand scheme of things wearing a dress was nothing at all.

"Well….you're taller than me and stuff…so maybe I should get something short? No, no, you hate short things. Maybe I could find us something with pants." Said Mob. She hated pants. She could count on her fingers each and every time she had worn pants in her twelve years of life and still had plenty of fingers to spare. They were itchy and uncomfortable and they made her feel like her legs were tired together or something. Also they were hot. She didn't know how Minegishi could have stood to wear pants all the time…

Maybe because they hated dresses.

Mob was not going to be selfish. Even though she was a year older today, this was her birthday, she was not going to be selfish. So what if she had gone to be eleven and woken up twelve? That didn't mean that she got to make her best friend uncomfortable. She…had already been selfish enough. Just because someone agreed to do something that didn't mean that they wanted to do it. Like when Sho asked her over and over again if he could have a bunch of soda at once or something and she just said that he could because she was sick of him asking her over and over again….

She hadn't asked Minegishi over and over again if they could be twins, in fact Minegishi was the one who brought it up, but Mob felt like…like she had been acting like Sho…for all of this….

"You hate pants." Said Minegishi simply

"I can still wear them." Said Mob

"But you hate them, I know for a fact that you hate them, and I know because you told me to my face that you hate them." Said Minegishi

"Ok…I do hate them…but I don't want you to be uncomfortable. I know that you want to be twins with me…and I really want to be twins with you…but not if it makes you uncomfortable." Said Mob

"Mob…why are you this mature?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. They didn't know why they were asking. They knew why Mob was this mature. She had never gotten the chance to be a kid…fucking Suzuki and his lazy approach to parenting…

"Um…I'm sorry? I mean I don't think that I'm mature…sorry." said Mob. She knew what mature meant, it meant that you were an adult and stuff. She knew what immature meant too. I meant that you acted like a kid. Mob didn't think that she acted that much like an adult…at least not when she didn't have to take care of Sho. If anything she had been acting like a kid all day….and she shouldn't have been.

She was twelve years old now.

She hadn't thought that much about being twelve. She had just gone to be eleven and woken up twelve. Nothing had happened. She hadn't woken up taller or anything like that. She was still the same size. She looked the same…for some reason she wished that her breasts were bigger but at the same time she wished that she hadn't gotten them at all…and she still felt the same. Nothing had happened. Not like the time she had gone to bed eleven and woken up covered in blood…she was happy that she never had to go through that again. Not for the first time, anyway, the first time had been scary…and no other scary stuff happened she didn't think…and she didn't want anything scary to happen to her…

She just sort of wished that…something…had happened…that she had changed in some way…or at least become as mature as Minegishi seemed to think that she was.

"Mob…one of these days you have got to stop apologizing. You have nothing to apologize for…trust me on this." said Minegishi

"I feel like I do. I know that you don't like…girl stuff like this…and I know that you're only doing this for me. I don't want to make you any more uncomfortable than you already are." Said Mob

"I'm fine. I'll live. I've been more uncomfortable than this, trust me. I've slept on floors, in gardens, in parks, and even in the woods. None of that compares to sharing a bed with Ryou, of course, but yeah. I've had worse than…this." said Minegishi. Mob believed them…good. They felt bad about lying to her, they wanted to crawl out of their own skin they were so uncomfortable, but Mob…she didn't need to feel worse than she was going to.

"But…you love Shimazaki." Said Mob

"Yeah, I do, but that doesn't change the fact that when he sleeps he hogs the bed and when he's awake he eats in it." Said Minegishi

"Did you try telling him not to do those things? Maybe he'll listen. When you love someone enough-" said Mob

"Some fights just aren't worth having. Like this one. Mob, pick us out a dress to wear already, alright? It's your birthday, not mine, so you get to choose." Said Minegishi

"Alright….but we can be pants twins on your birthday….and we don't even have to be all the way twins today. You can just wear pants underneath your clothes. I've seen people do that." Said Mob. She had seen the girls at her school doing that, before, when she'd gone to school. She had always thought that it was weird how they called her weird when they did something as weird ad wear pants under their skirts. Not that Mob had ever said anything, she wasn't mean like that, and she wasn't mean enough to make her best friend wear something that made them uncomfortable. Minegishi was right there were some fights that just weren't worth having.

And this was one of them.

Mob wanted…well she wanted to do a lot of things today….but being twins with Minegishi was more than enough. They were both wearing purple dresses, Minegishi looked really pretty even if they did have their clothes on under it, and that was enough for Mob. Now they could do something that Minegishi liked to do. They liked to sit and drink coffee and read….so that was what was next. Mob didn't really understand how they could do that for hours and hours…but that was still a fun thing that they did together. She hadn't brought a book but she had her phone, and she knew that Minegishi always had at least two books with them at any given time, so she figured that this would be ok. That this would be something that they would like.

She had thought right.

"This is really what you want to spend your birthday doing? Starbucks of all places?" asked Minegishi as they sat down. They would have preferred going home. They were getting looks…well they always got looks when they were out and about…but they preferred the looks they got when they were…themselves. When they were comfortable in their own skin…when their skin wasn't covered in at least a hundred layers of lotions and powders and powders and creams and Minegishi didn't even know what…

But Mob wanted to be here, at this Starbucks in the middle of Berlin, so this was where they were going to be.

"You like Starbucks and I like you…and also I like Starbucks…but I don't speak the language here so can you order for me?" asked Mob as she sat down. This was a nice place. It was kind of warm out, not super hot but not cold either, and there was a good view of the park here. There were a bunch of boys there kicking a soccer ball around…not that she was looking over there or anything!

Not that there was anything to look at.

Those were just boys…playing soccer….or maybe it was called football here. She wasn't sure. She didn't know the language. This was like English but really complicated and she just…she wasn't going to talk to anyone even if she did know the language! She didn't have anyone to talk to and even if she did then…then she still wouldn't have talked to them. She didn't know how to talk to boys…and she didn't want to…because what would she even say?! She didn't know how to talk to them or even why she would talk to them. She couldn't ever have a boyfriend…so there was no point in talking to them…and also she didn't know the language so there was even less point in talking to them!

So she was just going to stay right here and….drink coffee and read books and hang out with her best friend.

"That steamed milk and vanilla thing? With caramel?" asked Minegishi. They let their eyes follow the path Mob's took. Minegishi got the feeling that their enjoyment of the mediocrity that was Starbucks wasn't the only reason that Mob had brought them there. Well then they'd let her have this. Better she stare at boys her own age than plan surprise weddings for all of her friends.

"Yes…and sprinkles if they have them here. Thank you." Said Mob. There. Now she just had to sit and wait…and then Minegishi would come back…and then they would talk and stuff. Then Mob wouldn't have even had to think about the boys that were over there kicking a ball back and forth on the grass. They were around her age…or maybe even older…and there were a lot of them. Mob didn't know how many…so maybe it was ok to look at them so that she could count them…

Yes, there was nothing wrong with counting people. Nothing at all…

There were six of them there…and now that she was done counting she could just…look down at her phone. Maybe something important had come up. Maybe something other than people she didn't know telling her happy birthday. Maybe Sho had texted her…or dad was coming home finally…or maybe Minori had more stuff to complain about. Yes, there were a million different reasons she could have checked her phone for…

But she also had a good reason not to.

There was another boy there, now, he had come on a bike. He…had an aura. He kept it close but that was definitely an aura. That was…a yellow aura. No…not yellow. Deeper than yellow. Gold colored. That was a gold colored aura…and that boy had yellow hair. No, not yellow, blond. That boy had blond hair and…and she knew that boy! She knew him and she had promised that she would never forget him and….

And judging from the way that he was looking at her he hadn't forgotten her either.

A ball went sailing past the boy…and towards her. It stopped at her feet. She was supposed to do…something…with it. Toss it back or give it back…or something. She knew that she had to do something besides stare at him….but she couldn't help it. She had never thought that she would ever see him again and there he was. He was taller now….a lot taller…and his hair was longer…and he didn't look scared like he had when they'd met. He looked…well his aura was scared but he was just…looking at her. One of the other boys was nudging him and pointing at her…and Mob…she wanted to run away….and she wanted to run over there too….

She didn't know what she wanted.

"I know you wanted sprinkles but they didn't have any so I had them crush a cookie into this for you." Said Minegishi as they sat down. Mob was staring at something….well those boys and…oh. Minegishi felt it as soon as they sat down. Another aura. A bright one for a kid. Mob was staring at the kid with the yellow aura…and there was a soccer ball at her feet too…

And that other kid was staring right back at her.

Maybe he wanted his ball back, maybe he wanted to hook up with Mob, or maybe he had just never seen another esper before. Either way Mob needed this. This was the perfect chance for her to get…all of that…out of her system. The same thing that made her want to watch her friends kiss. Mob had earned this, and she was old enough two. Minegishi had been getting up to much worse than what Mob had on her mind when they'd been twelve years old.

"Th-thanks…I like…this." said Mob. She had no idea what Minegishi had set down in front of her. She was still looking at Teru….that was his name. Hanazawa Teruki but he liked to be called Teru….she remembered him. She remembered how she had saved him….and how she had promised to never forget him…and about how he had said that he would never forget her. Maybe he had forgotten her…or maybe he had. She didn't know. She just…she didn't know if she wanted him to forget her or if she wanted him to remember her or…

Or what.

"I think they want their ball back, Mob, so maybe you should go and give it back. If you want to keep it for some reason then I suggest we start running now." Said Minegishi

"I-I-I don't want to keep it…because stealing is wrong…so maybe I should go and…throw it back…"said Mob

"Or you can just get up and give it to them." Said Minegishi. Mob was so nervous…had they ever been as nervous as she was now? No, probably not, but she was a different person than they were. Mob was her own person and she could do whatever she wanted to…even if she was too afraid to do whatever she wanted to. It was amazing how she could command Claw, run her household, and stand up to her father but for some strange reason she was afraid to talk to boys her own age.

She was adorable sometimes.

"I-I can't! I mean I…I can't because of…reasons." Said Mob. She wasn't going to tell Minegishi that the boy over there, the one with the gold colored aura, was the very same boy who she had let escape all those years ago. She knew that Minegishi wouldn't say anything to anyone…but she also didn't want to give Minegishi a secret to keep….and also…also she knew that if she went over there and talked to him then her heart would beat out of her chest and then she would die…or something….

She certainly felt like she was going to die.

"What reasons?" asked Minegishi

"Reasonable reasons." Said Mob

"Mob, come on. I know you. You want to go over there, that kid with the aura is staring at you, and you've been staring at him. Why don't you just give him back his ball and see where it goes from there….but if it goes somewhere that you don't want it to go then you have every right to kick his ass…or just call me over and I'll kick his ass." Said Minegishi

"I…I don't want that to happen but…but I can go over there….I guess." Said Mob. She did want to go over there…and she did have to give this ball back…and that was what she would do. She wanted…she wanted to go over there…and she wanted to talk to Teru. Even though she had no idea what she was even going to say to him…

She could start by giving him back his ball…yes…that was a good start.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do…or anything I would." Said Minegishi

"But…then what am I supposed to do?" asked Mob

"Give him back his ball, smile a lot, and laugh at everything he says even if it's not funny." Said Minegishi with a shrug. It wasn't the best advice but it got the job done. Boys her age were easy. Well they had been when Minegishi had been that age. They weren't sure about now, they weren't Ryou they tended to stay within their own age range, but they had been Mob's age once.

"Um…ok. I can do that…I guess." Said Mob. That was the same thing that Minori had said. As long as she smiled a lot and acted like everything that they said was the funniest thing ever then they would like you…but Teru already liked her. Well he had liked her when they had met…he had kissed her…he hadn't known her but he'd kissed her…and that had been the best kiss of her life. Well that had been the only kiss of her life, the time Shimazaki put his hand over her mouth and kissed her didn't count…..thank God, but it had still been the best…and probably the only kiss that she would ever have…

Did he wanted to kiss her again?

Her braids flew up…but she could have blamed that on the wind. It was windy out here. That might have been her fault too. Maybe she should just have…run away….just tossed the ball and run away. The closer she got to him, the closer she got to Teru, the more she wanted to run away…or to run towards him…or just…she didn't know. She needed to make up her mind. It was like her brain didn't know what to do and her feet were on autopilot. She needed to figure out what to do…and soon…because now she was there…and she was right in front of Teru…

"Sprichst du Deutsch?" asked a boy. Mob shook her head. She kept her eyes on Teru…and he kept his eyes on her. If not for the fact that people were trying to talk to her it would have felt like they were the only two people in the world…and it was a good feeling.

"No speak German." Said Mob. That was…the best German that she could come up with. He held the ball in her hands. She was staring at Teru..and he was still staring at her. His aura was touching hers too and…and this was…really good…

"English?" asked another boy. Mob nodded and held out the ball.

"Is this…any of yours?" asked Mob in English. Teru took it from her and tossed it behind himself.

"Lass sie in ruhe." Said Teru. Mob…had no idea what it meant. She kind of wished that she'd let Minegishi teach her German…or that she'd taken the time to learn it herself.

"You can't call her, she came up to all of us, and anyway it was my ball!" said the boy next to Teru. Teru shoved him. Mob shook her head. Why did boys have to be like this? What happened in their heads that told them that they had to fight with everyone? Mob didn't know if she could have a boyfriend who fought with everyone…not that she thought that she and Teru could ever be anything….that was anything.

Dad might still have been looking for him.

Teru had gotten kidnapped on accident before…and that could happen again. Dad wasn't always careful about these things. That was why sometimes people didn't want to be there. That was also why people said such mean things about them on the internet. Hatori had showed her this site where people talked about all kinds of things, she was mostly there for Frozen stuff and the makeup addiction place, but there was a whole place where people talked about Claw.

Mean things.

Like they kidnapped people and tortured and killed them. A lot of people had nothing better to do than be jerks on the internet. She didn't understand it. Didn't these people have jobs? Families? Lives that they had to get back to? She...had spent way too much time correcting people. Dad did not think that he was a God, Claw did not kidnap people, and they were not trying to steal the moon. She didn't even know where that last one had come from. Dad had looked into stealing the moon before, he had said, but moving the moon even a little bit would have messed up the world. So that part wasn't true…and neither was the part about the kidnapping. Sometimes they just…mistook kids for orphans…and stuff. Like what had happened to Teru…

She hoped that Teru wasn't going to end up mistaken for an orphan again.

"Schwanz lutschen!" said Teru. Mob didn't know what that meant…and judging by the way the other boys went 'ooh' she didn't want to know. It was probably some gross boy thing…why did they have to be so gross all the time? Maybe this was why Minegishi liked both.

"That's what your mom's for!" said the boy

"Sich runterholen!" said Teru. He shoved the other boy that time….and that wasn't very nice at all. She didn't think that he had done a friendly shove either….boys could do friendly shoves. She…well she didn't know what to say or do…so she just…well she just stayed there until she figured out what to do.

"If your mom's not too tired after sucking my-" said the boy

"Shut up! This is why he gets girls and we don't! if you're going to say that then at least say it in a language she doesn't speak!" said another boy

"You're all hopeless. Come on, Suzuki, let's go….over there now." Said Teru. He grabbed her hand….he as TOUCHING her HAND! That was…he had called her Suzuki though…which was the polite thing to do…and maybe she should have called him Hanazawa in that case. He had been Teru in her mind for years now…they had kissed and that made them familiar since what could be more familiar than kissing? But maybe kissing didn't make you familiar…especially if it happened a long time ago…and kisses didn't have to mean anything, either. Minegishi had said that, sometimes people just kissed and did other things for the good feeling and nothing more…

She really hoped that Teru had wanted to kiss her for some reason beyond just…wanting to kiss someone.

That had been the greatest moment of her life up to that point, the time he kissed her, and maybe…maybe it could happen again. He was pulling her away from the others…over to some trees. His friends were 'oohing' again…and this did look like the kind of thing that people would….yeah. He was pulling her, leading her, over and…and she just….she held her braids down with her hand. She needed to keep calm and control her powers….and her hair…

This was…she needed to focus on controlling her powers. Once she had that figured out then she could focus on what this was.

"I-I'm sorry about them….just…wow. I never thought that I'd see you again and I was just shocked. I mean I would have told them to shut up and just…wow. You…you're here…Suzuki. Shigeko. Mob…whichever you like." Said Teru

"I-I'm Mob…mostly…but my given name is Shigeko…and my family name is Suzuki. I'm Suzuki Shigeko…but people call me Mob…in case you forgot." Said Mob. His aura flared out at that…and he reached out and took her hand. He laced his fingers in hers….which was REAL handholding….and…and she was really holding hands with him and…and….

Wow.

So much wow.

"Like I could ever forget you….you saved my life! And you got away, too. How did you get away? You told me you…lived…there." said Teru

"I…well I live in a lot of places…and I didn't run away. Like I said, my dad runs it and…oh! I'm vice president now. I got promoted." Said Mob. He let go of her hand. Her hand felt cold the second he let go of it. He…she wanted him to hold her hand. She had only held his hand for a few seconds…and she wanted…she wanted to do it again. To hold his hand and other things and…and now his aura was acting like it didn't like hers and….and…

And she had done something wrong.

"You…you're still in it…and you're in charge?" asked Teru. He let go of her hand and put up a gold colored barrier. She reached for him and touched it. He kept it up. She had done something…wrong. She had done something wrong and she didn't even know what.

"I'm only in charge sometimes, like if my dad is busy or something. I'm not in charge now. I mean I have power but…why are you putting up a barrier?" asked Mob

"No…" said Teru

"Um…yes you are. I can see it…and feel it." Said Mob

"No I'm not going with you! I am not getting kidnapped again! My family barely got out and-" said Teru

"No, no, no! I'm not here to kidnap you, honest! And I'm still sure that it was an accident…like they thought that you were an orphan or something. My dad is here scouting talent, he said, and that means looking for people to join us. I'm sure that when he realizes that you have a family that loves you-" said Mob

"No! I-I-I'm not going through that again!" said Teru

"I don't want you to! Just…um….maybe if you try running away again? I mean to a place that my dad hates. Like…um…he hates Korea and we can never go back for some reason…and he hates Osaka for some reason too…and he hates Seasoning City because he was born there just…um….don't yell at me! I don't want anything bad to happen to you either! And I never did! I just…I didn't even know that you were here and when I saw you I just…I was happy to see you and….and I'm still happy to see you now and…and whatever I did wrong I'm sorry!" said Mob. She sat down on the ground and pulled her knees up to her chest. She held her braids down with her hands. The grass around her grew high.

She wanted to go home.

She wanted to go home and hide. She had been wishing and hoping for this day for so long…and now she had messed it up. She had no idea how she had messed it up but she had…and she wished that he just…left her alone. That he just got away from her and soon, soon enough that she could forget this, and remember him how she had before. As the boy with the gold colored aura who had kissed her. As someone who came into her dreams sometimes and told her that he loved her. That was….that was better…

Better than this anyway.

Better than this boy who was mad at her. Better than this boy who's aura was scared and mad…at her…and she hadn't even done anything! She had just…he had just been holding her hand and…and now he was mad at her. That was…she didn't know what she had done…all she knew was that she felt bad now. She wanted to disappear…to turn invisible….to teleport away…or something.

She wanted to be anywhere but here.

"Hey…don't cry, Shigeko. I didn't mean to…to be…like that." Said Teru

"I'm not crying…I just want to be left alone right now. I'm sorry for whatever I did wrong and…and I just want to be left alone." Said Mob. She had been speaking Japanese, a language that they both had in common, but for some reason he wasn't listening. Instead of going away he just say down right next to her. She wiped her eyes…there were black smudges on her hands…she could see them…and then she couldn't.

Teru was holding her hands again.

He had sat down across from her and now he was holding both of her hands. His hair was kind of in his eyes…but she could still see them. They were a really pretty shade of blue…and his hair was a pretty shade of yellow…and his hoodie was a pretty combination of pink and blue. She knew that boys didn't like pink…but he did…and she liked him and…and his hoodie was so nice…even nicer than all of Hatori's sweaters put together…and he had really nice sweaters….

Boys in nice sweaters were good, she decided, very good….

"You didn't do anything wrong. I mean….you can't get out of it, I guess, and I just….I freaked out. I thought that you were going to…to bring me back there. I mean I've felt more people around than usual and…and I was being a jerk. I know that you wouldn't kidnap me." Said Teru

"Why would I do that? We don't kidnap people and also I helped you run away, before. Don't you remember?" asked Mob

"Like I could ever forget….and thank you….for that." Said Teru. He let go of one of her hands and then reached over and tiled her face up. She felt herself turning red…and the grass around them got higher. She couldn't help it. She had seen enough movies, and watched Shimazaki and Minegishi kiss enough times, to know what it meant when a boy did this. He did this when he was about to kiss you…or maybe not…

Maybe she was just being clueless again.

"You thanked me before." Said Mob. She swallowed hard, he was still touching her. One hand in hers and the other at the side of her face…and he was looking into her eyes like boys did when they liked you and….and he was doing a lot of the stuff that boys did when they liked you and…

And he…might have liked her….

"I know…and I want to thank you again." said Teru. He closed his eyes and leaned in close…like he wanted to kiss her…and she leaned in too…but then she pulled back. What if she had been wrong?! What if he wasn't about to kiss her and she was just being clueless. Minori had said that boys kissed girls and not the other way around…so if she kissed him first then she might have messed everything up!

"Um…what are you doing?" asked Mob

"I was going to kiss you but if you don't want to-" said Teru

"I want to! I mean that would be nice…I would like that." Said Mob. She leaned back in close…and she closed her eyes…and she waited. She waited and…and she kept her eyes closed and…and she heard Teru saying some stuff in German. She wished that she spoke German. When this was over she was learning all the German in the world. She wondered if he had said that he didn't want to kiss her. She opened her eyes and…

And now she was being kissed.

It was better than before. Before she had felt this flutter in her heart…and now it was back…but so was that shook up feeling she got sometimes in her stomach. That good shook up feeling that she used to get when she was around Hatori. She felt all shook up and…and the ground shook a little. She kept on leaning in and she let him kiss her…

It was better than before.

Before he had just sort of pressed his lips to hers. He was doing that but…his lips were….softer? it felt like he used chapstick…which was good…but also it was like he was more…relaxed. More like he just…he was moving a little…and his other hand was in hers. He moved the one from her face to the back of her head…and now he was playing with her hair…

That was kind of weird. She pulled away.

"So….good?" asked Teru.

"Um…" said Mob. He wasn't touching her hair anymore. That was good. She….didn't like that. That was a dad thing, touching her hair like that, and she did not want to think about her dad while she was kissing someone. That was just…the grossest thing that she had ever thought about in her life.

"If…if it wasn't good then you can tell me….but if it was good then you can tell me too. It was good, right?" asked Teru

"Y-Yes….that was…so good…wow! Sorry just…wow…" said Mob. She left out the part about the hair touching. That was just a thing that boys did when they kissed you. She had seen it in movies and also when Shimazaki kissed Minegishi. That was just something that happened when you kissed someone….and that was ok. She could get used to that.

"I've never made a girl 'wow' before…."said Teru.

"Huh?" asked Mob. He was touching her hair again…and her hand…and she wished that he would stop touching her hair…but she didn't want to say anything about that. About him touching her hair or…or about what he had just said. He had never made a girl 'wow' before…which was…he had done this with…other girls?

"S-Sorry just…um…do you want to do it again?" asked Teru

"…..that would be nice, yes." said Mob. She ….was not going to ask if he had done this with other girls. She didn't want the answer to that question. She just wanted to kiss him again. She wanted…she wanted to kiss him and…and there were other thoughts in her head too….but kissing was the thing that she wanted to do and that was what he had asked so…so now…

He kissed her again.

He was touching her hair again with one hand and her other hand with the other. She rested her hand on her leg….and now she was kind of…she knew what this feeling was but she had never had this caused by another person before. These alone sorts of feelings. His mouth over hers and his hand kind of on her leg. These were alone, lay in her bed in the middle of the night, feelings. These were lock the bathroom door and try not to move a lot feelings. These were not out in public feelings!

Well they were now, obviously, since she was having them.

"Good?" asked Teru

"Yes…" said Mob. She wiped her mouth with her hand. There had been…a lot of spit there. It was like he had been trying to swallow her lips with his lips or something. There had been a lot of moving and spit and…and while it was happening it hadn't been gross…and even now it wasn't that gross. Having someone else's spit on her. She had never had anyone else's spit on her before…but it wasn't that bad…not really.

Kind of weird though….

"Still wow?" asked Teru

"So much 'wow'…just…this is the best birthday ever." Said Mob. So it had felt a little weird…the part where he touched her hair more so than the part where he tried to swallow her lips with hers….but this was still the best birthday ever. First she got to be twins with Minegishi and now this! She liked it, being twelve, she hadn't even been twelve for one full day and she already loved it.

"Today's your birthday?" asked Teru

"Yes…I'm twelve today." Said Mob. Teru smiled at her and then he looked down. Then up at her face again and then down again. She could tell that she was being looked at…she could tell by his aura…and also the path his eyes took. She wanted…she wanted to pull her hoodie closed…but also she wanted…to do something that she hadn't ever wanted to do before…well she had but…well not with a person and…

And she stayed still just to be safe…just so that she didn't make the wrong choice.

"Hey um…since it's your birthday and all…um…do you mind if I try something….something that you'll like! I mean that you'll probably like. I mean nobody's complained before…sorry!" said Teru

"Um…ok….sure…that's…ok…" said Mob. She really did not want to think about him doing this with other girls. She knew that they weren't together…she had no idea what they ever were now….but she knew that she did not want to think about him kissing another girl like this. She wanted to keep on kissing him…and she wanted to feel good…and she wanted him to feel good too. Him feeling good….that also made her feel good…and…

And thinking about him with other girls did not make her feel good…so she wasn't going to think about that.

Instead she was going to think about how he was kissing her again. This time there was still a lot of spit, and he was still touching her hair, and so far…it felt a little bit weird but not anything that was too weird. She tried to match the way he kissed her. Minori had told her that you had to match the kissing rhythm with the boy or it wouldn't be good…and she knew a lot about kissing boys. More than Mob did. This was only her second kiss….third….fourth? She didn't really know.

She forgot how to count.

How was anyone supposed to remember how to count when someone else's tongue was in her mouth? She could feel…yes. That was his tongue. He had licked her lips, she had been surprised, and then he had just let himself in. He tasted like…spit? Not bad but…like…another person's tongue? She didn't know. She didn't have much of a chance to think about it…since she was having a lot of trouble thinking. There was someone else's tongue in her mouth and that made it kind of hard to think.

Kind of really hard.

His tongue was all the way in her mouth and her tongue…well it didn't really have anywhere to go. It was like he was trying to fight her tongue and he had won, there hadn't been any contest…but it was like he hadn't realized it yet. Also their teeth scraped….and that was a weird feeling and sound. Also their auras were touching…and that was weird too.

At least he had stopped touching her hair.

His hand left her hair…and then went down the side of her neck and then down to her…chest and….um….ok. That was…he was touching her…ok then. That was…a thing that was happening to her. That was…she knew what this was…and at least she could tell Minori that she wasn't a virgin at doing this anymore…not that she wanted to tell Minori. She didn't want to tell anyone. She didn't even want Teru to know and he was the one doing it to her!

This was…a thing that was happening to her body right now.

There was a hand on her left one…and then another hand on her right one...and now he was kind of…she felt like she was an avocado. Like he was trying to test and see if they were good for guacamole or something. It didn't feel good. It just felt weird…and also kind of…it didn't make sense. The fact that he was touching her, that he liked her enough to do this to her, felt good….but the reality of what he was doing made her feel like…weird. Like really weird and….and she didn't even know why he wanted to. She didn't have anything there to feel…well she sort of did since he was definitely grabbing onto them….but she still looked like a first grader…

She felt sort of like a first grader.

She felt like that time when she was in the first grade and it had been White Day. How she had felt so good that she hadn't known what to say or do….but also…also she felt weird. She didn't know what to do. Not how to feel or just…what to do. There really wasn't any rhythm for her to match, not anymore, he was pretty much just trying to keep her tongue pinned down. She didn't know what to do with her hands either. He was squeezing her breasts really hard…and also….did she do the same? To his chest? She had seen Minegishi do that to Shimazaki…

So she tried that.

She mostly just put her hands on his chest and…alright. This was nice. He didn't feel like Shimazaki did…but Shimazaki was all Shimazaki…and why was she thinking about Shimazaki!? Just because he had a really nice chest…maybe…but Teru did too. She could feel his heart beating and…and that was a first. She didn't know if this was a thing that you could be a virgin at, touching a boy's chest, but if this was one of those things you could be a virgin at then…then she wasn't a virgin at this anymore….

But that was the last of not wanting to be a virgin that she wanted to be.

"I-I should go!" said Mob. One of his hands had gone from her chest to her leg where her dress had ridden up. Because she was sitting on the ground. That was why and….and she just…she had to go!

So she ran away.

She ran all the way back to Minegishi. The rest of the world was just a blur around her as she ran. She didn't look back. She just ran all the way back to Minegishi. Minegishi was reading a book like everything was normal…but everything was not normal! She was not normal! She was not in any way normal! She had just kissed a boy…who was not her boyfriend…and she had liked parts of it…but other parts had been weird…and now she felt weird….and it felt like the whole world was looking at her…

And she wanted to go home!

"Mob…you alright?" asked Minegishi. They felt her long before they saw her. She was bright pink, her aura, with the usual amount of blue…and her face was bright pink, too. They wouldn't have been surprised if her lips had started turning blue. She was freaked out. Minegishi didn't know if this was good or bad…

If this was bad then…well Minegishi hoped that his parents, that little blond boy's, hadn't gotten too attached to him.

"I-I….I want to go home." Said Mob. She did NOT want to talk about this. Not here when she was out in public and everyone was watching her and listening to her and…and…and NOBODY COULD KNOW! Not about how she felt…not about how scared…hoe excited…how…how hot and how cold and how…how…

How weird she felt.

She was…she felt…she felt so weird. She wanted…she wanted to go home and watch Frozen. That was what….what she had to do. She always felt ok when she watched Frozen…and she wanted to feel ok again. She wanted…she wanted to feel anything other than this…than this feeling she had. This combination of good and bad and excited and scared…it wasn't a good feeling…and it was a good feeling and…

And she wanted…she wanted to feel ok. She understood ok.

"In a second, I feel like someone's about to get their ass kicked…" said Minegishi. There. That little….Mob did not need this shit in her life. Minegishi blamed themselves, of course, but they were not above taking this out on the little monster who had dared to make Mob-

"No, no, you don't have to. I just…want to go home, ok?" asked Mob. She reached over and held onto Minegishi. Her hand went around their wrist and her aura went around theirs. They were her best friend, she knew them, and she knew what it meant when they looked like that. When they looked like they were ready for a fight…

There really wasn't any reason to fight….Mob was ok. She felt weird but she was still ok.

"Are you sure that you're ok? Because if someone makes you do anything that you don't want to-" said Minegishi

"What?! No, no…it's not like that just…um….I did some stuff and…and I feel weird and I want to go home." Said Mob

"Good weird or bad weird?" asked Minegishi

"Good…and bad at the same time. Like…like it's a lot and…and it feels like everyone's looking at me…and stuff…and I just…want to be in a place where people can't look at me." Said Mob

"Alright, I understand. Come on, let's get you home." Said Minegishi. Well that was a relief. They knew what she was feeling, they had been there before….well they had been a lot of place before. They had no idea where it was, exactly, Mob had gone…and this was not the time to ask. Wherever she had gone it had been somewhere a lot more intimate, physically, than she had ever been before…and on the one hand good for her. Minegishi had sat through enough of Mob's movies to know that she was a ball of hormones…but also not so good for her since she, apparently, hadn't been ready…

Well it seemed to Minegishi that she hadn't been.

They didn't ask her on the way home. They knew that she wanted to be somewhere alone and that was where Minegishi was going to take her. Poor Mob. Even on her birthday it was hard to remember just how young she was. Twelve was not a good age….the next six to eight years of her life were going to be fairly terrible actually. Poor Mob….poor, poor, poor Mob….

But, yeah, this was what Minegishi was here for. Part of the whole 'caring for another human being' thing that they had spent the better part of their life avoiding.

"Want to go to your house? I think those two should be up by now…if Hatori was ever asleep. I swear to God his blood must be almost fully energy drink at this point." Said Minegishi

"Yeah…the red kind…even though he likes green…and um…yeah. We can go to my house." Said Mob. She really did not want to have to talk to any boys for a while…or dad. Dad wasn't home yet though, which was good, because she had no idea how to explain any of this. Her feelings must have been written on her aura….and dad was good at reading auras…but bad at reading feelings…

So it was a good thing that he wasn't home.

Even if, the minute she had gotten home, Minegishi stopped being twins with her. They pulled their dress up over their head and said that they had makeup to scrub off. Mob didn't mind…it was nice being twins with them but everything had to come to an end and other sad things. Also they told her to put Frozen on….and she really needed some Frozen in her life and stuff….

She wondered if Elsa ever had these problems.

Elsa had powers but then she was afraid of her powers because she almost killed her sister and then she ran away but then she got better. If Elsa could control her powers so could Mob. She had that problem, she understood that problem, and even without being a real person Elsa had helped her…but Mob couldn't see Elsa having this problem. She had never kissed a boy before, she didn't know any boys, and also she might have liked girls like people on the internet thought….but not Anna because sisters didn't do that...but Elsa didn't have a boy who loved her…Anna did…

Did Anna have these problems?

She had read plenty of stories on the internet where Anna and Kristoff got married and had a baby…and did all the stuff to get the baby…but never once had Anna felt the way that she felt now. All…hot and cold…all over. She wanted to run away and hide but also…also she wanted to stand up on her couch and start shouting 'a boy wanted to kiss me' over and over again until someone knocked on her door to complain…or dad got home and told her that she wasn't allowed to kiss boys. He had never come out and said that but…yeah…that did not seem like the kind of thing that he would have been ok with. So she didn't stand on her couch and start shouting….but she wanted to…she wanted to do a lot of things…

Like watch Frozen.

"Play the movie, Mob…and hang on." Said Minegishi as they sat down beside her. There was a static charge to the air around her. She was all worked up…but at least not upset…which was good. Well her being worked up wasn't good but she wasn't upset which was…well that was good for Mob and the rest of humanity too. Still though, this was her birthday and she didn't need to feel like that on her birthday….

God, Minegishi was going to hell for even thinking this…weren't they?

"For what?" asked Mob as Minegishi dug through their bag. She wondered what they were looking for. She could have helped. She needed…she needed to help someone. She needed to help her friend. She just…she needed to help them. She had to help…to be helpful…to be herself.

"Let me just…God, this bag is a mess…here we go. For you, happy birthday." Said Minegishi as they found what they were looking for.

"But…you said about moderation." Said Mob as Minegishi handed her a blunt. That was like a joint but bigger and made from cigarillo paper…she could smell it from here that was the pineapple this time. She didn't like rolling those, you wasted a whole cigarillo and those were like a bunch of cigarettes rolled together in a delicious paper. Seemed like a waste to roll flower into it…but she was probably being clueless again since Shimazaki had laughed at her when she said that.

"It's your birthday and you're all worked up so…yeah. Have at it." Said Minegishi

"We should share." Said Mob as she took it from Minegishi. This was her birthday…and she was always up for this. She just didn't ask because Minegishi had always been saying 'no' lately.

"Alright, but you go first." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't have to be told twice. She took it from there and inhaled like she was worried about them taking it away from her…which to be fair was something that she should have worried about. Mob…was not on a good path right now…and Minegishi was probably doing too little too late…but they had to try.

Just not now. Right now Mob needed this.

"This is really good…thank you." Said Mob

"You're welcome. So, are you ready to talk about what happened? Or does this die with you?" asked Minegishi

"Um…nothing bad happened…and um…cam you keep a secret? Because…um….I don't want to make you keep my secrets but if my dad finds out about this then I know he'll be upset." Said Mob

"Mob, I don't talk to your dad. In fact I actively avoid talking to your dad…but yeah, I can keep a secret." Said Minegishi

"Even from Shimazaki? Because I know that he can't keep a secret. If you tell him something then it's the same as telling the whole world." Said Mob

"Ryou is actually pretty good at keeping things in the vault when he has to….but yeah, I won't tell him." said Minegishi

"Ok…um…Teru kissed me and I felt weird! But weird like…not like the first time, he's the same boy who I helped escape but…but this was weird because he kissed me weird like he was trying to fight my tongue and…and also he touched my uh…I'm not a virgin at being felt up anymore! And just…please don't tell anyone…ever…even if they pluck out all of your eyelashes and then your eyes will have nothing at all to protect them…um…if that ever happens I have false eyelashes or you can just have mine but…um…don't tell anyone!" said Mob. She took a big inhale after she said that, as big as she could do, so big that her lungs started to hurt. She coughed more than she ever had in her entire life as she exhaled. Minegishi patted her on the back.

Which was good.

She didn't know what Minegishi would say. She knew that they wouldn't be mad at her…but aside from that she had no idea what was going to happen. Maybe Minegishi was going to tell her that she had been stupid. What if Teru was the only boy who would ever want to kiss her? She hadn't ever had any other boy…besides Shimazaki but he might have been kidding…but still. What if nobody ever liked her ever again? It wasn't like she was ever going to see Teru again…since he was going to run away again…and…

And this was hard. Very hard.

"Alright…your secret is safe with me…and just to be clear, Mob, you wanted to do all of that, right? Because I am fully prepared to-" said Minegishi

"No, no, I wanted to…I mean I didn't want him to touch my leg under my dress so I ran away…but everything else was…ok. Not the hair touching, though, that was weird…like…like how my dad touches my hair. That part was weird but everything else…well it was weird but in a good way…and stuff…um…yeah." Said Mob

"Well…that's…all perfectly normal. The way you're feeling. You thought you were ready for something but you weren't and…um…way to know your boundaries, Mob. I mean it would have been better if you snapped him in half for trying that with you…when did kids get this bold….but you knew your boundary so…good for you." Said Minegishi

"So…so it's ok that I ran away? And also…also I'll never see him again….and I don't know how I feel about that. He likes me and we can't be together because everyone keeps thinking he's an orphan and trying to kidnap him…and he doesn't want to join Claw anyway…so maybe I should have stayed…other girls would have stayed." Said Mob

"So? Other girls would have done a lot of things. Some of them would have wrung his neck for trying what he did and others would have thrown him down right there and seen what he was made of. Don't think about what other girls would have done. Worry about what you would have done. Trust me on this." said Minegishi

"Minegishi…what would have done? If you were me?" asked Mob quietly. She didn't know if this was ok to ask. She was asking about…things, maybe even all the things. Minegishi was her only friend who was a girl…well who had been born a girl…who had done all the things. She just…she wanted to know which of the things Minegishi had done….and which of the things that she should have done.

"Mob…that's one hell of a question." Said Minegishi. That was….a lot. A lot of things that Minegishi did not think that Mob needed to know about. They had told her a very watered down version of their life…and of course she had been asking them questions for years…questions which they had told her that she was too young to know…but she was older now…

So, yeah, maybe she was ready to hear about…some stuff….not all of it…but some of it.

"Oh….I'm sorry. I just…I shouldn't have asked. I'm sorry if I said the wrong thing." Said Mob

"No, no, it's not the wrong thing just…I made a lot of mistakes when I was your age. I…was a different person than I am now. When I was your age I was doing a lot more than kissing…and not always because I wanted to. Actually wanted to. When I was your age I…was looking for what I was missing…I guess…from other people…and those other people were….a hell of a lot older than me and not the best sort of people…or even the decent sort…so yeah. I would have done a lot of things that you are not, at least I don't think, emotionally ready to do." Said Minegishi

"Do you mean…all the stuff?" asked Mob quietly. She looked around. If dad had been there then he would have…not been happy…but she knew that he wasn't there…but what if he all of a sudden showed up at home?! Shimazaki did know how to teleport…

"Yeah, all the stuff…and the fact that you still say 'all the stuff' tells me that you're not emotionally ready, alright? Now take your turn and pass it." Said Minegishi

"So…I did the right thing by running away?" asked Mob as she handed the blunt to Minegishi. Mob…still didn't know. What if she had wasted her only chance at having someone who wanted to kiss her? What if she really was going to end up growing old with her dad like he had been promising her for her entire life it felt like?

"The right thing for yourself, yes. Never you mind what other people would have done in your shoes." said Minegishi

"But…um…I was thinking that….um….what if nobody ever wants to kiss me ever again?" asked Mob

"What? Mob, trust me. Plenty of guys are going to want to kiss you. You're nice, you're cute, and that's pretty much all they ask for at your age. Most guys your age aren't that bold, though, so keep that in mind. Guys my age are that bold…but you should stay away from guys my age. Just…don't even go there." said Minegishi

"I wasn't going to kiss Shimazaki!" said Mob suddenly. Did they know about all the stuff that Shimazaki had said to her before?! She was not…she was never going to do that with her best friend's boyfriend! Even if he hadn't been Shimazaki…just…no!

"You volunteering that information makes me think that you want to kiss Ryou…and that's…understandable." Said Minegishi. No. They did not need another one. Sho was bad enough. Mob…yeah. This was not going to happen. They could not survive Mob and her little brother being all…like this.

"I-I don't! I think that he might want to kiss me…he said back when I was ten that he's kiss me in three o four years…and it's been two years already….but I don't want that! I mean he might be kidding and-" said Mob

"He isn't kidding and please for the love of God don't enter into anything physical with Ryou." Said Minegishi. That was….a conversation for another day. One which they going to have with Ryou. They were going to tell him to knock it off and Mob…well she was already starting puberty and all that came with it…and Ryou was there and didn't care how young she was…God…

This was their life…great.

"Because he's your boyfriend and you'd be mad at me for stealing him from you?" asked Mob. That made sense. She knew that Shimazaki and Minegishi were in a kind of relationship where they were allowed to kiss other people…but that made no sense…and also even if Minegishi gave her permission she still wouldn't have messed with their friendship like that.

"What? No. That's not how that…neither of us belongs to the other…but…Mob, it would be weird for me. Very weird. It would be several different kinds of weird for me if you were doing…anything…with Ryou. At your age or even if you were older. Just…don't ever take Ryou up on his offer…well I mean I can't tell you what to do with your body but…it wouldn't be smart…and I know that you're smarter than that. You're too smart for him." said Minegishi

"I wouldn't even if he wasn't your boyfriend. I mean I like the way he looks….and he can be very nice but…I don't like him like that. Also friends don't do that to friends…ever. I mean I wouldn't do that to Sho either since he's in love with Shimazaki…ok? Just…even if he looks nice and stuff…and sometimes my brain makes me think about that….I would never do that to you." Said Mob

"Mob…you're a good friend." Said Minegishi. They didn't know what they had done to deserve a friend like Mob…or maybe Mob was the one who had done something to deserve a friend like them. Not good things…either….but that made no sense. This was Mob. She was a drop of goodness sent down to Earth. Mob…God. They just…they looked down at their bracelet. Best friends forever, that was what they were, and part of being best friends with someone was…being the bearer of bad news.

"Thank you, you are too." Said Mob. She didn't know what she had done to get a friend like Minegishi. Someone who was always there for her no matter what. Someone who was never going to leave her. She knew that Minegishi wasn't just going to run away in the middle of the night and leave her all alone…no matter what she did. They were best friends forever. Just like the bracelets said.

"No, I'm not. I'm really not. I…have to tell you something. Just…finish that blunt….and then…well once that's done I'll tell you…something that I should have told you days ago." Said Minegishi

"What are you going to tell me?" asked Mob. She didn't know why Minegishi was being so serious all of a sudden….it was kind of weird. She had just told them all kinds of stuff, stuff that nobody else could ever know, and now…they were going to tell her something? But what?

"It's about your brother." Said Minegishi. They…were going to ruin her birthday…they didn't want to ruin her birthday but they had to. Mob trusted them and…and they were not going to break that trust. No, she already had enough people in her life who broke her trust…and Minegishi was not going to be one of them.

They would ruin her birthday, yes, but they would not break her trust.


	501. Imprisoned

Ritsu Kageyama was ten years and ten months old.

In those ten years and ten months mom and dad had warned him never to wander far from home. They had told him, before, that he could get hurt. That he could get kidnapped. That he could be snatched up off the street and they would never see him again. Well he hadn't been snatched up off the streets, no, he had been snatched up from the woods. He had been snatched up and carried away and now he was in this prison cell far from home without mom or dad or his phone or…he even missed Tsubomi of all people. Playing house all afternoon would have been better than being here…all alone…

Well not totally alone.

"Ok…ok. We're going to be ok. We're going to be fine. We're…nothing's going to happen to us, ok? Just…stay calm." Said Reigen as he paced back and forth as best he could on a rolled ankle. Not good for running away…or even walking away…not that there was any 'away' for them to go to. Well now…they were well and truly fucked now weren't they? Reigen knew that, if it came down to it, he could always run away…well he had known that. It had been this…truth…he had carried with him for his entire life. When things went south he ran away. When the other kids teased him about being half he just left whatever group or club it was that he had joined. When school got to be overwhelming he left and got a job. When that job became too soul sucking for him he went and started up this psychic agency. When that got to be too much he had been about to throw in the towel and become a private investigator…but then this kid had come into his life…

This kid who he should have been there for.

This kid…Ritsu. Ritsu was sitting there in the corner of this prison cell…and that was what this was. This was a prison cell in a room full of prison cells. There were four bunk beds, a sink with a mirror over it, and a toilet. The mirror was just polished metal and it was built solidly into the wall. No breaking it and getting out. No buying enough time for Ritsu to escape. Reigen…he should have been there for Ritsu. He should have taken him seriously when he talked about these people….and he should have thrown Ritsu over his shoulder and carried him away when he had the chance. He had failed Ritsu as a friend, mentor, and occasional afterschool babysitter….God….the Kageyamas were going to kill him. He had ONE job, to take care of Ritsu, and he had failed….

There was no running away from this…there had always been the option to run away….but now there wasn't….

"I am calm." Said Ritsu. He was…he really was. This was…Reigen was the one freaking out, not him, and only because he didn't know what was going to happen. Ritsu knew what was going to happen. He had read about it. People talked about this group, Claw, all the time on the internet. How they gave people psychic powers…by torturing them. How they brought you to the edge of death and then pulled you back over and over again. How in exchange for powers you had to serve their leader for the rest of your life. Also they dissected you alive, it said, sometimes for research. There were holes too where they left you to die if you betrayed the organization. Also they supposedly shot people into space just for fun…

The internet wasn't always reliable.

But Ritsu…he sort of knew what was going to happen to him. He was never going to see his mom and dad again. He was never going to have to deal with dad's bad jokes and mom's constant 'Ritsu, study hard' and 'Ritsu, be careful' and 'Ritsu, you're my baby boy and I love you' and stuff. He would never see his friends…well his friend. Tsubomi had been really weird lately but she was still his friend…and he would never see her again. He would never have to play house with her…and he sort of…wished that they'd played that again even though she had been making it really weird lately. He'd never walk with her to school again…and he'd never go to school again either…and he had a book report due on Friday…and he had a Science test tomorrow….but…but he would never have to worry about any of that ever again…

He would never have to worry about anything ever again…because he was here now….

"I mean it…I'm not going to let anything happen to you. I'm the adult here and…and I'm not going to let anything happen to you. I'm here for you and…and I'm going to figure out a way…a way out…even if I have to break down these bars." Said Reigen

"You can't." said Ritsu

"Who says I can't?" asked Reigen

"I saw that you can't. You can barely walk and, anyway, if you could kick down those bars then they wouldn't be there. There's no escape. There's nothing that we can do." Said Ritsu

"Don't be so defeatist. The Ritsu I know would never say that. What about…about taking down the evil organization? What about-" said Reigen

"This is the evil organization and there's no way for me to take them down. They got me. They got the both of us. At least I'll be ok, I'm an esper, but you….well you won't be. I mean sometimes I can kind of feel something from you but that's spiritual powers and these people probably don't care about spiritual powers. You're probably going to end up in the lab or something….and I'll probably be recruited since I already have my powers….and that's it. This is it." Said Ritsu. He didn't know wat Reigen thought that he was going to accomplish by pacing around like that. It was over. They were captured and now horrible things were going to happen to them and…and at least he and Sho could hang out now…the thought doesn't make him feel as warm inside as it used to….

He should have listened.

Sho had told him to stay away and…and maybe part of him had come just to see him…or something. To take down the organization that owned him so they could be friends or something. Stupid stuff like that. This was all his fault. He wished that he hadn't ragged Reigen into this. He should have just come alone. If he had come alone then…then he would have had to worry only about himself….and also he may have been able to escape. Reigen's ankle was all messed up. Even if Ritsu managed to get his powers to listen, they were being especially disobedient right now, Reigen wouldn't have been able to keep up. Not in sneaking out of here, not in walking through the woods, and not in running and hiding for the rest of their lives so that Claw could never find them again. Ritsu wasn't going to leave him behind, either…

Even if there had been some way to escape Ritsu still wouldn't have ever left Reigen behind.

"Ritsu…come on. Don't be like that." Said Reigen as he hobbled over to where Ritsu was sitting. He sat beside him on the bunk and put his arm around him. There was a…blankness…to him that Reigen didn't like so see. Ritsu was still only ten, not even eleven yet, and he should have been yelling or crying or breaking things not just…sitting there and solemnly accepting his fate. This kid…when they were getting out of here he was figuring out what was up with this kid. Why he was so…like this.

When, not if, when they got out….because they had to get out. There was no other option.

"Ritsu…hey. Come on. We'll get through this. We just have to…we just have to stay calm and be positive. I can probably….probably talk my way out of this. I can talk my way out of anything. Did I ever tell you about the time I sold more laundry soap than anyone else in my class?" asked Reigen

"No." said Ritsu. He scooted closer to Reigen. He talked a lot when he was nervous…and he had every right to be nervous. They had been kidnapped. Ritsu…well he was maybe feeling a little nervous too….and also it was…kind of cold in there…so he let Reigen put an arm over his shoulders….and he let himself scoot closer to Reigen, too.

"Well back when I was in my second year of middle school they had us selling detergent to pay for this class trip to a hot spring resort. They couldn't get the school to pay for it…bunch of cheapskates…but anyway we had to go door to door selling this really crappy laundry detergent…and let me tell you this was the worst detergent that I've ever used in my life. I sold some to my mom and….yeah. All my clothes smelled like the inside of an old lady's purse." Said Reigen

"Like mothballs? Who wants detergent that smells like mothballs?" asked Ritsu

"Mothballs? No, like flowers and perfume….who's grandma smells like mothballs?" asked Reigen

"My grandma smells like mothballs. She lives out in the country and they have a lot of moths there…we go every summer to see her…and to see my cousin Tobio too. He always comes with my aunt and uncle when we visit grandma. He lives really far away…he's ok. He always makes me play volleyball with him, though, and he's really serious about it….I never liked playing with him but…well I mean…it wasn't so bad…" said Ritsu. That was something that he hadn't even thought about. The summer trip to the country to see grandma. Cousin Tobio came too...and he was kind of a jerk but he was the only cousin Ritsu had….and he would….not only would he never see mom and dad again but…he would never see the rest of his family again either…

He wiped his eyes.

"Hey, come on. Who's telling stories here? Me or you?" asked Reigen. He took back the stuff about wanting Ritsu to cry. Turns out he didn't want Ritsu to cry. Turns out Ritsu crying made everything worse. Ritsu…he was the reason that Ritsu was crying…and he just…he needed….he needed to…to do….to do something…

So he did the only thing in this world that he was good at. He talked.

"You." Said Ritsu. He didn't want to talk. If he started to talk then maybe…maybe he would do something stupid, like start crying. He couldn't cry. Crying wouldn't get him out of this. Crying wouldn't make these people, the ones who kidnapped him, feel so bad for him that they let him go. He had to keep calm and…and figure out how to get…to get out….

"Right. So anyway, yeah, there was no way in hell that I was going to sell all of this detergent. I would have quit and just played sick the day of the trip but our class rep was really, REALLY, serious about everyone doing their part. So you know what I did?" asked Reigen

"Used your own money to buy the detergent and then you threw it away when you got home?" asked Ritsu. That's what he would have done. That was what he did, actually, when his class had to sell candy and stuff….and he would never have to deal with that again…even though he kind of did want to deal with that again…because at least he knew what he had been dealing with there….and he knew what he was dealing with here…but not really and…

And he wanted to go home.

"Close but no. I decided to do a live demonstration of how 'amazing' this detergent was. So I got some disappearing ink and-" said Reigen. Ritsu put a hand over his mouth and pointed towards the door of their cell. There, getting closer, was the sound of footsteps…a person was coming…

Maybe someone who could be reasoned with.

Reigen knew that there was no jam that he couldn't talk his way out of. He knew that he had to bring his 'a' game here. For Ritsu. He had to at least buy Ritsu enough time to get out. He didn't care what happened to him. He was almost thirty, he'd lived his life, but Ritsu was just a kid. He had so much time left and so much to do…and Reigen hoped that his lectures about never smoking had taken affect….and he hoped that Ritsu made it far enough in life that he got to make the choice about whether or not he started smoking.

He had to get Ritsu out of here.

Maybe these were reasonable people. Sure they kept prisoners…and were a part of a cult…but maybe he could convince these people that he and Ritsu had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. That they had just been doing some hiking in the woods…in a suit and dress shoes…and that they had no idea that this…evil base thing…was out here. If that didn't work then maybe he could convince them that Ritsu had nothing to do with anything and that they should just let him go…and if that didn't work then there was always the almost green belt he had in judo…

He kind of wished that he had stuck with judo now…because he totally could have taken that cult guy!

There was a cult guy coming in now. He had a red and black uniform on with that same symbol….the one that Ritsu had shown Reigen. Those symbols, and ones that looked like it, were all around town. They were in little, hidden away, places. Carved into trees at the park. Scribbled in the backs of library books. Scratched into bathroom stall doors. There was even one written in cement down by that fancy gifted high school. Reigen…he wished that he had paid more attention…and when this was over he was paying all the attention in the world.

When, not if, when.

"Dinnertime prisoners!" said Claw Member Sato Isamu Level Three as he pushed the meal cart in to the newest prisoners. This was going to be great! More friends made them stronger, Mob had said so. Friendship was the only true show of strength in this world. They were stronger with friends than they were against enemies and that was why once they had enough manpower and money they were going to make the entire world their friends!

But first it was time to start with these two prisoners!

"Don't eat it, it could be poisoned." Whispered Ritsu. Reigen would eat anything, he was like a human garbage disposal, but this was not the time for that. Ritsu wasn't going to eat a single bite…even though it did smell good. Two trays were slid under the slot in the cell door. There was miso soup and white rice…fish….salad…even some fried pork. There were paper cups of what smelled like green tea, too, and also…a lot of milk cartons. White milk…and then chocolate milk…and then strawberry milk…and he was not going to drink the milk. That was how they got you, Ritsu had read, they drugged the milk to make you more suggestable.

To be safe he wasn't going to eat anything…even if he was really hungry…it was around dinnertime…and mom had been fixing pork curry….

"Don't be silly, little boy! We won't poison you, we want to be your friends. That's all. We want the both of you to join our friendship." Said Sato. He made sure to smile a lot, Mob said that smiles made everyone's day a little brighter. That was another important thing to do. Always smile, always be happy, always brighten people's days, and always make friends with everyone you met. When they took over the world then the only feeling that anyone would ever feel was happiness and everyone would be friends with everyone else!

Also there would be plentiful milk and jello for all!

"Yeah, you guys have a funny way of showing it." Said Reigen as he tapped the bars that held him in. That guy…his building was clearing missing a few bricks. Normal people did not smile like that….but this was not the place for normal people. This was some kind of new religion…evil cult…with deep ties to the yakuza…

Reigen was not in over his head. Not at all.

"Don't worry, the cell is just until we figure out what to do with the both of you. The Division Leader wants to keep you here but the President might want something else…and the both of you need to properly Awaken anyway…but don't worry! It's not so bad! Eventually you'll stop feeling anything at all. You won't even be able to tell if you're alive or dead!" said Sato. It had been worth it. Not only did he have powers now, he had a bright red aura like everyone else, he could move a playing card across the table in just under an hour without touching it once. That was amazing…and not only did he have powers but he was a part of the biggest friend group in the world…and Mob loved him too! She loved everyone and everyone loved her and she would take care of all of them for the rest of their lives…

She was such a good person….he got a little teary eyed…she was the best person in the whole world next to the President….

"Yeah that sounds great and all but we really aren't meant to be here. I mean we were just hiking in the woods and we had no idea that this…church…was out here. We're very sorry to have intruded on your house of worship and, honestly, we wouldn't be any good for your religion. I mean I'm a Buddhist on my father's side and that kid…he's…something…" said Reigen

"Shinto." Said Ritsu. He wasn't really anything but mom and dad were Shinto so maybe it was genetic…not that these people cared about religion. They only cared about worshipping their president and his family.

"Right. So, yeah. We don't know your religion or-" said Reigen

"It's not very complicated at all…and we have lots of Buddhists and Shintos too. If you need a religious holiday off then you just have to tell Mob and she'll make it an official Claw holiday. We get Christmas off, Hanukah, both the solstices, Buddha's birthday, Setsuban, children's day, lunar new year, normal new year, a bunch of feast days for Christians, golden week…that one's not religious but we have it off, Mob's birthday, Sho's birthday, the President's Birthday, all of Mob's very closest friend's birthdays, the first day each Disney Park is opened, but not the Emperor's birthday because that's a direct affront to the Suzuki family." Said Sato

"So your bosses are the Suzuki family?" asked Reigen. That was the same family, maybe, that owned the Suzuki Holding Corporation…the same corporation that owned a big chunk of Seasoning City….Ritsu had been right. The conspiracy went deep…

"They aren't just out bosses, no, they were sent down from the heavens to lead us. God, or the Gods, bestowed upon our President the greatest power that the world has ever seen. He's going to use that power to remake the world in what it's always been meant to be. The President took some of his power and made his two children. He has his firstborn son, Sho, and he's…around….and also there's his daughter Mob. Mob is the living avatar of the goddess of kindness and friendship. She loves us all and we all love her. We live by her kindness and one day if we work hard enough we can be her very close friends…sorry to cry….I just love her so much…" said Sato as he wiped his eyes.

"R…Right….." said Reigen. He was confident in his verbal sparring abilities…but with sane people. This guy…was messed up. He was pretty thoroughly messed up and…Reigen…for once in his life he had no idea how he was going to talk his way out of this one.

"You'll meet her one day. She'll come. She'll come…the President will send us his daughter…his first born daughter. He already gave us his second born daughter….she's cute…and his firstborn son so it's only a matter of time before he sends us Mob…and then everyone can be…we can all be happy…you'll both be so happy. If you make it through the Awakening. Not everyone does but it's ok. If you leave your physical body behind then you can stay here as a spirit. Like this guy I came in with, he was called Sato too, he didn't make it but that's ok because-" said Sato

"You're crazy!" said Ritsu. He couldn't listen to this. If he had to listen to another word, just one more word, his brain was going to melt out through his ears. This was…he had no idea how anyone could have been so insane!

"Ritsu, be….polite…" said Reigen. He was going to talk to Ritsu, later, about getting on your captor's good side. They needed to get these people to believe that they were all about….whatever the hell this was. These people thought that he and Ritsu were a good fit? Alright then, he and Ritsu would be the best damn cultists that this group had ever seen! Then, when they gained their captor's trust, they could make a run for it.

"This is the craziest thing I've ever heard! This is-" said Ritsu

"You'll come around, don't worry. I have faith in the both of you. You'll see. Now eat your dinner, there won't be any more food until breakfast…and I hope you like omelets because that's all we have for breakfast." Said Sato

"That sounds great! We love omelets…and praying to living Gods…and red jumpsuits too! And wearing blue ribbons!" said Reigen. He nudged Ritsu when he said that. This was…when Reigen got out of this he was writing a book. A nice tell all book about his time in the psychic cult. Then he was getting out of the psychic business, going back to law school, and also at some point he was taking a babysitting class too because he could not let this happen ever again. From now on he was being better to Ritsu…how could he ever have doubted him?

"Really?! Great, this is perfect! I'll can't believe I got you to come around so fast…I might just get a promotion for this! Maybe they'll let me be one of the people who shines the Suzuki family's shoes…" said Sato. Wow! Mob was going to be so happy with him. She didn't promote people personally but…well she would be happy with him and that would be even better than any promotion. Even the guy who shined their shoes…or even better…the guy who cut the President's hair. That was a good job, you got to keep the hair…though he would much rather have kept Mob's hair than her father's. He could have made a doll of her out of it and it would have been almost as good as having her near…

But that was insane. She never cut her hair.

"Yeah, we are one hundred percent on board for this. So you can get us fitted for our red jumpsuits right away." said Reigen. He had seen this, once, in a TV show. The trick was to identify with your captors…no. That was that thing he'd seen about Stockholm syndrome…and he had to make sure that they didn't catch that….what had they said in that thing about cults? If you were in a cult like situation you had to gain your captors trust and then escape the first chance you got…

He winced.

He wasn't going to be running away anytime soon…but Ritsu could. Ritsu could run away and get help…yeah. That would work. Ritsu could send help and then someone could do something about this. To think that there was a cult like this just…sitting out here in the woods. How many people had stumbled onto this insanity? How many people…he'd think about that later. Not now.

Now he just had to get Ritsu out of here.

"Don't be silly, you won't go straight to red. That's the highest level before you get to the Scars and squads. You'll start on black…and they aren't fitted. We have small, medium, large, extra large-" said Sato

"We don't want-" said Ritsu. He knew what was going to happen with him…and he just…he didn't want to…he didn't want any of this! He wanted to go home and…and he knew what was going to happen to him….he knew and…and he didn't want any of that stuff to happen! He didn't want to be Awakened and he didn't want to wear a red jump suit and he didn't want to go crazy like this guy…and…and he wanted to go home! Mom and dad were probably crying…..and they had already lost one kid….and he wanted…he didn't want…he didn't want to end up on the shrine next to Shigeko! He wanted to go home…and he wanted to play house with Tsubomi….and do his homework…and…and he wanted to visit grandma too!

He wanted…he wanted….to see his family again…and visit grandma too…and…and…and he wanted….that was what he wanted!

Even if mom and dad could be all….mom and dad…and even if grandma smelled like mothballs and pinched his cheeks…and even if cousin Tobio hit him with volleyballs when he messed up…he still wanted to see his family again….he wanted to see his friends again. He wanted to see Tsubomi again…even if she had been really weird lately….and if he ever saw her again he was telling her that he wasn't in love with her and he never could be in love with her. He was going to tell her that he didn't like girls….and he was going to tell mom and dad…and anyone else who asked…and if he ever saw Sho again he was going to tell him…

When. When he saw Sho again...not if. When.

He could feel Sho coming…he could hear him and feel him. Ritsu smiled. For the first time in forever he could feel himself smiling….because…Sho was there. He was there and….and Ritsu…he felt like he was melting from the inside. He knew that Sho was probably going to be pissed at him and…and he knew that he had messed up but…but was going to save him…

If he had been Tsubomi then he would have sighed.

"Hey! Leave them alone!" said Sho. He pushed that Awakened away with his powers. Fuck him and fuck this…and fuck Ritsu too! He had told Ritsu to stay the hell away and now…now he had gotten himself captured…Sho was going to save him. Sho didn't care if saving Ritsu made him a traitor. He didn't care if dad threw him down a traitor hole to die!

He couldn't let this happen to Ritsu

"Sho! This is Suzuki's son, the one I was telling you about. He's-" said Sato as he picked himself up. This was such an honor! Mob's younger brother, and President Suzuki's firstborn son, had knocked him over! He couldn't think of a greater honor!

"Did I fucking stutter? Get out of here!" said Sho. He kicked the Awakened again, this time even harder. He didn't care if he hurt this guy. He didn't care about anything anymore.

"Yes Sho-sama." Said Sato as he ran away. This was one of the best days of his life! He had made new friends for Claw and he had been hit, too, by a member of the Suzuki family…what had he done to deserve this!?

"I'm sorry about him…and all of this…just…hang on! I'll get you out of here and then I'll say sorry…just…hang on!" said Sho as the Awakened ran away…probably to go and tell his boss about this. Sho knew that he was going to get it…they were telling dad right now what had happened probably….he didn't have a lot of time.

"Sho…you came…" said Ritsu. Ok…he sighed that time. He hadn't meant to do that. He should have been telling Sho that he sucked for being a part of this and letting it get this far…but he was just so happy to be saved….and by Sho. He was just…he was in love. This was what love felt like. He had been about to get tortured and experimented on and whatever else they did to make people crazy here….

"Who's he?" asked Reigen. If this hadn't been such a life or death scenario he would have taken a picture just so he'd have something to torture Ritsu with later, when he grew up, and he would be growing up….not that there had been any question as to whether or not Ritsu would be growing up. No, the question had been as to whether or not Reigen would be around to watch Ritsu grow up…and he would…and he'd have years to take pictures to embarrass Ritsu with later on.

"This is Sho…the one who gave me the scar…" said Ritsu. That was all that he could come up with. He touched the scar….that was when they'd be. That was the first time Sho had saved him…and…he felt light. Sort of like that day when he'd been falling. He felt like…but also heavy. He was going to live…he was getting out of here. He was going to go home and see mom and dad again and see Tsubomi again and go to school and visit grandma…

He felt like he could have floated right off the ground….

"Hey! You only got that scar because I had to save your stupid ass….just like now! I told you to stay the fuck away from here! I told you to stay away from Claw and…and here you are! Your girlfriend told me you were going to the woods-" said Sho. Ritsu was a moron. He was a dirty, sweaty, smelly, crying, incredibly….a lot of things…moron! Sho…he had to focus. He tried to undo the lock…and this was hard! He knew how locks worked…door locks…and this wasn't a regular door lock. This was…something else….but he could get this! He would get this!

He had to get this!

"She's not my girlfriend." Said Ritsu quickly. No. Sho…couldn't think that. Ritsu…he wanted…a lot of stupid things. He loved Sho. This was what love felt like and he wanted to tell Sho that he loved him and that he was like nobody Ritsu had ever known before and that he wanted Sho to be his boyfriend…but that would have been stupid. He had to escape now and…and he felt like he had already escaped….but he hadn't.

He was still behind these bars.

"This is not the time, guys, this is not the time." Said Reigen with a shake of his head. His ankle was killing him, it was a long walk home, and he still had to worry about looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. As cute as this was…it was not the time. Also that kid did not need to be distracted from…whatever it was that he was doing. Reigen could hear the lock clicking…but judging by the kid's face they weren't out of the woods yet…or even about to go into the woods…

They had to get out of here.

"What? I was just saying…she isn't my girlfriend. I don't even like girls." Said Ritsu. He was red. He…didn't even know how to say it…but he had to…if he never saw Sho again…and if he did escape he would probably never see Sho again…he just…he had to say…it was a dumb thing to worry about…being kidnapped and trapped and all….

Better to worry about this than all the other stuff that he had been worrying about.

"What?" asked Sho. He stopped working and looked up. Ritsu was red…and…and had he just said what Sho thought that he just said? Sho…he must have been losing it because…that just…for a minute it sounded like Ritsu had just said….

"I don't like girls." Said Ritsu simply. He just said it. I'm Ritsu. I'm ten years and ten months old. My favorite color is blue. I don't like girls. There. That was….not liking girls was just as much a part of himself as all of that…and he wanted to live…and if he made it through this then he was living his best life. Like mom's coffee cup said, you had to live your best life, and his best life was telling the truth about himself.

"Like…yet? Or at-at all?" asked Sho. His powers stopped listening and so did his voice…it took a couple tries to say that…but…Ritsu had just said….

"I'm gay." said Ritsu simply. He said it like he said everything else….but on the inside he wanted to run and hide…but he was in prison. There was nowhere to go. There was nowhere to hide. He just had to…stay there…with what he just said…

And also with Reigen and Sho staring at him.

"Wait…you're-" said Sho. How could he have just…SAID that?! Like…like it was nothing?! Like it was just a thing that you were allowed to say? That it was just a thing that you were allowed to be? That just….what!?

"Ritsu, way to figure yourself out. Let's discuss this in depth when we get out of here…unless you want to be fitted for a red jumpsuit that is." Said Reigen as he patted Ritsu on the back. Well good for him. He had figured himself out. He was gay and Reigen had no problem with that...but he did have a problem with being indoctrinated into a cult. So, yeah, maybe this wasn't the time to confess to the boy he had a crush on.

"You know I don't want that." Said Ritsu. He could feel himself blushing…he looked down at his shoes. He couldn't look up. He knew that Reigen was ok with it…and he hadn't been super afraid of Reigen not liking him anymore since he was Reigen….and it wasn't Reigen who he was worried about.

Sho was still looking at him.

"Then let him get us out of here." Said Reigen

"I'm trying….just…these locks are psychic proof or something….but at least it's not a power nullification room." Said Sho as he got back to work. Ritsu was gay and he was gay and he liked Ritsu and Ritsu could potentially like him…and he had a girlfriend but he could always break up with her…it would have hurt her but…but Ritsu might have liked him!

But that wouldn't matter if he didn't get Ritsu out of here!

"So you do steal people's powers here." Said Ritsu with a cough. He had to say something. He had to say something to cover up what he had just said. Ok…now people new…and when he got out of this then more people would know…and he didn't even know if he would ever see Sho again…or if Sho even liked him…but…

He needed to think about something else.

"What? No! We give people powers…well sometimes…just…we have to get out of here! Then we can talk and….and I just….why are you even here!? I told you not to come here! I told you to stay away! I told you that…that you'd get kidnapped and…and you had better run when I let you out! You had better run and then never come…come back…because you're not safe here!" said Sho. Ritsu had better not have been on this shit again! No! They didn't steal powers here….and…and he wasn't going to tell him what they did! The only thing that he had to do, that Ritsu ever would have had to do, was to run the fuck away already!

"Me? What about you? This place…the people here are crazy! This is a bad place! You…you need to leave to and-" said Ritsu. A crazy thought. They could run away together. They could run away together and…and they could leave all of this behind. He could hide Sho in his wardrobe and feed him leftovers from dinner. They could hide until they were adults and then they could run away together and live with false names in another country. He spoke pretty good English so they could move to one of those English speaking countries…and then they could be together…

Crazy thoughts.

"You think that I don't want to! I want to but I…I can't….but you can! So go already! Go before someone notices! Go and….oh shit." Said Sho. He felt it…his range was good…but he had been focused on Ritsu and his stupid face and the stupid stuff that he'd said and…and stupid stuff like that! He had been too focused on Ritsu that he had noticed that he'd been followed…

Mother fucker!

"That doesn't sound encouraging…." Said Reigen

"What? What're you freaking out about?" asked Ritsu. He reached through the bars and touched Sho's hand. He had stopped messing with the lock…and that didn't seem…good. He looked scared. Scared and mad and…and Ritsu…

Maybe he wasn't going to be escaping after all….

"Fuck…Fukuda followed me….fuck!" Said Sho. He held Ritsu's hand. He knew that he shouldn't have been doing that…because someone could have seen…but he had to! If he never got the change to again then…then he needed to do it now…or whatever. Fukuda…Fukuda wasn't on his side about this stuff. He was on dad's side when it came to stuff like this…and dad wanted as many espers as he could get…and…

And it was over now. It was all over. All he could do now was hold Ritsu's hand…and have his hand held back.


	502. Pragmatic Choices

Fukuda did not feel like the highest ranking member of Claw in the room. Not by a longshot.

If anything he felt like a babysitter. He was holding Sho back, keeping him from doing something stupid like starting a fight with the division leader. Or maybe just keeping him from taking off and freeing the prisoners all on his own. Stupid things like that….though it depended on the context. Sho was a good boy, and he wanted to do the right thing…

But right not the right thing was also the stupid thing…the stupidest thing that he could have possibly done.

"Let them go! My dad is the President and that makes me the…second President…and….and I am ordering you guys to let all the prisoners go!" shouted Sho. This was not happening! He…he had to do…something! He had power! A lot of it! If his big sis had power then he had power too! Or….something…

"Sho, no." said Fukuda as he shook his head and pulled Sho back. He had taken a step forward, a threatening step, a stupid step. As powerful of an esper as Sho was, and he was a very powerful esper for someone his age, he was in no way strong enough to take on any of these Scars.

Fukuda was not going to let him get hurt.

"Sho! Stop it!" said Fukuda. Sho elbowed him in the stomach. He wanted to double over but he didn't, he couldn't. Now was not the time to show weakness. This was…he was the highest ranking member of Claw there and he had to do…something. He had choices to make…

All sorts of pragmatic choices.

"I'm not going to stop it! We can't just keep people-" said Sho

"President Suzuki will be informed of this after we've fully awakened the child and done what we can with the man. You don't need to concern yourself with this, Suzuki-chan." Said Ishiguro. That child…he'd had more than enough of that child. He had no idea why that child was even here. The child's nanny had been the one to request a meeting with him on the subject of the prisoners, not the child himself, and even if he had called a meeting Ishiguro would not have agreed to it.

That child had no power here.

This was his Division. He had fought the President, fought longer and harder than anyone else, and he had been rewarded with this division. It was his. This was where they created new Awakened. This was where they trained legions of Suzuki's followers. This was the Seasoning City Division, this was the city that made the largest proportion of espers by population. This was not a daycare. This was not an orphanage. This was not the place for Suzuki to dump his unwanted offspring….

He was not going to let this place become anything less than what it was…and he was not going to let himself become anything less than what he was.

"Hey! I am not Suzuki-chan! I am Suzuki-sama and-" said Sho. Fukuda was still holding him back…why!? What the hell did he think that he was doing?! Sho…he knew that Fukuda wasn't always on his side but…but this was wrong! This was so wrong in so many ways. Sho…he was…he was mad at everyone and…and he needed to keep calm. He couldn't fight everyone at this division, if he did then he wouldn't have been allowed to see baby sis anymore, and…and he liked Ritsu but…but not more than he liked baby sis and…and he didn't know what he would do if baby sis…if she was gone from his life forever…but also…also he couldn't just…just let all of the stuff that they did here happen to Ritsu…

He knew very well what happened at this Division.

"Sho, stop it. This isn't productive." Said Fukuda. Sho was glaring at him now…and he deserved it. He deserved to have Sho upset with him. Sho was too little to understand this…any of this. He was only eleven and…and he knew that this was wrong and he wanted to put a stop to it. He was still too little to be able to understand the pragmatic choices that came with…this life…and this place.

"I agree, it's impossible to be productive with the way this little pest is carrying on. Perhaps it's time for his nap." Said Ishiguro

"Hey! I don't need a-" said Sho

"Sho, go back home and let the adults talk. Alright?" asked Fukuda

"Fuck you!" said Sho. That time he did hit Fukuda…and he deserved it! Fine, if Fukuda wasn't going to do something then Sho…well he was going to do it himself! He didn't care what happened to him! He shoved Fukuda one more time before he left.

"Language." Said Fukuda as Sho ran off. He was probably off to break something or hit someone else…something to get his anger out. Fukuda would talk to him later. Right now he had to get all of this sorted out.

"You aren't going with him? How would President Suzuki feel if he knew that his nanny was neglecting his son and heir?" asked Ishiguro

"I am not Sho's nanny. I think that you're forgetting that I outrank you and everyone else in this room." Said Fukuda

"I suppose that the information did, in fact, slip my mind." Said Ishiguro

"I suppose that it would be getting slippery in your old age, Ishiguro, but I can help you with that. I can fix that right up for you as soon as I finish making arrangements for the prisoners." Said Fukuda. The kid was coming with them. The man…he was on his own. The kid was coming back to HQ with him. He'd do better at an HQ if not with the Suzuki family….he was Shigeko's brother…but Sho liked him…and Shigeko…well maybe figuring out the truth would…no…the truth would devastate her…but it also might take her down a peg…but Suzuki himself wouldn't take it well…but he was already going to be pissed that Fukuda had even brought Sho here in the first place….

He didn't know what to do.

Sho was his main priority. Sho is, was, and always would be his main priority. He loved Sho and he had to do what was best for him. Sho…was not going to take this well. Maybe if…if the kid stayed with them…or at least in a place where Sho could visit him…then that would soften the blow that was this situation. This impossible situation. Shigeko's brother was an esper…of course he was. Fukuda wasn't stupid, he knew that if a family made one esper they would probably end up making another, and he…was not alright with this. Them having another Shigeko to deal with….though he wasn't anywhere near her level it seemed….it was going to be a lot. Even worse if Shigeko found out the truth. She had gone off the rails back when Suzuki left and gave up his powers to her…that power was given to her under the assumption that she was his child…and she wasn't. She was only adopted…and he even had a daughter of his own….and now Shigeko and Sho would probably figure all of that out and….

And he needed to focus on one thing at a time.

"Arrangements have been made. The prisoners will be awakened and then added to the ranks here at the Seventh Division. President Suzuki will be informed when the process is completed. I see no reason in bothering him with the minutia of the process. He's a very busy man as we both know." Said Ishiguro. This man outranked him, technically, but Ishiguro was not going to let him extend what little power he had over him. This was his Division. Here he was the supreme authority…and he wasn't going to stop here. He was going to show the President that he was not a failure…not like the last time they'd managed to find an esper child.

"You're planning on turning talent into junk? You can't be serious. This is the worst Division when it comes to making Awakened. I'll be taking the prisoners with me to Tokyo HQ and then President Suzuki will personally see to it that-" said Fukuda

"Do what you want with the man but the boy stays here. He's been on our watch list for a while now and we're not letting him go." Said Ishiguro

"You're seriously thinking that you can replace one child with another?" asked Fukuda. A low blow. One that he needed to make. He had to hit where it hurt. The failure of the Seventh Division hadn't been forgotten and never would be. There was no way that Ishiguro was going to let that happen again…and Sho…well he had seemed like he was on his way to make it all happen again…

He had been the one to free that kid, the one from a few years ago, even if he denied it.

Fukuda knew Sho, he was a good kid, and if he hadn't been able to let this happen at eight then he didn't expect much had changed for Sho at eleven. He was going to set this kid free…and he would have done it anyway even if he hadn't been in love with him. Sho was going to do something stupid but this time people would notice…and when they told Suzuki Sho would…well he would be punished…and Fukuda might not have been able to put him back together again. Suzuki could lose control, easily, when he got upset….and Sho had never upset him that badly before…but now if the kid managed to escape Sho would be the one everyone would blame….

And he couldn't let that happen to Sho.

"The losses of the past are irrelevant to our current situation. If you want to dispute my will then dispute it. You can bring this up to President Suzuki if you want. Tell him that you and his son have been here for months with no discernable reason….well nothing work related of course…" said Ishiguro

"I don't like what you're implying." Said Fukuda

"I'm not implying anything. I'm simply stating a fact. Neither of you needs to be here and yet you are. President Suzuki may have something to say about that." Said Ishiguro

"President Suzuki may have something to say about you undermining the authority that he gave me." Said Fukuda

"And he may have something to say about you undermining the authority that he has bestowed upon me. Of course if you really want to settle this then I see no reason why we need to wait to involve President Suzuki." Said Ishiguro

"We don't settle our problems this way in the upper echelons. I'm through arguing this with you. Sho and I will be going…and we'll be taking the child with us. You can have the man. There. Now everyone gets a recruit." Said Fukuda

"You dare talk to me like-" said Ishiguro. Fukuda could feel the emery around him begin to shift. He…did not think that he could put himself back together after getting swallowed up in a mass of gravity. He had been there when Suzuki fought Ishiguro. Suzuki had been able to pop the black holes like soap bubbles…but Fukuda's powers did not work that way…

In a fight he knew that he had no chance.

But it didn't look like there would be a fight. The door to the war room opened and an Awakened scuttled in. That was a good word for it, scuttled. They were so jumpy here…though Fukuda couldn't really blame them. The way Ishiguro acted. Even now Fukuda could feel the gravity in the room pulling him closer and closer…

He held onto the wall with one hand.

"What's this about?" asked Fukuda. He tried to look and sound calm…even though he knew the barer of bad news when he saw one. That Awakened looked like he was about to die…and that could have meant anything. Literally anything could have gone wrong…hopefully Sho hadn't thought to do anything stupid….

"How could….get out! Get out you idiot! Prepare the east wing! Now!" said Ishiguro as he sent a mass of gravity trailing after the moron who cared to come to him with…with…with…THAT?! No…someone had said something to the President…and when he found out who there would be hell to pay! One of his people….or maybe not one of his people. His people didn't have the kind of initiative….they weren't a bright bunch either…no…someone was trying to undermine him…

But not one of his people.

"What's happening?" asked Fukuda. Please don't be Sho….please don't be Sho….

"Vice President Suzuki is on her way as we speak. This matter will be settled by her. Now if you'll excuse some of us have actual work to do around here." Said Ishiguro. Well now he had some damage control to do…and a warm welcome to give. Suzuki had sent his daughter…why? Why not just come himself? Did he really consider this to be…nothing? Something so small, so inconsequential, that he would send his own daughter and not come himself?

President Suzuki was sending them, him, another one of his children….why?

"Shigeko? She's….excuse me. I have business to attend to." Said Fukuda as he walked out of the room. He made sure not to break out into a run until he was well out of sight and range. Shigeko was coming….she was coming and not Suzuki…and that meant…he had no idea what that meant! Suzuki never let her wander so far from him…actually if it had been up to him Shigeko would have been on some kind of leash…so she had left on her own…but WHY?! She…she…she couldn't have known. She could not have known that he and Sho were here…and Sho wouldn't have told her…but Sho had been upset…and he couldn't think when he was upset…

Fukuda ran as fast as he could.

He followed the feeling of Sho's aura. Sho was…not in the direction of their apartment. No, he was…down. That was the feeling that Fukuda got. Sho was lower down. He was down several floors and…and these damn curse rooms! Fukuda's aura didn't exactly have the best range but…but he should still have been able to see Sho! Sho was bright, he always had been, but this place…Suzuki should not have been allowed to design anything!

This place was a labrinth.

This place…Fukuda had been there when Suzuki had designed this place. This had been one of the first Divisions that Suzuki had designed…and it showed. He had been more concerned with making it look col than functional….hence the hallways that led to dead ends. Hence the design that felt more like a labrinth than an actual building. Sho was down on another floor, probably the one where they held prisoners, and he was probably doing something stupid…if he hadn't already done something stupid…and Fukuda…he had to be there to protect him from everything…even himself.

He had promised Masami.

He had promised Masami that he would look after Sho…and even if he hadn't promised Masami he still had a responsibility to him. Sho was practically his son, it wasn't like anyone else was taking care of him, and Fukuda had to protect him. He had to protect Sho not only from the world around him but also from himself and all the stupid things that he did. Not only the obvious things, like how Sho insisted that he didn't need to bathe and could live in poptarts and coke with no ill effects, but also from the less than obvious things….like this.

Damn it, Sho….

Fukuda made it, eventually, to where the prisoners were kept. He had been too slow, of course, to stop Sho from trying to do something stupid. There he was in front of the cell door picking the lock like this was a good idea. Or even an idea. Sho hadn't had an idea. He'd had half of one. He'd had a quarter of one. He'd had an eighth of an idea. He was only eleven, he wasn't capable to thinking things through, and…and Fukuda….he loved Sho…

So he was not going to yell…or curse….no. He was going to stay calm.

"Sho, what do you think that you're doing?" asked Fukuda. He did not yell. He did not curse…he never cursed around Sho…but he did feel like cursing now. He reminded himself that Sho was a kid. He reminded himself that Sho was too young to know what he was doing. He reminded himself that Sho was only doing this because he was a good kid, that was all. He was a good kid and he…he needed to stay a good kid for as long as he could…

Fukuda…he needed to…to make sure that Sho stayed a good boy…but he also had to keep Sho alive.

"Fuck!" said Sho. That was all that he could think to say. He just…fuck! That was it. He should have been begging Fukuda to help him. He should have been telling Fukuda that if he didn't help him right now Sho would never talk to him again or something else…something worse. He just…he needed to think…but he couldn't think! All he could think was about how Fukuda was there and now he was fucked and…and…just…fuck!

Fuck this whole thing!

"Come on, Sho, stop with this." Said Fukuda. He sighed and tried his best to stay calm. Sho was a good kid. He reminded himself that Sho was a good kid. That Sho was…he was a good kid and…and Fukuda wasn't going to tell him to be a bad one…but he just…he had some pragmatic choices to make.

"I-I'm doing the right thing and I don't care what happens to me! I'm not going to let Ritsu…and his friend too I guess…" said Sho. It sounded dumb when he said it. He thought that he was dumb, anyway. He had thought that…well that it would all be over once he let everyone out…but with Fukuda there staring at him…he just…

He felt like a kid.

He was a kid. He was a kid and…and with an adult there…not just Ritsu's friend but an adult that he knew…he felt like a kid. Like a little kid. Like he was a little kid back at the old house and mom had caught him going through the snack cabinet. He wasn't doing anything bad, though, he wasn't doing anything bad at all! He just…felt like it…

Because that was how Fukuda was looking at him right now.

"Thanks a lot, kid." Said Reigen. Well this was…unexpected. The kid's dad….? He had that sort of presence. He didn't look a thing like the kid, of course, but he just had that…energy…that dads had. This was…either going to be good….or bad. Very bad…well this whole day had been very bad.

"Shut up." Said Ritsu. Reigen said the wrong thing sometimes….and this was not the time to be saying the wrong thing. This was…Sho was scared….and if Sho was scared then something was wrong…well everything was wrong. This whole day had been one wrong thing and then another and another….

And now it looked like it was about to get even worse.

"I'm not going to let them get kidnapped and…and awakened and…and fuck you if you try and stop me!" said Sho

"Sho…I know that you want to do the right thing but I need you to think for a minute. What happens when you let them go? What do you think is going to happen?" asked Fukuda

"They escape." Said Sho

"On a twisted ankle?" asked Fukuda. He could feel it. Both of them were injured…the man worse than the boy. No aura…well not much of one. Maybe he had potential…and maybe he didn't. Fukuda had to worry about the kid. He didn't have the luxury of worrying about the man too.

"You could heal him." said Sho. Fukuda should have been doing that right now! He was a healer, that was what he did, he healed people…and he helped Sho too! He had always helped Sho when he needed it…and he needed Fukuda's help now more than he ever had before. He just…he didn't know. He didn't know why Fukuda was just…why he was being this way. Fukuda couldn't have…he couldn't have been ready to just…let Ritsu get kidnapped….Fukuda wasn't like that. He wasn't like everyone else in Claw…

He wasn't like dad.

"That would be great, actually." Said Reigen as he shifted his weight off of his ankle. Psychic powers came in more flavors than they had ice cream, it seemed, and this was something to file away for later. It was best to learn everything he could about his captors, then he could use it to his advantage….and Ritsu's. Mostly Ritsu's. Sure he wanted to get away but Ritsu…he was just a kid.

Ritsu came first.

"Then I'm involved. If I'm involved then I'm going to be…well you know what your dad does to traitors. You know what he'd do to me…and you, too." Said Fukuda

"He can't throw me in a traitor hole, I'm his only son, and you're the only healer." Said Sho

"Sho…no power is unique. He could find another one of me…and he could have another son, too. It's actually a lot easier to have another son than it is to find someone else with my power set." Said Fukuda. There. The truth. The harsh truth. He hadn't wanted to tell Sho the harsh truth but…but he needed to know. Suzuki…did not like having his trust broken. He didn't look it but he was actually incredibly sensitive. He did NOT like being betrayed…and Fukuda had already betrayed him by bringing Sho here…helping Sho with this…

He would be lucky if he survived.

Nobody in Claw was truly irreplaceable. Fukuda was hard to replace but Suzuki had his limits. There must have been someone else in the world who could heal people, no power was unique, and as far as Sho went…Suzuki had never loved Sho. Not once. Suzuki could easily have another son. He could meet another woman and have another son and then Sho…well he would be irrelevant. He would be purposeless. Sho….the truth hurt…he looked like he was about to cry…but sometimes you had to hurt someone to help them.

Sometimes you had to make some pragmatic choices.

"What….?" Asked Sho. He felt….he would have felt better if Fukuda had kicked him in the chest. He would have preferred it if Fukuda had kicked him in the chest. He reached a hand out and held the bars next to him. He felt like…like he had been kicked in the chest…and he couldn't breathe….and he couldn't stand up…his legs were shaking and his heart was shaky and…..

And there was a hand over his.

"Hey! Fuck you!" said Ritsu. He didn't normally curse…but he had to now. Sho…he looked like he was going to cry and…and it hurt Ritsu to see him like that. It just…it hurt! He knew that he should have been worried about himself, about how he was going to get out of there, but Sho looked like he was going to cry and…

And now Ritsu had a hand over his mouth.

"Ritsu! Sorry about him, he's just a little-" said Reigen. Ritsu…he needed to sit Ritsu down and teach him what to do in a kidnapping situation like this. Seriously. Ritsu needed to shut his mouth…or at least stop licking Reigen's hand like that….he had to let go. That was just…unpleasant…but this was what he got for trying to get a ten year old boy to shut up. At least he hadn't gotten bitten.

"No, I'm not anything! I'm…fuck you! You can't just…you can't say that to him! If you're going to do something terrible to us then do it already but leave Sho alone!" said Ritsu

"I'm not going to do anything horrible to you…actually…you're hurt." Said Fukuda. Yup…that was a kid. Actually it was nice, how he came to Sho's defense like that, really nice. Good for Sho. He needed someone like that in his life…and Fukuda would do what he could to keep Sho's little boyfriend in his life. Even if this was Shigeko's brother…the more he looked the more he could see Shigeko in him. The eyes, mostly, they had those same eyes. Same shape, same color, same…same. It was like looking at a male version of Shigeko, almost.

Almost.

Shigeko would never have stood for this. She was powerful, he doubted that any prison could hold her, and she would have just left. She would have just ripped the bars off and then gone about her day. Her brother wasn't half the esper that she was, which was good…for everyone. He would do well at Tokyo HQ. That…would be best for everyone. Shigeko….well he could think up some reason to keep her away from Tokyo…and…and she didn't even know that she had a brother. A real brother. She had no idea that she had been adopted….and maybe it was time that she learned…

One thing at a time.

"It's just some scratches." Said Ritsu. He let go of Sho's hand and walked away from the bars. He got a bad feeling about this guy…well he got a bad feeling about all of these guys but he especially had a bad feeling about this guy…and not just because he had been a jerk to Sho.

"Fukuda. Fix them both. Now." Said Sho as he wiped his eyes. Fine. If Fukuda wanted to be an asshole then Sho could be an asshole right back. Sho….he didn't want to be an asshole towards Fukuda…and he didn't want Fukuda to be an asshole to him…he just…he wanted things to be normal. He wanted things to go back to normal between them….and he wanted Fukuda to take back what he had said…

But he wanted all the cuts and scratches on Ritsu to go away.

Also he wanted Ritsu's friend to get better too. He wanted them both to be able to run when they had to…and they would have to run. That was the best thing for them to do. Sho could send the Awakened in the other direction and Fukuda…well if it came to it Sho could take Fukuda. If Fukuda wasn't on his side anymore…and he had been on his side for so long…like now. Now he was at least doing what Sho had asked him to do…

Told. Sho had told him to do this.

"Oh my God…" said Reigen. There had been a moment of a sort of…warmth? And buzzing? And then…and then he had felt fine….and he was fine. He put weight on his ankle…and he felt…fine. Perfectly fine.

"You had some damage to you lungs too, and a cavity. I fixed it." Said Fukuda. He didn't know if there had been any point to it. That man…might not have been able to survive what was about to come to him…and Fukuda was about as sad about this as he could be at this point in his life.

"Good. Now go back the way you came. Go home and just…forget that you saw me here…and then we aren't ever going to talk about this ever again…and if we get thrown in traitor holes then I'll have dad throw us in together." Said Sho. Fukuda was only listening to him when he had told him what to do. Like dad did. Like an asshole. Sho…he thought that he had been done with this…being an asshole to the people who loved him…but he just…this was something that he had to do. He had to get Ritsu out and…and if being an asshole was the way to do it then…then that was what he had to do.

Fukuda could help him if he wanted to…

Did he? He was getting closer to Sho. He got down to Sho's level. He did that a lot when Sho was a kid…a smaller kid. He still felt like a kid. Like he was little and everything was way too big. Like the world was too big and everything was too high up and his telekinesis didn't listen and…and he wanted…he wanted the other feelings that came with being a kid too. Like how Fukuda used to get down on his level and put a hand on his shoulder and tell him that everything would be ok…

He did the hand on his shoulder part.

"Sho….I'm sorry about this." said Fukuda as he put his hand on Sho's shoulder. He took a deep breath and put Sho to sleep. That was something that he could do but didn't like to. He could put people in healing comas if he had to…and this was one of those had to situations. Not a want to situation but a had to situation.

He had to make pragmatic choices sometimes.

"You killed him!" said Ritsu. He took a step back….and then another…and then another. He took so many steps back that he walked into Reigen. Reigen put his arms around him. Ritsu didn't shove him off…even though he was fine on his own. He was fine and…and he wasn't fine…he was…

He was scared.

"Hey, Ritsu…Ritsu, come here." Said Reigen as he pulled Ritsu close. That was…the kid was still breathing. That was good, right? That was…this was bad…but he had to…to be…be…..there….for Ritsu.

"No, he's just sleeping. You…you're both going to be fine…and so is he just…don't piss anyone off. Alright? Don't piss anyone off and…and it'll go a lot easier for you. Excuse me." Said Fukuda as he picked Sho up as best as he could and carried him away. Sho…was a lot heavier than Fukuda remembered. He used to be able to pick Sho up with one arm. Now it took both arms…and it was practically a drag and not a carry….but he had to do this.

He had to save Sho from himself.

That was what Fukuda did, he saved people, and often from themselves. He had to do this for Sho. He had done this before for Suzuki and now he was doing the same for his son. He had done this for Suzuki until Suzuki got too strong for this to wok. Sho would be that strong one day, too, but that day was coming later. Not now.

Now he was just a kid.

He was just a kid and Fukuda was going to drag him home and put him to bed. Fukuda couldn't count how many times he'd had to do this, carry Sho to bed, but…it had never been like this. Sho had never been this heavy and…and things had never been this…grim. This dire. This…whatever this could be called. This was…he was…everyone was fucked. Well and truly fucked. There was no way out of this…no way for him and no way for Sho…no way to get out of this unscathed….but Fukuda could at least do what he could to…mitigate the damages.

It was time to make some pragmatic choices.

One of those pragmatic choices was dragging Sho to bed. Sho was going to be angry with him when he woke up…and then this fight would start all over again…but he had other things to worry about. Shigeko was coming. She knew. She was coming and…and Suzuki wouldn't be far behind. That was enough for him to worry about without touching the subject of Sho and his boyfriend and what, ultimately, to do about…all of this. A lot of pragmatic choices were going to have to be made…and Fukuda was the man who was going to have to make them.

He was the one in charge here after all…even if it didn't always feel like it.


	503. Ten At Night

Ritsu always called if he was going to be out late.

He had a six o'clock curfew, though it had been turning into six thirty lately, and sometimes he stayed out even later than that. He always called when he was going to be home late. It wasn't often enough for them to get upset over, sometimes Ritsu lost track of the time at his afterschool job, so it hadn't been strange when the clock struck six and Hana hadn't heard from her son.

But then it struck six thirty.

And then seven.

And then at seven thirty she called the police. The police told her that Ritsu was probably out with his friends and that there was nothing that they could do unless there was some evidence of foul play. There wasn't. Ritsu didn't hang out with delinquents, he wasn't involved in anything untoward, he was only ten years old! And he hadn't been snatched up after school either. Tsubomi had walked with him to Reigen's office. Reigen wouldn't have done anything either, it was a terrible stereotype that people had about men who spent time alone with children, and anyway if he had been planning on snatching Ritsu away then he would have done it a long time ago.

Besides, he was nowhere to be seen either.

When the clock struck seven thirty, the police said that they couldn't do a damn thing, Hana had sent her husband out to look for him. The first stop was Ritsu's afterschool job. The windows had been dark, Ichimaro had said, and there had been an angry woman standing outside the door asking Reigen's whereabouts. Apparently he'd had a date…she owed Ichimaro a backrub...it had not been the time for jokes. Reigen was missing too. He hadn't been at home, none of his neighbors had seen him, and Ichimaro had even tried a bar his neighbor said he frequented….nothing.

Two missing people….and the police still did nothing.

Well they had implied terrible things, when Hana told them about Reigen. They had implied things about her, too, about her ability to parent her son. About how she had been too busy working to take care of her household. It was like she had stepped back in time or something. Like her telephone had been a portal to twenty years ago or something. This was what her tax dollars paid for….for policemen to sit on their asses making excused for why they didn't have to do their jobs! She had been so angry when she had gotten off the phone with them that she had slammed it down.

She had been using her cellphone.

So, really, all she had accomplished was cracking her screen. At least her phone still worked. That was good…she could get a new screen later…or even a whole new phone. Ritsu had been wanting a new phone for a while now. He had been wanting one with more memory and a better camera for a game he played. He was some kind of detective or something in his game…he went around finding clues for a big mystery that he was close to cracking. Hana wasn't sure how his game worked…how to play it…and she wished that she had asked him. She wished that she had spent more time playing with him…they hadn't played together since….since Ichimaro's firm downsized….since the economy got shaky again…since she had to take up more hours at work. Maybe she was a bad mother…maybe she had messed up. Maybe if she had been home….if she had been there to pick Ritsu up after school even though he was ten years old now….if she had just done better then….then her son….then her son would have been there….

And her daughter, too.

She could see, from her spot at the kitchen table, Shigeko's shrine. Open floor plan…the house had an open floor plan…from any point on the ground floor she could see Shigeko's shrine. It was a little thing, not as ornate as the one she had for her mother and father, and…and Shigeko…she deserved better…even though she was still alive. She had been adopted, and quickly too, and now…now she was off living her new life in…well Hana didn't know where. The adoption was closed. She wasn't going to open it….there was no point….Shigeko was gone…

But Ritsu wasn't.

Ritsu was…she had no idea…where Ritsu was. He was gone off somewhere. He wasn't off with friends. The Takane's weren't home. Tsubomi was Ritsu's only friend…and his girlfriend too but Hana wasn't supposed to know about that yet…Ritsu was still only ten years old, of course he didn't want his mom to know that he had a girlfriend…he'd tell her in his own time…when he came back…and he was coming back. He was just…just a little late. He was just…

Hana checked the clock on the wall.

He was just four hours late. The clock told the correct time even though there was a crack in the glass on the front. The hands were just fine. Shigeko had broken the clock when she'd been a baby…when she'd been seven months old. She hadn't wanted to eat her sweet potato…the week before she had loved them but the week afterwards she had hated them…kids could be fickle like that. Ritsu had been the same way when it came to steamed carrots…and now it was pork feet. That made no sense. He'd eat every part of the pig but the feet….Shigeko hadn't minded them…not enough to break a clock…

It hadn't been intentional.

She knew that it hadn't been intentional…she stopped looking at the clock. She stopped looking at that damned clock. It wasn't telling her something that she didn't already know. It was late. Ritsu had never been out this late before. Not unless he was having a sleepover with Tsubomi…he was getting too old for those…but she so wished that he was next door playing with Tsubomi…and he had just lost track of the time…but he wasn't next door. Nobody was next door. The Takanes had gone up to the mountains for a long weekend…and they didn't have cell service…and they wouldn't have taken Ritsu with them…not without asking first…and she never would have let him travel so far from home….not without her and Ichimaro…she had no idea why she had been calling the Takanes anyway…

She knew that they weren't home…she knew that Ritsu wasn't there.

She heard a car in the driveway. Ichimaro was home. She got up and walked over to the door. A short walk. She had made this walk before, with Ritsu, when she had been teaching him to walk. Shigeko had held his other hand. They had walked together…very slowly for baby brother Shigeko had said…and Ritsu…he had always wanted to walk fast…so fast that he fell. He fell and Shigeko…she caught him. Sometimes she caught him…sometimes she made him float…and sometimes she made him float all the way up to the ceiling…so high up that there had been no way for her to reach him…but Shigeko knew how to put him down…sometimes she knew how…she had been so young then herself…

The door opened.

"Anything?" asked Hana as she reached out for her husband. He handed her his coat and kicked his shoes off.

"I tried the Takane's. Nothing." Said Ichimaro as he kicked his shoes off in the genkan. Hana put his shoes the right way…she did that a lot. She hated it when he just kicked his shoes off like that…she hated it when Ritsu did that too. He'd always done that…he'd done that since he had started wearing shoes. Blue ones with lights on them….

His shoes didn't have lights on them anymore.

No. His shoes were solid blue. They were solid blue aside from the silver piping. He remembered that…he remembered also that Ritsu's coat was yellow…that was important when kids were missing…you had to remember what they had been wearing….but Ritsu…he wasn't missing. He was just…out. He was out and…and he had just…lost track of the time. He was getting older. He was almost eleven…that was the age that he had been when he'd started staying out until all hours…of course he had lived out in the country…but…well there were still places that Ritsu could have gone to…he could have just…lost track of the time….

Ritsu was fine…he had to be…

"They're up in the mountains, I told you already." Said Hana with a click of her tongue. She told him. She told him…that was one of the first things that she had told him. Tsubomi was in the mountains with her family and Ritsu was nowhere to be seen….so…so…so why waste time at the Takane's?!

"No you didn't." said Ichimaro as her husband stepped out of the genkan. He leaned in to kiss his wife but stopped midway through. He knew that look, that look like she was sucking on a lemon. The world's most sour lemon. Ritsu did that too but all the time, not just when he was upset. Shigeko….that face had been reserved for the times that he had managed to wrestle her into her snow pants.

"Yes I did. It was one of the first things I said to you before you left. Don't try the Takane's. They aren't home." Said Hana

"Oh…well I forgot-" said Ichimaro

"Forgot?! How could you…this is our son! This is our son and you just…you forgot!?" asked Hana

"Yeah, I forgot! God, Hana, it took two seconds to knock on their door. I doubt anything happened in two seconds-" said Ichimaro

"You have no idea what can happen in two seconds!" shouted Hana. She took a step back…a pain shot up her spine. A familiar pain. That pain that came when she stepped wrong…or walked too fast…or too slowly….or walked on uneven ground. She had a few of those…they came and went. Two seconds. That was how long it had been. Two seconds…or maybe three…she couldn't remember. She could barely remember…

"Hana…I'm sorry. Just….I'm sorry." said Ichimaro. He took a step forward and held out his hand. Hana took it and pulled him close. They stayed that way for a moment before they broke apart.

"No….I'm sorry. I just…I'm sorry. You're…you're trying…and…" said Hana. The pain was back…there was some pain there now in the small of her back. That was…it came and it went. It came and it went and she had no idea why it still lingered, she had healed years ago, but they still lingered there. Everything lingered in the end…maybe.

Everything and everyone lingered in the end.

"You're trying too. Anyone call?" asked Ichimaro. He knew Hana. She was scared. She was scared and she needed him to be her rock right now….and he could do that. That was what a husband did, he was there for his wife, and…and nobody was there for him…but those were not the thoughts to have. He was not alone in this. She was there and…and they were in this together…even though there might have been no 'this' for them to be in.

Ritsu might have just been out playing.

"No, but I've been making calls." Said Hana

"Any leads? The Takane's…or Ritsu's other friends?" asked Ichimaro

"He only has Tsubomi and nobody in the family is answering their phones. The Takane's either don't have service or they're screening me, still nothing from Reigen, and the police said that unless I have evidence I need to stop bothering them." Said Hana. Evidence…what was she supposed to do? Go upstairs, get out Ritsu's detective kit, and look for clues?! What…no. She had to stay calm. She had to stay calm for her husband's sake…he had done so much for her…and she…she had to be there for him. This was…this was happening and…and they only had each other. She had no idea why any of this was happening but she knew that she had to be here for her husband.

"They used the word 'bother'?" asked Ichimaro. He tried his best to stay calm. Him flying off the handle wouldn't make this better…even if…bother?! It was a 'bother' to look for a missing child?! Ritsu had been missing for four hours…or maybe even longer…and…and looking for him was a bother?!

He had to stay calm for Hana's sake….he had to think about Hana.

"Yeah…bother. Like it's such a bother that my son is miss-miss-that my only son is missing!" said Hana

"I'll have to talk to them….let me call. You just…you rest. Let me call them and….and then I'll go out and look some more. I'm sure….he's fine. I'm sure that he's just…playing…and he lost track of the time." Said Ichimaro

"Playing? Where can he possibly be playing?! It's ten o'clock at night!" said Hana

"I know what time it is. I used to stay out this late when I was his age…I mean he's getting older. If his girlfriend hadn't been out of town I would have assumed that he was out with her." said Ichimaro with a laugh…that maybe he should have kept inside of himself. He had forced it out. He'd had no choice but to force it out. Always laugh, dad said, even when you didn't feel like it. Always be happy…always be positive…always be there. Always be there for the people that need you.

"He. Is. Ten. Where in the hell can someone his age be at this hour?!" asked Hana. She didn't care what her husband got up with in his wayward youth. Ritsu was a good boy and he wasn't going to…to do things like this. Not that he had done anything…she wished that Ritsu had just been out playing…but she knew the truth. She knew that he wasn't out playing. She knew that….that something had happened. Something had happened…she didn't know why something had happened. She didn't know why these things had to happen to her…to her family. She didn't know why these things happened to her and her family and…and maybe she should have prayed harder…or to other spirits…or not at all or…or spread salt around…or…or…

She didn't know!

"I don't know…the park? I just…I don't know but….but I know that he's fine. Who would want to hurt…to do anything to him? He's….he's Ritsu…" said Ichimaro. Ritsu was a good boy. Ritsu was his son…and he had never done anything to anyone. Well aside from the fights he got into…but he was a ten year old boy, they got into fights. Ritsu…he had no idea why someone, why anyone, would have wanted to hurt Ritsu….

He must have just been out….out playing….or something….or maybe he had run off to be with his girlfriend….or something….

"Kidnappers. Perverts. Murderers. Cannibals. Cultists. The yakuza-" said Hana. She listed off words, one worse than the next, on her fingers. There were so many things that could have happened to him…the world…it was such a terrible place…especially for someone as sweet and sensitive and intelligent as her son…as her only son…as her second born….

"I don't think the yakuza has anything to do with this. I mean unless Ritsu got close to that 'truth' that he's been looking for-" said Ichimaro

"No…no jokes. Not now. Not…not with Ritsu…our baby. Our baby is…" said Hana. She felt her knees beginning to buckle. She felt her heart begin to crack in half. Her lungs screamed in protest. She just….she just…her son…her son! He was out there alone and scared and she was here and…and she had to do something. She had to do something but she had no idea what she even could do! The city…the country…the world felt so vast…and she felt so small….she was so small….

She had never been aware of it…but she was small…incredibly small….

She felt two incredibly small eyes focused on her. There…the shrine. She wanted to close it…it had never been closed by…but she wanted to close it. Shigeko was staring at her now. Shigeko…she wanted to know why. She wanted to know why her parents were so terrible…why they couldn't take care of her…why they had lost her little brother…Rittu she had called him, because Ritsu had been too hard at first…but she had gotten it. She had always been so clever…so gifted…both of her children had been clever and gifted….

She used to have two children…now she had one….soon to be none…no….don't think like that….

"I-I know…and I'm sorry…" said Ichimaro. He had no idea what to do….so he held his wife. He was there holding his wife and…and he should have been out there looking for his son. He had already lost one child…and now his son….he looked up. He could feel Shigeko's eyes on him. He could feel her little eyes looking down on him asking 'why, dad?' and…and he didn't know why. He didn't know he was so bad at this…at being a father…and a husband….and a human being….

"I can't do it again….Ichi…I can't go through this again….I just…I don't want…another…another shrine…" said Hana

"We can't put up another shrine." Said Ichimaro

"Because Ritsu's fine…you're going to try and tell me that my son is fine." Said Hana

"No, I was going to say that you can't put up another shrine because Ritsu has never once taken a good picture. I swear he just instinctively closes his eyes." Said Ichimaro

"Yes…he….he always does that…Ritsu…oh God…." Said Hana. She just…she could not…she could not begin to understand why this was happening. What…what was happening to her. Why was…why had…why did this have to happen?! Because she had given up her daughter? Because…because she just…she wasn't good enough. Today…it was…it had just been…Shigeko should have been twelve by now and…and Ritsu was still ten and he was gone and….

And she couldn't do anything other than sob. So that was what she did. Ritsu had been due home four hours ago, at six, and now it was ten o'clock and she had no idea where her son was…so all she could do….was sob.


	504. Orange Flyers

There had been a flyer stuffed in the mailbox that morning.

That wasn't out of the ordinary. She got a lot of junk mail like that. She had never gotten junk mail at the old house…but that was then. This was now. There had been a bright orange flyer in her mailbox that morning. If not for the little boy's picture on the front, and the giant 'missing' in both Japanese and English, she would have mistook it for the usual ads that got delivered to the house. This wasn't an ad, this wasn't even a community announcement, though she had gotten plenty of those. They were planting more flowers in the park and needed volunteers….that one was on a pink flyer…

It was the orange flyer that had gotten her attention.

"Another missing dog?" asked Eiji as he walked into the kitchen. He leaned down and kissed his wife before he made his way over to the coffee maker…which was empty. He hit the on button…and nothing happened.

"No, a little boy this time." Said Masami. This wasn't a great picture. It was in black and white…and the orange didn't help…but she could see so much of Shigeko in that boy. The eyes, mostly, her eyes had been the same shape. The nose. The expression….that none expression. He looked so much like Shigeko….but she was just seeing her children where they weren't again. The ones she'd left behind, not the ones fighting in the living room, or the one resting on her bladder like it was a beanbag chair. No, her children…half of her children….were right where they were supposed to be.

She had no idea where her other children were….but Madoka, Juro, and untitled Hirai project were present and accounted for.

"Damn." Said Eiji as he checked the coffee maker. Empty….well Masami was pregnant. Her doctor had told her to cut out the caffeine…but the doctor hadn't said any such thing to him. No breakfast going yet either…well it looked like he was taking over this morning….he could do that. He wasn't the one growing a person inside of himself. He hoped that Masami wasn't expecting anything fancy, though, since he couldn't do much more than add water to the waffle mix or scramble an egg….and he had been wanting one of her omelets….

But she wasn't up to it and that was fine…she got like this sometimes.

She got into her moods sometimes…like now. She was staring down at the flyer and clutching it in her hands like it was one of their kids who had gone missing. None of their kids had gone missing, thank God, and he knew how tragic it could be to lose a child…in an abstract sense, anyway. He only had partial custody of the kids from his last marriage…and they were getting to that age where they'd rather spend their weekends and holidays with their friends and not their dad and new younger siblings….but that wasn't the same. The thought of any of his kids going missing…even untitled Hirai family project…was tragic…

Tragic enough to maybe send Masami into one of her moods.

"He's only ten years old…." Said Masami. She could hear her kids fighting in the other room. They were fighting over the toothpaste…why they were fighting over the toothpaste she did not know…but she was glad that they were fighting over the toothpaste. Madoka made an impassioned case for why she needed exclusive use of the toothpaste but Juro, as usual, could yell louder. Her unborn child was getting riled up it felt like…or maybe she had just had more than one sip of water that day. Everyone was fully accounted for…but they so easily could not have been…and…and not everyone was accounted for. Sho and Shigeko…well they wouldn't have been fighting over toothpaste. They would have been…eleven and twelve by now.

Almost teenagers.

They might have been at that stage where they lived in their rooms and only emerged to tell her that she was lame and could never understand what they were going through…or maybe they would go in the other direction. Maybe they'd be little joiners already up and about…going to clubs…hanging out with friends. Shigeko would probably have been making breakfast…the same breakfast that Masami was supposed to make…and Touichirou would have been…where the hell Touichirou went for most of the year….

She put the flyer down.

"Do we have any more of that hazelnut coffee?" asked Eiji as he went through the cabinets. They had plenty of instant left over from their family's last economic crisis…left over because it was terrible. Could this even be called coffee? Thank God that was over…mostly. Masami would be out of work again for a while after the new baby was born…granted she didn't get into one of her moods beforehand. She looked like she was on the verge of one…

He had no idea if he could do it again.

The last one had been when Juro had been born. She'd been tired, which made sense since she'd just given birth, but the fatigue didn't fade as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months….and then three months had passed and he'd just…it was hard. Chasing after a two year old and a caring for a newborn….and Masami had been so fatigued all the time…

He hoped that she was still taking her medicine.

"What?" asked Masami as she looked up. Eiji was going through the cabinets…and he'd gotten out that disgusting instant coffee he'd picked up back when work had been slow for them…she needed to throw that out. She had to go to the store today…and before that she had to make breakfast…and before that she had to investigate what that crash was…and what her children were running from….and before that she had to take her medicine….

She had a lot to do today. She had to take care of her family…of this family….of her new family.

"The hazelnut coffee, you know the fancy Starbucks stuff." Said Eiji

"We're out of that. We have some Starbucks dark roast left though." said Masami as she got up from the table and reached over her husband to get the good coffee. At least he had been making some kind of an effort…which was more than she could say for her last husband. No, Touichirou would have starved to death long before he tried to do so much as get the coffee maker going…

How that man thought that he could rule the world she would never know.

He wanted to run the world when, in the entirety of their marriage, he had never once learned how to run the coffee maker…or the tea kettle…or the rice maker…or the stove. It was amazing that he even know how to flick on a light switch. He had always been so ridiculous. She wondered, as she got the last of the good coffee out, if he'd managed to rope some other poor woman into marrying him. If he'd had any other children…he'd always wanted more children. He'd always talked about having a big family…of course he wasn't the one who would have to birth, care for, or raise the children in any capacity. Yes…single fatherhood would not have suited him. He'd probably replaced her almost immediately when it became clear that she wasn't coming back. After all it wasn't like she as a person had ever mattered to him…he just needed someone to fulfil the position of 'wife' in his life. She could have been anyone, he couldn't have made it any clearer…

Fukuda hadn't mentioned another woman in Touichirou's life but she knew Touichirou….he was helpless on his own.

"Dark roast?" said Eiji with a wrinkle of his nose.

"I'll go to the store later today, alright? After I start breakfast." Said Masami

"No, no, I'll go…and I'll make breakfast too. You just rest." Said Eiji

"I'm pregnant, not crippled." Said Masami. The truth of it was that she liked the help. She liked not having to shoulder the burden for the entire household on her back for once. Sure Eiji never came back with the right brands or quantities when he went to the store but it was nice to have someone who made an effort…but it was stressful, too, having to deal with whatever he brought home…and if he went shopping he would try and bring the kids with…and this was not the time to be taking the kids out of the house.

Especially Madoka.

Masami didn't know if this kid was an esper but…well Fukuda had told her what Touichirou's organization did. They kidnapped people, adults, and were not above doing the same to children. Esper children, ones that could use their powers, were rare. Incredibly rare…and Touichirou was morally bankrupt enough to rip children from their families. She had no idea how she could have married someone like that….

They weren't married anymore so it didn't bear contemplating.

"It's not about that. You just seem…tired…this morning. I mean the kids were carrying on last night…and you can't have coffee anymore…and…well….you picked up your medicine, right?" asked Eiji. There. That was a diplomatic way of asking her if she took them. She needed them. Without her pills she had…fatigue problems. It was no different than her taking insulin if she'd been a diabetic…or an inhaler if she'd been asthmatic. It was easier to think of it in terms like that…like she had a long term illness that she needed her medication to manage….

And to hell with what other people thought.

"I'll take them after breakfast. You know that I have to take them with food." Said Masami. She took a step away. She was a grown woman, she could take her medicine, and she didn't need them anyway. She wasn't sick. She only took them to get Eiji off her back. She wasn't sick with anything. She just…had a lot going on. A lot of things that Eiji couldn't know about. There was nothing wrong with reacting to the circumstances of her life…and those circumstances were often overwhelming…so there was nothing wrong with laying down for a little bit every now and again.

"I know, I know. I was just wondering….what do you want for breakfast? Eggs? I can scramble some eggs and bacon-" said Eiji

"I can make breakfast." Said Masami. She wasn't in the mood for eggs. Touichirou had eaten eggs. She just…the thought of having eggs again, for what must have been the thousandth time in her life, was just…exhausting. Completely and totally exhausting…and that was a normal reaction to have to this situation…not that Eiji could ever know why…

Secrets were so exhausting sometimes.

"You just rest. I know that you're tired…and I know that this missing kid shook you up. Hell, it shook me up. I mean not as badly as if one of our kids had gone missing but…well it's always a tragic thing." Said Eiji. He was on dangerous ground right now. He loved Masami, he always would love Masmai, but sometimes she could be…a little high strung. Like now. She had her arms crossed and she was standing with one of her shoulders towards him…she was defensive…and he didn't blame her. She was pregnant and of course seeing about a missing kid would have made her upset.

Thank God all of their kids were present and accounted for.

"Madoka, go and play with your brother. Breakfast is going to be late this morning." Said Masami as her daughter skidded into the kitchen. She caught herself on the table as she slid. She needed to wear her slippers in the house, not just her socks, but Masami wasn't in the mood to fight with her kids that morning.

"But I'm hungry now! And so is Juro! He's so hungry he tried to eat the toothpaste! I stopped him, I hid it! I hid it really good, too, I don't even remember where it is." Said Madoka

"Baby-" said Masami

"I'm not a baby, mom! I'm five!" said Madoka

"First born child of the Hirai family then. How does that sound?" asked Eiji as he patted his daughter on the head. Her hair was messy…Masami could handle that…if she was up to it. Even after five years of doing Madoka's hair he still had no clue what he was doing. He had at least learned not to brush it at this point…but anything beyond tying it up might as well have been rocket surgery to him.

"I like that better than baby." Said Madoka

"Then we'll have to get you a nametag. Now what do you need, first born child of the Hirai family?" asked Eiji

"Don't call her that….it's a mouthful." Said Masami. She turned around and got the waffle iron out of the cabinet. She had a first born…his name was Sho…and she had an oldest…her name was Shigeko. She felt unnamed Hirai family project turning around…or maybe kicking…or maybe just reacting to her mother reaching up to the top shelf. That was her…she didn't even know how to categorize this child. Shigeko was the oldest….and then Sho…and then Madoka…and then Juro…and then this baby…and the birth order…it was….

She got the waffle mix out of the cabinet.

They were having waffles this morning. Touichirou had always hated waffles. He hated most sweet things. He hated everything but grapefruit, unsweetened cheesecake, and lemon slices with salt on them. She only made waffles for the kids when Touichirou was away…but they had always preferred pancakes…she wondered if they still preferred pancakes…

It wasn't like she could ask….

"Um…" Said Madoka as mom started making breakfast. She and dad were fighting. Not the kind of fighting that she and Juro did, mom and dad didn't fight like that, they were fighting like grownups did. Without words. With looks and stuff…it made everything weird. She wanted to get out of there and find where she hid the toothpaste…but then Juro would just try and eat it again…but then again…

Oh! Orange!

"Mom, can I have that orange paper? I need it." Said Madoka pointing to the orange paper on the kitchen table. She didn't know what it said but it looked like someone was selling a kid. She wondered if that family took trades. Juro was really starting to bug her.

"For what, baby?" asked Masami

"I just said that I wasn't a baby!" said Madoka

"What do you need it for, first born child of the Hirai family?" asked Eiji. Masami tensed when he said that…it was a pregnancy thing. She just got kind of emotional when she was pregnant…and before she took her medicine…but she'd take her medicine during breakfast. So it went without commenting on…not that he ever would in front of the kids.

"I want to make a paper airplane out of it…for school. It's for a grade." Said Madoka

"Ah, so they're teaching aerodynamic design in kindergarten now?" asked Eiji with a laugh. He wished that he'd had his phone in his hands. Madoka's face was adorable there. Masami might have had her phone on her…but he didn't want to ask her. She seemed like she was on the edge of…something. Something that he didn't need her to end up going over the side of.

"Uh….yeah?" asked Madoka

"Well it's nice to see that we're getting out money's worth." Said Eiji

"Here, take this." said Masami as she handed her daughter another piece of junk mail, an ad for cheap appliances with financing. They did need a new rice cooker…but she handed her daughter the ad anyway.

"Mom, this is white. I don't want to make a white paper airplane." Said Madoka

"Mommy needs this right now, alright? Why don't you go and fold that plane." Said Masami. She knew that Madoka couldn't do it on her own. She mostly just wanted to get her out of the kitchen…at least until breakfast was done. At least until Masami had cleared her head a bit. She just….needed to clear her head and get breakfast on the table…and take her medicine during breakfast too so Eiji would get off her back about it….and then she needed to go to the store and…and about a million other things.

"Fine…" said Madoka as she left the kitchen with the white, and much more boring, piece of paper. She could always color it…but that was boring. She didn't get mom sometimes…most of the times. Maybe that was what happened when you grew up. You got weird and stuff. Well if that was the case then she was going to be five forever. Maybe if she made a bunch of paper cranes she could wish for that…but she didn't know how to make paper canes. Maybe dad could show her. Not mom, though, because it looked like she might have been getting sick again. She always fought with dad right before she got sick. She took medicine but she never seemed to get better.

Adults were weird like that.

"You're really going to hold onto that?" asked Eiji. Masami could behave so strangely sometimes. He had no idea why she wanted to hold onto that paper. What were the odds that they were going to remember the kid on it and know him if they ever spotted him out in the world? It was a god damned tragedy, really, when kids went missing but there was no need to get so…worked up…over it? God, he sounded terrible. He needed to be better for her…not that he was being cruel or anything like that. No, her last husband, Madoka's father had been cruel to her…and she had left him…

He didn't want to give Masami any reason at all to leave.

"Yeah, maybe I'll see the kid or something. I mean if one of our kids went missing and we were so desperate that we stuffed everyone's mailboxes with flyers…well….I would have liked it if people held onto them….anyway. Can you…can you see what Madoka did with the toothpaste? Before we forget and end up turning the house upside down before bedtime?" asked Masami. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve quickly. She truly didn't know why she was holding onto that piece of paper…maybe because she truly would have wished that if she had lost one of her own kids…maybe she would have wanted other people to save the flyers…or maybe she just…maybe she just….maybe she just was happy that it wasn't one of her kids…or maybe she was just happy…happy to have proof that other people, people besides her lost kids….

No, not lost.

She hadn't lost her kids. It felt like she had lost her kids but…but Sho and Shigeko…they weren't lost. They had been left behind but they weren't lost. They…had their own lives. She had no idea what those lives entailed but she was sure that they were happy…as happy as Fukuda could make them. She loved…she loved her kids so much and she knew that if they had been truly lost, not left behind, she would have walked across the entire country handing out flyers…

But she wouldn't have used orange paper.


	505. The Most Wonderful Person in the World!

This was truly the greatest day of Claw Member Sato Isamu Level Three's life.

She was coming! She was on her way! Mob! The avatar of the goddess of love, friendship, and kindness was coming to the Seventh Division! And Sato was a part of the welcome wagon! He couldn't breathe….there was not enough air in this room. This was…this was the greatest day of his life. Not only did he get to meet Mob but he also got to welcome her. That meant setting up the President's apartments for her and greeting her at the door…if he'd had anything to drink in the last six hours he would have wet himself from excitement…

But that was why his workmates were monitoring his liquid intake.

"What the hell are you still doing in here? Come on, we have to set up the kitchen and you know that's a bitch and a half!" said Claw Member Kuba Reiki Level Three. They were from the same level group and the same work detail. They had been a part of the same Awakening group too. They were friends…well all of Claw was friends….but the people who you worked with most of the time were your very best friends in the whole world. The people you saw most were the people who loved you the most because they wanted to be around you.

Well they had to be around each other…but if Kuba didn't like him then he could have just requested a different work detail…not that Sato knew why anyone would want to do anything besides this!

"I'm combing the carpet to make sure that it isn't lumpy. I wouldn't want Mob to step on a carpet lump…..no. That wouldn't do at all." said Sato from his place on the floor. He was on his hands and knees with a stiff brush making sure that the shags in the shag carpeting were all evenly distributed. Shag carpeting was the best, Mob had said once, because it kept your feet warm. She had been doing a stream of her virtual people game with Hatori, one of her closest friends, when she said that but he assumed that it applied to real life too.

She was such a good person to care if her virtual people were comfortable or not.

"Do you really think that she'll notice?" asked Kuba

"Yes! I know that she'll notice! Haven't you seen how small and delicate she is? She's like a china doll! She can't be expected to walk on an uneven carpet! What the h-word is the matter with you?!" asked Sato

"What's the matter with me? Whats the matter with you, that's the billion yen question right there." said Kuba

"There's nothing wrong with me. I'm just the only one taking this job seriously. I bet you guys didn't even arrange the soap in the bathroom the way she likes it." Said Sato

"What the….we put the soap in the bathroom. The coconut and rice milk bar soap, the strawberry kiwi body wash, and something called a blueberry burst body scrub are all under the sink like she likes them. We even got the special Zootopia body wash her brother likes and that plain white soap the President uses. It's all under the sink where it belongs-" said Kubo

"Wrong! That's wrong! Haven't you seen her beauty vlogs!? When she does her makeup routine in her bathroom the arrangement of her soap can clearly be seen. The body wash goes in the shower caddy, the sugar scrub goes on the side of the tub, and the bar soap goes in the special bar soap preserving box that she keeps on the outer rim of the tub! She does that because she's half Japanese and half American on her mother's side and her mother taught her to wash in the tub. She's said before that she's been trying to get into the Japanese habit of washing before she gets in the tub but because she's out of the country so often-" said Sato

"Yeah, no, I don't spend time thinking about ten year old kids taking baths…and neither should you. People are…well people are going to start talking about you and I don't know how in the hell I'm going to contain it." Said Kuba

"First of all she just turned twelve and second of all let people talk. All of you need to start paying more attention to Mob-" said Kuba

"Mob…the vice president…is twelve. You just said so. Do you know what people say about guys our age who are obsessed with twelve year olds? They say that they're perverts…and I'm not a pervert. I'm a money launderer, and yes I did bite that man on the train platform, and there have been times when I've walked out of Uniqlo with more pants on than I walked in with….but I'm not perving over a twelve year old girl. Come on, man, that's weird. Even for this place." Said Kuba

"Shut your f-wording mouth! I'm not like that! It's not like that…you wouldn't understand." Said Sato

"Yeah, well, what I do understand is that we have to get this apartment ready and she's going to be here soon so, yeah, stop playing with the carpet and help us with the real work already." Said Kuba as he left. There were footprints where he had stood. There, in the shag carpeting, was a trail of footprints…and that would not do. That would not do at all. Sato sighed and crawled over as best as he could. He tried to brush them out…but not the carpet was messed up where he had crawled.

He would have to start all over again.

But he believed in himself. He believed in not only his ability to do this job but also in his friends and their abilities too. Just so long as everyone believed in themselves no matter what…then they could do anything. That was something that Mob believed in. believing in yourself and your friends. She got that from the President. He said that they were going to all take over the world together because they had the audacity to say it. Once you had the audacity to say something then it was bound to happen.

That was another way of saying 'believe in yourself and you can do anything'.

Well Sato believed in himself. He held out his hand…maybe it would be faster with his powers. He focused as hard as he could…and the carpet stood up…but he was dizzy. He put his hand down and reached for the brush. He could use his powers…but not really…but that was ok. He was just an Awakened. He was happy that he could do anything at all. Happy that he had risen to level four. That meant that he got a little red in his uniform. The blue was for Mob, it was off uniform, but it was for her…so that was ok.

He never would have made it this far if not for her.

If not for Mob then he would have been dead. There had been so many times, during his awakening, that he had thought that he was dead…that he had wanted to die. There had been times that he had wanted to give up. He wanted to go home. Sure he worked a really f-wording terrible job at Family Mart and he'd lived in a six tatami room with four other people…and he'd been nothing. He hadn't even finished high school let alone university. You had to be able to sit down and do your school work, not only that but do it right, and he'd just…never been good at that. So he'd stopped going to school…stopped everything…until mom and dad threw him out of the house. He hadn't believed in himself then….but he believed in himself now.

Like Mob told him to.

That was the first thing that he had ever heard her say. He had been in the holding cell, the ones in the Awakening Lab, waiting for his next round of shocks…or maybe the water again…or the water that felt like fire…cold fire…cold fire all around him…inside of him….not being able to move…even when it was gone. The cold fire…he had only been able to think about the cold fire…and it had been so cold in the cell…and the futon had been so small. It had to be small so they could fit as many people in as possible…and the bars had to be thick and strong so nobody changed their mind and tried to escape. The guards had been watching something on their laptops…the birthday list…yes. That had been the first time he'd heard Mob's voice.

The birthday list.

She had been reading off the birthdays…and that had reminded him that he had a birthday…that he had been born and that he was alive. The cold fire was over. He was still alive and a waste of life…and he would be waste of life tomorrow and the day after and the day after…until his birthday. Until it came and…and she mentioned him. She had a whole list for the Awakened…and he was going to be one of them. She closed off her announcement with the results of the Tokyo HQ Smash Brother tournament…an Awakened had one…a level two but still….and she had said…she had said…

'Believe in yourself, and your friends, and you can do anything.'

So that was what he did. For once in his life he believed in himself. For once in his life he'd succeeded at something. For once in his life he was a part of something. Not just anything but something great. Something wonderful. Something perfect. Something that was going to change the world for the better…and it was all because of her. She was the best person that had ever existed…and she was there for him…for all of them. She had been sent down to earth to love and care for everyone in Claw…and nobody had ever loved or cared for him before…

He had to get all of this absolutely perfect for her…so she would love him even more.

"She's close! Everyone finish up! And Sato, stop daydreaming about twelve year old girls and help us out for once!" called Kuba from in the kitchen. Sato scowled even though nobody could see him.

"It's not like that!" shouted Sato. It really wasn't! He had no idea why the h-word anyone would think something like that! She was unattainable! She wasn't just the vice president, no, she was a drop of sunshine and goodness sent down to earth. Also she was twelve. People were the worst sort…that was a bad thought to have. He took it back as soon as he thought it, that people sucked, because that was not at all in line with what Mob had said. You were supposed to make friends with everyone no matter how mean or annoying or jerkish….

He had to get out of here.

"I have something to take care of! One of your finish brushing out the rug….please!" called out Sato as he left. The 'please' had come out as more of an afterthought than anything. Please and thank you were important things to say to people. You had to be polite to people all the time…especially your friends...even when your friends were kind of being jerkish…..

Not that he thought that anyone was being jerkish!

"I'm sorry, Mob!" shouted Sato as he closed the door to the presidential apartments. He could hear them talking through the door, his friends, but he paid them no mind. They weren't jerkish. They were his friends and he loved his friends. He loved everyone! He loved everyone and…and he had to get away from everyone…because now there were more thoughts in his head that he didn't want to have…thoughts like how everyone around him was a jerk and they would never understand….how….how he wasn't anything….he wasn't a part of this…the blue ribbon around his neck felt like it was choking him…

He wasn't a part of anything.

If he couldn't follow Mob's teachings then he had no place here. If he had no place here then he had to go. He had to go right now. He had to…he had to…he couldn't leave. There was still so much to be done. He had abandoned the rug…and now Mob's feet would hurt…and….and that was his fault! She would be so upset with him and she would never love him ever again and then nobody would ever love him and…and….no. That was not who she was….she loved everyone. She loved freely and unconditionally and she was just…she was perfect. She was perfect and he was imperfect….and he just…he could go back and fix the rub…but then his friends would be there and he might think that they were jerks again…and she hated it when people had thoughts like that…she had never said that word but…but he didn't want to be the person who made her hate someone…

He had to do something nice for her.

New friends! There were two new friends that were right there in the holding cells! Two new friends that she would be so happy to have on her side! And there were sides. Some Awakened wore blue and some didn't….not enough did. If she saw more people in blue, more people who were on her side, and more people who wanted to be her very good friends….she would be so happy! Well she was always happy but now she would be extra happy and if she was happy then her happiness would spread to everyone! And she might have even given them extra desserts or a movie night…or something else super fun like that….

She was always so kind to them like that.

So he had to be kind back. He felt his pockets…he had plenty of ribbons. Good. He liked to carry a bunch of them with him. People liked to snatch them off. That was just people trying to be funny. Mo said that sometimes it could seem like your friends were mean, or that they acted like crazy people, but that was ok because deep down they still loved you. He knew that his friends still loved him just as much as he loved them…even if they said terrible things and snatched his ribbons away….and didn't follow Mob's teachings….they were still his friends….and friends were the best thing that a person could have….

So why not make more friends.

The walk to the prisoner holding room wasn't that long. Not when you knew how to get around. That took time. This was kind of like a maze but it wasn't so hard once you figured it out. Sure he had spent planet of nights sleeping in corridors and then getting punished for not being in his bed at bed check back when he'd been a level four….but he knew his way around now. He had believed in himself and he learned the layout of the place.

The prisoners…no…the new friends would learn their way around too….he would teach them.

He would teach them how to get around and where the best vending machines were and what the best lunch options were, once they got to level three so they could have lunch options. Not a lot of them. Level ones, Awakened soldiers, got the best lunch. They were security right now, they protected the base, but when the day they took over the world came they would need all their strength. That was why they got the best lunch out of all the Awakened. Then the level twos and threes ate and then the level fours got what was left…and he hoped that the new friends didn't end up being level fours for very long…

Maybe they'd get put on his work detail when they reached level three!

But first they had to Awaken…and before that they had to get out of that cell…and to get out of the cell Mob had to settle what was going to happen to them. If they became friends with Mob then maybe she would take them with her. That was what happened with Hatori. He was a level two when he joined and then when he got promoted he was sent to level two floating tech support and now he was one of Mob's very best friends! Mob would definitely pick the little boy for her friend since they looked to be about the same age….but only if he showed that he was on her side like all of her very best friends were!

Sato would help them out, the man and the boy, they didn't have to worry.

"Oh God…he's back…" the man groaned. Sato didn't stop smiling. They were just tired, that was all. It was always hard to seep in any kind of cell. The beds…at least they got beds here…weren't very soft and the lights dimmed at night but never went out….and also it smelled like Lemon Time all the time because some people were lazy and just dumped the cleaning solution on the ground and walked away. That wasn't right. These cells were pretty germy, because of all the blood and people wetting themselves and throwing up from fear and stuff, and….well everyone had spent time in the cells and there was no reason to make things worse for other people….

Treat your friends like you want to be treated….Mob had said that.

"Hi! You guys are going to be so excited! Mob is-" said Sato

"You're going to let us out?" asked the boy. He had been kind of mean there, in his tone, but that was ok. He was a little guy and he must have been tired…and hungry. The breakfast trays hadn't been touched aside from the tiny cereal boxes and milk cartons…at least he was drinking the milk. He still seemed to think that his food was poisoned though…the omelets were untouched. The dinner trays that he was supposed to clear away were untouched too….of course the little guy was in a bad mood. He was hungry…

He was lucky that he got food…you didn't get food when you were Awakening….no! Don't think that way! Mob wouldn't like that!

"No, not yet anyway. Mob is here and then she'll decide what she wants to do with you. That's why I brought you guys these! Just tie these around yourself and she'll see that you want to be her friends, her very best friends, and then she might even take you back with her to become her very best friends!" said Sato. He side two ribbons under the bars, he knew better than to stick his hand in between the bars….the kid could bite even if he didn't want to eat, and the man took them. He seemed much more on board with this. He was kind of soft, he might not end up making it, but if he did Sato knew that he'd be a great friend and fellow Awakened.

"Reigen, what are you-" said the boy

"Thanks so much, we'll be sure to wear these. For your leader. Say, what's her policy on cigarette breaks? And maybe us stretching out legs a little?" asked the man

"I don't know what you two would need a break from since there's nothing to do in here…well it's kind of exhausting having nothing to do….but I can't let you out and I'm not allowed to give you a cigarette either. We had someone set themselves on fire before…so no more of that…but Mob loves to smoke. I'm sure that when she sees that you're on her side she'll share with you. Just wait, she's almost here!" said Sato

"You…were in here too?" asked the boy

"No, my cell wasn't nearly as nice as this. It was about six of us in a cell half this size…and we didn't get food either. You really should eat, you'll need your strength for later." Said Sato

"Later? What do you mean, later?" asked the boy

"Why, for when it comes time to awaken you two of course. It's going to be hard but if you believe in yourselves and each other then-" said Sato. He knew what it was like, to feel hopeless, to feel like there was nothing that you could say or do to get out of this…but that was ok. It would pass. Everything passed. Mob might even meet them and then the memory of her would carry the both of them through their awakening…and maybe they wouldn't die.

"Hey! The Division Leader says all level threes, twos, and ones have to line up! She's here!" called a voice that Sato couldn't recognize….that wouldn't do at all. He needed to learn people's names. Mob would have wanted that.

"I have to go now but remember, eat, so you have your strength. You'll need it for when it happens." Said Sato

"When what happens?! Hey! When what happens!?" shouted the boy. He should have gone back and told them exactly what happened when they awakened you. About the water and the shocks and the fire and the cold fire and the cold water and the part where sometimes you died but you didn't….but it felt like it….he should have warned the boy and the man about that, Mob would have liked it, but he had to greet Mob now. She would have liked that more…well maybe not. She always said that you had to care more about other people than yourself….but he just…

He wanted to see her!

He ran up the stairs and found his work group. He stood in line like they had rehearsed and waited. There, in the distance, he could feel her aura getting closer. He could feel it in his skin, his blood, his bones, his own aura…he could see her aura too. Blue and pink and…and so bright. So bright and pretty…bubblegum pink and cotton candy blue…and of course she would have had a pretty aura. She was a really pretty girl…

Even more so in person.

The car pulled up faster than he thought it would. She came right out. She even opened her own door. She was just…she was so pretty. He saw her foot first, her Frozen sneaker, and then her leg, her Frozen knee sock, and then her dress, Frozen blue, and then her face. She was so pretty and…and he just…he couldn't believe that he was looking at her….he was wearing blue…should he have been wearing Frozen stuff!?

No. He wouldn't have been able to get away with such a big uniform violation.

Was his uniform right? Was he clean enough? Was his ribbon straight? Was the bow big enough? Was she looking at him?! Was she…she looked at him! Her eyes met his as she stepped to the side….and one of her very best friends was there too! One of the very best friends….the very best friend of all, Minegishi Toshiki! He knew them…he knew of them. Nonbinary, twenty eight years old, hated sugar, loved black coffee, could control plants, was dating Shimazaki Ryou, and dyed their hair about once a month. That was just what he could remember….he needed to study more on the very best friends…especially the best friend of them all….not that he thought that he had any hope of ever becoming a very best friend!

It would have been nice….though….if she walked right up to him and offered to make him one of her very best friends…and then gave him a lock of her hair…or one of her bows….or something….

"Vice President Suzuki, it's always a pleasure. It's been several years since you've graced us with your presence." Said Division Leader Ishiguro. She was very upset, he could tell by her tone, but Mob…that was weird. She didn't seem to care. She just stare straight forward…she had bags under her eyes…and also she hadn't done her daily makeup routine…something was wrong. He wanted to break rank, run up to her, and ask her what had gone wrong…and what he could do to fix it!

He would have done anything for her….but she didn't even look his way…so he didn't have to do anything….

"Hello Division Leader…and Scars…and Awakened." Said Mob. It hit him right in the stomach…the heat…the entire torso! She had mentioned him…well Awakened….which was almost as good as mentioning him by name! She looked at him…well near to him….as she said that! If he had been around to move he would have straightened his bow…but he wasn't allowed to move. Not in front of the Division leader and most of the Scars…and Mob…and one of the very best friends too.

"If you'll follow me to the holding-" said Division Leader Ishiguro

"It's been a long flight, we need to lay down. Then you can show me whatever you need to show us. She's exhausted." Said Very Best Friend Minegishi. They were so…wow! They were a very best friend and…and they were acting like it and…and their hair was so purple! Plenty of black, too, because hair dye day was supposed to be last week. Mob took pictures for her Instagram and stuff…she hadn't posted in so long….but why was he wishing that she had posted something?! She was right there! He was looking right at her! He just….did not understand himself sometimes….but that was ok. He had friends and sometimes when you couldn't understand yourself friends could understand you. Mob had never said that but he got the feeling that…well that she would say something like that….

Even though she looked so tired…too tired….so tired that she wasn't going to be saying anything anytime soon.

"I must insist-" said Division Leader Ishiguro

"Later. Show me things later. Right now I need to talk to my little brother. I'm going to talk to him now…and then you can show me or Minegishi or whoever whatever you need to show them. I need…I need to talk to Sho now." Said Mob. She was such a good person! Of course she missed her brother! She was such a good and wonderful person and he was so happy to be able to stand, if even for a few minutes, in her light!

"Come on, Mob, let's go give Sho…and probably Fukuda first, a piece of our minds." Said Very Best Friend Minegishi

"No, you're even more tired than I am…and anyway your friend is right there and he's been staring at you. I'll go, you rest." Said Mob. She said that and then she started walking…..and she was going to walk right past him! He stood as still as possible. She was going to pass him by…she was going to walk right past him…she was getting closer…and….and Division Leader Ishiguro was trying to talk to her…Ishiguro was really f-wording scary…but Mob wasn't! She was getting closer and closer and he had to sit still and…

He couldn't.

He moved, just a bit, as she passed him. He could feel everyone's eyes on him now…he had messed up…but he had gotten a centimeter closer to her…close enough to smell her. She smelled just as wonderful as he'd imagined…actually she smelled like stale sweat and fruity perfume….but he had still been close enough to smell her. He knew that he would pay for it but…but he had gotten close to her and….and nothing could make this better…

Something blue on the ground.

Her bow. She was inside now…and her bow was right there. He would move again…even though he would get it even worse now. He moved his foot out, slightly, and stepped on her bow. He was standing on it now…it was uneven….the ground was uneven and…and he could deal with it. He had had bow and he had to give it back to her…or maybe…maybe he could keep it. Stealing was wrong but she had dropped it so…finders keepers? She had other bows…he was being selfish…and he was being terrible…but…he would make it up to her, somehow, as best as he could….because….well because….he…he wanted….this….

This was truly the greatest day of Claw Member Sato Isamu Level Three's life.


	506. Just Let Me Talk to My Brother

Mob had never hated anyone before.

Mob hated things, plenty of things, but not people. She hated shampoo when it got in her eyes. She hated ketchup when it stained dad's shirts and she couldn't get it out. She hated tattoos but only when Sho gave them to himself. She hated legos when she stepped on them. She hated milk too even, sometimes, like when she got up and got a drink of milk in the middle of the night without checking if it was good or not and she ended up with a mouth full of sour milk…that hadn't been a fun day. She even hated herself sometimes, too, like when she had mean thoughts…thoughts like…

Thoughts like how she really wanted Fukuda to drink a full glass of sour milk.

"Where's my brother?" asked Mob as Fukuda opened the door. She knew that she should have been polite. She should have bowed and said 'hi, how are you' or 'it's nice to see you' but…well she didn't want to do that. She was here to see Sho. She was here to see her little brother and talk to him and…and ask him why in the world he would have lied to her…for months!

Months and months of lies…from her own little brother….

"Hello, Miss Suzuki. You look well." Said Fukuda. She had certainly gotten taller. She came up over his stomach now…she was twelve now, wasn't she? Twelve years old…he remembered when she had been two. Ten years ago. She had been so small then…and not nearly as terrifying as she was now. She was…her eyes were blank and her face was flat…but her aura…she was lit up like a Christmas tree.

An angry Christmas tree….

"I've been on an airplane for thirteen hours. Where's my brother." Said Mob as she stepped through the door. She walked right past Fukuda. She needed to sit down. She had been sitting down for hours and hours…and she needed to sit down again. She didn't know why. She was just…tired. She had never been so tired from travelling before…

But she'd never had to deal with anything like this before.

Fukuda was staring at her. She pulled her hoodie close. She didn't want him to look at her…she wished that she'd bought the sweater Shibata made for her. She hadn't thought to pack. She just got a plane and then left. She should have thought to bring her big sweater…and probably about a million other things. She hadn't been thinking.

All she could think about was Sho…and what he had done.

"He's…sleeping." Said Fukuda as Shigeko walked right past him. She hadn't even taken off her shoes…and he had no idea what she had meant by that. He had no idea what was going on in her head. She was just as blank as always. Her aura said that she was upset, very upset, but he had no idea what he was supposed to do. When Suzuki got this upset he showed it…but that wasn't Shigeko's way…and he had no idea what was coming to him…

He wished that she would just get on with it already.

"Ok." Said Mob. She could wait. She didn't know how long it would take for him to wake up but she would wait all day and all night if she had to. She had to…talk to him. Not yell at him…even though she felt like yelling. She felt like yelling and screaming and…and she would never do that to Sho. Fukuda on the other hand…he was still looking at her. She had no idea why. She wished that he would just open his mouth and get on with whatever it was that he wanted to say. He'd never had problems saying what was on his mind before. Like how he thought that she was doing…stuff…with people and….she didn't want to think about that now.

She was tired of thinking about things.

The whole plane ride had been nothing but thinking about things. About how Sho had been gone for so long. About how Sho had lied to her. About how she had done something to make Sho lie to her. About how she had done something to make Sho want to be away from her. About how Sho had kept things from her, big things like where she was, and other big things….well big things which were also little…little but bigger than when she had lost seen them…

Sho had been keeping baby Mukai a secret from her.

She held her braids down and…oh. She lost one of her bows. She didn't care. She had a whole bag full of them. She'd rather lose every single bow and hair tie that she owned if it meant she got to have her little brother…and also Mukai. Baby Mukai…well she had been a baby before. She was two now….Mob had missed two of her birthdays…and two Christmases….and two New Year's…and two…just…it had been so long and…and it had only been a long time for her. Sho had been coming here for a long time…and she'd had to hear about it from her best friend…but Minegishi hadn't known that it was a secret….

Mob was the last person know….and she shouldn't have been the last person to know.

"Wh-what are you doing?" asked Fukuda. Her aura was flaring. She was glaring at him. There, her eyes were narrowed, and she was playing with her hair. That was one of her tells. Something was bothering her…he knew what was bothering her. She knew…she knew and she was here to…he didn't even know what. She was here but not Suzuki…and he had no idea what that meant. He had no idea what anything meant…

He just knew that he needed her to get on with whatever terrible thing that she was planning on doing to him.

He knew she must have had something planned. She wasn't Suzuki, he believed in swift and often unnecessarily severe punishment, she believed in….well he had no idea what she believed in. He had no idea what she was planning on doing to him, she must have known what had happened, and she must have been planning on doing something….but what?

Whatever it was she needed to get on with it.

"I'm going to wait for him to wake up and…oh. My shoes. Sorry." said Mob as she noticed that she hadn't taken off her shoes yet. She was mad at Fukuda…but that was no excuse to wear her shoes in the house. She took her shoes off with her powers and put them in the genkan. She was sort of glad that she had still been wearing her shoes, actually, that gave her an excuse to look away from Fukuda. He was still looking at her though….

She really wished that she'd brought her big sweater.

She…could not believe that she had done. She had kissed a boy…Teru….she had kissed him…and even more than kissed him…and it had been good and bad at the same time…but now it just made her mostly feel bad. Gross. Gross because…well because she felt like….like she shouldn't have done that. She…well at the time it had been nice…a boy liking her enough to do that with her. Not just any boy, too, Teru. The same Teru who had kissed her…back when she'd never kissed anyone before. It was so lucky that he had…that they had been in the same place…but not really because he might have been the talent that dad was scouting so that was a bad thing actually, them being in the same place…but at the time it had been so nice….but now it wasn't.

She had done stuff…the same stuff that Fukuda thought that she did with Shimazaki…and she hadn't done it with Shimazaki but…well she felt bad that she had done anything at all.

"You know you-" said Fukuda. He had been about to tell her that if she wanted to keep her shoes on she could….out in the hallway…or in her own apartment. He had put Sho under a while ago. It had been hard, he'd used up a lot of his own energy, but it had been worth it. There was no way he was getting up anytime soon….anytime today. When he did…well Fukuda would deal with that…but not now. No, now he just…he needed to think…to figure it out…

How he was going to get out of this…or at least make the most of it.

If Suzuki knew then Fukuda…well he would have been in pain right now. He didn't know if Suzuki would kill him. He just knew that Suzuki…well he did not like it when people broke his trust. He would have done something, anything, to Fukuda. Something to make him learn, to teach him, to ingrain it into his mind that he had done something wrong….and to never do it again.

Lying. Treason. Running off with his least favorite child. All of it.

"No…I'm not sorry. If I want to wear shoes inside then….then I'll wear shoes inside! But I don't want to do that." Said Mob. She just…she wasn't sorry. She knew what he was going to say. It was going to be something mean. It was going to be something that was both very polite and very mean. He didn't want to be nice to her. He didn't want to be friends with her. He didn't even want to be nice. He…she was having trouble being nice to him…and part of her…part of her didn't know why….why she had to be nice to him…

He was the one who had put Sho up to all of this after all.

"You can do whatever you want. I understand. I hear you loud and clear." Said Fukuda as diplomatically as he could. That was always a good tactic to take with her, the diplomatic one, she respected that. Suzuki had always respected that. She was his daughter after all…well sort of. He had a daughter….an actual daughter….and that must have been who Shigeko had been there for.

She knew that the baby was here. Why not go to her? Why stand there and harass him like that?

"I can't do whatever I want. I can't wake my little brother up." Said Mob. She had to be nice now. She had been mean there, way too mean, and she just…she needed to calm down. She needed to calm down and she needed to sit down. She went over to the couch and sat down…and that didn't help. She still felt tired and gross and mad and sad and…and Fukuda was still looking at her…and she still wanted him to drink a glass of sour milk….

What was wrong with her?

"You could if you wanted to…it's not like I can do anything to stop you." Said Fukuda as she walked over and sat down like she owned the place…which she did. She owned this place. She was, technically, the boss of him. That was why she was sitting down.

And why he had to stand.

Suzuki did this. It was a power thing. Suzuki liked to stay seating while the people around him stood. He was an important man, he didn't have to get up. It was kind of funny, really, when you knew why he did that. His father had told him that. Fukuda had been there when he said it. Some people had come by Suzuki's house, some important associates of his father's, and Suzuki had insisted on hiding just around the corner and watching his father work. He had stayed seated, Mr. Suzuki, because he was the most important man in the room…he had said. Then he had told Suzuki and Fukuda to get out of his sight because he did not like being spied on…which worked out good because they had stuff to do that day…well Suzuki had been weirdly jumpy but that made no sense. His father hadn't been pissed off, just overly dramatic, like Suzuki was. Like father like son.

And like daughter, too.

"Why would I want to do that, though? That would be mean and…and I love my brother and I would never do anything to hurt him. I love him and I…I would never…" said Mob. She was mad at Sho…she hated being mad at him. She was mad at him and she didn't want to be and…and she wanted him to wake up. She wanted him to wake up so they could talk about this but she wasn't going to be the one to wake him up. That was just mean.

She may have been in a mean mood today but she wasn't going to act on it.

"Yes. You love him like you love everyone." Said Fukuda. He tried and failed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Thankfully Shigeko was just as deaf to sarcasm as Suzuki was. If he didn't know better he would have thought that she was Suzuki's actual child.

"No, I love him the most out of everyone else in the world." Said Mob. Love Sho like everyone else? No. She knew that it was mean to play favorites with people like that but she couldn't think of anyone in the whole world that she loved more than her little brother. Even now, even with him being all…mean, like he had been.

"I'm sure you do." Said Fukuda. She loved Sho like she loved everyone else…which meant that she wanted to keep him close. She wanted to keep him near her like she wanted to keep all of her 'friends' near her.

"Good. Now you know I love Sho…and you should have known that in the first place! Why do you think that I don't love-sorry, I shouldn't have shouted at you. That was mean." Said Mob. She had tried her best to sound nice there but…but the meanness had just all come out at once. It was like meanness vomit. She had managed to make it stop, like real vomit, but not until she had made a mess all over herself. She rested her head in her hands. She wanted…she just wanted…she wanted her brother. She wanted her brother and she wanted Fukuda gone….

Not dead or anything…just gone from her presence.

"I have no opinion on the way you speak to me, Miss Suzuki." Said Fukuda diplomatically. She wasn't as deaf to sarcasm as she seemed. She had lost her temper there….that was dangerous. He wanted her to get on with whatever it was that she was planning to do…but also he wanted…he wanted her to get up off of that couch and just…go. He wanted her gone back to her friends and Suzuki and…and he wanted….he wanted his life with Sho back.

The life that they'd made for themselves here…away from all the insanity of the group.

"My name is Shigeko." said Mob with a sigh. The only person who could call her Miss Suzuki was Serizawa and that was because he was Serizawa. She knew that they were friends, she knew that he liked her, and she liked him too. That was what made it ok. She…didn't like Fukuda…and she hadn't liked him for a while…

He could have at least used her name…if he was going to be like that.

"Shigeko then." Said Fukuda. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to be level with her. She didn't get to tell him to call her by her given name, like an equal, if they weren't equals at all. Suzuki at least never pretended that they were equals.

"My friends call me Mob." Said Mob. Her friends never called her Shigeko. Her friends called her Mob…the friends that she had left behind…to be here. To be sitting here on this couch waiting for Sho to wake up.

"Mob…then." Said Fukuda. He hated it, that nickname, and he always had. It wasn't a name, first of all, and second of all it was a misnomer. As if she could ever be anything even close to a background character.

"No…don't call me Mob. It makes me feel gross." Said Mob. She shuddered there. Her friends called her Mob. Fukuda was not her friend. He was the person who made her brother sneak around and lie to her. He was the one who…well he was the one who…who made her feel like this….who made her feel all of these terrible feelings.

"Shigeko then." Said Fukuda tying his best to get at what it was that she was trying to tell him here. She was an enigma. Suzuki…well he was easy to understand. Shigeko…wasn't. She kept her cards close…if that was what she was even playing. Maybe some kind of chess…or Chinese checkers. She'd been fond of that game when she'd been small….but she wasn't small anymore. She hadn't been small for a very long time now.

"No…that makes me feel gross too." Said Mob. Everything that he said to her made her feel gross…or maybe she was just the one making herself feel gross. She kept on wishing that he'd just go into the fridge and take a long drink of sour milk…so of course she felt gross. She felt so gross and…and she was being gross. Just because someone had done something wrong to her didn't mean that she got to be mean to them. Two wrongs didn't make a right.

"Then what do you want me to call you?" asked Fukuda with a sigh. That…may have been the wrong thing to say. He knew Suzuki. He knew where his buttons were…but Shigeko's buttons were a mystery to him. He had just asked her a question and now….well there had been an earthquake localized on that room.

He hoped that Sho didn't get up soon.

"I…I don't know! Don't call me anything! Don't…just…leave me alone!" said Mob. She tucked her head into her chest and closed her eyes. She didn't know. What was she even supposed to say? That she didn't want him to call her anything? That she wished that he would just go away and never look at her or talk to her again? That she wanted him to drink sour milk or do something else terrible as punishment for what he had done? That she wanted him to…to say sorry. Sorry for keeping Mukai a secret, sorry for takin Sho away from her, and sorry for making Sho lie to her. She wanted…

She mostly just wanted to lay down.

"I'll leave you, then." Said Fukuda. Good. He finally had an out. He could go and sit by Sho's side…and keep him asleep. That was good. He needed to sleep. He needed to sleep until…well until Fukuda could figure out what he was supposed to do. Suzuki…he had to have been coming…and when he did Fukuda was going to throw himself at Suzuki's mercy. He was going to go above Shigeko's head, take his punishment no matter how terrible, so he could spare Sho his father's wrath….

A good plan. The best plan he possibly could have thought up.

"No, wait! That was mean…I'm very mean right now…I just…you and Sho to lie to me….and he lied to me!" said Mob. That was…she was being mean again. It was hard to keep all the meanness down. No matter what she did it was…coming up. Like vomit. Like she was the one who had drank the sour milk…not Fukuda….not that Fukuda had drank any sour milk…but she just…

She wanted to pour him a big glass of sour milk…and she wanted to serve it to him with a crazy straw.

"About what, Miss Suzuki?" asked Fukuda. He was going back with the diplomatic approach. Time to be diplomatic…and to play dumb. He had no idea what to do. He would have thrown himself to her mercy if she had been Suzuki…but Suzuki was always swift in punishment. He punished you and you knew that it would be painful but it was over and done with eventually.

Shigeko…he had no idea what Shigeko did to people….

"You guys said that you were going to stay in London so that Sho could be with Emmy because he loves her and wants to be with her for the rest of his life. You lied. This is not London, this is Seasoning City, and we're in Japan! Japan is not London!" said Mob. She got back up to her feet. She just…she couldn't sit down anymore. He was standing over her, looking down at her, and trying his best to make her feel small. She knew that he was trying to make her feel small…but she was not small….

She was twelve, now, and…and she was not…she was not small.

She was twelve now. She was twelve and…and she was the vice president of Claw and….and she was dad's daughter and…and she was Sho's big sister. That was the important part. She was Sho's big sister and she had to…to be there for him. She wasn't supposed to get upset with him…so she wouldn't be. She was upset with…she wasn't supposed to be upset with anyone…but if she had to be upset with Fukuda…because he was the one….

He was the cause of all of this!

He was the one who took Sho away from her. He was the one who had been taking Sho away, telling him to lie to her, and…and he was the one who took Mukai from her too! He took her away from her and…and he was supposed to have brought her to a family that loved her…but she loved her! She had loved baby Mukai and…and Fukuda had taken baby Mukai away from her because she had been too little to take care of her, he had said…..

She wasn't little anymore.

"I am aware of where I am geographically." Said Fukuda. He took a step back. She was on her feet now…and she was smaller without her shoes on. She was smaller in just her sock feet….but she wasn't small. She was…she was a child but also…also not. She was staring him down. She was staring him down and…and her aura was painful. Where it touched him it hurt….and he had no idea if she was doing that on purpose or not…

He had never pissed her off that badly before…he needed to pull back…but it was…hard….

"Don't talk to me like that…you don't even talk to dad like that…so don't talk to me like that. You talk to dad like you like him…but you never talk to him like you talk to me…and you've never lied to him…well you did. You lied to him like you lied to me…you lied to your best friend. You can't ever lie to your best friend! That's like….the worst thing that you can do. To lie to someone who loves you-" said Mob. Why did Fukuda have to be like….that? Why did Fukuda have to be so…mean? Why did he have to be mean to her and…and why did he have to…why did he have to teach Sho to lie like that!? And why did he have to keep on calling her that?! And why…why was he such a bad friend to dad…and to Sho…and to her! She hadn't done anything to him…nobody had done anything to him….

So why was he like this?! And why did he make her…why did he have to make her feel like this!?

"You father doesn't love me. He doesn't love anyone but you and himself." Said Fukuda. He tried to keep the words in…but he couldn't. He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice…but he couldn't. He just…he couldn't. He was tired. He was tired and he just…couldn't….he couldn't do this anymore.

"My dad loves you. He loves you and he loves…well he loved my mom and-" said Mob. She took deep breaths. Her aura….she needed….she needed a drink. She needed a drink or a smoke or…or…she wished that she had gone with Minegishi. She wished that she had gone to smoke or whatever with Minegishi and their friend. Sho…she loved him…but she had been in too much of a hurry. She should have calmed down….she should have calmed down and…

And she shouldn't have come over when Fukuda was here.

She should have…she didn't know. She should have talked to Sho alone…well she'd had no way of knowing that he'd be asleep when she got here…and she kind of wanted to go to sleep. She wanted to put her head down somewhere and sleep and then tomorrow would happen…and when tomorrow happened everything would over. Like a bad dream….but this wasn't a bad dream. This was reality, the reality she lived in, and in this reality she didn't get to put her head down and go to sleep…and she didn't get do-overs either…even if she had wished that she'd found some way to avid Fukuda. Serizawa had always said to make two save files…but this was life and life did not have save files…

If it did then she would not have saved this game. No way.

"Do not talk about your mother." Said Fukuda lowly. He…did not want to talk about Masami. He did not want to talk about Masami with Shigeko. She…had no right to talk about Masami. Not like that. Not like…like Suzuki…how dare she say that?! Fukuda did the best that he could….to keep calm. Fukuda….could not be upset…could not show that he was upset….could not show that…that…

How dare she!?

How dare she talk about Masami like that? Like she just…Suzuki…he did not love her! Not in the real way! He loved her in the way that he loved every woman…in terms of how she looked…of what she could do for him….he loved every single woman in the sense that he didn't love anyone. He just wanted to possess them…in the same way that Shigeko didn't love people so much as want to possess them…

Like father, like daughter.

They had always bene so alike…even now. Shigeko's aura as practically flaying his. Shigeko was showing him that she could hurt him if she wanted to…and for once he didn't care. She was the one who…she started it! She was the one who had become…this! This person….Masami must have hated him. She would have hated him if…if she had known that he had let Shigeko become this person. She would have hated Shigeko, too, or at least….not been happy with her. Shigeko…she had no right to talk about Masami….not while she was…the person that she was….

And she didn't have the right to hurt him, either!

"Why the h-word not!? She's my mom!" said Mob. She….knew that she was not allowed to talk about her mom with dad….but….but she just…she could talk about her mom if she wanted to! The only person who was the boss of her…dad was the boss of her! She was…she felt like she was going to…she didn't know. The room shook…again and again it shook…and she just…she had no idea…she just…she was mad! Her stomach hurt she was so mad! It was a twisting sort of hurt…like her organs were trying to escape…and she was all…it hut! Talking to Fukuda hurt!

Talking to Fukuda was like having a period. It hurt, it was unpleasant, and she couldn't wait for it to be over.

"Because….because I don't want you to!" said Fukuda. Diplomacy was no longer an option. She just…she had pushed him to this point. Suzuki had never managed to push him to this point but…but Shigeko had! She just…she had just found the line. She had found and crossed the line…and it hurt. It hurt like getting kicked in the chest with a size twenty nine men's shoe.

"Don't yell at me and don't tell me who I can and cannot talk about!" said Mob. Talking to him hurt…and she…it was her birthday! Well it had been…the time zones were different here…but…she was supposed to be happy right now! She was supposed to be happy and…and she couldn't be happy right now! Not with Fukuda being mean…she wished that he would just…she wished that he would…she wished that she would…she just…she wished for a lot of things right now!

"Right! Because how dare I tell the great Suzuki Toui-Shigeko what to do!" said Fukuda

"What? No….because…because….because I know my own dad and I know that he loves you and he loves my mom and….and if I want to talk about my own god damned mother then I will!" said Mob. She had said a bad word…and mom would have been so upset with her. Mom would have put her in timeout for saying that…when she had been little…but she wasn't little. She wasn't little anymore and…and…and she could say whatever she wanted!

"Language." Said Fukuda reflexively. That…he felt better. It had been like popping a balloon. Her aura calmed, the room stopped shaking, and now she was looking up at him with her big brown eyes…she looked like a kid there. She looked kind of like a scared kid….

"Oh no….I'm sorry! I'm sorry for saying that….that was mean of me and…and…" said Mob. She took a step back…and then another…and then another until the backs of her legs hit the couch. She fell down. Now she was sitting again. She was sitting again and….and she…she felt better. Sitting was better. Sitting…she was better now. She just…she was calmer now and…and…

And she couldn't believe that she'd said that…any of that!

"Will you just drop it already!? Nobody's here! Nobody's listening! You can just be yourself already!" said Fukuda. She was sitting down again. She was sitting down again. She thought that…she was…she was sitting down again!

How dare she?!

"This is myself. I'm me." Said Mob. She took a deep breath. She took another deep breath. She just…she wanted to smoke. She felt her Elsa bag….she had stuff…she had her pen and her flask, too, and she had…well she didn't know what Shimazaki had put in it…but it would have been enough to clear her head…and she knew that…that Minegishi had told her about moderation…

But her head hurt. Her stomach hurt. Her back hurt. Her heart her. Everything hurt.

She took her flask from her bag and took a drink. Fukuda was looking at her now….and she wished that he would stop already. What? What was he always looking at her like that for? She was…she wasn't doing anything. She just…she took a drink. It tasted like coconuts and burning. She put her flask back and then took out her cigarette box. If she started a joint and Sho woke up then he would want to share…and people who lied to her didn't get to share. She knew that it was mean but that was just how she felt right now.

She felt mean.

"Thank you….for dropping the act." Said Fukuda. She looked like herself again. Older. Older than she should have been. She held her cigarette between two fingers. It was dangling a bit. She ran a hand through her hair. She seemed put upon….why she seemed put upon he didn't know. She wasn't the one who was fucked no matter what she did. He…well it was done with now….or getting there….she was done with whatever all of that had been.

"What act?" asked Mob as she exhaled. She blew a cloud. If she had been smoking for fun she would have blown a ring. She could do that without her powers. She'd have to teach Sho, when he got older, and Mukai too…when she got older….if she even wanted to know Mob. She had missed out on so much of her life. For two years she'd been gone…well a year and a half. For a year and a half all Mukai had been to her was a sock stuffed into her pillow case….and now she was a whole kid…a whole kid that everyone had kept from Mob…

Mob needed another cigarette. She had one in her hand but she really felt like she needed another.

"That act. The one that you've been putting up for years. This…this….this 'I'm so sweet and innocent and perfect' act. I'm tired of it. Your father, at least, is himself. Since you're so hell bent on following in his footsteps then why don't you just do whatever terrible thing you're planning on doing to me and then go about your business?" asked Fukuda. He was tired. Fine. If he couldn't throw himself at Suzuki's mercy then he would throw himself on Shigeko's. He just…he was tired. He was so tired and….not just from putting Sho to sleep…

He was just tired.

"Horrible….thing? What? Why would I do a horrible thing to you?" asked Mob. Was that what he thought about her? Well…it would have made sense. He already thought horrible things about her on his own. He thought that she…he thought that she did stuff with Shimazaki and stuff….and he thought that….well this was just one more terrible thing that he thought about her that could be added to the very long list of terrible things that he thought about her.

"Why the hell are you ever here, then, if you're not planning anything? What is even the point?" asked Fukuda with a sigh.

"I'm here to see Sho, I told you so. That's the first thing I said to you. The first words that I said when you answered the door. I should have said something nicer but….but I don't want to say nice things to you right now…or ever…well not for a while. You're mean to me…I don't like that." Said Mob

"When have I ever been mean to you…I have shown you nothing but respect, Miss Suzuki." Said Fukuda. He had so many mean things he could say to her…and do to her. He could walk over and slap that cigarette out of her hand. He could tell her father exactly what she got up to when he wasn't looking. Hell, he could tell her father exactly what she was planning…what he was sure that she was planning. Nothing less than a takeover of Claw…and Suzuki…he would never have stood for that….

Oh, who was he kidding? Suzuki would probably have sat her behind his desk and told her to have at it.

Suzuki…had a soft spot for her. His entire head was a soft spot when it came to her. Maybe he would willingly give up his power to her. Maybe she was the one that he should have been afraid of. Maybe he was afraid of her. Maybe he just…he didn't even know anymore. When she was around it felt like the entire world was as upended as this room.

"There. You call me Miss Suzuki. I can't even remember how many times I asked you to stop doing that." Said Mob

"You literally just told me to." Said Fukuda. What was this? Suzuki…he never played mind games with you. He was an asshole, he beat you up, he threw you in a hole to die, but he never played mind games with you. Not like this.

"I-I-I don't know, ok?! I don't know what you….you should call me! You're…I don't like you! I don't like you anymore! You're mean to me! It's like…like one day you got up and you decided that you didn't like me anymore…and I don't know why! Just…tell me what I did to make you hate me so I can stop doing it and then we can all be friends again! I don't like you but I'd rather be your friend than…whatever we are now." Said Mob. More mean words…this was just like…the way her stomach hurt, the way everything upset her, the way she just wanted this all to end. Talking to Fukuda felt just like…only worse…much worse somehow.

"I don't hate you. I have told you time and time again that I do not and have not ever hated you." Said Fukuda. Her aura was flaring and her voice was raised….and he was tired of this. He couldn't remember how many times he had told her, to her face, that he did not hate her. He didn't know if she honestly felt that way or she was trying to mess with him…either way she needed to get it through her head that she needed to just…drop this 'he hated her' thing!

"Well then…then why don't you like me anymore? I never did anything to you…anything to make you not like me…and anything to make you take Sho away…and…and to make him lie to me. I know my little brother and I know that he would never lie to me on his own. He loves me and I love him….he lied to me…but he still loves me…" said Mob. Sho lied to her. Sho lied to her and…and she loved him and he loved her. Fukuda…must have told him to lie…or he came up with it himself but…but he was her little brother and she would always love her little brother no matter what.

"He does what you say." Said Fukuda. Sho…he chased her approval like he chased Suzuki's. He chased her approval and he didn't need to. Her approval made him just as miserable as Suzuki's did. Sho….if this had been a perfect world then Sho would have been with Masami…and she would gave approved of him no matter what.

"That too…because he loves me…but I would still love him if he didn't listen to me. He lied to me…and ran away from me…but I still love him…I don't love you anymore…that was mean but that's how I feel…but I still love him." said Mob. She had never said that before, that she didn't love someone, and….and it almost felt like she told Fukuda that she hated him…but she didn't hate Fukuda. She just…didn't love him anymore.

"Well you can feel however you want to about me. I have no right to tell you how to feel." Said Fukuda. He had no right to tell her anything. He had no right to tell her to get that cigarette out of her mouth. He had no right to tell her that she needed to start acting like a kid. He had no right to tell her anything. He…had no right to…anything. It hurt…part of him…it did when she said that she didn't love him. She had been small when she said it 'I love you, Fukuda' but it hadn't come out so clear. She had been small and…and he had loved her then…and maybe he still loved…

But she didn't want his love….and he had no right to tell her…anything…so there.

"No…you don't. You don't get to tell me how to feel and…and you don't get to make me feel this way." said Mob. She hated this, the way she felt, and…and she didn't have to feel this way. She didn't have to feel like her organs were trying to escape from her body. She didn't have to feel like she wanted Fukuda to drink a tall glass of chunky sour milk with the craziest straw they made. She didn't have to…to feel all the terrible things that she felt right now…

It was her birthday…a little past…and if not for Fukuda then she wouldn't have been feeling this way….

"What 'way' do I make you feel, Miss Suzuki?" asked Fukuda. He wanted one of those cigarettes. It was never going to end with her. There was no end in sight…no end aside from his death or suffering…so he might as well…so he might as well have a cigarette or two while he waited for the hammer to come down.

"You make me feel like…talking to you is like…." Said Mob. She just…she didn't have words. Bad. That was how he made her feel. Bad and sad and….and just….like her organs were trying to crawl out of her body…and her head was going to explode and…and she just….she didn't want to feel this way! And she didn't have to feel this way…but she still felt this way!

Fukuda made her feel this way.

"Like what?" asked Fukuda. He didn't 'make' her feel anyway! She just…she….she was just…like this!

"Talking to you is like having a period. Excuse me." Said Mob. That…had not been the thing to say. That should have stayed in her head…but she had said it. It had been both rude and gross…and also embarrassing. Extra embarrassing. The most embarrassing. That had been the grossest, most embarrassing, and also meanest thing that she had ever said…

She shouldn't have drank so much.

She got up and went in the direction of Sho's aura. She knew that waking him up was wrong…but she didn't want to spend any more time with Fukuda than she had already. Especially after she had said that. She shouldn't have drank so much….and also she shouldn't have tossed her cigarette filter on the ground…or grabbed another one from her bag….or lit it. Especially since she was in Sho's room now sitting on the edge of the bed watching him sleep….covered in a green aura…

Fukuda had put him to sleep.

That…that person! That person who was a-a-a….he was…that thing that Minegishi had called him on the one plane ride when he made fun of their chest! He was that and also what Sho called people who he didn't like! And what Hatori shouted at people in games! And….and he just…he was a jerk! He had put her little brother to sleep! Well…no! He did not get to do that. Mob held out her hand and let her aura out…she wondered if this would work with someone other than Serizawa…it should work…since this was just more extas energy…energy that she sucked up….there….that hadn't been so hard. That was something that she had to do and she did it and…

And she hadn't accounted for Sho waking up when she was all done.


	507. The Truth Hurts

Sho hadn't been dreaming.

He knew that he had been asleep, the dreamless sort of sleep that happened when Fukuda put him under, but he wished that he had been dreaming. He wished that he had still been asleep, he wished that he had been in the middle of a dream, even if he wasn't entirely sure what kind of dream this was. Not his normal dream where he lived in a hamster maze but he wasn't a hamster and Shimazaki lived with him and they cuddled in a big pile of hamsters, it would have been weird if big sis had been in one of those dreams anyway. This was more like a nightmare. It was like…like big sis was there…which was usually a good thing, but now…now she was upset and….

And this felt like a bad dream. But it wasn't.

She was sitting there on the edge of his bed. He sat up and pulled his blanket off with his powers. She was staring at him. Her aura…she was pissed off. He could feel it. Her face was kind of red…and her eyes had this kind of…edge…to them. When they had been kids people had always been asking him why his sister looked so bored all the time. She only looked bored if you didn't know her…and you couldn't see auras. He knew his big sister and he knew her looks…all of her looks…even the ones he never saw.

Like this one.

He crossed his legs and faced her. She was still staring at him. He had no idea what she was going to say…or do. She never got mad, not really, but he had never done anything as bad as this to her. He had been lying for years…and he had been keeping baby sis from her…and that…that was unforgivable. He had betrayed her. She loved baby sis just as much as he did and…and he had been doing the right thing. People couldn't know that big sis had been a part of his family Fukuda had said, because she was little and people would try and mess with her to get to dad. That made sense, people shot at dad all the time, and he was…dad. Baby sis couldn't do anything at all if someone tried to hurt her…and her mom was only a Scar. They were called Scars, Shimazaki had said once, because they were damaged goods. They had gone up against dad and lost so badly that they got scars on their faces. Dad put them there to remind them of their failures. Baby sis's mom couldn't protect her if something happened….and that was why she had to be a secret from everyone…even big sis.

She told dad everything.

That was another very good reason why big sis couldn't ever know about baby sis. Big sis told dad everything and dad…well he didn't want them to love baby sis. He didn't want baby sis to be a part of their family. Dad had given baby sis to big sis but that was just because she had to stay somewhere while Fukuda found her a mom. It had been ok that she stayed with them because dad had been on that very long away mission. Dad came back and when he did baby sis had to go…and since dad was the biggest dick hole in the world nobody could ever see baby sis again.

Not even big sis.

That was another reason why he had to keep baby sis a secret. Because of dad. It all came down to dad, didn't it? Dad was the reason for everything bad that had happened in his life. Dad was the reason that big sis was mad at him, dad was the reason that baby sis had to go away, and dad was the reason that mom had left too. Dad was the reason for everything bad that had ever happened to not only him but big sis and if big sis had to be pissed off at someone then she should have been pissed off at dad….but she wasn't going to be pissed off at dad. Sho felt around with his aura. Dad wasn't there. Dad was usually as bright as the sun. Dad wasn't there….but big sis was. Her and…if he spread his aura out really far he could feel Minegishi….only big sis and Minegishi….and he had no idea what that meant. Why dad and the others hadn't come…why Shimazaki wasn't there….this was not the time to think about Shimazaki…even though when they were together Sho always felt…good. Safe….not that he had any reason to ever feel unsafe…

Big sis had never done anything to hurt him…and she never would.

Even though it would have been better if she had. Even though he kind of wished that she would just…start screaming at him or…hitting him…or something. Something other than staring at him. She was staring at him and he was staring at her…and she must have had something to say. She must have had something to say to her own little brother, who had been a lying dick hole to her, even if it was just…he didn't know. 'Fuck off' or something…no. She didn't curse. It wouldn't have been natural if she had started cursing him out right there….but it would have been better than the silence…the silence that made him want to start cursing….

He knew that cursing would have been a bad idea…but he knew that he had to say something.

"Hi…big sis. What's up?" asked Sho. There. Words had been said. Now she had to say them back. It was like when they played hit the birdie together. He had hit the birdie and now it was on her side…and like when they played hit the birdie together it missed her completely. Nothing went to the other side and it seemed that he would have to wait for her to find the birdie, to find some words, before they could keep going.

He waited for a while.

Her aura touched his, and she opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, but then she closed it and went back to staring at him. He had no idea what she was trying to do…and he was so close to asking her. She had feelings, people had always said that it looked like she didn't but she totally did, and those feelings must have been bad. She must have been feeling something….anything….and even if it was the kind of thing that would make her yell at him and tell her that she was done being his big sister…no….she loved him and she would never do anything like that….

Mom had loved him too.

"Happy birthday…I drew you something…" said Sho. Maybe she would be happier if he talked about her birthday. Birthdays were important. They were the most important days of your life. They were a celebration of when you had been born and also you got presents. People liked being born…well the babies on TV were never happy when they were born but….but being bon meant that you were alive and people liked being alive….well actually sometimes you woke up and you wished that you had died in your sleep…but everyone like presents! Yeah, he had done a drawing for her of Anna and Kristoff getting married and also Elsa was there…and she would have liked that….maybe she would have been happier if he showed it to her…but that would have meant him getting up….

But he had to do something to make her happy.

"Did…you and the others do something fun? For your birthday, I mean." Said Sho. She hadn't said anything….she was just staring at him. She was staring at him because….because she was pissed off…and he had no idea what to do to make it better. He could have said sorry…but if he said sorry then that meant that he and big sis were talking about it…and if they talked about it then she might have gotten even more pissed off and…and left. Mom…she had been pissed off maybe….it had been hard to tell since she had been so sick for so long and he had been so little….but she had left and…and people who loved you…they could leave….

They could walk out the door and never come back…and there was nothing that you could do about it. Nothing at all.

"Did you do anything? Did you and Minegishi-" said Sho. He had been looking for something to say one minute and the next thing he knew he was being hugged. He pushed her away, for a second, because part of him thought that she was trying to hurt him. The stupid part of him. The part of him that made his whole body tense up and his powers shove her…but she didn't move. She didn't even act like she had felt it…but she must have felt it…he had pushed her…

He was the worst little brother in the history of the world and he deserved whatever was coming to him.

"I-I'm sorry-" said Sho

"You're right you're sorry!" said Mob. She had been trying to say something to Sho since she had gotten here. Since he had woken up. Since…since she had heard about…what had happened…from Minegishi! Not even her own little brother. Her best friend had been keeping a secret that they hadn't known was a secret…and Minegishi…well she wasn't mad at them because they hadn't known that they had been doing something wrong…but Sho knew…he knew that it was wrong to tell lies…

She had taught him that!

She had taught him not to tell lies and not to sneak around and…and…and he knew how much baby Mukai meant to her! He had kept her a secret since dad took her away! He…he had done so many things and…and that was why she hadn't said anything. She hadn't had any idea of what she could have said without it coming out mean. She could have said something just as bad, or even worse, than the period thing that she had said to Fukuda….and now she could never face him again since not only had she been mean to him but she had said the word period and she just…saw no other way to carry on with her life after all of that without hiding from Fukuda for the rest of her life…and also….also he was the one who should have been hiding from her! He had made her brother lie and-

-and he expected her to do horrible things to him.

She had never done anything horrible to anyone in her entire life. She loved her brother and her dad and her friends and…and she didn't do bad things to people. Dad did bad things to people but that was just because he didn't know how to be good. Like how he didn't know how to be best friends with Fukuda and Hatori so he was mean to them and he didn't know how to be a husband to mom so she left him and he didn't know how to be a son so his parents died…that last one might not have been his fault….but she didn't see him as being a good son either since he was bad at being everything else….and…and he didn't know any better but to be himself…and she didn't know any better but to be herself…and she had no idea who Fukuda thought that she was being but she didn't know how to be anyone other than herself, Suzuki Shigeko….Mob, and she just….

She didn't do horrible things to people!

Especially not Sho…even though she wanted…she didn't want to do anything horrible to him but she wanted to say horrible things to him. She wanted to tell him that he had been a bad little brother and that she was very unhappy with him. She wanted to tell him that from now on he was only getting one after bath soda and poptart. She wanted to tell him that because of what he had done, and had been doing for over a year, he had to go back to doing his homeschool work and that included math. She also wanted to tell him that because of what he had done she didn't fully trust him anymore…and that would have been mean…

And she loved Sho too much to be mean to him.

"I know! That's why I said it! I'm sorry that I pushed you with my powers. It was an accident!" said Sho

"What? When did you do that?" asked Mob

"Just now when you started hugging me. It was an accident. I thought that you were going to…my body though that you were going to hurt me…..but my brain knows that you never would." Said Sho

"…you should tell your body to listen to your brain…because I would never hurt you. You or anyone else." Said Mob. She felt like someone had cut her open and filled her with ice. Sho…was afraid of her? How did that even work? She…she had never done anything to hurt her and…and it was his body that was afraid, not his brain, and that…didn't make sense but…none of this made sense! Why he had just….lied to her! And kept secrets from her! And….and just….he had been….not good!

She needed to calm down before she said something to Sho that she couldn't take back.

"I know that you won't….but I deserve it. I know that I deserve it…and I'm sorry." said Sho. Maybe if he just got on with it, like ripping off a Band-Aid, then he and big sis could be friends again. She was still pissed off but she always forgave people when they were sorry. She wasn't going to just…go. She wasn't going to get mad and go like…like mom did. He didn't know why he was afraid of that. Big sis loved him…and mom had loved him too…and when you loved someone you didn't always have to stay and…

And he kind of wanted one of those cigarettes that big sis was smoking…or really anything to make him feel better.

"Sho, don't say that. It make me upset when you say that and I'm already super upset so…so please don't make it worse." Said Mob as she started another cigarette. She let the end of the last one fall onto the rub and she dug it in with her foot. She knew that she needed to find something to use as an ashtray….but she just…wasn't in the mood to make herself an ashtray. She was in the mood to smoke so she got into a better mood. She had her flask, too, but if she drank then she would just end up saying something mean…not that she would ever say something as mean or as embarrassing to her little brother as….what she had said to Fukuda….but she might have come up with something else that was mean and embarrassing….

So she decided that it was best to just keep a cigarette in her mouth so she didn't end up saying anything else worse.

"Can I have one too? I'm…upset." Said Sho. Big sis opened her bag with her powers and pulled out a cigarette. She usually smoked other stuff, stuff that made him spacy and happy and hungry, and right now he needed to feel spacy and happy…hungry was ok too….but mostly just spacey and happy. She pressed the cigarette to his lips. He held it between his teeth like he'd Shimazaki do a bunch of times before. Big sis leaned in and pressed the end of her cigarette to his.

"You have to inhale while I do this or it won't work." Said Mob

"Like this?" asked Sho before he closed his lips and inhaled. That worked….right? It tasted…really bad…and it smelled really bad….but he'd feel better. The spacey feeling would come back soon. The spacey feeling that he got when he smoked with big sis….and Shimazaki. He just…had to keep on smoking this…terrible thing that big sis seemed to like.

"I'm only going to give you one, ok? So don't smoke that too fast. Moderation is important with these. Once you start it's very hard to stop." Said Mob

"I don't think that I want another one of these anyway." Said Sho

"Why not?" asked Mob

"Because they taste bad. When do you start to feel all…good….and stuff? Spacey and happy." Said Sho

"You mean high? These don't make you high, they just help you calm down….and they taste good. I think that they taste good anyway." Said Mob

"I don't." said Sho

"You'll get used to it….but not now because I have to teach you about moderation….even though I don't want to right now. I don't even know if it'll help…or if you'll listen. You didn't listen to me about not lying." Said Mob

"….I didn't lie." Said Sho. He had lied, he had done so much lying that he had lost count of the number of lies that he'd told, but…but those didn't count as lies. Those were just pragmatic choices that he'd had to make. That was all. Sometimes in life you had to make pragmatic choices, Fukuda had said, and when you lied in a pragmatic choice then it was ok. That was why it was ok for him to tell Emmy that he loved her…and that was why it was ok to tell big sis that he was in London being all in love with his girlfriend when he in fact was in Seasoning City with his baby sister…pretend baby sister.

"Sho…you did. You just lied to me. You told me that you and Fukuda were staying in London so you could be with Emmy….but instead you came here to be with baby Mukai….and also you just lied to my face just now when you said that you hadn't lied. I don't like to be lied to." Said Mob as she took a very long drag off of her cigarette. She needed to go easy on these…she didn't have a lot of these left and she got the feeling that Minegishi wasn't going to share with her…but she had to smoke….she had to. Otherwise she would get upset again…and it was one thing to get upset at Fukuda, he didn't like her much anyways, but it was quite another to get upset at her own little brother.

"No it's just…I had to make a pragmatic choice, ok?! And those don't count as lies!" said Sho

"Pragmatic….choice?" asked Mob. She was glad that he had been keeping up with his homeschool work…but she wished that he had chosen a better time to use words that he knew that she didn't know. She didn't want to have to worry about how little work she had done in her vocabulary book on top of all of this!

"They're like…choices that you make where there's no good answer. Like…like if behind one door there's a tiger and behind the other door is like…a girl who you have to marry otherwise you have to go through the tiger door…then you go through the girl door so you don't have to go through the tiger door." Said Sho

"That…doesn't make any sense. Why are there doors? And who's making you go through them? And what's on the other side of these doors? And where did you get a tiger?" asked Mob

"None of that is important! The important thing is…is that I didn't lie! Well I did lie but lying was the best option so it's ok that I lied! Alright!?" said Sho

"Best…option?" asked Mob. She did not follow…which wasn't anything new for her. She had always been kind of clueless. Like now. She had no idea when the best option was to lie to someone. Telling lies was always wrong….which was why she never did that. She changed the subject, she ran away, she avoided the question, but she never told lies…and she had thought that she had taught Sho the same. Obviously she had thought wrong.

"Yeah like…like when you either hurt someone's feelings or you just…don't tell them the truth so they can be happy. Then they can be happy and you can be happy….everyone can be happy. It's alright to tell lies so long as you make people happy." Said Sho

"No….that's not alright. Nothing about that is alright. You always tell the truth. You can't just tell people lies to….to make your life easier." Said Mob. That was what he was talking about. That was…not right. The truth hurt sometimes but…but you couldn't just lie to people. You could keep secrets…which wasn't the same as lying but still pretty bad in this case…and you could avoid the subject….but you couldn't just…tell lies so you wouldn't have to deal with your problems. That wasn't right at all.

"What the hell are you talking about?!" asked Sho. Easier? Easier!? What the fuck did she mean by that!? Ever since he had started having to make these pragmatic choices nothing about his life had gotten any easier! In fact everything had gotten at least ten times harder than it had to be! How could she just look him in the eye and SAY things like that!?

"What it sounds like to me is that you're talking about telling lies so you don't have to deal with stuff that's too hard to deal with." Said Mob

"That's….that's not it at all! You don't understand…you never understand!" said Sho

"Then explain it to me so that I can understand, little brother, and do it now because I…am not in a very good mood at all…and I want to understand so I can be in a better mood…or at least not as upset as I am right now right this minute." Said Mob. She finished her cigarette and then started another one. She felt her flask as she dug around in her bag. That was…it was there…later. When Sho wasn't looking.

"I….I did what I had to do…ok? I wanted to tell you but Fukuda said-" said Sho. He really wanted to smoke something else right now. Maybe if he was high then this would be easier. Dulling the pain of living was important, big sis had said so, and he just….he hurt. This hurt, all of it. Talking about this hurt…being here hurt…there was just a lot of hurt there…

And he just wanted it to stop…but it didn't stop.

Her aura felt like standing in the sun on a hot beach in nothing but a bathing suit. No sunscreen, no nothing. Just him and the sun and the sand. He looked down at his hands, he almost expected to be sunburned, but he wasn't. He was fine…his body was, anyway. His aura was a whole other story. His aura was trying to get away from hers…and he wanted to get away from her too. She was staring at him again…her cigarette was about to fall on his bed…and then it did. It fell on his bed and burnt a hole right through Judy's ear. Sho wanted to pick it up…but he couldn't. It hurt. He hurt. He hurt and he wanted it to stop….

But it didn't stop.

"Alright then." Said Mob. She was not going to get mad. She was not going to yell. She was not going to scream. She was not going to break things. She was going to calmly get up, go back to Fukuda, and tell him that he unless he took back whatever nonsense he had taught Sho…her little brother….then he was…demoted. She didn't have the power to fire people but she could demote them….

And if he didn't take back what he taught Sho then he was going to be knocked right down to level four Awakened so fast he wouldn't know what hit him.

Which was better than actually hitting him…which was something else that Mob wanted to do. She wanted to hit him with both of her hands and also she wanted to kick him with both of her feet….but that was wrong…and she had never wanted to hurt anyone before…but she wanted to hurt him now…and she was so…so gross….for wanting to hurt someone but…but he was the one who had taught Sho that it was ok to lie. He was the one who had told her little brother that he needed to lie to her, sneak around, and keep big secrets. He was the one…he was the cause of all of this….him and no one else….because he thought that…he thought that…

Who, exactly, did Fukuda Tadashi think he was?

"Who do you think you are?" asked Mob. This time Fukuda was sitting and she was standing. This time she was the one who was taller than him. Good. She wanted to be taller than him. Maybe now he would listen to her. Dad had told her that the only way to rule was through fear…and she didn't want him to be afraid of her….but she also kind of did. Maybe if he was afraid of her then he wouldn't go around teaching Sho such horrible things!

"Excuse me?" asked Fukuda as he looked up. She was back…and she smelled like a cigarette factory. Sho was there too, peeping his head around the corner. He was awake now…Fukuda didn't have the strength to put him back under…he barely had the strength to look Shigeko in the eye…and he only did that for the sheer insanity of the situation.

"Who do I think I am? Who do you think you are, that's the question now isn't it? For years now you've been-" said Fukuda

"Stop talking." Said Mob. She knew that the more he said the more this…terrible feeling….would grow. This terrible feeling that she had inside of herself. She felt like she was a soda bottle that had been put inside of one of those paint shaking machines. She felt like at any moment she could just….explode…everywhere. The paint on the walls around her began to peel off…the lamp behind her exploded…and her braids were flying up around her head. She needed him to shut up before she did something worse…much worse….than she had ever done before.

"You just asked me a question. Why would you ask me a question if-" said Fukuda. She was playing mind games with him…or something. He didn't know. He didn't have the energy to figure this out. To figure her out.

"Stop talking. If you keep on talking then I could do something…or say something…something worse than I've ever said before." Said Mob

"You're going to say something worse than the period remark?" asked Fukuda with a laugh. She turned red…good. She shouldn't have said things like that, terrible things, if she wasn't prepared to deal with the effects of them.

"Hey! Don't make fun of big sis about stuff like that!" said Sho. He pushed Fukuda with his powers so hard that his head bounced off the wall…that had been kind of a dick hole move…but so was making fun of big sis for all of that stuff that happened to her! Stuff that you weren't supposed to talk about anyway because it was super private and also it made girls embarrassed when they knew that you knew that stuff like that even existed. Shimazaki had told him that and he trusted Shimazaki more than anyone else in the world next to big sis.

"Sho…don't be violent…and put that fucking cigarette out this instant! Just because she smokes does not mean that you get to!" said Fukuda. Nope, none of that. He was not letting Sho make his life any worse than it was now. Shigeko…she could do whatever she wanted. There was nothing that he could do about her. Sho on the other hand was his responsibility…and even if he wasn't Sho was an eleven year old kid and eleven year olds kids should not have been smoking!

"Hey! You don't get to tell Sho what to do! Not anymore! Sho, you can have that one but that's going to be the last one for the rest of the day." Said Mob. No, Fukuda did not get to tell Sho what to do anymore. Not after what he had taught him. From now on someone else could watch Sho…like…well Shimazaki taught Sho bad things too…and Minegishi didn't want to…and Shibata made Sho bowls of frosting to eat before bed so he had sweet dreams….and Hatori got scared too easily….and Serizawa, well, Sho would have been watching him and not the other way around….and dad couldn't be trusted not to hurt Sho….and tying him to a tree wouldn't work since he'd just chew through the leash….

She'd figure the specifics out later. Right now Fukuda was just…off the Sho sitting list…forever.

"That's really nice, Shigeko, the things that you teach your brother are just wonderful…aren't they?" asked Fukuda

"Yes. I'm teaching him about moderation. You only taught him how to lie. You taught him how to lie and…and that's not right at all. It's unforgivable…and I want you to teach Sho that it's wrong to tell lies and also that pragmatic choices aren't real….I want you to tell him that right now." Said Mob

"I can't do that." Said Fukuda. No. He was not going to sit there and tell Sho that he had been in the wrong. He hadn't been. He put too much on himself already. He had just been trying to make his life a little easier, a little more bearable, and there was nothing wrong with that at all. Shigeko wasn't capable of understanding that. What did she know about pragmatic choices? Her life was a goddamned fairytale.

"Yes you can. You just have to tell Sho that you were wrong to teach him about-" said Mob

"I wasn't wrong. Nothing about what I said or did was wrong. Your brother deserves whatever happiness he can get in his life and…and this isn't something that you're capable of understanding. Your life and his life are like night and day…so get off your goddamned soapbox already!" said Fukuda jumping to his feet. Sho put a barrier between him and Shigeko….Fukuda had no idea who Sho was trying to protect with that barrier. Him…Shigeko….the both of them from each other? Not that he could have done anything to hurt her. This was Suzuki Shigeko…she was second only to her father.

"But….I'm not on a soapbox. I'm standing on the same rug you are. My side is a little lumpy but…I'm not on a soapbox." Said Mob as she felt the carpet under her toes. Lumpy…she hated a lumpy rug…but not…whatever Fukuda had just said.

"He means that you're being all…bossy and stuff…and you kind of are." Said Sho. He understood why she was being like this…and he wasn't going to stop her. Better she be like this to Fukuda than him.

"I know that I am….and right now I don't care. Fukuda, you taught Sho something wrong and you need to make this right or…or I'll demote you….or something. You're already not allowed to watch Sho anymore….and I'll kick you out of the travel group if I have to. I don't care what my dad says. Either tell Sho that you were wrong or…or you're out." Said Mob. She wished that it hadn't come to this. She wished…she wished that she had been little again. She wished that she had been little and Fukuda had messed up going to the grocery store again and he came by with extra food and then he and mom cooked and she and Sho either helped or went outside to play and…and then they ate dinner and played together and…and she wished that…that she was that little again….but those times were over now.

Those times were over, wishes did not come true, and sometimes the people who you once loved hurt you in ways that you couldn't even imagine.

"You…you have no idea what you're saying. What are you going to do without a healer? What are you going to do if-" said Fukuda. She…was not serious…she could not have been serious. Touichirou would never have let her….Touichirou was out of his mind….who knew what he would do. He'd lost it after Masami escaped…and whatever Shigeko wanted Shigeko got…but he was not leaving Sho alone with her and the rest of them. He didn't need to gaze into a crystal ball to see what Sho would become if Fukuda just left him alone with…with all of them…

He could just take a look at Shigeko if he wanted to know…what Sho would become.

"Fukuda, she wants you to stop talking…so shut your fucking mouth before you make this even worse on yourself." Said Sho. He didn't want Fukuda gone! Sure he was an asshole but…but Fukuda was still…he was Fukuda! Sho wanted him around and shit just…not with him right now….but not gone forever!

"Sho…be nice…and I don't want Fukuda to stop talking. I want him to tell you that he…he was wrong to teach you about those pragmatic choice things. He was wrong to teach you about those things and he was wrong to…to even think that teaching you that…was ok. I have no idea why he would ever even begin to think that any of those things were ok….I just…I can't even begin to understand…" said Mob

"You…how can you not understand?" asked Fukuda. Was she really that clueless? Did she not see what her little brother went through each and every day? How…how could she be so…so absorbed in her own little world like that? Well…she had been raised by Touichirou…so there was that.

"Because nobody explained anything….and I don't even see what your explanation can possibly be. You taught my brother to lie. How do you explain that?" asked Mob

"I did what I had to do." Said Fukuda

"That….is not an answer." Said Mob. She did reach for her flask that time. She drank some of the coconut stuff then put it back in her bag. She knew that she was being watched, she knew that Sho wanted some too, but that was too bad. She was a good big sister, better for Sho than Fukuda was, and she was going to teach him about moderation…when she was done teaching him that lying was wrong.

"Fine, you want your answer? You want your answer, Shigeko, then here it is. I was trying to make your brother's life easier. It was hard on him when the baby got adopted-" said Fukuda

"You mean when dad made you take her away from us." Said Mob. Dad had miscalculated, he said, and he had apologized….and it was for the best because baby Mukai had a mom that loved her now…even though Mob had loved her almost as much as a mom could. She loved Mukai like a sister….and the love between sisters was enough to thaw a frozen heart…so that must have been at least three quarters as good as the love you got from a mom.

"I mean when I found a home for her away from you and the rest of…of….them!" said Fukuda as he threw his arms up in the air.

"You mean…when dad told you to take baby sis away…because she would be safer here in the Seventh Division." Said Sho slowly. Fukuda…he knew what Fukuda had told him. Dad had been the one to make him do that….and this was what was best for baby sis. Sometimes you had to make pragmatic choices...and that had been one of them.

"Safer here? That makes…zero sense. Dad is the most powerful esper in the world, I'm the second most powerful, Sho's pretty powerful, we live next door to Shimazaki who can teleport anywhere…and Minegishi who's good at fighting….and Shibata is…well he's huge! Nobody would mess with us just…just with him there alone! How the h-word could baby sis have been safer here than with us!?" said Mob

"Because she'd be away from you and that group and her father-" said Fukuda. He bit his tongue to make sure that it didn't slip again. He tasted copper. Good.

"You mean our father. Dad is our father." Said Mob

"Yeah, and dad's an asshole. He's an asshole to me and he'd be an asshole to her, too. He only likes you." Said Sho. That made sense. It was better for baby sis to live here than for her to have to live with someone as terrible as dad. It hurt but…it made sense.

"That's still…that still doesn't make sense. Dad can be mean sometimes but if I could stop him from hitting you then I could have protected baby Mukai too. Fukuda…did you take her away on your own because you thought that dad would hurt her? Because…if you were trying to keep her safe then…then I understand that. I mean…if someone's in danger…if you think that someone is in danger…then it's ok to tell lies. I guess." Said Mob. Well then. That had been….a really big misunderstanding….but it was over now. Now that was all settled and they could be friends again. They would all go and see baby Mukai and explain the big misunderstanding to her…if she understood things yet….and then they could all play the 'stick your arm in a paper towel roll' game…or whatever her new favorite thing was.

"I took your sister away because…because it was best for her. Your father didn't want her and, frankly, she's better off without him in her life. I did what I thought was best for your little sister. Alright? So shoot me. I did what I thought was best." Said Fukuda

"She's our pretend sister…and big sis was right. Taking her away wasn't for the best…but…I mean if you thought that dad would treat her like he treated me…and that nobody could protect her from him…then I guess…I guess that you were right…he was right. Right, big sis? He was right and you can stop being pissed off now?" asked Sho. He totally would have protected baby sis! Fukuda thought that he was some weak little baby but he wasn't! He wasn't going to start up with Fukuda about that, though, since big sis was calmer now. Her aura was less pissed off and her hair had stopped floating. She was ok…this was ok…everything was ok…

Now they could stop it, finally, and then…well big sis would want to play with baby sis after this….and everyone was still running around getting this place ready for her and dad, once he came, so it would be the perfect cover to let Ritsu and his friend escape…..

"Fukuda….was wrong…but he thought that he was doing what was right…so he's not demoted…and we can all put this behind us now." Said Mob. She felt….better. Lighter. Happier. Just…this was better. All of this was better. She could see Mukai again and they could pick up where they left off and…and maybe she and her mom could travel with them now…and they could all be one big happy family again. Mob smiled. That would be wonderful.

"Yeah, we can. Here, I'll tell you where she lives and then you guys can play girl games together or something." said Sho

"You can come too." Said Mob

"No, I have….stuff to do. You go on ahead. She misses you a lot, probably, if she can remember you…and you have to hear her talk! She knows a lot of words and she can walk now too." Said Sho

"That's…amazing…and I wish that I had been there to see it…but that's good. Maybe if she's less like a baby then dad will let her and her new mom join the group." Said Mob

"Big sis….you're a genius and I love you." Said Sho. This was…this was great! It had hurt, earlier, but now….now everything was going to work out! Baby sis could be with them forever and if dad didn't like it then he could go suck dicks in a public bathroom during golden week for ten yen, no, for five yen coins.

"Little brother…I love you too." Said Mob. Sure he had been sneaking around and lying…but he'd had a good reason….and she knew that he was sorry. What had happened, happened, and now everything could be better. Sure she was still a little bit hurt but…it would pass. Everything would pass eventually including this.

"No….no….no! A million times no! Are you out of your mind?!" asked Fukuda. He didn't know who he was screaming that at, Shigeko or Sho. Both of them, maybe, because that was a terrible idea. He may not have been that baby's biggest fan but he stood by what he did. She was better off in this insane place than in the traveling insane asylum that was Shigeko, her friends, and Touichirou! Not to mention the fact that Touichirou wanted nothing to do with that child!

"No….but you might be. Can't you see that this is a good idea? Baby sis is going to be so happy with us and-" said Sho

"Sho, no. Your sister does not need this. Your sister is better off with her mother who loves her…and she's better off in this place…and she's better off being as far away from your father as possible. Your father does not want her, why do you think he ran away when I brought her to him?!" said Fukuda

"Dad was on an away mission." Said Mob. Fukuda should not have been talking like that to Sho or to anyone….and she just…she wanted this to be over already. Would it have been rude to walk right out the door? Probably….so she stayed there. She had been rude enough, and mean enough, as it was….and she didn't want to give him another reason to dislike her.

"Your dad ran away because he couldn't face up to what he had done…and he's hanging on by a thread as it is. I know him and I know that if you just show up with his daughter-" said Fukuda

"What are you talking about? Mukai is an orphan that Claw found. Like Hatori." Said Mob

"Are you blind or just high again? That is your flesh and blood sister! Your father does not want her around and, frankly, she's better off here and-" said Fukuda. He…may have gotten a little carried away. He may have let his anger and exhaustion get the best of him. He may have gone the one step too far…but he was done now. He had no choice but to be done.

Because Sho had tackled him to the ground.

"Sho! Stop it!" said Mob as she used her powers to pry Sho off of Fukuda. That had been…a bunch of weird lies to tell…and she had no idea why he had told them but she knew that Sho should not have been fighting with people like that. Maybe Fukuda had brain worms like Sho was always talking about…or maybe he was just making things up to upset people….like Shimazaki did sometimes…or…something like that….

"Sho….I'm sorry. I'm sorry….I shouldn't have told you like this." said Fukuda

"Told him…lies? Yes. You should not have told him lies. You're right." Said Mob as she held Sho in the air with her powers. At least Fukuda was learning right from wrong…so…yay? This was…so tiring…and she wanted to see Mukai and go to bed and…and a whole lot of other things….things that didn't involve Fukuda.

"You're a liar!" said Sho. Fukuda….was just saying things. If he was telling the truth then…then that meant that he'd been lying to Sho…for years….and that there had been no reason to take baby sis away…and that there had been no reason to lie to big sis….or…or….anything!

"I…am so sorry. Your dad…he made a mistake and…and I meant to tell you when you were older and…and I was angry. I'm sorry. I truly am." Said Fukuda. He needed to lay down. He just…could not take this anymore. The way Shigeko just…was. The way she made these unilateral decisions without thinking…and…and she was so much like Touichirou…and he was just…he had been cleaning up Touichirou's messes for so long now….he didn't need Shigeko coming in and undoing his work.

"Mistake….what the fuck…people are not mistakes!" said Sho. Big sis was holding him back and…and now her aura was touching his and…and it hurt again. This time he did get sunburnt on his hands…and Fukuda got it worse…and now big sis…she was kind of scary there…she was holding onto her sides and…and it was getting hard to look at her…so he closed his eyes….but he could still see her. She was that bright.

"Fukuda…go away. Go away and never come back." Said Mob. Getting the words out hurt. It was like there was something inside of her…like she had mixed soda and pop rocks up and her stomach was going to explode….her stomach and the rest of her, too….and she just…she had to keep it together….for everyone's sake….

She had to keep everyone safe…safe from her.

"Sho…come away from her." said Fukuda. He reached out to pull Sho away. That was…he knew that look. He had seen it before…on Touichirou. This was the line. When he exploded it wasn't always sudden. There had been times when he'd toed the line just enough to bring himself back….but not always….it was always a coin flip….

And Fukuda was not a gambling man.

"Big sis…where are you going? And…and what's wrong?" asked Sho. All the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck were standing up. He wanted to run away…but he knew his sister. She was pissed off…and so was he….but he knew that she would never hurt him. Not on purpose. Her powers were doing their own thing but….but she would never hurt him…or anything….

"Go!" shouted Mob. She didn't know if she was yelling that at Fukuda or Sho….or herself. She took a step away…and then another…and another. She put a barrier around herself and kept walking. She kept her eyes closed…and kept on walking. She walked until she found a door…she knew that she was being called out to but….but she just had to keep walking. She walked until she found a door…and then she opened it…and then she kept on walking…she just…this was….she didn't want to think about this. How mean she had been….how terrible she had been in her mind…and her words…and the terrible thing that Fukuda had taught Sho…and the terrible thing that he had just confessed to….and the terrible thing that dad had done to mom….dad…her own dad…

She just kept on walking….until she couldn't walk anymore….

She found some stairs…sat down…and screamed.


	508. Family Time, Colors, and Earth Shakes

Costco counted as a family outing these days.

It had to. Family outings, real ones, were becoming few and far between and they would be for a while thanks to untitled family Hirai project. Another baby was a strain on their already strained finances…not that she didn't want her new son or daughter, of course she did, she just…was not a fan of going to Costco. She wasn't a fan of how hard it was to find parking. She wasn't a fan of how large the quantities of food were. She hated how much money she ended up spending every time she came here. She hated going to the store in general. Before….back when…well back when things had been different she had either walked to the small stores around her neighborhood after sending the kids to school and gotten what she needed or, more often than not, she just had what she needed delivered….but that wasn't an option anymore. Money was an object again. Money was a finite resource and that meant saving money wherever she could…

Which meant going to Costco…with her entire family….

She loved her family. She loved Eiji, she loved the kids, but she did not love going to the store with them. At least when she was all on her own then it was get in, get out, get what she needed, and then get on with her life. It was always a production when she went with all of them…but she couldn't leave them alone. Not Madoka, at least. If Touichirou's cult or whatever was kidnapping psychic kids then she needed to keep Madoka close…and if she was taking Madoka with then she couldn't just leave Juro behind, he wouldn't stand for it, and if she had both kids then she needed to take Eiji with because they liked to run off in separate directions. Eiji was just as excitable as the kids when it came to going to Costco but…well at least he wanted to go with her. At least he wanted to spend time with her….

Unlike some people….

That had been the hardest part of it all, really, being away from him for so long. Weeks if not months on end…and he hadn't even cared. He could have been gone for years and years and it wouldn't have phased him. He would have just come home, slipped off his shoes, and asked where is breakfast for dinner was. Eiji…he loved being with her…and he hated it when they were apart. There had even been a time, before, when he'd debated not taking the job in Tokyo if it meant that he had to be away from her and the kids for longer than necessary. The economic wellbeing of their family won out, Juro had been on the way after all and babies were expensive, so Masami had given her husband her blessing. He had thought that she hadn't cared but she had…even if it hadn't seemed that way. Compared to Touichirou…well leaving the house an hour or so earlier had been nothing.

It was something…to have her husband there…even if he sometimes get a tad bit too excitable.

"What does everyone want to first when we get there? I'll start. I'm going to sample everything. I timed it so we'll get there when they're getting rid of the old samples and then by the time we're done shopping we should be able to get the next batch…I hope they have those shrimp rolls again…" said Eiji. He glanced over at Masami. She was sitting with her head pressed against the window…not a good sign. Either she was sick again or her medicine was kicking though…or maybe she was still tired…or worked up about that kid from earlier. He'd get her some of that chocolate she liked…the big chocolate platter…and he'd hide it from the kids, too, since they were a couple of locusts when it came to sweets.

Yeah, Masami would like that enough…maybe enough to pull her out of this.

"First I want to watch all the TVs to see which one has the best picture and then I want to sit on all the couches to see which one is the most comfortable and then I want to poke all the bread to see which one is the freshest and then I want to go to where the fish are and pick which one we have for dinner." Said Madoka. She kicked mom's chair. Not too hard, she didn't want to hurt mom or her new brother and sister, but hard enough to wake her up maybe. Her medicine made her sleepy something but it was way too early for her to go to sleep…and also sometimes when she went to sleep she stayed that way for the whole day and night….sometimes she missed dinner and bath time and breakfast….and sometimes Mom even forgot about school….

"Hey mom, what do you want to do when we get there?" asked Madoka

"I don't know, baby, maybe we could pick out a fish like you said…and please stop kicking my chair." Said Masami. She put her hands over her stomach as they turned. She was being kicked from the inside and the outside too. Madoka had been a kicker. Juro, not so much. They used to have to shake up and down to make sure that he was ok in there. Sho had been trying to kick his way out from month four until month nine…of course when the time came….

Masami let go of her stomach.

"I don't want fish for dinner! I want Costco chicken! I want a Costco chicken leg and a Costco soda and a Costco churro and a Costco ice cream and a-" said Juro. Mom and the baby were hungry…and not for fish. That was why she was holding her stomach and looking sad. Fish was boring, and it had too many tiny bones. Chicken only had one big bone in it. That made it better. The baby agreed with him…and also it wasn't safe for the baby to have fish. What if mom swallowed a bone and then it got stuck in the baby's belly button since belly buttons were what connected the baby's stomach to mom's.

"That's lunch, dummy. I'm talking about dinner. For dinner I want to pick out which fish has to die." Said Madoka

"I don't want a fish to die! No fish for dinner!" said Juro

"Well a chicken has to die to make your Costco chicken leg so what does it matter if a fish has to die for my dinner?" asked Madoka. Juro was so dumb sometimes. Most boys were. Not that one boy who went to her karate school but was in a different class and already had a yellow belt…but most boys. Especially little brothers. She hoped that the new baby was a girl, then she could be her friend and teach her stuff, and also they could outvote Juro on things. If she got a little brother, though, then she was moving out. There was no other way.

Two brothers was just too many…even one was kind of pushing it.

"Mom! Madoka wants to kill fish!" said Juro. He pointed at Madoka. He stuck his finger in her face but not right in her eye. If he poked her in the eye then mom and dad would get upset with him but if he just put his finger really close then he wouldn't get in trouble. He was smart like that. That was why he was in the yellow room at school.

"Mom! Juro is being a baby again!" said Madoka as she made like she was going to bite him. If she bit him then she would get in trouble and dad wouldn't let her have double and triple samples with him…and she liked having double and triple samples. Also she had to pick out a fish for dinner, she had to be the one, so that way she could apologize to it. That was important since it had to die because of the food chain and stuff.

"Mom! Madoka called me a baby!" said Juro

"Did not!" said Madoka

"Did too!" said Juro

"Did-" said Madoka

"Kids, bring it down to a dull roar. Mom's not feeling good today and when mom feels good then the new baby doesn't feel good, and you don't want the new baby to feel bad do you?" asked Eiji as he pulled into Costco…gas? No, not with the kids like this…and Masami like this. She'd perk up once they got inside. He'd miss the first round of samples for her if she wanted to go and smell the soaps or something…he'd get her one of those body wash packs she liked. The ones with all the berry scents. She'd like that.

"I'm, fine, Eiji, I'm fine. Just a little tired." Said Masami as they backed into a parking spot. She was fine…just a little out of it. Her medicine was kicking in. That was all. She just…well there was what was happening…but if Eiji and the kids asked then she would just say that her medicine was kicking in. She didn't know how she would even explain to her family what all was happening in her head…so she wouldn't. She wasn't stupid, she knew not to send the whole thing come crashing down around her. She may not have liked dragging everyone to Costco but she loved her family…

And she wasn't going to ruin this one.

"How about we check out the scented soaps and then afterwards we check out the coffee sample lady?" asked Eiji. He reached over and patted Masami on the leg.

"You know I can't have caffeine." Said Masami with a groan.

"Right, sorry, I forgot. You know me." Said Eiji. He shrugged, laughed, and made a mental note that she couldn't have coffee anymore. He just had coffee on the brain because of their discussion that morning. He knew that she couldn't have coffee…or pretty much anything fun….but she could have scented soaps and herbal teas and fancy imported bulk chocolates and whatever else that she liked and could still have. Whatever could make her smile.

He loved it when she smiled.

She reached over and held his hand…and she was smiling again. She was smiling and looking at him…God. She was so pretty. He didn't know what she went on about sometimes, about how her face was always red and puffy because she was pregnant. She was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen…in his life, obviously, not like a model…no. She was as pretty as a model. Had she heard that? No, no, she couldn't read minds…well she acted like she could read his mind sometimes but she couldn't actually read minds.

Masami, if you can hear my thoughts please blink twice.

"I know…and I love you." Said Masami as she leaned over and kissed her husband. She liked that, being able to kiss him. Touichirou hated affection of any kind. Unless he was on top of her she was useless to him. Pointless. He didn't even cuddle at night. If she ever felt like touching Touichirou it had to be sexual or he would just look up at her and ask her if she needed something from him…Eiji wasn't like that. He actually loved her as something more than a person who fulfilled that abstract concept of a human being called 'wife'.

"I love you too." Said Eiji. He leaned in and kissed Masami again. He knew that people could see them through the windshield…but that didn't matter. Let them look. Attitudes like that were why the population was so low, why so many people were losing their minds and trying to live on the internet, and why everyone was so damn lonely all the time. If he couldn't kiss his wife in his fully paid off 2006 Estima then where could he kiss her?

"You guys are sickos!" shouted Juro as loud as he could. He didn't care if he woke up the new baby and made it kick mom's insides…that was a sick thing that mom and dad did! A sick, terrible, thing that you were never supposed to do because it was gross! When he grew up and got married he was never kissing his wife or holding hands with her or anything!

"Quiet, if they kiss then mom might have twins!" whispered Madoka as she poked Juro in the side. He had no idea how it worked. Yes, watching mom and dad trying to make another baby sister or brother was gross, but it was worth if they made twins. If they made twins then the twins could be identical and she could dress them the same and also she could rave them.

"Want to go for triplets?" asked Eiji. He wiggled his eyebrows at Masami. She smiled and rolled her eyes.

"If you'll do the diaper changes and the midnight feedings then alright." Said Masami

"Alright. Kids, here's my credit card and about ten thousand yen in cash. Come back with something besides candy." Said Eiji as he fished his wallet out of his pocket. Masami put her hand over her mouth and laughed. He hated it when she did that. He loved it when she smiled…he loved her…even if she have triplets in there….

He could live without sleep if he needed to…they were at Costco. Yeah, he'd just get an eighteen year supply of coffee when he was here.

"But we can buy candy, right dad?" asked Madoka as she undid her booster seat and reached over for dad's wallet. She could totally do the shopping on her own! She couldn't reach the carts too good…but Juro could sit on her shoulders. There.

"Of course. Bring me back some of those giant candy rings and that gum that turns your mouth blue." Said Eiji

"What if they just have the kind that turns green?" asked Juro

"Then I'll have to disown the both of you." Said Eiji. Masami took a deep breath and kept on smiling. He was kidding. He was always kidding. He didn't know how to do anything other than kid around…especially with the kids. He was never leaving the kids and…and she wasn't either and…and she needed air. Air and space…right now.

"Eiji, you're terrible. Come on, let's go before they run out of samples." Said Masami. She opened the door and stepped out. There. That was better. She took a deep breath. Summer was coming, it smelled like it, summer and gasoline. She tied her sweater around her waist…too hot for that. It was getting hotter out…that was why it was so busy today. There were people coming and going on all sides…she wished that Eiji had parked farther away. He was unbuckling Juro from his seat…and Madoka was writing her name in the dirt on their car. Masaki added a trip to the carwash to her to do list…and she added more hand sanitizer to her shopping list. She reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of strawberry mini hand sanitizer with one. She grabbed Madoka with the other.

"Mom!" said Madoka as mom started covering her hands with that gross stuff. It didn't even smell like strawberries. It smelled like soap…but worse!

"Look at your fingers, they're black. If you want samples then you'll hold still." Said Masami as she cleaned off Madoka's hands. She had written her name pretty well, actually. Good strokes and the right stroke order too. She couldn't do a lot of writing….but that was Masami's fault. She didn't have time to teach her at home like she had…with the…other two….when they had been little.

"I can just eat with my other hand." Said Madoka

"She's got you there, Masami…." Said Eiji as he unclipped Juro from his car seat. That may have been the wrong thing to say. Masami had that look on her face, now, it looked like she was sucking on a lemon.

"…but you need to listen to your mother, Madoka, no hand sanitizer then no snacks…and you know not to draw on the car." Said Eiji. Red…why did he have to get a red car? Because it looked cool and if he had to drive a minivan then he deserved a cool one…but the next one would be black. Black as night. Then the kids could draw on it as often as they wanted to.

"What about that lady? She's drawing on cars." Said Juro. He pointed over to the lady putting her drawings on the windows of people's cars. That was smart if she wanted people to see them…but also kind of dumb because people were just throwing them on the ground. That made litter and litter was bad. They had learned that on Earth Day…and then they had to pick up litter. Dumb litterers…..

"She's putting her drawings on cars, dummy, learn Japanese." Said Madoka as mom scrubbed her fingers down with the gross strawberry stuff. There was a lady putting orange papers on windows…she needed one Mom hadn't let her have the orange paper from that morning but now there were a bunch of them! They were on all the cars in the parking lot and all over the ground too!

"Madoka, you know not to call your brother names." Said Masami as she capped the hand sanitizer and put it back in her bag. She had no idea why Madoka had to fight with her brother all the time. She had no idea why Juro had to fight with Madoka. Had Sho and Shigeko fought this much? She…didn't remember. No. Sho…he'd been a little firecracker….but Shigeko…she'd been more like Touichirou. Quiet until something provoked her badly enough to use her powers…to lose control…

She took Madoka's hand.

"Mom, can I have one of these? You wouldn't let me have the one from this morning but there are a whole bunch now." Saoid Madoka as she bent down to grab one of the orange papers from the ground. She almost made it, too, before mom pulled her back up.

"No, don't pick things up from off the ground. I…I just cleaned your hands." Said Masami. There…on the ground. She had just thought that someone had gone a little litter crazy but…those were missing person flyers. The same ones from that morning. There were so many of them….

"I want one too!" said Juro as he tried to reach down. Dad almost dropped him…and that was scary…so scary. He grabbed dad's shirt and held on tight. He didn't want to be dropped. He wanted whatever Madoka wanted but not badly enough to be dropped!

"Careful, little guy." Said Eiji as Juro clung to him like a scared little monkey….maybe they had time to take the kids to the zoo or something later….it'd been a while since they'd seen the monkeys…did Costco have pets? No, they had a pet department but no animals…damn. Were monkeys even pets? He'd have to Google that later.

"Juro, no, we don't pick things up off the floor. Come on, let's go and see if they're any carts left-" said Masami as Madoka tugged on her hand.

"Mom, can I have one? Not from the ground, from the lady over there. Hey, lady!" shouted Madoka. She shouted and waved her arm so the lady could see her.

"Madoka, don't talk to strangers." Said Masami. She would have turned around but the woman had made eye contact…and now she was coming over. She was coming over and she had a stack of flyers on her arm…and her eyes were red. Very red. She had black smudges under her eyes, too…and dark circles. Her clothes were rumpled and stained with what looked like ink. Her hair was tied in a messy, lopsided bun, and Masami….

Well she hadn't looked much better, really, when she'd left her children.

It hadn't been so bad the first few days, Fukuda had been there to ease the pain, but then she'd had to leave him. She'd gotten her one way ticket to Sapporo and…even on the train it hadn't been so bad. It had hit her when she got off the train…when she stepped into a station that she hadn't been to since she'd been a kid…and it hadn't even been the same station. It had been remodeled. The brick wall where she had carved her name had been gone…and she reached for her children to at least show them where her name had been…and they hadn't been there. They were gone…and she had been all alone…and it hit her all at once…

She hadn't done anything but sleep for a week once she got her living situation sorted out.

She hadn't been able to do anything but sleep and eat, and eat and sleep, until the money started to run low and she'd needed a job. Then she did nothing, for months, but sleep work and eat…she'd eaten like a horse…and the reason why was standing next to her tugging on her arm. She hadn't even noticed that Madoka had been on the way…it had been so hard…and she had tried to tell herself over and over again in those first few months that at least she would have Sho back. At least he would be coming to her and they could be happy…but the weeks turned into months…and even after filling a bedroom with toys for him…it became obvious that he wasn't coming back…

Then she met Eiji…

And then Madoka came.

And now she was here.

She was here with her family. Her daughter and her son…and her unborn child. Everyone present and accounted for…as far as anyone could tell. She wasn't out there handing out flyers. She didn't have to. She knew where her children were. Right there. She even knew where Shigeko and Sho were….well she would have. She would have known if she'd save the password to that email address….her old one. If she hadn't deleted Fukuda's contact information from her phone…if she hadn't thrown her old phone away. She would have known where her children were…and what they had been getting up to…and where they…

She wouldn't have had to had to pace around a Costco parking lot with an arm full of flyers wearing stale clothes with makeup smeared around her eyes.

"Sorry…about her. She's just-" said Masami

"Please….have you seen my son!" said Hana. She knew that she was being impolite…but fuck being polite! Fuck manners, fuck littering laws, and fuck…fuck it! She…she knew she looked crazy. She knew the look that woman had given her…but what did she know? She had all of her children with her. They were so small….a woman her age. A woman her age with children that small….what did she think that she was doing judging Hana?! She…

She needed to calm down…and get another cup of terrible Costco coffee….she was insulting strangers on the street…almost….she was so fucking tired…

"I saw a lot of things today. I saw Hana Kapa today…but on TV and not in life…and I saw a dog today with a curly tail…and I saw a cloud that looked like a cotton ball…and I saw the bottom of my foot-" said Juro

"Juro, don't talk the lady's ear off. She's….busy…right now." Said Eiji. That poor woman…his heart broke for her. That was the same woman from this morning…from the flyers this morning. She was…seeing her made it more real. Kids went missing all the time and it was tragic…but now it…well it felt tragic. This whole thing was just…tragic. He held Juro tighter. One of the kids…the world felt bigger than it ever had before…and the kids looked smaller than they ever had before. It would have been so easy….just the time it took to blink…and they'd be gone….

He needed to spend more time with the kids…and he needed to call his other kids too…even if it wasn't his weekend with them….and even if their mom didn't want him to….he still needed to call them….

"Sorry…to shout. Here, take this…please. My son…Ritsu….he never came home from school…and nobody's seen him. Here. Take…take this…thank you…" said Hana. She handed the woman a flyer and then walked off as fast as she could in the other direction. She just…she had to keep trying. There was a wholes section of the parking lot that she hadn't even tried yet. She had…she had to finish this Costco and then…maybe try…she didn't know….the recycling center? Lots of people there…she just…she didn't know…

She had to keep working.

"Wow…poor lady. Mom, if I never came home from school would you be freaked out?" asked Madoka. The poor boy. Madoka had thought about it before, running away and living in the park, but she never did it. There were murderers that came out at night and she was still only a white belt so it was better to come home…even if Juro was annoying and mom was sick a lot of the time and the new baby was going to be a boy, probably, and then she'd end up with two Juros.

"….of course I would be…now come on, before the all the samples get eaten." Said Masami as she watched the woman run away. That poor woman…Madoka was right. That poor, poor, poor woman. Her son was missing…Masami…she two children she never saw…but she knew where they were. They were with Touichirou and he…was a piece of work…but he was protective over what was his….so the kids…were ok….

Sho and Shigeko were…probably fine…and Madoka and Juro…were getting antsy…so it was time to go and excessively sample until the staff politely, and then less politely, asked them to stop.

"Mom, can I pick which fish dies for our dinner? I want to say sorry before they kill it. That way it'll know that there are no hard feelings." Said Madoka as mom took her hand and started walking. She decided not to tell mom that she needed to walk on her own, that she wasn't a baby anymore, because mom was sick today. Sometimes you had to think about other people…and stuff. Especially your mom. Especially your mom…because you might not have a mom. Like…you could be missing…and then you wouldn't have a mom anymore…or a home…and then your picture would be everywhere but nobody would ever be able to find you again.

She held onto mom with both hands.

"No, I don't want fish! It has too many tiny bones and they get stuck in your throat and stuff." Said Juro as dad put him on his shoulders. This was a good place to be. He could see everything from up here! He couldn't wait until he was as tall as dad. Then he could see everything like if he was a giant! There were so many cars…and they all had orange papers on them. He held onto dad as tight as he could. He didn't want to go missing too…sometimes when things went missing you never found them again…and people were not things but maybe the rules for missing things were the very same.

"Can I cast my vote for miso eggplant? Nobody misos an eggplant like you do, Masami." Said Eiji. He smiled at her…and she smiled back. It didn't make it to her eyes. This thing with the kid….he liked the comforting weight of Juro on his back. At least up here he couldn't escape.

"I'm just going to get one of the meal kits, ok guys? I'm too tired to debone fish and miso eggplants." Said Masami

"Just so long as it's not fish it's fine by me." Said Juro

"How am I supposed to apologize, then, if the animal is already dead? How can I-" said Madoka. She stopped walking. There had been a flash of…something…and then…an earth shake? Was there an earth shake under her feet? No, that hadn't been under her feet…it had been in her feet…and her legs….and her back….and her skin…and her bones…and her fingernails too. That had been…that had been such a…feeling? That had been a feeling…inside of her…and outside? She saw…there had been a flash of white…in the corner of her eyes…and her…head? Her mind? She turned to face it…

It was gone…but there was…pink…there? And blue? She looked down….her colors were showing too….green…a lot of it….

"How about vegetarian, how does that sound? Madoka? Baby?" asked Masami as Madoka stopped walking. She did not feel like arguing with Juro about fish…and she didn't want to deal with eggplant either. She just…mostly she just wanted to lay down…or at least get off her feet.

"Did you see it?" asked Madoka

"See what?" asked Masami

"I can see everything from up here!" said Juro

"Did you see the colors?" asked Madoka. She pointed at the sky. She had seen it….and if she focused she could see it again. It was like someone was pointing a flashlight up at the sky…one of those cool ones that did colors…but also a little scary because it hurt…her…insides? Just a little bit…it….it hurt…..

"The flyers? Yeah, they're…everywhere." Said Eiji. This was…he wanted to keep going. There were so many of them blowing in the breeze. That same picture over and over again. A school picture. That kid seemed…well…not happy. Maybe he ran away from home…that was even worse…or maybe having your kid stolen was worse? He didn't know…and he didn't want to find out. He may not have seen his older kids that often but…he knew where they were…and he could call them at any time….and he had his younger kids here…and untitled Hirai family project was where he'd left it…

He held Juro even tighter…even though this was doing a number on his back.

"No. The colors that came after the earth shake. There was white…and now there's pink and blue…and my green is showing a lot too." Said Madoka. She held out her arms…but she knew that nobody but her could see the green…and she didn't know why…but she knew that she wasn't crazy…or imagining things like she knew mom and dad were going to say.

"Yes, there are a lot of pretty colors in the sky today. There's blue and white…and…how about we get going? You kids can pick out tonight's dinner…how about that?" asked Masami. She knew what Madoka meant. She could see auras…like Sho and Shigeko could…like their father could….Madoka…was so much like her father….

Too much like her father.

She took Madoka by the hand and kept walking. Truth be told she had felt something under her feet but she knew that it was just…the parking lot shaking as cars drove by. Cheap blacktop and all of that. Yes…that was…she knew for a fact that it wasn't that…but it wasn't an earth shake, as the children called them, it had been…something related to the flyers littering the ground…to the missing boy…to whatever it was the Touichirou did here in Seasoning City…Masami didn't know…

She knew that she had to get on with this family bonding activity so she could get home and just…rest…for a little bit.


	509. Escaping, Staying, Exploding

Sho ran off after big sis ran off…but he didn't run off after big sis.

He had something that he needed to do….and then he would do it….and…and he didn't know what he would do after he was done but…but he knew that he would do something! He just…dad…he had to teach dad a lesson and…and he was going to fight dad. Dad was on his way and Sho was going to fight him. Sho was going to…to hit him…and bite him…and rip out handfuls of his hair….and kick his teeth in….and…and a whole bunch of other stuff that he would do later!

But first he had something to do.

Having something to do helped a whole lot. He could see it, in his head, what he had to do and the order he had to do it in. He had to run down to the lowest level, the one with the prisoners not the one with the boilers and circuit breakers and stuff, and he had to steal the keys and he had to let the prisoners go….and then he had to fight off all the Awakened and Scars too…and he was angry enough to do it. The walls caved in a little as he ran. He didn't care. He didn't care that tiles came up under his feet as he ran down the hallway. He didn't care about this place. He didn't care that dad had spent his whole life building this place.

He wanted it to come down.

Dad deserved it! Dad deserved to have everything that he had ever built come down right over his head! He deserved to have the whole world coming down over his head until his head was just one big bump and his brain was soup and…and he was dead. He wanted dad to be dead. He wanted…dad…dad was the one who….he wanted dad dead! And he wanted Fukuda to…to suffer. He couldn't…he could never kill Fukuda…even after all of that he could never kill Fukuda…because Fukuda was…he just…

Nothing made sense anymore so he kept on running.

He knew this place by now. He had been living here for months. The hallways, the stairways, all of it. Sho knew this place like the back of his hand. He knew the fastest way to get to the basement and he didn't care if people saw him running…and he didn't care if he bumped into people. Especially not the stupid Awakened with the stupid blue ribbon who was walking down the middle of a hallway, one that he shouldn't have even been walking down since he was a level three!

"Get out of my fucking way!" said Sho as he pushed the Awakened to the ground. That guy said something about big sis…probably about how awesome she was. He was one of the people who thought that big sis was a princess or a god or something. He didn't care. He had…he had something to do…and he didn't want to think about big sis…about how he had been lying….about how he had been lying to big sis for almost two years…and how he had been lying without even knowing that he was lying…because Fukuda had been keeping the truth from him…

The truth…about baby sis….

Baby sis was his baby sis. She was his baby sis and he was her…he was her big brother. They had the same blood inside of them. They had the same blood inside of them and…and that was dad's fault! He had made a whole other person and…and just…sent her away! Baby sis was his real life baby sis, not pretend, and…and he should have stayed! He should have stayed with her from the very first time he came to visit…and he should have kept baby sis at the house with him…and he should have kicked dad in the balls so hard that he never became anyone else's dad ever again!

Sho had a little sister…

He was a big brother for real. He was…it felt different…knowing that he was her big brother. Dad had always talked about the bloodline and how it was important…how it was important that he made more people called Suzuki…and dad had made another person called Suzuki…and he was her big brother. Suzuki Mukai was his little sister. She was…Sagami Mukai. Baby sis was called Sagami Mukai and…and had a mom…and her mom could come with them and…and then baby sis could be with them but…but her mom was a girl…and she might have been the girl that dad did it with….

Dad had done it with someone who wasn't mom…

Mom wasn't coming back. Sho knew girls. He knew that they didn't like being cheated on. Dad was a cheater .Dad was a cheater and he had cheated on mom. He had done it with a girl who wasn't mom. Thinking about his parents doing it…doing that super gross thing together…that was way too much to think about. He had only seen his parents kissing once in his entire life and even thinking about it made him want to throw up. Thinking about them doing that thing…the gross thing…it…thinking about them doing it made him want to roll around in someone else's throw up until he felt cleaner. Thinking about dad doing that with some other lady…one who wasn't his mom…that made him want to eat someone else's throw up and then throw it up on himself so it was like double throw up…then he would feel cleaner….because he did not want to think about dad doing that….

Fuck dad!

Fuck him! Seriously! Cheating was the worst thing that you could do…Sho was a cheater too….but holding hands was nothing! He got it now, what Fukuda had meant when he'd said that. There were worse things that a person could do to another…like kissing them! Sho…Sho hadn't kissed Ritsu…and there were worse things even than kissing! Sticking your dick inside of someone like they were a piece of pita bread was way worse than kissing and hand holding! Sho was glad that he only liked guys, at least there wasn't any danger of him sticking his stick in anyone else because not only was it gross but he didn't even have a place for his dick to go…unless you could stick a dick in another dick…like a corndog…that wasn't important right now! What was important was….was doing the right thing….

So that was what he was going to do!

There wasn't anyone in the guard's room. That was good. Nobody was watching the cameras…so Sho could turn them off…and the key cabinet opened pretty fast when he used his powers. He saw a soda on the floor by the camera control table…and he spilled it. He spilled it all over the controls…maybe it would look like an accident…and just to be safe he kicked it a few times too. There. Now there would be no evidence…and dad wouldn't come after him…

Not that dad had any right to say or do anything to Sho when he…he had to calm the fuck down.

He could freak out once he was done. That was it. That was…what was going to happen. Right now he needed to…to do the right thing…so that was what he was going to do. Someone in this family had to do the right thing…someone besides big sis. Maybe she was good because she was a girl so she had gotten a lot more of mom than he did. He was mostly dad. That was why he was…the way he was. Why he was so terrible. He was just…part of dad…and dad was terrible…so maybe he was destined to be a terrible person…

He could try to do at least one thing right in his life…this thing…this thing that he was going to do.

Ritsu noticed him first, because he had an aura. Sho…he liked it…that Ritsu noticed him. He liked the way Ritsu's whole aura lit up. He liked the way Ritsu smiled at him. He liked….he liked the way Ritsu was so happy to see him and…and it made him feel like his insides had been scooped out and filled with goldfish….he liked it a lot….but he also hated it. He had promised someone that he would be with them for the rest of his life and that meant that he wasn't supposed to cheat and….and of course Fukuda would be ok with cheating! Dad had cheated on mom! Probably with more than just…just whoever he made Mukai with! He probably had girls everywhere that he cheated with and it was like…like a massive…buffet…of girls…or something….just….

Sho was not dad!

"Sho?! You're alive! Wait….why do you look like that? What's wrong?" asked Ritsu. He had sensed Sho before he saw him. He was there and…and he looked pissed off. He looked like he'd been crying. That was bad. He kicked Reigen awake. If they had to run or fight then it would be better for Reigen to be awake and ready to go…especially since he didn't run that well.

"Something's wrong!?" asked Reigen as he startled awake. He hadn't been sleeping! He'd just been resting his eyes! That was all, nothing else! He'd just been resting his eyes! Ritsu shook his head and pointed…hey! The little red haired kid was still alive! And he had a keyring in his hands.

"Nothing's wrong. I'm getting you out. I stole the key and…and I fucked with the cameras…and now I'm going to let you out and then I'll fight this whole place if I have to. If it means that I can get you out." Said Sho

"Sho…thanks." Said Ritsu. He didn't know what else he could say. Nobody had ever…done that for him. He had thought that Sho had died…that he'd been carried away for experiments…that…that he'd never see Sho again….there he was…and he was going to fight this whole place for Ritsu. This…was a life or death thing…but if it hadn't been…then Ritsu…he would have maybe done that sigh thing Tsubomi did sometimes…or something…because this was…

This was what love felt like…real love…he liked it.

"Mother fucker…hang on. I don't know what key it is." Said Sho as he tried every single key. There were iron ones and metal ones and brass ones and long ones and short ones and one that was made of candy….too much! Who in the hell invented all of these keys?!

"The long one with the two teeth at the end. All cell keys look like that." Said Reigen

"What do you do when I'm not around?" asked Ritsu. He smiled, there, the best that he could…which wasn't much at all…but it was still a smile. He could smile…and he would smile…because he had every reason to smile. He was getting out of here…he was going home…and he may have even been able to take Sho with him…well mom and dad would never let him live in the house but Ritsu could have Sho live in his closet or under his bed or in a hole in the backyard or….something!

"I….made some mistakes in my youth…which you are never to make. Never drink, and never on New Year's Eve, and never after your girlfriend leaves you." Said Reigen. That had not been a good time in his life…and he'd have to tell Ritsu about it when he got older…because he was getting out of here…and then he'd get older…and then he'd have his own adventures in university and Reigen would be there to make sure he never got picked up for drunk and disorderly at three in the morning on New Year's for fighting a tree because he thought that it stole his girlfriend from him.

"I'm never going to have a girlfriend. I'm gay, that's kind of the point." Said Ritsu. It felt good to be able to say it…so he would be saying it a lot from now on. To whoever asked. If anyone had a problem with it then he'd just beat them up with either his powers or the old fashioned way. Life was way too short to lie about stuff like that. He could have died at ten and ten months old. He could die right now. He could die tomorrow. He was not going to die while lying about something that he just…was. He was the way he was and there was nothing wrong with it besides what other people thought and he was not going to live what little life he had left worrying about what other people thought.

"Uh….here! I got it!" said Sho. His heart was pumping so loud that he could hear it in his ears. He was red, he knew that he was red. His whole face was red…and probably his whole chest….and he had so much…just…..happening! Sho knew that he liked Ritsu and maybe Ritsu liked him and…and he might have had a chance and…and he loved Shimazaki and maybe would love him until the day he died…and he knew that loving someone else was wrong when he was supposed to be in love with Emmy and…and he just…

He opened the door.

He held the door opened. That was the polite thing to do. He had to be polite and…and he had to…if he stood behind the door then Ritsu could pass him and…and maybe Sho wouldn't want to pull him close and kiss him. Kiss him and hold him and…and Sho really wanted to touch his chest. Ritsu smelled bad, and he was still all dirty, but Sho didn't care. He wanted…he wanted to kiss him…no. He wanted Ritsu to kiss him…to grab him by the jacket and kiss him…and also to touch his chest…and he wanted to touch Ritsu's chest and…and now not only was he having cheating thoughts he was having gross ones too! And now he was thinking about Shimazaki because he had the nicest chest that Sho had ever seen in his life and he just….he needed to stop having cheating thoughts!

He needed to stop being like dad!

"Sho….thanks…for this…" said Ritsu. The world was bigger, it felt like, since he'd been…there. He'd been there, in the cell, for how long he'd been in there. He didn't know. He didn't know how long it had been. The lights got dim sometimes but there didn't seem to be any reasoning for it. He had been fed nine times…and he had no idea if they were just mad that he'd been letting his food sit or that they just couldn't remember when he'd been last fed. He knew that it had been a while…and now he was out and…

And he could go places.

He had never thought about it, before, how big the world was. How he could just start walking in one direction and not stop. Sure he would get to the ocean at some point, and mom and dad would get worried, but he could always take a boat someplace….and mom and dad never held him prisoner. Sure he felt like a prisoner sometimes….but that didn't mean that he was one for real. He knew what it was like to be a prisoner…

And he was never going to live like that again.

"Ok, so this is the part where we start running. Right guys?" asked Reigen. He knew that look….well he had never seen it on Ritsu before…his student was growing up….and he was very glad that Ritsu was growing up and learning things about himself and all that jazz….he just needed to do it later! Not now! Not when they had to start running for their lives!

"Sho…" said Ritsu. He couldn't breathe….well he could, he wasn't sick, but also he couldn't. He couldn't…believe that he was thinking…what he was thinking. He just…Sho was there and Ritsu felt like…he was warm. He was hot. He was all hot and cold all over and…and he was getting closer to Sho. Sho was still holding the door…he was still behind it….he was still holding the door and Ritsu…he walked closer….

There was a door between him.

"Ritsu…" said Sho. He whispered. He had to whisper. He didn't trust his voice. Maybe if he spoke as quietly as he could he wouldn't say anything that he couldn't take back…anything that he regretted. He just…dad was a cheater and he wasn't…but he wanted to be. Ritsu was close…he was really close. He had his hand on the bars of the door…and he was looking Sho right in the eyes….and his eyes were the same as big sis's….and that was the weird thing. That was weird enough to make him take a step back…and to worry about big sis…and to think about how everything had gone….wrong…and how he had to get back to her and…and how he had to explain to her what had happened…well he had but…but he had to explain again but in a way that erased what Fukuda had said…and he had to help Ritsu escape…

He took a step back.

Ritsu took the door from his hands and then pushed the door so it closed. He took a step forward. Ritsu took another step farther and then another and another…and Sho took another step back…and then another…and another. He took a step back and Ritsu took a step forward…and his heart was pounding. His heart was pounding as hard as it had ever pounded before…and he would have thought that his goldfish would have been scared off…but it was worse than it had ever been before…

His back was to the wall now.

"Ok…how about we pick this up later?" asked Reigen. His eyes darted towards the doorway. This was not the time or the place! He didn't know what he should do. He cleared his through. He cleared his throat again. That had no effect. Nope. There were still two ten year olds over there gazing into each other's eyes….Reigen did not want to watch this. Even if they hadn't been trapped in this cult he still wouldn't have wanted Ritsu…fall in love? Deal with his first crush? Hopefully not have his first kiss…well Reigen was happy that Ritsu had figured himself off and he had someone he liked….and he loved Ritsu like his own kid or a little brother or something….

But like his own kid, or his little brother, or something…he did not want to sit there and watch his first kiss!

"You saved me…so…thanks." Said Ritsu. He…didn't know what to say. He had never felt like this before. He had never in his life wanted…to do this….well he knew what he wanted, he wanted to kiss Sho, and he wanted…well he'd wanted to kiss plenty of guys before, and he had, but it hadn't felt like this. This was perfect. Reigen was there…and he was talking….and Ritsu was going to ignore him. Nothing was going to ruin this….whatever this was. He was just…happy. He had never been so happy in his entire life. He was…so happy…he was free and he was happy and he could just…he could feel his whole…self. Like his body and stuff….like he was alive in it? Well he had always been alive in it but like…this was him and he was this and now he could go anywhere and do anything and just…he knew what he wanted to do…so he was going to do it.

He could die in a second or a day or a month or a year or a million years…so why not…just…yeah…

"Happy to-" said Sho. He…had no idea what he was going to say. His back was to the wall…and he was being kissed…and that was what was happening. Ritsu had been in front of him…and he had gotten closer…and he could remember that he had been thinking of how to get away….but…but he didn't want to get away. He wanted to be here for….for the rest of his life. He wanted to spend his entire life there with Ritsu….but he was cheating! He was a cheater and…and he was the worst kind of person and…

And his hands were on Ritsu's shoulders.

His hands were on Ritsu's shoulders…and now Ritsu's hands were on his waist…and Sho…he could feel Ritsu's hands right there on his hips and…and now he felt like…the goldfish had won. The goldfish had won and he…he wasn't going to fight it. At least it had gone from his stomach now…it had gone downwards and…and this was…this was something that he just…he didn't….this was…so much and…and he felt like….

Like the world was coming down over their heads.

"You two can fall in love after the earth quake!" said Reigen. He grabbed them both by the hands and dragged them awake. Was this awkward? Yes. Had seeing…that weirdly intimate for two ten year olds kiss been by far the most awkward moment of his entire life? Even counting the time blackboard incident of his first year of middle school? Even counting the time he walked in on his roommate watching that WEIRD tape back in university? Even counting the time when the one client got confused about what kind of massages Reigen gave?

Yes. It was.

"This way!" said Sho. He ran to the front of the group. He was at the front because…because he was the one who knew his way around….he went to the front and then….and then Ritsu ran next to him…and took his hand. Ritsu's hand was in his, their fingers were laced together….and he was…the happiest that he had ever been in his entire life….and also the saddest…and also the most embarrassed because his dick had been doing that weird thing again….and also he wanted to crawl into a hole and die! He was a cheater and….and he was still cheating and….

One thing at a time.

The walls were shaking. There was a loud sound like a bomb going off…baby sis…he could feel her…and he could feel big sis too. That was her…her aura. There was a flash of something….white…and then…the lights went out. For a moment Sho thought that he had stared at her aura for too long and now he went blind….but he could see…the hallway he was in turned red. Emergency power. The entire place had gone to emergency power…because of big sis. She was freaking out and…and he could feel it and…and he just…he was more upset with himself than he was…than he was worried about her….and he sucked. So not only was he a liar and a cheater but he was a bad little brother and…and he was still holding hands with Ritsu and….and he wanted to keep on holding hands with him and….

Ritsu's friend slipped. Good.

"I've got you." Said Sho as he caught Ritsu's friend with his powers. He was…better. He was…less…floaty and spacey…like he'd been high. He had been high…being all in love…and stuff. That was love….and he liked it…and he couldn't…couldn't let himself feel it and…and he needed to worry about big sis. He needed to worry about her and the sound of metal twisting and…and the way that the ground was shaking and….and people were running. He could heard them running so…

He ran with them.

"Come on, don't stop running no matter what!" said Sho. He grabbed Ritsu's friend with his powers and kept on running. They ran with the group. These were Awakened and they were all so stupid…too stupid to realize that Sho had helped the prisoners escape. Too scared for their own lives…the floor shook again…the door. There, light…he had never realized it before but there weren't any windows in this place at all. The red lights and the darkness…it was scary…and that was why Ritsu was holding onto him and…

And he was done telling lies.

Ritsu liked him and he liked Ritsu and…and that was why they were running with their fingers all together like this…all fitted together. They were fitting together and…and that was a weird feeling to have while running…this feeling like the goldfish had swam downwards again. He loved….he loved Ritsu so much. He had never been in love like this….a cheater…he was a cheater and he was in love and…and it was hot out. He focused on that. It had gotten really hot really fast. The world was too hot…and he was too hot…he ran for the shade of the trees.

Everyone was running for the shade of the trees.

Everyone was running and screaming…and nobody noticed him. He slowed down to a jog…there were a lot of roots…and he had to…he felt around with his powers. He felt…baby sis was outside….well she was within a hundred meters of him…she was safe. She had to be safe and…and he had to worry about baby sis…and big sis…and not how terrible he was. Not how he was half of dad…not how he…not about what Fukuda had said…not about….he just….

He stopped running.

"Kid…that was one hell of a distraction." Said Reigen as they came to a stop in a thicket of trees. He…hadn't been able to run that far for that long since he'd been a kid. He could…wow. He could breathe a lot better now. That…healer guy…had helped him. He put his weight on his ankle…it was better than new. He felt…good….he was alive! He was alive and Ritsu was alive and now that they were both safe and alive they could get to the main road, get on a bus or a cab or whatever, and just…head back to the city and never mess with these nut jobs ever again!

"That wasn't me….I didn't do that. My sister…she freaked out. Fukuda…that guy who fixed your ankle…he said some stuff and….and I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to talk." Said Sho. He could see, through the trees, that there was a section of the roof missing. The top floor….that was where Fukuda lived…him and some other people…also where the main meeting room and the Division Leader's office was….and there was a big chunk missing….and….and big sis had done that. He should have been there to stop her but he'd been here…cheating….

Saving people lives.

"So…yeah, the road is that way. Follow the rocks…the ones with the green arrows painted on them…and…run. Run and don't ever come back…the Awakened are really dumb but the Scars and stuff aren't so…yeah…" said Sho. He looked down at his shoes. He couldn't look at Ritsu or Ritsu's friend…and he couldn't look up either. If he looked up then he would there then he would see what big sis had done…because of Fukuda…and him. None of this would have happened if he hadn't been sneaking around…and also…also Fukuda…should have said something….or kept his mouth shut….or…or….

He didn't want to think about this!

"Come with me. Sho…just…run away with me. Run away with me and…and we can be….you don't have to be here. It's not safe here for you." Said Ritsu. He took Sho by the hand…it was the most perfect hand that he had ever held in his life. He just…his heart was pounding…and not from the running. The running hadn't felt like anything. Their…kiss…had been the best moment of his life and…and he wanted to do it again. He wanted…

He wanted to spend every single moment of his life with Suzuki Sho.

It could happen. He could sneak Sho into his room and feed him leftovers from dinner and…and he could make a bed in his closet….or something. He just…Sho had saved him. Sho had put his life on the line for him…nobody had ever done that for him before. Well Reigen had but Reigen was an adult and he didn't feel like this about Reigen. He had never felt like this before….

But he liked it.

It was…good. Scary, a little bit, because…it was new. He had been so scared…and he was scared. People were running around and screaming….and his heart was beating in his chest like he was a mouse. The heart of a mouse beat so fast that it didn't even sound like it was beating, no, it sounded more like it was humming. That was how he felt right now…like his heart had been replaced with the heart of a mouse…even though that would have killed him. He just…he wanted to remember this feeling for the rest of his life….he needed….he needed to write this down…he needed to remember this for the rest of his life…

He needed to remember Sho for the rest of his life….especially since he'd...let go of his hand….

"Sho?" asked Ritsu. His heart…hurt. Sho had let go of his hand…and he was looking down at his shoes. Did Sho…not love him anymore? Did Sho not care? Did he….Ritsu reached for his hand again. This time Sho held his hand back…but he still looked down.

"Ritsu…I want to but I can't. I want to go with you…but I can't. I have…a girlfr-um….I have a sister. A little sister…and a big sister…and my sisters need me. My sisters need me…and I can't go…but you can! Go! Run and hide and….and never come back! If you come back then I might not be here to save you so…go!" said Sho. He let go of Ritsu's hand and pushed him with his powers. He didn't look up…he couldn't look up. He knew that if he looked up then he would cry…and if he cried then…if he started to cry then he wouldn't be able to stop….and….and he was crying a little…

He was kissed again.

"Sho…I think I lo-like you…" said Ritsu. He had been about to say 'love' but that would have been too much. He wasn't…sure…now…if it was love…or he had just been scared…or if it was just…other weird feelings. He wanted Sho to be…to be his boyfriend…and his friend….and how he wanted them to be together forever…but they couldn't be together….because he had to run away and…and Sho couldn't run away with him…

"Ritsu…we have to go." Said Reigen. He grabbed Ritsu by the arm and gave him a tug. Ritsu was…he was a kid and he'd been through some terrible stuff that he'd need to talk about with a therapist…and…yeah. Ritsu had been through a lot and he was still going through a lot…and so was Reigen….but he was the adult here….

And as the adult he decided when they ran away….and they were running away right now!

"I….I like…you have to go. I'll make sure nobody follows you just…go, before stuff calms down." Said Sho. He looked up…and that had been the wrong thing to do. Looking into Ritsu's eyes was still weird…he looked like big sis. That was just a reminder that he had messed up…when it came to big sis….and also…if big sis hadn't looked like absolutely no one in his family Sho would have thought that he and Ritsu could have been brothers…

Disgusting!

He…hoped to God that they weren't secret brothers…and he hoped to God that…that Fukuda had been wrong about baby sis being his real sister. He wanted…he wanted Fukuda to have been a liar….he wanted Fukuda to have been lying through his teeth. He wanted dad to just…not have been a cheater! And to not have infected him with cheater genes….but he was infected with dad's cheater genes…because he had just cheated on Emmy with Ritsu…and that had been the best kiss of his life….and…and…and he just…

He looked up.

The walls had stopped caving in…but people were still running and screaming…he hoped that nobody had died. Big sis…she would have been upset about killing someone. Sho…he was upset. He felt like….he felt like….like his insides were all twisted and broken and on fire and alive and he just…he sat down in the grass.

What else could he do at this point?


	510. Explosions in the Distance

Shigeko was twelve years old now.

Suzuki had brought her home from the orphan prison ten years ago…well nine years and some months. She had been closer to two and a half, really, when he'd brought her home…but she didn't know that. She didn't know that he had only known her for less than a decade. She didn't know that he wasn't her father by blood. What she did know was that she was his daughter and he loved her more than any father had ever loved his daughter. He loved being near her. He loved the sound of her voice. He love dhow oft her hair was. He loved the way she could tell a story for hours and hours, one which went nowhere, but she could still fascinate him and keep him entranced. He loved her even when she hogged the blankets in the bed, or when she spent hours and hours locked in the bathroom washing her hair or doing her makeup, or when she slammed her bedroom door in his face and told him not to sneak around even though it was his house….he loved Shigeko….

He had done everything right.

He checked his phone again. Nothing…though he had very little signal. He was over Japan right now, coming close to Seasoning City's airport…what passed for an airport. A small series of landing strips which could accommodate his plane. His private plane. He had taken a small private plane as he usually did when he traveled, complete with all the fuel stops that he needed to make. Shigeko had taken a plane large enough to make the full trip from Berlin to Seasoning City…an expensive trip even by his standards….and if she had just waited then everyone could have gone as a group. That was the smart thing….that was what made sense. She had left on her birthday. She had texted him that she was going back to Japan and that she was taking Minegishi with her…and she had never done anything like this before…but this was her birthday and on her birthday she could do whatever she wanted…so he had no reason to worry….

And he did not need to be reassured.

"She's fine. She probably just felt like going back to Japan or something. She might have been homesick." Said Hatori. He wondered if he should do the thing that Mob did sometimes where she reached out with her aura and sort of…hugged….people…but Suzuki might not have appreciated that from Hatori. He would have wanted that from his daughter but his daughter wasn't here right now.

Hatori had no idea why.

Mob never went anywhere without them. Well she didn't just up and leave the country, anyway. She had seemed fine yesterday…so she might have just wanted to go back to Japan. She might have been homesick or something. He would have thought that she would have gone back to London to be with her brother…but she might have been enjoying her break from Sho. He knew that he was…just a little. Sho was a good kid but he could be kind of…high strung….

Like his dad.

"I know that she's fine…but I have no idea why she's behaving like this…and I do not need to be reassured. Reassure Serizawa. He needs it more than I ever will in my life." Said Suzuki. He pointed over to the corner seat where Serizawa was being rocked back and forth by Shibata like a small child. Compared to Shibata he looked almost like a small child. Suzuki was fine. He knew where his daughter was and…and he would be joining her shortly. She didn't leave him…she had just been afflicted by a sort of…wanderlust…that was all. The same thing that had afflicted him as he got older. She was fine. She might have even just felt like going back to her homeland. It could be so tiring being out in the world. The different languages and customs…the different people….sometimes it was nice to just be back in Japan…

Though she could have waited until they were scheduled to return home.

A trip to Tokyo HQ had been scheduled for the month of July and it was to extend until August at least. After that they were going to travel around Japan for a bit before flying over to China to check on some assets. After China they were going to spend Christmas in New York City because Shigeko liked to see the big Christmas tree. Then they were going to…well that didn't matter…and it was still up in the air….and also he wasn't quite sure. Tadashi was better at remembering these things but Tadashi wasn't here right now. He was in London with Sho. Suzuki…did not want to make that his permanent posting…because Tadashi belonged at his side. If something were to happen to him…not that he was fragile…Sho was fragile. He had a deathly citrus allergy….so Fukuda was always with him…but Suzuki had his own uses for Tadashi….so maybe the time had come to call them back to the group…or go and physically collect them….

Because, really, Tadashi had been gone for far too long.

"We've been flying for too long….it's been fifteen hours…and you said thirteen." Said Serizawa as he held his umbrella between both of his hands. They were so sweaty that he was sure that he was going to drop it. If he dropped it then it would roll away. If it rolled away then he would need to get up. If he got up then he might have lost control. If he lost control then the plane would fall out of the sky. If the plane fell out of the sky then he would be dead. If the plane fell out of the sky then all of his friends would be dead. If all of his friends were dead then Miss Suzuki would be very sad.

He couldn't think of anything worse than Miss Suzuki being said.

Well….if he was going to be selfish then, really the worst thing that he could think up was Miss Suzuki being gone. He had woken up that morning and she had been gone. That…wasn't too far out of the ordinary since it was her birthday and all and Minegishi was her best friend. They got up pretty early most days…so of course Miss Suzuki and Minegishi would have been off having all kinds of fun…and he didn't feel bad about being left behind. No. He had been alright. He had gotten up, changed into clean pajamas, brushed his teeth, brushed his air, and even went to the kitchen and ate some cereal from the box…Shibata hadn't been around to cook. Then Hatori ha gotten up and the two of them waited for Miss Suzuki to come back together…

And they waited…and waited…and waited….

Then day turned into night and President Suzuki came home with the others…and then…and then a lot of things happened at once and now he was here. He was here and Miss Suzuki…she had left him. Why? Was it because he hadn't gotten up early enough to wish her a happy birthday? Was it because he hadn't…hadn't gotten her anything…well he had gotten her something but it was stupid…a game that she might have liked…and he hadn't even been the one to get it for her! It had been a joint gift from him and Hatori…no wonder she had gone away….but he was going to see her again…or so Shibata had said. Serizawa….was trying his best here….not to explode….but it would have been a lot easier if Miss Suzuki had been there!

He needed her…he needed her an h-word of a lot more than she needed him…but that was ok….

"Google said about thirteen. Don't worry, we'll get there and then you can see Mob again." said Hatori as he sat down next to Serizawa. His aura hurt….it was a weird feeling, his aura being in pain, and he didn't really like it….but that didn't matter. Serizawa was a wreck, there was no other word for it, a complete and total wreck. Hatori….was not going to tell him that he was way too dependent on Mob. Mob was a great kid and all but she wasn't a…security blanket….or whatever Serizawa thought of her as. She was just a kid and…well…Hatori would not have been able to deal with this if he had been her age. He would have ran and hid under his bed…or in the bathroom…or somewhere small and safe.

That was what Serizawa needed right now, small and safe.

"Want me to walk him to the bathroom? I think we're going to land soon." Said Hatori

"No, Shimazaki's in there. I think he's snorting coke in there and….maybe it would be best not to bother him." said Shibata with a shake of his head. He did NOT need to deal with a coked up Shimazaki on top of all of this. He kept on rocking Serizawa back and forth like a really tall toddler. Serizawa…he had legitimate problems and Shibata was happy to help in any way…even if that meant rocking him back and forth for the past fifteen or so hours….and he wasn't at his limit. Yet. Shimazaki…would definitely push him over his limit…

He would make it his business to push Shibata over his limit…he always did…like now. God, he was like Bloody Mary…

"For your information I was not snorting coke. I was-" said Shimazaki as he teleported into a seat across from whatever the hell was happening in front of him. He…maybe should not have been teleporting. It was hard to see anything past Serizawa. His aura was just so…big…and loud…and just…it was everywhere. It was all around him…and it was shouting. It was like having someone screaming in terror right into his soul. Like if his ears went right to his soul…which made sense since his ears went right to his brain…and his brain was his souls and…and maybe his eye sockets led to his soul since the eyes were the window to the soul…or something. He didn't know. Toshi would have known…if Toshi had been there….

He was going to see Toshi soon.

He was not Serizawa. He wasn't going to sit there freaking out because Toshi had just up and left without even leaving him a note. Well it wasn't like he could have read it…but other people could have read it to him! Toshi didn't need to run away from him….run away to Seasoning City…to be with their other boyfriend…..the words hurt. The words hurt his brain and his soul…wherever that was. Toshi…and boyfriend…and…other. Toshi…that was one of their rules…right? They could only be in love with each other…that was…how it worked…right?

Right?

He turned to his side and put his feet up on the seat next to him. That was…something that he could do without Toshi being there…not that he would ever have been happy to have been away from Toshi but…but now he could do things that he normally couldn't. Like he could snort coke in the bathroom…if he had wanted to…but coke made him want to move around. Right now he needed to be still. He needed…well not to be still…but to just…stop moving….stop his brain from moving…or his soul…or just…the thoughts in his head? Toshi was gone. Toshi was gone and he was going to show up at the Seventh Division and they were going to tell him that they had a new boyfriend and they loved him and despite their new boyfriend's lack of a dick they were happy with him…and Toshi loved eating people out…that was something that they had in common….and they had other things in common too! They both liked black coffee and getting high in the woods and cuddling while soft music played and…and…and other things that he couldn't think of right now…

He didn't want to think of anything right now.

He pulled one of his bottles of liquor from the recesses of his coat and a baggy of assorted pills. He rotted around for something segmented and rectangular. This was something else that he and Toshi had in common, they both liked Xanax! Yeah…they both sometimes had to deal with shit by not dealing with it…by telling their brains or their souls to shut up…so that was what he was going to do. He was going to tell his brain and his soul to shut up…

And Serizawa needed to shut up too.

"Here, take this. It'll make you shut up…well it'll make your aura shut up." Said Shimazaki as he held out a single, solitary, bar for Serizawa. That was all he could handle…hopefully it could put him under….and hopefully the others would listen to him. Shibata had told him, before, to stay the fuck away from Serizawa and for the past fifteen hours he had been doing just that. He had been listening to music and reading and starting and deleting texts to Toshi….he had bene keeping busy…and he just….he was out of stuff to do! He hated it…being trapped her…no Toshi…and not Sho either. At least he would be able to see Sho again…

Well, no, not if in the homestretch Serizawa freaked out and killed them all.

"Don't take that, Serizawa, trust me on this. Never take anything that he gives you." Said Hatori. He reached over and pulled Serizawa's hands back. Nope. He knew Shimazaki. He knew that Shimazaki was going to try and do something stupid because he was bored….and he knew that whatever stupid idea Shimazaki had it would get them all killed. Most certainly.

"But…but I want…it to all just…stop!" said Serizawa. Miss Suzuki said that it was alright to drink things and smoke things so you felt better and kept better control over your powers. She knew about these things. She knew about everything. He didn't like drinking, it made him feel sick, and he wasn't too into smoking since it made him feel…spacey….but he trusted Miss Suzuki. She was his friend. He trusted Shimazaki too. He was also his friend….but he also trusted Hatori….

He trusted everyone and….and this was too hard!

"Suit yourselves. I'll see you all in hell…from heaven. I fully plan of sucking as much angel dick as I can so you two are on your own." said Shimazaki. He heard a shudder from Suzuki…and if Toshi had been there then they would have laughed….but Toshi wasn't there…but they would be soon. He just had to swallow all these bars and…wait. That was all.

"There is no way in hell that he's getting into heaven." Said Hatori. He leaned in and told Serizawa…and he would have expected him to at least smile. Suzuki was smiling…just a little. That aural smile he did. He hardly ever smiled openly unless it was at Mob or Fukuda. Serizawa….well he had more problems than Suzuki….well he had his own set of problems…Hatori was going to help him through this. Even if he wanted to run and hide…he had to help Serizawa through this. That was what Mob would have done and she was just a kid. He was young but he was an adult…and it sucked that the twelve year old was more of an adult than he was a lot of the time.

"I…I don't want anyone to go anywhere….I mean…not like…being stuck as a spirit but….I mean…." Said Serizawa. If he lost control then he could and would kill them all…all of his friends. He could kill everyone without even…even realizing what he had done…like when he had sent mom flying. He had sent her flying and then…and then….and as quick as it started it had been over…and…and it could happen again but worse…and he knew that mom had never forgiven him for what he had done….and he knew that he couldn't forget…or forgive himself…and…and…

Shibata was holding his left hand.

Hatori was holding his right.

"Serizawa, man, you're fine. The only place we're going is the Seventh Division, ok? We're going to the Seventh Division and it'll be great….just great." Said Hatori as he held Serizawa's hand. It felt weird, holding another guy's hand, but it worked. He'd seen Mob do this before….but Mob was twelve and pretty fucking adorable….but if it wasn't broke then he wasn't going to fix it….though he could feel Suzuki looking at him….and he knew how his brain worked…and he knew that he would end up shipped with Serizawa when all of this was done.

"Yeah, it'll be great. We'll get there and then you and Mob can hang out and I'll even make you your favorite food, or whatever else you want, just name it." Said Shibata as he held Serizawa's hand in his. He was careful not to hurt him. He wasn't squeezing his hand or anything like that, no, he was just sort of letting Serizawa's hand rest in his. He had no idea if this was helping or not but it had been fifteen hours…over fifteen hours…

"I-I don't know…" said Serizawa. He didn't want to think about food…he didn't even think that he would have been able to keep anything down. He used to go days without eating, sometimes, even though it worried mom. There had been days when the trays just got stacked up outside his door…breakfast through dinner…and mom….mom just asked him over and over what he wanted…and he hadn't wanted anything to eat…he had just wanted all of this to…to stop…but it never stopped….

"I'll make you something good. We'll have a nice dinner…or lunch…breakfast? Whatever meal this is. All of us. You, me, Hatori, President Suzuki, Mob, Minegishi, and….Shimazaki too if he doesn't have anything else going on." Said Shibata

"Don't forget about Sho." said Shimazaki as he tossed a tiny bottle of what had tasted like the world's shittiest whiskey at Hatori's head. It made contact. Even Toshi would have thought…well no, Toshi wouldn't have been impressed, but Sho would have been. Yeah…he just had to focus on the fact that he would see his two favorite people in the world again really soon….

But he wouldn't be able to hear them if he ended up going deaf.

He didn't hear auras in the same way that he heard sounds, with his ears, but he did feel like he was about to go deaf. Between Serizawa's aura's constant screaming and the…shriek? Like a startled one…that Suzuki just did….Shimazaki knew that by the time that this plane ride was over he was going to end up losing one of his remaining senses….and that would have sucked…never being able to hear Toshi's voice ever again.

If Suzuki deafened him then he was going to blind Suzuki and then everyone would be even…and Toshi would end up thinking that the whole thing was pretty fucking hilarious.

"What?" asked Suzuki. He must have been going deaf, that was the only explanation. He knew that his vision was starting to go…he could no longer ignore the fact that he had to squint to see his phone screen…so maybe his hearing was starting to go too. Or maybe it was just hard to hear anything over the roar of the engine and the way that Serizawa was carrying on. That would have made sense…a hell of a lot more sense than what Shimazaki had just said, anyway.

"Sho. Don't forget to add him to our time displaced meal plans. Not Fukuda, though, he can eat out of the trash when we're done or something." Said Shimazaki. He knew what Suzuki was freaking out over The fact that he would have to interact with his only son again. Oh, horror of unspeakable horrors, he was going to have to talk to his son and exist in the same space as him. Someone call a priest!

"What are you talking about?" asked Suzuki. He debated cleaning out his ears right then and there…and he decided not to. Sho did that…and he had done that when he'd been Sho's age….but he was a grown man now and grown men did not do that.

"Shimazaki's just being….Shimazaki. He knows that we can't fly all the way to London for Sho…I mean we could…but that's another fifteen hours in the air." Said Hatori. No. He was not going to let Shimazaki give Suzuki bad ideas like that. They were not turning this plane around and picking up Sho. Sure he liked Sho…when he was calm….but he didn't like him enough to spend over a day in a tony airplane with Serizawa about to explode at any minute. They were in the home stretch, last level, and h was going to win…or at least not use up his only life because Shimazaki had to be stupid.

"Please! No more flying!" said Serizawa. He did drop his umbrella that time. It had been resting between his legs but now it fell to the floor. He let it fall. He took his hands from his friends and covered his eyes. He tried to keep calm, he tried to keep his breathing level, he tried to focus…but he couldn't…not when…not when they were going to have to turn around…or keep going since the world was round…and…and…and he just didn't want to have to be on this plane for another second!

"Yeah…..no. I like Sho but…I don't think that Serizawa can handle any more time on this plane." Said Shibata. He did miss Sho….but if Sho wanted to come back to them then he would have come back by now. Shibata…he knew that the President was under a lot of stress since he ran Claw…and also he knew that the President had at least one personality disorder….and those things weren't his fault….but Sho was maybe better off with Fukuda…the thought makes him feel unpleasant….than he was around his father and all the people who cared about him.

"What in the hell are you guys talking about? Sho's not in London, he's in Seasoning City and has been for months. Toshi's new fuck buddy said so." Said Shimazaki as he opened up another tiny bottle from his coat. Tiny wine this time, tasted like apple wine…and he had no idea what everyone was so shocked about. He could feel their shock…and they knew him. They knew that his coat held everything that he would ever need…and they knew that he liked to drink…so what was up with this? If anyone else had wanted some then they should have gotten to the liquor cart before he raided it.

"….what did you just say?" asked Suzuki. Yes. He was going deaf. He was going to have to have Tadashi take a look at him because…because it sounded like Shimazaki had just told him that his son was in Japan…in Seasoning City…in the Seventh Division….but his Son…was not there. There was no way in hell that Sho…would have gone…to that Division….

Tadashi would never have done this to him.

Tadashi would never have betrayed him like this…he had no idea why he felt so betrayed…yes he did! Because he had been lied to! Tadashi had told him that he would be looking after Sho while he stayed in London to be with his little girlfriend. That was what Tadashi had said and…and if Sho had been done with his girlfriend then…then Tadashi would have returned to him…they always returned to one another…because they worked well together and….

And they did not lie to one another….they had never lied to one another…so the only explanation was that Suzuki was going deaf…or losing his mind…or…or something like that….

"A fuck buddy is a buddy who you're friends with for the express purposes of fucking. That's why Toshi wanted to go back to Japan…and for no other reason. They just wanted to fuck someone else and I can handle that….don't any of you tell me that I can't handle that because I can!" said Shimazaki. He knew what he was doing! He was perfectly capable of being Toshi's boyfriend and he was not clingy and needy and nobody, not even Suzuki Touichirou, was going to imply that he was needy and clingy and that he fully expected to step off this plane and have Toshi tell him that they were through and that they'd found….someone else….someone who they loved and….and….

And fuck Suzuki up his ass, down his throat, and then another dick in ass for good measure for even daring to think that shit about him!

"I don't….what?" asked Suzuki. That was…not at all what he had been asking about and just….what? How did that even….what? He…he didn't want to…he did….just….what?

"They're in a polyamorous relationship-" said Hatori. Suzuki didn't always get things…things like this. He was really old, almost fifty, polyamory and all of that hadn't been invented yet.

"I thought that it was an open relationship." Said Shibata. Well that was none of his business. Shimazaki and Minegishi were Shimazaki and Minegishi and…well they didn't need to make their relationship a topic of conversation. Sure it was a nice distraction from the impending explosion….but really he did not want to talk about this. Especially not with President Suzuki…or even Serizawa….he honestly didn't know which was worse.

"I thought that they were in love." Said Serizawa. Poor Shimazaki….no wonder he acted the way he did…his partner was with someone else. Here he was freaking out because Miss Suzuki was gone….but at least he would be able to see her again. Shimazaki…Minegishi had left him for another person…and…and he knew how much Shimazaki loved them….poor Shimazaki….

"Everyone but Hatori is right. Toshi and I are in an open relationship and we're in love. We can fuck other people but we can't fall in love with anyone else…Toshi knows that. That's one of our rules and Toshi-" said Shimazaki

"No, not about that. I don't care about his relationship. Do you mean to tell me that my son and my…and Tadashi…and Fukuda…have been in Japan this whole time?" asked Suzuki. He…wanted to murder everyone on that plane…and then he wanted to kill himself…and he had to keep this under control…because he needed these people and he needed to…to keep on living…even though…Tadashi had…had lied to him. There was a pain in his chest. There was a pain settling down into his chest and he had no idea…what it was…it felt like when Masami had left. Tadashi had lied to him and…and taken his Son from him…he didn't care about Sho…but he should have. That was what should have upset him about this but…but all he could think about…the only thing running through his mind was…the fact that Tadashi had betrayed him…

His chest hurt…maybe the shock of it had given him a heart attack…he had to hold on to control…and not his chest…and he wanted to hold on to Tadashi…with both hands…so he could never go again….

"Yeah….didn't you guys know?" asked Shimazaki. Huh. Well Toshi hadn't known but Toshi really didn't like Sho…for perfectly valid reasons. How hadn't the others known? Didn't they talk to people? Sho ran off to the Seventh Division to hang out with Suzuki's bastard daughter. That was common knowledge…right?

Obviously not.

"No." said Shibata with a shake of his head. Sho had gone….where? Fukuda had done…what? That was…shady as hell. He….was not the sort of person to go throwing these sorts of accusations around but…taking a kid to another country and not telling anyone, especially his dad, where he had taken him…that was some incredibly shady shit and if he hadn't been on a plane with a two human time bombs he would have done….something….

"Miss Suzuki didn't mention anything about that." Said Serizawa. She had been sad, actually, that her brother had been gone for so long…but she had never mentioned Japan. He felt…lighter…though. The fact that she had left so that she could go TO her brother and not AWAY from him…that felt…it felt good. Very good.

"Nobody told me anything. As far as I knew, Suzuki, your son was in London….really! I would never keep secrets from you and-" said Hatori. He stood up and held up his hands in the universal gesture of 'I surrender don't obliterate me'….or at least that was what he thought that it meant. He would have thought so…

But then his back hit the roof of the plane.

"What the fuck!" screamed Hatori. That hurt and…and they were going…down! They were going down and…and he lost his glasses…he couldn't see! He couldn't see…he could see colors….and…and…red! Purple! There was red and purple and…and he reached out. He could feel the plane…he could feel the electronics in it…the pathways it took and….and he just…he didn't know what to do! He couldn't think! He just…he just….he was going to die…at twenty one…

….but at least he would get to see mom and dad again….he closed his eyes….he couldn't see anyway….

"We're all going to die!" said Shimazaki as he hit the top of the plane. This was…he couldn't see….he couldn't see! He couldn't see and he could hear…it was so loud…voices were screaming and auras were screaming and…and he was screaming. He reached over…and he felt something hard…and he kept on reaching…but he didn't….Toshi wasn't there! Toshi wasn't there and he was going to be alone and…and he took back what he thought! Toshi could love whoever they wanted to love just so long that they kept on loving him…no! Just so long as they let him love them! If he made it out of this then he was going to tell them every day a hundred times a day just what they meant to him…everything….they meant everything to him…

"Toshi!" shouted Shimazaki. His voice mixed with all the screaming around him. He was not ok with this! There was so much he hadn't done yet! He hadn't ever…ever….he didn't know! All he could think about was Toshi and how he was going to leave them and…and how they had left him and…and no matter how much he felt around and reached they would never be there and…and he needed Toshi…he needed them and….and they were the love of his life…

He didn't have to be the love of theirs but they were the love of his…and he wasn't ready to leave them. Not yet.

"Mom!" shouted Serizawa. He didn't want to go! He wanted….he wanted to go back to his room…and he wanted his mom! He wanted his mom and….and he was sorry that he'd left! He was sorry that he'd left his mom and his house and…and he wanted to go home and…no. His last thought was not going to be a selfish one….Miss Suzuki wasn't going to like that…he was never going to see her again! He closed his eyes…his head hurt…he reached out….he knew that she wasn't there but he still reached out….

He didn't know what he expected, she wasn't there, but he still reached out.

"We're going to be ok!" shouted Shibata. He was going to be fine…he was practically invulnerable….but the others weren't. He opened his eyes and grabbed Serizawa and Hatori. He pulled them close. If he landed on his back then he could save them…and he would be fine…and even if he wasn't then…well at least he had managed to save someone else…

Shimazaki was on his own, though…not that it mattered. Shibata had no idea how long he had been falling for but it must not have been very long since the plane straightened itself out without any problem.

"…I…apologize for that." Said Suzuki as he straightened the plane out. He took his emotion, all of it, and he stuffed it deep inside of himself. Deep down, so deep and so down, the deepest and the downest that he could stuff them. He needed to control himself. Tadashi had…betrayed him…those were the facts as they were…and he hated…a part of him hated Tadashi for that…but another part of him…another part of him…wanted this to be…a misunderstanding or….or maybe Tadashi just hadn't been thinking or….

He didn't care. He couldn't care. He had to control himself.

He hadn't left his seat…but the others had. They fell to the floor…Hatori had lost his glasses. He reached over with his powers and pushed them back onto his face. There. He couldn't see without his glasses…and now he could see. That was….important. Hatori being able to see. He wanted…he wanted Hatori to be able to see and…and Hatori could be so annoying but…but he was there and…and Suzuki…

He had this growing need to be beside him.

He pulled Hatori over with his powers and sat him down on the free seat to his left. He didn't touch Hatori…even though he wanted to. He wanted…he wanted to straighten Hatori's glasses out…and his sweater…and he wanted to hold him close as well. He wanted to pull Hatori close and just…he needed to have someone close. Suzuki…he wanted his Daughter back…and he wanted his…he wanted Tadashi back….and he wanted…he wanted…

He wanted to get a hold of himself before he killed everyone on that plane…including Hatori….

"I…really didn't think that we were going to get through that." Said Hatori as Suzuki held him in a death grip. Not by hand, no, it was his aura that was clinging to him. That…made sense…well it would have made more sense if he hadn't been the one to almost kill them all! That had been….it was a miracle that Serizawa hadn't blown a hole in the plane. He could see some of Serizawa's aura hanging around…and then Suzuki's too….and Suzuki's was eating Serizawa's it looked like…but that was just…well he had just hit his head after all.

Auras didn't eat other auras…he was just concussed…or something.

"Neither did I." said Shibata as he caught his breath. He felt….weak…like he had the flu or something. That had been…a lot. Way too much. That had been way too much and he just…he could see his aura. It was dim…or maybe that was just because there was so much of Serizawa's aura in the air…and the President's too….and it looked almost like….but that was impossible…

"I'm sorry….I'm sorry!" cried Serizawa. He reached for his umbrella….but he couldn't find it. He was on his knees on the ground now…and someone was holding him. Shibata. He wanted…he wanted someone else…he wanted Miss Suzuki…but she wasn't there….and he wanted his mom….but she wasn't there either! He was alone and kind of dizzy and…and he just…he buried his head in Shibata's chest and….and he cried…

At least he hadn't exploded.

"I sincerely apologize to all of you." Said Suzuki as he absorbed the lingering energy from everyone. He…did not like doing this….not after he had been so…unstable. He was unstable and…and he needed to be more stable and…and he needed to get to Shigeko. He could feel her…and see her…and he used his powers to keep the plane aloft and on it's way to the airport. No landings. Nothing. A wave of energy washed over him…his energy…no…

Shigeko?

"What was that?" asked Shimazaki as he climbed to his feet. He felt around with both hands until he got to the wall of the plane. This was just…he hated it when this happened. His powers were being a bitch. He couldn't see and…and he was not going to piss himself…even though he had no idea what anything was and…and he just…he felt something. He felt around until he got to a wall. He felt around until his hands found glass. There…he could feel….something! Which was better than nothing….

He could still see. He wasn't sighted….but he wasn't blind either….he just….needed a minute…

"The President lost control." Said Shibata. He didn't know what was with Shimazaki…and he wanted…part of him wanted to help. Part of him wanted to go over there and lead him to where he needed to go…it was hard to remember, sometimes, that he was blind…but he knew Shimazaki. He knew Shimazaki and he knew that Shimazaki could find his way around just fine. He knew that Shimazaki was just fine…

Serizawa on the other hand….

"No, I mean that." Said Shimazaki as he banged on the glass with the palm of his hand. There. He felt it. There was like…someone blowing in his face….like a birthday blower? Well that was how it had started off. Like a birthday blower in his face…eyes…ears? Soul? Something that had been soft and annoying…but now…a kazoo? Now he could hear…well it didn't have the same sound as a kazoo but the same sort of…feel? As a kazoo?

As soon as he settled on 'kazoo' for this sound and feeling it turned into something closer to an amplifier with a microphone right in front of it….feedback…it sounded like feedback. He threw himself back and covered his ears. Too much….this was all too much…and he had no idea….he just…what even WAS that!?

"What…what the fuck is that…?!" asked Hatori. The….light? It was a light….like…being under a really bright lightbulb….or a bunch of them….like when mom and dad took him to the lamp store and he'd stood under all the hanging lamps…it felt like that but…too much. Like being…he didn't know…like being in an easy bake oven? He pulled closer to Suzuki…Suzuki put an arm around him.

"I asked you first!" said Shimazaki. He fell down…and felt his way back until he found somewhere to sit. That was…what the fuck was that?! And why did it feel like…like it was getting worse? And LOUDER?! How could it have possibly been….been louder….louder than anything that he had ever heard in his life?!

"Well I don't know any more than you do!" said Hatori

"Let's all just calm down-" said Shibata as he held Serizawa close. No. He was not going to look. He was not going to do anything but hold Serizawa close and keep him safe…and keep everyone else safe from him. That was enough to send him into another explosion….that was enough to…to make Shibata feel like he was going to explode. Out of his shirt, not like how Serizawa had exploded. He could feel his muscles getting ready to react…because he was scared? He felt…adrenaline? No…something else….something to do with the light….

"It feels like….Miss Suzuki…" said Serizawa. He….felt so….good. Like she was there….like she was right next to him….and…and he…he knew that everything was going to be ok…now that he could feel her there….even if she wasn't….

"Shigeko…" said Suzuki. That…he could see out the window with his eyes…or maybe his aura. White….and then pink…and blue. Shigeko had…she had lost control. He knew what it meant when she lost control…and he had lost control…and he could not afford to lose control again. He didn't have time to worry about Tadashi…about Fukuda…and his betrayal. He didn't have time to worry about the fact that Sho had been…well that Sho had been lying to him for months….honestly Sho didn't matter right now…and neither did Fukuda…the only thing that mattered was Shigeko.

I'm coming.


	511. Tea, Coffee, Coming Home, Coming Out

There's no place like home.

Ritsu had heard that at least a thousand times…but it had never meant anything until now. It had never meant anything until he had been away from home…until he had been taken away from his home. This building…this house…the house that he had lived in for his entire life…it had never meant anything to hi. It had just been a house, brown and white, with a small yard in the front that wasn't really good for playing and a bigger yard in the back that, according to Tsubomi, was terrible for tennis but good for badminton. This house had two yards, four walls, one roof, and more windows than he had been able to count…well he had been about to count them…but he had never thought to count them. Now he wanted to count them.

He had to count them.

The ones in the living room. The ones in the kitchen. The ones in the dining nook. The ones in the hallway. The ones in his bedroom. The ones in mom and dad's bedroom. The ones in Shigeko's bedroom…too…he had never been in Shigeko's bedroom before. Well not after he started to be able to remember things. He hadn't ever been in there…mom and dad had sealed it up. The door was locked from the outside. He had never once so much as seen inside…even now…looking up…he could see her room with the pink curtains…they had been pinker when he'd been little but they'd faded by now…but he could still see them. The pink curtains of her room…he wondered if his curtains had faded. His were blue. He wondered if mom and dad had closed his curtains for him…he forgot to close them at night a lot of the time…he wondered if mom and dad had closed them at night…and he remembered if they'd opened them in the morning….that way at least people would be able to see inside of his room…

He wondered if they'd sealed his room up yet.

That was what you did when you lost a kid, you sealed up their room and then you put up a shrine, or at least that was what his parents had done when Shigeko died. They didn't think that he was dead though, no, just missing. There were orange fliers all over town with his school picture on them. They were taped up in store windows, stapled to trees, stuffed into mailboxes, and just…blowing in the breeze. He was glad that earth day had passed…his teacher would have had a heart attack if she'd seen this mess. 'Ritsu, you should know better than to go missing and make your parents chop down a whole forest to find you' she would say…and then she would ask him where his homework was….and he hadn't even started it!

….he had never been so happy to have homework in his entire life.

He had never been so happy to be home in his life. He was smiling. He had been smiling since he escaped….he had been smiling since he made it out of the woods….he had been smiling since Reigen caught them a ride into the city…and he had been smiling since…well he had been smiling for a long time. He was smiling better than he had been in his school picture, anyway. He was home. He was home, at his house, with his family…well he was almost with his family…dad's car was gone and all the curtains were closed….but that was ok…

He was home now.

"You can go now, I'm fine." Said Ritsu as he opened his front gate. There was a flyer taped to it. Missing: Kageyama Ritsu. Last seen….Friday's date. Then there was his height and weight and stuff…and mom and dad's phone numbers. It was like he was a lost dog or something. He wasn't lost, missing, he'd been kidnapped…but mom and dad couldn't know that. Mom and dad would have freaked out if they'd known what had really happened to him….and also they'd go into the woods and…and he just…

He wanted it to be over…well it was over…he wanted it to stay that way.

"No, I think that as the adult here I should at least say something to your parents." Said Reigen. Home. Ritsu was home…and now he had to get home…and call his mom. He hated calling mom…but….well it felt right. He'd have to call her from the office, though, since they took and destroyed his cellphone when they captured him. Ritsu's too. They were both due for an upgrade…and maybe on Monday after school they could go to the phone store…

Yeah, that was a good plan.

They'd head over to the phone store and get some new phones and then they could stop for ramen from that place that did the good pork broth…and then he could buy some kind of kid leash for Ritsu and never take it off of him since, obviously, he could not be trusted! He went after the people who he knew were after him….why?! Because he was eleven and stupid and…and he was ten! He wasn't even eleven yet and he was so stupid and Reigen had been even stupider for not listening to him and…

And he needed to stop for a drink on the way home. Whiskey sour…heavy on the whiskey and heavy on the sour…

"Don't say anything to them! They'll just freak out and then they'll try and go after Claw-" said Ritsu

"Well it's nice to know where you get it from." Said Reigen

"No, it's not like that. At least I'm an esper. Mom and dad…they aren't and they could get really hurt." Said Ritsu

"Ritsu…we could have gotten really hurt….and we did get really hurt! Ritsu, if the building hadn't exploded then we…we could have died. I know that this is heavy but we could have died. I don't want you fu-messing with those people ever again. Do you hear me?" asked Reigen. He didn't want to have this conversation right out in the street…but it looked like they were. Ritsu…Reigen had seen what had probably been his first kiss…and…yeah. That had been weirdly intimate for a couple of ten year olds…and he had seen the way Ritsu had been looking at the red haired kid afterwards and…yeah. Ritsu was stupid enough to do something completely insane like go back there to save his boyfriend or something….and Reigen knew that next time they messed with Claw they wouldn't be so lucky…

So, really, the only thing to do was to avoid those nutjobs for the rest of time.

"I hear you…and so can everyone else. If you don't want to go home to your own house then you can come inside….I guess…" said Ritsu. He didn't want to go after Claw…and he hadn't been going after them in the first place. Reigen was just being overly dramatic. Ritsu had been gathering evidence and he would have been fine, too, if Reigen hadn't tagged along. Next time….would be better…and there would be a next time…

But not with Reigen.

Reigen…he managed to trip coming up Ritsu's front steps. No. There was no way that he was coming along next time…and Ritsu…he didn't really want there to be a next time. He wasn't even happy that there had been a 'this time'. He…he never wanted to go away again…to be kidnapped again. The smell of home…it hit him as he opened the door. It smelled like Pine Time floor cleaner, that vanilla coffee mom always made, green tea like dad liked, incense from Shigeko's shrine, and just…home.

He was home.

He kicked off his shoes for the first time in days…his feet stank. He stank. He hadn't had a shower or even put on deodorant in days…maybe mom and dad were right about him being old enough that he needed to at least shower every day now….but Reigen smelled worse. They both needed a shower and…and if they got kidnapped again then…then he would probably end up smelling even worse. He could smell…metal…and that was…he could smell cleanser and…and he smelled like…he smelled like that cell and…

He took off his hoodie and tossed it into the corner.

Mom wouldn't have liked that. She was always telling him 'the floor is not a hamper' and stuff like that. She had been talking about the bathroom floor….and his bedroom floor…but not the living room floor…but he needed to get that hoodie off. It had been too hot out for hoodies anyway…and it smelled. It smelled like him…and it smelled like Claw. If Reigen hadn't been there then Ritsu would have taken off every single thing he was wearing. He could have….the curtains were closed….but he wouldn't. Reigen was going home…and it would have been weird to walk around his house naked anyways….

He needed to get this smell off of him.

"Do you want some tea? I'm going to make some tea." Said Ritsu as Reigen faced both of their shoes the right way. He had already taken off his suitcoat and he hung it on the hooks that were on the wall. He was so…calm…even though he had spent most of the…time they were imprisoned….trying to be calm. Ritsu knew that he'd been freaked out though. He'd cried at night, when he had thought that Ritsu had been sleeping. Ritsu hadn't been sleeping….he'd heard the whole thing.

He'd never heard a man cry before.

He knew that guys could cry. He cried, sometimes, mostly when he'd been little. That was when he'd gotten most of his crying out. He'd cried because mom and dad cried. He'd cried because his sister, who he had never even met, had died. He cried for himself, because he knew that he would never be able to meet her, and because he knew that he would never be enough that mom and dad stopped crying. He cried, sometimes, too now that he was older….but not as much. He'd never heard a man crying before…a man who wasn't dad anyway…and dad never made noise when he cried. Tears just sort of came out of his eyes like he was a leaking faucet…

Reigen made noise when he cried.

He sniffled and babbled and sobbed…like mom did when she cried. So maybe it made more sense for him to say that he had never heard a man make noise while he cried. Ritsu had just assumed that any crying he did when he became a man would be silent like dad when he cried….not that he had planned on it. It had just been…something that he had assumed…but he didn't assume that anymore. If Reigen could cry then anyone could cry…and he had been crying…all night in those uncomfortable beds…they'd shared a bed…Ritsu facing the wall and Reigen curled up around him like…like if anything happened he could have protected Ritsu…but he couldn't have protected Ritsu….Ritsu had been the one to protect him…and the one who had protected Ritsu…was still in Claw…

And Ritsu had to find a way to get him out…before it was too late.

"Do your parents have anything stronger than tea around here?" asked Reigen with a sigh. He picked up Ritsu's hoodie and hung it up. There…at least he had done something right…at least he had before he did something very wrong. Ritsu had never seen him drink before…and for good reason. It wasn't a good habit. It was a worse habit, even, then smoking. Nobody had ever come stumbling home at two in the morning screaming about shit that never happened….dumping their kid out of his bed…screaming about nothing…because of a cigarette….maybe he'd hold that call to mom after all…

He was not his mother.

He was not his father, either, he was…he had tried to be better. Ritsu wasn't even his kid but he had tried to be better than his own parents…and look at where that had gotten the two of them. Reigen had done, perhaps, the worst job that a person could have possibly done in their life when it came to Ritsu. He had let him get kidnapped by some crazy cult…almost brainwashed…or even killed. He could still remember what that one guy said…about how it got to the point where you couldn't even tell if you were alive or dead….

Reigen needed a drink…just one….just so he could….calm down.

"They have a coffee maker and a Keurig machine." Said Ritsu

"No I mean…you know what, I'll take a coffee." Said Reigen. He had been about to make a mistake there…one of the biggest of his life. He was not going to teach Ritsu that shit. That you could find your solutions at the bottom of a bottle. Ritsu…he was just a kid….he had his whole life ahead of him…and Reigen wasn't going to shorten that life. In fact, he was glad that they took his cigarettes when they kidnapped him. He was kicking that habit starting today…yeah….Ritsu did not need to be taught that shit.

Ritsu needed to be taught a lot of things but how to drink and smoke….well those were lessons that he would have to learn on his own in university like everyone else.

"We only have vanilla and then the kinds in the k-cups." Said Ritsu

"Surprise me." Said Reigen

"Do you want a k-cup or regular coffee?" asked Ritsu. If he wanted to surprise Reigen then he would have brought him a cup of tea…but that would have been mean. He didn't much want to make two things though…but he did need a cup of tea. He had heard adults say, before, that they needed a drink…and Ritsu…he got the feeling that he needed a drink right now. Even though he was only ten and ten months old he needed a drink right this second…

So he'd have to settle for mom's special sleepy time green tea and herbal blend.

"Look at you, you're like a little barista." Said Reigen with a smile. A real one. Ritsu was just…such a kid. He would have made a great barista, actually, or…well he would have made a great anything that wasn't an exorcist. No more…no more of that. Reigen's smile fell. No more…yeah…he'd find something else for the kid to do. Reigen…he was a licensed masseur…and notary…and dog groomer…and he knew CPR…and he had most of a law degree….and also there had been the course he took in photo editing…and he knew how to work a pasta maker….maybe he and Ritsu could make some kind of business around that?

He'd ask Ritsu…later…after the dust had settled. Not now…this was coffee time.

"I'm making you a k-cup." Said Ritsu. Reigen was talking to him like he was a kid….and he was…but he wasn't. He felt….different. Taller…older…even though he wasn't. He walked to the kitchen….on his way he passed the height chart. Shigeko stopped way near the bottom….but he got pretty high up the door frame. He eyed it as he walked past…he was taller but not…tall like an adult. That was what he felt like…an adult…

And adults made coffee.

Adults made coffee and they paid bills and went to work and shaved and did laundry and talked about politics and drove cars and were married and stuff. He was only ten. He barely knew how to make coffee, the directions were on the machine thankfully, and he didn't have any bills to pay…well sometimes he had overdue book fines but that wasn't the same. He didn't shave, either, and he didn't want to since dad was always cutting himself and complaining about the cost of razor blades too. He did his own laundry sometimes…when he REALLY did not want mom to wash his stuff….and he mostly got it right aside from the fabric softener…as for politics he had done a report last week about the two houses of the diet and what they did…not that he understood what mom and dad weren't talking to the neighbors ever again over. He could sort of drive…dad sometimes let him drive around empty parking lots when they went shopping without mom. Marriage and stuff was…never going to happen…unless they changed the laws which they wouldn't….so maybe he would never become an adult…

He felt like one already….though…

He was still too short to get the mugs out from the cabinet. He used his powers for that. He used his powers to fill up the k-cup machine and the electric kettle. He could reach those but…he liked…being able to use his powers. Now they worked…because he wasn't scared…and also…there had been these weird symbols carved into the bars of the cell that had hurt when he touched them…and they had been on the floor and the walls too….maybe they had done something to his powers there…he didn't know. He knew that he was strong, though, and he would get stronger…so maybe his powers made him feel like an adult…

Or maybe he just…wasn't a kid anymore.

He was in love. Just thinking about Sho now…and their kiss…that made his powers stop working. There was tea all over the counter…he put it back as fast as he could. Right. Big feelings made his powers either go away or go crazy…but he couldn't help it. That kiss…had been the best kiss of his life…and…and this was what love felt like. Sho liked him back…he'd kissed him back and not hit him and called him names or anything like that…and….and Sho had risked his life for him. Nobody had ever done that before…well Reigen…but the thought of liking Reigen…loving him….was gross. He was Reigen! Sho…well he was Sho…and also they were the same age…and…and Sho had risked his life and even blown up a building for him…he said that he hadn't but Ritsu knew that he had…

So this was what love felt like…the real kind…the kind that adults felt for each other…it was really nice….

The k-cup was done first. Ritsu made sure to get out a guest mug, one of the expensive ones that mom and dad bought but never used because they were for company. They hardly ever had company and yet mom and dad still had all of this company stuff…well now they did. Reigen was getting one of the plain white mugs that somehow costed fifteen thousand yen at the department store. Ritsu got out his old Zootopia mug….he had liked that movie for like ten seconds when he'd been little and mom and dad had never let it go…it was good for tea though….

He maybe wasn't all the way an adult…yet.

He carried the mugs in his hands, he didn't trust his powers right now, as he walked back into the living room. Reigen was standing up now and he was looking at Shigeko's shrine. Ritsu but the mugs down and, after a second, got some coasters out. Mom said that these were important so that they didn't ruin the table. It was already ruined, though, it wobbled. It had broken when he had been a baby and dad glued the leg back on. A lot of things in the house had been broken a long time ago. There was the pane of glass that didn't match the rest of the house in the hallway window, the tiles in the bathroom that didn't match the colors and patterns of anything else, the dent in the wall of his room that his parents hung a star chart over, the places where the carpet didn't exactly line up…

Ritsu wished that Reigen had been looking at some of those oddities and not his dead sister's shrine.

"It's a Shinto thing." Said Ritsu as he sat down on the couch. He grabbed his tea and blew on it. Still way too hot. He kind of wished that it was cooler, though, because he really needed a drink. He was thirsty, actually, because he'd hardly had anything to eat or drink…food was out of the question though…he didn't know if he could keep it down. His stomach was doing all kinds of flips….love flips…and fear flips….an also annoyance flips…

What, had Reigen never seen a shrine before?

"Oh! Right….hey. Coffee's done…great! You have no idea how badly I need a good cup of coffee." Said Reigen as he walked away, quickly, from the shrine he had been staring at. He couldn't help it. He'd seen shrines before, his parents had even had one, but those….well the ones that he'd grown up with had always had old people's pictures inside…not…it was a tragedy. Losing a child that young. Ritsu's parents…he wasn't going to pretend to know the pain of losing a child….or the pain of it happening again…

Did Ritsu have a landline?

He hadn't seen one when he came in. He scanned the room as he crossed it. No landline…an empty jack in the wall…and a square of paint, he could see, where one had been hanging in the kitchen. The Kageyama's had probably cut that cord a long time ago. Maybe the neighbors had one. It felt wrong, to Reigen, to be sitting there sipping coffee in their living room while they were probably out there worried out of their minds…or worse. Maybe they were…maybe they were out there getting a second shrine made…and they were planning on using that same picture from the missing child posters that they had blanketed the neighborhood with…

He sat down and sipped his coffee…it was way too hot.

"You're supposed to blow on it." Said Ritsu as he took Reigen's mug from his hands and put it down on the coaster.

"Well now you warn me." Said Reigen with a laugh that didn't quite meet his eyes. Ritsu just sort of stared at him before getting back to blowing on his tea. Reigen's eyes darted around the room before they landed on the remotes lined up on the table. He didn't want to watch TV…but he did want some noise beyond listening to sound of Ritsu blowing on his tea…but he didn't….it would have been a bad idea, watching TV, and avoiding the problem…and there was a problem...well…sort of. There was…the whole…the question of what they were going to do now….

Besides drink tea and coffee.

They had to…to figure something out. No, he had to. There was no negotiating here. He was the adult and he had to lay down the law for once. There would be no more spirits in Sprits and Such. No more messing around with psychic powers…and nothing that could get the attention of psychic cults. He and Ritsu would do literally anything else…anything that didn't involve psychic powers. He didn't know what they would do…hell, he didn't even know how he was going to pay rent this month, but he knew that he had to keep Ritsu safe.

Which meant that they had a lot to talk about.

"Yours is probably still too hot to drink." Said Ritsu before he took a sip of his own tea. Reigen didn't have to do things just because he did them. Ritsu would have been fine gathering information on his own. He would have been able to run away if it had just been him…but Reigen had just been trying to keep him safe…but he didn't need someone to keep him safe…not when he could take care of himself….

He and Reigen had a lot to talk about.

"Thanks, Ritsu, for looking out for me…about the coffee." Said Reigen

"You don't have to thank me, it's just coffee." Said Ritsu

"It's not just about the coffee. You've been a really big help to me these past few months, you know that? You've been invaluable." Said Reigen

"Because I'm the only one of us with powers." Said Ritsu. He had no idea what spiritual powers were but he knew that Reigen had been almost totally helpless back there. He knew that Reigen couldn't do anything close to what he could do…and that was why he was going to have to be serious with Reigen. That was why he was going to have to tell Reigen right now to his face that next time he could not come along. Not even if Ritsu's life was in danger…and it would be in danger…and there would be a next time. He still had to save Sho after all.

"No…yes. You're the only one with powers. Ritsu….I don't have powers. Not psychic…and not spiritual. I lied…to you…because at first….well at first I thought that you were just playing….and I just wanted to play along, you know? You remind me a lot of myself at your age. When I was your age I used to pretend that…well that I was assistant to this TV psychic that came on every night…he was a medium and I would pretend that I could contact the other side…heh…kind of like…now. Ritsu…you're the only one with powers….ok?" asked Reigen. He closed his eyes and braced himself. Ritsu had never been afraid of telling people off…and now was probably no exception. He knew that it was coming…maybe harsh words…maybe curse words….hell, maybe he was about to get a mug of tea to the face…but it was…whatever happened would happen…he would accept anything….

Anything that Ritsu could throw at him he would take.

"Yeah, I figured. Whatever." Said Ritsu. There. Now this would make it easier to tell Reigen to stay put next time Ritsu had something dangerous to do…and also he wouldn't tell Tsubomi next time either since, apparently, she couldn't keep a secret to save anyone's life.

"….that's all you have to say?" asked Reigen

"Yeah. I mean I never really bought it anyway so…whatever. At least now you're admitting it and maybe next time-" said Ritsu

"No….no. Ritsu…there isn't going to be a next time. We are never going to bother those people again…or even pop up on their radar…ok? You and I…we're going to do our best to just…put it behind us." Said Reigen. What they really needed was a good therapist…but there was no way that a therapist would listen to their crazy store for even ten minutes without fitting them for straightjackets….so it looked like he and Ritsu were going to do this alone…no. Just him. He was going to be there for Ritsu…he had to be…there was no way in hell Ritsu was going to get through this alone.

Reigen was the adult and Ritsu was the child.

"Put it behind us? What are you…we can't put it behind us! Not when they're going to keep on kidnapping people and torturing them and…and….and I can't put this behind me! They're going to hurt more people….they're going to hurt him and…" said Ritsu

"Him? Ritsu…is this about that redheaded kid?" asked Reigen with a groan. Of course it was. That kid…Ritsu was in love. He had fallen in love for the first time…and it might not even have been love. Ritsu might have just been reacting to the fact that the redheaded kid had saved them. That might have been it. It might have just been trauma, gratitude, and hormones….was he old enough for the last part? He stank to high hell….but maybe that was just from not bathing for two days…

"Of course it's about Sho. I can't just leave him there, Reigen, I love him….and I know that he's just going to…to get hurt…for what he did-" said Ritsu

"Ritsu, no. You…you heard him. He said that his family ran the place. I'm sure that he'll be fine." Said Reigen

"He got knocked out and dragged off the first time he tried to save us. I don't think that counts as being fine." Said Ritsu

"He came back….and you might not! Just…Ritsu….I know that you think that you're in love. I know that first kisses feel like a big deal-" said Reigen

"That was my fourth kiss." Said Ritsu evenly. What did Reigen think he was? A little kid. Of course he'd done that before. He was almost eleven. He only counted kisses with other guys, though, since those were the ones he actually liked.

"Oh…good for you. Way to uh…put yourself out there." said Reigen. Was that…normal? He hadn't had his first kiss until he was fourteen…well good for Ritsu, figuring himself out….but…yeah. That was…maybe something that he would have to talk to Ritsu about….Reigen added love and puberty talk to the long list of master student talks that were coming up.

"I know how I feel. I know that I love him and I know that I can't just leave him to die. I know….I know myself and I know that if I don't have you to protect then…then I might have a chance." Said Ritsu. Reigen stared at him, turned a weird shade of red, and then drank his coffee in one gulp. He wiped his mouth and slammed his cup down on the table then he was done. Ritsu used his powers to put it on the coaster.

"Ritsu…alright. You know that shrine…right? The one for your sister. The one that you told me was a Shinto thing?" asked Reigen. He had to take a different approach. Ritsu…cared a lot about the people he loved…and there was more than one kind of love than he kind that he had discovered for that redheaded kid.

"Yeah. We put up shrine for people who died…like their spirits and stuff. I think that Buddhists do it too." Said Ritsu. He….had no idea why Reigen wanted to talk about religion now. Maybe because he had just figured out that Ritsu was Shinto? Just Shinto, mom and dad had said, not Shinto with Buddhist. Ritsu honestly didn't care about religion….but if Reigen wanted to talk about religion then they could talk until the sun went down if it kept Reigen from talking about….Sho…and Claw…and stuff.

"We do...but…Ritsu, I've never had to put up a shrine before…and I don't want to have to ask your parents for pointers." Said Reigen

"O….k…." said Ritsu

"They've already done it once….and I know that they could help me…but I don't want them to have to help me….and I don't want them to have to make another one…for you. Ritsu…those are bad people…and yes, you're a powerful kid….but you're just a kid. I don't….I don't want anything to happen to you…." Said Reigen. He choked, a little, at the end. He could not cry…he could not let Ritsu see him cry. Ritsu…he had to feel safe….and he couldn't feel like Reigen wasn't in control of the situation. He was the adult…he was the one who had to be in control of the situation….

He could not cry.

"Ok, ok, I won't go after Claw…just…stop crying." Said Ritsu. He had every intention of going after Claw….but Reigen didn't need to know that. Not today, no, and not tomorrow either. He'd do like Reigen said and wait until he got bigger and stronger….but he would go after Claw…and he would save Sho….he would just keep his mouth shut, next time.

"I wasn't crying….but thanks. Ritsu, you don't know how much this means to me and…and there's something else we have to talk about. About Spirits and Such-" said Reigen. There was the sound of a car pulling into the drive. Two doors opened and closed. He stood still. He felt like he'd been caught…but he hadn't been doing anything….but he still felt like he'd been caught.

"Mom and dad are home. Don't tell them anything about what happened." said Ritsu as he got up off the couch and went to the genkan. He wasn't going to talk about Claw…he was going to say that he ran away…and Reigen had gone to find him. That was…all. He wanted to tell mom and dad about his powers…he didn't want to hide…but he wasn't stupid. He didn't need to make any more problems for himself….he had enough problems…

Mom and dad were not going to be one of them.

He waited by the door…it didn't take long for it to open. Mom opened the door…he had never been so happy to see his mom in his life. His dad, too. He had never been so happy to see both of his parents…and…and he was not going to cry.

"I finally got through to the Takane's and Tsubomi said something about Ritsu going off to play in the woods so-RITSU! Ritsu! My wonderful, sweet, baby boy…you're here!" said Hana. She had barely gotten the key through the lock when she threw herself down onto the ground. She held her son in her arms. She was never letting him go…ever. Not until the day she died. Her boy…her sweet baby boy! She thanked whatever Gods had been watching over him. He stank to high hell…she pulled away from him for a moment….he didn't look hurt…he just smelled terrible…

"Ritsu…son….you're….oh God!" said Ichimaro. He dropped the stack of flyers that he'd been holding. He didn't need them anymore. Ritsu…he was there…he was back! His son…he just…he looked up at the shrine…his eyes met Shigeko's. He thanked whatever spirits had been attracted to this shrine…whatever spirits brought his son back…he had never been a religious man before but…it was time to start now.

"Hi mom…hi dad…." Said Ritsu as he was hugged. He used to hate being hugged like this, like he was a little kid, but now….he didn't mind. This was….this was the best hug that he had ever gotten in his life….and he never wanted mom and dad to let him go…but they did….mom did first….and she asked something that he knew he didn't want to answer.

"Ritsu…where have you been?" asked Hana as she let her son go. He was…he seemed fine. Ichimaro was walking over to Reigen now…and he seemed fine…they both seemed fine. They had been…the house smelled like tea and coffee….they had been here a while…they could have called! No, no, calm down….

Ritsu was back, now, and that was what mattered.

"The woods. I ran away. Reigen found me." Said Ritsu simply. There. That made sense…and now mom could get up off the floor and not ask any follow up questions because he didn't want to answer any. Couldn't they just go back to hugging and kissing him or something?

"Reigen…thank you. You found my son…so thank you…I don't know how to thank you!" said Ichimaro as he hugged Reigen. Hugging another man felt….strange….but he didn't care! His son was back and…and he felt twenty years younger. Thirty…forty…fifty….well now he was a zygote but….he didn't care! He felt so young and light…he could have kissed Reigen full on the mouth! He didn't care…the only thing that mattered was Ritsu!

"You're welcome. So…maybe I should head out. I can see that you have a lot to catch up on and-" said Reigen as he was trapped in the most awkward hug of his life. He didn't want to be here…and not just for the hugs. He was going to have to lie to these people….the ones who trusted him with his son…and usually he had no problem lying…but this was not usual. This was…nothing about this weekend had been usual….and he never wanted to repeat it ever again.

"Ritsu, why did you run away? You can tell us anything. Was…was something going wrong at school? Were the other kids teasing you? Problems with your grades? Your girlfriend only told us that you ran away-" said Hana

"Tsubomi isn't my girlfriend." Said Ritsu. That never stopped being annoying…he knew that he loved his parents…but that was just….so annoying!

"Oh…did she reject you? Was that it? You're not too young for girl problems-" said Hana. Kids….Ritsu…he could be so dramatic…and she loved him. Even if he put her through hell over a girl…but…but he was back now and…and she didn't care why he had run away! She only cared that he was back….well she cared a little why he'd run away…

Because that hadn't been like him at all.

"She didn't reject me, actually she's in love with me." Said Ritsu

"Is that why you ran away? Because you're not ready for a girlfriend? Ritsu, girl troubles can be hard but you can't run away from them. You'll meet a girl and she'll be right for you but if you run away to the woods every time-" said Hana

"Mom, it wasn't about Tsubomi or any other girl. I'm gay." Said Ritsu. There. The truth. Mom and dad….they knew the truth…and he felt…light. He felt lighter now that he didn't have that weight on him. Mom and dad were looking at him like he was crazy…and Reigen looked like he was going to jump out the window or something so he could escape…and with all the staring….well Ritsu sort of wanted to escape too…even though he wasn't a prisoner…he had been a prisoner…but better mom and dad know about him being gay than him having been kidnapped…

Mom and dad were freaking out…but not as bad like if they knew about the kidnapping….

"What?!" asked Ichimaro. He stepped away from Reigen so fast that he bumped into the coffee table. A mug of tea went flying to the ground where it shattered….Ritsu's favorite mug…that could be replaced…right now. He was going to go to the store and replace it. He just…people were looking at him and…and he loved his son! He loved his son and he was just a kid…he didn't…know what he was saying and…

And he still loved his son!

"I'm gay." Said Ritsu. He…didn't like the way dad said that…but…he wasn't going to take it back. He was who he was and…and he wasn't going to hide anymore.

"Are you….sure?" asked Ichimaro. Ritsu…was so young….he must have been confused. Yeah, puberty was confusing….Ritsu was at that age….he'd started doing his own laundry….he was just…confused…about things….

"Yeah, dad, I'm sure." Said Ritsu. Well now he was just kind of…pissed off. What? Was dad sure that he was straight? Well…he was married to mom…and he didn't want to think about his parents being in love even though he knew that they were…just…he was somehow even more tired now than he had been when he escaped Claw.

"So….yeah. I'll just…head on out now…." Said Reigen as he tried to slip away….but Ritsu's mother was blocking the doorway…and he was right in the middle of another awkward moment, wasn't he?

"We still love you! Your father and I…we love you…even if you are a little confused right now-" said Hana. That…made an insane amount of sense. The way he…well the way he had always been around boys. He'd always been better friends with girls…and he'd always been shy around the other boys…and he never gave Tsubomi a second glance even though she was very…developed…for a girl her age. She had thought that Ritsu had just been too young, and in fact she had been happy that her son had other things on his mind besides chasing girls…

But…maybe…..

"I'm not confused. I'm gay." Said Ritsu simply. No. He knew what he was…and he knew that life was too short to pretend to be something other than himself. He was Kageyama Ritsu, he was an esper, he was ten and ten months old, and he was gay. There. It wasn't complicated.

"Are you sure? Sometimes when we start…do you remember what we talked about? The special time in your life? Sometimes things get a little…complicated….." said Ichimaro. Ritsu…was his son and he loved him. He loved Ritsu and…and he….he just…how did this happen? Not that he didn't love his son but…but he was too young to know…how he felt…or maybe not…just….his eyes landed on the flyers on the ground. Ritsu was back…that was what mattered.

"Ichimaro, drop it. Ritsu…is sure of who he is and…and it must be hard on him. That's why you ran away…isn't it? Ritsu…you ran away because of…of this?" asked Hana. Her son was gay. That was…she loved him. She would never stop loving him….and he needed all the love that he could get. The world was a very cruel place to people who were like Ritsu…and she…she should have noticed sooner…and she should have done more to shield her son from the world's cruelty…but she could…she could protect him now…

Anyone who had a problem with her son being gay could take it up with her…she'd set them straight….oh yes she would….

"Yeah! He…was having a hard time so he ran away to live in the woods…kids, am I right? Well he ran away and I went to get him back but then we got lost and we lost our phones and it took us this long to even find the main road. I'm sorry, I should have called you but I….vastly overestimated…my ability to survive out in nature. Those two weeks of boy scouts didn't do me much good! So….I'll just…leave you to…this." said Reigen as he slunk away. Ritsu got caught in a hug from both of his parents. He made eye contact with Reigen. Reigen mouthed the words 'just go with it' at Ritsu…

'Thank you.' Mouthed Ritsu as his parents hugged him from all sides. They loved him…or maybe they were just happy that he hadn't died. He didn't know. He was just….he was happy to be with them even if they weren't one hundred percent alright with him being…the way he was…it felt like. He was home and…and he had lied but…it was for their own good. He knew that he would have to tell them the other big truth about himself someday….but later…not now. Now he would just…enjoy being home…for a little bit…for as long as it took for him to get big enough and strong enough to save Sho…

There was no place like home….so he would enjoy being home…and he would look forward to the day when he could bring Sho home with him….introduce him to mom and dad…as his boyfriend…and….stuff like that….

Nice stuff like that.


	512. I Need a Nap, So Let Me Nap

Thirteen hours.

That was how long Minegishi had been on a plane reassuring Mob for. Thirteen. Fucking. Hours. People were not meant to fly. If people had been meant to fly then babies would have been born wearing little capes. But they weren't born wearing little capes. They were born wearing amniotic fluid, viscera, and various other bits of filth. So maybe humans were meant to live in filth, then, it would have made sense. Minegishi was already almost there. They needed a bath. They needed a smoke, a drink, a bath, and a nap…in that order.

Thankfully they knew someone who could make that happen.

Matsuo looked well. That was better than could be said about them. They were a mess. Their hair was pretty much an oil slick, their face could have easily been mistaken for a planetarium, and their nails were chipped to hell…amongst a thousand and one other tiny things that they hadn't noticed about themselves. Ryou was blind and they didn't give a damn what the others thought about them…they had been spoiled. Matsuo could see them and…well they shouldn't have given a damn what he thought. Not when everything was going wrong in Mob's life. Not when she was going to get into the fight of her life with her little brother over some shit that shouldn't have even happened. They should have gone with Mob…well she hadn't wanted them to…but they still should have gone with…but here they were, being selfish…

They were good at that. Even when it came to Mob…they were pretty damn good at that.

"Hey." Said Minegishi as they approached Matsuo. He smiled when he saw them. That was…they liked his smile. It was nice…it didn't have the same sort of mirth that Ryou's had…but then again Ryou was one of a kind. Well everyone was one of a kind but Ryou was…well he was something special…but a lot of people were special…like Matsuo….

He was something special.

"Toshiki, you made it." Said Matsuo. Koyama gave him a look as he walked past. Matsuo ignored him. What had happened, happened, and he'd made his choice. Now they were making theirs…and this had nothing to do with social climbing and Miyagawa needed to learn to stop running his mouth. Toshiki ranked above him, sure, but that didn't mean anything.

Besides, it wasn't like he was after their job or anything.

"Barely." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head. They ran a hand through their hair…and knocked their bobby pins loose. Their hair had gotten so long they were back to the bobby pin thing….and they needed to cut it…that could come later. When Mob was done she would probably want to do some hardcore hair braiding….joy….

The things they did for Mob.

"Rough ride?" asked Matsuo as he reached up and fixed the bobby pins in their hair. They put them back in the bobby pins the way they had been, that cross pattern. They were growing out their bangs…and the rest of their hair too. It looked nice…they looked nice…really nice. Even after what must have been a grueling plane ride, airplanes were instruments of torture, they still looked…really nice.

Minegishi Toshiki really had it going on.

"You don't know the half of it. What's happening here?" Said Minegishi as the motioned to the large group of people still milling around. They loved Mob, they really did, but they didn't think that she needed the red carpet rolled out for her. She didn't even like that shit. She was already at the end of her rope…and maybe they should have gone with her…or maybe she wanted some space….they didn't know…maybe they were the one who wanted some space…

"Ishiguro's showing off again. She likes to make us line up like this…among other things." Said Matsuo

"Well I'm going to take that in the worst way possible." Said Minegishi

"Yeah, you got it. Have you ever seen any hentai ever? It's like that." Said Matsuo

"What do you take me for? I only read the finest of trashy romance novels." Said Minegishi

"So the guy on the front's shirt is only partially ripped?" asked Matsuo

"Hmm…which guy?" asked Minegishi. They raised the space where one of their eyebrows would have been and let it sink in. It didn't take long.

"God, Toshiki, this is so much better in real time." Said Matsuo with a laugh. God, he had forgotten how funny they could be. The smart kind of funny, not the kind of funny where someone soaped up a staircase and watched pain ensue…this division was staffed and run by children….it was so good to talk to an actual adult for once….well…he caught Tsuchiya's eye.

One without a kid.

"What? Are you saying we don't have textual chemistry?" asked Minegishi going for two. They saw the path Matsuo's eyes traveled. There. A muscular…and very well endowed…woman with a little red haired toddler. That was…they looked away. That was Mob's business. That was Suzuki family business…they didn't have a dog in this race…

Though Mob would be happy to know that the little vomit machine was doing well.

"Textual chemistry? I think I failed that." Said Matsuo. He took a step forward…Toshiki had some really dark circles going on. A nap, then, when he got them inside. If they didn't have anything to do for the Vice President. He had no idea what she was even doing here….and he wasn't going to ask. Toshiki said that she was apparently the sweetest kid in the world…but she was still…her. Way too powerful…and her eyes were haunting….and she came from Suzuki…

He blinked. He didn't know why. His vision in his eye, the one with the scar, would never be the same again….

"No, you're alright. You pass…just barely." Said Minegishi as they leaned in and kissed him. Short, sweet, and to the point. Nothing long and drawn out…they didn't have the energy for something long and drawn out. They didn't have the energy for…well…a lot of things they felt like doing. They had the energy to kiss him, though, something short and sweet and to the point…

He seemed to have the same idea.

"Toshiki…don't take this the wrong way but you look like you're dead on your feet." Said Matsuo as he stepped back from Toshiki. He knew that he was getting looks…he didn't care. Toshiki was his…whatever they were to him. Partner? Or maybe just…friend with benefits? They hadn't talked about this yet…and he knew that Toshiki was in some kind of situation-ship with Shimazaki Ryou….and he didn't want anything to do with that nut job…

"How am I not supposed to take that badly?" asked Minegishi

"No idea. Maybe you'll take it better if I ask you to take a nap with me." Said Matsuo

"You're right, I am taking it better…but I'm not up for more than a nap right now." Said Minegishi

"That's fine, we have time….right?" asked Matsuo

"I don't have a fucking clue. Come on, it's hot out here." Said Minegishi. They took his hand and let them lead. He knew this place better than they did. This was his home after all. They had spent some time in Tokyo HQ before moving to the floating hit squad. Before all of this stuff with Mob they hadn't ever had…this…

A permanent home.

Well a permanent group. They had a group now, their home was wherever Suzuki felt like it was, but a group…could feel like home. Not that they felt homesick. There was just…a lot of tiredness right there inside of them. That was why they felt that twinge of…whatever…when a Scar slapped Matsuo on the back and told him that he was lucky. They checked their phone as they walked. They had signal again…they had signal but Ryou might not have…Suzuki was probably following them right now. Suzuki was probably pissed and this whole thing was going to turn into a shit show…

Hopefully they slept through it.

Matsuo…they had never slept with him before. They had hooked up with him but they had never slept together. They….were alright with this. They needed a nap and they liked him…and they could sleep without Ryou. They could sleep…well they could sleep with someone else. They trusted Matsuo…and if they didn't then they could just knock themselves out and wait for Mob to wake them up…they sent her a text just so she knew that they were around…maybe they should have left her alone…she had a lot going on right now…

She had too much to deal with.

Was this alright? Them holding hands with someone and…and it was in this moment that Minegishi knew that they were spending way too much time with a twelve year old girl. They were holding hands with a guy. They were holding hands with a guy and they were going to take a nap with him….so scandalous. They needed more adult company….they had adult company….so why were they lonely?

They were way too tired.

"Here it is, home sweet home." Said Matsuo as he opened his door. He…didn't know what he was so nervous about. He cleaned up….sort of. The trash was in the trash can, the dishes were in the sink, and the laundry was in the hamper. There. Clean. Adult levels of clean. He watched Toshiki as they slipped their shoes off in the genkan. Their eyes were darting around his apartment. Too many stickers? Too many posters? Too many figurines? He knew…well his apartment was where taste went to die according to Sakurai…..

"Clockwork Orange….in Japanese. Nice." Said Minegishi as their eyes landed on a beat up poster on the wall across from them. This wasn't a big apartment…and it was made even smaller with the sheer amount of…stuff…on the walls. There wasn't a free section of wall anywhere. Where there weren't posters there were shelves and in the little places where some wall could have been seen there were stickers. Anime characters, animals, anime animals, fuzzy stickers, even the ones that came on fruit…

Not much worse than cluttering your room with plants and books, really.

"That's an original poster. I picked it up after I saw the movie…and you were right, it was good. The book was…alright." Said Matsuo as he took his belt off and hung it on the coatrack. He could feel Toshiki's eyes on him.

"Don't tell me you like the movie better than the book." Said Minegishi with a shake of their head.

"Ok, I won't tell you that I liked the movie better than the book." Said Matsuo as he put an arm around Toshiki's waist. God…he had been waiting to do this for so long. He hadn't expected to see them again….not until the next holiday party anyway. This was…he was lost…in a way. Lost in the sense that…he couldn't remember the last time he'd done this. Had someone he liked over…

It was nice…a little terrifying…but nice.

"Well then I won't say anything in retaliation to that." Said Minegishi with a yawn. Matsuo's hand was around their waist…and he felt…his hand was too small. Minegishi…they had no idea why they were thinking of Ryou. They had been with him…and only him…for too long. They knew that he was fine…they knew that he was on his way probably…and they knew that they'd had other people's hands around their waist.

And they knew that it was just in bad taste to compare one partner to another.

"What would you say if I asked you…which one you like better? The right or the left? Of the bed I mean." Said Matsuo. He felt like he was a kid again. Toshiki was looking at him…staring at him….in that way where it was like they were looking right through him….but that was just how they looked at everyone and everything. They were intense like that. He liked that about them. They were intense but also….

Pretty cute sometimes….like now.

"Whichever side won't have me pressed up against the wall." Said Minegishi. Ryou always liked to have the outer side of the bed…even though he could teleport and they couldn't. They switched off sometimes…but it would have been nice…to sleep on the outside…especially when they were sleeping with someone new. Well not new but….well sleeping was….

They were too tired…way too tired….

"Well then there's the left….or the right…or I guess that I can clear out the loft." Said Matsuo. There….that was good. Let them decide if they wanted to sleep next to him. Was this too soon? They'd been knuckle deep inside of him…the soon boat had left port a while ago…but that was sex and this was…..well he wasn't opposed to sex…actually he wouldn't have minded at all…and they had but…this was…different….

More…domestic…maybe? Or just…he was overthinking this.

"I'll take the left. Can I borrow some pajama pants, Mob didn't exactly give me time to pack up before we left." Said Minegishi

"You know what, I'll let you borrow a whole pajama set. How's that sound?" asked Matsuo with a laugh. That came out a little too high…he knew his voice was grating. Toshiki…will if they were bothered then they didn't say anything. They just took his hand.

"Think those Totoro ones will fit?" asked Minegishi. They took his hand in theirs. He was blushing…he was kind of…cute…when he blushed. It was like an anime blush sticker, kind of, it stuck to his cheeks. When Ryou blushed he just sort of turned red…and he had no idea how…they needed to stop thinking about Ryou.

"We're both mediums." Said Matsuo. There, his voice broke again. He reached down for his belt…but he'd taken it off. He hadn't wanted to do anything with it just…just kept it near him for his own emotional reasons.

"You're a medium….I'm chlorokinetic….and also in some brands I'm a large." Said Minegishi. They were fliting….they didn't need to flirt…but they were still flirting. There was something to be said for flirting with someone new…new-ish….they had been messaging with him for a while now. They had been…well it was different in life…real life…they could see him smile now…and blush….

God, he was so…him.

"Well I have plenty of-" said Matsuo and he laced his fingers with theirs. They had really rough hands…he liked it. Their hands were rough and their fingernails were chipped and….and he liked it. They felt sort of….real….there…if real was the word. Well he had known that they were real….and they were something that he could reach out and feel….and he had no idea how long that would last….

But he knew that he didn't want this…whatever it was…interrupted.

But it was interrupted. There were two knocks at his door. One strong, and one that sounded more like his door was being kicked…by a tiny foot. A tiny and adorable foot. A tiny and adorable foot who belonged to a tiny and adorable person….who he might have been scheduled to babysit….no….Sho was the one who watched her….

But apparently there was some kind of Suzuki family drama going on.

"You've got company." Said Minegishi. They could feel an aura…a familiar one….and they could hear a little voice demanding that 'uncle Matsuo' open the door. The little vomit machine….spoke now. Well that made sense. She was old enough to speak and walk and maybe even eat solid foods and not throw them back up. Good for her…now she could go and enjoy all this new autonomy in her life somewhere else…

Don't be an asshole, she's just a kid.

She was the caught of all of this…no. She was only here because Suzuki couldn't keep it in his pants or take responsibility for his actions. She was just a casualty of Suzuki's insanity and…yeah…there was a lot going wrong but it wasn't because of this little girl. It was because of her father…and her father's…Minegishi wasn't even sure what to call Fukuda. Well besides living human embodiment of discharge of course. He was something to Suzuki, something that wasn't Minegishi's business and had no bearing on their life, but someone who made their life exponentially more difficult than it had to be. Hopefully Mob was putting him in his place….and if she didn't then they could and would. After a nice long nap.

And whatever this was.

"Hey…Tsuchiya. Now's not really a good time. I kind of have company and-" said Matsuo as Tsuchiya pushed his door opened. Mukai ran in and launched herself into him.

"Matsuo! Hello! You! Hello!" shouted Mukai as she pointed to Minegishi.

"Vomit machine….hey." said Minegishi with a wave. The little vomit machine let go of Matsuo's leg and walked over to them slowly. They took a step back. That was….a bright aura…for someone who was so small….and she was still small. They had been expecting….well not expecting but picturing…a baby. An infant. The little infant that couldn't even hold her own head up. The little infant who couldn't even hold her food down…though that might have been because nobody in that house knew jack shit about how to choose formula or feed a baby…

They were so glad that they ate solid food now…maybe…she did have teeth now….

"I know. I need to talk to her…him…." said Tsuchiya as she made her way into Matsuo's apartment. She knew full well that she was being rude and that she was teaching Mukai to be rude…but she needed to talk to the Vice President's….best friend? Mother? Parent? Matsuo had said best friend but...well adults were not friends with kids…and the Vice President was definitely a kid…

She couldn't have been more than ten years older than Mukai.

"Them." Said Minegishi shortly. That was supposedly common knowledge…and it was really more polite to ask than to pretend that they weren't in the room. They could speak for themselves, thank you very much, not that they had much to say to the mother? The person raising Suzuki's illegitimate love child. There was some misplaced hostility there….they had to place it somewhere else…

It wasn't this woman's fault that the baby…toddler now…had been taken from Mob…so Minegishi needed to stop being an asshole…or at least severely curtain their natural impulse to be an asshole.

"Right. Them. I need to talk to them." Said Tsuchiya

"This really isn't a good time." Said Matsuo

"They are right here and if you want to talk to them then start talking…also your kid is eating a sticker. You might want to do something about that." Said Minegishi as they pointed over to Mukai. She was peeling a scratch and sniff sticker, strawberry, off the wall. Matsuo jumped down to her level….note to self, never touch the stickers….

"Mukai, spit it out! NoW!" said Tsuchiya. This was why she hated bringing Mukai here. Matsuo's apartment was pretty much a baby death trap…and Mukai was back in the habit of putting everything in her mouth…they had almost had that broken…but of course that brother of hers hadn't exactly gone along with her directions…

Maybe the sister was worse.

The sister…the sister and not the mother. Certain people, who had a one way ticket to pain town coming to them, had decided to start this crazy rumor that Suzuki had gotten his daughter pregnant and was hiding the evidence at this division. That was why his son, and only his son, but not his daughter came to visit. That was a sick rumor that did not bear repeating…and also…if there was some truth to it then…well then Tsuchiya was defecting and taking Mukai with her. That was not what she had signed up for! Not that she was jumping to any conclusions…not that she was making plans to defect yet…

She had no idea where she would ever go.

Claw had at least once base on every continent. There were people everywhere constantly on the look out for more espers and proto-Awakened. She knew that if she ran with Mukai she was going to have to disappear completely and…maybe move to the jungle? Or the arctic? Or maybe get some kind of dramatic plastic surgery for the both of them? She…hadn't thought this through…but if she had to defect…and not just for crazy rumors…

Then she would have liked a head start…before Vice President Suzuki…took Mukai back with her...

"Want candy! Now! Sho! Now!" shouted Mukai

"What the….he had better not have been giving you-" said Tsuchiya

"I've got her, I've got her." said Matsuo as he pried one of his stickers….these were limited edition and only came with the figurine….from Mukai's mouth. She still didn't know what was and was not food…but she'd learn…and hopefully she stuck around long enough to learn. She was so small….he didn't know what the Vice President was doing here but he did know that…well it couldn't have been good…

Not that he believed Miyagawa or anything…

The President…was a piece of work…but he wasn't that kind of piece of work. Sure he had shamelessly started this cult of personality around himself but he wasn't….like that. No, Vice President Suzuki was not Mukai's secret mother and she was not here to take her daughter back. Toshiki would have said something…and also…well Miyagawa liked to start crazy rumors…like about Tsuchiya sleeping her way to the Seventh Division…though he had shut up pretty fast after Tsuchiya shattered his jaw…

That had been the most peaceful six weeks the Seventh Division had ever seen.

"Can she keep food down yet?" asked Minegishi as they watched Matsuo pry the sticker from in between Mukai's teeth…she had teeth now. A full set of them. Mob was going to get a kick out of this. She'd probably make a new baby tooth box just for her…she had saved all of hers in a shoebox and all of Sho's in an old Christmas cookie tin….God…Mob had lost a tooth shortly before they met…where had the time gone…

Not even thirty years old yet and they were starting to feel nostalgic.

"What?" asked Tsuchiya

"When she lived with us she couldn't keep anything down. Just wondering if we were going to have to invest in rain ponchos or not." Said Minegishi. That baby…toddler….small former vomit machine was going to end up coming back with them. They knew Mob. They knew that she never thought before she acted. Her baby sister was coming back to the group….and this woman too…and then Suzuki was going to freak out…and they were going to freak out too because, yeah, they weren't a big fan of small children. Also Mob was twelve and did not need to take care of her sister…though it would be nice, having a woman around…

Maybe Suzuki's weird crush would transfer over to her or something.

"She's got some food sensitivities..." said Tsuchiya. She knew Mukai. She didn't like too much dairy, her stomach didn't, and sugar didn't agree with her either. Mukai…there was a lot to know…like how she needed her grapes peeled and cut or she'd choke…or how she was afraid of the dark and needed her Hello Kitty nightlight…or how she liked to pretend she was working out and it was cute but if you took your eyes off of her she would try and lift something way too heavy and hurt herself…..

"Well she had better not throw up on me. I got enough of that two years ago." Said Minegishi

"It depends on what she eats." Said Tsuchiya

"I figured. Well I hope to God that they stay your problem. I don't need to deal with this…not again…and neither does Mob. She has enough on her plate as it is." said Minegishi

"Mob…the Vice President. She's just a kid…right?" asked Tsuchiya

"She just turned twelve…why?" asked Minegishi

"Nothing, just a rumor…a really sick rumor. I don't believe it….tell her that I don't believe it…ok?" asked Tsuchiya. Maybe if she got on the Vice President's good side. She…well she had always wanted to see more women in power…or any women who weren't Ishiguro…but…the Vide President had the power to take Mukai away from her…

And she couldn't let that happen.

"I have no idea what you're talking about and I don't think that Mob will either." Said Minegishi. They had better things to do than repeat Scar gossip. Like nap. Like nap and nap some more and then deal with…whatever the hell Mob was planning on doing after she told her brother and Fukuda off….and hopefully her plan involved leaving the little vomit machine here in the Seventh Division where she belonged.

"I honestly hope that none of those rumors reach her." said Tsuchiya with a shudder. She had no idea how Miyagawa came up with this stuff…what must have happened in his mind….

"Then maybe don't repeat rumors where her close friends can hear….and your kid, too. She can talk now….Mob's going to be so excited…prepare yourself." Said Minegishi

"The Vice President….is here for…Mukai?" asked Tsuchiya. She felt her qi trying to activate. She knew that in a contest of brute strength she could snap this person like a twig….but there was a difference between the upper echelon, the Scars, and then…well the espers the President surrounded himself with. She knew that she couldn't take one of them in a contest of…powers….but she had to try….for Mukai she had to try.

"To see her, yeah." Said Minegishi with a shrug. Mob wasn't thinking…they didn't think she had a plan…they hadn't asked.

"Is that…why he sent her here? The President…is he taking her back? Just…tell me what you can." Said Tsuchiya. She lowered her voice and looked around…she knew that the walls didn't literally have ears but…better safe than sorry. This person…didn't seem like one of the devoted. Actually they looked like they wanted to be anywhere but there….but also they were in Suzuki's close orbit…

"Honestly? President Suzuki hasn't mentioned her once. I get the feeling that he doesn't even remember that he has an illegitimate love child. This is purely a Mob thing and…yeah. She's probably going to take Mukai back with us but she doesn't break up families so…congratulations on your impending promotion. She'll probably come looking for you once she's done chewing her brother and Fukuda out. Really they deserve-" said Minegishi….before they were knocked onto their back.

Then they were plunged into darkness.

The ground shook.

The walls shook.

Something broke.

Pain.

Dizziness.

Blood.

Screaming.


	513. My Daughter, My Only Daughter

Suzuki Touichirou did not like sunroofs.

But Shigeko had taken it upon herself to give one to the Seventh Division. There was a gaping hole, there, in the west corner. That would have to be fixed…that entire wing would have to be fixed. Demolished and rebuilt. The entire building may not even have been structurally sound. The floors beneath had been partially caved in. The dead…well there were dead but they were Awakened so they didn't matter. He had plenty of Awakened already and plenty more in other divisions. They were the most replaceable members of Claw…well everyone was replaceable…

Everyone but Shigeko.

"President Suzuki! I know this looks bad-" said Ishiguro, the Division Leader. He was living proof that age did not always bring with it wisdom. If he had the wisdom that a man his age should have he would have known that the best thing to do would have been to stay FAR away from Suzuki right now. The others did. Everyone but Hatori…well he needed Hatori with him now. He was smart, smarter than he looked, and his presence was calming….

Suzuki needed all the calming that he could get right now.

"No. This doesn't look bad. There aren't any words in the Japanese language for how this looks." Said Suzuki. Without resorting to profanity…he could not express how bad this was. The entire wing would have to be rebuilt. The cost would be astronomical…well they were going back into the red for the foreseeable future…but money wasn't even his greatest issue. Shigeko was. Her aura…it hung in the air…which meant that she was still alive…

Which was more than could be said for a lot of people.

"Really fucking bad?" asked Hatori. Suzuki tapped his aura…but just a tap. A light one. Hatori…was young enough that he didn't know any better than to slip into profanity. He was little more than one of the children, really, one of his children…where even were his children? Shigeko…had probably been taken to the makeshift medical wing that had been set up…but Sho…who cared?

He was alive, probably, and beyond that Suzuki didn't give a damn. Sho wasn't a priority right now. Suzuki had at least a hundred problems right here and Sho was not one of them.

"Don't curse….but yes. That is how this looks." Said Suzuki. He had to have that fixed…the entire wing demolished and built again…which would take time…and labor…and then he would have to move all of these people around since they couldn't live here anymore…at least not most of them…and without this Division then the Awakened…the new division in Australia wasn't done yet…but it would have to do….and Shigeko would probably…she had been the cause of this…and she was gone and…

And he had to stay calm.

Tadashi. It would have been easier if Tadashi was here. Suzuki's aura reached out for Hatori's….and it was nice, the grounding presence of another person, but there as something….missing…there. There was just something that Tadashi had and Hatori…did not…and he had no idea what that something was but it was something which could pull him off the brink of…THIS. This feeling….bubbling up there….just under his skin. He wanted to kill everyone. He didn't, obviously, because that would have been counterproductive to his goals…but he so wanted to. The Awakened lining up the dead and covering them in shets, the Scars arguing amongst themselves, the Division leader doing his best to grovel to him, Tadashi's lying…self….he wanted to kill them all….but he didn't….

That would not have been a logical move…and he needed to operate from a place of logic now…and not emotion….

"We can fix it! Don't worry, I already have a team on it. We just have to finish counting the dead and then we can get to work fixing the hole in the roof." Said Ishiguro

"The entire area is structurally unsound….demolish the entire wing and start again." said Suzuki

"The entire wing?" asked Ishiguro

"Yes. Are you deaf? Take off your mask, in that case, because I am not accustomed to repeating myself." Said Suzuki

"He's in a bad mood right now." Said Hatori. Suzuki…well that was helpful…a little annoying….but helpful. He didn't always show what he was feeling, not in a way that people could read, so it was helpful of Hatori to inform Ishiguro that Suzuki really was not in a good mood at all…in fact he was in an extremely foul mood….he needed Shigeko. He needed to be near her and….and she was around….he could feel her…everywhere!

He needed his Daughter.

"Hatori will take things from here." Said Suzuki. He put his hand on Hatori's back just between his shoulder blades and pushed him forward. He stumbled a bit, Suzuki caught him with his powers, and then he managed to stumble again despite not moving at all. Hatori was…uncoordinated….but Suzuki had complete faith in him.

He was an intelligent boy when it came to it. Suzuki trusted his judgement completely.

"M-Me! But Suzuki, what do I do if-" said Hatori

"Use your best judgement I trust you completely." Said Suzuki. He did, he really did. Hatori was like Tadashi….only without the lying and sneaking around. Only without doing the one thing that he had said that he would never do. They had agreed, years ago, never to lie to one another. The foundations of a new society could not be built on lies…not between the people who were going to run it actually. Also if they were going to build this thing together then they might as well have built it with a good foundation….

Also it made no sense to lie to your best friend.

Suzuki didn't like using that word, best friend, because it implied that there was an equality between them. There wasn't. Suzuki is, was, and always would be the President and Fukuda is, was, and always would be Fukuda. That was how it worked. They were not equals….but Fukuda had gotten the idea that they were. That was why he had taken Sho here without even informing him….or Shigeko. That was why Shigeko had rushed off…it made sense….she had rushed off to be with her brother and…and her sister….

Not her sister.

Suzuki could feel an aura similar to his own as he passed through the crowds. It was small, yes, but not dim. Red, like his, and with that same sort of…feeling…that his aura had. Sho's aura felt similar to his as well….maybe auras had something to do with genes? He didn't know. He just knew that he had to focus on that aura…the small but bright aura….pick it out of the sea of Awakened and just….ignore it. Stay away from it. He had no desire to see or speak to the person attached to that aura.

The only person he wanted to see right now was his Daughter.

She had been taken to the makeshift medical wing. Really it was just the rally room with beds stuck in it. This side of the building had been untouched. It had been the living quarters, mostly, which had been caved in. He could have lost all of his Scars if Shigeko had chosen to…it wasn't a choice when these things happened….when control slipped through your fingers….he had expected better from her…but no matter, no matter, she was his Daughter and he would love her no matter what…

Even if she had put a new sunroof in the roof of the Seventh Division.

"Holy shit…it's the President!" he heard an Awakened say. He didn't know which ones. They had names, he knew that they had names, but he never used them. Shigeko would have known that one's name….but Shigeko….well she was incapacitated right now. He saw her laying down on a bed…Minegishi was in the bed beside her. There was a Scar standing vigil over them. They had a bandage wrapped around their head….with a large red stain…one that may have even been growing….

Shigeko was untouched.

She was dirty, yes, and where was a hole in the sleeve of her shirt but she was untouched by what had happened. Not a scratch on her…she could have been sleeping…and she was sleeping. He made his way over to her as quickly as he could. She was not sleeping….she had passed out. He knew what it looked like when she slept. The little smile that pulled at the corner of her lips…the little sighs she made…and way she chewed on her sleeves occasionally. He knew what she looked like while she slept….

And she was not asleep.

Still….still as death…but still very much alive. She was breathing…she was just exhausted. Suzuki….he passed out sometimes too…after an explosion. Especially one as big as what she had just done. She had exploded upwards, thankfully, and that may have been what saved her and everyone else here. Not the birds, though, there were dead bids everywhere outside…but he was inside now. He held the room up with his powers…he didn't have to….but he didn't want to take that chance. He didn't want to take any chances when it came to his Daughter.

His only Daughter.

"Mama hurt! Fix Mama!" came a tiny voice. Suzuki grabbed Shigeko's hand. He did not look. He did not turn to face the source of that sound….what good would that have done? That was just…a child. That was all. There was a child here. A child crying out for her mother. That was….a thing…that children did. He'd cried out for his mother often when he'd been that small….two and a quarter years old if his math was right…not that he remembered that time in his life…and not that he wanted to remember being two and a quarter years old…..and not that he knew for sure that the source of the voice even was two and a quarter years old….

He couldn't remember her exact birthday.

"Shigeko….Daughter. I'm here, Daughter, your father is here." Said Suzuki as he held Shigeko's hand in his. There were people looking….people stopping to gawk….he pushed them along with his powers. He did not need to be seen like this…vulnerable….naked. He felt naked. He felt like he had stripped himself naked and left himself to be gawked at by the masses…but not in a sexual way obviously….just in a….way….

He pushed the Awakened away.

They fell down like bowling pins. There was a laugh, a high pitched thing, and he did his best to ignore it. He ignored the laugh and the trill of an aura…and the red that he could see out the corner of his eyes. He focused on Shigeko….on how faint her aura was. He knew what he should have been doing. He was the President of Claw…he should have been acting. He should have been on his feet directing people, getting this fixed, moving the Awakened, and probably looking for Tadashi and Sho too while he was at it…but he didn't….he couldn't….

His Daughter needed him.

"Mama! Look Mama! Ashes, ashes, they all fall down!" said the voice….very articulate…for her age. Shigeko hadn't been that articulate…though that may have been apprehension at joining his family. She hadn't spoken much in the beginning save for asking for her birth family. Where mama? Where daddy? Where Ritsu? She had been like a broken record those first few days….he had been annoyed with her those first few days but now…

Now he would have given anything to hear her voice.

He glanced over at Minegishi. Matsuo, the Scar, was holding their hand and muttering something to them. They were…very hurt….but they should have been dead. If they had been at the epicenter of the explosion then they would have died. Like that Awakened he'd seen being pulled out of the rubble. One of Shigeko's personal followers…there had been a ribbon around what was left of his neck and a bow embedded in his skull….

His Daughter could not know what she had done.

"Yeah…they all fall down. You're right Mukai." Said another voice…a woman's voice. A woman's voice speaking Japanese. Suzuki held his Daughter's hand tighter. He didn't know why he had expected to hear a woman's voice speaking Korean…something soft and impossibly sweet….sort of like birdsong maybe…but not annoying birdsong. Sort of like…he didn't even remember. He just couldn't stop thinking of birdsong and…and Shigeko's hand was turning white.

He loosened his grip.

"I'm right! I'm right!" sang the voice. Suzuki did his best to tune it out. He did his best to focus on Shigeko…on her breathing….on her aura…but it….it did not come easy…

"Yeah…you're right. You're my smart….smart little girl…you know that? You're so…so smart…" said the woman's voice. Strained. Her voice was strained…and her aura was guarded. She must have been hurt…Suzuki had no idea how hurt. He didn't dare turn his head, he didn't dare glance in her direction. He couldn't. He….he focused on Shigeko….he focused on his Daughter….

His Daughter who was sleeping right in front of him.

She was sleeping. His Daughter was sleeping. That was what he told himself. His Daughter was just sleeping and soon she'd wake up. Soon she'd wake up and then they could start their day together. She would open her birthday gift and then they could play together…he had gotten her another set of those dolls she liked. All of her favorite characters. The ice queen and her sister….the princess with the very long hair…the Arabian princess….the mermaid princess with and without legs…..the Scottish lesbian princess…that pacific islander princess from the new movie…he had even had a custom doll made for her of the princess from that cauldron movie even though she was not in the canonical group of princesses. Matching dresses had been made for Daughter, he'd measured her in her sleep as not to spoil the surprise, and Shigeko….and Daughter…when she woke up and opened her gift then she would be so happy…

She was just sleeping….that was all….

"Hey Toshiki….how about when you wake up we watch Totoro? And then Clockwork Orange? And then Love on a Bus? I think you'd like that…or something…we can do whatever you want…." Said Matsuo the Scar as he held Minegishi's hand in his. Minegishi stirred and muttered something before batting his hand away.

"Go…way….Ryou…." said Minegishi…well they said other things but that was just the clearest string of words that he could make out. They were hurt…a lot of people were hurt…and Tadashi was nowhere to be found. He was….this was his job! Well he had several smaller jobs as well but this was….this was what he had been put on this Earth to do. Just like Suzuki was bestowed with the ultimate power, he was created to rule this world, Tadashi was gifted with the power to heal. That was what he did…he made people better…he put them back together…

But he was nowhere to be found.

Suzuki did his best to focus on Daughter…to block out all other stimulus….including his own mind. Tadashi….had lived through worse. He had been at the epicenter of Shigeko's explosion, the one that destroyed the Eighth Division, and not only lived to tell the tale but also managed to heal others. He would….he should have been fine….he just…why did Suzuki even care!? Tadashi had betrayed him! Tadashi had betrayed him and-

A tug at his leg.

"Mukai! Come away from there!" said the woman's voice…and this time he did look. He looked at her. The woman, not the little girl tugging at his leg. He looked at the woman as he pulled herself out of bed…well cot. There were medical cots….Shigeko needed a real bed. He needed to focus on that….on Shigeko and her needs….and not the woman hobbling over towards him. She had what looked like fresh stitches on the side of her neck, a sling around her arm, and a brace on her leg. She seemed….she was tall…he remembered…almost as tall as he was….and she had put up a good fight. Fighting a woman had been…odd….even now the thought of it…you never hit women, father had said, even when they deserved it. He…well he had fought her…and left her with that Scar on her face….

The one that matched the little girl's.

"Hello!" said Mi-cha….Mukai. She…well she had been tugging on him…and saying hello….and it had been instinct to look at her. To glance down at the pest…the person…the little human being who was tugging on him. She…her face was round…very round. Her eyes…they were…his eyes…and her hair…was his hair. Wild. It grew wild around her head and…and he kept his short…for that reason. Her hair…he knew that hair grew…but he had been expecting her hair to be short…

He had been expecting an infant.

He had been expecting…the infant…that he'd held…if he'd even been expecting anything at all. The infant that had been wrapped in that pink blanket…the one that smelled vaguely of sour milk and baby powder…the one who…who had opened her eyes…and then closed them. She had been…sleeping…and she had opened her eyes once…looked into his…and closed them….almost like she hadn't wanted to look at him…like she couldn't bare it….

He knew that feeling.

"Hello!" said Mi-cha…said Mukai…again. He had renamed her. That had been….something which he had done. He didn't know why he had named her Mukai…well because he liked that name…and because she was his…because he was her…because within the timeframe of her conception he had ejaculated inside of her mother's vagina. He had picked her mother up, bent her over his desk, and….and other things which he did not want to think about right now…or ever. He….was not her father…at best he was…a sperm donor….someone who may or may not have been responsible for her creation but…but he was not her father….

He might not have even been her sperm donor…so there….

"Hello now! Hello now please!" shouted the Child. She pulled at his leg and looked up at him. Her mother, thankfully, managed to hobble over and pull her off of him. He felt…paralyzed. His body…it wouldn't move. He had been expecting…he had too many expectations. That was his problem. His mind had conjured up expectation after expectation after expectation. He needed to sort them out….or to just stop having them….he had Shigeko….he had to focus on Shigeko…her hand in his…the way her nose wrinkled…the crease between her eyes….the stirring of her aura…

He had to focus on his daughter.

"I'm sorry about her….President Suzuki….." said the woman…the Scar…Scar Tsuchiya as she grabbed Micha's….Mukai's…her daughter's arm with her good hand. That was…the woman Fukuda had been telling him about. She was…she was a good woman. A good fighter…level headed…hadn't even had to be Awakened…went to university….didn't have any documented social or emotional disorders…..she was good…a good person for Mukai….a good mother for Mukai…

Not Pang…not Su-jin…not Masami…but….a good mother…

"It's…fine…Scar Tsuchiya…." Said Suzuki finding his voice. Talking to women was always difficult…that was normal. This was normal. He was normal. He just…was having his usual difficulties. She was very tall and well endowed…the female version of it…so of course he would have had trouble finding his voice. She was staring at him, too, and her aura guarded her and the child…and she was right to feel that way. He was stronger than she would ever hope to be…it was good that she was protective of her child…even though she didn't have to be. Suzuki didn't like children…ones that weren't his own…and that was not his child. That was just….

A person who he may or may not have had hand in making.

"Scars!" said Mukai as she touched her scar…the one on her cheek. There…he hadn't given her that….and he had no idea why that thought had even crossed his mind….she wasn't a Scar…she just had one…and she would never be a Scar…she would be something like that. She was his….she may have been his…progeny…she would have been better than a Scar…

But nowhere near what Shigeko was.

"I'll just be…getting her out of your hair. Come on, Mukai…let's see if…home…is still there. President Suzuki…Vice President Suzuki. Good day." said Scar Tsuchiya with a bow. She hurried away as best as she could….her Daughter was still greeting people…and he had never greeted her back. That had been terribly rude of him…maybe he should have followed…and greeted her back. In Japanese…did she still speak Korean? Had she ever spoken it? Did she remember…had she even been capable of making memories? Had she been too young? Did she…did she know where Pang Su-jin had gone off to…not that he was looking for her or anything…not that he cared for her…not that he had ever cared for her. She had been a mistake…a moment of weakness…and he never wondered how she was doing or where she was or if she had ever finished that novel….and he never wondered about the Child either…what her favorite foods were….favorite colors…favorite…anything…he had no reason to care.

He already had a Daughter. Her name was Shigeko. He loved her.


	514. Hatori-sama

Hatori Nozomu was in way over his head.

He was tech support! He had only ever been tech support. He was the guy you called when the Wi-Fi went out or a disk was jammed or a printer stopped or when the whole network went down because someone was downloading weird porn on company time. This was just…way out of his area of expertise!

But he had to try. The alternative was…not good.

"Engineering his here, Hatori-sama." Said an Awakened that Hatori could not remember the name of. Hatori looked up from his desk. He had turned the security room into his base of operations. The power was back on, the backup generator was going and power had been cut off to the blown out part of the division. Suzuki had told him to take over, that he trusted Hatori's judgement, and…well that was flattering…

But Hatori didn't exactly tryst his own judgement.

"Send them in…please." Said Hatori. He had sent for engineering first. Engineering and building because they needed to get this place back in…not even order. They needed to get this place back to being structurally sound. He assumed that where he was sitting right now was safe, it was untouched aside from some soda that had spilled, but what did he know. He wasn't engineering or building.

He was tech support…he shouldn't have even been there.

"As you wish, Hatori-sama." Said the Awakened. He bowed and then scurried out of the room. Hatori sat up a little straighter and fixed is sweater. He had some kind of stains son the front…probably from dinner the other day…and his hair was a mess…but it wasn't like anyone else looked much better. He knew that he looked like crap…but to be fair nobody had told him that he was going to be…what even was he? Someone highly ranked enough to be able to just…call people in…and have stuff looked at…

He was Hatori-sama.

Usually he was just Hatori, or Hatoria-san, but never sama. He had never been sama to anyone ever in his life…but he was sama now. Suzuki had put him in charge….and that wasn't weird for him. He delegated sometimes, usually Fukuda, and sometimes Mob, took over for him for short periods of time. When he got overwhelmed, well he called it busy, but Hatori knew him. He didn't deal with pressure….no, not pressure….he ran Claw after all. He didn't deal with this sort of thing…when things went wrong in his personal life…

And things had gone VERY wrong….but Hatori….he didn't know how to fix it….one thing at a time. He had to fix one thing at a time.

"Good day, Hatori-sama, I'm Tsuda from engineering….and you're going to want to stay seated." Said Tsuda. Hatoru stayed seated. He knew that it was bad, he may have needed glasses but he could still see…so there was really no way to shock him at this point. How bad it could it be? There was a hole in the side of the building! It was bad and…and Hatori…well he didn't know exactly what to do to fix it…

But that was what engineering was for.

"Go ahead." Said Hatori. He turned to fully face Tsuda and then folded his hands in front of himself like Ikari Gendo. He was a powerful man now and that was what powerful men did, they sat like this, and looked at people over the top of their glasses….he kept that up for a little bit before folding his hands normally. Being a powerful man didn't suit him.

Also he may have looked less ridiculous doing that if he had been wearing a suit…or literally anything other than a stained sweater and ripped jeans.

"This building in uninhabitable. I'm not even comfortable right now…I'm sorry but that's the truth of the matter. The entire structure needs to be repaired. The foundations themselves have been damaged….not to mention the frame of the building. This place should have been evacuated hours ago! Not…not to raise my voice to you…or to tell you how to do your job, Hatori-sama." Said Tsuda. Hatori…well actually he wanted someone to tell him how to do his job. He wanted a lot of people to come in, push him out of this chair, and start doing this job for him…because he had no clue…

But he had to have a clue.

People were depending on him, a lot of people, including Suzuki. He had a lot going on right now. One of his kids was responsible for this, the other one was missing, and the guy that he was in love with had lied to him and betrayed him. He was going through a lot and unless they wanted to deal with a second explosion, or just a very pissed off Suzuki Hatori was going to have to be the man in charge…the second in command…

Because the other two seconds in command were either passed out or missing.

"Right. We'll do that then. I'll…tell everyone to leave and then you and your guys just…fix it." Said Hatori

"Sir…there is the matter of the cost. Fixing the building…the cost will be…astronomical." Said Tsuda

"Um….do whatever you have to do." Said Hatori. He wasn't accounting. He wasn't in accounting or finance and….and Suzuki liked numbers. Yeah! He would just…look at the whole thing like a big math problem…when he stopped being freaked out. He loved math! If math were a woman then he would have wined and dined it and then…well now he was going to weird places….he didn't want to think about Suzuki doing that with anyone let alone the anthropomorphic representation of math….

Right. Work time.

"Do you mean we have a blank check?" asked Tsuda

"Yeah, blank check. Go nuts. Get this place back to how it was before." Said Hatori. Mob did this a lot…Mob was Suzuki's kid….but Suzuki…well he wouldn't mind. Not that badly. Fukuda had betrayed him after all…or at least lied to him and taken his son to another country and hid there for months and months. Yeah, Suzuki would be more pissed about than however much 'astronomical' came out to…

Probably some big number with a lot of zeros.

"Very well, Hatori-sama. We'll just need the original plans and all of these people cleared out and we'll get right to work." Said Tsuda. Hatori did a fist pump….which he maybe shouldn't have done. He had been about to start cursing and cheering. Finally, something that he could do! And from his phone, too. Claw building plans…he didn't have the clearance….but he didn't need clearance. E could easily get through...that….and that...and there. The original plans for this division…he had no idea what he was looking at….

It wasn't his job to know what he was looking at.

It was his job to know who knew what they were looking at. This went to engineering. This went to engineering and building. They would know what to do for it…and they did. Tsuda bowed to him and left…actually bowed…and called him sama. He had never been called sama before. San, sometimes, but never sama. He even still got CHAN of all things sometimes…he was twenty one and he was still called chan…like he was a kid…

He wasn't a kid anymore. He was a man. He was the man in charge.

He….should not have been happy about this. Well not happy, this was a pretty shitty day actually, but he just…that was something…new. People talking to him like he wasn't just some kid. He hadn't been a kid for years. He was a man and…well it was nice to be treated like one for once….not that he was going to sit in the room and bask in the joy of being treated like a grown man for the first time in his life.

Nope.

As nice as it would have been Hatori had to get the fuck out of there….and he had to make sure that everyone else knew to get the fuck out of there too. Structurally unsound…that didn't sound good at all. in fact it sounded un-good….ok, no, he was not funny. He was not funny and he needed more time to work on his humor…like another…however long people lived. He got up from his chair and pulled out his phone….and…there. Now everyone knew to get outside and…

What then?

He walked and thought. This was…not good. The Divisions were the biggest of all the Claw bases. Even the HQs couldn't house this many people…also this was one of the few remaining places that could make Awakened….and train them. There was Australia…it wasn't done yet…but that was where the Awakened would go….

The living ones.

There, outside, were dead Awakened laid out covered in sheets….they needed to be buried. Hatori could make that happen….there. Another message, he didn't want to call them orders, and now they would be buried after they were identified. They had to bury those guys before Mob woke up. She….would not take it well if she knew that she killed people….again. The Eighth Division…this had been like the Eighth Division….and seventeen people had been killed there. Mob…she was just a kid. Sure she could be kind of…a force of extreme destruction ala Akira….but she was just a kid and she could not handle this….hell…he could barely handle this…

He walked faster.

He did not want to look at that. Seeing people dead…he had seen dead people before. He went through mission reports when he got bored…and he had seen the pictures….and he had seen the aftermath of executions too….but in real life….in real life it was different. Even covered in sheets…he could see blood…and he could smell smoke. There…there was no fire…he could smell smoke. He took off his glasses. It was easier with his glasses off. The world…it was blurry. It was green and blurry. He loved…he loved the world right now. He couldn't see it…he couldn't see anything…he could see….he stopped. He stopped and just…he had to breathe. He had to breathe and….and he just…the air hurt. It went into his lungs and it hurt and….and he rubbed his eyes. He rubbed his eyes…they hurt. It hurt. Everything hurt…it was hot and…and everything was too hot! It was too hot and dark and…and bright and…and he to…he had to make his bed…..he had to put his laundry away….he had to clean his room….dad said no more games until he cleaned his room….but dad was….mom was….

He couldn't breathe.

He got down onto his knees. He was on his knees and…and it was too hot. He was too hot. He heard his glasses fall…he didn't want them. He didn't want or need them. They were…he hated them right now. He hated everything right now. He wanted…it was too hot….it was too hot and it hurt to breathe and…and he…everything went dark. Everything was dark and…and he looked up. He could see…white. He could see white and…and his glasses flew up to his face…

And poked him in the eye.

"S-Sorry! You just seemed….sort of…I just thought that maybe the world was too big," said Serizawa. Hatori took his glasses from the air and put them on. There was an umbrella above him…the one that Serizawa was always carrying. Serizawa was…better now. He was better now and…and he was the one who was comforting Hatori and…and he didn't need this. He wasn't a kid and…he wiped his eyes. He knocked his glasses off…sort of…as he wiped his eyes and…now they were smashed back onto his face.

Shibata.

"It's ok, Hatori, we're here. It's bad, I know. Just don't look. How about we all go and look for Sho in the woods? How's that sound?" asked Shibata. He was talking to Hatori like he was Mob or Sho…one of the kids. He wasn't a kid anymore. He…he stood up. He put his glasses back on and stood up.

"Shimazaki too….we don't know where he went. Well I mean that…that he went to see Minegishi…and they're alive! She's alive too….I mean Miss Suzuki and not Minegishi….because they're a 'they' and not a 'she' even though…um…I don't know how it works and….and…" said Serizawa. He was still holding his umbrella over Hatori. Hatori pushed it over so he was covering himself from the sun and the world. Serizawa needed it more than he did.

He had a lot more going on than Hatori did.

Now there was a guy with problems…not that he meant to be an asshole….but Serizawa really did have legitimate problems. Hatori…sometimes he just got a little…like that. That's all. He just thought about his parents sometimes and that happened…so he wasn't going to think about them. He wasn't a kid and…and he didn't need people hovering over him like he was a kid.

Even if those people were his friends.

"Guys, I'm fine." Said Hatori even though that umbrella looked…inviting. It would have been better if there had been some way for him to close it. To close it and hide in it and…and it was way too bright out. It was bright out and hot out…he needed to take off his sweater…that was all.

"Are you sure? If you need something, anything, just ask me." Said Shibata. He looked tired…that would have made sense. He had been working….and it was work…for the whole plane ride. He had been keeping Serizawa calm and that was work…and he didn't need Shibata…not when Serizawa needed him. He still seemed freaked out….he was clinging to his umbrella and looked down at his crocs…and…yeah.

Hatori had to be the adult here….even though he was the youngest.

"I'm sure. Anyway you guys just….try and find Sho. Actually try and find Fukuda too….but don't go inside. It's not structurally sound. I've got stuff to do so…I'll see you guys later." Said Hatori. Ok, he was better now. He was outside and…and he walked away. He took off his sweater as he walked and tied it around his waist. Still too hot. He kept walking. He felt…he knew where he was walking. He felt Suzuki's aura and…and he was still inside…and Hatori…he wanted…

He just wanted Suzuki to be safe, that was all.

He just…wanted to get him and Mob out of there. They had used the loading dock as a makeshift sickbay since the old sick bay wasn't big enough. A lot of people had been hurt…and a lot of people died…and Mob…even if she was out of it they needed to move her. They needed to bring her to a house or a hotel or…something. Something that was in a place that wasn't here….and….Hatori looked up some places as he walked. They could stay…it might not be safe to take her all the way back to Tokyo…or Osaka…or…he had to move somewhere….for Mob. He had to move Mob somewhere and…

Suzuki.

It would be best to ask Suzuki. That was why he had to…to see Suzuki…even though he was in a room in a building that could collapse at any moment. Hatori went inside, he walked against the crowds, and he found Suzuki sitting at Mob's bedside like it was a vigil or something. Mob was…her eyes were moving behind her eyes…she was asleep. She was asleep and she could wake up at any time…and he needed to move her before he woke up….

He really needed to ask her dad before…well before he moved her to some other place…his name wasn't Fukuda, after all…

"What do you need?" asked Suzuki. He turned and looked at Hatori...and his eyes were….that was not a good look for him. When his pupil shrank like that. Nothing good ever came from Suzuki looking at someone like that. That was the same look that Sho got when he was up to something….and…well it wasn't always a good thing when the wheels in Suzuki's head turned….not that he was ever going to do anything to Mob.

He loved Mob. He was her dad and dads…well dads loved their kids.

"To…to move. I mean all of us. Engineering came and they said that this building could come down over our heads. They said that it wasn't structurally sound." Said Hatori as he came up to Suzuki's side. He was sitting on a folding chair…Hatori felt weird standing. There was a bed but it had blood on it…and he didn't want to sit on a bloody bed…or even cot. He didn't want to stand though…not if he was the only one standing….

But he stood.

"I know that it isn't structurally sound. I'm holding it up with my powers. Do you have anything else to tell me?" asked Suzuki. He was back to staring at Mob. There, her eyes moved again, and her fingers twitched. She smiled a little…she might have been having a good dream. Good. She deserved all the good dreams that she could get.

Especially after what she had been through.

"I….think that we should get Mob out of here…so she doesn't see what she did. I mean when she wakes up-" said Hatori

"She woke up…briefly….and then fell back asleep. She's tired…and fragile. She needs her rest." Said Suzuki

"Yeah but….they lined up the dead outside…and there's a hole in the building…and she doesn't need to know that she did it...not to tell you how to raise your kid but…yeah. Mob is…fragile…like you said." Said Hatori. He braced himself….Suzuki's aura reached out to his…but it didn't hurt. Suzuki was staring at him…and the wheels in his head were turning…but it didn't look like they were turning in a bad way.

"I….agree with you….move her. Move us...yes. Find a place for us to go…and find a place for the Awakened and the Scars and…and we'll get everything sorted out when….when I can think." Said Suzuki

"I'm sending a lot of people to Australia…but that's too far I think. Is Tokyo ok….or Osaka?" asked Hatori

"No, not Osaka…never Osaka….but Tokyo is fine. Have us moved there and send for our things…and find Tadashi…" said Suzuki. He called Fukuda by his first name….that made sense. Suzuki liked him…maybe even loved him…and it must have been hard. His lifelong best friend/crush/maybe love of his life betraying him….

"On it….and Sho too?" asked Hatori. Suzuki…didn't like Sho all that much. Maybe because Sho was everything about himself that he hated, mostly the out of control-ness and gay thoughts, and there was his traumatic birth….but he must have cared that Sho was missing….right?

Right?

"He's still missing?" asked Suzuki. Hatori blinked. That….well he didn't like Sho….and stuff…and also Mob had done all of this…and he didn't know why he cared. Suzuki was Suzuki and the rest of them loved Sho so it cancelled out…right?

"Yeah. I mean they're still digging people out of the rubble but…" said Hatori. There was a…cold? Warm? Weird feeling…inside? Suzuki's aura passed right over him…and expanded outwards…expanded so far outwards that for a moment all Hatori could see was red….and then it was over.

"He's alive…I can sense him….and Tadashi is alive too. I sensed him earlier…but not now…just…do what needs to be done and leave me." Said Suzuki

"Will do, boss." Said Hatori. He turned around…and was stopped. Suzuki's aura….his powers….grabbed him and turned him around. Hatori…he had thought that Suzuki liked him! Now he was stuck and Suzuki was standing up and coming at him and-

-and was hugging him.

He was being hugged and…and it was nice. Warm. He felt so…so…this was…he hugged Suzuki back. Suzuki was a lot bigger than he was…he had never noticed…well he had noticed but he hadn't ever been this close to him. This close…well there was Halloween but he couldn't remember Halloween that well…and…and he liked…this. He felt like a kid again…but in a good way like…like maybe things were ok or…he just…he hadn't been hugged by his dad in a while…but A DAD in a while…and all dads were good at hugs even though he was Suzuki Touichirou….

It was over way too fast.

"Hatori…thank you. For…being competent. Thank you for that." Said Suzuki as he let Hatori go. Hatori felt himself get pushed away….right. Hugging time was over. Time to work and….manage this crisis…and other stuff. Other stuff that he could do….other stuff that he knew that he could do…that he had to do…that Suzuki trusted him to do….

Suzuki trusted him.

"You're welcome….Suzuki." said Hatori. He wanted to hug him again….but he didn't. He had to figure out what…what came next. He had to find Sho…and Shimazaki….and Minegishi had been concussed pretty badly when he got here….he had to round up the others and find a place for them to live and…and he had to find Fukuda even though he didn't want to…he had no idea where to look….but he could find him if he had to…

He wasn't in over his head. He knew exactly what he had to do…and how to do it…so that was what he was going to do. What he had to do.


End file.
